WBIIiiilfiPIHII^ 
 
LIFE, HERE AND THERE : '^^^ 
 
 OR 
 
 ;ketches of society and adventure 
 
 AT 
 
 FAR-APAET TIMES AND PLACES 
 
 BY 
 
 N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 NEW ORLEANS: 
 BURNETT &£ BOSTWICK. 
 1854. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by 
 
 BAKER AND SCRIBNER, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southera 
 
 District of New York. 
 
 C. W. B ENEDI CT, 
 
 S t e r e t y p e Ty 
 
 UOl William st., N. Y. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 So imperceptibly is one stage of life shaded into the next — 
 so gradual and easy are the transitions, through the changes 
 worked by experience and observation — that we refer back to 
 what we " always said," and " always thought," as if we had 
 always looked through the same eyes and judged by the same 
 standards. Yet, if we could recal the Past, with the backward- 
 waving wand of the magician, and could see, together, the two 
 pictures — ^life as it seemed then, and life as it soems now — how 
 startling, to any mind, would be the comparison ! An author 
 who has chronicled his impressions, and preserved pictures of 
 society, as he saw it at earlier and later stages of observation, 
 has almost this magical privilege. He can look again at the 
 scenes which he has copied and treasured up, and judge, as few 
 others can, with what different eyes men look around them at far- 
 apart times and places. 
 
 In the following sketches, the writer records much in which he 
 had a personal share, though the narratives, even when told in 
 
IV 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 the first person, are, by no means, intended to be strictly auto- 
 biographic. The characters are all drawn from life, however, 
 and several of them are portraits, done with studied faithfulness^ 
 of celebrated men and women whom he has had the opportunity 
 to know ; while the scenes of the diflferent stories are minutely 
 true to the manners of the countries, and the style of the society, 
 in which they are laid. If the two parts of the book do not seem 
 to the reader to be written by the same pen, it but strengthens 
 the remark with which this preface commences. But if, from 
 these contrasted pictures, any knowledge can be drawn, as to the 
 tendencies of a varied life, and as to the comparative value of the 
 different spheres and relations of society, here and abroad, he 
 will not feel that even so sketchy a work is without its uses. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 EDITH LINDSEY. 
 
 A Snow Storm— Desperate Work— First Introduction— Love Commencing— Intel, 
 lectual Communion— Epicurism of Reading— Old Authors— Vision Explained— 
 Too Fine for Use— Religion in Illness — Anatomy of Love— Minute Philosophies 
 —Easy Luxuries— The Culture of Love— Albina McLush— Nature's Parallels- 
 Surprise at Health— To Realize Death— The Feelings of the Sick— Illness, 
 Poetry and Love— Verses in Absence— A Digression— A Charming Town— After 
 Long Partings— For whom "Write We ?— Time and Place of Happiness— Sketch 
 of a Chum— A Venture for a Friend— Souls in the Wrong Bodies— Naming 
 Children— Boy Poems— June in America— Scenery versus Society— Travel in 
 Canal Boats— Unwritten Music— Trenton Falls— Job on Horseback— Crack in 
 the Earth— Rapids at Trenton— A Surprise— Meeting Again— End of a First 
 Love 1 
 
 SCENES OF FEAR. 
 
 The Disturbed Vigil— Aptness for Adventure— A Western Student— Vigil with a 
 Madman— Hot Coals on a Lunatic— Literal Lunacy— American Sleighing— Male 
 Friendships— Madness in a Bridegroom— The Bridal— Lunacy Returned— Chase 
 of a Madman— Death on the Bridal Night 95 
 
 INCIDENTS ON THE HUDSON 
 
 Parisian-ism in America— Indians and Westerners— Plunge for a Lady— Cauters- 
 kill Falls— Narrow Escape , ,,..,.... 119 
 
▼1 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Pass 
 PEDLAR KARL. 
 
 Cyphenng by Trees— Possible Single-Blessedness— Latitudes of Belles— Lame 
 Women— Five Minutes too soon— Helping Lovers— An Old Maid Aunt— Tender 
 Humbug— The Elopement— Getting Late— Nearly Done 129 
 
 NIAGARA— LAKE ONTARIO— THE ST. LAWRENCE. 
 
 Niagara— Miss E. M Analysis of Grandeur— The Wear of Niagara— Under . 
 
 the Cascade— -A Risk— Niagara Ferry— A Soul Misplaced— Partiality for Water 
 —An Elopement— Indian Elopement— Thousand Isles— Sequel to a Love 152 
 
 THE CHEROKEE'S THREAT. 
 
 4 Character— New Haven— A Student from the Woods— Indian Girl at School- 
 Sudden Recognition— Red-Skin in Society — Effects of Indian Jealousy— Queer 
 Place for a Keepsake— Singular Compulsion— What Autumn is like— Sketch of 
 an Adventurer 177 
 
 F. SMITH. 
 
 Wonders of Nahant— Talk by Sea— A Trot on the Beach— Stuff for Friendships- 
 Model Reception of an Insult— Excuses for Inconstancy— Blanche Carroll— Im- 
 perious Belle— A Belle's Whim— A Lady-Whip— A Mystery— Quiz of an Ac- 
 quaintance 200 
 
 LEAVES FROM THE HEART-BOOK OF ERNEST CLAY. 
 
 An Elopement— Love, or Passion ?— Portrait worth your Study— Pay for Genius- 
 Envy the Twentieth— Analysis of Passion— Poverty, as Fashion sees it— Cost, of 
 Fashion with a Wife— Where Fame is Felt— Love in a Crowd— A Loved Woman 
 Eclipsed— Close Combat of Hearts— A Poet's Waking— A Love-Letter for a Vent 
 —Letter to an Old Love— A Women about awaking— Pivot of a Fate— Past Hope 
 Questioning Fruition— Beauty Born Again— The Old Love met Again— The Poet 
 Crowned— Poets as Lovers— Hearts and Lives in Danger— Desperate Venture 
 
 —A Trying Interview— Ambition in a Woman— A Lover within Call— Material 
 of a Friendship— A Lady's Team— Food for Perversion— Love in Death— High 
 Life Trammels— Marriage on a Death-Bed— An Electric Meeting— Bridge of 
 Mo«Qlight— A Clairvoyant Friend— First Love at Last 226 
 
CONTENTS. vu 
 
 Pagv 
 
 BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. 
 
 Portrait Painter's Secret— Object of a Visit— A Plain Man's Beauty— One "Way to 
 Love— Use of a Portrait- A Lover Undeceived 301 
 
 MISS JONES'S SON. 
 
 4 Dandy's Letter— Visit to a Mother's Sweetheart— An Unrecognized Lion- 
 Writes himself a Note— Opens the Campaign— Wit Below Stairs— At Home at 
 Last ; 314 
 
 LADY RACHEL. 
 
 Siege laid to an aversion— Regret at Success— An Apparition— Love at a Last 
 Moment 330 
 
 WiGVVAM versus ALMACK'S. 
 
 Indian and his Poney — Landlord's Daughter — The Heroine's Home — An Indian 
 Lover — Alniack's — Miss Trevanion — English Pride, American Vanity— First 
 Step in Fashion— Philosophy of Luxury— Selfishness of Wealth— Heroine in the 
 Saddle— High-Life Courting- A Warning- A Prairie Tale— A Discovery— An 
 Indian Hint— Fashion in a Wigwam— A Chiefs Home 340 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 
 
 EDITH LINSEY. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 FROST AND FLIRTATION. 
 
 ^ Oh yes — for you're in love with me ! 
 
 (I'm very glad of it, I'm sure ;) 
 But then you are not rich, you see, 
 
 And I you know Pm very poor ! 
 
 'Tis true that I can drive a tandem — 
 
 'Tis true that I can turn a sonnet— 
 'Tis true I leave the law at random, 
 
 When I should study — plague upon it ! 
 But this is not — excuse me ! — money ! 
 
 (A thing they give for house and land ;) 
 And we must eat in matrimony — 
 And love is neither bread nor honey — 
 
 And so you understand ?" 
 
 " Thou art spotless as the snow, lady mine, lady mine ! 
 Thou art spotless as the snow, lady mine ! 
 But the noon will have its ray, 
 And snow-wreaths melt away — 
 And hearts — why should not they ? — 
 Why not thine ?" 
 
 It began to snow. The air softened ; the pattering of the 
 
 horse's hoofs was muffled with the impeded vibration ; the sleigh 
 
 glided on with a duller sound ; the large loose flakes fell soft and 
 
 fast ; and the low and just audible murmur, like the tread of a 
 1 
 
2 ' A SNOW-STORM. 
 
 fairy host, melted on the ear with a drowsy influence, as if it were 
 a descent of palpable sleep upon the earth. You may talk of fall- 
 ing water — of the running of a brook — of the humming song of 
 an old crone on a sick vigil — or of the levi sumrro of the bees of 
 Hybla — but there is nothing like the falling 3^ che snow, for soft 
 and soothing music. You hear it, or not, as you will, but it melts 
 into your soul unaware. If you have ever a heartache, or feel the 
 need of " poppy or mandragora," or, like myself, grow sometimes 
 a-weary of the stale repetitions of this unvaried world, seek me 
 out in Massachusetts, when the wind softens and veers south, 
 after a frost — say in January. There shall have been a long-ly- 
 ing snow on the ground, well-trodden. The road shall be as 
 smooth as the paths to our first sins — of a seeming perpetual de- 
 clivity, as it were — and never a jot or jar between us and the 
 edge of the horizon ; but all onward and down apparently, with an 
 insensible ease. You sit beside me in m.y spring-sleigh, hung 
 with the lightness of a cob-web cradle for a fairy's child in the 
 trees. Our horse is, in the harness, of a swift and even pace, and 
 around his neck is a string of fine small bells, that ring to hi^ 
 measured step in a kind of muffled music, softer and softer as the 
 snow-flakes thicken in the air. Your seat is of the shape of the 
 fautcuil in your library, cushioned and deep, and with a back- 
 ward and gentle slope, and you are enveloped to the eyelids iu 
 waiin furs. You settle down, with every muscle in repose, the 
 visor of your ermine cap just shedding the snow from your fore- 
 head, and, with a word, the groom stands back, and the horse 
 speeds on, steady, but beautifully fast. The bells, which you 
 hear loudly at first, begin to deaden, and the low hum of the 
 alighting flakes steals gradually on your ear ; and soon the hoof- 
 Btrokes are as silent as if the steed were shod with wool, and away 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 3 
 
 you jQiee tlirougli the white air, like birds asleep upon the wing 
 diving through the feathery fleeces of the noon. Your eyelids 
 fall — forgetfulness steals upon the senses — a delicious torpor takes 
 possession of the uneasy blood — and brain and thought yield to 
 an intoxicating and trance-like slumber. It were perhaps too 
 much to ask that any human bosom may go scathless to the grave ; 
 but, in my own unworthy petitions, I usually supplicate that my 
 heart may be broken about Christmas. I know an anodyne o' 
 that season. 
 
 Fred Fleming and I occupied one of the seven long seats in a 
 stage-sleigh, flying at this time twelve miles in the hour, (yet not 
 fast enough for our impatience), westward from the university 
 gates. The sleighing had been perfect for a week, and the cold 
 keen air had softened for the first time that morning, and assumed 
 the warm and woolly complexion that foretokened snow. Though 
 not very cheerful in its aspect, this is an atmosphere particularly 
 pleasant to breathe ; and Fred, who was making his .first move 
 after a six weeks' fever, sat with the furs away from his mouth, 
 nostrils expanded, lips parted, and the countenance altogether of 
 a man in a high state of physical enjoyment. I had nursed him 
 through his illness, by-the-way, in my own rooms, and hence our 
 position as fellow-travellers. A pressing invitation from his 
 father to come home with him to Skaneateles, for the holydays, 
 had diverted me from my usual winter journey to the North ; and, 
 for the first time in my life, I was going upon a long visit to a 
 strange roof My imagination had never more business upon its 
 hands. 
 
 Fred had described to me, over and over again, every person I 
 was to meet — brothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, and friends — a 
 household of thirty people, guests included ; but there was one 
 
4 WHAT IS SHE LIKE? 
 
 person among them of whom his descriptions, amplified as the^ 
 were, were very unsatisfactory. 
 
 " Is she so very plain ?" I asked, for the twentieth time. 
 
 " Abominably !" 
 
 " And immense black eyes .^' 
 
 " Saucers !" 
 
 " And large mouth .?" 
 
 "Huge!" 
 
 " And very dark .^" 
 
 " Like a squaw !" 
 
 " And skinny hands, did yoii say ?" 
 
 " Lean, long, and pokerish !" 
 
 " And so very clever ?" 
 
 " Knows everything, Phil !" 
 
 " But a sweet voice ?" 
 
 " Um ! everybody says so." 
 
 " And high temper ?" 
 
 " She's the devil, Phil ! don't ask any more questions about 
 her." 
 
 "You don't like her, then ?" 
 
 " She never condescends to speak to me; how should I." 
 
 And thereupon I put my head out of the sleigh, and employed 
 myself with catching the snow-flakes on my nose, and thinking 
 whether Edith Linsey would like me or no ; for, through all Fred's 
 derogatory descriptions, it was clearly evident that she was the 
 ruling spirit of the hospitable household of the Flemings. 
 
 As we got farther on, the new snow became deeper, and we 
 found that the last storm had been heavier here than in the coun- 
 try from which we had come. The occasional farm-houses 
 were ahnost wholly buried, the black chimney alone appearing 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 5 
 
 above the ridgy drifts, while the tops of the doors and win- 
 dows lay below the level of the trodden road, from which a de- 
 scending passage was cut to the threshold, like the entrance to a 
 cave in the earth. The fences were quite invisible. The fruit- 
 trees looked diminished to shrubberies of snow-flowers, their 
 trunks buried under the visible surface, and their branches loaded 
 with the still falling flakes, till they bent beneath the burden. 
 Nothing was abroad, for nothing could stir out of the road without 
 danger of being lost, and we dreaded to meet even a single sleigh, 
 lest, in turning out, the horses should '^ slump" beyond their depth, 
 in the untrodden drifts. The poor animals began to labor severely, 
 4ind sunk at every step over their knees in the clogging and wool- 
 like substance ; and the long and cumbrous sleigh rose and fell 
 in the deep pits like a boat in a heavy sea. It seemed impossible 
 to get on. Twice we brought up with a terrible plunge and stood 
 suddenly still, for the runners had struck in too deep for the 
 strrngth of:the horses; and, with the snow-shovels, which formed 
 a p.trt of the furniture of the vehicle, we dug them from their con- 
 crete beds. Our progress at last was reduced to scarce a mile in 
 the hour, and we began to have apprehensions that our team 
 would give out between the post-houses. Fortunately it was still 
 warm, for the numbness of cold would have paralyzed our already 
 flagging exertions. 
 
 "We had reached the summit of a long hill with the greatest 
 difficulty. The poor beasts stood panting and reeking with sweat ; 
 the runners of the sleigh were clogged with hard cakes of snow. 
 and the air was close and dispiriting. We came to a stand-still, 
 with the vehicle lying over almost on its side, and I stepped out 
 to speak to the driver and look forward. It was a discouraging 
 prospect ; a long deep valley lay before us, closed at the distance 
 
e SNOW PERILS. 
 
 of a couple of miles by another steep hill, through a cleft in tha 
 top of which lay our way. We could not even distinguish the 
 line of the road between. Our disheartened animals stood at this 
 moment buried to their breasts, and to get forward without rearing 
 at every step seemed impossible. The driver sat on his box look- 
 ing uneasily down into the valley. It was one undulating ocean 
 of snow, not a sign of a human habitation to be seen, and even the 
 trees 'indistiuguishable from the general mass by their whitened 
 and overladen branches. The storm had ceased, but the usual 
 sharp cold that succeeds a warm fall of snow had not yet lightened 
 the clamminess of the new-fallen flakes, and they clung around 
 the foot like clay, rendering every step a toil. 
 
 " Your leaders are quite blown," I said to the driver, as he 
 slid off his uncomfortable seat. 
 
 " Pretty nearly, sir !" 
 
 " And your wheelers are not much bettor." 
 
 " Scrt'cely." 
 
 '^ And what do you think of the weather .^" 
 
 " It'll be darnation cold in an hour." As he spoke, he looked 
 jp to the sky, which was already peeling off its clouds in long 
 stripes, like the skhi of an orange, and looked as hard and cold 
 as marble between the widening rifts. A sudden gust of a more 
 chilling temperature followed iinmodiatcly upon his pi-ediction, and 
 the long cloth curtains of the sleigh flew clear off their slight 
 pillars, and shook off their fringes of icicles. 
 
 " Could you shovel a little, mister .'" said the driver, handing 
 me one of the broad wooden utensils from his foot-board, and 
 commencing, himself, after having thrown off his box-coat, by 
 heaving up a solid cake of the moist snow at the side of the 
 road. 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 7 
 
 *^ It's just to make a place to rub down tliem creturs," said he, 
 05 I looked at him, quite puzzled to know what he was going to 
 do. 
 
 Fred was too weak to assist us, and haying righted the yr']\'<] ■ 
 a little, and tied down the flapping curtains, he wrapp ;] ]di,:r. It 
 m his cloak, and I set heartily to work with my ph<;vel. In a few 
 minutes, taking advantage of the hollow of a diifi. we had cleared 
 a small area of frozen ground, and. r 1 usiii; ihe tired animals from 
 their harness, we rubbed ih^zii wt'll down with the straw from the 
 bottom of the sleigh, i'hf ].j: severing driver then cleared the 
 runners of their ioed ^n 1 clinging masses, and, a half hour having 
 elapsed, he produced two bottles of rum from his box, and, giving 
 each of the horses a dose, put them again to their traces. 
 
 We heaved out of the pit into which the sleigh had settled, and 
 Pjr th .' first mile it was down-hill, and we got on with compara 
 {ivo case. The sky was by this time almost bare, a dark, slaty 
 mass of clouds alone settling on the horizon in the quarter of the 
 wind;, while the sun, as powerless as moonlight, poured with daz- 
 zling splendor on the snow, and the gusts came keen and bitter 
 across the spaikiing waste, rimming the nostrils as if with bands 
 of steel, and penetrating to the innermost nerve with their pungent 
 iciness. No protection seemed of any avail. The whole surface 
 .of the body ached as if it were laid against a slab of ice. The 
 throat closed instinctively, and contracted its unpleasant respira- 
 ration — the body and limbs drew irresistibly together, to econo- 
 mize', like a hedge-hog, the exposed surftice — the hands and feet 
 felt transmuted to lead — and across the forehead, below the pres- 
 sure of the cap, there was a binding and oppressive ache, as if a 
 bar of frosty iron had been let into the scull. The mind, mean- 
 time, seem-^.'l t.--"-^.:ing up — unwillingness to stir, and inability to 
 
8 DESPERATE WORK. 
 
 think of anything but the cold, becoming every instant more de- 
 cided. 
 
 From the bend of the valley our diJ0Bculties became more serious. 
 The drifts often lay across the road like a wall, some feet above 
 the heads of the horses, and we had dug through one or two, and 
 had been once upset, and often near it, before we came to the 
 steepest part of the ascent. The horses had by this time begun 
 to feel the excitement of the rum, and bounded on through the 
 snow with continual leaps, jerking the sleigh after them with a 
 violence that threatened momently to break the traces. The 
 steam from their bodies froze instantly, and covered them with a 
 coat like hoar-frost ; and, spite of their heat, and the unnatural and 
 violent exertions they were making, it was evident by the pricking 
 of their ears, and the sudden crouch of the body when a stronger 
 blast swept over, that the cold struck through even their hot and 
 intoxicated blood. 
 
 We toiled up, leap after leap, and it seemed miraculous to me 
 that the now infuriated animals did not burst a blood-vessel or 
 crack a sinew with every one of those terrible springs. The sleigh 
 plunged on after them, stopping dead and short at ovory other 
 moment, and reeling over the heavy drifts, like a boat in a surging 
 sea. A finer crystallization had meantime taken place upon the 
 surface of the moist snow, and the powdered particles flew almost ■ 
 insensibly on the blasts of wind, filling the eyes and hair, and 
 cutting the skin with a sensation like the touch of needle-points. 
 The driver, and his maddened but almost exhausted team, were 
 blinded by the glittering and whirling eddies, the cold grew in- 
 censer every moment, the forward motion gradually less and less, 
 and when, with the very last effort apparently, we reached a spot 
 on the summit of the hill, which, from its exposed situation, had 
 
£ARLI£R DATS. f 
 
 ^ been kept bare by the wind, the patient and persevering whip 
 brought his horses to a stand, and despaired, for the first time, of 
 his prospects of getting on. I crept out of the sleigh, the iron- 
 bound runners of which now grated on the bare ground, but found 
 it impossible to stand upright. 
 
 " if you can use your hands," said the driver, turning his back 
 to the wind, which stung the face like the lash of a whip, " I'll 
 trouble you to un tackle them horses." 
 
 I set about it, while he buried his hands and face in the snow 
 to relieve them for a moment from the agony of cold. The poor 
 animals staggered stiffly as I pushed them aside, and every vein 
 stood out from their bodies like ropes under the skin. 
 
 " What are you going to do ?" I asked, as he joined me again, 
 and taking off the harness of one of the leaders, flung it into the 
 snow. 
 
 " Ride for life !" was his ominous answer. 
 
 " Grood God ! and what is to become of my sick friend .?" 
 
 " The Almighty knows — if he can't ride to the tavern !" 
 
 I sprang instantly to poor Fred, who was lying in the bottom 
 of the sleigh almost frozen to death, informed him of the driver's 
 decision, and asked him if he thought he could ride one of the 
 horses. He was beginning to grow drowsy, the first symptom of 
 death by cold, and could with difficulty be roused. "With the 
 driver's assistance, however, I lifted him out of the sleigh, shook 
 him soundly, and, making stirrups of the traces, set him upon one 
 of the horses, and started him off before us. The poor beasts 
 seemed to have a presentiment of the necessity of exertioo, and, 
 though stiff and sluggish, entered willingly upon the deep drift which 
 bloiiked up the way, and toilad exhaustedly on. The cold in our 
 exposed position was &g6mzmg. Every small fibr« in the skia of 
 
10 FIRST INTRODUCTION. 
 
 niy own face felt splitting and cracked, and my eyelids seemed 
 made of ice. Our limbs soon lost ^11 sensation. I could only 
 press with my knees to the horse's side, and the whole collected 
 energy of my frame seemed expended in the exertion. Fred held 
 on wonderfully. The driver had sfill the use of his arm, and rode 
 behind, flogging the poor animals on, whose every step seemed to 
 be the last summons of energy. The sun set, and it was rather a 
 relief, for the glitter upon the snow was exceedingly painful to the 
 sight, and there was no warmth in its beams. I could see my 
 poor friend drooping gradually to the neck of his horse, but, until 
 he should drop off, it was impossible to assist him, and his faithful 
 animal still waded on. I felt my own strength fast ebbing away. 
 If I had been alone, I should certainly have lain down, with the 
 almost irresistible inclination to sleep ; but the thought of my 
 friend, and the shouting of the energetic driver, nerved me from 
 time to time — and, with hands hanging helplessly down, and elbows 
 fastened convulsively to my side, we plunged and struggled pain- 
 fully forward. I but remember being taken afterward to a fire, 
 and shrinking from it with a shriek — the suffering of reviving con- 
 sciousness was so intolerable. We had reached the tavern liter- 
 ally frozen upon our horses. 
 
 n. 
 
 I was balancmg my spoon on the edge of a cup at the breakfast- 
 table, the morning after our arrival, when Fred stopped in the 
 middle of an eulogium on my virtues as a nurse, and a lady enter- 
 ing at the same moment, he said simply in parenthesis, " My 
 cousin Edith, Mr. Slingsby," and went on with his story. I rose 
 and bowed, and, as Fred had the jparoh^ I had time to collect my 
 
EARLIER DAYS. H 
 
 courage, and take a look at the enemy's camp — for, of that con- 
 siderable household, I felt my star to be in conjunction or oppo- 
 sition with her's only, who was at that moment my vis-d-vis across 
 a dish of stewed oysters. 
 
 In about five minutes of rapid mental portrait-painting, I had 
 taken a likeness of Edith Linsey, which I see at this moment (I 
 have carried it about the world ever since) as distinctly as the 
 incipient lines of care in this thin-wearing hand. My feelings 
 changed in that time from dread or admiration, or something be- 
 tween these, to pity ; she was so unscrupulously and hopelessly 
 plain — so wretchedly ill and suffering in her aspect — so spiritless 
 and unhappy in every motion and look. " I'll win her heart," 
 thought I, "by being kind to her. Poor thing ! it will be some- 
 thing new to her, I dare say !" Oh, Philip Slingsby ! what a 
 doomed donkey thou wert for that silly soliloquy ! 
 
 And yet, even as she sat there, leaning over her untasted break- 
 fast, listless, ill, and melancholy — ^with her large mouth, her pro- 
 truding eyes, her dead and sallow complexion, and not one 
 redeeming feature — there was something in her face which pro- 
 duced a phantom of beauty in my mind — a glimpse, a shadowing of 
 a countenance that Beatrice Cenci might have worn at her last 
 innocent orison — a loveliness moulded and exalted by superhuman 
 and overpowering mind — instinct through all its sweetness with 
 energy and fire. So strong was this phantom portrait, that in all 
 my thoughts of her, as an angel in heaven, (for I supposed her 
 dying for many a month, and a future existence was her own most 
 frequent theme), she always rose to my fancy with a face half 
 Niobe, half Psyche, radiantly lovely. And this, too, with a face 
 of her own, a bond fide physiognomy, that must have made a mirror 
 an unpleasant article of furniture in her bed-room. 
 
12 LOVE COMMENCING. 
 
 I have no suspicion, in my own mind, whether Time was drunk 
 or sober during the succeeding week of those Christmas holydays. 
 The second Saturday had come round, and I just remember that 
 Fred was very much out of humor with me for having appeared 
 to his friends to be everything he said I was not^ and nothing he 
 said I wat. He had described me as the most uproarious, noisy, 
 good-humored, and agreeable dog in the world. And I was not 
 that, at all — particularly the last. The old judge told him he had 
 not improved in his penetration at the university. 
 
 A week ! and what a life had been clasped within its brief cal- 
 endar, for me ! Edith Linsey was two years older than T, and I 
 was considered a boy. She was thought to be dying slowly, but 
 irretrievably, of consumption ; and it was little matter whom she 
 loved, or how. They would only have been pleased, if, by a new 
 affection, she could beguile the preying melancholy of illness ; for, 
 by that gentle name, they called, in their kindness, a caprice and 
 a bitterness of character that, had she been less a sufferer, 
 would not have been endured for a day. But she was not capri- 
 cious, or bitter to me ! Oh, no ! And from the very extreme of 
 her impatience with others — from her rudeness, her violence, her 
 sarcasm — she came to me with a heart softer than a child's, and 
 wept upon my hands, and weighed every word that might give me 
 offence, and watched to anticipate my lighest wish, and was humble, 
 and generous, and passionately loving and dependent. Her heart 
 sprang to me with a rebound. She gave herself up to me with an 
 utter and desperate abandonment, that owed something to her 
 peculiar character, but more to her own solemn conviction that 
 she was dying — that her best hope of life was not worth a week's 
 purchase. 
 
 We had begun with books, and upon them her past enthusiasm 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 13 
 
 had hitherto been released. She loved her favorite authors with 
 a passion. They had relieved her heart ; and there was nothing 
 of poetry or philosophy, that was deep, or beautiful, in which she 
 had not steeped her very soul. How well I remember her repeating 
 to me from Shelley those glorious lines to the soaring swan : — 
 
 " Thou hast a home, 
 Beautiful bird ! Thou voyagest to thy home — 
 Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck 
 "With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes 
 Bright with the lustre of their own fond joy ! 
 And what am I, that 1 should linger here, 
 With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, 
 Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned 
 To beaut}', wasting these surpassing powers 
 To the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven 
 That echoes not my thoughts !" 
 
 There was a lung room in the southern wing of the house, 
 fitted up as a library. It was a heavily-curtainod, dim old place, 
 with deep-embayed windows, and so many nooks, and so much 
 furniture, that there was that hushed air, that absence of echo 
 within it, which is the great charm of a haunt for study or thought. 
 It was Edith's kingdom. She might lock the door, if she pleased, 
 or shut or open the windows ; in short, when she was there, no 
 one thought of disturbing her, and she was like a " spirit in its 
 cell," invisible and inviolate. And here I drank, into my very life 
 and soul, the outpourings of a bosom that had been locked till (as 
 we both thought) the last hour of its life — a flow of mingled intel- 
 lect and passion that overran my heart like lava, sweeping every- 
 thing into its resistless fire, and (may God forgive her !) leaving it 
 scorched and desolate when its mocking brightness had gone out 
 
14 INTELLECTUAL COMMUNION. 
 
 I remember that ^' Elia" — Charles Lamb's Elia— was the fa- 
 vorite of favorites among her books ; and, partly, that the lata 
 death of this most-to-be-loved author reminded me to look it up, 
 and, partly, to have time to draw back my indifference over a sub- 
 ject that it something stirs me to recall, you shall read an imita- 
 tion (or continuation, if you will) that I did for Edith's eye, of 
 his " Essay on Books and Reading." I sat with her dry and 
 fleshless hand in mine while I read it to her, and the fingers of 
 Psyche were never fairer to Canova than they to me. 
 
 " It is a little singular," I began (looking into her eyes as long 
 as I could remember what I had written), " that, among all the 
 elegancies of sentiment for which the age is remarkable, no one 
 should ever have thought of writing a book upon ^ Reading.' The 
 refinements of the true epicure in books are surely as various as 
 those of the gastronome and the opium-eater ; and I can conceive 
 of no rea?=(in vrliy a topic of such natural occurrence should have 
 been so 1 mg nagloct:^'!, unless it is that that the taste itself, being 
 rather a growth of indolence, has never numbered among its vo- 
 taries one of the busy craft of writers. 
 
 " The ix^-oat proportion of men read, as they eat, for hunger. 
 1 do not C!Jn^ider them readers. Th" tru3 secret of the thino^ is 
 u more adapted to their comprehension, then the sublimations 
 of Louis Eustace Ude for the taste of a day-laborer. The re- 
 fined reading-taste, like the palate of gourmand erie^ must have 
 got beyond appetite — ^gross appetite. It shall be that of a man 
 who, having fed through childhood and youth on simple knowledge, 
 values now, only, as it were, the apotheosis of learning — the spiri- 
 tual narc. There are, it is true, instances of a keen natural 
 relish : a boy, as you will sometimes find one, of a premature 
 thoughtfulness, will carry a favorite author in' his bosom,, and 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 15 
 
 feast greedily on it in his stolen hours. Elia tells the ex^i^aisitd 
 story : 
 
 ' I saw a boy, with eager eye, 
 Open a book upon a stall, 
 And read as he'd devour it all ; 
 ' ^k Which, when the stall-man did espy, 
 mt ^^ Soon to the boy I heard him call, 
 " You, sir, you never buy a book, 
 Therefore in one you shall not look !" 
 The boy passed slowly on, and with a sigh, 
 He wished he had never been taught to read — 
 Then of the old churl's books he should have had no need.* 
 
 " The pleasure as well as the profit of reading depends as much 
 npon time and manner, as upon the book. The mind is an opal 
 — changing its color with every shifting shade. Ease of positiwi 
 is especially necessary. A muscle strained, a nerve unpoised, an 
 admitted sunbeam caught upon a mirror, are slight circumstances ; 
 but a feather may tickle the dreamer from paradise to earth. 
 * Many a fro ward axiom,' says a refined writer, * many an in- 
 humane thought, hath arisen from sitting uncomfortably, or from 
 a want of s^nnmetry in your chamber.' Who has not felt, at 
 times, an unaccountable disrelish for a favorite author ? Who 
 has not, by a sudden noise in the street, been startled from a 
 reading dream, and found, afterward, that the broken spell was 
 not' to be rewound ? An ill-tied cravat may unlink the rich har- 
 monies of Taylor. You would not think Barry Cornwall the 
 delicious heart he is, reading him in a tottering chair. 
 
 " There is much in the mood with which you come to a book. 
 If you have been vexed out of doors, the good humor of an author 
 seems unnatural. I think I should scarce relish the * gentle 
 
ja EPICURISM OF READING. 
 
 spiriting * of Ariel with a pulse of ninety in the minute. Or, if I 
 had been touched by the unkindness of a friend, Jack Falstafl 
 would not move me to laughter as easily as he is wont. There 
 are tones of the mind, however, to which a book will vibrate with 
 a harmony than which there is nothing more exquisite in nature. 
 To go abroad at sunrise in June, and admit all the holy influ- 
 ences of the hour — stillness, and purity, and balm — to a mind 
 subdued and dignified, as the mind will be by the sacred tranquil- 
 lity of sleep, and then to come in with bathed and refreshed 
 senses, and a temper of as clear joyfulness as the soaring lark's, 
 and sit down to Milton or Spenser, or, almost loftier still, the 
 divine * Prometheus' of Shelley, has seemed to me a harmony of 
 delight almost too heavenly to be human. The great secret of 
 such pleasure is sympathy. You must climb to the eagle poet's 
 eyry. You must have senses, like his, for the music that is only 
 audible to the fine ear of thought, and the beauty that is visible 
 only to the spirit-eye of a clear, and, for the time, unpolluted 
 fancy. The stamp and pressure of the magician's own time and 
 season must be upon you. You would not read Ossian, for ex- 
 ample, in a bath, or sitting under a tree in a sultry noon ; but 
 after rushing into the eye of the wind with a fleet horse, with all 
 his gallant pride and glorious strength and fire obedient to your 
 rein, and so mingling, as it will, with his rider's consciousness, 
 that you feel as if you were gifted in your own body with the 
 swiftness and energy of an angel, after this, to sit down to Ossian. 
 is to read him with a magnificence of delusion, to my mind scarce 
 less than reality. I never envied Napoleon till I heard it was hhs 
 habit, after a battle, to read Ossian. 
 
 " You cannot often read to music. But I love, when the 
 Toluatary is pealing in church — every breath in th« congregaticHJ 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 17 
 
 suppressed, and the deep-volumed notes pouring through the 
 arches of the roof with the sublime and almost articulate praise 
 of the organ — to read, from the pew Bible, the book of Ecclesi- 
 astes. The solemn stateliness of its periods is fitted to music like 
 a hymn. It is to me a spring of the most thrilling devotion — 
 though I shame to confess that the richness of its eastern im- 
 agery, and, above all, the inimitable beauty of its philosophy, 
 stand out somewhat definitely in the reminiscences of the hour. 
 
 " A taste for reading comes comparatively late. ^ Robinson 
 Crusoe' will turn a boy's head at ten. The ' Arabian Nights' 
 are taken to bed with us at twelve. At fourteen, a forward boy 
 will read the ' Lady of the Lake,' ' Tom Jones,' and * Peregrine 
 Pickle ;' and nt ^cvf^Dteen (not before) he is ready for Shak> 
 fepere, and, if he is of a thoughtful turn, Milton. Most men do 
 not read these last with a true relish till after this period. The 
 hidden beauties of standard authors break upon the mind by su 
 prise. It is like discovering a secret spring in an old jewel. \ jU 
 take up the book in an idle moment, as you have done a thousand 
 times before, perhaps wondering, as you turn over the leaves, 
 what the world finds in it to admire, when, suddenly as you read, 
 your fingers press close upon the covers, your frame thrills, and 
 the passage you have chanced upon, chains you like a spell — it is 
 so vividly true and beautiful. Milton's ' Comus' flashed upon mc 
 in this way. I never could read the ' Rape of the Lock' till a 
 friend quoted some passages from it during a walk. I know no 
 more exquisite sensation than this warming of the heart to an old 
 author ; and it seems to me that the most delicious portion of 
 intellectual existence is the brief period in which, one by one, the 
 great minds of old are admitted with all their time-mellowed worth 
 to the affections. Witk what delight I read, for the first time, 
 
i$ OLD AUTHORS. 
 
 the * kind-hearted' plays of Beaumont and Fletcher! How 1 
 doated on Burton! What treasures to me were the ^ Fairy 
 Queen' and the Lyrics of Milton ! 
 
 " I used to think, when studying the Greek and Latin poets in 
 my boyhood, that, to be made a school-author, was a fair offset 
 against immortality. I would as lief, it seemed to me, have my 
 verses handed down by the town-crier. But latterly, after a© 
 interval of a few years, I have taken up my classics (the identical 
 school copies with the hard places all thumbed and pencilled) 
 and have read them with no little pleasure. It is not to be be- 
 lieved with what a satisfaction the riper eye glides smoothly over 
 the once difficult line, finding the golden cadence of poetry be- 
 neath what once seemed only a tangled chaos of inversion. The 
 associations of hard study, instead of reviving the old distaste, 
 added wonderfully to the interest of a re~perusal. I could see now 
 what brightened the sunken eye of the pale and sickly master, as 
 he took up the hesitating passage, and read on, forgetful of the 
 delinquent, to the end. I could enjoy now, what was a dead 
 letter to me then, the heightened fullness of Herodotus, and the 
 strong-woven style of Thucydides, and the magnificent invention 
 of jEschylus. I took an aversion to Homer from hearing a class- 
 mate in the next room scan it perpetually through his nose. 
 There is no music for me in the ' Iliad.' But, spite of the recol- 
 lections scored alike upon my palm and the margin, I own to an 
 Augustan relish for the smooth melody of Virgil, and freely for- 
 give the sometime -oublesome ferule — enjoying by its aid the 
 raciness of Horace and Juvenal, and the lofty philosophy of Lu- 
 cretius. It will be a dear friend to whom I put down, in my will, 
 that shelf of defaced classics. 
 
 ** There are some books that bear reading pleasantly once a 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 19 
 
 year, ^ Tristram Shandy' is an annual with me — I read him regu- 
 larly about Christmas. Jeremy Taylor (not to mingle things holy 
 and profane) is a good table-book, to be used when you would collect 
 your thoughts and be serious a while. A man of taste need never 
 want fcr Sunday reading while he can find the sermons of Taylor, 
 and South, and Fuller — writers of good theological repute — though, 
 between ourselves, I think one likelier to be delighted with the po- 
 etry and quaint fancifulness of their style, than edified by the piety 
 it covers. I like to have a quarto edition of Sir Thomas Brown, on 
 a near shelf, or Milton's prose works, or Bacon. There are health- 
 ful moods of the mind when lighter nutriment is distasteful. 
 
 " 1 am growing fastidious in poetry, and confine myself more and 
 more to the old writers. Castaly of late runs shallow. Shelley's 
 (peace to his passionate heart !) was a deep draught, and Words- 
 v>-orth and Wilson sit near the well, and Keats and Barry Corn- 
 wall have been to the fountain's lip, feeding their imaginations 
 (the latter his heart as well), but they have brought back little for 
 th? world. The 'small silver stream' will, I fear, soon cease to 
 flow down to us, and, as it dries back to its source, we shall close 
 nearer and nearer upon the ' pure English undefiled.' The dab- 
 blers in muddy waters (tributaries to Lethe) will have Parnassus 
 to themselves. 
 
 " The finest pleasures of reading come unbidden. You cannot, 
 n'ith your choicest appliances for the body, always command the 
 tnany-toned mind. In the twilight alco^ve of a library, with a 
 time-mellowed chair yialding luxuriously to your pressure, a June 
 wind laden with idleness and balm floating in at the window, and, 
 in your hand, some Russia-bound, rambling old author, as Izaak 
 "Walton, good-humored and quaint, one would think the spirit 
 could scarce fail to be conjured. Yet often, after spending a 
 
20 EPICURISM OF READING. 
 
 morning hour restlessly thus, I have risen with my mind unhinged, 
 and strolled off with a book in my pocket to the woods ; and, as I 
 live, the mood has descended upon me under some chance tree, 
 with a crooked root under my head ; and I have lain there, read- 
 ing and sleeping by turns, till the letters were blurred in the 
 dimness of twilight. It is the evil of refinement that it breeds 
 caprice. You will sometimes stand unfatigued for hours on the 
 steps of a library ; or, in a shop, the eye will be arrested, and the 
 jostling of customers and the looks of the jealous shopman will 
 not divert you till you have read out the chapter. 
 
 " I do not often indulge in the supernatural, for I am an un- 
 willing believer in ghosts, and the topic excites me. But, for its 
 connexion with the subject upon which I am writing, I must con- 
 clude these rambling observations with a late mysterious visitation 
 of my own. 
 
 " 1 had, during the last year, given up the early summer tea- 
 parties, common in the town in which the university stands ; and 
 having, of course, three or four more hours than usual on my 
 hands, I took to an afternoon habit of imaginative reading. Shak- 
 speare came first, naturally ; and I feasted for the hundredth time 
 upon what I think his (and the world's) most delicate creation — 
 the ^ Tempest.' The twilight of the first day overtook me at the 
 third act, where the banquet is brought in with solemn music, by 
 the fairy troop of Prospero, and set before the shipwrecked kinc 
 and his followers. I closed the book, and, leaning back in my 
 chair, abandoned myself to the crowd of images which thronz 
 always upon the traces of Shakspeare. The fancy music was still 
 in my mind, when an apparently real strain of the most solemn 
 melody came to my ear, dying, it seemed to me, as it reached it, 
 the tones were so expiringly faint and low. I was not startled, 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 33 
 
 but lay quietly, holding my breath, and more fearing when the 
 strain would be broken, than curious whence it came. The 
 twilight deepened, till it was dark, and it still played on, changing 
 the tune at intervals, but always of the same melancholy sweet- 
 ness ; till, by-and-by, 1 lost all curiosity, and, giving in to the 
 charm, the scenes I had been reading began to form again in my 
 mind ; and Ariel, with his delicate ministers, and Prospero, and 
 Miranda, and Caliban, came moving before me to the measure, as 
 bright and vivid as the reality. I was disturbed in the midst of it 
 by Alfonso, who came in at the usual hour with my tea ; and, on 
 starting to my feet, I listened in vain for the continuance of the 
 music. I sat thinking of it a while, but dismissed it at last, and 
 went out to enjoy, in a solitary walk, the loveliness of the summer 
 night. The next day I resumed my book, with a smile at my 
 previous credulity, and had read through the last scenes of the 
 * Tempest,' when the light failed me. I again closed the book, 
 and presently again, as if the sympathy were instantaneous, the 
 strain broke in, playing the same low and solemn melodies, and 
 falling with the same dying cadence upon the ear. I listened to 
 it, as before, with breathless attention ; abandoned myself once 
 more to its irresistible spell ; and, half-waking, half-sleepmg, fell 
 again into a vivid dream, brilliant as fairy-land, and creating it- 
 self to the measures of the still audible music. I could not now 
 shake off my belief in its reality ; but I was so rapt with its 
 strange sweetness, and the beauty of my dream, that I cared not 
 whether it came from earth or air. My indifference, singularly 
 enough, continued for several days; and, regularly at twilight, I 
 threw aside my book, and listened with dreamy wakefulness for 
 the music. It never failed me, and its results were as constant 
 as its cominsr. Whatever I had read — sometimes a canto of 
 
22 VISION EXPLAINED. 
 
 Spenser, sometimes an act of a play, or a chapter of romance — 
 the scene rose before me with the stately reality of a pageant. 
 At last I began to think of it more seriously ; and it was a relief 
 to me one evening when Alfonso came in earlier than usual with 
 a message. I told him to stand perfectly still ; and, after a 
 minute's pause, during which I heard distinctly an entire passage 
 of a funeral hymm, I asked him if he heard any music ? He said 
 he did not. My blood chilled at his positive reply, and I bade 
 him listen once more. Still he heard nothing. I could endure it 
 no longer. It was to me as distinct and audible as my own voice ; 
 and I rushed from my room as he left me, shuddering to be left 
 alone. 
 
 " The next day I thought of nothing but death. Warnings by 
 knells in the air, by apparitions, by mysterious voices, were things 
 I had believed in, speculatively, for years, and now their truth 
 came upon me like conviction. I felt a dull, leaden presentiment 
 about my heart, growing heavier and heavier with every passing 
 hour. Evening came at last, and with it, like a summons from 
 the grave, a ^ dead march' swelled clearly on the air. I felt faint 
 and sick at heart. This could not be fancy ; and why was it, as 
 I thought I had proved, audible to my ear alone .? I threw open 
 the window, and the first rush of the cool north wind refreshed 
 me; but, as if to mock my attempts at relief, the dirge-like 
 sounds rose, at the instant, with treble distinctness. I seized my 
 bat and rushed into the street, but, to my dismay, every step 
 seemed to bring me nearer to the knell. Still I hurried on, the 
 dismal sounds growing distractingly louder, till, on turning a 
 corner that leads to the lovely burying-ground of New Haven, I 
 came suddenly upon — a bell foundry ! In the rear had lately 
 been hung, for trial, the chiming bells just completed for the new 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 33 
 
 Trinity church, and the master of the establishment informed me 
 that one of his journeymen was a fine player, and every day, after 
 his work, he was in the habit of amusing himself with the ' Dead 
 March in Saul,' the ^ Marsellois Hymn,' and other melancholy 
 and easy tunes, muffling the hammers that he might not disturb 
 the neighbors." 
 
 I have had my reward for these speculations, dear reader — a 
 smile that is lying at this instant, perdii,, in the innermost recess 
 of memory — and I care not much (without offence) whether you 
 like it or no. She thanked me — she thought it well done — she 
 laid her head on my bosom while I read it in the old library of the 
 Flemings, and every word has been " paid for in fairy gold." 
 ^^JLhave taken up a thread that lengthens as I unravel it, and I 
 cannot well see how I shall come to the end, without trespassing 
 on your patience. We will cut it here, if you like, and resume it 
 after a pause ; but, before I close, I must give you a little instance 
 of how love makes the dullest earth poetical. Edith had given 
 me a 'portefeuille crammed with all kinds of embossed and curious 
 note-paper, all quite too pretty for use, and what I would show 
 you are my verses on the occasion. For a hand unpractised, 
 then, in aught save the " Gradus ad Parnassum," I must own I 
 have fished them out of' that same old fortfolio (faded now from 
 its glory, and worn with travel — but how cherished !) with a 
 pleasant feeling of paternity : 
 
 " Thanks for thy gift ! But heardst thou ever 
 
 A story of a wandering fay, 
 Who, tired of playing sylph for ever, 
 
 Came romping to the earth one day 
 And, flirting like a little Love 
 
 With everything that flew and flirted, 
 
34 TOO FINE FOR USE. 
 
 Made captive of a sober dove, 
 
 Whose pinions (so the tale asserted) , 
 
 Though neither very fresh nor fair, 
 Were well enough for comnaon wear? 
 
 " The dove, though plain, was gentle bred, 
 
 And cooed agreeably, though low ; 
 But still the fairy shook her head. 
 
 And, patting with her foot, said ' No !' 
 'Twas true that he was rather fat : 
 
 But that was living in an abbey ; — 
 And solemn — but it was not that — 
 
 * What then V ' W'^y, szV, your wings are thabby.* 
 
 ** The dove was dumb : he drooped, and sidled 
 
 In shame along the abbey-wall ; 
 And then the haughty fay unbridled, 
 
 And blew her snail-shell trumpet-call ; 
 And summoning her waiting-sprite, 
 
 Who bore her wardrobe on his back, 
 She took the wings she wore at night, 
 
 (Silvery stars on plumes of black,) 
 And, smiling, begged that he would take 
 And wear them for his lady's sake. 
 
 " He took them ; but he could not fly ! 
 
 A fay -wing was too fine for him ; 
 And when she pouted, by-and-by, 
 
 And left him for some other whim. 
 He laid them softly in his nest, 
 
 And did his flying with his own, 
 And they were soft upon his breast, 
 
 When many a night he slept alone ; 
 And many a thought those wings would stir, 
 And many a dream of love and her." 
 
EARLIER DAYS. IB 
 
 PART II. 
 
 LOVE AND SPECULATION. 
 
 Edith Linsey was religious. There are many intensiflers (a 
 new word, that I can't get on without : I submit it for admission 
 into the language) ; — there are many intensifiers, I say, to the 
 passion of love : such as pride, jealousy, poetry (money, some- 
 times, Dio mio !) and idleness :* but, if the experience of one 
 who first studiid the Art of Love in an " evangelical" country is 
 worth a penny, there is nothing within the bend of the rainbow that 
 deepens the tender passion like religion. I speak it not irreve- 
 rently. The human being that loves us throws the value of its 
 existence into the crucible, and it can do no more. Love's best 
 alchymy can only turn into affection what is in the heart. The 
 vain, the proud, the poetical, the selfish, the weak, can and do 
 fling their vanity, pride, poetry, selfishness, and weakness, into a 
 first passion ; but these are earthly elements, and there is an an- 
 taojonism in their natures that is forever strivinoj to resolve them 
 back to their original earth. But religion is of the soul as well as 
 the heart — the mind as well as the aS'ections — and, when it min- 
 gles in love, it is the infusion of an iniinortal essence into an un- 
 worthy and else perishable mixture. 
 
 Edith's religion was equally without cant, and without hesitation 
 or disguise. She had arrived at it by elevation of mind, aided by 
 the habit of never counting on her tenure of life beyond the setting 
 of the next sun, and, with her, it was rather an intellectual exalt*' 
 tion than a humility of heart. She thought of God because the 
 subject was illimitable, and her powerful imagination found in it 
 
 * ^^ La paresa« dans les feounes est le presage de ramour.''-r-Li S&UV1&X. 
 3 
 
26 RELIGION IN ILLNESS. 
 
 the scope for wliich she pined. She talked of goodness, and 
 purity, and disinterestedness,- because she found them easy virtues 
 with a frame worn down with disease, and she was removed by 
 the sheltered position of an invalid from the collision which tries 
 so shrewdly, in common life, the ring of our metal. She prayed, 
 because the fullness of her heart was loosed by her eloquence when 
 on her knees, and she found that an indistinct and mystic un- 
 burthening of her bosom, even to the Deity, was a hush and a 
 .relief. The heart does not always require rhyme and reason of 
 language and tears. 
 
 There are many persons of religious feeling, who, from a fear of 
 ridicule or misconception, conduct themselves as if to express a 
 devout sentiment were a want of taste or good-breeding. Edith 
 was not of these. Keligion was to her a powerful enthusiasm, ap- 
 plied without exception to every pursuit and affection. She used 
 it as a painter ventures on a daring color, or a musician on a new 
 string in his instrument. She felt that she aggrandized botany, 
 or history, or friendship, or love, or what you will, by making it a 
 stepping-stone to heaven, and she made as little mystery of it as 
 she did of breathing and sleep, and talked of subjects which the 
 serious usually enter upon with a suppressed breath, as she would 
 comment upon a poem or define a new philosophy. It was sur- 
 prising what an impressiveness this threw over her in everything ; 
 how elevated. she seemed above the best of those about her ; and 
 with what a worshipping and half-reverent admiration she inspired 
 all whom she did not utterly neglect or despise. For myself, my 
 soul was drank up in hers as the lark is taken into the sky, and I 
 forgot there was a world beneath me in my intoxication. I 
 thought her an angel unrecognized on earth. I believed her as 
 pure from worldliness, and as spotless from sin, as a cherub with 
 
J&:ARLI£R DAYS. fr 
 
 his breast upon his lute ; and I knelt by her when she prayed, and 
 held her upon my bosom in her fits of faintness and exhaustion, 
 and sat at her feet, with my face in her hands, listening to her 
 wild speculations (often till the morning brightened behind the 
 curtains) with an utter and irresistible abandonment of my ex- 
 istence to hers, which seems to me, now, like a recollection of 
 another life — it were, with this conscious body and mind, a self- 
 relinquishment so impossible ! 
 
 Our life was a singular one. Living in the midst of a numer- 
 ous household, with kind and cultivate(fpeople about us, we were 
 as separated from them as if the ring of Gyges encircled us from 
 their sight. Fred wished me joy of my giraffe, as he ofi"eusively 
 called his cousin ; and his sisters, who were quite too pretty to 
 have been left out of my story so long, were more indulgent, I 
 thought, to the indigenous beaux of Skaneateles than those abori- 
 ginal specimens had a right to expect j but I had no eyes, ears, 
 sense, or civility, for anything but Edith. The library became a 
 forbidden spot to all feet but ours ; we met at noon after our late 
 vigils and breakfasted together ; a light sleigh was set apart for 
 our Ute-a-Ute drives over the frozen lake, and the world seemed 
 to me to revolve on its axle with a special reference to Philip 
 Slingsby's happiness. I wonder whether an angel out of heaven 
 would have made me believe that I should ever write the story of 
 those passionate hours with a smile and a sneer ! I tell thee, 
 Edith ! (for thou wilt read every line that I tfive written, and feel 
 it, as far as thou canst feel anything), that I have read " Faust" 
 since, and thought thee Mephistopheles ! I have looked on thee 
 since, with the cheek rosy dark, thy lip filled with the blood of 
 health, and curled with thy contempt of the world and thy yet 
 wild ambition to be its naaster-spirit and idol, and struck m^ 
 
28 ANATOMY OF LOVE. 
 
 Lreast with instinctive self-questioning if thou hadst given back 
 my soul that was thine own ! I fear thee, Edith. Thou hast 
 grown beautiful that wert so hideous — the wonder-wrought mi- 
 racle of health and intellect, filling thy veins, and breathing al- 
 most a newer shape over form and feature ; but it is not thy 
 beauty ; no, nor thy enthronement in the admiration of thy wo- 
 man's world. These are little to me ; for I saw thy loveliness 
 from the first, and I worshipped thee more in the duration of a 
 thought than a hecatomb of these worldlings in their lifetime. I 
 fear thy mysterious and unaccountable power over the human 
 soul ! I can scorn thee here, in another atmosphere, with sufficient 
 distance between us, and anatomize the character that I alone 
 have read truly and too well, for the instruction of the world (its 
 ajnusement, too, proud woman — thou wilt writhe at that) — but I 
 confess to a natural and irresistible obedience to the mastery of 
 thy spirit over mine. I would not willingly again touch the ra- 
 dius of thy sphere. I would come out of Paradise to walk alone 
 with the devil as soon. 
 
 How little even the most instructed women know the secret of 
 this power ! They make the mistake of cultivating only their own 
 minds. They think that, by sc/f-elevation, they will climb up to 
 the intellects of men, and win them by seeming their equals. 
 Shallow philosophers ! You never remember, that, to subdue a 
 human being to your will, it is more necessary to know his mind 
 than your own — that, in conquering a heart, vanity is the first out- 
 post — that, while you are employing your wits in thinking how 
 most efi"ectually to dazzle him^ you should be sounding his charac- 
 ter for its undeveloped powers to assist him to dazzle you — that 
 love is a reflected light, and, to be pleased with others, we must be 
 first pleased with ourselves ? 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 29 
 
 Edith (it has occurred to me in my speculations since) seemed 
 to me always an echo of myself. She expressed my thought as it 
 sprang into my brain. I thought that in her I had met my 
 double and counterpart, with the reservation that I was a little 
 the stronger spirit, and that in my mind lay the material of the 
 eloquence that flowed from her lips — as the almond, that you en- 
 deavor to split equally, leaves the kernel in the deeper cavity of 
 its shell. Whatever the topic, she seemed using my thoughts, 
 anticipating my reflections, and, with an unobtrusive but thrilling 
 flattery, referring me to myself for the truth of what I must know 
 was but a suggestion of my own ! ! Lucrezia Borgia ! if 
 Machiavelli had but practised that subtle cunning upon thee, thou 
 wouldst have had little space in thy delirious heart for the passion 
 that, in the history of crime, has made thee the marvel and the 
 monster. 
 
 The charm of Edith to most people was that she was no suUi- 
 mation. Her mind seemed of any or no stature. She was as 
 natural, and earnest, and as satisfied to converse, on the meanest 
 subject as on the highest. She overpowered nobody. She (ap- 
 parentlyj eclipsed nobody. Her passionate and powerful elo- 
 quence was only lavished on the passionate and powerful. She 
 never misap-plied herself : and what a secret of influence and supe- 
 riority is contained in that single phrase ! We so hate him who 
 out-measures us, as we stand side by side before the world ! 
 
 I have in my portfolio several numbers of a manuscript " G-a- 
 zette," with which the Flemings amused themselves during the 
 deep snows of the winter in which I visited them. It was con- 
 tributed to, by everybody in the house, and read aloud at the 
 breakfast table on the day of its weekly appearance ; and, quite 
 aj^rojpos to these remarks upon the universality of Edith's mind, 
 
so MINUTE PHILOSOPHIES. 
 
 there is in one of them an essay of hers on what she calls minute 
 philosophies. It is curious, as showing how, with all her loftiness 
 of speculation, she descended sometimes to the examination of the 
 smallest machinery of enjoyment. 
 
 " The principal sources of everyday happiness," (I am copying 
 out a part of the essay, dear reader), "are too obvious to need a 
 place in a chapter of breakfast-table philosophy. Occupation and 
 a clear conscience, the verj truant in the fields will tell you, are 
 craving necessities. But when these are secured, there are 
 lighter matters, which, to the sensitive and educated at least, are 
 to happiness what foliage is to the tree. They are refinements 
 which add to the beauty of life without diminishing its strength ; 
 and, as they spring only from a better use of our common gifts, 
 they are neither costly nor rare. I have learned secrets under the 
 roof of a poor man, which would add to the luxury of the rich. 
 The blessings of a cheerful fancy and a quick eye come from na- 
 ture, and the trailing of a vine may develop them as well as the 
 curtaininor of a kins^'s chamber. 
 
 " Riding and driving are such stimulating pleasures, that, to 
 talk of any management in their indulgence, seems superfluous. 
 Yet we are, in motion or at rest, equally liable to the caprices of 
 feeling, and, perhaps, the gayer the mood the deeper the shade 
 cast on it by untoward circumstances. The time of riding should 
 never be regular. It then becomes a habit, and habits, though 
 sometimes comfortable, never amount to positive pleasure. I 
 would ride when nature prompted — when the shower was past, or 
 the air balmy, or the sky beautiful — whenever and wherever the 
 significant finger of Desire pointed. Oh ! to leap into the saddle 
 when the west wind blows freshly, and gallop off into its very eye, 
 with an undrawn rein, careless how far or whither; or, to spring 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 31 
 
 up from a book when the sun breaks through, after a storm, and 
 drive awaj under the white clouds, through light and shadow, 
 while the trees are wet and the earth damp and spicy ; or, in the 
 clear sunny afternoons of autumn, with a pleasant companion on 
 the seat beside you, and the glorious splendor of the decaying 
 foliage flushing in the sunshine, to loiter up the valley, dreaming 
 over the thousand airy castles that are stirred by such shifting 
 beauty — these are pleasures indeed, and such as he, who rides 
 regularly after his dinner, knows as little of as the dray-horse of 
 the exultation of the courser. 
 
 " There is a great deal in the choice of a companion. If he is 
 an indifferent acquaintance, or an indiscriminate talker, or has a 
 coarse eye for beauty, or is insensible to the delicacies of sensa- 
 tion or thought — if he is sensual, or stupid, or practical constitu- 
 tionally — he will never do. He must be a man who can detect a 
 i^re color in a leaf, or appreciate a peculiar passage in scenery, 
 or admire a grand outline in a cloud ; he must have accurate and 
 fine senses, and a heart, noble at least by nature, and subject still 
 to her direct influences ; he must be a lover of the beautiful in 
 whatever shape it come ; and, above all, he must have read and 
 thought like a scholar, if not like a poet. He will then ride by 
 your side without crossing your humor ; if talkative, he will talk 
 well, and if silent, you are content, for you know that the same 
 grandeur or beauty, which has wrought the silence in your own 
 thoughts, has given a color to his. 
 
 " There is much in the manner of driving. I like a capricious 
 rein — now fast through a hollow, and now loiteringly on the edge 
 of a road or by the bank of a river. There is a singular delight 
 in quickening your speed in the animation of a climax, and in 
 
33 EASY LUXURIES 
 
 coming down gently to a walk with a digression of feeling, or a 
 sudden sadness. 
 
 " An important item in household matters is the management 
 of light. A small room well-lighted is much more imposing than 
 a large one lighted ill. Cross lights are painful to the eye, and 
 they destroy, besides, the cool and picturesque shadows of the fur- 
 niture and figures. I would have a room always partially darkened : 
 there is a repose in the twilight dimness of a drawing-room which 
 affects one with the proper gentleness of the place : the out-of-door 
 humor of men is too rude, and the secluded light subdues them fitly 
 as they enter. I like curtains — heavy, and of the richest material : 
 there is a magnificence in large crimson folds which nothing else 
 equals, and the color gives everything a beautiful tint as the light 
 streams through them. Plants tastefully arranged are pretty ; 
 flowers are always beautiful. I would have my own room like a 
 painter's — one curtain partly drawn ; a double shadow has a ner- 
 vous look. The effect of a proper disposal of light upon the feel- 
 ino-s is by most people surprisingly neglected. I have no doubt 
 that as an habitual thing it materially affects the character ; the 
 disposition for study and thought is certainly dependent on it in 
 no slight degree. AVhat is more contemplative than the twilight 
 of a deep alcove in a library ? What more awakens thought than 
 the dim interior of an old church, with its massive and shadowy 
 pillars ? 
 
 " There may be the most exquisite luxury in furniture. A 
 crowded room has a look of comfort, and suspended lamps throw 
 a mellow depth into the features. Descending light is always the 
 most becoming ; it deepens the eye, and distributes the shadows in 
 the face judiciously. Chairs should be of different and curious 
 fashions, made to humor every possible weariness. A spice-lamp 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 33 
 
 should burn in the corner, and the pictures should be colored of a 
 pleasant tone, and the subjects should be subdued and dreamy. 
 It should be a place you would live in for a century without an 
 uncomfortable thought. I hate a neat room. A dozen of the 
 finest old authors should lie about, and a new novel, and the last 
 new prints. I rather like the French fashion of a bonhonniere, 
 though that perhaps is an extravagance. 
 
 " There is a management of one's own familiar intercourse, which 
 is more neglected, and at the same time more important to hap- 
 piness, than every other ; it is particularly a pity that it is not 
 oftener understood by newly-married people ; as far as my own 
 experience goes, I have rarely failed to detect, far too early, signs 
 of ill-disguised and disappointed weariness. It was not the reac- 
 tion of excitement — not the return to the quiet ways of home — 
 but a new manner — a forgetful indifference, believing itself con- 
 cealed, and yet betraying itself continually by unconscious and 
 irrepressible symptoms. I believe it resulted oftenest from the 
 same causes : partly that they saw each other too much ; and 
 partly that when the form of etiquette was removed, they forgot 
 to retain its invaluable essence — an assiduous and minute disin- 
 terestedness. It seems nonsense to lovers, but absence is the 
 secret of respect, and therefore of affection. Love is divine, but 
 its flame is too delicate for a perpetual household lamp ; it should 
 be burned only for incense, and even then trimmed skilfully. It 
 is wonderful how a slight neglect, or a glimpse of weakness, or a 
 chance defect of knowledge, dims its new glory. Lovers, married 
 or single, should have separate pursuits — they should meet to 
 respect each other for new and distinct acquisitions. It is the 
 weakness of human affections that they are founded on pride, and 
 waste with over-much familiarity. And oh, the delight to meet 
 
34 THE CULTURE OF LOVE. 
 
 after hours of absence — to sit down by the evening lamp, and, with 
 a mind unexhausted by the intercourse of the day, to yield to the 
 fascinating freedom of conversation, and clothe the rising thoughts 
 of affection in fresh and unhackneyed language ! How richly the 
 treasures of the mind are colored — not doled out, counter by 
 counter, as the visible machinery of thought coins them, but heaped 
 upon the mutual altar in lavish and unhesitating profusion ! And 
 how a bold fancy assumes beauty and power — not traced up 
 through all its petty springs till its dignity is lost by association, 
 but flashing full-grown and suddenly on the sense ! The gifts of 
 no one mind are equal to the constant draught of a lifetime ; and 
 even if they were, there is no one taste which could always relish 
 them. It is an humiliating thought that immortal mind must be 
 husbanded like material treasure ! 
 
 " There is a remark of Godwin, which, in rather too strong 
 language, contains a valuable truth : ' A judicious and limited vo- 
 luptuousness,' he says, * is necessary to the cultivation of the mind, 
 to the polishing of the manners, to the refinement of the sentiment, 
 and to the development of the understanding ; and a woman de- 
 ficient in this respect may be of use in the government of our 
 families, but cannot add to the enjoyment, nor fix the partiality 
 of a man of taste !' Since the days when ^ St. Leon' was written, 
 the word by which the author expressed his meaning is grown 
 perhaps into disrepute, but the remark is still one of keen and ob- 
 servant discrimination. It refers (at least so I take it) to that 
 susceptibility to delicate attentions, that fine sense of the nameless 
 and exquisite tendernesses of manner and thought, which constitute 
 in the minds of its possessors the deepest undercurrent of life — 
 the felt and treasured, but unseen and inexpressible richness of 
 affection. It is rarely found in the characters of men, but it out- 
 
EARLIER DAYS. $^ 
 
 weighs, when it is, all grosser qualities — for its possession implies 
 a generous nature, purity, fine affections, and a heart open to all 
 the sunshine and meaning of the universe. It belongs more to 
 the nature of woman ; but, indispensable as it is to her character, 
 it is oftener than anything else, wanting. And without it, what 
 is she .'' What is love, to a being of such dull sense that she hears 
 only its common and audible language, and sees nothing but what 
 it brings to her feet, to be eaten, and worn, and looked upon .'' 
 What is woman, if the impassioned language of the eye, or the 
 deepened fullness of the tone, or the tenderness of a slight atten- 
 tion, are things unnoticed and of no value ^ — one who answers 
 you when you speak, smiles when you tell her she is grave, assents 
 barely to the expression of your enthusiasm, but has no dream 
 beyond — no suspicion that she has not felt and reciprocated your 
 feelings as fully as you could expect or desire .'' It is a matter 
 too little looked to. Sensitive and ardent men too often marry 
 with a blindfold admiration of mere goodness or loveliness. The 
 abandon of matrimony soon dissipates the gay dream, and they 
 find themselves suddenly unsphered, linked indissolubly with af- 
 fections strangely different from their own, and lavishing their 
 only treasure on those who can neither appreciate nor return it. 
 The after-life of such men is a stifling solitude of feeling. Their 
 avenues of enjoyment are their maniform sympathies, and, when 
 these are shut up or neglected, the heart is dark, and they have 
 nothing to do thenceforward but to forget. 
 
 " There are many, who, possessed of the capacity for the more 
 elevated affections, waste and lose it by a careless and often un- 
 conscious neglect. It is not a plant to grow untended. The 
 breath of indifference, or a rude touch, may destroy forever its 
 delicate texture. To drop the figure, there is a daily attention to 
 
36 ALBINA M^LUSH. 
 
 the slight courtesies of life, and an artifice in detecting the jiassing 
 shadows of feeling, which alone can preserve, through life, the first 
 freshness of passion. The easy surprises of pleasure, and earnest 
 cheerfulness of assent to slight wishes, the habitual respect to 
 opinions, the polite abstinence from personal topics in the com- 
 pany of others, the assiduous and unwavering attention to her 
 comfort, at home and abroad, and, above all, the absolute preser- 
 vation, in private, of those proprieties of conversation and manner 
 which are sacred before the world — are some of the thousand 
 secrets of that rare happiness which age and habit alike fail to 
 impair or diminish." 
 
 Of course, a " periodical," though issued for one fireside only, 
 could not be popular with merely such abstract and intangible 
 matter as the foregoing ; and I must redeem its character, in this 
 its only history, by copying one of its more practical articles, 
 furnished from my own pen and my own college experience, viz : 
 -the story of 
 
 ALBINA McLUSH. 
 
 I HAVE a passion for fat women. If there is anything I hate 
 in life, it is what dainty people call a sjpirituelle. Motion — rapid 
 motion — a smart, quick, squirrel-like step, a pert, voluble tone — 
 in short, a lively girl — is my exquisite horror ! I would as lief 
 have a diahle petit dancing his infernal hornpipe on my cerebellum 
 as to be in the room with one. I have tried before now to 
 school myself into liking these parched peas of humanity. I have 
 followed them with my eyes, and attended to their rattle till I was 
 as crazy as a fly in a drum. I have danced with them, and 
 romped with them in the country, and perilled the salvation of 
 
EARLIER DATS. 87 
 
 iDy " wli'te tights'' by sitting near tliem at supper. I swear off 
 from this moment. 1 do. I won't — no — hang me if ever I show 
 another small, lively, spry woman a civility. 
 
 Albina McLush is divine. She is like the description of the 
 Persian beauty by Hafiz : " her heart is full of passion and her 
 eyes are full of sleep." She is the sister of Lurly McLush, my 
 old college chum, who, as early as his sophomore year, was chosen 
 president of the Dolce-far-nienie Society — no member of which 
 was ever known to be surprised at anything — (the college law of 
 rising before breakfast excepted.) Lurly introduced me to his 
 sister one day, as he was lying upon a heap of turnips, leaning on 
 his elbow with his head in his hand, in a green lane in the sub- 
 urbs. He had driven over a stump, and been tossed out of his 
 gig, and I came up just as he was wondering how in the d — I's 
 name he got there ! Albina sat quietly in the gig, and when I 
 was presented, requested me, with a delicious drawl, to say no- 
 thing about the adventure — " it would be so troublesome to re- 
 late it to everybody!'' I loved her from that moment. Miss 
 McLush was tall, and her shape, of its kind, was perfect. It was 
 not a fleshy one, exactly, but she was large and full. Her skin 
 was clear, fine-grained, and transparent : her temples and fore- 
 head perfectly rounded and polished, and her lips and chin swell- 
 ing into a ripe and tempting pout, like the cleft of a bursted 
 apricot. And then her eyes — large, liquid and sleepy — they 
 languished beneath their long, black fringes as if they had no 
 business with daylight — like two magnificent dreams, surprised in 
 their jet embryos by some bird-nesting cherub. Oh ! it was 
 lovely to look into them ! 
 
 She sat, usually, upon tLfauteiiilj with her large, full arm em- 
 bedded in the cushion, sometimea for hours without stirring. I 
 
38 ALBINA M^XaSH. 
 
 have seen tlie wind lift the masses of dark hair from her shoulders 
 when it seemed like the coming to life of a marble Hebe— she had 
 been motionless so long. She was a model for a goddess of sleep, 
 as she sat with her eyes half closed, lifting up their superb lids 
 slowly as you spoke to her, and dropping them again with the de- 
 liberate motion of a cloud, when she had murmured out her sylla- 
 ble of assent. Her figure, in a sitting posture, presented a gentle 
 declivity from the curve of her neck to the instep of the small 
 round foot lying on its side upon the ottoman. I remember a 
 fellow's bringing her a plate of fruit one evening. He was one of 
 your lively men — a horrid monster, all right angles and activity 
 Having never been accustomed to hold her own plate, she had not 
 well extricated her whole fingers from her handkerchief, before he 
 set it down in her lap. As it began slowly to slide towaa-ds her 
 feet, her hand relapsed into the muslin folds, and she fixed her eye 
 upon it with a kind of indolent surprise, drooping her lids grad 
 ually, till as the fruit scattered over the ottoman, they closed en 
 tirely, and a liquid jet line was alone visible through the heavy 
 lashes. There was an imperial indifference in it worthy of 
 Juno. 
 
 Miss McLush rarely walks. When she does, it is with the de- 
 liberate majesty of- a Dido. Her small, plump feet melt to the 
 ground like snow-flakes, and her figure sways to the indolent mo- 
 tion of her limbs with a glorious grace and yieklingness quite inde- 
 scribable. She was idling slowly up the Mall one evening just at 
 twilight, with a servant at a short distance behind her, who, to 
 while away the time between her steps, was employing himself in 
 throwing stones at the cows feeding upon the Common. A gentle- 
 man, with a natural admiration for her splendid person, addressed 
 her. He might have done a more eccentj-ic thing. Without 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 39 
 
 troubling herself to look at him, she turned to her servant and re- 
 quested him, with a yawn of desperate ennui j to knock that fellow 
 down ! John obeyed his orders ; and, as his mistress resumed 
 her lounge, picked up a new handful of pebbles, and tossing one 
 at the nearest cow, loitered lazily after. 
 
 Such supreme indolence was irresistible. I gave in — I — who 
 never before could summon energy to sigh — I — to whom a decla- 
 ration was but a synonym for perspiration — I — who had only 
 thought of love as a nervous complaint, and of women but to pray 
 for a good deliverance — I — ^yes — I — knocked under. xilbina 
 McLush ! Thon wert too exquisitely lazy. Human sensibilities 
 cannot hold out forever ! 
 
 I found her one morning sipping her coffee at twelve, with her 
 eyes wide open. She was just from the bath, and her complexion 
 had a soft, dewy transparency, like the cheek of Venus rising 
 from the sea. It was the hour Lurly had told me, when she 
 would be at the trouble of thinking. She put away with her dim- 
 pled forefinger, as I entered, a cluster of rich curls that had fallen 
 over her face, and nodded to me like a water-lily swaying to the 
 wind when its cup is full of rain. 
 
 *' Lady Albina," said I, in my softest tone, " how are you 
 to-day .?" 
 
 " Bettina," said she, addressing her maid in a voice as clouded 
 and rich as a south wind on an ^olian, " how am I to-day .?" 
 
 The conversation fell into short sentences. The dialogue be- 
 ts«ime a monologue. I entered upon my declaration. With the 
 assistance of Bettina, who supplied her mistress with cologne, I 
 kept her attention alive through the incipient circumstances. 
 Symptoms were soon told. I came to the avowal. Her hand lay 
 reposing on the arm of the sofa, half buried in a musMnfoukrd 
 
40 ALBINA McLUSH. 
 
 I took it up and pressed the cool, soft fingers to mj lips — unfor- 
 bidden. I rose and looked into her eyes for confirmation. De- 
 licious creature ! she was asleep ! 
 
 I never have had courage to renew the subject. Miss McLush 
 seems to have forgotten it altogether. Upon reflection, too, I'm 
 convinced she would not survive the excitement of the ceremony 
 unless, indeed, she should sleep between the responses and the 
 prayer. I am still devoted, however, and if there should come a 
 war or an earthquake, or if the millenium should commence, as it 
 is expected, in 1833, or if anything happens that can keep her 
 waking so long, I shall deliver a declai-ation, abbreviated for me 
 by a scholar-friend of mine, which, he warrants, m?y be articulated 
 in fifteen minutes — without fatigue. 
 
 II. 
 
 Vacation was over, but Fred and myself were still lingering at 
 Fleming Farm. The roads were impassable, with a premature 
 THAW. Perhaps there is nothing so peculiar in American meteo- 
 rology as the phenomenon which I alone, probably, of all the im- 
 prisoned inhabitants of Skaneateles, attributed to a kind and 
 ' special Providence." Summer had come back, like Napoleon 
 from Elba, and astonished usurping Winter in the plenitude of ap- 
 parent possession and security. No cloud foreboded the change, 
 as no alarm preceded the apparition of '' the child of destiny." 
 Wc awoke on a February morning, with the snow lying chin-deep 
 on the earth, and it was June ! The air was soft and warm — the 
 sky was clear, and of the milky cerulean of chrysoprase — the south 
 wind (the same, save his unperfumed wings, who hp.d crept off like 
 a satiated lover in October,) stole back suddenly from the tropics, 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 4^ 
 
 and found his flowery mistress asleep and insensible to his kisses 
 beneath her snowy mantle. The sunset warmed back from its 
 wintry purple to the golden tints of heat, the stars burned with 
 a less vitreous sparkle, the meteors slid once more lambentl^i 
 down the sky. and the house-dove sat on the eaves, washing her 
 breast in the snow-water, and thinking (like a neglected wife at a 
 capricious return of her truant's tenderness) that the sunshine 
 would last for ever ! 
 
 The air was now full of music. The water trickled away under 
 the snow, and, as you looked around and saw no change or motion 
 in the white carpet of the earth, it seemed as if a myriad of small 
 bells were ringing under ground — fairies, perhaps, startled in mid- 
 revel with the false alarm of summer, and hurrying about with 
 their silver anklets, to wake up the slumbering flowers. The 
 mountain-torrents were loosed, and rushed down upon the valleys 
 like the Children of the Mist ; and the hoarse war-cry, swelling 
 and falling upon the wind, maintained its perpetual undertone, like 
 an accompaniment of bassoons ; and occasionally, in a sudden lull 
 of the breeze, you would hear the click of the undermined snow- 
 drifts dropping upon the earth, as if the chorister of spring were 
 beating time to the reviving anthem of nature. 
 
 The snow sunk perhaps a foot in a day, but it was only percep- 
 tible to the eye where you could measure its wet mark against a 
 tree from which it had fallen away, or by the rock, from which tha 
 dissolving bank shrunk and separated, as if rocks and snow were 
 as heartless as ourselves, and threw off their friends, too, in their 
 extremity ! The low-lying lake, meantime, surrounded by melt- 
 ing mountains, received the abandoned waters upon its frozen bo- 
 som, and, spreading them into a placid and shallow lagoon, sepa- 
 rate by a crystal plane from its own lower depths, gave them th# 
 
42 NATURE'S PARALLELS. 
 
 repose denied in the more elevated sphere in which lay their 
 birthright. And thus — (oh, how full is nature of these gentle 
 moralities !) — and thus sometimes do the lowly, whose bosom, like 
 the frozen lake, is at first cold and unsympathetic to the rich and 
 noble, still receive them in adversity, and — when neighborhood and 
 dependence have convinced them that they are made of the same 
 common element — as the lake melts its dividing and icy plane, and 
 mingles the strange waters with its own, do they dissolve the un- 
 natural barrier of prejudice, and take the humbled wanderer to 
 their bosom ! 
 
 The face of the snow lost its dazzling whiteness as the thaw 
 went on — as disease steals away the beauty of those we love — but 
 it was only in the distance, where the sun threw a shadow into the 
 irregular pits of the dissolving surface. Near to the eye (as the 
 dying one pressed to the bosom), it was still of its original beauty, 
 unchanged and spotless. And now you are tired of my loitering 
 speculations, gentle reader, and we will return (please Heaven, 
 only on paper !) to Edith Linsey, 
 
 The roads were at last reduced to what is expressively called, 
 in New England, slosh^ (in New York, 'posh^ but equally descrip- 
 tive), and Fred received a hint from the judge that the mail had 
 arrived in the usual time, and his heaux joiors were at an end. 
 
 A slighter thing than my departure would have been sufficient 
 to stagger the tottering spirits of Edith. "We were sitting at 
 table when the letters came in, and the dates were announced that 
 proved the opening of the roads ; and I scarce dared to turn my 
 eyes upon the pale face that I could just see had dropped upon 
 her bosom. The next instant there was a general confusion, and 
 she was carried lifeless to her chamber. 
 
 A note, scarcely legible, was put into my hand in the course of 
 
EARLIER DAYS 43 
 
 the evening, requesting me to sit up for her in the library. She 
 would come to me, she said, if she had strength. 
 
 It was a night of extraordinary beauty. The full moon was 
 high in the heavens at midnight, and there had been a slight 
 shower soon after sunset, which, with the clearing-up wind, had 
 frozen thinly into a most fragile rime, and glazed everything, open 
 to the sky, with transparent crystal. The distant forest looked 
 serried with metallic trees, dazzlingly and unspeakably gorgeous ; 
 and, as the night-wind stirred through them and shook their crys- 
 tal points in the moonlight, the aggregated stars of heaven spring- 
 ing from their Maker's hand to the spheres of their destiny, or 
 the march of the host of the archangel Michael with their irra- 
 diate spear-points glittering in the air, or the diamond beds of 
 central earth thrust up to the sun in some throe of the universe, 
 would, each or all, have been well bodied forth by such simihtude. 
 
 It was an hour after midnight when Edith was supported in by 
 her maid, and, choosing her own position, sunk into the broad 
 window-seat, and lay with her head on my bosom, and her face 
 turned outward to the glittering night. Her eyes had become, I 
 thought, unnaturally bright, and she spoke with an exhausted faint- 
 ness that gradually strengthened to a tone of the most thrilling and 
 melodious sweetness. I shall never get that music out of my brain ' 
 
 "Phihp!" she said. 
 
 " I listen, dear Edith !" 
 
 " I am dying." 
 
 And she looked it, and I believed her ; and my heart sunk to 
 its deepest abyss of wretchedness with the conviction. 
 
 She went on to talk of death. It was the subject that pressed 
 most upon her mind, and she could scarce fail to be eloquent on 
 any subject. She was very eloquent on tliis. I was so impressed 
 
44 SURPRISE Al' HEALTH. 
 
 witli the manner in which she seemed almost to rhapsodize be- 
 tween the periods of her faintness, as she lay in my arms that 
 night, that every word she nttered is still fresh in my memory 
 She seemed to forget my presence, and to commune with her own 
 thoughts aloud. 
 
 " I recollect," she said, '' when I was strong and well, (years 
 ago, dear Philip !) I left my books, on a morning in May, and 
 looking up to find the course of the wind, started off alone for a 
 walk into its very eye. A moist steady breeze came from the 
 southwest, driving before it fragments of the dispersed clouds. 
 The air was elastic and clear ; a freshness that entered freely at 
 every pore waj coming up, mingled with the profuse perfume of 
 grass and flowers ; the colors of the new, tender foliage were par- 
 ticularly soothing to an eye pained with close attention — and the 
 just perceptible murmur of the drops shaken from the trees, and 
 the peculiarly soft rustle of the wet leaves, made as much musio 
 as an ear accustomed to the silence of solitude could well relish. 
 Altogether, it was one of those rarely-tempered days when every 
 sense is satisfied, and the mind is content to lie still, with its com- 
 mon thoughts, and simply enjoy. 
 
 " I had proceeded perhaps a mile — my forehead held up to the 
 wind, my hair blowing back, and the blood glowing in my cheeks 
 with the most vivid flush of exercise and health — when I saw, com- 
 ing toward me, a man apparently in middle life, but wasted by 
 illness to the extremest emaciation. His lip was colorless, his 
 skin dry and white, and his sunken eyes had that expression of 
 inquiring earnestness which comes always with impatient sickness. 
 He raised his head, and looked steadily at me as I came on. My 
 lips were open, and my whole air must have been that of a person 
 in the most exulting enjojmient of health. I was just against him, 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 
 
 45 
 
 gliding i^ast with an elastic step, when, with his eye still fixed on 
 me, he half turned, and, in a voice of inexpressible meaning, ex- 
 claimed, ' Merciful Heaven ! hoic well she is P I passed on, with 
 his voice still ringing in my ear. It haunted me like a tone in 
 the ah'. It was repeated in the echo of my tread — in the pant- 
 ing of my heart. I felt it in the beating of the strong pulse in 
 my temples. As if it were strange that I should be so well ! I 
 had never before realized that it could be otherwise. It seemed 
 impossible to me that my strong limbs should fail me, or the pure 
 blood I felt bounding so bravely through my veins could be reached 
 and tainted by disease. How should it come } If I ate, would 
 it not nourish me } If I slept, would it not refresh me } If I came 
 out in the cool, free air, would not my lungs heave, and my 
 muscles spring, and my face feel its grateful freshness } I held 
 out my arm, for the first time in my life, with a doubt of its 
 strength. I closed mj hand unconsciously, with a fear it would 
 not obey. I drew a deep breath, to feel if it was difficult to 
 breathe ; and even my bounding step, that was elastic then as a 
 fawn's, seemed to my excited imagination already to have become 
 decrepit and feeble. 
 
 " I walked on, and thought of death. I had never before done 
 so definitely ; it was like a terrible shape that had always pursu-ad 
 me dimly, but which I had never before turned and looked steadily 
 on. Strange ! that we can live so constantly with that threaten- 
 inc hand hung over us, and not think of it always ! Strange ! that 
 we can use a limb, or enter with interest into any pursuit of 
 time, when we know that our continued life is almost a daily 
 miracle ! 
 
 " How difficult it is to realize death ! How difficult it is to be- 
 lieve tliat the hand with whose every vein you are familiar, will 
 
46 TO REALIZE DEATH. 
 
 ever lose its motion and its warmth ? That the quick eye, which 
 is so restless now, will settle and grow dull ? That the refined 
 lip, which now shrinks so sensitively from defilement, will not feel 
 the earth lying upon it, and the tooth of the feeding worm ? That 
 the free breath will be choked, and the forehead be pressed heavily 
 on by the decaying coffin, and the light and air of heaven be shut 
 quite out ; and this very body, warm, and breathing, and active 
 as it is now, will not feel uneasiness or pain ? I could not help 
 looking at my frame, as these thoughts crowded on me; and I 
 confess I almost doubted my own convictions — there was so much 
 strength and quickness in it — my hand opened so freely, and my 
 nostrils expanded with such a satisfied thirst to the moist air. 
 Ah ! it is hard to believe at first that we must die ! harder still 
 to believe and realiz3 the repulsive circumstances that follow that 
 terrible change ! It is a bitter thought, at the lightest. There is 
 littlo comfort in knowinp: tlmt the soul will not be there — that the 
 sense and th^ ininJ, that feel and measure suffering, will be gone. 
 The separation is too groat a mystery to satisfy fear. It is the 
 body that we knon\ It is this material frame in which the 
 affections have giown up. The splat is a mere thought— -a 
 presence that we are told of, but do not see. Philosophize as we 
 will, the idea of existence is connected indissolubly with the 
 visible body, and its pleasant and fiimiliar senses. We talk of, 
 and believe, the soul's ascent to its Maker ; but it is not ourselves 
 — it is not our own conscious breathing identity that w-,^ said up 
 in imagination through the invisible air. It is some phantom, that 
 is to issue forth mysteriously, and leave us gazing on it in wonder. 
 We do not understand, we cannot realize it. 
 
 " At the time I speak of, my health had been always unbroken. 
 Since then, I have known disease in many forms, and have had, 
 
EARLIER DAYS. ^ 
 
 of course, more time and occasion for the contemplation of death 
 I have never, till late, known resignation. With my utmost 
 energy, I was merely able, in other days, to look upon it with 
 quiet despair ; as a terrible, unavoidable evil. I remember, once, 
 after severe suffering for weeks, I overheard the physician telling 
 my mother that I must die, and from that moment the thought 
 never left me. A thin line of light came in between the shutters 
 of the south window \ and, with this one thought fastened on my 
 mind, like the vulture of Prometheus, I lay and watched it, day 
 after day, as it passed with its imperceptible progress over the 
 folds of my curtains. The last faint gleam of sunset never faded 
 from its damask edge, without an inexpressible sinking of my 
 heart, and a belief that I should see its pleasant light no more. I 
 turned from the window when even imagination could find the 
 daylight no longer there, and felt my pulse and lifted my head to 
 try my remaining strength. And then every object, yes, even 
 the meanest, grew unutterably dear to me ; my pillow, and the 
 cup with which my lips were moistened, and the cooling amber 
 which I had held in my hand, and pressed to my burning lips 
 when the fever was on me — everything that was connected with 
 life, and that would remain among the living when I was gone. 
 
 " It is strange, but, with all this clinging to the world, my affec- 
 tion for the li-vang decreased sensibly. I grew selfish in my weak- 
 ness. I could not bear that they should go from my chamber into 
 the fresh air, and have no fear of sickness and no pain. It seemed 
 unfeeling that they did not stay and breathe the close atmosphere 
 of my room — at least till I was dead. How could they walk 
 round so carelessly, and look on a fellow-creature dying helplessly 
 and unwillingly, and never shed a tear ! And then the passing 
 courtesies exchanged with the family at the door, and the quick- 
 
THE FEELINGS OF THE SICK. 
 
 ened step on the sidewalk, and the wandering looks about my 
 room, even while 1 was answering with my difficult breath their 
 cold inquiries! There was an inhuman carelessness in all thii 
 that stung me to the soul. 
 
 " I craved sympathy as I did life ; and yet I doubted it all 
 There .was not a word spoken, by the friends who were admitted t« 
 see me, that I did not ponder over when they were gone, and al- 
 ways with an impatient dissatisfaction. The tone, and the man- 
 ner, and the expression of face, all seemed forced ; and often, in 
 my earlier sickness, when I had pondered for hours on the ex- 
 pressed sympathy of some one I had loved, the sense of utter, 
 helplessness, which crowded on me with my conviction of their 
 insincerity, quite overcame me. I have lain, night after night, 
 and looked at my indifferent watchers: and oh, how I hated them 
 for their careless ease, and their snatched moments of repose ! I 
 could scarce keep from dashing aside the cup they came to give 
 me so sluggishly. 
 
 " It is singular that, with all our experience of sickness, we 
 do not attend more to these slight circumstances. It can scarce 
 be conceived how an ill-managed light, or a suppressed whisper- 
 ing, or a careless change of attitude, in the presence of one whose 
 senses are so sharpened, and whose mind is so sensitive as a sick 
 person's, irritate and annoy. And, perhaps, more than these to 
 bear, is the affectedly subdued tone of condolence. I remember 
 nothing which I endured so impatiently. 
 
 " Annoyances like these, however, scarcely diverted for a mo- 
 ment the one great thought of death. It became at last familiar, 
 but, if possible, more dreadfully horrible from that very fact. It 
 was giving it a new character. I realized it more. The minute 
 circumstances became nearer and more real — I tried the position 
 
EARLIER PAYS. 49 
 
 in which I should lie in my coffin — I lay, with my arms to my 
 side, and my feet together, and, with the cold sweat standing 
 in large drops on my lip, composed my features into a forced ex- 
 pression of tranquillity. 
 
 " I awoke on the second morning after the hope of my recovery 
 had been abandoned. There was a narrow sunbeam lying in a 
 clear crimson line across the curtain, and I lay and watched the 
 specks of lint sailing through it, like silver-winged insects, and 
 the thin dust, quivering and disappearing on its definite limit, 
 in a dream of wonder. I had thought not to see another sun, and 
 my mind was still fresh with the expectation of an immediate 
 change ; I could not believe that I was alive. Ths dizzy throb in 
 my temples was done ; my limbs felt cool and refreshed ; my 
 mind had that feeling of transparency which is common after 
 healthful and sweet sleep ; and an indefinite sensation of pleasure 
 trembled in every nerve. I thought that this might be death, and 
 that, with this exquisite feeling of repose, I was to linger thus 
 consciously with the body till the last day ; and I dwelt on it 
 pleasantly, with my delicious freedom from pain. I felt no regret 
 for life — none for a friend even : I Was willing — quite willing — to 
 lie thus for ages. Presently the physician entered ; he came and 
 laid his fingers on my pulse, and his face brightened. ' You will 
 get well,' he said, and I heard it almost without emotion. Gradu- 
 ally, however, the love of life returned ; and, as I realized it fully, 
 and all the thousand cords which bound me to it vibrated once 
 more, the tears came thickly to my eyes, and a crowd of delightful 
 thoughts pressed cheerfully and glowingly upcm me. No language 
 can do justice to the pleasure of convalescence from extreme sick- 
 ness. The first step upon the living grass — the first breath of 
 free air — the first unsuppressed salutation of a fiiend — ^ray faint- 
 3 
 
60 ILLNESS, FOETRY AND LOVE. 
 
 ing heart, dear Philip, rallies and quickens even now with the 
 recollection." 
 
 I have thrown into a continuous strain what was murmured to 
 me between pauses of faintness, and with difficulty of breath that 
 seemed overpowered only by the mastery of the eloquent spirit 
 apparently trembling on its departure. I believed Edith Linsey 
 would die that night ; I believed myself listening to words spoken 
 almost from heaven ; and if I have wearied you, dear reader, with 
 what must be more interesting to me than to you, it is because 
 every syllable was burnt like enamel into my soul, in my bound- 
 less reverence and love. 
 
 It was two o'clock, and she still lay breathing painfully in my 
 arms. I had thrown up the window, and the soft south wind, stirring 
 gently among the tinkling icicles of the trees, came in, warm and 
 genial, and she leaned over to inhale it, as if it came from the 
 source of life. The stars burned gloriously in the heavens ; and, in 
 a respite of her pain, she laid back her head, and gazed up at them 
 with an inarticulate motion of her lips, and eyes so unnaturally 
 kindled, that I thought reason had abandoned her. 
 
 " How beautiful are the stars to-night, Edith !" I said, with 
 half a fear that she would answer me in madness. 
 
 " Yes," she said, putting my hand (that pressed her closer, 
 involuntarily, to my bosom) first to her lips — ^' Yes ; and, beautiful 
 as they are, they are all accurately numbered and governed, and, 
 just as they burn now, have they burned since the creation, never 
 * faint in their watches,' and never absent from their place. How 
 glorious they are ! How thrilling it is to see them stand with such 
 a constant silence in the sky, unsteadied and unsupported, obey- 
 ing the ^reat law of their IMaker ! What pure and silvery light it 
 is ! How steadily it pours fvoui those small fountains, giving 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 61 
 
 every spot of earth its due portion ! The hovel and the palace are 
 shone upon equally, and the shepherd gets as broad a beam as the 
 king, and these few rays that are now streaming into my feverish 
 eyes were meant and lavished only for me ! I have often thought 
 — has it never occurred to you, dear Philip ? — how ungrateful wo 
 are, to call ourselves poor, when there is so much that no poverty 
 can take away ! Clusters of silver rays from every star in these 
 heavens are 7ninc. Every breeze that breaks on my forehead was 
 sent for my refreshment. Every tinkle and ray from those stir- 
 ring and glistening icicles, and the invigorating freshness of this 
 unseasonable and delicious wind, and moonlight, and sunshine, 
 and the glory of the planets, are all gifts that poverty could not 
 take away ; it is not often that I forget these treasures ; for I have 
 loved nature, and the skies of night and day, in all their changes, 
 from my childhood, and they have been unspeakably dear to me ; 
 for, in them, I see the evidence of an Almighty Maker, and, in the 
 excessive beauty of the stars and the unfading and equal splen- 
 dor of their steadfast fires, I see glimpses of an immortal life, and 
 find an answer to the eternal questioning within me ! 
 
 " Three ! The village clock reaches us to-night. Nay, the 
 wind can not harm me now. Turn me more to the window, for I 
 would look nearer upon the stars : it is the last time — I am sure 
 of it — the very last ! Yet to-morrow night those stars will all be 
 there — not one missing from the sky, nor shining one ray the less 
 because I am dead ! It is strange that this thought should be so 
 bitter — strange that the companionship should be so close between 
 our earthly affections and those spiritual worlds — and stranger yet, 
 that, satisfied as we must be that we shall know them nearer and 
 better when released from our flesh, we still cling so fondly to our 
 earthly and imperfect vision. I feel, Philip, that I shall traverse 
 
52 VERSES IN ABSENCE. 
 
 hereafter every star in those bright heavens. If the course of 
 that career of knowledge, which I believe in my soul it will be the 
 reward of the blessed to run, be detarmined in any degree by the 
 strong desires that yearn so sickeningly within us, I see the thou- 
 sand gates of my future heaven shining at this instant above me. 
 There they are ! the clustering Pleiades, with ^ their sweet in- 
 fluences ;' and the morning star, melting into the east with its 
 transcendent lambency and whiteness ; and the broad galaxy, with 
 its myriads of bright spheres, dissolving into each other's light, 
 and belting the heavens like a girdle. I shall see them all ! I 
 shall know them and their inhabitants as the angels of God know 
 them ; the mystery of their order, and the secret of their wonder- 
 ful harmony, and the duration of their appointed courses — all will 
 be made clear !" 
 
 I have trespassed again, most indulgent reader, on the limits of 
 these Procrustean papers. I must defer the " change" that 
 " came o'er the spirit of my dream" till another mood and time. 
 Meanwhile, you may consider Edith, if you like, the true heart 
 she thought herself, (and I thought her,) during her nine deaths 
 in the library ; and you will have leisure to imagine the three 
 years over which we shall skip with this finale^ during which I 
 made a journey to the north, and danced out a winter in John Bull's 
 territories at Quebec — a circumstance I allude to, no less to record 
 the hospitalities of the garrison of that time, (this was in '27 — ^were 
 you there t) than to pluck forth, from Time's hindermost wallet, 
 a modest copy of verses I addressed thence to Edith. She sent 
 them back to me considerably mended ; but I give you the 
 original draught, scorning her finger in my poesies : — 
 
EARLIER DAYS 53 
 
 TO EDITH, FROM THE NORTIL 
 
 As, gazing on the Pleiades, 
 
 We count each fair and starry one, 
 Yet wander from the light of these 
 
 To muse upon the ' Pleiad gone ;' — 
 As, bending o'er fresh-gathered flowers, 
 
 The rose's most enchanting hue 
 Reminds us but of other hours. 
 
 Whose roses were all lovely, too ; — 
 So, dearest, when I rove among 
 
 The bright ones of this northern sky, 
 And mark the smile, and list the song, 
 
 And watch the dancers gliding by — 
 The fairer still they seem to be. 
 
 The more it stirs a thought of thee. 
 
 The sad, sweet bells of twilight chime, 
 
 Of many hearts may touch but one. 
 And so this seeming careless rhyme 
 
 Will whisper to thy heart alone, 
 I give it to the winds. The bird, 
 
 Let loose, to his far nest will flee. 
 And love, though breathed but on a word, 
 
 Will find thee, over land and sea. 
 Though clouds across the sky have drivpp., 
 
 We trust the star at last will shine; 
 And, like the very light of heaven. 
 
 I trust thy love — trust thou in mine. 
 
64 A DIGRESSION. 
 
 PART III. 
 
 A DIGRESSION. 
 
 " Boy. "Will you not sleep, sir ? 
 
 Knight. Fling the window up ! 
 
 I'll look upon the stars. Where twinkle now 
 The Pleiades ? 
 
 £oy. Here, master ! 
 
 Knight. Throw me now 
 
 My cloak upon my shoulders, and good night ! 
 I have no mind to sleep t * ♦ • 
 » ♦ ♦ * She bade me look 
 Upon this baud of stars when other eyes 
 Beamed on me brightly, and remember her 
 By the lost Pleiad, 
 
 Boy. Are you well, sir? 
 
 Knight. Boy ! 
 
 Love you the stars ? 
 
 Boy When they first spring at eve 
 
 Better than near to morning. 
 
 Knight. Fickle child ! 
 
 Are they more fair in twilight ? 
 
 Boy. Master, no ! 
 
 Brighter, as night wears on — but I forget 
 Their beauty, looking on them long V^ 
 
 " Sir Fabian," an unpublished Poem. 
 
 It was a September night at the university. On the morrow I 
 was to appear upon the stage as the winner of the first honors of 
 my year. I was the envy — the admiration — in some degree the 
 wonder, of the collegiate town in which the university stands ; for 
 I had commenced my career as the idlest and most riotous of 
 freshmen. What it was that had suddenly made me enamored of my 
 chambers and my books — tnat nad saddened my manners and 
 softened my voice — that had given me a disgust to champagne and 
 my old allies, in favor of cold water and the Platonists — that, in 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 55 
 
 short, had metamorphosed, as Bob Wilding would have said, a 
 gentleman-like rake and vaurien into so dull a thing as an exem- 
 plary academician — was past the divining of most of my acquaint- 
 ances. Oh, once-loved Edith ! hast thou any inkling, in thy 
 downward metempsychosis, of the philosophy of this marvel ? 
 
 If you were to set a poet to make a town, with carte hlavche as 
 to trees, gardens, and green blinds, he would probably turn out 
 very much such a place as New Haven. (Supposing your edu- 
 cation in geography to have been neglected, dear reader, this is 
 the second capital of Connecticut, a half-rural, half-metropolitan 
 town, lying between a precipice that makes the fag-end of the 
 Grreen Mountains and a handsome bay in Long-Island Sound.) 
 The first thought of the inventor of New Haven was to lay out the 
 streets in parallelograms, and the second was to plant them, from 
 suburb to water-side, with the magnificent elms of the country. 
 The result is, that, at the end of fifty years, the town is buried in 
 leaves. If it were not for the spires of the churches, a bird, flying 
 over on his autumn voyage to the Floridas, would never mention 
 having seen it in his travels. It is a glorious tree, the elm — and 
 those of the place I speak of are famous, even in our land of trees, 
 for their surprising size and beauty. With the curve of their 
 stems in the sky, the long weepers of their outer and lower branches 
 drop into the street, fanning your face as you pass under with 
 their geranium-like leaves ; and close overhead, interwoven like 
 *he trellis of a vine, they break up the light of the sky into golden 
 flecks, and make you, of the common highway, a bower of the 
 most approved secludedness and beauty. The houses are some- 
 thing between an Italian palace and an English cottage — ^built of 
 wood, but, in the dim light of th^se overshadowing trees, as fair 
 to the eye as marble, with their triennial coats of paint ; and each 
 
56 A CHARMING TOWN. 
 
 stands in the midst of its own encircling grass-plot, half buried in 
 vines and flowers, and facing outwards from a cluster of gardens 
 divided by slender palings, and filling up, with fruit-trees and 
 summer-houses, the square on whose limit it stands. Then, like 
 the vari-colored parallelograms upon a chessboard, green openings 
 are left throughout the town, fiinged with triple and interweaving 
 elm-rows, the long and weeping branches sweeping downward to 
 the grass, and, with their enclosing shadows, keeping moist and 
 cool the road they overhang ; and fair forms (it is the garden of 
 American beauty — New Haven) flit about in the green light in 
 primitive security and freedom, and you would think the place, if 
 you alit upon it in a summer's evening — what it seems to me now 
 in memory, and what I have made it in this Rosa-Matilda de- 
 scription — a scene from Boccacio, or a vision from long-lost Arcady. 
 New Haven may have eight thousand inhabitants. Its steamers 
 run to New York in six hours (or did, in my time — I have ceased 
 to be astonished on that subject, and should not wonder if they 
 did it soon in OTm — a trifle of seventy miles up the Sound), and the 
 ladies go up in the morning for a yard of bobbin, and return at 
 night, and the gentlemen the same for a stroll in Broadway ; and 
 it is to this circumstance that, while it preserves its rural exterior, 
 it is a very metropolitan place in the character of its society. The 
 Amaryllis of the pretty cottage you admire wears tb.a fashion 
 twenty days from Paris, and her shepherd has a coat from Nugee, 
 the divine peculiarity of which is not yet suspected east of Bond 
 street ; and, in the newspaper, hanging out of the window, there is 
 news, red-hot with the velocity of its arrival, from Russia and the 
 Rocky Mountains, from the sources of the Mississippi and the brain 
 of Monsieur Heibault. Distance is an imaginary quantity, and 
 Time, that used to give everything the go-by, has come to a stand- 
 
EARLIER DAYS. Qf 
 
 Btill, in Lis astonishment. There will be a proposition in Congress, 
 ere long, to do without him altogether — every new thing " saves 
 time" so marvellously. 
 
 Bright as seems to me this seat of my Alma Mater, however, 
 and gayly as I describe it, it is to me, if I may so express it, a 
 picture of memory glazed and put away ; if I see it ever again, 
 it will be but to walk through its embowered streets by a midnight 
 moon. It is vain and heart-breaking to go back, after absence, to 
 any spot of earth of which the interest was the human love whose 
 home and cradle it had been. But there is a period in our lives 
 when the heart fuses and compounds with the things about it, and 
 the close enamel with which it overruns and binds, in the affections, 
 and which hardens in the lapse of years, till the immortal germ 
 within is not more durable and unwasting, warms never again, nor 
 softens ; and there is nothing on earth so mournful and unavailing 
 as to return to the scenes which are unchanged, and look to return 
 to ourselves and others as we were when we thus knew them. 
 
 Yet we think (I judge you by my own soul, gentle reader !) that 
 it is others — not we — who are changed ! We meet the friend 
 that we loved in our youth, and it is ever he who is cold and al- 
 tered ! We take the hand that we bent over with our passionate 
 kisses in boyhood, and our raining tears when we last parted, and 
 it is ever hers that returns not the pressure, and her eyes," and 
 not ours — oh, not ours ! — that look back the moistened and once 
 familiar regard with a dry lid and a gaze of stone ! Oh, God ! it 
 is ever he — the friend you have worshipped — ^for whom you would 
 have died — who gives you the tips of his fingers, and greets you 
 with a phrase of fashion, when you would rush into his bosom, and 
 break your heart with weeping out the imprisoned tenderness of 
 years ! I could carve out the heart from my bosom, and fiing 
 8* 
 
^ AFTER LONG PARTING.^ 
 
 it with a malison into the sea, when I think how utterly ?nJ wors"» 
 than useless it is, in this world of mocking names ! Yet " love'* 
 and " friendship" are words that read well. You could scare© 
 spare them in poetry. 
 
 II. 
 
 It was, as I have said, a moonlight night of unparalleled splen- 
 dor. The morrow was the college anniversary — the day of ths 
 departure of the senior class — and the town, which is, as it were, 
 a part of the university, was in the usual tumult of the gayest and 
 saddest evening of the year. The night was warm, and the houses j 
 of which the drawing-rooms are all on a level with the gardens in 
 the rear, and through which a long hall stretches like a ball-room, 
 were thrown open, doors and windows, and the thousand students 
 of the university, and the crowds of their friends, and the hosts of 
 strangers drawn to the place at this season by the annual festivities, 
 and the families, every one with a troop of daughters, (as the 
 leaves on our trees, compared with those of old countries — three 
 to one — so are our sons and daughters,) were all sitting without 
 lamps in the moon-lit rooms, or strolling together, lovers and 
 friends, in the fragrant gardens, or looking out upon the street, 
 returning the greetings of the passers-by, or, with heads uncovered, 
 pacing backward and forward beneath the elms before the door — 
 the whole scene one that the angels in heaven might make a holy 
 day to see. 
 
 There were a hundred of my fellow-seniors — ^young men of from 
 eighteen to twenty-four — every one of whom was passing the last 
 erening, of the four most impressible and attaching years of his 
 life, with the family in which he had been most intimate, in a town 
 where refinement and education had done their utmost upon tha 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 59 
 
 poeiety, and which was renowned thionghout America for the ex- 
 traordinary beauty of its women. They had come from every 
 State in the Union, and the Georgian and the Vermontese, the 
 Kentuckian and the Virginian, were to start alike on the morrow- 
 night with a lengthening chain for home, each bearing away the 
 hearts he had attached to him, (one or more !) and leaving his 
 own, till, like the magnetized needle, it should drop away with the 
 weakened attraction ; and there was probably but one that night 
 in the departing troop who was not whispering, in some throbbing 
 ear, the passionate, but vain and mocking avowal of fidelity in love ! 
 And yet I had had my attachments, too ; and there wa.s scarce a 
 house in that leafy and murmuring paradise of friendship and trees, 
 that would not have hailed me with acclamation had I entered the 
 door ; and I make this record of kindness and hospitality, (unfor- 
 gctten after busy years of vicissitude and travel,) with the hope 
 that there may yet live some memory as constant as mine, and 
 that some eye will read it with a warmth in its lid, and some lip 
 — some oTie at least — murmur, " I remember him !" There are 
 trees in that town whose drooping leaves I could press to my lips 
 with an affection as passionate as if they were human, though the 
 lips and voices that have endeared them to me are as changed as 
 the foliage upon the branch, and would recognise my love as 
 coldly. 
 
 There was one, I say, who walked the thronged pavement alone 
 that night, or but with such company as Uhland's ;* yet the heart 
 ^ Almost the sweetest thing I remember is the German poet's thought 
 when crossing the ferry to his wife and child : — 
 
 " Take, O boatman ! thrice thy fee, 
 
 Take, I give it willingly , 
 
 For, invisibly to thee, 
 
 Spirits twain have crossed with mt.** 
 
60 FOR WHOM WRITE WE? 
 
 of that solitary senior was far from lonely. The palm of years of 
 ambition was in his grasp — the reward of daily self-denial and 
 midnight watching — the prize of a straining mind and a yearning 
 desire ; and there was not one of the many who spoke of him that 
 night in those crowded rooms, either to rejoice in his success or 
 to wonder at its attainment, who had the shadow of an idea what 
 spirit sat uppermost in his bosom. Oh ! how common is this ig- 
 norance of human motives ! How distant, and slight, and unsus- 
 pected, are the springs often of the most desperate achievement ! 
 How little the world knows for what the poet writes, the scholar 
 toils, the politician sells his soul, and the soldier perils his life ! 
 And how insignificant and unequal to the result would seem these 
 invisible wires, could they be traced back from the hearts whose 
 innermost resource and faculty they have waked and exhausted ! 
 It is a startling thing to question even your own soul for its motive. 
 Ay, even in trifles. Ten to one you are surprised at the answer. 
 I have asked myself, while writing this sentence, whose eye it is 
 most meant to please ; and, as I live, the face that is conjured up 
 at my bidding is one of whom I have not had a definite thought 
 for years. I would lay my life she thinks at this instant I have 
 forgotten her very name. Yet I know she will read this page with 
 an interest no other could awaken, striving to trace in it the 
 changes that have come over me since we parted. I know, (and 
 I knew then^ though we never exchanged a word save in friendship,) 
 that she devoted her innermost soul, when we strayed together by 
 that wild river in the West, (dost thou remember it, dear friend ? 
 for now I speak to thee !) to the study of a mind and character 
 of which she thought better than the world or their possessor ; 
 and I know — oh, how wdl I know ! — that, with husband and child- 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 61 
 
 ren around her, whom she loves and to whom she is devoted, the 
 memory of me is laid away in her heart, like a fond, but incom- 
 plete dream, of what once seemed possible — the feeling with which 
 the mother looks on her witless boy, and loves him more for what 
 he might have been, than his brothers for what they are ! 
 
 I scarce know what thread I dropped to take up this improvista 
 digression (for, like " Opportunity and the Hours," I " never 
 look back ;"*) but let us return to the shadow of the thousand 
 elms of New Haven. 
 
 The Gascon thought his own thunder and lightning superior to 
 that of other countries, but I must run the hazard of your in- 
 credulity as well, in preferring an American moon. In Greece 
 and Asia Minor, perhaps (ragione — she was first worshipped 
 there), Cytheris shines as brightly ; but the Ephesian of Con- 
 necticut sees the flaws upon the pearly buckler of the goddess, as 
 does the habitant of no other clime. His eye lies close to the 
 moon. There is no film, and no visible beam, in the clarified 
 atmosphere. Her light is less an emanation than a presence — 
 the difference between the water in a thunder-shower and the 
 depths of the sea. The moon struggles to you in England — she 
 is all about you, like an element of the air, in America. 
 
 The night was breathless, and the fragmented light lay on the 
 pavement in motionless stars, as clear and definite in their edges 
 as if the " patines of bright gold" had dropped through the trees, 
 ind lay glittering beneath my feet. There was a kind of dark- 
 ness visible in the streets, overshadowed as they were by the 
 massy and leaf-burthened elms, and, as I looked through the 
 houses, standing in obscurity myself, the gardens seemed full of 
 * Walter Savage Landor. 
 
e2 TIME AND PLACE OF HAPPINESS. 
 
 dayliglit — the unobstructed moon poured with such a flood of 
 radiance on the flowery alleys within, and their gay troops of 
 proraenaders. And, as I distinguished one and another familiar 
 friend, with a form as familiar clinging to his side, and, with 
 drooping head and with faltering step, listening or replying, (I 
 well knew), to the avowals of love and truth, I murmured in 
 thought, to my own far away, hut never-forgotten Edith, a vow as 
 deep — ay, deeper than theirs, as my spirit and hers had been 
 sounded by the profounder plummet of sorrow and separation. 
 How the very moonlight — how the stars of heaven — how the balm 
 in the air, and the languor of summer night in my indolent frame, 
 seemed, in those hours of loneliness, ministers at the passionate 
 altar-fires of my love ! Forsworn and treacherous Edith ! do I 
 live to write this for thine eye ? 
 
 I linger upon these trifles of the past — these hours for which I 
 would have borrowed wings when they wore here — and, as then 
 they seemed but the flowering promise of happiness, they seem 
 now like the fruit, enjoyed and departed, JPast nnd future bliss 
 there would seem to be in the world — knows any one of such a 
 commodity in the present 1 I have not seen it in my travels. 
 
 III. 
 
 I was strolling on, through one of the most fashionable and ro- 
 mantic streets (when did these two words ever before find them- 
 selves in a sentence together r) when a drawing-room with which 
 I was very familiar, lit, .unlike most others on that bright night, 
 by a suspended lamp, and crowded with company, attracted my 
 attention for a moment. Between the house and the street there 
 was a slight shrubbery, shut in by a white paling, just suflicient to 
 
EARLIER DAYS. g^ 
 
 give an air of seclusion to the low windows without concealing 
 them from the passer-by, end, with the freedom of an old visiter, 
 I unconsciously stopped, and ltK)ke4 unobserved into the rooms. It 
 was the residence of a magnificent girl, who was generally known 
 as the Connecticut beauty — a singular instance in America of 
 what is called in England a^?i€ woman. (With us that word ap- 
 plies wholly to moral qualities.) She was as large as Jtmo, and 
 a great deal handsomer, if the painters have done that much- 
 snubbed goddess justice. She was a " book of beauty" printed 
 with virgin type ; and that, by the way, suggests to me what I 
 have all my life been trying to express — that some women seem 
 wrought of new material altogether, apropos to others who eeem 
 mortal rechauffes — as if every limb and feature had been used, 
 and got out of shape, in some other person's service. The lady I 
 speak of looked new — and her name was Isidora. 
 
 She was standing just under the lamp, with a single rose in her 
 hair, listening to a handsome coxcomb of a classmate of mine 
 with evident pleasure. She was a great fool, (did I mention that 
 before ?) but weak, and vacant, and innocent of an idea as she 
 was, Faustina was not more naturally majestic, nor Psyche (soit 
 elk en grande) more divinely and meaningly graceful. Loveliness 
 and fascination came to her as dew and sunshine to the flowers, 
 and she obeyed her instinct, as they theirs, and was helplessly, 
 and without design, the loveliest thing in nature. I do not see, 
 for my part, why all women should not be so. They are as use- 
 ful as flowers ; they perpetuate our species. 
 
 I was looking at her with irresistible admiration, when a figure 
 stepped out from the shadow of a tree, and my chum, monster, 
 and ally, Job Smith (of whom I have before spoken of in certain 
 historical papers), laid his hand on my shoulder. 
 
04 SKETCH OF A CHUM. 
 
 " Do you know, my dear Job," 1 said, in a solemn tone of ad- 
 monition, " that blind John was imprisoned for looking into 
 people's windows r" 
 
 But Job was not in the vein for pleasantry. The light fell on 
 his face as I spoke to him, and a more haggard, almost blasted 
 expression of countenance, I never saw even in a madhouse. I 
 well knew he had loved the splendid girl who stood unconsciously 
 in our sight, since his first year in college ; but, that it would ever 
 so master him, or that he could link his monstrous deformity, even 
 in thought, with that radiant vision of beauty, was a thing that I 
 thought as probable as that hirsute Pan would tempt from her 
 sphere the moon that kissed Endymion. 
 
 " I have been standing here, looking at Isidora, ever since you 
 bft me," said he. (We had parted three hours before, at twi- 
 light.) 
 
 " And why not go in, in the name of common sense ?" 
 
 *' Oh ! Heavens, Phil ! — with this demon in my heart ? Can 
 you see my face in this light ?" 
 
 It was too true— he would have frightened the household gods 
 from their pedestals. 
 
 " But what would you do, my dear Job ? Why come here to 
 madden yourself with a sight you must have known you would 
 see " 
 
 '' Phil r" 
 
 " What, my dear boy .?" 
 
 " Will you do me a kindness .?" 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " Isidora would do anything you wished her to do." 
 
 ** Um ! with a reservation, my dear chum !" 
 
 ** But she would give you the rose that is in her hair." 
 
EARLIER DAYS. $^ 
 
 *' "Without a doubt." 
 
 " And for me — if you told her it was for me. Would she 
 not?" 
 
 " Perhaps. But will that content you .^" 
 
 " It will soften my despair. I will never look on her face 
 more ; but I should like my last sight of her to be associated 
 with kindness?" 
 
 Poor Job ! how true it is that "^' affection is a fire which kind- 
 leth as well in the bramble as in the oak, and catcheth hold where 
 it first lighteth, not where it may best burn." I do believe in 
 my heart that the soul in thee was designed for a presentable 
 body — thy instincts were so invariably mistaken. When didst 
 thou ever think a thought, or stir hand or foot, that it did not 
 seem prompted, monster though thou wert, by conscious good- 
 looking-ness ! What a lying similitude it was that was written on 
 every blank page in thy Lexicon : " Larks that mount in the air, 
 build their nests below in the earth ; and women who cast their 
 eyes upon kings, may place their hearts upon vassals." Apelles 
 must have been better looking than Alexander, when Campaspe 
 said that ! 
 
 As a general thing you may ask a friend freely to break any 
 three of the commandments, in your service, but you should hesi- 
 tate to require of friendship a violation of etiquette. I was in a 
 round jacket and boots, and it was a dress evening throughout 
 New Haven. I looked at my dust-covered feet, when Job asked 
 me to enter a soiree upon his errand, and passed my thumb and 
 finger around the edge of my white jacket ; but I loved Job, as the 
 Arabian loves his camel, and for the same reason, with a differ- 
 ence — the imperishable well-spring he carried in his heart through 
 the desert of the world, and which I well knew he would give up 
 
his life to oiFer at need, as patiently as the animal whose con- 
 struction (inner and outer) he so remarkably resembled. When T 
 hesitated, and looked down at my boots, therefore, it was less to 
 seek for an excuse to evade the sacrificing office required of 
 me, than to beat about in my unprepared mind for a preface to 
 my request. If she had been a women of sense, I should have had 
 no difficulty ; but it requires caution and skill to go out of the 
 beaten track with a fool. 
 
 " Would not the rose do as well," said I, in desperate embar- 
 rassment, " if she does not know that it is for you^ my dear Job ?" 
 It would have been very easy to have asked for it for myself. 
 
 Job laid his hand upon his side, as if I could not comprehend 
 the pang my proposition gave him. 
 
 " Away, prop, and down, scaffiDld," thought I, as I gave my 
 jacket a hitch, and entered the door. 
 
 " Mr. Slingsby," announced the servant. 
 
 " Mr. Slingsby .?" inquired the mistress of the house, seeing 
 only a white jacket in the clair ohscur of the hall. 
 
 " Mr. Slingsby ! ! !" cried out twenty voices in amazement, as I 
 stepped over the threshold into the light. 
 
 It has happened, since the days of Thebet Ben Khorat, that 
 scholars have gone mad, and my sanity was evidently the upper- 
 most concern in the minds of all present. (I should observe, that 
 in those days, I relished rather of dandyism.) As I read the 
 suspicion in their minds, however, a thought struck me. I went 
 straight up to Miss Higgins, and, sotto voce, asked her to take a 
 turn with me in the garden. 
 
 *'Isidora," I said, ''I have long known your superiority of 
 mind," (when you want anything of a woman, praise her for that 
 in which she is most deficient, says La Bruyere), " and I havo 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 6T 
 
 great occasion to rely on it, iji the request I am about to make of 
 you." 
 
 She opened her eyes, and sailed along the gravel-walk with 
 heightened majesty. I had not had occasion to pay her a compli- 
 ment before, since my freshman year. 
 
 " What is it, Mr. Slingsby .?" 
 
 " You know Smith — my chum." 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " I have just come from him." 
 
 "Well!" 
 
 *' He is gone mad !" 
 
 " Mad ! Mr. Slingsby .?" 
 
 " Stark and furious !" 
 
 " Gracious goodness !" 
 
 " And all for you !" 
 
 " For me ! !" 
 
 " For you !" I thought her great blue eyes would have become 
 what they call in America " sot,'' at this astounding communi- 
 cation. 
 
 " Now, Miss Higgins," I continued, " pray listen ; my poor 
 friend has such extraordinary muscular strength, that seven men 
 cannot hold him." 
 
 " Gracious !" 
 
 " And he has broken away, and is here at your door." 
 
 " Good Gracious !" 
 
 " Don't be afraid ! He is as gentle as a kitten when I am 
 present. And now, hear my request. He leaves town to-morrow. 
 as you well Know, not to return. I shall take him home to Ver- 
 mont with keepers. He is bent upon one thing, and in that you 
 must humor him." 
 
€8 SOULS IN THE WRONG BODIES. 
 
 Miss Higgins began to be alarmed. 
 
 " He has looked througli the window, and seen you with a rose 
 in your hair, and, despairing even in his madness, of your love, he 
 says, that if you would give him that rose, with a kind word, and 
 a farewell, he should be happy. You will do it, will you not .?" 
 
 " Dear me ! I should be so afraid to speak to him !" 
 
 " But will you ? and I'll tell you what to say." 
 
 Miss Higgins gave a reluctant consent, and I passed ten minutes 
 in drilling her upon two sentences, which, with her fine manner 
 and sweet voice, really sounded like the most interesting thing in 
 the world. I left her in the summer-house at the end of the 
 garden, and returned to Job. 
 
 " You have come without it !" said the despairing lover, falling 
 back against the tree. 
 
 " Miss Higgins'*s compliments, and begs you will go round by 
 the gate, and meet her in the summer-house. She prefers to man- 
 age her own affairs." 
 
 " Good God ! are you mocking me .^" 
 
 " I will accompany you, my dear boy." 
 
 There was a mixture of pathos and ludicrousness in that scene, 
 which starts a tear and a laugh together, whenever I recall it to my 
 mind. The finest heart in the world, the most generous, the most 
 diffident of itself, yet the most self-sacrificing and delicate, was at the 
 altar of its devotion, offering its all in passionate abandonment for a 
 flower and a kind word ; and she, a goose in the guise of an angel, 
 repeated a phrase of kindness, of which she could not comprehend 
 the meaning or the worth, but which was to be garnered up by 
 that half-broken heart, as a treasure that repaid him for years of 
 unrequited affection ! She recited it really very well. I stood at 
 the latticed door, and interrupted them the instant there was a 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 0^ 
 
 pause in the dialogue ; and, getting Job away as fast as possible, I 
 left Miss Higgius with a promise of secrecy, and resumed my 
 midnight stroll. 
 
 Apropos — among Job's letters is a copy of verses, which, spite 
 of some little inconsistencies, I think were written on this very 
 occasion : — 
 
 I. 
 
 Nay — smile not on me — I have borne 
 
 Indifference and repulse from thee ; 
 With my heart sickening, I have worn 
 
 A brow, as thine own cold one, free ; 
 My lip has been as gay as thine, 
 
 Ever thine own light mirth repeating, 
 Though, in this burning brain of mine, 
 
 A throb the while, like death, was beating : 
 My spirit did not shrink or swerve — 
 
 Thy look — I thank thee ! — froze the nerve I 
 
 II. 
 But now again, as when I met 
 And loved thee in my happier days, 
 A smile upon thy bright lip plays, 
 And kindness in thine eye is set — 
 
 And this I cannot bear ! 
 It melts the manhood from my pride, 
 It brings me closer to thy side — 
 Bewilders — chains me there — 
 There — where my dearest hope was crushed and died I 
 
 III. 
 
 Oh, if thou couldst but know the deep 
 
 Of love that hope has nursed for years — 
 How in the heart's still chambers sleep 
 
 Its hoarded thoughts, its trembling feaif— 
 Treasure that love ha« brooded o'er 
 
to NAMING CHILDREN, 
 
 Till life, than this, has nothing more — 
 
 And couldst thou — ^but "tis vain ! — 
 I will not, cannot tell thee, how 
 That hoard consumes its coffer now — 
 I may not write of pain 
 That sickens in the heart, and maddens in the brain 1 
 
 IV. 
 
 Then smile not on me ! pass me by 
 
 Coldly, and with a careless mien — 
 'Twill pierce my heart, and fill mine eye, 
 But I shall be as I have been— 
 Quiet in my despair ! 
 'Tis better than the throbbing fever, 
 That else were in my brain for ever, 
 
 And easier to bear ! 
 I'll not upbraid the coldest look — 
 The bitterest word thou hast, in my sad pride I'll Irook ! 
 
 If Job had rejoiced in a more euphonious name, I should have 
 bought a criticism in some review, and started him fairly as a 
 poet. But " Job Smith !"— " Poems by Job Smith !"— It would 
 never do ! If he wrote like a seraph, and printed the book at 
 his own expense, illustrated and illuminated, and half-a-crown to 
 each person that would take one away, the critics would damn 
 him all the same ! Really, one's father and mother have a great 
 deal to answer for !* 
 
 But Job is a poet who should have lived in the middle ages, no 
 less for the convenience of the nom de guerre^ fashionable in those 
 days, than because his poetry, being chiefly the mixed product of 
 feeling and courtesy, is particularly susceptible to ridicule. The 
 philosophical and iron-wire poetry of our day stands an attack like 
 a fortification, and comes down upon the besieger with reason and 
 
 * Charles Lamb writes to a friend, on the subject of naming his child :— 
 " For God's sake, donH Nicodemus him into nothiog !" 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 71 
 
 .ogic as good as his own. Eut the more delicate offspring of ten- 
 derness and chivahy, intending no violence, and ventui'ing out to 
 sea upon a rose-leaf, is destroyed and sunk beyond diving-bells by 
 half a breath of scorn. I would subscribe liberally, myself, to a 
 private press and court of honor in poetry — critics, if admitted, to 
 be dumb upon a penalty. Will no Howard or Wilberforce act 
 upon this hint ? Poets now-a-days are more slaves and felons 
 than your African, or your culprit at the old Bailey ! 
 
 I would go a great way, privately, to find a genuine spark of 
 chivalry, and Job lit his e very-day lamp with it. See what a re- 
 dolence of old time there is in these verses, which I copied long 
 ago from a lady's album. Yet, you may ridicule them if you 
 like I— 
 
 There is a story I have met, 
 
 Of a high angelj pure and true, 
 With eyes that tears had never wet, 
 
 And lips that pity never knew j 
 But ever on his throne he sate, 
 
 With his white pinions proudly furleJ, 
 And, looking from his high estate, 
 
 Beheld the errors of a world : 
 Yet, never, as they rose to heaven, 
 Plead ev'n for one to be forgiven. 
 
 • 
 
 Grod looked at last upon his pride, 
 
 And bade him fold his shining wing, 
 
 And o'er a land where tempters bide, 
 
 He made the heartless angel king. 
 
 'Tis lovely, reading in the tale, 
 
 The glorious spells they tried on hiim, 
 Ere grew his heavenly birth-star pale, 
 
 Ere grew his frontlet jewel dim — 
 Caps of such rare and ravishing wines 
 
*?a BOY POEMS. 
 
 As ev'n a god might drink and bless, 
 Gems from unsearched and central mines, 
 
 Whose light than heaven's was scarcely less- 
 Gold of a sheen like crystal spars, 
 
 And silver whiter than the moon's, 
 And music like the songs of stars. 
 
 And perfume like a thousand Junes, 
 And breezes, soft as heaven's own air. 
 
 Like fingers playing in his hair ! 
 He shut his eyes — he closed his ears— - 
 
 He bade them, in God's name, begone ! 
 And, through the yet eternal years, 
 
 Had stood, the tried and sinless one : 
 But there was yet one untried spell — 
 A woman tempted — and he fell ! 
 
 And I — if semblance I may find 
 
 Between such glorious sphere and mine- 
 Am not to the high honor blind. 
 
 Of filling this fair page of thine — 
 Writing my unheard name among 
 Sagos and sires and men of song — 
 
 But honor, though the best e'er given, 
 And glory, though it were a king's, 
 
 And power, though loving it like heaven, 
 Were, to my seeming, lesser things. 
 
 And less temptation, far, to me, * 
 
 Than half a hope of serving thee I 
 
 I am mounted upon my hobby now, dear reader; for Job 
 Smith, though as hideous an idol as ever was worshipped on tho 
 Indus, was still my idol. Here is another touch of his quality : 
 
 I look 'ipon the fading flowers 
 
 Thou gav'st me, lady, in thy mirth, 
 And mourn, that, with the perishing hours, 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 73 
 
 Such fair things perish from the earth— 
 For thus, I know, the moment's feeling 
 
 Its own light web of life unweaves, 
 The deepest trace from memory stealing, 
 
 Like perfume from these dying leaves— 
 The thought that gave it, and the flower 
 Alike the creatures of an hour. 
 
 And thus it better were, perhaps, 
 
 For feeling is the nurse of pain, 
 And joys, that linger in their lapse, 
 
 Must die at last, and so are vain f 
 Could I revive these faded flowers, 
 
 Could I call back departed bliss, 
 I would not, though this world of ours 
 
 Were ten times brighter than it is 1 
 They must — and let them — pass away ! 
 
 We are forgotten— ev'n as they ! 
 
 I think I must give Edith another reprieve. I have no idea 
 why I have digressed, this time, from the story which (you may 
 see by the motto at the beginning of the paper) I have not yet 
 told. I can conceive easily how people, who have nothing to do, 
 betake themselves to autobiography — it is so pleasant rambling 
 about over the past, and re-gathering only the flowers. AVhy 
 should pain and mortification be unsepultured ? The world is no 
 wiser for these written experiences. " The best book," said 
 Southey, " does but little good to the world, and much harm to 
 the author." I shall deliberate whether to enlighten the world, as 
 to Edith's metempsychosis, or no. 
 
fl TUNE IN AMEKICA. 
 
 PART IV. 
 
 SCENERY AND A SCENE. 
 
 "Truth is no doctoresse ; she takes no degrees at Paris or Oxford, among great 
 clerks, disputants, subtle Aristotles, men nodosi ingenii, able to take Lully by the 
 chin ; but oftentimes, to such a one as myself, an idiota or common person, no great 
 things, melancholizing in woods where waters are, quiet places by rivers, fountains ; 
 •whereas the silly man, expecting no such matter, thinketh only how best to delec- 
 tate and refresh his mynde continually with nature, her pleasant* scenes, woods, 
 waterfalls : on a sudden the goddess herself. Truth has appeared with a shining 
 light and a sparkling countenance, so as ye may not be able lightlv to resist her." — 
 Burton. 
 
 Ever thus 
 Drop from us treasures one by one ; 
 
 They who have been froin youth with us. 
 Whose every look, whose every tone, 
 
 Is linked to us like leaves to flowers — 
 
 They who have shared our pleasant hours- 
 "Whose voices, so familiar grown, 
 They almost seem to us our own — 
 
 The echoes of each breath of ours— 
 They who have ever been our pride, 
 
 Yet in their hours of triumph dearest— 
 They whom we must have known and tried, 
 
 And loved the most when tried the nearest — 
 They pass from us, like stars that wane, 
 
 The brightest still before. 
 Or gold links broken from a chain 
 
 That can be joined no more I 
 
 Job Smith and myself were on the return from Niagara. It 
 was in the slumberous and leafy midst of June. Lake Erie had 
 lain with a silver glaze upon its bosom for days ; the ragged trees 
 ppon its green shore dropping their branches into the stirless 
 water, as if it were some rigid imitation — the lake glass, and the 
 leaves emerald ; the sky was of an April blue, as if a night-rain 
 had washed out its milkiness,' till you could see through its clari- 
 fied depths to the gates of heaven ; and yet, breathless and sunny 
 as was the face of the earth, there was a nerve and a vitality in 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 75 
 
 the air that exacted of every pulse its full compass — searched 
 every pore for its capacity of the joy of existence. 
 
 No one can conceive, who has not had his imagination stretched at 
 the foot of Niagara, or in the Titanic solitudes of the West, the 
 vastness of the unbroken phases of nature ; where every tree looks 
 a king, and every flower a marvel of glorious form and color — 
 where the rocks are rent, every one, as by the "tenth" thunder- 
 bolt — and lake, mountain, or river, ravine or waterfall, cave or 
 eagle's nest, whatever it may be that feeds the eye or the fancy, 
 is as the elements have shaped and left it — where the sculpture, 
 and the painting, and the poetry, and the wonderful alchymy of 
 nature, go on under the naked eye of the Almighty, and by his 
 own visible and uninterrupted hand — and where the music of nature, 
 from the anthem of the torrent and storm, broken only by the 
 scream of the vulture, to the trill of the rivulet with its accompani- 
 ment of singing birds and winds, is for ever ringing its changes, 
 as if for the stars to hear — in such scenes, I say, and in such 
 gcencs only, is the imagination overtasked, or stretched to the 
 capacity of a seraph's ; and, while common minds sink beneath 
 them to the mere inanition of their animal senses, the loftier 
 spirit takes their color and stature, and outgrows the common and 
 pitiful standards of the world. Cooper and Leatherstocking thus 
 became what they are — the one a high-priest of imagination and 
 poetry, and the other a simple-hearted but mere creature of in- 
 stinct ; and Cooper is no more a living man, and liable to the 
 common laws of human nature, than Leatherstocking a true and 
 life-like transcript of the more common effect of those overpower- 
 ing solitudes on the character. 
 
 We got on board the canal-boat at noon, and Job and myself, 
 eeated on the well-cushioned seats, with the blinds half-turned, to 
 
76 SCENERY VERSUS SOCIETY: 
 
 give Tis the prospect and exclude the sun, sat disputing in our 
 usual amicable way. He was the only man I ever knew with 
 whom I could argue without losing my temper ; and the reason 
 was, that I always had the last word, and thought myself victorious. 
 " We are about to return into the bosom of society, my dear 
 Job," said T, looking with unctuous good nature on the well-shaped 
 boot I had put on for the first time in a month that morning 
 (It is an unsentimental fact that hob-nailed shoes are indispensa- 
 ble on the most poetical spots of earth. J 
 
 " Yes," said Job ; " but how superior is the society we leave 
 behind ! Niagara and Erie ! What, in your crowded city, is com- 
 parable to these .^" 
 
 " Nothing, for size ! — but, for society — j^ou will think me a pa- 
 gan, dear chum — but, on my honor, straight from Niagara as T 
 come, I f'^el a most dissatisfied yearning for the society of Miss 
 Popkins !" 
 
 "Oh, Phil!" 
 
 " On my honor !" 
 
 " You, who were in such raptures at the Falls !" 
 
 " And real ones — but I wanted a woman at my elbow to listen 
 to them. Do you know. Job, I have made up my mind on a great 
 principle since we have been on our travels : Have you observed 
 that I was pensive .^" 
 
 " Not particularly — but what is your principle .?" 
 
 " That a man is a much more interesting object than a moun- 
 tain." 
 
 " A man ! did you say .?" 
 
 " Yes — but I meant a woman !" 
 
 "I don't think so." 
 
 " I do ! — and I judge by myself. When did I ever see won 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 77 
 
 der of nature — tree, sunset, waterfall, rapid, lake, or river — that 
 I would not rather have been talking to a woman the while ? Do 
 you remember the three days we were tramping through the 
 forest without seeing the sun, as if we had been in the endless 
 aisle of a cathedral ? Do you remember the long morning when 
 we lay on the moss at the foot of Niagara, and it was a divine 
 luxury only to breathe ? Do you remember the lunar rainbows at 
 midnight on Goat Island ? Do you remember the ten thousand 
 glorious moments we have enjoyed between weather and scenery 
 since the bursting of these summer leaves ? Do you ? 
 
 " Certainly, my dear boy !" 
 
 " Well, then, much as I love nature and you, there has not 
 been an hour since we packed our knapsacks, that, if I could 
 have distilled a charming girl out of a mixture of you and any 
 mountain, river, or rock, that I have seen, I would not have flung 
 you, without remorse, into any witch's caldron that was large 
 enough, and would boil at my bidding." 
 
 "Monster!" 
 
 " And I believe I should have the same feelings in Italy or 
 Greece, or wherever people go into raptures with things you can 
 neither eat nor make love to." 
 
 " Would not even the Venus fill your fancy for a day r" 
 
 " An hour, perhaps, it might ; for I should be studying, in its 
 cold Parian proportions, the structure of some living Musidora — 
 but I should soon tire of it, and long for my lunch or my love ; 
 and, I give you my honor, I would not lose the three meals of a 
 single day to see Santa Croco and St. Peter's." 
 
 " Both .'" 
 
 " Both." 
 
 Job disdained to argue against such a want of sentimental prin- 
 
78 TRAVEL IN CANAL-BOATS. 
 
 ciple, and, pulling up the blind, he fixed his eyes on the slowly- 
 gliding panorama of rock and forest, and I mounted for a pro- 
 menade upon the deck. 
 
 Mephistopheles could hardly have found a more striking amuse- 
 ment for Faust than the passage of three hundred miles in the 
 canal from Lake Erie to the Hudson. As I walked up and down 
 the deck of the packet-boat, I thought to myself, that, if it were 
 not for thoughts of things that come more home to one's " busi- 
 ness and bosom" (particularly "bosom"), I could be content to 
 re-take my berth at Schenectady, and return to Buffalo for amuse- 
 ment. The Erie canal-boat is a long and very pretty drawing- 
 room afloat. It has a library, sofas, a tolerable cook, curtains or 
 Venetian blinds, a civil captain, and no smell of steam or percepti- 
 ble motion. It is drawn generally by three horses at a fair trot, 
 and gets you through about a hundred miles a day, as softly as if 
 you were witched ov^r tn:' ground by Puck and Mustard-seed. 
 The comp;iny (siiy fiTty pt oplo) is such as pleases Heaven; though 
 I must say (with n]y •>ye all along the shore, collecting the vari- 
 ous dear fiiends I hnvo n;ade and left on that long canal) there 
 are few highways on which you will nioet so many lovely and lov- 
 ing fellow-passcngors. On this ooc-asi;»n my star was bankrupt — 
 Job Smith being my only civilized companion — and I was left to 
 the unsatisfactory society of my own thoughts and the scenery. 
 
 Discontented as I may seem to have been, I ronicmber, thi-ou2:h 
 a number of years of stirring and thickly-sown nianliood, eveiy 
 moment of that lovely evening. I remember the progression of 
 the sunset, from the lengthening shadows and the first gold upon 
 the clouds, to the deepening twilight and the new-sprung star 
 hung over the wilderness. And I remember what I am going to 
 lescribe — a twilight anthem in the forest — as you remember an 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 79 
 
 air of Rossini's, or a transition in the half-fiendish, half-heavenly 
 creations of IMeyerbeer. I thought time dragged heavily, then, 
 but I wish I had as light a heart and could feel as vividly now ! 
 
 The Erie canal is cut a hundred or two miles through the heart 
 of the primeval wilderness of America, and the boat was gliding 
 on silently and swiftly ; and, never sailed a lost cloud through the 
 abyss of space on a course more apparently new and untrodden. 
 The luxuriant soil had sent up a rank grass that covered the horse- 
 path like velvet ; the Erie water was clear as a brook in the wind- 
 ing canal ; the old shafts of the gigantic forest spurred into the 
 sky by thousands, and the yet unscared eagle swung off from the 
 dead branch of the pine, and skimmed the tree-tops for another 
 perch, as if he had grown to believe that gliding spectre a harm- 
 less phenomenon of nature. The horses drew steadily and un- 
 heard, at the end of the long line ; the steersman stood motionless 
 at the tiller, and I lay on a heap of baggage in the prow, atten- 
 tive to the slightest breathing of nature, but thinking, with an 
 ache at my heart, of Edith Linsey, to whose feet (did I mention 
 it ?) I was hastening with a lover's proper impatience. I might 
 as well have taken another turn in my " fool's paradise." 
 
 The gold of the sunset had glided up the the dark pine tops 
 and disappeared, like a ring taken slowly from an Ethiop's finger ; 
 the whip-poor-will had chanted the first stave of his lament ; the 
 bat was abroad, and the screech-owl, like all bad singers, com- 
 menced without waiting to be importuned, though we were listen- 
 ing for the nightingale. The air, as I said before, had been. all 
 day breathless ; but, as the first chill of evening displaced the 
 warm atmosphere of the departed sun, a slight breeze crisped the 
 mirrored bosom of the canal, and then commenced the nigLt 
 antheni of the forest, audible, I would fain believe, in its .soothiag 
 
80 UNWRITTEN MUSIC. 
 
 changes, by the dead tribes whose bones whiten amid the perish- 
 ing leaves. First, whisperingly yet articulately, the suspended 
 and wavering foliage of the birch was touched by the many-finger- 
 ed wind, and, like a faint prelude, the silver-lined leaves rustled 
 in the low branches ; and, with a moment's pause, when you could 
 hear the moving of the vulture's claws upon the bark, as he 
 turned to get his breast to the wind, the increasing breeze swept 
 into the pine-tops, and drew forth, from their fringe-like and 
 myriad tassels, a low monotone like the refrain of a far-off dirge ; 
 and still as it murmured, (seeming to you sometimes like the con- 
 fused and heart-broken responses of the penitents on a cathedral 
 floor), the blast strengthened and filled, and the rigid leaves of the 
 oak, and the swaying fans and chalices of the magnolia, and the 
 rich cups of the tulip trees, stirred and answered with their differ- 
 ent voices like many-toned harps ; and when the wind was fully 
 abroad, and every moving thing on the breast of the earth was 
 roused from its daylight repose, the irregular and capricious blast, 
 like a player on an organ of a thousand stops, lulled and strength- 
 ened by turns; and, from the hiss in the rank grass, low as the 
 whisper of fairies, to the thunder of the impinging and groaning 
 branches of the larch and the fir, the anthem went ceaselessly 
 through its changes, and the harmony (thougli the owl broke in 
 with his scream, and though the over-blown monarch of the wood 
 came crashing to the earth), was still perfect and without a jar. 
 It is strange that there is no sound of nature out of tune. The 
 roar of the waterfall comes into this anthem of the forest like aa 
 accompaniment of bassoons, and the occasional bark of the wolf, 
 or the scream of a night-bird, or even the deep-throated croak of 
 the frog, is no more discordant than the outburst of an octave flute 
 above the even melody of an orchestra ; and it is surprising how 
 
EARLIER DAYS. gj 
 
 the large rain-drops, pattering on the leaves, and the small voice 
 of the nightingale (singing, like nothing but himself, sweetest in 
 the darkness) seems an intensitive and alow burthen to the general 
 anthem of the earth — as it were, a single voice among instruments. 
 
 I had what Wordsworth calls a " couchant ear" in my youth, 
 and my story will wait, dear reader, while I tell you of another 
 harmony that I learned to love in the wilderness. 
 
 There will come sometimes in the Spring — say in May, or when- 
 ever the snow-drops and sulphur butterflies are tempted out by 
 the first timorous sunshine — there will come, I say, in that yearn- 
 ing and^ youth-renewing season, a warm shower at noon. Our 
 tent shall be pitched on the skirts of a forest of young pines, and 
 the evergreen foliage, if foliage it may be called, shall be a daily 
 refreshment to our eye while watching, with the west wind upon 
 our cheeks, the unclothed branches of the elm. The rain de- 
 scends softly and warm ; but, with the sunset, the clouds break 
 away, and it grows suddenly cold enough to freeze. The next 
 morning you shall come out with me to a hill-side looking upon 
 the south, and lie down with your ear to the earth. The pine 
 tassels hold, in every four of their fine fingers, a drop of rain frozen 
 like a pearl in a long ear-ring, sustained in their loose grasp by 
 the rigidity of the cold. The sun grows warm at ten, and the 
 slight green fingers begin to relax and j^ieid, and, by eleven, they 
 are all dropping their icy pearls upon the dead leaves, with a mur- 
 mur through the forest like the swarming of the bees of Hybla. 
 There is not much variety in its music, but it is a pleasant mo- 
 notone for thought ; and if, you have a restless fever in your bo- 
 som (as I had, when I learned to love it, for the travel which ha^ 
 corrupted the heart and the ear that it soothed and satisfied then) 
 you may lie down with a crooked root under your head,, in the 
 
82 
 
 TRENTON FALLS. 
 
 skirts of the forest, aud thank Heaven for an anodyne to care 
 And it is better than the voice of your friend, or the song of your 
 lady-love, for it exacts no gratitude, and will not desert you ere 
 the echo dies upon the wind. 
 
 Oh, how many of these harmonies there are ! — how many that 
 we hear, and how many that are " too constant to be heard !" I 
 could go back to my boyhood, now, with this thread of recollection, 
 and unsepulture a hoard of simple and long-buried joys, that would 
 bring the blush upon my cheek to think how my senses are dulled 
 since such things could give me pleasure ! Is there no " well of 
 Kanathos" for renewing the youth of the soul ? — no St. Hilary's 
 cradle .? no elixir to cast the slough of heart-sickening and heart- 
 tarnishing custom ? Find me an alchymy for thatf with your 
 alembic and crucible, and you may resolve to dross again your 
 philosopher's stone .' 
 
 IL 
 
 Everybody who makes the passage of the Erie canal, stops at 
 tlie half-way town of Utica, to visit a wonder of nature fourteen 
 miles to the west of it, called Trenton Falls. It would be becom- 
 ing in me, before mentioning the Falls, however, to sing the praises 
 of Utica and its twenty thousand inhabitants — having received 
 much hospitality from the worthy burghers, and philandered up 
 and down their well-flagged trottoir very much to my private sat- 
 isfaction. I should scorn any man's judgment who should attempt 
 to convince me that the Erie water, which comes down the canal 
 a hundred and fifty miles, and passes through the market-place of 
 that pleasant town, has not communicated, to the hearts of its 
 citizens, the expansion and depth of the parent lake from which it 
 is drawn. I have a theory on th:it subject with wliich I intend to 
 
EARLIER DAYS. ^ (|3 
 
 surprise the world, whenever politics and Mr. Bulwer draw less 
 engrossingly on its attention. Will any one tell me that the dark 
 eyes I knew there, and whose like, for softness and meaning, I 
 inquired for in vain through Italy, and the voice that accompanied 
 their gaze — (that Pasta, in her divinest out-gush of melody and 
 soul, alone recalls to me) — that these, and the noble heart, and 
 high mind, and even the genius, that were other gifts of the same 
 marvel among women — that these were born of common parent- 
 age, and nursed by the air of a demi-metropolis } We were but 
 the kindest of friends, that bright creature and myself, and I may 
 say, without charging myself with the blindness of love, that I be- 
 lieve in my heart she was the foster-child of the water-spirits on 
 whose wandering streamlet she lived — that the thousand odors 
 that swept down from the wilderness upon Lake Erie, and the un- 
 seen but wild and innumerable influences of nature, or whatever 
 you call that which makes the Indian a believer in the Great Spirit 
 -^that these came down with those clear waters, ministering to 
 the mind and watching over the budding beauty of this noble and 
 most high-hearted woman ! If you do not believe it, I should like 
 you to tell me how else such a creature was ^' raised," as they 
 phrase it in Virginia. I shall hold to my theory till you furnish 
 me with a more reasonable. 
 
 We heard at the hotel that there were several large parties at 
 Trenton Falls, and, with an abridgment of our toilets in our 
 pockets. Job and I galloped out of Utica about four o^clock of as 
 bright a summer's afternoon as was ever promised in the almanac. 
 We drew rein a mile or two out of town, and dawdled alonor the 
 wild road more leisurely. Job's Green Mountain proportions fittin*^ 
 to the saddle something in the manner and relative fitness of a 
 skeleton on a poodle. By the same token, he rode safely, thy 
 
84 JOB ON HORSEBACK. 
 
 looseness of his bones accommodating itself with singular facility 
 to the irregularities in the pace of the surprised animal beneath 
 him 
 
 I dislike to pass over the minutest detail of a period of my life 
 that will be rather interesting in my biography, (it is my intention 
 to be famous enough to merit that distinction, and I would recom- 
 mend to my friends to be noting my " little peculiarities"), and, 
 with this posthumous benevolence in my heart, I simply record, 
 that our conversation, on the road turned upon Edith Linsey — at 
 this time the lady of my constant love — for whose sake, and at 
 whose bidding, I was just concluding (with success I presumed) a 
 probation of three years of absence, silence, hard study, and rigid 
 morals ; and upon whose parting promise (God forgive her !) I had 
 built my uttermost gleaning and sand of earthly hope and desire. 
 I tell you, in the tail of this mocking paragraph, dear reader, that 
 the bend of the rainbow spans not the earth more perfectly than 
 did the love of that woman my hopes of future bliss ; and the 
 ephemeral arc does not sooner melt into the clouds — but I am 
 anticipating my story. 
 
 Job's extraordinary appearance, as he extricated himself from 
 his horse, usually attracted the entire attention of the by-standers 
 at a strange inn ; and, under cover of this, I usually contrived to 
 get into the house and commit him by ordering the dinner as soon 
 its it could be got ready. Else, if it was in the neighborhood of 
 scenery, he was oif till Heaven knew when, and, as 1 had that 
 delicacy for his feelings never to dine without him, you naj' im- 
 agine the necessity of my hungry manoeuvre. 
 
 We dined upon the trout of the glorious stream we had come 
 to see ; and, as our host's eldest daughter waited upon us (record- 
 ed, in Job's journal, in my possession at this moment, as " tho 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 85 
 
 most comely and gracious virgin" he had seen in his travels), we 
 felt bound to adapt our conversation to the purity of her mind, 
 and discussed only the philosophical point, whether the beauty of 
 the stream could be tasted in the flavor of the fish — Job for it, 1 
 against it. The argument was only interrupted by the entrance 
 of an apple-pudding, so hot that our tongues were fully occupied 
 in removing it from place to place as the mouth felt its heat incon- 
 venient ; and then, being in a country of liberty and equality, and 
 ihe damsel in waiting, as Job smilingly remarked, as much a lady 
 as the President's wife, he requested permission to propose her 
 health in a cool tumbler of cider, and we adjourned to the moon- 
 light. 
 
 III. 
 
 Ten or fifteen years ago, the existence of Trenton Falls was 
 not known. It was discovered, like Paestum, by a wandering 
 artist, when there was a town of ten thousand inhabitants, a canal, 
 a theatre, a liberty-pole, and forty churches, within fourteen miles 
 of it. It may be mentioned to the credit of the Americans, that 
 in the " hardness" of character of which travellers complain, there 
 is the soft trait of a passion for scenery; and, before the fact of its 
 discovery had got well into the " Cahawba Democrat" and " Go- 
 the-whole-hog-Courier," there was a splendid wooden hotel on the 
 edge cf the precipice, with a French cook, soda-water, and olives ; 
 and a law was passed by the Kentucky Travellers' Club, requiring 
 a hanging-bird's nest from the trees " frowning down the awful 
 abysm," (so expressed in the regulation), as a qualification for 
 membership. Thenceforward, to the present time, it has been a 
 place of fashionable resort during the summer solstice, and the 
 pine woods, in which the hotel stands, being impervious to the sun, 
 
^ CRACK IN THE EARTH, 
 
 M is prescribed by oculists for gentlemen and ladies with weak 
 gyes. If the luxury of corn-cutters had penetrated to the United 
 States, it might be prescribed for tender feet as well — the soft 
 floor of pine-tassels spread under the grassless woods, being con- 
 sidered an improvement upon Turkey carpets and green-sward. 
 
 Trenton Falls is rather a misnomer. I scarcely know what 
 you would call it, but the wonder of nature which bears the name 
 is a tremendous torrent, whose bed, for several miles, is sunk 
 fathoms deep into the earth — a roaring and dashing stream, so far 
 below the surface of the forest in which it is lost, that you would 
 think, as you come suddenly upon the edge of its long precipice, 
 that it was a river in some inner world (coiled within ours, as we 
 in the outer circle of the firmament), and laid open by some Ti- 
 tanic throe that had cracked clear asunder the crust of this shal- 
 low earth. The idea is rather assisted if you happen to see be- 
 low you, on its abysmal shore, a party of adventurous travellers ; 
 for, at that vast depth, and in contrast with the gigantic trees and 
 rocks, the same number of well-shaped pismires, dressed in the 
 last fashions, and philandering upon your parlor floor, would be 
 about of their apparent size and distinctness. -^ 
 
 They showed me at Eleusis the well by which Proserpine 
 ascends to the regions of day on her annual visit to the plains of 
 Thessaly — but, with the genius loci at my elbow in the shape of a 
 Grreek girl as lovely as Phryne, my memory reverted to the bared 
 axle of the earth in the bed of this American river, and I was per- 
 suaded (looking the while at the feroniere of gold sequins on the 
 Phidian forehead of my Katinka) that, supposing Hades in the cen- 
 tre of the earth, you are nearer to it by some fathoms at Trenton 
 I confess, I have had, since my first descent into those depths, an 
 
EARLIER DAYS. ^ 
 
 tincomfortable doubt of the solidity of the globe — how the deuce 
 it can hold together with such a crack in its bottom ! 
 
 It was a night to play Endymion, or do any Tom-foolery that 
 could be laid to the charge of the moon, for, a more omnipresent 
 and radiant atmosphere of moonlight never sprinkled the wilder- 
 ness with silver. It was a night in which to wish it might never 
 be day again — a night to be enamored of the stars, and bid God 
 bless them like human creatures on their bright journey — a night 
 to love in, to dissolve in — to do everything but what night is made 
 for — sleep ! Oh heaven ! when I think how precious is life in 
 such moments ; how the aroma — the celestial bloom and flower of 
 the soul — the yearning and fast-perishing enthusiasm of youth — 
 waste themselves, in the solitude of such nights, on the senseless 
 and unanswering air ; when I wander alone, unloving and unloved, 
 beneath influences that could inspire me with the elevation of a 
 seraph, were I at the ear of a human creature that could summon 
 forth and measure my limitless capacity for devotion — when I think 
 this, and feel this, and so waste my existence in vain yearnings- — 
 I could extinguish the divine spark within me, like a lamp on an 
 unvisited shrine, and thank Heaven for an assimilation to the ani- 
 mals I walk among ! And that is the substance of a speech I 
 made to Job, as a sequitur of a well-meant remark of his own, that 
 " it was a pity Edith Linsey was not there." , He took the clause 
 about the " animals" to himself, and I made an apology for the 
 same, a year after. We sometimes give our friends, quite inno- 
 cently, such terrible knocks in our rhapsodies ! 
 
 Most people talk of the sublimity of Trenton, but I have haunt- 
 ed it by the week together for its mere loveliness. The river, in 
 the heart of that fearful chasm, is the most varied and beautiful 
 assemblage of the thousand forms and shapes of running water, 
 
RAPJDS AT '1 i^ENTON. 
 
 that I know in the world. The soil, and the deep-striking roots 
 of the forest, terminate far above you, looking like a black rim on 
 the enclosing precipices ; the bed of the river and its sky-sustain- 
 ing walls are of solid rock, and, with the tremendous descent of the 
 stream — forming for miles one continuous succession of falls and 
 rapids — the channel is worn into curves and cavities which throw 
 the clear waters into forms of inconceivable brilliancy and variety. 
 It is a sort of half twilight below, with here and there a long beam 
 of sunshine reaching down to kiss the lip of an eddy, or form a 
 rainbow over a fall, and the reverberating and changing echoes :-— 
 
 maintain a constant and most soothing music, varying at every 
 step with the varying phase of the current. Cascades of from 
 twenty to thirty feet, over which the river flies with a single and 
 hurrying leap (not a drop missing from the glassy and bending 
 sheet), occur frequently as you ascend ; and it is from these that 
 the place takes its name. But the falls, though beautiful, are 
 only peculiar from the dazzling and unequalled rapidity with which 
 the waters come to the leap. If it were not for the leaf which 
 drops wavering down into the abysm from trees apparently painted 
 on the sky, and which is caught away by the flashing current as 
 if the lightning had suddenly crossed it, you would think the vault 
 of the steadfast heavens a flying element as soon. The spot, in 
 that long gulf of beauty, that I beet remember, is a smooth descent 
 of some hundred yards, where the river in full and undivided vol- 
 ume skims over a plane as polished as a table of scagliola, looking, 
 in its invisible speed, like one mirror of gleaming but motionless 
 crystal. Just above, there is a sudden turn in the glen, which 
 sends the water like a catapult against the opposite angle of the 
 
EAULtEK BAtS. |^9 
 
 rock, and, in the action of years, it has worn out a cr^vern of un- 
 known depth, into which the whole mass of the river jlunges, with 
 the abandonment of a flying fiend into hell, and, rerppeaiing like 
 the angel that has pursued him, glides swiftly h\ t with divine 
 serenity on its way. (I am indebted for that last figure to Job, 
 who travelled with a Milton in his pocket, and had a natural rsdo- 
 lence of" Paradise Lost" in his conversation.) 
 
 Much as I detest water in small quantities, (to drink), I have a 
 hydromania in the way of lakes, rivers, and waterfalls. It is, by 
 much, the belle in the family of the elements. Earth is never 
 tolerable unless disguised in green. Air is so thin as only to be 
 visible when she borrows drapery of water ; and Fire is so staring- 
 ly bright as to be unpleasant to the eyesight ; but Water ! soft, 
 pure, graceful water ! there is no shape into which you can throw 
 her that she does not seem lovelier than before. She can borrow 
 nothing of her sisters. Earth has no jewels in her lap so brilliant 
 as water's spray pearls and emeralds ; Fire has no rubies like 
 what she steals from the sunset ; Air has no robes like the grace 
 of her fine -woven and ever-changing drapery of silver. A health 
 (in wine !) to Water ! 
 
 Who is there, who did not love some stream in his youth } 
 Who is there, in whose vision of the past there does not sparkle 
 up, from every picture of childhood, a spring or a rivulet, woTcn 
 through the darkened and torn woof of first afi"ections like a thread 
 of unchanged silver ? How do you interpret the instinctive yearn- 
 ing with which you search for the river-side or the fountain in 
 every scene of nature — the clinging unaware to the river's course 
 when a truant in the fields of June— tho dull void you find in 
 every landscape of which it is not the ornament and the centre } 
 For myself, I hold with the Greek : " Water is the first principle 
 
90 A SURPRISE. 
 
 of all things : we were made from it and we shall be resolred into 
 it."* 
 
 lY. 
 
 The awkward thing in all story-telling is transition. Invention, 
 you do not need if you have experience ; for fact is stranger than 
 fiction. A beginning in these days of startling abruptness is as sim- 
 ple as open your mouth ; and when you have once begun you can end 
 whenever you like, and leave the sequel to the reader's imagina- 
 tion : but the hinges of a story — the turning gracefully hack from 
 a digression (it is easy to turn into one) — is the j>as qui coute. 
 My education on that point was neglected. 
 
 It was, as I said before, a moonlight night, and Job and myself 
 having, like Sir Fabian, " no mind to sleep," followed the fashion 
 and the rest of the company at the inn, and strolled down to see 
 the falls by moonlight. I had been there before, and I took Job 
 straight to the spot, in the bed of the river, which I have described 
 above as my favorite, and, after watching it for a few minutes, we 
 turned back to a dark cleft in the rock which afforded a rude seat, 
 and sat musing in silence. 
 
 Several parties had strolled past without seeing us in our recess, 
 when two female figures, with their arms around each other's 
 waists, sauntered slowly around the jutting rock below, and ap- 
 proached us, eagerly engaged in conversation. They came on to 
 the very verge of the shadow which enveloped us, and turned to 
 look back at the scene. As the Iiead nearest me was raised to 
 the light, I started half to my feet : it was Edith ! In the same 
 instaftt her voice of music broke on my ear, and an irresistible 
 * The Ionic philosophy, supported by Thales. 
 
EARLIER DAYS. gj 
 
 impulse to listen unobserved drew me down again upon my seat, 
 and Job, with a similar instinct, laid his hand on my arm. 
 
 " It was his favorite spot!" said Edith. (We had been at 
 Trenton together years before.) "I stood here with him, and I 
 wish he stood here now, that I might tell him what my hand hesi- 
 tates to write." 
 
 " Poor Philip !" said her companion, whom, by the voice, I re- 
 cognised as the youngest of the Flemings, " I cannot conceive 
 how you can resolve so coldly to break his heart." 
 
 I felt a dagger entering my bosom, but still I listened. Edith 
 went on. 
 
 " Why, I will tell you, my dear little innocent. I loved Philip 
 Slingsby when I thought I was going to die. It was a fitting at- 
 tachment, for I never thought to need, of the goods of this world, 
 more than a sick chamber and a nurse ; and Phil was kind-heart- 
 ed and devoted to me, and I lived at home. But, with returned 
 health, a thousand ambitious desires have sprung up in my heart, 
 and 1 find myself admii-ed by whom I will, and every day growing 
 more selfish and less poetical. Philip is poor, and love in a cot- 
 tage, though very well for you if you like it, would never do for 
 me. I should like him very well for a friend, for he is gentleman- 
 like and devoted, but, with my ideas, I should only make him 
 miserable, and so — I think I had better put him out of misery at 
 once — don't you think P^ 
 
 A half-smothered groan of anguish escaped my lips ; but it was 
 lost in the roar of the waters, and Edith's voice, as she walked on, 
 lessened and became inaudible to my ear. As her figure was lost 
 in the shadow of the rocks beyond, I threw myself on the bosom of 
 my friend, and wept in the unutterable agony of a crushed heart. 
 I know not how that night was spent, but I awoke at noon of the 
 
90 MEETING AGAIN. 
 
 next day, in my bed, with Jcb's hand clasped tenderly in my 
 own. 
 
 V. 
 
 I kept my tryst. I was to meet Edith Linsey at Saratoga in 
 July — the last month of the probation by which I had won a right 
 to her love. I had not spoken to her, or written, or seen her 
 (save, unknown to her, in the moment I have describedj, in the 
 three long years to which my constancy was devoted. I had gain- 
 ed the usual meed of industry in my profession, and was admitted 
 to its practice. I was on the threshold of manhood ; and she had 
 promised, before heaven, here to give me heart and hand. 
 
 I had parted from her at twelve on that night three years, and 
 as the clock struck, I stood again by her side in the crowded ball- 
 room of Saratoga. 
 
 " Good God ! Mr. Slingsby !" she exclaimed, as I put out my 
 hand. 
 
 " Am I so changed that you do not know me, Miss Linsey .?" 
 I asked, as she still looked with a wondering gaze into my face — 
 pressing my hand, however, with real warmth, and evidently under 
 the control, for the moment, of the feelings with which we had 
 parted. 
 
 " Changed, indeed ! Why, you have studied yourself to a 
 skeleton ! My dear Philip, you are ill !'' 
 
 I was — but it was only for a moment. I asked her for a waltz, 
 and never before or since came wit or laughter so freely to my lip. 
 I was collected, but, at the same time, I was the gayest of the 
 gay ; and, when everybody had congratulated me, in her hearing, 
 on the school to which I had put my wits in my long apprentice- 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 93 
 
 ship to the law, I retired to the gallery looking down upon the gar- 
 den, and cooled my brow and rallied my sinking heart. 
 
 The candles were burning low, and the ball was nearly over, 
 when I entered the room again, and requested Edith to take a turn 
 with me on the colonnade. She at once assented, and I could 
 feel, by her arm in mine, and see by the fixed expression on her 
 lip, that she did so with the intention of revealing to me what she 
 little thought I could so well anticipate. 
 
 ^' My probation is over," I said, breaking the silence which she 
 seemed willing to prolong, and which had lasted till we had twice 
 measured the long colonnade. 
 
 " It was three years ago to-night, I think, since we parted." 
 She spoke in an absent and careless tone, as if trying to work out 
 another more prominent thought in her mind. 
 
 " Do you find me changed .?" I asked. 
 
 " Yes — oh, yes ! very !" 
 
 " But I am more changed than I seem, dear Edith !" 
 
 She turned to me, as if to ask me to explain myself. 
 
 " Will you listen to me while I tell you how .^" 
 
 " What can you mean ? Certainly.' 
 
 " Then listen, for I fear I can scarce bring myself to repeat 
 what I am going to say. When I first learned to love you, and 
 when I promised to love you for life, you were thought to be dy- 
 ing, and I was a boy. I did not count on the future, for I de- 
 spaired of your living to share it with me, and, if I had done so, I 
 was still a child, and knew nothing of the world. I have since 
 grown more ambitious, and, I may as well say at once, more sel- 
 fish and less poetical. You will easily divine my drift. You are 
 poor, and I find myself, as you have seen to-night, in a position 
 which will enable me to marry more to my advantage ; and, with 
 
94 END OF A FIRST LOVE. 
 
 these views, I am sure I should only make you miserable by ful- 
 filling my contract with you, and you will agree with me that I 
 consult our mutual happiness by this course — don't you think r" 
 
 At this instant I gave a signal to Job, who approached and 
 made some sensible remarks about the weather ; and, after an- 
 other turn or two, I released Miss Linsey's arm, and cautioning 
 her against the night air, left her to finish her promenade and 
 swallow her own projected speech and mine, and went to bed. 
 
 And so ended my first love ' 
 
SCOES OF FEAR. 
 
 NO. I. 
 
 THE DISTURBED VIGIL. 
 
 • Antanio.— Get me a conjurer, I say ! Inquire me out a man that letB rat 
 devils."— Old Plat. 
 
 Such a night ! It was liko a festival of Dian. A burst of 
 a summer shower at sunset, with a clap or two of thunder, had 
 purified the air to an intoxicating rareness, and the free breathing 
 of the flowers, and the delicious perfume from the earth and grass, 
 and the fresh foliage of the new Spring, showed the delight and 
 sympathy of inanimate Nature in the night's beauty. There was 
 no atmosphere — nothing between the eye and the pearly moon — 
 and she rode through the heavens without a veil, like a queen as 
 she is, giving a glimpse of her nearer beauty for a festal favor to 
 the worshipping stars. 
 
 I was a student at the famed university of Connecticut, and the 
 bewilderments of philosophy and poetry were strong upon me, in 
 a place where exquisite natural beauty, and the absence of all 
 other temptation, secure to the classic neophite an almost super- 
 natural wakefulness of fancy. I contracted a taste for the horri- 
 ble in those days, which still clings to me. I have travelled 
 since then with no object but general observation, and have 
 dawdled my hour at courts and operas with little interest, while 
 
c)6 APTNESS FOR ADVENTURE. 
 
 the sacking and drowning of a woman in the Bospliorus, the im- 
 palement of a robber on the Nile, and the insane hospitals, from 
 Liverpool to Cathay, are described in my capricious journal with 
 the vividness of the most stirring adventure. 
 
 There is a kind of crystallization in the circumstances of one's 
 life. A peculiar turn of mind draws to itself events fitted to its 
 particular nucleus, and it is frequently a subject of wonder why 
 one man meets with more remarkable things than another, when 
 it is owing merely to a difference of natural character. 
 
 It was, as I was saying, a night of wonderful beauty. I was 
 watching a corpse. In that part of the United States, the dead 
 are never left alone till the earth is thrown upon them ; and, as a 
 friend of the family, I had been called upon for this melancholy 
 service on the night preceding the interment. It was a death 
 which had left a family of broken hearts ; for, beneath the sheet 
 which sank so appallingly to the outline of a human form, lay a 
 wreck of beauty and sweetness whose loss seemed to the survivors 
 to have darkened the face of the earth. The ethereal and touch- 
 ing loveliness of that dying girl, whom I had known only a hope- 
 less victim of consumption, springs up in my memory even yet, 
 and mingles with every conception of female beauty. 
 
 Two ladies, friends of the deceased, were to share my vigils. I 
 knew them but slightly, and, having read them to sleep an hour 
 after midnight, I performed my half-hourly duty of entering the 
 room where the corpse lay, to look after the lights, and then 
 strolled into the garden to enjoy the quiet of .the summer night. 
 The flowers were glittering in their pearl-drops, and the air was 
 breathless. 
 
 The sight of the long, sheeted corpse, the sudden flare of lights 
 as the long snuffs were removed from the candles, the stillness of 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 97 
 
 the close-shuttered rooiii. and my own predisposition to invest 
 death with a supernatural interest, had raised my heart to my 
 thro-it. I walked backward and forward in the garden-path ; and 
 the black shadows beneath the lilacs, and even the glittering of 
 the glow-worms within them, seemed weird and fearful. 
 
 The clock struck, and I re-entered. My companions still 
 slept, and I passed on to the inner chamber. I trimmed the 
 lights, and stood and looked at the white heap lying so fearfully 
 still within the shadow of the curtains ; and my blood seemed to 
 freeze. At the moment when I was turning away with a strong 
 effort at a more composed feeling, a noise like a flutter of wings, 
 followed by a rush and a sudden silence, struck on my startled 
 ear. The street was as quiet as death, and the noise, which was 
 far too audible to be a deception of the fancy, had come from the 
 side toward an uninhabited wing of the house. My heart stood 
 still. Another instant, and the fire-screen was dashed down, and 
 a white cat rushed past me, and, with the speed of light, sprang like 
 a hyena upon the corpse. The flight of a vampyre into the 
 chamber would not have more curdled my veins. A convulsive 
 shudder ran cold over me, but recovering my self-command, I 
 rushed to the animal (of whose horrible appetite for the flesh of 
 the dead I had read incredulously) , and attempted to tear her 
 from the body. With her claws fixed in the breast, and a yovjl 
 like the wail of an infernal spirit, she crouched fearlessly upon it, 
 and the stains already upon the vsheet convinced me that it would 
 be impossible to remove her without shockingly disfiguring the 
 corpse. I seized her by the throat, in the hope of choking her ; 
 but, with the first pressure of ni}' fingers, she flew into my face, 
 and the infuriated animal seemed persuaded that it was a con- 
 test for life. Half blinded by the fury of her attack, I loosed her 
 5 
 
98 A WESTERN STUDENT 
 
 for a moment, and she immediately leaped again upon the corpse, 
 and had covered her feet and face with blood before I could re- 
 cover my hold upon her. The body was no longer in a situation 
 to be spared, and I seized her with a desperate grasp to draw 
 her oflf ; but, to my horror, the half-covered and bloody corpse 
 rose upright in her fangs, and, while I paused in fear, sat with 
 drooping arms, and head fallen with ghastly helplessness over the 
 shoulder. Years have not removed that fearful spectacle from 
 my eyes. 
 
 The corpse sank back, and I succeeded in throttling the mon- 
 ster, and threw her at last, lifeless, from the window. I then 
 composed the disturbed limbs, laid the hair away once more 
 smoothly on the forehead, and, crossing the hands over the bosom, 
 covered the violated remains, and left them again to their repose. 
 My companions, strangely enough, slept on, and I paced the gar- 
 den-walk alone, till the day, to my inexpressible relief, dawned 
 over the mountains. 
 
 NO. 11. 
 
 THE MAD SENIOR. 
 
 I WAS called upon in my senior year to watch with an insane 
 student. He was a man who had attracted a great deal of atten- 
 tion in college. He appeared in an extraordinary costume at the 
 beginning of our freshman term, and wrote himself down as Wash- 
 ington Greyling, of , an unheard-of settlement somewhere 
 
 beyond the Mississippi. His coat and other gear might have been 
 the work of a Chickasaw tailor, aided by the superintending taste 
 of some white huntsman, who remembered faintly the outline of 
 
EARLIER DATS. 99 
 
 habiliments he had not seen for half a century. It was a body ot 
 green cloth, eked out with wampum and otter-skin, and would have 
 been ridiculous if it had not encased one of the finest models of a 
 manly frame that ever trod the earth. "With close-curling black 
 hair, a fine weather-browned complexion, Spanish features (from 
 his mother — a frequent physiognomy in the countries bordering 
 on Spanish America), and the port and lithe motion of a lion, he 
 was a figure to look upon in any disguise with warm admiration. 
 He was soon put into the hands of a tailor-proper, and, with the 
 facility which belongs to his countrymen, became in a month the 
 best-dressed man in college. His manners were of a gentleman- 
 like mildness, energetic, but courteous and chivalresque, and un- 
 like most savages and all coins, he polished without " losing his 
 mark." At the end of his first term, he would have been called 
 a high-bred gentleman at any court in Europe. 
 
 The opening of his mind was almost as rapid and extraordinary. 
 He seized everything with an ardor and freshness that habit and 
 difficulty never deadened. He was like a man who had tumbled 
 into a new star, and was collecting knowledge for a world to which 
 he was to return. The first in all games, the wildest in all ad- 
 venture, the most distinguished even in the elegant society for 
 which the town is remarkable, and unfailingly brilliant in his 
 recitations and college performances, he was looked upon as a sort 
 of admirable phenouienon, and neither envied nor opposed in 
 anything. I have often thought, in looking on him, that his sen- 
 sations, at coming fresh from a wild, western prairie, and, at th« 
 first measure of his capacities with men of better advantages, 
 finding himself so uniformly superior, must have been stirringly 
 delightful. It is a wonder he never became arrogant ; but it was 
 the last foible of which he could have been accused. 
 
100 VIGIL WITH A MADMAN. 
 
 We were reading hard for the honors in the senior year, when 
 Greyling suddenly lost his reason. He had not been otherwise 
 ill, and had, apparently in the midst of high health, gone mad at 
 a moment's warning. The physicians scarce knew how to treat 
 him. The confinement to which he was at first subjected, how- 
 ever, was thought inexpedient, and he seemed to justify their 
 lenity by the gentlest behavior when at liberty. He seemed op- 
 pressed by a heart-breaking melancholy. "We took our turns in 
 guarding and watching with him, and it was upon my first night 
 of duty that the incident happened which I have thus endeavored 
 to introduce. 
 
 It was scarce like a vigil with a sick man, for our patient went 
 regularly to bed, and usually slept well. I took my " Lucretius" 
 and the '' Book of the Martyrs," which was just then my favorite 
 reading, and, with hot punch, a cold chicken, books, and a fire, I 
 looked forward to it as merely a studious night ; and, as the wintry 
 wind of January rattled in at the old college windows, I thrust 
 my feet into slippers, drew my dressing-gown about me, and con- 
 gratulated myself on the excessive comfortableness of my position. 
 The Sybarite's bed of roses would have been no temptation. 
 
 It had snowed all day, but the sun had set with a red rift in the 
 clouds, and the face of the sky was swept in an hour to the clear- 
 ness of — I want a comparison — your own blue eye, dear Mary ! 
 The all-glorious arch of heaven was a mass of sparkling stars. 
 
 Greyling slept, and I, wearied of the cold philosophy of the 
 Latin poet, took to my " Book of Martyrs." I read on, and 
 read on. The college clock struck, it seemed to me, the quarters 
 rather than the hours. Time flew : it was three. 
 
 " Horrible ! most horrible !" I started from my chair with the 
 exclamation, and felt as if my scalp were self-lifted from my 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 101 
 
 head. It was a description, in the harrowing faithfulness of the 
 language of olden time, painting almost the articulate groans of an 
 impaled Christian. I clasped the old iron-bound book, and 
 rushed to the window as if my heart were stifling for fresh air. 
 
 Again at the fire. The large walnut fagots had burnt to a bed 
 of bright coals, and I sat gazing into it, totally unable to shake ofl 
 the fearful incubus from my breast. The martyr was there — on 
 the very hearth — with the stakes scornfully crossed in his body ; 
 and, as the large coal cracked asunder and revealed the brightness 
 within, I seemed to follow the nerve-rending instrument from hip 
 to shoulder, and suffer with him, pang for pang, as if the burning 
 redness were the pools of his fevered blood. 
 
 " Aha !" 
 
 It struck on my ear like the cry of an exulting fiend. 
 
 "Aha!" 
 
 I shrunk into the chair as the awful cry was repeated, and 
 looked slowly and with difficult courage over my shoulder. A 
 single fierce eye was fixed upon me from the mass of bed-clothes, 
 and, for a moment, the relief from the fear of some supernatural 
 presence was like water to a parched tongue. I sank back, re- 
 lieved, into the chair. 
 
 There was a rustling immediately in the bed, and, starting 
 again, I found the wild eyes of my patient fixed steadfastly upon 
 mo. He was creeping stealthily out of bed. His bare foot 
 touched the floor, and his toes worked upon it as if he was feeling 
 its strength, and in a moment he stood upright on his feet, and, 
 with his head forward and his pale face livid with rage, stepped 
 toward me. I looked to the door. He observed the glance, and 
 in the next instant he sprung clear over the bed, turned the key, 
 and dashed it furiously through the window. 
 
 "Now !" said he. 
 
102 HOT COALS ON A LUNATJC, 
 
 "Greyling !" I said. I had heard that a calm and fixed gaze 
 would control a madman, and, with the most difficult exertion of 
 nerve, I met his lowering eye, and we stood looking at each other 
 for a full minute, like men of marble. 
 
 ''Why have you left your hed r" I mildly asked. 
 
 " To kill you !" was the appalling answer ; and, in another mo- 
 ment, the light stand was swept from between us, and he struck 
 me down with a blow that would have felled a giant. Naked aa 
 he was, I had no hold upon him, even if in. muscular strength I 
 had been his match ; and, with a minute's struggle, I yielded, for 
 resistance was vain. His knee was now upon my breast and his 
 left hand in my hair, and he seemed, by the tremulousness of his 
 clutch, to be hesitating whether he should dash my brains out on 
 the hearth. I could scarce breathe with his weight upon my 
 chest, but I tried, with the broken words I could command, to 
 move his pity. He laughed, as only maniacs can, and placed his 
 hand on my throat. Oh God ! shall I ever forget the fiendish de- 
 liberation with which he closed those feverish fingers ? 
 
 " Greyling ! for God's sake ! Greyling !" 
 
 " Die ! curse you !" 
 
 In the agonies of sufibcatiou I struck out my arm, and almost 
 buried it in the fire upon the hearth. With an expiring thought, 
 I grasped a handful of the red-hot coals, and had just strength 
 sufficient to press them hard against his side. 
 
 " Thank God !" I exclaimed with my first breath, as my eyes 
 recovered from their sickness, and I looked upon the familiar ob- 
 jects of my chamber once more. 
 
 The madman sat crouched like a whipped dog in the farthest 
 corner of the room, gibbering and moaning, with his hands upon 
 bis burnt side. I felt that I had escaped death by a miracle. 
 
EARLIER DAYS. IQ^ 
 
 The door was locked, and, in dread of another attack, I threw 
 up the broken window, and, to my unutterable joy, the figure of a 
 man was visible upon the snow near the out-buildings of the col- 
 lege. It was a charity-student, risen before day to labor in the 
 wood-yard. I shouted to him, and Greyling leaped to his feet. . 
 
 " There is time yet !" said the madman ; but, as he came toward 
 me again with the same panther-like caution as before, I seized a 
 heavy stone pitcher standing in the window-seat, and, hurling it at 
 him with a fortunate force and aim, he fell stunned and bleeding 
 on the floor. The door was burst open at the next moment, and, 
 calling for assistance, we tied the wild Missourian into his bed, 
 bound up his head and side, and committed him to fresh 
 watchers. # # # * * 
 
 We have killed bears together at a Missouri salt-lick since 
 then ; but I never see "Wash. Greyling with a smile off his face, 
 without a disposition to look around for the door. 
 
 NO. III. 
 
 THE LUNATIC'S SKATE. 
 
 I HAVE only, in my life, known one lunatic — properly so called. 
 In ttie days when I carried a satchel on the banks of the Shaw- 
 sheen (a river whose half-lovely, half-wild scenery is tied like a 
 silver thread about my heart), Larry Wynn and myself were the 
 farthest boarders from school, in a solitary farm-house on the edge 
 of a lake of some miles square, called by the undignified title of 
 Pomp's Pond. An old negro, who was believed by the boys to 
 have come over with Christopher Columbus, was the only other 
 ttuman being within anything like a neighborhood of the lake (it 
 
104 LITERAL LUNACY. ^ 
 
 took its name from him), and the only approaches to its Traters^ 
 girded in as it was by an almost impenetrable forest, were the 
 path through old Pomp's clearing, and that by our own door. 
 Out of school, Larry and I were inseparable. He was a pale, sad- 
 faced boy, and, in the first days of our intimacy, he had confided 
 a secret to me which, from its uncommon nature, and the exces- 
 sive caution with which he kept it from every one else, bound me 
 to him with more than the common ties of school-fellow attach- 
 ment. AYe built wigwams together in the woods, had our toma- 
 hawks made of the same fashion, united our property in fox-traps, 
 and played Indians with perfect contentment in each other's ap- 
 probation. 
 
 I had found out, soon after my arrival at school, that Larr}' 
 never slept on a moonlight night. With the first slender horn 
 that dropped its silver and graceful shape behind the hills, his 
 uneasiness commenced, and, by the time its full and perfect orb 
 poured a flood of radiance over vale and mountain, he was like 
 one haunted by a pursuing demon. At early twilight he closed 
 the shutters, stuffing every crevice that could admit a ray ; and 
 then, lighting as many candles as he could beg or steal from our 
 thrifty landlord, he sat down with his book in moody silence, or 
 paced the room with an uneven step, and a solemn melancholy in 
 his fine countenance, of which, with all my familiarity with him, I 
 was almost afraid. Violent exercise seemed the only relief, and 
 when the candles burnt low after midnight, and the stillness around 
 the lone farm-house became too absolute to endure, he would 
 throw up the window, and, leaping desperately out into the moon- 
 light, rush up the hill into the depths of the wild forest, and walk 
 on with supernatural excitement till the day dawned. Faint and 
 pale, he would then creep into his bed, and, bcirgin^ me lo make 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 105 
 
 his very common and always credited excuse of illness, sleep 
 soundly till I returned from school. I soon became used to his 
 way, ceased to follow him, as I had once or -twice endeavored to 
 do, into the forest, and never attempted to break in on the fixed 
 and rapt silence which seemed to transform his lips to marble 
 And for all this Larry loved me. 
 
 Our preparatory studies were completed, and, to our mutual de- 
 spair, we were destined to different universities. Larry's father 
 was a disciple of the great Channing, and mine a Trinitarian of 
 uncommon zeal ; and the two institutions of Yale and Harvard 
 were in the hands of most eminent men of either persuasion, and 
 few are the minds that could resist a four years' ordeal in either. 
 A student was as certain to come forth a Unitarian from one, as a 
 Calvinist from the other ; and, in the New England States, these 
 two sects are bitterly hostile. So, to the glittering atmosphere of 
 Channing and Everett went poor Larry, lonely and dispirited ; 
 and I was committed to the sincere zealots of Connecticut, some 
 two hundred miles off, to learn Latin and Greek, if it pleased 
 Heaven, but the mysteries of " election and free grace," whether 
 or no. 
 
 Time crept, ambled, and galloped, by turns, as we were in love 
 or out, moping in term-time, or revelling in vacation, and gra- 
 dually, I know not why, our correspondence had dropped, and the 
 four years had come to their successive deaths, and we had never 
 met. I grieved over it ; for in those days I believed, with a 
 schoolboy's fatuity, 
 
 " That two, or one, are almost what they seem ;'* 
 
 and 1 loved Larry Wynn, as I hope I may never love man or 
 woman again — with a pain at my heart. I wrote one or two re- 
 5* 
 
XOe AMERICAN SLEIGHING. 
 
 proachful letters in my senior years, but his answers were over- 
 strained, and too full of protestations by half; and, seeing that 
 absence had done its usual work on him, I gave it up, and wrote 
 an epitaph on a departed friendship. I do not know, by the way^ 
 why I am detaining you with all this, for it has nothing to do with 
 my story ; but, let it pass as an evidence that it is a true one. 
 The climax of things in real life has not the regular procession of 
 incidents in a tragedy. 
 
 Some two or three years after we had taken " the irrevocable 
 yoke" of life upon us, (not matrimony, but money-making,) a 
 winter occurred of uncommonly fine sleighing — sledging they call 
 it in England. At such times the American world is all abroad, 
 either for business or pleasure. The roads are passable, at any 
 rate of velocity of which a horse is capable ; smooth as montagnes 
 JlusseSj and hard as is good for hoofs ; and a hundred miles is 
 diminished to ten, in facility of locomotion. The hunter brings 
 down his venison to the cities, the western trader takes his family 
 a hundred leagues to buy calicoes and tracts, and parties of all 
 kinds scour the country, drinking mulled wine and " flip," and 
 shaking the very nests out of the fir-trees with the ringing of their 
 horses' bells. You would think death and sorrow were buried in 
 the snow with the leaves of the last autumn. 
 
 I do not know why I undertook, at this time, a journey to the 
 West ; certainly not for scenery, for it was a world of waste, de- 
 solate and dazzling whiteness, for a thousand unbroken miles. The 
 trees Were weighed down with snow, and the houses were thatched 
 and half buried in it, and the mountains and valleys were like the 
 vast waves of an illimitable sea, congealed with its yeasty foam in 
 the wildest hour of a tempest. The eye lost its power in gazing 
 on it. The " spirit-bird," that spread his refreshing green wings 
 
EARLIER DAYS. IQ? 
 
 before the pained eyes cf Thalaba, would have been an inestimable 
 ^ellow traveller. The worth of the eyesight lay in the purchase 
 of a pair of green goggles. 
 
 In the course of a week or too, after skimming over the buried 
 scenery of half a dozen States, each as large as Great Bri- 
 tain, (more or less,) I found myself in a small town on the 
 border of one of our western lakes. It was some twenty years 
 since the bears had found it thinly settled enough for their pur- 
 poses, and now it contained, perhaps, twenty thousand souls. 
 The oldest inhabitant, born in the town, was a youth in his minor- 
 ity. With the usual precocity of new settlements, it had already 
 most of the peculiarities of an old metropolis. The burnt stumps 
 still stood about among the houses ; but there was a fashionable 
 circle, at the head of which were the lawyer's wife and the mem- 
 ber of Congress's daughter ; and people ate their peas with silver 
 forks, and drank their tea with scandal, and forgave men's many 
 sins and refused to forgive women's one^ very much as in towns 
 whose history is written in black letter. I dare say there were 
 not more than one or two offences against the moral and Levitical 
 law, fashionable in Europe, which had not been committed, 
 
 with the authentic aggravations, in the town of ; I 
 
 would mention the name if this were not a true story. 
 
 Larry Wynn (now Lawi'ence Wynn, Esq.,) lived here. He 
 had, as they say in the United States, "hung out a shingle" 
 (Londonice, put up a sign) as attorney-at-law, and, to all the 
 twenty thousand innocent inhabitants of the place, he was the 
 oracle and the squire. He was besides colonel of militia, church- 
 warden, and"canal commissioner ; appointments which speak vo- 
 lumes for the prospects of " rising young men" in our flourishing 
 republic. 
 
 / 
 
108 MALE FRIENDSHIPS. 
 
 Larry was glad to see me — very. I was more glad to see him 
 I have a soft heart, and forgive a wrong generally, if it touches 
 neither my vanity nor my loves. I forgot his neglect, and called 
 him " Larry." By the same token he did not call me " Phil." 
 (There are very few that love me, jatient reader ; but those who 
 do, thus abbreviate my pleasant name of Philip. I was called 
 after the India.n sachem of that name, whose blood runs in this 
 tawny hand.) Larry looked upon me as a man. I looked on 
 him, with all his dignities and changes, through the sweet vista of 
 memory — as a hoy. His mouth had acquired the pinched corners 
 of caution and mistrust common to those who know their fellow- 
 men ; but I never saw it, unless when speculating as I am now. 
 He was to me the pale-faced and melancholy friend of my boy- 
 hood ; and I could have slept, as I used to do, with my arm around 
 his neck, and feared to stir lest I should wake him. Had my last 
 earthly hope lain in the palm of my hand, I could have given it 
 to him, had he needed it, but to make him sleep ; and yet he 
 thought of me but as a stranger under his roof, and added, in his 
 warmest moments, a " Mr." to my name ! There is but one cir- 
 cumstance in my life that has wounded me more. Memory 
 avaunt ! 
 
 Why should there be no unchangeableness in the world ? why 
 no friendship .? or why am I, and you, gentle reader, (for by youT 
 continuing to pore over these idle musings, you have a heart too,) 
 gifted with this useless and restless organ beating in our bosoms, 
 if its thirst for love is never to be slaked, and its aching self-ful- 
 ness never to find flow or utterance } I would positively sell my 
 whole stock of affections for three farthings. Will you say 
 " two ?" 
 
 " You are come in good time," said Larry, one morning, with a 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 109 
 
 half-smile, *' and shall be groomsman to me. I am going to bo 
 married." 
 
 " Married .?" 
 
 " Married." ^^- 
 
 I repeated the'^rd after bim, for I was surpised. lie bad 
 never opened hh lips about bis unhappy lunacy, since my arrival, 
 and I liad felt hurt at this apparent unwillingness to renew our 
 ancient cormdence, but bad felt a repugnance to any forcing of the 
 topic upon him, and could only hope that be bad outgrown or 
 overcome it. I argued, immediately on this information of bis 
 intended marriage, that it must be so. No man, in bis senses, I 
 thought, would link an impending madness to the fate of a confid- 
 ing and lovely woman. 
 
 He took me into bis sleigh, and we drove to her father's house. 
 She was a flower in the wilderness. Of a delicate form, as all 
 my countrywomen are, and lovely, as quite all certainly are not, 
 large-eyed, soft in her manners, and yet less timid than confiding 
 and sister-like — with a sliadi of melancholy in her smile, caught, 
 perhaps, with the " trick of sadness" from himself, and a patri- 
 cian sligbtness of reserve, or pride, which nature sometimes, in 
 very mockery of high birth, teaches her most secluded child — the 
 bride elect was, as I have said before, a flower in the wilderness. 
 She was one of those women we sigh to look upon as they pass 
 by — as if there went a fragment of the wreck of some blessed 
 dream. 
 
 The day arrived for the wedding, and the sleigh-bells jingled 
 merrily into the village. The morning was as soft and genial as 
 June, and the light snow on the surface of the lake melted, and 
 lay on the breast of the solid ice beneath, giving it the effect of 
 one white silver mirror, stretching to the edge of the horizon. It 
 
no MADNESS IN A BRIDEGROOM. 
 
 was exquisitely beautiful, and I was standing at the window in tha 
 afternoon, looking off upon the shining expanse, when Larry ap- 
 proached, and laid his hand familiarly on my shoulder. 
 
 " What glorious skating we shall have," said I, " if this smooth 
 water freezes to-night !" 
 
 I turned the next moment to look at him ; for we had not 
 skated together since I went out, at his earnest entreaty, at mid-'*' 
 night, to skim the little lake where we had passed our boyhood, 
 and drive away the fever from his brain, under the light of a full 
 moon. 
 
 He remembered it, and so did I ; and I put my arm behind him, 
 for the color fled from his face, and I thought he would have sunk 
 to the floor. 
 
 '' The moon is full to-night," said he, recovering instantly to a 
 cold self-possession. 
 
 I took hoM of liis hand firml}^, and, in as kind a tone as I could 
 summon, spoke of mir oaily friendship, and, apologizing thus for 
 the freedom, asked if lie had quite overcome his melancholy 
 disease. His face worked with emotion, and he tried to with- 
 draw his hand from my clasp, and evidently wished to avoid an 
 answer. 
 
 " Tell me, dear Larry," said I 
 
 " Oh G-od ! no .'" said he, breaking violently from me, and 
 throwing himself with his face downward upon the sofa. The 
 tears streamed through his fingers upon the silken cushion. 
 
 " Not cured } And does she know it .^" 
 
 "No ! no ! thank God ! mi yet !'' 
 
 I remained silent a few minutes, listening to his suppressed 
 moans, (for he seemed heart-broken with the confession,) and 
 pitying while I inwardly condemned him. And then the picture of 
 
EARLIER DAYS. m 
 
 that lovely and fond woman rose up before me, and the impossibility 
 of concealing his fearful malady from his wife, and the fixed in- 
 sanity in which it must end, and the whole wreck of her hopes 
 and his own prospects and happiness — and my heart grew sick. 
 
 I sat down by him, and, as it was too late to remonstrate on 
 the injustice he was committing toward her, I asked how he came 
 to appoint the night of a full moon for his wedding. He gave up 
 his reserve, calmed himself, and talked of it at last as if he were 
 relieved by the communication. Never shall I forget the doomed 
 pallor, the straining eye, and feverish hand, of my poor friend 
 during that half hour. 
 
 Since he had left college he had striven with the whole energy 
 of his soul against it. He had plunged into business — he had 
 kept his bed, resolutely, night after night, till his brain seemed on 
 the verge of phrensy with the effort — he had taken opium to se- 
 cure to himself an artificial sleep ; but he had never dared to con- 
 fide it to any one, and he had no friend to sustain him in his fear- 
 ful and lonely hours ; and it grew upon him rather than diminish- 
 ed. He described to me, with the most touching pathos, how he 
 had concealed it for years — how he had stolen out like a thief to 
 give vent to his insane restlessness in the silent streets of the 
 city at midnight, and in the more silent solitudes of the forest — 
 how he had prayed, and wrestled, and wept over it — and finally,, 
 how he had come to believe that there was no hope for him, ex- 
 cept in the assistance and constant presence of some one who 
 would devote life to him in love and pity. Poor Larry ! I put 
 up a silent prayer in my heart that the desperate experiment 
 might not end in agony and death. 
 
 The sun set, and, according to my prediction, the wind changed 
 
112 THE BRIDAL. 
 
 suddenly to the nortli, and the whole surface of the lake, in a 
 couple of hours, became of the lustre of polished steel. It was 
 intensely cold. 
 
 The fires blazed in every room of the bride's paternal mansion, 
 and I was there early, to fulfil my office of master of ceremonies 
 at the bridal. My heart was weighed down with a sad boding^ 
 but I shook ofi" at least the appearance of it, and superintended the 
 concoction of a huge bowl of punch, with a merriment which 
 communicated itself, in the shape of most joyous hilarity, to a 
 troop of juvenile relations. The house resounded with their 
 shouts of laughter. 
 
 In the midst of our noise in the small inner room, entered 
 Larry. I started back, for he looked more like u demon possess- 
 ed than a Christian man. He had walked to the house alone in 
 the moonlight, not daring to trust himself in company. I turned 
 out the turbulent troop about me, and tried to dispel his gloom, 
 for a face like his, at that moment, would have put to flight the 
 rudest bridal party ever assembled on holy ground. He seized on 
 the bowl of strong spirits which I had mixed for a set of hardy 
 farmers, and, before I could tear it from his lips, had drank a 
 quantity which, in an ordinary mood, would have intoxicated him 
 helplessly in an hour. He then sat down with his face buried in 
 his hands, and, in a few minutes, rose, his eyes sparkling with ex- 
 citement, and the whole character of his face utterly changed. I 
 thought he had gone wild. 
 
 " Now, Phil," said he, " now for my bride !" And, with an 
 unbecoming levity, he threw open the door, and went half dancing 
 into the room where the friends were g-lready assembled to witness 
 the ceremony. 
 
 I followed with fear and anxiety. He took his place by the side 
 
EARLIER DAYS. * 113 
 
 of tie fair creature on whom lie had placed his hopes of life, and^ 
 though sobered somewhat by the inipressiveness of the scene, the 
 wild sparkle still danced in his eyes, and I could see that every 
 nerve in his frame was excited to the last pitch of tension. If he 
 had fallen a gibbering maniac on the floor, I should not have been 
 astonished. 
 
 The ceremony proceeded, and the first tone of his voice in the 
 response startled even the bride. If it had rung from the depths 
 of a cavern, it could not have been more sepulchral. I looked at 
 him with a shudder. His lips were curled with an exulting ex- 
 pression, mixed with an indefinable fear ; and all the blood in his 
 face seemed settled about his eyes, which were so bloodshot and 
 fiery, that I have ever since wondered he was not, at the first 
 glance, suspected of insanity. But oh ! the heavenly sweetness 
 with which that loveliest of creatures promised to love and cherish 
 him, in sickness and in health ! I never go to a bridal but it 
 half breaks my heart ; and, as the soft voice of that beautiful girl 
 fell with its eloquent meaning on my ear, and I looked at her, 
 with lips calm and eyes moistened, vowing a love which I knew to 
 be stronger than death, to one who, I feared, was to bring only 
 pain and sorrow into her bosom, my eyes warmed with irrepressible 
 tears, and I wept. 
 
 The stir in the room as the clergyman closed his prayer, seem- 
 ed to awake him from a trance. He looked around with a troub- 
 led face for a moment ; and then, fixing his eyes on his bride, he 
 suddenly clasped his arms about her, and, straining her violently 
 to his bosom, broke into an hysterical passion of tears and laugh- 
 ter. Then suddenly resuming his self-command, he apologized 
 for the over-excitement of his feelings, and behaved with forced 
 and gentle propriety till the guests departed. 
 
114 LUNACY RETURNED. 
 
 There way an apprehensive gloom over the sph'its of the small 
 bridal party left in the lighted rooms ; and, as they gathered round 
 the fire, I approached, and endeavored to take a gay farewell. 
 Larry was sitting with his arm about his wife, and he wrung my 
 hand in silence, as I said, " Good-night," and dropped his head 
 upon her shoulder. I made some futile attempt to rally him, but 
 it jarred on the general feeling, and I left the house. 
 
 It was a glorious night. The clear piercing air had a vitreous 
 brilliancy, which I have never seen in any other climate, the rays 
 of the moonlight almost visibly splintering with the keenness of 
 the frost. The moon herself was in the zenith, and there seemed 
 nothing between her and the earth but palpable and glittering 
 cold. 
 
 I hurried home : it was but eleven o'clock ; and, heaping up 
 the wood in the large fireplace, I took a volume of " Ivanhoe," 
 which had just then appeared, and endeavored to rid myself of 
 my unpleasant thoughts. I read on till midnight ; and then, in a 
 pause of the story, I rose to look out upon the night, hoping, for 
 poor Larry's sake, that the moon was buried in clouds. The 
 house was near the edge of the lake ; and, as I looked down upon 
 the glassy waste, spreading away from the land, I saw the dark 
 figure of a man kneeling directly in the path of the moon's rays. 
 In another moment he rose to his feet, and the tall, slight form of 
 my poor friend was distinctly visible, as, with long and powerful 
 strokes, he sped away upon his skates along the shore. 
 
 To take my own Hollanders, put a collar of fur around my 
 mouth, and hurry after him, was the work of but a minute. My 
 straps were soon fastened ; and, following in the marks of the 
 sharp irons at the top of my speed, I gained sight of him in about 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 115 
 
 half an hour, and, with great effort, neared him sufficiently to 
 shout his name with a hope of being heard. 
 
 " Larry ! Larry !" 
 
 The lofty-mountain shore gave back the cry in repeated echoes 
 •—but he redoubled his strokes, and sped on faster than before. 
 At my utmost speed I followed on ; and when, at last, I could 
 almost lay my hand on his shoulder, I summoned my strength to 
 my breathless lungs, and shouted again — " Larry ! Larry !" 
 
 He half looked back, and the full moon at that instant streamed 
 full into his eyes. I have thought since that he could not have 
 seen me for its dazzling brightness ; but I saw every line of his 
 features with the distinctness of daylight, and I shall never forget 
 them. A line of white foam ran through his half-parted lips ; his 
 hair streamed wildly over his forehead, on which the perspiration 
 gl it tared in large drops ; and every lineament of his expressive 
 face was stamped with unutterable and awful horror. He looked 
 back no more ; but, increasing his speed with an energy of which 
 { did not think his slender frame capable, he began gradually to 
 outstrip me. Trees, rocks, and hills, fled back like magic. My 
 limbs began to grow numb ; my fingers had lost all feeling, but a 
 strong northeast wind was behind us, and the ice smoother than a 
 mirror ; and I struck out my feet mechanically, and still sped on 
 
 For two hours we had kept along the shore. The branches of 
 the trees .were reflected in the polished ice, and the hills seemed 
 han^-ing in tlis air, and floating past us with the velocity of storm- 
 clouds. Far down the lake, however, there glimmered the just 
 visible light of a fire, and I was thanking Grod that we were pro- 
 bably approaching some human succor, when, to my horror, the 
 retreating figure before me suddenly darted off to the left, and 
 made, swifter than before, toward the centre of the icy waste 
 
116 CHASE OF A MADMAN. 
 
 Oh, Grod ! what feelings were mine at that moment ! Follow him 
 far I dared not ; for, the sight of land once lost, as it would be 
 almost instantly with our tremendous speed, we perished, without 
 a possibility of relief. 
 
 He was far beyond my voice, and to overtake him was the only 
 hope. I summoned my last nerve for the effort, and, keeping him 
 in my eye, struck across at a sharper angle, with the advantage of 
 the wind full in my back. I had taken note of the mountains, and 
 knew that we were already forty miles from home, a distance it 
 would be impossible to retrace against the wind ; and the thought 
 of freezing to death, even if I could overtake him, forced itself ap- 
 pallingly upon me. 
 
 Av/ay I flew, despair giving new force to my limbs, and soon 
 gained on the poor lunatic, whose efforts seemed flagging and 
 faint. I neared him. Another struggle ! I could have dropped 
 down where I was, and slept, if there were death in the first 
 minute, so stiff and drowsy was every muscle in my frame. 
 
 " Larry !" I shouted. " Larry !" 
 
 He started at the sound, and I could hear a smothered and 
 breathless shriek, as, with supernatural strength, he straightened 
 up his bending figure, and, leaning forward again, sped away from 
 me, like a phantom on the blast. 
 
 1 could follow no longer. I stood otiff on my skates, still going 
 
 on rapidly before the wind, and tried to look after him, but the 
 
 frost had stiffened u'y eyes, and there was a mist before them, and 
 
 they felt like glass. Nothing was visible around me but moonlight 
 
 * 
 and ice, and, dimly and slowly, I began to retrace the slight path 
 
 of semicircles toward the shore. It was painful work. The wind 
 seemed to divide the very fibres of the skin upon my face. Vio- 
 lent exercise no longer warmed my body, and I felt the cold shoot 
 
EARLIER DAYS, 117 
 
 ebarply into my loins, and bind across my breast like a chain of 
 ice ; and, -with the utmost strength of mind at my command, I 
 could just resist the terrible inclination to. lie down and sleep. I 
 forgot poor Larry. Life — dear life ! — was now my only thought ' 
 So selfish are we in our extremity ! 
 
 With difficulty I at last reached the shore, and then, unbutton- 
 ing my coat, and spreading it wide for a sail, I set my feet to- 
 gether, and went slowly down before the wind, till the fire which 
 I had before noticed began to blaze cheerily in the distance. It 
 seemed an eternity, in my slow progress. Tree after tree threw 
 the shadow of its naked branches across the way ; hill after hill 
 glided slowly backward ; but my knees seemed frozen together, 
 and my joints fixed in ice ; and, if my life had depended on strik- 
 ing out my feet, I should have died powerless. My jaws were 
 locked, my shoulders drawn half down to my kneefe, and, in a few 
 minutes more, I am well convinced, the blood would have thick- 
 ened in my veins, and stood still, for ever. 
 
 I could see the tongues of the flames — I counted the burning 
 fagots — a form passed between me and the fire — I struck, and fell 
 prostrate on the snow ; and I remember no more. 
 
 The sun was dartino; a slant beam throuo;h the trees when I 
 awoke. The genial warmth of a large bed of embers played on 
 my cheek, a thick blanket enveloped me, and beneath my head 
 was a soft cushion of withered leaves. On the opposite side of the 
 fire lay four Indians wrapped in their blankets, and, with her 
 head on her knees, and her hands clasped over her ankles, sat an 
 Indian woman, who had apparently fallen asleep upon her watch. 
 The stir I made aroused her, and, as she piled on fresh fagots, and 
 kindled them to a bright blaze with a handful of leaves, drowsi- 
 
118 DEATH ON THE BRIDAL NIGHT. 
 
 * 
 
 ness came over me again, and I wrapped the blanket about mo 
 more closely, and shut my eyes to sleep. 
 
 I awoke refreshed. It nmst have been ten o'clock, by the sun. 
 The Indians were about, busy in various occupations, and the 
 woman was broiling a slice of deer's flesh on the coals. She offer- 
 ed it to me as I rose ; and, having eaten part of it with a piece o! 
 cake made of meal, I requested her to call in the men, and, with 
 offers of reward, easily induced them to go with me in search of 
 my lost friend. 
 
 We found him, as I had anticipated, frozen to death, far out on 
 the lake. The Indians tracked him by the marks of his skate- 
 irons, and, from their appearance, he had sunk quietly down, pro- 
 bably drowsy and exhausted, and had died of course without pain. 
 His last act seemed to have been under the influence of his strange 
 madness, for he lay on his face, turned from the quarter of the 
 setting moon. 
 
 We carried him home to his bride. Even the Indians were af- 
 fected by her uncontrollable agony. I cannot describe that scene, 
 familiar as I am with pictures of horror. 
 
 I made inquiries with respect to the position of his bridal 
 chamber. There were no shutters^ and the moon streamed 
 broadly into it : and, after kissing his shrieking bride with the vio- 
 lence of a madman, he sprang out of the room, with a terrific 
 scream, and she saw him no more till he lay dead on his bridal 
 bed. 
 
INCIDENTS ON THE HUDSON. 
 
 M. Chabert, the fire-eater, would have found New York un^ 
 comfortable. I would mention the height of the thermometer, but 
 for an aversion I have to figures. Broadway, at noon, had been 
 known to fry soles. 
 
 I had fixed upon the first of August for my annual trip to 
 Saratoga — and, with a straw hat, a portmanteau and a black boy, 
 was huddled into the " rather-faster-than-lightning" steamer, 
 " North America," with about seven hundred other people, like 
 myself, just in time. Some hundred and fifty gentlemen and la- 
 dies, thirty seconds too late, stood " larding" the pine chips upon 
 the pier, gazing after the vanishing boat through showers of per- 
 spiration. Away we " streaked" at the rate of twelve miles in the 
 hour against the current, and, by the time I had penetrated to the 
 baggage-closet, and seated \\^illiam Wilberforce upon my port- 
 manteau, with orders not to stir for eleven hours and seven 
 minutes, we were far up the Hudson, opening into its hills and 
 rocks, like a witches' party steaming through the Hartz in a 
 cauldron. 
 
 A North-river steamboat, as a Vermont boy would phrase it, 
 is another guess sort o' thing from a Britisher. A coal-barge and 
 an eight-oars on the Thames are scarce more dissimilar. Built 
 for smooth water only, our river boats are long, shallow, and 
 graceful, of the exquisite proportions of a pleasure-yacht, and 
 
120 PARISIAN-ISM IN AMERICA, 
 
 paintefl as brilliantly and fantastically as an Indian shell. With 
 her bow just leaning up from the surface of the stream, her cut- 
 water throwing oflf a curved and transparent sheet from either side, 
 her white avrnings, her magical speed, and the gay spectacle of a 
 thousand well-dressed people on her open decks, I know nothing 
 prettier than the vision that shoots by your door, as you sit smok- 
 ing in your leaf-darkened portico on the bold shores of the 
 Hudson. 
 
 The American edition of Mrs. Trollope (several copies of which 
 are to be found in every boat, serving the same purpose to the 
 feelings of the passengers as the escape-valve to the engine) lay 
 on a sofa beside me, and taking it up, as to say, " I will be let 
 alone," I commenced dividing my attention, in my usual quiet 
 way, between the varied panorama of rock and valley flying back- 
 ward in our progress, and the as varied multitude about me. 
 
 For the mass of the women, as far as satin slippers, hats, 
 dresses and gloves could go, a Frenchman might have fancied 
 himself in the midst of a transplantation from the Boulevards. 
 In London, French fashions are in a manner Anglified : but an 
 American woman looks on the productions of Herbault, Boivin, 
 and Maneuri, as a translator of the Talmud on the inspired text. 
 The s\i(Ait ficrure and small feet of the race rather favor the resem- 
 
 O D 
 
 blance ; and a French milliner, who would probably come to 
 America expecting to see bears and buffaloes prowling about the 
 landing-place, would rub her eyes in New York, and imagine she 
 was still in France, and had crossed, perhaps, only the broad part 
 of the Seine. 
 
 The men were a more original study. Near me sat a Kentuck- 
 ian on three chairs. He had been to the metropolis, evidently for 
 the first time, and had " looked round sharp." In a fist of no 
 
EARLIER DAYS. ]2l 
 
 ^ery delicate proportions, was crushed a pair of French kid-gloves, 
 which, if they fulfilled to him a glove's destiny, would flatter " the 
 rich man" that " the camel" might yet give him the rec[uired pre- 
 cedent. His hair had still the traces of having been astonished 
 with curling-tongs, and across his Atlantean breast was looped, in 
 a complicated zig-zag, a chain that must have cost him a wilder- 
 ness of racoon-skins. His coat was evidently the production of 
 a Mississippi tailor, though of the finest English material ; his 
 shirt-bosom was ruffled like a swan with her feathers full spread, 
 and a black silk cravat, tied in a kind of a curse-me-if-1-care 
 sort of a knot, flung out its ends like the arms of an Italian impro- 
 visator e. With all this he was a man to look upon with respect 
 His under jaw was set up to its fellow with an habitual determina- 
 tion that would throw a hickory-tree into a shiver ; but frank good- 
 nature, and the most absolute freedom from suspicion, lay at 
 large on his Ajacean features, mixed with an earnestness that 
 commended itself at once to your liking. 
 
 In a retired corner, near the wheel, stood a group of Indians, 
 as motionless by the hour together as figures carved in ross/) antico. 
 They had been on their melancholy annual visit to the now-culti- 
 vated shores of Connecticut, the burial place, but unforgotten and 
 once wild home of their fathers. With the money given them by 
 the romantic persons whose sympathies are yearly moved by these 
 stern and poetical pilgrims, the}- had taken a passage in the " fire- 
 canoe," which would set them two hundred miles on their weary 
 journey back to the prairies. Tlicir Apollo-like forms loosely 
 dressed in blankets, their gaudy wampTim belts and feathers, the 
 muscular arm and close clutch upon the rifle, the total absence of 
 surprise at the unaccustomed wonders about them, and the lower- 
 ing and settled scorn and dislike expressed in then- copper faces, 
 
122 INDIANS AND WESTERNERS. 
 
 would have powerfully impressed a European. The only person 
 on whom they deigned to cast a glance was the Kentuckian, and 
 at him they occasionally stole a look, as if, through all his metro- 
 politan finery, they recognized metal with whose ring they were 
 familiar. 
 
 There were three foreigners on board, two of them companions^ 
 and one apparently alone. With their coats too small for them, 
 their thick-soled boots and sturdy figures, collarless cravats, and 
 assumed unconsciousness of the presence of another living soul, 
 they were recognizable at once as Englishmen. To most of the 
 people on board they probably appeared equally well-dressed, and 
 of equal pretensions to the character of gentlemen ; but any one 
 who has made observations between Temple Bar and the steps of 
 Crockford's, would easily resolve them into two Birmingham bag- 
 men " sinking the shop," and a quiet gentleman on a tour of in- 
 formation. 
 
 The only other persons I particularly noted were a southerner, 
 probably the son of a planter from Alabama, and a beautiful girl, 
 dressed in singularly bad taste, who seemed his sister. I knew 
 the " specimen" well. The indolent attitude, the thin, but pow- 
 erfully-jointed frame, the prompt politeness, the air of superiority 
 acquired from constant command over slaves, the mouth habitu- 
 ally flexible and looking eloquent even in silence, and the eye 
 in which slept a volcano of violent passions, were the marks that 
 showed him of a race that I had studied much, and preferred to 
 all the many and distinct classes of my countrymen. His sister 
 was of the slightest and most fragile figure, graceful as a fawn, 
 but with no trace of the dancing master's precepts in her motions, 
 vivid in her attention to everything about her, and amused with 
 all she aaw ; a copy of Lalla Rookh sticking from the pocket of 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 133 
 
 her French apron, a number of gold chains hung outside her trav- 
 elling habit, and looped to her belt, and a glorious profusion of 
 dark curls broken loose from her combs and floating unheeded over 
 her shoulders. 
 
 Toward noon we rounded West Point, and shot suddenly into 
 the overshadowed gorge of the mountains, as if we were dashing 
 into the vein of a silver mine, laid open and molten into a flowing 
 river by a flash of lightning. (The figure should be Montgome- 
 ry's ; but I can in no other way give an idea of the sudden dark- 
 ening of the Hudson, and the underground effect of the sharp 
 over-hanging mountains as you sweep first into the Highlands.) 
 
 The solitary Englishman, who had been watching the Southern 
 beauty with the greatest apparent interest, had lounged over to her 
 side of the boat, and, with the instinctive knowledge that women 
 have of character, she had shrunk from the more obtrusive at- 
 tempts of the Brummagems to engage her in conversation, and 
 had addressed some remark to him, which seemed to have advan- 
 ced them at once to acquaintances of a year. They were admir- 
 ing the stupendous scenery together, a moment before the boat 
 stopped for a passenger, off a small town above the point. As 
 the wheels were checked, the^e was a sudden splash in the water, 
 and a cry of " a lady overboard !" I looked for the fair creature 
 who had been standing before me, and she was gone. The boat 
 was sweeping on, and, as I darted to the railing, I saw the gurgling 
 eddy where something had just gone down ; and, in the next mi- 
 nute, the Kentuckian and the youngest of the Indians rushed to- 
 gether to the stern, and clearing ihe taffrail with tremendous leaps, 
 dived side by side into the very centre of the foaming circle. 
 The Englishman had coolly seized a rope, and, by the time they 
 reappeared, stoed on the railing with a coil in his hand, and flung 
 
124 PLUNGE FOR A LADY. 
 
 it with accurate calculation directly over them. With immovahly 
 grave faces, and eyes blinded witli water, the two divers rose, 
 holding high between them — a large pine fiigot ! Shouts of laugh- 
 ter pealed from the boat, and the Kentucldan, discovering his 
 error, gave the log an indignant fling behind, and, taking hold of 
 the rope, lay quietly to be drawn in : while the Indian, disdaining 
 assistance, darted through the wake of the boat with arroivy swift- 
 ness, and sprang up the side with the agility of a tiger-cat. The 
 lady reappeared from the cabin as they jumped dripping upon the 
 deck ; the Kentuckian shook himself, and sat down in the sun to 
 dry ; and the graceful and stern Indian, too proud even to put 
 the wet hair away from his forehead, resumed his place, and fold- 
 ed his arms, as indifferent and calm, save the suppressed heaving 
 of his chest, as if he had never stirred from his stone-like pos- 
 ture. 
 
 An hour or two more brought us to the foot of the Catskills, 
 and here the boat lay alongside the pier, to discharge those of 
 her passengers who were bound to the House on the mountain. 
 A hundred or more moved to the gangway, at the summons to get 
 ready, and among them the Southerners and the Kentuckian. I 
 had begun to feel an interest in our fair fellow-passenger, and I 
 suddenly determined to join their party — a resolution which the 
 j^inglishman seemed to come to, at the same moment, and proba- 
 bly for the same reason. 
 
 We slept at the pretty village on the bank of the river, and, the 
 next day, made the twelve hours' ascent, through glen and forest, 
 our way skirted with the most gorgeous and odorent flowers, and 
 turned aside and towered over by the trees whose hoary and moss- 
 covered trunks would have stretched the conceptions of the 
 '' Savage Rosa.' Everything that was not lovely was gigantesque 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 125 
 
 and awful. The rocks were split with the visible impress of the 
 Almighty Power that had torn them apart, and the daring and 
 dizzy crags spurred into the sky, as if the arms of a buried and 
 phrensied Titan were thrusting them from the mountain's bosom. 
 It gave one a kind of maddening desire to shout and leap — the 
 energy with which it filled the mind so out-measured the power 
 of the frame. 
 
 Near the end of our journey, we stopped together on a jutting 
 rock, to look back on the obstacles we had overcome. The view 
 extended over forty or fifty miles of vale and mountain, and, with 
 a half-shut eye, it looked, in its green and lavish foliage, like a 
 near and unequal bed of verdure, while the distant Hudson crept 
 through it like a half-hid satin riband, lost as if in clumps of moss 
 among the bryken banks of the highlands. I was trying to fix the 
 eye of my companion upon West Point, when a steamer, with its 
 black funnel and retreating line of smoke, issued as if from the 
 bosom of the hills into an open break of the river. It was as small, 
 apparently, as the white hand that pointed to it so rapturously. 
 
 " Oh !'' said the half-breathless girl, "is it not like some fairy 
 bark on an eastern stream, with a spice-lamp alight in its prow ?" 
 
 " More like an old shoe afloat, with a cigar stuck in it," inter- 
 rupted Kentucky. 
 
 As the sun began to kindle into a blaze of fire, — the tumultuous 
 masses, so peculiar to an American sky, turning every tree and 
 rock to a lambent and rosy gold, — we stood on the broad platform 
 on which the house is built, braced even beyond weariness by 
 the invigorating and rarified air of the mountain. A hot supper 
 and an early pillow, with the feather beds and blankets of win- 
 ter, were unromantic ckcumstances, but I am not aware that any 
 
126 CAUTERSKILL FALLS. 
 
 one of the party made any audible objection to tliem ; I sat next 
 the Kentuckian at table, and can answer for two. 
 
 A mile or two back from the Mountain-House, on nearly the 
 same level, the gigantic forest suddenly sinks two or three hun- 
 dred feet into the earth, forming a tremendous chasm, over which 
 a bold stag might almost leap, and above which the rocks hang on 
 either side with the most threatenino; and fj-ownins: e'randeur. A 
 mountain-stream creeps through the forest to the precipice, and 
 leaps as suddenly over, as if, Arethusa-like, it fled into the earth 
 from the pursuing steps of a satyr. Thirty paces from its brink, 
 you would never suspect, but for the hollow reverberation of the 
 plunging stream, that anything but a dim and mazy wood was 
 within a day's journey. It is visited as a great curiosity in scen- 
 ery, under the name of Cauterskill Falls. 
 
 We were all on the spot by ten the next morning, after a fa- 
 tiguing tramp through the forest ; for the Kentuckian had reject- 
 ed the offer of a guide, undertaking to bring us to it in a straight 
 line by only the signs of the water-course. The caprices of the 
 little stream had misled him, however, and we arrived half-dead 
 with the fatigue of our cross-marches. 
 
 I sat down on the bald edge of the precipice^ and suffered my 
 more impatient companions to attempt the difficult and dizzy de- 
 scent before me. The Kentuckian leaped from rock to rock, fol- 
 lowed daringly by the Southerner; and the Englishman, thoroughly 
 enamored of the exquisite child of nature, who knew no reserve 
 beyond her maidenl}^ modesty, devoted himself to her assistance, 
 and compelled her with anxious entreaties to descend more cau- 
 tiously. I lay at my length as they proceeded, and, with my head 
 over the projecting edge of the most prominent crag, watched them 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 137 
 
 in a giddy droam, half-stupifiod by the grandeur of the scene, half 
 interested in their motions. 
 
 They reached the bottom of the glen at last, and shouted to the 
 two "who had gone before, but they had followed the dark passage 
 of the stream to find its vent, and were beyond sight or hearing. 
 
 After sitting a minute or two, the restless, but over-fatigued 
 girl, rose to go nearer the fall, and I was remarking to myself the 
 sudden heaviness of her steps, when she staggered, and, turning 
 toward her companion, fell senseless into his arms. The close- 
 ness of the air below, combined with over-exertion, had been too 
 much for her. 
 
 The small hut of an old mv.n who served as a guide stood a 
 little back from the g'''n, and 1 had rushed into it, and was on the 
 fii'st step of the descent with a flask of spirits, when a cry from 
 the opposite crag, in the husky and choking scream of infuriated 
 passion, suddenly arrested me On the edge of the yawning 
 chasm, gazing down into it with a livid and death-like paleness, 
 stood the Southerner. I mechanically followed his eye. His sis- 
 ter lay on her back upon a flat rock immediately below him, and 
 over her knelt the Enghshman, loosening the dress that pressed 
 close upon her throat, and with his face so near to hers as to con- 
 ceal it entirely from the view. I felt the brother's misapprehen- 
 sion at a glance, but my tongue clung to the roof of my mouth ; 
 for in the madness of his fury he stood stretching clear over the 
 brink, and every instant I looked to see him plunge headlong. 
 Before I could recover my breath, he started back, gazed wildly 
 round, and seizing upon a huge fragment of rock, heaved it up 
 with supernatural strength, and hui-led it into the abyss. Giddy 
 and sick with horror, I turned away and covered up my eyes. I 
 felt assured he had dashed them to atoms. 
 
128 NARROW ESCAPE. 
 
 The lion roar of the Kentuckian was the first sound that fol 
 lowed the thundering crash of the fragments. 
 
 " Hallo, youngster ! what in tarnation are you arter ? You've 
 killed the gal, by gosh !" 
 
 The next moment I heard the loosfened stones as he went plung- 
 ing down into the glen, and, hurrying after him with my restora- 
 tive, I found the poor Englishman lying senseless on the rocks, and 
 the fainting girl, escaped miraculously from harm, struggling 
 slowly to her senses. 
 
 On examination, the new sufierer appeared only stunned by a 
 small fragment which had struck him on the temple, and the 
 Kentuckian, taking him up in his arms like a child, strode 
 through the spray of the fall, and held his head under the de- 
 scending torrent till he kicked lustily for his freedom. With a 
 draught from a flask, the pale Alabamian was soon perfectly re- 
 stored, and we stood on the rock together, looking at each other 
 like people who had survived an earthquake. 
 
 "We climbed the ascent and found the brother lying with his 
 face to the earth, beside himself with his conflicting feelings. 
 The rough tongue of the Kentuckian to whom I had explained 
 the apparent cause of the rash act, soon cleared up the tempest, 
 and he joined us presently, and walked back by his sister's side 
 in silence. 
 
 We made ourselves into a party to pass the remainder of the 
 summer on the Lakes, unwillingly letting off the Kentuckian, who 
 was in a hurry to get back to propose himself for the Legislature 
 
PEDLAR KARL. 
 
 " Which manner of digression, however, some dislike as frivolous ond impertinent, 
 yet I am of Beroaldus his opinion, such digressions do mightily delight and refresh a 
 weary reader : they are like sauce to a bad stomach, and I therefore do most wil- 
 lingly use them.''— BcRTOjr. 
 
 " Bienheureuses les imparfaites ; a elles appartientle royaume de I'amour. — L'Evaw- 
 
 GILE DES Fe.MMES. 
 
 I AM not sure whether Lebanon Springs, the scene of a ro- 
 mantic story I am about to tell, belong to New York or Massa- 
 chusetts. It is not very important, to be sure, in a country 
 where people take Vermont and Patagonia to be neighboring 
 States ; but I have a natural looseness in geography, which I take 
 pains to mortify by exposure. Very odd that I should not re- 
 member more of the spot where I took my first lessons in philan- 
 dering ! — where I first saw you, brightest and most beautiful, 
 A. D., (not Anno JDomini,) in your white morning frocks and 
 black French aprons ! 
 
 Lebanon Springs are the rage about once in three years. I 
 must let you into the secret of these things, gentle reader ; for, 
 perhaps I am the only individual existing, who has penetrated 
 the mysteries of the four dynasties of American fashion. In the 
 fourteen millions of inhabitants in the United States, there are 
 precisely four authenticated and undisputed aristocratic families. 
 There is one in Boston, one in New York, one in Philadelphia. 
 6* 
 
130 CYPHERING BY TREES. 
 
 and one in Baltimore. By a blessed Providence, they are not 
 all in one State, or we should have a civil war and a monarchy in 
 no time. With two hundred miles' interval between them, they 
 agree passably^ and generally meet at one or another of the three 
 watering-places of Saratoga, Ballston, or Lebanon. Their meet- 
 ing is as mysterious as the process of crystallization, for it is not 
 by agreement. You must explain it by some theory of homoeo- 
 pathy or magnetism. As it is not known till the moment they 
 arrive, there is, of course, great excitement among the hotel- 
 keepers in these different parts of the country ; and a village 
 that has ten thousand transient inhabitants one summer, has, for 
 the next, scarcely as many score. The vast and solitary temples 
 of Paestum, are gay in comparison with these halls of disappoint- 
 ment. 
 
 As I make a point of dawdling away July and August in this 
 locomotive metropolis of pleasure, and rather prefer Lebanon, it 
 is always agreeable to me to hear that the nucleus is formed in 
 that valley of hemlocks. Not for its scenery ; for really, my 
 dear eastern hemispherian ! you that are accustomed to what is 
 called nature in England, fto wit, a soft park, with a gray ruin in 
 the midst,) have little idea how wearily upon heart and mind 
 presses a waste wilderness of mere forest and water, without stone 
 or story. Trees in England have characters and tongues ; if you 
 see a fine one, you know whose father planted it, and for whose 
 pleasure it was designed, and about what sum the man must pos- 
 sess to afford to let it stand. They are statistics, as it were — so 
 many trees, ergo^ so many owners, so rich. In America, on the 
 contrary, trees grow, and waters run, as the stars shine — quite un- 
 meaningly. There may be ten thousand princely elms, and not 
 a man within a hundred miles worth " five pounds five." You ask, 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 131 
 
 in England, who has the privilege of this water ? or you say of 
 an oak, that it stood in such a man's time : but, with us, water is 
 an element unclaimed and unrented ; and a tree dabbles in the 
 clouds as they go over, and is like a great idiot, without soul or 
 responsibility. 
 
 If Lebanon had a history, however, it would have been a spot 
 for a pilgrimage, for its natural beauty. It is shaped like a 
 lotus, with one leaf laid back by the wind. It is a great green 
 cup, with a scoop for a diinking-place. As you walk in the long 
 porticoes of the hotel, the dark forest mounts up before you like 
 a leafy wall, and the clouds seem just to clear the pine-tops, and 
 the eagles sail across from horizon to horizon, without lifting their 
 wings, as if you saw them from the bottom of a well. People 
 born there, think the world about two miles square, and hilly. 
 
 The principal charm of Lebanon to me, is the village of 
 " Shakers," lying in a valley about three miles off. As Glaucus 
 wondered at the inert tortoise of Pompeii, and loved it for its 
 antipodal contrast to himself, so do I affection (^a French verb 
 that I beg leave to introduce to the English language) the Shak- 
 ing Quakers. That two thousand men could be found in the 
 New "World, who would embrace a religion enjoying a frozen and 
 unsympathetic -iutercouse with the diviner sex ; and that an equal 
 number of females could be induced to live in the same com- 
 munity, without locks or walls, in the cold and rigid observance 
 of a creed of celibacy, is to me an inexplicable and grave won- 
 der. My delight is to get into my stanhope after breakfast, and 
 drive over and spend the forenoon in contemplating them at their 
 work in the fields. They have a peculiar and most expressive 
 physiognomy. The v^omen are pale, or of a wintry redneis in 
 the cheek, and are all attenuated and spare. Gravity, deep and 
 
132 POSSIBLE SINGLE-BLESSEDNESS. 
 
 habitual, broods in every line of their thin faces. They go out 
 to their labor in company with those serious men, and are never 
 seen to smile ; their eyes are all hard and stony, their gait is 
 precise and stiff, tJieir voices are of a croaking hoarseness, and 
 nature seems dead in them. I would bake you such men and 
 >vomen in a brick kiln. 
 
 Do they think the world is coming to an end ? Are there to 
 be no more children } Is Cupid to be thrown out of business, 
 like a coach-proprietor on a railroad.? What can the Shakers 
 mean, I should be pleased to know.'' 
 
 The oddity is that most of them are young. Men of from 
 twenty to thirty, and women from sixteen to twenty-five, and 
 often, spite of their unbecoming dress, good-looking and shapely, 
 meet you at every step. Industrious, frugal, and self-denying, 
 they certainly are ; and there is every appearance that their tenets 
 of difficult abstinence are kept, to the letter. There is little 
 temj)tation beyond principle to remain ; and they are free to go 
 and come as they list : yet there they live on, in peace and unre- 
 pining industry, and a more thriving community does not exist in 
 the Republic. Many a time have I driven over, on a Sunday, and 
 watched those solemn virgins, dropping in, one after another, to 
 the church ; and when the fine-limbed and russet-faced brother- 
 hood were swimming round the floor in their fanatical dance, I 
 have watched their countenances for some look of preference, 
 some betrayal of an ill-suppressed impulse, till my eyes ached 
 again. I have selected the youngest and fairest, and have not 
 lost sight of her for two hours ; and she might have been made 
 of cheese-parings, for any trace of emotion. There is food for 
 speculation in it. Can we do without matrimony ? Can we 
 *^ strike," and be independent of these dear, delightful tyrants, 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 133 
 
 for whom we " live, and move, and have our being ?" "Will it 
 ever be no blot on our escutcheon, to have attained thirty-five as 
 an^unfructifying unit ? Is that fearful campaign, with all its em- 
 barrassments and awkwardnesses, and inquisitions into your money 
 and morals, its bullyings and backings-out, is it inevitable ? 
 
 Lebanon has one other charm. Within a morning drive of the 
 Springs, lies the fairest village it has ever been my lot to see. It 
 is English in its character, except that there is really nothing in 
 this country so perfect of its kind. There are many towns in the 
 United States more picturesquely situated ; but this, before I had 
 been abroad, always seemed to me the very ideal of English rural 
 scenery, and the kind of place to set apart for either love or 
 death — for one's honeymoon or burial : the two periods of life 
 which I have always hoped would find me in the loveliest spot of 
 nature. Stockbridge lies in a broad, sunny valley, with moun- 
 tains at exactly the right distance, and a river in its bosom, that 
 is as delicate in its windings, and as suited to the charms it wan- 
 ders among, as a vein in the transparent neck of beauty. I am 
 not going into a regular description, but I have carried myself 
 back to Lebanon ; and the remembrance of the leafy mornings of 
 summer, in which I have driven to that fair earthly paradise, and 
 loitered under its elms, imagining myself amid the scenes of song 
 and story in distant England, has a charm for me now. I have 
 seen the mother-land ; I have rambled through park, woodland, 
 and village, wherever the name was old and the scene lovely ; 
 and it pleases me to go back to my dreaming days, and compare 
 the reality with the anticipation. Most small towns in America 
 have traces of newness about them. The stumps of a clearing, 
 or freshly-boarded barns — something that is the antipodes of 
 vomance — meets your eye from every aspect. Stockbridge, on 
 
134 LATITUDES OF BELLES. 
 
 the contrary, is an old town, and tlio houses are of a rural struc- 
 ture ; the fields look soft and genial, the grass is swardlike, the 
 bridges picturesque, the hedges old, and the elms, nowhere, so 
 many and so luxuriant, are full-grown and majestic. The village 
 is emhowered in foliage. 
 
 Greatest attraction of all, the authoress of " Redwood" and 
 '* Hope Leslie," a novelist of whom America has the good sense 
 to be proud, is the Miss Mitford of Stockbridge. A man^ though 
 a distinguished one, may have little influence on the town he 
 lives in ; but a remarkable ivoman is the invariable cynosure of a 
 community, and irradiates it all. i think -I could divine the pre- 
 sence of one almost by the growing of the trees and flowers. 
 " Our Village" does not look like other villages. 
 
 II. 
 
 You will have forgotten that I had a story to tell, dear reader. 
 
 I was at Lebanon in the summer of -, (perhaps you don't 
 
 care about knowing exactly when it was, and, in that case, I 
 would rather keep shy of dates. I please myself with the idea, 
 that time gets on faster than I.) The Springs were thronged. 
 The President's lady was there, (this was under our adminis- 
 tration, the Adams',) and all the four cliques^ spoken of above, 
 were amicably united — each other's beaux dancing with each 
 other's belles, and so on. If I were writing merely for American 
 eyes, I should digress once more to describe the distinctive cha- 
 racters of the south, north, and central representations of beauty ; 
 but it would scarcely interest the general reader. I may say, in 
 passing, that the Boston belles were a PAnglaise, rosy and ri- 
 amies; the New-Yorkers, like Parisians, cool, dangerous, and 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 135 
 
 dressy ; and the Baltimorcaiis, (and no south,) like lonians O'^ 
 Romans, indolent, passionate, lovely, and languishing. jMen, 
 women, and pine-apples, I am inclined to think, flourish with a 
 more kindly growth in the fervid latitudes. 
 
 The campaign went on, and a pleasant campaign it was ; for 
 the parties concerned had the management of theii* own affairs — 
 that is, they who had hearts to sell, mada the bargain for them- 
 selves, (this was the greater num.ber ;) and they who disposed of 
 this commodity gratis, though necessarily young and ignorant of 
 the world, made the transfer in the same manner — in person. 
 This is your true Republic. The trading in affections by refer- 
 ence — the applying to an old and selfish heart for the purchase 
 of a young and ingenuous one — the swearing to your rents, and 
 not to your faithful passion — to your settlements, and not your 
 constancy — the cold distance between yourself and the young 
 creature who is to lie in your bosom, till the purchase-money is 
 secured, and the hasty marriage and sudden abandonment of a 
 nature thus chilled, and put on its guard, to a freedom with one 
 almost a stranger, that cannot but seem licentious, and cannot 
 but break down that sense of propriety in which modesty is most 
 strongly intrenched — this seems to me the 07ie evil of your old 
 woi-m-eaten monarchies that side the water, which touches the 
 essential happiness of the well-bred individual. Taxation and 
 oppression are but things he reads of in the morning paper. 
 
 This freedom of intercourse between unmarried people, has a 
 single disadvantage — one gets so desperately soon to the end of 
 the chapter ! There shall be two hundred young ladies at the 
 Springs in a given season, and, by the difference in taste, so 
 wisely arranged by Providence, there will scarcely be, of course, 
 more than four in that number, whom any one gentleman, at all 
 
136 LAINIE WOMEN. 
 
 difficult, will find within the range of his henii ideal. With these 
 four he may converse freely, twelve hours in the day — more, if 
 he particularly desires it. They may ride together, drive toge- 
 ther, ramble together, sing together, be together from morning 
 till night ; and, at the end of a month passed in this way, if lie 
 escape a committal, as is possible, he will know all that are agree- 
 able, in one large circle, at least, as well as he knows his sisters — 
 a state of things that is very likely to end in his going abroad 
 soon, from a mere dearth of amusement. 1 have imagined, how- 
 ever, the case of an unmarrying idle man — a character too rare, 
 as yet, in America, to affect the general question. People 
 marry as they die, in that country — when their time comes. We 
 ?nust all marry, is as much an axiom as ice must all die^ and eke 
 as melancholy. 
 
 Shall we go on with the story ? I had escaped for two blessed 
 weeks, and was congratulating the susceptible gentleman under my 
 waistcoat-pocket that we should never be in love with less than 
 
 the whole sex again, when a German Baron Von arrived at 
 
 the Springs with a lame daughter. She was eighteen, transparently- 
 fair, and, at first sight, so shrinkingly dependent, so delicate, so 
 childlike, that attention to her assumed the form almost of pity, 
 and sprang as naturally and unsuspectingly from the heart. The 
 only womanly trait about her was her voice, which was so deeply 
 soft and full, so earnest and yet so gentle, so touched with sub- 
 dued pathos and yet so melancholy calm, that, if she spoke after a 
 long silence, 1 turned to her involuntarily with the feeling that 
 she was not the same — as if some impassioned and eloquent 
 woman had taken unaware the place of the simple and petted 
 child. 
 
 I am inclined to think there is a particular tenderness in tha 
 
EARLIER DAYS. f^ 
 
 bnman breast for lame women. Any other deformity in the 
 gentler sex is monstrous ; but lameness (the devil's defect) is 
 "the devil." I picture myself, to my own eye, now — pacing 
 those rickety colonnades at Lebanon with the gentle Meeta hang- 
 ing heavily, and with the dependence inseparable from her infirmi- 
 ty, on my arm, while the moon (which was the moon of the 
 Rhine to hevj full of thrilling and unearthly influences) rode 
 solemnly up above the mountain-tops. And that strange voice, 
 filling like a flute with sweetness as the night advanced, and that 
 irregular pressure of the small wrist in her forgotten lameness, 
 and my own (I thought) almost paternal feeling as she leaned 
 more and more heavily, and turned her delicate and fair face con- 
 fidingly up to mine, and that dangerous mixture altogether of 
 childlikeness and womanly passion, of dependence and superiority, 
 of reserve on the one subject of love, and absolute confidence on 
 every other — if I had not a story to tell, I could prate of those 
 June nights and their witcheries till you would think 
 
 " Tutti gli alberi del mondo 
 Fossero penne," 
 
 and myself " bitten by the dipsas." 
 
 "VYe were walking one night late in the gallery running around 
 the second story of the hotel. There was a ball on the floor be- 
 low, and the music, deadened somewhat by the crowded room, 
 came up softened and mellowed to the dark and solitary colon- 
 nade, and added to other influences in putting a certain lodger in 
 my bosom beyond my temporary control. I told Meeta that I 
 loved her. 
 
 The buiWinjr stands against the side of a steep mountain high 
 up above the valley, and the pines and hemlocks, at that time, 
 
138 FIVE MINUTES TOO SOON. 
 
 hung in their primeval blackness almost oyer the roof. As the 
 most difficult and embarrassed sentence of which I had ever been 
 delivered died on my lips, and Meeta, lightening her weight on 
 my arm, walked in apparently offended silence by my side, a deep- 
 toned guitar was suddenly struck in the woods, and a clear, manly 
 voice broke forth in a song. It produced an instant and startling 
 effect on my companion. With the first word she quickly with- 
 drew her arm ; and, after a moment's pause, listening with her 
 hands raised in an attitude of the most intense eagerness, she 
 sprang to the extremity of the balustrade, and gazed breathlessly 
 into the dark depths of the forest. The voice ceased, and she 
 started back, and laid her hand hastily upon my arm. 
 
 " I must go," she said, in a voice of hurried feeling ; " if you 
 are generous, stay here and await me !" and in another moment 
 she sprang along the bridge connecting the gallery with the rising 
 ground in the rear, and was lost in the shadows of the hemlocks. 
 
 " I have made a declaration," thought I, " just five minutes too 
 soon." 
 
 I paced up and down the now too lonely colonnade, and picked 
 up the fragments of my dream with what philosophy I might. 
 By the time Meeta returned — perhaps a half hour, perhaps an 
 age, as you measure by her feeling or mine — I had hatched up a 
 very pretty and heroical magnanimity. She would have spoken, 
 but was breathless. 
 
 " Explain nothing," I said, taking her arm within mine, '' and 
 let us mutually forget. If I can serve you better than by silence, 
 command me entirely. I live but for your happiness — even," I 
 added after a pause, " though it spring from another." 
 
 We were at her chamber-door She pressed my hand with a 
 strength of which I djd not think those small, slight fingers capa- 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 139 
 
 ble, and vanished, leaving me, I am free to confess, less resigneci 
 than you would suppose from my last speech. I had done th# 
 dramatic thing, thanks to much reading of you, dear Barry Corn 
 wall ! but it was not in a play. I remained killed after the audi 
 
 ence was gone ! 
 
 III. 
 
 The next day a new character appeared on the stage. 
 " SiLcfi a handsome pedlar !" said magnificent Helen 
 
 to me, as I gave my horse to the groom after a ride in search of 
 hellebore, and joined the promenade at the well : " and what do 
 you think ? he sells only by raffle ! It's so nice ! All sorts of 
 Berlin iron ornaments, and everything German and sweet ; and 
 the pedlar's smile's worth more than the prizes ; and such a mus- 
 tache ! See ! there he is ! — and now, if he has sold all his tickets 
 — will you come. Master Grravity ?" 
 
 " I hear a voice you cannot hear," thought I, as I gave the 
 beauty my arm, and joined a crowd of people gathered about a 
 pedlar's box in the centre of the parterre. 
 
 The itinerant vender spread his wares in the midst of the gay 
 assemblage, and the raffle went on. He was excessively hand- 
 some. A head of the sweet gentleness of Raphael's, with locks 
 flowing to his shoulders in the fashion of German students, a soft 
 brovra mustache curving on a short Phidian upper lip, a large 
 blue eye expressive of enthusiasm rather than passion, and fea- 
 tures altogether purely intellectual — formed a portrait of which 
 even jealousy might console itself. Through all the disadvantages 
 of a dress suited to his apparent vocation, an eye the least on the 
 alert for a disguise would have penetrated his in a moment. The 
 gay and thoughtless crowd about him, not accustomed to impos- 
 
140 HELPING LOVERS. 
 
 tors who were more than they pretended to be, trusted lim for a 
 pedlar, but treated him with a respect far above his station, insen- 
 sibly. 
 
 Whatever his object was, so it were honorable, I inly deter- 
 mined to give him all the assistance in my power. A single 
 glance at the face of Meeta, who joined the circle as the prizes 
 were drawn — a face so changed since yesterday, so flushed with 
 hope and pleasure, and yet so saddened by doubt and fear, the 
 small lips compressed, the soft black eye kindled and restless, and 
 the red leaf on her cheek deepened to a feverish beauty — left me 
 no shadow of hesitation. I exchanged a look with her that I in- 
 tended should say as much. 
 
 ly. 
 
 I know nothing that gives one such an elevated idea of human 
 nature (in one's own person) as helping another man to a woman 
 one loves. Oh last days of minority or thereabout ! oh primal 
 manhood ! oh golden time, when we have let go all but the enthu- 
 siasm of the boy, and seized hold of all but the selfishness of the 
 man ! oh blessed interregnum of the evil and stronger genius ! why 
 can we not bottle up thy hours like the wine of a better vintage, 
 and enjoy them in the parched world-weariness of age ? In the 
 tardy honeymoon of a bachelor (as mine will be, if it come ever, 
 alas !) with what joy of paradise should we bring up, from the cel- 
 lars of the past, a hamper of that sunny Hyppocrene ! 
 
 Pedlar Karl and the " gentleman in No. 10" would have been 
 suspected in any other country of conspiracy. (How odd, that 
 the highest crime of a monarchy — the attempt to supplant the 
 existing ruler — ^becomes in a republic a creditable profession^ 
 
EARLIER DAYS. J4j 
 
 You are a traitor here, a 'politician there !) We sat together from 
 midnight onward, discoursing in low voices over sherry and sand- 
 wiches ; and, in that crowded Babylon, his entrances and exits re- 
 quired a very conspirator-liie management. Known as my friond, 
 his trade and his disguise were up. As a pedlar, wandering about 
 where he listed when not employed over his wares, his interviews 
 with 3Ieeta were easily contrived, and his lover's watch, gazing on 
 her through the long hours of the ball from the crowd of villagers 
 at the windows, hovering about her walks, and feeding his heart 
 on the many, many chance looks of fondness given him every hour 
 in that out-of-doors society, kept him comparatively happy. 
 
 " The baron looked hard at you to-day," said I, as he closed 
 the door in my little room, and sat down on the bed. 
 
 *' Yes ; he takes an interest in me as a countryman, but he does 
 not know me. He is a dull observer, and has seen me but once 
 in Germany." 
 
 " How, then, have you known 31eeta so long ?" 
 
 " I accompanied her brother home from the university, when 
 the baron was away, and for a long month we were seldom part- 
 ed. Riding, boating on the Rhine, watching the sunset from the 
 bartizan of the old castle-towers, reading in the old library, ram- 
 bling in the park and forest — it was a heaven, my friend, than 
 which I can conceive none brighter." 
 
 "And her brother .'" 
 
 " Alas ! changed ! "\Ye were both boys then, and a brother is 
 slow to believe his sister's beauty dangerous. He was the first to 
 shut the doors against me, when he heard that the poor student 
 had dared to love his highborn Meeta," 
 
 Karl covered his eyes with his hand, and brooded for a while in 
 silence on the remembrances he had awakened. 
 
142 AN OLD MAID AUNT. 
 
 " Do you think the baron came to America purposely to avoid 
 you ?" 
 
 " Partly, I have no doubt, for I entered tlie castle one nigbt in 
 my despair, when I had been forbidden entrance, and lie found me 
 at her feet in the old corridor. It was the only time he ever saw 
 me, if, indeed, he saw me at all in the darkness ; and he immedi- 
 ately hastened his preparations for a long-contemplated journey, 
 I knew not whither." 
 
 " Did you follow him soon .^" 
 
 " No, for my heart was cruslied at first, and I despaired. The 
 possibility of following them in my wretched poverty, did not even 
 occur to me for months." 
 
 " How did you track them hither, of all places in the world .^" 
 
 " I sought them first in Italy. It is easy, on the continent, to 
 find out wliere persons are not^ and after two years' wanderings, I 
 heard of them in P-cis. They had just sailed for America. I 
 followed ; but iu a coiiritiy where there are no passports, and no 
 espionage, it is di{iir;Lilt to trace the traveller. It was probable 
 only that they would be at a place of general resort, and I came 
 here with no assurance but hope. Thanks to God, the first sight 
 that greeted my eyes was my dear jMeeta, whose irregular step, as 
 she walked back and forth with you in the gallery, enabled me to 
 recognize her in the darkness." 
 
 Who shall say the days of romance are over ? The plot is not 
 brought to the catastrophe, but we hope it is near. 
 
 V. 
 
 My aunt, Isabella Slingsby (now in heaven, with the " eleven 
 thousand virgins," God rest her soul !) was at this time, as at all 
 others, under my respectable charge. She would have said I was 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 143 
 
 under hers — but it amounts to the same thing — ^we lived together 
 in peace and harmony. She said what she pleased, for I loved 
 her — and I did what I pleased, for she loved me. When Karl 
 told me that Meeta's principal objection to an elopement was the 
 want of a matron, I shut the teeth of my resolution, as they say 
 in Persia, and inwardly vowed my unconscious aunt to this exi- 
 gency. You should have seen Miss Isabella Slingsby to know 
 what a desperate man may be brought to resolve on. 
 
 On a certain day. Count Yon Rafl3e-off (as my witty friend and 
 ally, Tom Fane, was pleased to call the handsome pedlar) depart- 
 ed with his pack and the hearts of all the dressing-maids and 
 some of their mistresses, on his way to New York. I drove down 
 the road to take my leave of him out of sight, and give him my 
 last instructions. 
 
 How to attack my aunt was a subject about which I had many 
 unsatisfactory thoughts. If there was one thing she disapproved 
 of more than another, it was an elopement ; and with what face to 
 propose to her to run away with a baron's only daughter, and 
 leave her in the hands of a pedlar, taking upon herself, as she 
 must, the whole sin and odium, was an enigma I ate, drank, and 
 slept upon, in vain. One thing at last became very clear — she 
 would do it for nobody but me. Sequitur, I must play the lover 
 myself. 
 
 I commenced with a fit of illness. What was the matter ? For 
 two days I was invisible. Dear Isabella ! it was the first time I 
 had ever drawn seriously on thy fallow sympathies, and, how freely 
 they flowed at my afiected sorrows, I shame to remember ! Did 
 ever woman so weep ? Did ever woman so take antipathy to 
 man as she to that innocent old baron for his supposed refusal of 
 his daughter to Philip Slingsby ? This revival of the remem- 
 
144 TENDER HUMBUG. 
 
 brance shall not be in vain. The mignonette and roses planted 
 above thy grave, dearest aunt, shall be«weeded anew ! 
 
 Oh that long week of management and hypocrisy ! The day 
 came at last. 
 
 "Aunt Bel!' 
 
 " What, Philip, dear .?" 
 
 '^ I think I feel better to-day." 
 
 " Yes .?" 
 
 "Yes. What say you to a drive .'' There is the stanhope." 
 
 " My dear Phil, don't mention that horrid stanhope. I am 
 Bure, if you valued my life — " 
 
 " Precisely, aunt — (I had taken care to give her a good fright 
 the day before) — but Tom Fane has offered mo Lis ponies and 
 Jersey wagon, and that, you know, is the most quiet thing in the 
 
 world, and holds four. So, perhaps ehem ! you'll ask 
 
 Meeta ?" 
 
 " Um ! Why, you see, Philip—" 
 
 I saw at once, that, if it got to an argument, I was ^erdu. 
 Miss Slingsby, though a sincere Christian, never could keep her 
 temper when she tried to reason. I knelt down on her footstool, 
 smoothed away the false hair on her forehead, and kissed her. 
 It was a fascinating endearment of mine, that I only resorted to 
 on great emergencies. The hermit tooth, in my aunt's mouth, 
 became gradually visible, heralding what in youth had been a 
 smile ; and, as I assisted her in rolling up her embroidery, she 
 looked on me with an unsuspecting affection, that touched my 
 Heart. I made a silent vow, that if she survived the scrape into 
 "which she was being inveio-led, I would be to her and her do^ 
 Whimsiculo, (the latter my foe and my aversion,) the soul of ex- 
 emplary kindness for the remainder of their natural lives. I lay 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 14^ 
 
 Ac unction to my soul, that this vow was kept. My aunt 
 blessed me shortly before she was called to " walk in white," (she 
 bad, hitherto, walked in yellow ;) and, as it would have been un- 
 natural in Whimsiculo to survive her, I considered his " natural 
 life" as ended with hers, and had him peacefully strangled on the 
 same day. He lies at her feet, as usual — a delicate attention, 
 of which (I trust in Swedenborg) her spirit is aware. 
 
 With the exception of " Tom Thumb" and "Rattler," who 
 were of the same double-jointed family, of interminable wind and 
 bottom, there was never, perhaps, such a pair of goers as Tom 
 Fane's ponies. My aunt had a lurking hope, I believe, that the 
 baron would refuse Meeta permission to join us ; but either he 
 did not think mo a dangerous person, (I have said before he was 
 a dull man,) or he had no objection to me as a son-in-law ; which 
 my aunt and myself (against the world) would have thought the 
 natural construction upon his indifference. lie came to the ead 
 of the colonnade to see us start ; and, as I eased the ribands, and 
 let the ponies off, like a shot from a crossbow, I stole a look at 
 Meeta. The color had fled from cheek and lip, and the tears 
 streamed over them like rain. Aunt Bel was on the back seat, 
 grace a Dien. 
 
 We met Tom at the foot of the hill, and 1 pulled up. He was 
 the hest fellow, that Tom Fane ! 
 
 " Ease both the bearing reins," said I ; "I am going up the 
 mountain." 
 
 '' The devil, you are !" said Tom, doing my bidding, however ; 
 
 " you'll find the road to the Shakers much pleasanter. What an 
 
 odd whim ! It's a perpendicular three miles. Miss Slingsby. I 
 
 would as lief be hoisted up a well, and let down again. Don't 
 
 7 
 
146 THE ELOPEMENT 
 
 go that way, Phil, unless you are going to run away with Miss 
 Von " 
 
 " Many a shaft at random sent," 
 
 thought I ; and waving the tandem lash over the ears of the 
 ponies, I brought up the silk on the cheek of their malaprop 
 master, and spanked away up the hill, leaving him in a range 
 likely to get a fresh supply of fuel by dinner-time. Tom was of 
 a plethoric habit ; and if I had not thought he could afford to 
 burst a blood-vessel better than two lovers to break their hearts, 
 T should not have ventured on the bold measure of borrowing his 
 horses for an hour, and keeping them a week. We have shaken 
 hands upon it since ; but it is my private opinion, that he has 
 never foro;iven me in his heart. 
 
 As we wound slowly up the mountain, I gave Meeta the reins, 
 and jumped out to gather some wild flowers for my aunt. Dear 
 old soul ! the attention reconciled her to what she considered a 
 very unwarrantable caprice of mine. What I could wish to toil 
 up that steep mountain for ? AVell ! the flowers are charming in 
 these high regions ! 
 
 " Don't you see my reason for coming, then, aunt Bella V 
 
 ^' Was it for that, dear Philip ?" said she, putting the wild 
 flowers affectionately into her bosom, where they bloomed like 
 broidery on saffron tapestry; "How considerate of you!" 
 And she drew her shawl around her, and was at peace with all the 
 world. So easily are the old made happy by the young ! Reader, 
 I scent a moral in the air ! 
 
 We were at the top of the hill. If I was sane, my aunt was 
 probably thinking I should turn here and go back To descend 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 147 
 
 the other side, and re-ascend and descend again to the Springs, 
 was hardly a sort of thing one would do for pleasure. 
 
 " Here's a good place to turn, Philip, '' said she, as wo entered 
 a smooth, broad hollow, on the top of the mountain. 
 
 I dashed through it, as if the ponies were shod with talaria. 
 My aunt said nothing, and luckily the road was very narrow for a 
 mile, and she had a horror of a short turn. A new thought 
 struck me. 
 
 " Did you ever know, aunt, that there was a way back around 
 the foot of the mountain ?" 
 
 " Dear, no ; how delightful ! Is it far .?" 
 
 " A couple of hours, or so ; but I can do it in less. We'll 
 try ;" and I gave the sure-footed Canadians the whip, and scam- 
 pered down the hills, as if the rock of Sisyphus had been rolling 
 after us. 
 
 We were soon over the mountain- range, and the road grew 
 boLter and more level. Oh, how fast pattered those little hoofs, 
 and how full of spirit and excitement looked those small ears, 
 cutching the lightest chirrup I could whisper, like the very spell 
 of swiftness ! Pines, hemlocks, and cedars — farmhouses and 
 milestones, flew back like shadows. My aunt sat speechless in 
 the middle of the back seat, holding on with both hands, in 
 apprehensive resignation ! She expected soon to come in sight 
 of the Springs, and had, doubtless, taken a mental resolution, 
 that if, please God, she once more found herself at home, she 
 would never " tempt Providence," (it was a favorite expression 
 of hers,) by trusting herself again behind such a pair of fly- 
 away demons. As I read this thought in her countenance, by a 
 stolen glance over my shoulder, we rattled into a village distant 
 from Lebanon twenty 'miles. 
 
148 GETTING LATF.. 
 
 " There, aunt," said I, as I pulled up at the door of the inn, 
 " we have very nearly described a circle. Now, don't speak ! if 
 you do, you'll start the horses. There's nothing they are so 
 much afraid of as a woman's voice. Very odd, isn't it ? "We'll 
 just sponge their mouths now, and be home in the crack of a 
 whip. Five miles more, only. Come !" 
 
 Off we sped again, like the wind, aunt Bel just venturing to 
 wonder whether the horses wouldn't rather go slower. Meeta 
 had hardly spoken ; she had thoughts of her own to be busy 
 with, and 1 pretended to be fully occupied with my driving. The 
 nonsense I talked to those horses, to do away the embarrassment 
 of her silence, would convict me of insanity before any jury in the 
 world. 
 
 The sun began to throw long shadows, and the short-legged 
 ponies figured like flying giraffes along the retiring hedges. 
 Luckily, my aunt had very little idea of conjecturing a course by 
 the points of the compass. We sped on gloriously. 
 
 "Philip, dear I hav'n't you lost your way .^ It seems to me 
 we've come more than five miles since you stopped" — (ten, at 
 least) — " and I don't see the mountains about Lebanon, at all !" 
 
 " Don't bo alarmed, aunty, dear ! We're very high, just here, 
 and shall drop doivn on Lebanon, as it were. Are yoiu afraid, 
 Meeta .?" 
 
 " Nein .^" she answered. She was thinking in German, poor 
 girl, and heart and memory were wrapped up in the thought. 
 
 I drove on almost cruelly. Tom's incomparable horses justi- 
 fied all his eulogiums ; they were indefatigable. The sun blazed 
 a moment through the firs, and disappeared ; the gorgeous 
 changes of eve came over the clouds ; the twilight stole through 
 the damp air, with it.^ melancholy gray ; and the whippoorwills — 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 149 
 
 birds of evening — came abroad, like gentlemen in debt, to flit 
 about in the darkness. Everything was saddening. My own 
 volubility ceased ; the whiz of the lash, as I waved it over the 
 heads of my foaming ponies, and an occasional " Steady !" as 
 one or the other broke into a gallop, were the only inter- 
 ruptions to the silence. Meeta buried her face in the folds of 
 her shawl, and sat closer to my side ; and my aunt, soothed and 
 flattered by turns, believed and doubted, and was, finally, per- 
 suaded, by my ingenious and well-inserted fibs, that it was only 
 somewhat farther than I anticipated, and we should arrive " pre- 
 sently." 
 
 Somewhere about eight o'clock, the lights of a town ap- 
 peared in the distance, and, straining every nerve, the gallant 
 beasts whirled us in through the streets, and I pulled up, suddenly, 
 at the door of an hotel. 
 
 ""Why, Philip!" said my aunt, in a tone of unutterable 
 astonishment, looking about her as if she had awoke from a 
 dream, " this is Hudson !" 
 
 It was too clear to be disputed. "We were upon the North 
 River, forty miles from Lebanon, and the steamer v/ould touch 
 at the pier in half an hour. My aunt was to be one of the pas- 
 sengers to New York, but she was yet to be persuaded of it ; the 
 only thing now was, to get her into the house, and enact the 
 scene as soon as possible. 
 
 I helped her out as tenderly as I knew how, and, as we went 
 up stairs, I requested Meeta to sit down in a corner of the room, 
 and cover her face with her handkerchief. When the servant 
 was locked out, I took my aunt into the recess of the window, 
 and informed her, to her very great surprise, that she had run 
 away with the baron's daughter. 
 
150 NEARLY DONE. 
 
 " Philip Slingsby !" 
 
 My aunt was overcome. I had nothing for it, hut to he over 
 come too. She sunk into one chair, and I into the other ; and 
 burying my face in my hands, I looked through my fingers to 
 watch the effect. Five mortal minutes lasted my aunt's wrath ; 
 gradually, however, she began to steal a look at me, and the ex- 
 pression of resentment about her thin lips, softened into some- 
 thing like pity. 
 
 " Philip !" said she, taking my hand. 
 
 '^ My dear aunt !" 
 
 " What is to done .?" 
 
 I pointed to Meeta, who sat with her head on her bosom, 
 pressed my hand to my heart, as if to suppress a pang, and pro- 
 ceeded to explain. It seemed impossible for my aunt to forgive 
 the deception of the thing. Unsophisticated Isabella ! If thoi; 
 hadst known that thou wert, even yet, one fold removed from the 
 truth — if thou couldst have divined, that it was not for the darling 
 of ihy heart, that thou wert yielding a point only less dear to 
 thee than thy maiden reputation — if it could have entered thy 
 region of possibilities, that thine own house, in town, had been 
 three days aired for the reception of a bride, run away with by 
 thy ostensible connivance, and all for a German pedlar, in whose 
 fortunes and loves thou hadst no shadow of interest — I think the 
 brain in thee would have turned, and the dry heart in thy bosom 
 have broken with surprise and grief ! 
 
 I wrote a note to Tom, left his horses at the inn, and, at nine 
 o'clock, we were steaming down the Hudson, my aunt in bed, an(i 
 Meeta pacing the deck with me, and pouring forth her fears and 
 her gratitude in a voice of music that made me almost repent my 
 self-sacrificing enterprise. I have told the story gaily, gentle reader ! 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 15i 
 
 but there was a nerve ajar in my heart, while its little events 
 went on. 
 
 How we sped, thereafter, dear reader ! — how the consul of his 
 majesty of Prussia was persuaded by my aunt's respectability, to 
 legalize the wedding by his presence — how my aunt fainted dead 
 away when the parson arrived, and she discovered who was not 
 to be the bridegroom and who was — how I persuaded her she had 
 gone too far to recede, and worked on her tenderness once more 
 — how the weeping Karl, and his lame and lovely bride, lived with 
 us till the old baron thought it fit to give Meeta his blessing 
 and some money — how Tom Fane wished no good to the pedlar's 
 eyes — and, lastly, how Miss Isabella Slingsby lived and died, 
 wondering what earthly motive I could have for my absurd share 
 in these events, are matters of which I spare you the particulars 
 
NIAGAM-LAKE ONTAHIO-THE ST. LAWRENCE. 
 
 NO. I. NIAGARA. 
 
 " He was born when the crab was ascending, and all his affairs go backward."-* 
 Love for Love. 
 
 It was in my senior vacation, and I was bound to Niagara for 
 tlie first time. My companion was a specimen of the Iiuman 
 race, found rarely in Vermont, and never elsewhere. He was 
 nearly seven feet high, walked as if every joint in his body was in 
 a hopeless state of dislocation, and was hideously, ludicrously, and 
 painfully ugly. This whimsical exterior contained the conscious 
 spirit of Apollo, and the poetical susceptibility of Keats. He 
 had left his plough in the Grreen Mountains, at the age of twenty- 
 five, and entered as a poor student at the university, where, with 
 the usual policy of the college government, he was allotted to mo 
 as a compulsory chum, on the principle of breaking in a colt 
 with a cart-horse. I began with laughing at him, and ended with 
 loving him. He rejoiced in the common appellation of Job 
 Smith — a synonymous soubriquet, as I have elsewhere remarked, 
 which was substituted by his classmates for his baptismal name 
 of Forbearance. 
 
 Getting Job away, with infinite difficulty, from a young Indian 
 girl, who was selling moccasins in the streets of Bufialo, (a 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 1§3 
 
 straight, slender creature, of eighteen, stepping about like a 
 young leopard, cold, stern, and beautiful,) we crossed the outlet 
 of Lake Erie, at the ferry, and took horses on the northern bank 
 of Niao-ara River, to ride to the Falls. It was a noble stream — 
 as broad as the Hellespont, and as blue as the sky ; and I could 
 not look at it, hurrying on headlong to its fearful leap, without a 
 feeling almost of dread. 
 
 There was only one thing to which Job was more susceptible, 
 than to the beauties of nature, and that was the beauty of woman. 
 His romance had been stirred by the lynx-eyed Sioux, who took 
 her money for the moccasins, with such haughty and thankless 
 superbia ; and full five miles of the river, with all the gorgeous 
 flowers and rich shrubs upon its rim, might as well have been 
 Lethe for his admiration. He rode along, like the man of rags 
 you see paraded on an ass, in the carnival, his legs and arms 
 dangling about in ludicrous obedience to the sidelong hitch of his 
 pacer. 
 
 The roar of the Falls was soon audible ; and Job's enthusiasm, 
 and my own, if the increased pace of our Narraganset ponies 
 meant anything, were fully aroused. The river broke into rapids, 
 foaming furiously on its course ; and the subterranean thunder 
 increased, like a succession of earthquakes, each louder than the 
 last. I had never heard a sound so broad and universal. It was 
 impossible not to suspend the breath, and feel absorbed, to the 
 exclusion of all other thoughts, in the great phenomenon with 
 which the world seemed trembling to its centre. A tall, misty 
 cloud, changing its shape continually, as it felt the shocks of the 
 air, rose up before us ; and, with our eyos fixed upon it, and our 
 horses at a hard gallop, we found ourselves, unexpectedly, in front 
 of a vast, white hotel ! which suddenly interposed between 
 
154 MISS E. M- 
 
 the cloud and our vision. Job slapped his legs against the sides 
 of his panting beast, and urged him on ; but a long fence, on 
 either side of the immense building, cut him off from approach ; 
 and, having assured ourselves that there was no access to Niagara, 
 except through the back-door of the gentleman's house, who 
 stood with hat off to receive us, we wished no good to his ma- 
 jesty's province of Upper Canada, and dismounted. 
 
 ** Will you visit the Falls before dinner, gentlemen .^" asked 
 mine host. 
 
 " No, sir !" thundered Job, in a voice that, for a moment, 
 stopped the roar of the cataract. 
 
 He was like an improvisatore who had been checked by some 
 rude birbone in the very crisis of his eloquence. He would not 
 have gone to the Falls that night to have saved the world. We 
 dined. 
 
 As it was the first meal we had ever eaten under a monarchy, I 
 proposed the health of the King ; but Job refused it. There was 
 an impertinent profanity, he said, in fencing up the entrance to 
 Niagara, that was a greater encroachment on natural liberty than 
 the * stamp act.' He would drink to no King or parliament un- 
 der which such a thing could be conceived possible. I left the 
 table and walked to the window. 
 
 " Job, come here I Miss , by all that is lovely !" 
 
 He flounced up like a snake touched with a torpedo, and 
 sprang to the window. Job had never seen the lady whose name 
 produced such a sensation, but he had heard more of her than of 
 Niagara. So had every soul of the fifteen millions of inhabitants 
 between us and the Gulf of Mexico. She was one of those mira- 
 cles of nature that occur, perhaps once, in the rise and fall of an 
 empire — a woman of the perfect beauty of an angel, with the most 
 
EARLIER DAY . 155 
 
 vinnin^ human sweetness of character and manner. She was 
 kind, playful, unaffected, and radiantly, gloriously beautiful. I 
 am sorry I may not mention her name, for in more chivah'ous 
 times she would have been a character of history. Everybody 
 who has been in America, however, will know whom I am describ- 
 ing, and I am sorry for those who have not. The country of 
 Washington will be in its decadence before it sees such another. 
 
 She had been to the Fall, and was returning, with her mother, 
 and a troop of lovers, who, I will venture to presume, brought 
 away a very imperfect impression of the scene. I would describe 
 her as she came laughing up that green bank, unconscious of 
 everything but the pleasure of life in a summer sunset ; but I 
 leave it for a more skilful hand. The authoress of " Hope Les- 
 lie" will, perhaps, mould her image into one of her inimitable 
 heroines. 
 
 I presented my friend, and we passed the evening in her dan- 
 gerous company. After making an engagement to accompany her 
 in the morning behind the sheet of the Fall, we said " Good-night" 
 at twelve — one of us at least as many " fathoms deep in love" as 
 a thousand Kosalinds. My poor chum ! The roar of the cata- 
 ract that shook the very roof over thy head was less loud to thee 
 that night than the beating of thine own heart, I warrant mo ! 
 
 I rose at suniise to go alone to the Fall, but Job was before mo, 
 and the angular outline of his gaunt fi^rire, stretching up from 
 Table Rock in strong relief against the white body of the spray, 
 was the first object that caught my eye as I descended. 
 
 As I came nearer the Fall, a feeling of disappointment came 
 over me. I had imagined Niagara a vast body of water descend- 
 ing as if from the clouds. The approach to most falls ys, from ht- 
 In/r, and wc get an idea of them as of rivers pitching down to the 
 
156 ANALYSIS OF GRANDEUK. 
 
 plain from the brow of a hill or mountain. Niagara River, oi 
 the contrary, comes out from Lake Erie through a flat plain. Th(» 
 top of the cascade is ten feet, perhaps, below the level of the coun- 
 try around — consequently invisible from any considerable distance. 
 You walk to the bank of a broad and rapid river, and look over 
 the edge of a rock, where the outlet flood of an inland sea seems 
 to have broken through the crust of the earth, and, by its 
 mere weight, plunged with an awful leap into an immeasurable 
 and resounding abyss. It seems to strike and thunder upon the 
 very centre of the world, and the ground beneath your feet 
 quivers with the shock till you feel unsafe upon it. 
 
 Other disappointment than this I cannot conceive at Niagara. 
 It is a spectacle so awful, so beyond the scope and power of 
 every other phenomenon in the world, that, I think, people who 
 are disappointed there mistake the incapacity of their own con- 
 ception for the want of grandeur in the scene. 
 
 The " hell of waters" below needs but a little red ochre to out 
 Phlegethon Phlegethon. I can imagine the surprise of the gentle 
 element, after sleeping away a se'nnight of moonlight in the peace- 
 ful bosom of Lake Erie, at finding itself of a sudden in such a 
 coil ! A Mediterranean sea-gull, which had tossed out the whole 
 of a January in the infernal " yeast" of the Archipelago, (was I 
 not all but wrecked every day between Troy and Malta in a score 
 of successive hurricanes }) — I say, the most weather-beaten of 
 sea-birds would look twice before he ventured upon the roaring 
 cauldron below Niagara. It is astonishing to see how far the de- 
 scending mass is driven under the surface of the stream. As far 
 down towards Lake Ontario as the eye can reach, the immense 
 volumes of water rise like huge monsters ^o the light, boiling and 
 
EARLIER DAYS. I57 
 
 flashing out in rings of foam, with an appearance of rage and 
 anger that I have seen in no other cataract in the world. 
 
 " A nice ftill, as an Englishman would say, my dear Job " 
 
 "Awful!" 
 
 Halleck, the ximericau poet (a better one never "strung 
 pearls"J, has written some admirable verses on Niagara, desciib- 
 ing its effect on the different individuals of a mixed party, among 
 whom was a tailor. The sea of incident that has broken over me 
 in the years of travel, has washed out of my memory all but the 
 two lines descriptive of its impression upon Snip : — 
 
 " The tailor made one single note — 
 
 ' Gods ! what a place to sponge a coat !' " 
 
 " Shall we go to breakfast, Job ?" 
 
 " How slowly and solemnly they drop into the abysm !" 
 
 It was not an original remark of Mr. Smith's. Nothing is so 
 surprising to the observer as the extraordinary deliberateness with 
 which the waters of Niagara take their tremendous plunge. All 
 hurry and foam and fret, till they reach the smooth limit of the 
 curve — and then the laws of gravitation seem suspended, and, like 
 Caesar, they pause, and determine, since it is inevitable, to take 
 the death-leap with becoming dignity. 
 
 " Shall we go to breakfast, Job .?" I was obliged to raise my 
 voice, to be heard, to a pitch rather exhausting to an empty sto- 
 mach. 
 
 His eyes remained fixed upon the shifting rainbows bending and 
 vanishing in the spray. There was no moving him, and I gave 
 in for another five minutes. 
 
 " Do you think it probable, Jjb, that the waters of Niagara 
 strike on the axis of the world .'" 
 
158 THE WEAR OF NIAGARA 
 
 No answer. 
 
 " Job !" 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Do jou tliink His Majesty's half of the cataract is finer than 
 ours ?" 
 
 " Much." 
 
 " For water ^ merely, perhaps. But look at the delicious ver- 
 dure on the American shore, the glorious trees, the massed foliage, 
 the luxuriant growth even to the very rim of the ravine ! By 
 Jove ! it seems to me things grow better in a republic. Did you 
 ever see a more barren and scraggy shore than the one you stand 
 upon .?" 
 
 " How exquisitely," said Job, soliloquizing, " that small green 
 island divides the Fall ! What a rock it must be founded on, not 
 to have been washed away in the ages that those waters have split 
 against it !" 
 
 "I'll lay you a bet it is washed away before the year two thou- 
 sand — payable in any currency with which we may then be con- 
 versant." 
 
 " Don't trifle !" 
 
 " With time, or geology, do you mean } Isn't it perfectly 
 clear from the looks of that ravine, that Niagara has haclxed up all 
 the way from Lake Ontario ? These rocks are not adamant, and 
 the very precipice you stand on has cracked, and looks ready for 
 the plunge.* It must gradually wear back to Lake Erie, and 
 then there will be a sweep, I should like to live long enough to 
 see The instantaneous junction of two seas, with a difference of 
 two hundred foot in their levels, will be a spectacle — eh. Job ?" 
 
 * It has since fallen into the abyss — fortunately in the night, as visitors 
 were ahvays upon it during the day. The noise was heard at an incrediblfc 
 dista; 
 
EARLIER DAYS. I59 
 
 " Tremendous!'' 
 
 " Do you intend to Trait and see it, or will you come te break- 
 fast?" 
 
 He was immovable. 1 left Lim on the rock, went up to the 
 hotel and ordered mutton-chops and coffee, and, when they were 
 on the table, gave two of the waiters a dollar each to bring him up 
 nolejis-vokns. He arrived in a great rage, but with a good appe- 
 tite, and we finished our breakfast just in time to meet Miss , 
 
 as she stepped like Aurora from her chamber. 
 
 It is necessary to a reputation for prowess in the United States 
 to have been behind the sheet of the Fall (supposing you to have 
 been to Niagara). This achievement is equivalent to a hundred 
 shower-baths, one severe cold, and being drowned twice — but 
 most people do it. 
 
 We descended to the bottom of the precipice, at the side of the 
 Fall, where we found a small house, furnished with coarse linen 
 dresses for the purpose, and, having arranged ourselves in habili- 
 ments not particularly improving to our natural beauty, we reap- 
 peared — only three out of a party of ten having had the courage 
 
 to trust their attractions to such a trial. Miss looked like 
 
 a fairy in disguise, and Job like the most ghostly and diabolical 
 monster that ever stalked unsepultured abroad. He would 
 frighten a child, in his best black suit — but, with a pair of wet 
 linen trowsers scarcely reaching to his knees, a jacket with sleeves 
 shrunk to the elbows, and a white cap, he was something super- 
 naturally awful. The guide hesitated about going under the Fall 
 with him. 
 
 It looked rather appalling. Our way lay through a dense, de- 
 scending sheet of water, along a slender pathway of rocks, broken 
 into small fragments, with an overhanging wall on one side, and 
 
leO UNDER THE CASCADE. 
 
 the boiling cauldron of the cataract on the other. A false step, 
 and you were a subJ3Ct for the " shocking accident" maker. 
 
 The guide went first, taking Miss 's right hand. She gave 
 
 me her left, and Job brought up the rear, as they say in Connecti 
 cut, " on his own hook." We picked our way boldly up to the 
 water. The wall leaned over so much, and the fragmented decli- 
 Tity was so narrow and steep, that, if it had not been done before, 
 I should have turned back at once. Two steps more, and the 
 small hand in mine began to struggle violently, and, in the same 
 instant, the torrent beat into my eyes, mouth, and nostrils, and I 
 felt as if I were drowning. I staggered a blind step onward, but 
 still the water poured into my nostrils, and the conviction rushed 
 for a moment on my mind that we were lost. I struggled for 
 breath, stumbled forward, and, with a gasp that I thought was my 
 last, sunk upon the rocks within the descending waters. Job 
 tumbled over me the next instant, and, as soon as I could clear 
 my eyes sufficiently to look about me, I saw the guide sustaining 
 
 Miss who had been as nearly drowned as most of the subjects 
 
 of the Humane Society, but was apparently in a state of resuscita- 
 tion. None but the half-drowned know the pleasure of breathing. 
 
 Here we were, within a chamber that Undine might have covet- 
 ed, a wall of rock at our back, and a transparent curtain of shift- 
 ing water between us and the world, having entitled ourselves a 
 peu pres to the same reputation with Hylas and Lcander, for se- 
 duction by the Naiads. 
 
 Whatever sister of Arethusa inhabits there, we could but con- 
 gratulate her on the beauty of her abode. A lofty and well-lighted 
 hall, shaped like a long pavilion, extended as far as we could see 
 through the spray, and, with the two objections, that you could not 
 have heard a pistol at your ear for the noise, and that the floor was 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 16 1 
 
 somewhat prccipitouSj one could scarce imagine a more agreeable 
 ft'treat for a gontlemau who was disgusted with the world, and 
 sai'ject to dryness of the skin. In one respect it resembled the 
 enchanted dwelling of the Witch of Atlas, where, Shelley tells 
 us — 
 
 " the invisible rain did ever sing 
 A silver music on the mossy lawn." 
 
 It is lucky for Witches and Xaiads that they are not subject to 
 rheumatism. 
 
 The air was scarcely breathable — (if air it may be called, 
 which streams down the face with the density of a shower from a 
 watering-pot), and our footing upon the slippery rocks was so in- 
 secure, that the exertion of continually wiping our eyes was at- 
 tended with immment danger. Our sight was valuable, for surely, 
 never was such a brilliant curtain hung up to the sight of mortals, 
 as spread apparently from the zenith to our feet, changing in 
 thickness and lustre, but with a constant and resplendent curve. 
 It was what a child might imagine the arch of the sky to be where 
 it bends over the edge of the horizon. 
 
 The sublime is certainly very much diluted when one contem- 
 plates it with his back to a dripping and slimy rock, and his per- 
 son saturated with a continual supply of water. From a dry win- 
 dow, I think the infernal writhe and agony of the abyss into which 
 we were continually liable to slip, would have been as fine a thing 
 as I have seen in my travels ; but I am free to admit, that, at the 
 moment, I would have exchanged my experience and aU the 
 honor attached to it, for a dry escape. The idea of drowning 
 hack through that thick column of water, was at least a damper 
 to enthusiasm. We seemed cut 03" from the living. There was 
 a death between us and the vital air and sunshine. 
 
162 A RISK. 
 
 I was screwing up my courage for the return, wlien the guide 
 seized me hy the shoulder. I looked around, and what was my 
 
 horror to see Miss standing far in, behind the sheet, upon the 
 
 last visible point of rock, with the water pouring over her in tor- 
 rents, and a gulf of foam between us, which I could in no way 
 understand how she had passed over. 
 
 She seemed frightened and pale ; and the guide explained to me, 
 by signs, (for I could not distinguish a syllable, through the roar 
 of the cataract,) that she had walked over a narrow ledge, which 
 had broken with her weight. A long, fresh mark, upon the rock, 
 at the foot of the precipitous wall, made it sufficiently evident : 
 her position was most alarming. 
 
 I made a sign to her, to look well to her feet ; for the little 
 island on which she stood was green with slime, and scarce larger 
 than a hat ; and an abyss, of full six feet wide, foaming and un- 
 fathomable, raged between it and the nearest foothold. Whai. 
 was to be done ? Had we a plank, even, there was no possible 
 hold for the further extremity ; and the shape of the rock was so 
 conical, that its slippery surface, evidently, would not hold a rope 
 for a moment. To jump to her, even if it were possible, would 
 endanger her life ; and when I was smiling, and encouraging the 
 beautiful creature, as she stood trembling and pale on her dan- 
 gerous foothold, I felt my very heart sick within me. 
 
 The despairing guide said something, which I could not hear, 
 and disappeared through the watery wall ; and I fixed my eyes 
 upon the lovely form, standing, like a spirit, in the misty shroud 
 of the spray, as if the intensity of my gaze could sustain her 
 upon her dangerous foothold. I would have given ten years of 
 my life, at that moment, to have clasped her hand in mine. 
 
 I had scarce thought of Job, until I felt him trying to pass 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 163 
 
 behind me. His liand was trembling, as he laid it on my shoul- 
 der, to steady his steps ; but there was something, in his ill-hewn 
 features, that shot an indefinable ray of hope through my mind. 
 His sandy hair was plastered over his forehead, and his scant 
 dress clung to him like a skin ; but, though I recall his imag6 
 iioio^ with a smile, I looked upon him with a feeling far enough 
 from amusement then. God bless thee, my dear Job ! wherever, 
 in this unfit world, thy fine spirit may be fulfilling its destiny ! 
 
 He crept down carefully to the edge of the foaming abyss, till 
 he stood with the breaking bubbles at his knees. I was at a loss 
 to know what he intended. She, surely, would not dare to at- 
 tempt a jump to his arms, from that slippery rock ; and to reach 
 her, in any way, seemed impossible. 
 
 The next instant he threw himself forward ; and, while I cov- 
 ered my eyes in horror, with the flashing conviction that he had 
 gone mad, and flung himself into the hopeless whirlpool, to reach 
 her, she had crossed the awful gulf, and lay trembling and ex- 
 hausted at my feet ! He had thrown himself over the chasm, 
 caught the rock barely with the extremities of his fingers, and, 
 with certain death if he missed his hold, or slipped from his un- 
 certain tenure, had sustained her with supernatural strength, as 
 she walked over his body ! 
 
 The guide, providentially, returned with a rope, in the same 
 instant, and fastening it around one of his feet, we dragged him 
 back through the whirlpool ; and, after a moment or two to re- 
 cover from the sufibcating immersion, he fell on his knees, and we 
 joined him, I doubt not, devoutly, in his inaudible thanks to God 
 
164 NIAGARA FERRY. 
 
 II. LAKE ONTARIO. 
 
 The next bravest achievement to venturing behind the sheet 
 of Nia-T-ara, is to cross the river, in a small boat, at some distance 
 below the Phlegethon of the abyss. I should imagine it were 
 something like riding in a howdah, on a swimming elephant. 
 The immense masses of water, driven under by the Fall, rise, 
 splashing and fuming, far down the river ; and they are as unlike 
 a common wave, to ride^ as a horse and a camel. You are, per- 
 haps, ten or fifteen minutes pulling across, and you may get two 
 or three of these lifts, which shove you straight into the air, 
 about ten feet, and then drop you into the cup of an eddy, as if 
 some long-armed Titan had his hand under the water, and were 
 tossing you up and down for his amusement. It imports lovers 
 to take heed how their mistresses are seated ; as all ladies, on 
 these occasions, throw themselves into the arms of the nearest 
 "hose and doublet." 
 
 Job and I went over to dine on the American side, and refresh 
 our patriotism*. We dined under a hickory- tree, on Groat Island, 
 just over the glassy cui've of the cataract ; and, as we grew joy- 
 ous, with our champagne, we strolled up to the point where the 
 waters divide for the American and British Falls ; and Job ha- 
 rangued the " mistaken gentleman on his right," in eloquence 
 that would have turned a division in the House of Commons. 
 The deluded multitude, however, rolled away in crowds, for the 
 monarchy ; and, at the close of his speech, the British Fall was 
 Btill, by a melancholy majority, the largest. We walked back to 
 our bottle, like foiled patriots ; and soon after, hopeless of our 
 piinciples, went over to the other side, too ! 
 
 I advise aU people, going to Niagara, to suspend making a note 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 1^5 
 
 in tlieir journal, till the last day of their visit. You might as 
 well teach a child the magnitude of the heavens, by pointing to 
 the sky with your finger, as comprehend Niagara in a day. It 
 has to create its own mighty place in your mind. You have no 
 comparison, through which it can enter. It is too vast. The 
 imagination shrinks from it. It rolls in gradually, thunder upon 
 thunder, and plunge upon plunge ; and the mind labors with it, 
 to an exhaustion such as is created only by the extremest intel- 
 lectual eflfort. I have seen men sit and gaze upon it, in a cool 
 day of autumn, with the perspiration standing on their foreheads, 
 ill large beads, from the unconscious, but toilsome agony of its 
 conception. After haunting its precipices, and looking on its 
 solemn waters, for seven days, sleeping with its wind-played mo- 
 notony in your ears, dreaming, and returning to it, till it has 
 grown the one object, as it will, of your perpetual thought, you 
 feel, all at once, like one who has compassed the span of some 
 almighty problem. It has stretched itself within you. Your 
 capacity has attained the gigantic standard, and you feel an eleva- 
 tion, and breadth of nature, that could measure girth and stature 
 with a seraph. We had fairly " done" Niagara. We had seen 
 it by sunrise, sunset, and moonlight — from top and bottom — fast- 
 ing and full — alone and together. We had learned, by heait, 
 every green path on the island of perpetual dew, which is set like 
 an imperial emerald, on its front, (a poetical idea of my own, 
 much admired by Job;) we had been grave, gay, tender, and 
 sublime, in its mighty neighborhood ; we had become so accus- 
 tomed to the base of its broad thunder, that it seemed to us like 
 a natural property in the air, and we were unconscious of it for 
 hours ; our voices had become so tuned to its key, and our 
 thoughts so tmged by its grand and perpetual anthem, that I 
 
166 A SOUL MISPLACJ: 1). 
 
 almost doubted if the air, beyond tbe reach of its vibrations, 
 would not agonize us with its unnatural silence, and the common 
 features of the world seem of an unutterable and frivolous little- 
 
 We were eating our last breakfast there, in tender melancholy 
 
 — mine for the Falls, and Job's for the Falls and Miss , to 
 
 whom I had a half suspicion, that he had made a declaration. 
 
 "Job!" said I. 
 
 He looked up from his egg. 
 
 '^My dear Job!" 
 
 " Don't allude to it, my dear chum," said he, dropping his 
 spoon, and rushing to the window, to hide his agitation. It was 
 quite clear. 
 
 I could scarce restrain a smile. Psyche, in the embrace of a 
 respectable giraffe, would be the first thought, in anybody's mind, 
 who should see them together. And yet, why should he not woo 
 her — and win her, too ? He had saved her life in the extremest 
 peril, at the most extreme hazard of his own ; he had a heart as 
 high and worthy, and as capable of an undying worship of her, as 
 she would find in a wilderness of lovers ; he felt like a graceful 
 man, and acted like a brave one, and was sans jpeur et sans re- 
 procke ; and why should he not love like other men ? My dear 
 Job ! I fear thou wilt go down to thy grave, and but one woman 
 in this wide world v/ill have loved thee — thy mother ! Thou art 
 the soul of a preiix chevalier, in the body of some worthy grave- 
 digger, who is strutting about the world, perhajjs, in thy more 
 proper carcass. These angels are o'er hasty in packing ! 
 
 We got upon our horses, and had a pleasant amble before us, 
 of fifteen miles, on the British side of the river. We cantered 
 off stoutly for a mile, to settle our regrets ; and then I pulled 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 167 
 
 up, and requested Job to ride near me, as I had something to say 
 to him. 
 
 " You are entering," said I, ^' my dear Job, upon your first 
 journey in a foreign land. You will see other manners than your 
 own, which are not, therefore, laughable, and hear a different 
 pronunciation from your own, which is not, therefore, vulgar. 
 You are to mix with British subjects, whom you have attacked 
 vigorously in your school declamations, as " the enemy," but 
 who are not, therefore, to be bullied in their own country, and 
 who have certain tastes of their own, upon which you had better 
 reserve your judgment. We have no doubt that we are the 
 greatest country that ever was, is, or ever shall be ; but, as this 
 is an unpalatable piece of information to other nations, we will 
 not stuff it into their teeth, unless by particular request. John 
 Bull likes his coat too small. Let him wear it. John Bull pre- 
 fers his beefsteak to a fricandeau. Let him eat it, John Bull 
 will leave no stone unturned to serve you, in his own country, if 
 you will let him. Let him. John Bull will suffer you to find 
 fault, for ever, with king, lords, and commons, if you do not com- 
 pare them invidiously with other governments. Let the com- 
 parison alone. In short, my dear chum, as we insist that for- 
 eigners should adopt our manners while they are travelling in the 
 United States, we had better adopt theirs when we return the 
 visit. They are, doubtless, quite wrong throughout; but it is 
 not worth while to bristle one's back against the opinions of some 
 score millions." 
 
 The foam disappeared from the stream, as we followed it on, 
 and the roar of the Fails — 
 
 * * * « Now loud, now calm again, 
 Like a ring of bells, whose sound the wind still alters," 
 
168 PARTIALITY FOR WATER. 
 
 was soon faint on our cars, and, like the regret of parting, les- 
 sened with the increasing distance, till it was lost. Job began to 
 look around him, and see something else besides a lovely face in 
 the turnings of the road ; and the historian of this memorable 
 journey, who never had but one sorrow that " would not budge 
 with a filip," rose in his stirrups, as he descried the broad blue 
 bosom of Lake Ontario, and gave vent to his feelings in (he begs 
 the reader to believe) the most suitable quotation. 
 
 Seeing any celebrated water, for the first time, was always, to 
 me, an event. River, waterftill, or lake, if I have heard of it, 
 and thought of it, for years, has a sensible jpresence^ that I feel, 
 like the approach of a human being, in whom I am interested. 
 My heart flutters to it. It is, thereafter, an acquaintance ; and I 
 defend its beauty, or its grandeur, as I would the fair fame and 
 worth of a woman who had shown me a preference. My dear 
 reader, do you love water 1 Not to drink — for, I own, it is de- 
 testable in small quantities ; but water, running or falling, sleep- 
 ing or gliding, tinged by the sunset glow, or silvered by the gen- 
 tle alchymist of the midnight heaven } Do you love a lake } 
 Do you love a river .? Do you " affect" any one laughing and 
 sparkling brook, that has flashed on your eye like a fay overtaken 
 by the cock-crowing, and tripping away slily to dream-land i As 
 you see four sisters, and but one to love ; so, in the family of the 
 elements, I have a tenderness for water. 
 
 Lake Ontario spread away to the horizon, glittering in the 
 summer sun, boundless to the eye as the Atlantic ; and, directly 
 beneath us, lay the small town of Fort Niagara, with the steamer 
 at the pier, in which we promised ourselves a passage down the 
 St. Lawrence. We rode on to the hotel, which wo found, to our 
 surprise, crowded with English officers ; and. luivlnn; disposed of 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 169 
 
 our Narragansets, we inquired the hour of departure, and what 
 we could eat meantime, in as nearly the same breath as possiblo, 
 
 " Cold leg of mutton, and the steamboat's engaged, sir !" 
 
 The mercury, in Job's Britishometor, fell plump to zero. The 
 idea of a monopoly of the whole steamer, by a Colonel and his 
 staff, and no boat again for a week ! 
 
 There was a government to live under ! 
 
 We sat down to our mutton, and presently enter the waiter. 
 
 " Colonel 's compliments ; hearing that two gentlemen 
 
 have arrived, who expected to go by the steamer, he is happy to 
 offer them a passage, if they can put up with rather crowded ac- 
 commodations." 
 
 " "Well, Job ! what do you think now of England, politically, 
 morally, and religiously } Has not the gentlemanlike courtesy, of 
 one individual, materially changed your opinions upon every sub- 
 ject connected with the united kingdom of Great Britain .^" 
 
 ^' It has." 
 
 " Then, my dear Job, I recommend you, never again to read 
 a book of travels, without writing down on the margin of every 
 bilious chapter, '' probably lost his passage in the steamer," or, 
 '' had no mustard to his mutton," or, ^' could find no ginger-nuts 
 for the interesting little traveller," or some similar annotation. 
 Depend upon it, that dear, delightful Mrs. Trollope, would never 
 have written so agreeable a book, if she had thriven with her 
 bazaar in Cincinnati." 
 
 We paid our respects to the Colonel, and, at six o'clock in the 
 evening, got on board. Part of an Irish regiment was bivouacked 
 on the deck, and happier fellows I never saw. They had com- 
 pleted their nine years' service on the three Canadian stations, 
 and were returning to the ould country, wives, children, and all 
 8 
 
170 AN ELOPEMENT. 
 
 A line was drawn across the deck, reserving the after-quarter for 
 the officers ; the sick were disposed of, among the women in the 
 bows of the hoat ; and the band stood ready to play the farewell 
 air, to the cold shores of Upper Canada, 
 
 The line was cast off, when a boy of thirteen rushed down to 
 the pier, and springing on board with a desperate leap, flew from 
 one end of the deck to the other, and flung himself, at last, upon 
 the neck of a pretty girl sitting on the knee of one of the pri- 
 vates. 
 
 ** Mary, dear Mary !" was all he could utter. His sobs 
 choked him. 
 
 " Avast with the line, there !" shouted the captain, who had 
 no wish to carry off this unexpected passenger. The boat was 
 again swung to the wharf, and the boy very roughly ordered 
 ashore. His only answer was to cling closer to the girl, and re- 
 double his tears ; and by this time the Colonel had stepped aft, 
 and the case seemed sure of a fair trial. The pretty Canadian 
 dropped her head on her bosom, and seemed divided between 
 contending emotions ; and the soldier stood up, and raised his cap 
 to his commanding officer, but held firmly by her hand. The boy 
 threw himself on his knees to the colonel, but tried in vain ta 
 
 " Who's this, O'Shane .?" asked the officer. 
 " Sure, my sweetheart, your honor." 
 " And, how dare you bring her on board, sir .?" 
 " Och, she'll go to ould Ireland wid us, your honor." 
 ** No, no, no !" cried the convulsed boy, clasping the Colonel's 
 knees, and sobbing, as if his heart would break ; " she's my sis- 
 ter ! She isn't his wife ! Father'll die, if she does ! She can't 
 go with him ! She sha^nH go with him !" 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 171 
 
 Job began to snivel, and I felt uarm about the oyes, myself. 
 
 *' Have you got a wife, O'Sliane .^" asked the Colonel. 
 
 " Plase your honor, never a bit," said Paddy. He was a 
 tight, good-looking fellow, by the way, as you would wish to see. 
 
 " "Well ; we'll settle this thing at once. Get up, my little fel- 
 low 1 Come here, my good girl ! Do you love O'Shane well 
 enough to be his wife .^" 
 
 " Indeed I do, sir!" said Mary, wiping her eyes with the back 
 of her hand, and stealing a look at the " six feet one," that stood 
 as straight as a pike beside her. 
 
 " O'Shane ! I allow this girl to go with us, only on condition 
 that you marry her at the first place where we can find a priest. 
 "We will make her up a bit of a dowry, and I will look after her 
 comfort as long as she follows the regiment. What do you say, 
 sir ? Will you marry her !" 
 
 O'Shane began to waver in his military position — from a full 
 front face, getting to very nearly a right-about. It was plain he 
 was taken by surprise. The eyes of the company were on him, 
 however, and public opinion, which, in most human breasts, is 
 considerably stronger than conscience, had its efi'ect. 
 
 " I'll do it, your honor !" said he, bolting it out, as a man 
 volunteers upon a '' forlorn hope." 
 
 Tears might as well have been bespoken for the whole com- 
 pany. The boy was torn from his sister's neck, and set ashore, 
 in the arms of two sailors ; and poor Mary, very much in doubt 
 whether she was happy or miserable, sank upon a heap of knap- 
 sacks, and buried her eyes in a cotton handkerchief, with a map 
 of London upon it — probably a gage cfamoiir from the desaving 
 O'Shane. I did the same myself, with a silk one, and Job item 
 Item the Colonel and several officers. 
 
172 INDIAN ELOPEMENT. 
 
 The boat was shoved off, and the wheels spattered away ; but, 
 as far as we could hear his voice, the cry came following on, 
 "Mary, Mary !" 
 
 It rung in my ears all night, " Mary, Mary !" 
 
 I was up in the morning at sunrise, and was glad to escape 
 from the confined cabin, and get upon deck. The steamer was 
 booming on through a sea as calm as a mirror, and no land visible. 
 The fresh dewiness of the morning air ashore played in my 
 nostrils, and the smell of grass was perceptible in the wind ; but, 
 in all else, it was like a calm in mid ocean. The soldiers were 
 asleep along the decks, with their wives and children, and the 
 pretty runaway lay with her head on 'Shane's bosom, her red 
 eyes, and soiled finery, showing too plainly how she had passed the 
 night. Poor Mary ! she has enough of following a soldier, by 
 this, I fear. 
 
 I stepped forward, and was not a little surprised to see stand- 
 ing against the railing, on the larboard bow, the motionless fiojure 
 of an Indian girl of sixteen. Her dark eye was fixed on the line 
 of the horizon we were leaving behind, her arms were folded on 
 her bosom, and she seemed not even to breathe. A common 
 shawl was wrapped carelessly around her, and another glance 
 betrayed to me, that she was in a situation soon to become a 
 mother. Her feet were protected by a pair of once gaudy, but 
 now shabby and torn moccasins, singularly small ; her hands 
 were of a delicate thinness, unusual to her race ; and her hollow 
 cheeks, and forehead marked with an expression of pain, told all 
 I could have prophesied of the history of a white man's tender 
 mercies. I approached very near, quite unperceived. A small 
 burning spot, was just perceptible in the centre of her dark 
 cheek ; and, as I looked at her steadfastly, I could see a working 
 
EARLIER DATS. 
 
 173 
 
 of tlic muscles of her dusky brow, which betrayed, in one of a 
 race so trained to stony calmness, an unusual fever of feeling. I 
 looked around for the place in which she must have slept. A 
 mantle of wampum-work, folded across a heap of confused bao-- 
 gage, partly occupied as a pillow by a brutal-looking and sleeping 
 soldier, told, at once, the main part of her story. I felt for her, 
 from my soul ! 
 
 " You can hear the great waterfall no more," I said, touching 
 her arm. 
 
 " I hear it, when I think of it," she replied, turning her eyes 
 upon me as slowly, and with as little surprise, as if I had been 
 talking to her an hour. 
 
 I pointed to the sleeping soldier. " Are you going with him to 
 his country ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Are you his wife ?" 
 
 " My father gave me to him." 
 
 " Has he sworn before the priest, in the name of the Great 
 Spirit, to be your husband .^" 
 
 " No." She looked intently into my eyes, as she answered, as 
 if she tried, in vain, to read my meaning. 
 
 "Is he kind to you }" 
 
 She smiled, bitterly. 
 
 " Why, then, did you follow him } ' 
 
 Her eyes dropped upon the burden she bore at her heart. The 
 answer could not have been clearer if written with a sunbeam. I 
 said a few words of kindness, and left her, to turn over in my 
 mind how I could better interfere for her happiness. 
 
174 THOUSAND ISLES. 
 
 III. THE ST. LAWRENCE. 
 
 On the third evening we had entered upon the St. Lawrence, 
 and were winding cautiously into the channel of the Thousand 
 Isles. I think there is not, within the knowledge of the " all- 
 beholding sun," a spot so singularly and exquisitely beautiful. Be- 
 tween the Mississippi and the Cimmerian Bosphorus, I know 
 there is not, for I have pic-nicked from the Symplegades west- 
 ward. The Thousand Isles of the St. Lawrence are as imprinted 
 on my mind, as the stars of heaven. I could forget them as 
 soon. 
 
 The river is here as wide as a lake, while the channel just per- 
 mits the passage of a steamer. The islands, more than a thou- 
 sand in number, are a singular formation of flat, rectangular 
 rock, split, as it were, by regular mathematical fissures, and 
 overflowed nearly to the tops, which are loaded with a most luxu- 
 riant vegetation. Thoy vary in size, but the generality of them 
 would about accommodate a tea-party of six. The water is deep 
 enough to float a large steamer directly at the edge, and an active 
 deer would leap across from one to the other, in any direction. 
 What is very singular, these little rocky platforms are covered 
 with a rich loam, and carpeted with moss and flowers, while im- 
 mense trees take root in the clefts, and interlace their branches 
 with those of the neighboring islets, shadowing the water with the 
 unsunned dimness of the wilderness. It is a very odd thing to 
 glide through in a steamer. The luxuriant leaves sweep the 
 deck, and the black funnel parts the drooping sprays as it keeps 
 its way ; and you may pluck the blossoms of the acacia, or the 
 rich chestnut flowers, sitting on the tafi"rail ; and, really, a magic 
 passage in a witch's steamer, beneath the tree-tops of an un- 
 
EARLIER PAYS. 175 
 
 trodden forest, could not be more novel and startling. Then the 
 solitude and silence of the dim and still waters, are continually 
 broken by the plunge and leap of the wild deer springing or swim- 
 ming from one island to another, and the swift and shadowy canoe 
 of the Indian glides out from some unseen channel, and, with a 
 single stroke of his broad paddle, he vanishes, and is lost again, 
 even to the ear. If the beauty-sick and nature-searching spirit 
 of Keats is abroad in the world, " my basnet to a 'prentice cap," 
 he passes his summers amid the Thousand Isles of the St. Law- 
 rence ! I would we were there, with our tea-things, sweet Rosa 
 Matilda ! 
 
 We had dined on the quarter-deck, and were sitting over the 
 Colonel's wine, pulling the elm-leaves from the branches, as they 
 swept saucily over the table, and listening to the band — ^who were 
 playing waltzes, that, probably, ended in the confirmed insanity 
 of every wild heron and red deer, that happened, that afternoon, 
 to come within ear-shot of the good steamer Queenston. The 
 paddles began to slacken in their spattering, and the boat came 
 to, at the sharp side of one of the largest of the shadowy islands. 
 We were to stop an hour or two, and take in wood. 
 
 Everybody was soon ashore for a ramble, leaving only the Colo- 
 nel, who was a cripple from a score of Waterloo tokens, and your 
 servant, reader, who had something on his mind. 
 
 " Colonel ! will you oblige me, by sending for Mahoney ? 
 Steward, call me that Indian girl, sitting with her head on her 
 knees, in the boat's bow." 
 
 They stood before us. 
 
 " How is this ?" exclaimed the Colonel ; " another ! good Grod ! 
 these Irishmen ! Well, sir ! what do you intend to do with this 
 girl, now that you have ruined her .^" 
 
Ifff SEQUEL TO A LOVE. 
 
 Mahoney looked at her out of a corner of his eye, with a liber- 
 tine contempt, that made my blood boil. The girl watched for 
 his answer, with an intense but calm gaze into his face, that, if he 
 had had a soul, would have killed him. Her lips were set firmly, 
 but not fiercely, together ; and, as the private stood looking from 
 one side to the other, unable, or unwilling to answer, she sup- 
 pressed a rising emotion in her throat, and turned her look on 
 the commanding officer, with a proud coldness that would have 
 become Medea. 
 
 " Mahoney !" said the Colonel, sternly, "will you marry this 
 poor girl ?" 
 
 " Never, I hope, your honor !" 
 
 The wasted and noble creature raised her burdened form to its 
 fullest height, and, with an inaudible murmur bursting from her 
 lips, walked back to the bow of the vessel. The Colonel pur- 
 Bued his conversation with Mahoney, and the obstinate brute was 
 still refusing the only reparation he could make the poor Indian, 
 when she suddenly reappeared. The shawl was no longer around 
 her shoulders. A coarse blanket was bound below her breast, 
 with a belt of wampum, leaving her fine bust entirely bare, her 
 small feet trod the deck with the elasticity of a leopard about to 
 leap on his prey, and her dark, heavily-fringed eyes, glowed like 
 coals of fire. She seized the Colonel's hand, and imprinted a kiss 
 upon it, another upon mine, and, without a look at the father of 
 her child, dived, with a single leap, over the gangway. She rose 
 directly in the clear water, swam with powerful strokes to one of 
 the most distant islands ; and, turning once more to wave her 
 hand, as she stood on the shore, strode on, and was lost in the 
 tangles of the forest. 
 
THE CHEROKEE'S THREAT. 
 
 "Notre bonheur, mon cher, se tiendra toujours c^tre la plante de nos pieds et notie 
 occiput ; et qu'il coute un million par an ou cent louis, la perception intrinsique est 
 la mfeme au-dedans de nous.'' — Le P^re Goriot. 
 
 There were a hundred students in the new class matriculated 
 at Yale College, in Connecticut, in the year 18 — . They were 
 young men of different ages, and of all conditions in life, but less 
 various in their mien and breeding, than in the characteristics of 
 the widely-separate States from which they came. It is not 
 thought extraordinary in Europe, that the French and English, 
 the German and the Italian, should possess distinct national 
 traits ; yet one American is supposed to be like every other, 
 though the two, between whom the comparison is drawn, were 
 born and bred as far apart, and in as different latitudes, as the 
 Highland cateran and the brigand of Calabria. 
 
 I looked around me with some interest, when, on the first morn- 
 ing of the term, the president, professors, and students of the 
 university, assembled in the college chapel, at the sound of the 
 prayer-bell, and, with my brother freshmen, I stood in the side 
 aisle, closing up, with our motley, and, as yet, unclassical heads 
 and habiliments, the long files of the more initiated classes. The 
 berry-brown tan of the sun of Greorgia, unblanched by study, was 
 still dark and deep on the cheek of one ; the look of command, 
 8* 
 
178 A CHARACTER. 
 
 breathing through the indolent attitude, betrayed, in another, the 
 young Carolinian and slave-master ; a coat of green, garnished 
 with fur and bright buttons, and shaped less by the tailor than 
 by the Herculean and expansive frame over which it was strained, 
 had a taste of Kentucky in its complexion ; the white skin, and 
 red or sandy hair, cold expression, stiff black coat, and serious 
 attention to the service, told of the Puritan son of New Hamp- 
 shire or Vermont ; and, perked up in his well-fitted coat, the ex- 
 quisite of the class, sto^d the slight and metropolitan New- 
 Yorker, with a firm belief in his tailor and himself written on his 
 effeminate lip, and an occasional look at his neighbors' coats and 
 shoulders, that might have been construed into wonder, upon 
 what western river or mountain dwelt the builders of such coats 
 and men ! 
 
 Rather annoyed, at last, by the glances of one or two seniors, 
 who were amusing themselves with my simple gaze of curiosity, I 
 turned my attention to my more immediate neighborhood. A 
 youth, with close, curling, brown hair, rather under-sized, but with 
 a certain decision and nerve in his lip which struck me imme- 
 diately, and which seemed to express, somehow, a confidence in 
 himself which his limbs scarce bore out, stood with his back to 
 the pulpit, and, with his foot on the seat, and his elbow on his 
 knee, he seemed to have fallen, at once, into the habit of the place, 
 and to be beyond surprise or interest. As it was the custom of 
 the college to take places at prayers and recitation alphabetically, 
 and he was likely to be my neighbor in chapel and hall for the 
 next four years, I speculated rather more than I should else have 
 done, on his face and manner ; and, as the president came to his 
 " Amen," I came to the conclusion, that, whatever might be Mr. 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 
 
 179 
 
 "S.'s" capacity for friendship, his ill-will would be very demon- 
 strative and uncomfortable. 
 
 The term went on, the politics of the little republic fermented, 
 and, as first appearances wore away, or peculiarities wore off by col- 
 lision, or developed by intimacy, the different members of the class 
 rose or fell in the general estimation, and the graduation of talent and 
 spirit became more just and definite. The " Southerners and Nor- 
 therners," as they are called, soon discovered, like the classes 
 that had gone before them, that they had no qualities in common, 
 and, of the secret societies which exist among the students in 
 that university, joined each that of his own compatriots. The 
 Carolianian or Greorgian, who had passed his life on a plantation, 
 secluded from the society of his equals, soon found out the value 
 of his chivalrous deportment and graceful indolence, in the gay 
 society for which the town is remarkable ; while the Yermontese, 
 or White-Mountaineer, " made unfashionably," and ill at ease on 
 a carpet, took another line of ambition, and sat down with the ad- 
 vantage of constitutional patience and perseverance, to the study 
 which he would find, in the end, a " better continuer," even in 
 the race for a lady's favor. 
 
 It was the only republic I have ever known — that class of 
 freshmen. It was a fair arena ; and neither in politics, nor so- 
 ciety, nor literature, nor love, nor religion, have I, in much 
 searching through the world, found the same fair play or good 
 feeling. Talk of our own republic ! — its society is the very core 
 and gall of the worst growth of aristocracy. Talk of the republic 
 of letters ! — the two graves by the pyramid of Caius Cestius laugh 
 it to scorn. Of love ! — of religion. What is bought and sold like 
 that which has the name of the first } What is made a snare and 
 a tool by the designing like the last } But here — ^with a govern- 
 
180 NEW HAVEN. 
 
 ment over us ever kindly and paternal, no favor shown, and no 
 privilege denied ; every equality in tbe competitors at all possi- 
 ble — age, previous education, and, above all, worldly position 
 — it was an arena in which a generous spirit would wrestle, with 
 an abandon of heart and limb he might never know in the world 
 again. Every individual rising or falling by the estimation ho 
 exacts of his fellows, there is no such school of honor ; each, of 
 the many palms of scholarship, from the severest to the lightest, 
 aiming at that which best suits his genius, and as welcome as 
 another to the goal — there is no apology for the laggard. Of the 
 feelings that stir the heart in our youth — of the few, the very few, 
 which have no recoil, and leave no repentance — this leaping from- 
 the start-post of mind, this first spread of the encouraged wing 
 in the free heaven of thought and knowledge, is recorded in my 
 own slender experience as the most joyous and the most un- 
 mingled. He who has soiled his bright honor with the tools of 
 political ambition — he who has leant his soul upon the chaiity of 
 a sect in religion — he who has loved, hoped, and trusfcd, in the 
 greater arena of life and manhood — must look back on days like 
 these as the broken-winged eagle to the sky — as the Indian's sub- 
 dued horse to the prairie. 
 
 II. 
 
 New Haven is not alone the seat of a university. It is a kind of 
 metropolis of education. The excessive beauty of the town, with its. 
 embowered streets and sunny gardens, the refinement of its society, 
 its central position and accessibility, and the facilities for attend- 
 ing the lectures of the college professors, render it a most desira- 
 ble place of instruction in every department. Among others, the 
 female schools of the place have a great reputation, and this, 
 
EARLIER DAYS. igl 
 
 which, in Europe, or with a European state of society, would pro- 
 bably be an evil, is, from the simple and frank character of man- 
 ners in America, a mutual and decided advantage. The daugh- 
 ters of the first families of the country are sent here, committed 
 for two, three, and four years, to the exclusive care of the head of 
 tho establishment, and (as one of the privileges and advantages of 
 the school) associating freely with the general society of the town^, 
 the male part, of course, composed principally of students. A 
 more easy and liberal intercourse exists in no society in the world, 
 and, in no society that I have ever seen, is the tone of morals and 
 manners so high and unexceptionable. Attachments are often 
 formed, and little harm is thought of it ; and, unless it is a very 
 strong case of disparity or objection, no obstacle is thrown in the 
 way of the common intercourse between lovers ; and the lady re- 
 turns to her family, and the gentleman senior disappears with his 
 degree, and they meet and marry — if they like. If they do not, 
 the lady stands as well in the matrimonial market as ever, and 
 the gentleman (unlike his horse) is not damaged by having been 
 on his knees. 
 
 Like " Le Noir Faineant," at the tournament, my friend St. 
 John seemed more a looker-on than an actor in the various pur- 
 suits of the university. A sudden interference in a quarrel, in 
 which a brother freshman was contending against odds, enlighten- 
 ed the class as to his spirit and personal strength ; he acquitted 
 himself at recitations with the air of self-contempt for such easy 
 excellence ; he dressed plainly, but with instinctive taste ; and, at 
 the end of the first term, hav'ng shrunk from all intimacy, and 
 lived alone with his books and a kind of trapper's dog he had 
 brought with him from the west, he had acquired an ascendancy 
 
182 A STUDENT FROM THE WOODS. 
 
 in the opinion of the class for which no one could well account. 
 but to which every one unhesitatingly assented. 
 
 We returned after our first short vacation, and of my hundred 
 classmates there was but one whom I much cared to meet again. 
 St. John had passed the vacation in his rooms, and my evident 
 pleasure at meeting him, for the first time, seemed to open his 
 heart to me. He invited me to breakfast with him. By favor 
 seldom granted to a freshman, he had a lodging in the town — the 
 rest of the class being compelled to live with a chum in the col- 
 lege buildings. I found his rooms — (I was the first of the class 
 who had entered them) — more luxuriously furnished than I had 
 expected from the simplicity of his appearance, but his books, not 
 many, but select, and (what is in America an expensive luxury) 
 in the best English editions and superbly bound, excited most my 
 envy and surprise. How he should have acquired tastes of such 
 ultra-civilization in the forests of the west was a mystery that re- 
 mained to be solved. 
 
 III. 
 
 At the extremity of a green lane in the outer skirt of the fash- 
 ionable suburb of New Haven stood a rambling old Dutch house, 
 built probably when the cattle of Mynheer grazed over the pre- 
 sent site of the town. It was a wilderness of irregular rooms, of 
 no describable shape in its exterior, and, from its southern balcony, 
 to use an expressive Gallicism, "gave upon the bay." Long 
 Island Sound, the great highway from the northei^n Atlantic to 
 New York, weltered in alternate lead and silver (oftener like the 
 brighter metal, for the climate is divine), between the curving lip 
 of the bay and the interminable and sandy shore of the island 
 some six leagues distant ; the procession of ships and steamers' 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 183 
 
 stole past with an imperceptible progress ; the ceaseless hells of 
 the college chapel came deadened through the trees from behind, 
 and (the day being one of golden autumn, and myself and St. 
 John waiting while black Agatha answered the door-bell) the sun- 
 steeped precipice of East Rock, with its tiara of blood-red maples 
 flushing like a Turk's banner in the light, drew from us, both, a 
 truant wish for a ramble and a holy day. I shall have more to say 
 anon of the foliage of an American October : but just now, while 
 I remember it, I wish to record a belief of my own, that if, as 
 philosophy supposes, we have lived other lives — (if 
 
 " our star 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 And Cometh from afar") — 
 
 it is surely in the days tempered like the one I am remembering 
 and describing — profoundly serene, sunny as the top of Olympus, 
 heavenly pure, holy, and more invigorating and intoxicating than 
 luxurious or balmy ; the sort of air that the visiting angels might 
 have brought with them to the tents of Abraham — it is on such 
 days, I would record, that my own memory steps back over the 
 dim threshold of life (so it seems to me), and on such days only. 
 It is worth the translation of our youth and our household gods to 
 a sunnier land, if it were alone for those immortal revelations. 
 
 In a few minutes from this time were assembled, in Mrs. Ilfring- 
 ton's drawing-room, the six or seven young ladies of my more par- 
 ticular acquaintance among her pupils, of whom one was a new- 
 comer, and the object of my mingled curiosity and admiration. It 
 was the one day of the week when morning visitors were admitted, 
 and I was there, in compliance with an unexpected request from 
 my friend, to present him to the agreeable circle of Mrs. Ilfring- 
 
184 INDIAN GIRL AT SCHOOL. 
 
 ton. As an hahittce in her family, this excellent lady had taken 
 occasion to introduce to me, a week or two before, the newcomer 
 of whom I have spoken above — a departure from the ordinary 
 rule of the establishment, which I felt to be a compliment, and 
 which gave me, I presumed, a tacit claim to mix myself up in 
 that young lady's destiny as deeply as I should find agreeable. 
 The newcomer was the daughter of an Indian chief, and her name 
 was Nunu. 
 
 The wronojs of civilization to the noble aborigines of America 
 are a subject of much poetical feeling in the United States, and 
 will ultimately become the poetry of the nation. At present the 
 sentiment takes occasionally a tangible shape, and the transmis- 
 sion of the daughter of a Cherokee chief to New Haven, to be 
 educated at the expense of the government, and of several young 
 men of the same high birth to different colleges, will be recorded 
 among the evidences in history that we did not plough the bones 
 of their fathers into our fields without some feelings of compunc- 
 tion. Nunu had come to the seaboarvl under the charge of a fe- 
 male missionary, whose pupil she had been in one of the native 
 schools of the west, and was destined, though a chief's daughter, 
 to return as a teacher to her tribe when she should have mastered 
 some of the higher accomplishments of her sex. She was an apt 
 scholar, but her settled melancholy, when away from her books, 
 had determined Mrs. Ilfrington to try the effect of a little society 
 upon her, and hence my privilege to ask for her appearance in the 
 drawing-room. 
 
 As we strolled down in the alternate shade and sunshine of the 
 road, T had been a little piqued at the want of interest, and the 
 manner-of-course, with which St. John had received my animated 
 descriptions of the personal beauty of the Cherokee. 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 185 
 
 " I have hunted with the tiibe," was his only answer, " and 
 know their features." 
 
 " But she is not like them," I replied, with a tone of some im 
 patience ; "she is the beau ideal of a red skin, but it is with the 
 softened features of an Arab or an Egyptian. She is more wil 
 lowy than erect, and has no higher cheek-bones than the plaster 
 Yenus in your chambers. If it were not for the lambent fire in 
 her eye, you might take her, in the sculptured pose of her atti- 
 tudes, for an immortal bronze of Cleopatra. I tell you she is 
 divine." 
 
 St. John called to his dog, and we turned along the green bank 
 above the beach, with Mrs. Ilfrington's house in view, and so 
 opens a new chapter in my story. 
 
 IV. 
 
 In the united pictures of Paul Veronese and Raphael, steep- 
 ed as their colors seem to have been in the divinest age of 
 Venetian and Roman female beauty, I have scarcely found so 
 many lovely women, of so different models and so perfect, as were 
 assembled during my sophomore year under the roof of Mrs. II- 
 frington. They went about in their evening walks, graceful and 
 angelic, but, like the virgin pearls of the sea, they poured the 
 light of their loveliness on the vegetating oysters about them, and 
 no diver of fashion had yet taught them their value. Ignorant 
 myself, in those days, of the scale of beauty, their features are 
 enamelled in my memory, and I have tried insensibly by that 
 standard, (and found wanting), of every court in Europe the dames 
 most worshipped and highest born. Queen of the Sicilies, loveliest 
 in your own realm of sunshine and passion ! Pale and transpa- 
 parent Princess — pearl of the court of Florence— than whom the 
 
186 SUDDEN RECOGNITION. 
 
 creations on the immortal walls of the Pitti less discipline our eye 
 for the shapes of heaven ! Grips j of the Pactolus ! Jewess of the 
 rhracian Gallipolis ! Bright and gifted cynosure of the aris- 
 tocracy of England ! — ye are five women 1 have seen in as many 
 years' wandering over the world, lived to gaze npon, and live to 
 remember and admire — a constellation, I almost believe, that has 
 absorbed all the intensest light of the beauty of a hemisphere — 
 yet, with your pictures colored to life in my memory, and the 
 pride of rank and state thrown over most of you like an elevating 
 charm, I go back to the school of Mrs. Ilfrington, and (smile if 
 you will !) they were as lovely, and stately, and as worthy of the 
 worship of the world. 
 
 I introduced St. John to the young ladies as they came in. 
 Having never seen him, except in the presence of men, I was a 
 little curious to know whether his singular aplomb would serve 
 him as well with the other sex, of which I was aware he had had 
 very slender experience. My attention was distracted, at the mo- 
 ment of mentioning his name to a lovely little Georgian (with 
 eyes full of the liquid sunshine of the south), by a sudden bark of 
 joy from the dog, who had been left in the hall ; and, as the door 
 opened, and the slight and graceful Indian girl entered the room, 
 the usually unsocial animal sprang bounding in, lavishing caresses 
 on her, and seemingly wild with the delight of a recognition. 
 
 In the confusion of taking the dog from the room, I had agaic 
 lost the moment of remarking St. John's manner, and, on the en- 
 trance of Mrs. Ilfrington, Nunu was sitting calmly by the piano, 
 and my friend was talking in a quiet undertone with the passionate 
 Georgian. 
 
 " I must apologize for my dog," said St. John, bowing grace- 
 fully to the mistress of the house ; " he was bred by Indians, and 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 137 
 
 the sight of a Cherokee reminded him of happier days — as it did 
 his master." 
 
 Nunu turned her eyes quickly upon him, but immediately re- 
 sumed her apparent deep study of the abstruse figures in the Kid- 
 derminster carpet. 
 
 " You are well arrived, young gentlemen," said Mrs. Ilfring* 
 ton ; " we press you into our service for a botanical ramble. Mr. 
 Slingsby is at leisure, and will be delighted, I am sure. Shall I 
 say as much for you, Mr. St. John ?" 
 
 St. John bowed, and the ladies left the room for their bonnets 
 — Mrs. Ilfrington last. The door was scarcely closed when Nunu 
 reappeared, and, checking herself with a sudden feeling at the first 
 step over the threshold, stood gazing at St. John, evidently under 
 very powerful emotion. 
 
 "Nunu!" ho said, smiling slowly and unwillingly, and holding 
 out his hand with the air of one who forgives an ofi"ence. 
 
 She sprang upon his bosom with the bound of a leveret, and, be- 
 tween her fast kisses, broke the endearing epithets of her native 
 tongue, in words that I only understood by their passionate and 
 thrillin"; accent. The lano;uan;e of the heart is universal. 
 
 The fii'iv scholars came in, one after another, and we were soon 
 on our way through the green fields to the flowery mountain-sido 
 of East Rock : Mrs. Ilfrin2;ton's arm and conversation having 
 fallen to my share, and St. John rambling at largo with the rest 
 of the party, but more particularly beset by Miss Temple, whose 
 Christian name was Isabella, and whose Christian charity had no 
 bowels for broken hearts. 
 
 The most sociable individuals of the party for a while were Nunu 
 and Lash ; the dog\s recollections of the past, seeming, like those 
 «f wiser animals, more agreeable than the present. The Chero- 
 
188 RED-SKIN IN SOCIETY. 
 
 koe astonished Mrs. Ilfrington by an abandonment to joy and 
 frolic wliicli she had never displayed before — sometimes fairly out- 
 running the dog at full speed, and sometimes sitting down breath- 
 less upon a green bank, while the rude creature overpowered her 
 v>at]i his caresses. The scene gave origin to a grave discussion be- 
 tween that well-instructed lady and myself, upon the singular 
 force of childish association — the extraordinary intimacy between 
 the Indian and the trapper's dog being explained satisfactorily 
 (to her, at least) on that attractive principle. Had she but seen 
 Nunu spring into the bosom of my friend, half an hour before, she 
 might have added a material corollary to her proposition. If the 
 dog and the chief's daughter were not old friends, the chief's 
 daughter and St. John certainly were. 
 
 As well as I could judge by the motions of two people walking 
 before me, St. John was advancing fast in the favor and acquaint- 
 ance of the graceful Georgian. Her southern indolence was pro- 
 bably an apology in IMrs. Ilfrington's eyes for leaning heavily on 
 her companion's arm ; but, in a momentary halt, the capricious 
 beauty disembarrassed herself of the bright scarf that had floated 
 over her shoulders, and bound it playfully around his waist. This 
 was rather strong, on a first acquaintance, and Mrs. Ilfrington was 
 of that opinion. 
 
 " Miss Temple !" said she, advancing to whisper a reproof in 
 the beauty's ear. 
 
 Before she had taken a second step, Nunu bounded over the 
 low hedge, followed by the dog, with whom she had been chasing 
 a butterfly, and, springing upon St. John with eyes that flashed 
 fire, she tore the scarf into shreds, and stood trembling and pale, 
 with her feet on the silken fragments. 
 
 ^* IMadam !" said St. John, advancing to Mrs, Ilfrington, after 
 
EARLIER DAYS. igg 
 
 casting on the Cherokee a look of surprise and displeasure, ^' I 
 should have told you before that your pupil and myself are not 
 new acquaintances. Her father is my friend. I have hunted 
 with the tribe, and have hitherto looked upon Nunu as a child. 
 You will believe me, I trust, when I say her conduct surprises 
 me, and I beg to assure you that any influence I may have over 
 her will be in accordance with your own wishes exclusively. 
 
 His tone was cold, and Nunu listened with fixed lips and frown- 
 ing ej^es. 
 
 " Have you seen her since her arrival .^" asked Mrs. Ilfrington. 
 " My dog brought me yesterday the first intelligence that she 
 was here : he returned from his mornino- ramble with a strino- of 
 wampum about his neck, which had the mark of the tribe. He 
 was her gift," he added, patting the head of the dog, and looking 
 with a softened expression at Nunu, who dropped her head upon 
 her bosom, and walked on in tears. 
 
 V. 
 
 The chain of the Green Mountains, after a gallop of some five 
 hundred miles, from Canada to Connecticut, suddenly pulls up on 
 the shore of Lons^-Island Sound, and stands rearino; with a bristlinjr 
 mane of pine-trees, three hundred feet in air, as if checked in mid 
 career by the sea. Standing on the brink of this bold precipice, 
 you have the bald face of the rock in a sheer perpendicular below 
 you ; and, spreading away from the broken masses at its feet, lies 
 an emerald meadow, inlaid with a crystal and rambling river, 
 across which, at a distance of a mile or two, rise the spires of the 
 university, from what, else, were a thick-serried wilderness of elms. 
 Back from the edge of the precipice extends a wild forest of hem- 
 lock and fir, ploughed on its northren side by a mountain-torrent^ 
 
190 EFFECT OF INDIAx\ JEALOUSY. 
 
 wliose bed of marl, dry and overliung witli trees in the summer, 
 serves as a path and a guide from the plain to the summit. It 
 were a toilsome ascent but for that smooth and hard pavement, 
 and the impervious and green thatch of pine tassels overhung. 
 
 Antiquity in America extends no farther back than the days of 
 Cromwell, and East Rock is traditionary ground with us — for 
 there harbored the regicides Whalley and Goffe, and many a 
 breath-hushing tale is told of them over the smouldering log-fires 
 of Connecticut. Not to rob the historian, I pass on to say, that 
 this cavernous path to the mountain-top was the resort, in the 
 holyday sujnmer afternoons, of most of the poetical and otherwise 
 well-disposed gentlemen sophomores ; and, on the day of which I 
 speak, of Mrs. Ilfrington and her seven-and-twenty lovely scholars. 
 The kind mistress ascended with the assistance of my arm, and 
 St. John drew stoutly between Miss Temple and a fat young lady 
 with an incipient asthma. Nunu had not been seen since the first 
 cluster of hanging flowers had hidden her from our sight, as 
 she bounded upward. 
 
 The hour or two of slanting sunshine, pouring in upon the sum- 
 mit of the precipice from the west, had been sufficient to induce a 
 fine and silken moss to show its fibres and small blossoms above 
 the carpet of pine-tassels ; and, emerging from the brown shadow 
 of the wood, you stood on a verdant platform, the foliage of sigh- 
 ing trees overhead, a fairies' velvet beneath you, and a view be- 
 low that you may as well (if you would not die in your ignorance) 
 make a voyage or journey to see. 
 
 We found Nunu lying thoughtfully near the brink of the preci- 
 pice, and gazing ofi" over the waters of the Sound, as if she watch- 
 ed the coming or going of a friend under the white sails that spot- 
 ted its bosom. We recovered our breatli in silence, I alone, 
 
EARLIER BAYS. I9I 
 
 perhaps, of that considerable company, gazing with admiration at 
 the lithe and unconscious figure of grace lying in the attitude of 
 the Grecian Hermaphrodite on the brow of the rock before us. 
 Her eyes were moist and motionless with abstraction, her lips just 
 perceptibly curved in an expression of mingled pride and sorrow, 
 her small hand buried and clinched in the moss, and her left foot 
 and ankle, models of spirited symmetry, escaping carelessly from 
 her dress, the high instep strained back as if recovering from a 
 leap, with the tense control of emotion. 
 
 The game of the coquettish Georgian was well played. With 
 a true woman's pique, she had redoubled her attentions to my 
 friend from the moment that slio found it gave pain to another of 
 her sex ; and St. John, like most men, seemed not unwilling to 
 see a new altar kindled to his vanity, though a heart he had al- 
 ready won was stifling with the incense. Miss Temple was very 
 lovely. Her skin, of that teint of opaque and patrician white 
 which is found oftenest in Asian latitudes, was just perceptibly 
 warmed toward the centre of the cheek with a glow like sunshine 
 through the thick white petal of a magnolia ; her eyes were hazel, 
 with those inky lashes which enhance the expression a thousand- 
 fold, either of passion or melancholy ; her teeth were like strips 
 from the lily's heart ; and she was clever, captivating, and grace- 
 ful, and a thorough coquette. St. John was mysterious, romantic- 
 looking, superior, and, just now, the only victim in the way. He 
 admired, as all men do, those qualities which, to her own sex, ren- 
 dered the fair Isabella unamiable ; and yielded himself, as all 
 men will, a satisfied prey to enchantments of which he knew the 
 springs were the pique and vanity of the enchantress. How sin- 
 gular it is that the highest and best qualities of the female heart 
 are those with which men are most rarely captivated ! 
 
192 QUEER PLACE FOR A KEEPSAKE. 
 
 A rib of the mountain formed a natural seat a little Lack from 
 the pitch of the precipicej and here sat Miss Temple, triumphant 
 in drawing all eyes upon herself and her tamed lion ; her lap full of 
 flowers, which he had found time to gather on the way, and her white 
 hands employed in arranging a houqnet, of which the destiny was 
 yet a secret. Next to their own loves, ladies like nothing on 
 earth like mending or marring the loves of others ; and, while the 
 violets and already drooping wild flowers were coquettishly chosen 
 or rejected by those slender fingers, the sun might have swung 
 back to the east like a pendulum, and those seven-and-twenty 
 misses would have watched their lovely schoolfellow the same. 
 Nunu tui'ned her head slowly around, at last, and silently looked 
 on. St. John lay at the feet of the Greorgian, glancing from the 
 flowers to her face, and from her face to the flowers, with an ad- 
 miration not at all equivocal. Mrs. Ilfrington sat apart, absorbed 
 in finishing a sketch of New Haven ; and I, interested painfully in 
 watching the emotions of the Cherokee, sat with my back to the 
 trunk of a hemlock — the only spectator who comprehended the 
 whole extent of the drama. 
 
 A wild rose was set in the heart of the bouquet at last, a spear 
 of riband-grass added to give it grace and point, and nothing was 
 wanting but a string. Reticules were searched, pockets turned 
 inside out, and never a bit of riband to be found. The beauty 
 was in despair. 
 
 " Stay," said St. John, springing to his feet. " Lash ! Lash !" 
 
 The dog came coursing in from the wood, and crouched to his 
 master's hand. 
 
 " Will a string of wampum do .?" he asked, feeling under the 
 long hair on the dog's neck, and untying a fine and variegate(? 
 thread of many-colored beads, worked exquisitely. 
 
EARLIEK DAYS. 193 
 
 The dog growled, and Nunii sprang into the middle of the circle 
 with the fling of an adder, and, seizing the wampum as he handed 
 it to her rival, called the dog, and fastened it once more around 
 his neck. 
 
 The ladies rose in alarm ; the belle turned pale, and clung to 
 St. John's arm ; the dog, with his hair bristling upon his back, 
 stood close to her feet in an attitude of defiance ; and the superb 
 Indian, the peculiar genius of her beauty developed by her indig- 
 nation, her nostrils expanded, and her eyes almost showering fire 
 in their flashes, stood before them like a young Pythoness, ready 
 to strike them dead with a regard. 
 
 St. John recovered from his astonishment, after a moment, and, 
 leaving the arm of Miss Temple, advanced a step, and called to 
 his dog. 
 
 The Cherokee patted the animal on his back, and spoke to him 
 in her own language ; and, as St. John still advanced, Nunu drew 
 herself to her fullest height, placed herself before the dog, who 
 slunk growling from his master, and said to him, as she folded her 
 arms, " The wampum is mine." 
 
 St. John colored to the temples with shame. 
 
 " Lash !" he cried, stamping with his feet, and endeavoring to 
 fright him from his protectress. 
 
 The dog howled and crept away, half crouching with fear, 
 toward the precipice ; and St. John, shooting suddenly past Xunu, 
 seized him on the brink, and held him down by the throat. 
 
 The next instant, a scream of horror from Mrs. Ilfrington, fol- 
 lowed by a terrific echo from every female present, started the 
 rude Kentuckian to his feet. 
 
 Clear over the abyss, hanging with one hand by an ashen sap- 
 ling, the point of her tiny foot just j/oising on a projecting ledge 
 y 
 
194 SINGULAR COMPCL^^IOX. 
 
 of rock, swung the desperate Cherokee, sustaining herself witli 
 perfect ease, but with all the determination of her iron race col- 
 lected in calm concentration on her lips. 
 
 *' Restore the wampum to his neck," she cried, with a voice 
 that thrilled the very marrow with its subdued fierceness, " or my 
 blood rest on your soul !" 
 
 St. John flung it toward the dog, and clasped his hands in silent 
 horror. 
 
 The Cherokee bore down the sapling till its slender stem crack- 
 ed with the tension, and, rising lightly with the rebound, alit like a 
 feather upon the rock. The subdued student sprang to her side ; 
 but with scorn on her lip, and the flush of exertion already vanish- 
 ed from her cheek, she called to the dog, and with rapid strides 
 took her wa}^ alone down the mountain. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Five years had elapsed. I had put to sea from the sheltered 
 river of boj^hood — had encountered the storms of a first entrance 
 into life — had trimmed my boat, shortened sail, and, with a sharp 
 eye to windward, was laying fairly on my course. Among others 
 from whom I had parted company was Paul St. John, who had 
 shaken hands with me at the university gate, leaving me, after 
 four years' intimacy, as much in doubt as to his real character 
 and history as the fii-st day we met. I had never heard him 
 speak of either father or mother, nor had he, to my knowledge, 
 received a letter, from the day of his matriculation. He passed 
 his vacations at the university ; he had studied well, yet refused 
 one of the highest college honors ofiered him with his degree ; he 
 had shown many good qualities, yet some unaccountable faults ; 
 and, all in all, was an enigma to myself and the class. I know 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 195 
 
 liim clever, accomplished, and conscious of superiority ; and my 
 knowledge went no farther. The coach was at the gate, and I 
 was there to see him off ; and, after four years' constant associa- 
 tion, I had not an idea where he was going, or to what he was des 
 tined. The driver blew his horn. 
 
 " God bless you, Slingsby !" 
 
 " God bless you, St. John !" 
 
 And so we parted. 
 
 It was five years from this time, I say, and, in the bitter strug 
 gles of first manhood, I had almost forgotten there was such a 
 bcmg in the world. Late in the month of October, in 1829, I 
 was on my way westward, giving myself a vacation from the law 
 I embarked, on a clear and delicious day, in the small steamier 
 which plies up and down the Cayuga Lake, looking forward to a 
 calm feast of scenery, and caring little who were to be my fellow- 
 passengers. As wc got out of the little harbor of Cayuga, I 
 walked astern for the first time, and saw the not very unusual 
 sight of a group of Indians standing motionless by the wheel. 
 They were chiefs, returning from a diplomatic visit to Wash- 
 ington. 
 
 I sat down by the companion-ladder, and opened soul and eye 
 to the glorious scenery we were gliding through. The first severe 
 frost had come, and the miraculous change had passed upon the 
 leaves which is known only in America. The blood-red sugar 
 maple, with a leaf brighter and more delicate than a Circassian 
 lip, stood here and there in the forest like the Sultan's standard in 
 a host — the solitary and far- seen aristocrat of the wilderness ; the 
 birch, with its spirit-like and amber leaves, ghosts of the departed 
 summer, turned out along the edges of the woods like a lining of 
 the palest gold ; the broad sycamore and the fan-like catalpa 
 
196 WHAT AUTUMN IS LIKE. 
 
 flaunted their saffron foliage in the sun, spotted with gold like the 
 wings of a lady -bird ; the kingly oak, with its summit shaken bare, 
 still hid its majestic trunk in a drapery of sumptuous d3^es, like a 
 stricken monarch, gathering his robes of state about him to die 
 royally in his purple ; the tall poplar, with its minaret of silver 
 leaves, stood blanched like a coward in the dying forest, burthen- 
 ing every breeze with its complainings ; the hickory paled through 
 its enduring green ; the bright berries of the mountain-ash flushed 
 with a more sanguine glory in the unobstructed sun ; the gaudy 
 tulip-tree, the Sybarite of vegetation, stripped of its golden cups, 
 still drank the intoxicating light of noonday, in leaves than which 
 the lip of an Indian shell was never more delicately tinted ; the 
 still deeper-dyed vines of the lavish wilderness, perishing with the 
 noble things whose summer they had shared, outshone them in 
 their decline, as won an in her death is heavenlier tlian the being 
 on whom in life she leaned ; and, alone and un sympathizing in this 
 universal decay, outlaws from Nature, stood the fir and the hem- 
 lock, their frowning and sombre heads darker and less lovely than 
 ever, in contrast with the death-struck glory of their companions. 
 
 The dull colors of English autumnal foliage, give you no con- 
 ception of this marvellous phenomenon. The change there is 
 gradual ; in America it is the work of a night — of a single frost ! 
 
 Oh, to have seen the sun set on hills bright in the still green 
 and lingering summer, and to wake in the morning to a spectacle 
 like this ! 
 
 It is as if a myriad of rainbows were laced through the tree- 
 tops ; as if the sunsets of a summer — gold, purple, and crimson 
 ■ — had been fused in the alembic of the west, and poured back in 
 a new deluo;e of lio;ht and color over the wilderness. It is as if 
 
 o o 
 
 every leaf, in those countless trees, had been painted to oiitflush 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 197 
 
 the tulip ; as if, by some electric miracle, the dyes of the earth's 
 heart had struck upward, and her cry8tals and ores, her sap- 
 phires, hyacinths, and rubies, had let forth their imprisoned colors, 
 to mount through the roots of the forest, and, like the angels that 
 in olden time entered the body of the dying, re-animatc the per- 
 ishing leaves, and revel an hour in their bravery, 
 
 I was sitting by the companion-ladder, thinking to what on 
 earth these masses of foliage could be resembled, when a dog 
 sprang upon my knees, and, the moment after, a hand was laid 
 on my shoulder. 
 
 " St. John ? Impossible !" 
 
 " Bodily !" answered my quondam classmate. 
 
 I looked at him with astonishment. The soigne man of fashion 
 I had once known, was enveloped in a kind of hunter's frock, 
 loose and large, and girded to his waist by a belt ; his hat was 
 exchanged for a cap of rich otter skin ; his pantaloons spread 
 with a slovenly carelessness over his feet ; and, altogether, there 
 was that in his air which told me, at a glance, that he had re- 
 nounced the world. Lash had recovered his lameness, and, after 
 wagging out his joy, he crouched between my feet, and lay look- 
 ing into my face, as if he were brooding over the more idle days 
 in which we had been acquainted. 
 
 " And where are you bound ?" I asked, having answered the 
 same question for myself. 
 
 " Westward, with the chiefs !" 
 
 " For how long .'" 
 
 " For the remainder of my life." 
 
 I could not forbear an exclamation of surprise. 
 
 " You would wonder less," said he, with an impatient gesture, 
 " if you knew more of me. And, by-the-way," he added, with 
 
198 SKETCH OF AN ADVKMIJPKR. 
 
 a smile, " I think I never told you tlic first half of the story — 
 my life up to the time I met you." 
 
 " It was not for want of a catcchist " I answered, settling my- 
 self in an attitude of attention. 
 
 " No ; and I was often tempted to gratify your curiosity. Eut, 
 from the little intercourse I had with the world, I had adopted 
 some precocious principles ; and one was, that a man's inilucncc, 
 over others, was vulgarized and diminished by a knowledge of his 
 history." 
 
 I smiled ; and, as the boat sped on her way over the calm 
 waters of the Cayuga, St. John went on leisurely with a story 
 which is scarce remarkable enough for a repetition. He believed 
 himself the natural son of a \Yestern hunter ; but only knew 
 that lie had passed his early youth on the borders of civilization, 
 between whites and Indians, and that he had been more particu- 
 larly indebted for protection to the father of Nunu. Mingled 
 ambition and curiosity had led him Eastward, while still a lad ; 
 and a year or two of a most vagabond life in the different cities, 
 had taught him the caution and bitterness for which he was so 
 remarkable. A fortunate experiment in lotteries supplied him 
 with the means of education ; and, with singular application in a 
 youth of such wandering habits, he had applied himself to study 
 under a private master, fitted himself for the university in half 
 the usual time, and cultivated, in addition, the literary taste 
 which I have remarked upon. 
 
 " This," he said, smiling at my look of astonishment, '* brings 
 me up to the time when we met. I came to college at the age 
 of eighteen, with a few hundred dollars in my pocket — some 
 pregnant experience of the rough side of the world — great con- 
 fidence in myself, and distrust of others, and, I believe, a kind 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 199 
 
 of instinct of goc I manners, which made me ambitious of shining 
 iu society. You were a witness to my dehut. Miss Temple was 
 the first highly-educated woman I had ever known, and you saw 
 her effect on me." 
 
 " And — since we parted V 
 
 " Oh, since we parted, my life has been vulgar enough. I have 
 ransacked civilized life to the bottom, and found it a heap of un- 
 redeemed falsehoods. I do not say it from common disappoint- 
 ment ; for I may say I succeeded in everything I undertook — " 
 
 " Except Miss Temple," I said, interrupting, at the hazard of 
 wounding him. 
 
 " No ; she was a coquette, and I pursued her till I had my 
 ttirn. You see me in my new character now. But a month ago, 
 I was the Apollo of Saratoga, playing my own game with Miss 
 Temple. I left her for a woman worth ten thousand of her ; 
 and here she is." 
 
 As Nunu came up the companion-way from the cabin, I thought 
 I had never seen breathing creature so exquisitely lovely. With 
 the exception of a pair of brilliant moccasins on her feet, she 
 was dressed in the usual manner, but with the most absolute sim- 
 plicity. She had changed, in those five years, from the child to 
 the woman, and, with a round, well-developed figure, additional 
 height, and manners at once gracious and dignified, she walked 
 and looked the chieftain's daughter. St. John took her hand, 
 and gazed on her with moisture in his eyes. 
 
 " That I could ever have put a creature like this," he said, 
 * into comparison with the dolls of civilization !" 
 
 We parted at Buffalo ; St. John, with his wife and the chiefs, 
 to pursue their way westward, by Lake Erie ; and I, to go moral- 
 izmg on my way to Niagara. 
 
F. SMITH. 
 
 " Nature had made him for some other planet, 
 And pressed his soul into a human shape 
 By accident or malice.'' — Coleridge. 
 
 " I'll have you chronicled, and clironicled, and cut-and-chronicled, and s&ng in all- 
 to-be-praisea sonnets, and graved in new brave ballads, that all tongues shall troula 
 you." — Philaster. 
 
 If you can imagine a buried Titian, lying along tlie length of 
 a continent, with one arm stretched out into the midst of the sea 
 — the place to which I would transport you, reader mine ! — would 
 lie, as it were, in the palm of the giant's hands. The small pro- 
 montory to which I refer, which becomes an island in certain 
 states of the tide, is at the end of one of the long capes of Mas- 
 pachusets, and is still called by its Indian name, Nahant. Not 
 to make you uncomfortable, I beg to introduce you, at once, to a 
 pretentious hotel, " squat like a toad," upon the unsheltered and 
 highest point of this citadel in mid sea, and a very great resort 
 for the metropolitan New-Englanders. Nahant is, perhaps, liber- 
 ally measured — a square half mile ; and it is distant from what 
 may fairly be called mainland, perhaps a league. 
 
 Koad to Nahant there is nono. The oi polloi go there by steam *, 
 but when the tide is down, you may diive there with a thousand 
 chariots, over the bottom of the sCa. As I .suppose there is not 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 201 
 
 such another place in the known world, my tale will wait while I 
 desci ibe it more fully. If the Bible had been a fiction (not to 
 speak profanely), I should have thought the idea of the destruc- 
 tion of Pharaoh and his host, had its origin in some such wonder 
 of nature. 
 
 Nahant is so far out into the ocean, that what is called the 
 " ground swell," the majestic heave of its great bosom going on 
 for ever like respiration fthough its face may be like a mirror 
 beneath the sun, and a wind may not have crisped its surface for 
 days and weeks), is as broad and powerful within a rood of the 
 shore, as it is a thousand miles at sea. 
 
 The promontory, itself, is never wholly left by the ebb ; but, 
 from its western extremity, there runs a narrow ridge, scarce 
 broad enough for a horse-path, impassible for the rocks and sea- 
 weed of which it is matted, and extending at just high-water 
 mark from Nahant to the mainland. Seaward from this ridge, 
 which is the only connection of the promontory with the Continent, 
 descends an expanse of sand, left bare six hours out of the twelve 
 by the retreating sea, as smooth and hard as marble, and as broad, 
 and apparently as level, as the plain of the Hermus. For three 
 miles it stretches away without shell or stone, a surface of white, 
 fine-grained sand, beaten so hard by the eternal hammer of the 
 surf that the hoof of a horse scarce marks it, and the heaviest 
 wheel leaves it as printless as a floor of granite. This will be 
 easily understood, when you remember the tremendous rise and 
 fall of the ocean swell, from the very bosom of which, in all its 
 breadth and strength, roll in the waves of the flowing tide, break- 
 ing down on the beach, every one, with the thunder of a host pre- 
 cipitated from the ])attlGments of a castle. Nothing could be more 
 solemn and anthem-like, than the succession of these plunging 
 
202 WONDERS OF NAHANT. 
 
 surges. And when the " tenth wavb" gathers, far out at sea, 
 and rolls onward to the shore — first with a glassy and heaving 
 swell, as if some mighty monster were lurching inland beneath 
 the water, and then, bursting up into foam, with a front like an 
 endless and sparry crystal wall, advances and overwhelms every- 
 thing in its progress, till it breaks with a centupled thunder on 
 the beach — ^it has seemed to me, standing there, as if thus might 
 have beaten the first surge on the shore after the fiat which 
 " divided sea and land." I am no Cameronian, but the sea (my- 
 self on shore) always drives me to Scripture for an illustration 
 of my feelings. 
 
 The promontory of Nahant must be based on the earth's axle, 
 else I cannot imagine how it should have lasted so long. In the 
 mildest weather, the ground-swell of the sea gives it a fillip at 
 every heave, that would lay the " castled crag of Brachenfels" 
 as low as Memphis. The wine trembles in your beaker of claret, 
 as you sit after dinner at the hotel ; and, if you look out at the 
 eastern balcony, (for it is a wooden pagoda, with balconies, ver- 
 andahs, and colonnades ad libitum j) you will see the grass breath- 
 less in the sunshine upon the lawn, and the ocean as polished and 
 calm as MiladVs brow beyond, and yet the spray and foam dash- 
 ing fifty feet into the air between, and enveloping the " Devil's 
 Pulpit" (a tall rock, split ofi" from the promontory's front) in a 
 perpetual kaleidoscope of mist and rainbows. Take the trouble 
 to transport yourself there ! I will do the remaining honors on 
 the spot. A cavern, as cool (not as silent) as those of Tropho- 
 nius, lies just under the brow of yonder precipice, and the waiter 
 shall come after us with our wine. You have dined with the 
 Borromeo, in the grotto of Isola Bella, I doubt not, and know 
 the perfection of art — I will show you that oi nature. (I should 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 203 
 
 like to transport you, for a similar contrast, from Terni to 
 Niagara, or from San Giovanni Laterano to an aisle in a forest of 
 Michigan ; but the Dcedalian mysterj, alas ! is unsolved. We 
 "fly not yet." 
 
 Here we are, then, in the " Swallow's Cave." The floor de- 
 scends by a gentle declivity to the sea, and, from the long, dark 
 cleft, stretching outward, you look forth upon the broad Atlantic 
 — the shore of Ireland, the first terra Jirma in the path of your 
 eye. Here is a dark pool, left by the retreating tide for a refri- 
 gerator ; and, with the champagne in the midst, we will recline 
 about it like the soft Asiatics, of whom we learned pleasure in the 
 East, and drink to the small-featured and purple-lipped " Mig- 
 nons" of Syria — those flue-limbed and fiery slaves, adorable as 
 Peris, and, by turns, languishing and stormy, whom you buy for 
 a pinch of piastres (say, £5 5s.) in sunny Damascus. Your 
 drowsy Circassian, faint and dreamy, or you crockery Georgian — 
 fit dolls for the sensual Turk — is, to him who would buy soul, 
 dear at a penny the hecatomb. 
 
 We recline, as it were, in an ebon pyramid, with a hundred 
 feet of floor and sixty of wall, and the fourth side open to the 
 sky. The light comes in, mellow and dim, and the sharp edges 
 of the rocky portal seem let into the pearly arch of heaven. The 
 tide is at half-ebb, and the advancing and retreating waves, 
 which, at flrst, just lifted the fringe of crimson dulse at the lip 
 of the cavern, now dash their spray-pearls on the rock below, the 
 " tenth" surge alone rallying, as if in scorn of its retreating 
 fellows, and, lilie the chieftain of Culloden IMoor, rushing back 
 singly to the contest. And now that the waters reach the en- 
 trance no more, come forward, and look on the sea ! The 
 swell lifts ! Would you not think the bases of the earth rising 
 
204 TALK BY THE SEA. 
 
 beneath it ? It falls ? Would you not tliink the fodndation of 
 the deep had given way ? A plain, broad enough for the navies 
 of the world to ride at large, heaves up evenly and steadily, as if 
 it would lie against the sky, rests a moment spell- Dound in its 
 place, and falls again as far — the respiration of a sleeping child 
 not more regular and full of slumber. It is only on the shore 
 that it chafes. Blessed emblem ! it is at peace with itself ! The 
 rocks war with a nature so unlike their own, and the hoarse din, 
 of their border onsets, resounds through the caverns they have 
 rent open ; but beyond, in the calm bosom of the ocean, what 
 heavenly dignity ! what godlike unconsciousness of alarm ! I 
 did not think we should stumble on such a moral in the cave ! 
 
 By the deeper base of its hoarse organ, the sea is now playing 
 upon its lowest stops, and the tide is down. Hear ! how it 
 rushes in beneath the rocks, broken and stilled in its tortuous 
 way, till it ends with a washing and dull hiss among the sea-weed, 
 and, like a myriad of small tinkling bells, the dripping from the 
 crags is audible. There is fine music in the sea ! 
 
 And now the beach is bare. The cave begins to cool and 
 darken, and the first gold tint of sunset is stealing into the sky, 
 and the sea looks of a changing opal, green, pui-ple, and white, 
 as if its floor were paved with pearl, and the changing light 
 struck up through the waters. And there heaves a ship into the 
 horizon, like a white-winged bird, lying with dark breast on the 
 waves, abandoned of the sea-breeze within sight of port, and re- 
 pelled even by the spicy breath that comes with a welcome off 
 the shore. She conxes from " merry England." She is freighted 
 with more than merchandise. The home-sick exile will gaze oh 
 her snowy sail as she sets in with the morning breeze, and bless 
 it ; for the wind that first filled it on its way, swept through the 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 205 
 
 green vulley of his liome ! What links of human affection bringa 
 she over the sea ? How much comes in her that is not in her 
 *' bill of lading," yet worth, to the heart that is waiting for it, a 
 thousand times the purchase of her whole venture ? 
 
 Mais mcntons nous ! I hear the small hoofs of Thalaba ; my 
 stanhope waits ; we will leave this half bottle of champagne, that 
 " remainder biscuit," and the echoes of our philosophy, to the 
 Naiads who have lent us their drawing-room. Undine, or Egeria ! 
 Lurly, or Arethusa ! whatever thou art called, nymph of this 
 shadowy cave ! adieu ! 
 
 Slowly, Thalaba ! Tread gingerly down this rocky descent ! 
 So ! Here we are, on the floor of the vasty deep ! What a glori- 
 ous race-course ! The polished and printless sand spreads away 
 before you, as far as the eye can see, the surf comes in below, 
 breast-high ere it breaks, and the white fringe of the sliding wave 
 shoots up the beach, but leaves room for the marching of a Per- 
 sian phalanx on the sands it has deserted. Oh, how noiselessly 
 runs the wheel, and how dreamily we glide along, feeling our mo- 
 tion but in the resistance of the wind, and in the trout-like pull of 
 the ribands by the excited animal before us. Mark the color of 
 the sand ! White at high-water mark, and thence deepening to 
 a silvery gray as the water has evaporated less — a slab of Egyp- 
 tian granite in the obelisk of St. Peter's not more polished and 
 unimpressible. Shell or rock, weed or quicksand, there is none ; 
 and, mar or deface its bright surface as you will, it is ever beaten 
 down anew, and washed even of the dust of the foot of man, by 
 the returning sea. You may write upon its fine-grained face with 
 a crowquill — you may course over its dazzling expanse with a 
 troop of chariots. 
 
 Most wondrous and beautiful of all, within twenty yards of the 
 
206 A TROT Ox\ THE BEACH. 
 
 Burf, or for an hour after the tide has left the sand, it holds the 
 water without losing its firmness, and is like a gray mirror, bright 
 as the bosom of the sea. (By your leave, Thalaba !) And now 
 lean over the dasher, and see those small fetlocks striking up from 
 beneath — the flying mane, the thorough-bred action, the small and 
 expressive head, as perfect in the reflection as in the reality ; like 
 Wordsworth's swan, he 
 
 " Trots double, horse and shadow." 
 
 You would swear you were skimming the surface of the sea ; and 
 the delusion is more complete, as the white foam of the " tenth 
 wave" skims in beneath wheel and hoof, and you urge on, with the 
 treacherous element gliding away visibly beneath you. 
 
 We seem not to have driven fast, yet three miles, fairly mea- 
 sured, are left behind, and Thalaba's blood is up. Fine creature ! 
 I would not give hi'Ji 
 
 '• For the best horse the Sun has in his stable." 
 
 We have won cbaiupagne ere now, Thalaba, and I, trotting on 
 this silveiy beach ; and if ever old age comes on me, and I intend 
 it never shall, on aught save my mortal coil, (my spirit vowed to 
 perpetual youth), I think these vifal breczas, and a trot on these 
 exhilarating sands, would sooner renew my prime than a rock in 
 St. Hilary's cradle, or a dip in the well of Kanathos. May wo 
 try the experiment together, gentle reader ! 
 
 I am not settled in my own mind whether this description ot 
 one of my favorite haunts in America was written most to intro- 
 duce the story that is to follow, or the story to introduce the de- 
 scription. Possibly the latter, for, having consumed my callow 
 youth in wandering "to and fro in the earth," like Sathanas of 
 old, and looking on my country now with an eye from which all 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 207 
 
 tbe minor and temporary features have gradually faded, I find my 
 pride in it (after its glory as a republic) settling principally on 
 the superior handiwork of nature in its land and water. When I 
 talk of it DOW, it is looking through another's eyes — his who lis- 
 tens. I do not describe it after my own memory of what it was 
 once to mCj but according to my idea of what it will seem now to a 
 stranger. Hence I speak not of the friends I made, rambling by 
 lake or river. The lake and the river are there, but the friends 
 are changed — to themselves and me. I speak not of the lovely 
 and loving ones that stood by me, looking on glen or waterfall. 
 The glen and the waterfall are romantic still, but the form and 
 the heart that breathed through it are no longer lovely or loving. 
 I should renew my joys by the old mountain and river, for, all 
 they ever were I should find them still, and never seem to myself 
 grown old, or cankered of the world, or changed in form or spirit, 
 while they reminded me but of my youth, with their familiar sun- 
 shine and beauty. But the friends that I knew — as I knew them 
 — are dead. They look no longer the same ; they have another 
 heart in them ; the kindness of the eye, the smilingness of the lip, 
 are no more there. Philosophy tells me, the material and living 
 body changes and renews, particle by particle, with time ; and ex- 
 perience — cold-blooded and stony monitor — tells me, in his frozen 
 monotone, that heart and spirit change with it and renew ! But 
 the name remains, mockery that it is ! and the memory some- 
 times ; and so these apparitions of the past — that we almost fear 
 to question when they encounter us, lest the change they have un- 
 dergone should freeze our blood — stare coldly on us, yet call us 
 by name, and answer, though coldly to their own, and have that 
 terrible similitude to what they were, mingled with their unsym- 
 pathizing and hollow mummery, that we wish the grave of the 
 
208 STUFF FOR FRIENDSHIPS. 
 
 past, with all that it contained of kind or lovely, had been sealed 
 for ever. The heart we have lain near before our birth (so read 
 I the book of human life) is the only one that cannot forget 
 that it has loved us. As we once wove the sentiment into a 
 verse : — 
 
 " Mother ! dear mother ! the feelings nurst 
 As I hung at thy bosom, clung round thee fir st— - 
 'Twas the earliest link in love's warm chain, 
 'Tis the only one that will long remain ; 
 And as, year by year, and day by day, 
 Some friend, still trusted, drops away, 
 Mother ! dear mother ! oh. dost thou see 
 How the shortened chain brings me nearer thee P^ 
 
 II. 
 
 I have observed that of all the friends one has in the course of 
 his life, the truest and most attached is exactly the one who, from 
 his dissimilarity to yourself, the world finds it very odd you should 
 fancy. We hear sometimes of lovers who '^ are made for each 
 other," but rarely of the same natural match in friendship. It is 
 no great marvel. In a world like this, where we pluck so despe- 
 rately at the fruit of plea&.ire, we prefer for company those who 
 are not formed with precisely the same palate as ourselves. You 
 will seldom go wrong, dear reader, if you refer any human ques- 
 tion about which you are in doubt, to that icy oracle — selfishness. 
 
 My shadow for many years was a gentle monster, whom I have 
 before mentioned, baptized by the name of Forbearance Smith. 
 He was k Vermontese, a descendant of one of the Puritan Pilgrims, 
 and the first of his family who had left the Grreen Mountains since 
 the flight of the regicides to America. We assimilate to what wo 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 209 
 
 live amon^, and Forbearance was very green^ and very like a 
 mcuntain. He had a general resemblance to one of Thorwald- 
 sen's unfinished apostles — larger than life, and just hewn into out- 
 line. My acquaintance with him commenced during my first year 
 at the university. He stalked into my room one morning with a 
 hair-trunk on his back, and handed me the following note from 
 the tutor : — 
 
 '' Sir : The Faculty have decided to impose upon you the fine 
 of ten dollars and damages, for painting the president's horse, on 
 Sabbath night, while grazing on the college green. They, more- 
 over, have removed Freshman Wilding from your rooms, and ap- 
 point, as your future chum, the studious and exemplary bearer, 
 Forbearance Smith, to whom you are desired to show a becoming 
 respect. 
 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 
 "Erasmus Snufflegreek. 
 
 " To Freshman Sling shy. '''^ 
 
 Rather relieved by my lenient sentence (for, till the next shed- 
 ding of his well-saturated coat, the sky-blue body and red mane 
 and tail of the president's once gray mare would interfere with 
 that esteemed animal's usefulness), I received Mr. Smith with 
 more^ politeness than he expected. He deposited his hair-trunk 
 in the vacant bedroom, and remarked with a good-humored smile 
 that it was a cold morning ; and seating himself in my easiest chair, 
 opened his Euclid, and went to work upon a problem, as perfectly 
 at home as if he had furnished the room himself, and lived in it 
 from his matriculation. I had expected some preparatory apolo- 
 gy at least, and was a little annoyed ; but, being upon my good 
 behavior, I bit my lips, and resumed the " Art of Love," upon 
 
210 MODEL RECEPiION OF AN INSULT. 
 
 which 1 was just then practising my nascent Latinity, instead of 
 calculating logarithms for recitation. In about an hour, my new 
 chum suddenly vociferated " Eureka /" shut up his book, and 
 having stretched himself, (a very unnecessary operation), coolly 
 walked to my dressing-table, selected my best hair-brush, redo- 
 lent of Macassar, and used it with the greatest apparent satisfac- 
 tion. 
 
 " Have you done with that hair-brush ?" I asked, as he laid it 
 in its place again. 
 
 "Oh yes!" 
 
 " Then, perhaps, you will do me the favor to throw it out of 
 the window." 
 
 He did it without the slightest hesitation. He then resumed 
 his seat by the fire, and I went on with my book in silence. 
 Twenty minutes had elapsed, when he rose very deliberately, and, 
 without a word of preparation, gave me a cufi" that sent me flying 
 into the wood-basket in the corner behind me. As soon as I 
 could pick myself out, I flew upon him, but I might as well have 
 grappled with a boa-constrictor. He held me ofi" at arm's length 
 till I was quite exhausted with rage, and, at last, when I could 
 struggle no more, I found breath to ask him what the devil he 
 meant. 
 
 '' To resent what seemed to me, on reflection, to be an insult," 
 he answered, in the calmest tone, " and now to ask your pardon 
 for a fault of ignorance. The first was due to myself, the second 
 to you." 
 
 Thenceforth, to the surprise of everybody and Bob Wilding and 
 the tutor, we were inseparable. I took Bruin (by a double elision 
 Forlearanct became " htar^'' and by a paraphrase Bruin^ and he 
 answered to ihQ name) — I took him, I say, to the omnium shop, 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 211 
 
 and preseniod hini with a dressing-case, and other appliances for 
 his outer man ; and, as my inntr man was relatively as much in 
 need of his assistance, we mutually improved. I instructed him 
 in poetry and politeness, and he returned the lesson in problems 
 and politics. My star was never in more fortunate conjunction. 
 
 Four years had woven their threads of memory about us, and 
 there was never woof more free from blemish. Our friendship 
 was proverbial. All that much care and Macassar could do for 
 Bruin had been done, but there was no abating his seven feet of 
 stature, nor reducing the size of his feet proper, nor making the 
 muscles of his face answer to their natural wires. At his most 
 placid smile, a strange waiter would run for a hot towel and the 
 doctor ; (colic was not more like itself than that like colic) ; and 
 for his motions — oh Lord ! a skeleton, with each individual bone 
 app_^ndjd to its neighbor with a string, would execute a jpas seul 
 with the same expression. His mind, however, had none of the 
 ftv.kwardness of his body. A simplicity and truth, amounting to 
 the greatest ndivcfe^ and a fatuitous unconsciousness of the effect 
 on beholders of his outer man, were its only approaches to fault 
 or foible. With the finest sense of the beautiful, the most uner- 
 ring judgment in literary taste, the purest romance, a fervid en- 
 thusiasm, constancy, courage, and good temper, he walked about 
 the world in a mask — an admirable creature, in the guise and 
 seennng of a ludicrous monster. 
 
 Bruin was sensitive on but one point. He never could forgive 
 his father and mother for the wrong they had entailed on him at 
 his baj)tism. " Forbearance Smith !" he would say to himself 
 sometimes in unconscious soliloquy, " they should have given me 
 the virtue as well as the name !" And then he would sit with a 
 pen, and scrawl " F. Smith" on a sheet of paper by the hour to- 
 
212 EXCUSES FOR INCONSTANCY. 
 
 gether. To insist upon knowing his Christian name was the one 
 impertinence he never forgave. 
 
 III. 
 
 My party at Nahant consisted of Thalaba, Forbearance, and 
 myself. The place was crowded, but^I passed my time very 
 much between my horse and my friend, and was as certain to be 
 found on the beach, when the tide was down, as the sea to have 
 left the sands. Job (a synonyme for Forbearance which became, 
 at this time, his common sobriquet) was, of course, in love. Not 
 the least to the prejudice, however, of his last faithful passion — 
 for he was as fond of the memory of an old love, as he was tender in 
 the presence of the new. I intended to have had him dissected 
 after his death, to see whether his organization was not poculiar. 
 I strongly incline to the opinion that we should have found a mir- 
 ror in the place of his heart. Strange ! how the same man who 
 is so fickle in love, will be so constant in friendship ! But is it 
 fickleness ? Is it not rather a superjlw of tenderness in the na- 
 ture, which overflows to all who approach the fountain ? I have 
 ever observed that the most susceptible men are the most remark- 
 able for the finer qualities of character. They are more generous, 
 more delicate, and of a more chivalrous complexion altogether, 
 than other men. It was surprising how reasonably Bruin 
 would argue upon this point. " Because I was happy at Ni- 
 agara," he was saying one day as we sat upon the rocks, *' shall 1 
 take no pleasure in the Falls of Montmorenci Because the sun- 
 set was glorious yesterday, shall I find no beauty in that of to-day ? 
 Is my fancy to be used but once, and the key turned upon it for 
 ever ? Is the heart like a lonhon^ to be eaten up by the first fa- 
 vorite, and thought of no more .? Are our eyes blind, save to one 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 213 
 
 shape of beauty ? Are our ears insensible to the music, save of 
 
 one voice 
 
 ?" 
 
 " But do you not weaken the heart, and become incapable of a 
 lasting attachment, by this habit of inconstancy ?" 
 
 " How long, my dear Phil, will you persist in talking as if the 
 heart were material, and held so much love, as a cup so much 
 water, and had legs to be weary, or organs to grow dull ? How is 
 my sensibility lessened — how my capacity enfeebled ? Vvliat 
 would I have done for my first love, that I would not do for my 
 last ? I would have sacrificed my life to secure the happiness of 
 one you wot of, in days gone by ; I would jump into the sea, if it 
 would make Blanche Carroll happier to-morrow." 
 
 " Sautez-doncP'* said a thrilling voice behind ; and, as if the 
 utterance of her name had conjured her out of the ground, the ob- 
 ject of all Job's admiration, and a little of my own, stood before 
 us. She had a work-basket in her hand, a gipsy-hat tossed care- 
 lessly on her head, and had preceded a whole troop of belles and 
 matrons, who were coming out to while away the morning, and 
 breathe the invigorating sea-air, on the rocks. 
 
 Blanche Carroll was what the women would call " a little love ;" 
 but that phrase of endearment would not at all express the feel- 
 ing with which she inspired the men. She was small, and her 
 face and figure might have been framed in fairy-land for bewitch- 
 ing beauty ; but, with the manner of a spoiled child, and, appa- 
 rently, the most thoughtless playfulness of mind, she was as veri- 
 table a little devil as ever took the shape of a woman. Scarce 
 seventeen at this time, she had a knowledge of character that was 
 like an instinct, and was an accomplished actress in any part it 
 was necessary for her purpose to play. No grave Machiavel ever 
 managed his cards with more finesse, than that little intriguante^ 
 
214 BLANCHE CARROLL. 
 
 the limited world of wliicli slie was the star. She was a natural 
 master-spirit and plotter ; and the talent that would have em- 
 ployed itself in the deeper game of politics, had she been horn a 
 woman of rank in Europe, displayed itself, in the simple society 
 of a Kepublic, in subduing to her power everything in the shape 
 of a sino-le man that ventured to her net. I have nothinp; to tell 
 of her, at all commensurate with the character I have drawn ; for 
 the disposal of her own heart, (if she has one,) must, of course, 
 be the most important event of her life ; but, I merely pencil the 
 outline of the portrait, in passing, as a specimen of the material 
 that exists — even in the simplest society — for the dramatis 'per- 
 sons of a court. 
 
 We followed the light-footed beauty to the shelter of one of the 
 caves opening on the sea, and seated ourselves about her upon 
 the rocks. Some one proposed that Job or myself should read. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Smith," interrupted the belle, " where is my brace- 
 let } and where are my verses ?" 
 
 At the ball the night before, she had dropped a bracelet in the 
 waltz, and Job had been permitted to take care of the fragments, 
 on condition of restoring them, with a sonnet, the next morning. 
 She had just thought of it. 
 
 "Read them out! read them out!" she cried, as Job, blush- 
 ing a deep blue, extracted a tri-colored pink document from his 
 pocket, and tried to give it to her unobserved, with the packet of 
 jewelry. Job looked at her imploringly, and she took the verses 
 from his hand, and ran her eye through them. 
 
 Pretty well !" she said ; " but the last line might be improved. 
 Give me a pencil, some one !" And bending over it, till her 
 luxuriant hair concealed her fairy fingers in their employment, 
 she wrote a moment upon her knee, and, tossing the paper to me. 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 215 
 
 bade me read it out with the emendation. Bruin had, meantime, 
 modestly disappeared, and I read with the more freedom— 
 
 'Twas broken in the gliding dance, 
 
 When thou wert in thy dream of power ; 
 When shape and motion, tone and glance, 
 
 Were glorious all — the woman's hour ! 
 The light lay soft upon thy brow, 
 
 The music melted in thine ear, 
 And one, perhaps, forgotten now. 
 
 With 'wildered thoughts stood listening near 
 Marvelling not that links of gold 
 A pulse like thine had not controlled. 
 
 * 'Tis midnight now. The dance is done, 
 
 And thou, in thy soft dreams, asleep, 
 And I, awake, am gazing on 
 
 The fragments given me to keep : 
 I think of every glowing vein 
 
 That ran beneath these links of gold, 
 And wonder if a thrill of pain 
 
 Made those bright channels ever cold ! 
 With gifts like thine, I cannot think, 
 Grief ever chilled this broken link. 
 
 " Good night ! 'Tis little now to thee. 
 
 That in my ear thy Avords were spoken 
 And thou wilt think of them and me, 
 
 As long as of the bracelet broken. 
 For thus is riven many a chain. 
 
 That thou hast fastened but to break ; 
 And thus thou'lt sink to sleep again, 
 
 As careless that another wake : 
 The only thought thy heart can rend, 
 Is — what the fellow'' II charge to mendP^ 
 
 Job'g conclusion was more pathetic, but. probably, less true 
 
216 IMPERIOUS BELLE, 
 
 He appeared after the applause had ceased, and resumed his 
 place at the lady's feet, with a look in his countenance of having 
 deserved an abatement of persecution. The beauty spread out 
 the fragments of the broken bracelet on the rock beside her. 
 
 " Mr. Smith !" said she, in her most conciliating tone. 
 
 Job leaned toward her, with a look of devoted inquiry. 
 
 " Has the tide turned .^" 
 
 " Certainly. Two hours since." 
 
 *' The beach is passable, then .^" 
 
 "Hardly, I fear." 
 
 " No matter. How many hours' drive is it to Salem .?" 
 
 "Mr. Slingsby drives it in two." 
 
 " Then you'll get Mr. Slingsby to lend you his stanhope, drive 
 to Salem, have this bracelet mended, and bring it back in time 
 for the ball. I have spoken, as the Grand Turk says. Allez P^ 
 
 " But, my dear Miss Caroll " 
 
 She laid her hand on his mouth, as he began to remonstrate ; 
 and while I made signs to him to refuse, she said something to 
 him which I lost in a sudden dash of the waters. He looked at 
 me for my consent. 
 
 " Oh ! you can have Mr. Slingsby 's horse," said the beauty, as 
 I hesitated whether my refusal would not check her tyranny, 
 " and I'll drive him out this evening for his reward, JSPest-ce pas ? 
 you cross man !" 
 
 So, with a sun hot enough to fry the brains in his skull, and a 
 quivering reflection on the sands, that would burn his face to a 
 blister, exit Job, with the broken bracelet in his bosom 
 
 " Stop, Mr. Slingsby," said the imperious little belle, as I was 
 making up a mouth, after his departure, to express my disappro- 
 bation of her measures — " no lecture, if you please. Give me 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 217 
 
 that book of plays, and I'll read you a precedent. Because you 
 are virtuous, shall we have no more cakes and ale } EcouUz ! 
 Aud, with au emphasis and expression, that would have been per- 
 fect on the stage, she read the following passage from '' The Care- 
 less Husband" — 
 
 '* Lady Betty. — The men of sense, my dear, make the best 
 fools in the world ; their sincerity and good breeding throw them 
 so entirely into one's power, and give one such an agreeable 
 thirst of using them ill, to show that power — 'tis impossible net 
 to quench it." 
 
 ^'- Lady Easy. — But, my Lord Morelove — " 
 
 " Lady B. — Pooh ! my Lord Morelove's a mere Indiau 
 damask — one can't wear him out ; o' my conscience, I must give 
 hbn to my woman, at last. I begin to be known by him ; had I 
 not best leave him ofl*, my dear .^" 
 
 " Lady E. — Why did you ever encourage him ?" 
 
 '* Lady B. — Why, what would you have one do ^ For my 
 part, I could no more choose a man by my eye than a shoe — one 
 must draw them on a little, to see if they are right to one's 
 foot." 
 
 " Lady E. — But I'd no more fool on with a man I could not 
 like, than wear a shoo that pinched me." 
 
 *' Lady B. — Ay ; but then a poor wretch tells one he'll widen 
 'em, or do anything ; and is so civil and sUly, that one does not 
 know how to turn such a trifle as a pair of shoes, or a heart, 
 upon a fellow's hands again." 
 
 " Lady E. — And there's my Lord Foppington." 
 
 '' Lady B. — My dear ! fine fruit will have flies about it ; but, 
 DOor things ! they do it no harm ; for, if you observe, people are 
 10 
 
21g A BELLE'S WHIM. 
 
 generally most apt to choose that the flies have been busy with 
 Ha ! ha !" 
 
 " Lady £.— Thou art a strange, giddy creature !" 
 
 " Lady B. — That may be from too much circulation of thought 
 my dear !" 
 
 " Pray, Miss Carroll,' said I, as she threw aside the book, with 
 a theatrical air, " have you any precedent for broiling a man's 
 brains, as well as breaking his heart ? For, by this time, my friend 
 Forbearance has a coujp de solid, and is hissing over the beach 
 like a steam-engine." 
 
 " How tiresome you are ! Po you really think it will kill 
 
 him ?" 
 
 " It might injure him seriously— let alone the danger of driving 
 a spirited horse over the beach, with the tide quarter-down." 
 
 " What shall I do to be ' taken out of the corner,' Mr. Slings- 
 
 by ?" 
 
 " Order your horses an hour sooner, and drive to Lynn, to 
 meet him half way on his return. I will resume my stanhope, 
 and give him the happiness of driving back with you." 
 
 " And shall I be gentle Blanche CaroU, and no ogre, if I 
 do ?" 
 
 " Yes ; Mr. Smith surviving." 
 
 " Take the trouble to give my orders, then ; and come back 
 immediately, and read to me till it is time to go. Meantime, I 
 shall look at myself in this black mirror." And the spoilt, but 
 most lovely girl, bent over a dark pool in the corner of the cave, 
 forming a picture on its shadowy background, that drew a mur- 
 mur of admiration even from the neglected group who had been 
 the silent and disapproving witnesses of her caprice. 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 219 
 
 lY. 
 
 A thunder-cloud strode into the sky, with the rapidity which 
 marks that common phenomenon of a breathless summer after- 
 noon in America ; darkened the air for a few minutes, so that the 
 birds betook themselves to their nests ; and then poured out its 
 refreshing waters, with the most terrific flashes of lightning and 
 crashes of thunder, which, for a moment, seemed to still even the 
 eternal base of the sea. With the same fearful rapidity, the 
 black roof of the sky tore apart, and fell back, in rolling and 
 changing masses, upon the horizon ; the sun darted with intense 
 brilliancy through the clarified and transparent air ; the light- 
 stirring breeze came freighted with delicious coolness ; and the 
 lieavy sea-birds, who had lain brooding on the waves, while the 
 tumult of the elements went on, rose on their cimeter-like wings, 
 and fled away, with incomprehensible instinct, from the beautiful 
 and freshening land. The whole face of earth and sky had been 
 changed in an hour. 
 
 Oh, of what fulness of delight are even the senses capable ! 
 What a nerve there is sometimes in every pore ' What love, for 
 all living and all inanimate things, may be born of a summer 
 shower ! How stirs the fancy, and brightens hope, and warms 
 the heart, and sings the spirit within us, at the mere animal joy 
 with which the lark flies into heaven ! And yet, of this exquisite 
 capacity for pleasure, we take so little care ! We refine our taste — 
 we elaborate and finish our mental perception — we study the beau- 
 tiful, that we may know it when it appears ; yet, the senses by 
 which these faculties are approached, the stops by which this fine 
 instrument is played, are trifled with and neglected. We forget 
 ^at a single excess blurs and confuses the music written on our 
 
220 A LADY- WHIP. 
 
 iniuds — W3 forget that an untimely vigil weakens and bewildera 
 the delicate minister to our inner temple — we know not, or act as 
 if we knew not, that the fine and easily -jarred harmony of health, 
 is the only interpreter of Nature to our souls — in short, we drink 
 too much claret, and eat too muGh pate f die gras. Do you un- 
 derstand me, gourmand et gourmet! 
 
 Blanche Carroll was a beautiful whip, and the two bay ponies 
 in her phaeton were quite aware of it. La Bruyere says, with 
 his usual wisdom, " Une belle femme qui a les qualites d'un 
 honnete homme est ce qu'il y a au monde d'un commerce plus 
 deJicieux ;" and, to a certain degree, masculine accomplishments, 
 too, are very winning in a woman — if pretty ; if plain, she is ex- 
 pected not only to be quite feminine, but quite perfect. Foibles 
 are as hateful in a woman who does not possess beauty, as they 
 are engaging in a woman who does. Clouds are only lovely when 
 the heavens are bright. 
 
 She looked loveliest while driving, did Blanche Carroll ; for 
 she was born to rule, and the expression native to her lip was energy 
 and nerve ; and, as she sat with her little foot pressed against the 
 dasher, and reined in those spirited horses, the finely-pencilled 
 mouth, usually playful or pettish, was pressed together in a curve 
 as warlike as Minerva's, and twice as captivating. She drove, 
 too. as capriciously as she acted. At one moment her fleet ponies 
 fled over the sand at the top of their speed ; and, at the next, they 
 were brought down to a walk, with a suddenness which threatened 
 to bring them upon their haunches. Now far up on the dry sand, 
 cutting a zigzag to lengthen the way ; and again, below at the tide 
 edge, with the waves breaking over her seaward wheel : all her 
 powers, at one instant, engrossed in pushing them to their fastest 
 trot ; and, in another, the reins lying loose on their backs, while 
 
EARLIER DAYS. gSl 
 
 she discussed some sudden flight of philosophy. " Be his fairy, 
 his page, his everything that love and poetry have invented," 
 said Roger Aseham to Lady Jane Grey, just before her marriage ; 
 but Blanche Carroll was almost the only woman I ever saw, capa- 
 ble of the heau ideal of fascinating characters. 
 
 Between I\Iiss CaroU and myself, there was a safe and cordial 
 friendship. Besides loving another better, she was neither ear- 
 nest, nor true, nor affectionate enough, to come at all within the 
 range of my possible attachments ; and, though I admired her, 
 she felt that the necessary sympathy was wanting for love ; and, 
 the idea, of fooling me with the rest, once abandoned, we were 
 the greatest of allies. She told me all her triumphs, and I lis- 
 tened and laughed, without thinking it worth while to burden her 
 with my confidence in return ; and you may as well make a 
 memorandum, gentle reader, that that is a very good basis for a 
 friendship. Nothing bores women or worldly persons so much, as 
 to return their secrets with your own. 
 
 As we drew near the extremity of the beach, a boy rode up on 
 horseback, and presented Miss Carroll with a note. I observed 
 that it was written on a very dirty slip of paper, and was waiting 
 to be enlightened as to its contents, when she slipped it into her 
 belt, took the whip from the box, and, flogging her ponies through 
 the heavy sand of the outer beach, went off, at a pace which 
 seemed to engross all her attention, on her road to Lynn. We 
 reached the hotel, and she had not spoken a syllable ; and, as I 
 made a point of never inquiring into anything that seemed odd 
 in her conduct, I merely stole a glance at her face— which wore 
 the expression of mischievous satisfaction, that I liked the least 
 of its common expressions — and descended from the phaeton, with 
 
222 A MYSTERY, 
 
 the simple remark, that Job could not have arrived, a& I saw 
 nothing of my stanhope in the 3'ard. 
 
 " Mr. Slingsby." It was the usual preface to asking some par- 
 ticular favor. 
 
 " Miss Carroll." 
 
 " Will you be so kind as to walk to the library, and select me 
 a book to your own taste, and ask no questions as to what I do 
 with myself meantime .^" 
 
 But, my dear Miss Carroll — your father " 
 
 "Will feel quite satisfied when he hears that Cato was with me. 
 Leave the ponies to the groom, Cato, and follow me." I looked 
 after her as she walked down the village street with the old black 
 behind her, not at all certain of the propriety of my acquiescence, 
 but feeling that there was no help for it. 
 
 I lounged away a half hour at the library, and found Miss Car- 
 roll waiting for me on my return. There were no signs of Bruin ; 
 and, as she seemed impatient to be oif, I jumped into the phaeton, 
 and away we flew to the beach as fast as her ponies could be 
 driven under the whip. As we descended upon the sands she 
 spoke for the first time. 
 
 " It is so civil of you to ask no questions, Mr. Slingsby ; but 
 you are noi oifended with me .^" 
 
 " If you have got into no scrape while under my charge, I shall 
 certainly be too happy to shake hands upon it to-morrow." 
 
 " Are you quite sure .?" she asked archly. 
 
 '' Quite sure." 
 
 " So am not I," she said with a merry laugh ; and in her ex- 
 cessive amusement she drove down to the sea, till the surf broke 
 over the nearest poney's back, and filled the bottom of the phae- 
 ton with water. Our wet feet were now a fair apology for haste, 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 223 
 
 and, taking the reins from her, I drove rapidly home, while she 
 wrapped herself in her shawl, and sat apparently absorbed in the 
 coming of the twilight over the sea. 
 
 I slept late after the ball, though I had gone to bed exceedingly 
 anxious about Bruin, who had not yet made his appearance. The 
 tide would prevent his crossing the beach after ten in the morn- 
 ing, however, and I made myself tolerably easy till the sands were 
 passable with the evening ebb. The high-water mark was 
 scarcely deserted by the waves, when the same boy who had de- 
 livered the note to Miss Carroll the day before, rode up from the 
 beach on a panting horse, and delivered me the following note : — 
 
 " Dear Philip : You will be surprised to hear that I am in 
 the Lynn jail on a charge of theft and utterance of counterfeit 
 money. I do not wait to tell you the particulars. Please come 
 and identify. 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 " F. Smith." 
 
 I got upon the boy's horse, and hurried over the beach with 
 whip and spur. I stopped at the justice's office, and that worthy 
 seemed uncommonly pleased to see me. 
 
 " We have got him, sir," said he. 
 
 " Got whom .^" I asked rather shortly. 
 
 " Why, the fellow that stole your stanhope and Miss Carroll's 
 bracelet, and passed a twenty dollar counterfeit bill — ha'n't you 
 hearw on't .^" 
 
 The justice's incredulity, when I told him it was probably the 
 most intimate friend I had in the world, would have amused me 
 at any other time. 
 
 " Will you allow me to see the prisoner .?" I asked. 
 
224 QUIZ OF AN ACQUAINTANCE. 
 
 " Be sure I will, I let Miss Carroll have a peep at him yester- 
 day, and what do you think ? Oh, Lord ! he wanted to make 
 her believe she knew him ! Good ! wasn't it ! Ha ! ha ! And 
 such an ill-looking fellow I Why, I'd know him for a thief any- 
 where ! Yoiir intimate friend, Mr. Slingsby ! Oh, Lord ! when 
 you come to see him ! Ha ! ha !" 
 
 We were at the prison-door. The grating bolts turned slowly, 
 and the door swung rustily on its hinges as if it was not often used, 
 and in the next minute I was enfolded in Job's arms, who sobbed 
 and laughed, and was quite hysterical with his delight. I scarce 
 wondered at the justice's prepossessions when I looked at the 
 figure he made. His hat knocked in, his coat muddy, his hair 
 full of the dust of straw — the natural hideousness of poor Job 
 had every possible aggravation. 
 
 W^e were in the stanhope, and fairly on the beach, before ho 
 had sufficiently recovered to tell me the story. He had arrived 
 quite overheated at Lynn, but, in a hurry to execute Miss Car- 
 rolPs commission, he merely took a glass of soda-water, had Tha- 
 laba's mouth washed, and drove on. A mile on his way, he was 
 overtaken by a couple of ostlers on horseback, who very roughly 
 ordered him back to the inn. He refused, and a fight ensued, 
 which ended in his being tied into the stanhope, and driven back 
 as a prisoner. The large note, which he had given for his soda- 
 water, it appeared, was a counterfeit, and placards, offering a re- 
 ward for the detection of a villain, described in the usual manner 
 as an ill-looking fellow, had been sticking up for some days in the 
 village. He was taken before the justice, who declared at first 
 eight that he answered the description in the advertisement. His 
 stubborn refusal to give the whole of his name (he would rather 
 have died, I suppose), his possession of my stanhope, which was 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 225 
 
 immediately recognized, and, lastly, the bracelet found in his 
 pocket, of which he refused indignantly to give any account, were 
 ciicunistances enough to leave no doubt on the mind of the worthy 
 justice. He made out his miltimus forthwith, granting Job's re- 
 quest that he might be allowed to write a note to Miss Carroll 
 (who, he knew, would drive over the beach toward evening), as a 
 very great favor. She arrived as he expected. 
 
 " And what in Heaven's name did she say .?" said I, interested 
 beyond my patience at this part of the story. 
 
 Expressed the greatest astonishment when the justice showed 
 her the bracelet, and declared she nevei' saw vie before in her 
 life r 
 
 That Job forgave Blanche Carroll in two days, and gave her a 
 pair of gloves with some verses on the third, will surprise only 
 those who have not seen that lady. It would seem incrediblt?, 
 but here are the verses, as large as life : — 
 
 " Slave of the snow^- white hand ! I fold 
 
 My spirit in thy fabric fair ; 
 And, when that dainty hand is cold, 
 
 And rudely comes the wintry air, 
 Press in thy light and straining form 
 Those slender fingers scft and warm ; 
 
 And, as the fine-traced veins wuthin 
 Quicken their bright and rosy flow, 
 
 And gratefully the dewy skin 
 Clings to the form that warms it so, 
 
 Tell her my heart is hiding there, 
 Trembling to be so closely prest, 
 
 Yet feels how brief its moments are, 
 And saddens even to be blest — 
 Fated to serve her for a day, 
 And then, like thee, be flung awayP 
 
PART n. 
 
 LATER DAYS. 
 
 OH, 
 
 SKETCHES OF PERSONS AND SCENES OF HIGH LIFE IN 
 EUROPE. 
 
 LEAVES FROM THE HEART-BOOK OF ERNEST CLAY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 In a small room, second floor, front, No. — South Audley 
 street, Grosvenor square, on one of the latter days of May, five 
 or six years ago, there stood an inkstand, of which you may buy 
 the like for three halfpence, in most small shops in Soho. It 
 was stuck in the centre of the table, like the largest of the 
 Azores on a schoolboy's amateur map — a large blot, surrounded 
 by innumerable smaller blotlings- On the top of a small leather 
 portmanteau near by, stood two pair of varnished-leather boots, 
 of a sumptuous expensiveness, slender, elegant, and without spot, 
 except the leaf of a crushed orange blossom, clinging to one of 
 the heels. Between the inkstand and the boots, sat the young 
 
 and then fashionable author of ; and the boots and the 
 
 inkstand were tolerable exponents of his two opposite, but closely 
 woven existences. 
 
LATER DAYS. 227 
 
 It was two o'clock, P. M., and the author was stirring his tea. 
 He had been stirring it with the same velocity, three quarters of 
 an hour ; for, when that cup should be drank, inevitably the next 
 thing was, to write the first sentence of an article for the New 
 Month. Mag., and he was prolonging his breakfast, as a criminal 
 his last prayer. 
 
 The ^' fatigued" sugar and milk were still flying round the edge 
 of the cup in a whity blue concave, when the *' maid of all work" 
 of his landlord the baker, knocked at the door with a note. 
 
 " 13 G- M street. 
 
 " Dear Sir : 
 " Has there been any mistake in the two-penny post delivery, 
 tliat I have not received your article for this month } If so, 
 please send me the rough draught by the bearer (who waits), and 
 the compositors will try to make it out. Yours, truly, 
 
 " P. S. — If the tale is not finished, please send me the title 
 and motto, that we may print the * contents' during the delay." 
 
 The tea, which, for some minutes, had turned off a decreasing 
 ripple from the edge of the arrested spoon, came to a standstill, 
 at the same moment, with the author's wits. He had seized his 
 pen, and commenced : — 
 
 "Dear Sir: 
 
 " The tale of this month will be called — " 
 
 As it was not yet conceived, he found a difficulty in baptizing 
 it. His eyebrows descended, like the bars of a knight's visor ; 
 his mouth, which had expressed only lassitude and melancholy, 
 shut close, and curved downward, and he sat for some minutes 
 
>28 AN ELOPEMENT. 
 
 dipping his pen in the ink, and, at each dip, adding a new shoal 
 to the banks of the inky Azores. 
 
 A long sigh of relief, and an expansion of every line of his 
 face into a look of brightaning thought, gave token, presently, that 
 the incubation had been successful. The gilded note-paper was 
 pushed aside, a broad and fair sheet of " foreign post," was 
 hastily drawn from his blotting-book, and, forgetful alike of the 
 unachieved cup of tea, and the waiting '' devil" of Marlborough 
 street, the felicitous author dashed the first magic word on mid- 
 page, and, without title or motto, traced rapidly line after line, 
 his face clearing of lassitude, and his eyes of their troubled lan- 
 guor, as the erasures became fewer, and his punctuations farther 
 between. 
 
 " Any answer to the note, sir ?" said the maid-servant, who 
 had entered unnoticed, and stood close at his elbow, wondering at 
 the flying velocity of his pen. 
 
 He was at the bottom of tlie fourth page, and in the middle 
 of a sentence. Handing the wet and blotted sheet to the servant, 
 with an order for the messeno-er to call the followincr mornino; for 
 the remainder, he threw down his pen, and abandoned himself to 
 the most delicious of an author's j)leasures — revery in the mood 
 of composition. He forgot work. Work is to put such reveries 
 into words. His imagination flew on like a horse without a rider 
 — gloriously and exultingly, but to no goal. The very waste made 
 his indolence sweeter — the very nearness of his task, brightened 
 his imaginative idleness. The ink dried upon his pen. Some 
 capricious association soon drew back his thoughts to himself. 
 His eye dulled. His lips resumed their ningled expression of 
 pride and voluptuousness. He started to find himself idle, re- 
 membered that he had sent off the sheet with a broken sentence 
 
LATER DAYS. 229 
 
 ivitliout retaining even the concluding word, and, with a sigh more 
 of relief than vexation, he drew on his hoots. Presto ! — the 
 world of which his penny-half-penny inkstand was the immor- 
 tal centre — the world of heaven-born imagination — melted from 
 about him ! He stood in patent leather — human, handsome, and 
 liable to debt ! 
 
 And thus fugitive and easy of decoy — thus compulsory, irre- 
 solute, and brief, is the unchastised toil of genius — the earning 
 of the " fancy-bread" of poets ! 
 
 It would be hard if a man who has ^' made himself a name," 
 (beside being paternally christened,) should want one in a story 
 — so, if you please, I will name my hero in the next sentence. 
 Ernest Clay was dressed to walk to Marlborough street — to apply 
 for his "guinea-a-page" in advance, and find out the concluding 
 word of his MS. — when there was heard a footman's rap at the 
 street door. The baker on the ground floor ran to pick up his 
 penny loaves, jarred from the shelves by the tremendous rat-a-tat- 
 tat, and the maid ran herself out of her shoes, to inform Mr. 
 
 Clay that Lady Mildred wished to speak with him. Neither 
 
 maid nor baker were displeased at being put to inconvenience, 
 nor was the baker's hysterical mother disposed to murmur at 
 the outrageous clatter which shattered her nerves for a week. 
 There is a spell, to a Londoner, in a coronetted carriage, which 
 changes the noise and impudence of the unwhipped varlets who 
 ride behind it, into music and condescension. 
 
 " You were going out," said Lady Mildred ; '^ can I take you 
 anywhere ?" 
 
 " You can take me," said Clay, spreading out his hands in an 
 attitude of surrender, " when and where you please ; but I was 
 going to my publisher's." 
 
230 LOVE, OR PASSION? 
 
 The cliariot-steps rattled down, and liis foot was on the crim- 
 son carpet, wlien a plain family carriage suddenly turned out of 
 Grosvenor square, and pulled up, as near his own door as the ob- 
 struction permitted. 
 
 Ernest changed color slightly, and Lady Mildred, after a 
 glance through the window behind her, stamped her little foot, 
 and said, " Come !" 
 
 " One moment !" was his insufficient apology, as he sprang to 
 the window of the. other carriage, and, with a manner almost in- 
 fantine in its cordial simplicity, expressed his delight at meeting 
 the two ladies who sat within. 
 
 " Have you set up a chariot, Ernest ?" said the younger, lay- 
 ing her hand upon the dark mass of curls on his temple, and 
 pushing his head gently back, that she might see what equipage 
 stopped the way. 
 
 He hesitated a moment, but there was no escape from the 
 truth. 
 
 " It is Lady Mildred, who has just — " 
 
 " Is she alone .?" 
 
 The question was asked by the elder lady, with a look that ex- 
 pressed a painfully sad wish to hear him answer, ^' No." 
 
 While he hesitated, the more forgiving voice nest him hm-ried- 
 ly broke the silence. 
 
 " We are forgetting our errand, Ernest. Can you come to 
 Ashurst to-morrow .^" 
 
 " With all my heart." 
 
 " Do not fail ! My uncle wishes to see you. Stay — ^I have 
 brought you a note from him. Good-bye ! Are you going to the 
 rout at Mrs. Rothschild's to-night .?" 
 
 " I VMS not — but, if yon arc going, I will." 
 
LATER DAYS. 331 
 
 "Till this evening, then r" 
 
 The heavy vehicle rolled away, and Ernest crushed the noto 
 in his hand unread, and, with a slower step than suited the im- 
 patience of Lady Mildred, returned to the chariot. The coach- 
 man, with that mysterious instinct that coachmen have, let fall 
 his silk upon the backs of his spirited horses, and drove in time 
 with his master's quickened pulses ; and, at the corner of Chester- 
 field street, as the family carriage rolled slowly on its way to 
 Howell and James's, (on an errand connected with bridal 
 pearls), the lofty-stepping bays of Lady IMildred dashed by, as 
 if all the anger and scorn of a whole descent of coronets were 
 breathing from their arched nostrils. 
 
 What a boon, from nature to aristocracy, was the pride of the 
 horse ! 
 
 Lady Mildred was a widow, of two years' weeds, thirty-two, 
 and of a certain kind of talent, which will be explained in the 
 course of this story. She had no personal charms, except such 
 as are indispensably necessary to lady-likeness — indispensably 
 necessary, for that very reason, to any control over the fancy of a 
 man of imagination. Her upper lip was short enough to express 
 scorn, and her feet and hands were exquisitely small. Some 
 men of fancy would exact these attractions, and a great many 
 more. But, without these, no woman ever secured even the 
 most transient homage of a poet. She had one of those faces 
 you never find yourself at leisure to criticise, or, rather, she had 
 one of those syren voices, that, if you heard her speak before you 
 had found leisure to look at her features, you had lost your op- 
 portunity forever. Her voice expressed the presence of beauty, 
 ag much as a carol in a tree expresses th« pres€De« of a bird ; 
 
232 PORTRAIT WORTH YOUR STUDY. 
 
 and, though you saw not the beauty, as you may not see the bird, 
 it was impossible to doubt it was there. Yet, with all this en- 
 chantment in her voice, it was the most changeable music on 
 earth ; for, hear it when you would, if she were in earnest, you 
 might be sure it was the softened echo of the voice to which she 
 vras replying. She never spoke first. She never led the conver- 
 sation. She had not (or never used) the talent which many very 
 common-place women have, of giving a direction to the feelings, 
 and controlling even the course of thought, of superior men who 
 may admire them. In everything she ]played a second. She was 
 sil&nt through all your greetings — through all your compliments ; 
 smiled and listened, if it were for hours, till your lighter spirits 
 were exhaused, and 3^ou came down to the true under-tone of 
 your heart ; and, by the first-struck chord of feeling and earnest, 
 (and her skill in detecting it was an infallible instinct,) she modu- 
 lated her voice, and took up the strain ; and, from the echo of 
 your own soul, and the flow of the most throbbing vein in your 
 own heart, she drew your enchantment and intoxication. Her 
 manners were a necessary part of such a character. Her 
 limbs seemed al Trays enchanted into stillness. "When you gazed 
 at her more earnestlj'-, her eyes gradually drooped ; and again, 
 her enlarged orbs brightened and grew eager, as your gaze re- 
 treated. With her slight forefinger laid upon her cheek, and her 
 gloved hand supporting her arm, she sat stirless and rapt ; and, by 
 an indescribable magnetism, you felt that there was not a nerve 
 in your eye, nor a flutter toward change in the expression of your 
 face, that was not linked to hers, nerve for nerve, pulsation for 
 pulsation. Whether this charm would work on common men, it 
 is difficult to say ; for Lady Mildred's passions were invariably 
 men of genius 
 
LATER DAYS. 53:^ 
 
 You may not have seen such a woman as Lady Mildred — but 
 you have seen girls like Eve Gore. There are many lilies, 
 though each one, new-found, seems to the finder the miracle of 
 nature. She was a pure, serene-hearted, and very beautiful girl, 
 of seventeen. Her life had been, hitherto, the growth of love 
 and care, as the lily she resembled is the growth of sunshine and 
 dew ; and, flower-iike, all she had ever known, or felt, had turned 
 to spotless loveliness. She had met the gifted author of her 
 favorite romance, at a country house where they were guests to- 
 gether ; and 1 could not, short of a chapter of metaphysics, tell 
 you how natural it was for these two apparently uncongenial per- 
 sons to mingle, like drops of dew. I will merely say now, that, 
 etrongly-marked as seems the character of every man of genius? 
 his very capability of tracking the mazes of human nature makes 
 him the very chameleon and Proteus of his species, and that, 
 after he has assimilated himself, by turns, to every variety of 
 mankind, his masks never fall off without disclosing the very 
 soul and type of the most infantine simplicity. Other men's 
 disguises, too, become a second nature. Those of genius are 
 worn, to their last day, as loosely as the mantles of the gods. 
 
 The kind of man called " a penetrating observer," if he had 
 been in the habit of meeting Mr. Clay in London circles, and 
 
 had afterward seen him rambling through the woods of 
 
 Park with Eve Gore, natural, playful sometimes, and sometimes 
 sad, his manner the reflex of hers, even his voice almost as femi- 
 nine as hers, in his fine sympathy with her character and attrac- 
 tions — one of these shrewd people, I say, would have shaken his 
 head, and whispered, " Poor gii-1, how little she understands 
 him !'' But, of all the wise and worldly, gentle and simple, who 
 had ever crossed the path of Ernest Clay, this same child-like 
 
234 PAY FOR GENIUS. 
 
 girl was the only creature to whom he appeared utterly himself, 
 — for whom he wore no disguise — to whose plummet of simple 
 truth he opened the seldom-sounded depths of his prodigal and 
 passionate heart. Lady Mildred knew his weaknesses and his 
 genius. Eve Gore knew his better and brighter nature. And 
 both loved him. 
 
 And now, dear reader, having drawn you the portraits of my 
 two heroines, I shall go on, with a disembarrassed narrative, to 
 &e end. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Lady Mildred's bays pranced proudly up Bond street, and 
 kept on their way to the publisher's, at whose door they fretted 
 and champed the bit — they and their high-born mistress in attend- 
 ance upon the poor author, who, in this moment of despondency, 
 complained of the misappreciation of the world ! Of the scores 
 of people who knew him and his companion as London celebrities, 
 and who followed the showy equipage with their eyes, how many, 
 think you, looked on Mr. Ernest Clay as a misappreciatcd man .'* 
 How many, had they known that the whole errand, of this expen- 
 sive turn-out, was to call on the publisher for the price of a single 
 magazine paper, would have reckoned those sixteen guineas with 
 the chariot of a noble lady to come for the payment } Five hundred 
 pounds for your romance, and a welcome to all the best houses 
 and costliest entertainments of England — a hundred pounds for 
 your poem, aind the attention of a thousand eager admirers — these 
 are some of the " lengthening shadows" to the author's profits, 
 which the author does not reckon, but which the world does. To 
 the rest of mankind these are " chattels," priced and paid for. 
 
LATER DAYS. 235 
 
 Twenty thousand a year would hardly buy, for Mr. Clay, simple 
 and uncelebrated, what Mr. Clay, author, etc., has freely with 
 five hundred. To whose credit shall the remaining nineteen 
 thousand five hundred be set down ? Common people who pay 
 for these things are not believers in fairy gifts. They see the 
 author in a station of society unattainable except by the wealthiest 
 and best born, with all, that profuse wealth could purchase, as 
 completely at his service, as if the bills of cost were to be brought 
 in to him at Christmas ; and besides all this, (once more " into the 
 bargain,") caressed and flattered, as no " golden dulness" ever 
 was or could be. To rate the revenues of such a pampered idol 
 of fortune, what man in his senses would inquire merely into the 
 profits of his book .'' 
 
 And in this lies the whole secret of the envy and malice which 
 is the peculiar inheritance of genius. Generous-minded men, all 
 women, the great and rich who are too high themselves to feel 
 envy, and the poor and humble who are too low to feel aught but 
 wonder and grateful admiration — these are the fosterers and flat- 
 terers, the paymasters of the real wealth, and the receivers of the 
 choicest fruits, of genius. The aspiring mediocrity, the slighted 
 and eclipsed pretenders to genius, are a large class, to whose eyes 
 all brightness is black, and the great mass of men toil their lives 
 and utmost energies away, for the hundreth part of what the child 
 of genius wins by his unseen pen — by the toil which neither 
 hardens his hands, nor trenches on his hours of pleasure. They 
 see a man no comelier nor better born than they — idle, apparently, 
 as the most spoilt minion of wealth — vying with the best born in 
 the favor of beautiful and proud women, using all the goods of 
 fortune with a profuse carelessness, which the possession of the 
 lamp of Aladdin could not more than inspire — and by bitter 
 
236 ENVY THE TWENTIETH. 
 
 criticism, ^y ingenious slander, by continual depreciation, ridicule, 
 and exaggeration of every petty foible, they attempt to level the 
 inequalities of fortune, and repair the flagrant injustice of the blind 
 goddess to themselves. Upon the class, generally, they are 
 avenged. Their malice poisons the joy and cripples the fine- 
 winged fancy of nineteen in the score. But the twentieth is born 
 proud and elastic, and the shaft his scorn does not fling back, his 
 light-heartedness eludes, and his is the destiny which^ more than 
 that of kings or saints, proves the v/ide inequality in human lot. 
 
 I trust, dear reader, that you have been more amused than Lady 
 Mildred, at this half hour's delay at the publisher's. While I have 
 been condensing into a theory my scattered observations of Lon- 
 don authors, her ladyship has been musing upon the apparition of 
 the family carriage of the Gores at Mr. Clay's lodgings. Lady 
 Mildred's position in society, though she had the entree to all the 
 best houses in London, precluded an intimate acquaintance with 
 any unmarried girl ; but she had seen Eve Gore, and knew and 
 dreaded her loveliness, A match of mere interest would have 
 giv-en her no uneasiness, but she could see far enough into the 
 nature of this beautiful and fresh-hearted girl, to know that hers 
 would be no divided empire. All women are conscious that a 
 single-minded, concentrated, pure affection, melting the whole 
 character into the heart, is omnipotent in perpetuating fidelity. 
 
 " Ernest," said Lady Mildred, as the chariot sped from the 
 publisher's door, and took its way to the Park, '''' you are grown 
 ceremonious. Am I so new a friend, that you cannot open a note 
 in my presence .^" 
 
 Clay placed the crushed letter in her hand. 
 
 " I will have no secrets from you, dear Lady Mildred. There 
 is probably much in that note that will surprise you. Break the 
 
LATER DAYS. 237 
 
 seal, however, and give me your advice. I will not promise to 
 follow it." 
 
 The blood flushed to the temples of Lady Mildred as she read, 
 but her lips, though pale and trembling, were compressed, by a 
 strong eflfort of self-control. She turned back, and read the note 
 again, in a murmuring undertone : — 
 
 " Dear Mr. Clay : From causes which you will probably 
 understand, I have been induced to reconsider your proposal of 
 marriage to my niece. Imprudent as I must still consider your 
 union, I find myself in such a situation that, should you persevere, 
 I must decide in its favor, as the least of two evils. You will 
 forgive my anxious care, however, if I exact of you, before taking 
 any decided step, a full and fair statement of your pecuniary em- 
 barrassments, (which I understand are considerable,) and your 
 present income and prospects. I think it proper to inform you, 
 that Miss Gore's expectations, beyond an annuity of £300 a year, 
 are very distant, and that nil your calculations should be confined 
 to that amount. With this understanding, I should be pleased to 
 see you at Ashurst to-morrow morning. Yours, truly, 
 
 " Thomas Gore." 
 
 " Hear me, before you condemn, dear Lady Mildred," passion- 
 ately exclaimed Ernest, as she clasped her hands over the letter, 
 and her tears fell fast upon them : " I was wrong to leave the 
 discovery of this to chance — I should have dealt more frankly 
 with you — indeed, if I had had the opportunity — " 
 
 Lady Mildred looked up, as if to reproach him for the evasion 
 half uttered, 
 
 " I have seen you daily, it is true, but every hour is not an 
 hour for confession like this, and, besides, my new love was a sur- 
 
238 ANALYSIS OF PASSION. 
 
 prise, and what I have to confess is a change in my feelings still 
 more recent — a constantly brightening vision of a life (pardon me, 
 Lady Mildred !) deeper, a thousand fold, and a thousand times 
 sweeter and more engrossing than ours." 
 
 " You are frank," said his pale listener, who had recovered her 
 self-possession, and seemed bent now, as usual, only on listening 
 and entering into his feelings 
 
 " I would be so, indeed," he resumed ; "but I have not yet 
 come to my confession. Life is too short, Lady Mildred, and 
 youth too vanishing, to waste feeling on delusion." 
 
 '' Such as your love, do you mean, Ernest ?" 
 
 " Pardon me ! Were you my wife " 
 
 Lady Mildred made a slight motion of impatience with her 
 hand, and unconsciously raised the expressive arching of her lip. 
 
 " I must name this forbidden subject to be understood. See 
 what a false positi(rn is miri'.' ! You are too proud to marry, but 
 have not escaped Ir/ing nvi ; and you wish me to be contented 
 with a perfume on th j breeze — to feel a property in a bird in the 
 sky. It was very sweet to begin to love you, to win and win, step 
 by step, to have food for hope in what was refused me. But I 
 am checked, and you are still free. I stand at an impassable bar- 
 rier, and you demand that I should feel united to you." 
 
 " You are ungrateful, Ernest !" 
 
 " If I were your slave, I am, for you load me with favors — but 
 as your lover, no ! It does not fill my heart to open your house 
 to me ; to devote to me your dining hours, your horses, and ser- 
 vants ; to let the world know that you love me ; to make me your 
 romance — ^yet have all the common interests of life apart, have a 
 station in society apart, an ambition not mine, a name not mine, 
 a hearth not mine. You share my wild passions, and my fash- 
 
LATER DAYS. ^39 
 
 ionable negations, not my homely feelings and everyday sorrows. 
 I have a whole existence into whicA you never enter. I am some- 
 thing besides a fashionable author — but not to you. I have a 
 common human heart — a pillow upon which lies down no fancy — 
 a morning which is not spent in sleep or listlessness, but in the 
 earning of my bread — I have dulness, and taciturnity, and caprice 
 — and in all these you have no share. I am a butterfly and an 
 earth-worm, by turns, and you know me only on the wing. You 
 do not answer me !" 
 
 Lady Mildred, as I have said before, was an admirer of genius, 
 and, though Ernest was excusing an infidelity to herself, the novelty 
 of iis distinctions opened to her a new chapter in the book of love, 
 and she was interested far beyond resentment. He was talking 
 from his heart, too, and every one who has listened to a murmur 
 of affection, knows what sweetness the breathings of those deeper 
 veins of feeling infuse into the voice. To a palled Sybarite like 
 Lady Mildred, there was a wild-flower freshness in all this that 
 was irresistibly captivating. A smile stole through her lips, in- 
 stead of the reproach and anger that he expected. 
 
 " I do not answer you, my dear Ernest, for the same reason I 
 would not tear a leaf out of one of your books unread. I quite 
 enter into your feelings. I wish I could hear you talk of them, 
 hours longer. Their simplicity and truth enchant me, but I con- 
 fess I cannot see what you propose to yourself. Do you think to 
 reconcile and blend all these contradictory moods by an imprudent 
 marriage } Or do you mean to vow your butterfly to celibacy, 
 and marry your worm-fly alone, and grovel in sympathy rathei 
 than take love with you when you soar, and keep your groyelling 
 to yourself." 
 
 " I think Eve Gore would love me, soaring or creepmg, Lady 
 
240 POVERTY, AS FASHION SEES IT. 
 
 Mildred ! She would be happier sitting by my table while I wrote, 
 than driving in this gay crowd with her chariot. She would lose 
 the light of her life in absence from me, like a cloud receding 
 from the moon, whatever stars sparkled around her. She would 
 be with me at all hours of the day and the night, sharing every 
 thought that could spring to my lips, and reflecting my own soul 
 for ever. You will forgive me for finding out this want, this void, 
 while you loved me. But I have felt it sickeningly in your bright 
 rooms — with music and perfume, and the touch of your hand all 
 conspiring to enchant me. In the very hours when most men on 
 earth would have envied me, I have felt the humbler chambers of 
 jiiy heart ache with loneliness. I have longed for some still and 
 dark retreat, where the beating of my pulse would be protestation 
 enough, and where she who loved me was blest to overflowing with 
 my presence only. Afi'ection is a glow-worm light, dear Lady 
 Mildred ! It pales amid splendor." 
 
 " But you should have a glow-worm's habits to relish it, my 
 dear poet. You cannot live on a blade of grass, nor shine brightest 
 out of doors in the rain. Let us look at it without these Claude 
 Lorraine glasses, and see the truth. Mr. Thomas Gore ofiers 
 you £300 a year with his niece. Your own income, the moment 
 you marry, is converted from pocket-money into subsistence — 
 from the purchase of gloves and Hungary water, into butcher's 
 meat and groceries. You retire to a small house in one of the 
 cheaper streets. You have been accustomed to drive out con- 
 tinually ; and, for several years, you have not only been free from 
 ihe trouble and expence of your own dinner, but you have pam- 
 pered your taste with the varied chefs d^cEuv7'e of all the best 
 cooks of London. You dine at home, now, feeding several 
 mouths beside your own, on what is called a family dinner — say, 
 
LATER DAYS. 241 
 
 as a j^ood specimen, a beefsteak and potatoes, with a Yorkshire 
 pudding. Instead of retiring, after your coffee, to a brilliantly, 
 lighted drawing-room, where collision with some portion of the 
 most gifted society of London disciplines your intellect, and 
 polishes your wit and fancy, you sit down by your wife's work- 
 table, and grow sleepy over your plans of economy, sigh for the 
 gay scenes you once moved in, and go to bed to be rid of your 
 regrets.'* 
 
 " But why should I be exiled from society, my dear Lady Mil- 
 dred ? What circle in London would not take a new grace from 
 the presence of such a woman as Eve Gore .^" 
 
 " Oh, marvellous simplicity ! If men kept the gates of 
 society, a la bonne heurz ! — for then a party would consist of one 
 man (the host), and a hundred pretty women. But the " free 
 list" of society, you know, as well as I, my love-blind friend, is 
 exclusively masculine. Woman keeps the door, and, easy as turns 
 the hinge to the other sex, it swings reluctant to her own. You 
 may name a hundred men in your circle, whose return for the 
 hospitality of fashionable houses it would be impossible to guess 
 at, but you cannot point me out one married woman, whose price 
 of admission is not as well known, and as rightly exacted, as the 
 cost of an opera-box. Those who do not give sumptuous parties 
 in their turn, (and even these must be well bred and born 
 people,) are, in the first place, very ornamental ; but, besides 
 being pretty, they must either sing or flirt. There are but two 
 classes of women in fashionable society — the leaders or party- 
 givers, and the decoys to young men. There is the pretty Mrs. 
 
 , for example, whose habitation nobody knows, but as a card 
 
 with an address ; and why is she everywhere } Simply, because 
 she draws four or five fashionable young men, who would find no 
 U 
 
>42 COST OF FASHION WITH A WIFE. 
 
 inducement to come, if she were not there. Then there is Mrs. 
 
 , who sings enchantingly, and Mrs. , who is pretty, and 
 
 a linguist, and entertains stupid foreigners, and Mrs. , who 
 
 is clever at charades^ and plays quadrilles ; and what would Mrs. 
 Clay do } Is she musical V 
 
 "She is beautiful!" 
 
 " Well — she must flirt. With three or four fashionable 
 lovers — " 
 
 "Lady Mildred!" 
 
 " Pardon me, I was thinking aloud. AVell — I will suppose 
 you an exception to this Medc-and-Persian law of the heau monde, 
 and allow, for a moment, that Mrs. Clay, with an income of five 
 or six hundred a year, with no eyes for anybody but her husband, 
 poor, pretty, and innocent, (what a marvel it would be in May 
 Fair, by-thc-way !), becomes as indispensable to a, partie Ji^ie as 
 was Mr. Clay while in unmarried celebrity. Mind, I am not 
 talking of routs and balls, where anybody can go because there 
 must bo a crowd, but of 2>clUs soiifcrSj select dinners, and enter- 
 tainments where every guest is invited as an ingredient to a well- 
 studied cup of pleasure. I will suppose, for an instant, that a 
 connubial and happy pair could be desirable in such circles. 
 What part of your income, of five or six hundred a year, do you 
 suppose, would dress and jewel your wife, keep carriage and ser- 
 vants, and pay for your concert-tickets and opera-boxes — all ab- 
 solutely indispensable to people who go out ? Why, my dear 
 Ernest, your whole income would not suffice for, the half. You 
 must ' live shy,' go about in hackney-coaches, dress economically, 
 (which is execrable in a woman,) and endure the neglects and 
 mortifications which our pampered servants inevitably inflict on 
 shabby people. Your life would bo one succession of bitter mor- 
 
LATER DAYS. 243 
 
 tifications, difficulties, and heart-burnings. Believe me, there is 
 no creature on earth so exquisitely wretched, as a man with a 
 fashionable wife and small means." 
 
 Lady IVIildred had been too much accustomed to the manage- 
 ment of men, not to leave Ernest, after this homily, to his own 
 thoughts. A woman of less knowledge and tact would have fol- 
 lowed up this argument with an appeal to his feelings. But, be- 
 side that she wished the seed she had thus thrown into his mind 
 to germinate with thought, she knew that it was a wise principle 
 in the art of love to be cold by daylight. Ernest sat silent, with 
 his eyes cast musingly down to the corner of the chariot, where 
 the smallest foot and prettiest chaussure conceivable was playing 
 with the tassel of the window-pull ; and, reserving her more effec- 
 tive game of feeling for the evening, when they were to meet at 
 
 Mrs. Pi 's, she set him down at his clubhouse with a calm and 
 
 cold adieu, and drove home to bathe, dine alone, sleep, and re- 
 fresh body and spirit for the struggle against love and Eve Gore. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Genius is lord of the world. Men labor at the foundation of 
 society, while the lowly lark, unseen and little prized, sits, hard 
 by, in his nest on the earth, gathering strength to bear his song 
 up to the sun. Slowly rise basement and monumental aisle, 
 column and architrave, dome and lofty tower ; and when the cloud- 
 piercing spire is burnished with gold, and the fabric stands perfect 
 and wondrous, up springs the forgotten lark, with airy wheel to 
 the pinnacle, and, standing poised and un wondering on his giddy 
 perch, he pours out his celestial music till his bright footing 
 trembles with harmony. And when the song is done, and, mount- 
 
244 WHERE FAME IS FELT. 
 
 ing thence, he soars away to fill his exhausted heart at the foun- 
 tains of the sun, the dwellers in the towers below look up to the 
 gilded spire and shout — not to the burnished shaft, but to the 
 lark — lost from it in the sky. 
 
 " Mr. Clay !" repeated the last footman on Mrs. R.'s flower- 
 laden staircase. 
 
 I have let you down as gently as possible, dear reader ; but 
 here we are, in one of the most fashionable houses in May Fair, 
 
 Pardon me a moment ! Did I say 1 had let you down ? What 
 pyramid of the Nile is piled up like the gradations between com- 
 plete insignificance and the effect of that footman's announcement ? 
 On the heels of Ernest, and named with the next breath of the 
 menial's lips, came the bearer of a title laden with the emblazoned 
 honors of descent. Had he entered a hall of statuary, he could 
 not have been less regarded. All eyes were on the pale forehead 
 and calm lips that had entered before him ; and the blood of the 
 warrior who made the name, and of the statesmen and nobles who 
 had borne it and the accumulated honors and renown of centu- 
 ries of unsullied distinction — all these concentrated glories, in the 
 midst of the most polished and discriminating circle on eartli, 
 paled before the lamp of yesterday, burning in the eye of genius. 
 Where is distinction felt ? In secret, amid splendor ? No ! In 
 the street and the vulgar gaze ? No ! In the bosom of love ? 
 S/ie only remembers it. Where, then, is the intoxicating cup of 
 homage — the delirious draught for which brain, soul, and nerve, 
 are tasked, tortured, and spent — where is it lifted to the lips .' 
 The answer brings me back. Eyes shining from amid joAvels, 
 voices softened with gentle breeding, smiles awakening beneath 
 costly lamps — an atmosphere of perfume, splendor, and courtesy 
 — these form the poet's Hebe, and the hero's Ganymede. These 
 
LATER DAYS. 245 
 
 pour, for AiuLitlon, the drauirlit that slakes his fever — these hold 
 the cup to lips, drinking eagerly, that would turn away, in solitude 
 from the ambrosia of the gods ! 
 
 Clay's walk through the sumptuous rooms of IMrs. R was 
 
 like a Roman triumph. He was borne on from lip to lip — those 
 before him anticipating his greeting, and those he left, still send- 
 ing their bright and kind words after him. lie breathed incense. 
 
 Suddenly, behind him, he heard the voice of Eve Gore She 
 was making the tour of the rooms on the arm of a friend, and, fol 
 lowing Ernest, had insensibly tried to get nearer to him, and had 
 become flushed and troubled in the effort They had never be- 
 fore met in a large party, and her pride, in the universal attention 
 he attracted, still more flushed her eyelids and injured her beauty. 
 She gave him her hand as be turned ; but the greeting that 
 sprang to her lips was checked by a sudden consciousness that 
 many eyes were on her, and she hesitated, murmured some broken 
 words, and was silent. The immediate attention that Clay had 
 given to her, interrupted at the same moment the undertoued 
 murmur around him, and there was a minute's silence, in which 
 the inevitable thought flashed across his mind that he had over- 
 rated her loveliness. Still the trembling and clinging clasp of her 
 hand, and the appealing earnestness of her look, told him what 
 was in her heart — and when was ever genius ungrateful for love ! 
 He made a strong effort to reason down his disappointment, and, 
 had the embarrassed girl resumed instantly her natural ease and 
 playfulness, his sensitive imagination would have been conijuored, 
 and its recoil forgotten. But love, that lends us words, smiles, 
 tears, all we want, in solitude, robs us in the gay crowd of every 
 thing but what we cannot use — tears ! As the man she worship- 
 ped led her on through those bright rooms. Eve Gore, though she 
 
246 LOVE IN A CROWD. 
 
 knew not why, felt tlie large drops acbe behind her eyes. She 
 would have sobbed if she had tried to speak. Clay had given her 
 his arm, and resumed his banter of compliment with the crowd, 
 and with it a manner she had never before seen. He had been a 
 boy, fresh, frank, ardent, and unsuspicious, at Annesley Park. 
 She saw him now in the cold and polished armor of a man who has 
 been wounded as well as flattered by the world, and who presents 
 his shield even to a smile. Impossible as it was that he should 
 play the lover now, she felt wronged and hurt by his addressing to 
 her the same tone of elegant trifling and raillery which was the key of 
 the conversation around them. She knew, too, that she herself 
 was appearing to disadvantage ; and, before a brief hour had elapsed, 
 she had become a prey to another feeling — that bitter avarice 
 which is the curse of all afi'ection for the gifted or the beautiful — 
 an avarice that makes every smile, given back for admiration, a 
 gem torn from us — every word, even of thanks for courtesy, a 
 life-drop of our hearts drank away. 
 
 " The moon looks 
 On many brooks, 
 The brook can see ro moon but this," 
 
 contains the mordent secret of most hearts vowed to the love of 
 remarkable genius or beauty. 
 
 The supper-rooms had been sometime open ; from these and 
 the dancing hall, the half-weary guests were coming back to the 
 deep fauteuils, the fresher air, and the graver society of thss library, 
 which had served as an apartment of reception. With a clouded 
 brow, thoughtful and silent. Eve Gore sat with her mother in a 
 recess near the entrance, and Clay, who had kept near them, 
 though their conversation had long since languished, stood in the 
 
LATER DAYS. 347 
 
 centre of a small group of fashionable men, much more brilliant 
 and far louder in his gaiety than he would have been with a heart 
 at ease. It was one of those nights of declining May, when the 
 new foliage of the season seems to have exhausted the air, and, 
 though it was near morning, there came through the open win- 
 dows neither coolness nor vitality. Fans, faded wreaths, and 
 flushed faces, were universal. 
 
 A. footman stood suddenly in the vacant door. 
 
 " Lady MHdred !" 
 
 The announcements had been over for hours, and every eye 
 was turned on the apparition of so late a comer. 
 
 Quietly, but with a step as elastic as the nod of a water-lily, 
 Lady Mildred glided into the room, and the high tones and un- 
 harmonized voices of the different groups suddenly ceased, and 
 were succeeded by a low and sustained murmur of admiration. A 
 white dress of faultless freshness of fold, a snowy turban, from 
 which hung on either temple a cluster of crimson camelias still 
 wet with the night dew ; long raven curls of undisturbed grace 
 falling on shoulders of that undescribable and dewy coolness 
 which follows a morning bath, giving the skin the texture and the 
 opaque whiteness of the lily ; lips and skin redolent of repose 
 and purity, and the downcast but wakeful eye so expressive of re- 
 cent solitude, and so peculiar to one who has not spoken since 
 she slept — these were attractions, which, in contrast with the 
 paled glories around, elevated Lady Mildred at once into the pre- 
 dominant star of the night. 
 
 " "What news from the bottom of the sea, most adorable Venus .?" 
 said a celebrated artist, standing out from the group and drawing 
 a line through the air with his finger as if he were sketching the 
 flowing outline of her form. 
 
248 A LOV'D WOMAN ECLIPS'D. 
 
 Lady Mildred laid her small band on Clay's, and, with a smile, 
 but no greeting else, passed on. The bantering question of the 
 great painter told her that her spell worked to a miracle, and she 
 was too shrewd an enchantress to dissolve it by the utterance of a 
 word. She glided on like a spirit of coolness, calm, silent, and 
 graceful, and, standing a moment on the threshold of the apart- 
 ment beyond, disappeared, with every eye fixed on her vanishing 
 form in wondering admiration. Purity was the effect she had 
 produced — purity in contrast with the flowers in the room — 
 purity (Ernest Clay felt and wondered at it), even in contrast 
 with Eve Gore ! There was silence in the library for an instant, 
 and then, one by one, the gay group around our hero followed in 
 search of the new star of the hour, and he was left standing alone. 
 He turned to speak to his silent friends, but the manner of Mrs. 
 Gore was restrained, and Eve sat pale and tearful within the cur- 
 tain of the recess, and looked as if her heart were breaking. 
 
 " I should like — I should like to go home, mother!" she said 
 presently, with a difficult articulation. " I think I am not well. 
 Mr. Clay — Ernest — will see, perhaps, if our carriage is here." 
 
 " You will find us in the shawl-room," said Mrs. Gore, follow- 
 ing him to the staii'-case, and looking after him with troubled 
 eyes. 
 
 The carriage was at the end of the line, and could not come up 
 for an hour. Day was dawning, and Ernest had need of solitude 
 and thought. He crossed to the park, and strode off through the 
 wet grass, bathing his forehead with handfuls of dew. Alas ! the 
 fevered eyes and pallid lips he had last seen were less in harmony 
 with the calm stillness of the dawn than the vision his conscience 
 whispered him was charmed for his destruction. As the cool air 
 brought back his reason, he remembered Eve's embarrassed ad- 
 
LATER DAYS. 249 
 
 dress and his wearisome and vain eflforts to amuse her. He re- 
 nicmbered her mother's reproving eye, her own coldcx' utterance 
 of his name, and then in powerful rehef came up the pictures he 
 had brooded on since his conversation in the chariot with Lady 
 Mildred — visions of self-denial and loss of caste opposed to the en- 
 chantments of passion without restraint or calculation — and his 
 head and heart became wild with conflicting emotions. One thing 
 was certain. He must decide 7iow. He must speak to Eve 
 Gore before parting, and, in the tone of his voice, if it were but 9. 
 word, there must be that which her love would interpret as a 
 bright promise or a farewell. He turned back. At the gate of 
 the park stood one of the guilty wanderers of the streets, who 
 seized him by the sleeve and implored charity. 
 
 " Who are you ?" exclaimed Clay, scarce knowing what he ut- 
 tered. 
 
 " As good as she is," screamed the woman, pointing to Lady 
 Mildred's carriage, " only not so rich ! Oh, we could change 
 places, if all's true." 
 
 Ernest stood still, as if his better angel had spoken through 
 those painted lips. He gasped with the weight that rose slowly 
 from his heart ; and, purchasing his release from the unfortunate 
 wretch who had arrested his steps, he crossed slowly to the door 
 crowded with the menials of the gay throng within. 
 
 " Lady Mildred's carriage stops the way !" shouted a footman, 
 as he entered. He crossed .the hall, and, at the door of the shawl- 
 room he Avas met by Lady Mildred herself, descending from the 
 hall, surrounded with a troop of admirers. Clay drew back to let 
 her pass ; but while he looked into her face, it became radiant 
 with the happiness of meeting him, and the temptation to join her 
 seemed irresistible. She entered the room, followed by her gay 
 
250 CLOSE COMBAT OF HEARTS. 
 
 suite, and last of all by Ernest, who saw, with the first glance at 
 the Gores, that he was believed to have been with her during the 
 half-hour that had elapsed. He approached Eve ; but the sense 
 of an injustice he could not immediately remove, checked the 
 warm impulse with which he was coming to pour out his heart, 
 and against every wish and feeling of his soul, he was constrained 
 and cold. 
 
 *' No, indeed !" exclaimed Lady Mildred, her voice suddenly 
 becoming audible, *' I shall set down Mr. Clay, whose door I pass. 
 Lord George, ask Mr. Clay if he is ready." 
 
 Eve Gore suddenly laid her hand on his arm, as if a spirit had 
 whispered that her last chance for happiness was poised on that 
 moment's lapse. 
 
 " Ernest," she said, in a voice so unnaturally low that it made 
 his veins creep with the fear that her reason was unseated, " I am 
 lost if you go with her. Stay, dear Ernest ! She cannot love 
 you as I do. I implore you, remember that my life — my life " 
 
 " Beg pardon," said Lord George, laying his hand familiarly 
 on Clay's shoulder, and drawing him away, " Lady Mildred waits 
 for you!" 
 
 " I will return in an instant, dearest Eve," he said, springing 
 again to her side, " I will apologize and be with you. One in- 
 stant — only one " 
 
 " Thank God !" said the poor girl, sinking into a chair, and 
 bursting into tears. 
 
 Lady Mildred sat in her chariot, but her head drooped on her 
 breast, and her arms hung lifeless at her side. 
 
 *'She is surely ill," said Lord George; "jump in Clay, my 
 fine fellow. Get her home. Shut the door, Thomas ! Go on, 
 coachman !" Ai^d away sped the fleet horses of Lady Mildred, 
 
LATER DAYS. 2d1 
 
 but not homeward. Clay lifted lier head and spoke to her, but, 
 receiving no answer, he busied himself chafing her hands, and, the 
 carriage blinds being drawn, he thought momently he should bo 
 rid of his charge by their arrival in Grosvenor square. But the 
 minutes elapsed, and still the carriage sped on ; and surprised at 
 last into suspicion, he raised his hand to the checkstring, but the 
 small fingers he had been chafing so earnestly arrested his arm. 
 
 "No, no !" said Lady Mildred, rising from his shoulder, and 
 throwing her arms passionately around his neck, " you must go 
 blindfold, and go with me ! Ernest ! Ernest !" she continued, 
 as he struggled an instant to reach the string ; but he felt her 
 tears on his breast, and his better angel ceased to contend with 
 him. He sunk back in the chariot, with those fragile arms wound 
 around him, and, with fever in his brain, and leaden sadness at 
 his heart, sufi'ered that swift chariot to speed on its guilty way. 
 
 In a small maison de plaisance, which he well knew, in one of 
 the most romantic dells of Devon, built with exquisite taste by 
 Lady Mildred, and filled with all that art and wealth could 
 minister to luxury, Ernest Clay passed the remainder of the 
 summer, forgetful of everything beyond his prison of pleasure, 
 except a voice full of bitter remorse, which, sometimes, in the 
 midst of his abandonment, whispered the name of Eve Gore. 
 
 CHAPTER lY. 
 
 The rain poured in torrents from the broad leads and Gothic 
 
 battlements of — Castle, and the dull and plashing echoes, 
 
 sent up with steady reverberation from the stone pavement of 
 the terrace and courts, lulled to a late sleep one of the most gay 
 and fashionable parties assembled out of Londoa. It was verg- 
 
252 A POET'S WAKING. 
 
 ing toward noon, and, startled from a dream of music, by the 
 entrance of a servant, Ernest Clay drew back the heavy bed-cur- 
 tains and looked irresolutely around his luxurious chamber. The 
 coals in the bright fire widened their smoking cracks and parted 
 with an indolent eifort, the well-trained menial glided stealthily 
 about, arranging the preparations for the author's toilet, the gray 
 daylight came in grayer and softer through the draped folds which 
 fell over the windows ; and, if there was a temptation to get up, 
 it extended no further than to the deeply cushioned and spacious 
 chair, over which was flung a dressing-gown, of the loose and 
 flowing fashion and gorgeous stuff of the Orient. 
 
 " Thomas, what stars are visible to the naked eye this morn- 
 ing ?" said the couchant poet, with a heavy yawn. 
 
 "Sir!" 
 
 " I asked if Lady Grace was at breakfast?" 
 
 " Her ladyship took breakfast in her own room, I believe, sir !" 
 
 " ^ Qualis rexy talis grex."* Bring mine !" 
 
 " Beg pardon, sir ?" 
 
 " I said, I would have an egg and a spatchcock, Thomas ! 
 And, Thomas, see if the Duke has done with the Morning Post. 
 
 " I could have been unusually agreeable to Lady Grace," soli- 
 loquized the author, as he completed his toilet ; " I feel both 
 gregarious and brilliant this morning, and should have breakfast- 
 ed below. Strange that one feels so dexterous-minded sometimes 
 after a hard drink ! — Bacchus waking like Aurora ! Thomas, 
 you forgot the claret ! I could coin this efflux of soul, now, 
 into ' burning words,' and I will. What is the cook's name, 
 Thomas .'' Gone ! So has the builder of this glorious spatch- 
 cock narrowly escaped immortality ! Fairest Lady Grace, the 
 sonnet shall be yours, at the rebound ! A sonnet .? N — n — no ! 
 
LATER DAYS. 253 
 
 But I could write such a love-letter this morning! Morning 
 Post. ' JDicdj at Brighton, Mr. WiUiani Brown.'' Brown — 
 Brown — what was that pretty girl's name that married a Brown 
 — a rich William Brown. Beverly was her name — Julia Beverly 
 — a flower for the garden of Epicurus — a mate for Lecntium ! 
 I loved her till I was stopped by Mr. Brown — loved her } by 
 Jove, I loved her — as well as I loved anybody that year. Sup- 
 pose she were now the widow Brown? If I thought so, faith! 
 I ^yould write her such a reminiscent epistle ! Why not as it is — 
 on the supposition } Egad, if it is not her William Brown, it is 
 no fault of mine. Here goes, at a venture ! 
 
 " To her toho ivas Julia Beverly — 
 
 " Your dark eye rests on this once familiar hand-writing. If 
 your pulse could articulate at this moment, it would murmur he 
 loved me well ! He who writes to you now, after years of silence, 
 parted from you, with your tears upon his lips — parted from you 
 as the last shadow parts from the sun, with a darkness that must 
 deepen till morn again. I begin boldly, but the usage of the 
 world is based upon forgetfulness in absence, and I have not for- 
 gotten. Yet, this is not to be a love-letter. 
 
 " I am turning back a leaf in my heart. Turn to it in 
 yours ! On a night in June, within the shadow of the cypress 
 by the fountain of Ceres, in the ducal gardens of Florence, at 
 the festa of the Duke's birthnight, I first whispered to you of 
 love. Is it so writ in your tablet } Or, were those broken 
 words, and those dark tresses drooped on my breast, mockeries of 
 a night — flung from remembrance with the flowers you wore } 
 Flowers, said I } Oh, Heaven ! how beautiful you were, with 
 those lotus-stems braided in your hair, and the white chalices 
 
^4 -A- LOVE-LETTER FOR A VENT. 
 
 gleamimg tlirougli your ringlots, as if pouring their perfume over 
 four shoulders ! How rosy-pale, like light through alabaster; 
 Bhowed the cheek that shrank from me beneath the betraying 
 brightness of the moon ! How musical, above the murmur of the 
 fountain, rose the trembling wonder at my avowal, and the few 
 faint syllables of forgiveness and love, as I strained you wildly tc 
 my heart ! Oh, can that iDe forgotten ! 
 
 " With the news that your husband was dead, rushed bact 
 these memories in a whirlwind. For one brief, one delirious 
 moment, I fancied you might yet be mine. I write because the 
 delirium is over. Had it not been, I should be now weeping at 
 your feet — my life upon your lips ! 
 
 " I will try again to explain to you, calmly, a feeling that I 
 have. We met in the aisle of Santa Croce — strangers. There 
 was a winged lightness in your step, and a lithe wave in the out- 
 line of your form, as you moved through the sombre light, which 
 thrilled me like the awakening to life of some piece of serial 
 sculpture. I watched you to your carriage, and returned, to trace 
 that shadowy aisle for hours, breathing the same air, and trying 
 to conjure up to my imagination the radiant vision lost to me, I 
 feared, for ever. That night your necklace parted and fell at my 
 feet, in the crowd at the Pitti, and, as I returned the warm jewel 
 to your hand, I recognized the haunting features which I seemed 
 to live but to see again. By the first syllable of acknowledgment, 
 I knew you — for, in yoMV voice, there was that profound sweetness 
 that comes only from a heart thought-saddened^ and, therefore, 
 careless of the cold fashion of the world. In the embayed win- 
 dow, looking out on tlie moonlit terrace of the garden, I joined 
 you, with the confidence of a familiar friend, and, in the low un- 
 dertone of earnest and sincerity, we talked of the thousand themes 
 
LATER DAYS. 
 
 w 
 
 with which the walls of that palace of pilgrimage breathe and 
 kindle. Chance-guided, and ignorant even of each other's names, 
 we met on the galleries of art, in the gardens of noble palaces, in 
 the thronged resorts open to all in that land of the sun, and my 
 heart expanded to you like a flower, and love entered it with the 
 fulness of light. Again, I say, we dwelt but upon themes of in- 
 tellect, and I had not breathed to you of the passion that grew 
 hour by hour. 
 
 " We met, for the last time, on the night of the Duke's festa — 
 in that same glorious palace where we had first blended thought 
 and imagination on the wondrous miracles of art. You were sad 
 and lower-voiced than even 5^(>ur wont, and when I drew you from 
 the crowd, and, wandering with you through the flowering alleys of 
 the garden, stood, at last, by that murmuring fountain, and 
 ceased suddenly to speak — there was the threshold of love. Did 
 I^ou forbid me to enter ? You fell on my bosom and wept ! 
 
 " Had I brought you to this by love-making .'' ' Did I flatter or 
 plead my way into your heart ? Were you wooed or importuned ? 
 It is true, your presence drew my better angel closer to my side, 
 but I was myself — such as your brother might be to you — such 
 as you would have found me through life ; and for this — for being 
 what I was — with no art or eflbrt to win afi'ection, you drew the 
 Teil from between us — ^you tempted from my bosom the bird that 
 comes never back — ^you suffered me to love you, helplessly and 
 wildly, when you knew that love such as mine impoverishes life 
 for ever. The only illimitable trust, the only boundless belief on 
 earth, is first love ! What had I done to be robbed of this irre- 
 coverable gem — to be sent wandering through the world, a hope- 
 less infidel in woman ? 
 
 " I have become a celebrity since we parted, and perhaps you 
 
256 LETTER TO AN OLD LOYE. 
 
 have looked Into iny books, tbinking I inigbt bave woven, iniv 
 some one of my maiij-colored woofs, tlic brigbt tbroad you broke 
 so suddenly. You found no trace of it, and, you tbougbt, per- 
 haps, that all memory of those simpler hours was drowned in the 
 intoxicating cup of fame. I have accounted in this way for your 
 never writing to cheer or congratulate rne. But, if this conjec- 
 ture be true, how little you know the heart you threw away — 
 bow little you know of the thrice-locked, light-shunning, care- 
 hidden casket in which is treasured up the refused gold of a first 
 love. What else is there on earth worth hiding and brooding 
 over ? Should I wing such treasures with words and lose them ? 
 
 " And now you ask, why, after years of healing silence, I open 
 this wound afresh, and wi'ite to you. Is it to prove to you that I 
 love you ? — to prepare the way to sec you again, to woo and win 
 you ? No — though I was worthy of you once ! No — though I 
 feel living in my soul a passion, that, with long silence and im- 
 prisonment, has become well-nigh uncontrollable. I am not 
 worthy of you now ! My nature is soiled and world-polluted. 
 I am prosperous and famous, and could give you the station you 
 never won, though you trod on my heart to reach it — but the 
 lamp is out, on my altar of truth — I love by my lips — I mock at 
 faith — I marvel at belief in vows or fidelity — I would not trust 
 you — no, if you were mine I would not trust you — though I held 
 every vein of your bosom like a hound's leash. Till you can re- 
 buke whim, till you can chain imagination, till you can fetter 
 blood, I will not believe in woman. Yet this is your work ! 
 
 " Would you know why I write to you } Why has God given us 
 the instinct of outcry in agony, but to inflict on those who wound 
 us a portion of our pain .^ I would tell you, that the fire you 
 kindled so wantonly burns on — that, after years of distracting am- 
 
LATER DAYS. 257 
 
 bition, fame, ami pleasure, I still tiuste the bitterness 3'ou threw 
 into my cup.; tliat, in .'jccret, when musing on nij triumphs — in the 
 crowd, Avhen eiek with adulation — in this lordl}" castle, when lapt 
 in luxury and regard — in all hours and phases of a lite brilliant 
 and exciting above that of most men — I mourn over that betrayed 
 affection, I see that averted foce, I worship in bitter despair that 
 surpassing loveliness which should have been mine in its glory and 
 flower. 
 
 " I have laade my moan. I have given voice to my agony 
 Farewell !" Erxest Clay, 
 
 When Mr. Clay had concluded this " airing of his vocabulary," 
 he enclosed it in a hasty note to his friend, the Secretary of lega- 
 tion at the court of Tuscany, requesting him to call on " two 
 abominable old maids, by the name of Buggins or Blidginis," 
 who represented the scan. mag. of Florence, and could, doubtless, 
 tell him how to forward his letter to " the Browns ;" and the 
 castle-bell sounding as he achieved the suj^erscription, he descend- 
 ed to lunch, very much lightened of his ennui., but with no more 
 memory of the '' faithless Julia," than of the claret which had 
 supplied some of the " intensity" of his st3de. The letter — 
 began as a mystification, or, if it had an object beyond the 
 amusement of an idle hour, intended as a whimsical revenge for 
 Miss Beverley's preference of a rich husband to her then undis- 
 tinguished admirer — ^had, in the heat of composition, and quite 
 unconsciously to Clay, enlisted real feelings, totally disconnected 
 with the fair Julia, but not the less easily fused into shape and 
 probability by the facile alchymy of genius. The reader will see 
 at once, that the feelings expressed in it could never be the work 
 of imagination. Truth and bitter suffering show through every 
 line, and all its falsehood or fanoy lay in its capricious address to 
 
258 A WOMAN ABOUT AWAKING. 
 
 a woman wlio had really not the slightest share in contributing to 
 its material. The irreparable mischief it occasioned will be seen 
 in the sequel. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 While the Ambassador's bag is steadily posting over the hills 
 t^f Burgundy, with Mr. Clay's letter to Julia Beverley, the reader 
 must be content to gain a little upon Her Majesty's courier, and 
 look in upon a family party, in the terraced front of a villa in the 
 Sieighborhood of Fiesole. The evening was Italian and autum- 
 nal, of a ripe golden glory, and the air was tempered to the 
 blood, as daylight is to the eye — so fitly as be a forgotten 
 blessing. 
 
 A well-made, well-dressed, robust gentleman, who might be 
 forty-five, or a well-preserved sixty, sat at a stone table, on the 
 westward edge of the terrace. The London Times lay on his 
 lap, and a bottle of sherry and a single glass stood at his right 
 Land, and he was dozing quietly after his dinner. Near a foun- 
 tain below, two fair English children played with clusters of ripe 
 grapep. An Italian nurse, forgetting her charge, stood, with 
 folded arms, leaning against a rough garden statue, and looked 
 vacantly at the sunset sky, while up and down a level and flower- 
 ing alley, in the slope of the garden, paced slowly and gracefully 
 Mrs. Williaiii Brown, the mother of these children, the wife of 
 the gentleman sleeping over his newspaper, and the heroine of 
 this story. 
 
 Julia Beverley had been married five years, and, for three years 
 at least, she had relinquished the habit of dressing her fine per- 
 son to advantage. Yet, in that untransparent sleeve, was hidden an 
 
LATER DAYS. 259 
 
 arm of statuary roundness and polish, and, in those carelessly 
 fitted shoes, were disguised feet of a plump diminutiveness and 
 arched instep worthy to be the theme of a new Cenerentola. 
 The voluptuous chisel of the Greek never moulded shoulders and 
 bust of more exquisite beauty, yet, if she had not become uncon- 
 scious of the possession of these, altogether, she had so far lost 
 the vanity of her girlhood, that the prudery of a quakeress 
 would not have altered a fold of her cashmere. Her bonnet, as 
 she walked, had fallen back, and, holding it by one string, over 
 her shoulder, she put away, from behind her " pearl-round ear," 
 the dark and heavy ringlet it had tangled in its fall, and, with its 
 fellow shading her cheek and shoulder in broken masses of 
 auburn, she presented a picture of luxurious and yet neglected 
 beauty, such as the undress pencil of Greuze would have revelled 
 in portraying. The care of such silent fringes as veiled her in- 
 dolent eyes, is not left to mortals, and the covert loves, who curve 
 these soft cradles and sleep in them, had kept Julia Beverley's 
 with the fidelity of fairy culture. 
 
 The Beverley s had married their daughter to Mr. Brown, with 
 the usual parental care as to his fortune, and the usual parental 
 forgetfulness of everything else. There was a better chance for 
 happiness, it is true, than in most matches of convenience, for 
 the bridegroom, though past his meridian, was a sensible and very 
 presentable sort of man, and the bride was naturally indolent, and 
 therefore likely to travel the road shaped out for her by the very 
 jiarked hedges of expectation and duty. What she had felt for 
 Mr. Clay, during their casual and brief intimacy, will be seen 
 by-and-by, but it had made no barrier to her union with Mr. 
 Brown. With a luxurious house, fine -horses, and her own way, 
 the stream of life, for the first year of marriage, ran smoothly off. 
 
260 PIVOT OF A FATE. 
 
 The second year was chequered with misgivings that she had 
 thrown herself away, and nights of bitter weeping over a destiny 
 in which no one of her bright dreams of love seemed possible to 
 be realized ; and still, habit riveted its thousand chains, her children 
 grew attractive and attaching, and, by the time at which our 
 story commences, the warm images of a life of passionate devotion 
 had ceased to haunt her dreams, sleeping or waking, and she bade 
 fair to live and die one of the happy many about whom " there is 
 no story to tell." 
 
 Mr. Brown, at this period, occupied a villa in the neighborhood 
 of Florence, and, on the arrival of Mr. Clay's letter at the English 
 Embassy, it was at once forwarded to Fiesole, where it intruded, 
 like the serpent of old, on the domestic paradise to which the 
 reader has been introduced. 
 
 Weak and ill-reo;ulated as was the mind of Mrs. Brown, her 
 first feeling, after reading the ardent epistle of Mr. Clay, was un- 
 mingled resentment at its freedom. Her husband's back was 
 turned to her as he sat on the terrace, and, ascending the garden 
 steps, she threw the letter on the table. 
 
 '■'■ Here is a letter of condolence on your death," she said, the 
 blood mantling in her cheek, and her lips arched into an expres- 
 sion of wounded pride and indignation. 
 
 Alas, for the slight pivot on which turns the balance of destiny 
 — her husband slept ! 
 
 "William !" she said again, but the tone was fainter, and the 
 hand she raised to touch him, stayed suspended above the fated 
 letter. 
 
 Waiting one instant more for an answer, and bendin r over her 
 husband to be sure that his sleep was real, she hastily placed the 
 letter in her bosom, and, with pale brow and limbs trembling be- 
 
LATER DAYS, 261 
 
 Death her, fled to her chamber. Memory had required but an 
 instant to call up the past, and in that instant, too, the honeyed 
 flatteries she had glanced over in such haste, had burnt into her 
 imagination — effacing all else, even the object for which he had 
 written, and the reproaches he had lavished on her unfaithfulness. 
 With locked doors, and curtains dropped between her and the 
 glowing twilight, she reperused the worshipping picture of herself, 
 drawn so covertly under the semblance of complaint, and the 
 feeling of conscious beauty, so long forgotten, stole back into her 
 veins, like the re-incarnation of a departed spirit. With a flashing 
 glance at the tall mirror before her, she stood up, arching her 
 white neck, and threading her fingers through the loosened masses 
 3f her hair. She felt that she was beautiful — still superbly beau- 
 tiful. She advanced to the mirror. 
 
 Her bright lips, her pliant motion, the smooth transparence of 
 her skin, the fulness of vein and limb, all mingled in one assurance 
 of youth, in a wild desire for admiration, in a strange, restless, 
 feverish impatience to be away where she could be seen and loved 
 — away to fulfil that destiny of the heart which seemed now the 
 one object of life, though for years so unaccountably forgotten ! 
 
 " I was born to be loved !" she wildly exclaimed, pacing her 
 chamber, and wondering at her own beauty as the mirror gave 
 back her kindling features, and animated grace of movement. 
 " How could I have forgotten that I was beautiful .'" But at 
 that instant her husband's voice, cold, harsh and unimaginative, 
 forced its way to her ear, and, convulsed with a tumultuous 
 misery she could neither struggle with nor define, she threw her- 
 self on her bed, and abandoned herself to an uncontrolled agony of 
 tears. 
 
 Let those smile at this paroxysm of feeling, whose " dream has 
 
262 PAST HOPE QtJESTIOXiXi> ^liIJ^nO^^ 
 
 come to pass !" Let those wonder, who have never been startled 
 from their common-place existence with the heart's bitter question 
 — is this all ? 
 
 Eeader ! are you loved ? — loved as you dreamed in youth you 
 might and must be — loved by the matchless creature you painted 
 in your imagination, lofty-hearted, confiding, and radiantly fair ? 
 Have you spent your treasure ? Have you lavished the boundless 
 wealth of your affection ? Have you beggared heart and soul by 
 the wild abandonment to love, of which you once felt capable ? 
 
 Lady ! of you I ask : Is the golden flow of your youth coined 
 as it melts away ? Are your truth and fervor, your delicacy and 
 devotedness, your unutterable depths of tenderness and tears — are 
 they named on another's lips ? — are they made the incense to 
 Heaven of another's nightly prayer ? — Your beauty is in its pride 
 and flower — who lays back, with idolatrous caress, the soft part- 
 ing of your hair ? Who smiles when your cheek mantles, and 
 shudders when it is pale ? — Who sits with your slender fingers 
 
 clasped in his dumb, because there are bounds to language, 
 
 and trembling, because death will divide you? Oh, the ray of 
 light wasted on the ocean, and the ray caught and made priceless 
 in a king's diamond — the wild-flower perishing in the woods, and 
 its sister culled for culture in the garden of a poet — are not wider 
 apart in their destiny than the loved and the neglected ! — " Blessed 
 are the beloved," should read a new beatitude — " for theirs is the 
 foretaste of Paradise !" 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 * 
 
 The autumn following, found Mr. Clay a pilgrim for health to 
 the shores of the Mediterranean. Exhausted, body and soul, with 
 the life of alternate gaiety and passion into which his celebrity had 
 
LATER DAYS. 263 
 
 drawn him, lie bad accepted, with a sense of exquisite relief, the 
 offer of a cruise among the Greek Isles in a friend's yacht, and, in 
 the pure stillness of those bright seas, with a single companion and 
 his books, he idled away the summer in a luxury of repose and 
 enjoyment, such as only the pleasure-weary can understand. Re- 
 cruited in health, and, with a mind beginning to yearn once more 
 for the long foregone stimulus of society, he landed at Naples in 
 the beginninor of October. 
 
 " We are not very gay just now," said the English Minister, with 
 whom he hastened to renew an acquaintance commenced in his 
 former travels, " but the prettiest woman in the world is * at home' 
 to-night, and if you are as susceptible as most of the cavaliers of 
 the Chiaja, you will find Naples attractive enough after you have 
 seen her." 
 
 " English .?" 
 
 " Yes — but you cannot have known her, for I think she was 
 never heard of till she came to Naples." 
 
 " Her name .^" 
 
 " Why, you should hear that after seeing her. Call her Queen 
 Giovanna, and she will come nearer your prepossession. By-the- 
 by, what have you to do this morning .?" 
 
 " I am at your Excellency's disposal." 
 
 " Come with me to the atdier of a very clever artist, then, and 
 I will show you her picture. It should be the man's chef-dPaiwre^ 
 for he has lost his wits in painting it." 
 
 " Literally, do you mean .^" 
 
 " It would seem so — for, though the picture was finished some 
 months since, he has never taken it off his easel, and is generally 
 found looking at it. Besides, he has neither cleaned pallet nor 
 brush since the last day she sat to him." 
 
264 BEAUTY BORN AGAIN. 
 
 " If he were young and handsome " 
 
 " So he is — and so are scores of the lady's devoted admirers ; 
 but she is either prudent or cold, to a degree that effectually repels 
 hope, and the painter pines with the rest." 
 
 A few minutes' walk brought them to a large room near the 
 Corso, tenanted by the Venetian artist, Ippolito Incontri. The 
 Minister presented his friend, and Clay forgot their errand in ad- 
 miration of the magnificent brigand face and figure of the painter, 
 who, after a cold salutation, retreated into the darkest corner of 
 the point of view, and stood gazing past them at his easel, silent 
 and unconscious of observation. 
 
 " I have seen your wonder," said Clay, turning to the picture 
 with a smile, and at the first glance only remarking its resemblance 
 to a face that should be familiar to him. " I am surprised that I 
 cannot name her at once, for I am sure I know her well. But, 
 stay ! — the light grows on my eye — no ! — with that expression, 
 certainly not — I am sure, now, that I have not seen her. Won- 
 derful beauty ! Yet there was a superficial likeness ! Have you 
 ever remarked, Signor Incontri, that, through very intellectual 
 faces, such as this, you can sometimes see what the countenance 
 would have been in other circumstances — without the advantages 
 of education, I mean .?" 
 
 No answer. The painter was absorbed in his picture, and Clay 
 turned to the ambassador. 
 
 " I have seen somewhere a face, and a very lovely one, too, 
 that was strangely like these features ; yet, not only without the 
 soul that is here, but incapable, I should think, of acquiring it by 
 Mny discipline, either of thought or feeling." 
 
 " Perhaps it was the original of this, and the painter has given 
 the soul !" 
 
LATER DAYS. 3^6 
 
 " He could as soon warm a statue into life, as do it. Invent 
 that look ! Oh, he would be a god, not a painter ! Raphael 
 copied, and this man copies ; but Nature did the original of this, 
 as he did of Raphael's immortal beauties ; and the departure of 
 the most vanishing shadow from the truth, would be a blot irre- 
 mediable." 
 
 Clay lost himself in the picture, and was silent. Veil after 
 veil fell away from the expression as he gazed, and the woman 
 seemed melting out from the canvas into life. The _pose and dra- 
 pery were nothing. It was the portrait of a female standing still 
 — perhaps looking idly out on the sea — lost in revery perhaps — 
 perhaps just feeling the breath of a coming thought, the stirring 
 of some lost memory that would presently awake. The lips were 
 slightly unclosed. The heavy eyelashes were wakeful, yet coucb- 
 ant in their expression. The large, dark orbs, lustrous and suf- 
 fused, looked of the depth and intense stillness of the midnight sky 
 close to the silver rim of a moon high in heaven. The coloring 
 was warm and Italian, but every vein of the transparent temple 
 was steeped in calmness ; and, even through the bright pome- 
 granate richness of a mouth full of the capability of passion, there 
 seemed to breathe the slumberous fragrance of a flower motionless 
 under its night burthen of dew. It portrayed no rank in life. 
 The drapery might have been a queen's or a contadina's. It was 
 a woman stolen to the canvas from her inmost cell of privacy, 
 with her soul unstartled by a human look, and mere life and free- 
 dom from pain or care expressed in her form and countenance — 
 vet, with all this, a radiance of beauty, and a sustained loftiness 
 of feeling, as apparent as the altitude of the stars. It was a 
 matchless woman incomparably painted ; and, though not a man 
 to fall in love with a semblance, Clay felt, and struggled in vaia 
 12 
 
266 THE OLD LOVE MET AGAIN. 
 
 against the feeling, that the creature drawn in that portrait con- 
 trolled the next, and perhaps the most eventful, revolution of his 
 many-sphered existence. 
 
 The next five hours have (for this tale) no history. 
 
 " I have perplexed myself in vain, since I left you," Clay said 
 to the Ambassador, as they rolled on their way to the palace of the 
 fair Englishwoman, " but when I yield to the secret conviction 
 that I have seen the adorable original of the picture, I am lost in 
 a greater mystery — how I ever could have forgotten her. The 
 coming five minutes will undo the Sphinx's riddle for me." 
 
 ** My life on it, you have never seen her," said his friend, as 
 flie carriage turned through a reverberating archway, and, rapidly 
 making the circuit of a large court, stopped at the door of a palace 
 blazing with light. 
 
 An opening was made through the crowd, as the Ambassador's 
 name was announced, and Clay followed him through the brilliant 
 rooms with an agitation to which he had long been a stranger. 
 Taste, as well as sumptuous expensiveness, was stamped on every- 
 thing around, and there was that indefinable expression in the 
 assembly, which no one could detect or appreciate better than Clay, 
 and which is composed, among other things, of a perfect conviction, 
 on the part of the guests, that their time, presence, and approba- 
 tion, are well bestowed where they are. 
 
 At the curtained door of a small boudoir, draped like a tent, a 
 Neapolitan noble, of high rank, turned smiling to the Ambassador, 
 and placed his finger on his lip. The silken pavilion was crowded, 
 and only uniforms and heads, fixed in attention, could be seen by 
 those without ; but, from the arching folds of the curtain, came a 
 female voice of the deepest and sweetest melodiousness, reading, 
 in low and finely-measured cadence, from an English poem. 
 
EARLIER DAYS. 267 
 
 " Do you know the voice r" asked the Amlbassador, as Clay 
 stood like a man fixed to marble, eagerly listening. 
 
 " Perfectly ! I implore you tell me who reads !" 
 
 " No ! — though your twofold recognizance is singular. You 
 shall see her before you hear her name. What is she reading r" 
 
 " My own poetry, by Heaven ! and yet I cannot name her ! 
 This passes belief. I have heard that voice sob — sob convul- 
 sively, and with accents of love — I have heard it whisper and en- 
 treat — ^you look incredulous, but it is true. If she do not know 
 
 me — nay, if she has not " he would have said " loved me" — 
 
 but the look of scrutiny and surprise on the countenance of the 
 Ambassador checked the imprudent avowal, and he became aware 
 that he was on dangerous ground. He relapsed into silence, and, 
 crowding close to the tent, heard the numbers he had long ago 
 linked and forgotten, breathing in music from those mysterious 
 lips, and, possessed as he was by suspense and curiosity, he could 
 have wished thai sweet moment to have lasted for ever. I call 
 upon the poet, if there be one who reads this idle tale, to tell me 
 if there be a flattery more exquisite on earth, if there be a deeper- 
 sinking plummet of pride, ever dropped into the profound bosom 
 of the bard, than the listening to thoughts born in pain and silence, 
 articulate in the honeyed accents of woman ? Answer me, poet ! 
 Answer me, women, beloved of poets, who have breathed their 
 worshipping incense, and know by what its bright censer was 
 kindled ! 
 
 The voice ceased, and there was one moment of stillness, and 
 then the rooms eehoed with acclamation. " Crown her!" cried 
 a tall old man, who stood near the entrance covered with military 
 orders. ^' Crown her !" repeated every tongue ; and, from a vase 
 that hung suspended in the centre of the pavilion, the fresh 
 
26S THE POET CROWNED. 
 
 flowers were snatclied by eager hands and wreathed into a chap- 
 let. But those without became clamorous to see the imposition 
 of the crown ; and, clearing a way through the entrance, the old 
 man took the chaplet from the busy hands that had entwined it, 
 and crying out with Italian enthusiasm, " A triumph ! a triumph !" 
 led forth the majestic Corinna to the crowd. 
 
 The Ambassador looked for Clay. He had shrunk behind the 
 statue of a winged Cupid, and, though his eyes were fixed with a 
 gaze of stone on the magnificent creature who was the centre of 
 all regards, he seemed, by his open lips and heaving chest, to be 
 gasping with some powerful emotion. 
 
 " Give me the chaplet !" suddenly exclaimed the magnificent 
 idol of the crowd. And, with no apparent emotion, except a 
 glowing spot in her temples, and a quicker throb in the snowy 
 curve of her neck and bosom, she waved back the throng upon 
 her right, and advanced with majestic steps to the statue of 
 Love. 
 
 "Welcome, Ernest!" she said in a low voice, taking him by 
 the hand, and losing, for a scarce perceptible moment, the smile 
 from her lips. " Here, my friends ! she exclaimed, turning 
 again, and leading him from his concealment, " honor to whom 
 honor is due ! A crown for the poet of my country, Ernest 
 Clay!" 
 
 *' Clay, the poet !" " The English poet !" " The author of 
 the poem !" were explanations that ran (juickly through the room, 
 and, as the crowd pressed closer around, murmuring the enthusi- 
 asm native to that southern clime, Julia Beverley sprang upon an 
 ottoman, and standing, in her magnificent beauty, conspicuous 
 above all, she placed the crown above Clay's head, and bending 
 
LATER DAYS. e,Qg 
 
 gracefully and smiliugly over liini, impressed a kiss on his fore 
 head, and said, " This fur the poet /" 
 
 And, of the many lovers of this superb woman who saw that kiss, 
 ilot one showed a frown or turned away — so natural to the warm 
 impulse of the hour did it seem — so pure an expression of admira- 
 tion of genius — so mere a tribute of welcome from Italy to the 
 bard, by an inspiration born of its sunny air. Surrounded with 
 eager claimants for his acquaintance, intoxicated with flattery, 
 giddy with indefinable emotions of love and pleasure, Ernest Clay 
 lost sight for a moment of the face that beamed on him, and in 
 that moment she had made an apology of fatigue, and retired, leav- 
 ing her guests to their pleasures. 
 
 CHAPTEK VII. 
 
 *' Un amour rcchaujfe nc vaut jamais rien^^^ is one of those 
 common-places in the book of love, which are true only of the 
 common-place and unimaginative. The rich gifts of affection, 
 which surfeit the cold bosom of the dull, fall upon the fiery heart 
 of genius like spice-wood and incense, and, long after the giver's 
 prodigality has ceased, the mouldering embers lie warm beneath 
 the ashes of silence, and a breath will uncover and rekindle them. 
 The love of common men is a world without moon or stars. 
 When the meridian is passed, the shadows lengthen, and the light 
 departs, and the night that follows is dark indeed. But, as the 
 twilio"ht closes on the bright and warm passion of the poet, me- 
 mory lights her pale lamp, like the moon, and brightens as the 
 darkness deepens ; and the warm sacrifices made in love's noon 
 and eve, go up to their places like stars, and, with the light trea- 
 sured from that fervid day, shine in the still heaven of the past 
 
270 POETS AS LOVERS. 
 
 steadfast tlioiigh silent. If there be a feature of the liuman soul ' 
 in which, more than in all others, the fiend is manifest, it is the 
 masculine ingratitude for love. What wrongs, what agonies, 
 what unutterable sorrows are the reward of lavished afibction, of 
 generous self-abandonment, of unhesitating and idolatrous trust ! 
 Yet who are the ungrateful ? Men lacking the imagination which 
 can reclothe the faded form in its youthful beauty — men dead to 
 the past — with no perception but sight and touch — to whom wo- 
 man is a flower and no more — fair to look on, and sweet to pluck 
 in her pride "and nerfume, but scarce possessed ere trampled on 
 and forgotten ! Genius alone treasures the perishing flower and 
 remembers its dew and fragrance, and so, immemorially and well, 
 poets have been beloved of women. 
 
 I am recording the passions of genius. Let me say to you, 
 lady ! (reading this tale understandingly, for you have been be- 
 loved by a poet), trust neither absence, nor silence, nor untoward 
 circumstances! lie lias loved you once. Let not your eye rest 
 on him when you meet — and, if you speak, speak coldly ! — 
 for, with a passion strengthened and embellished tenfold by a 
 memory all iuiaginatitjii, he will love you again ! The hours you 
 passed with him, the caresses you e-=)ve biiii, the tears you shed, 
 and the beauty with which you bewildered him, have been hal- 
 lowed in poetry, and glorified in revery and dream, and he will 
 come back to you, as he would spring into paradise were it so lost 
 and recovered ! 
 
 Bitt to my story ! 
 
 Clay's memory had now become the home of an all-absorbing 
 passion. By a succession of mischances, or by management so 
 adroit as never to alarm his pride, a week passed over, and be 
 had found no opportunity of speaking alone to the object of hia 
 
LATER DAYS. gsjtj 
 
 adoration. She favored him in public, talked to him at the opera, 
 leaned on his arm in the crowd, caressed his genius with exquisite 
 flattery, and seemed at moments to escape narrowly from a phrase 
 too tender or a subject that would lead to the past — ^yet, without 
 a violation of the most palpable tact, love was still an impossible 
 topic. That he could have held her hand in his, unforbidden — 
 that he could have pressed her to his bosom while she wept — that 
 she could have loved him ever, though but for an hour — seemed 
 to him sometimes an incredible dream, sometimes a most pas- 
 sionate happiness only to believe. He left her at night to pace 
 the sands of the bay till morning, remembering — forever remem- 
 bering — the scene by the fountain at Florence ; and he passed 
 his day between her palace and the picture of poor Incontri, who 
 loved her more helplessly than himself, but found a sympathy in 
 the growing melancholy of the poet. 
 
 " She has no heart," said the painter ; but Clay had felt it bear 
 against his own, and he fed his love in silence on that remembrance. 
 
 They sat upon the rocks by the gate of the Villa Real. The 
 sun was just setting, and, as the waves formed near the shore and 
 rode in upon the glassy swell of the bay, there seemed to writhe, 
 on each wavy back, a golden serpent, who broke on the sands at 
 their feet in sparkles of fire. At a little distance lay the swallow- 
 like yacht, in which Clay \jad threaded the Archipelago, and, as 
 the wish to feel the little craft bounding once more beneath him 
 was checked by the anchor-like heaviness of his heart, an eques- 
 trian party stopped suddenly on the Chiaja. 
 
 " There is Mr. Clay !" said the thrilling voice of Julia Bever- 
 ley, " perhaps he will take us over in the yacht. Sorrento looks 
 so blue and tempting in the distance." 
 
 Without waiting for a repetition of the wish he had overheard, 
 
279 HEARTS AND LIVES IN DANGER. 
 
 Clay sprang upon a rock, and made signal for the boat, and, be- 
 fore the crimson of the departing day had faded from the sky, 
 the fair Julia and her party of cavaliers were standing on the 
 deck of the swift vessel, bound on a moonlight voyage to Sorrento, 
 and watching on their lee the reddening ribs and lurid eruption 
 of the volcano. The night was Neapolitan, and the air was the 
 food of love. 
 
 It was a voyage of silence, for the sweetness of life, in such an 
 atmosphere and in the midst of that matchless bay, lay like a vo- 
 luptuous burthen in the heart, and the ripple under the clearing 
 prow was language enough for all. Incontri leaned against the 
 mast, watching the moonlit features of the signora with his mel- 
 ancholy but idolizing gaze, and Clay lay on the deck at her feet, 
 trying, with pressed-down lids, to recall the tearful eyes of the Julia 
 Beverley he had loved at the fountain. 
 
 It was midnight when the breath of the orange groves of Sor- 
 rento, stealing seaward, ,-iackened the way of the little craft, and, 
 running in close under the rocky foundations of the house of 
 Tasso, Clay dropped his anchor, and landed his silent party at 
 their haven, Incontri was sent forward to the inn to prepare 
 their apartments, and, leaning on Clay's arm and her husband's, 
 the superb Englishwoman ascended to the overhanging balcony of 
 the dwelling of the Italian bard, and, in a few words of eloquent 
 sympathy in the homage paid by the world to these shrines of 
 genius, added to the overflowing heart of her gifted lover one 
 more intoxicating drop of flattery and fascination. They strolled 
 onward to the inn, and he bade her good night at the gate, for he 
 could no longer endure the totter of another's presence, and the 
 emotion stifled in his heart and lips. 
 
 I have forgotten the name of that pleasant inn at Sorrento, 
 
LATER DAYS. 273 
 
 built against the side of its mountain shore, "vvitb terraced orange- 
 groves piled above its roof, and the golden fruit nodding in at ita 
 windows. From the principal floor, you -will reraember, projects 
 a broad verandah, jutting upon one of these fruit-darkened alleys. 
 If you have ever slept there, after a scramble over Scaricatnja, 
 you have risen, even from your fatigued slumber, to go out and 
 pace awhile that overhanging garden, oppressed with the heavy 
 perfume of the orange flowers. Strange that I should forget the 
 name of that inn! I thought, when the busy part of my life 
 should be well over, I should go back and die there. 
 
 The sea had long closed over the orbed forehead of the moon, 
 and still Clay restlessly hovered around the garden of the inn. 
 Mounting at hist to the alley on a level with the principal cham- 
 bers of the house, he saw, outlined in shadow upon the curtain of 
 a long window, a female figure holding a book, with her cheek 
 resting on her hand. He threw himself on the grass and gazed 
 steadily. The hand moved from the cheek, and raised a pencil 
 from the table, and wrote upon the margin of the volume, and 
 then the pencil was laid down, and the slender fingers raised the 
 masses of fallen hair from the shoulder, and threaded the wavy 
 ringlets indolently as she read. From the slightest motion of that 
 statuary hand, from the most fragmented outline of that bird-like 
 neck, Clay would have known Julia Beverley ; and, as he watched 
 her graceful shadow, the repressed and pent-up feelings of that 
 evening of restraint, fed as they had been by every voluptuous in- 
 fluence known beneath the moon, rose to a height that absorbed 
 brain and soul in one wild tumult of emotion. He sprang to his 
 feet to rush into her presence, but at that instant a footstep start- 
 ed from the darkness of a tree, at the extremity of the alley. He 
 paused, and the shadow arose, and, laying aside the book, leaned 
 12* 
 
274 DESPERATE VENTURE. 
 
 back, and lifted the tapering arms, and wound up the long masses 
 of fallen hair, and then, kneeling, remained a few minutes motion- 
 less, with the face buried in the hands. 
 
 Clay trembled and felt rebuked. 
 
 Once more the flowing drapery swept across the curtain, the 
 light was extinguished, and the window thrown open to the night 
 air ; and then all was still. 
 
 Clay walked to and fro in an agitation bordering on delirium. 
 *' I must speak to her !" he said, murmuring audibly, and advanc- 
 ing toward the window. But hurried footsteps started again from 
 the shadow of the pine, and he stopped to listen. All was silent, 
 and he stood a moment pressing his hands on his brow, and trying 
 to struggle with the wild impulse in his brain. His closed eyes 
 brought back instantly the unfading picture of Julia Beverley, 
 weeping on his breast at the fountain ; and, with one rapid move- 
 ment, he divided the curtains and stood breathless in her chamber. 
 
 The heavy breathing of the unconscious husband fell like music 
 on his ear. 
 
 '^ Julia !" he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, " I am here — Er- 
 nest Clay !" 
 
 " You are frantic, Ernest !" said a voice so calm that it fell on 
 his ear like an assurance of despair. " I have no feeling for you 
 that answers to this freedom. Leave my chamber !" 
 
 " No !" said Clay, dropping the curtain behind him, and ad- 
 vancing into the room, " wake your husband if you will — this is 
 the only spot on earth where I can breathe, and if you are relent- 
 less, here will I die ! Was it false when you said you loved me ? 
 Speak, Julia !" 
 
 " Ernest !" she said, in a less assured tone, " I have done wrong 
 not to check this wild passion earlier, and I have that to say to 
 
LATER DAYS. 275 
 
 you which, perhaps, had better be said now. I will come to you 
 in the garden." 
 
 " My vessel waits, and in an hour " 
 
 " Nay, nay, you mistake me. But go ! I will follow in- 
 stantly!" 
 
 Vesuvius was burning with an almost smokeless flame when 
 Clay stood again in the night air, and every object was illuminat- 
 ed with the clearness of a conflagration. At the first glance 
 around, he fancied he saw figures gliding behind the lurid body of 
 a pine opposite the window, but, in the next moment, the curtain 
 again parted, and Julia Beverley, wrapped in a cloak, stood be- 
 side him on the verandah. 
 
 " Stand back !" she said, as he endeavored to put his arm 
 around her, " I have more than one defender within call, and I 
 mu^t speak to you where I am. "Will you listen to me, Ernest .^" 
 
 Clay's breast heaved ; but he folded his arms and leaned against 
 the slender column of the verandah in silence. 
 
 " Were it any other person who had so far forgotten himself," 
 siie continued, " it would be sufficient to say, ^ I can never love 
 you," and leave my privacy to be defended by my natural protec- 
 tor. But I wish to show you, Ernest, not only that you can 
 have no hope in loving me, but that you have made me the mis- 
 chievous woman I have become. From an humble wife to a dan- 
 gerous coquette, the change may well seem startling — but it is of 
 3'^our working." 
 
 "3Iine, madam !" said Clay, whose pride was aroused with the 
 calm self-possession and repulse of her tone and manner. 
 
 " I have never answered the letter you wrote me." 
 
 " Pardon, and spare me !" said Clay, who remembered, at the 
 instant only, the whim under which it was written. 
 
276 A TRYING INTERVIEW. 
 
 " It awoke me to a new existence," slic continued, without 
 heedinjr his confusion, " for it first made me aware that I could 
 ever be the theme of eloquent admiration. I had never been 
 praised but in idle compliment, and by those whose intellect I 
 despised ; and though, as a girl, I had a vague feeling that I was 
 slighted and unappreciated, I yielded, gradually, to the convic- 
 tion that the world was right, and that women sung by poets, and 
 ^.described in the glowing language of romance, were of another 
 mould. I scarce reasoned upon it. I remember, on first arriving 
 in Italy, drawing a comparison favorable to myself, between my 
 own beauty and the Fornarina's, and the portraits of Laura and 
 Leonora D'Este ; but, as I was loved by neither painters nor 
 poets, I accused myself of presumption, and, with a sigh, re- 
 turned to my humility. My life seemed more vacant than it 
 should be, and I sometimes wept from an unhappiness I could 
 not define ; and I once or twice met persons who seemed to have 
 begun to love me, and appreciate my beauty as I wished ] and, in 
 this lies the history of my heart up to the time of your writing to 
 me. That letter, Ernest—" 
 
 ^' You believed that I loved you, then !" passionately inter- 
 rupted her listener — " you know, now, that T loved you ! Tell me 
 so, I implore you !" 
 
 *' My dear poet," said the self-possessed beauty, with a smile, 
 expressive of as much mischief as frankness, '' let us be honest ! 
 You never loved me ! I never believed it, but for one silly houi-. 
 Stay ! — stay ! — you shall not answer me I have not left my bed 
 at this unseasonable hour, to listen to protestations. At loast, 
 let me first conclude the history of my metempsychosis ! I can 
 tell it to nobody else ; and, like the Ancient Mariner's, it is a tale 
 that must be told. Revejions ! Your very brilliant letter awoke 
 
LATER DAYS. 277 
 
 me from the most profound lethargy by which beauty such as 
 mine was ever overtaken. A moment's inventory of my attrac- 
 tions, satisfied me that your exquisite description (written, I have 
 since suspected, to amuse an idle hour, but done, nevertheless, 
 with the fine memory and graphic power of genius) was neither 
 firaciful nor over-colored ; and, for the first time in my life, \ felt 
 beautiful. You are an anatomist of the heart ; and, I may say 
 to you, that I looked at my own dark eyes, and fine features and 
 person, with the admiration and wonder of a blind beauty re- 
 stored to sight, and beholding herself in a mirror. You will 
 think, perhaps, that love for the writer of this magic letter should 
 have been the inevitable sequel. But I am here to avert the 
 consequences of my coquetry, and I will be frank with you. 1 
 forgot you in a day ! In the almost insane desire to be seen and 
 appreciated,, painted, sung, and loved, which took possession of 
 me when the tumult of my first feeling had passed away, your 
 self- controlled and manageable passion seemed to me frivolous 
 and shallow." 
 
 " Have you been better loved r" coldly asked Clay. 
 
 " I will answer that question before we part. I did not suffer 
 myself to think of a love that could be returned — for I had hus- 
 band and children ; and, though I felt that a mutual passion, such 
 as I could imagine, would have absorbed, under happier cir- 
 cumstances, every energy of my soul, I had no disposition to 
 make wreck of another's happiness and honor, whatever the 
 tamptation. Still, I must be loved — I must come out from' my 
 obscurity and shine — I must control the painter's pencil, and 
 the poet's pen, and the statesman's scheme — I must sun my 
 beauty in men's eyes, and be caressed and conspicuous — I must 
 u.se my gift, and fulfil my destiny ! I told my husband this. He 
 
278 AIMBITION IN A WOMAN. 
 
 secured my devotion to his peace and honor forever, by giving me 
 unlimited control over his fortune and himself. We came to 
 Naples, and my star, hitherto clouded in its own humility, sprang 
 at once to the ascendant. The " attraction of unconscious beau- 
 ty," is a poet's fiction, believe me ! Set it down in your books, 
 Ernest — we are our own nomenclators — the belle as well as the 
 hero ! I claimed to be beautiful, and queened it to the top of my 
 bent — and all Naples is at my feet ! Oh, Ernest ! it is a de- 
 licious power to hold human happiness in your control — to be the 
 loadstar of eminent men and bright intellects ! Perhaps a 
 woman who is absorbed in one passion, finds, in her lover's cha- 
 racter and fame, room enough for her pride and her thirst for in- 
 fluence ; but, to me, giving nothing in return but the light of my 
 eyes, there seems, scarce in the world, celebrity, rank, genius 
 enough, to limit my ambition. I would be Helen ! I would be 
 Mary of Scots ! I would have my beauty as undisputed and re- 
 nowned as the Apollo's ! Am I insane or heartless .?" 
 
 Clay smiled at the abrupt naivete of the question, but his eyes 
 were full of visible admiration of the glowing pictures before 
 him. 
 
 " You are beautiful !" was his answer. 
 
 " Am I not ! Shall I be celebrated hereafter, Ernest ? I 
 should be willing to grow old, if my beauty were ' in amber' — if, 
 by some burning line in your book, some wondrous touch of the 
 pencil, some bold novelty in sculpture, my beauty would live on 
 men's lips forever ! Incontri's picture is beautiful, and like ; but 
 it is not, if you understand, a conception — it is not a memoir of 
 the woman, as the Cenci's is — it does not embody a complete 
 fame in itself, like the ' Bella' of Titian, or the ^ Wife of Grior- 
 gione.' If yo2t loved me Ernest — " 
 
LATER DAYS. 279 
 
 "If you loved vie, Julia !" echoed Clay, with a tone rather of 
 mockery than sincerity. 
 
 " Ah, hut you threw me away ; and, even with my own con- 
 sent, I could never he recovered ! Believe me, Ernest, there 
 never was a coquette, who, in some one of her early preferences, 
 had not made a desperate and single venture of her whole heart's 
 devotion. That wrecked — she was lost to love ! I embarked with 
 you, soul and heart ; and you left to the mercy of the chance of 
 wind, a freight that no tide could bring to port again !" 
 
 " You forget the obstacles." 
 
 " A poet ! and talk of obstacles in love ! Did you even ask 
 me to run away with you, Ernest ! I would have gone ! Ay — 
 coldly as I talk to you now, I would have followed you to a hovel 
 — for it was first love to me. Had it been first love to both of 
 us, I should now be your wife — sharer of your fame ! And, oh ' 
 how jealous !" 
 
 " With your beauty, jealous P^ 
 
 " Not of flesh-and-blood women, Ernest ! With a wife's op- 
 portunities, I could outcharm, with half my beauty, the whole 
 troop of Circe. I was thinking of the favors of your pen ! Whom 
 would I let you describe ! What eyes, what hair, what form but 
 mine — what character, what name, would I ever sufier you to 
 make immortal ! Paul Veronese had a wife with my avarice. In 
 his hundred pictures, there is the same blue-eyed, golden-haired 
 woman, as much linked to his fame as Laura to Petrarch's. If 
 he had drawn her but once, she would have been known as the 
 woman Paul Veronese painted! She is known now as the woman 
 he loved. Delicious immortality !" 
 
 " Yet, she could not have exacted it. That would have re- 
 quired an intellect which looked abroad ; and poets love no 
 
280 A LOVER WITHIN CALL. 
 
 women wlio are not like birds — content with the summer around 
 them, but with every thought in their nest. Paul Veronese's 
 Bionda, with her soft, mild eyes, and fair hair, is the very type 
 of such a woman ; and she would not have foregone a caress for 
 twenty immortalities." 
 
 " May I ask, what was my attraction then ?" said the proud 
 beauty, with a tone of pique. 
 
 " Julia Beverley, unconscious and unintcllectual !" answered 
 Clay, drawing on his gloves with the air of a man who has got 
 through with an interview. '' You have explained your ' me- 
 tempsychosis,' but I was in love with the form you have cast off. 
 The night grows chill. Sweet dreams to you !" 
 
 " Stay, Mr. Clay ! You asked me if I had ever been ' better 
 loved,' and I promised you an answer. What think you of a 
 lover who has forgotten the occupation that gave him bread, 
 abandoned his ambition, and, at all hours of the night, is an un- 
 rewarded and hopeless watcher beneath my window .'^" 
 
 " To-night excepted," said Clay, looking around. 
 
 "Incontri !" called Mrs. Brown, without raising her voice. 
 
 Clay started and frowned, as the painter sprang from the 
 shadow of the pine-tree which had before attracted his attention. 
 Falling on his knee, the unhappy lover kissed the jewelled fingers 
 extended to him ; and, giving Clay his hand in rising, the poet 
 sprang back, for he had clasped the handle of a stiletto ! 
 
 ^' Fear not — she does not love you !" said Incontri, remarking 
 his surprise, and concealing the weapon in his sleeve. 
 
 *' I was destined to get cured of my love either way," said 
 Clay, bowing himself off the vcrandali with a shudder and half a 
 smile. 
 
 The curtain closed, at the same moment, over the retreating 
 
LATER DAYS. ggl 
 
 form of Julia Beverley ; and so turned another leaf of Clay's 
 voluminous book of love. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Clay threw the volume aside, in which he had been reading, 
 and taking up " the rod book," looked out for the county address 
 of Sir Harry Freer, the exponent (only) of Lady Fanny Freer, 
 who, though the " nicest possible creature," is not the heroine 
 of this story. Sir Harry's ancestral domain turned out to be a 
 portion of the earth's surface, in that county of England where 
 the old gentry look down upon very famous lords as too new, and 
 proportionately upon all other families that have not degenerated 
 since William the Conqueror. 
 
 Sir Harry had married an Earl's daughter ; but, as the earl- 
 dom was only the fruit of two generations of public and poli- 
 tical eminence, Sir Harry was not considered in Cheshire as 
 having made more than a tolerable match ; and, if she passed for 
 a " Cheshire cheese" in London, he passed for but the rind 
 in the county. In the county, therefore, there was a lord 
 paramount of Freer Hall, and in town, a lady paramount of 
 Brook-street ; and it was under the town dynasty, that Miss 
 Blanche Beaunn was invited up from Cheshire to pass a first 
 winter in London — Miss Beaufin being the daughter of a descend- 
 ant of a Norman retainer of the first Sir Harry, and the relative 
 position of tho families having been rigidly kept up to the exisfr 
 hig epoch. 
 
 The address found in the red book was described in the follow- 
 ing letter : 
 
2S2 MATERIAL OF A FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 ** Dear Lady Fanny — If you have anything beside the ghost 
 room vacant at Freer Hall, I will run down to you. Should you, 
 by chance, be alone, ask up the curate for a week, to keep Sir 
 Harry off my hands ; and, as you don't flirt, provide me with 
 somebody more pretty than yourself, for our mutual security. 
 As my autograph sells for eighteen pence, you will excuse the 
 brevity of " Yours, truly, 
 
 " Ernest Clay. 
 
 " N.E. — Tell me, in your answer, if Blanche Beaufin is with- 
 in a morning's ride." 
 
 Lady Fanny was a warm-hearted, extravagant, beautiful crea- 
 ture of impulse — a passionate friend of Clay's, (for such women 
 there are,) without a spice of flirtation. She was a perennial 
 belle in London ; and he had begun his acquaintance with her, 
 by throwing himself at her head, in the approved fashion — ^in love 
 to the degree of rose-asking and sonnet-writing. As she did not 
 laugh when he sighed, however, but only told him very seriously, 
 that ^e was not a bit in love with him, and thought he was 
 thowing away his time, he easily forgave her insensibility, and 
 they became very warm allies. Spoiled favorite, as he was, of 
 London society. Clay had qualities for a very sincere friendship ; 
 and Lady Fanny, full of irregular talent, had also a strong vein 
 of common sense, and perfectly understood him. This explana- 
 tion to the reader. It would have saved some trouble and pain, 
 if it had been made by some good angel to Sir Harry Freer. 
 
 As the London coach rattled under the bridged gate of the 
 gloomy old town of Chester, Lady Fanny's dashing ponies were 
 almost on their haunches, with her impetuous pull-up at the 
 hotel ; and, returning with a nod the coachman's respectful bow, 
 
LATER DATS. 2S3 
 
 she put her long whip in, at the coach-window, to shake hands 
 with Clay, and, in a few minutes, they were again off the pave- 
 ments, and taking the road at her ladyship's usual speed. 
 
 " Steady, Flash ! steady !" (she ran on, talking to Clay, and 
 her ponies, in the same breath ;) " doleful ride down, isn't it ? — 
 (keep up, Tom, you villain !) — very good of you to come, I'm 
 sure, dear Ernest, and you'll stay — how long will you stay ? — • 
 (down, Flash) — oh. Miss Beaufin ! I've something to say to you 
 about Blanche Beaufin ! I didn't answer your nota bene — (go 
 along> Tom ! that pony wants blooding) — because, to tell you 
 the truth, it's a delicate subject at Freer Hall, and I would rather 
 talk than write about it. You see — (will you be done, Flash !) — 
 the Beaufins, though very nice people, and Blanche quite a love 
 — (go along, lazy Tom !) — the Beaufins, I say, are rated rather 
 crockery in Cheshire. And I am ashamed to own, really quite 
 ashamed, I have not been near them in a month. Shameful, isn't 
 it ? There's good action, Ernest ! Look at that nigh pony ; 
 not a blemish in him ; and such a goer in single harness ! "Well, 
 I'll go around by the Beaufins now." 
 
 " Pray, consider. Lady Fanny !" interrupted Clay, deprecat- 
 ingly, " eighteen hours in a coach." 
 
 " Not to go in ! oh, not to go in ! Blanche is very ill. and 
 sees nobody ; and — (come, Tom ! come !) — I only heard of it 
 this morning — (there's for your laziness, you stupid horse !) — 
 We'll just call and ask how she is, though Sir Harry — " 
 
 " Is she very ill, then .^" asked Clay, with a concern which 
 made Lady Fanny turn her eyes from her ponies' ears to look at 
 him. 
 
 " They say, very ! Of course. Sir Harry can't forbid a visit 
 to the sick." 
 
284 A LADY'S TEAM. 
 
 " Surely he does not forbid you to call on Blanche Beaufin!" 
 
 " Not ' forbid' jDrecisely ; that wouldn't do — (gently, sweet 
 Flash ! now, Tom ! now, lazy ! trot fair through the hollow !) — • 
 hut, I invited her to pass the winter with me, without consulting 
 him, and he liked it well enough, till he got back among his 
 stupid neighbors — (well done, Flash ! — plague take that bother- 
 ing whipple-tree !) — and they, and their awkward daughters, 
 whom I might have invited — (whoa ! Flash !) — if I had wanted 
 a menagerie, set him to looking into her pedigree. There's the 
 house ; the old house, with the vines over it, yonder ! So then, 
 Sir Harry — such a sweet girl, too — set his face against the 
 acquaintance. Here we are ! — (Whoa, boys ! whoa !) Hold the 
 reins a moment, while I run in !" 
 
 More to quell a vague and apprehensive feeling of remorse, 
 than to while away idle time. Clay passed the reins back to the 
 stripling in grey livery behind, and walked round Lady Fanny's 
 ponies, expressing his admiration of them, and the turn-out al- 
 together. 
 
 " Yes, sir," said the lad, who seemed to have caught some of 
 the cleverness of his mistress, for he scarce looked fourteen, 
 " they're a touch above anything in Cheshire ! Look at the 
 forehand of that nigh 'un, sir ! — arm and withers like a grey- 
 hound, and yet, what a quarter for trotting, sir ! Quite the 
 right thing, all over ! Carries his flag that way quite nat'ral ; 
 never was nick'd, sir ! Did you take notice, begging your par- 
 don, sir, how milady put through that hollow ? Wasn't it fine, 
 sir .'* T'other's a goodish nag, too, but nothing to Flabh ; can't 
 spread, somehow ; that's Sir Harry's picking up, and never was a 
 match ; no blood in Tom, sir ! Look at his fetlock ; underbred, 
 hut a jimpy nag for a roadster, if a man wanted work out on 
 
LATER DAYS. «^g5 
 
 liim. See Low lie blows, sir, and Flash as still as a stopped 
 wheel !" 
 
 Lady Fanny's reappearance at the door of the house, inter- 
 rupted her page's eulogy on the hays ; and, with a very altered 
 expression of countenance, she resumed the reins, and drove 
 slowly homeward. 
 
 "She is very ill — very ill ! but, she wishes to see you, and you 
 must go there ; but not to-morrow. She is passing a crisis now, 
 and, her physician says, will be easier, if not better, after to- 
 morrow. Poor girl ! Dear Blanche ! Ah, Clay ! but no — no 
 matter ; I shall talk about it with more composure, by-and-bye — 
 poor Blanche !" 
 
 Lady Fanny's tears rained upon her two hands, as she let out 
 her impatient horses, to be sooner at home ; and, in half an 
 hour. Clay was alone in his luxurious quarters, under Sir Harry's 
 roof, with two hours to dinner, and more than thoughts enough, 
 and very sad ones, to make him glad of time and solitude. 
 
 Freer Hall was full of company — Sir Harry's company ; and 
 Clay, with the quiet assurance of a London star, used to the 
 domina'tt, took his station by Lady Fanny, on entering the draw- 
 ing-room, and, when dinner was announced, gave her his arm, 
 without troubling himself to remember that there was a baronet 
 who had claim to the honor, and of whom he must simply make a 
 mortal enemy. At table, the conversation ran mainly in Sir 
 Harry's vein — hunting ; and Clay did not even take a listener's 
 part ; but, in a low tone, talked of London to Lady Fanny — ^her 
 ladyship (unaccountably to her husband and his friends, who 
 were used to furnish her more merriment than revery) peniiive, 
 and out of spirits. With the announcement of coiFee in the draw- 
 ing-room, Clay disappeared with her, and their evening was tete^ 
 
|g§6 FOOD FOR PERVERSION. 
 
 a-ttte ; for Sir Harry and his friends were tliree-bottlo men, and 
 commonly bade good-night to ladies when the ladies left the 
 table. If there had been a second thought in the convivial 
 squirearchy, they would have troubled their heads less about a 
 man who did not exhibit the first symptom of love for the wife — 
 civility to the husband. But, this is a hand-to-mouth world, in 
 the way of knowledge ; and nothing is stored but experiences, 
 lifetime by lifetime. 
 
 Another day passed, and another, and mystery seemed the 
 ruling spirit of the hour, for there were enigmas for all. Re- 
 gularly, morning and afternoon, the high-stepping ponies were 
 ordered round, and Lady Fanny (with Mr. Clay for company to 
 the gate) visited the Beaufins, now against positive orders from 
 the irate Sir Harry ; and daily, Clay's reserve with his beautiful 
 hostess increased, and his distress of mind with it ; for both he 
 and she were alarmed with the one piece of unexplained intel- 
 ligence between them — Miss Bcaufin would see Mr. Clay when 
 she would be dying ! Not before — for worlds, not before — and, 
 of the physician constantly in attendance, (Lady Fanny often 
 present,) Clay knew that the poor girl besought, with an eager- 
 ness to the last degree touching and earnest, to know when hope 
 could be given over. She was indulged, unquestioned, as a dying 
 daughter ; and, whatever might be her secret. Lady Fanny pro- 
 mised, that, at the turning hour, come what would of distressing and 
 painful, she would herself come with Mr. Clay to her death-bed. 
 
 Sir Harry and his fiionds were in the billiard-room, and Lady 
 Fanny and Clay breakfasting together, when a note was brought 
 in by one of the footmen, who waited for an answer. 
 
 " Say that I will come," said Lady Fanny ; and — stay, George ! 
 See that my ponies are harnessed immediately ; put the head of 
 
LATER DAYS. 237 
 
 the phaeton up, and let it stand in the coach-house. And, Tim- 
 son !" she added, to the butler, who stood at the side-table, " if 
 Sir Harry inquires for me, say that I am gone to visit a sick 
 friend." 
 
 Lady Fanny walked to the window. It rained in torrents. 
 There was no need of explanation to Clay ; he understood the 
 note, and its meaning. 
 
 " The offices connect with the stables, by a covered way," she 
 said, " and we will get in there. Shall you be ready in a feW 
 minutes .?" 
 
 " Quite, dear Lady Fanny ! I am ready now." 
 
 " The rain is rather fortune ^e than otherwise," she added, in 
 going out, " for Sir Plany will not see us go ; and he might 
 throw an obstacle in the way, and make it difficult to manage. 
 Wrap well up, Ernest !" 
 
 The butler looked inquisitively at Clay and his mistress ; but, 
 both were pre-occupied, and, in ten minutes, the rapid phaeton 
 was on its way, the ponies pressing on the bit, as if the eagerness 
 of the two hearts beating behind them, was communicated through 
 the reins ; and Lady Fanny, contrary to her wont, driving in un- 
 encouraging silence. The three or four miles between Freer 
 Hall and their destination, were soon traversed ; and under the 
 small jporte-cochere of the ancient mansion, the ponies stood 
 panting and sheltered. 
 
 " Kind Lady Fanny ! God bless you !" said a tall, dark man, 
 of a very striking exterior, coming out to the phaeton. " And 
 you, sir, are welcome !" 
 
 They followed him into the little parlor, where Clay was pre- 
 sented by Lady Fanny to the mother of Miss Beaufin — a singu- 
 larly, yet sadly sweet woman, in voice, person, and address j 
 
188 LOVE IN DEATH. 
 
 to the old, white-haired yicar, and to the physician, who re- 
 turned his bow with a cold and very formal salute. 
 
 " There is no time to be lost," said he, " and, at the request 
 of Miss Beaufin, Lady Fanny and this gentleman will please go 
 to her chamber without us. I can trust your Ladyship to see 
 that the remainder of life is not shortened nor harrassed by need- 
 less agitation." 
 
 Clay's heart' beat violently. At the extremity of the long and 
 dimly-lighted passage, thrown open by the father to Lady Fanny, 
 he saw a white-curtained bed — the death-bed, he knew, of the gay 
 and fair flower of a London season, the wonder and idol of diffi- 
 cult fashion, and unadmiring rank. Blanche Beaufin had ap- 
 peared, like a marvel, in the brilliant circles of Lady Fanny's 
 acquaintance — a distinguished, unconscious, dazzling girl, of 
 whom her fair introductress (either in mischief or good nature) 
 would say nothing, but that she was her neighbor in Cheshire ; 
 though all that nature could lavish, on one human creature, seem- 
 ed hers, with all that high birth could stamp on mien, counte- 
 nance, and manners. Clay paid her his tribute with the rest — 
 the hundred who flattered and followed her — ^but, she was a proud 
 girl, and, though he seized every opportunity of being near her, 
 nothing in her manner betrayed to him that he was not counted 
 among the hundred. A London season fleets fast, and, taken by 
 surprise with Lady Fanny's early departure for the country, her 
 farewells were written on the corners of cards ; and, with a secret 
 deep buried in the heart, she was brought back to the retirement 
 of home. 
 
 Brief history of the breaking of a heart ! 
 
 Lady Fanny started slightly on entering the chamber. The 
 Hck girl sat propped in an arm-chair, dressed in snowy white ; 
 
LATER DAYS. 28Q 
 
 even her slight foot appearing beneath the edge of her dress, in a 
 slipper of white .satin. Her brown hair fell in profuse ringlets 
 over her shoulders ; but it was gathered behind into a knot, and 
 from it depended a white veil, the diamonds which fastened it 
 pressing, to the glossy curve of her head, a slender stem of orange 
 flowers. Her features were of that slight mould which shows 
 sickness by little except higher transparency of the blue veins, 
 and brighter redness in the lips ; and, as she smiled with suffused 
 cheek, and held out her gloved hand to Clay, with a vain effort 
 to articulate, he passed his hands across his eyes, and looked in- 
 quiringly at his friend. He had expected, though he had never 
 realized, that she would be altered. She looked almost as he had 
 left her. He remembered her only as he had oftenest seen her — 
 dressed for ball or pai-ty ; and, but for the solemnity of the pre- 
 paration he had gone through, he might have thought his feelings 
 had been played upon, only ; that Blanche Beaufin was well — still 
 beautiful and v/ell ; that he should again see her in the brilliant 
 circles of London ; still love her as he secretly did, and receive 
 what he now felt trould be, under any circumstances, a gift of 
 heaven — the assurance of a return. This, and a world of con- 
 fused emotion, tumultuously, and in an instant, rushed through 
 his heart ; for there are moments in which we live lives of feel- 
 ing and thought — moments, glances, which supply years of secret 
 or bitter memory. 
 
 This is but a sketch — but an outline of a tale over true. Were 
 there space — were there time, to follow out the traverse thread 
 of its mere mournful incidents, we might write the reverse side 
 of a leaf of life ever read partially and wrong — the life of the 
 gay and unlamenting. Sickness and death had here broken 
 down a wall of adamant, between two creatures every way formed 
 13 
 
290 HIGH-LIFE TRAMMELS. 
 
 for each other. In health, and ordinary regularity of circum* 
 stances, they would have loved as truly and deeply as those in 
 humbler, or in more fortunate relative positions ; but they, pro- 
 bably, would never have been united. It is the system — the 
 necessary system, of the class to which Clay belonged, to turn 
 adroitly and gayly off every shaft to the heart ; to take advantage 
 of no opening to affection ; to smother all preference that would 
 lead to an interchange of hallowed vows ; to profess insensibility 
 equally polished and hardened, on the subject of pure love ; to 
 forswear marriage, and make of it a mock and an impossibility. 
 And whose handiwork is this unnatural order of society } Was 
 it established by the fortunate and joyous — by the wealthy and 
 untrammelled, at liberty to range the world if they liked, and 
 marry where they chose, but, preferring gaiety to happiness, 
 and lawless liberty to virtuous love ? No, indeed ! not by these ! 
 Show me one such man, and I will show you a rare perversion 
 of common feeling — a man, who, under any circumstances, 
 would have been cold and eccentric. It is not to those able to 
 marry where they will, that the class of London gay men owe 
 their system of mocking opinions. But it is to the companions of 
 fortunate men— gifted, like them, in all but fortune, and holding 
 their caste by the tenure of forsworn ties — abiding in the para- 
 dise of aristocracy, with pure love for the forbidden fruit ! Are 
 such men insensible to love ? Has this forbidden joy — this one 
 thing hallowed in a bad world — has it no temptation for the gay 
 man ? Is his better nature quite dead within him ? Is he never 
 ill and sad, where gaiety cannot reach him ? Does he envy the 
 rich young lord (his friend) everything but his blushing and pure 
 bride ? Is he poet or wit, or the mirror of taste and elegance, 
 yet incapable of discerning the qualities of a true love — the celes- 
 
LATER DAYS. 291 
 
 tis.1 refinement of a maiden passion, lawful and fearless, devoted 
 because spotless, and enduring because made up half of prayer 
 and gratitude to her Maker ? Does he not know distinctions of 
 feeling, as he knows character in a play ? Does he not discrimi- 
 nate between purity and guilt in love, as he does in his nice judg- 
 ment of honor and taste ? Is he gayly dead to the deepest and 
 most elevated cravings of nature — love^ passionate, single-heart- 
 ted, and holy Trust me, there is a bitterness whose depths we 
 can only fathom by refinement ! To move among creatures em- 
 bellished and elevated to the last point of human attainment, 
 lovely and unsullied, and know yourself, (as to all but gazing on, 
 and appreciating them,) a pariah and an outcast — to breathe 
 their air, and be the companion and apparent equal of those for 
 whose bliss they were created, and to whom they are ofi'ered for 
 choice, with the profusion of flowers in a garden, (the chooser 
 and possessor of the brightest, your inferior in all else,) — to live 
 thus, to suffer thus, and still smile and call it choice, and your 
 own way of happiness — this is mockery, indeed ! He who now 
 stood in the death-room of Blanche Beaufin, had felt it, in its bit- 
 terest intensity ! 
 
 " Mr. Clay ! — Ernest !" said the now pale creature, breaking 
 the silence, with a strong effort, for he had dropped on his knee 
 at her side, in ungovernable emotion, and, as yet, had but articu- 
 lated her name — " Ernest ! I have but little time for anything — 
 least of all, for disguise or ceremony. I am assured that I am 
 d}ing. I am convinced," she added, firmly, taking up the watch 
 that lay beside her, " that I have been told the truth, and that, 
 when this hour-hand comes round again, I shall be dead. I will 
 conceal nothing. They have given me cordials that will support 
 
292 MARRIAGE ON A DEATH-BED. 
 
 me one hour, and, for that hour — and for eternity — I wish — ii i 
 may be so blest — if God will permit — to be your wife !" 
 
 Lady Fanny Freer rose, and came to her with Yupid steps ; 
 and Clay sprang to his feet, and in a passion of tears exclaimed, 
 '' Oh, God ! can this be true !" 
 
 "Answer me, quickly !" she continued, in a voice raised, bul 
 breaking through sobs — " an hour is short ; oh, how short, when 
 it is the last ! I cannot stay with you long, were you a thousand 
 times mine. Tell me, Ernest ! — shall it be ? — shall I be wedded 
 ere I die ? — wedded now ?" 
 
 A passionate gesture to Lady Fanny, was all the answer Clay 
 could make ; and, in another moment, the aged vicar was in the 
 chamber, with her parents and the physician — to all of whom a 
 few words explained a mystery which her bridal attire had already 
 half unravelled. 
 
 Blanche spoke quickly, " Shall he proceed, Ernest ?" 
 
 Her prayer-book was open on her knee, and Clay gave it to 
 the vicar, who, with a quick sense of sympathy, and with but a 
 glance at the weeping and silent parents, read, without delay, the 
 hallowed ceremonial. 
 
 Clay's countenance elevated and cleared as he proceeded, and 
 Blanche, with her large suffused eyes fixed on his, listened with a 
 smile, serene, but expressive of unspeakable rapture. Her beauty 
 had never been so radiant, so angelic. In heaven, on her bridal 
 night, beatified spirit as she was, she could not have been more 
 beautiful ! 
 
 One instant of embarrassment occurred, unobserved by the 
 dying bride, but, with the thoughtfulness of womanly generosity, 
 Lady Fanny had foreseen it, and, drawing off her own wedding- 
 ring, she passed it into Ernest's hand ere the interruption became 
 
LATER DAYS. 293 
 
 apparent. Alas ! the emaciated hand ungloved to receive it ! 
 The wasted finger pointed, indeed, to heaven ! Till then. Clay 
 had felt almost in a dream. But here was suffering — sickness — • 
 death ! This told what the hectic brightness, and the faultless 
 features, would fain deny — what the fragrant and still unwither- 
 ing flowers upon her temples would seem to mock ! But the hec- 
 tic was already fading, and the flowers outlived the light in the 
 dark eyes they shaded ! 
 
 The vicar joined their hands with the solemn adjuration, 
 " Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asun- 
 der ;" and Clay rose from his knees, and pressing his first kiss 
 upon her lips, strained her passionately to his heart. 
 
 " INIine in heaven !" she cried, giving way at last to her tears, 
 as she closed her slight arms over his neck ; " mine in heaven ! 
 Is it not so, mother ! father ! is he not mine now ? There is no 
 giving in marriage in heaven, but the ties, hallowed here, are not 
 forgotten there ! Tell me they are not ! Speak to me, my hus- 
 band ! Press me to your heart, Ernest ! Your wife — oh, I 
 thank God!" 
 
 The physician sprang forward and laid his hand upon her pulse. 
 She fell back upon her pillows, and, with a smile upon her lips, 
 and the tears still wet upon her long and drooping lashes, lay 
 dead. 
 
 Lady Fanny took the mother by the arm, and, with a gesture 
 to the father and the physician to follow, they retired and left the 
 bridegroom alone. 
 
 Life is full of sudden transitions ; and the next event in that of 
 Ernest Clay, was a duel with Sir Harry Freer — if the Morning 
 Post was to bo believed — " occasioned by the indiscretion of Lady 
 
294 AN ELECTRIC xMEETLYG. 
 
 Fanny, who, in a giddy moment, it appears, had given to her ad 
 mirer, Sir Harry's opponent, her wedding-ring !" 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Late one night in June two gentlemen arrived at the Villa 
 Hotel of the Baths of Lucca. They stopped the low biitzka in 
 which they travelled, and, leaving a servant to make arrangements 
 for their lodging, linked arms and strolled up the road toward the 
 banks of the Lima. The moon was chequered at the moment 
 with the poised leaf of a tree-top, and, as it passed from her face, 
 she arose and stood alone in the steel-blue of the unclouded hea- 
 vens — a luminous and tremulous plate of gold. And you know 
 how beautiful must have been the night, a June night in Italy, 
 with a moon at the full ! 
 
 A lady, with a servant following her at a little distance, passed 
 the travellers on the bridge of the Lima. She dropped her veil 
 and went by in silence. But the Freyherr felt the arm of his 
 friend tremble within his own. 
 
 " Do you know her, then ?" asked Von Leisten. 
 
 " By the thrill in my veins we have met before," said Clay ; 
 " but whether this involuntary sensation was pleasurable or painful, 
 I have not yet decided. There are none I care to meet — none 
 who can be here." He added the last few words after a mo- 
 ment's pause, and sadly. 
 
 They walked on in silence to the base of the mountain, busy, 
 each, with such coloring as the moonlight threw on their thoughts, 
 but neither of them was happy. 
 
 Clay was humane, and a lover of nature — a poet, that is to say 
 —and, in a world so beautiful, could never be a prey to disgust j 
 
LATER DAYS. 205 
 
 but he was satiated with, the common emotions of life. His heart, 
 for ever overflowing, had filled many a cup with love, but with 
 strange tenacity he turned back for ever to the first. He was 
 weary of the beginnings of love — weary of its probations and 
 changes. He had passed the period of life when inconstancy was 
 tempting. He longed now for an affection that would continue 
 into another world — holy and pure enough to pass a gate guarded 
 by angels. And his first love — recklessly as he had thrown it 
 away — was now the thirst of his existence. 
 
 It was two o'clock at night. The moon lay broad upon the 
 southern balconies of the hotel, and every casement was open to 
 its luminous and fragrant stillness. Clay and the Freyherr Yon 
 Leisten, each in his apartment, were awake, unwilling to lose the 
 luxury of the night. And there was one other, under that roof, 
 waking, with her eyes fixed on the moon. 
 
 As Clay leaned his head on his hand, and looked outward to 
 the sky, his heart began to be troubled. There was a point in 
 the path of the moon's rays where his spirit turned back. There 
 was an influence, abroad in the dissolving moonlight around him, 
 which resistlessly awakened the past — the sealed but unforgotten 
 past. He could not single out the emotion. He knew not 
 whether it was fear or hope — pain or pleasure. He called, 
 through the open window, to Von Leisten. 
 
 The Freyherr, like himself, and like all who have outlived the 
 efi'ervescence of life, was enamored of the night. A moment of 
 unfathomable moonlight was dearer to him than hours disenchant- 
 ed with the sun. He, too, had been looking outward and upward 
 — ^but with no trouble at his heart. 
 
 " The night is inconceivably sweet," he said, as he entered. 
 
296 BRIDGE OF MOONLIGHT. 
 
 " and jour voice called in my thought and sense from the intoxi 
 cation of a revel. What would jou, my friend ?" 
 
 " I am restless, Yon Leisten ! There is some one near us 
 whose glances cross mine on the moonlightj and agitate and per- 
 plex me. Yet there was but one, on earth, deep enough in the 
 life-blood of my being to move me thus — even were she here ! 
 And she is not here !" 
 
 His voice trembled and softened, and the last word was scarce 
 audible on his closing lips, for the Freyherr had passed his hands 
 over him while he spoke, and he had fallen into the trance of the 
 spirit-world. 
 
 Clay and Yon Leisten had retired from the active passions of 
 life toorether, and had met and mino;led at that moment of void and 
 
 Of o 
 
 thirst when each supplied the want of the other. The Freyherr 
 was a German noble, of a character passionately poetic, and of 
 singular acquirement in the mystic fields of knowledge. Too 
 wealthy to need labor, and too proud to submit his thoughts or his 
 attainments to the criticism or judgment of the world, he lavished 
 on his own life, and on those linked to him in friendship, the 
 strange powers he had acquired, and the prodigal overthrow of 
 his daily thought and feeling. Clay was his superior, perhaps, in 
 genius, and necessity had driven him to develop the type of his 
 inner soul, and leave its impress on the time. But he was infe- 
 rior to Yon Leisten in the power of will, and he lay in his control 
 like a child in its mother's. Four years they had passed together, 
 much of it in the secluded castle of Yon Leisten, busied with the oc- 
 cult studies to which the Freyherr was secretly devoted ; but they 
 were now travelling down to Italy to meet the luxurious summer, 
 and dividing their lives between the enjoyment of nature and the 
 ideal world they had unlocked. Yon Leisten had lost, by death, 
 
LATER DAYS. ^97 
 
 the human altar on which his heart could alone burn the incense of 
 love ; and Clay had flung aside in an hour of intoxicating passion 
 the one pure affection in which his happiness was sealed — and 
 both were desolate. But in the world of the past, Yon Leisten, 
 though more irrevocably lonely, was more tranquilly blest. 
 
 The Freyherr released the entranced spirit of his friend, and 
 bade him follow back the rays of the moon to the source of his 
 agitation. 
 
 A smile crept slowly over the speaker's lips. 
 
 In an apartment flooded with the silver lustre of the night, re- 
 clined, in an invalid's chair, propped with pillows, a woman of 
 singular, though most fragile beauty. Books and music lay 
 strewn around, and a lamp, subdued to the tone of the moonlight 
 by an orb of alabaster, burned beside her. She lay bathing her 
 blue eyes in the round chalice of the moon. A profusion of 
 brown ringlets fell over the white dress that enveloped her, and 
 her oval cheek lay supported on the palm of her hand, and her 
 bright red lips were parted. The pure, yet passionate spell of 
 that soft night possessed her. 
 
 Over her leaned the disembodied spirit of him who had onoe 
 loved her — praying to God that his soul might be so purified as 
 to mingle unstartlingly, un repulsively, in hallowed harmony with 
 hers. And presently he felt the coming of angels toward him, 
 breathing into the deepest abysses of his existence a tearful and 
 purifying sadness. And, with a trembling aspiration of grateful 
 humility to his Maker, he stooped to her forehead, and, with his 
 impalpable lips, impressed upon its snowy tablet a kiss. 
 
 It seemed to Eve Gore a thought of the past that brought the 
 blood suddenly to her cheek. She started from her reclining 
 position, and, removing the obscuring shade from her lamp, arose 
 13* 
 
298 A CLAIRVOYANT FRIEND. 
 
 and crossed her hands upon her wrists, and paced thoughtfully to 
 and fro. Her lips murmured inarticulately. But the thought, 
 painfully though it came, changed unaccountably to melancholy 
 sweetness ; and, subduing her lamp again, she resumed her stead- 
 fast gaze upon the moon. 
 
 Ernest knelt beside her, and, with his invisible brow bowed upon 
 her hand, poured forth, in the voiceless language of the soul, his 
 memories of the past, his hope, his repentance, his pure and pas- 
 sionate adoration at the present hour. 
 
 And thinking she had been in a sweet dream, yet wondering at 
 its truthfulness and power. Eve wept, silently and long. As the 
 morning touched the east, slumber weighed upon her moistened 
 eyelids, and, kneeling by her bedside, she murmured her gratitude 
 to God for a heart relieved of a burden long borne, and so went 
 peacefully to her sleep. ****** 
 
 It was in the following year, and in the beginning of May. 
 The gay world of England was concentrated in London, and at 
 the entertainments of noble houses there were many beautiful wo- 
 men and many marked men. The Freyherr Yon Leisten, after 
 years of absence, had appeared again, his mysterious and unde- 
 niable superiority of mien and influence again yielded to, as be- 
 fore, and again bringing to his feet the homage and deference of 
 the crowd he moved among. To his inscrutable power the game 
 of society was easy, and he walked where he would, through its 
 barriers of form. 
 
 He stood one night looking on at a dance. A lady of a noble 
 air was near him, and both were watching the movements of the 
 loveliest woman present, a creature in radiant health, apparently 
 about twenty-three, and of matchless fascination of person and 
 manner. Von Leisten turned to the lady near him to inquire her 
 
LATER DAYS. 399 
 
 name, but bis attention was arrested by the resemblance between 
 her and the object of his admiring curiosity, and he was silent. 
 
 The lady had bowed before he withdrew his gaze, however. 
 
 " I think we have met before !" she said ; but at the next in 
 stant a slight flush of displeasure came to her cheek, and she 
 seemed regretting that she had spoken. 
 
 " Pardon me !" said Von Leisten, " but — if the question be not 
 rude — do you remember where .?" 
 
 She hesitated a moment. 
 
 " I have recalled it since I have spoken," she continued ; " but 
 as the remembrance of the person who accompanied you always 
 gives me pain, T would willingly have unsaid it. One evening of 
 last year, crossing the bridge of the Lima, you were walking with 
 Mr. Clay. Pardon me — but, though I left Lucca with my 
 daughter on the following morning, and saw you no more, the as- 
 sociation, or your appearance, had imprinted the circumstance on 
 my mind." 
 
 ^' And is that Eve Gore !" said Von Leisten, musingly, gazing 
 on the beautiful creature now gliding with light step to her 
 mother's side. 
 
 But the Freyherr's heart was gone to his friend. 
 
 As the burst of the waltz broke in upon the closing of the 
 quadrille, he offered his hand to the fair girl, and, as they moved 
 round to the entrancing music, he murmured in her ear, " He 
 who came to you in the moonlight of Italy will be with you again, 
 if you are alone, at the rising of to-night's late moon. Believe 
 the voice that then speaks to you!" * * * * 
 
 It was with implacable determination that Mrs. Gore refused, 
 to the entreaties of Yon Leisten, a renewal of Clay's acquaintance 
 with her daughter. Resentment for the apparent recklessness 
 
300 ' FIRST LOVE AT LAST. 
 
 witli which he had once sacrificed her maiden love for an unlaw- 
 ful passion — scornful unbelief of any change in his character — dis- 
 trust of the future tendency of the powers of his genius — all 
 mingled together, in a hostility proof against persuasion. She had 
 expressed this with all the positiveness of language, when her 
 daughter suddenly entered the room. It was the morning after 
 the ball, and she had risen late. But, though subdued and pen- 
 sive in her air. Yon Leisten saw at a glance that she was happy. 
 
 " Can you bring him to me ?" said Eve, letting her hand re- 
 main in Yon Leisten's, and bending her deep blue eyes inquiring- 
 ly on his. 
 
 And, with no argument but tears and caresses, and an unex- 
 plained assurance of her conviction of the repentant purity and 
 love of him to whom her heart was once given, the confiding and 
 strong-hearted girl bent, at last, the stern will that forbade her 
 happiness. Her mother unclasped the slight arms from her neck, 
 and gave her hand in silent consent to Yon Leisten. 
 
 The Freyherr stood a moment with his eyes fixed on the ground. 
 The color fled from his cheeks, and his brow moistened. 
 
 " I have called him," he said — " he will be here !" 
 
 " An hour elapsed, and Clay entered the house. He had risen 
 from a bed of sickness, and came, pale and in terror — for the 
 spirit-summons was powerful. But Yon Leisten welcomed him at 
 the door with a smile, and withdrew the mother from the room, 
 and left Ernest alone with his future bride — the first union, save 
 in spirit, after years of separation. 
 
'' BEAUTY AND THE BEAST;" 
 
 HANDS03IE MRS. TITTON AND HER PLAIN HUSBAND. 
 
 " That man i' the world ivho shall report he has 
 A better wife, let him in naught be trusted 
 For speaking false in that." — Hknry "VIII. 
 
 I HAVE always been very fond of the society of portrait- 
 painters. Whether it is, (hat the pursuit of a beautiful and 
 liberal art softens their natural nualities, or that, from the habit 
 of conversing while engrossed with the pencil, they like best that 
 touch-and-go talk which takes care of itself; or, more probably 
 still, whether the freedom with which they are admitted behind 
 the curtains of vanity and affection, gives a certain freshness and 
 truth to their views of things around them — certain it is, that, in 
 all countries, their rooms are the most agreeable of haunts, and 
 they themselves the most enjoyable of cronies. 
 
 I had chanced, in Italy, to make the acquaintance of S , 
 
 an English artist of considerable cleverness in his profession, 
 but more remarkable for his frank good breeding, and his abund- 
 ant good nature. Four years after, I had the pleasure of renew- 
 ing my intercourse with him in London, where he was flourishing, 
 quite up to his deserving, as a portrait-painter. His rooms were 
 
302 PORTRAIT PAINTER'S SECRET. 
 
 bard-by one of the principal thoroughfares, and, from making an 
 occasional visit, I grew to frequenting them daily, often joining 
 him at his early breakfast, and often taking him out with me to 
 drive whenever we chanced to tire of our twilight stroll. While 
 rambling in Hyde Park, one evening, I mentioned, for the twen- 
 tieth time, a singularly ill-assorted couple I had once or twice met 
 at his room — a woman of superb beauty, attended by a very in- 
 ferior-looking and ill-dressed man. S had, previously, with 
 
 a smile at my speculations, dismissed the subject rather crisply ; 
 but, on this occasion, I went into some surmises as to the pro- 
 bable results of such " pairing and matching," and he either felt 
 called upon to defend the lacl}^, or made my misapprehension of 
 her character an excuse for telling me what he knew about her. 
 He began the story in the Park, and ended it over a bottle of 
 wine in the Haymarket — of course, with man)'- interruptions and 
 digressions. Let me f^'-";; if I can tie his broken threads 
 together. 
 
 " That lady is jlrs. Fortescue Titton, and the gentleman you 
 so much disparage, is, if you please, the incumbrance to ten 
 thousand a year — the money as much at her service as the hus- 
 band by whom she gets it. "Whether h? could have won her, had 
 
 he been 
 
 " Bereft and gelded of his patrimony," 
 
 I will not assert, especially to one who looks on them as ' Beauty 
 and the Beast;' but, that she loves him, or, at least, prefers to 
 him no handsomer man, I may say I have been brought to be- 
 lieve, in the way of my profession." 
 
 " You have painted her, then .^" I asked rather eagerly, think- 
 ing I might get a sketch of her face to take with me to another 
 country. 
 
LATER DAYS. 303 
 
 " No, but I have painted kirn — and for her — and it is not a 
 case of Titania and Bottom, either. She is quite aware he is a 
 monster ; and wanted his picture for a reason you would never 
 divine. But I must begin at the beginning. 
 
 " After you left me in Italy, I was employed, by the Earl of 
 
 , to copy one or two of his favorite pictures in the Vatican, 
 
 and that brought me rather well acquainted with his son. Lord 
 George was a gay youth, and a very * look-and-die' style of fel- 
 low ; and, as much from admiration of his beauty as anything 
 else, I asked him to sit to me, on our return to London. I 
 painted him very fantastically in an Albanian cap and Oriental 
 morning-gown and slippers, smoking a narghile — the room in 
 which he sat, by the way, being a correct portrait of his own 
 den — a perfect museum of costly luxury. It was a pretty gor 
 geous turn out, in the way of color, and was severely criticised, 
 but still a good deal noticed — for I sent it to the exhibition. 
 
 " I was one day going into Somerset House, when Lord George 
 hailed me, from his cab. He wished to suggest some alteration 
 in his picture, or, to tell me of some criticism upon it — I forget 
 exactly what ; but we went up together. Directly before the 
 portrait, gazing at it with marked abstraction, stood a beautiful 
 woman, quite alone ; and, as she occupied the only point where 
 the light was favorable, we waited a moment, till she should pass 
 on — Lord George, of course, rather disposed to shrink from be- 
 ing recognized as the original. The woman's interest in the pic- 
 ture seemed rather to increase, however ; and, what with vari 
 ations of the posture of her head, and pulling at her glove-fingers, 
 and other female indications of restlessness and enthusiasm, I 
 thought I was doing her no injustice by turning to my companion 
 with a congratulatory smile. 
 
304 OBJECT OF A VISIT. 
 
 ** ' It seems a case, by Jove !' said Lord George, trying U 
 look as if it were a matter of very simple occurrence ; ' and she'a 
 as fine a creature as IVe seen this season ! Eh, old boy ? We 
 must run her down, and see where she burrows — and there's no- 
 body with her, by good luck !' 
 
 *' A party entered just then, and passed between her and the 
 picture. She looked annoyed, I thought, but started forward, and 
 borrowed a catalogue of a little girl; and, we could see that sho 
 turned to the last page, on which the portrait was numbered, 
 with, of course, the name and address of the painter. She made 
 a memorandum on one of her cards, and left the house. Lord 
 George followed, and I, too, as far as the door, where I saw her 
 get into a very stylishly-appointed carriage and drive away, fol- 
 lowed closely by the cab of my friend, whom I had declined to 
 accompanyi 
 
 *' You wouldn't have given very heavy odds against his chance, 
 would you .^" said S , after a moment's pause. 
 
 *'No, indeed !" I answered, quite sincerely. 
 
 " Well, I was at work, the next morning, glazing a picture I 
 had just finished, when the servant brought up the card of Mrs. 
 Fortescue Titton. I chanced to be alone, so the lady was shown 
 at once into my painting room ; and lo ! the incognita of Somer- 
 set House. The plot thickens, thought I ! She sat down in my 
 * subject' chair ; and, faith ! her beauty quite dazzled me ! Her 
 first smile — but, you have seen her ; so I'll not bore you with 
 a description. 
 
 *''Mrs. Titton blushed on opening her errand to me — first, in- 
 quiring if I was the painter of * No. 403,' in the exhibition, aod 
 oaying some very civil things about the picture. I mentioned 
 tiiat it was a portrait df Lord George , (for his name was 
 
LATER DAYS. g05 
 
 not in the catalogue,) and I thoucrht she blushed still more con- 
 fusedly ; but, that, I think now, was fancy, or, at any rate, had 
 nothing to do -with feeling for his lordship. It was natural 
 enough for me to be mistaken ; for she was very particular in her 
 inquiries as to the costume, furniture, and little belongings of the 
 picture, and asked me, among other things, whether it was a flat- 
 tered likeness .'' — this last question very pointedly, too ! 
 
 " She arose to go. Was I at leisure — and could I sketch a 
 head for her — and when ? 
 
 "I appointed the next day, expecting, of course, that the sub- 
 ject was the lady herself, and scarcely slept with thinking of it, 
 and starved myself at breakfast to have a clear eye, and a hand 
 wide awake. And, at ten she came, with her Mr. Fortescue 
 Titton ! I was sorry to see that she had a husband ; for I had 
 indulged myself with a vague presentiment that she was a widov/ ; 
 but I begged him to take a chair, and prepared the platform for 
 my beautiful subject. 
 
 " ' Will you take your seat .^' I asked, with all my suavity, 
 when my palette was ready. 
 
 " ' My dear,' said she, turning to her husband, and pointing to 
 the chair, ' ]Mr. S is ready for you.' 
 
 " I begged pardon for a moment, crossed over to Verey's, and 
 bolted a beefsteak ! A cup of coffee, and a glass of Curagoa, 
 and a little walk round Hanover square, and I recovered from the 
 shock a little. It went very hard, I give you my word. 
 
 "I returned, and took a look, for the first time, at Mr. Titton. 
 You have seen him, and have some idea of what his portrait 
 might be, considered as a pleasure to the artist — what it might 
 promise, I should rather say ; for, after all, I ultimately enjoyed 
 working at it, quite aside from the presence of Mrs. Titton. Tt 
 
306 - A PLAIN MAN'S BEAUTY. 
 
 was the ugliest face in the world, but full of good-nature ; and, 
 as I looked closer into it, I saw, among its coarse features, lines 
 of almost feminine delicacy, and capabilities of enthusiasm, of 
 which the man himself was probably unconscious. Then a cer- 
 tain helpless style of dress was a wet blanket to him. Rich 
 from his cradle, I suppose his qualities had never been needed 
 on the surface. His wife knew them. 
 
 " From time to time, as I worked, Mrs. Titton came and 
 looked over my shoulder. With a natural desire to please her, I, 
 here and there, softened a harsh line, and was going on to flatter 
 the likeness — not as successfully as I could wish, however ; for it is 
 much easier to get a faithful likeness, than to flatter without de- 
 stroying it. 
 
 "* Mr. S ,' said she, laying her hand on my arm, as I thin- 
 ned away the lumpy rim of his nostril, ' I want, first, a literal 
 copy of my husband's features. Suppose, with this idea, you 
 take a fresh canvas .^' 
 
 " Thoroughly mystified by the whole business, I did as she 
 requested ; and, in two sittings, made a likeness of Titton, which 
 would have given you a face-ache. He shrugged his shoulders at 
 it, and seemed very glad when the bore of sitting was over ; but, 
 they seemed to understand each other very well, or, if not, he 
 reserved his questions till there could be no restraint upon the 
 answer. He seemed a capital fellow, and I liked him exceed- 
 ingly- 
 
 " I asked if I should frame the picture, and send it home ? 
 No ! I was to do neither. If I would be kind enough not to 
 show it, nor to mention it, to any one, and come next day and 
 dine with them, en families Mrs. Titton would feel very much 
 obliged to me. And this dinner was followed up by breakfasts 
 
LATER DAYS. 307 
 
 and lunches and suppers ; and, for a fortnight, I really lived 
 with the Tittons — and, pleasanter people to live with, by Jove, 
 you haven't seen in your travels, though you are ^a picked man 
 of countries !' 
 
 " I should mention, bj^-the-way, that I was always placed op- 
 posite Titton at table, and that he was a good deal with me, one 
 way and another, taking me out, as you do, for a stroll, calling 
 and sitting with me when I was at work, etc. And, as to INIrs. 
 Titton — if I did not mistrust your arriere pensee^ I would en- 
 large a little on my intimacy with Mrs. Titton ! But, believe 
 me when I tell you, that, without a ray of flirtation, we became 
 as cosily intimate as brother and sister." 
 
 " And what of Lord George, all this tim« .?" I asked. 
 
 " Ob, Lord George ! — "Well, Lord George, of course, had no 
 difficulty in making Mrs. Titton's acquaintance, though they were 
 not quite in the same circle ; and he had been presented to her, 
 and had ssen her at a party or two, where he managed to be in- 
 vited on purpose ; but of this, for a while, I heard nothing. She 
 had not yet seen him at her own house, and I had not chanced 
 to encounter him. But, let me go on with my story. 
 
 " Mrs. Titton sent for me to come to her, one morning rather 
 early. I found her in her boudoir, in a neglige morning-dress, 
 and looking adorably beautiful, and as pure as beautiful, you smil- 
 ing villain ! She seemed to have something on her mind, about 
 which she was a little embarrassed ; but, I knew her too well, to 
 lay any unction io my soul. We chatted about the weather a 
 few moments, and she came to the point. You will see that she 
 was a woman of some talent, mon ami ! 
 
 " * Have you looked at my husband's portrait since you finished 
 it .?" she asked. 
 
308 ONE WAY TO LOVE. 
 
 **']Soj indeed!' I rej^lied, rather hastily — but immediately 
 apologized. 
 
 " *■ Oh, if I had not been certain you would not,' she said, with 
 a smile, ' I should have requested it, for I wished you to for- 
 get it, as far as possible. And now, let me tell you what I want 
 of you ! You have got, on canvas, a likeness of Fortescue, as 
 the world sees him. Since taking it, however, you have seen 
 him more intimately, and — and — like his face better — do you 
 not P 
 
 " ^ Certainly ! certainly !" I exclaimed, in all sincerity. 
 
 " ^ Thank you ! If I mistake not, then, you do not, when 
 thinking of him, call up to your mind the features in your por 
 trait, but a face formed rather of his good qualities, as you havt^ 
 learned to trace them in his expression.' 
 
 " ' True,' I said, ' very true !' 
 
 " ' Now, then,' she continued, leaning over to me very ear- 
 nestly, ' I want you to paint a new picture, and, without depart- 
 ing from the real likeness, which you will have to guide you — 
 breathe into it the expression you have in your ideal likeness. 
 Add — to what the world sees — what I see, what you see, what all 
 who love him see, in his plain features. Idealize it — spiritualize 
 it, and, without lessening the resemblance. Can this be done P 
 
 " I thought it could. I promised to do my utmost. 
 
 " ' I shall call and see you as you progress in it,' she said, 
 * and now, if you have nothing better to do, stay to lunch, and 
 come out with me in the carriage. I want a little of your for- 
 eign taste in the selection of some pretty nothings for a gentle- 
 man's toilet.' 
 
 " We passed the morning in making what I should consider 
 very extravagant purchases for anybody but a prince-royal, wind- 
 
LATER DAYS. 309 
 
 icg up with some delicious cabinet pictures, and some gems of 
 statuary — all suited only, I should say, to the apartments of a 
 fastidious luxuriast. I was not yet at the bottom of her secret. 
 
 *' I went to work upon the new picture, with the zeal always 
 given to an artist by an appreciative and confiding employer, 
 ^he called every day, and made important suggestions, and, at 
 last, I finished it to her satisfiiction and mine ; and, witliout 
 speaking of it as a vrork of art, I may give you my opinion, that 
 Titton will scarcely be more embellished in the other world — 
 that is, if it be true, as the divines tell us, that our mortal like- 
 ness will be so far preserved, though improved upon, that we 
 shall be recognizable by our friends. Still, I was to paint a third 
 picture — a cabinet full length ; and, for this, the other two were 
 but studies, and so intended by Mrs. Fortescue Titton. It was 
 to be an improvement upon Lord George's portrait, (which, of 
 course, had given her the idea,) and was to represent her hus- 
 band in a very costly, and an exceedingly recherche morning 
 costume — dressing-gown, slippers, waistcoat, and neckcloth worn 
 with perfect elegance, and representing a Titton with a faultless 
 attitude, (in Vi fautcuil^ reading,) a faultless exterior, and around 
 him the most sumptuous appliances of dressing-room luxury. 
 This picture cost me a great deal of vexation and labor ; for it 
 was, emphatically, vl fancy picture — poor Titton never having ap- 
 peared in that character, even ^ by particular desire.' I finished 
 it, however, and again to her satisfaction. I afterward added 
 some finishing touches to the other two, and sent them home, ap- 
 propriately framed, according to very minute instructions." 
 
 " IIow long ago was this .^" I asked. 
 
 " Three years," replied S , musing over his wine. 
 
 tc "Well — the sequel ?" said I, a little impatient. 
 
310 USE OF A PORTRAIT. 
 
 " I was thinking how I should let it break upon you, as it took 
 effect upon her acquaintances ; for, understand, Mrs. Titton is 
 too much of a diplomatist to do anything obviously dramatic in 
 this age of ridicule. She knows very well that any sudden 
 ' flare-up' of her husband's consequence — any new light on his 
 character obviously calling for attention — would awaken specu- 
 lation, and set to work the watchful anatomizers of the body 
 fashionable. Let me see ! I will tell you what I should have 
 known about it, had I been only an ordinary acquaintance — not 
 in the secret, and not the painter of the pictures. 
 
 " Some six months after the finishing of the last portrait, I 
 was at a large ball at their house. Mrs. Titton's beauty, I 
 should have told you, and the style in which they lived, and, very 
 possibly, a little of Lord George's good will, had elevated them, 
 from the wealthy and respectable level of society, to the fashion- 
 able and exclusive. All the best people went there. As I was 
 going in, I overtook, at the head of the stairs, a very clever little 
 widow, an acquaintance of mine, and she honored me by taking 
 my arm, and keeping it for a promenade through the rooms. We 
 made our bow to Mrs. Titton, and strolled across the reception- 
 room, where the most conspicuous object, dead facing us, with a 
 flood of light upon it, was my first veracious portrait of Titton ! 
 As I was not known as the artist, I indulged myself in some 
 commonplace exclamations of horror. 
 
 " ^ Do not look at that,' said the widow, ^ you will distress poor 
 Mrs. Titton. What a quiz that clever husband of hers must be, 
 to insist on exposing such a caricature !' 
 
 " ^ How insist upon it ?' I asked. 
 
 " ' Why, have you never seen the one in her boudoir ? Come 
 with me .^' 
 
LATER DAYS. 3n 
 
 " We made our way through the apartments, to the little re- 
 treat lined with silk, which was the morning lounge of the fair 
 mistress of the house. There was but one picture, with a cur- 
 tain drawn carefully across it — my second portrait ! We sat 
 down on the luxurious cushions, and the- widow went off into a 
 discussion of it and the original, pronouncing it a perfect like- 
 ness, not at all flattered, and very soon begging me to re-draw 
 the curtain, lest we should be surprised by Mr. Titton himself. 
 
 " ^ And suppose we were ?' said I. 
 
 "*Why, he is such an oddity!' replied the widow, lowering 
 her tone. ' They say, that in this very house, he has a suite of 
 apartments entirely to himself, furnished with a taste and luxury 
 really wonderful ! There are tico Mr. Tittons, my dear friend ! — 
 one a perfect Sybarite, very elegant in his dress, when he chooses 
 to be, excessively accomplished and fastidious, and brilliant and 
 fascinating to a degree ! (and, in this character, they say he won 
 that superb creature for a wife ;) and the other Mr. Titton is 
 just the slovenly monster that everybody sees ! Isn't it odd ?' 
 
 " ^ Queer enough !' said I, affecting great astonishment ; ' pray, 
 have you ever been into these mysterious apartments ?' 
 
 " ' No ! They say only his wife and himself, and one confi- 
 dential servant, ever pass the threshold. Mrs. Titton don't like 
 to talk about it, though one would think she could scarcely object 
 to her husband's being thought better of. It's pride on his part 
 — sheer pride, and I can understand the feeling very well ! He's 
 a very superior man, and he has made up his mind that the world 
 thinks him very awkward and ugly ; and he takes a pleasure in 
 showing the world that he don't care a rush for its opinion, and 
 has resources quite sufficient within himself. That's the reason 
 that atrocious portrait is hung up in the best room, and this 
 
312 A LOVER Ux\DECEIVED. 
 
 gjood-looking one covered up with a curtain ! I suppose thi9 
 wouldn't be here, if he could have his own way, and if his wife 
 weren't so much in love with him !' 
 
 " This, I assure you," said S , " is the impression through- 
 out their circle of acquaintances. The Tittons, themselves, main- 
 tain a complete silence on the subject. Mr. Fortescue Titton is 
 considered a very accomplished man, with a very proud and very 
 secret contempt for the opinions of the world — dressing badly on 
 purpose, silent and simple by design, and only caring to show 
 himself in his real character to his beautiful wife, who is thought 
 to be completely in love with him, and quite excusable for it! 
 What do you think of the woman's diplomatic talents .'" 
 
 " I think I should like to know her," said I ; " but what says 
 Lord George to all this .^" 
 
 " I had a call from Lord George, not long ago," replied S , 
 
 " and, for the first time since our chat at Somerset House, the 
 conversation turned upon the Tittons 
 
 " ^ Devilish sly of you !' said his Lordship, turning to me half 
 angry, ' why did you pretend not to know the woman at Somer- 
 set House } You might have saved me lots of trouble and 
 money, for I was a month or two finding out what sort of people 
 they were — feeing the servants and getting them called on and 
 invited here and there — all w^ith the idea that it was a rich 
 donkey with a fine toy that didn't belong to him !" 
 
 "'Well!' exclaimed I— 
 
 " ' Well ! — not at all well ! I made a great ninny of myself, 
 with that satirical sl3-boots, old Titton, laughing at me all the 
 time, when you, that had painted him in his proper character, 
 and knew what a deep devil he was, might have saved me with 
 but half a hint !' 
 
LATER DAYS. 3] 3 
 
 " ' You bare been in tbe bidy's boudoir, tben !' 
 *' ' Yes, and iu tbe gentleiiuin's sanctum sanctorum ! Mrs. 
 Titton sent for me about some trumpery tbing or otber, and when 
 I called, tbe servant sbowed me in there by mistake. There was 
 a great row in tbe house about it, but I was there long enough to 
 see what a monstrous nice time the fellow has of it, all to him- 
 self, and to see your picture of hira in his private character. The 
 picture you made of ?}ic, was only a copy of that, you sly traitor ! 
 And, I suppose, Mrs. Titton didn't like your stealing from hers, 
 did she .^ — for, I take it, that was what ailed her at the exhibition, 
 when you allowed me to be so humbugged V 
 
 " I had a good laugh ; but it was as much at the quiet success 
 of Mis. Titton's tactics, as at Lord George's discomfiture. Of 
 
 course, I could not undeceive him. And now," continued S , 
 
 very good-naturedly, " just ring for a pen and ink, and I'll write 
 a note to Mrs. Titton, asking leave to bring you there this even- 
 inz, for it's her ^ night at bome,' and s/ie''s woi th seeing, if my 
 pictures, which you will see there, are net.'' 
 
MISS JONES'S SON 
 
 One night, toward the close of the London season — the last 
 week in August, or thereabouts — the Deptford omnibus set down 
 a gentleman at one of the small brick-block cottages on the Kent 
 road. He was a very quietly disposed person, with a face rather 
 inscrutable to a common eye, and might, or might not, pass for 
 what he was — a man of mark. His age was perhaps thirty, and 
 his manners and movements had that cool security which can 
 come only from conversance with a class of society that is beyond 
 being laughed at. He was handsome — but, when the style of a 
 man is well pronounced, that is an unobserved trifle. 
 
 Perhaps the reader will step in to No. 10, Verandah Row, 
 without further ceremony. 
 
 The room — scarce more than a squirrel-box from back to front 
 — was divided by folding doors, and the furniture was fanciful and 
 neatly kept. The canary-bird, in a very small cage, in the cor- 
 ner, seemed rather an intruder on such small quarters. You 
 could scarce give a guess what style of lady was the tenant of such 
 miniature gentility. 
 
 The omnibus passenger sat down in one of the little cane bot- 
 tomed and straight-backed chairs, and presently the door opened, 
 au4 ?t stout elderly woman, whose skirts really filled up the re- 
 
LATER DAYS. 
 
 315 
 
 maining void of the little parlor, entered with a cordial exclama-. 
 tion, and an aficctionate embrace was exchanged between them. 
 
 " Well, my dear mother !" said the visitor, " I am off to-mor- 
 row to Warwickshire to pass the shooting season, and I came to 
 wind up your household clockwork, to go for a month — (ticldngj 
 I am sorry to say !) \Vhat do you want ? How is the tea- 
 caddy .'" 
 
 " Out of green, James, but the black will do till you come 
 back. La ! don't talk of such matters when you are just going to 
 leave me. I'll step up stairs and make 3^ou out a list of my wants 
 presently. Tell me — where are you going in Warwickshire } 
 I went to school in Warwickshire. Dear me ! the lovers I had 
 there ! Well, well ! Where did you say you. were going ,?" 
 
 " To the Marquis of Headfort — Headfort Court, I think his 
 place is called — a post and a half from Stratford. Were you 
 ever there, mother .?" 
 
 " /there, indeed ! no, my son ! But I had a lover near Strat- 
 ford — ^young Sir Humphrey Fencher, he was then — old Sir Hum- 
 phrey now ! I'm sure he remembers me, long as it is since I saw 
 him — and, James, I'll give you a letter to him. Yes — I should 
 like to know how he looks, and what he will say to my grown-up 
 boy. I'll go and wiite it now, and I'll look over the groceries at 
 the same time. If you move your chair, James, don't crush the 
 canary-bird !" 
 
 The mention of the letter of introduction lingered in the ear of 
 the gentleman left in the parlor, and, smiling to himself with a 
 look of covert humor, he drew from his pocket a letter of which 
 it reminded him — the letter of introduction, on the strength of 
 which he was going to Warwickshire. As this and the one which 
 was being written up staii'S, were the two pieces of ordnance des- 
 
316 A DA?vDPS LETTER. 
 
 tined to propel the incidents of our stoiy, the reader will excuse 
 us for presenting them as a " make ready." 
 
 " Crochfordh, Monday 
 " Dear Fred : Nothing going on in town, except a little affan- 
 of my own, which I can't leave to go down to you. Dull even at 
 Crocky's — nobody plays, this hot weather. And novf, as to your 
 commissions. You will receive Duprez, the cook, by to-night's 
 mail. Grisi won't come to you without her man — ' 'twasn't thus 
 when we were boys !' — so I send you a figurante, and you must 
 
 do tableaux. I was luckier in finding you a Vv^t. S will be 
 
 v/ith you to-morrow, though, by the way, it is only on condition 
 of meeting Lady Midge Bellasys,for whom, if she is not with you, 
 you must exert your inveiglements. This, by way only of shut- 
 tlecock and battledore, however, for they play at wit together — • 
 nothing more, on Jwr part at least. Look out for this devilish 
 fellow, my lord Fred ! — and live thin till you see the last of him 
 — for he'll laugh you into your second apoplexy with the danger- 
 ous ease of a hair-trigger. I could amuse you with a turn or two 
 in my late adventures, but Black and White are bad confidants, 
 though very well as a business firm. And, mentioning them, I 
 have drawn on you for a temporary £500, which please lump 
 with my other loan, and oblige 
 
 " Yours, faithfully, 
 
 " YAURIE^^" 
 
 And here follows the letter of Mrs. S to her ancient lover, 
 
 the baronet of Warwickshire : — 
 
 " No. 10 Verandah Row, Kent Road. 
 " Dear Sir Humphrey : Perhaps you will scarce remember 
 J;iu'^ Jon?-^, to w'lOin you presented the brush of your first fox 
 
LATER DAYS. 317 
 
 TIii-3 was thirty years ago. I was then at school in the little vil- 
 lage near Tally-ho hall. Dear me ! how well I remember it ! 
 On hearing of your marriage, I accepted an offer from my late 
 
 husband, Mr. S , and our union was blessed with one boy, who, 
 
 I must say, is an angel of goodness. Out of his small income, 
 my dear James furnished and rented this very genteel house, and 
 he tells me I shall have it for life, and provides me one servant, 
 and everything I could possibly want. Thrice a week he comes 
 out to spend the day and dine with me, and, in short, he is the 
 pattern of good sons. As this dear boy is going down to War- 
 wickshire, I cannot resist the desire I have that you should know 
 him, and that he should bring me back an account of my lover in 
 days gone by. Any attention to him, dear Sir Humphre}'-, will 
 very much oblige one whom you once was happy to oblige, and 
 
 still Your sincere friend, Jane S , 
 
 " Formerly Joxes." 
 
 It was a morning astray from Paradise when S awoke 
 
 at Stratford. Ringing for his breakfast, he requested that the 
 famous hostess of the Red Horse would grace liim so far, as to join 
 him over a muffin and a cup of coffee, and, between the pauses of 
 his toilet, he indited a note, enclosing his mother's letter of intro- 
 duction to Sir Humphrey. 
 
 Enter dame hostess, prim and respectful, and, as breakfast 
 
 proceeded, S easily informed himself of the geography of 
 
 Tally-ho hall, and the existing branch and foliage of the family 
 tree. Sir Humphrey's domestic circle consisted of a daughter 
 and a niece, (his only son having gone with his regiment to the 
 Canada wars,) and the hall lay half way to Headfort Court — the 
 Fenchers his lordship's nearest neighbors, Mrs. Boniface was in- 
 clined to think 
 
318 VISIT TO A MOTHER'S SWEETHEART. 
 
 S divided his morning very deliglitfullj between the 
 
 banks of tlie Avon, and the be-scribbled localities of Shakspere's 
 birth and residence, and, by two o'clock, the messenger had re- 
 turned with this note from Sir Humphrey : — 
 
 " Dear Sir : I remember Miss Jones very well. God bless 
 me, I thought she had been dead many years. I am sure I shall 
 be very happy to see her son. Will you come out and dine with 
 us t — dinner at seven. Your ob't servant 
 
 " Humphrey Fencher. 
 
 " James S , Esq." 
 
 As the crack wit and diner-out of his time, S was as 
 
 well known to the brilliant society of London as the face of the 
 " gold stick in waiting" at St. James's, and, with his very com- 
 mon name, he was as little likely to be recognized, out of his pe- 
 culiar sphere, as the noble lord, when walking in Chcapside, to be 
 recognized as the " stick," so often m.entioned in the Court Jour- 
 nal, He had delayed his visit to Hcadfort Court for a day, and 
 undertaken to deliver his mother's letter, and look up her lang- 
 syne lover, very much as he would stop in the Strand to purchase 
 her a parcel of snuff — purely from the filial habit of always doing 
 her bidding, even in whims. He had very little curiosity to see 
 a Warwickshire Ninirod, and, till his post-chaise stopped at the 
 lodge-gate of Tally-ho hall, it had never entered his head to 
 speculate upon the ground of his introduction to Sir Humphrey, 
 nor to anticipate the nature of his reception. His name had been 
 so long to him an " open sesame," that he had no doubt of its 
 potency, and least of all when he pronounced it at an inferior gate in 
 the barriers of society. 
 
 The drcssiug-bcll had rang, and S was shown into the 
 
LATER DAYS. 319 
 
 vacant drawing-room, where he buried himself in the deepest chair 
 he could find, and sat looking at the wall with the composure of a 
 barber's customer waiting to be shaved. There presently entered 
 two young ladies, very showily dressed, who called him Mr. 
 " Jones," in replying to his salutation, and immediately fell to 
 promenading between the two old mirrors at the extremities of the 
 room, discoursing upon topics evidently chosen to exclude the 
 new-comer from the conversation. With rather a feeling that it 
 was their loss, not his, S recomposed himself in the lea- 
 thern chair, and resumed the perusal of the oaken ceiling. The 
 neglect sat upon him a little uncomfortably withal. 
 
 " How d'ye do, young man ! What ! are you Miss Jones's 
 son, eh .?" was the salutation of a burly old gentleman, who now 
 entered and shook hands with the great incognito. " Here, 'Bel!. 
 Fan ! Mr. Jones. My daughter and my niece, Mr. Jones !" 
 
 S was too indignant, for a moment, to explain that Miss 
 
 Jones had changed her name before his birth, and, on second 
 thought, finding that his real character was not suspected, and 
 that he represented to Sir Humphrey simply the obscure son of 
 an obscure girl, pretty, thirty years ago, he fell quietly into the 
 role expected of him, and walked patiently into dinner with Miss 
 Fencher, who accepted his arm for that purpose, but forgot to 
 take it ! 
 
 It was hard to be witty as a Mr. Jones, but the habit was strong 
 
 and the opportunities were good, and S , warming with his 
 
 first glass of sherry, struck out some sparks that would have passed 
 for gems of the first water, with choicer listeners ; but wit is 
 slowly recognized when not expected, and, though now and then 
 the young ladies stared, and now and then the old baronet chuck- 
 led, and said, " egad ! very well !" there was evidently no material 
 
320 AN UNRECOGNIZED LION. 
 
 rise in the value of Mr. Jones, and he at last confined his social 
 talents exclusively to his wine-glass and nut-picker, feeling, spite 
 of himself, as stupid as he seemed. 
 
 Relieved of the burden of replying to their guest, the young 
 ladies now took up a subject which evidently lay nearest their 
 hearts — a series of dejeuners^ the first of which was to come off 
 the following morning at Headfort Court. As if by way of caveat^ 
 in case Mr. Jones should fancy that he could be invited to ac- 
 company Sir Humphrey, Miss Fencher took the trouble to explain 
 that these were, by no means, common country entertainments, 
 but exclusive and select parties, under the patronage of the beau- 
 tiful and witty Lady Imogen Bellasys, now a guest at Headfort. 
 Her ladyship had not only stipulated for scciete choisie^ but had 
 invited down a celebrated London wit, a grent friend of her own, 
 to do the mottoes and keep up the spirit of the masques and tab- 
 leaux. Indeed, Miss Fencher considered herself as more parti- 
 cularly the guest and ally of Lady Imogen, never having been 
 permitted, during her mother's life, to visit Headfort (though she 
 did not see what the marquis's private character had to do with 
 his visiting list), and she expected to be called upon to serve as a 
 sort of maid of honor, or in some way to assist Lady Imogen, who 
 had invited her, very affectionately, after church, on Sunday. 
 She thought, perhaps, she had better wake up Sir Humphrey, 
 while she thought of it, (and while papa was good-natured, as he 
 always was after dinner), and exact of him a promise that the 
 great London Mr. What d'ye call 'im, should be invited to pass a 
 week at Tally-ho hall — for, of course, as mutual allies of Lady 
 Imogen, Miss Fencher and he would become rather well acquainted. 
 
 To this enlightenment, of which we have given only a brief rc- 
 surwer, Mr. Jones listened attentively, as he was expected to do 
 
LATER DAYS. 32 1 
 
 and wtis very graciously answoi-od, wlion, by way of feeling one of 
 the remote pulses of his celebrity, he ventured to ask for some 
 further particulars about the London wit aforementioned. He 
 learned, someAvhat to his disgust, that his name was cither Brown 
 or Simpson — some ver}^ common name, however — but that he had 
 a wonderful talent for wiiting impromptu epigrams on people, and 
 singing them afterward to impromptu music on the piano, and 
 that he was supposed to bo a natural son of Talleyrand or Lord 
 Byron, Miss Fencher had forgotten which. He had written 
 something, but Miss Fencher had forgotten what. He was very 
 handsome — no, very plain — indeed, Miss Fencher had forgotten 
 which — but it was one or the other. 
 
 At this crisis of the conversation Sir Humphrey roused from 
 his post-prandial snooze, and begged Mr. Jones to pass the port, 
 and open the door for the ladies. By the time the gloves were 
 rescued from under the table, the worthy Baronet had drained a 
 bumper, and, with his descending glass, dropped his eyes to the 
 level of his daughter's face, where they rested with paternal ad- 
 miration. Miss Fencher was far from ill-looking, and she well 
 knew that her father waxed affectionate over his wine. 
 
 " Papa !" said she, coming behind him, and looking down his 
 throat, as he strained his head backward, leaving his reluctant 
 double chin resting on his cravat. , " I have a favor to ask, my 
 dear papa !" 
 
 " He shall go, my dear ! he shall go ! I have been thinking 
 of it — ril arrange it, Bel, I'll arrange it ! Go your ways, chick, 
 and seD'l me my slippers !" gurgled the baronet, with his usual 
 rapid brevity, when slightly elevated. 
 
 Miss Fencher turned quite pale. 
 
 " Pa — pa !" she exclaimed, with horror in ner voice, coming 
 14* 
 
322 WRITES HIMSELF A NOTE. 
 
 round frout., " pa — pa ! — good gracious ! Do you know it is the 
 most exclusive — however, papa ! let us talk that over in the other 
 room. What I wish to ask is quite another matter. You know 
 that Mr. — Mr. — " 
 
 " The gentleman you mean is probably James S ," in- 
 terrupted Mr. Jones. 
 
 " Thank you, sir, so it is .?" continued Miss Fencher, putting 
 her hand upon the Baronet's mouth, who was about to speak — 
 
 " It is Mr. James S ; and what I wish, papa, is, to have 
 
 Mr. James S invited to pass a week with us. You know, 
 
 papa, we shall be very intimate — James S and I — both of 
 
 us assisting Lady Imogen, you know, papa ! and — and — stay till 
 I get some note-paper — will you, dear papa .?" 
 
 " You will have your way, chick, you ivill have your way," 
 sighed Sir Humphrey, getting his spectacles out of a very tight 
 pocket on his hip. " But, bless me, I can't write in the evening. 
 Mr. Jones — perhaps Mr. Jones will write the note for me — ^just 
 
 present my compliments to Mr. S , and request the honor, 
 
 and all that — can you do it, Mr. Jones .?" 
 
 g rapidly indited a polite note to himself, which he 
 
 handed to Miss Fencher for her approbation, and, meantime, en- 
 tered the butler with the coffee. 
 
 " Stuggins !" cried Sir Humphrey — " I wish Mr. Jones — " 
 
 " Good Heavens ! papa !" exclaimed Miss Fencher, ending 
 the remainder of her objurgation in a whisper in her father's ear. 
 But the Baronet was not in a mood to be controlled. 
 
 " My love ! — Bel, I say — he shall go. You d-d-d-diddedent 
 see Miss Jones's letter. He's a p-p-p-pattern of filial duty ! — he 
 gives his mother a house, and all she wants ! — he's a good son, I 
 
LATER DAYS. 323 
 
 tell you ! St-Stiiggins, come here ! Pass the port, Jones, my 
 good fellow!" 
 
 Stuggins stepped forward a pace, and presented his white waist- 
 coat, and Miss Fencher flounced out of the room in a passion. 
 
 " Stuggins !" said the old man, a little more tranquilly, since 
 he had no fear now of being interrupted, " I wish my friend, Mr. 
 Jones, here, to see this cock-a-hoop business to-morrow. It'll be 
 a fine sight, they tell me. I want him to see it, Stuggins ! You 
 understand me. His mother. Miss Jones, was a pretty girl, Stug- 
 gins ! And she'll be very glad to hear that her boy has seen such 
 a fine show — eh, Jones ? eh, Stuggins ? Well, you know what 
 I want. The Headfort tenants will have a place provided for 
 them, of course, — some shrubbery, eh r — some gallery — some 
 place behind the musicians, where they are out of the way, but 
 can see — is'nt it so ? eh .'' eh .^" 
 
 " Yes, Sir Humphrey — no doubt. Sir Humphrey !" acceded 
 Stuggins, with his ears still open to know how the details were to 
 be managed. 
 
 " Well — very well — and you'll take Jones with you in the 
 dickey, eh ? — Thomas will go on the box — eh ? Will that do .? 
 — and Mr. Jones will stay with us to-night, and perhaps you'll 
 buow him his room, now, and talk it over, eh, Stuggins ? — good 
 night, Mr. Jones ! — good night, Jones, my good fellow !" 
 
 And Sir Humphrey, having done this act of grateful reminis- 
 cence for his old sweetheart, managed to find his way into the 
 next room unaided. 
 
 S had begun, by this time, to see " straw for his bricks," 
 
 in the course matters were taking ; and, instead of throwing a de- 
 canter after Sir Humphrey, and knocking down the butler for 
 calling him Mr. Jones, he accepted Stuggins's convoy to the house- 
 
324 OPENS THE CAMPAIGN. 
 
 keeper's room, and, with bis droll stories and funny waj's, kept 
 the maids and footmen in convulsions of laughter till break of day 
 Such a merry time bad not come off in servants' hall for many a 
 day, and, of many a precious morsel of the high life below stairs of 
 Tally-bo hall, did he pick the brains of the delighted Abigails. 
 
 The ladies, busied with their toilets, had their breakfjists in their 
 own rooms, and Mr. Jones did not make his appearance till after 
 the Baronet had achieved his red herring and seltzer. .The car- 
 riage came round at twelve, and the ladies stepped in, dressed foi 
 triumph, tumbled after by burly Sir Humphrey, who required one 
 side of the vehicle to himself — Mr. Jones outside, on the dickey 
 with Stuggins, as previously arranged. 
 
 Half way up the long avenue of Headfort Court, Stuggins re- 
 linquished the dickey to its rightful occupant, Thomas, and, with 
 Mr. Jones, turned off by a side-path that led to the dairy and 
 offices — the latter barely saving his legs, however, for the man- 
 oeuvre was performed servant fashion, while the carriage kept its 
 way. 
 
 Lord Headfort was a widower, and his niece. Lady Imogen 
 Bellasys, the wittiest and loveliest girl in England, stood upon the 
 lawn for the mistress of the festivities. She had occasion for a 
 petticoat aicl-de-camp ^ and she knew that Lord Headfort wished 
 to propitiate his Warwickshire neighbors ; and, as Miss Fencher 
 was a fine grenadier-looking girl, she promoted her to that office 
 immediately on her arrival, decking her for the nonce with a broad 
 blue riband of authority. Miss Fencher made the best use of her 
 powers of self-congratulation, and thanked God privately, besides, 
 that Sir Humphrey had provided an eclipse for Mr. Jones ; for, 
 with the drawback of presenting such a superfluous acquaintance 
 of their own to the fastidious eyes of Lady Imogen, she felt as 
 
LATER DAYS. 325 
 
 Rured that her new honors would never have-arrived to her. She 
 had had a hint, moreover, from her dressing-maid, of Mr. Jones's 
 comicalities below stairs ; and the fact that he was a person who 
 could be funny in a kitchen, was quite enough to confirm tlie 
 aristocratic instinct by which she had at once pronounced upon 
 his condition. If her papa had been gay in his youth, there was 
 no reason why every Miss Jones should send her child to him to 
 be made a gentleman of ! " Filial pattern," indeed ! 
 
 The gayeties began. The French figurante, despatched by 
 Lord Vaurien from the opera, made up her tableaux from the 
 beauties, and those who had ugly faces but good figures, tried their 
 attitudes on the archery lawn, and those whose complexions would 
 stand the aggravation, tripped to the dancing-tents, and the falcon 
 was flown, and the grey-hounds were coursed, and a few couple 
 of Warwickshire lads tried their backs at a wrestling fall, and the 
 time wore on. But, to Lady Imogen's shrewd apprehension, it 
 wore on very heavily. There was no wit afloat. Nobody seemed 
 gayer than he meant to be. The bubble was wanting to their 
 champagne of enjoyment. Miss Fencher's blue riband went to 
 and fro like a pendulum, perpetually crossing the lawn between 
 Lady Imogen and the footman in waiting, to inquire if a post- 
 chaise had arrived from London. 
 
 " I will never forgive that James S , never !" pettishly 
 
 vowed her ladyship, as Miss Fencher came back for the fiftieth 
 time with no news of his arrival. 
 
 " Better feed your menagerie at once !" whispered Lord Head- 
 fort to his niece, as he caught a glance at her vexed face in 
 passing. 
 
 The decision with which the order was given to serve breakfast, 
 seemed to hurry the very heat of the kitchen fireSj for, in an incredi- 
 
326 WIT BELOW STAIRS. 
 
 bly short time, the hot soups and delicate entremets of Monsienr 
 Duprez were on the tables, and breakfast was announced. The 
 band played a march, the games were abandoned, Miss Fencher 
 followed close upon the heel of her chef, to secure a seat in her 
 neighborhood, and, in ten minutes, a hundred questions of prece- 
 dence were settled, and Sir Humphrey, somewhat to his surprise, 
 and as much to his delight, was called to the left hand of the Mar- 
 quis. Tally-ho hall was in the ascendant. 
 
 During the first assault upon the soups, the band played a de- 
 licious set of waltzes, terminating with the clatter of changing, 
 plates. But, at the same moment, above all the ring of impinging 
 china, arose a shout of laughter from a party somewhere without 
 the pavilion, and so sustained and hearty was the peal, that the 
 servants stood petrified with their dishes, and the guests sat in 
 wondering silence. The steward was instantly despatched to en- 
 force order, and Lord Headfort explained, that the tenants were 
 feasted on beef and ale, in the thicket beyond, though he could 
 scarce imagine what should amuse them so uncommonly. 
 
 " They have promised to maintain order, my lord !" said the 
 steward, returning, and stooping to his master's ear, " but there 
 is a droll gentleman among them, my lord !" 
 
 " Then I dare swear it's better fun than this !" mumbled his 
 lordship for the steward's hearing, as he looked round upon the 
 unamused faces in his neighborhood. 
 
 " Headfort," cried Lady Imogen, presently, from the other end 
 
 of the table, " did you send to Stratford for S , or did you 
 
 not .'' Let us know whether there is a chance of his coming !" 
 
 " Upon my honor. Lady Imogen, my own chariot has been at 
 the Stratford inn, waiting for him since morning," was the Mar- 
 quis's answer. " Yaurien wrote that he had booked him by the 
 
LATER DAYS. 33? 
 
 mail of the niglit before ! I'd give a thousand pounds if he were 
 here !" 
 
 Bursts of laughter, breaking through all efforts to suppress 
 them, again rose from the offending quarter. 
 
 " It's a Mr. Jones, my lord," said the steward, speaking be- 
 tween the Marquis and Sir Humphrey; "he's a friend of Sir 
 Humphrey's butler — and — if you will excuse me, my lord — Stug- 
 gins says he is the son of a Miss Jones, formerly an acquaintance 
 of Sir Humphrey's !" 
 
 Red as a turkey-cock grew the old baronet in a moment. " I 
 beg ten thousand pardons for haying intruded him here, my 
 lord !" said Sir Humphrey ; " it's a poor lad that brought me a 
 letter from his mother, and I told Stuggins — " 
 
 But here Stuggins approached with a couple of notes for his 
 master, and, begging permission of the Marquis, Sir Humphrey 
 put on his spectacles to read. The guests at the table, meantime, 
 were passing the wine very slowly, and conversation more slowly 
 still, and, with the tranquillity that reigned in the pavilion, the 
 continued though half-smothered merriment of the other party 
 was provokingly audible. 
 
 " Can't we borrow a little fun from those merry people !" cried 
 Lady Imogen, throwing up her eyes despairingly as the Marquis 
 exchanged looks with her. 
 
 " If we could persuade Sir Humphrey to introduce his friend, 
 Jones, to us — " 
 
 " /introduce him !" exclaimed the fuming Baronet, tearing off 
 his spectacles in a rage, " read that before you condescend to talk 
 of noticing such a varlet ! Faith ! I think he's the clown from a 
 theatre, or the waiter from a pot-house !" 
 
 The Marquis read :- 
 
328 AT HOME, AT LAST. 
 
 ^' Dear Nuncle : It's hard on to six o'clock, and I'm engaged 
 at seven to a junketing at the ' Hen and Chickens,' with Stuggina 
 and the maids. If you intend to make me acquainted with your 
 great lord, now is the time. If you don't, I shall walk in pre- 
 sently, and introduce myself ; for I know how to make my own 
 way, nuncle — ask Miss Bel's maid, and the other girls you intro- 
 duced me to, at Tally-ho hall ! Be in a hurry. I'm jast outside. 
 
 '' Yours, Jones. 
 
 " Sir Humphrey Fencher." 
 
 The excitement of Sir Humphrey, and the amused face of the 
 Marquis as he read, had drawn Lady Imogen from her seat, and 
 as he read aloud, at her request, the urgent epistle of Mr. Jones, 
 she clapped her hands with delight, and insisted on having him in. 
 Sir Humphrey declared he should take it as an affront if the thing 
 was insisted on, and Miss Fencher, who had followed to ier 
 father's chair, and heard the reading of the note, looked the pic- 
 ture of surprised indignation. " Insolent ! vulgar ! abominable !' 
 v/as all the compliment she ventured upon, however. 
 
 " Will you let me look at Mr. Jones's note .^" said Lady 
 Imogen. 
 
 " Grood Heavens !" she exclaimed, after glancing at it an in- 
 stant, *' I was sure it must be he !" 
 
 And out ran the beautiful queen of the festivities, and the next 
 moment, to Sir Humphrey's amazement, and Miss Fencher's 
 utter dismay, she returned, dragging in, with her own scarf around 
 his body, and her own wreath of roses around his head, the friend 
 of Stuggins — the abominable Jones ! Up jumped the Marquis, 
 and called him by name (not Jones), and seized him by both 
 hands, and up jumped with delighted acclamation half a dozen 
 
LATER DAYS. 329 
 
 other of the more distinguished guests at table, and the merri- 
 ment was now on the other side of the thicket. 
 
 It was five or ten minutes before they were again seated at table, 
 
 S on Lady Imogen's right hand, but there were two vacant 
 
 chairs, for Sir Humphrey and his daughter had taken advantage 
 of the confusion to disappear, and the field was open, therefore, for 
 a full account of Mr. Jones's adventures above and below stairs at 
 Tally-ho hall. A better subject never fell into the hand of that 
 inimitable humorist, and gloriously he made use of it. 
 
 As he concluded, amid convulsions of laughter, the butler 
 
 brought, in a note addressed to James S , Esq., which had 
 
 been given him by Stuggins early in the day — his own autograph 
 invitation to the hospitalities of Tally-ho hall ! 
 
LADY RACHEL. 
 
 *' Beauty, alone, is ost, too warily kept." 
 
 I ONCE had a long conversation with a fellow-traveller in the 
 coup& of a French diligence. It was a bright moonlight night; 
 early in June — not at all the scene or season for talking long on 
 Tery dry topics — and, with a mutual abandon which must be ex- 
 plained by some theory of the silent sympathies, we fell to chatting 
 rather confidentially on the subject of love. He gave me some 
 hints as to a passage in his life which seemed to me, when he told 
 it, a definite and interesting story ; but, in recalling it to mind 
 afterwards, I was surprised to find how little he really said, and 
 how much, from seeing the man and hearing his voice, I was ena- 
 bled without effort to supply. To save roundabout, I'll tell the 
 story in the first person, as it was told to me, begging the reader 
 to take my place in the coup^ and listen to a very gentlemanly 
 man, of very loveable voice and manners ; supplying, also, as I 
 did, by the imagination, much more than is told in the narration. 
 
 " I am inclined to think that we are sometimes best loved by 
 those whom we least suspect of being interested in us ; and, while 
 a sudden laying open of hearts would give the lie to many a love 
 professed, it would, here and there, disclose a passion which, in the 
 ordinary course of things, would never have been betrayed. I 
 
LATER DAYS. 33^ 
 
 was once a little surprised witli a circumstance of tbe Jjiud I al- 
 lude to. 
 
 " I had become completely domesticated in a family living in 
 the neighborhood of London — I can scarce tell you how, even if 
 it were worth while. A chance introduction, as a stranger in the 
 country, first made me acquainted with them, and we had gone 
 on, from one degree of friendship to another, till I was as much at 
 homo at Lilybank as any one of the children. It was one of those 
 little English paradises, rural and luxurious, where love, confi- 
 dence, simplicity, and refinement, seem natural to the atmosphere, 
 and I thought, when I was there, that I was probably as near to 
 perfect happiness as I was likely to be in the course of my life. 
 But I had my annoyance even there. 
 
 " Mr. Fleming (the name is fictitious, of course) was a man of 
 sufficient fortune, living, without a profession, on his means. He 
 was avowedly of the middle class, but his wife, a very beautiful 
 Bpecimen of the young English mother, was very highly connect- 
 ed, and might have moved in what society she pleased. She 
 chose to find her happiness at home, and leave society to come to 
 her by its own natural impulse and affinity — a sensible choice, 
 which shows you at once the simple and rational character of the 
 woman. Fleming and his wife were very fond of each other, but, 
 at the same time, very fond of the companionship of those who 
 were under their roof; and, between them and their three or four 
 lovely children, I could have been almost contented to have been 
 a prisoner at Lilybank, and to have seen nobody but its charming 
 inmates for years together. 
 
 " I had become acquainted with the Flemings, however, during 
 the absence of one of the members of the family. Without being 
 at all aware of any new arrival in the course of the morning, I 
 
 4 
 
332 SIEGE LAID TO AN AVERSION. 
 
 went late to dinner after a long and solitary ride on horseback, 
 and was presented to Lady Rachel , a tall and reserved-look- 
 ing person, sitting on Fleming's right hand. Seeing no reason to 
 abate any of my outward show of happiness, or to put any re- 
 straint on the natural impulse of my attentions, 1 took my accus- 
 tomed seat by the sweet mistress of the house, wrapped up my 
 entire heart, as usual, in every word and look that I sent toward 
 her, and played the schoolboy that I felt myself, uncloudedly frank 
 and happy. Fleming laughed and mingled in our chat occasion- 
 ally, as he was wont to do, but a glance now and then at his 
 stately right-hand neighbor made me aware that I was looked 
 upon with some coolness, if not with a marked disapproval. I 
 tried the usual peace-ofiPerings of deference and marked courtesy, 
 and lessened somewhat the outward show of my happiness, but 
 Lady Rachel was apparently not propitiated. You know what it 
 is to have one link cold in the chain of sympathy around a table. 
 
 " The next morning I announced my intention of returning to 
 town. I had hitherto come and gone at my pleasure. This time 
 the Flemings showed a determined opposition to my departure. 
 They seemed aware that my enjoyment under their roof had been, 
 for the first time, clouded over, and they were not willing I should 
 leave till the accustomed sunshine was restored. I felt that I 
 owed them too much to resist any persuasion of theirs against my 
 own feelings merely, and I remained. 
 
 " But I determined to overcome Lady Rachel's aversion — a 
 little from pique, I may as well confess, but mostly for the grati- 
 fication I knew it would give to my sweet friends and entertainers. 
 The saddle is my favorite thinking-place. I mounted a beautiful 
 hunter which Fleming always put at my disposal while I stayed 
 with them^ and went off for a long gallop. I dismounted at an 
 
LATER BAYS. 
 
 333 
 
 inn, some miles off, called for black-wax, and writing myself a 
 letter, despatched it to Liljbank. To plaj my part well, you 
 will easily conceive, it was necessary that my kind friends should 
 not be in the secret. 
 
 ^' The short road to the heart of a proud woman, I well knew, 
 was pity. I came to dinner, that day, a changed man. It wag 
 known through the family, of course, that a letter sealed with 
 black had arrived for me, during my ride, and it gave me the 
 apology I needed for a sudden alteration of manner. Delicacy 
 would prevent any one, except Mrs. Fleming, from alluding to it, 
 and she would reserve the incjuiry till we were alone. I had the 
 evening before me, of course. 
 
 "Lady Rachel, I had remarked, showed her superiority by 
 habitually pitching her voice a note or two below that of the per- 
 sons around her — as if the repose of her calm mind was beyond 
 the plummet of their superficial gaiety. I had also observed, 
 however, that if she succeeded in rebuking now and then (he hioh 
 spirits of her friends, and lowered the general diapason till it har- 
 monized with her own voice, she was more gratified than by any 
 direct compliment or attention. I ate my soup in silence, and 
 while the children, and a chance guest or two, were carrying on 
 some agreeable banter in a merry key, I waited for the first open- 
 ing of Lady Rachel's lips, and, when she spoke, took her tone 
 like an echo. "Without looking at her, I commenced a subdued 
 and pensive description of my morning's ride, like a man uncon- 
 sciously awakened from his revery by a sympathetic voice, and 
 betraying, by the tone in which he spoke, the chord to which he 
 responded. A newer guest had taken my place, next to Mrs. 
 Fleming, and I was opposite Lady Rachel. I could feel her eyes 
 suddenly fixed on me as I spoke. For the first time, she address- 
 
334 REGRET AT SUCCESS. 
 
 ed a remark to me, in a pause of m}^ description. I raised my 
 eyes to her with as much earnestness and deference as [ could 
 summon into them, and, when I had hstened to her and answered 
 her observation, kept them fastened on her lips, as if I hoped she 
 would speak to me again — yet without a smile, and with an ex- 
 pression that I meant should be that of sadness, forgetful of 
 usages, and intent only on an eager longing for sympathy. Lady 
 Rachel showed her woman's heart, by an almost immediate change 
 of countenance and manner. She leaned slightly over the table 
 toward me, with her brows lifted from her large dark eyes, and 
 the conversation between us became continuous and exclusive. 
 After a little while, my kind host, finding that he was cut off from 
 his other guests by the fear of interrupting us, proposed to gwe 
 me the head of the table, and I took his place at the left hand of 
 Lady Rachel. Her dinner was forgotten. She introduced topics 
 of conversation such ns sh} thought harmonized with my feelings, 
 and, while 1 listened^ with my eyes alternately cast down or raised 
 timidly to hers, she openad her heart to me on the subject of 
 death, the loss of friends, the vanity of the world, and the charm, 
 to herself, of sadness and melancholy. She sp.emed unconscious 
 of the presence of others as she t;)lked. The tears suffused her 
 fine eyes, and her lips quivered, and I found, to my surprise, that 
 she was a woman, under that mask of haughtiness, of the keenest 
 sensibility and feeling. When Mrs. Fleming left the table, Lady 
 Rachel pressed my hand, and, instead of following into the draw- 
 ing-room, went out by the low window upon the lawn. I had 
 laid up some little food for reflection as you may conceive, and I 
 sat the next hour looking into my wine glass, wondering at the 
 success of my mancieuvre, but a little out of humor with my own 
 hypocrisy, notwithstanding. 
 
LATER DAYS. 
 
 " Mrs. Fleming's tender kindness to me when I joined her at 
 the tea-table, made me again regret the sacred feelings upon 
 which I had drawn for my experiment. But there was no retreat. 
 I excused myself hastily, and went out in search of Lady Rachel, 
 meeting her ladyship, as I expected, slowly pacing the dark ave- 
 nues of the garden. The dimness of the starlight relieved me 
 from the effort of keeping sadness in my countenance, and I easily 
 played out my part till midnight, listening to an outpouring of 
 mingled kindness and melancholy, for the waste of which I felt 
 some need to be forgiven. 
 
 " Another day of this, however, was all that I could bring my 
 mind to support. Fleming and his wife had entirely lost sight — 
 in sympathy with my presumed affliction — of the object of detain- 
 ing me at Lilybank, and I took my leave, hating myself for the 
 tender pressure of the hand, and the sad and sympathizing fare- 
 wells which I was obliged to received from them. I did not dare 
 to tell them of my unworthy ruse. Lady Rachel parted from me 
 as kindly as the rest, and I had gained my point with the loss of 
 my self-esteem. With a prayer that, notwithstanding this deceit 
 and misuse, I might find pity when I should indeed stand in need 
 of it, I drove from the door. 
 
 " A month passed away, and I wrote, once more, to my friends 
 at Lilybank, that I would pass a week with them. An occur- 
 rence, in the course of that month, however, had thrown another 
 mask over my face, and I went there again with a part to play — and, 
 as if by a retributive Providence, it was now my need of sympa- 
 thy that I was most forced to conceal. An affair which I saw no 
 possibility of compromising, had compelled me to call out a man 
 who was well known as a practised duellist. The particulars 
 would not interest you. In accepting the challenge, my antagonist 
 
AN APPARITION. 
 
 asked a week's delay, to complete some important business from 
 which he could not withdraw his attention. And that week I 
 passed with the Flemings. 
 
 " The gaiety of Lilybank was resumed with the smile I brought 
 back, and chat and occupation took their course. Lady Rachel, 
 though kind and courteous, seemed to have relapsed into her re- 
 serve, and, finding societ}^ an effort, I rode out daily alone, seeing 
 my friends only at dinner and in the evening. They took it to 
 be an indulgence of some remainder of my former grief, and left 
 me consequently to the disposition of my own time. 
 
 " The last evening before the duel arrived, and I bade my 
 friends good-night as usual, though with some suppressed emotion. 
 My second, who was to come from town and take rcc up at Lily- 
 bank on his way to the ground, had written to me that, from what 
 he could gather, my best way was to be prepared for the worst, 
 and, looking upon it as very probably the last night of my life, I 
 determined to pass it waking, and writing to my friends at a dis- 
 tance. I sat down to it, accordingly, without undressing. 
 
 '* It was toward three in the morning that 1 sealed up my last 
 letter. My bedroom was on the ground-floor, with a long window 
 opening into the garden ; and, as I lifted my head up from leaning 
 over the seal, I saw a white object standing just before the case- 
 ment, but at some little distance, and half buried in the darkness. 
 My mind was in a fit mood for a superstitious feeling, and my 
 blood crept cold for a moment ; I passed my hand across my eyes 
 — looked again. The figure moved slowly away. 
 
 " To direct my thoughts, I took up a book and read. But, on 
 looking up, the figure was there again, and, with an irresistible 
 impulse, I rushed out to the garden. The figure came toward 
 
LATER DAYS. 337 
 
 me, but, with its first movement, I recognised the stately step of 
 Lady Rachel. 
 
 " Confused at having intruded on her privacy — for I presumed 
 that she was abroad for solitude, and with no thoufijht of beinor 
 
 ^ CO 
 
 disturbed — I turned to retire. She called to me, however, and, 
 sinking upon a garden-seat, covered her face with her hands. I 
 stood before her, for a moment, in embarrassed silence. 
 
 " ' You keep late hours,' she said, at last, with a tremulous 
 voice, but rising at the same time, and, with her arm put through 
 mine, leading me to the thickly-shaded walk. 
 
 " ' To-night I do,' I replied ; ' letters I could not well defer — ' 
 
 " ^ Listen to me !' interrupted Lady Rachel. ^ I know your 
 business for the morning — ' 
 
 " I involuntary released my arm and started back. The chance 
 of an interruption that would seem dishonorable flashed across 
 my mind. 
 
 '' ' Stay !' she continued ; ' I am the only one in the family 
 who knows of it, and my errand with you is not to hinder this 
 dreadful meeting. The circumstances are such, that, with 
 society as it is, you could not avoid it with honor.' 
 
 " I pressed her arm with a feeling of gratified justification, 
 which quite overcame, for the moment, my curiosity as to tha 
 source of her knowledge of the afi*air. 
 
 " ' You must forgive me,' she said, ' that I come to you like a 
 bird of ill omen. I cannot spare the precious moments, to tell 
 you how I came by my information as to your design. I have 
 walked the night away, before your window, not daring to inter- 
 rupt you in what was, probably, the performance of sacred duties. 
 But I know your antagonist — I know his demoniac nature, and — 
 pardon me ! — I dread the worst !' 
 15 
 
33r> LOVE AT A LAST MOMENT. 
 
 " I still walked by her side in silence. She resumed, though 
 strongly agitated. 
 
 '' ^ I have said that I justify you in an intention which wiU, 
 probably, cost you your life. Yet, but for a feeling which I am 
 about to disclose to you, I should lose no time, and spare no pains, 
 in preventing this meeting. Under such circumstances, your 
 honor would be less dear to me than now, and I should be acting 
 as one of my sex who had but a share of interest in resisting and 
 striving to correct this murderous exaction of public opinion. 
 I would condemn duelling in argument — avoid the duellist in so- 
 ciety — make any sacrifice with others to suppress it in the ab- 
 stract ; but, till the feeling changes in reference to it, I could not 
 bring myself to sacrifice, in the honor of the man I loved, my 
 world of happiness for my share only.' 
 
 " ' And mean you to say — ' I began, but, as the light broke 
 in upon my mind, amazement stopped my utterance. 
 
 ^' ' Yes — that I love you ! — that I love you !' murmured Lady 
 Rachel, throwing herself into my arms, and fastening her lips to 
 mine in a long and passionate kiss — ' that I love you, and, in this 
 last hour of your life, must breathe to you what I never before 
 breathed to mortal !' 
 
 " She sank to the ground ; and, with handfuls of dew, swept 
 from the grass of the lawn, I bathed her temples, as she leaned 
 senseless against my knee. The moon had risen above the trees, 
 and poured its full radiance on her pale face and closed eyes. 
 Her hair loosened, and fell in heavy masses over her shoulders 
 and bosom ; and, for the first time, I realized Lady KachePs ex- 
 traordinary beauty. Her features were without a fault, her skin 
 was of marble fairness and paleness, and her abandonment to 
 passionate feeling, had removed, for the instant, a hateful cloud 
 
LATER DAYS. 339 
 
 of pride and superciliousness, that, at all other times, had ob- 
 scured her loveliness. With a new-born emotion in my heart, I 
 seized the first instant of returning consciousness, and pressed 
 her, with a convulsive eagerness, to my bosom. 
 
 " The sound of wheels aroused me from this delirious dream, 
 and, looking up, I saw the grey of the dawn struggling with the 
 moonlight. I tore myself from her arms, and, the moment after, 
 was whii-ling away to the appointed place of meeting. 
 
 "I was in my room, at Lilybank, dressing, at eleven of that 
 same day. My honor was safe, and the affair was over, and now 
 my whole soul was bent on this new and unexpected vision of 
 love. True — I was but twenty-five, and Lady Rachel, probably, 
 twenty years older ; but, she loved me — she was high-born and 
 beautiful — and love is not so often brought to the lip in this 
 world, that we can cavil at the cup which holds it. With these 
 thoughts and feelings wrangling tumultuously in my heated blood, 
 I took the following note from a servant at my door. 
 
 " ' Lady Rachel buries, in entire oblivion, the last night 
 
 past. Feelings over which she has full control, in ordinary cir- 
 cumstances, have found utterance under the conviction that they 
 were words to the dying. They would never have been betrayed 
 without impending death ; and they will never, till death be 
 near to one of us, find voice, or give token of existence again. 
 Delicacy and honor will prompt you to visit Lilybank no more.' 
 
 '' Lady Rachel kept her room till I left, and I have nevei 
 visited Lilybank, nor seen her since." 
 
WIGWAM VERSUS ALMACK'S. 
 
 CHxiPTER I. 
 
 In one of the years not long since passed to your account and 
 mine, by the recording angel, gentle reader, I was taking my fill 
 of a delicious American June, as Ducrow takes his bottle of 
 wine, on the back of a beloved horse. In the expressive lan- 
 guage of the raftsmen on the streams of the West, I was " follow- 
 ing" the Chemung — a river whose wild and peculiar loveliness 
 is destined to be told in undying song, whenever America can 
 find leisure to look up her poets. Such bathing of the feet of 
 precipices — such kissing of flowery slopes — such winding in and 
 out of the bosom of round meadows — such frowning amid broken 
 rocks, and smiling through smooth valleys, you would never be- 
 lieve could go on, in this out-of-doors world, unvisited and un- 
 celebrated. 
 
 Not far from the ruins of a fortification, said to have been 
 built by the Spaniards before the settlement of New Enghmd by 
 the English, the road along the Chemung dwindles into a mere 
 ledge at the foot of a precipice, the river wearing into the rock 
 at this spot by a black and deep eddy. At the height of youf 
 
LATER DAYS. 341 
 
 lip above the carriage-track, tliore gushes from the rock a stream 
 of the size and steady clearness of a glass rod ; and all around 
 it, in the small rocky lap which it has worn away, there grows a 
 bed of fragrant mint, kept, by the shade and moisture, of a per- 
 petual green, bright as emerald. Here stops every traveller, 
 who is not upon an errand of life and death ; and, while his 
 horse stands up to his fetlocks in the river, he parts the dewy 
 stems of the mint, and drinks, for once in his life, like a fay or a 
 poet. It is one of those exquisite spots which paint their own 
 picture insensibly in the memory, even while you look on them — 
 natural " Daguerreotypes," as it were ; and you are surprised, 
 years afterward, to find yourself remembering every leaf and 
 stone, and the song of every bird that sung in the pine-trees 
 overhead, while you, were watching the curve of the spring-leap. 
 As I said before, it will be sung and celebrated, when America 
 sits down weary with her first century of toil, and calls for her 
 minstrels, now toiling with her in the fields. 
 
 Within a mile of this spot, to which I had been looking forward 
 with delight for some hours, I overtook a horseman. Before 
 coming up with him, I had at once decided he was an Indian. 
 His relaxed limbs, swaying to every motion of his horse with the 
 grace and ease of a wreath of smoke, his neck and shoulders so 
 cleanly shaped, and a certain watchful look about his ears which 
 I cannot define, but which you see in a spirited horse, were infal- 
 lible marks of the race whom we have driven from the fair land 
 of our independence. He was mounted upon a small, black 
 horse — of the breed commonly called Indian ponies, now not 
 very common so near the Atlantic — and rode with a slack rein, 
 and an air, I thought, rather more dispirited than indolent. 
 
 The kind of morning I have described, is, as every one must 
 
342 INDIAN AND HIS PoNY. 
 
 remember, of a sweetness so coirimnnicative, that one would 
 think two bh'ds could scarce meet on the wing without exchang- 
 ing a carol ; and I involuntarily raised my bridle, after a min- 
 ute's study of the traveller before me, and, in a brief gallop, 
 was at his side. With the sound of my horse's feet, however, he 
 changed in all his characteristics to another man — sat erect in his 
 saddle, and assumed the earnest air of an American, who never 
 rides but upon some errand ; and, on his giving me back my 
 " good morning," in the unexceptionable accent of the country, 
 I presumed I had mistaken my man. He was dark, but, not 
 darker than a Spaniard, of features singulaily handsome and 
 regular, dressed with no peculiarity except an otter-skin cap, of a 
 silky and golden-colored fur too expensive and rare for any but a 
 fanciful as well as a luxurious purchaser. A slight wave in the 
 black hair which escaped from it and fell back from his temples, 
 confirmed me in the conviction that his blood was of European 
 origin. 
 
 We rode on together with some indifferent conversation, till we 
 arrived at the spring-leap I have described ; and here my com- 
 panion, throwing his right leg over the neck of his pony, jumped 
 to the ground very actively, and, applying his lips to the spring, 
 drank a free draught. His horse seemed to know the spot, and, 
 with the reins on his neck, trotted on to a shallower ledge in 
 the river, and stood with the water to his knees, and his quick eye 
 turned on his master with an expressive look of satisfaction. 
 
 '' You have been here before," I said, tying my less-disciplined 
 horse to the branch of an overhanging shrub. 
 
 " Yes — often !" was his reply, with a tone so quick and rude, 
 however, that, but for the softening quality of the day, I should 
 Imve abandoned there all thought of further acquaintance. 
 
LATER PAYS. 343 
 
 I took a small valise from the pommel of my saddle, and, while 
 my fellow-traveller sat on the rock-side, looking moodily into the 
 river, I drew forth a flask of wine and a leathern cup, a cold 
 pigeon wrapped in a cool cabbage leaf, the bigger end of a large 
 loaf, and as much salt as could be tied up in the cup of a large 
 water-lily — a set-out of provender which owed its dantiness to the 
 fair hands of my hostess of the night before. 
 
 The stranger's first resemblance to an Indian had probably 
 given a color to my thoughts ; for, as I handed him a cup of 
 wine, I said, " I wish the Shawanee Chief, to whose tribe this val- 
 ley belongs, were here to get a cup of my wine." 
 
 The young man sprang to his feet with a sudden flash through 
 his eyes, and, while he looked at me, he seemed to stand taller 
 fchan, from my previous impression of his height, I should have 
 thought possible. Surprised, as I was, at the efiect of my re- 
 mark, I did not withdraw the cup, and, with a moment's search- 
 ing look into my face, he changed his attitude, begged pardon 
 rather confusedly, and, draining the cup, said, with a faint smile, 
 " The Shawanee Chief thanks you !" 
 
 " Do you know the price of land in the valley .^" I asked, 
 handing him a slice of bread, with the half pigeon upon it, and 
 beginning to think it was best to stick to commonplace subjects 
 with a stranger. 
 
 " Yes !" he said, his brow clouding over again. " It was 
 bought from the Shawanee Chief you speak of, for a string of 
 beads the acre. The tribe had their burial-place on the Susque- 
 hannah, some twenty miles from this ; and they cared little about 
 a strip of a valley which, now, I would rather have for my inheri- 
 tance than the fortune of any white man in the land." 
 
 " Throw in the hmdlord's daughter at the village below," said 
 
344 LANDLORD'S DxVUGHTER. 
 
 I, " and I would take it before any half-dozen of the German 
 principalities. Have you heard the news of her inheritance r" 
 
 Another moody look, and a very crisp " Yes," put a stop td 
 all desire on my part to make further advances in my companion's 
 acquaintance. Grathering my pigeon bones together, therefore, 
 and putting them on the top of a stone, where they would be 
 seen by the first " lucky dog" that passed, flinging my emptied 
 water-lily on the river, and strapping up cup and flask once more 
 in my valise, I mounted, and, with a crusty good morning, set off 
 at a hand-gallop down the river. 
 
 My last unsuccessful topic was, at the time I write of, the sub- 
 ject of conversation all through the neighborhood of the village 
 toward which I was travelling. The most old-fashioned and com- 
 fortable inn on the Susquehannah, or Chemung, was kept at the 
 junction of these two noble rivers, by a certain Robert Plymton, 
 who had " one fair daughter, and no more." He was a plain 
 farmer of Connecticut, who had married the grand-daughter 
 of an English emigrant, and got, with his wife, a chest of old 
 papers, which, he thought, had better be used to mend a broken 
 pane, or wrap up groceries, but which his wife, on her death-bed, 
 told him ^' might turn out worth something." With this slender 
 thread of expectation, he had kept the little chest under his bed, 
 thinking of it, perhaps, once a year, and satisfying his daughter's 
 inquisitive queries with a shake of the head, and something about 
 '' her poor mother's tantrums," concluding, usually, with some 
 reminder to keep the parlor in order, or mind her housekeeping. 
 Kuth Plymton had had some sixteen " winters' schooling," and 
 was known to be much '' smarter," (Anglice, cleverer,) than was 
 quite necessary for the fulfilment of her manifold duties. Since 
 twelve year.s of age, (the period of her mother's death,) she had 
 
LATER DAYS. 
 
 345 
 
 officiated with more and more success as bar-maid and host's daugh- 
 tar to the most frequented inn of the village, till, now, at eighteen, 
 she was the only ostensible keeper of the inn, the old man usually 
 being absent in the fields with his men, or embarking his grain in 
 an " ark," to take advantage of the first freshet. She was civil 
 to all comers ; but her manner was such as to make it perfectly 
 plain, even to the rudest raftsman and hunter, that the highest 
 respect they knew how to render to a woman, was her due. She 
 was rather unpopular with the girls of the village, from what they 
 called her pride, and " keeping to herself ;" but, the truth was, 
 that the cheap editions of romances which Ruth took instead of 
 money, for the lodging of the itinerant book-pedlars, were more 
 agreeable companions to her, than the girls of the village ; and 
 the long summer forenoons, and half the long winter nights, were 
 little enough for the busy young hostess, who, seated on her bed, 
 devoured tales of high-life, which harmonized with some secret 
 longing in her breast — she knew not, and scarce thought of ask* 
 ing herself, why. 
 
 I had been twice at Athens, (by this classical name is known 
 the village I speak of,) and each time had prolonged my stay at 
 Plymton's inn for a day longer than my horse or my repose 
 strictly exacted. The scenery at the junction is magnificent, but 
 it was scarce that. And I cannot say that it was altogether ad- 
 miration of the host's daughter ; for, though I breakfasted late, 
 for the sake of having a clean parlor while I ate my broiled 
 chicken, (and, having been once to Italy, Miss Plymton liked to 
 pom- out my tea, and hear me talk of St. Peter's and the Carni- 
 val,) yet, there was that marked retenn and decision in her man- 
 ner, that made me feel quite too much like a culprit at school ; 
 and, large and black as her eyes were, and light and airy as were 
 
it.x. 
 
 346 THE HEROINE'S HOME, 
 
 all her motions, I mixed up, with my propensity for bei society, a 
 sort of dislike. In short, I never felt a tenderness for a woman 
 who could ^' queen it" so easily, and I went heart-whole on my 
 journey, though always with a high respect for Ruth Plymton, 
 and a pleasant remembrance of her conversation. 
 
 The story which I had heard farther up the river, was, briefly ^ 
 that there had arrived at Athens an Englishman, who had found, 
 in Miss Ruth Plymton, the last surviving descendant of the 
 family of her mother — that she was the heiress of a large for- 
 tune, if the proof of her descent were complete, and that the 
 contents of the little chest had been the subject of a week's hard 
 study by the stranger, who had departed, after a vain attempt to 
 persuade old Plymton to accompany him to England with his 
 daughter. This was the rumor, the allusion to which had been 
 received with such repulsive coldness by my dark companion at 
 the spring-leap. 
 
 America is so much of an asylum for despairing younger sons, 
 and the proud and starving branches of great families, that a dis- 
 covery of heirs to property, among people of very inferior con- 
 dition, is by no means uncommon. It is a species of romance in 
 real life, however, which we never believe upon hearsay, and I 
 rode on to the village, expecting my usual reception by the fair 
 damsel of the inn. The old sign still hung askew as I approach- 
 ed, and the pillars of the old wooden " stoop" or portico, were 
 as much off their perpendicular as before, and, true to my augury, 
 out-stepped my fair acquaintance at the sound of my horse's feet, 
 and called to Reuben the ostler, and gave me an unchanged wel- 
 come. The old man was down at the river's side, and the key 
 of the grated bar hung at the hostess's girdle, and with these 
 
^ LATER DAYS. 347 
 
 signs of times as they were, my belief in the marvellous tale 
 vanished into thin air. 
 
 " So you are not gone to England to take possession ?" I 
 said. 
 
 Iler serious " No !" unsoftened by any other remark, put a 
 stop to the subject again, and taking myself to task for having 
 been all day stumbling on mal-apropos subjects, I asked to be 
 shown to my room, and spent the hour or two before dinner in 
 watching the chickens from the window, and wondering a great 
 deal as to the " whereabouts" of my friend in the otter-skin 
 cap. 
 
 The evening of that day was unusually warm, and I strolled 
 down to the bank of the Susquehannah, to bathe. The moon 
 was nearly full and half way to the zenith ; and, between the lin- 
 gering sunset and the clear splendor of the moonlight, the dusk 
 of the " folding hour" was forgotten, and the night went on 
 almost as radiant as day. I swam across the river, delighting 
 myself with the gold rims of the ripples before my breast, and 
 was within a yard or two of the shore on my return, when I heard 
 a woman's voice approaching in earnest conversation. I shot 
 forward, and drew myself in beneath a large clump of alders, 
 and, with only my head out of water, lay in perfect conceal- 
 ment. 
 
 " You are not just, Shahatan !" were the first words I distin- 
 guished, in a voice I immediately recognised as that of my fair 
 hostess. " You are not just. As far as I know myself, I love 
 you better than any one I ever saw — but — " 
 
 As she hesitated, the deep, low voice of my companion at the 
 spring-leap, uttered, in a suppressed and impatient guttural, 
 " But what .?" He stood still, with his back to the moon, and 
 
348 AN INDIAN LOVER. 
 
 while the light fell full on her face, she withdrew her arm froa; 
 his, and went on. 
 
 " I was going to say, that I do not yet know myself, or the 
 world, sufficiently, to decide that I shall always love you. I 
 would not be too hasty in so important a thing, Shahatan ! We 
 have talked of it before, and, therefore, I may say to you, now, 
 that the prejudices of my father, and all my friends, are against 
 it. 
 
 " My blood," interrupted the young man, with a movement of 
 impatience. 
 
 She laid her hand on his arm. "Stay! the objection is not 
 mine. Your Spanish mother, besides, shows more in your look 
 and features than the blood of your father. But it would still be 
 said I married an Indian, and, though I care little for what the 
 village would say, yet must I be certain that I shall love you with 
 all my heart and till death, before I set my face, with yours» 
 against the prejudices of every white man and woman in my 
 native land ! You have urged me for my secret, and there it is 
 I feel relieved to have unburthened my heart of it." 
 
 " That secret is but a summer old !" said he, half turning on 
 his heel, and looking from her upon the moon's path across the 
 river. 
 
 " Shame !" she replied ; " you know that long before this news 
 came, I talked with you constantly of other lands, and of my 
 irresistible desire to see the people of great cities, and satisfy 
 myself whether I was like them. That curiosity, Shahatan, is, I 
 fear, even stronger than my love, or, at least, it. is more impatient ; 
 and, now that I have the opportunity fallen to me like a star out 
 of the sky, shall I not go ? I must Indeed I must." 
 
 The lover felt that all had been said, or was too proud to an- 
 
LATER DAYS. 
 
 349 
 
 swcr, for they fell into the path again, side by side, in silence, 
 and, at a slow step, were soon out of my sight and hearing. I 
 emerged from my compulsory hiding-place, wiser than I went in, 
 dressed, and strolled back to the village, and, finding the old 
 landlord smoking his pipe alone, under the portico, I lighted a 
 cigar, and sat down to pick his brains of the little information I 
 wanted to fill out the story. 
 
 I took my leave of Athens on the following morning, paying 
 my bill duly to Miss Plymton, from whom I requested a receipt 
 in wi'iting, for I foresaw, without any very sagacious augury be- 
 side what the old man told me, that it mio-ht be an amusino; do- 
 cument by-and-by. You shall judge, by the sequel of the story, 
 dear reader, whether you would like it in your book of auto- 
 graphs. 
 
 Not long after the adventure described in the preceding chap- 
 ter, I embarked for a ramble in Europe. Among the newspapers 
 which were lying about in the cabin of the packet, was one which 
 contained this paragraph, extracted from a New Orleans Gazette. 
 The American reader will at once remember it : — 
 
 " Extraordinary attacJiment to sava.ge life. — The officers at 
 Fort (one of the most distant outposts of human habita- 
 tion in the West,) extended their hospitality lately to one of the 
 young proteges of government, a young Sbawanee Chief, wlio has 
 been educated at public expense for the purpose of aiding in the 
 civilization of his tribe. This youth, the son of a Sbawanee 
 chief by a Spanish mother, was put to a preparatory school, in a 
 small village on the Susquehannah, and, subsequently, was gra- 
 duated at College, with the first honors of his class. He 
 
 had become a most accomplished gentleman, was apparently fond 
 
350 ALMACK'S. 
 
 of society, aud, except in a scarce clistingiiishable tinge of copper 
 color in his skin, retained no trace of his savage origin. Singu- 
 lar to relate, however, he disappeared suddenly from the Fort, 
 leaving behind him the clothes in which he had arrived, and 
 several articles of a gentleman's toilet ; and, as the sentry on duty 
 was passed at dawn of the same day by a mounted Indian, in the 
 usual savage dress, who gave the pass-word in issuing from the 
 gate, it is presumed it was no other than the young Shahatan, 
 and that he has joined his tribe, who, were removed, some years 
 since, beyond the Mississippi." 
 
 The reader will agree with me, that I possessed the key to the 
 mystery. 
 
 As no one thinks of the thread that disappears in an intricate 
 embroidery, till it comes out again on the surface, I was too busy 
 in weaving my own less interesting woof of adventure for the two 
 years following, to give Shahatan and his love even a passing 
 thought. On a summer's night, in 18 — , however, I found my- 
 self on a banquette at an Almack's ball, seated beside a friend, 
 who, since we had met last at Almack's, had given up the white 
 rose of girlhood for the diamonds of the dame, timidity and 
 blushes for self-possession and serene sweetness, dancing for con- 
 versation, and the promise of beautiful and admired seventeen 
 for the perfection of more lovely and adorable twenty-two. 
 She was there as chaperon to a younger sister, and it was delight- 
 ful, in that whirl of giddy motion and more giddy thought, to sit 
 beside a tranquil and unfevered mind, and talk with her of what 
 was passing, without either bewilderment or effort. 
 
 " What is it," she said, " that constitutes aristocratic beauty > 
 — for it is often remarked that it is seen no where in such per- 
 fection as at Almack's ; yet, I have, for a half-hour looked ir: 
 
LATER DAYS. 351 
 
 vain among these handsome faces for a regular profile, or even a 
 perfect figure. It is not symmetry, surely, that gives a look of 
 high breeding — nor regularity of feature." 
 
 " If you will take a leaf out of a traveller's book," I replied, 
 " we may, at least, have the advantage of a comparison. I re- 
 member recording, when travelling in the East, that for months 
 I had not seen an irregular nose or forehead in a female face ; 
 and, almost universally, the mouth and chin of the Orientals, are, 
 as well as the upper features, of the most classic correctness. 
 Yet where, in civilized countries, do women look lower-born, or 
 more degraded .?" 
 
 " Then it is not in tlie featu ^s," said my friend. 
 
 " No, nor in the fi-ure, stiictly, " I went on to say, "for the 
 French and Italian women {vide the same book of mems.) are 
 generally remarkable for shape and fine contour of limb, and the 
 French are, we all know, (begging your pardon,) much better 
 dancers, and more graceful in their movements, than all other 
 nations. Yet what is more rare than a ^ thorough-bred' looking 
 Frenchwoman .^" 
 
 " We are coming to a conclusion very fast," she said, smiling. 
 " Perhaps we shall find the great secret in delicacy of skin after 
 all." 
 
 " Not unless you will agree that Broadway, in New York, is 
 the ' prato fiorito'' of aristocratic beauty — for, no where, on the 
 face of the earth, do you see such complexions. Yet, my fair 
 countrywomen stoop too much, and, are rather too dressy in their 
 tastes, to convey, very generally, the impression of high birth." 
 
 " Stay !" interrupted my companion, laying her hand on my 
 arm, with a look of more meaning than I quite understood ; 
 ' before you commit yourself farther on that point, look at thia 
 
^55 MISS TREVANIO-v-. 
 
 tall girl coming up the floor, and tell me what yon think of her, 
 apropos to the subject." 
 
 " Why, that she is the very forth-shadowing of noble parent- 
 age," I replied, " in step, air, form, — everything. But surely 
 the face is familiar to me." 
 
 " It is the Miss Trevanion whom you said you had never met. 
 Yet, she is an American, and, with such a fortune as hers, I won- 
 der you should not have heard of her at least.'' 
 
 " Miss Trevanion ! I never knew anybody of the name, I am 
 perfectly sure — ^yet that face I have seen before, and I would stake 
 my life I have known the lady, and not casually either. 
 
 My eyes were rivetted to the beautiful woman who now sailed 
 past with a grace and stateliness that were the subject of universal 
 admiration, and I eagerty attempted to catch her eye ; but on the 
 other side of her walked one of the most agreeable flatterers of 
 the hour, and the crowd prevented my approaching her, even if 
 I had solved the mystery so far as to know in what terms to ad- 
 dress her. Yet, it was marvellous that I could ever have seen 
 such beauty, and forgotten the when and where ; or, that such 
 fine and unusually lustrous eyes could ever have shone on me, 
 without inscribing well on my memory their " whereabout" and 
 history. 
 
 " Well !" said my friend," are you making out your theory, 
 or, are you ^ struck home' with the first impression, like many 
 another dancer here to-night .^" 
 
 " Pardon me ! I shall find out, presently, who Miss Trevanion 
 is — but, meantime, revenons. I will tell you where I think lies 
 the secret of the aristocratic beauty of England. It is in the 
 lofty maintun of the head and bust — the proud carriage, if 3'ou 
 remark, in all these women — the head set back, the chest elevatf •« 
 
LATER DAYS. 353 
 
 and expanded, and the v.hole port and expression that of pride 
 and conscious superiority. This, mind you, though the result of 
 qualities in the character, is not the work of a day, nor, perhaps, 
 of a single generation. The effect of expanding the breast, and 
 preserving the back straight, and the posture generally erect, is 
 the high health and consequent beauty of those portions of the 
 frame ; and, the physical advantage, handed down with the pride 
 which produced it from mother to child, the race gradually has 
 become perfect in those points, and the look of pride and high- 
 bearing is now easy, natural, and unconscious. Glance your eye 
 around, and you will see that there is not a defective bust, and 
 hardly a head ill set on, in the room. In an assembly in any 
 other part of the world, to find a perfect bust, with a gracefully 
 carried head, is as difficult as here to find the exception." 
 
 " What a proud race you make us out, to be sure," said my 
 companion rather dissentingly. 
 
 "And so you are, eminently and emphatically proud," I re- 
 plied. " What English family does not revolt from any proposi- 
 tion of marriage with a foreigner } For an English girl to marry 
 a Frenchman or an Italian, a Grerman or a Russian, Greek, 
 Turk, or Spaniard, is to forfeit a certain degree of respectability, 
 let the match be as brilliant as it may. The first feeling on 
 hearing of it, is against the girl's sense of delicacy. It extends 
 to everything else. Your soldiers, your sailors, your tradesmen, 
 your gentlemen, j'our common people, and your nobles, are all 
 (who ever doubted it you are mentally asking,) out of all com- 
 parison, better than the same ranks and professions in any other 
 country. John Bull is literally surprised if any one doubts this 
 — nay, he does not believe that any one does doubt it. Yet 
 you call the Americans ridiculously vain, because they believe 
 
354 ENGLISH PRIDZ, AMERICAN VANITY. 
 
 their institutions better than yours, that their ships fight as well, 
 their women are as fair, and their men as gentlemanly,, as any in 
 the world. The ' vanity' of the French, who believe in them- 
 selves, just as the English do, only in a less blind eniireness of 
 self-glorification, is a common theme of ridicule in English news- 
 papers ; and the French and the Americans, for a twentieth part 
 of English intolerance and self-exaggeration, are written down 
 daily, by the English, as the two vainest nations on earth." 
 
 ^' Stop !" said my fair listener, who was beginning ;;o smile at 
 my digression from female beauty to national pride, " let me 
 make a distinction there. As the English and French are quite 
 indifierent to the opinion of other nations on these points, and 
 not at all shaken in their self-admiration by foreign incredulity, 
 theirs may fairly be dignified by the name of pride. But what 
 shall I say of the Americans, who are in a perpetual fever at the 
 ridicule of English newspapers, and who receive, I understand, 
 with a general convulsion throughout the States, the least slur in 
 a review, or the smallest expression of disparagement in a tory 
 newspaper. This is not pride, but vanity. 
 
 "I am hit, I grant you. A home thrust that I wish I could 
 foil. But here comes Miss Trevanion, again, and I must make 
 her out, or smother of curiosity. I leave you a victor." 
 
 The drawing of the cord which encloses the dancers, narrowed 
 the path of the promenaders so effectually, that I could easily 
 take my stand in such a position that Miss Trevanion could not 
 pass without seeing me. With my back to one of the slight 
 pillars of the orchestra, I stood facing her as she came down the 
 room ; and, within a foot or two of my position, yet, with several 
 persons between us, her eye, for the first time, rested on me. 
 There was a sudden flush, a look of embarrassed, but momentary 
 
LATER DAYS. 35^ 
 
 curiositj, and tlie beautiful features cleared up, and I saw, with 
 vexatious mortification, that she had the advantage of me, and 
 was even pleased to remember where we had met. She held out 
 her hand the next moment, but evidently understood my reserve, 
 for, with a mischievous compression of the lips, she leaned over, 
 and said, in a voice intended only for my ear, " Reuben ! take 
 the gentleman's horse !" 
 
 My sensations were very much those of the Irishman who fell 
 into a pit in a dark night, and, catching a straggling root in his 
 descent, hung suspended by incredible exertion and strength of 
 arm till morning, when daylight disclosed the bottom, at just one 
 inch below the points of his toes. So easy seemed the solution — 
 after it was discovered. 
 
 Miss Trevanion (ci-devant Plymton) took my arm. Her com- 
 panion was engaged to dance. Our meeting at Almack's was 
 certainly one of the last events either could have expected when 
 we parted — but Almack's is not the place to express strong emo- 
 tions. We walked leisurely down the sides of the quadrilles to 
 the tea-room, and, between her bows and greetings to her acquain- 
 tances, she put me au courant of her movements for the last two 
 years — Miss Trevanion being the name she had inherited with the 
 fortune from her mother's family, and her mother's high but 
 distant connection having recognized and taken her by the hand in 
 England. She had come abroad with the representative of her 
 country, who had been at the trouble to see her installed in her 
 rights, and had but lately left her, on his return to America. A 
 house in j\Iay Fair, and a chaperon in the shape of a card-play- 
 ing and aristocratic aunt, were the other principal points in her 
 parenthetical narration. Her communicativeness, of course, 
 
356 FIRST STEP IN FASHION. 
 
 was very gracious, and, indeed, her whole manner was softened 
 and mellowed down, from the sharpness and hauteur of Miss 
 Pljmton. Prosperity had improved even her voice. 
 
 As she bent over her tea, in the ante-room, I could not but 
 remark how beautiful she was, by the change usually wrought by 
 the soft moisture of the English air, on persons from dry climates 
 — Americans particularly. That filling out and rounding of the 
 features, and renewing and freshening of the skin, becoming and 
 improving to all, had, to her, been like Juno's bath. Then who 
 does not know the miracles of dress ! A circlet of diamonds, 
 whose " water" was light itself, followed the fine bend on either 
 side backward from her brows, supporting, at the parting of her 
 hair, one large emerald. And, on what neck (ay — even of age) 
 is not a diamond necklace beautiful ? Miss Trevanion was su* 
 perb. 
 
 The house in Grosvenor-place, at which I knocked the next 
 morning, I well remembered as one of the most elegant and 
 sumptuous in London. Lady L had ruined herself in com- 
 pleting and furnishing it, and her parties " in my time" were 
 called, by the most apathetic blase, truly delightful. 
 
 " I bought this house of Lady L ," said Miss Trevanion, 
 
 as we sat down to breakfast, " with all its furniture, pictures, 
 books, incumbrances and trifles, even to the horses in the stables, 
 and the coachman in his wig ; for I had too many things to learn, 
 to study furniture and appointments, and, in this very short life, 
 time is sadly wasted in beginnings. People are for ever getting 
 ready to live. What think you .? Is not this true in every- 
 thing .?" 
 
 " Not in love, certainly." 
 
LATER DAYS. 357 
 
 Ah ! very true !" And she became suddenly thoughtful, and, 
 for some minutes, sipped her coffee in silence. I did not inter- 
 rupt it, for I was thinking of Shahatan, and our thoughts, very 
 possibly, were on the same long journey. 
 
 " You are quite right," said I, looking round at the exquisitely- 
 furnished room in which we were breakfasting, " you have bought 
 these things at their intrinsic value, and you have all Lady 
 
 L 's taste, trouble, and vexation for twenty years, thrown 
 
 into the bargain. It is a matter of a lifetime to complete a 
 
 house like this, and, just as it is all done, Lady L retires, 
 
 an old woman, and you come all the way from a country inn on 
 the Susquehannah to enjoy it. What a whimsical world we live 
 in!" 
 
 " Yes," she said, in a sort of soliloquizing tone, " I do enjoy 
 it. It is a delightful sensation to take a long stride at once in the 
 art of life — to have lived for years believing that the wants you 
 felt could only be supplied in fairy-land ; and suddenly to change 
 your sphere, and discover that not only these wants, but a thou- 
 sand others, more unreasonable, and more imaginary, had been 
 the subject of human ingenuity and talent, till those who live in 
 luxury have no loants — that science, and chemistry, and mechanics 
 have left no nerve in the human system, no recess in human 
 sense, unquestioned of its desire; and that every desire is sup- 
 plied ! What mistaken ideas most people have of luxury ! They 
 fancy the senses of the rich are over-pampered, that their zest of 
 pleasure is always dull with too much gratification, that theii 
 health is ruined with excess, and their tempers spoiled with ease 
 and subserviency. It is a picture drawn by the poets in times 
 when money could buy nothing but excess, and when those who 
 were prodigal, could only be gaudy and intemperate. It was no- 
 
358 PHILOSOPHY OF LUXURY. 
 
 cessary to practise upon the reyerse, too ; and, hence all the 
 world is convinced of the superior happiness of the ploughman, 
 the absolute necessity of early rising and coarse food to health, 
 and the pride that must come with the flaunting of silk and 
 satin." 
 
 I could not but smile at this cool upset of all the received phi 
 losophy of the poets. 
 
 " You laugh," she continued, " but is it not true, that, in Eng- 
 land, at this moment, luxury is the science of keeping up the 
 zest of the senses rather than of pampering them — that the chil- 
 dren of the wealthy are the healthiest and fairest, and the sons of 
 the aristocracy are the most athletic and rational, as well as the 
 most carefully nurtured and expensive of all classes — that the 
 most costly dinners are the most digestible, the most expensive 
 wines the least injurious, the most sumptuous houses the best 
 ventilated and wholesome, and the most aristocratic habits of life 
 the most conducive to the preservation of the constitution and 
 consequent long life. There will be excesses, of course, in all 
 spheres, but is not this true .?" 
 
 " I am wondering how so gay a life as yours could furnish such 
 very grave reflections." 
 
 " Pshaw ! I am the very person to make them. My aunt 
 (who, by-the-way, never rises till four in the afternoon) has 
 always lived in this sublimated sphere, and takes all these luxu- 
 ries to be matters of course, as much as I take them to be 
 miracles. She thinks a good cook as natural a circumstance as a 
 fine tree, and would be as much surprised and shocked at the 
 absence of wax candles, as she would at the going out of the 
 stars. She talks as if good dentists, good milliners, opera-singers, 
 perfumers, &c., were the common supply of nature, like dew and 
 
LATER DAYS. 359 
 
 sunshine to the flowers. My surprise and delight amuse her, a3 
 the child's wonder at the moon amuses the nurse." 
 
 " Yet you call thi,s dull unconsciousness the perfection of 
 civilized life." 
 
 " I think my aunt, altogether, is not a bad specimen of it, cer- 
 tainly. You have seen her, I think." 
 
 " Frequently." 
 
 " Well, you will allow that she is still a very handsome woman. 
 She is past fifty, and has every faculty in perfect preservation — 
 an erect figure, undiminished delicacy and quickness in all her 
 senses and tastes — and is still an ornament to society, and an at- 
 tractive person in appearance and conversation. Contrast her 
 (and she is but one of a class) with the women past fifty in the 
 middle and lower walks of life in America. At that age, with 
 us, they are old women in the commonest acceptation of the 
 term. Their teeth are gone, or defective from neglect, their 
 faces are wrinkled, their backs bent, their feet enlarged, their 
 voices cracked, their senses impaired, their relish in the joys of 
 the young entirely gone by. "What makes the difierence } Costly 
 care. The physician has watched over her health at a guinea a 
 visit. The dentist has examined her teeth at twenty guineas a 
 year. Expensive annual visits to the sea-side have renewed her 
 skin. The friction of the weary hands of her maid has kept 
 down the swelling of her feet and preserved their delicacy of 
 shape. Close and open carriages, at will, have given her daily 
 exercise, either protected from the damp, or refreshed with the 
 fine air of the country. A good cook has kept her digestion un- 
 taxed, and good wines have invigorated without poisoning her con- 
 stitution." 
 
 " This is taking very unusual care of oneself, howevei." 
 
360 SELFISHNESS OF WEALTH. 
 
 " Not at all. ]VIy aunt gives it no more tliouglit than the 
 drawing on of her glove. It is another advantage of wealth, too, 
 that your physician and dentist are distinguished persons who 
 meet you in society, and call on you unprofessionally, see when 
 they are needed, and detect the approach of disease before you 
 are aware of it yourself. My aunt, though naturally delicate, 
 has never been ill. She was watched in childhood with great 
 cost and pains, and, with the habit of common caution herself, 
 she is taken such, care of, by her physician and servants, that 
 nothing but some extraordinary fatality could bring disease near 
 her." 
 
 " Blessed are the rich, by your showing." 
 
 '' Why, the beatitudes were not written in our times. If long 
 life, prolonged youth and beauty, and almost perennial health, 
 are blessings, certainly, now-a-days, blessed are the rich." 
 
 " But is there no drawback to all this ? Where people have 
 surrounded themselves with such costly and indispensable luxuries, 
 are they not made selfish by the necessity of preserving them ? 
 Would any exigeance of hospitality for instance, induce your aunt 
 to give up her bed, and the comforts of her own room, to a 
 stranger P'^ 
 
 " Oh dear, no !" 
 
 " Would she eat her dinner cold for the sake of listening to an 
 appeal to her charity .^" 
 
 " How can you fancy such a thing .^" 
 
 " Would she take a wet and dirty, but perishing beggar-woman, 
 into her chariot, on her way to a dinner-party, to save her from 
 dying by the roadside .^" 
 
 " Um — why, I fear she would be very near-sighted till she got 
 fairly by." 
 
LATER DATS. 3q1 
 
 " Yet these are charities that require no great eflfort in those 
 whose chambers are less costly, whose stomachs are less carefully 
 watched, and whose carriages and dresses are of a plainer fash- 
 ion." 
 
 " Yery true ! 
 
 " So far, then, ' blessed are the poor!' But is not the heart 
 slower in all its sympathies, among the rich ? Are not friends 
 chosen and discarded, because their friendship is convenient or 
 the contrary ? Are not many worthy people ' ineligible' acquain- 
 tances, many near relations unwelcome visitors, because they are 
 out of keeping with these costly circumstances, or involve some 
 sacrifice of personal luxury ? Are not people, who would pre- 
 serve their circle choice and aristocratic, obliged to inflict cruel 
 insults on sensitive minds, to slight, to repulse, to neglect, to equi- 
 vocate, and play the unfeeling and ungrateful, at the same time 
 that to their superiors they must often sacrifice dignity, and con- 
 trive and flatter, and deceive — all to preserve the magic charm of 
 the life you have painted so attractive and enviable ?" 
 
 " Heigho ! it's a bad world, I believe !" said Miss Trevanion, 
 betraying, by that ready sigh, that, even while drawing the attrac- 
 tions of high life, she had not been blind to this more unfavorable 
 side of the picture. 
 
 " And, rather more important query still, for an heiress," I 
 said, " does not an intimate acquaintance with these luxurious 
 necessities, and the habit of thinking them indispensable, make 
 all lovers in this class mercenary, and their admiration, where 
 there is wealth, subject, at least, to scrutiny and suspicion ?" 
 
 A quick flush almost crimsoned Miss Trevanion's face, and 
 she fixed her eyes upon me so inquisitively, as to leave me in no 
 doubt that I had, inadvertently, touched upon a delicate subject. 
 16 
 
362 HEROINE IN THE SADDLE. 
 
 Embarrassed by a searching look, and not seeing how I could ex- 
 plain that I meant no allusion, I said hastily, " I was thinking of 
 swimming across the Susquehannah by moonlight." 
 
 "Puck is at the door, if you please, miss!" said the butler, 
 entering at the moment. 
 
 " Perhaps, while I am putting on my riding hat," said Miss 
 Trevanion, with a laugh, " I may discover the connection be- 
 tween your two last observations. It certainly is not very clear 
 at present." 
 
 I took up my hat. 
 
 ** Stay — ^you must ride with me. You shall have the groom's 
 horse and we shall go without him. I hate to be chased through 
 the park by a flying servant — one English fashion, at least, that 
 I think uncomfortable. They manage it better where I learned 
 to ride, " she added with a laugh. 
 
 '* Yes, indeed ! I do not know which they would first starve 
 to death in the backwoods — the master for his insolence in re- 
 quiring the servant to follow him, or the servant for being such 
 a slare as to obey." 
 
 I never remember to have seen a more beautiful animal than 
 the high-bred bloodmare on which my ci-devant hostess of the 
 Plymton inn rode through the park gates, and took the serpen- 
 tine path at a free gallop. I was as well mounted myself as ever 
 I had been in my life, and delighted, for once, not to fret a hun- 
 dred yards behind ; the ambitious animal seemed to have wings 
 to his feet. 
 
 " Who ever rode such a horse as this," said my companion, 
 " without confessing the happiness of riches ! It is the one 
 luxury of this new life that I should find it misery to forego. 
 Look at the eagerness of his ears ! See his fine limbs as he 
 
.LATER DAYS. Q^^ 
 
 strikes forward ! What nostrils ! What glossy shoulders ! "What 
 bounding lightness of action ! Beautiful Puck ! I could never 
 live without you ! What a shame to nature that there are no 
 such horses in the wilderness !" 
 
 ^' I remember seeing an Indian pony," said I, watching her 
 face for the eiFect of my observation, " which had as many fine 
 qualities, though of a different kind — at least when his master 
 was on him." 
 
 She looked at me inquiringly. 
 
 " By-the-way, too, it was at your house on the Susquehannah," 
 I added, "you must remember the horse — a black, double- 
 jointed 
 
 " Yes, yes, I know. I remember. Shall we quickeL our 
 pace ? I hear some one overtaking us, and, to be passed with 
 such horses as ours were a shame indeed." 
 
 We loosed our bridles and flew away like the wind ; but a 
 bright tear was presently tossed from her dark eyelash, and fell 
 glittering on the dappled shoulder of her horse. " Her heart is 
 Shahatan's," thought I, " whatever chance there may be that 
 the gay Honorable who is at our heels may dazzle her into throw- 
 ing away her hand. 
 
 Mounted on a magnificent hunter, whose powerful and straight- 
 forward leaps, soon told against the lavish and high action of our 
 
 more showy horses, the Hon. Charles (the gentleman who 
 
 had engrossed the attention of Miss Trevanion the night before 
 at Almack's) was soon beside my companion, and, leaning from 
 his saddle, was taking pains to address conversation to her in a 
 tone not meant for my ear. As the lady picked out her path 
 with a marked preference for his side of the road, I, of course, 
 rode with a free rein on the other, rather discontented, however, 
 
364 HIGH-LIFE COURTING 
 
 I must own, to be playing Monsieur de Trop. The Hon. Charles, 
 I very well knew, was enjoying a temporary relief from the most 
 pressing of his acquaintances, by the prospect 'of his marrying an 
 heiress,' and, in a two years' gay life in London I had traversed 
 his threads too often to believe that he had a heart to be redeemed 
 from dissipation, or a soul to appreciate the virtues of a high- 
 minded woman. I found myself, besides, without wishing it, at- 
 torney for Shahatan in the case. 
 
 Observing that I " sulked," Miss Trevanion,, in the next round, 
 turned her horse's head toward the Serpentine Bridge, and we 
 entered into Kensington Gardens. The band was playing on the 
 other side of the ha-ha, and fashionable London was divided be- 
 tween the equestrians on the road, and the promenaders on the 
 greensward. We drew up in the thickest of the crowd, and, pre- 
 suming that, by Miss Trevanion's tactics, I was to find some 
 other acquaintance to chat with, while our horses drew breath, I 
 spurred to a little distance, and sat mum in my saddle, with forty 
 or fifty horsemen between me and herself. Her other companion 
 had put his horse as close by the side of Puck as possible ; but 
 there were other dancers at Almack's who had an eye upon the 
 heiress, and their tcte-a-tcte was interrupted presently by the 
 how-d ye-do's and attention of half a dozen of the gayest men 
 about town. After looking black at them for a moment, Charles 
 drew bridle, and, backing out of the press rather uncere- 
 moniously, rode to the side of a lady who sat in her saddle with a 
 mounted servant behind her, separated from me by only the trunk 
 of a superb lime-tree. I was fated to see all the workings of 
 Miss Trevanion's destiny. 
 
 " You see what I endure for you," he said, as a flush came and 
 went upon his pale face. 
 
LATER DAYS. 355 
 
 " You arc false !" was the answer. " 1 saw you ride in — your 
 eyes fastened to liers — your lips open with watching for her 
 words — your horse in a foam, with your agitated and nervous rid- 
 ing. Never call her a giraffe, or laugh at her again, Charles ! 
 She is handsome enough to be loved for herself, and you love 
 her." 
 
 ^' No, by heaven !" 
 
 The lady made a gesture of impatience, and whipped her stirrup, 
 through the folds of her riding-dress, till it was heard even above 
 the tinkling triangle of the band. 
 
 " No," he continued, " and you are less clever than you think, 
 if you interpret my excitement into love. I am excited, most 
 eager in my chase after this woman. Yoio 9>hall knoio why. But 
 for herself — good heaven ! — v/isy, you have never heard her 
 speak ! She is never done wondering at silver forks, never done 
 with ecstatics about finaer-glasses and pastilles. She is a boor — 
 and you are silly enough to put her beside yourself !" 
 
 The lady's frown softened, and she gave him her whip to hold, 
 while she re-imprisoned a stray ringlet. 
 
 " Keep an eye on her, while I am talking to you," he con- 
 tinued, " for I must stick to her, like her shadow. She is full of 
 mistrust, and, if I lose her by the want of attention for a single 
 hour, that hour will cost me yourself, dearest, first and most 
 important of all, and it will cost me England or my liberty — 
 for failing this, I have not a chance." 
 
 " Go, go," said the lady, in a new and now anxious tone, 
 touching his horse at the same time with the whip he had just re- 
 stored to her, "she is off! Adieu !" 
 
 And, with half a dozen attendants, Miss Trevanion took the 
 road at a gallop, while her contented rival followed at a pensive 
 
366 ^ WARNING. 
 
 amble, apparently quite content to waste the time as slie best 
 might till dinner. The handsome fortune-hunter watched his op- 
 portunity and regained his place at Miss Trevanion's side, and, 
 with an acquaintance, who was one of her self-elected troop, I 
 kept in the rear, chatting of the opera, and enjoying the move- 
 ment of a horse, of as free and admirable action as I had ever 
 felt communicated like inspiration through my blood. 
 
 I was resumed as sole cavalier and attendant at Hyde Park 
 gate. 
 
 " Do you know the Baroness .^" I asked, as we walked 
 
 our horses slowly down G-rosvenor Place. 
 
 " Not personally," she replied ; " but I have heard my aunt 
 speak of her, and I know she is a woman of most seductive man- 
 ners, though said to be one of very bad morals. But from what 
 
 Mr. Charles tells me, I fancy high play is her only vice. 
 
 And, meantime, she is received every where. 
 
 " I fancy," said ], '' that the Hon. Charles is good author- 
 ity for the nuuib.M- oT her vices, and, begging you, as a parting 
 request, to make this remark the key to your next month's ob- 
 servation, I have the honor to return this fine horse to you, and 
 make my adieux." 
 
 " But you will come to dinner ! And, by-lhe-by, you have 
 not explained to me what you meant by ' swimming across the 
 Susquehannah,' in the middle of your breakfast, this morning." 
 
 While Miss Trevanion gathered up her dress to mount the 
 steps, I told her the story which I have already told the reader, 
 of my involuntary discovery, while lying in that moonlit river, 
 of Shahatan's unfortunate passion Violently agitated by the few 
 words in which I conveyed it, she insisted on my entering the 
 house and waiting while she recovered herself sufficiently to talk 
 
LATER DAYS. 
 
 .m 
 
 Co me on the subject. But I had no fancy for match making or 
 breaking. I reiterated my caution touching the intimacy of her 
 fashionable admirer with the baroness, and said a word of praise 
 of the noble savaoje who loved her. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 In the autumn of the year after the events outlined in the pre- 
 vious chapter, I received a visit, at my residence on the Susque- 
 hannah, from a friend I had never before seen a mile from St. 
 James's street — a May-fair man of fashion, who took me on his 
 way back from Santa Fe. He staid a few days to brush the cob- 
 webs from a jBshing-rod and gun which he found in inglorious 
 retirement in the lumber-room of my cottage, and, over our din- 
 ners, embellished with his trout and woodcock, the relations of 
 his adventures (compared, as everything was, with London expe- 
 rience exclusively,) were as delightful to me as the tales of Sche- 
 herezade to the calif. 
 
 " I have saved to the last,'^ he said, pushing me the bottle, 
 the evening before his departure, " a bit of romance which I 
 stumbled over in the prairie, and, I dare say, it will surprise you 
 as much as it did me, for I think you well remember having seen 
 the heroine at Al mack's." 
 
 "At Almack's.^" 
 
 " You may well stare. I have been afraid to tell you the stoiy, 
 lest you might think I drew too long a bow. I certainly should 
 never have been believed in London." 
 
 a Well— the story .?" 
 
 " I told you of my leaving St. Louis with a trading party for 
 Sante Fe. Our leader was a rough chap, big-boned, and ill put 
 
368 A PRAIRIE TALE. 
 
 together, but honestly fond of fight, and never content with a 
 stranger till he had settled the question of which was the better 
 man. He refused, at first, to take nie into his party, assuring 
 me that his exclusive services and those of his company had been 
 engaged at a high price, by another gentleman. By dint of 
 drinking ^ juleps,' with him, however, and giving him a thorough 
 * mill' (for, though strong as a rhinoceros, he knew nothing of ' the 
 science') he at last elected me to the honor of his friendship, 
 and took me into the party as one of his own men. 
 
 " I bought a strong horse, and, on a bright May morning, the 
 party set forward, bag and baggage, the leader having stolen a 
 march upon us, however, and gone a-head with the person who 
 hired his guidance. It was fine fun at first, as I have told you, 
 to gallop away over the prairie, without fence or ditch, but I soon 
 tired of the slow pace and the monotony of the scenery, and 
 began to wonder why the deuce our leader kept himself so care- 
 fully out of sight — for, in three days' travel, I had seen him but 
 once, and then at our bivouac fire on the second evening. The 
 men knew or would tell nothing, except that he had one man and 
 a packhorse with him, and that the 'gentleman' and he encamp- 
 ed farther on. I was under promise to perform only the part of 
 one of the hired carriers of the party, or I should soon have 
 made a push to penetrate the ' gentleman's' mystery. 
 
 " I think it was on the tenth day of our travel, that the 
 men began to talk of falling in with a tribe of Indians, whose 
 hunting grounds we were close upon, and at whose village, upon 
 the bank of a river, they usually got fish and buffalo-hump, and 
 other luxuries not picked up on the wing. We encamped about 
 sunset that night, as usual, and after picketing my horse, I 
 strolled off" to a round mounj not far from the fire, and sat dowD 
 
LATER DAYS. 359 
 
 upon the top to see the moon rise. The cast was brightening; 
 and the evening was delicious. 
 
 " Up came the moon, looking like one of the Duke of Devon- 
 shire's gold plates, (excuse the poetry of the comparison,) and 
 still the rosy color hung on in the west, and, turning my eyes 
 from one to the other, I at last perceived, over the southwestern 
 horizon, a mist slowly coming up, which indicated the course of a 
 river. It was just in our track, and the whim struck me to saddle 
 my horse and ride on in search of the Indian village, which, by 
 their description, must be on its banks. 
 
 " The men were singing songs over their supper, and, with a 
 flask of brandy in my pocket, I got off unobserved, and was soon 
 in a flourishing gallop over the wild prairie, without guide or 
 compass. It was a silly freak, and might have ended in an unplea- 
 t^ant adventure. Pass the bottle and have no apprehensions, 
 however. 
 
 " For an hour or so, I was very much elated with my independ- 
 ence, and my horse, too, seemed delighted to get oat of the slow 
 pace of the caravan. It was as light as day, with the wonderful 
 clearness of the atmosphere, and the full moon and the coolness 
 of the evening air made exercise very exhilarating. I rode on, 
 looking up occasionally to the mist, which retreated, long after I 
 thought I should have reached the river, till I began to feel un- 
 easy at last, and wondered whether I had not embarked in a very 
 mad adventure. As I had lost sight of our own fii-es, and might 
 miss my way in trying to retrace my steps, I determined to push 
 on. 
 
 " My horse was in a walk, and I was beginning to feel very 
 grave, when, suddenly, the beast pricked up his ears and gave a 
 loud neigh. I rose in my stirrups, and looked round in vain for 
 16* 
 
370 A DISCOVERY. 
 
 the secret of bis improved spirits, till, witli a second glance for. 
 ward, I discovered what seemed the faint light reflected upon the 
 smoke of a concealed fire. The horse took his own counsel, and 
 set up a sharp gallop for the spot, and, a few minutes brought me 
 in sight of a fire half concealed by a clump of shrubs, and a white 
 object near it, which, to my surprise, developed to a tent. Two 
 horses picketed near, and a man sitting by the fire with his hands 
 crossed before his shins, and his chin on his knees, completed the 
 very agreeable picture. 
 
 " Who goes there ?" shouted this chap, springing to his rifle, as 
 he heard my horse's feet sliding through the grass. 
 
 " I gave the name of the leader, comprehending at once that 
 this was the advanced guard of our party ; but, though the fellow 
 lowered his rifle, he gave me a very scant welcome, and motioned 
 me away from the tent-side of the fire. There was no turning a 
 man out of doors in the midst of a prairie ; so, without ceremony, 
 I tethered my horse to his stake, and getting out my dried beef 
 and brandy, made a second supper with quite as good an appetite 
 as had done honor to the first. 
 
 " My brandy-flask opened the lips of my sulky friend after a 
 while, though he kept his carcass very obstinately between me 
 and the tent, and I learned that the leader, (his name was Rolfe, 
 by-the-by,) had gone on to the Indian village, and, that the ^gen- 
 tleman' had dropped the curtain of his tent at my approach, and 
 was, probably, asleep. My word of honor to Rolfe, that I would 
 ' cut no capers,' (his own phrase in administering the obligation,) 
 kept down my excited curiosity, and prevented me, of course, 
 from even pumping the man beside me, though I might have dono 
 BO with a little more of the contents of my flask. 
 
 " The moon was pretty well ovor boad Vi'lion Rolfe returned, 
 
LATER DAYS. 37 j 
 
 and found me fast asleep by the fire. I awoke with the tramp- 
 ling and neighing of horses, and, springing to my feet, I saw an 
 Indian dismounting, and Rolfe and the fire-tender conversing 
 together while picketing their horses. The Indian had a tall 
 feather in his cap, and trinkets on his breast, which glittered in 
 the moonlight ; but he was dressed otherwise like a white man, 
 with a hunting-frock and very loose largo trowsers. By thy 
 way, he had moccasins, too, and a wampum belt ; but he was a 
 clean-limbed, lithe, agile-looking devil, with an eye like a coal of 
 fire. 
 
 " ' You've broke your contract, mister !" said Rolfe, coming 
 up to me ; ' but stand by and say nothing.' 
 
 '''■ He then went to the tent, gave an ' ehem !' by way of a 
 knock, and entered. 
 
 " It's a fine night," said the Indian, coming up to the fire and 
 touching a brand with the toe of his moccasin. 
 
 " I was so surprised at the honest English in which he delivered 
 himself, that 1 stared at him without answer. 
 
 " ' Do you speak English .^' he said. 
 
 " ' Tolerably well,' said I, ^ but I beg your pardon for being 
 so surprised at your own accent that I forgot to reply to you. 
 And, now I look at you more closely, I see that you are rather 
 Spanish than Indian.' 
 
 " ' My mother's blood," he answered rather coldly, ' but my 
 father was an Indian, and I am a chief.' 
 
 " ' Vrell, llolfe,' he continued, turning the next instant to the 
 trader, who caine towards us, ' who is this that would see Shaha- 
 tan P 
 
 " The trader pointed to the tent. The curtain was put aside, 
 and a smart-looking youth, in a blue cap and cloak, stepped out 
 
372 AN INDIAN HINT. 
 
 and took his way off into the prairie, motioning to the chief to 
 follow. 
 
 " ' Go along ! he won't eat you !' said Rolfe, as the Indian hesi- 
 tated, from pride or distrust, and laid his hand on his tomahawk. 
 
 " I wish I could- tell you what was said at that interview, for 
 my curiosity was never so strongly excited. Rolfe seemed bent 
 on preventing both interference and observation, however, and,*in 
 his loud and coarse voice, commenced singing and making prepa- 
 rations for his supper ; and, persuading me into the drinking part 
 of it, I listened to his stories and toasted my shins till 1 was too 
 sleepy to feel either romance or curiosity ; and, leaving the moon 
 to waste its silver on the wilderness, and the mysterious colloquists 
 to ramble and fioish their conference as they liked, I rolled over 
 on my buffalo-skin and dropped off to sleep. 
 
 " The next morning I rubbed my eyes to discover whether all 
 I have been telling you was not a dream, for tent and demoiselle 
 had evaporated, and I lay with my feet to the smouldering fire, 
 &nd all the trading party preparing for breakfast around me. 
 Alarmed at my absence, they had made a start before sunrise to 
 overtake Rolfe, and had come up while I slept. The leader, 
 after a while, gave me a slip of paper from the chief, saying that 
 ho should be happy to give me a specimen of Indian hospitality 
 at the Shawanee village, on my return from Santa Fe — a neat 
 hint that I was not to intrude upon him at present." 
 
 " Which yoQ took ?" 
 
 " Rolfe seemed to have had a hint which was probably in some 
 more decided shape, since he took it, for us all. The men 
 grumbled at passing the village without calling for fish, but the 
 leader was inexorable, and we left it to the right, and ' mada 
 
LATER DAYS. 373 
 
 tracks,' as the hunters say, for our destination. Two days from 
 there we saw a buffalo " 
 
 " Which you demolished. You told me that story last night. 
 Come, get back to the Shawauees ! You called on the village at 
 your return .^" 
 
 " Yes, and an odd place it was. We came upon it from the 
 west, Rolfe having made a bend to the westward on his return 
 back. We had been travelling all day over a long plain, v/ooded 
 in clumps, looking very much like an immense park, and I began 
 to think that the trader intended to cheat me out of my visit — 
 for he said we should sup with the Shawanees that night, and I 
 did not in the least recognize the outline of the country. We 
 struck the bed of a small and very beautiful river, presently 
 however, and, after following it through a wood for a while, came 
 to a sharp brow where the river suddenly descended to a plain at 
 least two hundred feet lower than the table land on which we had 
 been travelling. The country below looked as if it might have 
 been the bed of an immense lake, and' we stood on the shore of it. 
 
 " I sat on my horse, geologizing in fancy about this singular 
 formation of laud, till, hearing a shout, I found the party had 
 gone on, and Rolfe was hallooing to me to follow. As I was try- 
 ing to get a glimpse of him through the trees, up rode my old 
 acquaintance Shahatan, with his rifle across his thigh, and gave 
 me a very cordial welcome. He then rode on to show me the 
 the way. We left the river, which was foaming among some fine 
 rapids, and, by a zig-zag side-path through the woods, descended 
 about half-way to the plain, where we rounded a huge rock, and 
 stood suddenly in the village of the Shawanees. You cannot 
 fancy anything so picturesque. On the left, for a quarter of a 
 mile, extended a natural steppe^ or terrace, a hundred yards wide, 
 
374 FASHION IN A WIGWAM. 
 
 and rounding in a crescent to the south. The river came in 
 toward it, on the right, in a superb cascade, visible from the 
 whole of the platform, and, against the rocky wall at the back, 
 and around on the edge overlooking the plain, were built the wig- 
 wams and log-huts of the tribe ; in front of which lounged men, 
 women, and children, enjoying the cool of the summer evening. 
 Not far from the base of the hill, the river reappeared from the 
 woods, and I distinguished some fields planted with corn along its 
 banks, and horses and cattle grazing. What with the pleasant 
 sound of the falls, and the beauty of the scene altogether, it was 
 to me more like the j)nmitive Arcadia we dream about, than any- 
 thing I ever saw. 
 
 " Well, Rolfe and his party reached the village presently, for 
 the chief had brought me by a shorter cut, and, in a moment, the 
 whole tribe was about us, and the trader found himself apparently 
 among old acquaintances. The chief sent a lad with my horse 
 down into the plain to be picketed where the grass was better, 
 and took me into a small hut, where I treated myself to a little 
 more of a toilet than I had been accustomed to, of late, in compli- 
 ment to the unusual prospect of supping with a lady. The hut 
 was lined with bark, and seemed used by the chief for the same 
 purpose, as there were sundry articles of dress and other civilized 
 refinements hanging to the bracing-poles, and covering a rude 
 table in the corner. 
 
 " Fancy my surprise, on coming out, to meet the chief strolling 
 up and down his prairie shelf with, not one lady, but half a dozen 
 — a respectable-looking gentleman in black, (I speak of his coat,) 
 and a bevy of nice-looking girls, with our Almack's acquaintance 
 in the centre — the whole party, except the chief, dressed in a way 
 that would pass muster in any village in England. Shahatan 
 
LATER DAYS. 375 
 
 wore the Indian's blanket, modified with a large mantle of fine 
 blue cloth, and crossed over his handsome bare chest, something 
 after the style of a Hieland tartan. I really never saw a better 
 made, or more magnificent-looking fellow, though I am not sure 
 that his easy and picturesque dress would not have improved a 
 plainer man. 
 
 " 1 remembered directly that Rolfe had said something to me 
 about missionaries living among the Shawanees, and I was not 
 surprised to hear that the gentleman in a black coat was a 
 reverend, and the ladies the sisterhood of the mission. Miss 
 Trevanion seemed rather in haste to inform me of the presence 
 of ' the cloth,' and, in the next breath, claimed my congratula- 
 tions on her marriage ! She had been a chieftainess for two 
 months. 
 
 *' We strolled up and down the grassy terrace, dividing our at- 
 tention between the eflfects of the sunset on the prairie below 
 and the preparations for our supper, which was going on by the 
 light of pine-knots stuck in the clefts of the rock in the rear. 
 A dozen Indian girls were crossing and recrossing before the fires, 
 and, with the bright glare upon the precipice, and the moving 
 figures, wigwams, &c., it was like a picture of Salvator Rosa's. 
 The fair chieftainess, as she glided across occasionally to look after 
 the people, with a step as light as her stately figure would allow, 
 was not the least beautiful feature of the scene. We lost a fine 
 creature when we let her slip through our fingers, my dear 
 feUow !" 
 
 " Thereby hangs a tale, I have little doubt, and I can give you 
 some data for a good guess at it — but as the * nigger gong' has 
 
♦ 
 
 376 A CHIEFS HOME. 
 
 t" Tell us what dey had for supper — 
 
 Black-eyed pease, or bread and butter ?" 
 
 " We had everything the wilderness could produce — appetites 
 included. Lying in the track of the trading parties, Shahatan, 
 of course, made what additions he liked, to the Indian mode of 
 living, and, except that our table was a huge buffalo skin stretch- 
 ed upon stakes, the supper might have been a traveller's meal 
 among Turks or Arabs, for all that was peculiar about it, I 
 should except, perhaps, that no Turk or Arab ever saw so pretty 
 a creature as the chief's sister, who was my neighbor at the feast." 
 
 " So — another romance !" 
 
 *' No, indeed ! For thougb her eyes were eloquent enough to 
 persuade one to forswear the world and turn Sbawauee, she had 
 no tono;ue for a strano;er. What little Eno-lish she had learned 
 of the missionaries, she was too sly to use, and our flirtation was 
 a very unsatisfactory pantomime. I parted from her at night in 
 the bior wigwam, without havino; been out of ear-shot of the 
 chief for a single moment ; and, as Rolfe was inexorable about 
 getting off with the day-break the next morning, it was the last I 
 saw of the little fawn. But, to tell you the truth, I had forty 
 minds between that and St. Louis, to turn about and have another 
 look at her. 
 
 " The big wigwam, I should tell you, was as large as a com- 
 mon breakfast-room in London. It was built of bark very inge- 
 niously sewed together, and lined throughout with the most costly 
 furs, even the floor covered with highly-dressed bear-skins. 
 After finishing our supper in the open air, the large curtain at 
 the door, which was made of the most superb gold-colored otters, 
 was thrown up to let in the blaze of the pine torches stuck in the 
 rock opposite, and, as the evening was getting cool, we followed 
 
LATER DAYS. 377 
 
 the chieftainess to her savage drawing-room, and took coffee and 
 chatted until a late hour, lounging on the rude, fur-covered 
 couches. I had not much chance to talk with our old friend, 
 but I gathered from what little she said, that she had been dis- 
 gusted with the heartlessness of London, and preferred the 
 wilderness, with one of nature's nobility, to all the splendors of 
 matrimony in high life. She said, however, that she would try to 
 induce Shahatan to travel abroad for a year or two, and, after 
 that, she thought their time would be agreeably spent in such a 
 mixture of savage and civilized life as her fortune and his control 
 over the tribe would enable them to manage." 
 
 When my friend had concluded his story, I threw what little 
 light I possessed upon the undeveloped springs of Miss Trevanion's 
 extraordinary movements, and we ended our philosophizings on 
 the subject, by promising ourselves a trip to the Shawanees some 
 day together. Now that we have had the later news that Shaha- 
 tan and his wife were travelling, by the last accounts, in the 
 East, however, we have limited our programme to meeting them 
 in England, and have no little curiosity to see whether the young 
 eayage will decide like his wife in the question of " Wigwam 
 versv4 Almack's.'^ 
 
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