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IN PARTNERSHIP.




                              IN PARTNERSHIP

                         STUDIES IN STORY-TELLING

                   BY BRANDER MATTHEWS AND H. C. BUNNER

                                 NEW YORK
                         CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
                                   1884

                           COPYRIGHT, 1884, BY
                         CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS.




CONTENTS.


                                                                       PAGE

    THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE                                             3
          _By Brander Matthews and H. C. Bunner._

    VENETIAN GLASS                                                       48
          _By Brander Matthews._

    THE RED SILK HANDKERCHIEF                                            73
          _By H. C. Bunner._

    THE SEVEN CONVERSATIONS OF DEAR JONES AND BABY VAN RENSSELAER       115
          _By Brander Matthews and H. C. Bunner._

    THE RIVAL GHOSTS                                                    139
          _By Brander Matthews._

    A LETTER AND A PARAGRAPH                                            165
          _By H. C. Bunner._

    PLAYING A PART                                                      179
          _By Brander Matthews._

    LOVE IN OLD CLOATHES                                                196
          _By H. C. Bunner._




THE DOCUMENTS IN THE CASE.

BY BRANDER MATTHEWS AND H. C. BUNNER.


PART FIRST.


Document No. 1.

_Paragraph from the “Illustrated London News,” published under the head of
“Obituary of Eminent Persons,” in the issue of January 4th, 1879:_

SIR WILLIAM BEAUVOIR, BART.

Sir William Beauvoir, Bart., whose lamented death has just occurred at
Brighton, on December 28th, was the head and representative of the junior
branch of the very ancient and honourable family of Beauvoir, and was the
only son of the late General Sir William Beauvoir, Bart., by his wife
Anne, daughter of Colonel Doyle, of Chelsworth Cottage, Suffolk. He was
born in 1805, and was educated at Eton and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He
was M. P. for Lancashire from 1837 to 1847, and was appointed a Gentleman
of the Privy Chamber in 1843. Sir William married, in 1826, Henrietta
Georgiana, fourth daughter of the Right Honourable Adolphus Liddell, Q.
C., by whom he had two sons, William Beauvoir and Oliver Liddell Beauvoir.
The latter was with his lamented parent when he died. Of the former
nothing has been heard for nearly thirty years, about which time he left
England suddenly for America. It is supposed that he went to California,
shortly after the discovery of gold. Much forgotten gossip will now in
all probability be revived, for the will of the lamented baronet has been
proved, on the 2d inst., and the personalty sworn under £70,000. The two
sons are appointed executors. The estate in Lancashire is left to the
elder, and the rest is divided between the brothers. The doubt as to the
career of Sir William’s eldest son must now of course be cleared up.

This family of Beauvoirs is of Norman descent, and of great antiquity.
This is the younger branch, founded in the last century by Sir William
Beauvoir, Bart., who was Chief Justice of the Canadas, whence he was
granted the punning arms and motto now borne by his descendants--a beaver
sable rampant on a field gules; motto, “Damno.”


PART SECOND.


Document No. 2.

_Promises to pay, put forth by William Beauvoir, junior, at various times
in 1848:_

    +----------------------------------+
    |                                  |
    |            _I. O. U._            |
    |                                  |
    |                _£105. 0. 0._     |
    |                                  |
    | _April 10th, 1848._              |
    |                                  |
    |        _William Beauvoir, junr._ |
    |                                  |
    +----------------------------------+


Document No. 3.

_The same._

    +----------------------------------+
    |                                  |
    |            _I. O. U._            |
    |                                  |
    |                _£250. 0. 0._     |
    |                                  |
    | _April 22d, 1848._               |
    |                                  |
    |        _William Beauvoir, junr._ |
    |                                  |
    +----------------------------------+


Document No. 4.

_The same._

    +----------------------------------+
    |                                  |
    |            _I. O. U._            |
    |                                  |
    |                _£600. 0. 0._     |
    |                                  |
    | _May 10th, 1848._                |
    |                                  |
    |        _William Beauvoir, junr._ |
    |                                  |
    +----------------------------------+


Document No. 5.

_Extract from the “Sunday Satirist”, a journal of high-life, published in
London, May 13th, 1848:_

Are not our hereditary lawmakers and the members of our old families the
guardians of the honour of this realm? One would not think so to see the
reckless gait at which some of them go down the road to ruin. The D----e
of D----m and the E----l of B----n and L----d Y----g,--are not these
pretty guardians of a nation’s name? _Quis custodiet?_ etc. Guardians,
forsooth, _parce qu’ils se sont donnés la peine de naître_! Some of the
gentry make the running as well as their betters. Young W----m B----r, son
of old Sir W----m B----r, late M.P. for L----e, is a truly model young
man. He comes of a good old county family--his mother was a daughter of
the Right Honourable A----s L----l, and he himself is old enough to know
better. But we hear of his escapades night after night, and day after day.
He bets all day and he plays all night, and poor tired nature has to make
the best of it. And his poor worn purse gets the worst of it. He has duns
by the score. His I.O.U.’s are held by every Jew in the city. He is not
content with a little gentlemanlike game of whist or _écarté_, but he must
needs revive for his special use and behoof the dangerous and well-nigh
forgotten _pharaoh_. As luck would have it, he had lost as much at this
game of brute chance as ever he would at any game of skill. His judgment
of horseflesh is no better than his luck at cards. He came a cropper over
the “Two Thousand Guineas.” The victory of the favourite cost him to the
tune of over six thousand pounds. We learn that he hopes to recoup himself
on the Derby, by backing Shylock for nearly nine thousand pounds; one bet
was twelve hundred guineas.

And this is the sort of man who may be chosen at any time by force of
family interest to make laws for the toiling millions of Great Britain!


Document No. 6.

_Extract from “Bell’s Life” of May 19th, 1848_:

THE DERBY DAY.

WEDNESDAY.--This day, like its predecessor, opened with a cloudless sky,
and the throng which crowded the avenues leading to the grand scene of
attraction was, as we have elsewhere remarked, incalculable.

THE DERBY.

The Derby Stakes of 50 sovs. each, h. ft. for three-year-olds; colts, 8
st. 7 lb., fillies, 8 st. 2 lb.; the second to receive 100 sovs., and the
winner to pay 100 sovs. towards police, etc.; mile and a half on the new
Derby course; 215 subs.

    Lord Clifden’s b. c. _Surplice_, by Touchstone        1
    Mr. Bowe’s b. c. _Springy Jack_, by Hetman            2
    Mr. B. Green’s br. c. _Shylock_, by Simoon            3
    Mr. Payne’s b. c. _Glendower_, by Slane               0
    Mr. J. P. Day’s b. c. _Nil Desperandum_, by Venison   0


Document No. 7.

_Paragraph of Shipping Intelligence from the “Liverpool Courier” of June
21st, 1848_:

The bark _Euterpe_, Captain Riding, belonging to the Transatlantic
Clipper Line of Messrs. Judkins & Cooke, left the Mersey yesterday
afternoon, bound for New York. She took out the usual complement of
steerage passengers. The first officer’s cabin is occupied by Professor
Titus Peebles, M.R.C.S., M.R.G.S., lately instructor in metallurgy at the
University of Edinburgh, and Mr. William Beauvoir. Professor Peebles, we
are informed, has an important scientific mission in the States, and will
not return for six months.


Document No. 8.

_Paragraph from the “N. Y. Herald” of September 9th, 1848._

While we well know that the record of vice and dissipation can never
be pleasing to the refined tastes of the cultivated denizens of the
only morally pure metropolis on the face of the earth, yet it may be of
interest to those who enjoy the fascinating study of human folly and
frailty to “point a moral or adorn a tale” from the events transpiring
in our very midst. Such as these will view with alarm the sad example
afforded the youth of our city by the dissolute career of a young lump of
aristocratic affectation and patrician profligacy, recently arrived in
this city. This young _gentleman’s_ (save the mark!) name is Lord William
F. Beauvoir, the latest scion of a venerable and wealthy English family.
We print the full name of this beautiful exemplar of “haughty Albion,”
although he first appeared among our citizens under the alias of Beaver,
by which name he is now generally known, although recorded on the books
of the Astor House by the name which our enterprise first gives to the
public. Lord Beauvoir’s career since his arrival here has been one of
unexampled extravagance and mad immorality. His days and nights have been
passed in the gilded palaces of the fickle goddess, Fortune, in Thomas
Street and College Place, where he has squandered fabulous sums, by some
stated to amount to over £78,000 sterling. It is satisfactory to know
that retribution has at last overtaken him. His enormous income has been
exhausted to the ultimate farthing, and at latest accounts he had quit the
city, leaving behind him, it is shrewdly suspected, a large hotel bill,
though no such admission can be extorted from his last landlord, who is
evidently a sycophantic adulator of British “aristocracy.”


Document No. 9.

_Certificate of deposit, vulgarly known as a pawn-ticket, issued by one
Simpson to William Beauvoir, December 2d, 1848._

    -------------------------------------------------------
    John Simpson,
              Loan Office,
                        36 Bowery,
                                  New York.
    -------------------------------------------------------
                           _Dec. 2d, 1848._
    ----------------------------------------+--------+-----
                                            | Dolls. | Cts.
    _One Gold Hunting-case Watch and Chain, |        |
        William Beauvoir._                  |  _150_ | _00_
    ----------------------------------------+--------+-----
    Not accountable in case of fire, damage, moth, robbery,
      breakage, &c.
      25% per ann.               Good for 1 year only.
    -------------------------------------------------------


Document No. 10.

_Letter from the late John Phœnix, found among the posthumous papers
of the late John P. Squibob, and promptly published in the “San Diego
Herald.”_

                                   OFF THE COAST OF FLORIDA, Jan. 3, 1849.

MY DEAR SQUIB:--I imagine your pathetic inquiry as to my
whereabouts--pathetic, not to say hypothetic--for I am now where I cannot
hear the dulcet strains of your voice. I am on board ship. I am half seas
over. I am bound for California by way of the Isthmus. I am going for the
gold, my boy, the gold. In the mean time I am lying around loose on the
deck of this magnificent vessel, the _Mercy G. Tarbox_, of Nantucket,
bred by _Noah’s Ark_ out of _Pilot-boat_, dam by _Mudscow_ out of _Raging
Canawl_. The _Mercy G. Tarbox_ is one of the best boats of Nantucket, and
Captain Clearstarch is one of the best captains all along shore--although,
friend Squibob, I feel sure that you are about to observe that a captain
with a name like that would give anyone the blues. But don’t do it, Squib!
Spare me this once.

But as a matter of fact this ultramarine joke of yours is about east. It
was blue on the _Mercy G._--mighty blue, too. And it needed the inspiring
hope of the gold I was soon to pick up in nuggets to stiffen my backbone
to a respectable degree of rigidity. I was about ready to wilt. But I
discovered two Englishmen on board, and now I get along all right. We
have formed a little temperance society--just we three, you know--to see
if we cannot, by a course of sampling and severe study, discover which of
the captain’s liquors is most dangerous, so that we can take the pledge
not to touch it. One of them is a chemist or a metallurgist, or something
scientific. The other is a gentleman.

The chemist or metallurgist or something scientific is Professor Titus
Peebles, who is going out to prospect for gold. He feels sure that his
professional training will give him the inside track in the gulches and
gold mines. He is a smart chap. He invented the celebrated “William Riley
Baking Powder”--bound to rise up every time.

And here I must tell you a little circumstance. As I was coming down
to the dock in New York, to go aboard the _Mercy G._, a small boy was
walloping a boy still smaller; so I made peace, and walloped them both.
And then they both began heaving rocks at me--one of which I caught
dexterously in the dexter hand. Yesterday, as I was pacing the deck with
the professor, I put my hand in my pocket and found this stone. So I asked
the professor what it was.

He looked at it and said it was gneiss.

“Is it?” said I. “Well, if a small but energetic youth had taken you on
the back of the head with it, you would not think it so nice!”

And then, O Squib, he set out to explain that he meant “gneiss,” not
“nice!” The ignorance of these English about a joke is really wonderful.
It is easy to see that they have never been brought up on them. But
perhaps there was some excuse for the professor that day, for he was the
president _pro tem._ of our projected temperance society, and as such he
had been making a quantitative and qualitative analysis of another kind of
quartz.

So much for the chemist or metallurgist or something scientific. The
gentleman and I get on better. His name is Beaver, which he persists in
spelling Beauvoir. Ridiculous, isn’t it? How easy it is to see that the
English have never had the advantage of a good common-school education--so
few of them can spell. Here’s a man don’t know how to spell his own
name. And this shows how the race over there on the little island is
degenerating. It was not so in other days. Shakspere, for instance, not
only knew how to spell his own name, but--and this is another proof of
his superiority to his contemporaries--he could spell it in half a dozen
different ways.

This Beaver is a clever fellow, and we get on first rate together. He
is going to California for gold--like the rest of us. But I think he
has had his share--and spent it. At any rate he has not much now. I
have been teaching him poker, and I am afraid he won’t have any soon. I
have an idea he has been going pretty fast--and mostly down hill. But
he has his good points. He is a gentleman all through, as you can see.
Yes, friend Squibob, even you could see right through him. We are all
going to California together, and I wonder which one of the three will
turn up trumps first--Beaver, or the chemist, metallurgist or something
scientific, or

                                          Yours respectfully, JOHN PHŒNIX.

P. S.--You think this a stupid letter, perhaps, and not interesting. Just
reflect on my surroundings. Besides, the interest will accumulate a good
while before you get the missive. And I don’t know how you ever are to get
it, for there is no post-office near here, and on the Isthmus the mails
are as uncertain as the females are everywhere. (I am informed that there
is no postage on old jokes--so I let that stand.)

                                                                     J. P.


Document No. 11.

_Extract from the “Bone Gulch Palladium,” June 3d, 1850_:

Our readers may remember hovv frequeñtly vve have declared our firm belief
iñ the future uñexampled prosperity of Boñe Gulch. VVe savv it iñ the
immediate future the metropolis of the Pacific <DW72>, as it vvas iñteñded
by ñature to be. VVe poiñted out repeatedly that a time vvould come vvheñ
Boñe Gulch vvould be añ emporium of the arts añd scieñces añd of the best
society, eveñ more thañ it is ñovv. VVe foresavv the time vvheñ the best
meñ from the old cities of the East vvould come flockiñg to us, passiñg
vvith coñtempt the puñy settlemeñt of Deadhorse. But eveñ vve did ñot
so sooñ see that members of the aristocracy of the effete moñarchies of
despotic Europe vvould ackñovvledge the uñdeñiable advañtages of Boñe
Gulch, añd come here to stay permañeñtly añd forever. VVithiñ the past
vveek vve have received here Hoñ. VVilliam Beaver, oñe of the first meñ
of Great Britaiñ añd Irelañd, a statesmañ, añ orator, a soldier, añd añ
exteñsive traveller. He has come to Boñe Gulch as the best spot oñ the
face of the everlastiñg uñiverse. It is ñeedless to say that our promiñeñt
citizeñs have received him vvith great cordiality. Boñe Gulch is ñot like
Deadhorse. VVe kñovv a geñtlemañ vvheñ vve see oñe.

Hoñ. Mr. Beaver is oñe of ñature’s ñoblemeñ; he is also related to the
Royal Family of Eñglañd. He is a secoñd cousiñ of the Queeñ, añd boards at
the Tovver of Loñdoñ vvith her vvheñ at home. VVe are iñformed that he has
frequeñtly takeñ the Priñce of VVales out for a ride iñ his baby-vvagoñ.

VVe take great pleasure iñ coñgratulatiñg Boñe Gulch oñ its latest
acquisitioñ. Añd vve kñovv Hoñ. Mr. Beaver is sure to get aloñg all right
here uñder the best climate iñ the vvorld añd vvith the ñoblest meñ the
suñ ever shoñe oñ.


Document No. 12.

_Extract from the Dead Horse “Gazette and Courier of Civilization” of
August 26th, 1850_:

BONEGULCH’S BRITISHER.

Bonegulch sits in sackcloth and ashes and cools her mammoth cheek in the
breezes of Colorado canyon. The self-styled Emporium of the West has lost
her British darling, Beaver Bill, the big swell who was first cousin to
the Marquis of Buckingham and own grandmother to the Emperor of China, the
man with the biled shirt and low-necked shoes. This curled darling of the
Bonegulch aristocrat-worshippers passed through Deadhorse yesterday, clean
bust. Those who remember how the four-fingered editor of the Bonegulch
“Palladium” pricked up his ears and lifted up his falsetto crow when this
lovely specimen of the British snob first honored him by striking him for
a $ will appreciate the point of the joke.

It is said that the “Palladium” is going to come out, when it makes its
next semi-occasional appearance, in full mourning, with turned rules. For
this festive occasion we offer Brother B. the use of our late retired
Spanish font, which we have discarded for the new and elegant dress
in which we appear to-day, and to which we have elsewhere called the
attention of our readers. It will be a change for the “Palladium’s” eleven
unhappy readers, who are getting very tired of the old type cast for the
Concha Mission in 1811, which tries to make up for its lack of w’s by a
plentiful superfluity of greaser u’s. How are you, Brother Biles?

“We don’t know a gent when we see him.” Oh no (?)!


Document No. 13.

_Paragraph from “Police Court Notes,” in the New Centreville [late Dead
Horse] “Evening Gazette,” January 2d, 1858_:

HYMENEAL HIGH JINKS.

William Beaver, better known ten years ago as “Beaver Bill,” is now
a quiet and prosperous agriculturalist in the Steal Valley. He was,
however, a pioneer in the 1849 movement, and a vivid memory of this fact
at times moves him to quit his bucolic labors and come in town for a
real old-fashioned tare. He arrived in New Centreville during Christmas
week; and got married suddenly, but not unexpectedly, yesterday morning.
His friends took it upon themselves to celebrate the joyful occasion,
rare in the experience of at least one of the parties, by getting very
high on Irish Ike’s whiskey and serenading the newly-married couple with
fish-horns, horse-fiddles, and other improvised musical instruments.
Six of the participators in this epithalamial serenade, namely, José
Tanco, Hiram Scuttles, John P. Jones, Hermann Bumgardner, Jean Durant
(“Frenchy”), and Bernard McGinnis (“Big Barney”), were taken in tow by
the police force, assisted by citizens, and locked up over night, to cool
their generous enthusiasm in the gloomy dungeons of Justice Skinner’s
calaboose. This morning all were discharged with a reprimand, except Big
Barney and José Tanco, who, being still drunk, were allotted ten days in
default of $10. The bridal pair left this noon for the bridegroom’s ranch.


Document No. 14.

_Extract from “The New York Herald” for June 23d, 1861_:

THE RED SKINS.

A BORDER WAR AT LAST!

INDIAN INSURRECTION.

RED DEVILS RISING!

WOMEN AND CHILDREN SEEKING SAFETY IN THE LARGER TOWNS.

HORRIBLE HOLOCAUSTS ANTICIPATED.

BURYING THE HATCHET--IN THE WHITE MAN’S HEAD.

[SPECIAL DESPATCH TO THE NEW YORK HERALD.]

                                                   CHICAGO, June 22, 1861.

Great uneasiness exists all along the Indian frontier. Nearly all the
regular troops have been withdrawn from the West for service in the South.
With the return of the warm weather it seems certain that the red skins
will take advantage of the opportunity thus offered, and inaugurate a
bitter and vindictive fight against the whites. Rumors come from the
agencies that the Indians are leaving in numbers. A feverish excitement
among them has been easily to be detected. Their ponies are now in good
condition, and forage can soon be had in abundance on the prairie, if it
is not already. Everything points toward a sudden and startling outbreak
of hostilities.

[SPECIAL DESPATCH TO THE NEW YORK HERALD.]

                                                  ST. PAUL, June 22, 1861.

The Sioux near here are all in a ferment. Experienced Indian fighters say
the signs of a speedy going on the war-path are not to be mistaken. No one
can tell how soon the whole frontier may be in a bloody blaze. The women
and children are rapidly coming in from all exposed settlements. Nothing
overt as yet has transpired, but that the Indians will collide very soon
with the settlers is certain. All the troops have been withdrawn. In our
defenceless state there is no knowing how many lives may be lost before
the regiments of volunteers now organizing can take the field.

LATER.

THE WAR BEGUN.

FIRST BLOOD FOR THE INDIANS.

THE SCALPING KNIFE AND THE TOMAHAWK AT WORK AGAIN.

[SPECIAL DESPATCH TO THE NEW YORK HERALD.]

                                         BLACK WING AGENCY, June 22, 1861.

The Indians made a sudden and unexpected attack on the town of Coyote
Hill, forty miles from here, last night, and did much damage before the
surprised settlers rallied and drove them off. The red skins met with
heavy losses. Among the whites killed are a man named William Beaver,
sometimes called Beaver Bill, and his wife. Their child, a beautiful
little girl of two, was carried off by the red rascals. A party has been
made up to pursue them. Owing to their taking their wounded with them, the
trail is very distinct.


Document No. 15.

_Letter from Mrs. Edgar Saville, in San Francisco, to Mr. Edgar Saville,
in Chicago._

                      [Illustration: CAL. JARDINE’S

                MONSTER VARIETY AND DRAMATIC COMBINATION.

                              ON THE ROAD.]

                     _G. W. K. McCULLUM, Treasurer._

                      _HI. SAMUELS, Stage Manager._

                         _JNO. SHANKS, Advance._

            _No dates filled except with first-class houses._

      _Hall owners will please consider silence a polite negative._

                                          SAN FRANCISCO, January 29, 1863.

MY DEAR OLD MAN!--Here we are in our second week at Frisco and you will
be glad to know playing to steadily increasing biz, having signed for two
weeks more, certain. I didn’t like to mention it when I wrote you last,
but things were very queer after we left Denver, and “Treasury” was a
mockery till we got to Bluefoot Springs, which is a mining town, where
we showed in the hotel dining-room. Then there was a strike just before
the curtain went up. The house was mostly miners in red shirts and very
exacting. The sinews were forthcoming very quick my dear, and after that
the ghost walked quite regular. So now everything is bright, and you won’t
have to worry if Chicago doesn’t do the right thing by you.

I don’t find this engagement half as disagreeable as I expected. Of course
it ain’t so very nice travelling in a combination with variety talent but
they keep to themselves and we regular professionals make a _happy family_
that Barnum would not be ashamed of and quite separate and comfortable.
We don’t associate with any of them only with The Unique Mulligans wife,
because he beats her. So when he is on a regular she sleeps with me.

And talking of liquor dear old man, if you knew how glad and proud I was
to see you writing so straight and steady and beautiful in your three last
letters. O, I’m sure my darling if the boys thought of the little wife
out on the road they wouldn’t plague you so with the Enemy. Tell Harry
Atkinson this from me, he has a good kind heart but he is the worst of
your friends. Every night when I am dressing I think of you at Chicago,
and pray you may never again go on the way you did that terrible night at
Rochester. Tell me dear, did you look handsome in Horatio? You ought to
have had Laertes instead of that duffing Merivale.

And now I have the queerest thing to tell you. Jardine is going in for
Indians and has secured six very ugly ones. I mean real Indians, not
professional. They are hostile Comanshies or something who have just laid
down their arms. They had an insurrection in the first year of the War,
when the troops went East, and they killed all the settlers and ranches
and destroyed the canyons somewhere out in Nevada, and when they were
brought here they had a wee little kid with them only four or five years
old, but _so sweet_. They stole her and killed her parents and brought her
up for their own in the cunningest little moccasins. She could not speak a
word of English except her own name which is Nina. She has blue eyes and
all her second teeth. The ladies here made a great fuss about her and sent
her flowers and worsted afgans, but they did not do anything else for her
and left her to us.

O dear old man you must let me have her! You never refused me a thing yet
and she is so like our Avonia Marie that my heart almost breaks when she
puts her arms around my neck--_she calls me mamma already_. I want to have
her with us when we get the little farm--and it must be near, that little
farm of ours--we have waited for it so long--and something tells me my
own old faker will make his hit soon and be great. You can’t tell how I
have loved it and hoped for it and how real every foot of that farm is to
me. And though I can never see my own darling’s face among the roses it
will make me so happy to see this poor dead mother’s pet get red and rosy
in the country air. And till the farm comes we shall always have enough
for her, without your ever having to black up again as you did for me the
winter I was sick my own poor boy!

Write me yes--you will be glad when you see her. And now love and regards
to Mrs. Barry and all friends. Tell the Worst of Managers that he knows
where to find his leading juvenile for next season. Think how funny it
would be for us to play together next year--we haven’t done it since
’57--the third year we were married. That was my first season higher than
walking--and now I’m quite an old woman--most thirty dear!

Write me soon a letter like that last one--and send a kiss to Nina--_our
Nina_.

                              Your own girl,

                                                                     MARY.

P. S. He has not worried me since.

[Illustration]

Nina drew this herself she says it is a horse so that you can get here
soon.


PART THIRD.


Document No. 16.

_Letter from Messrs. Throstlethwaite, Throstlethwaite, and Dick,
Solicitors, Lincoln’s Inn, London, England, to Messrs. Hitchcock and Van
Rensselaer, Attorneys and Counsellors at Law, 76 Broadway, New York, U. S.
A._

                                                          January 8, 1879.

MESSRS. HITCHCOCK & VAN RENSSELAER:

GENTLEMEN: On the death of our late client, Sir William Beauvoir, Bart.,
and after the reading of the deceased gentleman’s will, drawn up nearly
forty years ago by our Mr. Dick, we were requested by Oliver Beauvoir,
Esq., the second son of the late Sir William, to assist him in discovering
and communicating with his elder brother, the present Sir William
Beauvoir, of whose domicile we have little or no information.

After a consultation between Mr. Oliver Beauvoir and our Mr. Dick, it was
seen that the sole knowledge in our possession amounted substantially to
this: Thirty years ago the elder son of the late baronet, after indulging
in dissipation in every possible form, much to the sorrow of his respected
parent, who frequently expressed as much to our Mr. Dick, disappeared,
leaving behind him bills and debts of all descriptions, which we, under
instructions from Sir William, examined, audited, and paid. Sir William
Beauvoir would allow no search to be made for his erring son and would
listen to no mention of his name. Current gossip declared that he had
gone to New York, where he probably arrived about midsummer, 1848. Mr.
Oliver Beauvoir thinks that he crossed to the States in company with a
distinguished scientific gentleman, Professor Titus Peebles. Within a
year after his departure news came that he had gone to California with
Professor Peebles; this was about the time gold was discovered in the
States. That the present Sir William Beauvoir did about this time actually
arrive on the Pacific Coast in company with the distinguished scientific
man above mentioned, we have every reason to believe: we have even direct
evidence on the subject. A former junior clerk, who had left us at about
the same period as the disappearance of the elder son of our late client,
accosted our Mr. Dick when the latter was in Paris last summer, and
informed him (our Mr. Dick) that he (the former junior clerk) was now a
resident of Nevada and a member of Congress for that county, and in the
course of conversation he mentioned that he had seen Professor Peebles
and the son of our late client in San Francisco, nearly thirty years ago.
Other information we have none. It ought not to be difficult to discover
Professor Peebles, whose scientific attainments have doubtless ere this
been duly recognized by the U. S. government. As our late client leaves
the valuable family estate in Lancashire to his elder son and divides the
remainder equally between his two sons, you will readily see why we invoke
your assistance in discovering the present domicile of the late baronet’s
elder son, or, in default thereof, in placing in our hand such proof of
his death as may be necessary to establish that lamentable fact in our
probate court.

We have the honour to remain, as ever, your most humble and obedient
servants,

                                 THROSTLETHWAITE, THROSTLETHWAITE, & DICK.

P. S.--Our late client’s grandson, Mr. William Beauvoir, the only child
of Oliver Beauvoir, Esq., is now in the States, in Chicago or Nebraska or
somewhere in the West. We shall be pleased if you can keep him informed
as to the progress of your investigations. Our Mr. Dick has requested Mr.
Oliver Beauvoir to give his son your address, and to suggest his calling
on you as he passes through New York on his way home.

                                                                T. T. & D.


Document No. 17.

_Letter from Messrs. Hitchcock and Van Rensselaer, New York, to Messrs.
Pixley and Sutton, Attorneys and Counsellors at Law, 98 California Street,
San Francisco, California._

                                Law Offices of Hitchcock & Van Rensselaer,
                                                    76 Broadway, New York.
                                                           P. O. Box 4076.

                                                            Jan. 22, 1879.

MESSRS. PIXLEY AND SUTTON:

GENTLEMEN: We have just received from our London correspondents, Messrs.
Throstlethwaite, Throstlethwaite, and Dick, of Lincoln’s Inn, London,
the letter, a copy of which is herewith enclosed, to which we invite
your attention. We request that you will do all in your power to aid
us in the search for the missing Englishman. From the letter of Messrs.
Throstlethwaite, Throstlethwaite, and Dick, it seems extremely probable,
not to say certain, that Mr. Beauvoir arrived in your city about 1849, in
company with a distinguished English scientist, Professor Titus Peebles,
whose professional attainments were such that he is probably well known,
if not in California, at least in some other of the mining States. The
first thing to be done, therefore, it seems to us, is to ascertain the
whereabouts of the professor, and to interview him at once. It may be that
he has no knowledge of the present domicile of Mr. William Beauvoir, in
which case we shall rely on you to take such steps as, in your judgment,
will best conduce to a satisfactory solution of the mystery. In any event,
please look up Professor Peebles, and interview him at once.

Pray keep us fully informed by telegraph of your movements.

                             Yr obt serv’ts,

                                               HITCHCOCK & VAN RENSSELAER.


Document No. 18.

_Telegram from Messrs. Pixley and Sutton, Attorneys and Counsellors at
Law, 98 California Street, San Francisco, California, to Messrs. Hitchcock
and Van Rensselaer, Attorneys and Counsellors at Law, 76 Broadway, New
York._

                                             SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., Jan. 30.

Tite Peebles well known frisco not professor keeps faro bank.

                                             PIXLEY & SUTTON. (D. H. 919.)


Document No. 19.

_Telegram from Messrs. Hitchcock and Van Rensselaer to Messrs. Pixley and
Sutton, in answer to the preceding._

                                                        NEW YORK, Jan. 30.

Must be mistake Titus Peebles distinguished scientist.

                                                HITCHCOCK & VAN RENSSELAER
                                                (Free. Answer to D. H.)


Document No. 20.

_Telegram from Messrs. Pixley and Sutton to Messrs. Hitchcock and Van
Rensselaer, in reply to the preceding._

                                             SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., Jan. 30.

No mistake distinguished faro banker suspected skin game shall we
interview.

                                             PIXLEY & SUTTON. (D. H. 919.)


Document No. 21.

_Telegram from Messrs. Hitchcock and Van Rensselaer to Messrs. Pixley and
Sutton, in reply to the preceding._

                                                        NEW YORK, Jan. 30.

Must be mistake interview anyway.

                                               HITCHCOCK & VAN RENSSELAER.
                                               (Free. Answer to D. H.)


Document No. 22.

_Telegram from Messrs. Pixley & Sutton to Messrs. Hitchcock and Van
Rensselaer, in reply to the preceding._

                                             SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., Jan. 30.

Peebles out of town have written him.

                                             PIXLEY & SUTTON. (D. H. 919.)


Document No. 23.

_Letter from Tite W. Peebles, delegate to the California Constitutional
Convention, Sacramento, to Messrs. Pixley and Sutton, 98 California
Street, San Francisco, California._

                                                  SACRAMENTO, Feb. 2, ’79.

MESSRS. PIXLEY & SUTTON: San Francisco.

GENTLEMEN: Your favor of the 31st ult., forwarded me from San Francisco,
has been duly rec’d, and contents thereof noted.

My time is at present so fully occupied by my duties as a delegate to the
Constitutional Convention that I can only jot down a brief report of my
recollections on this head. When I return to S. F., I shall be happy to
give you any further information that may be in my possession.

The person concerning whom you inquire was my fellow passenger on my first
voyage to this State on board the _Mercy G. Tarbox_, in the latter part
of the year. He was then known as Mr. William Beauvoir. I was acquainted
with his history, of which the details escape me at this writing. He was
a countryman of mine; a member of an important county family--Devonian, I
believe--and had left England on account of large gambling debts, of which
he confided to me the exact figure. I believe they totted up something
like £14,500.

I had at no time a very intimate acquaintance with Mr. Beauvoir; during
our sojourn on the _Tarbox_ he was the chosen associate of a depraved and
vicious character named Phœnix. I am not averse from saying that I was
then a member of a profession rather different to my present one, being,
in fact, professor of metallurgy, and I saw much less, at that period, of
Mr. B. than I probably should now.

Directly we landed at S. F., the object of your inquiries set out for the
gold region, without adequate preparation, like so many others did at that
time, and, I heard, fared very ill.

I encountered him some six months later; I have forgotten precisely in
what locality, though I have a faint impression that his then habitat was
some cañon or ravine deriving its name from certain osseous deposits.
Here he had engaged in the business of gold-mining, without, perhaps,
sufficient grounds for any confident hope of ultimate success. I have his
I. O. U. for the amount of my fee for assaying several specimens from his
claim, said specimens being all iron pyrites.

This is all I am able to call to mind at present in the matter of Mr.
Beauvoir. I trust his subsequent career was of a nature better calculated
to be satisfactory to himself; but his mineralogical knowledge was but
superficial; and his character was sadly deformed by a fatal taste for low
associates.

I remain, gentlemen, your very humble and obd’t servant,

                                                         TITUS W. PEEBLES.

P. S.--Private.

MY DEAR PIX: If you don’t feel inclined to pony up that little sum you are
out on the bay gelding, drop down to my place when I get back and I’ll
give you another chance for your life at the pasteboards. Constitution
going through.

                                  Yours,

                                                                     TITE.


PART FOURTH.


Document No. 24.

_Extract from the New Centreville [late Dead Horse] “Gazette and Courier
of Civilization,” December 20th, 1878_:

    “Miss Nina Saville appeared last night at the Mendocino Grand Opera
    House, in her unrivalled specialty of _Winona, the Child of the
    Prairies_; supported by Tompkins and Frobisher’s Grand Stellar
    Constellation. Although Miss Saville has long been known as one of
    the most promising of California’s younger tragediennes, we feel
    safe in saying that the impression she produced upon the large
    and cultured audience gathered to greet her last night stamped
    her as one of the greatest and most phenomenal geniuses of our
    own or other times. Her marvellous beauty of form and feature,
    added to her wonderful artistic power, and her perfect mastery
    of the difficult science of clog-dancing, won her an immediate
    place in the hearts of our citizens, and confirmed the belief
    that California need no longer look to Europe or Chicago for
    dramatic talent of the highest order. The sylph-like beauty, the
    harmonious and ever-varying grace, the vivacity and the power of
    the young artist who made her maiden effort among us last night,
    prove conclusively that the virgin soil of California teems with
    yet undiscovered fires of genius. The drama of _Winona, the Child
    of the Prairies_, is a pure, refined, and thoroughly absorbing
    entertainment, and has been pronounced by the entire press of
    the country equal to if not superior to the fascinating _Lady of
    Lyons_. It introduces all the favorites of the company in new
    and original characters, and with its original music, which is a
    prominent feature, has already received over 200 representations
    in the principal cities in the country. It abounds in effective
    situations, striking tableaux, and a most quaint and original
    concert entitled ‘The Mule Fling,’ which alone is worth the price
    of admission. As this is the first presentation in this city, the
    theatre will no doubt be crowded, and seats should be secured early
    in the day. The drama will be preceded by that prince of humorists,
    Mr. Billy Barker, in his humorous sketches and pictures from life.”

We quote the above from our esteemed contemporary, the Mendocino
_Gazette_, at the request of Mr. Zeke Kilburn, Miss Saville’s advance
agent, who has still further appealed to us, not only on the ground of
our common humanity, but as the only appreciative and thoroughly informed
critics on the Pacific <DW72> to “endorse” this rather vivid expression of
opinion. Nothing will give us greater pleasure. Allowing for the habitual
enthusiasm of our northern neighbor, and for the well-known chaste aridity
of Mendocino in respect of female beauty, we have no doubt that Miss Nina
Saville is all that the fancy, peculiarly opulent and active even for an
advance agent, of Mr. Kilburn has painted her, and is quite such a vision
of youth, beauty, and artistic phenomenality as will make the stars of
Paris and Illinois pale their ineffectual fires.

Miss Saville will appear in her “unrivalled specialty” at Hank’s New
Centreville Opera House, to-morrow night, as may be gathered, in a
general way, from an advertisement in another column.

We should not omit to mention that Mr. Zeke Kilburn, Miss Saville’s
advance agent, is a gentleman of imposing presence, elegant manners, and
complete knowledge of his business. This information may be relied upon as
at least authentic, having been derived from Mr. Kilburn himself, to which
we can add, as our own contribution, the statement that Mr. Kilburn is a
gentleman of marked liberality in his ideas of spirituous refreshments,
and of equal originality in his conception of the uses, objects and
personal susceptibilities of the journalistic profession.


Document No. 25.

_Local item from the “New Centreville Standard,” December 20th, 1878_:

Hon. William Beauvoir has registered at the United States Hotel. Mr.
Beauvoir is a young English gentleman of great wealth, now engaged in
investigating the gigantic resources of this great country. We welcome him
to New Centreville.


Document No. 26.

_Programme of the performance given in the Centreville Theatre, Dec. 21st,
1878_:

                   HANKS’ NEW CENTREVILLE OPERA HOUSE.

              A. JACKSON HANKS Sole Proprietor and Manager.

                     FIRST APPEARANCE IN THIS CITY OF

                          TOMPKINS & FROBISHER’S

                       GRAND STELLAR CONSTELLATION,

      Supporting California’s favorite daughter, the young American
                               Tragedienne,

                            MISS NINA SAVILLE,

               Who will appear in Her Unrivalled Specialty,

                   “WINONA, THE CHILD OF THE PRAIRIE.”

                    THIS EVENING, December 21st, 1878,

   Will be presented, with the following phenomenal cast, the accepted
                             American Drama,

                    WINONA, THE CHILD OF THE PRAIRIE.

    WINONA                                               }
    MISS FLORA MACMADISON                                }
    BIDDY FLAHERTY                                       }
    OLD AUNT DINAH (with Song, “Don’t Get Weary”)        } Miss NINA
    SALLY HOSKINS (with the old-time melody,             } SAVILLE.
        “Bobbin’ Around”)                                }
    POOR JOE (with Song)                                 }
    FRAULINE LINA BOOBENSTEIN (with stammering           }
        Song, “I yoost landet”)                          }
    SIR EDMOND BENNETT (specially engaged)            E. C. GRAINGER
    WALTON TRAVERS                                     G. W. PARSONS
    GIPSY JOE                                              M. ISAACS
    ’ANNABLE ’ORACE ’IGGINS                             BILLY BARKER
    TOMMY TIPPER                                    MISS MAMIE SMITH
    PETE, the Man on the Dock                             SI HANCOCK
    MRS. MALONE, the Old Woman in the Little House  MRS. K. Y. BOOTH
    ROBERT BENNETT (aged 5)                      LITTLE ANNIE WATSON

                          Act I.--The Old Home.

                       Act II.--Alone in the World.

                        Act III.--The Frozen Gulf:

                       THE GREAT ICEBERG SENSATION.

                         Act IV.--Wedding Bells.

         “WINONA, THE CHILD OF THE PRAIRIE,” WILL BE PRECEDED BY

                            A FAVORITE FARCE,

      In which the great BILLY BARKER will appear in one of his most
                         outrageously funny bits.

                       NEW SCENERY by Q. Z. SLOCUM

         Music by Professor Kiddoo’s Silver Bugle Brass Band and
                         Philharmonic Orchestra.

      Chickway’s Grand Piano, lent by Schmidt, 2 Opera House Block.

                AFTER THE SHOW GO TO HANKS’ AND SEE A MAN!

    Pop Williams, the only legitimate Bill-Poster in New Centreville.

                    (New Centreville Standard Print.)


Document No. 27.

_Extract from the New Centreville [late Dead Horse] “Gazette and Courier
of Civilization,” Dec. 24th, 1878._

A little while ago, in noting the arrival of Miss Nina Saville of the New
Centreville Opera House, we quoted rather extensively from our esteemed
contemporary, the Mendocino _Times_, and commented upon the quotation.
Shortly afterwards, it may also be remembered, we made a very direct and
decided apology for the sceptical levity which inspired those remarks,
and expressed our hearty sympathy with the honest, if somewhat effusive,
enthusiasm with which the dramatic critic of Mendocino greeted the sweet
and dainty little girl who threw over the dull, weary old business of
the stage “sensation” the charm of a fresh and childlike beauty and
originality, as rare and delicate as those strange, unreasonable little
glimmers of spring sunsets that now and then light up for a brief
moment the dull skies of winter evenings, and seem to have strayed into
ungrateful January out of sheer pity for the sad earth.

Mendocino noticed the facts that form the basis of the above
meteorological simile, and we believe we gave Mendocino full credit for
it at the time. We refer to the matter at this date only because in our
remarks of a few days ago we had occasion to mention the fact of the
existence of Mr. Zeke Kilburn, an advance agent, who called upon us at
the time, to endeavor to induce us, by means apparently calculated more
closely for the latitude of Mendocino, to extend to Miss Saville, before
her appearance, the critical approbation which we gladly extended after.
This little item of interest we alluded to at the time, and furthermore
intimated, with some vagueness, that there existed in Mr. Kilburn’s
character a certain misdirected zeal which, combined with a too keen
artistic appreciation, are apt to be rather dangerous stock-in-trade for
an advance agent.

It was twenty-seven minutes past two o’clock yesterday afternoon. The
chaste white mystery of Shigo Mountain was already taking on a faint,
almost imperceptible hint of pink, like the warm cheek of a girl who hears
a voice and anticipates a blush. Yet the rays of the afternoon sun rested
with undiminished radiance on the empty pork-barrel in front of McMullin’s
shebang. A small and vagrant infant, whose associations with empty barrels
were doubtless hitherto connected solely with dreams of saccharine
dissipation, approached the bunghole with precocious caution, and retired
with celerity and a certain acquisition of experience. An unattached goat,
a martyr to the radical theory of personal investigation, followed in the
footsteps of infantile humanity, retired with even greater promptitude,
and was fain to stay its stomach on a presumably empty rend-rock can,
afterward going into seclusion behind McMullin’s horse-shed, before the
diuretic effect of tin flavored with blasting-powder could be observed by
the attentive eye of science.

Mr. Kilburn emerged from the hostelry of McMullin. Mr. Kilburn, as we have
before stated at his own request, is a gentleman of imposing presence. It
is well that we made this statement when we did, for it is hard to judge
of the imposing quality in a gentleman’s presence when that gentleman is
suspended from the arm of another gentleman by the collar of the first
gentleman’s coat. The gentleman in the rear of Mr. Kilburn was Mr. William
Beauvoir, a young Englishman in a check suit. Mr. Beauvoir is not avowedly
a man of imposing presence; he wears a seal ring, and he is generally a
scion of an effete oligarchy, but he has, since his introduction into
this community, behaved himself, to use the adjectivial adverb of Mr.
McMullin, _white_, and he has a very remarkable biceps. These qualities
may hereafter enhance his popularity in New Centreville.

Mr. Beauvoir’s movements, at twenty-seven minutes past two yesterday
afternoon, were few and simple. He doubled Mr. Kilburn up, after the
fashion of an ordinary jack-knife, and placed him in the barrel,
wedge-extremity first, remarking, as he did so, “She is, is she?” He then
rammed Mr. Kilburn carefully home, and put the cover on.

We learn to-day that Mr. Kilburn has resumed his professional duties on
the road.


Document No. 28.

_Account of the same event from the New Centreville “Standard,” December
24th, 1878._

It seems strange that even the holy influences which radiate from this
joyous season cannot keep some men from getting into unseemly wrangles.
It was only yesterday that our local saw a street row here in the quiet
avenues of our peaceful city--a street row recalling the riotous scenes
which took place here before Dead Horse experienced a change of heart
and became New Centreville. Our local succeeded in gathering all the
particulars of the affray, and the following statement is reliable. It
seems that Mr. Kilburn, the gentlemanly and affable advance agent of the
Nina Saville Dramatic Company, now performing at Andy Hanks’ Opera House
to big houses, was brutally assaulted by a ruffianly young Englishman,
named Beauvoir, for no cause whatever. We say for no cause, as it is
obvious that Mr. Kilburn, as the agent of the troupe, could have said
nothing against Miss Saville which an outsider, not to say a foreigner
like Mr. Beauvoir, had any call to resent. Mr. Kilburn is a gentleman
unaccustomed to rough-and-tumble encounters, while his adversary has
doubtless associated more with pugilists than gentlemen--at least anyone
would think so from his actions yesterday. Beauvoir hustled Mr. Kilburn
out of Mr. Mullin’s, where the unprovoked assault began, and violently
shook him across the new plank sidewalk. The person by the name of Clark,
whom Judge Jones for some reason now permits to edit the moribund but
once respectable _Gazette_, caught the eye of the congenial Beauvoir,
and, true to the ungentlemanly instincts of his base nature, pointed to a
barrel in the street. The brutal Englishman took the hint and thrust Mr.
Kilburn forcibly into the barrel, leaving the vicinity before Mr. Kilburn,
emerging from his close quarters, had fully recovered. What the ruffianly
Beauvoir’s motive may have been for this wanton assault it is impossible
to say; but it is obvious to all why this fellow Clark sought to injure
Mr. Kilburn, a gentleman whose many good qualities he of course fails
to appreciate. Mr. Kilburn, recognizing the acknowledged merits of our
job-office, had given us the contract for all the printing he needed in
New Centreville.


Document No. 29.

_Advertisement from the New York “Clipper,” Dec. 21st, 1878._

                             WINSTON & MACK’S
                           GRAND INTERNATIONAL
                     MEGATHERIUM VARIETY COMBINATION,
                              COMPANY CALL.

    Ladies and Gentlemen of the Company will assemble for rehearsal, at
    Emerson’s Opera House, San Francisco, on Wednesday, Dec. 27th, at
    12 M. sharp. Band at 11.

                                                J. B. WINSTON, }
                                                EDWIN R. MACK, } Managers.

    Emerson’s Opera House,
       San Francisco, Dec. 10th, 1878.

    Protean Artist wanted. Would like to hear from Nina Saville.

    12--1t*.


Document No. 30.

_Letter from Nina Saville to William Beauvoir._

                                       NEW CENTREVILLE, December 26, 1878.

MY DEAR MR. BEAUVOIR--I was very sorry to receive your letter of
yesterday--_very_ sorry--because there can be only one answer that I can
make--and you might well have spared me the pain of saying the word--No.
You ask me if I love you. If I did--do you think it would be true love
in me to tell you so, when I know what it would cost you? Oh indeed you
must never marry _me_! In your own country you would never have heard
of me--never seen me--surely never written me such a letter to tell me
that you love me and want to marry me. It is not that I am ashamed of my
business or of the folks around me, or ashamed that I am only the charity
child of two poor players, who lived and died working for the bread for
their mouths and mine. I am proud of them--yes, proud of what they did
and suffered for one poorer than themselves--a little foundling out of an
Indian camp. But I know the difference between you and me. You are a great
man at home--you have never told me how great--but I know your father is
a rich lord, and I suppose you are. It is not that I think _you_ care
for that, or think less of me because I was born different from you. I
know how good--how kind--how _respectful_ you have always been to me--_my
lord_--and I shall never forget it--for a girl in my position knows
well enough how you might have been otherwise. Oh believe me--_my true
friend_--I am never going to forget all you have done for me--and how good
it has been to have you near me--a man so different from most others--I
don’t mean only the kind things you have done--the books and the thoughts
and the ways you have taught me to enjoy--and all the trouble you have
taken to make me something better than the stupid little girl I was when
you found me--but a great deal more than that--the consideration you
have had for me and for what I hold best in the world. I had never met a
_gentleman_ before--and now the first one I meet--he is my _friend_. That
is a great deal.

Only think of it! You have been following me around now for three months,
and I have been weak enough to allow it. I am going to do the right thing
now. You may think it hard in me _if you really mean what you say_, but
even if everything else were right, I would not marry you--because of your
rank. I do not know how things are at your home--but something tells me
it would be wrong and that your family would have a right to hate you and
never forgive you. Professionals cannot go in your society. And that is
even if I loved you--and I do not love you--I do not love you--_I do not
love you_--now I have written it you will believe it.

So now it is ended--I am going back to the line I was first
in--variety--and with a new name. So you can never find me--I entreat
you--I beg of you--not to look for me. If you only put your mind to
it--you will find it so easy to forget me--for I will not do you the wrong
to think that you did not mean what you wrote in your letter or what you
said that night _when we sang Annie Laurie together_ the last time.

                           Your sincere friend,

                                                                     NINA.


Documents Nos. 31 and 32.

_Items from San Francisco “Figaro” of December 29th, 1878_:

Nina Saville Co. disbanded New Centreville 26th. No particulars received.

Winston & Mack’s Comb. takes the road December 31st, opening at Tuolumne
Hollow. Manager Winston announces the engagement of Anna Laurie, the
Protean change artiste, with songs, “Don’t Get Weary,” “Bobbin’ Around,”
“I Yoost Landet.”


Document No. 33.

_Telegram from Zeke Kilburn, New Centreville, to Winston and Mack,
Emerson’s Opera House, San Francisco, Cal._

                                           NEW CENTREVILLE, Dec. 28, 1878.

Have you vacancy for active and energetic advance agent.

                                                        Z. KILBURN.
                                                        (9 words 30 paid.)


Document No. 34.

_Telegram from Winston and Mack, San Francisco, to Zeke Kilburn, New
Centreville_:

                                             SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 28, 1878.

No.

                                                       WINSTON & MACK.
                                                       (Collect 30 cents.)


Document No. 35.

_Bill sent to William Beauvoir, United States Hotel, Tuolumne Hollow,
Cal._:

                   _Tuolumne Hollow, Cal., Dec. 29, 1878._

    _William Beauvoir, Esq._

                              Bought of HIMMEL & HATCH,
                                 Opera House Block,
                           JEWELLERS & DIAMOND MERCHANTS,

    Dealers in all kinds of Fancy Goods, Stationery, and
    Umbrellas, Watches, Clocks and Barometers.

    TERMS CASH.                   MUSICAL BOXES REPAIRED.

    Dec. 29, One diamond and enamelled locket     $75.00
             One gold chain                        48.00
                                                  ------
                                                 $123.00
                              _Rec’d Payt._
                                 _Himmel & Hatch_,
                                               _per S._


PART FIFTH.


Document No. 36.

_Letter from Cable J. Dexter, Esq., to Messrs. Pixley and Sutton, San
Francisco._

                                     NEW CENTREVILLE, CAL., March 3, 1879.

MESSRS. PIXLEY & SUTTON:

GENTS: I am happy to report that I have at last reached the bottom level
in the case of William Beaver, _alias_ Beaver Bill, deceased through
Indians in 1861.

In accordance with your instructions and check, I proceeded, on the
10th ult., to Shawgum Creek, when I interviewed Blue Horse, chief of
the Comanches, who tomahawked subject of your inquiries in the year
above mentioned. Found the Horse in the penitentiary, serving out a
drunk and disorderly. Though belligerent at date aforesaid, Horse is now
tame, though intemperate. Appeared unwilling to converse, and required
stimulants to awaken his memory. Please find enclosed memo. of account
for whiskey, covering extra demijohn to corrupt jailer. Horse finally
stated that he personally let daylight through deceased, and is willing
to guarantee thoroughness of decease. Stated further that aforesaid
Beaver’s family consisted of squaw and kid. Is willing to swear that
squaw was killed, the tribe having no use for her. Killing done by
Mule-Who-Goes-Crooked, personal friend of Horse’s. The minor child was
taken into camp and kept until December of 1863, when tribe dropped to
howling cold winter and went on government reservation. Infant (female)
was then turned over to U. S. Government at Fort Kearney.

I posted to last-named locality on the 18th ult., and found by the
quartermaster’s books that, no one appearing to claim the kid, she had
been duly indentured, together with six Indians, to a man by the name
of Guardine or Sardine (probably the latter), in the show business.
The Indians were invoiced as Sage Brush Jimmy, Boiling Hurricane,
Mule-Who-Goes-Crooked, Joe, Hairy Grasshopper and Dead Polecat. Child
known as White Kitten. Receipt for Indians was signed by Mr. Hi. Samuels,
who is still in the circus business, and whom I happen to be selling
out at this moment, at suit of McCullum & Montmorency, former partners.
Samuels positively identified kid with variety specialist by name of Nina
Saville, who has been showing all through this region for a year past.

I shall soon have the pleasure of laying before you documents to establish
the complete chain of evidence, from knifing of original subject of your
inquiries right up to date.

I have to-day returned from New Centreville, whither I went after Miss
Saville. Found she had just skipped the town with a young Englishman by
the name of Bovoir, who had been paying her polite attentions for some
time, having bowied or otherwise squelched a man for her within a week or
two. It appears the young woman had refused to have anything to do with
him for a long period; but he seems to have struck pay gravel about two
days before my arrival. At present, therefore, the trail is temporarily
lost; but I expect to fetch the couple if they are anywhere this side of
the Rockies.

Awaiting your further instructions, and cash backing thereto, I am, gents,
very resp’y yours,

                                                          CABLE J. DEXTER.


Document No. 37.

_Envelope of letter from Sir Oliver Beauvoir, Bart., to his son, William
Beauvoir._

    +----------------------------------------+-----+
    |                                        |     |
    |        _Sent to Dead Letter Office_    |     |
    |                                        |     |
    |                                        +-----+
    |                                              |
    |             _Mr. William Beauvoir_           |
    |                   _Sherman House Hotel_      |
    |                         _Chicago_            |
    |                   _United States of America_ |
    |                                              |
    |    _Not here_                                |
    | _try Brevoort House_                         |
    |     _N. Y._                                  |
    +----------------------------------------------+


Document No. 38.

_Letter contained in the envelope above._

                                       CHELSWORTH COTTAGE, March 30, 1879.

MY DEAR BOY: In the sudden blow which has come upon us all I cannot
find words to write. You do not know what you have done. Your uncle
William, after whom you were named, died in America. He left but one
child, a daughter, the only grandchild of my father except you. And this
daughter is the Miss Nina Saville with whom you have formed so unhappy
a connection. She is your own cousin. She is a Beauvoir. She is of our
blood, as good as any in England.

My feelings are overpowering. I am choked by the suddenness of this great
grief. I cannot write to you as I would. But I can say this: Do not let me
see you or hear from you until this stain be taken from our name.

                                                          OLIVER BEAUVOIR.


Document No. 39.

_Cable dispatch of William Beauvoir, Windsor Hotel, New York, to Sir
Oliver Beauvoir, Bart., Chelsworth Cottage, Suffolk, England._

                                                    NEW YORK, May 1, 1879.

Have posted you Herald.

                                                         WILLIAM BEAUVOIR.


Document No. 40.

_Advertisement under the head of “Marriages,” from the New York “Herald,”
April 30th, 1879._

BEAUVOIR--BEAUVOIR.--On Wednesday, Jan. 1st, 1879, at Steal Valley,
California, by the Rev. Mr. Twells, William Beauvoir, only son of Sir
Oliver Beauvoir, of Chelsworth Cottage, Surrey, England, to Nina, only
child of the late William Beauvoir, of New Centreville, Cal.


Document No. 41.

_Extract from the New York “Herald” of May 29th, 1879._

Among the passengers on the outgoing Cunard steamer _Gallia_, which left
New York on Wednesday, was the Honorable William Beauvoir, only son of
Sir Oliver Beauvoir, Bart., of England. Mr. Beauvoir has been passing his
honeymoon in this city, and, with his charming bride, a famous California
belle, has been the recipient of many cordial courtesies from members of
our best society. Mr. William Beauvoir is a young man of great promise
and brilliant attainments, and is a highly desirable addition to the
large and constantly increasing number of aristocratic Britons who seek
for wives among the lovely daughters of Columbia. We understand that the
bridal pair will take up their residence with the groom’s father, at his
stately country-seat, Chelsworth Manor, Suffolk.




VENETIAN GLASS.

BY BRANDER MATTHEWS.


I.

IN THE OLD WORLD.

They had been to the Lido for a short swim in the slight but bracing
surf of the Adriatic. They had had a mid-day breakfast in a queer little
restaurant, known only to the initiated, and therefore early discovered
by Larry, who had a keen scent for a cook learned in the law. They had
loitered along the Riva degli Schiavoni, looking at a perambulatory
puppet-show, before which a delighted audience sturdily disregarded
the sharp wind which bravely fluttered the picturesque tatters of the
spectators; and they were moved to congratulate the Venetians on their
freedom from the monotonous repertory of the Anglo-American Punch and
Judy, which consists solely of a play really unique in the exact sense
of that much-abused word. They were getting their fill of the delicious
Italian art which is best described by an American verb--to loaf. And yet
they were not wont to be idle, and they had both the sharp, quick American
manner, on which laziness sits uneasily and infrequently.

John Manning and Laurence Laughton were both young New Yorkers. Larry--for
so in youth was he called by everybody pending the arrival of years which
should make him a universal uncle, to be known of all men as “Uncle
Larry”--was as pleasant a travelling companion as one could wish. He was
the only son and heir of a father, now no more, but vaguely understood
when alive and in the flesh to have been “in the China trade;” although
whether this meant crockery or Cathay no one was able with precision to
declare. Larry Laughton had been graduated from Columbia College with the
class of 1860, and the following spring found him here in Venice after
a six months’ ramble through Europe with his old friend, John Manning,
partly on foot and partly in an old carriage of their own, in which they
enjoyed the fast-vanishing pleasures of posting.

John Manning was a little older than Larry; he had left West Point in 1854
with a commission as second lieutenant in the Old Dragoons. For nearly
six years he did his duty in that state of life in which it pleased the
Secretary of War and General Scott to call him; he had crossed the plains
one bleak winter to a post in the Rocky Mountains, and he had danced
through two summers at Fort Adams at Newport; he had been stationed for a
while in New Mexico, where there was an abundance of the pleasant sport
of Indian-fighting,--even now he had only to make believe a little to see
the tufted head of a Navajo peer around the columns supporting the Lion
of Saint Mark, or to mistake the fringe of _facchini_ on the edge of the
Grand Canal for a group of the shiftless half-breeds of New Mexico. In
time the Old Dragoons had been ordered North, where the work was then less
pleasant than on the border; and, in fact, it was a distinct unwillingness
to execute the Fugitive Slave Law which forced John Manning to resign his
commission in the army, although it was the hanging of John Brown which
drew from him the actual letter of resignation. Before settling down to
other work--for he was a man who could not and would not be idle--he had
gratified his long desire of taking a turn through the Old World. Larry
Laughton had joined him in Holland, where he had been making researches
into the family history, and proving to his own satisfaction at least
that the New York Mannings, in spite of their English name, had come from
Amsterdam to New Amsterdam. And now, toward the end of April, 1861, John
Manning and Laurence Laughton stood on the Rialto, hesitating _Fra Marco
e Todaro_, as the Venetians have it, in uninterested question whether
they should go into the Ghetto, among the hideous homes of the chosen
people, or out again to Murano for a second visit to the famous factory of
Venetian glass.

“I say, John,” remarked Larry as they lazily debated the question, gazing
meanwhile on the steady succession of gondolas coming and going to and
from the steps by the side of the bridge, “I’d as lief, if not liefer,
go to Murano again, if they’ve any of their patent anti-poison goblets
left. You know they say they used to make a glass so fine that it was
shattered into shivers whenever poison might be poured into it. Of course
I don’t believe it, but a glass like that would be mighty handy in the
sample-rooms of New York. I’m afraid a man walking up Broadway could use
up a gross of the anti-poison goblets before he got one straight drink of
the genuine article, unadulterated and drawn from the wood.”

“You must not make fun of a poetic legend, Larry. You have to believe
everything over here, or you do not get the worth of your money,” said
John Manning.

“Well, I don’t know,” was Larry’s reply; “I don’t know just what to
believe. I was talking about it last night at Florian’s, while you were
writing letters home.”

“I did not know Mr. Laughton had friends in Venice.”

“Oh, I can make friends anywhere. And this one was lots of fun. He was a
priest, an _abbate_, I think he calls himself. He had read five newspapers
in the _caffè_ and paid for one tiny cup of coffee. When I finished the
_Débats_ I passed it to him for his sixth--and he spoke to me in French,
and I wasn’t going to let an Italian talk French to me without answering
back, so I just sailed in and began to swap stories with him.”

“No doubt you gave him much valuable information.”

“Well, I did; I just exuded information. Why the first thing he said,
when I told him I was an American, was to wonder whether I hadn’t met his
brother, who was also in America--in Rio Janeiro--just as if Rio was the
other side of the North River.”

John Manning smiled at Larry’s disgusted expression, and asked, “What has
this _abbate_ to do with the fragile Venetian glass?”

“Only this,” answered Larry. “I told him two or three Northwesters, just
as well as I could in French, and then he said that marvellous things were
also done here once upon a time. And he told me about the glass which
broke when poison was poured into it.”

“It is a pleasant superstition,” said John Manning. “I think Poe makes use
of it, and I believe Shakespeare refers to it.”

“But did either Poe or Shakespeare say anything about the two goblets just
alike, made for the twin brothers Manin nearly four hundred years ago? Did
they tell you how one glass was shivered by poison and its owner killed,
and how the other brother had to flee for his life? Did they inform you
that the unbroken goblet exists to this day, and is in fact now for sale
by an Hebrew Jew who peddles antiquities? Did they tell you that?”

“Neither Edgar Allan Poe nor William Shakespeare ever disturbs my slumbers
by telling me anything of the sort,” laughed Manning.

“Well, my _abbate_ told me just that, and he gave me the address of the
Shylock who has the surviving goblet for sale.”

“Suppose we go there and see it,” suggested Manning, “and you can tell me
the whole story of the twin brothers as we go along.”

“Shall we take a gondola or walk?” was Larry’s interrogative acceptance of
the suggestion.

“It’s in the Ghetto, isn’t it?”

“Most of the Jew curiosity dealers have left the Ghetto. Our Shylock has a
palace on the Grand Canal. I guess we had better take a gondola, though
it can’t be far.”

So they sat themselves down in one of the aquatic cabs which ply the water
streets of the city in the sea. The gondolier stood to his oar and put
his best foot foremost, and as the boat sped forward on its way along the
great S of the Grand Canal, Larry told the tale of the twin brothers and
the shattered goblet.

“Well, it seems that some time in the sixteenth century, say three hundred
years ago or thereabout, there were several branches of the great and
powerful Manin family--the same family to which the patriotic Daniele
Manin belonged, you know. And at the head of one of these branches were
the twin brothers Marco Manin and Giovanni Manin. Now, these brothers were
devoted to each other, and they had only one thought, one word, one deed.
When one of them happened to think of a thing, it often happened that
the other brother did it. So it was not surprising that they both fell
in love with the same woman. She was a dangerous-looking, yellow-haired
woman, with steel-gray eyes--that is, if her eyes were not really green,
as to which there was doubt. But there was no doubt at all that she was
powerfully handsome. The _abbate_ said that there was a famous portrait
of her in one of these churches as a Saint Mary Magdalen, with her hair
down. She was a splendid creature, and lots of men were running after
her besides the twin Manins. The two brothers did not quarrel with each
other about the woman, but they did quarrel with some of her other lovers,
and particularly with a nobleman of the highest rank and power, who was
supposed to belong not only to the Council of Ten, but to the Three.
Between this man and the Manins there was war to the knife and the knife
to the hilt. One day Marco Manin expressed a wish for one of these goblets
of Venetian glass so fine that poison shatters it, and so Giovanni went
out to Murano and ordered two of them, of the very finest quality, and
just alike in every particular of color and shape and size. You see the
twins always had everything in pairs. But the people at Murano somehow
misunderstood the order, and although they made both glasses they sent
home only one. Marco Manin was at table when it arrived, and he took it in
his hand at once, and after admiring its exquisite workmanship--you see,
all these old Venetians had the art-feeling strongly developed--he told
a servant to fill it to the brim with Cyprus wine. But as he raised the
flowing cup to his lips it shivered in his grasp and the wine was spilt on
the marble floor. He drew his sword and slew the servant who had sought to
betray him, and rushing into the street he found himself face to face with
the enemy whom he knew to have instigated the attempt. They crossed swords
at once, but, before Marco Manin could have a fair fight for his life, he
was stabbed in the back by a glass stiletto, the hilt of which was broken
off short in the wound.”

“Where was his brother all this time?” was the first question with which
John Manning broke the thread of his friend’s story.

“He had been to see the yellow-haired beauty, and he came back just in
time to meet his brother’s lifeless body as it was carried into their
desolate home. Holding his dead brother’s hand, as he had often held it
living, he promised his brother to avenge his death without delay and at
any cost. Then he prepared at once for flight. He knew that Venice would
be too hot to hold him when the deed was done; and besides, he felt that
without his brother life in Venice would be intolerable So he made ready
for flight. Twenty-four hours to a minute after Marco Manin’s death the
body of the hireling assassin was sinking to the bottom of the Grand
Canal, while the man who had paid for the murder lay dead on the same spot
with the point of a glass stiletto in his heart! And when they wanted to
send him the other goblet, there was no one to send it to: Giovanni Manin
had disappeared.”

“Where had he gone?” queried John Manning.

“That’s what I asked the _abbate_, and he said he didn’t know for sure,
but that in those days Venice had a sizable trade with the Low Countries,
and there was a tradition that Giovanni Manin had gone to the Netherlands.”

“To Holland?” asked John Manning with unwonted interest.

“Yes, to Amsterdam, or to Rotterdam, or to some one of those-dam towns, as
we used to call them in our geography class.”

“It was to Amsterdam,” said Manning, speaking as one who had certain
information.

“How do you know that?” asked Larry. “Even the _abbate_ said it was only a
tradition that he had gone to Holland at all.”

“He went to Amsterdam,” said Manning; “that I know.”

Before Larry could ask how it was that his friend knew anything about the
place of exile of a man whom he had never heard of ten minutes earlier,
the gondola had paused before the door of the palace in which dwelt
the dealer in antiquities who had in his possession the famous goblet
of Venetian glass. As they ascended to the sequence of rambling rooms
cluttered with old furniture, rusty armor, and odds and ends of statuary,
in which the modern Jew of Venice sat at the receipt of custom, both
Larry Laughton and John Manning had to give their undivided attention to
the framing in Italian of their wishes. Shylock himself was a venerable
and benevolent person, with a look of wonderful shrewdness and an
incomprehensibility of speech, for he spoke the Venetian dialect with
a harsh Jewish accent, either of which would have daunted a linguistic
veteran. Plainly enough, conversation was impossible, for he could barely
understand their American-Italian, and they could not at all understand
his Jewish-Venetian. But it would not do to let these _Inglesi_ go away
without paying tribute.

“_Ciò!_” said Shylock, smiling graciously at his futile attempts to open
communication with the enemy. Then he called Jessica from the deep window
where she had been at work on the quaint old account-books of the shop, as
great curiosities as anything in it, since they were kept in Venetian, but
by means of the Hebrew alphabet. She spoke Italian, and to her the young
men made known their wants. She said a few words to her father, and he
brought forth the goblet.

It was a marvellous specimen of the most exquisite Venetian workmanship.
A pair of green serpents, with eyes that glowed like fire, writhed around
the golden stem of a blood-red bowl, and as the white light of the
cloudless sky fell on it from the broad window, it burned in the glory of
the sunshine and seemed to fill itself full of some mysterious and royal
wine. Shylock revolved it slowly in his hand to show the strange waviness
of its texture, and as it turned, the serpents clung more closely to the
stem and arched their heads and shot a glance of hate at the strangers who
came to gaze on them with curious fascination.

John Manning looked at the goblet long and eagerly. “How did it come into
your possession?” he asked.

And Jessica translated Shylock’s declaration that the goblet had been at
Murano for hundreds of years; it was _anticho_--_antichissimo_, as the
signor could see for himself. It was of the best period of the art. That
Shylock would guarantee. How came it into his possession? By the greatest
good fortune. It was taken from Murano during the troubles after the fall
of the Republic in the time of Napoleon. It had gone finally into the
hands of a certain count, who, very luckily, was poor. _Conte che non
conta, non conta niente._ So Shylock had been enabled to buy it. It had
been the desire of his heart for years to own so fine an object.

“How much do you want for it?” asked John Manning.

Shylock scented from afar the battle of bargaining, dear in Italy to both
buyer and seller. He gave a keen look at both the _Inglesi_, and took up
the glass affectionately, as though he could not bear to part with it.
Jessica interpreted. Shylock had intended that goblet for his own private
collection, but the frank and generous manner of their excellencies had
overcome him, and he would let them have it for five hundred florins.

“Five hundred florins! Phew!” whistled Larry, astonished in spite of his
initiation into the mysteries of Italian bargaining. “Well, if you were to
ask me the Shakespearian conundrum, Hath not a Jew eyes? I shouldn’t give
it up; I should say he has eyes--for the main chance.”

“Five hundred florins,” said John Manning. “Very well. I’ll take it.”

Shylock’s astonishment at getting four times what he would have taken was
equalled only by his regret that he had not asked twice as much.

“Can you pack it so that I can take it to New York safely?”

“_Sicuro, signor_,” and Shylock agreed to have the precious object boxed
with all possible care and despatch, and delivered at the hotel that
afternoon.

“_Servo suo!_” said Jessica, as they stood at the door.

“_Bon di, Patron!_” responded Larry, in Venetian fashion; then as the door
closed behind them he said to John Manning, “Seems to me you were in a
hurry! You could have had that glass for half the money.”

“Perhaps I could,” was Manning’s quiet reply, “but I was eager to get it
back at once.”

“Get it back? Why, it wasn’t stolen from _you_, was it? I never did
suppose _he_ came by it honestly.”

“It was not stolen from me personally, but it belonged to my family. It
was made for Giovanni Manin, who fled from Venice to Amsterdam three
hundred odd years ago. His grandson and namesake left Amsterdam for New
Amsterdam half a century later. And when the English changed New Amsterdam
into New York, Jan Mannin became John Manning--and I am his direct
descendant, and the first of my blood to return to Venice to get the
goblet Giovanni Manin ordered and left behind.”

“Well, I’m damned!” said Larry, pensively.

“And now,” continued John Manning as they took their seats in the gondola,
“tell the man to go to the church where the picture of Mary Magdalen is. I
want a good look at that woman!”

       *       *       *       *       *

In the evening, as John Manning sat in a little _caffè_ under the arcades
of the Piazza San Marco, sipping a tiny cup of black coffee, Larry entered
with a rush of righteous indignation.

“What’s the matter, Larry?” was John Manning’s calm query.

“There’s the devil to pay at home. South Carolina has fired on the flag at
Sumter.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Three weeks later Colonel Manning was assigned to duty drilling the raw
recruits soon to be the Army of the Potomac.


II.

IN THE NEW WORLD.

In the month of February, 1864, a chance newspaper paragraph informed
whom it might concern that Major Laurence Laughton, having three weeks’
leave of absence from his regiment, was at the Astor House. In consequence
of this advertisement of his whereabouts, Major Laughton received many
cheerful circulars and letters, in most of which his attention was claimed
for the artificial limb made by the advertiser. He also received a letter
from Colonel John Manning, urgently bidding him to come out for a day at
least to his little place on the Hudson, where he was lying sick, and,
as he feared, sick unto death. On the receipt of this Larry cut short a
promising flirtation with a war-widow who sat next him at table, and took
the first train up the river. It was a bleak day, and there was at least
a foot of snow on the ground, as hard and as dry as though it had clean
forgot that it was made of water. As Larry left the little station, to
which the train had slowly struggled at last, an hour behind time, the
wind sprang up again and began to moan around his feet and to sting his
face with icy shot; and as he trudged across the desolate path which led
to Manning’s lonely house he discovered that rude Boreas could be as keen
a sharp-shooter as any in the rifle-pits around Richmond. A hard walk
up-hill for a quarter of an hour brought him to the brow of the cliff on
which stood the forlorn and wind-swept house where John Manning lay.
An unkempt and hideous old crone as black as night opened the door for
him. He left in the hall his hat and overcoat and a little square box he
had brought in his hand; and then he followed the ebony hag upstairs to
Colonel Manning’s room. Here at the door she left him, after giving a
sharp knock. A weak voice said, “Come in!”

Laurence Laughton entered the room with a quick step, but the
light-hearted words with which he had meant to encourage his friend died
on his lips as soon as he saw how grievously that friend had changed.
John Manning had faded to a shadow of his former self; the light of his
eye was quenched, and the spirit within him seemed broken; the fine,
sensitive, noble face lay white against the pillow, looking weary and wan
and hopeless. The effort to greet his friend exhausted him and brought on
a hard cough, and he pressed his hand to his breast as though some hidden
malady were gnawing and burning within.

“Well, John,” said Larry, as he took a seat by the bedside, “why didn’t
you let me know before now that you were laid up? I could have got away a
month ago.”

“Time enough yet,” said John Manning slowly; “time enough yet. I shall not
die for another week, I fear.”

“Why, man, you must not talk like that. You are as good as a dozen dead
men yet,” said Larry, trying to look as cheerful as might be.

“I am as good as dead myself,” said his friend seriously, as befitted a
man under the shadow of death; “and I have no wish to live. The sooner I
am out of this pain and powerlessness the better I shall like it.”

“I say, John, old man, this is no way for you to talk! Brace up, and you
will soon be another man!”

“I shall soon be in another world, I hope,” and the helpless misery of the
tone in which these few words were said smote Laurence Laughton to the
heart.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked with as lively an air as he could
attain, for the ominous and inexplicable sadness of the situation was fast
taking hold on him.

“I have a bullet through the lungs and a pain in the heart.”

“But men do not die of a bullet in the lungs and a pain in the heart,” was
Larry’s encouraging response.

“I shall.”

“Why should you more than others?”

“Because there is something else--something mysterious, some unknown
malady--which bears me down and burns me up. There is no use trying to
deceive me, Larry. My papers are made out, and I shall get my discharge
from the Army of the Living in a very few days now. But I must not waste
the little breath I have left in talking about myself. I sent for you to
ask a favor.”

Larry held out his hand, and John Manning took it, and seemed to gain
strength from the firm clasp.

“I knew I could rely on you,” he said, “for much or for little. And this
is not much, for I have not much to leave. This worn old house, which
belonged to my grandmother, and in which I spent the happiest hours of
my boyhood, this and a few shares of stock here and there are all I have
to leave. I do not know what the house is worth, and I shall be glad when
I am gone from it. If I had not come here, I think I might perhaps have
got well. There seems to be something deadly about the place.” The sick
man’s voice sank to a wavering whisper, as if it were borne down by a
sudden weight of impending danger against which he might struggle in vain;
he gave a fearful glance about the room, as though seeking a mystic foe,
hidden and unknown. “The very first day we were here the cat lapped its
milk by the fire and then stretched itself out and died without a sign.
And I had not been here two days before I felt the fatal influence: the
trouble from my wound came on again, and this awful burning in my breast
began to torture me. As a boy, I thought that heaven must be like this
house; and now I should not want to die if I thought hell could be worse!”

“Why don’t you leave the hole, since you hate it so?” asked Larry, with
what scant cheeriness he could muster; he was yielding himself slowly to
the place, though he fought bravely against his superstitious weakness.

“Am I fit to be moved?” was Manning’s query in reply.

“But you will be better soon, and then”--

“I shall be worse before I am better, and I shall never be better in this
life or in this place. No, no, I must die in my hole, like a dog. Like a
dog!” and John Manning repeated the words with a wistful face, “Do you
remember the faithful beast who always welcomed me here when we came up
before we went to Europe?”

“Of course I do,” said Larry, glad to get the sick man away from his
sickness, and to ease his mind by talk on a healthy topic; “he was a
splendid fellow, too. Cæsar, that was his name, wasn’t it?”

“Cæsar Borgia I called him,” was Manning’s sad reply. “I knew you could
not have forgotten him. He is dead. Cæsar Borgia is dead. He was the last
living thing that loved me--except you, Larry, I know--and he is dead. He
died this morning. He came to my bedside as usual, and he licked my hand
gently and looked up in my face, and laid him down alongside of me on the
carpet here and died. Poor Cæsar Borgia--he loved me, and he is dead! And
you, Larry, you must not stay here. The air is fatal. Every breath may be
your last. When you have heard what I want, you must be off at once. If
you like, you may come up again to the funeral before your leave is up. I
saw you had three weeks.”

Laurence Laughton moved uneasily in his chair and swallowed with
difficulty. “John,” he managed to say after an effort, “if you talk to me
like that, I shall go at once. Tell me what it is you want me to do for
you.”

“I want you to take care of my wife and of my child, if there be one born
to me after my death.”

“Your wife?” repeated Larry, in staring surprise.

“You did not know I was married? I knew it at the time, as the boy said,”
and John Manning smiled bitterly.

“Where is she?” was Larry’s second query.

“Here.”

“Here?”

“In this house. You shall see her before you go. And after the funeral
I want you to get her away from here with what speed you can. Sell this
house for what it will bring, and put the money into government bonds.
You may find it hard to persuade her to move, for she seems to have a
strange liking for this place. She breathes freely in the deadly air that
suffocates me. But you must not let her remain here; this is no place for
her now that a new life and new duties are before her.”

“How was it I did not know of your marriage?” asked Larry.

“I knew nothing about it myself twenty-four hours before it happened,”
answered John Manning. “You need not look surprised. It is a simple story.
I had this shot through the breast at Gettysburg last Fourth of July. I
lay on the hillside a day and a night before relief came. Then a farmer
took me into his house. A military surgeon dressed my wounds, but I owed
my life to the nursing and care and unceasing attention of a young lady
who was staying with the farmer’s daughter. She had been doing her duty
as a nurse as near to the field as she could go ever since the first Bull
Run. She saved my life, and I gave it to her--what there was of it. She
was a beautiful woman, indeed I never saw a more beautiful--and she has a
strange likeness to--but that you shall see for yourself when you see her.
She is getting a little rest now, for she has been up all night attending
to me. She _will_ wait on me in spite of all I say; of course I know there
is no use wasting effort on me now. She is the most devoted nurse in the
world; and we shall part as we met--she taking care of me at the last as
she did at the first. Would God our relation had never been other than
patient and nurse! It would have been better for both had we never been
husband and wife!” And John Manning turned his face to the wall with a
weary sigh; then he coughed harshly, and raised his hand to his breast as
though to stifle the burning within him.

“It seems to me, John, that you ought not to talk like that of the woman
you loved,” said Laurence Laughton, with unusual seriousness.

“I never loved her,” answered Manning, coldly. Then he turned, and asked
hastily, “Do you think I should want to die if I loved her?”

“But she loves you,” said Laurence.

“She never loved me!” was Manning’s impatient retort.

“Then why were you married?”

“That’s what I would like to know. It was fate, I suppose. What is to be,
is. I never used to believe in predestination, but I know that of my own
free will I could never have done what I did.”

“I confess I do not understand you,” said Larry.

“I do not understand myself. There is so much in this world that is
mysterious--I hope the next will be different. I was under the charm, I
fancy, when I married her. She is a beautiful woman, as I told you, and I
was a man, and I was weak, and I had hope. Why she married me that early
September evening I do not know. It was not long before we both found out
our mistake. And it was too late then. We were man and wife. Don’t suppose
I blame her--I do not. I have no cause of complaint. She is a good wife
to me, as I have tried to be a good husband to her. We made a mistake in
marrying each other, and we know it--that’s all!”

Before Laurence Laughton could answer, the door opened gently and Mrs.
Manning entered the room. Laurence rose to greet his friend’s wife, but
the act was none the less a homage to her resplendent beauty. In spite
of the worn look of her face, she was the most beautiful woman he had
ever seen. She had tawny, tigress hair, and hungry, tigress eyes. The
eyes, indeed, were fathomless and indescribable, and their fitful glance
had something uncanny about it. The hair was nearly of the true Venetian
color, and she had the true Venetian sumptuousness of appearance, simple
as was her attire. She seemed as though she had just risen from the
couch whereon she reclined before Titian or Tintoretto, and, having
clothed herself, had walked forth in this nineteenth century and these
United States. She was a strange and striking figure, and Laurence found
it impossible to analyze exactly the curious and weird impression she
produced on him. Her voice, as she greeted him, gave him a peculiar
thrill; and when he shook hands with her he seemed to feel himself face
to face with some strange being from another land and another century.
She inspired him with a supernatural awe he was not wont to feel in the
presence of woman. He had a dim consciousness that there lingered in his
memory the glimmering image of some woman seen somewhere, he knew not
when, who was like unto the woman before him.

As she took her seat by the side of the bed she gave Laurence Laughton a
look that seemed to peer into his soul. Laurence felt himself quiver under
it. It was a look to make a man fearful. Then John Manning, who had moved
uneasily as his wife entered, said, “Laurence, can you see any resemblance
in my wife to any one you ever saw before?”

Their eyes met again, and again Laurence had a vague remembrance as though
he and she had stood face to face before in some earlier existence. Then
his wandering recollections took shape, and he remembered the face and the
form and the haunting mystery of the expression, and he felt for a moment
as though he had been permitted to peer into the cabalistic darkness
of an awful mystery, though he failed wholly to perceive its occult
significance--if significance there were of any sort.

“I think I do remember,” he said at last. “It was in Venice--at the Church
of Santa Maria Magdalena--the picture there that”--

“You remember aright!” interrupted John Manning. “My wife is the living
image of the Venetian woman for whose beauty Marco Manin was one day
stabbed in the back with a glass stiletto, and Giovanni Manin fled from
the place of his birth and never saw it again. It is idle to fight against
the stars in their courses. We met here in the New World, she and I, as
they met in the Old World so long ago--and the end is the same. It was to
be--it was to be!”

Laurence Laughton gave a swift glance at his friend’s wife to see what
effect these words might have on her, and he was startled to detect on her
face the same enigmatic smile which was the chief memory he had retained
of the Venetian picture. Truly the likeness between the painting and the
wife of his friend was marvellous; and Laurence tried to shake off a
morbid wonder whether there might be any obscure and inscrutable survival
from one generation to another across the seas and across the years.

“If you remember the picture,” said John Manning, “perhaps you remember
the quaint goblet of Venetian glass I bought the same day?”

“Of course I do,” said Larry, glad to get Manning started on a topic of
talk a little less personal.

“Perhaps you know what has become of it?” asked Manning.

“I can answer ‘of course’ to that, too,” replied Larry, “because I have it
here.”

“Here?”

“Here--in a little square box, in the hall,” answered Larry. “I had it
in my trunk, you know, when we took passage on the _Vanderbilt_ at Havre
that May morning. I forgot to give it to you in the hurry of landing, and
I haven’t had a chance since. This is the first time I have seen you for
nearly three years. I found the box this morning, and I thought you might
like to have it again, so I brought it up.”

John Manning rang the bell at the head of his bed. The black crone
answered it, and soon returned with the little square box. Manning
impatiently broke the seals and cords that bound its cover and began
eagerly to release the goblet from the cotton and tissue paper in which
it had been carefully swathed and bandaged. Mrs. Manning, though her
moods were subtler and more intense, showed an anxiety to see the goblet
quite as feverish as her husband’s. In a minute the last wrapping was
twisted off and the full beauty of the Venetian glass was revealed to
them. Assuredly no praise was too loud for its delicate and exquisite
workmanship.

“Does Mrs. Manning know the story of the goblet?” asked Larry; “has she
been told of the peculiar virtue ascribed to it?”

“She has too great a fondness for the horrible and the fantastic not to
have heard the story in its smallest details,” said Manning.

Mrs. Manning had taken the glass in her fine, thin hands. Evidently it
and its mystic legend had a morbid fascination for her. A strange light
gleamed in her wondrous eyes, and Laughton was startled again to see the
extraordinary resemblance between her and the picture they had looked at
on the day the goblet had been bought.

“When the poison was poured into it,” she said at last, with quick and
restless glances at the two men, “the glass broke--then the tale was
true?”

“It was a coincidence only, I’m afraid,” said her husband, who had rallied
and regained strength under the unwonted excitement.

Just then the old-fashioned clock on the stairs struck five. Mrs. Manning
started up, holding the goblet in her hand.

“It is time for your medicine,” she said.

“As you please,” answered her husband wearily, sinking back on his pillow.
“My wife insists on giving me every drop of my potions with her own hands.
I shall not trouble her much longer, and I doubt if it is any use for her
to trouble me now.”

“I shall give you everything in this glass after this,” she said.

“In the Venetian glass?” asked Larry.

“Yes,” she said, turning on him fiercely; “why not?”

“Do you think the doctor is trying to poison me?” asked her husband.

“No, I do not think the doctor is trying to poison you,” she repeated
mechanically, as she moved toward a little sideboard in a corner of the
room. “But I shall give you all your medicines in this hereafter.”

She stood at the little sideboard, with her back toward them, and she
mingled the contents of various phials in the Venetian goblet. Then she
turned to cross the room to her husband. As she walked with the glass
in her hand there was a rift in the clouds high over the other side of
the river, and the rays of the setting sun thrust themselves through the
window and lighted up the glory of her hair and showed the strange gleam
in her staring eyes. Another step, and the red rays fell on the Venetian
glass, and it burned and glowed, and the green serpents twined about its
ruby stem seemed to twist and crawl with malignant life, while their
scorching eyes shot fire. Another step, and she stood by the bedside. As
John Manning reached out his hand for the goblet, a tremor passed through
her, her fingers clinched the fragile stem, and the glass fell on the
floor and was shattered to shivers as its fellow had been shattered three
centuries ago and more. She still stared steadily before her; then her
lips parted, and she said, “The glass broke--the glass broke--then the
tale is true!” And with one hysteric shriek she fell forward amid the
fragments of the Venetian goblet, unconscious thereafter of all things.




THE RED SILK HANDKERCHIEF.

BY H. C. BUNNER.


The yellow afternoon sun came in through the long blank windows of the
room wherein the Superior Court of the State of New York, Part II.,
Gillespie, Judge, was in session. The hour of adjournment was near at
hand, a dozen court-loungers slouched on the hard benches in the attitudes
of cramped carelessness which mark the familiar of the halls of justice.
Beyond the rail sat a dozen lawyers and lawyers’ clerks, and a dozen weary
jurymen. Above the drowsy silence rose the nasal voice of the junior
counsel for the defence, who in a high monotone, with his faint eyes fixed
on the paper in his hand, was making something like a half-a-score of
“requests to charge.”

Nobody paid attention to him. Two lawyers’ clerks whispered like
mischievous schoolboys, hiding behind a pile of books that towered upon
a table. Junior counsel for the plaintiff chewed his pencil and took
advantage of his opportunity to familiarize himself with certain neglected
passages of the New Code. The crier, like a half-dormant old spider, sat
in his place and watched a boy who was fidget ting at the far end of the
room, and who looked as though he wanted to whistle.

The jurymen might have been dream-men, vague creations of an autumn
afternoon’s doze. It was hard to connect them with a world of life and
business. Yet, gazing closer, you might have seen that one looked as if
he were thinking of his dinner, and another as if he were thinking of the
lost love of his youth; and that the expression on the faces of the others
ranged from the vacant to the inscrutable. The oldest juror, at the end
of the second row, was sound asleep. Everyone in the court-room, except
himself, knew it. No one cared.

Gillespie, J., was writing his acceptance of an invitation to a dinner set
for that evening at Delmonico’s. He was doing this in such a way that he
appeared to be taking copious and conscientious notes. Long years on the
bench had whitened Judge Gillespie’s hair, and taught him how to do this.
His seeming attentiveness much encouraged the counsel for the defence,
whose high-pitched tone rasped the air like the buzzing of a bee that has
found its way through the slats of the blind into some darkened room, of a
summer noon, and that, as it seeks angrily for egress, raises its shrill
scandalized protest against the idleness and the pleasant gloom.

“We r’quest y’r Honor t’ charge: First, ’t forcible entry does not
const’oot tresp’ss, ’nless intent’s proved. Thus, ’f a man rolls down a
bank”--

But the judge’s thoughts were in the private supper-room at Delmonico’s.
He had no interest in the sad fate of the hero of the suppositious case,
who had been obliged, by a strange and ingenious combination of accidents,
to make violent entrance, incidentally damaging the persons and property
of others, into the lands and tenements of his neighbor.

And further away yet the droning lawyer had set a-travelling the thoughts
of Horace Walpole, clerk for Messrs. Weeden, Snowden & Gilfeather; for the
young man sat with his elbows on the table, his head in his hands, a sad
half-smile on his lips, and his brown eyes looking through vacancy to St.
Lawrence County, New York.

He saw a great, shabby old house, shabby with the awful shabbiness of a
sham grandeur laid bare by time and mocked of the pitiless weather. There
was a great sham Grecian portico at one end; the white paint was well-nigh
washed away, and the rain-streaked wooden pillars seemed to be weeping
tears of penitence for having lied about themselves and pretended to be
marble.

The battened walls were cracked and blistered. The Grecian temple on the
hillock near looked much like a tomb, and not at all like a summer-house.
The flower-garden was so rank and ragged, so overgrown with weed and vine,
that it was spared the mortification of revealing its neglected maze, the
wonder of the county in 1820. All was sham, save the decay. That was real;
and by virtue of its decrepitude the old house seemed to protest against
modern contempt, as though it said: “I have had my day. I was built when
people thought this sort of thing was the right sort of thing; when we had
our own little pseudo-classic renaissance in America. I lie between the
towns of Aristotle and Sabine Farms. I am a gentleman’s residence, and
my name is Montevista. I was built by a prominent citizen. You need not
laugh through your lattices, you smug new Queen Anne cottage, down there
in the valley! What will become of you when the falsehood is found out of
your imitation bricks and your tiled roof of shingles, and your stained
glass that is only a sheet of transparent paper pasted on a pane? You are
a young sham; I am an old one. Have some respect for age!”

Its age was the crowning glory of the estate of Montevista. There was
nothing new on the place except a third mortgage. Yet had Montevista villa
put forth a juster claim to respect, it would have said: “I have had
my day. Where all is desolate and silent now, there was once light and
life. Along these halls and corridors, the arteries of my being, pulsed
a hot blood of joyous humanity, fed with delicate fare, kindled with
generous wine. Every corner under my roof was alive with love and hope
and ambition. Great men and dear women were here; and the host was great
and the hostess was gracious among them all. The laughter of children
thrilled my gaudily decked stucco. To-day an old man walks up and down my
lonely drawing-rooms, with bent head, murmuring to himself odds and ends
of tawdry old eloquence, wandering in a dead land of memory, waiting till
Death shall take him by the hand and lead him out of his ruinous house,
out of his ruinous life.”

Death had indeed come between Horace and the creation of his spiritual
vision. Never again should the old man walk, as to the boy’s eyes he
walked now, over the creaking floors, from where the Nine Muses simpered
on the walls of the south parlor to where Homer and Plutarch, equally
simpering, yet simpering with a difference,--severely simpering,--faced
each other across the north room. Horace saw his father stalking on his
accustomed round, a sad, familiar figure, tall and bent. The hands were
clasped behind the back, the chin was bowed on the black stock; but every
now and then the thin form drew itself straight, the fine, clean-shaven,
aquiline face was raised, beaming with the ghost of an old enthusiasm, and
the long right arm was lifted high in the air as he began, his sonorous
tones a little tremulous in spite of the restraint of old-time pomposity
and deliberation,--

“Mr. Speaker, I rise;”--or, “If your Honor please”--

The forlorn, helpless earnestness of this mockery of life touched Horace’s
heart; and yet he smiled to think how different were the methods and
manners of his father from those of brother Hooper, whose requests still
droned up to the reverberating hollows of the roof, and there were lost in
a subdued boom and snarl of echoes such as a court-room only can beget.

Two generations ago, when the Honorable Horace Kortlandt Walpole was the
rising young lawyer of the State; when he was known as “the Golden-Mouthed
Orator of St. Lawrence County,” he was in the habit of assuming that he
owned whatever court he practised in; and, as a rule, he was right. The
most bullock-brained of country judges deferred to the brilliant young
master of law and eloquence, and his “requests” were generally accepted
as commands and obeyed as such. Of course the great lawyer, for form’s
sake, threw a veil of humility over his deliverances; but even that he
rent to shreds when the fire of his eloquence once got fairly aglow.

“May it please your Honor! Before your Honor exercises the sacred
prerogative of your office--before your Honor performs the sacred duty
which the State has given into your hands--before, with that lucid
genius to which I bow my head, you direct the minds of these twelve good
men and true in the path of strict judicial investigation, I ask your
Honor to instruct them that they must bring to their deliberations that
impartial justice which the laws of our beloved country--of which no abler
exponent than your Honor has ever graced the bench,--which the laws of
our beloved country guarantee to the lowest as well as to the loftiest of
her citizens--from the President in the Executive Mansion to the humble
artisan at the forge--throughout this broad land, from the lagoons of
Louisiana to where the snow-clad forests of Maine hurl defiance at the
descendants of Tory refugees in the barren wastes of Nova Scotia”--

Horace remembered every word and every gesture of that speech. He recalled
even the quick upward glance from under the shaggy eyebrows with which
his father seemed to see again the smirking judge catching at the gross
bait of flattery; he knew the little pause which the speaker’s memory
had filled with the applause of an audience long since dispersed to
various silent country graveyards; and he wondered, pityingly, if it
were possible that even in his father’s prime that wretched allusion to
old political hatreds had power to stir the fire of patriotism in the
citizen’s bosom.

“Poor old father!” said the boy to himself. The voice which had for so
many years been but an echo was stilled wholly now. Brief victory and long
defeat were nothing now to the golden-mouthed orator.

“Shall I fail as he failed?” thought Horace: “No! I can’t. Haven’t I got
_her_ to work for?”

And then he drew out of his breast pocket a red silk handkerchief and
turned it over in his hand with a movement that concealed and caressed at
the same time.

It was a very red handkerchief. It was not vermilion, nor “cardinal,” nor
carmine,--a strange Oriental idealization of blood-red which lay well on
the soft, fine, luxurious fabric. But it was an unmistakable, a shameless,
a barbaric red.

And as he looked at it, young Hitchcock, of Hitchcock & Van Rensselaer,
came up behind him and leaned over his shoulder.

“Where did you get the handkerchief, Walpole?” he whispered; “you ought to
hang that out for an auction flag, and sell out your cases.”

Horace stuffed it back in his pocket.

“You’d be glad enough to buy some of them, if you got the show,” he
returned; but the opportunity for a prolonged contest of wit was cut
short. The judge was folding his letter, and the nasal counsel, having
finished his reading, stood gazing in doubt and trepidation at the
bench, and asking himself why his Honor had not passed on each point as
presented. He found out.

“Are you prepared to submit those requests in writing?” demanded
Gillespie, J., sharply and suddenly. He knew well enough that that poor
little nasal, nervous junior counsel would never have trusted himself to
speak ten consecutive sentences in court without having every word on
paper before him.

“Ye-yes,” the counsel stammered, and handed up his careful manuscript.

“I will examine these to-night,” said his Honor, and, apparently, he made
an endorsement on the papers. He was really writing the address on the
envelope of his letter. Then there was a stir, and a conversation between
the judge and two or three lawyers, all at once, which was stopped when
his Honor gave an Olympian nod to the clerk.

The crier arose.

“He’ ye! he’ ye! he’ ye!” he shouted with perfunctory vigor.
“Wah--wah--wah!” the high ceiling slapped back at him; and he declaimed,
on one note, a brief address to “Awperns han bins” in that court, of which
nothing was comprehensible save the words “Monday next at eleven o’clock.”
And then the court collectively rose, and individually put on hats for the
most part of the sort called queer.

All the people were chattering in low voices; chairs were moved noisily,
and the slumbering juror opened his weary eyes and troubled himself with
an uncalled-for effort to look as though he had been awake all the time
and didn’t like the way things were going, at all. Horace got from the
clerk the papers for which he had been waiting, and was passing out, when
his Honor saw him and hailed him with an expressive grunt.

Gillespie, J., looked over his spectacles at Horace.

“Shall you see Judge Weeden at the office? Yes? Will you have the kindness
to give him this--yes? If it’s no trouble to you, of course.”

Gillespie, J., was not over-careful of the feelings of lawyers’ clerks, as
a rule; but he had that decent disinclination to act _ultra præscriptum_
which marks the attitude of the well-bred man toward his inferiors
in office. He knew that he had no business to use Weeden, Snowden &
Gilfeather’s clerk as a messenger in his private correspondence.

Horace understood him, took the letter, and allowed himself a quiet smile
when he reached the crowded corridor.

What mattered, he thought, as his brisk feet clattered down the wide
stairs of the rotunda, the petty insolence of office _now_? He was
Gillespie’s messenger to-day; but had not his young powers already
received recognition from a greater than Gillespie? If Judge Gillespie
lived long enough he should put his gouty old legs under Judge Walpole’s
mahogany, and prose over his port--yes, he should have port, like
the relic of mellow old days that he was--of the times “when your
father-in-law and I, Walpole, were boys together.”

Ah, there you have the spell of the Red Silk Handkerchief!

It was a wonderful tale to Horace; for he saw it in that wonderful light
which shall shine on no man of us more than once in his life--on some of
us not at all, Heaven help us!--but, in the telling, it is a simple tale:

“The Golden-Mouthed Orator of St. Lawrence” was at the height of his
fame in that period of storm and stress which had the civil war for its
climax. His misfortune was to be drawn into a contest for which he was not
equipped, and in which he had little interest. His sphere of action was
far from the battle-ground of the day. The intense localism that bounded
his knowledge and his sympathies had but one break--he had tasted in his
youth the extravagant hospitality of the South, and he held it in grateful
remembrance. So it happened that he was a trimmer,--a moderationist he
called himself,--a man who dealt in optimistic generalities, and who
thought that if everybody--the slaves included--would only act temperately
and reasonably, and view the matter from the standpoint of pure policy,
the differences of South and North could be settled as easily as, through
his own wise intervention, the old turnip-field feud of Farmer Oliver and
Farmer Bunker had been wiped out of existence.

His admirers agreed with him, and they sent him to Congress to fill
the unexpired short term of their representative, who had just died in
Washington of what we now know as a malarial fever. It was not to be
expected, perhaps, that the Honorable Mr. Walpole would succeed in putting
a new face on the great political question in the course of his first
term; but they all felt sure that his first speech would startle men who
had never heard better than what Daniel Webster had had to offer them.

But the gods were against the Honorable Mr. Walpole. On the day set
for his great effort there was what the theatrical people call a
counter-attraction. Majah Pike had come up from Mizourah, sah, to cane
that demn’d Yankee hound, Chahles Sumnah, sah,--yes, sah, to thrash
him like a dawg, begad! And all Washington had turned out to see the
performance, which was set down for a certain hour, in front of Mr.
Sumner’s door.

There was just a quorum when the golden-mouthed member began his great
speech,--an inattentive, chattering crowd, that paid no attention to his
rolling rhetoric and rococo grandiloquence. He told the empty seats what
a great country this was, and how beautiful was a middle policy, and he
illustrated this with a quotation from Homer, in the original Greek (a
neat novelty: Latin was fashionable for parliamentary use in Webster’s
time), with, for the benefit of the uneducated, the well-known translation
by the great Alexander Pope, commencing:

    “To calm their passions with the words of Age,
    Slow from his seat arose the Pylian sage,
    Experienced Nestor, in Persuasion skilled,
    Words sweet as honey from his lips distilled”--

When Nestor and Mr. Walpole closed, there was no quorum. The member from
New Jersey, who had engaged him in debate, was sleeping the sleep of
honorable intoxication in his seat. Outside, all Washington was laughing
and cursing. Majah Pike had not appeared.

It was the end of the golden-mouthed orator. His voice was never heard
again in the House. His one speech was noticed only to be laughed at, and
the news went home to his constituents. They showed that magnanimity which
the poets tell us is an attribute of the bucolic character. They, so to
speak, turned over the pieces of their broken idol with their cow-hide
boots, and remarked that they had known it was clay, all along, and dern
poor clay at that.

So the golden-mouthed went home, to try to make a ruined practice repair
his ruined fortune; to give mortgages on his home to pay the debts his
hospitality had incurred; to discuss with a few feeble old friends ways
and means by which the war might have been averted; to beget a son of his
old age, and to see the boy grow up in a new generation, with new ideas,
new hopes, new ambitions, and a lifetime before him to make memories in.

They had little enough in common, but they came to be great friends as the
boy grew older, for Horace, inherited all his traits from the old man,
except a certain stern energy which came from his silent, strong-hearted
mother, and which his father saw with a sad joy.

Mr. Walpole sent his son to New York to study law in the office of Messrs.
Weeden, Snowden & Gilfeather, who were a pushing young firm in 1850.
Horace found it a very quiet and conservative old concern. Snowden and
Gilfeather were dead; Weeden had been on the bench and had gone off the
bench at the call of a “lucrative practice;” there were two new partners,
whose names appeared only on the glass of the office door and in a corner
of the letter-heads.

Horace read his law to some purpose. He became the managing clerk of
Messrs. Weeden, Snowden & Gilfeather. This particular managing clerkship
was one of unusual dignity and prospective profit. It meant, as it always
does, great responsibility, little honor, and less pay. But the firm was
so peculiarly constituted that the place was a fine stepping-stone for
a bright and ambitious boy. One of the new partners was a business man,
who had put his money into the concern in 1860, and who knew and cared
nothing about law. He kept the books and managed the money, and was beyond
that only a name on the door and a terror to the office-boys. The other
new partner was a young man who made a specialty of collecting debts.
He could wring gold out of the stoniest and barrenest debtor; and there
his usefulness ended. The general practice of the firm rested on the
shoulders of Judge Weeden, who was old, lazy, and luxury-loving, and who,
to tell the honest truth, shirked his duties. Such a state of affairs
would have wrecked a younger house; but Weeden, Snowden & Gilfeather had a
great name, and the consequences of his negligent feebleness had not yet
descended upon Judge Weeden’s head.

That they would, in a few years, that the Judge knew it, and that he was
quite ready to lean on a strong young arm, Horace saw clearly.

That his own arm was growing in strength he also saw; and the Judge knew
that, too. He was Judge Weeden’s pet. All in the office recognized the
fact. All, after reflection, concluded that it was a good thing that he
was. New blood had to come into the firm sooner or later, and although it
was not possible to watch the successful rise of this boy without a little
natural envy and heart-burning, yet it was to be considered that Horace
was one who would be honorable, just, and generous wherever fortune put
him.

Horace was a gentleman. They all knew it. Barnes and Haskins, the business
man and the champion collector, knew it down in the shallows of their
vulgar little souls. Judge Weeden, who had some of that mysterious ichor
of gentlehood in his wine-fed veins, knew it and rejoiced in it. And
Horace--I can say for Horace that he never forgot it.

He was such a young prince of managing clerks that no one was surprised
when he was sent down to Sand Hills, Long Island, to make preparations for
the reorganization of the Great Breeze Hotel Company, and the transfer of
the property known as the Breeze Hotel and Park to its new owners. The
Breeze Hotel was a huge “Queen Anne” vagary which had, after the fashion
of hotels, bankrupted its first owners, and was now going into the hands
of new people, who were likely to make their fortunes out of it. The
property had been in litigation for a year or so; the mechanics’ liens
were numerous, and the mechanics clamorous; and although the business was
not particularly complicated, it needed careful and patient adjustment.
Horace knew the case in every detail. He had drudged over it all the
winter, with no especial hope of personal advantage, but simply because
that was his way of working. He went down in June to the mighty barracks,
and lived for a week in what would have been an atmosphere of paint and
carpet-dye had it not been for the broad sea wind that blew through the
five hundred open windows, and swept rooms and corridors with salty
freshness. The summering folk had not arrived yet; there were only the
new manager and his six score of raw recruits of clerks and servants. But
Horace felt the warm blood coming back to his cheeks, that the town had
somewhat paled, and he was quite content; and every day he went down to
the long, lonely beach, and had a solitary swim, although the sharp water
whipped his white skin to a biting red. The sea takes a long while to warm
up to the summer, and is sullen about it.

He was to have returned to New York at the end of the week, and Haskins
was to have taken his place; but it soon became evident to Weeden, Snowden
& Gilfeather that the young man would attend to all that was to be done at
Sand Hills quite as well as Mr. Haskins, or--quite as well as Judge Weeden
himself, for that matter. He had to shoulder no great responsibility; the
work was mostly of a purely clerical nature, vexatious enough, but simple.
It had to be done on the spot, however; the original Breeze Hotel and Park
Company was composed of Sand Hillers, and the builders were Sand Hillers,
too, the better part of them. And there were titles to be searched;
for the whole scheme was an ambitious splurge of Sand Hills pride and
it had been undertaken and carried out in a reckless and foolish way.
Horace knew all the wretched little details of the case, and so Horace
was entrusted with duties such as do not often devolve upon a man of his
years; and he took up his burden proudly, and with a glowing consciousness
of his own strength.

Judge Weeden missed his active and intelligent obedience in the daily
routine of office business; but the Judge thought it was just as well that
Horace should not know that fact. The young man’s time would come soon
enough, and he would be none the worse for serving his apprenticeship in
modesty and humility. The work entrusted to him was an honor in itself.
And then, there was no reason why poor Walpole’s boy shouldn’t have a sort
of half-holiday out in the country, and enjoy his youth.

He was not recalled. The week stretched out. He worked hard, found time to
play, hugged his quickened ambitions to his breast, wrote hopeful letters
to the mother at Montevista, made a luxury of his loneliness, and felt a
bashful resentment when the “guests” of the hotel began to pour in from
the outside world.

For a day or two he fought shy of them. But these first comers were
lonely too, and not so much in love with loneliness as he thought he
was, and very soon he became one of them. He had found out all the walks
and drives; he knew the times of the tides; he had made friends with the
fishermen for a league up and down the coast, and he had amassed a store
of valuable hints as to where the first blue-fish might be expected to
run. Altogether he was a very desirable companion. Besides, that bright,
fresh face of his, and a certain look in it, made you friends with him at
once, especially if you happened to be a little older, and to remember a
look of the sort, lost, lost forever, in a boy’s looking-glass.

So he was sought out, and he let himself be found, and the gregarious
instinct in him waxed delightfully.

And then It came. Perhaps I should say She came; but it is not the woman
we love; it is our dream of her. Sweet and tender, fair and good, she may
be; but let it be honor enough for her that she has that glory about her
face which our love kindles to the halo that lights many a man’s life to
the grave, though the face beneath it be dead or false.

I will not admit that it was only a pretty girl from Philadelphia who came
to Sand Hills that first week in July. It was the rosy goddess herself,
dove-drawn across the sea, in the warm path of the morning sun--although
the tremulous, old-fashioned handwriting on the hotel register only showed
that the early train had brought--

    “_Samuel Rittenhouse,     Philadelphia.
      Miss Rittenhouse,           do._”

It was the Honorable Samuel Rittenhouse, ex-Chief-Justice of Pennsylvania,
the honored head of the Pennsylvania bar, and the legal representative of
the Philadelphia contingent of the new Breeze Hotel and Park Company.

In the evening Horace called upon him in his rooms with a cumbersome stack
of papers, and patiently waded through explanations and repetitions
until Mr. Rittenhouse’s testy courtesy--he had the nervous manner of
age apprehensive of youthful irreverence--melted into a complacent and
fatherly geniality. Then, when the long task was done and his young guest
arose, he picked up the card that lay on the table and trained his glasses
on it.

“‘H. K. Walpole?’” he said: “are you a New Yorker, sir?”

“From the north of the State,” Horace told him.

“Indeed, indeed. Why, let me see--you must be the son of my old friend
Walpole--of Otsego--wasn’t it?” said the old gentleman, still tentatively.

“St. Lawrence, sir.”

“Yes, St. Lawrence--of course, of course. Why, I knew your father well,
years ago, sir. We were at college together.”

“At Columbia?”

“Yes--yes. Why, bless me,” Judge Rittenhouse went on, getting up to look
at Horace: “you’re the image of your poor father at your age. A very
brilliant man, sir, a very able man. I did not see much of him after we
left college--I was a Pennsylvanian, and he was from this State--but I
have always remembered your father with respect and regard, sir,--a very
able man. I think I heard of his death some years ago.”

“Three years ago,” said Horace. His voice fell somewhat. How little to
this old man of success was the poor, unnoticed death of failure!

“Three years only!” repeated the judge, half apologetically; “ah, people
slip away from each other in this world--slip away. But I’m glad to have
met you, sir--very much pleased indeed. Rosamond!”

For an hour the subdued creaking of a rocking-chair by the window had
been playing a monotonously pleasant melody in Horace’s ears. Now and
then a coy wisp of bright hair, or the reflected ghost of it, had flashed
into view in the extreme lower left-hand corner of a mirror opposite him.
Once he had seen a bit of white brow under it, and from time to time the
low flutter of turning magazine leaves had put in a brief second to the
rocking-chair.

All this time Horace’s brains had been among the papers on the table;
but something else within him had been swaying to and fro with the
rocking-chair, and giving a leap when the wisp of hair bobbed into sight.

Now the rocking-chair accompaniment ceased, and the curtained corner by
the window yielded up its treasure, and Miss Rittenhouse came forward,
with one hand brushing the wisp of hair back into place, as if she were on
easy and familiar terms with it. Horace envied it.

“Rosamond,” said the judge: “This is Mr. Walpole, the son of my old friend
Walpole. You have heard me speak of Mr. Walpole’s father.”

“Yes, papa,” said the young lady, all but the corners of her mouth. And,
oddly enough, Horace did not think of being saddened because this young
woman had never heard of his father. Life was going on a new key, all of a
sudden, with a hint of a melody to be unfolded that ran in very different
cadences from the poor old tune of memory.

My heroine, over whose head some twenty summers had passed, was now in the
luxuriant prime of her youthful beauty. Over a brow whiter than the driven
snow fell clustering ringlets, whose hue--

That is the way the good old novelists and story-tellers of the Neville
and Beverley days would have set out to describe Miss Rittenhouse, had
they known her. Fools and blind! As if anyone could describe--as if a
poet, even, could more than hint at what a man sees in a woman’s face
when, seeing, he loves.

For a few moments the talkers were constrained, and the talk was meagre
and desultory. Then the Judge, who had been rummaging around among the
dust-heaps of his memory, suddenly recalled the fact that he had once,
in stage-coach days, passed a night at Montevista, and had been most
hospitably treated. He dragged this fact forth, professed a lively
remembrance of Mrs. Walpole,--“a fine woman, sir, your mother; a woman of
many charms,”--asked after her present health; and then, satisfied that he
had acquitted himself of his whole duty, withdrew into the distant depths
of his own soul and fumbled over the papers Horace had brought him, trying
to familiarize himself with them, as a commander might try to learn the
faces of his soldiers.

Then the two young people proceeded to find the key together, and began
a most harmonious duet. Sand Hills was the theme. Thus it was that they
had to go out on the balcony, where Miss Rittenhouse might gaze into the
brooding darkness over the sea, and watch it wink a slow yellow eye with
a humorous alternation of sudden and brief red. Thus, also, Horace had to
explain how the lighthouse was constructed. This moved Miss Rittenhouse
to scientific research. She must see how it was done. Mr. Walpole would
be delighted to show her. Papa was so much interested in those mechanical
matters. Mr. Walpole had a team and light wagon at his disposal, and
would very much like to drive Miss Rittenhouse and her father over to the
lighthouse. Miss Rittenhouse communicated this kind offer to her father.
Her father saw what was expected of him, and dutifully acquiesced, like
an obedient American father. Miss Rittenhouse had managed the Rittenhouse
household and the head of the house of Rittenhouse ever since her mother’s
death.

Mr. Walpole really had a team at his disposal. He came from a country
where people do not chase foxes, nor substitutes for foxes; but where they
know and revere a good trotter. He had speeded many a friend’s horse in
training for the county fair. When he came to Sand Hills his soundness in
the equine branch of a gentleman’s education had attracted the attention
of a horsey Sand-Hiller, who owned a showy team with a record of 2.37.
This team was not to be trusted to the ordinary summer boarder on any
terms; but the Sand-Hiller was thrifty and appreciative, and he lured
Horace into hiring the turnout at a trifling rate, and thus captured every
cent the boy had to spare, and got his horses judiciously exercised.

There was a showy light wagon to match the team, and the next day the
light wagon, with Horace and the Rittenhouses in it, passed every carriage
on the road to the lighthouse, where Miss Rittenhouse satisfied her
scientific spirit with one glance at the lantern, after giving which
glance she went outside and sat in the shade of the white tower with
Horace, while the keeper showed the machinery to the Judge. Perhaps she
went to the Judge afterward, and got him to explain it all to her.

Thus it began, and for two golden weeks thus it went on. The reorganized
Breeze Hotel and Park Company met in business session on its own property,
and Horace acted as a sort of honorary clerk to Judge Rittenhouse. The
company, as a company, talked over work for a couple of hours each day.
As a congregation of individuals, it ate and drank and smoked and played
billiards and fished and slept the rest of the two dozen. Horace had
his time pretty much to himself, or rather to Miss Rittenhouse, who
monopolized it. He drove her to the village to match embroidery stuffs.
He danced with her in the evenings when two stolidly soulful Germans,
one with a fiddle and the other with a piano, made the vast dining-room
ring and hum with Suppé and Waldteufel,--and this was to the great
and permanent improvement of his waltzing. She taught him how to play
lawn-tennis--he was an old-fashioned boy from the backwoods, and he
thought that croquet was still in existence, so she had to teach him to
play lawn-tennis--until he learned to play much better than she could. On
the other hand, he was a fresh-water swimmer of rare wind and wiriness,
and a young sea-god in the salt, as soon as he got used to its pungent
strength. So he taught her to strike out beyond the surf-line, with broad,
breath-long sweeps, and there to float and dive and make friends with the
ocean. Even he taught her to fold her white arms behind her back, and swim
with her feet. As he glanced over his shoulder to watch her following
him, and to note the timorous, admiring crowd on the shore, she seemed a
sea-bred Venus of Milo in blue serge.

I have known men to be bored by such matters. They made Horace happy. He
was happiest, perhaps, when he found out that she was studying Latin.
All the girls in Philadelphia were studying Latin that summer. They had
had a little school Latin, of course; but now their aims were loftier.
Miss Rittenhouse had brought with her a Harkness’s Virgil, an Anthon’s
dictionary, an old Bullion & Morris, and--yes, when Horace asked her, she
had brought an Interlinear; but she didn’t mean to use it. They rowed out
to the buoy, and put the Interlinear in the sea. They sat on the sands
after the daily swim, and enthusiastically labored, with many an unclassic
excursus, over P. V. Maronis Opera. Horace borrowed some books of a small
boy in the hotel, and got up at five o’clock in the morning to run a
couple of hundred lines or so ahead of his pupil, “getting out” a stint
that would have made him lead a revolt had any teacher imposed it upon his
class a few years before--for he was fresh enough from schooling to have a
little left of the little Latin that colleges give.

He wondered how it was that he had never seen the poetry of the lines
before. _Forsan et hæc olim meminisse juvabit_--for perchance it will joy
us hereafter to remember these things! He saw the wet and weary sailors
on the shore, hungrily eating, breathing hard after their exertions; he
heard the deep cheerfulness of their leader’s voice. The wind blew toward
him over the pine barrens, as fresh as ever it blew past Dido’s towers. A
whiff of briny joviality and adventurous recklessness seemed to come from
the page on his knee. And to him, also, had not She appeared who saw, hard
by the sea, that pious old buccaneer-Lothario, so much tossed about on
land and upon the deep?

This is what the moderns call a flirtation, and I do not doubt that it was
called a flirtation by the moderns around these two young people. Somehow,
though, they never got themselves “talked about,” not even by the stranded
nomads on the hotel verandas. Perhaps this was because there was such a
joyous freshness and purity about both of them that it touched the hearts
of even the slander-steeped old dragons who rocked all day in the shade,
and embroidered tidies and talked ill of their neighbors. Perhaps it was
because they also had that about them which the mean and vulgar mind
always sneers at, jeers at, affects to disbelieve in, always recognizes
and fears,--the courage and power of the finer strain. Envy in spit-curls
and jealousy in a false front held their tongues, may be, because, though
they knew that they, and even their male representatives, were safe from
any violent retort, yet they recognized the superior force, and shrunk
from it as the cur edges away from the quiescent whip.

There is a great difference, too, between the flirtations of the
grandfatherless and the flirtations of the grandfathered. I wish you
to understand that Mr. Walpole and Miss Rittenhouse did not _sprawl_
through their flirtation, nor fall into that slipshod familiarity which
takes all the delicate beauty of dignity and mutual respect out of such a
friendship. Horace did not bow to the horizontal, and Miss Rittenhouse did
not make a cheese-cake with her skirts when he held open the door for her
to pass through; but the bond of courtesy between them was no less sweetly
gracious on her side, no less finely reverential on his, than the taste
of their grandparents’ day would have exacted,--no less earnest, I think,
that it was a little easier than puff and periwig might have made it.

Yet I also think, whatever was the reason that made the dragons let them
alone, that a simple mother of the plain, old-fashioned style is better
for a girl of Miss Rosamond Rittenhouse’s age than any such precarious
immunity from annoyance.

Ah, the holiday was short! The summons soon came for Horace. They went to
the old church together for the second and last time, and he stood beside
her, and they held the hymn-book between them.

Horace could not rid himself of the idea that they had stood thus
through every Sunday of a glorious summer. The week before he had sung
with her. He had a boyish baritone in him, one of those which may be
somewhat extravagantly characterized as consisting wholly of middle
register. It was a good voice for the campus, and, combined with that
startling clearness of utterance which young collegians acquire, had
been very effective in the little church. But to-day he had no heart
to sing “Byefield” and “Pleyel”; he would rather stand beside her and
feel his heart vibrate to the deep lower notes of her tender contralto,
and his soul rise with the higher tones that soared upward from her
pure young breast. And all the while he was making that act of devotion
which--“uttered or unexpressed”--is, indeed, all the worship earth has
ever known.

Once she looked up at him as if she asked, “Why don’t you sing?” But her
eyes fell quickly, he thought with a shade of displeasure in them at
something they had seen in his. Yet as he watched her bent head, the cheek
near him warmed with a slow, soft blush. He may only have fancied that her
clear voice quivered a little with a tremolo not written in the notes at
the top of the page.

And now the last day came. When the work-a-day world thrust its rough
shoulder into Arcadia, and the hours of the idyll were numbered, they set
to talking of it as though the two weeks that they had known each other
were some sort of epitomized summer. Of course they were to meet again,
in New York or in Philadelphia; and of course there were many days of
summer in store for Miss Rittenhouse at Sand Hills, at Newport, and at
Mount Desert; but Horace’s brief season was closed, and somehow she seemed
to fall readily into his way of looking upon it as a golden period of
special and important value, their joint and exclusive property--something
set apart from all the rest of her holiday, where there would be other men
and other good times and no Horace.

It was done with much banter and merriment; but through it all Horace
listened for delicate undertones that should echo to his ear the
earnestness which sometimes rang irrepressibly in his own speech. In
that marvellous instrument, a woman’s voice, there are strange and
fine possibilities of sound that may be the messengers of the subtlest
intelligence or the sweet falterings of imperfect control. So Horace, with
love to construe for him, did not suffer too cruelly from disappointment.

On the afternoon of that last day they sat upon the beach and saw the
smoke of Dido’s funeral pile go up, and they closed the dog’s-eared
Virgil, and, looking seaward, watched the black cloud from a coaling
steamer mar the blinding blue where sea and sky blent at the horizon;
watched it grow dull and faint, and fade away, and the illumined turquoise
reassert itself.

Then he was for a farewell walk, and she, with that bright acquiescence
with which a young girl can make companionship almost perfect, if she
will, accepted it as an inspiration, and they set out. They visited
together the fishermen’s houses, where Horace bade good-bye to
mighty-fisted friends, who stuck their thumbs inside their waistbands and
hitched their trousers half way up to their blue-shirted arms, and said to
him, “You come up here in Orgust, Mr. Walpole--say ’bout the fus’ t’ the
third week ’n Orgust, ’n’ we’ll give yer some bloo-fishin’ ’t y’ won’t
need t’ lie about, neither.” They all liked him, and heartily.

Old Rufe, the gruff hermit of the fishers, who lived a half-mile beyond
the settlement, flicked his shuttle through the net he was mending, and
did not look up as Horace spoke to him.

“Goin’?” he said; “waal, we’ve all gotter go some time oruther. The’
aint no real perma-nen-cy on this uth. Goin’? Waal, I’m”--he paused,
and weighed the shuttle in his hand as though to aid him in balancing
some important mental process. “Sho! I’m derned ’f I ain’t sorry. Squall
comin’ up, an’ don’t y’ make no mistake,” he hurried on, not to be further
committed to unguarded expression; “better look sharp, or y’ ’ll git a
wettin’.”

A little puff of gray cloud, scurrying along in the south-east, had
spread over half the sky, and now came a strong, eddying wind. A big
raindrop made a dark spot on the sand before them; another fell on Miss
Rittenhouse’s cheek, and then, with a vicious, uncertain patter, the rain
began to come down.

“We’ll have to run for Poinsett’s,” said Horace, and stretched out his
hand. She took it, and they ran.

Poinsett’s was just ahead--a white house on a lift of land, close back
of the shore-line, with a long garden stretching down in front, and two
or three poplar trees. The wind was turning up the pale under-sides of
grass-blade and flower leaf, and whipping the shivering poplars silver
white. Cap’n Poinsett, late of Gloucester, Massachusetts, was tacking down
the path in his pea-jacket, with his brass telescope tucked under his
arm. He was making for the little white summer-house that overhung the
shore; but he stopped to admire the two young people dashing up the <DW72>
toward him, for the girl ran with a splendid free stride that kept her
well abreast of Horace’s athletic lope.

“Come in,” he said, opening the gate, and smiling on the two young faces,
flushed and wet; “come right in out o’ the rain. Be’n runnin’, ain’t
ye? Go right int’ the house. Mother!” he called, “here’s Mr. Walpole
’n’ his young lady. You’ll hev to ex-cuse me; I’m a-goin’ down t’ my
observa_tor_y. I carn’t foller the sea no longer myself, but I can look at
them that dooz. There’s my old woman--go right in.”

He waddled off, leaving both of them redder than their run accounted for,
and Mrs. Poinsett met them at the door, her arms folded in her apron.

“Walk right in,” she greeted them; “the cap’n he mus’ always go down t’
his observa_tor_y, ’s he calls it, ’n’ gape through thet old telescope of
hisn, fust thing the’s a squall--jus’s if he thought he was skipper of all
Long Island. But you come right int’ the settin’-room ’n’ make yourselves
to home. Dear me suz! ’f I’d ’a’ thought I’d ’a’ had company I’d ’a’
tidied things up. I’m jus’ ’s busy _as_ busy, gettin’ supper ready; but
don’t you mind _me_--jus’ you make yourselves to home,” and she drifted
chattering away, and they heard her in the distant kitchen amiably nagging
the hired girl.

It was an old-time, low-ceiled room, neat with New England neatness. The
windows had many panes of green flint glass, through which they saw the
darkening storm swirl over the ocean and ravage the flower-beds near by.

And when they had made an end of watching Cap’n Poinsett in his little
summer-house, shifting his long glass to follow each scudding sail far
out in the darkness; and when they had looked at the relics of Cap’n
Poinsett’s voyages to the Orient and the Arctic, and at the cigar-boxes
plastered with little shells, and at the wax fruit, and at the family
trousers and bonnets in the album, there was nothing left but that Miss
Rittenhouse should sit down at the old piano, bought for Amanda Jane in
the last year of the war, and bring forth rusty melody from the yellowed
keys.

“What a lovely voice she has!” thought Horace as she sang. No doubt he
was right. I would take his word against that of a professor of music,
who would have told you that it was a nice voice for a girl, and that the
young woman had more natural dramatic expression than technical training.

They fished out Amanda Jane’s music-books, and went through “Juanita,” and
the “Evergreen Waltz,” and “Beautiful Isle of the Sea;” and, finding a
lot of war songs, severally and jointly announced their determination to
invade Dixie Land, and to annihilate Rebel Hordes; and adjured each other
to remember Sumter and Baltimore, and many other matters that could have
made but slight impression on their young minds twenty odd years before.
Mrs. Poinsett, in the kitchen, stopped nagging her aid, and thought
of young John Tarbox Poinsett’s name on a great sheet of paper in the
Gloucester post-office, one morning at the end of April, 1862, when the
news came up that Farragut had passed the forts.

The squall was going over, much as it had come, only no one paid attention
to its movements now, for the sun was out, trying to straighten up the
crushed grass and flowers, and to brighten the hurrying waves, and to
soothe the rustling agitation of the poplars.

They must have one more song. Miss Rittenhouse chose “Jeannette and
Jeannot,” and when she looked back at him with a delicious coy mischief in
her eyes, and sang,--

    “There is no one left to love me now,
      And you too may forget”--

Horace felt something flaming in his cheeks and choking in his breast, and
it was hard for him to keep from snatching those hands from the keys and
telling her she knew better.

But he was man enough not to. He controlled himself, and made himself very
pleasant to Mrs. Poinsett about not staying to supper, and they set out
for the hotel.

The air was cool and damp after the rain.

“You’ve been singing,” said Horace, “and you will catch cold in this air,
and lose your voice. You must tie this handkerchief around your throat.”

She took his blue silk handkerchief and tied it around her throat, and
wore it until just as they were turning away from the shore, when she
took it off to return to him; and the last gust of wind that blew that
afternoon whisked it out of her hand, and sent it whirling a hundred
yards out to sea.

“Now, don’t say a word,” said Horace; “it isn’t of the slightest
consequence.”

But he looked very gloomy over it. He had made up his mind that that silk
handkerchief should be the silk handkerchief of all the world to him, from
that time on.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was one month later that Mr. H. K. Walpole received, in care of Messrs.
Weeden, Snowden & Gilfeather, an envelope postmarked Newport, containing
a red silk handkerchief. His initials were neatly--nay, beautifully,
exquisitely--stitched in one corner. But there was absolutely nothing
about the package to show who sent it, and Horace sorrowed over this. Not
that he was in any doubt; but he felt that it meant to say that he must
not acknowledge it; and, loyally, he did not.

And he soon got over that grief. The lost handkerchief, whose origin was
base and common, like other handkerchiefs, and whose sanctity was purely
accidental--what was it to _this_ handkerchief, worked by her for him?

This became the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace
that had changed the boy’s whole life. Before this he had had purposes
and ambitions. He had meant to take care of his mother, to do well in the
world, and to restore, if he could, the honor and glory of the home his
father had left him. Here were duty, selfishness, and an innocent vanity.
But now he had an end in life, so high that the very seeking of it was a
religion. Every thought of self was flooded out of him, and what he sought
he sought in a purer and nobler spirit than ever before.

Is it not strange? A couple of weeks at the sea-side, a few evenings under
the brooding darkness of hotel verandas, the going to and fro of a girl
with a sweet face, and this ineradicable change is made in the mind of a
man who has forty or fifty years before him wherein to fight the world, to
find his place, to become a factor for good or evil.

And here we have Horace, with his heart full of love and his head full of
dreams, mooning over a silk handkerchief, in open court.

Not that he often took such chances. The daws of humor peck at the
heart worn on the sleeve; and quite rightly, for that is no place for
a heart. But in the privacy of his modest lodging-house room he took
the handkerchief out, and spread it before him, and looked at it, and
kissed it sometimes, I suppose,--it seems ungentle to pry thus into the
sacredness of a boy’s love,--and, certainly, kept it in sight, working,
studying, or thinking.

With all this, the handkerchief became somewhat rumpled, and at last
Horace felt that it must be brought back to the condition of neatness in
which he first knew it. So, on a Tuesday, he descended to the kitchen
of his lodging-house, and asked for a flat-iron. His good landlady, at
the head of an industrious, plump-armed Irish brigade, all vigorously
smoothing out towels, stared at him in surprise.

“If there’s anything you want ironed, Mr. Walpole, bring it down here, and
I’ll be _more’n_ glad to iron it for you.”

Horace grew red, and found his voice going entirely out of his control,
as he tried to explain that it wasn’t for that--it wasn’t for ironing
clothes--he was sure nobody could do it but himself.

“Do you want it hot or cold?” asked Mrs. Wilkins, puzzled.

“Cold!” said Horace desperately. And he got it cold, and had to heat it at
his own fire to perform his labor of love.

That was of a piece with many things he did. Of a piece, for instance,
with his looking in at the milliners’ windows and trying to think which
bonnet would best become her--and then taking himself severely to task
for dreaming that she would wear a ready-made bonnet. Of a piece with his
buying two seats for the theatre, and going alone and fancying her next
him, and glancing furtively at the empty place at the points where he
thought she would be amused, or pleased, or moved.

What a fool he was! Yes, my friend, and so are you and I. And remember
that this boy’s foolishness did not keep him tossing, stark awake, through
ghastly nights; did not start him up in the morning with a hot throat
and an unrested brain; did not send him down to his day’s work with the
haunting, clutching, lurking fear that springs forward at every stroke
of the clock, at every opening of the door. Perhaps you and I have known
folly worse than his.

Through all the winter--the red handkerchief cheered the hideous first
Monday in October, and the Christmas holidays, when business kept him
from going home to Montevista--he heard little or nothing of her. His
friends in the city, or rather his father’s friends, were all ingrained
New Yorkers, dating from the provincial period, who knew not Philadelphia;
and it was only from an occasional newspaper paragraph that he learned
that Judge Rittenhouse and his daughter were travelling through the South,
for the Judge’s health. Of course, he had a standing invitation to call
on them whenever he should find himself in Philadelphia; but they never
came nearer Philadelphia than Washington, and so he never found himself
in Philadelphia. He was not so sorry for this as you might think a lover
should be. He knew that, with a little patience, he might present himself
to Judge Rittenhouse as something more than a lawyer’s managing clerk.

For, meanwhile, good news had come from home, and things were going well
with him. Mineral springs had been discovered at Aristotle--mineral
springs may be discovered anywhere in north New York, if you only try;
though it is sometimes difficult to fit them with the proper Indian
legends. The name of the town had been changed to Avoca, and there was
already an Avoca Improvement Company, building a big hotel, advertising
right and left, and prophesying that the day of Saratoga and Sharon and
Richfield was ended. So the barrens between Montevista and Aristotle,
skirting the railroad, suddenly took on a value. Hitherto they had been
unsalable, except for taxes. For the most part they were an adjunct of
the estate of Montevista; and in February Horace went up to St. Lawrence
County and began the series of sales that was to realize his father’s most
hopeless dream, and clear Montevista of all incumbrances.

How pat it all came, he thought, as, on his return trip, the train
carried him past the little old station, with its glaring new sign,
AVOCA, just beyond the broad stretch of “Squire Walpole’s bad land,” now
sprouting with the surveyors’ stakes. After all was paid off on the old
home, there would be enough left to enable him to buy out Haskins, who
had openly expressed his desire to get into a “live firm,” and who was
willing to part with his interest for a reasonable sum down, backed up
by a succession of easy installments. And Judge Weeden had intimated, as
clearly as dignity would permit, his anxiety that Horace should seize the
opportunity.

       *       *       *       *       *

Winter was still on the Jersey flats on the last day of March; but Horace,
waiting at a little “flag station,” found the air full of crude prophecies
of spring. He had been searching titles all day, in a close and gloomy
little town-hall, and he was glad to be out-of-doors again, and to think
that he should be back in New York by dinner time, for it was past five
o’clock.

But a talk with the station-master made the prospect less bright. No train
would stop there until seven.

Was there no other way of getting home? The lonely guardian of the Gothic
shanty thought it over, and found that there was a way. He talked of the
trains as though they were whimsical creatures under his charge.

“The’s a freight comin’ down right now,” he said, meditatively, “but I
can’t do nothin’ with her. She’s gotter get along mighty lively to keep
ahead of the Express from Philadelphia till she gets to the junction and
goes on a siding till the Express goes past. And as to the Express--why,
I couldn’t no more flag her than if she was a cyclone. But I tell you
what you do. You walk right down to the junction--’bout a mile ’n’ a
half down--and see if you can’t do something with number ninety-seven on
the other road. You see, she goes on to New York on our tracks, and she
mostly’s in the habit of waiting at the junction ’bout--say five to seven
minutes, to give that Express from Philadelphia a fair start. That Express
has it pretty much her own way on this road, for a fact. You go down to
the junction--walk right down the line--and you’ll get ninety-seven--there
ain’t no kind of doubt about it. You can’t see the junction; but it’s just
half a mile beyont that curve down there.”

So there was nothing to be done but to walk to the junction. The railroad
ran a straight, steadily descending mile on the top of a high embankment,
and then suddenly turned out of sight around a ragged elevation. Horace
buttoned his light overcoat, and tramped down the cinder-path between the
tracks.

Yes, spring was coming. The setting sun beamed a soft, hopeful red over
the shoulder of the ragged elevation; light, drifting mists rose from the
marsh land below him, and the last low rays struck a vapory opal through
them. There was a warm, almost prismatic purple hanging over the outlines
of the hills and woods far to the east. The damp air, even, had a certain
languid warmth in it; and though there was snow in the little hollows
at the foot of the embankment, and bits of thin whitish ice were in the
swampy pools, it was clear enough to Horace that spring was at hand.
Spring--and then summer; and, by the sea or in the mountains, the junior
partner of the house of Weeden, Snowden & Gilfeather might hope to meet
once more with Judge Rittenhouse’s daughter.

The noise of the freight-train, far up the track behind him, disturbed
Horace’s springtime revery. A forethought of rocking gravel-cars
scattering the overplus of their load by the way, and of reeking
oil-tanks, filling the air with petroleum, sent him down the embankment to
wait until the way was once more clear.

The freight-train went by and above him with a long-drawn roar and
clatter, and with a sudden fierce crash, and the shriek of iron upon iron,
at the end, and the last truck of the last car came down the embankment,
tearing a gully behind it, and ploughed a grave for itself in the marsh
ten yards ahead of him.

And, looking up, he saw a twisted rail raising its head like a shining
serpent above the dim line of the embankment. A furious rush took Horace
up the <DW72>. A quarter of a mile below him the freight-train was slipping
around the curve. The fallen end of the last car was beating and tearing
the ties. He heard the shrill creak of the brakes and the frightened
whistle of the locomotive. But the grade was steep, and it was hard to
stop. And if they did stop they were half a mile from the junction--half a
mile from their only chance of warning the Express.

Horace heard in his ears the station-master’s words: “She’s gotter get
along mighty lively to keep ahead of the Express from Philadelphia.”

“Mighty lively--mighty lively,”--the words rang through his brain to the
time of thundering car-wheels.

He knew where he stood. He had made three-quarters of the straight mile.
He was three-quarters of a mile, then, from the little station. His
overcoat was off in half a second. Many a time had he stripped, with that
familiar movement, to trunks and sleeveless shirt, to run his mile or his
half-mile; but never had such a thirteen hundred yards lain before him, up
such a track, to be run for such an end.

The sweat was on his forehead before his right foot passed his left.

His young muscles strove and stretched. His feet struck the soft, unstable
path of cinders with strong, regular blows. His tense forearms strained
upward from his sides. Under his chest, thrown outward from his shoulders,
was a constricting line of pain. His wet face burnt. There was a fire
in his temples, and at every breath of his swelling nostrils something
throbbed behind his eyes. The eyes saw nothing but a dancing dazzle of
tracks and ties, through a burning blindness. And his feet beat, beat,
beat till the shifting cinders seemed afire under him.

That is what this human machine was doing, going at this extreme
pressure; every muscle, every breath, every drop of blood alive with the
pain of this intense stress. Looking at it you would have said, “A fleet,
light-limbed young man, with a stride like a deer, throwing the yards
under him in fine style.” All we know about the running other folks are
making in this world!

Half-way up the track Horace stopped short, panting hard, his heart
beating like a crazy drum, a nervous shiver on him. Up the track there was
a dull whirr, and he saw the engine of the express-train slipping down on
him--past the station already.

The white mists from the marshes had risen up over the embankment. The
last rays of the sunset shot through them, brilliant and blinding. Horace
could see the engine; but would the engineer see him, waving his hands in
futile gestures, in time to stop on that slippery, sharp grade? And of
what use would be his choking voice when the dull whirr should turn into
a roar? For a moment, in his hopeless disappointment, Horace felt like
throwing himself in the path of the train, like a wasted thing that had no
right to live, after so great a failure.

As will happen to those who are stunned by a great blow, his mind ran
back mechanically to the things nearest his heart, and in a flash he went
through the two weeks of his life. And then, before the thought had time
to form itself, he had brought a red silk handkerchief from his breast,
and was waving it with both hands, a fiery crimson in the opal mist.

Seen. The whistle shrieked; there was a groan and a creak of brakes,
the thunder of the train resolved itself into various rattling noises,
the engine slipped slowly by him, and slowed down, and he stood by the
platform of the last car as the express stopped.

There was a crowd around Horace in an instant. His head was whirling,
but in a dull way he said what he had to say. An officious passenger,
who would have explained it all to the conductor if the conductor had
waited, took the deliverer in his arms--for the boy was near fainting--and
enlightened the passengers who flocked around.

Horace hung in his embrace, too deadly weak even to accept the offer of
one of the dozen flasks that were thrust at him. Nothing was very clear in
his mind; as far as he could make out, his most distinct impression was of
a broad, flat beach, a blue sea and a blue sky, a black steamer making a
black trail of smoke across them, and a voice soft as an angel’s reading
Latin close by him. Then he opened his eyes and saw the woman of the voice
standing in front of him.

“Oh, Richard,” he heard her say,“it’s Mr. Walpole!”

Horace struggled to his feet. She took his hand in both of hers and drew
closer to him; the crowd falling back a little, seeing that they were
friends.

“What can I ever say to thank you?” she said. “You have saved our lives.
It’s not so much for myself, but”--she blushed faintly, and Horace felt
her hands tremble on his; “Richard--my husband--we were married to-day,
you know--and”--

Something heavy and black came between Horace and life for a few minutes.
When it passed away he straightened himself up out of the arms of the
officious passenger and stared about him, mind and memory coming back to
him. The people around looked at him oddly. A brakeman brought him his
overcoat, and he stood unresistingly while it was slipped on him. Then he
turned away and started down the embankment.

“Hold on!” cried the officious passenger excitedly; “we’re getting up a
testimonial”--

Horace never heard it. How he found his way he never cared to recall; but
the gas was dim in the city streets, and the fire was out in his little
lodging-house room when he came home; and his narrow white bed knows all
that I cannot tell of his tears and his broken dreams.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Walpole,” said Judge Weeden, as he stood between the yawning doors of
the office safe, one morning in June, “I observe that you have a private
package here. Why do you not use the drawer of our--our late associate,
Mr. Haskins? It is yours now, you know. I’ll put your package in it.”
He poised the heavily sealed envelope in his hand. “Very odd _feeling_
package, Walpole. Remarkably soft!” he said. “Well, bless me, it’s none of
my business, of course. Horace, how much you look like your father!”




THE SEVEN CONVERSATIONS OF DEAR JONES AND BABY VAN RENSSELAER.

BY BRANDER MATTHEWS AND H. C. BUNNER.


I.

THE FIRST CONVERSATION.

                                               TUESDAY, February 14, 1882.

The band was invisible, but, unfortunately, not inaudible. It was in the
butler’s pantry, playing Waldteufel’s latest waltz, “Süssen Veilchen.”
The English butler, who resented the intrusion of the German leader, was
introducing an _obbligato_ unforeseen by the composer. This was the second
of Mrs. Martin’s charming Tuesdays in February. Mrs. Martin herself,
fondly and familiarly known as the “Duchess of Washington Square,”
stopped a young man as he was making a desperate rush for his overcoat,
then reposing under three strata of late comers’ outer garments in the
second-floor back, and said to him:

“O Dear Jones”--the Duchess always called him Dear Jones--“I want to
introduce you to Baby Van Rensselaer--Phyllis Van Rensselaer, you
know--they always called her Baby Van Rensselaer, though I’m sure I don’t
know why--Phyllis is such a lovely name--don’t you think so?--and your
grandfathers were such friends.” [Dear Jones executed an _ex post facto_
condemnation upon his ancestor and hers.] “You know Major Van Rensselaer
was your grandfather’s partner until that unfortunate affair of the
embezzlement--O Baby dear--there you are, are you? I was wondering where
you were all this time. This is Mr. Jones, dear, one of your grandfather’s
most intimate friends. Oh, I don’t mean that, of course--you know what I
mean--and I do so want you two to know each other.”

DEAR JONES: What in the name of the prophet does the Duchess mean by
introducing me to More Girls?

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: I do wish the Duchess wouldn’t insist on tiring me
out with slim young men; I never can tell one from the other.

    These remarks were not uttered. They remained in the privacy of the
    inner consciousness. What they really said was:

DEAR JONES [_inarticulately_]: Miss Van Rensselaer.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER [_inattentively_]: Yes, it is rather warm.…

And they drifted apart in the crowd.


II.

THE SECOND CONVERSATION.

                                                 THURSDAY, April 13, 1882.

Of course, Dear Jones was the last to arrive of the favored children of
the world who had been invited to dine at Judge Gillespie’s “to meet the
Lord Bishop of Barset,” just imported from England per steamer “Servia.”
In the hall, the butler, whose appearance was even more dignified and
clerical than the Bishop’s, handed Dear Jones an unsealed communication.

DEAR JONES [_examining the contents_]: Who in Heligoland is Miss Van
Rensselaer?

As Dear Jones entered, Mrs. Sutton--the Judge’s daughter, you
know--married Charley Sutton, who came from San Francisco--Mrs.
Sutton gave a little sigh of relief, nodded to the butler, and said
in perfunctory answer to the apologies Dear Jones had not made: “Oh,
no; you’re not a bit late--we haven’t been waiting for you at all--the
Bishop has only just come”--(confidentially in his ear) “I’ve given you a
charming girl.” [Dear Jones shuddered: he knew what that generally meant.]
“You know Baby Van Rensselaer? Of course--there she is--now, go--and do be
bright and clever.” And after thus handicapping an inoffensive young man,
she took the Bishop’s arm in the middle of his ante-prandial anecdote.

DEAR JONES [_marching to his fate_]: It’s the Duchess’s girl again, by
Jove! It’s lucky Uncle Larry is going to take me off at ten sharp.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Why, it’s _that_ Mr. Jones!

    These remarks were not uttered. They remained in the privacy of the
    inner consciousness. What they really said was:

DEAR JONES [_with audacious hypocrisy_]: Of course, _you_ don’t remember
me, Miss Van Rensselaer.…

BABY VAN RENSSELAER [_trumping his card unabashed_]: I really don’t quite.…

DEAR JONES [_offering his arm_]: Er … don’t you remember the Duch--Mrs.
Martin’s--that hideously rainy afternoon, just before Lent?

Here there was a gap in the conversation as the procession took up its
line of march, and moved through a narrow passage into the dining-room.

DEAR JONES [_making a brave dash at the “bright and clever”_]: Well, in
_my_ house, the door into the dining-room shall be eighteen feet wide.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER [_literal, stern, and cold_]: Are you building a
house, Mr. Jones?

DEAR JONES [_calmly_]: I am at present, Miss Van Rensselaer, building--let
me see--four--five--seven houses.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER [_coldly and suspecting flippancy_]: Ah, indeed--are
you a billionaire?

DEAR JONES: No; I’m an architect.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER [_in confusion_]: Oh, I’m sure I beg your pardon--

DEAR JONES: You needn’t. I shouldn’t be at all ashamed to be a billionaire.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Oh, of course not--I didn’t mean _that_--

DEAR JONES [_unguardedly_]: Well, if it comes to that; I’m not ashamed of
my architecture either.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER [_calmly_]: Indeed? I have never seen any of it.

DEAR JONES: You sit here, I think. This is your card with the little lady
in the powdered wig--a cherubic Madame de Staël.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: And this is yours with a Cupid in a basket--a
nineteenth century Moses.

DEAR JONES [_taking his seat beside her_]: Talking about dinner cards--and
billionaires, you heard of that dinner old Creasers gave to fifty-two of
his friends of the new dispensation. I believe there _was_ one poor fellow
there whose wife had only half a peck of diamonds. He assembled his hordes
in the picture-gallery, as the dining-room wasn’t large enough--you see, I
didn’t build _his_ house. And to carry out the novelty of the thing, his
dinner cards were--

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Playing-cards?

DEAR JONES: Just so--but they were painted, “hand-painted” on satin.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: And what did he take for himself--the king of
diamonds?

DEAR JONES: For the only time in his life he forgot himself--and he had to
put up with the Joker.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: What sort of people were there?

DEAR JONES: Very good sort, indeed. There was a M. Meissonnier and M.
Gérôme and a M. Corot--besides the man who sold them to him.

Everybody knows how a conversation runs on at dinner, when it does run
on. On this occasion it ran on for seventy minutes and six courses. Dear
Jones and Baby Van Rensselaer discussed the usual topics and the usual
bill-of-fare. Then, as the butler served the bombe _glacée à la Demidoff_--

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Oh, I’m so glad you liked her. We were at school
together, you know, and she was with us when we went up the Saguenay last
August.

DEAR JONES: Why, _I_ went up the Saguenay last August.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER [_earnestly_]: And we didn’t meet? How miserably
absurd!

DEAR JONES: I’ll tell you whom I did meet--your father’s partner, Mr.
Hitchcock. He had his daughter with him, too--a very bright girl. You know
her, of course.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER [_coldly_]: I have heard she is quite clever. [A
pause.] The Hitchcocks--I believe--go more in the--New England set. I have
met her brother, though--Mr. Mather Hitchcock.…

DEAR JONES: Mat Hitchcock; that little cad?

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Is he a little cad? I thought he was rather--bright.

After this, conversation was desultory; and soon the male guests were left
to their untrammeled selves, tobacco and the Bishop. At eleven minutes
past ten, in the vestibule of Judge Gillespie’s house, a young man and
a man not so young were buttoning their overcoats and lighting their
cigarettes. In the parlor behind them a soft contralto voice was lingering
on the rich, deep notes of “Der Asra,” the sweetest song of Jewish
inspiration, the song of Heine and of Rubinstein. They paused a moment as
the voice died away in

    “Und mein Stamm sind jene Asra,
    Welche sterben wenn sie lieben!”

The man not so young said: “Well, come along. What are you waiting for?”

DEAR JONES: What the devil are you in such a hurry for, Uncle Larry? It
looked abominably rude to leave those people in that way!


III.

THE THIRD CONVERSATION.

                                                    TUESDAY, May 30, 1882.

As the first band of the Decoration Day procession struck up “Marching
through Georgia” and marched past Uncle Larry’s house, a cheerfully
expectant party filed out of the parlor windows upon the broad stone
balcony, draped with the flag that had floated over the building for the
four long years the day commemorated. Uncle Larry had secured the Duchess
to matronize the annual gathering of young friends, the final friendly
meeting before the flight out of town; and many of those who accepted him
as the universal uncle had accepted also this invitation. Dear Jones and
Baby Van Rensselaer were seated in the corner of the balcony that caught
the southern sun, Baby Van Rensselaer, in Uncle Larry’s own study chair,
while Dear Jones was comfortably and gracefully perched on the broad
brown-stone railing of the balcony.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Now, _doesn’t_ that music make your heart leap?

DEAR JONES: M’--yes.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: You know I haven’t the least bit of sympathy with
that affected talk about not being moved by these things, and thinking it
vulgar and all that. I’m proud to say I love my country, and I do love to
see my country’s soldiers. Don’t you?

DEAR JONES: M’--yes.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Of course, I can’t really remember anything about the
war, but I try to pretend to myself that I do remember when I was held up
at the window to see the troops marching back from the grand review at
Washington. (_Rather more softly._) Mama told me about it often before she
died. And “Marching through Georgia” always makes the tears come to my
eyes; don’t it yours?

DEAR JONES: M’--yes.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: “Yes!” How queerly you say that!

DEAR JONES (_grimly_): I’m rather more inclined to cry when the band makes

    “Stream and forest, hill and strand,
      Reverberate with ‘Dixie.’”

BABY VAN RENSSELAER (_coldly_): I’m afraid, Mr. Jones, I do not understand
you. And you appear to have a very peculiar feeling about these things.

DEAR JONES [_rather absently_]: Well, yes, it is rather a matter of
feeling with me. Weak, I suppose--but the fact is, Miss Van Rensselaer, it
just breaks me up to see all this. You know, the war hit me pretty hard. I
lost my brother in hospital after Seven Pines--and then I lost my father,
the best friend I ever had, at Gettysburg, on the hill, you know, when he
was leading his regiment, and his men couldn’t make him stay back. So,
you see, I wouldn’t have come here at all to-day if--if--

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Oh, Mr. Jones, I’m _so sorry_.

DEAR JONES [_surprised_]: Sorry? Why?

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: I didn’t quite understand you--but I do now. Why,
you’re taking off your hat. What is it? Oh, the battle-flags!

DEAR JONES: My father’s regiment.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER [_to herself_]: I wonder if that is the regiment I saw
coming back from Washington?


IV.

THE FOURTH CONVERSATION.

                                                 TUESDAY, August 22, 1882.

The train rattled hotly along on its sultry journey from one end of
Long Island to the other, a journey the half of which it had nearly
accomplished with much fuss and fret. Leaving his impediments of travel in
the smoker, Dear Jones entered the forward end of the parlor car in search
of an uncontaminated glass of water. As he set down the glass he glanced
along the car, and his manner changed at once. He opened the door for an
instant and threw on the down track his half-smoked cigarette; and then,
smiling pleasantly, he walked firmly down the car, past a rustic bridal
couple, and took a vacant seat just in front of Baby Van Rensselaer.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Why, Mr. Jones!

DEAR JONES: Why, Miss Van Rensselaer!

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Who would have thought of seeing you here in this hot
weather?

DEAR JONES: Can I have this seat or is it that I _mank_ at the
_convenances_--as the French say?

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: It’s Uncle Larry’s chair--he’s gone back to talk to
one of his vestrymen--he’s taking me to Shelter Island.

DEAR JONES: Shelter Island? How long are you going to stay there?

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: And where are you going?

DEAR JONES: I’m going to Sag Harbor to build a house for one of my
billionaires.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Sag Harbor? What an extraordinary place for a house.

DEAR JONES: Oh, that’s nothing. Last year I had to build a house up in
Chemung county.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Chemung?

DEAR JONES [_spelling it_]: C-h-e-m-u-n-g´--accent on the mung. You
probably call it Cheémung, but it is really Sh’mung.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Where is it? and how do you get there?

DEAR JONES: By the _Chemung de fer_, of course.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Oh, Mr. Jones.

DEAR JONES: You see, my mind is relaxed by the effort to build a house on
the model of the one occupied by the old woman who lived in a shoe--and
that variety of early English architecture is very wearing on the taste.
What sort of a house is it you are going to at Shelter Island? And how
long are you going to stay there?

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Oh, it’s a stupid, old-fashioned place [_pause_]. Do
you think that bride is pretty? I have been watching them ever since we
left New York. They have been to town on their wedding-trip.

DEAR JONES: She is ratherish pretty. And he’s a shrewd fellow and likely
to get on. I shouldn’t wonder if he was the chief wire-puller of his
“deestrick.”

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: A village Hampden?

DEAR JONES: Some day he’ll withstand the little tyrant of the fields
and lead a revolt against the garden-sass monopoly, and so sail into
the legislature. I fear the bride is destined to ruin her digestion in
an Albany boarding-house, while the groom gives his days and nights to
affairs of state.

    Here the train slackened its speed as it approached a small station
    from which shrill notes of music arose.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Look, the bride is going to leave us.

DEAR JONES: He lives here, and the local fife and drum corps have come to
welcome him home. Dinna ye hear that strident “Hail to the Chief,” they
have just executed?

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: How proudly she looks up at him! I think the band
ought to play something for her--but they are men, and they’ll never think
of it.

DEAR JONES: You cannot expect much tact from two fifes and a bass
drum, but unless my ears deceive me they have greeted the bride with a
well-meant attempt at “Home, Sweet Home.”

BABY VAN RENSSELAER:

    “And each responsive soul has heard
      That plaintive note’s appealing.
    So deeply ‘Home, Sweet Home’ has stirred
      The hidden founts of feeling.”

DEAR JONES [_surprised_]: Why--how did you know that poem?

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Oh, I heard somebody quote it last Decoration Day--I
don’t know who--it struck me as very pretty and I looked it up.

DEAR JONES [_pleased_]: Oh, I remember. It has always been a favorite of
mine.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER [_coldly_]: Indeed?

DEAR JONES [_as the train starts again_]: Bride and groom, fife and drum,
fade away from sight and hearing. I wonder if we shall ever think of them
again?

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: I shall, I’m sure. She was so pretty. And, besides,
the music was lively. I shan’t have anything half as amusing as that at
Shelter Island.

DEAR JONES: Don’t you like it, then?

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Oh, dear no! I shall be glad to get away to my aunt’s
place at Watch Hill. It’s very poky indeed, at Shelter Island (_sighs_).
And to think that I shall have to spend just two weeks of primness and
propriety there.

DEAR JONES: Just two weeks? Ah!


V.

THE FIFTH CONVERSATION.

                                  TUESDAY, September 5, 1882. (Afternoon.)

Although it is difficult to tell the length from the breadth of the small
steamer that plies between Sag Harbor and New London, it is safe to assume
that it was the bow that was pointing away from the Shelter Island dock as
Baby Van Rensselaer stepped out of the cabin and Dear Jones walked up to
her, lifting his hat with an expression of surprise on his face that might
have been better, considering that he had rehearsed it a number of times
since he left Sag Harbor.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Why, Mr. Jones!

DEAR JONES [_forgetting his lines, and improvising_]: How--how--odd we
should meet again just here. Funny, isn’t it?

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: It is exceedingly humorous.

DEAR JONES: I did not tell you, did I!--when I saw you on the train, you
know--that I had to go to New London, after I’d finished my work at Sag
Harbor.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER [_uncompromisingly_]: I don’t think you said anything
about New London at all.

DEAR JONES: I probably said the Pequot House. It’s the same thing,
you know. I have to go to New London to inspect the Race Rock
lighthouse--you’ve heard of the famous lighthouse at Race Rock, of course.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: I don’t think its fame has reached me.

DEAR JONES: It’s a very curious structure, indeed. And, the fact is, one
of my--my billionaires--wants a lighthouse. He has an extraordinary notion
of building a lighthouse near his place on the seashore--a lighthouse of
his own. Odd idea, isn’t it?

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: It is a very odd proceeding altogether, I should say.

DEAR JONES: I suppose you mean that _I_ am a very odd proceeding.
Well, I will confess, and throw myself on your mercy. I _did_ hope to
meet you--and the Duch--Mrs. Martin. After two weeks of the society of
billionaires, I think I’m excusable.… [_A painful pause._] And I _had_
to go to Race Rock, so I got off a day earlier than I had meant to, by
cutting one of the turrets out of my original plan--he didn’t mind--there
are eleven left--and--and--will you forgive me?

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Really, I have nothing to forgive, Mr. Jones. I’ve no
doubt my aunt will be very glad to see you.

DEAR JONES: Ah--how _is_ Mrs. Martin?

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: She is in the cabin. She is quite well at present;
but she is always very nervous about sea-sickness, and she prefers to lie
down. I must go in and sit with her.

DEAR JONES [_quickly_]: Indeed--I didn’t know Mrs. Martin suffered from
sea-sickness. She’s crossed the ocean so many times, you know. How many is
it?

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Six, I think.

DEAR JONES: No; eight, isn’t it? I’m almost sure it’s eight.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Very possibly. But she is a great sufferer. I must go
and see how she is.

DEAR JONES: Yes, we’ll go. I want to see Mrs. Martin. One of the
disadvantages of the summer season is that one can’t see the Duchess at
regular intervals to exchange gossip.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Well, if you have any confidential gossip for the
Duchess, I will wait here until you come out. I want to get all the fresh
air possible, if I have to sit in the cabin for the rest of the trip.

DEAR JONES [_asserting himself_]: Very well. I have the contents of four
letters from Newport to pour into the Duchess’s ear. You know I was
staying at the Hitchcocks’ for a fortnight, before I went to Sag Harbor.

He went into the stuffy little cabin, where the Duchess was lying on
a bench, in a wilderness of shawls. Baby Van Rensselaer waited a good
half-hour, but heard no sound of returning footsteps from that gloomy
cave. Finally she went in to investigate, and was told by the Duchess that
“Dear Jones has gone after, or whatever you call it, to smoke a cigar.”
Baby Van Rensselaer made up her mind that under those circumstances she
would go forward and read her book. She also made up her mind that Mr.
Jones was extremely rude. His rudeness, she found, as she sat reading
at the bow of the boat, really spoiled her book. She knew that she ought
not to let such little things annoy her; but then, it was a very stupid
chapter, and the fresh sea breeze blew the pages back and forward, and her
veil would not stay over her hair, and she always had hated traveling,
and it was so disagreeable to have people behave in that way--especially
people--well, any people. Just here she turned her head, and saw Dear
Jones advancing from the cabin with a bright and smiling face.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER [_about to rise_]: My aunt wants me, I suppose.

DEAR JONES: Not at all--not in the least--at present. I just came through
the cabin--on tiptoe--and she was fast asleep. In fact, not to speak it
profanely, she was--she was audible.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Oh!

DEAR JONES: I’m glad to see you’re getting the benefit of the fresh air.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: I was afraid of waking my aunt with the rustling of
the leaves of my book, so I came out here.

DEAR JONES: I’m glad you did. It would be a shame for you to have to sit
in that close cabin. That’s the reason I didn’t come back to you when I
left Mrs. Martin. I played a pious fraud on you for the benefit of your
health.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: You were very considerate.

DEAR JONES [_enthusiastically_]: Oh, not at all.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER [_calmly_]: And if you’ll excuse me, I’ll finish my
book. I can’t read in the cabin.

Baby Van Rensselaer resumed her reading and found the book improved a
little. After a while she looked up and saw Dear Jones sitting on the
rail, meekly twirling his thumbs.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER [_after an effort at silence_]: Don’t be so
ridiculously absurd. What are you doing there?

DEAR JONES: I’m waiting to be spoken to.

Baby Van Rensselaer smiled. The boat had just swung out of the jaws of
the bay. Overhead was the full glory of a sky which made one believe that
there never was such a thing as a cloud. And they sped along over the sea
of water in a sea of light. Just then there came from the depths under the
cabin the rise and fall of a measured, mocking melody, high and clear as
the notes of a lark.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Why, that must be a bird whistling--only birds don’t
whistle “Amaryllis.”

DEAR JONES: ’Tisn’t a bird--it’s an engineer.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: An engineer?

DEAR JONES: A grimy engineer. Quite a pathetic story, too. Some of the
Sag Harbor people took him up as a boy. He had a wonderful ear and an
extraordinary tenor voice. They were going to make a Mario of him. They
paid for his education in New York, and then sent him over to Paris to the
Conservatory to be finished off. And he hadn’t been there six weeks before
he caught the regular Paris pleurisy--it’s an _article de Paris_, you
know, and lost his voice utterly and hopelessly.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Oh!

DEAR JONES: And so he had to come back and engineer for his living.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: How very sad. Now I can scarcely bear to hear him
whistle.

DEAR JONES [_to himself_]: Well, I didn’t mean to produce that effect.
[_To her._] Oh, he doesn’t mind it a bit. Hear him now.

    The engineer was executing a series of brilliant variations on the
    “Air du Roi Louis XIII.,” melting by ingenious gradations into the
    “Babies on our Block.”

DEAR JONES [_hastily_]: Race Rock lies over that way. You can’t see it
yet--but you will after a while.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Oh, then there _is_ a Race Rock?

DEAR JONES: Why, certainly.…

With this starter, it may readily be understood that a man of Dear Jones’s
fecundity of intellect and fine imaginative powers was able to fill the
greater part of the afternoon with fluent conversation. Two or three times
Baby Van Rensselaer made futile attempts to go into the cabin to see how
the Duchess was sleeping; but as many times she forgot her errand. There
was a fair breeze blowing from the northeast, but the sea was smooth, and
the little boat scarcely rocked on the long, low waves. It was getting
toward four o’clock when there was a sudden stoppage of the engineer’s
whistling, and of the machinery of the boat. Baby Van Rensselaer sent
Dear Jones back to inquire into the cause, for they were alone on the
broad sea, with only a tantalizing glimpse of New London harbor stretching
out welcoming arms of green, with the Groton monument stuck like a huge
clothes-pin on the left arm. Dear Jones came back, trying hard to look
decently perturbed and gloomy, but with a barbarian joy lighting up his
bronzed features.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: What is it?

DEAR JONES: The machinery is on a dead centre. And the whistling engineer
says that he’ll have to wait until he can get into port and hitch a horse
to the crank to start her off again.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: But how are we to get into port?

DEAR JONES: The whistling engineer further says that we are now drifting
toward Watch Hill.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: That’s just where we want to go.

DEAR JONES: Yes. [_An unholy toot from the steam whistle._] And there he
is signalling that yacht to take us off!

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: I must go to my aunt now.

DEAR JONES: Why--there’s no hurry.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: No, but she’ll be so frightened--she’ll think it’s
going to blow up or something.

Baby Van Rensselaer disappeared in the depths of the cabin. Dear Jones
disconsolately walked the deck in solitary silence for five minutes. When
Baby Van Rensselaer reappeared, his spirits rose.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: My aunt is afraid you may have difficulty in reaching
New London to-night. She wants me to ask you if you won’t stay over-night
at her place at Watch Hill?

DEAR JONES: Won’t I? Well, I will--have much pleasure in accepting your
aunt’s invitation.


VI.

THE SIXTH CONVERSATION.

                                    TUESDAY, September 5, 1882. (Evening.)

A row of Japanese lanterns shed a Cathayan light along the little path
leading from the Duchess’s house on a rocky promontory to the little beach
which nestled under its shoulder. The moon softly and judiciously lit up
the baby breakers which in Long Island Sound imitate the surf of the outer
sea. It threw eerie shadows behind the bath-houses, and fell with gentle
radiance upon two dripping but shapely figures emerging from the water,
where the other bathers were unwisely lingering.

DEAR JONES: I think this is simply delightful. I really never got the
perfect enjoyment of an evening swim before.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: I am glad you enjoyed it.

DEAR JONES: There is something so charming in this aristocratic seclusion,
with the shouts and laughter of the vulgar herd just far enough off to be
picturesque--if you can call a noise picturesque.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER [_coldly_]: I think this beach might be a little more
private--it’s shared in common by these three cottages.

DEAR JONES: But they seem to be very nice people here. And they all swim
so well, it quite put me on my mettle. You are really a splendid swimmer,
do you know it? And that girl I towed out to the buoy, who is she?

BABY VAN RENSSELAER [_explosively_]: Mr. Jones, this is positively
insulting!

DEAR JONES: Wh--what--wh--why? I don’t understand you.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: To pretend that you don’t know that Hitchcock woman!

DEAR JONES [_innocently_]: Was that Miss Hitchcock? I didn’t recognize her.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: If this is your idea of humor, Mr. Jones, it is
simply offensive!

DEAR JONES: But, upon my soul, I didn’t know the girl--nor she me!

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: You didn’t know her? After you have been staying two
weeks at her house at Newport?

DEAR JONES [_with something like dignity_]: I was staying at her father’s
house, Miss Van Rensselaer, and Miss Hitchcock was away on a visit.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Up the Saguenay, perhaps?

DEAR JONES: Very likely. Miss Hitchcock may have left a large part of the
Saguenay unexplored for all I know. I was introduced to her party only
half an hour before we got off the boat at Quebec.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Long enough, however, to discover that she was
“bright.”

DEAR JONES: Quite long enough, Miss Van Rensselaer. One may find out a
great deal of another’s character in half an hour.

    There was a pause, which was filled by the strains of a Virginia
    reel, coming from one of the cottages high up on the bank, where
    an impromptu dance was just begun. The moonlight fell on Baby Van
    Rensselaer’s little white teeth, set firmly between her parted
    lips. The pause was broken.

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: If you propose to descend to brutality of this sort,
Mr. Jones, I think we need prolong neither the conversation--nor the
acquaintance.

DEAR JONES [_honestly_]: No--you can’t mean that--Miss Van
Rensselaer--Baby--

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: What, sir! Your familiarity is--I can’t stand
familiarity from you! (_She clenches her little hands._)

DEAR JONES: You have no right to treat me like this. If I am familiar it
is because I love you--and you know it!

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: This is the first I have heard of it, sir. I trust it
will be the last. Will you kindly permit me to pass, or must I--

DEAR JONES: You may go where you wish, Miss Van Rensselaer--No, come, this
is ridiculous--

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Is it?

DEAR JONES: I mean it is foolish. Don’t let us--

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: Don’t let us see each other again!


VII.

THE SEVENTH CONVERSATION.

                                              THURSDAY, February 14, 1884.

As the soft, low notes of the wedding-march from “Lohengrin” fell gently
from the organ-loft over the entrance of Grace Church, the quartet of
able-bodied ushers passed up the centre aisle and parted the white
ribbons--a silken barrier which they had gallantly defended for an
hour in a vain effort to keep the common herd of acquaintance separate
from the chosen many of the family. Behind them came two pretty little
girls, strewing the aisle with white flowers from their aprons. The four
bridesmaids, two abreast, passed up the aisle after the little girls,
proud in their reflected glory. Then came the bride, leaning on Judge
Gillespie’s arm, and radiant with youth and beauty and happiness. As the
procession drew near the chancel-rail, the groom came from the vestry
and advanced to meet her, accompanied by his best man, Uncle Larry, who
relieved him of his hat and overcoat, the which he would dextrously return
to him when the happy couple should leave the church man and wife. And in
due time the Bishop asked, “Wilt thou have this Woman to thy wedded wife?”

DEAR JONES: I will.

The Bishop asked again, “Wilt thou have this Man to thy wedded husband?”

BABY VAN RENSSELAER: I will.

    As they knelt at the altar the sun came out and fell through the
    window, and the stained glass sifted down on them the mingled hues
    of hope and of faith and love; and the Bishop blessed them.




THE RIVAL GHOSTS.

BY BRANDER MATTHEWS.


The good ship sped on her way across the calm Atlantic. It was an outward
passage, according to the little charts which the company had charily
distributed, but most of the passengers were homeward bound, after a
summer of rest and recreation, and they were counting the days before
they might hope to see Fire Island Light. On the lee side of the boat,
comfortably sheltered from the wind, and just by the door of the captain’s
room (which was theirs during the day), sat a little group of returning
Americans. The Duchess (she was down on the purser’s list as Mrs. Martin,
but her friends and familiars called her the Duchess of Washington Square)
and Baby Van Rensselaer (she was quite old enough to vote, had her sex
been entitled to that duty, but as the younger of two sisters she was
still the baby of the family)--the Duchess and Baby Van Rensselaer were
discussing the pleasant English voice and the not unpleasant English
accent of a manly young lordling who was going to America for sport. Uncle
Larry and Dear Jones were enticing each other into a bet on the ship’s run
of the morrow.

“I’ll give you two to one she don’t make 420,” said Dear Jones.

“I’ll take it,” answered Uncle Larry. “We made 427 the fifth day last
year.” It was Uncle Larry’s seventeenth visit to Europe, and this was
therefore his thirty-fourth voyage.

“And when did you get in?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer. “I don’t care a bit
about the run, so long as we get in soon.”

“We crossed the bar Sunday night, just seven days after we left
Queenstown, and we dropped anchor off Quarantine at three o’clock on
Monday morning.”

“I hope we sha’n’t do that this time. I can’t seem to sleep any when the
boat stops.”

“I can; but I didn’t,” continued Uncle Larry; “because my stateroom was
the most for’ard in the boat, and the donkey-engine that let down the
anchor was right over my head.”

“So you got up and saw the sunrise over the bay,” said Dear Jones, “with
the electric lights of the city twinkling in the distance, and the first
faint flush of the dawn in the east just over Fort Lafayette, and the rosy
tinge which spread softly upward, and”--

“Did you both come back together?” asked the Duchess.

“Because he has crossed thirty-four times you must not suppose he has a
monopoly in sunrises,” retorted Dear Jones. “No; this was my own sunrise;
and a mighty pretty one it was, too.”

“I’m not matching sunrises with you,” remarked Uncle Larry calmly; “but
I’m willing to back a merry jest called forth by my sunrise against any
two merry jests called forth by yours.”

“I confess reluctantly that my sunrise evoked no merry jest at all.” Dear
Jones was an honest man, and would scorn to invent a merry jest on the
spur of the moment.

“That’s where my sunrise has the call,” said Uncle Larry complacently.

“What was the merry jest?” was Baby Van Rensselaer’s inquiry, the natural
result of a feminine curiosity thus artistically excited.

“Well, here it is. I was standing aft, near a patriotic American and a
wandering Irishman, and the patriotic American rashly declared that you
couldn’t see a sunrise like that anywhere in Europe, and this gave the
Irishman his chance, and he said, ‘Sure ye don’t have ’m here till we’re
through with ’em over there.’”

“It is true,” said Dear Jones thoughtfully, “that they do have some things
over there better than we do; for instance, umbrellas.”

“And gowns,” added the Duchess.

“And antiquities”--this was Uncle Larry’s contribution.

“And we do have some things so much better in America!” protested Baby Van
Rensselaer, as yet uncorrupted by any worship of the effete monarchies of
despotic Europe. “We make lots of things a great deal nicer than you can
get them in Europe--especially ice-cream.”

“And pretty girls,” added Dear Jones; but he did not look at her.

“And spooks,” remarked Uncle Larry casually.

“Spooks?” queried the Duchess.

“Spooks. I maintain the word. Ghosts, if you like that better, or
spectres. We turn out the best quality of spook”--

“You forget the lovely ghost stories about the Rhine, and the Black
Forest,” interrupted Miss Van Rensselaer, with feminine inconsistency.

“I remember the Rhine and the Black Forest and all the other haunts
of elves and fairies and hobgoblins; but for good honest spooks there
is no place like home. And what differentiates our spook--_spiritus
Americanus_--from the ordinary ghost of literature is that it responds
to the American sense of humor. Take Irving’s stories, for example.
_The Headless Horseman_, that’s a comic ghost story. And Rip Van
Winkle--consider what humor, and what good-humor, there is in the telling
of his meeting with the goblin crew of Hendrik Hudson’s men! A still
better example of this American way of dealing with legend and mystery is
the marvellous tale of the rival ghosts.”

“The rival ghosts?” queried the Duchess and Baby Van Rensselaer together.
“Who were they?”

“Didn’t I ever tell you about them?” answered Uncle Larry, a gleam of
approaching joy flashing from his eye.

“Since he is bound to tell us sooner or later, we’d better be resigned,
and hear it now,” said Dear Jones.

“If you are not more eager, I won’t tell it at all.”

“Oh, do, Uncle Larry; you know I just dote on ghost stories,” pleaded Baby
Van Rensselaer.

“Once upon a time,” began Uncle Larry--“in fact, a very few years
ago--there lived in the thriving town of New York a young American called
Duncan--Eliphalet Duncan. Like his name, he was half Yankee and half
Scotch, and naturally he was a lawyer, and had come to New York to make
his way. His father was a Scotchman, who had come over and settled in
Boston, and married a Salem girl. When Eliphalet Duncan was about twenty
he lost both of his parents. His father left him with enough money to
give him a start, and a strong feeling of pride in his Scotch birth; you
see there was a title in the family in Scotland, and although Eliphalet’s
father was the younger son of a younger son, yet he always remembered, and
always bade his only son to remember, that his ancestry was noble. His
mother left him her full share of Yankee grit, and a little old house in
Salem which had belonged to her family for more than two hundred years.
She was a Hitchcock, and the Hitchcocks had been settled in Salem since
the year 1. It was a great-great-grandfather of Mr. Eliphalet Hitchcock
who was foremost in the time of the Salem witchcraft craze. And this
little old house which she left to my friend Eliphalet Duncan was haunted.”

“By the ghost of one of the witches, of course,” interrupted Dear Jones.

“Now how could it be the ghost of a witch, since the witches were all
burned at the stake? You never heard of anybody who was burned having a
ghost, did you?”

“That’s an argument in favor of cremation, at any rate,” replied Jones,
evading the direct question.

“It is, if you don’t like ghosts. I do,” said Baby Van Rensselaer.

“And so do I,” added Uncle Larry. “I love a ghost as dearly as an
Englishman loves a lord.”

“Go on with your story,” said the Duchess, majestically overruling all
extraneous discussion.

“This little old house at Salem was haunted,” resumed Uncle Larry. “And by
a very distinguished ghost--or at least by a ghost with very remarkable
attributes.”

“What was he like?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer, with a premonitory shiver
of anticipatory delight.

“It had a lot of peculiarities. In the first place, it never appeared to
the master of the house. Mostly it confined its visitations to unwelcome
guests. In the course of the last hundred years it had frightened away
four successive mothers-in-law, while never intruding on the head of the
household.”

“I guess that ghost had been one of the boys when he was alive and in the
flesh.” This was Dear Jones’s contribution to the telling of the tale.

“In the second place,” continued Uncle Larry, “it never frightened anybody
the first time it appeared. Only on the second visit were the ghost-seers
scared; but then they were scared enough for twice, and they rarely
mustered up courage enough to risk a third interview. One of the most
curious characteristics of this well-meaning spook was that it had no
face--or at least that nobody ever saw its face.”

“Perhaps he kept his countenance veiled?” queried the Duchess, who was
beginning to remember that she never did like ghost stories.

“That was what I was never able to find out. I have asked several people
who saw the ghost, and none of them could tell me anything about its face,
and yet while in its presence they never noticed its features, and never
remarked on their absence or concealment. It was only afterward when
they tried to recall calmly all the circumstances of meeting with the
mysterious stranger, that they became aware that they had not seen its
face. And they could not say whether the features were covered, or whether
they were wanting, or what the trouble was. They knew only that the face
was never seen. And no matter how often they might see it, they never
fathomed this mystery. To this day nobody knows whether the ghost which
used to haunt the little old house in Salem had a face, or what manner of
face it had.”

“How awfully weird!” said Baby Van Rensselaer. “And why did the ghost go
away?”

“I haven’t said it went away,” answered Uncle Larry, with much dignity.

“But you said it _used_ to haunt the little old house at Salem, so I
supposed it had moved. Didn’t it?”

“You shall be told in due time. Eliphalet Duncan used to spend most of
his summer vacations at Salem, and the ghost never bothered him at all,
for he was the master of the house--much to his disgust, too, because he
wanted to see for himself the mysterious tenant at will of his property.
But he never saw it, never. He arranged with friends to call him whenever
it might appear, and he slept in the next room with the door open; and
yet when their frightened cries waked him the ghost was gone, and his
only reward was to hear reproachful sighs as soon as he went back to
bed. You see, the ghost thought it was not fair of Eliphalet to seek an
introduction which was plainly unwelcome.”

Dear Jones interrupted the story-teller by getting up and tucking a heavy
rug more snugly around Baby Van Rensselaer’s feet, for the sky was now
overcast and gray, and the air was damp and penetrating.

“One fine spring morning,” pursued Uncle Larry, “Eliphalet Duncan received
great news. I told you that there was a title in the family in Scotland,
and that Eliphalet’s father was the younger son of a younger son. Well, it
happened that all Eliphalet’s father’s brothers and uncles had died off
without male issue except the eldest son of the eldest, and he, of course,
bore the title, and was Baron Duncan of Duncan. Now the great news that
Eliphalet Duncan received in New York one fine spring morning was that
Baron Duncan and his only son had been yachting in the Hebrides, and they
had been caught in a black squall, and they were both dead. So my friend
Eliphalet Duncan inherited the title and the estates.”

“How romantic!” said the Duchess. “So he was a baron!”

“Well,” answered Uncle Larry, “he was a baron if he chose. But he didn’t
choose.”

“More fool he!” said Dear Jones sententiously.

“Well,” answered Uncle Larry, “I’m not so sure of that. You see, Eliphalet
Duncan was half Scotch and half Yankee, and he had two eyes to the main
chance. He held his tongue about his windfall of luck until he could find
out whether the Scotch estates were enough to keep up the Scotch title. He
soon discovered that they were not, and that the late Lord Duncan, having
married money, kept up such state as he could out of the revenues of the
dowry of Lady Duncan. And Eliphalet, he decided that he would rather be a
well-fed lawyer in New York, living comfortably on his practice, than a
starving lord in Scotland, living scantily on his title.”

“But he kept his title?” asked the Duchess.

“Well,” answered Uncle Larry, “he kept it quiet. I knew it, and a friend
or two more. But Eliphalet was a sight too smart to put Baron Duncan of
Duncan, Attorney and Counsellor at Law, on his shingle.”

“What has all this got to do with your ghost?” asked Dear Jones
pertinently.

“Nothing with that ghost, but a good deal with another ghost. Eliphalet
was very learned in spirit lore--perhaps because he owned the haunted
house at Salem, perhaps because he was a Scotchman by descent. At all
events, he had made a special study of the wraiths and white ladies and
banshees and bogies of all kinds whose sayings and doings and warnings
are recorded in the annals of the Scottish nobility. In fact, he was
acquainted with the habits of every reputable spook in the Scotch peerage.
And he knew that there was a Duncan ghost attached to the person of the
holder of the title of Baron Duncan of Duncan.”

“So, besides being the owner of a haunted house in Salem, he was also a
haunted man in Scotland?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer.

“Just so. But the Scotch ghost was not unpleasant, like the Salem
ghost, although it had one peculiarity in common with its transatlantic
fellow-spook. It never appeared to the holder of the title, just as the
other never was visible to the owner of the house. In fact, the Duncan
ghost was never seen at all. It was a guardian angel only. Its sole duty
was to be in personal attendance on Baron Duncan of Duncan, and to warn
him of impending evil. The traditions of the house told that the Barons of
Duncan had again and again felt a premonition of ill fortune. Some of them
had yielded and withdrawn from the venture they had undertaken, and it had
failed dismally. Some had been obstinate, and had hardened their hearts,
and had gone on reckless to defeat and to death. In no case had a Lord
Duncan been exposed to peril without fair warning.”

“Then how came it that the father and son were lost in the yacht off the
Hebrides?” asked Dear Jones.

“Because they were too enlightened to yield to superstition. There is
extant now a letter of Lord Duncan, written to his wife a few minutes
before he and his son set sail, in which he tells her how hard he has had
to struggle with an almost overmastering desire to give up the trip. Had
he obeyed the friendly warning of the family ghost, the latter would have
been spared a journey across the Atlantic.”

“Did the ghost leave Scotland for America as soon as the old baron died?”
asked Baby Van Rensselaer, with much interest.

“How did he come over,” queried Dear Jones--“in the steerage, or as a
cabin passenger?”

“I don’t know,” answered Uncle Larry calmly, “and Eliphalet, he didn’t
know. For as he was in no danger, and stood in no need of warning, he
couldn’t tell whether the ghost was on duty or not. Of course he was on
the watch for it all the time. But he never got any proof of its presence
until he went down to the little old house of Salem, just before the
Fourth of July. He took a friend down with him--a young fellow who had
been in the regular army since the day Fort Sumter was fired on, and who
thought that after four years of the little unpleasantness down South,
including six months in Libby, and after ten years of fighting the bad
Indians on the plains, he wasn’t likely to be much frightened by a ghost.
Well, Eliphalet and the officer sat out on the porch all the evening
smoking and talking over points in military law. A little after twelve
o’clock, just as they began to think it was about time to turn in, they
heard the most ghastly noise in the house. It wasn’t a shriek, or a howl,
or a yell, or anything they could put a name to. It was an undeterminate,
inexplicable shiver and shudder of sound, which went wailing out of the
window. The officer had been at Cold Harbor, but he felt himself getting
colder this time. Eliphalet knew it was the ghost who haunted the house.
As this weird sound died away, it was followed by another, sharp, short,
blood-curdling in its intensity. Something in this cry seemed familiar to
Eliphalet, and he felt sure that it proceeded from the family ghost, the
warning wraith of the Duncans.”

“Do I understand you to intimate that both ghosts were there together?”
inquired the Duchess anxiously.

“Both of them were there,” answered Uncle Larry. “You see, one of them
belonged to the house, and had to be there all the time, and the other
was attached to the person of Baron Duncan, and had to follow him there;
wherever he was, there was that ghost also. But Eliphalet, he had
scarcely time to think this out when he heard both sounds again, not one
after another, but both together, and something told him--some sort of
an instinct he had--that those two ghosts didn’t agree, didn’t get on
together, didn’t exactly hit it off; in fact, that they were quarrelling.”

“Quarrelling ghosts! Well, I never!” was Baby Van Rensselaer’s remark.

“It is a blessed thing to see ghosts dwell together in unity,” said Dear
Jones.

And the Duchess added, “It would certainly be setting a better example.”

“You know,” resumed Uncle Larry, “that two waves of light or of sound may
interfere and produce darkness or silence. So it was with these rival
spooks. They interfered, but they did not produce silence or darkness. On
the contrary, as soon as Eliphalet and the officer went into the house,
there began at once a series of spiritualistic manifestations, a regular
dark séance. A tambourine was played upon, a bell was rung, and a flaming
banjo went singing around the room.”

“Where did they get the banjo?” asked Dear Jones skeptically.

“I don’t know. Materialized it, maybe, just as they did the tambourine.
You don’t suppose a quiet New York lawyer kept a stock of musical
instruments large enough to fit out a strolling minstrel troupe just on
the chance of a pair of ghosts coming to give him a surprise party, do
you? Every spook has its own instrument of torture. Angels play on harps,
I’m informed, and spirits delight in banjos and tambourines. These spooks
of Eliphalet Duncan’s were ghosts with all the modern improvements, and
I guess they were capable of providing their own musical weapons. At all
events, they had them there in the little old house at Salem the night
Eliphalet and his friend came down. And they played on them, and they rang
the bell, and they rapped here, there, and everywhere. And they kept it up
all night.”

“All night?” asked the awe-stricken Duchess.

“All night long,” said Uncle Larry solemnly; “and the next night, too.
Eliphalet did not get a wink of sleep, neither did his friend. On the
second night the house ghost was seen by the officer; on the third night
it showed itself again; and the next morning the officer packed his
grip-sack and took the first train to Boston. He was a New Yorker, but he
said he’d sooner go to Boston than see that ghost again. Eliphalet, he
wasn’t scared at all, partly because he never saw either the domiciliary
or the titular spook, and partly because he felt himself on friendly terms
with the spirit world, and didn’t scare easily. But after losing three
nights’ sleep and the society of his friend, he began to be a little
impatient, and to think that the thing had gone far enough. You see, while
in a way he was fond of ghosts, yet he liked them best one at a time. Two
ghosts were one too many. He wasn’t bent on making a collection of spooks.
He and one ghost were company, but he and two ghosts were a crowd.”

“What did he do?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer.

“Well, he couldn’t do anything. He waited awhile, hoping they would get
tired; but he got tired out first. You see, it comes natural to a spook to
sleep in the daytime, but a man wants to sleep nights, and they wouldn’t
let him sleep nights. They kept on wrangling and quarrelling incessantly;
they manifested and they dark-séanced as regularly as the old clock on the
stairs struck twelve; they rapped and they rang bells and they banged the
tambourine and they threw the flaming banjo about the house, and, worse
than all, they swore.”

“I did not know that spirits were addicted to bad language,” said the
Duchess.

“How did he know they were swearing? Could he hear them?” asked Dear Jones.

“That was just it,” responded Uncle Larry; “he could not hear them--at
least not distinctly. There were inarticulate murmurs and stifled
rumblings. But the impression produced on him was that they were
swearing. If they had only sworn right out, he would not have minded it so
much, because he would have known the worst. But the feeling that the air
was full of suppressed profanity was very wearing, and after standing it
for a week, he gave up in disgust and went to the White Mountains.”

“Leaving them to fight it out, I suppose,” interjected Baby Van Rensselaer.

“Not at all,” explained Uncle Larry. “They could not quarrel unless he was
present. You see, he could not leave the titular ghost behind him, and the
domiciliary ghost could not leave the house. When he went away he took the
family ghost with him, leaving the house ghost behind. Now spooks can’t
quarrel when they are a hundred miles apart any more than men can.”

“And what happened afterward?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer, with a pretty
impatience.

“A most marvellous thing happened. Eliphalet Duncan went to the White
Mountains, and in the car of the railroad that runs to the top of Mount
Washington he met a classmate whom he had not seen for years, and
this classmate introduced Duncan to his sister, and this sister was a
remarkably pretty girl, and Duncan fell in love with her at first sight,
and by the time he got to the top of Mount Washington he was so deep in
love that he began to consider his own unworthiness, and to wonder whether
she might ever be induced to care for him a little--ever so little.”

“I don’t think that is so marvellous a thing,” said Dear Jones, glancing
at Baby Van Rensselaer.

“Who was she?” asked the Duchess, who had once lived in Philadelphia.

“She was Miss Kitty Sutton, of San Francisco, and she was a daughter of
old Judge Sutton, of the firm of Pixley and Sutton.”

“A very respectable family,” assented the Duchess.

“I hope she wasn’t a daughter of that loud and vulgar old Mrs. Sutton whom
I met at Saratoga, one summer, four or five years ago?” said Dear Jones.

“Probably she was.”

“She was a horrid old woman. The boys used to call her Mother Gorgon.”

“The pretty Kitty Sutton with whom Eliphalet Duncan had fallen in love was
the daughter of Mother Gorgon. But he never saw the mother, who was in
’Frisco, or Los Angeles, or Santa Fé, or somewhere out West, and he saw
a great deal of the daughter, who was up in the White Mountains. She was
travelling with her brother and his wife, and as they journeyed from hotel
to hotel, Duncan went with them, and filled out the quartette. Before the
end of the summer he began to think about proposing. Of course he had lots
of chances, going on excursions as they were every day. He made up his
mind to seize the first opportunity, and that very evening he took her out
for a moonlight row on Lake Winnipiseogee. As he handed her into the boat
he resolved to do it, and he had a glimmer of a suspicion that she knew he
was going to do it, too.”

“Girls,” said Dear Jones, “never go out in a row-boat at night with a
young man unless you mean to accept him.”

“Sometimes it’s best to refuse him, and get it over once for all,” said
Baby Van Rensselaer.

“As Eliphalet took the oars he felt a sudden chill. He tried to shake it
off, but in vain. He began to have a growing consciousness of impending
evil. Before he had taken ten strokes--and he was a swift oarsman--he was
aware of a mysterious presence between him and Miss Sutton.”

“Was it the guardian-angel ghost warning him off the match?” interrupted
Dear Jones.

“That’s just what it was,” said Uncle Larry. “And he yielded to it, and
kept his peace, and rowed Miss Sutton back to the hotel with his proposal
unspoken.”

“More fool he,” said Dear Jones. “It will take more than one ghost to keep
me from proposing when my mind is made up.” And he looked at Baby Van
Rensselaer.

“The next morning,” continued Uncle Larry, “Eliphalet overslept himself,
and when he went down to a late breakfast he found that the Suttons had
gone to New York by the morning train. He wanted to follow them at once,
and again he felt the mysterious presence overpowering his will. He
struggled two days, and at last he roused himself to do what he wanted
in spite of the spook. When he arrived in New York it was late in the
evening. He dressed himself hastily, and went to the hotel where the
Suttons put up, in the hope of seeing at least her brother. The guardian
angel fought every inch of the walk with him, until he began to wonder
whether, if Miss Sutton were to take him, the spook would forbid the
banns. At the hotel he saw no one that night, and he went home determined
to call as early as he could the next afternoon, and make an end of it.
When he left his office about two o’clock the next day to learn his fate,
he had not walked five blocks before he discovered that the wraith of the
Duncans had withdrawn his opposition to the suit. There was no feeling
of impending evil, no resistance, no struggle, no consciousness of an
opposing presence. Eliphalet was greatly encouraged. He walked briskly to
the hotel; he found Miss Sutton alone. He asked her the question, and got
his answer.”

“She accepted him, of course,” said Baby Van Rensselaer.

“Of course,” said Uncle Larry. “And while they were in the first flush
of joy, swapping confidences and confessions, her brother came into the
parlor with an expression of pain on his face and a telegram in his hand.
The former was caused by the latter, which was from ’Frisco, and which
announced the sudden death of Mrs. Sutton, their mother.”

“And that was why the ghost no longer opposed the match?” questioned Dear
Jones.

“Exactly. You see, the family ghost knew that Mother Gorgon was an awful
obstacle to Duncan’s happiness, so it warned him. But the moment the
obstacle was removed, it gave its consent at once.”

The fog was lowering its thick damp curtain, and it was beginning to
be difficult to see from one end of the boat to the other. Dear Jones
tightened the rug which enwrapped Baby Van Rensselaer, and then withdrew
again into his own substantial coverings.

Uncle Larry paused in his story long enough to light another of the tiny
cigars he always smoked.

“I infer that Lord Duncan”--the Duchess was scrupulous in the bestowal of
titles--“saw no more of the ghosts after he was married.”

“He never saw them at all, at any time, either before or since. But they
came very near breaking off the match, and thus breaking two young hearts.”

“You don’t mean to say that they knew any just cause or impediment why
they should not forever after hold their peace?” asked Dear Jones.

“How could a ghost, or even two ghosts, keep a girl from marrying the man
she loved?” This was Baby Van Rensselaer’s question.

“It seems curious, doesn’t it?” and Uncle Larry tried to warm himself by
two or three sharp pulls at his fiery little cigar. “And the circumstances
are quite as curious as the fact itself. You see, Miss Sutton wouldn’t be
married for a year after her mother’s death, so she and Duncan had lots
of time to tell each other all they knew. Eliphalet, he got to know a
good deal about the girls she went to school with, and Kitty, she learned
all about his family. He didn’t tell her about the title for a long time,
as he wasn’t one to brag. But he described to her the little old house
at Salem. And one evening toward the end of the summer, the wedding-day
having been appointed for early in September, she told him that she didn’t
want a bridal tour at all; she just wanted to go down to the little old
house at Salem to spend her honeymoon in peace and quiet, with nothing to
do and nobody to bother them. Well, Eliphalet jumped at the suggestion:
it suited him down to the ground. All of a sudden he remembered the
spooks, and it knocked him all of a heap. He had told her about the Duncan
banshee, and the idea of having an ancestral ghost in personal attendance
on her husband tickled her immensely. But he had never said anything about
the ghost which haunted the little old house at Salem. He knew she would
be frightened out of her wits if the house ghost revealed itself to her,
and he saw at once that it would be impossible to go to Salem on their
wedding trip. So he told her all about it, and how whenever he went to
Salem the two ghosts interfered, and gave dark séances and manifested and
materialized and made the place absolutely impossible. Kitty, she listened
in silence, and Eliphalet, he thought she had changed her mind. But she
hadn’t done anything of the kind.”

“Just like a man--to think she was going to,” remarked Baby Van Rensselaer.

“She just told him she could not bear ghosts herself, but she would not
marry a man who was afraid of them.”

“Just like a girl--to be so inconsistent,” remarked Dear Jones.

Uncle Larry’s tiny cigar had long been extinct. He lighted a new one,
and continued: “Eliphalet protested in vain. Kitty said her mind was
made up. She was determined to pass her honeymoon in the little old
house at Salem, and she was equally determined not to go there as long as
there were any ghosts there. Until he could assure her that the spectral
tenant had received notice to quit, and that there was no danger of
manifestations and materializing, she refused to be married at all. She
did not intend to have her honeymoon interrupted by two wrangling ghosts,
and the wedding could be postponed until he had made ready the house for
her.”

“She was an unreasonable young woman,” said the Duchess.

“Well, that’s what Eliphalet thought, much as he was in love with her. And
he believed he could talk her out of her determination. But he couldn’t.
She was set. And when a girl is set, there’s nothing to do but to yield to
the inevitable. And that’s just what Eliphalet did. He saw he would either
have to give her up or to get the ghosts out; and as he loved her and did
not care for the ghosts, he resolved to tackle the ghosts. He had clear
grit, Eliphalet had--he was half Scotch and half Yankee, and neither breed
turns tail in a hurry. So he made his plans and he went down to Salem. As
he said good-by to Kitty he had an impression that she was sorry she had
made him go, but she kept up bravely, and put a bold face on it, and saw
him off, and went home and cried for an hour, and was perfectly miserable
until he came back the next day.”

“Did he succeed in driving the ghosts away?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer,
with great interest.

“That’s just what I’m coming to,” said Uncle Larry, pausing at the
critical moment, in the manner of the trained story-teller. “You see,
Eliphalet had got a rather tough job, and he would gladly have had an
extension of time on the contract, but he had to choose between the girl
and the ghosts, and he wanted the girl. He tried to invent or remember
some short and easy way with ghosts, but he couldn’t. He wished that
somebody had invented a specific for spooks--something that would make the
ghosts come out of the house and die in the yard. He wondered if he could
not tempt the ghosts to run in debt, so that he might get the sheriff to
help him. He wondered also whether the ghosts could not be overcome with
strong drink--a dissipated spook, a spook with delirium tremens, might
be committed to the inebriate asylum. But none of these things seemed
feasible.”

“What did he do?” interrupted Dear Jones. “The learned counsel will please
speak to the point.”

“You will regret this unseemly haste,” said Uncle Larry, gravely, “when
you know what really happened.”

“What was it, Uncle Larry?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer. “I’m all
impatience.”

And Uncle Larry proceeded:

“Eliphalet went down to the little old house at Salem, and as soon as
the clock struck twelve the rival ghosts began wrangling as before. Raps
here, there, and everywhere, ringing bells, banging tambourines, strumming
banjos sailing about the room, and all the other manifestations and
materializations followed one another just as they had the summer before.
The only difference Eliphalet could detect was a stronger flavor in the
spectral profanity; and this, of course, was only a vague impression, for
he did not actually hear a single word. He waited awhile in patience,
listening and watching. Of course he never saw either of the ghosts,
because neither of them could appear to him. At last he got his dander
up, and he thought it was about time to interfere, so he rapped on the
table, and asked for silence. As soon as he felt that the spooks were
listening to him he explained the situation to them. He told them he was
in love, and that he could not marry unless they vacated the house. He
appealed to them as old friends, and he laid claim to their gratitude.
The titular ghost had been sheltered by the Duncan family for hundreds of
years, and the domiciliary ghost had had free lodging in the little old
house at Salem for nearly two centuries. He implored them to settle their
differences, and to get him out of his difficulty at once. He suggested
that they had better fight it out then and there, and see who was master.
He had brought down with him all needful weapons. And he pulled out his
valise, and spread on the table a pair of navy revolvers, a pair of
shot-guns, a pair of duelling swords, and a couple of bowie-knives. He
offered to serve as second for both parties, and to give the word when
to begin. He also took out of his valise a pack of cards and a bottle
of poison, telling them that if they wished to avoid carnage they might
cut the cards to see which one should take the poison. Then he waited
anxiously for their reply. For a little space there was silence. Then he
became conscious of a tremulous shivering in one corner of the room, and
he remembered that he had heard from that direction what sounded like a
frightened sigh when he made the first suggestion of the duel. Something
told him that this was the domiciliary ghost, and that it was badly
scared. Then he was impressed by a certain movement in the opposite corner
of the room, as though the titular ghost were drawing himself up with
offended dignity. Eliphalet couldn’t exactly see these things, because he
never saw the ghosts, but he felt them. After a silence of nearly a minute
a voice came from the corner where the family ghost stood--a voice strong
and full, but trembling slightly with suppressed passion. And this voice
told Eliphalet it was plain enough that he had not long been the head of
the Duncans, and that he had never properly considered the characteristics
of his race if now he supposed that one of his blood could draw his sword
against a woman. Eliphalet said he had never suggested that the Duncan
ghost should raise his hand against a woman, and all he wanted was that
the Duncan ghost should fight the other ghost. And then the voice told
Eliphalet that the other ghost was a woman.”

“What?” said Dear Jones, sitting up suddenly. “You don’t mean to tell me
that the ghost which haunted the house was a woman?”

“Those were the very words Eliphalet Duncan used,” said Uncle Larry;
“but he did not need to wait for the answer. All at once he recalled the
traditions about the domiciliary ghost, and he knew that what the titular
ghost said was the fact. He had never thought of the sex of a spook,
but there was no doubt whatever that the house ghost was a woman. No
sooner was this firmly fixed in Eliphalet’s mind than he saw his way out
of the difficulty. The ghosts must be married!--for then there would be
no more interference, no more quarrelling, no more manifestations and
materializations, no more dark séances, with their raps and bells and
tambourines and banjos. At first the ghosts would not hear of it. The
voice in the corner declared that the Duncan wraith had never thought of
matrimony. But Eliphalet argued with them, and pleaded and persuaded and
coaxed, and dwelt on the advantages of matrimony. He had to confess, of
course, that he did not know how to get a clergyman to marry them; but the
voice from the corner gravely told him that there need be no difficulty
in regard to that, as there was no lack of spiritual chaplains. Then, for
the first time, the house ghost spoke, in a low, clear, gentle voice, and
with a quaint, old-fashioned New England accent, which contrasted sharply
with the broad Scotch speech of the family ghost. She said that Eliphalet
Duncan seemed to have forgotten that she was married. But this did not
upset Eliphalet at all; he remembered the whole case clearly, and he told
her she was not a married ghost, but a widow, since her husband had been
hung for murdering her. Then the Duncan ghost drew attention to the great
disparity in their ages, saying that he was nearly four hundred and fifty
years old, while she was barely two hundred. But Eliphalet had not talked
to juries for nothing; he just buckled to, and coaxed those ghosts into
matrimony. Afterward he came to the conclusion that they were willing to
be coaxed, but at the time he thought he had pretty hard work to convince
them of the advantages of the plan.”

“Did he succeed?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer, with a young lady’s interest
in matrimony.

“He did,” said Uncle Larry. “He talked the wraith of the Duncans and the
spectre of the little old house at Salem into a matrimonial engagement.
And from the time they were engaged he had no more trouble with them.
They were rival ghosts no longer. They were married by their spiritual
chaplain the very same day that Eliphalet Duncan met Kitty Sutton in front
of the railing of Grace Church. The ghostly bride and bridegroom went away
at once on their bridal tour, and Lord and Lady Duncan went down to the
little old house at Salem to pass their honeymoon.”

Uncle Larry stopped. His tiny cigar was out again. The tale of the rival
ghosts was told. A solemn silence fell on the little party on the deck of
the ocean steamer, broken harshly by the hoarse roar of the fog-horn.




A LETTER AND A PARAGRAPH.

BY H. C. BUNNER.


I.

THE LETTER.

                                                  NEW YORK, Nov. 16, 1883.

MY DEAR WILL:--

You cannot be expected to remember it, but this is the fifth anniversary
of my wedding-day, and to-morrow--it will be to-morrow before this letter
is closed--is my birthday--my fortieth. My head is full of those thoughts
which the habit of my life moves me to put on paper, where I can best
express them; and yet which must be written for only the friendliest of
eyes. It is not the least of my happiness in this life that I have one
friend to whom I can unlock my heart as I can to you.

The wife has just been putting your namesake to sleep. Don’t infer that,
even on the occasion of this family feast, he has been allowed to sit up
until half past eleven. He went to bed properly enough, with a tear or
two, at eight; but when his mother stole into his room just now, after her
custom, I heard his small voice raised in drowsy inquiry; and I followed
her, and slipped the curtain of the doorway aside, and looked. But I did
not go into the room.

The shaded lamp was making a yellow glory in one spot--the head of the
little brass crib where my wife knelt by my boy. I saw the little face,
so like hers, turned up to her. There was a smile on it that I knew was a
reflection of hers. He was winking in a merry half-attempt to keep awake;
but wakefulness was slipping away from him under the charm of that smile
that I could not see. His brown eyes closed, and opened for an instant,
and closed again as the tender, happy hush of a child’s sleep settled down
upon him, and he was gone where we in our heavier slumbers shall hardly
follow him. Then, before I could see my wife’s face as she bent and kissed
him, I let the curtain fall, and crept back here, to sit by the last of
the fire, and see that sacred sight again with the spiritual eyes, and
to dream wonderingly over the unspeakable happiness that has in some
mysterious way come to me, undeserving.

I tell you, Will, that moment was to me like one of those moments of
waking that we know in childhood, when we catch the going of a dream too
subtly sweet to belong to this earth--a glad vision, gone before our eyes
can open wide; not to be figured into any earthly idea, leaving in its
passage a joy so high and fine that the poets tell us it is a memory of
some heaven from which our young souls are yet fresh.

You can understand how it is that I find it hard to realize that there can
be such things in my life; for you know what that life was up to a few
years ago. I am like a man who has spent his first thirty years in a cave.
It takes more than a decade above ground to make him quite believe in the
sun and the blue of the sky.

I was sitting just now before the hearth, with my feet in the bearskin
rug you sent us two Christmases ago. The light of the low wood fire was
chasing the shadows around the room, over my books and my pictures, and
all the fine and gracious luxuries with which I may now make my eyes and
my heart glad, and pamper the tastes that grow with feeding. I was taking
count, so to speak, of my prosperity--the material treasures, the better
treasure that I find in such portion of fame as the world has allotted me,
and the treasure of treasures across the threshold of the next room--in
the next room? No--there, here, in every room, in every corner of the
house, filling it with peace, is the gentle and holy spirit of love.

As I sat and thought, my mind went back to the day that you and I first
met, twenty-two years ago--twenty-two in February next. In twenty-two
years more I could not forget that hideous first day in the city room of
the _Morning Record_. I can see the great gloomy room, with its meagre
gas-jets lighting up, here and there, a pale face at a desk, and bringing
out in ghastly spots the ugliness of the ink-smeared walls. A winter rain
was pouring down outside. I could feel its chill and damp in the room,
though little of it was to be seen through the grimy window-panes. The
composing-room in the rear sent a smell of ink and benzine to permeate
the moist atmosphere. The rumble and shiver of the great presses printing
the weekly came up from below. I sat there in my wet clothes and waited
for my first assignment. I was eighteen, poor as a church mouse, green,
desperately hopeful after a boy’s fashion, and with nothing in my head
but the Latin and Greek of my one single year at college. My spirit had
sunk down far out of sight. My heart beat nervously at every sound of that
awful city editor’s voice, as he called up his soldiers one by one and
assigned them to duty. I could only silently pray that he would “give me
an easy one,” and that I should not disgrace myself in the doing of it. By
Jove, Will, what an old martinet Baldwin was, for all his good heart! Do
you remember that sharp, crackling voice of his, and the awful “Be brief!
be brief!” that always drove all capacity for condensation out of a man’s
head, and set him to stammering out his story with wordy incoherence?
Baldwin is on the _Record_ still. I wonder what poor devil is trembling at
this hour under that disconcerting adjuration.

A wretched day that was! The hours went slow as grief. Smeary little
bare-armed fiends trotted in from the composing-room and out again,
bearing fluttering galley-proofs. Bedraggled, hollow-eyed men came in
from the streets and set their soaked umbrellas to steam against the
heater, and passed into the lion’s den to feed him with news, and were
sent out again to take up their half-cooked umbrellas and go forth
to forage for more. Everyone, I thought, gave me one brief glance of
contempt and curiosity, and put me out of his thoughts. Everyone had some
business--everyone but me. The men who had been waiting with me were
called up one by one and detailed to work. I was left alone.

Then a new horror came to torture my nervously active imagination. Had my
superior officer forgotten his new recruit? Or could he find no task mean
enough for my powers? This filled me at first with a sinking shame, and
then with a hot rage and sense of wrong. Why should he thus slight me? Had
I not a right to be tried, at least? Was there any duty he could find that
I would not perform or die? I would go to him and tell him that I had come
there to work; and would make him give me the work. No, I should simply be
snubbed, and sent to my seat like a school-boy, or perhaps discharged on
the spot. I must bear my humiliation in silence.

I looked up and saw you entering, with your bright, ruddy boy’s face
shining with wet, beaming a greeting to all the room. In my soul I cursed
you, at a venture, for your lightheartedness and your look of cheery
self-confidence. What a vast stretch of struggle and success set you above
me--you, the reporter, above me, the novice! And just then came the awful
summons--“Barclay! Barclay!”--I shall hear that strident note at the
judgment day. I went in and got my orders, and came out with them, all in
a sort of daze that must have made Baldwin think me an idiot. And then you
came up to me and scraped acquaintance in a desultory way, to hide your
kind intent; and gave me a hint or two as to how to obtain a full account
of the biennial meeting of the Post-Pliocene Mineralogical Society, or
whatever it was, without diving too deeply into the Post-Pliocene period.
I would have fought for you to the death, at that moment.

’Twas a small matter, but the friendship begun in manly and helpful
kindness has gone on for twenty-two years in mutual faith and loyalty; and
the growth dignifies the seed.

A sturdy growth it was in its sapling days. It was in the late spring that
we decided to take the room together in St. Mark’s Place. A big room and a
poor room, indeed, on the third story of that “battered caravanserai,” and
for twelve long years it held us and our hopes and our despairs and our
troubles and our joys.

I don’t think I have forgotten one detail of that room. There is the
generous old fireplace, insultingly bricked up by modern poverty, all save
the meagre niche that holds our fire--when we can have a fire. There is
the great second-hand table--our first purchase--where we sit and work
for immortality in the scant intervals of working for life. Your drawer,
with the manuscript of your “Concordance of Political Economy,” is to
the right. Mine is to the left; it holds the unfinished play, and the
poems that might better have been unfinished. There are the two narrow
cots--yours to the left of the door as you enter; mine to the right.

How strange that I can see it all so clearly, now that all is different!

Yet I can remember myself coming home at one o’clock at night, dragging
my tired feet up those dark, still, tortuous stairs, gripping the shaky
baluster for aid. I open the door--I can feel the little old-fashioned
brass knob in my palm even now--and I look to the left. Ah, you are
already at home and in bed. I need not look toward the table. There is
money--a little--in the common treasury; and, in accordance with our
regular compact, I know there stand on that table twin bottles of beer,
half a loaf of rye bread, and a double palm’s-breadth of Swiss cheese.
You are staying your hunger in sleep; for one may not eat until the other
comes. I will wake you up, and we shall feast together and talk over the
day that is dead and the day that is begun.

Strange, is it not, that I should have some trouble to realize that this
is only a memory,--I, with my feet in the bearskin rug that it would have
beggared the two of us, or a dozen like us, to purchase in those days.
Strange that my mind should be wandering on the crude work of my boyhood
and my early manhood. I who have won name and fame, as the world would
say. I, to whom young men come for advice and encouragement, as to a tried
veteran! Strange that I should be thinking of a time when even your true
and tireless friendship could not quench a subtle hunger at my heart, a
hunger for a more dear and intimate comradeship. I, with the tenderest of
wives scarce out of my sight; even in her sleep she is no further from me
than my own soul.

Strangest of all this, that the mad agony of grief, the passion of
desolation that came upon me when our long partnership was dissolved
for ever, should now be nothing but a memory, like other memories, to
be summoned up out of the resting-places of the mind, toyed with, idly
questioned, and dismissed with a sigh and a smile! What a real thing it
was just ten years ago; what a very present pain! Believe me, Will,--yes,
I want you to believe this--that in those first hours of loneliness I
could have welcomed death; death would have fallen upon me as calmly as
sleep has fallen upon my boy in the room beyond there.

You knew nothing of this then; I suppose you but half believe it now; for
our parting was manly enough. I kept as stiff an upper lip as you did,
for all there was less hair on it. Perhaps it seems extravagant to you.
But there was a deal of difference between our cases. You had turned your
pen to money-making, at the call of love; you were going to Stillwater to
marry the judge’s daughter, and to become a great land-owner and mayor
of Stillwater and millionaire--or what is it now? And much of this you
foresaw or hoped for, at least. Hope is something. But for me? I was left
in the third-story of a poor lodging-house in St. Mark’s Place, my best
friend gone from me; with neither remembrance nor hope of Love to live on,
and with my last story back from _all_ the magazines.

We will not talk about it. Let me get back to my pleasant library with the
books and the pictures and the glancing fire-light, and me with my feet in
your bearskin rug, listening to my wife’s step in the next room.

To your ear, for our communion has been so long and so close that to
either one of us the faintest inflection of the other’s voice speaks
clearer than formulated words; to your ear there must be something akin
to a tone of regret--regret for the old days--in what I have just said.
And would it be strange if there were? A poor soldier of fortune who had
been set to a man’s work before he had done with his meagre boyhood, who
had passed from recruit to the place of a young veteran in that great,
hard-fighting, unresting pioneer army of journalism; was he the man, all
of a sudden, to stretch his toughened sinews out and let them relax in
the glow of the home hearth? Would not his legs begin to twitch for the
road; would he not be wild to feel again the rain in his weather-beaten
face? Would you think it strange if at night he should toss in his white,
soft bed, longing to change it for a blanket on the turf, with the broad
procession of sunlit worlds sweeping over his head, beyond the blue spaces
of the night? And even if the dear face on the pillow next him were to
wake and look at him with reproachful surprise; and even if warm arms drew
him back to his new allegiance; would not his heart in dreams go throbbing
to the rhythm of the drum or the music of songs sung by the camp-fire?

It was so at the beginning, in the incredible happiness of the first year,
and even after the boy’s birth. Do you know, it was months before I could
accept that boy as a _fact_? If, at any moment, he had vanished from my
sight, crib and all, I should not have been surprised. I was not sure of
him until he began to show his mother’s eyes.

Yes, even in those days some of the old leaven worked in me. I had moments
of that old barbaric freedom which we used to rejoice in--that feeling of
being answerable to nothing in the world save my own will--the sense of
untrammeled, careless power.

Do you remember the night that we walked till sunrise? You remember how
hot it was at midnight, when we left the office, and how the moonlight
on the statue above the City Hall seemed to invite us fieldward, where
no gaslight glared, no torches flickered. So we walked idly northward,
through the black, silence-stricken down-town streets; through that
feverish, unresting central region that lies between the vileness of
Houston Street and the calm and spacious dignity of the brown-stone ways,
where the closed and darkened dwellings looked like huge tombs in the
pallid light of the moon. We passed the suburban belt of shanties; we
passed the garden-girt villas beyond them, and it was from the hill above
Spuyten Duyvil that we saw the first color of the morning upon the face of
the Palisades.

It would have taken very little in that moment to set us off to tramping
the broad earth, for the pure joy of free wayfaring. What was there to
hold us back? No tie of home or kin. All we had in the world to leave
behind us was some futile scribbling on various sheets of paper. And of
that sort of thing both our heads were full enough. I think it was but the
veriest chance that, having begun that walk, we did not go on and get our
fill of wandering, and ruin our lives.

Well, that same wild, adventurous spirit came upon me now and then. There
were times when, for the moment, I forgot that I had a wife and a child.
There were times when I remembered them as a burden. Why should I not say
this? It is the history of every married man,--at least of every manly
man,--though he be married to the best woman in the world. It means no
lack of love. It is as unavoidable as the leap of the blood in you that
answers a trumpet-call.

At first I was frightened, and fought against it as against something
that might grow upon me. I reproached myself for disloyalty in thought.
Ah! what need had _I_ to fight? What need had I to choke down rebellious
fancies, while my wife’s love was working that miracle that makes two
spirits one.

What is it, this union that comes to us as a surprise, and remains for all
outside an incommunicable mystery? What is this that makes our unmarried
love seem so slight and childish a thing? You and I, who know it, know
that it is no mere fruit of intimacy and usage, although in its growth it
keeps pace with these. We know that in some subtle way it has been given
to a man to see a woman’s soul as he sees his own, and to a woman to look
into a man’s heart as if it were, indeed, hers. But the friend who sits
at my table, seeing that my wife and I understand each other at a simple
meeting of the eyes, makes no more of it than he does of the glance of
intelligence which, with close friends, often takes the place of speech.
He never dreams of the sweet delight with which we commune together in a
language that he cannot understand--that he cannot hear--a language that
has no formulated words, feeling answering feeling.

It is not wonderful that I should wish to give expression to the gratitude
with which I have seen my life made to blossom thus; my thankfulness for
the love which has made me not only a happier, but, I humbly believe, a
wiser and a better-minded man. But I know too well the hopelessness of
trying to find words to describe what, were I a poet, my best song might
but faintly, faintly echo.

I thought I heard a rustle behind me just now. In a little while my wife
will come softly into the room, and softly up to where I am sitting,
stepping silently across your bearskin rug, and will lay one hand softly
on my left shoulder, while the other slips down this arm with which I
write, until it falls and closes lightly, yet with loving firmness, on my
hand that holds the pen. And I shall say, “Only the last words to Will and
his wife, dear.” And she will release my hand, and will lift her own, I
think, to caress the patch of gray hair on my temple; it is a way she has,
as though it were some pitiful scar, and she will say, “Give them my love,
and tell them they must not fail us this Christmas. I want them to see
how our Willy has grown.” And when she says “Our Willy,” the hand on my
shoulder will instinctively close a little, clingingly; and she will bend
her head, and put her face close to mine, and I shall turn to look into
her eyes.

       *       *       *       *       *

Bear with me, my dear Will, until I have told you why I have written this
letter and what it means. I have concealed one thing from you for the last
six months. I have disease of the heart, and the doctor has told me that
I may die at any moment. Somehow, I think--I know the moment is close at
hand; I shall soon go to that narrow cot on the right of the door, and I
do not believe I shall wake up in the morning with the sun in my eyes, to
look across the room and see that its companion is gone.

For I am in the old room, Will, as you know, and it is not ten years since
you went away, but two days. The picture that has seemed real to me as I
wrote these pages is fading, and the thin gas-jet flickers and sinks as it
always did in these first morning hours. I can hear the roar of the last
Harlem train swell and sink, and the sharp clink of car-bells break the
silence that follows. The wind is gasping and struggling in the chimney,
and blowing a white powdery ash down on the hearth. I have just burnt my
poems and the play. Both the table drawers are empty now; and soon enough
the two empty chairs will stare at each other across the bare table. What
a wild dream have I dreamt in all this emptiness! Just now, I thought
indeed that it was true. I thought I heard a woman’s step behind me, and I
turned--

Peace be with you, Will, in the fullness of your love. I am going to
sleep. Perhaps I shall dream it all again, and shall hear that soft
footfall when the turn of the night comes, and the pale light through the
ragged blind, and the end of a long loneliness.

After I am dead, I wish you to think of me not as I was, but as I wanted
to be. I have tried to show you that I have led by your side a happier and
dearer life of hope and aspiration than the one you saw. I have tried to
leave your memory a picture of me that you will not shrink from calling
up when you have a quiet hour and time for thought of the friend whom you
knew well; but whom you may, perhaps, know better now that he is dead.

                                                         REGINALD BARCLAY.


II.

THE PARAGRAPH.

[From the _New York Herald_ of Nov. 18, 1883.]

Reginald Barclay, a journalist, was found dead in his bed at 15 St.
Mark’s Place, yesterday morning. No inquest was held, as Mr. Barclay
had been known to be suffering from disease of the heart, and his death
was not unexpected. The deceased came originally from Oneida County,
and was regarded as a young journalist of considerable promise. He had
been for some years on the city staff of the _Record_, and was the
correspondent of several out-of-town papers. He had also contributed to
the monthly magazines, occasional poems and short stories, which showed
the possession, in some measure, of the imaginative faculty. Mr. Barclay
was about thirty years of age, and unmarried.




PLAYING A PART: A COMEDY FOR AMATEUR ACTING.

BY BRANDER MATTHEWS.


_The Scene is a handsomely-furnished parlor, with a general air of home
comfort. A curtained window on each side of the central fireplace would
light the room if it were not evening, as the lamp on the work-table in
the centre of the room informs us. At one side of the work-table is the
wife, winding a ball of worsted from a skein which her husband holds in
his hands._

_He_ (_looking at watch, aside_). This wool takes as long to wind up as a
bankrupt estate. (_Fidgets._)

_She._ Do keep still, Jack! Stop fidgeting and jumping around.

_He._ When you pull the string, Jenny, I am always a jumping-jack to dance
attendance on you.

_She_ (_seriously_). Very pretty, indeed! It was true too--once--before we
were married: now you lead me a different dance.

_He._ I am your partner still.

_She_ (_sadly_). But the figure is always the Ladies’ Chain.

_He_ (_aside_). If I don’t get away soon I sha’n’t be able to do any work
to-night.--(_Aloud_). What do you mean by that solemn tone?

_She._ Oh, nothing--nothing of any consequence.

_He_ (_aside_). We look like two fools acting in private theatricals.

_She_ (_finishing ball of worsted_). That will do: thank you. Do not let
me detain you: I know you are in a hurry.

_He._ I have my work to do.

_She._ So it seems; and it takes all day and half the night.

_He_ (_rising and going to fireplace_). I am working hard for our future
happiness.

_She_ (_quietly_). I should like a little of the happiness now.

_He_ (_standing with back to fireplace_). Are you unhappy?

_She._ Oh no--not very.

_He._ Do you not have everything you wish?

_She._ Oh yes--except the one thing I want most.

_He._ Well, my dear, I am at home as much as I can be.

_She._ So you think I meant you?

_He_ (_embarrassed_). Well--I did suppose--that--

_She._ Yes, I used to want you. The days were long enough while you were
away, and I waited for your return. Now I have been alone so much that I
am getting accustomed to solitude. And I do not really know what it is I
do want. I am listless, nervous, good-for-nothing--

_He_ (_gallantly_). You are good enough for me.

_She._ You did think so once; and perhaps you would think so again--if you
could spare the time to get acquainted with me.

_He_ (_surprised_). Jenny, are you ill?

_She._ Not more so than usual. I was bright enough two years ago, when we
were married. But for two years I have not lived, I have vegetated; more
like a plant than a human being; and even plants require some sunshine.

_He_ (_aside_). I have never heard her talk like this before. I don’t
understand it.--(_Aloud._) Why, Jenny, you speak as if I were a cloud over
your life.

_She._ Do I? Well, it does not matter.

_He._ I try to be a good husband, don’t I?

_She_ (_indifferently_). As well as you know how, I suppose.

_He._ Do I deprive you of anything you want?

_She_ (_impatiently_). Of course you do not.

_He._ I work hard, I know, but when I go out in the evening now and then--

_She_ (_aside_). Six nights every week. (_Sighing._)

_He._ I really work. There are husbands who say they are at work when they
are at the club playing poker: now I am really working.

_She_ (_impatiently_). You have no small vices. (_Rising._) Is there no
work calling you away to-night? Why are you not off?

_He_ (_looking at watch_). I am a little late, that’s a fact: still, I can
do what I have to do if I work like a horse.

_She._ Have you to draw a conveyance? That is the old joke.

_He._ This is no joke. It’s a divorce suit.

_She_ (_quickly_). Is it that Lightfoot person again?

_He._ It is Mrs. Lightfoot’s case. She is a very fine woman, and her
husband has treated her shamefully.

_She._ Better than the creature deserved, I dare say. You will win her
case for her?

_He._ I shall do my best.

_She_ (_sarcastically_). No doubt.--(_Aside._) I hate that woman!
(_Crosses the room and sits on sofa on the right of the fireplace._)

_He._ But the result of a lawsuit is generally a toss-up; and heads do not
always win.

_She._ I wish you luck this time--for her husband’s sake: he’ll be glad to
be rid of her. But I doubt it: you can’t get up any sympathy by exhibiting
her to the jury: she isn’t good-looking enough.

_He_ (_quickly_). She’s a very fine woman indeed.

_She_ (_aside_). How eagerly he defends her!--(_Aloud._) She’s a great
big, tall, giantess creature, with a face like a wax doll and a head of
hair like a Circassian Girl. No juryman will fall in love with her.

_He._ How often have I told you that Justice does not consider persons!
Now, in the eye of the law--

_She_ (_interrupting_). Do you acknowledge that the law has but one eye
and can see only one side?

_He._ Are you jealous? (_Crossing and standing in front of her._)

_She._ Jealous of this Mrs. Lightfoot? (_Laughs._) Ridiculous!

_He._ I am glad of it, for I think a jealous woman has a very poor opinion
of herself.

_She_ (_forcibly_). And it is her business which takes you out to-night?

_He_ (_going toward the left-hand door_). I have to go across to the Bar
Association to look up some points, and--

_She_ (_rising quickly_). And you can just send me a cab. I shall go to
Mrs. Playfair’s to rehearse again for the private theatricals.

_He_ (_annoyed, coming back_). But I had asked you to give it up.

_She_ (_with growing excitement_). And I had almost determined to give it
up, but I have changed my mind. That’s a woman’s privilege, isn’t it? I am
tired of spending my evenings by myself.

_He._ Now be reasonable, Jenny: I must work.

_She._ And I must play--in the private theatricals.

_He._ But I don’t like private theatricals.

_She._ Don’t you? I do.

_He._ And I particularly dislike amateur actors.

_She._ Do you? I don’t. I like some of them very much; and some of them
like me, too.

_He._ The deuce they do!

_She._ Tom Thursby and Dick Carey and Harry Wylde were all disputing who
should make love to me.

_He._ Make love to you?

_She._ In the play--in _Husbands and Wives_.

_He._ Do you mean to say that you are going to act on the stage with those
brainless idiots?

_She_ (_interrupting_). Do not call my friends names: it is in bad taste.

_He._ What will people say when they see my wife pawed and clawed by those
fellows?

_She._ Let them say what they please. Do you think I care for the
tittle-tattle of the riffraff of society?

_He._ But, Jenny--(_Brusquely._) Confound it! I have no patience with you!

_She._ So I have discovered. But you need not lose your temper here, and
swear. Go outside and do it, and leave me alone, as I am every evening.

_He._ You talk as if I ill-treated you.

_She_ (_sarcastically_). Do I? That is very wicked of me, isn’t it? You
take the best possible care of me, you are ever thinking of me, and you
never leave my side for a moment. Oh no, you do not ill-treat me--or
abuse me--or neglect me (_breaking down_)--or make me miserable. There is
nothing the matter with me, of course. But you never will believe I have a
heart until you have broken it! (_Sinking on chair, C._)

_He_ (_crossing to her_). You are excited, I see; still, I must say this
is a little too much.

_She_ (_starting up_). Don’t come near me! (_Sarcastically._) Don’t let me
keep you from your work (_going to door R. 2d E_), and don’t fail to send
me a cab. At last I revolt against your neglect.

_He_ (_indignantly protesting_). My neglect? Do you mean to say I neglect
you? My conscience does not reproach me.

_She_ (_at the door on the right_). That’s because you haven’t any!
(_Exit, slamming door_).

_He_ (_alone_). I never saw her go on that way before. What can be the
matter with her? She is not like herself at all: she is low-spirited
and nervous. Now, I never could see why women had any nerves. I wonder
if she really thinks that I neglect her? I should be sorry, very sorry,
if she did. I’ll not go out to-night: I’ll stay at home and have a quiet
evening at my own fireside. (_Sits in chair in the centre._) I think
that will bring her round. I’d like to know what has made her act like
this. Has she been reading any sentimental trash, I wonder? (_Sees book
in work-basket._) Now, here’s some yellow-covered literature. (_Takes
it up._) Why, it’s that confounded play, _Husbands and Wives_. Let me
see the silly stuff. (_Reads:_) “My darling, one more embrace, one last,
long, loving kiss;” and then he hugs her and kisses her. (_Rising._) And
she thinks I’ll have her play a part like that? How should I look while
that was going on? Can’t she find something else? (_At work-table._)
Here is another. (_Takes up second pamphlet._) No, it is a _Guide to
the Passions_. I fear I need no guide to get into a passion. I doubt
if there’s as much hugging and kissing in this as in the other one.
(_Reads:_) “It is impossible to describe all the effects of the various
passions, but a few hints are here given as to how the more important
may be delineated.” (_Spoken._) This is interesting. If ever I have to
delineate a passion I shall fall back on this guide. (_Reads:_) “Love
is a--” (_Reads hastily and unintelligibly:_) “When successful, love
authorizes the fervent embrace of the beloved!” The deuce it does! And I
find my wife getting instruction from this Devil’s text-book! A little
more and I should be jealous. (_Looks at book._) Ah, here is jealousy:
now let’s see how I ought to feel. (_Reads:_) “Jealousy is a mixture
of passions and--” (_Reads hastily and unintelligibly._) Not so bad! I
believe I could act up to these instructions. (_Jumping up._) And I will!
My wife wants acting: she shall have it! She complains of monotony: she
shall have variety! “Jealousy is a mixture of passions.” I’ll be jealous:
I’ll give her a mixture of passions. I’ll take a leaf out of her book,
and I’ll find a cure for these nerves of her’s. I’ll learn my part at
once: we’ll have some private theatricals to order. (_Walks up and down,
studying book._)

    _She re-renters, with bonnet on and cloak over her arm, and stands
    in surprise, watching him._

_She._ You here still?

_He._ Yes.

_She._ Have you ordered a cab for me?

_He._ No.

_She._ And why not?

_He_ (_aside_). Now’s my chance. Mixture of passions--I’ll try suspicion
first.--(_Aloud._) Because I do not approve of the people you are going to
meet--these Thursbys and Careys and Wyldes.

_She_ (_calmly sitting on sofa_). Perhaps you would like to revise my
visiting-list, and tell the servant whom I am to receive.

_He._ You may see what ladies you please--

_She_ (_interrupting_). Thank you; still, I do not please to see Mrs.
Lightfoot.

_He_ (_annoyed_). I say nothing of her.

_She._ Oh dear, no! I dare say you keep it as secret as you can.

_He_ (_aside_). Simple suspicion is useless. What’s next? (_Glances
in pamphlet:_) “Peevish personalities.” I will pass on to peevish
personalities.--(_Aloud._) Now, these men, these fellows who strut about
the stage for an idle hour, who are they? This Tom Thursby, who wanted to
make love to you--who is he?

_She._ Are you going to ask many questions? Is this catechism a long one?
If it is, I may as well lay aside my shawl.

_He._ Who is he, I say, I insist upon knowing.

_She._ He’s a good enough fellow in his way.

_He_ (_sternly_). He had best beware how he gets in _my_ way.

_She_ (_aside_). There’s a great change in his manner: I do not understand
it.

_He._ And this Dick Carey--who is he? (_Stalking toward her._)

_She_ (_starting up and crossing_). Are you trying to frighten me by this
violence?

_He_ (_aside_). It is producing an effect.

_She._ But I am not afraid of you, if I am a weak woman and you are a
strong man.

_He_ (_aside_). It is going all right.--(_Aloud, fiercely._) Answer me at
once! Is this Carey married?

_She._ I believe he is.

_He._ You believe! Don’t you know? Does his wife act with these strollers?
Have you not seen her?

_She._ I have never seen her. She and her husband are like the two buckets
in a well: they never turn up together. They meet only to clash, and one
is always throwing cold water on the other.

_He._ And Harry Wylde! Is he married?

_She._ Yes; and his wife is always keeping him in hot water.

_He._ And so he comes to you for consolation?

_She_ (_laughing_). He needs no consoling: he has always such a flow of
spirits.

_He._ I’ve heard the fellow drank.

_She_ (_surprised, aside_). Can Jack be jealous? I wish I could think so,
for then I might hope he still loved me.

_He._ And do you suppose I can allow you to associate with these fellows,
who all want to make love to you?

_She_ (_aside, joyfully_). He _is_ jealous! The dear boy!

_He_ (_fiercely_). Do you think I can permit this, madam?

_She_ (_aside_). “Madam!” I could hug him for loving me enough to call me
“madam” like that. But I must not give in too soon.

_He._ Have you nothing to say for yourself? Can you find no words to
defend yourself, woman?

_She_ (_aside_). “Woman!” He calls me “woman!” I can forgive him anything
now.

_He._ Are you dumb, woman? Have you naught to say?

_She_ (_gleefully, aside_). I had no idea I had married an Othello! (_She
sees the pillow on the sofa, and, crossing to it quietly, hides the pillow
behind the sofa._)

_He_ (_aside_). What did she mean by that?--(_Aloud, fiercely._) Do you
intend to deny--

_She_ (_interrupting_). I have nothing to deny, I have nothing to conceal.

_He._ Do you deny that you confessed these fellows sought to make love to
you?

_She._ I do not deny that. (_Mischievously._) But I never thought you
would worry about such trifles.

_He._ Trifles! madam? Trifles, indeed! (_Glances in book, and quoting:_)

    “Trifles light as air
    Are to the jealous confirmations strong
    As proofs of holy writ.”

_She_ (_surprised aside_). Where did he get his blank verse?

_He_ (_aside_). That seemed to tell. I’ll give her some more. (Glancing in
pamphlet, and quoting:)

    “But, alas, to make me
    A fixed figure for the time of scorn
    To point his slow, unmoving finger at!”

_She_ (_aside, jumping up with indignation_). Why, it is _Othello_ he is
quoting! He is acting! He is positively playing a part! It is shameful of
him! It’s not real jealousy: it’s a sham. Oh, the wretch! But I’ll pay him
back! I’ll make him jealous without any make-believe.

_He_ (_aside_). I’m getting on capitally. I’m making a strong impression:
I am rousing her out of her nervousness. I doubt if she will want any
more private theatricals now. I don’t think I shall have to repeat the
lesson. This _Guide to the Passions_ is a first-rate book: I’ll keep one
in the house all the time.

_She_ (_aside_). If he plays Othello, I can play Iago. I’ll give his
jealousy something to feed on. I have no blank verse for him, but I’ll
make him blank enough before I am done with him. Oh, the villain!

_He_ (_aside_). Now let me try threatening. (_Glancing in book:_) “Pity
the sorrows of a poor old man”--I’ve got the wrong place. That’s not
threatening--that’s senility. (_Turning over page._) Ah, here it is.

_She_ (_aside_). And he thinks he can jest with a woman’s heart and not be
punished? Oh, the wickedness of man!--(_Forcibly._) Oh, if mamma were only
here, now!

_He_ (_threateningly_). Who are these fellows? This Tom, Dick and Harry
are--are they--(_hesitates, and glances in pamphlet_) are they “framed to
make women false?”

_She_ (_aside_). Why, he’s got a book! It’s my _Guide to the Passions_.
The wretch has actually been copying his jealousy out of my own book.
(_Aloud, with pretended emotion._) Dear me, Jack, you never before
objected to my little flirtations. (_Aside, watching him._) How will he
like that?

_He_ (_aside, puzzled_). “Little flirtations!” I don’t like that--I don’t
like it at all.

_She._ They have all been attentive, of course--

_He_ (_aside_). “Of course!” I don’t like that, either.

_She._ But I did not think you would so take to heart a few innocent
endearments.

_He_ (_starting_). “Innocent endearments!” Do you mean to say that they
offer you any “innocent endearments?”

_She_ (_quietly_). Don’t be so boisterous, Jack: you will crush my book.

_He_ (_looking at pamphlet crushed in his hand, and throwing it from him,
aside_). Confound the book! I do not need any prompting now.--(_Aloud._)
Which of these men has dared to offer you any “innocent endearments?”

_She_ (_hesitatingly_). Well--I don’t know--that I ought to tell
you--since you take things so queerly. But Tom--

_He_ (_forcibly_). Tom?

_She._ Mr. Thursby, I mean. He and I are very old friends, you know--I
believe we are third cousins or so--and of course I don’t stand on
ceremony with him.

_He._ And he does not stand on ceremony with you, I suppose?

_She._ Oh, no. In fact, we are first-rate friends. Indeed, when Dick Carey
wanted to make love to me, he was quite jealous.

_He._ Oh, _he_ was jealous, was he? The fellow’s impudence is amazing!
When I meet him I’ll give him a piece of my mind.

_She_ (_demurely_). Are you sure you can spare it!

_He._ Don’t irritate me too far, Jenny: I’ve a temper of my own.

_She._ You seem to have lost it now.

_He._ Do you not see that I am in a heat about this thing? How can you sit
there so calmly? You keep cool like a--(_hesitates_) like a--

_She_ (_interrupting_). Like a burning-glass, I keep cool myself while
setting you on fire? Exactly so, and I suppose you would prefer me to be a
looking-glass in which you could see only yourself?

_He._ A wife should reflect her husband’s image, and not that of a pack of
fools.

_She._ Come, come, Jack, you are not jealous?

_He._ “Jealous!” Of course I am not jealous, but I am very much annoyed.

_She._ I am glad that you are not jealous, for I have always heard that a
jealous man has a very poor opinion of himself.--(_Aside._) There’s one
for him.

_He._ I am not jealous, but I will probe this thing to the bottom; I must
know the truth.

_She_ (_aside_). He _is_ jealous now; and this is real: I am sure it is.

_He._ Go on, tell me more: I must get at the bottom facts. There’s nothing
like truth.

_She_ (_aside_). There is nothing like it in what he’s learning.

_He_ (_aside_). This Carey is harmless enough, and he can’t help talking.
He’s a--he’s a telescope; you have only to draw him out, and anybody can
see through him. I’ll get hold of him, draw him out, and then shut him up!
(_Crossing excitedly._)

_She_ (_aside_). How much more his real jealousy moves me than his
pretence of it! He seems very much affected: no man could be as jealous
as he is unless he was very much in love.

_He_ (_with affected coolness_). You have told me about Tom and Dick;
pray, have you nothing to say about Harry?

_She._ Mr. Wylde? (_Enthusiastically._) He is a man after my own heart!

_He._ So he is after it? (_Savagely._) Just let me get after him!

_She_ (_coolly_). Well, if you do not like his attentions, you can take
him apart and tell him so.

_He_ (_vindictively_). If I took him apart he’d never get put together
again!

_She._ Mr. Wylde is very much afraid of his wife, but when she is not
there he is more devoted than either of the others.

_He._ “More devoted!” What else shall I hear, I wonder?

_She._ It was he who had to kiss me.

_He_ (_startled_). What?

_She._ I told him not to do it. I knew I should blush if he kissed me: I
always do.

_He_ (_in great agitation_). You always do? Has this man ever--(_breaking
down._) Oh, Jenny! Jenny! you do not know what you are doing. I do not
blame you--it is not your fault: it is mine. I did not know how much I
loved you, and I find it out now, when it is perhaps too late.

_She_ (_aside_). How I have longed for a few words of love like these! and
they have come at last!

_He._ I have been too selfish; I have thought too much of my work and too
little of your happiness. I see now what a mistake I have made.

_She_ (_aside_). I cannot sit still here and see him waste his love in the
air like this.

_He._ I shall turn over a new leaf. If you will let me I shall devote
myself to you, taking care of you and making you happy.

_She_ (_aside_). If he had only spoken like that before!

_He._ I will try to win you away from these associates: I am sure that in
your heart you do not care for them. (_Crossing to her._) You know that I
love you: can I not hope to win you back to me?

_She_ (_aside_). Once before he spoke to me of his love: I can remember
every tone of his voice, every word he said.

_He._ Jenny, is my task hopeless?

_She_ (_quietly crossing to arm-chair_). The task is easy, Jack.
(_Smiling._) Perhaps you think too much of these associates: perhaps you
think a good deal more of them than I do. In fact, I am sure that to-night
you were the one who took to private theatricals first. By the way,
where’s my _Guide to the Passions_? Have you seen it lately?

_He_ (_half comprehending_). Your _Guide to the Passions_? A book with a
yellow cover? I think I _have_ seen it.

_She._ I saw it last in your hand--just after you had been quoting
_Othello_.

_He._ _Othello?_ Oh, then you know--

_She_ (_smiling_). Yes, I know. I saw, I understood, and I retaliated on
the spot.

_He._ You retaliated?

_She._ I paid you off in your own coin--counterfeit, like yours.

_He_ (_joyfully_). Then Tom did not make love to you?

_She._ Oh, yes he did--in the play.

_He._ And Dick is not devoted?

_She._ Yes, he is--in the play.

_He._ And Harry did not try to kiss you?

_She._ Indeed he did--in the play.

_He._ Then you have been playing a part?

_She._ Haven’t you?

_He._ Haven’t I? Certainly not. At least--Well, at least I will say
nothing more about Tom or Dick or Harry.

_She._ And I will say nothing more of Mrs. Lightfoot.

_He_ (_dropping in chair to her right_). Mrs. Lightfoot is a fine woman,
my dear (_she looks up_), but she is not my style at all. Besides, you
know, it was only as a matter of business, for the sake of our future
prospects, that I took her part.

_She_ (_throwing him skein of wool_). And it is only for the sake of our
future happiness that I have been playing mine.

    _He holds the wool and she winds the ball, and the curtain falls,
    leaving them in the same position its rising discovered them in._




LOVE IN OLD CLOATHES.


                                           NEWE YORK, yᵉ 1ˢᵗ Aprile, 1883.

Yᵉ worste of my ailment is this, yᵗ it groweth not Less with much
nursinge, but is like to those fevres wᶜʰ yᵉ leeches Starve, ’tis saide,
for that yᵉ more Bloode there be in yᵉ Sicke man’s Bodie, yᵉ more foode
is there for yᵉ Distemper to feede upon.--And it is moste fittinge yᵗ I
come backe to yᵉ my Journall (wherein I have not writt a Lyne these manye
months) on yᵉ 1ˢᵗ of Aprile, beinge in some Sort myne owne foole and yᵉ
foole of Love, and a poore Butt on whome his hearte hath play’d a Sorry
tricke.--

For it is surelie a strange happenninge, that I, who am ofte accompted a
man of yᵉ Worlde, (as yᵉ Phrase goes,) sholde be soe Overtaken and caste
downe lyke a Schoole-boy or a countrie Bumpkin, by a meere Mayde, & sholde
set to Groaninge and Sighinge, &, for that She will not have me Sighe to
Her, to Groaninge and Sighinge on paper, wᶜʰ is yᵉ greter Foolishnesse
in Me, yᵗ some one maye reade it Here-after, who hath taken his dose of
yᵉ same Physicke, and made no Wrye faces over it; in wᶜʰ case I doubte I
shall be much laugh’d at.--Yet soe much am I a foole, and soe enamour’d
of my Foolishnesse, yᵗ I have a sorte of Shamefull Joye in tellinge, even
to my Journall, yᵗ I am mightie deepe in Love withe yᵉ yonge Daughter
of Mistresse Ffrench, and all maye knowe what an Angell is yᵉ Daughter,
since I have chose Mʳˢ. French for my Mother in Lawe.--(Though she will
have none of my choosinge.)--and I likewise take comforte in yᵉ Fancie, yᵗ
this poore Sheete, whᵒⁿ I write, may be made of yᵉ Raggs of some lucklesse
Lover, and maye yᵉ more readilie drinke up my complaininge Inke.--

This muche I have learnt yᵗ Fraunce distilles not, nor yᵉ Indies growe
not, yᵉ Remedie for my Aile.--For when I 1ˢᵗ became sensible of yᵉ folly
of my Suite, I tooke to drynkinge & smoakinge, thinkinge to cure my minde,
but all I got was a head ache, for fellowe to my Hearte ache.--A sorrie
Payre!--I then made Shifte, for a while, withe a Bicycle, but breakinge of
Bones mendes no breakinge of Heartes, and 60 myles a Daye bringes me no
nearer to a Weddinge.--This being Lowe Sondaye, (wᶜʰ my Hearte telleth me
better than yᵉ Allmanack,) I will goe to Churche; wh. I maye chaunce to
see her.--Laste weeke, her Eastre bonnett vastlie pleas’d me, beinge most
cunninglie devys’d in yᵉ mode of oure Grandmothers, and verie lyke to a
coales Scuttle, of white satine.--

                                                               2ⁿᵈ Aprile.

I trust I make no more moane, than is just for a man in my case, but there
is small comforte in lookinge at yᵉ backe of a white Satine bonnett for
two Houres, and I maye saye as much.--Neither any cheere in Her goinge
out of yᵉ Churche, & Walkinge downe yᵉ Avenue, with a Puppe by yᵉ name of
Williamson.

                                                               4ᵗʰ Aprile.

Because a man have a Hatt with a Brimme to it like yᵉ Poope-Decke of a
Steam-Shippe, and breeches lyke yᵉ Case of an umbrella, and have loste
money on Hindoo, he is not therefore in yᵉ beste Societie.--I made this
observation, at yᵉ Clubbe, last nighte, in yᵉ hearinge of Wᵐˢᵒⁿ, who made
a mightie Pretence to reade yᵉ Spᵗ of yᵉ Tymes.--I doubte it was scurvie
of me, but it did me muche goode.

                                                               7ᵗʰ Aprile.

Yᵉ manner of my meetinge with Her and fallinge in Love with Her (for
yᵉ two were of one date) is thus.--I was made acquainte withe Her on a
Wednesdaie, at yᵉ House of Mistresse Varick, (’twas a Reception,) but
did not hear Her Name, nor She myne, by reason of yᵉ noise, and of Mʳˢˢᵉ
Varick having but lately a newe sett of Teethe, of wh. she had not yet
gott, as it were, yᵉ just Pitche and accordance.--I sayde to Her that yᵉ
Weather was warm for that season of yᵉ yeare.--She made answer She thought
I was right, for Mʳ Williamson had saide yᵉ same thinge to Her not a
minute past.--I tolde Her She muste not holde it originall or an Invention
of Wᵐˢᵒⁿ, for yᵉ Speache had beene manie yeares in my Familie.--Answer was
made, She wolde be muche bounden to me if I wolde maintaine yᵉ Rightes
of my Familie, and lett all others from usinge of my propertie, when
perceivinge Her to be of a livelie Witt, I went about to ingage her in
converse, if onlie so I mightie looke into Her Eyes, wh. were of a coloure
suche as I have never seene before, more like to a Pansie, or some such
flower, than anything else I can compair with them.--Shortlie we grew
most friendlie, so that She did aske me if I colde keepe a Secrett.--I
answering I colde, She saide She was anhungered, having Shopp’d all yᵉ
forenoone since Breakfast.--She pray’d me to gett Her some Foode.--What,
I ask’d.--She answer’d merrilie, a Beafesteake.--I tolde Her yᵗ that
_Confection_ was not on yᵉ Side-Boarde; but I presentlie brought Her such
as there was, & She beinge behinde a Screane, I stoode in yᵉ waie, so yᵗ
none mighte see Her, & She did eate and drynke as followeth, to witt--

    iij cupps of Bouillon (wᶜʰ is a Tea, or Tisane, of
          Beafe, made verie hott & thinne)
     iv Alberte biscuit
     ij éclairs
      i creame-cake

together with divers small cates and comfeits whᵒᶠ I know not yᵉ names.

So yᵗ I was grievously afeared for Her Digestion, leste it be over-tax’d.
Saide this to Her, however addinge it was my Conceite, yᵗ by some
Processe, lyke Alchemie, whᵇʸ yᵉ baser metals are transmuted into golde,
so yᵉ grosse mortall foode was on Her lippes chang’d to yᵉ fabled Nectar
& Ambrosia of yᵉ Gods.--She tolde me ’t was a sillie Speache, yet seam’d
not ill-pleas’d withall.--She hath a verie prettie Fashion, or Tricke, of
smilinge, when She hath made an end of speakinge, and layinge Her finger
upon Her nether Lippe, like as She wolde bid it be stille.--After some
more Talke, whⁱⁿ She show’d that Her Witt was more deepe, and Her minde
more seriouslie inclin’d, than I had Thoughte from our first Jestinge,
She beinge call’d to go thence, I did see Her mother, whose face I knewe,
& was made sensible, yᵗ I had given my Hearte to yᵉ daughter of a House
wh. with myne owne had longe been at grievous Feud, for yᵉ folly of oure
Auncestres.--Havinge come to wh. heavie momente in my Tale, I have no
Patience to write more to-nighte.

                                                              22ⁿᵈ Aprile.

I was mynded to write no more in yˢ journall, for verie Shame’s sake, yᵗ
I shoude so complayne, lyke a Childe, whose toie is taken fᵐ him, butt
(mayhapp for it is nowe yᵉ fulle Moone, & a moste greavous period for them
yᵗ are Love-strucke) I am fayne, lyke yᵉ Drunkarde who maye not abstayne
fᵐ his cupp, to sett me anewe to recordinge of My Dolorous mishapp.--When
I sawe Her agayn, She beinge aware of my name, & of yᵉ division betwixt
oure Houses, wolde have none of me, butt I wolde not be putt Off, &
made bolde to question Her, why She sholde showe me suche exceedᵍ
Coldness.--She answer’d ’twas wel knowne what Wronge my Grandefather had
done Her G.father.--I saide, She confounded me with My G.father--we were
nott yᵉ same Persone, he beinge muche my Elder, & besydes Dead.--She wᵈ
have it, ’twas no matter for jestinge.--I tolde Her I wolde be resolv’d,
what grete Wronge yⁱˢ was.--Yᵉ more for to make Speache thⁿ for mine owne
advertisemᵗ, for I knewe wel yᵉ whole Knaverie, wh. She rehears’d, Howe
my G.father had cheated Her G.father of Landes upp yᵉ River, with more,
howe my G.father had impounded yᵉ Cattle of Hern.--I made answer, ’twas
foolishnesse, in my mynde, for yᵉ iiiᵈ Generation to so quarrell over a
Parsel of rascallie Landes, yᵗ had long ago beene solde for Taxes, yᵗ as
to yᵉ Cowes, I wolde make them goode, & thʳ Produce & Offspringe, if it
tooke yᵉ whole Washᵗⁿ Markett.--She however tolde me yᵗ yᵉ Ffrenche family
had yᵉ where wᵃˡ to buye what they lack’d in Butter, Beafe & Milke, and
likewise in _Veale_, wh. laste I tooke muche to Hearte, wh. She seeinge,
became more gracious &, on my pleadinge, accorded yᵗ I sholde have yᵉ
Privilege to speake with Her when we next met.--Butt neyther then, nor at
any other Tyme thᵃᶠᵗᵉʳ wolde She suffer me to visitt Her. So I was harde
putt to it to compass waies of gettinge to see Her at such Houses as She
mighte be att, for Routs or Feasts, or yᵉ lyke.--

But though I sawe Her manie tymes, oure converse was ever of yⁱˢ Complexⁿ,
& yᵉ accursed G.father satt downe, and rose upp with us.--Yet colde I
see by Her aspecte, yᵗ I had in some sorte Her favoure, & yᵗ I mislyk’d
Her not so gretelie as She wᵈ have me thinke.--So yᵗ one daie, (’twas in
Januarie, & verie colde,) I, beinge moste distrackt, saide to Her, I had
tho’t ’twolde pleasure Her more, to be friends w. a man, who had a knave
for a G.father, yⁿ with One who had no G.father att alle, lyke Wᵐˢᵒⁿ (yᵉ
Puppe).--She made answer, I was exceedinge fresshe, or some such matter.
She cloath’d her thoughte in phrase more befittinge a Gentlewoman.--Att
this I colde no longer contayne myself, but tolde Her roundlie, I lov’d
Her, & ’twas my Love made me soe unmannerlie.--And w. yⁱˢ speache I
att yᵉ leaste made an End of my Uncertantie, for She bade me speake w.
Her no more.--I wolde be determin’d, whether I was Naught to Her.--She
made Answer She colde not justlie say I was Naught, seeing yᵗ whᵉᵛᵉʳ
She mighte bee, I was One too manie.--I saide, ’twas some Comforte, I
had even a Place in Her thoughtes, were it onlie in Her disfavour.--She
saide, my Solace was indeede grete, if it kept pace with yᵉ measure of
Her Disfavour, for, in plain Terms, She hated me, & on her intreatinge of
me to goe, I went.--Yⁱˢ happ’d att ye house of Mʳˢˢ Varicke, wh. I 1ˢᵗ
met Her, who (Mʳˢˢ Varicke) was for staying me, yᵗ I might eate some Ic’d
Cream, butt of a Truth I was chill’d to my Taste allreadie.--Albeit I
afterwards tooke to walkinge of yᵉ Streets till near Midnight.--’Twas as I
saide before in Januarie & exceedinge colde.

                                                                20ᵗʰ Maie.

How wearie is yⁱˢ dulle procession of yᵉ Yeare! For it irketh my Soule yᵗ
each Monthe shoude come so aptlie after yᵉ Month afore, & Nature looke so
Smug, as She had done some grete thinge.--Surelie if she make no Change,
she hath work’d no Miracle, for we knowe wel, what we maye look for.--Yᵉ
Vine under my Window hath broughte forth Purple Blossoms, as itt hath
eache Springe these xii Yeares.--I wolde have had them Redd, or Blue, or
I knowe not what Coloure, for I am sicke of likinge of Purple a Dozen
Springes in Order.--And wh. moste galls me is yⁱˢ, I knowe howe yⁱˢ sadd
Rounde will goe on, & Maie give Place to June, & she to July, & onlie my
Hearte blossom not nor my Love growe no greener.

                                                                 2ⁿᵈ June.

I and my Foolishnesse, we laye Awake last night till yᵉ Sunrise gun,
wh. was Shott att 4½ o’ck, & wh. beinge hearde in yᵗ stillnesse fm. an
Incredible Distance, seem’d lyke as ’t were a Full Stopp, or Period putt
to yⁱˢ Wakinge-Dreminge, whᵃᵗ I did turne a newe Leafe in my Counsells,
and after much Meditation, have commenc’t a newe Chapter, wh. I hope
maye leade to a better Conclusion, than them yᵗ came afore.--For I am
nowe resolv’d, & havinge begunn wil carry to an Ende, yᵗ if I maie not
over-come my Passion, I maye at yᵉ least over-com yᵉ Melanchollie, &
Spleene, borne yᵒᶠ, & beinge a Lover, be none yᵉ lesse a Man.--To wh. Ende
I have come to yⁱˢ Resolution, to depart fm. yᵉ Towne, & to goe to yᵉ
Countrie-House of my Frend, Will Winthrop, who has often intreated me, &
has instantly urg’d, yᵗ I sholde make him a Visitt.--And I take much Shame
to myselfe, yᵗ I have not given him yⁱˢ Satisfaction since he was married,
wh. is nowe ii Yeares.--A goode Fellowe, & I minde me a grete Burden to
his Frends when he was in Love, in wh. Plight I mockt him, who am nowe, I
much feare me, mockt myselfe.

                                                                 3ʳᵈ June.

Pack’d my cloathes, beinge Sundaye. Yᵉ better yᵉ Daie, yᵉ better yᵉ Deede.

                                                                 4ᵗʰ June.

Goe downe to Babylon to-daye.

                                                                 5ᵗʰ June.

Att Babylon, att yᵉ Cottage of Will Winthrop, wh. is no Cottage, but a
grete House, Red, w. Verandahs, & builded in yᵉ Fashⁿ of Her Maiestie
Q. Anne.--Found a mighty Housefull of People.--Will, his Wife, a verie
proper fayre Ladie, who gave me moste gracious Reception, Mʳˢˢ Smithe, yᵉ
ii Gresham girles (knowne as yᵉ Titteringe Twins), Bob White, Virginia
Kinge & her Mothʳ, Clarence Winthrop, & yᵉ whole Alexander Family.--A
grete Gatheringe for so earlie in yᵉ Summer.--In yᵉ Afternoone play’d
Lawne-Tenniss.--Had for Partner one of yᵉ Twinns, agˢᵗ Clarence Winthrop
& yᵉ other Twinn, wh. by beinge Confus’d, I loste iii games.--Was voted
a Duffer.--Clarence Winthrop moste unmannerlie merrie.--He call’d me yᵉ
Sad-Ey’d Romeo, & lykewise cut down yᵉ Hammocke whⁱⁿ I laye, allso tied
up my Cloathes wh. we were att Bath.--He sayde, he Chaw’d them, a moste
barbarous worde for a moste barbarous Use.--Wh. we were Boyes, & he did
yⁱˢ thinge, I was wont to trounce him Soundlie, but nowe had to contente
Myselfe w. beatinge of him iii games of Billyardes in yᵉ Evg., & w.
daringe of him to putt on yᵉ Gloves w. me, for Funne, wh. he mighte not
doe, for I coude knocke him colde.

                                                                10ᵗʰ June.

Beinge gon to my Roome somewhatt earlie, for I found myselfe of a peevish
humour, Clarence came to me, and prayᵈ a few minutes’ Speache.--Sayde
’twas Love made him so Rude & Boysterous, he was privilie betroth’d to
his Cozen, Angelica Robertes, she whose Father lives at Islipp, & colde
not containe Himselfe for Joye.--I sayinge, there was a Breache in yᵉ
Familie, he made Answer, ’twas true, her Father & His, beinge Cozens, did
hate each other moste heartilie, butt for him he cared not for that, & for
Angelica, She gave not a Continentall.--But, sayde I, Your Consideration
matters mightie Little, synce yᵉ Governours will not heare to it.--He
answered ’twas for that he came to me, I must be his allie, for reason
of oure olde Friendˢᵖ. With that I had no Hearte to heare more, he made
so Light of suche a Division as parted me & my Happinesse, but tolde him
I was his Frend, wolde serve him when he had Neede of me, & presentlie
seeing my Humour, he made excuse to goe, & left me to write downe this,
sicke in Mynde, and thinkinge ever of yᵉ Woman who wil not oute of my
Thoughtes for any change of Place, neither of employe.--For indeede I
doe love Her moste heartilie, so yᵗ my Wordes can not saye it, nor will
yⁱˢ Booke containe it.--So I wil even goe to Sleepe, yᵗ in my Dreames
perchaunce my Fancie maye do my Hearte better Service.

                                                                12ᵗʰ June.

She is here.--What Spyte is yⁱˢ of Fate & yᵉ alter’d gods! That I, who
mighte nott gett to see Her when to See was to Hope, muste nowe daylie
have Her in my Sight, stucke lyke a fayre Apple under olde Tantalus his
Nose.--Goinge downe to yᵉ Hotell to-day, for to gett me some Tobackoe,
was made aware yᵗ yᵉ Ffrench familie had hyred one of yᵉ Cottages
round-abouts.--’Tis a goodlie Dwellinge Without--Would I coude speake
with as much Assurance of yᵉ Innsyde!

                                                                13ᵗʰ June.

Goinge downe to yᵉ Hotell againe To-day for more Tobackoe, sawe yᵉ
accursed name of Wᵐˢᵒⁿ on yᵉ Registre.--Went about to a neighboringe Farm
& satt me downe behynd yᵉ Barne, for a ½ an Houre.--Frighted yᵉ Horned
Cattle w. talkinge to My Selfe.

                                                                15ᵗʰ June.

I wil make an Ende to yⁱˢ Businesse.--Wil make no onger Staye here.--Sawe
Her to-day, driven Home fm. ye Beache, about 4½ of yᵉ Afternoone, by Wᵐˢᵒⁿ
in his Dogge-Carte, wh. yᵉ Cadde has broughten here.--Wil betake me to yᵉ
Boundlesse Weste--Not yᵗ I care aught for yᵉ Boundlesse Weste, butt yᵗ I
shal doe wel if haplie I leave my Memourie amᵍ yᵉ Apaches & bringe Home my
Scalpe.

                                                                16ᵗʰ June.

To Fyre Islande, in Winthrop’s Yacht--yᵉ Twinnes w. us, so Titteringe &
Choppinge Laughter, yᵗ ’twas worse yⁿ a Flocke of Sandpipers.--Found a
grete Concourse of people there, Her amonge them, in a Suite of blue,
yᵗ became Her bravelie.--She swimms lyke to a Fishe, butt everie Stroke
of Her white Arms (of a lovelie Roundnesse) cleft, as ’twere my Hearte,
rather yⁿ yᵉ Water.--She bow’d to me, on goinge into yᵉ Water, w. muche
Dignitie, & agayn on Cominge out, but yⁱˢ Tyme w. lesse Dignitie, by
reason of yᵉ Water in Her Cloathes, & Her Haire in Her Eyes.--

                                                                17ᵗʰ June.

Was for goinge awaie To-morrow, but Clarence cominge againe to my
Chamber, & mightilie purswadinge of me, I feare I am comitted to a verie
sillie Undertakinge.--For I am promis’d to Help him secretlie to wedd
his Cozen.--He wolde take no Deniall, wolde have it, his Brother car’d
Naughte, ’twas but yᵉ Fighte of theyre Fathers, he was bounde it sholde be
done, & ’twere best I stoode his Witnesse, who was wel lyked of bothe yᵉ
Braunches of yᵉ Family.--So ’twas agree’d, yᵗ I shal staye Home to-morrowe
fm. yᵉ Expedition to Fyre Islande, feigning a Head-Ache, (wh. indeede I
meante to do, in any Happ, for I cannot see Her againe,) & shall meet him
at yᵉ little Churche on yᵉ Southe Roade.--He to drive to Islipp to fetch
Angelica, lykewise her Witnesse, who sholde be some One of yᵉ Girles, she
hadd not yet made her Choice.--I made yⁱˢ Condition, it sholde not be
either of yᵉ Twinnes.--No, nor Bothe, for that matter.--Inquiringe as to
yᵉ Clergyman, he sayde yᵉ Dominie was allreadie Squar’d.

                               NEWE YORK, Yᵉ BUCKINGHAM HOTELL, 19ᵗʰ June.

I am come to yᵉ laste Entrie I shall ever putt downe in yˢ Booke, and
needes must yᵗ I putt it downe quicklie, for all hath Happ’d in so
short a Space, yᵗ my Heade whirles w. thynkinge of it. Yᵉ after-noone
of Yesterdaye, I set about Counterfeittinge of a Head-Ache, & so wel
did I compasse it, yᵗ I verilie thinke one of yᵉ Twinnes was mynded to
Stay Home & nurse me.--All havinge gone off, & Clarence on his waye to
Islipp, I sett forth for yᵉ Churche, where arriv’d I founde it emptie,
w. yᵉ Door open.--Went in & writh’d on yᵉ hard Benches a ¼ of an Houre,
when, hearinge a Sounde, I look’d up & saw standinge in yᵉ Door-waye,
Katherine Ffrench.--She seem’d muche astonished, saying You Here! or yᵉ
lyke.--I made Answer & sayde yᵗ though my Familie were greate Sinners, yet
had they never been Excommunicate by yᵉ Churche.--She sayde, they colde
not Putt Out what never was in.--While I was bethynkinge me wh. I mighte
answer to yⁱˢ, she went on, sayinge I must excuse Her, She wolde goe upp
in yᵉ Organ-Lofte.--I enquiring what for? She sayde to practice on yᵉ
Organ.--She turn’d verie Redd, of a warm Coloure, as She sayde this.--I
ask’d Do you come hither often? She replyinge Yes, I enquir’d how yᵉ Organ
lyked Her.--She sayde Right well, when I made question more curiously (for
She grew more Redd eache moment) how was yᵉ Action? yᵉ Tone? how manie
Stopps? Whᵃᵗ She growinge gretelie Confus’d, I led Her into yᵉ Churche,
& show’d Her yᵗ there was no Organ, yᵗ Choire beinge indeede a Band, of
i Tuninge-Forke, i Kitt, & i Horse-Fiddle.--At this She fell to Smilinge
& Blushinge att one Tyme.--She perceiv’d our Errandes were yᵉ Same, &
crav’d Pardon for Her Fibb.--I tolde Her, If She came Thither to be
Witness at her Frend’s Weddinge, ’twas no greate Fibb, ’twolde indeede be
Practice for Her.--This havinge a rude Sound, I added I thankt yᵉ Starrs
yᵗ had bro’t us Together. She sayde if yᵉ Starrs appoint’d us to meete no
oftener yⁿ this Couple shoude be Wedded, She was wel content. This cominge
on me lyke a last Buffett of Fate, that She shoude so despitefully
intreate me, I was suddenlie Seized with so Sorrie a Humour, & withal so
angrie, yᵗ I colde scarce Containe myselfe, but went & Sat downe neare
yᵉ Doore, lookinge out till Clarence shd. come w. his Bride.--Looking
over my Sholder, I sawe yᵗ She wente fm. Windowe to Windowe within,
Pluckinge yᵉ Blossoms fm. yᵉ Vines, & settinge them in her Girdle.--She
seem’d most tall and faire, & swete to look uponn, & itt Anger’d me yᵉ
More.--Meanwhiles, She discours’d pleasantlie, asking me manie questions,
to the wh. I gave but shorte and churlish answers. She ask’d Did I nott
Knowe Angelica Roberts was Her best Frend? How longe had I knowne of yᵉ
Betrothal? Did I thinke ’twolde knitt yᵉ House together, & Was it not
Sad to see a Familie thus Divided?--I answer’d Her, I wd. not robb a Man
of yᵉ precious Righte to Quarrell with his Relations.--And then, with
meditatinge on yᵉ goode Lucke of Clarence, & my owne harde Case, I had
suche a sudden Rage of peevishness yᵗ I knewe scarcelie what I did.--Soe
when she ask’d me merrilie why I turn’d my Backe on Her, I made Reply I
had turn’d my Backe on much Follie.--Wh. was no sooner oute of my Mouthe
than I was mightilie Sorrie for it, and turninge aboute, I perceiv’d She
was in Teares & weepinge bitterlie. Whᵃᵗ my Hearte wolde holde no More, &
I rose upp & tooke Her in my arms & Kiss’d & Comforted Her, She makinge no
Denyal, but seeminge greatlie to Neede such Solace, wh. I was not Loathe
to give Her.--Whiles we were at This, onlie She had gott to Smilinge, &
to sayinge of Things which even yⁱˢ paper shal not knowe, came in yᵉ
Dominie, sayinge He judg’d We were the Couple he came to Wed.--With him
yᵉ Sexton & yᵉ Sexton’s Wife.--My swete Kate, alle as rosey as Venus’s
Nape, was for Denyinge of yⁱˢ, butt I wolde not have it, & sayde Yes.--She
remonstrating w. me, privilie, I tolde Her She must not make me Out a
Liar, yᵗ to Deceave yᵉ Man of God were a greavous Sinn, yᵗ I had gott Her
nowe, & wd. not lett her Slipp from me, & did soe Talke Her Downe, & w.
such Strengthe of joie, yᵗ allmost before She knewe it, we Stoode upp, &
were Wed, w. a Ringe (tho’ She Knewe it nott) wh. belong’d to My G father.
(Him yᵗ Cheated Herⁿ.)--

Wh was no sooner done, than in came Clarence & Angelica, & were Wedded in
theyre Turn.--The Clergyman greatelie surprised, but more att yᵉ Largeness
of his Fee.

This Businesse being Ended, we fled by yᵉ Trayne of 4½ o’cke, to yⁱˢ
Place, where we wait till yᵉ Bloode of all yᵉ Ffrenches have Tyme to coole
downe, for yᵉ wise Mann who meeteth his Mother in Lawe yᵉ 1ˢᵗ tyme, wil
meete her when she is Milde.--

And so I close yⁱˢ Journall, wh., tho’ for yᵉ moste Parte ’tis but a
peevish Scrawle, hath one Page of Golde, whᵒⁿ I have writt yᵉ laste
strange Happ whᵇʸ I have layd Williamson by yᵉ Heeles & found me yᵉ
sweetest Wife yᵗ ever stopp’d a man’s Mouthe w. kisses for writinge of Her
Prayses.




Stories by American Authors


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End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In Partnership, by 
Brander Matthews and H. C. Bunner

*** 