Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, August, 1880

by Various

IV.—JACK.

"I've never told the whole straight ahead, ma'am. The Lord knows it all, an' there've been times I couldn't ha' done it, an' wouldn't ha' done it if I could ha' helped it. For, you see, in spite of the deviltry I never quite got rid of the sense that God sat lookin' at me, an' that, I do suppose, came from what stuck to me, whether or no, in the school. An' you'd wonder that anything stuck or could.

"I'll begin at the beginnin'. Drink? No, it wasn't my drinkin'. You'd think that must ha' been it, but it wasn't, for all I came up in the Fourth Ward—the only sober bartender the ward ever see, or ever will see, I reckon.

"The very first thing that ever I remember is my mother dead drunk on the floor. I thought it was dead without the drunk, an' stood screamin'; an' my father come up an' some of the neighbors. We was all respectable then, an' one of them says, 'The Lord help you, Mr. Brown! She's begun ag'in.' He didn't speak, but just lifted her up an' put her on the bed, and then he sat down and covered up his face with his hands, an' was so still I thought he was dead too. I crawled up to him whimperin', an' he lifted me up.

"'Jack,' he says, 'my heart's broke. It's no use: she's bound to go to the bad, an' maybe you'll take after her.'

"I screamed ag'in, though I didn't know what that meant, but he hushed me. 'Jack,' he said, 'you're a little fellow, an' your troubles ain't begun yet. I'd give my life this minute to take you with me.' He held me up to him tight an' took my breath, so 't I couldn't ask him where; an' then he cried.

"That was the beginnin' of me, if gettin' a gleam of sense means beginnin' for folks; for, though I didn't know what it all meant, I did know he wanted comfort bad as I did, an' we hugged up to one another. But I know now all the ins and the outs, for I was told by one that knew them both.

"She was a pretty girl in a mill in Fall River—fast, like some of them, but with an innocent face an' big blue eyes, like a child's, to the very last. Many's the time I've seen 'em with no more sense, nor as much, as a baby's in 'em. He was a young shoemaker, that fell in love with the pretty face, an' married her out of hand then an' there, an' took her to New York, where he'd got a good place—foreman in a factory. His folks lived in Fall River, and hers off somewheres. I haven't never seen any of 'em, an' good reason not to want to.

"She liked fine clothes, an' thought she was goin' to be a lady an' do nothin'; an' when the first baby come it was a bother to her, for she wasn't strong, an' one of the neighbors told her to drink beer. There's no use spinnin' it out. It began with beer, but it ended with whiskey, an' the first my father ever knew was the dead baby that she'd killed rollin' over on it in a drunken sleep.

"That cured her for a year. She was afraid of my father, for at first, in his fury, he swore he'd give her up to the officers; an' then she cried so, an' went on day after day, till he couldn't but be sorry for her ag'in. An' then I come along—many's the time I've cursed the day—an' till I was four all was well enough. Then it came. She'd been takin' a little slyly a good while, but nobody knew till it got to be too much for her ag'in. It was partly trouble, I will say, for my father was weakly an' goin' with consumption, an' she was fond of him. But this time there was no stoppin' her. She'd pawn everything: she's taken the jacket off me in a winter's day an' sent me with it to the pawnbroker's, an' I not darin' not to go. To the last minute my father did what he could. I was six when he died, an' he'd dress me himself an' try to keep me decent. She was drunk the very night he died, an' not a soul near. I sat on the bed an' looked at him. 'Jack,' he said, 'hate whiskey long as you live: it's killed me, an' it'll kill your mother. It's a devil.'

"There was a saloon under us then. We had got lower and lower, for, fix up as father might, there was never any surety he wouldn't find things smashed or sold out; an' at last there wasn't anything to sell. An' when he was gone I can't remember as I ever see her sober. I got to hate the smell of it so it sickened me. It does now, though it was my trade to sell the stuff, an' I never minded that.

"I lost track of her. I was a newsboy an' lookin' out for myself when I was eight, an' sometimes I'd hunt her up, an' she'd hug me an' go on over me if she wasn't too drunk; but mostly I didn't. I might ha' been respectable enough, for I liked my work, but I got in with a set of boys that had learned to pick pockets. It was good fun. I had quick ways, an' the first time I ever hauled out a handkerchief I thought it about the smartest game anybody could play. It's more for the excitement of it, half the time, than from real native cussedness, that boys begin; an' I didn't think one way or another. But the time come when I did think. I was caught with fellows that had been up half a dozen times, an' because I was little they sent me to the house of refuge.

"Now, I ain't goin' to say more'n I can help about that, for there was one man I sha'n't ever forget. He's dead now, but he meant work with them boys, an' he did it. I believe he loved 'em every one just because they had souls. But what I do say is, that, far's I know, eight boys out o' ten come out worse'n when they went in. Why not? They're mostly the worst sort, an' it's a kind of rivalry amongst them which'll tell the most deviltry. There ain't a trick nor turn you can't be put up to, an' I learned 'em every one. I learned some other things too. We had to study some, an' I was quick, an' I learned Bible-verses so well they thought I was a crack scholar; an' we all laughed, thinkin' how easy you can humbug a teacher. But the last year I was wild to get away an' try my hand at some of the new kinks I'd learned. I was fourteen and full grown, so't I was always taken for twenty; an' I thought I was a man, sure. I run away twice, an' was brought back, an' it went hard with me, for they flogged me each time so't I couldn't stir for a week.

"At last time was up. I'd made up my mind what to do: I'd settled it by that time that everybody was ready to humbug, an' the pious-talkin' ones worst of all, for I'd seen some that I'd spotted in lies many a time. The first thing I did was to chuck away the Bible they'd given me an' make straight for Micky Hagan's. You don't know what that means? I'll tell you. Micky Hagan's was one of the receivin'-places for river-thievin'. He had boats to let, an' bought out an' out or advanced on the swag, just as you pleased; an' mostly you're in his debt, because you get into the way of swappin', an' he sets his own price on the thing you fancy.

"Now, I've thought it all out, ma'am, many a time. If there'd been anybody to take hold of us in the right way I don't believe we should have come out as we did. I wasn't bad all through then: I mean, I was ready to do a good turn if I could, an' bound for a lark anyhow. But we'd smuggled in novels and story-papers till our heads was full of what fine things we'd do. They didn't give us better things. There was books—yes, plenty of 'em—but mostly long-winded stuff about fellers that died young, bein' too good for this world. There wasn't anybody to tell us we'd a right to some fun, and the Lord meant us to enjoy life, nor to get us busy in some way that would take our minds off real wickedness. These preachers hadn't ever been boys: they'd been born in their white chokers, I believe, an' knew no more of real human nature than they did of common sense. If I had a boy growin' up I'd keep him hard at something, an' try an' have him like it, too. A boy don't mind work if there's anything he can see to be got by it. Why, see how I did. At fifteen out all night long, up an' down the river, schemin' all ways to circumvent the watchmen, for they're that 'cute it needs all your brains an' more to get ahead of 'em. You see, a ship'll come in an' unload partly, an' there's two or three days they're on the keen lookout till they're nigh empty; an' then's the best time for light plunder—ropes an' such. But I went in for reg'lar doin's—bags of coffee or spice, or anything goin'. We had a dodge for a good while they couldn't make out—goin' along soft, oars muffled, hardly drawin' a long breath, till we'd got under the dock, where I'd seen the coffee-bags lie, an' a man on 'em with pistol cocked. Then, slow an' easy, bore with a big auger up through them beams and straight into the bag, an' the coffee'd pour down into the bag we held under. Went off with seven bags that very way one night, an' I was that full of laugh! I walked back down the dock when we'd landed 'em, an' saw the watchman jest dancin' an' swearin', he was so mad.

"'What's up?' I says, innocent as could be, goin' up to him.

"'It's them d—— river-thieves,' he says, 'with a new kink,——'em! I'll be even with 'em yet. Here's seven holes right up through, an' the Lord only knows how they could do it an' I not hear 'em. They're that thick I believe there's one to every bag of coffee on ship or off; but I'll get 'em yet.' He looked at me sharp as a rat, but I kept my face straight till I'd walked off, an' then I believe I laughed a day without stoppin'.

"That went on three years. I'd got to think no man alive could take me, for I'd been grabbed a dozen times, an' always slipped out somehow. I'd been shot at, an' hit twice; been knocked overboard, an' swum under the dock—'most froze an' stiff with ice before I could get out. An' then to think that it was only a coil of rope took me at last! I thought 'twas spices, but the captain'd been too quick for us, an' every bag was in the government storehouse. I crawled up the side like a cat an' felt round, mad enough to find only that rope; an' I'd just dropped it over the side when there was a light, an' three men on me. I dropped, but they had me. I fought like mad, but the handcuffs were on, an' I was marched off quicker'n I can tell it. An' one was the very man that had sworn to be even with us, an' he knew me on the spot. That trial didn't take long. 'In consideration of my youth,' the judge said, I was to have 'only ten years.' Only ten years! He didn't know how it looked to me, that loved my own life an' freedom so't I couldn't bear a house over me even a day, but must be out in the air. I swore I'd kill whoever took me, an' I fought with the keeper till they chained me like a wild beast; an' that's the way I went to Sing-Sing, an' all warned they'd got the devil's own to deal with.

"There was six months I fought: there wasn't a week I wasn't up for punishment. Do you know what that means? It's better now, they say. Then it meant the shower-bath till you fainted dead, an' when you came to, put back to have it ag'in. It meant the leather collar an' jacket, an' your head wellnigh cut off when, half dead, you had to let it drop a bit. It meant kicks an' cuffs an' floggin's an' half rations. I was down to skin an' bone. 'You're goin', sure, Jack,' I said; an' then I said, 'What's the use? Behave yourself an' maybe you'll get pardoned out, or, better yet, maybe you'll get away.'

"It was tough work. I hated that keeper so't I could have brained him joyfully any minute. I'd set my teeth when he came near, for the murder'd run down my arms till my hands twitched an' tingled to get at him. I swore I'd kill him if I ever got a chance to do it quietly, for he'd treated us worse than dogs. But I mended my ways. It took a year of hard work before I could hold on to myself. I'd get a sight at the sky when we crossed the yard, an' my heart was up in my throat every time. Oh, to be out! If only I could be on the river ag'in an' smell the salt an' feel the wind! I've lain on my floor in the cell many a night an' cried like a baby for only ten minutes' freedom. I'm that way yet: there's wild blood in me from somewhere, an' I'd make a better Indian than white man any day."

Jack's restless motions were the best proof of his theory. As his story began he had sat quietly in the little mission-parlor, but now he was walking hastily up and down, stopping a moment at some special point, then starting again—a tall, lean figure, with characteristic New England face, very thin now, and with a hectic flush on the sunken cheeks, but shrewd and kindly—the narrow chin and high cheek-bones, prominent nose and soft thin hair, seeming to belong wholly to the type of New England villager, and by no possibility to the rough and desperate native of the Fourth Ward. Born in his own place on some quiet inland farm, he would have turned peddler, or, nearer the sea, have chosen that for his vocation; but it was impossible to look upon him as an ex-convict or to do away with the impression of respectability which seems part of the New England birthright.

"At last," he went on, "things changed. A new chaplain came, for one thing, an' I'd got so quiet they changed my cell an' put me on the other side the buildin'. I went on in a kind of dream. I worked like two, an' they begun to take notice of me. The chaplain 'd come an' talk to me, an' he worked over me well; but he might as well have talked to the dead. But my very keepin' still made him think he'd half got me, an' he'd fetch books an' papers; an' things got easier that way. I read an' studied: I was bound now to know something, an' I worked at that hard as I did at everything else; an' there come a time when I was recommended for pardon, an' five years an' a day after I went in he brought it to me. I couldn't speak: I could have gone on my knees to him, an' he had sense to know how I felt.

"'Jack,' he said, 'you're very young yet, an' now is your chance. Try to be an honest man an' pray for help. I wish I knew if you will pray.'

"'You'd make me if any one could,' I says, 'but I ain't sure of the use of it yet: I wish I was.'

"He just looked at me sorrowful, for I hadn't said even that much before, an' I went off.

"An' I did mean to keep straight. I'd had enough of prison; but when I went round askin' for work, not a soul would have me. A jail-bird!—well, they thought not. I grew mad ag'in, an' yet I wouldn't take to the river, for, somehow, I'd lost my courage. Then I met an old pal, an' he took me round to Micky's saloon. The barkeeper'd just been stuck in a fight. I'd been a profitable one for Micky, an' maybe he thought, beginnin' there, I'd go back to the river once more. An' there I was three years, an' fights nigh every night of the year. I could stop 'em when no one else could, for I was always sober.

"'Why don't you drink?' they'd say, an' I'd tell 'em I wanted what brains I had unfuddled. But I hated it worse an' worse. I'd have stopped any minute if there'd been one alive to take me by the hand an' say, 'Here's honest work.' I looked at folks when I went out, to see if there was one that could be spoken to. An' at last I made up my mind for another try. I'd saved some money an' could live a while, an' one Saturday night I just left when Micky paid me. 'Get another man,' I said: 'I'm done;' an' I walked out, with him shoutin' after me.

"Then I waited three months. I answered advertisements, an' I put 'em in. I went here an' I went there, an' always it was the same story, for I answered every one square. An' at last I was sick of it all: I had nothing to live for. 'I'm tired of living with rascals,' I said, 'an' good folks are too good to have anything to do with me. I've had all I want. If work don't come in a week I'll get out of this the easiest way.'

"It didn't come. My money was gone: I'd gone hungry two days. I'd been on half rations before that, till my strength was all gone: I'd pawned my clothes till I wasn't decent. Then I hadn't a cent even for a place on the floor in a lodgin'-house, an' I sat in the City Hall Park long as they would let me. Then, when I was tired of bein' rapped over the head, I got up an' walked down Beekman street to the river—slow, for I was too far gone to move fast. But as I got nearer something seemed to pull me on: I began to run. 'It's the end of all trouble,' I said; an' I went across like a shot an' down the docks. It was bright moonlight, an' I had sense to jump for a dark place where the light was cut off; an' that's all I remember. I must have hit my head ag'inst a boat, for when they took me out it was for dead. Two of my old pals hauled me out, an' worked there on the dock to bring me to, till the ambulance come an' took me to Bellevue.

"I wouldn't have lived, but I didn't know enough not to, bein' in a fever a month. Then I come out of it dazed an' stupid, an' it wasn't till I'd been there six weeks that I got my senses fairly an' knew I was alive after all.

"'I'll do it better next time,' I said, bein' bound to get out of it still; but that night a man in the bed next me began to talk an' ask about it. I told him the whole. When I got through he says, 'I don't know but one man in New York that'll know just what to do, an' that's McAuley of Water street. You go there soon's you can stir an' tell him.'

"I laughed. 'I'm done tellin',' I said.

"'Try him,' he says; an' he was that urgent that I promised. I'd ha' given a hand if I hadn't, though.

"I went out, tremblin' an' sick, an' without a spot to lay my head; an' right there I stood by the river an' thought it would come easier this time. But I'd never go back on my word, an' so I started down, crawlin' along, an' didn't get there till meetin' had begun. I didn't know what sort of a place it was.

"It was new then, in an old rookery of a house, but the room clean an' decent, an' just a little sign out, 'Helping Hand for Men.' I sat an' listened an' wondered till it was over, an' then tried to go, but first I knew I tumbled in a dead faint an' was bein' taken up stairs. They made me a bed next their own room. 'You'd better not,' I said: 'I'm a jail-bird an' a rascal, an' nobody alive wants to have anything to do with me.'

"'You be quiet,' says Jerry. 'I'm a jail-bird myself, but the Lord Jesus has forgiven me an' made me happy; an' He'll do the same by you.'

"They kept me there a week, an' you'd think I was their own, the way they treated me. But I stuck it out: 'When I see a man that's always been respectable come to me an' give me work, an' say he's not afraid or ashamed to, then maybe I'll believe in your Lord Jesus Christ you talk about; but how am I goin' to without?'

"An' that very night it came. You know him well—the gentleman that looks as if the wind had never blown rough on him, an' yet with an eye that can't be fooled.

"'You don't need to tell me a word,' he says: 'I believe you are honest, an' you can begin to-morrow if you're strong enough. It's light work, an' it shall be made easier at first.'

"I looked at him, an' it seemed to me something that had frozen me all up inside melted that minute. I burst out cryin', an' couldn't stop. An' then, first thing I knew, he was down on his knees prayin' for me. 'Dear Lord,' he said, 'he is Thy child, he has always been Thy child. Make him know it to-night: make him know that Thy love has followed him and will hold him up, so that his feet will never slip again.'

"These words stayed by me. I couldn't speak, an' he went away. He knew what he'd done.

"That's all. Some of the men shake their heads: they say it wasn't regular conversion. All I know is, the sense of God come into me then, an' it's never left me. It keeps me on the watch for every soul in trouble. I'm down on the docks o' nights. I know the signs, an' now an' then I can help one that's far gone. I'm goin' myself, you see. There ain't much left of me but a cough an' some bones, but I shall be up to the last. God is that good to me that I'll go quick when I do go; but, quick or slow, I bless Him every hour of the day for the old mission an' my chance."

Helen Campbell.

---

WESTBROOK.

Ruth looked very warm and tired as she came up the path in the strong sunlight; and in striking contrast to her sat Miss Custer in the sheltered veranda, with her cool gray draperies flowing about her in the most graceful folds that could be imagined, as though a sculptor's hand had arranged them. Her dress was cut so as to disclose her white throat rising, swan-like, above a ruffling of soft yellow lace; and her sleeves, flaring a little and short enough to reveal a good deal of the exquisitely-moulded arms, were edged with the same costly trimming, throwing a creamy shadow on the white skin and giving it a tinge like ivory.

Miss Custer liked being considered a brunette, and directed all the arts of her toilette to the bringing out of that idea. She had not much to commence with, however. Her eyes were brown, it is true, but they were a sort of amber-brown, large and serene, with dusky, long-fringed lids drooping over them; and her hair, which was dark in the shadow of the veranda, all hemmed in with trees in thick foliage, was bright gold in certain lights.

She was an amply-framed, finely-proportioned person, and rejoiced in her physique, having a masculine pride in her breadth of shoulders and depth of chest. But in all other respects she was exquisitely feminine: she never displayed either strength or agility. Westbrook was a country place, and in the young folks' rambles about town and out over the hills she was more often fatigued than anybody else, and obliged to accept support from some one of the gentlemen, all of whom were eager enough to offer their services.

She had been in Westbrook only two weeks—she had come to rest herself from the burdens of fashionable life—but she was already very much at home with the place and the people. She was one of those persons who immediately interest the whole neighborhood, and of whom people say, "Have you met her? Have you been introduced to her?"

She was not an entire stranger: there were a good many people in Westbrook who had known her parents years before, and who took her at once upon the credit of her family.

Ruth looked tired and warm, I say, as she came up the path. It was after four o'clock, and school was just out. She was the teacher of the grammar department in the ugly red-brick school-house down at the other end of the town, and she had had a tiresome walk through the heat.

Miss Custer dropped her work, some delicate embroidery, in her lap and folded her white hands upon it, and smiled down at her. She liked Ruth, and was glad to see her coming: the afternoon had been rather dull because she was alone, and she was not constituted for solitude.

Doctor Ebling had said at the dinner-table that, with Ruth's permission—at which Ruth blushed and said something rather saucy, for her—he would read The Spanish Gypsy to Miss Custer out in the shade.

"It is so confoundedly healthy at this particular season," he said, "especially up among these Connecticut hills, that a physician's occupation's gone."

First, however, he went down town—going part of the way with Ruth—to make sure that no orders were awaiting him at his office, intending to come back immediately.

Miss Custer stepped across the hall from the dining-room into the sitting-room, made cool by having the blinds closed, and struck a few chords on the piano. Herbert Bruce, a young attorney of some wealth and some renown, and bosom friend of Doctor Ebling, followed her, and stood, hat in hand, with his shoulder against the door-jamb. "So you have never read The Gypsy?" he remarked.

Miss Custer turned quickly and came a step toward him. "Oh yes, I have read it," she returned. "Or, rather, a good many people have read it to me. But one can stand hearing a poem a good many times, you know."

"By Jove! that's a cooler!" thought Bruce. "No doubt she has been bored to death by that wretched Gypsy, and now Ebling is going to martyrize her again, and make a fool of himself into the bargain."

"Won't you be seated?" Miss Custer asked, "and let me play you something?"

In the shaded room, with her languid eyes intensified, she was a decided brunette, and a very brilliant and beautiful one. Mr. Bruce, pleading business, although he knew there was not a soul stirring down street, and nothing more to be done in his office than in that of Mortimer Lightwood, Esq., declined rather ungraciously and stalked off.

"A born coquette!" he muttered with his hat pulled over his eyes. "Ebling's a fool: Ruth Stanley is worth a dozen of her."

Miss Custer went up stairs and made her afternoon toilette, then got out her embroidery and came down to her accustomed rustic arm-chair, smilingly conscious of the perfection of all that pertained to herself, from the soft ringlets on her broad forehead, so different from the stiff, frowsy crimps of the country-girls, to the small Newport ties with their cardinal-red bows, the only bright color about her. She was just beginning to wonder what kept the doctor so long, when, raising her eyes from a reverie which had been almost a nap, she saw him driving by at a fast trot, with a farm-boy galloping on horseback beside him. He waved his hand to her.

Just then Hugh, son and heir of Aunt Ruby, mistress of this Westbrook boarding-establishment, who had been sent down town after dinner to do some marketing, came in at the gate with a basket on his arm, eating an apple. He paused when he came up, and rested himself by putting one foot on the lower step and settling his weight upon the other. "There's a man out east bin awfully cut up in a mowin'-machine," said he, glancing up at Miss Custer sideways from under his broad-brimmed straw hat, sure that she would appreciate the news, he being the first to tell it; for he had a boyish conceit that Miss Custer had a very high opinion of him, and even indulged the fancy that if he were a man—say twenty-one—instead of a youth of seventeen, he could cut out all them downtown fellers that hung round her.

"Oh! poor man!" said Miss Custer with a sweetness of sympathy that must have comforted the wounded person immensely had he heard it.

"Burnses' boy came in for Doc Ebling," continued Hugh. "They don't know whether they can patch him up again or not."

"I suppose the doctor will find out," said Miss Custer complacently; and Hugh flung away his apple-core and walked on around the house.

Miss Custer hardly knew what to do with herself. She went back to her room, and was tempted to lie down, but then it would rumple her dress and spoil her hair. She thought of the invalid lady, Mrs. Tascher, whose room was at the other end of the hall, but she had an uncomfortable intuition that Mrs. Tascher disliked her. For herself, she disliked nobody: there were people who were not congenial to her, but she never took the trouble to get up a feeling against them. But it seemed to her Mrs. Tascher had not only clearly defined but conscientious likes and dislikes. She had tried to overcome the opposing current so far as it concerned herself, because it was unpleasant; and, although not wholly unaccountable—for she was conscious of some weaknesses, as most mortals are—so far as Mrs. Tascher was affected by her shortcomings the prejudice seemed unfounded. She had never injured her—never, except in that large sense in which all good souls are injured by wrong-doing; which large sense Miss Custer, perhaps, had but a dim consciousness of even when stung—for she was very susceptible—by the criticism, open or implied, of certain high, discriminating natures.

After a while she went down to the back regions, and glided in upon the white kitchen-floor with her sweeping skirts.

Aunt Ruby looked up with an exclamation of surprise. She was picking over raspberries for tea: "Oh, you oughtn't to come in here, Miss Custer: you'll spoil your clothes."

"Impossible," said Miss Custer, glancing around at the cleanness of everything with flattering significance, and seated herself in a low splint-bottomed chair.

"To be sure, Peggy scrubbed this morning," said Aunt Ruby with a feeling of satisfaction, "but one can't ever be very sure about a kitchen-floor."

"I could always be sure enough of yours to scatter my best things upon it," said Miss Custer, who, wishing to be entertained, was exceedingly good-natured; though, for that matter, she was seldom otherwise.

Aunt Ruby, who was greatly taken with the fine-lady boarder who made herself so common, entertained her better than she thought, for Miss Custer took a curious interest in most of the people she met, and liked to study them.

Of course Aunt Ruby could not spend time for her own or anybody else's amusement merely: when she got through with the raspberries she went at something else, her loose slippers clattering over the floor back and forth wherever her duty called her. But still, she talked, and Miss Custer sat looking out into the clean-swept back yard with its boxed-up flower-beds blooming with the gayest annuals, and its cooped-up hens with their broods of puffy chickens scratching and picking and chirping outside.

"Have Doctor Ebling and Miss Stanley been long engaged?" Miss Custer asked, the conversation having somehow led up to that query.

"Oh, la! yes," Aunt Ruby answered—"for more'n a year. The way of it was: Ruth's guardian, Mr. Murray, who was a minister, went off to some forrin country several years ago to be a missionary, and left Ruth here to finish her education. He was to send for her to come an' teach in a mission-school if she wanted to go—an' she al'ays said she did—after she'd graduated in the normal. But she came up here to stay a spell after graduatin', an' met Doctor Ebling; an' they took a notice to each other right away, an' were engaged. She wrote to Mr. Murray about it, an' he gave his consent to the marriage. But it couldn't take place just yet, for the doctor had only just begun his practice an' wasn't ready to settle down."

"That is, I suppose, he had not sufficient means to set up housekeeping?" said Miss Custer, smiling.

"Well, perhaps not in the way he'd like," Aunt Ruby returned evasively, not being a gossip in the mischievous sense.

"And your other gentleman-boarder, Mr. Bruce—" began Miss Custer, and then stopped.

"Oh, he's got enough money to set up housekeeping like a king," said Aunt Ruby, feeling that this was safe ground. "If he had anybody to set up with him," she added, and laughed at her own wit.

"But did Miss Stanley really think of going to teach in a foreign mission-school?" Miss Custer asked.

"To be sure she did," said Aunt Ruby. "She's a Christian girl, if ever there was one. You might look the world over, Miss Custer, an' you'd hardly find another girl like Ruth Stanley. She's the same as a missionary right here at home, because she looks out for every poor an' sick body in the town, an' spends half her wages to help them."

"Just the sort of person, then, for a doctor's wife," laughed Miss Custer, and gathered up her embroidery to go back to the veranda.

Instead of going through the dining-room, the way she had entered, she crossed over to the door of the back sitting-room, which was ajar, and pushed it open. She started and her cheeks crimsoned, at the recollection of her conversation with Aunt Ruby, on finding the sitting-room occupied.

Mrs. Tascher sat in Aunt Ruby's great arm-chair, with its calico cushions, looking over some fashion-plates in the carelessly-indolent way that very warm weather induces. She had some pieces of muslin and a pair of scissors beside her on the table, as though she had been cutting out. She looked up with a smile that was intended simply as an expression of politeness, and not such a smile as she would give a friend, and nodded: "Good-afternoon, Miss Custer."

Miss Custer, feeling herself compromised by having been caught gossiping—and by Mrs. Tascher, of all people!—fortified herself by a little accession of pride in her usually suave demeanor. "Good-afternoon," she returned, passing on through the room. "How stiflingly warm it is here!"

"Yes. I have been thinking of going into the parlor," said Mrs. Tascher: "it is always cool there, because the blinds are kept closed."

"Does she say that to prevent my taking refuge in the parlor?" thought Miss Custer, and moved on and went outside.

By and by some soft piano-strains came through the window, the sash of which was raised, at her back. When they ceased she became conscious, without turning her head to look through the shutters, that Mrs. Tascher had seated herself in an easy-chair and taken up a book from the centre-table, which held the usual stock of gilt-edged poems—Whittier's, Tennyson's, etc.

Nearly an hour passed in sultry silence, broken only by the buzzing of flies and, now and then, a subdued sound of wheels on the sandy road below. At last the gate-latch clicked, and Ruth came in, walking slowly up the path.

Doctor Ebling had driven by a few moments before, and gone up the alley to the stable, and just as Ruth reached the steps, shutting her parasol and smiling up rather wearily at Miss Custer, he came around the corner of the house, lifting his hat and wiping the perspiration from his face.

"Why, where have you been?" Ruth asked in surprise.

"In the country," said he.

"And just think, Miss Stanley," exclaimed Miss Custer, speaking to Ruth, but looking a smiling reproach at the doctor, and for a moment forgetting the parlor occupant at her back, "here I have been sitting this whole blessed afternoon! I could have borne the infliction of my own solitary company better, of course, if I had not been promised an entertainment."

"You must charge your disappointment to a poor fellow who got himself cut to pieces by a grass-mower," said the doctor.

"Who was it?" asked Ruth quickly, with a sympathetic play of facial muscles.

"A man by the name of Burgess, out east of town."

"And is he in a bad way?"

"Rather."

Ruth stood for a moment with her eyes upon the ground, absorbed in the thought of a fellow-being in distress, and the doctor, glancing from her up to Miss Custer, was conscious of the strong contrast between them.

Miss Custer was ten years Ruth's senior, but just now it looked as if it might be the other way: teaching gave Ruth a jaded look that seemed like age. But she was only eighteen. She wore a plain brown dress and linen cuffs and collar, all of which bore the stamp of the school-room. Her shoes were dusty, and her hair, untouched since early morning, had settled into a mass at the back of her neck, more artistic than stylish.

By and by she excused herself and went into the house. It was her habit to take a bath and dress herself before tea. The doctor came up and seated himself on the top step, and remarked that he didn't know whether it would be worth while to go up town before supper or not. Miss Custer was about to persuade him that it would not be worth while, when a movement on the part of Mrs. Tascher recalled her to the consciousness of that lady's proximity and put her under a sort of constraint. "Do you suppose your office to be strewn with orders for your immediate attendance upon wounded individuals?" she asked carelessly.

"If I thought it was," said he, "I'd make for the woods over yonder and hide myself."

"Unnatural physician! I always supposed medical men to be the most devoted to their profession, and the fondest of exercising it, of all beings."

"As to devotion," said the doctor, "I agree with you—we are a devoted class. But as to exercise of any description, that is contrary to all human inclination in such a temperature as this."

"And yet Miss Stanley endures it," said Miss Custer, and could have bitten her tongue the next moment.

A grave expression settled upon the doctor's face. "Yes," said he, "her brave spirit surmounts everything. She is of a different make-up from all the other people I know. And, by the way, it always seems to me irrelevant to bring her into comparison with ordinary mortals," he added; and, getting up and settling his hat upon his head, he strode off.

Miss Custer felt a pang of keen regret. "I have offended him," she thought.

But at the supper-table, an hour or two later, there was no evidence of offence in his attitude toward her, though it must be allowed that he paid rather more attention to Ruth than usual when she came down stairs freshened up in a light-colored lawn dress and her dark hair handsomely coiled and ornamented with a half-blown rose. She sat just opposite Doctor Ebling and beside Miss Custer, and stood the contrast with that amber-eyed beauty very well. Doctor Ebling thought so, and it had a tendency to elevate his spirits. The three carried on an animated dialogue. Mr. Bruce, at the end of the table, was abstracted, and ate his supper with great diligence, except when Mrs. Tascher, being his nearest neighbor, addressed a remark to him: then he turned to her with the utmost deference and replied as elaborately as friendly politeness demanded.

"Any of you folks in for a boat-ride this evening?" called up Hugh from the lower end of the table. "My Sally Lunn is anchored down by the big oak if you want her, and here's the key," holding it up.

"Why, yes," said Doctor Ebling, taking it upon himself to answer. Hugh's questions and remarks were usually addressed to the company collectively, and the doctor generally was tacitly elected spokesman.—"Don't you want to go, ladies?" he asked, "and you, Bruce?"

The ladies, Ruth and Miss Custer, assented with bright looks.

Mr. Bruce replied deliberatively that he was not sure he could leave the office.

"Oh, come now, Bruce, that's put on," said the doctor. "No man, whatever his profession, unless he be a farmer, can convince me of a pressure of business at this season. Banish the delusive idea and make yourself agreeable for once."

Mr. Bruce raised his head, showing at the same time a flash of his white teeth and his black eyes. "For once?" he repeated. "Making myself agreeable, or making a grotesque caricature of myself in my struggles to be agreeable, has been the business of my life."

"Oh, Mr. Bruce!" laughed Ruth. "Everybody knows you are delightful, but the idea of your making an effort in that direction is too absurd."

"If I had made that speech," thought Miss Custer, "Mrs. Tascher would have looked a severe criticism."

Mrs. Tascher, as it was, looked across at Ruth and said laughingly, "That hits him hard, my dear, but he ought not to wince."

Mr. Bruce had colored slightly and broken up the gravity of his face.

Later, when they all rose from the table, Mrs. Tascher, under some pretext or other, detained him a moment. "Do go!" she said: "you see how it is—Ruth never has the doctor to herself a moment any more. They used to take delightful little moonlight strolls together, and were as happy as a pair of young lovers ought to be. Now there is always a third party."

"Oh! So you think I ought to sacrifice myself to the happiness of the precious lovers? And what if I get enthralled myself? Who will come to my rescue?"

"I am willing to trust you," laughed Mrs. Tascher. "You have thirty years upon your head, and a vast amount of hard practicality in it: Dr. Ebling lacks something of both."

The girls had got their hats and were already out upon the veranda.

"Come, Bruce: have you decided whether there is an important case pending or not?" called the doctor.

Mrs. Tascher gave him a little push, and he sauntered out. She stood in the doorway and saw him, with a feeling of satisfaction, pair off with Miss Custer after they had got outside the gate. "I believe she likes him twenty times better than she does the doctor," she soliloquized. "And yet with what persistency she clings to Ruth and her lover! Poor Ruth! She takes her down in good faith."

The stream upon which Westbrook was built was about half a mile distant, and the sun was going down when they reached the big oak where the boat was anchored. Doctor Ebling clambered down the steep bank and unlocked it, and got in and rowed up a little way to where there was a better descent.

"Now, then, shall we all go at once," said he, "or take turns?"

"It is such a diminutive vessel," said Bruce, eying it doubtingly, "that perhaps Miss Custer and myself had better 'pause upon the brink' here, and wait until you two have made a short voyage."

"Oh, we shall not make a very short voyage," said Ruth, running down the bank and grasping the doctor's hand as he held it out to steady her in stepping into the boat. "I want to go up as far as the bridge and make a sketch to-night: the sunset and the moon-rise are lovely."

"Better come on—don't think we'll upset," said the doctor, beginning, nevertheless, to push off.

Bruce looked about and found a log to sit on. "Just spread your shawl on it," said he; and Miss Custer was obliged to unfold her beautiful white burnous.

"What an idea!" she thought, "and how ungallant he is!"

And yet he had a remarkable power of fascination, though, as Ruth said, he made no effort to please.

He took a seat beside her, and for some time his eyes followed the boat. After a while he said, "And did you manage to get through with The Spanish Gypsy again?"

"Oh no," said Miss Custer. "Didn't you know? The doctor was called into the country."

"Ah! he was?"

"Yes."

"Then you lost your afternoon's entertainment? That must have been a great deprivation."

He turned his head and looked at her with a lingering, exploring gaze that was difficult for her to fathom. How should she answer? He was certainly the only being of his sex who baffled or embarrassed her.

"It was indeed," she returned demurely, and yet with a hope that he might discover that she was but half in earnest. Her eyelids drooped and her lips were curved with a smile. She was pleasurably conscious of his prolonged gaze, and hoped something from it, knowing from much previous experience the power of her beauty.

The silence was very eloquent. He broke it—or intensified it indeed—by repeating from The Gypsy, in a low and remarkably well-modulated voice,

"Do you know
Sometimes when we sit silent, and the air
Breathes gently on us from the orange trees,
It seems that with the whisper of a word
Our souls must shrink, yet poorer, more apart.
Is it not so?

Do you know the answer?" he asked, never once taking away his eyes.

She raised hers and gave it with equal effect:

"Yes, dearest, it is true.
Speech is but broken light upon the depth
Of the unspoken: even your loved words
Float in the larger meaning of your voice
As something dimmer."

There was nothing audacious in her manner of repeating it—no coquettish reference, in voice or glance, to him. She threw into her eyes an expression of complete absorption in the spirit and story of the poem, and appeared to be far away with Don Silva and Fedalina.

Her seriousness and evident intensity of feeling were a surprise to him. He had simply been trying her with a careless stroke, but he seemed to strike true flint. "I could have sworn," he thought to himself, "that she was making fun of Ebling's proposition to read to her to-day when she said one could stand hearing a poem a good many times." And he actually went on repeating passage after passage, while she sat with her hands folded and her eyes fixed dreamily, drinking it in like distant music sounding all the way from the Spanish shores.

They were both so absorbed—not in the poem, but in thoughts that floated under the poem and circled right around themselves—that they did not hear the dipping of the oars as the doctor rowed back to shore in the white moonlight—not softened now, as it had been a while ago, by the mellow tints in the west. "Hallo!" he called. "Come down now and embark."

"Shall we?" asked Bruce in a voice so low that it seemed almost tender.

She answered by getting up, and he took the burnous off the log and folded it about her shoulders. It gave her a conscious thrill.

They sauntered down, and Bruce gave her his hand to make the descent of the bank. Ruth sprang up like a gazelle while the doctor held the boat to shore, and then pushed it off when the occupants were seated.

"I'm the poorest rower in Christendom," said Bruce, taking up the oars and making a few awkward strokes.

"Never mind about rowing," said Miss Custer. "When we get out into the current let us drift: I like it just as well."

Bruce did so, resting the handles of the oars upon his knees.

Perfect silence reigned. The moon was strangely bright, making the very air silvery. Miss Custer, with the rarest tact, let the stillness alone, knowing there was power in it.

By and by Bruce murmured,

"With dreamful eyes,
My spirit lies
Under the walls of Paradise.

What a strange effect moonlight and water have upon us, Miss Custer! They seem almost to disembody us. I can hardly ever recall a single line of poetry in the daytime when the sun is shining. But moonlight brings out all the delicate images of the mind's palimpsest."

"Pray, then, go on and repeat something more," said Miss Custer in a low voice: "I like to hear you. Repeat the rest of 'Drifting.'"

Bruce complied, and then struck upon Byron, and was surprised and delighted to find that Miss Custer followed him even there. The truth was, Miss Custer had rehearsed all these things many times before with different actors. The whole plot lay before her, ending and all. Bruce was certainly hooked, and all she had to do was to draw the line carefully in. To be sure, he was an odd specimen, a sort of man she was not much acquainted with; but that made him all the more interesting, and she was conscious of her power to manage him.

At last Bruce put the boat about without consulting her, and rowed back to the landing in silence and with considerable dexterity, considering his self-depreciation as a rower. Ruth and the doctor, who had no doubt been affected by the moonlight too, stood on the bank waiting for them. They all went home together, a rather merry party, and immediately dispersed for the night.

The next morning, when Miss Custer came down to breakfast radiant and joyous, with a consciousness of being in perfect keeping with the unpoetic sunshine, she was stricken with consternation at finding Mr. Bruce as distant and nonchalant as ever. No lingering, exploring glance this morning—nothing but the usual flash of his dark eyes as he bowed to her. Was it possible that all the fine effects of last night had passed out of his consciousness?

Some time during the day Bruce found an opportunity to say to Mrs. Tascher, "Don't ask me to do it again: I came near making a fool of myself last night. Got to quoting poetry and all that."

"Did you, indeed?" said she, laughing. "If the siren had that effect on you, a hardened bachelor, consider how it would go with Ebling."

"Ebling's heart is supposed to be preoccupied," said Bruce: "mine is an 'aching void.'"

That evening Hugh challenged Miss Custer to a game of croquet, and she, with secret reluctance, but a very good grace—being one of those sweetly-amiable people who never speak ill of any one, and never manifest the least boredom, no matter who undertakes the office of entertainer to them—accepted. However, she would make the most she could out of it. She invited the rest of the company to come down and look on and see that she had fair play. Bruce, at whom she glanced appealingly, paid no heed, but put on his hat and went down town with the air of a man greatly preoccupied and oppressed with business cares. Mrs. Tascher never went out when the dew was falling, and so there was nobody but Ruth and the doctor. They complied at once, and took seats on a rustic bench under the trees.

Miss Custer was conscious of showing to advantage in this picturesque game, and paid far more attention to her attitudes than her strokes: as a consequence, she was beaten, and immediately threw down her mallet.

"I'll give you another chance," said Hugh wistfully.

"Oh, I could never redeem myself with you if we should play till doomsday," she answered.

"You have beaten me," persisted Hugh.

"But I have a presentiment that I can't do it to-night," she returned.

"Well, then, Hugh," said the doctor, getting up and helping himself to a mallet, "if she is so disheartened, suppose we give her a chance to come off second best by taking a game with me?"

Hugh, smiling, but a little put out, stepped back, and the contest began, with far more animation on the part of Miss Custer. Presently Hugh's mother called him, and he went away. After a time Ruth called to the players, who were both at the other end of the ground, "Say, folks, if you'll excuse me I'll go in."

Miss Custer turned round and answered, "Oh, poor child! I presume you do find it dull."

Ruth ran up to Mrs. Tascher's room. Her acquaintance with that lady she counted among the best things of her life. The world had seemed larger and brighter and better since she had known her.

Mrs. Tascher was a widow: she had considerable wealth, but being an invalid she was deprived of the enjoyment of it to a great extent. She welcomed Ruth's friendly little visits always with a smile that seemed to make her soul stand out upon her face. She was what one might call a woman of the world. That is, she had travelled much, read much, studied people much, and mingled all her previous life in intelligent and refined society.

"Why, where is the rest of your party, my dear?" she asked as Ruth tapped on the door and came in.

"Hugh's mother wanted him," Ruth answered, "and I left Frank and Miss Custer playing a game."

Mrs. Tascher's smile faded. She felt tempted to speak a word of warning, but it seemed too bad to destroy the innocent faith of this high-minded, unsuspecting girl. She gave Ruth a chair, and Ruth begged her to read something: Mrs. Tascher's reading was sweeter than music to her. She complied readily, because it gave her pleasure to do anything Ruth asked. "Here is a poem by Whittier, just out," she said, taking up a magazine, the leaves of which she had cut only that afternoon. She began it, and Ruth leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes the better to see the images that passed in her mind. Mrs. Tascher read on until the light grew so dim that she could not see the lines, and then she got up and went to the window to finish. She glanced out as she did so, and stood silent. At last she said, "Come here, Ruth."

Ruth got up and went and looked out.

Away down at the farther end of the lawn stood Miss Custer and the doctor with their elbows resting upon the fence, evidently very deeply absorbed in each other. The spot was very lonely and still, hemmed in by trees, and would not have been visible from below—perhaps from hardly any other point but this window.

"Doesn't it strike you, Ruth, that a couple of young people must be rather sentimental to stray away like that?" asked Mrs. Tascher.

Ruth laughed, but not very joyously, and immediately turned away from the window, as though the sight hurt her.

Mrs. Tascher did so too, and struck a match to light her lamp. "If I were you, Ruth," she said as she settled the shade over it, "I would go down to the croquet-ground, from where you can see those people, and call to them."

"Oh no," said Ruth with a shiver.

"Why, you see," continued Mrs. Tascher, "it doesn't look well. Miss Custer ought to know better, but she is so vain of her influence over gentlemen that she exercises it upon every occasion that offers. It doesn't appear to make any difference who the gentleman is: it would be all the same to her now if it were Hugh instead of the doctor. I believe she does care something for Bruce, and he is her lawful prey; but she knows the doctor is not in the market."

Ruth threw back her head proudly. "He can be in the market," she said hoarsely.

"No, no, my dear," said Mrs. Tascher, shaking her head. "I don't want you to get reckless: I want to see you play this game with Miss Custer with a cool hand and come out ahead. You can do it, and you will be stronger and safer in the end."

Ruth pretty soon went out. She entered her room with her hand upon her heart, and sat down by the window without striking a light. In the course of half an hour the doctor and Miss Custer appeared in sight, walking slowly toward the house. They passed directly under her window, but their voices were so low that she could distinguish no word. By and by she heard the piano going. A moment after Mrs. Tascher tapped on her door, and, turning the knob, put her head in and called, "Ruth!"

Ruth got up and came forward.

"Come," said her visitor, "let us go down to the parlor."

"I cannot," said Ruth: "please don't ask me."

"Foolish child!" said Mrs. Tascher. "I am a thousand times sorry that I brought this thing to your notice."

"It was brought to my notice long ago," said Ruth brokenly; and Mrs. Tascher turned and went down stairs.

The doctor was leaning back in an easy-chair, completely absorbed in watching the exquisite figure at the piano and listening to the strains she evoked.

"One would think she had feeling," commented Mrs. Tascher mentally as she entered the room and swept across to the vacant seat beside the doctor, dispelling somehow, with her strong presence, the spirit of sentimentalism that pervaded the atmosphere. "Why, Doctor Ebling, are you here?" she asked: "I supposed you had gone to town. Where is Miss Stanley?"

"I—I don't know," said the doctor—honestly enough, to be sure.

"I thought you all went down to the croquet-ground?"

"Yes, we did. But she came back, and left Miss Custer and myself to finish our game."

"Oh, then I presume she is in her room.—Have you finished playing, Miss Custer?" with a smile of placid indifference as Miss Custer turned round on the piano-stool.

"Yes," said Miss Custer, getting up and taking a chair. "Doctor Ebling wished to hear the 'Last Hope.'"

"You haven't come to that in your experience yet, have you, doctor?" laughed Mrs. Tascher, though she was not in the habit of playing upon words.

"No," said the doctor. "It seems to me the 'last hope' is that we feel when we draw our last breath."

The three spent the evening together, and Mrs. Tascher brought into exercise the old charms and graces of manner and conversation that years ago had made her one of the most brilliant and fascinating women society could boast of. She was not old—not more than thirty-five—and when animated she was still beautiful: her face became illuminated and stars shone in her eyes. She so far outdid Miss Custer in the matter of pleasing and entertaining that when the doctor went away he hardly thought of the latter. He said to himself as he went down town, "What a remarkably brilliant woman Mrs. Tascher must have been in her day! And is yet, for that matter. Husband been dead six years: wonder why she never married again?"

Then he wondered with a slight feeling of uneasiness where Ruth had kept herself all the evening. "How affectionately and admiringly Mrs. Tascher always speaks of Ruth!" he said, and added, "Well, she is a noble girl."

There was an indefinable hardness in Ruth's manner the next morning. Her voice was hollow and her smile seemed ironical, though she was unusually gay. Mrs. Tascher, who observed her closely and with some uneasiness, thought her mockingly attentive to Miss Custer. Something was said at the dinner-table again about the doctor's promise to read to Miss Custer, and Ruth exclaimed, "By all means!—Miss Custer, make him stay at home and read you that poem."

The doctor of course fell readily in with the idea, and said he would not go down town this time to see if there were any orders: if anybody wanted him it was generally known that if he was not in his office he was at his boarding-place.

"Why did you do it?" said Mrs. Tascher, putting her handkerchief on her head and going down to the gate with Ruth.

"Because," said Ruth with drawn lips and heaving bosom, "I do not want to get him unfairly. If there is some one else who interests him more than I, he is still at liberty to choose."

"Ruth," said Mrs. Tascher, and her eyes flashed, "do you think she is getting him fairly? You have no conception of the scheming of that woman."

"Oh yes, indeed I believe I know it all," said Ruth, and hurried away.

In a few days school closed, and Ruth packed her trunk and went up to Merton, a little village about twenty miles distant, to visit her aunt. Almost as soon as she was gone Miss Custer was taken sick. Aunt Ruby insisted upon her occupying the spare bedroom, a cool, spacious apartment opening off the back sitting-room. The professional services of Doctor Ebling were of course engaged at once, and he proved himself very attentive at least.

To save appearances and for Ruth's sake, although she had little hope, Mrs. Tascher took up her position in the sick-room and compelled the doctor to give all his directions to her. He pronounced the malady a low fever brought on by the extreme heat of the season. Mrs. Tascher thought it was the result of exposure to night-dews, carelessness in regard to diet and lack of proper exercise.

Her presence, it must be allowed, put but little constraint upon the extraordinary intimacy of the pair. The doctor was all devotion, and Miss Custer all languor and dependence. She made a beautiful invalid, with her rare complexion and her white, lissome hands lying so restfully and helplessly on the counterpane. One day, after being freshly dressed in an embroidered gown of the finest texture, and instructing Mrs. Tascher how to wind her hair, which was long and abundant, around the top of her head in a coronet that was very becoming to her, she requested to have Mr. Bruce sent in when he came to his dinner. She had some affairs that must be looked into immediately by a legal eye.

"Had you not better just send him a message?" asked Mrs. Tascher.

"No: I prefer to attend to it myself," she returned coldly.

Bruce was therefore sent in, and Mrs. Tascher stepped out into the sitting-room. Miss Custer, who was certainly very white, raised her dusky eyelids, smiled faintly and held out her jewelled hand. Bruce, standing awkwardly enough by the bed-side, took it, but without apparent appreciation of its loveliness.

The invalid had chosen an inopportune moment: despite the subdued light of the chamber, it was high noon and the sun shone burningly outside, and Bruce, who had just eaten a hearty dinner, was utterly devoid of sentiment and indifferent to nice effects. There was a tumbler of dewy roses on a little table beside the bed, and he picked out one, and, sitting down, began eating the leaves one by one. "I hope," said he, thinking it a good plan to rally the sick a little, "you haven't got so discouraged by this indisposition—which the doctor tells me is not at all serious—that you wish to make your will?"

"No," she returned, hardly able to conceal her disgust at the unfeeling wretch: "I merely wish to send to my attorney for some money."

"Oh, is that it?" said Bruce, laughing. "Then the doctor was right. So long as a person takes a controlling interest in his affairs he is safe."

"A person!" thought Miss Custer, and really curled her lip. She gave him her lawyer's address, stated the sum she wanted and told him he might say that she was ill.

"And unable to write," added Bruce. "All right! I shall be as prompt in the execution of your commission as the exigences of the case appear to demand."

He took up his hat and went out cheerily, and Miss Custer turned her face to the wall and cried. For a day or two she was worse: then she grew better, and was finally able to sit up. At the expiration of two weeks Ruth came back. She was very pale and her face had a rigid look. Miss Custer met her sweetly, being still under the subduing influence of invalidism, and Ruth tried to feel kindly to her; which was a great vexation to Mrs. Tascher.

"Let me alone," said Ruth passionately one day. "Don't you see how I hate her? I could almost kill her! I am trying to fight down the demon in me."

The doctor, who had himself grown thin and haggard-looking, welcomed Ruth back with an air of constraint.

One day the young folks of the village got up a picnic and invited Aunt Ruby's boarders. The doctor at first hesitated about giving his permission for Miss Custer to go, but she coaxed, and he finally consented. The evening before the picnic Ruth requested an interview with the doctor, and they walked out into the grove. She told him she wished to release him from his engagement, and it was a painful satisfaction to her to see the agony that was in his face. He accused himself bitterly—said he had broken up her happiness and ruined her life, that he could never forgive himself, and ended by refusing to accept his release, and declaring that he should never avail himself of any of the advantages it offered.

The next morning he went to Bruce with white face and strained eyes, and begged him, for the love he bore him, to take Miss Custer to the picnic and to stay by her.

"So, my boy," said Bruce, not a little affected, "you have got into the ditch and want me to help you out? Well, I will do what I can.—Thank the Lord, his eyes are opened at last!" he muttered as Ebling went away.

The picnic-ground was a wooded hillside that sloped down into a grassy meadow a mile from town. The company all got together at the appointed hour—two in the afternoon—in the street below Aunt Ruby's, and waited for her boarders to come out. Ruth had persuaded Mrs. Tascher to go, and the doctor, with a painful attempt to appear natural, kept beside her and was scrupulously attentive to her comfort. Ruth playfully claimed Hugh as her escort. Bruce, true to agreement, monopolized Miss Custer in a masterly way, much to her surprise. She tried to snub him at first, but he ignored all her efforts in that direction with consummate stupidity, and in the end she submitted with a charming grace that was torture to the doctor.

Everybody seemed in fine spirits, but on the part of two or three members of the company we have reason to suppose that it was only seeming. And perhaps a little general knowledge of the affairs of mankind might justify us in the suspicion that there were others not so happy as their bright looks seemed to warrant. But, however that might be, every one threw in his or her contribution to the pleasure and amusement of the day. The doctor helped to lay out a croquet-ground and fixed the target for archery-practice; Hugh was active in putting up swings; some of the older and more dignified gentlemen, including Bruce, took upon themselves the lighter duty of entertaining the ladies; when lunch-time came some of the young fellows kindled a fire, and Ruth boiled the coffee. After that there was a good deal of pairing off and walking about, or sitting cozily upon old mossy, fallen trunks of trees.

Miss Custer, who had not yet risen from the grass-plot where she had sat to eat her dinner, looked away down across the green meadows with sleepy, half-shut eyes, and asked, "What is that pile of stones in the corner yonder?"

A youthful jeweller whom she remembered among her distant admirers answered, "It's an old well. This place here used to be a stock-farm, but it hasn't been used for that for a good many years; so the framework and buckets have been taken away."

Miss Custer, seized with a sudden impulse, sprang up and exclaimed, "I have a great mind to go down and take a look into it. Old wells have a peculiar fascination for me, and that one looks so lovely and romantic!"

She had a thought that Bruce might volunteer to accompany her, but that indolent barrister, sprawling upon the grass at her feet, hardly felt called upon by the nature of his agreement with Ebling to undergo quite so much as that. He reflected that it was his business to keep the charmer out of mischief for the day. "And if she meanders away to that fascinating well," he thought, "in her own solitary company, nobody will be damaged, so far as I can see."

But Miss Custer, seeing no other way and feeling the position a little awkward, appealed to Ruth, who got up and started with her. When they had clambered down the rather steep hill to the meadow's edge Miss Custer affectionately took her arm. "Don't you think picnics are stupid things?" she asked confidingly.

"Why," said Ruth, "we didn't think so this morning."

"Oh no, not when we were anticipating, but

One of the pleasures of having a rout
Is the pleasure of having it over.

I shall be glad when we get back home, though I suppose we shall not start till near sundown."

When they reached the well Miss Custer stepped upon the flat white stones with which it was walled up to the surface of the ground and gazed down into its dark depths. "What a queer feeling that is which one is almost sure to have standing upon the edge of danger!—a sort of reckless impulse to throw one's self forward. Did you ever feel it?" Ruth, standing just behind her as she leaned over, saw her hands involuntarily clutch her dress, as though the strange temptation were so great that she must hold herself forcibly back from it. "I have—a thousand times," she added; "and I feel it now."

"Take care!" cried Ruth, catching at her.

Miss Custer, in turning away her charmed gaze, lost her balance from sheer dizziness and plunged forward. Ruth, with a look and cry of horror, bent over and saw the fearful descent, so quick and so noiseless until the dull splash was heard and the black water opened and closed again. Then she threw up her hands and started to run toward the hill, calling loudly. But already they had seen and were coming. One—Doctor Ebling—was far ahead of the rest. Ruth met him and turned back with him.

"Ruth, you did it: I saw you push her," he found breath to say. But Ruth's sensibilities were too shocked to feel the accusation.

The doctor was halfway down the well before any one else reached the spot. Bruce had had the forethought to cut down a swing and bring the rope. In a very few minutes Miss Custer—or what was believed to be her lifeless body—was lying wet upon the grass and the doctor, also dripping, was making a hasty examination of her condition. "I think she will live," was his verdict, "but we must get her home with all speed."

A light wagon coming up the road was signalled to, and they got her into it and drove furiously to town. By the time the rest of the party reached home she was partially recovered, though very weak and terribly shaken.

As soon as it was said that she was out of danger and would probably suffer no serious consequences Ruth recalled the doctor's frightful words: "You did it: I saw you push her."

She rushed in search of him. He was in the parlor, walking back and forth with a troubled air. She went up to him: "Frank, you accused me of doing that dreadful thing. I have just remembered what you said—that you saw me push her. I did not: I put out my hand to save her."

"I hope to God you did!" said he, but his look was doubting and reproachful.

"Why, Frank," she said, with scarcely enough breath to speak the words, "if you do not believe me it will kill me!"

Just then some one came to the door and beckoned to him, and he went out. Ruth turned, with a breaking heart, to go up stairs. The youthful jeweller was talking to Mrs. Tascher in the hall. "Yes," he was saying, "I saw it all. She was standing leaning over the well, and was just turning to step back when she gave a sort of lurch as if she had got dizzy, and Miss Stanley reached out her hand and caught her by the shoulder. But she had got the start of her, and over she went in a twinkling. The whole thing was done in an instant."

"Oh, Mr. Omes, I wish you would explain all that to Doctor Ebling," said Ruth, coming up.

"Oh, he knows all about it: he saw it the same as I did," said the young man.

A suspicion crossed Ruth's mind that the doctor knew, but she could not believe him so base.

Miss Custer was doomed to have a serious time of it, after all. The great excitement brought on fever again, and for some days her recovery was thought doubtful. Everybody in the house did all that was in her or his power to do, and the doctor was more devoted than ever. It became a fixed idea that he would marry Miss Custer as soon as she was able to sit up. He and Ruth scarcely spoke to each other.

One day Mrs. Tascher told Ruth she must go away.

"Yes, I know," answered Ruth: "I am going."

She packed her trunk again—this time taking all her things—and went back to her aunt's. In less than a week Mrs. Tascher had a letter from her stating that she had started, under the escort of a friend of her guardian's, for Beirut.

It was so great a shock to Mrs. Tascher that she scarcely left her room for ten days after it, and indeed did not wholly recover until another letter came, dated from far-off Syria, with a curious commingling of the strange and the familiar in the well-known handwriting and the foreign post-mark, assuring her that her young friend was safely sheltered under the protection of her guardian and his estimable wife. Ruth dwelt entirely upon her new experience, and never mentioned the old. She had not so much to say about her journey, though it was interesting and delightful, as about her arrival and the meeting with her dear friends, whose loved faces were so sweetly familiar in that strange, strange land that she fell upon their necks and wept. She drew vivid pictures of the magnificent scenery that lay around her in her new home—the gardens, the orange-groves, the figs and olives, the terraced slope of Mount Lebanon, the glorious Mediterranean.

Mrs. Tascher was comforted, though the void made by Ruth's absence was almost like death, the wide space seemed so unspannable. She wrote back at once in all the fulness of her heart, and Ruth was not so absorbed in grief for the loss of her lover but that she appreciated and was deeply grateful for the tender, unfailing affection of her friend. Mrs. Tascher, who felt that the sharpest knife was the best to be used in a case of urgent surgical necessity, wrote briefly that the doctor and Miss Custer were married—that Miss Custer had begged for at least three months' preparation, but the doctor was impatient; and so, as soon as she was able to stand the journey to Boston, where her friends and property were, they had joined hands and started.

"The marriage took place in the parlor," Mrs. Tascher wrote, "and the household were invited to be present. I, however, had a bad headache and could not get down stairs; Bruce pleaded 'business;' and poor Hugh, whose boyish affections have been cruelly tampered with, had a fishing engagement. So there was nobody but Aunt Ruby and her 'help' to witness the touching ceremony except the minister and his wife. It was touching, I suppose: Miss Custer wept bitterly at being so 'neglected,' and Ebling is mortally offended with Bruce."

Three years went by; which space of time Mrs. Tascher spent chiefly in Florida and New York, going back and forth as the seasons changed in obedience to medical authority. At last she concluded to try a few weeks in Westbrook again. Aunt Ruby, who still kept boarders—all strangers, however—gave her the old rooms up stairs with their pleasant windows. Here she sat and wrote to Ruth a few days after her arrival.

Ruth had become quite contented, and even happy, under the warm Syrian sun, watching with earnest, loving eyes the development of barbarism and heathenism into civilization and Christianity, though it seemed very much to her sometimes as if she had lost her place and personality in the world. She was swallowed up in the great pagan East, and was nothing to the land that owned her—to the people that were her people. She was dead to the life and world to which she had been born.

The family of her guardian, together with some of their pupils, had removed to a little village up the side of the mount to spend a few of the hottest weeks, as was their custom. The mail was regularly brought up by a young Arab riding a mule. One evening, when Ruth had gone to sit alone on one of the grassy terraces overlooking the sea and the luxuriant foliage and vegetation below—a thing she liked, though it usually made her pensive and a little sad—a young Syrian girl ran down and gave her a letter. It was Mrs. Tascher's, and I will take the liberty to transcribe a part of it here:

"Aunt Ruby has furnished me with a good many surprising items in regard to the fortunes and actions of our old associates. Bruce (he was a splendid fellow—wasn't he?—solid, practical and all that), who, you remember, had a good deal of means, has built himself a house, something quite elegant. It stands on that little knoll on the other side of the town, overlooking the river. I mean to go over and take a look at it some day: it is said to be beautifully furnished, and is kept by an old maiden aunt of our friend. Bruce, by the way, is in Europe, though what took him there I cannot conjecture, unless he means to bring home a European exportation in the shape of a wife. I wish, my dear, you had taken a fancy to him: I always thought he admired you. You don't mind my probing an old wound—do you?—because I want to speak of some of the others. Miss Custer's fortune, as it turned out, was extremely limited. She had, I believe, enough to furnish a small rented house here, and she and the doctor immediately went to housekeeping. But time, which settles all things and places them in their true light and relations, has brought to the notice of this precious pair that they are very ill adapted to each other: it is even said that they quarrel. The coarser gossips affirm that Mrs. Ebling is lazy and shiftless, and that the doctor is disheartened and neglects his business. I have seen him once, and can judge something of his state by his bearing and looks. He is certainly not the sort of man I once thought he would make. Whether there is better stuff in him than what we see developed, or whether he owes what he is entirely to circumstances, is an unsolvable question. I am inclined to think that every person has the making of two individuals in him—one bad, the other good. What a pity that a man usually has only one chance! If he makes a mistake he is lost. My dear Ruth, in the whole course of my life I have kept my eyes upon the infallible law of cause and effect; and I know this, that wrong-doing inevitably brings its own retribution."

When Ruth took her eyes from this letter and fixed them upon the distant blue water-depths they were brimful of tears. "Yes, wrong-doing is followed by retribution," she thought, "but where is the reward for right-doing?"

Oh, she felt so lonely in that far-off heathen land, with the shadow of others' wrong-doing lying always across her path! Why must she suffer and be alone?

A step from behind startled her, and she sprang up and turned round. A pair of black eyes were smiling at her from a handsome, familiar face. "Oh, Mr. Bruce!" she cried, and flew up the steps, holding out both her hands.

"I have come such a long way to see you," said Bruce, "that my motive must be pretty conspicuous: I don't mean to try to conceal it. Perhaps you have never thought of me as a man you would be at all likely to marry. Still, I have made it my business to come and ask you, and I thought I might better let you know my errand at once, instead of leaving you to guess it from any clownish efforts of mine to do the agreeable to you."

He certainly broke it to her very well, smiling and holding her hands—so well that she laughed heartily and was at home with him in a moment.

One day it was rumored in Westbrook that Bruce had come home with a wife. The news had but just reached Aunt Ruby's premises when Bruce himself came rapidly up the path and asked for Mrs. Tascher. She came down at once. "I have come for you to go and call upon my wife," said he.

"Why, Mr. Bruce—" she began.

But he stopped her, and in spite of her demurring carried her off.

"You certainly have a lovely place, Mr. Bruce," she said, looking admiringly round as they mounted the front steps of his residence. The door flew open, and there, waiting to welcome her, stood the bride—Ruth.

Alice Ilgenfritz.

---

WHERE LIGHTNING STRIKES.

The air has been growing hotter for many days, with "occasional counteracting influences" (as "Probabilities" says), until the sunshine-loving doves hide under shadowing gables and the robins and sparrows sit on the lower branches of the trees with little wings lifted from their palpitating sides. The multitudinous shrilling of the grasshoppers adds emphasis to the white heats of the air. Even the housefly seeks the shade and hums drowsily in complicated orbits about the upper part of the room, or, with too keen proboscis, destroys my last crumb of comfort, the post-prandial nap.

My eyes open upon a world that dreams. The trees stand motionless. Among their tops the bull-bat darts erratically. The pale star of thistledown mounts on some mysterious current, like an infant soul departing heavenward. The hum of the near city is hushed. The sound of the church-bells is muffled. The trumpeting of the steamer comes from the bay, as though some lone sea-monster called aloud for companionship. There is a sudden rattle and roar as a train rushes by, and then the smoke drifts away over the glowing landscape.

But there is an increasing opaque dimness in the western horizon that steadily deepens in color. Fleece-like clouds rapidly increase in height and density, and a sheet of pale flame flashes from the midst and is gone. A glowing, crinkly line marks the edge of the cloud, and disappears.

Now swallows soar far up in the sky, the doves make wild, uncertain flights above the steeples, and the hoarse trumpet of the steamer again calls for recognition. At the west another bright line falls, zigzag, to a distant hill, revealed an instant, then lost in the shadow of the cloud. Soon there is a low, momentary rumble, and you are assured that the swift, delightful, dangerous shower, that cools the earth without interrupting our pleasures for dreary days, is approaching. No one whose dwelling is not better protected than most of those which bear the vain and flimsy decorations called "lightning-rods" can know whether his own house may not in a few moments receive a ruinous stroke, or that it may not be his lot to enter eternity with the first flash from that dark, towering mass of sulphurous hue that already casts its ominous shadow upon his face.

Timid persons should experience gladness rather than alarm at the sound of the thunder and the flash of the lightning, both being signals that personal danger is past for the time. Persons who have been struck and rendered insensible, but who have afterward recovered, had not seen or heard what hurt them. Unless we are acquainted with the locality, and know the points likely to receive the fiery bolt; if a disruptive discharge occurs near us there is no telling the spot of danger or of safety in open ground. A discharge from the front of the cloud may take a downward angle of forty-five degrees, and, passing over hill and forest, strike an insignificant knoll or a moist meadow half a mile in advance of the cloud. For myself, if overtaken in the country by a thunderstorm, I would seek the nearest and most convenient shelter from the rain and take my chance with the lightning.

Teams and the persons accompanying them appear to be peculiarly in danger during a thunderstorm. Caves, and even deep mines, afford no absolute safety, for the thunderbolt has been known to enter even these. Tall trees are more dangerous than low ones, but none of them appear capable of affording protection against this mysterious element. The people of different countries have regarded various kinds of trees as exempt from the electric stroke, but inquiry has always shown that every species has suffered in one locality or another. The beech, from some cause, has probably escaped more generally than any other tree of considerable size in northern latitudes. But it is the neighborhood of a good conductor, not a sheltering non-conductor, that affords safety. Some scientific men have advised a station of fifteen to forty feet from a tree, or such a position between several trees, but it has sometimes happened that such open spaces have received the bolt. In cities and villages, likewise, open spaces are not found to be places of safety.[5]

The question whether the small metallic articles usually carried about the person increase the danger is a matter of some concern. Many persons on the approach of a thunderstorm customarily relieve themselves of these things. Hair-pins, clasps and the metallic springs often used in the dresses of ladies are not, however, so easily got rid of. From the record of the effects of lightning upon the human body we reach the conclusion that metal is dangerous about the person only according to its position. Constantine mentions that during a thunderstorm a lady raised her arm to close a window, when a flash of lightning entered: her golden bracelet was entirely dissipated, but without the slightest injury to the wearer. A similar case is reported in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal for 1844. During a violent thunderstorm a fishing-boat belonging to Midyell, in the Shetland Islands, was struck by lightning. The discharge came down the mast (which it tore into shivers) and melted a watch in the pocket of a man who was sitting close by, without at all injuring him. He was not even aware of what had happened until, on taking out his watch, he found it fused into one mass. Instances might be cited where a portion of the shoe was carried away without serious injury to the wearer, and where knitting-needles, scissors and other household implements have been struck, sometimes conducting the current to the person with fatal effect.

During a thunderstorm in France in July, 1858, a peasant-woman, on her way home from the fields, was struck down by lightning. No wound was detected upon her person, but her hair was singed and a part of a silver comb melted. Here metal seems to have conducted the electricity to the body. On the other hand, the traveller Brydone relates a circumstance which happened to a lady who was regarding a thunderstorm from her window. At a flash of lightning her bonnet was reduced to ashes, nothing else about her being affected. Brydone supposes the electric current to have been attracted by the metallic wire which maintained the shape of her bonnet. Hence he proposes that either these wires be abandoned or in times of danger a metallic chain be attached to the bonnet, by which the charge might pass to the earth. Accordingly, we find that it became fashionable in France at that period to wear on the top of the bonnet an ornament of bright metal connecting with a small silver chain dropping down to the ground. At about the same time umbrellas were carried fitted with wires and chain for a similar purpose.

In July, 1819, lightning fell upon the prison of Biberach in Suabia, and there struck, in a common apartment, among twenty prisoners, one only—a condemned captain of brigands, who was chained about the waist. A similar arrangement of metal proved fatal in another case. On the 9th of October, 1836, on the coast of Italy, a young man was struck by lightning and killed. It was found that he wore a girdle containing gold coins. Undoubtedly, danger or safety depends on properly placing the conducting object. It may convey the current to the vital organs or it may ward off the stroke. Probably any line of metal parallel with the length of the body when upright would be in some degree a protection. The noted Dr. King once saw a military company receive a discharge of electricity from the clouds upon their bayonets, whence their muskets conducted it to the ground without harm or any painful shock. On the other hand, a battalion of French infantry, while marching between Mouzon and Stenay, June 2, 1849, was struck by lightning, and two men killed, while about two hundred were struck to the ground. Blood flowed from their mouths, ears and noses. This effect appears to have been the result of the concussion. Similar results sometimes follow from heavy discharges of artillery.

Uniform testimony goes to show that men in metallic armor have never been fatally injured by lightning. A complete suit of metallic armor embodies the principle of the well-known electrical cage of Faraday. This is simply a basket of wire network with its open side to the ground. If the wire is of proper size and the capacity sufficient, this cage is the most effectual protection possible, unless the walls be of solid iron.

If one places beside him a better direct conductor to the earth than his own body, he will not be fatally injured by the electric current, though, if it pass very near, he may be blinded by the glare or deafened by the noise—effects which are usually temporary. Equal safety for buildings may be similarly secured.

Glass being so well known as an excellent non-conductor, some have been led to suppose it effectual in warding off the disruptive stroke. Hence chambers or cases of glass have actually been made for the use of individuals who were apt to be overcome with terror during the prevalence of a thunderstorm. In this belief, also, the vane of Christ Church in Doncaster, England, was furnished with a glass ball; but the spire was afterward struck, causing great damage. Many also think they may sit beside a closed window in safety, but records of holes being melted in the glass and whole windows crumbled to powder by lightning are too numerous to admit of any reliance upon such a precaution.

In the case of silken garments the evidence met with does not warrant a statement either for or against them; yet there appears to be no reason why this non-conductor should be more of a safeguard than any other. No doubt an abundance of gold and silver lace, or cloth having threads of these metals, might prove a protection. Feather beds, too, have been regarded as places of safety, but persons have been killed by lightning while in bed. Dr. Franklin advised especially that the vicinity of chimneys be avoided, because lightning often enters a room by them. All metallic bodies, mirrors and gilded ornaments, he held, should likewise be shunned. Contact with the walls or the floor or proximity to a chandelier, a projecting gas-pipe, a position between two considerable pieces or surfaces of metals, unless distant, are all hazardous. Draughts of air are also to be avoided. Bell-wires may generally be considered as protective, though too small to be effectual. Perhaps a hammock, in addition to the preceding precautions, will afford as much security as can be derived from insulation. But in a building having continuous iron walls, posts or pillars from top to bottom, or in one which is properly supplied with conductors in other forms, all the foregoing precautions may be neglected without apprehension. Yet, as was suggested early in this article, the great number of buildings damaged by lightning while furnished with rods has caused much distrust of this system of protection.

From the large number of trees receiving the electric current it has come to be thought by many that these may be the best protectors of buildings if properly placed. In a case coming under my observation a tree received (or at least deflected) the current and communicated it to the house. In many instances, however, the building is struck while tall trees near by are untouched.

There is no doubt that lightning generally strikes elevated rather than low objects, and therefore it has been thought that a building surrounded by steeples had nothing to fear. As previously stated, however, the bolt sometimes selects a low object when high ones are at hand. For example, lightning fell upon a house occupied by Lord Tilney in Naples, although it was surrounded on all sides, at the distance of four or five hundred paces, by the towers and domes of a great number of churches, all wet with a heavy rain.

In considering the matter of protection from lightning we must bear in mind that trees, buildings, masts and other elevated points exert no attractive power on the thundercloud except in connection with the great plane where they are situated. The primary cause of the discharge is not in the metals of the building, the exact point or line in which the insulation by the air breaks down being determined by a variety of causes. The elevated points of a building or ship may form a channel for the passage of the current, but it is not the only one nor the cause of the discharge, which would take place sooner or later though the ship or building were absent altogether.

There has been a difference of opinion in regard to the area protected by lightning-conductors, early notions on this point having been much exaggerated. Leroy's, in 1788, is the earliest positive statement which I have met. It is, that a conductor protects a horizontal space around it equal to somewhat more than three times the height of the metal rod above the building to which it is attached. The physical section of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, on being consulted by the Minister of War in 1823, expressed the opinion that a lightning-conductor protects a circular space of which the radius is equal to the height of the rod. Here, apparently, is a wide difference, but possibly the estimates refer to different elevations. Leroy clearly intended an area at a level with the top of the building: thus, supposing the rod to be attached to a chimney six feet in height and to rise a foot and a half above the chimney, then it would protect a radius of about ten feet on the roof. The estimate of the Academy of Sciences speaks of the total height of the rod, and refers to a horizontal area at the base of the measurement, whether this began at the ground or at the top of the structure to which the rod is attached. In this view the estimates do not differ so much as might appear, the latter being about one-third less than that of Leroy. Other French writers estimate the area protected as having a radius of double the height of the rod above the highest point of the connected structure, being twice the radius allowed by the Academy. Later physicists have been cautious in giving figures, for experience has shown that estimates of protection are not accurately observed by the descending bolt. For instance, when Her Majesty's corvette Dido, furnished with the best system of conductors, was struck by lightning, the discharge fell in a double or forked current upon the main royal mast, one of the branches striking the extreme point of the royal yard arm and passing along to the conductor on the mast, while the other fork fell on the vane, spindle and truck; which last was split open. As soon as the discharge reached the conductor all damage ceased.

The practice of the best electricians has now long been to protect all angles and projections, the latter by a branch of the rod, and the former by running a line of rod over them, having at every few feet sharp points of an inch or two in length attached to and standing out at right angles with the rod. Indeed, some go even beyond this, forming points along the whole length of the conductors by notching the corners of a square rod with a chisel. Sometimes a rod is twisted for ornament, but with a loss for practical uses, for in a twisted rod the electrical current is retarded, and a portion of the charge is more liable to leave the conductor.

In England, during our Revolutionary war, an active scientific discussion was carried on as to whether the upper end of a lightning-conductor should be sharp or blunt. "The scientific aspect of the question soon became lost in political acrimony, those who, with Dr. Franklin, advocated sharp conductors, being classed with him and the Revolutionary party, while those who advocated blunt conductors were held to be loyal subjects and good citizens." There is a difference in the action of a sharp conductor and one with a blunt end or terminating in a ball. In the first the point silently receives the current, while in the other the opposite electricities of the rod and cloud may meet with explosion; but the building will not necessarily be injured from this cause. M. Michel proposed to combine the advantages of the two systems by having the rod terminate in a spherical enlargement from which should project points in various directions. This, he thought, would lessen the danger of fusion and control the current at distances where it might escape other forms of terminal. Some American electricians now use a modification of this form, surmounting the rod with a branching tip, while others prefer the single point. The latter is the form used in the American and British navies. The vane, with its appurtenances, is sometimes made the terminal of the conductor, and should at least always be connected.

The practice is also a good one of combining balustrades, finials and other metal-work at the tops of buildings with the system, by which protection is rendered more complete. Especially is it important to connect with a metallic roof at its lower edge, and with the gutters, unless the rain-conductors connect with the earth to its moist mass.

In regard to the material for conductors, copper is undoubtedly the best, but more expensive than iron. The latter is more liable to rust, and on account of its lower conductive power is more easily melted. An electrical explosion which only melts a copper wire would utterly destroy an iron wire of twice the diameter of the former. In being heated a rod contracts in length, and is then liable to fracture by the shrinkage, but if of sufficient size these results are not likely to occur. An iron rod, by successively receiving an electrical discharge, is sometimes reduced in size.

The conducting power of metals likely to be found in buildings is as follows: taking the power of lead as one, that of tin will be two—that is, tin conducts electricity twice as well as lead; iron, nearly two and a half times as well; zinc, four times; and copper, twelve times. From this comparison of conducting power the important fact will appear that when any two of these metals are used in the same line of conduction, the one of low power should be proportionately larger. Sir W.S. Harris—perhaps the best authority on lightning-rods in general—advises that the size of the rod, if of iron, should be three-fourths of an inch in diameter, although he admits that probably never in the experience of man has a rod half an inch in diameter been melted by an electrical discharge. He regarded the extent of surface rather than quantity of metal in the conductor as the measure of its power, while many other electricians hold the contrary opinion.

It is important that the conductor should form an unbroken line throughout its extent, otherwise there is danger that a portion of the charge may be diverted from it. For instance: a large barn struck not long since had a conductor at each of three corners. In order to maintain the uniformity of the four angles of the square hip roof, a rod was run from the main conductor down the fourth angle to the hip, where it terminated in an erect point. A heavy discharge struck the main rod at the cupola, and, descending, divided among the four branches. That on the short branch jumped from its end to the metal sheathing along the angle of the roof, which it followed to the gutter, passing along this to one of the conductors, doing some damage on the way. Had not the charge found a line of metal on which to continue its course from the end of the rod, it would have done greater damage, and most likely have set the building on fire.

Another point of importance is, that the connection of the joints of the rod be perfect, as explosions and fusion occur wherever the surface in contact is less than the size of the rod, unless the latter is much larger than necessary. The hook and the lap joints, if not very carefully made, are liable to this objection. The best connection, no doubt, is that of the screw coupling.

The insulation of the rod from the building is an expense not only without the least advantage, but the contrary. Harris (Thunderstorms, pp. 129, 131) says: "This practice is not only useless, but disadvantageous, and is manifestly inconsistent with the principles on which conductors are applied." Dr. Franklin says: "The rod may be fastened to the wall, chimney, etc. with staples of iron. The lightning will not leave the rod to pass into the wall through these staples. It would rather, if any were in the wall, pass out of it into the rod, to get more readily by that conductor to the earth." The practice may have gained vogue from an observance of the use of glass knobs as insulators of telegraph-wires. Many intelligent people have failed to apprehend the vast difference between the low tension of voltaic electricity and frictional electricity, lightning being in the nature of the latter. The fact that when lightning strikes the telegraph-wire it jumps from the wire to the posts, often tearing in pieces half a dozen in a row, ought to be conclusive in regard to insulating lightning-rods.

The same considerations will also effectually dissipate the fallacy by which the horizontal lightning-rod has duped so many people in certain portions of the West; for if the wire be cut off from the ground-connections (in which condition it accords with the conductor in question) the posts (which answer to the building thus "protected") must suffer still greater damage. So far from being insulated, the rod should be connected with all considerable masses of metal in the building, these having also a good connection with the earth. Frequently during a thunder-shower—sometimes even on the approach of one—all metallic objects will be electrified, and those of considerable size will often yield a spark; and this without the building containing these objects being struck. When struck, the larger masses of metal might occasion a dangerous explosion from induction, though at some distance from the rod: for this reason, as before stated, they should be connected with the ground. Being then liable to receive a part of the current from the conductor in case this be too small, they should be connected with it, as otherwise the current would cause damage in its passage. In a word, therefore, all metal bodies in a building should, as far as possible, be made a part of the system of conduction. This matter is not well understood generally. A dwelling in Boston having been struck by lightning a few years since, a neighbor remarked that "it was fortunate the lightning did not reach the gas-pipe, for it would then have gone all over the house." The fact was, that the bolt did not go more than five feet inside the house before it struck the pipe, and there all damage ended. The idea may be novel to most people, but if the gas-or water-pipes were carried above the roof to the usual height of lightning-rods, they would form a very efficient system of conductors so long as they were connected with the main pipes in the street. Knowing the destructive character of lightning when it passes through air, wood, brick, stone or other non-conductor, people are naturally fearful of allowing the current to run through their houses. But the lion and the lamb are not more different than are the disruptive discharge while passing through a non-conductor and the same current passing through a good conductor.

The system of lightning-conductors in use in the British navy goes through the woodwork of the vessel, the conductors sunk in the side of the masts connecting with the sea through the metal bolts in the hull. After the terrible charge of electricity had fallen on the Chichester, Captain Stewart wrote: "I examined the planks about the bolts, and found all quite fair and water-tight." (These "bolts" formed the lower part of the system of conduction, passing through the bottom of the vessel and connecting with the water.) After twenty-five years' use there had not, as we learn from the British Nautical Magazine for March, 1853, been a solitary instance of serious damage by lightning on ships fitted with these conductors, though many had been struck by heavy discharges. In our own navy the conductors pass from the upper part of the mast over the side of the vessel.

It is not, however, to advocate making the gas-and water-pipes the main lines of conduction that I have made these citations, but to remove in some degree the dread of "having the lightning come into the house." A better conductor would be the metal covering of the roof when such material is used. When a good metallic connection is made between a metal roof and metal rain-conductors, which, in their turn, are well connected with the earth, nothing further is needed for complete protection than a rod soldered to the roof for each chimney or other projection. But as the lightning is liable to melt the plate at the point where it enters, especially if the metal be tin or zinc, it is well to solder points at the angles. Some, "to make assurance doubly sure," carry the rods over the whole distance quite to the ground in addition. All authorities consider such a system as this to be as complete a defence against lightning as possible.

"If," says Harris, "a building or a ship were perfectly metallic in all its parts, no damage could possibly arise to it when struck by lightning, since the explosive action would vanish the instant the electrical agency entered the metal. In applying lightning-conductors, therefore, as a means of guarding against the destructive effects of lightning, our object should be to carry out this principle in all its generality, and bring the building or ship as nearly as possible into that state of passive electrical resistance it would have supposing the whole mass were iron throughout."

After the most careful and extended inquiry possible to him, it is the writer's conclusion that in nearly every case of serious damage by lightning to a building having conductors of any well-known system (except the horizontal, which is not a conductor at all in the usual sense of the word), the failure to protect has been on account of a defective ground-connection. The fact is the more surprising as this connection is so much within control and is the least costly part of the system. This fault has arisen from the failure of lightning-rod men, as well as owners of buildings, to apprehend what constitutes a ground-connection for electricity. If the eye sees the end of the conductor pass a short distance beneath the surface, all the connection necessary is thought to be effected, because "the ground is always wet enough in a shower." In the cities it is customary to connect the rod with the water-or gas-pipes in the street, which makes the conduction perfect. In the absence of these it is best to carry the rod to a well; and it is always desirable to enlarge the lower end of the conductor, which may be done by soldering it there to a sheet of copper. If the termination of the line cannot be carried to a well, it should be deeply buried in a bed of coke or charcoal that has been subjected to a red heat.

A season or two ago a large barn in the vicinity of Boston was struck by lightning, and though there were rods at three of the four corners, three kine were killed by the discharge. The barn stood upon the side of a hill, having a cellar and sub-cellar, the bottom of the last being very moist. An ox stood in one corner, a cow in another and a heifer at a third, and each received a fatal stroke. On examination it was found that the rods entered the ground to the depth of only about one foot, and the soil, being dry, perfectly insulated them. Consequently, on the way to damp earth the currents jumped to the nearest conductors, which happened to be these unfortunate animals. In placing conductors it must not be forgotten that dry earth in general is not a conductor. Neither will any small quantity of surface water serve to check the rage of the electric stroke, unless there is a connection of moisture with the mass of moisture below the soil.

The depth to which lightning may penetrate before it is so dissipated as to lose its dangerous character is shown by the fulgurites, or "lightning-tubes," sometimes found in sandy soils. Their formation has been conclusively traced to disruptive electrical discharges from the clouds, which have melted the sand by the intense heat generated in passing through to a moist earth. These tubes generally divide into prongs, like a parsnip, as they descend. The inner surface is smooth and very bright. It scratches glass and strikes fire as a flint. They are sometimes found three inches in external diameter, and extending to a depth of thirty feet. In one instance five of these tubes were found in a single hill.

This tendency of certain localities to receive the electrical discharge is further illustrated by the number of times certain buildings in every considerable town have been struck. As before stated, the elevation of the structure does not seem to be the determining influence in directing the stroke, for the unfortunate edifice often stands much lower than some others in the vicinity which have always been struck. Numerous illustrations of this can be found in the records of European countries. Hollis Street Church in Boston has been struck several times, though the ground on which it stands is but little above the level of the sea, while the State-House, on the very apex of Beacon Hill, with great quantities of metal in surface and mass, is not known ever to have received a disruptive discharge. It has been supposed that the copper covering of the roof, including the gilded dome, its rain-pipes and four excellent lightning-rods, have had the effect of neutralizing the air about it by constant conduction of mild currents. Yet the rod on the spire of Somerset Street Church, nearby and eastward of the State-House, but lower, has been seen to receive a disruptive discharge. Bunker Hill Monument, about a mile north-west and some twenty feet higher, has several times received powerful discharges, which a good conductor has always carried harmlessly away.

There has also been observed a tendency of the current not only to strike certain buildings, but to enter the earth at a certain point whenever such buildings are struck. Some of our oldest and most successful appliers of rods believe that at certain points there are natural electric currents, or at least readier conduction for them than at others. Yet these points can become known only by repeated disasters. Lightning-rod men who are adepts in their business now take care to overcome adverse currents by enlarging the lower part of the conductors and by carrying them to greater depth.

Soon after the powder-magazine of the Boston Navy Yard was completed the neighboring residents grew fearful, and petitioned the authorities that it should be better protected from lightning. It had already four excellent rods, one at each corner of the building; but to these peaceful and unwarlike citizens every thunderstorm was a great battle in which their homes were in danger of destruction and their own lives in jeopardy. The result of their action was, that a trench four feet deep was dug entirely around the magazine, and in its bottom was laid a continuous line of sheet copper four inches in width: to this the plate of each rod was soldered, and then the soil was replaced.[6] No one could doubt now that the stealthy upward stroke would be caught and the mysterious earth-currents overcome. It is supposed that thenceforth the tremors of the good citizens ceased. The massive magazine with its fiery contents yet stands, though terrible peals of thunder have shaken it and fearful bolts have fallen near.

George J. Varney.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Among other beliefs in regard to lightning is that of the upward stroke. It has even found expression in the American Journal of Science and Arts. On careful consideration of the cases offered in support, both printed and unprinted, I find that every one is susceptible of a reasonable explanation without this theory.

[6] It is not usual that the body of moisture can be reached so near the surface, but this magazine is situated on low ground.

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THE SEA'S SECRET.

Just as it is, it hath been, love, I know—
So long ago
That time and place have faded: I forget
What rivers ran, what hills closed round us; yet
Thus much my soul remembers: thou and I
Saw the sun's rise and set, felt life slip by.

And then it was that first the deep-voiced sea
Sang low to thee and me
Its ancient secrets by the lonely shore;
And we two watched the strange birds dip and soar
Between the fading sea-line, far and dim,
And the white dazzle of the sands' long rim.

All that thou saidst—all that we heard and told
In some lost language old—
Has perished like the speech; yet this remains:
From the vast desert of the ocean-plains
A great moon climbing, with a dull red glare
Like smouldering fire, far up the purple air.

And then—I cannot grasp it—yet I know
That something, long ago,
Held fast thy soul to mine with cords of pain
And marvellous joy, and love's sweet loss and gain.
All save that love the years have swept away—
A thousand years, a single yesterday!

But when my soul dreams, by the lonely sea,
Back to eternity,
I hear an echo, through its hollow moan,
From those lost lives drowned in the centuries gone:
I catch the haunting memory, and I know
The secret that you told me long ago.

G.A. Davis.

It is not usual that the body of moisture can be reached so near the surface, but this magazine is situated on low ground.

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DUNGENESS, GENERAL GREENE'S SEA-ISLAND PLANTATION.

Southernmost of those famed "Sea Islands" of Georgia, lying right in sight of Florida's northern shore, on the northern verge of the tropic border-land, Cumberland Island presents its beach-front to the ocean. It unites within itself all those attractions which have made Florida famous—all but river and lake: it has the balmiest climate in the South; the vegetation of its forests is semi-tropical; it has game in abundance. It has all these, and yet its territory is now a waste.

In November I visited it, and again in April, and later in August. To reach it one must go first to St. Mary's, the town farthest south on the Georgia coast, or to Fernandina, the northernmost city in Florida. In either case he will have to hire a boat and a boatman, and in either case he must carry with him his provisions.

St. Mary's in April is St. Mary's in August—a drowsy, quaint old town, warm in the daytime and cool at night; hot in the sunlight, but with cool sea-breezes. The streets of St. Mary's are her glory: they are one hundred feet wide, carpeted with a green sward smooth as a shaven lawn, lined with live-oaks and china trees. In April the latter are in full bloom, their lilac blossoms hanging in dense panicles, the green leaves flecking them just enough to afford contrast, and the sombre Spanish moss depending gracefully from every branch and limb. Great gaudy butterflies are continually hovering over them and fluttering uneasily from flower to flower, and gleaming humming-birds, our own Northern summer visitors (the Trochilus colubris), are flashing from tree to tree, now poised a moment in air, now sipping honey from the tiny cups.

From the lighthouse dome at Fernandina one can look over half the island, trace the white sand-beach miles to the south—follow it north till it curves inland where Amelia Sound, the mouth of the St. Mary's River, forms the harbor. Away north runs up Cumberland Beach, and among the trees and over a broad stretch of marsh gleam white the ruins of "Dungeness." West, again, one sees the gloomy pines of the main land, behind which the sun goes down, lighting gloriously the marsh and silver threads of the river.

Unlike the seasons of the North, there is here no perceptible line of demarcation between them. We cannot positively assert that spring has opened or summer or winter begun. As for autumn and harvest-time, the crops are being continually gathered in. So since the year came in I have seen various plants and shrubs in bloom that ought to open with spring. Up the Ocklawaha in January I saw the blackberry or dewberry in blossom; and ever since, along the St. John's in that month and February, on the banks of the St. Mary's in February and March, and even here, in Fernandina and St. Mary's, it is blossoming and bearing fruit. It is this week—the first week in April—that we obtained the first fruit for the table, buying it for ten cents a quart. It puzzles one to think of planting. When must he begin? Last Christmas one of our truck-farmers had a large crop of peas ready to harvest: a chance frost gobbled them up, however: now (April) peas and potatoes are in their prime.

By the middle of April the china trees have dropped their blossoms, and the streets beneath are strewn with withered flowers. The fragrance that filled the air has departed with the humming-birds and butterflies. The pomegranate still continues in bloom: its vividly-scarlet flowers have delighted us ever since the middle of March. The figs commenced leafing with the month: now they are green with broad leaves, and in the axil of each appears the rudiment of a fruit. They are grotesquely gnarled and twisted, taking most unthought-of shapes and positions. The mocking-birds have mated and begun the construction of their nests. Their music is delightful: nearly all the day long they sing, and sometimes in the night. It seems almost wicked—to mercenary man—to think that birds worth twenty-five dollars apiece are freely fluttering about unharmed. When the breeding season has opened, however, it will not close without some family of mocking-birds being made desolate, for the young Ethiopian hath an ear for music, and most eagerly seeketh the young bird in its downy nest, trusting to the unsuspecting Yankee for remuneration therefor.

The month went out in glorious style: every morning of its thirty days had opened with unclouded sky, and each night's sun went down with a blaze of glory that flooded the marshes with golden light and left painted on the sky clouds of royal purple and crimson. Two or three showers sprang upon us in the afternoon, ending after a stay of an hour or two, cooling the air and refreshing weary man most wonderfully. Plums and peaches are nearly grown and turning color. They afford another illustration of the dilatory motions of vegetation here. In January I left some plum trees in full bloom: returning a month later, I found the same trees still white with flowers. The peaches were pink with bloom in February and March, and even in April some blushing flowers appear.

This was Fernandina and St. Mary's in April: in August the latter town had changed but little. The streets were as green as in early spring: the flowers were fewer, but the air was heavy with the fragrance of crape-myrtle and orange. It was hot in the morning, but an early breeze from the ocean soon came in, blowing with refreshing coolness all day long. It was even pleasanter than in spring and winter, the air clearer and more bracing, and annoying insects had disappeared.

St. Mary's is intimately connected with Cumberland Island in history. In the war of 1812 the island was taken, and the slaves were offered their freedom by Admiral Cockburn; but such was their attachment to the place and their masters that but one availed himself of this opportunity to escape. At Point Peter, where the main land of Georgia terminates in the marshes of St. Mary's, a fight occurred, and there are yet the remains of an earthwork thrown up by the Americans to repulse the British fleet in its advance on St. Mary's.

The oldest inhabitant of St. Mary's, who is said to have scored a century, old "Daddy Paddy"—a negro who bears in his face the tattooing of his native Africa—participated in that fight. He lives in a little cabin on a street by the wharf, and devotes his time to fishing, at which he is very expert. Upon being questioned regarding the fight, he seemed rather hazy as to dates, but was positive as to the time he first saw America: "De wah ob de rebenue was jes' clar' peace when I land at Charleston from Afriky. Was young man den, jes' growd. No, sah, nebah saw Gin'l Wash'tun, but heah ob him, sah: he fout wid de British, sah, an' gain de vic'try at New Orleans, sah."

"That was General Jackson, uncle."

"No, sah! Gin'l Jackson mout ha' ben thar, but Gin'l Wash'tun, he hab a han' in it. Yes, sah, I'se de fust settlah, sah: was in St. Mary's afo' a street was laid out [in 1787], an' 'twas all bay-gall an' hammock."

The Indian name of Cumberland Island was Missoe ("beautiful land"), and this was changed when Oglethorpe visited the island, at the request of an Indian chief who had received some kindness from the duke of Cumberland. It is related in an old English record, of which I have seen a copy, that the duke was so well pleased at this evidence of good-will that he caused a hunting-lodge to be erected there, and named it Dungeness, after his country-seat, Castle Dungeness, on the cape of Dungeness in the county of Kent. From that time until the breaking out of the Revolution it was "owned successively by peers of the British realm."

The island is eighteen miles in length and from half a mile to three miles in breadth. The soil is sandy, adapted to the culture of cotton, corn, potatoes, etc.: pomegranates, olives, dates, figs, limes, lemons, oranges and melons yield abundant crops. The great frost of 1835, which extended over the entire peninsula of Florida, destroyed the fine groves of orange trees: at one time this fruit was shipped in schooner-loads, and from one tree three thousand oranges have been gathered. The forest trees are live-oak, cedar and a few pines. A most interesting fact in the history of the island is found in its chronicles, for here were obtained the timbers for the Constitution (Old Ironsides), that noble frigate so well known to every American. Some of the stumps of the indestructible live-oak from which the timber was cut for her ribs may yet be seen. Deer, raccoons, bear and 'possum are abundant in the thick forest. The climate is temperate and healthy: many of the former slaves live to a great age. The island has never been afflicted by fever: while the town of Brunswick, to the north, and Fernandina, just across the channel to the south, have been scourged by Yellow Jack, Cumberland has ever remained untouched. St. Mary's, across the marshes on the main land, also boasts this immunity.

The creeks of the marshes swarm with fish of every sort, and there are oyster-beds containing large and toothsome bivalves. With 'possums and 'coons, fish and oysters, is it strange that Cuffie clung to his old home long after his master had left it? is it a matter of wonder that there yet remains a remnant of the old slave population, houseless and poverty-stricken, clinging to the island that once gave them so delightful a home? At the close of the war, it is related, Mr. Stafford, proprietor of the central portion of the island, burned his negro houses to the ground, telling his people to go, as he had no more use for them nor they for him. Cumberland to-day is nearly depopulated, the fertile cotton-and corn-fields run to waste, and wild hogs and half-wild horses roam over the pasture and scrub that cover once-cultivated fields.

The history of this island commences with that of Georgia. We read that in 1742 the Spaniards invaded Georgia and landed on the island. With a fleet of thirty-six sail and with more than three thousand troops from Havana and St. Augustine, they entered the harbor of St. Simons, north of Cumberland, and erected a battery of twenty guns. General Oglethorpe, with eight hundred men, exclusive of Indians, was then on the island. He withdrew to his fort at Frederica, and anxiously awaited reinforcements from Carolina. By turning to account the desertion of a French soldier he precipitated the attack of the Spaniards, and on their march to Frederica they fell into an ambuscade. Great slaughter ensued, and they retreated precipitately. The place of conflict is to this day known as "Bloody Marsh." The Spaniards retreated south along the coast in their vessels, and on their way attacked Fort William, at the southern extremity of Cumberland Island, but were repulsed with loss. This fort, which was constructed, I think, by Oglethorpe, is placed on the extreme southern end of Cumberland in a map of the island made in 1802. Even then the fort was half submerged at high water, and at the present day its site is far out in the channel. The water of the river-mouth is constantly encroaching upon the land, and the ruins of a house once standing upon the southern point may be seen, it is said, beneath the water at low tide. Old Fort William has been seen within the memory of residents of St. Mary's, but likewise beneath the waves.

About 1770 that rare naturalist and botanist, William Bartram, landed here and traversed the island, being set across to Amelia Island (Fernandina) by a hunter whom he found living here. He was then at the commencement of his romantic journeyings among the Seminole Indians up the St. John's River, then running through a wilderness. Another fortification, Fort St. Andrew, situated on the north-west point of the island, may still be traced by the ruins of its walls. A well is known there into which, it is said, the English threw ten thousand pounds in silver upon the approach of the Spaniards. In this way, by vestiges of foundation-walls, are indicated the various settlements of the island—mansions and cabins that have passed away, leaving no other sign but these sad memorials of the past.

At the conclusion of peace, and immediately after the close of the Revolution, the southern portion of Cumberland Island came into the possession of General Nathaniel Greene. It is said by some to have been presented to him by the State of Georgia in connection with the beautiful estate of Mulberry Grove, where he removed with his family and took up his residence. His lamentably premature death prevented the consummation of his design to build here a retreat in which to spend the hot summer months. He had resided but a year upon his estate of Mulberry Grove, and had hardly commenced to beautify and adorn this chosen residence of his maturer years, when a sun-stroke cut him down in the prime of his life.

The general had selected the site of the mansion to be built at Dungeness, and had planned the grounds, laid out a garden—which subsequently became famous for its tropical products and roses—and had lined through the forests of live-oak those avenues which have since grown to such magnificent proportions. As has been related, he did not live to see the completion of his work, but died almost at its very inception. In 1786 the year of his death, the foundation-walls were laid of the mansion-home of Dungeness, but the building was not finished till 1803. Even after it had been occupied for years, and during the sixty years and more it was used as a residence by the descendants of General Greene, there remained a few unfinished rooms. A tradition in the family to the effect that some great misfortune would befall it if the building were finished prevented, it is said, its completion. In the early part of the present century it was the most elegant residence on the coast.

A mound of shells, the accumulation of centuries and the result of countless Indian feasts, rose high above the southern marsh of Cumberland. A forest of live-oaks surrounded it on three sides, and at its feet ran the broad creek which wound through the marsh for miles, seeking the Sound at a point opposite the Florida shore. Here, for ages of time, the Indians of the South had resorted to feast upon the oysters with which the creek was filled. The Creek Indians—the most honorable with whom the United States ever had dealings, from whom sprang the Seminoles, and who occupied the entire territory of Georgia and Carolina at the period of the white man's advent—were the last who aided in the erection of this monument to a race now passed away. The summit of this shell-mound was levelled for the site of the house, and a terraced area of an acre or more constructed with the shells. Upon this base, raised above the general level of the island, its foundations were laid. It was four stories in height above the basement, and from cellar-stone to eaves was forty-five feet. There were four chimneys and sixteen fireplaces, and twenty rooms above the first floor. The walls at the base were six feet in thickness, and above the ground four feet. They were composed of the material known as "tabby," a mixture of shells, lime and broken stone or gravel with water; which mass, being pressed in a mould of boards, becomes when dry as hard and durable as rock. The walls are now as solid as stone itself. The second story above the terrace contained the principal rooms: the room in the south-east corner was the drawing-room in the time of the Shaws and the Nightingales. The room immediately back of the drawing-room, in the north-east corner, was the dining-room: a wide hall ran through the centre, upon the opposite side of which were two rooms, used respectively as school- and sewing-room. Above these apartments, in the third story, were the chambers. That directly above the drawing-room is the most interesting of all, for it was occupied by General Harry Lee, who was confined there by sickness, and there died. The interior of the house corresponded with its exterior in beauty of finish and magnificence of decoration and appointments.

Enclosed by a high wall of masonry (the "tabby" just described) was a tract of twelve acres devoted to the cultivation of flowers and tropical fruits. This wall, now broken down in places and overgrown with ivy-and trumpet-vines, yet divides the garden from the larger fields once devoted to cotton and cane. The gardener's house was next the mansion, and joined to it by this high wall. The garden lay to the south, reaching the marsh in successive terraces. On and about the semicircular terrace immediately around the house were planted crape-myrtle, clove trees and sago-palms: some yet remain to indicate what an Eden-like retreat was this garden of spices and bloom half a century ago. The first broad terrace, which ran the entire length of the garden-wall east and west, was divided by an avenue of olives, which separated in front of the house, leaving a space in which were two noble magnolias. A broad walk ran from the house to the lower garden, which was divided from the other by a thick-set hedge of mock-orange: in this garden was another walk bordered by olives. This space was entirely devoted to flowers: on each side was a grove of orange trees, and in the lower garden were the fig, India-rubber and date-palm, the golden date of Africa. Of trees there were the camphor tree, coffee, Portuguese laurel, "tree of Paradise," crape-myrtle, guava, lime, orange, citron, pomegranate, sago-palm and many others whose home is in the tropics. The delicious climate of this island, several degrees warmer than that of the main land in the same latitude, enabled the proprietors of this insular Paradise to grow nearly all the fruits of the torrid zone.

A little tongue of land runs from the garden into the marsh, an elevation of the original shell-mound, covered with oaks hung with long gray moss. This was called "The Park," and here the inhabitants of this favored estate would resort for recreation in the afternoon and evening. Near this strip of land, beneath the shade of an immense live-oak, luxuriates a clump of West India bamboo, said to have originated from a single stalk brought here by General Lee. The feathery lances clash and rattle with all the wild abandon characteristic of them in their native isles. I have not seen a more perfect group outside the islands of the Caribbean Sea.

From the walls of the second story—if you wish to view the wide-extended prospect to the south you must clamber there—you can look across three thousand acres of salt marsh to Fernandina and St. Mary's, along the river and beach, across miles of ocean. Ivy climbs the corner wall of the ruins and covers garden-wall and trees. Ruin everywhere stares you in the face: on every side are deserted fields and gardens—fields that employed the labor of four hundred negroes; fields that were fertile and yielded large crops of the famous "Sea-Island cotton." Bales from this estate were never "sampled." The Sea-Island cotton that took the prize at the World's Fair in London was raised on this island.

East of the garden, stretching toward the ocean-beach, is the olive-grove. Seventy years ago the first olive trees were imported from Italy and the south of France. They grew and flourished, and years ago this grove yielded a profit to its owners. In 1755, Mr. Henry Laurens of South Carolina imported and planted olives, capers, limes, ginger, etc., and in 1785 the olive was successfully grown in South Carolina; but probably there is not at the present day a grove equal in extent to this. It was estimated that a large tree would average a gallon of oil per year: there were eight hundred planted and brought to a flourishing and profitable stage of growth. There are several hundred now, scattered through a waste of briers and scrub and overgrown with moss.

But the avenues? In the hottest day there are shade and coolness beneath the intertwined branches of the live-oaks that arch above them. The eye is refreshed in gazing down these vistas over the leaf-strewn floors of sand. The sunshine sifts through the arch above, flecking the roadway with a mosaic of leaves and boughs in light and shade. From the limbs hang graceful pennons of Spanish moss, festooned at the sides, waved by every wind, changing in every light. Grapevines with stems six inches in diameter climb into the huge oaks and swing from tree to tree, linking limb with limb: the tree-tops are purple with great fruit-clusters. To the whole scene the dwarf palmetto gives a semi-tropic aspect. There are no signs of life, save a lizard darting over the leaves, stopping midway to look at you with bright eyes. In the evening the squirrels come out in countless numbers, and their crashing leaps may be heard in all directions; bright cardinal-birds, Florida jays and gay nonpareils enliven the gloom; the jays chatter in the branches and mocking-birds carol from the topmost limbs. It is one of the joys of earth to walk through the Grand Avenue of Dungeness at sunset.

There were, when the estate was in prosperous condition, eleven miles of avenues, seven miles of beach, eight miles of walks and nine miles of open roads. Grand Avenue, running midway the length of the island, was cleared eighteen miles, to High Point. There are now but three miles cleared, but you can look straight down beneath the arch of live-oaks for more than a mile of its length. From the Sound to the beach, crossing Central Avenue, ran River Avenue for a distance of about a mile.

This live-oak forest, which covers several thousand acres, is densely filled with scrub palmetto, impenetrable almost, and so difficult to pierce that the deer with which the forest swarms choose the old paths and roadways in their walks from sleeping- to feeding-grounds. The hunters take advantage of this, and after starting their dogs in the scrub post themselves on the main avenues where the paths intersect, and shoot the deer as they jump out. The deer of the island are estimated by thousands, and a State law which prohibits the hunting of deer with dogs, except with the owner's permission, has aided in their increase. Halfway up the island are numerous ponds, to which ducks resort in the winter in vast numbers. Bear are plentiful in the deep woods, and their tracks, with those of the deer in greater abundance, are often found crossing the abandoned fields.

Three hundred feet in width, hard as stone, shell-strewn, between wind-hollowed sand-dunes and foaming surf, this beach of Cumberland stretches for twenty miles. The sands that border it are covered with a network of beautiful convolvulus, tufts of sea-oats with nodding plumes, and picturesque clumps of Spanish bayonet (Yucca gloriosa) with pyramids of snowy flowers. This and the prickly pear suggest the climate of the tropics. I find them on the sandhills bordering the ocean-beach, the wind-swept dunes between the "beach-hammock" and the hard sand of the wave-washed beach. They are called barren by many, these sandhills of the Atlantic coast, but I never find them so. To me they are always attractive, whether I am traversing the sand-slopes of Cape Cod or the similar ones of Florida. Even the grasses possess a character of their own—gracefully erect, tiny circles traced about them where the last wind has caused them to brush the sand. Here too are grasses rare and beautiful—the feathery fox-tail, the tall, loose-branched sea-oats, and many others with names unknown, which you may see ornamenting the famous palmetto hats.

So fascinating are these sand-dunes that one wanders among them for hours, following in the paths worn by the feet of cattle which roam these hills and the neighboring marsh in a half-wild state. Sometimes the banks will shelve abruptly, hollowed out by the wind, and one can look down into a hole ten or twenty feet deep, arched over by thorn-bushes, grapevines and a species of bay. These sand-caverns are of frequent occurrence. There are clumps of scrubby oak completely covered with scarlet honeysuckle and trumpet-flower. While seeking to investigate one of these I startled a hen-quail, which, after whirring rapidly out of sight, returned and manifested much anxiety by plaintive calls. This is a queer place for quail: in the neighborhood of old fields, where they can easily run out and glean a hasty meal from weeds and broken ground, is their chosen place for a nest.

Along the surface of the sea long lines of pelicans pursue a lumbering flight; graceful terns (sea-swallows) skim the waves; a great blue heron stalks across the hard sand, majestic, solitary and shy of man's approach; and dainty little beach-birds, piping plover in snowy white and drab, glide rapidly past the surf-line. A mile below Beach Avenue is a high sandhill shelving abruptly toward the beach, half-buried trees projecting from its western slope: it is now known as "Eagle Cliff," so called by the proprietor of Dungeness from the fact of my shooting an eagle there one day in November.

In the beach-hammock are the same wind-hollowed hills, rooted into permanence by twisted oaks and magnolias. Upon their limbs in April the Spanish moss and air-plants were just blossoming, the former into little star-like, hardly-discernible flowers, the latter throwing up a green stem with a pink terminal bud, which in August had burst into a spike of crimson flowers. Curious lichens cover the rough trunks of these oaks—some gray, some ashy-white, some pink, some scarlet like blotches of blood. The Mitchella, the little partridge-berry, is here in bloom, and has been since the year came in.

The marsh that borders the beach-hammock and spreads a sea of silvery green before the mansion is not barren of attractions. Inquisitive and faint-hearted fiddler-crabs are darting in and out of their holes in the mud: an alligator now and then shows a hint of a head above the water of the creek, along whose banks walk daintily and proudly egrets and herons robed in white, and from the reeds of which myriads of water-hens send up a deafening chatter.

Midway between the mansion and the beach, in the southern corner of the orchard of olive trees, which overhang and surround it, is the graveyard of the family. It is the last object to which in this narrative I call attention, but to the visitor it is the most interesting, the fullest of memories of the past. By a winding and secluded path from the deserted garden, along the banks of the solitary marsh, beneath great water-oaks hung with funereal moss, one reaches this little cemetery, a few roods of ground walled in from the adjoining copsewood—

A lonesome acre, thinly grown
With grass and wandering vines.

Three tombs and three headstones indicate at least six of the graves with which this little lot is filled. In one of these graves rest the bones of her who shared the fortunes of the gallant general, the "Washington of the South," when he rested after the last decisive battle and retired to his Georgia plantation. In another lies buried his daughter, and in another the gallant "Light-Horse Harry," who so ably assisted him at Eutaw Springs—the brave and eloquent Lee. Upon the first marble slab is engraven, "In memory of Catherine Miller (widow of the late Major-General Nathaniel Greene, Commander-in-Chief of the American Revolutionary Army in the Southern Department in 1783), who died Sept. 2d, 1814, aged 59 years. She possessed great talents and exalted virtues." Phineas Miller, Esq., a native of Connecticut and a graduate of Yale College, who had been engaged by General Greene as law-tutor to his son, managed the widow's estates after the general's death, and later married her. His grave is here, though unmarked by any stone.

And this name revives the memory of one of the greatest inventions of the eighteenth century. Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton-gin, was born in Westborough, Massachusetts, December 8, 1765. In 1792 he obtained a position as tutor to the children of a Georgia planter, but owing to the imperfect postal regulations his letter of acceptance was not received, and on arriving in Savannah he found his place occupied by another. Without means or friends, he was in great want, when his circumstances became known to Mrs. Greene (then residing at Mulberry Grove), who, being a lady of benevolent heart, invited him to make her house his home until he should find remunerative employment.

One day, while this lady was engaged in working a sort of embroidery called "tambour-work," she complained to young Whitney that the frame she was using was too rough and tore the delicate threads. Anxious to gratify his benefactress, Whitney quickly constructed a frame so superior in every respect that she thought it a great invention. It chanced shortly after that a party of gentlemen, many of them old friends and officers who had served under General Greene, met at her house, and were discussing the merits and profits of cotton, which had been lately introduced into the State. One of them remarked that unless some machine could be devised for removing the seed it would never be a profitable crop (the cleaning of one pound of cotton being then a day's work). Mrs. Greene, who heard the remark, replied that a young man, a Mr. Whitney, then in her house, could probably help them. She then sent for Whitney, introduced him, extolled his genius and commended him to their friendship. He set to work under great disadvantages, having to make his tools, and even his wires, which at that time could not be had in Savannah. By Mrs. Greene and Mr. Miller he was furnished with abundant means wherewith to complete his machine. It was first exhibited privately to a select company, but it could not long remain a secret, and its fame, which spread rapidly throughout the South, was the cause of great excitement. The shop containing the model was broken open and the machine was stolen: by this means the public became possessed of the secret, and before another could be made a number of machines were in successful operation.

A partnership was entered into between Miller and Whitney, and in 1793 a large area was planted with cotton in expectation that the new gin would enable them to market it at little expense. In 1795 their shops, which had been removed to New Haven, were destroyed by fire, thus reducing the firm to the verge of bankruptcy. The faith and energy of Mr. Miller are well shown in the following letter, written from Dungeness to Whitney in New Haven: "I think we ought to meet such events with equanimity. We are pursuing a valuable object by honorable means, and I believe our measures are such as are justified by virtue and morality. It has pleased Providence to postpone the attainment of this object. In the midst of all the reflections called up by our misfortunes, while feeling keenly sensitive to the loss, injury and wrong we have sustained, I feel an exultant joy that you possess a mind similar to my own, that you are not disheartened, that you will persevere and endeavor at all hazards to attain the main object. I will devote all my time, all my thoughts, all my exertions, all the fortune I possess and all the money I can borrow, to compass and complete the business we have undertaken; and if fortune should by any future disaster deprive us of our reward, we will at least have deserved it."

While thus embarrassed information came from England that the cotton cleaned by their gins was ruined. Whitney nearly gave way under the strain, and wrote to Mr. Miller at Dungeness: "Our extreme embarrassments are now so great that it seems impossible to struggle longer against them. It has required my utmost exertions to exist, without making any progress in our business. I have labored hard to stem the strong current of disappointment which threatens to carry us over the cataract, but have labored with a shattered oar, and in vain unless some speedy help come. Life is short at best, and six or seven of its best years are an immense sacrifice to him who makes it."

Returning South, he constructed a new model (it is said at Dungeness), with the object in view so to improve upon the old one as to remove the seed without injury to the staple. It was first tried in the presence of Mrs. Greene and Mr. Miller, but found lacking in an important particular. Mrs. Greene exclaimed, "Why, Mr. Whitney, you want a brush," and with a stroke of her handkerchief removed the lint. Comprehending her idea at once, he replied, "Mrs. Greene, you have completed the cotton-gin."

With the further fortunes of the brave inventor we have no more to do, as that part of his history intimately connected with Dungeness ends here. His subsequent trials, disappointments, triumphs, all the world knows. His friend and partner, who so nobly sustained him, lies buried here, so tradition says, having died in 1806 of lockjaw caused by running an orange-thorn through his hand while removing trees from Florida to Dungeness.

Near the tomb of Mrs. Miller is another: "Sacred to pure affection. This simple stone covers the remains of James Shaw. His virtues are not to be learned from perishable marble; but when the records of Heaven shall be unfolded it is believed they will be found written there in characters as durable as the volumes of eternity. Died January 6th, 1820, aged 35 years." And by the side of this latter another marble slab, with this inscription, which explains itself: "Louisa C. Shaw, relict of James Shaw, Esq., and youngest daughter of Major-General Nathaniel Greene of the Army of the Revolution. Died at Dungeness, Georgia, April 24th, 1831, aged 45 years."

This ends the record of the residence of the family of General Greene at Dungeness. That they made it their home for many years is evident—that they removed here soon after the death of the general is probable. In the division of General Greene's possessions Dungeness became the property of Mrs. Shaw, his youngest daughter: she, dying childless, left it to her nephew, Phineas Miller Nightingale. Mrs. Nightingale, wife of the grandson of General Greene, to whom this property was given, was daughter of Rufus King, governor of New York, and granddaughter of Rufus King, minister to Great Britain during the elder Adams's administration. The Nightingales, descendants of General Greene, remained in undisturbed possession until the late war, dispensing unbounded hospitality at their princely mansion. During the war the house was occupied by Northern troops until its close, when, through the negligence of some negro refugees, it was burned. Its ruins alone testify to the wealth of former years which now is departed, and the broad acreage of untilled fields and the ruined negro cabins cry out loudly for those who will never return to bless them.

Let us turn once more to that cemetery in the olive-grove. Another stone claims our attention, a tablet to the memory of him who pronounced those glowing words, "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen:" "Sacred to the memory of Gen. Henry Lee of Virginia. Obiit 25 March, 1818, ætat. 63." In 1814, General Lee was injured by a mob in Baltimore, and never recovered. Early in 1818 he arrived at Dungeness from Cuba, whither he had gone to regain his health. He landed from a schooner at the river landing, a weak, decrepit old man, in whom it would have been difficult to recognize the dashing Light-Horse Harry of the Revolution. A grandson of General Greene's, Phineas Miller Nightingale, was loitering near the landing. Calling him, General Lee learned who he was, and despatched him to his aunt, Mrs. Shaw, with the intelligence of his arrival. "Tell her," said he, "that the old friend and companion of General Greene has come to die in the arms of his daughter."

A carriage was sent for him, and he was installed in the southern chamber above the drawing-room, and everything done to alleviate his pain that the kindest forethought could suggest. He lingered here some two months, and then passed away, and was buried in the family burying-ground. His only baggage at the time of his arrival was an old hair-covered trunk nailed round with brass-headed nails.

An anecdote is preserved in the family relating to the general's residence there. One of the servants, Sara by name—commonly called "the Duchess" from her stately demeanor—incurred his ill-will. General Lee once threatened to throw his boot at her, and the Duchess turned upon him and replied, "If you do I'll throw it back at you." This answer so pleased the old general that he would afterward permit no other servant to wait upon him.

Some years after his death a stone was placed above his grave by his son, General Robert E. Lee, who a few months prior to his death visited his father's grave in company with his daughter.

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These are some of the associations that cluster about the ruins of Dungeness, giving to those ivy-grown walls, to forest and shore, an interest which mere attractions of scenery and climate could not awaken.

Frederick A. Ober.

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OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

"WESTERN MEMORABILIA."

One of the pioneers of the old-book trade in New York was William J. Gowans, whose career as a dealer in old and rare books covered a period of nearly fifty years, and brought him into a contact more or less intimate with all the literary and many of the other notables of his day. Gowans had some literary aspirations, and in his old age projected a book which he proposed to call Western Memorabilia, and which was to consist of sketches and reminiscences of the famous men he had met in his career. This book was never published—somewhat to the loss of American literature, I am inclined to think after perusing some of its scattered fragments which have recently come into my possession. These are full of detail, and, as throwing light on the characters of some persons of whom far too little is known, are certainly worthy of preservation.

On Poe I find the following notes: "The characters drawn of Poe by his various biographers and critics may with safety be pronounced an excess of exaggeration, but this is not to be much wondered at when it is considered that these men were his rivals, either as poets or prose-writers, and it is well known that such are generally as jealous of each other as are the ladies who are handsome of those who desire to be considered so. It is an old truism, and as true as it is old, that in the multitude of counsellors there is safety. I therefore will show you my opinion of this gifted but unfortunate genius: it may be estimated as worth little, but it has this merit: it comes from an eye-and ear-witness, and this, it must be remembered, is the very highest of legal evidence. For eight months or more, 'one house contained us, us one table fed.' During that time I saw much of him, and had an opportunity of conversing with him often; and I must say I never saw him the least affected with liquor, nor ever descend to any known vice, while he was one of the most courteous, gentlemanly and intelligent companions I have ever met. Besides, he had an extra inducement to be a good man, for he had a wife of matchless beauty and loveliness: her eye could match that of any houri, and her face defy the genius of a Canova to imitate; her temper and disposition were of surpassing sweetness; in addition, she seemed as much devoted to him and his every interest as a young mother is to her first-born. During this time he wrote his longest prose romance, entitled the Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym. Poe had a remarkably pleasing and prepossessing countenance—what the ladies would call decidedly handsome. He died after a brief and fitful career at Baltimore, October, 1849, where his remains lie interred in an obscure burying-ground."

Of Simms he writes, under date of Oct. 15, 1868: "To-day I had the pleasure of a call from William Gilmore Simms, the novelist. He is quite affable in conversation, and apparently well stocked with general information, which he can impart with fluency. He appears somewhat downcast, or rather, I should say, has a melancholy cast of countenance: he is advanced in years, with a profusion of hair around his face, chin and throat—is apparently between sixty and seventy years of age. I requested him to enroll his name in my autograph-book, which he did with readiness. He remarked that he was often requested to do so, especially by the ladies. I replied that this was a debt which every man incurred when he became public property either by his words, actions or writings. He acquiesced in the justice of the remark. Mr. Simms was in search of a copy of Johnson's History of the Seminoles, to aid him in making a new book. He was accompanied by Mr. Duykinck."

Halleck is thus introduced: "On a certain occasion I was passing a Roman Catholic church in New York: seeing the doors open and throngs of people pressing in, I stepped inside to see what I could see. I had not well got inside when I beheld Fitzgreene Halleck standing uncovered, with reverential attitude, among the crowd of unshorn and unwashed worshippers. I remained till I saw him leave. In doing so he made a courteous bow, as is the polite custom of the humblest of these people on taking their departure.

On the subject of compliments paid him for poetical talents, Mr. Halleck once said to me, 'They are generally made by those who are ignorant or who have a desire to please or flatter, or perhaps a combination of all. As a general thing, they are devoid of sincerity, and rather offensive than pleasing. There is no general rule without its exception, however, and in my bagful of compliments I cherish one which comes under that rule, and reflecting upon it affords me real pleasure as it did then. On a warm day in summer a young man came into the office with a countenance glowing with ardor, innocence and honesty, and his eyes beaming with enthusiasm. Said he, "Is Mr. Halleck to be found here?" I answered in the affirmative. Continued he, with evidently increased emotion, "Could I see him?"—"You see him now," I replied. He grasped me by the hand with a hearty vigorousness that added to my conviction of his sincerity. Said he, "I am happy, most happy, in having had the pleasure at last of seeing one whose poems have afforded me no ordinary gratification and delight. I have longed to see you, and I have dreamt that I have seen you, but now I behold you with mine own eyes. God bless you for ever and ever! I have come eleven hundred miles, from the banks of the Miami in Ohio, mainly for that purpose, and I have been compensated for my pains."'

"Mr. Halleck told me that he had been solicited to write a life of his early and beloved friend Drake. 'But,' said he, 'I did not well see how I could grant such a request: I had no lever for my fulcrum. What could I say about one who had studied pharmacy, dissection, written a few poems, and then left the scene of action? I had no material, and a mere meaningless eulogy would have been out of the question.'

"In personal appearance Halleck was rather below the medium height and well built: in walking he had a rather slow and shuffling gait, as if something afflicted his feet; a florid, bland and pleasant countenance; a bright gray eye; was remarkably pleasant and courteous in conversation, and, as a natural consequence, much beloved by all who had the pleasure of his acquaintance. But to that brilliancy in conversation which some of his admirers have been pleased to attribute to him in my opinion he could lay no claim. His library was sold at auction in New York on the evening of October 12, 1868. If the collection disposed of on that occasion was really his library in full, it must be confessed it was a sorry affair and meagre in the extreme. In surveying the collection a judge of the value of such property would perhaps pronounce it worth from one hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and fifty dollars. The books brought fabulous prices—at least ten times their value. The company was large, good-humored and just in the frame of mind to be a little more than liberal, doubtless stimulated to be so from a desire to possess a relic of the departed poet who had added fame to the literature of his country. The following are the names of a few of the books and the prices they brought: Nicholas Nickleby, with the author's autograph, $18; Bryant's little volume of poems entitled Thirty Poems, with the author's autograph, $11; Campbell's Poems, with Halleck's autograph, $8.50; Catalogue of the Strawberry Hill Collection, $16; Barnaby Rudge, presentation copy by the author to Halleck, $15; Coleridge's Poems, with a few notes by Halleck, $10; Fanny, a poem by Mr. Halleck, $10. The sum-total realized for his library was twelve hundred and fifty dollars."

Aaron Burr is the subject of some interesting reminiscences: "Shortly after I came to New York, Aaron Burr was pointed out to me as he was slowly wending his way up Broadway, between Chambers street and the old theatre, on the City Hall side. I frequently afterward met him in this and other streets. He was always an object of interest, inasmuch as he had become an historical character, somewhat notoriously so. I will attempt to describe his appearance, or rather how he appeared to me: He was small, thin and attenuated in form, perhaps a little over five feet in height, weight not much over a hundred pounds. He walked with a slow, measured and feeble step, stooping considerably, occasionally with both hands behind his back. He had a keen face and deep-set, dark eye, his hat set deep on his head, the back part sunk down to the collar of the coat and the back brim somewhat turned upward. He was dressed in threadbare black cloth, having the appearance of what is known as shabby genteel. His countenance wore a melancholy aspect, and his whole appearance betokened one dejected, forsaken, forgotten or cast aside, and conscious of his position. He was invariably alone when I saw him, except on a single occasion: that was on the sidewalk in Broadway fronting what is now the Astor House, where he was standing talking very familiarly with a young woman whom he held by one hand. His countenance on that occasion was cheerful, lighted up and bland—altogether different from what it appeared to me when I saw him alone and in conversation with himself. Burr must have been a very exact man in his business-affairs. His receipt-book came into my possession. I found there receipts for a load of wood, a carpenter's work for one day, a pair of boots, milk for a certain number of weeks, suit of clothes, besides numerous other small transactions that but few would think of taking a receipt for. The book was but a sorry, cheap affair, and could not have cost when new more than fifty cents."

Edwin Forrest is thus mentioned: "At the time when Forrest was earning his reputation on the boards of the Bowery Theatre I was connected with that institution, and of course had an opportunity of seeing him every night he performed. Mr. Forrest appeared to be possessed of the perfection of physical form, more especially conspicuous when arrayed in some peculiar costumes which tended to display it to the best advantage. He had a stentorian voice, and must have had lungs not less invulnerable than one of Homer's heroes. He had a fine masculine face and prepossessing countenance, much resembling many of the notable Greeks and Romans whose portraits have come down to our time, and a keen intellectual eye. His countenance at times assumed an air of hauteur which doubtless had become a habit, either from personating characters of this stamp or from a consciousness of his merited popularity. He left the impression on the beholder of one intoxicated with success and the repletion of human applause. He kept aloof from all around him, and condescended to no social intercourse with any one on the stage, and appeared to entertain a contempt for his audience.... He has now lost that mercurial, youthful appearance which was then so conspicuous, and which doubtless aided in laying the foundation of his widespread reputation. He was then straight as an arrow and elastic as a circus-rider, the very beau-ideal of physical perfection: now he bears the marks of decay, or rather, as is said of grain just before harvest, he has a ripe appearance. If he would consult his renown he would retire from the stage, and never set foot upon it again."

The fragments also contain notes on Bryant, Parton, Mrs. Siddons and several eminent divines and journalists. Of the latter class the fullest relate to James Gordon Bennett, founder of the Herald, and his coadjutor, William H. Attree. The following are extracts: "I remember entering the subterranean office of Mr. Bennett early in the career of the Herald and purchasing a single copy of the paper, for which I paid the sum of one cent only. On this occasion the proprietor, editor and vender was seated at his desk busily engaged in writing, and appeared to pay little or no attention to me as I entered. On making known my object in coming in, he requested me to put my money down on the counter and help myself to a paper: all this time he continued his writing operations. The office was a single oblong, underground room. Its furniture consisted of a counter, which also served as a desk, constructed from two flour-barrels, perhaps empty, standing apart from each other about four feet, with a single plank covering both; a chair, placed in the centre, upon which sat the editor busy at his vocation, with an inkstand by his right hand; on the end nearest the door were placed the papers for sale. I attribute the success of the Herald to a combination of circumstances—to the peculiar fitness of its editor for his position, to its cheapness, and its advertising patronage, which was considerable. In the fourth place, it early secured the assistance of William H. Attree, a man of uncommon abilities as a reporter and a concocter of pithy as well as ludicrous chapters greatly calculated to captivate many readers. In fact, this clever and talented assistant in some respects never had his match. He did not, as other reporters do, take down in short-hand what the speaker or reader said, but sat and heard the passing discourse like any other casual spectator: when over he would go home to his room, write out in full all that had been said on the occasion, and that entirely from memory. On a certain occasion I hinted to him my incredulity about his ability to report as he had frequently informed me. To put the matter beyond doubt, he requested me to accompany him to Clinton Hall to hear some literary magnate let off his intellectual steam. I accordingly accompanied him as per arrangement. We were seated together in the same pew. He placed his hands in his pockets and continued in that position during the delivery of the discourse, and when it was finished he remarked to me that I would not only find the substance of this harangue in the Herald the next day, but that I would find it word for word. On the following morning I procured the paper, and read the report of what I had heard the previous evening; and I must say I was struck with astonishment at its perfect accuracy. Before Mr. Attree's time reporting for the press in New York was a mere outline or sketch of what had been said or done, but he infused life and soul into this department of journalism. His reports were full, accurate, graphic; and, what is more, he frequently flattered the vanity of the speaker by making a much better speech for him than he possibly could for himself. Poor Attree died in 1849, and is entombed at Greenwood."

It is probable that other fragments of this work are in existence, and if so it is hoped that the publication of these will tend to their discovery.

C.B.T.

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CONCERNING NIGHT-NOISES.

Many a time these summer nights am I startled out of my midnight sleep by a conversation like the following as two friends pause on the corner beneath my suburban window:

"Well, good-night."

"Good-night."

"Hold on a moment. I want to—"

"Oh yes. Rely on me. Do you think he will—"

"He promised."

"Oh, then he'll do it. Well, then, good—"

"Good-night, good-night."

"Wait an instant. But how shall I—"

" ... Now you understand?"

"Oh yes. Good-night."

"Good-night."

"Good-night."

After these exclamations, uttered with piercing distinctness, have been exchanged, the belated revellers from some club or whist-party or an evening at the theatre in town terminate their sweet sorrow at parting by going their several ways to their different homes, where, no doubt, on retiring to rest they sink at once into blameless slumber, ignorant of the fact that for me they have murdered sleep.

I had gone to bed betimes, wornout with hard mental labor: I had hoped for a night's repose to recruit my energies for the morrow. This sleep I craved was no luxurious indulgence of pampered inclination, but my stock in trade—my bone, my sinew, my heart's courage, my mental inspiration, the immediate jewel of my soul.

Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing:
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my NIGHT'S SLEEP
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.

But let me now repose again: tenderly entreated, softly courted, sleep may return. There are many specifics for bringing slumber to mutinous eyelids. Let me remember what they are.

First. To think of the wind blowing on a field of grain. Watch with your mind's eye the long wavy undulations, the golden sheen which takes the light. What a dreamy, exquisite rhythm! (Still, I don't sleep.)

Second. Repeat the multiplication-table backward, from twelve times down to twice. (Hopeless, the only result being to render my mathematical powers acutely, preternaturally awake, so that I begin to estimate the magnitude of my summer expenses.)

Third. Try to decide where to spend the August vacation. I am thinking of Lake George, the Saguenay, Sea Girt, the White Mountains, when all at once I begin to yield drowsily to the influence of long conversations about nothing which take possession of my mind—mere gibberish, strings of words without sense. Thank Heaven, I am off! I am actually going to sleep. Not yet!

Down the street comes a man with an accordion. He is playing "Annie Laurie." Every now and then he strikes a wrong note. Excruciating agony! Did he render it correctly it might blend with a romantic dream, but when he insists on flatting persistently, as for bonnie Annie Laurie he offers to lay him down and die, who is to bear it? And why does he not consummate the proffered sacrifice by dying at once? I would cheerfully bury him. He passes slowly, lingeringly, seeming to pause outside of my window, as if my casement enshrined that form like the snowdrift and that throat like the swan's. But, although he vanishes finally, the street has become alive. Two men pass in deeply-interesting conversation, one of them assuring the other that he has not done "a stroke's work" in two years. He is maudlin, of course. "A stroke's work"? And as if any man could expect to find work and to do it after keeping such hours as these!

And now comes "the whistler." I had been expecting him. He is to-night whistling airs from Pinafore. The Pirates, thank Heaven! furnishes him no airs. He whistles—let me confess, reluctant although I am to do it—he whistles to perfection. There is nothing experimental, nothing tentative, in his notes, which come clear, sharp, in perfect time and tune.

The clock strikes two. It is the voice of doom, for presently the 2.19 freight-train will thunder slowly through our end of the town. It renders my case utterly hopeless. One might as well expect to sleep in momentary expectation of the Juggernaut. I know its every sound: I can feel the bridge at—— Junction, five miles away, tremble under it. I listen and wait, every nerve on edge. A mile and a half the other side of our station the engine will first snort, then begin a series of shrieks—shrieks suggestive of warning, imminent danger, supreme peril, the climax of a tragical catastrophe. For at least five minutes shall I be compelled to listen while the engineer—if it be a real living engine-man who impels this chorus of fiends—runs the full scale of his shrill tooting, perhaps deeming it essential to the safety of the town, which ought to be asleep, or to the dignity of his long, creeping train of coal- and freight-laden cars.

Even the Juggernaut passes: it is gone. I emerge, faint and wornout from the trial. Now that it is toward three o'clock, everybody except the policeman in bed, and no more trains to come until after five, one might suppose there was some chance for an interval of peace, of repose. I get up and walk about a little in order to feel, with the opportunity, the inclination for slumber. Yes, it will come....

Scarcely have I ventured to close my eyes again before there begins a chirp, a twitter, a general thrill of sound. All the birds are awake, and are soon in full chorus. Presently a flush of color will run around the horizon, and it will be dawn. The actual night has flown. I can hear Smith, our grocery-man around the corner, setting off into the country for his milk and eggs. Several marketcarts are abroad.... There goes an extra train, shrieking direly along the curve.

It is actually growing light. With the first gleam of day my excellent aunt—who embodies all my future expectations of wealth—sleeping in the next chamber, turns in her bed, yawns loudly and unreservedly, gets up and takes an observation, opening and closing her shutters with a bang. By breakfast-time my revered relation becomes a respectable and no longer a riotous member of society, but during the early morning hours her inventions for disturbing her neighbors are ingenious and diabolical.

By five o'clock the morning-trains begin, followed at half-past six by fifty factory-whistles. The children are awake and stirring. The housemaid is banging her utensils on piazza and in hallway: the cook is flirting with the milk-and butter-man at the back gate, and exclaiming "Oh Laws!" to some news or pleasantry of his. The licensed venders are abroad. There are all sorts of cries. It is less than an hour to breakfast. The night is lost: one foolish, intolerable noise has spoiled all.

L.W.

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TABARIN, THE FRENCH MERRY-ANDREW.

The French word tabarin is almost obsolete, and its English synonym, merry-andrew, is not much in vogue, but as they are andronymics, to coin a word, embalming the memories of two famous charlatans, they possess an abiding interest apart from all question of their use or disuse.

Andrew Borde and Tabarin were both charlatans and both famous, but here all resemblance between them ceases. The former was a witty and eccentric quack, who travelled about from place to place and country to country selling drugs and practising medicine in fairs and marketplaces, where his glib tongue readily gathered crowds and earned him the nickname which has since passed current in English as a generic term for buffoons of all sorts and conditions. The tenth volume of the Extra Series of the Early English Text Society is wholly devoted to Borde, and well repays perusal, although probably few who read it will agree with Mr. Furnivall, the editor, that "any one who would make him more of a merry-andrew than anything else is a bigger fool than he would make Borde."

Tabarin, however, was a veritable and inimitable clown, and his name has figured in French literature both as a proper and a common noun almost from the day that he and his partner, Mondor, set up their booth on the Pont Neuf. They began their sale of ointments and liniments in Paris about the year 1618, attracting custom by their absurd dialogues in the vein of the circus-clown and ring-master of to-day. Occasionally they left the city to try their luck in the provinces, but during most of their career they were to be found on the bridge near the entrance to the Place Dauphine. Tabarin retired from the business about 1630, but his partner continued at the old stand with a new clown, who must have been either less witty or more obscene than Tabarin, for in 1634 Mondor was abated as a nuisance by the authorities.

Tabarin was blessed with a wife and daughter: his wife's name was Francisquine; his daughter married the celebrated buffoon Gaultier Garguille. The story goes that when he left Mondor he bought a small country-place near Paris, where he passed his latter days comfortably on his earnings. There are two traditions current as to the manner of his death: according to one, he was killed by some noblemen in a hunting quarrel; according to the other, he died from the effects of heavy drinking for a wager. He is said to have styled himself Tabarin because he usually appeared in a little tabard, called in Italian tabarrino, but his true name and his nationality are alike unknown.

Tabarin's pleasantries, as jotted down by members of his audiences, have been given to the world at divers times in various forms, and have latterly been collected and published in a body with those of his less successful rival Grattelard; but very few of them are suited to nineteenth-century taste, and most of them are gross to the last degree. Some of the presentable ones are here given, and may serve as specimens of his manner, though they will scarcely account for his reputation:

Tab. Who are the politest people in the world, master?

Mon. I've travelled in Spain, Italy and Germany, and I assure you that the French nation is by all odds the most courteous. They are the only people in the world that kiss and compliment, and above all take off hats.

Tab. Take off hats! If that's courtesy I don't want any of it.

Mon. Taking off hats, Tabarin, is an ancient custom originating among the Romans. It is done in token of good-will.

Tab. So you say taking off hats is the pink of politeness? Now, if that's so, do you want to know who I think are the politest people?

Mon. Yes: who?

Tab. Why, our Paris street-thieves, for they don't stop at taking off hats, but take cloaks off too.

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Tab. Master, why don't they let women take orders?

Mon. Because the sex is frail, Tabarin, and not worthy to conduct the services of the Church, which are sacred mysteries.

Tab. Humbug! It's because they always will have the last word, so it wouldn't do to let them give the responses. Why, the services would never end.

By similar logic Tabarin demonstrates, among others, the following propositions:

An ass is a better linguist than his master, because he understands when he is spoken to, while his lingo is all lost upon the man.

A fiddler has the hardest lot of all mankind, because his life depends upon a bit of wood and a piece of cord, for all the world like a malefactor's.

Cut-purses are the most liberal of all men, for they not only empty their own purses, but those of other people.

If you put a miller, a tailor, a bailiff and an attorney in a bag, the first thing to come out will be a thief.

The most wonderful gardener and the most wonderful tree in the world are respectively Jack Ketch and the gallows tree, because when the hangman plants that unpleasant vegetable it bears fruit the same day.

If you see six birds on a tree, and shoot three, there will be none left, for of course the remaining three will fly away. This last jest is so trite to-day as to be absolutely threadbare.

Tabarin's wits were not exhausted by this kind of buffoonery. He issued comic proclamations and almanacs, and even produced short farces in which his wife performed with him. From one of these farces Molière is supposed to have borrowed the ideas for his sack-scene in the Fourberies de Scapin.

La Fontaine stole one of Grattelard's dialogues bodily, and converted it into the celebrated fable of The Acorn and the Pumpkin. Grattelard was contemporary with Tabarin, as remarked above: he and his partner, Désidério Descombes, sold quack medicines at the north end of the Pont Neuf. The dialogue in question follows, at least so much of it as is in point, and will serve as tailpiece to the specimens of Tabarin's wit:

Grat. I had a great discussion this morning with a philosopher, trying to prove to him that Nature often makes great mistakes.

D.D. No, no, Grattelard: everything that Nature does is done for the best.

Grat. Just wait now: let me tell you how I had to give in.

D.D. Well, how was it?

Grat. We were walking in the garden, and pretty soon we came across a tremendous pumpkin, as big as a Swiss drum. "There!" said I: "Nature has no better sense than to hang a great thing like that on such a slender vine that the least breeze can break it off."

D.D. Then you blamed Nature in the matter of the pumpkin?

Grat. Yes, for of course there ought to be some proportion inter sustinens et sustentum; but, by Heavens, I soon changed my mind, for just as I was passing under a great oak tree down fell an acorn and struck me on the nose. Of course I had to admit that Nature was right, after all, for if she had put a pumpkin up there I should have been in a pretty pickle.

D.D. Yes indeed, Grattelard: you would have cut a fine figure drinking out of a bottle with your nose in a sling.

Grat. By the Georgics of Virgil, 'twould be all up with spectacles for my old age.

Tabarin was the first of the series of clowns that enlivened the streets of Paris for two hundred years, or, at any rate, the first to attain celebrity: Bobèche in our own century was the last. He made a great noise in his day, but nothing keeps his memory green except the Bobèche of Offenbach's Barbe-Bleue. Tabarin, however, has a new lease of life in two of the handy little-volumes of the Bibliothèque Elzévirienne.

S.E.T.

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A LEGION OF DEVILS.

"Everybody knows," said Beppo, my Roman model, "that the English are mad, signor. For has not the padre told me so? and does he not say that the fires of Purgatory burn within them? Else why do they roll about in a tub of water every morning, if not to cool their vitals? It is an insult to an Italian to wash him: we only wash dead bodies;" and Beppo draws his huge frame up to its full height, while his black eyes flash, and I mentally acknowledge him and his begrimed rags picturesque if filthy.

"Si, si, they are all mad," he continues, "and they keep horses and dogs as mad as themselves; and they ride out, dressed in the very color of the flames of Purgatory, to run screaming and shouting after poor foxes over the Campagna, notwithstanding the Holy Father has rigorously prohibited that sort of insanity, and has placed his gendarmerie purposely to stop it. But who can stop il diavolo e gli suoi angeli? Why, signor, if they want foxes, I myself, Beppo Donati, would catch them any number for a paul or two. But they are all mad, all mad. And the dogs, it is well known how they became possessed; for," lowering his voice and coming nearer me, "I myself saw the arch-fiend himself and his legions enter them bodily. I will tell the signor how it was.

"The signor has been in the Catacombs of the blessed martyrs, but cannot know as much about them as myself, who was custodian for many a year in the dangerous and least frequented ones; and it was there that I received the hurt that caused me to turn model. Many are the hours I have passed in the remote ones lying miles away from the Eternal City, where the only available entrance was a tortuous, chimney-like hole almost filled with rubbish, and so insignificant in appearance that it had remained concealed by a few bushes from the time it was last used by the blessed martyrs themselves till to-day.

"To descend this aperture, signor, one struggles along with much difficulty: lying on one's chest, and with a lighted taper in one hand, the other holding a rope that has been made fast to a tree outside, one slides down by degrees feet foremost. The passages are usually narrowed and choked by the rubbish, and descend nearly perpendicularly to where, lower down, they open wider and your feet touch steps cut roughly in the rock; but you must not trust them, for the soft stone will crumble with your weight. After descending some sixty or seventy feet you suddenly bump against an old stone doorway, and you are at the bottom. But on passing the doorway your position is even worse, as the stagnant pools of muddy water reach up to your knees, and the passages are too low to admit of your standing upright, while you stretch your taper into a thick darkness that closes over everything a few yards distant and prevents your seeing anything but the horizontal niches in tiers, one above the other, where the mortal remains of the beatific lie surrounded by the symbols of the faith they died for. Here they keep their vigil century after century over our Holy City, while they await their glorious resurrection.

"I have been miles under the Campagna in these subterranean cemeteries. No one has yet ascertained their entire extent. They branch out in every direction, and the ramifications are so countless—not only on a level, but in stories underlying one another—and so many of them have fallen in or been filled with water, that no successful attempt has ever been made to follow them to their extremities. Nor can it be found out whether they communicate with one another or remain as they were originally, distinct from each other.

"You have heard, signor, that the early Christians celebrated the feasts of the Church by visiting the then newly-decorated and consecrated subterranean cemeteries, and that on one of these occasions, when a large crowd of persons had entered to celebrate a festival, it occurred to the ruling authorities that the opportunity might be advantageously used to lessen by so many the troublesome and ever-increasing population of the new faith. Accordingly, a number of huge stones were brought and the entrance built up and rigidly guarded till all the unfortunate prisoners had died a martyr's death.

"After that, to guard against a repetition of such an act, various apertures of exit were made, and may now be frequently found on the Campagna, where, when one's foot sinks into a doubtful-looking hole filled with rubbish, one knows it penetrates to the depths beneath. Secret passages were also made to debouch in the private houses of well-known Christians or buildings set apart for Christian worship; and it was from one of these walled-up doorways that I, Beppo Donati, myself saw un miracolo performed and a legion of devils let loose.

"It was in the church of St. Prassede. St. Prassede, the signor knows, was one of the daughters of the senator Pudens mentioned by St. Paul as sending his greetings to Timothy. The present church stands on the site of the very house once inhabited by this Christian family, and in the dark crypt under the high altar there is a walled-up doorway with the sign of the cross upon it. The crypt was originally the cellar of the ancient house, into which debouched one of the secret entrances to the Catacombs: at one extremity of the crypt is the doorway in question, now strongly built up, with the cross impressed in its superficial stucco.

"For many centuries the subterranean excavations behind the crypt have been haunted by the Evil One and his coadjutors, who break forth from time to time in unearthly noises, racings, scamperings, moanings and yellings, and scarcely a man, woman or child in the vicinity but has heard them with their own veritable ears. Many special services of exorcism have been performed in the church above to meet the occasions as they might arise, but with no permanent effect. And, signor, notwithstanding the cloud of witnesses that can testify to these supernatural sounds, the city contains sceptics, and none more determined than the learned Father Xavier of the Holy Propaganda.

"The day of the miracle that I am about to tell you of was a dark, wet Thursday in November, when my wife Teresina and myself attended high mass at St. Prassede, in honor of Teresina's festa. At the conclusion of the mass strange sounds were heard behind the walls of the crypt, and more especially at the back of the walled-up door. Gasps, yellings, scamperings, and then a cessation, and again a repetition of the same unearthly sounds with increased vehemence. Sometimes they would seem to recede till they died away in the distance, and then come rushing as if a whole legion of the enemy were close at hand. From the body of the church the crypt is approached by an open passage down a wide flight of steps immediately in front of the high altar, and the walled door, as well as the whole of the crypt, can be distinctly seen from the top of the steps. When the mysterious noises were first heard most of the congregation had retreated precipitately to the doors, but some of the more pious or venturesome—among whom were Teresina and myself—had remained, and were leaning over the balusters while the padre descended with his attendants to perform the special service appointed for the occasion. The exorcism took effect, for the noises, from being very uproarious, suddenly ceased altogether, and the arch-fiend seemed pacified, if not utterly routed, until at the close of the service, a bell was rung as appointed in the office. The sound of this bell had the effect of increasing the demoniac uproar to such a degree that the padre officiating was fain to hurry through the rest of the service as best he could and beat a precipitate retreat, with the acolytes, bells and all, to the sacristy.

"Teresina and myself had fled to the door of the church, where we stationed ourselves in a convenient place for a start when the occasion might require it. We had not been there long when we saw Father Xavier—the sceptic I told the signor about—enter the church with two assistants armed with crowbars and pickaxes, and proceed immediately to the crypt, where no doubt could exist as to the noises at that moment, as the yellings, scamperings and scramblings were loud enough in all conscience. The sacristan came out from the body of the church and suggested another exorcism to the reverend father, who answered that he preferred the pickaxe, and, turning to beckon to his workmen, found they had fled. Nowise daunted, the reverend gentleman took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves and went to work with a will, making the vault re-echo with his blows. This operation, while it had the effect of thinning the audience still further in the church, where Teresina and I lingered, certainly abated the noises behind the door, until the padre's blows, continuing with unabated energy, effected a breach where the very head and claws of the Evil One himself were actually to be seen protruding through the aperture: in one moment more the whole troop of the enemy had dashed through the opening, upset the padre, and were in full career through the church, from whence the whole assembly took flight into the streets, uttering frantic shouts and seeking safety in the houses. The legionaries of Satan had it all to themselves, and continued their career until they arrived at the place where the English keep their hounds, where, with a tremendous yell, they leaped over the gate and disappeared in the kennels.

"I myself saw this, signor," said Beppo, giving his head an emphatic nod, "and have I not every reason for saying that the hounds, as well as their masters, are possessed?"

Beppo's story still leaving some physiological questions unsolved in my dark Protestant mind, I took occasion to speak to Father Xavier himself about it when I next met him. From him I learned that on the morning in question a party of English left the city on a hunting-excursion on the Campagna. A fox was unearthed after considerable delay, and a sharp run started, when suddenly fox, dogs and all disappeared down one of the numerous holes leading to the Catacombs. As the occurrence was not unusual, the hunt waited, expecting them to reappear up some other aperture; but after lingering the greater part of the day they were obliged to return to the city without the dogs, who had found their way through the dark and intricate passages to the door of the crypt, where the sceptical padre, as we have seen, liberated them.

M.S.D.

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THE DEMIDOFFS.

Readers of the agreeable memoirs of Madame Le Brun may remember the passage in which she speaks of a certain "M. Demidoff, le plus riche particulier de la Russie." His father, she goes on to say, had left him an inheritance of great value in the shape of mines, the products of which he sold to the government on very profitable terms. His enormous wealth enabled him to obtain the hand of a Miss Strogonov, the daughter of one of the most ancient families of the land. Their union was an harmonious one, and they left two sons, "of whom one," concludes our author, "lives most of the time at Paris, and, like his father, is very fond of art."

Madame Le Brun's friend was Nicolai Demidoff (1774–1828), one of the least distinguished members of his family, who have been the mining-kings of Russia for two centuries. The contemporary of Peter the Great was ennobled by him (without receiving a title), and in the patent it was decreed that the family should be for ever free from military and other service, "that they may devote themselves to the discovery of metals." Nicolai's son Anatoli was born in Moscow March 24, 1813: he was sent to Paris to be educated, and remained there till his eighteenth year, studying at various institutions, including the law-school and the École Polytechniqne. Shortly after his return his father died, and he came into possession of an enormous property, which he immediately began to spend, lavishly, but generously. In St. Petersburg he bought and furnished a large building to serve as a charitable institution. From its kitchen two hundred thousand meals are given yearly to the poor, and in it one hundred and fifty orphans are housed and fed, one hundred and fifty girls are trained to be capable servants, and forty impoverished gentlewomen find a home. When the cholera raged in the same city not long afterward he not only established a hospital, but is said to have devoted himself personally to the care of the sick. In the furtherance of science and art he was still more munificent. He founded the Demidoff prizes, which annually distribute nearly four thousand dollars to the authors of the most useful works published during the year, while from his mines in Siberia eight young men went forth yearly to acquire a thorough technical education at his expense. In 1837, urged by the great need of coal felt by the Russian industrial classes, he began a three years' exploration of the Black Sea country, accompanied by a staff of six professors, who produced a detailed report, not only of the coal-deposits, but also of the zoology, botany and geology of the region traversed. The results of their labors are described in four octavo volumes—Voyage dans la Russie méridionale, exécutée sous la direction de M. Anatole de Demidoff—and inscribed to the emperor Nicholas. One reward of this labor was election to the Institute de France, his competitors being Parry and Sir John Franklin.

Some years before this time he had entered the diplomatic service, being attaché, first, at Vienna, then at Rome, then chargé d'affaires at Florence. Here he met and married Mathilde Bonaparte, who, through her mother, was closely connected with his sovereign. Nicolai's daughter had been allowed to make a love-match in marrying the duke of Leuchtenberg, son of Eugène Beauharnais, and the emperor was by no means pleased to have another mésalliance in the family. What most offended him, however, was the fact that M. Demidoff, in the Catholic as well as in the Greek marriage ceremony, had promised to educate his children in the faith of the officiating priest. In consequence of this he was deprived of such titular honors as he possessed and was ordered to live abroad. As the married pair did not get on very well, and as, after a childless union of four years, they agreed to separate, Demidoff was again received into the imperial favor. He had meantime bought the fine estate and mansion of San Donato, near Florence; and as he thought the possessor of so much wealth and the husband of so noble a lady deserved to have a title, he dubbed himself "prince," and continued to enjoy this self-given title, probably in the hope that an uncontested use would give him a prescriptive right to bear it. In this hope he was disappointed, for Count Medem, an attaché of the Russian embassy at Paris, noticing "Prince Demidoff" on the list of the members of the Jockey Club, crossed the name out, adding the observation, "Il n'y a pas de prince Demidoff." A bloodless duel followed.

In the lately-published memoirs of the German novelist Hackländer—who in 1843 figured as secretary to the crown-prince of Würtemberg during his visit to Italy—we have an agreeable picture of M. Demidoff at San Donato. "His paintings, sculptures, odd furniture, bronzes and weapons were arranged in an irregular and apparently arbitrary fashion, so that they did not produce the wearisome effect of an ordinary collection, but looked rather like treasures with which their owner had surrounded himself partly for use, partly only to look at." Demidoff "was a tall, thin man," continues Mr. Hackländer, "with light, almost yellow, complexion, and always dressed with extreme elegance. On the occasion of our first visit to his town-house the princess was painting in her studio, in which art she was more than a dilettante. The prince went first to her with Demidoff, and after they had come back we heard from her a peal of the heartiest laughter, which rung down through five large rooms. Soon after she came out and greeted us in the kindest fashion. She was then a young and handsome woman, with a splendid figure, graceful curves, fine eyes and complexion,—all beautified and illumined by her pleasant voice and happy manner."

In 1851, Demidoff bought the villa of San Martini, which Bonaparte occupied during his stay in Elba, improved the building at a cost of forty thousand dollars, and made of it a museum in which were to be seen all sorts of curiosities connected with the great emperor—hats, swords, pistols, portraits of the king of Rome, and manuscripts for which he paid one hundred thousand dollars. His uncle's other collections the present M. (or, if you like, Prince) Demidoff sold at auction the present year: I have not heard whether the Elba relics were sold with them.

Florence, as well as St. Petersburg, owes much to M. Demidoff—among other things, an asylum in which fifty boys are trained in silk-weaving. It was in Paris, however, not in the city which he so long honored with his residence, that in 1870 this philanthropic and enterprising man took leave of worldly vanities.

A.V.

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LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

A History of Classical Greek Literature. By the Rev. J.P. Mahaffy, M.A., Fellow and Professor of Ancient History, Trinity College, Dublin. New York: Harper & Brothers.

It is easy to imagine a history of Greek literature which should be not only useful and stimulative to the student, but fascinating to the general mass of intelligent readers. The literature of Greece is not, like that of modern nations, the mirror of a many-colored life; but the originality, variety and perfection of its forms make it on the whole the most complete and splendid representation of thought and imagination which the world possesses. While it owed little or nothing to any foreign influence, it was itself the source of all later conceptions of literary art, and though it exists only in fragmentary remains, these still furnish the chief standard of excellence in nearly every department. The subject is therefore unique both in the value of its materials and in the definiteness of its limits. What is demanded for the adequate treatment of it is not universal knowledge, but minute and thorough scholarship; not a wide and diversified experience, an unlimited range of sympathies, the power of detecting subtle motives and disentangling complicated threads of action, but a comprehension of the simple and eternal elements of character and conduct, the faculty of tracing a specific development from its origin to its decline, while indicating its connection with other indigenous growths of the same soil, and a vivid sense of the marvellous rapidity and exquisite beauty of the simultaneous or successive unfoldings. Given these powers, unhampered by any defect of mere technical skill, and it is hard to see how any mind susceptible of being interested in their application to such a topic could resist their sway.

We do not know what ideal Mr. Mahaffy may have formed of the task he has undertaken or of the qualities demanded for it. His preface gives no intimation on this point, and his "introduction" affords only negative evidence in his refusal to follow "the usual practice with historians of Greek literature" and "begin with a survey of the character and genius of the race, the peculiar features of the language, and the action which physical circumstances have produced upon the development of all these things." Instead of any discussions of this nature, which "in many German books are," it appears, "so long and so vague that the student is wearied before he arrives at a single fact," the natural division of literature into poetry and prose is made the starting-point. The former, in accordance with "a well-known law of human progress," precedes the latter, but is gradually supplanted by it. "This may be seen among us in the education of children, who pass in a few years through successive stages not unlike those of humanity at large in its progress from mental infancy to mature thought. We know that little children can be taught to repeat and remember rhymes long before they will listen to the simplest story in prose." On the other hand, "when the majority of people begin to read, poetry loses its hold upon the public, and the prose-writer, who composes with greater simplicity and less labor, at last obtains an advantage over his rival the poet, who is put into competition with all the older poets now circulating among a more learned public." In accordance with this profound yet simple theory—from which we gather that the Golden Age of the poets was that in which there were no readers—the work is divided into two nearly equal parts, the first dealing with poetry and the second with prose, and this "is now the accepted order among the German writers on the subject."

In the first volume epic, lyric and dramatic poetry are dealt with in the order in which they are here named, while in the second the arrangement is strictly chronological, taking up historians, philosophers and orators as they appeared upon the scene. Except in the case of the epic and the drama there is no examination of the rise or nature of any particular form of composition, and the exceptions merely touch the familiar ground of the origin of the Homeric poems and the rise of the Æschylean tragedy. Some account is given of the principal authors, their works are more or less fully enumerated and some of them analyzed, style and similar matters are discussed in a summary and decisive tone—critics, ancient and modern, who have held different views from those of Mr. Mahaffy being sharply reprehended—and the final sections of some of the chapters are devoted to bibliography, including modern imitations and translations. Although Mr. Mahaffy is never otherwise than terse—or, more properly speaking, curt—he sometimes condescends to repetition. Thus he tells us in three or four different places that Sophocles and Thucydides "play at hide-and-seek with the reader." These two authors, thus happily classed together, represent "the artificial obscurity of the Attic epoch," in distinction from "the pregnant obscurity" of Heracleitus and Æschylus and "the redundant obscurity of some modern poets." The attempt of "Classen and others" to explain the involutions and anacolutha of Thucydides by "the undeveloped condition of Attic prose, and the difficulties of wrestling with an unformed idiom to express adequately great and pregnant thoughts," is triumphantly refuted by the statement that "Euripides and Cratinus had already perfected the use of Attic Greek in dramatic dialogue," and "in Attic prose Antiphon had already attained clearness, as we can see in his extant speeches." As Classen, in his discussion of the question, has not omitted to notice Antiphon, it may be doubted whether he would accept this fact as conclusive. Another point in regard to Thucydides is introduced in a manner that prepares us for some startling disclosures: "As regards the historian's trustworthiness, it has been so universally lauded that it is high time to declare how far his statements are to be accepted as absolute truths." But expectation subsides when we are assured in the next sentence that "on contemporary facts his authority is very good, and so far there has been no proof of any inaccuracy brought home to him." He is open to doubt, it appears, "only when he goes into archæology," by which term Mr. Mahaffy understands early Sicilian history, which "reaches back three hundred years, nay to three hundred years before the advent of the Greeks." It has "only lately," it appears, been discovered that Thucydides had no personal knowledge of the events of that remote period, but "copied from Dionysius of Syracuse," and hence "the whole tradition requires careful consideration." In that case, we fear, the "high time" for deciding on the "absolute truth" of the historian's statements will have to be indefinitely postponed. Meantime we learn from the work before us the striking fact, that "the night-escape of the Plateans from their city," as related in the third book of Thucydides, "has been reproduced in our own day by Sir E. Creasy, in his Greek novel, The Old Love and the New." It has sometimes been debated whether the Greeks had any novels: it is now settled that they had one—written by an Englishman. It is to be hoped that this discovery will give a new impetus to the interest in Greek literature, which must be at a low ebb if Mr. Mahaffy be correct in stating that "even diligent scholars find it a task to read a dialogue of Plato honestly through." To be sure, if Plato's style and matter were simply such as Mr. Mahaffy describes them, there would be no great inducement to make the attempt. The same remark would apply to most of the extant plays of Sophocles. The Œdipus Rex, in particular, reveals itself in Mr. Mahaffy's analysis as a mere farrago of inconsistencies and absurdities. In allusion to the very different estimate of Professor Campbell, Mr. Mahaffy remarks, "Though I deeply respect this simple-hearted enthusiasm, it does not appear to me the best way of stimulating the study of any writer." Still, Mr. Mahaffy can occasionally defend a Greek author against the strictures of other critics. Thus he cannot agree with Mr. Simcox in giving "some credence to the attacks on Demosthenes charging him with unchastity. These," he observes, "the whole man's life and his portrait-statue forbid us to believe." We do not quite understand how the fact that Demosthenes was a "whole man" tends to rebut the charge referred to, and if what Mr. Mahaffy meant to say be "the man's whole life," this is simply begging the question, a part of that whole being the point of dispute. But the evidence of the "portrait-statue" is, of course, resistless, and one cannot but regret, in the interests of public decency, that testimony so conclusive is not admitted in modern trials involving a similar issue. One great characteristic of Mr. Mahaffy's style is an unsparing use of the first personal pronoun. "I think," "I do not think," "I conceive," "I believe," "I advocate," "I infer," "I would select," "I had predicted," are forms of expression strewn abundantly, often in clusters, over the pages of the work, the subject to which they refer being generally one on which most other people do not "think" or "conceive" as Mr. Mahaffy does. One is reminded of an epigram on Whewell, master of Trinity College (Oxford, not Dublin), after the appearance of his Plurality of Worlds:

His eye, as it ranges through boundless infinity,
Finds the chief work of God the master of Trinity.

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William Cowper. By Goldwin Smith. (English-Men-of-Letters Series.) New York: Harper & Brothers.

Much thoughtful and sympathetic criticism has been written on the life and writings of Cowper, without any new facts being brought to light or any decided progress made. His character reveals itself and his life is minutely recorded in his correspondence; but the few points which his letters leave unexplained still remain obscure after long search and study. The question of his rupture with Lady Austen, for instance, is just where Hayley left it. His poems present elements so apparently irreconcilable that, while their qualities are universally recognized, their place in literature is still an unsettled one. The reader of The Task may ask himself in one breath whether it is poetry at all, or whether it be not great poetry. There is no trace of the instinctive poetic utterance of bards such as Shelley and Keats, but there is a constant appeal to the strongest and most elementary human feelings, rarely met with in any but the greatest works of art. It was never Cowper's fate to be exposed to that brilliant but unsympathetic criticism which is the most short-sighted kind. No comprehension of him can be got without bringing in feeling as a factor of judgment, and it would not be singular if the moral beauty of his verse should blind readers to its artistic faults. As a matter of fact, however, the tendency now-a-days is to exaggerate Cowper's position rather than his qualities, and this arises not from warmth of feeling, but from hasty dogmatizing. There is a marked difference between The Task and any poem preceding it, but the distance from The Task to The Excursion is still wider. The resemblance to Wordsworth in the former poem is tolerably superficial: it is a likeness with a difference. Cowper was the observer, not the priest, of Nature, watching her minutely and tenderly, but with none of Wordsworth's passion. The finest passages in The Task are wholly descriptive, and of description pure and simple there is very little in Wordsworth's writings. Neither is there any strong proof of Cowper's influence in the work of his successor, though the influence felt most strongly by each was the same—that of Milton. When M. Taine speaks of the revolution effected by Cowper as one of style, when Mr. Lowell characterizes Wordsworth's blank verse as "essentially the blank verse of Cowper," those eminent critics agree in exalting Cowper above his age at the very point where he is most closely bound to it. In sentiment he made a certain advance toward Wordsworth, though on a lower plane, but in diction he is distinctly of the eighteenth century. His style is often as artificial as that of any of its rhymesters: it is full of inversions, freighted with long, formal words, and still more marred by others of a false dilettante ring. Wordsworth would never have spoken of "embellished Nature," "embroidered banks," or applied the word "elegant" to a rose, any more than he would have used "lubricity" or "stercoraceous" in verse.

Yet, formal as Cowper's language often is, narrow as are the ideas which take up a large part of his writings, the essence of his poetry is its truth. A false note in feeling he seldom struck, and the most artificial language cannot hinder his lines from going direct to the heart. The high-water mark of his genius was reached in two or three poems in which the words are in full harmony with the thought and reflect it limpidly, with no attempt at the "embellishment" which he too frequently employed.

In a book designed to introduce the subject to many readers we could have wished for a little more sympathy of tone than Mr. Goldwin Smith has allowed himself in his otherwise admirable volume. It is hardly necessary, for instance, to insist on the obvious narrowness of Cowper's religion. That the book is too short is a failing on the right side, and chargeable to the plan of the series rather than the writer, whose terse style and excellent arrangement make it full of interest. Cowper's life and poetry are bound together in a singularly close union. He belongs by circumstances rather than by genius to those unfortunate minds which, thrown off the proper balance, have gained a deeper insight and a stronger hold upon others through their very weakness. What lends a peculiar pathos and charm to his figure is the purity and gentleness of his mind, the efforts by which he clung to truth in the cruel darkness of mental disease, and the innocent gayety and light-heartedness which alternated with gloom. Like Rousseau, Cowper had, by the very reaction from sadness, a rare keenness of enjoyment. Little things were enough to feast it, and hence the most trivial matters came naturally into his verse. His poems have certainly had a varied history. Written to afford occupation to a mind on the verge of madness, linked with the slightest events of his daily life, it has been their fate to serve for a long time as poetic tracts, and afterward to be exalted by critics as prophecies of a new order of things, the beginning of a literary revolution.

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Books Received.

Barbara; or, Splendid Misery. By Miss M.E. Braddon.—For Her Dear Sake. By Mary Cecil Hay.—Daireen. By Frank Frankfort Moore.—Two Women. By Georgiana M. Craik.—Prince Hugo. By Maria M. Grant.—From Generation to Generation: A Novel. By Lady Augusta Noel.—Young Lord Penrith: A Novel. By John Berwick Harwood.—Clara Vaughan: A Novel. By R.D. Blackmore.—The Heart of Holland. By Henry Havard. Translated by Mrs. Cashel Hoey.—Reata: What's in a Name? A Novel. By E.D. Gerard.—Mary Anerley: A Yorkshire Tale. By R.D. Blackmore.—Poet and Peer: A Novel. By Hamilton Aidé.—The Pennant Family. By Anne Beale. (Franklin Square Library.) New York: Harper & Brothers.

The Diary of a Man of Fifty, and A Bundle of Letters. By Henry James, Jr.—Tales from the Odyssey, for Boys and Girls. By "Materfamilias."—Life of Charlemagne. By Eginhard.—The Right Honorable William Ewart Gladstone: A Biographical Sketch. By Henry W. Lucy. With Portrait.—British and American Education. By Mayo W. Hazeltine.—Mrs. Austin. By Margaret Veley.—Business Life in Ancient Rome. By Charles G. Herbermann, Ph.D. (Harper's Half-Hour Series.) New York: Harper & Brothers.

The Spell-bound Fiddler: A Norse Romance. By Kristofer Janson. Translated from the original by Auber Forestier. Chicago: S.C. Griggs & Co.

Studies of Irving. By Charles Dudley Warner, William Cullen Bryant and George Palmer Putnam. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe. By John Addington Symonds. 2 vols. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Eminent Israelites of the Nineteenth Century. By Henry Samuel Morais. Philadelphia: Edward Stern & Co.

The Throat and its Functions. By Louis Elsberg, A.M., M.D. Illustrated. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

The Independent Movement in New York. By Junius. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Preadamites. By Alexander Winchell, M.D. Chicago: S.C. Griggs & Co.

Ethylization. By R.J. Levis, M.D. Philadelphia.