CONCLUDING PAPER.
By the end of July the dispersion of the racing fraternity has become general. Some have gone into the provinces to lead the pleasant life of the château; some are in the Pyrenees, eating trout and cotelettes d'izard at Luchon; while those whom the Paris season has quite worn out, or put in what they would call too "high" a condition, are refitting at Mont Dore or else at Vichy, which is the Saratoga of France—with this difference, that nobody goes to Vichy unless he is really ill, and that very few were ever known to get married there. But if our friend the sportsman should happen to have nothing the matter with him, and should know of nothing better to do during the summer than to go where his equine instincts would lead him, he may spend the month of July at least in following what is called "the Norman circuit." This consists of a series of meetings at different places, either on the coast or very near the Channel, in that green land of Normandy which is to France what the blue-grass region of Kentucky is to America—the great horse-raising province of the country. Here the circuit begins with the Beauvais meeting, always largely attended by reason of its proximity to Paris and to the numerous châteaux, all occupied at this season of the year, and in one of which, at Mouchy-le-Chastel, the duc de Mouchy entertains a large and distinguished company. Sunday and Tuesday are the days for races at Beauvais, Monday being given up to pigeon-shooting. Then follow in quick succession the courses of Amiens, Abbeville, Rouen, Havre and Caen; and in all these places the daily programme will be found to be a very varied one—too much so, indeed, to suit the taste of the English, whose notions of the fitness of things are offended by the sight of a steeple-chase and a flat-race on the same track. The Normans, on the contrary, finding even this double attraction insufficient, add to it the excitement of a trotting-match in harness and under the saddle. And such trotting! "Allais! marchais!" shouts the starter in good Norman, and away go the horses, dragging their lumbering, rattling Norman carts, guided by equally ponderous Norman peasants, over a track that is sure to be heavy or else too hard—conditions sufficient of themselves to account for the fact that the time made by these provincial trotters has not by any means been reduced to figures like the 2.18 of Dexter or the phenomenal 2.14 of Goldsmith Maid. It is possible, however, that this somewhat primitive condition of things may be gradually bettered by time, and that when American institutions and customs shall have come to be the mode in France trotting-races, and perhaps walking-matches and base-ball, will be developed with the rest; but up to the present time, it must be confessed, these various amusements have been regarded by the French public with profound indifference.
I cannot help feeling the most lively regret that trotting-contests should have taken no hold upon the fancy of my countrymen, who would find in their magnificent roads an opportunity for the demonstration of the practical, every-day value of a good trotter far more favorable than any possessed by America. But it seems that no considerations of utility or convenience can prevail against popular prejudices and, above all, the mode; and we find even the baron d'Étreilles, official handicapper and starter to the Jockey Club—and therefore an authority—writing this singular paragraph in Le Sport: "Trotting-races deserve but little encouragement. The so-called trotting-horse does not, in fact, trot at all. His pace is forced to such a degree of exaggeration as to lose all regularity, at the same time that it is rendered valueless for any practical purpose. The trotter can no more be put to his speed upon an ordinary road than can the racer himself. By breaking up the natural gait of a horse he is made to attain an exceptional speed, it is true, but in doing so he has contracted an abnormal sort of movement for which it is impossible to find a name. It is something between a trot and a racking pace, and with it a first-rate trotter can make four kilomètres (two miles and a half) in seven minutes and a half, and not much less, whatever may be said to the contrary. I know that certain time-keepers have marked this distance as having been done in seven minutes, but this I consider disputable, to say the least." M. d'Étreilles cites, however, as an exception to his rules, a horse called Rochester, belonging to the Prince E. de Beauvan, which trotted nineteen miles in one hour without breaking or pacing, but when a return bet was proposed, with the distance increased to twenty miles, the owner of Rochester refused.
These assertions of the French authority will appear strange enough to Americans. But we must add that the views of M. d'Étreilles on this subject are by no means universally shared in France. A writer whose practical experience and long observation entitle his opinions to much weight—M. Gayot—goes so far as to say that the American trotters really form a distinct race. "The Northern States of the Union," he writes, "have accomplished for the trotter what England has done for the thoroughbred: by selecting the best—that is to say, the swiftest and the most enduring—and by breeding from these, there has been fixed in the very nature of their progeny that wonderful aptitude for speed which," in direct contradiction to the opinion of M. d'Étreilles, he declares to be "of the greatest practical utility."
The administration of the Haras and the Society for the Encouragement of the Raising of Horses of Half-blood have established special meetings at which trotting-prizes are given. That these are by no means to be despised has been proved by M. Jouben's Norman trotter Tentateur, who last year earned for his owner twenty thousand francs without the bets. There is a special journal, La France Chevaline, which represents the interests of the "trot," and its development has been further encouraged by an appropriation of sixty thousand francs voted this year by the Chamber. A former officer of the Haras has also set up an establishment at Vire for the training of trotters. In 1878 a track was laid out at Maison Lafitte, near Paris, for the trial of trotting-horses, and the government, in the hope that animals trained to this gait would be sent to Paris from other countries during the great Exhibition if sufficient inducement were offered, awarded a sum of sixty-two thousand francs to be given in premiums. Six races took place on the principal day of the trials. These were in harness to two- and four-wheeled wagons, and two of the matches were won by Normans, two by English horses and two by horses from Russia of the Orloff breed. America was, unfortunately, not represented. As to the public, it took little interest in the event, notwithstanding its novelty: the few persons who had come to look on soon grew tired of it, and after the fourth race not a single spectator was left upon the stands.
The marquis de MacMahon, brother of the marshal, used to say that the gallop was the gait of happy people, the natural movement of women and of fools. "The three prettiest things in the world," wrote Balzac, "are a frigate under sail, a woman dancing and a horse at full run." I leave these opinions, so essentially French, to the judgment of Americans, and turn to another point of difference in the racing customs of the two countries.
In France the practice of recording the time of a race is looked upon as childish. The reason given is, that horses that have run or trotted separately against time will often show quite contrary results when matched against each other, and that the one that has made the shortest time on the separate trial will frequently be easily beaten on the same track by the one that showed less speed when tried alone. However this may be, it appears that the average speed of running races in France has increased since 1872. At that time it was one minute and two to three seconds for one thousand mètres (five furlongs); for two thousand mètres (a mile and a quarter), 2m. 8 to 10s.; for three thousand mètres (one mile seven furlongs), 3m. 34 to 35s.; for four thousand mètres (two miles and a half), 4m. 30 to 35s. The distance of the Prix Gladiateur (six thousand two hundred mètres or three and three-quarter miles one furlong)—the longest in France—is generally accomplished in 8m. 5 to 6s., though Mon Étoile has done it in 7m. 25s. But the mean speed, as we have said, has been raised since 1872, as it has been in America.
But let us come back to our Norman circuit, which this digression about time and trotting interrupted at Rouen. The sleepy old mediæval town on this occasion rouses itself from its dreams of the past and awakens to welcome the crowd of Norman farmers who come flocking in, clad for the most part in the national blue blouse, but still bearing about their persons those unmistakable though quite indescribable marks by which the turfman can recognize at a glance and under any costume the man whose business is with horses. Every trade and calling in life perhaps may be said to impart to its followers some distinguishing peculiarity by which the brethren of the craft at least will instinctively know each other; and amongst horse-fanciers these mysterious signs of recognition are as infallible as the signals of Freemasonry. As one penetrates still farther into Normandy on his way to the Caen races—which come off a few days after those at Rouen—one becomes still more alive to the fact that he is in a great horse-raising country. It is indeed to the departments of Calvados and the Orne beyond all other places that we owe those fine Norman stallions of which so many have been imported into America. In the Pin stud, at the fairs of Guibray and of Montagne, one may see the descendants of the colossal Roman-nosed horses of Merlerault and Cotentin which used to bear the weight of riders clad in iron, and which figure at a later day in the pictures of Van der Meulen. The infusion of English blood within the present century, and particularly during the Second Empire, has profoundly modified the character of the animal known to our ancestors: the Norman, with the rest of the various races once so numerous in France, is rapidly disappearing, and it will not be very long before two uniform types only will prevail—the draught-horse and the thoroughbred.
The race-course at Caen is one of the oldest in France, having been established as long ago as 1837. The most important events of its programme are the Prix de la Ville (handicap), with premium and stakes amounting to twenty or twenty-five thousand francs, on which the heaviest bets of the intermediate season are made, and the Grand St. Léger of France, which before the war took place at Moulins, and which is far from being of equal importance with the celebrated race at Doncaster whose name it bears. The site of the track at Caen is a beautiful meadow upon the banks of the Orne, very long and bordered with fine trees, but unfortunately too narrow, and consequently awkward at the turns.
By the rules of the Société colts of two years are not allowed to run before the first of August, and as the Caen races take place during the first week of this month, they have the first gathering of the season's crop of two-year-olds—an event which naturally excites the curiosity of followers of the turf. The wisdom and utility of subjecting animals of this age to such a strain upon their powers have been much discussed, and good judges have strongly condemned the precocious training involved, as tending to check the natural development of the horse, and sometimes putting a premature end to his career as a racer. In England these races have been multiplied to abuse. There are signs of a reaction, however, in France, where several owners of racing-stables, following the example set by M. Lupin, have found their advantage in refusing to take part in the pernicious practice. For, after all, these first trials really prove nothing at all. They are found to furnish no standard by which any accurate measure can be taken of the future achievements of the horse. In fact, if one will take the trouble to examine the lists of winners of these two-year-old criterions, as they are called, he will find but very few names that have afterward become illustrious in the annals of the turf.
The races of Caen over, their followers take themselves some few leagues farther upon their circuit, to attend the meeting at Cabourg, one of those pretty little towns, made up of about a hundred villas, four hotels, a church and a casino, that lie scattered along the Norman coast like beads of a broken necklace. Living is dear in these stylish little out-of-the-way places, and this naturally keeps away the more plebeian element that frequents the great centres. About the fifteenth of August begins the week of races at Déauville, the principal event of the Norman circuit, bringing together not unfrequently as many as a hundred and sixty horses, and ranking, in fact, as third in importance in all France, the meetings at Longchamps and Chantilly alone taking precedence of it. It is to the duc de Morny that Déauville owes the existence of its "hippodrome," but the choice of this bit of sandy beach, that seemed to have been thrown up and abandoned by the sea like a waif, cannot be called a happy one. It may be, however, that the duke's selection of the site was determined by its proximity to the luxuriant valley of the Auge, so famous for its excellent pasturage and for the number of its stables. The Victor stud belonging to M. Aumont, that of Fervacques, the property of M. de Montgomery, and the baron de Rothschild's establishment at Meautry, are all in the immediate neighborhood of Déauville; but even these advantages do not compensate for the unfavorable character of the track, laid out, as we have said, upon land from which the sea had receded, and which, as might have been expected, was sure to be hard and cracked in a dry season. To remedy this most serious defect, and to bring the ground to its present degree of excellence, large sums had to be expended. The aspect of the race-course to-day, however, is really charming. A rustic air has been given to the stands, the ring, even to the stables that enclose the paddock, but it is a rusticity quite compatible with elegance, like that of the pretty Norman farm in the garden of Trianon. The purse for two-year-olds used to be called, under the Empire, the Prix Morny, but this name was withdrawn at the same time that the statue of the duke, which once stood in Déauville, was pulled down.
Our Norman circuit comes to a close with the races at Dieppe, which finished last year on the 26th of August. Dieppe was celebrated during the Empire for its steeple-chases, which were run upon a somewhat hilly ground left almost in its natural state—a very unusual thing in France. The flat- and hurdle-races which have succeeded to these since the war are not of sufficient importance to detain us.
Returning from this agreeable summer jaunt, in which the pleasures of sea-bathing have added a zest to the enjoyment of the race-course, the followers of the turf will seek, on coming back to Paris in the early days of September, the autumn meetings at Fontainebleau and at Longchamps. But they will not find the paddock of the latter at this season of the year bustling with the life and fashion that gave it such brilliancy in the spring, and the "return from the races" is made up of little else than hired cabs drawn by broken-down steeds. It is just the period when Paris, crowded with economical strangers, English or German—the former on their return, perhaps, from Switzerland, the latter enjoying their vacation after their manner—mourns the absence of her own gay world. The haute gomme—the swells, the upper ten—are still in the provinces. They have left the sea-side, it is true—it was time for that—but the season in the Pyrenees is not over yet, and Luchon and Bigone will be full until the middle of September, and not before the month is ended will Biarritz give up her pleasure-seekers. The opening of the shooting season on the first Sunday of September has scattered the sportsmen throughout the twenty-five or thirty departments in which there is still left a chance of finding game. But the best shooting is in the neighborhood of Paris, in the departments of Seine-et-Marne and Seine-et-Oise—at Grosbois with the prince de Wagram; at St. Germain-les-Corbeil on the estate of M. Darblay; at Bois-Boudran with the comte de Greffuhle; or at the château of the baron de Rothschild at Ferrières; and the numerous guests of these gentlemen may, if they are inclined, take a day to see the Omnium or the Prix Royal Oak run between two battues aux faisans. The Omnium is the most important of the handicaps: it is the French Cæsarewitch, though with a difference. The distance of the latter is two miles and two furlongs, that of the Omnium but a mile and a half. The value of the stakes is generally from twenty-five to thirty thousand francs. As its name would indicate, this race, by exception to the fundamental principle of the Jockey Club, is open to horses of every kind, without regard to pedigree, above the age of three years. A horse that has gained a prize of two thousand francs after the publication of the weights is handicapped with an overweight of two kilogrammes and a half (a trifle over five pounds); if he has gained several such, with three kilos; if he is the winner of an eight-thousand-franc purse, he has to carry an overweight of four kilos, or one of five kilos if he has won more than one race of the value last mentioned. The publication of the weights takes place at the end of June, when the betting begins. Heavy and numerous are the wagers on this important race, and as the prospects of the various horses entered change from time to time according to the prizes gained and the overweights incurred, the quotation naturally undergoes the most unlooked-for variations. A lot of money is won and lost before the real favorites have revealed themselves; that is to say, before the last week preceding the race. The winner of the Omnium is hardly ever a horse of the first rank, and the baron d'Étreilles undertakes to tell us why. The object of the handicap, he says, being to equalize the chances of several horses of different degrees of merit, the handicapper is in a manner obliged to make it next to impossible for the first-rate horses to win; otherwise, the owners of the inferior animals, seeing that they had no chance, would prefer to pay forfeit, and the harmony, as it were, of the contest—the even balancing of chances, which is of the very essence of the handicap—would be lacking. On the other hand, the handicapper cannot bring the chances of the really bad horses up to the mean average, no matter how much he may favor them in the weights, and thus it nearly always turns out that the Omnium, like every other important handicap, is won by a horse of the second class, generally a three-year-old, whose real merits have been hidden from the handicapper. This concealment is not so difficult as it might seem. There are certain owners who, when they have satisfied themselves by trials made before the spring races that they have in their stables a few horses not quite good enough to stand a chance in the great contests, but still by no means without valuable qualities, prefer to reserve them for an important affair like the Omnium, on which they can bet heavily and to advantage, especially if they have a "dark horse," or one that is as yet unknown. Otherwise, to what use could these second-rate horses be put? If one should run them in the spring they might get one or two of the smaller stakes, after which everybody would have their measure. Their owners, therefore, show wisdom in keeping them out of sight, or perhaps, as some of the shrewder ones do, by running them when rather out of condition, and thus ensuring their defeat by adversaries really inferior to themselves. In this way the handicapper is deceived as to their true qualities, and is induced to weight them advantageously for the Omnium.
Many readers but little conversant with turf matters will no doubt be scandalized to hear of these tricks of the trade, and will be apt to conclude that good faith is no more the fashion at Longchamps than at the Bourse, and that cleverness in betting, as in stockjobbing, consists in knowing when to depreciate values and when to inflate them, as one happens to be a bull or a bear in the market. The truth is, that no rules can be devised, either by Jockey Clubs or by imperial parliaments, that can put a stop to these abuses: they will exist, in spite of legislation, as long as the double character of owner and better can be united in the same person. If this person should not act in perfect good faith, all restraining laws will be illusory, because the betting owner has the cards in his own hands, and can withdraw a horse or make him run at his pleasure, or even make him lose a race in case of need. If the thing is managed with skill, it is almost impossible to discover the deception. In 1877, at Déauville, the comte de Clermont-Tonnere and his jockey, Goddart, were expelled from the turf because the latter had "pulled" his horse in such a clumsy and unmistakable way that the spectators could not fail to see it. This circumstance was without precedent in France, and yet how often has the trick, which in this case was exposed, been practised without any one being the wiser for it! It ought to be added that the betters make one claim that is altogether unreasonable, and that is—at least this is the only inference from their talk—that when they have once "taken" a horse, as they call it, in a race, the owner thereby loses a part of his proprietorship in the animal, and is bound to share his rights of ownership with them. But one cannot thus limit the rights of property, and as long as the owner does not purposely lose a race, and does not deceive the handicapper as to the real value of his horse for the purpose of getting a reduction of weights, he can surely do as he pleases with his own. There will remain, of course, the question of morality and of delicacy, of which each one must be the judge for himself. M. Lupin, for example, and Lord Falmouth, when they have two horses engaged for the same purse, always let these take their chances, and do nothing to prevent the better horse from being the winner, while the comte de Lagrange, as we have had occasion to observe before, has acquired the reputation of winning, if he can, with his worst animal, or at least with the one upon whose success the public has least counted. This is what took place when he gained the Grand Prix de Paris in 1877 with an outsider, St. Christophe, whilst all the betters had calculated upon the victory of his other horse, Verneuil. So the duke of Hamilton in 1878 at Goodwood, where one of his horses was the favorite, declared just at the start that he meant to win with another, and by his orders the favorite was pulled double at the finish. The same year, in America, Mr. Lorillard caused Parole, then a two-year-old, to be beaten by one of his stable-companions and one decidedly his inferior. When this sort of thing is done the ring makes a great uproar about it, but without reason, for there can be no question of an owner's right to save his best horse, if he can, from a future overweight by winning with another not so good. Only he ought frankly to declare his intention to do so before the race.
The autumn stakes that rank next in importance to the Omnium are known as the Prix Royal Oak, open, like its counterpart, the St. Leger of Doncaster, to colts and fillies of three years only, with an unloading of three pounds for the latter. On this occasion one will have an opportunity of seeing again in the Bois de Boulogne the contestants of the great prizes of the spring. The Royal Oak is nearly always won by a horse of the first class, and in the illustrious list may be found the names of Gladiateur and of four winners of the French Derby—Patricien, Boïard, Kilt and Jongleur.
In October, Longchamps is deserted for Chantilly, where the trials of two-year-olds take place—the first criterion for horses, the second criterion for fillies—the distance in these two races being eight hundred mètres, or half a mile. The Grand Criterion, for colts and fillies, has a distance of double this, or one mile (sixteen hundred mètres). Since their débuts in August at Caen and Déauville the young horses have had time to harden and to show better what they are made of; and it is in the Grand Criterion that one looks for the most certain indications of their future career. The names of the winners will be found to include many that have afterward become celebrated, such as Mon Étoile, Stradella, Le Béarnais, Mongoubert, Sornette, Révigny and others.
Chantilly is the birthplace of racing in France. In the winter of 1833—the same year which also witnessed the foundation of the Jockey Club—Prince Labanoff, who was then living at Chantilly, and who had secured the privilege of hunting in the forest, invited several well-known lovers of the chase to join him in the sport. Tempted by the elasticity of the turf, it occurred to the hunters to get up a race, and meeting at the Constable's Table—a spot where once stood the stump of a large tree on which, as the story goes, the constable of France used to dine—they improvised a race-course which has proved the prolific mother of the tracks to be found to-day all over the country. In this first trial M. de Normandie was the winner. The fate of Chantilly was decided. Since the suicide—or the assassination—of the last of the Condés the castle had been abandoned, the duc d'Aumale, its inheritor, being then a minor. The little town itself seemed dying of exhaustion. It was resolved to infuse into it a new life by taking advantage of the exceptional quality of its turf. The soil is a rather hard sand, resisting pressure, elastic, and covered with a fine thick sward, and of a natural drainage so excellent that even the longest rains have no visible effect upon it. On this ground—as good as, if not better than, that at Newmarket—there is to-day a track of two thousand mètres, or a mile and a quarter—the distance generally adopted in France—with good turns, excepting the one known as the "Réservoirs," which is rather awkward, and which has the additional disadvantage of skirting the road to the training-stables—a temptation to bolt that is sometimes too strong for horses of a doubtful character. For this reason there is sometimes a little confusion in the field at this point. Before coming to the last turn there is a descent, followed by a rise—both of them pretty stiff—and this undoubtedly has its effect on the result, for the lazier horses fall away a little on the ascent. Just at this point too a clump of trees happens to hide the track from the spectators on the stands, and all the lorgnettes are turned on the summit of the rise to watch for the reappearance of the horses, who are pretty sure to turn up in a different order from that in which they were last seen. This crisis of the race is sometimes very exciting. A magnificent forest of beech borders and forms a background to the race-course in the rear of the stands; in front rise the splendid and imposing stables of the duc d'Aumale, built by Mansard for the Great Condé; on the right is the pretty Renaissance château of His Royal Highness; while the view loses itself in a vast horizon of distant forest and hills of misty blue. The stands are the first that were erected in France, and in 1833 they seemed no doubt the height of comfort and elegance, but to-day they are quite too small to accommodate the ever-increasing crowd. The stands as well as the stables, and the race-course itself, all belong to the duc d'Aumale, who gave a splendid house-warming and brilliant fête last October to celebrate the completion of the restorations of his ancestral château. Under the Empire, the property of the Orleans princes having been confiscated, a nominal transfer of Chantilly was made to a friend of the family. The emperor, having one day signified his wish to witness the Derby, had the mortification on his arrival to find the reserved stand closed against him by the prince's orders. It was necessary to force the gate. The emperor took the hint, however, and never went to Chantilly again.
The soil of the Forest of Fontainebleau being of the same nature as that of the turf in the open, the alleys of the park furnish an invaluable resource to the trainer. For this reason, since racing has come in vogue, most of the stables have found their way to Chantilly or to its immediate neighborhood, where one of the largest and finest alleys of the forest, running parallel to the railway and known as the Alley of the Lions, has been given up to their use. Thus, Chantilly, with its Derby Day and its training-grounds, may be called at once the Epsom and the Newmarket of France. There is hardly a horse, with the exception of those of the comte de Lagrange and of M. Lupin, and those of Henry Jennings, the public trainer, that is not "worked" in the Alley of the Lions. The Société d'Encouragement has control of the training-ground as well as of the track, and also claims the right to keep spectators away from the trial-gallops, so that the duc d'Aumale, whose proprietary privileges are thus usurped, is often at war with the society. He has stag-hunts twice a week during the winter, on Mondays and Thursdays, and now and then on Sundays too—as he did with the grand duke of Austria on his late visit to Chantilly—and he naturally objects to having the hunt cut in two by the gallops over his principal avenue. He worries the trainers to such a degree that they begin to talk of quitting Chantilly for some more hospitable quarters. When things get to this pass the duke, who, in his character of councillor-general, is bound to look after the interests of his constituents, relents, and putting aside his personal wrongs calls a parley with the stewards of the races, offers a new prize—an object of art perhaps—or talks of enlarging the stands, and the gage of reconciliation being accepted, peace is made to last until some new casus belli shall occur. His Royal Highness is not forgetful of the duties of his position. When he is at Chantilly on a race-day he gracefully does the honors of his reserved stand to all the little Orleanist court. Since the reconciliation that took place between the comte de Paris and the comte de Chambord in 1873 this miniature court has been enlarged by the addition of several personages of the Legitimist circle, and the "ring" at Chantilly is often graced with a most distinguished and aristocratic assemblage. Amongst the beauties of this brilliant company may be especially noticed Madame de Viel-Castel, the young princesse Amédé de Broglie, the duchesse de Chaulnes with her strange, unconventional type of beauty, Madame Ferdinand Bischoffsheim, the comtesse Beugnot, the comtesse Tanneguy-Duchâtel and the princesse de Sagan. And when all this gay party has dispersed, and the duke is left to his cigar—as constant a companion as the historical weed in the mouth of General Grant—he might almost fancy, as he walks the great street of his good town, that he is back again at Twickenham in the days of his exile. There is something to remind him on every side of the country that once sheltered him. To right and left are English farrieries, English saddleries, and English bars and taverns too. English is the language that reaches his ears, and English of the most "horsey" sort that one can hear this side of Newmarket. Everybody has the peculiar gait and costume that belong to the English horseman: the low-crowned hat, the short jacket, those tight trousers and big, strong boots, are not to be mistaken. It is a little world in itself, in which no Frenchman could long exist, but its peculiar inhabitants have not, for all that, neglected anything that may attract the young folk of the country. They have even offered the bribe of a race in which only French jockeys are permitted to ride, but these, with only an exception here and there, have very promptly given up the business, disgusted either by the severe regimen required in the matter of diet or by the rigorous discipline indispensable in a training-stable. The few exceptions to which I have referred have not sufficed to prevent this race from falling into disrepute; but it may be worth mentioning that on the last occasion on which it was run, the 19th October last, when but three or four horses were engaged, the baron de Bizé, with what has been called a veritable inspiration of genius, threw an unlooked-for interest into the event by mounting in person M. Camille Blanc's horse Nonancourt, and winning the race with him. It is to be borne in mind that the riders must not only have been born in France, but must be of French parentage on the side of both father and mother.
The best-known jockeys are nearly all the children of English parents, and have first seen the light in the little colony at Chantilly or else have been brought very young into France. I give some of their names, classed according to the number of victories gained by them respectively in 1878: Hunter, who generally rides for M. Fould, 47 victories; Wheeler, head-jockey and trainer for M. Ed. Blanc, 45 victories; Hislop, 39; Hudson, ex-jockey to M. Lupin, who gained last year the Grand Prix de Paris, 36 victories; Rolf, 35; Carratt, 32; Goater, who rides for the comte de Lagrange, and who is well known in England; and Edwards, whose "mount" was at one time quite the mode, and whose tragical death on the 3d of October last created a painful sensation. When Lamplugh was training for the duke of Hamilton he made Edwards "first stable-boy," and this and his subsequent successes excited a violent jealousy in one of his stable-companions named Page. The two jockeys separated, but instead of fighting a duel, as Frenchmen might have done, they simply rode against each other one day at Auteuil—Page on Leona, and Edwards on Peau-d'Âne. The struggle was a desperate one: both riders got bad falls from their exhausted mares, and from that time poor Edwards never regained his aplomb. He frequently came to grief afterward, and met his death in consequence of a fall from Slowmatch at Maison Lafitte.
One of the oldest celebrities of Chantilly is Charles Pratt, formerly trainer and jockey for the baron Nivière and for the late Charles Lafitte, and at present in the service of the prince d'Aremberg. His system of training approached very nearly that of Henry Jennings, under whose orders and instructions he had worked for a long time. His horses were always just in the right condition on the day they were wanted, and as he never allowed them to be overridden, their legs remained uninjured for many years—a thing that has become too rare in France as well as in England. As a jockey Pratt possessed, better than any other, that knowledge of pace without which a rider is sure to commit irreparable mistakes. At the Grand Prix de Paris of 1870, when he rode Sornette, he undertook the daring feat of keeping the head of the field from the start to the finish. Such an enterprise in a race so important and so trying as this demanded the nicest instinct for pace and the most thorough knowledge, which as trainer he already possessed, of the impressionable nature and high qualities of his mare.
The autumn meetings at Chantilly close the legitimate season in France. The affairs at Tours are of little interest except to the foreign colony—which at this season of the year is pretty numerous in Touraine—and to the people of the surrounding country. On these occasions the cavalry officers in garrison at Tours get up paper hunts, a species of sport which is rapidly growing in favor and promises to become a national pastime. Whatever interest attaches to the November races at Bordeaux is purely local. Turfmen who cannot get through the winter without the sight of the jockeys' silk jackets and the bookmakers' mackintoshes must betake themselves to Pau in December. The first of the four winter meetings takes place during this month upon a heath at a distance of four kilomètres—say about two miles and a half—from the town. The exceptional climate and situation of Pau, where the frozen-out fox-hunters of England come to hunt, and where there is a populous American colony, will no doubt before long give a certain importance to these races, but just now the local committee is short of funds and the stakes have been insufficient to offer an attraction to good horses. Last winter in one of the steeple-chases all the horses tumbled pell-mell into the river, which was the very first obstacle they encountered, and although the public was quite used to seeing riders come to grief, it found the incident somewhat extraordinary.
The meetings at Nice, the queen of all winter residences in Europe, are much finer and more worthy of attention. They begin in January, and the programme has to be arranged almost exclusively for steeple-chases and hurdle-races, as flat-racers are not in condition for running at the time when the season at Nice is at its height. The greater number, and particularly the best, of the racers have important engagements for the spring meetings at Paris and at Chantilly, and even in view of really valuable prizes they could not afford at this time of year to undergo a complete preparation, which would advance them too rapidly in their training and would make it impossible to have them in prime condition in the spring. The race-course at Nice is charmingly situated in the valley of the Var. The perfume of flowers from numerous beds reaches the stands, where one may enjoy a magnificent view of mountain and sea, whilst a good band discourses music in the intervals of the races. Some of the prizes are important. The Grand Prix de Monaco, for instance, popularly known as "The Cup", consists of an object of art given by the prince of Monaco and a purse of twenty thousand francs, without counting the entrance-stakes. On the second day is run the great hurdle handicap for seventy-five hundred francs called the Prix de Monte Carlo, and on the third and last day of the meeting the Grand Prix de Nice, a free handicap steeple-chase for a purse of ten thousand francs.
The international pigeon-shooting matches at Monaco, which occur at the same time, contribute, with the races, to give an extraordinary animation to this period of the season at Nice. The betting-ring feels the influence of the proximity of the gaming-tables, where everybody goes; and yet one could so easily exchange this feverish life of play for the calmer enjoyments of the capital cuisine of London House and an after-dinner stroll on the English Promenade or the terraces of Monte Carlo, in dreamy contemplation of the mountains with their misty grays and a sea and sky of such heavenly blue. But no: this charming programme is wantonly rejected: not the finest orchestras, not the prettiest fêtes, not the newest chansonettes sung by Judie and Jeanne Granier themselves, can turn the players for a moment from the pursuit of their one absorbing passion. Play goes on at the Casino of Monte Carlo the livelong day, the only relaxation from the couleur gagnante or tiers et tout being when the gamblers step across the way to take a shot at the pigeons or a bet on the birds; for they must bet on something, if it is but on the number of the box from which the next victim will fly. And when in the evening the players have returned to Nice it is only to indulge the fierce passion again in playing baccarat—the terrible Parisian baccarat—at the Massena Club or at the Mediterranean, where the betting is even higher than at Monaco. Hundreds of thousands of francs change hands every hour from noon to six o'clock in the morning in this gambling-hell—a hell disguised in the colors of Paradise.
But let us fly from the perilous neighborhood and reach the nearest race-course by the fastest train we can find. The passion for the turf is healthier than the other, and its ends not so much in need of concealment. Unluckily, we shall not find just at this season—that is to say, in February—anything going on excepting a few steeple-chases—some "jumping business," as the English say rather contemptuously. In England there are certain owners, such as Lord Lonsdale, Captain Machell, Mr. Brayley and others, who, though well known in flat-races, have also good hunters in their stables, while the proprietors of the latter in France confine themselves exclusively to this specialty. Perhaps the best known amongst them are the baron Jules Finot and the marquis de St. Sauveur. Most of the members of the Jockey Club affect to look down upon the "illegitimate" sport, as they call it. It would seem, however, that this disdain is hardly justifiable, for as a spectacle at least a steeple-chase is certainly more dramatic and more interesting than a flat-race. What can be finer than the sight of a dozen gentlemen or jockeys, as the case may be, charging a brook and taking it clear in one unbroken line? And yet, despite the attractions and excitement of the sport, and all the efforts made from time to time by the Society of Steeple-chases to popularize it in France, it cannot as yet be called a success. Complaint is made, as in England, of too short distances, of the insufficiency of the obstacles, of an overstraining of the pace. The whole thing is coming to partake more and more of the nature of a race, an essentially different thing. Field sports are not races—at least they never ought to be. A steeple-chase can never answer the true purpose of the flat-race, which is to prove which is the best horse, to the end that he may ultimately reproduce his like. But nobody ever heard of "a sire calculated to get steeple-chasers". The cleverness and the special qualities that make a good steeple-chaser are not transmitted. The best have been horses of poor appearance, often small and unsightly, that have been given up by the trainer as incapable of winning in flat-races. In England the winners of the "Grand National" have had no pedigree to speak of, and have failed upon the track. Cassetête had run in nineteen races without gaining a single one before he began his remarkable career as a hunter; Alcibiade had been employed at Newmarket as a lad's horse; Salamander was taken out of a cart to win the great steeple-chases at Liverpool and Warwick.
In France there is no Liverpool or Croydon or Sandown for steeple-chases: there is only an Auteuil. The other meetings in the neighborhood of Paris—Maisons, Le Vésinet, La Marche—are in the hands of shameless speculators like Dennetier, Oller and the rest. Poor horses, bought in the selling races and hardly trained at all to their new business, compete at these places for slender purses, and often with the help of dishonest tricks. Accidents, as might be expected, are frequent, although the obstacles, with the exception of the river at La Marche, are insignificant. But the pace is pushed to such excess that the smallest fence becomes dangerous. This last objection, however, may be made even to the running at Auteuil, where the course is under the judicious and honorable direction of the Society of Steeple-chases. The pace is quite too severe for such a long stretch, strewn as it is with no less than twenty-four obstacles, and some of them pretty serious. The weather, too, is nearly always bad at Auteuil, even at the summer meetings, and the ill-luck of the Steeple-chase Society in this respect has become as proverbial as the good-fortune and favoring skies that smile upon the Société d'Encouragement, its neighbor at Longchamps. It is not to be wondered at, then, that the English do not feel at home upon this dangerous track. They have gained but twice the great international steeple-chase founded in 1874—the first time with Miss Hungerford in the year just mentioned, and again with Congress in 1877. This prize, the most important of the steeple-chase purses in France, amounts to twelve hundred sovereigns, added to a sweepstakes of twenty sovereigns each, with twelve sovereigns forfeit—or only two sovereigns if declared by the published time—and is open to horses of four years old and upward. It is run in the early part of June. Last year, whilst Wild Monarch, belonging to the marquis de St. Sauveur and ridden by D'Anson, was winning the race, the splendid stands took fire and were burned, without the loss of a single life, and even without a serious accident, thanks to the ample width of the staircases and of the exits. These stands were the newest and the most comfortable in the country. It is to be hoped that the society will not allow itself to be discouraged by such a persistent run of ill-luck, but that it will continue to pursue its work, the object of which it has declared to be "to encourage, as far as its resources will permit, the breeding and raising of horses for service and for the army." As the Encouragement Society rests upon the Jockey Club, so the Society of Steeple-chases finds its support in the Cercle of the Rue Royale, commonly called the Little Club or the Moutard. This club was reorganized after the war under the direction of the prince de Sagan, and has made great sacrifices to bring Auteuil into fashion.
The regular racing-season in France begins on the 15th of March, and no horse that has appeared upon any public track before this date is permitted to enter. The first event of the series is the spring meeting at Rheims—the French Lincoln. Of the six flat-races run here, one, known as the Derby of the East, is for two-year-olds of the previous year, with a purse of five thousand francs. In the "Champagne" races the winner gets, besides his prize, a basket of a hundred bottles of the sparkling wine instead of the empty "cup" that gives its name to other famous contests. After Rheims the next meeting in course is at Longchamps, in the beginning of April, opening with the Prix du Cadran, twenty-five thousand francs, distance forty-two hundred mètres, for four-year-olds. Then comes the essay of horses of the year in the Trial Sweepstakes and the Prix Daru, corresponding with the Two Thousand Guineas and the Thousand Guineas at Newmarket. The quotation begins to take shape as the favorites for the great events of May and June stand out more clearly. Of all the prizes—not excepting even the Grand Prix de Paris—the one most desired by French turfmen is the French Derby, or, to call it by its official name, the Prix du Jockey Club, the crowning event of the May meeting at Chantilly. The conditions of the Derby are as follows: For colts and fillies of three years, distance twenty-four hundred mètres, or a mile and a half, fifty thousand francs, or two thousand pounds sterling, with stakes added of forty pounds for each horse—twenty-four pounds forfeit, or twenty pounds if declared out at a fixed date; colts to carry one hundred and twenty-three pounds, and fillies one hundred and twenty pounds. The purse last year amounted to £3863 (96,575 francs). Like the English Derby, its French namesake is regarded as the test and gauge of the quality of the year's production. In the year of the foundation of this important race (1836), and for the two succeeding years, it was gained by Lord Henry Seymour's stable, whose trainer, Th. Carter, and whose stallion, Royal Oak, both brought from England, were respectively the best trainer and the best stallion of that time. In 1839, however, the duc d'Orléans's Romulus, foaled at the Meudon stud, put an end to these victories of the foreigner. In 1840 the winner was Tontine, belonging to M. Eugène Aumont, but Lord Seymour, whose horse had come in second, asserted that another horse had been substituted for Tontine, and that under this name M. Aumont had really entered the English filly Hérodiade, while the race was open only to colts foaled and raised in France. A lawsuit was the result, and while the courts refused to admit Lord Seymour's claim, the racing committee declared the mare disqualified, and M. Aumont sold his stable. In 1841, Lord Seymour again gained the Derby with Poetess (by Royal Oak), who afterward became mother of Heroine and of Monarque and grandmother of Gladiateur. In 1843 there was a dead heat between M. de Pontalbra's Renonce and Prospero, belonging to the trainer Th. Carter, and, as often happens, the worse horse—in this case it was Renonce—won the second heat. In 1848, the name of "Chantilly" being just then too odious, the Derby was run at Versailles, and was gained by M. Lupin's Gambetti. This same year is remarkable in the annals of the French turf for the excellence of its production. From this period until 1853—the year of Jouvence—M. Lupin enjoyed a series of almost uninterrupted successes. In 1855 the Derby was won by the illustrious Monarque, and the following year witnessed the first appearance upon the turf of the now famous red and blue of Lagrange. It was Beauvais, belonging to Madame Latache de Fay, who in 1860 carried off the coveted prize, which was won the next year by Gabrielle d'Estrées, from the stable of the comte de Lagrange. Then for a period of nine years the count's stable had a run of ill-luck, its horses always starting as prime favorites and being as invariably beaten. This was Trocadéro's fate in 1867. He was a great favorite, and had, moreover, on this occasion the assistance of his stable-companion Mongoubert, a horse of first-rate qualities. This time, at least, the count's backers were sure of success, but the victory that seemed within their grasp was wrested from their hands by the unexpected prowess developed upon the field of battle by a newcomer, M. Delamarre's Patricien. At a distance of two hundred mètres from the goal the three horses named were alone in the race, and the struggle between them was a desperate one. It looked almost as if it might turn out a dead heat, when Patricien, with a tremendous effort, reached the winning-post a head in advance, after one of the finest and best-contested races ever seen at Chantilly. In 1869, however, Consul succeeded in turning the tide of adverse fortune that had set in against the comte de Lagrange, but it was only for the moment, and it was not until 1878 that he was again the victor, when he won with Insulaire. He repeated the success last year with Zut, whom Goater brought in to the winning-post a length and a half ahead of the field.
Unfortunately, the winner of the French Derby can hardly ever be in good condition to contest the great race at Epsom. These two important events are too near in point of time, and the fatigue of the journey, moreover, puts the horse that has to make it at a disadvantage. Were it not for this drawback it is probable that the comte de Lagrange would beat the English oftener than he does. In May, 1878, his horse Insulaire, having just come in second in the Two Thousand Guineas at Newmarket, left that place for home, won the French Derby on Sunday, and returned to England in time for the Epsom Derby on Wednesday, where he came in second. He recrossed the Channel, and the following Sunday was second again in the Grand Prix de Paris, Thurio passing him only by a head. Making the passage again—and this was his fourth voyage within fifteen days—he gained the Ascot Derby. It is not unlikely that if this remarkable horse had remained permanently in the one country or the other he would have carried off the principal prizes of the turf.
For the last three or four years the racing men have been in the habit of meeting, after the Grand Prix de Paris, in the pretty park of La Marche, between St. Cloud and St. Germain. It is quite a private gathering, and as elegant as a dashing turnout of some fifteen or twenty four-in-hands and a pretty luncheon and charming flirtation can make it, and if dancing has not yet been introduced it soon will be. Prizes in the shape of groups in bronze and paintings and valuable weapons are awarded to the gentlemen present who may take part in the hunting steeple-chase or the race with polo ponies or with hacks.
In 1878 a new race-course was started at Enghien, to the north of Paris. The prizes are sufficiently large, the stands comfortable and the track is good; and these attractions, with the advantage of the neighborhood of the Chantilly and Morlaye stables, will no doubt make Enghien a success. Steeple-chases and hurdle-races predominate.
We can hardly close this review of turf matters in France without at least a reference to the so-called sporting journals, but what we have to say of them can be told in two words. They exist only in name. Any one who buys Le Sport, Le Turf, Le Jockey, Le Derby, the Revue des Sports, etc., on the faith of their titles—nearly all English, be it observed—will be greatly disappointed if he expects to find in them anything beyond the mere programmes of the races: they contain no criticism worthy of the name, no accurate appreciation of the subject they profess to treat of, and are even devoid of all interesting details relating to it. Far from following the example of their fellows of London and New York, these sheets concern themselves neither with hunting, shooting or fishing, nor with horse-breeding or cattle-raising, but give us instead the valuable results of their lucubrations upon the names of the winning horses of the future, and with such sagacity that a subscriber to one of them has made the calculation that if he had bet but one louis upon each of the favorites recommended by his paper he would have lost five hundred louis in the one year of his subscription.
Let us add, however, that, the press excepted, the English have nothing more to teach their neighbors in turf matters. The Pall Mall Gazette has well said that the organization of racing in France has taken a great deal of what is good from the English turf, and has excluded most of what is bad. The liberality of the French Jockey Club is declared by Vanity Fair to be in striking contrast with the starveling policy of its English namesake. The Daily Telegraph has recently eulogized the French club for having found out how to rid the turf of the pest of publicans and speculators and clerks of courses, and of all the riffraff that encumber and disgrace it in England, and that make parliamentary intervention necessary. The French turf, in fine, may be said to be inferior to the English in the number of horses, but its equal in respect of their quality, while it must be admitted to be superior to it in the average morality of their owners.
L. Lejeune.
FROM FAR.
Oh, Love, come back, across the weary way
Thou didst go yesterday—
Dear Love, come back!
"I am too far upon my way to turn:
Be silent, hearts that yearn
Upon my track."
Oh, Love! Love! Love! sweet Love! we are undone
If thou indeed be gone
Where lost things are.
"Beyond the extremest sea's waste light and noise,
As from Ghostland, thy voice
Is borne afar."
Oh, Love, what was our sin that we should be
Forsaken thus by thee?
So hard a lot!
"Upon your hearts my hands and lips were set—
My lips of fire—and yet
Ye knew me not."
Nay, surely, Love! We knew thee well, sweet Love!
Did we not breathe and move
Within thy light?
"Ye did reject my thorns who wore my roses:
Now darkness closes
Upon your sight."
Oh, Love! stern Love! be not implacable:
We loved thee, Love, so well!
Come back to us!
"To whom, and where, and by what weary way
That I went yesterday,
Shall I come thus?"
Oh weep, weep, weep! for Love, who tarried long
With many a kiss and song,
Has taken wing.
No more he lightens in our eyes like fire:
He heeds not our desire,
Or songs we sing.
Philip Bourke Marston.
AMERICANS ABROAD.
Five-and-twenty years ago Americans had no cause to be particularly proud of the manner in which, from a social point of view, their travelling compatriots were looked upon in Europe. At that epoch we were still the object of what Mr. Lowell calls a "certain condescension in foreigners." We were still the recipients at their hands of that certain half-curious, half-amused and wholly patronizing inspection which, from the height of their civilization, they might be expected to bestow upon a novel species of humanity, with manners different from their own, but recently sprung into existence and notice and disporting itself in their midst.
But this sort of thing has had its day. By dint of having been able to produce, here and there, for the edification of foreigners, a few types of American manhood and womanhood which came up to the standard of high-breeding entertained in the Old World, and of having occasionally dispensed hospitality, both at home and abroad, in a manner which was unexceptionable, besides having shown other evidences in social life—not to speak of political life—of being able to hold our own quite creditably, the "condescension" has gradually diminished in a very satisfactory manner. It is now no longer kept alive by even the typical American traveller such as he was when five-and-twenty years ago a familiar sight at every railway-station, in every steamer and in every picture-gallery, museum and ruin of every town in Europe. Now-a-days everybody in America who lays any claim to the right of being called "somebody," however small a "somebody" it may be, has been to Europe at least once in his or her life—on a three months' Cook-excursion tour, if in no other way. And those who have not been have had a father, mother, brother, sister, or in any case a cousin in some degree, who has; so that there is always a European trip in the family, so to speak. The result of all this has naturally been a certain amount of experience concerning Europe which has tended to wellnigh exterminate the race of the typically-verdant American traveller. Occasional specimens, with all their characteristics in full and vigorous development, may still be met, but these are merely isolated survivors of a once widespread family. The Americans that one meets to-day in Europe, both those who travel and those who reside there, are of a different conformation and belong to a different type. The crudeness which so shocked Europeans in their predecessors they have, with characteristic adaptability, readily and gracefully outgrown. But whether they have improved in other respects, and whether, on other grounds, we have cause to be particularly proud of our countrymen abroad at the present day, is another question.
That Americans are constantly apologizing to foreigners for America, for its institutions, for its social life, and for themselves as belonging to it, is a fact which no one ever thinks of disputing. In this faculty for disparaging our own country we may flatter ourselves that we have no equals. The Chinese may come near us in their obsequious assurances as to the utter unworthiness of everything pertaining to them, but with the difference that they, probably, are inwardly profoundly convinced of the perfection of all that their idea of courtesy obliges them to abuse, and mean nothing of what they say; whereas we do mean everything we say.
The prejudice of the English, and their attempts to transport a miniature England about with them wherever they go, furnish a frequent subject of jest to Americans on the Continent. If the total immunity from any such feeling which characterizes the Americans themselves were the result of breadth of ideas—if they spoke as they do because they measured the faults and follies, the merits and advantages, of their own institutions with as impartial an eye as they would measure those of other nations, and judged them without either malice or extenuation—we might then have the privilege of condemning narrow-mindedness and prejudice. But we have no such breadth of ideas. On the contrary, we have ourselves—none more so—the strongest sort of prejudices—prejudices which prevent us as a nation from taking wide, cosmopolitan views of things. The only difference is that with us the prejudice, instead of being in favor of everything belonging to our own country, is, in far too many cases, against it, consequently the most objectionable, the least excusable, of prejudices.
It is but rarely that we find a German, a Frenchman, a Spaniard, an Italian, or a Russian, who even having expatriated himself completely for one reason or another, and after years of absence, will not have retained some affection for his native country, some longing for it, some feeling that it is the best place on earth after all. But among any number of Americans who have been on European soil for any period of time, from twenty days to twenty years, those who are burdened with any such affection, any such longing, any such feeling, might be counted with ease. Indeed, if through some inconceivable arrangement of human affairs the Americans abroad were to be prevented from ever returning to their own country, I imagine the majority would bear the catastrophe with great equanimity, and, aside from the natural ties of family and pecuniary interests that might bind them to their home, would think the permanent life in Europe thus enforced the happiest that Fate could have bestowed upon them. For my part, I never met but one American who was anxious to return home—a lady, strange to say—and her chief reason seemed to be that she missed her pancakes, hot breads, etc. for breakfast. All the others, men and women, had but one voice to express how immeasurably more to their taste was everything in Europe—the climate, the life, the people, the country, the food, the manners, the institutions, the customs—than anything in America.
However, all Americans in Europe are not of this class, although it includes the majority. There is a comparatively small number who are as much impressed with the perfection of everything American as the most ardent patriotism could desire. These people go to Europe cased in a triple armor of self-assertion, prepared to poohpooh everything and everybody that may come under their notice, and above all to vindicate under all circumstances their independence as free-born American citizens by giving the world around them the benefit of their opinions upon all topics both in and out of season. They stand before a chef-d'œuvre of some old master and declare in a loud, aggressive voice that they see nothing whatever to admire in it, that the bystanders may know that the judgment of centuries will not weigh with them. They inquire with grim facetiousness, and terrific emphasis on the pronominal adjectives, "Is this what the people in this part of the world call a steamboat?" "Do they call that duckpond a lake?" "Is that stream what they call a river?" And so on, in a perpetual attitude of protest against everything not so large as their steamboats, their lakes, their rivers. When this genus of Americans abroad comes together with the other genus—with the people who think the most wretched daub that hangs in the most obscure corner of a European gallery, labelled with prudent indefiniteness "of the school of ——," better far than the most conscientious work by the most gifted of American artists—and a discussion arises, as it is sure to do, on the relative merits of Europe and America, then indeed does Greek meet Greek, and, both starting from equally false premises and with equally false views, the cross-purposes, the rabid comparing of things between which no comparison is possible, the amount of absurd nonsense spoken on either side, and the profound disdain of one for the other, furnish a great deal of amusement to Europeans, but make an American who has any self-respect suffer no small amount of mortification.
There is but one ground upon which these two classes of Americans meet in common, and that is in their respect for titles, coronets and coats-of-arms. It is useless to deny the immense impressiveness which this sort of thing has for the average American. Of course, if he be of the aggressive sort he will scout the very idea of any such imputation, one of the favorite jokes of his tasteful stock in trade being precisely to express sovereign contempt for anything and everything smacking of nobility, and to weigh its advantages against the chink of his own dollars and find it wanting. But this does not in the least alter the matter. The people who inveigh the most fiercely against the pretensions of blue blood are generally, the world over, the ones who are devoured by the most ardent retrospective ambitions for grandfathers and grandmothers; and the Americans who cry out loudest against the hollow vanity of the European aristocracy are generally those who have genealogical trees and coats-of-arms of authenticity more or less questionable hanging in their back parlor, and think themselves a step removed from those among their neighbors who boast of no such property.
It may not be pleasant for us to acknowledge to ourselves that our countrymen abroad are cankered with toadyism and are frightful snobs; but so it is, nevertheless. The fact is very visible, veil it as we may. The American who has not had it forced upon his attention in innumerable ways—by the undisguised empressement of those among his compatriots who frankly spend their whole time running after persons with titles, entertaining them and fawning upon them in every possible manner, no more than by the intensely American Americans who profess supreme disregard for all precedence and distinctions established by society, and yet never fail to let you know, quite accidentally, that Count This, Baron That and Marquis the Other are their very particular friends—has had an exceptional experience indeed.
This manner of disposing of all Americans abroad by putting them into one of these two categories may seem somewhat sweeping, and it will be objected that there are hundreds of our countrymen in Europe who could never come under the head of either. Granted. These hundreds undoubtedly exist: they are made up of people of superior mind and intelligence, of people of superior culture, of people who occupy that exceptional social position which, either through associations of hereditary ease, refinement, wealth and elegance, or by contact with "the best" of everything from childhood up, confers on those who belong to it very much the same outward gloss the world over. But it is never among such exceptions that the distinctive characteristics of a nation are to be sought. These are to be looked for in the great mass of the people. Now, the great mass of Americans who go abroad are people of average minds, average education, average positions; and that, thus taken as a mass, they are lamentably lacking both in good taste and dignity, every one must admit who is in any degree familiar with the American colonies in the cities of Europe where our countrymen congregate.
I should perhaps say, to express myself more accurately, "where our countrywomen congregate;" for, after all, the true representatives of America in Europe are the American women. Nine-tenths of all the American colonies consist of mothers who, having left their liege lords to their stocks and merchandise, have come abroad "for the education of their children"—an exceedingly elastic as well as convenient formula, which somehow always makes one think of charity that "covereth a multitude of sins." Occasionally—once in three or four years perhaps—the husband leaves his stocks or merchandise for a brief space of time, crosses the Atlantic and remains with his family a month or two. Occasionally also he fails to appear altogether. I am not very sure but that this last course is the one that foreigners expect him to pursue, and that when he deviates from it it is not rather a surprise to them. Europeans, I fancy, are somewhat apt to look upon the American husband as a myth. At all events, it seems to take the experience of Thomas in many instances to convince them of his material existence. The American who is content to have his wife and children leave him for an indefinite period ranging anywhere from one year to ten years, and during that time enjoy the advantages of life and travel in Europe, while he himself remains at home absorbed in his business, is a species of the genus Homo that Europeans are at a loss to comprehend. Being so rarely seen in the flesh, he necessarily occupies but a secondary position in their estimation: indeed, I think all American men, those of the class named no more than those that are more frequently seen abroad, such as doctors, clergymen, consuls, etc., may be said—some exception being made for the "leisure class" possessed of four-in-hands and so on, and an unlimited supply of the world's goods—to be considered by Europeans of no great significance, socially speaking. It is madame and mesdemoiselles who are all-important. Monsieur is thought a worthy person, with some excellent qualities, such as freedom from uncomfortable jealousies and suspicions, and both capacity and willingness for furnishing remittances, but a person rather destitute of polish—invaluable from a domestic point of view, from any other somewhat uninteresting. But madame and mesdemoiselles have every possible tribute paid to their charms: their beauty, their wit, their dash and sparkle, their independence, receive as large a share of admiration as the most insatiable among them could desire.
It must be owned that the American spirit, tempered by European education or influences, makes a very delightful compound. And it is astonishing to mark how soon the toning process does its work—how soon the most objectionable American girl of the sort known as "fast," or even "loud," softens into a very charming creature who makes the admiration bestowed upon her by European men quite comprehensible.
That this admiration is returned is perhaps not less comprehensible. American women, as a mass, are better educated than American men, and are particularly their superiors so far as outward grace and polish and the general amenities of life are concerned. These qualities, in which their countrymen are deficient, and the blander manners which accompany them, they are apt to find well developed in European men, whatever other virtues or faults may be theirs; and when to this fact is added the spice of novelty, the strong liking that American girls manifest for foreigners, and which has been the cause of putting so many American youths in anything but a benedictory frame of mind, is easily accounted for, and the marriages which so frequently take place between our girls and European men may be explained, even on other grounds than the common exchange of money on one side and title on the other.
Be the motive of these marriages either mutual interest or mutual inclination, in neither case does the generally-accepted theory that they are never happy bear the test of application. So far as my knowledge goes, the common experience is quite the reverse. The number of matches between American girls and Europeans that turn out badly is small compared to the number of those that are perfectly satisfactory. It is astonishing to see how many of our girls, who have been brought up in the belief of the American woman's prerogative of absolute supremacy in the domestic circle, when they are thus married change and seem quite content to relinquish not a few of their ideas of perfectly untrammelled independence, and to take that more subordinate position in matrimony which European life and customs allot to women. It is still more astonishing to see how contentedly and cheerfully they do so when marrying men, as they often do, whose equals in every point, were they their own countrymen, they would consider decidedly bad partis—men with no advantages of any description, without either position, career or any visible means of livelihood, often passably destitute of education and character as well. How they contrive to be satisfied with their bargain in this case is a puzzle, but satisfied they are.
Marriages of this sort, where the man has absolutely nothing to offer beyond the charms of his more or less blandly persuasive person, excite no surprise abroad. That a penniless male fortune-hunter should marry a girl with wealth is considered in Europe at the present day not only just, proper and quite as it should be, but rather comme il faut than otherwise. Let the case be reversed, and a man of fortune permit himself the caprice of marrying a portionless girl, and society cries out in horror against the mésalliance.
American women in Europe have two chief aims and occupations. The first is to obtain an entrée into the society of the country in which they are residing, and to identify themselves with that society: the second is to revile one another.
So far as the first aim is concerned, it is certainly most laudable, taken in one sense: the persons who can live in the midst of a people without endeavoring to gain an insight into its character and its customs must be possessed of an exceptionally oyster-like organization indeed. But the majority of American women seek foreign society on other grounds than this—chiefly from that tendency to ape everything European and to decry everything American to which I have already alluded as being characteristic of us as a nation. England and the English are the principal models chosen for imitation. It is marvellous to notice the fondness of American women abroad for the English accent and manner of speech and way of thinking; how enthusiastically they attend all the meets in Rome; how plaintively they tell one if one happens to have arrived quite recently from home, "Really, there is no riding across country in your America, you know." In the cities of the Continent that have large English and American colonies they attend the English church in preference to their own. I believe it is considered more exclusive to do so, and better form. In this mania for all things English we are not alone. John Bull happens to be the fashion of the day quite as much on the continent of Europe as in America, and has quite as many devoted worshippers there as among us.
Naturally, one of the chief reasons why American women have so great a liking for European society is to be found in the fact of the far more important position that married ladies occupy in that society than they do with us. For a woman who feels that she has still attractions which should not be buried in obscurity, but who has found that since her marriage she has, to all intents and purposes, been "laid upon the shelf," it is a very delightful experience to see herself once more the object of solicitous attention, considered as one of the brilliant central ornaments of a ballroom, not as one of its indispensable wall-decorations. The experience seems to be so particularly pleasant to the majority of American women, indeed, that they show the greatest disinclination to sharing it one with the other—a disinclination made manifest by that habit of reviling each other which I mentioned as the second great aim and occupation of our countrywomen abroad. That there should be very little kindness and fellow-feeling, and a great deal of envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness among their members, is characteristic of all foreign colonies in every country; but none certainly can, in this respect, surpass the American colonies in Europe, at least in so far as their feminine representatives are concerned. The extent to which these ladies carry their backbiting and slandering, and the abnormal growth which their jealousy of one another attains, fill the masculine mind with amazement.
A lady of a certain age who had lived in Europe twenty years, and who, in addition to being a person of great clearness and robustness of judgment, held a position, as a widow with a comfortable competency, which made her verdict unassailable by any suspicion of its being an interested one, spoke to me once on this subject. "In all my experience of American life in Europe," she said, "I may safely state that I have never met more than half a dozen American women who had anything but ill-natured remarks to make of one another. No American woman need hope, live as she may, do as she may, say what she may, to escape criticism at the hands of her countrywomen. The mildest manner in which they will treat her in conversation will be to say that she is 'nobody,' 'never goes anywhere,' etc., and thus dismiss her. In every other case it is, 'Mrs. A——? Oh yes, such a charming person! Perhaps just a little bit inclined to put on airs, but then—Oh, a very nice little woman. I don't suppose she has ever really been accustomed to much, you know. They say her mother was a dressmaker, but of course one never knows how true these things may be. She does make frantic efforts to get into society here: it is quite amusing. I think the Von Z——s have rather taken her up. She has plenty of money to spend, oh yes. I can't see how her husband can afford to let her live in the style she does abroad, but then that is his affair. She entertains all these people, and of course they go to her house because she can give them some amusement.'—'Mrs. B——? Do I know anything about her? Well, I think I do. Nice? Oh, I do not know that there is anything to be said against her. To be sure, in Paris people did say some rather ugly things. There was a Count L——. And I heard from a very reliable source that she was not on exactly good terms with her husband. So, having daughters, you know, I was obliged to be prudent and rather to shun her than otherwise. Without wishing to be ill-natured I feel inclined to advise you to do the same: I think you will find it quite as well to do so.'—'Mrs. C——? Oh, my dear, such a coarse, common, vulgar creature! She was never received in any sort of good society in New York. Her husband made money one fine day, and she has come abroad and is trying to impose upon people here. She is perfectly ignorant—no education whatever. And the daughters are horribly mauvais genre.'—'Mrs. D——? I should call her an undesirable acquaintance. Not but what she is a very nice sort of person—in her way—but she does make up so frightfully, and she looks so fast. Always has a crowd of officers dangling about her. Her husband is a stick. They do say that when his relatives came abroad last winter they would not call upon him. They were completely incensed at the way in which he permits his wife to carry on.'—'Mrs. E——? Pray, who is Mrs. E——? and where does she get the money to live as she does? I knew her a few years ago, when she had a thousand a year to live on, she and both her children. And now, the toilettes she makes! And, some people say, the debts! And, really, I don't see how it can be otherwise, knowing, as I do, that all the members of her family are as poor as church mice. Her husband committed suicide, you know.—No! did you never hear that? Oh yes: he was mixed up in some rather shady transactions in business, and put an end to himself in that way.'—'Mrs. F——? Oh yes, I remember. An old thing, with a grown-up son, who dresses as if she were fifteen. Dreadfully affected, and so silly! Moreover, Mrs. I—— lived in the same house with her in Dresden—had the apartment above hers—and she told me the servants said that Mrs. F—— was always in some difficulty with tradespeople.'—'Miss G——? Is it possible you have never heard about her? Why, she ran away with a footman, or something of the kind. Was brought back before she had reached the station, I believe; but you can imagine the scandal! All the girls in that family are rather queer, which, considering the stock they come from, is really not very strange,' etc. etc. etc."
In view of these facts, and of many more of the same nature, when one sees the people who come back from Europe after an absence of a year or two unable to speak their own language fluently, because they have heard and spoken nothing but German or French or Italian during that time, and who cannot stand the climate because they are not used to it; when one sees the young ladies who return home unable to take any interest in American life, and who shut themselves away from its society, which to them is most unpolished and vapid, because they have had a European education; when one sees the hundred follies which a glimpse of Europe will put into the heads of people whom before one had had every reason to think sensible enough,—one feels inclined to ask one's self the question, Are we to conclude that European life is demoralizing to Americans? Are we to conclude that the innumerable advantages that such a life confers—the wider view and broader knowledge of things, the softening influences gained by contact with a riper civilization, the æsthetic tastes developed by acquaintance with older and more perfect art—are to count as nothing, are to be outweighed by the disadvantages of the same life?
Certainly, out of a hundred Americans who go abroad ninety-nine return with what they have lost in narrowness of experience completely offset by what they have gained in pretentious affectation. So far from being improved in any way are they that their well-wishers are inclined to think it would have been far better had they never gone at all.
I do not wish to draw the ultimate conclusion from all this that it would be better for Americans were their periodical exodus to Europe to cease. Far from it. That cultivated Americans, and Americans particularly of a more reflective than active mind, should find the relative ease, culture and simplicity of European life more congenial to them than the restless, high-pressure life of America, is quite natural. And if there are no interests or ties to make their presence in their own country imperatively necessary, it is certainly a matter of option with them where they take up their abode. There is no law, human or divine, to bind a person to live in one certain spot when the surroundings are uncongenial to him, and when no private duty fetters him to it, for the simple reason that he has chanced to be born there. Every one is certainly at liberty to seek the centre that best suits him and answers to his needs. Again, there are numbers of persons who with moderate means can live according to their taste in Europe when it would be impossible for them to do so in America on the same amount. There are a thousand small gratifications that people can afford themselves on a small income abroad, a thousand small pleasures in life from which in our country they would be hopelessly debarred; and that they should be debarred from them when escape is possible, and not only possible but most simple and easy, would indeed be hard.
But why cannot Americans indulge this preference for life in Europe, why can they not avail themselves of the choice if it is open to them, and yet remember that they are Americans, and that no circumstance can absolve them from a sacred obligation to show respect for their native country, and to stand as its citizens on their own dignity? Men and women may be conscious of faults and weaknesses in their parents, but they are not expected to expose these weaknesses on that account: instinctive delicacy in any one but a churl would keep him from acknowledging any such failings to his own heart. And a similar feeling should teach us, even if our sympathies were not with our own country, to treat it in word and deed with respect. Until we do learn to show this respect before Europeans we must still resign ourselves to the imputation, if they wish to make it, of crudeness, of being still sadly in want of refining.
Alain Gore.
GLIMPSES OF PORTUGAL AND THE PORTUGUESE.
Sketch Map of NORTH SPAIN and PORTUGAL.
The mere name of Spain calls up at once a string of flashing, barbaric pictures—Moorish magnificence and Christian chivalry, bull-fights, boleros, serenades, tattered pride and cruel pleasure. All these things go to form that piquant whole, half Eastern, half European, which is the Spain of our imaginations. Our associations with the western part of the Peninsula are, on the other hand, vague and incomplete. Vasco da Gama, the earthquake of Lisbon, port wine and Portuguese plums are the Lusitanian products most readily called to mind. After them would come perhaps the names of Magellan, of Prince Henry the Navigator and of the ill-fated Don Sebastian. One poet of the country, Camoens, is as often referred to as Tasso or Ariosto. Those whose memories go back to the European events of 1830 and thereabouts may recall the Portuguese civil wars, the woes of Dona Maria and the dark infamy of Don Miguel. And more recently have we not heard of the Portuguese Guide to English Conversation and relished its delicious discoveries in our language? All these items do not, however, present a very vivid or finished picture of the country: like the words in a dictionary, they are a trifle disconnected.
Portugal was the first station of Childe Harold's pilgrimage, but it holds no place in the ordinary European tour of to-day. It does not connect with any of the main lines of travel in such a manner as to beguile the tourist insensibly over its border: a deliberate start must be made by steamer from England in order to reach Lisbon from the north. Another and probably stronger reason for our neglect of its scenery is that it is not talked of. We go to Europe to see places and follow up associations with which fame has already made us familiar, and, though Portugal has had a great past of which the records are still extant, it has not been brought to our notice by art.
The two nations living side by side on the Peninsula, though originally of the same stock and subjected to the same influences, present more points of difference than of likeness. Their early history is the same. Hispania and Lusitania both fell successively under the dominion of the Romans and of the Moors, and were modified to a considerable extent by the civilization of each. Moorish influence was predominant in Spain—Portugal retained more deeply the Roman stamp. This is easily seen in the literature of the two countries. Spanish ballads and plays show the Eastern delight in hyperbole, the Eastern fertility of invention: Portuguese literature is completely classic in spirit, avoiding all exaggeration, all offences against taste, and confining itself to classic forms, such as the pastoral, the epic and the sonnet. Many Moorish customs survive in Portugal to this day, but they have not become so closely assimilated there as in Spain to the character of the people. The cruelty which has always marked the Spanish race is no part of the Portuguese national character, which is conspicuous rather for the "gentler-sexed humanity." True, the bull-fight, that barbarous legacy of the Moors, still lingers among the Portuguese, but the sport is pursued with no such wanton intoxication of cruelty as in the country with which its name is now associated. On the other hand, the Roman tradition has been preserved in Portugal more perfectly than in Italy itself: in the "fairest of Roman colonies," as it was once called, there will be found manners and customs which bring up more vividly the life portrayed by the classic poets than any existing among the peasants of modern Italy.
ANCIENT HOUSE IN OPORTO.
Both Rome and Arabia stood sponsors for the land they thus endowed. The name Portugal is compounded of the Latin portus, a "port," and the Arabic caläh, a "castle" or "fortress." The first of these names was originally given to the town which still retains it—Oporto—one of the oldest of Portugal, and at one time its capital.
The history of Portugal, when it separates from that of Spain, is the history of a single stupendous achievement. A small nation raising itself in a short time to the power of a great empire, reaching a height which to gain was incredible, to keep impossible, and at the first relaxation of effort suddenly falling with a disastrous crash,—that is the drama of Portugal's greatness. There was no gradual rise or decline: it mounted and fell. There is a tradition that the first king of Portugal, Affonso Henriquez, was crowned on the battlefield with a burst of enthusiasm on the part of the soldiers whom he was leading against the Saracens, and that on the same day he opened his reign by the glorious victory of Ourique. Less than half a century previously the country had been given as a fief to a young knight, Count Henry of Burgundy, on his marriage with a daughter of the king of Castile. The Moors were overrunning it on the one hand, Castile was eying it jealously on the other, yet Affonso Henriquez made it an independent and permanent kingdom. This prince slaughtered Saracens and carried off honors on the field as fast as the Cid, but his deeds were not embalmed in an epic destined to become a storehouse of poetry for all the world. His chronicler did not come till about four centuries later, and then nearer and vaster achievements than those of Affonso Henriquez lay ready to his pen. At the birth of Camoens, in 1525, Portugal had gained her greatest conquests, and, if the shadows were already falling across her power, she had still great men who were making heroic efforts to retain it. Vasco da Gama had died within the year. Albuquerque, the hero of the Lusiado, the noblest and most far-sighted mind in an age of great men, had been dead ten years. Camoens, like the Greek dramatists, was soldier as well as poet: he was not alone the singer of past adventures—he was the reporter of what took place under his own eyes. His epic was already finished before the defeat of Don Sebastian in the battle of Alcazar put an end to the glory it celebrated, and in dying shortly after the poet is said to have breathed a prayer of thanksgiving at being spared the pain of surviving his country.
CHAPEL NEAR GUIMARAENS.
The period of Portuguese supremacy lasted then, altogether, less than a century. There is an irresistible temptation to ponder over what results were lost by its sudden downfall, and to seek therein some explanation of the strange fact that Portugal alone among the southern nations of Europe has never had a national art. There was a moment when the foundations for it seemed to be laid: it was the period at which early Spanish art was putting forth its first efforts, while that of Italy was in its prime. Under Emanuel the Fortunate and his successor Portugal was rich and powerful. Its intellect and ambition had been stimulated by the achievements of its great navigators. There was an awakening of interest in art and letters. A school of poets had arisen of which Camoens was to be the crown. The court, mindful of the duties of patronage, was building new churches and convents and decorating the old ones with religious pictures, and in Portugal religious feeling has always been peculiarly strong. Many of these pictures are still preserved. They are not, however, of a high order of merit, and it is not even certain that they are the work of native artists, some authorities inclining to the belief that they were done by inferior Flemish painters visiting the country, and are therefore the lees of the Flemish school, not the flower of a national one. Universal belief among the Portuguese attributes them to Gran Vasco, a master whose very existence is mythical, and who if he had lived several lives could not have painted all the works of various styles which are ascribed to him. That the artistic sense was not lacking in the Portuguese people is abundantly shown in their architecture, in their repoussé-work of the fifteenth century and the carvings in wood and stone. The church and convent at Belem, the work of this period, are ornamented by Gothic stone-work of exquisite richness and fertility of invention. The church is unfinished, like the epoch it commemorates. To an age of activity and conquest succeeded one of gloom and depression. The last of the kings whom the nation had leaned on, while it supported them so loyally, had fallen at Alcazar, and in the struggle which ensued for the succession Portugal fell an easy prey to the strongest claimant. Philip II. strengthened his claim to the vacant throne by sending an army of twenty thousand men into the country under the command of the duke of Alva, and the other heirs were too weak or too divided to oppose him. The discoveries and conquests made by Portugal had laid the foundations of riches and power for other nations: her own immediate benefit from them was over. The period of prosperous repose which may be expected to follow one of great national activity was denied to her. When the house of Braganza recovered its rights, the impulse to creative art was extinct.
CLOISTERS OF BELEM CONVENT.
Though it was as a maritime power that Portugal rose to its greatest height, it has been from time immemorial an agricultural nation, and the mass of its people are engaged in tilling the soil. They are a cheerful, industrious race, who, far from meriting Lord Byron's contemptuous epithet of "Lusitanian boors," are gifted with a natural courtesy and refinement of manner. A New-England farmer would be tempted to follow the poet's example and regard them with contempt: weighed in his balance, they would certainly be found wanting. There is no public-school system in operation, and the Portuguese farmer is not likely to be able to read or sign his name. But the want of literature is not felt in a Southern country, where social intercourse is far more cultivated than in our own rural districts. It is not by reading the newspapers, but by talking matters over with his neighbor, that the Portuguese farmer obtains his sound and intelligent views on the politics of his country. He is a great talker, taking a keen interest in all that goes on, enjoying a joke thoroughly and addressing his comrade with all the ceremonies and distinctions of a language which contains half a dozen different forms of address. The illiterate peasant is no whit behind the man of culture in the purity of his Portuguese. In no country in Europe is the language kept freer from dialect, and this notwithstanding the fact that it is one of involved grammatical forms. In France the use of the imperfect subjunctive is given up by the lower classes and by foreigners, but in Portugal the peasant has still deeper subtleties of speech at the end of his tongue. Add to this that he has a vocabulary of abuse before which the Spaniard or the California mule-driver would be silenced, and you have the extent of his linguistic accomplishments. This profane eloquence was an art imparted no doubt by the Moors. The refinements of syntax come from the Latin, to which Portuguese bears more affinity in form than any other modern language.
From the Romans the Lusitanian received his first lessons in agriculture—lessons which have never been entirely superseded. His plough was given him by the Romans, and he has not yet seen fit to alter the pattern. The ox-cart used in town and country for all purposes of draught is another relic preserved intact. Its wheels of solid wood are fastened to the axle, which revolves with them, this revolution being accompanied by a chorus of inharmonious shrieks and creaks and wails which to the foreign and prejudiced nerve is simply agonizing. Its master hears it with a different ear: he finds it rather cheerful than otherwise, good to enliven the oxen, to dispel the silence of lonely places and to frighten away wolves and bogies, of which enemies he has a childish awe. Instead, therefore, of pouring oil upon this discord, he applies lemon-juice to aggravate the sound! The cart pleases the eye of the stranger more than his ear. When in the vintage season the upright poles forming its sides are bound together by a wickerwork of vine branches with their large leaves, and the inside is heaped with purple grapes, it is a goodly sight, and one which Alma-Tadema might paint as a Roman vintage, for it is doubtless a counterfeit presentment of the grape-laden wains which moved in the season of vintage over the Campagna. The results in both cases were the same, for the vinho verde, a harsh but refreshing wine, made and drunk by the country-people, is made in the same way and is probably identical with that wherewith the Latin farmer slaked his thirst. The recipe may have descended through Lusus, the companion of Bacchus, whom tradition names as the father of the Lusitanian. Be that as it may, the Portuguese is still favored of the wine-god. Wine flows for him even more freely than water, which gift of Nature has to be dug for and sought far and wide. He drinks the ruby liquid at home and carries it afield: he even shares it with his horse, who sinks his nose, nothing loth, in its inviting depths, and neither man nor beast shows any ill effects from this indulgence.
A MADEIRA FISHERMAN.
It is in the north-western corner of the country, in the Minho province, that the highest rural prosperity is to be met with. This little province, scarcely as large as the State of Delaware, but with more than four times its population, has successfully solved the problem of affording labor and sustenance in nearly equal shares to a large number of inhabitants. Bonanza-farming is unheard of there. The high perfection of its culture, which gives the whole province the trim, thriving air of a well-kept garden, comes from individual labor minutely bestowed on small surfaces. No mowing-, threshing- or other machines are used. Instead of labor-saving, there is labor cheerfully expended—in the place of the patent mower, a patient toiler (often of the fair sex), armed with a short, curved reaping-hook. The very water, which flows plentifully in fountains and channels, comes not direct from heaven without the aid of man. It is coaxed down from the hills in tedious miles of aqueduct or forced up from a great depth by a rustic water-wheel worked by oxen, and is then distributed over the land. Except for its aridity, the climate is kind to the small farmer: there is no long inactivity forced upon him by a cold winter. A constant succession of crops may be raised, and all through the year he works cheerfully and industriously, finding his ten acres enough and his curious broad hoe dexterously wielded the equivalent of shovel and pickaxe. If ignorant of our inventions, he is intimately acquainted with some American products. If a Yankee were to walk into a Portuguese farm-house and surprise the family at dinner, he would be sure to see on the table two articles which, however oddly served, would be in their essentials familiar to him—Indian meal and salt codfish. Indian corn has long been cultivated as the principal grain: it is mixed with rye to make the bread in every-day use. The Newfoundland cod, under the name of bacalhau, has crept far into the affections of the nation, its lack of succulence being atoned for by a rich infusion of olive oil, so that the native beef, cheap and good as it is, has no chance in comparison. Altogether, the Portuguese peasant with his wine, his oil and his bacalhau fares better than most of his class. At Christmas-tide he stakes his digestion on rebanadas, a Moorish invention—nothing less than ambrosial flapjacks made by soaking huge slices of wheaten bread in new milk, frying them in olive oil and then spreading them lavishly with honey.
The Portuguese can be industrious, but all work and no play is a scheme of life which would ill accord with his social, pleasure-loving temperament. With a wisdom rare in his day and generation, and an energy unparalleled among Southern races, he manages to combine the two. After rising at dawn and working from twelve to fifteen hours, he does not sit down and fall asleep, but slings a guitar over his shoulder and is off to the nearest threshing-floor to dance a bolero. His dancing is not the more graceful for coming after hours of field-labor, but it lacks neither activity nor picturesqueness: above all, it is the outcome of light-heartedness and enjoyment in capering. The night air, soft yet cool, is refreshing after the intense heat of the day: the too sudden lowering of temperature at sundown which makes the evenings unhealthy in many Southern countries is not experienced in Portugal. Every peasant has his guitar, for a love of music is widely diffused, and some of them not only sing but improvise. In the province of the Minho it is not uncommon at these gatherings for a match of improvisation to be held between two rustic bards. One takes his guitar, and in a slow, drawling recitative sings a simple quatrain, which the other at once caps with a second in rhyme and rhythm matching the first. Verse follows verse in steady succession, and the singer who hesitates is lost: his rival rushes in with a tide of rhyme which carries all before it. In such primitive pleasures the shepherds of the Virgilian eclogue indulged.
As the life of the peasant, so is that of his wife or sweetheart. She shares in the work, guiding the oxen, cutting grass, even working on the road with hoe and basket. "Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound." Like Wordsworth's reaper, she sings as she works, and the day's labor over is ready to join in the bolero. On fête-days she is arrayed in all the magnificence of her peasant ornaments, worth, if her family is well-to-do, a hundred dollars or more—gold pendants in her ears, large gold chains of some antique Moorish design falling in a triple row over her gay bodice. The men wear long hooded cloaks of brown homespun, which they sometimes retain for convenience after the rest of the peasant-dress has been thrown aside for the regulation coat and trousers. There is no tendency to eccentricity in the national costume of Portugal, but the Portuguese colony of Madeira have invented a singular head-gear in a tiny skull-cap surmounted by a steeple of tightly-wound cloth, which serves as a handle to lift it by. Like the German student's cap, it requires practice to make it adhere at the required angle. This is a bit of coxcombry which has no match in the simple, unaffected vanity of the Portuguese.
COUNTRY-HOUSE IN PORTUGAL.
The country is left during the greater part of the year to the exclusive occupancy of the peasantry, the town atmosphere being more congenial in the long run to the social gentry of Portugal. The wealthy class in Lisbon have their villas at Cintra, in which paradise of Nature and art, with its wonderful ensemble of precipices and palaces, forest and garden scenes, they can enjoy mountains without forsaking society. Many Oporto families own country-houses in the Minho, and rusticate there very pleasantly for a month or two in early fall. The gentlemen have large shooting-parties, conducted on widely-different principles from those so unswervingly adhered to by Trollope's indefatigable sporting character, Mr. Reginald Dobbs. In a Portuguese shooting the number of men and dogs is often totally disproportionate to that of the game, and a single partridge may find itself the centre of an alarming volley from a dozen or more guns. The enjoyment is not measured, however, by the success. There is a great deal of talking and laughing, and no discontent with the day's sport is exhibited even if there be little to show for the skill and patience expended. There is further occupation in superintending vintage and harvest, while the orange-groves and luxuriant gardens offer plenty of resources for exercise or idleness. Plant-life in Portugal is singularly varied even for so warm a country. To the native orange, olive and other trees of Southern Europe have been added many exotics. The large magnolia of our Southern States, the Japanese camellia and the Australian gum tree have made themselves at home there, and grow as if their roots were in their native soil. Geraniums and heliotrope, which we confine easily in flower-pots, assume a different aspect in the public gardens of Lisbon, where the former is seen in flaming trees and hedges twenty or thirty feet high, and the latter distributes its fragrance while covering the high walls with its spreading arms.
The grapes from which port-wine is made are all grown within the narrow compass of a mountain-valley about twenty-seven miles long by five or six wide, where the conditions of soil and climate most favorable to wine-culture—including a large degree of both heat and cold—are found in perfection. Owing to its elevation the frosts in this district are tolerably severe, while in summer the sun looks steadily down with his hot glance into the valley till its vine-clad sides are permeated by heat. The grapes ripened there are of peculiar richness and strength. The trade is all in the hands of a certain number of English merchants at Oporto, who buy the grapes as they hang of the native farmers and have the wine made under their own supervision. The wine-making is conducted in much the same manner as in other countries, a certain quantity of spirits being added to arrest decay and ensure its preservation. All wine has passed through the first stage of decay, fermentation, and is liable at any time to continue the course. It may be made with little or no alcohol if it is to be drunk within the year: to ensure a longer lease of life some antiseptic is necessary. Port is, from its richness, peculiarly liable to decay, and will stand fortification better than sherry, which being a light wine is less in need of it and more apt to be over-fortified. The area in which port is produced being so small, there can be no material difference in the produce of different vineyards, but some slight superiorities of soil or aspect have given the Vesuvio, the Raïda and a few other wines a special reputation.
The history of port is a somewhat curious one. It is associated closely with the old English gentleman of a bygone generation, a staunch and bigoted being who despised French wines as he abhorred the French nation, and agreed with Doctor Johnson that claret was for boys, port for men. The vintage of 1820 was a remarkable one in Portugal. The port made in that season was of a peculiar strength and sweetness, in color nearly black. The old English gentleman would acknowledge no other as genuine, and, as Nature positively refused to repeat the experiment, the practice of dyeing port with dried elderberries and increasing the infusion of brandy to impart strength and flavor was resorted to. It was successful for some time, but after a while the secret oozed out, and the public began to receive the garnet-hued liquid again into favor, and to find, with Douglas Jerrold, that it preferred the old port to the elder. The elderberry is not sufficiently common in Portugal to make the continuation of this process popular with wine-makers. At present port is tolerably free from adulteration, though its casks and those of an inferior red wine of Spain after voyaging to England sometimes find their contents a little mixed.
Oporto is the seat of the wine-trade, and its huge warehouses are filled with stores of port ripening to a good old age, when the garnet will be exchanged for a dark umber tint. A handsome, thriving city is Oporto, mounting in terraces up the slope of a steep hill. A fine quay runs the length of the town along the Douro, and here the active life of Oporto is mainly concentrated. Any stranger watching this stir of movement and color will be struck by the prominent position which women fill in the busy crowd. The men do not absorb all branches of labor. Besides the water-carriers, market-women and fruit-vendors there may be seen straight, stalwart lasses acting as portresses to convey loads to and from the boats which are fastened to the river-wall. Many of the servants and other laborers through Portugal come from Galicia, the inhabitants of that Spanish province enjoying a reputation for honesty and faithful service combined with stupidity.
QUAY AT OPORTO—THE QUEEN'S STAIRS.
A sad contrast to the fertility of the Minho is presented by the country opposite Lisbon and the adjoining province of Alemtejo. This Portuguese campagna was in Roman days a fertile plain covered with golden wheat-fields. Now it is a barren, melancholy waste, producing only ruins. It is in and about this region that the most important Roman remains in the country are to be found. The soil in the neighborhood of Evora is rich in coins and other relics, and Evora has, besides its great aqueduct, the massive pillars of a temple to Diana, which, sad to say, was once put to ignoble use as a slaughter-house. The ruins of Troia have escaped desecration, if they have not obtained the care and study which they merit. Lying on a low tongue of land which projects into the bay of Setubal, the city of Troia is buried, not in Pompeian lava, but in deep mounds of sand, accumulated there by the winds and waves. A tremendous storm in 1814 washed away a part of this sand and revealed something of its treasure, but it was not till 1850 that the hint was followed up by antiquaries and a regular digging made. A large Roman house was uncovered, together with a vast débris of marble columns, mosaic pavements, baths, urns, and other appurtenances of Roman existence. The excavations have been far from thorough; the peninsular Troy still awaits its Schliemann. The name Troia was probably bestowed by Portuguese antiquaries of the Renaissance period, who mention it thus in their writings. According to Roman records, the city flourished about 300 a.d. as Cetobriga.
Sketch Map of SETUBAL and RUINS OF TROIA.
We must return to the Minho province—still the most representative section of Portugal—for monuments of Portuguese antiquity. Guimaraens is the oldest town of purely native growth, and is closely associated with the life of Affonso Henriquez. The massive castle in which he was born, and the church which witnessed the christening of the first king of Portugal, are still standing: the old walls of the town date back to the time of the hero; and not far off is the field where he fought the battle which gained him his independence at eighteen. Within a few miles of Guimaraens is Braga, celebrated for centuries as a stronghold of the Church. Its Gothic cathedral is of grand proportions, containing a triple nave, and belongs to the thirteenth century. The church treasures shut up in its sanctuary are among the richest in the Peninsula.
Portugal presents the curious spectacle of a country in which the customs of antiquity have lasted as long as its monuments. In a certain way the former are the more impressive. As some little familiar trait will sometimes give a fresher insight into a great man than the more important facts of his biography, so the ploughing, harvesting and singing of a Portuguese peasant, with their bucolic simplicity, bring the life of the ancients a little nearer to us than the sight of their great aqueducts and columns. But the nineteenth century is striking the death-blow of the bucolic very fast, the world over, and Portugal is awake and bestirring herself—not the less effectively that she is making no noise about it. Nevertheless, she is becoming better known. Mr. Oswald Crawfurd, the English consul at Oporto, who has lived in Portugal for many years, is writing about it from the best point of view, half within, half without. His book of travels published under the pseudonym of Latouche, and a volume entitled Portugal, Old and New, recently issued under his own name, throw a strong, clear light upon the country and its inhabitants. Another sympathetic and entertaining traveller is Lady Jackson, the author of Fair Lusitania.
CHURCH PLATE IN BRAGA CATHEDRAL.
The Portugal of Mr. Crawfurd and Lady Jackson is a different land from that which Southey, Byron and other English celebrities visited at the beginning of this century: it is not the same which Wordsworth's daughter, Mrs. Quillinan, travelled through on horseback in 1837, making light of inconveniences and looking at everything with kind, frank eyes. Lisbon is no longer a beautiful casket filled with dirt and filth, but a clean, bright and active city, and Portugal is no longer a sleeping land, but a well-governed country, which will probably be hindered by its small natural proportions, but not by any sluggishness or incapacity of its people, from taking a high place among European nations.
A GRAVEYARD IDYL.
In the summer of 187-, when young Doctor Putnam was recovering from an attack of typhoid fever, he used to take short walks in the suburbs of the little provincial town where he lived. He was still weak enough to need a cane, and had to sit down now and then to rest. His favorite haunt was an old-fashioned cemetery lying at the western edge of the alluvial terrace on which the town is built. The steep hillside abuts boldly on the salt marsh. One of the cemetery-paths runs along the brink of the hill; and here, on a wooden bench under a clump of red cedars, Putnam would sit for hours enjoying the listless mood of convalescence. Where the will remains passive, the mind, like an idle weathercock, turns to every puff of suggestion, and the senses, born new from sickness, have the freshness and delicacy of a child's. It soothed his eye to follow lazily the undulations of the creek, lying like the folds of a blue silk ribbon on the flat ground of the marsh below. He watched the ebbing tide suck down the water from the even lines of trenches that sluiced the meadows till the black mud at their bottom glistened in the sun. The opposite hills were dark with the heavy foliage of July. In the distance a sail or two speckled the flashing waters of the bay, and the lighthouse beyond bounded the southern horizon.
It was a quiet, shady old cemetery, not much disturbed by funerals. Only at rare intervals a fresh heap of earth and a slab of clean marble intruded with their tale of a new and clamorous grief among the sunken mounds and weatherstained tombstones of the ancient sleepers for whom the tears had long been dried. Now and then a mourner came to put flowers on a grave; now and then one of the two or three laborers who kept the walks and shrubberies in order would come along the path by Putnam's bench, trundling a squeaking wheelbarrow; sometimes a nurse with a baby-carriage found her way in. But generally the only sounds to break the quiet were the songs of birds, the rumble of a wagon over the spile bridge across the creek and the whetting of scythes in the water-meadows, where the mowers, in boots up to their waists, went shearing the oozy plain and stacking up the salt hay.
One afternoon Putnam was in his accustomed seat, whistling softly to himself and cutting his initials into the edge of the bench. The air was breathless, and the sunshine lay so hot on the marshes that it seemed to draw up in a visible steam a briny incense which mingled with the spicy smell of the red cedars. Absorbed in reverie, he failed to notice how the scattered clouds that had been passing across the sky all the afternoon were being gradually reinforced by big fluffy cumuli rolling up from the north, until a rumble overhead and the rustle of a shower in the trees aroused him.
In the centre of the grounds was an ancient summer-house standing amidst a maze of flower-beds intersected by gravel-walks. This was the nearest shelter, and, as the rain began to patter smartly, Putnam pocketed his knife, turned up his coat-collar and ran for it. Arrived at the garden-house, he found there a group of three persons, driven to harbor from different parts of the cemetery. The shower increased to a storm, the lattices were lashed by the rain and a steady stream poured from the eaves. The althæa and snowberry bushes in the flower-pots, and even the stunted box-edges along the paths, swayed in the wind. It grew quite dark in the summer-house, shaded by two or three old hemlocks, and it was only by the lightning-flashes that Putnam could make out the features of the little company of refugees. They stood in the middle of the building, to avoid the sheets of rain blown in at the doors in gusts, huddling around a pump that was raised on a narrow stone platform—not unlike the daughters of Priam clustered about the great altar in the penetralia: Præcipites atra ceu tempestate columbæ.
They consisted of a young girl, an elderly woman with a trowel and watering-pot, and a workman in overalls, who carried a spade and had perhaps been interrupted in digging a grave. The platform around the pump hardly gave standing room for a fourth. Putnam accordingly took his seat on a tool-chest near one of the entrances, and, while the soft spray blew through the lattices over his face and clothes, he watched the effect of the lightning-flashes on the tossing, dripping trees of the cemetery-grounds.
Soon a shout was heard and down one of the gravel-walks, now a miniature river, rushed a Newfoundland dog, followed by a second man in overalls. Both reached shelter soaked and lively. The dog distributed the contents of his fur over our party by the pump, nosed inquiringly about, and then subsided into a corner. Second laborer exchanged a few words with first laborer, and melted into the general silence. The slight flurry caused by their arrival was only momentary, while outside the storm rose higher and inside it grew still darker. Now and then some one said something in a low tone, addressed rather to himself than to the others, and lost in the noise of the thunder and rain.
But in spite of the silence there seemed to grow up out of the situation a feeling of intimacy between the members of the little community in the summer-house. The need of shelter—one of the primitive needs of humanity—had brought them naturally together and shut them up "in a tumultuous privacy of storm." In a few minutes, when the shower should leave off, their paths would again diverge, but for the time being they were inmates and held a household relation to one another.
And so it came to pass that when it began to grow lighter and the rain stopped, and the sun glanced out again on the reeking earth and saturated foliage, conversation grew general.
"Gracious sakes!" said the woman with the trowel and watering-pot as she glanced along the winding canals that led out from the summer-house—"jest see the water in them walks!"
"Gol! 'tis awful!" murmured the Irishman with the spade. "There'll be a fut of water in the grave, and the ould mon to be buried the morning!"
"Ah, they had a right to put off the funeral," said the other workman, "and not be giving the poor corp his death of cold."
"'Tis warrum enough there where the ould mon's gone, but 'tis cold working for a poor lad like mesilf in the bottom of a wet grave. Gol! 'tis like a dreen." With that he shouldered his spade and waded reluctantly away.
Second laborer paused to light his dhudeen, and then disappeared in the opposite direction, his Newfoundland taking quite naturally to the deepest puddles in their course.
"Hath this fellow no feeling of his business?" asked Putnam, rising and sauntering up to the pump. The question was meant more for the younger than the elder of the two women, but the former paid no heed to it, and the latter, by way of answer, merely glanced at him suspiciously and said "H'm!" She was unlocking the tool-chest on which he had been sitting, and now raised the lid, stowed away her trowel and watering-pot, locked the chest again and put the key in her pocket, with the remark, "I guess I hain't got any more use for a sprinkle-pot to-day."
"It is rather de trop," said Putnam.
The old woman looked at him still more distrustfully, and then, drawing up her skirts, showed to his great astonishment a pair of india-rubber boots, in which she stumped away through the water and the mud, leaving in the latter colossal tracks which speedily became as pond-holes in the shallower bed of the stream. The younger woman stood at the door, gathering her dress about her ankles and gazing irresolutely at these frightful vestigia which gauged all too accurately the depth of the mud and the surface-water above it.
"They look like the fossil bird-tracks in the Connecticut Valley sandstone," said Putnam, following the direction of her eyes.
These were very large and black. She turned them slowly on the speaker, a tallish young fellow with a face expressive chiefly of a good-natured audacity and an alertness for whatever in the way of amusement might come within range. Her look rested on him indifferently, and then turned back to the wet gravel.
Putnam studied for a moment the back of her head and her figure, which was girlishly slender and clad in gray. "How extraordinary," he resumed, "that she should happen to have rubber boots on!"
"She keeps them in the tool-chest. The cemetery-man gives her a key," she replied after a pause, and as if reluctantly. Her voice was very low and she had the air of talking to herself.
"Isn't that a rather queer place for a wardrobe? I wonder if she keeps anything else there besides the boots and the trowel and the 'sprinkle-pot'?"
"I believe she has an umbrella and some flower-seeds."
"Now, if she only had a Swedish cooking-box and a patent camp-lounge," said Putnam laughing, "she could keep house here in regular style."
"She spends a great deal of time here: her children are all here, she told me."
"Well, it's an odd taste to live in a burying-ground, but one might do worse perhaps. There's nothing like getting accustomed gradually to what you've got to come to. And then if one must select a cemetery for a residence, this isn't a bad choice. Have you noticed what quaint old ways they have about it? At sunset the sexton rings a big bell that hangs in the arch over the gateway: he told me he had done it every day for twenty years. It's not done, I believe, on the principle of firing a sunset gun, but to let people walking in the grounds know the gate is to be shut. There's a high stone wall, you know, and somebody might get shut in all night. Think of having to spend the night here!"
"I have spent the night here often," she answered, again in an absent voice and as if murmuring to herself.
"You have?" exclaimed Putnam. "Oh, you slept in the tool-chest, I suppose, on the old lady's shake-down."
She was silent, and he began to have a weird suspicion that she had spoken in earnest. "This is getting interesting," he said to himself; and then aloud, "You must have seen queer sights. Of course, when the clock struck twelve all the ghosts popped out and sat on their respective tombstones. The ghosts in this cemetery must be awfully old fellows. It doesn't look as if they had buried any one here for a hundred and thirty-five years. I've often thought it would be a good idea to inscribe Complet over the gate, as they do on a Paris omnibus."
"You speak very lightly of the dead," said the young girl in a tone of displeasure and looking directly at him.
Putnam felt badly snubbed. He was about to attempt an explanation, but her manner indicated that she considered the conversation at an end. She gathered up her skirts and prepared to leave the summer-house. The water had soaked away somewhat into the gravel.
"Excuse me," said Putnam, advancing desperately and touching his hat, "but I notice that your shoes are thin and the ground is still very wet. I'm going right over to High street, and if I can send you a carriage or anything—"
"Thank you, no: I sha'n't need it;" and she stepped off hastily down the walk.
Putnam looked after her till a winding of the path took her out of sight, and then started slowly homeward. "What the deuce could she mean," he pondered as he walked along, "about spending the night in the cemetery? Can she—no she can't—be the gatekeeper's daughter and live in the gate-house? Anyway, she's mighty pretty."
His mother and his maiden aunt, who with himself made up the entire household, received him with small scoldings and twitterings of anxiety. They felt his wet clothes, prophesied a return of his fever and forced him to go immediately to bed, where they administered hot drinks and toast soaked in scalded milk. He lay awake a long time, somewhat fatigued and excited. In his feeble condition and in the monotony which his life had assumed of late the trifling experience of the afternoon took on the full proportions of an adventure. He thought it over again and again, but finally fell asleep and slept soundly. He awoke once, just at dawn, and lay looking through his window at a rosy cloud which reposed upon an infinite depth of sky, motionless as if sculptured against the blue. A light morning wind stirred the curtains and the scent of mignonette floated in from the dewy garden. He had that confused sense of anticipation so common in moments between waking and sleeping, when some new, pleasant thing has happened, or is to happen on the morrow, which the memory is too drowsy to present distinctly. Of this pleasant, indistinct promise that auroral cloud seemed somehow the omen or symbol, and watching it he fell asleep again. When he next awoke the sunlight of mid-forenoon was flooding the chamber, and he heard his mother's voice below stairs as she sat at her sewing.
In the afternoon he started on his customary walk, and his feet led him involuntarily to the cemetery. As he traversed the path along the edge of the hill he saw in one of the grave-lots the heroine of his yesterday's encounter, and a sudden light broke in on him: she was a mourner. And yet how happened it that she wore no black? There was a wooden railing round the enclosure, and within it a single mound and a tombstone of fresh marble. A few cut flowers lay on the grave. She was sitting in a low wicker chair, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes fixed vacantly on the western hills. Putnam now took closer note of her face. It was of a brown paleness. The air of hauteur given it by the purity of the profile and the almost insolent stare of the large black eyes was contradicted by the sweet, irresolute curves of the mouth. At present her look expressed only a profound apathy. As he approached her eyes turned toward him, but seemingly without recognition. Diffidence was not among Tom Putnam's failings: he felt drawn by an unconquerable sympathy and attraction to speak to her, even at the risk of intruding upon the sacredness of her grief.
"Excuse me, miss," he began, stopping in front of her, "but I want to apologize for what I said yesterday about—about the cemetery. It must have seemed very heartless to you, but I didn't know that you were in mourning when I spoke as I did."
"I have forgotten what you said," she answered.
"I am glad you have," said Putnam, rather fatuously. There seemed really nothing further to say, but as he lingered for a moment before turning away a perverse recollection surprised him, and he laughed out loud.
She cast a look of strong indignation at him, and rose to her feet.
"Oh, I ask your pardon a thousand times," he exclaimed reddening violently. "Please don't think that I was laughing at anything to do with you. The fact is that last idiotic speech of mine reminded me of something that happened day before yesterday. I've been sick, and I met a friend on the street who said, 'I'm glad you're better;' and I answered, 'I'm glad that you're glad that I'm better;' and then he said, 'I'm glad that you're glad that I'm glad that you're better'—like the House that Jack Built, you know—and it came over me all of a sudden that the only way to continue our conversation gracefully would be for you to say, 'I'm glad that you're glad that I've forgotten what you said yesterday.'"
She had listened impatiently to this naïve and somewhat incoherent explanation, and she now said, "I wish you would go away. You see that I am alone here and in trouble. I can't imagine what motive you can have for annoying me in this way," her eyes filling with angry tears.
Putnam was too much pained by the vehemence of her language to attempt any immediate reply. His first impulse was to bow and retire without more words. But a pertinacity which formed one of his strongest though perhaps least amiable traits countermanded his impulse, and he said gravely, "Certainly, I will go at once, but in justice to myself I must first assure you that I didn't mean to intrude upon you or annoy you in any way."
She sank down into her chair and averted her face.
"You say," he continued, "that you are in trouble, and I beg you to believe that I respect your affliction, and that when I spoke to you just now it was simply to ask pardon for having hurt your feelings yesterday, without meaning to, by my light mention of the dead. I've been too near death's door myself lately to joke about it." He paused, but she remained silent. "I'm going away now," he said softly. "Won't you say that you excuse me, and that you haven't any hard feelings toward me?"
"Yes, oh yes," she answered wearily: "I have no feelings. Please go away."
Putnam raised his hat respectfully, and went off down the pathway. On reaching the little gate-house he sat down to rest on a bench before the door. The gatekeeper was standing on the threshold in his shirt-sleeves, smoking a pipe. "A nice day after the rain, sir," he began.
"Yes, it is."
"Have you any folks here, sir?"
"No, no one. But I come here sometimes for a stroll."
"Yes, I've seen you about. Well, it's a nice, quiet place for a walk, but the grounds ain't kep' up quite the shape they used to be: there ain't so much occasion for it. Seems as though the buryin' business was dull, like pretty much everything else now-a-days."
"Yes, that's so," replied Putnam absently.
The gatekeeper spat reflectively upon the centre of the doorstep, and resumed: "There's some that comes here quite reg'lar, but they mostly have folks here. There's old Mrs. Lyon comes very steady, and there's young Miss Pinckney: she's one of the most reg'lar."
"Is that the young lady in gray, with black eyes?"
"That's she."
"Who is she in mourning for?"
"Well, she ain't exactly in mourning. I guess, from what they say, she hain't got the money for black bunnets and dresses, poor gal! But it's her brother that's buried here—last April. He was in the hospital learning the doctor's business when he was took down."
"In the hospital? Was he from the South, do you know?"
"Well, that I can't say: like enough he was."
"Did you say that she is poor?"
"So they was telling me at the funeral. It was a mighty poor funeral too—not more'n a couple of hacks. But you can't tell much from that, with the fashions now-a-days: some of the richest folks buries private like. You don't see no such funerals now as they had ten years back. I've seen fifty kerridges to onst a-comin' in that gate," waving his pipe impressively toward that piece of architecture, "and that was when kerridge-hire was half again as high as it is now. She must have spent a goodly sum in green-house flowers, though: fresh b[=o]quets 'most every day she keeps a-fetchin'."
"Well, good-day," said Putnam, starting off.
"Good-day, sir."
Putnam had himself just completed his studies at the medical college when attacked by fever, and he now recalled somewhat vaguely a student of the name of Pinckney, and remembered to have heard that he was a Southerner. The gatekeeper's story increased the interest which he was beginning to feel in his new acquaintance, and he resolved to follow up his inauspicious beginnings to a better issue. He knew that great delicacy would be needed in making further approaches, and so decided to keep out of her sight for a time. In the course of the next few days he ascertained, by visits to the cemetery and talks with the keeper, that she now seldom visited her brother's grave in the forenoon, although during the first month after his death she had spent all her days and some of her nights beside it.
"I hadn't the heart, sir, to turn her out at sundown, accordin' to the regulations; so I'd leave the gate kinder half on the jar, and she'd slip out when she had a mind to."
Putnam read the inscription on the tombstone, which ran as follows: "To the Memory of Henry Pinckney. Born October 29th, 1852. Died April 27th, 187-;" and under this the text, "If thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him." He noticed with a sudden twinge of pity that the flowers on the grave, though freshly picked every day, were wild-flowers—mostly the common field varieties, with now and then a rarer blossom from wood or swamp, and now and then a garden flower. He gathered from this that the sister's purse was running low, and that she spent her mornings in collecting flowers outside the city. His imagination dwelt tenderly upon her slim, young figure and mourning face passing through far-away fields and along the margins of lonely creeks in search of some new bloom which grudging Nature might yield her for her sorrowful needs. Meanwhile he determined that the shrine of her devotion should not want richer offerings. There was a hot-house on the way from his home to the cemetery, and he now stopped there occasionally of a morning and bought a few roses to lay upon the mound. This continued for a fortnight. He noticed that his offerings were left to wither undisturbed, though the little bunches of field flowers were daily renewed as before.
In spite of the funereal nature of his occupation his spirits in these days were extraordinarily high. His life, so lately escaped from the shadows of death, seemed to enjoy a rejuvenescence and to put forth fresh blossoms in the summer air. As he sat under the cedars and listened to the buzzing of the flies that frequented the shade, the unending sound grew to be an assurance of earthly immortality. His new lease of existence prolonged itself into a fee simple, and even in presence of the monuments of decay his future, filled with bright hazy dreams, melted softly into eternity. But one morning as he approached the little grave-lot with his accustomed offerings he looked up and saw the young girl standing before him. Her eyes were fixed on the flowers in his hand. He colored guiltily and stood still, like a boy caught robbing an orchard. She looked both surprised and embarrassed, but said at once, "If you are the gentleman who has been putting flowers on my brother's grave, I thank you for his sake, but—"
She paused, and he broke in: "I ought to explain, Miss Pinckney, that I have a better right than you think, perhaps, to bring these flowers here: I was a fellow-student with your brother in the medical school."
Her expression changed immediately. "Oh, did you know my brother?" she asked eagerly.
He felt like a wretched hypocrite as he answered, "Yes, I knew him, though not intimately exactly. But I took—I take—a very strong interest in him."
"Every one loved Henry who knew him," she said, "but his class have all been graduated and gone away, and he made few friends, because he was so shy. No one comes near him now but me."
He was silent. She walked to the grave, and he followed, and they stood there without speaking. It did not seem to occur to her to ask why he had not mentioned her brother at their former interview. She was evidently of an unsuspecting nature, or else all other impressions were forgotten and absorbed in the one thought of her bereavement. After a glance at her Putnam ventured to lay his roses reverently upon the mound. She held in her hand a few wild-flowers just gathered. These she kissed, and dropped them also on the grave. He understood the meaning of her gesture and was deeply moved.
"Poor little, dull-colored things!" she said, looking down at them.
"They are a thousand times more beautiful than mine," he exclaimed passionately. "I am ashamed of those heartless affairs: anybody can buy them."
"Oh no: my brother was very fond of roses. Perhaps you remember his taste for them?" she inquired innocently.
"I—I don't think he ever alluded to them. The atmosphere of the medical college was not very æsthetic, you know."
"At first I used to bring green-house flowers," she continued, without much heeding his answer, "but lately I haven't been able to afford them except on Sundays. Sundays I bring white ones from the green-house."
She had seated herself in her wicker chair, and Putnam, after a moment's hesitation, sat down on the low railing near her. He observed among the wild plants that she had gathered the mottled leaves and waxy blossoms of the pipsissewa and its cousin the shinleaf.
"You have been a long way to get some of those," he said: "that pipsissewa grows in hemlock woods, and the nearest are several miles from here."
"I don't know their names. I found them in a wood where I used to walk sometimes with my brother. He knew all their names. I went there very early this morning, when the dew was on them."
"'Flowers that have on them the cold dews of the night are strewings fittest for graves,'" said Putnam in an undertone.
Her face had assumed its usual absent expression, and she seemed busy with some memory and unconscious of his presence. He recalled the latter to her by rising and saying, "I will bid you good-morning now, but I hope you will let me come and sit here sometimes if it doesn't disturb you. I have been very sick myself lately: I was near dying of the typhoid fever. I think it does me good to come here."
"Did you have the typhoid? My brother died of the typhoid."
"May I come sometimes?"
"You may come if you wish to visit Henry. But please don't bring any more of those expensive flowers. I suppose it is selfish in me, but I can't bear to have any of his friends do more for him than I can."
"I won't bring any more, of course, if it troubles you, and I thank you very much for letting me come. Good-morning, Miss Pinckney." He bowed and walked away.
Putnam availed himself discreetly of the permission given. He came occasionally of an afternoon, and sat for an hour at a time. Usually she said little. Her silence appeared to proceed not from reserve, but from dejection. Sometimes she spoke of her brother. Putnam learned that he had been her only near relative. Their parents had died in her childhood, and she had come North with her brother when he entered the medical school. From something that she once said Putnam inferred that her brother had owned an annuity which died with him, and that she had been left with little or nothing. They had few acquaintances in the North, almost none in the city. An aunt in the South had offered her a home, and she was going there in the fall. She looked forward with dread to the time of her departure.
"It will be so cruel," she said, "to leave my poor boy all alone here among strangers, and I never away from him before."
"Don't think of it now," he answered, "and when you are gone I will come here often and see to everything."
Her bereavement had evidently benumbed all her faculties and left her with a slight hold on life. She had no hopes or wishes for the future. In alluding to her brother she confused her tenses, speaking of him sometimes in the past, and sometimes in the present as of one still alive. Putnam felt that in a girl of her age this mood was too unnatural to last, and he reckoned not unreasonably on the reaction that must come when her youth began again to assert its rights. He was now thoroughly in love, and as he sat watching her beautiful abstracted face he found it hard to keep back some expression of tenderness. Often, too, it was difficult for him to tone down his spirits to the proper pitch of respectful sympathy with her grief. His existence was golden with new-found life and hope: into the shadow that covered hers he could not enter. He could only endeavor to draw her out into the sunshine once more.
One day the two were sitting, as usual, in silence or speaking but rarely. It was a day in the very core of summer, and the life of Nature was at its flood. The shadows of the trees rested so heavy and motionless on the grass that they appeared to sink into it and weigh it down like palpable substances.
"I feel," said Putnam suddenly, "as though I should live for ever."
"Did you ever doubt it?" she asked.
"Oh, I mean here—ici bas—in the body. I can't conceive of death or of a spiritual existence on such a day as this."
"There is nothing here to live for," she said wearily. Presently she added, "This hot glare makes me sick: I wish those men would stop hammering on the bridge. I wish I could die and get away into the dark."
Putnam paused before replying. He had never heard her speak so impatiently. Was the revulsion coming? Was she growing tired of sorrow? After a minute he said, "Ah, you don't know what it is to be a convalescent and lie for months in a darkened room listening to the hand-organ man and the scissors-grinder, and the fellow that goes through the street hallooing 'Cash paid for rags!' It's like having a new body to get the use of your limbs again and come out into the sunshine."
"Were you very sick?" she inquired with some show of interest.
He remembered with some mortification that he had told her so once or twice before. She had apparently forgotten it. "Yes, I nearly died."
"Were you glad to recover?"
"Well, I can't remember that I had any feelings in particular when I first struck the up-track. It was hard work fighting for life, and I don't think I cared much one way or the other. But when I got well enough to sit up it began to grow interesting. I used to sit at the window in a very infantile frame of mind and watch everything that went by. It wasn't a very rowdy life, as the prisoner in solitary confinement said to Dickens. We live in a back street, where there's not much passing. The advent of the baker's cart used to be the chief excitement. It was painted red and yellow, and he baked very nice leaf-cookies. My mother would hang a napkin in the door-knocker when she wanted him to stop; and as I couldn't see the knocker from my window, I used to make bets with Dummy as to whether the wagon would stop or not."
"Your mother is living, then?"
"Yes: my father died when I was a boy."
She asked no further questions, but a few minutes after rose and said, "I think I will go now. Good-evening."
He had never before outstayed her. He looked at his watch and found that it was only half-past four.
"I hope," he began anxiously, "that you are not feeling sick: you spoke just now of being oppressed by the heat. Excuse me for staying so long."
"Oh no," she answered, "I'm not sick. I reckon I need a little rest. Good-evening."
Putnam lingered after she was gone. He found his way to his old bench under the cedars and sat there for a while. He had not occupied this seat since his first meeting with Miss Pinckney in the summer-house, and the initials which he had whittled on its edge impressed him as belonging to some bygone stage of his history. This was the first time that she had questioned him about himself. His sympathy had won her confidence, but she had treated him hitherto in an impersonal way, as something tributary to her brother's memory, like the tombstone or the flowers on his grave. The suspicion that he was seeking her for her own sake had not, so far as Putnam could discover, ever entered her thoughts.
But in the course of their next few interviews there came a change in her behavior. The simplicity and unconsciousness of her sorrow had become complicated with some other feeling. He caught her looking at him narrowly once or twice, and when he looked hard at her there was visible in her manner a soft agitation—something which in a girl of more sanguine complexion might have been interpreted as a blush. She sometimes suffered herself to be coaxed a little way into talking of things remote from the subject of her sorrow. Occasionally she questioned Putnam shyly about himself, and he needed but slight encouragement to wax confidential. She listened quietly to his experiences, and even smiled now and then at something that he said. His heart beat high with triumph: he fancied that he was leading her slowly up out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
But the upward path was a steep one. She had many sudden relapses and changes of mood. Putnam divined that she felt her grief loosening its tight hold on her and slipping away, and that she clung to it as a consecrated thing with a morbid fear of losing it altogether. There were days when her demeanor betokened a passionate self-reproach, as though she accused herself secretly of wronging her brother and profaning his tomb in allowing more cheerful thoughts to blunt the edge of her bereavement. He remarked also that her eyes were often red from weeping. There sometimes mingled with her remorse a plain resentment toward himself. At such times she would hardly speak to him, and the slightest gayety or even cheerfulness on his part was received as downright heartlessness. He made a practice, therefore, of withdrawing at once whenever he found her in this frame of mind.
One day they had been sitting long together. She had appeared unusually content, but had spoken little. The struggle in her heart had perhaps worn itself out for the present, and she had yielded to the warm current of life and hope which was bearing her back into the sunshine. Suddenly the elderly woman who had formed one of the company in the summer-house on the day of the thunderstorm passed along the walk with her trowel and watering-pot. She nodded to Miss Pinckney, and then, pausing opposite the pair, glanced sharply from one to the other, smiled significantly and passed on. This trifling incident aroused Putnam's companion from her reverie: she looked at him with a troubled expression and said, "Do you think you ought to come here so much?"
"Why not?"
"I don't know. How well did you know my brother Henry?"
"If I didn't know him so very intimately when he was living, I feel that I know him well now from all that you have told me about him. And, if you will pardon my saying so, I feel that I know his sister a little too, and have some title to her acquaintance."
"You have been very kind, and I am grateful for it, but perhaps you ought not to come so much."
"I'm sorry if I have come too much," rejoined Putnam bitterly, "but I shall not come much more. I am going away soon. The doctor says I am not getting along fast enough and must have change of air. He has ordered me to the mountains."
There was silence for a few minutes. He was looking moodily down at the turf, pulling a blade of grass now and then, biting it and throwing it away.
"I thank you very much for your sympathy and kindness," she said at length, rising from her chair; "and I hope you will recover very fast in the mountains. Good-bye."
She extended her hand, which Putnam took and held. It was trembling perceptibly. "Wait a moment," he said. "Before I go I should like to show some little mark of respect to your brother's memory. Won't you meet me at the green-house to-morrow morning—say about nine o'clock—and select a few flowers? They will be your flowers, you know—your offering."
"Yes," she answered, "I will; and I thank you again for him."
The next morning at the appointed hour Putnam descended the steps into the green-house. The gardener had just watered the plants. A rich steam exhaled from the earth and clouded all the glass, and the moist air was heavy with the breath of heliotropes and roses. A number of butterflies were flying about, and at the end of a many-colored perspective of leaves and blossoms Putnam saw Miss Pinckney hovering around a collection of tropical orchids. The gardener had passed on into an adjoining hot-house, and no sound broke the quiet but the dripping of water in a tank of aquatic plants. The fans of the palms and the long fronds of the tree-ferns hung as still as in some painting of an Indian isle.
She greeted him with a smile and held out her hand to him. The beauty of the morning and of the place had wrought in her a gentle intoxication, and the mournful nature of her errand was for the moment forgotten. "Isn't it delicious here?" she exclaimed: "I think I should like to live in a green-house and grow like a plant."
"A little of that kind of thing would do you no end of good," he replied—"a little concentrated sunshine and bright colors and the smell of the fresh earth, you know. If you were my patient, I would make you take a course of it. I'd say you wanted more vegetable tissue, and prescribe a green-house for six months. I've no doubt this man here would take you. A young-lady apprentice would be quite an attractive feature. You could pull off dead leaves and strike graceful attitudes, training up vines, like the gardener's daughter in Tennyson."
"What are those gorgeous things?" she asked, pointing to a row of orchids hung on nails along the wall.
"Those are epiphytic orchids—air-plants, you know: they require no earth for their roots: they live on the air."
"Like a chameleon?"
"Like a chameleon."
He took down from its nail one of the little wooden slabs, and showed her the roots coiled about it, with the cluster of bulbs. The flower was snow-white and shaped like a butterfly. The fringe of the lip was of a delicate rose-pink, and at the base of it were two spots of rich maroon, each with a central spot of the most vivid orange. Every color was as pronounced as though it were the only one.
"What a daring combination!" she cried. "If a lady should dress in all those colors she'd be thought vulgar, but somehow it doesn't seem vulgar in a flower."
She turned the blossom over and looked at the under side of the petals. "Those orange spots show right through the leaf," she went on, "as if they were painted and the paint laid on thick."
"Do you know," said Putnam, "that what you've just said gives me a good deal of encouragement?"
"Encouragement? How?"
"Well, it's the first really feminine thing—At least—no, I don't mean that. But it makes me think that you are more like other girls."
His explanation was interrupted by the entrance of the gardener.
"Will you select some of those orchids, please—if you like them, that is?" asked Putnam.
A shade passed over her face. "They are too gay for his—for Henry," she answered.
"Try to tolerate a little brightness to-day," he pleaded in a low voice. "You must dedicate this morning to me: it's the last, you know."
"I will take a few of them if you wish it, but not this one. I will take that little white one and that large purple one."
The gardener reached down the varieties which she pointed out, and they passed along the alley to select other flowers. She chose a number of white roses, dark-shaded fuchsias and English violets, and then they left the place. Her expression had grown thoughtful, though not precisely sad. They walked slowly up the long shady street leading to the cemetery.
"I am dropping some of the flowers," she said, stopping: "will you carry these double fuchsias a minute, please, while I fasten the others?"
He took them and laughed. "Now, if this were in a novel," he said, "what a neat opportunity for me to say, 'May I not always carry your double fuchsias?'"
She looked at him quickly, and her brown cheek blushed rosy red, but she started on without making any reply and walked faster.
"She takes," he said to himself. But he saw the cemetery-gate at the end of the street. "I must make this walk last longer," he thought. Accordingly, he invented several cunning devices to prolong it, stopping now and then to point out something worth noting in the handsome grounds which lined the street. And so they sauntered along, she appearing to have forgotten the speech which had embarrassed her, or at least she did not resent it. They paused in front of a well-kept lawn, and he drew her attention to the turf. "It's almost as dark as the evergreens," he said.
"Yes," she answered, "it's so green that it's almost blue."
"What do you suppose makes the bees gather round that croquet-stake so?"
"I reckon they take the bright colors on it for flowers," she answered, with a certain quaintness of fancy which he had often remarked in her.
As they stood there leaning against the fence a party of school-girls came along with their satchels and spelling-books. They giggled and stared as they passed the fence, and one of them, a handsome, long-legged, bold-faced thing, said aloud, "Oh my! Look at me and my fancy beau a-takin' a walk!"
Putnam glanced at his companion, who colored nervously and looked away. "Saucy little giglets!" he laughed. "Did you hear what she said?"
"Yes," almost inaudibly.
"I hope it didn't annoy you?"
"It was very rude," walking on.
"Well, I rather like naughty school-girls: they are amusing creatures. When I was a very small boy I was sent to a girls' school, and I used to study their ways. They always had crumbs in their apron-pockets; they used to write on a slate, 'Tommy is a good boy,' and hold it up for me to see when the teacher wasn't looking; they borrowed my geography at recess and painted all the pictures vermilion and yellow." He paused, but she said nothing, and he continued, talking against time, "There was one piece of chewing-gum in that school which circulated from mouth to mouth. It had been originally spruce gum, I believe, but it was masticated beyond recognition: the parent tree wouldn't have known her child. One day I found it hidden away on a window-sill behind the shutter. It was flesh-colored and dented all over with the marks of sharp little teeth. I kept that chewing-gum for a week, and the school was like a cow that's lost her cud."
As Putnam completed these reminiscences they entered the cemetery-gate, and the shadow of its arch seemed to fall across the young girl's soul. The bashful color had faded from her cheek and the animation from her eye. Her face wore a troubled expression: she walked slowly and looked about at the gravestones.
Putnam stopped talking abruptly, but presently said, "You have not asked me for your fuchsias."
She stood still and held out her hand for them.
"I thought you might be meaning to let me keep them," said Putnam. His heart beat fast and his voice trembled as he continued: "Perhaps you thought that what I said a while ago was said in joke, but I mean it in real earnest."
"Mean what?" she asked faintly.
"Don't you know what I mean?" he said, coming nearer and taking her hand. "Shall I tell you, darling?"
"Oh, please don't! Oh, I think I know. Not here—not now. Give me the flowers," she said, disengaging her hand, "and I will put them on Henry's grave."
He handed them to her and said, "I won't go on now if it troubles you; but tell me first—I am going away to-morrow, and sha'n't be back till October—shall I find you here then, and may I speak then?"
"I shall be here till winter."
"And may I speak then?"
"Yes."
"And will you listen?"
"Yes."
"Then I can wait."
They moved on again along the cemetery-walks. Putnam felt an exultation that he could not suppress. In spite of her language, her face and the tone of her voice had betrayed her. He knew that she cared for him. But in the blindness of his joy he failed to notice an increasing agitation in her manner, which foretold the approach of some painful crisis of feeling. Her conflicting emotions, long pent up, were now in most delicate equilibrium. The slightest shock might throw them out of balance. Putnam's nature, though generous and at bottom sympathetic, lacked the fineness of insight needed to interpret the situation. Like many men of robust and heedless temperament, he was more used to bend others' moods to his own than to enter fully into theirs. His way of approaching the subject had been unfortunate, beginning as he had with a jest. The sequel was destined to be still more unlucky.
They had reached a part of the cemetery which was not divided into lots, but formed a sort of burial commons for the behoof of the poor. It was used mainly by Germans, and the graves were principally those of children. The headstones were wooden, painted white, with inscriptions in black or gilt lettering. Humble edgings of white pebbles or shells, partly embedded in the earth, bordered some of the graves: artificial flowers, tinsel crosses, hearts and other such fantastic decorations lay upon the mounds. Putnam's companion paused with an expression of pity before one of these uncouth sepulchres, a little heap of turf which covered the body of a "span-long babe."
"Now, isn't that echt Deutsch?" began Putnam, whom the gods had made mad. "Is that glass affair let into the tombstone a looking-glass or a portrait of the deceased—like that 'statoot of a deceased infant' that Holmes tells about? Even our ancestral cherub and willow tree are better than that, or even the inevitable sick lamb and broken lily."
"The people are poor," she murmured.
"They do the same sort of thing when they're rich. It's the national Geschmack to stick little tawdry fribbles all over the face of Nature."
"Poor little baby!" she said gently.
"It's a rather old baby by this time," rejoined Putnam, pointing out the date on the wooden slab—"Eighteen fifty-one: it would be older than I now if it had kept on."
Her eyes fell upon the inscription, and she read it aloud. "Hier ruht in Gott Heinrich Frantz, Geb. Mai 13, 1851. Gest. August 4, 1852. Wir hoffen auf Wiedersehen." She repeated the last words softly over to herself.
"Are those white things cobblestones, or what?" continued Putnam perversely, indicating the border which quaintly encircled the little mound. "As I live," he exclaimed, "they are door-knobs!" and he poked one of them out of the ground with the end of his cane.
"Stop!" she cried vehemently: "how can you do that?"
He dropped his cane and looked at her in wonder. She burst into tears and turned away. "You think I am a heartless brute?" he cried remorsefully, hastening after her.
"Oh, go away, please—go away and leave me alone. I am going to my brother: I want to be alone."
She hurried on, and he paused irresolute. "Miss Pinckney!" he called after her, but she made no response. His instinct, now aroused too late, told him that he had better leave her alone for the present. So he picked up his walking-stick and turned reluctantly homeward. He cursed himself mentally as he retraced the paths along which they had walked together a few moments before. "I'm a fool," he said to himself: "I've gone and upset it all. Couldn't I see that she was feeling badly? I suppose I imagined that I was funny, and she thought I was an insensible brute. This comes of giving way to my infernal high spirits." At the same time a shade of resentment mingled with his self-reproaches. "Why can't she be a little more cheerful and like other girls, and make some allowance for a fellow?" he asked. "Her brother wasn't everybody else's brother. It's downright morbid, this obstinate woe of hers. Other people have lost friends and got over it."
On the morrow he was to start for the mountains. He visited the cemetery in the morning, but Miss Pinckney was not there. He did not know her address, nor could the gatekeeper inform him; and in the afternoon he set out on his journey with many misgivings.
It was early October when Putnam returned to the city. He went at once to the cemetery, but on reaching the grave his heart sank at the sight of a bunch of withered flowers which must have lain many days upon the mound. The blossoms were black and the stalks brittle and dry. "Can she have changed her mind and gone South already?" he asked himself.
There was a new sexton in the gate-house, who could tell him nothing about her. He wandered through the grounds, looking for the old woman with the watering-pot, but the season had grown cold, and she had probably ceased her gardening operations for the year. He continued his walk beyond the marshes. The woods had grown rusty and the sandy pastures outside the city were ringing with the incessant creak of grasshoppers, which rose in clouds under his feet as he brushed through the thin grass. The blue-curl and the life-everlasting distilled their pungent aroma in the autumn sunshine. A feeling of change and forlornness weighed upon his spirit. As with Thomas of Ercildoune, whom the Queen of Faëry carried away into Eildon Hill, the short period of his absence seemed seven years long. An old English song came into his head:
Winter wakeneth all my care,
Now these leaves waxeth bare:
Oft in cometh into my thought,
Of this worldes joy how it goeth all to naught.
Soon after arriving at the hills he had written to Miss Pinckney a long letter of explanations and avowals; but he did not know the number of her lodgings, or, oddly enough, even her Christian name, and the letter had been returned to him unopened. The next month was one of the unhappiest in Putnam's life. On returning to the city, thoroughly restored in health, he had opened an office, but he found it impossible to devote himself quietly to the duties of his profession. He visited the cemetery at all hours, but without success. He took to wandering about in remote quarters and back streets of the town, and eyed sharply every female figure that passed him in the twilight, especially if it walked quickly or wore a veil. He slept little at night, and grew restless and irritable. He had never confided this experience even to his mother: it seemed to him something apart.
One afternoon toward the middle of November he was returning homeward weary and dejected from a walk in the suburbs. His way led across an unenclosed outskirt of the town which served as a common to the poor people of the neighborhood. It was traversed by a score of footpaths, and frequented by goats, and by ducks that dabbled in the puddles of rain-water collected in the hollows. Halfway across this open tract stood what had formerly been an old-fashioned country-house, now converted into a soap-boiling establishment. Around this was a clump of old pine trees, the remnant of a grove which had once flourished in the sandy soil. There was something in the desolation of the place that flattered Putnam's mood, and he stopped to take it in. The air was dusk, but embers of an angry sunset burned low in the west. A cold wind made a sound in the pine-tops like the beating of surf on a distant shore. A flock of little winter birds flew suddenly up from the ground into one of the trees, like a flight of gray leaves whirled up by a gust. As Putnam turned to look at them he saw, against the strip of sunset along the horizon, the slim figure of a girl walking rapidly toward the opposite side of the common. His heart gave a great leap, and he started after her on a run. At a corner of the open ground the figure vanished, nor could Putnam decide into which of two or three small streets she had turned. He ran down one and up another, but met no one except a few laborers coming home from work, and finally gave up the quest. But this momentary glimpse produced in him a new excitement. He felt sure that he had not been mistaken: he knew the swift, graceful step, the slight form bending in the wind. He fancied that he had even recognized the poise and shape of the little head. He imagined, too, that he had not been unobserved, and that she had some reason for avoiding him. For a week or more he haunted the vicinity of the common, but without result. December was already drawing to an end when he received the following note:
"Dear Mr. Putnam: You must forgive me for running away from you the other evening: I am right—am I not?—in supposing that you saw and recognized me. It was rude in me not to wait for you, but I had not courage to talk with any one just then. Perhaps I should have seen you before at the cemetery—if you still walk there—but I have been sick and have not been there for a long time. I was only out for the first time when I saw you last Friday. My aunt has sent for me, and I am going South in a few days. I shall leave directions to have this posted to you as soon as I am gone.
"I promised to be here when you came back, and I write this to thank you for your kind interest in me and to explain why I go away without seeing you again. I think that I know what you wanted to ask me that day that we went to the green-house, and perhaps under happier circumstances I could have given you the answer which you wished. But I have seen so much sorrow, and I am of such a gloomy disposition, that I am not fit for cheerful society, and I know you would regret your choice.
"I shall think very often and very gratefully of you, and shall not forget the words on that little German baby's gravestone. Good-bye.
"Imogen Pinckney."
Putnam felt stunned and benumbed on first reading this letter. Then he read it over mechanically two or three times. The date was a month old, but the postmark showed that it had just been mailed. She must have postponed her departure somewhat after writing it, or the person with whom it had been left had neglected to post it till now. He felt a sudden oppression and need of air, and taking his hat left the house. It was evening, and the first snow of the season lay deep on the ground. Anger and grief divided his heart. "It's too bad! too bad!" he murmured, with tears in his eyes: "she might have given me one chance to speak. She hasn't been fair to me. What's the matter with her, anyhow? She has brooded and brooded till she is downright melancholy-mad;" and then, with a revulsion of feeling, "My poor darling girl! Here she has been, sick and all alone, sitting day after day in that cursed graveyard. I ought never to have gone to the mountains: I ought to have stayed. I might have known how it would turn out. Well, it's all over now, I suppose."
He had taken, half unconsciously, the direction of the cemetery, and now found himself at the entrance. The gate was locked, but he climbed over the wall and waded through the snow to the spot where he had sat with her so many summer afternoons. The wicker chair was buried out of sight in a drift. A scarcely-visible undulation in the white level marked the position of the mound, and the headstone had a snow-cap. The cedars stood black in the dim moonlight, and the icy coating of their boughs rattled like candelabra. He stood a few moments near the railing, and then tore the letter into fragments and threw them on the snow. "There! good-bye, good-bye!" he said bitterly as the wind carried them skating away over the crust.
But what was that? The moon cast a shadow of Henry Pinckney's headstone on the snow, but what was that other and similar shadow beyond it? Putnam had been standing edgewise to the slab: he shifted his position now and saw a second stone and a second mound side by side with the first. An awful faintness and trembling seized him as he approached it and bent his head close down to the marble. The jagged shadows of the cedar-branches played across the surface, but by the uncertain light he could read the name "Imogen Pinckney," and below it the inscription, "Wir hoffen auf Wiedersehen."
Henry A. Beers.