A Summer's Outing, and The Old Man's Story

by Carter H. Harrison

The day of my departure from Cincinnati, I went to the Burnett to discuss a business venture with a guest of the house. He was in the dining-room at 5 o'clock dinner. I sat by his side discussing our business, when I was startled by the tones of a voice near by. I sought it. There just opposite to me the "brown shawl" was being seated. An elderly lady accompanied her.

My vis-a-vis was a young girl, not over eighteen, but in every respect the woman I met in '50, at the flower-show in Regent's Park. There was one difference it is true—in her coiffure; as I took it, the result of change of fashion. So vividly was the photograph of years ago impressed on my memory, and so exactly was it copied, that the incongruity of time and added years never crossed my brain. I was dazed by the sudden apparition of my dream. No thought entered my mind that it was contrary to the laws of nature, that a woman of 18 in '50 was still only 18 now; nor did the idea occur to me that I was laboring under an hallucination, or was the victim of mistaken identity. The woman I had worshipped for long years was there before me, in every feature the same as memory pictured her. She was no older, and was altered only as change of fashion had altered her. I did not reason on the subject.

I overheard that the two ladies were on their way to Boston; and were to leave on the 7:30 train, going East. They examined a time table, and speculated as to their stops for meals before reaching their destination. The elder was addressed as "Auntie," the younger one as "Rita."

In an hour I was at the station with my luggage. I saw them enter the cars, and knew whenever they left it at eating stations. At Boston I made my cab driver follow their carriage and took the number of the dwelling and the name of the street. The next day I watched the house. At noon Rita with a lady, both in calling costume took a carriage at the door, and Rita, for so I already called her in my thoughts threw a kiss to a child who had followed them from the house.

I determined this was her home, and felt no longer any necessity for constant watching. Towards sundown I was walking in the Common, where she and I met face to face. She looked at me, but as one to her an indifferent stranger. A girl, probably of five years was her companion. While the latter sailed a toy boat on the pond, the young lady sat on a seat not far away.

The little girl dropped her hat in the water, and called out, "Oh, Aunt Rita! I've lost my hat." They tried to reach it with her parasol. I ran to a man raking grass, took his rake and rescued the hat. When I put it on the child's head, the aunt thanked me, with a smile that was a ray of sunshine. Her voice, modulated to express thanks, was simply music.

Resolved to take advantage of any and every opportunity to make her acquaintance, I took off my hat saying, "Pardon me, but we have met before. It was in London, in 1850."

She replied, with a smile, "Your memory must be wonderful, for at that time, I was—let me see—" and she counted the years on her fingers, "I was then nine years old, and very small for my age." I was dumbfounded, for as yet I had not thought of the anachronism I had been guilty of. I said, "it is strange"—my voice sounded hollow to myself—"but a young lady, your very image, I met a dozen times, and what is stranger still, she wore the self same brown shawl which covered your shoulders at the Burnett house, a few days since." She did not notice my allusion to the Burnett house but burst out in a hearty laugh and clapped her hands so loudly, that the little girl ran to her.

"I see it all," she cried; "Minnie, my sister, was in London that year, and wore that shawl. Her picture was taken in it about the same time, and when I grew up I was so wonderfully like her, that she gave it to me; when I fix my hair as hers was, and put on that wrap, every one declares the picture to be the very image of myself."

I had broken the ice rather unconventionally, and was determined not to recede. I said "But she was with her father and a little boy." I felt I was treading on thin ice, but if it were not her father, I would manage in some way to get out of my mistake.