Roderick Martens attends to the ship-building interests of Jyphoven, in Amsterdam, and occupies the old Jyphoven mansion. Herr and Madame Jyphoven continue to reside in Paris. Bella is enchanted with life in the French city, and declares that to be mistress of the whole world—if she would go but for a day—could be no inducement to her to set her foot in the old Holland fishery, as she now describes it to be. She is entirely reconciled to Francisca. The beauty and happiness of the young wife would captivate the most callous heart.
And Von Kluyden? This man who devoted himself to intrigue and rascality for so long, knew not, while he lived, how otherwise to occupy his time. He was never satisfied. Nemesis held him fast in her cruel clutches. When the time came for Hendrik to assert and prove his rights, he did so most successfully; and that for which Isabella bartered her honor, and beauty, and youth, passed like sand through the fingers, and was hers no more. Von Kluyden was successful in nothing that he undertook to accomplish; the ghost of the murdered Horst followed him day and night;—he finally died in a madhouse! Isabella had, a little while before his dementia, entrusted herself and her million of money into the hands of a young man of the titled nobility—who in his turn did not love the young widow even for her marvelous beauty—but for the thalers and gulden that brought plenty to his empty coffers and luxury to his impoverished home. In this marriage Isabella did not find the happiness she expected to find, and for which she had so long waited. The Prince squandered her enormous fortune, as Princes are usually supposed to squander fortunes, in about the half of a year's duration, and by that time, having found out and enjoyed all that life held for him of pleasure or excitement, he closed his career by putting a pistol-ball through his head, early one morning, while the sun was shining, and the birds were singing, and flowers were blooming on every side.
So it has come to pass that Isabella—although not yet twenty-five years of age, has been twice a widow—(and a very charming one she is!) not likely now ever to be aught else! The sale of her beauty, her honor, her peace of mind, has brought to her, as a recompense for what she has lost, a varied and rich experience, which will save her forever hereafter from the chance of being deceived and betrayed through the tenderest and noblest impulses of the human heart.
And so the curtain goes down forever between us and those with whom we have whiled away some pleasant hours, and gathered, it may be, profit or amusement from their acting on the stage of life.
Voila tout.
[MARY F. CHILDS]
Mrs. Mary Fairfax Childs, maker of dialect verse, was born at Lexington, Kentucky, May 25, 1846. She is the daughter of the Rev. Edward Fairfax Berkley (1813-1897), who was rector of Christ Church, Lexington, for nineteen years. Dr. Berkley baptized Henry Clay, in 1847, and buried him five years later. Miss Berkley was a pupil at the Misses Jackson's Seminary for young ladies until her thirteenth year, or, in 1858, when her father accepted a call to St. Louis, in which city he labored for the following forty years. In St. Louis, she continued her studies at a private school for girls, when she left prior to her graduation in order to devote herself more especially to music, Latin, and French. Miss Berkley was married, in 1870, to William Ward Childs, a returned Confederate soldier; and in 1884 they removed to Clinton, Missouri, where they resided for seven years, when business called them to New York, their home until Mr. Child's death in 1911. Mrs. Childs's life in New York was a very busy one. She was prominent in several social and literary groups; and for many years she was corresponding secretary of the New York Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Her first poem that attracted wide attention was entitled De Namin' ob de Twins, which originally appeared in The Century Magazine for December, 1903. It was the second in a group of Eleven Negro Songs, written by Joel Chandler Harris, Grace MacGowan Cooke, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, and one or two other poets. That Mrs. Childs's masterpiece was the flower of the flock admits of little question: it is one of the best negro dialect poems yet written by a Southern woman. Exactly a year later the same periodical published her A Christmas Warning, with the well-known refrain, Roos' high, chicken—roos' high. These, with many others, were brought together in an attractive volume, entitled De Namin' ob de Twins, and Other Sketches from the Cotton Land (New York, 1908). This collection is highly esteemed by that rather small company of lovers of dialect verse. Mrs. Childs's poem, The Boys Who Wore the Gray, has been printed, and is well-known throughout the South. She has recently completed another collection of sketches, called Absolute Monarchy, which will appear in 1913. At the present time Mrs. Childs is historian of the Society of Kentucky Women of New York, although she is residing at Kirkwood, Missouri, near St. Louis.
Bibliography. Letters from Mrs. Childs to the present writer; The Century Magazine (January, 1906).
DE NAMIN' OB DE TWINS[32]