"My younger girl's impression was quite different. In spite of all he had told us about his wealthy father and his lumber-forests, she said she didn't believe but what if the truth were known he would be discovered to be a New York drummer in the button business or perhaps a Western man in the ham trade.
"'Well, my dears, I am going to tell you something about him that will surprise you. He is not what you have said, Minnie, nor what you have said, Jennie, nor what he himself said: he is simply nothing more nor less than a pickpocket!'
"The girls were first horrified, then they laughed: the farce of a thing is very apparent to heedless youth. No doubt the other youthful individual was laughing at the farcicality now. As for me, I could scarcely see the joke. The matter was not so serious as it might have been, however, for the bulk of my money was stitched in the bosom of my dress; but I had kept out about four hundred dollars to pay for a set of silverware which was not ready at the last moment, and that money my friend had seen in my pocket-book when I paid him for the tickets. I discovered the loss at the supper-table almost the instant he left my chair, and my rising and going outside was the natural impulse to stop a thief. I knew now only too well when the transfer had taken place: it was at that blissful moment when this new pattern of a Romeo had pressed up to the side of his silly and elderly Juliet in a tender half embrace. The youthful philosopher was quite right in saying I did not know what the future had in store for me: I had not the remotest conception that in less than an hour it would disclose to my dull mind that I had met a pickpocket in the guise and with the apparent feelings of a gentleman—not to say a lover."
The termination of this recital naturally drew forth comment. Henry L. Thompkins said he really thought better of his nephews now: at least, they never picked pockets. McLaughlin startled the company by declaring that he had met this very man some thirty-five years ago when he was lying off the Bahama Islands—he was sure of it: and even an exact computation, which showed conclusively that the individual in question could not have been born then, was not sufficient to shake him in his belief. Mr. Perkins observed that he hoped the young man might meet Christian influences, and so reform: it was a pity he could not have had Mrs. Marcellus's Christian friendship, for it might have been his salvation. The brigadier's conclusion was that the whole plan was a scheme of deep revenge which had a much broader basis than the mere purloining of a pocket-book. It was the old story of national hatred on the part of England. This man was of English derivation: that he was an American born was no matter—was, in fact, most probably untrue. But Englishmen could not bear, even after the lapse of a century, to think that this grand empire was not under the control of the British crown. The military facts connected with the war of the Revolution had been so galling: Washington's masterly strategy in always advancing his left flank had proved, as it ever must, the utter annihilation of the redcoats, and had occasioned a series of defeats hard then and now for the proud-spirited British nation to bear. Depend upon it, this pocket had been picked in a spirit of international revenge. When Cornwallis—
Here the editor advanced his left flank unexpectedly by asking Mrs. Marcellus if he might put the story in print: the fellow should really be hunted down, if possible, even at this late hour, and brought to punishment. But our hostess would not consent to this, and motioned to me with a smile to begin my confession. But just at that moment the good-night lamp was brought in, and never since then have stories been in order at Mrs. Marcellus's Saturdays.
Olive Logan.