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1Author:  McHenry James 1753-1816Requires cookie*
 Title:  The wilderness, or, Braddock's times  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: Let melancholy spirits talk as they please concerning the degeneracy and increasing miseries of mankind, I will not believe them. They have been speaking ill of themselves, and predicting worse of their posterity, from time immemorial; and yet, in the present year, 1823, when, if the one hundreth part of their gloomy forebodings had been realized, the earth must have become a Pandemonium, and men something worse than devils, (for devils they have been long ago, in the opinion of these charitable denunciators,) I am free to assert, that we have as many honest men, pretty women, healthy children, cultivated fields, convenient houses, elegant kinds of furniture, and comfortable clothes, as any generation of our ancestors ever possessed. “I am glad you are come back so soon.— My sister—your wife—was cast down in your absence. But I could not blame her—for I remember when Shanalow, my husband, went first to hunt, after our marriage, I was disconsolate, and dreamed every night of evil till he returned. He is now gone to his fathers, and shall never more return. But he died of a breast-wound fighting the Otawas, and our whole tribe has praised him. The warning which Tonnaleuka had given Charles to be circumspect in regard to the enemy, was not lost upon him. He employed Paddy Frazier as a scout to hover round the French station at Le Bœuf in order to watch their motions and give him the earliest intelligence of their design. He also kept four or five of his men constantly employed in ranging on horseback, those quarters of the country from which he could be suddenly attacked, while the whole of the remainder were busily engaged in digging trenches, and preparing long pointed stakes to fix in the ground to form their stoccade fortification. From the friendly Indians he at first rceived considerable aid in forwarding his works; but in a few days he began to perceive their ardour in his behalf to diminish; and suspecting that they had imbided some unfriendly feeling towards him, he thought proper to visit king Shingiss, and expostulate with him on the subject. “My persuading you to submit, at this time, to a residence in a dark subterraneous cell, is a proof how anxious I am for your safety. You will, no doubt, feel your situation lonely and disagreeable; but I hope the necessity for it will not be of long continuance; and, in the meanwhile, in order to relieve its tediousness as much as possible, I shall send you a supply of such books as I possess, best suited for your entertainment. You may be also assured, that our family will let you want for nothing in their power to afford you comfort. “We, the officers of the Virginia regiment, are highly sensible of the particular mark of distinction with which you have honoured us in returning your thanks for our behaviour in the late action; and cannot help testifying our grateful acknowledgments for your “high sense” of what we shall always esteem a duty to our country and the best of kings. “Dear Sir—The progress we have made in the transaction, in which your son and my niece were to be the parties disposed of, had induced me to hope for a speedy and final settlement of the affair; but I am sorry to say, that owing to some misadventure on the part of your son, the bargain is likely to fail on your side. My niece, which was the part of the concern for which I stood engaged, is still substantial and ready for delivery, when the equivalent shall be forthcoming, and the demand made.
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2Author:  Morris George Pope 1802-1864Requires cookie*
 Title:  The little Frenchman and his water lots, with other sketches of the times  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: How much real comfort every one might enjoy, if he would be contented with the lot in which heaven has cast him, and how much trouble would be avoided if people would only “let well alone.” A moderate independence, quietly and honestly procured, is certainly every way preferable even to immense possessions achieved by the wear and tear of mind and body so necessary to procure them. Yet there are very few individuals, let them be doing ever so well in the world, who are not always straining every nerve to do better; and this is one of the many causes why failures in business so frequently occur among us. The present generation seem unwilling to “realize” by slow and sure degrees; but choose rather to set their whole hopes upon a single cast, which either makes or mars them for ever!
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3Author:  Neal John 1793-1876Requires cookie*
 Title:  The Down-easters, &c. &c. &c  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: We were on our way from Philadelphia to Baltimore, in the beautiful month of May, 1814; our boat crowded with passengers, the oddest collection you ever saw, and the British lying not far off in considerable force; and yet, so assured were we of our ability to escape, as not even to be kept awake by our dangerous neighborhood. The war, chess, politics, flirting, pushpin, tetotum, and jackstraws, (cards being prohibited,) newspapers and religious tracts, had all been tried, and all in vain to relieve the insipidity of a pleasant passage, and keep off the drowsiness that weighed upon our spirits like the rich overloaded atmosphere of a spice-island, breathing about a soft summer sea. Even the huge negroes felt and enjoyed the delicious warmth, as they lay stretched out, heads and points, over the piles of split wood, with their fat shiny faces turned up to the sky, and their broad feet stiffening in the shadow.
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4Author:  Neal John 1793-1876Requires cookie*
 Title:  The Down-easters, &c. &c. &c  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: Such was the “terrible letter”! such the very words of a part which fell upon me, with a power which no language can describe. And yet, I do believe I showed no emotion before the girl who brought me the message of death—I mean what I say—the message of death; I believe too that I spoke in my usual voice, and I know that I did not shed a tear, and that I have not shed a tear since—I hope never to shed one while I breathe, for the perfidy of that woman. It was not—oh no!—it was not the losing a marriage with her, it was not even the losing of her heart, for I could have borne both, I believe, with a smile, if she had treated me as I deserve to be treated by those I love—no—no!—it was neither—it was the losing of my faith in her that I was ready to worship—and now I remember a passage in her letter which I had forgotten before—“I know that you love me,” said she. “This will be a terrible blow, for you had set up an image in your heart for worship”—and so I had! and she broke that image to pieces; and with it, every hope I had on earth, for every hope I had on earth was connected in some way or other with my belief in her exalted virtue, her generosity, and her truth.
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5Author:  Neal Joseph C. (Joseph Clay) 1807-1847Requires cookie*
 Title:  Peter Ploddy, and other oddities  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: Let no one be unjust to Ploddy—to Peter Ploddy, once “young man” to Mr. Figgs, the grocer, and now junior partner of the flourishing firm of Figgs and Ploddy. Though addicted a little to complaint, and apt to institute comparisons unfavourable to himself, it would be a harsh judgment to set him down as ever having been envious, in the worst sense of the word. It is true, no doubt, that at the period of his life concerning which we are now called upon to speak, a certain degree of discontent with his own position occasionally embittered his reflections; but he had no wish to deprive others of the advantage they possessed, nor did he hate them on the score of their supposed superiority. It was not his inclination to drag men down, let them be situated as loftily as they might; and whatever of vexation or perplexity he experienced in contemplating their elevation, arose altogether from the fact that he could not clearly understand why he should not be up there too. It was not productive of pleasurable sensations to Ploddy, to see folks splashed who were more elegantly attired than himself. He never laughed from a window over the disastrous results of a sudden shower; nor could he find it in his heart to hope it would rain when his neighbours set gayly forth on a rural excursion. It is a question, indeed, whether it had been a source of satisfaction to him to see any one's name on a list of bankrupts. The sheriff's advertisements of property “seized and taken in execution,” were never conned over with delight by Peter Ploddy; and when the entertainments given in his section of the town were as splendid as luxury and profusion could make them, it was yet possible for Peter to turn in his bed at the sound of the music and of the merriment, without a snarl about “there you go,” and without a hint that there are headaches in store for the gentlemen, with a sufficient variety of coughs and colds for the ladies. He never said, because an invitation had not been addressed to Ploddy, that affairs of this sort make work for the doctors.
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6Author:  Smith Richard Penn 1799-1854Requires cookie*
 Title:  The forsaken  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: More than half a century ago, there stood in Darby, a small village near Philadelphia, an humble inn, denominated “The Hive;” which name the house acquired in consequence of a rude sign, that yielding to every blast of wind, creaked in front of the building; although one who was not a connoisseur in painting, might have mistaken the hive for a hay-cock, and the bees for partridges, had not the ingenious artist, to prevent all mistakes of this nature, judiciously painted, in capital letters, the name of his design, which at once put an end to the illiberal cavilling of such critics as could decipher the alphabet. You may judge of the extent of my perplexities when I apply to you for pecuniary assistance. Were you in funds you would be the first I should apply to, but in your present circumstances you should be the last. But, as I do not know what fortune may have done for you since our last interview, I have ventured to make known my distresses to you. I have an insuperable objection to my father's becoming acquainted with the cause of my present embarrassment, and have therefore employed every means to extricate myself before a knowledge of the circumstance shall reach him. To change the subject, I feel that I should fight the battles of my king with better heart, if my earliest and best friend were still by my side. Reflect again upon the nature of the contest; reflect, I beseech you, until you view it in the light that it is viewed by “Meet me at the sign of the Crooked Billet, on the evening of the first of October, as I have something to communicate that concerns you nearly. Fail not to be punctual.
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7Author:  Tucker Beverley 1784-1851Requires cookie*
 Title:  The partisan leader  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: The part I bore in the transactions which form the subject of the following narrative, is my voucher for its authenticity. My admiration of the gallant people, whose struggle for freedom I witnessed and partook; the cherished friendships contracted among them, at a time of life when the heart is warm, and under circumstances which called all its best feelings into action; and, above all, the connexion then formed, which has identified me with Virginia, and which, during the last five years, has been the source of all my happiness; are my inducements to dedicate this work to you. The approbation which, in acknowledging, more than rewarded my humble services, is my warrant for hoping, that this tribute of grateful veneration will be favorably received. Toward the latter end of the month of October, 1849, about the hour of noon, a horseman was seen ascending a narrow valley at the eastern foot of the Blue Ridge. His road nearly followed the course of a small stream, which, issuing from a deep gorge of the mountain, winds its way between lofty hills, and terminates its brief and brawling course in one of the larger tributaries of the Dan. A glance of the eye took in the whole of the little settlement that lined its banks, and measured the resources of its inhabitants. The different tenements were so near to each other as to allow but a small patch of arable land to each. Of manufactures there was no appearance, save only a rude shed at the entrance of the valley, on the door of which the oft repeated brand of the horse-shoe gave token of a smithy. There too the rivulet, increased by the innumerable springs which afforded to every habitation the unappreciated, but inappreciable luxury of water, cold, clear and sparkling, had gathered strength enough to turn a tiny mill. Of trade there could be none. The bleak and rugged barrier, which closed the scene on the west, and the narrow road, fading to a foot-path, gave assurance to the traveller that he had here reached the ne plus ultra of social life in that direction. “Mr. Baker begs leave to throw himself on the mercy of Miss Delia Trevor. He confesses his offence against her on Saturday last. He admits, with shame, that he did intend to wound her feelings, and that he has nothing to offer in extenuation of his offence. He does not even presume to ask a pardon, which he acknowledges to be unmerited, and respectfully tenders the only atonement in his power, by assuring Miss Trevor that he will never again, intentionally, offend her by his presence. My dear sir: I hasten to lay before you a piece of information which touches you nearly. Though I receive it at the hands of one who has the highest claims to my confidence, I yet trust it will prove to have originated in mistake. “My dear sir: Your letter has been received, and, to me, is entirely satisfactory. But I regret to inform you that, to those friends whom I feel myself bound to consult, it is not so. Such of them, indeed, as are acquainted with your high character, do not intimate a doubt that a full explanation of the affair would entirely justify your assurance that I have been misinformed. “Sir: I have just learned that charges of a serious nature have been made against Lieutenant Trevor, which, it seems, grow out of certain occurrences to which I am privy. I can have little doubt that the affair, to which I allude, has not been truly reported to you. Had it been, you would have seen that Lieutenant T. acted no otherwise than as became a soldier and a gentleman, in whose presence a lady, under his protection, had been insulted. The enclosed documents, to the authenticity of which I beg leave to testify, will place the transaction in its true light. Were Lieutenant T. at Washington, I should not lay these papers before you, without authority from him. As it is, I trust I do no more than my duty by him, and by your Excellency, in furnishing such evidences of the real facts of the case, as may aid you in deciding on the course to be pursued in regard to it. “Sir: I have it in command from his Excellency the President to say, that your letter of resignation has been received with surprise and regret. “I never performed a more painful duty in my life, my dear Trevor, than in putting the seal and superscription to the accompanying letter from the Secretary.
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8Author:  Tuckerman Henry T. (Henry Theodore) 1813-1871Requires cookie*
 Title:  The Italian sketch book  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: There are countries of the globe which possess a permanent and peculiar interest in human estimation; an interest proportioned in each individual to his intelligence, culture and philanthropy. They are those where the most momentous historical events occurred, and civilization first dawned; and of which the past associations and present influences are, consequently, in a high degree exciting. The history of these lands affords one of our most attractive sources of philosophical truth, as the reminiscences they induce excite poetical sentiment; and, hence, we very naturally regard a visit to them as an event singularly interesting, not to say morally important.
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9Author:  Tuckerman Henry T. (Henry Theodore) 1813-1871Requires cookie*
 Title:  Rambles and reveries  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
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10Author:  Ware William 1797-1852Requires cookie*
 Title:  Julian, or Scenes in Judea  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: Wakened from dreams in which I was losing myself, I saw that the reproof of the camel-driver was needed. We accordingly returned towards the path we had left, and moved on in the direction of the city.
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11Author:  Willis Nathaniel Parker 1806-1867Requires cookie*
 Title:  Dashes at life with a free pencil  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: “Has there been any mistake in the two-penny post delivery, that I have not received your article for this month? If so, please send me the rough draught by the bearer (who waits), and the compositors will try to make it out. “The tale of this month will be called—” “Dear Mr. Clay: From causes which you will probably understand, I have been induced to reconsider your proposal of marriage to my niece.—Imprudent as I must still consider your union, I find myself in such a situation that, should you persevere, I must decide in its favor, as the least of two evils. You will forgive my anxious care, however, if I exact of you, before taking any decided step, a full and fair statement of your pecuniary embarrassments (which I understand are considerable) and your present income and prospects. I think it proper to inform you that Miss Gore's expectations, beyond an annuity of £300 a year, are very distant, and that all your calculations should be confined to that amount. With this understanding, I should be pleased to see you at Ashurst to-morrow morning. “Your dark eye rests on this once familiar handwriting. If your pulse could articulate at this moment, it would murmur he loved me well! He who writes to you now, after years of silence, parted from you with your tears upon his lips—parted from you as the last shadow parts from the sun, with a darkness that must deepen till morn again. I begin boldly, but the usage of the world is based upon forgetfulness in absence, and I have not forgotten. Yet this is not to be a love-letter. “Dear Lady Fanny: If you have anything beside the ghost-room vacant at Freer Hall, I will run down to you. Should you, by chance, be alone ask up the curate for a week to keep Sir Harry off my hands; and, as you don't flirt, provide me with somebody more pretty than yourself for our mutual security. As my autograph sells for eighteen pence, you will excuse the brevity of “Sir: I am intrusted with a delicate commission, which I know not how to broach to you, except by simple proposal. Will you forgive my abrupt brevity, if I inform you, without further preface, that the Countess Nyschriem, a Polish lady of high birth and ample fortune, does you the honor to propose for your hand. If you are disengaged, and your affections are not irrevocably given to another, I can conceive no sufficient obstacle to your acceptance of this brilliant connexion. The countess is twenty-two, and not beautiful, it must in fairness be said; but she has high qualities of head and heart, and is worthy of any man's respect and affection. She has seen you, of course, and conceived a passion for you, of which this is the result. I am directed to add, that should you consent, the following conditions are imposed—that you marry her within four days, making no inquiry except as to her age, rank, and property, and that, without previous interview, she come veiled to the altar. “You will pardon me that I have taken two days to consider the extraordinary proposition made me in your letter. The subject, since it is to be entertained a moment, requires, perhaps, still further reflection— but my reply shall be definite, and as prompt as I can bring myself to be, in a matter so important. “Dear Fred: Nothing going on in town, except a little affair of my own, which I can't leave to go down to you. Dull even at Crocky's—nobody plays this hot weather. And now, as to your commissions. You will receive Dupree, the cook, by to-night's mail. Grisi won't come to you without her man—`'twasn't thus when we were boys!'—so I send you a figurante, and you must do tableaux. I was luckier in finding you a wit. S— will be with you to-morrow, though, by the way, it is only on condition of meeting Lady Midge Bellasys, for whom, if she is not with you, you must exert your inveiglements. This, by way only of shuttlecock and battledore, however, for they play at wit together—nothing more, on her part at least. Look out for this devilish fellow, my lord Fred!— and live thin till you see the last of him—for he'll laugh you into your second apoplexy with the dangerous ease of a hair-trigger. I could amuse you with a turn or two in my late adventures, but black and white are bad confidants, though very well as a business firm. And, mentioning them, I have drawn on you for a temporary £500, which please lump with my other loan, and oblige “Dear Sir Humphrey: Perhaps you will scarce remember Jane Jones, to whom you presented the brush of your first fox. This was thirty years ago. I was then at school in the little village near Tally-ho hall. Dear me! how well I remember it! On hearing of your marriage, I accepted an offer from my late husband, Mr. S—, and our union was blessed with one boy, who, I must say, is an angel of goodness. Out of his small income, my dear James furnished and rented this very genteel house, and he tells me I shall have it for life, and provides me one servant, and everything I could possibly want. Thrice a week he comes out to spend the day and dine with me, and, in short, he is the pattern of good sons. As this dear boy is going down to Warwickshire, I can not resist the desire I have that you should know him, and that he should bring me back an account of my lover in days gone by. Any attention to him, dear Sir Humphrey, will very much oblige one whom you once was happy to oblige, and still “Dear Sir: I remember Miss Jones very well, God bless me, I thought she had been dead many years. I am sure I shall be very happy to see her son. Will you come out and dine with us?—dinner at seven. “Dear Nuncle: It's hard on to six o'clock, and I'm engaged at seven to a junketing at the `Hen and chickens,' with Stuggins and the maids. If you intend to make me acquainted with your great lord, now is the time. If you don't, I shall walk in presently, and introduce myself; for I know how to make my own way, nuncle—ask Miss Bel's maid, and the other girls you introduced me to at Tally-ho hall! Be in a hurry, I'm just outside. “My dear Lord: In the belief that a frank communication would be best under the circumstances, I wish to make an inquiry, prefacing it with the assurance that my only hope of happiness has been for some time staked upon the successful issue of my suit for your daughter's hand. It is commonly understood, I believe, that the bulk of your lordship's fortune is separate from the entail, and may be disposed of at your pleasure. May I inquire its amount, or rather, may I ask what fortune goes with the hand of Lady Angelica. The Beauchief estates are unfortunately much embarrassed, and my own debts (I may frankly confess) are very considerable. You will at once see, my lord, that, in justice to your daughter, as well as to myself, I could not do otherwise than make this frank inquiry before pushing my suit to extremity. Begging your indulgence and an immediate answer, I remain, my dear lord, “Dear Lord Frederick: I trust you will not accuse me of a want of candor in declining a direct answer to your question. Though I freely own to a friendly wish for your success in your efforts to engage the affections of Lady Angelica, with a view to marriage, it can only be in the irrevocable process of a marriage settlement that her situation, as to the probable disposal of my fortune, can be disclosed. I may admit to you, however, that, upon the events of this day on which you have written (it so chances), may depend the question whether I should encourage you to pursue further your addresses to Lady Angelica. “My dear Angelica: I am happy to know that there are circumstances which will turn aside much of the poignancy of the communication I am about to make to you. If I am not mistaken at least, in believing a mutual attachment to exist between yourself and Count Pallardos, you will at once comprehend the ground of my mental relief, and perhaps, in a measure, anticipate what I am about to say. “Dear Count: You will wonder at receiving a friendly note from me after my refusal, two months since, to meet you over `pistols and coffee;' but reparation may not be too late, and this is to say, that you have your choice between two modes of settlement, viz:—to accept for your stable the hunter you stole from me (vide police report) and allow me to take a glass of wine with you at my own table and bury the hatchet, or, to shoot at me if you like, according to your original design. Manners and Beauchief hope you will select the latter, as they owe you a grudge for the possession of your incomparable bride and her fortune; but I trust you will prefer the horse, which (if I am rightly informed) bore you to the declaration of love at Chasteney. Reply to Crockford's. “My dear St. Leger: Enclosed you have the only surviving lock of my grizzled wig—sign and symbol that my disguises are over and my object attained. The wig burns at this instant in the grate, item my hand-ruffles, item sundry embroidered cravats a la vielle cour, item (this last not without some trouble at my heart) a solitary love-token from Constantia Hervey. One faded rose—given me at Pæstum, the day before I was driven disgraced from her presence by the interference of this insolent fool—one faded rose has crisped and faded into smoke with the rest. And so fled from the world the last hope of a warm and passionate heart, which never gave up its destiny till now—never felt that it was made in vain, guarded, refined, cherished in vain, till that long-loved flower lay in ashes. I am accustomed to strip emotion of its drapery—determined to feel nothing but what is real— yet this moment, turn it and strip it, and deny its illusions as I will, is anguish. `Self-inflicted,' you smile and say! “And now that we know each other again—now that I can call you by name, as in the past, and be sure that your inmost consciousness must reply— a new terror seizes me! Your soul comes back, youthfully and newly clad, while mine, though of unfading freshness and youthfulness within, shows to your eye the same outer garment, grown dull with mourning and faded with the wear of time. Am I grown distasteful? Is it with the sight only of this new body that you look upon me? Rodolph!—spirit that was my devoted and passionate admirer! soul that was sworn to me for ever!—am I—the same Margaret, refound and recognised, grown repulsive? Oh God! What a bitter answer would this be to my prayers for your return to me! “I have followed up to this hour, my fair cousin, in the path you have marked out for me. It has brought me back, in this chamber, to the point from which I started under your guidance, and if it had brought me back unchanged—if it restored me my energy, my hope, and my prospect of fame, I should pray Heaven that it would also give me back my love, and be content—more than content, if it gave me back also my poverty. The sight of my easel, and of the surroundings of my boyish dreams of glory, have made my heart bitter. They have given form and voice to a vague unhappiness, which has haunted me through all these absent years—years of degrading pursuits and wasted powers—and it now impels me from you, kind and lovely as you are, with an aversion I can not control. I can not forgive you. You have thwarted my destiny. You have extinguished with sordid cares a lamp within me that might, by this time, have shone through the world. And what am I, since your wishes are accomplished? Enriched in pocket, and bankrupt in happiness and self-respect. Dined with F—, the artist, at a trattoria. F— is a man of genius, very adventurous and imaginative in his art, but never caring to show the least touch of these qualities in his conversation. His pictures have given him great vogue and consideration at Rome, so that his daily experience furnishes staple enough for his evening's chit-chat, and he seems, of course, to be always talking of himself. He is very generally set down as an egotist. His impulse to talk, however, springs from no wish for self-glorification, but rather from an indolent aptness to lay hands on the readiest and most familiar topic, and that is a kind of egotism to which I have very little objection—particularly with the mind fatigued, as it commonly is in Rome, by a long day's study of works of art. “You will be surprised on glancing at the signature to this letter. You will be still more surprised when you are reminded that it is a reply to an unanswered one of your own—written years ago. That letter lies by me, expressed with all the diffidence of boyish feeling. And it seems as if its diffidence would encourage me in what I wish to say. Yet I write far more tremblingly than you could have done. “Where art thou, bridegroom of my soul? Thy Ione S— calls to thee from the aching void of her lonely spirit! What name bearest thou? What path walkest thou? How can I, glow-worm like, lift my wings and show thee my lamp of guiding love? Thus wing I these words to thy dwelling-place (for thou art, perhaps, a subscriber to the M—r). Go—truants! Rest not till ye meet his eye. “`Dear Miss Blidgims: Feeling quite indisposed myself, and being firmly persuaded that we are three cases of cholera, I have taken advantage of a return calesino to hurry on to Modena for medical advice. The vehicle I take, brought hither a sister of charity, who assures me she will wait on you, even in the most malignant stage of your disease. She is collecting funds for an hospital, and will receive compensation for her services in the form of a donation to this object. I shall send you a physician by express from Modena, where it is still possible we may meet. With prayers, &c., &c. “Sir: The faculty have decided to impose upon you the fine of ten dollars and damages, for painting the president's horse on sabbath night while grazing on the college green. They, moreover, have removed Freshman Wilding from your rooms, and appoint as your future chum the studious and exemplary bearer, Forbearance Smith, to whom you are desired to show a becoming respect. “Dear Philip: You will be surprised to hear that I am in the Lynn jail on a charge of theft and utterance of counterfeit money. I do not wait to tell you the particulars. Please come and identify, “Dear Tom: If your approaching nuptials are to be sufficiently public to admit of a groomsman, you will make me the happiest of friends by selecting me for that office. “Dear Phil: The devil must have informed you of a secret I supposed safe from all the world. Be assured I should have chosen no one but yourself to support me on the occasion; and however you have discovered my design upon your treasure, a thousand thanks for your generous consent. I expected no less from your noble nature. “Baron: Before taking the usual notice of the occurrence of this morning, I wish to rectify one or two points in which our position is false. I find myself, since last night, the accepted lover of Lady Imogen Ravelgold, and the master of estates and title as a count of the Russian empire. Under the etourdissement of such sudden changes in feelings and fortune, perhaps my forgetfulness of the lady, in whose cause you are so interested, admits of indulgence. At any rate, I am so newly in love with life, that I am willing to suppose for an hour that had you known these circumstances, you would have taken a different view of the offence in question. I shall remain at home till two, and it is in your power till then to make me the reparation necessary to my honor. “Dear Sir: My wife wishes me to write to you, and inform you of her marriage, which took place a week or two since, and of which she presumes you are not aware. She remarked to me, that you thought her looking unhappy last evening, when you chanced to see her at the play. As she seemed to regret not being able to answer your note herself, I may perhaps convey the proper apology by taking upon myself to mention to you, that, in consequence of eating an imprudent quantity of unripe fruit, she felt ill before going to the theatre, and was obliged to leave early. To day she seems seriously indisposed. I trust she will be well enough to see you in a day or two—and remain, THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED, BY HIS FRIEND, Start fair, my sweet Violet! This letter will lie on your table when you arrive at Saratoga, and it is intended to prepare you for that critical campaign. You must know the ammunition with which you go into the field. I have seen service, as you know, and, from my retirement (on half-pay), can both devise strategy and reconnoitre the enemy's weakness, with discretion. Set your glass before you on the table, and let us hold a frank council of war. My dear widow: For the wear and tear of your bright eyes in writing me a letter you are duly credited. That for a real half-hour, as long as any ordinary half-hour, such well-contrived illuminations should have concentrated their mortal using on me only, is equal, I am well aware, to a private audience of any two stars in the firmament—eyelashes and petticoats (if not thrown in) turning the comparison a little in your favor. Thanks—of course—piled high as the porphyry pyramid of Papantla! My dear neph-ling: I congratulate you on the attainment of your degree as “Master of Arts.” In other words, I wish the sin of the Faculty well repented of, in having endorsed upon parchment such a barefaced fabrication. Put the document in your pocket, and come away! There will be no occasion to air it before doomsday, probably, and fortunately for you, it will then revert to the Faculty. Quiescat ad-huc—as I used to say of my tailor's bills till they came through a lawyer. Dear reader: A volume of poems goes from us in an extra of the Mirror this week, which leaves us with a feeling—we scarce know how to phrase it—a feeling of timidity and dread—like a parent's apprehensiveness, giving his child into the hands of a stranger. It is not Pliny's “quam sit magnum dare aliquid in manus hominum,” nor is it, what the habitual avoidance of grave themes looks like, sometimes—a preference “to let the serious part of life go by Like the neglected sand.” We are used to buttering curiosity with the ooze of our brains—careful more to be paid than praised— and we have a cellar, as well as many stories, in our giddy thought-house; and it is from this cave of privacy that we have, with reluctance, and consentings far between, drawn treasures of early feeling and impression, now bound and offered to you for the first time in one bundle. Oh, from the different stories of the mind—from the settled depths, and from the effervescent and giddy surface—how different looks the world! —of what different stuff and worth the link that binds us to it! In looking abroad from one window of the soul, we see sympathy, goodness, truth, desire for us and our secrets, that we may be more loved; from another, we see suspicion, coldness, mockery, and ill-will—the evil spirits of the world—lying in wait for us. At one moment—the spirits down, and the heart calm and trusting—we tear out the golden leaf nearest the well of life, and pass it forth to be read and wept over. At another, we bar shutter and blind upon prying malice, turn key carefully on all below, and, mounting to the summit, look abroad and jest at the very treasures we have concealed—wondering at our folly in even confessing to a heartless world that we had secrets, and would share them. We are not always alike. The world does not seem always the same. We believe it is all good sometimes. We believe sometimes, that it is but a place accursed, given to devils and their human scholars. Sometimes we are all kindness—sometimes aching only for an an tagonist, and an arena without barrier or law. And oh what a Procrustes's bed is human opinion—trying a man's actions and words, in whatever mood committed and said, by the same standard of rigor! How often must the angels hovering over us reverse the sentence of the judge—how oftener still the rebuke of the old maid and the Pharisee. Sir: A French writer wittily turns the paradox: “Il faut de l'argent même pour se passer d'argent”— (is it necessary to have money to be able to do without it)—and we please ourselves with suspecting that it is only amid the forgetful ease of possession that you can have made up your mind to forego us. If so, and your first se'ennight of unmirrored solitude prove heavier to bear than the aching three dollar void balanced against it—so! The pathos of this parting will have been superfluous. Ladies and gentlemen: In the eleven thousand shining sixpences which duly rise and dispense their silver light upon our way, we see of course the “Heaven of eternal change” toward whose “patines of bright gold” we have been long stretching with tiptoe expectation. We trust that, like the unpocketable troop whose indefatigable punctuality you emulate, there are still comers to your number unarrived, and that the “Lost Pleiad” (the single heavenly body upon whose discontinuance to rise we indited the foregoing epistle), will come round again in his erratic orbit, and take his place in the constellation he has deserted. We give notice here, however, that, at eleven thousand, we shall, like the nuns of St. Ursula, stop numbering. There have been virgins since the shelving of the bones of the “eleven thousand virgins of Cologne,” yet the oft-told number is still told, without increase, in the holy tradition. We believe with the sainted sisterhood that human credence can go no farther—that 'twixt millions and billions of virgins the disciple's mind would not be likely to discriminate. You will still permit us, therefore, to cast our horoscope upon this nominal number. As other starry sixpences fall into the chinks of boundless space, the perceptible increase of our brightness will alone tell the tale—but they will be marked and welcomed in the careful astronomy of our leger. You are feeding the news-hopper of your literary mill, my dear poet, and I am trying on the old trick of gayety at Saratoga. Which of us should write the other a letter? You, if you say so—though as I get older, I am beginning to think well of the town, even in August. You have your little solaces, my fast liver! Dear Willis: Your kind note to St. John, of the Knickerbocker, got me the state-room with the picture of “Glenmary” on the panel, and I slept under the protection of your household gods—famously, of course. The only fault I found with that magnificent boat, was the right of any “smutched villain” to walk through her. It is a frightful arrangement that can sell, to a beauty and a blackguard, for the same money, the right to promenade on the same carpet, and go to sleep with the same surroundings on the opposite sides of a pine partition! Give me a world where antipodes stay put! But what a right-royal, “slap-up” supper they give in the Knickerbocker! They'll make the means better than the end—travelling better than arriving—if they improve any more! I had a great mind to go back the next day, and come up again. “Dear Bel-Phœbe: I have been `twiddling my sunbeam' (you say my letters are `perfect sunshine') for some time, more or less, in a quandary as to what is now resolved upon as `Dear Bel-Phœbe'—the beginning of this (meant-to-be) faultless epistle. I chanced to wake critical this morning, and, `dear Phœbe,' as the beginning of this letter of mine, looked both vulgar and meaningless. I inked it out as you see. A reference to my etymological dictionary, however, restored my liking for that `dear' word. It is derived from the Anglo-Saxon verb Der-ian, which means to do mischief. Hence dearth, which, by doing mischief, makes what remains more precious, and hence dear, meaning something made precious by having escaped hurting. `Dear Phœbe,' therefore (meaning unhurt Phœbe), struck me as pretty well—you being one of those delicious, late-loving women, destined to be `hurt' first at thirty. Still, the sacred word `Phœbe' was too abruptly come upon. It sounded familiar, and familiarity should be reserved for the postscript. I should have liked to write `dear Lady Phœbe,' or `dear Countess Phœbe'—but we are not permitted to `read our title clear,' in this hideously-simple country. Might I invent an appellative? We say char-woman and horse-man—why not put a descriptive word before a lady's name, by way of respectful distance. Phœbe Lorn is a belle—why not say Bel-Phœbe? Good! It sounds authentic. This letter, then, is to Phœbe, unhurt and beautiful (alias), `Dear Bel-Phœbe!' “Dear Madam: The undersigned, booksellers, publishers, and authors, of the city of New York, have long felt desirous of transmitting to you a memorial of the high and respectful admiration which they entertain for one to whose pen we are indebted for some of the purest and most imaginative productions in the wide range of English literature. As the authoress of `Thaddeus of Warsaw,' the `Scottish Chiefs,' &c., your name has spread over the length and breadth of our land, and the volumes of your delightful works may be found gracing alike the abodes of the wealthy, and the humble dwellings of the poor. And deservedly so—for if purity of sentiment, felicity of expression, and the constant inculcation of the noblest lessons of religion and morality, be any passport to literary fame, then will the name of Miss Porter rank high on the list of those whom the present age delights to honor, and for whom coming ages will entertain a deep feeling of reverential esteem. Dear Jack: Since my compulsory budding, flowering, and bearing fruit, have been accelerated to one season per diem, to feed a daily paper, you will easily understand that I found it necessary at first to work all my sap into something useful—omitting as it were, the gum deposite of superfluous correspondence. I accordingly left you off. Your last letter was slipped into the no-more-bother hole, without the usual endorsement of “answered,” and I considered you like a trinket laid aside before a race—not to encumber me. I miss the writing of trumpery, however. I miss the sweeping out of the corners of my mind—full of things fit only for the dust-pan, but still very possibly hiding a silver-spoon. Dear Custom: Your friend is wrong, from the egg to the apple. Miss Lucy Jones has a mother, or father, guardian, or friend, at whose house she is to be married. The invitation should come from the person under whose protection she is given away—(sent, if you please, to Mr. Smith's friends, with Mr. Smith's card, but understood by Miss Lucy Jones's friends, without card or explanation). It is tampering with serious things, very dangerously, to circulate the three words, “and Mrs. John Smith,” one minute before the putting on of the irrevocable ring. The law which permits ladies (though not gentlemen) to change their minds up to the last minute before wed lock, exacts also that the privileged angels should not be coerced by the fear of seeing the escaped name afterward on a wedding card! Besides, such a card, so issued, would be received from Mrs. Smith before there was any such person. “Dear Sir: I am directed by the committee of the `Travellers' to inform you that they have great pleasure in admitting you as a visiter to the club for the ensuing month, and that they hope to be favored with your frequent attendance. “Sir: I am directed to inform you that the committee of the `Athenæum' have ordered your name to be placed on the list of distinguished foreigners residing in London, who are invited to the house of the club for three months, subject to the same regulations as the members are required to observe. “Mr. Editor: I observe that a `bachelor,' writing in the `American,' recommends to `invited' and `inviters,' to send invitations and answers, stamped, through the penny-post. This is a capital idea, and I shall adopt it for one. I perceive that a bachelor in another paper says, `it will suit him and his fellow-bachelors,' for reasons set forth, and that he will adopt the plan. Now, Mr. Editor, I am a housekeeper, and married, and my wife requires the use of all my servants, and can not spare them to be absent three or four days, going round the city, delivering notes, on the eve of a party. These notes could, by the plan suggested, be delivered in three hours, and insure a prompt answer. I can then know exactly who is coming and who is not—a very convenient point of knowledge! “Right Trusty and Right Well-beloved Cousin.—We greet you well. Whereas, the 1st day of March next (or thereabouts) is appointed for our coronation.—These are to will and command you (all excuses set apart) to make your personal attendance on us at the time above-mentioned, furnished and appointed as to your rank and quality appertaineth.— There to do and perform all such services as shall be required and belong to you.—Whereof you are not to fail.—And so we bid you heartily farewell. “Mr. Editor: One of the greatest treats you could give your country lady readers, would be to furnish them from time to time, with brief hints as to the actual style of fashions in the metropolis. We have, all along, depended for information on this important subject, upon the monthly magazines, all of which profess to give the fashions as worn, but we find out to our dismay, that they pick up their fashions from the Paris and London prints at random—some of them adopted by our city ladies, some not! It thus happens that we country people, who like to be in the fashion, are often subjected to great expense and mortification—relying too implicitly upon the magazine reports. We cause a bonnet or a dress to be made strictly in accordance with the style prescribed in the fashion plate of the magazine, and when we hie away to the city with our new finery, we discover that our costume is so outrè that every one laughs at us! Now, should there not be some remedy for this evil? “`Madam: There is a fund applicable, as vacancies may occur, to the grant of annual pensions of very limited amount, which usage has placed at the disposal of the lady of the first minister. On this fund there is a surplus of £20 per annum. Dear Fanny: Would your dark eyes vouchsafe to wonder how I come to write to you? Thus it befell:— Madame Pico's Concert.—We should guess that between two and three thousand persons were listeners in the vast hall of the Tabernacle at the concert. The five hundred regular opera-goers, who were apparently all there, were scattered among a mass of graver countenances, and Madame Pico saw combined her two bailiwicks of fashion and seriousness. She seems to be equally popular with both, and her “good-fellow” physiognomy never showed its honest beauty to more advantage. She wore a Greek cap of gold braid on the right-side organ of conscientiousness, and probably magnetized very powerfully the large gold tassel that fell from it over her cheek. The English song was the qui-vive-ity of the evening, however, and English, from a tongue cradled in a gondola, is certainly very peculiar! But, preserve us, Rossini-Bellini! After hearing exclusively Italian music from a songstress, the descent to Balfe is rather intolerable. A lark starting for its accustomed zenith with “chicken fixings” would represent our soul as it undertook to soar last night with Balfeathered Pico!—What should make that same song popular is beyond our divining. Most of its movement works directly in the joint between the comfortable parts of the voice, and nobody ever tilted through its see-saw transitions, in our hearing, without apparent distress. To a lady-friend in the country: I am up to the knees in newspapers, and write to you under the stare of nine pigeon-holes, stuffed with literary portent. Were there such a thing (in this world of everythings) as papyral magnetism, you would get a letter, not only typical in itself, but typical of a flood in which my identity is fast drowning. Oh, the drown of news, weighed unceasingly—little events and great ones— against little more than the trouble of snipping round with scissors! To a horrid death—to a miraculous preservation—to a heart-gush of poesy—to a marriage —to a crime—to the turn of a political crisis—to flashing wit and storied agonies—giving but the one invariable first thought—“Shall I cut it out?” Alas, dear beauty-monarch of all you survey!—your own obituary, were I to read it in a newspaper of to-morrow, would speak scarce quicker to my heart than to those scissors of undiscriminating circum-cision! With the knowledge that the sky above me was enriched, as Florence once was, by the return of its long-lost and best model of beauty, I should ask, with be-paragraphed grief—“will her death do for the Mirror?” My Dear Sir: To ask me for my idea of General Morris is like asking the left hand's opinion of the dexterity of the right. I have lived so long with the “brigadier,” known him so intimately, worked so constantly at the same rope, and thought so little of ever separating from him (except by precedence of ferriage over the Styx), that it is hard to shove him from me to the perspective distance—hard to shut my own partial eyes, and look at him through other people's. I will try, however, and as it is done with but one foot off from the treadmill of my ceaseless vocation, you will excuse both abruptness and brevity.
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12Author:  Willis Nathaniel Parker 1806-1867Requires cookie*
 Title:  The complete works of N.P. Willis  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: This volume is sent forth, with a feeling somewhat akin to a parent's apprehensiveness, in giving his child into the hands of a stranger. We have a cellar, as well as many stories, in our giddy thought-house; and it is from this cave of privacy that we have, with reluctance, and consentings far between, drawn treasures of feeling and impression, now bound and offered to you for the first time in one bundle. Oh, from the different stories of the mind — from the settled depths, and from the effervescent and giddy surface — how different looks the world! — of what different stuff and worth the link that binds us to it! In looking abroad from one window of the soul, we see sympathy, goodness, truth, desire for us and our secrets, that we may be more loved; from another, we see suspicion, coldness, mockery, and ill will — the evil spirits of the world — lying in wait for us. At one moment — the spirits down, and the heart calm and trusting — we tear out the golden leaf nearest the well of life, and pass it forth to be read and wept over. At another, we bar shutter and blind upon prying malice, turn key carefully on all below, and, mounting to the summit, look abroad and jest at the very treasures we have concealed — wondering at our folly in even confessing to a heartless world that we had secrets, and would share them. We are not always alike. The world does not seem always the same. We believe it is all good sometimes. We believe sometimes, that it is but a place accursed, given to devils and their human scholars. Sometimes we are all kindness — sometimes aching only for an antagonist, and an arena without barrier or law. And oh what a Procrustes' bed is human opinion — trying a man's actions and words, in whatever mood committed and said, by the same standard of rigor! How often must the angels hovering over us reverse the sentence of the judge — how oftener still the rebuke of the old maid and the Pharisee. Sir: In selling you the dew and sunshine ordained to fall hereafter on this bright spot of earth — the waters on their way to this sparkling brook — the tints mixed for the flowers of that enamelled meadow, and the songs bidden to be sung in coming summers by the feathery builders in Glenmary, I know not whether to wonder more at the omnipotence of money, or at my own impertinent audacity toward Nature. How you can buy the right to exclude at will every other creature made in God's image from sitting by this brook, treading on that carpet of flowers, or lying listening to the birds in the shade of these glorious trees — how I can sell it you, is a mystery not understood by the Indian, and dark, I must say to me. “Has there been any mistake in the two-penny post delivery, that I have not received your article for this month? If so, please send me the rough draught by the bearer (who waits), and the compositors will try to make it out. “Dear Mr. Clay: From causes which you will probably understand, I have been induced to reconsider your proposal of marriage to my niece. — Imprudent as I must still consider your union, I find myself in such a situation that, should you persevere, I must decide in its favor, as the least of two evils. You will forgive my anxious care, however, if I exact of you, before taking any decided step, a full and fair statement of your pecuniary embarrassments (which I understand are considerable) and your present income and prospects. I think it proper to inform you that Miss Gore's expectations, beyond an annuity of £300 a year, are very distant, and that all your calculations should be confined to that amount. With this understanding, I should be pleased to see you at Ashurst to-morrow morning. “Your dark eye rests on this once familiar handwriting. If your pulse could articulate at this moment, it would murmur he loved me well! He who writes to you now, after years of silence, parted from you with your tears upon his lips — parted from you as the last shadow parts from the sun, with a darkness that must deepen till morn again. I begin boldly, but the usage of the world is based upon forgetfulness in absence, and I have not forgotten. Yet this is not to be a love-letter. “Dear Lady Fanny: If you have anything beside the ghost-room vacant at Freer Hall, I will run down to you. Should you, by chance, be alone, ask up the curate for a week to keep Sir Harry off my hands; and, as you don't flirt, provide me with somebody more pretty than yourself for our mutual security. As my autograph sells for eighteen pence, you will excuse the brevity of “Sir: I am intrusted with a delicate commission, which I know not how to broach to you, except by simple proposal. Will you forgive my abrupt brevity, if I inform you, without further preface, that the Countess Nyschriem, a Polish lady of high birth and ample fortune, does you the honor to propose for your hand. If you are disengaged, and your affections are not irrevocably given to another, I can conceive no sufficient obstacle to your acceptance of this brilliant connexion. The countess is twenty-two, and not beautiful, it must in fairness be said; but she has high qualities of head and heart, and is worthy of any man's respect and affection. She has seen you, of course, and conceived a passion for you, of which this is the result. I am directed to add, that should you consent, the following conditions are imposed — that you marry her within four days, making no inquiry except as to her age, rank, and property, and that, without previous interview, she come veiled to the altar. “You will pardon me that I have taken two days to consider the extraordinary proposition made me in your letter. The subject, since it is to be entertained a moment, requires, perhaps, still further reflection — but my reply shall be definite, and as prompt as I can bring myself to be, in a matter so important. “Dear Fred: Nothing going on in town, except a little affair of my own, which I can't leave to go down to you. Dull even at Crocky's — nobody plays this hot weather. And now, as to your commissions. You will receive Dupree, the cook, by to-night's mail. Grisi won't come to you without her man — `'twasn't thus when we were boys!' — so I send you a figurante, and you must do tableaux. I was luckier in finding you a wit. S — will be with you to-morrow, though, by the way, it is only on condition of meeting Lady Midge Bellasys, for whom, if she is not with you, you must exert your inveiglements. This, by way only of shuttlecock and battledore, however, for they play at wit together — nothing more, on her part at least. Look out for this devilish fellow, my lord Fred! — and live thin till you see the last of him — for he'll laugh you into your second apoplexy with the dangerous ease of a hair-trigger. I could amuse you with a turn or two in my late adventures, but black and white are bad confidants, though very well as a business firm. And, mentioning them, I have drawn on you for a temporary £500, which please lump with my other loan, and oblige “Dear Sir Humphrey: Perhaps you will scarce remember Jane Jones, to whom you presented the brush of your first fox. This was thirty years ago. I was then at school in the little village near Tally-ho hall. Dear me! how well I remember it! On hearing of your marriage, I accepted an offer from my late husband, Mr. S — , and our union was blessed with one boy, who, I must say, is an angel of goodness. Out of his small income, my dear James furnished and rented this very genteel house, and he tells me I shall have it for life, and provides me one servant, and everything I could possibly want. Thrice a week he comes out to spend the day and dine with me, and, in short, he is the pattern of good sons. As this dear boy is going down to Warwickshire, I can not resist the desire I have that you should know him, and that he should bring me back an account of my lover in days gone by. Any attention to him, dear Sir Humphrey, will very much oblige one whom you once was happy to oblige, and still “Dear Sir: I remember Miss Jones very well, God bless me, I thought she had been dead many years. I am sure I shall be very happy to see her son. Will you come out and dine with us? — dinner at seven. “Dear Nuncle: It's hard on to six o'clock, and I'm engaged at seven to a junketing at the `Hen and chickens,' with Stuggins and the maids. If you intend to make me acquainted with your great lord, now is the time. If you don't, I shall walk in presently, and introduce myself; for I know how to make my own way, nucle — ask Miss Bel's maid, and the other girls you introduced me to at Tally-ho hall! Be in a hurry, I'm just outside. “My dear Lord: In the belief that a frank communication would be best under the circumstances, I wish to make an inquiry, prefacing it with the assurance that my only hope of happiness has been for some time staked upon the successful issue of my suit for your daughter's hand. It is commonly understood, I believe, that the bulk of your lordship's fortune is separate from the entail, and may be disposed of at your pleasure. May I inquire its amount, or rather, may I ask what fortune goes with the hand of Lady Angelica. The Beauchief estates are unfortunately much embarrassed, and my own debts (I may frankly confess) are very considerable. You will at once see, my lord, that, in justice to your daughter, as well as to myself, I could not do otherwise than make this frank inquiry before pushing my suit to extremity. Begging your indulgence and an immediate answer, I remain, my dear lord, “Dear Lord Frederick: I trust you will not accuse me of a want of candor in declining a direct answer to your question. Though I freely own to a friendly wish for your success in your efforts to engage the affections of Lady Angelica, with a view to marriage, it can only be in the irrevocable process of a marriage settlement that her situation, as to the probable disposal of my fortune, can be disclosed. I may admit to you, however, that, upon the events of this day on which you have written (it so chances), may depend the question whether I should encourage you to pursue further your addresses to Lady Angelica. “My dear Angelica: I am happy to know that there are circumstances which will turn aside much of the piognancy of the communication I am about to make to you. If I am not mistaken at least, in believing a mutual attachment to exist between yourself and Count Pallardos, you will at once comprehend the ground of my mental relief, and perhaps, in a measure, anticipate what I am about to say. “Dear Count: You will wonder at receiving a friendly note from me after my refusal, two months since, to meet you over `pistols and coffee;' but reparation may not be too late, and this is to say, that you have your choice between two modes of settlement, viz: — to accept for your stable the hunter you stole from me (vide police report) and allow me to take a glass of wine with you at my own table and bury the hatchet, or, to shoot at me if you like, according to your original design. Manners and Beauchief hope you will select the latter, as they owe you a grudge for the possession of your incomparable bride and her fortune; but I trust you will prefer the horse, which (if I am rightly informed) bore you to the declaration of love at Chasteney. Reply to Crockford's. “My dear St. Leger: Enclosed you have the only surviving lock of my grizzled wig — sign and symbol that my disguises are over and my object attained. The wig burns at this instant in the grate, item my hand-ruffles, item sundry embroidered cravats a la vielle cour, item (this last not without some trouble at my heart) a solitary love-token from Constantia Hervey. One faded rose — given me at Pæstum, the day before I was driven disgraced from her presence by the interference of this insolent fool — one faded rose has crisped and faded into smoke with the rest. And so fled from the world the last hope of a warm and passionate heart, which never gave up its destiny till now — never felt that it was made in vain, guarded, refined, cherished in vain, till that long-loved flower lay in ashes. I am accustomed to strip emotion of its drapery — determined to feel nothing but what is real — yet this moment, turn it and strip it, and deny its illusions as I will, is anguish. `Self-inflicted,' you smile and say! “I have followed up to this hour, my fair cousin, in the path you have marked out for me. It has brought me back, in this chamber, to the point from which I started under your guidance, and if it had brought me back unchanged — if it restored me my energy, my hope, and my prospect of fame, I should pray Heaven that it would also give me back my love, and be content — more than content, if it gave me back also my poverty. The sight of my easel, and of the surroundings of my boyish dreams of glory, have made my heart bitter. They have given form and voice to a vague unhappiness, which has haunted me through all these absent years — years of degrading pursuits and wasted powers — and it now impels me from you, kind and lovely as you are, with an aversion I can not control. I can not forgive you. You have thwarted my destiny. You have extinguished with sordid cares a lamp within me that might, by this time, have shone through the world. And what am I, since your wishes are accomplished? Enriched in pocket, and bankrupt in happiness and self-respect. “Where art thou, bridegroom of my soul? Thy Ione S — calls to thee from the aching void of her lonely spirit! What name bearest thou? What path walkest thou? How can I, glow-worm like, lift my wings and show thee my lamp of guiding love? Thus wing I these words to thy dwelling-place (for thou art, perhaps, a subscriber to the M — r). Go — truants! Rest not till ye meet his eye. “`Dear Miss Blidgims: Feeling quite indisposed myself, and being firmly persuaded that we are three cases of cholera, I have taken advantage of a return calesino to hurry on to Modena for medical advice. The vehicle I take, brought hither a sister of charity, who assures me she will wait on you, even in the most malignant stage of your disease. She is collecting funds for an hospital, and will receive compensation for her services in the form of a donation to this object. I shall send you a physician by express from Modena, where it is still possible we may meet. With prayers, &c., &c. “Sir: The faculty have decided to impose upon you the fine of ten dollars and damages, for painting the president's horse on sabbath night while grazing on the college green. They, moreover, have removed Freshman Wilding from your rooms, and appoint as your future chum the studious and exemplary bearer, Forbearance Smith, to whom you are desired to show a becoming respect. “Dear Philip: You will be surprised to hear that I am in the Lynn jail on a charge of theft and utterance of counterfeit money. I do not wait to tell you the particulars. Please come and identify, “Dear Tom: If your approaching nuptials are to be sufficiently public to admit of a groomsman, you will make me the happiest of friends by selecting me for that office. “Dear Phil: The devil must have informed you of a secret I supposed safe from all the world. Be assured I should have chosen no one but yourself to support me on the occasion; and however you have discovered my design upon your treasure, a thousand thanks for your generous consent. I expected no less from your noble nature. “Baron: Before taking the usual notice of the occurrence of this morning, I wish to rectify one or two points in which our position is false. I find myself, since last night, the accepted lover of Lady Imogen Ravelgold, and the master of estates and title as a count of the Russian empire. Under the etourdissement of such sudden changes in feelings and fortune, perhaps my forgetfulness of the lady, in whose cause you are so interested, admits of indulgence. At any rate, I am so newly in love with life, that I am willing to suppose for an hour that had you known these circumstances, you would have taken a different view of the offence in question. I shall remain at home till two, and it is in your power till then to make me the reparation necessary to my honor. “Dear Sir: My wife wishes me to write to you, and inform you of her marriage, which took place a week or two since, and of which she presumes you are not aware. She remarked to me, that you thought her looking unhappy last evening, when you chanced to see her at the play. As she seemed to regret not being able to answer your note herself, I may perhaps convey the proper apology by taking upon myself to mention to you, that, in consequence of eating an imprudent quantity of unripe fruit, she felt ill before going to the theatre, and was obliged to leave early. To day she seems seriously indisposed. I trust she will be well enough to see you in a day or two — and remain, Start fair, my sweet Violet! This letter will lie on your table when you arrive at Saratoga, and it is intended to prepare you for that critical campaign. You must know the ammunition with which you go into the field. I have seen service, as you know, and, from my retirement (on half-pay), can both devise strategy and reconnoitre the enemy's weakness, with discretion. Set your glass before you on the table, and let us hold a frank council of war. My dear widow: For the wear and tear of your bright eyes in writing me a letter you are duly credited. That for a real half-hour, as long as any ordinary half-hour, such well-contrived illuminations should have concentrated their mortal using on me only, is equal, I am well aware, to a private audience of any two stars in the firmament — eyelashes and petticoats (if not thrown in) turning the comparison a little in your favor. Thanks — of course — piled high as the porphyry pyramid of Papantla! My dear neph-ling: I congratulate you on the attainment of your degree as “Master of Arts.” In other words, I wish the sin of the Faculty well repented of, in having endorsed upon parchment such a barefaced fabrication. Put the document in your pocket, and come away! There will be no occasion to air it before doomsday, probably, and fortunately for you, it will then revert to the Faculty. Quiescat ad-huc — as I used to say of my tailor's bills till they came through a lawyer. Dear reader: A volume of poems goes from us in an extra of the Mirror this week, which leaves us with a feeling — we scarce know how to phrase it — a feeling of timidity and dread — like a parent's apprehensiveness, giving his child into the hands of a stranger. It is not Pliny's “quam sit magnum dare aliquid in manus hominum,” nor is it, what the habitual avoidance of grave themes looks like, sometimes — a preference “to let the serious part of life go by Like the neglected sand.” We are used to buttering curiosity with the ooze of our brains — careful more to be paid than praised — and we have a cellar, as well as many stories, in our giddy thought-house; and it is from this cave of privacy that we have, with reluctance, and consentings far between, drawn treasures of early feeling and impression, now bound and offered to you for the first time in one bundle. Oh, from the different stories of the mind — from the settled depths, and from the effervescent and giddy surface — how different looks the world! — of what different stuff and worth the link that binds us to it! In looking abroad from one window of the soul, we see sympathy, goodness, truth, desire for us and our secrets, that we may be more loved; from another, we see suspicion, coldness, mockery, and ill-will — the evil spirits of the world — lying in wait for us. At one moment — the spirits down, and the heart calm and trusting — we tear out the golden leaf nearest the well of life, and pass it forth to be read and wept over. At another, we bar shutter and blind upon prying malice, turn key carefully on all below, and, mounting to the summit, look abroad and jest at the very treasures we have concealed — wondering at our folly in even confessing to a heartless world that we had secrets, and would share them. We are not always alike. The world does not seem always the same. We believe it is all good sometimes. We believe sometimes, that it is but a place accursed, given to devils and their human scholars. Sometimes we are all kindness — sometimes aching only for an an tagonist, and an arena without barrier or law. And oh what a Procrustes's bed is human opinion — trying a man's actions and words, in whatever mood committed and said, by the same standard of rigor! How often must the angels hovering over us reverse the sentence of the judge — how oftener still the rebuke of the old maid and the Pharisee. You are feeding the news-hopper of your literary mill, my dear poet, and I am trying on the old trick of gayety at Saratoga. Which of us should write the other a letter? You, if you say so — though as I get older, I am beginning to think well of the town, even in August. You have your little solaces, my fast liver! Dear Willis: Your kind note to St. John, of the Knickerbocker, got me the state-room with the picture of “Glenmary” on the panel, and I slept under the protection of your household gods — famously, of course. The only fault I found with that magnificent boat, was the right of any “smutched villain” to walk through her. It is a frightful arrangement that can sell, to a beauty and a blackguard, for the same money, the right to promenade on the same carpet, and go to sleep with the same surroundings on the opposite sides of a pine partition! Give me a world where antipodes stay put! But what a right-royal, “slap-up” supper they give in the Knickerbocker! They'll make the means better than the end — travelling better than arriving — if they improve any more! I had a great mind to go back the next day, and come up again. “Dear Willis: You frightened me to-day, terribly, in the hint you threw out in the course of conversation with the `brigadier,' to wit: `Shall we make it into a monthly?' “Dear Bel-Phœbe: I have been `twiddling my sunbeam' (you say my letters are `perfect sunshine') for some time, more or less, in a quandary as to what is now resolved upon as `Dear Bel-Phœbe' — the beginning of this (meant-to-be) faultless epistle. I chanced to wake critical this morning, and, `dear Phœbe,' as the beginning of this letter of mine, looked both vulgar and meaningless. I inked it out as you see. A reference to my etymological dictionary, however, restored my liking for that `dear' word. It is derived from the Anglo-Saxon verb Der-ian, which means to do mischief. Hence dearth, which, by doing mischief, makes what remains more precious, and hence dear, meaning something made precious by having escaped hurting. `Dear Phœbe,' therefore (meaning unhurt Phœbe), struck me as pretty well — you being one of those delicious, late-loving women, destined to be `hurt' first at thirty. Still, the sacred word `Phœbe' was too abruptly come upon. It sounded familiar, and familiarity should be reserved for the postscript. I should have liked to write `dear Lady Phœbe,' or `dear Countess Phœbe' — but we are not permitted to `read our title clear,' in this hideously-simple country. Might I invent an appellative? We say char-woman and horse-man — why not put a descriptive word before a lady's name, by way of respectful distance. Phœbe Lorn is a belle — why not say Bel-Phœbe? Good! It sounds authentic. This letter, then, is to Phœbe, unhurt and beautiful (alias), `Dear Bel-Phœbe!' “Dear Madam: The undersigned, booksellers, publishers, and authors, of the city of New York, have long felt desirous of transmitting to you a memorial of the high and respectful admiration which they entertain for one to whose pen we are indebted for some of the purest and most imaginative productions in the wide range of English literature. As the authoress of `Thaddeus of Warsaw,' the `Scottish Chiefs,' &c., your name has spread over the length and breadth of our land, and the volumes of your delightful works may be found gracing alike the abodes of the wealthy, and the humble dwellings of the poor. And deservedly so — for if purity of sentiment, felicity of expression, and the constant inculcation of the noblest lessons of religion and morality, be any passport to literary fame, then will the name of Miss Porter rank high on the list of those whom the present age delights to honor, and for whom coming ages will entertain a deep feeling of reverential esteem. Dear Jack: Since my compulsory budding, flowering, and bearing fruit, have been accelerated to one season per diem, to feed a daily paper, you will easily understand that I found it necessary at first to work all my sap into something useful — omitting as it were, the gum deposite of superfluous correspondence. I accordingly left you off. Your last letter was slipped into the no-more-bother hole, without the usual endorsement of “answered,” and I considered you like a trinket laid aside before a race — not to encumber me. I miss the writing of trumpery, however. I miss the sweeping out of the corners of my mind — full of things fit only for the dust-pan, but still very possibly hiding a silver-spoon. Messrs. Editors: My friend John Smith is to be married to Lucy Jones. She issues a card of invitation like this: — Dear Custom: Your friend is wrong, from the egg to the apple. Miss Lucy Jones has a mother, or father, guardian, or friend, at whose house she is to be married. The invitation should come from the person under whose protection she is given away — (sent, if you please, to Mr. Smith's friends, with Mr. Smith's card, but understood by Miss Lucy Jones's friends, without card or explanation). It is tampering with serious things, very dangerously, to circulate the three words, “and Mrs. John Smith,” one minute before the putting on of the irrevocable ring. The law which permits ladies (though not gentlemen) to change their minds up to the last minute before wed lock, exacts also that the privileged angels should not be coerced by the fear of seeing the escaped name afterward on a wedding card! Besides, such a card, so issued, would be received from Mrs. Smith before there was any such person. “Dear Sir: I am directed by the committee of the `Travellers' to inform you that they have great pleasure in admitting you as a visiter to the club for the ensuing month, and that they hope to be favored with your frequent attendance. “Sir: I am directed to inform you that the committee of the `Athenæum' have ordered your name to be placed on the list of distinguished foreigners residing in London, who are invited to the house of the club for three months, subject to the same regulations as the members are required to observe. “Je suis vraiment desolée de ne pouvoir aller ce soir chez Lady Morgan. Je dine chez le Prince Esterhazy ou je dois passer la soirée. Demain au soir, j'ai un concert pour M. Laporte, le reste de la semaine je suis libre et tout à vos ordres. Si vous croyez de combiner quelque-choze avec Lady Morgan, comptez sur moi! Demain je passerai chez Lady Morgan pour faire mes excuses en personne. “Mr. Editor: I observe that a `bachelor,' writing in the `American,' recommends to `invited' and `inviters,' to send invitations and answers, stamped, through the penny-post. This is a capital idea, and I shall adopt it for one. I perceive that a bachelor in another paper says, `it will suit him and his fellow-bachelors,' for reasons set forth, and that he will adopt the plan. Now, Mr. Editor, I am a housekeeper, and married, and my wife requires the use of all my servants, and can not spare them to be absent three or four days, going round the city, delivering notes, on the eve of a party. These notes could, by the plan suggested, be delivered in three hours, and insure a prompt answer. I can then know exactly who is coming and who is not — a very convenient point of knowledge! “Right Trusty and Right Well-beloved Cousin. — We greet you well. Whereas, the 1st day of March next (or thereabouts) is appointed for our coronation. — These are to will and command you (all excuses set apart) to make your personal attendance on us at the time above-mentioned, furnished and appointed as to your rank and quality appertaineth. — There to do and perform all such services as shall be required and belong to you. — Whereof you are not to fail. — And so we bid you heartily farewell. “Mr. Editor: One of the greatest treats you could give your country lady readers, would be to furnish them from time to time, with brief hints as to the actual style of fashions in the metropolis. We have, all along, depended for information on this important subject, upon the monthly magazines, all of which profess to give the fashions as worn, but we find out to our dismay, that they pick up their fashions from the Paris and London prints at random — some of them adopted by our city ladies, some not! It thus happens that we country people, who like to be in the fashion, are often subjected to great expense and mortification — relying too implicitly upon the magazine reports. We cause a bonnet or a dress to be made strictly in accordance with the style prescribed in the fashion plate of the magazine, and when we hie away to the city with our new finery, we discover that our costume is so outrè that every one laughs at us! Now, should there not be some remedy for this evil? “`Madam: There is a fund applicable, as vacancies may occur, to the grant of annual pensions of very limited amount, which usage has placed at the disposal of the lady of the first minister. On this fund there is a surplus of £20 per annum. To a lady-friend in the country: I am up to the knees in newspapers, and write to you under the stare of nine pigeon-holes, stuffed with literary portent. Were there such a thing (in this world of everythings) as papyral magnetism, you would get a letter, not only typical in itself, but typical of a flood in which my identity is fast drowning. Oh, the drown of news, weighed unceasingly — little events and great ones — against little more than the trouble of snipping round with scissors! To a horrid death — to a marriage preservation — to a heart-gush of poesy — to a marriage — to a crime — to the turn of a political crisis — to flashing wit and storied agonies — giving but the one 50 invariable first thought — “Shall I cut it out?” Alas, dear beauty-monarch of all you survey! — your own obituary, were I to read it in a newspaper of to-morrow, would speak scarce quicker to my heart than to those scissors of undiscriminating circum-cision! With the knowledge that the sky above me was enriched, as Florence once was, by the return of its long-lost and best model of beauty, I should ask, with be-paragraphed grief — “will her death do for the Mirror?” My Dear Sir: To ask me for my idea of General Morris is like asking the left hand's opinion of the dexterity of the right. I have lived so long with the “brigadier,” known him so intimately, worked so constantly at the same rope, and thought so little of ever separating from him (except by precedence of ferriage over the Styx), that it is hard to shove him from me to the perspective distance — hard to shut my own partial eyes, and look at him through other people's. I will try, however, and as it is done with but one foot off from the treadmill of my ceaseless vocation, you will excuse both abruptness and brevity.
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13Author:  Willis Nathaniel Parker 1806-1867Requires cookie*
 Title:  The miscellaneous works of N.P. Willis  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: I have not written to you in your boy's lifetime— that fine lad, a shade taller than yourself, whom I sometimes meet at my tailor's and bootmaker's. I am not very sure, that after the first month (bitter month) of your marriage, I have thought of you for the duration of a revery—fit to be so called. I loved you—lost you—swore your ruin and forgot you— which is love's climax when jilted. And I never expected to think of you again. Start fair, my sweet Violet! This letter will lie on your table when you arrive at Saratoga, and it is intended to prepare you for that critical campaign. You must know the ammunition with which you go into the field. I have seen service, as you know, and, from my retirement (on half-pay), can both devise strategy and reconnoitre the enemy's weakness, with discretion. Set your glass before you on the table, and let us hold a frank council of war. My dear widow: For the wear and tear of your bright eyes in writing me a letter you are duly credited. That for a real half-hour, as long as any ordinary half-hour, such well-contrived illuminations should have concentrated their mortal using on me only, is equal, I am well aware, to a private audience of any two stars in the firmament—eyelashes and petticoats (if not thrown in) turning the comparison a little in your favor. Thanks—of course—piled high as the porphyry pyramid of Papantla! My dear neph-ling: I congratulate you on the attainment of your degree as “Master of Arts.” In other words, I wish the sin of the Faculty well repented of, in having endorsed upon parchment such a barefaced fabrication. Put the document in your pocket, and come away! There will be no occasion to air it before doomsday, probably, and fortunately for you, it will then revert to the Faculty. Quiescat adhuc—as I used to say of my tailor's bills till they came through a lawyer. Dear reader: A volume of poems goes from us in an extra of the Mirror this week, which leaves us with a feeling—we scarce know how to phrase it—a feeling of timidity and dread—like a parent's apprehensiveness, giving his child into the hands of a stranger. It is not Pliny's “quam sit magnum dare aliquid in manus hominum,” nor is it, what the habitual avoidance of grave themes looks like, sometimes—a preference “to let the serious part of life go by Like the neglected sand.” We are used to buttering curiosity with the ooze of our brains—careful more to be paid than praised— and we have a cellar, as well as many stories, in our giddy thought-house; and it is from this cave of privacy that we have, with reluctance, and consentings far between, drawn treasures of early feeling and impression, now bound and offered to you for the first time in one bundle. Oh, from the different stories of the mind—from the settled depths, and from the effervescent and giddy surface—how different looks the world! —of what different stuff and worth the link that binds us to it! In looking abroad from one window of the soul, we see sympathy, goodness, truth, desire for us and our secrets, that we may be more loved; from another, we see suspicion, coldness, mockery, and ill-will—the evil spirits of the world—lying in wait for us. At one moment—the spirits down, and the heart calm and trusting—we tear out the golden leaf nearest the well of life, and pass it forth to be read and wept over. At another, we bar shutter and blind upon prying malice, turn key carefully on all below, and, mounting to the summit, look abroad and jest at the very treasures we have concealed—wondering at our folly in even confessing to a heartless world that we had secrets, and would share them. We are not always alike. The world does not seem always the same. We believe it is all good sometimes. We believe sometimes, that it is but a place accursed, given to devils and their human scholars. Sometimes we are all kindness—sometimes aching only for an an tagonist, and an arena without barrier or law. And oh what a Procrustes's bed is human opinion—trying a man's actions and words, in whatever mood committed and said, by the same standard of rigor! How often must the angels hovering over us reverse the sentence of the judge—how oftener still the rebuke of the old maid and the Pharisee. Sir: A French writer wittily turns the paradox: “Il faut de l'argent même pour se passer d'argent”— (is it necessary to have money to be able to do without it)—and we please ourselves with suspecting that it is only amid the forgetful ease of possession that you can have made up your mind to forego us. If so, and your first se'ennight of unmirrored solitude prove heavier to bear than the aching three dollar void balanced against it—so! The pathos of this parting will have been superfluous. Ladies and gentlemen: In the eleven thousand shining sixpences which duly rise and dispense their silver light upon our way, we see of course the “Heaven of eternal change” toward whose “patines of bright gold” we have been long stretching with tiptoe expectation. We trust that, like the unpocketable troop whose indefatigable punctuality you emulate, there are still comers to your number unarrived, and that the “Lost Pleiad” (the single heavenly body upon whose discontinuance to rise we indited the foregoing epistle), will come round again in his erratic orbit, and take his place in the constellation he has deserted. We give notice here, however, that, at eleven thousand, we shall, like the nuns of St. Ursula, stop numbering. There have been virgins since the shelving of the bones of the “eleven thousand virgins of Cologne,” yet the oft-told number is still told, without increase, in the holy tradition. We believe with the sainted sisterhood that human credence can go no farther—that 'twixt millions and billions of virgins the disciple's mind would not be likely to discriminate. You will still permit us, therefore, to cast our horoscope upon this nominal number. As other starry sixpences fall into the chinks of boundless space, the perceptible increase of our brightness will alone tell the tale—but they will be marked and welcomed in the careful astronomy of our leger. You are feeding the news-hopper of your literary mill, my dear poet, and I am trying on the old trick of gayety at Saratoga. Which of us should write the other a letter? You, if you say so—though as I get older, I am beginning to think well of the town, even in August. You have your little solaces, my fast liver! Dear Willis: Your kind note to St. John, of the Knickerbocker, got me the state-room with the picture of “Glenmary” on the panel, and I slept under the protection of your household gods—famously, of course. The only fault I found with that magnificent boat, was the right of any “smutched villain” to walk through her. It is a frightful arrangement that can sell, to a beauty and a blackguard, for the same money, the right to promenade on the same carpet, and go to sleep with the same surroundings on the opposite sides of a pine partition! Give me a world where antipodes stay put! But what a right-royal, “slap-up” supper they give in the Knickerbocker! They'll make the means better than the end—travelling better than arriving—if they improve any more! I had a great mind to go back the next day, and come up again. “Dear Willis: You frightened me to-day, terribly, in the hint you threw out in the course of conversation with the `brigadier,' to wit: `Shall we make it into a monthly?' “Dear Bel-Phœbe: I have been `twiddling my sunbeam' (you say my letters are `perfect sunshine') for some time, more or less, in a quandary as to what is now resolved upon as `Dear Bel-Phœbe'—the beginning of this (meant-to-be) faultless epistle. I chanced to wake critical this morning, and, `dear Phœbe,' as the beginning of this letter of mine, looked both vulgar and meaningless. I inked it out as you see. A reference to my etymological dictionary, however, restored my liking for that `dear' word. It is derived from the Anglo-Saxon verb Der-ian, which means to do mischief. Hence dearth, which, by doing mischief, makes what remains more precious, and hence dear, meaning something made precious by having escaped hurting. `Dear Phœbe,' therefore (meaning unhurt Phœbe), struck me as pretty well—you being one of those delicious, late-loving women, destined to be `hurt' first at thirty. Still, the sacred word `Phœbe' was too abruptly come upon. It sounded familiar, and familiarity should be reserved for the postscript. I should have liked to write `dear Lady Phœbe,' or `dear Countess Phœbe'—but we are not permitted to `read our title clear,' in this hideously-simple country. Might I invent an appellative? We say char-woman and horse-man—why not put a descriptive word before a lady's name, by way of respectful distance. Phœbe Lorn is a belle—why not say Bel-Phœbe? Good! It sounds authentic. This letter, then, is to Phœbe, unhurt and beautiful (alias), `Dear Bel-Phœbe!' “Dear Madam: The undersigned, booksellers, publishers, and authors, of the city of New York, have long felt desirous of transmitting to you a memorial of the high and respectful admiration which they entertain for one to whose pen we are indebted for some of the purest and most imaginative productions in the wide range of English literature. As the authoress of `Thaddeus of Warsaw,' the `Scottish Chiefs,' &c., your name has spread over the length and breadth of our land, and the volumes of your delightful works may be found gracing alike the abodes of the wealthy, and the humble dwellings of the poor. And deservedly so—for if purity of sentiment, felicity of expression, and the constant inculcation of the noblest lessons of religion and morality, be any passport to literary fame, then will the name of Miss Porter rank high on the list of those whom the present age delights to honor, and for whom coming ages will entertain a deep feeling of reverential esteem. Dear Jack: Since my compulsory budding, flowering, and bearing fruit, have been accelerated to one season per diem, to feed a daily paper, you will easily understand that I found it necessary at first to work all my sap into something useful—omitting as it were, the gum deposite of superfluous correspondence. I accordingly left you off. Your last letter was slipped into the no-more-bother hole, without the usual endorsement of “answered,” and I considered you like a trinket laid aside before a race—not to encumber me. I miss the writing of trumpery, however. I miss the sweeping out of the corners of my mind—full of things fit only for the dust-pan, but still very possibly hiding a silver-spoon. Messrs. Editors: My friend John Smith is to be married to Lucy Jones. She issues a card of invitation like this:— Dear Custom: Your friend is wrong, from the egg to the apple. Miss Lucy Jones has a mother, or father, guardian, or friend, at whose house she is to be married. The invitation should come from the person under whose protection she is given away—(sent, if you please, to Mr. Smith's friends, with Mr. Smith's card, but understood by Miss Lucy Jones's friends, without card or explanation). It is tampering with serious things, very dangerously, to circulate the three words, “and Mrs. John Smith,” one minute before the putting on of the irrevocable ring. The law which permits ladies (though not gentlemen) to change their minds up to the last minute before wed lock, exacts also that the privileged angels should not be coerced by the fear of seeing the escaped name afterward on a wedding card! Besides, such a card, so issued, would be received from Mrs. Smith before there was any such person. “Dear Sir: I am directed by the committee of the `Travellers' to inform you that they have great pleasure in admitting you as a visiter to the club for the ensuing month, and that they hope to be favored with your frequent attendance. “Sir: I am directed to inform you that the committee of the `Athenæum' have ordered your name to be placed on the list of distinguished foreigners residing in London, who are invited to the house of the club for three months, subject to the same regulations as the members are required to observe. “Je suis vraiment desolée de ne pouvoir aller ce soir chez Lady Morgan. Je dine chez le Prince Esterhazy ou je dois passer la soirée. Demain au soir, j'ai un concert pour M. Laporte, le reste de la semaine je suis libre et tout à vos ordres. Si vous croyez de combiner quelque-choze avec Lady Morgan, comptez sur moi! Demain je passerai chez Lady Morgan pour faire mes excuses en personne. “Mr. Editor: I observe that a `bachelor,' writing in the `American,' recommends to `invited' and `inviters,' to send invitations and answers, stamped, through the penny-post. This is a capital idea, and I shall adopt it for one. I perceive that a bachelor in another paper says, `it will suit him and his fellow-bachelors,' for reasons set forth, and that he will adopt the plan. Now, Mr. Editor, I am a housekeeper, and married, and my wife requires the use of all my servants, and can not spare them to be absent three or four days, going round the city, delivering notes, on the eve of a party. These notes could, by the plan suggested, be delivered in three hours, and insure a prompt answer. I can then know exactly who is coming and who is not—a very convenient point of knowledge! “Right Trusty and Right Well-beloved Cousin.—We greet you well. Whereas, the 1st day of March next (or thereabouts) is appointed for our coronation.—These are to will and command you (all excuses set apart) to make your personal attendance on us at the time above-mentioned, furnished and appointed as to your rank and quality appertaineth.— There to do and perform all such services as shall be required and belong to you.—Whereof you are not to fail.—And so we bid you heartily farewell. “Mr. Editor: One of the greatest treats you could give your country lady readers, would be to furnish them from time to time, with brief hints as to the actual style of fashions in the metropolis. We have, all along, depended for information on this important subject, upon the monthly magazines, all of which profess to give the fashions as worn, but we find out to our dismay, that they pick up their fashions from the Paris and London prints at random—some of them adopted by our city ladies, some not! It thus happens that we country people, who like to be in the fashion, are often subjected to great expense and mortification—relying too implicitly upon the magazine reports. We cause a bonnet or a dress to be made strictly in accordance with the style prescribed in the fashion plate of the magazine, and when we hie away to the city with our new finery, we discover that our costume is so outrè that every one laughs at us! Now, should there not be some remedy for this evil? “`Madam: There is a fund applicable, as vacancies may occur, to the grant of annual pensions of very limited amount, which usage has placed at the disposal of the lady of the first minister. On this fund there is a surplus of £20 per annum. Dear Fanny: Would your dark eyes vouchsafe to wonder how I come to write to you? Thus it befell:— To a lady-friend in the country: I am up to the knees in newspapers, and write to you under the stare of nine pigeon-holes, stuffed with literary portent. Were there such a thing (in this world of everythings) as papyral magnetism, you would get a letter, not only typical in itself, but typical of a flood in which my identity is fast drowning. Oh, the drown of news, weighed unceasingly—little events and great ones— against little more than the trouble of snipping round with scissors! To a horrid death—to a miraculous preservation—to a heart-gush of poesy—to a marriage —to a crime—to the turn of a political crisis—to flashing wit and storied agonies—giving but the one invariable first thought—“Shall I cut it out?” Alas, dear beauty-monarch of all you survey!—your own obitnary, were I to read it in a newspaper of to-morrow, would speak scarce quicker to my heart than to those scissors of undiscriminating circum-cision! With the knowledge that the sky above me was enriched, as Florence once was, by the return of its long-lost and best model of beauty, I should ask, with be-paragraphed grief—“will her death do for the Mirror?” My Dear Sir: To ask me for my idea of General Morris is like asking the left hand's opinion of the dexterity of the right. I have lived so long with the “brigadier,” known him so intimately, worked so constantly at the same rope, and thought so little of ever separating from him (except by precedence of ferriage over the Styx), that it is hard to shove him from me to the perspective distance—hard to shut my own partial eyes, and look at him through other people's. I will try, however, and as it is done with but one foot off from the treadmill of my ceaseless vocation, you will excuse both abruptness and brevity. “Has there been any mistake in the two-penny post delivery, that I have not received your article for this mouth? If so, please send me the rough draught by the bearer (who waits), and the compositors will try to make it out. “Dear Mr. Clay: From causes which you will probably understand, I have been induced to reconsider your proposal of marriage to my niece.—Imprudent as I must still consider your union, I find myself in such a situation that, should you persevere, I must decide in its favor, as the least of two evils. You will forgive my anxious care, however, if I exact of you, before taking any decided step, a full and fair statement of your pecuniary embarrassments (which I understand are considerable) and your present income and prospects. I think it proper to inform you that Miss Gore's expectations, beyond an annuity of £300 a year, are very distant, and that all your calculations should be confined to that amount. With this understanding, I should be pleased to see you at Ashurst to-morrow morning. “Dear Lady Fanny: If you have anything beside the ghost-room vacant at Freer Hall, I will run down to you. Should you, by chance, be alone, ask up the curate for a week to keep Sir Harry off my hands; and, as you don't flirt, provide me with somebody more pretty than yourself for our mutual security. As my autograph sells for eighteen pence, you will excuse the brevity of “Sir: I am intrusted with a delicate commission, which I know not how to broach to you, except by simple proposal. Will you forgive my abrupt brevity, if I inform you, without further preface, that the Countess Nyschriem, a Polish lady of high birth and ample fortune, does you the honor to propose for your hand. If you are disengaged, and your affections are not irrevocably given to another, I can conceive no sufficient obstacle to your acceptance of this brilliant connexion. The countess is twenty-two, and not beautiful, it must in fairness be said; but she has high qualities of head and heart, and is worthy of any man's respect and affection. She has seen you, of course, and conceived a passion for you, of which this is the result. I am directed to add, that should you consent, the following conditions are imposed—that you marry her within four days, making no inquiry except as to her age, rank, and property, and that, without previous interview, she come veiled to the altar. “You will pardon me that I have taken two days to consider the extraordinary proposition made me in your letter. The subject, since it is to be entertained a moment, requires, perhaps, still further reflection— but my reply shall be definite, and as prompt as I can bring myself to be, in a matter so important. “Dear Fred: Nothing going on in town, except a little affair of my own, which I can't leave to go down to you. Dull even at Crocky's—nobody plays this hot weather. And now, as to your commissions. You will receive Dupree, the cook, by to-night's mail. Grisi won't come to you without her man—`'twasn't thus when we were boys!'—so I send you a figurante, and you must do tableaux. I was luckier in finding you a wit. S— will be with you to-morrow, though, by the way, it is only on condition of meeting Lady Midge Bellasys, for whom, if she is not with you, you must exert your inveiglements. This, by way only of shuttlecock and battledore, however, for they play at wit together—nothing more, on her part at least. Look out for this devilish fellow, my lord Fred!— and live thin till you see the last of him—for he'll laugh you into your second apoplexy with the dangerous ease of a hair-trigger. I could amuse you with a turn or two in my late adventures, but black and white are bad confidants, though very well as a business firm. And, mentioning them, I have drawn on you for a temporary £500, which please lump with my other loan, and oblige “Dear Sir Humphrey: Perhaps you will scarce remember Jane Jones, to whom you presented the brush of your first fox. This was thirty years ago. I was then at school in the little village near Tally-ho hall. Dear me! how well I remember it! On hearing of your marriage, I accepted an offer from my late husband, Mr. S—, and our union was blessed with one boy, who, I must say, is an angel of goodness. Out of his small income, my dear James furnished and rented this very genteel house, and he tells me I shall have it for life, and provides me one servant, and everything I could possibly want. Thrice a week he comes out to spend the day and dine with me, and, in short, he is the pattern of good sons. As this dear boy is going down to Warwickshire, I can not resist the desire I have that you should know him, and that he should bring me back an account of my lover in days gone by. Any attention to him, dear Sir Humphrey, will very much oblige one whom you once was happy to oblige, and still “Dear Sir: I remember Miss Jones very well, God bless me, I thought she had been dead many years. I am sure I shall be very happy to see her son. Will you come out and dine with us?—dinner at seven. “Dear Nuncle: It's hard on to six o'clock, and I'm engaged at seven to a junketing at the `Hen and chickens,' with Stuggins and the maids. If you intend to make me acquainted with your great lord, now is time. If you don't, I shall walk in presently, and introduce myself; for I know how to make my own way, nucle—ask Miss Bel's maid, and the other girls you introduced me to at Tally-ho hall! Be in a hurry, I'm just outside. “My dear Lord: In the belief that a frank communication would be best under the circumstances, I wish to make an inquiry, prefacing it with the assurance that my only hope of happiness has been for some time staked upon the successful issue of my suit for your daughter's hand. It is commonly understood, I believe, that the bulk of your lordship's fortune is separate from the entail, and may be disposed of at your pleasure. May I inquire its amount, or rather, may I ask what fortune goes with the hand of Lady Angelica. The Beauchief estates are unfortunately much embarrassed, and my own debts (I may frankly confess) are very considerable. You will at once see, my lord, that, in justice to your daughter, as well as to myself, I could not do otherwise than make this frank inquiry before pushing my suit to extremity. Begging your indulgence and an immediate answer, I remain, my dear lord, “Dear Lord Frederick: I trust you will not accuse me of a want of candor in declining a direct answer to your question. Though I freely own to a friendly wish for your success in your efforts to engage the affections of Lady Angelica, with a view to marriage, it can only be in the irrevocable process of a marriage settlement that her situation, as to the probable disposal of my fortune, can be disclosed. I may admit to you, however, that, upon the events of this day on which you have written (it so chances), may depend the question whether I should encourage you to pursue further your addresses to Lady Angelica. “My dear Angelica: I am happy to know that there are circumstances which will turn aside much of the poignancy of the communication I am about to make to you. If I am not mistaken at least, in believing a mutual attachment to exist between yourself and Count Pallardos, you will at once comprehend the ground of my mental relief, and perhaps, in a measure, anticipate what I am about to say. “Dear Count: You will wonder at receiving a friendly note from me after my refusal, two months since, to meet you over `pistols and coffee;' but reparation may not be too late, and this is to say, that you have your choice between two modes of settlement, viz:—to accept for your stable the hunter you stole from me (vide police report) and allow me to take a glass of wine with you at my own table and bury the hatcher, or, to shoot at me if you like, according to your original design. Manners and Beauchief hope you will select the latter, as they owe you a grudge for the possession of your incomparable bride and her fortune; but I trust you will prefer the horse, which (if I am rightly informed) bore you to the declaration of love at Chasteney. Reply to Crockford's. “My dear St. Leger: Enclosed you have the only surviving lock of my grizzled wig—sign and symbol that my disguises are over and my object attained. The wig burns at this instant in the grate, item my hand-ruffles, item sundry embroidered cravats a la vielle cour, item (this last not without some trouble at my heart) a solitary love-token from Constantia Hervey. One faded rose—given me at Pæstum, the day before I was driven disgraced from her presence by the interference of this insolent fool—one faded rose has crisped and faded into smoke with the rest. And so fled from the world the last hope of a warm and passionate heart, which never gave up its destiny till now—never felt that it was made in vain, guarded, refined, cherished in vain, till that long-loved flower lay in ashes. I am accustomed to strip emotion of its drapery—determined to feel nothing but what is real— yet this moment, turn it and strip it, and deny its illusions as I will, is anguish. `Self-inflicted,' you smile and say! “I have followed up to this hour, my fair cousin, in the path you have marked out for me. It has brought me back, in this chamber, to the point from which I started under your guidance, and if it had brought me back unchanged—if it restored me my energy, my hope, and my prospect of fame, I should pray Heaven that it would also give me back my love, and be content—more than content, if it gave me back also my poverty. The sight of my easel, and of the surroundings of my boyish dreams of glory, have made my heart bitter. They have given form and voice to a vague unhappiness, which has haunted me through all these absent years—years of degrading pursuits and wasted powers—and it now impels me from you, kind and lovely as you are, with an aversion I can not control. I can not forgive you. You have thwarted my destiny. You have extinguished with sordid cares a lamp within me that might, by this time, have shone through the world. And what am I, since your wishes are accomplished? Enriched in pocket, and bankrupt in happiness and self-respect. Dined with F—, the artist, at a trattoria. F— is a man of genius, very adventurous and imaginative in his art, but never caring to show the least touch of these qualities in his conversation. His pictures have given him great vogue and consideration at Rome, so that his daily experience furnishes staple enough for his evening's chit-chat, and he seems, of course, to be always talking of himself. He is very generally set down as an egotist. His impulse to talk, however, springs from no wish for self-glorification, but rather from an indolent aptness to lay hands on the readiest and most familiar topic, and that is a kind of egotism to which I have very little objection—particularly with the mind fatigued, as it commonly is in Rome, by a long day's study of works of art. “Where art thou, bridegroom of my soul? Thy Ione S— calls to thee from the aching void of her lonely spirit! What name bearest thou? What path walkest thou? How can I, glow-worm like, lift my wings and show thee my lamp of guiding love? Thus wing I these words to thy dwelling-place (for thou art, perhaps, a subscriber to the M—r). Go—truants! Rest not till ye meet his eye. “`Dear Miss Blidgims: Feeling quite indisposed myself, and being firmly persuaded that we are three cases of cholera, I have taken advantage of a return calesino to hurry on to Modena for medical advice. The vehicle I take, brought hither a sister of charity, who assures me she will wait on you, even in the most malignant stage of your disease. She is collecting funds for an hospital, and will receive compensation for her services in the form of a donation to this object. I shall send you a physician by express from Modena, where it is still possible we may meet. With prayers, &c., &c. “The delivery of this was subject, of course, to the condition of the ladies when they should arrive, though I had a presentiment they were in for a serious business. “Baron: Before taking the usual notice of the occurrence of this morning, I wish to rectify one or two points in which our position is false. I find myself, since last night, the accepted lover of Lady Imogen Ravelgold, and the master of estates and title as a count of the Russian empire. Under the etourdissement of such sudden changes in feelings and fortune, perhaps my forgetfulness of the lady, in whose cause you are so interested, admits of indulgence. At any rate, I am so newly in love with life, that I am willing to suppose for an hour that had you known these circumstances, you would have taken a different view of the offence in question. I shall remain at home till two, and it is in your power till then to make me the reparation necessary to my honor. “Dear Sir: My wife wishes me to write to you, and inform you of her marriage, which took place a week or two since, and of which she presumes you are not aware. She remarked to me, that you thought her looking unhappy last evening, when you chanced to see her at the play. As she seemed to regret not being able to answer your note herself, I may perhaps convey the proper apology by taking upon myself to mention to you, that, in consequence of eating an imprudent quantity of unripe fruit, she felt ill before going to the theatre, and was obliged to leave early. To day she seems seriously indisposed. I trust she will be well enough to see you in a day or two—and remain,
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14Author:  Willis Nathaniel Parker 1806-1867Requires cookie*
 Title:  The prose works of N.P. Willis  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: Sir: In selling you the dew and sunshine ordained to fall hereafter on this bright spot of earth—the waters on their way to this sparkling brook—the tints mixed for the flowers of that enamelled meadow, and the songs bidden to be sung in coming summers by the feathery builders in Glenmary, I know not whether to wonder more at the omnipotence of money, or at my own impertinent audacity toward Nature. How you can buy the right to exclude at will every other creature made in God's image from sitting by this brook, treading on that carpet of flowers, or lying listening to the birds in the shade of these glorious trees —how I can sell it you, is a mystery not understood by the Indian, and dark, I must say to me. “Has there been any mistake in the two-penny post delivery, that I have not received your article for this month? If so, please send me the rough draught by the bearer (who waits), and the compositors will try to make it out. “Dear Mr. Clay: From causes which you will probably understand, I have been induced to reconsider your proposal of marriage to my niece.—Imprudent as I must still consider your union, I find myself in such a situation that, should you persevere, I must decide in its favor, as the least of two evils. You will forgive my anxious care, however, if I exact of you, before taking any decided step, a full and fair statement of your pecuniary embarrassments (which I understand are considerable) and your present income and prospects. I think it proper to inform you that Miss Gore's expectations, beyond an annuity of £300 a year, are very distant, and that all your calculations should be confined to that amount. With this understanding, I should be pleased to see you at Ashurst to-morrow morning. “Dear Lady Fanny: If you have anything beside the ghost-room vacant at Freer Hall, I will run down to you. Should you, by chance, be alone, ask up the curate for a week to keep Sir Harry off my hands; and, as you don't flirt, provide me with somebody more pretty than yourself for our mutual security. As my autograph sells for eighteen pence, you will excuse the brevity of “Sir: I am intrusted with a delicate commission, which I know not how to broach to you, except by simple proposal. Will you forgive my abrupt brevity, if I inform you, without further preface, that the Countess Nyschriem, a Polish lady of high birth and ample fortune, does you the honor to propose for your hand. If you are disengaged, and your affections are not irrevocably given to another, I can conceive no sufficient obstacle to your acceptance of this brilliant connexion. The countess is twenty-two, and not beautiful, it must in fairness be said; but she has high qualities of head and heart, and is worthy of any man's respect and affection. She has seen you, of course, and conceived a passion for you, of which this is the result. I am directed to add, that should you consent, the following conditions are imposed—that you marry her within four days, making no inquiry except as to her age, rank, and property, and that, without previous interview, she come veiled to the altar. “You will pardon me that I have taken two days to consider the extraordinary proposition made me in your letter. The subject, since it is to be entertained a moment, requires, perhaps, still further reflection— but my reply shall be definite, and as prompt as I can bring myself to be, in a matter so important. “Dear Fred: Nothing going on in town, except a little affair of my own, which I can't leave to go down to you. Dull even at Crocky's—nobody plays this hot weather. And now, as to your commissions. You will receive Dupree, the cook, by to-night's mail. Grisi won't come to you without her man—`'twasn't thus when we were boys!'—so I send you a figurante, and you must do tableaux. I was luckier in finding you a wit. S—will be with you to-morrow, though, by the way, it is only on condition of meeting Lady Midge Bellasys, for whom, if she is not with you, you must exert your inveiglements. This, by way only of shuttlecock and battledore, however, for they play at wit together—nothing more, on her part at least. Look out for this devilish fellow, my lord Fred!— and live thin till you see the last of him—for he'll laugh you into your second apoplexy with the dangerous ease of a hair-trigger. I could amuse you with a turn or two in my late adventures, but black and white are bad confidauts, though very well as a business firm. And, mentioning them, I have drawn on you for a temporary £500, which please lump with my other loan, and oblige “Dear Sir Humphrey: Perhaps you will scarce remember Jane Jones, to whom you presented the brush of your first fox. This was thirty years ago. I was then at school in the little village near Tally-ho hall. Dear me! how well I remember it! On hearing of your marriage, I accepted an offer from my late husband, Mr. S—, and our union was blessed with one boy, who, I must say, is an angel of goodness. Out of his small income, my dear James furnished and rented this very genteel house, and he tells me I shall have it for life, and provides me one servant, and everything I could possibly want. Thrice a week he comes out to spend the day and dine with me, and, in short, he is the pattern of good sons. As this dear boy is going down to Warwickshire, I can not resist the desire I have that you should know him, and that he should bring me back an account of my lover in days gone by. Any attention to him, dear Sir Humphrey, will very much oblige one whom you once was happy to oblige, and still “Dear Sir: I remember Miss Jones very well, God bless me, I thought she had been dead many years. I am sure I shall be very happy to see her son: Will you come out and dine with us?—dinner at seven. Your ob't servant, “Humphrey Fencher. “Dear Nuncle: It's hard on to six o'clock, and I'm engaged at seven to a junketing at the `Hen and chickens,' with Stuggins and the maids. If you intend to make me acquainted with your great lord, now is the time. If you don't, I shall walk in presently, and introduce myself; for I know how to make my own way, nuncle—ask Miss Bel's maid, and the other girls you introduced me to at Tally-ho hall! Be in a hurry, I'm just outside. “My dear Lord: In the belief that a frank communication would be best under the circumstances, I wish to make an inquiry, prefacing it with the assurance that my only hope of happiness has been for some time staked upon the successful issue of my suit for your daughter's hand. It is commonly understood, I believe, that the bulk of your lordship's fortune is separate from the entail, and may be disposed of at your pleasure. May I inquire its amount, or rather, may I ask what fortune goes with the hand of Lady Angelica. The Beauchief estates are unfortunately much embarrassed, and my own debts (I may frankly confess) are very considerable. You will at once see, my lord, that, in justice to your daughter, as well as to myself, I could not do otherwise than make this frank inquiry before pushing my suit to extremity. Begging your indulgence and an immediate answer, I remain, my dear lord, “Dear Lord Frederick: I trust you will not accuse me of a want of candor in declining a direct answer to your question. Though I freely own to a friendly wish for your success in your efforts to engage the affections of Lady Angelica, with a view to marriage, it can only be in the irrevocable process of a marriage settlement that her situation, as to the probable disposal of my fortune, can be disclosed. I may admit to you, however, that, upon the events of this day on which you have written (it so chances), may depend the question whether I should encourage you to pursue further your addresses to Lady Angelica. “My dear Angelica: I am happy to know that there are circumstances which will turn aside much of the poignancy of the communication I am about to make to you. If I am not mistaken at least, in believing a mutual attachment to exist between yourself and Count Pallardos, you will at once comprehend the ground of my mental relief, and perhaps, in a measure, anticipate what I am about to say. “Dear Count: You will wonder at receiving a friendly note from me after my refusal, two months since, to meet you over `pistols and coffee;' but reparation may not be too late, and this is to say, that you have your choice between two modes of settlement, viz:—to accept for your stable the hunter you stole from me (vide police report) and allow me to take a glass of wine with you at my own table and bury the hatchet, or, to shoot at me if you like, according to your original design. Manners and Beauchief hope you will select the latter, as they owe you a grudge for the possession of your incomparable bride and her fortune; but I trust you will prefer the horse, which (if I am rightly informed) bore you to the declaration of love at Chasteney. Reply to Crockford's. “I have followed up to this hour, my fair cousin, in the path you have marked out for me. It has brought me back, in this chamber, to the point from which I started under your guidance, and if it had brought me back unchanged—if it restored me my energy, my hope, and my prospect of fame, I should pray Heaven that it would also give me back my love, and be content—more than content, if it gave me back also my poverty. The sight of my easel, and of the surroundings of my boyish dreams of glory, have made my heart bitter. They have given form and voice to a vague unhappiness, which has haunted me through all these absent years—years of degrading pursuits and wasted powers—and it now impels me from you, kind and lovely as you are, with an aversion I can not control. I can not forgive you. You have thwarted my destiny. You have extinguished with sordid cares a lamp within me that might, by this time, have shone through the world. And what am I, since your wishes are accomplished? Enriched in pocket, and bankrupt in happiness and self-respect. Dined with F—, the artist, at a trattoria. F— is a man of genius, very adventurous and imaginative in his art, but never caring to show the least touch of these qualities in his conversation. His pictures have given him great vogue and consideration at Rome, so that his daily experience funishes staple enough for his evening's chit-chat, and he seems, of course, to be always talking of himself. He is very generally set down as an egotist. His impulse to talk, however, springs from no wish for self-glorification, but rather from an indolent aptness to lay hands on the readiest and most familiar topic, and that is a kind of egotism to which I have very little objection—particularly with the mind fatigued, as it commonly is in Rome, by a long day's study of works of art. “You will be surprised on glancing at the signature to this letter. You will be still more surprised when you are reminded that it is a reply to an unanswered one of your own—written years ago. That letter lies by me, expressed with all the diffidence of boyish feeling. And it seems as if its diffidence would encourage me in what I wish to say. Yet I write far more tremblingly than you could have done. “Where art thou, bridegroom of my soul? Thy Ione S— calls to thee from the aching void of her lonely spirit! What name bearest thou? What path walkest thou? How can I, glow-worm like, lift my wings and show thee my lamp of guiding love? Thus wing I these words to thy dwelling-place (for thou art, perhaps, a subscriber to the M—r). Go—truants! Rest not till ye meet his eye. “`Dear Miss Blidgims: Feeling quite indisposed myself, and being firmly persuaded that we are three cases of cholera, I have taken advantage of a return calesino to hurry on to Modena for medical advice. The vehicle I take, brought hither a sister of charity, who assures me she will wait on you, even in the most malignant stage of your disease. She is collecting funds for an hospital, and will receive compensation for her services in the form of a donation to this object. I shall send you a physician by express from Modena, where it is still possible we may meet. With prayers, &c., &c. “Sir: The faculty have decided to impose upon you the fine of ten dollars and damages, for painting the president's horse on sabbath night while grazing on the college green. They, moreover, have removed Freshman Wilding from your rooms, and appoint as your future chum the studious and exemplary bearer, Forbearance Smith, to whom you are desired to show a becoming respect. “Dear Philip: You will be surprised to hear that I am in the Lynn jail on a charge of theft and utterance of counterfeit money. I do not wait to tell you the particulars. Please come and identify. “Dear Tom: If your approaching nuptials are to be sufficiently public to admit of a groomsman, you will make me the happiest of friends by selecting me for that office. “Dear Phil: The devil must have informed you of a secret I supposed safe from all the world. Be assured I should have chosen no one but yourself to support me on the occasion; and however you have discovered my design upon your treasure, a thousand thanks for your generous consent. I expected no less from your noble nature. “Baron: Before taking the usual notice of the occurrence of this morning, I wish to rectify one or two points in which our position is false. I find myself, since last night, the accepted lover of Lady Imogen Ravelgold, and the master of estates and title as a count of the Russian empire. Under the etourdissement of such sudden changes in feelings and fortune, perhaps my forgetfulness of the lady, in whose cause you are so interested, admits of indulgence. At any rate, I am so newly in love with life, that I am willing to suppose for an hour that had you known these circumstances, you would have taken a different view of the offence in question. I shall remain at home till two, and it is in your power till then to make me the reparation necessary to my honor. Yours, etc., “Dear Sir: My wife wishes me to write to you, and inform you of her marriage, which took place a week or two since, and of which she presumes you are not aware. She remarked to me, that you thought her looking unhappy last evening, when you chanced to see her at the play. As she seemed to regret not being able to answer your note herself, I may perhaps convey the proper apology by taking upon myself to mention to you, that, in consequence of eating an imprudent quantity of unripe fruit, she felt ill before going to the theatre, and was obliged to leave early. To day she seems seriously indisposed. I trust she will be well enough to see you in a day or two—and remain, Start fair, my sweet Violet! This letter will lie your table when you arrive at Saratoga, and it is intended to prepare you for that critical campaign. You must know the ammunition with which you go into the field. I have seen service, as you know, and, from my retirement (on half-pay), can both devise strategy and reconnoitre the enemy's weakness, with discretion. Set your glass before you on the table, and let us hold a frank council of war. My dear widow: For the wear and tear of you bright eyes in writing me a letter you are duly credited. That for a real half-hour, as long as any ordinary half-hour, such well-contrived illumination should have concentrated their mortal using on me only, is equal, I am well aware, to a private audience of any two stars in the firmament—eyelashes and petticoats (if not thrown in) turning the comparison little in your favor. Thanks—of course—piled high as the porphyry pyramid of Papantla! My dear neph-ling: I congratulate you on the attainment of your degree as “Master of Afts.” In other words, I wish the sin of the Faculty well repented of, in having endorsed upon parchment such a barefaced fabrication. Put the document in your pocket, and come away! There will be no occasion to air it before doomsday, probably, and fortunately for you, it will then revert to the Faculty. Quiescat adhuc—as I used to say of my tailor's bills till they came through a lawyer. Dear reader: A volume of poems goes from us in an extra of the Mirror this week, which leaves us with a feeling—we scarce know how to phrase it—a feeling of timidity and dread—like a parent's apprehensiveness, giving his child into the hands of a stranger. It is not Pliny's “quam sit magnum dare aliquid in manus hominum,” nor is it, what the habitual avoidance of grave themes looks like, sometimes—a preference “to let the serious part of life go by Like the neglected sand.” We are used to buttering curiosity with the ooze of our brains—careful more to be paid than praised— and we have a cellar, as well as many stories, in our giddy thought-house; and it is from this cave of privacy that we have, with reluctance, and consentings far between, drawn treasures of early feeling and impression, now bound and offered to you for the first time in one bundle. Oh, from the different stories of the mind—from the settled depths, and from the effervescent and giddy surface—how different looks the world! —of what different stuff and worth the link that binds us to it! In looking abroad from one window of the soul, we see sympathy, goodness, truth, desire for us and our secrets, that we may be more loved; from another, we see suspicion, coldness, mockery, and ill-will—the evil spirits of the world—lying in wait for us. At one moment—the spirits down, and the heart calm and trusting—we tear out the golden leaf nearest the well of life, and pass it forth to be read and wept over. At another, we bar shutter and blind upon prying malice, turn key carefully on all below, and, mounting to the summit, look abroad and jest at the very treasures we have concealed—wondering at our folly in even confessing to a heartless world that we had secrets, and would share them. We are not always alike. The world does not seem always the same. We believe it is all good sometimes. We believe sometimes, that it is but a place accursed, given to devils and their human scholars. Sometimes we are all kindness—sometimes aching only for an an tagonist, and an arena without barrier or law. And oh what a Procrustes's bed is human opinion—trying a man's actions and words, in whatever mood committed and said, by the same standard of rigor! How often must the angels hovering over us reverse the sentence of the judge—how oftener still the rebuke of the old maid and the Pharisee. You are feeding the news-hopper of your literary mill, my dear poet, and I am trying on the old trick of gayety at Saratoga. Which of us should write the other a letter? You, if you say so—though as I get older, I am beginning to think well of the town, even in August. You have your little solaces, my fast liver! Dear Willis: Your kind note to St. John, of the Knickerbocker, got me the state-room with the picture of “Glenmary” on the panel, and I slept under the protection of your household gods—famously, of course. The only fault I found with that magnificent boat, was the right of any “smutched villain” to walk through her. It is a frightful arrangement that can sell, to a beauty and a blackguard, for the same money, the right to promenade on the same carpet, and go to sleep with the same surroundings on the opposite sides of a pine partition! Give me a world where antipodes stay put! But what a right-royal, “slap-up” supper they give in the Knickerbocker! They'll make the means better than the end—travelling better than arriving—if they improve any more! I had a great mind to go back the next day, and come up again. “Mrs. Noggs, too—a strong woman, by the way— is, nevertheless, weekly on this point, very. She says she'll never forgive you if you change the fair, form of the Mirror. Think o' that! Though not a vain woman, she has a passion for looking into the Mirror that is very affecting. On the other hand, she says if you'll give up the horrid notion of changing the form of the Mirror, she'll fry you `a nipper' as brown as a nut, with her own fair hands, when next you come Bostonward, and will visit our humble cottage near the sea. I have ye now! For my well-tried friends, Gentleman Charles (him of the Astor house, I mean) and his handsome partner, tell me you are a gallant youth and well affected toward the ladies. “Dear Bel-Phœbe: I have been `twiddling my sunbeam' (you say my letters are `perfect sunshine') for some time, more or less, in a quandary as to what is now resolved upon as `Dear Bel-Phœbe'—the beginning of this (meant-to-be) faultless epistle. I chanced to wake critical this morning, and, `dear Phœbe,' as the beginning of this letter of mine, looked both vulgar and meaningless. I inked it out as you see. A reference to my etymological dictionary, however, restored my liking for that `dear' word. It is derived from the Anglo-Saxon verb Der-ian, which means to do mischief. Hence dearth, which, by doing mischief, makes what remains more precious, and hence dear, meaning something made precious by having escaped hurting. `Dear Phœbe,' therefore (meaning unhurt Phœbe), struck me as pretty well—you being one of those delicious, late-loving women, destined to be `hurt' first at thirty. Still, the sacred word `Phœbe' was too abruptly come upon. It sounded familiar, and familiarity should be reserved for the postscript. I should have liked to write `dear Lady Phœbe,' or `dear Countess Phœbe'—but we are not permitted to `read our title clear,' in this hideously-simple country. Might I invent an appellative? We say char-woman and horse-man—why not put a descriptive word before a lady's name, by way of respectful distance. Phœbe Lorn is a belle—why not say Bel-Phœbe? Good! It sounds authentic. This letter, then, is to Phœbe, unhurt and beautiful (alias), `Dear Bel-Phœbe!' “Dear Madam: The undersigned, booksellers, publishers, and authors, of the city of New York, have long felt desirous of transmitting to you a memorial of the high and respectful admiration which they entertain for one to whose pen we are indebted for some of the purest and most imaginative productions in the wide range of English literature. As the authoress of `Thaddeus of Warsaw,' the `Scottish Chiefs,' &c., your name has spread over the length and breadth of our land, and the volumes of your delightful works may be found gracing alike the abodes of the wealthy, and the humble dwellings of the poor. And deservedly so—for if purity of sentiment, felicity of expression, and the constant inculcation of the noblest lessons of religion and morality, be any passport to literary fame, then will the name of Miss Porter rank high on the list of those whom the present age delights to honor, and for whom coming ages will entertain a deep feeling of reverential esteem. Dear Jack: Since my compulsory budding, flowering, and bearing fruit, have been accelerated to one season per diem, to feed a daily paper you will easily understand that I found it necessary at first to work all my sap into something useful—omitting as it were, the gum deposite of superfluous correspondence. I accordingly left you off. Your last letter was slipped into the no-more-bother hole, without the usual endorsement of “answered,” and I considered you like a trinket laid aside before a race—not to encumber me. I miss the writing of trumpery, however. I miss the sweeping out of the corners of my mind—full of things fit only for the dust-pan, but still very possibly hiding a silver-spoon. Messrs. Editors: My friend John Smith is to be married to Lucy Jones. She issues a card of invitation like this:— Dear Custom: Your friend is wrong, from the egg to the apple. Miss Lucy Jones has a mother, or father, guardian, or friend, at whose house she is to be married. The invitation should come from the person under whose protection she is given away—(sent, if you please, to Mr. Smith's friends, with Mr. Smith's card, but understood by Miss Lucy Jones's friends, without card or explanation). It is tampering with serious things, very dangerously, to circulate the three words, “and Mrs. John Smith,” one minute before the putting on of the irrevocable ring. The law which permits ladies (though not gentlemen) to change their minds up to the last minute before wedlock, exacts also that the privileged angels should not be coerced by the fear of seeing the escaped name afterward on a wedding card! Besides, such a card, so issued, would be received from Mrs. Smith before there was any such person. “Dear Sir: I am directed by the committee of the `Travellers' to inform you that they have great pleasure in admitting you as a visiter to the club for the ensuing month, and that they hope to be favored with your frequent attendance. “Sir: I am directed to inform you that the committee of the `Athenæum' have ordered your name to be placed on the list of distinguished foreigners residing in London, who are invited to the house of the club for three months, subject to the same regulations as the members are required to observe. “Je suis vraiment desolée de ne pouvoir aller ce soir chez Lady Morgan. Je dine chez le Prince Esterhazy ou je dois passer la soirée. Demain au soir, j'ai un concert pour M. Laporte, le reste de la semaine je suis libre et tout à vos ordres. Si vous croyez de combiner quelque-choze avec Lady Morgan, comptez sur moi! Demain je passerai chez Lady Morgan pour faire mes excuses en personne. “Mr. Editor: I observe that a `bachelor,' writing in the `American,' recommends to `invited' and `inviters,' to send invitations and answers, stamped, through the penny-post. This is a capital idea, and I shall adopt it for one. I perceive that a bachelor in another paper says, `it will suit him and his fellow-bachelors,' for reasons set forth, and that he will adopt the plan. Now, Mr. Editor, I am a housekeeper, and married, and my wife requires the use of all my servants, and can not spare them to be absent three or four days, going round the city, delivering notes, on the eve of a party. These notes could, by the plan suggested, be delivered in three hours, and insure a prompt answer. I can then know exactly who is coming and who is not—a very convenient point of knowledge! “Mr. Editor: One of the greatest treats you could give your country lady readers, would be to furnish them from time to time, with brief hints as to the actual style of fashions in the metropolis. We have, all along, depended for information on this important subject, upon the monthly magazines, all of which profess to give the fashions as worn, but we find out to our dismay, that they pick up their fashions from the Paris and London prints at random—some of them adopted by our city ladies, some not! It thus happens that we country people; who like to be in the fashion, are often subjected to great expense and mortification—relying too implicitly upon the magazine reports. We cause a bonnet or a dress to be made strictly in accordance with the style prescribed in the fashion plate of the magazine, and when we hie away to the city with our new finery, we discover that our costume is so outrè that every one laughs at us! Now, should there not be some remedy for this evil? Dear Fanny: Would your dark eyes vouchsafe to wonder how I come to write to you? Thus it befell:— To a lady-friend in the country: I am up to the knees in newspapers, and write to you under the stare of nine pigeon-holes, stuffed with literary portent. Were there such a thing (in this world of everythings) as papyral magnetism, you would get a letter, not only typical in itself, but typical of a flood in which my identity is fast drowning. Oh, the drown of news, weighed unceasingly—little events and great ones— against little more than the trouble of snipping round with scissors! To a horrid death—to a miraculous preservation—to a heart-gush of poesy—to a marriage —to a crime—to the turn of a political crisis—to flashing wit and storied agonies—giving but the one 50 invariable first thought—“shall I cut it out?” Alas, dear beauty-monarch of all you survey!—your own obituary, were I to read it in a newspaper of to-morrow, would speak scarce quicker to my heart than to those scissors of undiscriminating circum-cision! With the knowledge that the sky above me was enriched, as Florence once was, by the return of its long-lost and best model of beauty, I should ask, with be-paragraphed grief—“will her death do for the Mirror?” My Dear Sir: To ask me for my idea of General Morris is like asking the left hand's opinion of the dexterity of the right. I have lived so long with the “brigadier,” known him so intimately, worked so constantly at the same rope, and thought so little of ever separating from him (except by precedence of ferriage over the Styx), that it is hard to shove him from me to the perspective distance—hard to shut my own partial eyes, and look at him through other people's. I will try, however, and as it is done with but one foot off from the treadmill of my ceaseless vocation, you will excuse both abruptness and brevity.
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15Author:  Willis Nathaniel Parker 1806-1867Requires cookie*
 Title:  People I have met, or, Pictures of society and people of mark, drawn under a thin veil of fiction  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: The death of a lady, in a foreign land, leaves me at liberty to narrate the circumstances which follow. “My dear Lord: In the belief that a frank communication would be best under the circumstances, I wish to make an inquiry, prefacing it with the assurance that my only hope of happiness has been for some time staked upon the successful issue of my suit for your daughter's hand. It is commonly understood, I believe, that the bulk of your lordship's fortune is separate from the entail, and may be disposed of at your pleasure. May I inquire its amount, or rather, may I ask what fortune goes with the hand of Lady Angelica. The Beauchief estates are unfortunately much embarrassed, and my own debts (I may frankly confess) are very considerable. You will at once see, my lord, that, in justice to your daughter, as well as to myself, I could not do otherwise than make this frank inquiry before pushing my suit to extremity. Begging your indulgence and an immediate answer, I remain, my dear lord, yours very faithfully, “Dear Lord Frederick: I trust you will not accuse me of a want of candor in declining a direct answer to your question. Though I freely own to a friendly wish for your success in your efforts to engage the affections of Lady Angelica, with a view to marriage, it can only be in the irrevocable process of a marriage settlement that her situation, as to the probable disposal of my fortune, can be disclosed. I may admit to you, however, that upon the events of this day on which you have written, (it so chances,) may depend the question whether I should encourage you to pursue further your addresses to Lady Angelica. A letter from Lord Aymar to Lady Angelica will put the story forward a little: “Dear Count: You will wonder at receiving a friendly note from me, after my refusal, two months since, to meet you over `pistols and coffee;' but reparation may not be too late, and this is to say, that you have your choice between two modes of settlement, viz:—to accept for your stable the hunter you stole from me (vide police report) and allow me to take a glass of wine with you at my own table and bury the hatchet, or, to shoot at me if you like, according to your original design. Mynners and Beauchief hope you will select the latter, as they owe you a grudge for the possession of your incomparable bride and her fortune; but I trust you will prefer the horse, which (if I am rightly informed) bore you to the declaration of love at Chasteney. Reply to Crockford's. “My dear St. Leger: Enclosed you have the only surviving lock of my grizzled wig—sign and symbol that my disguises are over and my object attained. The wig burns at this instant in the grate, item my hand-ruffles, item sundry embroidered cravats 3 â la veille cour, item (this last not without some trouble at my heart) a solitary love-token from Constantia Hervey. One faded rose—given me at Pæstum, the day before I was driven disgraced from her presence by the interference of this insolent fool—one faded rose has crisped and faded into smoke with the rest. And so fled from the world the last hope of a warm and passionate heart, which never gave up its destiny till now—never felt that it was made in vain, guarded, refined, cherished in vain, till that long-loved flower lay in ashes. I am accustomed to strip emotion of its drapery—determined to feel nothing but what is real—yet this moment, turn it and strip it, and deny its illusions as I will, is anguish. `Self-inflicted,' you smile and say! “I have followed up to this hour, my fair cousin, in the path you have marked out for me. It has brought me back, in this chamber, to the point from which I started under your guidance, and if it had brought me back unchanged—if it restored me my energy, my hope, and my prospect of fame, I should pray Heaven that it would also give me back my love, and be content— more than content, if it gave me back also my poverty. The sight of my easel, and of the surroundings of my boyish dreams of glory, have made my heart bitter. They have given form and voice to a vague unhappiness, which has haunted me through all these absent years—years of degrading pursuits and wasted powers—and it now impels me from you, kind and lovely as you are, with an aversion I can not control. I cannot forgive you. You have thwarted my destiny. You have extinguished with sordid cares a lamp within me, that might, by this time, have shone through the world. And what am I, since your wishes are accomplished? Euriched in pocket, and bankrupt in happiness and self-respect. Dined with F—, the artist, at a trattoria. F— is a man of genius, very adventurous and imaginative in his art, but never caring to show the least touch of these qualities in his conversation. His pictures have given him great vogue and consideration at Rome, so that his daily experience furnishes staple enough for his evening's chit-chat, and he seems, of course, to be always talking of himself. He is very generally set down as an egotist. His impulse to talk, however, springs from no wish for self-glorification, but rather from an indolent aptness to lay hands on the readiest and most familiar topic, and that is a kind of egotism to which I have very little objection—particularly with the mind fatigued, as it commonly is in Rome, by a long day's study of works of art. “Baron: Before taking the usual notice of the occurrence of this morning, I wish to rectify one or two points in which our position is false. I find myself, since last night, the accepted lover of Lady Imogen Ravelgold, and the master of estates and title as a Count of the Russian empire. Under the etourdissement of such sudden changes in feelings and fortune, perhaps my forgetfulness of the lady, in whose cause you are so interested, admits of indulgence. At any rate, I am so newly in love with life, that I am willing to suppose, for an hour, that had you known these circumstances, you would have taken a different view of the offence in question. I shall remain at home till two, and it is in your power till then to make me the reparation necessary to my honor. Yours, etc., “Dear Sir: My wife wishes me to write to you, and inform you of her marriage, which took place a week or two since, and of which she presumes you are not aware. She remarked to me, that you thought her looking unhappy last evening, when you chanced to see her at the play. As she seemed to regret not being able to answer your note herself, I may perhaps convey the proper apology by taking upon myself to mention to you, that, in consequence of eating an imprudent quantity of unripe fruit, she felt ill before going to the theatre, and was obliged to leave early. To day she seems seriously indisposed. I trust she will be well enough to see you in a day or two—and remain, “My Dear Tremlet,—In the two days that I have exiled you from my presence, I have exiled my happiness also—as you well know without my confessing—but I needed to sleep and wake more than once upon your welcome but unexpected avowal. I fear, indeed, that I need much more time, and that reflection would scarce justify what I am now about to write to you. But my life, hitherto, has been such a succession of heart-chilled waitings upon Reason, that, for once, while I have the power, I am tempted to bound away with Impulse, after happiness. “I promised to return to you when I should resemble my picture. It is possible that exile from your presence has marred more beauty than mental culture has developed—but the soul you drew in portrait has, at least found its way to my features— for the world acknowledges what you alone read prophetically at Leipsic. I have kept myself advised of your movements, with a woman's anxiety. You are still toiling at the art which made us acquainted, and, (thank God!) unmarried. To-night, at the concert of the Countess Isny-Frere, I shall sing to you, for I have taken pains to know that you will be there. Do not speak to me till you can see me alone—but hear me in my art before I abandon myself to the joy long deferred, of throwing myself at your feet with the fortune and fame it is now mine to offer you. “`Dear Miss Blidgims: Feeling quite indisposed myself, and being firmly persuaded that we are three cases of cholera, I have taken advantage of a return calesino to hurry on to Modena for medical advice. The vehicle I take brought hither a sister of charity, who assures me she will wait on you, even in the most malignant stage of your disease. She is collecting funds for a hospital, and will receive compensation for her services in the form of a donation to this object. I shall send you a physician by express from Modena, where it is still possible we may meet. With prayers, &c. &c.
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16Author:  Woodworth Samuel 1784-1842Requires cookie*
 Title:  The champions of freedom, or The mysterious chief  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: AMONG the early champions of American freedom, few, perhaps, bore arms with more honor to themselves or success to the glorious cause, than Major Willoughby. He was the only son of the most opulent farmer in the state of Massachusetts, who designed his son for the study and practice of the law. But while he was preparing for an admittance into Harvard University, the plains of Lexington were wet with the blood of his countrymen. “My Son—I have strange things to tell you— events that will excite your “special wonder,” and which may almost cause you to doubt the veracity of your father. Attend, therefore, while I relate a series of facts as extraordinary as any that ever figured in romance, either ancient or modern. “The plot thickens—war is inevitable— and the folly or madness of democracy fully established. The vassals of Bonaparte in the house of representatives, have agreed to enlist these States under the banners of the tyrant against England; there can be no doubt of the senate's concurrence—war will be declared in a few days —Detroit is the sally-port—look to Sandwich, and expect further particulars as soon as they transpire. “I have, my brave but unfortunate boy, written several letters, and directed them to you at different military posts in Canada; but know not whether either of them has been fortunate enough to reach you. Mr. Fleming, who departs for Buffalo to-morrow morning, expects to meet a young Irish prisoner there, to whom he can safely confide this letter—he being the son of Fleming's particular friend.
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17Author:  Woodworth Samuel 1784-1842Requires cookie*
 Title:  The champions of freedom, or The mysterious chief  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: The rocky precipice which now sheltered these few “hardy gleanings” of so many desperate fights, was within a few paces of the river's margin; but not a boat was there to receive them. In this extremely painful situation they remained many minutes, when they found themselves suddenly surrounded by more than five times their number; and knowing that a further resistance would produce an useless effusion of blood, they reluctantly complied with their leader's advice, who sighed in the performance of what had now become a necessary duty, for the prevention of a greater sacrifice. They threw down their arms in sullen despondency, which Scott, with a graceful dignity peculiar to himself, tendered his sword to his more fortunate opponent. “Your last, my son, is now before me, and every sentence yields me pleasure, except that in which you mention Amelia's fears on my account. Assure her from me, that the moment any real cause of alarm presents itself, I shall not be backward in providing for the safety of myself and those under my protection. It grieves me that she should make herself unhappy in anticipating evils that may never arrive. Let me intreat her, through you, to banish every fear for the safety of her father, and repose her trust in that merciful Being who, in the operations of his providence, never permits an evil to take place but for the ultimate good of his creatures; and it is our duty to submit without a murmur. I do not wish it to be understood that the ordinary human means of shunning an impending danger are to be neglected: so far from it, I should conceive that I was tempting the Almighty, to remain in a place of danger, when I could retreat consistently with duty. I repeat, that I will remove from Mulberry-Grove the moment I apprehend any 27* danger from staying. Were it a tenable fortress, the case would be different. Let this assurance restore peace to the bosom of my child. “Sir—I have the honor to inform you, that on the 25th inst. being in the lat. 29 N. long. 29, 30, W. we fell in with, and, after an action of an hour and an half, captured his Britannic Majesty's ship Macedonian, commanded by captain John Carden, and mounting forty-nine carriage guns (the odd gun shifting.) She is a frigate of the largest class, two years old, four months out of dock, and reputed one of the best sailors in the British service. The enemy being to windward, had the advantage of engaging us at his own distance, which was so great, that for the first half hour we did not use our carronades, and at no moment was he within the complete effect of our musketry and grape—to this circumstance and a heavy swell, which was on at the time, I ascribe the unusual length of the action. “Yours of the fifteenth December came duly to hand, and has yielded me indescribable pleasure. The unparalleled achievements of our gallant sailors, must convince every man, not blinded by prejudice, of the importance of a respectable naval establishment. This is a point to which the strength and resources of our country can be directed with advantage—with honor— with complete success. Congress will become convinced of this without a very long study in that dear school you speak of. “I hasten, my dear brother, to furnish an antidote to the melancholy which the writing of your last must have occasioned. “Another Naval Victory, my dear George, has rewarded the courage and enterprise of American sailors, and the name of Lawrence is now inscribed with those of Hull, Decatur, Jones, and Bainbridge, on an imperishable pillar of glory. “We are now standing on and off the harbor of York, which we shall attack at day-light in the morning. I shall dedicate these last moments to you, my love, and to-morrow throw all other ideas but my country to the winds. As yet I know not if general Dearborn lands; he has acted honorably so far, and I feel great gratitude to the old gentleman: my sword and pen shall both be exerted to do him honor. I have no new injunction—no new charge to give you; nor any new idea to communicate; yet we love to commune with those we love, more especially when we conceive it may be the last time in this world. Should I fall, defend my memory: and only believe, had I lived, I would have aspired to deeds worthy of your husband. Remember me with a father's love—a father's care, to our dear daughter, and believe me to be, with the warmest sentiments of love and friendship, your “Sir—Pity alone has prompted me to take this method of relieving an embarrassment which must not only be very painful to your feelings, but which (judging from what I this day witnessed) will so impede the performance of your professional duties, as to endanger your reputation. But, sir, you may discard all apprehensions from your mind—I shall never molest you. You know the word of George Washington Willoughby is sacred—it was never yet violated—I shall not condescend to chastise a being whose meanness has sunk him so far below my resentment. I know what you might reasonably expect from many of our young officers, were they placed in my situation. But it is well known to you that my notions of honor are altogether different. You have never injured me, because—it was not in your power. But even if your despicable attempts had succeeded—had you robbed me of my greatest earthly treasure, your blood would no more tend to wash away the injury, than that which daily flows in the meanest butcher's shambles. Entertain no fears, then, for your life; I shall never seek to deprive you of a gem so tarnished with corruption, and yet, so dear to its possessor. “Call all your native fortitude to your aid, my son, for the intelligence I have to communicate is afflicting. Catharine Fleming is safe under my protection—would I could say she was well. Her amiable mother has joined the rest of her unfortunate family in a better world. Fleming is a prisoner of war, and their house is in ashes. Mulberry Grove exhibits nothing but a black heap of smoking ruins. “First recover that— and then thou shalt hear further.” “I am happy, my dear boy, to inform you, that by a courier, who is travelling express from Harrison's head-quarters to Erie, I have received a letter from Fleming, written on board an English gun-boat in Sandusky Bay, just preparing to sail for Malden. He is anxious to learn the fate of his family, and fears the worst. Catharine herself has undertaken to relieve this suspense, by writing immediately, and as flags are frequently passing between the two armies, there will be no difficulty attending its conveyance, except the customary inspection of its contents, which is of no consequence. I am sensible of Harrison's disposition to oblige me, and he has promised to exert his influence in procuring Fleming's release. May the choicest blessings of Heaven rest upon the hero's head. “We arrived at this place on the evening of the thirteenth instant. By a pilot-boat, which was sent out for observation, a British sail was discovered at anchor near one of the islands, and the signal for chase was immediately made. By dark, we were almost within gunshot of the enemy; one hour more of day light, and she would have been captured. A very severe storm came on, and for fear of getting the squadron separated, we anchored for the night. Captain Richardson has gone on shore to proceed to Harrison's head-quarters at Seneca, and accompany the general down to the fleet. General Clay, the commandant at Fort Meigs, has received orders from Harrison to reduce the compass of that fort in such a manner as to enable three hundred men to hold it, and then march with the balance of his force to 42 head-quarters, at Seneca. Preparations are accordingly making to convey the stores, ammunition, and cannon, to Cleveland and Seneca, which it will take about ten days to accomplish. After these arrangements are completed, a force of five thousand troops, regulars and militia, will embark on board this squadron, and be conveyed to Malden, where Harrison will retrieve all that Hull lost. Previous to the embarkation, however, you may expect to hear that we are masters of the lake. “The last eastern mail has brought us the welcome news of Another Naval Victory, the particulars of which I will relate as far as they have been made public, before I descend to local and domestic subjects. “You was right, my dear Willoughby—“Revenge will not remedy the evil.” British blood has flowed in torrents, and still I am the last remaining twig on our family tree; nor can all the blood that flows in English veins, resuscitate the other branches, or restore my lost happiness. We have had a battle, and hundreds of Englishmen are laid low—many of them beneath the waters of Erie. The survivors are our prisoners, and I have conversed with many of them who would willingly die for their country, but who loudly condemn the conduct of those ministers whose ambition has plunged them into a war with their brethren. It is the blood of such men, the blood of our brethren, that has so lavishly crimsoned the waves of this lake, and their blood will cry for vengeance on those ambitious wretches who guide the counsels of England. You was right—these men, whom I have been so eager to destroy, do `commiserate my sufferings, and denounce the authors of them.' Every English groan that has saluted my ears since the battle, has caused me to confess—`that was not the voice which decreed my brother's death; that man had no hand in dragging me on board a British ship; he never employed an Indian to murder my sister; why then should I rejoice at his sufferings?' I do not; I am a convert to your doctrine, and my present tenderness to those poor wounded men who are placed under my care, shall in some measure atone for my former error. “Good news, my dear Willoughby! Detroit, Sandwich, Malden—all that Hull and you lost, and all that you might have taken—is now in possession of the Americans. Tecumseh is slain, Proctor fled, and the British army captured, with all their camp equipage and their leader's private baggage. Harrison is the hero who has achieved all this, by the valor of the brave troops under his command. I have just conversed with an officer who served as a volunteer in this brilliant affair, and he has furnished me with the following particulars: “Be not alarmed, my daughter, that this letter is not written by your father's hand. That hand is, alas! too much enfeebled by disease to hold a pen; I have, therefore, employed that of my most excellent friend, captain Miller, who has generously offered to make a journey to Ithaca for the sole purpose of conveying to you the last injunctions and blessing of your affectionate father.” “Adieu, my dearest, best friend—adieu, until we meet in that world where parting will be no more. I should feel guilty of an unpardonable neglect, did I longer delay to inform you that I am rapidly sinking beneath the iron hand of affliction. Grief for the loss of my parents has made such havoc with my constitution, that my health I fear can never be again restored. I shall never cease to love you—no, not even in heaven; next to my Saviour's, your image will be the object which I shall contemplate with the greatest delight, through the boundless ages of eternity. My greatest earthly comfort is the perusal of your affectionate epistles—this is the first I have ever written to you—it will be the last you must ever expect—preserve it as a legacy of my affection. I will not conceal—for why should I?—that your presence would soothe my dying hour, and that the transition would be sweet from your arms to those of my attendant angels, who are waiting to receive me. But I will not drag you from those higher duties to which you are called by your God and your country. Continue to serve both faithfully, and you will one day be again restored to your ever faithful “It is my good fortune, my dear sir, to announce that I have for the second time, witnessed the glorious sight of a whole British fleet surrendering to the superior skill and bravery of American seamen. Our gallant commodore, M`Donough, will now vie with Perry, while the name of M`Comb will be coupled with those of Harrison, Brown, Scott, Boyd, Ripley, Porter, &c. The eleventh of September will also shine as bright on the page of history, as the tenth. But I will descend to particulars. “Heaven be praised for all its mercies! Catharine is safe! Yes, my dear sir, my poor niece is alive—well—among friends—uninjured—happy, as she can be while separated from us. The inclosed will tell you all—it is from my son, who is in New-Orleans, where he has just taken a wife. Read it, and then join with me in adoring that Being whose `judgments are unsearchable, and whose ways are past finding out.' “Be happy, my dear mother, for I have good news to communicate. Our cousin Catharine Fleming is safe under my protection—the same innocent happy being, as when we were romping together at Ithaca. Pause, while you freely indulge the rapturous tears of joy, and then proceed to particulars.
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18Author:  Melville Herman 1819-1891Requires cookie*
 Title:  Typee  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | Wiley & Putnam's library of American books | wiley & putnams library of american books 
 Description: Six months at sea! Yes, reader, as I live, six months out of sight of land; cruising after the sperm-whale beneath the scorching sun of the Line, and tossed on the billows of the wide-rolling Pacific—the sky above, the sea around, and nothing else! Weeks and weeks ago our fresh provisions were all exhausted. There is not a sweet potato left; not a single yam. Those glorious bunches of bananas which once decorated our stern and quarter-deck, have, alas, disappeared! and the delicious oranges which hung suspended from our tops and stays—they, too, are gone! Yes, they are all departed, and there is nothing left us but salt-horse and sea-biscuit. Oh! ye state-room sailors, who make so much ado about a fourteen days' passage across the Atlantic; who so pathetically relate the privations and hardships of the sea, where, after a day of breakfasting, lunching, dining off five courses, chatting, playing whist, and drinking champaignpunch, it was your hard lot to be shut up in little cabinets of mahogany and maple, and sleep for ten hours, with nothing to disturb you but “those good-for-nothing tars, shouting and tramping over head,”—what would ye say to our six months out of sight of land? Returning health and peace of mind gave a new interest to everything around me. I sought to diversify my time by as many enjoyments as lay within my reach. Bathing in company with troops of girls formed one of my chief amusements. We sometimes enjoyed the recreation in the waters of a miniature lake, into which the central stream of the valley expanded. This lovely sheet of water was almost circular in figure, and about three hundred yards across. Its beauty was indescribable. All around its banks waved luxuriant masses of tropical foliage, soaring high above which were seen, here and there, the symmetrical shaft of the cocoa-nut tree, surmounted by its tuft of graceful branches, drooping in the air like so many waving ostrich plumes.
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