University of Virginia Library

F. SMITH.

Coleridge.

Philaster.

If you can imagine a buried Titan lying along the
length of a continent with one arm stretched out into
the midst of the sea, the place to which I would transport
you, reader mine! would lie as it were in the
palm of the giant's hand. The small promontory to
which I refer, which becomes an island in certain
states of the tide, is at the end of one of the long capes
of Massachusetts, and is still called by its Indian name,
Nahant. Not to make you uncomfortable, I beg to
introduce you at once to a pretentious hotel, “squat
like a toad” upon the unsheltered and highest point
of this citadel in mid sea, and a very great resort for
the metropolitan New-Englanders. Nahant is perhaps,
liberally measured, a square half-mile; and it is
distant from what may fairly be called mainland, perhaps
a league.

Road to Nahant there is none. The oi polloi go
there by steam; but when the tide is down, you may
drive there with a thousand chariots over the bottom

of the sea. As I suppose there is not such another
place in the known world, my tale will wait while I
describe it more fully. If the Bible had been a fiction,
(not to speak profanely,) I should have thought
the idea of the destruction of Pharaoh and his host
had its origin in some such wonder of nature.

Nahant is so far out into the ocean, that what is
called the “ground swell,” the majestic heave of its
great bosom going on for ever like respiration, (though
its face may be like a mirror beneath the sun, and a
wind may not have crisped its surface for days and
weeks,) is as broad and powerful within a rood of the
shore as it is a thousand miles at sea.

The promontory itself is never wholly left by the
ebb; but, from its western extremity, there runs a
narrow ridge, scarce broad enough for a horse-path,
impassable for the rocks and seaweed of which it is
matted, and extending at just high-water mark from
Nahant to the mainland. Seaward from this ridge,
which is the only connexion of the promontory with
the continent, descends an expanse of sand, left bare
six hours out of the twelve by the retreating sea, as
smooth and hard as marble, and as broad and apparently
as level as the plain of the Hermus. For three
miles it stretches away without shell or stone, a surface
of white, fine-grained sand, beaten so hard by the
eternal hammer of the surf, that the hoof of a horse
scarce marks it, and the heaviest wheel leaves it as
printless as a floor of granite. This will easily be understood
when you remember the tremendous rise and
fall of the ocean-swell, from the very bosom of which,
in all its breadth and strength, roll in the waves of the
flowing tide, breaking down on the beach, every one,
with the thunder of a host precipitated from the battlements
of a castle. Nothing could be more solemn
and anthem-like than the succession of these plunging

surges. And when the “tenth wave” gathers, far out
at sea, and rolls onward to the shore, first with a
glassy and heaving swell as if some mighty monster
were lurching inland beneath the water, and then,
bursting up into foam, with a front like an endless and
sparry crystal wall, advances and overwhelms every
thing in its progress, till it breaks with a centupled
thunder on the beach—it has seemed to me, standing
there, as if thus might have beaten the first surge
on the shore after the fiat which “divided sea and
land.” I am no Cameronian, but the sea (myself on
shore) always drives me to Scripture for an illustration
of my feelings.

The promontory of Nahant must be based on the
earth's axle, else I cannot imagine how it should have
lasted so long. In the mildest weather, the groundswell
of the sea gives it a fillip at every heave that
would lay the “castled crag of Drachenfels” as low as
Memphis. The wine trembles in your beaker of claret
as you sit after dinner at the hotel; and if you look
out at the eastern balcony, (for it is a wooden pagoda,
with balconies, verandahs, and colonades ad libitum,)
you will see the grass breathless in the sunshine upon
the lawn, and the ocean as polished and calm as Miladi's
brow beyond, and yet the spray and foam dashing
fifty feet into the air between, and enveloping the
“Devil's Pulpit” (a tall rock split off from the promontory's
front) in a perpetual kaleidoscope of mist and
rainbows. Take the trouble to transport yourself
there! I will do the remaining honors on the spot.
A cavern as cool (not as silent) as those of Trophonius
lies just under the brow of yonder precipice, and the
waiter shall come after us with our wine. You have
dined with the Borromeo in the grotto of Isola Bella,
I doubt not, and know the perfection of art—I will
show you that of nature. (I should like to transport

you for a similar contrast from Terni to Niagara, or
from San Giovanni Laterano to an aisle in a forest of
Michigan; but the Dædalian mystery, alas! is unsolved.
We “fly not yet.”)

Here we are, then, in the “Swallows' Cave.” The
floor descends by a gentle declivity to the sea, and
from the long dark cleft stretching outward you look
forth upon the broad Atlantic—the shore of Ireland
the first terra firma in the path of your eye. Here is
a dark pool left by the retreating tide for a refrigerator,
and with the champagne in the midst, we will recline
about it like the soft Asiatics of whom we learned
pleasure in the East, and drink to the small-featured
and purple-lipped “Mignons” of Syria—those fine-limbed
and fiery slaves, adorable as Peris, and by turns
languishing and stormy, whom you buy for a pinch
of piastres (say 5l. 5s.) in sunny Damascus. Your
drowsy Circassian, faint and dreamy, or your crockery
Georgian—fit dolls for the sensual Turk—is, to him
who would buy soul, dear at a para the hecatomb.

We recline, as it were, in an ebon pyramid, with a
hundred feet of floor and sixty of wall, and the fourth
side open to the sky. The light comes in mellow and
dim, and the sharp edges of the rocky portal seem let
into the pearly arch of heaven. The tide is at half-ebb,
and the advancing and retreating waves, which
at first just lifted the fringe of crimson dulse at the lip
of the cavern, now dash their spray-pearls on the rock
below, the “tenth” surge alone rallying as if in scorn
of its retreating fellows, and, like the chieftain of Culloden
Moor, rushing back singly to the contest. And
now that the waters reach the entrance no more, come
forward and look on the sea! The swell lifts!—
would you not think the bases of the earth rising beneath
it? It falls!—would you not think the foundation
of the deep had given way? A plain, broad

enough for the navies of the world to ride at large,
heaves up evenly and steadily as if it would lie against
the sky, rests a moment spell-bound in its place, and
falls again as far—the respiration of a sleeping child
not more regular and full of slumber. It is only on
the shore that it chafes. Blessed emblem! it is at peace
with itself! The rocks war with a nature so unlike
their own, and the hoarse din of their border onsets
resounds through the caverns they have rent open;
but beyond, in the calm bosom of the ocean, what
heavenly dignity! what godlike unconsciousness of
alarm! I did not think we should stumble on such a
moral in the cave!

By the deeper bass of its hoarse organ, the sea is
now playing upon its lowest stops, and the tide is down.
Hear! how it rushes in beneath the rocks, broken and
stilled in its tortuous way, till it ends with a washing
and dull hiss among the sea-weed, and, like a myriad
of small tinkling bells, the dripping from the crags is
audible. There is fine music in the sea!

And now the beach is bare. The cave begins to
cool and darken, and the first gold tint of sunset is
stealing into the sky, and the sea looks of a changing
opal, green, purple, and white, as if its floor were
paved with pearl, and the changing light struck up
through the waters. And there heaves a ship into the
horizon, like a white-winged bird lying with dark breast
on the waves, abandoned of the sea-breeze within sight
of port, and repelled even by the spicy breath that
comes with a welcome off the shore. She comes from
“merry England.” She is freighted with more than
merchandise. The home-sick exile will gaze on her
snowy sail as she sets in with the morning breeze, and
bless it; for the wind that first filled it on its way
swept through the green valley of his home! What
links of human affection brings she over the sea? How

much comes in her that is not in her “bill of lading,”
yet worth, to the heart that is waiting for it, a thousand
times the purchase of her whole venture!

Mais montons nous! I hear the small hoofs of
Thalaba; my stanhope waits; we will leave this half
bottle of champagne, that “remainder biscuit,” and the
echoes of our philosophy, to the Naiads who have lent
us their drawing-room. Undine, or Egeria! Lurly,
or Arethusa! whatever thou art called, nymph of this
shadowy cave! adieu!

Slowly, Thalaba! Tread gingerly down this rocky
descent! So! Here we are on the floor of the vasty
deep! What a glorious race-course! The polished
and printless sand spreads away before you as far as
the eye can see, the surf comes in below, breast-high
ere it breaks, and the white fringe of the sliding wave
shoots up the beach, but leaves room for the marching
of a Persian phalanx on the sands it has deserted.
Oh, how noiselessly runs the wheel, and how dreamily
we glide along, feeling our motion but in the resistance
of the wind, and by the trout-like pull of the
ribands by the excited animal before us. Mark the
color of the sand! White at high-water-mark, and
thence deepening to a silvery gray as the water has
evaporated less—a slab of Egyptian granite in the
obelisk of St. Peter's not more polished and unimpressible.—Shell
or rock, weed or quicksand, there is
none; and mar or deface its bright surface as you
will, it is ever beaten down anew, and washed even
of the dust of the foot of man, by the returning sea.
You may write upon its fine-grained face with a crow-quill—you
may course over its dazzling expanse with
a troop of chariots.

Most wondrous and beautiful of all, within twenty
yards of the surf, or for an hour after the tide has left
the sand, it holds the water without losing its firmness,

and is like a gray mirror, bright as the bosom of
the sea. (By your leave, Thalaba!) And now lean
over the dasher, and see those small fetlocks striking
up from beneath—the flying mane, the thorough-bred
action, the small and expressive head, as perfect in
the reflection as in the reality; like Wordsworth's
swan, he
You would swear you were skimming the surface of
the sea; and the delusion is more complete as the
white foam of the “tenth wave” skims in beneath
wheel and hoof, and you urge on with the treacherous
element gliding away visibly beneath you.

We seem not to have driven fast, yet three miles,
fairly measured, are left behind, and Thalaba's blood
is up. Fine creature! I would not give him

We have won champagne ere now, Thalaba and I,
trotting on this silvery beach; and if ever old age
comes on me, and I intend it never shall on aught
save my mortal coil, (my spirit vowed to perpetual
youth,) I think these vital breezes, and a trot on these
exhilarating sands, would sooner renew my prime
than a rock in St. Hilary's cradle, or a dip in the Well
of Kanathos. May we try the experiment together,
gentle reader!

I am not settled in my own mind whether this description
of one of my favourite haunts in America
was written most to introduce the story that is to follow,
or the story to introduce the description. Possibly
the latter, for having consumed my callow youth
in wandering “to and fro in the earth,” like Sathanas
of old, and looking on my country now with an eye
from which all the minor and temporary features have

gradually faded, I find my pride in it (after its glory
as a republic) settling principally on the superior
handiwork of Nature in its land and water. When
I talk of it now, it is looking through another's eyes
—his who listens. I do not describe it after my own
memory of what it was once to me, but according to
my idea of what it will seem now to a stranger.
Hence I speak not of the friends I made, rambling by
lake or river. The lake and the river are there, but
the friends are changed—to themselves and me. I
speak not of the lovely and loving ones that stood by
me, looking on glen or waterfall. The glen and the
waterfall are romantic still, but the form and the heart
that breathed through it are no longer lovely or loving.
I should renew my joys by the old mountain
and river, for, all they ever were I should find them
still, and never seem to myself grown old, or cankered
of the world, or changed in form or spirit,
while they reminded me but of my youth, with their
familiar sunshine and beauty. But the friends that
I knew—as I knew them—are dead. They look
no longer the same; they have another heart in them;
the kindness of the eye, the smilingness of the lip,
are no more there. Philosophy tells me the material
and living body changes and renews, particle by particle,
with time; and Experience—cold-blooded and
stony monitor—tells me, in his frozen monotone, that
heart and spirit change with it and renew! But the
name remains, mockery that it is! and the memory
sometimes; and so these apparitions of the past—that
we almost fear to question when they encounter us,
lest the change they have undergone should freeze our
blood—stare coldly on us, yet call us by name, and
answer, though coldly, to their own, and have that
terrible similitude to what they were, mingled with
their unsympathizing and hollow mummery, that we
wish the grave of the past, with all that it contained
of kind or lovely, had been sealed for ever. The
heart we have lain near before our birth (so read I the
book of human life) is the only one that cannot forget
that it has loved us. Saith well and affectionately
an American poet, in some birth-day verses to his
mother—

2. II.

I have observed that of all the friends one has in
the course of his life, the truest and most attached is
exactly the one who, from his dissimilarity to yourself,
the world finds it very odd you should fancy.
We hear sometimes of lovers who “are made for
each other,” but rarely of the same natural match in
friendship. It is no great marvel. In a world like
this, where we pluck so desperately at the fruit of
pleasure, we prefer for company those who are not
formed with precisely the same palate as ourselves.
You will seldom go wrong, dear reader, if you refer
any human question about which you are in doubt to
that icy oracle—selfishness.

My shadow for many years was a gentle monster,
whom I have before mentioned, baptized by the name
of Forbearance Smith. He was a Vermontese, a
descendant of one of the Puritan pilgrims, and the
first of his family who had left the Green Mountains
since the flight of the regicides to America. We assimilate
to what we live among, and Forbearance was
very green, and very like a mountain. He had a

general resemblance to one of Thorwaldsen's unfinished
Apostles—larger than life, and just hewn into outline.
My acquaintance with him commenced during
my first year at the university. He stalked into my
room one morning with a hair-trunk on his back, and
handed me the following note from the tutor:—

“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.

Rather relieved by my lenient sentence, (for, till the
next shedding of his well-saturated coat, the sky-blue
body and red mane and tail of the President's once
gray mare would interfere with that esteemed animal's
usefulness,) I received Mr. Smith with more politeness
than he expected. He deposited his hair-trunk in the
vacant bed-room, remarked with a good-humoured
smile that it was a cold morning, and seating himself
in my easiest chair, opened his Euclid, and went to
work upon a problem, as perfectly at home as if he
had furnished the room himself, and lived in it from
his matriculation. I had expected some preparatory
apology at least, and was a little annoyed; but being
upon my good behaviour, I bit my lips, and resumed
the “Art of Love,” upon which I was just then practising
my nascent Latinity, instead of calculating logarithms
for recitation. In about an hour, my new chum

suddenly vociferated “Eureka!” shut up his book,
and having stretched himself, (a very unnecessary
operation,) coolly walked to my dressing-table, selected
my best hair-brush, redolent of Macassar, and used it
with the greatest apparent satisfaction.

“Have you done with that hair-brush?” I asked, as
he laid it in its place again.

“Oh yes!”

“Then, perhaps, you will do me the favour to throw
it out of the window.”

He did it without the slightest hesitation. He then
resumed his seat by the fire, and I went on with my
book in silence. Twenty minutes had elapsed, perhaps,
when he rose very deliberately, and without a
word of preparation, gave me a cuff that sent me flying
into the wood-basket in the corner behind me. As
soon as I could pick myself out, I flew upon him, but
I might as well have grappled with a boa-constrictor.
He held me off at arm's length till I was quite exhausted
with rage, and, at last, when I could struggle
no more, I found breath to ask him what the devil he
meant?

“To resent what seemed to me, on reflection, to be
an insult;” he answered, in the calmest tone, “and
now to ask your pardon for a fault of ignorance. The
first was due to myself, the second to you.”

Thenceforth, to the surprise of every body, and
Bob Wilding and the tutor, we were inseparable. I
took Bruin (by a double elision Forbearance became
“bear,” and by paraphrase Bruin, and he answered to
the name)—I took him, I say, to the omnium shop, and
presented him with a dressing-case, and other appliances
for his outer man; and as my inner man was
relatively as much in need of his assistance, we mutually
improved. I instructed him in poetry and politeness,
and he returned the lesson in problems and

politics. My star was never in more fortunate conjunction.

Four years had woven their threads of memory
about us, and there was never woof more free from
blemish. Our friendship was proverbial. All that
much care and Macassar could do for Bruin had been
done, but there was no abating his seven feet of stature,
nor reducing the size of his feet proper, nor making
the muscles of his face answer to their natural
wires. At his most placid smile, a strange waiter
would run for a hot towel and the doctor; (colic was
not more like itself than that like colic;) and for his
motions—oh Lord! a skeleton, with each individual
bone appended to its neighbour with a string, would
execute a pas seul with the same expression. His
mind, however, had none of the awkwardness of his
body. A simplicity and truth, amounting to the greatest
naïveté, and a fatuitous unconsciousness of the
effect on beholders of his outer man, were its only approaches
to fault or foible. With the finest sense of
the beautiful, the most unerring judgment in literary
taste, the purest romance, a fervid enthusiasm, constancy,
courage, and good temper, he walked about
the world in a mask—an admirable creature, in the
guise and seeming of a ludicrous monster.

Bruin was sensitive on but one point. He never
could forgive his father and mother for the wrong they
had entailed on him at his baptism, “Forbearance
Smith!” he would say to himself sometimes in unconscious
soliloquy, “they should have given me the virtue
as well as the name!” And then he would sit
with a pen, and scrawl “F. Smith” on a sheet of paper
by the hour together. To insist upon knowing his
Christian name was the one impertinence he never
forgave.

3. III.

My party at Nahant consisted of Thalaba, Forbearance,
and myself. The place was crowded, but I passed
my time very much between my horse and my
friend, and was as certain to be found on the beach
when the tide was down, as the sea to have left the
sands. Job (a synonyme for Forbearance which became
at this time his common soubriquet) was, of
course, in love. Not the least to the prejudice, however,
of his last faithful passion—for he was as fond
of the memory of an old love, as he was tender in the
presence of the new. I intended to have had him dissected
after his death, to see whether his organization
was not peculiar. I strongly incline to the opinion,
that we should have found a mirror in the place of
his heart. Strange! how the same man who is so
fickle in love, will be so constant in friendship! But
is it fickleness? Is it not rather a superflu of tenderness
in the nature, which overflows to all who approach
the fountain? I have ever observed that the
most susceptible men are the most remarkable for the
finer qualities of character. They are more generous,
more delicate, and of a more chivalrous complexion altogether,
than other men. It was surprising how reasonably
Bruin would argue upon this point. “Because I
was happy at Niagara,” he was saying one day as we sat
upon the rocks, “shall I take no pleasure in the Falls of
Montmorenci? Because the sunset was glorious yesterday,
shall I find no beauty in that of to-day? Is my
fancy to be used but once, and the key turned upon it
for ever? Is the heart like a bon-bon, to be eaten up
by the first favorite, and thought of no more? Are
our eyes blind, save to one shape of beauty? Are our
ears insensible to the music save of one voice?”

“But do you not weaken the heart, and become incapable

of a lasting attachment, by this habit of inconstancy?”

“How long, my dear Phil, will you persist in talking
as if the heart was material, and held so much
love as a cup so much water, and had legs to be
weary, or organs to grow dull? How is my sensibility
lessened—how my capacity enfeebled? What
would I have done for my first love, that I would not
do for my last? I would have sacrificed my life to
secure the happiness of one you wot of in days gone
by—I would jump into the sea, if it would make
Blanche Carroll happier to-morrow.”

“Sautez-donc!” said a thrilling voice behind; and
as if the utterance of her name had conjured her out
of the ground, the object of all Job's admiration, and a
little of my own, stood before us. She had a work-basket
in her hand, a gipsey-hat tossed carelessly on
her head, and had preceded a whole troop of belles
and matrons, who were coming out to while away the
morning, and breathe the invigorating sea-air on the
rocks.

Blanche Carroll was what the women would call
“a little love,” but that phrase of endearment would
not at all express the feeling with which she inspired
the men. She was small, and her face and figure
might have been framed in fairy-land for bewitching
beauty; but with the manner of a spoiled child and,
apparently, the most thoughtless playfulness of mind,
she was as veritable a little devil as ever took the
shape of woman. Scarce seventeen at this time, she
had a knowledge of character that was like an instinct,
and was an accomplished actress in any part it
was necessary for her purpose to play. No grave
Machiavel ever managed his cards with more finesse
than that little intriguante the limited world of which
she was the star. She was a natural masterspirit and

plotter; and the talent that would have employed itself
in the deeper game of politics, had she been born
a woman of rank in Europe, displayed itself, in the
simple society of a republic, in subduing to her
power every thing in the shape of a single man that
ventured to her net. I have nothing to tell of her at
all commensurate with the character I have drawn,
for the disposal of her own heart (if she has one) must
of course be the most important event of her life; but
I merely pencil the outline of the portrait in passing,
as a specimen of the material that exists, even in the
simplest society, for the dramatis personœ of a court.

We followed the light-footed beauty to the shelter
of one of the caves opening on the sea, and seated ourselves
about her upon the rocks. Some one proposed
that Job or myself should read.

“Oh, Mr. Smith!” interrupted the belle, “where is
my bracelet? and where are my verses?”

At the ball the night before she had dropped a
bracelet in the waltz, and Job had been permitted to
take care of the fragments, on condition of restoring
them, with a sonnet, the next morning. She had just
thought of it.

“Read them out! read them out!” she cried, as
Job, blushing a deep blue, extracted a tri-cornered
pink document from his pocket, and tried to give it to
her unobserved, with the packet of jewellery. Job
looked at her imploringly, and she took the verses
from his hand, and ran her eye through them.

“Pretty well!” she said; “but the last line might
be improved. Give me a pencil, some one!” And
bending over it, till her luxuriant hair concealed her
fairy fingers in their employment, she wrote a moment
upon her knee, and tossing the paper to me,
bade me read it out with the emendation. Bruin had,
meantime, modestly disappeared, and I read with the
more freedom.

Job's conclusion was more pathetic, but probably
less true. He appeared after the applause had ceased,
and resumed his place at the lady's feet, with a look
in his countenance of having deserved an abatement
of persecution. The beauty spread out the fragments
of the broken bracelet on the rock beside her.

“Mr. Smith!” said she, in her most conciliating
tone.

Job leaned toward her with a look of devoted inquiry.

“Has the tide turned?”

“Certainly. Two hours since.”

“The beach is passable, then?”

“Hardly, I fear.”

“No matter. How many hours' drive is it to Salem?”

“Mr. Slingsby drives it in two.”

“Then you'll get Mr. Slingsby to lend you his
stanhope, drive to Salem, have this bracelet mended,
and bring it back in time for the ball. I have spoken,
as the Grand Turk says. Allez!”

“But my dear Miss Carroll—”

She laid her hand on his mouth as he began to remonstrate,
and while I made signs to him to refuse,
she said something to him which I lost in a sudden
dash of the waters. He looked at me for my consent.

“Oh! you can have Mr. Slingsby's horse,” said the
beauty, as I hesitated whether my refusal would not
check her tyranny, “and I'll drive him out this evening
for his reward, N'est-ce pas? you cross man!”

So, with a sun hot enough to fry the brains in his
skull, and a quivering reflection on the sands that
would burn his face to a blister, exit Job, with the
broken bracelet in his bosom.

“Stop, Mr. Slingsby,” said the imperious little belle,
as I was making up a mouth, after his departure, to
express my disapprobation of her measures, “no lecture,
if you please. Give me that book of plays, and
I'll read you a precedent. Because you are virtuous,
shall we have no more cakes and ale? Ecoutez! And,
with an emphasis and expression that would have
been perfect on the stage, she read the following passage
from “The Careless Husband:”—

“Lady Betty. The men of sense, my dear, make
the best fools in the world; their sincerity and good
breeding throw them so entirely into one's power, and

give one such an agreeable thirst of using them ill, to
show that power — 'tis impossible not to quench it.

“Lady Easy. But, my Lord Morelove—

“Lady B. Pooh! my Lord Morelove's a mere Indian
damask—one can't wear him out; o' my conscience,
I must give him to my woman at last. I
begin to be known by him; had I not best leave him
off, my dear?

“Lady E. Why did you ever encourage him?

“Lady B. Why, what would you have one do?
For my part, I could no more choose a man by my
eye than a shoe—one must draw them on a little, to
see if they are right to one's foot.

“Lady E. But I'd no more fool on with a man I
could not like, than wear a shoe that pinched me.

“Lady B. Ay; but then a poor wretch tells one
he'll widen 'em, or do any thing, and is so civil and
silly, that one does not know how to turn such a trifle
as a pair of shoes, or a heart, upon a fellow's hands
again.

“Lady E. And there's my Lord Foppington.

“Lady B. My dear! fine fruit will have flies about
it; but, poor things! they do it no harm; for, if you
observe, people are generally most apt to choose that
the flies have been busy with. Ha! ha!

“Lady E. Thou art a strange, giddy creature!

“Lady B. That may be from too much circulation
of thought, my dear!”

“Pray, Miss Carroll,” said I, as she threw aside the
book with a theatrical air, “have you any precedent
for broiling a man's brains, as well as breaking his
heart? For, by this time, my friend Forbearance has
a coup de soleil, and is hissing over the beach like a
steam-engine.”

“How tiresome you are! Do you really think it
will kill him?”

“It might injure him seriously—let alone the danger
of driving a spirited horse over the beach, with the
tide quarter-down.”

“What shall I do to be `taken out of the corner,'
Mr. Slingsby?”

“Order your horses an hour sooner, and drive to
Lynn, to meet him half way on his return. I will resume
my stanhope, and give him the happiness of
driving back with you.”

“And shall I be gentle Blanche Carroll, and no
ogre, if I do?”

“Yes; Mr. Smith surviving.”

“Take the trouble to give my orders, then; and
come back immediately, and read to me till it is time
to go. Meantime, I shall look at myself in this black
mirror.” And the spoilt, but most lovely girl bent
over a dark pool in the corner of the cave, forming a
picture on its shadowy background that drew a murmur
of admiration even from the neglected group who
had been the silent and disapproving witnesses of her
caprice.”

4. IV.

A thunder-cloud strode into the sky with the rapidity
which marks that common phenomenon of a
breathless summer afternoon in America, darkened the
air for a few minutes, so that the birds betook themselves
to their nests, and then poured out its refreshing
waters with the most terrific flashes of lightning,
and crashes of thunder, which for a moment seemed to
still even the eternal bass of the sea. With the same
fearful rapidity, the black roof of the sky tore apart, and
fell back, in rolling and changing masses, upon the
horizon; the sun darted with intense brilliancy
through the clarified and transparent air; the light-stirring
breeze came freighted with delicious coolness;

and the heavy sea-birds, who had lain brooding on
the waves while the tumult of the elements went on,
rose on their scimitar-like wings, and fled away, with
incomprehensible instinct, from the beautiful and
freshened land. The whole face of earth and sky had
been changed in an hour.

Oh, of what fulness of delight are even the senses
capable! What a nerve there is sometimes in every
pore! What love for all living and all inanimate
things may be born of a summer shower! How stirs
the fancy, and brightens hope, and warms the heart,
and sings the spirit within us, at the mere animal joy
with which the lark flees into heaven! And yet, of
this exquisite capacity for pleasure we take so little
care! We refine our taste, we elaborate and finish
our mental perception, we study the beautiful, that
we may know it when it appears,—yet the senses by
which these faculties are approached, the stops by
which this fine instrument is played, are trifled with
and neglected. We forget that a single excess blurs
and confuses the music written on our minds; we
forget that an untimely vigil weakens and bewilders
the delicate minister to our inner temple; we know
not, or act as if we knew not, that the fine and easily-jarred
harmony of health is the only interpreter of
Nature to our souls; in short, we drink too much
claret, and eat too much pâté foie gras. Do you
understand me, gourmand et gourmet?

Blanche Carroll was a beautiful whip, and the two
bay ponies in her phaeton were quite aware of it. La
Bruyère says, with his usual wisdom, “Une belle
femme qui a les qualités d'un honnête homme est ce
qu'il y a au monde d'un commerce plus délicieux;”
and, to a certain degree, masculine accomplishments
too, are very winning in a woman—if pretty; if plain,
she is expected not only to be quite feminine, but

quite perfect. Foibles are as hateful in a woman who
does not possess beauty, as they are engaging in a woman
who does. Clouds are only lovely when the
heavens are bright.

She looked loveliest while driving, did Blanche
Carroll, for she was born to rule, and the expression
native to her lip was energy and nerve; and as she
sat with her little foot pressed against the dasher, and
reined in those spirited horses, the finely-pencilled
mouth, usually playful or pettish, was pressed together
in a curve as warlike as Minerva's, and twice
as captivating. She drove, too, as capriciously as
she acted. At one moment her fleet ponies fled over
the sand at the top of their speed, and at the next they
were brought down to a walk, with a suddenness
which threatened to bring them upon their haunches.
Now far up on the dry sand, cutting a zigzag to
lengthen the way, and again below at the tide edge,
with the waves breaking over her seaward wheel;
all her powers at one instant engrossed in pushing
them to their fastest trot, and in another the reins
lying loose on their backs, while she discussed some
sudden flight of philosophy. “Be his fairy, his page,
his every thing that love and poetry have invented,”
said Roger Ascham to Lady Jane Grey, just before
her marriage; but Blanche Carroll was almost the
only woman I ever saw capable of the beau idéal of
fascinating characters.

Between Miss Carroll and myself there was a safe
and cordial friendship. Besides loving another better,
she was neither earnest, nor true, nor affectionate
enough to come at all within the range of my possible
attachments, and though I admired her, she felt that
the necessary sympathy was wanting for love; and,
the idea of fooling me with the rest once abandoned,
we were the greatest of allies. She told me all her

triumphs, and I listened and laughed without thinking
it worth while to burden her with my confidence in
return; and you may as well make a memorandum,
gentle reader, that that is a very good basis for a friendship.
Nothing bores women or worldly persons so
much as to return their secrets with your own.

As we drew near the extremity of the beach, a boy
rode up on horseback, and presented Miss Carroll with
a note. I observed that it was written on a very dirty
slip of paper, and was waiting to be enlightened as to
its contents, when she slipped it into her belt, took the
whip from the box, and flogging her ponies through
the heavy sand of the outer beach, went off, at a pace
which seemed to engross all her attention, on her road
to Lynn. We reached the hotel and she had not
spoken a syllable, and as I made a point of never inquiring
into any thing that seemed odd in her conduct,
I merely stole a glance at her face, which wore the
expression of mischievous satisfaction which I liked
the least of its common expressions, and descended
from the phaeton with the simple remark, that Job
could not have arrived, as I saw nothing of my stanhope
in the yard.

“Mr. Slingsby.” It was the usual preface to asking
some particular favor.

“Miss Carroll.”

“Will you be so kind as to walk to the library and
select me a book to your own taste, and ask no questions
as to what I do with myself meantime?”

“But, my dear Miss Carroll—your father—”

“Will feel quite satisfied when he hears that Cato
was with me. Leave the ponies to the groom, Cato,
and follow me.” I looked after her as she walked
down the village street with the old black behind her,
not at all certain of the propriety of my acquiescence,
but feeling that there was no help for it.

I lounged away a half hour at the library, and found
Miss Carroll waiting for me on my return. There
were no signs of Bruin; and as she seemed impatient
to be off, I jumped into the phaeton, and away we flew
to the beach as fast as her ponies could be driven
under the whip. As we descended upon the sands
she spoke for the first time.

“It is so civil of you to ask no questions, Mr. Slingsby;
but you are not offended with me?”

“If you have got into no scrape while under my
charge, I shall certainly be too happy to shake hands
upon it to-morrow.”

“Are you quite sure?” she asked archly.

“Quite sure.”

“So am not I,” she said with a merry laugh; and
in her excessive amusement she drove down to the sea,
till the surf broke over the nearest pony's back, and
filled the bottom of the phaeton with water. Our wet
feet were now a fair apology for haste, and taking the
reins from her, I drove rapidly home, while she wrapped
herself in her shawl, and sat apparently absorbed
in the coming of the twilight over the sea.

5. V.

I slept late after the ball, though I had gone to bed
exceedingly anxious about Bruin, who had not yet
made his appearance. The tide would prevent his
crossing the beach after ten in the morning, however,
and I made myself tolerably easy till the sands were
passable with the evening ebb. The high-water mark
was scarcely deserted by the waves, when the same
boy who had delivered the note to Miss Carroll the
day before, rode up from the beach on a panting horse,
and delived me the following note:—

“Dear Philip,—You will be surprised to hear

that I am in the Lynn gaol on a charge of theft and
utterance of counterfeit money. I do not wait to tell
you the particulars. Please come and identify

I got upon the boy's horse, and hurried over the
beach with whip and spur. I stopped at the justice's
office, and that worthy seemed uncommonly pleased
to see me.

“We have got him, sir,” said he.

“Got whom?” I asked rather shortly.

“Why, the fellow that stole your stanhope and Miss
Carroll's bracelet, and passed a twenty dollar counterfeit
bill—han't you hearn on't?”

The justice's incredulity, when I told him it was
probably the most intimate friend I had in the world,
would have amused me at any other time.

“Will you allow me to see the prisoner?” I
asked.

“Be sure I will. I let Miss Carroll have a peep at
him yesterday, and what do you think? Oh Lord!
he wanted to make her believe she knew him! Good!
wasn't it? Ha! ha! And such an ill-looking fellow!
Why, I'd know him for a thief any where!
Your intimate friend, Mr. Slingsby! Oh, Lord!
when you come to see him! Ha! ha!”

We were at the prison-door. The grating bolts
turned slowly, the door swung rustily on its hinges as
if it was not often used, and in the next minute I was
enfolded in Job's arms, who sobbed and laughed, and
was quite hysterical with his delight. I scarce wondered
at the justice's prepossessions when I looked at
the figure he made. His hat knocked in, his coat muddy,
his hair full of the dust of straw—the natural
hideousness of poor Job had every possible aggravation.

We were in the stanhope, and fairly on the beach,
before he had sufficiently recovered to tell me the story.
He had arrived quite overheated at Lynn, but, in a
hurry to execute Miss Carroll's commission, he merely
took a glass of soda-water, had Thalaba's mouth washed,
and drove on. A mile on his way, he was overtaken
by a couple of ostlers on horseback, who very
roughly ordered him back to the inn. He refused, and
a fight ensued, which ended in his being tied into the
stanhope, and driven back as a prisoner. The large
note, which he had given for his soda-water, it appeared,
was a counterfeit, and placards, offering a reward
for the detection of a villain, described in the
usual manner as an ill-looking fellow, had been sticking
up for some days in the village. He was taken
before the justice, who declared at first sight that he
answered the description in the advertisement. His
stubborn refusal to give the whole of his name, (he
would rather have died, I suppose,) his possession of
my stanhope, which was immediately recognised, and
lastly, the bracelet found in his pocket, of which he
refused indignantly to give any account, were circumstances
enough to leave no doubt on the mind of the
worthy justice. He made out his mittimus forthwith,
granting Job's request that he might be allowed to
write a note to Miss Carroll, (who, he knew, would
drive over the beach toward evening,) as a very great
favour. She arrived as he expected.

“And what in heaven's name did she say?” said I,
interested beyond my patience at this part of the story.

“Expressed the greatest astonishment when the
justice showed her the bracelet, and declared she never
saw me before in her life!”

That Job forgave Blanche Carroll in two days, and
gave her a pair of gloves with some verses on the
third, will surprise only those who have not seen that

lady. It would seem incredible, but here are the
verses, as large as life:—