University of Virginia Library

AMERICAN LIFE.

COUNT POTT'S STRATEGY.

There were five hundred guardian angels (and of
course as many evil spirits), in and about the merry
premises of Congress Hall. Each gay guest had his
pair; but though each pair had their special ministry
(and there was here and there a guest who would not
have objected to transform his, for the time being, into
a pair of trotting ponies), the attention of the cherubic
troop, it may fairly be presumed, was directed mainly
to the momentous flirtatious of Miss C. Sophy Onthank,
the dread disposer of the destinies of eighty
thousand innocent little dollars.

Miss Chittaline Sophy (though this is blabbing,
for that mysterious “C.” was generally condemned
to travel in domino)—Miss Chittaline Sophy, besides
her good and evil spirit already referred to, was under
the additional watch and ward of a pair of bombazine
aunts, Miss Charity Onthank and Miss Sophy the
same, of whom she was the united namesake.—
“Chittaline” being the embellished diminutive of
“Charity.” These Hesperian dragons of old maids
were cut after the common pattern of such utensils,
and of course would not dignify a description; though
this disparaging remark (we must stop long enough to
say) is not at all to the prejudice of that occasional
love-of-an-old-maid that one does sometimes see—
that four-leaved clover of virginity—that star apart in
the spilled milk of the Via Lactea:—

But the two elderly Misses Onthank were not of this
category.

By the absence of that Junonic assurance, common
to those ladies who are born and bred heiresses, Miss
C. Sophy's autograph had not long been an object of
interest at the bank. She had all the air of having
been “brought up at the trough,” as the French
phrase it,

and her belle-ship was still a surprise to her. Like
the red-haired and freckled who find, when they get
to Italy, that their flaming peculiarities are considered
as captivating signs of a skin too delicate for exposure,
she received with a slight incredulity the homage to
her unseen charms—homage not the less welcome for
exacting from the giver an exercise of faith and imagination.
The same faith and imagination, she was
free to suppose, might find a Venus within her girdle,
as the sculptor sees one in the goodly block of marble,
lacking only the removal of its clumsy covering by
chisel and sandpaper. With no visible waist, she was
as tall as a pump, and riotously rosy like a flowering
rhododendron. Hair brown and plenty of it. Teeth
white and all at home. And her voice, with but one
semitone higher, would have been an approved contralto.

Having thus compressed into a couple of paragraphs
what would have served a novelist for his first ten
chapters, permit us, without the bother of intermediate
mortar or moralizing (though this is rather a mixed
figure), to lay on the next brick in the shape of a hint
at the character of Miss Onthank's two prominent
admirers.

Mr. Greville Seville was a New York beau. He
had all the refinement that could possibly be imported.
He had seen those who had seen all that is visible in
the fashionable man of London and Paris, and he was
well versed in the conduits through which their
several peculiarities found their way across the Atlantic.
Faultlessly booted, pantalooned, waistcoated, and shirted,
he could afford to trust his coat and scarf to Providence,
and his hat to Warnock or Leary. He wore
a slightly restrained whisker, and a faint smut of an
imperial, and his gloves fitted him inexorably. His
figure was a matter of course. He was brought up in
New York, and was one of the four hundred thousand
results (more or less) of its drastic waters—washy and
short. And he had as good a heart as is compatible
with the above personal advantages.

It would very much have surprised the “company”
at Congress Hall, to have seen Mr. Chesterfield Potts
put down as No. 2, in the emulous contest for the two
hands of Miss Onthank. The count (he was commonly
called “Count Potts,” a compliment to good
manners not unusual in America), was, by his own
label, a man of “thirty and upward”—by the parish
register possibly sixty-two. He was an upright, well-preserved,
stylish looking man, with an expensive wig,
fine teeth (commonly supposed not to be indigenous),
and a lavish outlay of cotton batting, covering the retreat
of such of his muscular forces as were inclined
to retire from the field. What his native qualities
might be was a branch of knowledge long since lost to
the world. His politeness had superseded the necessity
of any particular inquiry into the matter; indeed,
we are inclined to believe his politeness had superseded
his character altogether. He was as incapable of the
impolite virtues (of which there are several) as of the
impolite vices. Like cricketing, punning, political
speech making, and other mechanical arts, complimenting
may be brought to a high degree of dexterity,
and Count Potts, after a practice of many years,
could, over most kinds of female platitude, spread a
flattering unction humbugative to the most suspicious
incredulity. As he told no stories, made no puns,
volunteered but little conversation, and had the air of
a modest man wishing to avoid notice, the blockheads
and the very young girls stoutly denied his fascination.

But in the memory of the riper belles, as they went
to sleep night after night, lay snugly lodged and carefully
treasured, some timely compliment, some soothing
word, and, though credited to “old Potts,” the
smile with which it was gracefully re-acknowledged
the next morning at breakfast, would have been warm
enough for young Ascanius. “Nice old Potts!” was
the faint murmur of many a bright lip turning downward
to the pillow in the “last position.”

And now, dear reader, you have an idea of the forces
in the field, and you probably know how “the war is
carried on” at Saratoga. Two aunts and a guardian
angel versus an evil spirit and two lovers—Miss Onthank's
hand, the (well-covered) bone of contention.
Whether the citadel would speedily yield, and which
of these two rival knights would bear away the palm
of victory, were questions upon which the majority
of lookers-on were doomed to make erroneous predictions.
The reader of course is in the sagacious
minority.

Mr. Potts' income was a net answer to his morning
prayer. It provided his “daily bread” but no provender
for a horse. He probably coveted Miss Onthank
as much for her accompanying oats as for her personal
avoirdupois, since the only complaint with which he
ever troubled his acquaintances, was one touching his
inability to keep an equipage. Man is instinctively a
centaur, he used to say, and when you cut him off
from his horse and reduce him to his simple trunk
(and a trunk was all the count's worldly furniture), he
is but a mutilated remainder, robbed of his natural
locomotive.

It was not authenticated in Wall street that Mr.
Greville Seville was reasonably entitled to horse-flesh
and caparison; but he had a trotting wagon and two
delicious cropped sorrels; and those who drove in his
company were obliged to “down with the dust” (a
bon mot of Count Potts'). Science explains many of
the enigmas of common life, however, and the secret
of Mr. Seville's equipment and other means of going
on swimmingly, lay in his unusually large organ of
hope. He was simply anticipating the arrival of 1840,
a year in which he had reason to believe there would
be paid in to the credit of the present Miss Onthank
a sufficient sum to cover his loosest expenditure.
The intermediate transfer to himself of her rights to
the same, was a mere filling up of an outline, his mind
being entirely made up as to the conditional incumbrance
of the lady's person. He was now paying her
some attentions in advance, and he felt justified in
charging his expenses on the estate. She herself
would wish it, doubtless, if she could look into the
future with his eyes.

By all the common data of matrimonial skirmishing,
a lover with horses easily outstrips a lover with
none. Miss C. Sophy, besides, was particularly fond of
driving, and Seville was an accomplished whip. There
was no lack of the “golden opportunity” of tête-à-tête,
for, with a deaf aunt and somebody else on the back
seat, he had Miss Onthank to himself on the driving
box, and could talk to his horses in the embarrassing
pauses. It looked a clear case to most observers:
and as to Seville, he had studied out a livery for his
future footman and tiger, and would not have taken an
insurance at a quarter per cent.

But Potts—ah! Potts had traced back the wires of
woman's weaknesses. The heiress had no conversation
(why should she have it and money too?), and
the part of her daily drive which she remembered with
most pleasure, was the flourish of starting and returning—managed
by Potts with a pomp and circumstance
that would have done honor to the goings and comings
of Queen Victoria. Once away from the portico, it
was a monotonous drag through the dust for two or
three hours, and as most ladies know, it takes a great
deal of chit-chat to butter so large a slice of time;
for there was no making love, parbleu! Miss Chittaline
Onthank was of a stratum of human nature susceptible
of no sentiment less substantial than a kiss,
and when the news, and the weather, and the virtues
of the sorrel ponies, were exhausted, the talk came to
a stand-still. The heiress began to remember with
alarm that her education had been neglected, and that
it was a relief to get back to old Potts and the portico.

Fresh from his nap and warm bath, the perfumed
count stepped out from the group he had purposely
collected, gave her his hand with a deferential inquiry,
spread the loungers to the right and left like an “usher
of the black rod,” and with some well-studied impromptu
compliment, waited on her to her chamber
door. He received her again after her toilet, and for
the remainder of the day devoted his utmost powers
to her aggrandizement. If talking alone with her, it
was to provoke her to some passage of school-girl
autobiography, and listen like a charmed stone to the
harp of Orpheus. If others were near, it was to catch
her stupidities half uttered and twist them into sense
before they came to the ground. His own clevernesses
were prefaced with “As you remarked yesterday,
Miss Onthank,” or, “As you were about to say
when I interrupted you.” If he touched her foot, it
was “so small he didn't see it.” If she uttered an
irredeemable and immitigable absurdity, he covered
its retreat with some sudden exclamation. He called
her pensive, when she was sleepy and vacant. He
called her romantic, when he couldn't understand her.
In short, her vanity was embodied—turned into a
magician and slave—and in the shape of Count Chesterfield,
Potts ministered to her indefatigably.

But the summer solstice began to wane. A week
more was all that was allotted to Saratoga by that
great American commander, General Consent.

Count Potts came to breakfast in a shawl cravat!

“Off, Potts?”

“Are you flitting, my dear count?”

“What—going away, dear Mr. Potts?”

“Gracious me! don't go, Mr. Potts!”

The last exclamation was sent across the table in a
tone of alarm by Miss C. Sophy, and responded to
only by a bow of obsequious melancholy.

Breakfast was over, and Potts arose. His baggage
was at the door. He sought no interview with Miss
Onthank. He did not even honor the two bombazinities
with a farewell. He stepped up to the group of
belles, airing their demi-toilettes on the portico, said
“Ladies! au revoir!” took the heiress's hand and put
it gallantly toward his lips, and walked off with his
umbrella, requesting the driver to pick him up at the
spring.

“He has been refused!” said one.

“He has given Seville a clear field in despair!” said
another. And this was the general opinion.

The day crept on. But there was an emptiness
without Potts. Seville had the field to himself, and
as there was no fear of a new squatter, he thought he
might dispense with tillage. They had a very dull
drive and a very dull dinner, and in the evening, as
there was no ball, Seville went off to play billiards.
Miss Onthank was surrounded, as usual, by the belles
and beaux, but she was down flat—unmagnetized, ungalvanized.
The magician was gone. Her stupid
things “stayed put.” She was like a glass bead lost
from a kaleidoscope.

That weary week was spent in lamentations over
Potts. Everybody praised him. Everybody complimented
Miss Onthank on her exclusive power of
monopoly over such porcelain ware. The two aunts
were his main glorifiers; for, as Potts knew, they
were of that leathery toughness that only shines on
you with rough usage.

We have said little, as yet, of Miss Onthank's capabilities
in the love line. We doubt, indeed, whether

she rightly understood the difference between loving
and being born again. As to giving away her heart,
she believed she could do what her mother did before
her, but she would rather it would be one of her back
teeth, if that would do as well. She liked Mr. Potts
because he never made any difficulty about such
things.

Seville considered himself accepted, though he had
made no direct proposition. He had asked whether
she preferred to live in country or town—she said
“town.” He had asked if she would leave the choice
and management of horses and equipages to him—
she said “be sure!” He had asked if she had any
objection to his giving bachelor dinners occasionally
—she said “la! no!” As he understood it, the whole
thing was most comfortably arranged, and he lent
money to several of his friends on the strength of it—
giving his note, this is to say.

On a certain morning, some ten days after the departure
of the count from Saratoga, Miss Onthank
and her two aunts sat up in state in their parlor at the
City hotel. They always went to the City hotel
because Willard remembered their names, and asked
after their uncle the major. Mr. Seville's ponies and
wagon were at the door, and Mr. Seville's father,
mother, seven sisters, and two small brothers, were in
the progress of a betrothal visit—calling on the future
Mrs. Greville Seville.

All of a sudden the door was thrown open, and enter
Count Potts!

Up jumped the enchanted Chittaline Sophy.

“How do you do, Mr. Potts?”

“Good morning, Mr. Potts!” said the aunts in a
breath.

“D'ye-do, Potts!” said Seville, giving him his forefinger,
with the air of a man rising from winning at
cards.

Potts made his compliments all round. He was
about sailing for Carolina, he said, and had come to
ask permission of Miss Onthank to leave her sweet
society for a few years of exile. But as this was the
last of his days of pleasure, at least till he saw Miss
Onthank again, he wished to be graced with the honor
of her arm for a promenade in Broadway. The ladies
and Mr. Seville doubtless would excuse her if she put
on her bonnet without further ceremony.

Now Potts's politenesses had such an air of irresistible
authority that people fell into heir track like cars
after a locomotive. While Miss Onthank was bonneting
and shawling, the count entertained the entire
party most gayly, though the Sevilles thought it rather
unceremonious in the affianced miss to leave them in
the midst of a first visit, and Mr. Greville Seville had
arranged to send his mother home on foot, and drive
Miss Onthank out to Harlem.

“I'll keep my horses here till you come back!” he
shouted after them, as she tripped gayly down stairs
on the count's arm.

And so he did. Though it was two hours before
she appeared again, the impatient youth kept the old
aunts company, and would have stayed till night, sorrels
and all—for in that drive he meant to “name the day,”
and put his creditors at ease.

“I wouldn't even go up stairs, my dear!” said the
count, handing her to the wagon, and sending up the
groom for his master, “it's but an hour to dine, and
you'll like the air after your fatigue. Ah, Seville,
I've brought her back! Take good care of her for
my sake, my good fellow!”

“What the devil has his sake to do with it, I wonder?”
said Seville, letting his horses off like two rockets
in harness.

And away they went toward Harlem; and in about
an hour, very much to the surprise of the old aunts,
who were looking out of the parlor window, the young
lady dismounted from an omnibus! Count Potts had
come to dine with them, and he tripped down to meet
her with uncommon agility.

“Why, do you know, aunties,” she exclaimed, as
she came up stairs, out of breath, “do you know that
Mr. Seville, when I told him I was married already to
Mr. Potts, stopped his wagon, and p-p-put me into an
omnibus!”

“Married to Mr. Potts!” screamed Aunt Charity.

“Married to Mr. Potts!” screamed Aunt Sophy.

“Why—yes, aunties; he said he must go south,
if I didn't!” drawled out the bride, with only a very
little blush indeed. “Tell aunties all about it, Mr.
Potts!”

And Mr. Potts, with the same smile of infallible
propriety, which seemed a warrant for everything he
said or did, gave a very sketchy account of his morning's
work, which, like all he undertook, had been exceedingly
well done—properly witnessed, certified, &c.,
&c., &c. All of which shows the very sound policy
of first making yourself indispensable to people you
wish to manage. Or, put it receipt-wise:—

To marry a flat:—First, raise her up till she is
giddy. Second, go away, and let her down. Third,
come back, and offer to support her, if she will give
you her hand.

“Simple comme bonjour” as Balsac says.

THE FEMALE WARD.

Most men have two or more souls, and Jem Thalimer
was a doublet, with sets of manners corresponding.
Indeed one identity could never have served the
pair of him! When sad—that is to say, when in disgrace
or out of money—he had the air of a good man
with a broken heart. When gay—flush in pocket
and happy in his little ambitions—you would have
thought him a dangerous companion for his grandmother.
The last impression did him more injustice
than the first, for he was really very amiably disposed
when depressed, and not always wicked when gay—
but he made friends in both characters. People sel
dom forgive us for compelling them to correct their
first impressions of us, and as this was uniformly the
case with Jem, whether he had begun as saint or sinner,
he was commonly reckoned a deep-water fish;
and, where there were young ladies in the case, early
warned off the premises. The remarkable exception
to this rule, in the incident I am about to relate, arose,
as may naturally be supposed, from his appearing, during
a certain period, in one character only.

To begin my story fairly, I must go back for a moment
to our junior Jem in college, showing, by a little
passage in our adventures, how Thalimer and I

became acquainted with the confiding gentleman to
be referred to.

A college suspension, very agreeably timed, in June,
left my friend Jem and myself masters of our travels
for an uncertain period; and as our purse was always
in common, like our shirts, love-letters, and disgraces,
our several borrowings were thrust into a wallet which
was sometimes in his pocket, sometimes in mine, as
each took the turn to be paymaster. With the (intercepted)
letters in our pockets, informing the governors
of our degraded position, we travelled very
prosperously on—bound to Niagara, but very ready to fall
into any obliquity by the way. We arrived at Albany,
Thalimer chancing to be purser, and as this function
tacitly conferred, on the holder, all other responsibilities,
I made myself comfortable at the hotel for the
second day and the third—up to the seventh—rather
wondering at Jem's depressed spirits and the sudden
falling off of his enthusiasm for Niagara, but content
to stay if he liked, and amusing myself in the
side-hill city passably well. It was during my rambles
without him in this week that he made the acquaintance
of a bilious-looking person lodging at the
same hotel—a Louisianian on a tour of health. This
gentleman, whom he introduced to me by the name
of Dauchy, seemed to have formed a sudden attachment
to my friend, and as Jem had a “secret sorrow”
unusual to him, and the other an unusual secretion
of bile, there was of course between them that “secret
sympathy” which is the basis of many tender
friendships. I rather liked Mr. Dauchy. He seemed
one of those chivalric, polysyllabic southerners, incapable
of a short word or a mean action, and, interested
that Jem should retain his friendship, I was not sorry
to find our departure follow close on the recovery of
his spirits.

We went on toward Niagara, and in the irresistible
confidence of canal travelling I made out the secret
of my fidus achates. He had attempted to alleviate
the hardship of a deck-passage for a bright-eyed girl
on board the steamer, and, on going below to his
berth, left her his greatcoat for a pillow. The stuffed
wallet, which somewhat distended the breast-pocket,
was probably in the way of her downy cheek, and
Jem supposed that she simply forgot to return the
“removed deposite”—but he did not miss his money
till twelve hours after, and then, between lack of
means to pursue her, and shame at the sentiment he
had wasted, he kept the disaster to himself, and passed
a melancholy week in devising means for replenishing.
Through this penseroso vein, however, lay his way
out of the difficulty, for he thus touched the soul
and funds of Mr. Dauchy. The correspondence
(commenced by the repayment of the loan) was kept
up stragglingly for several years, bolstered somewhat
by barrels of marmalade, boxes of sugar, hommony,
&c., till finally it ended in the unlooked-for consignment
which forms the subject of my story.

Jem and myself had been a year out of college, and
were passing through that “tight place” in life, commonly
understood in New England as “the going in
at the little end of the horn.” Expected by our parents
to take to money-making like ducks to swimming,
deprived at once of college allowance, called
on to be men because our education was paid for, and
frowned upon at every manifestation of a lingering
taste for pleasure—it was not surprising that we sometimes
gave tokens of feeling “crowded,” and obtained
somewhat the reputation of “bad subjects”—(using
this expressive phrase quite literally). Jem's share
of this odor of wickedness was much the greater, his
unlucky deviltry of countenance doing him its usual
disservice; but like the gentleman to whom he was
attributed as a favorite protegé, he was “not so black
as he was painted.”

We had been so fortunate as to find one believer in
the future culmination of our clouded stars—Gallagher,
“mine host”—and for value to be received when
our brains should fructify, his white soup and “redstring
Madeira,” his game, turtle, and all the forth-comings
of the best restaurant of our epoch, were
served lovingly and charged moderately. Peace be
with the ashes of William Gallagher! “The brains”
have fructified, and “the value” has been received—
but his name and memory are not “filed away” with
the receipt; and though years have gone over his
grave, his modest welcome, and generous dispensation
of entertainment and service, are, by one at least of
those who enjoyed them, gratefully and freshly remembered!

We were to dine as usual at Gallagher's at six—one
May day which I well remember. I was just addressing
myself to my day's work, when Jem broke into
my room with a letter in his hand, and an expression
on his face of mingled embarrassment and fear.

“What the deuce to do with her!” said he, handing
me the letter.

“A new scrape, Jem?” I asked, as I looked for an
instant at the Dauchy coat-of-arms on a seal as big as
a dollar.

“Scrape?—yes, it is a scrape!—for I shall never
get out of it reputably. What a dunce old Dauchy
must be to send me a girl to educate! I a young
lady's guardian! Why, I shall be the laugh of the
town! What say? Isn't it a good one?”

I had been carefully perusing the letter while Thalimer
walked soliloquizing about the room. It was
from his old friend of marmalades and sugars, and in
the most confiding and grave terms, as if Jem and he
had been a couple of contemporaneous old bachelors,
it consigned to his guardianship and friendly counsel,
Miss Adelmine Lasacque, the only daughter of a
neighboring planter! Mr. Lasacque having no friends
at the north, had applied to Mr. Dauchy for his guidance
in the selection of a proper person to superintend
her education, and as Thalimer was the only correspondent
with whom Mr. Dauchy had relations of
friendship, and was, moreover, “fitted admirably for
the trust by his impressive and dignified address,” (?)
he had “taken the liberty,” &c., &c.

“Have you seen her?” I asked, after a long laugh,
in which Jem joined but partially.

“No, indeed! She arrived last night in the New
Orleans packet, and the captain brought me this letter
at daylight, with the young lady's compliments.
The old seadog looked a little astounded when I announced
myself. Well he might, faith! I don't look
like a young lady's guardian, do I?”

“Well—you are to go on board and fetch her—is
that it?”

“Fetch her! Where shall I fetch her? Who is
to take a young lady of my fetching? I can't find a
female academy that I can approve—”

I burst into a roar of laughter, for Jem was in earnest
with his scruples, and looked the picture of unhappiness.

“I say I can't find one in a minute—don't laugh,
you blackguard!—and where to lodge her meantime?
What should I say to the hotel-keepers? They all
know me? It looks devilish odd, let me tell you, to
bring a young girl, without matron or other acquaintances
than myself, and lodge her at a public house.”

“Your mother must take your charge off your
hands.”

“Of course that was the first thing I thought of.
You know my mother! She don't half believe the
story, in the first place. If there is such a man as
Mr. Dauchy, she says, and if this is a `Miss Lasacque,'
all the way from Louisiana, there is but one
thing to do—send her back in the packet she came
in! She'll have nothing to do with it! There's
more in it than I am willing to explain. I never

mentioned this Mr. Dauchy before. Mischief will come
of it! Abduction's a dreadful thing! If I will make
myself notorious, I need not think to involve my
mother and sisters! That's the way she talks about it.”

“But couldn't we mollify your mother?—for, after
all, her countenance in the matter will be expected.”

“Not a chance of it!”

“The money part of it is all right?”

“Turn the letter over. Credit for a large amount
on the Robinsons, payable to my order only!”

“Faith! it's a very hard case if a nice girl with
plenty of money can't be permitted to land in Boston!
You didn't ask the captain if she was pretty?”

“No, indeed! But pretty or plain, I must get her
ashore and be civil to her. I must ask her to dine!
I must do something besides hand her over to a
boarding-school! Will you come down to the ship
with me?”

My curiosity was quite aroused, and I dressed immediately.
On our way down we stopped at Gallagher's,
to request a little embellishment to our ordinary dinner.
It was quite clear, for a variety of reasons, that she must
dine with her guardian there, or nowhere. Gallagher
looked surprised, to say the least, at our proposition
to bring a young lady to dine with us, but he made no
comment beyond a respectful remark that “No. 2
was very private!”

We had gone but a few steps from Devonshire
street when Jem stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.

“We have not decided yet what we are to do with
Miss Lasacque all day, nor where we shall send her
baggage, nor where she is to lodge to-night. For
Heaven's sake, suggest something!” added Jem, quite
out of temper.

“Why, as you say, it would be heavy work to walk
her about the streets from now till dinner-time—eight
hours or more! Gallagher's is only an eating-house,
unluckily, and you are so well known at all the hotels,
that, to take her to one of them without a chaperon,
would, to say the least, give occasion for remark.
But here, around the corner, is one of the best boarding-houses
in town, kept by the two old Misses Smith.
You might offer to put her under their protection.
Let's try.”

The Misses Smith were a couple of reduced gentlewomen,
who charged a very good price for board
and lodging, and piqued themselves on entertaining
only very good company. Begging Jem to assume
the confident tone which the virtuous character of his
errand required, I rang at the door, and in answer to
our inquiry for the ladies of the house, we were shown
into the basement parlor, where the eldest Miss Smith
sat with her spectacles on, adding new vinegar to some
pots of pickles. Our business was very briefly stated.
Miss Smith had plenty of spare room. Would we
wait a moment till she tied on the covers to her pickle-jars?

The cordiality of the venerable demoiselle evidently
put Thalimer in spirits. He gave me a glance which
said very plainly, “You see we needn't have troubled
our heads about this!”—but the sequel was to come.

Miss Smith led the way to the second story, where
were two very comfortable unoccupied bedrooms.

“A single lady?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Jem, “a Miss Lasacque of Louisiana.”

“Young, did you say?”

“Seventeen, or thereabout, I fancy.” (This was a
guess, but Jem chose to appear to know all about
her.)

“And—ehem!—and—quite alone?”

“Quite alone—she is come here to go to school.”

“Oh, to go to school! Pray—will she pass her
vacations with your mother?”

“No!” said Jem, coughing, and looking rather embarrassed.

“Indeed! She is with Mrs. Thalimer at present,
I presume.”

“No—she is still on shipboard! Why, my dear
madam, she only arrived from New Orleans this
morning.”

“And your mother has not had time to see her?
I understand. Mrs. Thalimer will accompany her
here, of course.”

Jem began to see the end of the old maid's catechism,
and thought it best to volunteer the remainder
of the information.

“My mother is not acquainted with this young lady's
friends,” he said; “and, in fact, she comes introduced
only to myself.”

“She has a guardian, surely?” said Miss Smith,
drawing back into her Elizabethan ruff with more
dignity than she had hitherto worn.

“I am her guardian!” replied Jem, looking as red
and guilty as if he had really abducted the young lady,
and was ashamed of his errand.

The spinster bit her lips and looked out of the
window.

“Will you walk down stairs for a moment, gentlemen,”
she resumed, “and let me speak to my sister.
I should have told you that the rooms might possibly be
engaged. I am not quite sure—indeed—ehem—pray
walk down and be seated a moment!”

Very much to the vexation of my discomfited
friend, I burst into a laugh as we closed the door of
the basement parlor behind us.

“You don't realize my confoundedly awkward position,”
said he. “I am responsible for every step I
take, to the girl's father in the first place, and then to
my friend Dauchy, one of the most chivalric old
cocks in the world, who, at the same time, could never
understand why there was any difficulty in the
matter! And it does seem strange, that in a city with
eighty thousand inhabitants, it should be next to impossible
to find lodging for a virtuous lady, a stranger!”

I was contriving how to tell Thalimer that “there
was no objection to the camel but for the dead cat
hung upon its neck,” when a maidservant opened the
door with a message—“Miss Smith's compliments,
and she was very sorry she had no room to spare!”

“Pleasant!” said Jem, “very pleasant! I suppose
every other keeper of a respectable house will be
equally sorry. Meantime, it's getting on toward noon,
and that poor girl is moping on shipboard, wondering
whether she is ever to be taken ashore! Do you
think she might sleep at Gallagher's?”

“Certainly not! He has, probably, no accommodations
for a lady, and, to lodge in a restaurant, after
dining with you there, would be an indiscreet first
step, in a strange city, to say the least. But let us
make our visit to your fair ward, my dear Jem! Perhaps
she has a face innocent enough to tell its own
story—like the lady who walked through Erin `with
the snow-white wand.”'

The vessel had lain in the stream all night, and was
just hauling up to the wharf with the moving tide.
A crowd of spectators stood at the end of her mooring
cable, and, as she warped in, universal attention
seemed to be given to a single object. Upon a heap
of cotton-bales, the highest point of the confused
lumber of the deck, sat a lady under a sky-blue parasol.
Her gown was of pink silk; and by the volume
of this showy material which was presented to the
eye, the wearer, when standing, promised to turn out
of rather conspicuous stature. White gloves, a pair
of superb amethyst bracelets, a string of gold beads
on her neck, and shoulders quite naked enough for a
ball, were all the disclosures made for a while by the
envious parasol, if we except a little object in blue,
which seemed the extremity of something she was
sitting on, held in her left hand—and which turned
out to be her right foot in a blue satin slipper!

I turned to Thalimer. He was literally pale with
consternation.

“Hadn't you better send for a carriage to take your
ward away?” I suggested.

“You don't believe that to be Miss Lasacque, surely!”
exclaimed Jem, turning upon me with an imploring
look.

“Such is my foreboding,” I replied; “but wait a
moment. Her face may be pretty, and you, of course,
in your guardian capacity, may suggest a simplification
of her toilet. Consider!—the poor girl was
never before off the plantation—at least, so says old
Dauchy's letter.”

The sailors now began to pull upon the sternline,
and, as the ship came round, the face of the unconscious
object of curiosity stole into view. Most of the spectators,
after a single glance, turned their attention
elsewhere with a smile, and Jem, putting his hands
into his two coat-pockets behind him, walked off toward
the end of the pier, whistling to himself very energetically.
She was an exaggeration of the peculiar
physiognomy of the south—lean rather than slight,
sallow rather than pale. Yet I thought her eyes fine.

Thalimer joined me as the ship touched the dock,
and we stepped on board together. The cabinboy
confirmed our expectations as to the lady's identity,
and putting on the very insinuating manner which
was part of his objectionable exterior, Jem advanced
and begged to know if he had the honor of addressing
Miss Lasacque.

Without loosing her hold upon her right foot, the
lady nodded.

“Then, madam!” said Jem, “permit me to introduce
to you your guardian, Mr. Thalimer!”

“What, that old gentleman coming this way?”
asked Miss Lasacque, fixing her eyes on a customhouse
officer who was walking the deck.

Jem handed the lady his card.

“That is my name,” said he, “and I should be
happy to know how I can begin the duties of my office!”

“Dear me!” said the astonished damsel, dropping
her foot to take his hand, “isn't there an older Mr.
James Thalimer? Mr. Dauchy said it was a gentleman
near his own age!”

“I grow older, as you know me longer!” Jem replied
apologetically; but his ward was too well satisfied
with his appearance, to need even this remarkable
fact to console her. She came down with a slide
from her cotton-bag elevation, called to the cook to
bring the bandbox with the bonnet in it, and meantime
gave us a brief history of the inconveniences she
had suffered in consequence of the loss of her slave,
Dinah, who had died of sea-sickness three days out.
This, to me, was bad news, for I had trusted to a “lady's
maid” for the preservation of appearances, and
the scandal threatening Jem's guardianship looked,
in consequence, very imminent.

“I am dying to get my feet on land again!” said
Miss Lasacque, putting her arm in her guardian's,
and turning toward the gangway—her bonnet not
tied, nor her neck covered, and thin blue satin slippers,
though her feet were small, showing forth in
contrast with her pink silk gown, with frightful conspicuousness!
Jem resisted the shoreward pull, and
stood motionless and aghast.

“Your baggage,” he stammered at last.

“Here, cook!” cried the lady, “tell the captain,
when he comes aboard, to send my trunks to Mr.
Thalimer's! They are down in the hold, and he told
me he couldn't get at 'em till to-morrow,” she added,
by way of explanation to Thalimer.

I felt constrained to come to the rescue.

“Pardon me, madam!” said I, “there is a little
peculiarity in our climate, of which you probably are
not advised. An east wind commonly sets in about
noon, which makes a shawl very necessary. In consequence,
too, of the bronchitis which this sudden
change is apt to give people of tender constitutions,
the ladies of Boston are obliged to sacrifice what is
becoming, and wear their dresses very high in the
throat.”

“La!” said the astonished damsel, putting her
hand upon her bare neck, “is it sore throat that you
mean? I'm very subject to it, indeed! Cook! bring
me that fur-tippet out of the cabin! I'm so sorry my
dresses are all made so low, and I haven't a shawl unpacked
either!—dear! dear!”

Jem and I exchanged a look of hopeless resignation,
as the cook appeared with the chinchilli tippet.
A bold man might have hesitated to share the conspicuousness
of such a figure in a noon promenade,
but we each gave her an arm when she had tied the
soiled riband around her throat, and silently set forward.

It was a bright and very warm day, and there seemed
a conspiracy among our acquaintances, to cross
our path. Once in the street, it was not remarkable
that they looked at us, for the towering height at
which the lady carried her very showy bonnet, the
flashy material of her dress, the jewels and the chinchilli
tippet, formed an ensemble which caught the eye
like a rainbow; and truly people did gaze, and the
boys, spite of the unconscious look which we attempted,
did give rather disagreeable evidence of being
amused. I had various misgivings, myself, as to the
necessity for my own share in the performance, and,
at every corner, felt sorely tempted to bid guardian
and ward good morning; but friendship and pity prevailed.
By streets and lanes not calculated to give
Miss Lasacque a very favorable first impression of
Boston, we reached Washington street, and made an
intrepid dash across it, to the Marlborough hotel.

Of this public house. Thalimer had asked my opinion
during our walk, by way of introducing an apology
to Miss Lasacque for not taking her to his own
home. She had made it quite clear that she expected
this, and Jem had nothing for it but to draw such a
picture of the decrepitude of Mr. Thalimer, senior,
and the bedridden condition of his mother (as stout
a couple as ever plodded to church!) as would satisfy
the lady for his short-comings in hospitality. This
had passed off very smoothly, and Miss Lasacque entered
the Marlboro', quite prepared to lodge there,
but very little aware (poor girl!) of the objections to
receiving her as a lodger.

Mr. —, the proprietor, had stood in the archway
as we entered. Seeing no baggage in the lady's
train, however, he had not followed us in, supposing,
probably, that we were callers on some of his guests.
Jem left us in the drawing-room, and went upon his
errand to the proprietor, but after half an hour's absence,
came back, looking very angry, and informed
us that no rooms were to be had! Instead of taking
the rooms without explanation, he had been unwise
enough to “make a clean breast” to Mr. —, and
the story of the lady's being his “ward,” and come
from Louisiana to go to school, rather staggered that
discreet person's credulity.

Jem beckoned me out, and we held a little council
of war in the entry. Alas! I had nothing to suggest.
I knew the puritan metropolis very well—I knew its
phobia was “the appearance of evil.” In Jem's care-for-nothing
face lay the leprosy which closed all doors
against us. Even if we had succeeded, by a coup-de-main,
in lodging Miss Lasacque at the Marlboro', her
guardian's daily visits would have procured for her, in
the first week, some intimation that she could no
longer be accommodated.

“We had best go and dine upon it,” said I; “worst
come to the worst, we can find some sort of dormitory
for her at Gallagher's, and to-morrow she must be put

to school, out of the reach of your `pleasant, but
wrong society.”'

“I hope to Heaven she'll `stay put,”' said Jem,
with a long sigh.

We got Miss Lasacque again under way, and avoiding
the now crowded pavé of Washington street, made
a short cut by Theatre Alley to Devonshire street and
Gallagher's. Safely landed in “No. 2,” we drew a
long breath of relief. Jem rang the bell.

“Dinner, waiter, as soon as possible.”

“The same that was ordered at six, sir?”

“Yes, only more champagne, and bring it immediately.
Excuse me, Miss Lasacque,” added Jem,
with a grave bow, “but the non-appearance of that
east wind my friend spoke of, has given me an unnatural
thirst. Will you join me in some champagne
after your hot walk?”

“No, thank you,” said the lady, untying her tippet,
“but, if you please, I will go to my room before
dinner!”

Here was trouble, again! It had never occurred to
either of us, that ladies must go to their rooms before
bedtime.

“Stop!” cried Jem, as she laid her hand on the
bell to ring for the chamber-maid, “excuse me—I
must first speak to the landlord—the room—the room
is not ready, probably!”

He seized his hat, and made his exit, probably wishing
all confiding friends, with their neighbor's daughters,
in a better world! He had to do with a man of
sense, however. Gallagher had but one bedroom in
the house, which was not a servant's room, and that
was his own. In ten minutes it was ready, and at the
lady's service. A black scullion was promoted for the
nonce, to the post of chamber-maid, and, fortunately,
the plantation-bred girl had not been long enough
from home to be particular. She came to dinner as
radiant as a summer-squash.

With the door shut, and the soup before us, Thalimer's
spirits and mine flung off their burthens together.
Jem was the pleasantest table-companion in
the world, and he chatted and made the amiable to his
ward, as if he owed her some amends for the awkward
position of which she was so blessedly unconscious.
Your “dangerous man” (such as he was voted), inspires,
of course, no distrust in those to whom he
chooses to be agreeable. Miss Lasacque grew, every
minute, more delighted with him. She, too, improved
on acquaintance. Come to look at her closely, Nature
meant her for a fine showy creature, and she was
“out of condition,” as the jockeys say—that was all!
Her features were good, though gamboged by a
southern climate, and the fever-and-ague had flattened
what should be round and ripe lips, and reduced
to the mere frame, what should be the bust and neck
of a Die Vernon. I am not sure I saw all this at the
time. Her subsequent chrysalis and emergence into
a beautiful woman, naturally color my description
now. But I did see, then, that her eyes were large
and lustrous, and that naturally she had high spirit,
good abilities, and was a thorough woman in sentiment,
though deplorably neglected—for, at the age
of twenty, she could hardly read and write! It was
not surprising that she was pleased with us! She was
the only lady present, and we were the first coxcombs
she had ever seen, and the day was summery, and the
dinner in Gallagher's best style. We treated her like
a princess; and the more agreeable man of the two
being her guardian, and responsible for the propriety
of the whole affair, there was no chance for a failure.
We lingered over our coffee; and we lingered over
our chassecafé; and we lingered over our tea; and,
when the old South struck twelve, we were still at the
table in “No. 2.” quite too much delighted with each
other to have thought of separating. It was the venerated
guardian who made the first move. and, after
ringing up the waiter to discover that the scullion had,
six hours before, made her nightly disappearance, the
lady was respectfully dismissed with only a candle for
her chamber-maid, and Mr. Gallagher's room for her
destination—wherever that might be!

We dined together every successive day for a week,
and during this time the plot rapidly thickened. Thalimer,
of course, vexed soul and body, to obtain for
Miss Lasacque a less objectionable lodging—urged
scarcely more by his sense of propriety than by a
feeling for her good-natured host, who, meantime,
slept on a sofa. But the unlucky first step of dining
and lodging a young lady at a restaurant, inevitable
as it was, gave a fatal assurance to the predisposed
scandal of the affair, and every day's events heightened
its glaring complexion. Miss Lasacque had ideas
of her own, and very independent ones, as to the
amusement of her leisure hours. She had never been
before where there were shops, and she spent her first
two or three mornings in perambulating Washington
street, dressed in a style perfectly amazing to beholders,
and purchasing every description of gay trumpery—the
parcels, of course, sent to Gallagher's, and
the bills to James Thalimer, Esq.! To keep her out
of the street, Jem took her, on the third day, to the
riding-school, leaving her (safely enough, he thought),
in charge of the authoritative Mr. Roulstone, while
he besieged some school-mistress or other to undertake
her ciphering and geography. She was all but
born on horseback, however, and soon tired of riding
round the ring. The street-door was set open for a
moment, leaving exposed a tempting tangent to the
circle, and out flew Miss Lasacque, saving her “Leghorn
flat” by a bend to the saddle-bow, that would
have done credit to a dragoon, and no more was seen,
for hours, of the “bonnie black mare” and her rider.

The deepening of Miss Lasacque's passion for Jem,
would not interest the reader. She loved like other
women, timidly and pensively. Young as the passion
was, however, it came too late to affect her manners
before public opinion had pronounced on them. There
was neither boarding-house nor “private female academy”
within ten miles, into which “Mr. Thalimer's
young lady” would have been permitted to set her
foot—small as was the foot, and innocent as was the
pulse to which it stepped.

Uncomfortable as was this state of suspense, and
anxious as we were to fall into the track marked
“virtuous,” if virtue would only permit; public opinion
seemed to think we were enjoying ourselves quite
too prosperously. On the morning of the seventh day
of our guardianship. I had two calls after breakfast,
one from poor Gallagher, who reported that he had
been threatened with a prosecution of his establishment
as a nuisance, and another from poorer Jem,
whose father had threatened to take the lady out of
his hands, and lodge her in the insane asylum!

“Not that I don't wish she was there,” added Jem,
“for it is a very fine place, with a nice garden, and
luxurious enough for those who can pay for them, and
faith, I believe it's the only lodging-house I've not applied
to!”

I must shorten my story. Jem anticipated his
father, by riding over, and showing his papers constituting
him the guardian of Miss Lasacque, in which
capacity, he was, of course, authorized to put his
ward under the charge of keepers. Everybody who
knows Massachusetts, knows that its insane asylums
are sometimes brought to bear on irregular morals, as
well as on diseased intellects, and as the presiding officer
of the institution was quite well assured that
Miss Lasacque was well qualified to become a patient,
Jem had no course left but to profit by the error.
The poor girl was invited, that afternoon, to take a
drive in the country, and we came back and dined
without her, in abominable spirits, I must say

Provided with the best instruction, the best of care
taken of her health, and the most exemplary of matrons
interesting herself in her patient's improvements,
Miss Lasacque rapidly improved—more rapidly, no
doubt, than she ever could have done by control less
rigid and inevitable. Her father, by the advice of the
matron, was not informed of her location for a year,
and at the end of that time he came on, accompanied
by his friend, Mr. Dauchy. He found his daughter
sufficiently improved in health, manners, and beauty,
to be quite satisfied with Jem's discharge of his trust,
and we all dined very pleasantly in “No. 2;” Miss
Lasacque declining, with a blush, my invitation to her
to make one of the party.

TWO BUCKETS IN A WELL.

“Five hundred dollars a year!” echoed Fanny
Bellairs, as the first silver gray of the twilight spread
over her picture.

“And my art,” modestly added the painter, prying
into his bright copy of the lips pronouncing upon
his destiny.

“And how much may that be at the present rate
of patronage—one picture a year painted for love!”

“Fanny, how can you be so calculating!”

“By the bumps over my eyebrows, I suppose.
Why, my dear coz, we have another state of existence
to look forward to—old man-age and old woman-age!
What am I to do with five hundred dollars a year,
when my old frame wants gilding—(to use one of
your own similes)—I shan't always be pretty Fanny
Bellairs!”

“But, good Heavens! we shall grow old together!”
exclaimed the painter, sitting down at her feet, “and
what will you care for other admiration, if your husband
see you still beautiful, with the eyes of memory and
habit.”

“Even if I were sure he would so look upon me!”
answered Miss Bellairs more seriously, “I can not
but dread an old age without great means of embellishment.
Old people, except in poetry and in very
primitive society, are dishonored by wants and cares.
And, indeed, before we are old—when neither young
nor old—we want horses and ottomans, kalydor and
conservatories, books, pictures, and silk curtains—all
quite out of the range of your little allowance, don't
you see!”

“You do not love me, Fanny!”

“I do—and will marry you, Philip—as I, long ago,
with my whole heart promised. But I wish to be
happy with you—as happy, quite as happy, as is at all
possible, with our best efforts and coolest, discreetest
management. I laugh the matter over sometimes,
but I may tell you, since you are determined to be in
earnest, that I have treated it, in my solitary thought,
as the one important event of my life—(so indeed it
is!)—and, as such, worthy of all fore-thought, patience,
self-denial, and calculation. To inevitable ills I can
make up my mind like other people. If your art were
your only hope of subsistence—why—I don't know—
(should I look well as a page!)—I don't know that I
couldn't run your errands and grind your paints in
hose and doublet. But there is another door open
for you—a counting-house door, to be sure—leading
to opulence and all the appliances of dignity and happiness,
and through this door, my dear Philip, the art
you would live by comes to pay tribute and beg for
patronage. Now, out of your hundred and twenty
reasons, give me the two stoutest and best, why you
should refuse your brother's golden offer of partnership—my
share, in your alternative of poverty, left for
the moment out of the question.”

Rather overborne by the confident decision of his
beautiful cousin, and having probably made up his
mind that he must ultimately yield to her, Philip replied
in a lower and more dejected tone:—

“If you were not to be a sharer in my renown,
should I be so fortunate as to acquire it, I should feel
as if it were selfish to dwell so much on my passion
for distinction and my devotion to my pencil as the
means of winning it. My heart is full of you—but it
is full of ambition too, paradox though it be. I can
not live ignoble. I should not have felt worthy to
press my love upon you—worthy to possess you—
except with the prospect of celebrity in my art. You
make the world dark to me, Fanny! You close down
the sky, when you shut out this hope! Yet it shall
be so.”

Philip paused a moment and the silence was uninterrupted.

“There was another feeling I had, upon which I
have not insisted,” he continued. “By my brother's
project, I am to reside almost wholly abroad. Even
the little stipend I have to offer you now, is absorbed
of course by the investment of my property in his
trading capital, and marriage, till I have partly enriched
myself, would be even more hopeless than at present.
Say the interval were five years—and five years of
separation!”

“With happiness in prospect, it would soon pass,
my dear Philip!”

“But is there nothing wasted in this time? My
life is yours—the gift of love. Are not these coming
five years the very flower of it?—a mutual loss,
too, for are they not, even more emphatically, the very
flower of yours? Eighteen and twenty-five are ages at
which to marry, not ages to defer. During this time the
entire flow of my existence is at its crowning fulness
—passion, thought, joy, tenderness, susceptibility to
beauty and sweetness—all I have that can be diminished
or tarnished or made dull by advancing age and
contact with the world, is thrown away for its spring
and summer. Will the autumn of life repay us for
this? Will it—even if we are rich and blest with
health, and as capable of an unblemished union as
now? Think of this a moment, dear Fanny!”

“I do—it is full of force and meaning, and could
we marry now, with a tolerable prospect of competency,
it would be irresistible. But poverty in wedlock,
Philip—”

“What do you call poverty! If we can suffice for
each other, and have the necessaries of life, we are not
poor! My art will bring us consideration enough—
which is the main end of wealth, after all—and of
society, speaking for myself only, I want nothing.
Luxuries for yourself, Fanny, means for your dear
comfort and pleasure, you should not want if the
world held them, and surely the unbounded devotion
of one man to the support of the one woman he loves,
ought to suffice for the task! I am strong—I am

capable of labor—I have limbs to toil, if my genius
and my present means fail me, and, oh, Heaven, you
could not want!”

“No, no, no! I thought not of want!” murmured
Miss Bellairs, “I thought only—”

But she was not permitted to finish the sentence.

“Then my bright picture for the future may be
realized!” exclaimed Philip, knitting his hands together
in a transport of hope. “I may build up a
reputation, with you for the constant partner of its
triumphs and excitements! I may go through the
world and have some care in life besides subsistence,
how I shall sleep, and eat, and accumulate gold; some
companion, who, from the threshold of manhood,
shared every thought—and knew every feeling—some
pure and present angel who walked with me and purified
my motives and ennobled my ambitions, and received
from my lips and eyes, and from the beating
of my heart, against her own, all the love I had to give
in a lifetime. Tell me, Fanny! tell me, my sweet
cousin! is not this a picture of bliss, which, combined
with success in my noble art, might make a Paradise
on earth for you and me?”

The hand of Fanny Bellairs rested on the upturned
forehead of her lover as he sat at her feet in the
deepening twilight, and she answered him with such
sweet words as are linked together by spells known
only to woman—but his palette and pencils were,
nevertheless, burned in solemn holocaust that very
night, and the lady carried her point, as ladies must.
And to the importation of silks from Lyons was devoted,
thenceforth, the genius of a Raphael—perhaps!
Who knows?

The reader will naturally have gathered from this
dialogue that Miss Fanny Bellairs had black eyes,
and was rather below the middle stature. She was a
belle, and it is only belle-metal of this particular
description which is not fusible by “burning words.”
She had mind enough to appreciate fully the romance
and enthusiasm of her cousin, Philip Ballister, and
knew precisely the phenomena which a tall blonde
(this complexion of woman being soluble in love and
tears), would have exhibited under a similar experment.
While the fire of her love glowed, therefore,
she opposed little resistance and seemed softened and
yielding, but her purpose remained unaltered, and she
rang out “no!” the next morning, with a tone as little
changed as a convent-bell from matins to vespers,
though it has passed meantime through the furnace
of an Italian noon.

Fanny was not a designing girl, either. She might
have found a wealthier customer for her heart than
her cousin Philip. And she loved this cousin as truly
and well as her nature would admit, or as need be,
indeed. But two things had conspired to give her
the unmalleable quality just described—a natural disposition
to confide, first and foremost, on all occasions,
in her own sagacity, and a vivid impression made upon
her mind by a childhood of poverty. At the age of
twelve she had been transferred from the distressed
fireside of her mother, Mrs. Bellairs, to the luxurious
roof of her aunt, Mrs. Ballister, and her mother dying
soon after, the orphan girl was adopted and treated as
a child; but the memory of the troubled health at
which she had first learned to observe and reason,
colored all the purposes and affections, thoughts,
impulses and wishes of the ripening girl, and to think
of happiness in any proximity to privation seemed to
her impossible, even though it were in the bosom of
love. Seeing no reason to give her cousin credit for
any knowledge of the world beyond his own experience,
she decided to think for him as well as love him, and
not being so much pressed as the enthusiastic painter
by the “besoin d'aimer et de se faire aimer,” she very
composedly prefixed, to the possession of her hand,
the trifling achievement of getting rich—quite sure
that if he knew as much as she, he would willingly run
that race without the incumbrance of matrimony.

The death of Mr. Ballister, senior, had left the
widow and her two boys more slenderly provided for
than was anticipated—Phil's portion, after leaving
college, producing the moderate income before mentioned.
The elder brother had embarked in his father's
business, and it was thought best on all hands for the
younger Ballister to follow his example. But Philip,
whose college leisure had been devoted to poetry and
painting, and whose genius for the latter, certainly,
was very decided, brought down his habits by a resolute
economy to the limits of his income, and took
up the pencil for a profession. With passionate enthusiasm,
great purity of character, distaste for all
society not in harmony with his favorite pursuit, and
an industry very much concentrated and rendered
effective by abstemious habits, Philip Ballister was
very likely to develop what genius might lie between
his head and hand, and his progress in the first year
had been allowed by eminent artists to give very
unusual promise. The Ballisters were still together
under the maternal roof, and the painter's studies
were the portraits of the family, and Fanny's picture
of course much the most difficult to finish. It would
be very hard if a painter's portrait of his liege mistress,
the lady of his heart, were not a good picture, and
Fanny Bellairs on canvass was divine accordingly. If
the copy had more softness of expression than the
original (as it was thought to have), it only proves that
wise men have for some time suspected, that love is
more dumb than blind, and the faults of our faultless
idols are noted, however unconsciously. Neither
thumb-screws nor hot coals—nothing probably but repentance
after matrimony—would have drawn from
Philip Ballister, in words, the same confession of his
mistress's foible that had oozed out through his
treacherous pencil!

Cupid is often drawn as a stranger pleading to be
“taken in,” but it is a miracle that he is not invariably
drawn as a portrait-painter. A bird tied to the muzzle
of a gun—an enemy who has written a book—an Indian
prince under the protection of Giovanni Bulletto (Tuscan
for John Bull),—is not more close upon demolition,
one would think, than the heart of a lady delivered
over to a painter's eyes, posed, draped and lighted
with the one object of studying her beauty. If there
be any magnetism in isolated attention, any in steadfast
gazing, any in passes of the hand hither and thither
—if there be any magic in ce doux demi-jour so loved
in France, in stuff for flattery ready pointed and feathered,
in freedom of admiration, “and all in the way of
business”—then is a loveable sitter to a love-like
painter in “parlous” vicinity (as the new school would
phrase it), to sweet-heart-land! Pleasure in a vocation
has no offset in political economy as honor has
(“the more honor the less profit,”) or portrait-painters
would be poorer than poets.

And malgré his consciousness of the quality which
required softening in his cousin's beauty, and malgré
his rare advantages for obtaining over her a lover's
proper ascendency, Mr. Philip Ballister bowed to the
stronger will of Miss Fanny Bellairs, and sailed for
France on his apprenticeship to Mammon.

The reader will please to advance five years. Before
proceeding thence with our story, however, let
us take a Parthian glance at the overstepped interval.

Philip Ballister had left New York with the triple
vow that he would enslave every faculty of his mind
and body to business, that he would not return till he
had made a fortune, and that such interstices as might
occur in the building up of this chateau for felicity
should be filled with sweet reveries about Fanny Bellairs.
The forsworn painter had genius, as we have

before hinted, and genius is (as much as it is any one
thing), the power of concentration. He entered upon
his duties accordingly with a force, and patience of
application, which soon made him master of what are
called business habits, and, once in possession of the
details, his natural cleverness gave him a speedy insight
to all the scope and tactics of his particular field of
trade. Under his guidance, the affairs of the house
were soon in a much more prosperous train, and after
a year's residence at Lyons, Philip saw his way very
clear to manage them with a long arm and take up his
quarters in Paris.

“Les fats sont les seuls hommes qui aient soin d'eux
mêmes,” says a French novelist, but there is a period,
early or late, in the lives of the cleverest men, when
they become suddenly curious as to their capacity for
the graces. Paris, to a stranger who does not visit in
the Faubourg St. Germain, is a republic of personal
exterior, where the degree of privilege depends with
Utopian impartiality on the style of the outer man;
and Paris, therefore, if he is not already a Bachelor
of Arts (qu?—beau's Arts), usually serves the traveller
as an Alma Mater of the pomps and vanities.

Phil. Ballister, up to the time of his matriculation
in Chaussée D'Antin, was a romantic-looking sloven.
From this to a very dashing coxcomb is but half a step,
and to be rid of the coxcombry and retain a look of
fashion, is still within the easy limits of imitation.
But—to obtain superiority of presence with no apparent
aid from dress and no describable manner, and to display
at the same time every natural advantage in effective
relief, and, withal, to adapt this subtle philtre,
not only to the approbation of the critical and censorious,
but to the taste of fair women gifted with judgment
as God pleases—this is a finish not born with
any man (though unsuccessful if it do not seem to be),
and never reached in the apprenticeship of life, and
never reached at all by men not much above their
fellows. He who has it, has “bought his doublet in
Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany,
and his behavior everywhere,” for he must know,
as a chart of quicksands, the pronounced models of
other nations; but to be a “picked man of countries,”
and to have been a coxcomb and a man of fashion, are,
as a painter would say, but the setting of the palette
toward the making of the chef-d'æuvre.

Business prospered and the facilities of leisure increased,
while Ballister passed through these transitions
of taste, and he found intervals to travel, and
time to read, and opportunity to indulge; as far as he
could with the eye only, his passion for knowledge in
the arts. To all that appertained to the refinement
of himself, he applied the fine feelers of a delicate and
passionate construction, physical and mental, and, as
the reader will already have included, wasted on culture
comparatively unprofitable, faculties that would have
been better employed but for the meddling of Miss
Fanny Bellairs.

Ballister's return from France was heralded by the
arrival of statuary and pictures, books, furniture, and
numberless articles of tasteful and costly luxury. The
reception of these by the family at home threw rather
a new light on the probable changes in the long-absent
brother, for, from the signal success of the business
he had managed, they had very naturally supposed
that it was the result only of unremitted and plodding
care. Vague rumors of changes in his personal appearance
had reached them, such as might be expected
from conformity to foreign fashions, but those who
had seen Philip Ballister in France, and called subsequently
on the family in New York, were not people
qualified to judge of the man, either from their own
powers of observation or from any confidence he was
likely to put forward while in their society. His
letters had been delightful, but they were confined to
third-person topics, descriptions of things likely to interest
them, &c., and Fanny had few addressed personally
to herself, having thought it worth while, for
the experiment's sake or for some other reason, to see
whether love would subsist without its usual pabulum
of tender correspondence, and a veto on love-letters
having served her for a parting injunction at Phil's
embarkation for Havre. However varied by their
different fancies, the transformation looked for by the
whole family was substantially the same—the romantic
artist sobered down to a practical, plain man of business.
And Fanny herself had an occasional misgiving
as to her relish for his counting-house virtues and
manners; though, on the detection of the feeling, she
immediately closed her eyes upon it, and drummed
up her delinquent constancy for “parade and inspection.”

All bustles are very much alike (we use the word
as defined in Johnson), and the reader will appreciate
our delicacy, besides, in not intruding on the first reunion
of relatives and lovers long separated.

The morning after Philip Ballister's arrival, the
family sat long at breakfast. The mother's gaze
fastened untiringly on the features of her son—still her
boy—prying into them with a vain effort to reconcile
the face of the man with the cherished picture of the
child with sunny locks, and noting little else than the
work of inward change upon the countenance and expression.
The brother, with the predominant feeling
of respect for the intelligence and industry of one who
had made the fortunes of the house, read only subdued
sagacity in the perfect simplicity of his whole exterior.
And Fanny—Fanny was puzzled. The bourgeoisie
and leger-bred hardness of manner which she had
looked for were not there, nor any variety of the
“foreign slip-slop” common to travelled youth, nor
any superciliousness, nor (faith!) any wear and tear
of youth or good looks—nothing that she expected—
nothing! Not even a French guard-chain!

What there was in her cousin's manners and exterior,
however, was much more difficult to define by
Miss Bellairs than what there was not. She began the
renewal of their intercourse with very high spirits,
herself—the simple nature and unpretendingness of
his address awakening only an unembarrassed pleasure
at seeing him again—but she soon began to suspect
there was an exquisite refinement in this very simplicity,
and to wonder at “the trick of it;” and after
the first day passed in his society, her heart beat when
he spoke to her, as it did not use to beat when she
was sitting to him for her picture, and listening to his
passionate love-making. And with all her faculties she
studied him. What was the charm of his presence! He
was himself, and himself only. He seemed perfect, but
he seemed to have arrived at perfection like a statue,
not like a picture—by what had been taken away, not
by what had been laid on. He was as natural as a bird,
and as graceful and unembarrassed. He neither forced
conversation, nor pressed the little attentions of the drawing-room,
and his attitudes were full of repose; yet she
was completely absorbed in what he said, and she had
been impressed imperceptibly with his high-bred politeness,
and the singular elegance of his person. Fanny
felt there was a change in her relative position to her
cousin. In what it consisted, or which had the advantage,
she was perplexed to discover—but she bit
her lips as she caught herself thinking that if she were
not engaged to marry Philip Ballister, she should
suspect that she had just fallen irrecoverably in love
with him.

It would have been a novelty in the history of Miss
Bellairs that any event to which she had once consented,
should admit of reconsideration; and the
Ballister family, used to her strong will, were confirmed
fatalists as to the coming about of her ends and
aims. Her marriage with Philip, therefore, was

discussed, cœur ouvert, from his first arrival, and, indeed,
in her usual fashion of saving others the trouble
of making up their minds, “herself had named the
day.” This, it is true, was before his landing, and
was then, an effort of considerable magnanimity, as
the expectant Penelope was not yet advised of her
lover's state of preservation or damages by cares and
keeping. If Philip had not found his wedding-day
fixed on his arrival, however, he probably would have
had a voice in the naming of it, for with Fanny's new
inspirations as to his character, there had grown up a
new flower in her garden of beauties—timidity!
What bird of the air had sown the seed in such a soil
was a problem to herself—but true it was!—the confident
belle had grown a blushing trembler! She
would as soon have thought of bespeaking her wings
for the sky, as to have ventured on naming the day in
a short week after.

The day was named, however, and the preparations
went on—nem. con.—the person most interested (after
herself) accepting every congratulation and allusion,
touching the event, with the most impenetrable suavity.
The marbles and pictures, upholstery and services,
were delivered over to the order of Miss Bellairs, and
Philip, disposed, apparently, to be very much a recluse
in his rooms, or at other times, engrossed by troops
of welcoming friends, saw much less of his bride elect
than suited her wishes, and saw her seldom alone. By
particular request, also, he took no part in the 'plenishing
and embellishing of the new abode—not permitted
even to inquire where it was situated, and under this
cover, besides the pleasure of having her own way,
Fanny concealed a little secret, which, when disclosed,
she now felt, would figure forth to Philip's comprehension,
her whole scheme of future happiness. She had
taken the elder brother into her counsels a fortnight
after Philip's return, and, with his aid and consent,
had abandoned the original idea of a house in town,
purchased a beautifully-secluded estate and cottage
ornée, on the East river, and transferred thither all the
objects of art, furniture, &c. One room only of the
maternal mansion was permitted to contribute its
quota to the completion of the bridal dwelling—the
wing, never since inhabited, in which Philip had made
his essay as a painter—and without variation of a cobweb,
and with whimsical care and effort on the part
of Miss Fanny, this apartment was reproduced at
Revedere—her own picture on the easel, as it stood
on the night of his abandonment of his art, and palette,
pencils and colors in tempting readiness on the table.
Even the fire-grate of the old studio had been re-set
in the new, and the cottage throughout had been refitted
with a view to occupation in the winter. And
to sundry hints on the part of the elder brother, that
some thought should be given to a city residence—
for the Christmas holydays, at least—Fanny replied,
through a blush, that she should never wish to see the
town—with Philip at Revedere!

Five years had ripened and mellowed the beauty
of Fanny Bellairs, and the same summer-time of youth
had turned into fruit the feeling left by Philip in bud
and flower. She was ready now for love. She had
felt the variable temper of society, and there was a
presentiment in the heart of receding flatteries, and
the winter of life. It was with mournful self-reproach
that she thought of the years wasted in separation, of
her own choosing, from the man she loved, and with
the power to recall time, she would have thanked
God with tears of joy for the privilege of retracing
the chain of life to that link of parting. Not worth a
day of those lost years, she bitterly confessed to herself,
was the wealth they had purchased.

It lacked as little as one week of “the happy day,”
when the workmen were withdrawn from Revedere,
and the preparations for a family breakfast, to be succeeded
by the agreeable surprise to Philip of inform
ing him he was at home, were finally completed. One
or two very intimate friends were added to the party,
and the invitations (from the elder Ballister) proposed
simply a dejeuner sur l'herbe in the grounds of an unoccupied
villa, the property of an acquaintance.

With the subsiding of the excitement of return, the
early associations which had temporarily confused and
colored the feelings of Philip Ballister, settled gradually
away, leaving uppermost once more the fastidious
refinement of the Parisian. Through this medium,
thin and cold, the bubbles from the breathing of the
heart of youth, rose rarely and reluctantly. The Ballisters
held a good station in society, without caring
for much beyond the easy conveniences of life, and
Fanny, though capable of any degree of elegance, had
not seen the expediency of raising the tone of her
manners above that of her immediate friends. Without
being positively distasteful to Philip, the family
circle, Fanny included, left him much to desire in the
way of society, and unwilling to abate the warmth of
his attentions while with them, he had latterly pleaded
occupation more frequently, and passed his time in
the more congenial company of his library of art.
This was the less noticed that it gave Miss Bellairs
the opportunity to make frequent visits to the workmen
at Revedere, and in the polished devotion of her
betrothed, when with her, Fanny saw nothing reflected
but her own daily increasing tenderness and admiration.

The morning of the fête came in like the air in an
overture—a harmony of all the instruments of summer.
The party were at the gate of Revedere by ten,
and the drive through the avenue to the lawn drew a
burst of delighted admiration from all. The place was
exquisite, and seen in its glory, and Fanny's heart was
brimming with gratified pride and exultation. She
assumed at once the dispensation of the honors, and
beautiful she looked with her snowy dress and raven
ringlets flitting across the lawn, and queening it like
Perdita among the flowers. Having narrowly escaped
bursting into tears of joy when Philip pronounced the
place prettier than anything he had seen in his travels,
she was, for the rest of the day, calmly happy, and
with the grateful shade, the delicious breakfast in the
grove, the rambling and boating on the river, the hours
passed off like dreams, and no one even hinted a regret
that the house itself was under lock and bar. And
so the sun set, and the twilight came on, and the
guests were permitted to order round their carriages
and depart, the Ballisters accompanying them to the
gate. And, on the return of the family through the
avenue, excuses were made for idling hither and thither,
till lights began to show through the trees, and by
the time of their arrival at the lawn, the low windows
of the cottage poured forth streams of light, and the
open doors, and servants busy within, completed a
scene more like magic than reality. Philip was led in
by the excited girl who was the fairy of the spell, and
his astonishment at the discovery of his statuary and
pictures, books and furniture, arranged in complete
order within, was fed upon with the passionate delight
of love in authority.

When an hour had been spent in examining and
admiring the different apartments, an inner room was
thrown open, in which supper was prepared, and this
fourth act in the day's drama was lingered over in untiring
happiness by the family.

Mrs. Ballister, the mother, rose and retired, and
Philip pleaded indisposition, and begged to be shown
to the room allotted to him. This was ringing-up the
curtain for the last act sooner than had been planned by
Fanny, but she announced herself as his chamberlain,
and with her hands affectionately crossed on his arm,
led him to a suite of rooms in a wing still unvisited,
and with a good-night kiss left him at the open door
of the revived studio, furnished for the night with a

bachelor's bed. Turning upon the threshold, he
closed the door with a parting wish of sweet dreams,
and Fanny, after listening a moment with a vain hope
of overhearing some expression of pleasure, and lingering
again on her way back, to be overtaken by her
surprised lover, sought her own bed without rejoining
the circle, and passed a sleepless and happy night of
tears and joy.

Breakfast was served the next morning on a terrace
overlooking the river, and it was voted by acclamation,
that Fanny never before looked so lovely. As none
but the family were to be present, she had stolen a
march on her marriage wardrobe, and added to her
demi-toilet a morning cap of exquisite becomingness.
Altogether, she looked deliciously wife-like, and did
the honors of the breakfast-table with a grace and
sweetness that warmed out love and compliments even
from the sober soil of household intimacy. Philip
had not yet made his appearance, and they lingered
long at table, till at last a suggestion that he might be
ill started Fanny to her feet, and she ran to his door
before a servant could be summoned.

The rooms were open, and the bed had not been
occupied. The candle was burned to the socket, and
on the easel, resting against the picture, was a letter
addressed—“Miss Fanny Bellairs.”

LIGHT VERVAIN.

The foregoing is a leaf from a private diary which I
kept at Rome. In making a daily entry of such
passing stuff as interests us, we sometimes, amid much
that should be ticketed for oblivion, record that which
has a bearing, important or amusing, on the future;
and a late renewal of my acquaintance with Mr. F—,
followed by a knowledge of some fortunate changes
in his worldly condition, has given that interest to this
otherwise unimportant scrap of diary which will be
made apparent presently to the reader. A vague
recollection that I had something in an old book
which referred to him, induced me to look it up, and
I was surprised to find that I had noted down, in this
trifling anecdote, what turned out to be the mainspring
of his destiny.

F — returned to his native country after five years
study of the great masters of Italy. His first pictures
painted at Rome procured for him, as is stated in the
diary I have quoted, a high reputation. He carried
with him a style of his own which was merely stimulated
and heightened by his first year's walk through
the galleries of Florence, and the originality and boldness
of his manner of coloring seemed to promise a
sustained novelty in the art. Gradually, however, the
awe of the great masters seemed to overshadow his
confidence in himself, and as he travelled and deepened
his knowledge of painting, he threw aside feature
after feature of his own peculiar style, till at last he
fell into the track of the great army of imitators, who
follow the immortals of the Vatican as doomed ships
follow the Flying Dutchman.

Arrived at home, and depending solely on his art
for a subsistence, F — commenced the profession to
which he had served so long an apprenticeship. But
his pictures sadly disappointed his friends. After the
first specimens of his acquired style in the annual exhibitions,
the calls at his rooms became fewer and
farther between, and his best works were returned
from the galleries unsold. Too proud to humor the
popular taste by returning to what he considered an
inferior stage of his art, he stood still with his reputation
ebbing from him, and as his means, of course,
depended on the tide of public favor, he was soon involved
in troubles before which his once-brilliant hopes
rapidly faded.

At this juncture he received the following letter:—

Mrs. F—, as will be seen from the style of her letter,
is a woman of decision and cleverness, and of such
a helpmeet, in the way of his profession as well as in
the tenderer relations of life, F — was sorely in need.
By her common-sense counsels and persuasion, he
has gone back with his knowledge of the art to the
first lights of his own powerful genius, and with
means to command leisure and experiment, he is,
without submitting the process to the world, perfecting
a manner which will more than redeem his early
promise.

As his career, though not very uncommon or dramatic,
hinged for its more fortunate events on an act
of high-spirited politeness, I have thought, that in
this age of departed chivalry, the story was worth
preserving for its lesson.

NORA MEHIDY;
OR, THE STRANGE ROAD TO THE HEART OF MR. HYPOLET LEATHERS.

Now, Heaven rest the Phœnicians for their pleasant
invention of the art of travel.

This is to be a story of love and pride, and the hero's
name is Hypolet Leathers.

You have smiled prematurely, my friend and reader,
if you “think you see” Mr. Leathers foreshadowed,
as it were, in his name.

(Three mortal times have I mended this son of a
goose of a pen, and it will not—as you see by the
three unavailing attempts recorded above—it will not
commence, for me, this tale, with a practicable beginning.)

The sun was rising (I think this promises well)—
leisurely rising was the sun on the opposite side of the
Susquehannah. The tall corn endeavored to lift its
silk tassel out of the sloppy fog that had taken upon
itself to rise from the water and prognosticate a hot fair
day, and the driver of the Binghamton stage drew over
his legs a two-bushel bag as he cleared the street of
the village, and thought that, for a summer's morning,
it was “very cold”—wholly unaware, however,
that, in murmuring thus, he was expressing himself
as Hamlet did while waiting for his father's ghost upon
the platform.

Inside the coach were three passengers. A gentleman
sat by the window on the middle seat, with his
cloak over his lap, watching the going to heaven of
the fog that had fulfilled its destiny. His mind was
melancholy—partly for the contrast he could not but
draw between this exemplary vapor and himself, who
was “but a vapor,”[1] and partly that his pancreas began
to apprehend some interruption of the thoroughfare
above—or, in other words, that he was hungry
for his breakfast, having gone supperless to bed. He
mused as he rode. He was a young man, about
twenty-five, and had inherited from his father, John
Leathers, a gentleman's fortune, with the two drawbacks
of a name troublesome to Phœbus (“Phœbus!
what a name!”), and premature gray hair. He was,
in all other respects, a finished and well-conditioned
hero—tall, comely, courtly, and accomplished—and
had seen the sight-worthy portions of the world, and
knew their differences. Travel, indeed, had become
a kind of diseased necessity with him—for he fled
from the knowledge of his name, and from the observation
of his gray hair, like a man fleeing from two
fell phantoms. He was now returning from Niagara,

and left the Mohawk route to see where the Susquehannah
makes its Great Bend in taking final leave of
Mr. Cooper, who lives above; and at the village of
the Great Bend he was to eat that day's breakfast.

On the back seat, upon the leather cushion, behind
Mr. Leathers, sat two other chilly persons, a middle-aged
man and a girl of sixteen—the latter with her
shawl drawn close to her arms, and her dark eyes bent
upon her knees, as if to warm them (as unquestionably
they did). Her black curls swung out from her
bonnet, like ripe grapes from the top of an arbor—
heavy, slumberous, bulky, prodigal black curls—oh,
how beautiful! And I do not know that it would be
a “trick worth an egg” to make any mystery of these
two persons. The gentleman was John Mehidy, the
widowed tailor of Binghamton, and the lady was Nora
Mehidy, his daughter; and they were on their way to
New York to change the scene, Mrs. Mehidy having
left the painful legacy of love—her presence—behind
her. For, ill as he could afford the journey, Mr. Mehidy
thought the fire of Nora's dark eyes might be
put out with water, and he must go where every
patch and shred would not set her a weeping. She
“took it hard,” as they describe grief for the dead in
the country.

The Great Bend is a scene you may look at with
pleasure, even while waiting for procrastinated prog,
and Hypolet Leathers had been standing for ten minutes
on the high bank around which the Susquehannah
sweeps, like a train of silver tissue after a queen
turning a corner, when past him suddenly tripped Nora
Mehidy bonnetless, and stood gazing on the river
from the outer edge of the precipice. Leathers's visual
consciousness dropped into that mass of clustering
hair like a ring into the sea, and disappeared.
His soul dived after it, and left him with no sense or
remembrance of how his outer orbs were amusing
themselves. Of what unpatented texture of velvet,
and of what sifting of diamond dust were those lights
and shadows manufactured! What immeasurable
thickness in those black flakes—compared, with all
locks that he had ever seen, as an edge of cocoameat,
fragrantly and newly broken, to a torn leaf, limp
with wilting. Nora stood motionless, absorbed in the
incomparable splendor of that silver hook bent into
the forest—Leathers as motionless, absorbed in her
wilderness of jetty locks—till the barkeeper rang the
bell for them to come to breakfast. Ah, Hypolet!
Hypolet! what dark thought came to share, with that
innocent beefsteak, your morning's digestion!

That tailors have, and why they have, the handsomest
daughters, in all countries, have been points
of observation and speculation for physiology, written
and unwritten. Most men know the fact. Some
writers have ventured to guess at the occult secret.
But I think “it needs no ghost, come from the grave,”
to unravel the matter. Their vocation is the embellishment—partly
indeed the creation—of material
beauty. If philosophy sit on their shears (as it should
ever), there are questions to decide which discipline
the sense of beauty—the degree in which fashion
should be sacrificed to becomingness, and the resistance
to the invasion of the poetical by whim and
usage, for example—and as a man thinketh—to a certain
degree—so is his daughter. Beauty is the business-thought
of every day, and the desire to know
how best to remedy its defects is the ache and agony
of the tailor's soul, if he be ambitious. Why should
not this have its exponent on the features of the race,
as other strong emotions have—plastic and malleable
as the human body is, by habit and practice. Shakspere,
by-the-way, says—

and I own to the dulness of never till now apprehending
that this remarkable passage typifies the steeping
of superfine broadcloth (made into superfine habits)
into the woof and warp of the tailor's idiosyncracy.
Q. E. D.

Nora Mehidy had ways with her that, if the world
had not been thrown into a muss by Eve and Adam,
would doubtless have been kept for queens. Leathers
was particularly struck with her never lifting up
her eyelids till she was ready. If she chanced to be
looking thoughtfully down when he spoke to her,
which was her habit of sadness just now, she heard
what he had to say and commenced replying—and
then, slowly, up went the lids, combing the loving air
with their long lashes, and no more hurried than the
twilight taking its fringes off the stars. It was adorable—altogether
adorable! And her hands and lips,
and feet and shoulders, had the same contemptuous
and delicious deliberateness.

On the second evening, at half-past five—just half
an hour too late for the “Highlander” steamer—the
“Binghamton stage” slid down the mountain into
Newburgh. The next boat was to touch at the pier
at midnight, and Leathers had six capacious hours to
work on the mind of John Mehidy. What was the
process of that fiendish temptation, what the lure and
the resistance, is a secret locked up with Moloch—
but it was successful! The glorious chevelure of the
victim—(sweet descriptive word—chevelure!)—the
matchless locks that the matchlocks of armies should
have defended—went down in the same boat with Nora
Mehidy, but tied up in Mr. Leathers' linen pocket-handkerchief!
And, in one week from that day, the
head of Hypolet Leathers was shaven nude, and the
black curls of Nora Mehidy were placed upon its
irritated organs in an incomparable WIG!!

A year had elapsed. It was a warm day, in No. 77
of the Astor, and Hypolet Leathers, Esq., arrived a
week before by the Great Western, sat aiding the
evaporation from his brain by lotions of iced lavender.
His wig stood before him, on the blockhead that was
now his inseparable companion, the back toward him;
and, as the wind chased of the volatile lavender from
the pores of his skull, he toyed thoughtfully with the
lustrous curls of Nora Mehidy. His heart was on
that wooden block! He dressed his own wig habitually,
and by dint of perfuming, combing, and caressing
those finger-like ringlets—he had tangled up his
heart in their meshes. A phantom, with the superb
face of the owner, stayed with the separated locks, and
it grew hourly more palpable and controlling. The
sample had made him sick at heart for the remainder.
He wanted the rest of Nora Mehidy. He had come
over for her. He had found John Mehidy, following
his trade obscurely in a narrow lane, and he had asked
for Nora's hand. But though this was not the whole
of his daughter, and he had already sold part of her
to Leathers, he shook his head over his shiny shears.
Even if Nora could be propitiated after the sacrifice
she had made (which he did not believe she could be),
he would as lief put her in the world of spirits as in a
world above him. She was his life, and he would not
give his life willingly to a stranger who would take it
from him, or make it too fine for his using. Oh, no!
Nora must marry a tailor, if she marry at all—and
this was the adamantine resolution, stern and without
appeal, of John Mehidy.

Some six weeks after this, a new tailoring establishment
of great outlay and magnificence was opened
in Broadway. The show-window was like a new revelation
of stuff for trowsers, and resplendent, but not
gaudy, were the neckcloths and waistcoatings—for
absolute taste reigned over all. There was not an article
on show possible to William street—not a waistcoat
that, seen in Maiden lane, would not have been
as unsphered as the Lost Pleiad in Botany Bay. It
was quite clear that there was some one of the firm

of “Mehidy & Co.” (the new sign) who exercised
his taste “from within, out,” as the Germans say of
the process of true poetry. He began inside a gentleman,
that is to say, to guess at what was wanted for
a gentleman's outside. He was a tailor-gentleman,
and was therefore, and by that quality only, fitted to
be a gentleman's tailor.

The dandies flocked to Mehidy & Co. They
could not be measured immediately—oh no! The
gentleman to be built was requested to walk about the
shop for a half hour, till the foreman got him well in
his eye, and then to call again in a week. Meantime
he would mark his customer in the street, to see how
he performed. Mehidy & Co. never ventured to take
measure for terra incognita. The man's gait, shrug,
speed, style, and quality, were all to be allowed for,
and these were not seen in a minute. And a very
sharp and stylish looking fellow seemed that foreman
to be. There was evidently spoiled some very capable
stuff for a lord when he was made a tailor.

And, faith! it was a study to see him take a customer's
measure! The quiet contempt with which he
overruled the man's indigenous idea of a coat!—the
rather satirical comments on his peculiarities of wearing
his kerseymere!—the cool survey of the adult to
be embellished, as if he were inspecting him for admission
to the grenadiers! On the whole, it was a
nervous business to be measured for a coat by that
fellow with the devilish fine head of black hair!

And, with the hair upon his head, from which Nora
had once no secrets—with the curls upon his cheek
and temples which had once slumbered peacefully
over hers, Hypolet Leathers, the foreman of “Mehidy
& Co.,” made persevering love to the tailor's magnificent
daughter. For she was magnificent! She
had just taken that long stride from girl to woman,
and her person had filled out to the imperial and voluptuous
model indicated by her deliberate eyes.
With a dusky glow in her cheek, that looked like a
peach teinted by a rosy twilight, her mouth, up to the
crimson edge of its bow of Cupid, was moulded with
the slumberous fairness of newly wrought sculpture,
and gloriously beautiful in expression. She was a
creature for whom a butterfly might do worm over
again—to whose condition in life, if need be, a prince
might proudly come down. Ah, queenly Nora Mehidy!

But the wooing—alas! the wooing throve slowly!
That lovely head was covered again with prodigal
locks, in short and massive clusters, but Leathers was
pertinacious as to his property in the wig, and its becomingness
and indispensableness—and to be made
love to by a man in her own hair!—to be obliged to
keep her own dark curls at a respectful distance!—to
forbid all intercourse between them and their children-ringlets,
as it were—it roughened the course of
Leathers's true love that Nora must needs be obliged
to reason on such singular dilemmas. For, though a
tailor's daughter, she had been furnished by nature
with an imagination!

But virtue, if nothing more and no sooner, is its
own reward, and in time “to save its bacon.” John
Mehidy's fortune was pretty well assured in the course
of two years, and made, in his own line, by his proposed
son-in-law, and he could no longer refuse to
throw into the scale the paternal authority. Nora's
hair was, by this time, too, restored to its pristine
length and luxuriousness, and, on condition that Hypolet
would not exact a new wig from his new possessions,
Nora, one summer's night, made over to him
the remainder. The long-exiled locks revisited their
natal soil, during the caresses which sealed the compact,
and a very good tailor was spoiled the week
after, for the married Leathers became once more a
gentleman at large, having bought, in two instalments,
at an expense of a hundred dollars, a heart, and two
years of service, one of the finest properties of which
Heaven and a gold ring ever gave mortal the copyhold!

THE PHARISEE AND THE BARBER.

Sheafe lane, in Boston, is an almost unmentionable
and plebeian thoroughfare, between two very
mentionable and patrician streets. It is mainly used
by bakers, butchers, urchins going to school, and
clerks carrying home parcels—in short, by those who
care less for the beauty of the road than for economy
of time and shoe-leather. If you please, it is a shabby
hole. Children are born there, however, and people
die and marry there, and are happy and sad there, and
the great events of life, more important than our
liking or disliking of Sheafe lane, take place in it
continually. It used not to be a very savory place.
Yet it has an indirect share of such glory as attaches
to the birth-places of men above the common. The
(present) great light of the Unitarian church was born
at one end of Sheafe lane, and one of the most accomplished
merchant-gentlemen in the gay world of New
York was born at the other. And in the old Haymarket
(a kind of cul-de-sac, buried in the side of
Sheaf lane), stood the dusty lists of chivalric old
Roulstone, a gallant horseman, who in other days
would have been a knight of noble devoir, though in
the degeneracy of a Yankee lustrum, he devoted his
soldierly abilities to the teaching of young ladies how
to ride.

Are you in Sheafe lane? (as the magnetisers inquire).
Please to step back twenty-odd years, and
take the hand of a lad with a rosy face (ourself—for
we lived in Sheafe lane twenty-odd years ago), and
come to a small house, dingy yellow, with a white
gate. The yard is below the level of the street.
Mind the step.

The family are at breakfast in the small parlor
fronting on the street. But come up this dark staircase,
to the bedroom over the parlor—a very neat
room, plainly furnished; and the windows are curtained,
and there is one large easy chair, and a stand
with a bible open upon it. In the bed lies an old man
of seventy, deaf, nearly blind, and bed-ridden.

We have now shown you what comes out of the
shadows to us, when we remember the circumstances
we are about to body forth in a sketch, for it can
scarcely be called a story.

It wanted an hour to noon. The Boylston clock
struck eleven, and close on the heel of the last stroke
followed the tap of the barber's knuckle on the door

of the yellow house in Sheafe lane. Before answering
to the rap, the maid-of-all-work filled a tin can from
the simmering kettle, and surveying herself in a three-cornered
bit of looking-glass, fastened on a pane of the
kitchen window; then, with a very soft and sweet
“good morning,” to Rosier, the barber, she led the
way to the old man's room.

“He looks worse to-day,” said the barber, as the
skinny hand of the old man crept up tremblingly to
his face, conscious of the daily office about to be performed
for him.

“They think so below stairs,” said Harriet, “and
one of the church is coming to pray with him to-night.
Shall I raise him up now?”

The barber nodded, and the girl seated herself near
the pillow, and lifting the old man, drew him upon her
breast, and as the operation went rather lingeringly on,
the two chatted together very earnestly.

Rosier was a youth of about twenty-one, talkative
and caressing, as all barbers are; and what with his
curly hair and ready smile, and the smell of soap that
seemed to be one of his natural properties, he was a
man to be thought of over a kitchen fire. Besides, he
was thriving in his trade, and not a bad match. All of
which was duly considered by the family with which
Harriet lived, for they loved the poor girl.

Poor girl, I say. But she was not poor, at least if
it be true that as a woman thinketh so is she. Most
people would have described her as a romantic girl.
And so she was, but without deserving a breath of the
ridicule commonly attached to the word. She was
uneducated, too, if any child of New England can be
called uneducated. Beyond school-books and the
Bible, she had read nothing but the Scottish Chiefs,
and this novel was to her what the works of God are
to others. It could never become familiar. It must
be the gate of dream-land; what the moon is to a
, what a grove is to a man of revery, what sunshine
is to all the world. And she mentioned it as
seldom as people praise sunshine, and lived in it as
unconsciously.

Harriet had never before been out to service. She
was a farmer's daughter, new from the country. If
she was not ignorant of the degradation of her condition
in life, she forgot it habitually. A cheerful and
thoughtful smile was perpetually on her lips, and the
hardships of her daily routine were encountered as
things of course, as clouds in the sky, as pebbles in
the inevitable path. Her attention seemed to belong
to her body, but her consciousness only to her
imagination. In her voice and eyes there was no
touch or taint of her laborious servitude, and if
she had suddenly been “made a lady,” there would
have been nothing but her hard hands to redeem from
her low condition. Then, hard-working creature as
she was, she was touchingly beautiful. A coarse eye
would have passed her without notice, perhaps, but a
painter would not. She was of a fragile shape, and had
a slight stoop, but her head was small and exquisitely
moulded, and her slender neck, round, graceful, and
polished, was set upon her shoulders with the fluent
grace of a bird's. Her hair was profuse, and of a
tinge almost yellow in the sun, but her eyes were of a
blue, deep almost to blackness, and her heavy eyelashes
darkened them still more deeply. She had the
least possible color in her cheeks. Her features were
soft and unmarked, and expressed delicacy and repose,
though her nostrils were capable of dilating with an
energy of expression that seemed wholly foreign to
her character.

Rosier had first seen Harriet when called in to the
old man, six months before, and they were now supposed
by the family to be engaged lovers, waiting only
for a little more sunshine on the barber's fortune.
Meantime, they saw each other at least half an hour
every morning, and commonly passed their evenings
together, and the girl seemed very tranquilly happy in
her prospect of marriage.

At four o'clock on the afternoon of the day before
mentioned, Mr. Flint was to make a spiritual visit to
the old man. Let us first introduce him to the reader.

Mr. Asa Flint was a bachelor of about forty-five,
and an “active member” of a church famed for its
zeal. He was a tall man, with a little bend in his
back, and commonly walked with his eyes upon the
ground, like one intent on meditation. His complexion
was sallow, and his eyes dark and deeply set; but
by dint of good teeth, and a little “wintry redness in
his cheek,” he was good-looking enough for all his
ends. He dressed in black, as all religious men must
(in Boston), and wore shoes with black stockings the
year round. In his worldly condition, Mr. Flint had
always been prospered. He spent five hundred dollars
a year in his personal expenses, and made five thousand
in his business, and subscribed, say two hundred
dollars a year to such societies as printed the name of
the donors. Mr. Flint had no worldly acquaintances.
He lived in a pious boarding-house, and sold all his
goods to the members of the country churches in
communion with his own. He “loved the brethren,”
for he wished to converse with no one who did not see
heaven and the church at his back—himself in the
foreground, and the other two accessories in the perspective.
Piety apart, he had found out at twenty-five,
that, as a sinner he would pass through the world
simply Asa Flint—as a saint, he would be Asa Flint
plus eternity and the respect of a large congregation.
He was a shrewd man, and chose the better part.
Also, he remembered, sin is more expensive than
sanctity.

At four o'clock Mr. Flint knocked at the door. At
the same hour there was a maternal prayer meeting at
the vestry, and of course it was to be numbered
among his petty trials that he must find the mistress
of the house absent from home. He walked up
stairs, and after a look into the room of the sick man,
despatched the lad who had opened the door for him,
to request the “help” of the family to be present at
the devotions.

Harriet had a rather pleasing recollection of Mr.
Flint. He had offered her his arm, a week before, in
coming out from a conference meeting, and had “presumed
that she was a young lady on a visit” to the
mistress! She arranged handkerchief and took the
kettle off the fire.

Mr. Flint was standing by the bedside with folded
hands. The old man lay looking at him with a kind
of uneasy terror in his face, which changed, as Harriet
entered, to a smile of relief. She retired modestly to
the foot of the bed, and, hidden by the curtain, open
only at the side, she waited the commencement of the
prayer.

“Kneel there, little boy!” said Mr. Flint, pointing
to a chair on the other side of the light-stand, “and
you, my dear, kneel here by me! Let us pray!”

Harriet had dropped upon her knees near the corner
of the bed, and Mr. Flint dropped upon his, on
the other side of the post, so that after raising his
hands in the first adjuration, they descended gradually,
and quite naturally, upon the folded hands of the
neighbor—and there they remained. She dared not
withdraw them, but as his body rocked to and fro in
his devout exercise, she drew back her head to avoid
coming into farther contact, and escaped with only his
breath upon her temples.

It was a very eloquent prayer. Mr. Flint's voice,
in a wordly man, would have been called insinuating,
but its kind of covert sweetness, low and soft, seemed,
in a prayer, only the subdued monotony of reverence
and devotion. But it won upon the ear all the same.
He began, with a repetition of all the most sublime
ascriptions of the psalmist, filling the room, it appeared

to Harriet, with a superhuman presence. She trembled
to be so near him with his words of awe. Gradually
he took up the more affecting and tender passages
of scripture, and drew the tears into her eyes
with the pathos of his tone and the touching images
he wove together. His hand grew moist upon hers,
and he leaned closer to her. He began, after a short
pause, to pray for her especially—that her remarkable
beauty might not be a snare to her—that her dove-like
eyes might beam only on the saddened faces of
the saints—that she might be enabled to shun the
company of the worldly, and consort only with God's
people—and that the tones of prayer now in her ears
might sink deep into her heart as the voice of one
who would never cease to feel an interest in her temporal
and eternal welfare. His hand tightened its
grasp upon hers, and his face turned more toward
her; and as Harriet, blushing, spite of the awe
weighing on her heart, stole a look at the devout
man, she met the full gaze of his coal-black eyes
fixed unwinkingly upon her. She was entranced.
She dared not stir, and she dared not take her
eyes from his. And when he came to his amen, she
sank back upon the ground, and covered her face with
her hands. And presently she remembered, with
some wonder, that the old man, for whom Mr. Flint
had come to pray, had not been even mentioned in
the prayer.

The lad left the room after the amen, and Mr. Flint
raised Harriet from the floor and seated her upon a
chair out of the old man's sight, and pulled a hymnbook
from his pocket, and sat down beside her. She
was a very enthusiastic singer, to say the least, and he
commonly led the singing at the conferences, and so,
holding her hand that she might beat the time with
him, he passed an hour in what he would call very
sweet communion. And by this time the mistress of
the family came home, and Mr. Flint took his leave.

From that evening, Mr. Flint fairly undertook the
“eternal welfare” of the beautiful girl. From her
kind mistress he easily procured for her the indulgence
due to an awakened sinner, and she had permission
to frequent the nightly conference, Mr. Flint
always charging himself with the duty of seeing her
safely home. He called sometimes in the afternoon,
and had a private interview to ascertain the “state of
her mind,” and under a strong “conviction” of something
or other, the excited girl lived now in a constant
revery, and required as much looking after as a child.
She was spoiled as a servant, but Mr. Flint had only
done his duty by her.

This seemed all wrong to Rosier, the barber, however.
The bright, sweet face of the girl he thought
to marry, had grown sad, and her work went all amiss
—he could see that. She had no smile, and almost
no word, for him. He liked little her going out at
dusk when he could not accompany her, and coming
home late with the same man always, though a very
good man, no doubt. Then, once lately, when he
had spoken of the future, she had murmured something
which Mr. Flint had said about “marrying with
unbelievers,” and it stuck in Rosier's mind and troubled
him. Harriet grew thin and haggard besides,
though she paid more attention to her dress, and
dressed more ambitiously than she used to do.

We are reaching back over a score or more of
years for the scenes we are describing, and memory
drops here and there a circumstance by the way. The
reader can perhaps restore the lost fragments, if we
give what we remember of the outline.

The old man died, and Rosier performed the last
of his offices to fit him for the grave, and that, if we
remember rightly, was the last of his visits, but one,
to the white house in Sheafe lane. The bed was
scarce vacated by the dead, ere it was required again
for another object of pity. Harriet was put into it
with a brain fever. She was ill for many weeks, and
called constantly on Mr. Flint's name in her delirium;
and when the fever left her, she seemed to have but
one desire on earth—that he should come and see
her. Message after message was secretly carried to
him by the lad, whom she had attached to her with
her uniform kindness and sweet temper, but he never
came. She relapsed after a while into a state of stupor,
like idiocy, and when day after day passed without
amendment, it was thought necessary to send for
her father to take her home.

A venerable looking old farmer, with white hairs,
drove his rough wagon into Sheafe lane one evening,
we well remember. Slowly, with the aid of his long
staff, he crept up the narrow staircase to his daughter's
room, and stood a long time, looking at her in
silence. She did not speak to him.

He slept upon a bed made up at the side of hers,
upon the floor, and the next morning he went out
early for his horse, and she was taken up and dressed
for the journey. She spoke to no one, and when the
old man had breakfasted, she quietly submitted to be
carried toward the door. The sight of the street first
seemed to awaken some recollection, and suddenly in
a whisper she called to Mr. Flint.

“Who is Mr. Flint?” asked the old man.

Rosier was at the gate, standing there with his hat
off to bid her farewell. She stopped upon the sidewalk,
and looked around hurriedly.

“He is not here—I'll wait for him!” cried Harriet,
in a troubled voice, and she let go her father's arm
and stepped back.

They took hold of her and drew her toward the
wagon, but she struggled to get free, and moaned like
a child in grief. Rosier took her by the hand and
tried to speak to her, but he choked, and the tears
came to his eyes. Apparently she did not know him.

A few passers-by gathered around now, and it was
necessary to lift her into the wagon by force, for the
distressed father was confused and embarrassed with
her struggles, and the novel scene around him. At
the suggestion of the mistress of the family, Rosier
lifted her in his arms and seated her in the chair intended
for her, but her screams began to draw a crowd
around, and her struggles to free herself were so violent,
that it was evident the old man could never take
her home alone. Rosier kindly offered to accompany
him, and as he held her in her seat and tried to sooth her,
the unhappy father got in beside her and drove away.

She reached home, Rosier informed us, in a state
of dreadful exhaustion, still calling on the name that
haunted her; and we heard soon after, that she relapsed
into a brain fever, and death soon came to her
with a timely deliverance from her trouble.

MRS. PASSABLE TROTT.

The temerity with which I hovered on the brink
of matrimony when a very young man could only be
appreciated by a fatuitous credulity. The number
of very fat mothers of very plain families who can
point me out to their respectable offspring as their
once imminent papa, is ludicrously improbable. The
truth was that I had a powerful imagination in my
early youth, and no “realizing sense.” A coral necklace,
warm from the wearer—a shoe with a little round
stain in the sole—anything flannel—a bitten rosebud
with the mark of a tooth upon it—a rose, a glove, a
thimble—either of these was agony, ecstasy! To anything
with curls and skirts, and especially if encircled
by a sky-blue sash, my heart was as prodigal as a
Croton hydrant. Ah me!

But, of all my short eternal attachments, Fidelia
Balch (since Mrs. P. Trott) was the kindest and fairest.
Faithless of course she was, since my name
does not begin with a T.—but if she did not continue
to love me—P. Trott or no P. Trott—she was shockingly
forsworn, as can be proved by several stars,
usually considered very attentive listeners. I rather
pitied poor Trott—for I knew

and he was rich and forty-odd. But they seemed to
live very harmoniously, and if I availed myself of
such little consolations as fell in my way, it was the
result of philosophy. I never forgot the faithless
Fidelia.

This is to be a disembowelled narrative, dear reader
—skipping from the maidenhood of my heroine to
her widowhood, fifteen years—yet I would have you
supply here and there a betweenity. My own sufferings
at seeing my adored Fidelia go daily into another
man's house and shut the door after her, you can
easily conceive. Though not in the habit of rebelling
against human institutions, it did seem to me that the
marriage ceremony had no business to give old Trott
quite so much for his money. But the aggravating
part of it was to come! Mrs. P. Trott grew prettier
every day, and of course three hundred and sixty-five
noticeable degrees prettier every year! She
seemed incapable of, or not liable to, wear and tear;
and probably old Trott was a man, in-doors, of very
even behavior. And, it should be said too, in explanation,
that, as Miss Balch, Fidelia was a shade too
fat for her model. She embellished as her dimples
grew shallower. Trifle by trifle, like the progress of
a statue, the superfluity fell away from nature's original
Miss Balch (as designed in Heaven), and when
old Passable died (and no one knew what that P.
stood for, till it was betrayed by the indiscreet plate
on his coffin) Mrs. Trott, thirty-three years old, was
at her maximum of beauty. Plump, taper, transparently
fair, with an arm like a high-conditioned Venus,
and a neck set on like the swell of a French horn,
she was consumedly good-looking. When I saw in
the paper, “Died, Mr. P. Trott,” I went out and
walked passed the house, with overpowering emotions.
Thanks to a great many refusals, I had been faithful!
I could bring her the same heart, unused and undamaged,
which I had offered her before! I could
generously overlook Mr. Trott's temporary occupation
(since he had left us his money!)—and when her
mourning should be over—the very day—the very
hour—her first love should be ready for her, good as
new!

I have said nothing of any evidences of continued
attachment on the part of Mrs. Trott. She was a
discreet person, and not likely to compromise Mr. P.
Trott till she knew the strength of his constitution.
But there was one evidence of lingering preference
which I built upon like a rock. I had not visited her
during these fifteen years. Trott liked me not—you
can gness why! But I had a nephew, five years old
when Miss Balch was my “privately engaged,” and
as like me, that boy, as could be copied by nature.
He was our unsuspecting messenger of love, going to
play in old Balch's garden when I was forbidden the
house, unconscious of the billet-doux in the pocket
of his pinafore; and to this boy, after our separation,
seemed Fidelia to cling. He grew up to a youth of
mind and manners, and still she cherished him. He
all but lived at old Trott's, petted and made much of
—her constant companion—reading, walking, riding—
indeed, when home from college, her sole society.
Are you surprised that, in all this, there was a tenderness
of reminiscence that touched and assured me?
Ah—

I thought it delicate, and best, to let silence do its
work during that year of mourning. I did not whisper
even to my nephew Bob the secret of my happiness.
I left one card of condolence after old Trott's
funeral, and lived private, counting the hours. The
slowest kind of eternity it appeared!

The morning never seemed to me to break with so
much difficulty and reluctance as on the anniversary
of the demise of Mr. Passable Trott—June 2, 1840.
Time is a comparative thing, I well know, but the
minutes seemed to stick, on that interminable morning.
I began to dress for breakfast at four—but details
are tiresome. Let me assure you that twelve
o'clock, A. M., did arrive! The clocks struck it, and
the shadows verified it.

I could not have borne an accidental “not at home,”
and I resolved not to run the risk of it. Lovers, besides,
are not tied to knockers and ceremony. I bribed
the gardener. Fidelia's boudoir, I knew, opened upon
the lawn, and it seemed more like love to walk in.
She knew—I knew—Fate and circumstance knew and
had ordained—that that morning was to be shoved up,
joined on, and dovetailed to our last separation. The
time between was to be a blank. Of course she expected
me.

The garden door was ajar—as paid for. I entered,
traversed the vegetable beds, tripped through the flower-walk,
and—oh bliss!—the window was open! I
could just see the Egyptian urn on its pedestal of
sphinxes, into which I knew (per Bob) she threw all
her fading roses. I glided near. I looked in at the
window.

Ah, that picture! She sat with her back to me—
her arm—that arm of rosy alabaster—thrown carelessly
over her chair—her egg-shell chin resting on her
other thumb and forefinger—her eyelids sweeping her
cheek—and a white—yes! a white bow in her hair.

And her dress was of snowy lawn—white, bridal
white! Adieu, old Passable Trott!

I wiped my eyes and looked again. Old Trott's
portrait hung on the wall, but that was nothing. Her
guitar lay on the table, and—did I see aright?—a
miniature just beside it! Perhaps of old Trott—taken
out for the last time. Well—well! He was a
very respectable man, and had been very kind to her,
most likely.

“Ehem!” said I, stepping over the sill, “Fidelia!”

She started and turned, and certainly looked surprised.

“Mr. G—!” said she.

“It is long since we parted!” I said, helping myself
to a chair.

“Quite long!” said Fidelia.

“So long that you have forgotten the name of
G—?” I asked tremulously.

“Oh no!” she replied, covering up the miniature
on the table by a careless movement of her scarf.

“And may I hope that that name has not grown
distasteful to you?” I summoned courage to say.

“N—, no! I do not know that it has, Mr. G—!”

The blood returned to my fainting heart! I felt as
in days of yore.

“Fidelia!” said I, “let me not waste the precious
moments. You loved me at twenty—may I hope that
I may stand to you in a nearer relation! May I venture
to think that our family is not unworthy of a
union with the Balches?—that, as Mrs. G—, you
could be happy?”

Fidelia looked—hesitated—took up the miniature,
and clasped it to her breast.

“Do I understand you rightly, Mr. G—!” she
tremulously exclaimed. “But I think I do! I remember
well what you were at twenty! This picture
is like what you were then—with differences, it is true,
but still like! Dear picture!” she exclaimed again,
kissing it with rapture.

(How could she have got my miniature?—but no
matter—taken by stealth, I presume. Sweet and eager
anticipation!)

“And Robert has returned from college, then?”
she said, inquiringly.

“Not that I know of,” said I.

“Indeed!—then he has written to you!”

“Not recently!”

“Ah, poor boy! he anticipated! Well, Mr. G—!
I will not affect to be coy where my heart has been so
long interested.”

(I stood ready to clasp her to my bosom.)

“Tell Robert my mourning is over—tell him his
name” (the name of G—, of course) “is the music
of my life, and that I will marry whenever he
pleases!”

A horrid suspicion crossed my mind.

“Pardon me!” said I; “whenever he pleases, did
you say? Why, particularly, when he pleases?”

“La! his not being of age is no impediment, I
hope!” said Mrs. Trott, with some surprise. “Look
at his miniature, Mr. G—! It has a boyish look,
it's true—but so had you—at twenty!”

Hope sank within me! I would have given worlds
to be away. The truth was apparent to me—perfectly
apparent. She loved that boy Bob—that child—
that mere child—and meant to marry him! Yet how
could it be possible! I might be—yes—I must be,
mistaken. Fidelia Balch—who was a woman when
he was an urchin in petticoats!—she to think of marrying
that boy! I wronged her—oh I wronged her!
But, worst come to the worst, there was no harm in
having it perfectly understood.

“Pardon me!' said I, putting on a look as if I
expected a shout of laughter for the mere supposition,
“I should gather—(categorically, mind you!—
only categorically)—I should gather from what you
said just now—(had I been a third person listening,
that is to say—with no knowledge of the parties)—I
should really have gathered that Bob—little Bob—was
the happy man, and not I! Now don't laugh at me!”

“You the happy man!—Oh Mr. G—! you are
joking! Oh no! pardon me if I have unintentionally
misled you—but if I marry again, Mr. G—, it will
be a young man!!! In short, not to mince the matter,
Mr. G—! your nephew is to become my husband
(nothing unforeseen turning up), in the course
of the next week! We shall have the pleasure of
seeing you at the wedding, of course! Oh no! You!
I should fancy that no woman would make two unequal
marriages, Mr. G—! Good morning, Mr.
G—!”

I was left alone, and to return as I pleased, by the
vegetable garden or the front door. I chose the latter,
being somewhat piqued as well as inexpressibly
grieved and disappointed. But philosophy came to
my aid, and I soon fell into a mood of speculation.

“Fidelia is constant!” said I to myself—“constant,
after all! She made up her mouth for me at twenty.
But I did not stay twenty! Oh no! I, unadvisedly,
and without preparatively cultivating her taste for
thirty-five, became thirty-five. And now what was she
to do? Her taste was not at all embarked in Passable
Trott, and it stayed just as it was—waiting to be
called up and used. She locks it up decently till old
Trott dies, and then reproduces—what? Why, just
what she locked up—a taste for a young man at
twenty—and just such a young man as she loved when
she was twenty! Bob—of course! Bob is like me—
Bob is twenty! Be Bob her husband!

But I cannot say I quite like such constancy!

THE SPIRIT-LOVE OF “IONE S—.”

(SINCE DISCOVERED TO BE MISS JONES)

Not long ago, but before poetry and pin-money
were discovered to be cause and effect, Miss Phebe
Jane Jones was one of the most charming contributors
to a certain periodical now gone over “Lethe's wharf.”
Her signature was “Ione S—!” a neat anagram,
out of which few would have picked the monosyllable
engraved upon her father's brass knocker. She wrote
mostly in verse; but her prose, of which you will
presently see a specimen or two, was her better vein—
as being more easily embroidered, and not cramped
with the inexorable fetters of rhyme. Miss Jones
abandoned authorship before the New Mirror was established,
or she would, doubtless, have been one of
its paid contributors—as much (“we” flatter ourselves)
as could well be said of her abilities.

The beauty of hectics and hollow chests has been
written out of fashion; so I may venture upon the
simple imagery of truth and nature. Miss Jones was

as handsome as a prize heifer. She was a compact,
plump, wholesome, clean-limbed, beautifully-marked
animal, with eyes like inkstands running over; and a
mouth that looked, when she smiled, as if it had never
been opened before, the teeth seemed so fresh and unhandled.
Her voice had a tone clear as the ring of a
silver dollar; and her lungs must have been as sound
as a pippin, for when she laughed (which she never
did unless she was surprised into it, for she loved melancholy),
it was like the gurgling of a brook over the
pebbles. The bran-new people made by Deucalion
and Pyrrha, when it cleared up after the flood, were
probably in Miss Jones's style.

But do you suppose that “Ione S—” cared any
thing for her looks! What—value the poor perishing
tenement in which nature had chosen to lodge her
intellectual and spiritual part! What—care for her
covering of clay! What—waste thought on the chain
that kept her from the Pleiades, of which, perhaps,
she was the lost sister (who knows)? And, more than
all—oh gracious!—to be loved for this trumpery-drapery
of her immortal essence!

Yes—infra dig, as it may seem to record such an
unworthy trifle—the celestial Phebe had the superfluity
of an every-day lover. Gideon Flimmins was willing
to take her on her outer inventory alone. He
loved her cheeks—he did not hesitate to admit! He
loved her lips—he could not help specifying! He had
been known to name her shoulders! And, in taking
out a thorn for her with a pair of tweezers one day, he
had literally exclaimed with rapture that she had a
heavenly little pink thumb! But of “Ione S—”
he had never spoken a word. No, though she read
him faithfully every effusion that appeared—asked his
opinion of every separate stanza—talked of “Ione
S—” as the person on earth she most wished to see
(for she kept her literary incog.)—Gideon had never
alluded to her a second time, and perseveringly, hatefully,
atrociously, and with mundane motive only, he
made industrious love to the outside and visible Phebe!
Well! well!

Contiguity is something, in love; and the Flimminses
were neighbors of the Joneses. Gideon had
another advantage—for Ophelia Flimmins, his eldest
sister, was Miss Jones's eternally attached friend. To
explain this, I must trouble the reader to take notice
that there were two streaks in the Flimmins family.
Fat Mrs. Flimmins, the mother (who had been dead a
year), was a thorough “man of business,” and it was
to her downright and upright management of her husband's
wholesale and retail hat-lining establishment,
that the family owed its prosperity; for Herodotus
Flimmins, whose name was on the sign, was a flimsyish
kind of sighing-dying man, and nobody could ever
find out what on earth he wanted. Gideon and the
two fleshy Miss Flimminses took after their mother;
but Ophelia, whose semi-translucent frame was the
envy of her faithful Phebe, was, with very trifling exceptions,
the perfect model of her sire. She devotedly
loved the moon. She had her preferences among the
stars of heaven. She abominated the garish sun. And
she and Phebe met by night—on the sidewalk around
their mutual nearest corner—deeply veiled to conceal
their emotion from the intruding gaze of such stars as
they were not acquainted with—and there they communed!

I never knew, nor have I any, the remotest suspicion
of the reasoning by which these commingled spirits
arrived at the conclusion that there was a want in their
delicious union. They might have known, indeed,
that the chain of bliss, ever so far extended, breaks off
at last with an imperfect link—that though mustard
and ham may turn two slices of innocent bread into a
sandwich, there will still be an unbuttered outside.
But they were young—they were sanguine. Phebe,
at least, believed that in the regions of space there ex
isted—“wandering but not lost”—the aching worser
half of which she was the “better”—some lofty intellect,
capable of sounding the unfathomable abysses of
hers—some male essence, all soul and romance, with
whom she could soar finally, arm-in-arm, to their native
star, with no changes of any consequence between
their earthly and their astral communion. It occurred
to her at last that a letter addressed to him, through
her favorite periodical, might possibly reach his eye.
The following (which the reader may very likely remember
to have seen) appeared in the paper of the
following Saturday:—

It was an inky night. The moon was in her private
chamber. The stars had drawn over their heads the
coverlet of clouds and pretended to sleep. The street
lamps heartlessly burned on.

Twelve struck with “damnable iteration.”

On tiptoe and with beating heart Phebe Jane left
her father's area. Ophelia Flimmins followed her at
a little distance, for Ione was going to meet her spirit-bridegroom,
and receive a renewal of his ante-vital
vows; and she wished her friend, the echo of her soul,
to overhear and witness them. For oh—if words were
anything—if the soul could be melted and poured,
lava-like, upon “satin post”—if there was truth in feelings
magnetic and prophetic—then was he who had
responded to, and corresponded with, Ione S— (she
writing to “I,” and he to “P”), the ideal for whom
she had so long sighed—the lost half of the whole so
mournfully incomplete—her soul's missing and once
spiritually Siamesed twin! His sweet letters had
echoed every sentiment of her heart. He had agreed
with her that outside was nothing—that earthly beauty
was poor, perishing, pitiful—that nothing that could
be seen, touched, or described, had anything to do
with the spiritually-passionate intercourse to which
their respective essences achingly yearned—that, unseen,
unheard, save in whispers faint as a rose's sigh
when languishing at noon, they might meet in communion
blissful, superhuman, and satisfactory.

Yet where fittingly to meet—oh agony! agony!

The street-lamps two squares off had been taken up
to lay down gas. Ophelia Flimmins had inwardly
marked it. Between No. 126 and No. 132, more particularly,
the echoing sidewalk was bathed in unfathomable
night—for there were vacant lots occupied as
a repository for used-up omnibuses. At the most
lonely point there stood a tree, and, fortunately, this
night, in the gutter beneath the tree, stood a newly-disabled
'bus of the Knickerbocker line—and (sweet
omen!) it was blue! In this covert could the witnessing
Ophelia lie perdu, observing unseen through the
open door; and beneath this tree was to take place the
meeting of souls—the re-interchange of sky-born vows
—the immaterial union of Ithuriel and Ione! Bliss!
bliss!—exquisite to anguish.

But—oh incontinent vessel—Ophelia had blabbed!
The two fat Miss Flimminses were in the secret—
nay, more—they were in the omnibus! Ay—deeply
in, and portentously silent, they sat, warm and wondering,
on either side of the lamp probably extinguished
for ever! They knew not well what was to
be. But whatever sort of thing was a “marriage of
soul,” and whether “Ithuriel” was body or nobody—
mortal man or angel in a blue scarf—the Miss Flimminses
wished to see him. Half an hour before the
trysting-time they had fanned their way thither, for a
thunder-storm was in the air and the night was intolerably
close; and, climbing into the omnibus, they re-ciprocally
loosened each other's upper hook, and with
their moistened collars laid starchless in their laps,
awaited the opening of the mystery.

Enter Ophelia, as expected. She laid her thin hand
upon the leather string, and, drawing the door after
her, leaned out of its open window in breathless suspense
and agitation.

Ione's step was now audible, returning from 132.
Slowly she came, but invisibly, for it had grown suddenly
pitch-dark; and only the far-off lamps, up and
down the street, served to guide her footsteps.

But hark! the sound of a heel! He came! They
met! He passed his arm around her and drew her
beneath the tree—and with whispers, soft and low,
leaned breathing to her ear. He was tall. He was in
a cloak. And, oh ecstasy he was thin! But thinkest
thou to know, oh reader of dust, what passed on those
ethereal whispers? Futile—futile curiosity! Even to
Ophelia's straining ear, those whispers were inaudible.

But hark! a rumble! Something wrong in the
bowels of the sky! And pash! pash!—on the resounding
roof of the omnibus—fell drops of rain—fitfully!
fitfully!

“My dear!” whispered Ophelia (for Ione had borrowed
her chip hat, the better to elude recognition),
“ask Ithuriel to step in.”

Ithuriel started to find a witness near, but a whisper
from Ione reassured him, and gathering his cloak
around his face, he followed his spirit-bride into the
'bus.

The fat Miss Flimminses contracted their orbed
shapes, and made themselves small against the padded
extremity of the vehicle; Ophelia retreated to the middle,
and, next the door, on either side, sat the starry
bride and bridegroom—all breathlessly silent. Yet
there was a murmur—for five hearts beat within that
'bus's duodecimal womb; and the rain pelted on the
roof, pailsful-like and unpityingly.

But slap! dash! whew! heavens!—In rushed a
youth, dripping, dripping!

“Get out!” cried Ione, over whose knees he drew
himself like an eel pulled through a basket of contorted
other eels.

“Come, come, young man!” said a deep bass voice,
of which everybody had some faint remembrance.

“Oh!” cried one fat Miss Flimmins.

“Ah!” screamed the other.

“What?—dad!” exclaimed Gideon Flimmins, who
had dashed into the sheltering 'bus to save his new
hat—“dad here with a girl!”

But the fat Flimminses were both in convulsions.
Scream! scream! scream!

A moment of confusion! The next moment a sudden
light! A watchman with his lantern stood at the
door.

“Papa!” ejaculated three of the ladies.

“Old Flimmins!—my heart will burst!” murmured
Ione.

The two fat girls hurried on their collars; and Gideon,
all amazement at finding himself in such a family
party at midnight in a lonely 'bus, stepped out and entered
into converse with the guardian of the night.

The rain stopped suddenly, and the omnibus gave
up its homogeneous contents. Old Flimmins, who
was in a violent perspiration, gave Gideon his cloak to
carry, and his two arms to his two pinguid adult
pledges. Gideon took Ophelia and Phebe, and they
mizzled. Mockery! mockery!

Ione is not yet gone to the spirit-sphere—kept here
partly by the strength of the fleshy fetter over which
she mourned, and partly by the dove-tailed duties consequent
upon annual Flimminses. Gideon loves her
after the manner of this world—but she sighs “when
she hears sweet music,” that her better part is still
unappreciated—unfathomed—“cabined, cribbed, confined!”

MABEL WYNNE.

Mabel Wynne was the topmost sparkle on the
crest of the first wave of luxury that swept over New
York. Up to her time, the aristocratic houses were
furnished with high buffets, high-backed and hair-bottomed
mahogany chairs, one or two family portraits,
and a silver tray on the side-board, containing cordials
and brandy for morning-callers. In the centre of the
room hung a chandelier of colored lamps, and the
lighting of this and the hiring of three negroes (to
“fatigue,” as the French say, a clarinet, a baseviol,
and a violin) were the only preparations necessary for
the most distinguished ball. About the time that
Mable left school, however, some adventurous poineer
of the Dutch haut ton ventured upon lamp-stands for
the corners of the rooms, stuffed red benches along
the walls, and chalked floors; and upon this a French
family of great beauty, residing in the lower part of
Broadway, ventured upon a fancy ball with wax-candles
instead of lamps, French dishes and sweetmeats instead
of pickled oysters and pink champagne; and,
the door thus opened, luxury came in like a flood.
Houses were built on a new plan of sumptuous arrangement,
the ceiling stained in fresco, and the
columns of the doors within painted in imitation of
bronze and marble; and at last the climax was topped
by Mr. Wynne, who sent the dimensions of every
room in his new house to an upholsterer in Paris,
with carle blanche as to costliness and style, and the
fournisseur to come out himself and see to the arrangement
and decoration.

It was Manhattan tea-time, old style, and while
Mr. Wynne, who had the luxury of a little plain
furniture in the basement, was comfortably taking his
toast and hyson below stairs, Miss Wynne was just
announced as “at home,” by the black footman, and
two of her admirers made their highly-scented entrée.
They were led through a suite of superb rooms, lighted
with lamps hid in alabaster vases, and ushered in
at a mirror-door beyond, where, in a tent of fluted silk,
with ottomans and draperies of the same stuff, exquisitely
arranged, the imperious Mabel held her
court of 'teens.

Mabel Wynne was one of those accidents of sovereign
beauty which nature seems to take delight in misplacing
in the world—like the superb lobelia flashing
among the sedges, or the golden oriole pluming his
dazzling wings in the depth of a wilderness. She
was no less than royal in all her belongings. Her
features expressed consciousness of sway—a sway
whose dictates had been from infancy anticipated.
Never a surprise had startled those languishing eyelids
from their deliberateness—never a suffusion other than
the humid cloud of a tender and pensive hour had
dimmed those adorable dark eyes. Or, so at least it
seemed!

She was a fine creature, nevertheless—Mabel
Wynne! But she looked to others like a specimen
of such fragile and costly workmanship that nothing
beneath a palace would be a becoming home for her.

“For the present,” said Mr. Bellallure, one of the
gentlemen who entered, “the bird has a fitting cage.”

Miss Wynne only smiled in reply, and the other
gentleman took upon himself to be the interpreter of
her unexpressed thought.

“The cage is the accessory—not the bird,” said
Mr. Blythe, “and, for my part, I think Miss Wynne
would show better the humbler her surroundings.
As Perdita upon the greensward, and open to a shepherd's
wooing, I should inevitably sling my heart upon
a crook—”

“And forswear that formidable, impregnable vow of
celibacy?” interrupted Miss Wynne.

“I am only supposing a case, and you are not likely
to be a shepherdess on the green.” But Mr. Blythe's
smile ended in a look of clouded revery, and, after
a few minutes' conversation, ill sustained by the gentlemen,
who seemed each in the other's way, they
rose and took their leave—Mr. Bellallure lingering
last, for he was a lover avowed.

As the door closed upon her admirer, Miss Wynne
drew a letter from her portfolio, and turning it over
and over with a smile of abstracted curiosity, opened
and read it for the second time. She had received it
that morning from an unknown source, and as it was
rather a striking communication, perhaps the reader
had better know something of it before we go on.

It commenced without preface, thus:—

“On a summer morning, twelve years ago, a
chimney-sweep, after doing his work and singing his
song, commenced his descent. It was the chimney
of a large house, and becoming embarrassed among
the flues, he lost his way and found himself on the
hearth of a sleeping-chamber occupied by a child.
The sun was just breaking through the curtains of
the room, a vacated bed showed that some one had
risen lately, probably the nurse, and the sweep, with
an irresistible impulse, approached the unconscious
little sleeper. She lay with her head upon a round
arm buried in flaxen curls, and the smile of a dream
on her rosy and parted lips. It was a picture of
singular loveliness, and something in the heart of that
boy-sweep, as he stood and looked upon the child,
knelt to it with an agony of worship. The tears gushed
to his eyes. He stripped the sooty blanket from
his breast, and looked at the skin white upon his side.
The contrast between his condition and that of the
fair child sleeping before him brought the blood to his
blackened brow with the hot rush of lava. He knelt
beside the bed on which she slept, took her hand in
his sooty grasp, and with a kiss upon the white and
dewy fingers poured his whole soul with passionate
earnestness into a resolve.

“Hereafter you may learn, if you wish, the first
struggles of that boy in the attempt to diminish the
distance between yourself and him—for you will have
understood that you were the beautiful child he saw
asleep. I repeat that it is twelve years since he stood
in your chamber. He has seen you almost daily since
then—watched your going out and coming in—fed his
eyes and heart on your expanding beauty, and informed
himself of every change and development in your
mind and character. With this intimate knowledge
of you, and with the expansion of his own intellect,
his passion has deepened and strengthened. It possesses
him now as life does his heart, and will endure
as long. But his views with regard to you have
changed, nevertheless.

“You will pardon the presumption of my first
feeling—that to attain my wishes I had only to become
your equal. It was a natural error—for my
agony at realizing the difference of our conditions in

life was enough to absorb me at the time—but it is
surprising to me how long that delusion lasted. I am
rich now. I have lately added to my fotune the last
acquisition I thought desirable. But with the thought
of the next thing to be done, came like a thunderbolt
upon me the fear that after all my efforts you might
be destined for another! The thought is simple
enough. You would think that it would have haunted
me from the beginning. But I have either unconsciously
shut my eyes to it, or I have been so absorbed
in educating and enriching myself that that goal only
was visible to me. It was perhaps fortunate for my
perseverance that I was so blinded. Of my midnight
studies, of my labors, of all my plans, self-denials, and
anxieties, you have seemed the reward! I have never
gained a thought, never learned a refinement, never
turned over gold and silver, that it was not a step
nearer to Mabel Wynne. And now, that in worldly
advantages, after twelve years of effort and trial, I
stand by your side at last, a thousand men who never
thought of you till yesterday are equal competitors
with me for your hand!

“But, as I said, my views with regard to you have
changed. I have, with bitter effort, conquered the
selfishness of this one lifetime ambition. I am devoted
to you, as I have been from the moment I first
saw you—life and fortune. These are still yours—
but without the price at which you might spurn them.
My person is plain and unattractive. You have seen
me, and shown me no preference. There are others
whom you receive with favor. And with your glorious
beauty, and sweet, admirably sweet qualities of character,
it would be an outrage to nature that you should
not choose freely, and be mated with something of
your kind. Of those who now surround you I see no
one worthy of you—but he may come! Jealousy
shall not blind me to his merits. The first mark of
your favor (and I shall be aware of it) will turn upon
him my closest, yet most candid scrutiny. He must
love you well—for I shall measure his love by my
own. He must have manly beauty, and delicacy, and
honor—he must be worthy of you, in short—but he
need not be rich. He who steps between me and you
takes the fortune I had amassed for you. I tell you
this that you may have no limit in your choice—for the
worthiest of a woman's lovers is often barred from her
by poverty.

“Of course I have made no vow against seeking
your favor. On the contrary, I shall lose no opportunity
of making myself agreeable to you. It is against
my nature to abandon hope, though I am painfully
conscious of my inferiority to other men in the qualities
which please a woman. All I have done is to
deprive my pursuit of its selfishness—to make it subservient
to your happiness purely—as it still would be
were I the object of your preference. You will hear
from me at any crisis of your feelings. Pardon my
being a spy upon you. I know you well enough to
be sure that this letter will be a secret—since I wish
it. Adieu.”

Mabel laid her cheek in the hollow of her hand and
mused long on this singular communication. It stirred
her romance, but it wakened still more her curiosity.
Who was he? She had “seen him and shown him
no preference!” Which could it be of the hundred
of her chance-made acquaintances? She conjectured
at some disadvantage, for “she had come out” within
the past year only, and her mother having long been
dead, the visiters to the house were all but recently
made known to her. She could set aside two thirds
of them, as sons of families well known, but there
were at least a score of others, any one of whom might,
twelve years before, have been as obscure as her
anonymous lover. Whoever he might be, Mabel
thought he could hardly come into her presence again
without betraying himself, and, with a pleased smile
at the thought of the discovery, she again locked up
the letter.

Those were days (to be regretted or not, as you
please, dear reader!) when the notable society of
New York revolved in one self-complacent and clearly-defined
circle. Call it a wheel, and say that the
centre was a belle and the radii were beaux—(the
periphery of course composed of those who could
“down with the dust”). And on the fifteenth of July,
regularly and imperatively, this fashionable wheel
rolled off to Saratoga.

“Mabel! my daughter!” said old Wynne, as he
bade her good night the evening before starting for
the springs, “it is useless to be blind to the fact that
among your many admirers you have several very
pressing lovers—suiters for your hand I may safely
say. Now, I do not wish to put any unnecessary restraint
upon your choice, but as you are going to a
gay place, where you are likely to decide the matter
in your own mind, I wish to express an opinion. You
may give it what weight you think a father's judgment
should have in such matters. I do not like Mr.
Bellallure—for, beside my prejudice against the man,
we know nothing of his previous life, and he may be
a swindler or anything else. I do like Mr. Blythe—
for I have known him many years, he comes of a
most respectable family, and he is wealthy and worthy.
These two seem to me the most in earnest, and you
apparently give them the most of your time. If the decision
is to be between them, you have my choice.
Good night, my love!”

Some people think it is owing to the Saratoga
water. I differ from them. The water is an “alterative,”
it is true—but I think people do not so much
alter as develop at Saratoga. The fact is clear enough
—that at the springs we change our opinions of almost
everybody—but (though it seems a bold supposition
at first glance) I am inclined to believe it is because
we see so much more of them! Knowing people in
the city and knowing them at the springs is very much
in the same line of proof as tasting wine and drinking
a bottle. Why, what is a week's history of a city acquaintance?
A morning call thrice a week, a diurnal
bow in Broadway, and perhaps a quadrille or two in
the party season. What chance in that to ruffle a
temper or try a weakness? At the springs, now, dear
lady, you wear a man all day like a shoe. Down at
the platform with him to drink the waters before breakfast—strolls
on the portico with him till ten—drives with
him to Barheight's till dinner—lounges in the drawing-room
with him till tea—dancing and promenading
with him till midnight—very little short altogether of
absolute matrimony; and, like matrimony, it is a very
severe trial. Your “best fellow” is sure, to be found
out, and so is your plausible fellow, your egotist, and
your “spoon.”

Mr. Beverly Bellallure had cultivated the male
attractions with marked success. At times he probably
thought himself a plain man, and an artist who
should only paint what could be measured with a rule,
would have made a plain portrait of Mr. Bellallure.
But—the atmosphere of the man! There is a physiognomy
in movement—there is aspect in the harmonious
link between mood and posture—there is expression
in the face of which the features are as much
a portrait as a bagpipe is a copy of a Scotch song.
Beauty, my dear artist, can not always be translated
by canvass and oils. You must paint “the magnetic
fluid” to get a portrait of some men. Sir Thomas
Lawrence seldom painted anything else—as you may
see by his picture of Lady Blessington, which is like
her without having copied a single feature of her face.
Yet an artist would be very much surprised if you
should offer to sit to him for your magnetic atmosphere—though
it expresses (does it not?) exactly

what you want when you order a picture! You wish
to be painted as your appear to those who love you—
a picture altogether unrecognisable by those who love
you not.

Mr. Bellallure, then, was magnetically handsome
—positively plain. He dressed with an art beyond
detection. He spent his money as if he could dip it
at will out of Pactolus. He was intimate with nobody,
and so nobody knew his history; but he wrote himself
on the register of Congress hall as “from New
York,” and he threw all his forces into one unmistakable
demonstration—the pursuit of Miss Mabel
Wynne.

But Mr. Bellallure had a formidable rival. Mr.
Blythe was as much in earnest as he, though he played
his game with a touch-and-go freedom, as if he
was prepared to lose it. And Mr. Blythe had very
much surprised those people at Saratoga who did not
know that between a very plain man and a very elegant
man there is often but the adding of the rose-leaf to
the brimming jar. He was perhaps a little gayer
than in New York, certainly a little more dressed,
certainly a little more prominent in general conversation—but
without any difference that you could swear
to, Mr. Blythe, the plain and reliable business man,
whom everybody esteemed without particularly admiring,
had become Mr. Blythe the model of elegance
and ease, the gentleman and conversationist
par excellence. And nobody could tell how the statue
could have lain so long unsuspected in the marble.

The race for Miss Wynne's hand and fortune was
a general sweepstakes, and there were a hundred men
at the springs ready to take advantage of any falling
back on the part of the two on the lead; but with
Blythe and Bellallure Miss Wynne herself seemed
fully occupied. The latter had a “friend at court”
—the belief, kept secret in the fair Mabel's heart, that
he was the romantic lover of whose life and fortune
she had been the inspiration. She was an eminently
romantic girl with all her strong sense; and the devotion
which had proved itself so deep and controlling
was in reality the dominant spell upon her heart.
She felt that she must love that man, whatever his
outside might be, and she construed the impenetrable
silence with which Bellallure received her occasional
hints as to his identity, into a magnanimous determination
to win her without any advantage from the
romance of his position.

Yet she sometimes wished it had been Mr. Blythe!
The opinion of her father had great weight with her;
but, more than that, she felt instinctively that he was
the safer man to be intrusted with a woman's happiness.
If there had been a doubt—if her father had
not assured her that “Mr. Blythe came of a most
respectable family”—if the secret had wavered between
them—she would have given up to Bellallure
without a sigh. Blythe was everything she admired
and wished for in a husband—but the man who had
made himself for her, by a devotion unparalleled even
in her reading of fiction, held captive her dazzled imagination,
if not her grateful heart. She made constant
efforts to think only of Bellallure, but the efforts
were preceded ominously with a sigh.

And now Bellallure's star seemed in the ascendant—
for urgent business called Mr. Wynne to the city, and
on the succeeding day Mr. Blythe followed him,
though with an assurance of speedy return. Mabel
was left under the care of an indulgent chaperon, who
took a pleasure in promoting the happiness of the
supposed lovers; and driving, lounging, waltzing, and
promenading, Bellallure pushed his suit with ardor
unremitted. He was a skilful master of the art of
wooing, and it would have been a difficult woman indeed
who would not have been pleased with his society—but
the secret in Mabel's breast was the spell by
which he held her.

A week elapsed, and Bellallure pleaded the receipt
of unexpected news, and left suddenly for New York—
to Mabel's surprise exacting no promise at parting,
though she felt that she should have given it with reluctance.
The mail of the second day following
brought her a brief letter from her father, requesting
her immediate return; and more important still, a note
from her incognito lover. It ran thus:—

“You will recognise my handwriting again. I have
little to say—for I abandon the intention I had formed
to comment on your apparent preference. Your happiness
is in your own hands. Circumstances which
will be explained to you, and which will excuse this
abrupt forwardness, compel me to urge you to an immediate
choice. On your arrival at home, you will
meet me in your father's house, where I shall call to
await you. I confess tremblingly, that I still cherish
a hope. If I am not deceived—if you can consent to
love me—if my long devotion is to be rewarded—take
my hand when you meet me. That moment will decide
the value of my life. But be prepared also to
name another if you love him—for there is a necessity,
which I can not explain to you till you have
chosen your husband, that this choice should be made
on your arrival. Trust and forgive one who has so
long loved you!”

Mabel pondered long on this strange letter. Her
spirit at moments revolted against its apparent dictation,
but there was the assurance, which she could
not resist trusting, that it could be explained and forgiven.
At all events, she was at liberty to fulfil its
requisitions or not—and she would decide when the
time came. Happy was Mabel—unconsciously happy—in
the generosity and delicacy of her unnamed
lover! Her father, by one of the sudden reverses of
mercantile fortune, had been stripped of his wealth
in a day! Stunned and heart-broken, he knew not
how to break it to his daughter, but he had written
for her to return. His sumptuous house had been
sold over his head, yet the purchaser, whom he did
not know, had liberally offered the use of it till his
affairs were settled. And, meantime, his ruin was
made public. The news of it, indeed, had reached
Saratoga before the departure of Mabel—but there
were none willing to wound her by speaking of it.

The day was one of the sweetest of summer, and
as the boat ploughed her way down the Hudson, Mabel
sat on the deck lost in thought. Her father's
opinion of Bellallure, and his probable displeasure at
her choice, weighed uncomfortably on her mind.
She turned her thoughts upon Mr. Blythe, and felt surprised
at the pleasure with which she remembered his
kind manners and his trust-inspiring look. She began
to reason with herself more calmly than she had
power to do with her lovers around her. She confessed
to herself that Bellallure might have the romantic
perseverance shown in the career of the chimney-sweep,
and still be deficient in qualities necessary
to domestic happiness. There seemed to her something
false about Bellallure. She could not say in
what—but he had so impressed her. A long day's
silent reflection deepened this impression, and Mabel
arrived at the city with changed feelings. She prepared
herself to meet him at her father's house, and
show him by her manner that she could accept neither
his hand nor his fortune.

Mr. Wynne was at the door to receive his daughter,
and Mabel felt relieved, for she thought that his pressence
would bar all explanation between herself and
Bellallure. The old man embraced her with an effusion
of tears which she did not quite understand, but
he led her to the drawing-room and closed the door.
Mr. Blythe stood before her!

Forgetting the letter—dissociated wholly as it was,
in her mind, with Mr. Blythe—Mabel ran to him
with frank cordiality and gave him her hand! Blythe

stood a moment—his hand trembling in hers—and as
a suspicion of the truth flashed suddenly on Mabel's
mind, the generous lover drew her to his bosom and
folded her passionately in his embrance. Mabel's
struggles were slight, and her happiness unexpectedly
complete.

The marriage was like other marriages.

Mr. Wynne had drawn a little on his imagination
in recommending Mr. Blythe to his daughter as “a
young man of most respectable family.”

Mr. Blythe was the purchaser of Mr. Wynne's superb
house, and the old man ended his days under its
roof—happy to the last in the society of the Blythes,
large and little.

Mr. Bellallure turned out to be a clever adventurer,
and had Mabel married him, she would have been
Mrs. Bellallure No. 2—possibly No. 4. He thought
himself too nice a young man for monopoly.

I think my story is told—if your imagination has
filled up the interstices, that is to say.

THE GHOST-BALL AT CONGRESS HALL.

It was the last week of September, and the keeper
of “Congress hall” stood on his deserted colonnade.
The dusty street of Saratoga was asleep in the stillness
of village afternoon. The whittlings of the stage-runners
at the corners, and around the leaning posts,
were fading into dingy undistinguishableness. Stiff
and dry hung the slop-cloths at the door of the livery
stable, and drearily clean was doorway and stall.
“The season” was over.

“Well, Mr. B—!” said the Boniface of the
great caravansary, to a gentlemanly-looking invalid,
crossing over from the village tavern on his way to
Congress spring, “this looks like the end of it! A
slimmish season, though, Mr. B—! `Gad, things
isn't as they used to be in your time! Three months
we used to have of it, in them days, and the same
people coming and going all summer, and folks' own
horses, and all the ladies drinking champagne! And
every `hop' was as good as a ball, and a ball—when do
you ever see such balls now-a-days? Why, here's
all my best wines in the cellar; and as to beauty—
pooh!—they're done coming here, any how, are the
belles, such as belles was!”

“You may say that, mine host, you may say that!”
replied the damaged Corydon, leaning heavily on his
cane,—“what—they're all gone, now, eh—nobody at
the `United States?”'

“Not a soul—and here's weather like August!—
capital weather for young ladies to walk out evenings,
and, for a drive to Barheight's—nothing like it! It's
a sin, I say, to pass such weather in the city! Why
shouldn't they come to the springs in the Indian
summer, Mr. B—?”

Coming events seemed to have cast their shadows
before. As Boniface turned his eyes instinctively
toward the sand hill, whose cloud of dust was the
precursor of new pilgrims to the waters, and the sign
for the black boy to ring the bell of arrival, behold, on
its summit, gleaming through the nebulous pyramid,
like a lobster through the steam of the fisherman's
pot, one of the red coaches of “the People's Line.”

And another!

And another!

And another!

Down the sandy descent came the first, while the
driver's horn, intermittent with the crack of his whip,
set to bobbing every pine cone of the adjacent wilderness.

“Prrr—ru—te—too—toot—pash!—crack!—snap!
—prrrr—r—rut—rut—rrut!! G'lang!—Hip!”

Boniface laid his hand on the pull of the porter's
bell, but the thought flashed through his mind that
he might have been dreaming—was he awake?

And, marvel upon wonder!—a horn of arrival from
the other end of the village! And as he turned his
eyes in that direction, he saw the dingier turnouts
from Lake Sacrament—extras, wagons—every variety
of rattletrap conveyance—pouring in like an Irish
funeral on the return, and making (oh, climax more
satisfactory!) straight, all, for Congress Hall!

Events now grew precipitate—

Ladies were helped out with green veils—parasols
and baskets were handed after them—baggage was
chalked and distributed—(and parasols, baskets, and
baggage, be it noted, were all of the complexion that
innkeepers love, the indefinable look which betrays
the owner's addictedness to extras)—and now there
was ringing of bells; and there were orders for the
woodcocks to be dressed with pork chemises, and for
the champagne to be iced, the sherry not—and
through the arid corridors of Congress hall floated
a delicious toilet air of cold cream and lavender—and
ladies' maids came down to press out white dresses,
while the cook heated the curling irons—and up and
down the stairs flitted, with the blest confusion of
other days, boots and ieed sangarees, hot water, towels,
and mint-juleps—all delightful, but all incomprehensible!
Was the summer encored, or had the Jews
gone back to Jerusalem? To the keeper of Congress
hall the restoration of the millenium would have
been a rush-light to this second advent of fun-and-fashion-dom!

Thus far we have looked through the eyes of the
person (pocket-ually speaking) most interested in the
singular event we wished to describe. Let us now
(tea being over, and your astonishment having had
time to breathe) take the devil's place at the elbow of
the invalided dandy beforementioned, and follow him
over to Congress Hall. It was a mild night and, as I
said before (or meant to, if I did not), August, having
been prematurely cut off by his raining successor,
seemed up again, like Hamlet's governor, and bent on
walking out his time.

Rice (you remember Rice—famous for his lemonades
with a corrective)—Rice, having nearly ignited
his forefinger with charging wines at dinner, was out
to cool on the colonnade, and B—, not strong
enough to stand about, drew a chair near the drawing-room
window, and begged the rosy barkeeper to throw
what light he could upon this multitudinous apparition.
Rice could only feed the fire of his wonder
with the fuel of additional circumstances. Coaches
had been arriving from every direction till the house
was full. The departed black band had been stopped
at Albany, and sent back. There seemed no married
people in the party—at least, judging by dress and
flirtation. Here and there a belle, a little on the
wane, but all most juvenescent in gayety, and (Rice

thought) handsomer girls than had been at Congress
hall since the days of the Albany regency (the regency
of beauty), ten years ago! Indeed, it struck Rice
that he had seen the faces of these lovely girls before,
though they whom he thought they resembled had
long since gone off the stage—grandmothers, some of
them, now!

Rice had been told, also, that there was an extraordinary
and overwhelming arrival of children and
nurses at the Pavilion Hotel, but he thought the
report smelt rather like a jealous figment of the
Pavilioners. Odd, if true—that's all!

Mr. B—had taken his seat on the colonnade, as
Shakspere expresses it, “about cock-shut time”—
twilight—and in the darkness made visible of the
rooms within, he could only distinguish the outline of
some very exquisite, and exquisitely plump figures
gliding to and fro, winged, each one, with a pair of
rather stoutish, but most attentive admirers. As the
curfew hour stole away, however, the ladies stole away
with it, to dress; and at ten o'clock the sudden outbreak
of the full band in a mazurka, drew Mr.
B—'s attention to the dining-room frontage of the
colonnade, and, moving his chair to one of the windows,
the cockles of his heart warmed to see the
orchestra in its glory of old—thirteen black Orpheuses
perched on a throne of dining-tables, and the black
veins on their shining temples strained to the crack
of mortality with their zealous execution. The
waiters, meantime, were lighting the tin Briareus (that
spermaciti monster so destructive to broadcloth), and
the side-sconces and stand-lamps, and presently a
blaze of light flooded the dusty evergreens of the
façade, and nothing was wanting but some fashionable
Curtius to plunge first into the void—some adventurous
Benton, “to set the ball in motion.”

Wrapped carefully from the night-air in his cloak
and belcher, B— sat, looking earnestly into the
room, and to his excited senses there seemed, about
all this supplement to the summer's gayety, a weird
mysteriousness, an atmosphere of magic, which was
observable, he thought, even in the burning of the
candles! And as to Johnson, the sable leader of the
band—“God's-my-life,” as Bottom says, how like a
tormented fiend writhed the cremona betwixt his chin
and white waistcoat! Such music, from instruments
so vexed, had never split the ears of the Saratoga
groundlings since the rule of Saint Dominick (in
whose hands even wine sparkled to song)—no, not
since the golden age of the Springs, when that lord of
harmony and the nabobs of lower Broadway made, of
Congress hall, a paradise for the unmarried? Was
Johnson bewitched? Was Congress hall repossessed
by the spirits of the past? If ever Mr. B—, sitting
in other years on that resounding colonnade, had felt
the magnetic atmosphere of people he knew to be up
stairs, he felt it now! If ever he had been contented,
knowing that certain bright creatures would presently
glide into the visual radius of black Johnson, he felt
contented, inexplicably, from the same cause now—
expecting, as if such music could only be their herald,
the entrance of the same bright creatures, no older,
and as bright after years of matrimony. And now and
then B— pressed his hand to his head—for he was
not quite sure that he might not be a little wandering
in his mind.

But suddenly the band struck up a march! The
first bar was played through, and B— looked at
the door, sighing that this sweet hallucination—this
waking dream of other days—was now to be scattered
by reality He could have filliped that mercenary
Ethiopian on the nose for playing such music to such
falling off from the past as he now looked to see
enter.

A lady crossed the threshold on a gentleman's arm.

“Ha! ha!” said B—, trying with a wild effort to
laugh, and pinching his arm into a blood-blister,
“come—this is too good! Helen K—! oh, no!
Not quite crazy yet, I hope—not so far gone yet!
Yet it is! I swear it is! And not changed either!
Beautiful as ever, by all that is wonderful! Psha!
I'll not be mad! Rice!—are you there? Why, who
are these coming after her? Julia L—! Anna
K—, and my friend Fanny! The D—s! The
M—s! Nay, I'm dreaming, silly fool that I am!
I'll call for a light! Waiter!! Where the devil's
the bell?”

And as poor B— insisted on finding himself in
bed, reached out his hand to find the bell-pull, one of
the waiters of Congress hall came to his summons.
The gentleman wanted nothing, and the waiter
thought he had cried out in his nap; and rather
embarrassed to explain his wants, but still uncovinced
of his freedom from dream-land, B— drew his hat
over his eyes, and his cloak around him, and screwed
up his courage to look again into the enchanted ball-room.

The quadrilles were formed, and the lady at the
head of the first set was spreading her skirts for the
avant-deux. She was a tall woman, superbly handsome,
and moved with the grace of a frigate at sea
with a nine-knot breeze. Eyes capable of taking in
lodgers (hearts, that is to say) of any and every calibre
and quality, a bust for a Cornelia, a shape all love and
lightness, and a smile like a temptation of Eblis—
there she was—and there were fifty like her—not like
her, exactly, either, but of her constellation—belles,
every one of them, who will be remembered by old
men, and used for the disparagement of degenerated
younglings—splendid women of Mr. B—'s time,
and of the palmy time of Congress hall—

Out on your staring and unsheltered lantern of
brick—your “United States hotel,” stiff, modern, and
promiscuous! Who ever passed a comfortable hour
in its glaring cross-lights, or breathed a gentle sentiment
in its unsubdued air and townish open-to-dustiness!
What is it to the leafy dimness, the cool shadows,
the perpetual and pensive demi-jour—what to the
ten thousand associations—of Congress hall! Who
has not lost a heart (or two) on the boards of that
primitive wilderness of a colonnade! Whose first
adorations, whose sighs, hopes, strategies, and flirtations,
are not ground into that warped and slipper-polished
floor, like heartache and avarice into the
bricks of Wall street! Lord bless you, madam!
don't desert old Congress hall! We have done going
to the Springs—(we)—and wouldn't go there again
for anything, but a good price for a pang—(that is,
except to see such a sight as we are describing)—but
we can not bear, in our midsummer flit through the
Astor, to see charming girls bound for Saratoga, and
hear no talk of Congress hall! What! no lounge
on those proposal sofas—no pluck at the bright green
leaves of those luxuriant creepers while listening to
“the voice of the charmer”—no dawdle on the steps
to the spring (mamma gone on before)—no hunting
for that glow-worm in the shrubbery by the music-room—no
swing—no billiards—no morning gossips
with the few privileged beaux admitted to the upstairs
entry, ladies' wing?

than assist or mingle in such ungrateful forgetfulness
of pleasure-land! But what do we with a digression
in a ghost-story?

The ball went on. Champagne of the “exploded”
color (pink) was freely circulated between the dances—
(rosy wine suited to the bright days when all things
were tinted rose)—and wit, exploded, too, in these

leaden times, went round with the wine; and as a
glass of the bright vintage was handed up to old
Johnson, B— stretched his neck over the window-sill
in an agony of expectation, confident that the
black ghost, if ghost he were, would fail to recognise
the leaders of fashion, as he was wont of old, and to
bow respectfully to them before drinking in their presence.
Oh, murder! not he! Down went his black
poll to the music-stand, and up, and down again, and
at every dip, the white roller of that unctuous eye was
brought to bear upon some well-remembered star of
the ascendant! He saw them as B— did! He
was not playing to an unrecognised company of late-comers
to Saratoga—anybodies from any place! He,
the unimaginative African, believed evidently that
they were there in flesh—Helen, the glorious, and all
her fair troop of contemporaries!—and that with them
had come back their old lovers, the gay and gallant
Lotharios of the time of Johnson's first blushing
honors of renown! The big drops of agonized horror
and incredulity rolled off the forehead of Mr. B—!

But suddenly the waiters radiated to the side-doors,
and with the celestial felicity of star-rising and morning-breaking,
a waltz was found playing in the ears
of the revellers! Perfect, yet when it did begin!
Waltzed every brain and vein, waltzed every swimming
eye within the reach of its magic vibrations!
Gently away floated couple after couple, and as they
circled round to his point of observation, B— could
have called every waltzer by name—but his heart was
in his throat, but his eyeballs were hot with the stony
immovableness of his long gazing.

Another change in the music! Spirits of bedevilment!
could not that waltz have been spared! Boniface
stood waltzing his head from shoulder to shoulder
—Rice twirled the head-chambermaid in the entry—
the black and white boys spun round on the colonnade
—the wall-flowers in the ball-room crowded their
chairs to the wall—the candles flared embracingly—
ghosts or no ghosts, dream or hallucination, B—
could endure no more! He flung off his cloak and
hat, and jumped in at the window. The divine Emily
C— had that moment risen from tying her shoe.
With a nod to her partner, and a smile to herself,
B— encircled her round waist, and away he flew
like Ariel, light on the toe, but his face pallid and
wild, and his emaciated legs playing like sticks in his
unfilled trousers. Twice he made the circuit of the
room, exciting apparently less surprise than pleasure
by his sudden appearance; then, with a wavering halt,
and his hand laid tremulously to his forehead, he flew
at the hall-door at a tangent, and rushing through
servants and spectators, dashed across the portico, and
disappeared in the darkness! A fortnight's brain-fever
deprived him of the opportunity of repeating this remarkable
flourish, and his subsequent sanity was established
through some critical hazard.

There was some inquiry at supper about “old
B—,” but the lady who waltzed with him knew
as little of his coming and going as the managers;
and, by one belle, who had been at some trouble in
other days to quench his ardor, it was solemnly believed
to be his persevering apparition.

The next day there was a drive and dinner at Bar
height's, and back in time for ball and supper; and
the day after there was a most hilarious and memorable
fishing-party to Saratoga lake, and all back again
in high force for the ball and supper; and so like a
long gala-day, like a short summer carnival, all frolic,
sped the week away. Boniface, by the third day, had
rallied his recollections, and with many a scrape and
compliment, he renewed his acquaintance with the
belles and beaux of a brighter period of beauty and
gallantry. And if there was any mystery remaining
in the old functionary's mind as to the identity and
miracle of their presence and reunion, it was on the
one point of the ladies' unfaded loveliness—for, saving
a half inch aggregation in the waist, which was rather
an improvement than otherwise, and a little more fulness
in the bust, which was a most embellishing difference,
the ten years that had gone over them had
made no mark on the lady portion of his guests; and
as to the gentlemen—but that is neither here nor there.
They were “men of mark,” young or old, and their
wear and tear is, as Flute says, “a thing of naught.”

It was revealed by the keeper of the Pavilion, after
the departure of the late-come revellers of Congress
hall, that there had been constant and secret visitations
by the belles of the latter sojourn, to the numerous
infantine lodgers of the former. Such a troop
of babies and boys, and all so lovely, had seldom
gladdened even the eyes of angels, out of the cherubic
choir (let alone the Saratoga Pavilion), and though,
in their white dresses and rose-buds, the belles afore
spoken of looked like beautiful elder sisters to those
motherless younglings, yet when they came in, mothers
confessed, on the morning of departure, openly
to superintend the preparations for travel, they had so
put off the untroubled maiden look from their countenances,
and so put on the indescribable growing-old-iness
of married life in their dress, that, to the
eye of an observer, they might well have passed for
the mothers of the girls they had themselves seemed
to be, the day before, only.

Who devised, planned, and brought about, this practical
comment on the needlessness of the American
haste to be old, we are not at liberty to mention. The
reader will have surmised, however, that it was some
one who had observed the more enduring quality of
beauty in other lands, and on returning to his own,
looked in vain for those who, by every law of nature,
should be still embellishing the society of which he
had left them the budding flower and ornament. To
get them together again, only with their contemporaries,
in one of their familiar haunts of pleasure—to
suggest the exclusion of everything but youthfulness
in dress, amusement, and occupation—to bring to
meet them their old admirers, married like themselves,
but entering the field once more for their smiles against
their rejuvenescent husbands—to array them as belles
again, and see whether it was any falling off in beauty
or the power of pleasing which had driven them from
their prominent places in social life—this was the obvious
best way of doing his immediate circles of
friends the service his feelings exacted of him; the
only way, indeed, of convincing these bright creatures
that they had far anticipated the fading hour of bloom
and youthfulness. Pensez-y!

BORN TO LOVE PIGS AND CHICKENS.

The guests at the Astor House were looking mournfully
out of the drawing-room windows, on a certain
rainy day of an October passed over to history. No
shopping—no visiting! The morning must be passed
in-doors. And it was some consolation to those who
were in town for a few days to see the world, that their
time was not quite lost, for the assemblage in the large
drawing-room was numerous and gay. A very dressy
affair is the drawing-room of the Astor, and as full of
eyes as a peacock's tail—(which, by the way, is also a
very dressy affair). Strangers who wish to see and be
seen (and especially “be seen”) on rainy days, as well
as on sunny days, in their visits to New York, should,
as the phrase goes, “patronize” the Astor. As if
there was any patronage in getting the worth of your
money!

Well—the people in the drawing-room looked a
little out of the windows, and a great deal at each
other. Unfortunately, it is only among angels and
underbred persons that introductions can be dispensed
with, and as the guests of that day at the Astor House
were mostly strangers to each other, conversation was
very fitful and guarded, and any movement whatever
extremely conspicuous. There were four very silent
ladies on the sofa, two very silent ladies in each of the
windows, silent ladies on the ottomans, silent ladies in
the chairs at the corners, and one silent lady, very
highly dressed, sitting on the music-stool, with her
back to the piano. There was here and there a gentleman
in the room, weather-bound and silent; but
we have only to do with one of these, and with the
last-mentioned much-embellished young lady.

“Well, I can't sit on this soft chair all day, cousin
Meg!” said the gentleman.

“'Sh!—call me Margaret, if you must speak so
loud,” said the lady. “And what would you do out
of doors this rainy day? I'm sure it's very pleasant
here.”

“Not for me. I'd rather be thrashing in the barn.
But there must be some `rainy-weather work' in the
city as well as the country. There's some fun, I know,
that's kept for a wet day, as we keep corn-shelling and
grinding the tools.”

“Dear me!”

“Well—what now?”

“Oh, nothing!—but I do wish you wouldn't bring
the stable with you to the Astor House.”

The gentleman slightly elevated his eyebrows, and
took a leaf of music from the piano, and commenced
diligently reading the mystic dots and lines. We have
ten minutes to spare before the entrance of another
person upon the scene, and we will make use of the
silence to conjure up for you, in our magic mirror,
the semblance of the two whose familiar dialogue we
have just jotted down.

Miss Margaret Pifflit was a young lady who had a
large share of what the French call la beauté du diable—youth
and freshness. (Though, why the devil
should have the credit of what never belonged to him,
it takes a Frenchman, perhaps, to explain.) To look
at, she was certainly a human being in very high perfection.
Her cheeks were like two sound apples; her
waist was as round as a stove-pipe; her shoulders had
two dimples just at the back, that looked as if they
defied punching to make them any deeper; her eyes
looked as if they were just made, they were so bright
and new; her voice sounded like “C sharp” in a new
piano; and her teeth were like a fresh break in a
cocoa-nut. She was inexorably, unabatedly, desperately
healthy. This fact, and the difficulty of uniting
all the fashions of all the magazines in one dress,
were her two principal afflictions in this world of care.
She had an ideal model, to which she aspired with
constant longings—a model resembling in figure the
high-born creatures whose never-varied face is seen
in all the plates of fashion, yet, if possible, paler and
more disdainful. If Miss Pifflit could have bent her
short wrist with the curve invariably given to the well-gloved
extremities of that mysterious and nameless
beauty; if she could but have sat with her back to
her friends, and thrown her head languishingly over
her shoulder without dislocating her neck; if she
could but have protruded from the flounce of her
dress a foot more like a mincing little muscle-shell,
and less like a jolly fat clam; in brief, if she could
have drawn out her figure like the enviable joints of a
spy-glass, whittled off more taperly her four extremities,
sold all her uproarious and indomitable roses for
a pot of carmine, and compelled the publishers of the
magazines to refrain from the distracting multiplicity
of their monthly fashions—with these little changes
in her allotment, Miss Pifflit would have realized all
her maiden aspirations up to the present hour.

A glimpse will give you an idea of the gentleman
in question. He was not much more than he looked
to be—a compact, athletic young man of twenty-one,
with clear, honest blue eyes, brown face, where it was
not shaded by the rim of his hat, curling brown hair,
and an expression of fearless qualities, dashed just
now by a tinge of rustic bashfulness. His dress was
a little more expensive and gayer than was necessary,
and he wore his clothes in a way which betrayed that
he would be more at home in shirt-sleeves. His hands
were rough, and his attitude that of a man who was
accustomed to fling himself down on the nearest
bench, or swing his legs from the top rail of a fence,
or the box of a wagon. We speak with caution of
his rusticity, however, for he had a printed card, “Mr.
Ephraim Bracely,” and he was a subscriber to the
“Spirit of the Times.” We shall find time to say a
thing or two about him as we get on.

“Eph.” Bracely and “Meg” Pifflit were “engaged.”
With the young lady it was, as the French
say, faute de mieux, for her beau-ideal (or, in plain
English, her ideal beau) was a tall, pale young gentleman,
with white gloves, in a rapid consumption. She
and Eph. were second cousins, however, and as she
was an orphan, and had lived since childhood with his
father, and, moreover, had inherited the Pifflit farm,
which adjoined that of the Bracelys, and, moreover,
had been told to “kiss her little husband, and love
him always” by the dying breath of her mother, and
(moreover third) had been “let be” his sweetheart by
the unanimous consent of the neighborhood, why, it
seemed one of those matches made in Heaven, and
not intended to be travestied on earth. It was understood
that they were to be married as soon as the
young man's savings should enable him to pull down
the old Pifflit house and build a cottage, and, with a
fair season, that might be done in another year.
Meantime, Eph. was a loyal keeper of his troth,
though never having the trouble to win the young

lady, he was not fully aware of the necessity of court-ship,
whether or no; and was, besides, somewhat unsusceptible
of the charms of moonlight, after a hard
day's work at haying or harvesting. The neighbors
thought it proof enough of his love that he never
“went sparking” elsewhere, and as he would rather
talk of his gun or his fishing-rod, his horse or his
crop, pigs, politics, or anything else, than of love or
matrimony, his companions took his engagement with
his cousin to be a subject upon which he felt too
deeply to banter, and they neither invaded his domain
by attentions to his sweetheart, nor suggested thought
by allusions to her. It was in the progress of this
even tenor of engagement, that some law business
had called old Farmer Bracely to New York, and the
young couple had managed to accompany him. And
of course nothing would do for Miss Pifflit but “the
Astor.”

And now, perhaps, the reader is ready to be told
whose carriage is at the Vesey street door, and
who sends up a dripping servant to inquire for Miss
Pifflit.

It is allotted to the destiny of every country-girl to
have one fashionable female friend in the city—somebody
to correspond with, somebody to quote, somebody
to write her the particulars of the last elopement,
somebody to send her patterns of collars, and the rise
and fall of tournures, and such other things as are not
entered into by the monthly magazines. How these
apparently unlikely acquaintances are formed, is as
much a mystery as the eternal youth of post-boys,
and the eternal duration of donkeys. Far be it from
me to pry irreverently into those pokerish corners of
the machinery of the world. I go no farther than
the fact, that Miss Julia Hampson was an acquaintance
of Miss Pifflit's.

Everybody knows “Hampson and Co.”

Miss Hampson was a good deal what the Fates had
tried to make her. If she had not been admirably
well dressed, it would have been by violent opposition
to the united zeal and talent of dressmakers and milliners.
These important vicegerents of the Hand that
reserves to itself the dressing of the butterfly and
lily, make distinctions in the exercise of their vocation.
Wo be to an unloveable woman, if she be not
endowed with taste supreme. She may buy all the
stuffs of France, and all the colors of the rainbow,
but she will never get from those keen judges of fitness
the loving hint, the admiring and selective persuasion,
with which they delight to influence the
embellishment of sweetness and loveliness. They
who talk of “anything's looking well on a pretty
woman,” have not reflected on the lesser providence
of dressmakers and milliners. Woman is never mercenary
but in monstrous exceptions, and no tradeswoman
of the fashion will sell taste or counsel; and,
in the superior style of all charming women, you see,
not the influence of manners upon dress, but the affectionate
tribute of these dispensers of elegance to
the qualities they admire. Let him who doubts, go
shopping with his dressy old aunt to-day, and to-morrow
with his dear little cousin.

Miss Hampson, to whom the supplies of elegance
came as naturally as bread and butter, and occasioned
as little speculation as to the whence or how, was as
unconsciously elegant, of course, as a well-dressed
lily. She was abstractly a very beautiful girl, though
in a very delicate and unconspicuous style; and by
dint of absolute fitness in dressing, the merit of her
beauty, by common observers at least, would be half
given to her fashionable air and unexceptionable toilet.
The damsel and her choice array, indeed, seemed
the harmonious work of the same maker. How much
was nature's gift, and how much was bought in Broadway,
was probably never duly understood by even her
most discriminate admirer.

But we have kept Miss Hampson too long upon the
stairs.

The two young ladies met with a kiss, in which (to
the surprise of those who had previously observed
Miss Mifflit) there was no smack of the latest fashion.

“My dear Julia!”

“My dear Margerine!” (This was a romantic variation
of Meg's, which she had forced upon her
intimate friends at the point of the bayonet.)

Eph. twitched, remindingly, the jupon of his cousin,
and she introduced him with the formula which she
had found in one of Miss Austin's novels.

“Oh, but there was a mock respectfulness in that
deep courtesy,” thought Eph. (and so there was—for
Miss Hampson took an irresistible cue from the inflated
ceremoniousness of the introduction).

Eph. made a bow as cold and stiff as a frozen horse-blanket.
And if he could have commanded the
blood in his face, it would have been as dignified and
resentful as the eloquence of Red Jacket—but that
rustic blush, up to his hair, was like a mask dropped
over his features.

“A bashful country-boy,” thought Miss Hampson,
as she looked compassionately upon his redhot forehead,
and forthwith dismissed him entirely from her
thoughts.

With a consciousness that he had better leave the
room, and walk off his mortification under an umbrella,
Eph. took his seat, and silently listened to the
conversation of the young ladies. Miss Hampson had
come to pass the morning with her friend, and she
took off her bonnet, and showered down upon her
dazzling neck a profusion of the most adorable brown
ringlets. Spite of his angry humiliation, the young
farmer felt a thrill run through his veins as the heavy
curls fell indolently about her shoulders. He had
never before looked upon a woman with emotion. He
hated her—oh, yes! for she had given him a look
that could never be forgiven—but for somebody, she
must be the angel of the world. Eph. would have
given all his sheep and horses, cows, crops, and haystacks,
to have seen the man she would fancy to be
her equal. He could not give even a guess at the
height of that conscious superiority from which she
individually looked down upon him; but it would
have satisfied a thirst which almost made him scream,
to measure himself by a man with whom she could
be familiar. Where was his inferiority? What was
it? Why had he been blind to it till now? Was
there no surgeon's knife, no caustic, that could carve
out, or cut away, burn or scarify, the vulgarities she
looked upon so contemptuously? But the devil take
her superciliousness, nevertheless!

It was a bitter morning to Eph. Bracely, but still it
went like a dream. The hotel parlor was no longer
a stupid place. His cousin Meg had gained a consequence
in his eyes, for she was the object of caress
from this superior creature—she was the link which
kept her within his observation. He was too full of
other feelings just now to do more than acknowledge the
superiority of this girl to his cousin. He felt it in
his after thoughts, and his destiny then, for the first
time, seemed crossed and inadequate to his wishes.

(We hereby draw upon your imagination for six
months, courteous reader. Please allow the teller to
show you into the middle of the following July.)

Bracely farm, ten o'clock of a glorious summer
morning—Miss Pifflit extended upon a sofa in despair.
But let us go back a little.

A week before, a letter had been received from
Miss Hampson, who, to the delight and surprise of
her friend Margerine, had taken the whim to pass a
month with her. She was at Rockaway, and was
sick and tired of waltzing and the sea. Had Farmer
Bracely a spare corner for a poor girl?

But Miss Pifflit's “sober second thought” was utter
consternation. How to lodge fitly the elegant Julia
Hampson? No French bed in the house, no boudoir,
no ottomans, no pastilles, no baths, no Psyche to
dress by. What vulgar wretches they would seem to
her. What insupportable horror she would feel at
the dreadful inelegance of the farm. Meg was pale
with terror and dismay as she went into the details of
anticipation.

Something must be done, however. A sleepless
night of reflection and contrivance sufficed to give
some shape to the capabilities of the case, and by
daylight the next morning the whole house was in
commotion. Meg had fortunately a large bump of
constructiveness, very much enlarged by her habitual
dilemmas-toilet. A boudoir must be constructed.
Farmer Bracely slept in the dried apple-room, on
the lower floor, and he was no sooner out of his
bed than his bag and baggage were tumbled up stairs,
his gun and Sunday whip were taken down from their
nails, and the floor scoured, and the ceiling whitewashed.
Eph. was by this time returned from the
village with all the chintz that could be bought, and a
paper of tacks, and some new straw carpeting; and by
ten o'clock that night the four walls of the apartment
were covered with the gayly-flowered material, the
carpet was nailed down, and old Farmer Bracely
thought it a mighty nice, cool-looking place. Eph.
was a bit of a carpenter, and he soon knocked together
some boxes, which, when covered with chintz, and
stuffed with wool, looked very like ottomans; and,
with a handsome cloth on the round-table, geraniums
in the windows, and a chintz curtain to subdue the
light, it was not far from a very charming boudoir,
and Meg began to breathe more freely.

But Eph. had heard this news with the blood hot in
his temples. Was that proud woman coming to look
again upon him with contempt, and here, too, where
the rusticity, which he presumed to be the object of
her scorn, would be a thousand times more flagrant
and visible? And yet, with the entreaty on his lip
that his cousin would refuse to receive her, his heart
had checked the utterance—for an irresistible desire
sprung suddenly within him to see her, even at the
bitter cost of tenfold his former mortification.

Yet, as the preparations for receiving Miss Hampson
went on, other thoughts took possession of his
mind. Eph. was not a man, indeed, to come off second
best in the long pull of wrestling with a weakness.
His pride began to show its colors. He remembered
his independence as a farmer, dependant
on no man, and a little comparison between his pursuits,
and life, such as he knew it to be, in a city, soon
put him, in his own consciousness at least, on a par
with Miss Hampson's connexions. This point once
attained, Eph. cleared his brow, and went whistling
about the farm as usual—receiving without reply,
however, a suggestion of his cousin Meg's, that he
had better burn his old straw hat, for, in a fit of absence,
he might possibly put it on while Miss Hampson
was there.

Well, it was ten o'clock on the morning after
Miss Hampson's arrival at Bracely farm, and, as we
said before, Miss Pifflit was in despair. Presuming
that her friend would be fatigued with her journey,
she had determined not to wake her, but to order
breakfast in the boudoir at eleven. Farmer Bracely
and Eph. must have their breakfast at seven, however,
and what was the dismay of Meg, who was pouring
out their coffee as usual, to see the elegant Julia rush
into the first kitchen, courtesy very sweetly to the old
man, pull up a chair to the table, apologise for being
late, and end this extraordinary scene by producing
two newly-hatched chickens from her bosom! She
had been up since sunrise, and out at the barn, down
by the river, and up in the haymow, and was perfectly
enchanted with everything, especially the dear little
pigs and chickens!

“A very sweet young lady!” thought old Farmer
Bracely.

“Very well—but hang your condescension!” thought
Eph., distrustfully.

“Mercy on me!—to like pigs and chickens!” mentally
ejaculated the disturbed and bewildred Miss Pifflit.

But with her two chicks pressed to her breast
with one hand, Miss Hampson managed her coffee
and bread and butter with the other, and chattered
away like a child let out of school. The air was so
delicious, and the hay smelt so sweet, and the trees in
the meadow were so beautiful, and there were no stiff
sidewalks, and no brick houses, and no iron railings,
and so many dear speckled hens, and funny little
chickens, and kind-looking old cows, and colts, and
calves, and ducks, and turkeys—it was delicious—it
was enchanting—it was worth a thousand Saratogas
and Rockaways. How anybody could prefer the city
to the country, was to Miss Hampson matter of incredulous
wonder.

“Will you come into the boudoir?” asked Miss
Pifflit, with a languishing air, as her friend Julia rose
from breakfast.

“Boudoir!” exclaimed the city damsel, to the infinite
delight of old Bracely, “no, dear! I'd rather go
out to the barn! Are you going anywhere with the
oxen to-day, sir?” she added, going up to the gray-headed
farmer caressingly, “I should so like to ride
in that great cart!”

Eph. was a little suspicious of all this unexpected
agreeableness, but he was naturally too courteous not
to give way to a lady's whims. He put on his old
straw hat, and tied his handkerchief over his shoulder
(not to imitate the broad riband of a royal order, but
to wipe the sweat off handily while mowing), and offering
Miss Hampson a rake which stood outside the
door, he begged her to be ready when he came by
with the team. He and his father were bound to the
far meadow, where they were cutting hay, and would
like her assistance in raking.

It was a “specimen” morning, as the magazines
say, for the air was temperate, and the whole country
was laden with the smell of the new hay, which somehow
or other, as everybody knows, never hinders or
overpowers the perfume of the flowers. Oh, that
winding green lane between the bushes was like an
avenue to paradise. The old cart jolted along
through the ruts, and Miss Hampson, standing up
and holding on to old Farmer Bracely, watched the
great oxen crowding their sides together, and looked
off over the fields, and exclaimed, as she saw glimpses
of the river between the trees, and seemed veritably
and unaffectedly enchanted. The old farmer, at least,
had no doubt of her sincerity, and he watched her,
and listened to her, with a broad honest smile of admiration
on his weather-browned countenance.

The oxen were turned up to the fence, while the
dew dried off the hay, and Eph. and his father turned
to mowing, leaving Miss Hampson to ramble about
over the meadow, and gather flowers by the river-side.
In the course of an hour, they began to rake up, and
she came to offer her promised assistance, and stoutly
followed Eph. up and down several of the long swaths,
till her face glowed under her sunbonnet as it never
had glowed with waltzing. Heated and tired at last,
she made herself a seat with the new hay under a
large elm, and, with her back to the tree, watched the
labors of her companions.

Eph. was a well-built and manly figure, and all he
did in the way of his vocation, he did with a fine display
of muscular power, and (a sculptor would have
thought) no little grace. Julia watched him as he
stepped along after his rake on the elastic sward, and

she thought, for the first time, what a very handsome
man was young Bracely, and how much more finely
a man looked when raking hay, than a dandy when
waltzing. And for an hour she sat watching his motion,
admiring the strength with which he pitched up
the hay, and the grace and ease of all his movements
and postures; and, after a while, she began to feel
drowsy with fatigue, and pulling up the hay into a fragrant
pillow, she lay down and fell fast asleep.

It was now the middle of the forenoon, and the old
farmer, who, of late years, had fallen into the habit
of taking a short nap before dinner, came to the big
elm to pick up his waistcoat and go home. As he approached
the tree, he stopped, and beckoned to his son.

Eph. came up and stood at a little distance, looking
at the lovely picture before him. With one delicate
hand under her cheek, and a smile of angelic content
and enjoyment on her finely cut lips, Julia Hampson
slept soundly in the shade. One small foot escaped
from her dress, and one shoulder of faultless polish
and whiteness showed between her kerchief and her
sleeve. Her slight waist bent to the swell of the hay,
throwing her delicate and well-moulded bust into
high relief; and all over her neck, and in large clusters
on the tumbled hay, lay those glossy brown ringlets,
admirably beautiful and luxuriant.

And as Eph. looked on that dangerous picture of
loveliness, the passion, already lying perdu in his
bosom, sprung to the throne of heart and reason.

(We have not room to do more than hint at the
consequences of this visit of Miss Hampson to the
country. It would require the third volume of a
novel to describe all the emotions of that month at
Bracely farm, and bring the reader, point by point,
gingerly and softly, to the close. We must touch
here and there a point only, giving the reader's imagination
some gleaning to do after we have been over
the ground.)

Eph. Bracely's awakened pride served him the good
turn of making him appear simply in his natural character
during the whole of Miss Hampson's visit. By
the old man's advice, however, he devoted himself to
the amusement of the ladies after the haying was
over; and what with fishing, and riding, and scenery-hunting
in the neighborhood, the young people were
together from morning till night. Miss Pifflit came
down unwillingly to plain Meg, in her attendance on
her friend in her rustic occupations, and Miss Hampson
saw as little as possible of the inside of the boudoir.
The barn, and the troops of chickens, and all
the out-door belongings of the farm, interested her
daily, and with no diminution of her zeal. She
seemed, indeed, to have found her natural sphere in
the simple and affectionate life which her friend Margerine
held in such superfine contempt; and Eph.,
who was the natural mate to such a spirit, and himself,
in his own home, most unconsciously worthy of
love and admiration, gave himself up irresistibly to
his new passion.

And this new passion became apparent, at last, to
the incredulous eyes of his cousin. And that it was
timidly, but fondly returned by her elegant and high-bred
friend, was also very apparent to Miss Pifflit.
And after a few jealous struggles, and a night or two
of weeping, she gave up to it tranquilly—for, a city
life and a city husband, truth to say, had long been
her secret longing and secret hope, and she never had
fairly looked in the face a burial in the country with
the “pigs and chickens.”

She is not married yet, Meg Pifflit—but the rich
merchant, Mr. Hampson, wrecked completely with
the disastrous times, has found a kindly and pleasant
asylum for his old age with his daughter, Mrs. Bracely.
And a better or lovelier farmer's wife than Julia,
or a happier farmer than Eph., can scarce be found
in the valley of the Susquehannah.

THE WIDOW BY BREVET.

Let me introduce the courteous reader to two ladies.

Miss Picklin, a tall young lady of twenty-one, near
enough to good-looking to permit of a delusion on the
subject (of which, however, she had an entire monopoly),
with cheeks always red in a small spot, lips not
so red as the cheeks, and rather thin, sharpish nose,
and waist very slender; and last (not least important),
a very long neck, scalded on either side into a resemblance
to a scroll of shrivelled parchment, which might
or might not be considered as a mis-fortune—serving
her as a title-deed to twenty thousand dollars. The
scald was inflicted, and the fortune left in consequence,
by a maiden aunt who, in the babyhood of Miss Picklin,
attempted to cure the child's sore throat by an application
of cabbage-leaves steeped in hot vinegar.

Miss Euphemia Picklin, commonly called Phemie
—a good-humored girl, rather inclined to be fat, but
gifted with several points of beauty of which she was
not at all aware, very much a pet among her female
friends, and admitting, with perfect sincerity and submission,
her sister's exclusive right to the admiration
of the gentlemen of their acquaintance.

Captain Isaiah Picklin, the father of these ladies,
was a merchant of Salem, an importer of figs and opium,
and once master of the brig “Simple Susan,”
which still plied between his warehouse and Constantinople—nails
and codfish the cargo outward. I have
not Miss Picklin's permission to mention the precise
date of the events I am about to record, and leaving
that point alone to the imagination of the reader, I
shall set down the other particulars and impediments
in her “course of true love” with historital fidelity.

Ever since she had been of sufficient age to turn her
attention exclusively to matrimony, Miss Picklin had
nourished a presentiment that her destiny was exotic;
that the soil of Salem was too poor, and the indigenous
lovers too mean; and that, potted in her twenty thousand
dollars, she was a choice production, set aside for
flowering in a foreign clime, and destined to be transplanted
by a foreign lover. With this secret in her
bosom, she had refused one or two gentlemen of middle
age, recommended by her father, beside sundry
score of young gentlemen of slender revenues in her
own set of acquaintances, till, if there had been anything
beside poetry in Shakspere's assertion that it is—

the neighboring “brush barrens” of Saugus would
have sold in lots at a premium. It was possibly from
the want of nightingales, to whose complaining notes
the gentleman of Verona “turned his distresses,” that
the discarded of Salem preferred the consolations of
Phemie Picklin.

News to the Picklins! Hassan Keui, the son of old

Abdoul Keui, was coming out in the “Simple Susan!”
A Turk—a live Turk—a young Turk, and the son of
her father's rich correspondent in Turkey! “Ah me!”
thought Miss Picklin.

The captain himself was rather taken aback. He
had known old Abdoul for many years, had traded and
smoked with him in the cafés of Galata, had gone out
with him on Sundays to lounge on the tombstones at
Scutari, and had never thought twice about his yellow
gown and red trowsers; but what the deuce would be
thought of them in Salem? True, it was his son;
but a Turk's clothes descend from father to son
through three generations; he knew that, from remembering
this very boy all but smothered in a sort of
saffron blanket, with sleeves like pillowcases—his first
assumption of the toga virilis (not that old Picklin
knew Latin, but such was “his sentiment better expressed”).
Then he had never been asked to the
house of the Stamboul merchant, not introduced to
his wives nor his daughters (indeed, he had forgotten
that old Keui was near cutting his throat for asking
after them)—but of course it was very different in Salem.
Young Keui must be the Picklin guest, fed and
lodged, and the girls would want to give him a tea-party.
Would he sit on a chair, or want cushions on
the floor? Would he come to dinner with his breast
bare, and leave his boots outside? Would he eat rice
pudding with his fingers? Would he think it indecent
if the girls didn't wear linen cloths, Turkey fashion,
over their mouths and noses? Would he bring
his pipes? Would he fall on his face and say his
prayers four times a day, wherever he should be (with
a clean place handy)? What would the neighbors
say? The captain worked himself into a violent perspiration
with merely thinking of all this.

The Salemites have a famous museum, and know
“what manner of thing is your crocodile;” but a live
Turk consigned to Captain Picklin! It set the town
in a fever!

It would leave an indelicate opening for a conjecture
as to Miss Picklin's present age, were I to state
whether or not the arrival of the “Simple Susan” was
reported by telegraph. She ran in with a fair wind
one Sunday morning, and was immediately boarded by
the harbor-master and Captain Picklin; and there, true
to the prophetic boding of old Isaiah, the young Turk
sat cross-legged on the quarter-deck, in a white turban
and scarlet et ceteras, smoking his father's identical
pipe—no other, the captain would have taken his oath!

Up rose Hassan, when informed who was his visiter,
and taking old Picklin's hand, put it to his forehead.
The weather-stained sea-captain had bleached in the
counting-house, and he had not, at first sight remembered
the old friend of his father. He passed the pipe
into Isaiah's hand and begged him to keep it as a memento
of Abdoul, for his father had died at the last
Ramazan. Hassan had come out to see the world,
and secure a continuance of codfish and good-will from
the house of Picklin, and the merchant got astride the
tiller of his old craft, and smoked this news through
his amber-mouthed legacy, while the youth went below
to get ready to go ashore.

The reader of course would prefer to share the first
impressions of the ladies as to the young Mussulman's
personal appearance, and I pass at once, therefore, to
their disappointment, surprise, mortification, and vexation;
when, as the bells were ringing for church, the
front door opened, their father entered, and in followed
a young gentleman in frockcoat and trowsers! Yes,
and in his hand a hat—a black hat—and on his feet no
yellow boots, but calfskin, mundane and common calfskin,
and with no shaved head, and no twisted shawl
around his waist; nothing to be seen but a very handsome
young man indeed, with teeth like a fresh slice
of cocoa-nut meat, and a very deliberate pronunciation
to his bad English.

Miss Picklin's disappointment had to be slept upon,
for she had made great outlay of imagination upon the
pomp and circumstance of wedding a white Othello in
the eyes of wondering Salem; but Phemie's surprise
took but five minutes to grow into a positive pleasure;
and never suspecting, at any time, that she was visible
to the naked eye during the eclipsing presence of her
sister, she sat with a very admiring smile upon her
lips, and her soft eyes fixed earnestly on the stranger,
till she had made out a full inventory of his features,
proportions, manners, and other stuff available in
dream-land. What might be Hassan's impression of
the young ladies, could not be gathered from his manner;
for, in the first place, there was the reserve which
belonged to him as a Turk, and, in the second place,
there was a violation of all oriental notions of modesty
in their exposing their chins to the masculine observation;
and though he could endure the exposure, it
was of course with that diffidence of gaze which accompanies
the consciousness of improper objects—
adding to his demeanor another shade of timidity.

Miss Picklin's shoulders were not invaded quite to
the limits of terra cognita by the cabbage-leaves which
had exercised such an influence on her destiny; and
as the scalds somewhat resembled two maps of South
America (with Patagonia under each ear), she usually,
in full dress, gave a clear view of the surrounding
ocean—wisely thinking it better to have the geography
of her disfigurement well understood, than, by
covering a small extremity (as it were the isthmus of
Darien), to leave an undiscovered North America to
the imagination. She appeared accordingly at dinner
in a costume not likely to diminish the modest embarrassment
of Mr. Keui (as she chose to call him)—extremely
decolleté, in a pink silk dress with short sleeves,
and in a turban with a gold fringe—the latter, of
course, out of compliment to his country. “Money
is power,” even in family circles, and it was only Miss
Picklin who exercised the privilege of full dress at
a mid-day dinner. Phemie came to table dressed as
at breakfast, and if she felt at all envious of her sister's
pink gown and elbows to match, it did not appear in
her pleasant face or sisterly attention. The captain
would allow anything, and do almost anything, for his
rich daughter; but as to dining with his coat on, in hot
weather, company or no company, he would rather—

though that is not the way he expressed it. The parti
carré, therefore (for there was no Mrs. Picklin), was,
in the matter of costume, rather incongruous, but, as
the Turk took it for granted that it was all according
to the custom of the country, the carving was achieved
by the shirt-sleeved captain, and the pudding “helped”
by his bare-armed daughter, with no particular commotion
in the elements. Earthquakes do not invariably
follow violations of etiquette—particularly where
nobody is offended.

After the first day, things took their natural course
—as near as they were able. Hassan was not very
quick at conversation, always taking at least five minutes
to put together for delivery a sentence of English,
but his laugh did not hang fire, nor did his nods
and smiles; and where ladies are voluble (as ladies
sometimes are), this paucity of ammunition on the
gentleman's part is no prelude to discomfiture. Then
Phemie had a very fair smattering of Italian, and that
being the business language of the Levant, Hassan
took refuge in it whenever brought to a stand-still in
English—a refuge, by the way, of which he seemed
inclined to avail himself oftener than was consistent
with Miss Picklin's exclusive property in his attention.
Rebellious though Hassan might secretly have
been to this authority over himself, Phemie was no accomplice,
natural modesty combining with the long

habit of subserviency to make her even anticipate the
exactions of the heiress; and so Miss Picklin had
“Mr. Keui” principally to herself, promenading him
through the streets of Salem, and bestowing her
sweetness upon him from his morning entrance to his
evening exit; Phemie relieving guard very cheerfully,
while her sister dressed for dinner. It was possibly
from being permitted to converse in Italian during this
half hour, that Hassan made it the only part of the
day in which he talked of himself and his house on
the Bosphorus, but that will not account also for Phemie's
sighing while she listened—never having sighed
before in her life, not even while the same voice was
talking English to her sister.

Without going into a description of the Picklin tea-party,
at which Hassan was induced to figure in his
oriental costume, while Miss Picklin sat by him on a
cushion, turbaned and (probably) cross-legged, à la
Sultana, and without recording other signs satisfactory
to the Salemites, that the young Turk had fallen
to the scalded heiress—

I must come plump to the fact that, on the Monday
following (one week after his arrival), Hassan left Salem,
unaccompanied by Miss Picklin. As he had
asked for no private interview in the best parlor, and
had made his final business arrangements with the
captain, so that he could take passage from New York
without returning, some people were inclined to fancy
that Miss Picklin's demonstrations with regard to him
had been a little premature. And “some people”
chose to smile. But it was reserved for Miss Picklin
to look round in church, in about one year from this
event, and have her triumph over “some people;”
for she was about to sail for Constantinople—“sent
for,” as the captain rudely expressed it. But I must
explain.

The “Simple Susan” came in, heavily freighted
with a consignment from the house of Keui to Picklin
& Co., and a letter from the American consul at Constantinople
wrapped in the invoice. With the careful
and ornate wording of an official epistle, it stated that
Effendi Hassan Keui had called on the consul, and
partly from the mistrust of his ability to express himself
in English on so delicate a subject, but more particularly
for the sake of approaching the object of his
affections with proper deference and ceremony, he had
requested that officer to prepare a document conveying
a proposal of marriage to the daughter of Captain
Picklin. The incomplete state of his mercantile arrangements,
while at Salem the previous year, would
account for his silence on the subject at that time, but
he trusted that his preference had been sufficiently
manifest to the lady of his heart; and as his prosperity
in business depended on his remaining at Constantinople,
enriching himself only for her sake, he was
sure that the singular request appended to his offer
would be taken as a mark of his prudence rather than
as a presumption. The cabin of the “Simple Susan,”
as Captain Picklin knew, was engaged on her next passage
to Constantinople by a party of missionaries, male
and female, and the request was to the intent that, in
case of an acceptance of his offer, the fair daughter of
the owner would come out, under their sufficient protection,
to be wedded, if she should so please, on the
day of her arrival in the “Golden Horn.”

As Miss Picklin had preserved a mysterious silence
on the subject of “Mr. Keui's” attentions since his
departure, and as a lady with twenty thousand dollars
in her own right is, of course, quite independent of
parental control, the captain, after running his eye
hastily through the document, called to the boy who
was weighing out a quintal of codfish, and bid him
wrap the letter in a brown paper and run with it to
Miss Picklin—taking it for granted that she knew
more about the matter than he did, and would explain
it all, when he came home to dinner.

In thinking the matter over, on his way home, it
occurred to old Picklin that it was worded as if he had
but one daughter. At any rate, he was quite sure
that neither of his daughters was particularly specified,
either by name or age. No doubt it was all right,
however. The girls understood it.

“So, it's you, miss!” he said, as Miss Picklin looked
round from the turban she was trying on before
the glass.

“Certainly, pa! who else should it be?”

And there ended the captain's doubts, for he never
again got sight of the letter, and the turmoil of preparation
for Miss Picklin's voyage, made the house
anything but a place for getting answers to impertinent
questions. Phemie, whom the news had made silent
and thoughtful, let drop a hint or two that she would
like to see the letter; but a mysterious air, and “La!
child, you wouldn't understand it,” was check enough
for her timid curiosity, and she plied her needle upon
her sister's wedding dress with patient submission.

The preparations for the voyage went on swimmingly.
The missionaries were written to, and willingly
consented to chaperon Miss Picklin over the seas,
provided her union with a pagan was to be sanctified
with a Christian ceremonial. Miss Picklin replied
with virtuous promptitude that the cake for the wedding
was already soldered up in a tin case, and that
she was to be married immediately on her arrival,
under an awning on the brig's deck, and she hoped
that four of the missionaries' wives would oblige her
by standing up as her bridesmaids. Many square
feet of codfish were unladen from the “Simple Susan”
to make room for boxes and bags, and one large case
was finally shipped, the contents of which had been
shopped for by ladies with families—no book of oriental
travels making any allusion to the sale of such
articles in Constantinople, though, in the natural
course of things, they must be wanted as much in
Turkey as in Salem.

The brig was finally cleared and lay off in the stream,
and on the evening before the embarkation the missionaries
arrived and were invited to a tea-party at the
Picklins. Miss Picklin had got up a little surprise
for her friends with which to close the party—a
“walking tableau,” as she termed it, in which she
should suddenly make her apparition at one door,
pass through the room, and go out at the other,
dressed as a sultana, with a muslin kirtle and satin
trowsers. She disappeared accordingly half an hour
before the breaking up; and, conversation rather
languishing in her absence, the eldest of the missionaries
rose to conclude the evening with a prayer, in
the midst of which Miss Picklin passed through the
room unperceived—the faces of the company being
turned to the wall.

The next morning at daylight the “Simple Susan”
put to sea with a fair wind, and at the usual hour for
opening the store of Picklin and Co., she had dropped
below the horizon. Phemie sat upon the end of
the wharf and watched her till she was out of sight,
and the captain walked up and down between two
puncheons of rum which stood at the distance of a
quarter-deck's length from each other, and both father
and daughter were silent. The captain had a confused
thought or two besides the grief of parting, and Phemie
had feelings quite as confused, which were not all
made up of sorrow for the loss of her sister. Perhaps
the reader will be at the trouble of spelling out their
riddles while I try to let him down softly to the catastrophe
of my story.

Without confessing to any ailment whatever, the
plump Phemie paled and thinned from the day of her
sister's departure. Her spirits, too, seemed to keep

her flesh and color company, and at the end of a
month the captain was told by one of the good dames
of Salem that he had better ask a physician what
ailed her. The doctor could make nothing out of it
except that she might be fretting for the loss of her
sister, and he recommended a change of scene and
climate. That day Captain Brown, an old mate of
Isaiah's, dropped in to eat a family dinner and say
good-by, as he was about sailing in the new schooner
Nancy for the Black sea—his wife for his only passenger.
Of course he would be obliged to drop anchor
at Constantinople to wait for a fair wind up the
Bosphorus, and part of his errand was to offer to take
letters and nicknackeries to Mrs. Keui. Old Picklin
put the two things together, and over their glass of
wine he proposed to Brown to take Phemie with Mrs.
Brown to Constantinople, leave them both there on a
visit to Mrs. Keui, till the return of the Nancy from
the Black sea, and then re-embark them for Salem.
Phemie came into the room just as they were touching
glasses on the agreement, and when the trip was
proposed to her she first colored violently, then grew
pale and burst into tears; but consented to go. And,
with such preparations as she could make that evening,
she was quite ready at the appointed hour, and
was off with the land-breeze the next morning, taking
leave of nobody but her father. And this time the
old man wiped his eyes very often before the departing
vessel was “hull down,” and was heartily sorry he
had let Phemie go without a great many presents and
a great many more kisses.

A fine, breezy morning at Constantinople!

Rapidly down the Bosphorus shot the caique of
Hassan Keui, bearing its master from his country-house
at Dolma-batchi to his warehouses at Galata.
Just before the sharp prow rounded away toward the
Golden Horn, the merchant motioned to the caikjis
to rest upon their oars, and, standing erect in the
slender craft, he strained his gaze long and with anxious
earnestness toward the sea of Marmora. Not a
sail was to be seen coming from the west, except a
man-of-war with a crescent flag at the peak, lying off
toward Scutari from Seraglio point, and with a sigh
that carried the cloud off his brow, Hassan gayly
squatted once more to his cushions, and the caique
sped merrily on. In and out, among the vessels at
anchor, the airy bark threaded her way with the dexterous
swiftness of a bird, when suddenly a cable rose
beneath her and lifted her half out of the water. A
vessel newly-arrived was hauling in to a close anchorage,
and they had crossed her hawser as it rose to the
surface. Pitched headlong into the lap of the nearest
caikji, the Turk's snowy turban fell into the water and
was carried by the eddy under the stern of the vessel
rounding to, and as the caique was driven backward
to regain it, the bareheaded owner sank back aghast—
Simple Susan of Salem staring him in the face in
golden capitals.

“Oh! Mr. Keui! how do you do!” cried a well-remembered
voice, as he raised himself to fend off
by the rudder of the brig. And there she stood
within two feet of his lips—Miss Picklin in her bridal
veil, waiting below in expectant modesty, and though
surprised by his peep into the cabin windows, excusing
it as a natural impatience in a bridegroom coming to
his bride.

The captain of the Susan, meantime, had looked
over the tafferel and recognised his old passenger, and
Hassan, who would have given a cargo of opium for
an hour to compose himself, mounted the ladder
which was thrown out to him, and stepped from the
gangway into Miss Picklin's arms! She had rushed
up to receive him, dressed in her muslin kirtle and
satin trousers, though, with her dramatic sense of
propriety, she had intended to remain below till summoned
to the bridal. The captain, of course, kept
back from delicacy, but the missionaries stood in a
cluster gazing on the happy meeting, and the sailors
looked over their shoulders as they heaved at the
windlass. As Miss Picklin afterward remarked, “it
would have been a tableau vivant if the deck had not
been so very dirty!”

Hassan wiped his eyes, for he had replaced his wet
turban on his head, but what with his escape from
drowning, and what with his surprise and embarrassment
(for he had a difficult part to play, as the reader
will presently understand), he had lost all memory
of his little stock of English. Miss Picklin drew him
gently by the hand to the quarter-deck, where, under
an awning fringed with curtains partly drawn, stood a
table with a loaf of wedding-cake upon it, and a bottle
of wine and a bible. She nodded to the Rev. Mr.
Griffin, who took hold of a chair and turned it round,
and placing it against his legs with the back toward
him, looked steadfastly at the happy couple.

“Good morning—good night—your sister—aspetta!
per amor' di Dio!” cried the bewildered Hassan,
giving utterance to all the English he could remember,
and seizing the bride by the arm.

“These ladies are my bridesmaids,” said Miss
Picklin, pointing to the missionaries' wives who stood
by in their bonnets and shawls. “I dare say he expected
my sister would come as my bridesmaid!”
she added, turning to Mr. Griffin to explain the outbreak
as she understood it.

Hassan beat his hand upon his forehead, walked
twice up and down the quarterdeck, looked around
over the Golden Horn as if in search of an interpreter
to his feelings, and finally walked up to Miss Picklin
with a look of calm resignation, and addressed to her
and to the Rev. Mr. Griffin a speech of three minutes,
in Italian. At the close of it he made a very ceremonious
salaam, and offered his hand to the bride;
and, as no one present understood a syllable of what
he had intended to convey in his address, it was received
as probably a welcome to Turkey, or perhaps
a formal repetition of his offer of heart and hand. At
any rate, Miss Picklin took it to be high time to blush
and take off her glove, and the Rev. Mr. Griffin then
bent across the back of the chair, joined their hands
and went through the ceremony, ring and all. The
ladies came up, one after another, and kissed the
bride, and the gentlemen shook hands with Hassan,
who received their good wishes with a curious look
of unhappy resignation, and after cutting the cake and
permitting the bride to retire for a moment to calm
her feelings and put on her bonnet, the bridegroom
made rather a peremptory movement of departure,
and the happy couple went off in the caique toward
Dolma-batchi amid much waving of handkerchiefs
from the missionaries, and hurrahs from the Salem
hands of the Simple Susan.

And now, before giving the reader a translation of
the speech of Hassan before the wedding, we must
go back to some little events which had taken place
one month previously at Constantinople.

The Nancy arrived off Seraglio Point after a very
remarkable passage, having still on her quarter the
northwest breeze which had stuck to her like a blood-hound
ever since leaving the harbor of Salem. She
had brought it with her to Constantinople indeed, for
twenty or thirty vessels which had been long waiting
a favorable wind to encounter the adverse current of
the Bosphorus, were loosing sail and getting under
way, and the pilot, knowing that the destination of the
Nancy was also to the Black sea, strongly dissuaded
Captain Brown from dropping anchor in the horn,
with a chance of losing the good luck, and lying, perhaps
a month, wind-bound in harbor. Understanding
that the captain's only object in stopping was to leave
the two ladies with Keui the opium-merchant, the
pilot, who knew his residence at Dolma-batchi, made

signal for a caique, and kept up the Bosphorus.
Arriving opposite the little village of which Hassan's
house was one of the chief ornaments, the ladies
were lowered into the caique and sent ashore—
expecting of course to be received with open arms
by Mrs. Keui—and then, spreading all her canvass,
the swift little schooner sped on her way to Trebisond.

Hassan sat in the little pavilion of his house which
looked out on the Bosphorus, eating his pillau, for it
was the noon of a holyday, and he had not been that
morning to Galata. Recognising at once the sweet
face of Phemie as the caique came near the shore,
he flew to meet her, supposing that the “Simple
Susan” had arrived, and that the lady of his love
had chosen to come and seek him. The reader
will understand of course that there was no “Mrs.
Keui.”

And now to shorten my story.

Mrs. Brown and Phemie were in Hassan's own house,
with no other acquaintance or protector on that side
of the world, and there was no possibility of escaping
a true explanation. The mistake was explained, and
explained to Brown's satisfaction. Phemie was the
“daughter” of Captain Picklin, to whom the offer was
transmitted, and as, by blessed luck, the Nancy had
outsailed the Simple Susan, Providence seemed to
have chosen to set right for once, the traverse of true
love. The English embassy was at Burgurlu, only
six miles above, on the Bosphorus, and Hassan and
his mother and sisters, and Mrs. Brown and Phemie
were soon on their way thither in swift caiques, and
the happy couple were wedded by the English chaplain.
The arrival of the Simple Susan was of course looked
for, by both Hassan and his bride, with no little dismay.
She had met with contrary winds on the
Atlantic, and had been caught in the Archipelago by
a Levanter, and from the damage of the last she had
been obliged to come to anchor off the little island of
Paros and repair. This had been a job of six weeks,
and meantime the Nancy had given them the go-by,
and reached Constantinople.

Hassan was daily on the look-out for the brig in his
trips to town, and on the morning of her arrival, his
mind being put at ease for the day by his glance
toward the sea of Marmora, the stumbling so suddenly
and so unprepared on the object of his dread, completely
bewildered and unnerved him. Through all
his confusion, however, and all the awkwardness of
his situation, there ran a feeling of self-condemnation,
as well as pity for Miss Picklin; and this had driven
him to the catastrophe described above. He felt that
he owed her some reparation, and as the religion
which he was educated did not forbid a plurality of
wives, and there was no knowing but possibly she
might be inclined to “do in Turkey as Turkeys do,”
he felt it incumbent on himself to state the fact of
his previous marriage, and then offer her the privilege
of becoming Mrs. Keui No. 2, if she chose to accept.
As he had no English at his command, he stated his
dilemma and made his offer in the best language he
had—Italian—and with the results the reader has been
made acquainted.

Of the return passage of Miss Picklin, formerly
Mrs. Keui, under the charge of Captain and Mrs.
Brown, in the schooner Nancy, I have never learned
the particulars. She arrived at Salem in very good
health, however, and has since been distinguished
principally by her sympathy for widows—based on
what, I can not very positively say. She resides at
present in Salem with her father, Captain Picklin,
who is still the consignee of the house of Keui, having
made one voyage out to see the children of his
daughter Phemie and strengthen the mercantile connexion.
His old age is creeping on him, undistinguished
by anything except the little monomania of reading
the letters from his son-in-law at least a hundred
times, and then wafering them up over the fireplace
of his counting-room—in doubt, apparently, whether
he rightly understands the contents.

THOSE UNGRATEFUL BLIDGIMSES.

F—, the portrait-painter, was a considerable ally
of mine at one time. His success in his art brought
him into contact with many people, and he made
friends as a fastidious lady buys shoes—trying on a
great many that were destined to be thrown aside. It
was the prompting, no doubt, of a generous quality—
that of believing all people perfect till he discovered
their faults—but as he cut loose without ceremony
from those whose faults were not to his mind, and as
ill-fitting people are not as patient of rejection as ill-fitting
shoes, the quality did not pass for its full value,
and his abusers were “thick as leaves in Vallambrosa.”
The friends who “wore his bleeding roses,”
however (and of these he had his share), fought his
battles quite at their own charge. What with plenty
of pride, and as plentiful a lack of approbativeness,
F— took abuse as a duck's back takes rain—buoyant
in the shower as in the sunshine.

“Well, F—!” I said, as I occupied his big chair
one morning while he was at work, “there was great
skirmishing about you last night at the tea-party!”

“No!—really? Who was the enemy?”

“Two ladies, who said they travelled with you
through Italy, and knew all about you—the Blidgimses.”

“Oh, the dear old Blidgimses—Crinny and Ninny—the
ungrateful monsters! Did I ever tell you
of my nursing those two old girls through the cholera?”

“No. But before you go off with a long story,
tell me how you can stand such abominable back-biting?
It isn't once in a way, merely!—you are
their whole stock in trade, and they vilify you in every
house they set foot in. The mildest part of it is
criminal slander, my good fellow! Why not do the
world a service, and show that slander is actionable,
though it is committed in good society?”

“Pshaw! What does it amount to?

and in this particular instance, the jury would probably
give the damages the other way—for if they
hammer at me till doomsday, I have had my fun out
of them—my quid pro quo!”

“Well, preface your story by telling me where
you met them. I never knew by what perverse thread
you were drawn together.”

“A thread that might have drawn me into much
more desperate extremity—a letter from the most lovable
of women, charging me to become the trusty
squire of these errant damsels wherever I should encounter
them. I was then studying in Italy. They
came to Florence, where I chanced to be, and were
handed over to me without dog, cat, or waiting-maid,
by a man who seemed ominously glad to be rid of
them. As it was the ruralizing season, and all the
world was flocking to the baths of Lucca, close by,
they went there till I could get ready to undertake
them—which I did, with the devotion of a courier in
a new place, one fig-desiring evening of June.”

“Was there a delivery of the great seal?” I asked,
rather amused at F—'s circumstantial mention of
his introitus to office.

“Something very like it, indeed. I had not fairly
got the blood out of my face, after making my salaam,
when Miss Crinny Blidgims fished up from
some deep place she had about her, a memorandum-book,
with a well-thumbed brown paper cover, and
gliding across the room, placed it in my hands as people
on the stage present pocket-books—with a sort
of dust-flapping parabola. Now if I have any particular
antipathy, it is to the smell of old flannel, and as
this equivocal-looking object descended before my
nose—faith! But I took it. It was the account-book
of the eatables and drinkables furnished to the
ladies in their travels, the prices of eggs, bread, figs,
et cetera, and I was to begin my duties by having up
the head waiter of the lodging-house, and holding inquisition
on his charges. The Blidgimses spoke no
Italian, and no servant in the house spoke English,
and they were bursting for a translator to tell him that
the eggs were over-charged, and that he must deduct
threepence a day for wine, for they never touched it!”

“`What do the ladies wish?' inquired the dumb-founded
waiter, in civil Tuscan.

“`What does he say? what does he say?' cried
Miss Corinna, in resounding nasal.

“`Tell the impudent fellow what eggs are in Dutchess
county!' peppered out Miss Katrina, very sharply.

“Of course I translated with a discretion. There
was rather an incongruity between the looks of the
damsels and what they were to be represented as saying—Katrina
Blidgims living altogether in a blue opera-hat
with a white feather.”

I interrupted F— to say that the blue hat was
immortal, for it was worn at the tea-party of the night
before.

“I had enough of the blue hat and its bandbox before
we parted. It was the one lifetime extravagance
of the old maid, perpetrated in Paris, and as it covered
the back seam of a wig (a subsequent discovery
of mine), she was never without it, except when bonneted
to go out. She came to breakfast in it, mended
her stockings in it, went to parties in it. I fancy it
took some trouble to adjust it to the wig, and she devoted
to it the usual dressing-hours of morning and
dinner; for in private she wore a handkerchief over
it, pinned under her chin, which had only to be whipped
off when company was announced, and this, perhaps,
is one of the secrets of its immaculate, yet
threadbare preservation. She called it her abbo!”

“Her what?”

“You have heard of the famous Herbault, the
man-milliner, of Paris? The bonnet was his production,
and called after him with great propriety.
In Italy, where people dress according to their condition
in life, this perpetual abbo was something à la
princesse, and hence my embarrassment in explaining
to Jacomo, the waiter, that Signorina Katrina's high
summons concerned only an overcharge of a penny
in the eggs!”

“And what said Jacomo?”

“Jacomo was incapable of an incivility, and begged
pardon before stating that the usual practice of the
house was to charge half a dollar a day for board and
lodging, including a private parlor and bedroom, three
meals and a bottle of wine. The ladies, however,
had applied through an English gentleman (who
chanced to call on them, and who spoke Italian), to
have reductions made on their dispensing with two
dishes of meat out of three, drinking no wine, and
wanting no nuts and raisins. Their main extravagance
was in eggs, which they ate several times a
day between meals, and wished to have cooked and
served up at the price per dozen in the market. On
this they had held conclave below stairs, and the result
had not been communicated, because there was
no common language; but Jacomo wished, through
me, respectfully to represent, that the reductions from
the half dollar a day should be made as requested,
but that the eggs could not be bought, cooked, and
served up (with salt and bread, and a clean napkin),
for just their price in the market. And on this point
the ladies were obstinate. And to settle this difficulty
between the high contracting parties, cost an argument
of a couple of hours, my first performance as
translator in the service of the Blidgimses. Thenceforward,
I was as necessary to Crinny and Ninny—
(these were their familiar diminutives for Corinna and
Katrina)—as necessary to Crinny as the gift of speech,
and to Ninny as the wig and abbo put together. Obedient
to the mandate of the fair hand which had consigned
me to them, I gave myself up to their service,
even keeping in my pocket their frowsy grocery-book—though
not without some private outlay in
burnt vinegar. What penance a man will undergo
for a pretty woman who cares nothing about him!”

“But what could have started such a helpless pair
of old quizzes upon their travels?”

“I wondered myself till I knew them better.
Crinny Blidgims had a tongue of the liveliness of an
eel's tail. It would have wagged after she was skinned
and roasted. She had, beside, a kind of pinchbeck
smartness, and these two gifts, and perhaps the name
of Corinna, had inspired her with the idea that she
was an improvisatrice. So, how could she die without
going to Italy?”

“And Ninny went for company?”

“Oh, Miss Ninny Blidgims had a passion too!
She had come out to see Paris. She had heard that,
in Paris, people could renew their youth, and she
thought she had done it, with her abbo. She thought,
too, that she must have manners to correspond. So,
while travelling in her old bonnet, she blurted out her
bad grammer as she had done for fifty years, but in
her blue hat she simpered and frisked to the best of
her recollection. Silly as that old girl was, however,
she had the most pellucid set of ideas on the prices
of things to eat. There was no humbugging her on
that subject, even in a foreign language. She filled
her pockets with apples, usually, in our walks; and
the translating between her and a street-huckster, she
in her abbo and the apple-woman in Italian rags, was
vexatious to endure, but very funny to remember. I
have thought of painting it, but, to understand the
picture, the spectator must make the acquaintance of
Miss Fanny Blidgims—rather a pill for a connoisseur!
But by this time you are ready to approfond, as the
French aptly say, the depths of my subsequent distresses.

THE STORY.

“I had been about a month at Lucca, when it was
suddenly proposed by Crinny that we should take a

vetturino together, and go to Venice. Ninny and she
had come down to dinner with a sudden disgust for
the baths—owing, perhaps, to the distinction they had
received as the only strangers in the place who were
not invited to the ball of a certain prince, our next-door
neighbor. The Blidgimses and their economies, in
fact, had become the joke of the season, and, as the
interpreter in the egg-trades, I was mixed up in the
omelette, and as glad to escape from my notoriety as
they. So I set about looking up the conveyance with
some alacrity.

“By the mass, it was evidently a great saving of
distance to cross the mountains to Modena, and of
course a great saving of expense, as vetturinos are
paid by the mile; but the guide-books stated that the
road was rough, and the inns abominable, and recommended
to all who cared for comfort to make a circum-bendibus
by the way of Florence and Bologna.
Ninny declared she could live on bread and apples,
however, and Crinny delighted in mountain air—in
short, economy carried it, and after three days' chaffering
with the owner of a rattletrap vettura, we set off
up the banks of the Lima without the blessing of
Jacomo, the head waiter.

“We soon left the bright little river, and struck
into the mountains, and as the carriage crept on very
slowly, I relieved the horses of my weight and walked
on. The ladies did the same thing whenever they
came in sight of an orchard, and for the first day
Ninny munched the unripe apples and seemed getting
along very comfortably. The first night's lodging
was execrable, but as the driver assured us it was the
best on the route, we saved our tempers for the worst,
and the next day began to penetrate a country that
looked deserted of man, and curst with uninhabitable
sterility. Its effect upon my spirits, as I walked on
alone, was as depressing as the news of some trying
misfortune, and I was giving it credit for one redeeming
quality—that of an opiate to a tongue like Crinny
Blidgims's—when both the ladies began to show symptoms
of illness. It was not long after noon, and we
were in the midst of a waste upland, the road bending
over the horizon before and behind us, and neither
shed nor shelter, bush, wall, or tree, within reach of
the eye. The only habitation we had seen since morning
was a wretched hovel where the horses were fed
at noon, and the albergo, where we should pass the
night, was distant several hours—a long up-hill
stretch, on which the pace of the horses could not
possibly be mended. The ladies were bent double in
the carriage, and said they could not possibly go on.
Going back was out of the question. The readiest
service I could proffer was to leave them and hurry
on to the inn, to prepare for their reception.

“Fortunately our team was unicorn-rigged—one
horse in advance of a pair. I took off the leader, and
galloped away.

“Well, the cholera was still lingering in Italy, and
stomachs must be cholera-proof to stand a perpetual
diet of green apples, even with no epidemic in the air.
So I had a very clear idea of the remedies that would
be required on their arrival.

“At a hand-gallop I reached the albergo in a couple
of hours. It was a large stone barrack, intended, no
doubt, as was the road we had travelled, for military
uses. A thick stone wall surrounded it, and it stood
in the midst, in a pool of mud. From the last eminence
before arriving, not another object could be
descried within a horizon of twenty miles diameter,
and a whitish soil of baked clay, browned here and
there by a bit of scanty herbage, was foreground and
middle and background to the pleasant picture. The
site of the barrack had probably been determined by
the only spring within many miles, and by the dryness
without and the mud within the walls, it was contrived
for a monopoly by the besieged.

“I cantered in at the unhinged gate, and roared
out `casa!' `cameriere!' `botega!' till I was frightened
at my own voice.

“No answer. I threw my bridle over a projection
of the stone steps, and mounted, from an empty
stable which occupied the ground floor (Italian
fashion), to the second story, which seemed equally
uninhabited. Here were tables, however, and wooden
settees, and dirty platters—the first signs of life. On
the hearth was an iron pot and a pair of tongs, and
with these two musical instruments I played a tune
which I was sure would find ears, if ears there were
on the premises. And presently a heavy foot was
heard on the stair above, and with a sonorous yawn
descended mine host—dirty and stolid—a goodly pattern
of the `fat weed on Lethe's wharf,' as you would
meet in a century. He had been taking his siesta,
and his wife had had a colpo di sole, and was confined
helplessly to her bed. The man John was out tending
sheep, and he, the host, was vicariously, cook,
waiter, and chambermaid. What might be the pleasure
of il signore?

“My pleasure was, first, to see the fire kindled and
the pot put over, and then to fall into a brown
study.

“Two fine ladies with the cholera—two days' journey
from a physician—a fat old Italian landlord for
nurse and sole counsellor—nobody who could understand
a word they uttered, except myself, and not a
drug nor a ministering petticoat within available
limits! Then the doors of the chambers were without
latches or hinges, and the little bed in each great
room was the one article of furniture, and the house
was so still in the midst of that great waste, that all
sounds and movements whatever, must be of common
cognisance! Should I be discharging my duty to
ladies under my care to leave them to this dirty old
man? Should I offer my own attendance as constant
nurse, and would the service be accepted? How, in
the name of Robinson Crusoe, were these delicate
damsels to be `done for'?

“As a matter of economy in dominos, as well as to
have something Italian to bring home, I had bought at
Naples the costume of a sister of charity, and in it I
had done all my masquerading for three carnivals. It
was among my baggage, and it occurred to me
whether I had not better take the landlord into my
confidence, and bribe him to wait upon the ladies, disguised
in coif and petticoat. No—for he had a mustache,
and spoke nothing but Italian. Should I do it
myself?

“I paced up and down the stone floor in an agony
of dilemma.

“In the course of half an hour I had made up my
mind. I called to Boniface, who was watching the
boiling pot, and made a clean breast to him of my
impending distresses, aiding his comprehension by
such eye-water as landlords require. He readily undertook
the necessary lies, brought out his store of
brandy, added a second bed to one of the apartments,
and promised faithfully to bear my sex in mind, and
treat me with the reverence due my cross and rosary.
I then tore out a leaf of the grocery book, and wrote
with my pencil a note to this effect, to be delivered to
the ladies on their arrival:—

“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.

“And, true to my boding, they did arrive, exceedingly
ill. An hour earlier than I had looked for him,
the vetturino came up with foaming horses at a tugging
trot, frightened half out of his senses. The
ladies were dying, he swore by all the saints, before he
dismounted. He tore open the carriage door, shouted
for il signore and the landlord, and had carried both
the groaning girls up stairs in his arms, before fat
Boniface, who had been killing a sheep in the stable,
could wash his hands and come out to him. To his
violent indignation, the landlord's first care was to
unstrap the baggage and take off my portmanteau,
condescending to give him neither why nor wherefore,
and as it mounted the stairs on the broad shoulders of
my faithful ally, it was followed by a string of oaths
such as can rattle off from nothing but the voluble
tongue of an Italian.

“I immediately despatched the note by the host,
requesting him to come back and `do my dress,' and
in half an hour sister Benedetta's troublesome toilet
was achieved, and my old Abigail walked around me,
rubbing his hands, and swore I was a `meraviglia di
belleza.' The lower part of my face was covered by
the linen coif, and the forehead was almost completely
concealed in the plain put-away of a `false front;'
and, unless the Blidgimses had reconnoitred my nose
and eyes very carefully, I was sure of my disguise.
The improvements in my figure were, unluckily,
fixtures in the dress, for it was very hot; but by the
landlord's account they were very becoming. Do you
believe the old dog tried to kiss me?

“The groans of Ninny, meantime, resounded
through the house, for, as I expected, she had the
worst of it. Her exclamations of pain were broken
up, I could also hear, by sentences in a sort of spiteful
monotone, answered in regular `humphs!' by Crinny—Crinny
never talking except to astonish, and being
as habitually crisp to her half-witted sister as she was
fluent to those who were capable of surprise. Fearing
that some disapprobation of myself might find its
way to Ninny's lips, and for several other reasons
which occurred to me, I thought it best to give the
ladies another half hour to themselves, and by way of
testing my incognito, bustled about in the presence of
the vetturino, warming oil and mixing brandies-and-water,
and getting used to the suffocation of my petticoats—for
you have no idea how intolerably hot they
are, with trowsers under.

“Quite assured, at last, I knocked at the door.

“`That's his nun!' said Ninny, after listening an
instant.

“`Come in!—that is to say, entrez!' feebly murmured
Crinny.

“They were both in bed, rolled up like pocket-handkerchiefs;
but Ninny had found strength to band-box
her wig and abbo, and array herself in a nightcap
with an exceedingly broad frill. But I must not
trench upon the `secrets of the prison-house.' You
are a bachelor, and the Blidgimses are still in a `world
of hope.'

“I walked in and leaned over each of them, and
whispered a benedicite, felt their pulses, and made
signs that I understood their complaints and they need
not trouble themselves to explain; and forthwith I commenced
operations by giving them their grog (which
they swallowed without making faces, by-the-by), and,
as they relaxed their postures a little, I got one foot at
a time hung over to me from the side of the bed into
the pail of hot water, and set them to rubbing themselves
with the warm oil, while I vigorously bathed
their extremities. Crinny, as I very well knew, had
but five-and-twenty words of French, just sufficient to
hint at her wants, and Ninny spoke only such English
as Heaven pleased, so I played the ministering angel
in safe silence—listening to my praises, however, for I
handled Ninny's irregular doigts du pied with a tenderness
that pleased her.

“Well—you know what the cholera is. I knew
that at the Hotel Dieu at Paris, women who had not
been intemperate were oftenest cured by whiskey
punches, and as brandy toddies were the nearest approach
of which the resources of the place admitted,
I plied my patients with brandy toddy. In the weak
state of their stomachs, it produced, of course, a delirious
intoxication, and as I began very early in the
morning, there were no lucid intervals in which my
incognito might be endangered. My ministrations
were, consequently, very much facilitated, and after
the second day (when I really thought the poor girls
would die), we fell into a very regular course of hospital
life, and for one, I found it very entertaining.
Quite impressed with the idea that sister Bellidettor
(as Ninny called me) understood not a word of English,
they discoursed to please themselves, and I was
obliged to get a book, to excuse, even to their tipsy
comprehension, my outbreaks of laughter. Crinny
spouted poetry and sobbed about Washington Irving,
who, she thought, should have been her lover, and
Ninny sat up in bed, and, with a small glass she had
in the back of a hair-brush, tried on her abbo at every
possible angle, always ending by making signs to sister
Bellidettor to come and comb her hair! There was a
long, slender, mustache remaining on the back of the
bald crown, and after putting this into my hand, with
the hair-brush, she sat with a smile of delight till she
found my brushing did not come round to the front!

“`Why don't you brush this lock?' she cried,
`this—and this—and this!' making passes from her
shining skull down to her waist, as if, in every one, she
had a handful of hair! And so, for an hour together,
I threaded these imaginary locks, beginning where
they were rooted `long time ago,' and passing the
brush off to the length of my arm—the cranium,
when I had done, looking like a balloon of shot silk,
its smooth surface was so purpled with the friction of
the bristles. Poor Ninny! She has great temptation
to tipple, I think—that is, `if Macassar won't bring
back the lost chevelure!'

“About the fifth day, the ladies began to show
signs of convalescence, and it became necessary to
reduce their potations. Of course they grew less
entertaining, and I was obliged to be much more on
my guard. Crinny fell from her inspiration, and
Ninny from her complacency, and they came down to
their previous condition of damaged spinsters, prim
and peevish. `Needs must' that I should `play out
the play,' however, and I abated none of my petits
soins for their comfort, laying out very large anticipations
of their grateful acknowledgments for my dramatic
chivalry, devotion, and delicacy!”

“Well—they are ungrateful!” said I, interrupting
F— for the first time in his story.

“Now, are not they? They should at least, since
they deny me my honors, pay me for my services as
maid-of-all-work, nurse, hair-dresser, and apothecary!
Well, if I hear of their abusing me again, I'll send in
my bills. Wouldn't you? But, to wind up this long
story.

“I thought that perhaps there might be some little
circumstances connected with my attentions which
would look best at a distance, and that it would be
more delicate to go on and take leave at Modena as

sister Benedetta, and rejoin them the next morning in
hose and doublet as before—reserving to some future
period the clearing up of my apparently recreant desertion.
On the seventh morning, therefore, I instructed
old Giuseppe, the landlord, to send in his bill
to the ladies while I was dressing, and give notice to
the vetturino that he was to take the holy sister to
Modena in the place of il signore, who had gone on
before.

“Crinny and Ninny were their own reciprocal
dressing-maids, but Crinny's fingers had weakened by
sickness much more than her sister's waist had diminished,
and, in the midst of shaving, in my own room,
I was called to `finish doing' Ninny, who backed up
to me with her mouth full of pins, and the breath, for
the time being, quite expelled from her body. As I
was straining, very red in the face, at the critical hook,
Giuseppe knocked at the door, with the bill, and the
lack of an interpreter to dispute the charges, brought
up the memory of the supposed `absquatulator' with
no very grateful odor. Before I could finish Miss
Ninny and get out of the room, I heard myself
charged with more abominations, mental and personal,
than the monster that would have made the fortune of
Trinculo. Crinny counted down half the money, and
attempted, by very expressive signs, to impress upon
Giuseppe that it was enough; but the only palm of
the old publican was patiently held out for more, and
she at last paid the full demand, fairly crying with vexation.

“Quite sick of the new and divers functions to
which I had been serving an apprenticeship in my
black petticoat, I took my place in the vettura, and
dropped veil, to be sulky in one lump as far as Modena.
I would willingly have stopped my ears, but after
wearing out their indignation at the unabated charges
of old Giuseppe, the ladies took up the subject of the
expected donation to the charity-fund of sister Benedetta,
and their expedients to get rid of it occupied
(very amusingly to me) the greater part of a day's
travel. They made up their minds at last, that half a
dollar would be as much as I could expect for my
week's attendance, and Crinny requested that she
should not be interrupted while she thought out the
French for saying as much when we should come to
the parting.

“I was sitting quietly in the corner of the vettura,
the next day, felicitating myself on the success of my
masquerade, when we suddenly came to a halt at the
gate of Modena, and the doganiere put his mustache
in at the window, with `passaporti, signore!'

“Murder! thought I—here's a difficulty I never
provided for!

“The ladies handed out their papers, and I thrust
my hand through the slit in the side of my dress and
pulled mine from my pocket. As of course you
know, it is the business of this gatekeeper to compare
every traveller with the description given of him in
his passport. He read those of the Blidgimses and
looked at them—all right. I sat still while he opened
mine, thinking it possible he might not care to read
the description of a sister of charity. But to my dismay
he did—and opened his eyes, and looked again
into the carriage.

“`Aspetta, caro!' said I, for I saw it was of no use.
I gathered up my bombazine and stepped out into the
road. There were a dozen soldiers and two or three
loungers sitting on a long bench in the shade of the gateway.
The officer read through the description once
more, and then turned to me with the look of a functionary
who has detected a culprit. I began to pull up
my petticoat. The soldiers took their pipes out of their
mouths and uttered the Italian `keck' of surprise.
When I had got as far as the knee, however, I came
to the rolled-up trowsers, and the officer joined in the
sudden uproar of laughter. I pulled my black petticoat
over my head, and stood in my waistcoat and
shirt-sleeves, and bowed to the merry official. The
Blidgimses, to my surprise, uttered no exclamation,
but I had forgotten my coif. When that was unpinned,
and my whiskers came to light, their screams
became alarming. The vetturino ran for water, the
soldiers started to their feet, and in the midst of the
excitement, I ordered down my baggage and resumed
my coat and cap, and repacked under lock and key
the sister Benedetta. And not quite ready to encounter
the Blidgimses, I walked on to the hotel and
left the vetturino to bring on the ladies at his leisure.

“Of course I had no control over accidents, and
this exposure was unlucky; but if I had had time to
let myself down softly on the subject, don't you see it
would have been quite a different sort of an affair? I
parted company from the old girls at Modena, however,
and they were obliged to hire a man-servant who
spoke English and Italian, and probably the expense
of that was added to my iniquities. Anyhow, abusing
me this way is very ungrateful of these Blidgimses.
Now, isn't it?”