University of Virginia Library

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 flimsy-ish
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 reciprocally
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 s
youth, dripping, dripping!

“Get out!” cried Ione, over whose knees he drew
himself like an eel pulled through a basket of centorted
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 sadden
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 pingnid 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!”