University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII.
GENEVIEVE AND COUSIN JULE.

I RESOLVED to let no grass grow under my feet
in the path of duty. I said that I would take
Genevieve in hand immediately, examine her, cross-examine
her, hint at my suspicions, watch for every start of
consciousness, and, if possible, terrify her from the evil way
into which I feared that she had entered. All that day, and
again that evening, I sought an opportunity to speak with her
alone. At last, just as daylight was changing to moonlight,
like an allegro dying into an adagio, I found her sitting on
one of the benches which edged the cliff, gazing far away
into the soft southern horizon, and listening between her
thoughts to some droning piscatorial tale of Robert Van
Leer's. This is alone, I thought, for Bob does not count in
conversation, except as a sort of background of silence. I
would have preferred a full noontide on her features, in order
to note better their expression; but if the imperfect light of
the hour was a friend to her face, it was also a friend to mine,
and one that I needed. In truth, I trembled a little, and felt
much more like a culprit than like a prosecuting attorney.
Standing near her, and a little on one side, so that I could
command a view of her aristocratic profile, I studied her for
a moment, seeking some downcast look of unworthiness, some
jaded air of concealment, some terror of discovery, some
flippant bravado of guilt. There was no such evil visitor in

that young paradise; there was naught but intelligence, feeling,
spirit, and the calm pride of self-respect. Looking up
at me presently with a wide-open serene eye, she broke the
back of one of Bob's creeping sentences by saying, “Never
mind about the other sharks, Robert. I want to ask Mr.
Fitz Hugh what he is thinking of.”

“Nothing,” replies Mr. Fitz Hugh, as much abashed as a
schoolboy detected in committing a roguery when he should
have been committing his multiplication-table.

“Oh, oh! how much reflection people have given to that
subject! I suppose, however, that nothing means a revery,—
some poetical illusion, perhaps.”

“Exactly,” said I. “I have been troubled with an illusion
lately; a very bad one; a perfect incubus, in fact.”

“If it is so disagreeable, what makes you entertain it?
Why don't you turn it off and get a more amiable one? Or,
if you can't do that, why don't you give up such intoxicating
things altogether,—take the pledge, as the temperance men
say?”

“Perhaps I can't do either. Perhaps such changings and
resignations are not within my power. It is a theory of
mine that every man has his inevitable illusion. One respectable
middle-aged person of my acquaintance contents
himself with the chimera that his neighbor, the starveling
apothecary, is in secret immensely rich. He has no reason
for this whimsical article of faith; he holds it apparently by
instinct, as he does the knowledge of his own identity, and
about as firmly; dispute it, and you are sure of encountering
a long argument, of which nothing is comprehensible but the
bare words, and those only as parts of speech, not as parts of
logic. You see, no man knows his own illusion; for, if he
did, he would drop it. As to mine, I have the misfortune to
believe that it is sober truth.”

“Poor man! It seems to be a dreadful one, really. It
quite unmans you. Do you suppose that your mind is
sound?” laughed Genevieve.

“Perhaps you ain't well,” observed Bob, with a sympathy
which, though stupid, was sincere. “That's it, old feller,
depend upon it. I tell you when I've eaten anything that
don't agree with me, I get the blues the worst sort.”

“Oh, Robert!” exclaimed Genevieve. “Accuse a poet
of dyspepsia! What a horror!”

“Not so bad an idea,” said I. “I fancy that a great
many awful phantasms of the brain do get into it from the
stomach. In fact, there is such a thing as a dyspeptic
mind. Nothing digests healthily in it; acetous fermentation
ensues; the man is permanently soured.”

“Just so,” assented Bob. “I know a feller who has the
hardest kind of dyspepsia. He smokes too many cigars, and
he has awful low spirits. I tell him to leave off smoking;
but, you see, he can't do it. That's always the way with a
feller; when he's got into a habit it sticks to him like tar
and feathers.”

“Do you want to know what does the whole mischief?”
I asked. “It is the first cigar.”

“Not a bit of it,” retorted Bob. “My first cigar made
me sick, and made me say I'd never smoke another,—though
I have smoked a lot since then.”

“Still, it was the first cigar that began the habit,” said I,
persisting in my puerile philosophy, for want of something
better to say. “If there had been no first, there could have
been no second.”

“I don't see that,” replied Bob obstinately. “I could have
smoked the second just as easy as the first.”

“Never mind, Robert, you'll see it all some day,” interposed
Genevieve. “I want Mr. Fitz Hugh to go on. I
suppose he is only speaking of cigars figuratively. He is a
poet, and uses things as the symbols of thoughts. Please to
proceed, Mr. Fitz Hugh.”

“I mean to say,” continued I, “that it is the first step in
evil which is the father of all the others and of the final ruin.
I don't pretend to have discovered this truth, nor to be particularly

worthy of preaching any great moral truth, even
supposing that I had invented it. At the same time, I wish
I were fit so to preach. I believe that I should not have to
go far to find those who greatly need a sermon.”

I faltered here, for I thought that I was pushing allusion
to the brink of accusation. Genevieve did, in fact,
stare at me, but her face expressed only surprise and then
curiosity.

“Who? Mr. Fitz Hugh,” she asked. “Who is it that has
just taken the first step down hill? Not I, you may be sure.
I am an old offender; perverse and hardened in it; no novice
in naughtiness, not I. Is it Robert? Ah, Robert! what
have you got on your conscience? Do confess him, Mr. Fitz
Hugh, and give him absolution if he is penitent. Come,
Robert, out with it.”

“Out with what?” says Bob. “I don't know what you're
talking about. I say, Fitz Hugh, what's to pay? What's
the joke?”

“No joke at all,” returned Genevieve. “Don't you see
how dreadfully serious he is? Who do you mean, Mr. Fitz
Hugh? Is it papa? Are you thinking about his unlucky
speculations? I wish you could say something so very wise
and so very terrible that it would make him stop speculating
forever.”

I was disconcerted by her gayety, and fell helplessly into
the new track which she had opened for the conversation.
“You are very clever,” I said. “I hope you will not blame
me if I think it unfortunate that your father has acquired a
taste for speculation. It is not a profitable acquisition. In
the long run, the chances are that he will lose.”

“Make it a short run,” observed Genevieve; “it would be
just as true, and more striking. But how comes it so? I
never heard any one explain the mystery.”

“Why, it is very clear that many men must pay for blanks
in order that money enough may be accumulated to furnish
one lucky adventurer with a prize.”

“Only rich men ought to speculate,” inferred Genevieve.
“Poor men can't afford the risk.”

“Nor rich men either,” said I, still hammering at this subject
because I knew not how to get back to the one nearest
my heart. “I assure you that if I were a millionaire I
would not risk the first thousand in speculation. I know very
well that, if I lost, I should most probably send off a second
thousand on some wild-goose chase after the first. That
would be the beginning of the end. Once let this devil of
speculation into your head, and it is sure to run violently
down some steep place into the sea. I saw a boy fishing in
the creek, yesterday. He caught his hook in a root, thought
he had a bite, gave a triumphant haul, and left his line under
water. Aha! said I, you are a speculator.”

“Did he lose his line?” inquired Bob, with a born fisherman's
sympathy. “Too bad, by Jove!”

All this time I felt like a man in a railroad-car, who has
found that the train does not stop at his village. I had got
on this topic of speculation, and could not discover how to
stop it, nor how to bring it round to that mystery for the sake
of which I had sought the interview. “The boy suffered a
real misfortune,” I continued desperately; “whereas it is not
always thus with the unlucky speculator. Often he is not a
whit poorer after failure than before; he has only learned
that he is not as rich as he supposed himself to be; a very
unpleasant discovery, to be sure, but not exactly a calamity.
Let us suppose a parallel case of a man who gets merry with
wine, and fancies himself to be Emperor of Siam, lord of the
forty golden umbrellas, and so forth; but, on coming to his
sober senses, finds that all that Siamese business was a misconception.
Has this individual any right to bewail his lost
greatness, and demand his forty umbrellas again? On the
whole, we ought to be thankful to Providence for sending
these occasional pressures to squeeze out the nonsense, and
vanity, and lies, which are perpetually soaking into society.”

Did ever a preacher wander farther from his text? I felt

that I was ridiculous, although I knew that Genevieve could
not see it, because she was necessarily ignorant what a gap
there was between my words and my thoughts. I made a
short tack, and steered resolutely into the very breakers of
the mystery. “I hope you caught no cold from being out
last night,” I said.

She gave me a side glance, and then swept the horizon
with her eyes in an absent-minded way before she answered.
“No, none at all, thank you.”

“It was a fearful storm,” I resumed, while my temples began
to throb as if the tempest had entered into them. “It
was very reckless in you to expose yourself,—without cause,
too.”

“Of course. But then there's no accounting for girls, as my
old nurse used to say. We are permitted to have freaks, you
know. Why not? If Providence permits it, why not men?”

“To be sure,—to a certain degree. But when a freakish
fancy risks the ruin of health, or—or anything else of priceless
value, the owner of that fancy ought to shut it up, chain
it, chain herself, rather than indulge it.”

“Very likely,” she returned, beginning to bite her nails,
and then drawing her hand from her mouth suddenly as if
recollecting herself.

“I know of some one else who was abroad last night,” I
said with a great effort.

“Who?” she asked, turning toward me abruptly, and, as
I thought, eagerly.

“Myself,” I meant to have said; but really I could not;
the word died in my throat. After a moment of hesitation, I
replied, “The principalities and powers of the air.”

“Do you think I was in their company?” she asked with
a laugh. “Do you suspect me of being a witch and having
dealings with the principalities?”

“Yes; I do suspect it; I have grave reason to believe it.”

She clearly did not understand me, for she laughed again,
carelessly.

“I say, what's the excitement?” inquired Bob. “What
the Old Harry are you talking about?”

“You have just named the personage, Robert,” replied
Genevieve.

“The devil? You don't say so! Well, now I'll tell you
the greatest joke. When I was a little chug, I used to think
the devil got up all the thunder and lightning; I did so, and
you can ask Henry if I didn't. And it was very natural I
should think so, seems to me. Lightning never does any
good, that I can see; it only does harm, kills people, sets fire
to houses and splits trees; and then it looks so tremendously
red-hot, you know.”

“Cotton Mather entertained the same views,” said I. “He
thought that the devil had much to do with thunder-storms,
especially as so many churches were struck by lightning in
his day.”

“Did he, though?” inquired Bob, respectfully. “Well,
who was Cotton Mather?”

“One of the old puritan divines of Massachusetts. Author
of—”

“Oh, I know,—one of the blue-noses. No, hang it! not a
blue-nose; that's a Nova Scotia man. The fact is, I always
get the blue-noses and the blue laws, and the blue stockings
all mixed up together. Now, I say, Fitz Hugh, you've read
a great deal and travelled a great deal, and I want to ask
you one question. What does the devil keep up the fight for
when he knows he can't whip? What's the use of it, and
why don't he stop it?”

“Bravo, Robert!” exclaimed Genevieve, throwing her
head back in laughter until the moon shone full upon the fair
features, revealing with a light that was almost saintly their
childlike glee and purity. “What a theologian you are! for
really a man must have some idea of theology merely to ask
that question. Do try to answer him, Mr. Fitz Hugh. I
have often puzzled over that point myself. Oh, yes, you can

answer him, too,—a man that has read and travelled as much
as you have,—for shame to pretend ignorance!”

“Light up, Fitz Hugh, and pull away,” added Bob, encouragingly.

The evil one was not so far from my subject, I thought,
and so I struck into his trail with some spirit. “Why, the
truth of it probably is, that Lucifer is a grossly self-deceived
individual with regard to his chances. The more immoral a
mind is, the more liable to deception on moral questions. A
thoroughly bad man, for instance, holds that everybody else
is at heart as bad as himself, and, if not so savingly, is more
firmly convinced of the doctrine of total depravity than the
most devout Calvinist. Moral insanity, in short, generates
more or less of mental insanity. Now, the devil, being infinitely
wickeder than any human creature can be, is in proportion
infinitely more subject to delusions in regard to the
comparative extent and power of the two principles of good
and evil. He perpetually expects to see the entire universe
coming over to his party. More than this, he believes that
at this very moment every saint, and even every angel, is at
bottom a hypocrite. He has fully expected to catch every
tempted, worried, but praying and victorious pilgrim, that ever
trod the shadowy valley and passed between the lions and
forded the dark river and entered with noise of hymns into
the golden city. Every time that a martyr has witnessed a
good confession and risen from the stake on fiery pinions to
the foot of the great white throne, this irreclaimable victim of
moral insanity has been as much astonished, and his ardent
expectations have been as much outraged, as if the circumstance
had never happened before. I don't approve, by the
way, of those ascriptions of immense power which are made
to this personage by some imaginative preachers. If he is in
good faith and without a metaphor, the prince of this world,
it seems to me that we are bound to treat him with that reverence
which St. Paul recommends us to render unto all
who are in authority. Now I say it without shame, and I

say it firmly, that I have no reverential feelings towards the
devil.”

“Nor I neither, by Jove!” broke in Bob enthusiastically.
“I tell you what, old feller, that's first-rate. I say, Fitz
Hugh, he must be an infernal old ass. But you've done him
brown.”

“He is usually considered black,” said I. “But I'm glad
you like my thesis. My tutor didn't. It's a scrap from one
of my compositions.”

“No! by Jove! is it, though? Well, I thought you was
spinning it off pretty hifalutin for common talk, now. But
it's splendid anyhow. And the tutor didn't like it? Well, he
must have been about as great a fool as the devil. However,
these private tutors seldom are great men.”

“But I have another way of explaining Lucifer,” said I.
“You may call it my shorter catechism. I never hear him
mentioned but what I think of Sairy Gamp's Mrs. Harris.
I don't believe there is any such person.”

“You don't!” exclaimed Bob, who was not versed in the
later constructions of theology, and to whom this declaration
seemed a species of atheism. “What do you think, Jenny?”
he added, looking all abroad, as if his moral ideas had lost
their accustomed guardian.

“I think that Mr. Fitz Hugh used to write pretty clever
compositions,” said she. “He hasn't improved so very wonderfully
since he got to be an Idler in Italy. Come, Robert,
give us something of yours now. Let's hear a bit of your
valedictory.”

“Oh, Jenny, I didn't take no valedictory,” returned Bob
humbly. “No, no; couldn't come that; didn't kill myself
with trying, either. By the way, it always struck me as queer
that they didn't have five or six valedictories to a class, so as
to give more fellers a chance. But then there's the trouble
that they would all have to say about the same thing, which
would be tedious.”

“Let them all speak together,” proposed Genevieve.

“Ah, but then you couldn't understand what any of them
said,” objected Bob.

“Yes, but it wouldn't be tedious,” she replied. “On the
contrary, it would be grand fun to see ten valedictorians, all
spouting at once and each trying to drown his neighbor, like
so many fire-engines playing on each other. I am sure the
ladies would be amused; and, if they liked it, of course nobody
else would dare complain.”

“Oh, but that wouldn't do, no how,” decided Bob imperatively.

“Never mind, then. But give us one of your compositions,”
said Genevieve.

“Now, Jenny, I'd like to please you, but I can't do it,”
responded the unsuspicious youth. “The fact is, I scarcely
remember any of my own compositions; the biggest part of
them was done for me by other fellers; and I found them in cigars,
you know. Oh, I'll tell you the greatest joke. I handed
in a piece to the Professor one day, thinking I had pleased
him that time; for it was a first-rate one, if I do say it. Well,
when I went after it, he asked me how long it took me to
write it. Says I, it took me two days. Says he, you are
smart; it took me a week. Well, Jenny, I don't suppose you
ever felt so flat in all your life as I did in that single minute.
The way it happened was this: I gave Dick Carter, a Connecticut
feller, three bunches of real Figaro Regalias to write
me a piece. Well, Dick, instead of getting it out of his own
head, went and copied it out of Harper, and got hold of one
of the Professor's own articles. I tell you I cut Dick's assistance
after that. He wan't original enough for me.”

I had been driven clear off my course, and was puzzling
how I should get back again. I stood gazing at Genevieve,
who laughed heartily at Bob's whimsical tale of misfortune,
and whose merry eyes met mine without faltering, or even
seeming to wonder at my unusual gravity. I had not laughed
at all during the interview, although I had said things which
bore a semblance of gayety. Is she innocent, and am I a

monomaniac, the fool of my own imagination? I questioned.
I uncovered my forehead to the southwest wind,—blowing
straight from the Indian paradise, humid, mellow, calming,
sweet as the breath of scraphs,—and looked away over the
silver-rippled Sound, oceanic in moonlight, seeking to bring
Nature in some way to my aid, and thus escape out of my
bounded helplessness. Let me make one more effort to probe
her soul into expression, I thought, and then, if there comes
to her face no response of self-accusation, let me clear her
utterly and forever. But I could think of nothing to say
that would fit my purpose, except another allusion to the
evening of the tempest.

“Really, that storm seems to have taken a strong hold
upon your mind,” she replied, looking at me rather more
gravely than hitherto.

“Well, it might!” said I, my voice sinking, in spite of
me, to a whisper that was absolutely theatrical. “I was out
in it.”

“Were you? Where?” she asked, rising and bringing
her face so near mine that I could observe every light and
shadow of her emotions, and see that she was not only attentive
but anxious. I watched her steadily while I replied,
“What if I were here in this garden?”

“Here! You! What, here?” she repeated. “Oh, you
are joking. Why, I was in the garden; I was, really. If
you had been here, I should have seen you, I think.”

“Perhaps it did not occur to you to look,” said I. “Perhaps
you were too much occupied with something else.
You did not see me? Well, I may have been here, for all
that.”

“What, Fitz Hugh!” broke in Bob, loudly, regardless of
the fact that we had been whispering. “Was you really out
here last night in that regular pour? why didn't you come in
and sleep with me?”

“Oh! that's deli—cious! That's su—perb! What a discovery!”
exclaimed a voice behind us.

Before we could turn, Mrs. Van Leer bounded upon us,
holding up her dress to a very unnecessary altitude as she
crossed the flower-beds. She laughed outrageously at first,
and then shook her little fist in my face with simulated
anger.

“I have found out the culprit,” said she. “Oh, what a
detective I am! What a sly rogue he is! Really, I thought
it was Mr. Somerville; but now I shall have to clear him
and put you,—yes, you, sir,—in the irons. Ah! you coax
my little inexperienced cousin out in a thunder-storm, and
get her wet to the skin. What do you think will be done
with you, sir? Don't you know that you ought to go to the
penitentiary? Or do you believe that you can get off on the
plea of insanity?”

“Nonsense, cousin Jule!” said Genevieve. “Don't be
silly! I didn't see him. I don't believe he was here at all.
I was alone.”

“Precisely; it is perfectly true,” added I. “I did not
see Miss Genevieve. In fact I haven't said that I was
here.”

“Oh! oh! now then I have caught you,” answered Mrs.
Van Leer with another burst of glee. “Those stories don't
hang together. You were here, and didn't see her; and
then, again, you wan't here. Don't you see that you contra—dict
yourself? Come along; come right along with
me. I can't have any collusion between the accused parties.”

She caught my arm and dragged me away. It would have
been ungallant to resist, and besides it would have been useless
to remain, for I could not have prosecuted my examination
of Genevieve in her presence. Conscious that I had
learned nothing, I resigned myself to my ill-success and to
Mrs. Van Leer, who hurried me, chattering all the way,
down the shrubbiest walks of the garden, and stopped in a
grape arbor where we were concealed alike from the house
and from our late companions.

“Now tell me all about it,” said she, “Confess the whole
extent of your wickedness. Tell me what made you do so.
Perhaps I shall take pity on you, and get you par—doned at
head-quarters.”

“Thank you for nothing, ma'am. I am as innocent as
these hollyhocks. If I was out in the rain, it was because,
like them, I couldn't help it.”

“Oh, what a veg—etable you are! What a green young
sprout! What a little innocent po—sy. Very well; I believe
all you say; you didn't mean to get wet; no, no. It
must have been ve—ry embarrassing. These naughty showers
are a dread—ful damper on coquetry, aren't they? But
now, tell me, did you flirt ve—ry badly? You shouldn't
have done so, you know, for Genevieve is a mere girl, and
not a match for you. Why didn't you take one of your
age? why didn't you take me, for exam—ple?”

“Don't! don't! Mrs. Van Leer!” I remonstrated. “I
didn't flirt, I do assure you. I didn't see Genevieve. The
whole thing is a mere blunder of Bob's. I didn't say that I
was in the garden. I was merely supposing the case to
Genevieve in order to pique her curiosity and tease her. I
am as much astonished that she should have been in the
garden last night as you can be.”

“Oh! that isn't friend—ly, now; that isn't a bit gal—lant,
now,” she replied, in a tone of mock reproach. “Don't you
know that when a woman solicits a man's confidence, she does
him a fa—vor, and that the least answer he can make is a
full confession? Well, I must buy your se—cret then.
What can I do for you? Really, I would give almost
any—thing to get a full disclosure out of you. What are
you going to ask for your mystery. Now don't be too hard
upon me.”

She had kept hold of my arm all the while, and she now
leaned upon it heavily, while her manner became still more
frolicsome and coquettish. I must declare modestly that she
seemed to me less bent upon penetrating my secret than upon

tantalizing me into a flirtation, as I had repeatedly seen her
try to allure Somerville; and I half forgot my previous embarrassment
in this new one, which was ridiculously perplexing.

“I do solemnly aver, Mrs. Van Leer, that I have nothing
to tell,” I asseverated, as she looked up in my face and pouted
her lips with a tempting pretence of sulkiness. “I have no
connection with last night's mystery, if there was a mystery.
I was not even out in the rain. I watched the storm, sheltered
and peaceable, in the doorway of my boarding-house.
Besides, if I had a secret, you, a married lady, would not give
a toss of your fan to buy it.”

“Oh, you don't know us women,” she replied. “We are
insa—tiably inquisitive. Marriage satisfies only half our
curiosity. Come, I would do won—ders to persuade you
to confess.”

She brought up her right hand, joined it to her left and
clasped both together over my arm. “Now what makes us
women love scan—dal so?” she continued. “What makes
us willing to give so much more for a bit of fresh, hot tittle-tattle
than a man would do?”

“Do you really want to know?” I asked, glad to change
the conversation. “For, if you do, I think I can tell you.”

“By all means tell me, and after that you will tell me the
secret. Let us walk down this shady path where we shall
not be interrupted.”

“Listen then. A woman cares more for scandal than a
man, principally because her mind and her time are less
filled up than his by serious matters. Her occupations, such
as embroidery, sewing, and housewifery, are not sufficient to
distend her intellectual capacity, while they are often just
sufficient to keep her from severe reading and reflection.”

“It seems very likely, although a trifle per—sonal,” said
Mrs. Van Leer.

“Now, then, here is a vacuum,” I went on; “but Nature
abhors vacuums, and fills them all as fast as they occur; she

is a conscientious dentist and allows of no cavities. Well, the
cheapest and handiest material for stuffing a hollow head is
gossip.”

“Go on, Mr. Flat—terer. I understand why we love to
hear gossip; now tell me why we love to talk it.”

“Change the figure then. Don't you know that a tumbler
full of air is much more sonorous than one which is full of
water, or lead, or gold?”

“How deli—cious! A tumbler full of gold!” observed
Mrs. Van Leer.

“Well, scandal is the most ethereal of mental substances;
a wind that blows nobody any good, but still only wind. Of
course the lady's intellectual tumbler, having little or nothing
in it but this same volatile gossip, is astonishingly resonant.
Do you comprehend?”

“Per—fectly. All that gets into my empty head as easily
as so much title-tattle. You are mon—strous civil, by
the way, to tell me these pretty things. But never mind
about that now; just listen to one question. Don't you think
it is an abom—inable shame for the men to keep us in such
a sphere, that our only means of filling our craving noddles is
to pour them brim full of slan—der? Don't you believe
that the strong-minded women are right? Don't you think
that we ought to stand up on a level with men?”

“Of course. Why don't you? Why didn't you grow six
feet high, as I did? What made you stop just when your
head had got up to my shoulder?”

“Is my head just up to your shoulder?” she replied.
“Really I think it must be higher. Let us meas—ure.”
She laid her head against the shoulder in question, raised it
again, gave me a glance of provoking coquettishness, and
sighed. “How hum—bling!” she said. “I admit my littleness.
Please to go on; take advantage of your superiority.
What about the strong-minded women?”

Oh, you veteran, seasoned, reckless flirt! I thought. I
wish your Potiphar was here to make you let go of me.

My voice was getting quite husky with embarrassment, but,
clearing it with a hem, (which made her laugh,) I launched
desperately into my subject. “A strong-minded—ha—woman,
indeed. I don't believe they are serious in their professions.
I don't believe they really wish to equalize the
two sexes. If they do, why don't they begin at the bottom
and set things right in the lower animal kingdom, before they
meddle with the privileges of the human male? Why don't
they get up a charitable society for sewing manes on to the
lionesses, and giving the peahens as splendid tails as the
peacocks?”

“Perhaps we don't want to meddle with the dirty birds
and beasts,” interrupted my companion.

“If they could only induce the male parrot not to wear
finer feathers than the female,” I prosecuted, “and persuade
the cock not to crow louder or fight better than the pullet,
we should doubtless be shamed into following the modest
example so set us by our inferiors. We should reduce our
stature to five feet two, speak treble, and be afraid of
thunder.”

“Oh, disgust—ing!” said she. “I wouldn't have such a
man about me.”

“Exactly; of course you wouldn't. Now, don't you see,
Mrs. Delilah, how absurd it is in you to want to cut off the
strength-bearing locks of Samson?”

“Ah, but this Mrs. Delilah doesn't want to cut them off.
The most she can imagine herself as wishing is to have just
such locks herself.”

“Well raise them, then; but after you have got them, be
contented; don't expect us to admire you then for the delicate
curls of grace and womanliness that you have thrown
away. At best, Mrs. Van Leer, I am afraid that your new
hair would be only a wig. Now wouldn't you much rather
have a husband?”

“To be sure I would, or a beau, either,” she replied, bending
her head as if in laughter, so as to let her braids sweep
my shoulder.

Driven to recklessness, teased beyond the limits of civil
endurance, I turned upon the indiscreet yet really cold-blooded
creature who hung at my elbow, and uttered certain
remarks, perfectly proper, I maintain, in themselves, but so
odious to the average female sense of propriety on this side
of the Atlantic, that I have been counselled not to report
them in these pages. I spoke of what I considered the true
sphere of woman; I enlarged especially upon the pains,
pleasures, and glories of maternity; and I expressed myself
in the plainest, bluntest words that are to be found in English
dictionaries. As I went on, I discovered that the most
heedless of hoydens may be a prude, just as the most boisterous
of bullies may be a coward. Mrs. Van Leer took off
one hand from my arm, then the other, and finally stood a
full yard away from me, although she laughed heartily.

“That will do,” she said. “I fancy that you have exhausted
the subject. You are a man of the world, I see. I
have a great mind to tell my husband how sau—cy you are.
Never mind, though; I will be discreet, if you will. Come
into the house now, and let us know all about the mys—tery.
Do!”

“I have no mystery,” returned I. “Good-night.”

Well, I had pryed but a very short way into the mind of
Genevieve; but does it not often happen thus, and are not
our failures as edifying as our successes? If a man should
tell only the good luck that befalls him, he would make a very
absurd and incomprehensible tale indeed of his experiences.
It would be a Chinese picture: all lights and no shadows;
bright, flat, and false.