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The $30,000 Bequest, and Other Stories

by Mark Twain · English · Gutenberg #142 · 542,782 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The $30,000 Bequest, and Other Stories

Author: Mark Twain


        
Release date: September 14, 2004 [eBook #142]
                Most recently updated: October 29, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/142

Credits: Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE $30,000 BEQUEST, AND OTHER STORIES ***

THE $30,000 BEQUEST

and Other Stories


by Mark Twain

(Samuel L. Clemens)



CONTENTS



THE $30,000 BEQUEST

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII


A DOG'S TALE

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III


WAS IT HEAVEN? OR HELL?

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X


A CURE FOR THE BLUES

THE CURIOUS BOOK

THE CALIFORNIAN'S TALE

A HELPLESS SITUATION

A TELEPHONIC CONVERSATION

EDWARD MILLS AND GEORGE BENTON: A TALE

THE FIVE BOONS OF LIFE

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V


THE FIRST WRITING-MACHINES

ITALIAN WITHOUT A MASTER

ITALIAN WITH GRAMMAR

A BURLESQUE BIOGRAPHY

HOW TO TELL A STORY

GENERAL WASHINGTON'S NEGRO BODY-SERVANT

WIT INSPIRATIONS OF THE “TWO-YEAR-OLDS”

AN ENTERTAINING ARTICLE

A LETTER TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY

AMENDED OBITUARIES

A MONUMENT TO ADAM

A HUMANE WORD FROM SATAN

INTRODUCTION TO “THE NEW GUIDE OF THE CONVERSATION IN PORTUGUESE AND
ENGLISH”

ADVICE TO LITTLE GIRLS

POST-MORTEM POETRY (1)

THE DANGER OF LYING IN BED

PORTRAIT OF KING WILLIAM III

DOES THE RACE OF MAN LOVE A LORD?

EXTRACTS FROM ADAM'S DIARY

EVE'S DIARY

EXTRACT FROM ADAM'S DIARY



THE $30,000 BEQUEST



CHAPTER I

Lakeside was a pleasant little town of five or six thousand inhabitants,
and a rather pretty one, too, as towns go in the Far West. It had church
accommodations for thirty-five thousand, which is the way of the Far
West and the South, where everybody is religious, and where each of the
Protestant sects is represented and has a plant of its own. Rank was
unknown in Lakeside--unconfessed, anyway; everybody knew everybody and
his dog, and a sociable friendliness was the prevailing atmosphere.

Saladin Foster was book-keeper in the principal store, and the only
high-salaried man of his profession in Lakeside. He was thirty-five
years old, now; he had served that store for fourteen years; he had
begun in his marriage-week at four hundred dollars a year, and had
climbed steadily up, a hundred dollars a year, for four years; from
that time forth his wage had remained eight hundred--a handsome figure
indeed, and everybody conceded that he was worth it.

His wife, Electra, was a capable helpmeet, although--like himself--a
dreamer of dreams and a private dabbler in romance. The first thing she
did, after her marriage--child as she was, aged only nineteen--was to
buy an acre of ground on the edge of the town, and pay down the cash for
it--twenty-five dollars, all her fortune. Saladin had less, by fifteen.
She instituted a vegetable garden there, got it farmed on shares by the
nearest neighbor, and made it pay her a hundred per cent. a year. Out of
Saladin's first year's wage she put thirty dollars in the savings-bank,
sixty out of his second, a hundred out of his third, a hundred and fifty
out of his fourth. His wage went to eight hundred a year, then, and
meantime two children had arrived and increased the expenses, but she
banked two hundred a year from the salary, nevertheless, thenceforth.
When she had been married seven years she built and furnished a
pretty and comfortable two-thousand-dollar house in the midst of her
garden-acre, paid half of the money down and moved her family in. Seven
years later she was out of debt and had several hundred dollars out
earning its living.

Earning it by the rise in landed estate; for she had long ago bought
another acre or two and sold the most of it at a profit to pleasant
people who were willing to build, and would be good neighbors and
furnish a general comradeship for herself and her growing family. She
had an independent income from safe investments of about a hundred
dollars a year; her children were growing in years and grace; and
she was a pleased and happy woman. Happy in her husband, happy in her
children, and the husband and the children were happy in her. It is at
this point that this history begins.

The youngest girl, Clytemnestra--called Clytie for short--was eleven;
her sister, Gwendolen--called Gwen for short--was thirteen; nice girls,
and comely. The names betray the latent romance-tinge in the parental
blood, the parents' names indicate that the tinge was an inheritance. It
was an affectionate family, hence all four of its members had pet
names, Saladin's was a curious and unsexing one--Sally; and so was
Electra's--Aleck. All day long Sally was a good and diligent book-keeper
and salesman; all day long Aleck was a good and faithful mother and
housewife, and thoughtful and calculating business woman; but in the
cozy living-room at night they put the plodding world away, and lived in
another and a fairer, reading romances to each other, dreaming dreams,
comrading with kings and princes and stately lords and ladies in the
flash and stir and splendor of noble palaces and grim and ancient
castles.



CHAPTER II

Now came great news! Stunning news--joyous news, in fact. It came from a
neighboring state, where the family's only surviving relative lived. It
was Sally's relative--a sort of vague and indefinite uncle or second
or third cousin by the name of Tilbury Foster, seventy and a bachelor,
reputed well off and corresponding sour and crusty. Sally had tried to
make up to him once, by letter, in a bygone time, and had not made that
mistake again. Tilbury now wrote to Sally, saying he should shortly die,
and should leave him thirty thousand dollars, cash; not for love, but
because money had given him most of his troubles and exasperations, and
he wished to place it where there was good hope that it would continue
its malignant work. The bequest would be found in his will, and would be
paid over. PROVIDED, that Sally should be able to prove to the executors
that he had _Taken no notice of the gift by spoken word or by letter,
had made no inquiries concerning the moribund's progress toward the
everlasting tropics, and had not attended the funeral._

As soon as Aleck had partially recovered from the tremendous emotions
created by the letter, she sent to the relative's habitat and subscribed
for the local paper.

Man and wife entered into a solemn compact, now, to never mention the
great news to any one while the relative lived, lest some ignorant
person carry the fact to the death-bed and distort it and make it appear
that they were disobediently thankful for the bequest, and just the
same as confessing it and publishing it, right in the face of the
prohibition.

For the rest of the day Sally made havoc and confusion with his books,
and Aleck could not keep her mind on her affairs, not even take up a
flower-pot or book or a stick of wood without forgetting what she had
intended to do with it. For both were dreaming.

“Thir-ty thousand dollars!”

All day long the music of those inspiring words sang through those
people's heads.

From his marriage-day forth, Aleck's grip had been upon the purse, and
Sally had seldom known what it was to be privileged to squander a dime
on non-necessities.

“Thir-ty thousand dollars!” the song went on and on. A vast sum, an
unthinkable sum!

All day long Aleck was absorbed in planning how to invest it, Sally in
planning how to spend it.

There was no romance-reading that night. The children took themselves
away early, for their parents were silent, distraught, and strangely
unentertaining. The good-night kisses might as well have been impressed
upon vacancy, for all the response they got; the parents were not aware
of the kisses, and the children had been gone an hour before
their absence was noticed. Two pencils had been busy during that
hour--note-making; in the way of plans. It was Sally who broke the
stillness at last. He said, with exultation:

“Ah, it'll be grand, Aleck! Out of the first thousand we'll have a horse
and a buggy for summer, and a cutter and a skin lap-robe for winter.”

Aleck responded with decision and composure--

“Out of the _capital_? Nothing of the kind. Not if it was a million!”

Sally was deeply disappointed; the glow went out of his face.

“Oh, Aleck!” he said, reproachfully. “We've always worked so hard and
been so scrimped: and now that we are rich, it does seem--”

He did not finish, for he saw her eye soften; his supplication had
touched her. She said, with gentle persuasiveness:

“We must not spend the capital, dear, it would not be wise. Out of the
income from it--”

“That will answer, that will answer, Aleck! How dear and good you are!
There will be a noble income and if we can spend that--”

“Not _all _of it, dear, not all of it, but you can spend a part of it.
That is, a reasonable part. But the whole of the capital--every penny
of it--must be put right to work, and kept at it. You see the
reasonableness of that, don't you?”

“Why, ye-s. Yes, of course. But we'll have to wait so long. Six months
before the first interest falls due.”

“Yes--maybe longer.”

“Longer, Aleck? Why? Don't they pay half-yearly?”

“_That _kind of an investment--yes; but I sha'n't invest in that way.”

“What way, then?”

“For big returns.”

“Big. That's good. Go on, Aleck. What is it?”

“Coal. The new mines. Cannel. I mean to put in ten thousand. Ground
floor. When we organize, we'll get three shares for one.”

“By George, but it sounds good, Aleck! Then the shares will be
worth--how much? And when?”

“About a year. They'll pay ten per cent. half yearly, and be worth
thirty thousand. I know all about it; the advertisement is in the
Cincinnati paper here.”

“Land, thirty thousand for ten--in a year! Let's jam in the
whole capital and pull out ninety! I'll write and subscribe right
now--tomorrow it maybe too late.”

He was flying to the writing-desk, but Aleck stopped him and put him
back in his chair. She said:

“Don't lose your head so. _We_ mustn't subscribe till we've got the
money; don't you know that?”

Sally's excitement went down a degree or two, but he was not wholly
appeased.

“Why, Aleck, we'll _have _it, you know--and so soon, too. He's probably
out of his troubles before this; it's a hundred to nothing he's
selecting his brimstone-shovel this very minute. Now, I think--”

Aleck shuddered, and said:

“How _can _you, Sally! Don't talk in that way, it is perfectly
scandalous.”

“Oh, well, make it a halo, if you like, _I_ don't care for his outfit, I
was only just talking. Can't you let a person talk?”

“But why should you _want _to talk in that dreadful way? How would you
like to have people talk so about _you_, and you not cold yet?”

“Not likely to be, for _one _while, I reckon, if my last act was giving
away money for the sake of doing somebody a harm with it. But never mind
about Tilbury, Aleck, let's talk about something worldly. It does seem
to me that that mine is the place for the whole thirty. What's the
objection?”

“All the eggs in one basket--that's the objection.”

“All right, if you say so. What about the other twenty? What do you mean
to do with that?”

“There is no hurry; I am going to look around before I do anything with
it.”

“All right, if your mind's made up,” sighed Sally. He was deep in
thought awhile, then he said:

“There'll be twenty thousand profit coming from the ten a year from now.
We can spend that, can't we, Aleck?”

Aleck shook her head.

“No, dear,” she said, “it won't sell high till we've had the first
semi-annual dividend. You can spend part of that.”

“Shucks, only _that_--and a whole year to wait! Confound it, I--”

“Oh, do be patient! It might even be declared in three months--it's
quite within the possibilities.”

“Oh, jolly! oh, thanks!” and Sally jumped up and kissed his wife in
gratitude. “It'll be three thousand--three whole thousand! how much
of it can we spend, Aleck? Make it liberal!--do, dear, that's a good
fellow.”

Aleck was pleased; so pleased that she yielded to the pressure and
conceded a sum which her judgment told her was a foolish extravagance--a
thousand dollars. Sally kissed her half a dozen times and even in that
way could not express all his joy and thankfulness. This new access
of gratitude and affection carried Aleck quite beyond the bounds of
prudence, and before she could restrain herself she had made her darling
another grant--a couple of thousand out of the fifty or sixty which she
meant to clear within a year of the twenty which still remained of the
bequest. The happy tears sprang to Sally's eyes, and he said:

“Oh, I want to hug you!” And he did it. Then he got his notes and sat
down and began to check off, for first purchase, the luxuries which
he should earliest wish to secure.
“Horse--buggy--cutter--lap-robe--patent-leathers--dog--plug-hat--
church-pew--stem-winder--new teeth--_say_, Aleck!”

“Well?”

“Ciphering away, aren't you? That's right. Have you got the twenty
thousand invested yet?”

“No, there's no hurry about that; I must look around first, and think.”

“But you are ciphering; what's it about?”

“Why, I have to find work for the thirty thousand that comes out of the
coal, haven't I?”

“Scott, what a head! I never thought of that. How are you getting along?
Where have you arrived?”

“Not very far--two years or three. I've turned it over twice; once in
oil and once in wheat.”

“Why, Aleck, it's splendid! How does it aggregate?”

“I think--well, to be on the safe side, about a hundred and eighty
thousand clear, though it will probably be more.”

“My! isn't it wonderful? By gracious! luck has come our way at last,
after all the hard sledding. Aleck!”

“Well?”

“I'm going to cash in a whole three hundred on the missionaries--what
real right have we care for expenses!”

“You couldn't do a nobler thing, dear; and it's just like your generous
nature, you unselfish boy.”

The praise made Sally poignantly happy, but he was fair and just enough
to say it was rightfully due to Aleck rather than to himself, since but
for her he should never have had the money.

Then they went up to bed, and in their delirium of bliss they forgot and
left the candle burning in the parlor. They did not remember until they
were undressed; then Sally was for letting it burn; he said they could
afford it, if it was a thousand. But Aleck went down and put it out.

A good job, too; for on her way back she hit on a scheme that would turn
the hundred and eighty thousand into half a million before it had had
time to get cold.



CHAPTER III

The little newspaper which Aleck had subscribed for was a Thursday
sheet; it would make the trip of five hundred miles from Tilbury's
village and arrive on Saturday. Tilbury's letter had started on Friday,
more than a day too late for the benefactor to die and get into that
week's issue, but in plenty of time to make connection for the next
output. Thus the Fosters had to wait almost a complete week to find out
whether anything of a satisfactory nature had happened to him or not.
It was a long, long week, and the strain was a heavy one. The pair could
hardly have borne it if their minds had not had the relief of wholesome
diversion. We have seen that they had that. The woman was piling up
fortunes right along, the man was spending them--spending all his wife
would give him a chance at, at any rate.

At last the Saturday came, and the _Weekly Sagamore_ arrived. Mrs.
Eversly Bennett was present. She was the Presbyterian parson's wife, and
was working the Fosters for a charity. Talk now died a sudden death--on
the Foster side. Mrs. Bennett presently discovered that her hosts
were not hearing a word she was saying; so she got up, wondering and
indignant, and went away. The moment she was out of the house, Aleck
eagerly tore the wrapper from the paper, and her eyes and Sally's swept
the columns for the death-notices. Disappointment! Tilbury was not
anywhere mentioned. Aleck was a Christian from the cradle, and duty and
the force of habit required her to go through the motions. She pulled
herself together and said, with a pious two-per-cent. trade joyousness:

“Let us be humbly thankful that he has been spared; and--”

“Damn his treacherous hide, I wish--”

“Sally! For shame!”

“I don't care!” retorted the angry man. “It's the way _you _feel, and if
you weren't so immorally pious you'd be honest and say so.”

Aleck said, with wounded dignity:

“I do not see how you can say such unkind and unjust things. There is no
such thing as immoral piety.”

Sally felt a pang, but tried to conceal it under a shuffling attempt to
save his case by changing the form of it--as if changing the form while
retaining the juice could deceive the expert he was trying to placate.
He said:

“I didn't mean so bad as that, Aleck; I didn't really mean immoral
piety, I only meant--meant--well, conventional piety, you know; er--shop
piety; the--the--why, _you _know what I mean. Aleck--the--well, where
you put up that plated article and play it for solid, you know, without
intending anything improper, but just out of trade habit, ancient
policy, petrified custom, loyalty to--to--hang it, I can't find the
right words, but _you _know what I mean, Aleck, and that there isn't any
harm in it. I'll try again. You see, it's this way. If a person--”

“You have said quite enough,” said Aleck, coldly; “let the subject be
dropped.”

“I'm willing,” fervently responded Sally, wiping the sweat from his
forehead and looking the thankfulness he had no words for. Then,
musingly, he apologized to himself. “I certainly held threes--_I know_
it--but I drew and didn't fill. That's where I'm so often weak in
the game. If I had stood pat--but I didn't. I never do. I don't know
enough.”

Confessedly defeated, he was properly tame now and subdued. Aleck
forgave him with her eyes.

The grand interest, the supreme interest, came instantly to the front
again; nothing could keep it in the background many minutes on a
stretch. The couple took up the puzzle of the absence of Tilbury's
death-notice. They discussed it every which way, more or less hopefully,
but they had to finish where they began, and concede that the only
really sane explanation of the absence of the notice must be--and
without doubt was--that Tilbury was not dead. There was something sad
about it, something even a little unfair, maybe, but there it was, and
had to be put up with. They were agreed as to that. To Sally it seemed
a strangely inscrutable dispensation; more inscrutable than usual, he
thought; one of the most unnecessary inscrutable he could call to mind,
in fact--and said so, with some feeling; but if he was hoping to draw
Aleck he failed; she reserved her opinion, if she had one; she had not
the habit of taking injudicious risks in any market, worldly or other.

The pair must wait for next week's paper--Tilbury had evidently
postponed. That was their thought and their decision. So they put the
subject away and went about their affairs again with as good heart as
they could.

Now, if they had but known it, they had been wronging Tilbury all the
time. Tilbury had kept faith, kept it to the letter; he was dead, he had
died to schedule. He was dead more than four days now and used to it;
entirely dead, perfectly dead, as dead as any other new person in the
cemetery; dead in abundant time to get into that week's _Sagamore_, too,
and only shut out by an accident; an accident which could not happen
to a metropolitan journal, but which happens easily to a poor little
village rag like the _Sagamore_. On this occasion, just as the editorial
page was being locked up, a gratis quart of strawberry ice-water arrived
from Hostetter's Ladies and Gents Ice-Cream Parlors, and the stickful of
rather chilly regret over Tilbury's translation got crowded out to make
room for the editor's frantic gratitude.

On its way to the standing-galley Tilbury's notice got pied. Otherwise
it would have gone into some future edition, for _weekly Sagamores_ do
not waste “live” matter, and in their galleys “live” matter is immortal,
unless a pi accident intervenes. But a thing that gets pied is dead, and
for such there is no resurrection; its chance of seeing print is gone,
forever and ever. And so, let Tilbury like it or not, let him rave in
his grave to his fill, no matter--no mention of his death would ever see
the light in the _Weekly Sagamore_.



CHAPTER IV

Five weeks drifted tediously along. The _Sagamore _arrived regularly
on the Saturdays, but never once contained a mention of Tilbury Foster.
Sally's patience broke down at this point, and he said, resentfully:

“Damn his livers, he's immortal!”

Aleck give him a very severe rebuke, and added with icy solemnity:

“How would you feel if you were suddenly cut off just after such an
awful remark had escaped out of you?”

Without sufficient reflection Sally responded:

“I'd feel I was lucky I hadn't got caught with it _in_ me.”

Pride had forced him to say something, and as he could not think of any
rational thing to say he flung that out. Then he stole a base--as he
called it--that is, slipped from the presence, to keep from being brayed
in his wife's discussion-mortar.

Six months came and went. The _Sagamore _was still silent about Tilbury.
Meantime, Sally had several times thrown out a feeler--that is, a hint
that he would like to know. Aleck had ignored the hints. Sally now
resolved to brace up and risk a frontal attack. So he squarely proposed
to disguise himself and go to Tilbury's village and surreptitiously find
out as to the prospects. Aleck put her foot on the dangerous project
with energy and decision. She said:

“What can you be thinking of? You do keep my hands full! You have to be
watched all the time, like a little child, to keep you from walking into
the fire. You'll stay right where you are!”

“Why, Aleck, I could do it and not be found out--I'm certain of it.”

“Sally Foster, don't you know you would have to inquire around?”

“Of course, but what of it? Nobody would suspect who I was.”

“Oh, listen to the man! Some day you've got to prove to the executors
that you never inquired. What then?”

He had forgotten that detail. He didn't reply; there wasn't anything to
say. Aleck added:

“Now then, drop that notion out of your mind, and don't ever meddle with
it again. Tilbury set that trap for you. Don't you know it's a trap? He
is on the watch, and fully expecting you to blunder into it. Well, he is
going to be disappointed--at least while I am on deck. Sally!”

“Well?”

“As long as you live, if it's a hundred years, don't you ever make an
inquiry. Promise!”

“All right,” with a sigh and reluctantly.

Then Aleck softened and said:

“Don't be impatient. We are prospering; we can wait; there is no hurry.
Our small dead-certain income increases all the time; and as to futures,
I have not made a mistake yet--they are piling up by the thousands and
tens of thousands. There is not another family in the state with such
prospects as ours. Already we are beginning to roll in eventual wealth.
You know that, don't you?”

“Yes, Aleck, it's certainly so.”

“Then be grateful for what God is doing for us and stop worrying. You do
not believe we could have achieved these prodigious results without His
special help and guidance, do you?”

Hesitatingly, “N-no, I suppose not.” Then, with feeling and admiration,
“And yet, when it comes to judiciousness in watering a stock or putting
up a hand to skin Wall Street I don't give in that _you _need any
outside amateur help, if I do wish I--”

“Oh, _do_ shut up! I know you do not mean any harm or any irreverence,
poor boy, but you can't seem to open your mouth without letting out
things to make a person shudder. You keep me in constant dread. For you
and for all of us. Once I had no fear of the thunder, but now when I
hear it I--”

Her voice broke, and she began to cry, and could not finish. The sight
of this smote Sally to the heart and he took her in his arms and petted
her and comforted her and promised better conduct, and upbraided himself
and remorsefully pleaded for forgiveness. And he was in earnest, and
sorry for what he had done and ready for any sacrifice that could make
up for it.

And so, in privacy, he thought long and deeply over the matter,
resolving to do what should seem best. It was easy to _promise _reform;
indeed he had already promised it. But would that do any real good, any
permanent good? No, it would be but temporary--he knew his weakness,
and confessed it to himself with sorrow--he could not keep the promise.
Something surer and better must be devised; and he devised it. At
cost of precious money which he had long been saving up, shilling by
shilling, he put a lightning-rod on the house.

At a subsequent time he relapsed.

What miracles habit can do! and how quickly and how easily habits are
acquired--both trifling habits and habits which profoundly change us.
If by accident we wake at two in the morning a couple of nights in
succession, we have need to be uneasy, for another repetition can turn
the accident into a habit; and a month's dallying with whiskey--but we
all know these commonplace facts.

The castle-building habit, the day-dreaming habit--how it grows! what a
luxury it becomes; how we fly to its enchantments at every idle moment,
how we revel in them, steep our souls in them, intoxicate ourselves with
their beguiling fantasies--oh yes, and how soon and how easily our dream
life and our material life become so intermingled and so fused together
that we can't quite tell which is which, any more.

By and by Aleck subscribed to a Chicago daily and for the _Wall Street
Pointer_. With an eye single to finance she studied these as diligently
all the week as she studied her Bible Sundays. Sally was lost in
admiration, to note with what swift and sure strides her genius and
judgment developed and expanded in the forecasting and handling of the
securities of both the material and spiritual markets. He was proud of
her nerve and daring in exploiting worldly stocks, and just as proud of
her conservative caution in working her spiritual deals. He noted that
she never lost her head in either case; that with a splendid courage
she often went short on worldly futures, but heedfully drew the line
there--she was always long on the others. Her policy was quite sane and
simple, as she explained it to him: what she put into earthly futures
was for speculation, what she put into spiritual futures was for
investment; she was willing to go into the one on a margin, and take
chances, but in the case of the other, “margin her no margins”--she
wanted to cash in a hundred cents per dollar's worth, and have the stock
transferred on the books.

It took but a very few months to educate Aleck's imagination and
Sally's. Each day's training added something to the spread and
effectiveness of the two machines. As a consequence, Aleck made
imaginary money much faster than at first she had dreamed of making it,
and Sally's competency in spending the overflow of it kept pace with the
strain put upon it, right along. In the beginning, Aleck had given the
coal speculation a twelvemonth in which to materialize, and had been
loath to grant that this term might possibly be shortened by nine
months. But that was the feeble work, the nursery work, of a financial
fancy that had had no teaching, no experience, no practice. These
aids soon came, then that nine months vanished, and the imaginary
ten-thousand-dollar investment came marching home with three hundred per
cent. profit on its back!

It was a great day for the pair of Fosters. They were speechless for
joy. Also speechless for another reason: after much watching of the
market, Aleck had lately, with fear and trembling, made her first flyer
on a “margin,” using the remaining twenty thousand of the bequest
in this risk. In her mind's eye she had seen it climb, point by
point--always with a chance that the market would break--until at last
her anxieties were too great for further endurance--she being new to
the margin business and unhardened, as yet--and she gave her imaginary
broker an imaginary order by imaginary telegraph to sell. She said forty
thousand dollars' profit was enough. The sale was made on the very day
that the coal venture had returned with its rich freight. As I have
said, the couple were speechless, they sat dazed and blissful that
night, trying to realize that they were actually worth a hundred
thousand dollars in clean, imaginary cash. Yet so it was.

It was the last time that ever Aleck was afraid of a margin; at least
afraid enough to let it break her sleep and pale her cheek to the extent
that this first experience in that line had done.

Indeed it was a memorable night. Gradually the realization that they
were rich sank securely home into the souls of the pair, then they began
to place the money. If we could have looked out through the eyes of
these dreamers, we should have seen their tidy little wooden house
disappear, and two-story brick with a cast-iron fence in front of it
take its place; we should have seen a three-globed gas-chandelier grow
down from the parlor ceiling; we should have seen the homely rag carpet
turn to noble Brussels, a dollar and a half a yard; we should have seen
the plebeian fireplace vanish away and a recherche, big base-burner with
isinglass windows take position and spread awe around. And we should
have seen other things, too; among them the buggy, the lap-robe, the
stove-pipe hat, and so on.

From that time forth, although the daughters and the neighbors saw only
the same old wooden house there, it was a two-story brick to Aleck
and Sally and not a night went by that Aleck did not worry about the
imaginary gas-bills, and get for all comfort Sally's reckless retort:
“What of it? We can afford it.”

Before the couple went to bed, that first night that they were rich,
they had decided that they must celebrate. They must give a party--that
was the idea. But how to explain it--to the daughters and the neighbors?
They could not expose the fact that they were rich. Sally was willing,
even anxious, to do it; but Aleck kept her head and would not allow it.
She said that although the money was as good as in, it would be as well
to wait until it was actually in. On that policy she took her stand, and
would not budge. The great secret must be kept, she said--kept from the
daughters and everybody else.

The pair were puzzled. They must celebrate, they were determined to
celebrate, but since the secret must be kept, what could they celebrate?
No birthdays were due for three months. Tilbury wasn't available,
evidently he was going to live forever; what the nation _could _they
celebrate? That was Sally's way of putting it; and he was getting
impatient, too, and harassed. But at last he hit it--just by sheer
inspiration, as it seemed to him--and all their troubles were gone in a
moment; they would celebrate the Discovery of America. A splendid idea!

Aleck was almost too proud of Sally for words--she said _she _never
would have thought of it. But Sally, although he was bursting with
delight in the compliment and with wonder at himself, tried not to let
on, and said it wasn't really anything, anybody could have done it.
Whereat Aleck, with a prideful toss of her happy head, said:

“Oh, certainly! Anybody could--oh, anybody! Hosannah Dilkins, for
instance! Or maybe Adelbert Peanut--oh, _dear_--yes! Well, I'd like to
see them try it, that's all. Dear-me-suz, if they could think of the
discovery of a forty-acre island it's more than _I_ believe they could;
and as for the whole continent, why, Sally Foster, you know perfectly
well it would strain the livers and lights out of them and _then_ they
couldn't!”

The dear woman, she knew he had talent; and if affection made her
over-estimate the size of it a little, surely it was a sweet and gentle
crime, and forgivable for its source's sake.



CHAPTER V

The celebration went off well. The friends were all present, both the
young and the old. Among the young were Flossie and Gracie Peanut and
their brother Adelbert, who was a rising young journeyman tinner,
also Hosannah Dilkins, Jr., journeyman plasterer, just out of his
apprenticeship. For many months Adelbert and Hosannah had been showing
interest in Gwendolen and Clytemnestra Foster, and the parents of the
girls had noticed this with private satisfaction. But they suddenly
realized now that that feeling had passed. They recognized that the
changed financial conditions had raised up a social bar between
their daughters and the young mechanics. The daughters could now look
higher--and must. Yes, must. They need marry nothing below the grade of
lawyer or merchant; poppa and momma would take care of this; there must
be no mesalliances.

However, these thinkings and projects of theirs were private, and
did not show on the surface, and therefore threw no shadow upon the
celebration. What showed upon the surface was a serene and lofty
contentment and a dignity of carriage and gravity of deportment which
compelled the admiration and likewise the wonder of the company. All
noticed it and all commented upon it, but none was able to divine the
secret of it. It was a marvel and a mystery. Three several persons
remarked, without suspecting what clever shots they were making:

“It's as if they'd come into property.”

That was just it, indeed.

Most mothers would have taken hold of the matrimonial matter in the
old regulation way; they would have given the girls a talking to, of
a solemn sort and untactful--a lecture calculated to defeat its own
purpose, by producing tears and secret rebellion; and the said mothers
would have further damaged the business by requesting the young
mechanics to discontinue their attentions. But this mother was
different. She was practical. She said nothing to any of the young
people concerned, nor to any one else except Sally. He listened to her
and understood; understood and admired. He said:

“I get the idea. Instead of finding fault with the samples on view,
thus hurting feelings and obstructing trade without occasion, you merely
offer a higher class of goods for the money, and leave nature to take
her course. It's wisdom, Aleck, solid wisdom, and sound as a nut. Who's
your fish? Have you nominated him yet?”

No, she hadn't. They must look the market over--which they did. To start
with, they considered and discussed Brandish, rising young lawyer, and
Fulton, rising young dentist. Sally must invite them to dinner. But not
right away; there was no hurry, Aleck said. Keep an eye on the pair, and
wait; nothing would be lost by going slowly in so important a matter.

It turned out that this was wisdom, too; for inside of three weeks Aleck
made a wonderful strike which swelled her imaginary hundred thousand
to four hundred thousand of the same quality. She and Sally were in the
clouds that evening. For the first time they introduced champagne at
dinner. Not real champagne, but plenty real enough for the amount of
imagination expended on it. It was Sally that did it, and Aleck weakly
submitted. At bottom both were troubled and ashamed, for he was a
high-up Son of Temperance, and at funerals wore an apron which no dog
could look upon and retain his reason and his opinion; and she was a
W. C. T. U., with all that that implies of boiler-iron virtue and
unendurable holiness. But there it was; the pride of riches was
beginning its disintegrating work. They had lived to prove, once more,
a sad truth which had been proven many times before in the world: that
whereas principle is a great and noble protection against showy and
degrading vanities and vices, poverty is worth six of it. More than
four hundred thousand dollars to the good. They took up the matrimonial
matter again. Neither the dentist nor the lawyer was mentioned; there
was no occasion, they were out of the running. Disqualified. They
discussed the son of the pork-packer and the son of the village banker.
But finally, as in the previous case, they concluded to wait and think,
and go cautiously and sure.

Luck came their way again. Aleck, ever watchful saw a great and risky
chance, and took a daring flyer. A time of trembling, of doubt, of awful
uneasiness followed, for non-success meant absolute ruin and nothing
short of it. Then came the result, and Aleck, faint with joy, could
hardly control her voice when she said:

“The suspense is over, Sally--and we are worth a cold million!”

Sally wept for gratitude, and said:

“Oh, Electra, jewel of women, darling of my heart, we are free at last,
we roll in wealth, we need never scrimp again. It's a case for Veuve
Cliquot!” and he got out a pint of spruce-beer and made sacrifice, he
saying “Damn the expense,” and she rebuking him gently with reproachful
but humid and happy eyes.

They shelved the pork-packer's son and the banker's son, and sat down to
consider the Governor's son and the son of the Congressman.



CHAPTER VI

It were a weariness to follow in detail the leaps and bounds the Foster
fictitious finances took from this time forth. It was marvelous, it
was dizzying, it was dazzling. Everything Aleck touched turned to fairy
gold, and heaped itself glittering toward the firmament. Millions upon
millions poured in, and still the mighty stream flowed thundering
along, still its vast volume increased. Five millions--ten
millions--twenty--thirty--was there never to be an end?

Two years swept by in a splendid delirium, the intoxicated Fosters
scarcely noticing the flight of time. They were now worth three
hundred million dollars; they were in every board of directors of every
prodigious combine in the country; and still as time drifted along, the
millions went on piling up, five at a time, ten at a time, as fast as
they could tally them off, almost. The three hundred double itself--then
doubled again--and yet again--and yet once more.

Twenty-four hundred millions!

The business was getting a little confused. It was necessary to take an
account of stock, and straighten it out. The Fosters knew it, they felt
it, they realized that it was imperative; but they also knew that to do
it properly and perfectly the task must be carried to a finish without
a break when once it was begun. A ten-hours' job; and where could _they
_find ten leisure hours in a bunch? Sally was selling pins and sugar and
calico all day and every day; Aleck was cooking and washing dishes and
sweeping and making beds all day and every day, with none to help, for
the daughters were being saved up for high society. The Fosters knew
there was one way to get the ten hours, and only one. Both were ashamed
to name it; each waited for the other to do it. Finally Sally said:

“Somebody's got to give in. It's up to me. Consider that I've named
it--never mind pronouncing it out aloud.”

Aleck colored, but was grateful. Without further remark, they fell.
Fell, and--broke the Sabbath. For that was their only free ten-hour
stretch. It was but another step in the downward path. Others would
follow. Vast wealth has temptations which fatally and surely undermine
the moral structure of persons not habituated to its possession.

They pulled down the shades and broke the Sabbath. With hard and patient
labor they overhauled their holdings and listed them. And a long-drawn
procession of formidable names it was! Starting with the Railway
Systems, Steamer Lines, Standard Oil, Ocean Cables, Diluted Telegraph,
and all the rest, and winding up with Klondike, De Beers, Tammany Graft,
and Shady Privileges in the Post-office Department.

Twenty-four hundred millions, and all safely planted in Good Things,
gilt-edged and interest-bearing. Income, $120,000,000 a year. Aleck
fetched a long purr of soft delight, and said:

“Is it enough?”

“It is, Aleck.”

“What shall we do?”

“Stand pat.”

“Retire from business?”

“That's it.”

“I am agreed. The good work is finished; we will take a long rest and
enjoy the money.”

“Good! Aleck!”

“Yes, dear?”

“How much of the income can we spend?”

“The whole of it.”

It seemed to her husband that a ton of chains fell from his limbs. He
did not say a word; he was happy beyond the power of speech.

After that, they broke the Sabbaths right along as fast as they turned
up. It is the first wrong step that counts. Every Sunday they put in the
whole day, after morning service, on inventions--inventions of ways to
spend the money. They got to continuing this delicious dissipation until
past midnight; and at every seance Aleck lavished millions upon great
charities and religious enterprises, and Sally lavished like sums upon
matters to which (at first) he gave definite names. Only at first. Later
the names gradually lost sharpness of outline, and eventually faded into
“sundries,” thus becoming entirely--but safely--undescriptive. For Sally
was crumbling. The placing of these millions added seriously and most
uncomfortably to the family expenses--in tallow candles. For a while
Aleck was worried. Then, after a little, she ceased to worry, for
the occasion of it was gone. She was pained, she was grieved, she was
ashamed; but she said nothing, and so became an accessory. Sally was
taking candles; he was robbing the store. It is ever thus. Vast wealth,
to the person unaccustomed to it, is a bane; it eats into the flesh and
bone of his morals. When the Fosters were poor, they could have been
trusted with untold candles. But now they--but let us not dwell upon it.
From candles to apples is but a step: Sally got to taking apples; then
soap; then maple-sugar; then canned goods; then crockery. How easy it
is to go from bad to worse, when once we have started upon a downward
course!

Meantime, other effects had been milestoning the course of the Fosters'
splendid financial march. The fictitious brick dwelling had given place
to an imaginary granite one with a checker-board mansard roof; in time
this one disappeared and gave place to a still grander home--and so on
and so on. Mansion after mansion, made of air, rose, higher, broader,
finer, and each in its turn vanished away; until now in these latter
great days, our dreamers were in fancy housed, in a distant region, in a
sumptuous vast palace which looked out from a leafy summit upon a
noble prospect of vale and river and receding hills steeped in tinted
mists--and all private, all the property of the dreamers; a palace
swarming with liveried servants, and populous with guests of fame and
power, hailing from all the world's capitals, foreign and domestic.

This palace was far, far away toward the rising sun, immeasurably
remote, astronomically remote, in Newport, Rhode Island, Holy Land of
High Society, ineffable Domain of the American Aristocracy. As a rule
they spent a part of every Sabbath--after morning service--in this
sumptuous home, the rest of it they spent in Europe, or in dawdling
around in their private yacht. Six days of sordid and plodding fact life
at home on the ragged edge of Lakeside and straitened means, the seventh
in Fairyland--such had been their program and their habit.

In their sternly restricted fact life they remained as of old--plodding,
diligent, careful, practical, economical. They stuck loyally to the
little Presbyterian Church, and labored faithfully in its interests
and stood by its high and tough doctrines with all their mental and
spiritual energies. But in their dream life they obeyed the invitations
of their fancies, whatever they might be, and howsoever the fancies
might change. Aleck's fancies were not very capricious, and not
frequent, but Sally's scattered a good deal. Aleck, in her dream life,
went over to the Episcopal camp, on account of its large official
titles; next she became High-church on account of the candles and shows;
and next she naturally changed to Rome, where there were cardinals and
more candles. But these excursions were a nothing to Sally's. His dream
life was a glowing and continuous and persistent excitement, and he kept
every part of it fresh and sparkling by frequent changes, the religious
part along with the rest. He worked his religions hard, and changed them
with his shirt.

The liberal spendings of the Fosters upon their fancies began early
in their prosperities, and grew in prodigality step by step with their
advancing fortunes. In time they became truly enormous. Aleck built
a university or two per Sunday; also a hospital or two; also a Rowton
hotel or so; also a batch of churches; now and then a cathedral; and
once, with untimely and ill-chosen playfulness, Sally said, “It was
a cold day when she didn't ship a cargo of missionaries to persuade
unreflecting Chinamen to trade off twenty-four carat Confucianism for
counterfeit Christianity.”

This rude and unfeeling language hurt Aleck to the heart, and she went
from the presence crying. That spectacle went to his own heart, and in
his pain and shame he would have given worlds to have those unkind words
back. She had uttered no syllable of reproach--and that cut him. Not one
suggestion that he look at his own record--and she could have made, oh,
so many, and such blistering ones! Her generous silence brought a swift
revenge, for it turned his thoughts upon himself, it summoned before
him a spectral procession, a moving vision of his life as he had been
leading it these past few years of limitless prosperity, and as he
sat there reviewing it his cheeks burned and his soul was steeped in
humiliation. Look at her life--how fair it was, and tending ever upward;
and look at his own--how frivolous, how charged with mean vanities,
how selfish, how empty, how ignoble! And its trend--never upward, but
downward, ever downward!

He instituted comparisons between her record and his own. He had found
fault with her--so he mused--_he_! And what could he say for himself?
When she built her first church what was he doing? Gathering other blase
multimillionaires into a Poker Club; defiling his own palace with it;
losing hundreds of thousands to it at every sitting, and sillily vain of
the admiring notoriety it made for him. When she was building her
first university, what was he doing? Polluting himself with a gay
and dissipated secret life in the company of other fast bloods,
multimillionaires in money and paupers in character. When she was
building her first foundling asylum, what was he doing? Alas! When she
was projecting her noble Society for the Purifying of the Sex, what was
he doing? Ah, what, indeed! When she and the W. C. T. U. and the Woman
with the Hatchet, moving with resistless march, were sweeping the fatal
bottle from the land, what was he doing? Getting drunk three times a
day. When she, builder of a hundred cathedrals, was being gratefully
welcomed and blest in papal Rome and decorated with the Golden Rose
which she had so honorably earned, what was he doing? Breaking the bank
at Monte Carlo.

He stopped. He could go no farther; he could not bear the rest. He rose
up, with a great resolution upon his lips: this secret life should be
revealed, and confessed; no longer would he live it clandestinely, he
would go and tell her All.

And that is what he did. He told her All; and wept upon her bosom; wept,
and moaned, and begged for her forgiveness. It was a profound shock, and
she staggered under the blow, but he was her own, the core of her heart,
the blessing of her eyes, her all in all, she could deny him nothing,
and she forgave him. She felt that he could never again be quite to her
what he had been before; she knew that he could only repent, and not
reform; yet all morally defaced and decayed as he was, was he not her
own, her very own, the idol of her deathless worship? She said she was
his serf, his slave, and she opened her yearning heart and took him in.



CHAPTER VII

One Sunday afternoon some time after this they were sailing the summer
seas in their dream yacht, and reclining in lazy luxury under the awning
of the after-deck. There was silence, for each was busy with his own
thoughts. These seasons of silence had insensibly been growing more
and more frequent of late; the old nearness and cordiality were waning.
Sally's terrible revelation had done its work; Aleck had tried hard to
drive the memory of it out of her mind, but it would not go, and the
shame and bitterness of it were poisoning her gracious dream life. She
could see now (on Sundays) that her husband was becoming a bloated and
repulsive Thing. She could not close her eyes to this, and in these days
she no longer looked at him, Sundays, when she could help it.

But she--was she herself without blemish? Alas, she knew she was not.
She was keeping a secret from him, she was acting dishonorably toward
him, and many a pang it was costing her. _She was breaking the compact,
and concealing it from him_. Under strong temptation she had gone into
business again; she had risked their whole fortune in a purchase of all
the railway systems and coal and steel companies in the country on a
margin, and she was now trembling, every Sabbath hour, lest through some
chance word of hers he find it out. In her misery and remorse for this
treachery she could not keep her heart from going out to him in pity;
she was filled with compunctions to see him lying there, drunk and
contented, and never suspecting. Never suspecting--trusting her with
a perfect and pathetic trust, and she holding over him by a thread a
possible calamity of so devastating a--

“_Say_--Aleck?”

The interrupting words brought her suddenly to herself. She was grateful
to have that persecuting subject from her thoughts, and she answered,
with much of the old-time tenderness in her tone:

“Yes, dear.”

“Do you know, Aleck, I think we are making a mistake--that is, you
are. I mean about the marriage business.” He sat up, fat and froggy and
benevolent, like a bronze Buddha, and grew earnest. “Consider--it's more
than five years. You've continued the same policy from the start: with
every rise, always holding on for five points higher. Always when I
think we are going to have some weddings, you see a bigger thing ahead,
and I undergo another disappointment. _I_ think you are too hard to
please. Some day we'll get left. First, we turned down the dentist and
the lawyer. That was all right--it was sound. Next, we turned down the
banker's son and the pork-butcher's heir--right again, and sound. Next,
we turned down the Congressman's son and the Governor's--right as
a trivet, I confess it. Next the Senator's son and the son of the
Vice-President of the United States--perfectly right, there's no
permanency about those little distinctions. Then you went for the
aristocracy; and I thought we had struck oil at last--yes. We would
make a plunge at the Four Hundred, and pull in some ancient lineage,
venerable, holy, ineffable, mellow with the antiquity of a hundred and
fifty years, disinfected of the ancestral odors of salt-cod and pelts
all of a century ago, and unsmirched by a day's work since, and then!
why, then the marriages, of course. But no, along comes a pair of real
aristocrats from Europe, and straightway you throw over the half-breeds.
It was awfully discouraging, Aleck! Since then, what a procession!
You turned down the baronets for a pair of barons; you turned down the
barons for a pair of viscounts; the viscounts for a pair of earls;
the earls for a pair of marquises; the marquises for a brace of dukes.
_Now_, Aleck, cash in!--you've played the limit. You've got a job lot
of four dukes under the hammer; of four nationalities; all sound in the
wind and limb and pedigree, all bankrupt and in debt up to the ears.
They come high, but we can afford it. Come, Aleck, don't delay any
longer, don't keep up the suspense: take the whole lay-out, and leave
the girls to choose!”

Aleck had been smiling blandly and contentedly all through this
arraignment of her marriage policy, a pleasant light, as of triumph with
perhaps a nice surprise peeping out through it, rose in her eyes, and
she said, as calmly as she could:

“Sally, what would you say to--_royalty_?”

Prodigious! Poor man, it knocked him silly, and he fell over the
garboard-strake and barked his shin on the cat-heads. He was dizzy for a
moment, then he gathered himself up and limped over and sat down by
his wife and beamed his old-time admiration and affection upon her in
floods, out of his bleary eyes.

“By George!” he said, fervently, “Aleck, you _are _great--the greatest
woman in the whole earth! I can't ever learn the whole size of you.
I can't ever learn the immeasurable deeps of you. Here I've been
considering myself qualified to criticize your game. _I!_ Why, if I had
stopped to think, I'd have known you had a lone hand up your sleeve.
Now, dear heart, I'm all red-hot impatience--tell me about it!”

The flattered and happy woman put her lips to his ear and whispered
a princely name. It made him catch his breath, it lit his face with
exultation.

“Land!” he said, “it's a stunning catch! He's got a gambling-hall, and
a graveyard, and a bishop, and a cathedral--all his very own. And all
gilt-edged five-hundred-per-cent. stock, every detail of it; the tidiest
little property in Europe; and that graveyard--it's the selectest in
the world: none but suicides admitted; _yes_, sir, and the free-list
suspended, too, _all _the time. There isn't much land in the
principality, but there's enough: eight hundred acres in the graveyard
and forty-two outside. It's a _sovereignty_--that's the main thing;
_land's_ nothing. There's plenty land, Sahara's drugged with it.”

Aleck glowed; she was profoundly happy. She said:

“Think of it, Sally--it is a family that has never married outside the
Royal and Imperial Houses of Europe: our grandchildren will sit upon
thrones!”

“True as you live, Aleck--and bear scepters, too; and handle them as
naturally and nonchantly as I handle a yardstick. It's a grand catch,
Aleck. He's corralled, is he? Can't get away? You didn't take him on a
margin?”

“No. Trust me for that. He's not a liability, he's an asset. So is the
other one.”

“Who is it, Aleck?”

“His Royal Highness
Sigismund-Siegfried-Lauenfeld-Dinkelspiel-Schwartzenberg Blutwurst,
Hereditary Grand Duke of Katzenyammer.”

“No! You can't mean it!”

“It's as true as I'm sitting here, I give you my word,” she answered.

His cup was full, and he hugged her to his heart with rapture, saying:

“How wonderful it all seems, and how beautiful! It's one of the
oldest and noblest of the three hundred and sixty-four ancient German
principalities, and one of the few that was allowed to retain its royal
estate when Bismarck got done trimming them. I know that farm, I've been
there. It's got a rope-walk and a candle-factory and an army. Standing
army. Infantry and cavalry. Three soldier and a horse. Aleck, it's been
a long wait, and full of heartbreak and hope deferred, but God knows I
am happy now. Happy, and grateful to you, my own, who have done it all.
When is it to be?”

“Next Sunday.”

“Good. And we'll want to do these weddings up in the very regalest style
that's going. It's properly due to the royal quality of the parties
of the first part. Now as I understand it, there is only one kind of
marriage that is sacred to royalty, exclusive to royalty: it's the
morganatic.”

“What do they call it that for, Sally?”

“I don't know; but anyway it's royal, and royal only.”

“Then we will insist upon it. More--I will compel it. It is morganatic
marriage or none.”

“That settles it!” said Sally, rubbing his hands with delight. “And it
will be the very first in America. Aleck, it will make Newport sick.”

Then they fell silent, and drifted away upon their dream wings to the
far regions of the earth to invite all the crowned heads and their
families and provide gratis transportation to them.



CHAPTER VIII

During three days the couple walked upon air, with their heads in the
clouds. They were but vaguely conscious of their surroundings; they saw
all things dimly, as through a veil; they were steeped in dreams,
often they did not hear when they were spoken to; they often did not
understand when they heard; they answered confusedly or at random; Sally
sold molasses by weight, sugar by the yard, and furnished soap when
asked for candles, and Aleck put the cat in the wash and fed milk to
the soiled linen. Everybody was stunned and amazed, and went about
muttering, “What _can _be the matter with the Fosters?”

Three days. Then came events! Things had taken a happy turn, and
for forty-eight hours Aleck's imaginary corner had been booming. Up--up-
-still up! Cost point was passed. Still up--and up--and up! Five points
above cost--then ten--fifteen--twenty! Twenty points cold profit on the
vast venture, now, and Aleck's imaginary brokers were shouting
frantically by imaginary long-distance, “Sell! sell! for Heaven's sake
_sell_!”

She broke the splendid news to Sally, and he, too, said, “Sell!
sell--oh, don't make a blunder, now, you own the earth!--sell, sell!”
 But she set her iron will and lashed it amidships, and said she would
hold on for five points more if she died for it.

It was a fatal resolve. The very next day came the historic crash, the
record crash, the devastating crash, when the bottom fell out of Wall
Street, and the whole body of gilt-edged stocks dropped ninety-five
points in five hours, and the multimillionaire was seen begging his
bread in the Bowery. Aleck sternly held her grip and “put up” as long
as she could, but at last there came a call which she was powerless to
meet, and her imaginary brokers sold her out. Then, and not till then,
the man in her was vanished, and the woman in her resumed sway. She put
her arms about her husband's neck and wept, saying:

“I am to blame, do not forgive me, I cannot bear it. We are paupers!
Paupers, and I am so miserable. The weddings will never come off; all
that is past; we could not even buy the dentist, now.”

A bitter reproach was on Sally's tongue: “I _begged _you to sell, but
you--” He did not say it; he had not the heart to add a hurt to that
broken and repentant spirit. A nobler thought came to him and he said:

“Bear up, my Aleck, all is not lost! You really never invested a penny
of my uncle's bequest, but only its unmaterialized future; what we
have lost was only the incremented harvest from that future by your
incomparable financial judgment and sagacity. Cheer up, banish these
griefs; we still have the thirty thousand untouched; and with the
experience which you have acquired, think what you will be able to do
with it in a couple years! The marriages are not off, they are only
postponed.”

These were blessed words. Aleck saw how true they were, and their
influence was electric; her tears ceased to flow, and her great spirit
rose to its full stature again. With flashing eye and grateful heart,
and with hand uplifted in pledge and prophecy, she said:

“Now and here I proclaim--”

But she was interrupted by a visitor. It was the editor and proprietor
of the _Sagamore_. He had happened into Lakeside to pay a duty-call upon
an obscure grandmother of his who was nearing the end of her pilgrimage,
and with the idea of combining business with grief he had looked up
the Fosters, who had been so absorbed in other things for the past four
years that they neglected to pay up their subscription. Six dollars due.
No visitor could have been more welcome. He would know all about Uncle
Tilbury and what his chances might be getting to be, cemeterywards. They
could, of course, ask no questions, for that would squelch the bequest,
but they could nibble around on the edge of the subject and hope for
results. The scheme did not work. The obtuse editor did not know he was
being nibbled at; but at last, chance accomplished what art had failed
in. In illustration of something under discussion which required the
help of metaphor, the editor said:

“Land, it's as tough as Tilbury Foster!--as _we_ say.”

It was sudden, and it made the Fosters jump. The editor noticed, and
said, apologetically:

“No harm intended, I assure you. It's just a saying; just a joke, you
know--nothing in it. Relation of yours?”

Sally crowded his burning eagerness down, and answered with all the
indifference he could assume:

“I--well, not that I know of, but we've heard of him.” The editor was
thankful, and resumed his composure. Sally added: “Is he--is he--well?”

“Is he _well_? Why, bless you he's in Sheol these five years!”

The Fosters were trembling with grief, though it felt like joy. Sally
said, non-committally--and tentatively:

“Ah, well, such is life, and none can escape--not even the rich are
spared.”

The editor laughed.

“If you are including Tilbury,” said he, “it don't apply. _He_ hadn't a
cent; the town had to bury him.”

The Fosters sat petrified for two minutes; petrified and cold. Then,
white-faced and weak-voiced, Sally asked:

“Is it true? Do you _know _it to be true?”

“Well, I should say! I was one of the executors. He hadn't anything to
leave but a wheelbarrow, and he left that to me. It hadn't any wheel,
and wasn't any good. Still, it was something, and so, to square up, I
scribbled off a sort of a little obituarial send-off for him, but it got
crowded out.”

The Fosters were not listening--their cup was full, it could contain
no more. They sat with bowed heads, dead to all things but the ache at
their hearts.

An hour later. Still they sat there, bowed, motionless, silent, the
visitor long ago gone, they unaware.

Then they stirred, and lifted their heads wearily, and gazed at each
other wistfully, dreamily, dazed; then presently began to twaddle to
each other in a wandering and childish way. At intervals they lapsed
into silences, leaving a sentence unfinished, seemingly either unaware
of it or losing their way. Sometimes, when they woke out of these
silences they had a dim and transient consciousness that something had
happened to their minds; then with a dumb and yearning solicitude they
would softly caress each other's hands in mutual compassion and support,
as if they would say: “I am near you, I will not forsake you, we
will bear it together; somewhere there is release and forgetfulness,
somewhere there is a grave and peace; be patient, it will not be long.”

They lived yet two years, in mental night, always brooding, steeped in
vague regrets and melancholy dreams, never speaking; then release came
to both on the same day.

Toward the end the darkness lifted from Sally's ruined mind for a
moment, and he said:

“Vast wealth, acquired by sudden and unwholesome means, is a snare. It
did us no good, transient were its feverish pleasures; yet for its
sake we threw away our sweet and simple and happy life--let others take
warning by us.”

He lay silent awhile, with closed eyes; then as the chill of death crept
upward toward his heart, and consciousness was fading from his brain, he
muttered:

“Money had brought him misery, and he took his revenge upon us, who had
done him no harm. He had his desire: with base and cunning calculation
he left us but thirty thousand, knowing we would try to increase it, and
ruin our life and break our hearts. Without added expense he could
have left us far above desire of increase, far above the temptation
to speculate, and a kinder soul would have done it; but in him was no
generous spirit, no pity, no--”



A DOG'S TALE



CHAPTER I

My father was a St. Bernard, my mother was a collie, but I am a
Presbyterian. This is what my mother told me, I do not know these
nice distinctions myself. To me they are only fine large words meaning
nothing. My mother had a fondness for such; she liked to say them, and
see other dogs look surprised and envious, as wondering how she got
so much education. But, indeed, it was not real education; it was only
show: she got the words by listening in the dining-room and drawing-room
when there was company, and by going with the children to Sunday-school
and listening there; and whenever she heard a large word she said it
over to herself many times, and so was able to keep it until there was
a dogmatic gathering in the neighborhood, then she would get it off,
and surprise and distress them all, from pocket-pup to mastiff, which
rewarded her for all her trouble. If there was a stranger he was nearly
sure to be suspicious, and when he got his breath again he would ask her
what it meant. And she always told him. He was never expecting this but
thought he would catch her; so when she told him, he was the one that
looked ashamed, whereas he had thought it was going to be she. The
others were always waiting for this, and glad of it and proud of her,
for they knew what was going to happen, because they had had experience.
When she told the meaning of a big word they were all so taken up with
admiration that it never occurred to any dog to doubt if it was the
right one; and that was natural, because, for one thing, she answered up
so promptly that it seemed like a dictionary speaking, and for another
thing, where could they find out whether it was right or not? for she
was the only cultivated dog there was. By and by, when I was older, she
brought home the word Unintellectual, one time, and worked it pretty
hard all the week at different gatherings, making much unhappiness and
despondency; and it was at this time that I noticed that during that
week she was asked for the meaning at eight different assemblages, and
flashed out a fresh definition every time, which showed me that she had
more presence of mind than culture, though I said nothing, of course.
She had one word which she always kept on hand, and ready, like a
life-preserver, a kind of emergency word to strap on when she was likely
to get washed overboard in a sudden way--that was the word Synonymous.
When she happened to fetch out a long word which had had its day weeks
before and its prepared meanings gone to her dump-pile, if there was a
stranger there of course it knocked him groggy for a couple of minutes,
then he would come to, and by that time she would be away down wind on
another tack, and not expecting anything; so when he'd hail and ask her
to cash in, I (the only dog on the inside of her game) could see her
canvas flicker a moment--but only just a moment--then it would belly
out taut and full, and she would say, as calm as a summer's day, “It's
synonymous with supererogation,” or some godless long reptile of a
word like that, and go placidly about and skim away on the next tack,
perfectly comfortable, you know, and leave that stranger looking profane
and embarrassed, and the initiated slatting the floor with their tails
in unison and their faces transfigured with a holy joy.

And it was the same with phrases. She would drag home a whole phrase,
if it had a grand sound, and play it six nights and two matinees, and
explain it a new way every time--which she had to, for all she cared for
was the phrase; she wasn't interested in what it meant, and knew those
dogs hadn't wit enough to catch her, anyway. Yes, she was a daisy! She
got so she wasn't afraid of anything, she had such confidence in the
ignorance of those creatures. She even brought anecdotes that she had
heard the family and the dinner-guests laugh and shout over; and as
a rule she got the nub of one chestnut hitched onto another chestnut,
where, of course, it didn't fit and hadn't any point; and when she
delivered the nub she fell over and rolled on the floor and laughed and
barked in the most insane way, while I could see that she was wondering
to herself why it didn't seem as funny as it did when she first heard
it. But no harm was done; the others rolled and barked too, privately
ashamed of themselves for not seeing the point, and never suspecting
that the fault was not with them and there wasn't any to see.

You can see by these things that she was of a rather vain and frivolous
character; still, she had virtues, and enough to make up, I think. She
had a kind heart and gentle ways, and never harbored resentments for
injuries done her, but put them easily out of her mind and forgot them;
and she taught her children her kindly way, and from her we learned also
to be brave and prompt in time of danger, and not to run away, but face
the peril that threatened friend or stranger, and help him the best we
could without stopping to think what the cost might be to us. And she
taught us not by words only, but by example, and that is the best way
and the surest and the most lasting. Why, the brave things she did, the
splendid things! she was just a soldier; and so modest about it--well,
you couldn't help admiring her, and you couldn't help imitating her;
not even a King Charles spaniel could remain entirely despicable in her
society. So, as you see, there was more to her than her education.



CHAPTER II

When I was well grown, at last, I was sold and taken away, and I never
saw her again. She was broken-hearted, and so was I, and we cried; but
she comforted me as well as she could, and said we were sent into
this world for a wise and good purpose, and must do our duties without
repining, take our life as we might find it, live it for the best good
of others, and never mind about the results; they were not our affair.
She said men who did like this would have a noble and beautiful reward
by and by in another world, and although we animals would not go there,
to do well and right without reward would give to our brief lives
a worthiness and dignity which in itself would be a reward. She had
gathered these things from time to time when she had gone to the
Sunday-school with the children, and had laid them up in her memory more
carefully than she had done with those other words and phrases; and she
had studied them deeply, for her good and ours. One may see by this that
she had a wise and thoughtful head, for all there was so much lightness
and vanity in it.

So we said our farewells, and looked our last upon each other through
our tears; and the last thing she said--keeping it for the last to make
me remember it the better, I think--was, “In memory of me, when there
is a time of danger to another do not think of yourself, think of your
mother, and do as she would do.”

Do you think I could forget that? No.



CHAPTER III

It was such a charming home!--my new one; a fine great house, with
pictures, and delicate decorations, and rich furniture, and no gloom
anywhere, but all the wilderness of dainty colors lit up with flooding
sunshine; and the spacious grounds around it, and the great garden--oh,
greensward, and noble trees, and flowers, no end! And I was the same as
a member of the family; and they loved me, and petted me, and did not
give me a new name, but called me by my old one that was dear to me
because my mother had given it me--Aileen Mavoureen. She got it out of a
song; and the Grays knew that song, and said it was a beautiful name.

Mrs. Gray was thirty, and so sweet and so lovely, you cannot imagine
it; and Sadie was ten, and just like her mother, just a darling slender
little copy of her, with auburn tails down her back, and short frocks;
and the baby was a year old, and plump and dimpled, and fond of me,
and never could get enough of hauling on my tail, and hugging me, and
laughing out its innocent happiness; and Mr. Gray was thirty-eight, and
tall and slender and handsome, a little bald in front, alert, quick in
his movements, business-like, prompt, decided, unsentimental, and with
that kind of trim-chiseled face that just seems to glint and sparkle
with frosty intellectuality! He was a renowned scientist. I do not know
what the word means, but my mother would know how to use it and get
effects. She would know how to depress a rat-terrier with it and make a
lap-dog look sorry he came. But that is not the best one; the best one
was Laboratory. My mother could organize a Trust on that one that would
skin the tax-collars off the whole herd. The laboratory was not a
book, or a picture, or a place to wash your hands in, as the college
president's dog said--no, that is the lavatory; the laboratory is quite
different, and is filled with jars, and bottles, and electrics, and
wires, and strange machines; and every week other scientists came there
and sat in the place, and used the machines, and discussed, and made
what they called experiments and discoveries; and often I came, too,
and stood around and listened, and tried to learn, for the sake of my
mother, and in loving memory of her, although it was a pain to me, as
realizing what she was losing out of her life and I gaining nothing at
all; for try as I might, I was never able to make anything out of it at
all.

Other times I lay on the floor in the mistress's work-room and slept,
she gently using me for a foot-stool, knowing it pleased me, for it
was a caress; other times I spent an hour in the nursery, and got well
tousled and made happy; other times I watched by the crib there, when
the baby was asleep and the nurse out for a few minutes on the baby's
affairs; other times I romped and raced through the grounds and the
garden with Sadie till we were tired out, then slumbered on the grass in
the shade of a tree while she read her book; other times I went visiting
among the neighbor dogs--for there were some most pleasant ones not
far away, and one very handsome and courteous and graceful one,
a curly-haired Irish setter by the name of Robin Adair, who was a
Presbyterian like me, and belonged to the Scotch minister.

The servants in our house were all kind to me and were fond of me, and
so, as you see, mine was a pleasant life. There could not be a happier
dog that I was, nor a gratefuler one. I will say this for myself, for it
is only the truth: I tried in all ways to do well and right, and honor
my mother's memory and her teachings, and earn the happiness that had
come to me, as best I could.

By and by came my little puppy, and then my cup was full, my happiness
was perfect. It was the dearest little waddling thing, and so smooth
and soft and velvety, and had such cunning little awkward paws, and such
affectionate eyes, and such a sweet and innocent face; and it made me
so proud to see how the children and their mother adored it, and fondled
it, and exclaimed over every little wonderful thing it did. It did seem
to me that life was just too lovely to--

Then came the winter. One day I was standing a watch in the nursery.
That is to say, I was asleep on the bed. The baby was asleep in the
crib, which was alongside the bed, on the side next the fireplace. It
was the kind of crib that has a lofty tent over it made of gauzy stuff
that you can see through. The nurse was out, and we two sleepers were
alone. A spark from the wood-fire was shot out, and it lit on the slope
of the tent. I suppose a quiet interval followed, then a scream from the
baby awoke me, and there was that tent flaming up toward the ceiling!
Before I could think, I sprang to the floor in my fright, and in a
second was half-way to the door; but in the next half-second my mother's
farewell was sounding in my ears, and I was back on the bed again.,
I reached my head through the flames and dragged the baby out by the
waist-band, and tugged it along, and we fell to the floor together in a
cloud of smoke; I snatched a new hold, and dragged the screaming little
creature along and out at the door and around the bend of the hall,
and was still tugging away, all excited and happy and proud, when the
master's voice shouted:

“Begone you cursed beast!” and I jumped to save myself; but he was
furiously quick, and chased me up, striking furiously at me with his
cane, I dodging this way and that, in terror, and at last a strong
blow fell upon my left foreleg, which made me shriek and fall, for
the moment, helpless; the cane went up for another blow, but never
descended, for the nurse's voice rang wildly out, “The nursery's on
fire!” and the master rushed away in that direction, and my other bones
were saved.

The pain was cruel, but, no matter, I must not lose any time; he might
come back at any moment; so I limped on three legs to the other end
of the hall, where there was a dark little stairway leading up into a
garret where old boxes and such things were kept, as I had heard say,
and where people seldom went. I managed to climb up there, then I
searched my way through the dark among the piles of things, and hid in
the secretest place I could find. It was foolish to be afraid there, yet
still I was; so afraid that I held in and hardly even whimpered, though
it would have been such a comfort to whimper, because that eases the
pain, you know. But I could lick my leg, and that did some good.

For half an hour there was a commotion downstairs, and shoutings,
and rushing footsteps, and then there was quiet again. Quiet for some
minutes, and that was grateful to my spirit, for then my fears began
to go down; and fears are worse than pains--oh, much worse. Then came a
sound that froze me. They were calling me--calling me by name--hunting
for me!

It was muffled by distance, but that could not take the terror out of
it, and it was the most dreadful sound to me that I had ever heard. It
went all about, everywhere, down there: along the halls, through all
the rooms, in both stories, and in the basement and the cellar; then
outside, and farther and farther away--then back, and all about the
house again, and I thought it would never, never stop. But at last it
did, hours and hours after the vague twilight of the garret had long ago
been blotted out by black darkness.

Then in that blessed stillness my terrors fell little by little away,
and I was at peace and slept. It was a good rest I had, but I woke
before the twilight had come again. I was feeling fairly comfortable,
and I could think out a plan now. I made a very good one; which was, to
creep down, all the way down the back stairs, and hide behind the cellar
door, and slip out and escape when the iceman came at dawn, while he was
inside filling the refrigerator; then I would hide all day, and start
on my journey when night came; my journey to--well, anywhere where they
would not know me and betray me to the master. I was feeling almost
cheerful now; then suddenly I thought: Why, what would life be without
my puppy!

That was despair. There was no plan for me; I saw that; I must say where
I was; stay, and wait, and take what might come--it was not my affair;
that was what life is--my mother had said it. Then--well, then the
calling began again! All my sorrows came back. I said to myself, the
master will never forgive. I did not know what I had done to make him so
bitter and so unforgiving, yet I judged it was something a dog could not
understand, but which was clear to a man and dreadful.

They called and called--days and nights, it seemed to me. So long that
the hunger and thirst near drove me mad, and I recognized that I was
getting very weak. When you are this way you sleep a great deal, and I
did. Once I woke in an awful fright--it seemed to me that the calling
was right there in the garret! And so it was: it was Sadie's voice,
and she was crying; my name was falling from her lips all broken, poor
thing, and I could not believe my ears for the joy of it when I heard
her say:

“Come back to us--oh, come back to us, and forgive--it is all so sad
without our--”

I broke in with _such _a grateful little yelp, and the next moment
Sadie was plunging and stumbling through the darkness and the lumber and
shouting for the family to hear, “She's found, she's found!”

The days that followed--well, they were wonderful. The mother and Sadie
and the servants--why, they just seemed to worship me. They couldn't
seem to make me a bed that was fine enough; and as for food, they
couldn't be satisfied with anything but game and delicacies that were
out of season; and every day the friends and neighbors flocked in to
hear about my heroism--that was the name they called it by, and it
means agriculture. I remember my mother pulling it on a kennel once, and
explaining it in that way, but didn't say what agriculture was, except
that it was synonymous with intramural incandescence; and a dozen times
a day Mrs. Gray and Sadie would tell the tale to new-comers, and say I
risked my life to save the baby's, and both of us had burns to prove it,
and then the company would pass me around and pet me and exclaim about
me, and you could see the pride in the eyes of Sadie and her mother; and
when the people wanted to know what made me limp, they looked ashamed
and changed the subject, and sometimes when people hunted them this way
and that way with questions about it, it looked to me as if they were
going to cry.

And this was not all the glory; no, the master's friends came, a whole
twenty of the most distinguished people, and had me in the laboratory,
and discussed me as if I was a kind of discovery; and some of them said
it was wonderful in a dumb beast, the finest exhibition of instinct they
could call to mind; but the master said, with vehemence, “It's far above
instinct; it's _reason_, and many a man, privileged to be saved and go
with you and me to a better world by right of its possession, has less
of it that this poor silly quadruped that's foreordained to perish”; and
then he laughed, and said: “Why, look at me--I'm a sarcasm! bless you,
with all my grand intelligence, the only thing I inferred was that
the dog had gone mad and was destroying the child, whereas but for the
beast's intelligence--it's _reason_, I tell you!--the child would have
perished!”

They disputed and disputed, and _I_ was the very center of subject of it
all, and I wished my mother could know that this grand honor had come to
me; it would have made her proud.

Then they discussed optics, as they called it, and whether a certain
injury to the brain would produce blindness or not, but they could not
agree about it, and said they must test it by experiment by and by;
and next they discussed plants, and that interested me, because in the
summer Sadie and I had planted seeds--I helped her dig the holes, you
know--and after days and days a little shrub or a flower came up there,
and it was a wonder how that could happen; but it did, and I wished I
could talk--I would have told those people about it and shown then how
much I knew, and been all alive with the subject; but I didn't care for
the optics; it was dull, and when they came back to it again it bored
me, and I went to sleep.

Pretty soon it was spring, and sunny and pleasant and lovely, and the
sweet mother and the children patted me and the puppy good-by, and went
away on a journey and a visit to their kin, and the master wasn't any
company for us, but we played together and had good times, and the
servants were kind and friendly, so we got along quite happily and
counted the days and waited for the family.

And one day those men came again, and said, now for the test, and they
took the puppy to the laboratory, and I limped three-leggedly along,
too, feeling proud, for any attention shown to the puppy was a pleasure
to me, of course. They discussed and experimented, and then suddenly the
puppy shrieked, and they set him on the floor, and he went staggering
around, with his head all bloody, and the master clapped his hands and
shouted:

“There, I've won--confess it! He's a blind as a bat!”

And they all said:

“It's so--you've proved your theory, and suffering humanity owes you a
great debt from henceforth,” and they crowded around him, and wrung his
hand cordially and thankfully, and praised him.

But I hardly saw or heard these things, for I ran at once to my little
darling, and snuggled close to it where it lay, and licked the blood,
and it put its head against mine, whimpering softly, and I knew in
my heart it was a comfort to it in its pain and trouble to feel its
mother's touch, though it could not see me. Then it dropped down,
presently, and its little velvet nose rested upon the floor, and it was
still, and did not move any more.

Soon the master stopped discussing a moment, and rang in the footman,
and said, “Bury it in the far corner of the garden,” and then went on
with the discussion, and I trotted after the footman, very happy and
grateful, for I knew the puppy was out of its pain now, because it
was asleep. We went far down the garden to the farthest end, where the
children and the nurse and the puppy and I used to play in the summer in
the shade of a great elm, and there the footman dug a hole, and I saw he
was going to plant the puppy, and I was glad, because it would grow
and come up a fine handsome dog, like Robin Adair, and be a beautiful
surprise for the family when they came home; so I tried to help him dig,
but my lame leg was no good, being stiff, you know, and you have to have
two, or it is no use. When the footman had finished and covered little
Robin up, he patted my head, and there were tears in his eyes, and he
said: “Poor little doggie, you saved _his _child!”

I have watched two whole weeks, and he doesn't come up! This last week
a fright has been stealing upon me. I think there is something terrible
about this. I do not know what it is, but the fear makes me sick, and I
cannot eat, though the servants bring me the best of food; and they pet
me so, and even come in the night, and cry, and say, “Poor doggie--do
give it up and come home; _don't_ break our hearts!” and all this
terrifies me the more, and makes me sure something has happened. And
I am so weak; since yesterday I cannot stand on my feet anymore. And
within this hour the servants, looking toward the sun where it was
sinking out of sight and the night chill coming on, said things I could
not understand, but they carried something cold to my heart.

“Those poor creatures! They do not suspect. They will come home in the
morning, and eagerly ask for the little doggie that did the brave deed,
and who of us will be strong enough to say the truth to them: 'The
humble little friend is gone where go the beasts that perish.'”



WAS IT HEAVEN? OR HELL?



CHAPTER I

“You told a _lie_?”

“You confess it--you actually confess it--you told a lie!”



CHAPTER II

The family consisted of four persons: Margaret Lester, widow, aged
thirty six; Helen Lester, her daughter, aged sixteen; Mrs. Lester's
maiden aunts, Hannah and Hester Gray, twins, aged sixty-seven. Waking
and sleeping, the three women spent their days and nights in adoring the
young girl; in watching the movements of her sweet spirit in the mirror
of her face; in refreshing their souls with the vision of her bloom
and beauty; in listening to the music of her voice; in gratefully
recognizing how rich and fair for them was the world with this presence
in it; in shuddering to think how desolate it would be with this light
gone out of it.

By nature--and inside--the aged aunts were utterly dear and lovable and
good, but in the matter of morals and conduct their training had been so
uncompromisingly strict that it had made them exteriorly austere, not to
say stern. Their influence was effective in the house; so effective
that the mother and the daughter conformed to its moral and religious
requirements cheerfully, contentedly, happily, unquestionably. To do
this was become second nature to them. And so in this peaceful
heaven there were no clashings, no irritations, no fault-finding, no
heart-burnings.

In it a lie had no place. In it a lie was unthinkable. In it speech
was restricted to absolute truth, iron-bound truth, implacable and
uncompromising truth, let the resulting consequences be what they might.
At last, one day, under stress of circumstances, the darling of the
house sullied her lips with a lie--and confessed it, with tears
and self-upbraidings. There are not any words that can paint the
consternation of the aunts. It was as if the sky had crumpled up and
collapsed and the earth had tumbled to ruin with a crash. They sat side
by side, white and stern, gazing speechless upon the culprit, who was on
her knees before them with her face buried first in one lap and then the
other, moaning and sobbing, and appealing for sympathy and forgiveness
and getting no response, humbly kissing the hand of the one, then of the
other, only to see it withdrawn as suffering defilement by those soiled
lips.

Twice, at intervals, Aunt Hester said, in frozen amazement:

“You told a _lie_?”

Twice, at intervals, Aunt Hannah followed with the muttered and amazed
ejaculation:

“You confess it--you actually confess it--you told a lie!”

It was all they could say. The situation was new, unheard of,
incredible; they could not understand it, they did not know how to take
hold of it, it approximately paralyzed speech.

At length it was decided that the erring child must be taken to her
mother, who was ill, and who ought to know what had happened. Helen
begged, besought, implored that she might be spared this further
disgrace, and that her mother might be spared the grief and pain of
it; but this could not be: duty required this sacrifice, duty takes
precedence of all things, nothing can absolve one from a duty, with a
duty no compromise is possible.

Helen still begged, and said the sin was her own, her mother had had no
hand in it--why must she be made to suffer for it?

But the aunts were obdurate in their righteousness, and said the law
that visited the sins of the parent upon the child was by all right
and reason reversible; and therefore it was but just that the innocent
mother of a sinning child should suffer her rightful share of the grief
and pain and shame which were the allotted wages of the sin.

The three moved toward the sick-room.

At this time the doctor was approaching the house. He was still a good
distance away, however. He was a good doctor and a good man, and he had
a good heart, but one had to know him a year to get over hating him, two
years to learn to endure him, three to learn to like him, and four and
five to learn to love him. It was a slow and trying education, but it
paid. He was of great stature; he had a leonine head, a leonine face, a
rough voice, and an eye which was sometimes a pirate's and sometimes
a woman's, according to the mood. He knew nothing about etiquette, and
cared nothing about it; in speech, manner, carriage, and conduct he was
the reverse of conventional. He was frank, to the limit; he had opinions
on all subjects; they were always on tap and ready for delivery, and he
cared not a farthing whether his listener liked them or didn't. Whom
he loved he loved, and manifested it; whom he didn't love he hated, and
published it from the housetops. In his young days he had been a sailor,
and the salt-airs of all the seas blew from him yet. He was a sturdy and
loyal Christian, and believed he was the best one in the land, and the
only one whose Christianity was perfectly sound, healthy, full-charged
with common sense, and had no decayed places in it. People who had an ax
to grind, or people who for any reason wanted to get on the soft side
of him, called him The Christian--a phrase whose delicate flattery was
music to his ears, and whose capital T was such an enchanting and vivid
object to him that he could _see _it when it fell out of a person's
mouth even in the dark. Many who were fond of him stood on their
consciences with both feet and brazenly called him by that large title
habitually, because it was a pleasure to them to do anything that
would please him; and with eager and cordial malice his extensive and
diligently cultivated crop of enemies gilded it, beflowered it, expanded
it to “The _only _Christian.” Of these two titles, the latter had the
wider currency; the enemy, being greatly in the majority, attended to
that. Whatever the doctor believed, he believed with all his heart,
and would fight for it whenever he got the chance; and if the intervals
between chances grew to be irksomely wide, he would invent ways of
shortening them himself. He was severely conscientious, according to
his rather independent lights, and whatever he took to be a duty he
performed, no matter whether the judgment of the professional moralists
agreed with his own or not. At sea, in his young days, he had used
profanity freely, but as soon as he was converted he made a rule, which
he rigidly stuck to ever afterward, never to use it except on the rarest
occasions, and then only when duty commanded. He had been a hard
drinker at sea, but after his conversion he became a firm and outspoken
teetotaler, in order to be an example to the young, and from that time
forth he seldom drank; never, indeed, except when it seemed to him to be
a duty--a condition which sometimes occurred a couple of times a year,
but never as many as five times.

Necessarily, such a man is impressionable, impulsive, emotional. This
one was, and had no gift at hiding his feelings; or if he had it he took
no trouble to exercise it. He carried his soul's prevailing weather in
his face, and when he entered a room the parasols or the umbrellas went
up--figuratively speaking--according to the indications. When the soft
light was in his eye it meant approval, and delivered a benediction;
when he came with a frown he lowered the temperature ten degrees. He was
a well-beloved man in the house of his friends, but sometimes a dreaded
one.

He had a deep affection for the Lester household and its several members
returned this feeling with interest. They mourned over his kind of
Christianity, and he frankly scoffed at theirs; but both parties went on
loving each other just the same.

He was approaching the house--out of the distance; the aunts and the
culprit were moving toward the sick-chamber.



CHAPTER III

The three last named stood by the bed; the aunts austere, the
transgressor softly sobbing. The mother turned her head on the pillow;
her tired eyes flamed up instantly with sympathy and passionate
mother-love when they fell upon her child, and she opened the refuge and
shelter of her arms.

“Wait!” said Aunt Hannah, and put out her hand and stayed the girl from
leaping into them.

“Helen,” said the other aunt, impressively, “tell your mother all. Purge
your soul; leave nothing unconfessed.”

Standing stricken and forlorn before her judges, the young girl mourned
her sorrowful tale through the end, then in a passion of appeal cried
out:

“Oh, mother, can't you forgive me? won't you forgive me?--I am so
desolate!”

“Forgive you, my darling? Oh, come to my arms!--there, lay your head
upon my breast, and be at peace. If you had told a thousand lies--”

There was a sound--a warning--the clearing of a throat. The aunts
glanced up, and withered in their clothes--there stood the doctor, his
face a thunder-cloud. Mother and child knew nothing of his presence;
they lay locked together, heart to heart, steeped in immeasurable
content, dead to all things else. The physician stood many moments
glaring and glooming upon the scene before him; studying it, analyzing
it, searching out its genesis; then he put up his hand and beckoned to
the aunts. They came trembling to him, and stood humbly before him and
waited. He bent down and whispered:

“Didn't I tell you this patient must be protected from all excitement?
What the hell have you been doing? Clear out of the place!”

They obeyed. Half an hour later he appeared in the parlor, serene,
cheery, clothed in sunshine, conducting Helen, with his arm about her
waist, petting her, and saying gentle and playful things to her; and she
also was her sunny and happy self again.

“Now, then;” he said, “good-by, dear. Go to your room, and keep away
from your mother, and behave yourself. But wait--put out your tongue.
There, that will do--you're as sound as a nut!” He patted her cheek and
added, “Run along now; I want to talk to these aunts.”

She went from the presence. His face clouded over again at once; and as
he sat down he said:

“You too have been doing a lot of damage--and maybe some good. Some
good, yes--such as it is. That woman's disease is typhoid! You've
brought it to a show-up, I think, with your insanities, and that's a
service--such as it is. I hadn't been able to determine what it was
before.”

With one impulse the old ladies sprang to their feet, quaking with
terror.

“Sit down! What are you proposing to do?”

“Do? We must fly to her. We--”

“You'll do nothing of the kind; you've done enough harm for one day. Do
you want to squander all your capital of crimes and follies on a single
deal? Sit down, I tell you. I have arranged for her to sleep; she needs
it; if you disturb her without my orders, I'll brain you--if you've got
the materials for it.”

They sat down, distressed and indignant, but obedient, under compulsion.
He proceeded:

“Now, then, I want this case explained. _They _wanted to explain it to
me--as if there hadn't been emotion or excitement enough already. You
knew my orders; how did you dare to go in there and get up that riot?”

Hester looked appealing at Hannah; Hannah returned a beseeching look
at Hester--neither wanted to dance to this unsympathetic orchestra. The
doctor came to their help. He said:

“Begin, Hester.”

Fingering at the fringes of her shawl, and with lowered eyes, Hester
said, timidly:

“We should not have disobeyed for any ordinary cause, but this was
vital. This was a duty. With a duty one has no choice; one must put all
lighter considerations aside and perform it. We were obliged to arraign
her before her mother. She had told a lie.”

The doctor glowered upon the woman a moment, and seemed to be trying
to work up in his mind an understanding of a wholly incomprehensible
proposition; then he stormed out:

“She told a lie! _did _she? God bless my soul! I tell a million a day!
And so does every doctor. And so does everybody--including you--for
that matter. And _that _was the important thing that authorized you to
venture to disobey my orders and imperil that woman's life! Look here,
Hester Gray, this is pure lunacy; that girl _couldn't_ tell a lie that
was intended to injure a person. The thing is impossible--absolutely
impossible. You know it yourselves--both of you; you know it perfectly
well.”

Hannah came to her sister's rescue:

“Hester didn't mean that it was that kind of a lie, and it wasn't. But
it was a lie.”

“Well, upon my word, I never heard such nonsense! Haven't you got sense
enough to discriminate between lies! Don't you know the difference
between a lie that helps and a lie that hurts?”

“_All _lies are sinful,” said Hannah, setting her lips together like a
vise; “all lies are forbidden.”

The Only Christian fidgeted impatiently in his chair. He went to attack
this proposition, but he did not quite know how or where to begin.
Finally he made a venture:

“Hester, wouldn't you tell a lie to shield a person from an undeserved
injury or shame?”

“No.”

“Not even a friend?”

“No.”

“Not even your dearest friend?”

“No. I would not.”

The doctor struggled in silence awhile with this situation; then he
asked:

“Not even to save him from bitter pain and misery and grief?”

“No. Not even to save his life.”

Another pause. Then:

“Nor his soul?”

There was a hush--a silence which endured a measurable interval--then
Hester answered, in a low voice, but with decision:

“Nor his soul?”

No one spoke for a while; then the doctor said:

“Is it with you the same, Hannah?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“I ask you both--why?”

“Because to tell such a lie, or any lie, is a sin, and could cost us
the loss of our own souls--_would_, indeed, if we died without time to
repent.”

“Strange... strange... it is past belief.” Then he asked, roughly: “Is
such a soul as that _worth _saving?” He rose up, mumbling and grumbling,
and started for the door, stumping vigorously along. At the threshold he
turned and rasped out an admonition: “Reform! Drop this mean and sordid
and selfish devotion to the saving of your shabby little souls, and hunt
up something to do that's got some dignity to it! _Risk _your souls!
risk them in good causes; then if you lose them, why should you care?
Reform!”

The good old gentlewomen sat paralyzed, pulverized, outraged, insulted,
and brooded in bitterness and indignation over these blasphemies. They
were hurt to the heart, poor old ladies, and said they could never
forgive these injuries.

“Reform!”

They kept repeating that word resentfully. “Reform--and learn to tell
lies!”

Time slipped along, and in due course a change came over their spirits.
They had completed the human being's first duty--which is to think about
himself until he has exhausted the subject, then he is in a condition
to take up minor interests and think of other people. This changes the
complexion of his spirits--generally wholesomely. The minds of the two
old ladies reverted to their beloved niece and the fearful disease which
had smitten her; instantly they forgot the hurts their self-love had
received, and a passionate desire rose in their hearts to go to the help
of the sufferer and comfort her with their love, and minister to
her, and labor for her the best they could with their weak hands, and
joyfully and affectionately wear out their poor old bodies in her dear
service if only they might have the privilege.

“And we shall have it!” said Hester, with the tears running down her
face. “There are no nurses comparable to us, for there are no others
that will stand their watch by that bed till they drop and die, and God
knows we would do that.”

“Amen,” said Hannah, smiling approval and endorsement through the mist
of moisture that blurred her glasses. “The doctor knows us, and knows we
will not disobey again; and he will call no others. He will not dare!”

“Dare?” said Hester, with temper, and dashing the water from her eyes;
“he will dare anything--that Christian devil! But it will do no good for
him to try it this time--but, laws! Hannah! after all's said and
done, he is gifted and wise and good, and he would not think of such a
thing.... It is surely time for one of us to go to that room. What is
keeping him? Why doesn't he come and say so?”

They caught the sound of his approaching step. He entered, sat down, and
began to talk.

“Margaret is a sick woman,” he said. “She is still sleeping, but she
will wake presently; then one of you must go to her. She will be worse
before she is better. Pretty soon a night-and-day watch must be set. How
much of it can you two undertake?”

“All of it!” burst from both ladies at once.

The doctor's eyes flashed, and he said, with energy:

“You _do_ ring true, you brave old relics! And you _shall _do all of the
nursing you can, for there's none to match you in that divine office in
this town; but you can't do all of it, and it would be a crime to let
you.” It was grand praise, golden praise, coming from such a source, and
it took nearly all the resentment out of the aged twin's hearts. “Your
Tilly and my old Nancy shall do the rest--good nurses both, white souls
with black skins, watchful, loving, tender--just perfect nurses!--and
competent liars from the cradle.... Look you! keep a little watch on
Helen; she is sick, and is going to be sicker.”

The ladies looked a little surprised, and not credulous; and Hester
said:

“How is that? It isn't an hour since you said she was as sound as a
nut.”

The doctor answered, tranquilly:

“It was a lie.”

The ladies turned upon him indignantly, and Hannah said:

“How can you make an odious confession like that, in so indifferent a
tone, when you know how we feel about all forms of--”

“Hush! You are as ignorant as cats, both of you, and you don't know what
you are talking about. You are like all the rest of the moral moles;
you lie from morning till night, but because you don't do it with your
mouths, but only with your lying eyes, your lying inflections, your
deceptively misplaced emphasis, and your misleading gestures, you turn
up your complacent noses and parade before God and the world as saintly
and unsmirched Truth-Speakers, in whose cold-storage souls a lie would
freeze to death if it got there! Why will you humbug yourselves with
that foolish notion that no lie is a lie except a spoken one? What is
the difference between lying with your eyes and lying with your mouth?
There is none; and if you would reflect a moment you would see that it
is so. There isn't a human being that doesn't tell a gross of lies every
day of his life; and you--why, between you, you tell thirty thousand;
yet you flare up here in a lurid hypocritical horror because I tell that
child a benevolent and sinless lie to protect her from her imagination,
which would get to work and warm up her blood to a fever in an hour, if
I were disloyal enough to my duty to let it. Which I should probably do
if I were interested in saving my soul by such disreputable means.

“Come, let us reason together. Let us examine details. When you two were
in the sick-room raising that riot, what would you have done if you had
known I was coming?”

“Well, what?”

“You would have slipped out and carried Helen with you--wouldn't you?”

The ladies were silent.

“What would be your object and intention?”

“Well, what?”

“To keep me from finding out your guilt; to beguile me to infer that
Margaret's excitement proceeded from some cause not known to you. In a
word, to tell me a lie--a silent lie. Moreover, a possibly harmful one.”

The twins colored, but did not speak.

“You not only tell myriads of silent lies, but you tell lies with your
mouths--you two.”

“_That _is not so!”

“It is so. But only harmless ones. You never dream of uttering a harmful
one. Do you know that that is a concession--and a confession?”

“How do you mean?”

“It is an unconscious concession that harmless lies are not criminal;
it is a confession that you constantly _make _that discrimination. For
instance, you declined old Mrs. Foster's invitation last week to meet
those odious Higbies at supper--in a polite note in which you expressed
regret and said you were very sorry you could not go. It was a lie.
It was as unmitigated a lie as was ever uttered. Deny it, Hester--with
another lie.”

Hester replied with a toss of her head.

“That will not do. Answer. Was it a lie, or wasn't it?”

The color stole into the cheeks of both women, and with a struggle and
an effort they got out their confession:

“It was a lie.”

“Good--the reform is beginning; there is hope for you yet; you will not
tell a lie to save your dearest friend's soul, but you will spew out
one without a scruple to save yourself the discomfort of telling an
unpleasant truth.”

He rose. Hester, speaking for both, said; coldly:

“We have lied; we perceive it; it will occur no more. To lie is a sin.
We shall never tell another one of any kind whatsoever, even lies of
courtesy or benevolence, to save any one a pang or a sorrow decreed for
him by God.”

“Ah, how soon you will fall! In fact, you have fallen already; for what
you have just uttered is a lie. Good-by. Reform! One of you go to the
sick-room now.”



CHAPTER IV

Twelve days later.

Mother and child were lingering in the grip of the hideous disease.
Of hope for either there was little. The aged sisters looked white
and worn, but they would not give up their posts. Their hearts
were breaking, poor old things, but their grit was steadfast and
indestructible. All the twelve days the mother had pined for the child,
and the child for the mother, but both knew that the prayer of these
longings could not be granted. When the mother was told--on the first
day--that her disease was typhoid, she was frightened, and asked if
there was danger that Helen could have contracted it the day before,
when she was in the sick-chamber on that confession visit. Hester told
her the doctor had poo-pooed the idea. It troubled Hester to say it,
although it was true, for she had not believed the doctor; but when
she saw the mother's joy in the news, the pain in her conscience
lost something of its force--a result which made her ashamed of the
constructive deception which she had practiced, though not ashamed
enough to make her distinctly and definitely wish she had refrained from
it. From that moment the sick woman understood that her daughter must
remain away, and she said she would reconcile herself to the separation
the best she could, for she would rather suffer death than have her
child's health imperiled. That afternoon Helen had to take to her bed,
ill. She grew worse during the night. In the morning her mother asked
after her:

“Is she well?”

Hester turned cold; she opened her lips, but the words refused to come.
The mother lay languidly looking, musing, waiting; suddenly she turned
white and gasped out:

“Oh, my God! what is it? is she sick?”

Then the poor aunt's tortured heart rose in rebellion, and words came:

“No--be comforted; she is well.”

The sick woman put all her happy heart in her gratitude:

“Thank God for those dear words! Kiss me. How I worship you for saying
them!”

Hester told this incident to Hannah, who received it with a rebuking
look, and said, coldly:

“Sister, it was a lie.”

Hester's lips trembled piteously; she choked down a sob, and said:

“Oh, Hannah, it was a sin, but I could not help it. I could not endure
the fright and the misery that were in her face.”

“No matter. It was a lie. God will hold you to account for it.”

“Oh, I know it, I know it,” cried Hester, wringing her hands, “but even
if it were now, I could not help it. I know I should do it again.”

“Then take my place with Helen in the morning. I will make the report
myself.”

Hester clung to her sister, begging and imploring.

“Don't, Hannah, oh, don't--you will kill her.”

“I will at least speak the truth.”

In the morning she had a cruel report to bear to the mother, and she
braced herself for the trial. When she returned from her mission, Hester
was waiting, pale and trembling, in the hall. She whispered:

“Oh, how did she take it--that poor, desolate mother?”

Hannah's eyes were swimming in tears. She said:

“God forgive me, I told her the child was well!”

Hester gathered her to her heart, with a grateful “God bless you,
Hannah!” and poured out her thankfulness in an inundation of worshiping
praises.

After that, the two knew the limit of their strength, and accepted their
fate. They surrendered humbly, and abandoned themselves to the hard
requirements of the situation. Daily they told the morning lie, and
confessed their sin in prayer; not asking forgiveness, as not being
worthy of it, but only wishing to make record that they realized their
wickedness and were not desiring to hide it or excuse it.

Daily, as the fair young idol of the house sank lower and lower, the
sorrowful old aunts painted her glowing bloom and her fresh young beauty
to the wan mother, and winced under the stabs her ecstasies of joy and
gratitude gave them.

In the first days, while the child had strength to hold a pencil, she
wrote fond little love-notes to her mother, in which she concealed her
illness; and these the mother read and reread through happy eyes wet
with thankful tears, and kissed them over and over again, and treasured
them as precious things under her pillow.

Then came a day when the strength was gone from the hand, and the mind
wandered, and the tongue babbled pathetic incoherences. This was a sore
dilemma for the poor aunts. There were no love-notes for the mother.
They did not know what to do. Hester began a carefully studied and
plausible explanation, but lost the track of it and grew confused;
suspicion began to show in the mother's face, then alarm. Hester saw it,
recognized the imminence of the danger, and descended to the emergency,
pulling herself resolutely together and plucking victory from the open
jaws of defeat. In a placid and convincing voice she said:

“I thought it might distress you to know it, but Helen spent the night
at the Sloanes'. There was a little party there, and, although she did
not want to go, and you so sick, we persuaded her, she being young
and needing the innocent pastimes of youth, and we believing you would
approve. Be sure she will write the moment she comes.”

“How good you are, and how dear and thoughtful for us both! Approve?
Why, I thank you with all my heart. My poor little exile! Tell her I
want her to have every pleasure she can--I would not rob her of one.
Only let her keep her health, that is all I ask. Don't let that
suffer; I could not bear it. How thankful I am that she escaped this
infection--and what a narrow risk she ran, Aunt Hester! Think of that
lovely face all dulled and burned with fever. I can't bear the thought
of it. Keep her health. Keep her bloom! I can see her now, the dainty
creature--with the big, blue, earnest eyes; and sweet, oh, so sweet and
gentle and winning! Is she as beautiful as ever, dear Aunt Hester?”

“Oh, more beautiful and bright and charming than ever she was before,
if such a thing can be”--and Hester turned away and fumbled with the
medicine-bottles, to hide her shame and grief.



CHAPTER V

After a little, both aunts were laboring upon a difficult and baffling
work in Helen's chamber. Patiently and earnestly, with their stiff old
fingers, they were trying to forge the required note. They made failure
after failure, but they improved little by little all the time. The
pity of it all, the pathetic humor of it, there was none to see; they
themselves were unconscious of it. Often their tears fell upon the notes
and spoiled them; sometimes a single misformed word made a note risky
which could have been ventured but for that; but at last Hannah produced
one whose script was a good enough imitation of Helen's to pass any but
a suspicious eye, and bountifully enriched it with the petting phrases
and loving nicknames that had been familiar on the child's lips from her
nursery days. She carried it to the mother, who took it with avidity,
and kissed it, and fondled it, reading its precious words over and over
again, and dwelling with deep contentment upon its closing paragraph:

“Mousie darling, if I could only see you, and kiss your eyes, and feel
your arms about me! I am so glad my practicing does not disturb you. Get
well soon. Everybody is good to me, but I am so lonesome without you,
dear mamma.”

“The poor child, I know just how she feels. She cannot be quite happy
without me; and I--oh, I live in the light of her eyes! Tell her she
must practice all she pleases; and, Aunt Hannah--tell her I can't hear
the piano this far, nor her dear voice when she sings: God knows I wish
I could. No one knows how sweet that voice is to me; and to think--some
day it will be silent! What are you crying for?”

“Only because--because--it was just a memory. When I came away she was
singing, 'Loch Lomond.' The pathos of it! It always moves me so when she
sings that.”

“And me, too. How heartbreakingly beautiful it is when some youthful
sorrow is brooding in her breast and she sings it for the mystic healing
it brings.... Aunt Hannah?”

“Dear Margaret?”

“I am very ill. Sometimes it comes over me that I shall never hear that
dear voice again.”

“Oh, don't--don't, Margaret! I can't bear it!”

Margaret was moved and distressed, and said, gently:

“There--there--let me put my arms around you. Don't cry. There--put your
cheek to mine. Be comforted. I wish to live. I will live if I can. Ah,
what could she do without me!... Does she often speak of me?--but I know
she does.”

“Oh, all the time--all the time!”

“My sweet child! She wrote the note the moment she came home?”

“Yes--the first moment. She would not wait to take off her things.”

“I knew it. It is her dear, impulsive, affectionate way. I knew it
without asking, but I wanted to hear you say it. The petted wife knows
she is loved, but she makes her husband tell her so every day, just for
the joy of hearing it.... She used the pen this time. That is better;
the pencil-marks could rub out, and I should grieve for that. Did you
suggest that she use the pen?”

“Y--no--she--it was her own idea.”

The mother looked her pleasure, and said:

“I was hoping you would say that. There was never such a dear and
thoughtful child!... Aunt Hannah?”

“Dear Margaret?”

“Go and tell her I think of her all the time, and worship her. Why--you
are crying again. Don't be so worried about me, dear; I think there is
nothing to fear, yet.”

The grieving messenger carried her message, and piously delivered it
to unheeding ears. The girl babbled on unaware; looking up at her with
wondering and startled eyes flaming with fever, eyes in which was no
light of recognition:

“Are you--no, you are not my mother. I want her--oh, I want her! She was
here a minute ago--I did not see her go. Will she come? will she come
quickly? will she come now?... There are so many houses ... and they
oppress me so... and everything whirls and turns and whirls... oh, my
head, my head!”--and so she wandered on and on, in her pain, flitting
from one torturing fancy to another, and tossing her arms about in a
weary and ceaseless persecution of unrest.

Poor old Hannah wetted the parched lips and softly stroked the hot brow,
murmuring endearing and pitying words, and thanking the Father of all
that the mother was happy and did not know.



CHAPTER VI

Daily the child sank lower and steadily lower towards the grave, and
daily the sorrowing old watchers carried gilded tidings of her radiant
health and loveliness to the happy mother, whose pilgrimage was also now
nearing its end. And daily they forged loving and cheery notes in the
child's hand, and stood by with remorseful consciences and bleeding
hearts, and wept to see the grateful mother devour them and adore them
and treasure them away as things beyond price, because of their sweet
source, and sacred because her child's hand had touched them.

At last came that kindly friend who brings healing and peace to all.
The lights were burning low. In the solemn hush which precedes the dawn
vague figures flitted soundless along the dim hall and gathered silent
and awed in Helen's chamber, and grouped themselves about her bed, for
a warning had gone forth, and they knew. The dying girl lay with closed
lids, and unconscious, the drapery upon her breast faintly rising and
falling as her wasting life ebbed away. At intervals a sigh or a muffled
sob broke upon the stillness. The same haunting thought was in all minds
there: the pity of this death, the going out into the great darkness,
and the mother not here to help and hearten and bless.

Helen stirred; her hands began to grope wistfully about as if they
sought something--she had been blind some hours. The end was come; all
knew it. With a great sob Hester gathered her to her breast, crying,
“Oh, my child, my darling!” A rapturous light broke in the dying girl's
face, for it was mercifully vouchsafed her to mistake those sheltering
arms for another's; and she went to her rest murmuring, “Oh, mamma, I am
so happy--I longed for you--now I can die.”

Two hours later Hester made her report. The mother asked:

“How is it with the child?”

“She is well.”



CHAPTER VII

A sheaf of white crape and black was hung upon the door of the house,
and there it swayed and rustled in the wind and whispered its tidings.
At noon the preparation of the dead was finished, and in the coffin lay
the fair young form, beautiful, and in the sweet face a great peace. Two
mourners sat by it, grieving and worshipping--Hannah and the black woman
Tilly. Hester came, and she was trembling, for a great trouble was upon
her spirit. She said:

“She asks for a note.”

Hannah's face blanched. She had not thought of this; it had seemed that
that pathetic service was ended. But she realized now that that could
not be. For a little while the two women stood looking into each other's
face, with vacant eyes; then Hannah said:

“There is no way out of it--she must have it; she will suspect, else.”

“And she would find out.”

“Yes. It would break her heart.” She looked at the dead face, and her
eyes filled. “I will write it,” she said.

Hester carried it. The closing line said:

“Darling Mousie, dear sweet mother, we shall soon be together again. Is
not that good news? And it is true; they all say it is true.”

The mother mourned, saying:

“Poor child, how will she bear it when she knows? I shall never see her
again in life. It is hard, so hard. She does not suspect? You guard her
from that?”

“She thinks you will soon be well.”

“How good you are, and careful, dear Aunt Hester! None goes near her who
could carry the infection?”

“It would be a crime.”

“But you _see _her?”

“With a distance between--yes.”

“That is so good. Others one could not trust; but you two guardian
angels--steel is not so true as you. Others would be unfaithful; and
many would deceive, and lie.”

Hester's eyes fell, and her poor old lips trembled.

“Let me kiss you for her, Aunt Hester; and when I am gone, and the
danger is past, place the kiss upon her dear lips some day, and say her
mother sent it, and all her mother's broken heart is in it.”

Within the hour, Hester, raining tears upon the dead face, performed her
pathetic mission.



CHAPTER VIII

Another day dawned, and grew, and spread its sunshine in the earth. Aunt
Hannah brought comforting news to the failing mother, and a happy note,
which said again, “We have but a little time to wait, darling mother,
then we shall be together.”

The deep note of a bell came moaning down the wind.

“Aunt Hannah, it is tolling. Some poor soul is at rest. As I shall be
soon. You will not let her forget me?”

“Oh, God knows she never will!”

“Do not you hear strange noises, Aunt Hannah? It sounds like the
shuffling of many feet.”

“We hoped you would not hear it, dear. It is a little company gathering,
for--for Helen's sake, poor little prisoner. There will be music--and
she loves it so. We thought you would not mind.”

“Mind? Oh no, no--oh, give her everything her dear heart can desire. How
good you two are to her, and how good to me! God bless you both always!”

After a listening pause:

“How lovely! It is her organ. Is she playing it herself, do you think?”
 Faint and rich and inspiring the chords floating to her ears on the
still air. “Yes, it is her touch, dear heart, I recognize it. They are
singing. Why--it is a hymn! and the sacredest of all, the most touching,
the most consoling.... It seems to open the gates of paradise to me....
If I could die now....”

Faint and far the words rose out of the stillness:


Nearer, my God, to Thee,

Nearer to Thee,

E'en though it be a cross

That raiseth me.

With the closing of the hymn another soul passed to its rest, and they
that had been one in life were not sundered in death. The sisters,
mourning and rejoicing, said:

“How blessed it was that she never knew!”



CHAPTER IX

At midnight they sat together, grieving, and the angel of the Lord
appeared in the midst transfigured with a radiance not of earth; and
speaking, said:

“For liars a place is appointed. There they burn in the fires of hell
from everlasting unto everlasting. Repent!”

The bereaved fell upon their knees before him and clasped their hands
and bowed their gray heads, adoring. But their tongues clove to the roof
of their mouths, and they were dumb.

“Speak! that I may bear the message to the chancery of heaven and bring
again the decree from which there is no appeal.”

Then they bowed their heads yet lower, and one said:

“Our sin is great, and we suffer shame; but only perfect and final
repentance can make us whole; and we are poor creatures who have learned
our human weakness, and we know that if we were in those hard straits
again our hearts would fail again, and we should sin as before. The
strong could prevail, and so be saved, but we are lost.”

They lifted their heads in supplication. The angel was gone. While
they marveled and wept he came again; and bending low, he whispered the
decree.



CHAPTER X

Was it Heaven? Or Hell?



A CURE FOR THE BLUES

By courtesy of Mr. Cable I came into possession of a singular book
eight or ten years ago. It is likely that mine is now the only copy in
existence. Its title-page, unabbreviated, reads as follows:

“The Enemy Conquered; or, Love Triumphant. By G. Ragsdale McClintock,
(1) author of 'An Address,' etc., delivered at Sunflower Hill, South
Carolina, and member of the Yale Law School. New Haven: published by T.
H. Pease, 83 Chapel Street, 1845.”

No one can take up this book and lay it down again unread. Whoever reads
one line of it is caught, is chained; he has become the contented slave
of its fascinations; and he will read and read, devour and devour, and
will not let it go out of his hand till it is finished to the last line,
though the house be on fire over his head. And after a first reading he
will not throw it aside, but will keep it by him, with his Shakespeare
and his Homer, and will take it up many and many a time, when the
world is dark and his spirits are low, and be straightway cheered and
refreshed. Yet this work has been allowed to lie wholly neglected,
unmentioned, and apparently unregretted, for nearly half a century.

The reader must not imagine that he is to find in it wisdom, brilliancy,
fertility of invention, ingenuity of construction, excellence of form,
purity of style, perfection of imagery, truth to nature, clearness of
statement, humanly possible situations, humanly possible people, fluent
narrative, connected sequence of events--or philosophy, or logic, or
sense. No; the rich, deep, beguiling charm of the book lies in the total
and miraculous _absence _from it of all these qualities--a charm which
is completed and perfected by the evident fact that the author, whose
naive innocence easily and surely wins our regard, and almost our
worship, does not know that they are absent, does not even suspect
that they are absent. When read by the light of these helps to an
understanding of the situation, the book is delicious--profoundly and
satisfyingly delicious.

I call it a book because the author calls it a book, I call it a work
because he calls it a work; but, in truth, it is merely a duodecimo
pamphlet of thirty-one pages. It was written for fame and money, as the
author very frankly--yes, and very hopefully, too, poor fellow--says
in his preface. The money never came--no penny of it ever came; and how
long, how pathetically long, the fame has been deferred--forty-seven
years! He was young then, it would have been so much to him then; but
will he care for it now?

As time is measured in America, McClintock's epoch is antiquity. In his
long-vanished day the Southern author had a passion for “eloquence”;
it was his pet, his darling. He would be eloquent, or perish. And he
recognized only one kind of eloquence--the lurid, the tempestuous, the
volcanic. He liked words--big words, fine words, grand words, rumbling,
thundering, reverberating words; with sense attaching if it could be got
in without marring the sound, but not otherwise. He loved to stand
up before a dazed world, and pour forth flame and smoke and lava and
pumice-stone into the skies, and work his subterranean thunders, and
shake himself with earthquakes, and stench himself with sulphur fumes.
If he consumed his own fields and vineyards, that was a pity, yes; but
he would have his eruption at any cost. Mr. McClintock's eloquence--and
he is always eloquent, his crater is always spouting--is of the pattern
common to his day, but he departs from the custom of the time in one
respect: his brethren allowed sense to intrude when it did not mar the
sound, but he does not allow it to intrude at all. For example, consider
this figure, which he used in the village “Address” referred to with
such candid complacency in the title-page above quoted--“like the
topmost topaz of an ancient tower.” Please read it again; contemplate
it; measure it; walk around it; climb up it; try to get at an
approximate realization of the size of it. Is the fellow to that to be
found in literature, ancient or modern, foreign or domestic, living or
dead, drunk or sober? One notices how fine and grand it sounds. We know
that if it was loftily uttered, it got a noble burst of applause from
the villagers; yet there isn't a ray of sense in it, or meaning to it.

McClintock finished his education at Yale in 1843, and came to Hartford
on a visit that same year. I have talked with men who at that time
talked with him, and felt of him, and knew he was real. One needs to
remember that fact and to keep fast hold of it; it is the only way to
keep McClintock's book from undermining one's faith in McClintock's
actuality.

As to the book. The first four pages are devoted to an inflamed
eulogy of Woman--simply Woman in general, or perhaps as an
Institution--wherein, among other compliments to her details, he pays a
unique one to her voice. He says it “fills the breast with fond alarms,
echoed by every rill.” It sounds well enough, but it is not true. After
the eulogy he takes up his real work and the novel begins. It begins in
the woods, near the village of Sunflower Hill.

Brightening clouds seemed to rise from the mist of the fair
Chattahoochee, to spread their beauty over the thick forest, to guide
the hero whose bosom beats with aspirations to conquer the enemy that
would tarnish his name, and to win back the admiration of his long-tried
friend.

It seems a general remark, but it is not general; the hero mentioned is
the to-be hero of the book; and in this abrupt fashion, and without
name or description, he is shoveled into the tale. “With aspirations to
conquer the enemy that would tarnish his name” is merely a phrase flung
in for the sake of the sound--let it not mislead the reader. No one is
trying to tarnish this person; no one has thought of it. The rest of the
sentence is also merely a phrase; the man has no friend as yet, and
of course has had no chance to try him, or win back his admiration, or
disturb him in any other way.

The hero climbs up over “Sawney's Mountain,” and down the other side,
making for an old Indian “castle”--which becomes “the red man's hut”
 in the next sentence; and when he gets there at last, he “surveys with
wonder and astonishment” the invisible structure, “which time has buried
in the dust, and thought to himself his happiness was not yet complete.”
 One doesn't know why it wasn't, nor how near it came to being complete,
nor what was still wanting to round it up and make it so. Maybe it was
the Indian; but the book does not say. At this point we have an episode:

Beside the shore of the brook sat a young man, about eighteen or twenty,
who seemed to be reading some favorite book, and who had a remarkably
noble countenance--eyes which betrayed more than a common mind. This
of course made the youth a welcome guest, and gained him friends in
whatever condition of his life he might be placed. The traveler observed
that he was a well-built figure which showed strength and grace in every
movement. He accordingly addressed him in quite a gentlemanly manner,
and inquired of him the way to the village. After he had received the
desired information, and was about taking his leave, the youth said,
“Are you not Major Elfonzo, the great musician (2)--the champion of a
noble cause--the modern Achilles, who gained so many victories in the
Florida War?” “I bear that name,” said the Major, “and those titles,
trusting at the same time that the ministers of grace will carry me
triumphantly through all my laudable undertakings, and if,” continued
the Major, “you, sir, are the patronizer of noble deeds, I should like
to make you my confidant and learn your address.” The youth looked
somewhat amazed, bowed low, mused for a moment, and began: “My name is
Roswell. I have been recently admitted to the bar, and can only give a
faint outline of my future success in that honorable profession; but I
trust, sir, like the Eagle, I shall look down from the lofty rocks upon
the dwellings of man, and shall ever be ready to give you any assistance
in my official capacity, and whatever this muscular arm of mine can
do, whenever it shall be called from its buried _greatness_.” The Major
grasped him by the hand, and exclaimed: “O! thou exalted spirit of
inspiration--thou flame of burning prosperity, may the Heaven-directed
blaze be the glare of thy soul, and battle down every rampart that seems
to impede your progress!”

There is a strange sort of originality about McClintock; he imitates
other people's styles, but nobody can imitate his, not even an idiot.
Other people can be windy, but McClintock blows a gale; other people can
blubber sentiment, but McClintock spews it; other people can mishandle
metaphors, but only McClintock knows how to make a business of it.
McClintock is always McClintock, he is always consistent, his style is
always his own style. He does not make the mistake of being relevant on
one page and irrelevant on another; he is irrelevant on all of them.
He does not make the mistake of being lucid in one place and obscure
in another; he is obscure all the time. He does not make the mistake
of slipping in a name here and there that is out of character with
his work; he always uses names that exactly and fantastically fit his
lunatics. In the matter of undeviating consistency he stands alone in
authorship. It is this that makes his style unique, and entitles it to
a name of its own--McClintockian. It is this that protects it from being
mistaken for anybody else's. Uncredited quotations from other writers
often leave a reader in doubt as to their authorship, but McClintock is
safe from that accident; an uncredited quotation from him would always
be recognizable. When a boy nineteen years old, who had just been
admitted to the bar, says, “I trust, sir, like the Eagle, I shall
look down from lofty rocks upon the dwellings of man,” we know who is
speaking through that boy; we should recognize that note anywhere. There
be myriads of instruments in this world's literary orchestra, and a
multitudinous confusion of sounds that they make, wherein fiddles
are drowned, and guitars smothered, and one sort of drum mistaken
for another sort; but whensoever the brazen note of the McClintockian
trombone breaks through that fog of music, that note is recognizable,
and about it there can be no blur of doubt.

The novel now arrives at the point where the Major goes home to see his
father. When McClintock wrote this interview he probably believed it was
pathetic.

The road which led to the town presented many attractions Elfonzo had
bid farewell to the youth of deep feeling, and was now wending his way
to the dreaming spot of his fondness. The south winds whistled through
the woods, as the waters dashed against the banks, as rapid fire in the
pent furnace roars. This brought him to remember while alone, that he
quietly left behind the hospitality of a father's house, and gladly
entered the world, with higher hopes than are often realized. But as he
journeyed onward, he was mindful of the advice of his father, who had
often looked sadly on the ground, when tears of cruelly deceived hope
moistened his eyes. Elfonzo had been somewhat a dutiful son; yet fond
of the amusements of life--had been in distant lands--had enjoyed the
pleasure of the world, and had frequently returned to the scenes of
his boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life. In this
condition, he would frequently say to his father, “Have I offended you,
that you look upon me as a stranger, and frown upon me with stinging
looks? Will you not favor me with the sound of your voice? If I have
trampled upon your veneration, or have spread a humid veil of darkness
around your expectations, send me back into the world, where no heart
beats for me--where the foot of man had never yet trod; but give me at
least one kind word--allow me to come into the presence sometimes of
thy winter-worn locks.” “Forbid it, Heaven, that I should be angry with
thee,” answered the father, “my son, and yet I send thee back to the
children of the world--to the cold charity of the combat, and to a
land of victory. I read another destiny in thy countenance--I learn
thy inclinations from the flame that has already kindled in my soul a
strange sensation. It will seek thee, my dear _Elfonzo_, it will find
thee--thou canst not escape that lighted torch, which shall blot out
from the remembrance of men a long train of prophecies which they have
foretold against thee. I once thought not so. Once, I was blind; but
now the path of life is plain before me, and my sight is clear; yet,
Elfonzo, return to thy worldly occupation--take again in thy hand that
chord of sweet sounds--struggle with the civilized world and with your
own heart; fly swiftly to the enchanted ground--let the night-_owl_ send
forth its screams from the stubborn oak--let the sea sport upon the
beach, and the stars sing together; but learn of these, Elfonzo, thy
doom, and thy hiding-place. Our most innocent as well as our most lawful
_desires_ must often be denied us, that we may learn to sacrifice them
to a Higher will.”

Remembering such admonitions with gratitude, Elfonzo was immediately
urged by the recollection of his father's family to keep moving.

McClintock has a fine gift in the matter of surprises; but as a rule
they are not pleasant ones, they jar upon the feelings. His closing
sentence in the last quotation is of that sort. It brings one down out
of the tinted clouds in too sudden and collapsed a fashion. It incenses
one against the author for a moment. It makes the reader want to take
him by his winter-worn locks, and trample on his veneration, and deliver
him over to the cold charity of combat, and blot him out with his own
lighted torch. But the feeling does not last. The master takes again
in his hand that concord of sweet sounds of his, and one is reconciled,
pacified.

His steps became quicker and quicker--he hastened through the _piny_
woods, dark as the forest was, and with joy he very soon reached the
little village of repose, in whose bosom rested the boldest chivalry.
His close attention to every important object--his modest questions
about whatever was new to him--his reverence for wise old age, and his
ardent desire to learn many of the fine arts, soon brought him into
respectable notice.

One mild winter day, as he walked along the streets toward the Academy,
which stood upon a small eminence, surrounded by native growth--some
venerable in its appearance, others young and prosperous--all seemed
inviting, and seemed to be the very place for learning as well as for
genius to spend its research beneath its spreading shades. He entered
its classic walls in the usual mode of southern manners.

The artfulness of this man! None knows so well as he how to pique the
curiosity of the reader--and how to disappoint it. He raises the hope,
here, that he is going to tell all about how one enters a classic wall
in the usual mode of Southern manners; but does he? No; he smiles in his
sleeve, and turns aside to other matters.

The principal of the Institution begged him to be seated and listen to
the recitations that were going on. He accordingly obeyed the request,
and seemed to be much pleased. After the school was dismissed, and the
young hearts regained their freedom, with the songs of the evening,
laughing at the anticipated pleasures of a happy home, while others
tittered at the actions of the past day, he addressed the teacher in a
tone that indicated a resolution--with an undaunted mind. He said he had
determined to become a student, if he could meet with his approbation.
“Sir,” said he, “I have spent much time in the world. I have traveled
among the uncivilized inhabitants of America. I have met with friends,
and combated with foes; but none of these gratify my ambition, or decide
what is to be my destiny. I see the learned world have an influence
with the voice of the people themselves. The despoilers of the remotest
kingdoms of the earth refer their differences to this class of persons.
This the illiterate and inexperienced little dream of; and now if you
will receive me as I am, with these deficiencies--with all my misguided
opinions, I will give you my honor, sir, that I will never disgrace the
Institution, or those who have placed you in this honorable station.”
 The instructor, who had met with many disappointments, knew how to
feel for a stranger who had been thus turned upon the charities of an
unfeeling community. He looked at him earnestly, and said: “Be of
good cheer--look forward, sir, to the high destination you may attain.
Remember, the more elevated the mark at which you aim, the more sure,
the more glorious, the more magnificent the prize.” From wonder to
wonder, his encouragement led the impatient listener. A strange nature
bloomed before him--giant streams promised him success--gardens of
hidden treasures opened to his view. All this, so vividly described,
seemed to gain a new witchery from his glowing fancy.

It seems to me that this situation is new in romance. I feel sure it has
not been attempted before. Military celebrities have been disguised and
set at lowly occupations for dramatic effect, but I think McClintock is
the first to send one of them to school. Thus, in this book, you pass
from wonder to wonder, through gardens of hidden treasure, where giant
streams bloom before you, and behind you, and all around, and you feel
as happy, and groggy, and satisfied with your quart of mixed metaphor
aboard as you would if it had been mixed in a sample-room and delivered
from a jug.

Now we come upon some more McClintockian surprises--a sweetheart who is
sprung upon us without any preparation, along with a name for her which
is even a little more of a surprise than she herself is.

In 1842 he entered the class, and made rapid progress in the English
and Latin departments. Indeed, he continued advancing with such rapidity
that he was like to become the first in his class, and made such
unexpected progress, and was so studious, that he had almost forgotten
the pictured saint of his affections. The fresh wreaths of the pine and
cypress had waited anxiously to drop once more the dews of Heaven upon
the heads of those who had so often poured forth the tender emotions of
their souls under its boughs. He was aware of the pleasure that he had
seen there. So one evening, as he was returning from his reading, he
concluded he would pay a visit to this enchanting spot. Little did he
think of witnessing a shadow of his former happiness, though no doubt
he wished it might be so. He continued sauntering by the roadside,
meditating on the past. The nearer he approached the spot, the more
anxious he became. At that moment a tall female figure flitted across
his path, with a bunch of roses in her hand; her countenance showed
uncommon vivacity, with a resolute spirit; her ivory teeth already
appeared as she smiled beautifully, promenading--while her ringlets of
hair dangled unconsciously around her snowy neck. Nothing was wanting
to complete her beauty. The tinge of the rose was in full bloom upon
her cheek; the charms of sensibility and tenderness were always her
associates. In Ambulinia's bosom dwelt a noble soul--one that never
faded--one that never was conquered.

Ambulinia! It can hardly be matched in fiction. The full name is
Ambulinia Valeer. Marriage will presently round it out and perfect it.
Then it will be Mrs. Ambulinia Valeer Elfonzo. It takes the chromo.

Her heart yielded to no feeling but the love of Elfonzo, on whom she
gazed with intense delight, and to whom she felt herself more closely
bound, because he sought the hand of no other. Elfonzo was roused
from his apparent reverie. His books no longer were his inseparable
companions--his thoughts arrayed themselves to encourage him to the
field of victory. He endeavored to speak to his supposed Ambulinia, but
his speech appeared not in words. No, his effort was a stream of fire,
that kindled his soul into a flame of admiration, and carried his senses
away captive. Ambulinia had disappeared, to make him more mindful of
his duty. As she walked speedily away through the piny woods, she calmly
echoed: “O! Elfonzo, thou wilt now look from thy sunbeams. Thou shalt
now walk in a new path--perhaps thy way leads through darkness; but fear
not, the stars foretell happiness.”

To McClintock that jingling jumble of fine words meant something, no
doubt, or seemed to mean something; but it is useless for us to try to
divine what it was. Ambulinia comes--we don't know whence nor why; she
mysteriously intimates--we don't know what; and then she goes echoing
away--we don't know whither; and down comes the curtain. McClintock's
art is subtle; McClintock's art is deep.

Not many days afterward, as surrounded by fragrant flowers she sat one
evening at twilight, to enjoy the cool breeze that whispered notes of
melody along the distant groves, the little birds perched on every
side, as if to watch the movements of their new visitor. The bells were
tolling, when Elfonzo silently stole along by the wild wood flowers,
holding in his hand his favorite instrument of music--his eye
continually searching for Ambulinia, who hardly seemed to perceive him,
as she played carelessly with the songsters that hopped from branch to
branch. Nothing could be more striking than the difference between the
two. Nature seemed to have given the more tender soul to Elfonzo, and
the stronger and more courageous to Ambulinia. A deep feeling spoke from
the eyes of Elfonzo--such a feeling as can only be expressed by those
who are blessed as admirers, and by those who are able to return the
same with sincerity of heart. He was a few years older than Ambulinia:
she had turned a little into her seventeenth. He had almost grown up
in the Cherokee country, with the same equal proportions as one of the
natives. But little intimacy had existed between them until the year
forty-one--because the youth felt that the character of such a lovely
girl was too exalted to inspire any other feeling than that of quiet
reverence. But as lovers will not always be insulted, at all times and
under all circumstances, by the frowns and cold looks of crabbed old
age, which should continually reflect dignity upon those around, and
treat the unfortunate as well as the fortunate with a graceful mien, he
continued to use diligence and perseverance. All this lighted a spark
in his heart that changed his whole character, and like the unyielding
Deity that follows the storm to check its rage in the forest, he
resolves for the first time to shake off his embarrassment and return
where he had before only worshiped.

At last we begin to get the Major's measure. We are able to put this
and that casual fact together, and build the man up before our eyes,
and look at him. And after we have got him built, we find him worth the
trouble. By the above comparison between his age and Ambulinia's, we
guess the war-worn veteran to be twenty-two; and the other facts stand
thus: he had grown up in the Cherokee country with the same equal
proportions as one of the natives--how flowing and graceful the
language, and yet how tantalizing as to meaning!--he had been turned
adrift by his father, to whom he had been “somewhat of a dutiful son”;
he wandered in distant lands; came back frequently “to the scenes of his
boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life,” in order to
get into the presence of his father's winter-worn locks, and spread
a humid veil of darkness around his expectations; but he was always
promptly sent back to the cold charity of the combat again; he learned
to play the fiddle, and made a name for himself in that line; he had
dwelt among the wild tribes; he had philosophized about the despoilers
of the kingdoms of the earth, and found out--the cunning creature--that
they refer their differences to the learned for settlement; he had
achieved a vast fame as a military chieftain, the Achilles of the
Florida campaigns, and then had got him a spelling-book and started
to school; he had fallen in love with Ambulinia Valeer while she was
teething, but had kept it to himself awhile, out of the reverential awe
which he felt for the child; but now at last, like the unyielding Deity
who follows the storm to check its rage in the forest, he resolves to
shake off his embarrassment, and to return where before he had only
worshiped. The Major, indeed, has made up his mind to rise up and shake
his faculties together, and to see if_ he_ can't do that thing himself.
This is not clear. But no matter about that: there stands the hero,
compact and visible; and he is no mean structure, considering that his
creator had never created anything before, and hadn't anything but
rags and wind to build with this time. It seems to me that no one can
contemplate this odd creature, this quaint and curious blatherskite,
without admiring McClintock, or, at any rate, loving him and feeling
grateful to him; for McClintock made him, he gave him to us; without
McClintock we could not have had him, and would now be poor.

But we must come to the feast again. Here is a courtship scene, down
there in the romantic glades among the raccoons, alligators, and things,
that has merit, peculiar literary merit. See how Achilles woos.
Dwell upon the second sentence (particularly the close of it) and the
beginning of the third. Never mind the new personage, Leos, who is
intruded upon us unheralded and unexplained. That is McClintock's way;
it is his habit; it is a part of his genius; he cannot help it; he never
interrupts the rush of his narrative to make introductions.

It could not escape Ambulinia's penetrating eye that he sought an
interview with her, which she as anxiously avoided, and assumed a more
distant calmness than before, seemingly to destroy all hope. After many
efforts and struggles with his own person, with timid steps the Major
approached the damsel, with the same caution as he would have done in
a field of battle. “Lady Ambulinia,” said he, trembling, “I have
long desired a moment like this. I dare not let it escape. I fear the
consequences; yet I hope your indulgence will at least hear my petition.
Can you not anticipate what I would say, and what I am about to express?
Will not you, like Minerva, who sprung from the brain of Jupiter,
release me from thy winding chains or cure me--” “Say no more, Elfonzo,”
 answered Ambulinia, with a serious look, raising her hand as if she
intended to swear eternal hatred against the whole world; “another
lady in my place would have perhaps answered your question in bitter
coldness. I know not the little arts of my sex. I care but little for
the vanity of those who would chide me, and am unwilling as well as
ashamed to be guilty of anything that would lead you to think 'all is
not gold that glitters'; so be not rash in your resolution. It is better
to repent now, than to do it in a more solemn hour. Yes, I know what you
would say. I know you have a costly gift for me--the noblest that man
can make--_your heart!_ You should not offer it to one so unworthy.
Heaven, you know, has allowed my father's house to be made a house of
solitude, a home of silent obedience, which my parents say is more to
be admired than big names and high-sounding titles. Notwithstanding all
this, let me speak the emotions of an honest heart--allow me to say in
the fullness of my hopes that I anticipate better days. The bird may
stretch its wings toward the sun, which it can never reach; and flowers
of the field appear to ascend in the same direction, because they cannot
do otherwise; but man confides his complaints to the saints in whom he
believes; for in their abodes of light they know no more sorrow. From
your confession and indicative looks, I must be that person; if so
deceive not yourself.”

Elfonzo replied, “Pardon me, my dear madam, for my frankness. I have
loved you from my earliest days--everything grand and beautiful hath
borne the image of Ambulinia; while precipices on every hand surrounded
me, your _guardian angel_ stood and beckoned me away from the deep
abyss. In every trial, in every misfortune, I have met with your helping
hand; yet I never dreamed or dared to cherish thy love, till a voice
impaired with age encouraged the cause, and declared they who acquired
thy favor should win a victory. I saw how Leos worshiped thee. I felt my
own unworthiness. I began to _know jealously_, a strong guest--indeed,
in my bosom,--yet I could see if I gained your admiration Leos was to be
my rival. I was aware that he had the influence of your parents, and the
wealth of a deceased relative, which is too often mistaken for permanent
and regular tranquillity; yet I have determined by your permission
to beg an interest in your prayers--to ask you to animate my drooping
spirits by your smiles and your winning looks; for if you but speak I
shall be conqueror, my enemies shall stagger like Olympus shakes. And
though earth and sea may tremble, and the charioteer of the sun may
forget his dashing steed, yet I am assured that it is only to arm me
with divine weapons which will enable me to complete my long-tried
intention.”

“Return to yourself, Elfonzo,” said Ambulinia, pleasantly: “a dream
of vision has disturbed your intellect; you are above the atmosphere,
dwelling in the celestial regions; nothing is there that urges or
hinders, nothing that brings discord into our present litigation. I
entreat you to condescend a little, and be a man, and forget it all.
When Homer describes the battle of the gods and noble men fighting with
giants and dragons, they represent under this image our struggles with
the delusions of our passions. You have exalted me, an unhappy girl, to
the skies; you have called me a saint, and portrayed in your imagination
an angel in human form. Let her remain such to you, let her continue to
be as you have supposed, and be assured that she will consider a share
in your esteem as her highest treasure. Think not that I would allure
you from the path in which your conscience leads you; for you know I
respect the conscience of others, as I would die for my own. Elfonzo, if
I am worthy of thy love, let such conversation never again pass between
us. Go, seek a nobler theme! we will seek it in the stream of time, as
the sun set in the Tigris.” As she spake these words she grasped the
hand of Elfonzo, saying at the same time--“Peace and prosperity
attend you, my hero; be up and doing!” Closing her remarks with this
expression, she walked slowly away, leaving Elfonzo astonished and
amazed. He ventured not to follow or detain her. Here he stood alone,
gazing at the stars; confounded as he was, here he stood.

Yes; there he stood. There seems to be no doubt about that. Nearly half
of this delirious story has now been delivered to the reader. It seems a
pity to reduce the other half to a cold synopsis. Pity! it is more
than a pity, it is a crime; for to synopsize McClintock is to reduce
a sky-flushing conflagration to dull embers, it is to reduce barbaric
splendor to ragged poverty. McClintock never wrote a line that was not
precious; he never wrote one that could be spared; he never framed one
from which a word could be removed without damage. Every sentence that
this master has produced may be likened to a perfect set of teeth,
white, uniform, beautiful. If you pull one, the charm is gone.

Still, it is now necessary to begin to pull, and to keep it up; for lack
of space requires us to synopsize.

We left Elfonzo standing there amazed. At what, we do not know. Not at
the girl's speech. No; we ourselves should have been amazed at it,
of course, for none of us has ever heard anything resembling it; but
Elfonzo was used to speeches made up of noise and vacancy, and could
listen to them with undaunted mind like the “topmost topaz of an ancient
tower”; he was used to making them himself; he--but let it go, it cannot
be guessed out; we shall never know what it was that astonished him. He
stood there awhile; then he said, “Alas! am I now Grief's disappointed
son at last?” He did not stop to examine his mind, and to try to find
out what he probably meant by that, because, for one reason, “a mixture
of ambition and greatness of soul moved upon his young heart,” and
started him for the village. He resumed his bench in school, “and
reasonably progressed in his education.” His heart was heavy, but
he went into society, and sought surcease of sorrow in its light
distractions. He made himself popular with his violin, “which seemed to
have a thousand chords--more symphonious than the Muses of Apollo, and
more enchanting than the ghost of the Hills.” This is obscure, but let
it go.

During this interval Leos did some unencouraged courting, but at last,
“choked by his undertaking,” he desisted.

Presently “Elfonzo again wends his way to the stately walls and
new-built village.” He goes to the house of his beloved; she opens the
door herself. To my surprise--for Ambulinia's heart had still seemed
free at the time of their last interview--love beamed from the girl's
eyes. One sees that Elfonzo was surprised, too; for when he caught that
light, “a halloo of smothered shouts ran through every vein.” A neat
figure--a very neat figure, indeed! Then he kissed her. “The scene was
overwhelming.” They went into the parlor. The girl said it was safe,
for her parents were abed, and would never know. Then we have this
fine picture--flung upon the canvas with hardly an effort, as you will
notice.

Advancing toward him, she gave a bright display of her rosy neck, and
from her head the ambrosial locks breathed divine fragrance; her robe
hung waving to his view, while she stood like a goddess confessed before
him.

There is nothing of interest in the couple's interview. Now at this
point the girl invites Elfonzo to a village show, where jealousy is the
motive of the play, for she wants to teach him a wholesome lesson, if he
is a jealous person. But this is a sham, and pretty shallow. McClintock
merely wants a pretext to drag in a plagiarism of his upon a scene or
two in “Othello.”

The lovers went to the play. Elfonzo was one of the fiddlers. He and
Ambulinia must not be seen together, lest trouble follow with the girl's
malignant father; we are made to understand that clearly. So the two sit
together in the orchestra, in the midst of the musicians. This does not
seem to be good art. In the first place, the girl would be in the way,
for orchestras are always packed closely together, and there is no room
to spare for people's girls; in the next place, one cannot conceal a
girl in an orchestra without everybody taking notice of it. There can be
no doubt, it seems to me, that this is bad art.

Leos is present. Of course, one of the first things that catches his eye
is the maddening spectacle of Ambulinia “leaning upon Elfonzo's chair.”
 This poor girl does not seem to understand even the rudiments of
concealment. But she is “in her seventeenth,” as the author phrases it,
and that is her justification.

Leos meditates, constructs a plan--with personal violence as a basis,
of course. It was their way down there. It is a good plain plan, without
any imagination in it. He will go out and stand at the front door, and
when these two come out he will “arrest Ambulinia from the hands of the
insolent Elfonzo,” and thus make for himself a “more prosperous field of
immortality than ever was decreed by Omnipotence, or ever pencil drew
or artist imagined.” But, dear me, while he is waiting there the couple
climb out at the back window and scurry home! This is romantic enough,
but there is a lack of dignity in the situation.

At this point McClintock puts in the whole of his curious play--which we
skip.

Some correspondence follows now. The bitter father and the distressed
lovers write the letters. Elopements are attempted. They are idiotically
planned, and they fail. Then we have several pages of romantic powwow
and confusion signifying nothing. Another elopement is planned; it is to
take place on Sunday, when everybody is at church. But the “hero” cannot
keep the secret; he tells everybody. Another author would have found
another instrument when he decided to defeat this elopement; but that is
not McClintock's way. He uses the person that is nearest at hand.

The evasion failed, of course. Ambulinia, in her flight, takes refuge
in a neighbor's house. Her father drags her home. The villagers gather,
attracted by the racket.

Elfonzo was moved at this sight. The people followed on to see what was
going to become of Ambulinia, while he, with downcast looks, kept at
a distance, until he saw them enter the abode of the father, thrusting
her, that was the sigh of his soul, out of his presence into a solitary
apartment, when she exclaimed, “Elfonzo! Elfonzo! oh, Elfonzo! where
art thou, with all thy heroes? haste, oh! haste, come thou to my relief.
Ride on the wings of the wind! Turn thy force loose like a tempest, and
roll on thy army like a whirlwind, over this mountain of trouble and
confusion. Oh friends! if any pity me, let your last efforts throng upon
the green hills, and come to the relief of Ambulinia, who is guilty of
nothing but innocent love.” Elfonzo called out with a loud voice, “My
God, can I stand this! arouse up, I beseech you, and put an end to this
tyranny. Come, my brave boys,” said he, “are you ready to go forth to
your duty?” They stood around him. “Who,” said he, “will call us to
arms? Where are my thunderbolts of war? Speak ye, the first who will
meet the foe! Who will go forward with me in this ocean of grievous
temptation? If there is one who desires to go, let him come and shake
hands upon the altar of devotion, and swear that he will be a hero; yes,
a Hector in a cause like this, which calls aloud for a speedy remedy.”
 “Mine be the deed,” said a young lawyer, “and mine alone; Venus alone
shall quit her station before I will forsake one jot or tittle of my
promise to you; what is death to me? what is all this warlike army,
if it is not to win a victory? I love the sleep of the lover and the
mighty; nor would I give it over till the blood of my enemies should
wreak with that of my own. But God forbid that our fame should soar
on the blood of the slumberer.” Mr. Valeer stands at his door with the
frown of a demon upon his brow, with his dangerous weapon (3) ready to
strike the first man who should enter his door. “Who will arise and go
forward through blood and carnage to the rescue of my Ambulinia?” said
Elfonzo. “All,” exclaimed the multitude; and onward they went, with
their implements of battle. Others, of a more timid nature, stood among
the distant hills to see the result of the contest.

It will hardly be believed that after all this thunder and lightning not
a drop of rain fell; but such is the fact. Elfonzo and his gang stood up
and black-guarded Mr. Valeer with vigor all night, getting their outlay
back with interest; then in the early morning the army and its general
retired from the field, leaving the victory with their solitary
adversary and his crowbar. This is the first time this has happened in
romantic literature. The invention is original. Everything in this book
is original; there is nothing hackneyed about it anywhere. Always, in
other romances, when you find the author leading up to a climax, you
know what is going to happen. But in this book it is different; the
thing which seems inevitable and unavoidable never happens; it is
circumvented by the art of the author every time.

Another elopement was attempted. It failed.

We have now arrived at the end. But it is not exciting. McClintock
thinks it is; but it isn't. One day Elfonzo sent Ambulinia another
note--a note proposing elopement No. 16. This time the plan is
admirable; admirable, sagacious, ingenious, imaginative, deep--oh,
everything, and perfectly easy. One wonders why it was never thought of
before. This is the scheme. Ambulinia is to leave the breakfast-table,
ostensibly to “attend to the placing of those flowers, which should have
been done a week ago”--artificial ones, of course; the others wouldn't
keep so long--and then, instead of fixing the flowers, she is to walk
out to the grove, and go off with Elfonzo. The invention of this plan
overstrained the author that is plain, for he straightway shows failing
powers. The details of the plan are not many or elaborate. The author
shall state them himself--this good soul, whose intentions are always
better than his English:

“You walk carelessly toward the academy grove, where you will find me
with a lightning steed, elegantly equipped to bear you off where we
shall be joined in wedlock with the first connubial rights.”

Last scene of all, which the author, now much enfeebled, tries to
smarten up and make acceptable to his spectacular heart by introducing
some new properties--silver bow, golden harp, olive branch--things that
can all come good in an elopement, no doubt, yet are not to be compared
to an umbrella for real handiness and reliability in an excursion of
that kind.

And away she ran to the sacred grove, surrounded with glittering pearls,
that indicated her coming. Elfonzo hails her with his silver bow and his
golden harp. They meet--Ambulinia's countenance brightens--Elfonzo leads
up the winged steed. “Mount,” said he, “ye true-hearted, ye fearless
soul--the day is ours.” She sprang upon the back of the young
thunderbolt, a brilliant star sparkles upon her head, with one hand she
grasps the reins, and with the other she holds an olive branch. “Lend
thy aid, ye strong winds,” they exclaimed, “ye moon, ye sun, and all ye
fair host of heaven, witness the enemy conquered.” “Hold,” said Elfonzo,
“thy dashing steed.” “Ride on,” said Ambulinia, “the voice of thunder is
behind us.” And onward they went, with such rapidity that they very soon
arrived at Rural Retreat, where they dismounted, and were united with
all the solemnities that usually attended such divine operations.

There is but one Homer, there is but one Shakespeare, there is but one
McClintock--and his immortal book is before you. Homer could not have
written this book, Shakespeare could not have written it, I could not
have done it myself. There is nothing just like it in the literature of
any country or of any epoch. It stands alone; it is monumental. It
adds G. Ragsdale McClintock's to the sum of the republic's imperishable
names.

1. The name here given is a substitute for the one actually attached to
the pamphlet.

2. Further on it will be seen that he is a country expert on the fiddle,
and has a three-township fame.

3. It is a crowbar.



THE CURIOUS BOOK

COMPLETE

(The foregoing review of the great work of G. Ragsdale McClintock is
liberally illuminated with sample extracts, but these cannot appease the
appetite. Only the complete book, unabridged, can do that. Therefore it
is here printed.--M.T.)

THE ENEMY CONQUERED; OR, LOVE TRIUMPHANT


Sweet girl, thy smiles are full of charms,

Thy voice is sweeter still,

It fills the breast with fond alarms,

Echoed by every rill.

I begin this little work with an eulogy upon woman, who has ever been
distinguished for her perseverance, her constancy, and her devoted
attention to those upon whom she has been pleased to place her
_affections_. Many have been the themes upon which writers and public
speakers have dwelt with intense and increasing interest. Among these
delightful themes stands that of woman, the balm to all our sighs and
disappointments, and the most pre-eminent of all other topics. Here the
poet and orator have stood and gazed with wonder and with admiration;
they have dwelt upon her innocence, the ornament of all her virtues.
First viewing her external charms, such as set forth in her form and
benevolent countenance, and then passing to the deep hidden springs of
loveliness and disinterested devotion. In every clime, and in every age,
she has been the pride of her _nation_. Her watchfulness is untiring;
she who guarded the sepulcher was the first to approach it, and the last
to depart from its awful yet sublime scene. Even here, in this highly
favored land, we look to her for the security of our institutions, and
for our future greatness as a nation. But, strange as it may appear,
woman's charms and virtues are but slightly appreciated by thousands.
Those who should raise the standard of female worth, and paint her value
with her virtues, in living colors, upon the banners that are fanned by
the zephyrs of heaven, and hand them down to posterity as emblematical
of a rich inheritance, do not properly estimate them.

Man is not sensible, at all times, of the nature and the emotions which
bear that name; he does not understand, he will not comprehend; his
intelligence has not expanded to that degree of glory which drinks in
the vast revolution of humanity, its end, its mighty destination, and
the causes which operated, and are still operating, to produce a
more elevated station, and the objects which energize and enliven its
consummation. This he is a stranger to; he is not aware that woman is
the recipient of celestial love, and that man is dependent upon her
to perfect his character; that without her, philosophically and truly
speaking, the brightest of his intelligence is but the coldness of a
winter moon, whose beams can produce no fruit, whose solar light is not
its own, but borrowed from the great dispenser of effulgent beauty. We
have no disposition in the world to flatter the fair sex, we would raise
them above those dastardly principles which only exist in little souls,
contracted hearts, and a distracted brain. Often does she unfold herself
in all her fascinating loveliness, presenting the most captivating
charms; yet we find man frequently treats such purity of purpose with
indifference. Why does he do it? Why does he baffle that which is
inevitably the source of his better days? Is he so much of a stranger
to those excellent qualities as not to appreciate woman, as not to have
respect to her dignity? Since her art and beauty first captivated man,
she has been his delight and his comfort; she has shared alike in his
misfortunes and in his prosperity.

Whenever the billows of adversity and the tumultuous waves of trouble
beat high, her smiles subdue their fury. Should the tear of sorrow and
the mournful sigh of grief interrupt the peace of his mind, her voice
removes them all, and she bends from her circle to encourage him onward.
When darkness would obscure his mind, and a thick cloud of gloom would
bewilder its operations, her intelligent eye darts a ray of streaming
light into his heart. Mighty and charming is that disinterested devotion
which she is ever ready to exercise toward man, not waiting till
the last moment of his danger, but seeks to relieve him in his early
afflictions. It gushes forth from the expansive fullness of a tender and
devoted heart, where the noblest, the purest, and the most elevated and
refined feelings are matured and developed in those many kind offices
which invariably make her character.

In the room of sorrow and sickness, this unequaled characteristic
may always been seen, in the performance of the most charitable acts;
nothing that she can do to promote the happiness of him who she claims
to be her protector will be omitted; all is invigorated by the animating
sunbeams which awaken the heart to songs of gaiety. Leaving this point,
to notice another prominent consideration, which is generally one of
great moment and of vital importance. Invariably she is firm and steady
in all her pursuits and aims. There is required a combination of forces
and extreme opposition to drive her from her position; she takes her
stand, not to be moved by the sound of Apollo's lyre or the curved bow
of pleasure.

Firm and true to what she undertakes, and that which she requires by
her own aggrandizement, and regards as being within the strict rules of
propriety, she will remain stable and unflinching to the last. A more
genuine principle is not to be found in the most determined, resolute
heart of man. For this she deserves to be held in the highest
commendation, for this she deserves the purest of all other blessings,
and for this she deserves the most laudable reward of all others. It is
a noble characteristic and is worthy of imitation of any age. And when
we look at it in one particular aspect, it is still magnified, and grows
brighter and brighter the more we reflect upon its eternal duration.
What will she not do, when her word as well as her affections and _love
_are pledged to her lover? Everything that is dear to her on earth,
all the hospitalities of kind and loving parents, all the sincerity and
loveliness of sisters, and the benevolent devotion of brothers, who have
surrounded her with every comfort; she will forsake them all, quit the
harmony and sweet sound of the lute and the harp, and throw herself upon
the affections of some devoted admirer, in whom she fondly hopes to
find more than she has left behind, which is not often realized by many.
Truth and virtue all combined! How deserving our admiration and love! Ah
cruel would it be in man, after she has thus manifested such an unshaken
confidence in him, and said by her determination to abandon all the
endearments and blandishments of home, to act a villainous part, and
prove a traitor in the revolution of his mission, and then turn Hector
over the innocent victim whom he swore to protect, in the presence of
Heaven, recorded by the pen of an angel.

Striking as this trait may unfold itself in her character, and as
pre-eminent as it may stand among the fair display of her other
qualities, yet there is another, which struggles into existence, and
adds an additional luster to what she already possesses. I mean that
disposition in woman which enables her, in sorrow, in grief, and in
distress, to bear all with enduring patience. This she has done, and
can and will do, amid the din of war and clash of arms. Scenes and
occurrences which, to every appearance, are calculated to rend the heart
with the profoundest emotions of trouble, do not fetter that exalted
principle imbued in her very nature. It is true, her tender and feeling
heart may often be moved (as she is thus constituted), but she is not
conquered, she has not given up to the harlequin of disappointments, her
energies have not become clouded in the last movement of misfortune, but
she is continually invigorated by the archetype of her affections. She
may bury her face in her hands, and let the tear of anguish roll, she
may promenade the delightful walks of some garden, decorated with all
the flowers of nature, or she may steal out along some gently rippling
stream, and there, as the silver waters uninterruptedly move forward,
shed her silent tears; they mingle with the waves, and take a last
farewell of their agitated home, to seek a peaceful dwelling among
the rolling floods; yet there is a voice rushing from her breast,
that proclaims _victory _along the whole line and battlement of her
affections. That voice is the voice of patience and resignation; that
voice is one that bears everything calmly and dispassionately, amid the
most distressing scenes; when the fates are arrayed against her peace,
and apparently plotting for her destruction, still she is resigned.

Woman's affections are deep, consequently her troubles may be made to
sink deep. Although you may not be able to mark the traces of her grief
and the furrowings of her anguish upon her winning countenance, yet be
assured they are nevertheless preying upon her inward person, sapping
the very foundation of that heart which alone was made for the weal and
not the woe of man. The deep recesses of the soul are fields for their
operation. But they are not destined simply to take the regions of
the heart for their dominion, they are not satisfied merely with
interrupting her better feelings; but after a while you may see the
blooming cheek beginning to droop and fade, her intelligent eye no
longer sparkles with the starry light of heaven, her vibrating pulse
long since changed its regular motion, and her palpitating bosom beats
once more for the midday of her glory. Anxiety and care ultimately throw
her into the arms of the haggard and grim monster death. But, oh, how
patient, under every pining influence! Let us view the matter in bolder
colors; see her when the dearest object of her affections recklessly
seeks every bacchanalian pleasure, contents himself with the last
rubbish of creation. With what solicitude she awaits his return! Sleep
fails to perform its office--she weeps while the nocturnal shades of the
night triumph in the stillness. Bending over some favorite book, whilst
the author throws before her mind the most beautiful imagery, she
startles at every sound. The midnight silence is broken by the solemn
announcement of the return of another morning. He is still absent; she
listens for that voice which has so often been greeted by the melodies
of her own; but, alas! stern silence is all that she receives for her
vigilance.

Mark her unwearied watchfulness, as the night passes away. At last,
brutalized by the accursed thing, he staggers along with rage, and,
shivering with cold, he makes his appearance. Not a murmur is heard from
her lips. On the contrary, she meets him with a smile--she caresses him
with tender arms, with all the gentleness and softness of her sex. Here,
then, is seen her disposition, beautifully arrayed. Woman, thou art more
to be admired than the spicy gales of Arabia, and more sought for than
the gold of Golconda. We believe that Woman should associate freely with
man, and we believe that it is for the preservation of her rights. She
should become acquainted with the metaphysical designs of those who
condescended to sing the siren song of flattery. This, we think, should
be according to the unwritten law of decorum, which is stamped upon
every innocent heart. The precepts of prudery are often steeped in the
guilt of contamination, which blasts the expectations of better moments.
Truth, and beautiful dreams--loveliness, and delicacy of character, with
cherished affections of the ideal woman--gentle hopes and aspirations,
are enough to uphold her in the storms of darkness, without the
transferred colorings of a stained sufferer. How often have we seen it
in our public prints, that woman occupies a false station in the world!
and some have gone so far as to say it was an unnatural one. So long has
she been regarded a weak creature, by the rabble and illiterate--they
have looked upon her as an insufficient actress on the great stage of
human life--a mere puppet, to fill up the drama of human existence--a
thoughtless, inactive being--that she has too often come to the same
conclusion herself, and has sometimes forgotten her high destination, in
the meridian of her glory. We have but little sympathy or patience for
those who treat her as a mere Rosy Melindi--who are always fishing for
pretty complements--who are satisfied by the gossamer of Romance,
and who can be allured by the verbosity of high-flown words, rich in
language, but poor and barren in sentiment. Beset, as she has been, by
the intellectual vulgar, the selfish, the designing, the cunning, the
hidden, and the artful--no wonder she has sometimes folded her wings
in despair, and forgotten her _heavenly _mission in the delirium of
imagination; no wonder she searches out some wild desert, to find a
peaceful home. But this cannot always continue. A new era is moving
gently onward, old things are rapidly passing away; old superstitions,
old prejudices, and old notions are now bidding farewell to their old
associates and companions, and giving way to one whose wings are plumed
with the light of heaven and tinged by the dews of the morning. There
is a remnant of blessedness that clings to her in spite of all evil
influence, there is enough of the Divine Master left to accomplish the
noblest work ever achieved under the canopy of the vaulted skies; and
that time is fast approaching, when the picture of the true woman will
shine from its frame of glory, to captivate, to win back, to restore,
and to call into being once more, _the object of her mission_.


Star of the brave! thy glory shed, O'er all the earth, thy army led--
Bold meteor of immortal birth! Why come from Heaven to dwell on Earth?

Mighty and glorious are the days of youth; happy the moments of the
_lover_, mingled with smiles and tears of his devoted, and long to be
remembered are the achievements which he gains with a palpitating heart
and a trembling hand. A bright and lovely dawn, the harbinger of a fair
and prosperous day, had arisen over the beautiful little village
of Cumming, which is surrounded by the most romantic scenery in the
Cherokee country. Brightening clouds seemed to rise from the mist of
the fair Chattahoochee, to spread their beauty over the thick forest, to
guide the hero whose bosom beats with aspirations to conquer the enemy
that would tarnish his name, and to win back the admiration of his
long-tried friend. He endeavored to make his way through Sawney's
Mountain, where many meet to catch the gales that are continually
blowing for the refreshment of the stranger and the traveler. Surrounded
as he was by hills on every side, naked rocks dared the efforts of his
energies. Soon the sky became overcast, the sun buried itself in the
clouds, and the fair day gave place to gloomy twilight, which lay
heavily on the Indian Plains. He remembered an old Indian Castle, that
once stood at the foot of the mountain. He thought if he could make his
way to this, he would rest contented for a short time. The mountain
air breathed fragrance--a rosy tinge rested on the glassy waters that
murmured at its base. His resolution soon brought him to the remains of
the red man's hut: he surveyed with wonder and astonishment the decayed
building, which time had buried in the dust, and thought to himself,
his happiness was not yet complete. Beside the shore of the brook sat
a young man, about eighteen or twenty, who seemed to be reading some
favorite book, and who had a remarkably noble countenance--eyes which
betrayed more than a common mind. This of course made the youth a
welcome guest, and gained him friends in whatever condition of life he
might be placed. The traveler observed that he was a well-built figure,
which showed strength and grace in every movement. He accordingly
addressed him in quite a gentlemanly manner, and inquired of him the way
to the village. After he had received the desired information, and was
about taking his leave, the youth said, “Are you not Major Elfonzo, the
great musician--the champion of a noble cause--the modern Achilles, who
gained so many victories in the Florida War?” “I bear that name,”
 said the Major, “and those titles, trusting at the same time that the
ministers of grace will carry me triumphantly through all my laudable
undertakings, and if,” continued the Major, “you, sir, are the
patronizer of noble deeds, I should like to make you my confidant and
learn your address.” The youth looked somewhat amazed, bowed low, mused
for a moment, and began: “My name is Roswell. I have been recently
admitted to the bar, and can only give a faint outline of my future
success in that honorable profession; but I trust, sir, like the Eagle,
I shall look down from lofty rocks upon the dwellings of man, and shall
ever be ready to give you any assistance in my official capacity, and
whatever this muscular arm of mine can do, whenever it shall be called
from its buried _greatness_.” The Major grasped him by the hand, and
exclaimed: “O! thou exalted spirit of inspiration--thou flame of burning
prosperity, may the Heaven-directed blaze be the glare of thy soul, and
battle down every rampart that seems to impede your progress!”

The road which led to the town presented many attractions. Elfonzo had
bid farewell to the youth of deep feeling, and was now wending his way
to the dreaming spot of his fondness. The south winds whistled through
the woods, as the waters dashed against the banks, as rapid fire in the
pent furnace roars. This brought him to remember while alone, that he
quietly left behind the hospitality of a father's house, and gladly
entered the world, with higher hopes than are often realized. But as he
journeyed onward, he was mindful of the advice of his father, who had
often looked sadly on the ground when tears of cruelly deceived hope
moistened his eye. Elfonzo had been somewhat of a dutiful son; yet fond
of the amusements of life--had been in distant lands--had enjoyed the
pleasure of the world and had frequently returned to the scenes of
his boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life. In this
condition, he would frequently say to his father, “Have I offended you,
that you look upon me as a stranger, and frown upon me with stinging
looks? Will you not favor me with the sound of your voice? If I have
trampled upon your veneration, or have spread a humid veil of darkness
around your expectations, send me back into the world where no heart
beats for me--where the foot of man has never yet trod; but give me at
least one kind word--allow me to come into the presence sometimes of
thy winter-worn locks.” “Forbid it, Heaven, that I should be angry with
thee,” answered the father, “my son, and yet I send thee back to the
children of the world--to the cold charity of the combat, and to a
land of victory. I read another destiny in thy countenance--I learn
thy inclinations from the flame that has already kindled in my soul a
strange sensation. It will seek thee, my dear _Elfonzo_, it will find
thee--thou canst not escape that lighted torch, which shall blot out
from the remembrance of men a long train of prophecies which they have
foretold against thee. I once thought not so. Once, I was blind; but now
the path of life is plain before me, and my sight is clear; yet Elfonzo,
return to thy worldly occupation--take again in thy hand that chord
of sweet sounds--struggle with the civilized world, and with your own
heart; fly swiftly to the enchanted ground--let the night-_owl_ send forth
its screams from the stubborn oak--let the sea sport upon the beach, and
the stars sing together; but learn of these, Elfonzo, thy doom, and
thy hiding-place. Our most innocent as well as our most lawful _desires
_must often be denied us, that we may learn to sacrifice them to a
Higher will.”

Remembering such admonitions with gratitude, Elfonzo was immediately
urged by the recollection of his father's family to keep moving. His
steps became quicker and quicker--he hastened through the _piny _woods,
dark as the forest was, and with joy he very soon reached the little
village of repose, in whose bosom rested the boldest chivalry. His close
attention to every important object--his modest questions about whatever
was new to him--his reverence for wise old age, and his ardent desire to
learn many of the fine arts, soon brought him into respectable notice.

One mild winter day as he walked along the streets toward the Academy,
which stood upon a small eminence, surrounded by native growth--some
venerable in its appearance, others young and prosperous--all seemed
inviting, and seemed to be the very place for learning as well as for
genius to spend its research beneath its spreading shades. He entered
its classic walls in the usual mode of southern manners. The principal
of the Institution begged him to be seated and listen to the recitations
that were going on. He accordingly obeyed the request, and seemed to
be much pleased. After the school was dismissed, and the young hearts
regained their freedom, with the songs of the evening, laughing at the
anticipated pleasures of a happy home, while others tittered at the
actions of the past day, he addressed the teacher in a tone that
indicated a resolution--with an undaunted mind. He said he had
determined to become a student, if he could meet with his approbation.
“Sir,” said he, “I have spent much time in the world. I have traveled
among the uncivilized inhabitants of America. I have met with friends,
and combated with foes; but none of these gratify my ambition, or decide
what is to be my destiny. I see the learned would have an influence
with the voice of the people themselves. The despoilers of the remotest
kingdoms of the earth refer their differences to this class of persons.
This the illiterate and inexperienced little dream of; and now if you
will receive me as I am, with these deficiencies--with all my misguided
opinions, I will give you my honor, sir, that I will never disgrace the
Institution, or those who have placed you in this honorable station.”
 The instructor, who had met with many disappointments, knew how to
feel for a stranger who had been thus turned upon the charities of an
unfeeling community. He looked at him earnestly, and said: “Be of
good cheer--look forward, sir, to the high destination you may attain.
Remember, the more elevated the mark at which you aim, the more sure,
the more glorious, the more magnificent the prize.” From wonder to
wonder, his encouragement led the impatient listener. A strange nature
bloomed before him--giant streams promised him success--gardens of
hidden treasures opened to his view. All this, so vividly described,
seemed to gain a new witchery from his glowing fancy.

In 1842 he entered the class, and made rapid progress in the English
and Latin departments. Indeed, he continued advancing with such rapidity
that he was like to become the first in his class, and made such
unexpected progress, and was so studious, that he had almost forgotten
the pictured saint of his affections. The fresh wreaths of the pine and
cypress had waited anxiously to drop once more the dews of Heavens upon
the heads of those who had so often poured forth the tender emotions of
their souls under its boughs. He was aware of the pleasure that he had
seen there. So one evening, as he was returning from his reading, he
concluded he would pay a visit to this enchanting spot. Little did he
think of witnessing a shadow of his former happiness, though no doubt
he wished it might be so. He continued sauntering by the roadside,
meditating on the past. The nearer he approached the spot, the more
anxious he became. At the moment a tall female figure flitted across his
path, with a bunch of roses in her hand; her countenance showed uncommon
vivacity, with a resolute spirit; her ivory teeth already appeared as
she smiled beautifully, promenading--while her ringlets of hair dangled
unconsciously around her snowy neck. Nothing was wanting to complete
her beauty. The tinge of the rose was in full bloom upon her cheek; the
charms of sensibility and tenderness were always her associates.. In
Ambulinia's bosom dwelt a noble soul--one that never faded--one that
never was conquered. Her heart yielded to no feeling but the love of
Elfonzo, on whom she gazed with intense delight, and to whom she felt
herself more closely bound, because he sought the hand of no other.
Elfonzo was roused from his apparent reverie. His books no longer were
his inseparable companions--his thoughts arrayed themselves to encourage
him in the field of victory. He endeavored to speak to his supposed
Ambulinia, but his speech appeared not in words. No, his effort was a
stream of fire, that kindled his soul into a flame of admiration, and
carried his senses away captive. Ambulinia had disappeared, to make him
more mindful of his duty. As she walked speedily away through the
piny woods she calmly echoed: “O! Elfonzo, thou wilt now look from
thy sunbeams. Thou shalt now walk in a new path--perhaps thy way leads
through darkness; but fear not, the stars foretell happiness.”

Not many days afterward, as surrounded by fragrant flowers she sat one
evening at twilight, to enjoy the cool breeze that whispered notes of
melody along the distant groves, the little birds perched on every
side, as if to watch the movements of their new visitor. The bells were
tolling when Elfonzo silently stole along by the wild wood flowers,
holding in his hand his favorite instrument of music--his eye
continually searching for Ambulinia, who hardly seemed to perceive him,
as she played carelessly with the songsters that hopped from branch to
branch. Nothing could be more striking than the difference between the
two. Nature seemed to have given the more tender soul to Elfonzo, and
the stronger and more courageous to Ambulinia. A deep feeling spoke from
the eyes of Elfonzo--such a feeling as can only be expressed by those
who are blessed as admirers, and by those who are able to return the
same with sincerity of heart. He was a few years older than Ambulinia:
she had turned a little into her seventeenth. He had almost grown up
in the Cherokee country, with the same equal proportions as one of the
natives. But little intimacy had existed between them until the year
forty-one--because the youth felt that the character of such a lovely
girl was too exalted to inspire any other feeling than that of quiet
reverence. But as lovers will not always be insulted, at all times and
under all circumstances, by the frowns and cold looks of crabbed old
age, which should continually reflect dignity upon those around, and
treat unfortunate as well as the fortunate with a graceful mien, he
continued to use diligence and perseverance. All this lighted a spark
in his heart that changed his whole character, and like the unyielding
Deity that follows the storm to check its rage in the forest, he
resolves for the first time to shake off his embarrassment and return
where he had before only worshiped.

It could not escape Ambulinia's penetrating eye that he sought an
interview with her, which she as anxiously avoided, and assumed a more
distant calmness than before, seemingly to destroy all hope. After many
efforts and struggles with his own person, with timid steps the Major
approached the damsel, with the same caution as he would have done in
a field of battle. “Lady Ambulinia,” said he, trembling, “I have
long desired a moment like this. I dare not let it escape. I fear the
consequences; yet I hope your indulgence will at least hear my petition.
Can you not anticipate what I would say, and what I am about to express?
Will not you, like Minerva, who sprung from the brain of Jupiter,
release me from thy winding chains or cure me--” “Say no more, Elfonzo,”
 answered Ambulinia, with a serious look, raising her hand as if she
intended to swear eternal hatred against the whole world; “another
lady in my place would have perhaps answered your question in bitter
coldness. I know not the little arts of my sex. I care but little for
the vanity of those who would chide me, and am unwilling as well as
shamed to be guilty of anything that would lead you to think 'all is not
gold that glitters'; so be not rash in your resolution. It is better
to repent now than to do it in a more solemn hour. Yes, I know what you
would say. I know you have a costly gift for me--the noblest that man
can make--_your heart!_ you should not offer it to one so unworthy.
Heaven, you know, has allowed my father's house to be made a house of
solitude, a home of silent obedience, which my parents say is more to
be admired than big names and high-sounding titles. Notwithstanding all
this, let me speak the emotions of an honest heart; allow me to say in
the fullness of my hopes that I anticipate better days. The bird may
stretch its wings toward the sun, which it can never reach; and flowers
of the field appear to ascend in the same direction, because they cannot
do otherwise; but man confides his complaints to the saints in whom he
believes; for in their abodes of light they know no more sorrow. From
your confession and indicative looks, I must be that person; if so,
deceive not yourself.”

Elfonzo replied, “Pardon me, my dear madam, for my frankness. I have
loved you from my earliest days; everything grand and beautiful hath
borne the image of Ambulinia; while precipices on every hand surrounded
me, your _guardian angel_ stood and beckoned me away from the deep
abyss. In every trial, in every misfortune, I have met with your helping
hand; yet I never dreamed or dared to cherish thy love till a voice
impaired with age encouraged the cause, and declared they who acquired
thy favor should win a victory. I saw how Leos worshipped thee. I felt
my own unworthiness. I began to _know jealousy_--a strong guest, indeed,
in my bosom--yet I could see if I gained your admiration Leos was to be
my rival. I was aware that he had the influence of your parents, and the
wealth of a deceased relative, which is too often mistaken for permanent
and regular tranquillity; yet I have determined by your permission
to beg an interest in your prayers--to ask you to animate my drooping
spirits by your smiles and your winning looks; for if you but speak I
shall be conqueror, my enemies shall stagger like Olympus shakes. And
though earth and sea may tremble, and the charioteer of the sun may
forget his dashing steed, yet I am assured that it is only to arm me
with divine weapons which will enable me to complete my long-tried
intention.”

“Return to your self, Elfonzo,” said Ambulinia, pleasantly; “a dream
of vision has disturbed your intellect; you are above the atmosphere,
dwelling in the celestial regions; nothing is there that urges or
hinders, nothing that brings discord into our present litigation. I
entreat you to condescend a little, and be a man, and forget it all.
When Homer describes the battle of the gods and noble men fighting with
giants and dragons, they represent under this image our struggles with
the delusions of our passions. You have exalted me, an unhappy girl, to
the skies; you have called me a saint, and portrayed in your imagination
an angel in human form. Let her remain such to you, let her continue to
be as you have supposed, and be assured that she will consider a share
in your esteem as her highest treasure. Think not that I would allure
you from the path in which your conscience leads you; for you know I
respect the conscience of others, as I would die for my own. Elfonzo, if
I am worthy of thy love, let such conversation never again pass between
us. Go, seek a nobler theme! we will seek it in the stream of time as
the sun set in the Tigris.” As she spake these words she grasped the
hand of Elfonzo, saying at the same time, “Peace and prosperity
attend you, my hero: be up and doing!” Closing her remarks with this
expression, she walked slowly away, leaving Elfonzo astonished and
amazed. He ventured not to follow or detain her. Here he stood alone,
gazing at the stars; confounded as he was, here he stood. The rippling
stream rolled on at his feet. Twilight had already begun to draw her
sable mantle over the earth, and now and then the fiery smoke would
ascend from the little town which lay spread out before him. The
citizens seemed to be full of life and good-humor; but poor Elfonzo saw
not a brilliant scene. No; his future life stood before him, stripped of
the hopes that once adorned all his sanguine desires. “Alas!” said he,
“am I now Grief's disappointed son at last.” Ambulinia's image rose
before his fancy. A mixture of ambition and greatness of soul moved upon
his young heart, and encouraged him to bear all his crosses with the
patience of a Job, notwithstanding he had to encounter with so many
obstacles. He still endeavored to prosecute

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