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Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885

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Title: Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885

Author: Various


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE, OLD SERIES, VOL. 36—NEW SERIES, VOL. 10, JULY 1885 ***

LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
OF
POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

OLD SERIES, VOL. XXXVI.--NEW SERIES, VOL. X.

PHILADELPHIA: J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
1885.


Entered according to Act of Congress,
in the year 1885, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

LIPPINCOTT'S PRESS, _Philadelphia_.

       *       *       *       *       *

CONTENTS.

[Note: The sign * denotes the letters or pages which are missing on the
original manuscript.]

Art of Reading, The, _Grace R. Peirce_
Aurora, _Mary Agnes Tincker_
Backwoods Romance, A, _Susan Hartley Swett_
Birds of a Texan Winter, _Edward G. Bruce_
Brown, Anthony Calvert, _P. Deming_
Chapter of Mystery, A, _Charles Morris_
Cookham Dean, _Margaret Bertha Wright_
Dieu Dispose, _Nathan Clifford Brown_
Drama in the Nursery, The, _Norman Pearson_
Eye of a Needle, The, _Sophie Swett_
Ferryman's Fee, The, _Margaret Vandegrift_
Fishing in Elk River, _Tobe Hodge_
Forest Beauty, A, _Maurice Thompson_
Friend George Randall, My, _Frank Parke_
Grant, General, at Frankfort, _Alfred E. Lee_
Hoosier Idyl, A, _Louise Coffin Jones_
In a Suppressed Tuscan Monastery, _Kate Johnston Matson_
Lady Lawyer's First Client, The, _Thomas Wharton_      ,
Letters and Reminiscences of Charles Reade ,_Kinahan Cornwallis_
"Mees", _Charles Dunning_
Mickley, Joseph J., _J. Bunting_
Muster-Day in New England, _Frederick G. Mather_
New York Libraries, _Charles Burr Todd_
Next Vacation, The, _Alice Wellington Rollins_
North-River Ferry, A, _F.N. Zabriskie_
Nos Pensions
On this Side, _F.C. Baylor_
Parisian *, The, _Theodore Child_
P* of Archaeology, The, _Ernest Ingersoll_      *
* the Short-Story, The, _Brander Matthews_      *
* Southwest, The; _Edmund Kirke_      *
*t, A, _Margaret Vandegrift_      *
*ple, The, _M.H. Catherwood_      *
* or Free Classic Architecture, _George C. Mason, Jr._      *
*t, A, _C.W. Wilmerding_      *
*ning, _W.W. Crane_      *
* Yesterday and To-Day, _Alice King Hamilton_      *
Roughing it in Palestine, _Charles Wood_
Salt-Mine, In a, _Margery Deane_
Scenes of Charlotte Bronté's Life in Brussels, _Theo. Wolfe, M.D._
Scottish Crofters, The, _David Bennett King_
Second Rank, The, _Felix L. Oswald_
Story of an Italian Workwoman's Life, The, _Marie L. Thompson_
Story of a Story, The, _Horace E. Scudder_
Substitute, The, _James Payn_
Temple Pilgrimage, A, _Henry Frederick Reddall_
Texas Sheep-Ranch, On a, _E.C. Reynolds_
Tobacco-Plantation, A, _Philip A. Bruce_
Truth about Dogs, The, _F.N. Zabriskie_
Turtling on the Outer Reef, _C.F. Holder_
Van, _Charles King, U.S.A._
Ville, Our, _Margaret Bertha Wright_
White-Whalers, The _C.F. Holder_




LITERATURE OF THE DAY, comprising Reviews of the following Works:


Across the Chasm
Agassiz, Louis: His Life and Correspondence. Edited by Elizabeth Gary
Agassiz
Allen, Willis Boyd--Pine-Cones
At the Red Glove
Bates, Arlo--A Wheel of Fire
Beers, Henry A.--Nathaniel Parker Willis
Behler, W.H., Lieutenant, U.S.N.--The Cruise of the Brooklyn
Bompas, George O.--Life of Frank Buckland
Byron, Lord--Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Carey, Rose Nouchette--Barbara Heathcote's Trial
Carey, Eose Nouchette--For Lilias
Carryl, Charles E.--Davy the Goblin; or, What Followed Reading "Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland"
Cleveland, Rose Elizabeth--George Eliot's Poetry,
and Other Studies
Craddock, Charles Egbert--Down the Ravine
Dunning, Charlotte--Upon a Cast
Eugène Delacroix, par lui-même
Forbes, F.R.G.S., Henry O.--A Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern
Archipelago.
A Narrative of Travel and Exploration from  to
Hamilton, Alice King--One of the Duanes
Harrison, Mrs. Burton--Bric-à_Brac Stories
Harte, Bret--By Shore and Sedge
Hawthorne, Julian--Love--or a Name
Holmes, Oliver Wendell--The Last Leaf
Hornaday, William T.--Two Years in the Jungle
Howard, Blanche Willis--Aulnay Tower
Howells, William D.--The Rise of Silas Lapham
Jewett, Sarah Orne--A Marsh Island
Luska, Sidney--As it was Written: A Jewish Musician's Story
Married for Fun
Noble, Edmund--The Russian Revolt: its Causes, Condition, and
Prospects
Pennell, Joseph and Elizabeth Robbins--A Canterbury Pilgrimage
Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart--An Old Maid's Paradise
Pyle, Howard--Pepper and Salt; or, Seasoning for Young Folks
Pyle, Howard--Within the Capes
Roosevelt, Blanche--Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Doré
Rosseau, Jean--Hans Holbein
Searing, E.A.P.--A Social Experiment
Sermon on the Mount, The
Stanley, Henry M.--The Congo, and the Founding of its Free State:
A Story of Work and Exploration
Stockton, Frank R.--Rudder Grange
Tales from Many Sources
The Bar Sinister
Thompson, Maurice--At Love's Extremes
Torrey, Bradford--Birds in the Bush
Warner, Beverley Ellison--Troubled Waters
Wendell, Barrett--The Duchess Emilia
Whittier, John Greenleaf--Poems of Nature
*rs. A.L.--The Lady with the Rubies
*cles--J.F. Millet




OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP, comprising the following Articles:


* The,       "Additional Hair" Supply, The,
Art of Modern
Novel-Writing, The, *
Daniel Webster's "Moods,"
Dothegirls Hall,
Etymology of "Babe," The,
Feuds and Lynch-Law in the Southwest,
Future for Women, A,
Ice-Saints, The,
Man who Laughs, The,
Mystifications of Authoresses,
Old Songs and Sweet Singers,
Reminiscence of Harriet Martineau, A,
Svenska Maid, A,
Tourgéneff's Idea of Bazaroff,
Virginia Lady of the Old School, A,
Why we Forget Names,




POETRY:


Carcanet, A, _John B. Tabb_
Elusive, _Sarah D. Hobart_
Epitaph written in the Sand on a Butterfly Drowned in the Sea,
_Helen Gray Cone_
Into Thy Hands, _Stuart Sterne_
Mithra, _Charles L. Hildreth_
Morning, _Florence Earle Coates_
On a Noble Character marred by littleness, _Charlotte Fiske Bates_
Probation, _Florence Earle Coates_
Rose Romance, _Ada Nichols_
Shadows All, _Paul Hamilton Hayne_
Song, _Robertson Trowbridge_
"What do I Wish for You?" ,_Carlotta Perry_
Wood-Thrush at Sunset,_Mary C. Peckham_

       *       *       *       *       *


LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

_JULY, 1885_.




ON THIS SIDE.

VII.


It has not been concealed that, with all his fine qualities, Mr. Ketchum
was an obstinate man, and so, in spite of his wife's remonstrances, he
came down-stairs next morning--Sunday morning--in a dress that she had
assured him was "only fit for one's bedroom,"--namely, a very gorgeous
Oriental dressing-gown (Mabel's gift the preceding Christmas), with a fez
on his head, and on his feet a pair of slippers of amazing workmanship and
soundlessness, the joy of his feet, if not of his heart. Thus accoutred,
he prowled about on the lower floor, looking after various things, and,
going into the pantry for something, he chanced to look through the small
window used for the transmission of dishes from the next room, and saw
Parsons holding a pile of letters one by one over a steaming kettle.
Unconscious of his proximity, the respectable Parsons dexterously and
neatly opened several envelopes with a practised hand, and then
transferred the letters to her pocket, to be enjoyed at her leisure, after
which she laid hold of the kettle and retired into the kitchen beyond.

"Well, upon my word, if that isn't the coolest thing I ever saw!"
exclaimed Mr. Ketchum mentally, and, feeling that he had made a great
discovery, was at first for sharing it immediately with Parsons's mistress;
but on reflection he thought differently. "It is her funeral: I guess I
had better not meddle: there would be a great scene," he thought. "At any
rate, I'll wait until they are leaving before putting her on her guard."
He went back to the dining-room to his newspaper, and sat there until the
others came down.

Miss Noel was not long in the room before an idea struck her. "Did you not
say that your post-bag containing the night's mail would be sent over this
morning?" she asked.

"I did. It came about an hour ago," said Mr. Ketchum.

"How very nice! I hope there may be something for me. It is so very trying
to get no news from England," said Miss Noel.

"Why, Mabel had twenty-three letters laid aside for you until you should
come. Didn't she give them to you?" asked Mr. Ketchum. "Were none of those
from England?"

"Oh, yes. But that was three days since, and I've heard nothing for a
fortnight. If Parsons has _quite_ finished with the letters, I suppose I
may as well have them. And she must be, by this. Would you kindly ring and
send for them?" said Miss Noel.

"What! you know that she reads your letters?" exclaimed Mr. Ketchum,
surprised.

"Oh, dear, yes. They all do. It is very tiresome, but they will do it.
Parsons is generally good enough to let me have them quite promptly; but
she reads them, of course,--all but my cousin Blanche Best's letters.
Blanche has always been my most intimate friend, and can't bear the idea:
so she blocked the game by a most ingenious device. She writes one
sentence in French, the next in Italian, the third in English,--at least
she did until a happier plan suggested itself: now she writes English in
German text. It answers perfectly; but it is having a great effect on
Parsons, quite undermining her constitution, I fear, especially when
important things are happening at 'The Court,' where I often go. I
sometimes wickedly slip one of Blanche's letters under the pin-cushion, as
if with the intention of concealing it, and I have so enjoyed seeing
Parsons whip it under her apron when she got the chance, knowing that she
could not make out a single word. She really looked quite green afterward
for a week: pure chagrin."

"I am sure I have done everything that I could think of to keep my letters
from my man," said Sir Robert, "but quite without success. I think he
finds my correspondence a little dull sometimes, as compared with that of
a former place. He came to me from the greatest scamp in England; and I
can fancy that the letters there were very various and diverting. My own
must be altogether too ponderous and respectable for a taste formed on
sensational models."

"Well, all I have got to say is that if I caught a servant of mine at that
little game I'd make my letters uncommonly interesting reading to him; and
if the style suited him, I'd see that he got a little leisure in the
penitentiary to copy them and impress them on his mind. Do you mean to say
that you don't even discharge them for it?" said Mr. Ketchum, "I never
heard anything like it!"

"One could discharge the culprit easily enough; the trouble is that his
successor or successors would do exactly the same thing," replied Sir
Robert. "When the Barons rose, they neglected to provide a remedy for an
unforeseen nuisance, and I suppose this literary partnership of Master &
Servant, Limited, will always exist. I wrote a note once to Beazely (my
man), addressed to myself, and told him that if he disapproved of the
Conservative tone of my correspondence, as was likely, seeing that he was
a Radical, I would make an effort to get at Dilke or Bright, with a view
to an _occasional_ note at least. The envelope had been resealed, I saw
when it reached me, but Beazely had no more expression in his face than
the Sphinx. My letters, however, were not tampered with for about a week."

Mrs. Ketchum senior became fluent in her amazement: "How perfectly
dreadful! Good gracious! What did you do about your husband's letters? The
idea of sharing his letters with a servant!"

She was addressing Mrs. Sykes, who said very cheerfully in reply, "Oh,
there was never anything in his letters, except warnings to put the
servants at board-wages before I went away, and look to expenditures, and
not ask him for any more money soon. I didn't mind much. I was rather
ashamed of the spelling,--that was all. Poor dear Guy never could spell,
and I never read anything so dull as his letters,--the same thing over and
over again, till it hardly seemed worth while to open them, only for
knowing what he was up to, or when he was coming. How my poor sisters did
laugh one Christmas when I got a letter from him in Italy, saying, 'The
cole here is intense; but I have got a projick in my head, which is to get
back to England as fast as rale and steme can possibly carry me'! It
wasn't often that bad; but there was always something wrong. I can't think
how it is, for he had no end of tutors and masters, except that he
certainly was a very thick-headed fellow." She laughed merrily over the
epistolary deficiencies of her late lord as she spoke, and every one
joined her except Mrs. Ketchum, who was too shocked to countenance her.

"I saw Parsons in the very act of opening your letters this morning as I
was roaming around in my Jesuit creepers, and thought you would be
horrified; but it seems to be all right," said Mr. Ketchum, glancing down
at his slippers. "Suppose, now, we have some breakfast: it is late. We
haven't nearly as much time as the patriarchs, anyway, and so much more
use for it."

"I have been thinking it would never be ready," said Mrs. Sykes.

"And I am quite ready for it. Isn't that a nice new-laid egg for me?"
asked Miss Noel, taking her place with the others.

"Mabel, eggs for Miss Noel every morning, if she likes them, and don't you
forget it," said Mr. Ketchum. "'Trouble'? Not the least that ever was. I
have them for myself always. An egg for me must be like Caesar's wife,
--above suspicion. I have provided myself with a conscientious High-Church
hen that lays one every day of the year; though how she can think it worth
her while, when they are selling for ten cents a dozen, I can't
imagine.--What's the matter, Heathcote?"

The matter was the "Jesuit creepers" and the hen combined, which had sent
all the party into a little fit of laughter, from which Mr. Heathcote
could not recover.

"I don't see anything to double you up like a jack-knife," said Mr.
Ketchum, in allusion to his guest's way of stooping over and having the
laughs, as it were, shaken out of him by a superior force, while he got
out at intervals,--

"Jest--creep--High--such a fellow!" in staccato jerks that made every one
else laugh from sympathy.

"I call 'em that because Mother Schmidt made them for me so that I could
steal a march on my mother-in-law, and she's a Catholic and knew how to do
it. Talking of Catholics and what Washington calls the 'Peskypalians,' who
is going to church to-day?"

"I am going to walk over to Dale with Bijou Brown and her father," said
Ethel.

"That isn't as nice a church as ours. We will take the others into Kalsing,
eh, husband?" said Mabel; "that is, if they will come."

"I will go to the scaffold with Mrs. Ketchum," protested Sir Robert
gallantly. "What do you youngsters say?"

"Ramsay and I thought we would walk over to that little village on the
crest of a hill that one can see from my window," said Mr. Heathcote.

"You had much better go to church, --much better. But of course your soul
is your own," said Sir Robert.

"You won't have much body left when you get back: it is a good twenty
miles," remarked Mr. Ketchum.

"Oh, that is nothing." replied Mr. Ramsay.

"Forty miles there and back! Are they crazy?" Mrs. Ketchum asked of Mabel
_sotto voce_; to which a smile and shake of the head came in answer.--"The
day is very damp, Job. I am almost afraid to go out; but it is my duty,
and I will."

"That's right, ma. Do your duty. It is a good earthly as well as heavenly
investment," replied Mr. Ketchum.

"But I wish, son, that you would live in Kalsing, next to the church, or
in New York, which would be better. I saw a beautiful house advertised in
the neighborhood of Trinity Church the other day, and wrote to ask about
it," said Mrs. Ketchum, who was always in spirit moving the family away
from Fairfield.

"You are too speculative, ma, entirely," said he. "You are like my partner,
Richardson, who would write to ask the Czar what he would take for the
Winter Palace, if I'd let him, when if steamships were a dollar a dozen he
couldn't put up enough to buy a gang-plank. I can't move next to a church,
because all you womenites belong to different ones; but I can take a room
for you in the steeple and have an elevator put in that will make close
connection with the services, if you like."

"Don't be irreverent, my son," said Mrs. Ketchum, who, like some other
Protestants, believed in an infallible steeple, if not an infallible Pope.
"I don't expect _my_ wishes to be considered in anything."

"Oh, come, now, ma; that isn't fair. Except that I married to suit myself,
which is about the only foolish thing that I have done, I have been
tolerably obedient, I think," said Mr. Ketchum, aware that he was on
dangerous ground.

"Do tell us about it. You wanted him to marry some one else,--some one
with a fortune, didn't you?" said Mrs. Sykes. "Quite natural, I am sure."

"She wanted me to marry the ugliest woman east of the Rockies," said Mr.
Ketchum. "But I couldn't stand that face behind my cups and saucers three
hundred and sixty-five days in the year, and I bolted to England, where my
wife picked me up."

"She wasn't so ugly at all, Job, except that her nose was a little
aquiline," protested Mrs. Ketchum.

"Aquiline as a camel's back," asserted her son, in an aside.

"And her hair _was_ rather auburn," Mrs. Ketchum went on, in reluctant
concession.

"Call it pink, as the English do their hunting-coats," suggested he,
smiling.

"But such a dear, _good_ girl, you quite forgot that she wasn't exactly
handsome" ("No, not precisely," interjected he) "when you came to know
her."

"That I _never_ did. It might as a speculation have done to get a cast of
her face for andirons to keep the American child from falling into the
fire; but _marry her_! Good Lord! When I eat anything now that disagrees
with me, I dream of Emily's mouth," affirmed Mr. Ketchum, with the most
laughing mirth in his eyes, his mobile features expressing volumes.

"Her mouth _was_ large, and her teeth _a little_ prominent. But you shall
not abuse Emily any more. You would have been very happy with her, I can
tell you," asserted Mrs. Ketchum. "You would have got over her mouth."

"I might in time have got _around_ it, and I could easily have got _into_
it, but I should never have got _over_ it in the world," affirmed Mr.
Ketchum, with decision. "I would rather be married to that Puseyite there,
unhappy as I am."

This closed the little duel between the mother and son, and another laugh
drowned Mabel's remark to Miss Noel, which was, "Husband is in one of his
joking moods, and does not mean that he is _really_ unhappy at all. He
should not say such things, they are so very misleading."

When quiet was restored, a discussion followed about the parties in the
English Church, and, the question being raised as to who was the head of
the Low Church party, Mr. Ketchum had just said, "Why, _Lucifer_, of
course," when, amid general merriment, Miss Brown walked in, saying, "I
never heard of such an uproarious Sunday party. Are you ready, Ethel? We
ought to be off,"--which practically ended the meal, for first Mr. Ramsay
and then the others left the table, he to talk to Bijou, they to get ready
for church. Job's eyes followed Mr. Ramsay, and he said to Sir Robert,
"What a charming girl Mrs. De Witt was in the old Cheltenham days!
Heathcote didn't make the landing there, and I'm sorry."

"So am I. She is an immense favorite of mine," said Sir Robert. "As
charming as ever! It was a more serious thing than I thought it would be.
I doubt whether he ever marries."

"She was a born enchantress, Jenny was," he replied. "Some women are like
poison oak,--once get them in your system, and they will break out on you
every spring for fifty years, if you live that long, fresh and painful as
ever. But as for his marrying, some one of our girls will enter for the
Consolation stakes, very likely, and he will be married before he knows
what has hurt him."

"A consummation devoutly to be wished," said Sir Robert. "He is my heir,
you know."

In a few minutes Ethel joined Bijou, who looked at her rather hard, as she
felt. Ethel wore a simple serge dress, heavy boots, a stout frieze jacket,
and a hat of a shape unknown in America, that seemed to be all cocks'
plumes. Her eyes being weak, she had put on her smoked glasses. The day
being damp, and her chest delicate, she had added her respirator. "I am
nicely protected, am I not?" she said contentedly. "I had a severe cold
last winter, from which I am not quite recovered, and auntie thinks I had
best be prudent. Are you ready?"

"Not quite," said Bijou. "I want to see Mrs. Ketchum a moment." She ran
off, accordingly, into the library in search of the old lady, whom she
found there looking out the lessons, it being her practice to verify every
word the clergyman read, and no small satisfaction to catch him tripping.
"Do, Mrs. Ketchum, speak to Ethel and get her to take off those machines
and put on something stylish," said Bijou. "I am really ashamed to take
her into our pew; people will stare so. She is a perfect fright. The idea
of a girl making herself look like that!"

Mrs. Ketchum, however, declined to interfere, and when Bijou got back to
the drawing-room Ethel was missing. Taking advantage of Bijou's absence,
she had gone up-stairs, and, during the library interview, was saying to
her aunt, "You never saw anything got up as she is,--silk, and satin, and
lace, and bracelets, and feathers, and what not. And for church, too! I
wonder she should turn out like that: she should have better taste. I
really don't quite like going with her, she looks so conspicuous,--just as
if she were going to a garden-party or flower-show, for all the world."
When they met again, both girls looked a little conscious, and Ethel said,
"How very smart you are!"

"Why, this is an old dress that I put on for fear it might rain," said
Bijou. "Don't you hate having to wear goggles and cages and things? It
must be perfectly horrid."

"I don't mind. Of course one isn't looking one's best; but that is of no
consequence. Health is the first consideration," said Ethel. "Ah! there
comes your father."

Of the walk it need only be said that it was very pleasant going, and
rained a little coming back; that Ethel produced her "goloshes," put up
her umbrella, and walked home as serenely as her concern for Bijou would
admit. That young lady had on paper-soled boots that got soaking wet, a
fine summer parasol that she seemed to think fulfilled every office that
was desirable in shielding her bonnet, a dress ill fitted to resist chill
or dampness. She persisted that she was "all right," while her pretty
teeth chattered; but she caught a violent cold, and was in bed a week,
while Ethel came down to dinner as rosy as Baby Ketchum, and ate as
heartily as Mr. Ramsay and Mr. Heathcote, who certainly showed themselves
good trenchermen. Mrs. Ketchum persisted in regarding the two young men
very much as though they had been returned Arctic travellers, and amused
them not a little by suggesting that they should lie down all the evening.

"Why, we haven't turned a hair. We are as fit as a fiddle," they exclaimed,
and looked anything but unstrung.

Ethel had made one speech that astonished Bijou considerably. "Do you know,
I have been watching you ever since I have known you," she said, "to see
if it was true? That is, that the American ladies _spat_ on all occasions,
as I have read. Don't think me rude to mention it."

"We don't quarrel any more than any one else," said Bijou, quite
misunderstanding.

"I don't mean that, you know: _expectorate_. And I see it was not true at
all. I have not seen it once," explained Ethel.

"I should think not! Well, I do think! How could you believe such
ridiculous nonsense?" asked Bijou indignantly.

"Don't be vexed, Bijou dear. I did not mean to make unkind reflections. It
was only that I had read a stupid book about America," said Ethel; and
peace was restored.

As for the other members of the party, they had gone to a handsome church
in Kalsing, which boasted the best stained glass in the country and was
thoroughly churchly and attractive. Here they not only heard good music,
but one of the most eloquent preachers in "the American branch of the
English establishment," as Sir Robert called the Episcopalian communion.

It amused Mr. Ketchum not a little to see the way in which the baronet
conducted his devotions,--his preliminary prayer in his silk hat, from
which streamed a halo of side-whiskers, the heartiness with which he
joined in the service, especially the way in which, avoiding all the
compromises the male American practises in prayer-time (such as bending
forward a little, or leaning back pensively with the hand shading the
face), he plumped squarely down on his knees, turned up a pair of shoes
half as long as his very respectable, tightly-rolled umbrella, and made
his responses in a clear, audible voice, like an honest gentleman and a
miserable sinner.

It did not escape Mr. Ketchum's keen eyes, either, that although Sir
Robert contributed a five-dollar bill to the offertory, he first rolled it
up into a tiny, unrecognizable wad before dropping it into the alms-basin.
The service over, Sir Robert and the eminent divine were made acquainted.
The latter said he would call as soon as he could snatch a moment, and Sir
Robert, his hands folded behind his back, holding his hat and gloves, made
the rounds of the church, inspecting every bit of carving, frescoing,
glass, and brass, and making the most intelligent criticisms upon what he
saw to Miss Noel in a whisper. Mrs. Sykes sat still in the pew, fuming at
being "let in for a charity sermon," for some inexplicable reason, seeing
she had given nothing to the charity. Miss Noel was stopped at the door by
no less a person than Captain Kendall, who had suddenly discovered that he
had a great-aunt living in Kalsing, whom he must see, and now stood there
saying, "Where is Miss Ethel? How is it that you are here without her? I
hope she is quite well."

"My niece, Miss Heathcote, is quite well, thanks, and has gone to church
elsewhere," said Miss Noel, with dignity, intending to mildly repress a
young gentleman whom she thought a little too free with his "Miss Ethels."

"Then I will have the pleasure of calling upon you to-morrow," said
Captain Kendall, unabashed and joyous, as he walked away.

So active an intelligence as Sir Robert's requires plenty of food, and
when Mrs. Ketchum senior issued from her room about ten the next morning,
whom should she meet in the hall but the baronet in a state of the most
overflowing energy and brilliant good humor, dressed in a suit of striped
red-and-white "pajamas," having on his head a paper cap, under his arm a
roll of designs, and in his mind the delightful intention of painting the
ceiling of Mabel's boudoir!

"Good-morning, madam. Here we are," he said, shaking his box of paints and
stencils at her. "I have improvised a scaffolding, and am now going to
work on my outlines. I planned the whole thing in bed last night, and,
unless I am much mistaken, we are going to have the prettiest boudoir in
this part of the country. I shall do a panel or two to get the effect, and
any workman can finish it."

"But can you do it?" asked Mrs. Ketchum, amazed, but interested.

"You shall see. I frescoed the chapel on my place at home, and I may say
there have been worse pieces of work," replied Sir Robert, descending the
stairs as he spoke, eager to get to work.

"Is he _raving crazy_, Mabel? What on earth has he got on? He isn't
_respectable_. I declare to goodness, he has set my heart beating so I
shan't get over it all day," said the startled lady to her daughter-in-law,
who joined her just then.

"Oh, for shame, ma, to give yourself away like that! Fashionable men wear
those costumes altogether now," said Mr. Ketchum, coming up. "You see,
Daisy, that if I shocked him beyond expression yesterday morning, as you
said I should, he has horrified me to death to-day: so I guess we are
quits. Come along: let's go down to see the trapeze-performance."

Down they went, and, meeting Mr. Ramsay, who was coming up, Job stopped a
moment to tell him to take out any of the horses that he fancied. "Take
the piebalds," said he, "if you'd like to have a drive, and take some nice
girl--Miss Ethel or Bijou Brown--for a two-forty shine."

"Thanks awfully," said Mr. Ramsay. "But I think I had better--that is, I
had rather ask Heathcote."

"You are horribly welcome, but I don't think much of your taste," replied
Mr. Ketchum, not understanding what a proposition he had made.

In the lower hall they found the eminent divine, irreproachably clerical
and dignified, and Captain Kendall, just arrived. Sir Robert, hearing
voices, came out, brush in hand, to welcome them, producing quite as great
an impression on them as on Mrs. Ketchum. "I belong to the working-classes
now. Just you come here and see how the fine arts are prospering in the
State of Michigan," said he, and led them into the boudoir, where he
nimbly ran up a step-ladder, laid himself out on the scaffolding, and,
with a bold, free touch, went on sketching a procession of Cupids which
was to go around the base of the small dome, talking all the while with
the utmost animation to the guests below. "As soon as I get in this fellow
riding a dolphin, I shall be entirely at your service," said he. "No
considerations of respect and attachment to the Church or fear of the Army
can influence me just now."

The two gentlemen begged that he would go on; the ladies came in, and
together they passed an agreeable morning, Sir Robert declaring that on
the scaffold he was entitled to benefit of clergy, and begging the eminent
divine when he left to let him have his ghostly counsel every day for at
least a week. In spite of his eminence, this gentleman had no very great
breadth of view. To sit about on boxes and window-seats, picnicking in an
empty room, while the stranger upon whom he had come to call lay above him
in red pajamas, painting Cupids on the ceiling, was to his mind
monstrously indecorous. It was amusing to see the dignified way in which
he took the pleasantries of the party; and he made no response to Sir
Robert's farewell overture except a bow. "Your guest is a very
entertaining man," he said to Mr. Ketchum, who accompanied him to the
hat-rack, "but is he quite--quite--you understand?"

"Perfectly so," said Job, with a laugh. "Head and heart both of the best,
as you will find out when you know him better. You are coming back to
dinner, ain't you, to help us out with the fatted calf?"

The dinner was a very elegant affair of twenty-five covers, given to the
guests, the first of a series of entertainments planned in their honor.
All the notable people of the neighborhood were represented at it. The
scandalized divine returned to partake of it, and, seeing Sir Robert in a
dress-suit, dignified, polished, of preternatural respectability, not to
say distinction, looking the pillar of Church and State that he was, and
talking with due gravity of the tariff, free trade, and the like ponderous
subjects, concluded to overlook the mad behavior of the morning, and,
joining him, gave him a long account of the Indian Missions of the Church.
Unconscious of having done anything that might be regarded as eccentric,
Sir Robert was all affability, soon grew interested, asked a number of
questions as to the death-rate among the tribes, the prevalence of
smallpox and cholera among them, the spread of civilization, confirmed
nomadism, traces of Jewish rites, and so on, thanked him for a "very
profitable half-hour," and said he should send a little check to be
applied in any way he might see fit, obliterating thereby the last trace
of the previous prejudice. This, indeed, was replaced by something very
like enthusiasm when there came next day a slip of paper representing five
hundred dollars, also a note from the donor, saying that he should be glad
to know that some portion of the sum enclosed had gone to an industrial
school, if any such existed, where the young Indian women could learn to
boil a potato properly, and the use of brooms and pails and
scrubbing-brushes. "You must first clean them and then convert them: get
them into the bath-tub, and you can take them anywhere," said Sir Robert,
with great truth and perspicacity.

"One doesn't get such a dinner, except at a few great houses, outside of
London or Paris," Mrs. Sykes was pleased to say when it was over. "I have
found out that almost everything was ordered from New York; and a pretty
penny it must have cost. Not that this man cares. I dare say he is only
too glad to have the chance of entertaining me,--that is, us. I was sent
in with a waspish little man that turned suddenly crusty on my hands and
was an owl for the rest of the time; but I was rather glad to be able to
devote myself to my dinner for once."

Mrs. Sykes's escort had "turned crusty" because that lady, following her
instinct of ingratiation, had said to him, "All the gentry of this country
are in the South, aren't they? They don't live about here, do they?"--not
from a prejudice in favor of Southerners at all, as was proved when she
went to New Orleans later and promptly asked the first acquaintance she
made whether all the education was not at the North.

The week that followed was a very gay one, the Ketchums' friends in the
neighborhood and in Kalsing being most intent on hospitable thoughts and
providing something agreeable in the shape of an entertainment for every
night. Every moment of the day, too, of every day was filled up. It seemed
to Mrs. Ketchum that "those English people," as she called them, were
never idle, and had discovered the secret of perpetual motion.

Sir Robert had the boudoir, to which he devoted exactly two hours after
breakfast. He had a geological chart of America, with what he felt to be
melancholy blanks for the chalk and oolite beds of his own country, and
appropriate fossils indicated by an index-finger in red ink. He had the
Poor-Law and electoral systems to master, as well as the prison systems of
the different States. He had to prove that the Mound-Builders and the race
that built the buried cities of Central America were one and the same. He
had innumerable questions, political, social, agricultural, pressing upon
him, from the history of spiritualism, the purity of the ballot, and the
McCormack reaper, down to certain expressions that immensely struck and
pleased him, which had to be entered in the diary as "unconscious poetry
of the Westerners,"--such phrases as "the fall" (of the leaf),
"morning-glories," "dancing like a breeze," "Daphnes" (instead of laurels),
and many more, which he hoped would be "permanently engrafted on the
mother-tongue." There were other entries to be made,--"customs of the
Westerners," their "descent," "taxation," "climate" (as affected by the
Great Lakes), "population in 1900," and so on. There were books, books,
books, to be read, referred to, ordered. There was even a little taxidermy
to be done, and the "native birds" to be first sought, then bought, then
prepared, and packed to be sent back to England. The others, if not quite
so busy, were anything but idle. Miss Noel walked her five miles a day.
She was out sketching for hours under her umbrella, no matter what the
weather was, and only said, "Thank you for your kind concern, but I am
quite equal to it," when Mrs. Ketchum, astonished to see a woman of her
own age enduring such fatigue and running such risks, undertook to
remonstrate with her. "One must get one's constitutional, you know, and
one must not mind a drop or two. There has been no really bad weather yet,
--nothing to keep one in-doors, at least." If she stayed in-doors, she and
Mrs. Sykes (when the latter was not scouring the country on foot or
horse-back) interested themselves in their plants, minerals, seeds,
drawings, the herbarium, the Wardian case, the diaries and letters and
fancy-work, the beautiful collection of sea-weed sent by Miss Marlow from
New England, and a dozen things besides. Mr. Heathcote, meanwhile, was
walking, and riding, and visiting, and, above all, photographing. He got a
small covered cart, into which he would put his photographic apparatus and
go the rounds of the country-side alone, getting his luncheon as he could,
and coming back late in the evening, flushed with heat and victory,
bringing amusing accounts of his experiences, a bouquet as of an
apothecary-shop, and "proofs" of "a lane,--quite an English-looking lane,"
"a dog on the chain," "rear view of an American public" (house), "Saint
Lieuk's Church" (five different aspects), "what the natives call an
'ash-hopper,'--came out beautifully," "children among the hay-cocks,--very
indistinct," "squatter's hut on the edge of a common," "Western American
farm-house," "negro dust-man," "village beauty," and many others. He was
much complimented upon them all by Mr. Ketchum, who enjoyed the whole
collection and made comments and suggestions of the most delightful kind.
Mr. Heathcote looked infinitely pleased and flattered when told by him
that they had "a cold, professional air," and asked for copies of some of
them, after which he was eclipsed behind his black cloth and instrument
for two days, had his room darkened to a Cimmerian pitch, worked very
diligently, and presented the fruits of his labors to his host with the
modest depreciation but secret delight of the artist, smiling indulgently
at Mr. Ramsay, with his "I say, old chappy, what an out-and-out swell you
are at it, to be sure! You must do the horses." Thus encouraged, Mr.
Heathcote did the horses, the house, the family grouped inside and outside,
Master Jared Ponsonby, Hannibal Hamlin, Master Bobo and Miss Blanche, the
poultry, and (aided by mirrors) himself in almost every dress and attitude
which it is possible for a man to assume. He must have spent a small
fortune in chemicals alone, and all his talk was of light and shadow,
background, draperies, foreground, plates, and proofs; every table was
strewn with photographs, finished and not finished, mounted or curled up
like paper crumpets.

Mr. Ramsay, too, had his little diversions, not precisely scientific, but
amusing. He was in and out of the stables all day long, and was loved by
every animal on the place. Such long-suffering and good nature Master
Ketchum had never seen, except in Fräulein Schmidt; and then the strength,
the resources, the conversation of his new friend enchanted the child, who
followed him about, perched on his shoulder, played games with him, and
had to be carried away from him struggling by his nurse. Mr. Ramsay had
other occupations: he rode, he fished, he cleaned his guns, he got over
leagues and leagues of ground, he killed several snakes and captured
scores of insects. He caught dozens of tree-frogs, for one thing, and shut
them all up together in the drawing-room coal-scuttle, where he peeped at
them from time to time, well satisfied. He played little tunes on his chin,
asked conundrums, showed Job a great many tricks at cards, and two French
puzzles (saying, "Those French beggars are awfully sharp at that kind of
thing, you know"); he played "God Save the Queen" with one finger on the
piano, held skeins of wool for the ladies, shut doors, got shawls, and
really need have done none of these arduous duties, for in looking so
handsome and so jolly from Monday morning until Saturday night he
contributed his quota toward the carrying on of society, and all beside
were works of supererogation. When these palled upon him a little, as was
shown by his picking up a book, he looked very unhappy for ten minutes,
and then, making a pass at his face with one of has beautiful hands, he
cried out, "No fellow can read badgered like this. There's a regular brute
of a fly that has been lighting on my nose every half-second since I sat
down," closed the book, smiled, and said, "I may as well call upon Mr.
Brown while I have time," and took himself off. This happened on the ninth
day after his arrival, and with it began a new era in his existence. He
not only went to Mr. Brown's that day, but the next, and the day after
that. In short, he had found an amusement best expressed in the French
equivalent _distraction_. He rode with Bijou, and reported to Mr.
Heathcote that she was "a clinker at her fences, and went at them as
straight as an English girl." He taught her a good deal about the
management of her reins and animal, and admitted that she was "a plucky
one." If she had only consented to get an English saddle (which she
declined to do, with one of her customary exaggerations, saying that she
"didn't want a thousand pommels"), to rise in that saddle, and to have the
tail of her horse cropped properly, he would have been quite happy. As it
was, he acknowledged that in her own fashion she was a most graceful and
fearless horsewoman, and approved of her accordingly. It soon struck him
that she did other things well. Used to the reserved and rather
constrained manner of most English girls, he found a great charm in her
bright gayety, her frank cordiality, the good-humored comradeship and
absence of stiffness, untainted by vulgarity. For, although Bijou was not
high-bred, distinguished, or clever, she was a girl of real refinement,
and he had the wit to see it. Her merry tongue and generous and
affectionate heart, neither chilled nor hardened yet by contact with the
world, were very attractive, and it is just possible that he felt the
influence of her piquantly-pretty face. At any rate, he had found a great
number of imperative reasons for going to Brown's, when one morning, as he
was opening the little wicket-gate that admitted him to their
croquet-field, he saw something that gave him an unpleasant shock. It was
a buggy in front of the door, in which sat Bijou, charmingly arrayed,
smiling upon a gentleman who had just helped her in and was only deterred
from taking the seat waiting for him by her calling out, "Stop, till I fix
my skirts and put up my parasol," the gentleman being his cousin, Mr.
Edward Plummer, _alias_ Drummond. The sight of Mr. Plummer enraged him.
Bijou's cheerful air did not improve matters, and for the first time he
felt irritated at her American speech and accent. "'Fix my skirts,'" he
quoted discontentedly, as he watched them drive off, and then, after a
moment's indecision, he stalked angrily up to the front door, pulled the
bell fiercely, and asked to see Mr. Brown. He was almost immediately
ushered into the library, where Mr. Brown was sitting.

"Good-morning, sir. I am glad to see you. I am sorry to say that Bijou is
out. She has gone driving with our guest: an English guest, by the way,
--Mr. Drummond. He came on with us from New York, and has been here ever
since, except the last two weeks, which he has spent in Chicago," said Mr.
Brown.

"That's what I've come about," blurted out Mr. Ramsay, the moment there
was a pause. "His name isn't Drummond at all: it is Plummer. And he isn't
fit to be a guest in any decent house, and I've come to tell you so and
have you give him the sack and put him to the door at once. Excuse me
meddling, but you have been very kind to me and received me most
hospitably, and I am not going to see you taken in by a rascal and a
blackguard."

Mr. Brown was shocked, but did not show it. He prided himself on being
very logical and dispassionate and judicial, and was privately convinced
that he would have greatly adorned the legal profession if Fate had been
kinder. Besides, Mr. Drummond was his guest and there by his invitation,
which to his mind was strong presumptive proof that Mr. Ramsay's charges
were without foundation. "Grave accusations these, Mr. Ramsay,--very grave
accusations. I trust you are making them upon some better grounds than
mere personal prejudice or idle rumor, if you expect me to believe them.
Not that I mean any discourtesy to you, sir, in saying this," he said, in
his roundest, most impressive tones.

"What do you mean? The fellow was sent to Coventry by his regiment and
forced to resign, his father has cut him off with a shillin', he can't
show his face in London, and he has been kicked out of his club for
keepin' too many aces up his sleeve. I should think that was grounds
enough for an accusation. Do you suppose I go about inventin' lies to take
away other people's characters?" said Mr. Ramsay excitedly.

"Do not exaggerate. Be calm; be reasonable," said Mr. Brown. "Observe, I
do not accuse you of wilful misrepresentation, but of misapprehension,
perhaps of prejudice. There is a difference. Note it, and do not take
offence, my young friend, too readily."

"I am not offended, but what I say is true, and I hope you will act upon
it, so that Miss Brown shall not go out ridin' round the country with
that--" began Mr. Ramsay, only to be interrupted by--

"No violence; no excitement. Let us look at the thing rationally," from
Mr. Brown. "Mr. Drummond is my guest,--my guest, remember; introduced to
me by one of the first men in New York; received everywhere. You are both
strangers to me. This is a matter of purely individual testimony," Mr.
Brown went on, feeling that he was growing exquisitely subtile, and
clothing himself in imaginary ermine as he spoke. "He may tell me that
_you_ are a rascal. In that event, how am I to know who is the honest man
and who the villain? Shall I believe you, or shall I believe him, in the
absence of documentary evidence and disinterested statement? As my guest,
he has, if anything, the prior claim to consideration; though I am far
from saying that whatever views you may advance will not have equal weight
with me,--as _views_, mark you."

"You can believe who you please and what you please," said Mr. Ramsay;
"but remember that I have given you warnin'. He may be your guest, but he
is my cousin, and I should think that I ought to know what I am talkin'
about. There is no necessity for me stayin' any longer."

He rose to go, but Mr. Brown stopped him by a gesture. "A cousin!" he
exclaimed. "Do not excite yourself; be calm. On the face of it, that would
seem conclusive; but appearances are notoriously deceitful. Will you
assure me on your honor that there is no motive, no family feud, at the
bottom of this? Cousins do not go about the world denouncing each
other--_as a rule_. Family pride, affection, a thousand things, prevent
them from making such things public; but still it is not impossible. I do
not say that it is _impossible_; only _improbable_,--very improbable. Give
me your word, though, that there is _no motive_.--we must always look for
a motive in these cases,--and I will promise to give the matter full and
impartial investigation."

"I'll do nothing of the sort. I will bid you good-morning," exclaimed
Mr. Ramsay, reaching out impetuously for his hat.

"You have meant well, perhaps. I am obliged to you, if such be the case. I
will bear what you have said in mind, and let you know my decision," said
Mr. Brown, delivering a verdict from the bench.

"Just as you please," replied Mr. Ramsay haughtily; and so they parted.

Left to himself, however, Mr. Brown ceased to be judicial, and became
practical. He recalled, as he sat there, a number of circumstances that
had not impressed him favorably in connection with his guest. Mr. Drummond
had borrowed a considerable sum of him, on the ground of delayed
remittances. Mr. Drummond had filled his pockets with his host's Havanas
in the most scandalous fashion, yet never had a cigar. Mr. Drummond had
done a number of ill-bred things that he had not liked,--such as ordering
the carriage to be got ready on his own responsibility, lending valuable
books without so much as asking permission, and the like. The longer Mr.
Brown thought of the late interview, the more uneasy he felt. The paper
had dropped from his hand, and he was still deep in his uncomfortable
meditations, when the door opened, and his daughter ran to him and threw
herself into his arms, crying hysterically, "Oh, popper, popper! Oh! oh!
oh!"

We will extricate the story of what had happened from the sobs and
interruptions to which Mr. Brown had to submit, and preface it with some
account of the relations between Bijou and Mr. Drummond-Plummer or
Plummer-Drummond.

They had met in New York the previous winter, where Mr. Drummond had
suddenly appeared, put up at a fashionable hotel, and, with no other
credentials than his handsome person, good manners, and bold assertions
that he was related to certain great people in England, had been accepted
in society with that beautiful faith and charity that believeth all things
an Englishman of supposed position may choose to say of himself, in spite
of much disastrous experience of foreign adventurers both painful and
ludicrous. Attracted by Bijou, he promptly satisfied himself of the
stability and reality of her father's fortune, and began to lay siege to
her hand: about her heart he gave himself small concern. Now, Bijou was a
Western belle, and was in the habit of receiving any amount of attention.
At seventeen a famous racer and a steam-boat had already been named for
her. The local newspapers chronicled her toilets and triumphs. Her little
sitting-room was a sentimental hall of Eblis, full of shapes with hearts
that were one burning coal, bright with the sacred flame. She had a large
album which she called her "him-book," because it contained nothing but
the photographs of her admirers. She had hats, and bats, and caps, and
whips, and cravats, and oars, and canes disposed about it tastefully,
souvenirs of various persons, times, and places, and talked of the
original owners in a way that made Ethel's blue eyes open their widest
when she came to be admitted there, that decorous young person not being
used, as she frankly said, to hearing "a person of the opposite sex"
called "a perfectly lovely fellow," and his nose pronounced "a dream,"
though not in the sense of its being broken or disjointed.

"Why, you wouldn't have me call _you_ a lovely fellow, would you?" said
Bijou laughingly, as she tripped about doing the honors of her den,
--showing locks of hair (of which she had almost enough to stuff a
sofa-cushion), dried bouquets of vast dimensions, little gifts she had
received, verses and valentines that she thought "perfectly splendid" or
"too utterly killing for anything," and bundle after bundle of letters,
--the adorers' letters, all of them, written from all parts of the country,
in every style. She read Ethel choice passages from them with great glee,
and gave spirited sketches of her correspondents; how she had met them at
Saratoga, Mt. Desert, "and pretty much every place;" how she had danced,
flirted, walked, driven, sailed, "crabbed," read, sung, talked with them,
apparently without either fear or reproach; and of their appearance, dress,
character, position, prospects,--a full, if not perfectly complete,
history of her relations with them that almost made Ethel's lower jaw drop
as she listened. There was no mention of mother, aunt, governess, or maid
throughout. Bijou had gone away from home with friends who had let her
amuse herself in her own fashion; and at home she was what De Tocqueville
has pronounced "the freest thing in the world,--an American girl in her
father's house." Yet it was a liberty that was worlds removed from
license. Undisciplined she was, impulsive, indulged beyond all European
conceptions, but, in spite of a good deal of innocent coquetry and vanity,
effervescing in some foolish ways very pardonable in a motherless girl,
and of which a great deal too much has been made in discussing American
girls, there was never one of any nation more pure-hearted and womanly.
Her worst deviations from rigidly conventional standards were better than
the best behavior of some very nice people, as Swift defines them,--"Nice
people: people who are always thinking of and looking out for nasty
things." Different training would have improved her, just as a hot-house
rose is more perfect than the wild one; but she, too, was pink-petalled,
had a heart of gold, and was full of lovely, fragrant qualities, like the
English variety near her.

"You correspond with twelve men! Good heavens!" exclaimed Ethel, when
these open secrets had been revealed to her. "Don't tell auntie of it, I
beg. She will--will misunderstand, I fear, and think it dreadful, and
perhaps prevent me being here so much. It is not at all in accord with
English ideas, you know, dear; and auntie is rather stricter than most,
even there."

"Not tell! Why not?" asked Bijou. "What is there to shock her? She must be
easily shocked. I have got nothing to be ashamed of; and I shall tell the
old dear to-morrow."

"Does your father know it?" said Ethel.

"Why, _of course_ he does," replied Bijou impatiently. "I generally read
him the letters, and he laughs fit to kill himself over some of them.
Popper don't care one bit. He says I am old enough to paddle my own canoe;
and so I am. And he knows I don't care a pin about any of them. It's great
fun until you get tired of it. I am tired of it now, rather. I used to
write to twenty; but it has dwindled down to twelve, and I'm going to drop
two of those, because they are in the army and are both stationed at the
same post. You see, it is too much trouble to write different letters to
each one, so I get up one bright, smart one that suits all around, and
copy it for them all, with some changes."

This speech almost stunned Ethel for a while. "But doesn't it vex them
very much to get such letters? What if they should find it out? And if you
don't at all care for them, why do it at all?"

"Why, for the _fun_ of the thing, goosie. Angry? No. They do the same
thing themselves. Will Piper sent Kate Price and me letters that were
exactly the same, word for word: we compared them. That is where I got the
idea. Splendid one, isn't it? I am just bent and determined on having
stacks of fun before I am married, because after that, you know, I shall
be laid on the shelf completely," said Bijou.

"But why should you be 'laid on the shelf'? I can't make it out. Your life
will be just beginning," said Ethel.

"Well, because what is so is _so_," replied Bijou, showing her some
patterns for slippers, watch-pockets, tobacco-pouches, and so on, that she
meant to work up for birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, "philopoenas,"
and other festive occasions, as presents for the adorers.

It is perhaps clearer now why Bijou laid no stress whatever on Mr.
Drummond's attentions, while she seemed to him to be receiving them with
marked favor. When, on their leaving New York, Mr. Brown had asked him to
go home with them and spend a month, he looked upon the prize as won.
Before going to Chicago he had shown this so plainly that Bijou had
snubbed him roundly,--a course so foreign to her amiable nature and
hospitable creed that on his return she had received him with a kindness
that had revived all his hopes,--or rather designs. He utterly
misunderstood it, and easily persuaded himself that he was practically
irresistible. The drive of that afternoon had been planned by him that he
might ask the fateful question. He had asked it, and, presumptuously
taking her answer for granted, had slipped an arm about her waist, when,
to his great surprise, he had found himself half ordered, half pushed out
of the buggy immediately, after which Bijou, transported by fury, had laid
the whip once smartly across his shoulders and driven away at a gallop,
leaving him standing in the middle of the road, an angry man.

She went home, as we have seen, and told her father, who was distinctly
excited on hearing it, ordered Mr. Drummond's effects to be packed and
sent to the hotel in Kalsing at once, forbade her ever taking another
drive with a stranger "the longest day she lived," and would certainly
have caned the offender with unparliamentary fervor, instead of being
"reasonable" and letting the affair drop, had he known where to find him.

What Mr. Drummond did was to walk into Kalsing and put up at a
boarding-house there, where he spent the evening glowering into vacancy
blackly enough, and showed his high breeding and respect for the other
boarders by taking off his shoes in the parlor and sitting with his
stockinged feet propped up on a chair in front of him while he gave
himself up to his reflections,--bitter thoughts of the past in which he
had been an English gentleman, desperate plans for his future as a
_chevalier d'industrie,_ fierce abuse of Americans in general and the
Browns in particular, culminating in a fixed resolve to leave "this
beastly hole" next day; which was happily carried out.

Mr. Ramsay, offended, held aloof for a little while; but, getting a note
from Mr. Brown couched in few words, and those to the effect that his
warning had been acted on and Mr. Drummond dismissed, he called next day
at the house, assured Mr. Brown with earnestness that his cousin was "a
precious rascal," gave some particulars of his shady career, and took up
the threads of his intimacy again, unvexed by any such ideas as that he
was at all responsible for or could be affected by his kinsman's
disreputable behavior. Mr. Brown concealed from him that he had lost some
money by Mr. Drummond. Bijou imagined that he must be "feeling dreadfully
about it," and took great pains not to say anything that could wound his
imaginary susceptibilities as the relative of a _mauvais sujet._ But the
simple truth was that, once assured that respectable people were not being
deluded or cheated by his cousin, Mr. Ramsay had no further sensitiveness
on the subject. The Browns kept what he had told them even from the
Ketchums, only to hear him announce in all assemblies that a cousin of his
was "goin' about over here,--an awful swindler and 'leg,'--and that the
best thing people could do would be to give him the widest sort of berth
until he got himself into the penitentiary, as he certainly would,--at
least it was quite on the cards," smiling in cheerful enjoyment of the
possibility. Entertainments were going on all the while in the
neighborhood, and he had ample opportunities of advertising the fact, all
of which he improved, while a puzzled audience knew not what to make of so
novel a situation, and were sorely put to it for suitable replies as they
stared at an Adonis in Poole-cut clothes who sat and looked alternately at
them and his patent-leather court pumps and gay silk socks while he
affably denounced his father's nephew and "hoped the blackguard was goin'
to New Orleans and would get the yellow fever there, which was beginnin'
to be had over from the Havana."

This last speech was made at a dinner-party which Mr. Ketchum's partner
Mr. Richardson had felt called upon to give in honor of the English guests,
and was almost the only amusing feature of the evening to Job. The
Richardsons' house was one of those in which everything is provided on
such occasions except amusement. When their invitation came, Job said to
his wife, "I wish we could get out of going; but we can't. I don't know
what is the matter with that house. It is one of the handsomest in the
city, elegantly furnished; they always have a crowd of people at their
entertainments, some of them delightful people to meet anywhere else, but
somehow there seems a kind of pall draped above the front door that drops
down behind you when you enter and never lifts till you leave. Mrs.
Richardson puts on all her war-paint and feathers and goes around all the
evening anxiously trying to make the thing go off, and it gets worse and
worse every moment, so dull and stupid that you can hardly keep awake, and
not quite quiet enough for a good nap. Richardson buys everything that is
to be had, and then sits around and looks as though he had a note to meet
in bank and no money to do it with. Altogether, it is about as lively as a
water-tank on the Pacific Railroad after the train has gone. But it won't
do to hurt their feelings: we have got to go."

So they did, and it was stiff and formal beyond even his expectation. The
dinner was interminably long, over-elaborate, and slowly served. They
were all sent in with the wrong people. The conversation all but died
again and again. Sir Robert was afflicted by a deaf man, who shrieked,
"Ha-ow?" and "What say?" at him with brief intervals all during the meal.
Mabel shrank into herself, and only ventured on a few trite remarks. Mr.
Ketchum's liveliness utterly evaporated after the first ten minutes. It
was quite ghastly, and the move back to the drawing-room was a most
blessed relief. Mrs. Sykes had made no effort to lighten the tedium of the
dinner, and no sooner found it at an end than she lolled back
indifferently on the sofa, and, picking up a book, coolly read it for more
than an hour, though twice interrupted by Mrs. Richardson, who vainly
tried to substitute polite conversation the first time, and offered a cup
of tea the second.

"English breakfast?" asked Mrs. Sykes loftily, raising her eyes for a
moment. "No; I am afraid not. It is green tea, I think."

"But do take some," replied Mrs. Richardson, "It is very nice indeed."

"No, thank you," said Mrs. Sykes very shortly, her eyes on her book.

"Just one cup. Let me make it for you?" suggested Mrs. Richardson.

"Not for a five-pound note would I drink the poisonous stuff. Say no more
about it," replied Mrs. Sykes, with delicate consideration, and turned
over a page.

"Do take some coffee, then, or chocolate," insisted Mrs. Richardson.

"Nothing of any sort or kind whatever," snapped Mrs. Sykes, turning away
decidedly, to get a better light on her book, apparently, but really to
get rid of her hostess.

Mr. Ketchum, fearing to show indecent exultation when the carriages were
announced, repressed the satisfaction that would have expressed itself in
gay speeches of farewell. A decorous exit was made; and as they rolled
away he gave a great sigh of relief, and exclaimed, "I haven't had as much
fun since I had the measles. Mussiful Powers! what an evening! I feel like
the boy whose mother gave him a good beating for his own sake. But all the
same I shall have a word to say to Mrs. Sykes tomorrow; and of course I
shall have to apologize for her behavior to Richardson."

"Most insolent, unpardonable conduct, I call it," said Sir Robert. "She's
an innately vulgar woman."

"Puts on an awful lot of side. I can't stand her. She gives me the jumps.
And she can tell a buster, too, when she likes: I have found that out,"
put in Mr. Ramsay.

"Well, I don't exactly hanker to be cast away on a desert island with her,
even supposing I was one of the royal dukes and had taken the precaution
of being introduced while we were tying on the life preservers, in case of
accidents," said Mr. Ketchum.

What he said to Mrs. Sykes next morning no one ever knew but the discreet
Mabel. Not much, probably, but that little was so much to the point that
it had a decided effect,--two of them, indeed, one interior, the other
external. It increased her respect for him, and it made her perfectly
civil to all his friends, as far as constitution and habit would allow.

"I cut her comb for her, and handled her without gloves," was his report
of the interview to his wife, who was amazed at his nerve.

When Sir Robert got a note addressed to "Lord Heathcote, Baronet,"
beginning "Dear Sir," and signed "Very respectfully your obedient servant,
" and read it aloud at the breakfast-table as "a most extraordinary
production," Mrs. Sykes had absolutely no comments to make. And when Ethel
opened her letters and found among them an invitation to take a
buggy-drive, commencing "Dear Miss," Mrs. Sykes still held her peace,--a
fact that was full of significance.

It was Miss Noel who said, "Really, Ettie dear, I can't have you driving
about furiously in a gig without a groom. But pray thank Mr.--what is the
name?--Price for being so kind as to propose it, meaning to give you
pleasure. He has been so obliging, too, as to procure tickets for us to
the play, and has kindly offered to escort us: I have a letter from him as
well. A most lovely day, this. There seems no end, really, to the fine
weather. Remind me to look at the thermometer after breakfast, before the
sun catches it, love. It must have been _quite_ two degrees hotter
yesterday than the day before; but I neglected to make the entry in my
journal, and so cannot be quite positive. Only fancy! Is it not annoying?
I am getting sadly forgetful about everything. And I so dislike guess-work
and conjecture in a record of the kind. I should like to see the
rose-trees at home this morning: the garden must be gay with flowers by
this,--though the last time I went pottering about it in my pattens there
was nothing out but the blackthorn."

Other entertainments followed closely upon the dinner, of which Mrs. Sykes
complained to Miss Noel, saying, "Why will they ask me out? Why can't they
leave me alone? Really, I shall not let any one know that I am here, if
anything ever brings me back to America,--which is most unlikely."

"There is nothing to prevent you staying at home if you do not wish to go
out," replied Miss Noel. "But do you not like it? I enjoy going to the
Browns'. Mr. Brown is a man of cultivated mind and Christian courtesy; I
like him very much; and the people one meets there are generally of
superior station and refined education. Why should you object to meeting
them?"

"American society may be nice some day,--that is, if it ever grows up.
There doesn't seem to be anybody in it now over twenty," grumbled Mrs.
Sykes.

One result of the parties was that Mr. Ketchum, going over to Mr. Brown's
one morning, found all the young people assembled there practising steps,
the "two-and-a-half," the "polka-glide," and other cheerful evolutions.
After watching Mr. Ramsay's efforts to do as Bijou did, for a moment, he
called out to her to know what she was doing to a British subject under
his protection, and, being shown by Bijou (skirts held up a little, the
prettiest feet imaginable, daintily shod, and the gliding, swaying,
pirouetting, galopading, graceful beyond expression), cried out, "Teaching
him to dance, are you? I thought he was practising heading off a calf in a
lane." This so exactly expressed the awkward desperate plunges to the
right and left which Mr. Ramsay was executing at the moment, that Mr.
Heathcote had another of his acute attacks of appreciation, and became
almost a subject for sal volatile and burnt feathers, Mr. Ramsay saying
good-naturedly, "What a fellow you are for chaffin', Ketchum! Just you
hook it out of this, will you, and let us get on with this? One and two
and a kick, you say, Miss Brown? I am such a duffer I can't get the kick."

"You do the one and two make one, and leave the kick to Miss Bijou," said
Mr. Ketchum suggestively. "Why aren't you gambolling like the playful
antelope, Heathcote?"

"I don't often gamble. I leave that to Ramsay, who is an all-fired
jewhillikens scratch at it, as you say over here," replied Mr.
Heathcote.

"You gamble a little differently, that is all. You have dropped a good
deal on loo first and last, for all your wisdom," retorted Mr. Ramsay
between his steps.

"Get out your 'Hand-Book of American Slang,' my boy,--two dollars a volume,
--and you will retrieve all your losses, I'll engage," said Mr. Ketchum
laughingly, as he walked away.

The dancing had been interrupted, however, and Bijou and Mr. Ramsay
retired to the bow-window to talk. "Odd that I can't get it, isn't it?"
said he. "I never was much of a dancin' man; and I ought to be, you know.
I am not a readin' man; and a man that is not a readin' man is nearly
always a dancin' man. The governor is a readin' man, and took a
double-first; but I am like my poor mother, who was dull." Thus launched,
he gave her a full account of his relatives and home with all his own
frankness, and she, listening with her heart as well as her ears, did not
know whether to smile or sigh: the phraseology of the recital and its
completeness amused her, but she also divined the loneliness of such a
boyhood. To her great embarrassment, the tears rose in her eyes in quick
sympathy when she came to hear of the way he was treated in his childish
maladies.

"Poor little fellow!" she said softly, and, as she was obliged to drop the
white, thickly-fringed lids and fall to pleating her handkerchief
industriously, she felt rather than saw that he was looking at her
narrowly.

There was a moment's silence, and then Mr. Ramsay began talking again.
"You are very happy here, aren't you? You wouldn't like to leave it and go
away to India, or Egypt, or--or--England, or anywhere?" said this
particularly deep young man, and, without waiting for any answer, except
such as was afforded by her rosy silence, went on: "American girls do have
lots of fun, I see that. I am afraid they are too fond of flirting,
though. English girls don't get much of a chance at that, as girls. They
don't amount to much until they are married and get their own way."

"Why, they don't flirt after they are _married_, do they?" said Bijou, in
a horrified tone, her ideal of post-matrimonial conduct being the exact
opposite of the ante-matrimonial.

"Oh, don't they, just!" said Mr. Ramsay cheerfully. "You see, as girls
they are heavily handicapped. They can't do anything they like, or go
anywhere; it's awfully slow for them, poor things. And so they naturally
look forward to the time when they will get their liberty as well as a
husband. But the competition must be something awful. A fellow that has
got a fine property or money is regularly hunted down; and even a poor
devil like me has to be monstrous careful. Cowrie, of the Carbineers, who
has got sixty thousand a year, says that he can't go to certain houses,
for fear they may have a clergyman secreted about the place and will get
him spliced to the ugliest daughter before he can escape. Awfully clever
chap, Cowrie,--a match for any mamma in England, I can tell you. He is not
going to marry any woman but the one he wishes to marry. No more am I.
That's why I can't marry. I've got no money. The governor picked out a
young woman from Liverpool for me last year,--a brewer's daughter, with
pots of it,--and wanted me to make up to her."

"Oh, he did! What did you do about it?" asked Bijou, in a low voice.

"Well, you see, just then I was most awfully hard up, and couldn't afford
to break with the governor; and so--"

"I'd be ashamed to say any more about it. Addressing a girl just for her
money!" interjected Bijou warmly, disappointed that he had not scorned the
proposition utterly.

"It didn't go that far. I thought it might be a good thing, you know. And
so I tried it,--spooning, you know," said he placidly.

"Oh, indeed!" commented Bijou sarcastically. "Very honorable of you, I am
sure, and delightful for the girl to have such a disinterested admirer.
How did it end?"

"How you do pick,a fellow up!" remonstrated Mr. Ramsay amiably. "It sounds
awfully conceited to say so, of course, but I think I could have carried
off the cup if I had liked. At least every one said she was hard hit. And
she wasn't long in the tooth, or very ugly, or vulgar, or anything; but
somehow I couldn't stand it. I got to hate her. She breathed so hard when
she danced, for one thing. Regular grampus. Upon my word, she almost blew
my gibus away from under my arm sometimes. Regular snorts. And then she
was always smilin'. And she talked an awful lot about Goethe and Schiller,
and those chaps. Altogether, I cried off, and told the governor I would
try the Colonies. And he told me that if I was such a consummate ass as to
let a good thing like that slip, I could take my little pittance and go to
the deuce as soon as ever I liked; and here I am. Some may think I acted
foolishly, but one's relatives are not always the best judges of what is
good for one, you know, though they may think they are actin' for one's
good; and what one wants to do is to do one's best in whatever position
one finds one's self in, you know, no matter what one--Hang it all! I know
what I want to say, but I can't say it. You understand, I fancy, without
me tryin' to explain."

Having tied himself up in this conversational bow-knot, Mr. Ramsay waited
to be extricated. His idea had been to convey in the most delicate and
roundabout way to Bijou that he was not the man to marry any woman for her
money, and that if he had seemed to like a certain person a good deal it
was not because she was the daughter of a rich man. To her, however, he
seemed to be posing as a conqueror of heiresses, indifferent to the pain
he might inflict upon any girl silly enough to be captivated by his good
looks and good manners,--a breaker of tacit engagements, and a wicked
worldling. So she rose very stiffly, and said that she neither knew nor
cared to know what he meant, and was obliged to leave him, and so went
away, and left him extremely puzzled and disconcerted by the behavior of
his charmer.

After this, the summer of Mr. Ramsay's discontent set in. There was
nothing that he could actually complain of in Bijou's treatment of him,
but it was plain that she had changed. She was vastly more polite than
before, but much less kind. Their intimacy seemed a thing of the past
century. It was Mr. Heathcote now who, partly from idleness, partly from a
desire to tease his friend, went constantly to the Browns', and showed
Bijou various attentions, which she accepted with very pronounced
satisfaction. It was with Miss Price now that Mr. Ramsay rode and walked
and talked,--Miss Price, whose free-and-easiness, vapid chatter,
artificiality, and sentimentalism contrasted unpleasantly with Bijou's
frankness and sincerity. By this course each confirmed the other in the
impression of untrustworthiness and flirtatiousness both had received, and
they ought to have been perfectly satisfied with this result. But,
considering how perfectly happy she was in Mr. Heathcote's society, it was
odd that Bijou grew paler and thinner every day. And if Miss Price was so
perfectly delightful, why did she send Mr. Ramsay home always as gloomy
and morose as any young man very well could be? With blundering honesty,
Mr. Ramsay once taxed Bijou with a preference for Mr. Heathcote, not
knowing that when a jealous lover accuses a girl of being fond of some
other man she never fails to encourage the idea, unless it is really true,
when she denies it with the utmost vehemence. Bijou, with much feminine
circumlocution, insinuated that he was devotedly attached to Miss Price,
to which he truthfully replied that he did not care "one rap" about her.
Women are born incredulous in such affairs. When sure of themselves, they
doubt the lover; when sure of the lover, they invariably doubt themselves.
And so the misunderstanding grew, and continued in mutual mistake and
suspicion, and no two people were ever more thoroughly and foolishly
miserable. Mr. Ketchum, when enlightened by his wife, could see that his
guest was in a bad way; and one day it chanced that they were left alone
in the library, where Job was most unromantically engaged in looking up
plans for a model pig-stye, while he incidentally refreshed himself with
his favorite confection, molasses candy.

"Man alive!" said he, after directing a keen glance at Mr. Ramsay's face,
"what is the matter? Take some of the Dentist's Friend, won't you?"
(pushing a plate toward him.) "I like it better than all the French stuff
that was ever made, and Mabel keeps me liberally supplied. You look
awfully down in the mouth, Ramsay, as though you'd enjoy howling like the
lone wolf on far Alaska's shore, if you were sure nobody was looking.
Suppose you tell me what has impaled you. Is it love, money, or
indigestion, old fellow?"

The words were light, but the tone hearty and kind; and, thus encouraged,
Mr. Ramsay laid bare his woes, Mr. Ketchum listening attentively, and
saying, when he had finished, "I know; I know. When I thought I had lost
Mabel once, I carried the universe around on a sore back all day, and then
my heart would get up on its hind legs and yelp half the night; and there
have been other times when I got caught in the machinery, and I know how
it hurts, I think of those times often. They grind a man down to the quick,
and send the chaff flying: they teach him valuable lessons. I remember I
started out in life with two violent prejudices,--one against Jews, and
the other against Roman Catholics. Well, in the greatest strait I have
ever known, the Christian that came to my relief was a Jew in a town of
seven thousand people; and when I had the smallpox a Sister of Charity
took me to the hospital and nursed me, when every one had deserted me and
left me to die or live without any meddling from them to bias me in my
decision. After that I said to myself, 'Job Ketchum, if the Lord can make
and stand as great a fool as you have been, he can make plenty of good
Jews and Roman Catholics, and if they have got his hall-mark they can do
without your valuable endorsement; and when smelting-day comes I reckon
you'll find that the Protestant quartz won't pan out _all_ the silver that
has been put in the earth's veins. You needn't go around blushing for
David and Thomas ?Kempis any longer, my son. Take a holiday.' My advice to
you, Ramsay, is to keep a stiff upper lip. Perhaps the buzz-saw has only
got your clothes, and you will be all right when you cut loose; but if it
has got _you_, all you can do is to stand and take it, and if you can
remember who set it going it will be better for you."

The last phrase Mr. Ketchum got out in a shamefaced way, as if very much
ashamed of it, as indeed he was; but Mr. Ramsay was the better for the
talk, and, though not "a readin' man," had easily understood the
illuminated characters in this page of human experience. He brightened
perceptibly from this date, and was able to take a healthy interest in
certain match-games of base-ball and la-crosse in neighboring cities,
which he attended with Mr. Ketchum and Sir Robert, who, besides these
diversions, had to visit the prisons and all the public schools, and to
gather a mass of information in regard to these two subjects, with
criminal and educational statistics, systems, theories, that had to be
examined, sifted, recorded in the diary with the pains, study, and
reverence for facts that characterized every entry made in it. Meanwhile,
quite an intimacy had sprung up between the ladies of the Ketchum and
Brown households, or rather the existing one soon embraced the
Englishwomen. Mrs. Sykes and Miss Noel were struck by a number of things
in the latter establishment.

"Do you suppose that _all_ American households are organized in this
extraordinary, miscellaneous way, so as to include, besides the head of
the house, his wife and children, all sorts of relatives, outsiders, and
strangers?" said Mrs. Sykes to Miss Noel. "Mrs. De Witt told me, quite as
a matter of course, that the sister of her husband's first wife lived with
them, though she was away when we were there. And look at the Ketchums and
the Browns. It is most remarkable. Why do they do it, I wonder? I must
really ask about it, how it ever came about. And on such an extraordinary
basis, too! Only fancy, that poor, thread-paper creature, Mr. Brown's
daughter, has married badly and come back to her father with a troop of
children; and she married in opposition to his wishes, and she hasn't a
farthing of her own; and yet she seems to have no proper sense of her
position whatever. She does nothing to make herself useful and get her
living, but sits up in her bedroom, rocking and sewing, all the day long.
She bids her father buy this and that for the children, just as though
they were not actually beggars, dependent upon him for shelter and every
mouthful. She meddles in household matters to any extent, giving the
servants orders, having fires made, and even the dinner-hour changed to
suit her convenience; and one would think she was mistress there. I wonder
she dares do it. Yet, so far from being sat upon or put in her place, I
heard Mr. Brown tell Bijou the other day, when some little disagreement
took place between them, that she must let her "poor sister" have
everything to suit herself, and do her best to make her happy and
contented and help her to forget all the trouble she had known, as far as
possible. Just as if spoiling her like that, and giving her false ideas of
her importance, could be a good plan. Not that it will last. She is a
pauper, and will be made to see that she is one, sooner or later. She has
nothing but what he gives her, I know, for I have asked her; but she would
not tell me why she separated from her husband. Americans are so absurdly
secretive and sensitive! Do you know, she was vexed by the inquiry? A
great mistake, as I told her, to get rid of him, unless he was a dangerous
brute: men are so useful, and 'grass-widows,' as they say here, are always
looked down upon. Did you ever know anything so idle as those Brown women?
The men here are very active and 'go-ahead,' as they call it, but the
women seem to do one of two things,--either they hold their hands
altogether and are a thousand times more idle than any queen or duchess,
or they work themselves to death, and are cooks, sempstresses, maids,
housemaids, nurses, governesses, ladies, and a dozen other things rolled
into one,--poor things! Thank heaven I am not an American lady."

"I see what you mean," said Miss Noel. "That dear, sweet girl Bijou has
had no practical training whatever. She was amazed that I should make
Ethel dye her white kid slippers (when they were soiled) for morning use;
and when she saw me getting up some dainty bits of old point that I do not
trust to Parsons, she asked me why I bothered with the old stuff and
didn't buy new. She has absolutely no idea of the value of money or of
household management. On the other hand, that little Mrs. Grey, their
friend, told me that she did all the sewing for her twelve children; and
Mrs. Grey has not taken a holiday of even a few weeks for twenty years. I
can't think how it is they don't break down altogether."

But it was the children of the Brown household that awakened the liveliest
surprise in the minds of these ladies,--an astonishment wholly free from
admiration or approval, for they were children of a type with which
Americans are sadly familiar, but which had never come under their notice
before. The little Graysons were utterly undisciplined, and got their own
way in everything. Their grandfather, aunt, mother, and nurses combined
were powerless to control them, and would give them anything but what they
most needed. They pervaded the whole house, and were the hub of it; they
ate at all hours, and of whatever they fancied. They had no regular hour
for going to bed, but fell asleep everywhere, and were removed with the
utmost precaution. Mrs. Sykes, going there, would find them jumping up and
down with muddy feet on the drawing-room sofas or playing on the new grand
piano with the poker. Miss Noel one day found Mr. Brown in a great state
of perturbation, calling out, "Helen! Jane! Bijou! Come here, quick! The
baby is bumping his head on the floor!" (The baby being three years old.)
"Don't get angry, darling. If you won't bump your head, grandpa will bring
you a wax doll from Kalsing to-morrow." Another day, baby's sister in
banging on the window-pane struck through the glass and cut her fist.
"Poor little dear! Poor childie! Let me bind it up quickly. Harry, love,
bid nurse fetch the arnica at once," exclaimed Miss Noel; but the patient
stamped and shrieked, and would not have her hand examined or doctored by
anybody, whereupon her admiring mother said, "Jenny has always been that
way. She has a great deal of character, Miss Noel."

"A very undisciplined one, I fear," replied that lady emphatically. She
could scarcely believe that she heard aright when, on asking this model
parent what her plans were for the summer, she said,--

"I am going to try Saratoga again. We were there last year, and I went
prepared to stay until the 1st of October. I liked it very much; it was
very gay and pleasant; but Harry got tired of it, and wouldn't stay after
the second week, so I packed up and went to Long Branch, which he has
always liked."

"Your brother, or uncle?" inquired Miss Noel, in perfect good faith.

"No, my little Harry," replied the placid mother.

The very appearance of the children, fragile, delicate-looking, nervous,
was in striking contrast to the solid, rosy, somewhat stolid English
children to whom she was accustomed. They were pretty, quite abnormally
intelligent she thought, and as attractive as such rearing would permit
them to become; but their habits and manners positively afflicted her. She
pined to put them to bed at seven o'clock, keep them four or five hours of
every day in the open air, give them simple, nourishing food,--in short,
inaugurate the wholesome nursery system of her own country. To see them
sitting down to table without saying their grace or putting on their
pinafores, and order of the servant soups full of condiments, veal, any or
all of eight vegetables, pickles, tarts, pudding, jelly, custard,
fruit-cake, bon-bons, strong coffee, cheese, almonds, raisins, figs, more
custard, raisins again, and more fruit-cake, all despatched in great haste,
with no attention to the proper use of napkin, knife, fork, or spoon, was
acutely disagreeable to her; and it was amusing to see her efforts to
insinuate, as it were, better things into their daily life. "Nice, clever
children," she would say,--"so delicate-featured, and so refined in
appearance, but, heavens! what a monstrous system of education!" She had
taken a fancy to Bijou from the first, and she soon noticed in her a great
many little evidences of weariness, discontent, unhappiness; also that she
was alternately very pale and depressed or flushed and animated. She took
the girl therefore under her motherly wing, lectured her a little in her
gentle way about some things, praised her in others, and was very kind to
her.

"My dear," she would say, "do you not eat entirely too many sweets,
bon-bons, and what not, and then go without proper food at the regular
meals?" Or it would be, "How do you occupy yourself, as a rule, dear
child? Do you district-visit, botanize, sketch, learn a language? What do
you do? You would enjoy a course of belles-lettres, and should take that.
And that head in crayons that you did at school was pleasantly executed:
why not study from life constantly?" Bijou had to confess that she did
nothing, and not even that industriously. "But, my dear, you are not an
Asiatic. You surely don't wish to be a doll, a plaything, self-indulgent,
helpless, leading a life of mere luxurious indulgence and artificiality?"

No, Bijou had no such wish; but what was the use of learning or doing
anything now as a girl? If she married, it would be different; but then
she would never, never marry. But Miss Noel insisted that an idle woman
was a miserable woman, married or single, and was brisk and cheerful and
kind, and devised a number of small employments for Bijou, whom she kept
with her a great deal, and so befriended her as effectually as Mr. Ketchum
had done Mr. Ramsay. Mrs. Sykes found fault with her once or twice, but
did not find her all meekness.

"Why do you talk of 'an elegant breeze'?" she said to her one day.

"For the same reason that you spoke of 'a beautiful roast' yesterday,"
retorted the young lady, who might be broken-hearted, but was certainly
not broken-spirited. "I know better, and I suppose you do, but we are both
careless."

Matters drifted along in this way until a certain morning spent by Mr.
Ramsay at the Browns',--eventful because a little thing happened which
convinced him that Bijou cared for him. He came home with a new pang
substituted for those he had been enduring for a lover's age. After dinner
he tramped off for a long walk alone, in the course of which it may fairly
be presumed that he decided what course to take, for early on the
following day he called especially, for the second time, upon Mr. Brown.

"I have come to tell you that I can't come here any more," he said,
holding his hat with his accustomed grace, and going in his
straightforward fashion immediately to the subject in his mind. "And I
wish to thank you for bein' so kind to me and receivin' me as you have
done, and to tell you why I am actin' in this way."

"Why, what's the matter? Going away? Isn't this rather sudden?" asked
Brown _p?_, all unsuspicious of what was to come.

"Oh, it isn't _that_! Though of course I shall be goin'. It is that I
can't marry. That is what it is. You should have been told of it before,
by rights, only I kept puttin' it off. You have a perfect right to blame
me for not sayin' so long ago, when you were good enough to admit me here
on an intimate footin'. It was a shabby, dishonorable thing of me, and I
hope you'll forgive it, rememberin' that it was not my intention to
deceive you," said Mr. Ramsay. "It wasn't, now, really."

"But, my dear fellow, of what are you accusing yourself? There must be
some mistake. What has that got to do with your visits here?" asked Mr.
Brown.

"Why, don't you see?--don't you object to me bein' thrown so much with
Miss Brown, under the circumstances?" stammered out Mr. Ramsay.

"Not the least in the world,--not the least in the world, I assure you.
Delighted to see you, I am sure, whenever you like to come," said Mr.
Brown, with hospitable warmth. "Why should I? There is no necessity for
your marrying anybody, that I can see. What put such a foolish idea in
your head?"

"But I thought you would think--she would think I thought--that is--as you
might say--"

A hearty laugh from Mr. Brown interrupted him: "Why, you seem to have
thought a good deal on the subject. The most extraordinary idea! Excuse my
saying so. This house is always full of young men dancing attendance on
Bijou, who is as popular a girl as there is; but I don't trouble _my_ head
about them, I can assure you. No, indeed. Half of them don't want to marry
Bijou, and she don't want to marry any of them that I know of. And I guess
I shall be told when the affair comes off, so that I can order the
wedding-cake. Why, they are just all young people together. It don't mean
anything. They just naturally like each other's society. They are amusing
themselves,--that's all; and quite right, too."

Mr. Ramsay had never conceived of such a philosophical parent or agreeable
state of affairs. He was very much embarrassed, and caught at a familiar
idea in his confusion. "That's what I thought you would think,--that I was
amusin' myself. And I wanted to tell you that I am not, you know. I have
far too much respect for Miss Brown to dream of doin' such a thing," he
said very eagerly.

"Oh, you mean at her expense? I understand now. Well, now, let me make
your mind perfectly easy on that score. Bijou can take care of herself as
well as any girl in America, and I never thought of such a thing. If you
are thinking of _her_, that's all right. If you are thinking of yourself,
of course that is another thing. She isn't thinking of marrying _you_. She
doesn't care anything about you in that way, I am certain. I should have
noticed it if she had been," said Mr. Brown, who labored under the usual
parental delusion as to his daughter's heart having a glass window through
which he could see all that went on there.

"I am tryin' to do what is best for both of us," said Mr. Ramsay honestly,
blushing profusely. "And I came to say good-by. And here is a little note
I have written Miss Brown. I have left it open, in case you wished to see
it."

"Not at all,--not at all. Bijou would blow me up sky-high if she caught me
reading it, I can tell you. I'll give it to her, certainly. I think you
are giving yourself unnecessary concern; but your scruples, though novel,
do you honor. If you think it best to give us up, you are, as far as you
are personally concerned, the best judge. Good-by. Send us a line to say
how you like the West. Good-by," said Mr. Brown, and smilingly accompanied
him to the front door.

Papa Brown gave his daughter the note, which ran as follows:

"MY DEAR MISS BROWN,--I am going away, and you have been so awfully kind
to me that I know you will excuse me writing to say how awfully grateful I
am to your family for receiving a stranger as they have done."

Here "I shall often think of you" was carefully scratched out, and "I
shall always remember it and the pleasant hours I have spent with them"
substituted.

"And now I have got to say a disagreeable word, which is good-by. I hope
you will have a fine hot summer and will think of me sometimes when you
are spooning tremendously at croquet,--as you know you do, though it isn't
fair. With best regards to all the members of your household, I am

"Faithfully yours,

"ARTHUR RAMSAY.

"P.S.--If I should drop into a good thing you will hear of it."

Mr. Ramsay had taken four hours to compose something that should not be
actionable or compromising, and yet that should convey some idea of the
state of his mind and feelings, and had turned out this masterpiece, which
Bijou read in bitterness of soul over and over again.

"Excuse me writing," "fine hot summer," "croquet," she quoted mentally.
"After all that has passed between us! If he had really cared for me, and
anything had separated us, he would have had the common honesty and
manliness to say so. No; he thinks me another Liverpool girl, 'hard hit.'
He is running away from _me_." At this cruel idea, so abhorrent to her
vanity, pride, affection, and general womanhood, the poor girl sank down
on her bed overwhelmed, and did not leave her room for three days,--or
rather eternities,--at the end of which time she met Mr. Ramsay by
accident on the high-road and cut him dead.

"I must pull myself together and get away out of this," said Mr. Ramsay to
Mr. Ketchum that evening. "I have bought of Albert Brown his ranch in
Colorado, near Taylorsville, and I leave in the morning."

"WHAT!" cried Mr. Ketchum. "Has he sold you that tumble-down claim on a
burnt prairie, miles from any wood or water? I know the place."

"I haven't examined the property; but he assures me it is a fine one. And,
anyway, it is settled, I am going. A thousand thanks for all your kindness,
Ketchum. An Englishman that I met in New York wants me to go huntin' with
him, and I shall join him at St. Louis and go on out from there."

"Why, I thought you had all promised to go to Niagara as my guests in a
few days. Do change your mind and stay, won't you?" urged Mr. Ketchum.

But Mr. Ramsay was obdurate, and took himself and a car-load of property
off in the direction of the setting sun by the mid-day train next morning.

"Ramsay, I want you to promise me one thing. If, owing to that skunk Brown,
you are disappointed out there, or don't get on, write or telegraph me,
and I'll stand by you to the tune of ten thousand or so. Good-by, old
fellow. Remember, I'm your _friend_," said generous Job, at the station.
And as he went home he stopped and presented Mr. Albert Brown with a piece
of his mind that any other man would only have taken in exchange for a
flogging, delivered.

"How very nice and kind of the dear duke to give Mr. Ramsay an invite to
join him!" said Mrs. Sykes, with emotion, at dinner that day.

F.C. BAYLOR.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

       *       *       *       *       *




A TEMPLE PILGRIMAGE


Sauntering down the southerly side of Fleet Street, toward the historic
spot where once stood Temple Bar, crested with its ghastly array of
pike-pierced traitors' heads, the curious itinerant comes to an arched
gate-way of Elizabethan architecture. The narrow lane which it guards is
known as Inner Temple Street, and cleaves the Temple enclosure into
unequal parts, ending at the river. Standing in the shady archway, with
the roar and rattle, the glare and glitter, of Fleet Street at our backs,
we instinctively feel that we are about to enter a new and strange
locality, the quiet atmosphere and the cloister-like walks of which seem
redolent of books and the pursuits of bookish men.

We are on the threshold of the Temple,--a spot than which none in all this
historic metropolis is more replete with memories of the storied past. Nor
does its interest consist solely in its associations with the men and
manners of a by-gone epoch. Despite its antique architecture and its
quaint observances, the Temple still maintains its reputation for
scholarship and legal acumen. Its virility is fitly symbolized in the
venerable and vigorous trees whose branching boughs wave above its walls:
sound to the core, it sends forth new scions with perennial freshness.

The gray gate-way under which we have halted is one of the two chief
entrances to the Temple. It was built in the reign of James I., being
consequently nearly three centuries old. White-aproned porters, with
numbered pewter badge on lapel, stand on either side, ready--for a
consideration--to direct our transatlantic ignorance into veritable "paths
of pleasantness and peace." Access to the Middle Temple from Fleet Street
is had by way of another gate-house, built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1684,
soon after the Great Fire. It is in the style of Inigo Jones, of reddish
brick, with stone pointing. There are several other entrances,--many of
them known only to the initiated,--through intricate courts and passages
debouching on Fleet Street and the surrounding thoroughfares, and one from
the river at Temple Pier; but, chiefly because of their proximity to the
New Courts of Law, these two gate-ways are most frequented.

The boundaries of this famous abode of British wit and intellect may be
roughly sketched as follows: on the north, Fleet Street; on the south, the
Thames and the Victoria Embankment; on the east, Serjeants' Inn and the
Whitefriars region; on the west, Essex Street, Strand. These boundaries
remain substantially as they were six or seven centuries ago. The Middle
Temple lies nearest the river; the Inner Temple is nearer to Fleet Street,
and "inside"--that is, on the "city" side--of Temple Bar. Essex House and
its purlieus, once the abode of the powerful earls of that name, were
formerly a part of the Temple. It was called the Outer Temple, because
"outside" of Temple Bar.

In the reign of Henry II., about the year 1185, the ground now included in
the Temple area became the head-quarters in London of the crusading
Knights Templar. Removing from humbler quarters in Holborn, the order,
having become wealthy and ambitious, bought a tract of land extending from
the walls of Essex House to Whitefriars, and from the river to Fleet
Street. They erected a church, a priory, and other buildings clustered
around in the mediaeval fashion, and in imitation of the Temple near the
Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.

Under the first Richard and the third Henry the Templars increased in pelf,
power, and pride. After a career commenced in zeal and purity,
culminating in valor and fanaticism, and closing in corruption and
indolence, in the year 1312, when the second Edward sat on the throne of
England, the now useless order was formally abolished by Clement V., the
reigning Pontiff. The Temple domain, by grant of the crown, then passed to
Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, who conveyed it to the Earl of
Lancaster, a cousin of Edward II. It was then rented to the professors and
students of the common law, who had recently become an incorporate body,
In 1333 the Temple had apparently reverted to the crown, for we find
Edward III. farming out the rents for twenty-five pounds a year.

The Knights Hospitallers of St. John, meantime, affected to be much
scandalized at what they deemed a desecration of holy ground, and claimed
the custody of the place. In 1340, in consideration of a hundred golden
guineas contributed toward the armament against France, the king made over
the Temple to the Hospitallers. They handsomely endowed the church with
lands, and gave "a thousand fagots yearly from Lillerton Wood to nourish
the church fires."

The records of the Temple date back no further than the reign of Henry
VII., so that the history of the previous period; is more or less obscure
and traditional: the precise manner in which the Temple passed from the
control of the sword to that of the wig and gown is not certain. The
Hospitallers of St. John, who already possessed a priory at Clerkenwell,
in the north of London, after having vindicated the sanctity of the church
and cloisters, are believed to have leased the buildings and the demesne
to the lawyers for the rent of ten pounds, payable yearly. Another account
says that the latter purchased the property outright. However this may
have been, in the reign of Richard II. we find the legal fraternity of the
metropolis securely domiciled in the locality they have ever since
tenaciously clung to.

Even so early as the time of Henry VI. the brotherhood of lawyers had
attained to an unwieldy growth, and it separated into two halls, the
original two halls of the Knights Templar forming the nuclei around which
the frequenters of each grouped themselves. Thus arose the Middle and
Inner Temple. Under the eighth Henry the two societies became direct
tenants of the crown once more. In 1609 James I. granted "letters patent
to the mansion of the Inner Temple," at a yearly rent of ten sovereigns;
and a like sum was exacted for the Middle Temple. The societies have not
been disturbed in their holdings since that time.

The Temple to-day comprises two of the four great Inns of Court,
--Lincoln's Inn, Gray's Inn, Inner Temple, Middle Temple,--which, taken
collectively, constitute the backbone of the legal polity of England. Ben
Jonson described them as "the noblest nurseries of humanity and liberty in
the kingdom." They are all of great age and the recipients of rich
revenues. The income of the Middle Temple alone (not the richest of the
four) from the single item of rents is about thirteen thousand pounds
yearly; but the affairs of the Inns are so shrouded in administrative
secrecy that exact information on this topic is not easily obtained.

Until recently there was a fifth,--Serjeants' Inn, the members of which
were lawyers who had risen to the rank of serjeant, or to the bench
itself. Formerly such promotions terminated membership in the original Inn;
but since the abolishment of the rank of sergeant at the English bar
Serjeants' Inn has ceased to exist,--the name surviving only in the
locality,--and the four Inns have readmitted those of their members on
whom judicial honors were bestowed.

Each Inn possesses certain smaller or subordinate Inns, which formerly
served as preparatory schools, but which are now mere collections of
chambers. There are thus attached to the Inner Temple Clement's Inn,
Clifford's Inn, and Lyon's Inn; to the Middle Temple, New Inn.

All the Inns of Court are unincorporated voluntary societies. In our
modern nomenclature the name "inn" may seem a strange one for an
institution of learning; but the term is a literal rendering of the
ancient title _hospitia_ applied to them in the Latin records, as
distinguished from public lodging-houses (_diversoria_).

Each Inn consists of a hall, a chapel, a law-library, a set of rooms for
the benchers, and a large number of houses, divided into small suites
known as "chambers," and occupied chiefly by barristers, solicitors, and
students, though tenancy is not restricted to these classes. The quiet,
the studious environment, and the freedom from certain social obligations
unavoidable in more fashionable quarters, have at all times rendered
residence in the several Inns peculiarly attractive to that large class in
England which consists in the main of young men of good family, moderate
fortune, and no particular occupation.

The Inns possess the exclusive right of "calling students to the bar,"[A]
also of "disbarring" a barrister for questionable practices,--a right
exercised by Gray's Inn in 1864 in the case of the late erratic but
brilliant Dr. Kenealy, counsel for the notorious Tichborne "claimant."
From their decision no court, as such, can give relief. The disbarred one
has only the right of appeal to and review by certain of the judges. The
Inns neither govern nor license attorneys, who are admitted to practice by
the courts.

[Footnote A: The origin of this term dates from the venerable custom of
calling students to the bar that divided the benchers' dais from the body
of the hall to bear their part in the "meetings" or discussions on knotty
legal topics. We are informed by Lord Campbell that Sir Edward Coke "first
evinced his forensic powers when deputed by the students to make a
representation to the benchers of the Inner Temple at one of the 'moots'
respecting the poor quality of the commons served in the hall. He argued
with so much quickness of penetration and solidity of judgment that he
gave entire satisfaction to the students and was much admired by the
benchers."]

The Middle Temple affiliates with the Universities of London and Durham. A
residence of three years and the keeping of twelve "commons" entitle a
gentleman to be called to its bar, after certain qualifying examinations,
if he be above twenty-three years of age. In the Inner Temple (by far the
richest and most popular of the two societies) the candidate for admission
must have taken his B.A. or passed an examination at the Universities of
Oxford, Cambridge, or London. No one in holy orders can be called, and
none are admitted without the consent of the benchers. The candidate must
also furnish a statement in writing, outlining his rank, age, and
residence, accompanied by a voucher as to his respectability signed by a
bencher or two barristers. In short, the Inns of Court may be described as
universities "with power to grant degrees in the municipal law of England,
which constitute indispensable qualifications for practice in the superior
courts of law." To secure these ends they have from time immemorial
enjoyed the protection of the crown.

In former times the curriculum was comprehensive and the discipline
severe. The fare provided was frugal, and the chambers were sparsely
furnished. Luxury was tabooed, and the rules were rigidly enforced. From
early morning till the hour of five in the evening, when supper was served,
not an hour was wasted. Fortescue, writing in the time of Henry VI.,
gives a graphic account of these law-schools as they were in his day.
"Students resort hither in great numbers to be taught as in common
schools. Here they learn to sing and to exercise themselves in all kinds
of harmony. On the working days they study law, and on the holy days
Scripture, and their demeanor is like the behavior of such as are coupled
together in perfect amity. There is no place where are found so many
students past childhood as here." But in these degenerate days, when the
_jeunesse dorée_ decorate their "dens" with Queen Anne furniture, Turkish
rugs, and choice bric-Ã -brac, it has been jocosely said that "dining in
hall is the only legal study of Temple students." Of late years, however,
"the best professional sentiment" has strongly and successfully tended in
favor of keeping up the standard of these institutions as true seminaries
of learning. Ample courses of lectures have been introduced, also
subsequent searching examinations.

A glance at a map of the Temple shows conclusively that it has no
connected plan. Its growth has been the outcome of the needs of many
generations during the last half-dozen centuries, and it is at present a
picturesque conglomeration of buildings of all sizes and shapes and styles,
erected with no regard for architectural beauty or symmetry, and with no
very great adaptability to their past or present use. Aside from the halls
and libraries of the two societies, the Church of St. Mary, and one or two
blocks of chambers, like Paper Buildings, there is no salient feature to
impress the eye. Yet the uniform ugliness of some of the buildings
constitutes not the least of their attractions. A hard grayish stone
frequently appears, though there are a number of brick houses so mellowed
by age that it would be difficult to name their original hue.

The chambers are frequently massed around four sides of a stone-paved
court, from which direct entrance is had to the main staircases. In some
of these flagged spaces a fountain tinkles; in others, sturdy elm- or
plane-trees tower far above the red chimney-stacks; in the centre of
another is the famous Temple pump. The several courts have distinguishing
names, such as Garden Court, Pump Court, and Brick Court, and they connect
with each other sometimes by an arched passage under the houses, at two
sides of the square, or again by narrow alleys. Nor is the same level
always preserved. Small flights of time-worn steps continually surprise us
in our pilgrimage. The aggregate--barren courts, narrow passages, and
winding lanes--forms a perfect labyrinth, very trying to a stranger or to
one possessing a poor memory for localities.

The nomenclature of certain of these Temple courts possesses a breezy,
countrified sound, utterly unsuggestive of musty tomes and special
pleadings. Thus, we have Elm-Tree Court, Vine Court, Fig-Tree Court, and
Fountain Court. The reader will recall to mind the fact that it was in the
last-named locality, with its sprightly, sparkling, upward-springing
stream, that Ruth Pinch--"gentle, loving Ruth"--held tryst with her lover,
manly John Westlock. Letitia Elizabeth Landon, too, has embalmed this "pet
and plaything of the Temple" in some pleasant stanzas:

      The fountain's low singing is heard on the wind,
      Like a melody bringing sweet fancies to mind,--
      Some to grieve, some to gladden: around them they cast
      The hopes of the morrow, the dreams of the past.
      Away in the distance is heard the vast sound
      From the streets of the city that compass it round,
      Like the echo of fountains, or the ocean's deep call;
      Yet that fountain's low singing is heard over all.

Entering the houses, we find them mostly of a stereotyped pattern. A
wainscoted, dark, and generally uncarpeted staircase gives access to
landings on which abut the outer doors of the "sets," or chambers. These
consist of two, three, or at most four rooms, in the style peculiar to the
domestic architecture of the earlier years of the present century. High
corniced ceilings, wainscoted walls, and shoulder-high chimney-pieces
abound. Here and there, however, some opulent tenant has modernized his
rooms; but the structures, inside and out, remain for the most part not
materially changed from the later Georgian era of their erection,--a time
when every gentleman sported a small-sword and ladies wore hoops and
patches. The famous garden forms one of the chief charms of the Temple
enclosure, and its beauty and atmosphere of quiet repose are justly
celebrated. Here Shakespeare is believed to have sat and thought out some
of his most masterly creations; here many of the great legal luminaries of
the last few centuries walked and talked; and here the infantile footsteps
of the subsequently famous "Elia" chased butterflies across the velvety
sward. "The Temple Garden," says Mr. Walter Thornbury, "has probably been
a garden from the time the white-robed Templars first came from Holborn
and settled by the river-side." It covers an expanse of three acres, and
its gay flower-beds, umbrageous trees, and emerald turf make it a
veritable oasis to the inhabitants, and especially to the children, of
that corner of the great metropolis. A pillar sundial in the centre of the
grass bears the date 1770, and the iron gate, surmounted by a winged horse,
which guards the entrance from the terrace, was erected in 1730. East of
the sundial is a hoary old sycamore, sole survivor of three sisters,
carefully protected by railings, under whose grateful shade, says local
tradition, Johnson and Goldsmith were wont to chat. In the Middle Temple
Garden stands a venerable catalpa-tree, planted by Sir Matthew Hale, "one
of the most eminent of lawyers and excellent of men." The scene in "King
Henry the Sixth,"[A] where the partisans of the rival houses of Lancaster
and York assume the distinctive badges of the white and red rose, is laid
in the Temple Garden. "Toward evening," says Dr. Dibdin, "it was the
fashion for the leading counsel to promenade during the summer months in
the Temple Gardens. Cocked hats and ruffles, with satin small-clothes, at
that time constituted the usual evening dress." Anciently, the "moots"
were held on the terrace of the Garden at five of the clock in the long
summer evenings.

[Footnote A: Part I., act 2, scene 4.]

The great hall of the Middle Temple is one of the finest Elizabethan
structures in the metropolis. It was commenced in 1562, when the old hall
was converted into chambers, consumed a decade in building, and is of
grand proportions. It is a hundred feet long, and the massive beauty of
the glossy oaken roof, almost black with age, is alone worth an Atlantic
voyage to see. The walls and windows are decorated with the arms of
various members of the Inn, and the paintings are numerous and of great
historical interest. Over the dais is a portrait of Charles I. on
horse-back, by Vandyke, one of the three original paintings of the unhappy
monarch by that great master. Another of the trio is at Windsor, while the
third adorns Warwick Castle. There are also copies of portraits of Charles
II., James II., William III., Queen Anne, and George II., and marble busts,
by Behnes, of "Doubting" Lord Eldon and Lord Stowell, the great Admiralty
judge. The screen and the music-gallery are marvels of the wood-carver's
art. Tradition says the screen was made of oak from the timbers of the
wrecked Invincible Armada; but this cannot be, inasmuch as it was set up a
dozen years before the doomed squadron sailed out of Lisbon harbor.

The Middle Temple Library, a handsome building of recent erection,
situated on the river side of the Inn, at the southwest corner of the
Temple Gardens, was opened by the Prince of Wales, October 31, 1861. While
it is of nobler proportions than the library of the Inner Temple, it does
not seem to be so well suited for the purposes of the student. Its
location, however, is far more pleasant, on the margin of the
flower-mantled garden, and within sight of the busy Victoria Embankment
and of the panoramic river scenery. From the great oriel window a noble
vista is unrolled. In the distance, the twin-towered Houses of Parliament
are outlined against the sky, while the massive proportions of the "water
front" of Somerset House, the motley groupings of the structures that
crowd the intervening water-side, and the flashing river hound by
many-arched bridges, fill the middle distance.

Aside from the lustre shed around its history by many eminent lawyers and
jurists, the Middle Temple has numbered among its students several great
poets and dramatists, notably John Ford, William Congreve, Nicholas Rowe,
Thomas Shadwell, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Thomas Moore. But, as
their literary remains prove, few or none of them prosecuted their legal
studies with that sedulous devotion which the law, proverbially a jealous
mistress, demands. Sir William Blackstone, who immortalized his name by
his "Commentaries on the Laws of England," was educated in the Middle
Temple, where he was entered as a student, November 20, 1741, and by which
he was called to the bar, April 26, 1750. In his Temple chambers, ere he
finally consecrated his massive intellect to the legal profession,
Blackstone wrote the famous "Farewell to the Muses:"

      Lull'd by the lapse of gliding floods,
      Cheer'd by the warbling of the woods,
      How blest my days, my thoughts how free,
      In sweet society with thee!
      Then all was joyous, all was young,
      And years, unheeded, roll'd along;
      But now the pleasing dream is o'er,--
      These scenes must charm me now no more.
      Lost to the field and torn from you,
      Farewell! a long, a last adieu.

Edmund Burke was entered at the Middle Temple in 1747, and kept his terms
in 1750. But the great tribune was never called to the bar. Had he been,
what a powerful advocate, what a pitiless adversary, he would have made!
Porson, the brilliant but bibulous classicist, has left behind him many
sad stories of his pranks during his residence in Essex Court, where he
had chambers immediately above those occupied by the future Baron Gurney,
whom, in one of his debauches, he came near burning in his bed. Chaucer is
believed to have entered as a student of the Middle Temple, where he is
supposed to have formed a friendship with the "moral Gower." Sir Walter
Raleigh, Sir Thomas Overbury, Sir Edward Bramston, Lord-Keeper Guildford,
Edmund Plowden,--perhaps the greatest lawyer of the Elizabethan epoch,
--"Ugly" Dunning, who afterward became Lord Ashburton, and Lord Eldon, are
among the ornaments of the British bench and bar who sprung from the
Middle Temple.

Now, however, the glories of the Middle Temple rest chiefly in the past.
It has decreased in wealth and in numbers. There is an old proverb which
says, "The Inner Temple for the rich, the Middle Temple for the poor;" and
a famous wit emphasized this saying by a happy _mot_. After one of its far
from _recherché_ dinners, he compared a gritty salad, of which he had been
unlucky enough to partake, to "eating a gravel walk and meeting an
occasional weed."

The hall of the Inner Temple is a modern building, and was opened by the
Princess Louise on May 4, 1870. More spacious than the one it replaced, it
contains a number of cosy offices and ante-rooms. There is also attached a
lunch-room for the use of members, much frequented in term-time, when at
the mid-day hour one may meet many of the great practitioners at the
English bar. Passable portraits of William and Mary, Queen Anne, Lord
Chief-Justice Coke, and Sir Thomas Littleton look upon the visitor, and
the arms of the successive treasurers of the Inn are blazoned on the walls.

The Inner Temple Library is the most attractive, quiet, and convenient of
any in the four Inns. Its plan comprises a series of book-lined apartments
leading one into another. Besides a valuable and voluminous collection of
authorities on legal topics, it possesses a unique array of works on
general subjects. It stands on the terrace, and commands a view of the
river. The noble hammer-beam roof is a fine specimen of its kind, spanning
a chamber forty-two feet wide and ninety-six feet long. One of the
stained-glass windows is emblazoned with the Templars' escutcheon. The
debating-hall is in the Tudor style, and cost not far from seventy-five
thousand dollars.

Several great jurists and a number of men equally eminent in other walks
of life were connected with the Inner Temple, pre-eminent among whom stand
Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord-Chancellor of England in 1587, and nicknamed
the "Dancing Chancellor," Lord Tenterden, "one of the greatest Englishmen
who ever sat in the seat of Gamaliel," who was admitted in 1795, and John
Selden, who took up residence in Paper Buildings in 1604. The latter were
consumed in the great fire of 1666. Audley, chancellor to the eighth Henry,
Nicholas Hare, privy councillor to the latter monarch and Master of the
Rolls under Mary, who resided in the court which now bears his name, the
eminent lawyer Littleton and his no less famous commentator Coke, Lord
Buckburst, Beaumont the poet, Sir William Follett, and Judge Jeffries of
infamous memory, were all students within the Temple precincts.

Charles Lamb, whose father, John Lamb, was clerk to Mr. Salt, a bencher of
the Inner Temple, was born in Crown Office Row. In 1809 he took chambers
at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, where some of the delightful "Elia" essays
were penned. In one of these he says, "I was born and passed the first
seven years of my life in the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens,
its fountains, its river, I had almost said,--for in those young years
what was the king of rivers to me but a stream that watered our pleasant
places?--these are of my oldest recollections. I repeat to this day no
verses more frequently or with kindlier emotion than those of Spenser
where he speaks of this spot. Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the
metropolis. What a transition for a countryman visiting London for the
first time,--the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet Street by
unexpected avenues into its magnificent ample squares, its classic green
recesses! What a cheerful, liberal look hath that portion of it which,
from three sides, overlooks the greater garden, that goodly pile

      Of buildings strong, albeit of paper hight,[A]

confronting with massy contrast the lighter, older, more fantastically
shrouded one named of Harcourt, with the cheerful Crown Office Row (place
of my kindly engendure), right opposite the stately stream which washes
the garden foot with her yet scarcely trade-polluted waters and seems but
just weaned from Twickenham Na?es! A man would give something to have been
born in such places. What a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan
hall where the fountain plays which I have made to rise and fall how many
times, to the astonishment of the young urchins my contemporaries, who,
not being able to guess at its recondite machinery, were tempted to hail
the wondrous work as magic." Though its courts may have been "magnificent"
and "ample" to the contemplation of the kindly Lamb, they would scarce be
so accounted now.

[Footnote A: Paper Buildings.]

The "great Cham of Literature," Dr. Samuel Johnson, resided for some time
at No. 1, Inner Temple Lane. Indeed, it was while the doctor was living in
the Temple that the world-famous "Literary Club" was founded. The faithful
and receptive Boswell, too, as might be expected, lived within easy
distance of the object of his veneration, at the foot of Inner Temple
Lane. It was in 1763 that Boswell first made the acquaintance of the
"Great Bear" and called on him in his Temple chambers.

Cowper the poet, as the reader doubtless remembers, at first embraced the
law as his profession. He was duly articled to a solicitor of some
eminence; but with how little ardor he devoted himself to the study may be
inferred from the following candid confession: "I did actually live three
years with Mr. Chapman, a solicitor,--that is to say, I slept three years
in his house, but I lived, I spent my days, in Southampton Row. Here was I
and the future Lord Chancellor [Thurlow] constantly employed from morning
till night in giggling and making giggle instead of studying law." It is
not surprising, as one of his biographers remarks, that when, at the age
of twenty-one, he proudly became the occupant of a set of chambers in the
Middle Temple, "he neither sought business nor business sought him."

While domiciled here, the hideous malady which darkened his manhood began
to cast its gloomy pall on his mind. In the year 1759 he removed from the
Middle Temple to better quarters in the Inner Temple. For a time the
change seemed beneficial, but in 1763 what had hitherto been mere morbid
melancholy became something very near the dreaded insanity. "I was struck,
" he says, "not long after my settlement in the Temple, with such
dejection of spirits as none but they who have felt the same can have the
least conception of. Day and night I was upon the rack, lying down in
horror and rising up in despair." His residence at the Temple extended in
all through eleven years. The year above mentioned, the last of that term,
found the poet in straitened circumstances. The twin offices of
reading-clerk and clerk of committees in the House of Lords became vacant
at this juncture, and both were at the disposal of a cousin of Cowper's.
They were duly conferred on the poet. But the duties of these positions
necessitated frequent attendance before the Peers, and to one who suffered
from a morbid nervousness this prospect was most distasteful. Hence,
almost immediately after having accepted them, Cowper resigned these posts
and took instead that of clerk of the journals. Now another difficulty
intervened. It was necessary, in order to qualify for this place, that he
should undergo an examination at the bar of the House of Peers; and thus
"the evil from which he seemed to have escaped again met him."

"A thunderbolt," he writes, "would have been as welcome to me as this
intelligence. To require my attendance at the bar of the House, that I
might there publicly entitle myself to the office, was in effect to
exclude me from it. In the mean time, the interest of my friend, the honor
of his choice, my own reputation and circumstances, all urged me forward,
all urged me to undertake what I saw to be impracticable." The mental
agony he suffered was wellnigh unbearable. He even contemplated with some
calmness the coming of mental derangement, that thereby he might have good
reason for throwing up the appointment. He made many attempts to destroy
himself. "He purchased laudanum, but threw it away. He went down to the
Custom-House Quay to throw himself into the river. He tried to stab
himself." Finally, the most desperate attempt of all to extinguish the
lamp of life took place in his Temple chambers. Thrice he essayed to hang
himself by his garter,--first on his high canopy bedstead, and then on the
door.

The public way which, starting at Fleet Street, runs between the Temple
Church and Goldsmith Buildings, is a curious thoroughfare,--street it
cannot be called. It inclines somewhat toward the river, with a very
narrow foot-walk, scarcely wide enough for two to pass abreast. On one
side is the hoary sanctuary, and on the other a row of gloomy,
flat-fronted houses, whose dirty windows blink drowsily on the flagged way
beneath.

The pavement of a part of this thoroughfare is unique. It consists of old
tombstones. In 1842, the entire available space in the churchyard being
covered with graves, the benchers decided to permit no more interments
there, and ordered it to be paved over. A path now runs directly across
the old cemetery, where rest the bones of the Knights Templar and their
dependants, and many of the sculptured stones have become paving-flags.
Worn and polished by the passage of many feet, the epitaphs are entirely
defaced. Here and there a few letters of antique cut may with difficulty
be deciphered; but soon no sign will survive to tell of this painful
desecration.

A little outside the roadway the ground is slightly elevated, and near to,
but outside of, the gilt-tipped railings which enclose the Temple Church
lies a very unpretending slab of marble. Rising but a few inches above the
level, one corner sunken and green with earth-mould, it is but a single
remove from the general decay around it. No fence protects it, children
play and fight their mimic battles thereon, and when last we saw it a
group of workmen employed near by were discussing their noontide bread and
cheese and beer in various lounging attitudes upon it. The slab is sadly
chipped, yet it is not nearly so old as the years of the century. Surely
the man whose death it commemorates departed this life

      Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

Not so. Let us scrape aside the accumulated dirt, and trace with
finger-tip the fast-vanishing inscription. It says, "Here lies Oliver
Goldsmith." This, then, is the way the world reveres its great ones. Of
what avail a monument to the poet in Westminster Abbey, dignified by the
celebrated epitaph of Dr. Johnson, when his tomb is thus relegated to the
domain of neglect and oblivion? Even the site at present indicated is
"entirely conjectural:" the precise position of the poet's grave has been
long forgotten.

Goldsmith Buildings, of course, take their name from the erratic poet and
playwright. In one of them he lived and died, just above the rooms
tenanted by the learned Blackstone, who, at that time engaged in penning
the fourth volume of his "Commentaries," was often grievously annoyed by
the dancing- and drinking-parties, the games of blind-man's-buff, and the
noisy singing of "poor Noll" and his boon companions. Goldsmith took up
residence in the Temple in the spring of the year 1764, in a very shabby
set of rooms, which he shared with Jeffs, the butler of the society. Here
Dr. Johnson visited him, says Mr. Forster, "and on prying and peering
about in them after his short-sighted fashion, flattening his face against
every object be looked at, Goldsmith's uneasy sense of their deficiencies
broke out. 'I shall soon be in better chambers, sir, than these,' he said.
'Nay, sir,' answered Johnson, 'never mind that: _nil te quaesiveris
extra_.'"

In 1765, his purse having become somewhat more plethoric, he removed to
Garden Court, then, as now, one of the choice spots in the Temple Area.
Here he sported a man-servant, and ran head over ears in debt to his
trades-people. Three years later, in 1768, we find the happy-go-lucky
spendthrift squandering four hundred of the five hundred pounds which the
partial success of "The Good-Natured Man" netted him in the purchase of a
set of chambers in No. 2 Brick Court, much to the sorrow of the studious
Blackstone, whose fellow-tenant he thus became. The nocturnal revelries of
Goldy and his intimates are happily described in Mr. Forster's biography.
Supper-parties were frequent, "preceded by blind-man's-buff, forfeits, or
games of cards, when Goldsmith, festively entertaining them all, would
make frugal supper for himself off boiled milk." He would "sing all kinds
of Irish songs," and with special enjoyment "gave them the Scotch ballad
of 'Johnny Armstrong' (his old nurse's favorite);" with great cheerfulness
"he would put the front of his wig behind, or contribute in any other way
to the general amusement;" and to an "accompaniment of uncontrolled
laughter he once danced a minuet with Mrs. Seguin," the wife of an Irish
merchant.

A volume would not contain the thrilling story of the trials and triumphs,
the struggles and successes, of the dead-and-gone generations whose feet
have polished the cool gray flags of the purlieus of the Temple. Comedy
and tragedy have been enacted within its walls; penury and prodigality
have dwelt beneath the same rafters; the versatile genius and the plodding
dullard have taken their maiden flights toward fame in its halls. Soldiers
and statesmen, poets and playwrights, courtiers, wits, and adventurers,
have herein acted their various parts. Yet, despite the checkered lives
that have run their course within its pale, and notwithstanding the lustre
shed upon its history by the many great jurists nurtured there, the Temple
gains its greatest renown from the residence therein of that famous trio,
Johnson, Goldsmith, and Lamb.

The immortal pump, so often alluded to in the Temple annals, stands in the
centre of Hare Court,--not in Pump Court, as might not unreasonably be
expected. It yields a copious supply of the coolest spring-water, and the
office-lads of the surrounding chambers make many pilgrimages hither,
stone pitcher in hand, during the sultry summertime. Charles Lamb, in an
epistle to Coleridge, in his happiest vein, says, "I have been turned out
of my chambers in the Temple by a landlord who wanted them for himself;
but I have got others at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, far more commodious and
roomy.... The rooms are delicious, and the best look backwards into Hare
Court, where there is a pump always going; just now it is dry. Hare
Court's trees come in at the window,--so that it's like living in a
garden." Again, writing from the Temple in 1810 to his friend Manning, who
is in China, Lamb says, "The household gods are slow to come, but here I
mean to live and die. Come, and bring any of your friends the mandarins
with you. My best room commands a court in which are trees and a pump, the
water of which is excellent cold--with brandy, and not very insipid
without." At about the same time we find Mary Lamb recording that her
genial brother had suddenly taken to living like an anchorite. He tabooed
all alcoholic drinks, and confined himself to cold water and cold tea. But
the beverage drawn from Hare Court did not agree with his internal
economy: he suffered in consequence from cramps and rheumatism, and his
abstention from generous fluids was, we are forced to infer, exceedingly
brief.

The poet Garth, who exposed the apothecaries of London to reprobation and
ridicule in his satirical poem "The Dispensary," also humorously alludes
to Hare Court's pump:

      And dare the college insolently aim
      To equal our fraternity in fame?
      Then let crabs' eyes with pearls for virtue try,
      Or Highgate Hill with lofty Pindus vie;
      So glowworms may compare with Titan's beams,
      And Hare Court pump with Aganippe's streams.

The one structure in the Temple area that overshadows all others in point
of interest is the famous round church, consecrated to St. Mary by
Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, in the year 1185. This prelate's
presence in England was on an errand to invoke the assistance of Henry II.
against Saladin, who had recently inflicted several disastrous defeats on
the Templars in the Holy Land.

The church was finished about 1240. It is one of the four round churches
still remaining in England. Its plan is that of a central round tower,
supported by six beautiful clustered columns, crossed by a nave and
transepts. Notwithstanding the lapse of ages, and although its beauties
were for centuries hidden beneath a variety of hideous excrescences, it
remains to-day one of the best specimens of early Gothic architecture
extant. In 1682, 1695, 1706, 1737, and 1811 extensive repairs were made.
In 1828 the exterior was thoroughly restored and recased with stone, and
several unsightly structures that impeded the view of the church were
removed. All of these so-called restorations were, however, but partial in
extent. Many outrageous additions and much meretricious ornamentation,
added at various epochs, were allowed to remain.

Finally, in 1845, steps were taken looking to a thorough renovation and
restoration of the venerable pile. The purity of the marble columns had
been sullied by several coats of paint and whitewash, while many of the
foliated capitals of the columns supporting the "Round" bore traces of
gilding. These latter were scraped and cleaned; an eight-feet-high oak
wainscot was removed; light, movable seats were substituted for the heavy
pews of Charles II.'s time that encumbered the Round; the pavement was
lowered to its original level, thus revealing the bases of the columns;
the organ (built by the famous Father Smith in the reign of Charles II.)
was removed to its present position in the choir, and the whole interior,
by means of these and other extensive changes, was exhibited in its
pristine purity.

It is difficult to understand the crass stupidity which blocked up
exquisite Norman windows, covered carved capitals with a thick coat of
cement, closed many of the arches with wooden partitions, planted a
cumbrous pulpit and reading-desk immediately under the dome, and hid the
noble groined ceiling behind a shell of flat, whitewashed boarding. In the
course of these repairs much of the marble-work was found to require
renewal, for replacing which some old quarries in the Isle of Purbeck,
unworked for generations, were reopened.

On the pavement, immediately under the Round, are several marble effigies
of mail-clad knights,--"Associates of the Temple." Those that have been
identified represent Geoffry de Magnaville, Earl of Essex, one of the
barons who fought against King Stephen; another, having clean-cut features
and clad in chain-armor, commemorates William Marshall, who was Protector
during the reign of Henry III,; and by his side rests his son, a leader of
the Barons in their memorable struggle against King John. The effigy of
Gilbert Marshall, third son of the Protector, reposes near the western
door-way, and hard by is the figure of a warrior in the act of prayer,
supposed to be intended for Robert, Lord of Ros. Five or six other figures,
some of remarkable beauty, and all in good preservation, two of heroic
stature, are unidentified.

Service is held daily in the Temple Church, and admission is practically
free. On Sunday mornings, however, the introduction of a bencher is
requisite to secure admittance. The music is of the best of its kind, and
the organ, though of great age, is renowned as one of the purest-and
sweetest-toned instruments in London.

No account of the Temple would be complete without some mention of its
many curious sundials. Each garden possesses a plain pillar-dial. There is
one in Temple Lane with the motto, "_Pereunt et imputantur_," and
"_Vestigia nulla retrorsum_" appears on another in Essex Court. In Pump
Court, high up on the front of a house is a large, rectangular dial, with
gilt figures and stile, bearing the inscription, "Shadows we are and like
shadows depart." Over the dial is the traditional Temple lamb bearing a
cross.[A] In Brick Court there is a dial with the apt legend, "Time and
tide tarry for no man." In the year 1828 an ancient building on Inner
Temple Terrace was demolished, and with it a sundial bearing the strange
but not inappropriate inscription, "Begone about your business." The story
runs that, many years before, a crusty old bencher had promised the
dial-maker to provide a motto for the then new dial. The messenger,
however, arrived at an inopportune time, received the above curt dismissal
in answer to his request, and conveyed it to his master as the legend to
be engraved.

[Footnote A: The devices of the Middle and Inner Temple are a lamb and a
horse respectively, and they may be frequently seen blazoned on window and
wall. An irreverent wit once scrawled these lines on the Temple gate:

      As by the Templars' hold you go,
        The horse and lamb displayed
      In emblematic figures show
        The merits of their trade.

      The clients may infer from thence
        How just is their profession:
      The lamb sets forth their innocence,
        The horse their expedition.

      O happy Britons, happy isle,
        Let foreign nations say,
      Where you get justice without guile,
        And law without delay!

In answer and in ridicule of which, a second scribbler penned the
following stanzas beneath:

      Deluded men, these holds forego,
        Nor trust such cunning elves:
      These artful emblems tend to show
        Their _clients_, not _themselves_.

      'Tis all a trick; these are all shams
        By which they mean to cheat you:
      But have a care,--for you're the lambs,
        And they the wolves that eat you.

      Nor let the thought of "no delay"
        To these their courts misguide you:
      'Tis you're the showy horse, and they
        The jockeys that will ride you.]

The din and devastation of civil strife and the smoke and flame of
conflagration have more than once surged high and furious in and around
the Temple. In Wat Tyler's rebellion many of the houses were razed by the
rioters, books and parchments were carried away and fed to bonfires, and
it was the intention of the rebels to destroy the precinct and the lawyers
together, for thus, they said, they would obliterate both unjust laws and
corrupt law-makers. The "No-Popery" rioters in 1780 marched to attack the
Temple, but were awed into flight by the apparently determined front
presented by the lawyers and students, who were really in desperate fear
themselves. Street-fights with the lawless Alsatians of the adjoining
Whitefriars region were at one time frequent.[B] In 1553, and again in
1669, the mayor of the city essayed to "pass through the cloisters with
drawn sword." The Temple claimed immunity from civic control, and on both
occasions the mayor's weapon was beaten down and a bloody affray resulted.
An appeal growing out of this event was made to Charles II. by Heneage
Finch in behalf of the Temple, but the question is still unsettled. Hence
the modern Templars close their gates at ten o'clock every night, and when
the "charity children" of the adjacent parishes "beat the bounds" on
Ascension Day, redouble their vigilance. The rich rental of the property
pays no local taxes, though repeated efforts have been made to assess it.

[Footnote B: Salisbury Court, Whitefriars, enjoyed for centuries the
privilege of a sanctuary--at first for criminals, but finally for debtors
only--until 1697, when it was abolished by royal warrant. It was nicknamed
"Alsatia," in imitation of the frontier province of the same name, which
was long a cause of contention and familiarly known to English soldiers in
the long Continental wars. As Cunningham observes, "In the Temple students
were trying to keep the law, and in Alsatia, adjoining, debtors to avoid
and violate it. The Alsatians were troublesome neighbors to the Templars,
and the Templars as troublesome neighbors to the Alsatians."]

In 1666 the Great Fire of London burnt its way westward as far as the
Temple. After consuming several sets of chambers and a quantity of
title-deeds to many valuable estates, the course of the flames was stayed
just east of the Temple Church. But in 1678-79, in the mouth of January, a
large area was burned over. The fire lasted from midnight till noon of the
ensuing day. Pump Court, Vine Court, part of Brick Court, Elm-Tree Court,
Hare Court, part of Middle Temple Hall, a portion of Inner Temple Hall,
and the old cloisters, were swept away. The season was remarkable for its
severity: the Thames was frozen over, and the supply of water entirely
inadequate. So great hogsheads of ale were hoisted up from the cellars and
the liquor fed to the clumsy hand-engines of the period. When the ale gave
out, recourse was had to gunpowder,--buildings in the track of the flames
being blown up; but in this dangerous work the Temple library was
demolished. In the end, however, the Temple was the gainer by this fire:
much better structures took the place of the old rookeries, and the entire
precinct was purified.

Around the hoary walls of the Temple cluster memories of many a strange
custom or quaint observance. The revels at Yule-tide, St. Stephen's Day,
New Year's Day, and Twelfth Night were not surpassed anywhere in "merrie
England." Feasts, masques, and play-acting at various times greatly
scandalized the more sober and staid among the benchers. Stowe tells us
that the readers of his day "for upwards of three weeks kept a splendid
table, feasting the nobility, judges, bishops, principal officers of state,
and sometimes the king himself, insomuch that it has cost a reader above
one thousand pounds,"--a mint of money in those frugal days. Revelries
grew in frequency and attractiveness as the business of instruction
declined, so much so that we are compelled to believe that at one period
the qualifications for admission were merely nominal. A banquet given by
Sir Heneage Finch the year following the restoration of Charles II. lasted
from the 4th to the 17th of August, and all London was invited and made
welcome.

In one point the Templars of to-day are not a whit behind their
predecessors: they give good dinners. For centuries the benchers of the
two societies have dined in each other's company once a year in the great
hall; and to Mr. Thornbury we are indebted for the following description
of a Temple dinner of to-day:

"An Inner Temple banquet is a very grand thing. At five or half-past five
the barristers and students in their gowns follow the benchers in
procession to the dais; the steward strikes the table solemnly a mystic
three times; grace is said by the treasurer or senior bencher present, and
the men of law fall to. In former times it was the custom to blow a horn
in every court to announce the meal. The benchers observe somewhat more
style at their table than the other members do at theirs. The general
repast is a tureen of soup, a joint of meat, a tart, and cheese to each
mess, consisting of four persons, and each mess is allowed a bottle of
port wine. Dinner is served daily to the members of the Inn during
term-time,--the masters of the bench dining on the dais, and the
barristers and students at long tables extending down the hall. On grand
days the judges are present, who dine in succession with each of the four
Inns of Court. To the parliament chamber, adjoining the hall, the benchers
repair after dinner. The 'loving-cups' used on certain grand occasions are
huge silver goblets, which are passed down the table filled with a
delicious composition, immemorially termed 'sack,' consisting of sweetened
and exquisitely flavored white wine. The butler attends the progress of
the cup to replenish it, and each student is by rule restricted to a sip;
yet it is recorded that once, though the number present fell short of
seventy, thirty-six quarts of the liquid were sipped away. At the Inner
Temple, on May 29, a gold cup of sack is handed to each member, who drinks
to the happy restoration of Charles II."

The Temple has been for generations a favorite abode with men of letters
and others having no leaning toward or connection with the bar. It is a
vast bachelors' hall. Fleet Street and its immediate vicinity is the
centre of the publishing interest of London. Here many of the great
dailies are edited and printed, and "Brain Street," as George Augustus
Sala fitly nicknamed it, is midway between the "city" and the "West End,
"--the "down town" and the "up town" of London, if such a simile is
permissible as applied to a brick-and-mortar polypus whose members radiate
toward every point of the compass. No part of the Temple is more than five
minutes' walk from this centre of intellectual industry, and yet, once
within its walls, the silence and seclusion are complete. The roar and
rattle of Fleet Street and the Strand might be a thousand miles away, for
scarce a murmur penetrates beyond the Temple gates. The quiet, stone-paved
courts, the grassy nooks gemmed with a few choice blossoms, the
soft-plashing fountains, overshadowed by sturdy elm-, plane-, or fig-trees,
the cool stone archways leading from one court to another, the park-like
expanse of the Temple Garden, bounded by the bustling Embankment and the
swift-flowing river, are surroundings favorable alike to the labors of a
busy journalist, to the novelist's weavings of fiction, to the poet's
subtile creations, to the purposeful studies of the patient scholar, or to
the objectless dreamings of the mere "man about town."

HENRY FREDERIC REDDALL.

       *       *       *       *       *




"MEES."


Red-armed Annette gave a final glance at the table, and as the clock was
striking eight summoned Frau Pastorin Raben's boarders to supper. Promptly
came the two Von Ente girls, high-born and high-posed damsels, forced to
make themselves teachers. It had been a sad blow to their pride. The elder
was somewhat consoled by a huge carbuncle brooch given to her by Kaiser
Wilhelm himself. The younger was named for a very great lady; and when a
letter came from the very great lady the recipient lifted her head and
remembered that, whatever happened, she was a Von Ente.

Following them close, there entered the dining-room a woman who painted
pictures and sold them. Hedwig Vogel was about fifty, tall, angular,
hard-featured. She was reported to be very rich and very mean. Moreover,
she was an undoubted democrat; for when Elsa von Ente's lady patron came
to the house, everybody kissed the august dame's hand except Hedwig Vogel
and "the Mees." Of course "the Mees," poor thing! knew no better; but
Fräulein Vogel!--a woman guilty of such a misdemeanor was capable of
putting dynamite in Bismarck's night-cap. She responded curtly to the
greeting given to her by the Von Entes, and then asked where the Frau
Pastorin might be.

"Here," answered a soft voice, and the plump, smiling, suave mistress of
the house entered and seated herself at the table. As she bowed her head
to invoke a blessing on the smoked herring, the raw ham, the salad, the
three kinds of bread, a tardy boarder opened the dining-room door. She
stood on the threshold for a minute, then moved swiftly to her place.

"Good-evening, Mees," said the Frau Pastorin, and "Good-evening, Mees,"
echoed the Von Entes. Fräulein Vogel contented herself with a nod, and
attacked bread and ham in hungry silence.

"Your walk has given you a fine color," the Frau Pastorin continued
blandly. Then, turning to the artist, "You should paint the Mees,
Fräulein. 'A Study of America.' That would sound well, would it not?"

The Study of America smiled a little disdainfully, and refused the raw ham
and the herring offered to her by Elsa von Ente. She had refused raw ham
and smoked herring at least a hundred times, but yet the Frau Pastorin
protested.

"I am sad there is nothing for you," she murmured in English,--a language
she fondly fancied she spoke.

"Oh, there is bread galore," said the Mees.

This set the hostess to thinking. Bread she understood; but what was bread
galore?

"I should like to learn some American dishes," she said. "Buckwhit cakes,
--so, is it right?--I have read of them. How you would relish them
to-night, would you not?"

"No," said Mees ungraciously.

"Not?" said the Von Entes, who talked together habitually. "But what then?"

"Beef--mutton--chickens," said Mees.

"We have them here," murmured the Frau Pastorin sweetly.

"Do you?" said Mees, quite as sweetly. And Hedwig Vogel burst out
laughing. The Frau Pastorin bit her lip, the Von Ente girls looked blank,
and Annette scuttled away, smelling danger from afar, for she knew full
well that she often received a vicarious reproof.

Supper over, the table was cleared and a big Bible laid before the Frau
Pastorin, who, as a clergyman's widow, felt that it was her duty to set a
good example to the sojourners beneath her roof. Hedwig Vogel, however,
did not stay to the reading: she went up to her bare, lonely rooms. They
were totally lacking in character, for neither the woman nor the artist
was betrayed in their appointments. Everything was scrupulously clean and
painfully neat about them. German-fashion, the square table was pushed
close to the sofa, and held a lamp and four never-opened books. Here
Fräulein Vogel seated herself, turned up the lamp-wick, and then crossed
her long, lean, sinewy hands in her lap. The tall white porcelain stove
made the room so warm that she presently rose and set a window open a
little way. She was indeed a dangerous, unconventional creature, a
Prussian who cared neither for great ladies nor draughts. She stood there,
feeling the damp air of early spring blow in her face. From the beer-hall
near by came the sound of music; over the pavement rattled a cart drawn by
two weary dogs and followed by a yet wearier peasant-woman; with a brave
clink-clank of spurs and sword strode by a brave lieutenant. Above all
these sounds Fräulein Vogel's quick ear caught a light foot-fall on the
bare stairs without. She crossed the parlor and flung open the door.

"Mees."

"Yes, most gracious lady."

"Ridiculous,--'gracious lady'! Come in."

Mees obeyed, and took the place of honor on the sofa beside the painter.

"I have a favor to ask," she said, with a deprecatory smile, "Don't call
me Mees, please. It does not mean anything."

"Shall I say Mees Varing?" asked the painter, with a struggle to pronounce
the name properly.

"Unless you like Kitty better," said Mees.

"Kitty--Kitty." Fräulein Vogel repeated it gravely. "Kitty." She smiled.
"Kitty Varing, of New York. Now I have it all."

"No," said Kitty, "not quite. Of Withlacootchie, New York."

They both laughed, the Indian name was so unmanageable. Kitty finally
wrote it down, and the painter pronounced it over and over again. At last
she straightened up, and said sternly,

"But where is the picture, Mees--Kitty?"

"Ah, you don't want to see it," Kitty exclaimed; "and I don't want to show
it to you. I tell you I have no talent. I suppose, though, patience must
tell in the end," she added, half to herself.

"Yes, it will tell," said the painter grimly. "It will tell--something.
Go get your picture now."

Kitty crossed the corridor to her own little room. There was the picture,
--a sketch in oils of the best-known model in DÃ¥sseldorf, this time rigged
out as a Roman peasant. The girl looked at the picture with a frown; she
seized it as though she would dash it on the floor in scorn, but, checking
the impulse, she carried it to Fräulein Vogel.

The successful painter looked at the sketch in silence for a full minute,
holding it off at arm's length. Finally, she laid it down on the table,
murmuring, "And after three years' hard work!"

"Only a year's real work," Kitty broke in eagerly. "I have only been here
a year, you know; and those two years at home I ought not to count, for I
did not work then as I do now."

"Why not?" asked Fräulein Vogel sharply. And Kitty changed color.

"Ah, one must not ask questions," Fräulein Vogel remarked; "but one can
have plenty of suspicions. I dare say you were in love, and, as love
failed, you have taken to art. So it goes with women. Everything but
marriage is a _pis-aller_."

Kitty half rose: the stray arrow had sped home, and it rankled in a new
wound.

"I am a woman myself," added Fräulein Vogel, with a droll smile that
melted the girl's anger in an instant.

Kitty dropped down on the sofa. "Well," she said gayly, "I grant that I
was in love once on a time; but that is all past. Now I want to be a
painter. Listen: I have not much money, I have no friends,--that is,
friends such as we read about,--and I must learn to make some money. When
I am thirty I shall begin to make money; otherwise--"

"You are spending your capital," said Fräulein Vogel.

"If I spent only my income I should either wear shoes and no clothes, or
clothes and no shoes," answered Kitty, laughing, with a little air of
recklessness that sat well on her. "Besides," she added sagely, "it is
well to burn one's ships. Sink or swim."

"But you are quite sure of swimming?" said Fräulein Vogel, taking up the
picture again and looking at it closely.

"It is very bad," Kitty said.

"Abominable," said the painter. She drew a long breath and shook her head.
"Abominable," she repeated, almost as though such an abominable piece of
work demanded respect. "_Ach_! You leave old Zweifarbe's studio," she
exclaimed. "Send your easel over to me. You want to make some money? Good.
There are many artists here in DÃ¥sseldorf who say I cannot paint; there is
not one who will say I have not made money. Perhaps I can teach you." And
Fräulein Vogel burst out laughing, while Kitty stared at her in blank
surprise.

"But you have never taken pupils," she stammered.

"I have never died; but I suppose I shall," was the response.

And so old Zweifarbe lost a pupil,--for Kitty's easel was straightway
borne on the back of a sturdy _dienstmann_ to Fräulein Vogel's studio.
What a chatter, what a commotion, it caused in the nest of painters! They
chirped and gossiped and pecked each other like a flock of sparrows. The
Frau Pastorin expressed the popular sentiment when she discussed Hedwig
Vogel's eccentricities.

"How much a lesson?" she said, half closing one shrewd gray eye. "How much
a lesson? Ah, she would not take pupils,--no, no, not while she was Hedwig
Vogel; and _der liebe Gott_ knows she will never be Hedwig anything else.
But she will make an exception for our deer Mees Varing; oh, yes, an
exception! Wait till Mees Varing's rich American friends come along and
buy some of the great Vogel's pictures. You will see."

"But has the Mees any rich friends?" asked her crony the Frau Doctorin.

And then the parson's widow laughed in a worldly way.

"So pretty a girl," she said, "so fine a complexion, such little feet! And
those winning ways!"

From which it will be seen that the Frau Pastorin could admire and
appreciate a woman who was young and beautiful. So could the painters; but
that is easier to believe. And so could the tight-booted lieutenants; but
that is perfectly understood. When Kitty Waring crossed the Hof Garten,
even that old woman who years and years ago sold little Heinrich Heine
plums would point out the girl to her contemporary the venerable
under-gardener.

"_HÃ¥bsch_" the old woman would growl.

"_Aber leichtsinnig--leichtsinnig_," the old man would add,--for he was a
misogynist.

But Kitty was not quite _leichtsinnig_, although she did stroll through
the garden sometimes with Fritz Goebel, sometimes with Otho Weiss,
sometimes with her fellow-countryman Joe Buckley. They were all young, all
painters, all poor. Who cared what they did? What if they sat on a beach
under a linden-tree and played cat's-cradle like children? What if they
made little excursions to Zons or to Xanten? What if there was a supper in
Joe Buckley's studio, and Kitty Waring and Anna van der Meer--a sedate
creature from Rotterdam was she--were taught how to make a true, good
_bowl_? Who cared? In fact, all DÃ¥sseldorf cared.

One day the Frau Pastorin called Kitty into her parlor. "Dear child," she
began, "if your good mother--"

"She has been dead fifteen years," said Kitty.

"If your father--" continued the Frau Pastorin.

"He? Oh, I can't remember him at all," said Kitty.

"Have you no family?" was the question that the Frau Pastorin put squarely.

"An uncle or two somewhere in Iowa," Kitty answered. "An aunt brought me
up, and then died, poor thing!" A smile flitted across Kitty's face, and
tears sprang to her eyes; but her questioner saw only the smile. The world
is full of such purblind folk.

"Where were you last night so late?" she said acridly.

Kitty turned on the plump little woman and looked down at her.

"When Miss Smythe told me that I should find a pleasant home here, she
made a sad mistake," was the irrelevant answer that Mees gave. It puzzled
the Frau Pastorin for full a week. Then Hedwig Vogel and Mees paid their
honest debts and took up quarters with Frau Tisch, in the Rosenstrasse.

"It is much pleasanter here," cried; Kitty, as she moved about the parlor,
transforming the commonplace aspect of the room. "And it is cheap, too. I
thought Frau Tisch would ask more than Frau Raben."

"It is less because we club together," said Fräulein Vogel.

Kitty might have suspected something if her new friend had not had the
name of being so close-fisted. Who would dream that Hedwig Vogel could be
free-handed?--she who would beat a _gemåse-frau_ out of two cents; she who
refused to subscribe to the fund for painters' widows, declaring that it
was as likely she would leave a widow as be left one. She was not
susceptible, she cared naught for sweet smiles and gentle ways. That she,
a gaunt, grim, brusque woman of fifty, could suddenly feel all the stifled
mother-love within her spring up,--that was preposterous, the vain
imagining of a romancer.

They worked together, these two, in Hedwig Vogel's studio, and Kitty
strove to make up for her lack of talent by her abundance of patience.

"Why did you decide to be a painter?" Fräulein Vogel asked her one day.

"Because I had a start in that line," Kitty answered. "If I had had a
start in music I should have tried to play or sing. I wonder if I could
sing? They say everybody has a voice. People are just like fields: plough
'em up, plant cabbages, plant potatoes, you can raise some sort of a crop.
How do you happen to be a painter?"

Hedwig Vogel paused, palette in one hand, brush in the other. "Because I
would rather paint than eat," she answered.

"That is genius," said Kitty solemnly. "I would rather eat. That is lack
of genius. But because I want to eat I paint. That is--what would you call
that?"

"You have a daub of ochre on your nose," said Fräulein Vogel.

"Anyway," Kitty remarked after a while, "if worse came to worst I could
teach. There is German. Now, I really speak German well, don't I? I could
teach that."

"Oh, you have the gift o' gab!" said the painter. "But you will be married,
sure."

A long silence followed. "I am twenty-four," said Kitty.

"There is no safety for you this side of the grave," said Fräulein Vogel.

"I may be married, but I doubt it," Kitty continued. "I--" And then she
dropped her brushes, flung herself prone on the floor, and burst into
passionate tears. Hedwig Vogel did not try to comfort her, but she knelt
beside her and put her strong right arm about the girl's quivering
shoulders. At last Kitty sat up and brushed back her tangled hair.

"Every day I think of him," she said. "Every day I hope, I pray he will
come. I watch for the postman,--I have watched for him so long. He never
brings me a letter, but my heart stops beating when he draws near the
house. When he rings the bell, when the servant comes up the stairs, I
shut my eyes. I can almost believe I have the letter in my hand. I almost
see the words. But there is never a letter,--there never can be. Oh, I--"
She rose and walked to and fro. "I am to blame," she added, laying her
hand on Fraulein Vogel's shoulder. "I wronged him by my suspicion, my
petty jealousy; then I ran away from him, and expected him to roam over
Europe trying to find me. I hid myself from him, and I am eating my heart
out because he does not come."

"Suppose," said Fräulein Vogel, "that he is seeking for you now?"

Kitty's wet eyes shone for a moment. "I am not worth that," she said.

"But if he loves you?"

"Oh, he loves me, I know!" she exclaimed. "And I doubted him. I thought
all manner of base thoughts, and I told him of them to his face,--to him,
the noblest, dearest,--and he never reproached me. Do you wonder I am
ashamed to write to him? Do you wonder I dare not ask his pardon?"

"If he loves you he would forgive anything," said Fräulein Vogel.

The room had grown dark, and they mechanically washed their brushes,
cleaned their palettes, and made ready to go home. As they crossed the Hof
Garten, two or three young painters joined them, and the talk ran on
gayly. Fräulein Vogel had heard Kitty's laugh ring out many a time before,
but never until now did she hear the sad note that dimmed the sweetness of
it. The young men turned away at last.

"To-morrow, then, at eight," sang out Otho Weiss.

"Until to-morrow," cried the others.

"Until to-morrow," Kitty echoed. "Always to-morrow," she added softly to
herself.

"I do not understand," said Fräulein Vogel, going back to the talk in the
studio.

"I was jealous," Kitty answered simply. "He was above me in station--"

"I thought there was no rank in America," said Fräulein Vogel.

"Then you cannot understand how a big tradesman scorns a little one,"
Kitty rejoined. "My aunt kept a shop, but she would never let me help her
sell pins and needles and tape. No, I must go to school with girls whose
fathers sold pins by the ton instead of by the paper,--or by the pound, as
you do here. His father sold them by the ton,--a mere matter of big and
little. The family was reconciled to me after a while. You see, the family
had to be reconciled, for Frank did not care what they said to him."

"He loved you," said Fräulein Vogel.

"Yes, but they wanted him to love somebody else. Perhaps he would have
done so if I had not come in his way. Perhaps he would have married the
right girl,--a limp, languid creature, with money enough to build a
cathedral like the one at Cologne. She made the trouble. They said he was
tired of me, that he repented his impetuosity; and I heard it all, and I
grew jealous,--jealous of nothing. I reproached him, told him that he
wanted her and her money. Then came the crash. My aunt died. I had a
chance to come to Europe with some people, and I did not even bid him
good-by. Now I expect him to write to me--to find me."

She laughed a little as she said this. "Some day," said Fräulein Vogel.
"If he loves you," she added.

"I doubted him," Kitty said, "and I deserve all this. Ah, if you knew him,
if you saw him, you would know what a fool I was!"

They had reached the house by this time, and, as Kitty opened the door,
she added, "I must write soon. I must hear something about him. What may
not have happened in a year? Perhaps he is dead."

She did not mention her lover again to Fräulein Vogel, but she showed her
his portrait; and the sharp-eyed painter looked at the frank, manly face a
long time.

"Write to him, you foolish woman," she said.

"Not yet. I will wait a little longer," Kitty rejoined.

The summer wore away. In August they went for a fortnight to a little
place near Remagen,--Bad Neunahr it is called,--and here Kitty's eyes were
opened, and she suddenly awoke to the fact that her new friend was no
ordinary friend.

"You need not worry about money," said Fräulein Vogel. "If you don't learn
how to make it, you know how to spend it. I could never learn that myself."

But in the autumn Kitty only worked the harder, believing with all her
heart that patience would make a respectable, picture-selling painter out
of a Chinese mandarin. When the gray dawn stole in at the window she
sprang out of bed, dressed, and was off to the studio for an hour before
breakfast. She begrudged the time spent for dinner, she bemoaned a dark
day, and she laid her brushes down reluctantly in the twilight. In the
evening she wanted to go to the theatre, to a concert, to a supper. Such
as she find plenty of companions, and from time to time DÃ¥sseldorf raised
its hands over her doings. Fräulein Vogel watched and waited in a sort of
patient agony, but at last, not without deep reflection, she wrote a
letter to Kitty's sweetheart. She read his name on the back of a
photograph, she knew well how to spell the name of the town, she knew the
town was near New York, she knew New York was in North America, and she
had to buy an extra big envelope to hold the whole address. But the letter
was a terrible thing, and a happy thought came to her. She made a little
picture of Kitty,--a perfect little picture,--and beneath it she wrote
name and address. That was better than a thousand letters. Carefully she
did it up, placing tissue-paper above and beneath the cardboard, and
laying it tenderly in a white box. Surely it could not go astray, unless
all the post-office men were blind; but, to make sure, she would register
it, if that were possible. All must be done without Kitty's knowledge, and
the touch of mystery made the romance the sweeter. One fine day she
sallied forth to send the little portrait on its way. She entered the Hof
Garten, sauntered down the Linden Allée thinking all the while how
delightfully the comedy would end. Her own part, as good fairy of the play,
pleased her, too, and she smiled to herself as she strayed off from the
Allée and, seating herself on a bench that was well screened from prying
eyes, she gave herself up to revery. Of course the lover would come, of
course he would carry Kitty off; but Fräulein Vogel did not mean to be
left far behind. She would look after Kitty, for the foolish, impetuous
creature would need at least two people to keep her out of mischief.

"Frank."

Some one uttered the name, and Fräulein Vogel peered through the leaves.
Sitting near was a pale, sweet-faced woman, drawing figures in the gravel
with the tip of her parasol.

"Frank," she repeated, "shall we go home?"

"Do you mean Withlacootchie or the hotel?" was the answer.

The man had his back to Fräulein Vogel, but now he turned, and she
recognized him. The portrait had lied a little, as portraits will lie, and
yet he was a handsome man enough, after all.

"Home or the hotel, dear?" His voice was very gentle, and his smile
tender. "Are you tired of wandering?" he added.

"Oh, no!" she said, "but whither shall we wander?"

"Up-stairs, down-stairs, in my ladies' chamber," he rejoined. "Last summer,
the Tyrol; last winter, Italy; this summer, Switzerland; now,--where? We
are making a long honeymoon of it."

"And are you tired?" she asked.

He gave a rapid glance up and down the Allée then stooped and kissed her.

Fräulein Vogel had not understood all the words, the caress she saw. She
rose and went slowly homeward. In the tiny DÃ¥ssel the swans were floating
majestically, and, standing there on the bank, she tore the box and the
picture into scraps and flung them in the water. The swans hastened after
the bits of white paper; they fought and screamed over them, and the
victor proudly bore away a fragment from his envious mates, only to
discover that it was worthless.

CHARLES DUNNING.

       *       *       *       *       *




THE NEXT VACATION.


If it finds you with fifty dollars and a fortnight at your command, you
cannot do better than spend both on the Great Lakes.

You don't care for water? But the Great Lakes are not water. You follow
closely the most interesting and wonderful shore, and seven different
times stop for several hours at places on the coast.

Or perhaps you do care for water, and would not like hugging the shore?
One day, at least, on Lake Huron, you would be out of sight of land; and
if you should have a lake storm, you would have all the ocean "fun" you
would care for.

Or you were thinking of the Thousand Isles? There are a thousand isles in
the northern part of Lake Huron, just before you turn into the little
winding river that leads to the "Soo."

Or you had planned to see Lake George this year? You will see a beautiful
copy of Lake George as you leave the little town of Hancock and pass from
the narrow river into a broad expanse dotted with islands, just before
entering the canal that leads to the upper part of Lake Superior.

But you had rather go West, among the mines? What mines can you find, more
interesting than the great copper-mines of Calumet and Hecla and
Quincy?--the only place in the United States, indeed, where you can see
the curious man-engine, with its arrangement of changing-platforms for
carrying the miners up and down.

Well, you meant to go "canoeing." Some very choice canoeing and shooting
of rapids you can have during the hours at the Sault Ste. Marie, popularly
known as the "Soo," and during the two days that the steamer waits at
Duluth before the return-trip Lake Superior will prove not an unattractive
spot to paddle about in.

Add to this the interest of the magnificent new locks at the "Soo," the
historical and romantic associations with Marquette and Mackinac (for you
will not forget that Miss Woolson's "Anne" lived on the Great Lakes), and
the creature comforts of big state-rooms, with large, comfortable beds,
and running water in the basins, on admirable steamers that set an
excellent hotel-table, and you will wonder, as we did, that so few
tourists seem to know about, or care for, one of the most enjoyable
excursions in the country,--I am quite sure I can say the most enjoyable
for the little money it costs.

We took it ourselves quite by accident,--willing to go out of our way a
little on the journey to Colorado in the heat of summer for the sake of a
little trip by water to compensate for the sea-shore cottage we were
leaving behind us for the season. We did not, indeed, begin the trip, as
the steamers do, at Buffalo; for, although time and tide wait for no man
at the East, at the West there are no tides, and time was willing to make
an appointment for us to overtake the steamer at Detroit. We were glad of
an excuse for lingering at the House Beautiful in Buffalo, where we would
rather spend Sunday any time than on any lake in the world. Fortunately,
we had "been to the Falls" many times before, and had seen Niagara in
winter splendor and summer loveliness: so we were at liberty to idle away
the fleeting hours in the shades of Delaware Avenue, on charming piazzas,
till the time came when we must start on the flying trip through Canada if
we would overtake the steamer Japan.

She was just gliding into her dock at Detroit as we stepped from the cars,
and we still had three or four hours' leisure before she would start again
in which to drive about the pretty city and call on friends. Just before
midnight we embarked, and our first experience of the Great Lakes was a
night of peaceful and serene slumber.

Peaceful and serene, too, was the following day,--a patient waiting for
the scenery to begin, sitting with novels on what was facetiously known as
"the back piazza" of the Japan, out of sight of land, but gliding over a
sea so smooth that the hanging flower-baskets on the deck scarcely
stirred. If you scorn such tame delights when apparently at sea, remember
that it might have been rough as only lakes are rough in a great storm. It
was very warm. The captain's assurance that the next morning we should
want to borrow his overcoat and mittens had no effect in disguising the
fact that it was warm. The ladies dressed for dinner, many of them in
white; and the only excitement of the afternoon was the "sighting" of the
Michigan, United States man-of-war, cruising in lake-waters. A little knot
of officers on deck waved their handkerchiefs; a little knot of pretty
girls on the Japan were responding eagerly, when a severe and elderly
voice was heard to say, with distinctness, "The officers' wives are on
board the Japan. They are waving to _them_."

And in fact, as we glided past, a little child was seen at a port-hole of
the Michigan, waving a handkerchief to mamma on the Japan. It had been
seriously ill, and the mother, forbidden by the United States government
to remain with her sick child on the Michigan, preferred to leave him
there with his father, where he could have the care of the special surgeon
who understood the case, while she followed as closely as she could in one
of the lake-steamers. Ah, how interested we all were! It is recorded in
history that certain enemies of the Egyptians used to go into battle with
them with each man holding a cat in his arms. Suppose in our next war we
try the effect upon our enemies of letting each of our soldiers carry a
white-robed baby? One thing is certain, the Michigan captured the Japan
with all on board that day simply by exhibiting that little white figure
at its port-hole. The next day at the "Soo" not a murmur of dissent was
heard when the good-natured captain, who had no European mails on board,
said he would wait an extra hour for the Michigan to come up, that the
anxious mother might have twenty-four hours' later news.

On the second morning there was an entire change of weather and landscape.
The sun still shone gloriously (the thermometer that day in Chicago stood
at 94), but rugs, seal-skins, and hoods were in demand. We were no longer
out of sight of land, but were threading our way in and out among a
thousand isles, with hills that seemed almost mountains threatening to bar
our course before long if we did not turn back the way we came. No one,
the captain said, had ever been known to guess the channel correctly; but
before long we had made a sharp turn to the left at the only spot that
offered an outlet, and found the Great Lakes narrowed suddenly to a
beautiful winding river which led us in the course of another hour or two
to the "Soo." Here the steamer would wait three hours, and we could
explore the queer little town,--quite a popular resort in summer,--or
inspect the splendid locks of the great canal, or shoot the rapids. To me
it was a genuine pleasure to find at last some rapids that were visible to
the naked eye. The famous rapids of the St. Lawrence had been a severe
disappointment, but here were rapids worthy of the name. Lake Superior was
visibly above us, Lake Huron visibly below, and between ran the turbulent
little stream which of course must be flowing into Lake Huron, though we
could not have told merely by looking at it which way the current ran.

"Would we go up the rapids?" We had heard of going down the rapids, but in
reality the most wonderful part of the performance is going up. Not only
is the current fearfully swift, even close to the shore as it is necessary
to keep, but the water seems to be only a few inches deep, and the rocks
are as thick as plums in a Christmas pudding. Yet two Indians, standing
erect, one in the bow and one in the stern of the canoe, pole you up the
stream against these terrible odds as easily and surely as a Harvard
oarsman might row you across Seneca Lake. Then they pause for a moment.

"How will you have it going down? Rough?" they ask.

"Rough," we answer, wondering what in the world they can mean by speaking
as if they were the autocrats of wind and current.

But it seems there are two channels,--one near shore for the timid, and
one in mid-stream. We were not to be betrayed into any exhibition of
timidity after that first hesitating question, "Do you know the rapids
well? How many times have you taken people down?" To which the quiet reply
had been, "Three times a day, lady, for twenty years." Twenty thousand
times, by rough calculation!

So we went over in mid-stream, and were not sorry,--receiving as we
stepped ashore what is probably a part of every programme, the compliment
of being "the bravest lady that ever went over the falls."

Many a pleasant day, or week, one might undoubtedly spend at the Sault
Ste. Marie, or at Mackinac; but if you have only turned through the
straits and gone southward again to Chicago through Lake Michigan, do not
think of saying that you have taken the trip on the Great Lakes. To me the
Great Lakes will always mean Lake Superior. It is something unique in the
geography of the world, and you have the consciousness of your actual
height above the level of the sea as you rarely have on any elevated land
that is not actually a mountain. Ruskin says that for him the flowers lose
their light, the river its music, when he tries to divest any given
landscape of its associations with human struggle and endeavor. Our New
World scenery, of course, has little of that wonderful charm of
association; but there is something singularly impressive in the mere
silence and vastness of our great Northern solitudes.

We entered Lake Superior late in the afternoon, and the only event of the
evening was a magnificent aurora. Toward midnight the gorgeous tints
changed to a thin wedge of perfectly white light, against which in a
duskier white the sails of passing vessels were distinctly outlined,
though no hulls were visible.

At Marquette, in the morning, a party of Finnish emigrants on board left
the ship. Half a dozen Americanized Finns, who had evidently been the
inspiring cause of this influx of new citizens, had come to the wharf to
greet the new arrivals. They had the same short stature, the same stolid
features, as their relatives on board; but there was a difference. The
white shirt, the clean collar, the smart straw hat and vivid necktie, with
a vigorous step, alert manner, decisive tones, and a certain tendency to
help the women with their heavy boxes, distinctly individualized those who
had been awhile under American influence.

All day we basked in the sunshine on the captain's bridge. Think of being
glad to bask in the sunshine on a 4th of August! Between Marquette and
Portage River we passed but one house,--one solitary, lonely house, set on
the very edge of the "unsalted sea;" before it a vast expanse of limitless
waters, behind it an unbroken, limitless forest; no fields, no crops, no
roads, only space enough cleared for the tiny cabin and tinier shed. What
had lured people there? What kept them alive? No neighbors, no mail, no
farm, no apparent object in life, and only one small rowboat to get away
in.

Yet they had put a curtain up at the window! No human being could by any
possibility look in at that window. Even the curtain could only be
detected with an opera-glass from the steamer that passed twice a week.
But the sweet instinct of privacy and home had had its way, and every
night the little curtain that never shut out anything but the incurious
moonlight or the innocent stars was drawn as regularly as the shades of a
Fifth Avenue mansion. Later we learned that it was the Life-Saving Station
of Lake Superior.

"No nap this afternoon, ladies," said the captain as he left the
luncheon-table. "You must be on the lookout for Portage River."

All the afternoon we watched for the little river, eked out by a canal,
that enables us to cut off one hundred and twenty miles of what would be
the course around Keweena Point, besides giving what is perhaps the most
interesting part of the whole trip. So narrow is the opening of the river
that no trace of it is to be seen till we are close upon it; yet swift as
the dove from far Palmyra flying, unerring as an arrow from the bow, the
great ship sweeps across the lake to exactly the right spot. The river is
hardly the width of a canal, yet curves as no canal would ever curve, so
that the captain in giving orders has to watch both ends of the vessel to
see that neither runs aground. It would be impossible for two steamers to
pass each other in the river, and the contingency of their meeting is
guarded against by the fact that returning steamers have to go round the
Point, being too heavily laden with flour from Duluth. As it was, there
were but thirteen feet of water in the river, and the Japan drew twelve.

Once in the river, we experienced a most extraordinary transformation.
Every one knows what it is to pass in a day or two from northern snow to
southern roses, or in a few hours from valley roses to mountain snow; but
here, _in five minutes_, and remaining on precisely the same level, we
passed from October to July. The cold lake-breeze died away, and on the
little inland river the sun was actually oppressive. Seal-skins were cast
aside, and we sent hastily below for sun-umbrellas. The speed of the
steamer was slackened to four miles an hour. You heard no click of
machinery or swash of water against the sides: we were gliding on through
a green and lovely marsh, with water-lilies all about us and wild roses in
the distance. Cattle stood knee-deep in pleasant brooks, locusts hummed
and buzzed in the warm air, all sweet summer sounds and scents encompassed
us. There was even a little settlement of scattered houses; but the
expected steamer had evidently created no excitement in the inmates. It
would not stop; it brought them neither mail nor summer boarder: why
should they care just to see it pass? One man, painting the window-sashes
of his house with his back to the steamer, never even turned or paused
from his work, though we were so near that he might have heard what was
said about him on the deck. It is not the dweller in the wilderness, but
the denizen of cities, that longs for something to happen.

At Hancock the steamer waits several hours, giving an opportunity to visit
the wonderful copper-mines. We chanced to be there just at the hour to see
one of the unique sights of America,--the working of the man-engine that
brings the miners up from their work. Even by machinery it takes them half
an hour to reach daylight. The mine is worked to the depth of fifteen
hundred feet, and for five hundred we could gaze down into the dark and
awful shaft, lit for us by the candles burning in the miners' caps. Two
long beams, to which are attached at right angles little platforms at
intervals of eight feet, each platform holding one man, work up and down.
As each man reaches the level of the platform above on the opposite beam
the engine stops just long enough for him to step from one to the other.
The long, silent, spectral procession, moving with such shadowy precision
and constant motion, with the glimmering lights changing, not fitfully,
but with the regularity of well-trained will-o'-the-wisps, made a panorama
not easily forgotten. Every minute or two, as the engine paused, the miner
whose platform had reached the top sprang suddenly, like a jack-in-the-box,
out of the opening into which we were gazing, touched his hat, and
disappeared into the town. Long as we waited, the procession was not yet
ended when we had to go back to the Japan.

It is just beyond Hancock that the river broadens into the beautiful
expanse so like Lake George. As we glided away from the wharf in the light
of a splendid sunset, it was curious to look back at the simple little
town, so remote from luxury, even from civilization, so humble in its own
wants and pleasures, yet pouring such vast sources of supply into the
great world of which it knew nothing and asked nothing, save the privilege
of enriching it.

At twilight we entered the canal. I have been up the Saguenay, I have been
over the Marshall Pass and through the Royal Gorge of the Arkansas, and I
have seen many noble scenes in Europe, but no scenery has ever impressed
me with such solemnity as the landscape on that canal in the twilight of
an August afternoon. Nor was it merely a personal impression. There were
two hundred souls on board, with the usual proportion of giddy young girls
and talkative youths; the negro waiters as we entered the canal were
singing and playing their violins; but in an instant, as the speed of the
steamer was again checked to four miles an hour, every sound was hushed on
board. During the hour that was occupied in going through the canal, it is
a literal fact that not a sound was heard on the great steamer but the low
impressive orders of the captain and--if you chanced to be on the
captain's bridge--_the ticking of the clock in the wheel-house._ People
spoke in whispers, if they spoke at all, quite unconscious of it till they
remembered it afterward. What made it so impressive? I am sure I do not
know. Certainly there was nothing awful in the scenery, and we never were
in less danger in our lives. We were moving peacefully through a long,
narrow sheet of perfectly calm water, stretching straight as a die from
the river to the upper lake. If anything had happened, we could have
jumped ashore on either side, and another steamer from Buffalo would have
come through in a day or two and picked us up. The only thing possible to
fear was that we might ground in the shallow water, an emergency from
which we could only be relieved, as there are no tides in the lakes, by
the tedious process of lightening the cargo. It was a perfectly clear
evening after a most beautiful day. But on either side of us, far as the
eye could reach, stretched an apparently unbroken forest. Through the
narrow vista cleared for our silvery pathway a slow and stately twilight
came solemnly to fold us in its embrace, as we advanced solemnly and
slowly from vast and awful solitudes to solitudes more vast and awful
still. As we drew near the lake again, a little light-house gleamed, and,
as we swept past it out into the broad expanse of limitless waters, the
cheerful throb of the machinery quickened again upon the sea, the pleasant
swish of the water against the ship greeted us once more, life, movement,
and gayety sprang out again on board, and in an instant the entire steamer
had burst into laughter and chat and song. We were really in far more
danger, from storm or collision or fire, out on the great lake; but the
sense of awe had been lifted from us.

We were due at Duluth at four o'clock of the following afternoon. What
would she be like, this "zenith city of the unsalted seas," with such a
stately avenue of approach? At three o'clock we began to see in the
distance what seemed to be her cloud-capped towers and domes and palaces;
at half-past three a beautiful little humming-bird, blown from the shore,
lit on my scarlet necktie and pecked at this strange flower from the East;
at four we were at the wharf.

"I think," said my companion slowly, gazing sorrowfully at the shanties
that had made such splendid domes in the distance, "I think I should have
called it Delusion, instead of Duluth. It looks like a town in Dickens's
'American Notes' illustrated by Dor?

Surely never was there a more forlorn little town, trying to scramble up a
hillside covered with the tall trunks of dead trees and blackened stumps,
shut out from one world by the waste of waters before it, shut in from
another by dreary, verdureless hills. Surely nobody _lived_ there; those
could not be _homes,_ those desolate frame houses where people were
"staying" awhile. It seemed as if the whole town, like "Poor Joe," would
soon be told by a vigilant policeman to "move on."

And we, who were looking forward to Colorado, needed no policeman to urge
us to "move on" by the earliest train to St. Paul.

ALICE WELLINGTON ROLLINS.

       *       *       *       *       *




AURORA.


CHAPTER XXXIV.

ROSE AND GOLD.


Aurora wrote to the address given her by the Duke of Sassovivo, and
received an immediate reply. The tone of her letter might be described as
dutiful. She could assume no other. That pale face and weary voice were
ever before her. She wrote much as she might have written to Fra Antonio,
though with less ease; and the reply was not calculated to change this new
position in which the two stood to each other. D'Rubiera wrote freely of
his movements and plans, and of his son, but made no reference to his
feelings, and did not mention the past, or any future beyond his travels.

"I trust that you will not leave me in ignorance of any contemplated
change in your mode of life," he concluded, "and that you will come to no
decision on any subject of importance without giving me the privilege of
offering my advice, even if you should think best not to follow it."

The letter included a note to Mrs. Lindsay, which she answered; and her
answer called forth a letter addressed to herself. There seemed to be no
reason why Aurora should write again, and, by the tacit consent of all,
the correspondence fell into Mrs. Lindsay's hands. Sometimes Aurora did
not see these letters, or saw but a part of them,--though her friend
always told her the duke's movements and plans and read her out some
message from him to herself.

Possibly the reason of this reserve lay in the fact that Mrs. Lindsay made
Aurora the principal theme of her letters. Her triumphs, her beauty, her
goodness, her admirers, her acts, her sayings, even her little whims, were
all recounted.

The lady was a good letter-writer. She wrote in a simple, self-colored way
a clear narrative of their life in Venice, ignoring sentiment and
reflections; yet the many little incidents and phrases which she set down
were like so many touches with a full brush, and gave life to what she
told.

The duke remained in England but a short time. Robertino was perfectly
contented, he wrote, and better without him. He crossed the ocean, and
threw himself into the life of the New World, going east, west, north, and
south, glancing at the agriculture, commerce, and manufactures of that
prodigious country, which astonished him. The magnificent strength and
vitality of it all braced him, waked him up, and dispelled his miasmas.
Back to England; and, before they knew that he was there, off to Spain;
and when they thought of him as in Spain, he had returned to England.

And here at length he took a brief repose. He began to go into society,
and wrote Mrs. Lindsay the names of persons he met and whom she might
know. Among those whom he saw constantly was Lady Maud Churchill, whom he
pronounced exquisitely beautiful.

Mr. Edward Churchill was with them when the letters were brought, and
Mrs. Lindsay read out this compliment to him.

"Lady Maud is my cousin," he said. "She is a woman carved in alabaster."

Mrs. Lindsay gave Aurora the letter to read when she went to her room, and
she sat there by her window after having read it, the open sheet in her
lap.

"Exquisitely beautiful," she repeated, looking down at the words. "He will
marry her. I am glad that he is going to marry an Englishwoman. She must
be good, if she is like her cousin."

She looked out at the bright April sunlight dreamily, and for a long time
without stirring. She was considering if she had not better accept Mrs.
Lindsay's invitation to accompany them to America in June. She would like
to see that wonderful golden land where nobody is ragged and nobody poor,
--to see its prairies and forests, its cities sprung up since yesterday,
its wide, clean streets with trees in them, its people, unresting,
truth-telling, generous and courageous, if not always polite.

"Fancy a country where the people drink water!" exclaimed a Frenchman, on
seeing water sold in the streets of Seville.

"Fancy a nation where the people are for the most part truthful!" thought
this Italian, sitting in the window of a Venetian palace and looking out
into the Canal Grande.

"I had better go," she said. "I shall never again have so good an
opportunity. And I really do not know what else to do. There is nothing to
keep me here."

And then, with the thought that she might indeed go to the ends of the
earth and never come back, for any tie that held her, came the bitter
remembrance of her losses.

"Oh, mamma!" she whispered, and began to cry,--not with the passion of her
first sorrow, but piteously and low, with a sense of desolation.

The next day Mrs. Lindsay wrote the duke, "A name you mention in your
letter opens the way to a story I have to tell you. Lady Maud Churchill
has a cousin in Venice who is a frequent visitor of ours, and more than an
admirer of Aurora's. It has been on my mind, to write you of this
gentleman, but I always put off doing so with the expectation of having
something of importance to communicate concerning him the next time. Last
evening he confided to me that he offered himself to Aurora a month ago,
and was refused, but so kindly that he could not give up all hope. She
told him that she was free, and had a sincere regard for him, but that she
did not mean to marry any one.

"Of course no man would believe his case hopeless with such a reply; and
Mr. Churchill seems to think that Aurora is softening toward him. It
really seems so to me also. Last evening she sat apart and talked with
him nearly two hours; and this morning, as we sat alone, she suddenly
exclaimed, 'I wish that Mr. Churchill would come in!'

"It is true that, having refused him once, she may feel free to show that
she likes him as a friend. However it may turn out, I hope that she may be
as happy as she deserves. For my part, I could not wish her a more
honorable and devoted lover. He is a man calculated to win affection and
esteem."

This letter was brought to the duke just as he was going out to a ball. He
went back to his room to read it; and, having read it, he flung it angrily
into the lighted grate.

"What does the woman mean! I'll shoot the fellow if he dares to wring a
promise out of Aurora. And this stuff about Lady Maud. What did I write?
Do they fancy that I care for her? I like her as I like Wenham ice. Aurora
'softening' toward this impudent Englishman! She would soften toward a cat
if it cried. Mr. Edward Churchill her devoted lover! _Arcidiavolo!_"

With this growl of rage, rolling and deep-drawn, the Italian went to his
_escritori_, and wrote, "Aurora should not think of marrying an
Englishman. Sooner or later he is sure to return to England; and what
would she do here? I do not at all approve of the match; and I hope that
you will do all that you can to prevent it. Above all, do not let anything
be concluded in haste."

An event of importance in Mrs. Lindsay's family prevented her replying to
this note. Shortly after its reception her first child was laid in her
arms. Nor did she show the note to Aurora, though she requested her to
write a line to the duke, informing him that a young lady of the most
tender age but obstinate will had placed a veto on her writing at present.

It would be impossible to say whether father or mother was more happy and
proud over the advent of this little girl, but there could be no doubt
that the mother was the more peremptory and authoritative concerning it.
If Mrs. Lindsay had been queen of the household before, she was empress
now, and that in her own right.

"You are only prince consort, John," she remarked to her husband, when he
suggested that the child might be baptized in the house by the resident
Protestant minister. "I am regnant. My daughter may be baptized by a
Protestant minister, and welcome, if--but she is going to be baptized in
San Marco, and Aurora Coronari is to be her godmother and Prince P---- her
godfather. If you can reconcile that with your minister, do so."

The prince consort bowed his head meekly. "I have no particular objection
that a priest should baptize her," he said. "I am very much pleased to
have the prince and Aurora stand sponsors for her. Of course it doesn't
make any difference what they promise for her now. She will be sure to do
as she pleases when she grows up,--if she should turn out to be like her
mother."

The baptism took place on the first day of May, in the morning; and the
company invited to assist were to return to Palazzo Pesaro to breakfast in
honor of the event.

Mrs. Lindsay had her gondola--the baby's gondola _pro tem._.--decorated
for the occasion. An immense white umbrella, lined with gold-colored silk,
was fixed to cover the seats, and the whole gondola was lined and carpeted
with white and pale blue. A blue fringe fell over the edge almost to the
water, and bouquets of flowers were bespoken.

Not only this: she had made a pact with Aurora, who declared that a girl
baptized in the month of May should have Mary for one of her names. Mrs.
Lindsay would include the name if Aurora would attend the ceremony dressed
like the Madonna of an ancient picture of hers, she herself to furnish the
dress; and Aurora consented.

This Madonna on a sparkling gold ground had a long veil of dim blue
falling over her head and shoulders, and wore a dress of dull-red wool
with faint golden reflection. It was a Raphael dress, and had a band of
fine gold embroidery across the neck and round the wrists.

The dress came home the evening before, and was tried on and displayed to
the family, with whom was Mr. Edward Churchill.

"There! wasn't I right?" exclaimed Mrs. Lindsay in triumph.

"Suppose we should scrape out the Madonna and have Aurora painted in her
place," Mr. Lindsay proposed, with perfect seriousness.

"The Madonna is an antiquity," his wife said, with dignity.

"But her eyes are turned like a Chinese's," the gentleman persisted.
"And her expression is cross."

"I wouldn't do it for the world," Aurora declared. "I feel almost wicked
in assuming her dress."

"Well," Mr. Lindsay sighed. "Only don't assume her squint, and I think you
will be forgiven the clothes."

Every night when Aurora went to her room she extinguished her candle and
sat awhile by the open window. The custom had at first been a poetical one,
it was now a sig

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