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The copy filmed here has been reproduced thanks
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Thomai Fisher Rare Book Library,
University of Toronto Library

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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,

BY MARK TWAIN.

"Tom Brown" and "Tom Bailey" are, among
boys, in books, alone deserving to be named with
" Tom Sawyer."— Atlantic Monthly.

Old Times on the Mississippi,

BY MARK TWAIN.

" We must express our sense if their delicious
humour, truthful local delineation, and original
insights, of which we couid the ' ^y judge^ from
personal reminiscences of our c^ ildhood in the

Mississippi Y&\\eyJ"—Canadiai -. slra'ed News.

For sale by all booksellers, on trains, or mailed
post paid on receipt of price, by

ROSE-BELFOIID PUBLISHING CO.,

60 YORK STREET, TORONTO.

IDLE EXCUESION.

ll(f^fnr^'^^

7 r

i^iyu

' i J

;f.

MARK TWAIN,

AITIIOK OK "ADVENTT'RKS OF TOM SAWYER," "OLD TIMES ON TUB MISSISHIPPI,"
" INNOCRNTS ABROAD," F!TC.

ROSE.BELFORD PUBLISHING COMPANY.

MDCCCLXXVIII.

^ ivui/ 10 1968

'<c^/ry OF Tov.^-^

IltrNTXR, R08B AND CO.,

PRINTERS AND BINDERS,

TOROHTO.

A^ IDLE EXCIJRSION.

-♦-♦-•-

CHAPTER I.

LL the journeyings I had ever done had been purely
in the vay of business. The pleasant May weather
suggested a novelty, namely, a trip for pure recre-
ation, the bread-and-butter element left out. The Rever-
end said he would go, too : a good man, one of the best of
men, although a clergyman. By eleven at night we were
iii New Haven, and on board the New York boat. We
bought our tickets, and then went wandering around here
and there, in the solid comfort of being free and idle, and
of putting distance between ourselves and the mails and
telegraphs.

After a while I went to my state-room and undressed,
but the night was too enticing for bed. We were moving
down the bay now, and it was pleasant to stand at the
window and take the cool night-breeze and watch the
gliding lights on shore. Presently, two elderly men sat
down under that window, and began a conversation.
Their talk was properly no business of mine, yet I was
feeling friendly toward the whole world and willing to be
entertained. I soon gathered that they were brothers,
that they were from a small Connecticut village, and that
the matter in hand concerned the cemetery. Said one, —
' Now, John, we talked it all over amongst ourselves,

W)WI

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

and this is what we've done. You see, eveiybody was a-
movin' from the old buryin'-ground, and our folks was
most about left to theirselves, as you may say. They were
crowded, too, as you know ; lot wa'n't hig enough in the
first place; and last year, when Seth's wife died, we
couldn't hardly tuck her in. She sort o' overlaid Deacon
Shorb's lot, and he soured on her, so to speak, and on the
rest of us, too. So we talked it over, and I was for a lay-
out in the new simitery on the hill. They wa'n't unwill-
ing, if it was cheap. Well, the two best and biggest plots
was No. 8 and No. 9 — both of a size ; nice comfortable
room for twenty-six, — twenty-six full-grown that is ; but
you reckon in children and other shorts, and strike an
average, and I should say you might lay in thirty, or may
be thirty-two or three, pretty genteel, — no crowdin' to
signify.'
' That's a plenty, William. Which one did you buy ? '
' Well, I'm a comin' to that, John. You see No. 8 was
thirteen dollars. No. 9 fourteen' —
* I see. So's't you took No. 8.'

' You wait. I took No. 9 ; and I'll tell you for why.
In the first place. Deacon Shorb wanted it. Well, after
the way he'd gone on about Seth's wife overlappin' his
prem'ses, I'd a beat him out o' that No. 9 if I'd 'a' had to
stand two dollars extra, let alone one. That's the way I
felt about it. Says I, what's a dollar, any way ? Life's
on'y a pilgrimage, says I ; we ain't here for good, and we
can't take it with us, says I. So I just dumped it down,
knowin' the Lord don't suffer a good deed to go for no-
thin', and cal'latin to take it out o' somebody in the course
o' trade. Then there was another reason, John. No. 9's

•

AN IDLK EXCURSION. 7

a long way the handiest lot in the siniitery, and the like-
lie.st for .situation. It lies right on top of a knoll in the
dead centre of the buryin'-ground ; and you can see Mill-
port from there, and Tracy's, and Hopper Mount, and a
raft o' farms, and so on. There a'int no better outlook
from a buryin'-plot in the State. Si Higgins says so, and
I reckon he ought to know. Well, and that ain't all.
Course Shorb had to take No. 8 ; wa'n't no help for't.
Now, No. 8 joins on to No. 9, but it's on the .slope of the
hill, and every time it rains it'll soak right down on to the
Shorbs. Si Higgins says't when the deacon's time comes,
he'd better take out fire and marine insurance both on his
remains.'

Here there was ^h'i sound of a low, placid, duplicate
chuckle of appreciation and satisfaction.

' Now, John, here's a little rough draft of the ground,
that I've made on a piece of paper. Up here, in the left
hand corner, we've bunched the departed ; took them from
the old grave-yard and stowed them one alongside o'
t'other, on a lirst-come-first-served plan, no partialities,
with gran'ther Jones for a starter on'y because it hap-
pened so, and windin' up indiscriminate with Seth's twins.
A little crowded towards the end of the lay-out, may be,
but we reckoned't wa'n't best to scatter the twins. Well,
next comes the livin'. Here, where it's marked A, we're
goin' to put Mariar and her family, when they're called ;
B, that's for brother Hosea and his'n ; C, Calvan and
tribe. What's left is these two lots here, — just the gem
of the whole patch for general style and outlook ; they're
for me and my folks and you and yourn. Which of them
would you rather be buried in ? '

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

* I swan you've took me mighty unexpected, William !
It sort of started tlie shivers. Fact is, I was thinkin' so
busy about makin' things comfortable for the otiiers, I
hadn't thought about being buried myself.'

' Life's on'y a fleeting show, John, as the sayin' is.
We've all got to go, sooner or later. To go with a clean
record 's the main thing. Fact is, it's tlie on'y way worth
strivin' for, John.'

' Yes, that's so, William, that's so ; there ain't no gettin'
round it. Which of these lots would you recommend ?'

' Well, it depends, John. Are you particular about out-
look '( '

' I don't say I am, William ; I don't say I ain't. Reely,
I don't know. But mainly, I reckon, I'd set store by a
south exposure.'

' That's easy fixed, John ; they're both south exposure.
They take the sun and tfie Shorbs get the shade.'

' How abou u sile, William ? '

* D's a sandy sile, E's mostly loom.'

' You may gimme E, then, William ; a sandy sile caves
in more or less, and costs for repairs.'

' AU right ; set your name down here, John, under E.
Now, if you don't mind payin' me your share of the four-
teen dollars, John, while we're on the business, every-
thing's fixed.'

After some higgling and sharp bargaining the money
was paid, and John bade his brother good-night and took
his leave. There was a silence for some moments, then a
soft chuckle welled up from the lonely William, and he
muttered : ' I declare for't if I haven't made a mistake !

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

It'.s D that mostly loom, not K ; and John's booked for a
sandy silo after all.'

There was anotlier soft chuckle, and William departed
to his rest also.

The next day, in New York, was a hot one ; still we
inana<ifed to <j^et more or less entertainment out of it. To-
ward the mi«ldle of the afternoon wearrive<l on board the
staunch steamship ' Bermuda,' with bag and baggage, and
hunted for a shady place. It was blazing sunnner weather
until we were half way down the harbour. Then I but-
toned my coat closely ; half-an-hour later I put on a spring
overcoat, and buttoned that. As we passed the light-
ship I added an lUster, and tied a handkerchief round the
collar to hold it snug up to my neck. So rapidly had the
summer gone and the winter come again !

By nightfall we \#ere far out at sea, with no land in
sight. No telegrams could come here, no letters, no news.
It was an uplifting thought. It was still more uplifting
to reflect that the millions of harassed people on shore
behind us were suffering just as usual.

The next day brought us into the midst of the Atlantic
solitudes, — out of smoke-coloured soundings into fathom-
less deep blue ; no ships visible anywhere over the wide
ocean ; no company but Mother Gary's chickens, wheeling,
darting, skimming the waves in the sun. There were
some sea-faring men among the passengers, and the con-
versation drifted into matters concerning ships and sailors.
One said that ' true as a needle to the pole ' was a bad
figure, since the needle seldom pointed to the pole. He
said a ship's compass was not faithful to any particular
point, but was the most fickle and treacherous of the ser-

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

vants of man. It was forovor clinngiiijif. Itt'hnngfMl every
day in tho yenr ; consequently the amount of the daily
variation had to be ciphered out and allowance made for
it, else the mariner would go utterly astray. Another said
there was a vast foi-tune waiting for thi; genius who
should invent a compass that would not be affected by
the local influences of an iron ship. He said there was
only one creature more fickle than a wooden ship's com-
[)ass, and that was the compass of an iron ship. Then came
reference to the well-known fact that an experienced
mariner can look at the compass of a new iron vessel
thousands of miles from her birth-place, aud tell which
way her head was pointing wiien she was in process of
building.

Now an ancient whale-ship master fell to talking about
the sort of crews they used to have in his early days.
Said he, —

' Sometimes we'd have a batch of college students.
Queer lot. Ignorant ? Why, they didn't know the cat-
heads from the main brace. But if you took them for
fools you'd get bit, sure. They'd learn more in a month
than another man would in a year. We had one, once,
in the ' Mary Ann,' that came on board with gold spectacles
on. And besides, he was rigged out from maintruck to
keelson in the nobbiest clothes that ever saw a fo'castle.
He had a chest full, too ; cloaks and broadcloth coats
and velvet vests ; everything swell, you know ; and
didn't the salt water fix them, out for him ? I guess
not ! Well, going to sea, the mate told him to go aloft
and help to shake out the fore-to'-gallants'l. Up he shins
to the fore-top, with his spectacles on, and in a minute

AN IDLK EXCURSION.

) t

down ho cornoH again, looking insulted. Say.s the mate,
" What did you come down for ? " Says the chap, " P'raps
you didn't notice that there ain't any ladders above there."
You see we hadn't any shrouds above the foretop. The
men bursted out in a laugh such as I guess you never heard
the like of. Next night, which was dark and rainy, the
mate ordered this chap to go aloft about something, and
I'm dummed if he didn't start up with an umbrella and
a lantern ! But no matter ; he made a mighty good
sailor before the voyage was done, and we had to hunt
up something else to laugh at. Years afterwards, when
I had forgot all about him, I comes into Boston, mate of
a ship, and was loafing about town with the second mate,
and it so happened that we stepped into the Revere
House, thinking maybe we would chance the salt-horse
in that big dining-room for a flyer, as the boys say. Some
fellows were talking just at our elbow, and one says,
" Yonder's the new governor of Massachusetts, — at that
table over there, with the ladies." We tooka good look, my
mate andl.forwehadn't either of us seen a governor before.
I looked and looked at that face, and then all of a sudden
it popped on me. But I didn't give any sign. Says I,
" Mate, I've a notion to go over and shake hands with
him." Says he, " T think I see you doing it, Tom." Says
I, " Mate, I'm a-going to do it." Says he, " Oh, yes, I
guess so ! May be you don't want to bet you will, Tom ? "
Says I, " I don't mind going a V on it mate." Says he,
" Put it up." " Up she goes," says I, planking the cash.
This surprised him. But he covered it, and says pretty
sarcastic, " Hadn't you better take your grub with the
governor and the ladies, Tom ? " Says I, " Upon second

'^i':.

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

|v $

thoughts, I v/ill." Says he, " Well, Tom, you are a dum
fool." Says I, " May be I am, may be I ain't ; but the
main question is, Do you want to risk two and a half that
1 won't do it? " " Make it a V," says he. " Done," says I.
I started him a-giggling and slapping his hand on his
thigh, he felt so good. I went over there and leaned my
knuckles on the table a minute and looked the governor
in the face, and says I, " Mister Gardner, don't you know
me ? " He stared, and I stared, and he stared. Then all
of a sudden he sings out, " Tom Bowling, by the holy
poker ! Ladies, it's old Tom Bowling, that you've heard
me talk about, — shipmate of mine in the ' Mary Ann.'
He rose up and shook hands with me ever so hearty, — I
sort of glanced around and took a realizing sense of my
mate's saucer eyes, — and then says the governor, " Plant
yourself, Tom, plant yourself ; you can't cat your anchor
again till you've had a feed with me and the ladies! " I
planted myself alongside the governor, and canted my
eye around towards my mate. Well, sir, his dead-lights
were bugged out like tompions ; and his mouth stood
that wide open that you could have laid a ham in it with-
out noticing it.' ^

There was great applause at the conclusion of the old
captain's story ; then, after a moment's silence, a grave,
pale young man, said, —

* Had you ever met the governor before ? '
The old captain looked steadily at this inquirer a while,
and then got up and walked aft without making any re-
ply. One passenger after another stole a furtive glance
at the inquirer, but failed to make him out, and so gave
him up. It took some little work to get the talk ma-

AN IDLE KXCURSION.

chinery to running smoothly again after this derange-
ment ; but at length a conversation sprang up about that .
important and jealously guarded instrument, a ship's
time-keeper, its exceeding delicate accuracy, and the
wreck and destruction that have sometimes resulted from
its varying a few seemingly trifling moments from the
true time ; then, in due course, my comrade, the Rever-
erd, got off' on a yarn, with a fair wind and everything
drawing. It was a true stoiy, too, — about Captain
B ounce ville's shipwreck, — true in every detail. It was
to this effect : —

Captain Rounceville's vessel was lost in mid-Atlantic,
and likewise his wife and his two little children. Cap-
tain Rounceville and seven seamen escaped with life, but
with little else. A small rudely constructed raft was to
be their home for eight days. They had neither pro-
visions nor water. They had scarcely any clothing ; no-
one had a coat but the captain. The coat was changing
hands all the time, for the weather was very cold. When-
ever a man became exhausted with the cold, they put the
coat on him and laid him down between two ship-mates
until the garment and their bodies had warmed life into
him again. Among the sailors was a Portuguese who
knew no English. He seemed to have no thought of his
own calamity, but was concerned only about the captain's
bitter loss of wife and children. By day, he would look
his dumb compassion in the captain's face ; and by night,
in the darkness and the driving spray and rain, he would
seek out the captain and try to comfort him with caress-
ing pais on the shoulder. One day, when hunger and
thirst were making their sure inroads upon the men's.

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

strength and spirits, a floating barrel was seen at a dis-
tance. It seemed a great find, for doubtless it contained
food of some sort. A brave fellow swam to it, and after
long and exhausting effort got it to the raft. It was
eagerly opened. It was a barrel of magnesia ! On the
fifth day an onion was spied. A sailor swam off" and got
it. Although perishing with hunger he brought it in its
integrity and put it into the captain's hand. The history
of the sea teaches that among starving, shipwrecked men,
selfishness is rare, and a wonder-compelling magnanimity
the rule. The onion was equally divided into eight parts,
and eaten with deep thanksgivings. On the eighth day
a distant ship was sighted. Attempts were made to
hoist an oar with Captain Rounceville's coat on it for a
signal. There were many failures, for the men were but
skeletons now, and strengthless. At ast success was
achieved, but the signal brought no help. The ship faded
out of sight and left despair behind her. By and by an-
other ship appeared, and passed so near that the cast-
aways, every eye eloquent with gratitude, made ready to
welcome the boat that would be sent to save them. But
this ship also drove on, and left these men staring their
unutterable surprise and dismay into each other's ashen
faces. Late in the day, still another ship came up out of
the distance, but the men noted with a pang that her
course was one which would not bring her nearer. Their
remnant of life was nearly spent ; their lips and tongues
were swollen, parched, cracked with eight days' thirst ;
their bodies starved ; and here was their last chance glid-
ing relentlessly from them ; they would not be alive when
the next sun rose. For a day or two past the men had

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

lost their voices, but now Captain Rounceville whis-
pered, ' Let us pray.' Tlie Portuguese patted him on the
shoulder in sign of deep approval. All knelt at the base
of the oar that was waving the signal coat aloft, and bowed
their heads. The sea was tossing ; the sun rested, a red,
rayless disk, on the sea-line in the west. When the men
presently raised their heads they would have roared a
hallelujah if they had had a voice ; the ship's sails lay
wrinkled and flapping against her masts, she was going
about ! Here was a rescue at last, and in the very last
instant of time that was left for it. No, not rescue yet,
— only the imminent prospect of it. The red disk sank
under the sea and darkness blotted out the ship. By and
by came a pleasant sound, — oars moving in a boat's row-
locks. Nearer it came, and nearer, — within thirty steps,
but nothing visible. Then a deep voice: ' Ho\-lo !' The
castaways could not answer; their swollen tongues re-
fused voice. The boat skirted round and round the raft,
started away — the agony of it! — returned, rested on the
oars, close at hand, listening, no doubt. The deep voice
again: 'Hol-^o! Where are ye, shipmates?' Captain
Rounceville whispered to his men, saying : ' Whisper
your best, boys ! now — all at once ! So they sent out an
eight-fold whisper in hoarse concert : ' Here ! ' There was
life in it if it succeeded ; death if it failed. After that
supreme moment Captain Rounceville was conscious of
nothing until he came to himself on board of the saving
ship. Said the Reverend, concluding : —

' There was one little moment of time in which that raft
could be visible from that ship, and only one. If that one
little fleeting moment had passed unfruitful, those men's

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

doom was sealed. As close as that does God shave events
foreordained from the beginning of the world. When the
sun reached the water's edge that day, the captain of that
ship was sitting on deck reading his prayer-book. The
book fell ; he stooped to pick it up, and happened to glance
at the sun. In that instant that far off* raft appeared for
a second against the red disk, its needle-like oar and di-
minished signal cut sharp and black against the bright
surface, and in the next instant was thrust away into the
dusk again. But that ship, that captain, and that preg-
nant instant had had their work appointed for them in
the dawn of time and could not fail of the performance ! '

There was a deep, thoughtful silence for some moments.
Then the grave, pale young man said, —

' What is the chronometer of God ? '

AN IDLE EXCUUSION.

CHAPTER II.

T dinner, six o'clock, the same people assembled
whom we had talked with on deck and seen at
luncheon and breakfast this second day out, and at
dinner the evening before. That is to say, three journey-
ing ship-masters, a Boston merchant, and a returning
Bermudian who had been absent from his Bermuda thir-
teen years ; these sat on the starboard side. On the port
side sat the Reverend in the seat of honour ; the pale young
man next to him ; I next ; next to me an aged Bermudian,
returning to his sunny islands after an absence of twenty -
seven years. Of course our captain was at the head of the
table, the purser at the foot of it. A small company, but
small companies are pleasantest.

No racks upon the table ; the sky cloudless, the sun
brilliant, the blue sea scarcely ruffled : then what had be-
come of the four married couples, the three bachelors, and
the active and obliging doctor from the rural districts of
Pennsylvania ? — for all these were on deck when we sailed
down New York harbour. This is the explanation. I
quote from my note book : —

Thursday, 3.30 p.m. Under way, passing the Battery.
The large party, of four mairied couples, three bachelors,
and a cheery, exhilarating doctor from the wilds of Penn-
sylvania, are evidently travelling together. All but the
doctor grouped in camp-chairs on deck.

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

Passing principal fort. The doctor is one of those peo-
ple who has an infallible preventive of sea-sickness ; i.'+
flitting from friend to friend administering it and saying,
" Don't you be afraid ; I k7ioiu this medicine ; absolutely
infallible ; prepared under my own supervision." Takes
a dose himself, intrepidly.

4.15 P.M. Two of those ladies have struck their colours,
notwithstanding the " infallible." They have gone below.
The other two begin to show distress.

5 P.M. Exit one husband and one bachelor. These
still had their infallible in cargo when they started, but
arrived at the companion-way without it.

5.10. Lady No. 3, two bachelors, and one married man
have gone below with their own opinion of the infallible.

5.20. Passing Quarantine Hulk. The infallible has
done the business for all the party except the Scotchman's
wife and the author of that formidable remedy.

Nearing the Light-Ship. Exit the Scotchman's wife,
head dropped on stewardess's shoulder.

Entering the open sea. Exit doctor !

The rout seems permanent ; hence the smallness of the
company at table since the voyage began. Our captain
is a grave, handsome Hercules of thirty-five, with a brown
hand of such majestic size that one cannot eat for admir-
ing it and wondering if a single kid or calf could furnish
material for gloving it.

Conversation not general; drones along between couples.
One catches a sentence here and there. Like this, from
Bermudian of thirteen years' absence : " It is the nature
of woman to ask trivial, irrelevant, and pursuing ques-

mmmmm

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

tions, — questions that pursue you from a beginning in
nothing to a run-to-cover in nowhere." Reply of Ber-
mudian of twenty-seven years' absence : " Yes ; and to
think they have logical, analytical minds and argumenta-
tive ability. Y^ou see 'em begin to whet up whenever
they smell argument in the air." Plainly these be philo-
sophers.

Twice since we left port our engines have stopped for a
couple of minutes at a time. Now they stop again. Says
the pale young man, meditatively, " There ! — that engi-
neer is sitting down to rest again."

Grave stare from the captain, whose mighty jaws cease
to work, and whose harpooned potato stops in mid-air on
its way to his open paralyzed mouth. Presently says he
in measured tones, " Is it your idea that the engineer of
this ship propels her by a crank turned by his own
hands?"

The pale young man studies over this a moment, then
lifts up his guileless eyes, and says, " Don't he ? "

Thus gently falls the death-blow to further conversa-
tion, and the dinner drags to its close in a reflective silence,
disturbed by no sounds but the murmurous wash of the
sea and the subdued clash of teeth.

After a smoke and a promenade on deck, where is no
motion to discompose our steps, we think of a game of
whist. We ask the brisk and capable stewardess if there
are any cards in the ship.

" Bless your soul, dear, indeed there is. Not a whole
pack, true for ye, but not enough missing to signify."

However, I happened by accident to bethink me of a
new pack in a morocco case, in my trunk, which I had

■I I — W^MIPI—

'■■ A

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

placed there by mistake, thinking it to be a flask of some-
thing. So a party of us conquered the tedium of the even-
ing with a few games and were ready for bed about six
bells, mariner's time, the signal for putting out the lights.

There was much chat in the smoking-cabin on the ui)per
deck after luncheon to-day, mostly whaler yarns from
those old sea-captains. Captain Tom Bowling was garru-
lous. He had that garrulous attention to minor detail
which is born of secluded farm life oi life at sea on long-
voyages, where there is little to do and time no object.
He would sail along till he was right in the most exciting-
part of a yarn, and then say, " Well, as I was- saying, the
rudder was fouled, ship driving before the gale, head-on,
straight for the iceberg, all hands holding their breath,
turned to stone, top-hamper giving way, sails blown to
ribbons, first one stick going, then another, boom ! smash !
crash ! duck your head and stand from under ! when up
comes Johnny Rogers, capstan bar in hand, eyes a-blazing,
hair a-flying . . . no 't wasn't Johnny Rogers . . .
let me see . . . seems to me Johnny Rogers wa'n't
along that voyage ; Le was along one voyage, I know that
mighty well, but somehow it seems to me that he signed
the articles for this voyage, but — but — whether he come
along or not, or got left, or something happened " —

And so on and so on, till the excitement all cooled down
and nobody cared whether the ship struck the iceberg or
not.

In the course of his talk he rambled into a criticism
upon New England degrees of merit in ship-building.
Said he, " You get a vessel built away down Maine-way ;
Bath, for instance ; what's the result ? First thing you

>»;

:;*

■J

'.'■...kti.i.-.-f.-i.:. ,.j, .— .■..:i4J.J.a..L.tk^i,...--,.-^:, -iili iMfiili

^itUtlltt

■■•■

■^l

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

do, you want to heave her down for repairs, — ikaUB the
result ! Well, sir, she hain't been down a week till you
can heave a dog through her seams. You send that ves-
sel to sea, and what's the result ? She wets her oakum
the first trip ! Leave it to any man if 't ain't so. Well,
you let our folks build you a vessel — down New Bedford
way. What's the result ? Well, sir, you might take that
ship and heave her down, and keep her hove down six
months, and she'll never shed a tear ! "

Everybody, landsmen and all, recognised the descrip-
tive neatness of that figure, and applauded, which greatly
pleased the old man. A moment later, the meek eyes of
the pale young fellow heretofore mentioned came up
slowly, rested upon the old man's face a moment, and the
meek mouth began to open.

" Shet your head ! " shouted the old mariner.

It was a rather startling surprise to everybody, but it
was eft'ective in the matter of its purpose. So the conver-
sation flowed on instead of perishing. r

There was some talk about the perils of the sea, and a
landsman delivered himself of the customary nonsense
about the poor mariner wandering in far oceans, tempest-
tossed, pursued by dangers, every storm blast and thunder-
bolt in the home skies moving the friends by snug firesides
to compassion for that poor mariner, and prayers for his
succour. Captain Bowling put up with this for a while,
and then burst out with a new view of the matter.

" Come, belay there ! I have read this kind of rot all

my life in poetry and tales and such like rubbage. Pity

for the poor mariner 1 sympathy for the poor mariner !

All right enough, but not in the way the poetry puts it.
- B

AN IDLE EXCUKHION.

Pity for the mariner's wife ! all right a«,fain, but not in
the way the poetry puts it. Look-a-here ! whose life's
the safest in the whole world i Tlie poor mariners. You
look at the statistics, you'll see. So don't you fool away
any sympathy on the poor mariner's dangers and priva-
tions and sufferings. Leave tliat to the poetry nmtis.
Now you look at the other side a minute. Here is Cap-
tain Brace, forty years old, been at sea thirty. On his
way now to take command of his ship and sail south from
Bermuda. Next week he'll be under way : easy times,
comfortable quarters ; passengers, sociable company ; just
enough to do to keep his mind healthy and not tire him ;
king over his ship, boss of everything and everybody ;
thirty years' safety to learn him that his profession ain't
a dangerous one. Now you look back atj^his home. His
wife's a feeble woman ; she's a stranger in New York ;
shut up in blazing hot or freezing cold lodgings, according
to the season ; don't know anybody hardly ; no company
but her lonesomeness and her thoughts ; husband gone
six months at a time. She has borne eight children ; live
of them she has buried without her husband ever setting
eyes on them. She watched them alFthe long'nights till
they died, — he comfortable on the sea ; she followed them
to the grave, she heard t'^e ciods fall that broke her heart,
— he comfortable on the sea ; she mourned at home, weeks
and weeks, missing them every day and every hour, — he
cheerful at sea knowing nothing about it. Now look at
it a minute, — turn it over in vour mind and size it : five
children born, she among strangers, and him not by to
hearten her ; buried, and him not by to comfort her ;
think of that ! Sympathy for the poor mariner's perils is

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

rot ; givo it to his wife's hard lines, where it belongs !
Poetry makes out that all the wife worries about is the
danger her husband's running. She's got substantialer
things to worry over, I tell you. Poetry's always pitying
the poor mariner on account of his perils at sea ; better a
blamed sight pity him for the nights ho can't sleep for
thinking of how he had to leave his wife in her very birth
pains, lonesome and friendless, in the thick of disease and
trouble and death. If there's one thing that can make
me madder than another, it's this sappy, damned maritime
poetry ! "

Captain Brace was a patient, gentle, seldom-speaking
man, with a pathetic something in his bronzed face that
had been a mystery up to this time, but stood interpreted
now, since we had heard his story. He had voyaged
eighteen times to the Mediterranean, seven times to India,
once to the Arctic pole in a discovery ship, and " between
times " had visited all the remote seas and ocean corners
of the globe. But he said that twelve years ago, on
account of his family, he " settled down," and ever since
then had ceased to roam. And what do you suppose was
this simple-hearted, life-long wanderer's idea of settling
down and ceasing to roam ? Why, the making of two five-
month voyages a year between Surinam and Boston for
sugar and molasses.

Among other talk, to-day, it came out that whale-ships
carry no doctor. The captain adds the doctorship to his
own duties. He not only gives medicines, but sets broken
limbs after notions of his own, or saws them off and sears
the stump when amputation seems best. T^e captain is
provided with a medicine chest, with the medicines num-

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

berod instead of named. A book of directionH goes with
this. It descri))es diseases and symptoms, and says,
" Give a tcaspoonful of No. 9 once an hour," or *' Give teri
grains of No. 12 every half-hour," etc. One of our sen-
captains came across a skipper in the North Paciilo who
was in a state of great surprise and perplexity. S./i 1 he :

" There's something rotten about this niudicine-chest
business. One of my men was sick, — nothing much the
matter. I looked in the book : it said, give him a tea-
spoonful of No. 15. I went to the medicine-chest, and I
see I was out of No. 15. I judged I'd got to get ^up a
combination somehow that would fill the bill ; so I hove
into the fellow L.dl'a teaspoonful of No. 8 and half a tea-
flpoonful of No. 7, and I'll be hanged if it didn't kill him
in fifteen minutes ! There's something about this medi-
cine-chest system that's too many for me ! "

There was a good deal of pleasant gossip about old
Captain " Hurricane '' Jones, of the Pacific Ocean, — peace
to his ashes ! Two or three of us present had known him ;
I, particularly, well, for I had T»:fidt> four sea- voyages
with him. He u as a very remP"kiih!<. rian. !^T > ^^^j
bom in a ship ; he picked up wl '".. uie education he had
among his shipmates ; he began life in the forecastle, and
climbed grade by grade to the captaincy. More than fifty
vears of his sixty-five were spent at sea. He had sailed
Jl , seans, jcen all lands, and borrowed a tint from all
dimates. When a man has been fifty years at sea, he
jieeessarily knows nothing of men, nothing of the world
but its surface, nothing of the world's thought, nothing of
the world's learning but its A. B. C, and that blurred and/
distorted by the unfocused lenses of an untrained mind.

AS IDLE KXCURSTON.

Sucli a man iy only a gray and bc^ardod child This is
wliat old Hurricane JoncH whs, — simply an iuiit v nt, lov*
able old infant. When his spirit was in rep, <He he ^rmmi
Hwoet and yontlo as a girl ; whun his wrath wai- up h vva*
u hurricane that made his nickname seeui tamel' desi ip-
tive. Ho was forniidal>le in a fight, for he \ as ot oweii^'ul
build and dauntless coiragc He was frcscoeifl h* n
head to heel with picturt ^ and mottoes tatooedwi re ojkI
blue India ink. I was u th him one voyage wIkjd gut
his last vacant space tat roocd ; this vacant spa^ >vas
around his left ankle, durin ; three days he stumped n »ut
the ship with his ankle bare and 8woll(m, and this 1( id
gleaming red and angry out from a cloudinjji of Indiji k. :
" Virtue is its own R'd." (There was a laick of rin i.)
He was deeply and sincerely | 'ious, and swore like at
woman. He considered sw aring blameless, becav_^
sailors would not understand an order unillumined by i4.
He was a }irofound Biblical scliolar, — that is, he thought
he was. He believed everything in the Bible, but he had
his own methods of arriving at his beliefs. He was of
the "advanced " school of think '^rs, and applied natural
laws to the interpretation of all miracles, somewhat on the
plan of the people who make the six days of creation six
geological epochs, and so forth. Without being aware of
it, he was a rather severe satirt- on modern scientific
religionists. Such a man as I have been describing is
rabidly fond of disquisition and argument; one knows
that without being told it.

One trip the captain had a clergyman on board, but did
not know he was a clergyman, since the passenger list
did not betray the fact. He took a great liking to this

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

Rev. Mr. Peters, and talked with hini a great deal : told
him yarns, gave him toothsome scraps of personal history,
and wove a glittering streak of profanity through his
garrulous fabric that was refreshing to a spirit weary of
the dull neutralities of undecorated speech. One day the
captain said, " Peters, do you ever read the Bible ?"

"Well— yes."

" I judge it ain't often, by the way you say it. Now,
you tackle it in dead earnest once, and you '11 find it '11
pay. Don't you get discouraged, but hang right on.
First, you won't understand it ; but by and by, things
will begin to clear up, and then you wouldn't lay it down
to eat."

" Yes, I have heard that said."

" And it's so, too. There ain't a book that begins with
it. It lays over 'em all, Peters. There's some pretty
tough things in it, — there ain't any getting around that,
— but you stick to them and think them out, and when
once you get on the inside everything's plain as day."

" The miracles, too captain ? "

"Yes, sir ! the miracles, too. Every one of them. Now,
there's that business with the prophets of Baal ; like
enough that stumped you ? "

" Well, I don't know, but "—

" Own up, now ; it stumped you. Well, I don't wonder.
You hadn't had any experience in raveling such things
out, and naturally it was too many for you. Would you
like to have me explain that thing to you, and show you
how to get at the meat of these matters ?"

" Indeed, I would, captain, if you don't mind."

Then the captain proceeded as follows : " I'll do it with

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

pleasure. First, you see, I read and read, and thought
and thought, till I got to understand what sort of people
they were in the old Bible times, and then after that it
was all clear and easy. Now, this was the way I put it
up, concerning Isaac* and the prophets of Baal. There
was some mighty sharp men amongst the public characters
of that old ancient day, and Isaac was one of them. Isaac
had his failings, — plenty of them, too ; it ain't for me to
apologize for Isaac ; he played it on the prophets of Baal,
and like enough he was justifiable considering the odds
that was against him. No, all I say is, 'twa'iit any mira-
cle, and that I'll show you so's't you can see it yourself.

" Well, times had. been getting rougher and rougher for
prophets, — thatis, prophets of Isaac's denomination. There
was four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal in the com-
munity, and only one Presbyterian ; that is, if Isaac was
a Presbyterian, which I reckon he was, but it don't say.
Naturally, the prophets of Baal took all the trade. Isaac
was pretty low-spirited, I reckon, but he was a good deal
of a man, and no doubt he went a-prophesying around,
letting on to be doing a land-office business, but 't wa'nt
any use; he couldn't run any opposition to amount to any-
thing. By and by things got desperate with him ; he sets
his head to work and thinks it all out, and then what does
he do ? Why, he begins to throw out hints that the other
parties are this and that and t'other, — nothing very definite,
may be, but just kind of undermining their reputation in
a quiet way. This made talk, of course, and finally got to
the king. The king asked Isaac what he meant by his
talk. Says Isaac, ' Oh, nothing particular ; only can they

* This is the captain's own mistake.

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

i ',

pray down fire from heaven on an altar ? It ain't much,
may be, your majesty, only can they do it ? That's the
idea.' So the king wns a good deal disturbed, and he
went to the prophets of Baal, and they said, pretty airy,
that if he liad an altar ready, they were ready ; and they
intimated that he had better get it insured, too.

" So next morning all the children of Israel and their
parents and the other people gathered themselves together.
Well, here was that great crowd of prophets of Baal
packed together on one side, and Isaac walking up and
down all alone on the other, putting up his job. When
time was called, Isaac let on to be comfortable and indif-
ferent ; told the other team to take the first innings. So
they went at it, the whole four hundred and fifty, pray-
ing around the altar, very hopeful, and doing their level
best. They prayed an hour, — two hours, — three hours, —
and so on, plumb till noon. It wa'n't any use ; they
hadn't took a trick. Of course they felt kind of ashamed
before all those people, and well they might. Now, what
would a magnanimous man do ? Keep still, wouldn't he ?
Of course. What did Isaac do ? He graveled the prophets
of Baal eveiy way he could think of. Says he, ' You
don't speak up loud enough ; your god's asleep, like
enough, or may be he's taking a walk ; you want to holler,
you know ', — or words to that effect ; I don't recollect the
exact language. Mind, I don't apologize for Isaac ; he
had his faults.

" Well., the prophets of Baal prayed along the best they
knew how all the afternoon, and never raised a spark . At
last, about sundown, they were all tuckered out, and they
owned up and quit.

■

- 1

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

" What does Isaac do, now ? He steps up and says to
some friends of his, there, ' Pour four barrels of water on
the altar !' Everybody was astonished ; for the other side
prayed at it dry, you know, and got whitewashed. They
poured it on. Says he, * Heave on four more barrels.'
Then he says, ' Heave on four more.' Twelve bar-
rels, you see, altogether. The water ran all over the
altar, and all down the sides, and filled up a trench around
it that would hold a couple of hogsheads, — ' measures,' it
says ; I reckon it means about a hogshead. Some of the
peo])le were going to put on their things and go, for they
allowed he was crazy. They didn't know Isaac. Isaac
knelt down and began to pray : he strung along, and
strung along, about the heathen in distant lands, and
about the sister churches, and about the state and the
country at large, and about those that's in authority in
the government, and all the usual programme, you know,
till everybody had got tired and gone to thinking about
something else, and then all of a sudden, when nobody
was noticing, he outs with a match and rakes it on the
under side of his leg, and pff ! up the whole thing blazes
like a house afire ! Twelve barrels of luater ? Petroleum^
Sir, PETROLEUM ! that's what it was !"

" Petroleum, captain ? "

" Yes, Sir ; the country was full of it. Isaac knew all
about that. You read the Bible. Don't you worry about
the tough places. They ain't tough when you come to
think them out and throw light on them. There ain't a
thing in the Bible but what is true ; all you want is to go
prayerfully to work and cipher out how 'twas done."

At eight o'clock on the third morning out from New

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

York, land was sighted. Away across the sunny waves one
saw a faint dark stripe stretched along under the horizon
— or pretended to see it, for the credit of his eye-sight.
Even the Reverend said he saw it, a thing which was
manifestly not so. But I never have seen any one who was
morally strong enough to confess that he could not see
land when others claimed that they could.

By and by the Bermuda Islands were easily visible. The
principal one lay upon the water in the distance, a long,
dull-coloured body, scalloped with slight hills and valleys.
We could not go straight at it, but had to travel all the
way around it, sixteen miles from shore, because it is
fenced with an invisible coral reef. At last we sighted
buoys, bobbing here and there, and then we glided into a
narrow channel among them, " raised the reef," and came
upon shoaling blue water that soon further shoaled into
pale green, with a surface scarcely rippled. Now came the
resurrection hour: the berths gave up their dead. Who
are these pale spectres in plug hats and silken flounces
that file up the companion-way in melancholy procession
and step upon the deck ? These are they which took the
infallible preventive of sea-sickness in New York harbour
and then disappeared and were forgotten. Also there came
two or three faces not seen before until this moment.
One's impulse is to ask, " Where did you come aboard ? "

We followed the narrow channel a long time, with land
on both sides — low hills that might have been green and
grassy, but had a faded look instead. However, the land-
locked water was lovely, at any rate, with its glittering
belts of blue and green where moderate soundings were,
and its broad splotches of rich brown where the rocks

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

lay near the surface. Everybody was feeling so well that
even the grave, pale young man (who, by a sort of kindly
common consent, had come latterly to be referred to as
" the Ass") received frequent and friendly notice — which
was right enough, for there was no harm in him.

At last we steamed between two island points whose
rocky jaws allowed only just enough room for the vessel's
body, and now before us loomed Hamilton on her clus-
tered hill-sides and summits, the whitest mass of terraced
architecture that exists in the world perhaps.

It was Sunday afternoon, and on the pier were gathered
one or two hundred Bermudians, half of them black, half
of them white, and all of them nobbily dressed, as the poet
says.

Several boats came off to the ship, bringing citizens.
One of these citizens was a faded, diminutive old gentle-
man, who approached our most ancient passenger with a
childlike joy in his twinkling eyes, halted before him,
folded his arms, and said, smiling with all his might and
with all the simple delight that was in him, " You don't
know me, John ! Come, out with it, now ; you know you
don't!"

The ancient passenger scanned him perplexedly, scan-
ned the napless, threadbare costume of venerable fashion
that had done Sunday-service no man knows how many
years, contemplated the marvellous stove-pipe hat of still
more ancient and venerable pattern, with its poor pathe-
tic old stiff brim canted up " gallusly" in the wrong places
and said, with a hesitation that indicated strong internal
effort to " place " the gentle old apparition, " Why . . .
let me see . . . plague on it . . . there's something

I' I

^w<

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

about you that . . . er . . . er . . . but I 'v^e been
gone from Bermuda for twenty-seven years, and . . .
hum, hum ... I don't seem to get at it, somehow, but
there's something about you that is just as familiar to me

" Likely it might be his hat," murmured the Ass, with
sympathetic interest.

li'uUliO'

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

CHAPTER III.

the Reverend and I had at last arrived at Hamil-
ton, the principal town in the Bermuda Islands. A
wonderfully white town; white as snow itself.
White as marble ; white as flour. Yet looking like none
of these, exactly. Never mind, we said ; we shall hit
uopn a figure by and by that will describe this peculiar
white.

It was a town that was compacted together upon the
sides and tops of a cluster of small hills. Its outlying
borders fringed oft' and thinned away among the cedar
forests, and there was no woody distance of curving coast,
or leafy islet sleeping upon the dimpled, painted sea, but
was flecked with shining white points — half-concealed
houses peeping out of the foliage.

The architecture of the town was mainly Spanish, in-
herited from the colonists of two hundred and fifty years
ago. Some ragged-topped cocoa-palms, glimpsed here and
there, gave the land a tropical aspect.

There was an ample pier of heavy masonry; upon this,
under shelter, were some thousands of barrels containing
that product which has carried the fame of Bermuda to
many lands — the potato. With here and there an onion.
That last sentence is facetious; for they grow at least two
onions in Bermuda to one potato. The onion is the pride
and joy of Bermuda. It is her jewel, her gem of gems. In
her conversation, her pulpit, her literature, it is her most

I !

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

frequent and eloquent %urc. In Bermudian metaphor it
stands for perfection — perfection absolute.

The Bermudian weeping over the departed, exhausts
praise when he says, ' He was an onion !' The Bermudian
extolling the living hero, bankrupts applause when he
says, ' He is an onion! ' The Bermudian setting his son
upon the stage of life to dare and do for himself, climaxes
all counsel, supplication, admonition, comprehends all am-
bition, when he says, ' Be an onion ! '

When parallel with the pier, and ten or fifteen steps out-
side it, we anchored. It was Sunday, bright and sunny.
The groups upon the pier, men, youths, and boys, were
whites and blacks in about equal proportion. All were
well and neatly dressed, many of them nattily, a few of
them very stylishly. One would have to travel far before
he would find another town of twelve thousand inhabi-
tants that could represent itself so respectably, in the mat-
ter of clothes, on a freight-pier, without premeditation or
effort. The women and young girls, black and white, who
occasionally passed by, were nicely clad, and many were
elegantly and fashionably so. The men did not aflfeciv
summer clothing much, but the girls and women did, and
their w hite garments were good to look at, after so many
months of familiarity with sombre colours.

Around one isolated potato barrel stood four young gen-
tlemen, two black, two white, becomingly dressed, each
with the head of a slender cane pressed against his teeth,
and each with a foot propped up on the barrel. Another
young gentleman came up, looked longingly at the bar-
rel but saw no rest for his foot there. He wandered here
and there, but without result. Nobody sat upon a barrel, •

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

as is the custom of the idle in other lands, yet all the iso-
lated barrels were humanly cecupied. Whosoever had a
foot to spare put it on a barrel, if all the places on it v/ere
not already taken. The habits of all peoples are deter-
mined by their circumstances. Tlie Bermudian:j lean upon
barrels because of the scarcity of lamp-posts.

Many citizens came on board and spoke eagerly to the
officers — inquiring about the Turco-Russian war news, I
supposed. However, by listening judiciously, I found
that this was not so. They said, ' What is the price of
onions ? ' or, ' how is onions ? ' Naturally enough this was
their first interest ; but they dropped into the war the
moment it was satisfied.

We went ashore and found a novelty of a pleasing na-
ture; there were no hackmen, hacks, or omnibuses on the
pier or about it anywhere, and nobody offered his services
to us, 01 molested us in any way. I said it was like being
in heaven. The Reverend rebukingly and rather point-
edly advised me to make the most of it, then. We knew
of a boarding-house, and what we needed now was some-
body to pilot us to it. Presently a little barefooted col-
oured boy came along, whose raggedness was conspicu-
ously un-Bernmdian. His rear was so marvellously be-
patched with coloured squares and triangles that one was
half persuaded he had got it out of an atlas. When the
sun struck him right, he was as good to follow as a light-
ning-bug. We hired him and dropped into his wake. He
piloted us through one picturesque street after another,
and in due course deposited us where we belonged. He
charged us nothing for his map, and but a trifle for his
services ; so the Reverend doubled it. The little chap re-

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

ceived the money with a beaming applause in his eye
which plainly said, ' This man's an onion ! '

Wo had brouifht no letters of introduction . Our names
had been misspelt in the passenger list ; nobody knew
whether we were honest folk or otherwise. So we were
expecting to have a good private time in case there was
nothing in our general aspect to close boarding-house
doors asfainst us. We had no trouble. Bei muda has had
but little experience of rascals, and is not suspicious. We
got large, cool, well-lighted rooms on a second floor, over-
looking a bloomy display of flowers and flowering shrubs
— calla and annunciation lilies, Ian tanas, heliotrope, jessa-
mine, roses, pinks, double geraviiums, oleanders, pomegra-
nates, blue morning-glories of a great size, and many
plants that were unknown to me.

We took a long afternoon walk, and soon found out
that that exceedingly white town was built of blocks of
white coral. Bermuda is a coral island, with a six-inch
crust of soil on top of it, and every man has a quarry on
his own premises. Everywhere you go you see square
recesses cut into the hill-sides, with perpendicular walls
unmarred by crack or crevice, and perhaps you fancy that
a house grew out of the ground there, and has been re-
moved in a single piece from the mould. If you do, you
•err. But the material for a house has been quarried there
They cut right doWn through the coral, to any depth that
is convenient — ten to twenty feet — and take it out in
gi'eat square blocks. This cutting is done with a chisel
that has a handle twelve or fifteen feet long, and is used
as one uses a crowbar when he is drilling a hole, or a
dasher when he is churning. Thus soft is this stone.

9.\

;'■ "

AN IDLE EXCURSION,

, I

)

Then with a common handsaw they saw the j^ieat blocks
into liand.some, huge bricks that are two feet long, a foot
wide, and about six inches thick. These stand loosely
piled during a month to harden ; then the work of build-
ing begins. The house is built of these blocks ; it is roofed
with broad coral slabs an inch thick, whose edges lap upon
each other, so that the roof looks like a succession of shal-
low steps or terraces ; the chimneys are built of the coral
blocks and sawed into graceful and picturesque patterns ;
the ground-floor veranda is paved with coral blocks —
built in massive panels, with broad cap-stones and heavy
gate-posts, and the whole trimmed into easy lines and
comely shape with the saw. Then they put a hard coat
of whitewash, as thick as your thumb-nail, on the fence
and all over the house, roof, chimneys, and all ; the sun
comes out and shines on this spectacle, and it is time for
you to shut your unaccustomed eyes, lest they be put out»
It is the whitest white you can conceive of, and the blind-
ingest. A Bermuda house does not look like marble ; it
is a much intenser white than that ; and besides, there is
a dainty, indefinable something else about its look that is.
not marble-like. We put in a great deal of solid talk and
reflection over this matter of trying to find a figure that
would describe the unique white of a Bermuda house, and
we contrived to hit upon it at last. It is exactly the
white of the icing of a cake, and has the same unempha-
sized and scarcely perceptible polish. The white of mar-
ble is modest and retiring compared with it.

After the house is cased in its hard scale of whitewash,
not a crack, or sign of a seam, or joining of the blocks, is
detectable, from base-stone to chimney-top ; the building

AN IDI.K KXCUUSION.

InoUsiis if it lijul liecii carved from a ,sin;;l«' Mock of stoin',
aixl the (looi-s and vviiulows .sawi'd out afterwards. A
wliiti' niarltlc liousc has a cold, toiid)-Iii<e, uiisocial»l«! look,
and takes tlie conversation out of a body and depresses
liini. Notsowitli a Bermuda house. Tliere is something
♦•xhilarating, even hilarious, about its vivid whiteness
when tlie sun plays upon it. If it be of picturescpie sliape
and graceful contour — an<l many of the Bermudian <lwell-
ings are— it will so fascinate you that you will keep your
eyes upon it until they ache. One of those clean-cut
fanciful cliimncys — too pure and white for tliis worl<l —
with one side glowing in the sun and the other touched
witli a soft shadow, is an object that will cliarm one's gaze
by the hour. I know of no other country that has chim-
neys worthy to be gazed at an<l ghjated over. One of
those snowy houses, half-concealed and half-glimpsed
through green foliage, is a pretty thing to see; and if it
takes one by surprise and suddenly, as he turns a sharp
corner of a country road, it will wring an exclamation
from him, sure.

Wherever you go, in town or country, you find those
snowy houses, and always with masses of bright-coloured
flowers about thcm,but with no vines climbing their walls ;
vines cannot take hold of the smooth, hard whitewash.
Wherever you go, in the town or along the country roads,
among little potato farms and patches or expensive coun-
try-seats, these stainless white dwellings, gleaming out
from flowers and foliage, meet you at every turn. The
least little bit of a cottage is as white and blemishless as
the stateliest mansion. Nowhere is there dirt or stench,
puddle, or hog-wallow, neglect, disorder, or lack of trim-

id*

H »

iiikitiitf.<i*l.4^'nW»*WJ W. ''.HMluWIII». I H

AN I dm: KXCUHHION.

noss and neatness. The roads, tlic streets, the dwellings,
tilt' people, the clothes, tliis neatness extends to every-
thing.;' that falls under the cyo. It is the tidiest country
in the world. And very nuich the tidiest, too,

Consi(h'rin;( these things, tlie ([uestion came up, Whore
dothe poor live ? No answer was arrived at. Tin
we agreed to leave this conundrum for future statesmen
to wrangle over.

What a bright and startling spectacle one of those blaz-
ing white count!} i)ahices, with its brown-tinted window
caps and ledges, and green shutters, and its wealth of
caressing flowers and foliage, would be in black London !
And what a gleaming surprise it would be in nearly any
American city one could mention!

Bermuda roads are made by cutting down a few inches
into the solid white coral — or a good many feet, where a
hill intrudes itself — and smoothing off the surface of the
road-bed. It is a simple and easy process. The grain of
the coral is coa*'se and porous ; the road-bed has the look
of being made of coarse white sugar. Its excessive clean-
ness and whiteness are a trouble in one way : the sun is
reflected into your eyes with such energy as you walk along
that you want to sneeze all the time. Old Captain Tom
B(3wling found another difficulty. He joined us in our
walk, but kept wandering unrestfully to the road-side.
Finally he explained. Said he, " Well, I chew, you know,
and the road's so plaguy clean,"

We walked several miles that afternoon in the bewil-
dering glare of the sun, the white roads, and the white
buildings. Our eyes got to paining us a good deal. By-
and-by a soothing, blessed twilight spread its cool balm

I,-

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

around. We looked up in pleased surprise, and saw that
it proceeded from an intensely black negro who was going
by. We answered his military salute in the grateful gloom
of his near presence, and then passed on into the pitiless
white glare again.

The coloured women whom we met usually bowed and
spoke ; so did the children. The coloured men commonly
gave the military salute. They borrowed this fashion
from the soldiers, no doubt ; England has kept a garrison
here for generations. The younger men's custom of carry-
ing small canes is also borrowed from the soldiers, I sup-
pose, who always cany a cane, in Bermuda as everywhere
else in Britain's broad dominions.

The country roads curve and wind hither and thither in
the delightfuUest way, unfolding pretty surprises at every
turn ; billowy masses of oleander that seem to float out
from behind distant projections like the pink cloud-banks
of sunset ; sudden plunges among cottages and gardens,
life and activity, followed by as sudden plunges into the
sombre twilight and stillness of the woods ; flittering
visions of white fortresses and beacon towers pictured
against the sky on remote hill-tops ; glimpses of shining
green sea caught for a moment through opening headlands
then lost again ; more woods and solitude ; and by-and-
by another turn lays bare, without warning, the full sweep
of the inland ocean, enriched with its bars of soft colour,
and graced with its wandering sails.

Take any road you please, you may depend upon it you
will not stay in it half a mile. Your road is everything
that a road ought to be : it is bordered with trees, and with
strange plants and flowers : it is shady and pleasant, or

TTUIigll] i'.li

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

sunny and still pleasant; it carries you by the prettiest
and peacef uUest and most home-like of homes, and through
stretches of forest that lie in a deep hush sometimes, and
sometimes are alive with the music of birds ; it curves
always, which is a continual promise, whereas straight
roads reveal eveiything at a glance and kill interest. Your
road is all this, and yet you will not stay in it half a mile,
for the reason that little, seductive, mysterious roads are
always branching out from it on either hand, and as these
curve sharply also and hide what is beyond, you cannot
resist the temptation to desert your own chosen road and
explore them. You are usually paid for your trouble ; con-
sequently, your walk irdand always turns out to be one of
the most crooked, involved, purposeless, and interesting
experiences a body can imagine. There is enough of va-
riety. Sometimes you are in the level open, with marshes
thick grown with flag-lances that are ten feet high on the
one hand, and potato and onion orchards on the other ;
next, you are on a hill-top, with the ocean and the Islands
spread around you ; presently, the road winds through a
deep cut shut' in by perpendicular walls, thirty or forty
feet high, marked with the oddest and abruptest stratum
lines, suggestive of sudden and eccentric old upheavals,
and garnished with here and there a clinging adventurous
flower, and here and there a dangling vine ; and by-and-
by your way is along the sea edge, and you may look down
a fathom or two through the transparent water and watch
the diamond-like flash- and play of the light upon the
rocks and sands on the bottom until you are tired of it —
if you are so constituted as to be able to get tired of it.
You may march the country roads in maiden medita-

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

til

tion fancy free, by field and farm, for no dog will [»iunge
out at you from unsuspected gate, with breath-taking sur-
prise and ferocious bark, notwitlistanding it is a Christian
hmd and a civilized. We saw upwards of a million cats
in Bermuda, but the people are very abstemious in the
matter of dogs. Two or three nights we prowled the
country far and wide, and never once were accosted by a
dog. It is a great privilege to visit such a land. The cats
were no oflfence when properly distributed, but when piled
they obstructed travel.

As we entered the edge of the town that Sunday after-
noon, we stopped at a cottage to get a drink of water.
The propiietor, a middle-aged man with a good face, asked
us to sit down and rest. His dame brought chairs, and we
grouped ourselves in the shade of the trees by the dooi-.
Mr. Smith — that was not his name, but it will answer —
questioned us about ourselves and our country, and we
answered him truthfully, as a general thing, and ques-
tioned him in return. It was all very simple and pleasant
and sociable. Rural, too ; for there was a pig and a small
donkey and a hen anchored out, close at hand, b}' cords to
their legs, on a spot that purported to be grassy. Presently
a woman passed along, and although she coldly said nothing,
she changed the drift of our talk. Said Smith :

" She didn't look this way, you noticed ? Well, she is
our next neighbour on one side, and there's another family
that's our next neighbours on the other side ; but there's
a general coolness all round now, and we don't speak.
Yet these three families, one generation and another, have
lived here side by side and been as friendly as w^eaverx
for a hundred and fifty years, till about a year ago."

wttmsm

AiN IDLE KXCURSION.

" Why, what calamity could have been powerful enough
to break up so old a friendship ? "

" Well, it was too bad, but it couldn't be helped. It
happened like this : About a year or more ago, the rats
got to pestering my place a good deal, and I set up a steel-
trap in the back yard. Both of these neighboui's lun
considerable to cats, and so I warned them about the
trap, because their cats were pretty sociiiMe around here
nights, and they might get into trouble without n:y in-
tending it. Well, they shut up their cats for a while,
but you know how it is with people ; they got careless,
a,nd sure enough one night the trap took Mrs. Jones's
principal tom-cat into camp, and finished him up. In
the morning Mrs. Jones comes here with the corpse in her
arms, and cries and takes on the same as if it was a chihl.
It was a cat by the name of Yelveiton — Hector G. Yel-
verton — a troublesome old rip, with no more principle
than an Injun, though you couldn't make her believe it.
I said all a man could to comfort her, but no, nothing
would do but I nuist pay for him. Finally, I said I
warn't investing in cats now as much as I was, and with
that she walked off in a huff, carrying the remains with
her. That closed our intercourse with the Joneses. Mrs.
Jones joined another church and took her tribe with her.
She said she would not hold fellowship with assassins.
Well, by and by comes Mrs. Brown's turn — she that went
by here a minute ago. She had a disgraceful old yellow
cat that she thought as \nuch of as if he was twins, and
one night he tried that trap on his neck, and it fitted him
so, and was so sort of satisfactory, that he laid down and

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

curled up and stayed with it. Such was the end of Sir
John Baldwin."

" Was that the name of the cat ? "

" The same. There's cats around here with names
that would surprise you. Maria" to his wife — "what
was that cat's name that eat a keg of ratsbane by mistake
over at Hooper's, and started home and got struck by
lightning and took the blind staggers and fell in the well
and was most drowned before they could fish him out ? "

" That was that coloured Deacon Jackson's cat. I only
remember the last end of its name, which was To-be-or-
not-to-be-that-is-the-question-Jackson."

" Sho, that ain't the one. That's the one that eat up an
entire box of Seidlitz powders, and then hadn't any more
judgment than to go and take a drink. He was con-
sidered to be a great loss, but I never could see it. Well,
no matter about the names. Mrs. Brown wanted to be
reasonable, but Mrs. Jones wouldn't let her. She put her
up to going to law for damages. So to law she went, and
had the face to claim seven shillings and sixpence. It
made a great stir. All the neighbours went to court;
everybody took sides. It got hotter and hotter, and broke
up all the friendships for thrae hundred yards around —
friendships that had lasted for generations and generations.

" Well, I proved by eleven witnesses that the cat was
of a low character and very ornery, and warn't worth a
cancelled postage-stamp, any way, taking the average of
cats here; but I lost the case. What could I expect?
The system is all wrong here, and is bound to make re-
volution and bloodshed some day. You see, they give
the magistrate a poor little starvation salary, and then

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

turn him loose on the public to gouge for fees and costs
to live on. What is the natural result ? Why, he never
looks into the justice of a case — never once. All he looks
at is which client has got the money. So this one piled
the fees and costs and everything on to me. I could pay
specie, don't you see ? and he knew mighty well that if
he put the verdict on to Mrs. Brown, where it belonged,
he'd have to take his swag in currency."

" Currency ? Why, has Bermuda a currrency ? "

" Yes — onions. And they were forty per cent, discount,
too, then, because the season had been over as much as
three months. So I lost my case. I had to pay for that
cat. But the general trouble the case made was the worst
thing about it. Broke up so much good feeling. The
neighbours don't speak to each other now. Mrs. Brown
had named a child after me. So she chansjed its name
right away. She is a Baptist. Well, in the course of bap-
tising it over again, it got drowned. I was hoping we
might get to be friendly again some time or other, but of
course this drowning the child knocked that all out of the
question. It would have saved a world of heart- break
and ill blood if she had named it dry.''

I knew by the sight that this was honest. All this
trouble and all this destruction of confidence in the purity
of the bench on account of a seven-shilling lawsuit about
a cat ! Somehow, it seemed to " size " the country.

At this point we observed that an English flag had just
been placed at half mast on a building a hundred yards
away. I and my friend were busy in an instant trying
to imagine whose death, among the island dignitaries,
could command such a mark of respect as this. Then a

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

shudder shook him and me at the same moment, and I
knew that we had jumped to one and the same conclu-
sion : " The Governor has gone to England ; it is for the
British admiral ! "

At this moment Mr. Smith noticed the flajr. He said
with emotion : —

" That's on a boarding-house. I judge there's a boarder
dead."

A dozen other flags within view went to half-mast.

" It's a boarder, sure," said Smith.

" But would they half-mast the flags hei-e for a boarder,
Mr. Smith ? "

" Why certainly tht;y would, if he was dead"

That seemed to " size " the country again.

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

CHAPTER IV.

^ HE early twilight of a Sunday evening in Hamilton,
^-7, Bermuda, is an alluring time. There is just enough
of whispering breeze, fragrance of Howers, and sense of
repose to raise one's thoughts heavenward ; and just
enough amateur piano music to keep him reminded of
the other place. There are many venerable pianos in
Hamilton, and they all play at twilight. Age enlarges
and enriches the powers of some musical instruments, —
notably those of the violin, — but it seems to set a piano's
teeth on edge. Most of the music in vogue there is the
same that those pianos prattled in their innocent infancy ;
and there is something very pathetic about it when they
go over it now, in their asthmatic second childhood, drop-
ping a note here and there, where a tooth is gone.

We attended evening service at the stately Episcopal
church on the hill, where were five or six hundred people^
half of them white and the other half black, according to
the usual Bermudian proportions ; and all well dressed, —
a thing which is also usual in Bermuda Mnd to be confi-
dently expected. There was good music, which we heard,
and doubtless a good sermon, but there was a wonderful
deal of coughing, and so only the high parts of the argu-
ment carried over it. As we came out after service, I
overheard one young girl say to another, —

" Why you don't mean to say you pay duty on gloves
and laces ! I only pay postage ; have them done up and
sent in the Boston Advertiser."

•48

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

There ai'e those who believe that the most difficult
thing to create is a woman who can comprehend that it
is wrong to smuggle ; and that an impossible thing to
create is a woman who will not smuggle, whether or no,
when she gets a chance. But these may be errors.

We went wandering off toward the country, and were
soon far down in the lonely black depths of a road that
was roofed over by the dense foliage of a double rank of
great cedars. There was no sound of any kind there ; it
was perfectly still. And it was so dark that one could
detect nothing but sombre outlines. We strode farther and
farther down this tunnel, cheering the way with chat.

Presently the chat took this shape : — " How insensibly
the character of a people and of a government makes its
impression upon a stranger, and gives him a sense of se-
curity or of insecurity without his taking deliberate
thought upon the matter or asking anybody a question !
We have been in this land half a day ; we have seen none
bnt honest faces ; we have noticed the British flag flying*
which means efficient government and good order ; so
without inquiry we plunged unarmed and with perfect
confidence into this dismal place, which in almost any
other country would swarm with thugs and garroters " —

'Sh ! What was that ? Stealthy footsteps. Low voices !
We gasp, we close up together, and wait, A vague shape
glides out of the dusk and confronts us. A voice speaks
— demands money !

" A shilling, gentlemen, if you please, to help build the
new Methodist church."

Blessed sound ! Holy sound ! We contribute with
thankful avidity to the new Methodist church, and are

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

41>'

happy to think how lucky it was that those little coloured
Sunday-school scholars did not seize upon everything we
had with violence, before we recovered from our momen-
tary helpless condition. By the light of cigars we write
down the names of weightier philanthropists than our-
selves on the contribution-cards, and then pass on into
the farther darkness, saying, What sort of a government .
do they call this, where they allow little black pious child-
ren, with contribution-cards, to plunge out upon peaceable
strangers in the dark and scare them to death ?

We prowled on several hours, sometimes by the sea-side,
sometimes inland, and finally managed to get lost, which
is a feat that requires talent in Bermuda. I had on new
shoes. They were No. 7's when I started, but were not
more than 5's now, and still diminishing. I walked two
hours in those shoes after that, before we reached home.
Doubtless I could have the reader's sympathy for the ask-
ing. Many people have never had the headache or the
toothache, and I am one of those myself ; but everybody
has worn tight shoes for two or three hours, and know
the luxury of taking them off in a retired place and see-
ing his feet swell up and obscure the firmament. Few of
us will ever forget the exquisite hour we were married. ■
Once when I was callow, bashful cub, I took a plain, un-
sentimental country girl to a comedy one night. I had
known her a day ; she seemed divine ; I wore my new
boots. At the end of the first half-hour she said, " Why
do you fidget so with your feet ? " I said, " Did I ? "
Then I put my attention there and kept still. At the end
of another half hour she said, " Why do you say ' yes, oh,
yes ! ' and ' Ha, ha, oh, certainly ! very true ! ' to every-

.50

AN IDLE EXCUIISION.

ling

the

say, wlion nait tiic tuno tno.se are entirely irrele-
vant answers ? " I blushed, and explained that I had
been a little absent-minded. At the end of another half
hour she said, " Please, why do you grin so steadfastly at
vacancy, and y;'t look so sad ? " I explained that I always
did that when I was reflecting. An hour passud, and then
she turned and contemplated me with her earnest eyes
and said, " Why do you cry all the time ? " I explained
that very funny comedies always made me cry. At last
human nature surrendered, and I secretly slipped my
boots off. This was a mistake. I was not able to get
them on any more. It was a rainy night ; there were no
omnibuses going our way ; and as I walked home, burn-
ing up with shame, with the girl on one arm and my
boots under the other, I was an object worthy of some
compassion, — especially in those moments of martyrdom
when I had to pass through the glare that fell upon the
pavement from street lamps. Finally, this child of the
forest said, " Where are your boots ? " and being taken
unprepared, I put a fitting finish to the follies of the
evening with the stupid remark, " The higher classes do
not wear them to the theatre."

j. The Reverend had been an army chaplain during the
war, and while we were hunting for a road that would
lead to Hamilton he told a story about two dying soldiers
which interested me in spite of my feet. He said that in
the Potomac hospitals rough pine coffins were furnished
by government, but that it was not always possible to
keep up with the demand ; so, when a man died, if there
was no coffin at hand he was buried without one. One
night late, two soldiers lay dying in a ward. A man came

AN IDLK EXCURSION.

in with a coffin on his shouldiT, and stood trying,' to make
up his mind vvliidi of these two poor fellows would be
likely to need it first. Both of them begged for it with
their fading eyes, — they were past talking. Then one of
tliem protruded a wasted hand from his blankets and
made a feeble beckoning sign with tlie fingers, to signify,
" Be a good fellow ; put it under my bed, please." The
man di<l it, and left. The lucky soldier painfully turned
himself in his bed until he faced the other warrior, raised
himself partly on his elbow, and began to work up a mys-
terious expression of some kind in his face. Gradually,
irksomely, but surely and steadily, it developed, and at
last it took definite form as a pretty successful wink. The
sufferer fell back exhausted with his laboui-, but bathed
in glory. Now^ entered a personal friend of No. 2, the
despoiled soldier. No. 2 pleaded with him with eloquent
eyes, till presently he understood, and removed the coffin
from under No. I's bed and put it under No. 2's. No. 2
indicated his joy, and made some more signs ; the friend
understood again, and put his arm under No. 2's shoulders
and lifted him partly up. Then the dying hero turned
the dim exultation of his eye upon No. 1, and began a
slow and laboured work with his hands ; gradually he
lifted one hand up toward his face ; it grew weak and
dropped back again ; once more he made the effort, but
failed again. He took a rest ; he gathered all the rem-
nant of his strength, and this time he slowly but surely
carried his thumb to the side of his nose, spread the gaunt
fingers wide in triumph, and dropped back dead. That
picture sticks by me yet. The " situation " is unique.
The next morning, at what seemed a very early hour.

AN IDLE EXCUIISION.

^tij

the little wliitc table-waiter appeared .su<Menly in ruy
room and shot a single word out of himself : " Breakfa;«>t ! "
This was a remarkable boy in many ways. He was
about eleven years old ; ho had alert, intent black eyes ;
he was quick of movement ; there was no hesitation, no
•uncertainty about him anywhere ; there was a military
decision in his lip, his manner, his speech, that was an
astonishing thing to see in a little chap like him ; he
wasted no words ; his answers always came so quick and
brief that they seemed to be part of the ([uestion that had
been asked instead of a reply to it. When he stood at
the table with his fly-brush, rigid, erect, his face set in a
cast-iron gravity, he was a statue till he detected a dawn-
ing want in somebody's eye ; then he pounced down, sup-
plied it, and was instantly a statue again. When he was
sent to the kitchen for anything, he marched upright till
he got to the door ; he turned hand-springs the rest of
the way.

" Breakfast ! "

I thought 1 would make nne more effort to get some
conversation out of this being.

" Have you called the Reverend, or are — ?"

"Yess'r!"

" Is it early, or is— ?"

" Eight-five !"

" Do you have to do all the ' chores,' or is there some-
body to give you a 1 — "

"Coloured girl!"

this island, or are there — "

only one parish

Eight

AN IDI.K KXCl/IlsroN.

.^3

" Is the big church on the liill a parish church, or Is
it—"

" Chapol-of-oaHt! !"

" Ls taxation lioro claHHitiod into poll, parish, town,
and—"

" ])on't know !"

Before I could cudgel anotlicr ([Ue.stion out of my hea<l
he was below, hand-springinj; across the back-yard. He
liad slid down the balusters, head Hrst. I gave up trying
to provoke a discussion with him. The essential element
of discussion had been left out of him ; his answers were
80 final and exact, that they did not leave a doubt to hang
conversation on. I suspect that there is the making of a
mighty man or a mighty rascal in this boy, — according to
circumstances, — but they are going to apprentice him to
a carpenter. It is the way tlie world uses its oppor-
tunities.

During this day and the next we took carriage drives
about the island and over to the town of St. George's
fifteen or twenty miles away. Such hard, excellent roads
to drive over are not to be found elsewhere out of Europe.
An intellii(ent N'ounff coloured man drove us, and acted as
guide-book In the edge of the town we saw five or six
mountain-cabbage palms (atrocious names !) standing in a
straight row, and equidistant from each other. These
were not the largest or the tallest trees I have ever seen,
but they were the stateliest, the most majestic. That row
of them nmst be the nearest that nature has ever come to
counterfeiting a colonnade. These trees are all the same
height, say sixty feet ; the trunks as gray as granite, with
a very gradual and perfect taper, without sign of branch

AN IDIiE EXCURSION.

or knot or flaw ; the surface not looking like bark, but
like granite that has been dressed and not polished.
Thus all the way up the diminishing shaft for fifty feet ;
then it begins to take the appearance of being closely
wrapped, spool-fashion, with gray cord, or of having been
turned in a lathe. Above this point there is an outward
swell, and thence upwards for six feet or more, the cylin-
der is a bright, fresh green, and is formed of wrappings
like those of an ear of green Indian corn. Then comes
the great spraying palm plume, also green. Other palm-
trees always lean out of the perpendicular, or have a
curve in them. But the plumbline could not detect a
deflection in any individual of this stately row. They
stand as straight as the colonnade of Baal bee ; they have
its great height, they have its gracefulness, they have its
dignity ; in moonlight or twilight, and shorn of their
plumes, they would duplicate it.

The birds we came across in the country were singu-
larly tame. Even that wild creature, the quail, would
pick around in the grass at ease while we inspected it
and talked about it at leisure. A small bird of the can-
ary species had to be stirred up with the butt-end of the
whip before it would move, and then it moved only a
couple of feet. It is said that even the suspicious flea is
tame and sociable in Bermuda, and will allow himself to
be caught and caressed without misgivings. This should
be taken with allowance, for doubtless there is more or
less brag about it. In San Fraecisco they used to claim
that their native flea could kick a child over, as if it were
a merit iu a flea to be able to do that ; as if the know-

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

ledge of it trumpeted abroad ought to entice emigration.
Such a thing in nine cases out of ten would be almost
sure to deter a thinking man from coming.

We saw no bugs or reptiles to speak of, and so I was
thinking of saying in print, in a general way, that there
were none at all ; but one night after I had gone to bed,
the Reverend came into my room carrying something, and
asked, " Is this your boot ? " I said it was, and he said he
had met a spider going off with it. Next morning he
stated that just at dawn the same spider raised his win-
dow, and was coming in to get a shirt, but saw him and
fled.

I inquired, " Did he get the shirt ? "
" No."

" How did you know it was a shirt he was after ?"
" I could see it in his eye."

We inquired round, but could hear of no Bermudian
spider capable of doing these things. Citizens said that
their largest spiders could not more than spread their legs
over an ordinary saucer, and that they had always been
considered honest. Here was testimony of a clergyman
against the testimony of mere worldlings, — interested
ones, too. On the whole I judged it best to lock up my
things.

Here and there on the country roads we found lemon,
papaia, orange, lime, and fig-trees ; also several sorts of
palms, among them the cocoa, the date, and the palmetto.
We saw some bamboos forty feet high, with stems as thick
as a man's arm. Jungles of the mangrove-tree stood up
out of swamps, propped on their interlacing roots as upon

1 1

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

a tangle of stilts. In dryer places the noble tamarind sent
down its grateful cloud of shade. Here and there the
blossomy tamarisk adorned the roadside. There was a
curious gnarled and twisted black tree, without a single
leaf on it. It might have passed itself off for a dead apple-
tree, but for the fact that it had a star-like, red-hot flower
sprinkled sparsely over its pe:"son. It had the scattery
red glow that a constellation might have when glimpsed
through smoked glass. It is possible that our constella-
tions have been so constructed as to be invisible through
smoked glass ; if this is so it is a great mistake.

We saw a tree that bears grapes, and just as calmly and
unostentatiously as a vine would do it. We saw an
India-rubber tree, but out of season, possibly, so there
were no shoes on it, nor suspenders, nor anything that a
person would properly expect to find there. This gave it
an impressively fraudulent look. There was exactly one
mahogany-tree on the island. I know this to be reliable,
because I saw a man who said he had counted it many a
time, and could not be mistaken. He was a man with a
hair lip and a pure heart, and everybody said he was as
true as steel. Such men are all too few.

One's eye caught near and far the pink cloud of the
oleander and the red blaze of the pomegranate blossom.
In one piece of wild wood the morning-glory vines had
wrapped the trees to their very tops, and decorated them
all over with couples and clusters of great blue-bells, — a
fine and striking spectacle at a little distance. But the
dull cedar is everywhere, and its is the prevailing foliage.
One does not appreciate how dull it is until the varnished,

„

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

bright green attire of the infrequent lemon tree pleasantly
intrudes its contrast. In one thing Bermuda is eminently
tropical, — was in May, at least, — the unbrilliant, slightly
faded, unrejoicing look of the landscape. For forests
arrayed in a blemishless magnificence of glowing green
foliage that seems to exult in its own existence, and can
move the beholder to an enthusiasm that will make him
either shout or cry, one must go to countries that have
malignant winters.

We saw scores of coloured fanners digging their crops
of potatoes and onions, their wives and children helping,
entirely contented and comfortable, if looks go for any-
thing. We never met a man or woman or child anywhere
in this sunny island, who seemed to be unprosperous, or
discontented, or sorry about anything. This sort of mon-
otony became very tiresome presently, and even some-
thing worse. The spectacle of an entire nation grovelling
in contentment is an infuriating thing. We felt the lack
of something in this community, — a vague, an undefin-
able, an elusive something, and yet a lack. But after
considerable thought we made out what it was, — tramps.
Let them go there, right now, in a body. It is utterly
virgin soil. Passage is cheap. Every true patriot in
America will help buy tickets. Whole armies of these
excellent beings can be spared from our midst and our
polls ; they will find a delicious climate, and a green,
kind-hearted people. There are potatoes and onions for
all, and a generous welcome for the first batch that
arrives, and elegant graves for the second.

It was the Early Rose potato the people were digging.

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

^ater in the year they have another crop, -which they
call the Garnet. We buy their potatoes (retail) at fifteen
dollars a barrel ; and those coloured farmers buy ours
for a song, and live on them. Havana might exchange
cigars with Connecticut in the same advantageous way
if she thought of it.

We passed a rOi*dside grocery with a sign up, " Potatoes
Wanted." An ignorant stranger, doubtless. He could
not have gone thirty-steps from his place without finding
plenty of them.

In several fields the arrowroot crop was already sprout-
ing. Bermuda used to make a vast annual profit out of
this staple before fire-arms came into such general use.

The island is not large. Somewhere in the interior a
man ahead of us had a very slow horse. I suggested that
we had better go by him ; but the driver said the man
had but a little way to go. I waited to see wondering
how he could know. Presently the man did turn down
another road. I asked, " How did you know he would ? "

" Because I knew the man, and where he lived."

1 asked him satirically, if he knew everybody in the
island ; he answered very simply, that he did. This gives
a boy's mind a good substantial grip on the dimensions
of the place.

At the principal hotel in St. George's, a young girl, with
a sweet, serious face, said we could not be furnished with
dinner, because we had not been expected, and no prepa-
ration had been made. Yet it was still an hour before
dinner time. We argued ; she yielded not ; we suppli-
cated, she was serene. The hotel had not been expecting

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

an inundation of two people, and so it seemed that we
should have to go home dinnerless. I said we were not
very hungry ; a fish would do. My little maid answered,
it was not the market day for fish. Things began to look
serious ; but presently the boarder who sustained the
hotel came in, and when the case was laid bsfore him he
was cheerfully willing to divide. So we had much plea-
sant chat at table about St. George's chief industry, the
repairing of damaged ships ; and in between we had a
soup that had something in it that seemed to taste like
the hereafter, but it proved to be only pepper of a parti-
cularly vivacious kind. And we had an iron-clad chicken
that was deliciously cooked, but not in the right way.
Baking was not the thing to convince his sort. He ought
to have been put through a quartz mill until the " tuck "
was taken out of him, and then boiled till we came
again. We got a good deal of sport out of him, but not
enough sustenance to leave the victory on our side. No
matter ; we had potatoes and a pie and a sociable good
time. Then a ramble through the town, which is a quaint
one, with interesting crooked streets, and narrow crooked
lanes, with here and there a grain of dast. Here, as in
Hamilton, the dwellings had Venetian blinds of a very
sensible pattern. They were not double shutters, hinged
at the sides, but a single broad shutter hinged at the top ;
you push it outward, from the bottom, and fasten it at
any angle required by the sun or desired by yourself.

All about the island one sees great white scars on the
hill-slopes. These are dished spaces where the soil has
been scraped off and the coral exposed and glazed with

■

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

irr' whitewash. Some of these are a quarter-acre in
siace. They catch and carry the rain-fall to reservoirs ;
for the wells are few and poor, and there are no natural
springs and no brooks.

They say that the Bermuda climate is mild and equa-
ble, with never any snow or ice, and that one may be
very comfortable in spring clothing the year round, there.
We had delightful and decided summer weather in May,
with a flaming sun that permitted the thinnest of rai-
ment, and yet there was a constant breeze ; consequently
we were never discomfited by heat. At four or five in the
afternoon the mercury began to go down, and then it
became necessary to change to thick garments. I went
to St. George's in the morning clothed in tlie thinnest of
linen, and reached home at five in the afternoon with two
overcoats on. The nights are said to be always cool and
bracing. We had mosquito nets, and the Reverend said
the mosquitoes persecuted him a good deal. I often heard
him slapping and banging at these imaginary creatures
with as much zeal as if they had been real. There are
no mosquitoes in the Bermudas in May.

The poet Thomas Moore spent several months in Ber-
muda more than seventy years ago. He was sent out to
be registrar of the admiralty. I am not quite clear as to
the function of a registrar of the admiralty of Bermuda,
but I think it is his duty to keep a record of all the ad-
mirals born there. . I will inquire into this. There was
not much doing in admirals and Moore got tired and went
away. A reverently preserved souvenir of him is still one
of the treasures of the islands. T gathered the idea

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

vaguely, that it was a jug, but was persistently thwarted
in the tweaty-two efforts 1 made to visit it. However,
it was no matter, for I found afterwards that it was only
a chair.

There are several " sights " in the Beruuidas, of course,
but they are easily avoided. This is a great advantage
— one cannot have it in Europe. Bermuda is the right
country for a jaded man to " loaf " in. There are no har-
assments ; the deep peace and quiet of the country sink
into one's body and bones, and give his conscience a rest,
and chloroform the legion of invisible small devils that are
always trying to whitewash his hair. A good many Ame-
ricans go there al)out the first of March and remain until
the early spring weeks have finished their villainies at
home.

The Bermudas are hoping soon to have telegraphic
communication with the world. But even after they
shall have acquired this curse it will still be a good coun-
try to go to for a vacation, foi* there ai'e charming little
islets scattered about the inclosed sea where one could
live secure from interruption. The telegraph boy would
have to come in a boat, and one could easily kill him
while he was making his landing.

We had spent four days in Bermuda, — three bright
ones out of doors and one rainy one in the house, we be-
ing disappointed about gotting a yacht for a sail ; and
now our furlough was ended.

We made the run home to New York quarantine in
three days and five hours, and could have gone right
along up to the city if we had had a health permit. But

tm, Ik'

()2

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

lioaltli permits are not granted after seven in the evening,
partly because a ship cannot be inspected and overhauled
with exhaustive thoroughness except in the daylight*
and partly because health ofKcials are liable to catch cohl
if they expose themselves to the night air. Still, you
can but/ a permit after hours for five dollars extra,
and the officer will do the inspecting next week.
Our ship and passengers lay under expense and in humi-
liating captivity all night, under the very nose of the lit-
tle official reptile who is supposed to protect New York
from pestilence by his vigilant " inspections." This im-
posing rigour gave everybody a solemn and awful idea of
the beneficent watchfulness of our government, and there
were some who wondered if anything finer could be
found in other countries.

In the morning we were all a- tiptoe to witness the
intricate ceremony of inspecting the ship. But it was a
disappointing thing. The health officer's tug ranged
alongside for a moment, our purser handed the lawful
three-dollar permit fee to the health officer's boot-black,
who passed us a folded paper on a forked stick, and away
we went. The entire " inspection " did not occupy thir-
teen seconds.

The health officer's place is worth a hundred thousand
dollars a year to him. His system of inspection is per-
fect, and therefore cannot be improved on ; but it seems
to me that his system of collecting his fees might be
amended. For a gi'eat ship to lie idle all night is a most
costly loss of time ; for her passengers to have to do the
same thing works to them the same damage, with the

•i

AN IDLE EXCURSION.

addition of an amount of exasperation and bitterness
of soul tliat the spectacle of that health offi ...
... * could hardly sweeten. Now, why would it not
be better and simpler to let the ships pass in unmo-
lested, and the permits be exchanged once a year by
post ?

* When the proofs of this article came to me 1 saw that " The Atlantic "
had condemned the words which occupied the place where is now a vacancy.
I can invent no figure worthy to stand in the shoes of the lurid colossus
which a too deep respect for the opinions of mankind has thus ruthlessly
banished from his due and rightful pedestal in the world's literature. Let
the blank remain a blank ; and let it suggest to the reader that he has
sustained a precious loss which can never be made good to him, M. T,

FACTS

'CONCERNING THE RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME IN CON-
NECTICUT.

j^Tj WAS feeling blithe, almost jocund. I put a match to
(^ my cigar, and just then the morning's mail was hand-
ed in. The first superscription I glanced at was in a
handwriting that sent a thrill of pleasure through and
through me. It was Aunt Mary's ; and she was the per-
son I loved and honoured most in all the world, outside of
my own household. She had been my boyhood's idol ;
maturity, which is fatal to so many enchantments, had not
been able to dislodge her from her pedestal ; no, it had only
justified her right to be there, and placed her dethronement
permanently among the impossibilities. To show how
strong her influence over me was, I will observe that long
after everybody else's " c?o-stop-smoking " had ceased to
affect me in the slightest degree. Aunt Mary could still
stir my torpid conscience into faint signs of life when she
touched upon the matter. But all things have their limit,
in this world. A happy day came at last, when even
Aunt Mary's words could no longer move me. I was not
merely glad to see that day arrive ; I was more than glad
— I was grateful ; for when its sun had set, the one alloy
that was able to mar my enjoyment of my aunt's society
was gone. The remainder of her stay with us that winter
was in every way a deligiit. Of course she pleaded with
me just as earnestly as ever, after that blessed day, to quit

RECENT CAllNIVAL OF t'lllME.

my pernicious habit, but to no pui-poso whatever ; the
moment .she opened the subject I at once became calmly,
peacefully, contentedly indifferent — absolutely, adaman-
tinely indifferent. Consequently the closing weeks of that
memorable visit melted away as pleasantly as a dream,
they were so freighted for me^ with tramjuil satisfaction.
I could not have enjoyed my pet vice more if my gentle
tormenter had been a smoker herself, and an advocate of
the practice. Well, the sight of her handwriting reminded
me that 1 was getting very hungry to see her again. I
easily guessed what 1 should find in her letter. I opene<l
it. Good ! just as i expected ; she was coming ! Coming
this very day, too, and by the morning train; I might
expect her any moment.

I said to myself, " I am thoroughly happy and content,
now. If my most pitiless enemy could appear before me
at this moment, I would freely right any wrong I may
have done him."

Straightway the door opened, and a shrivelled shabby
dwarf ei.tered. He was not more than two feet high. Ho
seemed to be about forty years old. Every feature and
every inch of him was a trifle out of shape ; and so, while-
one could not put his finger upon any particular part
and say, " This is a conspicuous deformity," the spectator
perceived that this little person was a deformity as a
whole — a vague, general, evenly blended, nicely adjusted
deformity. There was a fox-like cunning in the face and
the sharp little eyes, and also alertness and malice. And
yet, this vile bit of human rubbish seemed to bear a sort
of remote and ill-defined resemblance to me ! It was dully
perceptible in the mean form, the countenance, and even

RECENT CAUNIVAIi OF CIUME.

the clothes, |,'o.stures, manner, and attitudes of the creature.
He was a far-fetched, dim suggestion of a })urle8que upon
me, a caricature of mo in little. One thing about hira
struck me forcibly, and most unpleasantly : ho was cover-
ed all over with a fuzzy, greenish mould, such as one
sometimes sees upon mildewed bread. The sight of it was
nauseating.

He slipped along with a chipper air, and flung himself
into a doll's chair in a very free and easy way, without
waiting to be asked. He tossed his hat into the waste
basket. He picked up my old chalk pipe from the floor
gave the stem a wipe or two on his knee, filled the bowl
from the tobacco-box at his side, and said to me in a tone
of pert command, —
"Gimme a match ! "

I blushed to the roots of my hair ; partly with indig-
nation, but mainly because it somehow seemed to me that
this whole performance was very like an exaggeration of
conduct which I myself had sometimes been guilty of in
my intercourse with familiar friends — but never, never
with strangers, I observed to myself. I wanted to kick
the pygmy into the tire, but some incomprehensible sense
of being legitimately under his authority legally and
legitimately forced me to obey his order. He applied
the match to the pipe, took a contemplated whiff or two,
and remarked in an irritating familiar way : —

" Seems to me it 's devilish odd weather for this time
of year."

• I flushed again, and in anger and humiliation as before ;
for the language was hardly an exaggeration of some that
I have uttered in ray day, and moreover was delivered in

UECENT CAKNIVAL OF CIMMK.

u tone of voico and with an r-xaspeiatin^' drawl that luid
the secniinj,' of a delihoiato travesty of luy style. Now
there is nothin<,^ I am quite ho .sensitive about as a mock-
ing imitation of my drawling infirmity of speech, I
spoke up sharply and said : —

" Look here, you miserable ash-cat ! you will have to
give a little more attention to your iiianners, or I will
throw you out of the windcw !"

The manikin smiled a smile of "jalicious content and
security, putted a whiH'of smok( ci utemptaously towards
me, ami said, with a still lu re elaborate irawl : —

" Come — go gently, now ; don't put on too many airs
with your betters. "

This cool snub rasped me all over, but it seemed to sub-
jugate me, too, for a moment. The pygmy contemplated
me awhile with weasel eyes, and then said, in a peculiarly
sneering way : —

" You turned a tramp away from your door this morn-

ing.

I saidcrui^; ^'v : —

" Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn't. How do you know ? "

" Well, I know. It is n't any matter how I know."

" Very well. Suppose I did turn a tramp away from
the door — what of it ? "

" O, nothing ; nothing in particular. Only you lied to
him."

"I didn't! That is I—"

" Yes, but you did ; you lied to him."

I felt a guilty pang — in truth I had felt it forty times
before that tramp had travelled a block from my door^ —

RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME.

but still I resolved to make a show of feeling slandered ;
so I said : —

" This is baseless impertinence. I said to the tramp — "
" There — wait. You were about to lie again. / know
what you said to him. You said the cook was gone down
town and there was nothing left from breakfast. Two
lies. You knew the cook was behind the door and plenty
of provisions behind her!'

This astonishing accuracy silenced me ; and it filled me
with wondering speculations, too, as to how this oub could
have got his information. Of course he could have culled
the information from the tramp, but by what sort of
magic had he contrived to find out about the concealed
cook ? Now the dwarf spoke again : —

" It was rather pitiful, rather small, in you to refuse to
read that poor young woman's manuscript the other day,
and give your opinion as to its literary value ; and she
had come so far, too, and so hopefully. Now wasn't it ? "
I felt like a cur ! And I had felt so every time the
thing had recurred to my mind, I may as well confess. I
flushed hotly and said : —

" Look here, have you nothing better to do than prowl
around prying into other people's business ? Did that
girl tell you that ? "

" Never mind whether she did or not. The main thina*
is, you did that contemptible thing. /Vnd you felt ashamed
of it afterwards. Aha ! you feel ashamed of it now ! "

This with a sort of devilish glee. With a fiery earnest-
ness I responded : —

" I told that girl in the kindest gentlest way that I
could not consent to deliver judgment upon any one's

RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME.

■tm

manuscript, because an individual's verdict was woi'thless.
It might underrate a work of high merit and lose it to the
world, or it might overrate a trashy production and so
open the way for its infliction upon the world. I said
that the great public was the only i.ibunal competent to
sit in judgment upon a literary effort, and therefore it
must be best to lay it before that tribunal in the outset,
since in the end it must stand or fall by that mighty
court's decision any way."

" Yes, you said all that. So you did, you juggling,
small-souled shuffler ! And yet when the happy hopeful-
ness fadod out of that poor girl's face, when you saw her
furtively slip beneath her shawl the scroll she had so pa-
tiently and honestly scribbled at, — so ashamed of her
darling now, so proud of it before, — when you saw the
gladness go out of her eyes and the tears come there,
when she crept away so humbly who had come so — "

" O, peace ! peace ! peace ! Blister your merciless
tongue, haven't all these thoughts tortm^ed me enough,
without your coming here to fetch them back again ? "

Remorse ! remorse ! It seemed to me that it would

eat the very heart out of me ! And yet that small fiend

only sat there leering at me with joy and contempt, and

placidly chuckling. Presently he began to speak again.

Every sentence was an accusation, and every accusation

a truth. Every clause was freighted with sarcasm and

derision, every slow-dropping word burned like vitriol.

The dwarf reminded me of times when I had flown at

my children in anger and punished them for faults which

a little inquiry would have taught me that others, and

not they, had committed. He reminded me of how I had
E

RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME.

disloyally allowed old friends to be traduced in my hear-
ing, and been too craven to utter a word in their defence.
He reminded me of many dishonest things which I had
done; of many which I had procured to be done by
children and other irresponsible persons ; of some which
I had planned, thought upon, and longed to do, and been
kept from the performance by fear of consequences only.
With exquisite cruelty he recalled to my mind, item by
item, wrongs and unkindnesses I had inflicted and hu-
miliations I had put upon friends since dead, " who died
thinking of those injuries, maybe, and grieving over
them," he added, by way of poison to the stab.

" For instance," said he, " take the case of your younger
brother, when you two were boys together, many a long-
year ago. He always lovingly trusted in you with a
fidelity that your manifold treaoiwries were not able to
shake. He followed you about like a dog, content to
suffer wrong and abuse if he might only be with you ;
patient under these injuries so long as it was your hand
that inflicted them. The latest picture you have of him
in health and strength must be such a comfort to you !
You fledged your honour that if he would let you blind-
fold him no harm should come to him ; and then, giggling
and choking over the rare fun of the joke, you led him
to a brook thinly glazed with ice, and pushed him in ;
and how you did laugh ! Man, you will never forget the
gentle, reproachful look he gave you as he struggled
shivering out, if you live a thousand years ! Oho ! you
see it now, you see it now ! "

" Beast, I have seen it a million times, and shall see it
a million more ! and may you rot away piecemeal, and

'!»

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KECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME.

i»

/'I

suffer till doomsday what I suffer now for bringing it
back to me again ! "

The dwarf chuckled contentedly, and went on with his
accusing history of my career. I dropped into a moody,
vengeful state, and suffered in silence under the merciless
lash. At last this remark of his gave me a sudden
rouse : —

" Two months ago, on a Tuesday, you woke up, away
in the night, and fell to thinking, with shame, about a
peculiarly mean and pitiful act of yours toward a poor
ignorant Indian in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains in
the winter of eighteen hundred and — "

" Stop a moment, devil ! Stop ! Do you mean to tell
me that even my very thoughts are not hidden from you ? "

" It seems to look like that. Didn't you think the
thoughts I have just mentioned ? "

" If I didn't, I wish I may never breathe again ! Look
here, friend — look me in the eye. Who are you 1 "

" Well, who do you think ? "

" I think you are Satan himself. I think you are the
devil."

" No."

" No ? Then who can you be ? "

" Would you really like to know ? "

" Indeed I would."

" Well, I am your Conscience ! "

In an instant I was in a blaJie of joy and exultation
sprang at the creature, roaring, —

" Curse you, I have wished a hundred million times
that you were tangible, and that I could get my hands on

i j

llECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME.

your throat once ! 0, but I will wreak a deadly ven-

li I

geance on-

Folly! Lii^hh ing does not move more quickly than
my Conscience did ! He darted aloft so suddenly that in
the moment my fingers clutched the empty air he was al-
ready perched on the top of the high bookcase, with his
thumb at his nose in token of derision. I flung the poker
at him, and missed. I fired the bootjack. In a blind
rage I flew from place to place, and snatched and hurled
any missile that came handy; the storm of books, ink-
stands, and chunks of coal gloomed the air and beat about
the manikin's perch relentlessly, but all to no purpose ;
the nimble figure dodged every shot ; and not only that»
but burst into a cackle of sarcastic and triumphant laugh-
ter as I sat down exhausted. While I puffed and gasped
with fatigue and excitement, my Conscience talked to this
eSbct : —

" My good slave, you are curiously witless — no, I mean
characteristically so. In truth, you are always consistent,
always yourself, always an ass. Otherwise it must have
occurred to you that if you attempted this murder with a
sad heart and a heavy conscience, I would droop under
the burdening influence instantly. Fool, I should have
weighed a ton, and could not have budged from the floor ;
but instead, you are so cheerfully anxious to kill me that
your conscience is as light as a feather ; hence I am away
up here out of your reach. I can almost respect a mere
ordinary sort of fool ; but yovu — ^pah ! "

I wovld have given anything, then, to be heavy-
hearted, so that I could get this person down from there
and take his life, but I could no more be heavy-hearted

t^t

RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME.

^i*^

over such a desire than I could have sorrowed over iis
accomplishment. So I could only look longingly up at
my master, and rave at the ill-luck that denied me a
heavy conscience the one only time that I had ever warted
such a thing in my life. By and by I got to musing over
the hour's strange adventure, and of course my human
curiosity began to work. I set myself to framing in my
mind some questions for this fiend to answer. Just then
one of my boys entered, leaving the door open behind
him, and exclaimed, —

" My ! what has been going on, here ! The bookcase is
all one riddle of — "

I sprang up in consternation, and shouted, —

" Out of this ! Hurry ! Jump ! Fly ! Shut the door !
Quick, or my Conscience will get away ! "

The door slammed to, and I locked it. I glanced up
and was grateful, to the bottom of my heart, to see that
my owner was still my prisoner. I said, —

" Hang you, I might have lost you ! Children are the
heedlessest creatures. But look here, friend, the boy did
not seem to notice you at all ; how is that ? "

" For a very good reason. I am invisible to all but
you."

I made mental note of that piece of information with a
ofood deal of satisfaction. I could kill this miscreant now,
if I got a chance, and no one would know it. But this
very reflection made me so light-hearted that my Con-
science could hardly keep hiy seat, but was like to float
aloft toward the ceiling like a toy balloon. I said, pre-
sently, —

" Come, my Conscience, let us be friendly. Let us fly

Sj'^'-^'

RECEN'i CARNIVAL OF CRIME.

a flag of truce lor a while. I am suflering to a.sk yon
some quest 1 oils."

" Verv well. Begin."

" Well, then, in the fir'^t place, 'v'^hy \^ ore you never
visible to me before ? "

" Because you never asked to soe me bei'ore ; that is,
you never asked in the right spirit an<l tlie pro)ier form
before. You were just in the right {spirit this tjuie, and
wl oil yon called Cor your most pitiless enemy I was that
person hy a very large majority, though you did not sus-
pect h:"'

'* Well, did that remark of mine turn you into flesh and
blood?"

" No. It only made me visible to you. I am unsub-
stantial, just as other spirits are." \

This remark prodded me with a sharp misgiving. If
he was unsubstantial, how was I going to kill him ? But
I dissembled and said persuasively, —

" Conscience, it is n't sociable of you to keep at such a
distance. Come down and take another smoke."

This was answered with a look that was full of derision,
and with this observation added : —

" Come where you can get at me and kill me i The
invitation is declined with thanks."

" All right," said I to myself ; " so it seems a spirit can
be killed, after all ; there will be om spirit lacking in this
world, presently, or I lose my guiss." Then I said
aloud,—

" Iriend— "

" There ; wait a bit. I am not your friend, I am your

'«»

RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME.

i %

enemy ; I am not your equal, I am your master. Call me
' my lord,' if you please. You are too familiar."

" I don't like such titles. I am willing to call you sir.
That is as far as — "

"We will have no argument about this. Just obey;
that is all. Go on with your chatter."

" Very well, my lord, — since nothing but my lord will
suit you, — I was going to ask you how long you will be
visible to me ? "

" Ah/ays ! "

I broke out with strong indignation : " This is simply
an outrage. That is what I think of it. You have dogged,
and dogged, and dogged me, all the days of my life, in-
visible. That was misery enough ; now to have such a
looking thing as you tagging after me like another shadow
all the rest of my days is an intolerable prospect. You
have my opinion, my lord ; make the most of it."

" My lad, there was never so pleased a conscience in
this world as I was when you made me visible. It gives
me an inconceivable advantage. Now, I can look you
straight in the eye, and call you names, and leer at you,
jeer at you, sneer at you ; and yoii know what eloquence
there is in visible gesture and expression, more especially
when the effect is heightened by audible speech. I shall
always address you henceforth in your o— w-n s-n-i-v-e-1-
1-i-n-g d-r-a-w-1 — baby ! "

I let fly with the coal-hod. No result. My lord
said, —

" Come, come ! Remember the flag of truce ! "
" Ah, 1 forgot that. I will try to be civil ; and you
try it, too, for a novelty. The idea of a civil conscience !

RECENT CAIINIVAL OF CRIME.

It is a good joke ; an excellent joke. All the consciences
T have ever heard of were nagging, badgering, fault-find-
ing, execrable savages ! Yes ; and always in ti sweat about
some poor little insignificant trifie or other — destruction
catch the lot of them, / say ! I would trade mine for the
small-pox and seven kinds of consumption, and be glad of
the chance. Now, tell me, why is it that a conscience
can't haul a man over the coals, once, for an ott'ence, and
then let him alone ? Why is it that it wants to keep on
pegging at him, day and night and night and day, week in
and week out, f orevei* and ever, about the same old thing ?
There is no sense in that, and no reason in it. I think a
conscience that will act like that is meaner than the very
dirt itself."

" Well, we like it, that sufl^ces."

" Do you do it with the honest intent to impro/e a
man ? "

That question produced a sarcastic smile, and this
reply :- -

" No, sir. Excuse me. We do it simply because it is
business.' It is our trade. The purpose of it is to im-
prove the man, but lue are merely disinterested agents.
We are appointed by authority, and haven't anything to
say in the matter. We obey orders and leave the conse-
quences where they belong. But I am willing to admit
this much : we do crowd the orders a trifle when we get
a chance, which is most of the time. We enjoy it. We
are instructed to remind a man a fev^ times of an eiTor ;
and I don't mind acknowledging that w<i ;, to give pret'v
goed measure. And when we get hold of a man of a
peculiarly sensitive nature, oh, but we ao haze him ! I

*' ,.

UECENT CAIINIVAL OF CHIME.

have known consciences to come all the way from China
and Russia to see a person of that kind put through his
paces, on a special occasion. Why, 1 knew a man of that
8ort who had accidentally crippled a mulatto baby ; the
news went abroad, and I wish you may never commit
another sin if the consciences didn't flock from all over
the earth to enjoy the fun and help his master exercise
him. That man walked the floor in torture for forty-
eight hours, v'ithout eating or sleeping, and then blew his
luains out. The child was perfectly well again in three
weeks."

" Well, you are a precious crew, n. o to put it too strong-
1 think I begin to see, now, why you have always been
ji trifle inconsistent with me. In your anxiety to get all
the juice you can out of a sin, you make a man repent of
it in three or four diflereni/ ways. For instance, you
found fault with me for lying to that tramp, and Isufter-
ed over i iiat. But it was only yesterday that I to'd a
tramj) the square ti'uth, to wit, that, it being regai'ded as
bad citizenshi]> to encourage vagrancy, I would give him
nothing. What did you do then ? Why, you made me
say to myself, ' Ah, it would have been so much kinder
and more blameless to ease him ofi" with a little white lie,
and send him away feelinj that if he could not have
bread, the gentle treatment was at least something to be
grateful for ! ' Well, I suffered all day about that. Three
days before, I had fed a tramp, and fed him freely, sup-
posing it a virtuous act. Straight oflf you said, ' O false
citizen, to havo fed a tramp ! ' and I suflfered as usual. I
gave a tramp work ; you objected to it — after the contract
was made, of course ; you never speak up beforehand.

; \

RKCEXT CARNIVAL QV CRIME.

Next I i'efiised a tramp work ; yon objected to that.
Ne~ t, I proposed to kill a ti-aiiip ; you kept mo awake all
night oozing remorse at every pore. Sure I was going to
bu right tkU time, I sent the next tramp away v' ith my
benediction ; and I wish yoxx may live as long as I do, if
you didn't make me smart all night again because I
didn't kill him. Is there any way of satisfying that
malignant invention which is called conscience ? "

" Ha, ha ! this is luxury ! Go (m ! "

" But come, now, answer me that question, /.s there
any way ? "

" Well, none that I propose to tell yon, my son. Ass! I
don't care ivhat act you may turn your band to, I can
straightway whisper a word in your ear and make yo'i
think you have committed a dreadful meanness. It is
my buKineas — and my joy — to make you repent of every-
thing you do. If I have fooled away my opportunities
it was not inttutional ; I beg to assure you it was not
intentional."

" Don't woiTy ; you haven't missed a trick that / know
of. I never did a thing in all my life, virtuous or other-
wise, that I didn't repent of within twenty-four hours.
In church last Sunday I listened to a charity sermon.
My first impulse was to give three hundred and fifty
dollars ; repented of that and reduced it a hundred ; re-
pented of that and reduced it another hundred ; repented
of that and reduced it another hundred ; repented of that
and reduced the remaining fift\ to twenty -five ; repented
of ihcii a ltd came down to fifteen ; repented of that and
dropped to two dollars and a ha'jf ; when the plate came
around at last, I repented once more and contributed ten

HWIf HITWWMiaWMiXai

RECENT CARNIVAL OF CHIME.

cents. Well, when T got home, I did wisli to goodness I
liad that ten cents buck again ! You never did let me
get through a charity sermon without having something
to sweat about."

" O, and 1 never shall, I never shall. You ran always
depend on me."

" I think so. Many and many's the restless night I
wanted to take you by the neck. If I could only get
hold of you now I "

" Yes, no doubt. But I am not an ass ; I am only the
saddle of an ass. But go on, go on. You entertain me
more than I like to confess."

" I am glad of that. (You will not mind my lying a
little, to keep in practice.) Look here ; not to be too pei'-
sonal, I think you are about the shabbiest and most con-
temptible little shrivelled-up reptile that can be imagined
I am grateful enough that you are invisible to other peo-
ple, for I should die with shame to be seen with such a
mildewed monkey of conscience as you are. Now if you
were five or six feet high, and — "

" O, come, who is to blame? "

" / don't know."

" Why, you are ; nobody else."

" Confound you, I wasn't consulted about your per-
sonal appearance."

" I don't care, you had a good deal to do with it, never-
theless. When you were eight or nine years old, I was
seven feet high and as pretty as a picture."

" I wish you had died young ! So you have grown the
wrong way, have you ? "

" Some of us grow one way and some the other. You

•isi3%

«fV

:80

RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME.

had a large conscience once ; if you've a small conscience
now, I rocl^on there are reasons for it. However, both of
us are to blame, you and I. ^ You see, you used to be con-
scientious about a great many things ; morbi< lly so, I may
say. It was a great many years ago. You probably do
not remember it, now. Well, I took a gieat interest in
my work, and I so enjoyed the anguish which certain pet
sins of yours afHicted you with, that I kept pelting at
you until I rather overdid the matter. You began to
rebel. Of course I began to lose ground, then, and shri-
vel a little — diminish in stature, get mouldy, and grow
deformed. The more I weakened, the more stubbornly
you fastened on to those particular sins ; till at last
the places on my person that represent those vices
became as callous as shark-skin. Take smoking, for
instance. I played that card a little too long, and I
lost. When people plead with you at this late day to
quit that vice, the old callous place seems to enlarge
and cover me all over like a shirt of mail. It exerts a
mysterious, smothering effect; and presently I, your
faithful hater, your devoted Conscience, go fast asleep !
Sound ? It is no name for it. I couldn't hear it thun-
der at such a time. You have some few other vices —
perhaps eighty, or maybe ninety — that affect me in much
the same way."

" This is flattering ; you must be asleep a good part of
your time."

" Yes, of late years. I shcjuld be asleep all the time,
but for the help I get."

" Who helps you ? "

" Other consciences. Whenever a person whose con-

It- I

UECENT CARNIVAL OP CRIME.

•r

science I am acquainted with tries to plead with you
about the vices you are callous to, I ^et my friend to
give his client a pang concerning some villany of his own,
and that shuts otf his meddling and starts him oft' to liunt
personal consolation. My fiehl of usefulness is about
trimmed down to tramps, l)udding authoresses, and that
line of goods, now ; but don't you worry — I'll harry you
on them while they last ! Just you put your trust in

me.

" I think 1 can. But if you had only been good enough
to mention these facts some thirty years ago, I should
have turned my particular attention to sin, and I think
that by this time I should not only have had you pretty
permanently asleep on the entire list of human vices, but
reduced to the size of a homoeopathic pill, at that. That
is about the style of conscience 7 am pining for. If I only
had you shrunk down to a homoepathic pill, and could get
my hands on you, would I put you in a glass case for a
keepsake ? No, sir. I would give you to a yellow dog !
That is where you ought to be — you and all your tribe.
You are not fit to be in society, in my opinion. Now
another question. Do you know a good many conseien- .
ces in this section ? "
" Plenty of them."

" I would give anything to see some of them ! Could
you bring them here ? And would they be visible to me ? "
"Certainly not."

■ " I suppose I ought to have known that, without
asking. But no matter, you can describe them. Tell me
about my neighbour Thompson's conscience, please."
"Very well. I know him intimately, — have known.

RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME.

him many years. I knew him when he was eleven feet
high, and of a faultless figure. But he is very rusty and
tough and misshappen now, and hardly ever interests
himself about anything. As to his present size — well, he
sleeps in a cigar-box."

" Likely enough. There are few smaller, meaner men
in this region than Hugh Thompson. Do you know Rob-
inson's conscience ?"

" Yes. He is a shade under four and a half feet high ;
used to be a blonde ; is a brunette now, but still shapely
and comely.

" Well, Robinson is a good fellow. Do you know Tom
Smith's conscience ? "

" I have known him from childhood. He was thirteen
inches high, and rather sluggish when he was two years
old — as nearly all of us are at that age. He is thirty-
seven feet high now, and the stateliest figure in America.
His legs are still racked with growing pains, but he has a
good time nevertheless. Never sleeps. He is the most
active and energetic rrember of the New England Con-
science Club,- -is president of it. Night and day you can
find him pegging away at Smith, panting with his labour,
sleeves rolled up, countenance all alive with enjoyment.
He has got his victim splendidly dragooned now. He can
make poor Smith imagine that the most innocent little
thing he does is an odious sin ; and then he sets to work
and almost tortures the soul out of him about it."

" Smith is the noblest man in all this section, and the
purest ; and yeu is always breaking his heart because he
cannot be good ! Only a conscience could find pleasure in

« I

■ii M Mwpii l yy

CT »

RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME.

heaping agony upon a spirit like that. Do you know my
Aunt Mary's conscience ?"

" I have seen her at a distance, but am not acquainted
with her. She lives in the open air altogether, becaase
no door is large enough to admit her,"

" I can believe that. Let me see. Do you know the
conscience of that publisher who once stole some sketches
of mine for a ' series ' of his, and then left me to pay the
law expenses I had to incur in order to choke him ott'?"

" Yes ; he has a wide fame. He was exhibited a month
ago, with some other antiquities, for the benefit of a recent
Member of the Cabinet's conscience, that was starving in
exile. Tickets and fares were high, but I travelled for
nothing by pretending to be the conscience of an editor,
and got in foi- half price hy representing myself to be the
conscience of a clergyman. However, the publisher's
conscience, which was to have been the main feature of
the entertainment, was a failure, — as an exhibition. He
was there, but what of that ? The management had pro-
vided a microscope with a magnifying power of only
thii-ty thousand diametei^s, and so nobody got to see him
after all. There was great and general dissatisfaction, of
course, but — "

Just here there wl s an eager footstep on the stairs. I
opened the door, and my Aunt Maiy burst into the room.
It was a joyful meeting, and a cheery bombardment of
questions and answers concerning family matters ensued.
By and by my Aunt said :

" But I am going to abuse you a little now. You pro-
mised me, the day I saw you last, that you would look
after the needs of the poor family round the corner as

RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME.

faithfully as I had done it myself. Well, I found out by
accident that you failed of your promise. Was that
right ? "

In simple truth, I never had thought of that family a
second time ! And now such a splintering pang of guilt
shot through me ! I glanced up at my Conscience.
Plainly, my heavy heart was affecting him. His body
was drooping forward ; he seemed about to fall from the
bookcase. My aunt continued : —

" And think how you have neglected my poor protegee
Sit the almshouse, you dear, hard-hearted promise-
breaker ! " I blushed scarlet, and my tongue was tied.
As the sense of my guilty negligence waxed shai-per and
stronger, my Conscience began to sway heavily back and
forth ; and when my aunt, after a little pause, said in a
grieved tone " Since you never once went to see her, may-
be it will not distress you now to know that that pooi'
child died, months ago, utterly friendless and forsaken ! '
My Conscience coidd no longer bear up under the weight
of my sufferings, but tumbled headlong from his high
perch and struck the floor with a dull, leaden thump. He
lay there writhing with pain and quaking with appre-
hension, but straining every muscle in frantic efforts to
get up. In a fever of expectancy I sprang totlie door,
locked it, placed my back against it, and bent a watchful
gaze upon my struggling master. Already my fingers
were itching to begin their murderous work.

" O, what can be the matter ! " exclaii led my aunt,
shrinking from me, and following with her frightened
eyes the direction of mine. My breath was coming in

RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME.

short, quick gasps now, and my excitement was almost
uncontrollable. My aunt cried out, —

" O, do not look so ! You appall me ! 0, what can
the matter be ? What is it you see ? Why do you stare
so ? Why do you work your fingers like that ? "

" Peace, woman ! " I said, in a hoarse whisper. " Look
elsewhere ; pay no attention to me ; it is nothing, noth-
ing. I am often this way. It will pass in a moment. It
comes from smoking too much."

My injured lord was up, wild-eyed with terror, and
trying to hobble toward the door, I could hardly breathe,
I was 80 wrought up. My aunt wrung her hands, and
said, —

" O, I knew how it would be ; I knew it would come t(^
this at last ! O, I implore yon to ci'ush out that fatal
liabit while it may yet be time ! You must not, you
shall not be deaf to my supplications longer ! " My
struggling Conscience showed sudden signs of weariness!
" O, promise me you will throw off this hateful slavery
of tobacco ! " My Conscience began to reel drowsily,and
grope with his hands — enchanting spectacle ! " I beg
you, I beseech you, I implore you ! Your reason is de-
serting you ! There is madness in your eye ! It flames
with frenzy ! 0, hear me, hear me, and be saved ! See, I
plead with you on my very knees ! " As she sank before
me my Conscience reeled again, and then drooped lan-
guidly to the floor, blinking toward me a last supplication
for mercy, with heavy eyes. " 0, promise, or you are
lost : Promise, and be redeemed ! Promise ! Promise
and live ! " With a long-drawn sigh my conquered Con-
science closed his eyes and fell fast asleep !

RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME.

With an exultant shout I sprang past my aunt, and in
an instant I had my life-long foe by the throat. After
so many years of waiting and longing, he was mine at
last. I tore him to shreds and fragments. I rent the
fraerments to bits. I cast the bleedingf rubbish into the
fire, and drew into my nostrils tlie grateful incense of my
burnt offering. At last, and forever, my Conscience was
dead !

I was a free man ! I turned upon my poor aunt, who
was almost petrified with terror, and shouted, —

" Out of this with your paupers, your charities, your
reforms, your pestilent morals ! You behold before you
a man whose life-conflict is done, whose soul is at peace ;
a man whose heart is dead to sorrow, dead to suifferiug,
dead to remorse ; a man without a Conscience! In my
joy I spare you, though I could throttle you and never
feel a pang ! Fly ! "

She fled. Since that day my life is all bliss. Bliss, un-
alloyed bliss. Nothing in all the world could persuade
me to have a conscience again. I settled all my old out-
standing scores, and began the world anew. I killed
thirty-eight persons during the first two weeks — all of
them on account of ancient grudges. I burned a dwelling
that interrupted my view. I swindled a widow and somr
orphans out of their last cow, which is a very good one,
though not thoroughbred, I believe. I have also com-
mitted scores of crimes, of various kinds, and have en-
joyed my work exceedingly, whereas it would formerly
have broken my heart and turned my hair gray, I have
no doubt.

In conclusion I wish to state, by way of advertisement,

IIEC'ENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME.

that inedicul colleges desiring assorted tramps for scien-
tific purposes, either by the gross, by cord measurement,
or per ton, will do well to examine the lot in my cellar
before purchasing elsewhere, as these were all selected
and prepared by myself, and can be had at a low rate, be-
cause I wish to clear out my stock and get ready for the
spring trade.

THE LOVES

ALOlsrZO FITZ OLAEENCE

AND

EOSAIVJNAH ETHE1.T0]SI.

-•-♦-•

<>^

fT was well along in the forenoon of a bittei- winter's
^ . day. The town of Eastport, in the State of Maine,
lay buried under a deep snow that was newly fallen. The
customary bustle in the streets was wanting. One could
look long distances down them and see nothing but a
dead white emptiness, with silence to match, Of course
I do not mean that you could see the silence, — no, you
could only hear it. The sidewalks were merely long,
deep ditches, with steep snow walls on either side. Here
and there you might J '.ear the faint, far scrape of a wooden
shovel, and if you were quick enough you might catch a
glimpse of a distanc black figure stooping and disappear-
ing in one of those ditches, and reappearing the next mo-
ment with a motion which you would know meant the
heaving out of a shovelful of snow. But you needed to
be quick, for that black figure would not linger, but
would soon drop that shovel and seud for the house,
thrashing itself with its arms to warm them. Yes, it was
too venomously cold for snow shovelers or anybody else
to 5»tay out long.

ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETH ELTON. 89

Presently the sky darkened ; then the wind rose and
began to blow in fitful, vigorous gusts, which sent clouds
of powdery snow aloft, and straight ahead, and every-
where. Under the impulse of one of these gusts, great
white drifts banked themselves like graves across the
streets ; a moment later, another gust shifted them around
the other way, driving a fine spray of snow from their
sharp crests, as the gale drives the spume flakes from the
wave-crests at sea ; a third gust swept that place as clean
as your hand, if it saw fit. This was fooling, this was
play ; but each and all of the gusts dumped some snow
into the sidewalk ditches, for that was business.

Alonzo Fitz Clarence was sitting in his snug and
elegant little parlour, in a lovely blue silk dressing-gown,
with cuffs and facings of crimson satin, elaborately quilted.
The remains of his bieakfast were before him, and the
dainty and costly little table service added a harmonious
charm to the grace, beauty, and richness of the fixed ap-
pointments of the room. A cheery fire was blazing on
the hearth.

A furious gust of wind shook the windows, and a great
wave of snow washed against them with a drenching
sound, so to speak. The handsome young bachelor mur-
mured, —

" That means, no going out to-day. Well, I am con-
tent. But what to do for company ? Mother is well
enough, aunt Susan is well enough ; but these, like the
poor, I have with me always. On so grim a day as this,
one needs a new interest, a fresh element, to whet the
dull edge of captivity. That was very neatly said, but it
doesn't mean anything. One doesn't waiit the edge of

*m'

90 ALONZO FJTZ CLAHENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHEL'l'ON.

captivity sharpened up, you know, but just the re-
verse."

He glanced at his pretty French mantel clock.

" That clock's wrong again. That clock hardly eve;
knows what time it is ; and when it does know, it lies
about it, — which amounts to the same thing. Alfred ! "

There was no answer.

" Alfred ! . . . Good servant, but as uncertain as
the clock." •

Alonzo touched an electric bell-button in the wall. He
waited a moment, then touched it again ; waited a few
moments more, and said, —

" Battery out of order, no doubt. But now that 1 have
started, I will find out what time it is." He stepped to
a speaking-tube in the wall, blew its \vhistie and callud,
" Mother ! " and repeated it twice.

" WeW, that's no use. Mother's battery is out of order,
too. Can't raise anyliody down stairs, — that's plain."

He sat down at at a rose-wood desk, leanetl his chin on
the left-hand edge of it, and spoke, as if to the flooi- : —
" Aunt Susan 1 "

A low, pleasant voice answered, " Is that you, Alonzo r

" Yes. I'm too lazy and comfortable to go down-stairs ;
I'm in extremity, and I can't seem to scare up any help."

" Dear me, what is the matter ? "

" Matter enough, I can tell 3^ou ! "

" Oh, don't keep me in suspense, dear ! What Ik it ?"

" I want to know what time it is."

" You abominable boy, what a t\n-n you did give me !
Is that all ? "

ALONZO FITA CJAllENCE AND llOSANNAH ETIIELT(JN. 91

"All,— on my honour. Calm yourself. Tell mc the
timr and receive my blessing,"

" Just five minutes after nine. No charge, — keep your
blessing."

" 1'hanks. It wouldn't have impoverished me, aunty,
noi so enriched you that you could live without other
means." He got up murmuring, " Just five minutes after
nine," and faced his clock. " Ah," said he, " you are doing
better than usual. You are only thirty-four minutes
wrong. Let me see . . . let me see . . . Thirty-
tliree and twenty-one are fifty -four ; four times fifty-four
are two hundred and thirty-six. One ofi", leaves two hun-
dred and thii'ty-five. That's right." He turned the hands
of his clock forward till they marked twenty -five minutes
to v-ne, and said, " Now see if you can't keep right for a
whUe . . . else I'll rafile you !"

He sat down at the desk again, and said, "Aunt
Susan ! "

'•' Yes, deal-."

" Had breakfast ? "

" Yes, indeed, an hour ago."

" Busy ? "

" T-iO, — except sewing. Why ? "

" Got any company ? "

" No, but I t'xpect some at half past nine."

" I wish 1 did. I'm lonesome. I want to talk to
.■0)> r^body."

" Very well, talk to me."

' But this is very private."

•' Don't be afraid, — talk right along ; there's nobody
here but me."

92 ALONZO FITZ CLAHENCE AND ROSANNAH EIHELTON

i l|

" I hardly know wliether to venture oi- not, but" —

"But what i* Oh, don't stop there? You kno('' yon
can trust uie, Alonzo, — you know you can.",

" I feel it, aunt, but this is very serious. It atiects nic
deeply, — me and all the family, — even the whole com-
munity."

"Oh, Ahmzo, tell me ! I will never Ireathe a word of
it. What i8 it ? "

" Aunt, if I might dare " —

"Oh, please go on ! I love you and can feel for you.
Tell me all. Confide in me. What ix it {

" The weather ! "

" Plague take the weathei- 1 I don't see how you can
have the heart to serve me so, Lon."

" There, there, aunty dear, I'm sorry ; I am, on my
honour. I won't do it again. Do you forgive me ? "

" Yes, since you seem so sincere about it, though I know
I oughtn't to. You will fool me again as soon as I have
forgotten this time."

"No, I won't, honour bright. But such weather, oh
such weather ! Youv'e got to keep your spirits up arti-
ficially. It is snowy, and blowy, and gusty, and bitter
cold ! How is the weather with you ? "

" Warm and rainy and melancholy. The mourners go
about the streets with their umbrellas running streams
from the end of every whalebone. There's an elevated
double pavement of umbrellas stretching down the sides
of the streets as far as I can see. I've got a fire for cheer-
fulnessi and the windows open to keep cool. But it is
vain, it is useless : noth- ^g comes in but the balmy breath
of December, with its bi len of mocking odours from the

ALON/.O FITZ CLARKNCK AND ItOSANNAM KTJP "''(►N.

I-

fl 'lai poHHOHstlu' roalin outsido, aiu' • j -i- • \ \ their

la Fusion whilst the spirit of imui is low, and

tla> a. ptiidy spl(!ii(l()urs in his face wliilst ]»is soul

is clothed in sackcloth and ashes and his heart breaketh."

Alonzo open(!(lhis lips to say, " You ought to print that
and get it fianie<l," but checked hininelf, for he heainl his
aunt speaking to some one else. He went and stood at
the window and looked out upon the wintry prospect.
The storm was driving the snow before it more furiously
than ever ; window shutters were slamming and banging ;
a forlorn dog, with bowed head and tail withdrawn from
service, was pressing his cpiaking body against a windward
wall for shelter and protection ; a young girl was plough-
ing knee-deep through tlie drifts, with her face turned
from the blast, and the cape of her water-proof blowing
straight rearward over her head. Alonzo shuddered, and
said with a sigh, " Btitter the slop and the sultry rain, and
even the insolent Howers, than this I "

He turned from the window, moved a step, and stopped
in a listening attitude. The faint, sweet notes of a fa-
miliar song caught his ear. He remained there, with his
head unconsciously bent forward, drinking in the melody,
stirring neither hand nor foot, hardly breathing. There
was a blemish in the execution of the song, but to Alonzo
it seemed an added charm instead of a defect. This blem-
ish consisted of a marked flatting of the third, fourth,
fifth, sixth and seventh notes of the refrain or chorus of
the piece. When the nuisic ended, Alonzo drew a deep
breath, and said, " Ah, I never have heard In the Sweet
By and By sung like that before ! "

He stepped (juickly to the desk, listened a moment, and

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Hiotographic

Sciences

Corporation

33 WEST MAIN STREET

WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580

(716) 873-4503

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■^ "i^'^

94 ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON.

said in a guarded, confidential voice, " Aunty, who is this
divine singer ? "

" She is the company I was expecting. Stays with me
a month or two. I will introduce you. Miss " —

" For goodness sake, wait a moment, aunt Susan ! You
never stop to think what you are about ! "

He flew to his bed-chamber, and returned in a moment
perceptibly changed in his outward appearance, and re-
marking, snappishly, —

" Hang it, she would have introduced me to this angel
in that sky-blue dressing-gown with red-hot lappels !
Women never think, when they get agoing."

He hastened and stood by the desk, and said eagerly,
" Now, aunty, I am ready," and fell to smiling and bow-
ing with all the persuasiveness and elegance that were in
him.

" Very well. Miss Rosannah Ethelton, let me introduce
to you my favourite nephew, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence.
There ! You are both good people, and I like you ; so I
am going to trust you together while 1 attend to a few
household affairs. Sit down, Rosannah ; sit down, Alonzo.
Good-by ; I shan't be gone long." ^ '

Alonzo had been bowing and smiling all the while, and
motioning imaginary young ladies to sit down in imagi-
nary chairs, but now he took a seat himself, mentally
saying, " Oh, this is luck ! Let the winds blow, now and
the snow drive, and the heavens frown ! Little 1 care ! "

While these young people chat themselves into an
acquaintanceship, let us take the liberty of inspecting the
sweeter and fairer of the two. She sat alone at her
graceful ease, in a richly furnished apartment which was

ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON.

t:-'.v

Kir

!%-■

manifestly the private parlour of a refined and sensible
lady, if signs and symbols may go for anything. For
instance, by a low, comfortable chair stood a dainty, top-
heavy work-stand, whose summit was a fancifully em-
broidered shallow basket, with vari-coloured crewels, and
other strings and odds and ends, protruding from under
the gaping lid and hanging down in negligent profusion.
On the floor lay bright shreds of Turkey-red, Prussian
blue, and kindred fabrics, bits of ribbon, a spool or two,
a pair of scissors, and a roll or so of tinted silken stuffs.
On a luxurious sofa, upholstered with some sort of soft
Indian goods wrought in black and gold threads inter-
webbed with other threads not so pronounced in colour,
lay a great square of coarse white stuff, upon whose sur-
face a rich bouquet of flowers was growing, under the
deft cultivation of the crochet needle. The household cat
was asleep on this work of art. In a bay window stood
an easel with an unfinished picture on it, and a palette
and brushes on a chair beside it. Thero were books every-
where : Robertson's Sermons, Tennyson, Moody and San-
key, Hawthorne, Rab and his Friends, cook-books, prayer-
books, pattern-books, — and books about all kinds of odious
and exasperating pottery, of course. There was a piano,
with a deck -load of music, and more in a tender. There
was a great plenty of pictures on the walls, on the shelves
of the mantel-piece, and around generally ; where coignes
of vantage offered were statuettes, and quaint and pretty
gimcracks, and rare and costly specimens of peculiarly
devilish china. The bay-window gave upon a garden that
was ablaze with foreign and domestic flowers and flower-
ing shrubs ' V

06 ALONZO FITZ CLARENCK AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON

But the sweet young girl was the daintiest thing those
premises, within or without, could offer for contempla-
tion ; delicately chiseled features, of Grecian cast; her
complexion the pure snow of a japonica that is receiving
a faint reflected enrichment from some scarlet neighbour
of the garden ; great, soft blue eyes fringed with long,
curving lashes ; an expression made up of the truthful-
ness of a child and the gentleness of a fawn ; a beautiful
head crowned with its own prodigal gold ; a lithe and
rounded figure, whose every attitude and movement were
instinct with native grace.

Her dress and adornment were marked by that exqui-
site harmonv that can come onlv of a fine nature^ taste
perfected by culture. Her gown was of a simple ^' enta
tulle, cut bias, traversed by three rows of li^ blue
flounces, with the selvage edges turned up with ashes-of-
roses-chenille ; overdress of dark bay tarleton, with scarlet
satin lambrequins ; corn-coloured polciiaise, en panier,
looped with mother-of-pearl buttons and silver cord, and
hauled aft and made fast by buff"- velvet lashings ; basque
of lavender reps, picked out with Valenciennes; low neck,
short sleeves ; maroon-velvet necktie edged with delicate
pink silk; inside handkerchief of some simple three-ply in-
grain fabric of a soft saffron tint; coral bracelets and
locket-chain ; coiffure of forget-me-nots and lilies of the
valley massed around a noble calla.

This was all ; yet even in this subdued attire she was
divinely beautiful. Tlien what must she have been when
adorned for the festival or the ball ?

All this time she has been busily chatting with Alonzo,
unconscious of our inspection. The minutes still sped.

:■■'?.

^ ■»,■•

a i

a %

ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND llOSANNAH ETHKLTON. 97

and still she talked. By and by she happened to look
up, and saw the clock. A crimson blush sent its rich
Hood through her cheeks, and she exclaimed, —

" There, good-by , Mr. Fitz Clarence ; I must go now ! "
She sprang from her chair with such haste that she
hardly heard the young man's answering good-by. She
stood radiant, graceful, beautiful, and gazed, wondering,
upon the accusing clock. Presently her pouting lips
parted, and she said, —

" Five minutes after eleven ! Nearly two hours, and it
did not seem twenty minutes! Oh, deai-, what will he
think of me ! "

At the sell -same moment Alonzo was staring at his
clock. And presently he said, —

" Twenty-five minutes to three ! Nearly two hours,
and I didn't believe it was two minutes ! Is it possible
that this clock is humbugging me again? JVliss Ethelton !
Just one moment, please. Are you there yet ? "
" Yes, but be quick ; I'm going right away." •
" Would you be so kind as to tell me what time it

IS?

The girl blushed again, murmured to herself, "It's
right down cruel of him to ask me ! " and then spoke up
and answered with admirably counterfeited unconcern,
' Five minutes after nine."

" Oh, thank you ! You have to go now, have you?"

"Yes." ».

" I m sorry.

No reply.

" Miss Ethelton ! '*

"Well'"

98 ALONZO FITZ CLAUKNCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON.

" You — ^you're there yet, ain't you ?"

" Yes ; but please hurry. What did you want to

say

" Well, I — well, nothing in particular. It's very lone-
some here. It's asking a great deal, I know, but would
you mind talking with me again by and by, — that is, if
it will not trouble you too much ? "

" 1 don't know— but I'll think about it. I'll try."

" Oh, thanks ! Miss Ethelton ... Ah me, she's
gone, and here are the black clouds and the whirling snow
and the raging winds come again ! But she said good-hy \
She didn't say good morning, she said good by ! . . .
The clock was right, after all. What a lightning-winged
two hours it was !"

He sat down, and gazed dreamily into his fire for a
while, then heaved a sigh and said, —

" How wonderful it is ! Two little hours ago I was a
free man, and now my heart's in San Francisco !"

About that time Rosannah Ethelton, propped in the
window-seat of her bed-chamber, book in hand, was gazing
vacantly out over the rainy seas that washed the Golden
Gate, and whispered to herself, " How different he is
from poor Burley, with his empty head and his simple
little antic talent of mimicry ! " .

'■^fr

'OUR weeks later Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley was en-
tertaining a gay luncheon company, in a sumptuous
drawing-room on Telegraph Hill, with some capital imita-
tions of the voices and gestures of certain popular actors

ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON. 99

and San Franciscan literary people and Bonanza grandees.
He was elegantly upholstered, and was a handsome fel-
low, barring a trifling east in his eye. He seemed very
jovial, but nevertheless he kept his eye on the door with
an expectant and uneasy watchfulness. By and by a
nobby lackey appeared, and delivered a message to the
mistress, who nodded her head understandingly. That
seemed to settle the thing for Mr. Burley ; his vivacity
decreased little by little, and a dejected look began to
creep into one of his eyes and a sinister one into the
other.

The rest of the company departed in due time, leaving
him with the mistress, to whom he said, —

" There is no longer any question about it. She avoids
me. She continua,ily excuses herself. If I could see her,
if I could speak to her only a moment, — but this sus-
pense." —

"Perhaps her seeming avoidance is mere accident, Mr.
Burley. Go to the small drawing-room up stairs and
amuse yourself a moment. I will dispatch a household
order that is on my mind, and then I will go to her room.
Without doubt she will be persuaded to see you."

Mr. Burley went up stairs, intending to go to the small
drawing-room, but as he was passing " Aunt Susan's "
private parlour, the door of which stood slightly ajar, he
heard a joyous laugh which he recognised ; so without
knock or announcement he stepped confidently in. But
before he could make his presence known he heard words
that harrowed up his soul and chilled his young blood.
He heard a voice say, — ^

" Darling, it has come

• »

100 ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON.

Then he heard Rosannah Ethelton, whose back was
. toward him say, —

" So has yours, dearest !"

He saw her bowed form bend lower ; he heard her kiss
something, — not merely once, but again and again ! His
soul raged within him. The heart-breaking conversation
went on : —

" Rosannah, I know you must be beautiful, but this is
dazzling, this is blinding, this is intoxicating! "

" Alonzo, it is such happiness to hear you say it. I
know it is not true, but I am so grateful to have you
think it is, nevertheless ! I knew you must have a noble
face, but the grace and majesty of the reality beggar the
poor creation of my fancy."

Burley heard that rattling shower of kisses again.

" Thank you, my Rosannah ! The photograph flatters
me, but you must not allow yourself to think of that. •
Sweetheart ? "

" Yes, Alonzo."

"I am so happy, Rosannah."

" Oh, Alonzo, none that have gone before me knew
what love was, none that come after me will ever know
what happiness is. I float in a gorgeous cloudland, a
boundless firmament of enchanted and bewildering
ectascy!"

" Oh, my Rosannah ! — for you are mine, are you not ? "

" Wholly, oh, wholly yours, Alonzo, now and forever !
All the day long, and all through my nightly dreams, one
song sings itself, and its sweet burden is, ' Alonzo Fitz
Clarence, Alonzo Fitz Clarence, Eastport, State of
Maine!'"

ALONZO FITZ CLAREN<!K AND ROSANNAH ETHKl.TON. 101

" Curse him, I've got his address, anyway ! " roared
Burley, inwardly, and rushed from the place.

Just behind the unconscious Alonzo stood his mother,
a picture of astonishment. She was so muffled from head
to heel in furs that nothing of herself was visible but her
eyes and nose. She was a good allegory of winter, for
she was powdered all over with snow.

Behind the unconscious Rosannah stood " aunt Susan,"
another picture of astonishment. She was a good alle-
gory of summer, for she was lightly clad, and was vigor-
ously cooling the perspiration on her face with a fan.

B(jth of these women had tears of joy in their eyes.

" So ho ! " exclaimed Mrs. Fitz Clarence, " this explains
why nobody has been able to drag you out of your room
for six weeks, Alonzo ! "

" So ho ! " exclaimed aunt Susan, " thi oxplains why
you have been a hermit for the past six weeks, Rosan-
nah ! "

The young couple were on their feet in an instant,
abashed, and standing like detected dealers in stolen goods
awaiting Judge Lynch's doom,

" Bless you, my son ! I am happy in your happiness.
Come to your mother's arms, Alonzo ! "

" Bless you, Rosannah, for my dear nephew's sake !
Come to my arms ! "

Then was there a mingling of hearts and of tears of re-
joicing on Telegraph Hill and in Eastport Square.

Servants were called by the elders, in both places.
Unto one was given the order, " Pile this fire high with
hickory wood, and bring me a roasting-hot lemonade."

Unto the other was given the order, " Put out this fire,
Q

102 ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON.

and bring me two palm-leaf fans and a pitcher of ice-
water."

Then the young people were dismissed, and the elders
sat down to talk the sweet surprise over and make the
wedding plans.

Some minutes before this Mr. Burley rushed from the
mansion on Telegraph Hill without meeting or taking
formal leave of anybody. He hissed through his teeth,
in unconscious imitation of a popular favourite in melo-
drama, " Him shall she never wed ! I have sworn it !
Ere sfreat Nature shall have doffed her winter's ei-mine
to don the emerald gauds of spring, she shall be mine ! "

III.

'mF^WO weeks later. Every few hours, during some
b^, three or four days, a very prim and devout-lookinj;-
Episcopal clergyman with a cast in his eye, had visited
Alonzo. According to his card, he was the Rev. Melton
Hargrave, of Cincinnati. He said he had retired from
the ministry on account of his health. If he had said on
account of ill b<^a1th; he would probably have erred, to,
judge by his wholesome looks and firm build He was
the inventor of an improvement in telephones, and hoped
to make his bread by selling the privilege of using it.
" At present," he continued, " a man may go and tap a
..telegraph wire which is conveying a song or a concert
from one State to another, and he can attach his private
telephone and steal a hearing of that music as it passes
along. My invention will stop all that. "

ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON. 103

i$-

" Well," answered Alonzo^ " if the owner of the nuiHic
could not miss what was stolen, why sliould he care ? "

" He shouldn't care," said the Reverend.

" Well ? " said Alonzo, inquiringly.

" Suppose," replied the Reverend, " suppose that, in-
stead of music that was passing along and being stolen,
the burden of the wire was loving endearments of the
most private and sacred nature ? "

Alonzo shuddered from head to heel. " Sir, it is a
priceless invention," said he ; " I must have it at any
cost."

But the invention was delayed somewhere on the road
from Cincinnati, most unaccountably. The impatient
Alonzo could hardly wait. The thought of Rosannah's
sweet words being shared with him by some ribald thief
was galling to him. The Reverend came frequently and
lamented the del?//, and told of measures he had taken
to hurry things up. This was some little comfort to
Alonzo.

One forenoon the Reverend ascended the stairs and
knocked at Alonzo's door. There was no response. He
entered, glanced eagerly around, closed the door softly,
then ran to the telephone. The exquisitely soft, remote
strains of the Sweet By and By came floating through
the instrument. The singer was flatting, as usual, the
five notes that follow the first two in the chorus, when
the Reverend interrupted her with this word, in a voice
which was an exact imitation of Alonzo's, with just the
faintest flavour of impatience added, —

"Sweetheart?" ,

" Yes, Alonzo ? "

104 ALONZO PITZ CLARENCE AND R08ANNAH ETHELTON.

" Please don't Hin^ that any more this week, — try some-
thing modern."

The agile stop that goes with a happy heart wan heard
on the stairs, and the Reverend, smiling diabolically,
sought sudde.i refuge behind the heavy folds of the vel-
vet window curtains. Alonzo entered and Hew to the
telephone. Said he, —

" Rosarmah, dear, shall we sing something together ? "

" Something modern ? " asked she, with sarcastic bit-
terness.

" Yes, if you prefer."

" Sing it yourself, if you like I "

This snappishness amazed and wounded the young man.
He said, —

" Rosannah , that was not like you."

" I -suppose it becomes me as much as your very polite
speech became you, Mr. Fitz Clarence."

" Mister Fitz Clarence ! Rosannah, there was nothing
impolite about my speech."

" Oh, indeed ! Of course, then, I misunderstood you,
and I most humbly beg your pardon, ha-ha-ha ! No
doubt you said, ' Don't sing it any more to-day.' "

" Sing what any more to-day ? "

"The song you mentioned, of course. How very obtuse
we are, all of a sudden ! "

" I never mentioned any song."

-' Oh, yovL didn't ! "

""So, I didn't!"

" I am compelled to remark that you did"

" And I am obliged to reiterate that I didn't."

ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHKLTON. 105

" A socond rudeness ! That is sufticient, sir. I will
never forgive you. All is over hot ween us."

Then canio a uiutHod sound of crying. Alonzo hastened
to say, —

" Oh, Rosannah, unsay those words ! There is some
dreadful niistory here, some hideous mistake. I .on ut-
terly earnest and sincere when I say T never Maid anything
about any song. I would not hui-t you for the whole
world . . . Rosannah, dear ? ... Oh, speak to mo, won't
you ! "

There was a pause ; then Alonzo heard the girl's sob-
l»ing8 retreating, and knew she had gone from the tele-
phone. He rose with a heavy sigh and hastened from
the room, saying to himself, " I will ransack the charity
missions and the haunts of the poor for my niother. She
will persuade her that I never meant to wound her."

A minute later, the Reverend was crouching over the
telephone like a cat that knoweth the ways of the prey.
He had not very many minutes to wait. A soft, repen-
tant voice, tremulous with tears, said, —

" Alonzo, dear, I have been wrong. You could not have
said so cruel a thing. It must have been some one who
imitated your voice in malice or in jest."

The Reverend coldly answered, in Alonzo's tones, —

" You have said all was over between us. So let it be,
I spurn your proffered repentance, and despise it ! "

Then he departed, radiant with fiendish triumph, to
return no metre with his imaginary telephonic invention
forever.

Four hours afterward, Alonzo anived with his mother
from her favourite haunts of poverty and vice. They

106 ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON.

summoned the San Francisco household ; but there was
no reply. They waited, and continued to wait, upon the
voiceless telephone.

At length, when it was sunset in San Francisco, and
three hours and a half after dark in Eastport, an answer
came to the oft-repeated cry of " Rosannah ! "

But, alas, it was aunt Susan's voice that spake. She
said, —

" I have been out all day ; just got in. I will go and
find her."

The watchers waited two minutes — five minutes — ten
minutes. Then came these fatal words, in a frightened
tone, —

" She is gone, and her baggage with her. To visit an-
other friend, she told the servants. But I found this note
on the table in her room. Listen : ' I am gone ; seek not
to trace me out ; my heart is broken ; you will never see
me more. Tell him I shall alw^ays think of him when I
sing my poor Sweet By and By, hut never of the unkind
words he said about it.' That is her note. Alonzo, Al-
onzo, what does it mean ? What has happened ? "

But Alonzo sat white and cold as the dead. His mother
threw back the velvet cuitains and opened a window.
The cold air refreshed the suflferer, and he told his aunt
his dismal story. Meantime his mother was inspecting
a card which had disclosed itself upon the floor when she
cast the curtains back. It read, " Mr. Sidney Algernoon
Burley, San Francisco."

" The miscreant ! " shouted Alonzo, and rushed foi-th to
seek the false Reverend and destroy him ; for the card ex-
plained everything, since in the course of the lovers' mu-

ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON. 107

■ r

[•

li^

tual confessions they had told each other all about all the
.sweethearts they had ever had, and thrown no end of mud
at their failings and foibles, — for lovers always do that.
It has a fascination that ranks next after billing and

cooing.

IV.

During the next ^-w^o months, many things happened.
It had early transpired that Rosannah, poor suffering or-
phan, had neither returned to her grandmother in Portland,
Oregon, nor sent any word to her save a duplicate of the
woful note she had left in the mansion on Telegraph Hill.
Whosoever was sheltering her — if she was still alive —
had been persuaded not to betray her whereabouts, with-
out doubt ; for all efforts to find trace of her had failed.

Did Alonzo give her up ? Not he. He said to himself,
" She will sing that sweet song when she is sad ; I shall
find her." So he took his carpet sack and a portable tele-
phone, and shook the fsnow of his native city from his
arctics, and went forth into the world. He wandered far
and wide and in many States. Time and again, strangers
were astounded to see a wasted, pale, and woe-worn man
laboriously climb a telegraph pole in wintry and lonely
places, perch sadly there an hour, with his ear at a little
box, then come sighing down, and wander wearily away.
Sometimes they shot at him, as peasants do at aeronauts,
thinking him mad and dangerous. Thus his clothes were
much shredded by bullets and his person grievously lacer-
ated. But he bore it all patiently.

In the beginning of his pilgrimage he used often to say,
"Ah, if I could but hear the Sweet By and By ! " But to-

108 ALONZO FITZ CLARANCK AND ROSANNAH ETH ELTON.

ward the end of it he used to shed tears of anguish and
say, " Ah, if I could but hear something else! "

Thus a month and three weeks drifted by, and at last
some humane people seized him and confined him in a
private mad-house in Mew York. He made no moan, for
his strength was all gone, and with it all heart and all
hope. The superintendent, in pity, gave up his own com-
fortable parlour and bed-chamber to him and nursed him
with affectionate devotion.

At the end of a week the patient was able to leave his
bed for the first time. He was lying, comfortably pillowed,
on a sofa, listening to the plaintive Miserere of the bleak
March winds, and the muffled sound of tramping feet in
the street below, — for it was about six in the evening,
and New York was going home from work. He had a
bright fire, and the added cheer of a couple of student
lamps. So it was warm and snug within, though bleak and
raw without ; it was light and bright within though out-
side it was dark and dreary as if the world had been lit
with Hartford gas. Alonzo smiled feebly to think how his
loving vagaries had made him a maniac in the eyes of the
world, and was proceeding to pursue his line of thought
further, when a faint, sweet strain, the very ghost of
sound, so remote and attenuated it seemed, struck upon
his ear. His pulses stood' still ; he listened with parted
lips and bated breath. The song flowed on, — he waiting,
listening, rising slowly and unconsciously from his recum-
bent position. At last he exclaimed, —

" Tt is ! it is she ! Oh, the divine flatted notes ! "
• He dragged himself eagerly to the corner whence the
sounds proceeded, tore aside £*>• curtain, and discovered a

•

ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON. 109

telephone. He bent over, and as the last note died away
he burst forth with the exclamation, —

" Oh, thank Heaven, found at last ! Speak to me, Ro-
sannah, dearest ! The cruel mystery has been unraveled
it was the villain Burley who mimicked my voice and
wounded you with insolent speech. ! "

There was a breathless pause, a waiting age to Alonzo;
then a faint sound came, framing itself into language, —

" Oh, say those precious words again, Alonzo ! "

" They are the truth, the veritable truth, my Rosannah,
and you shall have the proof , ample and abundant proof!"

" Oh, Alonzo, stay by me ! Leave me not for a mo-
ment ! Let me feel that you are near me ! Tell me we
shall never be parted more ! Oh, this happy hour, this
blessed hour, this memorable hour ! "

" We will make record of it, my Rosannah ; every year,
as this dear hour chimes from the clock, we will celebrate
it with thanksgivings, all the years of our life."

" We will, we will Alonzo ! "

" Four minutes after six, in the evening, my Rosannah,
shall henceforth" —

" Twenty-three minutes after twelve.afternoon, shall" —

" Why, Rosannah, darling, where are you ? "

" In Honolulu, Sandwich Islands. And where are you?
Stay by me ; do not leave me for a moment. I cannot
bear it. Are you at home ? "

" No, dear, I am in New York,— a patient in the doctor's
hands."

An agonizing shriek came buzzing to Alonzo's ear, like
the sharp buzzing of a hurt gnat ; it lost power in travel-
ling five thousand miles. Alonzo hastened to say, —

110 ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON.

" Calm yourself, my child. It is nothing. Already I
am getting well under the sweet healing of your presence.
Rosannah ? "

" Yes, Alonzo ? Oh, how you terrified me ! Say on."

" Name the happy day, Rosannah ! "

There was a little pause. Then a diflSdent small voice
replied, " I blush — but it is with pleasure, it is with hap-
piness. Would — would you like to have it soon ? "

" This very night, Rosannah ! Oh, let us risk no more
delays. Let it be now ! — this very night, this very mo-
ment ! "

" Oh, you impatient creature ! I have nobody here but
my good old uncle, a missionary for a generation, and now
retired from service, — nobody but him and his wife. I
would so dearly like it if your mother and your aunt
Susan " —

" Our mother and our aunt Susan, my Rosannah."

" Yes, our mother and our aunt Susan, — I am content
to word it so if it pleases you ; I would so like to have
them present." . , , . s

" So would I. Suppose you telegraph aunt Susan. How
long would it take her to come ? " . /■

" The steamer leaves San Francisco day after to-mor-
row. The passage is eight days. She would be here the
31st of March." > ..

" Then name the 1st of A^jril : do, Rosannah, dear."

" Mercy, it would make us April fools, Alonzo ! " -*

" So we be the happiest ones that that day's sun looks
down upon in the whole broad expanse of the globe, why
need we care ? Call it the 1st of April, dear."

,**:.

-fi

ALONZO FITZ CLARKNCE AND ROSANNAH ETHLETUN. Ill

" Then the 1st of April it shall be, with all my heart ! "

" Oh, happiness ! Name the hour, too, Rosannah."

" I like the morning, it is so blithe. Will eight in the
morning do, Alonzo ! "

" The loveliest hour in the day, — since it will make you
mine."

There was a feeble but frantic sound for some little time
as if wool-lipped, disembodied spirits were exchanging
kisses ; then Rosannah said, " Excuse me just a moment,
dear ; I have an appointment, and am called to meet it."

The young girl sought a large parlor and took her place
at a window which looked out upon a beautiful scene. To
the left one could view the charming Nuuana Valley,
fringed with its ruddy flush of tropical flowers and its
plumed and graceful cocoa palms; its rising foothills
clothed in the shining green of lemon, citron, and orange
groves ; its storied precipice beyond, where the flrstKarae-
hameha drove his defeated foes over to their destruction,
— ^a spot that had forgotten its grim history, no doubt, for
now it was smiling, as almost always at noonday, under
the glowing arches of a succession of rainbows. In front
of the window one could see the quaint town, and here
and there a picturesque gi-oup of dusky natives, enjoying
the blistering weather ; and far to the right lay the rest-
less ocean, tossing its white mane in the sunshine.

Rosannah stood there, in her filmy white raiment, fan-
ning her flushed and heated face, waiting. A Kanaka boy,
clothed in a damaged blue neck-tie and part of a silkhat,
thrust hit head in at the door, and announced, " 'Frisco
haole !" "

, " Show him in," said the girl, straightening herself up

112 ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON.

and assuming a meaning dignity. Mr. Sidney Algernon,
Burley entered, clad from head to heel in dazzling snow,
— that is to say, in the lightest and whitest of Irish linen.
He moved eagerly forward, but the girl made a gesture
and gave him a look which checked him suddenly. She
said, coldly, " I am here, as I promised. I believed your
assertions, I yielded to your importunities, and said I
would name the day. I name the 1st of April, — eight in
the morning. Now go."

" Oh, my dearest, if the gratitude of a life-time " —
" Not a word. Spare me all sight of you, all communica-
tion with you, until that hour. No, — no supplications ; I
will have it so."

When he was gone, she sank exhausted in a chair, for
the long siege of troubles she had undergone had wasted
her strength. Presently she said, " What a narrow escape !
If the hour appointed had been an hour earlier — Oh,
horror, what an escape I have made ! And to think I had
come to imagine I was loving this beguiling, this truthless,
this treacherous monster ! Oh, he shall repent his
villainy!" ^

Let us now draw this history to a close, for little more
needs to be told. On the 2nd of the ensuing April, the
Honolula Advertiser contained this notice : —

Married. — In this city, by telephone, yesterday morn-
ing, at eight o'clock, by Rev. Nathan Hays, assisted by
Rev. Nathaniel Davis, of New York, Mr. Alonzo Fitz
Clarence, of Eastport, Maine, U. S., and Miss Rosannah
Ethelton, of Portland, Oregon, U. S. Mrs. Susan How[-

ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON. 113

land, of San Francisco, a friend of the hiide, was present,
she being the guest of the Rev. Mr. Hays and wife, uncle
and aunt of the bride. Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley, of
San Francisco, was also present, but did not remain till
the conclusion of the marriage service. Captain Haw-
thorne's beautiful yacht, tastefully decorated, was in wait-
ing, and the happy bride and her friends immediately de-
parted on a bridal trip to Lahaina and Haleakala.

The New York papers of the same date contained this
notice : —

Married. — In this city, yesterday, by telephone, at
half past two in the morning, by Rev. Nathaniel Davis,
assisted by Rev. Nathan Hays, of Honolulu, Mr, Alonzo
Fitz Clarence, of Eastport, Maine, and Miss Rosanna
Ethelton, of Portland, Oregon. The parents and' several
friends of the bridegroom were present, and enjoyed a
sumptous breakfast and much festivity until nearly sun-
rise, and then departed on a bridal trip to the Aquarium,
the bridegi-oom's state of health not admitting of a more
extended journey.

Toward the close of that memorable day, Mr. and Mrs.
Alonzo Fitz Clarence were buried in sweet converse con-
cerning the pleasures of their several bridal tours, when
suddenly the young wife exclaimed : " 0, Lonny, I forgot !
I did what I said I would."

" Did you, dear ? "

" Indeed I did. I made him the April fool ! And I
told him so, too ! Ah, it was a charming surprise ! There

■€?:■.

114 ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETI5ELT0N.

he stood, sweltering in a black dress suit, with the mer-
<;ury leaking out of the top of the thermometer, waiting
to be married. You should have seen the look he gave
when I whispered it in his ear! Ah, his wickedness ''.ost
me many a heartache and many a tear, but the score was
all squared up, then. So the vengeful feeling went right
out of my heart, and I begged him to stay, and said I for-
gave him everything. But he wouldn't. He said he
would live to be avenged ; said he would make our lives
a curse to us : But he can't, can he, dear ? "
" Never in this world, ray Rosannah ! "

Aunt Susan, the Orfegonian grandmother, and the young
ci>uple and their Eastport parents are all happy at this
writing, and likely to remain so. Aunt Susan brought
the bride from the Islands, accompanied her across oui-
continent, and had the happiness of witnessing the rap-
turous meeting between on adoring husband and wife
who had never seen each other until that moment.

A word about the wretched Burley, whose wicked
machinations came so near wrecking the hearts and lives
of our poor young friends, will be sufficient. In a mur-
derous attempt to seize a crippled and helpless artisan
who he fancied had done him some small offence, he fell
into a caldron of boiling oil and expired before he could

be extinguished.

Mark Twain.

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