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(.VTH TP- BAMBLIJSTG- :^OTES or AN IDLE EXCURSIOi^ Br MAEK TWAIlSr, ^WTHOR OF '• AnVBNTURES OF TOM 8..WTBR," "OLD TIMBS OS TM HI88» SIPPI," " INNOCENTS ABBOAD." MO. ra«. MISSIS- tSmtttAtii ROSE-BELFORD PUBLISHING COMPANY. MDCCCLXXVIII, HUNTEB, BOSK & CO., PUOrTBRa AND BIKDUM rORONTO. AN IDLE EXCURSION. • ♦• CHAPTER I. I i f, LL the journeyings I had ever done had been purely in the way of business. The pleasant May weather suggested a novelty, namely, a trip for pure recre- ation, the bread-and-butter element left out. The Re\ er- end said he would go, too : a good man, one of the best of men, although a clergyman. By eleven at night we were in 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, 6 AN IDLE EXCURSION. and this is what we've done. You see, everybody v^as a • movin' from the old buryin'-ground, and our folks wis most about left to theirselves, as you may say. They were crowded, too, as you know ; lot wa'n't big enough in the first place; and last year, when Seth's wife died, wo 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 wa.*^ 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, v/hat'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 ? n AN IDLE EXCURSION. 7 ?' I i V a long way t!ie handiest lot in the sirtiitery, and the like- liest 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. Weil, 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 the 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 ihe old grave-yard and stowed them one alongside o' t'other, on a first-come-first-served plan, no partialities, with gTan'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 liere, — 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 the shivers. Fact is, I was thinkin* ao busy about makin* things comfortable for the others, I hadn't thought about being buried myself.' ' Life's on'y a fleeting show, John, as the sajdn' is. We've all got to go, sooner or later. To go with a cloun record 's the main thing. Fact is, it's the 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 V ' 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 the Shorbs get the shade.* * How about sile, William ? ' * D's a sandy sile, E's mostly loom.' * You may jimme E, then, William; a sandy silo 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 ! I AN IDLE EXCURSION. 9 f i It's D that mostly loom, not E ; and John's booked for a sandy sile after all.' There was another soft chuckle, and William depaHcd to his rest also. The next day, in New York, was a hot one ; still we managed to get more or less entertainment out of it. To- ward the middle of the afternoon we arrived on board the staunch steamship * Bermuda,' with bag and baggage, and hunted for a shady place. It was blazing summer 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 buttons 1 that. As we passed the light- ship I added an ulster, and tied a handkerchief round the collar to hold it snug up to my neck. So rapidly had the sumnK ■ gone and the winter come again ! By iii'7^ *^fall we were far out at sea, with no land in sight. 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, darling, 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, fcince the needle seldom pointed to the pole. He said a ship's compass was not faithful to any particular point, but was the moat fickle and treacherous of the «er- 10 AN IDLE EXCmSION. vants of man. Tt was forever changing. It changed ovevy (lay in the year; consequently the amount of the daily variation had to bo ciphered out and allowance madc^ for it, cIhc the mariner would go utterly astray. Another said there was a vast fortune waiting for the 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- pass, 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 now iron vessel thousands of miles from her birth-place, aud tell which way her head was pointing when 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 ot 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 j 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 IDLE EXCURSION'. 11 1 ; down ho comes again, looking insulted. Says the mate, " What (lid 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 ijo 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 took a good look, my mate and I, for we hadn'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, " I 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, T <'ii ? " 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 12 AN IDLE EXCURSION. 1 thoughts, I will." Says he, " Well, Tom, you are a dum fool." Says I, " May be I am, may be I ain't ; but the daain question is, Do you want to risk two and a half that I won't do it ? " " Make it a V," says he. " Done," says I. [ started him a-giggling and slapping his hand on his thigh, he felt so good. I w«?nt over there and leaned my knuckles on the table a minutg and looked the govemoi 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'v 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- ith- 1 AN IDLE EXCURSION. 13 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 Avreck 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- end, got oflT on a yam, with a fair wind and everything drawing. It was a true story, too, — about Captain Kounceville's shipwreck, — true m 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 gaiment 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 pats on the shoulder. One day, when hunger and thirst weie making their sure inroads upon the men's u 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 biave fellow swam to it, and ,9,fter 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 daj 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 1 ] } 1 AN IDLE EXCURSION. 15 \ I, lost their voices, but now Captain Rounceville whis- pered, * Let us pray.' The 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. ray less 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 I 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: ' H.o\-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-Zo ! Where aro yo, shipmates ? * Captain Rounceville whispered to his men, saying : ' Whisper yjour 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 : — * T] ore 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 16 AN IDLE EXCURSION. (loom 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-hook. 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 ! * Th3re was a deep, thoughtful silence for some moments. Then the grave, pale young man said, — • What is the chronometer of God V i \ : \ i ■^'- events len the of that . The glance red for md di- bright ito the t preg- lem in unce ! ' ments. t AN IDLE fiXCUJttilON. 17 i^ 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 t6 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, bu< small companies are pleasantest. No racks upon the table ; the sky cloudless, the sun brilliant, the blue sea scarcely ruffled : then what had be- «ome of the four married couples, the three oachelors, and the active and obliging doctor from the niral 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 married couples, three bachelors, and a cheery, exhilarating doctor from the wilds of Penn- sylvania, are evidently travelling together. All but tha doctor grouped in camp-chairs on deck. 18 AN IDLE EXCURSION. i Passing principal fort. The doctor is one of those peo- ple who has an infallible preventive of sea-sickness ; is flitting from friend to friend administering it and saying, " Don't you be afraid ; I know this medicine ; absolutely infallible ; prepared under my own supervision." Takes a dose himself, intrepidly. 4.15 P.M. Two of those ladies have stiuck 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. Thcce still had their infallible in cargo when they started, but arrived at the companion-way without it. 5.10. LadT No. 3, two bachelors, and one married man have gone below with I5heir own opinion of the infallible 5.20. Passing Quarantine Hulk. The infallible harj done the business for all the party except the Scotchman'^* wife and the author of that formidable remedy. Nearing the Light-Ship, j^xit the Scotchman's wife, head dropped on stewardess's shoulder. Entering the open sea. Exit doctor 1 i The rout seems permanent ; hence the smallness of tlic company at table since the voj^age began. Our v^aptain 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- f f 1 ^i/^ 1 AN IDLE EXCUBSION. 19 se peo- ess ; is saying, Dlutely Takes olours, below. ThcGG ed, but edman iallible )le haa hman'&i 's wife, of the aptain brown admir- •urnish tuples. , from nature ques- 'i i lions,-' \kVVNl\ims that pursue you from a beginning in nothii\*; lo a run-to-cover in nowhere." Reply of Ber- inudiaii of tAv^isnty-seven years' absence : " Yes ; and to think they have logical, analytical minds and argumenta- tive ability. If ou see 'em begin to whet up whenever they smell argument in the air." Plainly these be philo- sophers. Twice since "v;e left port our engines havo stopped for t couple of minutes at a time. Now they stop again. Say? the pale young man, meditatively, " There ! — that engi- neer is sitting down to rest again," Grave stare fiom 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 biv trunk, which I had AN IDLE EXCURSION. placed there by mistake, thinking it to be a flauk of some thing. So a party of us conquered the tedium of the even ing with a fbw games and were ready for bod about six bells, mariner's time, the signal for putting out the lights There was much chat in the smoking-cabin on the uppei deck after luncheon to-day, mostly vhaler yams fron; those old sea-captains. Captain Tom Bowling was garru- lous. He had that garrulous attention to minor detail which is bom of secluded farm life or 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 th^ 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 tc ribbons, first one stick going, then another, boom ! smash '> crash ! duck your head and stand from under ! when up comes Johnny Kogers, capstan bar in hand, eyes a-blazing, hair a-flying . . . no 't wasn't •Johnnj'^ Rogers . . . let me see . . . seerns to me Johnny Rogers wa'n't along that voyage ; he was along one voyage, I know thati 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 Englc^nd degrees of merit in ship-building. Said he, " You get a vessel built away down Maine- way ; Bath, for instance ; whai « (.ne result i First thing you AN IDLE EXCURSION. 21 )me ven b six ^hts ppei froix irru ietai) long oject liting r, the ,d-on •eath m. to aashi jn up ^zing, ■ • a'n't that« Igned Icome lown rgor icism ing. you i do, you want to heave her down for repairs, — thafs 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 owr 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 effective in the matter of its purpose. So the conver- sation flowed on instead of perishing. 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 ! sympathy for the poor mariner ! All right enough, but not in the way the poetry puts it. B 22 AN IDLE EXCUllSION. Pity for tho mariner's wife ! all right again, but not in the way the poetry puts it. Look-a-liere ! whose life's the saf cfe Jie whole world ? The 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 that to the poetry muffs. 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 at 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 ; five of them she has buried without her husband ever setting eyes on them. She watched them all the long nights till they died, — he comfortable on the sea ; she followed them to the grave, she heard the clods 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 i AN IDLE EXCURSION. 23 ^ rot ; give it to his wife's hftrd lines, where it belonn^s I 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 he 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 mo 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 evei" 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 foi sugar and molasses. Among other talk, to-day, it came out that whale-ships carry no elector. 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. The captain is provided with a medicine chest, with the medicines num- 24 A.N IDLE EXCURSION, bored instead of named. A book of directions goes with this. It dcHcribes diaeaacs and symptoms, and says, " Give a teaspoonful of No. 9 once an hour," or " Give ten grains of No. 12 every half -hour," etc. One of our sea captains came across a skipper in the North Pacific who was in a state of great sui*priso and perplexity. Said he • " There's something rotten about this medicine-chest business. One of my men was sick, — nothing much the matter. I looked in tlu 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 half a teaspoonful of No. 8 and half a tea- spoonful of No, 7, and I'll be hanged if it didn't kill him in fifteen minutes ! There's something bout this medi- cine-chest system that's too many for me ! " There was a good deal of pleasant gossip about old Captain " Humcane '' Jones, of the Pacific Ocean, — peace to his ashes ! Two or three of us present had known him ; I, particularly, well, for I had made four sea-voyages with him. He was a very remarkable man. He was bom in a ship ; he picked up what little education he had among his shipmates ; he began life in the forecastle, and climbed grade by grade to the captaincy. More than fifty years of his sixty -five were spent at sea. He had sailed all oceans, seen all lands, and borrowed a tint from all climates. When a man has been fifty years at sea, he necessarily 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. \ a AN IDLE EXCURSION. 2A Such a man is only a gray and boarded child. This it* what old Hurricane Jones was, — simply an innocent, lov- able old infant. When his spirit was ii: repose he was a? sweet and gentle as a girl ; when his wrath was up he wa? a hurricane that made his nickname seem tamely desc. ip- tive. He was formidable in a fight, for ho was of powerful build and dauntless courage. Ho was frescoed from head to heel with pictures and mottoes tatooed in red and blue India ink. I was with him one voyage when he got his last vacant space tattooed ; this vacant space was around his left ankle, during three days he stumped about the ship with his ankle bare and swollen, and this legend gleaming red and angry out from a clouding of India ink " Virtue is its own R'd." (There was a lack of room.) He was deeply and sincerely pious, and swore like a fish- woman. He considered swearing blameless, because sailors would not understand an order unillumined by it. He was a profound Biblical scholar, — 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 thinkers, and applied natural laws to the interpretation of all miracles, somewhat on the plan of the people who make the lIx days of creation six geological epochs, and so forth. Without being aware of it, he was a rather severe satire 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. fc /^ 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. Ho took a great liking to this 26 AN IDLE EXCURSION. Kev. Mr. Peters, and talked with him 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, j'ou 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'U do it willi t i • >> t AN IDLE EXCURSION. 27 I 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'nt 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, — that is, 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, — no thing 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 ia the captain's own mistake. 28 AN IDLE EXCURSION. 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 was a good deal disturbed, and he went to the prophets of Baal, and they said, pretty airy, that if he had 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 every 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. ■« I AN IDLE EXCURSION. 29 I ; \ " What does Isaac do, now ? He steps up nnd 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 people 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 water ? Petroleum^ Sir, PETROLEUM ! that's what it was I" " 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 80 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 ghttering belts of blue and green where moderate soundings were, and its broad splotches of rich brown where the rocita i ^ «k AN IDLE EXCUKSION. 31 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 vessvl'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 th'> pier were gathered one or two hundred Bermudians, haif of them black, half of them white, and aU 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 , , . thcra's something 32 AN IDLE EXCUBSION. about you that . . . er . . . er . . . but I 've 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 as — " Likely it might be his hat/' murmured the Aaa, with sympathetic intore»^ » been • • 9 V, but to me , "with AN IDLE EXCURSION. 33 ( 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 off* 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 u AN IDLE EXCURSION. frequent and eloquent fi^ro. 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 sor upon the stage of life to dare and do for himself, climaxe? all counsel, supplicflition, 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 werf well and neatly dressed, many of them nattily, a few ol 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 ox effort. The women and young girLs, black and white, w ho occasionally passed by, were nicely clad, and many were elegantly and fashionably so. The men did not affect summer clothing much, but the girls and women did, and their white garments were good to look at, after so many months of familiarity with sombre colours. Around one isolated potato barrel stood foui yuuiig ^en 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. Anothei young gentleman came up, looked longingly at the bar- rel bat saw no rest for his foot there. He wandered hen and there, but without result. Nobody sat upon a barrel AN IDLE EXCURSION. 35 as is the custom of the idle in other lands, yet all the iso- lated barrels were humanly occupied. Whosoever had a foot to spare put it on a barrel, if all the places on it were not already taken. The habits of all peoples are deter- mined by their circumstances. The Bermudians 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 onioiia ? ' or, * how is onions ? ' Naturally enough this was their first interest ; but they dropped into the war the moment it was satisfied. W^e 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, or 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-Bermudian. His rear was so marvellously be- patcbed 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 t»ervices ; so the Reverend doubled it. The little chap re- 86 AN IDLE EXCURSION. ceived the money with a beaming applause in hia eye which plainly said, ' This man's an onion ! ' We had brought 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 against us. We had no trouble. Bermuda 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, iantanas, heliotrope, jessa- mine, roses, pinks, double geraniums, 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 c»ral 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 great 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 chu^ ning. Thus soft is this stone. B^l AN IDLE EXCURSION. 37 Then with a common handsaw they saw the greac blocks into handsome, 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, end 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 38 kH IDLE £XCU11SI0N. looks as if it had been carved from a single block of stone, and the doors and windows sawed out afterwards. A white marble house has a cold, tomb-like, unsociable look, and takes the conversation out of a body and depresses him. Not so with a Bermuda house. There is something exhilarating, even hilarious, about its vivid whiteness when the sun plays upon it. If it be of picturesque shape and graceful contour — and many of the Bermudian dwell- ings are— it will so fascinate you that you will keep your eyes upon it until they ache. One of those clean-cut fanciful chimneys — too pure and white for this world — with one side glowing in the sun and the other touched with a soft shadow, is an object that will charm one's gaze by the hour. I know of no other country that has chim- neys worthy to be gazed at and gloated 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 ''ountry road, it will wring an exclamation from him, fure.^^ WhercYer you go, in town or country, you find those snowy houses, and always with masses of bright-coloured flowers about them, hut 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. i>fo where is there dirt or stench, puddle, or hog- wallow, ueglect, disorder, or lack of trim- • I Tii thi th in del W( to AN IDLE EXCUB3I0N. 39 t I I ness and ncatnoss. The roads, the .streets, the dwellings, the people, the clothes, this neatness extends to every- thing that falls under the eye. It is the tidiest country in the world. And very much the tidiest, too. Considering these things, the question came up, Where dothe poor live ? No answer was arrived at. Therefore, we agi'eed to leave this conundrum for future statesmen to wrangle over. What a bright and startling spectacle one of those blaz- ing white country palaces, with its brown-tinted window caps and ledges, and green shutters, and its wealth ot 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 Iiill intrudes itself — and smoothing off the surface of the road-bed. It is a simple and easy process. The grain of the coral is coarse 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 Bowling 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 i buildings. Our eyes got to paining us a good deal. By- land-by a sooohing, blessed twilight sp/ead its cool balm 40 AN IDLE EXCURSION. around. We looked up in pleased surprise, and saw thai 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 carry a cane, in Bermuda as everywhere else in Britain's broad dominions. The country roads curve and wind hither and thither in the delightful lest 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 tow rs 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 ■ •I '■. IN IDLE EXCURSION. 41 1 sunny and still pleasant; it carries you by the prettiest and peacefullest 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 everything 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 inland 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 sen 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 arc tired of it — if you are so constituted as to be able to get tiied of it. You may march the country roads in maidon modita- 42 AN IDLE EXCURSION. tion fancy free, by field and farm, for no dog will plunge out at you from unsuspected gate, with breath-taking sur- prise and ferocious bark, notwithstanding it is a Christian land 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 offence 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 proprietor, 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 door. 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, bj" 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 weavers for a hundred and fifty years, till about a year ago." > «. AN IDLE EXCURSION. 43 plunge ing sur- tiristian on cats in the led the 3d by a 'he cats jn piled y after- water. ), asked and we le door, swer — md we i ques- leasant I small ords to isently 3thing, she is family there's speak. r, have eavers f " 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 neighbours run considerable to cats, and so I warned them about the trap, because their cats were pretty sociable around here nights, and they might get into trouble without my in- tending it. Well, they shut up their cats for a while, but you know how it is with people ; they got careless, and 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 child. It was a cat by the name of Yelverton — 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 must 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, caiTying the remains vnth 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 much of as if he was twins, and one nighi he tried that trap on his neck, and it fitted him so, and was so sort of satisfactory, that he laid down a.^d 44 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 three hundred j'^ards 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 v.^arn't worth a cancelled postage-stamp, any way, taking the average of cats here; but I lost the case. V/hat 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 I AN IDLE EXCURSION. 45 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, discoimt, 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 changed 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, Int 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 i^'^and dignitaries, could command such a mark of respect as this. Then a 46 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 flag. 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 here for a boarder, Mr. . mith ? " " Why certainly they would, if he was dead.** That seemed to " size " the country a^in. ndl iclu- the said rder L^ IDLE EXCURSION. 4y ; rder, CHAPTER IV. J HE early twilight of a Sunday evening in Hamilton, Bermuda, is an alluring time. There is just enough of whispering breeze, fragrance of flowers, 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 w!:ite and the other half black, according to the usual Bermudian proportions ; and all well dressed, — a thing which is also usual in Bermuda and 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." 4f) AN IDLE EXCURSION. There are those who believe that the most difficult thing to create is a woman who can comprehend that it is wrong to smuggle ; and that a i 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 w^ith 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 halx a day ; v/e 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 fooi^^eps. 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 concribute witli thankful avidity to the new Methodist church, and are AN IDLE EXCUBSION. id I so I 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 1 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 " 1 said, " Did I ? " Then I put my attention there tmd kept still. At the end of another half hour she said, " Why do you say * yes, oh, yes 1 ' and * Ha, ha, oh, certainly I very true I ' to every- t 50 AN IDLE EXCURSION. j i I thing T say, when half the time those 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 yet look so sad ? " I explained that I always did that when I was reflecting. An hour passed, and then she turned and contemplated me with her earnest eyes and said, " Why do you cry all the tim« ? " I explained that very funny comedies r^lways 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, bTxm- 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." 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. Ke said that in the Potomac hospitals rough pine coflins 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 IDLE EXCURSION. 51 the ren the do I in with a coffin on his shoulder, and stood trying to m.ike up his mind which 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 them protruded a wasted hand from his blankets and made a feeble beckoning sign with the fingers, to signify, " Be a good fellow ; put it under my bed, please." The man did 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 labour, 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. Be took fl. 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, 52 AN IDLE EXCURSION. the little white table-waiter appeared suddenly in my room and .shot a wingle word out of hiniself : " Breakfast ! " This was a remarkable boy in many ways. He was about eleven years old ; he had alert, intent black eyes ; he was quick of movement ; there was no hesitation, no uncertainty about him anj^whcre ; 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 question that had been asked instead of a reply to it. When he stood at the table with his fly-binish, 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 I would make one more effort to get some conversation out of this being. *' Have you called the Reverend, or are — V\ " Yes s'r 1" "Isitearly, oris— ?" " Eight-five !" " Do you have to do all the ' chores/ or is there some- body to give you a 1- " "Coloured girl!" " Is there only one parish in this island, or are there — " " Eight !" AN IDLE EXCURSION. r3 u* If " Is the big church on the hill a parish chiirc! "Chapel-of-oase!" "Is taxation here classified into poll, paiisli, town, and^" "Don't know!" Before T could cudgel another question out of my hea3 he was below, hand-springing across the back-yard. He had slid down the balusters, head first. I gave up trying to provoke a discuss! i with him. The essential element of discussion had been left out of him ; his answers were so 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 the world uses its oppor- tunities. During this day and the next we took carriage drive, about the island and over to the town of St. George's fifteen or twenty miles away. Such hard, excellent road, to drive over are not to be found elsewhere out of Europe. An intelligent young 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, Ibut they were the stateliest, the most majestic. That row lof them must 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 54 AN IDLE EXCURSION. i 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 efc,r 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 Baalbec ; 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. ' Tho 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 iijspected 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, end 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, foi doubtless there is more or less brag about it. In San Fx{?<bcisco they used to claim that their native flea could kick a child over, as if it were a merit in a flea to be able to do that ; as if the know- AN IDLE EXCURSION. 5t ledge of it trumpeted abroad ought to entice emigi'ation. 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 stoted 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 testim^ony 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 roets as upon ■'M 56 AN 7T>LE EXCURSION. a tangle of stilts. In dryer places the noble tamarind sent down its gi-ateful 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 person. 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_thi:pugh smoked glass ; if this is so it is a great mistal We saw a tree that bears grapes, and just as caMTy 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 ma ly 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. 67 ly a 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 farmers 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. II *i 58 A.N IDLE EXCURSION. H Later 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 ii. she thought of it. We passed a roadside 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 g(b 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." I 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 J AN IDLE EXCURSION 5f an inicadation 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 before him he was cheerfully willing to divide. So we h^>d 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 lo 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 i\\e town, which is a quaint one, with interesting crooked streets, and narrow crooked lanes, with here and there a grain of dust. 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 b jttom, 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 i- 60 AN IDLE EXCUBSION. hard whitewash. Some of these are a quarter-acre in size. 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 afteriioon 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 the thinnest of linen, and reached home at five in the afternoon with two overcoats on. The night? 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. I gathered the idea I it a \ AN IDLE EXCURSION. 61 J vaguely, that it was a jug, but was persistently thwarted in the twenty-two effoiis I 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 Bermudas, 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 about 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, for there are chaiming li^ttle 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 getting 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 ■ I 62 AN IDLE EXCURSION. \ 1 health permits are not granted after seven in the evening, partly because a ship cannot be inspected and overhauled with exhaustive thoroughness except in the daylighij and partly because health officials are liable to catch coLl if they expose themselves to the night air. Still, you can buy 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- Hating 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 coimtries. 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 great 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 a c hi I w bi th ' AN IDLE EXCIJKSION. ca addition of an amount of exasperation and bitterness of soul that the spectacle of that health ofR . . . . . . * 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 I Haw that " The Atlantic " had condemned the words which occupied the place where is now a vacancy. I can invent no figure worthy to otand in the ahoesi of the lurid colossus which a too deep respect for the opinions of mankind hao thus ruthlessly banished from his due and rightful pedestd in the world's literature. I^et the blank remain a blank ; and let it suggest to the reader that he lias sustained a precious lost which can nev«r b« made good to him, M. T. 1 FACTS C )NCERNING THE RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME IN CON • NECTICUT. WAS feeling blithe, almost jocuiMi. I put a match to my cigtar, 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 delight. Of course she pleaded with me just as earnestly as ever, after that blessed day, io quit RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME. 65 CON my pernicious habit, but to no purpose whatever ; the moment she opened the subject I at once bocame 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 tranquil 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 I was getting very hungry to see her again. I easily guessed what I should find in her letter. I opened 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 entered. He was not more than two feet high. He 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, an-d even m 66 RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME. the clothes, gestures, manner, and attitudes of the creature. He was a far-fetched, dim suggestion of a burlesque upon me, a caricature of me in little. One thing about him struck me forcibly, and most unpleasantly : he was cover- ed all over with a fuzz}'-, greenish mould, such as one sometimes sees upon mildewed bread. The sight of it was nauseating, He stepped along with a chipper air, and flung himself into a doll's chair in a very fi-ee 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 mo 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, nevev with strangers, I observed to myself. I wanted to kick the pygmy into the fire, 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 my day, and moreover was delivered in a t< the RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME. 67 a tone of voice and with an exasperating drawl that had the seeming of a deliberate travesty of my style. Now there is nothing I am quite so sensitive about as a n:ock- ing ircitation of my drawling infirmity of speech. I spoke up sharply and said : — " Look hero, you miserable ash -cat ! you will have to give a little more attention to your manners, or I will throw you out of the window ! " The manikin smiled a smile of malicious content and security, puflfed a whifF of smoke contemptuously towards me, and said, with a still more elaborate drawl : — " 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 fr -m your door this mom- I said crustily : — " Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn't. How do yoit 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 'i " " 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 — 68 RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME. l\ but sffi I resolved to m ke 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. Tw© 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 cub 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 bad come so far, too, and so hopefully. Now wcLsn'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 thing is, you did that contemptible thing. And 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 hot consent to deliver judgment upon any one's wo RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME. 69 » » manuscript, because an individuars verdict was worthless. 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 tribunal competent to sit in judgment upon a literary efibrt, 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 faded 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 — " " 0, peace ! peace ! peace ! Blister your merciless tongue, haven't all these thoughts tortured me enough, without your coming here to fetch them back again ? " Remoi*se ! 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 ! <l I I 70 RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME. If' I 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 treacheries 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 Ir.test picture you have of him in health and strength must be such a comfort to you You pledged 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 ft million more ! and may you rot away piecemeal, and rou£ EECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME. 71 ly hear- defence. ;h I had lone by e which nd been 5es only, item by and hu- ''ho died ng over younger 7 a long with a ) able to itent to th you ; ar hand of him to you I blind led him lim in ; rget thfo ruggled 10 1 you II see it tal, and 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, wi\/h 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 1 Look here, friend — look me in the eye. Who are you ? " " 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 I " In an instant I was in a blaze of joy and exultation. I 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\ 72 KECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME. ti i your throat once ! 0, but I will wreak a deadly ven- geance on — " Folly ! Lightning does not move more quickly than ray 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 triumph? nt laugh- ter as I sat down exhausted. While I pufied aLd gasped with fatigue and excitement, my Conscience talked to this effect : — " 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 kiU 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 you — 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 covdd no more be heavy-hearted RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME. 73 lly ven- :ly than that in was al- svith his le poker a blind I hurled ks, ink- it about urpose ; ly that, t laugh- gasped I to this I mean sistent, st have with a ) under d have 3 floor ; ae that i away a mere heavy- 1 there earted over SI' oh a desire than I could have sorrowed over ita 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 wanted such a thing in my life. By and by I got to musing over the hour's strange adventure, and of course mj^ human curiosity began to work. I set myself to framing in my mind some questions for this fiend to answer. Just then one cf 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 gi'atef ul, 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 m ental note of that piece of information with a good 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 his 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 " 74 RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME. f I a flag of truce for a while. I am suffering to ask you some questions." " Very well. Begin." " Well, then, in the first place, why were you never visible to me before ? " " Because you never asked to see me before ; that is, you never asked in the right spirit and the proper form before. You were just in the right spirit this time, and when you called for your most pitiless enemy I was that person by a very large majority, though you did not sus- pect it." '* 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 ne was unsubstantial, how was I going to kill ? * - ? 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 ihat was full of derision, and with this observation added : — " Come where you can get at me and kill me ? 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 one spirit lacking in this world, presently, or I lose my guess." Then I said aloud, — " Friend—" " There ; wait a bit. I am not your friend, I am your I ask you ou never ; that is, per form ime, and was that not sus- flesh and 1 unsub- ving. If - ? But t such a derision, e? The )irit can ig in this I said mi your RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME. 75 t 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 wr. That is as far as — " "We will have no argument about this. Just obey; that is all. Go on with your c'uatter." " 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 ? " "Always!" 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 sr'^h 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 you know what eloquence there is in visible gesture and expression, more especially when the eiFect 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 ! E,emember the flag of truce ! " " Ah, I forgot that. I will try to be civil ; and you try it, too, for a novelty. . The idea of a civil conscience ! i ill i: 70 RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME. iii It is a good joke ; an excellent joke. All the consciences 7 have ever heard of were nagging, badgering, fault-find- ing, execrable savages ! Yes ; and always in a sweat about some poor little insignificant trifle or other — destruction catch the lot of them, I 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 offence, and sben 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, forever 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." " Weil, we like it, that suffices." " Do you do it with the honest intent to improve 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 we 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 y7bere 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 few times of an error ; and I don't mind acknowledging that we try to give pretty good measure. And when we get hold of a man of a peculiarly sensitive nature, oh, but we do haze him ! I I RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME. 77 have known consciences to come all the way from China and Russia to see a person of that ki^A put through his paces, on a special occasion. Why, I ki.ew a man of that sort 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, without eating or sleeping, and then blew his brains out. The c.^il vras perfectly well again in three weeks." " Well, you are « precious crew, not to put it too strong* I think I begi?' to see, now, why you have always been a 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 different ways. For instance, you f oimd fault with me for lying to that tramp, and I suffer- ed over that. But it was only yesterday that I told a tramp the square truth, to wit, that, it being regarded as bad citizenship 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 off with a little white lie, and send him away feeling 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 off you said, * O false citizen, to have fed a tramp ! ' and I suffered as usual. I gave a tramp work ; you objected to it — after the contract was made, of course; you never speak up beforehand, 78 RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME. ill Next I refused a tramp work ; you objected to that Next, I proposed to kill a tramp ; you kept me awake all night oozing remorse at every pore. Sure I was going to be right this time, I sent the next tramp away with my benediction ; and I wish you may Hve as long as I do, it you didn't make me oiii?.rt 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 on ! " " But come, now, answer me that question, /s there any way ? " " Well, none that T propose to tell you, my ^on. Ass ! I don't care what act you may turn your hand to, I can straightway whisper a word in your ear and make you think you have committed a dreadful meanness. It is my business — and my joy — to make you repent of every- thing you do. If I have fooled away my opportunities it was not intentional ; I beg to assure you it was not intentional." "Don't worry ; 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 fifty to twenty -five ; repented of that and came down to fifteen ; repented of that and dropped to two dollars and a half ; when the plate came around at last, I repented once more and contributed ten RECENT CABKIVAL OF CRIME. 79 i cents. Well, when I got home, I did wish to goodness 1 had that ten cents back again ! You never did let mo get through a charity sermon without having something to swoat about." " O, and I never shall, I never shall. You can 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 ! " " 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 per- scmal, 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 peoi pie, 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 io 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 80 RECENT CAENIVAL OF CRIME. 1.1 'f had a large conscieuce once ; if you've a small conscience now, I reckon there are reasons for it. However, both ol us are to blame, you and I. Yoti see, you used to be con- scientious about a great many things ; morbidly so, I may say. It was a great many years ago. You probably do not remember it, now. Well, I took a great interest in my work, and I so enjoyed the anguish which certain pet sins of yours afflicted you with, that I kept pelting at you until I rather overdid the matter, ^ou 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 soriye 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 should be asleep all the time but for the help I get." " Who helps you ? " " Othc)' consciences. Whenever a person whose con^ RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME. 81 science I am acquainted with tries to plead with you about the vices you are callous to, I get my friend to give his client a pang concerning some villany of his own, and that shuts off his meddling and starts him off to hunt personal consolation. My field of usefulness is about trimmed down to tramps, budding authoresses, and that line of goods, now ; but don't you worr^ — I'll harry you on them while they last ! Just you put your trust in me. » " I think I 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 / am pining for. If I only had you shrunk down to a homcepathic 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 conscien- 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 } sve 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 82 RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME. !' I him many years. I knew him when he was eleven leet high, and of a faultless figure. But he is very rusty and tough and misshappen now, and hardly ever interests himself about anything. A.s 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 member of the New England Con- science Club, — is presidenij of it. NigLt and day you can find him pegging away at Smith, panting with his labour, sleeves rolled up, countenance all alive with enjoyment H« 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 yet is always breaking his heart because he oannot be good ! Only a conscience could find pleasure in EECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME. 83 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, because 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 off?" " 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 for half price by 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 thirty thousand diameters, and so nobody got to see him after all. There was great and general dissatisfaction, ot course, but — " Just here there was an eager footstep on the stairs. I opened the door, and my Aunt Mary 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- ini;:jed me, the day I saw you last, that you would look after the needs of the poor family round the corner an 84 RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME. ill faithfully as I had done it myself. Well, I found out by accident that you failed of your promise. Wo.s that right ? " In simple truth, I never had thought of that family a secoiid 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 prot^gie at the almshouse, you dear, hard-hearted promise- breaker ! " I blushed scarlet, and my tongue was tied. As the sense of my guilty negligence waxed sharper and st>:onger, 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 poor child died, months ago, utterly friendless and forsaken ! '' My Conscience could 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 to the 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. " 0, what can be the matter ! " exclaimed my aunt, shrinking from me, and following with her frightened eyes the direction of mine. My breath was coming in \ \) KECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME. 85 out by as that amily a )f guilt science. s body om the rot^gSe romise- is tied. )er and ek and d in a r, may- ,t poor tken ! '' weight s high ip. He appre- brt« to 3 door, -tchful fingers aunt, itened ing in Bhort, quick gasps now, and my excitement was almost uncontrollable. My aunt cried out, — " 0, do not look so ! You appall me ! O, what can the matter be ? What is it you see ? W hy 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- insf. I am often this w&y. 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 so wrought up. My aunt wrung her hands, and said, — " O, I knew how it would be ; I knew it would come to this at last ! 0, I implore yon to crush out that fatal habit 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 i 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 ana live I " With a long-drawn sigh my conquered Con- science closed his eyes and fell fa;st asleep ! ■*m^'- ^'''\ 86 RECENT ./iENWA.!. )F ORlMii.. ;, i in "With an exultant shoufc T .sprpng past my aunt, and in an instant I had my life-long foe by the throat. After so many years of waiting and long;ng, he was mine at last, I tore him to shreds and fragments. I rent the fragments to bits. I cast the Heeding rubbish into the fire, and drew into my nostrils the grateful incense of my burnt offering. At last, and forever, my Conscience was dead! I was a free man I I tvmed upon my poor aunt, who was almost petrified with te Tor^ 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 sufiering, dead to remorse ; a man without a Conscience! In my joy I spare you, though I cnuld throttle you and never feel a pang! Fly!" She fled. Since that da^^ my life is all bliss. Bliss, un- alloye t i<Ilss. Nothing in all the world could persuade me to >.vtv8 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 some orphans out of their last cow, which is a very gocd 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 ray heart and turned my hair gray, I have no doubt. In conclusion I wish to state, by way of adveiiisement, f '-^^: t, and in u After mine at rent the into the ise of my ■'^ was mco ant, who ies, your fore you -t peace ; mffering, ! In my tid never Bliss, un- persuade old out- I killed J— all of dwelling ^nd some ocd one, Iso com- lave en- formerly , I have RECiJNT CMi^lVAL fy^ ClUl^.E. 87 that medical colleges desiring assortcl ranps for scien- tific purposes, either by the gross, hv 3ord i iie<ASuremeut, or per ton, will do well to examine -lie lot in my cellar before purchasing elsewhere, as these were all selected and pre][>ared 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, ^2l '■>] isement, THE L0YE8 ov ALONZO FITZ OLAKENOE AND ROSANFAH ETHELTOK -> ♦ • Qii ■„ I! li, r3. 1 £1 ! [T was well along in the forenoon of a bitter 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 moan 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 hear the faint, far scrape o^ a wooden shovel, and if you were quick enough you might catch a glimpse of a distant black figure stooping and disappear- ing in one of those ditches, and reappearing the next mo- ment wiih 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 scud for the house, thrashing itself with its arms to warm them. Yes, it was too venomously cold for snow shovelers or anybody else to stay out lon^. ' i ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON. 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 breakfast 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 Lave with me always. On so grim a day as this, one needs a new interest, a fresh element, to whet the dull edge of caiptivity. That was very neatly said, but it doesn't mean anything. One doesn't want the edge of M 90 ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON. > i captivity shai-pened up, you know, but just the re- verse." He glanced at his pretty French mantel clock. " That clock's wrong again. That clock hardly ever 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 I have started, I will find out what time it is." He stepped tr a speaking-tube in the wall, blew its whistle and called " Mother ! " and repeated it twice. " Well, that's no use. Mother's battery is out of ordei too. Can't raise anybody down stairs, — that's plain." He sat down at at a rose- wood desk, leaned his chin or the left-hand edge of it, and spoke, as if to the floor :— "Aunt Susan!" A low, pleasant voice answered, " Is that you, Alonzo V " 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 you !" " Oh, don't keep me in suspense, dear ! "What is it ?" " I want to know what time it is." " You abominable boy, what a turn you did give me Is that all ? " ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON. 91 " All, — on my honour. Calm yourself. Tell roe the time, and receive my blessing." " Just five minutes after nine. No charge, — keep your blessing." " Thanks. It wouldn't ha\ae impoverished me, aunty, nor 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- three and twenty-one are fifty-four ; four times fifty-four are two hundred and thirty-six. One ofi", leaves two hun- dred and thirty-five. That's right." He turned the hands of his clock forward till they marked twenty-five minutes to one, and said, " Now see if you can't keep right for a while . . . else I'll raffle you !" He sat down at the desk again, and said, ''Aunt Susan ! " " Yes, dear." " Had breakfast ? " " Yes, indeed, an hour ago." '' Busy ? " " No, — except sewing. Why ? " " Got any company ? " " No, but I expect some at half past nine." " I wish I did. I'm lonesome. I want|to talk to somebody." " Very well, talk to me." " But this is very private." "D^n't be afraid, — talk right aloug; there's nobody here but me." 92 ALONZO FITZ CLAftENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHBLTON. W 1 .1 " I hardly know whether to venture or not, but " — " But what ? Oh, don't stop there ? You knoio you can trust me, Alonzo, — you know you can." " I feel it, aunt, but this is very serious. It affects me deeply, — me and all the family, — even the whole com- munity." " Oh, Alonzo, tell me ! I will never breathe a word oi it. What is 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 is it ? " The weather ! " " Plague take the weather ! 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- fulness, and the windows open to keep cool. But it is vain, it is useless : nothing comes in but the balmy breath of December, with its burden of mocking odours from the flo^ la^ flai is ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON. 93 flowers that possess the realm outside, and rejoice in their lawless profusion whilst the spirit of man is low, and flaunt their gaudy splendours in his face whilst his soul is clothed in sackcloth and ashes and his heart breaketh." Alonzo opened his lips to say, " You ought to prir^ that and get it framed," but checked himself, for he heard 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 quaking body against a windward wall for shelter and protection ; a young girl was plough- ing knee-deep through the 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, " Better the slop and the sultry '•din, and even the insolent flowers, than this !" He turned from the windovf, 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 music 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 quickly to the desk, listened a moment, and ' IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I ml 2.0 ^i^ I 1.6 Photographic Sciences Corporation J f\ V SJ :\ \ rv '^Jk & 23 WEST MA!N STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. MS80 (716) S72-4503 '^V^ V 4^0 ^ u/^ %'' 94 AI.ONZO ^nZ CLARBKCE 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 " — " Spr 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 Bosannah 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 I attend to a few household affairs. Sit down, Bosannah ; 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 I 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 ILTON. is thia i^th me n ! You moment and re- is angel appels ! agerly, id bow- were in broduce larence. u ; so 1 > a few ^onzo. lie, and imagi- entally )wand care ! " ito an ng the Ekt her jh was ▲LONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON. 95 manifestly the private parlour of a refined and sensible lady, if signs and symbols may go for an3rthing. For instance, by a low, comfortable chair stood a dainty, top- heavy work-stand, whose summit was a fancifuUy em- broidered shallow basket, with vari-coloured crewels, and other stiings 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 thieads inter- webbed with other threads not so pronounced in colour, lay a great square of coarse white sti.]?, upon whose sur- face a rich bouquet of flowers was giowing, 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. There 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 oflered 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 96 ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON But the sweet young girl was the daintiest thing those premises, within or without, could oflfer for contempla- tion ; delicately chiseled features, of Qrecian cast; her complexion the pure snow of a japonica that is receiving a faint reflected enrichment from some scarlet neighboui of th*e 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 beautifu) 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 harmony that can come only of a fine natural taste perfected by culture. Her gown was of a simple magenta tulle, cut bias, traversed by three rows of light blue fiounces, with the selvage edges turned up with ashes-of- roses-chenille ; overdress of dark bay tarleton, with scarlet satin lambrequins ; corn-coloured polonaise, 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 safiron tint; coral bracelets and locket-chain ; coifinre 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. Then 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 up fio hai Bto^ up( ALONZO FITZ CLAKENCE AUD BOSANNAH ETHELTON. 97 Aid still she talked. By and by she happened to look up, and saw the clock. A crimson blush sent its rich flood 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 dock. Presently her pouting lips parted, and she said, — " Five minutes after eleven I Nearly two hours, and it did not seem twenty minutes! Oh, dear, what will he think of me ! " At the self -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 i Is it possible that this clock is humbugging me again? Miss Ethel ton ! 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 find 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 Etholton ! " "WeU?" I ''I i 1 98 ALONZO FITZ GLABENCE AMD ROSANNAH ETHELTON. * You — ^you're there yet, am't you ?** "Yes; but please hurry. What did you want to say r " 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, il it will not trouble you too much ? ** " I don't know— but I'll think about it. I'll try." " Oh, thanks ! Miss Ethelton ... Ah me, she's go: and here are the black clouds and the whirling snow and the raging winds coine 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-d«,mber, 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 I" n. 2i^=> 'OUR weeks later Mr. Sidney AlgemonBurley was en- tertaining a gay luncheon company, in it sumptuous Irawing-room on Telegraph Hill, with some capital imita- dons of the voices and gestures of certain popular actors BLTON. ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON. 99 97ant to iry lone-" it would lat is, ii ry. Qe, she's ing snow good'hy ! • • • f-winged re for a I was a L in the s gazing Golden t he is simple was en- iptuouff 1 imita- r actors' and San Franciscan literary people and Bonanza grandees. He was elegantly upholstered, and was a handsome fel- low, barring a trifling cast 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 continually 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 Jrawing-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 annoimcement 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 1" 100 ALONZO FITZ CLABENCB AKD BOSANNAH ETHELTON. M Then he heard Bosannah Ethelton, whose Dack was toward hun say, — " So has yours, dearest !'* He saw her bowed form bend lowe** * 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 ip 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, Bosannah." " 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 doudland, a boundless firmament of enchanted and bewildering ectascyl" " Oh, my Rosannah ! — ^f or you are mine, are you not ? " " Wholly, oh, wholly yours, .ilonzo, now and forever I All the day long, and all through my nightly dreams, one song sings itself, and its sweet burden is, * Alonzo Fitz Olarence Alonzo Fitz Clarence, Eastport, State of Maine ! If Mamn ALONZO FITZ CIJOtENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON. 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 jtras so muffled from head to heel in furs that nothing of herself was visible but hei 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. Both 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 1 " exclaimed aunt Susan, '' this explains why you have been a hermit for the past six weeks, Rosan- nah!" The young eouple were on their feet in an instant, abashed, and standing like detec!^ed 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 nepheVs sake! Come to my arms ! " Then was there a mingling of hearts and of tean of re- joicing on Telegraph Hill and in Eastport Square. Servants were called by the elders, in botL 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, 102 ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAU JLTHELTON. and brin^ 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 great Nature shall have dofied her winter's ermine to don the emerald gauds of spring, she shall be mine ! *' III. IWO weeks later. Every few hours, during some (3^ three or four days, a very prim and devout-looking 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 health; 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 jklong. My invention will stop all that." LION. r of ice- e eldera lake the rom the ' taking is teeth, In melo- 7om it! ermine mine!" iijf some looking visited Melton 3d from said on rred, to Ee was hoped sing it. 1 tap a concert jrivate passes ALONZO Fir/ DLABBNOE AND BOSANNAH ETHELTON. 103 •' Well," answered Alonzo^ " if the owner of the music could not miss what was stolen, why should he Cftre ? " " 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 v^ras galling to him. The Reverend xme frequently and lamented the delay, and told of me; s he had taken bo hurry things up. This was soi . t.tle 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 &ve notes that follow the first two in the chorus, when the Reverend interrupted her with this word, in a voice whioh was an exact imitation of Alonzo's, with just the faintest flavour of impatience added, — " Sweetheart ? " " Yes, Alonzo I " 104 ALONZO FITZ CLABENGE AND ROSANNAH BTHELTON. " Please don't sing that any more this week, — try some thing modem." The agile step that goes with a happy heart was hearc on the stairs, and the Reverend, smiling diabolically sought sudden refuge behind the heavy folds of the vel vet window curtains. Alonzo entered and flew to th( telephone. Said he, — " Rosannah, dear, shall we sing something together ? ' ** Something modem i " asked she, with sarcastic bit- terness. " Yes, if you prefer." " Sing it yourself, if you like ! ** 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, you didn't ! " '^ No, I didn't!'* " I am compelled to remark that you ddd!' " And I am obliged to reiterate that I did/nV* roN. some hearc lically le vel to tb< her?' ;ic bit- gman polite )thing iyou, No >btu8e ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND R08ANNAH ETHELTON. 105 " A second rudeness I Tbat is sufficient, sir. I will never forgive you. All is over between us." Tben came a muffled sound of crying. Alonzo hastened to say,— " Oh, Rosannah, unsay those words ! There is some dreadful mistery here, some hideous mistake. I am ut- terly earnest and sincere when I say I never said anything about any song. I would not hurt you for the whole world . . . Rosannah, dear ? . . . Oh, speak to me, won't you 1 " There waa a pause ; then Alonzo heard the girl's sob> bings 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 mother. She will peiisuade 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 .AJonzo'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 more with his imaginary telephonic invention forever. Four hours afterward, Alonzo arrived with his mother from her favourite haunts of poverty and vice. They, y 106 AliONZO FITZ CLABENCE AND BOSANNAH 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 heai-t is broken ; you will never see me more. Tell him I shall always think of him when I sing my poor Sweet By and By, but 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 curtains and opened a window. The cold air refreshed the sufferer, 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 Algemoon Burley, San Francisco." " The miscreant ! " shouted Alonzo, and rushed forth to seek the false Reverend and destroy him; for the card ex- plained everything!:, since in the course of the lovers' mu- She ALONZO FITZ CLABENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON. 107 tual confessions they had told each other all about all the sweethearts they had ever h- \ 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 two 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 snow 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 I " But to- 108 ALONZO FITZ CLABANCE AND ROSAKNAH ETHILTON. ward the end of it he used to shed teaxs 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 If ew 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 allectionate 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 siz 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, — " It is ! it is she ! Oh, the divine flatted notes ) " He dragged himself eagerly to the comer whence the sounds proceeded, tore aside a curtain, and discovered a' ^ I LTON. ish and I at last im in a oan, for and all mcom- }ed him avehis llowed e bleak feet in vening, 3 had a itndent akand jh out- een lit owhis of the lought ost of : upon parted aiting, ecum- ie the Died a' ALONZO FITZ CLABENCE AND BOSANNAH ETHBLTON. 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, i " 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 veiitable truth, my Rosannali, and you shall have the proof, ample and abundant proof!" " Oh, Alonzo, stay by me I Leave me not for a mo- ment ! Let me feel that you are near me ! Ti'U me we shall never be parted more ! Oh, this happy hour, this blessed hour, this memorable hour ! " " We will make record of it, my Bosannah ; every yeai . as this dear hour chimes from the clock, we will celebrate it with thanksgivings, aD the years of our life." " We will, we will Alonzo ! " " Four minutes after six, in the evening, my Kosannah, shall hencef ortli " — " Twenty-three minutes after twelve, afternoon, shall " — " Why, Rosanuah, darling, where aie 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 V ork,— a patient in the doctor's hands." An agonizing shriek came buzzing to Alonzo's ear, like tlie shai'p buzzing of a hurt gnat; it lost power in tiavel- ling five thousand miles. Alonzo hastened to say, — 110 ALONZO FITZ CLABBNCE AND ROSANNAH ETHBLTON. ! " Calm yourself , my child. It is nothing. Already! 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 diffident small voice replied, " I blush — ^but it is with pleasure, it is with hap- piness. Would — ^woidd you like to have it soon ? " " This very night, Rosannah ! Oh, let us risk no more delays. Let it be now ! — ^this very right, this very mo- ment ! " " Oh, you impatient creatu e ! I have nobody here but my g«od 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 ov/r aunt Susan, my Rosannah." " Yes, ov/r mother and our aunt Susan, — I am content to word it so if it pleases you ; J would so like to have them present." " 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 Slot of March." '' Then name the 1st of April : do, Rosannah, dear." " Mercy, it would make us April fools, Alonzo 1 " " So we be the Iiappiest ones that that day's sun looks down upon in the whole broad expanse of the ^lobe, why ueed we care ? Call it the 1st of April, dear," It u tt or tt t. ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHLETt)N. Ill II >»■ ooks why " Then the 1st of April it shall be, with all my heart ! " " Oh, happiness ! Name the hour, too, Rosamiah." " I liko the morning, it is so blithe. Will eight in the (noming do, Alonzo ! " " The loveliest hour in the day, — since it will make you II 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; Ihave 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 first Kame- 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 group 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 silk hat, thrust his head in at the door, and announced, " 'Frisco haole I" " Show him in," said the girl^ straightening herself up I 1 112 iXONZO 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, hut the gu-l made a gesture and gave him a look which checked him suddenly. She said, coldly, " I am here, as I promised. I helieved youi 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 houi'. No, — ^no supplications ; I will have it so." When he was gone, she sank exhausted in a chair, for tlie 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 1 Oh, he shall repent his villainy 1 " 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- ELTON. dgemoj?, ng snow, ish linen. I gesture ly. She v^ed youi i said I -eight in »»» imunica- ations ; I chair, for i wasted r escape ! ier— Oh, ik I had thless, ent his tic more )ril, the morn- sted by so Fitz' Isannah How- ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON. 113 land, of San Francis 20, a friend of the bride, was present, she being the guest of the Eev. 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 unmediately 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 bridegroom'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 hvm the April fool ! And I told him so, too I Ah, it was a charming surprise I There |i .> 114 ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON. he stood, sweltering in a black dress suit, with the mer- cury leaking out of tho top of the thermometer, waiting to be inarriecl. You should have seen the look he gave when I whispered it in his ear! Ah, his wickedness cost W& 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, cnn he, doar ? " " Never in this world, my Rosannah ! " Aunt Susan, the Oregonian grandmother, and the young couple and their Eastport parents are all happy at this writing, and likely to remain so. Aimt Susan brought the bride from the Islands, accompanied her across oi:r 1^ 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. BSLTON. the mer- , waiting he gave aess cost core was 3nt right id I for- said he our lives le young y at this brought ross oi:r the rap- nd wife t. wicked nd lives > a mur- artisan , he fell ' e could A TRUE STORY. REPEATED WOBD FOB WORD AS X HEARD IT. |T was summer time, and twilight We were sitting on the porch of tbc farm-house, on the summit ol the hill, and " Aunt Rachel ' was sitting respectfully be- low our level, on the steps, — for she was our servant, and coloured. She was of mighty frame and stature; she was sixty years old, but her eye was undimmed and her strength unabated. She was a cheerful, hearty soul, and it was no more trouble for her to laugh than it is for a bird to sing. She was under fire, now, as usual when the day was done That is to say, she was being chaffed without mercy, and was enjoying it. She would let off peal after peal of laughter, and then sit with her face in her hands and shake with throes of enjoyment which she could no longer get breath enough to express. At such a momen\i as this a thought occurred to me, and I said : — " Aunt Rachel, how is it that youVe lived sixty years and never had any trouble." She stopped quaking. She paused, and there was a moment of silence. She turned her face over her shoul- der toward me, and said, without even a smile on her voice : — " Misto C , is you in 'arnest ? " It surprised me a good deal ; and it sobered my man- ner and my speech, too. I said : — " Why, I thought — ^that is, I meant — why, you oem't ' ii 116 ▲ TRUE STOAY. i W i^ have had any troi^Me. I've never heard you sigh, and never seen your eye when there wasn't a laugh in it " She faced fairly around, now, and was full of earnest- ness. " Has I had any trouble ? h. ksto C , I's gy wne to te'l you, den I leave it to you. I was bawn down 'mongst de slaves ; I knows all 'bout slavery case I ben one of 'cm my own se'f. Well, sah, my olo man — dat's my bus- bar/ — he was lovin* an' kind to me, jist as kind as you is to yo own wife. An' we had chil'en — seven chil'en — an' we loved dem chil'en jist de same as you loves yo' chil'en Dey was black, but de Lord can t make no chil'en so black but what dey mother loves em an' wouldn't give 'em up, no, not for anything dat's in dis whole world. " Well sah, I was raised in old Fo'ginny, but my mother she was raised in Maryland ; an' my souls ! she was tur- riblo when she'd git started I My Ian' ! but she'd make de fur fly When she'd git into dem tantrums, she al- ways had one word dat she said. She'd straighten herse'i up an' put her fists in her hips an' say, ' I want you to understan' dat I wa'nt bawn in the mash to be fool' by trash I's one o' de ole Blue Hen's Chickens, / is ! * 'Ca'se, you see, dat's what folks dat's bawn in Maryland calls deyseives, an' dey's proud of it. Well, dat was her word. I don't ever forgit it, beca'se she said it so much, an' beca'se she said it one day when my little Henry tore his wris' awful, and most busted his head, right up at de top of his forehead, an' de niggers didn't fly aroun' fas' enough to 'tend to him. An' when dey talk' back at her, she up an' she says, 'Look-aheah!' she says, 'I want you niggers to underatan' dat I wa'nt bawn in de mash cl d dl d 111 tl A TUUE STORY. 117 sigh, and in it " I earnest- ly wne to 1 'mongst 3n one of my hus- as you is I'en — an' y chil'en ihil'en so in't give ^orld. 7 mother was tur- 'd make , she al- 1 herse'i ; you to fool' by /is!' iryland vas her » much, ry tore ) at de an* fas* at her, want mash to be fool' by trash ? Fs one o* de ole Blue Hen's Chick- ens, /is ! ' an' den she clar* dat kitchen and bandage' up de chile herse'f. So I says dat word, too, when I's riled. " Well, bymeby my ole mistis says she's broke, an* she's got to sell all de niggers on de place. An' when I heali dat dey gwyne to sell us all off at oction in Ichmon', oh de good gracious ! I know what dat mean 1 " Aimt Rachel had gradually risen, while she t rmed to her subject, and now she towered above us, black against the stars. " Dey put chains on us an* put us on a stan* as high as dis po*ch, — ^twenty foot high, — an' all de people stood aroun' crowds an' crowds. An' dey'd come up dah an look at us all roun', an' squeeze our arm, an' make us git up an' walk an' den say, ' Dis one too ole,' or ' Dis one lame,* or * Dis one don't 'mount to much.* An' dey sole my ole man, an' took him away, an' dey begin to sell my chil'en an' take dem away, an' I begin to cry ; an' de m&u. "say, ' Shet up yo* dam blubberin',' an' hit me on de mouf wid his han'. An' when de las' one was gone but my litue Henry, I grab' him clost up to my breast so, an' I ris up an' says, ' You shan't take him away,' I says ; ' I kill de man dat tetches him ! ' I says. But my little Henry, whis- per an' say, ' I gwyne to run away, an' den I work an' buy yo' freedom.* 0, bless de chile, he always so good ! But dey got him — dey got him, de men did ; but I took and tear de clo*es most' v ff of *em an' beat \m over de head wid my chain ; an* dey give it to me, too, but I didn't mine dat. " Well, dah was my ole man gone, an' all my chil'en, all my sevea chil'en — ^an' six of 'em I hain't set eyes on ag'in 118 A TRUE 8T0RT. to dis day, an' dat's twenty-two ye&r ago las' Easter. Dt man dat bought me b'long' in Newbern, an' he took me dah. Well, bymeby de years roll on an* de waw come. My marster he was a Go*;fedrit colonel, an' I was his fam- ily's cook So when de Unions took dat town, dey all run away an' lef me all by myse'f wid de other niggers in dat monr'us big house. So de big Union officers move in dah, an' dey ask me would I cook for dem. ' Lord bless you,' says I, ' dat's what I's /(yr* " Dey wa'nt no small-fry officers, mine you, dey was de biggest de}' ia ; an' de way dey made dem sojers mosey roun' ! De Qen'l he tole me to boss dat kitchen ; an' he says, ' If anybody come meddlin' wid you, you jist make em' walk chalk ; don't you be afeared/ he says ; * you's 'mong frens, now.' " Well, I thinks to myse'f, if my little Henry ever got a chance to run away, he'd make to de Norf,o' course. So one day I comes in dah whar de big officers was, in de par- lor, an' I drops a kurtchy, so, an' I up an' tole *em 'bout my Henry, dey a-listening to my troubles jist de same as if I was white folks ; an' I says, ' What I come for is be- ca'se if he got away and gon' up Norf whar you gemmen comes from, you might 'a' seen him, maybe, an' could tell me so as I could fine him ag'in; he was very little, an' he had a sk-yar on his lef wris' an' at de top of his forehead.' Den dey look mournful, an' de Qen'l say, ' How long sence you los' him ? ' an' I say, * Thirteen year.' Den de Qen'l say, * He wouldn't be little no mo', now — ^he's a man ! ' " I never thought o' dat bef o' ! He was only dat little feller to me, yit. I never thought 'bout him growin' up an' bein' big. But I see it den. None o' de gemmen had A TRUE STORY. i8t€r. Bt took me 'aw come. B his fam- D, dey all r niggers :ers move i. ' Lord »y was de rs mosey 1 ; an' he jist make b; 'you's ever got mrse. So n de par- em 'bout same as 'or is be- gemmen ould tell >, an' he )rehead.' ng sence de Qen'l an!' at little •win' up nen had run acrost him, so dey couldn't do nothin' for me. But alJ dat time, do' / didn't know it, my Henry was run off to de Norf, years an' years, an' he was a barber, too, an' upe an' he says : ' I's done barberin',' he says, * Is gwyne to fine my ole mammy, less'n she's dead.' So ho stole out an' went to whar dey was recruitin', an' hired hisse'f out to de colonel for his servant ; an' den he went all f roo de battles everywhah, huntin' for his ole mammy ; yes in- leed}^ he'd hire to fust one officer an' den another, tell led ransacked de whole Souf; but you see /didn't know nuffin 'bout dia. How was / gwyne to know it. " Well, one night we had a big sojer ball ; de sojers dah at Newbem was always havin' balls an* can*yin' on. Dey had 'em in my kitchen, heaps o' times, 'ca'se it was so big Mine you, I was down on sich doin's ; beca'se my piace was wid de officers, an' it rasp me to have dem com- mon sojers cavortin' roan my kitchen like dat. But I alway' stood aroun' an' kep' thmgs straight, I did ; an' sometimes dey'd git my dander up, an' den I'd make 'em dar dat kitchen, mine I tell you I " Well, one night — ^it was a Friday night — dey comes a whole plattoon f m a nigger ridgment dat was on guard at de house, — de house was headquarters, you know, — an' den I was jist a hilin' ! Mad ? I was jist Si-boonmn* ! I swelled aroun , an' swelled aroun' ; I jist was a-itching' for 'em to do somefin for to start me. An' dey was a- waltzing an' a-dancin' ! my ! but dey was havin* a time ! an' I jist a-swellm' an' a-swellin' up Pooty soon, 'long comes sich a spruce young nigger a-sailin* down de room wid a yaller wench roun* de wais' ; an' roun' an' roun' an' roun' dey went, enough to make a body drunk to look at 120 A TEUE STOEY. h i i em* ; an' when dey got abreas' o' me, dey went to kin' o* balancin' aroun' fust on one leg an' aen on t'other, an', smilin' J my big red turban, an' makin' fun, an' I ups an' say Git along wid you ! — ^rubbage ! ' De young man's face kin' o' changed, all of a sudden, for bout second, but den he went to smilm' ag'in, same as he was befo'. Well, 'bout dis time, in comes some niggers dat played music and b'long' to de ban', an' dey Tiever .ould get along widout puttm' on airs. An' de very fust ar dey put on dat night, I lit into 'em ! Dey laughed, an* dat made me wuss. De res' o' de niggers got to laughm' an' den my soul alive but I was hot ! My eye was jist a blazin' ! I jist straightened myself up, so,— jist as I is now, plum to de ceilin', mos', — an' I digs my fists into my hips, an' I says, * Look-a-heah ! ' I says, * I want you niggers to under- stan' dat I wa'nt bawn in de mash to be fool' by trash ! I's one o' de ole Blue Hen's Chickens, / is ! ' an' den I see dat young man stan' a-starin' an' stiff, lookin' kin' o' up at de ceilin' like he fo'got somefin, an' couldn't 'member it no mo'. Well, I jist march' on dem niggers, — so, lookin' like a gen'l, — an' dey jist cave' away befo' me an' out at de do'. An' as dis young man was a-goin' out, I heah him say to another nigger, ' Jim, he says, * you go 'long an' tell de cap'n I be on han' 'bout eight oclock in de mawnin* ; dey's somefin' on my mine, lie says ; I don't sleep no mo' dis night. You go 'long, he says, ' an leave me by my own se'f.' " Dis was 'bout one o'clock in de mawnin' Well, 'bout seven, I was up an' on han' gettin' de ofiieors' breakfast. I was a-stoopin' down by de stove, — jist so, same as if yo* foot was de stove, — ^an' I'd opened de stove do' wid my >?*.> A TRUE STORY. to kin' o' other, an*, ' I ups an' ang man's second, was bef o*. it played get along jy put on made me den my azm' ! I plum to ps, an' I to under- •ash ! I's I see dat up at de t no mo*. Jagen'l, o'. An' say to tell de i' ; dey's mo' dis [ly own 121 right han', — so, pushin'it back, jist as I pushes yo* foot, — an' I'd jist got de pan o hot biscuits in my han' an* was 'bout to raise up, when I see a black face come aroun' under mine, an' de eyes a-lookm' into mine jist as I's a-lookin' up clost under yo face now; an' I jist stopped 7'ight dah, an' never budged 1 jist gazed, an' gazed, so • an* de pan begin to tremble, an' all of a sudden I kTWwed! De pan drop' on de flo* an' I grab his lef han' an' shove back his sleeve, — jist so, as I's doin' to you, — an' den I goes for his forebear' an' push de hair back so, an' ' Boy ! ' I says, 'if you an't my Henry, what is you doin' wid dis welt on yo' wris* an' dat sk-yar on yo* fore- head ? De Lord God ob heaven be praise', I got my own ag*in I * " 0, no, Miflto C 1 1 hain't had no ti*oubJe. An' no 11, 'bout jakfast. s if yo' leid my I i THE CANVASSER'S TALE. I OOP, odd- eyed stranger ! There was that about his humble mien, his tired look, his decayed-gentility clothes, that almost reached the mustard-seed of charity that still remained, remote and lonely, in the empty vast- ness of my heart, notwithstanding I observed a portfolio under his arm, and said to myself. Behold, Providence hath delivered his servant into the hands of another can- vasser. Well, these people always get one interested. Before I well knew how it came about, this one was telling me his history, and I was all attention and sympathy. He told it something like this : My parents died, alas, when I was a little sinless child. My Uncle Ithuriel took me to his heart and reared me as Lis own. He was my only relative in the wide world ; but he was good and rich and generous. He reared me in the lap of luxury. I knew no want that money could satisfy. In the fulness of time I was graduated, and went with two of my servants — my chamberlain and my valet — ^to travel in foreign countries During four years 1 flitted upon careless wing amid the beauteous gardens of the dis- tant strand, if you will permit this form of speech in one whose tongue was ever attuned to poesy ; and indeed I so speak with confidence, as one unto his kind, for I perceive 1 THE CANVASSEll'S TALE. 123 <• about his gentility •f charity pty vast- portfoho evidence her can- Before I ? me his He told ss child, d meas world ; Lred me y could it with let — to flitted he dis- in one ediso rceive by your eyes that you too, sir, are gifted with the divine inflation. In those far lands I revelled in the ambrosial food that fructifles the soul, the mind, the heart. But of all things, that which most appealed to my inborn sBsthe- tic taste was tlie prevailing custom there, among the rich, of making collections of elegant and costly rarities, dainty ohjeta de vertu, and in an evil hour I tried to uplift my Uncle Ithuriel to a plane of sympathy with this exquisite employment. I wrote and told him of one gentleman's vast collection of shells ; another's noble collection of meerschaum pipes; another's elevating and reflning collection of undecipher- able autographs ; another's priceless collection of old china; another's enchanting collection of postage-stamps — and so forth and so on. Soon my letters yielded fruit. My uncle began to look about for something to make a collection of. You may know, perhaps, how fleetly a taste like this dilates. His soon became a raging fever, though I knew it not. He began to neglect his great pork business ; presently he wholly retired and turned an elegant leisure into a rapid search for curious things. His wealth was vast, and he spared it not. First he tried cow-bells. He made a collection which filled five large salons, and com- prehended all the difierent sorts of cow-bells that ever had been contrived, save one. That one — an antique, and the only specimen extant — was possessed by another col- lector. My uncle offered enormous sums for it, but the gentleman would not sell. Doubtless you know what necessarily resulted. A true collector attaches no value to a collection that is not complete. His great h^trt 124 1 1 THE CANVASSEB S TALE. breaks, he sells his hoard, he turns his mind to some field that seems unoccupied. Thus did my uncle. He next tried brickbats. After piling up a vast and intensely interesting collection, the former difficulty supervened ; his great heart broke again ; he sold out his soul's idol to the retired brewer who pos- sessed the missing brick. Then he tried flint hatchets and other implements of Primeval Man, but by and by discovered that the factory where they were made was supplying other collectors as well as himself. He tried Aztec inscriptions and stuffed whales — ^another failure, after incredible labour and expense. When his collection seemed at last perfect, a stuffed whale arrived from Green- land and an Aztec inscription from the Cundurango re- gions of Central America that made all former specimens insignificant. My uncle hastened to secure these noble gems. He got the stuffed whale, but another collector got the inscription. A real Cundurango, as possibly you know, is a possession of such supreme value that, when once a collector gets it, he will rather part with his family than with it. So my uncle sold out, and saw his darlings go forth, never more to return; and his coal- black hair turned white as snow in a single night. Now he waited and thought. He knew another disap- pointment might kill him. He was resolved that he would choose things next time that no other man was collecting. He carefully made up his mind, and once more entered the field — this time to make a collection of echoes. " Of what ? " said I. Echoes, sir. His first purchase was an echo in Georgia that repeated four times ; his next was a six-repeater in .y. THE CANVASSER S TALE. 125 some field bs. After ction, the ke again ; who pos- ) hatchets >y and by nade was He tried r failure, 3ollection m Qreen- rango re- 3ecimens >se noble collector ibly you le that, with his saw his is coal- • ' disap- )hat he an was emore echoes. Georgia a-ter in . filaiyland; his next was a thirteen-repeater in Maine ; his next was a nine-repeater in Kansas; his next was a twelve-repeater in Tennessee, which he got cheap, so to speak, because it was out of repair, a portion of the crag which reflected it having tumbled down. He believed he could repair it at a cost of a few thousand dollars, and, by increasing the elevation with masonry, treble the re- peating capacity ; but the architect who undertook the job had never built an echo before, and so he utterly spoiled this one. Before he meddled with it, it used to talk back like a mother-in-law, but now it was only fit for the deaf and dumb asylum. Well, next he bought a lot of cheap little double-barrelled echoes, scattered around over various States and Territories; he got them at twenty per cent, off by taking the lot. Next he bought a perfect Gatling gun of an echo in Oregon, and it cost a f 01 tune, I can tell you. You may know, sir, that in the echo market the scale of prices is cumulative, like the carat-scale in diamonds ; in fact, the same phraseology is used. A single-carat echo is worth but ten dollars over and above the value of the land it is on ; a two-carat oi double-barreled echo is worth thirty dollars ; a five-carat is worth nine hundred and fifty ; a ten-carat is worth thirteen thousand. My uncle's Oregon echo, which he called the Great Pitt Echo, was a twenty-two carat gem, and cost two hundred and sixteen thousand dollars — they threw the land in, for it was four hundred miles from a settlement. Well, in the mean time my path i^^^as a path of loses. I was the accepted suitor of the only and lovely daughter of an English earl, and was Beloved to distraction. In r 1^ I f 126 THE GANVABSER'S TALE. that dear presence I swam in seas of bliss. The family were content, for it was known that I was sole heir to an uncle held to be worth five million dollars. However, none of us knew that my uncle had become a collector, at least in anything more than a small way, for sesf^hetic amusement. Now gathered the clouds above my unconscious head. That divine echo, since known throughout the world as the Great Koh-i-noor, or Mountain of Repetitions, was discovered. It was a sixty-five-carat gem. You could utter a word and it would talk back at you for fifteen minutes, when the day was otherwise quiet. But behold another discovery was made at the same time ; another echo-collector was in the field. The two rushed to make the purchase. The property consisted of a couple of small hills with a shallow swale between, out yonder among the back settlements of New York State. Both men arrived on the ground at the same time, and neither knew the other was there. The echo was not owned by one man ; a person by the name of Williamson Bolivar Jarvis owned the east hill,' and a person by the name of Harbi- son J. Bledso owned the west hill ; the swale between was the dividing line. So while my uncle was buying Jarvis's hill for three million two hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars, the other party was buying Bledso's hill for a shade over three million. Now, do you perceive the natural result ? Why, the noblest collection of echoes on earth was forever and ever incomplete, since it possessed but the one half of the king echo of the universe. Neither man was content with this divided ownership, yet neither would sell to the e family eir to an fowever, JoUejtor, sesf^hetic us head. p^orld as ►ns, was u could r fifteen ' behold > another io make of small amons: bh men ir knew by one ' Jarvis Harbi- etween buying ty-five lo's hill ly, the d ever e king I with io the THE CANVASSEB'S TALE. 127 other. There were jawings, bickerings, heart-burnings. And at last, that other collector, with a malignity which only a collector can ever feel toward a man and a brother, proceeded to cut down his hill ! You see, as long as he could not have the echo, he was resolved that nobody should have it. He would remove his hill, and then there would be nothing to reflect my ■ uncle's echo. My uncle remonstrated with him, but the man said, " I own one end of this echo ; I choose to kill my end ; you must take care of your own end yourself." Well my uncle got an injunction put on him. The other man appealed and fought it in a higher court. They carried it on up, clear to the Supreme Court of the United States. It made no end of trouble there. Two of the judges believed that an echo was personal property, because it was impalpable to sight and touch, and yet was purchasable, salable, and consequently taxable ; two others believed that an echo was real estate, because it was manifestly attached to the land, and was not remov- able from place to place ; other of the judges contended that an echo was not property at all. It was finally decided that the echo was property ; that the hills were property; that the two men were separate and independent owners of the two hUls, but tenants in common in the echo; therefore defendant was at full lib- erty to cut down his hill, since it belonged solely to him, but must give bonds in three million dollars as indemnity for damages which might result to my uncle's half of the echo. This decision also debarred my uncle from using defendant's hill to reflect his part of the echo, without defendant's consent , he must use only his own hill ; if 128 THE canvasser's TALE. his part of the echo would not go, under these circum- stances, it was sad, of course, but tliv^ court could find no remedy. The court also debarred defendant from using my uncle's hill to reflect his end of the echo, without consent. You see the grand result ! Neither man gave consent, and so that astonishing and most noble echo had to cease from its great powers ; and since that day that magnificent property is tied up and unsaleable. * A week before my wedding day, while I was still swimming in bliss and the nobility were gathering from far and near to honour our espousals, came news of my uncle's death, and also his will, making me his sole heir. He was gone ; alas, my dear benefactor was no more, The thought surcharges my heart even at this remote day. I handed the will to the earl ; I could not read it for the blinding tears. The earl read it ; then he sternly said, " Sir do you call this wealth ? — ^but doubtless you do in your inflated country. Sir, you are left sole heir to a vast collection of echoes — if a thing can be called a collection that is scattered far and wide over the huge length and breadth of the American continent ; sir this is not all ; you are head and oars m debt ; there is not an echo in the lot but has a mortgage on it ; sir, I am not a hard man, but I must look to my child's intereet ; if you had but one echo which you could honestly call your own, if vou had but one echo which was free from incum- brance, so that you could retire to it with my child, and by humble, painstaking industry cultivate and improve it, and thus wrest from it a maintenance, I would not say you nay ; but I cannot marry my child to a beggar THE CANVASSEB S TALE. 129 circum- l find no im using without lan gave echo had day that was still ing from T^B of my sole heir, no more, s remote ►t read it e sternly •tless you sole heir ) called a ihe huge rir this is s not an I am not ereet; if call your a incum- hild, and improve ould not a beggar Leave his side, my darling; go, sir ; take your mortgage- ridden echoes and quit my sight forever." My noble Celestine clung to me in tears, with loving arms, and swore she would willingly, nay, gladly marry me, though I had not an echo in the world. But it could not be. We were torn asunder, she to pine and die within the twelve month, I to toil life's long journey sad and lone, praying daily, hourly, for that release which shall join us together again in that dear realm where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. Now, sir, if you will be so kind as to look at these maps and plans in my portfolio, I am sure I can sell you an echo for less money than any man in the trade. Now this one, which cost my uncle ten dollars thirty years ago, and is one of the sweetest things in Texas, I will let you have for — " Let me interrupt you," I said. " My friend, I have not had a moment's respice from canvassers this day; I have bought a sewing machine which I did not want ; I have bought a. map which is mistaken in all its details ; I have bought a clock which will not go ; I have bought a moth poison which the moths prefer to any other beverage ; I have bought no end of useless inventions, and now I have had enough of this foolishness. I would not have one of your echoes if you were even to give it to me. I would not let it stay on the place. I always hate a man that tries to sell me echoes. You see this gun? Now take your collection and move on; let us not have blood- shed." But he only smiled a sad, sweet smile, and got out some more diagrams. You know itie result perfectly II / ISO THE canvasser's TALE. well, because you know that when you have once opened the door to a canvasser, the trouble is done and you have to suffer defeat. I compromised with this man at the end of an intoler- able hour. I bought two double ban'eled echoes in good condition, and he threw in another, which he said was not salable because it only spoke German. He said, *' She was a perfect polyglot once, but somehow her pal- aW got down." i opened TOM have L intoler- ; in good said was Ee said, her pal- AN ENCOUNTER WITH AS INTERVIEWER. I HE nervous, dapper, " peart" young man took the chair I offered him, and said he was connected with the Daily Thvmderatorm, and added, — " Hoping it's no harm, I've come to interview you." " Come to what ? " "Interview you." " Ah ! I see. Yes, — yes. Um ! Yes, — yes." I was not feeling bright that morning. Indeed, my powers seemed a bit under a cloud. However, I went to the bookcase, and when I had been looking six or seven minutes, I found I was obliged to refer to the young man. I said, — " How do you spell it " Spell what ? " " Interview." " my goodness ! What do you want to spell it for ? " " I don't want to spell it ; I want to see what it means." " Well, this is astonishing, I must say. I can tell you what it means, if you — if you — " " 0, all right ! That will answer, and much obliged to you, too." " I n, iw, t e r, ter, mtet — " f m 182 AN ENCOUNTBB WITH AM INTEBVIEWER. : " Then you spell it with an i f " " Why, certainly ! " *' 0, that is what took me so long." ** Why, my dear sir, what do you propose to spell it with ? " *' Well, I — I — I hardly know. I had the Unabridged, and I was ciphering around in the back end, hoping I might tree her among the pictures. But it's a very old edition." " Why, my friend, they would not have a picf.ure of it in even the latest e — My dear sir, I beg your pardon, I mean no harm in the world, but you do not look as — as — intelligent as I had expected you would. No harm, — I mean no harm at all." " O, don't mention it ! It has often been said, and by people who would not flatter and who could have no in- ducement to flatter, that I am quite remarkable in that way. Yes, — ^yes ; they always speak of it with rapture." " I can easily imagine it. But about th.' ' 'nterview. You know it is the custom, now, to interview any man who has become notorious." " Indeed ! I had not heard of it before. It must be very interesting. What do you do it with ? " " Ah, well, — well, — well, — this is disheartening. It ought to be done with a club in some cases ; but custo- marily it consists in the interviewer asking questions and the interviewed answering them. It is all the rage now. Will you let me ask you certain questions calculated to bring out the salient points of your public and private histoiy ? " " 0, with pleasure, — with pleasure. I have a very bad AN ENCOUNTER WITH AN INTERVIEWER. 133 spell it abridged, aoping I very old ure of it pardon, I )k as — as > harm, — I, and by Lve no in- e in that rapture." lew. You man who ) must be ning. It 3ut custo- jtions and rage now. ulated to d private , very bad memory, but I hope you will not mind that. That is to say, it is an irregular memory, — singularly irregular. Sometimes it goes in a gallop, and then again it will be as much as a fortnight passing a given point. This is a great grief to me." " O, it is no matter, so you will try to io the best you can. " I will. I will put my whole mind on it.* " Thanks. Are you ready to begin ? " " Ready." Q. How old are you ? A. Nmeteen, in June. • • •Q. Indeed ! I would have taken you to be thirty-five or six. Where were you bom ? A. In Missouri. Q. When did you begin to write ? A, In 1836. Q. Why, how could that be, if you are only nineteen now? A, I^on't know. It does seem curious, somehow. Q. It does, indeed. Who do you consider the most re- markable man you ever met ? A. Aaron Burr. Q. But you never could have met Aaron Burr, if you «re only nineteen years — A. Now, if you know more about me than I do, what do you ask me for ? Q. Well, it was only a suggestion ; nothing more. How did you happen to meet Burr ? A. Well, I happened to be at his funeral one day, and he asked me to make less noise, and — lU AN ENCOUNTER WITH AN INTERVIEWER. Il- 1 jr II n 1 : 1 ■ ! ) |ii f Q. But, good heavens ! if you were at his funeral, he must have been dead ; and if he was doad, how could he care whether you made a noise or not ? A. I don't know. He was always a particular kind of a man that way. Q. Still, I don't understand it at all. You say he spoke to you and that he was dead. A. I didn't say he was dead. Q. But wasn't he dead ? A. Well, some said he was, some said he wasn't. Q. What did you think ? A. O, it was none of my business ! It wasn't any of my funeral. Q. Did you — However, we can never get this matter straight. Let me ask about something else. What was the date of your birth ? A Monday, October 31, 1693. Q. What! Impossible! That would make you a hundred and eighty years old. How do you account for that? ^ " A. I don*t account for it at all. Q. But you said at first you were only nineteen, and now you make yourself out to be one hundred and eighty. It is an awful discrepancy. A. Why, have you noticed that ? (Shaking hands.} Many a, time it has seemed to me like a discrepancy, but somehow I couldn't make up my mind. How quick you notice a thing ! Q. Thank you for the co^npliment, as far as it goes. Had you, or have you, any brothers or sisters ? AN ENCOUNTER WITH AN INTERVIEWER. 135 A. Eh ! I — I — I think so, — yes, — but I don't re- member. Q, Well, that is the most extraordinary statement I ever heard ! ... A. Why, what makes you think that ? Q. How could I think otherwise ? Why, look here 1 who is this a picture of on the wall ? Isn't that a brother of yours ? A. Oh ! yes, yes, yes ! Now you remind me of it, that was a brother of mine. That's William, — Bill we called him. Poor old Bill ! Q. Why? Is he dead, then ? A. Ah, well, I suppose so. We never could tell. There was a great mystery about it. Q. That is sad, veiy sad. He disappeared then ? A. Well, yes, in a sort of general way. We buried him. Q. Buried him ! Buried him without knowing whether he was dead or not ? A. no ! Not that. He was dead enough. Q. Well, I confess that I can't understand this. If you buried him and you knew he was dead — A. No ! no ! we only thought he was. Q. O, I see ! He came to life again ? A. I bet he didn't. Q. Well, I never heard anything like this. Somebody was dead. Somebody was buried. Now, where was the mystery ? A. Ah, that's just it ! That's it exactly. You see we were twins, — defunct and I, — and we got mixed in the bath-tub when we were only two weeks old, and one of ( I IJ ill 13C AN ENCOUNTER WITH AN INTERVIEWER. m us was drowned. But we didn't know which. Some think it was Bill, some think it was me. Q. Well, that is remarkable. What do you think ? A. Goodness knows ! I would give whole worlds to know. This solemn, this awful mystery has cast a gloom over my whole life. But I will tell you a secret now which I never hav^ revealed to any creature before. One of us had a peculiar mark, a large mole on the back of his left hand, — ^that was me. That child was the one that was drowned. Q. Very well, then, I don't see that there is any mys- tery about it, after all. A. You don't ? WoU, / do. Anyway, I don't see how they could ever have been such a blundering lot as to go and bury the wrong child. But, 'sh ! — don't mention it where the family can hear of it. Heaven knows they have heart-breaking troubles enough without adding this. Q. Well, I believe I have got material enough for the * present, and I am very much obliged to you for the pains you have taken. But I was a good deal interested in that account of Aaron Burr's funeral. Would you mind telling me what particular circumstance it was that made you think Burr was such a remarkable man ? A. 0, it was a mere trifle ! Not one man in fifty would have noticed it at all. When the sermon was over, and the procession all ready to start for the cemetery, and the body all arranged nice in the hearse, he said he wanted to take a last look at the scenery, and so he got up and rode with the driver. Then the young man reverently withdrew. He was ?ery pleasant company, and I was sorry to see him go. SPEECH ON THE WEATHER, kT THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY'S SEVENTY-FIRST ANNUAL DINNER, NEW YORK CITY. HE next toast was : " The Oldest Inhabitant — The Weather of New England." Who can lose it and forget it ? Who can have it and regret it? ** Be interposer 'twixt us T'^ain." — Merchant of Venice. To this Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) replied as follows : *' I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all . makes everything in New England but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather clerk's factory who experi- ment and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for coun- tries that require a good article, and will take their cus- tom elsewhere if they don't get it. There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration — and regret. The weather is always doing something there ; always attending strictly to busi- ness ; always getting up new designs and trying them on the people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in spring than in any other season. In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty -six different 138 SPEECH ON THE WEATHER. ( r i? Jij'i kinds of weather inside four and twenty hours. It was 1 that made the fame and fortune of that man that had that marvellous collection of weather on exhibition at the Cen- tennial, that so astounded the foreigners. He was going to travel all over the world and get specimens from all the climes. I said, * Don't you do it ; you come to New England on a favourable spring day.' I told him what we could do in the way of style, variety, and quantity. Well, he came and made his collection in four days. As to variety, why, he confessed that he got hundreds of kinds of weather that he had never heard of before. And as to quantity — well, after he had picked out and dis- carded all that was blemished in any way, he not only had weather enough, but weather to spare ; weather to hire out ; weather to sell ; to deposit ; weather to invest ; weather to give to the poor. The people of New England are by nature patient and forbearing, but there are some things which they will not stand. Every year they kill a lot of poets for writing about * Beautiful Spring.' These are generally casual \isitors, who bring their notions of spring from somewhere else, and cannot, of course, know how the natives feel about spring. And so the first thing they know the opportunity to inquire how they feel has permanently gee by. Old Pj obabilities has a mighty reputation for accurate prophecy, and thoroughly well deserves it. You take up the paper and observe how crisply and confidently he checks off what to-day's weather is going to be on the Pacific, down South, in the Middle States, in the Wisconsin region. See him sail along in th© joy and pride of his power till he gets to New England, and then see his tail drop. He doesn't know Speech on the weather. 139 It was 1 it had that it the Cen- was going ls from all le to New him what quantity. days. As Is of kinds And as b and dis- j not only ireather to to invest ; 7 England are some they kill ig.' These otions of e, know rst thing feel has mighty hly well rve how to-day's fh, in the him sail to New 't know what the weather is going to be in New England. He can't any more tell than he can tell how many Presidents of the United States there's going to be next year. Well, he mulls over it, and by and by he gets out something about like this : Probable north-east to south-west winds, Varying to the southward and westward and eastward, and [points between, high and low barometer swapping around from place to place ; probable areas of rain, snow hail, and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes, with thunder and lightning. Then he jots down this post- script from his wandering mind, to cover accidents. * But it is possible that the programme may be wholly changed in the meantime.' Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it. There is only one thing certain about it : you arc certain there is going to be plenty of weather — a perfect grand review ; but you can never tell which end of the proces- sion is going to move first. You fix up for the drought ; you leave your umbrella in the house and sally out with your sprinkling-pot, and two to one you get drowned. You make up your mind that the earthquake is due ; you stand from under, and take hold of something to steady yourself, and the first thing you know you get struck by lightning. These are great disappointments. But they can't be helped. The lightning there is peculiar ; it is so convincing, when it strikes a thing it doesn't leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether — well, you'd think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there. And the thunder. "When the thunder com- mences to merely tune up and scrape and saw, and key up the instruments for the performance, strangers say, ' Why, 1 1 •I I b 140 SPEECH ON THE WEATHER. what awful thunder you have here !' But when the baton is raised and the real concert begins, you'll find that stranger down in the cellar with his head in the ash-barrel. Now as to the size of the weather in New England — lengthways, I mean. It is utterly disproportioned to the size of that little country. Half the time, when it is packed as full as it can stick, you will see that New Eng- land weather sticking out beyond the edges and project- ing around hundreds and hundreds of miles over the neighbouring States. She can't hold a tenth part of her weather. You can see cracks all about where she has strained herself trying to do it. I could speak volumes abc/ui the inhuman perversity of the New England weather, but I will give but a single specimen. I like to hear rain on a tin roof. So I cove ed part of my roof with tin, with an eye to the luxury. Well, sir, do you think it ever rains on that tin ? No, sir : skips it every time. Mind in this speech I have been trying merely to do honour to the New England weather — ^no language could do it justice. But, after all, there is at least one or two things about that weather (or, if you please, effect produced by it) which we residents would not like to part with. If we hadn't our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather "with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries — the ice- storm — ^when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top — ice that is as bright and clear as crys- tal ; every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dew-drops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia's diamond plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all SPEECH ON THE WEATHER. 141 1 the baton find that ash-barrel. England — ►ned to the rhen it is New Eng- id project- over the art of her •e she has k volumes ' England I like to f my roof »ir, do you ►s it every merely to language ist one or ase, effect ^e to part >liage, we e feature -the ice- from the r as crys- is, frozen id white, the wind )ums all those mjTiads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and hum and flash with all manner of coloured fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold — the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels ; and it stands there the acme, the climax, supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, in- toxicating, intolerable magnificence. One cannot make tiie words too strong." ROGERS. HIS man Eogers happened upon me and introduced himself at the town of , in the South of Eng- land, where I stayed awhile. His step-father had married a distant relative of mine who was afterwards hanged, and so he seemed to think a blood relationship existed between us. He came in every day and sat down and talked. Of all the bland, serene, human curiosities I ever saw, I think he was the chiefest. He desired to look at my new chimney-pot hat. I was very willing, for I thought hewouldnotice thenameof the great Oxford-street hatter in it and respect me accordingly. But he turned it about with a sort of grave compassion, pointed out two or three blemishes, and said that I, being so recently ar- rived, could not be expected to know where to supply myself. Said he would send me the address of his hatter. Then he said, " Pardon me," and proceeded to cut a neat circle of red tissue paper ; daintily notched the edges of it ; took the mucilage and pasted it in my hat so as to cover the manufacturer's name. He said, " No one will know now where you got it. I will send you a hat-tip of my hat- ter, and you can paste it over this tissue circle." It was the calmest, coolest thing — I never admired a man so much in my Hfe. Mind, he did this while his own hat eat offensively near our noses, on the table — ^an ancient IIOGEKS. 143 i introduced ►uth of Eng- p-father had 3 afterwards relationship nd sat down curiosities I ^e desired to grilling, for I xford-street it he turned ted out two :'ecently ar- to supply his hatter, cut a neat sdgesof it; is to cover will know of my hat- It was a man so own hat m ancient e extinguisher of the " slouch " pattern, limp and shapeless with age, discoloured by vicissitudes of the weather, and banded by an equator of bear's grease that had stewed through. Another time he examined my coat. I had no terrors, for over my tailor's door was the legend, " By Special Appointment Tailor to H.R.H the Prince of Wales," etc. I did not know at the time that the most of the tailor shops had the same sign out, and that whereas it takes nine tailors to make an ordinary man, it takes a hundred and fifty to make a prince. He was full of compassion for my coat. Wrote down the address of his tailor for me. Did not tell me to mention my nom de plume and the tailor would put his best work on my gar- ment, as complimentary people sometimes do, but said his tailor would hardly trouble himself for an unknown per- son (unknown person, when I thought I was so celebrated in England ! — that was the cruellest cut), but cautioned me to mention his name, and it would be all right. Think- ing to be facetious, I said : " But he might sit up all night and injure his health.'* " Well, let him," said Rogers ; *' I've done enough for him to show some appreciation of it." I might just as well have tried to disconcert a mummy with my facetiousness. Said Rogers : '* I get all my coats there — they're the only coats fit to be seen in." I made one more attempt. I said, " I wish you had brought one with you — I would like to look at it." " Bless your heart, haven't I got one on ? — this article is Morgan's make." I examined it. The coat had been bought ready-made, 144 ROGEBS. 4,; i \ of a Chatham street Jew, without any question — about 1848. It probably cost four dollars when it was new. It was ripped, it was frayed, it was napless and greasy. I could not resist showing him where it was ripped. It so affected him that I was almost sorry I had done it. First he seemed plunged into a bottomless abyss of grief. Then he roused himself, made a feint with his hands as if waving off the pity of a nation, and said — with what seemed to me a manufactured emotion — " No matter , no matter ; don't mind me ; do not bother about it. I can get another." I prayed Heaven he would not get another, like that. When he was thoroughly restored, so that he could ex- amine the rip and command his feelings, he said — ah, now he understood it — his servant must have done ic while dressing him that morning. His servant ! There was something awe-inspiring in effrontery like this. Nearly every day he interested himself in some article of my clothing. One would hardly have expected this sort of infatuation in a man who always wore the same suit, and it a suit that seemed coeval with the Conquest. It was an unworthy ambition, perhaps, but I did wish I could make this man admire something about me or something I did — you would have felt the same way. I saw my opportunity : I was about to return to London, and had " listed " my soiled linen for the wash. It made quite an imposing mountain in the comer of the room— fifty-four pieces. I hoped he would fancy it was the ac- cumulation of a single week. I took up the wash-list, as if to see that it was all right, and then tossed it on the stion — about it was new. i and greasy, s ripped. It had done it. 3y8s of grief, his hands as — with what ) matter , no it it. I can r, like that, he could ex- he said — ah, lave done io inspiring in some article pected this •e the same e Conquest. I did wish ibout me or same way. to London, . It made the room- was the ac- vash-list, as i it on the BOOEBa 145 bable, with pretended forgetfulness. Sure enough, he took it up and ran his eye along down to the grand total. Then he said, " You get off easy," and laid it down again. His gloves were the saddest ruin — but he told me where I could get some like them. His shoes would hardly hold walnuts without leaking — but he liked to put his feet up on the mantel-piece and contemplate them. He wore a dim glass breast-pin, which he called a " morphylitic dia- mond," whatever that may mean — and said only two of them had ever been found — the Emperor of China had the other one. Afterward in London, it was a pleasure to me to see this fantastic vagabond come marching into the lobby of the hotel in iiis /rand-ducal way, for he always had some new imaginary grandeur t^ develop — there was no- thing stale about him but his clothes. If he addressed me when strangers were about, he always raised his voice a little and called me "Sir Richard," or '* General," or "Your Lordship " — and when people began to stare and look de- ferential, he would fall to enquiring in a casual way why I disappointed the Duke of Argyll the night before ; and then remind me of our engagement at the Marquis of Westminster's for the following day. I think that for the time being these things were realitivjs to him. He once came and invited me to go with him and spend the even- ing with the Earl of Warwick at his town house. I said I had received no formal invitation. He said that r.as. of no consequence — the Earl had no formalities for hSm cm his friends. I asked if I might go juat as I was. Heaaid no, that would hardly do — evening dreas waa requifilte afa night in any gentleman's houaoi. He said h» woattd waiik 146 ROQEUS. while T dressed, and then we could go to his apartmenta and I could take a bottle of champagne and cigar while 1)0 dressed. I was very willing to see how this entei*prise would turn out, so I dressed, and we started to his lodg- ings. He said if I didn't mind we would walk. So we tramped some four miles through the mud and fog, and finally found his " apartments," and they consisted of jv .single room over a barber's shop in a back street. Two chairs, a small table, an ancient valise, a wash-basin and pitcher (both on the floor in a corner), an unmade bed, a fragment of a looking-glass, and a flower-pot with a per- ishing little rose geranium in it (which he called a century plant, and said it had not bloomed now for upwards of two centuries — given to him by the late Lord Palmerston — been ofl'ered a prodigious sum for it) — these were the contents of the room. Also a brass candlestick and puit of a candle. Rogers lit the candle, and told mo to sit down and make myself at home. He said he hoped 1 was thirsty, because he would surprise my palate with an article of champagne that seldom got into a commoner's system ; or would I prefer sherry or port ? Said he had port in bottles that were swathed in stratified cob-webs, every stratum representing a generation — and as for hia cigars — well, I should judge of them myself. Then ho put his head out at the door and called : " Sackville ! " No answer. « Hi ! — Sackville ! " No answer. " Now what the devil can have become of that butler ? I nefver allow a sei-vant to — Oh, confound that idiot, he's got the keys. Can't get into the other rooms without the keys." IIOUEKS. 147 rtmenU ir while tei*piise is lodg* So we og, and ied of a i. Two ksin and e bed, a h a per- century ^ards of mei'stoii 'ere the ,nd puit to sit d 1 was vith an moner's he had b-webs, for hia 'lien ho jutler ? ot, he's out the (I wab just wondering at his intrepidity instill keeping^ up the delusion of the champagne, and crying to imagine how he was going to get out of the difficulty.) Now he stopped calling Sackville and began to call " Anglesy." But Anglesy didn't come. He said, " This is the second time that equerry has been absent without leave. To-morrow 1*11 discharge him." Now he began to whoop for " Thomas," but Thomas didn't answer. Then for " Theodore," but no Theodore •'rpucd. "Well, I give it up," said Rogers. "The servants ni'ver expect me at this hour, and so they're all oft on a lark. Might get along without the equerry and the page, but can't have any wine or cigars without the butler, and can't dress without my valet." 1 offered to help him dress, but he would not hear of it ; and besides, he said he would not feel comfortable unless dressed by a practised hand. However, he finally concluded that he was such old friends with the Earl that it would not make any difference how he was dressed. So we took a cab, he gave the driver some directions, and we started. By and by we stopped before a large house and got out. I never had seen this man with a collar on. He now stepped under a lamp and got a venerable paper collar out of his coat pocket, along with a hoary cravat, and put them on. He ascended the stoop, rang and entered the door. Presently he reappeared, descended rapidly, and said, " Come— quick 1 " We hurried away, and turned the corner. lli 148 ROGERS. ii ^i' " Now we're safe," he said, and took off his collar and sravat and returned them to his pocket. " Made a mighty narrow escape," said he. " How ? " said I. *' B' George, the Countess was there ! " " Well, what of that ? — don't she know you ? " " Know me ? Absolutely worships me. I just did happen to catch a glimpse of her before she saw me — and out I shot. Haven't seen her for two months — ^to rush in on her without any warning might have been fatal. She could not have stood it. I didn't know she was in town — thought she was at the castle. Let me lean on you — just a moment — ^there ; now I am better — ^thank you ; thank you ever so much. Lord bless me, what an escape ! " So I never got to call on the Earl after all. But I marked his house for futmo reference. It proved to be an ordinary family hotel, with about a thousand plebeian® roosting in it. In most things Rogers was by no means a fool. In some things it was plain enough he was a fool, but he certainly did not know it. He was in the " deadest " earnest in these matters. He died at sea, last bummer* as the *' Earl of Kamsgate." »llar and just did Qe — ^and ) rush in il. She in town a you — k you; escape!" But I i to be lebeian® )ol. In but he sadest " ummer» 1 ETTER READ AT A DINNER OF THE KNIGHTS OF ST. PATRICK. Habtford, Ct., March 16, 1876. 'to TK% OhAIBMAN! ^y> ^I^fJvEAR SIR : I am very sorry that I cannot be with (^^^^ the Knights of St. Patrick to-morrow evening. In this centennial year we ought all to find a peculiar pleasure in doing honor to the memory of a man whose good name has endured through fourteen centuries. We ought to find pleasure in it for the reason that at this time we naturally have a fellow-feeling for such a man. He wr ught a great work in his day. He found Ireland a prosperous republic, and looked about him to see if he might find some useful thing to turn his hand to. He observ- ed that the president of that republic was in the habit of sheltering his great officials from' deserved punishment, so he lifted up his staff and smote him, and he died. He found that the secretary of war had been so unbecoming- ly economical as to have laid up $12,000 a year out of a salary of $8,000, and he killed him. He found that the secretary of tie interior always prayed over every separ- ate and distinct barrel of salt beef that was intended for the unconverted savage, and then kept that beef himself, so he killed him also. He found that the secretary of the aavy knew more about handling suspicious claims than 150 LETTER READ AT A DINNER. :il :fi he did about handling a ship, and he at once made an end of him. He found that a very foul private secretary had been engineered through a sham trial, so he destroyed him. He discovered that the congress which pretended to prodigious virtue was very anxious to investigate an ambassador who had dishonoured the country abroad, but was equally anxious to prevent the appointment of any spotless man to a similar post ; that this congress had no god but party ; no system of morals but party policy ; no vision but a bat's vision ; and no reason or excuse for ex- isting anyhow. Therefore he massacred that c ngress to the last man. When he had finished this great work, he said, in hia figurative way, " Lo, I have destroyed all the reptiles in Ireland." St. Patrick had no politics ; Ms sympathies lay with the right — that was politics enough. When he came across a reptile, he forgot to enquire whether he was a democrat or a republican, 'out simply exalted his staff and * let him have it." Honoured be his name — I wish we lad him here to trim us up xor the centennial. But that cannot be. His staff", which was the symbol of real, not .^ham reform, is idle. However, we still have with ua the symbol of Truth — George Washington's little hatchet — for I know where they've buried it. Yours truly, Mark Twain.