THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 NEVER AGAIN 
 
 W. S. MAYO, M.D., 
 
 AUTHOR OF "KALOOLAH," "THE BERBER, ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, 
 
 FOUBTH AVENUE AND 23D STBEET. 
 1873.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM & SONS, 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
 
 POOLH & MACLAUCHI.AN, 
 
 PKINTKRS AND BOOKIIINDKRS, 
 
 205-213 East i2tk -SV.
 
 PS 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 TO MISS SUSAN R. BILKERS. 
 
 IT must seem strange, my dear Miss Bilkers, not 
 only to you, but to members of your set, that I 
 should venture to connect the name of such a fashion 
 able girl as yourself with anything so out of fashion 
 as a dedication, and especially a dedication of what 
 does not pretend to be a pure work of art ; not 
 even a novel with a moral, or a novel with a pur 
 pose ; but simply a tale with a tail, and this tail 
 without sting or venom, and in no ways distinguish 
 able except by a few harmless rattles that can hurt 
 nothing and nobody. It must seem, I say, strange 
 perhaps presumptuous to you and your excellent 
 mother, to whom you owe so much of your early 
 training ; but I have a good reason, in my excessive 
 admiration not only of your mind and person, but 
 of your style in general. I have watched you on 
 many occasions with interest, and you must permit 
 me to say, with an ever-growing conviction that 
 there are^ very few girls in society quite equal to 
 you.
 
 IV DEDICATION. 
 
 It is admitted that the days of the old-fashioned, 
 cold, hard, and haughty, but quiet, fine-ladyism have 
 passed ; and in its place, we have the active, the 
 aggressive, the impetuously pert and energetically 
 arrogant style. Of this style, you are, I believe, my 
 dear Miss Bilkers, one of the most happy examples. 
 The demonstrative insouciance, if I may be allowed 
 the expression, with which you twist your lithe figure 
 through the mazes of the cotillion the insolent vigor 
 with which you repel the contact of common peo 
 ple, at ball or party the active contemptuousness 
 with which you stare down nobodies as they stroll 
 the piazza of the watering place hotel or still more, 
 that ineffable expression of combative arrogance that 
 " slap-your-face-for- two-cents" kind of a look that 
 beams from every feature as you roll along in your 
 carriage through Bellevue Avenue, or the drives in 
 the Park all, all have often excited my admira 
 tion, and now fully warrant this public tribute of 
 regard and esteem from your humble friend. 
 
 THE AUTHOR.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 DESIGNED AND ENGRAVED BY G ASTON FAY. 
 
 MR. LEDGERAL AT BADEN, 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Frontispiece. 
 
 LUNCH AT DELMONICO'S 
 
 "Nothing but ghosts of ideas." 
 
 - 107 
 
 MORNING CALL, ------- 
 
 "An outside heresy, my dear Mrs. Struggles," 
 
 - 142 
 
 LUTHER'S DREAM, 
 
 "Beautiful, isn't it?" 
 
 - 228 
 
 "LET ME BEGUILE YOUR THOUGHTS AWHILE," 
 
 . . . 243 
 
 "THE KAISER'S CHILD is IN HIS ARMS," 
 
 - 245 
 
 "AND TOTTERS ON HER WAY," - 
 
 - 247 
 
 "BENEATH HIS EYES THE COURTYARD LIES," - 
 
 - 248 
 
 "THE WONDROUS DURANDALL," - 
 
 - 249 
 
 "THE KAISER SMILED, THEN LIFTS HIS CHILD," 
 
 - 251 
 
 HELEN AND HER FATHER, ..... 
 
 - - - 368 
 
 " I don't want any husband." 
 
 Miss JONES' BREAKFAST TABLE, - - - - - -457 
 
 "The Doctor does us the honor to propose a conundrum." 
 
 MRS. STICHEN'S BOUDOIR, - - . . . . . . 535 
 
 "Mr. Hoggs, may I talk plainly?" 
 
 THE RESULT OF JOSEPH'S REFLECTIONS, - .... 650 
 
 "Dere's dem city sixes." 
 
 UNCLE SHIPPEN'S LECTURE, 668 
 
 "What's a million without the principle of longevity ?" 
 
 LUTHER AND MRS. STEIGNITZ, ....... 693 
 
 "Nous verrons."
 
 NEVER AGAIN 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PROEMIAL. 
 
 u *" I ^HE AUSTRIAN BAND PLAYS THIS EVENING!" was 
 JL the announcement, made in all languages, to every 
 body, by all the maitres-d'' hotel, premiers gar$ons, courriers and 
 valets de place of Baden. Of course there was a rush, after 
 dinner, for the promenade, enthusiasm for Austrian mili 
 tary music being, twenty-five or thirty years ago, almost as 
 much a test of connoisseurship as in the present day. 
 
 Every chair on the colonnade of the Kurhaus, and on 
 both sides of the public walk, running between the little kiosk 
 occupied by the band and the thronged portals of the gam 
 bling salons was filled, and the walk itself was densely crowded 
 with a gay throng of promenaders. Richly dressed women 
 beautiful and ugly old and young from every civilized 
 clime, and gallant and graceful men variously costumed, and 
 of all ages from tripping youth to shuffling senility, passed 
 and repassed, bowing and smiling, smirking and gesticula 
 ting, and exhaling an odor of refined savoir vivre peculiar, in 
 its intensity, and its entire freedom from any merely moral 
 or utilitarian smells, to this the greatest bathing-place, with 
 waters of the least efficacy in Europe. 
 
 Have you ever seen at sea, while watching the dark massy
 
 10 NEVER AGAIN 
 
 waves rolling on in sullen and resistless power, a handful of 
 spray dashed upwards and converted into a shower of dia 
 monds and rubies by a gleam of sun-light ? If so, you have 
 an image of the spoon-drift of society, as it sparkled and 
 flashed in the lights, natural and artificial, of a lovely even 
 ing at Baden. 
 
 The gambling salons were nearly empty. There had 
 been an intermission of an hour or two in the monotonous 
 "faites votre jeu MessUurs ; le jeu est fait,'" of the croupiers 
 of the rouge-et-noir, and the game had not yet been opened 
 for the evening. The wheel of the roulette, however, at the 
 head of the large conversation salle was in motion. It al 
 ways is in motion. It is said that the oldest inhabitants of 
 Baden, those who have lived through many millions of its 
 revolutions, have never known it to stop. Friction and the 
 resistance of the air have no effect upon it. On it goes in 
 violation of the plainest principles of mechanics, in utter 
 contempt of the most rigid demonstrations of the impossi 
 bility of perpetual motion, on forever and ever whirling 
 away yearly the wealth, health, and happiness of thousands. 
 Whether its drivers and conductors are a different order of 
 men from the croupiers of the rouge-et-noir is a matter of 
 doubt ; but certain it is that they never sleep, and require 
 nothing to eat. There are intermissions with the cards, which 
 indicate a connection between the impassible shufflers and or 
 dinary humanity ; but the ball of the roulette is not less regu 
 lar and continuous in its revolutions than the balls of the 
 solar system. 
 
 It was the hour of ebb in the gambling tide, the time 
 for the minnows and small fry, the singlo silver-florin 
 folks who have already repocketed their cure-dents and swal 
 lowed their pousse-caf is and/#.r verres. Wait an hour and 
 the big fish will begin to show themselves, the tide will turn, 
 and a flood, with a rush like the bore in the Hoogly or the 
 Bay of Funda, will set in and cover the green cloth banks 
 with a sediment of gold. 
 
 Gathered around the roulette are a dozen or so of couriers,
 
 NEVER AGAIN. H 
 
 soiis-officiers, and students, with a few ladies' maids and French 
 milliners, together with three or four staid, quiet heads of fam 
 ilies, who, at London or New York, would cleem penny points 
 or sixpenny loo the unpardonable sin ; and who, if compelled 
 to sit out a night at euchre or vingt-et-un would require, like 
 Moses at Rephidim, some one to help them hold up their 
 hands. Besides these there is an English built, clerical-look 
 ing gentleman in a white neck cloth, who is intently watching 
 the game with his hand thrust down into his pocket fingering 
 a florin. " Put it down, my dear sir, just for the fun of the 
 thing ! it will be so odd ; no one knows you, and you merely 
 wish to see whether pair will not come up after impair has 
 been called five times. 
 
 Far down at the lower end of the large hall one solitary in 
 dividual was to be seen. The superior attractions of the rou 
 lette at the upper end, and of the music and crowd without, 
 had drawn off all stragglers, and left him in undisturbed pos 
 session of a sofa, and several hundred square feet of solitude. 
 He appeared to be, after making all allowance for a carefully 
 studied toilet, a man of about fifty-five years of age, and was 
 evidently an invalid. His figure was slight and somewhat 
 bent, his complexion pale and unhealthy, his cheeks hollow, 
 his eyes sunken, and his lips bloodless and thin. An enor 
 mous mustache, dyed a deep black, rested upon the inclined 
 plane of his projecting front teeth, and, contrasting oddly with 
 his scanty gray locks, added an expression of fierceness to a 
 face deeply marked by the play of uncurbed appetites and 
 passions. Still, there was something in his appearance that 
 excited interest and commanded respect. An air of exquis 
 ite refinement and high breeding concealed, at first sight, 
 almost wholly the natural repulsiveness of his expression, and 
 served to confirm a conjecture, warranted by his elaborate and 
 finished, yet quiet, style of dress, that he was a man of high 
 social position, if not of rank. A practised observer might, 
 perhaps, have gone still further and have marked him down 
 as an aristocratic rouu ; old before his time, and bowed with the 
 weight, not of years, but of days and nights of vice and folly,
 
 12 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 He was reclining upon the sofa in an attitude of affected 
 ease, that but poorly concealed a sense of debility and lassi 
 tude. He appeared to be lost in thought of no very pleasant 
 kind, to judge from the frown on his brow, and the impatient 
 gnawing of his thin lip. But of whatever character his reve 
 rie, he was roused from it by a servant in a plain suit of 
 black who, with a letter in his hands, had been peering about 
 through the different rooms. 
 
 The reclining gentleman took the letter with a listless air, 
 glanced carelessly at the address, and suddenly started from 
 his recumbent attitude, with a gesture of vexation, and a few 
 muttered objurgations in French. 
 
 " Has any one seen this ? " he demanded of the man. 
 
 "No one, Durchlaucht. I have just taken it from the 
 post. I thought it best to bring it to you at once without 
 waiting your Excellency's return to the hotel." 
 
 " 'Tis very well, Steignitz. I am glad that no one has seen 
 this address. But you forget that I have forbidden you to 
 style me Excellency or Durchlaucht. Recollect that I am 
 plain Monsieur D'Okenheim." 
 
 " Permit me to observe," replied Steignitz, " that I see 
 here almost fifty people who know us." 
 
 " True ! I am not such a fool as to think that an incog 
 nito can be preserved at Baden. But fifty people are not 
 everybody. I have my reasons for being Monsieur D'Oken 
 heim to all strangers. Where is Madame ? " 
 
 " Der Herr will find her outside, directly in front of this 
 lower window." 
 
 " Alone ? " 
 " No, she is attended by Herrn Ledgeral." 
 
 Herr D'Okenheim's face was a study the expression was 
 so peculiar, and so complex. A deep frown corrugated his 
 forehead, and his shaggy eyebrows were drawn down so as 
 to almost conceal the pinkish, lustreless eyes they shaded ; 
 while his heavy mustache was thrown upwards, and the corn 
 ers of his mouth twisted into a smile of mingled malice and 
 pleasure.
 
 , NEVER AGAIN. 13 
 
 He waved his hand. Steignitz bowed and depaited to 
 rejoin Annette, Madame, D'Okenheim's French maid, who 
 was awaiting him for a stroll in the avenue of Lichtenthal. 
 
 Monsieur D'Okenheim, with a trembling hand, broke the 
 seal of his letter, and began to read. As he read, his frown 
 grew deeper, and what there had been of a smile, gave place 
 to an expression of pure rage. He crushed the letter in his 
 hand, and, starting from his seat, paced up and down with 
 vivacious, but uncertain step. 
 
 Approaching the window, indicated by his servant, he 
 looked out upon the crowd. His eye lighted at once upon a 
 gentleman and lady seated directly below him, and again his 
 face was illumined with an equivocal smile. He stood gazing 
 at them for some time, one hand crumpling the letter the 
 other nervously twisting the ends of his long mustache. 
 
 " All alike ! yes, all alike ! " he exclaimed. " I really 
 had begun to believe that there were exceptions, and that 
 my wife would prove one of them ; but I am rather glad 
 to be undeceived. I am rather glad at being relieved from 
 the distinction of possessing such a rara avis as a virtuous 
 wife. 
 
 " Virtue ! " he muttered, renewing his walk. " Bah ! 
 what is virtue ? I don't believe a word of it in man or 
 woman. It is a hybrid a monster an unnatural affirmative, 
 born of the conjunction of two negatives no passions and no 
 opportunities. Opportunities and importunities have not 
 been wanting in her case. She has been too long the com 
 panion of the Princess of Stacklenberg for that. It must 
 have been her cold heart that has kept her reputation so far 
 clear of stain. I had begun to think that it was her clever 
 ness that, as Shakespeare has it, she ever "put out the fire 
 of passion with the sap of reason." But cleverness never 
 saves them. The sap of reason dries up when most needed. 
 But why has the fire, in her case, never been lighted ? that's 
 what puzzles me. There was the Count Hunoyd ! I thought 
 at one time it might be my duty to put a sword through the 
 handsomest man in Vienna ; but no, she extinguished him
 
 I 4 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 herself without the slightest suggestion from me. And now 
 well, as the wisest of all poets says : 
 
 '" In some breasts passion lies concealed and silent, 
 Like war's swart posvder in a castle vault, 
 Until occasion like the lintstock lights it.' 
 
 Perhaps the Yankee carries the lintstock. 
 
 " Strange ! strange ! " he continued, advancing to the 
 window, and looking out upon his wife and her companion. 
 " It must be just the perversity of the sex. Were I a doting, 
 uxorious, jealous husband, my wife, I do not doubt, would 
 have counted her lovers by the score ; and now this Yankee 
 is the first man in whom she has taken any real interest. I 
 should not have thought that the self-conceited gauky could 
 have stirred that smooth-polished, well-balanced mechanism 
 she calls her heart. However, I must tell her of this letter. 
 It will distress her, I know; but then she knows how and 
 where to seek for consolation." 
 
 Monsieur D'Okenheim seized his hat and stick, and, with 
 an affected jauntiness of step, sallied from the Kurhaus. 
 Threading his way, not without difficulty, through the crowd, 
 he advanced to the couple whose movements he had been 
 watching. 
 
 The lady Madame D'Okenheim was a distinguished 
 looking woman of about eight-and-twenty years of age. She 
 had a fine, stylish figure, almost perfect, unless perhaps an 
 imperfection might be found in a decided promise of fat at 
 forty ; and she had a face which, if not unqualifiedly hand 
 some, had a great deal of that kind of beauty which is the 
 exponent of youth and high health large liquid lustrous eyes, 
 as yet undimmed by gas-light and ball-room glare skin pure 
 and polished, as yet untinted and unroughened by matutinal 
 champagne and/#/t! de foie gras pearly teeth, and ruby lips 
 that spoke only of sound lungs, and a good digestion, and 
 said nothing about a compressed liver, and an obstructed 
 portal circulation. Not the highest style of beauty it may be. 
 Not perhaps beauty at all ; but the highest condition of
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 15 
 
 beauty, the sine qua non of beauty, the something without 
 which beauty, unless in some rare cases, don't amount to 
 much ; or, to mount a metaphor, the animal on which spiritual 
 and intellectual beauty the beauty of soul and mind gallops 
 through the avenues of sense into the heart. Of course if 
 the animal is out of condition, beauty can't ride fast or far. 
 She is very apt to stop short of the portals of passion, and 
 " hitch up " at the door of respect and esteem. Let it not be 
 supposed from this figurative flourish, that Madame D'Oken- 
 heim was deficient in the beauty of expression. All that is 
 meant is that she was healthily handsome. A charming 
 toilet set off all the graces of her person to the best advan 
 tage, while the effect was very much heightened by an easy 
 but quiet graciousness of manner, and a certain aura of ban 
 ten which she seemed to breathe out at every word and move 
 ment. Her style clearly indicated study in the Viennese 
 school, which is to manners pretty much what the Venetian 
 school was to art a happy mingling of vivacity and repose 
 in the composition, with the flesh tints strong and hearty; the 
 general tone rich and warm, with a very faithful and substan 
 tial rendering of sentiment and passion. 
 
 Her companion was, perhaps, twenty-three years of 
 age. He, too, was rather good looking. Tall, and somewhat 
 lanky in figure, but withal graceful and easy in his bearing, 
 there was perhaps a little too much of an attempt at elegance 
 in his general getting up the necessary and pardonable 
 effect of his recent emancipation from certain puritanic prej 
 udices, as well as from a certain provincialism in dress, 
 which at that time still characterized the great commercial 
 metropolis of America, but which has now so happily disap 
 peared. 
 
 The eldest son of Mr. Ledgeral, a reputable New York 
 merchant, he had been dispatched to Liverpool, a few 
 months before, for the settlement of some business question, 
 requiring a confidential agent on the part of Ledgeral, Ship- 
 pen and Co. His business having been satisfactorily arranged, 
 young Ledgeral was now enjoying, preparatory to his return
 
 1 6 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 to the dingy counting-house in Burling Slip, a few months' run 
 upon the continent. 
 
 It was at Frankfort that he first made the acquaintance 
 of Monsieur and Madame D'Okenheim. He was trying to 
 make himself understood by the custode' of the Wahlzimmer, 
 or election chamber of the German Emperors, but inasmuch 
 as he knew not a word of German, and but very little French, 
 he was turning away with a feeling of profound disgust at the 
 fellow's stupidity, when a pleasant voice came to his relief 
 with a " Permit me I will explain," and Madame D'Oken 
 heim, in alternate English and German, cleared up all diffi 
 culties. Monsieur D'Okenheim coming up, and he, too, speak 
 ing English, the conversation was continued. Together they 
 saw the famous Golden Bull, or Deed, by which Charles IV. 
 settled the mode of election of the German Emperors, and 
 visited the Kaisersaal, or banqueting-room, where the Em 
 perors were waited upon by Kings and Princes. Again they 
 met, bowed, and spoke, in the Jfudengasse, one of the chief 
 sights in Frankfort, and at dinner-time, as luck would have it, 
 Mr. Ledgeral found himself at the table d'hote the vis-a-vis of 
 Madame. 
 
 Upon his expressing a wish to visit Homburg, a seat in 
 Monsieur D'Okenheiin's carriage, for next day, was offered 
 him, and as Madame backed the invitation with a bewitching 
 smile, and an assurance that she should be charmed to have 
 his company, it was most gratefully accepted. 
 
 Every traveller knows how rapidly an acquaintanceship 
 ripens under such circumstances : one sight-seeing excursion 
 having about as much forcing power as a round of dinner or 
 evening parties and a dozen or two of morning calls. It is 
 not surprising therefore, that during the ride to Homburg it 
 should have been found that Baden-Baden was the destina 
 tion of all parties, and that there was again a seat for Mr. 
 Ledgeral in Monsieur D'Okenheim's travelling carriage. 
 
 There was a freshness of feeling and expression about 
 the young man that interested Madame D'Okenheim, who, 
 accustomed since extreme youth to the polished and doubly
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 17 
 
 refined, but heartless, and dissipated society of mediatized 
 German Princes, and the haute noblesse of Austria and Hun 
 gary, was thoroughly blase. His occidentalities had for her 
 the charm of novelty. They affected her taste very much as 
 the flavor of a canvas-back duck does the palate of an Euro 
 pean epicure, as a something dubiously delightful. 
 
 There was also a certain degree of mingled verdancy and 
 shrewdness a kind of Yankee naivete, mixed with a good 
 proportion of self conceit, that seemed for a time to amuse 
 Monsieur D'Okenheim, who soon managed, with the skill of 
 a diplomatist and man of the world, by a few adroit observa 
 tions and questions to strip the vain and confident youth of 
 every feeling, sentiment, and plan, leaving his inner man in 
 a state of nudity which, had he been conscious of, he him 
 self would have been the first to denounce as ridiculous and 
 indecent, especially as with all his " 'cuteness," he got not a 
 rag of Monsieur D'Okenheim's mental habiliments in return. 
 The process complete, Monsieur took, apparently, but little 
 further interest in his conversation ; most of the time, while 
 in the carriage, he seemed to be asleep, or, when stopping 
 to view a ruin or a landscape, was so apathetic and indif 
 ferent, so indisposed or unfit for exertion, or so attentive to 
 Annette, the French maid, or so taken up with the talk of 
 guides and custodes, that the duty of attendance upon 
 Madame fell naturally and wholly to the young man. 
 
 The approach of Monsieur D'Okenheim, as he picked his 
 way amid the crowd seated under the colonnade of the Kur- 
 haus, was unnoticed by the lady or her companion until he 
 stood before them. A slight start and a suffusion of the 
 cheek in both were not unobserved by him, but produced no 
 perceptible effect upon his manner, unless perhaps to increase 
 the sinister smile with which he addressed them. Raising 
 his hat and bowing low, he said, in a tone of bland impres- 
 siveness : " I am sorry to interrupt your conversation, and I 
 ask a thousand pardons, but, Monsieur Ledgeral, if you will 
 have the goodness to excuse Madame for ten minutes, I have 
 a few words to say to her. I have just received a letter, the
 
 !g NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 contents of which I wish to communicate to her. I shall 
 detain her but a fe\v minutes, when, Monsieur, if you will 
 have the goodness to take charge of her again, that is, if 
 you are not otherwise engaged, you will, I am sure, charm 
 her and oblige me." 
 
 Madame D'Okenheim rose from her seat. 
 
 " Shall we find you here upon our return ? " she demanded, 
 looking back with an inviting smile. 
 
 The young man, blushing and bowing, laid his hand upon 
 his heart with theatric, but not ungraceful, gallantry. 
 
 "I am a statue," he said, "until your return." 
 
 " As stationary, perhaps ? " she replied, smiling. 
 
 " Certainly. But I would not have you think as hard or 
 as cold. The great English poet of whom we were talking, 
 says 'the eyes of women are Promethean fires.' I have been 
 Prometheusized ; my heart has been touched by the heavenly 
 flame, and although I shall not move, I shall live, and feel, 
 and hope." 
 
 " We shall not keep you long waiting," exclaimed Mon 
 sieur D'Okenheim, who affected not to hear these remarks, 
 which, uttered in a low tone, had nevertheless too much of 
 the penetrating intensity of passion to wholly escape his ear. 
 " I am anxious to resume my seat at the table within. I feel 
 that I shall be in luck to-night." 
 
 Madame took her husband's proffered arm. A few steps 
 brought them to the deserted piazza, of the Trinkhalle. Mon 
 sieur looked cautiously around to see that no one was within 
 hearing. 
 
 "So/" he exclaimed, pursing up his lips and ejecting 
 the sound with a prolonged hissing through his closed teeth. 
 "So/ ma belle, the Yankee's gallantry is improving, I see." 
 
 "Yes, he is coming on," replied the lady carelessly. 
 " He begins to fancy himself a gallant de premiere force, and 
 to plume himself upon his conquest" 
 
 " A conquest ! Yes, after the fashion of the soldier who 
 captured the Tartar. A real Cadmian victory! You have 
 heard the phrase 'a victory of Pyrrhus'? 'Another such
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 19 
 
 success,' said the old king of Epirus, ' and I am ruined ' : in 
 fact the conquering jackanape is completely in your power now ; 
 you could make him hang himself with one of your garters." 
 
 " I have no wish that my garters should be put to such a 
 use ! " 
 
 " No ? Perhaps you prefer that he should go on conquer 
 ing and to conquer : may-be he is nearer a conquest of your 
 heart than I supposed. Come, tell me what progress he has 
 really made. Has he reached his third parallel ? has he 
 crowned the crest of the glacis ? is the citadel in danger ? " 
 
 " I don't understand barrack-room figures," replied the 
 lady, contemptuously. 
 
 " To be plain then, what do you really think of this lover 
 of yours ? You know you can trust me. It is a great thing 
 for a woman to be able to trust her husband in such matters. 
 Come, tell me, is your own heart wholly untouched ? " 
 
 The struggle between a leer and a sneer, for possession 
 of the speaker's countenance, would have made a study for 
 the great illustrator of Faust. 
 
 " Well, perhaps not," replied Madame D'Okenheim mu 
 singly. " He is good looking, and his American conceit and 
 naivete amuses me. Besides, he is so enterprising. Why, the 
 fellow would have no hesitation, if he had a chance, despite 
 his bashfulness, in making love to an Empress. That inter 
 ests me, but you have no objections, have you? You know 
 you have given me carte blanche." 
 
 " True ; but hitherto you have not seemed disposed to 
 take advantage of your privileges. Do you know the reasons 
 that I have had for being so liberal ? " 
 
 " Because perversity is about the only quality in woman 
 that you believe in, and you thought that removing all restric 
 tions would remove nine-tenths of the temptation." 
 
 " Partly so, ma belle." 
 
 " And because, although you had but little respect for my 
 principles, you had for my will, and you knew that any 
 restrictions you could impose would be useless." 
 
 " Partly so, ma belle."
 
 20 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " And because you wished to secure for yourself a similar 
 privilege." 
 
 " What a profound analyst ! My dear, motives are fre 
 quently, and, in my case, always, confused and complicated. 
 When I want to know what I mean myself, I shall in future 
 come to you." 
 
 - " You flatter me." 
 
 " Not at all ; but I am going to mention one other reason 
 which is somewhat complimentary, and which you have left 
 out and that is great confidence in your prudent manage 
 ment of any case that might arise. Mind you, I don't claim 
 any right to interfere with you, upon general marital princi 
 ples, but in case of any public scandal it might become my 
 duty, ydTi know, to send a pistol ball through the gentleman's 
 head. Now I don't like that ; I have done it, perhaps, half-a- 
 dozen times too often already. To be sure, the temptation to 
 add an American to the list might be something," said Herr 
 D'Okenheim musingly. " But to quit this pleasant subject, 
 and come to something downright disagreeable and more 
 nearly affecting my feelings." 
 
 Monsieur D'Okenheim paused as if taking time to mas 
 ter some rising emotion, and for a moment his mustache 
 worked rapidly up and down the inclined plane of his teeth. 
 
 " I have just received a letter from my good cousin," he 
 at length said in a low, hissing tone. " Here it is, and what 
 think you ? a fresh insult ! He says that he has heard from 
 Isenthal, and, as presumptive heir to the estates, he must 
 object to my cutting more than a hundred klafters of wood 
 for the use of the castle, and that he forbids my damming 
 the river and converting meadow-land into ornamental lake 
 and fish-pond. He even alludes to my failing health, and his 
 certain prospects of the succession, and signs himself my 
 loving cousin, Joseph. The cold blooded, canting rascal ! 
 Ah ! how I have ever hated him ; how I do hate him ! and 
 what's more, how he hates me, and you too, ma belle! In 
 fact, I am not sure but that a good deal of the feeling he has 
 for me, is a reflection of the intense hate he has for you."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 21 
 
 " There is no love lost between us," replied the lady. 
 
 " True, but he has the advantage of you in this he may 
 yet have it in his power to make you feel how little he loves 
 you. He lords it now in a bold tone ; but what will he do, 
 think you, when he succeeds to my estates ? " 
 
 " You may well outlive him," said Madame D'Okenheim, 
 with a slight shrug of the shoulders. 
 
 " Pshaw ! " replied Monsieur D'Okenheim in an impatient 
 tone, " his life is worth a dozen such as mine. But if I die 
 within the year I don't think I could rest in my grave were 
 he my successor. I'd sooner see the vilest beggar's brat in 
 my place." 
 
 - " And I should have very little rest out of the grave, I 
 suppose," said Madame, "but I don't see how you can 
 help it. You cannot be more sorry than I am that your 
 hopes of an heir have been doomed to disappointment." 
 
 " But they must not be disappointed," returned Monsieur 
 D'Okenheim. 
 
 The lady started, and looked up inquiringly. " So ! A 
 leaf from the history of Napoleon ; and I am to play the role 
 of Josephine ! Ha ! " 
 
 " Not so, ma belle ; you mistake me entirely. I have not 
 the least hopes from anything of that kind." 
 
 The lady shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 " Oh ! don't think, Madame, that I intend to reproach you. 
 I know better than that. I know that were we on trial for 
 the crime, for crime it is, or if not a crime, something which 
 we have but to search the annals of the reigning houses of 
 Germany to find has been punished far more severely than a 
 crime, if we were on trial, I say, for the crime of not giving 
 a lot of little hostages to fortune, and citizens to the State, 
 your sentence would be light I know full well that you 
 might, if it pleased you, emulate the famous English Lady 
 Godiva, and ride in a similar toilet through the Pays Latin 
 or the Alser Vorstadt, without a single straggling pathologist 
 being able to raise his finger at you. But, my dear, did you 
 never hear of quietly adopting an heir of lifting some
 
 22 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 wayside waif into high estate of buying some infantile re 
 sponsibility, eradicating the wooden spoon to which it was 
 born, and sticking a silver forjt in its place ? " 
 
 " I have read of such things in romances." 
 
 " And I have known of such things in real life." 
 
 " And you would try it ? " 
 
 "No, no! /would never try it," and the Count empha 
 sized the " I " with peculiar force. " I would never run the 
 risk of inevitable exposure which always comes of men's 
 bungling in such matters. The thing has been done, and in 
 probably a good many cases the succession has been diverted 
 by the expedient. But I am afraid the difficulties in our case 
 are almost insuperable, unless in the hands of an exceed 
 ingly cautious and clever woman. I could, of course, have 
 nothing to do with it. I merely mentioned it to show that 
 there are more ways than one of tying a knot in the Devil's 
 tail." 
 
 Herr D'Okenheim pressed the point of his finger upon the 
 round shoulder of Madame, and leered into her face with a 
 grotesque grin. 
 
 " That is, you would like to have the knot tied without 
 your running any risk from his hoof or his horns ; or in other 
 words, if any one is 19 be tried for attempting to foist a false 
 heir into Isenthal, you would rather it should be your wife 
 than yourself." 
 
 " Hush, my dear. Don't speak of such a thing. I had no 
 such thought. I only meant that supposing such a wicked and 
 foolish thing were attempted, it would certainly fail if it were 
 not managed so that even I could have no suspicion of it." 
 
 " And you propose that I should undertake a scheme so 
 liable to failure ? " demanded the lady. 
 
 " Propose ? Oh no ! It would be wrong, absurd, dan 
 gerous ! Consult Annette, and see what can be done ; she 
 is devoted to you ; she can be trusted. I propose nothing. 
 I plan nothing. I have lost all confidence in plans. I have 
 seen them so often thwarted ; as for instance in our mar 
 riage. I married in the hopes of putting an end to the
 
 NEVER AGAIN. ^ 
 
 expectations of cousin Joseph. I mean no disparagement 
 to your wit, or beauty, or style. 
 
 " Ah ! what a misfortune then is mine, the more unbear 
 able, too, since I am so moderate in my wishes. All that I. 
 desire is an heir, and almost anything alive and human would 
 content me. All people desire children, but then they desire 
 prodigies, but I don't. They desire 'living jewels dropped 
 from heaven,' as the poet has it, but then they want them 
 of the clearest water. Now I I shouldn't mind a little im 
 perfection. For instance, I should not mind if my heir looked 
 like the coarsest peasant's child. I don't care about beauty. 
 A moderate amount of ugliness anything short of a chim 
 panzee or a Cape Baboon I should not object to. Strength 
 and health ! Yes, I should want our heir to have strength 
 and health that he might outlive that amiable cousin of mine ; 
 but nothing else should I care about. I don't demand sense, 
 or talents ; still less, genius. I have no improper and selfish 
 longings for a wise child." 
 
 " A wise child ! " exclaimed Madame D'Okenheim. 
 " What do you mean by a wise child ? " 
 
 " That depends, my dear, upon what may be considered 
 evidences of wisdom. Pico della Mirandola, Blaise Pascal, 
 and others, gave evidences of a certain kind of wisdom at a 
 very early age. On the other hand, there is a proverb relat 
 ing to a different kind of wisdom. Pardon the implied re 
 flection upon your sex, but you must have often heard it, it 
 is found in all languages. The Italians say, ' II maggior ser- 
 TIZIO die possa fare un figliuolo saggio al padre & '/ conasccrlo.' 
 The French say, ' II est savant r enfant qui connait son propre 
 pcre.' The English say, 'It is a wise child that' Well, you 
 know the proverb. I should not care if my successor was 
 still more ignorant, and didn't know his own mother." 
 
 "Infamous!" exclaimed Madame D'Okenheim, starting 
 back, and shaking off her husband's hand from her shoulder. 
 
 " Infamous, indeed. Nine-tenths of all the proverbs in 
 all languages relating to your sex are infamous, scandalous, 
 and, if you please, absurd ; but I am not responsible for
 
 2 4 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 them, and I must beg you to lay aside all affectation. A 
 little, just a little, indignation at the aphoristic impertinence I 
 have quoted, may be perhaps becoming ; at least, it might be 
 were anybody by but ourselves. But between us Bah ! we 
 know each other don't we, ma belle ? " 
 
 " I think we do," replied the lady, with a shrug. " At 
 least I think I know you." 
 
 " Certainly you do, but that is not much. It is not diffi 
 cult to know such an honest, open-hearted fellow as I am. 
 But I give you credit for a higher knowledge than that." 
 
 " Pardon me," returned the lady, a perceptible sneer 
 marking the expression of her countenance. " A higher 
 knowledge ? Yes, perhaps ; but not a more difficult" 
 
 "Well, well, ma belle; at least you have a knowledge 
 of your own interests. You know that it will never do to 
 make an esclandre that would bring your name before the 
 public just at this time.'* 
 
 The gentleman and lady took a few turns up and down the 
 piazza in silence. They paused as if to listen to those deli 
 cious strains, those nectared and subtle voicings of an exqui 
 site and intensified conventionality that floated on the golden 
 and odorous air across the esplanade ; but little was the mu 
 sic heeded by either. The gentleman was the first to speak. 
 
 "You will see then, my dear, that under the circum 
 stances it is best to avoid all scandal with that young Amer 
 ican. I should be very sorry to have to shoot him ; it would 
 make so much noise. Not that I wish to interfere with any 
 flirtation of yours, however far you may be willing to push it ; 
 but publicity would be very objectionable ; and I think I 
 perceive that you are becoming a little careless. That is al 
 ways the case with you women when once you become really 
 interested. But there is no danger of a grand passion in this 
 case, is there ? It would be too ridiculous, eh ? " 
 
 The lady made no reply. 
 
 " He has, however," continued the gentleman, " one thing 
 in his favor : another lover might not be so luckily circum 
 stanced, and if you will avail yourself of the privileges of your
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 25 
 
 sex, and amuse yourself with a lover, you might perhaps go 
 further and fare worse. It will be very easy in a few days to 
 shake him off. He leaves for his own country in a short 
 time." 
 
 The lady turned inquiringly to her husband. 
 
 " He is not rich," replied Monsieur emphatically, nodding 
 his head, " and once across the Atlantic, and settled down to 
 his business, it' will be long before he will visit Europe again. 
 The money-getting devil will get hold of him. I know some 
 thing of those New York merchants. I have visited them, 
 when I was attached to our legation at Washington, in their 
 own houses quite magnificent their houses are too, regu 
 lar temples dedicated solely to the worship of mammon, 
 all fitted up exactly alike with the gorgeous fragments and 
 figments of a bought-and-paid-for taste, while the service 
 consists mainly of the chinking of gold and the rattling of 
 dollars. They have a creed, and a catechism too. The one 
 begins with, ' I believe in any man worth a million,' and the 
 other with, 'What is the chief end of man? To glorify trade 
 and make money forever.' No, we shall never hear of him 
 again, and as he suspects not our title or address, he prob 
 ably will never hear of us. If we parted from him now, I 
 don't believe he could hunt us up, even if he had time and 
 disposition to do so. 
 
 " As you remarked," observed Monsieur D'Okenheim, 
 after a pause, " he is good-looking." 
 
 "Passably so." 
 
 " And well mannered ? " 
 
 " So, so." 
 
 " And deeply enamored of you." 
 
 " Perhaps. You have had more experience in such mut 
 ters, and are a better judge than I am." 
 
 " Ah, Madame, you flatter me, and belie your own acuie- 
 ness. What is the acquired skill of man in that respect com 
 pared to the natural instinct of woman ? I never knew this 
 to fail, except in cases where they suffer their own passions to 
 blind them. I hope, for the credit of one of the coolest heads
 
 2 6 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 I know, that interest in him does not disqualify you from esti 
 mating the co/ r esponding symptoms of interest on his part I " 
 
 " Well, well," exclaimed the lady impatiently, " perhaps it 
 is so, and what then ? " 
 
 " What then ? " said Monsieur D'Okenheim, twisting up 
 the corners of his mustache, and drawing down his eyebrows 
 until the two, almost touching, made a circle of hair through 
 which peered his pinched-up nose. " What then ? Why noth 
 ing nothing at all. Only I would remark that women of 
 the world are often so confoundedly grateful for a modicum 
 of genuine youthful devotion, that they suffer themselves to 
 be carried beyond their depth before they know it. Mind 
 you, I don't pretend to any right to interfere, but this little 
 affair that is, if you are determined to make it an affair is 
 so odd, so unexpected, and, I may add, so inoportune, that 
 I can't refrain from speaking to you about it. 
 
 " Don't you think, my dear, that it would be a great want 
 of tact, and sense, and wisdom, in a woman as clever as you 
 are, not to avail herself of one of the best qualities in her 
 lover ? " 
 
 The lady turned a sharp look of inquiry towards her hus 
 band. 
 
 "You recollect what your friend the Princess of Stacklin- 
 burg used to say : that she chose for her lovers only young 
 officers of the linie-regimenter, because, they being constantly 
 liable to marching orders, she was certain of getting rid of 
 them more easily than of the gallants of the Kaiser liche 
 Leifavache, who are always around the court. Ah ! the Prin 
 cess was a great woman and a wise woman. She knew that 
 nine- tenths of scandal comes from the unnecessary vigor 
 with which many women defend their hearts from all ap 
 proaches. 'It isn't the assault and capture of a city,' said 
 she, 'that makes the fame of a siege : it is the mining and 
 countermining ; the boom of the batteries and the prelimi 
 nary falfs d'armes. If a woman demands for her heart 
 a systematic attack with a heavy siege train, she can't be sur 
 prised if rumor sooner or later sticks her into one of her bul-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 27 
 
 Mins scandaleux.' Now, in a court where the characters of 
 so many women are compromised, the reputation of the Prin 
 cess of Stacklinburg is almost intact. ' It is such a nice 
 thing,' said the Princess one day to me, ' to be able to get rid 
 of one's lovers before one is tired of them ; most women 
 wait too long. Now don't you think that in view of the ex 
 ceedingly delicate management that may be required in a cer 
 tain case, you have amused yourself with this young man about 
 long enough ? Don't you think that we had better drop him 
 at once ? It won't be much of a sacrifice will 't, ny dear ? 
 and besides, he will be compelled in a few days tc drop us 
 that is, unless you make a slave of him, and tie him to 
 your chariot wheels forever. I don't doubt your power to do 
 so, but it strikes me mind I have no intention to dictate, 
 hardly even to advise that in the end le jeu ne vaut pas la 
 chandelle, or in his own shop-keeping lingo, the thing would 
 not pay. But come, ma belle, let us cross to the Kurhaus. 
 Your Yankee will hardly wait much longer, and I am anxious 
 to pick up a thousand louis this evening. I feel certain that 
 I shall win. Fortune, -I am sure, owes me a good turn, after 
 this last insult from my precious cousin." 
 
 The lady made no reply, but sauntered slowly by the side 
 of her husband back to the colonnade of the Kurhaus, where 
 Mr. Ledgeral was impatiently gnawing the head of his cane, 
 and nervously twisting himself about on two chairs, as if to 
 convince any sedentarily-disposed and seat-seeking spectator 
 that the second chair was an optical illusion. 
 
 " We have made you wait a long time," said Monsieur 
 D'Okenheim, with his politest bow. 
 
 " The time has seemed long, it is true," replied Mr. Ledg 
 eral, with a significant smile to the lady, " but no time would 
 be too long to wait in the service of Madame." 
 
 " Ah, very well said very well turned indeed. But then a 
 turn for compliments is characteristic of the Yankees. They 
 are very complimentary to themselves," he muttered aside to 
 Madame ; " but are you sure you have no other engagements ? " 
 
 "None whatever."
 
 2 8 NETER AC A IX. 
 
 " Madame will then be indebted to you." 
 
 With an abstracted air, the lady took the arm of the young 
 man. They followed Monsieur D'Okenheim into the gam 
 bling saloon, and stood behind him as he dropped into his 
 accustomed seat, marked by his card pinned to the green 
 cloth, and pushed out ten louis to the centre of the table. 
 
 11 Rouge gagne, noir pent f" exclaimed the dealer; and a 
 croupier added ten louis to the stake. 
 
 A second time the phrase was repeated, and twenty louis 
 were added. A third, a fourth, and a fifth time, still Mon 
 sieur D'Okenheim sat motionless and silent. 
 
 " Deux louis d la masse" he suddenly exclaimed, as the 
 dealer prepared for the sixth deal. 
 
 "Deux louis d la masse" repeated the dealer. "Noir 
 gagne, rouge per d." 
 
 " A/i, quelle chance etonnante ! qucl bonheur merveillcux ! " 
 murmured the galerie. 
 
 The croupier picked out two pieces from the glittering pile 
 of three hundred and twenty louis, while Monsieur D'Oken 
 heim reached forward, and pulled the remainder towards him. 
 
 He looked up to his wife with a smile that was half a grin 
 and half a sneer. " Do you see, ma belle" he whispered, 
 " the cards are favorable, but one must play with reticence 
 and self-control. There is no use in pushing fortune too far. 
 To draw back in time one must draw back early." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral and the lady sauntered into the open air. 
 The full moon had just risen over the eastern rim of the 
 basin of Baden the last faint flush of sunset still tinged the 
 tottering towers of das alte Schloss. 
 
 Slowly they paced around the esplanade through the 
 alley of shops up and down the avenue of Lichtenthal by 
 the banks of the Oos along the faade of the Trinkhall, 
 until, quite accidentally, they took a turn into the now deserted 
 walks on the hill-side, back of the Kurhaus. 
 
 A moment after, Annette, the lady's maid, accompanied 
 by Steignitz, entered the same path, and stealthily followed 
 the steps of her mistress.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Lake Mahopac A Bear or a Bald Eagle ? A Queer Boy Biblical 
 Exegesis A Visit to the Hudson First Love An Awful Blunder 
 Poetry and Despair. 
 
 GO up the Hudson as far as the town of Peekskill, and 
 thence directly back from the river some twelve or 
 fourteen miles, and you will arrive at the shore of one of 
 a group of little lakes, six or seven in number, which there 
 lie nestling in the embraces of the Highlands. Elevated a 
 thousand feet above the level of the river fed with water 
 from the clearest springs swept by the purest mountain 
 breezes and studded with little islets of mingled rock and 
 wood nothing can be imagined of a more happy, healthful 
 beauty. From one high hill the whole group at certain 
 seasons when the foliage does not prevent may be seen 
 at once, like ornaments of silver on the green and brown 
 garniture of the landscape ; and, from the branches of one 
 tall tree crowning this hill, can be traced the distant valley 
 of the Hudson. 
 
 It was on a day some nineteen or twenty years after the 
 date of the conversation recorded in the last chapter, that 
 two men, in a one-horse vehicle yclept a " buggy," were driv 
 ing slowly along the road that winds around the foot of this 
 hill. Their attention had been attracted to a dark-looking 
 object perched in the leafless branches of the tall tree on its 
 summit, and they stopped their horse to examine it more 
 steadily. 
 
 " I can't rightly think exactly what kind of a critter that 
 may be," said the elder of the two " that is, if it is a living 
 critter at all. What do you think, Captain Combings ? "
 
 3 
 
 NEVER AGAIN: 
 
 " Well, Deacon, I think it is an animal of some kind, for 
 I can distinctly see it move," replied the Captain, a short, 
 stout, ruddy-faced man of about forty-five years of age. " It 
 can't be a crow ?" 
 
 " Oh, no !" exclaimed the Deacon. " It ain't nothin' like 
 a crow. My eyes ain't so good as they used to be, but they 
 are good enough to see that that is too big, and not black 
 enough, for a crow. It may be a bald eagle." 
 
 " Perhaps it's a bear !" suggested Captain Combings. 
 
 " Well, it does look something like a bear, that's a fact ; 
 but I've lived within three miles of this hill now for about 
 seventy years, and I have never seen a bear except in a 
 travelling menagerie. 'Tain't a bear, I guess ; bul here 
 comes a fellow that can tell us, perhaps. Hollo, there ! 
 Mister ! do you know what that thing is up in the top of 
 that tree there?" 
 
 The question was asked of a man with an axe on his 
 shoulder, who was just emerging from the bushes that con 
 cealed a wood-road running up the hill-side. 
 
 The woodman thus addressed deliberately slipped on his 
 jacket which he carried on his arm, advanced to the side of 
 the buggy, and, resting his hand upon his axe helve, squinted 
 up to the object in question. 
 
 " You want to know what kind of a wild thing that is up 
 there in the tree," said he, with a chuckling laugh. 
 
 " Yes," responded the Deacon. " Captain Combings here 
 thinks it a bear, but I 'spect the Captain knows more about 
 whales and porpoises than he does about bears. I kind o' 
 consate it's a bald eagle." 
 
 " 'Tisn't an eagle," replied the man. 
 
 " It can't be a bear," said the Deacon. 
 
 "No, nor a lion, nor a tiger, nor a rhinoceros it's a 
 boy !" 
 
 "Wi.ew! A boy! Why, what is he doing up there? 
 We saw him two miles back, and have been watching him 
 here for some time past. He must have been perched up 
 there for an hour, at least. Are you sure it's a boy ?"
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 31 
 
 " Sartin sure ; it is little Luth Lansdale. He roosts up 
 there purty much all his spare time now. What he does up 
 there, I can't exactly make out. I've seen boys climb trees 
 for nuts and birds' nests, and 'taint long since I used to do it 
 myself, but there ain't a nut or nest on that tree. A queer 
 boy, Luth ! Sometimes I think he's a little non compos, and 
 sometimes I think he ain't. I axed him one day what he had 
 taken to roosting in that tree for, and he said he went up 
 there to see the world and the kingdoms thereof." 
 
 "Just like his father," exclaimed the Deacon; "he was 
 always a queer man a terrible queer man." 
 
 "You know this youngster, then?" demanded Captain 
 Combings. " What kind of a boy is he ? " 
 
 " Well, to tell you the truth, I don't know much about 
 him. I've heard tell all kind of opinions some say he's 
 smart, and some say he's stupid ; some say he's a very good 
 boy, and others say he's a regular imp. I don't know what 
 to say myself, but I'm afraid he won't turn out very well. 
 I've had the teachers in our Sunday-school complain to me 
 that he asked such odd questions that they were quite dis 
 gusted with him. But there, he's coming down now. Get 
 up, pony !" 
 
 " Hold on for a moment," exclaimed Captain Combings, 
 with an expression of interest. " I think I once knew his 
 father, and his mother, too, for that matter. I would like to 
 see him a little closer. He's coming this way." 
 
 The Deacon checked his horse again, and the two sat 
 quietly observing the movements of the youngster as he 
 slipped down the trunk of the tree and, touching the ground, 
 bounded off on a run down the hill. 
 
 " A very queer boy," muttered the Deacon. 
 
 The Deacon's phrase expressed exactly the reputation 
 that the lad had contrived to establish for himself throughout 
 the community. However much his friends and companions 
 might differ in their estimation of his talents, temper, or man 
 ners, they all agreed that he was "queer, very queer." 
 
 For his age, which might be about fourteen years, he was
 
 3 2 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 perhaps as active and vigorous a youth as Putnam County 
 could boast. His growth had been rapid, but healthy. In 
 person he was tall and somewhat slender, but strong-limbed 
 and supple. His features, though tolerably regular, could 
 hardly be called handsome, with the exception of his eyes, 
 which were large and of a deep brown color ; but his face had 
 much of a certain kind of beauty the kind which comes up, 
 as it were, from the depths of the soul, where it lies hidden, 
 in response only to kind and sympathetic observation a 
 beauty something like that often seen in the road-side pool 
 a passing glance, and all is dark, stagnant, and forbidding 
 a second look, and, lo ! in the depths are flitting clouds, and 
 leafy trees, and waving grass and flowers. 
 
 A something wayward and capricious in manner had, per 
 haps, more than anything else contributed to his reputation 
 for queerness. Ordinarily quiet and reserved, he could be, 
 at times, when high animal spirits broke down the barriers of 
 bashfulness, rampantly gay and communicative, but in all 
 cases a vivid imagination and great natural delicacy of feeling 
 exerted a modifying influence. For neither of these qualities, 
 however, had he found much that was encouraging or conge 
 nial among his usual associates. At home, life had for him 
 only discomfort and vexations ; abroad, he had companions 
 and acquaintances, but no intimacies or warm friendships. 
 His nature had thus been turned back and driven in upon 
 itself, and his sympathies, cut off in a measure from the light 
 of actual life, and cellared in the depths of his own mind, 
 were rapidly running themselves out into the world beyond 
 through the loop-holes of imagination. Sensitive and shrink 
 ing, yet ardent and self-reliant, he had ever evinced an 
 instinctive aversion to the sordid and vulgar surroundings of 
 his daily life, and his passionate love for the companionship 
 of his own thoughts had unconsciously driven him frequently 
 to the hill-top as the best escape he could make from his daily 
 cares and troubles, and as a kind of ascent, as it were, into 3 
 higher life demanded by the dawning capabilities of his 
 nature. There, perched on the topmost boughs of his favor-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 33 
 
 ite tree, he would remain sometimes for hours gazing down 
 into the fascinating little lakes, or straining his eyes to the 
 distant Hudson the mysterious object of his intense long 
 ings type to him of the World, of Life avenue to his 
 future the only channel through which his imagination went 
 out to fame, fortune, and power. No Hindoo ever longed 
 more earnestly for a bath in the sacred Ganges, or Christian 
 pilgrim for a sight of the blessed Jordan, than did he for a 
 nearer view of the Hudson. 
 
 The youth dashed down the hill in a succession of runs 
 and jumps, and, plunging through the bushes at the bottom, 
 leaped the dilapidated rail-fence, and alighted in the road 
 not far from where the buggy, with its occupants, was 
 standing. 
 
 " Luther ! " exclaimed the Deacon and the youth advan 
 ced inquiringly. " Luther Lansdale, your name is, isn't it ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " And do you know what my name is ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes sir ; everybody knows Deacon Dusenbury." 
 
 " Right, Luther ; I 'spect I'm pretty well known about 
 here. And how is your mother, Luther ? Pretty well, eh ? 
 Well, I'm glad to hear it; and your brother John well too, 
 eh ? The fact is, Captain Combings, everybody is always 
 well up here, no fever and ague, nor nothing. 'Tis the 
 healthiest country about here, I ever see. And now, Luther, 
 I want to know what you were doing up in that tree, making 
 us think it was a bear, or a bald eagle ? " 
 
 The boy hesitated for a moment, and then, with a lurking 
 twinkle of his eye, he said : " There is nothing in the Bible 
 against climbing trees, is there ? " 
 
 "Why no," replied the Deacon musingly, "I believe not. 
 I don't think the Scripter has much to say about climbing 
 trees, either agin it or for it." 
 
 " Oh, yes sir ; there is something in favor of it." 
 
 " How so, Luther ? What does it say ? I recollect there 
 is something about the tree of Life, and the tree of knowl 
 edge, and there's the olive tree and the sycamore tree, and
 
 34 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 our Saviour talks about the fig tree, and David says some 
 where, 'wake harp and p-saltree.' Now I don't know what 
 kind of a tree a p-saltree is, but I guess there is nothing 
 about climbing it. I don't believe you can find anything 
 about climbing any kind of a tree in the Bible." 
 
 " Oh, yes sir ; don't the Bible say ' and Zaccheus, he did 
 climb the tree, his Lord to see ' ? " 
 
 " Right, Luther ; it does say so. I see your Sunday school - 
 ing has done you good." 
 
 Captain Combings laughed heartily, and gave the young 
 ster a knowing look, as much as to say that, despite his 
 demure air, he suspected him of quizzing the Deacon. 
 
 " And so, Luther, you climbed the tree, like Zaccheus, to 
 see better," continued the Deacon. "What did you want to 
 see ? " 
 
 " I wanted to see the Hudson." 
 
 " Can you see it from that tree ? " 
 
 " No sir, not quite ; but I can almost. I can see where it 
 runs, and the hills on the other side ; and I can see the tops 
 of the vessels." 
 
 " See the tops of the vessels, eh ? Well, I shouldn't have 
 thought it. And you'd like to see the vessels themselves, 
 I'm sure. A North River sloop is no great sight ; you should 
 see the big ships down at New York." 
 
 " But I suspect," interrupted Captain Combings with a 
 whimsical squint, first at the Deacon and then at the boy, 
 " that Luther has already seen as large and as fine ships as 
 ever New York can show ; haven't you Luther ? You've seen 
 the Bassorah, the ship that Sinbad made his second voyage 
 in ? and you've often been aboard of Captain Cook's ship, 
 the Endeavor? And wasn't you cabin-boy on board of the Rat 
 tler when Captain Kidd murdered William Moore, as he 
 sailed, as he sailed ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " exclaimed Luther, looking up and taking his 
 cue from the Captain, "and I've seen Cleopatra's barge 
 when she went to visit Mark Antony." 
 
 " Right, Luther ; that was a ship with her capstan bars and
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 35 
 
 belaying pins of solid gold, and all her canvas, from courses 
 to skysail, of the finest satin." 
 
 " Why what on earth do you mean ? " interrupted the 
 Deacon. " I don't believe the boy has been three miles from 
 Lake Mahopac in all his life." 
 
 " Oh, that's nothing. Lake Mahopac is as big as the ocean 
 when it is properly multiplied here," replied the Captain, put 
 ting his finger to his forehead and waggishly squinting at the 
 mystified Deacon. 
 
 " Oh ! Captain, get out ; you are making fun of the poor 
 child. I have never seen the ocean myself, but I guess 
 it must be five hundred times as big as Lake Mahopac. 
 You're a sailor, and ought to know how that is." 
 
 " You're right, Deacon, we wont argue the point ; but you 
 are coming to Peekskill on Monday, why not give the lad a 
 lift down and up, and let him have a full view of the big 
 river?" 
 
 " Well, I don't mind if I do," replied the Deacon, " that 
 is, Luther, if your mother will give you leave. You'd like to 
 go ? Yes. Well, I'd like very well to have you, for I'm going 
 to drive my colts down, and I'm not sure they'll stand well in 
 the streets, so you see it will be quite convenient to have some 
 one to look after them. You be ready bright and early Mon 
 day morning, and I'll pick you up as I come by your place. 
 Get up now, pony; we've wasted too much time already, get 
 up ! " 
 
 The Deacon accompanied the word with a blow, and his 
 horse a beast of spirit started off at a round trot. 
 
 The youth watched the buggy until it disappeared at a 
 turn of the road, and then, buoyed up by the exultant flutter 
 ings of his own heart, flew, rather than ran, toward his home. 
 
 " Oh, mother ! mother ! " he exclaimed to a thin, delicate, 
 patient-looking woman, who was sitting, needle in hand, on 
 the back porch of an old weather-stained farm-house, with a 
 large basket of worn and torn garments beside her. " Dea 
 con Dusenbury has asked me to go down to Peekskill with 
 him on Monday. He's going to drive his gray colts, and he's
 
 36 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 afraid they won't stand well in the streets without some one to 
 look after them while he is running about. -Mayn't I go, 
 mother? there's no school Monday, and the deacon says he 
 can't go without me." 
 
 " I am afraid, my dear," replied Mrs. Lansdale, " that your 
 brother John will want you on Monday. He is going to be 
 gin clearing the old stump-field, and you know you are so 
 handy with the steers." 
 
 " I don't care what John wants ! " exclaimed the youth in 
 an excited tone. " Deacon Dusenbury wants me, too, and 
 you've promised me a hundred times that I should go clown 
 to the river the first chance. Every other boy around here 
 has been down a dozen times. I promised you that I would 
 never go down without letting you know. I have kept my 
 promise, and you have broken yours. I could go down and 
 back on foot any day. I've had fifty chances to ride, and 
 every time John has interfered and prevented me. He inter 
 feres with me in everything. He doesn't want me to go to 
 school. He locks up father's books. My Latin grammar is 
 gone ; I'll bet he has burned it. Now this must stop. I 
 won't stand it I am not going to be his slave ! I won't help 
 him with the stumps on Monday I won't work for him any 
 more. I'll run away I'll go down to York ; I'll go to sea! 
 I'll kill myself ! I'll kill him !" 
 
 " Oh, Luther ! Luther ! " exclaimed his mother, " how can 
 you ? how can you be so wicked ? Don't you know that God 
 hears every word you say ? " 
 
 " I don't care if He does ! " shouted Luth, stamping in his 
 rage upon the old rotten porch floor to the great enclanger- 
 ment of the whole fabric, " I don't care if He does, and the 
 devil too, and the whole world besides ! I hope to be ever 
 lastingly " 
 
 " Oh, Luther ! Luther ! " 
 
 " I do ! Indeed I do !" 
 
 Pool, pious, horrified Mrs. Lansdale lifted her hand, 
 gauntled with an old cotton stocking she was darning, to her 
 eye, and wiped away a tear. Startled from her usual serenity
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 37 
 
 by the unexpected and over-bearing passion of her favorite 
 child, she readily promised him her permission to go with the 
 Deacon, and soothed him with repeated assurances that she 
 would say nothing to John. 
 
 Selfish and tyrannical in disposition, and coarse and vio 
 lent in manner, this eldest son had, since the death of his 
 father, assumed .entire control of the family, composed of 
 his mother and six children, and also of the property, consist 
 ing of some two hundred acres of land, lying not far from 
 the largest of the little lakes we have mentioned. Bitterly 
 had Mrs. Lansdale regretted her weakness in submitting to 
 the over-bearing and never-ending dictation of her son, and 
 not unfrequently, in the interests of her other children, she 
 had made efforts to withstand it, but in vain. Her placid 
 and yielding nature was no match for the passionate and 
 obstinate temper to which it was opposed. 
 
 Mrs. Lansdale was faithful to her promise, and on Mon 
 day morning Luther was allowed to slip off and join the 
 Deacon ; his mother covering his disappearance with some 
 excuse until it was too late for his recall. 
 
 Ah ! what a happy morning was that when, for the first 
 time, he saw from the high hill back of the town of Peeks- 
 kill the broad Hudson gleaming at his feet. There were 
 a dozen sloops, with their white sails trimmed close to the 
 wind, beating up the stream, while a still greater number, 
 with flowing sheets, were just issuing from the gorge of the 
 Highlands. There was a magnificent steamboat streaming 
 along like a thing of life, and, like a thing of life, showing 
 itself for a brief period between two eternities of mystery 
 the whence and the whither the New York and Albany 
 of his excited imagination. There, also, stretched out in 
 Babylonian amplitude and magnificence, lay the town, with 
 its long streets and lofty houses. 
 
 He turned to the Deacon, who was steadying his skittish 
 horses in the descent of the hill. He could hardly under 
 stand the old man's preoccupation with so comparatively un 
 important a matter ; he could only wonder at and admire
 
 38 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 his self-possession, his impassiveness, his apparent contempt 
 of the grandeur and glory of the scene. The Deacon had 
 always been a formidable character thanks to his tall, stiff 
 figure and stern manner, and to the remembrance of sundry 
 ear pullings for laughing in Sunday-school. Now, measured 
 by and found superior to the ten-thousand foot standard 
 of the young lad's excited feelings, he was 'absolutely grand. 
 
 " Is New York really so much larger than the town before 
 us ? " Luther asked of the Deacon, in as calm and emotion 
 less a tone as he could command. 
 
 " I guess you won't rightly know the difference till you've 
 been down to York some day," replied the Deacon. " York 
 is a great place. Take about a hundred Peekskills, and put 
 them all together, and you wouldn't begin to make one York." 
 
 A hundred times as large as the town before them ! The 
 idea was too vast. The lad felt that his voice would betray 
 him if he asked any more questions. He sat silent, enjoying 
 the bliss of a moment which in its unalloyed illusory fulness 
 comes but once in a lifetime and then only to those trained 
 in the narrow and contracted limits of country domesticity 
 that moment when the shell of local habit is first chipped 
 that instant when the chickens of fancy first fairly peep into 
 the great outside world of fact. 
 
 It is unnecessary to dwell upon the delight with which, 
 while the Deacon was running about upon his business, the 
 youth sat in the wagon, munching ginger-bread and watching 
 the novel sights passing before his eyes. The colts proving 
 very quiet, he was able, in the absence of the Deacon, to 
 make frequent short excursions round the nearest corners 
 until at length, getting more confident, he ventured a trip to 
 an old sloop lying at the wharf. 
 
 " Ha ! my young bald eagle ! or maybe its a bear, eh ? 
 ha ! ha ! Well, give us your claw, or your paw ! I'm glad to 
 see you. Came down with the Deacon, eh ? " 
 
 Luther blushingly acknowledged the salutation of Captain 
 Combings, and accepted his invitation to step aboard the 
 sloop.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 39 
 
 The Captain, thrusting his hand down into the pocket of 
 hu coat on one side, and withdrawing it, produced a big 
 apj le. A profound dive into the other pocket was equally 
 successful, and resulted in a handful of boiled chestnuts. 
 Ht had evidently supplied himself with a store of dainties 
 for the reception of his youthful visitor. 
 
 "And so," said the Captain at a pause in the conversation, 
 which had at first run on the build and qualities of the sloop, 
 the difficulties and dangers of Tappan Sea and Haverstraw 
 Bav, and of the curious sights and shows of the great city, 
 " and so your name is Luther Luther Lansdale, and your 
 father's name is" 
 
 " John John H. Lansdale ; but I haven't got any father 
 now he's dead." 
 
 " Oh, yes ; I forgot. I recollect now reading of his death 
 some two or three years ago. Well," continued the Captain, 
 " you may be sure he is in Heaven, for he was an honest man 
 and believed in his Bible, and that will take any one there, I 
 guess. I knew your father, Luther, and I can speak a good 
 word for him, although I did owe him a grudge once. You 
 see he cut me out. I'll tell you how it was, and you'll see how 
 near I came to being your father myself. I was once starting 
 out from York a good many years ago ; the steamboat was 
 full of passengers, and when we had just got out into the 
 bay there came on a terrible squall. Night had just set in, 
 and the clouds made it as black as pitch. Suddenly, smash 
 went the connecting rod. There was a heavy ebb tide, and 
 we were carried down the bay like a shingle in a mill-race, 
 and we didn't any of us know but that we should be driven 
 right out to sea. I went down into the cabin, and there such 
 a taking on among the women no one ever did see. They 
 were all crying and screeching and wringing their hands ex 
 cept one a good-looking young woman, who was on her 
 knees at prayer. In a few minutes she got up, and I'll tell 
 you what, there way just one tear-streak down her cheek, but 
 besides that hei face was as smooth and composed as yours 
 is at this moment, and she went around among the women
 
 4 o NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 and children and so comforted them with a few words of faith 
 and hope that in ten minutes they were all as quiet as lambs. 
 I looked at her, and thinks I to myself, I'll marry that girl if 
 I can, just so sure as we get out of this scrape, and I felt cer 
 tain of getting out of it ; for if ten righteous men could have 
 saved a city, one such woman was enough to have saved a 
 dozen North River craft. And sure enough in a few min 
 utes the wind fell, Staten Island light came out, and our Cap 
 tain got up a jury mast forward, and rigged it with a piece 
 of canvas for a foresail, just enough to give her steerage 
 way until we fell in with a tug that took us back to the dock. 
 And who do you think the young woman was ? " demanded 
 the Captain. 
 
 Luther shook his head. 
 
 " She was nobody else but Polly Scott your own blessed 
 mother. But you see I was a little too late, and a little too 
 ugly, I suppose. I followed her up pretty well, until I found 
 that she had made up her mind for your father, Colonel John 
 Lansdale. The fact was, I was nothing but a youngster, and 
 had no business to think of the thing. And besides, your 
 father was a scholar and a gentleman, and he'd been a kind 
 of stylish man down in the city until he lost his money, so 
 when I found he carried too many guns for me, I put my helm 
 up, wore short round, and went off on another tack. Since 
 those days I haven't laid eyes on her, although I used some 
 times to meet your father. The other day when I was up to 
 Lake Mahopac I would have liked to stop and see her. How 
 is she ? I hope she is comfortable and hearty." 
 
 " My mother is in very good health," replied Luther. 
 
 " And well to do in the world ? " 
 
 " Pretty well ; we've got a good farm more than two hun 
 dred acres." 
 
 " Ah ! that will do very well for your mother and brothers, 
 but you will want to spread yourself a little, I guess ; I see it 
 in your eye. You'll want to see more water than Lake Maho 
 pac has, and more houses than Peekskill. Well, you just 
 mention Captain Combings to your mother, and tell her from
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 4! 
 
 me that if ever you get a little restless and want to try your 
 luck upon the river, or go a seeking your fortune down in 
 York, to let you come here to me, and I, Peleg Combings, 
 will give you a lift." 
 
 Astonished and delighted at the Captain's generous offer, 
 which seemed to open at once a pathway to the realization of 
 the lad's wildest imaginings, Luther could hardly find words 
 to express his grateful acknowledgments. 
 
 " Well, well," said the Captain, " there is no use of any 
 words about it. I've taken a notion to you, and I'll do as I 
 say. But here comes the Deacon ; he's after you, I guess. I 
 hope his colts haven't run away. He's looking cross enough 
 to kick up and break things himself. I'll tell you what, I'll 
 slush him down a bit while you slip around to the wagon." 
 
 More than two years had elapsed from the date of this 
 first visit to Peekskill, and Luther had reached his seven 
 teenth year. He had grown tall and strong, and the spirit 
 of adventure, fostered by a desultory course of travels and 
 romances, had grown with his growth. But it was held some 
 what in check by his ardent desire for a complete and thor 
 ough education. He was a hard student, and had vigorously 
 availed himself of all the opportunities within his reach, but 
 would he ever have a chance at that crowning glory a full 
 collegiate course ? Hardly ; but if he could only go for a 
 while to the nearest academic institution, that would be some 
 thing. The subject was often canvassed by himself and his 
 mother. 
 
 But if he could not continue his classical studies, if his 
 brother John was determined to foil his ambition in this re 
 spect, why then he would go out into the world and content 
 himself with making a fortune. It needs no great learning to 
 do that. Are not all of our rich men notoriously ignorant of 
 all except the art of money-getting ? And after all, is not a 
 fortune a large fortune, the one great good in this life, the 
 one thing that everybody is striving after with heart and
 
 42 XEVER AGAIN. 
 
 soul and brain, the one thing that now more than ever the 
 world bows down to and adores, the one powerful lever that 
 lifts a man to place, either as a leader of society, presiding 
 officer of a great party, or member of a cabinet ? Luther knew 
 but little of New York, but he knew that it was the residence 
 of Astor, and Vanderbilt, and Stewart; and can it be expected 
 that an imaginative youth will remain blind to the glory of 
 their achievements as reflected, almost from day to day, in 
 the columns of the city press, or in the conversations of the 
 country store, post-office or bar-room. 
 
 This spirit had been further stimulated by two or three 
 visits to Peekskill, and the encouraging conversation of Cap 
 tain Combings. But the desire of some change had received 
 its highest energy from the increasing discomforts and vexa 
 tions of his domestic life. The relations between his brother 
 John and himself had become those of determined and des 
 perate hostility. Stern commands and abusive words only 
 roused in him a spirit of resistance. This, in turn, exasper 
 ated the elder brother, who felt bound to enforce submission ; 
 and the consequence was a state of open warfare, which, as 
 John had grown to manhood, fell most heavily upon the 
 younger and weaker, although not unfrequently in their per 
 sonal contests, Luther, after being soundly beaten, would con 
 trive, by a well-hurled stone, to take a satisfactory revenge. 
 
 Poor Mrs. Lansdale often besought Luther with many 
 tears to submit to John's authority, and to try to live with him 
 on more peaceable terms ; but as often as he promised to do 
 so, some fresh act of tyranny, some new indignity would ren 
 der all his good resolutions impossible of performance. 
 
 Upon John, Mrs. Lansdale's gentle voice had but little 
 effect. With uncommon energy, however, she insisted that 
 Luther should be kept at school, instead of being compelled 
 to stay at home and work upon the farm. By this means she 
 succeeded in suspending for several hours in the day the 
 broils which she so much deplored but could not prevent. 
 
 Frequently Luther proposed to his mother that she should 
 permit him to accept the offer of her old admirer, Captain
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 43 
 
 Combings ; but she could not make up her mind to part with 
 him, although she freely admitted that it would be perhaps 
 the best thing that he could do. " But then, Luther," she 
 would exclaim a moment after, as if seeking reasons for jus 
 tifying her decision, " what should we do without you you 
 are so handy with the tools ? None of your brothers are good 
 for anything at tinkering ; they couldn't now make one of your 
 new-fashioned goose-yokes after seeing you do it twenty times. 
 Or, supposing your dam and water-wheel, or some of the 
 gearing should give out, and you were not here, we should 
 have to work the churn again by hand." 
 
 Luther had too much affection for his mother, and too 
 keen a sense of filial duty to think of going without her con 
 sent. Besides, he had at the bottom of his heart a lurking 
 fear of the unknown a secret dread of knocking away the 
 dog-shores of habit which alone held him to the domestic 
 stocks, and of launching out into the great ocean of life, 
 which served very much to counter-balance his intense curios 
 ity. It needed something more than the promptings of the 
 spirit of adventure and the persecutions of his brother to 
 drive him out from home, and that something soon came, at 
 first in the form of ambition and the desire of knowledge, 
 and then in the shape of mortified vanity, pride, and }ove. 
 
 How or in what way Mrs. Lansdale raised the sums neces 
 sary for Luther's support at Dutchess County Academy was 
 never known. Trinkets, the jeweller in Maiden Lane, if ques 
 tioned, could perhaps tell of some nice little bargains that he 
 made a pair of ear-rings with diamond drops for half their val 
 ue, and quite a pretty set of coral, fuschia pattern, that Colonel 
 Lansdale it was well-known had in his extravagant bachelor 
 days bought at Naples and given ever so much money for 
 at a time when coral was not worth one-third what it is now. 
 At any rate, Mrs. Lansdale did raise the money a few 
 hundred dollars only, and Luther commenced his academic 
 course. 
 
 To say that he worked hard would be but doing him scant 
 justice. He really overworked himself, urged on by the
 
 44 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 conviction that his mother's means were limited, that they 
 probably would be soon exhausted, and that his academic 
 career might at any moment come to an end. The first year 
 passed rapidly and pleasantly, and the second was entered 
 upon but with many misgivings ; in fact Luther had begged 
 his mother more than once in his letters to give up the con 
 test with John, and, looking only to her own peace and com 
 fort, let him Luther go out into the world and begin his 
 battle for fortune at once. His sense of the instability of his 
 position, while urging him to improve every moment of his 
 time, grew so strong that it needed but the slighest push of 
 circumstance to topple him over, and this push came about in 
 the absurdest manner ; but acting on such a sensitive com 
 pound of pride and humility, imagination and sense, knowl 
 edge and ignorance, it was more than enough in his uncer 
 tain state of mind to decide him. The blow fell, and although 
 as Mercutio says, " the wound was not as wide as a barn-door 
 or as deep as a well," it was enough. 
 
 The principal of the female department happened to be 
 fat, fair, and almost forty, and with her it suited Luther's 
 capricious fancy to fall desperately in love. He never told 
 his love, nor even attempted to manifest it by the usual little 
 attentions ; he was too much in awe of his divinity ; but if 
 ever there was a stately, dignified, but withal rather good- 
 looking, middle-aged woman adored at a respectful distance 
 in silence, with a slight touch of despair, by a youthful but 
 ardent lover, Miss Deborah Doolittle wes the one. 
 
 The influence of Luther's passion proved not unfavorable 
 to his studies, especially in the department of public speaking 
 and English composition. He devoted his best energies to 
 these branches. That she would hear him speak and listen 
 to his compositions, fired his ambition. At the same time he 
 hoped, by a judicious choice of speeches, and the artful in 
 fusion of delicate allusions in his compositions, to open her 
 eyes to the state of his affections. For a long while he 
 labored with this design, but with no very marked success. 
 Sometimes he fancied that he could perceive the evidences of
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 45 
 
 emotion as he uttered, with his eyes directed full upon her, 
 some tender sentiment ; but he never could make up his mind 
 whether it was a cold, unimpassioned admiration of the author 
 or orator, or something of a warmer and more affectionate 
 feeling for the individual. 
 
 A travelling book pedlar brought matters to a crisis. 
 Luther's only dollar went for a morocco-bound, gilt-edged 
 album. The pure white pages upon which so much glowing 
 and touching sentiment might be written presented irresistible 
 attractions. Who with the slightest literary turn has not felt 
 the allurement and the charm ? The unsullied expanse of 
 paper appeals as directly and as forcibly to the imaginative 
 youth as ever did the virgin snows of the Alps, or the unspot 
 ted fields of the pole, to the most daring climber or explorer 
 saying, " Come, track me ; over and across me lies Parnas 
 sus with Musagetus himself and his sacred nine waiting to 
 crown the Great Poet." Luther had really quite a pretty talent 
 for verse-making. He had frequently exhibited it to the ad 
 miration of the whole school. He must commence himself with 
 something original before soliciting contributions from others. 
 What better than a delicate and nicely turned address to the 
 object of his affections ? She herself was a poetess. A piece 
 in the Poughkeepsie Eagle had been signed with her initials, 
 although some said that D. D. stood for doctor of divinity. 
 It was rumored that she had written something fine for Harper's 
 Magazine, and her name had even been mentioned among 
 the two hundred and twenty-five authors of " Beautiful Snow." 
 Some allusion, therefore, to her as a poetess would be the proper 
 thing it would feather his shaft and carry it straight to the 
 mark. A poetical oestrum that interrupted his studies for 
 twenty-four hours resulted in the following lines : 
 
 High o'er the surge, on craggy rough Leucate, 
 Pale, tearful Sappho wails her wretched fate : 
 With reckless step she seeks the awful steep, 
 Waves her wild anus, and dares the desperate leap. 
 Detested Phaou ! scorn of all true bards, 
 To thus contemn fair Sappho's fond regards !
 
 4 6 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Not thus with thce, who rivallest Sappho's strain, 
 Not thine to fondly smile, and smile in vain, 
 Not thine a Phaon's cold contempt to prove, 
 But thine each heart, with slightest look, to move. 
 Dost doubt thy power? Ah, try it then on me ; 
 Try if, like Phaon, loving smiles I flee ; 
 Try me, if wanting Phaon's grace his art, 
 I want not, too, his cold, impassive heart ! 
 
 Luther showed his verses to two of his schoolmates in 
 whose literary judgment he had most confidence. 
 
 " First rate," exclaimed Joe Fitchet. " Dang me, if it isn't 
 as good as anything in the Ledger; it'll fetch her, sure pop." 
 
 " Fetch who ? " demanded Luther, indignantly. 
 
 " Oh ! go 'long now," put in Bill Gabson. " Don't you go 
 for to act like an old turkey-gobbler with his head in a corn- 
 shook, and think that nobody don't see you. Don't we know 
 who your Sappho is ? I should just like to see her jump off a 
 big rock ; wouldn't she come down all ker-flop. She'd shake 
 the poetry out of all creation. People would think that Mount 
 Toby had turned a summersault, or that a cattle train had 
 telescoped the Harlem Express." 
 
 Luther closed his book with a bang, and slamming it into 
 his drawer, rushed out for a solitary walk without waiting for 
 any further criticisms on his poetry. 
 
 The next day he despatched the book into the girl's 
 department, with a verbal request through the bearer for con 
 tributions to its pages. Unfortunately, however, after having 
 racked his brains for some kind of motto or title-page for that 
 portion of it in which he wished the girls to write, and having 
 composed and rejected a dozen verses, in despair of an ele 
 gant simplicity he suddenly selected the most awkward piece 
 of doggerel of them all : 
 
 " Dear Ladys please to here indite 
 A few lines for this daring wight ; 
 He hopes that you will not refuse, 
 And his presumption you'll excuse." 
 
 This was bad enough, but unluckily, in his anxiety respecting
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 47 
 
 the chirography, he contrived to make a most unfortunate 
 and patent blunder in spelling. 
 
 With a trembling heart he prepared himself to await for 
 two or three days the result. Would Miss Deborah Doo- 
 little see it? Would she condescend to write in it? And if 
 she did write in it, would her composition consist of original or 
 selected verse ? Conjecture, stimulated by love, hope and 
 fear, was actively at work, but completely at fault. 
 
 Luther's suspense, however, was not destined to be of long 
 duration. The slow-houred school-day had come to its close, 
 and he was locking up his drawer of books for the night, when 
 his attention was attracted by the voice of a little girl at his 
 side. 
 
 " Here is your album," she said ; " Miss Doolittle told me 
 to bring it in, and give it to you," and putting the book upon 
 his desk, with a blush and a courtesy, she ran from the room. 
 
 It was of no consequence how quickly she went. Luther 
 could not have asked her for an explanation had she stayed an 
 hour. There lay the book returned to him contemptuously 
 returned too, as he felt ; and his request for contributions re 
 fused ! But perhaps something had been written in it ? He 
 did not, however, dare open it he felt a presentiment of some 
 terrible blow to his self-love. 
 
 With an outward calmness of manner which strangely 
 belied his internal agitation, he seized the book, put it under 
 his arm, and set out to the little lake on the outskirts of the 
 village. As he went along he pondered a variety of solu 
 tions suggested by his imagination, but it was some time be 
 fore he could muster up the courage to seek the true explana 
 tion in the book itself. Mentally reproaching himself for 
 being "such a darned fool," he turned aside, and leaping a 
 fence, seated himself out of sight from the highway on a 
 fallen log. The level beams of the setting sun were lingering 
 upon the surrounding hill-tops, masses of golden and ruby 
 clouds hung in graceful canopy over the burnished and glitter 
 ing surface of the little lake. As he opened the book the 
 pages assumed a pinky hue, and, as he fancied, blushed for
 
 48 .VAT/: A' AGAL\~. 
 
 his coming shame. He turned them slowly over, but could 
 discover no marks of the pen. His breath came again, and 
 his agony of doubt and fear began to subside. " There must 
 have been some mistake about it but what is this ? Ha ! 
 a pencil mark ! " He read, and again he read, when a dark 
 ness came across his eyes. All nature seemed turning topsy 
 turvy the trees began to dance, Mount Toby shook with sup 
 pressed laughter, and East Mountain nodded derisively to 
 West Mountain. The more distant hills began to wriggle and 
 writhe like corn-ricks in a hurricane, and the surface of the 
 lake to split itself up and fly in pieces like fragments of a 
 huge mirror. 
 
 The darkness passed, and to the horror succeeded rage 
 rage at his own stupidity and folly. He tore his hair, ground 
 his teeth, gesticulated furiously with clenched fists, and hurl 
 ing the unlucky volume to the ground, stamped upon it with 
 all his force. 
 
 A calm succeeded, but it was the calm of despair. He 
 picked up the mutilated book, and read the pencilled words 
 again: "The ladies do not please to do anything for a boy 
 who can't spell." There could be no doubt that it was her 
 hand. There in glowing plumbago were his own stately, sharp- 
 angled letters. But he could not blame her. He deserved it 
 all, and more. True, it was the blunder of carelessness rather 
 than ignorance ; but could he make any explanation ? Who 
 would believe it? Was it not notorious that he was weak in 
 orthography? Ah, there was the sting ! It is always the one 
 little lurking drop of truth which gives bitterness to any 
 amount of misrepresentation. Simple, pure falsehood, no mat 
 ter how malicious, seldom hurts anybody. However much he 
 might excel in other branches, he couldn't spell ; and what was 
 more, he couldn't learn to spell. He had tried it faithfully, 
 and failed. It was clear that he had no memory for the col 
 location of letters. There were boys in the school for whose 
 talents he had the most profound contempt dunces regular 
 pig-headed fellows who could beat him in spelling with ease. 
 And he had comforted himself ass that he was! with the
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 49 
 
 reflection that Napoleon JBonaparte spelled execrably! Poor 
 consolation now, in this agony of shame and vexation ! 
 
 But it was not alone the mortification of having made such 
 a mistake that overwhelmed him. It was as much the con 
 temptuous terms in which the reproof was conveyed. To be 
 called a boy and by her, too ! He ! a young man almost 
 eighteen, and old enough to be desperately in love with a woman 
 of thirty-five ! " Oh, stupid fool ! dolt ! idiot ! " he groaned, 
 as the wounds of love and vanity gaped and smarted. "But 
 I have one resource never shall she see me again ! I will 
 go if I have to go penniless, friendless, and without my 
 mother's blessing far from this scene of my disgrace ! " 
 
 Luther rushed back to his room, and without saying a 
 word to any one, packed up his small store of books and cloth 
 ing, and taking his trunk upon his shoulders, started for the 
 depot. There was an evening way train, and luckily he had 
 left in his pocket just fifty cents the fare between his 
 school and the station nearest to his home. By ten o'clock 
 he was out of the train, had trudged the intervening four 
 miles, and was in the arms of his mother. He found his 
 mother alone, and without circumlocution announced his inten 
 tion of leaving home forever. 
 
 "You know," he exclaimed, "that I have anticipated mat 
 ters only by a few days ; our term lacks but a fortnight of its 
 end. I could not continue there another term. You know it 
 would be impossible for you to furnish the money either for 
 my tuition or board ; and if you could, I will not consent to any 
 more sacrifices for me. I am not worth it. Oh, if you knew 
 all, you would see that I am not worth it ! Let me go away 
 and get my own living. Let me seek my fortune in the city 
 I am sure I shall find it. I should like to pursue my studies, 
 but every day that I am kept from actually doing something 
 in the world I feel to be lost ; ever}- time I read the Herald 
 I feel guilty ; I feel that I, too, ought to be laying the foun 
 dations of a big fortune. Oh, I must begin mother ; I must 
 begin at once ! " 
 
 Carried away by his impetuosity, Mrs. Lansdale was at 
 4
 
 50 NEVER AGAIN, 
 
 length compelled to give her consent, and she did so with less 
 reluctance when he finally confessed the blunder of the album 
 and admitted the peculiar state of his affections. The uncom 
 fortable relations between the two brothers also rendered 
 some change advisable, and Mrs. Lansdale admitted that for 
 some time it had been merely a question of time and manner, 
 and that she had long felt that sooner or later her beloved 
 boy would be compelled to leave home. She was too wise a 
 woman to argue the question of blighted love, or to ridicule 
 his feelings. She knew that in a day or two his excited 
 fancy would cool down, and that in the meantime it would be 
 useless to try and convince him that the Miss Doolittle of his 
 imagination had no real existence. She knew that an igno 
 rance of life and the world so dense could only be cured by 
 contact with the actual and real. Alas, that the cure in most 
 cases should be so rapid and so complete ! 
 
 It was finally settled that Luther should go as soon as his 
 mother could prepare his small kit of clothing, and that noth 
 ing should be said to John about it until after his departure. 
 His mother also proposed that he should wait until he found 
 one of the neighbors going down to Peekskill, with whom he 
 might ride, but Luther would not listen to any such idea. 
 Captain Combings was known to be at Peekskill; in a day or 
 two at most he would be getting under way. Luther was 
 anxious to be off, and his own legs he knew from good experi 
 ence would be no poor dependence for a trip of fifteen or six 
 teen miles. 
 
 The next day his mother was employed in mending and 
 putting in order his few garments. When night came, and the 
 family had retired to rest, she sat up w.ih him until a late 
 hour by the kitchen-fire talking over his plans. She gave him 
 what most mothers give a great deal of good advice, which, 
 like most young men, he at the time promised faithfully to fol 
 low ; and in addition she gave him an old eel-skin pouch con 
 taining twenty-five dollars in gold, which, with many cautions 
 against the sharpers and pickpockets of the city, she showed 
 him how to strap around his waist. The interview finished
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 51 
 
 with a prayer and her blessing, and then a good hearty cry 
 and a good hearty kissing. 
 
 As no sleep visited Luther's eyes that night, he was up 
 bright and early before John, who had returned the evening 
 before, was stirring. A bowl of bread and milk was in read 
 iness for him, but he could swallow only a few mouthfuls. 
 His mother helped him to strap his kit on his back, and ac 
 companied him to the high-road. One last embrace, and she 
 knelt upon the stile with her apron to her eyes. Luther lin 
 gered on the other side, but with a wave of her hand she 
 motioned him away. " Go, my son," she exclaimed, " and 
 may the God of the widow and the fatherless go with you ! " 
 
 Luther trudged on sturdily for a few moments, and then 
 looking back he could still dimly discern her kneeling figure 
 in the glimmering light of the early dawn.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Launching Out The Highlands of the Hudson A Poor Pun A 
 Terrible Catastrophe An Absurd Discussion The Rescue The 
 Great City. 
 
 THE first and most pleasing object that Luther noticed 
 upon coming in sight of the village of Peekskill was 
 the red swallow-tailed pennant, flying from the Montaigne, 
 Captain Combings' old sloop. He reached her just in time 
 to step on board before she swung clear of the wharf. 
 
 "All right, Luther," exclaimed the Captain, "jump aboard 
 glad to see you. So you've come at last thought you 
 would. Brought your traps with you ? Well, take your bun 
 dle down into the cabin, and then come up and I'll give you 
 a rope to haul on. We will talk about your mother when we 
 get out into the stream." 
 
 Very much to Luther's surprise, and at first somewhat to 
 his disappointment, the course of the Montaigne proved to be 
 up the river, before a strong tide and wind. 
 
 " You thought you were going to York, eh ? " said Captain 
 Combings. " Well, so we will, but not just yet. I have an 
 engagement up-stream for a couple of loads of brick, and af 
 ter that, my boy, we will go down to the city. Look out for 
 sights then ! But for my part, I don't think any sights on this 
 side of the Atlantic can be finer than these we are just com 
 ing to. Here we are at the entrance to what is called the 
 Highlands of the North River. This big mountain on the 
 right is Anthony's Nose. What a famous nose Anthony Van 
 Corlear, the old trumpeter, must have had to have suggested 
 the name ? Below there, to the left, is Stony Point. You
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 53 
 
 recollect the story ? the surprise, the desperate assault, and 
 the bloody fight The taking of that fort, by Wayne, was as 
 gallant a feat as was performed in the Revolutionary War, or in 
 any other war. And there, right in front of us, you see that 
 plateau where you can trace some old ruins. That was Fort 
 Montgomery, and commanded the entrance to this part of the 
 river from below. Clinton took it, you know, but he couldn't 
 get any further up the river ; and as Burgoyne could not get 
 down the river to join him, the consequence is that you and I 
 are free-born Americans and sailing to-day in the old Mon 
 taigne after a load of brick." 
 
 The breeze had fallen to a gentle zephyr just strong 
 enough to give steerage-way to the sloop, as she floated silently 
 in the deep shadow along the bases of the overhanging hills. 
 A dozen broad white sails were in sight, some slowly moving 
 up-stream before the wind, and some industriously trying to 
 beat in short tacks to windward. As the tide began to make 
 against them, these latter would let run their halyards and 
 drop their anchors the sudden sound of the falling canvas 
 and the rattling of the chains skimming the surface of the 
 smooth water and arousing the echoes of the surrounding 
 hills. 
 
 Luther seated himself upon the deck, and leaned back 
 with his head upon the low tarfrail, occasionally arousing him 
 self to follow the movements of the Captain's forefinger as he 
 pointed out spots famous in history or tradition. But he asked 
 few questions he was too full of the whole scene to attend to 
 the details, and it needed not the historic or romantic associa 
 tions of particular localities to heighten his emotion. 
 
 Not the least interesting object was the Captain himself, 
 as he stood with one leg resting on the tiller, his elbow upon 
 his leg, and his chin in his hand. An old straw hat adorned 
 his het;d ; a dingy cotton shirt, and a pair of gray woollen 
 trowsers, turned up around the legs of a stout pair of cow 
 hide boots, completed his apparel. In person he was short 
 but stoutly built, with something more of a salt-water air 
 about him than is ordinarily to be seen in the captains of
 
 54 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 North River sloops. He had a roll in his gait that was never 
 got from the swell of Tappan Sea or Haverstraw Bay. His 
 eyes had evidently seen foreign service ; one of them in par 
 ticular had a comical twist that seemed to speak of a long 
 look out for squalls. A brilliant head of red hair, a com 
 plexion that looked not unlike a piece of purple morocco 
 fresh from the pomette of the grainer, and a broad humorous 
 mouth full of strong white teeth, constituted all his claims 
 to physical beauty ; but there was something more and better 
 in the simple but great and brave spirit that informed all his 
 features, and spoke in every tone, glance, and gesture. 
 
 He had, as he told Luther, begun life as a cabin-boy in a 
 Canton ship ; had done a sailor's duty before the mast in every 
 quarter of the globe, and at last had risen to the command of 
 a crazy old bark in which he had made several voyages to 
 Europe and the Brazils. Becoming tired of the sea, or rather 
 of his vessel and her owners, and having saved money enough 
 to build a sloop of his own, he had resolved to settle down to 
 the more regular, and, if less dignified, less hazardous, navi 
 gation of the Hudson. 
 
 " Look there, Luth," exclaimed the Captain, after a pause 
 in the conversation, " look there ; that white thing on the edge 
 of the bank up yonder is Kosciusczko's monument, and this 
 point of land around which the river bends is West Point, and 
 there, way up on the top of the hill there, those crumbling 
 walls are the ruins of Fort Putnam. Take a good look on 
 'em, Luth, for they are just about to my mind the finest 
 thing on the Hudson. 'Tisn't because Fort Put is the high 
 est hill or the handsomest, but because it has a kind of human 
 look about it. Now, the other hills of the Highlands are 
 very beautiful and very grand, and they throw a shadow upon 
 one's thoughts, dark and deep as this upon the river, but they 
 have got nothing upon them for the eye or the fancy to rest 
 upon, except rocks and trees. A fellow looks at them, Luther 
 but before he can fairly clinch them in his mind's grasp, 
 he has to go way back beyond the days of old Noah. Aye ! 
 even beyond the days of Adam, and that strains the imag-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 55 
 
 ination terribly. It wants a cable-laid fancy to stand such a 
 pull. No inch-a-half running stuff is strong enough to hold 
 on to those big hills surging about in the old ocean of chaos, 
 and even if it was, you'd have to take a good hearty turn 
 about the bitts of the Bible to keep your catechism instincts 
 from being jerked right out of you ; mere creeds and articles 
 and confessions and doctrines, and all such kind of church 
 deck-stoppers, wouldn't hold ten minutes. 
 
 " Now look at Fort Put there there is something human 
 not new, poor, sixpenny human, but old, respectable and 
 venerable human ; but not too old, not beyond the memory 
 of man or the records of history. You don't have to go back 
 beyond the days of '76 before you get an understanding of 
 the means and ends of that hill ; you feel at once that it was 
 just shoved up there to put the fort upon." 
 
 " If the hill was shoved up out of the ground expressly to 
 put the fort upon," interrupted Luther, " it seems very proper 
 that the fort should be named Fort Put." 
 
 " Luther," replied the Captain reproachfully, " I didn't ex 
 pect that of you. I didn't think that you would go for to in 
 dulge in any small wit right under Kosciusczko's monument, 
 and within sight of those old walls and ramparts around which 
 still play the memories of Arnold's treason and Andre's fate. 
 Look up there, Luther, and tell me, if you can, whether the 
 rosy light illuminating the gray stones of old Fort Put is the 
 lingering beams of the setting sun or the condensed glory of 
 the American Revolution." 
 
 Luther felt himself justly rebuked for his miserable at 
 tempt at a pun, amid such scenes and associations, and for a 
 while there was a pause in the conversation. 
 
 " But," resumed the Captain, " it is not alone for the stones 
 and traditions connected with scenes like these that we look 
 at them with pleasure. There is something more than all 
 that. They give, as I said before, a human feeling and a 
 human interest to nature. Perhaps we don't know anything 
 about their history or traditions. You don't know who built 
 them, or just what kind of a crew whether lubbers or able-
 
 5 6 NEVER AGAIV. 
 
 hands, buccaneers or fair-traders manned the battlements ; 
 there they are, time-honored evidences of man's labors, of his 
 sufferings and his joys. And the landscape is all the richer. 
 It is in this way, and only in this way, that the famous 
 Rhine beats the Hudson." 
 
 " You have seen the Rhine ? " demanded Luther. 
 
 " Yes. You see I was once mate of the bark Zampa, 
 and we were bound to Hamburg. Well, we drew too much 
 water to go up to the town, so we moored to one of the spiles 
 standing in the river, and began to unload into a lighter. It 
 had been pretty cold for several days, when suddenly there 
 came on a thaw and a freshet ; the river rose, and the ice 
 broke and came down upon us in great floes, one of which 
 a ten-acre piece cut a hole in the Zampa's bows that in about 
 five minutes saved us any further trouble with either ship or 
 cargo. She went down, and when or how they got her up 
 again I never stopped to inquire. I knew they could do noth 
 ing with her until spring, so I started for home ; but first I 
 thought I'd see something of the country. I cut across to 
 Cologne, took a trip up the Rhine as far as Strasburg, and 
 then through France to Paris, and so on to Havre and home. 
 But you know all about the Rhine from your school-books, I 
 suppose ? " 
 
 Luther modestly denied all pretensions to a complete 
 knowledge. 
 
 " You know where it rises ? " demanded the Captain. 
 
 "In the Alps of Switzerland, by three small heads." 
 
 " Good ! And what lake does it run through ? " 
 
 " Lake Constance." 
 
 " An1 where does it empty ? " 
 
 " It empties itself by several mouths into the German 
 Ocean." 
 
 " Smart boy, Luther ; you'll see the Rhine one of these 
 clays, and then you will see for yourself that as regards the 
 nature of the stream it ain't equal to this. The part that 
 folks rave about is very much like our Highlands here, but 
 the hills are really not so fine. However, that is more than
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 57 
 
 made up by those old castles. Just imagine every hill we 
 have passed to-day to be crowned with mellow-looking ruins, 
 like old Fort Put, and you will get an idea of the Rhine be 
 tween Bonn and Mayence." 
 
 Following the Captain's directions, Luther was endeavor 
 ing to cap each peak in sight with an old ruined fort, incon 
 gruously jumbling the low curtain and solid bastion of mod 
 ern fortifications with the tall towers and turretted walls of 
 medieval defence, when the roll of a drum floated downward 
 from the table-land above, and was followed by the report of 
 a cannon. It was the evening gun of the post, and announced 
 that the cadets were engaged at parade. The breeze had now 
 died away entirely ; a few stars began to show themselves, 
 and the shadows of the surrounding hills flowed down like a 
 flood of ink upon the bosom of the river. 
 
 The sloop was well in under the right bank of the stream 
 when Captain Combings ordered an anchor to be let go, the 
 sails hauled down, and a light hoisted on the forestay to indi 
 cate his position to any steamer passing in the night. The 
 caboose fire was lighted, and a fragrant supper of ham and 
 eggs prepared. The Captain and his two mates crew there 
 was none then filled their pipes, and after a half-hour's smoke, 
 retired to their berths in the little cabin. Room had been 
 made for Luther by removing from its shelf the Captain's 
 library, consisting of Shakespeare, Montaigne's essays, a vol 
 ume of old English comedies, with Plutarch's Lives, Rollins' 
 Ancient History, and Russell's Modern Europe, in all thirty 
 or forty volumes, well thumbed and thoroughly digested. 
 
 For a while Luther remained above, after the others had 
 retired. He walked the deck, speculating on the new pros 
 pects which were opening to him, and building castles in the 
 air of the loftiest description. Now and then, to his praise 
 be it said, notwithstanding the excited state of his imagina 
 tion, his thoughts turned to the home that he had left most 
 probably forever, and to that dear loving mother whose affec 
 tion had lightened so many of his childhood's cares and trou 
 bles. Occasionally he paused, and leaning over the main
 
 58 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 boom listened to the dreamy sounds that now and then floated 
 along the lazy stillness of the water the plashing of distant 
 paddle-wheels, or the rush of escaping steam the lowing of 
 calves, and the bleating of sheep pent up in market* barges 
 the doleful tooting of a solitary owl the stridulous song of 
 the katydid the barking of dogs, or the tones of the human 
 voice. 
 
 Tired out at last, Luther sought his berth, or book-shelf 
 rather, and scrupulously saying his customary " Now I lay me," 
 he closed his eyes, little dreaming of the terrible shock that 
 was to greet him on awaking. 
 
 Luther's sleep was disturbed by a host of images, among 
 which prominently figured the face of Miss Doolittle, only 
 instead of her own beautiful nasal organ, she seemed to 
 have adopted a monstrous mass of rock which the Captain 
 had pointed out as being the well-known Anthony's Nose. 
 Half awake and half asleep, he turned and twisted and 
 groaned, but could not get rid of that nose. It was An 
 thony's Nose, and yet it was Miss Doolittle's nose it was a 
 mountain of rock, and yet it was a veritable organ of flesh 
 and blood. 
 
 Conscious at length that the disagreeable impression was 
 but the illusion of a dream, he crawled out of his berth, and 
 vigorously rubbed his eyes until fairly awake: it was about 
 three o'clock in the morning. He pulled on his trowsers, and 
 stepped up the narrow companion-way on to the deck. The 
 night was " pitch dark '' a thick canopy of clouds being 
 drawn across the narrow strip of sky between the tops of the 
 hills. 
 
 Luther noticed that the signal light which had been fas 
 tened in the forestay had gone out, and he hesitated for a 
 moment as to whether he should call one of the men, or at 
 tempt to re-light it himself. At this moment his attention was 
 excited by the sound of paddle-wheels and the rush of a boat 
 through the water. He strained his eyes, but could see noth 
 ing. The sounds which had at first been cut off and dead 
 ened by an intervening point of land suddenly grew loud,
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 59 
 
 louder, louder still. The steamer had just rounded the point, 
 and was evidently close aboard of them. 
 
 " She is certainly," muttered Luther, "going to give us a 
 good wide berth in due time." 
 
 He waited a moment, but there was no change in her 
 course as indicated by her lights. She was not a hundred 
 yards off, and coming down at the rate of twenty miles an 
 hour. 
 
 Luther sent up a shrill shout of warning to the steamer; 
 and then bounding to the companion-way, Called loudly to the 
 Captain. As he raised himself from his stooping posture, the 
 steamer's bow-light hung almost -over his head. He shut his 
 eyes instinctively at the appalling proximity of the monstrous 
 vessel, and before he could open them, her bow struck 
 the sloop a little forward of midships, and with a sharp crash 
 cut entirely through her with as much ease as if she had been 
 made of paper. 
 
 Luther clung to the taffrail, which for a moment was tilted 
 up and canted over. He saw the figures of the Captain and 
 his men struggling from the companion-way, and then a rush 
 of water took him off his feet and carried him deep down in 
 the whirlpool of the sinking vessel. He was, however, an 
 active and buoyant swimmer, and struggled desperately until 
 at last he found himself rising, and soon his head came above 
 the surface of the water. None too soon, however, for his 
 senses had almost deserted him, and he was a minute or two 
 before he could comprehend his position. 
 
 The steamer was about two hundred yards off, lying to. 
 There was the noise of many voices, mingled with the whiz 
 zing of steam from the escape-pipe, and the plashing of boats 
 as they fell from their davits. 
 
 " Luther ! Luther ! " shouted the stentorian voice of Cap 
 tain Combings, in tones of intense anxiety. 
 
 " Here I am, sir," replied Luther, stretching out towards 
 the quarter whence came the Captain's voice. " Can I do any 
 thing for you ? " 
 
 " Do anything for me ? Why you've done the best thing
 
 6o NEVER AGAIN, 
 
 for me in answering my hail. I was afraid you had gone 
 down to trie bottom, with the wreck, and the river here is two 
 hundred feet deep." 
 
 " If I had got down as far as that, it would have been all 
 up with me, I guess," replied Luther. 
 
 " I guess so too, but you are all sound ; no bones broken, 
 oh ? " 
 
 " I feel all right just as if I could swim a couple of miles 
 or so. Shall we strike out for the shore ? It can't be three 
 hundred yards off." 
 
 " No, no ; we should land in the bushes, and it would be 
 hard work to scale those rocks barefoot. Hold on, and in a 
 minute or two the steamer's boats will be down for us. I can 
 hear the oars in the rowlocks. I'll give them a hail." 
 
 The Captain shouted at the top of his lungs, and was 
 answered as well by the boats as by his two men, who were 
 plashing and thrashing the water in a manner to indicate that, 
 although frightened, they were accustomed to swimming, and 
 could retain their position on the surface with ease. 
 
 " All safe ! " ejaculated the Captain. " Thank God for 
 that ; we have had a narrow escape, Luther. Nothing but a 
 special interposition of Providence could have saved some of 
 us from being smashed up by the wheels." 
 
 " Don't you think that it was a special interposition of 
 Providence that made the steamer run on to us ? " demanded 
 Luther. 
 
 "Well, I suppose so," replied the Captain, blowing the 
 water from his mouth. 
 
 " Oughtn't we to thank God for that too, then," inquired 
 Luther with a slight chuckling laugh at the absurdity of a dis 
 cussion of the doctrine of special Providences under such cir 
 cumstances. 
 
 " Well, yes ; I suppose we ought, although I can't see 
 the exact ground for gratitude in the case, unless it was that 
 she struck us forward of midships. For you see, Luther, 
 if she had struck us further aft, our stern would have been 
 whirled right under her wheels, and then "
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 6 1 
 
 " Then no special interposition of Providence would have 
 saved us," said Luther. * 
 
 " Exactly; but here comes the boat," exclaimed the Cap 
 tain, striking out vigorously, and not unwilling to escape a 
 conversation in which he found himself rapidly getting beyond 
 his depth. 
 
 The steamer's deck was all alight and alive, and a hun 
 dred anxious faces peered down upon the boats as they 
 came alongside. Poor Captain Combings had had no time to 
 make his toilet, and he was compelled to mount to the deck 
 with no more clothing than he had on when jumping from 
 his berth. His single scanty cotton garment but poorly con 
 cealed his confusion and dismay at the sight of several female 
 passengers, who, with night-caps on their heads and a mixed 
 expression of curiosity and fear in their countenances, had 
 sallied out from the ladies' saloon. He stopped not to 
 answer any questions, but quickly disappeared with some of 
 the officers of the boat. 
 
 As Luther, thanks to his restlessness and perturbed dreams, 
 was in a more presentable garb, he was arrested in front of 
 the ladies' saloon by the anxious crowd, and closely questioned, 
 particularly by several elderly females, as to the nature and 
 cause of the accident. He explained that he was only a pas 
 senger and had had nothing to do with the management of 
 the sloop. His testimony as to the fact of there having been 
 no light on the sloop at the time of the collision seemed to 
 give great satisfaction to the captain of the steamboat, who 
 made Luther formally repeat the assertion in presence of the 
 crowd. 
 
 "Your name is Luther Lansdale," he said, making a 
 memorandum in his pocket-book. "And where are you to 
 to be found, if I or my owners should want to see you in 
 relation to this matter ? " 
 
 Luther hesitated for a moment, partly from a vague appre 
 hension of being dragged into court, and that too in some 
 way to the detriment of his friend Captain Combings, and 
 partly from a sense of shame at being unable to give any very
 
 62 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 precise answer. To the question of the captain, he was however 
 compelled to reply that he had no address, that he was going 
 down to New York, but that he had not the least idea where 
 he should stay, or what he should do, and that he had been 
 utterly unable to make up his mind as to what occupation or 
 employment he should seek or accept. As he made the con 
 fession the two antagonistic poles of the real and the ideal 
 met him here for the first time, and the tension of his over 
 charged fancy was reduced by the shock. A sense of incon 
 gruity, a conviction of the monstrous preposterousness of his 
 expectations, flashed upon him, and his voice faltered. 
 
 " Have you no friends in New York ?" said a low, soft voice 
 just behind him. 
 
 There was something in the tone inappreciable by the 
 grosser sense of hearing something that seemed to enter the 
 portals of the ear, decline the ordinary route of the auditory 
 nerve to the brain, and descend by the shortest possible cut 
 to the heart. Luther turned, and beheld the very face which 
 he had seen a thousand times before. He had seen it in the 
 clouds, he had seen it in the glassy water of his mountain 
 lake. He had seen it peeping out at him from the rustling 
 foliage of the trees, from beneath the waving grass, and the 
 bending corn. He had seen it amid the glowing coals, the 
 volleying smoke, the flickering lights and shadows of the 
 kitchen fire. It had often smiled at him from the pages of a 
 book, and had even winked lovingly and knowingly from 
 the depths profound of his old scratched and frameless school 
 slate. At least if it was not the very same face, it was one 
 so very much like it that it made Luther start. It was the 
 bright face of a young girl, of perhaps sixteen. Oval in 
 shape, with fine delicate features, and a pale but pure com 
 plexion, it was a thoroughly American face, and yet with :i 
 slight fulness and roundness of line that suggested Italy, and 
 indicated a capacity of passion and feeling deeper than gen 
 erally belongs to the common American type. 
 
 Her eyes were dark gray, and had Luther been less em 
 barrassed, and the lights better, and her ringlets not in curl
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 63 
 
 papers, he might have observed that her hair was a dark 
 auburn. A large blanket shawl was thrown over her head 
 and confined around her throat by one white hand, while the 
 other rested on the arm of a tall, elderly gentleman, who, in 
 his hurry and fright, had neglected to assume any garments, 
 except his waistcoat and pantaloons. 
 
 " Have you no friends in New York ? " she again inquired, 
 seeing that Luther hesitated. 
 
 " Not one, Miss," replied Luther, bowing and blushing ; 
 " not even an acquaintance that I know of." 
 
 " Indeed ! " and the young girl turned to her father. 
 
 " Oh, father, how will he get along? what can he do?" 
 
 " I intend to do as others have done," returned Luther, in 
 quite a withering and sarcastic tone. " I intend to make a 
 fortune ! " 
 
 " And not a friend ? not even an acquaintance ? " she 
 exclaimed in a pitying voice and looking up appealingly in her 
 father's face. " Poor boy ! " 
 
 There was something in her voice and words that sent a 
 thrill of pleasure through Luther, but there was also some 
 thing which jangled harshly amid the sensitive chords of his 
 complex nature. He, the lord of unbounded possessions, 
 with a magnificent castle in every country under heaven, to 
 be pitied by a stranger a girl j'ounger than himself, because 
 nobody in one single city, and that not the largest in the 
 world, had the honor and pleasure of knowing him ! And 
 the " poor boy " too ! Why it was worse and more contemp 
 tuous than Miss Doolittle's "boy" of the orthographical 
 blunder ; and besides, Miss Doolittle was an old woman and 
 not at all a stylish woman, and utterly without what Luther's 
 uninstructed instinct recognized at once as evidences of social 
 position. 
 
 " Not a friend, Miss ! " he replied, drawing himself up as 
 stiffly as possible, " but I presume I shall have when when, 
 that is after I find the fortune which I am going to seek. 
 Wealth," continued Luther in a tone which was meant to be 
 particularly sarcastic, and which could not have been more
 
 64 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 haughty had he been master of the Indies, " wealth never 
 wants friends in New York, I believe." 
 
 The young girl looked at him for a moment with a puz 
 zled expression. Luther's countenance fell ; a sense of shame 
 at his rudeness brought the blood to his cheeks ; a conviction 
 of the absurdity of his speech, of its inartistic inappropriate- 
 ness and incongruity sent it back to his heart in a suffocating 
 tide of contending emotion. How silly to be offended at her 
 pitying exclamation, or even at her expression " poor boy." 
 He was a poor boy, a stupid, mean-spirited, miserable boy ! 
 And how did he know that she was rich, or that she unduly 
 prided herself upon wealth, or that she was one of those city 
 folks whom he had heard often derided as " stuck up." Bah ! 
 what a fool ! what an ass ! what a ridiculous blockhead he 
 must appear in her eyes, and in the eyes of all who were 
 looking on ! 
 
 The features of the young girl relaxed into a smile. Per 
 haps if her heart had not been so full of pity and maybe, 
 too, that if Luther, with his damp hair curling in thick waves 
 around his brown and ruddy face, and his eyes glowing with 
 his rapidly-sweeping and contrary emotions, had not been so 
 good looking, she would have laughed outright. " I meant 
 no offence by the expression," she replied. " Papa will tell 
 you that it is no reproach to be without friends, or even ac 
 quaintances in a city that one has never visited. I don't know 
 much about it, but I believe they are very necessary to help 
 one to look after a fortune." 
 
 And the young girl emphasized the word fortune with a 
 slightly sarcastic smile, but as if anxious to atone by some 
 act of real kindness for anything that might wound feelings 
 so sensitive or offend an egotism so marked, she suddenly 
 turned to her father : " Perhaps you can do something, papa, 
 towards putting him in the way to wealth ; you want a boy 
 a young gentleman I mean in your counting-room, don't 
 you ? " 
 
 " I don't know my dear," replied the gentleman ; "he seems 
 to be in no need of any assistance, and least of all, yours.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 65 
 
 You had better go to your berth now. Come, they are start 
 ing the engine, and there is nothing further to fear." 
 
 It was evident, more from his tone than his words, that 
 Luther had made no very pleasant impression upon him. 
 This however would not have disturbed the young man much, 
 but he felt really sorry that he assumed such a rude and ridic 
 ulous air towards the young lady. His discomfiture was com 
 plete, when she partially withdrew her arm from her father's, 
 and leaning back towards him, whispered in a tone of hearty 
 and unaffected interest : " You may want employment some time 
 and be unable to find it ; many young men are, I have heard 
 it said, in that condition in the city. If so, apply to Mr. Led- 
 geral, of the firm of Ledgeral, Shippen & Co., Burling Slip. 
 You shall have my influence in that quarter, and little as you 
 think so now, it may be of use." 
 
 With a smile and a nod of the head, she disappeared 
 within the door of the ladies' saloon. 
 
 " Come young man," said the captain of the steamboat, 
 "you had better go into the boiler-room and dry your clothes, 
 and then you can go down below and take any of the empty 
 berths ; there are plenty of 'em." 
 
 Luther declined the captain's offer, preferring, as the night 
 was warm and he had no desire for sleep, to stretch himself 
 upon a settee on deck. He had enough to think of the ac 
 cident to the sloop his narrow escape his mother Miss 
 Doolittle and his unlucky blunder and last, but not least, 
 the young girl who had spoken to him with so much kindness 
 and interest, so politely and so pleasantly. " Miss Ledgeral ! 
 But what can her first name be ? Helen, or Mary, or perhaps 
 Isabel ? No, Isabel is Spanish, and of course a brunette ; it 
 may be Mary Mary always has blue eyes. Her eyes are 
 gray. No matter, I shall never see her again ; never speak to 
 her again. Bah ! she wouldn't let me speak to her again ; 
 and serve me right too such a dolt ! such an idiot ! But 
 I never will apply to her father the idea is preposterous. I 
 apply to such a purse-proud old fool? Never! I wouldn't 
 ask the slightest favor from him I would starve first ! But 
 5
 
 66 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 why should I feel angry with her simply because I am angry 
 with myself? Come, come, Luther Lansdale, be a little more 
 generous, or rather a little more just. She meant no offence, 
 and you were a stupid jackass to take any. Well, I will see 
 her once more when she leaves the boat, and thank her at 
 least for her kindness. Not that I will ever follow her direc 
 tions : no, never ! Old Ledgeral shall never see my face again 
 that is not until I am rich: then well, what then? Why 
 then, perhaps, I should like to meet his handsome daughter 
 again. How handsome she is ! Miss Doolittle pooh ! She 
 is ten thousand times as handsome as Miss Doolittle ! " 
 
 Thus ran Luther's thoughts until the boat began to glide 
 by the docks and houses of the upper part of the city. A few 
 purple streaks in the eastern sky announced the rapid ap 
 proach of morning, lighting up the numerous spires of the 
 churches, and the long blocks of red brick houses, and dis 
 closing deep views through numberless narrow streets into 
 the heart of that most mysterious and impressive of all objects 
 a slumbering city. One by one the passengers emerged 
 from the cabins, laden with cloaks, umbrellas and carpet bags. 
 Porters appeared, carrying trunks of all sizes and colors, 
 followed hither and thither by jealous and anxious owners ; 
 a hugh pile of luggage arose at the larboard gangway ; haw 
 sers, by which to swing the boat into her berth and secure 
 her, were stretched along the deck ; the heaving-ropes, care 
 fully coiled, hung ready from the hands of the mates. 
 
 The ladies' saloon had poured forth a crowd of its inmates, 
 but still Luther could not get a glimpse of the face he wanted 
 to see. He stationed himself so as to command a view of the 
 main entrance to the ladies' cabin, and watched and waited 
 until at last he began to be afraid that she had passed in the 
 crowd, or had gone ashore by some short cut that the other 
 passengers knew nothing about, or that, like an image-full 
 mist on the hillside, or a floating cloud blushing in the last 
 rays of the setting sun, or a sportive shadow on the surface of 
 his mountain lake, or a lovely shape of some pleasant and 
 vivid dream, the vision of the night had in reality vanished
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 67 
 
 with the light, or had perhaps landed during the night in a 
 supersensuous small boat rowed by phantoms at some invisi 
 ble point on the Hudson. At the last moment, however, his 
 fears were dispelled. As the crowd were beginning to ascend 
 the gang-way plank, she emerged from the saloon, leaning on 
 the arm of 'her father. Luther hesitated a moment, but see 
 ing the attention of the gentleman was mainly occupied in 
 securing a safe passage with her through the throng, he 
 vigorously thrust himself forward, and crossed the plank by 
 her side. He bowed and blushed, as she turned to his whis 
 pered " Good morning," and recognized him. 
 
 " Good morning, Miss Ledgeral. I want to say that I am 
 much obliged to you for your kind words. I I thank you 
 very much, that is as much as as as if I needed them 
 that is as if as if" 
 
 " Good bye, Mr. Lansdale," replied the young girl, laying 
 a slight emphasis upon the Mr. " Recollect the firm, Led 
 geral, Shippen & Co., or perhaps you had better, if you want 
 to see my father, come to our house in Waverly Place, Wash 
 ington Square : you will find the house easily enough. Good 
 bye ! " 
 
 There was a slight smile on her lips, which Luther imag 
 ined to be contemptuous and sarcastic, but which to any one 
 less morbidly sensitive would have seemed merely good- 
 natured and sweet. He returned her salutation somewhat 
 coldly, and sprang back to the deck of the boat. " I apply 
 to her father for assistance of any kind ! " he muttered. " I 
 put myself in her way again, after she has seen me in this 
 plight, without hat, or coat, and laughed at me ! Never ! 
 never ! I hope I may die if I do ! What do I care for her ? " 
 he continued, as he ran up to the promenade deck, to catch a 
 last look as she entered a carriage in waiting. " Nothing ! 
 not the snap of my finger, not the flip of a copper. No, I 
 won't think of her again. I have something better to do 
 than that, I guess." 
 
 Luther returned to the deck where he found Captain 
 Combings with his two companions in conference with the
 
 68 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 captain of the steamboat, who announced that a collection 
 had been taken up among the passengers and crew of the 
 steamer, for relief of their immediate necessities as to clothing. 
 Luther was at first inclined to refuse his portion, but his 
 scruples were instantly overborne by the authority of quarter 
 deck opinion ; and besides, an instinctive feeling of delicacy 
 suggested that for him to stand out alone in such a case would 
 be a reflection upon the conduct of his companions who had 
 no such scruples, and, more than himself, were in need of the 
 money. The sum amounted to nearly two hundred dollars, 
 which at Captain Combings' suggestion the captain of the 
 steamboat divided equally between the four unfortunates. 
 To this, Luther objected : he had saved his shirt, pantaloons 
 and vest, and, more than all, his eel-skin pouch with its 
 twenty-five dollars, while his companions had saved nothing 
 but their shirts, and were indebted to the kindness of some of 
 the hands of the boat for the loan of clothes in which to go 
 ashore and get a new fit out of their own. But the two cap 
 tains insisted upon the equity of an equal division, so that 
 Luther actually was a gainer by the accident ; an omen, let 
 us hope, of Fortune's favor in his future career.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Advantages of Dress Search for a Boarding-House A Sailor's Library 
 The Captain's Departure An Awful Ordeal Boarding-House 
 Wit A Spiritualistic Discussion The Solitude of a City A 
 Present to Helen. 
 
 c T~\RESS, Luther, goes a great ways with most people," 
 JLx said Captain Combings, as they stood in one of the 
 common slop-shops in Washington Street. " It is with them just 
 as it is with passengers in a packet-ship they want only clean 
 decks, a fresh coat of paint and bright brass work; they never 
 look to see whether the rigging is chafed, the spars strained, 
 or the pump-bolts worn half through. Now, looking at it in 
 that aspect and by-the-bye, Luther, everything in this life has 
 two or three aspects, and some things half-a-dozen or more 
 looking at it in that aspect, I say, dress is a regular imposi 
 tion ; in fact, a downright swindle, the same as paying the 
 seams over with tar before you've put in the oakum. But 
 then, when you bowse in the bow-line of observation, and luff 
 up on t'other aspect, dress has its virtues. It looks very 
 much like faith, as described by St. Paul, which is, as the 
 apostle has it, 'the evidence of things not seen.' You see, 
 when any thing or person is well dressed, there is a tendency 
 remarkably weak in many cases, it is true to make every 
 thing correspond. A ship with new sails, fresh spars, well 
 scraped and slushed, with plenty of paint and holly stones, is 
 not so apt to get on shore, for the reason that there will be 
 smarter seamanship on that craft ; and just in that way, more 
 than half-a-dozen times in the course of my life, I have been 
 prevented doing or saying or thinking something dreadful 
 mean by a clean shirt and a little blacking on my boots. So
 
 7 o NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 you see, Luther, you want a smartish dress, for two reasons : 
 first, for its effect upon the public, and next for its effect upon 
 yourself. These things are common slop-shop affairs ; they 
 will do very well for Tom and Bill, here, and even for myself. 
 We are old battered craft, with no rake to our sticks, and the 
 cut of our jibs is of no consequence ; but you want something 
 with a little more style in it. I think you had better go up 
 into the town and order a dandy rig, square-cut and a-taunto." 
 
 The Captain's proposition chimed in perfectly with the 
 suggestions of Luther's vanity ; so, bidding good-bye to Tom 
 and Bill, who for a quarter of their share of the collection had 
 obtained a complete suit of serviceable clothes, he set out 
 under the guidance of the Captain in search of a tailor ol 
 fashion. The Captain's notions on the subject were not very 
 exalted, and Hudson Street readily supplied an artist who 
 pledged his word of honor that he would have the required 
 suit ready in three days. 
 
 From the tailor's they went to a sailor's boarding-house, 
 where the Captain was to remain for a few days, and where it 
 was agreed that Luther also should stay until his new clothes 
 were finished, when he was to remove to a more genteel 
 house, in a more fashionable quarter of the city. 
 
 Captain Combings now went out to visit his business 
 friends, and Luther was left alone. He had nothing to do 
 but to wander about and see the sights. His walks, hc.vever, 
 were strictly confined to the wharves and by-streets. He had 
 purchased a coarse P-jacket, which, as he thought, answered 
 very well for such excursions, but which would never do for 
 Broadway and the more central parts of the town. Two or 
 three times he stole up a cross street until he could see the 
 carriages and omnibuses rushing by, and hear the roar of the 
 great thoroughfare, but he did not venture nearer. He felt 
 that it would be almost impolite to expose his P-jacket to 
 the gaze of such a noted and fashionable street. All eyes 
 would of course be directed upon him, and out of the thous 
 ands whom he would meet, not one would know that he had 
 a beautiful new suit in the hands of the tailor. His curiosity
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 7 ! 
 
 was strong, but so was his vanity, and Luther resisted the 
 temptation to explore the magnificent mysteries upon which 
 his imagination had so long dwelt. 
 
 With a punctuality unusual in tailordom the clothes were 
 finished. Luckily for Luther, Captain Combings was a sharp 
 hand at a bargain, and half-a-dozen new shirts, as many pairs 
 of stockings, a new hat, new boots, and a good second-hand 
 valise, did not quite exhaust his portion of the collection taken 
 up on board the steamboat. 
 
 Luther was soon dressed, and after as close an examina 
 tion of himself as possible in the little broken bit of looking- 
 glass that adorned his> mantel-piece, he sallied out, accompa 
 nied by the Captain, in search of a new boarding-house. 
 They paused before several doors. If the Captain's longitude 
 when on nearing land had depended upon the accuracy with 
 which he examined each house, his observations could not 
 have been conducted with more apparent care. First he de 
 voted five minutes to a deliberate squint upwards from the 
 opposite side of the way, as if he was especially desirous of 
 taking the altitude of the cornice and chimney-tops. Next, he 
 crossed the street, and as deliberately investigated the pro 
 fundities of the area, leaning over the railing and sniffing up 
 the air, as if smelling for bilge-water. 
 
 " But tell me, Captain," demanded Luther, " how can we 
 know positively which house is a boarding-house ? " 
 
 " Know 'em ! don't you know you can tell a Frenchman 
 from a John Bull without hearing his hail or seeing his hull ? 
 Well, how do you suppose it is done ? Why, by something in 
 the set of the sails, or the trim of the spars something that 
 perhaps you can't point out, but there it is, &je ne sais qtwi, 
 as the French call it. It is just so with a. boarding-house 
 but, besides that, there is another and an infallible way of 
 telling 'em, and that is by the nose." 
 
 " By the nose ? " 
 
 " Certainly, by the nose one knows 'em. There is, in nine 
 cases out of ten, about an American boarding-house an odor 
 of boiled coffee and fried beefsteaks. Mind, I don't say that
 
 7 2 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 they always do boil their coffee and fry their beefsteaks, but 
 there is a smell of it, and that smell is just as good a guide as 
 the smell of fried onions in Malaga, or boiled cabbage in 
 Hamburg. And more than that, there are other signs. Do 
 you see the grease and dirt round the lock of that door ? 
 Well, there are night-keys used in that house, and I guess 
 that some of them don't get into that key-hole without a good- 
 deal of fumbling. It is rather a nice-looking house. Suppose 
 that we try it? And Bleecker Street is a nice street, too. 
 Not now, perhaps, of the highest brand in the fashionable 
 world, but good, respectable second chop ; a No. 2 from fair 
 to middling ; by that I mean, Luther, there are worse streets 
 in New York than Bleecker Street." 
 
 They rang the bell, and after due delay the door was 
 opened by a red-headed female Celt, with a dirty dusting- 
 cloth in her hand. A rustling of skirts at the head of the 
 stairs, and the sudden withdrawal of a white cap and pink 
 ribbons over the upper rail, indicated that Miss De Belvoir 
 Jones, the landlady, was occupying her customary coigne of 
 vantage, whence she could descend in an overwhelming aval 
 anche of inflated petticoats, or retreating, disappear in the 
 dim and nebulous recesses of " not-at-home." 
 
 Having satisfied herself by eye and ear that the avalanche 
 was the safe thing, Miss De Belvoir Jones came down upon 
 the Captain and his companion in a perfect foam of silk lace 
 and scolloped under-skirts. The Captain doffed his hat and 
 bowed in the style of a merchant-trader striking topsails to a 
 line-of-battle-ship. A smile of undisguised admiration at the 
 round pleasant face, and the plump overdressed figure of 
 Miss De Belvoir Jones illumined his honest countenance. 
 "Hang me," he whispered to Luther, "if she doesn't remind 
 me of old Ironsides at Rio, when she hung out all her signal 
 flags for the Emperor of Brazil." 
 
 " You say that your house is quite quiet ? " demanded the 
 Captain. 
 
 ft Oh, perfectly quiet," replied Miss Jones ; " we have 
 never no noise in the neighborhood, unless it may be some-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 73 
 
 times when they get drunk and fight in a tenement house in the 
 rear; but then we don't mind that much." 
 
 " Get used to it, eh ? Well, there is not much harm in a 
 row when you are not called upon to join in. How about the 
 cats, Madam ? " continued the Captain. 
 
 "Cats, sir!" 
 
 " Yes, and the rats ? " 
 
 " Rats, sir ! " 
 
 " Yes, but we wont inquire about any of the smaller ver 
 min. Those, Luther, are among the little evils of life that, 
 as Montaigne says, one ought always to take for granted, and 
 then you will never be disappointed. And your boarders, 
 Madam," continued the Captain, turning to the lady; "they 
 are all respectable people ? " 
 
 " Respectable people ! " exclaimed Miss Jones, the color 
 mounting to her face. 
 
 The Captain hastened to correct himself. " Oh no, not 
 respectable people, not at all respectable, but genteel genteel 
 people, I mean. " 
 
 " Certainly, sir," replied Miss Jones, in a modified tone ; 
 " all my boarders are remarkably genteel nice people, all of 
 the Upper Ten, sir, : in fact I take none but the nicest sort of 
 people. My first floor front is occupied by Mr. Stichen 
 the rich Mr. Stichen and wife, of the firm of Stichen & 
 Hoyt, dealers in linens manufactured linens." 
 
 " Shirts ! " ejaculated the Captain, nodding his head. 
 
 " And my first floor back," continued Miss Jones, without 
 replying to the Captain's coarse interpretation of her delicate 
 euphuism, " is occupied by a distinguished literary man J. 
 Augustus Whoppers, author of the ' Song of the Spheres,' and 
 editor of the New York Weekly Universe. You must have 
 heard of him." 
 
 ''Is he a hairy man ? " demanded the Captain. 
 
 "Hairy?" exclaimed Miss Jones. 
 
 " Yes mam, about the face ; because I once knew a fellow 
 called Jack Whoppers; he wrote a song called 'Seven long 
 years I courted a widow.' He made a voyage once with me
 
 74 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 in the bark Kangaroo, and I can assure you, Miss Jones, that 
 his whiskers were whoppers : they did justice to his name. I did 
 hear that he had quit the sea and hired himself out to Bar- 
 num to play the bearded Baboon from the Bango Islands." 
 
 Miss Jones was puzzled. She could not tell whether to 
 feel affronted or not. The speaker's look of profound admir 
 ation she could not mistake. She felt the compliment all 
 through her stout little body ; but then such talk ! What to 
 make of it ? It might, however, be the way of the sea, and all 
 in earnest, but really at first it sounded very much like chaff. 
 Her loquacity had received a check, however, and she had 
 nothing more to say of her boarders. 
 
 A bargain was finally concluded, by which Luther was to 
 have a bed in a little narrow attic room for four dollars and a 
 half a week. The Captain having decided to go up the river 
 that afternoon, Luther had but just time, before accompanying 
 him to the boat, to write a letter, which his friend promised to 
 deliver in person if he could possibly find the time to ride out 
 to the Lake. 
 
 On their way to the boat the Captain improved the oppor 
 tunity to impress his youthful companion with a due sense of 
 the dangers of city life, and of the necessity of a constant 
 watch over himself, if he wished to escape the many tempta 
 tions to which he would be exposed. "Above all things," 
 said Captain Combings, " find something to do at once. 
 Work ! Luther, work ! You may depend upon it there is 
 nothing like work ; nothing like it, not only for the good that it 
 does, but for the evil that it prevents. There is nothing that 
 the devil hates so much as good hard work. He don't so 
 much object to a little occasional church-going and psalm- 
 singing ; he isn't afraid of a moderate stock of good principles ; 
 he doesn't object to a thorough knowledge of the ten com 
 mandments ; and as for just an outside lick or two of respect 
 ability and gentility, why bless you, he loves it ; but he has a 
 mortal fear of honest work. He knows that he can always 
 find ' some wicked thing for idle hands to do.' Now, there 
 must be many people in such a city as this who would like to
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 75 
 
 employ such a good-looking and clever young fellow as you 
 are. If we could have stayed together on the old sloop for a 
 few voyages, I should have had time to look around and 
 find some nice place for you ; but now you must do it for 
 yourself. I hope you will have no difficulty. Look at the 
 advertisements, and be sure to answer every one that you 
 think will do. I shall see you soon again, and if nothing 
 better turns up you can take a trip with me to sea ; that is, if 
 I can get a command again from my old owners." 
 
 The Captain held Luther by the hand, and looked kindly 
 into his face. The young man could but half restrain a sob, 
 while the older man's little gray eyes rolled about in a bath of 
 liquid lustre, which only needed the thousandth part of a drop 
 more from the fount of feeling to have been a tear. 
 
 " Promise me, lad, that you wont run on any of the shoals 
 I told you of. Keep a good sober watch at the cat-heads, 
 with a strong hand on the tiller, and you will make a good 
 land-fall, I have no doubt. Come, cheer up ; cheer up : you 
 mustn't let your craft get down by the head, and run under. 
 If you find yourself getting into that trim, just overhaul and 
 re-stow your ideas, and remember that Captain Combings 
 expects to see you in a few weeks bowling along on an even 
 keel, under easy canvas, and that it will just about kill him to 
 find such a likely craft pitching and rolling and straining hull 
 and spars under trysail, royals and flying-jib." 
 
 The speaker jumped aboard as the gangway plank was 
 pulled in. The boat started ; he waved his hand and smiled, 
 but it was with a heavy heart. He was sorry to part with 
 Luther, but, besides that, he had other causes of sadness ! 
 First and foremost, he himself was now nearly penniless. He 
 had no insurance upon his sloop, and there were no hopes of 
 receiving anything from the owners of the steamboat which had 
 caused the loss. To support himself, and an aged mother and 
 a widowed sister, who were almost wholly dependent upon him, 
 he saw that his only resource was the sea. But even in such 
 employment he had good reason to suppose that, without the 
 means of purchasing a share in a ship, he would find it impos-
 
 7 6 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 sible to obtain a command, and that he would have to accept 
 a subordinate post on some miserable craft. He was not one, 
 however, to suffer from an undue depression of spirits. His 
 was naturally a sound, healthy temperament ; and the cir 
 cumstances of his life his early experience of hard work and 
 hard fare his struggles on the world of waters, both with 
 the fierce moral elements that go down to the sea in ships, 
 and with the still fiercer natural elements which so often pre 
 vent their return his varied adventures and misadventures 
 by flood and field, had served to develop in him, both men 
 tally and physically, a high degree of manhood. His sensi 
 bilities were, like his muscles, round, and full, and strong 
 easily excited by proper and proportionate forces, but not 
 convulsed by pin-scratches and flea-bites. He had, moreover, 
 a good stock of sound philosophy, which he had mainly 
 acquired from his library of half-a-dozen books ; not a grand 
 collection, but then it must be recollected that among them 
 were Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Plutarch, and that the 
 Captain had spent many an hour of ocean solitude over them 
 until he had got them, almost by heart. 
 
 Luther lingered on the wharf until the steamboat had 
 passed out of sight. The sun had just gone down behind the 
 heights of Bergen, and the darkness of twilight was drawing 
 over the scene ; but a brighter sun had just set in Luther's 
 mental horizon, and a deeper darkness was drawing over 
 heart and brain the darkness of utter loneliness ! " Never 
 mind, my dear boy ; your experience may hardly warrant the 
 conviction, yet it is nevertheless true that, in the world of 
 sentiment as in the world of physics, the night can't last 
 always in time the sun will rise and light will come." 
 
 With his valise in hand and a small bundle ot odd lug 
 gage under his arm, Luther bid adieu to the landlord of the 
 sailor's boarding-house, and, threading the back streets, sought 
 his new home. Making his way up to his little dingy room 
 in the attic, by the aid of a lingering ray of twilight he ar-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 77 
 
 ranged his effects, smoothed his hair, retied his cravat, and 
 otherwise prepared his person for the momentous and trying 
 ordeal of the tea-table. 
 
 The tea-bell rang. With a hesitating step and a fluttering 
 heart, he descended the stairs. 
 
 It would be difficult to find anything in the history of 
 young America out of which to manufacture a comparison 
 that would heighten the reader's conception of the tumult of 
 feeling with which Luther entered the room. What conceiv 
 able event shall we select ? Is it a presentation to the Mayor 
 of the great city of New York ? oh most modest of citizens ! 
 Be dad ! Pat Rooney, only three weeks from the bogs of Balli- 
 nagora, will take you up and introduce you to him and stir 
 him up like hot porridge, and if there is a bashful or embar 
 rassed man in the company you may safely bet that it will be 
 the Mayor himself. 
 
 Is it an introduction to the Governor ? I think I see you 
 oh young man of little reverence for potentates and powers ! 
 A gracious smile on your placid countenance, a subdued 
 swagger in your gait, as you condescendingly seize and shake 
 his Excellency's hesitating flipper. 
 
 Is it a step higher ? would you visit the White House ? 
 Ah ! there is Pat Rooney's cousin, Tim Doolan, who came 
 over this time two years, long enough to become an American 
 citizen to the back bone and a member of Congress to boot 
 he can help you, he can put you on easy terms at once ; 
 ahd besides, as Tim says, isn't the poor devil in the presi 
 dential chair a man and a brother ; you couldn't ask more 
 nor that of a nigger, let alone a democratic republican and 
 gintleman. 
 
 No, we must go abroad for our comparison, to Europe, 
 and above all to England, where the organ of reverence is 
 more assiduously cultivated, and where a more rigid tabooism 
 gives a wonderful exaltation to the idols of snobdom. "Will 
 my daughter, when presented, have a good opportunity of 
 seeing her Majesty?" inquired an American mother of her 
 friend a lovely and accomplished Marchioness, who had
 
 7 8 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 kindly consented to map out the young lady's course through 
 the rocks and shoals of court etiquette and costume into the 
 haven heaven we might say of royalty. " Oh ! yes, if she 
 dare,'' replied the lady, dropping her voice to the lowest 
 contralto of reverential awe, and with a dubitating emphasis 
 upon the word dare " if she dare raise her eyes to her 
 Majesty, she may see her." The unabashed girl not only 
 raised her eyes, and very lovely eyes too, but in her anxiety 
 to get a good look at her Majesty she forgot one of the pre 
 scribed courtesies to satellite royalties, whereupon with an 
 aplomb that excited the wonder of some old courtiers, she 
 coolly retraced her steps and deliberately paid the proper 
 compliment. Now, suppose that instead of an irreverent re 
 publican it had been Lady Grace, or Lady Blanche. Ah ! 
 now we begin to get within sight of a comparison. A lovely, 
 well-trained English girl of rank, on her first presentation at 
 Court determined to go through with it ; yet trembling, awe 
 struck, not "daring to raise her eyes to Majesty : " there we 
 have it ! the exact counterpart in feeling to Luther, as he 
 entered the dingy-looking, greasy-smelling dining-room, fur 
 nished with a grim horse-hair sofa, and a long, black mahogany 
 table, around which were seated half-a-dozen women in divers 
 stages of age and ugliness. A slight relief, however, to the 
 dismal scene was given by a glimpse through the folding 
 doors of a stout, rather dumpy, but neatly-dressed and pleasant 
 looking woman, who, seated at an open piano, and carelessly 
 touching the keys, was humming in the undertones of a rich 
 contralto voice occasional bars of music made famous by 
 Alboni. 
 
 "I wish Mrs. Stichen would give us 'Jim along Josey,' or 
 ' Who's dat knocking at de door,' " said one of the ladies at 
 the tea-table ; " I can't bear those stupid Italian tunes." 
 
 "Oh, Miss Billings, how can you say so ? I think Italian 
 tunes are lovely. I enjoy the opera so much," exclaimed her 
 opposite neighbor. 
 
 "Well, so do I, when they are sung by a real prima donna ; 
 but, to tell you the truth, Mrs. Simmons, I don't like the
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 79 
 
 woman, she's stuck up, don't have nothing to say to nobody, 
 and sings and reads poetiy all the day long. She's got some 
 voice, but I don't like her, and she can't sing anything to 
 suit me." 
 
 A boarding-house tea almost immediately succeeding a 
 hearty dinner has seldom any great attractions for the male 
 sex, and no men had as yet arrived, with the exception of Mr. 
 Whoppers, who sauntered in with an abstracted air, holding 
 in his hand several strips of printed matter intended for the 
 columns of the New York Universe. A short, pale-faced man 
 was Mr. Whoppers, with sandy hair, and an enormous strag 
 gling mustache, which he occasionally stroked and pulled with 
 his left hand, while with his right he made divers marks with a 
 red chalk crayon on the strips of paper before him. His 
 little ferret eyes furtively stealing around the table, notwith 
 standing his apparent preoccupation, showed him ready to 
 pounce upon any item of news for his journal, or any crumb 
 of admiration for himself. 
 
 " You must find the life of an editor very laborious, Mr. 
 Whoppers?" observed Mrs. Lasher, a lank woman of dubious 
 age, cavernous gray eyes, neutral tint complexion, and of a 
 decidedly spiritualistic turn of mind. 
 
 "Very: behold ^e. proof I" replied Mr. Whoppers, holding 
 up the strips of paper. 
 
 Mr. Whoppers was really a man of sense and information, 
 but he had a curious yet common theory of wit, that not 
 unfrequently conveyed an erroneous impression of his 
 talents. It differed greatly from the oft-quoted theory of Dr. 
 Johnson. Mr. Whoppers' idea was that a pun, no matter 
 how trite, absurd, or misplaced, was the highest form of wit. 
 and that if he had really set himself out to cultivate the an, 
 he could have made himself one of its greatest masters ; and it 
 is by no means clear that his vanity misled him. He had 
 some fancy, a good knowledge of words, and his memory was 
 well stocked with the fag ends of poetry and all kinds of quo 
 table quips and quiddities, and it is well known that in no 
 sort of mental exercise is the adage " practice makes perfect"
 
 8o NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 more applicable. A regular punster, which we are far from 
 accusing Mr. Whoppers of being, snaps at a verbal resem 
 blance as a trained poodle snaps at a cracker on his nose 
 with similar skill and with equal success. There would be no 
 great harm in him if, when he has caught one, he did not 
 invariably rear himself up and paw the air for more. 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! very good ! '' exclaimed Mr. Stichen, a fat 
 little man who waddled into the room at the moment, his 
 round black eyes twinkling with an expression of good- 
 humored self-complacency and admiration of his friend Whop 
 pers, over a pair of cherry-red cheeks, half concealed by the 
 whitest and stiffest of shirt collars. " Ha ! ha ! very good ! 
 Proof, ladies ! you see, proof! Ha ! ha ! very good indeed ; 
 ha ! ha ! Whoppers, you are a wit you are the wittiest man 
 I know of, without excepting Blithers, of our club, and he 
 stutters out sometimes such capital things." 
 
 " Mr. Stichen," exclaimed Mr. Whoppers, eyeing with af 
 fected sternness the little gentleman as he dropped into his 
 seat at the table, " this is a proof, but I shall have to give 
 you a re-proof if you flatter me so grossly." 
 
 "Ha ! ha ! he ! he ! good again ; proof, reproof ; ha ! ha ! 
 very good. Why, Mrs. Lasher, the spirits themselves couldn't 
 do better than that." 
 
 " I beg your pardon," interrupted Mr. Whoppers ; " the 
 spirits, if they are good for anything, would readily come up 
 to fourth proof." 
 
 " He ! he ! ha ! ha ! good, very good," sputtered the 
 little dealer in manufactured linens, with his mouth full of hot 
 tea, a drop the wrong way converting the spasm of admira 
 tion into a laryngeal convulsion that had to be coughed out 
 with averted head into the depths of a snowy and voluminous 
 handkerchief. 
 
 " You must excuse me, ladies," exclaimed Mr. Stichen, as 
 he recovered his breath ; "but between Mr. Whoppers' wit and 
 a drop" 
 
 "Oh drop that," interrupted Mr. \Vhoppers; "we all take a 
 drop too much sometimes, but it is not best to say anything
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 8 1 
 
 about it before the ladies ; and as for coughing, you'll have a 
 worse fit of ' coffin' than that before long." 
 
 This last witticism did not seem to be quite so palatable 
 to Mr. Stichen, so that between suspended breath and sus 
 pended admiration, the lone, lank woman was able to resume 
 the conversation. 
 
 " Mr. Stichen has made an allusion to the inhabitants of 
 the spirit world," said Mrs. Lasher, in a tone profoundly in 
 dicative of a stern belief in the supernatural ; " I would ob 
 serve that the denizens of the supernal spheres can do some 
 thing better than to make poor puns." 
 
 " Certainly," replied Mr. Whoppers, with a polite nod and 
 a vigorous pull at his mustache ; " I have no doubt that with 
 their advantages and in their position they ought to be able, 
 they ought to be compelled to make good ones. In fact, 
 I have no doubt that all dull spirits are pun-ished in that 
 way. They are* required to make puns, and I think that if 
 you, Mrs. Lasher, will ask for a communication on that sub 
 ject, especially from any of our deceased old-clothes-dealing 
 brethren, you will find that when a pun ish required a good 
 pun ish ment." 
 
 " You may laugh, Mr. Whoppers, or rather, Mr. Stichen 
 may laugh and you may scoff, but if you had attended the 
 session last evening, you must have been convinced. You 
 could not have resisted the evidence of the immediate pres 
 ence of some of the greatest spirits." 
 
 " Fourth proof spirits," giggled Mr. Stichen, in a desper 
 ate attempt to glitter for a moment in a reflected flash of the 
 great luminary, Mr. Whoppers. 
 
 " You must have been convinced," continued Mrs. Lasher ; 
 " we had the advantage of a medium who can communicate 
 with the highest spheres : we had communications from Wash 
 ington and Franklin." 
 
 " Can you favor us, Mrs. Lasher, with the exact words of 
 Washington ?" demanded a fat, round-faced man with a white 
 neck-cloth the Rev. Dr. Droney, whose talents, sadly over 
 looked in the distribution of clerical calls, had found a fitting 
 6
 
 8a NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 field in the half-constructed heavily-mortgaged church-beg 
 ging business. " Can you favor us with his exact words ? I 
 have always had a great respect for Washington. I believe 
 that he was a very worthy, good man." 
 
 " I can," replied Mrs. Lasher ; " it was partly prose and 
 partly poetry. He said : ' My experience in the spirit state 
 convinces me more and more of the value of the Union. Let 
 no demoniac or democratic,' I forget now which it was, 
 democratic or demoniac, but I think it was demoniac, ' let 
 no demoniac hand ruthlessly tear asunder those ties cemented 
 by the blood of the heroes and patriots of '76. 
 
 " ' Let your proud bird forever hold 
 The awful tyrant-frightening scroll : 
 plttribus Unum, writ so bold, 
 That kings may read from pole to pole.' " 
 
 "Very fine, very fine indeed," ejaculated the Doctor. 
 " Washington was unquestionably a lover of his country, and 
 a very good, worthy man. I have always had a very great 
 respect for his character. In fact, our country has hardly 
 produced a man whose course and conduct has more generally 
 met my approval. I hope you admire him, sir," suddenly 
 turning to Luther, who, in obedience to an indication from 
 Miss Jones, had taken a vacant chair by the side of the Doc 
 tor. " It is particularly incumbent upon all young men to 
 admire him, he set such a good example for youth. Never 
 told lies, you know, and owned up about hacking the cherry 
 tree, and all that you know." 
 
 Thus directly addressed, Luther felt it his duty to say 
 something in reply. " Yes sir," he stammered out, " I know 
 that, but but " and Luther hardly knew what to say " but 
 I did not know that Washington was a poet." 
 
 " Ha ! Very true, sir, very true," and Dr. Droney looked 
 with an air of stern inquiry towards the lone, lank expounder 
 of things spiritual. 
 
 "Not in this world," replied Mrs. Lasher, "but in the 
 supernal spheres the faculties of the mind receive a higher 
 development. Washington could not write such poetry, could
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 83 
 
 not, perhaps, write poetry at all when living ; but now he could 
 write a dozen volumes as good as that." 
 
 "Perhaps," exclaimed Dr. Droney, his fat face flushing 
 with the glow of a luminous idea, " he had the assistance of 
 Hamilton. You know Hamilton wrote all his letters and 
 papers in this life. What do you think, Mr. Whoppers ? you 
 are a poet yourself, or at least you publish a good deal of 
 poetry." 
 
 Thus directly appealed to, Mr. Whoppers looked up from 
 his proofs. " Allow me to correct you, Doctor, a deal of 
 good poetry. As to the Hamiltonian theory, I am opposed 
 to it ; and besides, Hamilton was not a poet. If Washington 
 wrote those lines he must have had the assistance of a pro 
 fessed poet Shakespeare perhaps, or Milton ; they sound 
 Miltonious." 
 
 " But what about Franklin ? " continued Mr. Whoppers, 
 turning to Mrs. Lasher. " As a member of the editorial fra 
 ternity I am more interested in the opinions of Franklin than 
 of any one else. I hope Franklin did not belie his name he 
 opened his mind frankly eh ? " 
 
 "Oh, that is what I wanted to, tell you," replied Mrs. 
 Lasher. "It has always seemed to me, Mr. Whoppers, that 
 you have never taken a sufficiently high view of the duties 
 and responsibilities of editorship. Picking up items of every 
 day news for the public, and writing stories and tales for the 
 vulgar, is a desecration and a degradation. Hear what Frank 
 lin said last night. He said : ' If there is anything for which 
 I regret having left the world, it is the enormous journalistic 
 development which has since taken place. The newspaper 
 is destined to be the highest main-spring of mundane exist 
 ence.' What do you think of that, Mr. Whoppers ? " 
 
 " Are you sure that he said the ' highest main-spring of 
 mundane existence ?' " demanded Mr. Whoppers, cocking his 
 eye at Mr. Stichen in a way that set the little gentleman off 
 into a premature giggle. 
 
 " Certainly, the very highest main-spring." 
 
 " Well, then," replied Mr. Whoppers, " I can only say that
 
 84 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 I think the old gentleman must have been, in the main, 
 decidedly sprung himself, or else that he had not been prop 
 erly wound up ; " and gathering up his proofs, Mr. Whoppers, 
 with becoming gravity, but not without a sly wink to Mr. 
 Stichen, bowed himself out of the room. 
 
 The conversation not having any peculiar interest for 
 Luther, he availed himself of the sensation attending Mr. 
 Whoppers' parting mot to slip away from the table. He had 
 been so long accustomed to bowls of fresh milk and bread, or 
 slices of fried ham with eggs for his supper, that a cup of 
 wishy-washy tea and a thin slice of bread with questionable 
 butter could hardly produce any great elevation of spirits, 
 and so to escape the companionship of his own sad thoughts, 
 as well as to gratify curiosity, he hurried out into Broadway. 
 
 The lamps were just lighted the street was filled with a 
 throng of rapidly-moving people the roar of wheels almost 
 deafened him. He felt excited and delighted, and yet every 
 now and then there came over him such a feeling of loneli 
 ness to be one of such a crowd and yet not know a soul in 
 it to have no one in such a large city who cared for him or 
 for whom he cared ! No one ? Luther pondered the ques 
 tion, and the 'fair face of the young girl whom he had seen 
 on the steamboat came up to his mental vision. Somehow, 
 he did not feel so lonely when he thought of her. Not that 
 he really cared anything about her, or even expected to see 
 her again. Oh ! no ; but then there was a kind of com 
 panionship in the thought of her. She seemed to go along 
 with him and to loiter with him at the shop windows, and 
 everything seemed in some way to assume an interest in con 
 nection with her. There was a richly-figured pink silk how 
 well it would become her! There was a beautiful India 
 shawl how gracefully she would wear it ! There was a show 
 case full of common bijouterie not a single article costly 
 enough to present to her : if he could give her the whole ease 
 ful, that perhaps would do. But for a present here in this 
 jeweller's window is the thing : a diamond bracelet ! Luther 
 wondered whether the article was really worthy of being pre-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 85 
 
 sented to her. The stones could not be paste, they were too 
 beautiful and brilliant. He thought he would ask the price, 
 and judge from the answer whether it would be the thing, if 
 lie were rich and going to make her a present. Cautiously 
 pushing open the door, he, in a very modest tone, asked a 
 man standing behind the show-case if he would have the 
 goodness to tell him the price of the bracelet in the window. 
 
 " A thousand dollars," replied the salesman, after eyeing 
 Luther a moment. " Do you want to buy it ? will it suit 
 you?" 
 
 "No, sir ; but I thank you for telling me," replied Luther 
 humbly feeling that the man had a just claim against him 
 for damages in not fulfilling a contract to purchase, implied 
 in his asking. "No, sir ; I only wanted to inquire the price." 
 
 Little did the jeweller know how much pleasure his an 
 swer had given. A thousand dollars ! Luther was delighted 
 he had been afraid that the answer would be four or five 
 hundred. A thousand dollars ! It was then pretty enough 
 and costly enough to present to her. True, he had no expec 
 tation of ever seeing her again, much less of ever making her 
 a present of any kind, but it was a comfort to know that she 
 was in the same city, and that there was a beautiful diamond 
 bracelet ready for any one who might choose to give it to 
 her. Oh Luther ! you fickle young villain, was there nothing 
 in that show-window that would do for Miss Deborah Doolittle? 
 
 Luther went home, crept under the low slanting roof, into 
 his hard, knobby, corn-husk bed, and dreamed of walking, 
 with his pockets stuffed full of thousand-dollar bank notes, 
 into a butcher's shop, where hung pieces of beef, fresh from 
 Golconda, all studded with diamonds as large as lemons.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Seeking Work Letter from the Captain A Dog-Fight with a Moral 
 The Hereof Corunna Futile Efforts A New Principle in Medicine 
 A Warning to Young Men in the Country Pride Knocks Under. 
 
 LUTHER had now to set himself seriously to work seek 
 ing some employment, not so pleasant a task as it had 
 seemed when viewed from a distance. He had, however, no 
 doubt as to its practicability, and under that delusion he wasted 
 a week in looking about the city and trying to make up his 
 mind as to what situation he would be willing to take. The 
 payment however of his first week's board bill, and the sud 
 den conviction that his small stock of money would not last 
 forever, gave a fresh impulse to his determination. He looked 
 over the newspapers and selected the advertisements which 
 he thought applied to a case like his own. Some he answered 
 by letter, others required a reply in person. Dressing every 
 morning with the utmost care in his new suit, and taking his 
 memorandum of the address, Luther would sally forth with 
 the firmest resolve to have an interview with the preferred ad 
 vertiser, and close a bargain with him at once. But somehow, 
 as he walked, his resolution began to give way a thousand 
 doubts and objections arose in his mind. There was some 
 thing in the advertisement that he did not like, or it was ques 
 tionable, on second thoughts, whether he could perform the 
 duties required of him, or there was something in the nature 
 of the business that he had neglected to consider. The re 
 sult was that his excursion generally ended in an examination 
 of the outside of the office or warehouse, and a return to his 
 own room, where, to his great astonishment, as well as disap 
 pointment, he never could find an answer to any of his written 
 communications.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 87 
 
 A second board bill gave a new fillip to his resolution, and 
 he made up his mind to no longer delay applying for, and se 
 curing, some situation. His first application threw a flood of 
 light upon matters, in relation to which he had hitherto been 
 entirely in the dark. "We are in no want of any one," was 
 the prompt and rather rude answer to his inquiry. 
 
 "I saw an advertisement in the Herald" 
 
 " True, but that was two days since ; we had fifty applica 
 tions the first day." 
 
 Fifty applications ! Astonishment held him dumb and 
 motionless for a moment, and then a sense of shame sent the 
 color to his cheek. He felt ashamed of his own dilatoriness, 
 and ashamed, more than all, of having applied for a place 
 already filled. He felt as guilty as if he had been caught try 
 ing to carry off some of the bales or barrels lying around, 
 and, hastily making for the door, he rushed into the street. 
 
 The ill success of his first effort deterred him from making 
 another for several days. Visions of a seafaring life came 
 over him. He thought of the ocean, as thousands of imagi 
 native minds have thought and will think of it upon finding 
 for the first time that their lofty fabrics of fancy have no solid 
 foundation upon the land. 
 
 With this idea, he visited all the shipping in port strolled 
 around the wharves, and spent hours in the various ship-yards. 
 This was great waste of time, but it was certainly better than 
 loitering in drinking-saloons, or hanging around ten-pin alleys 
 or billiard-rooms. He also made a regular morning visit to 
 Washington Square, and an evening seldom passed without 
 repeating it. He could not sleep comfortably without passing 
 and repassing the house a dozen times, occasionally stopping 
 to listen to the sounds of the piano to watch the shadows 
 flitting by on the closed curtains, and now and then creeping 
 up the front steps, and trying to peer into the parlor windows. 
 Sometimes, for hours, he stood on the opposite side of the 
 street, with his back to the park railing, endeavoring, in imag 
 ination, to penetrate the mysteries of those illuminated rooms. 
 Perfectly familiar with the castles of feudal and fairy land,
 
 88 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 and with the palaces and caravansaries of Bagdad and Bas- 
 sorah, Luther was utterly ignorant of the arrangements and 
 furniture of a first-class residence in New York. His pran 
 cing fancy consequently, when galloping into the front door of 
 that particular house, lacked the curb of comparison, or even 
 the check-rein of probability. His idea was that of a suite 
 of rooms of interminable extent ceiled with a mosaic of 
 rubies, emeralds, and sapphires ; hung with a curious com 
 posite of crystal mirrors, gobelin tapestry, and pictures by 
 Raphael ; carpeted with the fabrics of Persia, half a foot 
 thick, and filled with furniture of solid gold. Through these 
 rooms flitted continually a figure, the face of which was that 
 of Miss Ledgeral, as she appeared that night on the steam 
 boat, but all the rest was brocade, diamonds, and little glass 
 slippers. From all this it will readily be seen by the astute 
 reader, what a poor, weak, ignorant youngster we have here. 
 He would hardly do for the hero of a modern novel. True, 
 he has some book knowledge and plenty of brains, but he is 
 so ridiculously lacking in savoir-faire. Sometimes, however, 
 these kind of fellows have a wonderful faculty of* learning 
 rapidly. Let us hope that he will have a little common sense 
 and knowledge of the world and its ways knocked into him 
 in time. 
 
 Again, after a few days of mortification and despondency, 
 did Luther summon up a resolution to answer another adver 
 tisement, but there was something in his appearance that, in 
 the absence of any letters of recommendation, induced a 
 prompt refusal. He was now getting somewhat accustomed 
 to such rebuffs, and his spirit began to rise. The combata- 
 tive instinct so essential to success of any kind began to stir 
 within him. He determined to obtain a situation somehow 
 by sheer persistence and pluck. In this state of mind he felt 
 strongly supported by a note from Captain Combings, to 
 whom he had written an account of his failure in his first at 
 tempt. " The world," wrote the Captain, " is very much like 
 a big dog I once knew in Corunna. It was a hot summer's 
 afternoon, the citizens men, women, and children had just
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 89 
 
 got through their siestas, and were beginning to show them 
 selves on their balconies, all busy rubbing their eyes and roll 
 ing cigarettes. I was stretched out on three chairs, in the 
 public room of a dirty posada, trying to smoke one of the 
 nasty little paper things, when suddenly there was a terrible 
 shouting. I rushed to the window, as did everybody else in 
 town. 
 
 " ' El perro ! El perro i ' The dog of all dogs the most 
 awful dog in all Spain the dog that had killed his man more 
 than once, and had whipped his bull more than a dozen times 
 had broken loose ! It was cut-and-run with the half-a-dozen 
 long-legged fellows in the street, and there was a terrible 
 slamming of shop-doors and ground-floor windows. In a 
 moment the street was cleared of every living thing except 
 the dog a monstrous yellow brute, as big as a bull, that is, 
 a small-sized bull ; and one of my men Bill Stebbins by 
 name a little chap about five feet high, but a sailor every 
 inch of him. I saw by his weather roll that he had shipped a 
 little botega, and hadn't got it very well stowed, but with all 
 that, he was, for ' a Jack-ashore,' in pretty good trim. The 
 people on the balconies shouted to him to fly save himself, 
 or the dog would kill him. Bill couldn't understand them ; 
 he continued to work his way right up the centre of the street 
 towards the dog. When he came within reach of my voice I 
 hailed him by name, and told him to look sharp or the dog 
 would be upon him. ' Dog ? ' he cried, looking up, and see 
 ing the animal for the first time. ' Dog ? dog be damned ; is 
 that all that these yellow-faced lubbers are making such a 
 fuss about ? ' At that moment the dog got sight of him, and 
 with a deep growl of rage rushed to the attack. Bill grasped 
 his tarpauling by its lining with his left hand, and threw him 
 self into a regular boxing attitude. The dog gave a dozen 
 monstrous jumps down the street, and then one terrific bound 
 directly at his throat. A shudder of excitement fairly shook 
 the crowded balconies. As a senorita said to me afterwards, 
 ' it was delightful ; we all expected him to be torn instantly 
 to pieces ; it was better than a bull-fight.' As the dog sprang 

 
 90 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 into the air, Bill received him with his tarpaulin on his left 
 hand, and at the same instant struck him an upward blow 
 right under the lower jaw that knocked him completely over 
 on to his back. ' First knock down for me,' shouted Bill. 
 ' Time, you lubber ! ' And time it was ; for the dog, recover 
 ing his feet, instantly made another spring. Again the tar 
 paulin was thrust at his mouth", and another blow right under 
 his jaw given with still more force, turned him once more 
 over on to his back with his big paws quivering in the air. 
 Before he could recover himself Bill rushed at him, and with 
 his foot gave him a heavy stern-lifter. ' There, take that, you 
 lubber,' he shouted; 'foul is fair in a dog-fight.' This last 
 indignity was too much for Senor Pero. He got himself on 
 to his legs, rushed up the street amid the shouting and hoot 
 ing of the people, and slunk into his kennel. I guess if you 
 had asked that evening the name of the hero of Corunna, you 
 couldn't have found a beggar in town who would have thought 
 of Sir John Moore. Now the world, Luther, is just like that 
 big yellow dog. If you stand up to it square and true, strike 
 out strong and hearty, knock it down, and especially if you 
 can contrive to give it a good kick or two after it is down, it 
 will fetch and carry for you like a trained poodle ; but if you 
 get frightened, and let it once get you under, you may be sure 
 
 it will worry you." 
 
 ***** 
 
 " Where there's a will there's a way ! " exclaimed Luther. 
 Alas ! What a pity that so many proverbs should be thorough 
 hybrids half truth and half falsehood. The adage, how 
 ever, encouraged him, and he devoted himself in earnest to 
 his task. Dry goods shops and groceries, wholesale and re 
 tail jobbers, shipping merchants, brokers of every class, with 
 ship-chandlers and slop-shops all were successively applied 
 to, but in all cases he was either too late, or too old, or too 
 young, or too something-or-other, for the place. 
 
 He called at the post-office and found a long and affec 
 tionate letter from his mother. She had heard of the acci 
 dent on the river, and of the lucky escape of the crew of the
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 9 1 
 
 
 sloop. Her own health was worse, and John's temper and 
 manner more surly and disagreeable than ever, but she did 
 not care for anything, she said, so long as her darling Luther 
 was doing well. Captain Combings had, according to his prom 
 ise, paid her a visit. His account had encouraged her hopes 
 of her dear boy's ultimate success, and she congratulated him 
 upon his prospects, which she had great confidence had already 
 become realities. 
 
 Luther could not answer this letter he could not tell her 
 of the miserable failure that had attended all his efforts. In 
 fact he could hardly bear to read it the second time, it sounded 
 so much like mockery of his crude plans and foolish hopes. 
 
 His money was all gone, and there was a week's board 
 due. No criminal condemned to the gallows ever endured a 
 week of greater mental torture. He could not eat, not alone 
 because he had no appetite, but because he felt that every 
 mouthful was a theft a fraud upon his confiding landlady. 
 He could not sleep, or if he did, it was to dream of a terrible 
 hob-goblin clothed in a dress of dirty bank-notes, with a tail 
 fashioned like that of a kite out of a long string of unpaid 
 bills, and shaking an empty purse as he danced upon his la 
 boring breast. He began to fall off in flesh, the bloom of 
 high health was beginning to fade from his cheek. 
 
 The Rev. Dr. Droney eyed him suspiciously, and finally 
 took it upon himself to advise him not to be led into tempta 
 tion, but to keep the example of that good, worthy man, 
 Washington, ever before him. "Look at Proverbs, chap. i. 
 ver. 10, young man, and let the text sink into your heart." 
 
 Mrs. Lasher advised him to try homoeopathy, especially 
 when she found, upon inquiry, that he had not slept much for 
 two or three nights. " Caffein is the thing one drop in a 
 tumbler of water, and take a teaspoonful every half hour. It 
 works like a charm. Why, I was very wakeful the other night, 
 and I had to take nearly a whole tumbler full, but towards 
 morning it put me into such a sound sleep I didn't hear the 
 breakfast bell." 
 
 " Ah, but I have the remedy," interposed Mr. Stichen.
 
 92 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " Some nasty allopathic drug, I suppose," said Mrs. 
 Lasher. 
 
 " No, mine is an external application," replied Mr.Stichen. 
 
 " But not being able to go to sleep is internal," retorted 
 Mrs. Lasher. 
 
 " Just so," said Mr. Stichen, " that's my principle exactly 
 all internal diseases ought to be treated externally, and all 
 external diseases internally." 
 
 " Well, there is something in that," rejoined Mrs. Lasher; 
 " it sounds reasonable, and besides, it coincides with what 
 Doctor Quackenhummer said to me at our last biological 
 soiree. You don't know the doctor, do you ? Well, you ought 
 to ; he is so lucid, only he don't speak English very plainly. 
 He was at first a disciple of Hahnemann, but he has got way 
 beyond his master. He said to me : ' Madame, de grand 
 principe of dat great man, similia similibus, is von of de finest 
 tings of de human mind, but I have make von discovery ten 
 tousand times more fine, 'tis vat I call de vice-varsity of na 
 ture.' Now, that agrees with what you say of the externality 
 of internalisms, and the internalism of externalities. Hut 
 what is your remedy in cases when the cerebellum evinces a 
 decided repugnance to the somnific state ? " 
 
 " Nothing more simple, madam ; shirts is the thing." 
 
 " Shirts ! " 
 
 " Yes, ma'am, shirts. I have a dozen shirts lying by my 
 bedside. W 7 hen I can't sleep I hop out of bed and change 
 my shirt ; and I do that every half hour, until I either fall 
 asleep or go through the whole dozen." 
 
 " Very remarkable and original ! " exclaimed Dr. Droney. 
 
 " Neither one nor the other," said Mr. Whoppers, who had 
 just entered the room. " Stichen hops out of bed and hops 
 into a fresh shirt : now it is neither wonderful or new that 
 hops should produce sleep." 
 
 Despite these various prescriptions, Luther grew worse ; 
 an explanation could not be long delayed ; it was a relief 
 when it came. The actual is seldom so distressing or so diffi 
 cult to bear as fancy represents it
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 93 
 
 His good-natured landlady took it much more quietly than 
 he had expected. She had become used to such things, and 
 this was only one week's board, besides youth and good looks 
 counted for something on the credit side in the books of 
 dressy,fussy, but tender-hearted Miss de Belvoir Jones. 
 
 With a promise to pay her as soon as he could get the 
 money, he took his carpet-bag in his hand and walked into 
 the street. Penniless ! friendless ! homeless ! he knew 
 not which way to direct his steps. Instinctively he turned up 
 into Broadway, and stood for a while gazing on the stream of 
 life as it rolled by. And what more striking object of con 
 templation than the active, bustling, hustling crowd of people 
 thronging the great thoroughfare of a great city? 
 
 " As with like haste to several ways they run, 
 Some to undo, and some to be undone." 
 
 Abstract yourself, and drop for a moment a sense of your 
 own immediate relations, whatever they may be, to the crowd, 
 the scene is funny and grotesque, or mean and pitiable, or 
 grand and solemn one or all, as you may choose to view it. 
 What a grand flux and reflux of life, or what a pitiful whirl 
 of miserable individualities what a bubbling and seething 
 of divers contemptible interests and motives, or what a strik 
 ing display of excited and elevated activities ! and from all 
 what a strong conviction arises of a great natural law, or 
 laws, in obedience to which the apparently independent mem 
 bers of the confused mass move and halt, and talk, and ges 
 ticulate and laugh and cry, and tumble down and pick them 
 selves up again, and repeat, over and over, in exactly the 
 same proportion, the accidents, the motions, the looks, the 
 feelings and the sentiments of yesterday and to-morrow. 
 
 As the crowd rolled by, many directed their eyes towards 
 him some with a slight expression of surprise or curiosity ; 
 but none stopped to ask him a question or to offer any assist 
 ance. All seemed to be too busy or too happy to heed him. 
 A feeling of bitterness arose in his heart, but his better judg 
 ment checked it, though not without effort. How could they
 
 94 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 know his distress, and if they did, were there not other objects 
 better deserving their compassion ? Besides, how did he 
 know that under that gay exterior there were not hearts ach 
 ing with deeper griefs than his own ? 
 
 But what to do ? which way to turn ? where to go ? 
 Alas ! how many young men have been in a similar condition, 
 and without Luther's excuses? Deluded by a false estimate 
 of city life, allured from perhaps pleasant homes or from set 
 tled situations in the country by ridiculous notions of the 
 ease and certainty with which fortune is won in town, they 
 expect, with feeble will, small capacity for work, and no spec 
 ial talent, to succeed in a struggle which taxes the energies of 
 the best-endowed for merely a bare existence. And how 
 many, too, having once made the mistake, instead of returning 
 to the abundant work of the country, hold on to the very 
 verge 'of despair, supported only by 
 
 " An esperance so obstinately strong 
 That doth invert the attest of eyes and ears." 
 
 Corrupted and enfeebled by the baser influences of city life, 
 they surrender energy and will to 
 
 " Hope, the fawning traitor of the mind 
 Which, while it cozzens with a color'd friendship, 
 Robs us of our best virtue resolution." 
 
 If, however, utterly dissatisfied with home, where, as Petru- 
 chio says, "but small experience grows," our country youth 
 feel "the wind that scatters young men through the world," 
 too strongly to be resisted ; better they set their sails for a 
 far western course, and seek for newer fields. Padua is as 
 old as " old Verona," and as over-filled with starving people. 
 
 Luther thought of his fair acquaintance of the steamboat, 
 no unfrequent thought with him, and of the firm of Ledg- 
 eral, Shippen & Co. " No ! never ! " he exclaimed. " I have 
 said it, and I will stick to it !" Pride, false and foolish as it 
 most always is, gave temporary vigor to his resolution, and he 
 instantly closed his heart to the suggestion. 
 
 With equal firmness he rejected the impulse to return
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 95 
 
 to his mother. He knew that he could easily beg a passage 
 up the river on some sloop, or if he found any difficulty in 
 doing so, that he could make the journey on foot in a couple 
 of days. But he could not reconcile himself to the idea of 
 returning to his brother's rule, and still less of announcing in 
 person to his mother the failure of his plans. 
 
 Instinctively his steps turned towards the sailor boarding- 
 house in West Street, where, with Captain Combings, he had 
 at first lodged. The landlord received him very graciously, 
 and kindly insisted that he should again take up his residence 
 with him, although Luther frankly owned that his pockets 
 were empty, and that he knew not when they would be replen 
 ished. He gladly accepted the landlord's offer of a bed, re 
 solving that he would pick up his meals out of the house, or 
 go without eating, sooner than trench further upon the worthy 
 man's hospitality. 
 
 During the night a brilliant idea occurred to him. He 
 would canvass, personally, the whole business portion of the 
 city. He would inquire and press his inquiries with all prope: 
 persistence, at every store, shop, and office. Something must 
 come of it according to the doctrine of chances. 
 
 He arose with a light heart, but, unluckily, with a light 
 stomach too. The sun was shining brightly, his level rays 
 lifting the mist-veils from the surface of the river, and pack 
 ing them away amid the other finer}' of nature in upper cloud- 
 land. A row of huge black ships, stretched up and down on 
 either hand, their well slushed spars and blackened cordage 
 gleaming in the morning light in all the glistening glories of 
 fresh coats of grease, tar, and black paint. The streets and 
 bordering quays began to be alive with a bustling crowd of 
 sailors, stevedores, riggers, porters, draymen and custom 
 house officers. Everything looked lively, cheerful, and in 
 spiriting. 
 
 Luther dressed himself carefully, ate a piece of ship-bis 
 cuit for his breakfast, and began his preambulations in one 
 of the principal business streets. He called at every door on 
 one side of the street, but with no success. Somewhat dis-
 
 9 6 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 heartened he took the other side, and went through it in like 
 manner. The answer was invariably a prompt negative. 
 Faint and hungry he stepped into two or three bar-rooms, and, 
 pretending to look at the papers, siddled up to the bar, and 
 helped himself to small pieces of cracker and cheese placed 
 there for the bibulous customers. It was not a very wicked 
 thing to do, but it was a meanness that, a week ago, he would 
 have scouted as impossible. Pinching poverty had begun its 
 demoralizing work. More than a hundred places he called 
 at that day. 
 
 The next day he arose and began again ; but with no bet 
 ter fortune. The next day and the next went in the same 
 way, and with them went all confidence in the success of his 
 scheme. Every possible mode of earning a livelihood seemed 
 to be closed against him. 
 
 He stopped at the door of a blacksmith's shop : the 
 sparks were flying merrily from a piece of iron on the anvil ; 
 as it cooled, the vigorous blows of the smith subsided into a 
 gentle tapping, until at length he rested his hammer upon the 
 anvil and looked up. 
 
 " Do you want any one to blow and strike ? " demanded 
 Luther. 
 
 " Well, I don't know," replied the smith ; " what kind of .a 
 chap is he ? " 
 
 " I want the situation myself," said Luther. 
 
 " You ! " exclaimed the man with a laugh. " No, I guess 
 we don't want any such slick-looking, nicely-dressed fellows 
 as you. A tack hammer would be better for you than a 
 sledge, I expect. A blacksmith's shop ain't no place for 
 young dandies ; you ought to be behind a counter selling rib 
 bons and tape you had." 
 
 Luther turned away without another word. He was faint 
 from want of something to eat. He went on a block or two, 
 when he spied in the gutter the half of a ship-biscuit. He 
 looked around cautiously : no one whom he could see was 
 observing him, and stooping, he quickly picked up the frag 
 ment, and, wrapping it in his handkerchief, thrust it into
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 97 
 
 his pocket. He again looked around, when he perceived that 
 from the window of a neighboring counting-room his motions 
 had been observed by a large, dressy, good-looking young 
 man, who made a gesture indicating a desire to speak with 
 him. Luther was too much ashamed and confused to heed 
 him, and turning away he hurried rapidly along the street. 
 As reflection came to him, he was sorry that he had not re 
 plied to the inviting gesture, but it was too late. Who of us 
 have not felt at times that, by some sudden act of caprice, 
 passion, or negligence, we have turned a sharp corner of des 
 tiny, and forever left behind us an avenue that might have led 
 to something a something which a vanity will seldom allow 
 fancy to paint otherwise than in very brilliant and enchanting 
 colors ? Alas ! for those might-have-been conditions those 
 if-I-had-only-done-so-and-so possibilities with which we have 
 all felt and still feel ourselves so closely surrounded. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Luther's pride was now pretty well subdued, and during 
 a long and wakeful night he pondered the propriety of mak 
 ing an application to the father of his young steamboat 
 acquaintance. Upon duly considering the matter he concluded 
 that it would not be useful for him to apply in person. Mr. 
 Leclgeral would hardly recollect him, and if he did, he would 
 not be likely to feel, Luther thought, specially prompted by the 
 remembrance to any very vigorous action in his behalf. It 
 would be best, then, to make the application in writing. That 
 would be some little testimony to his abilities, and be more 
 likely to ensure some attention if not from the great man 
 himself, at least from his subordinates or deputies. 
 
 As soon as it was light, he arose and proceeded to draft a 
 letter in pencil upon the back of an old theatre bill, but -after 
 altering and realtering it in almost every line, he suddenly 
 changed his mind, and decided to write to the young lady 
 herself. Once on the inclined plane of self-humiliation, he 
 was not one to stop short of the bottom. But if writing to 
 the father was difficult, writing to the daughter was next door 
 to an impossibility. Having, however, once conceived the 
 7
 
 98 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 idea, he was determined to carry it out. Repeated trials and 
 repeated failures did not deter him. He knew that he had 
 the ability to write a fitting note. A dim consciousness of 
 the artistic instinct that instinct that hunts out, through the 
 mazes of words or the mazes of form and color, the exact 
 and proper expression stirred within him. He felt that, if 
 he only worked long enough and hard enough, he should at 
 length succeed in so weighing every word and phrase, and so 
 qualifying and arranging them, that his note should be artis 
 tically, whatever its result, just the thing. If he starved to 
 death, he would starve with the conviction that he had not 
 written a ridiculous and feeble note to her. 
 
 Luther thought of the enraged artist, who, having worked 
 for a long time in vain on a picture, threw his brush full of 
 paint at the canvas, and at once achieved the desired effect. 
 
 " Decidedly," he exclaimed aloud, " the man of colors has 
 an advantage over the artist in words. I might serve my 
 paper as my great namesake did the devil, and throw a full 
 inkstand without any chance of hitting the right expression. 
 There, that will do it must do ! " and wearily he read over, 
 for the fiftieth time, the amended and rewritten and trans 
 formed draft : 
 
 " Miss Ledgeral will undoubtedly recollect an incident which occur 
 red on the Hudson some six weeks since : the running down and sinking 
 of a sloop by the steamboat on which Miss Ledgeral was a passenger. 
 She will, perhaps, also recollect a person who was rescued from the sinking 
 sloop, and whom she honored with a few words of conversation, and an 
 offer of assistance in case of need. Friendless, homeless, penniless, and 
 utterly dispirited at the ill-success attending every effort to procure em 
 ployment, Luther Lansdale ventures to remind Miss Ledgeral of her kind 
 offer, and to beg her influence with the head of the firm of Ledgeral, 
 fchippen & Co., to which firm he is going to apply for employment of 
 some kind. He knows, from, his recent disheartening but conclusive ex 
 perience, the futility of making any such application unless Miss Ledg 
 eral exerts her influence in his favor. He knows, however, his ability to 
 make himself in time useful in various ways, and his willingness to make 
 the attempt in any situation, however humble, and however laborious, 
 and he knows, above all things, his determination to do no dishonor to 
 Miss Ledgeral's recommendation.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 99 
 
 " Hoping that Miss Ledgeral will recall to mind her earnest kind 
 ness of tone and manner at the time of the accident, and that, however 
 uninterested she may now feel, and however indisposed to take any 
 notice of this note, she will not deem it wholly unwarranted or presump 
 tuous, the writer begs leave to subscribe himself 
 
 " Her very humble servant, 
 
 Luther having carefully copied his letter in his best hand, 
 on a sheet of paper borrowed from his landlord, set out to 
 deliver it in person. Arrived at Washington Square, his 
 courage failed him. He passed and repassed the house a 
 dozen times walked around the square repeatedly, and took 
 short excursions up the streets leading into it. He had eaten 
 nothing for two days but the piece of cracker he had picked 
 up in the gutter. He felt very faint by turns, and soon grew 
 very tired. Two or three times he had to stop and hold on 
 to the park railings, pretending the while to be very much in 
 terested in the gambols of the children who were at play 
 within. At length, utterly exhausted, he seated himself upon 
 the stone foundation of the iron railing. His heart was cold 
 and as heavy as lead. He could feel each one of its feeble 
 and reluctant pulsations. His head ached and throbbed with 
 an occasional swimming sensation, as if about to whirl itself 
 round and sail away from his shoulders. . 
 
 Suddenly he started to his feet. His mental hesita 
 tion was at an end. Imagination had done her worst. He 
 might die perhaps of starvation, but he would not be fright 
 ened to death by the vague terrors of his own vagabond 
 fancy. He crossed the street, ascended the steps, and rang 
 the bell. 
 
 The door was opened by an old colored man, in a white 
 neck-cloth and a glossy and rather voluminous suit of black. 
 An embodiment of so much African dignity would have been 
 overwhelming, had it not been modified by a benignant smile 
 and an impressive courtly courteousness of manner. 
 
 " Is Miss Ledgeral at home ? " demanded Luther. 
 
 " Miss Ledgeral, sar ! Miss Ledgeral am gwine out ob 
 town wid her mudder," replied the sen-ant ; " but," he added,
 
 ioo NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 seeing Luther's look of dismay, and the increasing pallor of 
 his cheek, " Miss Helen Ledgeral is at home ; mabbe she'll 
 attend to any communercation." 
 
 " Miss Helen Ledgeral ! " Here was a dilemma. Was 
 it Miss Helen Ledgeral that he wanted ? How stupid in him 
 not to think that she might have sisters, and that in writing 
 to a young lady it was very necessary to know her name. 
 
 The negro held the door invitingly open, and almost 
 unconsciously Luther entered the hall. 
 
 " I don't know that is, am not sure," he stammered out, 
 at the same time grasping the hat-stand to steady himself, 
 " but I thought that is, I have a letter for a young lady that 
 was on the steamboat " 
 
 " Look 'ere, young man," exclaimed the old negro, sud 
 denly assuming a very stern tone, " I tink you tink dis pussan 
 a fool, eh ? You shake your head ' No,' den you make a 
 great mistake to tink dis house am a steamboat a mistake 
 which is excusible only upon de supposishum dat you have 
 gotten de steam up too high here, sar ! " and the old fellow 
 frowned and touched his forehead with his finger emphati 
 cally. 
 
 Luther tried to make some reply, but his tongue failed 
 him, he could only extend his hand with the letter. At that 
 instant a lithe female figure darted from the parlor, crossed 
 the hall, and bounded up the stairs, two steps at a time, in 
 the very watonness of youthful agility. There was a mist 
 creeping over Luther's eyes, and the gaslight in the hall was 
 not burning very brightly, but he recognized at a glance the 
 cloud of golden ringlets which he had seen but once before, 
 and then only in curl papers. 
 
 Half way up the stairs the young girl paused, and turned 
 upon hearing the voices at the door. 
 
 " What is that, Joseph ? a parcel for me ? " 
 
 " No, Miss Helen, 'tis a young man dat has got a letter 
 for somebody in a steamboat. But oh lor ! what is de mat 
 ter!" exclaimed Joseph, as Luther sank senseless to the floor.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral in his Study The Editor Disturbs Him A Valuable 
 Report Helen's Appeal to her Father Luther's Letter Joseph's 
 Predictions A Sailor's Yarn Luther's Poetry A Double Metaphor. 
 
 MR. LEDGERAL sat in his study, the very impersona 
 tion of genteel respectability. There were the two or 
 three carved book-cases, filled with handsomely-bound vol 
 umes ; there was the walnut cloth-covered table, loaded with 
 the largest kind of bronze ink-stand and pen-rack, besides 
 portfolio, manuscripts, maps, engravings, and books of refer 
 ence ; there were the two inevitable globes, handsomely 
 mounted on rosewood stands ; there were the red and green 
 curtains, and the green and red carpet small pattern, rich, 
 but not gaudy the genuine library tone ; there were a 
 couple of vases of porcelain, not beautiful, but valuable from 
 having once belonged to the dowager-duchess of Sax-Graen- 
 ingen, and the curious circumstances under which they came 
 into the possession of their owner; and over the mantel 
 piece there were several small pictures regular gems of the 
 old masters picked up by the greatest good luck, twenty 
 years ago, out of some old neglected rubbish in a shop just 
 around the corner of the first street to the right as you come 
 out of the museum of Dresden ; one by Raphael a female 
 with a simper of excessive purity on her face, and an un 
 dressed infant in her arms was evidently a Madonna and 
 child ; in fact, no one ever disputed its being a Madonna and 
 child. Another was a Magdalen by Guido. Guido did occa 
 sionally paint Magdalens, you know, and this is one of them j 
 and a third is just as clearly a Carlo Dolci. No one could
 
 102 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 doubt, with that charming lilac tint : every picture he ever 
 painted has it, you know. 
 
 Amid his books and pictures, in a capacious, patent ellip 
 tical, spring-bottomed, morocco-covered arm-chair, sat Mr. 
 Leclgeral, the picture of elegant respectability, or if not a pic 
 ture, a very pretty study for a picture of that estimable quali 
 ty, could he have been seen and sketched by some artist of 
 an allegoric turn of mind. Down in his counting-room, in 
 Burling Slip, or in the bank-parlor in Wall Street, the study 
 would have been one simply of moneyed respectability. He 
 would hardly have been content to sit for that. He would 
 have felt that old Rhindergelt would do as well, or better, 
 especiaHy as old Rhindergelt had the most money, and was 
 likely to have more, "having never," as he told Mr. Ledgeral 
 one day, " wasted a dollar on a potry-book, a picter, a stat 
 ute, or a mosaic." 
 
 Lolling in his carriage, perhaps with Madame at his side, 
 half buried in an overflowing flood of silk flounces ; coach 
 man and footman in dark blue ; crest on harness and panel, 
 and a pair of thoroughbreds stepping as if playfully trying to 
 paw at their pole-straps ; or, seated at his own dinner-table, 
 surrounded by all the blazing glories of burnished silver, 
 bohemian glass, flowers, fruit, and spun sugar, the picture 
 would have been one of great elegance, it is true, but largely 
 of mere ostentatious and fashionable respectability. Now Mr. 
 Ledgeral had too much ambition for mere moneyed respecta 
 bility, too much taste and mental cultivation for mere fashion 
 able respectability. Foreign travel, some knowledge of the 
 world, a little desultory reading, combined with that kind of 
 imperfect half-and-half education that teaches a man a good 
 deal, but that utterly prevents him from knowing how much 
 he don't know, had had the customary and legitimate effect, 
 and generated a creditable amount of dogmatic dilettanteism, 
 and a decided inclination towards an elevated, elegant, cul 
 tured respectability. And that was the picture he would have 
 made had Hicks, or Baker, or Huntingdon been at hand, as 
 he sat amid his books, papers, and pictures, in his patent 
 elliptical, spring-bottomed, morroco-covered arm-chair.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 103 
 
 More than twenty years had passed since we first saw him 
 at Baden, but notwithstanding those years had had their cares 
 and troubles and labors, he was still comparatively a young- 
 looking man a little more portliness, a few wrinkles, and a 
 sparsity of hair on the crown, that the most assiduous train 
 ing of the side locks could hardly conceal, were almost the 
 only marks that he exhibited to his casual acquaintances of 
 his manful contest with Time. No, not the only marks. 
 There were those impertinent white hairs which will intrude 
 themselves so wonderfully early into the most luxuriant whis 
 kers, and which, when there is plenty of red in the complexion, 
 are not, perhaps, unbecoming. These he made no effort to 
 conceal, contrary to the advice of Mr. Whoppers, who was 
 always ready with his advice, no matter how delicate the sub 
 ject. " Why don't you dye ? " said that gentleman to him one 
 day. " I would, if I were you. You know it is only weak 
 and demoralized nations that yield to the first attack of the 
 invader." 
 
 Madame D'Okenheime, now, could she have suddenly 
 seen him, would probably have discovered much greater 
 changes. She would have had the advantage of comparing 
 him with himself then and now, untrammelled by the sha 
 ding and confusing influence of daily observation, and would 
 not only have been struck by the physical marks of advan 
 cing age, but would, also, have been able to detect many 
 slight and undefined changes of expression that just as 
 clearly indicate the wear and tear of time upon the soul. 
 
 And this observation brings us naturally and directly to 
 the subject of the pleasant thoughts that, to judge from the 
 half-formed smile on his lips, were floating through his mind. 
 He was thinking of that sunny time at Baden ; of those de 
 lightful walks by the banks of the Oose ; of his fair compan 
 ion in those walks, who had so suddenly disappeared from his 
 passionate gaze, and to whose place of retreat, or possible 
 fate, his most diligent researches had been able to discover 
 no clue. Pleasant memories no doubt, but very wrong in a 
 married man, a father of a family, and a member of the
 
 104 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 church. He felt that they were very wrong, and a hundred 
 times he had resolved to banish them entirely. He perhaps 
 would have succeeded in doing so had not his curiosity been 
 continually piqued by a mystery that he could not solve. 
 What had become of her? Why did she leave Baden so sud 
 denly, for Basle, without bidding him good-bye ? Why, at 
 Basle, could he find no trace of her? Had the aroused 
 jealousy of her husband anything to do with her disappear 
 ance ? If so, what had been her fate, and why had he never 
 been able to find any German who knew anything of the 
 family or name ? 
 
 He, could not answer these questions, and so, despite a 
 sense of propriety, and marital duty, and the prickings of a 
 conscience, stirred up to a weekly qui vive by the exhortations 
 of the pious and fashionable rector of St. Cyprians, and not 
 withstanding a tolerably clear conviction that the secret pride 
 many excellent men take in certain kinds of by-gone and re- 
 pented-of sin, adds no great unction to the " Good Lord de 
 liver us " of the penitent, he could not help chewing the cud 
 of recollection, and occasionally rolling the sweet morsel 
 under his tongue. 
 
 He arose, and taking a bunch of keys from his pocket, 
 selected one that opened an inner drawer of his writing-table. 
 From this drawer he took out an old and well-worn pocket- 
 book, and from the pocket-book a tress of fine silky light- 
 brown hair. He held it up between his eye and the window, 
 through which streamed the reddish light of the setting sun. 
 He watched, lost in thought, the gleams of the secret, hardly 
 suspected ruby-shades that, secure in their auburn cover from 
 the attacks of reflected light, were compelled to come out 
 from their hiding-places by the more powerful and penetra 
 ting transmitted rays. While engaged in this interesting oc 
 cupation, the door was suddenly opened, and the Editor of 
 the New York Universe was ushered into the room. 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral started. His first impulse was to conceal 
 the tress of hair, but seeing who his visitor was, he changed 
 his mind, and, while returning Mr. Whoppers' salutation,
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 105 
 
 deliberately proceeded to fold up the ringlet in its paper en 
 velope, and return it to the recesses of the old pocket-book. 
 
 " You are late," exclaimed Mr. Ledgeral ; " I have finished 
 dinner, and have been expecting you this half hour." 
 
 " Couldn't help it," replied Mr. Whoppers, in a familiar, 
 free-and-easy tone. " Couldn't find an uncrowded omnibus, 
 and had to knock my feet against the curb-stone of Fulton 
 Street for twenty minutes. But I see you had something to 
 amuse you ; sorry to disturb your after-dinner musings ; study 
 ing Locke, eh ? Mrs. Ledgeral has brown hair, I believe. 
 But, my dear sir, light tress or dark tress, don't let what I say 
 or saw distress you." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral colored up a little, and looked for an in 
 stant somewhat confused. " Oh, pshaw, it was nothing but 
 an old lock of hair that I was looking at. Twenty years ago, 
 and more, it came of a little affaire de coeur I had when quite 
 a youngster, in Europe." 
 
 " Affair de cur ! Ah, yes, I see a dog-fight," said Mr. 
 Whoppers. 
 
 " A dog-fight ! " exclaimed Mr. Ledgeral, in a slightly in 
 dignant tone, which, however, was wholly unobserved by his 
 visitor. 
 
 " What else should it be ? An affair de eur, and in your 
 days of puppyhood, too. I suppose thereby hangs a tale ? " 
 
 " No, sir," said Mr. Ledgeral, still more stiffly ; " there is, 
 and was, no tale." 
 
 " No tale ! Why, sir, you are as bad off as the old knife- 
 grinder, or a Scotch terrier. But, perhaps, the tale was cut 
 short in your days of puppyhood, or may be bit off in the 
 affair de cur ha ! ha ! ha ! Good idea, that. I'll put it in the 
 next Universe." 
 
 Could the stately, elegant, fastidious, and somewhat re 
 served Mr. Ledgeral have had his own way, he would have 
 rung for a servant, and directed that Mr. Whoppers should be 
 shown to the street door. But there was an ambitious Mr. 
 Ledgeral that counselled differently, and there was an excess 
 ively vain Mr. Ledgeral that couldn't bear the idea of quar
 
 lo6 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 rolling with so useful a person as the editor of the New York 
 Universe, and one who had it in his power to take such 
 prompt revenge, not only in the pages of the Universe, but 
 in the columns of the daily press, with which he still sus 
 tained intimate relations. It was not, however, the mere fact 
 that Mr. Whoppers owned and edited a journal that gave 
 him his influence with Mr. Ledgeral. True, it was pleasant 
 for a vain man to see his name in print, even in a weekly 
 jourrial, and that not, perhaps, of the greatest circulation, in 
 connection with some laudatory notice of a report or set 
 of resolutions, or speech ; or with some allusion to mer 
 chant princes and citizens of the highest respectability ; or 
 with some editorial suggestion of the right kind of a candi 
 date upon whom all parties could unite their suffrages, for 
 Mayor, or Member of Congress, or State Senator. All this 
 is very pleasant and agreeable ; somewhat expensive, it is 
 true, but, if a gentleman will beg or buy his newspaper-fame 
 he must expect to pay for it in some form. 
 
 There were, however, other services much more important 
 than the editor of the Universe had it in his power to render. 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral had a great flow of ideas. He had ideas 
 of the highest importance upon all subjects, political, social, 
 literary, and artistic. His intellect rambled over every field 
 of human thought, except the purely scientific. In that, he 
 found the fences too high and straight, the hedges too stiff, 
 and the ditches too wide, and the troublesome stumps of 
 naked facts not unfrequently sticking themselves right up in 
 the path. He had also a great flow of words. He could talk by 
 the hour on his favorite topics ; but, somehow, when he came 
 to writing, his flow of ideas and his flow of words did not 
 combine happily. Like the currents of the Arve and Rhone, 
 the confluence was imperfect, or established with difficulty. 
 He could not write elegantly or clearly. Why it should be so, 
 he was puzzled to understand. He was desirous of writing 
 well. He had labored and studied to acquire the art of writ 
 ing well. It was important to the world and society that he 
 should write well, inasmuch as he had so many valuable
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 107 
 
 thoughts and suggestions to publish, and so many reports to 
 present of nominating, and building, and fund-raising com 
 mittees of the Historical, Geographical, and Ethnological As 
 sociations ; and many resolutions to draw, and speeches to 
 make for the societies of St. Nicholas, St. George, and St. 
 David, to say nothing of the Chamber of Commerce, and 
 Tammany Hall. Why couldn't he write well, and brilliantly, 
 and clearly? 
 
 "I'll tell you," said Mr. Whoppers, bluntly, "to write 
 clearly and brilliantly, a man must think clearly and bril 
 liantly." 
 
 "And do you mean to say that I don't think clearly? I 
 say nothing of brilliantly, but I will say, sir, clearly and cor 
 rectly," demanded Mr. Ledgeral, justly indignant that a man 
 whom he was treating to a lunch of Spanish mackerel and 
 Rudesheimer at Delmonico's should venture such a thrust at 
 his Amphitryon's vanity. Are not the ideas I give you to 
 work over perfectly clear ? " 
 
 Mr. Whoppers shut one eye, and rolled the other with a 
 cool, quizzical leer, from his glass of Rudesheimer to the face 
 of his entertainer. There was nothing of the parasite about 
 the editor of the Universe. He was always ready to eat his 
 dinner, provided it was a good one, with any one who would 
 pay for it ; or he was ever ready to pocket his pay for a puff or 
 first-rate notice ; but he was no sycophant. He had too high 
 a sense of his position for that. He felt that only a state of 
 habitual beneficent condescension enabled him to associate on 
 equal terms with fellows who couldn't write leading articles, 
 or dress up a sensational " to-be-continued," or make decent 
 puns. 
 
 " Ideas ! " exclaimed Mr. Whoppers, one day, in a tone 
 of careless effrontery, characteristic of the literary Bohemian. 
 " Ideas ! I never knew you to have any ideas at all few 
 people have ideas. Ghosts of ideas, sir, such as always stalk 
 round at dinner-tables, and haunt conversaziones and tea- 
 fights, people very generally mistake them for ideas ; but 
 they are nothing but ghosts of ideas, or at best, nothing but
 
 108 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 skeletons mere skeletons, nothing but bones, sir, and often 
 with the molities ossium at that. It requires sharp thinking to 
 fill 'em up with fat and flesh. Mere expression afterwards is 
 nothing. They hop into a coat of words and sentences as 
 naturally and as readily as if a dozen literary tailors had 
 been cutting up dictionaries on purpose." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral would not, and could not, admit the truth 
 of this ; but he found it useless to discuss the question with 
 such a dogmatic opponent. He continued to find ideas for 
 numerous reports and speeches, while Mr. Whoppers cut and 
 trimmed, and patched the brilliant rhetorical dresses in 
 which they figured before the world. 
 
 It would not do for the two to quarrel, and least of either 
 would it do for Mr. Ledgeral ; so, instead of ringing the bell 
 for a servant to show his visitor the door, he forced himself to 
 smile a little, in a mild way, at the terribly witty version of an 
 affaire de caeur, and at once reverted to the business 'which 
 was the object of Mr. Whoppers' visit. 
 
 "You have finished the report?" he demanded. Mr 
 Whoppers nodded, and produced from his pocket a roll of 
 manuscript, and the two were soon engrossed in the reading 
 and revision of a report upon the statistics of juvenile mud 
 larks and dock-wollopers ; with an inquiry into the relation 
 between exposed molasses-casks and sugar-hogsheads, and 
 the numbers, condition, and final fate of these youthful spec 
 imens of total depravity. " And your committee would re 
 spectfully suggest," read Mr. Whoppers, with increased unc 
 tion, as he came to the conclusion, " that the most active 
 measures be immediately taken to remove this great and 
 growing evil ; and they would recommend as a practical 
 measure of the highest importance, that the rising generation 
 of our pauper population should be at once taught the neces 
 sity and utility of settled habits of honest industry ; that they 
 should be made to see the disgusting deformity of idleness 
 and vice, and the beauties of virtue and holiness ; and that 
 they should be imbued, as rapidly as possible, with a taste for 
 the purer enjoyments and more refined pleasures of life."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 109 
 
 "That sounds well," exclaimed Mr. Ledgeral, as the 
 reader concluded. 
 
 "You flatter me," said Mr. Whoppers ; "the sound is mine, 
 but the sense is yours. I claim nothing but the sound, vox et 
 prcterca nihil." 
 
 The conversation was interrupted. The door was sud 
 denly flung open, when Miss Helen Ledgeral, with a gliding, 
 but impetuous step, came into the room. We will not stop to 
 describe her here, inasmuch as it will be necessary to do so 
 more fully further on, when, by some three years of efflorescent 
 force, the budding beauties of sixteen shall have been ripened 
 into all the luxuriant glories of confirmed womanhood. Helen 
 drew back for an instant, but seeing that the visitor was only 
 Mr. Whoppers, she simply subdued somewhat of her excited 
 manner, and advanced a little more quietly, but still with rapid 
 energy, towards her father. 
 
 " Oh ! father ! father ! " she exclaimed ; " you recollect 
 the young man whom we picked up out of the river that night 
 when the sloop was run down. Well, he's here, or rather, he 
 was here ; but he's gone now, and he fainted almost dead 
 away in the hall, and Joseph thought at first that he was 
 drunk ; but I knew that he wasn't drunk, and I ran and got 
 some water, and was going to throw it in his face ; but he 
 came to, and I made him drink the water, and then he thanked 
 me. Oh, you should see him ; such a gentlemanly way, and 
 well dressed, too ! He doesn't look at all as he did that 
 night on the steamboat. He's grown so thin and pale, and 
 Joseph says that he wishes now he'd got him a glass of wine, 
 for he thinks that perhaps he was faint for want of something 
 to eat ; and I wish so, too, only I know he wouldn't have taken 
 it; but I do wish Joseph had got it for him, and if I had only 
 thought of it, he might have got him some of the meringues 
 and some charlotte-russe. The dinner-things have not all been 
 cleared away, and there is a whole form that we didn't touch." 
 " Well, well, tell us what this young gentleman came for 
 not merely to renew his acquaintance with you, I hope," 
 said Mr. Ledgeral.
 
 no NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " That is just what I was going to tell you. He came 
 here to leave this letter, and he did not intend to come in, but 
 he thought that Joseph said I was not in town, and while 
 talking about it he grew faint. Oh, father, you must do some 
 thing for him ! Read the letter, and promise me, promise me 
 that you will find a situation for him. I don't care what, 
 if it's nice. He wants to make a large fortune as soon as 
 possible, and I want that he should." 
 
 " Fortunate youth to have such an advocate," said Mr. 
 Whoppers. " What had he to offer as a retainer good looks, 
 eh ? Ah ! Miss Helen, look out, or rather, look in ; take care 
 and read your Wordsworth 
 
 " ' He was a lovely youth, I guess, 
 The panther in the wilderness 
 
 Was not so fair as he. 
 And when he chose to sport and play, 
 No dolphin ever was so gay 
 
 Upon the tropic sea.' " 
 
 " Oh, you are laughing at me, Mr. Whoppers, but you are 
 right, too. I am a good advocate, for I'll tell you what I'll do 
 if papa don't promise I'll put on my hat and run right 
 around to Uncle Shippen. I can do anything with Uncle 
 Shippen. You may laugh, but I can make him do anything 
 I please." 
 
 " I don't doubt it, Miss Helen ; I've no doubt that beneath 
 your smile his very purse-strings would relax, to say nothing 
 of his heart-strings. He'd be a harder old codger than I 
 think he is, if he did not yield to such influences." 
 
 " You mean a compliment to me, I suppose, Mr. Whop 
 pers, but I won't thank you for it, if you call Uncle Shippen 
 an old codger," exclaimed Helen. 
 
 Mr. Whoppers was beginning to apologize in a mocking 
 tone, when he was cut short by Mr. Ledgeral. 
 
 " What do you think of that ? " said he, tossing Luther's 
 letter across the table ; " it seems to me uncommonly well 
 expressed." 
 
 Mr. Whoppers took the letter, and ran his eye over it
 
 NEVER AGAIN. IH 
 
 " Luther Lansdale ! " he exclaimed ; " why, I believe I know 
 the youngster." 
 
 " Oh, that is so nice ! " exclaimed Helen. " Papa, Mr. 
 Whoppers knows him. Now you must do something for him ; 
 he is an intimate friend of Mr. Whoppers. You're sure you 
 know him ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Whoppers ; " he is, or was, a few days 
 since, a fellow-boarder of mine. I did not get very well ac 
 quainted with him, but I liked what little I saw of him, very 
 much. If you will commission me, sir, and you, Miss Helen, 
 I will hunt him up, and give him some encouragement. Poor 
 fellow, I shouldn't wonder if he wanted something more than 
 money or occupation, and that is a kind word ah ! I've 
 known what the want of that is, myself." 
 
 " Oh, delightful ! thank you ! thank you ! you must, papa, 
 agree to that. Let Mr. Whoppers see him, and tell him that 
 there is a place for him in your counting-room, and that you 
 will give him six hundred ; no, eight hundred ; no, a thousand 
 dollars a year." 
 
 "Pshaw! Helen, you are talking about what you don't 
 know anything about. But we'll see we'll see ; go now, my 
 dear, and tell Joseph to bring in tea." 
 
 Joseph was shuffling about the hall, as if engaged in his 
 usual duties, but in reality waiting anxiously for the result of 
 the conference in the library. 
 
 "Ki! Missy Helen! Did yer succeed in yer applumca- 
 tion ? " 
 
 "Oh, yes, he's going to have a place." 
 
 " Well, dat's good. I like de looks ob dat young man. 
 He looks furs rate. He ain't none ob yer common sort. And 
 he's gwine to hab a place in de old store ; and you got it for 
 him, eh ? " 
 
 Joseph paused, and laid his finger alongside of his nose, 
 and shut one eyej and otherwise assumed a highly reflective 
 attitude. 
 
 " I tell ye what, Missy Helen, dar'll be a conserquence, dar 
 will. Dat young man is gwine to fall in lub wid you, he is."
 
 112 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 "Oh, go along, you old goose, and get father's tea," re 
 plied Helen, entering the parlor and closing the door. 
 
 " Yes, I is an old goose. I was born in her gandfader's 
 house fifteen year before her fader, and I guess I'm old 
 enough to calkelate how the young gosling's gwine to act. 
 Jess as likely as not, she'll fall in lub, herself; 'cause you see, 
 honey, when a young gal does someting bery important for a 
 feller, she tinks she must go and do ebbery ting. Dat's de 
 femernine. But den," continued Joseph, as he commenced 
 arranging two cups on a small tray, "perhaps dey won't have 
 much chance to do any damage ; dey won't be togedder much. 
 But if dey was, I wouldn't like to bet on it ; and he nothing 
 but a clerk! Ha, ha ! wouldn't her mudder flop about some, 
 eh ? I guess ; " and the old man put down his tray for a 
 minute, to indulge in a hearty chuckle at the absurdity of the 
 idea. 
 
 " You'll take tea, Mr. Whoppers ? " asked Mr. Ledgeral, as 
 Joseph entered the library. " You won't ! Why, what is your 
 hurry ? Stop and take a cup. You decline ? " 
 
 " Teatotally ! " ejaculated Mr. Whoppers. 
 
 " Well, then, find that young man, and I'll see you about 
 him to-morrow." 
 
 " He has given his address, I see, in this letter." I'll find 
 him, and I'll tell him that he has made a first-rate shot: he 
 aimed at the little chicken, and hit the old cock, too. If he is 
 as clever at the pistol as he is at the epistle, eh ? " 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral was left alone in his study, musing over 
 Luther's letter. "Very well expressed, indeed," he muttered, 
 half aloud; "just enough to the point, and nothing super 
 fluous. Confound that Whoppers, with his insolence and his 
 disgusting puns ; I have half a mind to get rid of him. I be 
 lieve I will do so. However, I cannot part with him just yet ; " 
 and Mr. Ledgeral mused for some time in silence. The fact 
 was he rather liked the editor of the Universe, after all ; if he 
 hadn't such a free-and-easy way with him, he would have quite 
 liked him. He was certainly not decidedly vulgar, and inso 
 lence was, maybe, a hard word to apply to what was, perhaps.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. H 3 
 
 nothing but good-natured independence. " I shall want a 
 good deal of wire-pulling, by and by, and Whoppers is a use 
 ful fellow. No, I can't part with him yet ; but this letter is 
 certainly very well written for a raw country youth. How cu 
 rious it is that some fellows have a knack of writing some 
 thing that is born with them. Now a common business letter 
 I can write as well as any man, but when it comes to fine wri 
 ting, such as is expected in a report or a speech Confound 
 that punning devil ! I wonder if Dr. Johnson ever did say 
 that 'a man who would make a pun would pick a pocket.' 
 I must look in Boswell's Life, some day, and if I can find it 
 I'll show it to Whoppers. But this letter certainly reads very 
 well. I must keep an eye upon that youngster, he may be 
 useful. Yes, decidedly ; I'll tell Gainsby to make room for 
 him, and set him at something." 
 
 Luther returned to his lodgings with a lighter step and 
 a lighter heart. His grand act of humiliation had been accom. 
 plished, and he felt better for it. He had shown himself 
 to her, not as a conquering hero, but as a broken-down 
 suppliant broken down not only in spirit, but in body and in 
 purse. " He that humbleth himself shall be exalted," and as 
 Luther had no one to exalt him, he exalted himself. He felt 
 proud of the thoroughness and completeness of his break 
 down. The heroics are often clever mental gymnasts, and 
 can " turn about, and wheel about, and jump Jim Crow," to 
 the utter amazement of all sober feeling and sentiment. 
 
 He felt better, too, from the natural influence of her unhes 
 itating sympathy, and the consequent revivification of his 
 deadened hopes. And still better he felt, when, on the 
 strength of his brightened prospects, he accepted the invita 
 tion of his landlord, and a plate of clam chowder renewed 
 the vigor of the fainting flesh. 
 
 Luther slept sounder that night than he had done for a 
 month slept so well that it was quite late in the morning 
 when he was awakened by a knock at his door, and the an-
 
 114 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 nouncement that a gentleman wanted to see him. He hurried 
 on his clothes, and descended to the dingy bar-room, where 
 he found the editor of the Universe talking with Mr. Bungay, 
 the landlord, in whom he had found an old acquaintance ; and 
 standing treat to a party of tars, whom he was pumping with 
 all manner of questions, in the hope of picking up some items 
 of news, or some hints for a tale. 
 
 "And so you left the Juliana, because of a few cock 
 roaches ? " exclaimed Mr. Whoppers. 
 
 " A few cockroaches ! " indignantly replied the spokesman 
 of the group. "Lord bless you, what do you call a few? a 
 thousand now, or five hundred thousand ? or five hundred 
 thousand million billion? Why the roaches were so thick 
 that every step you took up and down the deck you'd kill a 
 dozen of 'em. The captain and mates always had to fight 
 their way forward with trumpet, spy-glass, or marling-spikes, 
 and when we relieved the wheel, a man had to get in the fore- 
 top, work his way aft, and come down by the mizzen back-stay. 
 Not a soul had been below for three months, except one poor 
 fellow who tumbled down the forecastle hatch, head foremost, 
 into the cockroaches. The cockroaches closed over him. 
 He struggled for a moment, but 'twant no use in five 
 minutes his bones were picked as clean as my knife 
 blade. We worked round into Santa Cruz, but the 
 roaches on our yard-arms began to fly off in clouds to the 
 other vessels in the roadstead, and the governor pointed the 
 guns of the fort at us, and ordered us to clear out, which we 
 did, but when out we couldn't set a rag of sail, or haul our 
 yards round, for the roaches were so thick they choked the 
 blocks, and devil a brace or halyard could be made to run. 
 We floated round for a long time, all hands sleeping in the 
 boats that we kept towing astern, until I got tired, and says I, 
 ' Boys, let's cut and run for the Grand Canary,' which we did 
 one night. We reached Grand Canary in safety, got across 
 to Orratavo, in Teneriffe, and took ship for Cadiz." 
 
 "Cadiz ! my dear fellow," exclaimed Mr. Whoppers, "you 
 did wrong you ought to have sailed for Roachclle, or shipped,
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 "5 
 
 at least, on a whaler. I don't know anybody better than you 
 who could have taken a raz<r//-back. But I am much obliged 
 to you for your yarn. It's short, and it encroaches a little on 
 the fabulous, but it's tough, and will do to string two or three 
 ' to-be-continueds ' on. Ah, here comes my man," and Mr. 
 Whoppers turned to Luther, and cordially shook his hand. 
 
 " You look surprised at seeing me. Come with me, and 
 I'll tell you all about it. I haven't had my breakfast yet, nor 
 you either. Well, we'll go up to the corner of Chambers 
 Street and Broadway. I guess Delmonico can manage to 
 assuage any regrets at missing our friend Miss Jones pan 
 cakes and ' sassages' this morning. Is your kit all packed ? 
 I will just ask Mr. Bungay, here, to send it up to Bleecker 
 Street?" 
 
 " No ! no ! " exclaimed Luther. " I can't go back there. 
 I already owe Miss Jones for two weeks board, and " 
 
 " Pshaw ! " interposed Mr. Whoppers. " I've settled all 
 that. Miss Jones is dying to have you back. She thinks you 
 are such a nice young man. Do you know how I managed 
 her ? You left some scraps of writing in your room when you 
 left. She found them." 
 
 " Found them ! " exclaimed Luther, coloring up to the 
 roots of his hair. 
 
 " Yes, found them. Confound her, I suppose you think ; 
 but there is no harm done, the verses had no name to them. 
 Here they are. Bungay, are you a judge of poetry?" de 
 manded Mr. Whoppers, turning to the landlord, as he pulled 
 Luther's scribblings from his pocket. 
 
 " I consate I am," returned Mr. Bungay. " I boarded a 
 crazy poet once, for six "months Bill Jennings, the bully poet 
 of Jarsey ; found him in beer and tobacco, and took it all out 
 in rhyme." 
 
 " Well, listen to this, then ; it isn't bad for an early speci 
 men : 
 
 ' 'The poet's privilege, fair maid, is mine 
 
 To make all beauty subject of my verse, 
 To boldly sing thy loveliness divine, 
 
 And all thy charms of mind and heart rehearse.
 
 Il6 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 ' But I forbear to trust my feeble hand 
 
 With theme so lovely, and to me so new, 
 Not even Moses could have mapped the Holy Land 
 From Pisgah's glorious, but far-distant, view. 
 
 ' Defaulting thus in laudatory lays, 
 
 These flowers I send thee, brimmed with incense sweet, 
 To bear 'mid odorous strains of fitting praise, 
 My humble service to thy gentle feet. 
 
 ' Refuse them not, because the poor, dumb creatures 
 
 Cannot to thee my name and state reveal, 
 
 Take them, as kin to thee in all their features, 
 
 And let my name a friendly blank conceal.' 
 
 Utterly dumbfounded, Luther listened to this public ex 
 posure of his poetical sins, this profanation of his most tender 
 and delicate sentiments, this proclamation, in the reeking bar 
 room of a sailor's boarding-house, of a secret he had hardly 
 dared to confess to himself. And what made it more ridic 
 ulous was that the flowers existed only in his imagination. 
 A fellow who could not pay his board bill, buying and sending 
 flowers ! 'Twas absurd, and Luther had a keen appreciation 
 of the absurd. He grasped the back of a chair to steady him 
 self, and fairly gasped for breath, as he felt the surge of hor 
 ror, and shame, and indignation, rolling over him. 
 
 " Now, that I call pretty fair. Don't you, Bungay ? The 
 peak of Pisgah is a little steep, eh ? and that back stretch to 
 Moses a little longish for anything under a two-forty fancy ; 
 but I like it it shows bottom as well as speed. Training 
 will tell on that colt, eh old hoss ? " 
 
 Mr. Whoppers prided himself upon his ability to adapt 
 himself in manners or conversation to all sorts of men. Turn 
 ing to Luther, he continued : " Now, I told Miss Jones that 
 the ' fair maid ' meant her. ' Dear me,' said she. ' Just so,' 
 said I ; ' it's dear you.' ' Dear me,' said she, ' I'm old enough 
 to be his mother.' 'But you are not his mother; and what is 
 more, you are not old enough to be his mother. You might 
 be his mother's youngest sister, or something of that kind, : 
 said I ; ' but all that has nothing to do with it. I don't pre-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 117 
 
 tend to say that the youngster has fallen absolutely in love 
 with you. We scribbling fellows need a good, nice, substan 
 tial peice of flesh and blood to rest our poetical guns on when 
 we shoot at the ideal. He has just made a rest of you, and 
 you ought to rest satisfied, for it's a very pretty compliment.' 
 ' Well,' said Miss Jones, ' he's a very nice young man, and I 
 wish he was back again.' So, back you go, Mr. Luther. Bun- 
 gay, you'll send his kit up to Bleecker Street ? " 
 
 " But," objected Luther, as he and Mr. Whoppers directed 
 their steps towards Broadway, " I have no means of paying 
 her, and I cannot, I will not, get any deeper in her debt. 
 Then, perhaps, I shall never have the means of paying her ; 
 now I may hope to be able to settle so small a debt. My 
 friend, Captain Combings, made me promise him on this 
 point ; the last words he said to me, were ' Luther, remember, 
 debt is the devil, and, as an old writer says, next to the grace 
 of God, a receipt in full is the best instrument for baffling the 
 old boy. It is not what you owe other people, but it's also 
 what you owe yourself. Pay as you go, and you will be de 
 livered from a thousand temptations to vanity and sin.' " 
 
 Mr. Whoppers stroked his long, yellow beard, and looked 
 askance at the honest and open countenance of the young 
 moralist. He saw nothing to throw a doubt upon Luther's 
 earnestness and sincerity. 
 
 " Your friend, the Captain, is quite right," said Mr. Whop 
 pers ; " I can speak from experience. I wish I had had such 
 a capital Captain at my elbow, a few years ago. Debt is a ter 
 rible thing, but then, like other terrible things in this world 
 of profit and loss, it can't always be avoided. Best to take it, 
 when it comes, in a cheerful spirit. It's a misfortune, it is 
 true, but we must bear up under it. There is one considera 
 tion," continued Mr. Whoppers, with a comical twinkle in his 
 little ferret eyes, " that ought to make it more easy to bear, 
 and that is, the evil is shared with one's creditors. Now, 
 in that matter of your fortnight's board, there's two of you 
 concerned ; you and Miss Jones that is only one week 
 apiece."
 
 n8 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Luther hardly knew what to make of his companion's 
 serious tone, and, for a moment, was somewhat confused by 
 this novel view of his outstanding liabilities. 
 
 " And debt, after all, is such a curious thing, such a singu 
 lar thing I may say, such a funny thing : in fact, a singularly 
 funny thing! Do you take? No! Well, it's a singularly 
 funny thing, in this : that it is the only thing in the world that, 
 the more you contract it the bigger it grows." 
 
 Mr. Whoppers stopped short in his walk, stroked his 
 straggling whiskers vigorously, and burst into a hearty laugh : 
 " Not bad, that, eh ? pretty fair, don't you think ? " 
 
 " Very good," replied Luther, laughing ; " I only hope you 
 have not run into debt for it." 
 
 " Now, Luther, that is very ungenerous. You ought to be 
 more willing to give trust. Never refuse tick to a joke. Why, 
 if a man isn't to say a smart thing, or a wise thing, or a funny 
 thing, because of the possibility that some clever forestalling 
 rascal has been and said it before him, we might as well 
 knock under to commonplace at once, and getting down on 
 our knees, exclaim : ' Hail, boredom ! we are thy slaves ; thy 
 captains and thy strong men are too much for us. Who may 
 withstand the might of thy Dr. Droneys ? We lick the dust at 
 their feet, and gratefully fill our mental bellies with the emp 
 tiness of their utterances ! ' Of course, a fellow would like to 
 be always original, but he can't, you know, in these latter days. 
 Why, the forestallers have been at it for two thousand years 
 and more ! Those old Greeks and Romans were perfectly 
 outrageous. Thank God, they have not all survived. The 
 burning of that Alexandrian library was a blessed thing, and 
 the dark ages did their duty pretty well ; but there is one fel 
 low I wish they had used up, and that's Horace. Have you 
 ever read Horace ? A few odes, eh ? Well, don't you read any 
 more of him. He'll fill your head with such a lot of ideas 
 and so many nice turns of expression, that when you come 
 to be one of us as I am afraid you will some day and want 
 to put your pen to paper upon social subjects, you won't be 
 able to tell for the life of you whether to steal or quote.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 119 
 
 But we were talking about emptiness, just now. That reminds 
 me that we haven't had breakfast, and here we are at Delmon- 
 ico's ; let us hurry in, and I will tell you how it has been ar 
 ranged for you to pay your debts to Miss Jones, after we have 
 ordered our bif-tcke au cresson and our pomme de terre a la 
 maltre d7wtel." 
 
 Having given the waiter his orders, Mr. Whoppers re 
 sumed the conversation, and, very much to the young man s 
 astonishment, broached the subject of Luther's letter to 
 Miss Helen Ledgeral. He told Luther of Helen's appli 
 cation to her father ; detailed the conversation that en 
 sued ; and informed him, that he, Mr. Whoppers, had 
 been commissioned to hunt Luther up, and inform him that 
 some kind of a situation would be given him, by which he 
 might, at least, earn enough to pay his board. " Mr. Ledgeral 
 wants to see you, himself," said Mr. Whoppers ; " you will go 
 up to his house, and he will give you a note to Gainsby, his 
 junior, which .you will deliver in Burling Slip. Now, don't let 
 your imagination run away with you there is no great for 
 tune in prospect. It will be small pay, and hard work, for 
 years ; I know what a clerk's life is ; I've led it myself. If 
 you have industry, and great tenacity of purpose, and good 
 luck, you may stand about one chance in five thousand of 
 being taken into partnership by some firm, and after that, 
 about one chance in five hundred of coming out a rich man. 
 There is one other point that I have half a mind to give you 
 a little bit of caution on. I know you'll resent it, although I 
 give it in good part ; I know I should at your age." 
 
 Luther protested that he could not feel otherwise than 
 under an obligation for any advice. 
 
 "I don't know about that; however, I'll tell you that it's 
 possible that you may, once in a while, see Miss Helen Ledg 
 eral. Mind you, I say, once in a while only; for as to a young 
 clerk in the counting-room down town ever getting the run 
 of the up-town parlors, that is quite out of the possibilities. 
 Now, don't you go and get love-sick, and make a scribbling 
 spoony of yourself."
 
 120 NEVER AGAI.Y. 
 
 The blood rushed to Luther's face. 
 
 " There, you need not say a word, I see you would deny 
 it ; but don't I know who the ' fair maid ' stands for in your 
 
 verses '? 
 
 ' It were all one, 
 
 That you should love a bright, particular star 
 And think to wed it.' 
 
 I won't go on and say what Shakespeare says, ' she is so far 
 above you,' for I don't believe it ; but she is far removed from 
 you ; there is a golden gulf between you. You'd have to 
 wade through a sea of silver to reach her, and your legs are 
 not full grown yet. No, my dear boy, she'll marry some fel 
 low with a settled business, a good income, certain social pre 
 tensions, and that, too, before your first salary as junior clerk 
 is doubled. But," continued Mr. Whoppers, looking at his 
 watch, "it is ten o'clock; just the time to call on your new 
 master. You'll catch him before he leaves for down town. 
 Go in boldly, give him your name, and tell him you come by 
 my directions. He'll receive you kindly enough. He isn't a 
 bad fellow if he can't write a smart squib or a leading article, 
 and don't appreciate a pun. Try him for awhile, at any rate, 
 and if he don't suit, why, I'll see if I can't do something for 
 you in our line. You are cut out for one of us only I don't 
 want to take the risk of inoculating you for the disease. I 
 had rather you should take it in the natural way. A fellow 
 that can scribble both in verse and prose, at your age, ought 
 to be able, after a little training, to get at least his living in 
 almost any newspaper office. I'll see you at dinner in 
 Bleecker Street. And, hark ye, the maternal instinct is strong 
 in Miss Jones, and if you can contrive to come the filial affec 
 tion dodge, I have no doubt she will adopt you." 
 
 Luther parted from his new friend with an expression of 
 thankfulness for the interest he had evinced in his fortunes, 
 and turned up Broadway on his way to Washington Square. 
 It was with a rapid step, but with a good deal of mental hes 
 itation, that he gained Waverly Place, and turned down towards
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 12 1 
 
 the Square. His active imagination was at work, dressing up the 
 repelling qualities of the great merchant in the most formid 
 able proportions. He had a lurking suspicion that such a 
 jaunty, free-and-easy, devil-me-care kind of a fellow as Mr. 
 Whoppers, was not altogether to be trusted ; and that, per 
 haps, Mr. Whoppers had overvalued his influence with Mr. 
 Ledgeral, and had misconceived his intentions. A sense of 
 the vast social distance between a wealthy New York mer 
 chant, and an unknown, penniless, country youth, suggested 
 by Mr. Whoppers' double metaphor of a golden gulf and a 
 silver sea, increased with every step. 
 
 And what was he going to call upon this great man for? 
 Why, to seek an employment, by which, as his friend Mr. 
 Whoppers had coolly phrased it, he could earn enough to pay 
 for his board. Yesterday, the prospect would have been of 
 the brightest ; to-day, it did not seem quite so brilliant. True, 
 it was the first step in the ladder of Fortune it lifted him 
 out of the mud and dust of absolute destitution ; but the lad 
 der seemed longer than ever, and the rounds more numer 
 ous. Could he ever climb it ? he must climb it. Gaunt 
 hunger impelled the first step, but a still sterner necessity 
 urged the effort and encouraged the desire to mount to the 
 topmost round. He felt this necessity in the very air he 
 breathed. He felt it in the universal social tone ; it came 
 to him in the newspapers, in books, in lectures, and even in 
 sermons. The united voicings of his age and his country 
 dinned in his ears the necessity of wealth enormous wealth ; 
 not a moderate modicum of golden dross, not a mean, sordid, 
 self-sufficiency of fortune, to be hoarded, and gloated over, 
 and worshipped with that vulgar reverence which is to be 
 sought for in its highest instances, not in this country, but 
 among our kind cousins of England, or our spirituel friends 
 of France. Talk of the almighty dollar ! Better talk of the 
 almighty tuppence-ha'penny, or the almighty sous. Vanity, 
 pride, ambition, love, taste, charity, philanthropy all coun 
 selled the necessity of wealth, and Luther thought of Young's 
 line : 
 
 " The wretched impotence of gold."
 
 122 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Wretched impotence, indeed ! 
 
 " Why, 'tis gold 
 
 Which buys admittance ; oft it doth, yea and makes 
 Diana's rangers, false themselves, yield up 
 Their deer to the stand of the stealer ; and 'tis gold 
 Which makes the true man killed, and saves the thief; 
 Nay, sometimes hangs both thief and true man : what 
 Can it not do and undo ? " 
 
 Luther longed for fortune not with an envious, mean-spirited 
 longing not with an idle longing for some rich man's money, 
 but a generous longing, a hopeful longing, such as only an 
 American boy can feel, because only he can indulge the de 
 sire amid the glorious possibilities, nay, the probabilities, of 
 early fruition. " But what if I am doomed to fail ! " ex 
 claimed Luther ; " thousands, even in this country, fail to 
 command fortune," and he went off into a train of thought 
 which culminated in a loud utterance just as he reached the 
 door of Mr. Ledgeral's house. " No, no," he energetically 
 exclaimed, with a flourish of his hand, " ' a man's a man for a' 
 that.' " 
 
 Startled at the sound of his own voice, he looked up, 
 caught the wondering eye of a gentleman passing, and, to 
 hide his confusion, sprang briskly up the steps, and rang the 
 bell. 
 
 Joseph quickly answered the summons, and, opening the 
 door, received Luther with a dignified nod of recognition. 
 "Glad to see you, sah; hope your health am better, sah, den 
 'twas las' ebening." 
 
 " Thank you," replied Luther. " I am quite recovered, 
 and I also thank you for your attention, last evening. Can I 
 see Mr. Ledgeral ? " 
 
 " Mr. Ledgeral, sah ; de fader, sah ? " inquired Joseph, 
 with a gracious grin ; " ah, yes ; well, he's in de library. 
 Walk dis way, sah." 
 
 At the door, Luther hesitated. " I should like to ask," he 
 said, in a lower tone, " if Miss Ledgeral is well, this morn- 
 ing?"
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 123 
 
 " Miss Helen, sah ? well she am, I tink. She eat one 
 egg and two slices ob toast dis morning. Dat's purty well. 
 She'd be weller if she eat de regular rule ob two eggs. I tell 
 her so ; but she tink one egg purty well." 
 
 " Her mother and sister, you told me last evening, are 
 not in town." 
 
 " No, sah, dey is trabbling for de benefit ob de health of 
 Miss Ledgeral. Her health am below de eggs altogedder. 
 She hab a touch ob de dispipsha." 
 
 " Has Miss Helen Ledgeral any other sisters or brothers ? " 
 demanded Luther. 
 
 " No, sah, no odder ones." 
 
 Joseph was evidently disposed to be communicative, but 
 Luther refrained from asking any more questions, and the 
 old man, pushing open the library door, ushered Luther into 
 the presence of Mr. Ledgeral. 
 
 Joseph closed the door. " I like dat young man," he 
 muttered, as he shuffled across the hall to the back parlor, 
 from whence issued sounds evoked from a piano-forte by 
 rapid fingers in industrious practice. " I like him. He's 
 young, and he's green ; but he don't look as do he ebber 
 would hab dat imperient look like Mister Billy Dugan, or dat 
 sassy clerk dat comes up here sometimes from de store. Call 
 me ' old woolly-head,' ha ! well, I nebber ; but this one look 
 good, he hab agreeable eyes, he hab an agreeable mouf, and 
 he hab an agreeable nose. And if he only had an agreeable 
 fortun' he might hab my permishun to snoop round dar and 
 see what he could do," and the speaker jerked his thumb over 
 his shoulder in the direction of the parlor door. " I don't 
 like dese 'scity men. Dey ain't worth shucks. Dey do berry 
 well for de common scum, but my little chile dar, dat I more 
 nor half brung up myself, she must hab someting furst-rate 
 someting that's got someting in his cocoa-nut eh, honey ? 
 someting dat ye call brains, not jess a crannenum full ob mush 
 and molasses. Not like dat Billy Dugan. He's beginning 
 to cock his eye dis way, I see. Dis nigger hasn't been a 
 member ob 'scity more den half a centuary widout being
 
 124 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 able to compromhend. But ye can't come it Billy ; yer a lunk 
 head wid all yer money, yer a regular sappy, ye are ; call me 
 old woolly-head, eh ! Well I guess de old woolly-head can 
 unscrew your buggy-springs for ye ye've got a long road to 
 ride two or three years yet and I'm afraid ye'll get jolted." 
 
 Joseph put his head into the parlor. " What you tink, 
 Miss Helen? " he exclaimed, addressing the young girl, who 
 suspended the fingering of a difficult passage to listen to him. 
 " What do you tink, eh ? dat young chap ob de steamboat hab 
 come agin." 
 
 " To see me, Joseph ? " 
 
 "Wai, I shouldn't wonder if dat was de real objic', but de 
 'stensible objic' was to see your farder. I show'd him into 
 de liberary." 
 
 " Why, of course, he did not come to see me. How can 
 you be so stupid as to think so, Joseph ? My father is going 
 to give him a situation in the counting-room, and father told 
 Mr. Whoppers to send him up here this morning." 
 
 " Ob course I'se stupid I'se drefful stupid," replied 
 Joseph, with a sly twinkle of intelligence in his eye that com 
 pletely belied the humiliating admission. " Ob course I is, 
 but I tought dat you was so much flustratecl las' ebening 
 'cause he fainted awah, dat mabbe you would like to see how 
 well he got dis morning, and I tought dat he would like to 
 tell you about de conserquence ob your interseshshion wid 
 yer farder, and I tought dat he'd like to tank you for de glass 
 ob water. He tank me berry purlitely ; but I'se drefful 
 stupid. If he axes about you I'll tell him you is engaged, 
 and can't see nobody." 
 
 " No, no, Joseph, you need not do that. You can leave 
 the parlor door wide open, and perhaps I will speak a word 
 with him in the hall, that is if I happen to see him come out 
 of the library. You understand, Joseph ? " 
 
 " I tink I do, Miss Helen, but I'se drefful stupid," replied 
 Joseph, as, muttering, chuckling, he shuffled himself off to his 
 work in the butler's pantry.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 125 
 
 The interview with Mr. Ledgeral was a far less for 
 midable affair than Luther had anticipated. He was re 
 ceived with a stiff, but not wholly ungracious nod, and an 
 invitation to take a seat, while Mr. Ledgeral finished writing 
 a letter at which he was engaged. This seat was luckily near 
 a book-case, and he amused himself with poring over the 
 titles of the books within the compass of his eye. He won 
 dered whether it would be too much of a liberty if he lifted 
 one of them from its place and opened it. Had it not been 
 for the gorgeously gilt bindings the temptation to such an im 
 pertinent freedom would perhaps have been irresistible. 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral finished his note, and took a deliberate sur 
 vey of his visitor. What he saw evidently did not displease 
 him. How should it ? He saw a tall, trim, graceful figure ; 
 he saw a fine large head, thick waving locks of brown hair, 
 large, deep, almost bottomless brown eyes, a well-formed 
 dominating nose, splendid teeth, and a skin to which the 
 amber and crimson tints, mingling in lustrous harmony, were 
 rapidly returning under the influence of a good full meal. 
 Decidedly Luther was good-looking handsome in fact, if we 
 compare him with the multitudes of lanky, cadaverous, lantern- 
 jawed, old-looking, nicotinized young men whom we meet on 
 every side ; but he had none of that conscious and obtrusive 
 beauty, that impertinent prettiness, that insulting youthfulness 
 which is so often an offence to middle-aged gentlemen who 
 with cunning tricks of fence are desperately warding off the 
 blows of that furious old fellow of the scythe. 
 
 " Are you fond of books ? " abruptly demanded Mr. Ledg 
 eral. "Well, I suppose so," he continued, seeing Luther 
 hesitate. " But it don't much matter ; you write a good hand, 
 I see by this letter, and the composition is very good, the con 
 struction and grammar quite correct ; where have you been 
 educated ? " 
 
 Thus questioned and encouraged, Luther went into the 
 details of his school-life and his studies. 
 
 " Do you know anything of accounts ? " 
 
 " No, sir, I can't say I do. I was going to study book-
 
 126 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 keeping, but our Latin master said I was doing so well in 
 Latin that I had better wait until I had got a little further on 
 before I took up any new study." 
 
 "So you have studied Latin pray how far have you got 
 in your Latin ? " 
 
 " Well, sir, I have read Sallust and Caesar's commentaries, 
 and the six first books of the ^Eneid, and Cicero de Senectute, 
 and had just begun on a few odes of Horace." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral mused in silence for a few moments. His 
 thoughts went back to his youthful days, when he, too, having 
 mastered the rudimentary difficulties of the Latin grammar, 
 and dawdled away a couple of years of preparatory study, 
 might have gone on to the heights or depths of an ordinary 
 Columbia College classical education. Alas ! for neglected 
 opportunities. Could it be that his inability to write clearly 
 and strongly was due to his ignorance of Latin and Greek. 
 Could it be that Longinus and Quintilian would have made 
 him independent of that Whoppers ? No ! he knew clever 
 writers who had never been to college, and who knew nothing 
 of Latin and Greek, and he knew clever writers who, having 
 been to college, nevertheless knew nothing of Latin and 
 Greek. In fact, he knew that of nine-tenths, yes, ninety-nine 
 hundredths, of our college graduates not one, in five years 
 after taking his degree, can read a page of any strange 
 classic. 
 
 " You will have but little opportunity, and no disposition, 
 to pursue your classical studies any further, I presume ? " said 
 Mr. Ledgeral, in an inquiring tone. 
 
 " I shall have no opportunity, I suppose," answered Luther, 
 despondingly ; "but I have the disposition." 
 
 " In that case, I am not so sure," replied Mr. Ledgeral, 
 " about your not having the opportunity ; a strong disposition 
 always makes opportunity. You will have some hours of the 
 day, and all your evenings to yourself. I would advise you 
 to pursue your classical studies, seeing you have got such a 
 good start. There is the famous Dr. Brown, now the great 
 Homoeopathist and Spiritualist, he is one of the most enthu-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 127 
 
 siatic Latin scholars that I know. He reads himself to sleep 
 every night with Seneca or Cicero, he refreshes himself in his 
 carriage, between his visits, with a page of Pliny, and the other 
 day, calling upon him, I found him poring over the Somnium 
 Scipionis, in which he had discovered, as he said, upon the 
 indubitable testimony of the great Roman orator and philoso 
 pher, an authentic and reliable account of one of the earliest 
 manifestations of the spirit world. He acquired his education 
 under many difficulties and disadvantages, and owes nothing 
 to any college for a knowledge of the classics. Don't, how 
 ever, neglect your other studies, or your general reading, and 
 don't neglect the duties of the place to which my partner, Mr. 
 Gainsby, upon the presentation of this note, will assign you." 
 
 " I will do the best I can, sir," said Luther, taking the 
 note and bowing himself out of the room the consciousness 
 of not having made a bad impression giving him an easy but 
 unpresuming grace of manner in doing so, that was quite in 
 contrast with his embarrassed, awkward entrance. 
 
 By a fortunate and rather singular coincidence, Helen 
 Ledgeral was at the same moment coming out of the back 
 parlor with a roll of music in her hand. 
 
 Luther bowed in a shy way, but resolutely crossed the 
 hall, determined to make his acknowledgments to the young 
 girl for her sympathy and assistance. 
 
 " You have had an interview with father ; I hope that it 
 has been a satisfactory one ? " she demanded. 
 
 " Yes, thanks to your kindness," replied Luther. " Miss 
 Ledgeral, I don't know that I shall ever have an opportunity 
 again of saying how much I feel indebted to you, and there 
 fore you must permit me to make my acknowledgments now. 
 I thank you very much." 
 
 " Oh, don't call me Miss Ledgeral, I am not Miss Ledgeral, 
 I am only Miss Helen ; and don't thank me, I did nothing but 
 show your letter to father and coax him just a little. He 
 uidn't need it much. But I am so glad you have got a place ! 
 I hope it will prove the first step to that fortune." 
 
 Luther colored up a little, but replied pleasantly, " Oh,
 
 J2 8 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 you may laugh about that fortune, but I can assure you that 
 it is bound to come one of these days. I shall worship the 
 blind goddess so fervently and so persistently that she can't 
 refuse me her favors. I suppose, Miss Helen, I shall never 
 have the pleasure of seeing you again ? " continued Luther, 
 despondingly, 
 
 " Well, I suppose not ; that is, perhaps, not unless unless 
 Mr. Gainsby should send you up here with some message to 
 father ; or unless mother should take it into her head to ask 
 you up here on Christmas evening. Do you dance ? " 
 
 " I am very fond of it," replied Luther. " We had a danc 
 ing-master come up from the city and give us lessons, and I 
 had the reputation of being one of his best pupils ; but I am 
 not sure that our country style will do here." 
 
 " Oh yes, never fear, almost anything will do for us young 
 girls. I will tell mamma that you can dance very well. You 
 see that so many young men can't dance, or won't dance, that 
 we are sometimes very much in want of partners, and we 
 younger girls have to dance together." 
 
 " But Christmas is a long way off," replied Luther, laugh 
 ing; "and an invitation that depends upon your mamma, 
 whom I have never seen, and who will naturally have no great 
 inclination to see me, is a very doubtful affair." 
 
 " That is true," replied Helen, in a tone of affected seri 
 ousness, at the same time shrugging her shoulders and open 
 ing her big gray eyes as if the suggested difficulty was in 
 reality insuperable. The next moment she burst into a low 
 carolling laugh, and her golden ringlets danced as if keeping 
 time to the music. " It is true and it is not true. You must 
 know that papa is not the only one in this house who some 
 times does as I wish. Mamma is always disposed, after a 
 little coaxing, to entertain any suggestion of mine ; besides, 
 it is Aunt Shippen who manages all our small parties, and I 
 could make her invite the great Mogul." 
 
 " The great Mogul, perhaps," pleasantly replied Luther 
 " but how about the little Mogul ? " 
 
 " Well, I admit," replied Helen, " that Aunt Shippen's taste
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 129 
 
 would be rather for the big Mogul, but I know what I can do 
 with her, so I will say good-bye good-bye until Christmas." 
 
 Helen made a little motion with her hand. An older or 
 more self-possessed man would at once have construed it 
 into an offer to shake hands, but Luther never thought of such 
 a thing he never could have intended such a liberty, oh no, 
 certainly not ! The laws, however, of animal magnetism are 
 as powerful as they are mysterious. Instinctively, but very 
 gently, his hand seized her hand, and as he touched the little 
 soft white fingers resting in his grasp, and looked down into 
 the deep gray eyes, he felt very much as if he should like to 
 get down upon his knees and open his heart d deux battants. 
 It speaks something for his sense of proportion and propriety 
 to say that he resisted the impulse, swallowed down a big sob, 
 and smiling, turned manfully towards the door, which Joseph 
 stood ready to open for him. 
 
 " You have heard, Miss Helen," he exclaimed quite in the 
 tone and with the air of a practised gallant, "the Scotch 
 phrase, ' It's a far cry to Lochaw.' I can parody it, and say that, 
 in a double sense, it's a far cry to Christmas not only a far cry, 
 but a hearty cry. Good bye," and the door closed upon 
 Luther, who marched off up Waverley Place, a walking para 
 dox, a breathing incongruity, a living confutation of the axiom 
 that two things cannot occupy the same space at the same 
 time : his heart was full of despair and full of hope. And 
 then came the thought that in trying to say something fine he 
 had indulged in an inappropriate and far-fetched conceit, and 
 had made an absurd and ridiculous speech. He did not 
 exactly " writhe him to and fro," like Satan, " when he first 
 knew pain," but he gave himself a sharp mental thrust. Fool 
 ish fellow ! But who has not at times suffered from the same 
 cause some flat or foolish speech some slight breach of 
 etiquette something at the wrong time or in the wrong way 
 and the resultant misery quite equalling that from a breach 
 of the decalogue ? You never have ? My dear sir, allow me 
 to congratulate you upon your want of sensibility, your self- 
 conceit, and your intense mental stolidity. 
 9
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A Leader of Fashion Explanation of American Taste in Dress 
 
 Struggles and the Art of Snubbing Mr. Boggs A Society-Man 
 An Outside Heresy A Sudden Fortune Stichen and Boggs. 
 
 YOU might hunt society all through with the assistance 
 of a full pack of the best-trained, sharpest-sighted, 
 keenest-scented snobs and flunkies to be found in social ken 
 nels anywhere, and you would not find a more thorough 
 woman of fashion than Mrs. Ledgeral. With a good natural 
 foundation for a few judicious decorative dexterities of art, 
 her face was generally considered handsome. With a fine, 
 full figure, she was universally allowed to be one of the best 
 dressers in her set. Un pen bruyante, loud ; as Billy Dugan 
 phrases it, " devilish loud ; " but Billy, although formerly one 
 of the best polka dancers in town, and even now one of the 
 most authoritative and exemplary leaders of the German, is 
 something of a blackguard, and very much of a bore, so no 
 body minds his slang. Besides, American taste in dress is 
 very tolerant of what may be called broad art. It likes strong 
 and decided touches. 
 
 The reasons for this are evident and twofold. The 
 first is unquestionably the influence of climate ; for we see 
 something of the same kind in the aborigines of this country. 
 An Indian chief not only puts jewels in his ears and around 
 his neck, but he hangs them from his nose, as being more 
 prononc'e more decided as being a bolder thrusting of them 
 not only into his own face, but into the face of all the world. 
 Perroquets, red-birds, and blue-jays furnish his head-plumes
 
 NE VER AGAIN. 131 
 
 the gaudiest snake-skins and dyed porcupine-quills gleam 
 amid the folds of his nether garments, and when " en grande 
 tenue" he paints, he does it with no feeble hand. Broad 
 masses of the strongest reds, yellows, and blacks light up with 
 terrific severity the natural beauties of his countenance. 
 
 The second reason is as unquestionably the very great 
 beauty of American women. In a country where every tenth 
 woman is handsome, and nine-tenths of the remainder pretty, 
 dress may be more strictly regarded in and for itself. A 
 Frenchwoman is compelled to study the becoming. She can 
 not afford to indulge the whims of a crude and ill-regulated 
 taste, or to follow too rigidly the edicts of fashion. While 
 conforming in the main, she alters, modifies, and adapts in 
 detail. She submits to the government, but some slight de 
 viation from the rule, some delicate infraction of law, some 
 gentle, but decided outbreak of independent volition reveals 
 the rebel at heart, and quietly protests against tyranny. It 
 is even said some grand dames have had the courage to sneer 
 openly at the great dictator of the Rue de la Paix, and a good 
 story, hardly credible on this side of the Atlantic, is told of 
 the Princess Metternich, who, under the shelter of high title 
 and diplomatic rank, had the audacity to walk in and fairly 
 snub his autocratical grandiosity in full conclave just as he 
 was raising that identical glass of wine to his lips. 
 
 " Jeveux relever les jupes dpanier de Madame la Princesse 
 avec des nceuds-de-dentelles blanches" insisted the great man. 
 
 " Non, Monsieur, vous ne leferez pas de cette mani'ere : vous 
 mettrez de petits cernes des lilas blancs que je pr'ef'ere" One can 
 tell this story more readily, inasmuch as no one will believe 
 it, any more than . they do Kinglake's stories of the Elysee 
 Bourbon, on the night of the coup d'etat. 
 
 On the other hand, the American woman has so much 
 beauty and to spare, that she can afford 
 
 " To melt herself away in flashing bravery." 
 
 She alone of all women can afford to sink her personality in 
 the devotee : to kotou, to genuflect, to get down and knock 
 her fine head, or, perhaps, in less metaphorical language, to
 
 I 3 2 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 trail her skirts nine times a day in the dirt before the over 
 whelming shekinah of the great Yellow Button. 
 
 " Jump," said the barbarous potentate to one of his officers, 
 on the top of a tower ; one moment for a salute, and the next 
 the devoted minion clears the battlement with a bound. 
 "Jump," exclaims the supposed potentate of fashion; and 
 over goes the obedient Americaine in a flutter of devotion, and 
 down she comes before our shrinking gaze, a brilliant mass 
 of self-abnegated vanity. 
 
 But not she alone. As in the story of the sailor's jump 
 ing from the yard-arm, it is " follow my leader," until the 
 whole sea of fashion sparkles and foams with the similarly 
 be-flounced and be-chignoned victims of a rigid and griping 
 conventionality. 
 
 But for this gregal conformity there is, as I have said, a 
 cause and an excuse. The American knows that she can 
 dress for the sake of dress. If, in obedience to fashion, she 
 puts large patterns on her /<?//'/<? figure, or shawls on her high 
 shoulders, or festoons with feathers her round head and short 
 neck, or carries extra flounces with an extra wriggle or with 
 a lumbering and unqualified waddle, or if, with high forehead 
 and large features, she wears her hair as if she had just suc 
 cessfully ran the gauntlet at a Comanche scalp-dance, she 
 knows that her handsome face will still look handsome enough, 
 and that at least her dress is beautiful in, and of, itself. She 
 knows that if it is somewhat unsuited to her style, it is, as 
 Madame de Volorem assures her, according to the latest plates 
 from the Rue Richelieu and the Boulevard des Italiens, and 
 that if it is a little gaudy, or ostentatious, or pretentious, or, 
 in fact, flaunty, or if it is slightly incongruous, in shape, color, 
 or material, with time and place in short, if, without being 
 positively a violation of the more patent laws of taste, it indi 
 cates a certain jejuneness of thought, and delicately hints at 
 a modicum of mental vulgarity, it is nevertheless a dress that 
 Mrs. Gruncly (that is the Mrs. Grundy of our set) wholly 
 approves of, and that not the most fastidious member of the 
 ultramarine demi-monde could laugh at or call dowdy.
 
 NEVER AGAIN, 
 
 133 
 
 Now Mrs. Ledgeral was not merely a good dresser more 
 Americano but she was a downright clever woman clevei 
 in both the English and American acceptation of the word 
 English-clever in that she had good natural talents : nothing 
 wonderful it is true, and no special gifts, but then she had, in 
 addition, an infinitude of tact, and tact is to talent like a 
 mug of hot water to a cold razor. Every thin-skinned, strong- 
 bearded man knows what that is. Strap and hone as much 
 as you please, and the miserable thing won't cut, or else draws 
 blood ; but steep it, give it a hot bath, hold its back in the 
 g^s, heat in any way, and lo ! shaving is a luxury a delight. 
 In this way, Mrs. LedgeraPs tact was an unfailing, ever-active 
 warmth or glow that kept her mental razors in a state of the 
 finest temper and polish. She was American-clever, too, in that 
 she liked to indulge, when it was not too inconveniemyin all 
 kindly emotions. She might not fulfil the impossible injunc 
 tion of loving her enemies, but then she took good care not to 
 hate her friends. She might detest their style of dress, their 
 manners, their gait, their egotistical talk, their affected laugh, 
 their absurd notions on the great band and cassock question, 
 their non-appreciation of the Rector of St. Cyprian's, and 
 above all their absurd way of dressing and bringing up their 
 children ; but she tried to do so as little as possible. She 
 even went so far as to try not to exaggerate the ages of her 
 female friends ; and she never did put on more than two or 
 three years at the utmost. She was naturally of a benevolent 
 spirit, and, notwithstanding she patronized St. Luke's Hospi 
 tal, and was a member of the Children's Aid Society, and 
 contributed to Home Missions, and the poor of the parish, 
 and the fund for aged and indigent clergymen, not forgetting 
 her monthly dole of a dollar on Communion Sunday, she 
 still, occasionally, indulged herself in the luxury of a little 
 purely private and unostentatious charity. True, Madame 
 Volorem, although she cut and made cheap enough, had a 
 way of running up her bills with the trimmings that rendered 
 it almost impossible to do much in that line, still there was 
 the satisfaction, and, we may add, the sense of merit, arising
 
 1 34 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 from a conscious and continually cultivated, although unfor 
 tunately unsatisfied, desire to alleviate the misfortunes and 
 miseries of the poor a satisfaction and a sense of merit which 
 always follow, in obedience to a beautiful law of nature, by 
 which the distance between the wish and the deed is made 
 almost infinitely less when we are to give than when we are 
 to receive. 
 
 Mrs. Ledgeral's spirit of charity was by no means confined 
 to her own set. She never wantonly trampled upon the feel 
 ings of anybody. She had made it a rule never to snub any 
 one when it was not clearly necessary to her own social suc 
 cess. Not having been born in the purple, her early life had 
 been one of vigorous struggle, some mortifications, but in the 
 end decided success. Emerging from the unfashionable re 
 spectability of East Broadway, she had fought her way with 
 an irresistible gallantry to one of the very best positions on 
 the Avenue. Of course she had to snub as well as to be 
 snubbed ; of course she had had to look down with scant 
 courtesy on some old friends and acquaintances who would 
 persist in hanging on to her skirts ; of course she had had to 
 resort in more than one instance to the doleful brutality of the 
 downright dead cut there are such stupid people in the 
 world ! but for the last dozen years of her society life there 
 had been no occasion for any but the gentler and the kinder 
 emotions no excuse for any deviation from a style of suave 
 and honeyed condescension. She had attained position not 
 only in the higher regions of upper-tendom, but clear up 
 among the ultimate five hundred way up on the topmost 
 Alp of fashion, where the thin, dry, and pure air, and the scanty 
 but crisp vegetation, are supposed to produce the richest social 
 cream. She no longer dreaded contact with any of the in 
 ferior races. She could, and actually did, often speak openly, 
 at church, or at the opera, or at concerts, and without any 
 disposition to shrink from observation while doing so, to 
 merely respectable people, and more than once she had in 
 dulged a kindly reminiscence of youthful days by renewing 
 an acquaintance that had been dropped for twenty years .-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 135 
 
 while later she had got so loose, or rather liberal, in her code 
 so defiant of all authority that she had been known, upon 
 two or three occasions, to invite to her parties people not be 
 longing to her own or any cognate set people without the 
 excuse of distinction of any kind, either as authors, artists, 
 generals, politicians, or even as seven-ciphered millionaires ; 
 merely good people with no better title to the compliment 
 than the bubbling memories of a former friendship, or the 
 accidental recollection of a family relationship. In short, 
 Mrs. Ledgeral had become a very fashionable lady, bien repandu, 
 as the French say, and she used her social power with a degree 
 of moderation, and in general conducted herself with a degree 
 of independence, that her friend and follower, Mrs. Struggles, 
 could not pretend to imitate, even had Mrs. Struggles had 
 the natural disposition to do so. 
 
 If the word toady was not such an ugly, disagreeable word, 
 it would not inaptly describe the relationship of Mrs. Strug 
 gles to Mrs. Ledgeral in fact her relationship in general to 
 the social powers that be. Unfortunately, Mrs. Struggles' 
 knowledge of the minuter social affiliations was slight. She 
 lacked experience, and she had no intuitiveness. She looked 
 only at the surface. The irridescence of the infinitely thin 
 pellicle of society dazzled her eyes, and, as she had no pene 
 tration, she could not, in and by herself, suspect the depths ; 
 so it not unfrequently happened that she " broke through," or, 
 in less metaphorical language, blundered awfully. Her toady 
 ism and her superciliousness were sometimes alike misdirected. 
 She fired away vigorously, right and left, but not having that 
 discriminating sense of game which comes to the nouvelle venue 
 only after a hundred social battues, or any hereditary knowl 
 edge of the natural history of fashion, she sometimes, with 
 her impressive politeness, knocked over a noisy torn-tit, on 
 the one hand, and sometimes, with her insolence, ruffled the 
 feathers of a quiet old hen pheasant on the other. Her friend 
 and patroness had had frequent occasions to scold her for 
 her mistakes. 
 
 " I am quite provoked with you, my dear Mrs. Struggles,"
 
 I3 6 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 said Mrs. Ledgeral, the morning after a small entertainment, 
 as they sat in Mrs. Ledgeral's boudoir the small room over 
 the hall, hung in blue and gold ; " I am quite provoked with 
 you ! " 
 
 " Oh ! my dear Mrs. Ledgeral, how ? why ? what ? " ex 
 claimed Mrs. Struggles, a look of deprecatory obsequiousness 
 mantling her round rouged and befrizzled face. 
 
 " Quite provoked," continued Mrs. Ledgeral ; " I don't 
 know really that I can continue to to" ' patronize,' Mrs. 
 Ledgeral was going to say, but checked herself in time " to 
 advise to assist you, if you go on as you do. You have no 
 discrimination ; or if you think you have, you discriminate 
 badly. I took special pains last night to present you to Mrs. 
 Van der Toozle, and you scarcely spoke two words to her. 
 You were a great deal more polite to those Pushtons. You 
 think, because you see them round everywhere, that they are 
 people of some influence. Their influence can do nothing for 
 you, my dear. They have need of it all to keep themselves 
 afloat. I don't say but that they may be of some consequence 
 in time, for the Lord only knows what New York society is 
 coming to, but, now, you had better have one nod of approval 
 from Mrs. Van der Toozle than a dozen smiles from the 
 Pushtons." 
 
 " What ! that plain-looking woman with the big nose and 
 the maroon satin?" demanded Mrs. Struggles. "Why, I 
 have never seen her out anywhere, and she didn't seem to 
 know any one. I did not dream that she was anybody. Is 
 she so very rich ? " 
 
 " No," curtly replied Mrs. Ledgeral. 
 
 " Is she very fashionable then ? " demanded Mrs. Strug 
 gles. 
 
 " No," returned Mrs. Ledgeral. 
 
 Mrs. Struggles thrust her hands into her muff, and grasped 
 her card-case to suppress her emotion, while her queer gray 
 eyes alone-gave expression to her mingled astonishment and 
 curiosity. 
 
 " She is not at all what you would call a fashionable
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 137 
 
 woman," said Mrs. Ledgeral ; " she entertains but little, and 
 goes out but little ; but she is a Van der Toozle, and the Van 
 der Toozles were Van der Toozles before the Anglo-Saxon 
 conquest of New Amsterdam and the defeat of Peter Stuy- 
 vesant by the English armada. She has what Hamilton 
 Boggs calls 'the latent potentiality of fashion.' She could 
 spread herself indefinitely any moment she should see fit. 
 There are a good many such women in New York society 
 either subsided ci-devant fashionables, or women with hered 
 itary social claims ; women of decided position ; circum 
 scribed position, it is true ; but you must recollect that it 
 requires less money, time, and labor to amplify a position than 
 it does to achieve one. It don't do, my dear Mrs. Struggles, 
 for a person like you to go round snubbing everybody whom 
 you don't know indiscriminately." 
 
 " That is a fact," exclaimed a spruce, middle-aged young 
 fellow, as he quietly slipped into the half-open door without 
 a word of warning to the ladies, " that is a fact, you might 
 snub angels unawares. " 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Boggs, is that you ? I am glad to see you," said 
 Mrs. Ledgeral. 
 
 " Yes ; I knew you received nobody this morning, so, as 
 I am nobody, I thought I would come in and sit with you a 
 little while but you were lecturing Mrs. Struggles upon the 
 art of snubbing. Go on, go on, my dear madam. Mrs. 
 Struggles, don't mind me. The subject is interesting, and I 
 know no one who understands it better than yourself, or to 
 whom a little advice on the refinements of the art will be of 
 more service than to Mrs. Struggles and myself." 
 
 Mr. Boggs seated himself upon a small velvet chair, which, 
 adapted to the size of the room, was rather too small to admit 
 of his usual graceful, lounging attitude. But still he contrived 
 to make a nice picture of himself in his mustard and molasses- 
 colored melton morning suit, his bright -blue cravat, and his 
 tight Bismarck gloves. His congress-booted feet wide apart, 
 his elbows on his knees, one hand holding his glossy hat, and 
 the other his little rattan cane, with its mother-of-pearl head,
 
 138 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 knocking against his teeth, he presented a picture of that 
 happy combination of ineffable inanity and contemptuous 
 insouciance, which, with a dash of slumbering, slangy vigor, 
 appeals at once and overwhelmingly to the fashionable femi 
 nine heart. 
 
 Mr. Boggs was a society-man. He was not so young as 
 he had been. You could see that in the nicely brushed, but 
 somewhat scanty chevelure. A luxuriant mustache adorned 
 his upper lip, but there were no side whiskers. Wicked peo 
 ple said that it was to avoid the trouble of dyeing that he kept 
 his cheeks closely shaved. Decidedly, Mr. Boggs was not 
 so young as he had been ; but, during all the flitting years 
 from youth to this stand-still age, he had always been a so 
 ciety-man. 
 
 It is a curious fact, unnoted by anatomists and embryolo- 
 gists in relation to any other animal, that the state of arrested 
 development in the society-man always merges directly into 
 a state of arrested decay. A certain point once reached, there 
 is apparently no change. Life seems in this case to violate 
 the laws that so universally govern it elsewhere. The flood 
 of vitality refuses to ebb ; but remains at high tide despite 
 the changes of the sun and moon. Many instances have been 
 known where a thorough-bred society-man, after reaching 
 thirty-five, has remained at precisely the same age for twenty- 
 five years, and even after that it sometimes takes the acute 
 eyes of a youthful generation to perceive the first stria and 
 maculae of fossiliferous action. 
 
 There are people, however, who pretend to doubt whether 
 the veritable society-man is found among us. But why not ? 
 The turbot has been, and is now, occasionally, taken in Ameri 
 can waters. If this be true, no one need to doubt that the 
 society-man, who is so largely the product of European insti 
 tutions, should be found on this side also. Here we have all the 
 elements for his development, except, perhaps, a titled aris 
 tocracy. We have counteracting influences, it is true, but 
 they cannot act upon every individual with equal force. Some 
 few escape and become society-men in obedience to Darwin's
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 139 
 
 law of the survival of the fittest. We have a wide and mag 
 nificent field for all activities. We have work enough for all, 
 rich and poor. We have fortunes to be made, and imperative 
 private and public duties to be performed. We have, it is to 
 be hoped, for on this point one must speak with some doubt, 
 a slowly expanding national and social sentiment ; but with 
 all this we have the society-man ; the society-man pure and 
 simple, the society-man/ar excellence. 
 
 One must not suppose that by this term is meant merely 
 the social man who likes society for its own sake ; or the 
 worn working-man who prescribes society to himself as a 
 regimen, and who doses himself with a ball or a dinner-party 
 precisely as a dyspeptic swallows a pill or potion ; or a man 
 who is driven into society by his wife, or by a sense of duty 
 to his family, in order that he may share the burden and heat 
 of the day, and keep up, with what grace he can, his end of 
 the social load ; or the man who goes into society to dance, 
 to sing, to flirt, or to look after a wife. 
 
 The society-man proper, in general, won't dance, can't 
 sing, don't flirt, at least to hurt any, except when some ex 
 ceedingly silly woman helps him, and only fully intends to 
 marry when some great heiress jumps into his arms. The 
 society-man is his own final cause ; he is a society-man be 
 cause he is a society-man. 
 
 Now it may be doubted by careless observers whether we 
 have the true society-man on this side of the Atlantic ; but as 
 has been said, it is asserted that the turbot is sometimes found 
 on the American coast, and one of the best authorities on 
 pisiculture goes so far as to say that we have white-bait here. 
 If so, why shouldn't we have the society-man ? 
 
 Hamilton Boggs was a society-man, but, perhaps, not a 
 pure and simple specimen. It would be doing undoubted 
 injustice to the class to call him simply a society-man. By a 
 strange anomaly, Hamilton Boggs, although a society-man, 
 had a good deal of common sense in his composition, which 
 not all the glamour of the great ineffable Bosh had wholly ob 
 scured. There was a philosophic streak running through his
 
 140 
 
 NEVER AC A IX. 
 
 mental constitution. He was an observer, and a thinker. 
 He saw the faults and follies and failings of fashionable so 
 ciety ; but he saw what none of its votaries, and few of its 
 detractors do see its utilities, its capacities, its merits, its ex 
 cuses, and its justifications. He saw that it is the natural and 
 necessary result of social causes ; that even its inanities are 
 the legitimate product of human thought. He saw that fash 
 ion is not a mere matter of caprice, changeable at the will or 
 wish of any individual, however powerful, that even fashions 
 of dress, apparently the result of mere whim, have their 
 intimate and inseparable relations to former fashions, and are 
 governed by laws founded on the constitution of the human 
 mind, subtle, yet rigid, and as yet hardly suspected by scien 
 tific men. In short, Boggs had begun to see that there is a 
 philosophy of fashion, and he had formed for himself certain 
 theories which he occasionally ventilated in a somewhat slangy 
 style. 
 
 " Go on, I beg of you, my dear Mrs. Ledgeral," continued 
 Mr. Boggs ; " there is no subject that I know of more inter 
 esting than the snub, if properly treated, especially from the 
 philanthropic and Christian point of view. Don't you think 
 so, Mrs. Struggles ? " 
 
 " I don't know what Christianity has to do with it," sim 
 pered Mrs. Struggles. 
 
 " Don't you ? I am afraid you don't read your Bible, my 
 dear Mrs. Struggles, as closely as you ought. The good book 
 has many fine examples." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Boggs, how absurd." 
 
 " There is one," continued Mr. Boggs, unheeding the in 
 terruption, "I have always admired. Ah, Mrs. Struggles, if 
 you could only always imitate that, and I do not intend any 
 irreverence in alluding to it, it would put you at once at the 
 very head of society." 
 
 " Indeed ! " exclaimed Mrs. Struggles ; " do tell me ! 
 what book? what chapter ? what verse? what are the words ?" 
 
 " ' Get thee behind me, Satan.' " 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Boggs, how can you be so absurd ? "
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 141 
 
 " Well, it is absurd to suppose that any one in this age 
 could treat the old boy so disrespectfully, so we will go back 
 to snubs in general. The subject is both interesting and ab 
 struse, and I want to hear Mrs. Ledgeral's exposition of it." 
 
 " You will get no exposition of it from me," said Mrs. Ledg- 
 eral ; " I only ventured a remark to Mrs. Struggles upon the 
 impolicy of indiscriminate snubbing. If you want an analysis 
 of the art, I know no one who can make it better than your 
 self, Mr. Boggs." 
 
 " You flatter me ; but, to tell the truth, I fancy I do under 
 stand the subject ; and some day I am going to write an arti 
 cle in the Social Science Journal, for the enlightenment of 
 the climbing barbarians. I will send you a copy of it, Mrs. 
 Struggles." 
 
 " Oh, I shall be so much obliged," said Mrs. Struggles ; 
 "you know I have often been indebted to Mrs. Ledgeral and 
 yourself for good advice, and I assure you I am not above 
 trying to learn. I don't want to snub too much, or in the 
 wrong place ; but one must snub sometimes, you know there 
 are so many common people in society so much shoddy, 
 you know." 
 
 Mr. Boggs stared steadily at Mrs. Struggles for at least a 
 minute and a half with an expression of interest and curiosity 
 resembling that which would undoubtedly animate the coun 
 tenance of Agassiz over a nondescript crinoid or ascidian. 
 
 " Don't you think so ? " demanded Mrs. Struggles ; there 
 are so many very common people with nothing but money ; 
 and money, you know, can do anything." 
 
 Mr. Boggs took another long steady stare at Mrs. Strug 
 gles, uttered a gentle sigh, and shook his head dubiously. 
 
 "My dear Mrs. Ledgeral," he exclaimed, "you should 
 not allow your friend, our friend," with a slight bow to Mrs. 
 Struggles, " to talk in this way." 
 
 "I don't care," exclaimed Mrs. Struggles, bristling up; 
 " it's true, all the world knows it is true. Look at the Seltons, 
 they were just nobodies until the old man made a million in 
 leather. And look at the Higgletons. Wasn't her father a
 
 142 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 butcher ? And wasn't she nowhere until Slicky Higgleton 
 made a fortune by failing five times in cotton ? Look at her 
 now who goes to her parties? Don't the Macjimpseys and 
 the Rammerdans and the De Belleverts, and the Montebellos 
 go ? Why, at her last musicale I saw you, Mr. Boggs, very 
 industriously stuffing Kate Higgleton with boned turkey and 
 champagne. You know that there is not a girl in society that 
 gets more attention. It's all money." 
 
 " An outside heresy, my dear Mrs. Struggles, an outside 
 heresy, which I am sorry to see that you have fallen into. 
 And besides, you mistake the question, or rather confound two 
 questions. Nothing personal, my dear Mrs. Struggles it is 
 characteristic of the female mind in general. But be so good 
 as to keep distinctly this division first, the influence of 
 money in getting in, and secondly, the importance of money 
 after you have got in. Money is important, in the first case, 
 but it is a great mistake to suppose that it is omnipotent. 
 There is, probably, no country where money mere money, or 
 rather the mere sentimental aura and emanation of a vast pile 
 of money, has less power both in politics and society than 
 here. It is at the best only one of the four Bs. It is neces 
 sary always to have two, and in most cases three, of the four 
 Bs, to develop any social force." 
 
 " The four Bs !" exclaimed Mrs. Struggles. "What can 
 they be ? " 
 
 " Oh, it's nothing but some of Mr. Boggs' nonsense," in 
 terrupted Mrs. Ledgeral. 
 
 But Mrs. Struggles' curiosity was excited, and she steadily 
 looked her inquiry. 
 
 " The four Bs, my dear Mrs. Struggles ? Well, the four 
 Bs are the essentials of social success. The four Bs are 
 Blood, Brains, Brass, and Brads. You see, in some cases two 
 of them will do ; as, for instance, blood and brads ; but brads 
 alone will never do. Even brads and brass is generally a 
 failure ; but brads, brass, and brains is a very happy and 
 irresistible composition. Now I think, when you come to 
 examine the case of the Seltons or the Higgletons or the
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 143 
 
 Inersley's, you will find something besides brads say an 
 enormous quantity of brass, and no small amount of brains." 
 
 " And by brads, of course, you mean" 
 
 "Tin." 
 
 " Tin ? " 
 
 " Yes, or pewter ; just as you please to call it." 
 
 ""Pshaw, Mr. Boggs ; you mean money." 
 
 " Well, that is the vulgar name for it. But whatever you 
 call it, I don't mean to question its power when properly used, 
 and I am going to give you an instance of it. My friend 
 Stichen has just made a million. I've stepped in this morn 
 ing, Mrs. Ledgeral, to speak to you about it." 
 
 " To me, Mr. Boggs ! what have I to do with it ? I never 
 heard of Stichen. I don't know him." 
 
 " No, and I don't want you to know him ; but, as I have 
 said, he has just made his million. You see he has been for 
 some time quietly rolling up a fortune in what he calls the 
 manufactured linen line ; making money slowly and deliber 
 ately, however, is no great merit. Thousands do that without 
 entitling them to any social distinction. But Stichen is a 
 genius. He conceived a grand idea, and last year he de 
 spatched a diplomatic agent to the chief of the Gran Chaco. 
 The chief was so pleased with a present of a dozen lace-ruffled 
 bosoms for himself that he listened, and finally became con 
 verted to the doctrine that his subjects ought to wear shirts. 
 Stichen got the contract for the supply of all the red rovers 
 between the Paraguay and the foot of the Andes, and he has 
 just sold out his contract for a round million to a company of 
 gentlemen in Chatham Street, to be called the Grand South 
 American Shemial Supply Company. From this instant 
 Stichen shuts up shop. I went to Stichen, and I said, 
 ' Stichen, how about that little account that has been running 
 on between us so long ? I hear that you are going to shut 
 up shop.' " 
 
 " ' Yes, I am going to give up the manufactured linen busi 
 ness. I am not only going to shut up shop, but I am going to 
 sink the shop. I am going to abandon all retail associations.'
 
 144 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 "'Well Stichen,' said I, 'I don't know that that is so 
 easy , certain associations stick ; you know what the poet 
 says: 
 
 ' " You may break, you may smash both the counter and till, 
 But the odor of retail will hang round you still." ' 
 
 Stichen is, or rather was, a vulgar little man, but he looked 
 at me with an expression of dignified acuteness which [ 
 have never seen surpassed. It was something stupendous. 
 It would have adorned the visage of a Chief Justice of the 
 Supreme Court, or the countenance of a street broker who 
 has just made a successful turn of a hundred shares of 
 Erie. 
 
 " 'You have read Prescott's Conquest of Mexico ? ' said he. 
 
 " ' I have,' said I. 
 
 " ' Well, do you know what was the greatest thing Cortez 
 did?' 
 
 "I hesitated. 
 
 " ' I'll tell you,' said he ; ' it was burning his ships ! I have 
 imitated him.' 
 
 " ' You have ? ' said I. 
 
 " ' I have,' said he. ' Standing upon the shore of a new 
 world, with the distant mountains of finance and fashion before 
 me, I have burnt my books.' 
 
 " ' And my account ? ' said I. 
 
 " ' Is in ashes,' said he. 
 
 " ' Stichen,' said I, ' give me your hand. You are a genius, 
 if ever there was one.' 
 
 " Stichen extended his hand with as much dignity as if 
 he had been for twenty years a wholesale commission mer 
 chant. Not a smile on his face, which used to be one univer 
 sal smirk. 
 
 " ' I have a favor to ask of you,' said he. 
 
 " ' Anything I can possibly do for you, my dear Mr. 
 Stichen,' I replied. 
 
 " ' Well, I want you to call and see my wife. She wants 
 some advice on a few points of taste. You see, my wife and 
 I have always heretofore drawn pretty well together. When
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 145 
 
 we first started I always cut, while she overlooked the sewing- 
 machines, and now and then took a touch at the bands and 
 button-holes. Well, as we got on, our circumstances grew a 
 little easy. She soared away, not exactly from me, but above 
 me. She always was above me. She had a talent for soar 
 ing, and so, as the money came in, I found feathers. I liked 
 to see her soar. I liked to look up and see her floating way 
 up in the realms of poetry, and music, and art ; but she had 
 to float all alone. She had no society, no sympathy. I am 
 wrong she lived with Bryant, Tennyson, and Longfellow, 
 and a lot of other fellows. I wasn't a bit jealous. I liked it, 
 I encouraged it. I said, " My dear, I can't satisfy your highest 
 aspirations. Go to Dr. Holmes and Bayard Taylor and Stod- 
 dard and Steclman, and see what they can do for you." Well, 
 she went to those fellows and they did her good ; but now that 
 I have got plenty of money she is going in for fashion, and I 
 am going in for finance. She will want a little advice in the 
 one case, which I will be willing to return in the other. Go 
 and see her. You will find her grateful for any sugges 
 tions.' " 
 
 " And did you go ? " exclaimed both ladies in a breath, 
 as Mr. Boggs paused in his narrative. 
 
 Mr. Boggs nodded his head. 
 
 " Some vulgar, dowdy thing ! " exclaimed Mrs. Struggles. 
 
 " No," replied Mr. Boggs. " Lacks style somewhat, and 
 don't know how to dress yet ; but she has given unlimited 
 orders to Madame Volorem, and I shall take good care to tone 
 her down a little. As to her house, nothing can be finer. I 
 arrived just in time to save her dining-room from a dingy 
 maroon. ' Don't do it,' said I ; ' never mind what Magnet 
 says ; that thing is done to death, and it weighs upon the di 
 gestion. Give us something light and lively in the eating 
 way; and so a soft orange, panelled with a delicate purple, 
 and half-a-dozen pictures of game, fruit, and flowers, will shed 
 a sparkle on the festive scene.' No, she is not vulgar that is, 
 she is not as vulgar as many of our folks ; as Mrs. De Vine or 
 as Mrs. Fain, for instance." 
 
 10
 
 I4 6 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Boggs ! " exclaimed Mrs. Struggles, " how can 
 you call Mrs. De Vine and Mrs. Fain vulgar ? Why, they 
 are two of the most fashionable women in society." 
 
 "" I do not say that they are not fashionable," replied Mr. 
 Boggs ; " I only said they are vulgar mentally vulgar, I mean. 
 Did you ever hear either of them talk five minutes without in 
 troducing that dinner to the Marquis, or that beautiful ball at 
 the Doria palace, when ' young Odiscalchi asked to be intro 
 duced to Tilly, and came up to her, and said, " Miss Fain, will 
 you do me the honor to dance with me in the next set ? " in 
 just as good English as possible, and without the least accent. 
 But Tilly was engaged to the handsome Cenci, and she was 
 so sorry, and I nudged Tilly, and says I, " Speak I-talian," and 
 Tilly said, " Ah ! tante grazie per fa/to onore ! ma davvero ! me ne 
 duolc ; non mi'epossibilediaccettareronoreroleinmto ; sonogid im- 
 pegnata per tutte le altre danze." And young Odiscalchi smiled 
 as pleasantly as possible, and he turned to me and said, 
 " Mrs. Fain, your daughter speaks Italian charmingly. Our 
 old phrase, ' Lingua Toscana in bocca Romanaj will have to be 
 changed into ' bocca Americana. 1 " And Tilly looked so pleased, 
 but didn't say anything ; and I nudged her again and whis 
 pered to her that she ought to thank him for such a compli 
 ment, but she wouldn't, and I had to do it in English. ' ' 
 
 Mr. Boggs was something of a mimic, and both ladies 
 laughed at the close imitation. 
 
 " Well, now," resumed Mr. Boggs, " Mrs. Stichen is not 
 vulgar, for there is no vulgarity without pretension, or rather 
 pretentiousness, and she is not ignorant that is, not as ig 
 norant as the Misses Wadkins, or Sally Chorly. She knows 
 who painted Mr. Dusseldorf s pictures, and when I spoke of 
 Lady Geraldine's courtship she didn't mistake it for one of 
 Moore's melodies, or think I meant Jimmy Doolittle's spoony 
 bout at Milan and Cadenabia with that fast Irish peeress." 
 
 " But, Mr. Boggs," interposed Mrs. Struggles, " how can 
 you call the Misses Wadkins ignorant ? Why they know 
 everybody in town ; they play and sing ; they have been to 
 Paris, and they speak French beautifully, and they draw ! oh
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 147 
 
 yes, they draw wonderfully. You should see Julia's drawing 
 of the Venice de Medici." 
 
 " The Venice de what ! " demanded Mr. Boggs. 
 
 " The famous statue." 
 
 "Never heard of it." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Boggs ! never heard of the Venice de Medici ? " 
 
 " Never ; I have heard of the Florence di Medici, but never 
 of the Venice." 
 
 Mrs. Ledgeral shook her finger at Mr. Boggs. 
 
 " Well, I admit," he continued, " that the Wadkins know 
 a good deal ; they know the Bois thoroughly, and have been 
 presented at the Tuilleries, and danced the cotillion half-a- 
 dozen times apiece with the Prince Vascoutch and the Mar 
 quis de la Roche Gammon. 1 don't know but I am wrong in 
 calling them ignorant. There is a great deal of very useless 
 knowledge in the world, but perhaps it is just as well to have 
 a kind of an idea that Childe Harold wasn't written by Shake 
 speare ; and that Browning the poet and Browning the butcher 
 in Clinton market, where pa buys his beef, are two different 
 persons. 
 
 " But, as I was saying, Mrs. Stichen is not ignorant ; I have 
 examined her. ' Let us see,' said I, ' Mrs. Stichen, what you 
 know. Do you know that the square of the hypothenuse of a 
 right-angled triangle equals the sum of the squares of the two 
 sides ? ' 'I don't,' said she, ' and I didn't know that it was 
 necessary to know it. I never supposed there were any 
 squares or triangles in society. I thought there were nothing 
 but circles.' And she looked so demure you would never 
 have thought well, I can't say that butter wouldn't melt in 
 her mouth, for she has just that ripe, warm, luscious-looking 
 nouth that you'd think butter would melt in it, and that very 
 quickly. 
 
 " ' Mrs. Stichen,' said I, ' you'll do. I'll be hanged if I 
 don't take you up in earnest.' And now, my dear Mrs. Ledg 
 eral, that is just what I have come about this morning. I 
 want to know, if Mrs. Stichen calls upon you, whether you will 
 return her call and put her name upon your visiting-list. You
 
 I4 8 NEVER AGAIN 
 
 see Stichen is a sensible fellow, and he has promised never to 
 show himself. Mrs. Stichen has a good voice, and I am 
 going to work the musical dodge for her. She wants a little 
 training, but Albetus says, that with her great natural capa 
 bility, he can put her in good order for at least two or three 
 songs in about three months. Her voice is a rich round con 
 tralto ; none of your squeaky sopranos." 
 
 "Well, suppose I should give a musicale, Mr. Boggs, and 
 bring her out for you ? " 
 
 " Thank you, but that won't do," replied Mr. Boggs. " I 
 am going to do the fair thing by her. I have promised Stichen, 
 and I mean to keep my word. I am not going to have 
 her get into the musical notch and stick there. I am not going 
 to allow her to go into society to sing for her patrons. I am 
 going to fix it so that, being in society, she will occasionally 
 sing to gratify her friends. There is a difference, you know, 
 and if Mrs. Ledgeral will promise to return her call, that is all 
 I ask just at present." 
 
 " With great pleasure, Mr. Boggs," replied Mrs. Ledgeral. 
 " You somewhat pique my curiosity, and, as you say she is 
 presentable, I shan't mind introducing her to Aunt Shippen, 
 and perhaps to Mrs. De Billivert." 
 
 " Oh, thank you, Mrs. Ledgeral, you are very kind. Those 
 two will do, but not another one if you have any regard for 
 me. I don't want to sprawl her all over society at once. 
 She'd spread out too thin. Better wait a little. Society is a 
 monster that must be delicately tickled into an appetite for a 
 fresh morsel. It is a whirlpool, and it is better to be sucked 
 in than to be pushed in. You glide into the very vortex more 
 gently and surely." 
 
 " Well, just as you say, Mr. Boggs. You are a first-rate 
 engineer, and can manage your, or anybody's, social loco 
 motive as well as any one I know. I shall watch your opera 
 tions with interest, and in- the meantime you may be sure that 
 I shall return her call." 
 
 ( ' Well, then, your reception-day next week will see about 
 as pretty a pair of brown bays at your door as you can find in
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 149 
 
 town. I selected them, with clarence, coachman and call-boy, 
 all myself, carte blanche, you know, from Stichen. I shall 
 be on hand. Au revoir" and Mr. Boggs lounged from the 
 room. 
 
 " And do you really mean to take up this Mrs. Stichen, 
 my dear Mrs. Ledgeral ? " demanded Mrs. Struggles. 
 
 It is characteristic of the struggling woman that, while 
 clinging with desperate clutch to the middle rounds of the 
 ladder of fashion, she has the capacity of directing her vision 
 with equal intensity in directly opposite directions above and 
 below ; one eye, beaming with hope and ambition, turns prayer 
 fully upward, with its tears of faith and devotion, the veri 
 table pearls of social piety, glistening in the effulgence of 
 the great ineffable Bosh ; the other, gleaming with scorn and 
 jealousy, flashes darkly downward upon the sacrilegious 
 wretch who has dared to raise herself out of the mud and 
 mire of common vulgar respectability by so much as a single 
 step on the first fashionable rung. 
 
 " If I were you, my dear Mrs. Ledgeral, I don't think 
 that I would notice her. I don't care if she is accomplished 
 and handsome and well-mannered and lady-like, she is very 
 low ; and as for her music, it would be a great deal better to 
 get the professionals to sing for you you know you can do 
 that for nothing, very often, if you only flatter them a little 
 than to receive such people. I think it very wrong that peo 
 ple in society should be called upon to compromise them 
 selves with all these common people." 
 
 " Compromise ! Mrs. Struggles, " demanded Mrs. Ledg 
 eral ; " what do you mean by that ? " 
 
 "Oh, I don't mean that you could be compromised," 
 replied Mrs. Struggles ; "you can do anything, but I don't see 
 the use of really taking up such a woman, and bringing her 
 right in. It is hardly fair. Why look at Mrs. Highton. She 
 went through six years of snubs before she could do anything 
 worth speaking of. Lord ! just to think of what that woman 
 endured at Sharon and Newport. And now Mr. Boggs wants 
 to jump this Mrs. Stichen right over everything. I don't see
 
 I5 o NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 the use, my dear Mrs. Ledgeral, of taking her up. There 
 are getting to be so many common people in society now so 
 much shoddy. Why should you do it ? " 
 
 "Well, I don't know," said Mrs. Ledgeral; "pour 
 nfamuser and to oblige Mr. Boggs. Besides, Boggs is a 
 pretty good judge of music, and he says she has a good voice. 
 Now, with good looks, a good voice, plenty of money, and 
 Mr. Boggs to engineer matters for her, ten chances to one 
 that in a season or two she takes a position." 
 
 " She may spread herself among the upper ten thousand," 
 replied Mrs. Struggles, in an anxious tone, "but do you really 
 think, my dear Mrs. Ledgeral, that she will make her way 
 into the highest circle the ultimate five hundred your set, 
 and, thanks to your kindness, I may say, our set ? " 
 
 " Perhaps, that is if she takes a turn or two at Sharon and 
 Newport ; quietly and modestly attacks society in detail ; 
 don't invite a combination against her by running after the 
 men too much at first, and don't try to give a grand party too 
 soon, so as to allow society to get her down into one of those 
 awful social ruts that it is so difficult to get out of. But 
 Hamilton Boggs knows all the pit-falls, and can pull all the 
 strings. She's lucky in having such an adviser. I shouldn't 
 wonder if he should make her a downright rage before he 
 gets through with her. You recollect what a wonderful belle 
 his sister was for two seasons ; but I forget, you could not 
 have known anything about it, for that was five or six years 
 ago. Well, no girl ever made more noise. Twice a week, a 
 serenade that disturbed the whole neighborhood, and the 
 biggest anonymous bouquets ever known. She was the talk 
 of our set. Two or three times copies of verses got into the 
 Herald, and Boggs threatened to flog the editor. He never 
 did, but I know that he has a knack at rhymes, and I know 
 that he paid Himmerman three thousand dollars for music, 
 and only the other day Mackenzie, the florist, told me that 
 Boggs owed three hundred dollars balance on an old account. 
 The second season there was a dead set at her, but Tim Bur 
 ling came in and carried her off with his three millions. 
 Oh, Boggs can do the tiling if any one can."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. i$i 
 
 "Well, then," said Mrs. Struggles, with a sigh, "I shall 
 be here on Tuesday, and you must introduce me." 
 
 Mrs. Struggles took her leave, and was giving orders to 
 her coachman to drive home, when suddenly she changed her 
 mind. " What if I call at once ? " said she. " I'll do it ! I 
 can say that my friend Boggs had so much interested me in 
 her that I had resolved not to stand upon ceremony." 
 
 It is best, thought Mrs. Struggles, when you can't keep 
 people out, to make a flourish of cordiality, and rush at once 
 to open the door. A happy thought, original and profound, 
 wherein lies a hint to prime ministers, legislators, and poli 
 ticians of every degree.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Slippery and Sloppy A Street Adventure The Old Frenchwoman 
 Timely Aid Luther's Gallantry A Vista of Unlimited French 
 and German. 
 
 IT was the last half hour of a chill winter's day. A leaden 
 sky above ; a sluggy, dingy-white carpet of snow below ; 
 no animation, no buoyancy in the moisture-laden air, anon, a 
 perceptible decrease of temperature. The fitful blasts that 
 whistled round the corners of the streets opening to the 
 North River became more and more aciculated. The hurry 
 ing crowds in Broadway drew their coats and cloaks closer 
 as they passed the exposed crossings. 
 
 His day's duties done, Luther with rather deliberate step 
 was wending his way to Broome Street ; there was nothing 
 so very inviting in Miss Jones' mahogany and horse-hair- 
 furnitured parlors, and the dark, dumb anthracite stove, that 
 he should quicken his steps beyond the rate dictated by the 
 natural impulses of a healthy circulation and a vigorous 
 innervation. 
 
 He paused for a few moments at two or three of the shop 
 windows, and his fancy strode round and round the world, on 
 the hints of some silks and satins, one or two cashmere 
 shawls, some articles of bijoutry and virtu. He lingered at 
 some of the crossings and looked down the bleak streets and 
 across the long line of closely-packed spars and masts and 
 steam funnels in his mind not merely the iron and wooden 
 instruments and adjuncts of sordid trade, but the symbols of the 
 richest romance ; the dashes and exclamation points emphasiz 
 ing the boldest enterprise, the wildest and most fascinating 
 adventure. He stopped on the corner of Franklin Street, and,
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 153 
 
 in the instinctive bravado of youthful hardihood, turned his 
 ruddy cheeks to the blast. It was no mere wind from Hobo- 
 ken or Weehawken that saluted him, as it did the thousands 
 of passers. It was the very breath of the pole, and bore on 
 its chill wings the grumblings of the grinding ice-fields, the 
 crushings of colliding bergs, the cracklings of the aurora and 
 the last sighs of Franklin and his men. 
 
 At this moment he was sensible of a curious phenomenon ; 
 it was growing colder, and yet it seemed to be growing 
 warmer. As the sloppy slush of the streets began to freeze, 
 a pleasant warmth was radiated from the hardening mass. 
 Heat, latent in the liquid, streamed out from the hold of the 
 griping crystals, and diffused itself through the chill air. He 
 had often noticed the same thing before, and thoroughly com 
 prehended the rationale of the phenomenon, but the fact had 
 never struck him so forcibly. It suggested itself now as a 
 good illustration of the principle of compensation, and he 
 thought of the story of the old soldier reproving his comrades, 
 grumbling around their Russian bivouac, with his nous avions 
 chaud en Egypte il y a vingt ans. 
 
 " Yes, yes," exclaimed Luther, forgetting the crowds, and 
 suddenly speaking in quite a loud voice ; " Yes, // y a tou- 
 jours compensation, man ami." 
 
 "Qitotf Que dites vous!" suddenly demanded a female 
 voice at his side. 
 
 The speaker was a little withered woman of some fifty or 
 fifty-five years of age. She was shabbily, but still sufficiently, 
 clad, in an old black silk cloak ; streaked and frayed and 
 faded ; and with here and there a downright hole or rent 
 through which peeped the dingy wadding. On her head she 
 wore an old velvet hat, evidently dating from the days when, 
 in the matter of female head-gear, a liberal and generous 
 fashion prevailed, and exhibiting in the crushed and seamed 
 pile the indications of ancient splendor, but guiltless at the 
 moment of any effort at adornment, not a speck of feather, 
 flower or ribbon, except the crumpled snuff-tinted strings that 
 confined it. A pair of thick india-rubber shoes protected her
 
 !54 NEVER 
 
 feet, and added an appearance of comfort if not of elegance 
 to her toilet an appearance that was heightened by a warm 
 but somewhat mussy victorine of cat-skin that encircled her 
 neck, each particular hair of which, standing out in its own 
 particular way, seemed still to speak of the desperate battle 
 with brutal bull terriers in which poor grimalkin had lost 
 her life. 
 
 She stretched out from beneath her cloak a small and del 
 icately formed hand, covered with a new and nicely-fitting 
 glove, of a pure pearl tint, and touched Luther on the arm. 
 There was still light enough to reveal the incongruity. So 
 shabby and forlorn, and yetganti d merveille in Duprez's best ! 
 What could it mean ? It could not be purely accidental. 
 No, in some way it indicated an injection of sentiment into 
 the overlying shales and conglomerates of real life, or, per 
 haps, better, an outcrop of feeling from mysterious psycholog 
 ical depths. Luther had been listening to a popular lecture 
 on geology the evening before, and as the metaphor flashed 
 upon him, he chuckled slightly with the usual pleasurable 
 pangs of figurative parturition. 
 
 The little hand flashed for a moment in Luther's sight, 
 pressed his arm with a finger's weight for an instant, and then 
 disappeared like a shooting star in the clouds of the old black 
 cloak. 
 
 " Quoif" she exclaimed. " Que dites vous? Vous ties 
 Franraist Non, nonje me trompe, pardon, pardon. Que 
 je suis btte^ and she turned away suddenly, muttering to her 
 self, and walked off with rapid, but somewhat uncertain step. 
 
 Luther, a little startled and a good deal amused, had no 
 time to frame a reply, but as she was going up Broadway he 
 resumed his walk, and followed her. 
 
 The slippery-sloppy slush had by this time changed into 
 a rough but still more slippery ice, compelling even the firmest- 
 footed pedestrians to pick their way with care. And now the 
 big india-rubber shoes stood the little old woman in good 
 stead. Without them she could hardly have gone half-a-dozen 
 yards from the spot where she had accosted Luther, but with
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 155 
 
 them she had successfully achieved a block and more, when 
 suddenly even their assistance proved insufficient. She slip 
 ped, caught her balance for an instant, slipped again, and fell 
 heavily her full length. A portly German was a little ahea-1 
 at this instant. He glanced backward, but he was under ^oo 
 much headway to stop ; besides, she was nothing but a woman, 
 somebody else could help her up, and, more than that, per 
 haps she might hot want anybody to help her up. A French 
 man was just passing. He, too, could not stop. It is true 
 she was a woman, but she was no acquaintance, and moreover 
 she was a shabby woman, and neither a young woman nor a 
 pretty woman ; but, with true French politeness, he instinct 
 ively touched his hat. Luckily the assistance of these gen 
 tlemen was not necessary, as Luther was but a step or two 
 behind, and rushing up, raised the little woman from the 
 ground. 
 
 " You are not much hurt ? " he demanded. 
 
 " No ; I have not broke the back or the neck mats 
 the foot the what you call the ankle. Well, I am much 
 under some obligation to you. Good-bye, sir," and the old 
 woman paused and examined her gloves, soiled and rent by 
 their violent contact with the rough pavement. 
 
 A flush of anger, almost the only emotion she had exhib 
 ited, mantled her face, and Luther heard a slight hiss and a 
 prolonged but almost inaudible roll of double r-r's deep down 
 in her throat. 
 
 She turned, took a step or two, but evidently with so much 
 difficulty, that Luther was again by her side. 
 
 " You had better let me assist you," he exclaimed ; " the 
 walking is very bad, very dangerous. Here, take my arm. 
 Have you far to go ? " 
 
 The old woman threw her head back, and fastened a pair 
 of piercing black eyes upon Luther's face. 
 
 " Have you ever seen me before ? " she demanded. 
 
 " Never," replied Luther. 
 
 " Did you ever hear of Madame Steignitz ?" she demanded. 
 
 " I never have had that pleasure," answered Luther.
 
 156 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " And you offer your arm to a poor old woman like me, 
 in Broadway, and the daylight not all gone away ? Me ! 
 poor, old, sale, mal habill'ee what you call shabby ! Aliens, 
 let us go," and the old woman put her arm within Luther's. 
 
 "Comme il est brave, ce gar $on" she muttered. "Ah! 
 comme il est fort aussi" she continued, as Luther, with vigor 
 ous arm, supported her over a particularly difficult and slip 
 pery piece of pavement. 
 
 Luther became sensible that a good many curious and 
 wondering glances were directed at him and his companion. 
 But what of it ; why should he care ? Even when he saw, ad 
 vancing to meet him, a fellow-member of Miss Jones' family, 
 a young bank-clerk, with whom he was on familiar terms, 
 he had no disposition to shrink from the encounter. 
 
 " Hollo ! old fellow," exclaimed his acquaintance, " what's 
 up ? Just landed, eh ? " Catching sight at this moment of 
 the old woman's face, he checked his chaff in mid-volume, 
 but, as he passed, he made a comical grimace, gave Luther a 
 mocking salutation, and, as he pretended to raise his hat, 
 touched his nose with his thumb, and flourished his fingers 
 in the air. 
 
 The keen black eyes were fastened upon Luther's face. 
 
 He could not help coloring up a little, but it was more 
 with anger than with shame. Why should he feel ashamed ? 
 Confound the fellow ! Luther never did really like him. 
 " Let him laugh. Giving one's arm to a poor old woman 
 isn't wrong, is it ? and why should it be thought ridiculous ? 
 But is it ridiculous ? No ; it can't be ridiculous. But if it 
 really is ridiculous, what then ? Why shouldn't a fellow make 
 himself ridiculous sometimes when he knows he's right? If 
 he makes himself ridiculous when he knows he's wrong ! Ah ! 
 that is another thing." And Luther's thoughts ran back past 
 his steamboat adventure, to the days of Miss Deborah Doo- 
 little. 
 
 " Yes, you're a brave," exclaimed the old woman. " ye 
 voudrais bien savoir sa pensee" she muttered to herself. 
 
 Luther made no reply ; lost in thought he mechanically
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 157 
 
 occupied himself in assisting his companion's footsteps, and 
 together they walked two or three blocks in silence. 
 
 "Tell me what of you think! " suddenly exclaimed the old 
 woman. 
 
 Lut her smiled. 
 
 " Oui! out! d quoi pensez vous? Tell me." 
 
 Lut'ier laughed outright. " I was thinking," he said, "of 
 a remark of an old friend of mine." 
 
 " Repeat it to me." 
 
 "You would hardly understand it." 
 
 " Do you think so ? Let me tell you I comprehend the 
 English perfectly well." 
 
 "Yes, and you speak it very purely, but my friend's 
 remark was in English of the sea, and not English of the 
 land." 
 
 " Never mind, repeat it to me." 
 
 Luther laughed again, as the little woman reiterated her 
 order in a peremptory tone. 
 
 "Well," replied Luther, "he was talking about people 
 being afraid of being laughed at. He said that he never 
 knew a lubber who was afraid of being laughed at turn out a 
 good seaman. He might learn to slush a spar, clean the pig 
 sty, or milk the Captain's goat, but'you couldn't depend upon 
 him to haul out the weather earing in a nor'-wester." 
 
 " And you was think of that ah ! ah ! I comprehend, 
 parfaitement I; ten ! parfaitement bien ! Your sea friend will 
 say that if a young gentleman, beau, brave, bien mis, gives his 
 arm to a poor old shabby Frenchwoman in Broadway, he 
 must not be afraid of the laugh. Ha ! ha ! Bien, bim, quit 
 rit? nous verrons, nous verrons. This is my street," she sud 
 denly exclaimed as they reached the head of Houston Street, 
 "but you go not yet, you shall come with me to my apart 
 ment. Where do you live ? " 
 
 Luther hesitated. He had felt impelled to give her the sup 
 port of his arm for the time, but he was by no means certain 
 that he desired to form any permanent friendly relations with 
 her. She might possibly prove a disreputable acquaintance ;
 
 158 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 she might, and very probably would, prove a disagreeable one. 
 Still there was a tone of decision and authority in her way of 
 putting her queries that Luther was unable to resist, and 
 there was something in the expression of her flashing black 
 eyes and her mobile mouth, in fact in her whole air and man 
 ner, that piqued curiosity and excited interest. Why should he 
 not go with her ? The cross-streets were even more slippery 
 than Broadway, and it would be such a terrible misfortune 
 for the poor old thing to break any of her bones. 
 
 "You live in Bleecker Street? Good ! we are neighbors. 
 I live in Wooster Street, close by ; viens done. I shall nqf 
 take you much out -of your way un petit pas de plus. Ah, 
 here we are nous sommes arrives." 
 
 The speaker stopped at one of a row of old-fashioned and 
 rather dilapidated two-story houses with dormer windows. 
 The worn and battered door stood open, disclosing the bare 
 and dirty boards of the hall floor, and a rickety, carpetless 
 staircase. The fractured balusters ; the broken plaster of the 
 side walls exposing the splintered lathing ; the flutter of old 
 rags chinking the broken fanlights ; and the vista of a sloppy 
 yard filled with dirt-heaps, headless and hoopless barrels, old 
 tubs, and broken crockery, made a fine subject for a picture 
 for some of the great masters of genre, but which Luther 
 failed to appreciate. " Ah, I understand," said Mr. Whop 
 pers, as Luther was describing to him the scene, "more 
 homely than homey." 
 
 " Come in ! come in ! I insist ! ' : said the old woman, as 
 Luther helped her up the steps; "you have been too good not 
 to give me the pleasure of your company for a few moments 
 more." 
 
 Luther could not refuse. His curiosity was excited, and 
 any doubts as to the danger or impropriety of the adventure 
 were quieted by the sight of a group of dirty children in the 
 hall, and the signs of an honest cobbler in the front base 
 ment windows. 
 
 " This house is mine," said the old woman as she led the 
 way up-stairs ; " but I have no need for the whole. My loca-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 159 
 
 taires are not elegant people, mais que vouhz vous ! they pay 
 their rent and make not a noise too much ; except, except, 
 well, yes, except this fellow here on the second floor to the 
 front. He fights his wife sometimes, and then, ah mon Diett, 
 qu'el tapage horrible ! I tell him the next time he fights his 
 wife he fights her in the street, mais donnez vous la peine de 
 monter encore. I live in the attic ; quite at the top ; voild mon 
 voisin" indicating the front attic room " my neighbor. Oh, 
 he is a great man ! Mon Dieu, quelle fete ! On me dit" she 
 whispered, " quil est le plus grand inventeur du monde ; peut 
 etre sais pas, mais ilestfou. He work all day and all night, 
 et il ne gagne pas un sou. I must have my rent. He may be 
 a great inventor, but I must have my rent ! " 
 
 " What countryman is he? " demanded Luther. 
 
 "// est Americain, je crois. Je n'en suis pas sure; but I 
 think ; because I speak to him French and German he does 
 not comprehend both too well. But he is not like the Amer 
 icans. He studies all night. He files the brass and the iron, 
 and he makes the wood in the what you call it le tour the 
 lathe all day. He does not eat, he does not talk ; he thinks 
 he thinks all the time; he lives in a state of maussaderie 
 incroyable, all what you call higgledy-piggledy, but he does 
 not make any money. He sits on his grand ideas like a cou- 
 veuse, just like an old hen ; but will he hatch something ? 
 sais pas; but I know he does not hatch any money. That is 
 not like a Yankee. Oh, the Yankees are the great people to 
 gain money quick. Flick ! Flack ! Pouf ! ten thousand 
 dollars, twenty thousand dollars, hundred thousand dollars ! 
 If the Yankee does not gain money 'tis because he is a lazy 
 fellow, or because he is a fool. Monsieur Planly is not lazy, 
 he must be a fool. But I must have my rent. Entrez, Mon 
 sieur, void mon appartement. Dieu qifil fait sombre tennez 
 -je vats allumer ma lampe ; I will make a light in one lit 
 tle moment." 
 
 Madame Steignitz struck a match and, lighting her lamp, 
 motioned Luther to a seat on an old lounge covered with 
 faded chintz. Rapidly throwing off her bonnet, cloak, and
 
 l6o NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 cat-skin victorine, and opening the folds of a dingy curtain 
 covering a shallow recess, she hung them or rather flung them 
 with a careless jerk on to their accustomed pegs at the foot 
 of a narrow bed. The gloves, however, demanded more con 
 sideration. She advanced to the light, examined the stains 
 and rents, shook her head sorrowfully, and slowly drawing 
 them off, smoothed them out with care, and placed them with 
 great deliberation and precision in a handsome glove-box of 
 Russia leather. In doing this, she disclosed a pair of very 
 white and delicate hands, well-shaped and smooth, and giving 
 none of the usual and certain signs of age in the roughened 
 skin and the predominance of the flexor over the extensor 
 muscles. 
 
 Luther looked on much amused. He thought he compre 
 hended the whole scene, and his imagination framed upon the 
 instant a long story. Once a lady, young, handsome, and 
 vain ; once the envy of women and the admiration of men : for 
 it was plain to be seen in her vivacious dark eye, her straight 
 and well-formed nose, a little inclining, perhaps, to the Jewish 
 type, in her large, full-lipped, but expressive mouth, her nicely- 
 rounded chin, in fact in the general contour of head and face, 
 that, in those days, far back, when vigorous pulses had dis 
 tended and illuminated the now dried and darkened skin, she 
 had been handsome. Disappointment in love loss of friends 
 and then poverty, stern poverty, driving out vanity ; chas 
 ing it from head and cheek and person ; leaving nothing but a 
 remnant clinging to the handsome hands in their special priv 
 ilege of the finest and nicest Parisian dress that was the 
 story ! 
 
 Luther was right in the main as to the indications of hand 
 and glove, but wrong in his conjecture as to the moving pas 
 sion. It was not blighted affection, hardly grief, and certainly 
 not poverty that had so nearly exterminated the universal, and 
 almost strongest, sentiment of the female heart. It was a 
 stronger, fiercer influence : the inordinate love of money a 
 passion within bounds useful ; but, uncontrolled, like Aaron's 
 rod ; or, to drop such a hackneyed figure, like a badly-trained
 
 NEVER AGAIN. Z 6i 
 
 ferret in a barn-yard, killing the rats and driving off all vermin, 
 but, in its insatiable blood-thirsty rage, throttling and destroy 
 ing, right and left, young and old, the defenceless denizens of 
 the poultry-ground and the hen-house. 
 
 " Maintenant ! " exclaimed Madame Steignitz, turning 
 round to Luther, " let me look at you. I want to see the 
 young gentleman who would give his arm to help a poor 
 old woman in Broadway. Bon ! " she continued, as Luther 
 smiled under this deliberate scrutiny. " Now you shall tell me 
 all about yourself," and the old lady began a string of questions 
 as to age, birth, parentage, present employment, and future 
 prospects, etc., to which Luther replied very amiably until at 
 last he began to be a little annoyed by her minute inquisitive- 
 ness. She probed him, however, with so much pertinacity 
 and vivacity of manner that he could not escape answering. 
 He told about his steam-boat disaster ; described his friends 
 Captain Combings and Mr. Whoppers ; and touched upon 
 the social and epicurean delights of Miss Jones' boarding- 
 house. But one thing he avoided, and that was the title of 
 the firm in whose employment he was, from a feeling that the 
 mention of Mr. Ledgeral's name might lead to some inquiries 
 about the family in Waverley Place, which he might not like to 
 answer. Happily she did not demand the name. The com 
 mon New York phrase, ' in a store down town,' satisfied her, 
 and prevented the necessity of mentioning a name that might 
 have aroused associations she little thought of at the moment. 
 Luther of course knew nothing of this. His hesitation was 
 an instinctive, not a conscious, shrinking. It was an invol 
 untary pause, as the hollow murmur of Mr. Whoppers' silver 
 sea upon whose shore he stood surged up in gusts of profound- 
 est warning. 
 
 The old lady took another look at Luther's face. " Bon ! " 
 she exclaimed ; " ce n'est pas le regard d'un fripon. You have 
 told me about yourself; I will tell you about myself. My first 
 name was De Laune Annette De Laune, but I married a 
 German, Steignitz. Ha ! " exclaimed the old lady, turning 
 sharply to Luther and eying him suspiciously, " you did not 
 ii
 
 1 62 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 know that was my name when you helped me up in the street; 
 you never heard of Madame Steignitz eh ? " 
 
 Luther shook his head. 
 
 " Well, well, that is my name. I am a poor woman very 
 poor, and I have no relatives, rfo friends ; but I do not need 
 any help. I do not beg. I live by myself. It does not cost 
 much. Nobody comes to see me. My husband left me this 
 house. 'Tis old ; 'tis broken ; my tenants cheat me of the 
 rent ; the city robs me with the tax ; and then the interest 
 upon mortgage in this country is so high. Ah mon Dieu ! 
 A poor woman in this country has a hard time to faire son 
 chemin what you call to get along." 
 
 " Have you no wish to return to your own country ? " 
 demanded Luther. 
 
 " No, no, 1 have no country. When I was young I love 
 my own country ; I love my other country hinter dem Rhin. 
 And now, this is my country. I shall have no other. But do 
 not go," she continued, as Luther made a motion to depart ; 
 "you are the first that has been in this chamber for several 
 years. I like your looks ; I think you are honest ; I know 
 you are brave. Yes ! yes ! yes ! " She nodded her head 
 emphatically several times, and suddenly her eyes, which were 
 steadily directed at Luther's face, seemed to penetrate com 
 pletely through him and beyond him into blank space, thou 
 sands of miles away. 
 
 She started, raised her hands, and flung them out with a 
 movement of desperate impatience and rage ; the next instant 
 clasped and wrung them with an expression of the fiercest 
 anguish. " Ah, mon Dieu, mon Dieu" she cried, " if he had 
 lived he too might have been like this. Oui, oui, like this. 
 O, mon enfant, mon petit ! Pardon," she exclaimed in the next 
 moment, laying her hand gently on Luther's arm. "I have 
 frightened you, but it is nothing. You will forgive a poor old 
 woman who has sometimes some ugly thoughts. She is not 
 crazy. Do you not have any fears ! It is all right here," tap 
 ping her forehead. " And now I want you to come and see 
 me sometimes. It seems to me that some light comes where
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 163 
 
 you stand, and it is so very dark! yes, it is so very dark 
 always. I want you should come sometimes." 
 
 Luther expressed his willingness to do so. 
 
 " Ah, yes, I know what that means. You hope to have 
 the pleasure sometime ; but I must have something better 
 than that. I have never asked anybody to come and see me 
 before. Why should anybody come to see a poor old French 
 woman ? To do so they must have some cause, some reason. 
 I am not such a fool as to think they would come for nothing. 
 To make sure, I must bribe you. I cannot give you money. 
 I have none, and if I had," she added apologetically, seeing 
 Luther's face beginning to flush " if I had, you would not 
 take it? Well, 'tis not many such; but I must bribe you. 
 You would come once or twice to please a poor, solitary old 
 woman ; but no, I will not that old age should be exigeant to 
 youth. You shall not come once or twice, but fifty times, to 
 please yourself. You tell me you study a great deal. You 
 say you have studied the French a little, but you cannot speak 
 it. Would you like to speak French?" 
 
 Luther's eyes sparkled. " Nothing I desire so much," he 
 replied. " Nothing am I so determined upon, but my oppor 
 tunities are poor. I cannot afford a private master, and twice 
 a week with a large public class at the Mercantile Library is 
 slow work." 
 
 " C'est pa," exclaimed Madame Steigmtz, " the lessons are 
 few, the time is short, the practice is nothing, and not always 
 the master is good. You come to me, I remedy all that. I 
 make you speak French ; I know how to teach better than a 
 master ; I have learned them myself. I speak German like 
 my own language. I speak English, as you see. I speak Ital 
 ian as well as the Pope ; and I have lived three years in Ma 
 drid. You shall come to me ; it shall cost you nothing. In 
 six months I will make you speak French, not like a native 
 Parisian -that is all blague, what you call 'stuff' but you shall 
 speak it like a gentleman comme ilfaut, and not like a school 
 boy. The Frenchman shall not say, Voila un Parisien ! mais 
 on dira, II parle mieux qifnn Fran$ais. Un petit accent!
 
 164 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Mais comme, <?cst delideux ! And, perhaps, German, too ! Ah ! 
 but that would be trap de bonheur, eh ? No, no, it shall be." 
 
 Madame Steignitz laughed and held out her hand, and Lu. 
 ther took his leave with feelings quite elated as the vision of 
 unlimited French opened before him.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Ihe Inventor New York Streets Hygienic Propositions Planly's 
 Plans Whoppers on Luther's Good Luck An Invitation to the 
 House up-town The Editor's Comments Certain Characters and 
 Characteristics of Society. 
 
 AS Luther came out into the hall the door of the front attic 
 room was opened, and Mr. Planly, the inventor, made 
 his appearance and prepared to descend the stairs. He was 
 tall, gaunt, and round-shouldered. A short, thin, faded blue 
 camlet cloak hung from his shoulders, and partially concealed 
 a seamed, smirched, and almost thread-bare suit of black, 
 which was carefully buttoned up to the chin, perhaps solely 
 to protect his breast from the cold, but, as no linen appeared 
 above the rusty black silk cravat, perhaps, also, to screen a 
 well-worn woollen shirt from sight. Perhaps! we say, for 
 there was a depth of speculation in those dark gray, caverned 
 eyes that forbade a measurement of motives by the little two- 
 foot rule of social vanities and sentiments. A thick grizzly- 
 beard and mustache partially concealed the sunken cheeks 
 and delicate mouth, and the well-rounded, but not very 
 powerful jaw and chin. The nose, well enough in its way, 
 was not a prominent feature ; not at all a powerful nose ; but 
 above it, the forehead swelled into proportions truly striking. 
 The immense breadth rather obscured the length. The per 
 ceptive and reflective organs seemed to be well balanced, but 
 the organs of ideality, bursting out in great tables and plains 
 of osseous development on either side, made and marked the 
 character of the head. They suggested to Luther's mind the 
 idea of being levered upward and outward by the same irre 
 sistible power that is upheaving the shores of Sweden, or the 
 plateaus and mountain masses of Colorado and Nevada.
 
 1 66 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " Exactly," exclaimed Mr. Whoppers, to whom Luther 
 was relating his adventures. " Undoubtedly the same power ; 
 correlation of forces, you know, and all that. Now couldn't 
 we devise some experiments to determine the exact propor 
 tion, say between the Catskills and that fellow's cerebellum ? " 
 
 Mr. Planly took off his battered and napless hat in return 
 to Luther's respectful salutation. 
 
 A few scanty gray hairs covered the top of his head, which 
 was quite flat, as if the organ of veneration had been cut off 
 or driven in, leaving in fact a hollow that would almost have 
 held water like - the back of a prize ox. The mechanical 
 inventor stood revealed. What could a man with such a 
 shaped head do but worship the graven images, the cut and 
 carved and hammered idols of his own fancy, and revel in the 
 glorious mechanical possibilities of material nature. Not for 
 him the reverential awe of authority, not for him an unhesitat 
 ing faith in dogma, not for him the meritorious abasement of 
 self before the unknown and the unknowable. The dance of 
 his imagination must be along the paths, or rather by-paths, 
 of the practical and the actual ; his faith must necessarily be 
 circumscribed and hampered by obedience to scientific 
 methods and conclusions, and his soul, unlike many happier 
 souls, inhabiting heads with an elevated apex, could not be 
 upborne into the regions of religious mist upon the pious pin 
 ions of a devout metaphysic, but must necessarily wing its 
 flights, guided by the dictates of a positive philosophy, along 
 the less elevated, but still gorgeous and wonderful, hills 
 and valleys, meads and gardens, of a material and objective 
 creation. 
 
 Mr. Planly returned Luther's salute, and together they 
 descended the stairs. Both seemed struck with each other's 
 appearance, and with reason, for there was much in both that 
 would have attracted the eye of even a common observer. 
 Of course, the conversation began with the inevitable subject 
 the range of the thermometer, and that New York topic par 
 excellence the state of the streets. 
 
 Happy, happy denizen of the great Western metropolis !
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 167 
 
 How thankful ought he to be for the crowning mercy of 
 American life ! How grateful to a benign municipal govern 
 ment ought he ever to be for a topic of conversation not 
 hackneyed like the weather, but always fresh and always 
 present ! How proud ought he to be of his citizenship ! I 
 am a Roman citizen ! Bah ! I am a citizen of New York ! a 
 citizen of a city of patient people ! Talk not of Rome, or the 
 rampant virtues of that vehement pagan race. Under similar 
 circumstances of dust, mud, filth, rascality, and corruption, 
 they would have risen in revolution, cut off the heads of their 
 consuls, tried their tribunes and hanged them, and flogged 
 their lictors with their own fasces ! The Christian virtues, 
 patience, humility, meekness ; the meritorious conditions of 
 submission, long-suffering, and endurance of evil could never, 
 then and there, have received that special and wonderful 
 illustration which constitutes the real greatness and glory of 
 New York. 
 
 Mr. Planly expressed the opinion that, offensive as 
 may be the dirt of the streets, both to eye and nose, the 
 danger to health is small compared with that from the great 
 laboratory of malific influences underlying the streets. " It is 
 unquestionably the sewers," he said, " that are the great 
 breeders and feeders of disease ; and there is no excuse for 
 that, you know, so long as the trouble can be so easily 
 remedied." 
 
 " By the utilization of the sewerage and its conversion into 
 fertilizing products ? " demanded Luther. 
 
 " No," replied Mr. Planly. " It will take, perhaps, a hun 
 dred years before New Yorkers get that amount of sanitary 
 science knocked into them. Three generations at least must 
 struggle along with poisonous gases, and the miasms of 
 scarlet fever, cholera, and typhoid ; and hundreds of thousands 
 of children, and adults as well, will have to be slaughtered 
 before the people can rise to a sufficiently clear conception 
 that the present disposal of sewerage is wicked and wasteful, 
 as well as offensive, or be willing to submit to the great labor 
 and expense of a complete change of system. No, my c nly
 
 1 68 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 hope for the present generation is in a much simpler plan 
 one that has been tried and found to work admirably." 
 
 " Where was that ? " demanded Luther. 
 
 " In Killoam," replied Mr. Planly ; and seeing Luther 
 look a little blank he added, " the great capital of Frama- 
 zugda you will find an account of it in that veracious book 
 of travels Kaloolah. The plan consists in building towers or 
 ventilating chimneys to the sewers. Here in New York," con 
 tinued Mr. Planly, "I suppose that from thirty to forty 
 such towers say two hundred feet high would be enough. 
 They would not cost much, especially when we consider the 
 vast evil to be remedied, and that no system of plumbing 
 that could be devised can, or if devised, will, from its expense 
 and inconvenience, and the recklessness of individuals, 
 make of our houses anything but poisonous death-dealing 
 centres of disease. If expense is an objection, better build 
 them in the roughest way, without ornamentation, like the 
 draft chimneys of manufactories. Health first and beauty 
 afterwards a million of dollars would build the whole forty 
 in a plain but effective style. Arrangements should be made 
 for increasing the draft at will by burning gas within the 
 chimney, and perhaps a design might be adopted for deod-' 
 orizing and purifying or destroying the effluvium in its pas 
 sage upward. But perhaps it would be well not to compli 
 cate the plan beyond the conceptive powers of the average 
 municipal mind." 
 
 " It seems as if it might be effective," said Luther. 
 
 "Seems! my dear Sir!" exclaimed Mr. Planly, catching 
 Luther's arm and pulling him around the corner out of the 
 way of the wind, which began to whistle keenly. " Seems ! 
 why it has been done. Livingstone, I hope, will be able to tell 
 us all about it when he gets home, for he must have visited 
 Killoam. It can't fail. The elements of the calculation are all 
 known and I have gone over them myself. In the first place, 
 the awful evil to be overcome is admitted next, the area of 
 sewerage, amount of poison to be eliminated, area of ventilat 
 ing shafts height of shaft, strength of up-draft, consequent
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 169 
 
 pressure outward and downward at all the orifices in our 
 houses, where now the poisonous pressure is inward and up 
 ward, are all calculable." 
 
 Mr. Planly had found a sympathetic listener, and his voice 
 grew emphatic as the enthusaism of the inventor rose. He 
 could have talked for an hour on the peak of an iceberg. 
 Never mind the cold wind or a cold dinner. 
 
 Luther began to think of the last, when a happy thought 
 struck him not that it required any great stretch of imagina 
 tion. It was simply one that is almost inconceivably natural and 
 common to the New York mind. He thought that he would 
 dive into a neighboring oyster-cellar and have a stew, and 
 the suspicion crossed his mind that perhaps, if he asked Mr. 
 Planly to join him, it might be an unusually proper and appro 
 priate thing to do. At any rate a double box-stew of splen 
 did East Rivers, unlimited coolslaa, and bread and butter, 
 and a glass of creamy ale, did not appear in the least to inter 
 fere with the inventor's willingness to unfold a little more in 
 detail his ideas of sanitary reform. 
 
 Luther listened with interest. The idea of extirpating at 
 one swoop and at so little expense, and without interfering 
 with any of the settled habits or prejudices of the community, 
 so large a proportion of the causes of disease and consequent 
 misery would have charms for a less enthusiastic and imagina 
 tive mind. Just to think of what could be done, and that 
 almost immediately. Think of the thousands of lives that 
 would be preserved. Think of the pains, the aches, the ailings, 
 the blood-poisonings, the fevers and zymotic diseases of all 
 kinds that would be prevented. Think of the doctor's bills that 
 would be saved. Think of the almost universal blasphemy in 
 attributing to the Divine Being the results of men's culpable 
 ignorance and carelessness that would be forever suppressed ! 
 Why, the gain would be something tremendous in all its social 
 consequences ! 
 
 " The world does move," said Mr. Planly, as he blandly 
 accepted Luther's offer of a second glass of ale, " but oh, how 
 slowly in the matter of social and sanitary reform. In a cen-
 
 170 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 tury or two, people will look back to our times with somewhat 
 of the same feelings with which we regard the old garc de 
 Feau system of Edinburgh and various Continental cities. 
 They will wonder how we could have endured for a moment 
 the thousand ills and miseries which will then no longer exist, 
 but which we now absurdly suppose flesh to be necessarily 
 heir to, and which we blindly dignify into visitations of 
 God." 
 
 " You wouldn't expect to abolish all diseases ? " demanded 
 Luther. 
 
 " Oh no ! only a large proportion of the most terrible. 
 There would still remain diseases enough to do death's work, 
 without keeping the old fellow waiting for old age. But I 
 must say that I think it hardly possible to calculate how far 
 or how wide a reform in this one thing might extend. Do 
 you know," and here Mr. Planly, as his second mug of ale 
 began to acquire a gentle inclination from the perpendicular, 
 grew more and more confidential, " do you know that I believe 
 that a great deal of the universal craving for stimulants of some 
 kind is due to the depressing effect of miasmatic effluvia. 
 Think of that ! If that is so, eh ? " 
 
 " I see," said Luther. " It is admitted that there is not 
 much use in attacking King Alcohol in front. You would 
 turn his flank, and take him in the rear, and scatter his chief 
 allies." 
 
 " Exactly." And Mr. Planly emphasized the expression 
 by draining the last drop. 
 
 The conversation rambled on for some little time. Mr. 
 Planly explained his plan for improved ventilation of houses, 
 and controlling the temperature and especially for the pro 
 duction of cold. Every attention has been paid to heating 
 houses, none to cooling in our climate, almost as great a 
 necessity as the other. Mr. Planly pulled out his pencil and 
 rapidly illustrated the system of cooling on a grand scale by 
 means of condensed air, led into the houses in tubes, so that 
 any one could turn a stop-cock and flash as much cold air into 
 his rooms as he pleased. Mr. Planly would have continued
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 17 1 
 
 the conversation indefinitely, but Luther, although very much 
 interested, bethought himself of his studies, and finding that it 
 was eight o'clock, made a movement from the table, from 
 which the last cracker and the last shred of cold-cut cabbage 
 had disappeared. 
 
 Both of them expressing their obligations each to the 
 other for an interesting hour, they parted with mutual promises 
 
 of further and more intimate acquaintance. 
 
 ***** 
 
 At the corner of Broadway Luther bade Mr. Planly good- 
 evening, and hurried around the block to his home in Bleecker 
 Street. He was late, but Miss Jones received him with a 
 gracious smile, and a weak and cold cup of tea was the only 
 penalty. No, not the only penalty, he was doomed to listen 
 to a long discussion between Dr. Dronly and Mrs. Lasher as 
 to whether Spiritualism was a voice from the angelic spheres, 
 or whether it was simply a manifestation of the devil. Both 
 agreed as to the facts. The thumps, jumps, kicks, table-dancing, 
 spirit-faces, and floatings about, generally in darkened rooms, 
 there could be no dispute about but the explanation ! Ah ! 
 then came a harmonic divergence an agreement to disagree. 
 Both repudiated as utterly absurd the psychic or odic force 
 theory ; but, while Mrs. Lasher maintained that the wonderful 
 phenomena were manifestations of departed spirits, the Doctor 
 placed himself, as he said, squarely and firmly upon the bibli 
 cal record, and maintained that they were nothing more nor less 
 than the doings of Satan himself. 
 
 '' So you have been doing the gallant this evening," ex 
 claimed Mr. Whoppers. " Walking Broadway in the daytime 
 with a widow on your arm ! Look out for the widows, Luther 
 oh, you need not look so astonished. Rolf says that he met 
 you with Madame Steignitz hanging on to you as lovingly as 
 if she was your own grandmother. How did you pick her 
 up?" 
 
 "Pick her up? well, that is just it; she slipped down in 
 the street and I picked her up. But how did Rolf know that 
 her name was Madame Steignitz ; and who is Madame Steig-
 
 172 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 nitz ? No disreputable character, I hope," said Luther, who 
 began to think that perhaps he had made a mistake in making 
 her acquaintance. 
 
 " Well, Rolf knows her name because he is in the Bank, 
 and he has frequently to look after her dividends. Nobody 
 knows much about her, but there is no doubt that she is rich. 
 Rolf says she owns rows of houses, has piles of bonds and 
 mortgages, and oceans of bank-stock : manages it all herself, 
 never spends or gives away a penny. But female misers are 
 always freaky. They haven't the cold-blooded persistence of 
 the male beast. Who knows but that you have made a lucky 
 find, in finding the old woman ; you may find your name in 
 her will some day." 
 
 " Pshaw ! Rolf is wrong. The old woman that I was help 
 ing is a poor old woman, miserably poor, but I think that I 
 was lucky in falling in with her." And then Luther told 
 Whoppers of Madame Steignitz's promise of daily lessons 
 in French." 
 
 " Whew ! " exclaimed Mr. Whoppers, " you green ones 
 you modest chaps, have a way of going it sometimes that leaves 
 us old fellows far in the rear. Just look at it! You saunter 
 up Broadway, caring for nothing or nobody, and this old 
 Crassus or Croesus in petticoats tumbles into your arms. 
 Pick her up ! why I'd pick up a dozen of the ugliest old 
 wealthy women in town ; pads, panniers, paint, bought teeth, 
 store-hair and all, for half of your chance." 
 
 Luther laughed and protested that he had no designs upon 
 the old lady's purse, but that he meant to pick her brains of a 
 little German and French. 
 
 " When do you begin ?" demanded Mr. Whoppers. 
 
 "To-morrow evening I am to take my first lesson at eight 
 o'clock." 
 
 " No, you can't do that," replied Mr. Whoppers ; " you have 
 made another engagement, or rather I have for you. I was 
 up at the house in Waverley Place to-day, and it was intimated 
 to me that my presence would be required to-morrow evening 
 at a small party. As I don't figure on the light fantastic,
 
 NEVER AGAIN. ! 73 
 
 except in the old-fashioned quadratics or the Virginia reel, 
 I suppose I am asked to corner some old dowager and keep 
 her quiet while her charge has the range of the rooms." 
 
 " But what has that to do with me ? " demanded Luther. 
 
 "Why you are invited too. I was told to ask you. It is 
 an impromptu affair ; small and informal ; quite a family 
 party ; ' no cards,' as they say in the wedding notices nowa 
 days ; swallow-tails of course, dress vest, pantaloons, and white 
 neckties advisable, but rien de rigueur except light kids. 
 Old Ledgeral told me to bring you up." 
 
 " Well, I won't go," replied Luther. 
 
 "Why not?" demanded Mr. Whoppers; "you are not 
 a-going to cut up proud, are you ? Do you want papa to call 
 upon you in a coach-and-four, and mamma to send Brown to 
 you with her respectful compliments, in a monogram med enve 
 lope a foot square? Now I know that my invitation comes 
 from my Lord, and that my Lady just barely assents, but what 
 do I care ? There is always a choice of Green Seal or Roe- 
 derer, and as to the chicken salad, old Joseph makes it him 
 self. You think you have been neglected because you have 
 been now more than a year in the store, and haven't as yet been 
 invited up-town to dinner half-a-dozen times. Don't make a 
 fool of yourself! What would you think of a fellow who should 
 refuse to take a stroll in the Hesperides, or even to look into 
 the garden gates, because the golden apples hang above reach, 
 and old Cerberus won't allow a ladder ? I have half a mind 
 not to tell you something." 
 
 "Well, keep it to yourself then," replied Luther ; "but 
 don't mistake me or think me such a fool as to expect or 
 desire any attentions that my position don't warrant. I know 
 what I am, a poor devil of a clerk ; but I am better off than I 
 was two years ago I have advanced a step or two, and you 
 know ce rfest que le premier pas qui couie. I've had my salary 
 raised, and that hundred dollars you gave me for my scrib- 
 blings I've stored away in the Savings Bank. I've got my 
 foot upon the shore of that silver sea, or that golden gulf, you 
 are eternally talking about. I don't care which it is. If it's a
 
 1 74 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 silver sea, I am going to build a boat of bank-notes and sail 
 over it ; if it's a golden gulf, I'll be hanged if I don't bridge it 
 or jump it ; but, until I do, you musn't suppose I am going to 
 wriggle myself into the attentions of society, or to feel hurt 
 because I don't receive them. If your friend, the great sexton 
 of Grace Church, should offer to put me upon his list of salta 
 tory availables to-morrow, I should refuse ; but I don't think 
 it is pride." 
 
 " Well, what do you call it then ? " 
 
 " I call it self-respect" 
 
 " Bah ! how does self-respect prevent your going with me 
 to-morrow night ? " 
 
 " In this way : a verbal invitation, through you from the 
 master of the house, does not indicate in any way the slightest 
 desire for my presence on the part of the only persons whose 
 wishes I care to consult." 
 
 "Now I'll be hanged!" exclaimed Mr. Whoppers, "if I 
 havn't half a mind not to tell you." 
 
 "Tell me what?" 
 
 "Why that Miss Helen followed me into the hall, and 
 said, 'Tell Mr. Lansdale that Aunt Shippen sends him a 
 special invitation, and that we shall all be happy to see him; 
 there's going to be very few of sister's set here : only a dozen 
 of my friends and some old folks. Tell him he must come.' 
 Now you are not going to refuse such an invitation as that, 
 are you? If you do, all I can say is that you're a confounded 
 impracticable prig." 
 
 " Well that alters the case," replied Luther, " but I am 
 afraid I shall not cut much of a figure ; you know I am entirely 
 green yet." 
 
 "That is just the point ; don't try to cut any figure at all, 
 and you will do well enough. If we had time, I'd make Ham 
 ilton Boggs give you some lessons. Boggs is under obligations 
 to me. I've attacked him more than a dozen times in the 
 Universe. I've called him a contemptible sprig of fashion 
 three times. Three times I have informed him personally 
 that high birth and breeding furnish no excuse for brutal and
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 175 
 
 overbearing manners to common people ; and three times, 
 lately, I have denounced him as a bloated aristocrat. In 
 return he has given me a good deal of fashionable news and 
 two dinners at Delmonico's ; but he hasn't half paid me. If 
 we had time, I know he would give you any instructions. I 
 don't mean in the way of manners. You are all right there; 
 but a little information as to the lay of the land, and who's 
 who, and all that. No matter, however, I can tell you all that 
 is necessary. I can show you all the styles. The verdant and 
 the slightly sentimental will do in this case. You can grin 
 and say nothing at all, if you choose, or. you can bow and say, 
 ' I hope I have the pleasure of seeing Miss Thompson well 
 this evening but, I need not ask,' and then grin as if you 
 were going to add, ' she is looking so charming.' But that 
 kind of thing won't do in some cases. You might get a put- 
 back as Jules Rodgers did when he made the same speech to 
 Tilly Dusenbury : ' Bright as a button and real solid silver, 
 I declare ; but I must tell you, confidentially, that I can't 
 accept it, for ever since the income tax papa won't let us use 
 anything but electro-plate.' 
 
 " Boggs tells about her dancing with the Prince. Tilly 
 belongs to the Pushton set, and so she was to dance with the 
 Prince, and the best birth, breeding and refinement of society 
 had to stand back and kotou from a decent distance. After 
 the dance the Hon. Mr. Flickerson came up to her with his 
 ' Aw, aw, Miss Dusenbury, how do you find his Royal High 
 ness as a partner? ' 'Jolly; a perfect pet ; a real broth of a 
 boy ; especially after I had given him a little instruction.' 
 ' Aw, aw, how extraordinary.' ' Yes, I told his Royal High 
 ness to waist me up a little higher, shorten his grip, and 
 lengthen his stride ; which he did, and away we -.vent like 
 birds.' ' God bless me ! how very extraordinary ! ' and the 
 Hon. Mr. Flickerson had to seize a glass of champagne to 
 keep from fainting away on the spot. However, to-mor 
 row you won't have to do with any of the real fast ones 
 mostly young fillies, quiet and untrained. You can seldom or 
 never get a two-forty gait out of a girl under twenty-five.
 
 1 76 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 There are, it is true, some rare exceptions. There is Minnie 
 Yadkins, for instance. She began to show both speed and 
 bottom at eighteen." 
 
 " And what is her rate now," laughingly demanded 
 Luther. 
 
 "Well, I have not had lately an opportunity to time her, 
 but I rather guess she can't be beat. She's about as fast as 
 they make 'em nowadays. She don't care what she says or 
 does, or how she says and does it, and in the matter of chaff 
 she can beat a steam threshing-machine any day. I'll tell 
 you what, you had not better give her any of your ' sass.' 
 She'd deluge you with the latest and most fashionable slang. 
 The last time I was standing beside her at a party, young 
 Davy Spoons, just out, came up to her, simpering and bow 
 ing, and said, ' May I have the felicity of complimenting Miss 
 Yadkins upon her exquisite toilet this evening, and of hoping 
 that she will honor me with a turn or two ? ' ' Well, bully for 
 you, little David,' she exclaimed, with a laugh, and tapping 
 him with her fan, ' I don't know but you may sling me round 
 a few times. But stop, let me see,' she said, looking at her 
 tablets, ' ah ! yes, I have promised the next heat to Waltic 
 Von Twill ; but I guess I'H let him slide.' 'Oh, I don't wish 
 to interfere with anybody,' began Spoons. ' Oh, bother ! 
 never mind,' she interrupted, ' Waltie will keep, especially if 
 you put a little ice upon him once in a while.' And all this 
 with a certain grace of manner and tone that takes it quite 
 out of the plane of low-life vulgarity, and elevates it into the 
 highest regions of social inanity and indecency." 
 
 " Do you mean to tell me," exclaimed Luther, his face 
 ablaze with indignation, " that the highest class of society is 
 composed of such as your Miss Yadkinses and Miss Dusen- 
 burys ? " 
 
 "Dame, as the French say, I don't know that the Misses 
 Yadkins abound, but they exist, and the tendency is to make 
 more of them. Demand and supply, you know. When you 
 wanted a two-forty horse you got him ; and now there are five 
 hundred of them right here in New York, and a dozen or two
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 177 
 
 that can turn a mile in two-twenty. However, you won't 
 meet any of the flyers to-morrow night ; or if you should you 
 won't see anything very fast ; the aura of the Ledgeral set 
 is not favorable to any marked exhibitions of speed. 
 Besides, you are too green yet to readily distinguish pace and 
 action, even if you should meet 'em. But you'll go to-morrow 
 night?" 
 
 " Perhaps." 
 
 Luther was glad to be alone. He had enough of Mr. 
 Whoppers' conversation for the time. He did not always 
 like its tone, and this evening it was particularly jarring and 
 discordant. He had no great confidence in Mr. Whoppers' 
 knowledge of the highest phases of society, and he didn't 
 really believe a word about fast girls and coarse snobs, and 
 ill-bred, ignorant, dowdy fashionables, and all that cant and 
 slang of the envious, ignoble vulgar. He felt quite confident 
 that the highest fashion embraced nothing but the highest 
 culture, the utmost refinement of mind and heart, the perfec 
 tion of manners, the last ultimate attainments of grace, 
 beauty, amiability, and wit. If it didn't, what was the use of 
 having any distinctions in society at all ? Isn't "society" 
 that is, society that pretends to be " society " par excellence 
 founded as much upon the concessions of the many as upon 
 the assumptions of the few : and are people such downright 
 donkeys as to stand a tyranny that is nothing if not noble ? 
 Impossible ! Isn't it well known that the sole motive, the 
 only justification, the veritable raison d'etre of an exclusive 
 fashionable set, is the cultivation of a certain quiet elegance 
 of manner a certain grace of conversation a certain refine 
 ment of mind and heart ? And all this not so much for its 
 own pleasure and improvement as for an example and a 
 counterpoise to the boorishness of common people, and as 
 the guardian of the sacred traditions of culture and of all 
 mental and moral sweetness ? Bah ! he wouldn't believe a 
 word of Whoppers' talk ; but he resolved to learn the true 
 state of the case some day from his own observation. 
 
 Under the guidance of Mr. Whoppers he had attended
 
 178 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 two or three public balls, and had made one of a small party 
 at the house of a distinguished public functionary and poli 
 tician in Madison Avenue. At this last there were splendid 
 apartments filled with the most costly furniture, and decora 
 ted in the style of the newest splendor. And why not? 
 Did it not all come out of the public pockets of one of the 
 richest cities in the world ? There was any amount of dress, 
 jewels, and good looks ; the music was exquisite ; the cham 
 pagne veritable ; the pdti de foie and terrapin unquestion 
 able ; the spun sugar magnificent. The centre piece was an 
 elaborate representation of the new City Hall ; and all 
 around the border of the table was a most delicately curved 
 and interlaced chain of horse-railroads, street-sewers, and 
 grand half-graded boulevards. It was all beautiful, artistic, 
 splendid, but there was a yahooistic touch and tone with it 
 all that went right to Luther's heart. He felt that he was 
 not even at the portals of genuine, elevated, cultivated fash 
 ion. His instinctive refinement was so shocked that he point- 
 blank refused to go with Mr. Whoppers to a similar enter 
 tainment where it was expected there would be several Con 
 gressmen and their families ; two or three of the Chiefs of 
 Tammany ; one of the most distinguished members of the 
 Board of Supervisors, who had made an immense fortune ; 
 and a contractor for odd Corporation jobs, worth his five 
 millions ; with any quantity of Aldermanic millionaires. 
 
 " Well, I must admit," said Mr. Whoppers, who was urg 
 ing Luther to go, " it is not exactly the crime de la crvme, but 
 let me tell you, that is a fluid not quite so easy in all cases to 
 get." 
 
 " Well, if I can't get cream," returned Luther, " that is 
 no reason why I should drink swill milk, is it? No, I'll 
 wait." 
 
 "Well, you may have to wait until the cows come home." 
 
 " I will ; and I'll be in no hurry for the first milking either. 
 I'll wait for the strippings." 
 
 Luther felt a pang of regret at having to break his first 
 engagement with Madame Steignitz ; but how could he refuse
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 179 
 
 an invitation from Miss Helen Ledgeral ? True, her image 
 had somewhat paled in the past two years, during which he 
 had only seen her at church and half-a-dozen times in the 
 street, and generally then only to bow to her. In fact it 
 might have faded away like a morning cloud in the full glare 
 of day into the dimmest and remotest regions of fancy had it 
 not been for Mr. Whoppers. He very innocently acted as a 
 go-between, and by his occasional remarks and his frequent 
 items of up-town news kept up the interest. Like a busy 
 humble-bee buzzing from flower to flower in a clover-field, 
 and ignorant of the important part he is playing in the fructifi 
 cation of the plant ; so the editor fluttered back and forth, 
 utterly unaware of the little germs of passion he was carrying. 
 
 With Helen the feeling of profound interest in the young 
 man had grown rather than decreased and she was perfectly 
 ready to avow it. Why shouldn't she ? What more natural ? 
 Wasn't he her protege didn't she make him what he is ? 
 Wasn't he, as almost head clerk, and a rapidly rising young man, 
 purely her own creation ? And how nicely he had repaid her ! 
 how fully he had justified her recommendation ! Why, even 
 her father had mentioned him more than once with commen 
 dation, and Uncle Shippen had said that he believed that he 
 was a great deal better than most young men. 
 
 Luther, of course, couldn't know all this. He had thought 
 of himself as quite forgotten, and he had begun to think of 
 her as one that must soon inevitably vanish from his vision, 
 and to wonder whether, when he too had crossed the silver 
 sea or jumped the golden gulf, he should find anything half as 
 fair on the other side. But now well he should see her ; 
 speak to her perhaps ; dance with her perhaps ; hold her 
 delicate hand in his perhaps ; and that is, if mamma allowed 
 round dances clasp her flexile waist ; cushion her head on 
 his shoulder ; feel her soft breath on his cheek ; and reel, 
 whirl, fly away up into the most distant nebulous regions of 
 the surrounding heaven. He hastily scribbled a note of ex 
 cuse to Madame Steignitz to be delivered in the morning, and 
 jumped into his knobby corn-husk bed.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A Small Party Luther's First Experience The Meeting Helen and 
 Luther Aunt Shippen Drawing-Room Talk Whoppers' Advice 
 A New York Aristocrat The Dance Begins. 
 
 are going to be more people than I thought," 
 
 -*- said Mr. Whoppers, as he and Luther ascended 
 the marble steps in Washington Square, and heard the 
 announcement " Gentlemen, second floor front." " Well, 
 that is all the better for you ; you won't feel quite so much 
 as if everybody was looking at you. Ah ! Joseph, how do 
 you do? I've got a bone to pick with you." 
 
 " A bone, sar ! " grinned Joseph. 
 
 " Yes, a big one : why did you tell me that there was to 
 be no party to-night half-a-dozen people or so ? " 
 
 "Well, sah, I tell de truf ; 'taint no party, only a little 
 gatherem ; most 'specially ob de young folks purty much all 
 in de firm or de family. You don't see no Mister Brown out 
 side de door, do you ? I've got de supumversion ob de 
 whole ting myself." 
 
 " You're right Joseph," laughed Mr. Whoppers, as he and 
 Luther ascended to the dressing-room. " No Brown ; no 
 party. You ought to know Brown. He's a New York insti 
 tution of the biggest kind. I don't know, for a certainty, but 
 I don't believe they have got such a thing in all London or 
 Paris. They may have Joneses and Fergusons and Jenkins* 
 es ; they may even have Browns, but I don't believe they have 
 got a Brown. Our Brown is the embodiment of an immense 
 amount of social force. He is a power ; an authority ; a
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 181 
 
 law an imposing and ponderous expression of fashion. He 
 has no rivals. There are other men who can be hired to dis 
 tribute cards ; superintend the arrivals ; call and direct coach 
 men ; and all that kind of thing ; but it is well known to all 
 your acquaintances that you employ them only because you 
 can't get Brown. Your ball or party minus Brown only signi 
 fies that the ultra fashionable Mrs. De Bellevert, or Mrs. Van 
 T wilier, is giving a ball or party at the same time. You must 
 know Brown. He's a friend of mine ; I'll introduce you 
 some time. Come, hurry on your kids, and let us go down : 
 you feel a little shy ? well, of course you do, I wouldn't give 
 two cents for a young fellow in your circumstances who 
 didn't" 
 
 " Well, I'd give a good deal more than two cents for a 
 little of your modest assurance," said Luther. 
 
 " Bah ! never you fear. It's just like public speaking ; the 
 man who don't hesitate and boggle and break down the first 
 time he tries speaking in public will never make an orator ; 
 so the young man, or woman either, who is not a little shy at 
 first going into company will never have good manners. An 
 absence of shyness indicates an absence of imagination and 
 sensibility, without which manner may be passable, but sel 
 dom downright pleasing, much less perfect. I was shy myself 
 once, but I have almost forgotten the time when ; so, courage ! 
 follow me, and where you see my white plume wave, dash 
 into the heady current of the fight into the thick of the 
 melee ; where bright eyes are flashing and sweet voices ring 
 ing ; and frizzetts and chignons bowing and bending ; and 
 fair bosoms heaving ; and all the batteries of beauty playing ; 
 and champagne flowing like water ; and chicken-salad and 
 oysters hurtling around in the most deadly volleys ; and if 
 you don't find me bearing myself bravely, then never be your 
 oriflamme again the helmet of Navarre, nevar ! nevar ! ' Oh 
 no, we nevar mention her ! ' ' Mr. Whoppers chuckled heart 
 ily as he descended the stairs. " I would give a dollar," he 
 exclaimed to Luther, " to have had old Ledgeral hear that. 
 He squirms at a pun, or a quotation, or a quibble of any kind
 
 1 82 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 as if you'd stuck a pin in him. However, I'll contrive to give 
 him a prick or two before I get through ; I'll pay him off for 
 his condescension in asking me to-night." 
 
 Joseph threw open the door as they crossed the hall, and 
 announced their names in a loud and distinct tone, and the 
 next moment Luther stood bowing and blushing before the 
 ladies of the house. 
 
 The stereotyped smile of Mrs. Ledgeral expanded into 
 an expression of mingled surprise and pleasure as her eyes 
 fell upon Luther's glowing face. She graciously extended her 
 hand ; murmured a few words of welcome ; and Luther felt 
 himself wafted onward by a gentle impulse into the room. 
 
 He drew himself up by one of the pilasters of the folding- 
 door and looked around. There were not more than two or 
 three dozen of people in the room, but there were more coming 
 in, and to Luther's apprehension there was to be quite a 
 crowd. Not that it made any difference to him how many 
 there were, but everybody, so far, seemed to know everybody, 
 while he knew nobody, and the sense of social nonentity is so 
 much enhanced in a large assembly. Besides, if there were 
 to be so many people, he might miss the only object he had 
 in coming. Where was she? what had become of her? 
 There was Miss Ledgeral, who had not even condescended to 
 look at him when he entered the room. He knew her from 
 the resemblance, and, besides, he had seen her several times 
 in the street, but 
 
 " Mr. Lansdale has not forgotten me, I hope," said a low, 
 softly-modulated voice at his side. 
 
 Luther turned. Great heavens, what a vision met his 
 eyes ! A full-grown and in every way quite a perfect young 
 woman ! Lithe, but not lathy ; somewhat on the willow pat 
 tern, as becomes a very young woman ; but with a waist as 
 unlike that of a wasp as is the waist of Venus herself; no com 
 pression preventing all activity of digestion and nutrition, and 
 hampering the movements of lungs and heart ; no paintings or 
 pencillings or dyeings or powderings or paddings ; no artificial 
 cotton-wool developments ; no well there is no necessity of
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 183 
 
 enumerating all that there was not; inasmuch as Luther's 
 knowledge on such subjects was limited, and no young man is 
 supposed to be able to understand means and appliances ; he 
 can only recognize results. He saw the smooth, elastic, well- 
 nourished skin, and caught the under-flash of the deep but 
 delicate flesh-tints that painters find it so hard to reproduce. 
 No thin, shiny, pink-and-white cuticular prettinesses ; but the 
 delicate bloom of a Marguerite, toned by the deep tints that 
 on Raphael's brush touched the cheeks and bosom of the For- 
 narina. He saw the red, ripe lips, slightly parted, and throwing 
 their roseate shadows upon two gleaming rows of Hygeia's 
 white-coated guards those best indices of a sound constitu 
 tion and a good digestion that no dentist's hand would have 
 dared, in their perfectness, to imitate. He saw and looked 
 away down into the large liquid lustrous gray eyes that seemed 
 almost black in the deep shadows of their long lashes, eyes 
 full of an expression half melancholy, half joyous ; an intoxica 
 ting mixture of tenderness and archness, eyes that seemed 
 to open and envelop the person they fell upon with a misty 
 and perfumed mantle of love and mirth, eyes like portals to 
 some beautiful palace with a thousand little devils, serious and 
 funny, pathetic and comic, struggling with each other for 
 egress, not at all ox eyes, or gazelle eyes, or any other kind 
 of animal's eyes. They were eyes that without any further 
 ungainly straining after similes can best be described by 
 noting one of their effects : there was not an old, bald-headed, 
 gray-bearded sinner in society who did not silently thank God 
 every time they fell upon him. 
 
 " You have not quite forgotten me ? " she said, extending 
 her hand. 
 
 " Oh, no ! " exclaimed Luther, as he shyly touched the tips 
 of her little fingers. " How could I ? that is, I hope, that 
 that you could not think it possible, but," he added, recover 
 ing by a mighty effort from his embarrassment, " if I had, I 
 don't know that I should have been wholly to blame. It has 
 been so very long since I have seen you, and you have changed 
 so much."
 
 1 84 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " For the better, I hope," she answered, with a little bend 
 of the head and an arch sparkle of the eye ; " but you need not 
 reply, I know the formula ; I hear it often enough, and I am 
 not fishing for a compliment." 
 
 " No, it would hardly be worth while to make a cast when 
 you have only to dip your hand in and select the finest from 
 the whole school." 
 
 " Well, that is a metaphor," laughed Helen, " that not every 
 young lady could comprehend. But luckily for me we have a 
 trout-stream on our place on Long Island ; so I can, at the 
 same time, understand the figure, and feel grateful for the com 
 pliment." Helen made a little mock curtesy and laughed 
 merrily, but her big eyes dropped for a moment beneath 
 Luther's ardent gaze. " But it is really," she continued, " a 
 long time since we last met, and I see that time has not stood 
 still with you either." 
 
 " Not stood still exactly. He has been somewhat of a 
 laggard," said Luther, " but I can't complain, as to-night ' he 
 brings in his revenges.' " 
 
 " Well, I won't be quite so malicious, or so out of the fash 
 ion, as to quote Shakespeare back at you and say, ' time hath 
 transfixed the flourish set on youth,' but really you have 
 changed very much." 
 
 " For the better, I hardly dare to hope, in the eyes of Miss 
 Helen Ledgeral." 
 
 " Now you are fishing for a compliment, but you shan't 
 catch it at the first throw ; I was only going to say that when I 
 persuaded Aunt Shippen to send you an invitation I hardly 
 expected to see such an old gentleman." 
 
 " ' Old, but with eye and ear full sensed as yet 
 To all her matchless beauty, grace, and wit,' " 
 
 murmured Luther in a low tone, but giving emphasis to the 
 quotation by a glance of intense, eager admiration. 
 
 " Aunt Shippen's beauty, grace, and wit ! well, I will tell 
 
 her the compliment," laughed Helen ; but notwithstanding her 
 
 brave and mocking tone, her cheeks flushed and her eyes were 
 
 cast down for a moment she felt a little confused, a little bil 
 
 9
 
 NEVER AGAIN. ^5 
 
 flurried, but certainly not displeased. Here was something in 
 looks, tone, and manner evidently quite new, so different 
 from the nonchalance of Mr. Boggs ; the unutterable common 
 place of Jencks Jones ; or the slang and downright stupidity 
 of Billy Dugan and Bob Yadkins; something evidently very- 
 verdant, unsophisticated and unfashionable ; ridiculous even, 
 the idea of quoting Shakespeare ! but something fresh 
 and fragrant ; something that seemed to speak of green fields 
 and pastures new beyond the palings of Washington Square ; 
 something that produced an expanding sensation in and about 
 the region of the aorta or the arteria innominata like an occa 
 sional line of Tennyson or Longfellow. 
 
 We mention these large blood-vessels to avoid saying heart, 
 as the heart has been pretty well played out in society in these 
 days ; and we ought perhaps to beg pardon for a strong odor of 
 " shop." But what is the use of writing M. D. to one's name, 
 if, after the letters have wholly lost all dignity, they should not 
 confer at least the poor privilege of being once in a while a 
 little technical and anatomical ? 
 
 Helen felt herself being infolded and wrapped up in an 
 atmosphere or influence of tender but impassioned solicitation, 
 and, for the first time, she felt an inkling of that mysterious 
 sensation, a yearning to yield. Suddenly she looked up with 
 a laugh. 
 
 " Come, Mr. Lansdale," she said," this will never do ; quot 
 ing poetry in the drawing-room is against the rules. Listen tc 
 the conversation going on around us ; and if you hear anything 
 poetical, or witty, or clever, I'll let you quote the whole of 
 your commonplace book to me some time. Come, I want to 
 introduce you to Aunt Shippen. It seems Uncle Shippen 
 has taken quite a liking to you." 
 
 " To me ! " said Luther ; " why, often as I have seen him in 
 the counting-room, he never spoke five words to me." 
 
 "That's just like Uncle Shippen. He doesn't say much, 
 but he keeps up a tremendous thinking. Haven't you been 
 promoted lately?" 
 
 " Yes ; I was custom-house clerk ; looked after all the
 
 1 86 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 entries, and hurried up and helped the custom-house brokers 
 and store-keepers. The other clay, Mr. Gainsby said that he 
 had noticed I spent a good deal of my spare time in studying 
 the samples and the price-currents ; and he wanted to know 
 if J ;hought I could undertake to fulfil a portion of the buying 
 orders. I told him that I would do my best ; so I at once 
 mounted into a very pleasant position mostly out-door work, 
 and when I am through with my day's duties I am through 
 with them, no lingering office work ; and when business is 
 slack I have a good deal of time to myself." 
 
 " You may depend upon it that was Uncle Shippen,' 1 said 
 Helen. " He is a special partner, you know, and he don't have 
 anything to do with the business. Tisn't right, you know, and 
 I believe the law won't let him ; but he knows all about the 
 clerks, and anything he recommends will be done. He told 
 Aunt Shippen to ask you up here to-night. I was proposing 
 to her to send you an invitation, and he said ' Do so, my clear ; 
 he looks as if he inherited a large share of the principle of 
 longevity.' " 
 
 " The principle of longevity ! " exclaimed Luther, with a 
 look and tone of extreme puzzlement. 
 
 " That's the phrase," laughed Helen ; " Uncle Shippen has 
 it in his mouth very often. You must know he is a great phi 
 losopher and reformer ; but he don't believe in any of the 
 reforms that are advocated nowadays. He says that the true 
 reform is a reform of the physical constitution of man." 
 
 " A good idea," said Luther ; " but I don't see how it can 
 be carried out." 
 
 " Nor I either," replied Helen ; " but I hear uncle talk 
 a great deal about cultivating the principle of longevity. Did 
 you ever have a relative that lived to be very old ? " 
 
 " Yes, my mother's grandfather lived to a hundred and six." 
 
 " A hundred and six ! Well, your fortune is made with 
 Uncle Shippen. I wonder if he could have heard about your 
 great-grandfather. Did you ever tell any one about him 
 lately ? " 
 
 " Nobody but Mr. Whoppers. I told him the story one
 
 NEVER AGAIN. !8? 
 
 day. I don't know why, for the story is not very creditable 
 or entertaining, but it is true, and, when a boy, I always fan 
 cied there was something funny in it." 
 
 "Nothing wrong, I'm sure," said Helen. "I couldn't be 
 lieve anything wrong of a man who had lived to be over a 
 hundred. He must have had a clear conscience." 
 
 " Oh, his conscience was clear enough," replied Luther, 
 "but his habits were not the very best. He was a little red 
 headed Scotchman, and was very fond of his glass, so much 
 so that during the last half of his long life he was never 
 known to go to bed 'entirely sober.' That was my mother's 
 phrase for his infirmity, but I believe they had to put him to 
 bed every night quite tipsy. He, however, never thought 
 himself intemperate, but rather prided himself .upon his regu 
 lar habits. The best of men, however, will yield to tempta 
 tion some time or other, if they live long enough ; and one 
 night, after he had turned his hundredth year, he forgot him 
 self, and drank so much that he could not find his way home. 
 It was the coldest night of a cold winter, and the old gentle 
 man was compelled to sleep out in the snow and ice, on the 
 banks of the Hudson, a mile or two from home. The next 
 morning they found him frozen stark and stiff, but with hot 
 blankets outside, and hot whiskey within, he gradually thawed 
 out, and went to bed that night as jolly as ever. Six years 
 more of regular habits proved that he had not suffered much 
 from the exposure." 
 
 " Well I " exclaimed Helen, " that is the very story I 
 heard Mr. Whoppers telling Uncle Shippen, and that, you 
 may depend upon it, is the real reason for your promotion." 
 
 " That is too bad in you, Miss Ledgeral. I did not think 
 you would be so unkind. You not only refuse me a compli 
 ment which you accuse me of fishing for, but you cut away 
 the ground of a compliment that I was paying myself. I 
 supposed that my promotion was due to an exhibition of my 
 own virtues, and you make it out that it is all due to the vir 
 tues of my ancestors. But any way, I am rejoiced to have so 
 much more time for study and amusement."
 
 t88 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " And is writing verses a study or an amusement ? " 
 
 Luther colored at the imputation. 
 
 " Ah, don't be surprised or frightened. I shan't proclaim 
 your literary sins. I received a copy of verses with some 
 flowers that I put to your credit, although there was no 
 name." 
 
 " And have you nothing to give me in return ? " demanded 
 Luther. " Mr. Whoppers tells me that you write poetry, 
 too.' 1 
 
 " No, no, I don't pretend to write poetry. I just made 
 some rhymes the other day, and Mr. Whoppers teased me to 
 let him see them." 
 
 " And is Mr. Whoppers to be more favored than I ? " 
 
 " Oh, I am afraid of you you are such an old experienced 
 poet. Mr. Whoppers showed me some verses that he pub 
 lished in the Universe, beginning 
 
 ' With counters not with coin, ah ! lady, know, 
 I've ever played love's game with cautious art, 
 But reckless now, on one mad desperate throw, 
 I've ventured all the treasures of my heart.' 
 
 He wouldn't tell me who was the author, but I was sure it 
 was you." 
 
 " And why sure ? " demanded Luther. " Because you 
 thought they expressed sentiments exactly fitting my own 
 case ? " 
 
 " Oh, no ! " replied Helen, laughing and blushing. " I did 
 not suppose you such an experienced gallant. If written in 
 earnest I should think they would imply a man twice your 
 age, and one who had been in love half-a-dozen times ; but I 
 know how often poets indulge in imaginary trials and 
 troubles. Mr. Whoppers tells me that you have been writ 
 ing some verses about Imma and Englehard. Do you think it 
 really was true that she carried her lover across the fresh 
 fallen snow, in the court-yard at Aix-la-Chapelle, with Charle 
 magne looking down upon her ? I should like to see your 
 version of the story. I suppose Mr. Whoppers will publish 
 them ? "
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 189 
 
 " Nothing will give me greater delight than to send them 
 to you, if you will permit me, except perhaps one thing." 
 
 " And what is that ? " 
 
 "That you will let me see some of your verses." 
 
 " I tell you that I am afraid. I never show what I write 
 to anybody ; only just that once to Mr. Whoppers, and then 
 he laughed at me." 
 
 " You'll find me a much more sympathetic critic." 
 
 " Will you tell me just what you think of them ? " 
 
 " I will, truly." 
 
 " Well, then." 
 
 " When shall I get them ? now ? Yes, yes, this evening ! " 
 
 " Oh, pshaw ! we must go now. What will Aunt Shippen 
 say ? She told me to bring you up and introduce you. We 
 are going to dance in a few minutes." 
 
 " I hope I am to have the honor and the pleasure of 
 your hand." 
 
 " Yes, once." 
 
 " Only once ? " 
 
 " Well then, twice. I have saved a quadrille and a galop 
 for you, but I am going to introduce you to two or three very 
 nice girls, for the other dances ; see that you dance and talk 
 and flirt your best now. They are very good girls ; just from 
 boarding-school, and they are a little exigeantes ; no boy's play 
 will suit them." 
 
 " But, Miss Ledgeral, you frighten me ; I am afraid I 
 shall not do honor to your presentation. There's Mr. Boggs ; 
 I see him over there talking to your sister. He is more com 
 petent, I should think, from what I have heard Mr. Whoppers 
 say of him, to play the gallant to such formidable young 
 ladies. Permit me to decline " 
 
 " No, no ; Mr. Boggs is too grand a being for us girls. 
 But first we'll go to Aunt Shippen." 
 
 Helen took Luther*s arm, and led the way into the back 
 room. 
 
 Mr. Whoppers stopped them for a moment, and after jest 
 ingly making his compliments to the young lady, whispered
 
 190 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 in Luther's ear " Take care, young one, you are going the 
 pace a little too fast ; you'll have the eyes of all in the room 
 on you if you let the spoons stick out at every wink of your 
 eye, poco poco, as we say in Spain ; there now, don't flush 
 up like a young turkey-cock. Recollect this is a round game . 
 papa and mamma and half-a-dozen others have got a hand 
 in it, and you can't go it alone." 
 
 Mr. Whoppers glided off bowing and smiling and shak 
 ing hands. A desperate fellow in the hand-shaking line was 
 the editor of the Universe. 
 
 " I'd like to give him one good clip under the ear," mur 
 mured Luther to himself: the schoolboy's phrase for a sud 
 den, severe, and deserved punishment almost flashing out 
 into an audible threat. The next moment he was making 
 
 his bow to Aunt Shippen. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Aunt Shippen, net Van Scoutenhorn, was a born aristo 
 crat, and she looked like it, not like the aristocrat of 
 the modern novel, but like the aristocrat of actual society, 
 here, or in the noble circles of European society. She 
 was not quite so fat and ungainly in figure as the Duch 
 ess of Grasston, or as the Hon. Mrs. Lowclingtop ; she had 
 not such big hands and splay feet as the Countess of Dree- 
 lincourt : she had not such a rough and parchmenty skin as 
 the Princess of Moestricht ; she had not such a coarse voice, 
 half snuffle and half screech, as Madame La Baronne de la 
 Roche Gammon, but she was nevertheless a born aristocrat. 
 
 She could count back her ancestors seven or eight gene 
 rations, to the days of Walter Von Twiller ; and the line, like 
 other lines, had had its mutations. The beginning was per 
 haps involved in a little obscurity. Dubious rumor spoke of 
 a decaying cooper's shop near the Visch Markt, in Old Am 
 sterdam, and then of its vigorous offshoot near the Vli Markt 
 in the New. Be that as it may, the adventurous cadet of the 
 adz and hoop-pole soon erected his staff or staves to some 
 purpose. He married a Ten Broeck ; and the one-legged 
 hero of Curacoa, the illustrious Captain-General of all the
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 191 
 
 Dutch transatlantic provinces Peter Stuyvesant, upon his 
 arrival, found a Van Scoutenhorn a foremost burgher ; a 
 member of the council ; an official of weight and substance ; 
 a man of bigger nether garments, longer pipes, and more 
 schnapps than any other in New Amsterdam. Altogether a 
 right-worshipful, and weighty man ; and his wife and daugh 
 ters leaders in the very van of fashionable life. 
 
 You see the point here ? It is all the same as when some 
 Coulthorp goes right back beyond the days of William and 
 Harold to the time of Agricola, and calling the roll of Cen 
 turions, fastens upon the veritable Coultatus who started his 
 line ; or like some of those happy souls who can throw the 
 doomsday survey aside, and point to the very grounds tilled 
 by their great-grandfathers in the time of Canute, or out of 
 which they were hustled during the troubles of the Heptar 
 chy. Talk of the Conquest ! Pshaw ! that is very, very 
 modern. Curiosity once induced some genealogical inquiries 
 in Normandy as to one of the adventurous seigneurs who vis 
 ited England under the auspices of William. " Yes, I recol 
 lect," said our venerable informant, a citizen of Caen, "that 
 a cadet did accompany the Conqueror. His name is upon 
 the monument erected not many years ago in commemora 
 tion of the expedition, but I have never kept the run of that 
 younger branch of the family. You see we go directly back 
 beyond Rollo, and not being compelled to stop at the time 
 of the great duke and English king, I have never thought 
 to make any inquiry about our English collaterals." 
 
 In this way the Van Scoutenhorns dated back beyond the 
 Anglo-Saxon conquest of New Amsterdam, beyond the gov 
 ernorship of Peter the Testy, into the autocthonic times of 
 Walter the Doubter. Then came the Conquest the great 
 Peter retired in sulky dignity to his bowerie, and then and 
 there planted the famous pear-tree in whose shadows have 
 rested his descendants to the present day. The Van Scout 
 enhorns remained active traders and good subjects under 
 the English dynasty, but, in the third or fourth generation, 
 misfortune came and pushed the family down from the glories
 
 192 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 of a big brick trading and dwelling-house in Coenties Slip to 
 a small market-garden away out of town. But, in the time of 
 Mrs. Shippen's grandfather, there was again a change. The 
 city grew and grew, and with insatiate fury overleaping all 
 presupposed bounds, gobbled up the garden grounds of the 
 Van Scoutenhorns and turned them into a beautiful and 
 easily digested mass of twenty-five foot lots. The yield was 
 tremendous ; garden " sass " was nowhere ; early radishes 
 and green peas got their go-by ; and the different families of 
 the Tuberosa Solanum and Lycope-rsicum bloomed no 
 longer ; no not even in the memory of a Van Scoutenhorn. 
 
 Miss Van Scoutenhorn was a belle and a beauty after her 
 kind, and as she had some money, it was somewhat surprising 
 to her friends that she should step a little out of her set to 
 marry young Shippen. But she knew what she was about. 
 She was not, perhaps, desperately in love, but the liking was 
 sufficiently strong and mutual. What cared she what society 
 said ? She'd let society know that she'd do as she pleased ; 
 she'd walk over it and through it, and make it get down on its 
 knees to any man whose name she should see fit to adopt. 
 She felt her position ; and she knew her powers of attack 
 when supported by the inexhaustible affluence which the vig 
 orous and rising merchant was sure to attain. 
 
 Van Amburg entering the den of wild animals with a heavy 
 iron bar close at hand in case of any outburst of fury, was a 
 favorite figure of hers. " It is not alone the iron rod that is 
 necessary in such a case," she used to say ; " he must have an 
 iron heart and muscles of steel ; and so in going among the 
 bears and lions and jackals of society you must have a big bar 
 of gold, and the will and the strength and the skill to use it ; 
 swing it deftly and whack away right and left stoutly, and you 
 can make the wild beasts dance to any tune you please." 
 
 One thing was wanting to Mrs. Shippen's happiness ; she 
 had no children. And this had led to her seizing upon and 
 almost wholly appropriating her husband's niece, Helen Ledg- 
 eral. At least half of the young girl's time was spent at her 
 aunt's ; and even when residing at home it came to be tacitly
 
 NEVER AGAIN, 
 
 193 
 
 admitted that no one was to have anything to say as to her 
 general and particular training, her studies, her dressing, her 
 amusements, except Uncle and Aunt Shippen. Lucky girl, 
 one may exclaim, to have been subjected to such influences, 
 to have been released from the feeble, vacillating sway of ego 
 tistic and selfish, but over indulgent, parental affection, the 
 chief characteristic of American households, to have been 
 saved from the pretentious and demoralizing slip-slop, or 
 worse, of the boarding-school, or the depuderizing freedoms 
 of the watering-place hotel. 
 
 But it would be wrong to keep Luther, modest youth as he 
 was, bowing too long ; although he had a rare talent for bow 
 ing gracefully the natural product of his withy and compact 
 figure. 
 
 Aunt Shippen held out her hand graciously ; she would 
 have done that to almost any young man to whom she had 
 vouchsafed a presentation. In most cases the movement did 
 not mean much. Her style was the complaisant and the con 
 descending, she could not be rude or even brusque, except to 
 pretentious, pushing vulgarity, and besides she had a pretty 
 hand, and a graceful movement of the wrist and elbow ; and 
 the manual salutation, when rightly managed, admits of such 
 a variety of expression, from the languid indifference of the 
 extreme finger-tip, to the cordial grasp of profound esteem, 
 and so on up to the rapturous devotion of the perfectly invol 
 untary grip d deux mains. 
 
 In Luther's case the salutation grew more cordial as her 
 glance took in more fully his fine face and figure. In truth, 
 youth and good looks will have their influence, even with 
 women of fifty, perhaps all the more because they are women 
 of fifty, something of the motherly qualifying the admiration, 
 and more than making up for any decreased sensibility to the 
 influence of matured masculine charms. 
 
 She drew Luther down to a seat on the sofa beside her. 
 
 " So you are the hero of the steamboat adventure," she 
 said. " I have heard of you very often, and I hear a very 
 good report of you."
 
 194 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 "I feel very much flattered," stammered Luther, blushing 
 and bowing, "but I can be called the hero only by way of 
 ridicule, as I did nothing heroic, and had nothing to do with 
 it but as a sufferer in common with others." 
 
 "Ah, sensible, but sensitive, I see," exclaimed Mrs. Ship- 
 pen. " Well I won't call you a hero again, unless you do 
 something very grand to deserve it. But if not a hero, I 
 hear that you are a very well conducted young man, and an 
 excellent clerk, and that you are clever with your pen too. 
 Don't let it run away with you : you want to be rich, I sup 
 pose ? " 
 
 " Who does not in this age of the world, and in this com 
 munity ? " demanded Luther, with a smile. " I am not beyond 
 or above the influences that surround me. I hope to be rich. 
 I intend to be rich." 
 
 " Rich ! well you can't help wishing to be rich, I suppose, 
 but is that all? Have you no ideal beyond that? Ah, I 
 know you have, and I should be sorry for you if you had not, 
 but don't let your ideal lead you out of the road at first." 
 
 " You think that the best way is to get money first, and 
 follow the ideal afterwards ? " said Luther. 
 
 " Yes ; there is one trouble about that, however. By the 
 time the money is got, the ideal is apt to slip away from one, 
 and there is nothing left but the poor and bald reality of 
 wealth ; you must guard against that. Better get hold of 
 some hobby and ride it to death, as Mr. Shippen does, than to 
 sit down as many of our rich men do in sheer weariness upon 
 their money-bags, and give up all kinds of intellectual exer 
 tion and all efforts, or even wishes, for mental or moral im 
 provement." 
 
 "Will you allow me to ask," demanded Luther, "what 
 kind of a hobby Mr. Shippen pleases himself with ? " 
 
 " Oh, I should have said hobbies," replied Mrs. Shippen. 
 " You know he is connected with the firm only as special 
 partner. He has no business to occupy him, and sometimes 
 he mounts one hobby and sometimes another. He thinks 
 himself something of a scholar and something of a philoso-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 195 
 
 pher. His present hobby is the physical regeneration and 
 improvement of the human race." 
 
 " I suppose that means the improvement of the physical 
 conditions of human life," said Luther, hesitatingly. 
 
 " No, I rather think that he is in favor of letting the sad 
 conditions of human life work out their final results. He has 
 borrowed some nonsense about the necessity of a struggle for 
 existence, and all that kind of thing. But we won't get into a 
 discussion of the subject. 'Tisn't exactly a topic for the 
 drawing-room," said Mrs. Shippen, smiling. " Your name," 
 she continued, " seems quite familiar to me. I do not mean 
 from your adventure, or your connection with the affairs of 
 the firm. I have some associations with your name that date 
 from much further back. I knew a good many years ago a 
 Col. Samuel Lansdale : he was once quite a society-man. 
 Was he a relative of yours ? I have not seen or heard any 
 thing of him for a long time." 
 
 " I presume," said Luther, " that you have reference to 
 my father. He has been dead for a number of years." 
 
 " Oh yes, it seems to me now that I remember to have 
 heard of his death." 
 
 The conversation continued for a few minutes in relation 
 to Luther's family, and to his own adventures since his arrival 
 in New York. Aunt Shippen put a good many kind inquiries 
 as to his duties and his amusements, and encouraged him in 
 the expression of some of his general tastes and likings, until 
 they were interrupted by a movement among the younger 
 people, which indicated the opening of the dance. 
 
 Helen rushed up to her aunt. " Oh, aunty, I want Mr. 
 Lansdale as a partner for Julia Been. I have promised him 
 to her. Come and let me present you." 
 
 " My dear," interrupted Aunt Shippen, " one moment. 
 Three things," and she held up her finger with a gesture and 
 look of mock severity. " First, don't rush so. Walk ; don't 
 run ; leave that to that Thompson girl ; next, don't speak 
 quite so loud ; leave that to your friends the Trelawnys ; and 
 as to young girls dragging young gentlemen round helter-
 
 196 NEVER AC A IX. 
 
 skelter and introducing them to other young girls, just leave 
 that to your sister and Miss Yadkins. I'll take Mr. Lans- 
 dale across to Miss Deen and introduce him." 
 
 Aunt Shippen rose and took Luther's arm. 
 
 " I was in hopes," whispered Luther to Helen, " that you 
 were coming to claim me as a partner for yourself." 
 
 " I don't claim my partners they claim me," replied 
 Helen, with a saucy little nod of the head. 
 
 " True, in general ; but when the partner is nothing but 
 a slave the veriest slave, you could condescend to order 
 him." 
 
 "Slaves can wait." 
 ' Until when ? " demanded Luther. 
 
 "Well, until the third dance after this." 
 
 " I suppose you think," said Aunt Shippen, " that I am 
 quite a dragon ; but when I see the way the young people 
 are going on nowadays, I can't help getting really provoked. 
 I am not at all an advocate for undue restraint, but I think 
 a little pretension to youthful feminine delicacy ; a small 
 modicum of modesty and gentleness ; a few indications of a 
 lingering respect for the notions and feelings of people who 
 have attained the venerable age of thirty-five years and up 
 wards ; wouldn't be too much to ask. Do you think it would, 
 Mr. Whoppers ? " she exclaimed, as the Editor of the Universe 
 checked his bustling and erratic movements for a moment at 
 her side. 
 
 " Certainly not. 'Ask and it shall be granted unto you.' 
 Beg pardon no irreverence : the quotation slipped out ; but 
 what is it about ? " 
 
 " I don't suppose you meant any irreverence, Mr. Whop 
 pers. We all know your weakness in the matter of quota 
 tions. But in this case it was singularly unfortunate and in 
 applicable. You may ask as much as you please and you 
 will get no consideration or politeness out of the rising gener 
 ation, with some few exceptions. I was lecturing this young 
 gentleman upon the present style of manners. Not that I 
 think he particularly needs it."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 197 
 
 " Bow, Luther ! " exclaimed Mr. Whoppers. " Why don't 
 you bow ? that is a nice compliment ; and from such a source ! 
 If it were my case, I should have to go down on my knees 
 but I see ! a blush will do as well ! A lecture upon the pres 
 ent style of manners may be unnecessary, but it could not 
 have been tiresome ; it must have been short ; almost as short 
 as Archbishop Pontipidian's celebrated chapter on snakes in 
 Iceland: ' There are no snakes in Iceland.' Lecture by Mrs. 
 Shippen on the Manners of Young America : ' Young Amer 
 ica has no manners, and it is growing more so every day.' 
 There is but one remedy, Mrs. Shippen. Let all the middle- 
 aged people rise in revolution and exterminate the young 
 ones." 
 
 " Another massacre of the innocents," suggested Luther. 
 
 " Hardly, for if we should all turn Herods I don't know 
 where we would find the innocents. No, it isn't another He 
 rod that we want ; it is a little more of the-rod. Ha! ha! 
 that's good, isn't it ? I must find my friend Ledgeral, and 
 stick it into him ; I'll demonstrate to him that if we could once 
 restore the-rod, we could divide it into the he-rod and the she- 
 rod, and tickle the innocents into good manners without quite 
 killing them." 
 
 " Mr. Whoppers is a friend of yours ? " demanded Mrs. 
 Shippen of Luther. 
 
 " Yes," answered Luther hesitatingly ; and for an instant 
 that meanest, most unmanly, and yet most common of all sen 
 timents the fear of compromising one's self in the opinion 
 of some social potentate or power, tempered his tone of voice. 
 'Twas but for an instant. He had a good natural fund of 
 honest moral courage ; besides, he had studied Thackeray on 
 snobs ; and come what might, he was not going to sacrifice to 
 fashion, or opinion, or personal influence, his firm convictions 
 or his honest sentiments, and make himself a contemptible, 
 heartless, characterless social flunky. No, not he ; and the 
 blush with which he continued in a more firm tone, was due 
 rather to shame at his momentary weakness than to any sense 
 of Mr. Whoppers' fashionable shortcomings. "Yes, Mr.
 
 198 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Whoppers is my friend, I am very happy to say, and a very 
 good and useful friend he has been to me. We live together 
 in the same house." 
 
 Aunt Shippen was a woman of the world, and had had too 
 much social experience not to comprehend from Luther's tone 
 and looks exactly what was passing through his mind. She 
 gave him a glance of increasing admiration, as she replied: 
 '* Mr. Whoppers, I believe, is a very reputable man. I don't 
 like his class or his profession ; but I suppose there is a differ 
 ence among editors and reporters. I don't know much about 
 them personally ; but by what I can see of what they call the 
 amenities of journalism, I should judge that in general they have 
 more talent than taste, more wit than manners. However, 
 there must be exceptions, and some of them are unquestion 
 ably gentlemen. Mr. Whoppers is well enough ; and, some 
 times, a very faulty friend may be a very useful one to a young 
 man, if a discrimination is made between the good qualities 
 and the faults ; between what to admire or imitate, and what 
 to condemn and avoid. Mr. Whoppers' manner and style, you 
 see for yourself, is not as quiet and polished as it might be ; a 
 little more suavity and a little more reticence would improve 
 him. But here is your partner ; I suppose it won't do to keep 
 so important a person as a girl just from boarding-school wait 
 ing any longer."
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 A Neologist Uncle Shippen takes Luther's Measure Joseph's Device 
 The Cardinal's Tears Miss Yaclkins and the Baronet Cure for the 
 English Accent Helen's Poetry A Terrible Mistake A First 
 Lesson in French. 
 
 THE sudden introduction to each other of two practised 
 people of the world, when neither one has the slightest 
 knowledge of the other's antecedents, or the slightest clue to 
 the occupations, opinions, or tastes of his opponent, is fre 
 quently a very awkward affair. It reminds one of the famous 
 duel in the dark, which has so often been dished up in various 
 forms for the delectation of sensation-lovers. 
 
 Luckily Luther and his partner, like all young people of 
 their ages, were not very dangerously armed ; and a contest 
 with headless lances, pointless swords, and small potato pop 
 guns is hardly worth describing. Suffice it to say that Luther 
 acquitted himself quite to his partner's satisfaction, if not 
 entirely to his own, albeit there were none of those brilliant 
 sallies, epigrammatical flashes and witty repartees the very 
 youngest people of the modern novel are apt to indulge in. 
 
 Luther's shortcomings were partly owing to mental preoc 
 cupation. He could not keep his mind, and occasionally his 
 eye, from wandering to another set, where the graceful form 
 of Helen Ledgeral was floating about in a foam of white tulle. 
 Luckily the dance is not exacting in the way of conversation, 
 and his partner did not perceive his distraction. One can 
 caper, slide, bow, smile and simper in almost any state of the 
 head or heart. That is the great advantage of the dance for 
 very young people, who in general have no conversation. 
 What would they do without it ? Think of it, ye who would 
 proscribe it totally because some of its forms are of question-
 
 2 oo NEVER AGA1X. 
 
 able decency, or because with an older set it is often a cover, 
 or perhaps an incitement, to dangerous flirting or downright 
 intrigue. 
 
 Luther bowed his partner to her seat, and was withdrawing, 
 when he felt a hand upon his shoulder ; and turning, found 
 himself confronted by a small, stout, elderly gentleman in blue 
 broadcloth and white waistcoat of the olden pattern, across 
 which diagonalized a broad black ribbon, which might have 
 been mistaken for some foreign order, but which merely served 
 to support a pair of tortoise-shell eye-glasses. A thick pad 
 ded neckcloth encircled a stiff shirt-collar, which, extending 
 upon both cheeks to an utterly unfashionable height, enclosed 
 almost half of the bald head. This alone would have been a 
 protest against the modern style of men's attire, but this pro 
 test was deepened into an expression of absolute contempt by 
 a shirt-frill crimped with great skill and care. One involunta 
 rily looked at the hand for lace ruffles ; and even breeches 
 and silk stockings would have astonished nobody. But if dis 
 appointed in these, the eyes were more than gratified by the 
 sight of a wide, high coat-collar, and brass waist-buttons up 
 nearly to the shoulders. 
 
 And this was a neologist ! Yes, Uncle Shippen was a 
 neologist ; and this intense conservatism or old-fogyism in 
 outward dress was nothing but a kind of balance to the new 
 ness of his mental habillements. The latest cut in theory and 
 opinion he demanded for his ideas ; for his body, his tailor 
 must not vary a hair's breadth from the fashions of fifty years 
 ago. The latest teachings in every department of science 
 were his delight. The doctrine of the correlation of forces 
 and the theory of evolution were too well settled to afford 
 much exercise to his faculties, but spontaneous generation had 
 been a fruitful field. He had wandered from Pasteur to Bas- 
 tian over and over again, and under the latest telescopic and 
 spectroscopic investigations he had changed his opinion of the 
 constitution of the sun at least half-a-dozen times. 
 
 Motioning to Luther to follow him, he led the way into and 
 across the hall, and with a wave of his hand indicated a chair
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 201 
 
 just within the dining-room door. A wreath or rope of 
 flowers across the entrance was old Joseph's device for intima 
 ting that the magnificent spectacle of cut glass, flowers, fruit 
 and spun-sugar was "tabooed " until, at the proper time, and at 
 his own good pleasure, he should see fit to load the sparkling 
 board with the hot smoking substantiate of the supper. 
 
 Luther of course hesitated to enter, but Uncle Shippen 
 raised the barrier. " Come in, come in here," he exclaimed ; 
 '' we shall be quite alone here. Now sir, sit down," and sud 
 denly putting his hand into his coat-pocket he pulled out a 
 formidable pair of calipers and opened them. " Now sir, per 
 mit me. Sit still, sir, sit still ! " 
 
 Luther did not know whether to sit still or to jump up and 
 make a dash for the parlor. The old gentleman was mad evi 
 dently, and was going to try some surgical operation on him ; 
 or perhaps he was a freemason, and was going to initiate him 
 on the spot ; or may be a missionary, and about to perform 
 some religious rite ; or could it be that this was one of the 
 customs of good society ? 
 
 Curiosity held him undecided for a minute, but that was 
 enough. Uncle Shippen applied the points of the calipers to 
 his temples, and starting back, adjusted his eye-glass, and read 
 off the figures on the slide. 
 
 " Nearly six inches ! " he exclaimed in the tone of one who 
 had made some happy discovery. " I thought so ; and now, sir, 
 from the root of the nose to the orifice of the ear. There, 
 there. Splendid ! I knew it. You get it from your great 
 grandfather and let me see, a perpendicular from a circle 
 cutting the head through the eyebrow and the occipital pro 
 tuberance to the orifice of the ear must be at least an inch 
 and three-quarters : and the ear itself soft, yet firm as leather," 
 and the old gentleman pulled away at the young man's ear, 
 Luther sitting perfectly quiet and booking up with a sense of 
 the comical beginning to qualify somewhat his fright and 
 astonishment. 
 
 "Permit me," continued Uncle Shippen; and suddenly 
 producing and unrolling a tape measure, he held one end of it 
 9
 
 202 NEVER AC A IX. 
 
 on the front edge of the chair with one hand, and stretched the 
 other up to the top of Luthers breast-bone. " Good heavens, 
 sir ! over twenty-six inches, and full-chested besides ! Go, sir, 
 and thank heaven for such a rich inheritance from your great 
 grandfather. A hundred and six ! just to think of it! I knew 
 it I knew the indications must correspond/' muttered the old 
 gentleman. " I will watch that fellow ; he must not throw his 
 great inheritance away upon anything in the feeble vitality and 
 deficient longevity line." 
 
 " So you have been under Uncle Shippen's calipers," said 
 Heien. " I saw him take you aside. He is just the best dear 
 old uncle that ever any one had ; but he will produce those 
 awful measuring instruments at the most awkward times. I 
 hope your indications were all right?" 
 
 " Indications of what ? " 
 
 " Of longevity ! Do you know that Uncle Shippen can 
 tell you just how long your life will last ? Isn't it awful ?" 
 
 " I should prefer to have him tell me how long this happi 
 ness will last." 
 
 " What happiness ? " 
 
 " The happiness of this dance ; I hear the first bars of a 
 waltz, I believe it is my turn now." 
 
 "Oh, I can tell you that. Just one turn." 
 
 " Let it be a long one, then," said Luther, as he passed his 
 arm around her waist and led off with a peculiarly easy and 
 vigorous step that is always a rare endowment of nature, rather 
 than a product of art. 
 
 " Who is he ? " demanded Mrs. Struggles of Miss Ledgeral. 
 
 " Oh, he's nothing but one of papa's clerks," replied that 
 young lady with a slight curl of her lips. " I suppose it's 
 some of Aunt Shippen's doings." 
 
 " It's a pity, my dear," replied Mrs. Struggles, " that your 
 Aunt Shippen was not a little more considerate of people's 
 feelings ; she ought to keep common people, young and old, in 
 their place. It is very awkward meeting persons you don't 
 want to know." 
 
 Miss Ledgeral gave Mrs. Struggles a swift supercilious
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 203 
 
 glance, and turned away without making any reply. Her ex 
 pression, could it have been interpreted in words, would have 
 simply said : " You are a pretty one to talk about common 
 people ; and, if I find fault with Aunt Shippen, I am not going 
 to permit you to do so too." 
 
 Mrs. Struggles understood it all ; but she was used to snubs, 
 and was quite willing to submit to them from some quarters, 
 since through the favor of her friend Mrs. Ledgeral she had 
 attained a certain hold in society which enabled her to snub 
 a good many people formerly her betters, in return. 
 
 Joseph had at last condescended to order the barrier of 
 evergreens and flowers removed from the dining-room door. 
 The announcement that supper-time had arrived was received 
 with a degree of languor and indifference that quite astonished 
 Luther, after the experience he had had at two or three alder- 
 manic balls to which he had been invited, at the instance of 
 Mr. Whoppers, and from an extensive study of the manners 
 and customs of American society in the pages of British writ 
 ers who have visited this countiy, and of many equally good 
 authorities who have not. Still the clash and clatter grew, 
 and the movement towards the supper-room increased in 
 volume, until there was, as Mr. Whoppers said, jam enough 
 for twice the bread and butter a case of jam satis. "Don't 
 be in a hurry, my dear fellow," he continued, tapping Luther 
 on the shoulder. " Help the ladies, but don't eat anything 
 yet yourself: a little gallantry now is a good investment at 
 the price. It's a case of virtue its own reward, you know. 
 Joseph is reserving a dish of hot terrapin for the last, and he 
 won't open that Latour Blanche till I give him the wink. 
 Watch Boggs, he knows the ropes ; you won't see him eat 
 anything until the feminine feeders are filled." 
 
 The hubbub increases, everybody is talking, which is not 
 at all strange ; but eveiybody is eating, which is a little 
 strange, considering that, not one in ten of the guests 
 would dream of going to bed on a hot supper at home, from 
 a wholesome fear, or perhaps a positive assurance, that they 
 would drj :in pretty thoroughly upon it afterwards.
 
 204 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Luther looks around for Miss Helen Ledgeral. Alas i 
 there is no chance for him : half-a-dozen gray-haired fellows 
 have almost struggled for the preference, and she is in the 
 centre of a group of old fogies, who, allured by her smiles, 
 hop out of their holes of selfish habit, as lively as toads in the 
 spring sunshine. 
 
 It is rather a good sign when a young girl is able to ex 
 cite the rusty gallantry of " grave and reverend seigniors : " to 
 interest them, make them talk, and exert themselves to enter 
 tain her. It is rather a good sign, inasmuch as it indicates a 
 certain esprit which all girls do not have ; and a certain ad 
 mixture of sense and sensibility. It indicates that the abso 
 lute and universal in youthful feminine attractions is not en 
 tirely overlaid by the temporary conventionalities, the immedi 
 ate youthful whims, fantasies and fashions of the hour. 
 
 Luther sees that there is no chance for him at the moment, 
 and he therefore resigns himself to Miss Julia Deen ; but, her 
 wants supplied, he suddenly dashes with generous gallantry 
 to the aid of two elderly ladies who seem to him to have less 
 attention paid them than the others ; and makes himself very 
 active in supplying their wants ; very much to their astonish 
 ment, but evidently not at all to their displeasure. Poor fel 
 low ! he is so unsophisticated so very verdant, it is quite 
 excusable in him. With his limited social experience, how 
 can he know that middle-aged or elderly females have no 
 claim upon youth of any kind : and that it is not etiquette, if 
 they are plain and not very fashionable, and don't keep houses 
 of entertainment, to treat them with any attention, or even to 
 offer to save them from absolute starvation by even so much 
 as a single meringue or an ice. An encouraging smile from 
 Helen, which he catches over the mass of heads, would have 
 rewarded him, even had he fully known what an oddity he 
 was making of himself. 
 
 Relieved after a while from his duties of waiter, Luther 
 amuses himself by listening to the conversation going on 
 around him. He tries to catch it as it falls on either side of 
 him, and a queer jumble he makes of it. Let us follow him
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 205 
 
 for a moment as he flits from group to group. Nothing would 
 be more absurd than to attempt to give the chaff, the slang, 
 the personal gossip and the social cant, having meaning and 
 point only to the ears of " our set," which passes as conver 
 sation at balls and parties most of it commonplace, a good 
 deal of it stupid and utterly inane. There is, however, some 
 times here and there a group of interesting people, and, if 
 you listen closely, now and then a remark that strikes and 
 sticks. There is, for instance, old Rhindergelt with a heaped 
 up plate of oysters and chicken salad in his hand ; he is an 
 able man, and interesting, if you like his line of talk : " I 
 tell you what I'll do ; I ! 11 sell you a call, buyer thirty, for a 
 thousand shares for a thousand dollars \ You think that the 
 preferred is going up. Maybe, but the common is bound to 
 fall off ten per cent, in the next ten days. Now mind I tell 
 you." 
 
 You don't like such kind of talk for the drawing-room ? 
 Ah I I see you don't ; you turn away, you don't appreciate 
 it I if you did you would go right down the next morning and 
 invest in the common stock of Arkansas Central, and perhaps 
 turn an honest penny or two before dinner. 
 
 Well, you need not listen to it it is exceptional at best. 
 But hark I here is something about art not very profound 
 perhaps, but still it is pleasant to hear a pretty girl expatiate 
 upon Turner, and Durand, and Kensett, and Church, and Bier- 
 stadt, and the Academy, and the Metropolitan Art Gallery, 
 even if the epithets charming, lovely, beautiful, are sprinkled 
 about a little too freely. And then here is something I 
 What animation I you can't catch it all, only now and then a 
 word, but the subject is clear : the Opera, Parepa-Rosa, 
 Nilsson, Verdi, Wagner, music of the future, Beethoven's 
 Mass in D, the Eroica, symphony in C. Very good, indeed, 
 and quite bearable, inasmuch as the soupfon of ' Shakespeare 
 and the musical glasses' is so very slight. And then books 
 the last novel. " You don't like Trollope ? " " No, I'm 
 getting tired of him." " But he is so natural." " True, but 
 he writes too much. Toujours perdrix^ you know ha \ ha \
 
 206 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Give me George Eliot's last book splendid ! powerful ! 
 women novelists ! beat the men," and then a confused jumble 
 of names Charles Reade, Browning, Swinburne. " Oh 
 horrid ! no lady ; I don't care I read him. Greatest poet 1 
 Hawthorne, Longfellow, and Mrs. Stowe." 
 
 It takes the group about twenty minutes to run through 
 the whole circle of modern literature. 
 
 Luther turns away to another group, attracted by the tones 
 of a loud and clear voice pronouncing the name of Dickens. 
 It was the voice of Uncle Shippen. " Now I lay this down, 
 sir, as a fundamental test of longevity that if a book which 
 has given me great delight at its first appearance, say twenty 
 years ago, upon a second reading, after that or a longer inter 
 val, still continues to give me as much or more delight, that 
 book has the principle of longevity in a high state of concen 
 tration. But if upon the second reading I find that it falls 
 far short of my first conceptions if I find the characters are 
 not what I had supposed them to be- that they are absurd 
 and rather coarse exaggerations; in a word, if I find that, how 
 ever clever it may be, it does not come up to the idea I had 
 at first formed, then, sir, I doubt whether that book has that 
 principle of longevity that will carry it much beyond its own 
 generation into the coming ages. You see the lapse of twenty 
 years serves as a base-line, and having the angle of my first 
 conceptions, I take the angle of my last conceptions, and a 
 perpendicular from the point of intersection to the base indi 
 cates the probable longevity of the book." 
 
 " That is," interposes Mr. Whoppers, " you act as a kind 
 of posterity to your own conceptions you father your own 
 grandfather, and become a son to yourself." 
 
 There is no sense or point in this observation, but when 
 ever Mr. Whoppers puts in his word there is always a dispo 
 sition to laugh. 
 
 "Now take Dickens' books," continues Uncle Shippen, 
 unheeding the impertinent interruption, " and apply this test, 
 and I think you will find that they do not comprise a body of 
 literature that will live forever."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 207 
 
 To this opinion there are several dissenters, and the dis 
 cussion branches off in various directions. Martin Chuzzlewit 
 is mentioned. " How do you like the American scenes ? " 
 " Poor, sir, comically poor ! But the most comical thing is 
 that an apology should have been thought necessary. I 
 never saw or heard yet of an American who has expressed 
 the slightest anger at them. Many a one has felt provoked 
 with Dickens that he did not put more point and force and truth 
 in them there was such a good chance, and no one would have 
 objected to the lash well laid on, even if it did tingle his own 
 hide a little ; but all Dickens' American work is so dauby 
 that there is no light of consciousness in which we can hang 
 it that makes it look like a picture at all. It is a kind of 
 thrashing roundabout with a ridiculous old broom-handle, 
 rather than a raw-hide. He reminds one of a blind teamster, 
 he whirls his whip around his head quite vigorously, and 
 makes a devil of a cracking, but never really touches the raw. 
 
 " Ah ! the best plan for us would be to import the whole 
 star! of the Saturday. They would walk into us. Here's to 
 their health," continues the speaker, refilling his glass of 
 champagne. " I won't say more power to their arm, for they 
 have enough of it, but more knowledge to their noddles." 
 
 " I should say that the Blackwood fellows would be the 
 best ; we never have been touched up properly yet, and there 
 is a clever malignity about them that would send their sneers 
 home if they were only aimed right." 
 
 " It would be of no use ; they would bring their ideal 
 Yankee with them, and content themselves with sticking pins 
 into the poor devil forever, leaving our hides unscratched." 
 
 " Well, we could at least disabuse them of one notion 
 which is about* as thoroughly ingrained into John Bull's mind 
 as any conception of things transatlantic can well be, and that 
 is, that we are so sensitive as to what is said and thought of 
 us across the water. It was perhaps so once, but times have 
 changed. We have gone through three wars. The first 
 achieved our political independence, the second achieved our 
 mercantile independence, and our last grand affair has pretty
 
 208 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 effectually achieved our social independence. I don't think 
 that we shall ever take much offence at what our kind cousins 
 may see fit to say of us in future." 
 
 " Oh ! we never did take offence at what they said. There 
 is the great mistake which they have always made. If we 
 have been offended it has been at the way the thing is said. 
 They cry ' Don't wince, my dear fellow. Don't we satirize 
 and abuse, and ridicule and blackguard people, and manners, 
 and customs, and matters and things in general, at home just 
 as freely?' Ah, so you do, Mr. Bull, and the Lord knows you 
 have mighty good room and reason for it. But the difference 
 is just this: that when you show up the coarseness and brutal 
 ity, and vulgarity, and criminality of your own household, there 
 is always some epithet or allusion something said, or perhaps 
 something not said something in the tone, which enables a 
 reader to understand that the satire or the sneer does not 
 apply to everybody or everything in the tight little island, but 
 when you come to cut up your cousins you make one general 
 and universal mass of mince-meat of 'em." 
 
 "You mean," interrupts Mr. Whoppers, "that Bull would 
 do so if his hatchet were heavy enough and the handle of 
 sufficient length." 
 
 " Exactly ! but he does his level best. He hacks away 
 without apparently the slightest shadow of an idea that there 
 is the least refinement of mind or manner, elevation of feeling, 
 culture, taste, honesty, pure diction or sound English in the 
 whole country." 
 
 " That reminds me," interposes one of the group, " of a 
 story of Washington Allston, as told by one of the English 
 men present at the scene. Allston was the only American 
 among a large party, one of whom, sneering at America and 
 Americans, observed that he had never seen an American 
 gentleman. Allston rose from his seat, straightened himself 
 up, and in a quiet and composed tone said, ' Sir, / am an 
 American gentleman.' The sensation was marked, and cor 
 dially sympathetic, and the amplest apologies atoned for 
 what was, of course, as they were all gentlemen, the result of
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 209 
 
 carelessness or forgetfulness, rather than of conscious inso 
 lence." 
 
 " Oh, I'll tell you," exclaims Mr. Whoppers, " how it is. 
 The Judge here hasn't more than half explained the matter. 
 You see it all comes of the newspapers. I'll show you just 
 how it is, there isn't a squib, sneer, lie, slander nor piece of 
 ridicule, satire or abuse of any kind in the English journals 
 that is not at once transferred to our papers, and read by hun 
 dreds of thousands. We like it so far so good ; but what 
 galls us is that we can't get in a lick in return. We have no 
 way of blackguarding back. Look at the boys : one calls the 
 other a scallawag; what a satisfaction it is to the juvenile 
 mind to reply ' You're another.' ' I'll slap your chops for you.' 
 'If ye do, you'll get yer nose smashed.' Everything is all set 
 tled, because that account is perfectly square it balances 
 exactly." 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! I see what Whoppers is after : he wants to 
 get us to raise a fund for printing a hundred thousand copies 
 of the Universe for gratuitous distribution over the water." 
 
 " The best thing you could do," cries Mr. Whopper ; " no 
 missionary work equal to it ! I'd enlighten 'em. I'd pitch 
 into them vulgarity, brutality, general beastliness, bad man 
 ners, universal cant, confirmed philistinism, crime, pauper 
 ism, rlunkyism, horrid accent, corrupt English, and diaboli 
 cal grammar ! I'd give 'em as good as they send, and I'd 
 produce a cordial state of feeling between the two countries 
 in six months' time that would render any real disagreement 
 between them impossible. We wouldn't have any more am 
 bassadors, or ministers, or high commissioners, or private 
 self-appointed representatives of the two nations standing up 
 at dinner-tables and slopping over their twaddle about blood 
 and race and community of language and confraternity of 
 feeling, and all that stuff." 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! suppose we raise a few hundred thousand, 
 and hand the money over to Whoppers? Who'll head the 
 list with ten thousand ? " 
 
 " He don't get a cent from me, unless he promises to go 
 M
 
 210 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 straight for the ' bloated aristocracy,' that's the veritable 
 American bugaboo, ha ! ha ! ha." 
 
 Luther had listened long enough to the loitering old 
 fogies of the supper-room, and was turning away when a deli 
 cate attention from Joseph arrested him on his way to the 
 parlors. " Looker heah, sar. I observe dat you don't took 
 nothing 'cepting one glass ob Champagne. Dat is berry ob- 
 stemerous, and I like to see it in a young man, but, sar, I got 
 just one bottle here ob Maderie dat I'm gwine to open. Born 
 sar in de last centuary. Dey call it de ' Cardinal's tears.' It 
 was out in de monks' celler at Goa for elebben years. De old 
 gem men's wine, sar. I nebber let young Missir Courtland 
 hab more den one bottle at a time. I say, Shaw ! what's de 
 use of throwing pearls before hogs, eh ! 'Taint appreciumated 
 'cepting by jus' a few fellars, like de old Judge dare. Please 
 step dis way, sar." 
 
 " But," objected Luther, " I don't know anything about 
 wine : I couldn't tell Madeira from Sherry." 
 
 " Dat's jess it. Dat's why I gib it to you. Jess so dat 
 when somebody axes your 'pinion some time you can say, 
 'Well, purty good, but but it don't quite come up to de 
 Goa wine ob '86.' '' And Joseph smacked his lips and shut 
 his eyes and rolled his head as if he was in all the agonies of 
 connoisseurship. " I gib you dis glass furs, cause dose old 
 fellars 'specting someting.. Dey know what's coming, and 
 once I say, ' Judge, de Cardinal waits for you,' you wouldn't 
 stand no more chance dan a little wiggle-waggle in a pailful 
 of pollywogs." 
 
 Luther wanders into the parlors. Where is she ? He 
 can see nothing of her. The lights ; the music ; the babble 
 of voices ; the crush; the confusion seem to have increased; 
 although the crowd is really thinning out ; and a number of 
 people are hurrying up-stairs to the dressing-room, and sev 
 eral shawled and cloaked figures can be seen in the hall. 
 
 A small, but rather stylish-looking girl, with a very inno 
 cent expression of countenance, is standing close beside him. 
 Luther recognizes her as the noted Minnie Yadkins. Mr.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 2I i 
 
 Whoppers had pointed her out to him in the early part of the 
 evening. She is talking with a tall, handsome specimen of 
 English aristocracy, Sir Charles Flukes, who has just arrived. 
 He is decidedly lucky in falling, at his first party, into the 
 hands of so accomplished an artist as Miss Minnie Yadkins. 
 That is, however, as people may think. 
 
 His style, made up for the market, is most praise 
 worthy. It may be described as the I-don't-believe-it-awl, you 
 know the desirous-of-instruction and open-to-conviction 
 in fact, the conciliatory and condescendingly inquiring style. 
 Clearly he was determined to see for himself whether the 
 Americans really do spit the flowers and figures of their 
 Moquettes and Axminsters out of sight ; or endanger the mass 
 ive bronzes, or the delicate Dresden and Wedgwood ware of 
 their mantel-pieces, with their boot-heels. 
 
 Luther listens with all his ears. 
 
 " I observe with great pleasure, Miss Yadkins, that the 
 Americans speak much better English than I had supposed." 
 
 " Indeed ! Oh, I am so delighted. We have improved, 
 very much improved, of late years. Do you know it was 
 formerly very difficult for you English to understand us. I'll 
 tell you a veritable story. When I was a little girl, a good 
 many years ago, we were all staying at the Hotel des Alpes at 
 Interlachen. The large drawing-room of the hotel was filled, 
 and I was sitting by a fine-looking, grandly-dressed English 
 woman, and my sister was at the other side of the room talk 
 ing to the son of this lady. At length the young fellow came 
 towards us. ' George,' said his mother, ' who is that you were 
 talking to just now ? ' ' Oh, that's an American girl.' ' An 
 American girl ! why, could you understand her ? ' ' Oh yes, I 
 could make out to understand her. She speaks a devil of a 
 jargon, to be sure, but I could understand her notwith 
 standing. ' You find no difficulty in understanding us do 
 you, Sir Charles ? " 
 
 " Oh, Miss Yadkins ! not the least, I assure you. Really 
 now, I quite comprehend everything that I hear. Aw, 'pon 
 my honor now, I don't find the accent so bad, so so strong.
 
 212 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 I mean, and the grammar really now, the grammai is quite 
 1 will say really now quite respectable." 
 
 " Ah, you flatter us," and the young lady gave him one of 
 her most beaming smiles. " But I believe you are right 
 about the accent. It is not so very strong. It is not really 
 as strong as the English accent is it, Sir Charles? " 
 
 " English accent ! Miss Yadkins ; I never heard of an 
 English accent. You mean the cockney accent, or perhaps 
 some of the provincial dialects, now ? " 
 
 " No, I mean the true upper-class English accent." 
 
 " Ah ! 'pon my word. I never heard of such a thing." 
 
 " Never ! Oh, I have heard of it ; and have heard it often. 
 It's very funny to an American ear, but I suppose you get 
 accustomed to it when you are so young that you never per 
 ceive it. It can be cured, I believe can't it, Sir Charles?" 
 
 " Cured ! Miss Yadkins, cured ! the English accent ! God 
 bless me ! Never heard of such a thing ! " 
 
 " Never ! why that is strange. Never heard of the red- 
 riannel cure? Why the Marquis of Hunterround told me all 
 about it when he was here. He said it was first tried on the 
 Duke of Cambridge. When he was young Prince George, 
 and stationed at Gibraltar years ago, he made a visit to Tan 
 gier, and a large party was got up to give him a day or two's 
 boar-huntin-g. Well, all the Consulates turned out strong, 
 and among them the American Consulate, and among the 
 Americans there was a Dr. Jimpson a very learned man. 
 He knew everything about languages. I believe he had 
 written a grammar of the Aryan language, and a great many 
 books that no young lady could be expected to remember the 
 names of. Well, Prince George of Cambridge got very inti 
 mate with him, and one day the Prince complained to the 
 Doctor that he had that disagreeable English accent so strong. 
 'Why, I can tell your Royal Highness what will cure it,' said 
 the Doctor. The Prince begged to know what it was. ' Why, 
 all you have to do,' said the Doctor, ' is to carry a good- sized 
 piece of red flannel in your mouth for six months : at the end 
 of that time you will find yourself completely relieved.' And
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 213 
 
 the Marquis says that the Prince did so ; and that now he 
 enunciates in a very pure tone, and speaks quite distinctly ; 
 but whenever he finds the accents around him too strong, and 
 that there is danger of his relapsing, he goes right off and 
 stuffs his mouth with a piece of red flannel for a week or so. 
 Strange you never heard of it, Sir Charles." 
 
 Sir Charles puts his hand to his head with a clasping 
 movement as if to keep his brains from gushing out upon the 
 spot. 
 
 " The Duke of Cambridge aw! aw! Red flannel ! Bless 
 me! I I never never! Good Heavens !" 
 
 If Sir Charles is slightly confounded, Luther is still more 
 so. Luckily he at this moment catches sight of Helen Ledg- 
 eral and seizes his opportunity. 
 
 " You have been enjoying yourself, I hope, " said Helen, 
 " and have been doing your duty to the young ladies to whom 
 I presented you ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, I have done my best, but I don't know but 
 that I must plead guilty to a little distraction, and perhaps 
 negligence." 
 
 " How so ? " 
 
 " Why, in the first place, I have been led away into listen 
 ing to the conversation going on around me ; and in the 
 second place, I have been very much employed in trying to 
 find you for a moment disengaged." 
 
 " Oh, you know I am part hostess here to-night, and I 
 have to spread myself around among the young ones as much 
 as I can." 
 
 " Oh, it is not alone the young ones, but it is the old ones 
 as well, that have prevented my asking you if I am not to 
 have one more dance." 
 
 But why stop to detail a conversation without especial mean 
 ing or point, and that, even to the speakers themselves, is care 
 less and inconsequent ? If one could photograph a couple of 
 souls peeping out from behind consciousness, and watching 
 each other with swift electric comprehensive glances, and 
 gathering in, unbeknown to their owners, a thousand little
 
 214 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 manifestations the germs of sentiment which sooner or 
 later will fructify into all the splendor of conscious passion, 
 if one could photograph them, and a nice little vignette 
 take the place of a long wordy description, it would, per 
 haps, be worth while to make the attempt upon the reader's 
 sympathy. 
 
 The quadrille came to an end, and Luther led his partner 
 into the hall for a walk. By great good luck there was no 
 clamoring for her attention. The library door stood open : 
 what more natural than that they should wander into the 
 room ? it was quite deserted. 
 
 " Miss Helen," exclaimed Luther, " do you know that it is 
 more than two years since I came into this room with nothing 
 hut your friendly influence between me and starvation? And 
 now I stand here again, and nothing but the same friendly in 
 fluence between me and a worse kind of starvation a starv 
 ation of mind and soul. You will exert that friendly in 
 fluence, won't you, and and let me see you sometimes once 
 in a great while?" 
 
 " Why, I will do the best I can," replied Helen ; "but it all 
 depends upon Aunt Shippen and mamma. You dance well, 
 and you are so very obliging with the very young girls and the 
 very old women, and Julia Deen says she likes you so much 
 as a partner, that I don't know ; but, however, I can't prom 
 ise you anything." 
 
 " But you have promised me something and that is the 
 sonnet that Mr. Whoppers was telling me about. When and 
 how shall I get it ? " 
 
 " Oh ! I don't know that I promised. And it was very 
 wrong in Mr. Whoppers to tell you that I have even tried to 
 make verses. I just showed him a few lines once, and he 
 laughed at me, and sister and mother laughed at me, and T 
 made a vow I never would let anybody see any of my scrib- 
 lings again. And I don't know how it was that I let Mr. 
 Whoppers see my sonnet : but he said he wanted to see whether 
 I had got over the bread-and-butter phase and I thought it 
 pretty good, as good as many things he publishes in the Uni-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 215 
 
 verse, and so, just out of spite, I showed it to him. But I 
 don't know about you. You are such a poet ! Yet I should 
 like to have your opinion. Of course, my verses don't amount 
 to much as poetry, and the sonnet is so difficult. It is just a 
 foolish thought I had about the sea ever trying to lift itself in 
 vapor to the sky, and being ever drawn back in showers. But 
 I can't send it to you, you know." 
 
 The discussion continued for a few minutes, Luther press 
 ing the point, until Helen suddenly exclaimed, " Well, I'll 
 tell you what if you won't laugh at it ! You promise ? I'll 
 run up-stairs and get it, and you can take it now ; and as to 
 your legend of Charlemagne, I want to see that so much 
 you can call here in a day or two to leave your card it won't 
 be expected of you, but it will be a proper thing for you to 
 do, and you can hand my sonnet, as well as your verses, to 
 Joseph." 
 
 " And you are not going to give it to me ? " demanded 
 Luther. 
 
 " No, I am not. I am only going to show it to you, 
 because I can't show it to anybody else." 
 
 " But if I should retain a copy ? " 
 
 " Oh well, if you will do such a mean thing as that, I sup 
 pose I must have my revenge. I will learn your poem by 
 heart," said Helen, laughing and making a movement for the 
 door. 
 
 " And put it away with all that store of Shakespeare, and 
 Spenser and Herbert, and Wordsworth and Tennyson, and 
 Longfellow and Bryant," exclaimed Luther. " Oh, that would 
 be revenge indeed. I should feel the ridicule to my finger 
 tips. I should never be able to hold pen again for any 
 figures, except figures of arithmetic." 
 
 Helen bounded up-stairs to her room, and in a moment 
 was back again. An instinctive feeling led her to understand 
 that, as it had to be done, it had better be done quickly, be 
 fore any loungers happened into the library, who as she 
 could only do it openly and before all present might not be 
 able to distinguish from the back of the envelope whether it
 
 216 NEVEK AGAI.\'. 
 
 contained a billet-doux or a harmless copy of verses. But io 
 her hurry she made an awful mistake. 
 
 " Come, young ones, time's up," exclaimed Mr. Whoppers. 
 " Luther and myself to our dens, and you, Miss Helen, to 
 tread alone a banquet-hall deserted eh ! I wonder how a 
 party-giver feels when the guests have all fled, and the music 
 is all dead very much like going to bed, I suppose. I must 
 give a party myself some day. If I only had a Mrs. Whop 
 pers to assist." 
 
 " Why don't you propose to " 
 
 " Oh, Miss Helen ! for you to say that ! Why don't 
 I propose ? That's cruel ; you know you wouldn't ac 
 cept me. Good-night, good-night permit me to say ' my 
 dearest.' I have had a glorious time ; but so short so fleet 
 ing. ' But 'tis ever thus since childhood's hours.' Ah yes, 
 how ' noiseless falls the foot of Time that only treads on 
 flowers.' " 
 
 Mr. Whoppers shook his head in a melancholy way, and 
 pulled out his watch. " I'll take a note of time," he contin 
 ued, " and when found, make a note of it and get it dis 
 counted and proceeds put to my great account. ' The bell 
 strikes one.' Let us see now what time of night is it, lad ? 
 But all that is very superfluous. Come, Luther, let us go." 
 
 Evidently Joseph had opened that bottle of Latour 
 Blanche that Mr. Whoppers had talked about. 
 
 " I call tell you what, young man," said Mr. Whoppers, as 
 he bade Luther good-night, at the door of his apartment, 
 and stood for a few moments steadying himself against the 
 newel-post of the stairs, " we are all born free and equal, 
 ain't we ? It's in the constitution of the United States, ain't 
 it ? Well, old Jeff was right politically but, socially ? Ah, 
 there's the rub. We are all mere bubbles of vitality on the 
 great ocean of force that lies all around us. That's a first- 
 rate phrase, ain't it ? But, socially, some of us are a devilish 
 sight bigger bubbles than others, eh ? And now go to bed 
 and dream of the silver sea, and let the sound of its surges be 
 the requiem of any vagarious stuff in your noddle. Bah ! I'm
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 217 
 
 getting poetical. It's all \hatSerichon; Liqueur digestive! I 
 thought I'd try one. petit verre as a finale, but it's so confounded 
 strong, I'll no more of it. But, Luther, hold on one min 
 ute ; what I want to get at is this : that you need never expect 
 to be invited to that house again." 
 
 " Why not ? " demanded Luther. 
 
 " Because because you're ' too good-looking, and you can't 
 come in ; ' you're too too comme ilfaut, as we say in Paris. 
 Yes, yes," continued Mr. Whoppers, as Luther tore himself 
 away and mounted the stairs, " you are too d d comme ilfaut 
 to be left around loose in our set ; we can't stand it, we can't, 
 I could see it in my lady's eye. Think of the silver sea, my 
 lad ; verbum sat. Good-night, good-night, my dearest ; I hear 
 the watchman's cry; no I don't, it's just that Berichon buzzing 
 in my head." 
 
 Luther hurried up to his room, and lighting his lamp, sat 
 down to examine his prize. He however hesitated for some 
 moments before taking the lines from their envelope. They 
 were almost too precious to look at and ah ! there was the 
 fear, which he would not confess to himself, that they might not 
 be quite worthy of their maker ; not quite up to his own stand 
 ard. Of course, as Helen had said, they couldn't amount 
 to much as poetry, and the sonnet is so very difficult, but what 
 if it should be fiat and silly ? Impossible ! It might be weak 
 and feeble, and commonplace and badly constructed : that was 
 but a reasonable expectation of any young girl's first attempt 
 in a form of verse that had tasked the powers of the greatest 
 poets ; but downright silly the lines could not be. But, what 
 if they were ? would they be any the less precious ? 
 
 Luther opened the envelope. " Why, what is this ? A 
 sonnet ? No ! a long poem that far transcends the conven 
 tional number of lines. She must have made a mistake." 
 These verses could not have been intended for his sight. It 
 would be very improper very indelicate to read them with 
 out permission ! but but human nature is very weak, and 
 we will peep over Luther's shoulder as his eye runs down the 
 page: 
 
 TO
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 When with dainty hand the master 
 
 Deftly strikes the sounding strings. 
 And the witching flood of music 
 
 O'er the heart its glamour flings, 
 List'ning closely, low harmonics 
 
 Undertone the music's roll, 
 Faintly speaking to the senses, 
 
 Whispering louder to the soul. 
 
 So when glows the land at noon-tide, 
 
 And the God showers down his gold, 
 Or when Eve -distils her amber, 
 
 And Night's spangled gates unfold, 
 Or when wreaths of protean cloudage 
 
 Whirl the face of Heaven along ; 
 Or the leaflet struck by Zephyr 
 
 Sighing sings its saddening song ; 
 
 Or, enthralled in dread and wonder, 
 
 Wandering by the wave-lashed shore, 
 Mine eyes all filled with wild commotion 
 
 And mine ears with ravening roar, 
 Then, as always 'neath Earth's chantings, 
 
 Low harmonic tones I hear, 
 Tones mysterious from the Far-off, 
 
 But that ever seem so near. 
 
 And as 'neath the chants of Nature, 
 
 So beneath the smiles of Art, 
 Speak the same low countertonings 
 
 To my sad and questioning heart. 
 Speak, 'twould seem, of deeper meanings 
 
 Than the sounds that round me fall, 
 Speak of states of finer being 
 
 Whence in seeming comes the call. 
 
 Expound me, then, these mystic voicings, 
 
 Tell me what they fain would say ; 
 I am young, the world I know not, 
 
 Tell me, tell me, then, I pray. 
 Say, has Life here nothing finer 
 
 Than what now I feel and see ? 
 Hush ! my rebel heart be quiet ! 
 
 Surely that can never be.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 219 
 
 Surely Life has something finer 
 
 Than the sweetest songs of Art, 
 Than the chaunts and charms of Nature, 
 
 For my sad and questioning heart. 
 Surely but, ah me, I tremble 
 
 Lest that finer thing should be, 
 What all around me call delusion, 
 
 Love's transcendent ecstasy. 
 
 It was with something approaching a transcendent ecstasy 
 that Luther jumped into bed, just as Dawn was about to swing 
 Night's spangled gates into place. It is needless to say that 
 if he entertained any hopes of an hour or two's sleep he was 
 disappointed. He little thought, however, that Helen was 
 equally wakeful : and those miserable lines the cause, in her 
 case too, as well ! The poor innocent sonnet lying quietly in 
 its place on her writing-table had been pettishly torn in pieces 
 and flung on the floor. It was really too provoking ! and the 
 more so as the young man must now be treated with a little 
 more coolness and reserve, if there should ever be a meeting 
 again, unless unless well unless she could get Mr. Whop 
 pers to explain how it happened. 
 
 Luther's thoughts ran upon his legend of Charlemagne, 
 which he was to give in exchange. It seemed all too poor : 
 but a happy thought ! he would illustrate it. He had, as 
 we have said, quite a talent for drawing, and he would endeav 
 or to make up with his pencil for the feebleness of his pen. 
 That would give it some point, or at least add emphasis to the 
 real point. There might not be much poetry in his poem, or 
 cleverness in his rendering of the old story, but there was a 
 good plain moral, and very applicable that is, supposing 
 Charlemagne to be a great New York commission merchant 
 and Engenhard a young man in a store down town. 
 
 That was a good idea, and during the day more than one 
 sheet of note-paper on his desk at Burling Slip suffered in con 
 sequence, but as the evening came on he recovered himself 
 sufficiently to think of his engagement with Madame Steignitz, 
 and to resolve that no balls or parties should ever again inter 
 fere with his studies. At the appointed hour he set out for
 
 220 XEVER AC A IX. 
 
 Wooster Street, and mounted the rickety stairs leading to her 
 apartment. 
 
 " And so you broke your engagement with me to go to a 
 party," exclaimed Madame Steignitz, as Luther was making 
 his excuses. " Well, well, I will not reproach you ; you are 
 young: 'tis the way of the young. Why should you mind to 
 visit a poor old woman when les beaux yeux, &s mains douces, 
 les lumieres, la musigue, the soft frou-frou of muslin and silk 
 et tout le parfum de la jeunesse dor'ee invite you ? ah, I know. 
 Once I, too, thought the dance to be Heaven." 
 
 " Indeed, you mistake," exclaimed Luther, " and I don't 
 think it will happen again. I had a particular reason for 
 going this time one which rendered it impossible for me to 
 refuse." 
 
 " Oh, oh, I comprehend ! J7 y avait quelqii'une avec 
 laqudle vous ttes aux petits soins who is she ? " 
 
 " No no," exclaimed Luther. " J had to go because the 
 invitation was from my employer," and Luther had the grace 
 to blush at the fib. 
 
 " And who is he ? " she demanded. 
 
 " Mr. Ledgeral." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Ledgeral, the rich merchant of Burling Slip. 
 Why did you not tell me his name before ? " 
 
 " Tell you ! Why should I ? do you know him ? " 
 
 " Dame ! I don't know ; perhaps I do," and Madame 
 Steignitz mused for a moment in silence. " And now com- 
 menrons, we shall begin. We must not lose any time. You 
 think you can come to me only three times a week? Well, 
 you will give me three hours each evening, and you will see 
 what I shall do for you. You know what is the greatest thing 
 for to learn a new language ? No ? Well, I shall tell you. 
 Study ! Study ! Study ! I speak five languages perfectly; 
 how do I arrive to that ? By looking at a book one hour a 
 day ? No, by study, pen in hand, four, five, six, eight hours 
 some days. Some years ago I have teach the French, in this 
 country. My pupils study one hour, two hour some days, 
 and some days nothing at all. And then they say, Oh, mon
 
 221 
 
 Dteu ! quel talent incroyable have those Germans, and Rus 
 sians, and Poles for the languages ! Bah ! it is not so ! It 
 is not the difference in the brains, or in the organ, or in the 
 method : it is in the work. The Russians, and Poles, and 
 Germans, in the matter of languages, have a grand talent for 
 work. I gave some French lessons in Germany once, and 
 one pupil, la veuve (Tun nouveau riche, would to learn French 
 quickly. So she read, she write, she speak fourteen hours 
 every day for a year. She went into the French, grosst comme 
 fa, et rouge comme un bifteak ; et lourde le double de mat, and 
 she came out of it mince comme ya, et blanche comme une assiette 
 de soupe d la reine, but she knew more French than the whole 
 academy. So we will study ; commen^ons, let us see what you 
 know. Read this page of Balzac. I will see how you pro 
 nounce : then you shall write some phrase which I will dic 
 tate, and I will see how much grammar you know. Don't 
 mind me, j'e vais faire ma petite cuisine, Je n'ai pas encore 
 soupe, ; allez done, ne me regardez pas, vous ne me derangez 
 pas." 
 
 Luther commenced reading. Madame Steignitz occupied 
 herself with preparations for her exceedingly frugal meal. A 
 casserole, with its stock of meagre soup, was pulled out from 
 the recesses of an old, and neatly carved, but dilapidated 
 buffet, that m'ght, perhaps, in former times have contained the 
 delicate Stvres of a Ninon's petites soup'es, or upheld the plate 
 and crystal at the orgies of the Regent. Madame uncovered 
 the casserole, and took a sniff at the contents. 
 
 " Open your mouth wider and sound your r-rs, and recol 
 lect one thing ; you can't swallow your letters in French as 
 you do in English." 
 
 Another sniff at the casserole, and then as if satisfied 
 that the contents still remained in an edible condition, the 
 vessel was placed to heat upon the top of the little anthracite 
 stove. 
 
 " Bon ! Bon ! " she exclaimed, "I see you have practice 
 with your u and your double 1, but your r ah, you must 
 r-r-r-oll it more. Like this : sacr-r-r-r-r" and the old woman's
 
 222 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 head disappeared in the recesses of the buffet ; whence the 
 r-rs continued to roll out, accompanied by divers profanities 
 and a great clattering and clinking and rustling of bottles 
 and plates and old boxes and baskets. 
 
 " Sacr-r-r-e tonnere! jpai perdu mon ognon ; sacr-r-r nom de 
 Dieu! mon seul ognon. Out, out, mon seul ognon. O^ est in 
 otiestil? oti, peut-il se trouver 1 Ah! ah! le void ! sacr-r-r-r 
 cochon d' ognon, le void." 
 
 Luther paused, and for a moment almost imagined that 
 the old buffet was about to give birth to a French trooper. 
 The old woman emerged with triumphant vivacity, holding 
 another stewpan in one hand, and in the other a cold boiled 
 potato; a coffee-cup filled with fish livers and hearts; and 
 the truant onion. 
 
 She proceeded to slice the potato into the casserole ; then 
 the half of the onion ; adding a pinch of salt and pepper, a 
 few crumbs of bread and a lump of fat, and was just going to 
 turn in the contents of the coffee-cup, when she paused, ad 
 vanced to Luther, held the cup under his nose, and asked 
 him in French what he called it. 
 
 Luther shook his head. 
 
 " Oh, you don't know ? Well, I will tell you ; it is a sample 
 and a proof of the prodigality and barbarity of your country. 
 That is one of the dearest dishes in the French market. In 
 Paris I give two francs a pound, and make a dish for the 
 gourmet le plus instruit of Phillips, or the Cafe, Anglais, and 
 here, sometimes I give three cents a pound, and sometimes I 
 get them for nothing. Mais lisez encore; ne me regardez pas. 
 ye vats faire un plat d'entrailles de poisson saute, d la grande 
 Cartme" 
 
 Luther resumed his reading, while the old lady stirred the 
 contents of her stewpans, and prepared one corner of the 
 rickety old table. A soup-plate of 'French porcelain, with 
 broken edges, a battered silver spoon, and a napkin of fine 
 material but frayed and full of holes, and looking somewhat 
 the worse in color from frequent general service as duster and 
 dishcloth, were soon arranged, and a portion of the contents
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 223 
 
 of the first stew having been emptied into the soup-plate, the 
 old lady commenced her meal. 
 
 " That will do for the reading," she exclaimed, after a few 
 mouthfuls of soup, " I see that, with a little practice, you will 
 pronounce very well ; you have a good organ. Now, will you 
 take your pencil and paper, and I shall see what you can write." 
 
 " Mais pardon un moment" she exclaimed, as Luther got 
 his pencil and paper in readiness j " ilfaut faire sauter mes en- 
 trailles de poisson" and jumping up she rushed to the stove, 
 gave the stewpan a shake, whisked back again to the table, and 
 swallowed a few mouthfuls of soup. " Maintenant commenfons, 
 write as I dictate. Ecrivez done I am sorry that I cannot 
 ask you to eat something." 
 
 " Manger quclque chose" said Luther, finishing the phrase. 
 
 " I cannot do so for several reasons." 
 
 " Plusieures raisons" echoed Luther. 
 
 " First, because I have not got any too much for myself." 
 
 " Pour mot," murmured Luther. 
 
 " Second, because what I, a poor woman, have to eat is 
 not good enough for a young gentleman." 
 
 " Gentilhomme" said Luther. 
 
 "Third, because I know that you have already eaten your 
 supper, and that you are not hungry." 
 
 " N'avezpasfaim" 
 
 The stewpan on the stove began to emit by this time cer 
 tain fragrant evidences of readiness for the table. Madame 
 Steignitz, first dexterously giving it a few shakes, whipped it 
 off the stove, and poured its contents into the same plate that 
 had served for the soup, all the time continuing her dictation. 
 
 " Good ! " she exclaimed, as she swallowed the last mouth 
 ful and wiped the plate with a crust of bread. " Good ! now 
 let me see what you have written. Very good, indeed ! I 
 see you have made some progress. The worst part for you is 
 over. You have not made more than a dozen errors. Wait 
 till I put away these things, and then we will find them and 
 correct them. Et apres nous causerons un peu what you 
 call chat a little."
 
 224 NEPER AGAIN. 
 
 The remainder of the evening was filled up with talk uj:on 
 various subjects ; with a scene from Moliere, read by Madame 
 with spirit and vivacity; and with an extemporized represen 
 tation of assumed characters in various situations. 
 
 "Now, you shall imagine yourself to be a young lady, and 
 I will be a gentleman come to visit you." And the old lady 
 rushed to the door and pretended to enter the room, sliding, 
 and bowing, and making her compliments with affected em- 
 pressement. 
 
 Luther could hardly refrain from a hearty laugh, but 
 forcing himself into the spirit of the scene, he endeavored to 
 reply with all the vigor and vivacity possible. 
 
 Madame Steignitz neither helped him nor corrected him 
 directly, but whenever he made a mistake, or was in want of a 
 word or a phrase, she said something that involved the phrase, 
 or furnished the expression, and that with an emphasis that 
 drove in and clinched the right word or the right idiom, in a 
 way that dawdling over a grammar or phrase-book could 
 never do. 
 
 " Now you shall be the gentleman, and I will be the lady. 
 You shall say to me all that I have said to you." And again 
 the scene was repeated. 
 
 " Now I shall keep a book-store, and you have come to 
 buy some books." And the probable conversation of buyer 
 and seller was gone through with. 
 
 There was a little old French clock, surmounted by a 
 pair of tarnished gilt Cupids on the stained wooden mantle- 
 piece, half hidden by piles of papers, pamphlets, bottles, pill 
 boxes, brushes, and odds and ends of all kinds of rubbish. 
 Its tiny voice announced to Luther's astonished ear the hour 
 of ten. He could hardly believe it was so late, so much had 
 he been interested in the exercises of the evening. 
 
 As he bade Madame Steignitz adieu, with many thanks 
 and the strongest protestations of his determination to renew 
 his visits upon the appointed days, and closed the door be 
 hind him, he felt a wonderful elation at the opening prospect 
 of a complete mastership of a second tongue. He was cer-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 22$ 
 
 tain now of French. German, which he was to begin in a 
 month's time, he would do his best at, and might even ulti 
 mately attempt the Italian and Spanish, but French at the 
 worst was within his grasp ; a short and vigorous attack must 
 result in a perfect and permanent conquest. 
 
 As Luther closed the door, and stepped out on the landing, 
 he noticed a light issuing from the room of Mr. Planly. The 
 door was a little ajar, and he felt an impulse to push it open, 
 and exchange passing salutations with the old inventor, when 
 he was interrupted by u sound of voices from within. 
 
 " How much money will it take to complete it? " demanded 
 a harsh voice, in suppressed tone, with a strong foreign accent. 
 " I am poor desperately poor, but once finished and in my 
 hands, if it will do what you think, and I hope, I can get 
 plenty of money for it. How much money will it take to com 
 plete it ? " 
 
 " I cannot say," responded Mr. Planly, " not much ; but 
 I must have tools and materials, and you will recollect that it 
 is an affair of time as well as money. I must experiment 
 try different plans, make and remake the thing so as to have 
 it portable as well as efficient ; and, in the meantime, I must 
 live : I can't go every day as I have to-day without eating. 
 My landlady is impatient for her rent ; some money I must 
 have, and I cannot beg, borrow, or steal." 
 
 "And this landlady of yours, has she any money ?" 
 
 " They say that she is very rich : she must be, I should 
 think, quite wealthy ; she spends nothing and owns several 
 houses." 
 
 " And where does she keep her money ? Does she have 
 any here in her garret do you suppose ? " 
 
 If Luther had been in the room he would have seen Mr. 
 Planly suddenly start and fasten a keen and suspicious look 
 upon his companion. 
 
 " Ah, I know your thoughts : you think that I wish to rob 
 her," resumed the strange voice, "but if I did there would be 
 no great harm in it. The money would do more good in my 
 hands than in the pockets of a miserable old avare like that."
 
 226 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 "There is no necessity to discuss that point," rejoined Mr. 
 Planly. "The attempt would be a folly at least, as she never 
 trusts herself with a penny, and every day she deposits before 
 night in the savings bank the money that she collects." 
 
 "In that case she is doubly safe from me," replied the 
 stranger with a laugh. " Desperate poverty has never yet 
 made me commit a crime. I am sure it will never cause me 
 to knowingly make such a fool of myself. In my country an 
 old witch like that would be pretty sure to have a good magot 
 somewhere, and I know some of my compatriots who would 
 be looking after it. But your confounded banks of deposit 
 are so thick that they spoil that game. But I must bid you 
 good-night, I have an appointment with my friends at our 
 usual haunt in Wooster Street at ten. 1 will see if we can't 
 raise a few dollars for you. Au revoir" 
 
 The last word reminded Luther that he was listening to a 
 conversation not intended for his ear, and decided his hesita 
 tion about entering. He concluded to defer his call upon 
 Mr. Planly until another evening, and turned to the stairs, 
 just in time to escape observation, as the door was flung open 
 and gave exit to a small bushy-wiskered man in a cloak and 
 slouched hat. 
 
 " Mind you keep it well out of sight," he called back from 
 the head of the stairs to the inventor, who stood in the door 
 way. "The slightest publicity will destroy the value of the 
 whole thing." 
 
 " Oh, never fear," replied Mr. Planly ; " I have very few 
 visitors, and I don't know a soul in town who would willingly 
 take the slightest interest in that or anything else that I am 
 concerned in, or who would pay attention enough to anything 
 I could say to enable them to comprehend either its princi 
 ples or its objects." 
 
 " Dame ! Je if en suis pas si sur" muttered the man in the 
 cloak, but with an accent which, contrasting with the pure 
 intonation of Madame Steignitz still ringing in his ears, left 
 Luther very much in doubt as to whether the speaker was a 
 Frenchman or not.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 227 
 
 " I am not so sure of that. There are a great many cu 
 rious people about ; so be on your guard." 
 
 The speaker rapidly descended the stairs. 
 
 Luther's curiosity was aroused. He was half inclined to 
 stop and examine the stranger a little more closely, but he 
 did not like to be caught watching or waiting ; and he did not 
 like to admit to himself a capability of trying to pry into the 
 business of other people with which he had nothing to do. 
 He opened the front door without looking directly back, 
 closely followed by the stranger, and tripping down the steps, 
 turned up the street. 
 
 In front of the steps, leaning against the railing, was a 
 large, powerfully-built man ; roughly clad, as Luther, aided by 
 the feeble glimmer of a miserable gas-light at a little distance, 
 could see at a glance. 
 
 A small astrachan cap, set upon a monstrous mass of curly 
 jet-black hair surmounted his head. Around his neck was a 
 red bandanna, knotted sailor-fashion, with the ends falling 
 down upon an old cardigan jacket that was buttoned up to the 
 chin. A heavy black moustache and beard, that covered 
 nearly one-half of a hideously repulsive face, deeply scarred 
 with the small-pox, together with rather large gold rings in his 
 ears, constituted all the details that Luther's rapid glance could 
 take in ; and these he could hardly be said to see at the instant. 
 They became developed in his consciousness only by a mental 
 analysis that lasted until he had almost reached his home in 
 Bleecker Street. As a part too of this development into cog 
 nizable mental pictures of instantaneous and simultaneous sen 
 suous impressions, he arrived at the conclusion that the two 
 men were friends ; that they had nodded to each other ; had 
 dropped a word of salutation, which was neither French nor 
 English ; and had gone off together down Wooster Street in 
 the direction of Canal Street. 
 
 Perhaps his impression was somewhat intensified by their 
 sudden disappearance as he stood looking after them ; one 
 moment they were plain in sight, the next they had vanished. 
 " Dropped into some under-ground drinking-saloon," said
 
 22 8 - V/-.' VER A GAIN. 
 
 Luther, but his curiosity had never been so thoroughly piqued 
 before ; and yet, as he said to himself, he could not imagine 
 why or wherefore. There was nothing very striking or won 
 derful in the fact that the inventor had a visitor with a foreign 
 accent, or that the said foreigner had a companion who was 
 waiting for him outside of the house ; still he could not help 
 wondering about it as he made his way up-stairs to his little 
 attic, and he could not help wondering at himself for wonder 
 ing at so trivial an incident. " I dare say," mused Luther, 
 "if I should stroll the streets to-night until the short hours, I 
 should see and hear a dozen things much more curious, and 
 much more suggestive of mystery. There's the old woman 
 she is a complete mystery and how impenetrable ! How 
 thoroughly dry she has pumped me, and how little she has 
 revealed in return ! But then, I suppose, that is natural. I 
 have nothing to conceal ; she evidently has had her adventures 
 and her trials. She must have had a son, I take it, and she 
 fancies that I resemble him. I suppose she will tell me all 
 about it some time." 
 
 Luther went off to sleep, and had a troubled dream of 
 Asmodeus and unroofed houses ; of mysterious sights and 
 sounds ; of interesting scenes of intrigue and conjugal infe 
 licity ; and debauchery and murder ; and splendid tableaux- 
 vivants of love, and hate, and greed. 
 
 " Beautiful, isn't it?" exclaimed the limping devil in Lu 
 ther's ear, as he tore off roof after roof; " but here is a couple 
 of pictures not quite so striking, but really the finest of all." 
 And the devil ripped up a roof, and exposed to Luther's sight 
 a luxurious chamber with a single occupant a maiden, beau 
 tiful and youthful, but with a distressed and despairing expres 
 sion that foreshadowed, for the instant, the permanent lines 
 and shadows of thirty. With her hair half in crimping-pins, 
 and half straggling loose ; and her cheek hollow and wan, 
 anc } now that the slight tint of the red ribbon, with which it 
 had been artistically touched, had been washed off almost as 
 white as the folds of her robe dc nui/, she sat at her dressing- 
 table motionless ; holding her head on one hand, and gazing
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 229 
 
 at a riviere of diamonds that flashed its seductive light from 
 the perfumed satin folds of its richly gilt and embossed case. 
 
 She started, closed the lid, and with a slight shudder 
 pushed the box from her. Her hand fell upon a small gilt- 
 edged prayer-book ; it opened at the marriage service ; she 
 hastily closed it with a still stronger shudder, and flung it, 
 with a gesture of fierce impatience, on to a distant sofa. Tears 
 sprang to her eyes, and rolled down her cheeks ; she clasped 
 her hands with a convulsive grasp, and bowed her head upon 
 them. Deep sobs shook her whole frame ; a wail of agony 
 burst from her laboring heart. " Too late, too late," she cried. 
 " Oh, Harry, Harry, my love ! my life ! why did you let me 
 give you up ? why did I do it, why did I do it ? Why did that 
 horrible fellow with his million cross my path ? Alas ! how 
 full of misery looms my future. Oh that I could die ! yes, die 
 to-night ; now at once, and escape forever." 
 
 She raised her head, wiped the tears from her eyes, and 
 commenced coiling her back twist, and finishing her front 
 hair with crimping-pins. 
 
 " Now that is the kind of thing I like to see," said Asmo- 
 cleus. " There is a young girl one of the most fashionable 
 and best educated of any within two blocks of the Avenue but 
 her family by some miserable dispensation of fortune is not 
 rich. Her mother has only a pittance some seven or eight 
 thousand a year ; and her father doesn't get a cent over twelve 
 thousand as president of an insurance company. She must 
 have money, and her charms have been in the market for two 
 years past. In that time she has fallen desperately in love 
 with a nice young fellow of a doctor, who is rapidly getting 
 into good practice, but who has no income that would permit 
 for many years anything like a life of fashion-. Why a single 
 ball at Delmonico's, when you pay a thousand dollars for rose 
 buds, to say nothing of the other flowers, would swallow up 
 the fees of fifty amputations, or accouchements ; or exhaust 
 the pecuniary supplies derivable from twenty malingering 
 maternal nervous systems, or a dozen infantile fits, rickets, 
 and club-feet, or a score or two of paternal gouty stomachs
 
 230 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 and congested livers. No, she couldn't marry the doctor, and 
 settle down to a life of love and domestic bliss, or mingled 
 duty and rational pleasure, to the hum-drum enjoyments of 
 a stupid family circle, and a restricted social set. Think of 
 what she would have to endure : the barest glance of recog 
 nition from Mrs. Newcome, the banker's wife ; the cut-direct 
 of Mrs. Wriggleton and her daughters, or the cold hard stare 
 of Mrs. D'Oberge. No, she couldn't marry the doctor ; Pa 
 and Ma both said so, and society said so, so she is going to 
 marry an ugly, illiterate, unrefined, flashy, flippant boor of 
 twice her age, who, because he has converted an inherited 
 fifty thousand, picked up by his progenitor in a feed-store, 
 into two millions by questionable speculation, imagines him 
 self to be the equal of the finest-cultured and most tender 
 and delicate-mannered gentlemen in the land. Does she ever 
 think of bearing children to such a father, and rearing them 
 under his parental guidance and example? You need not 
 ask. Look at that shudder that runs through every nerve in 
 her body. 
 
 " But enough of this. Here we have a funny picture. Let 
 us look at it for an instant. Do you see that old woman ? 
 that is old Mother Jinks. She is going to a ball. She always 
 is going to a ball, or party, or reception, or somewhere, where 
 she can show off her laces and diamonds, her false teeth and 
 painted cheeks, and scraggy bust. She has no daughter to 
 bring out, but she contrives to hang herself on to some young 
 damsel, for the time being, by the pure power of suction. 
 Like a vampire she fastens upon her victim ; lulls her to 
 sleep with fannings and flutterings of compliments and little 
 attentions, sucks out all her youthful social juices, and throws 
 her, a withered and helpless old maid, away. Look at her 
 now : she is almost made up, and she will be soon simpering 
 and bowing, and grimacing, and boring herself and others, 
 and making herself an object of ridicule and contempt to the 
 young people around her, and denouncing the party and so 
 ciety generally, and sneering at ' common people,' and won 
 dering why she cannot enjoy herself, forgetting that no one
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 231 
 
 can find anything in society when they take nothing into it 
 themselves. Then she will come home, quarrel with her 
 maid, and go to bed, and get up again to go through the same 
 routine the next day. I declare it makes me laugh," and 
 the devil gave a loud ha ! ha ! that startled Luther from his 
 sleep. He was glad to find it daylight and time to rise if he 
 wished to give a few finishing touches to the illustrations of 
 his " Legend " before the summons to hash and buckwheat 
 cakes. 
 
 " I tell you what, Mr. Editor," said Luther to Mr. Whop 
 pers, at the breakfast-table, " if I could write it all out it 
 would make a first-rate article for the Atlantic or the Galaxy ; 
 it would be altogether above the line of your readers." 
 
 " No doubt, too lofty entirely but that is natural : a fel 
 low that has been straddling ridge-poles and climbing round 
 chimney-pots all night, might be expected to be a little ele 
 vated. Are you sure the elevation did not take place before 
 you went to bed? You thought that it was a spirit that was 
 leading you around. Well, perhaps it was, and infernally bad 
 spirit too. There is a good deal of it about. It is powerful 
 enough, no doubt. I've known it to take the roof right off of 
 a man's head ; and as to elevation, a single gin-sling will 
 sometimes throw a fellow as high as Trinity steeple. One 
 thing I can tell you, and that is, your diable boiteux is a little 
 *oo much like a police reporter ; or the city correspondent of 
 a country newspaper ; or a third-class novelist. He gives 
 you exceptional views, and makes you think that what he sees 
 and says stands for the world and society. There are thou 
 sands of houses in New York upper-tendom whose roofs he 
 wouldn't dare to disturb : the amount of sensation to be ex 
 tracted from them wouldn't pay for the trouble of ripping up 
 a single tile."
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Inflation and Panic A Tight Money-Market The Great House in 
 Trouble Mr. Ledgeral Raises The Money A Nice Distinction 
 Count Isenthal's Letter Joseph's Recollections. The Great House 
 Saved. 
 
 THERE had been one of those periods, lasting two or 
 three years, of great financial inflation and consequent 
 commercial activity. Money was plenty, and every kind of 
 trade acknowledged the impulse. And not only all kinds of 
 legitimate trade, but the absurdest schemes, the wildest spec 
 ulations, the most brazen swindles floated, bobbing and bub 
 bling about, on the great seething, roaring current of credit. 
 In the "street," there was a terrible activity, and all the 
 avenues to sudden wealth were filled with crowds of eager, 
 excited men anxiously making haste to be rich. A perfect 
 fury of greed had seized upon all classes, professions and 
 trades ; upon all ages and both sexes. The 'preacher's 
 thoughts wandered at the sacred desk to his last investment 
 in the "Communipaw Silver Lead," or the " Chickahomany 
 Railroad and Labor Improvement Co." The great surgeon 
 hurried the sweep of his amputating-knife by ten seconds, to 
 attend a meeting of a board of directors squatting upon spec 
 imens of a new-found vein of the real stuff in the wilds of the 
 Rocky Mountains. The great barrister in his heaviest 
 speeches could not keep from mentally counting his chances 
 in the Big Thing Petroleum, and even, in one of his highest 
 flights, apostrophizing the Fount of Justice as flowing at least 
 four hundred barrels. The glowing appeal moves the court. 
 The presiding judge starts, leans forward, and whispers : "Is 
 there any chance for the court to get in on first principles ? "
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 233 
 
 " One five-thousand-dollar share left genuine, first sand 
 stone, no watering, no cloubling-up. Your honor will step 
 right in on the very first rung of the derrick ladder." 
 
 " Good ! The court notes the point, and will reserve its 
 decision until the afternoon. Go on with your argument, 
 sir." 
 
 And now had begun the inevitable reaction. Money had 
 become tight, or if not tight, could not be found lying around so 
 loose as usual. There were many symptons of a coming hur 
 ricane. The stock-barometers fell away below foul. There 
 was a leaden dulness settling down in the street, and the 
 faces of bank presidents and cashiers grew cloudy : there was 
 a growing disposition to "realize," to "pocket the rocks," to 
 "git out," to "take in sail," to "clew up and clew down," and 
 many a captain of a gallant craft regretted that he had not 
 carried his top-gallant sails over reefed top-sails, so that he 
 could shorten his canvas handily in the squall. 
 
 You had but to visit the Rialto in the time of high-tide, or 
 in other words to drop into the note and exchange brokers' of 
 fices in Wall Street, to find that no firm stood higher in the opin 
 ion of money-lenders than the old respected and respectable 
 establishment of Shippen, Ledgeral & Co. And yet it was 
 difficult for Mr. Gainsby to raise all the money needed. It 
 would never do, however, for such a solid firm to acknowledge 
 any pressing want. It would never do for such a respectable 
 firm to go shinning about for temporary loans. It would 
 never do for a firm composed of individuals of such large pri 
 vate wealth to attempt discounts from outside commercial 
 Grad-grinds on questionable collaterals, or allow their own 
 notes to be shaved at a higher rate than ten per cent. The very 
 purity and elevation of the firm's character worked against it 
 now. As when a fast girl, with a reputation for modesty and 
 propriety, un peu usee, says and does things without losing 
 social consideration that would completely destroy the char 
 acter of an immaculate, but slow virgin ; or as when a mere 
 member of the congregation reels home from the St. Nicholas 
 dinner, and hurts nothing or nobody, while a single lurch in
 
 234 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 a communicant will shock a whole church ; so a firm like Ship- 
 pen, Ledgeral & Co. was debarred from any acknowledgment, 
 by outward sign or symptom, of the fury of the blast. No 
 willow-like bending, no shivering, no shaking. In the daily 
 " Ho ! what news from the Rialto ? " its name must not be 
 mentioned. A single whisper against the solidity of such a 
 settled institution, the faintest suggestion of frangibility in 
 such a towering structure, would precipitate everything :ind 
 everybody " down town" into one universal and never-ending 
 smash. 
 
 And yet the firm wanted money, and didn't know how or 
 where to raise it ; or rather they had raised so much that it 
 might look suspicious to call for more ; and, besides, the se 
 curities on which a great deal of its money was locked up 
 would hardly bear examination even in the best of times. 
 
 " If it weren't for our advances to those d d Cuban 
 
 sugar fellows, we should do well enough," exclaimed Mr. 
 Gainsby, as he and Mr. Ledgeral sat in anxious consultation 
 in the library of the house in Washington Square. 
 
 Mr. Gainsby had called at an early hour before breakfast 
 to see his senior partner, and to try and arrange some plan 
 of operations before going down town, and found that, like 
 himself, Mr. Ledgeral had passed a sleepless night, and was 
 up and dressed an hour before his usual time. 
 
 Mr. Gainsby considered himself a harassed man, and for 
 the time a thoroughly overworked and used-up man but if 
 he could have seen his partner pacing his chamber during the 
 silent watches of the night, he would have thanked heaven 
 for his own occasional snatches of sleep, and still more in 
 that his own watchfulness was caused by nothing more than 
 business anxiety, and that no pangs of conscience, or fear of 
 disgrace, sharpened the dread of a protested note. 
 
 "If it weren't for those advances," said Mr. Gainsby, 
 pointing with his finger to some items in a schedule which lay 
 on the table before him. 
 
 " Well, whose fault is that ? " said Mr. Ledgeral. " I had 
 nothing to do with it."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 235 
 
 " You forget," replied Mr. Gainsby ; " it is true I proposed 
 it, but you approved it, and I suppose the responsibility is 
 shared about equally : if we hadn't done it, three of the larg 
 est plantations on the island would have slipped out of our 
 hands." 
 
 " Well, well," testily replied Mr. Ledgeral, " it is done 
 now the money is gone, and we shan't see a cent of it back 
 again for six months, at least. What is the lowest figure that 
 will tide us over into next month ? " 
 
 " We must have a full hundred and fifty thousand," an 
 swered Mr. Gainsby, " and two-thirds of that must go into 
 the bank to-day. When I got those sugar-house notes for 
 fifty thousand discounted yesterday, I saw that it strained our 
 friends at the bank somewhat, and that we need not look for 
 more in that quarter. I know of but one resource." 
 
 " And what may that be ? " demanded Mr. Ledgeral. 
 
 " We must go to Mr. Shippen," replied Mr. Gainsby. 
 
 " Never, never ! No, no, that will never do," exclaimed 
 Mr. Ledgeral, starting from his seat and beginning to pace 
 up and down the room. 
 
 Startled at his sudden vehemence, Mr. Gainsby watched 
 his partner for a few minutes in silent astonishment. A sus 
 picion suddenly dawned upon his mind that Mr. Ledgeral 
 had already been dipping on his own account into the 
 purse of the special partner. He had had reason to know 
 that Mr. Ledgeral's private speculations had been on the most 
 enormous scale, and it was pretty certain that many ol them 
 must have been unsuccessful. " Pity," thought Mr. Gainsby, 
 " that the restrictions in the articles of copartnership should 
 apply only to the junior members of the firm, and that the 
 head of the house had not been saved from the temptations 
 of the times also." 
 
 " No, no, I can't do that ; I don't want to bother Uncle 
 Shippen about any business matters at present. Besides, I 
 know he has no money ; he has little or nothing but real es 
 tate, and if he were disposed to mortgage the whole of it, that 
 would do us no good at the moment."
 
 236 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " What is to be done then ? " demanded Mr. Gainsby, 
 with a quivering lip. " Suspension now, would be perfect 
 ruin. We may as well make up our minds to go under com 
 pletely." 
 
 His partner seemed lost in thought, and made ro rep'y 
 for several minutes. 
 
 " It must be done," suddenly muttered Mr. Ledgeral, 
 starting up from his chair. " There is no help for it ; worse 
 than ruin open disgrace if I hesitate. I have made the 
 plunge I must wade through. My only possible chance is 
 in saving the firm. That all right, I can turn myself around, 
 by spring, before the fellow arrives, and get out of the scrape 
 without dishonor." 
 
 Mr. Gainsby listened intently, but could make nothing 1 
 of the few words that caught his ear ; while Mr. Ledgeral 
 continued his walk up and down, in a state of marked agita 
 tion and excitement. Drops of cold perspiration started from 
 his forehead. The color forsook his cheek, and his lips, 
 parched and trembling, seemed scarce able to frame his in 
 coherent sentences. Suddenly he seemed to become sensible 
 that some one else was in the room, and throwing himself into 
 a chair opposite to Mr. Gainsby, he demanded, with an effort 
 at vigor, but in a voice still trembling, if Mr. Gainsby was 
 positively certain that one hundred thousand would be enough 
 for the day. 
 
 Mr. Gainsby pointed to the schedule. 
 
 "Well, then," resumed Mr. Ledgeral, "I think I can an 
 swer for it yes, I will answer for it. I will be down before 
 twelve." 
 
 " With the money ? " 
 
 "Yes, with the money. I shall have to make great sacri 
 fices to get it ; and I shall charge the firm with any loss upon 
 my securities." 
 
 Mr. Gainsby nodded his head, and took up his hat. " I 
 hope there is no chance of any mistake or miscarriage," he 
 said hesitatingly. " If there is, I am sure our special will 
 never forgive us for not letting him know."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 237 
 
 " Never fear, I will be on hand at twelve ; and you need 
 say nothing to any one, mind to any one, as to where the 
 money comes from." 
 
 Mr. Gainsby took his departure, and a close observer 
 might have noticed that he left the house and strode off down 
 Broadway with a more elastic step than usual, and with a 
 pleasant smile and a hand ready to wave an exceedingly com 
 placent salute to every passing acquaintance. 
 
 Mr. Gainsby was a precise, fastidious man socially, and 
 had never in his whole life indulged in the vulgarity, or rather 
 the downright blackguardism of smoking in the street, and he 
 was not a little startled at finding his cigar case in his hand. 
 " I must indulge," said he to himself. " It is early yet, and 
 my nerves have been so tightly strained that, now the tension 
 is off, they jingle and jangle like fiddle-strings. He'll get 
 the money no doubt. He seemed to be confident of success. 
 I wonder where it will come from. Ha ! ha ! that was a very 
 useless injunction not to tell anybody I'll be hanged if I 
 know anything to tell. I know that he has been desperately 
 short for a month past, and I am pretty sure he has already 
 got into Uncle Shippen, so how or where he can raise a hun 
 dred thousand to-day, I don't know ? " 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral sat in his luxurious arm-chair for at least 
 half an hour after Mr. Gainsby had left, without moving. No 
 longer a picture of mercantile dignity, and condescending, ele 
 gant dilettanteism ; but rather a picture of brooding irresolu 
 tion and forlorn conscience-stricken imbecility. The summons 
 to breakfast remained unanswered. Joseph put his head into 
 the room for the second time, and received an impatient re. 
 buff, ending with an order to bring a cup of coffee into the 
 library. 
 
 "Tears to me," muttered Joseph, "dat someting's gwine 
 to happen bout dese ere days. I heard 'em say dat dey had 
 got de screws on, and dat money is as tight as a clam-shell. 
 Yes tighter dan a clam-shell. 'Pears to dis nigger dat some- 
 ting is gwine to happen." 
 
 ^Nlr. Ledgeral sipped his coffee quietly for a few moments,
 
 238 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 and then proceeded to draw from the recesses of his portfolio 
 a letter with a German post-mark, but the contents were written 
 in very correct .English. It was dated "Isenthal," and con 
 tained an enclosure in the shape of a bill of exchange. Omit 
 ting some remarks upon the weather, the harvests, and the 
 prospects of war, the letter ran nearly as follows : 
 
 " Yours of the I3th ult. has been duly received, and its contents thank 
 fully noted. I am much obliged to you for your advice, as to the Illinois 
 Centrals. They are confident in Frankfort, I am told, of an advance, but 
 you are so much nearer the ground, and I have so much confidence in 
 the judgment of a man who is at the head of so world-renowned a house 
 as yours, that I think it best to make the change you propose. You will 
 consider yourself, therefore, hereby authorized to make the exchange. En 
 closed please find a first bill on Barings drawn to my order and endorsed 
 to you for ten thousand pounds, the proceeds of which please invest as you 
 have suggested : half in your city six per cents, and half in the stock of 
 some sound bank. As I have more money than I need at present, I 
 shall not draw upon you for my coming dividends on the bonds in your 
 hands. You can hold the money until I come out, which I hope to do 
 early in the Spring. I have long had a desire to see your great and much- 
 to-be-envied country, and one of the pleasures I count most upon is that 
 of expressing my obligations to a man so distinguished and widely hon 
 ored as yourself. Permit me to say that, as a young man entirely igno 
 rant of business and business men, had it not been that I was attracted 
 oy your high reputation, and by a little incident which I will explain to 
 you when I have the pleasure of seeing you, the money you have so hap 
 pily invested for me would have been most probably squandered. 
 
 " Hoping that this will find you in good health, 
 " I am yours truly, 
 
 " Count Albert von Isenthal." 
 
 " Fool that I am ! " exclaimed Mr. Ledgeral. " Why did 
 I write such a pressing invitation to visit this country ? ' If 
 I had not put it into his head he never would have thought 
 
 of coming. D d, miserable vanity ! Just to have the 
 
 pleasure and eclat of parading about a rich young German 
 count, I have got myself into this scrape." And for a moment 
 Mr. Ledgeral took refuge from the black and repulsive aspect 
 of crime in the contemplation and fierce reprobation of minor 
 foibles and weaknesses. But not for long could he discharge
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 239 
 
 his mind of the fact that he had yielded to temptation, and in 
 an evil hour had fallen from his honorable and virtuous es 
 tate down down to the ranks of the criminal class. No, no. 
 not quite so bad as that ; because from the first, and still 
 more now, he was resolved upon restitution with interest at 
 the highest market rate, not perhaps in money, but in the 
 best of advice and business guidance. In this light It was 
 only borrowing, and as it was absolutely essential t!:at the 
 money should be had at the moment, there was of course no 
 time to write to the young man, asking the loan. 
 
 And after all, it was only a portion of the fund that had 
 been used, only a hundred thousand ; a mere bagatelle. " If 
 that dry hole that those rascals ran the oil into had really 
 proved an eighty-barrel well, and petroleum had kept up to 
 eight dollars, it would have paid the whole in less than six 
 months. Now there is, with this bill of exchange, just one 
 hundred and fifty thousand left : we must have a hundred 
 thousand to day. Necessity knows no law ; the very exist 
 ence of one of the most important institutions in the United 
 States depends upon it. One must make sacrifices sometimes 
 for the good of our fellow-men. Besides, the money is not 
 to be wasted or thrown away ; it will all come back again. 
 And more than all, the trust has been violated, if you will 
 use a rough term, and part of the money disposed of, and 
 that too in what the public might call wild speculations. It 
 can't certainly be any great harm to go on a little further and 
 borrow in a really good sound cause the remainder." 
 
 The distinction that Mr. Ledgeral was drawing in his 
 mind, although very fine, will be equally apparent to the 
 reader. If the trust had been intact there might be some 
 question about touching it. But it had been broken into. 
 The thing had been done the responsibility had been in 
 curred, and isn't it clear that any one assuming such a respon 
 sibility acquires a kind of right to the remainder of the trust, 
 especially if he is going to use it in a perfectly honest endeav 
 or to replace the first portion unfortunately lost ? 
 
 As Mr. Ledgeral reasoned himself into a more elevated
 
 240 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 anckphilosophic view of the matter, and his mental perturba 
 tion abated, his appetite returned, and he rang for Joseph and 
 inquired if the ladies had finished breakfast. 
 
 " All done sar, 'cept Miss Ledgeral, sar, she nebber don't 
 done 'til 'bout twelve o'clock." 
 
 "Well, what can you give me in a hurry? I had no ap 
 petite at first, but I believe I will eat a few mouthfuls before 
 I go out." 
 
 " Ebbery ting dat's hot am cold, sar, but I can get you a 
 turkey's leg debbled in 'bout five minutes." 
 
 " Well, that will do, Joseph, and tell John to have my 
 coupu at the door in half an hour." Mr. Ledgeral seldom 
 rode down town in his own carriage. He recollected an old 
 maxim of his father's, that the young fellow who rode down 
 to business in his own carriage, generally had to walk in his 
 old age. Mr. Ledgeral was still young, that is he walked as 
 vigorously as ever, and liked the exercise, and when he rode 
 in an omnibus he felt much safer amid the jam and crush of 
 carts and carriages. Still there are times when a little osten 
 tation is necessary, and a sight of his prancing bays and well- 
 known livery might in this time of pressure and panic do the 
 " street " good. 
 
 " Tears to me," said Joseph, as Mr. Ledgeral drove off 
 after a hurried, but hearty breakfast " 'pears to me we ain't 
 going to bust nor nothing dis time. I recomlect way back to 
 thirty-sebben O Lord, I was a young man den ! when we 
 had ter sospend for a week. Nobody eat any debble turkey- 
 leg den. No, sar. De old man he eat nothing but a cracker, 
 and a pint or two of brandy, and de young one Misser 
 Court here he almost starve hisself to death on lobster-salad 
 and Champagne. O Lord, I recomlect dat we dat is he and 
 me togedder spile more nor a basket in tree days. If dat 
 panic hadn't sumsided I tell you what, it would hab bust dis 
 nigger's head open yes, sar ! Good-morning, sar ! walk in, 
 sar ! " exclaimed Joseph, throwing open the front door in an 
 swer to a ring of the bell, and saluting Luther, who stood upon 
 the steps. " For Miss Helen, sar? ah, yes, I will gib it to her
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 241 
 
 she is in de parlor now. Won't you gib it yourself? Tears 
 to me," continued the old man, as Luther, having handed him 
 his card and a roll of manuscript addressed to Miss Helen 
 Ledgeral, turned and tripped rapidly down the steps, " 'pears 
 to me," but the sentence was left unfinished, as Mrs. Ledg 
 eral at that moment stepped into the hall. 
 
 " What is that, Joseph ? " 
 
 " It is a card from one ob de young gemmenob de party," 
 replied Joseph, dexterously whipping the roll of manuscript 
 into his voluminous coat pocket and dropping the card into his 
 silver waiter. 
 
 Mrs. Ledgeral took the card and looked at it. 
 
 " Nonsense ! " she exclaimed, twisting up the card in her 
 fingers, and leisurely ascended the stairs. 
 
 Joseph put his head into the parlor. " Miss Helen," he 
 said, looking around to see that no one was present. " Dat 
 young man ob de steamboat ! He bring dis for you. I 
 doesn't tink it is a bilyer doo, cause it's rolled up so. No, I 
 doesn't tink it is a bilyer doo." 
 
 " Nonsense ! " exclaimed Helen, taking the roll. 
 
 ' Dat's just what her mudder say," muttered Joseph as he 
 left the room. " Nonsense ! I guess it is nonsense, but 
 'pears to me der is a good deal ob it about." 
 
 The old man had no reference especially to Luther's 
 poetry, and was quite unconscious of the wide application to 
 modern poetry his remark was capable of. 
 
 Helen waited not to unroll the manuscript, but tripped 
 lightly from the parlor up stairs. The door of her mother's 
 room stood ope'n, and the naughty girl was going to steal 
 quietly by. She had nothing to conceal oh ! no ; but then 
 her mother might make some inquiry about the manuscript in 
 her hand, and some things are so trifling so ridiculous in fact 
 that it is not pleasant to explain them. Therefore, in 
 answer to her mother's call, she merely put her head within 
 the half-opened door. "What is it, mamma ? " 
 
 " Helen, do you know that young man has called and left 
 his card ? " 
 
 16
 
 242 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " What young man, mamma ? " 
 
 " That Luther Lansdale." 
 
 " Indeed ! " 
 
 " Yes, and I think it a great piece of impertinence." 
 
 " It would have been more polite and attentive in him to 
 have come in and paid his party call in person," replied 
 Helen in the most innocent tone. 
 
 " Pshaw ! " and that was all Mrs. Ledgeral vouchsafed to 
 utter in reply. 
 
 Very wrong in Helen to thus play upon a fond mother's 
 feelings but we have never said that she was a perfect char 
 acter only a very good girl, as girls go. As her mother 
 turned away the slightest twinkle of humor lighted up the 
 demure expression of the naughty girl's face, and rapidly 
 mounting the stairs she gained her own room. 
 
 Let us follow her and read the lines with her as she runs 
 over them. We have said that Luther had quite a talent for 
 drawing. Now a novelist is bound, when he makes an as 
 sertion, to prove it, when he can. Unlike the historian, a 
 novelist is nothing unless he is truthful. It is the privilege 
 of the historian to misstate facts and pervert testimony, and 
 distort character until the confounded reader is left with the 
 very dimmest conceptions of what is true, and what is not 
 true ; but the novelist must tell nothing that in the depths 
 of his moral consciousness he does not know to be true, and 
 he is bound to furnish his proof he is bound to make his 
 characters think, say, and do, at least, a little of what he 
 vaunts their ability, so as to let the reader judge for himself. 
 Alas, that this rule should be so often utterly neglected ! 
 
 We should, however, hardly be able to afford so much 
 space to a proof that Luther has a turn for drawing, were it 
 not that the verses themselves contain an applicable moral. 
 Helen saw the point and felt it at once what better modern 
 representation of the famous Kaiser than a great New York 
 commission-merchant, or of Engenhard than a clerk in a 
 " store down town," and it made her heart flutter in a way the 
 mere poetry never could have done as she read the
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 243 
 
 LEGEND OF CHARLEMAGNE. 
 
 LET me beguile your thoughts awhile 
 
 With rude but truthful lay, 
 Far back along Time's Nile-like stream 
 Far back through History's phantom dream 
 
 Far back to the olden day 
 
 What time one name was mouthed of fame, 
 
 And fell, and field, and town, 
 Throughout Christ's realm from Tiber's flow 
 To where Rhine's channels seaward go, 
 Basked in its fierce renown.
 
 244 
 
 NEVER AGAIN 
 
 O'er Aix draws night, and the last light, 
 This drear November's day, 
 
 The royal city's streets has fled ; 
 
 E'en scarce a star gleams overhead, 
 
 And shadows thick with things of dread 
 Through court and cloister play. 
 
 And hushed is all, save one foot-fall, 
 
 That stirs the spectred air, 
 And frights the guard "A spirit ! hist !" 
 A gallant sprite, who keeps his tryst 
 
 With Imma, fond as fair.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 'Tis Engenhard who frights the guard, 
 As he the courts creeps o'er, 
 
 To where a postern, deep in shade, 
 
 Is sentried only by the maid, 
 
 With hand on the yielding door. 
 
 245 
 
 'Tis Engenhard, king s scribe and bard, 
 
 A clerk of low degree. 
 The Kaiser's child is in his arms, 
 He dares to taste her princely charms 
 
 With lip so bold and free, 
 He dares to clasp her to his breast 
 
 With Love's audacity.
 
 246 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 How long he stays, how vows and prays. 
 
 With all that there befell, 
 How oft they share the burning kiss, 
 How deeply sip love's madd'ning bliss 
 It booteth not to tell. 
 
 Enough to say, ere break of day, 
 
 They seek the private door, 
 One last caress, and then, " Good-night," 
 Ah, Christ defend ! fresh snow so white 
 
 The court-yard carpets o'er. 
 
 And all on high stars gem the sky, 
 And glint from spire to spire, 
 And shimmer down the frosted towers 
 Into the court in lustrous showers 
 Of glitt'ring diamond fire : 
 
 While all below the lucent snow 
 
 Gleams pitiless and hard. 
 " Good Jesu. aid ! liow light ! " she cries. 
 " 'Tis not the light I fear," he sighs ; 
 " Nor yet the drowsy guard. 
 
 " Far more I dread my manly tread 
 
 Our trysting will reveal. 
 Oh ! cursed chance that brought this snow 
 'Tis death to stay, 'tis death to go ; 
 
 My steps I can't conceal. 
 
 * And well I ween, my foot-prints seen, 
 
 The fierce and hungry pack 
 Of scandal's hounds will seize, the clue, 
 And hang with noses sharp and true 
 
 Upon my tell-tale track." 
 
 " Thou may'st not stay, yet hold ! a way ! " 
 
 Out cries the witty fair, 
 
 " By which we'll fault their staunchest hound 
 Come clasp me thus my neck around, 
 
 And thee across I'll bear.
 
 NEVER AGAIN.. 
 
 "My foot, so small, 'twill puzzle all 
 
 To read the riddle right. 
 Come, clasp me thus in such sore strait 
 Love lends his aid nay, do not wait, 
 
 Shame rides the coming light." 
 
 247 
 
 No time to lose, nor else to choose, 
 
 All's lost by more delay. 
 Around her neck he deftly clings, 
 Around his form her arms she flings, 
 And totters on her way
 
 248 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Uneasy bed hath crowned head. 
 Sore truth of Charlemagne. 
 Now pacing slow his chamber round, 
 Revolving plans of state profound, 
 Now studying stars, anon the ground, 
 From narrow oillet pane. 
 
 Beneath his eyes tne court-yard lies: 
 
 Ah ! could the lovers know 
 What eye above is looking down 
 How fierce the glance ! how stern the frown ! 
 
 That trails them o'er the snow. 
 
 " Ho ! warders, ho ! my trumpets blow, 
 
 Arouse my sluggard Peers." 
 Alas ! that voice, that furious tread 
 That flashing eye, I greatly dread, 
 
 Betoken blood and tears.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 The purple hours scarce tinge the towers, 
 
 Incrust with snowy flakes, 
 When starting at the brazen call, 
 The nobles seek the judgment hall, 
 
 And all astir is Aix. 
 
 Scarce dies the blast, when striding fast 
 
 Mal'gigi heads the train, 
 Rinaldo next, then Gan, forsworn ; 
 Oliver ; with Ortuel, paynim born ; 
 Astolpho, him of the magic horn, 
 
 And Ogier the Dane. 
 
 249 
 
 And not the least at fight or feast, 
 
 Sir Roland heeds the call, 
 While groans and clanks at every stride 
 That magic sword whose sweep so wide 
 Can e'en the rocks and hills divide, 
 The wondrous Durandall.
 
 2 co NEVEK AGAIN. 
 
 In solemn state all grimly wait 
 
 The Kaiser's stern commands ; 
 
 His banner waving o'er each knight, 
 
 And each in gleaming steel bedight, 
 
 And each on his proud hilt of might 
 
 Supporting mailed hands. 
 
 The hall now filled, and voices stilled, 
 
 All eyes the Kaiser seek : 
 " Peers, paladins, to traitorous deed 
 Should be affirmed a fitting meed, 
 
 Your judgment I bespeak. 
 
 " Pronounce the fate of low ingrate, 
 
 This scribbling, rhyming youth, 
 Who has, with clerkly arts, beguiled 
 This faithless maid your sovereign's chiH- 
 From fealty and from truth. 
 
 " Say what his fate, who from such state 
 
 Lures her to tryst so low, 
 And then to hide his villain track, 
 Dares to betask her princely back, 
 And ride thus o'er the snow." 
 
 He looks around : at first no sound ; 
 
 Close held is every breath ; 
 And then, in swelling tones from all, 
 Resounds throughout the lofty hall, 
 
 " The traitor's doom is Death ! " 
 
 Ha ! see, that frown is softening down, 
 
 And in that eagle eye 
 A gleam of humor, scant and dim, 
 Compels the shadows, dark and grim, 
 
 Reluctantly to fly. 
 
 " Now, by God's truth, this daring youth 
 Deserves that death to die, 
 
 But Love the pang of death disdains ; 
 
 So, ere the law's extremest pains, 
 
 It is my pleasure that in chains 
 Repenting he should lie."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 251 
 
 The Kaiser smiled, then lifts his child 
 
 From suppliance at his knee : 
 " Here, take this leasing, meeching bard, 
 With priestly aid go bind him hard, 
 In Hymen's chains him safely guard ; 
 His warder thou shalt be." 
 
 Hand clasped in hand, the lovers stand, 
 
 O'erwhelmed with hope and fear, 
 Half doubting if that voice of might, 
 Thus fraught with mercy, fall aright 
 Upon the questioning ear.
 
 252 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 But cheers from all r.ow fill the hall, 
 
 With brave and loyal cries, 
 Till through the doors the echoes roll 
 And voice the instincts of the soul, 
 At Love's assured emprise.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 253 
 
 As Mr. Ledgeral's carriage moved down into the thickest 
 of the crowd at Fulton Street, he grew not only perfectly com 
 posed, but even elated. In the first place the affair was set 
 tled, and, as the good book says, it is wrong to put your hand 
 to the plough and look back. Banish these vain thoughts and 
 regrets, and useless sentimentalizings. This world is a world 
 of struggle. No matter how much the preacher denounces 
 the objects of the struggle, we are so constituted that we can 
 not help taking a deep interest in the vanities around us. The 
 fault if there is a fault is the fault of circumstance, and it is 
 sheer nonsense to talk and preach the way people do. The 
 moment you come to put the matter into precise scientific lan 
 guage, the fallacy is apparent ; you see the absolute necessity 
 for the adaptation of our temperaments and our mental and 
 moral habitudes to the peculiar character of our environments. 
 The great object, then, is success. No matter at what cost of 
 health or even conscience. The world worships it. Society 
 rewards it with her best gifts. Not to succeed is wicked. It 
 is only the successful man who can really do much good in the 
 world. And how easy for the successful man to atone for any 
 thing wrong which he has done. He does not always do it, 
 and there he is to blame ; and, in such cases, he will, unques 
 tionably, be blamed, if not here, at least hereafter. But if he 
 always has his money ready for the plate, if he heads subscrip 
 tion lists for philanthropic purposes, presides on committees 
 of benevolent institutions, and does a pretty fair amount of 
 private charity, why, just think of what an amount of good he 
 may do ; and it is only a successful man that can do good in 
 this way. 
 
 True, Mr. Ledgeral was not exactly satisfied with the force 
 of this reasoning, but it had its soothing effect, and why con 
 sider its weak points too closely ? We all have the faculty of 
 shutting our eyes to logical flaws when we don't want to see 
 them. The same as some of us have to material sights and 
 scenes. How often in walking the streets do we come across 
 some shocking or revolting sight, or sound, or smell? a 
 filthy, reeling drunkard ; a worn-out omnibus-horse kicking
 
 254 
 
 NEVER AC A IX. 
 
 and struggling as he lies on the slippery pavement ; a wretched 
 and abandoned girl, flaunting her misery in tawdry finery ; a 
 volley of profanity and blackguardism from some licensed 
 devil's den ; or some horrible odor from unmoved garbage or 
 neglected gutters, bad enough in itself, but which is infinitely 
 more horrible as a suggestion of intense rottenness in munici 
 pal high-places ! How often we see, hear, or smell something 
 of the kind ; and how miserable we should be if the sensitive 
 ones among us had not the happy faculty of shutting down the 
 windows of the mind upon the reports of the senses, and men 
 tally turning away, as if the sight, sound, or smell were not ; 
 as if it had no objective existence. So it is in ethics and in 
 logic. The disagreeable facts of duty and truth are continu 
 ally meeting us, and what miserable devils we should be in 
 the beautiful and splendid society of to-day, if we were com 
 pelled, by our mental constitution, to look at them to stare 
 straight at them, to take them in in their full force, or if, by 
 some accident, having sucked tl-em, as irritating and offend 
 ing materials, clear into the inmost recesses of consciousness, 
 we had not the power, oyster-like, of secreting a benign enve 
 lope, and converting the rough grains and thorns of truth and 
 right into beautiful, smooth, glittering pearls and jewels, for a 
 fastidious moral sense to play with. 
 
 Another elevating and soothing influence that swept across 
 Mr. Ledgeral's mind, as he reached the head of what is 
 known as par excellence " the street," was simple sympathy 
 with outward circumstances. Just as when in some majestic 
 cathedral, amid the lofty arches ; the dusky aisles ; the stained 
 windows ; the marble floors, tesselated with the memento marts 
 of departed faith, or valor, or beauty ; the mind is attuned to 
 a feeling of the deepest devotion just as when, in some Al 
 pine valley, where the mountains lift their heads into the 
 region of eternal snow, and their sunless, sombre flanks are 
 lighted only by the gleam of the glacier ; an emotion of gran 
 deur and sublimity steals over the soul, and lifts it from 
 nature up to nature's God just as when by some lonely lake, 
 dimpled in wooded hills, illumined by a summer's setting sun,
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 2 55 
 
 or, as when by some gentle brook, flowing at noontide, in 
 shadowy coolness, through fields and pastures specked and 
 spangled with beauty, and sparkling and tinkling with all the 
 grateful sights and sounds of man's first and happiest occu 
 pation, the heart is overwhelmed with a flood of soft, loving 
 sentiment, a thrilling sense of the beautiful diffusing itself 
 through our whole frame, and looking up in an ecstasy of joy, 
 we cry, " God made the country, man made the town, I will 
 go where I can best enjoy God's work; I will have a nice 
 little villa, where I can praise Him forever" just so, when 
 one turns into " the street," the bustle, the confusion, the 
 countless evidences and suggestions of financial activity, the 
 hurrying crowds, the eager faces, the ever-slamming bank- 
 doors, the yawning brokers' dens, with hosts of men and boys 
 diving down, and then bubbling up- again to the surface, many 
 of them flustered and excited, many of them worn and cadav 
 erous-looking, as if they had been chewed-up once and spit 
 out again by some horrible monster just so the mysterious 
 chain of sympathy begins to vibrate, the pulse quickens, the 
 muscles quiver, the hands burn and itch, the blood rushes to 
 that little fasciculus of the brain whose spiral twisting, ac 
 cording to the great Professor Tyndal, produces the sentiment 
 of greed, and a flood of emotion surges home upon the heart. 
 The poor innocent who ventures into " the street " soon feels 
 as must have felt an old knight, amid the flaunting of banners, 
 and clanking of steel, and the exhortations of Peter the her 
 mit. He feels that he too must draw his sword, or, if not a 
 sword, at least a bill of exchange, or a bank-check, and rush 
 into the heady current of the fight. What the tomb of Christ 
 was to a Tancred, or a Godfrey, or the Holy Grail to Sir 
 Galahad, a good bank-balance, with a portfolio full of notes 
 and bonds, a gold mine, a steamboat line, or the majority of 
 the shares in a big railroad, is to the knight errant of modern 
 society, who, in quest of adventures, once wanders amid the 
 enchanted cobble-stones of "the street." 
 
 And what more natural than that this excitement; this in 
 tense preoccupation with the most important interests of life ;
 
 256 NEVER AGAL\'. 
 
 this tremendous exacerbation of the combative instincts ; this 
 complete concentration of all our powers, mental and physical, 
 in what used to be foolishly decried as a vain heaping up of 
 riches, but which is now known, since Darwin's discovery, 
 as an inevitable and universal struggle for existence what 
 more natural than that this should blunt our perceptions of 
 right and wrong, and somewhat obfuscate our moral sight ? 
 Richard was a generous man, and chivalric but is it to be 
 supposed that, if, at the confused and bloody melees of Li- 
 messo, or Askalon, his two-handed sword, in its wide, death- 
 dealing sweep, had encountered the head of woman or child, 
 is it to be supposed that he would have stopped to whine 
 over the accident, or have even felt in his lion-heart one pang 
 at anything that might perhaps be strictly considered uncourt- 
 eous and unknightly in the blow? So in the turmoil of "the 
 street," no one can be accountable for all the accidents,.the 
 slips and slides, the little malfeasances that almost invariably 
 occur in the course of any tremendous and exciting deed of 
 financial deering-do. That is, not so fully accountable as a 
 man who has never ventured beyond the quiet pursuits of 
 professional life, or who, shrinking from the glare of specula 
 tion, has wholly confined his etiolated intellects to the shady 
 walks of humble trade. Of course no one would like to ven 
 ture so far out of the path of church dogma as to maintain that a 
 Wall Street financier like a New York office-holder is not in 
 a moderate degree accountable for any little deviations from 
 the rigid path of right or truth. He is accountable, and he 
 knows it He is accountable to his bankers, he is account 
 able to his brokers, he is perhaps accountable to the stock- 
 board, and to his club ; but beyond that, he loses all sense of 
 accountability, and therefore it would be wrong to try him 
 and judge him by laws well enough in the abstract, but hav 
 ing, in times of excitement, but little or no force in "the 
 street." 
 
 We have used very freely, and perhaps at too much 
 length, the very commonplace figure of a battle, in order to 
 show the great trials, and temptations, and accidents that
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 257 
 
 visit the career of a virtuous speculator, and to prevent, or at 
 least to mitigate as far as possible, any harshness of judgment 
 in the case of the rich Mr. Ledgeral, the respectable Mr. 
 Ledgeral, the head of the great firm of Ledgeral, Shippen 
 & Co. Perhaps a better figure, certainly a newer one, 
 to illustrate the mental condition and moral sentiments 
 of a stock speculator, would be that of an enterprising 
 traveller endeavoring to ford on horseback a raging, rapid 
 river. He starts from the bank, a little fearful perhaps, 
 but full of hope, and with all his senses about him : a few 
 steps, he is up to his saddle-girths in the raging, roaring wa 
 ters. And now everything grows confused and unsteady. 
 The whole world seems turning topsy-turvy, and his eyes 
 fairly swim in his head as the countless swirls of foam go 
 seething by. All that he can really be said to see is that, if 
 he keeps a straight course, he is gone. He feels, he knows 
 that, while giving his beast a loose rein, he must yes, he must 
 head a little up-stream. Now that was all that Mr. Ledg 
 eral was doing when he borrowed the very confiding young 
 Count's money : he was simply heading a little up-stream. 
 
 Had any inquisitive people chosen to dog Mr. Ledgeral's 
 footsteps after he had entered " the street," they would have 
 been struck with an apparent inconsistency in his movements. 
 First, he went to the bank where he kept his private account, 
 and, demanding his box of securities, drove to a broker, with 
 whom he left orders to sell immediately one hundred thousand 
 in bonds of the Illinois Central and Hudson River Railroads. 
 Next to an exchange broker, with whom he left his bill on the 
 Barings with directions to have the proceeds ready in an 
 hour's time, when he would call for them. Next to another 
 stock-broker's office, leaving peremptory orders to buy fifty 
 thousand in city sixes and certain bank stocks. 
 
 But why buy and sell simultaneously ? Why not cash the 
 bill of exchange and use the proceeds directly ? Ah, there 
 comes a beautiful example of the financial punctilio. To 
 borrow a few unregistered, and consequently disposable secu- 
 
 ties belonging to another person that happen to be in your
 
 258 A'ETEK AGAIX. 
 
 possession, is one thing ; to appropriate money sent with 
 specific orders for investment is another. Mr. Ledgeral had 
 to answer his correspondent's letter, and he felt the impossi 
 bility of writing a direct flagrant untruth. Besides if the 
 worst came to the worst, his full power of attorney \\ould en 
 able him to quietly borrow the money no matter how in 
 vested. 
 
 And now again to his selling broker's office, where the 
 certified checks of some of the best men in town were await 
 ing him, and thence to the counting-house at Burling Slip. 
 
 How proudly pranced the bays as the liveried coachman 
 deftly guided them through the crowds of market-carts, 
 express-wagons, omnibuses, and lumbering drays. Quite like 
 a conquering hero Mr. Ledgeral drew up at the door, and, 
 dismounting from his triumphal car, and briskly ascending to 
 the private office, laid the checks upon Mr. Gainsby's desk. 
 
 And so was saved the great house of Ledgeral, Shippen 
 & Co., at a time when nothing short of an Astor, a Vander- 
 bilt, a Moses Taylor, a Dan Drew, a John Morrissey, or a 
 Gould could have borrowed a dollar. How many persons 
 and firms on the brink of ruin have been saved in a similar 
 way, and the good public never a bit the wiser ?
 
 CHAPTER XIII. . 
 
 Table Talk A Worldly Woman Spiritualistic Infidelity Mrs. Lasher's 
 Discourse on Congeniality and Grammar Whoppers Vulgar as usual 
 More and more Metaphorical The Divaricating Principle in 
 Domestic Life Noted. 
 
 THE "dinner-things" had vanished as if by magic, but 
 really by the dexterous swoop of a sable Ganymede and 
 two slattern Hebes of the Milesian type. The comestibles 
 and condiments had pretty much gone maw-ward, and were 
 rapidly being developed into the higher forms of organic life 
 in the persons of Mrs. Lasher and Dr. Droney and other 
 guests making up the gratified and grateful circle that daily 
 gathered around Miss Jones' generous board. The dirty 
 glasses and greasy plates and empty pudding-dishes had gone 
 kitchen-ward, followed by the soiled and rainbow-hued table 
 cloth and the rumpled napkins, exhaling an odor compounded 
 of bar-soap, beef-steak gravy, and onion-sauce. The hot 
 political discussion had ended as usual both sides getting 
 the best of it. The latest city and foreign news had been ex 
 hausted as a topic of conversation, and the brilliant current 
 of chaff with which the meal had commenced was reduced to 
 a few volatile flakes from the threshing-machine of the editor 
 of the Universe. 
 
 A clever writer could in this way, or something like it, fill 
 two pages with the announcement that dinner was over, but 
 as w.e have not the two pages to spare, we forbear to test at 
 this time our abilities, or to experiment upon the patience of 
 the reader. Sufficient to say that a very good general board 
 ing-house dinner had come to an end, and that some of the 
 convives had risen, and sauntered off into the drawing-room, to 
 a course of piano and cards, while others still lingered around 
 the mahogany sipping their coffee or tea.
 
 260 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " And now my sucking Croesus," exclaimed Mr. Whoppers, 
 " when you have put a colophon to Miss Jones' bounteous feed, 
 just let us know what you intend to do with yourself." 
 
 "Put a what, Mr. Whoppers?" demanded Mrs. Lasher in 
 her most sepulchral voice. 
 
 " A colophon." 
 
 " And what is a colophon ? " 
 
 "Good heavens! Mrs. Lasher," replied Mr. Whoppers, 
 "you an advocate of woman's rights, and not know what a 
 colophon is ! It is a corps of cavalry. It is the last lick with 
 the broom-stick in a domestic muss. It is the coming female 
 suffrage which is to close up the miserable accounts of 
 society, and write ' Finis' to all the imperfections of the world 
 in general." 
 
 " Nonsense ! " exclaimed Mrs. Lasher. 
 
 " Exactly. ' You know how it is yourself.' But if you 
 think nonsense keep it to yourself. I'll none of it." 
 
 " What folly, Mr. Whoppers, for a sensible man to talk as 
 you do. Explain yourself." 
 
 " And must I ravel up the seam of folly ? Not a bit of 
 it ; and so, Luther, when you have colophonized your retreat 
 ing dinner with that cup of tea, what are you going to do with 
 yourself? If you have no engagement I have something to pro 
 pose." 
 
 " What is it ? " demanded Luther. 
 
 " Why, Mrs. Stichen was quite impressive the other night 
 at the party, and asked me to come up and see her. She 
 takes a great interest in you, I know. What do you say ? 
 For a wonder I am free to-night. Shall we go and pay our 
 devotions at the shrine of the rising goddess ? " 
 
 "I'm willing," replied Luther. " She gave me a very cor 
 dial invitation also/' 
 
 " A young man might be better employed," interposed 
 Mrs. Lasher, " than in visiting such a person. Don't you 
 think so, Dr. Droney ? I have nothing to say to Mr. Whop 
 pers, he is old enough to know better ; but you, Mr. Lansdale, 
 are a very yaung man, and have a great deal to learn, which
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 261 
 
 in some respects I hope you never may learn. Don't you 
 think so, Dr. Droney ? " 
 
 " Indeed, madam," replied the Doctor in his most unctu 
 ous tones, " I cordially agree with you : ' train up a child,' as 
 the good book says, ' in the way he shall go,' and ' just as the 
 twig is bent, the tree's inclined,' and ' follow not after her 
 whose steps lead down down to to the bad place." 
 
 " What the devil do you mean ? " demanded Mr. Whoppers. 
 " To you mean to insinuate anything against the character of 
 Mrs. Stichen ? If you do " 
 
 " Mr. Whoppers, Mr. Whoppers," interrupted Mrs. Lasher, 
 " I am shocked at your profanity ! Anywhere and at any time 
 it's awful ; but, in the presence of this reverend and holy 
 man, and of a lady who, if not old enough to be your mother, 
 is not such a mere girl as not to know what is due to female 
 propriety and decorum." 
 
 " Female propriety and decorum be be hanged damned, 
 I was going to say, but I won't just at this moment. What I 
 want to know is " 
 
 " Oh ! oh ! " cried Mrs. Lasher shuddering, and holding 
 both hands to her face. " Oh, Doctor dear, do you hear him ? 
 He denounces he does more, he damns female propriety and 
 decorum. No, no, Mr. Whoppers, don't go on, sir ; stop imme 
 diately ; I will not listen to you ; I will not listen to you ; it is 
 too awful ; it is too horrible. Oh, Doctor, can't you say a 
 word to the young man who is thus being led astray ? " 
 
 Thus exhorted, the Doctor turned to Luther, and ex 
 claimed in tones of solemn severity, " You see, young man, the 
 awful gulf yawning at your feet. Beware, beware, Luther ! 
 listen not to the song of the charmer, charm he or she ever so 
 wisely." 
 
 Luther threw himself back in his chair and laughed heart 
 ily. 
 
 " Don't laugh, young man, don't laugh ; respect my supe 
 rior years and experience, and respect my sacred office. It is 
 my duty to warn you in season and out of season, line upon 
 line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little."
 
 262 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 "Look here now," shouted Mr. Whoppers, at the top of 
 his voice. " Stop all this caterwauling, and answer one ques 
 lion. I want to know if you have anything to say against the 
 character of Mrs. Stichen ? " 
 
 " Yes, I have," firmly replied Mrs. Lasher. 
 
 " And what is it ? " demanded Mr. Whoppers. 
 
 "Well, she's a, a" 
 
 " She's a what ? " 
 
 " She's a worldly woman. There now ! " 
 
 " Is that all ? " 
 
 " Oh, Doctor, do you hear that ? Is that all ? all indeed ! 
 I tell you that she is a downright worldly woman. All she 
 thinks about is dressing and spending money at Madame 
 Volorem's ; and driving about in her new clarence, with glass 
 windows all around, so that she can be seen by everybody ; 
 and showing her baby face at operas, and balls, and parties, 
 and even the church. I tell you she is a mincing, simpering, 
 affected, stuck-up piece. When she boarded here I never 
 liked her, although you all went mad about her singing ; and 
 since that little rascal, her husband, has made so much money, 
 I don't want to know her, and whenever I meet her, I cut her 
 dead. The Doctor, here, knows how worldly she is." 
 
 " Indeed I do," replied the Doctor. " I have tried her 
 I have tried her in the balance, and found her wanting. I'll 
 give you an instance. I went to her and told her that a large 
 tribe of the Wanabangos, residing in the Jebbledoon moun 
 tains, were living a life of cannibalism, and downright nudity, 
 and utterly without the benefits of stated preaching, or any 
 kind of Sabbath-day instruction. It made not the lightest 
 impression upon her ; she said that she had already contrib 
 uted, all she could afford, to the domestic missions, but if 
 there were any of the Wanabango tribe round Cherry or 
 Greenwich streets, or down in the Five Points, or Mackerel- 
 ville, she would be willing to strain a point and give some 
 thing more. What could I say to that ? I saw that she com 
 pletely misunderstood the whole object and design of that 
 particular kind of missionary work in which I am engaged. I
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 263 
 
 thought I would try her with something else, and I said, ' My dear 
 Mrs. Stichen, I have in hand another most important work 
 one that recommends itself to the loving consideration of 
 every pious and affluent Protestant. We have a beautiful 
 little church at Skinnersdale, in Nevada tower truncated as 
 yet ; but real stone mullions. Well, owing to the unaccount 
 able bursting of a whiskey-still, and to the lamentable occur 
 rence of three or four street fights, the congregation has been 
 reduced to less than half-a-dozen members, and no one of 
 these has anything to give or would give it if he had. Now 
 this little Protestant temple is soon to be sold, under fore 
 closure of mortgage, unless we who feel an interest in the 
 cause come forward with the necessary funds. And if it is 
 sold think of it ! think of the awful fact ; it will inevitably 
 fall into the hands of the Romanists ! There are numbers of 
 them some wealthy, and all bigoted and they are deter 
 mined to buy it, and carry up that unfinished steeple, and 
 crown it with a large gilt cross. Think of it, Mrs. Stichen,' 
 said I, ' think that the small sum of five thousand dollars will 
 save that church,' and I made my appeal in my most touching 
 tone and manner. But would you believe it? it had no effect ; 
 would you believe it ? that woman let me go out of that house 
 that splendid house, filled with the latest and most resplen 
 dent vanities of household adornment, with all that delighteth 
 the eye, and administereth to the comfort of the body would 
 you believe it? I say; she let me go out from that gilded 
 saloon ; out from that frescoed and tessellated hall, down 
 those massive and richly ornamented freestone steps, into 
 the street, without a dollar; yea, without even a piece of frac 
 tional currency to the value of ten cents. A menial in a 
 white neck-cloth, and a much better coat than my own, closed 
 the carved oaken door behind me. ' Avaunt thee, Satan,' I 
 ejaculated, for I felt the tempter urging me to a little honest 
 indignation, but I would not give way to him." 
 
 " Well, at least," exclaimed Mr. Whoppers, who had now 
 recovered his good-humor, " she offered you cake and wine, or 
 something of that sort? "
 
 264 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 The Doctor shook his head. " Nothing of the kind, and I 
 almost ready to drop from exhaustion." 
 
 "Wrong, certainly," replied Mr. Whoppers; "if you weie 
 ready to drop from exhaustion, she ought to have been ready 
 to drop from a bottle or decanter, or something of that sort. 
 I begin to think that she is a very worldly woman. She under 
 stands more of the world than I thought she did, but I am 
 glad that there is nothing really affecting her moral char 
 acter." 
 
 "I don't know that I don't know that," interrupted Mrs. 
 Lasher, in her deep tragedy voice, and shaking her head vi 
 ciously. 
 
 "Ah, you mean that looking at the nudities of the Wana- 
 bangos is a sin, a moral delinquency." 
 
 ''No, I don't; I mean that riding and driving with such an 
 impudent-looking fellow as that Boggs is suspicious, yes, very 
 suspicious, and the Doctor here will tell you that no woman 
 should do anything suspicious." 
 
 "That is true, sir. Suspicion, sir, for a woman, is bad, sir, 
 very bad. She should be always like Caesar's wile, you know, 
 who hadn't any suspicion." 
 
 " But mere suspicion don't amount to much. It may be 
 entirely groundless," said Mr. Whoppers. 
 
 " I don't care if it is groundless," exclaimed Mrs. Lasher. 
 "She can't be a virtuous woman who allows herself to be 
 suspected. But 1 know how it is with you men. You, all of 
 you, take up the cause of a good-looking woman ; not that she 
 has any looks to boast of, but almost any woman can wind 
 any of you right round her finger." 
 
 " She must begin by winding her arms around us, Mrs. 
 Lasher. But where is your woman's rights question. I 
 thought that men were such horrible monsters and tyrants." 
 
 " So they are to the good and the virtuous. It is the vile 
 women, the silly women, the ungodly women at whose feet you 
 men bow down and humble yourselves, and encourage them to 
 flaunt their worldliness in the faces of the nobler portion of 
 their sex. But as to Mrs. Stichen, it isn't alone her character
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 265 
 
 for morality or for virtue that 1 object to," continued Mrs. 
 Lasher. " It is her mental character. It is her intellectual 
 character. She has no belief in anything. She scouts the 
 plainest evidence. She is an infidel, and that in a woman is 
 awful. It may do for you men. I know you are one, too, 
 Mr. Whoppers." 
 
 " That is," said Mr. Whoppers, " she does not believe in 
 your friend, Dr. Quachenhummer." 
 
 " She doesn't believe in homoeopathy at all ; nor in hydro 
 pathy ; nor in isopathy ; nor in electropathy. She says that 
 she don't believe that women, and clergymen, and poets, and 
 editors, however clever, who have not a scientific hair in their 
 heads, are good authorities on medical subjects. But what 
 will you do when you come to be on your death-bed ? said I. 
 ' Well, I will make my exit secundum artem] said she. I 
 never heard anything more horrible. Besides, she don't be 
 lieve in the woman's rights movement. She don't believe in 
 the elevation of woman. She says she doesn't care to elevate 
 herself; all she wants is to elevate Stichen." 
 
 "That is wrong ; decidedly wrong," exclaimed Mr. Whop 
 pers. " Stichen don't want any one to elevate him, he can 
 elevate himself. I recollect one night Stichen gave some of 
 us a little supper at Delmonico's, and he elevated himself 
 about as high as the table, and kicked all the bottles off." 
 
 The peculiarity of Mrs. Lasher's conversation was that 
 once having turned on the tap of talk, it continued to flow in 
 spite of any interruption. Once under way, even Doctor 
 Droney could only now and then get his pipe in. 
 
 " And more than all," continued Mrs. Lasher, " she don't 
 believ in spirits. Neither do you, Mr. Whoppers, but it is 
 because of your ignorance and indifference in all supermun 
 dane affairs ; and I make allowance for you ; you are a man, 
 and one of that class of men whose coarse sensual natures 
 must ever weigh them down to the things of this world ; but 
 Mrs. Stichen has no excuse ; she cannot plead ignorance. I 
 have tried to enlighten her. I have taken her to three or 
 four of our most interesting sittings, when the manifestations
 
 2 66 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 have been most exti aordinary ; she even had evidences of the 
 spirits in her own person. We were all sitting one evening 
 round the mediumistic board when it began to jump up and 
 down in a terrible manner, and Mrs. Stichen felt something 
 tread upon her toes. ' If it wasn't a spirit, what was it ? ' 
 said I. ' I don't know,' said she, ' but I have known a lady's 
 toes to be trod upon half-a-dozen times at a boarding-house 
 breakfast-table in broad daylight.' The good-for-nothing 
 thing ! I have no doubt that the toes were her own, and it 
 wasn't Stichen who did it. I know his legs are too short. 
 But she says to me, ' Mrs. Lasher, I will believe there is 
 something in it when I am satisfied on three points. The 
 first is, why is it that the spirits of people who in this world 
 were clever and well educated, talk in the next nothing but 
 bosh and bad grammar ? ' >: 
 
 " And your answer, Madam ? " exclaimed Doctor Droney. 
 " Tell Mr. Whoppers your answer. I think on all except one 
 point it was perfectly conclusive ; on that my explanation is 
 unquestionably nearer the truth." 
 
 " Well, we will not argue that now, my dear Doctor. I know 
 your view is a strong one, but I am not going to give in. I 
 said to Mrs. Stichen, ' You are mistaken about the bad gram 
 mar. Grammar is an entirely arbitrary and conventional mat 
 ter ; and more than that, it is a capricious matter. What is 
 grammar to-day is not grammar to-morrow. Language is 
 continually changing ; old grammatical forms are left off, and 
 new ones adopted. Besides, see how the authorities of to-day 
 differ among themselves. Mr. Moon, Dean Alford, and Grant 
 White ! see how they fight and squabble about words. No 
 sooner does one of them write a book, trying to settle' what is 
 and what is not correct in our English speech, than the others 
 pitch into him and tear him all to pieces. More than this, it 
 is always assumed that we speak English, and therefore ought 
 to be governed by the rules of English grammar. Now I 
 contend that we do not speak English. We speak the great 
 American language. It is a language that resembles English, 
 but it is a richer and more copious language ; a more highly
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 267 
 
 developed language ; a more expansive language, with a 
 greater capability of adaptation to the growing exigencies of 
 human nature ; a thoroughly elastic and spring) 7 language, and 
 therefore it ought not to be cramped and confined by the nar 
 row rules of English Grammar. Now if this is true, why 
 should the spirits be accused of speaking bad grammar, when 
 they are only speaking or writing the improved grammar of 
 the supernal sphere the grammar of the great American 
 future ? ' I had no need to say anything more, had I ? " de 
 manded Mrs. Lasher. 
 
 " Not a word," replied Mr. Whoppers, " you done your 
 level best, as they say in the supernal sphere. I consider 
 that pint settled. But what was the other pint, or quart I 
 believe there were two of 'em ? " 
 
 " ' The next thing,' said Mrs. Stichen, ' is why, when any 
 really scientific man any man accustomed to observation and 
 investigation, appears, the spirits won't perform, or give but 
 very imperfect and unsatisfactory manifestations of themselves.' 
 I know where she got her question from it came from that 
 miserable allopath Dr. Petkaff, who is all the time fluttering 
 around her and stuffing her stomach with pills and potions, 
 and her head with fashionable flummery. But I answered 
 her. Says I, ' Congeniality is only an important element of 
 mundane existence ; but it is an essential element of supernal 
 life. Now congeniality is a compound, and if you analyze it 
 you will find that one of its most important ingredients is a 
 coincidence of method and form in spiritualistic speculations ; 
 an identity of conception in the fundamentals of the trans 
 cendental, or, in plainer words, a complete parallelism in our 
 respective receptivities of the abstract and the absolute. 
 Without this parallelism, this coincidence, there can be no 
 congeniality, and it stands to reason that without congeniality 
 the spirits cannot manifest themselves fully.' Mrs. Stichen," 
 continued Mrs. Lasher, " couldn't say a word more on that 
 point, but says she : ' Why do the spirits perform the most 
 wonderful tricks only in the dark ? ' " 
 
 " Evil spirits, evil spirits," energetically exclaimed Doctor
 
 268 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Droney, "prefer darkness, rather than light. Reason plain 
 as day." 
 
 " My dear Doctor," said Mrs. Lasher, " I can not admit 
 that at all." 
 
 " Yes, yes," interupted Mr. Whoppers, 4: the Doctor is 
 right, it is the bad spirits. Plenty of them around, and they 
 have made 'me prefei the darkness very often." 
 
 " But Mrs. Stichen does not believe in either good spirits 
 or bad spirits," said Mrs. Lasher ; " she does not believe in 
 spirits at all." 
 
 " She does not even believe in the devil," ejaculated the 
 Doctor. 
 
 " The devil she don't," exclaimed Mr. Whoppers. " That 
 is too horrible. Come, Luther, let's constitute ourselves a 
 mission of two, and go and convert her. Perhaps if Stichen 
 is at home he will let us see what kind of spirits he believes 
 in. Good-bye, Doctor. Good-bye, Mrs. Lasher don't lose 
 your spirits while we are gone ; you know how to keep your 
 spirits up eh ? " and Mr. Whoppers elevated his elbow and 
 turned his hand downward, at the same time making a gurg 
 ling sound in his throat, and hurriedly closing the door, fol 
 lowed by Luther, marched off without waiting to hear the 
 half angry, half contemptuous comments upon his vulgarity 
 and insolence. 
 
 "That is what I call a capital cross match," said Mr. 
 Whoppers, suddenly speaking after a silence of some minutes, 
 during which their rapid walking had brought them by Waverley 
 Place to the foot of Fifth Avenue. " A first-rate cross match. 
 Style, form and action almost identical, and everything alike, 
 except color and sex. It is true she has a little the fastest gait, 
 but he has the most bottom. It is true she arches her neck a 
 little too much, and he pokes his nose somewhat, but a snaffle, 
 with a Kimble Jackson on her, and a martingale on him, 
 would make 'em about even. And then, I tell you, once in 
 hand, you just take 'em out on to the highfalutin course and 
 crack 'em up with a good round paradox or half-a-dozen tin 
 gling puns. If you don't see the mud fly tell me I don't know 
 the uliginous when I see it."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 269 
 
 " What do you mean ? " exclaimed Luther ; " what team ? 
 when ? where ? Or have you mounted a metaphor ? Do you 
 know, Mr. Whoppers, you are a devil of a fellow for a meta 
 phor ! Once up and astride, you carry your meaning that is 
 when you have any such load, for I must admit you generally 
 ride light enough, you carry your meaning so fast and so far 
 that to follow it is impossible. You are as incomprehensible 
 as" 
 
 " Mrs. Lasher or Dr. Droney. Exactly, that is the team I 
 mean. But here we are at the house," and Mr. Whoppers 
 ran up the steps and pulled the bell. " I hope she is at home," 
 he continued, " and Stichen too. I want to see how the droll 
 little fellow looks and acts in his magnificent house. I'll 
 have some fun with him, you'll see. I'll make him split him 
 self with laughing, and I'll chaff him till he thinks himself in a 
 bran-bin." 
 
 A solemn man in black cloth and white necktie opened 
 the door, and in answer to their inquiries ushered them with 
 a grand bow into the first drawing-room. 
 
 " Do you know, Luther, that I begin to feel quite flustered. 
 I didn't dream that I was going to have the door opened by 
 an assistant rector of Trinity parish." 
 
 " Oh, stop your nonsense," exclaimed Luther, " I want to 
 look at these pictures. What a lovely little landscape ! Ah 
 that brook with the cattle drinking there is no make-believe 
 about that. That's running water, and the cattle are down 
 right thirsty ; and that rustic bridge why, I've driven the 
 cows across many a time, and many a time I've dangled a 
 worm with a pin-hook over that broken rail. And that cot 
 tage in the distance with that tender light glinting on it, and 
 that subdued general luminousness trickling down through the 
 fluttering leaves, clear into the shade. Oh, that is charming. 
 I shouldn't wonder if that is by Kensett. Don't you think 
 that is by Kensett, Mr. Whoppers ? " 
 
 " It's all the same," replied Mr. Whoppers ; " if it isn't 
 exactly 'by Kensett,' it is a picture you admiringly ' Can sit' 
 by."
 
 270 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 "And I shouldn't wonder," exclaimed Luther, "if that 
 were a Church." 
 
 " To be sure ; there in the distance you can see the 
 steeple." 
 
 Luther made a gesture of impatience. 
 
 " Well, well, suck your fill of the ideal, I go in for the 
 practical. Here is the card-basket. Let us see who Mrs. S. 
 has got on her visiting-list; quite a pile, I declare. She is 
 getting on in quantity how about the quality? third or fourth 
 card from the top is always the biggest of the big bugs. 
 Never lead your best card first, unless you have in your hand 
 all the trumps in the pack. It don't do to parade a conde 
 scension too proudly; let the important fact leak out with a 
 straggling crumpled corner about the middle of the pile. 
 Good, here are some of the real old genuine bell-bearers of 
 uppertenclom ; Mrs. Theoderic Boggs Boggs' mother blue 
 blood ! every drop of it, real Gothic ; Mrs. Gerardus Vander- 
 hoben, all the way from New Amsterdam in a coach and six ; 
 and by George, here is Mrs. Douglas Livingston ; manes of the 
 Earl of Linlithgow, I salute thee ! and Mrs. Leroy, and Mrs. 
 Mary Tudor, and oh ! good gracious ; here is Mrs. Stuyvesant 
 K. Delphin. Ah, who would think now, to see her gracefully 
 sustaining her social and official honors, that seven generations 
 ago there was war between Peter the Testy, and the Jarseys ? 
 And I declare here is Mrs. Thanely. I cannot flatter her, be 
 cause the truth outruns my tongue. No 
 
 ' Lay on Macduff: 
 And damn'd be he that first cries, " Hold, enough ! " ' 
 
 And Mrs. Montebello too. And here's Madame de Basseville 
 beauty as well as fashion ! and Mrs. Ratherwade wit and 
 grace combined ! This is charming. This is all Boggs' work. 
 He knows how, and what strings to pull. Tires la ficelle, ma 
 femme; and up goes the curtain, and the play begins. He'll 
 make a fortune out of or through Stichen ; but I am glad to 
 see that he is doing good fair honest work for h's money. He 
 does not fob her off with anything under the " ultimate five
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 271 
 
 hundred." I wonder when he is going to let us give a small and 
 select gabble-gobble. There is enough here to begin with." 
 
 '' What the deuce do you mean by a gabble-gobble ? " de 
 manded Luther. 
 
 " Why, what used to be called a ' reception,' where people 
 meet to gabble and gobble, and show their dresses, and prove 
 their connection with certain circles, and exhibit to each other 
 their claims to a certain position anything and everything, 
 rather than for mere social and intellectual enjoyment. 
 Mrs. Stichen must give one soon, if only to exhibit her trophies 
 and parade her success, and if she leaves us out I'll take the 
 direst revenge on Boggs I won't abuse him again in the Uni 
 verse for six months at least. And Mrs. Struggles came also ! " 
 continued Mr. Whoppers holding up her card. " Well, that 
 is an indication that Mrs. Stichen is really getting on in the 
 fashionable world ; and Madame D'Oberge ! that is a still big 
 ger indication. You don't catch her wasting shot on vermin 
 or small game." 
 
 ^As Mr. Whoppers threw down the card Mr. Stichen entered 
 the room, with a calm and quiet air quite a contrast to his 
 former vivacious and lively manner. The early and later 
 styles of Raphael were not more different. Look at the St. 
 Cecilia in the Bologna gallery, or the Spozalitzo at the Brera, 
 and you will see, in conception and execution, marked evi 
 dences of the Peruginesque. Go then to the Uffizzi or the 
 Vatican, and there you will see the untrammelled, disenthrall 
 ed genius of Raphael himself. So with Mr. Stichen. To 
 any one who had studied him in his chrysalis state ; or in 
 other words, in his retail condition, he would have exhibited 
 all over the flibbity-gibbity touch. Now everything had 
 changed ; drawing, coloring, and feeling. He had caught the 
 genuine Midastic style. If he had been nothing but whole 
 sale for ten years, he could not have mingled his dabs of dig 
 nity and benignity more grandly. 
 
 " How are you ? " exclaimed Mr. Whoppers Stichen he 
 was going to say, but he hesitated involuntarily, and said, 
 "Mr. Stichen."
 
 272 
 
 NEVER AC A IX. 
 
 There was something in the get-up of his friend that 
 struck even the coarse perceptions of Mr. Whoppers. In the 
 first place he was clearly two inches taller ; his head sat fur 
 ther back ; and his sternum projected an inch and a half 
 more than it did when he first measured himself for shirts 
 anatomical changes that have always been noted as the con 
 sequences, or at least the concomitants, of an extra million. 
 Besides this he had on a perfectly plain linen bosom ; no em 
 broidery, no frills or fancy plaits, and the plain shirt-front had 
 nothing but plain nacre buttons, no jewelled studs, no twenty- 
 thousand-dollar diamond breastpin, like a blackleg, a pick 
 pocket, or a New York office-holder. 
 
 Mr. Whoppers could see this at a glance, and even he 
 the generally irrepressible wilted, and said " Mr. Stichen." 
 
 " I am very happy to see you," said that gentleman. 
 " Mrs. Stichen will also be happy to see you if you will have 
 the goodness to walk into the dining-room. We keep an 
 open fire-place with a wood fire in the dining-room, and we 
 find it so much more agreeable, than these miserable coal- 
 fires, or than that horrible furnace heat, that we make that 
 room our sitting-room when we are alone ; and there is no 
 one with us now but Mr. Boggs. Ah. Mr. Lansdale, I am 
 glad to see you too. The pictures ? Ah, yes ! The pictures are 
 I believe very fine. Painting is a subject about which I know 
 nothing; literally nothing. I depend altogether on my wife's 
 taste and judgment, assisted by Mr. Boggs. I could have got 
 copies and chromos that would have suited me just as well, 
 but my wife objected, and I said, ' Do as you please, my 
 dear,' and the consequence is I am getting the reputation 
 of a great patron of art, without an idea of a good picture be 
 yond the frame." 
 
 This dignified humility, this confiding frankness, seemed 
 to tickle Mr. Whoppers very much. 
 
 He laughed heartily. He recalled to mind the time, only 
 a few months past, when Mr. Stichen used to attend the 
 Academy exhibitions, and discuss the respective merits of the 
 various pictures with vivacity. He recollected when Mr.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 273 
 
 Stichen used to haunt picture-sales ; at first buying the most 
 astonishing green and yellow landscapes ; then getting rid of 
 them, as his taste improved, and at last resolutely working his 
 way up through copies of the old masters and wonderful genre 
 subjects with some vulgar or commonplace sentiment sticking 
 out as stiff and strong as a crow-bar, and through grand his 
 torical pieces, of the coal-ashes and brick-dust school, in 
 which the drawing and composition might justly be said to 
 rival the color. 
 
 Q 
 
 " Look here now, Stichen," exclaimed Mr. Whoppers, who 
 had recovered from the first shock of that gentleman's shirt- 
 bosom, " look here now," slapping him familiarly on the 
 shoulder, " you can't shove your gammon into this cove. Just 
 let us know the exact figure at which a fellow can affect to 
 know nothing and care nothing about the pictures he spends 
 his money on : a million now ? or say two million, eh ? A 
 poor devil with five hundred thousand I suppose must know 
 all about pictures be able to discuss composition, color, and 
 drawing ; talk about tone, feeling, and chiaroscuro. How I 
 envy you, Stichen not for your money but because you've 
 made your pile and are free from the burden of knowing any 
 thing about art, or, what is worse, the bore of pretending to 
 know anything about it." 
 
 Mr. Stichen smiled complacently. He had given up gig 
 gling forever. Who ever- knew a great firaacier and a million 
 aire to giggle ? 
 
 "Facetious as ever," he merely observed, with a smile, and 
 throwing open the .dining-room door introduced his two vis 
 itors into the room where sat Mrs. Stichen and Mr. Boggs. 
 
 The lady's greeting was sufficiently cordial. Two finger 
 tips hardly the least mite disturbed by former intimacy with 
 bands and button-holes to Mr. Whoppers : the whole of her 
 soft plump little hand to Luther. Her style, naturally quiet 
 and subdued, had been still further adoucified by long contact 
 with the lively and aciculated manners of her husband. 
 
 It is a curious fact in domestic physics hitherto unnoted b) 
 scientific men ; escaping as yet even the philosophic insight of 
 18
 
 274 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 the Saturday Review, that two directly opposite principles 
 prevail almost at the same time with equal force. People 
 grow to resemble each other : man and wife in time look 
 alike, act alike, talk alike, and think alike the effect of sym 
 pathy and the influence of the mimetic instincts ! To the 
 truth of this fact we have the general consent of mankind. 
 It requires a pro founder observation to trace in its remote 
 effects the divaricating influence of dissimilar habits and sen 
 timents. . 
 
 For instance, how often do we find a man naturally neat 
 and orderly driven into the most careless, disorderly, and even 
 dirty domestic habits by the natural reaction against the over- 
 tidiness, the rigorous comfort-destroying regularity and clean 
 liness of an energetic, persevering, dust-hating femme de 
 menage. As for instance in the case of the husband of the 
 Western widow who startled the ministering attendants at the 
 good man's funeral by suddenly exclaiming as the sexton was 
 about to screw down the coffin lid, a Hold on a moment, 
 and let me dust George off ; " no doubt the dear defunct had 
 in his latter years a real longing for dirt. No doubt the final 
 summons of " dust to dust" had been received with a resigna 
 tion born of the hope of an existence hereafter where brooms, 
 brushes, and dusters are unknown. On the other hand what 
 more common than for a ' molly-coddle ' to change a good 
 housewife into a novel-reading, lecture-haunting, shop-visiting 
 "gad-about." In this way the long-continued attrition of Mr. 
 Stichen's manner had served to foster in Madame a tendency 
 to a state of quiet mollescence, which, as his spirits began to 
 feel the pressure of wealth, and every crack and cranny of his 
 mind to be as it were caulked up with bank-notes, began in 
 her to develop itself into a most lady-like style a style, as 
 Hamilton Boggs said, perfectly comme il faut.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 The Distance from Bleecker Street to the Fifth Avenue Society Science 
 Discussion A Big Pool in Wall Street Is the Old Woman so rich ? 
 Luther half confesses to Mrs. Stichen. 
 
 HARMED to see you, gentlemen. I believe you know 
 * ' Mr. Boggs? " And that gentleman had the condescen 
 sion to half rise from his low luxurious arm-chair at the corner 
 of the sparkling fire and return the salute. The exertion, es 
 pecially as he had a cup of tea in his hands, was an immense one 
 for Boggs, but Mr. Whoppers was an old acquaintance, had 
 frequently been of service to him, and might be again, and be 
 sides Boggs liked him personally. Clever himself, he liked to 
 be with clever men outside his own set occasionally. Ultra 
 refined himself, he had no objection to a little coarseness in 
 others, when seasoned with wit or humor : and moreover, he 
 was somewhat afraid of Mr. Whoppers. He knew that the 
 Editor of the Universe knew him knew all his little affecta 
 tions knew how much of a humbug in some things he really 
 was. In addition to this, Mr. Whoppers held a social position 
 so fully amplified somewhere about the middle slopes of fashion 
 that so long as he did not attempt to surmount the very peak 
 it was a good deal more easy to recognize him than to push or 
 put him down. 
 
 Mr. Boggs had seen but little of Luther : only once at the 
 Ledgerals and two or three times in company with Mr. Whop 
 pers, but he saw that he was good-looking, modest, nice-man 
 nered, clever, well-educated, and industrious. Now there is 
 no predicting the extent of greatness which a young Ameri 
 can with these qualities and characteristics may not achieve. 
 He may perhaps become a wholesale commission-merchant ; 
 he may perhaps become a rich stock-broker, and give grand 
 dinners to grand ladies of the beau monde, and charming petits
 
 276 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 soup'ers to charming women of the demi monde at Delmonico's ; 
 or higher still, he may become a great banker, deal in foreign 
 exchange, suspend, resume, and oh ! altitudinous bliss ! oh ! 
 Alpine peak of social exaltation ! drive a four-horse drag over 
 the prostrate souls of a thousand parasites and flunkies. 
 
 We wouldn't say that Mr. Boggs was actuated wholly by 
 this view of the case. He rather liked the young man, and 
 Boggs' position was so strong that he could afford to gratify a 
 fancy now and then, and be at least moderately civil to a no 
 body, even while feeling his own exclusiveness and strictly 
 maintaining the rights and privileges of a purely fashionable 
 " society-man." 
 
 " And first, I must bring you to account, Mr. Whoppers, 
 for neglecting me so long," said Mrs. Stichen. " Do you 
 know we have been in this house almost a year, and this is 
 your first visit And you too, Mr. ^ansdale, I had hoped for 
 more attention from you," and the lady gave Luther a little 
 nod and a smile, that went bubbling to his brain like a glass 
 of Champagne. 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Stichen, you forget," replied Mr. Whoppers, 
 " how far it is from Bleecker Street to the Fifth Avenue." 
 
 " How far do you call it, Mr. Whoppers ? " 
 
 " About five hundred thousand miles, or as far as to the 
 moon and back." 
 
 " Nonsense, Mr. Whoppers ; you are always figurative or 
 funny." 
 
 " No nonsense about it, my dear Mrs. Stichen ; you sud 
 denly spread your wings and soar aloft, and a very pretty 
 flight you have made of it. I was looking into your card-bas 
 ket just now how can you expect your humble friends to fol 
 low you, when they haven't any feathers to fly with ? " 
 
 "Well, Mr. Whoppers, I am not going to be so silly as to 
 deny that we have taken something of a flight. All this," 
 and the lady made a pretty little sweeping gesture with her 
 hand, which brought the diamonds on iier lingers very inno 
 cently into full play, " all this is a little beyond Miss Jones' 
 first floor front, but if you think that I am going wholly to for-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 277 
 
 get Miss Jones' first floor front and its associations, or that I 
 am going to cut old and pleasant friends because I have made 
 some new and fashionable ones, you are mistaken." 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Stitchen, don't suppose for an instant that 
 I could think you such a a pardon the word such a snob 
 as intentionally to do anything of the kind ; but a change to 
 a certain style of living and a certain set of acquaintance ren 
 ders it a difficult matter on both sides to keep up former 
 social relations." 
 
 " That is just what Mr. Boggs says ; but then he agrees 
 with me that it is bad style to drop old friends, simply because 
 they can't keep pace with you in your ascent into the regions 
 of fashionable life. Don't you think so, Mr. Boggs?" 
 
 Thus appealed to, Mr. Boggs raised his hand depre- 
 catingly. " One moment, my dear Mrs. Stichen ; excuse 
 me;" and handing his cup to the servant, he deliberately 
 drew his handkerchief from his pocket, and turning it over 
 the point of his fore-finger, delicately dabbed the edge of his 
 upper lip half-a-dozen times so as not to disturb a hair of the 
 well-waxed mustache. 
 
 "Permit me to reply that I do think so, but that I also 
 agree with Mr. Whoppers. In one just beginning to rise in 
 the social scale nothing can be in worse taste than an affecta 
 tion of ignorance of common people ; nothing more absurd 
 than to deny, upon all occasions former associations ; nothing 
 mere vulgar than a pretence to exclusiveness, and nothing 
 more unnecessary, and even dangerous, than to drop abruptly 
 old acquaintances and friends. Don't you see ? any airs or 
 affectations, any social brutalities, at once sets all the gossips 
 in society upon the qui vive, and your cousin the hack-driver, 
 or your uncle the soap-fat man, is constantly trotted out for 
 the amusement of your new friends, and the immense comfort 
 of your old ones. There is Mrs. Struggles now a case in 
 point. What an awful time, notwithstanding Mrs. Ledgeral's 
 assistance, she has had of it. She commenced by assuming an 
 hereditary right to snub people, and instantly her own work 
 in the cotton-mill, and her mother's clear-starching, she finds
 
 278 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 chalked down in every visiting-book that she can get her 
 name into." 
 
 " Still she has worked herself in everywhere," exclaimed 
 Mr. Whoppers; "she is a social success.'' 
 
 " Hardly ! 'Tis true she goes everywhere, and outsiders 
 naturally suppose that she is you will pardon the vulgarism, 
 Mrs. Stichen top of the heap, but they who are adepts ; they 
 who have mastered the arcana of social science ; they who 
 are to the manner born, know better. 'Tis the same as it is in 
 London. How many Americans, and Englishmen too, for 
 that matter, believe that the countess of Isola Bella, or the 
 great banker Ahashuerus Billionah, are the very largest and 
 purest globules of butyraceous material floating in the crime 
 de la creme. But ask my mother's old friend, the dowager 
 Duchess of Dobbershire, and she will tell you that fashiona 
 ble notoriety, there as here, is not by any means a perfect 
 measure of social position ; and that devotees of the ineffable 
 Bosh may be bien r'epandus, and apparently all powerful, at 
 the same time that it is known to the initiated, and known 
 even to themselves, that they have not advanced a step 
 beyond the tolerated qf the outer porch ; and that they havn't 
 the smallest chance of lifting the veil of penetrating to the 
 Holy of Holies, or of mingling their coarse voices with the 
 awful, but mellifluous, oracular utterances of the adytum" 
 
 " Mr. Boggs, may I ask you to write that down for me 
 some time ? " exclaimed Mr. Whoppers. " I'd give five dollars 
 a column. I've always said that I don't know a fellow in 
 town who can wriggle himself more handsomely through a 
 thicket of commas and semicolons, or stagger along under a 
 load of big words more stoutly than yourself." 
 
 Mrs. Stichen and Luther both started at the very idea of 
 any one's daring to chaff so august a personage ! Boggs 
 didn't seem to mind it at all. He made a slight gesture of 
 deprecation. " Don't flatter me, Whoppers ; you know you're 
 weak in that line, and you recollect what Judge Simpson said 
 about you the other day, in his charge to the Grand Jury : 
 that he could stand anything in the Universe, except flattery.'
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 279 
 
 But, as I was saying, and as I advised Mrs. Stichen, nothing 
 is more dangerous than to drop old acquaintances too 
 suddenly." 
 
 " Thank you, Mr. Boggs," exclaimed Luther with a smile. 
 
 Mr. Boggs paused, and gave a look at the speaker, as 
 much as to say, " You are sharper young man than I 
 supposed." 
 
 " You're right, Luther," said Mr. Whoppers, " we are 
 deeply indebted to Boggs." 
 
 " No, you needn't thank Mr. Boggs," exclaimed the lady. 
 " I defer in general to Mr. Boggs' taste and superior experi 
 ence, but in some things I decide and judge for myself. I 
 have made up my mind that in no case will I drop old friends 
 and acquaintances whom I like. But the friends whom I 
 never did like, and the acquaintances whom I always hated 
 and always was willing to get rid of well, that is different. 
 I don't know why I should put myself out to keep them ?" 
 
 " No reason in the world," said Mr. Whoppers. " The 
 holiest saint that ever attained the entry of fashionable society 
 would let 'em slide in such cases. Cut right and left ; never 
 mind a little harshness towards sinners hardened in respecta 
 bility ; and as you say, whom you always did hate." 
 
 " And as to the others, your friends whom you have really 
 loved," said Mr. Boggs, " it is not only bad taste, but very 
 unnecessary ; it is a foolish waste of energy." 
 
 " You mean, Boggs, that a rising woman has only to live 
 up to the mark of her high calling to get rid of all her social 
 detrimentals, nobodies, and dowdies, and vulgar relations. 
 She don't drop them ! Oh no, not a bit of it ! They drop 
 her. Well that brings us back, Mrs. Stichen, to your ques 
 tion and my answer. Five hundred thousand miles from 
 Bleecker Street, if it is a rod ! Don't you see ? " 
 
 " Well, I don't care how far it is, Mr. Whoppers. You 
 and Luther have found that you can walk it of an evening, 
 and I shall expect you to do so very often. I count on you, 
 Luther, at any rate. You have all of your evenings to your 
 self."
 
 2 8o NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " I shall be most happy," replied Luther. " But- I would 
 not have you think me of such idle habits as to have all my 
 evenings disengaged." 
 
 " Ah, I see some young lady in the case." 
 
 Luther laughingly protested against that view. Time was 
 too precious to be wasted in that way. 
 
 " Ah, I forgot ; that fortune you came to New York to 
 achieve must be had first. And then well I watched you the 
 other night at the Ledgerals, and I should judge from what I 
 did see, that if there is no young lady who occupies your time, 
 there is one who occupies a good deal of your thoughts. You 
 need not blush so," continued Mrs. Stichen, in a low voice. 
 
 She might have spoken in a full tone, for the three gentle 
 men were by this time fully engaged in a discussion of the 
 latest news, which Mr. Stichen had brought up from the street, 
 and particularly the last thing in Erie. 
 
 " And you really think it would do to sell five hundred 
 shares ? " said Mr. Boggs. " Here's Whoppers too, he is al 
 ways ready to turn an honest penny." 
 
 "But I'm a little afraid," replied Mr. Whoppers, "that if 
 there is such a powerful party ready to give it a lift, we may 
 get caught selling short, and I can't afford to lose much. I 
 am master of the Universe it is true, but my means are not in 
 exhaustible. I am like another celebrated master of the Uni 
 verse, and willing to cry bonus est odor ex re qualibet, which 
 means, Stichen, that I won't turn up my nose at the smell of 
 a bank-note, no matter where it comes from, but well I've 
 been astraddle of a bull's horns once ; and once I got a bear's 
 claws clear into my vitals, and I don't want to be clawed or 
 gored again. I musn't do anything to endanger the Universe, 
 but if you think there is not too much risk ? " 
 
 " That's just it, you see ; but mind you, what I say is to go 
 no further. I am willing to help you, Mr. Boggs, and our 
 friend Whoppers here, but I am not going to tell all I know 
 to everybody. You see it's just like a trotting match ; you 
 don't know the horses, and you know there is going to be 
 cheating, so you take your chance of coming out on the swin-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 281 
 
 dlers side. You find out which horse the biggest rascals are 
 ostensibly laying their bets on, and you go your pile against 
 him ; two to one you see your money back. Well, you must 
 know, they came to me and said, 'Stichen, we are going to 
 make a big strong pool, and we want you should go in with 
 us ; we count on you for half a million. We are already ten 
 million strong, and we can pry her up twenty per cent, at least. 
 The shorts are pretty deep already, and if we work the thing 
 right, we can take every hair of their hides off. We'll make 
 pious Dan wish he was once more feeding a lot of drovers at 
 the Bull's Head.' And that is just how it stands at pres 
 ent." 
 
 "And yet you advise us, Mr. Stichen, to sell short." 
 
 "Just so. Don't you see; that crowd is composed of 
 some of the most slippery fellows in the street. They think 
 they can humbug me, and make me think that they want to 
 put the stock up, and that I, with others, will rush out and pri 
 vately load up with fifty-thousand shares or so, and then they 
 will get a rig on the money-market and come in with convert 
 ible bonds and new issues, and crowd the mourners with over 
 whelming short sales, and all that, and smash everything and 
 grind a million or two out of their confiding friends and con 
 federates. But they don't catch me. I shall sell five thou 
 sand shares to-morrow morning, and if you choose I will put 
 you down for five hundred, Mr. Boggs, and you, Mr. Whop 
 pers. You won't need any margins, you know," as the two 
 gentlemen hesitated; "I'll take care of that." 
 
 " Oh, Stichen, you are too kind," and both gentlemen shook 
 him warmly by the hand. 
 
 " Oh, not at all. But come now, Mr. Whoppers, I want 
 you should taste a little of March and Benson's 1803. Boggs 
 put me on the scent of it. It is the genuine rain water, not 
 another drop of it left in the city. I took the four dozen at 
 forty dollars the bottle. There are a few bottles of it in a 
 Brooklyn cellar, but no money could fetch that," and Mr. 
 Stichen touched the bell. " And I have a dozen of curious 
 sherry, old Stuyvesant wine, a present from the king of Spain
 
 282 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 to the Viceroy in '96, and captured and sold at La Guyra years 
 ago. You shall taste both. You, gentlemen, are judges and 
 can appreciate the article, but as for me ! I care nothing about 
 either. Can hardly tell sherry from Madeira. Rather have a 
 glass of Muir or Bass any day. Got in a cask of Bass the 
 other day just for my own drinking. Oh ! there is no affecta 
 tion about me." 
 
 " That's just my taste, d bas all affectation," exclaimed 
 Mr. Whoppers. " It's horribly low, I suppose our friend Boggs 
 thinks, not to care for March and Benson of 1803." 
 
 Mr. Boggs shook his head, " No, I quite approve of Bass 
 under certain circumstances." 
 
 " You do ; adapt your liquor to your company. I sup 
 pose, you see, Stichen, he thinks this just the occasion for a 
 little of the frothy, that's what ails him. Bring in your Bass ; 
 or perhaps Brown stout, if you have any, would better enable 
 us to stand up under so much condescension." 
 
 The gentlemen were fully occupied at the side-board, and 
 Mrs. Stichen and Luther continued their conversation. 
 
 "You need not blush so," said the lady. " I admire your 
 taste. I think if I were a young man I should fall in love 
 there myself." 
 
 "Yes, but it would be very ridiculous for me to do so." 
 
 " And why would it be ridiculous in you ? you don't hold 
 yourself superior to the universal weakness, do you?" 
 
 " Not I," exclaimed Luther laughing ; " I expect to be in 
 love a dozen times, but I am not going to try it on when the 
 thing is certain to be a misfit." 
 
 " Well, now, if your friend Whoppers had heard that, he 
 would say that it is just a miss fit that you ought to try. Pity 
 he is so busy talking to Stichen. I'd like to show him that I 
 can make a pun sometimes." 
 
 " Do you know," continued Mrs. Stichen, " I heard her ask 
 Aunt Shippen what she thought of you ; and if you had not 
 rather good manners ; and if she didn't think that you danced 
 pretty well, and made a good partner for the very young 
 girls."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 283 
 
 " I am much obliged to her, I am sure, for her good opin 
 ion, but I don't think that I will trouble her or the young 
 girls again." 
 
 " Now don't be foolish, Luther. What would you have 
 her say, sly puss that she is ? Would you have her fall in 
 ecstasies over your good looks, or your charming manners, or 
 your fine dancing, and just have the doors of the house closed 
 on you forever ? " 
 
 " No," replied Luther, somewhat mollified by the turn Mrs. 
 Stichen had given to Helen's remarks. " No, and yet, why 
 should not the door be closed forever, first as well as last. 
 Whoppers is always dinning it into me, that until I can bridge 
 the golden gulf, or cross the silver sea, there is no hope. 
 And the gulf grows broader, and the sea wider every day. 
 No, I never mean to take a fancy to any girl, still less try to 
 make any girl take a fancy to me, until I am rich." 
 
 " What a heartless speech ! Luther, I am quite ashamed 
 of you." 
 
 " Well, it does seem heartless, but it isn't. It is not alone 
 myself that I think of, it is the girl herself. Love in a cottage 
 was all very well in the time of our grandmothers, perhaps, 
 but it don't do nowadays. No, the first, second, and third 
 requirement for happiness in married life now is money, 
 money, money. I know I shouldn't make a good husband 
 without it, and I should consider myself a reckless rascal to 
 ask any well-brought-up girl of the period to share an unfash 
 ionable existence with me ; to give up, to a great extent, balls, 
 and parties, and the opera, and endure a life of merely re 
 spectable privation; and finally sink out of sight of her set, 
 beneath the waves of social contempt. No, no, I'd tear my 
 heart out first ! " 
 
 " Why, I had no idea, Luther, that you were such a despe 
 rate case. You are dead in love with that girl." 
 
 "Mrs. Stichen!" 
 
 " Oh, don't be afraid, I'll keep your secret. You shall 
 come up some day when I am alone, and we'll have a little 
 private talk about it. You shall tell me all you think and feel.
 
 284 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 It will do you good. We can't say anything more just now : 
 they have settled the affair of Erie, and will be joining in our 
 conversation in a moment. You'll come? Alone?" 
 
 Luther nodded. 
 
 " Say next Friday evening ? " 
 
 Luther hesitated. 
 
 " Oh, he can't go anywhere, or do anything on Friday 
 evening ! " exclaimed Mr. Whoppers. " That's one of the 
 evenings that he has to devote to his old woman. Tell Mrs. 
 Stichen, Luther, about the old lady. It's quite an adventure." 
 
 Both Mr. Boggs and Mr. Stichen expressed great interest, 
 as soon as they found that the old lady alluded to was named 
 Steignitz. 
 
 "I have never seen her," said Mr. Stichen, "but I have 
 heard them speak of her at the bank. I believe there is no 
 doubt about her having money." 
 
 " Money ! " said Boggs, " why she has piles of it. Very 
 few people ever heard of her, and nobody knows much about 
 her ; but it is supposed she has millions. She collects all her 
 dividends and rents herself; has an account in every savings 
 bank in the city. She invests a great deal through Jones, 
 Brothers & Co. I was in there yesterday when they accidentally 
 learned that she was doing the same thing through half-a-do/en 
 other bankers and brokers. You see she had just taken fifty 
 thousand in Illinois Central bonds, when in rushed Jerry Del- 
 evan and wanted fifty thousand immediately. It's for an old 
 customer, and she is in a hurry, said he. She ! said Jones, 
 have you also got a female customer to-day for fifty thousand ? 
 Yes, and a funny little old thing she is too. You don't mean 
 it ? is she French ? said Jones. French or German. Does 
 her name happen to be Steignitz ? The very name ! And 
 so the whole thing came out. Jones asked her why she did 
 not give them the order for the whole hundred thousand. If 
 you will have the goodness, sir, she replied, to put your com 
 missions in your pocket, without asking me any unnecessary 
 questions, Bon! if not, I find some other shop. Think of 
 her talking to Jones in that style. You know Jones: he fancies
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 285 
 
 himself high cockalorum up town, as well as down ; and when 
 he puts on his best airs, the President of the United States 
 might take a lesson in manners. Jerry Delevan swears that 
 she came from Mexico with the proceeds of a gold mine in 
 her pocket, and that he really believes that she can, any day, 
 buy and sell Astor, or Vanderbilt, or Stewart, and throw in 
 Moses Taylor, and Daniel Drew by way of small change." 
 
 " That is all nonsense," said Mr. Stichen, " she is proba 
 bly rich, but then you know what women's fortunes are. They 
 are like the fortunes of the chaps who used to come up from 
 the South, or around from California with a grand flourish. 
 First rate to brag on, provided nobody makes a call. Any 
 woman with a hundred thousand is invariably chalked up half 
 a million or more." 
 
 " Well, at any rate our young friend has done a nice thing 
 in getting into the graces of the old lady." 
 
 " No one knows that better than myself," said Luther. " I 
 have known her but little more than six months, and I have 
 already pretty much mastered French, and made good prog 
 ress in German." 
 
 "I hope she will do better by you than merely a little 
 French and German." 
 
 " I have no other expectations or wishes," replied Luther, 
 laughing. " As to her wealth, I don't believe a word of it. 
 She lives so poorly that I was induced to insist one day upon 
 paying a small sum for my lessons. She utterly refused it, 
 but finally she said if I could spare half a dollar, for a few days, 
 as a loan, she would be glad of it, as paying the interest of the 
 mortgage on her house had taken every cent of the rent she 
 had received. She has not been able to return it yet." 
 
 "I guess he'll get it back again," said Mr. Whoppers. 
 " Don't you think so, Boggs ? " 
 
 "Well, I wish I had half a dollar as well invested as 
 that." 
 
 " You'll not forget your promise to visit me soon again ? " 
 said Mrs. Stichen, extending her hand to Luther as he and 
 Mr. Whoppers rose to make their parting salutations. " You
 
 2 86 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 need not wait for your companion, you know," she whispered. 
 "We can talk over that matter better alone." 
 
 "The matter is hardly worth talking over, but I am 
 delighted to have your permission to repeat my visit." 
 
 " Well, well, as you please. Good-night and pleasant 
 dreams, but no walking in your sleep ; you might lose your 
 self in the labyrinth of Washington Square."
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 A Mysterious Deposit A Hideous Face at the Window The Captain's 
 Letter The Inventor The Old Problem Freedom of the "Will 
 Inventions and Inventors The Noiseless Gun A nice Instrument 
 for a Modern Vehmgericht. 
 
 LUTHER'S correspondence was not large, in fact it was 
 very seldom that he received a letter, and he knew in a 
 moment the familiar handwriting of his only regular corre 
 spondent, Captain Combings. He read the letter twice over 
 with the deepest interest, put it in his pocket and hurried to 
 Burling Slip. That afternoon he managed to get away a lit 
 tle earlier than usual : it was one of the days of the week on 
 which the Merchants' Clerks' Savings Bank keeps open until 
 evening. 
 
 Luther thought that he would stop at the bank, make a 
 small deposit, and examine his book, which he had always been 
 in the habit of leaving at the bank. There was something in 
 the Captain's letter that made him desirous of knowing the ex 
 act amount of his balance. He had a pretty accurate idea, 
 but there had been some interest written in since the last de 
 posit, and he might as well know the exact figure, which was 
 really getting so large that he had better be looking out for a 
 profitable permanent investment. 
 
 The prompt and amiable teller received his money, enter 
 ed it, and then, at Luther's request, handed him the bank-book 
 for him to examine. 
 
 Luther glanced carelessly through the list of deposits, until 
 it alighted on something very singular at the end ; he started, 
 winked his eyes violently, and looked again : could he believe 
 his sight ? Yes, there it was, in bold, clear writing. A credit
 
 2 88 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 of five hundred dollars the last deposit, made about three 
 weeks before. There must be a mistake ! He never had de 
 posited five hundred dollars ; and besides he had not been 
 into the bank for more than a month. 
 
 He drew his pencil from his pqcket, and going to a side 
 desk summed up the whole list of credits. It was some time 
 since his book had been balanced, but he knew to within five 
 dollars what the amount ought to be. Seven hundred and 
 fifty dollars was the extreme that by any possibility he was 
 entitled to. 
 
 The addition was soon made, and came out twelve hun 
 dred and fifty ; to be sure of his addition he repeated the oper 
 ation, and then stepping up to the teller's desk, he called that 
 gentleman's attention to the bank-book. 
 
 " How ? What ? Deposits uncredited ? Impossible ! 
 Just step to the book-keeper's desk he will show you." 
 
 "No, sir ; that is not it. It is a credit too much. It ap 
 pears here that on the 4th instant I deposited five hundred 
 dollars. On that day I was not in the bank : I could not 
 have made the deposit." 
 
 "Sent it by somebody, perhaps ?" 
 
 " No, sir ; I hadn't it to send. There must be some mis 
 take about it." 
 
 " No mistake, sir ; impossible ! we don't make mistakes 
 here. It was three weeks ago, and don't you suppose that my 
 cash-account would have shown a mistake of that kind. Be 
 sides, I recollect that a deposit of that amount was made to 
 your credit." 
 
 " By whom ? " 
 
 " Can't tell that ; recollect the fact only but perhaps you 
 had better walk into the back room and see our cashier : he 
 may tell you what to do, but I think you will have to keep the 
 money. It certainly don't belong to us." 
 
 The cashier received the young man with his usual court- 
 esty, and listened with interest to his statement. Here was 
 something new in banking experience : a customer who had 
 more money than he wanted who was disposed to raise ob-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 289 
 
 jections to a big balance, and to cut down his own credits 
 below the bank estimates. 
 
 The cashier took the book and left his room to consult the 
 book-keeper. In a few minutes he returned. 
 
 " I am afraid it's all right/' he said smiling. " The money 
 was deposited to your credit on the date assigned." 
 
 " It could not have been by me. I recollect that I thought 
 of coming here to make a deposit that day, as I had saved up 
 twenty dollars, but, as it was my birthday, I decided to make 
 myself a present of books and to send a few flowers to a 
 friend." 
 
 " Well, perhaps, as it was your birthday, some friend had 
 decided to make a present to you. Mr. teller thinks that the 
 money was deposited by an elderly gentleman with a white 
 moustache and beard, or else by a young man who looked 
 like a lawyer's clerk. He can't recollect which." 
 
 Luther rapidly ran over in his mind the few utterly improb 
 able persons of his acquaintance. He could not help blush 
 ing, partly at the utter absurdity of the idea, as his thought 
 fluttered for an instant above the image of Helen Ledgeral. 
 What if, on the very day that he was sending her anonymous 
 verses and flowers, she was sending him anonymously a contri 
 bution towards that fortune he was seeking? It certainly 
 showed a disposition to lessen the distance between them. But 
 nonsense ! she would have more delicacy ! how could he do 
 her such injustice ? and what a coarse-minded brute he must be 
 to think of such a thing for an instant : and besides, where 
 would she get five hundred dollars for such a purpose as soon 
 suspect his impecunious friend Mr. Whoppers. 
 
 "No," said Luther, " 1 have no friend who would or could 
 do it." 
 
 "Well, if it is an enemy," replied the cashier, smiling, "I 
 would advise you to pocket the affront. At any rate we can 
 do nothing more than take care of the money for you." 
 
 " It is quite mysterious," said one of the clerks, as Luther 
 left the bank. 
 
 " Not a bit of mystery," replied the paying teller. " The 
 9
 
 290 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 thing is as plain as a counterfeit green-back. Don't you see 
 what a good-looking young fellow he is? Well, there is a 
 woman around somewhere, you may be sure." 
 
 Luther hurried home, and finding that Mr. Whoppers was 
 in the house, dashed into his room without ceremony. 
 
 " Look at that," said Luther, as he flung his bank-book on 
 the table where Mr. Whoppers sat writing, and then Luther 
 rapidly told the story of his visit to the bank, 
 
 " And now who's my friend ? " 
 
 " I can tell you," replied Mr. Whoppers, " it is your old 
 Frenchwoman." 
 
 "I don't believe it." 
 
 " She is the only friend you have got who has the ability 
 to do such a thing." 
 
 " I don't believe it. I doubt both her ability and her dis 
 position. You persist in calling her rich ; how the story got 
 around I can't imagine ; if you knew her as well as I do, you 
 would see that that idea is ridiculous. But, supposing that 
 she had a little money stowed away, why should she give it to 
 me?" 
 
 "Why? The Lord knows why. You don't expect me to 
 tell you all the pros and cons of an elderly French female's 
 mind do you? I merely tell you the fact: the money comes 
 from her ; you can argue the point for yourself if you please. 
 You've got the data. I haven't. Don't know her. Never 
 have seen her. I suppose you can't ask her plump ? " 
 
 " Shouldn't like to. But I'll see if I can't bring her to book 
 in a roundabout way to night." 
 
 At his usual hour Luther mounted the dark, rickety stairs 
 of the house in Wooster Street, and tapped at the door of 
 Madame Steignitz' room. 
 
 Madame's sharp eyes fairly gleamed with pleasure as she 
 unbolted the door and welcomed him in voluble French. For 
 some weeks now the conversation had been wholly in French, 
 hardly a word in English. Under her capital system of in 
 struction, Luther had acquired such a mastery of the language, 
 that when running on in the full flood of personal gossip, en-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 291 
 
 livened by funny anecdotes and minute details of personal 
 adventure, Madame never felt the slightest temptation to eke 
 out her meaning, or assist Luther's comprehension by a single 
 word outside of her own native tongue. The instruction in 
 German to which the first hour of the evening was always 
 devoted, was rigorously filtered through French ; after that 
 an hour's more frequently two hours' talk. 
 
 Madame had grown much more communicative than at 
 first. She seemed rather to like talking now about herself 
 than not. She told Luther all about her early life. How she 
 had gone to Germany as a bonne in attendance upon the chil 
 dren of a noble family. That she had gone through the de 
 grees of lady's maid, and governess, and had lived in Italy, 
 and in Spain, as maitresse de son propre menage. Of her hus 
 band she did not seem disposed to say much. " C'etait un 
 homme dur; but he is dead died at St. Louis, and left us 
 some little money and the house in Wooster Street; just 
 enough to keep us from starving." Luther could see that her 
 thoughts were fluttering around the memory of some other and 
 dearer object of her affections, but she never gave them a voice 
 until one evening when Luther unwittingly provoked, by a 
 direct question, a scene which he never wanted to see repeated. 
 
 "You say us."" He said, "who do you mean by us?" 
 
 Madame Steignitz sank back in her chair as if struck by a 
 
 heavy blow. " Oh, mon Dieu ! mon Dieu ! " she moaned, 
 
 " why did you suffer it ! why did you afflict me so heavily ! 
 
 why should I lose my only one ; my joy ! my pride ! Is there 
 
 jio mercy in heaven ! " 
 
 Starting up from her chair, a gleam of ferocity in her eyes, 
 she began pacing up and down the room. 
 
 " You ask the meaning of us ! It means I and my child, 
 my beautiful child ! my brave boy ! my only one ! all, all I 
 had on earth ! swept away instantly ! snatched from me and 
 swallowed up by that dark, ravenous, cursed stream and I not 
 to know where in the foul Mississippi mud his bones lie bur 
 ied ! " 
 
 She continued her walk, wringing her hands one minute,
 
 292 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 and the next throwing them abroad in t le wildest gesticula 
 tion. 
 
 " I loved him so better than my life ! yes better than 
 Heaven. I loved him so much that God got jealous of him. 
 But oh ! he was so beautiful, so brave, so strong, and the 
 cursed river ravished even his breathless body from me. Oh, 
 mon Dieu, mon Dieu ! if I had found his body ; if I only 
 had his little grave, that I could lay my head upon it, and kiss 
 the soil, and heap it with flowers ! 
 
 "Yes," she continued, <; he looked like you. The same 
 eyes, the same hair ; and he, too, if he had been spared, would 
 have grown tall and strong." 
 
 She advanced to Luther and passed her delicate little fin 
 gers through the masses of hair curling round his brow, and 
 suddenly clasping his head with both hands, gave him two or 
 three convulsive kisses on the forehead. 
 
 "Forgive me!" she exclaimed. "Forgive a foolish old 
 woman for giving way to her feelings sometimes ; 'tis not 
 often ; my nerves are good ; it shall be the last time. Have 
 no fear ; I will not frighten you again." 
 
 Since that scene she had never alluded to her child, and 
 Luther had been careful not to say anything that might, how 
 ever indirectly, lead to the subject. 
 
 The hour devoted to German had nearly passed, and Lu 
 ther was marking the concluding passage, when happening to 
 raise his eyes to one of the dormer-windows he saw something 
 that startled him a man's face pressed closely against the 
 glass, and peering intently into the room. It was but a 
 glimpse, the next instant it was gone. But that glimpse was 
 strong enough to stamp the impression clearly upon Luther's 
 mind. There was something familiar in the expression of the 
 face, could it be that he had ever encountered the owner 
 of that hideous countenance. The thick masses of black 
 hair that bristled out from beneath a low fur cap, the glaring 
 eyes, the coarse red skin, the heavy, close-cut moustache and 
 beard, certainly belonged to none of his acquaintance, and yet 
 it flashed upon him that he had seen these before.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 2 93 
 
 Luther hesitated for an instant through sheer surprise, and 
 then grasped Madame Steignitz by the shoulder. 
 
 " Quoi! Qu'avez vous!" she demanded, quite startled in 
 turn by Luther's evident excitement. 
 
 " Did you see that ?" he demanded. 
 
 "What? I saw nothing." 
 
 " A man's face looking in at the window." 
 
 " No : it can't be.' : 
 
 " I saw it distinctly, an ugly fellow in a cap. He poked 
 his head around from that side." 
 
 " Oh, bah ! your eyes deceive you ; 'twas nothing but a 
 flash of light as you looked up from your book. I think you 
 read too much." 
 
 Luther shook his head and rising crossed to the window 
 and threw up the sash. There was nothing strange in sight. 
 Two feet below him ran the gutter, and below that he could 
 see down into the grimy court, partly lighted from the back 
 room windows of the thickly-peopled houses on either side. 
 He jumped up and seated himself on the window-sill, and 
 holding on to the sash bent backward until he could take a 
 view up along the roof on either side. There was nothing 
 suspicious in sight. 
 
 The examination was not wholly satisfactory, for the roofs 
 of the neighboring houses were continuous, and although not 
 half a minute had elapsed since he had seen the man's head, 
 there was a possibility that the owner might have reached the 
 concealment of a neighboring dormer-window. He had half 
 a mind, despite Madame's entreaties, to get out and search 
 the roofs of the row. But the slates were damp and slippery, 
 and in clambering about he might frighten honest people and 
 be taken for a burglar himself. 
 
 "Bah! if it is a robber," exclaimed Madame, "what do 
 I care ? He won't disturb me. I've got nothing for him. They 
 know I'm poor. Everybody knows I've not got so much as 
 five cents in this roomj and who would take the trouble to rob 
 an old woman of these rags and broken things ? Come in and 
 shut the window. You will catch nothing but a big cold."
 
 294 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Luther jumped down and closed the window. There was 
 a loose catch, but nail-holes over the lower sash showed that 
 somebody in former times had not felt so secure against 
 intrusion as the present occupant Madame had no nails, so 
 Luther split up a piece of kindling-wood, and whittled out a 
 peg that would answer the purpose for the moment. 
 
 It was some little time before the young man quite re 
 covered his composure. It was difficult to get rid of the im 
 pression that the man's face had made upon him. That it 
 was a man's face he felt quite confident, and yet there was a 
 possibility that it was a product of his own brain. Everybody 
 had stories, too, of the illusions of disordered vision. There 
 was the fellow that had the big yellow dog always following 
 around after him ; and there was the chap that whenever he 
 went to draw a bucket of water always saw an Indian chief 
 in feathers and war-paint, jump out of the well and hide him 
 self in the wood-pile. Perhaps he was getting a little dys 
 peptic stomach out of order maybe, without his knowing it. 
 Well, he would not read quite so late at nights, and he would 
 not eat so many buckwheat cakes in the morning. 
 
 " Do you know, Madame," he said, " I've had a queer 
 thing happen to me to-day, and I admit that it may have put 
 my nerves in something of a flutter," and Luther pulled his 
 bank-book out of his pocket. 
 
 The old lady listened with great interest to Luther's ac 
 count of his discovery at the bank but uttered no expression 
 that allowed him an opportunity for a direct question. It would 
 have been easy to accuse her in a joking tone, but Luther's 
 sense of delicacy forbade it. She was so very poor, that is, sup 
 posing the stories about her wealth to be fictions, that any 
 joking on such a subject might look like ridicule. The near 
 est approach that he allowed himself was a reply to her won 
 dering question Who could it be ? 
 
 " I can't imagine ; I have turned over in my mind the idea 
 of everybody whom I know, without being able to hit upon a 
 probability ; I might as well suppose it came from you as any 
 one."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 295 
 
 Madame Steignitz indulged in a hearty, and, as Luther 
 thought, an unaffected laugh, at the utter absurdity of such an 
 idea. 
 
 " Well, it is a perfect God-send, wherever it came from. It 
 brings my bank-account hard on to fifteen hundred dollars, 
 and I have just now an occasion for that sum." 
 
 "Oh! you make an investment; what you buy? some 
 stocks or bonds ? I know something of that thing. My hus 
 band, oh! he buy and sell a great many things in St. Louis." 
 
 " No, neither stocks nor bonds : I am going to put it into a 
 ship, or rather I am going to loan it to a friend to put in a 
 ship." 
 
 " No, no, put it in a ship yourself; that is not so bad. I 
 had a little money in a ship myself once ; but do not lend it. 
 Who it is who wants to borrow your money ? " 
 
 " No one wants to borrow, but I want to lend ; and I am 
 by no means sure that the loan will be accepted. I have re 
 ceived a letter to-day from my friend Captain Combings, 
 whom you have heard me speak about so often." 
 
 " Ah ! yes, the brave old sailor read me his letter." 
 
 Luther got up, went across the room to his overcoat, took 
 the letter from the pocket and returned to his seat, not with 
 out casting a suspicious glance at the windows. It seemed as 
 if he must see that face still at the pane. 
 
 " It will not be long now, my dear Luther, a few days at 
 most," wrote Captain Combings, " before I shall have an op 
 portunity of giving you a hail. I hope to find you as willing 
 to back your main topsail as I am. I do long so to see you 
 once more. I want to see for myself how you carry your can 
 vas. I want to overhaul your log a little. Although you 
 have kept me pretty well informed, there are some things 
 which I don't fully understand. That French craft you have 
 fallen afoul of ! are you sure she is all sound ? No buts started 
 anywhere, and enough ballast in her hold ? " 
 
 " Oh, mon Dieu ; mon Dieu ! " interrupted Madame ; 
 "what a language that of the sea ! " 
 
 " And is there no other craft with finer lines and a cleaner
 
 296 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 run, and a newer set of sticks, and more top-hamper that has 
 crossed your course ? Oh, fill away with you now ! can't I see 
 with half an eye how hard you brace up on that tack ? In all 
 your letters you have never mentioned the Helen but twice, 
 and do you suppose an old quartermaster can't see when 
 the leach of a sail is shivering in the wind ? Dyce dyce 
 No nigher ; ease her up a spoke or two or you'll have every 
 thing aback, you son of a gun ! 
 
 " But to leave off sailor lingo, my dear Luther, I am right 
 glad of the prospect of meeting you, and I am not sorry to bid 
 good-bye to these miserable inland seas forever. The 
 weather on Ontario is as bad as it is on the North Atlantic, 
 and you are so cramped for sea- room, that you can't scud for 
 an hour, unless the wind blows up and down the lake, without 
 chucking your spars into their native forests ; you can't lay to 
 for half an hour without wishing you were five miles to 
 windward of Sable Island or Nantucket Shoals, and you can't 
 make for a harbor without getting on some miserable spit or 
 bar. 
 
 " That has just been my case. I was bound down the 
 lake to Ogdensburg : the weather was thick and squally ; the 
 wind shifting every five minutes, and coming out in puffs that 
 played about as big tunes with our old rotten rigging as I 
 care to listen to. I knew by midnight the air would be full of 
 broomsticks, and a witch on every one of 'em. However, I 
 managed to get the miserable, worn-out, ill-found thing down 
 to the mouth of the Oswegatchie, which makes the harbor of 
 Ogdensburg. I had just rounded up, with my sheets hauled 
 aft, and was standing in by the old French trading-house 
 point, when along came a puff not much to speak of consid 
 ering I was only showing the head of my foresail but crack 
 went the mast short off by the board, and up went her head 
 into the wind, and before I could cut clear of the spar she 
 gathered stern-way and backed right down upon the bar. 
 There we were hard and fast in the mud. 
 
 " Well, I had made up for some time to leave the old tub, 
 as my owners would do nothing in the way of repairs. Every
 
 NEVER AGAIN 
 
 297 
 
 sail patched until there wasn't an original yarn from main 
 sail to flying-gib, and when she heeled on a wind the seams in 
 her rotten old top-sides would open and almost sluice her ribs 
 out. But this is an end of her. The owner will make a good 
 thing of it out of the insurance company, and I am a free 
 man. But what to do ? Well, I will come down to the city, 
 and look about for a few days. I am five or six hundred dol 
 lars ahead that's mighty little towards getting a command in 
 a decent sea-going craft, but perhaps I may get an interest in 
 some old sloop on the river. If not, why I will take the berth 
 of mate, although it is a little hard for a man who knows the 
 ropes, and who has always cocked his hat on his own quarter 
 deck skipper-wise, to come down to bossing a ship's watch as 
 first or second officer. 
 
 " Expect me then about Wednesday next. When I hope I 
 shall have a better opportunity of telling you how much delight 
 your success in business matters, your improvement, bodily and 
 mental, and your good steady habits, have given to the heart 
 of the old sailor, your friend." 
 
 Luther finished the letter, and Madame Steignitz sat for 
 some time silent, with her elbows on her knee, and her chin 
 in her hand. 
 
 " That Captain, I think, is a good man," she said at length. 
 
 " Good ! " said Luther. " Why he is the best of men. He 
 is perfectly lovely; a regular angel," and Luther launched out 
 on a current of magniloquent talk in praise of the Captain's 
 manifold merits and virtues. Any one listening to him would 
 have got the idea that the Captain was also a handsome man. 
 On which point however, there could be no doubt that Lu 
 ther's enthusiasm carried him a little too far. 
 
 " And you are going to lend your money to him ? " de 
 manded Madame Steignitz. 
 
 " Well, you see it is almost impossible for a man who has 
 not been to sea for some time, and who has no personal 
 friends among ship-owners, to get a command, unless he has 
 money enough to make him part owner. Now the Captain 
 has got five hundred dollars, and I have got fifteen hundred ;
 
 298 NEVER AGAIN, 
 
 that makes two thousand. That is not much, but it will buy a 
 share in an old brig that I know of. She belongs to our firm : 
 the captain now in command wants to sell out his share, and 
 quit the sea. Captain Combings can step into his shoes. It 
 is not a very splendid thing. The brig is old and a perfect 
 tub, they say, but she has been running, pretty regularly, for 
 sugar and molasses for the last twenty years. Such a good 
 man and such a splendid seaman as the Captain ought to 
 have a first-rate ship, and something better to do than carry 
 ing cargoes of cockroaches between here and Matanzas." 
 
 "Do you know of any such ship?" asked Madame. 
 
 " Why I know of half a dozen. There is the Spoondrift a 
 splendid ship ; half clipper ; twelve hundred tons ; her own 
 ers have put her up for Australia, and she is half full of lumber 
 and Yankee notions. There is a quarter of her to be bought, 
 but it would take ten thousand dollars." 
 
 " You think it is cheap '? " 
 
 " Very cheap ; she is worth every cent of sixty thousand ; 
 but then we can't think of that." 
 
 " I don't know ; I don't know. Let me think ! I am a 
 very poor woman. I have nothing but this house with the 
 mortgage, but you see it is a good house ; not so far from 
 Broadway. I think they will let me have some more money 
 upon it. Perhaps something can be done for your brave 
 friend. You have fifteen hundred : the Captain has five hun 
 dred. Now if I raise eight thousand on this house, that will 
 make the ten thousand. We buy the share for the Captain, 
 and then the Captain puts the share in my name. I be well 
 secured, eh? And I get enough money from the ship to pay 
 my interest. What you say, eh ? " 
 
 Luther, at first, did not know what to say. How could he 
 allow the old lady to take so much trouble and perhaps risk ? 
 But then he could not but be struck at her shrewdness in pro 
 posing to take the whole of the share in her own name. " At 
 eight thousand it would certainly be a safe and a good thing 
 for her ten per cent, at least. And perhaps after all they are 
 right, and the old woman is rich, and may have the money on 
 hand ! "
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 299 
 
 Luther hesitated. 
 
 " Well, well, perhaps nobody will let me have the money 
 on the mortgage. We will see ; we will see. You find out 
 all about the ship, and see if you cannot get the share /or nine 
 thousand, or nine thousand five hundred. You know 'tis very 
 bad property now." 
 
 As Luther took his leave, the image of that hideous face 
 and those glaring eyes came to his mind, and he felt really 
 alarmed at the idea of the old lady's lonely and unprotected 
 condition. Perhaps there was nothing to fear from a robber, 
 but what if the roof-hunting demon should turn out to be an 
 escaped maniac? It would, however, do no good to broach 
 the idea to Madame. She wouldn't believe that he really 
 had seen a man's head at the window, and, after all, it was 
 well not to excite useless fears. He could do nothing better 
 than bid her good-night. 
 
 Stepping across the landing, Luther tapped at the door of 
 Mr. Planly. For he had been in the habit of looking in, after 
 his lessons, upon the old inventor, sometimes for a passing 
 salutation, sometimes for a long hour's chat. 
 
 Luther was of an inventive turn himself, and his evident 
 sympathy had lifted the forlorn old genius out of his habitual 
 shyness and reserve. It was a pleasure which hitherto he 
 had known nothing of this contact with a young fresh and 
 active mind. To hear the voice of commendation and en 
 couragement outside of himself, and apart from and yet in 
 unison with the whisperings of his own brain ; to be able to 
 pour out into eager ears the tale of his hopes and disappoint 
 ments, and struggles ; to unfold his plans, and display his 
 drawings and models to an eye sparkling with interest and 
 capable of seizing almost instantaneously the minutest me 
 chanical details, was a pleasure new and intense. He had 
 fought the world at a disadvantage so long ; had had so many 
 falls, had been buried so deeply under heaps of gibes and 
 jests ; had had his heart so seamed and scarred by the slings 
 and arrows of outrageous fortune ; that he had abandoned all 
 hope of the battle ; almost all desire for a successful rally.
 
 300 NE VER A GAIN. 
 
 And now here was a friendly cheer ringing over the waste 
 of dead and dying aspirations; and he felt his nerves tingle, 
 and his heart jump, and his cold blood warm again, as he 
 listened to the joyful sound. 
 
 " How is it," demanded Luther, " that you have pushed so 
 few of your inventions into practical use, and how is that 
 those that have been adapted have brought you so little 
 money ? " 
 
 " There are two reasons," replied Mr. Planly. " One is 
 the want of business talent; an extreme distaste for anything 
 in the way of chaffering and bargaining, and an utter inca 
 pacity to resist a rebuff or to fight my way against anything 
 that touches my pride morbid pride if you will. Oh, 1 have 
 analyzed myself; I know just how weak I am, when I really 
 look into myself. Generally I call it pride, and am rather 
 proud of it ; generally I humbug myself, as people of my 
 stamp often do, with notions of personal dignity and self-re 
 spect ; but really at times and this is one of them, and I am 
 going to make a confession at times, I say, I see myself as I 
 really am vain, weak, silly, with a sickly sensitiveness that 
 would disgrace a chlorotic girl." 
 
 "Oh," said Luther deprecatingly, "your mode of life may 
 have a good deal to do with all such notions. You study too 
 hard, think too much, and work too steadily ; and then you 
 don't take proper exercise ! " 
 
 " Or food either, you might add. Well, well, I am as I 
 am. I am the product of the circumstances under and into 
 which I am born. I can't help being myself. I have cast 
 off all belief in free will and moral responsibility. Given a 
 form like this and a brain like this" touching his forehead 
 "large in front and small behind big reflective organs and 
 no sustaining powers too much of the intellectual and not 
 enough of the animal give such a being a feeble volition and 
 chuck him helpless into an environment like mine ; and, at 
 the end of sixty years, what is the product ? Why I I am 
 the necessary and inevitable result. And who's to blame, 
 pray ? Am I ? am I to blame because under different circum-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 301 
 
 stances, with a different body and a different temperament, 
 and another mind and heart and soul, I might have been nc 
 longer I I might have been somebody else? I won't admit it. 
 Suppose that any accident had foiled my mother's gesta- 
 tory cares ; would I have been held responsible for the failure 
 of my antenatal existence ? No ! And why more for this 
 miserable abortion of threescore years ? No, I cannot admit 
 it. I cannot give up my only consolation for a life of suffer 
 ing and failure my only justification to myself my only 
 ground for hope that in the great hereafter the power that 
 made me will, upon the principle of compensation, do a little 
 better by me. 
 
 " This is horrible doctrine, I know," continued Mr. Planly. 
 " You don't hear anything like it in the churches ; but it 
 won't do you any harm, and it does me good to blow off a lit 
 tle. I would not convert you to my way of thinking. I 
 would not convert anybody to anything. If I had Samson's 
 strength and his powerful weapon in my hand, I might feel 
 called upon to fight the Philistines a little. But let the world 
 wag. What is Hecuba to me or I to Hecuba besides it is 
 
 not meet 
 
 ' That he who guides amiss his petty barque 
 Should undertake the helm of social order.' 
 
 " And if I should go to the wheel, what guaranty have I 
 that I should serve my trick out, or that I should succeed in 
 steering the craft into smooth water. 
 
 "The fatal facility of change," continued Mr. Planly after 
 a short pause " Ah ! that's it. Young man, look at me, and 
 lake warning. The proverb of the rolling stone is applied 
 generally to changes of external occupations ; it will apply 
 equally well to a futile versatility in our mental operations. 
 I have always been an inventor. Nothing has seduced me 
 from or disgusted me with the calling ; so far I have been per 
 sistent. But within that calling what a want of persistency 
 and stability what an absence of tenacity of idea and steadi 
 ness of purpose! Oh, I know myself; I know myself. No 
 sooner, after infinite labor and thought, do I see an idea or
 
 302 NE VER A GAIN. 
 
 thing approaching completion or perfection than I become 
 disgusted with it can't bear it turn away from it drop it 
 out of my thought. Now is this the result of bad training and 
 evil mental habits, or is it a radical and congenital defect in 
 the organization of my brain ? " 
 
 Mr. Planly paused and looked at Luther as if expecting a 
 reply. 
 
 " I am not physiologist or psychologist enough to answer 
 that," said Luther. 
 
 " But," continued Mr. Planly, " I am getting too far away 
 from your question, why I haven't been able to carry out any 
 of my inventions. Of course no one knows better than my 
 self that many of them are good for nothing practically. 
 Many of them are ingenious devices for doing what can be 
 done more cheaply or more conveniently in other ways, or 
 what is perhaps not worth doing at all. In some, I am wrong 
 in principle, or utterly mistaken in the adaptation of means to 
 ends, and have in consequence spent a good deal of time and 
 thought that a wiser or better educated man might have 
 saved. Any inventor is liable to this, especially one whose 
 mind rambles over a wide field, and who fondles in desultory 
 thought a thousand objects of devotion, instead of sticking to 
 one. But still I have hit upon some things that are good, 
 and that ought to be tried, and upon many that have been ap 
 propriated, or have since been invented, by others and are 
 now in use. 
 
 " And now," resumed Mr. Planly after a pause, " I will 
 tell you the second, and I hope the greatest reason for my 
 failure to carry out into general practice any of my more im 
 portant inventions, and that is want of money ; or, to put it a 
 little more truly, hard, grinding poverty. Materials, models, 
 experiments, skilled labor, all cost money, and sometimes a 
 good deal of money. But suppose that an inventor, by hair 
 starving himself, going half clad, and working night and day, 
 with his own hands, succeeds in getting his idea developed 
 into drawings and models, and even goes so far unaided as to 
 secure his patents, how is he to move a step beyond ? How
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 303 
 
 is he to make a capitalist distinguish him in his old rusty hat, 
 faded thread-bare coat, and worn-out shoes, amid the crowd 
 of projectors and charlatans that beseige a rich man's door. 
 If he had plenty of money ! Ah, then the thing would be 
 easy enough. Everybody has so much more confidence in 
 the judgment and disinterestedness of a man with money. 
 He can get along without their help why shouldn't they 
 help him ? And to a great extent I believe they are right. 
 Money ballasts a man's intellect or rather it anchors him 
 down, and he merely swings at his moorings, without entirely 
 floating off with every turn of the tide. And then if an inven 
 tor with money wants to interest a capitalist, why he can at 
 tack the animal in his den, armed cap-a-pie, in gleaming habil 
 iments, from his shiny latest style beaver, down to his 
 polished n. vv boots ; or he can get him into the club or Del- 
 monico's ; gorge him with turtle and champagne ; and when his 
 pores are fairly open, force in any idea that he wishes ; even 
 if it is some new modification of the rotatory system ; some 
 grand project for an elevated railroad, or some wonderfully 
 simple plan for a few hundred horse power hot-air engine." 
 
 Mr. Planly stopped for a moment in his plaintive tirade, 
 and Luther turned to some of the models and drawings hang 
 ing upon the walls or lumbering up the rickety shelves. There 
 was a complicated affair for utilizing the enormous power of 
 the waves, and converting their irregular action into an avail 
 able working force by means of a system of gigantic pumps 
 sending the water to an elevated reservoir inland, whence it 
 returned in a continuous fall to the sea. 
 
 " The idea is not new," said Mr. Planly ; " but a practical 
 plan for working it out has not before been suggested." 
 
 There was a design for transferring the strain of the cables 
 of a ship at anchor from the hawse-holes to a point or points 
 underneath the water and nearer in a line with the centre of 
 gravity of the ship. 
 
 " You see," said Mr. Planly, " in the usual p'an, the action 
 of the cable is in a great part to pull a ship's head down into 
 the water and increase the power of the waves. You see here,
 
 304 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 by means of this traveller running on an iron bar, I let down a 
 short scope of heavy chain to a bolt or hook let in on either 
 side of the stem almost on a level with the keel. The other 
 end of this chain has this kind of stopper. You get your 
 cable out of the hawse-hole, pass it into this stopper, then let 
 your cable slide through the stopper as far as you wish then 
 let go the short grip-chain and the stopper seizes the cable 
 and holds it tight. Now veer away a littlfe more cable, and 
 the strain is at once transferred from the hawse-hole to a 
 point ten or fifteen feet below the water-line, and if you please 
 to two points, as many feet aft of the stem as may be thought 
 proper. Any eye can see how much more easily a ship would 
 ride. A little calculation will show at least thirty-five or forty 
 per cent. gain. Don't you see ? " 
 
 Luther did see it very clearly. 
 
 " And when you weigh anchor you heave in as usual until 
 your stopper comes up, cast it off, haul up your traveller and 
 grip-chain and take it on board ; or if you want to veer away a 
 large scope of chain suddenly, as for instance a ship sagging 
 down upon you in a crowded roadstead, all you have to do is 
 to pull on this small rope that goes down to the bolt in your 
 submarine stopper and away your cable runs." 
 
 " I wish my friend Captain Combings was here," said 
 Luther. " He'd like this, I know." 
 
 " He might not think much of it here," replied Mr. Planly ; 
 " but if he was riding, with his spars and sails gone, to a heavy 
 sea and with sharp rocks under his lee I rather think it would 
 suit him." 
 
 "And what may this be?" demanded Luther, pointing 
 to a curious complication of towers and long, low arched 
 buildings. 
 
 " Oh, that is my improved brick-kiln. You see two-thirds 
 of the expense of making bricks is in burning them, and at 
 least nine-tenths of the fire used is utterly wasted. Now, it is 
 perfectly astonishing the amount of ingenuity that has been 
 directed to the invention and improvement of brick machines, 
 but hardly a step has been made towards saving of waste of
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 35 
 
 fuel and the enormous loss from the imperfect burning of pale 
 brick and the over-burning of arch brick." 
 
 Mr. Planly went on to explain how he proposed to employ 
 the heat of one kiln in partially cooking the bricks in a second 
 kiln and even a third, and baking them all to one color, but 
 as the female reader may be supposed to care nothing for 
 bricks, unless it may be the perfect brick of a society-man, 
 and the male reader to know nothing of the subject except a 
 slight knowledge of an occasional " brick in the hat " we will 
 turn with Luther to other subjects. 
 
 "What is that?" said Luther. 
 
 "Oh, that is a magnetic sounding-lead. You see a great 
 many ships are lost from neglect of the lead, and captains fre 
 quently won't sound, because of the trouble or delay of heaving 
 to or slowing up. Now, with that, a captain can sit in his cabin 
 and read off at any moment, when on soundings, the depth of 
 water below him with perfect accuracy without deadening his 
 way. The soundings on our coast are so regular that there is 
 no excuse for any captain not knowing his distance from land 
 in the thickest fog." 
 
 "And what is that combination of circles, or parts of 
 circles?" 
 
 " Oh, that is an attempt to make an instrument for working 
 out mechanically observations for time at sea. You see here 
 are two meridian circles connected by an equator, and this is 
 a diagonal or zenith-distance circle. Now, you know your 
 latitude, and you clamp one end of your zenith-distance circle 
 to your latitude on the meridian. You observe the altitude 
 of the sun above the horizon subtract that from ninety, and 
 you have the zenith distance of the sun. Set this movable 
 pin on this diagonal circle at that distance then separate 
 your mer. dian circles until this pin corresponds to the decli 
 nation of the sun marked on the movable meridian circle 
 read off the number of degrees, on the equatorial circle, that 
 the two meridian circles are apart, and you have the distance 
 of the sun from your meridian, or in other words the differ 
 ence in time from 12 o'clock, or the true time where you are.' ?
 
 306 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " And what use would such an instrument be ? " demanded 
 Luther. 
 
 " Not much, only there are a few captains so stupid or so 
 ignorant that they can't be depended upon to work out their 
 observations in the usual way ; or so lazy that they won't take 
 the trouble to work out more than one observation at a time. 
 If they had an easy mechanical means there might be some 
 times great errors avoided." 
 
 "I recollect," said Luther, "that in our conversation the 
 other night you promised to show me your plans for ventila 
 ting rail-cars and doing away with the dust." 
 
 " Oh, don't broach that subject so late in the evening if 
 you desire any sleep to night. Once upon that I never let 
 up. To do away with noise and dust in railroad travelling 
 would perhaps contribute more to human health and happiness 
 and encourage travelling and increase dividends more than any 
 mechanical implement ever devised. Luckily I have neither 
 model nor drawings here at this moment and you are saved. 
 Some other time ! some other time ! " and Mr. Planly nodded 
 his head emphatically. 
 
 Let us rejoice in Luther's lucky escape, as it enabled him 
 to turn rapidly in succession to numerous small articles in this 
 museum of inventions. There were surgical instruments that 
 attracted his notice among them what Mr. Planly called a 
 painless knife. It consisted of a hollow stem with a little cir 
 cular knife that could be made to revolve several thousand 
 times a minute by means of a crank turned by an assistant ; no 
 matter how slow the stroke of the operator, the knife would 
 make its cut with the rapidity of lightning. There was an 
 ingenious instrument for superseding the awful operations of 
 Lithotomy and Lithotrity, enabling the surgeon to seize a 
 calculus, enclose it in a little silken bag and then subject it to 
 the action of strong acids. 
 
 " Has it ever been tried ? " demanded Luther. 
 
 " No, I have never been able to get exactly the right 
 kind of tissue for holding the acid, but I am satisfied that 
 it can be made. Many years ago I was full of the subject,
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 37 
 
 but alas ! the time soon comes when the slightest obstacle 
 knocks anything out of my head, and I have to turn to some 
 thing else." 
 
 " And are these for surgical purposes also ? " said Luther, 
 picking up some curiously shaped india-rubber articles. 
 
 " Yes, those are for treating wounds and sores of all kinds 
 KH different kinds of gas or in perfectly pure air. You 
 know that a great deal of the bad conduct of wounds and 
 ulcers and diseases of the skin comes from the irritation and 
 malignant action of impure air air loaded with poisonous 
 gases or vapors or infinitesimal seeds of parasitic vegetation 
 like hospital gangrene for instance. Now, suppose you have a 
 bad stump after an operation, you clap this on to the leg, press 
 the top down and exclude the air : now raise it and in rushes 
 the gas from a reservoir of carbonic acid or of the vapor of 
 some hydro-carbon or of pure nitrogen. You keep the wound 
 or sore in this bath of gas long enough to kill all animal or 
 vegetable life, and then drive out the gas and fill up from a 
 reservoir of filtered common air. In this way all kinds of 
 action purifying, stimulating, soothing, deodorizing, and dis 
 infecting may be had by the local application of therapeutic 
 agencies hitherto very much neglected. What will be the 
 exact results, of course I don't know, and I don't think the 
 Doctors know much better. It will take a long course of 
 experiment to determine. 
 
 " But here is something that I have the greatest hopes 
 from," continued Mr. Planly, pulling out a large drawing rep 
 resenting something like a large box or small room with 
 human figures in it. "This is my plan for an operating-room 
 that will enable the surgeon to perform all operations, espe 
 cially those opening into the important cavities of the human 
 body, in an atmosphere of innocuous gas or in filtered air air 
 absolutely pure and entirely free from the germs of poisonous 
 ferments, which are unquestionably the source of so much 
 trouble the cause of so much danger and death." 
 
 Mr. Planly stopped short : as he was about to launch out 
 into an explanation a heavy step was heard on the stairs.
 
 308 NEVER AC. 4 IX. 
 
 The inventor started. " Ah ! I had forgotten," he exclaimed, 
 "that I had an appointment." 
 
 Luther rose to go, but before he could reach the door, it 
 was opened, and a short, active man strode into the room. 
 
 A soft wide-brimmed felt hat, slouched over his eyes, con 
 cealed the upper part of his" face ; a heavy black beard and 
 moustache completely masked the lower part ; a heavy cloak, 
 thrown with theatrical effect, covered up his person. Luther, 
 whose quick fancy had been cultivated in the melo-dramatic 
 line by frequent attendance at the opera, and by a course of 
 Byron and Bourcicault, was struck with the bandit style of the 
 gentleman, and almost expected him to begin in a deep bari 
 tone. 
 
 The bravo, or conspirator, or whoever he might be, 
 advanced into the room without stopping to close the door. 
 
 Luther, who had been concealed by the open door, quietly 
 slipped out of the room unperceived, but not until he had 
 heard the stranger say in good English, but with a foreign 
 accent, and in a voice that Luther recognized as having 
 heard before, " I am here in time. Well, I have found a 
 room for you, and have taken it for a year ; closed the bar 
 gain at once. You can remove there as soon as you please. 
 We'll get rid of this French devil who wants her rent so regu 
 larly." 
 
 " I am a little sorry now, you have taken the room," 
 replied Mr. Planly. " I don't know that I want to move from 
 here." 
 
 "You will have to move yoa can't help yourself the 
 old woman will turn you out, and we want you away out of 
 this at once ! We shall have the sheriff in, and all our 
 things seized before we know it ; and besides something may 
 happen to the old woman, and as you are her nearest neigh 
 bor, and known to be in her debt, you will be suspected, and 
 may get into a good deal of trouble." 
 
 Mr. Planly's reply was made in so low a tone that Luther 
 couM not catch a word of it. He would have liked to stop 
 and listen. His curiosity was aroused, but not to a sufficient
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 39 
 
 degree to overmaster his self-respect. By merely pausing at 
 the door he could easily overhear the continuation of the 
 conversation. But no, he would not do it. It had been laid 
 down in every novel that he had ever read, that eavesdrop 
 ping was ungentlemanly, and above all things Luther wanted 
 to be able to think himself a gentleman. Of course he 
 couldn't stop his ears. He couldn't help hearing what he 
 had heard, and he couldn't help wanting to hear more but 
 he could take himself off, and not bother himself any more 
 about what ought to have no interest for him. He was how 
 ever sensible of a sense of mystery. No foundation for it, to 
 be sure, but still it was creeping over him, and contrary to 
 his usual custom, he unconsciously began to slip noiselessly 
 down the stairs. 
 
 As he opened the street door, the back of a man leaning 
 against the railing was turned towards him. Something in 
 the figure seemed familiar, and it flashed upon Luther that 
 this was the same man whom he had seen awaiting the bandit 
 gentleman above, on a former visit to Mr. Planly. 
 
 " Well, they hunt in couples, it seems," muttered Luther ; 
 " but what the game is I can't imagine. It can't be that they 
 are after that ridiculous toy, the noiseless gun Planly calls it 
 a toy, but he seems very much interested in it, and goes 
 somewhere out of town often to experiment. And how 
 quickly he turned the subject when I asked a question about 
 it ! What if it shouldn't be a toy ! It would be a dangerous 
 weapon in the hands of some folks. By George, I did not 
 think of that ! What would some of the Reds in Europe give 
 for a weapon that would kill at a thousand yards without 
 noise and without smoke." 
 
 In an instant Luther's active fancy whisked him over the 
 sea, and seated him in some sombre subterranean council- 
 chamber of a modern Vehmgericht. The judgment is passed; 
 some crowned assassin of liberty must die. Luther is ap 
 pointed executioner. The noiseless gun is put into his hands. 
 In some quiet mansard, that has an outlook upon the palace, 
 he sits and squints along his telescopic sights at the favorite
 
 3 io 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 window; a short, heavy, fish-eyed, squash-skinned man makes 
 his appearance with his opera-glass in his hand ; Luther pulls 
 trigger no noise ! no smoke ! the simple ping of the bullet : 
 and the cut-throat of liberty the garroter of progress, the 
 vampire sucking out the vitality of a great nation, the big 
 gest humbug and impostor in Europe is dead. And Luther 
 viciously jerked his night-key into the lock of Miss Jones' 
 boarding-house in Bleecker Street.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 The Captain in town A fine Craft The Captain dresses for Dinnei 
 Mrs. Lasher's Lecture Women's Rights, etc. A Spiritualistic Di 
 cussion Marine Table-turning Visit to Madame Steignitz A Con- 
 founded Lie Dreams again. 
 
 "OHIVER my timbers ! as we sailors always say on the 
 vj stage, if I am not glad to hook fingers with you once 
 more. Why, Luther, how you have spread since I left you. 
 I should hardly know you. Let me see. Draft about the 
 same, but a good deal more beam ; none too much however 
 just enough to keep from rolling too deep in a heavy swell : 
 and your spars straight and well stayed, and everything alow 
 and aloft trim and tidy. Why, Luther, I don't believe there's 
 anything that sails in petticoats that wouldn't be proud of you 
 for a consort. If I were building a clipper I'd get you to sit 
 for the figure head." 
 
 We hope the reader recognizes in the speaker Captain 
 Combings, who with his honest rubicund face fairly glow 
 ing with delight, and his hearty voice vibrating with affection 
 ate feeling, was shaking the young man's hand. 
 
 Luther was equally delighted to see his old friend, and re 
 turned his grasp warmly. A short conversation, and it was 
 decided to summon Miss Jones and see if she had not a va 
 cant room which would serve the Captain for the few days 
 that he expected to remain. 
 
 Miss Jones had nearly finished her morning duties as pre 
 siding genius of the tea-urn and coffee-pot, and responded 
 readily to the summons. If there was anything in her busi 
 ness that she really liked it was giving audience to the numer 
 ous applicants for rooms, especially when the applicants were 
 gentlemen, and above all when the applications were made in 
 the morning. Miss Jones, thanks to a good digestion, an
 
 312 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 easy conscience; and the punctual payment of her.butcher's 
 and grocer's bills, slept well and she was conscious of a greater 
 freshness in the morning. She knew that her eyes were 
 brighter, her complexion clearer and her curls more crisp 
 than after the drag of the day. She knew that everybody is 
 from half an inch to an inch taller in the morning than in the 
 afternoon ; and an envy of tall women was one of her weak 
 nesses. She knew that that morning costume was her strong 
 point that jaunty little breakfast-cap, with purple ribbons ; 
 that pretty little collar and chemisette of the finest material, 
 and perfectly plain, except an embroidered monogram of D. B. 
 J., with cuffs to match ; that neatly fitting robe of tinted cash 
 mere trimmed, and turned up with purple satin ! Oh, she 
 knew, cunning Miss De Belvoir Jones ! she knew there wasn't 
 a woman in the house who didn't abuse her and her dress in 
 the most outrageous manner, and she was perfectly satisfied. 
 
 Miss Jones had never forgotten that the handsome young 
 man who always paid his board-bills so punctually had once 
 called her " dear maid," in verse, and she was always ready to 
 do anything for Luther that lay in her power. In fact her at 
 tentions were at times, as Luther thought, a little too strong 
 ly marked : nothing but his determined preference for the 
 drumstick prevented his plate from being heaped every day 
 with the parson's bit and side-bones ; and as to his tea, he had 
 to insist upon sweetening it himself. He could never trust his 
 cup to the tender mercies of Miss Jones' sugar-tongs. 
 
 Miss Jones " had a vacant room : was exceedingly happy 
 that she had a vacant room. Recollected the Captain per 
 fectly ; would be pleased to receive him, if only for a week ; 
 hoped however that she might have the pleasure of his com 
 pany for a longer time. He would no doubt be pleased with 
 her house and her boarders, as she entertained none but gen 
 teel people, in fact the genteelest kind of people." 
 
 " Oh, don't mention it, my dear Miss Jones," exclaimed the 
 Captain, bowing and smiling with a certain suave and defer 
 ential benignity, truly charming, " don't mention it. I haven't 
 the least objection to genteel people, in fact I like 'em except
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 3*3 
 
 when they are a little too genteel ; and that sometimes happens, 
 you know, as in the case of Ben Hutching's wife 
 
 ' So she up with the broomstick and made him squeal, 
 
 Heave and pall, Heave and pall, 
 Oh ! she is so sweet and so bloody genteel, 
 
 Heave and pall, Heave and pall.' " 
 
 Miss Jones stared at the Captain for a few moments in si 
 lence, and then quietly led the way to the room in question. 
 It proved to be comfortable and convenient, and in everything 
 ready for immediate occupation. 
 
 Miss Jones listened to his compliments, evidently pleased, 
 but unquestionably astonished. Here was a new kind of mon 
 ster a sea monster, a veritable monster a monster who, in 
 his rage, could evidently seize a woman and choke all her vol 
 ubility right out of her. Now Miss Jones never had had 
 her volubility checked, not to say choked, but she was dis 
 posed to exclaim with Trinculo, "a most delicate monster,' 
 or rather with Stephano : " The poor monster is my subject 
 and he shall not suffer indignity." 
 
 She blushed a little, courtesied lower than usual, but went 
 quietly to her room, and sat ruminating for some time, and 
 finally made up her mind to add some side dishes to her bill 
 of fare. " Duff" was simple, she could accomplish that ; but 
 could an unacustomed cook rise at once to the heights of that 
 most mysterious nautical dish, " lobscouse ? " 
 
 " What a very nice, well-built craft," observed the Captain 
 as Miss Jones left the room. " Haven't seen anything with 
 neater lines and a cleaner run in a long time." 
 
 " Don't you think" said Luther, laughing, " that she is a 
 little too broad in the bows ? " 
 
 "Well, perhaps she is, and a little mite too full in the 
 counter, and she doesn't tumble home in the waist as much as 
 some of them they build nowadays : but do you know 
 Luther, I like that. She sails well, don't she ? " 
 
 " Well, she sails pretty close to the wind, some of her 
 passengers think," replied Luther ; " but I make allowance for
 
 3 t4 NEVER AC A IX. 
 
 her: any woman in a boarding-house has to lay pretty close, 
 or she will be among the breakers before she knows it? " 
 
 " That's it, that's it," said the Captain ; " give her sea 
 room and I've no doubt she'd be a comfortable, weatherly 
 craft. I wonder no skipper has applied for the command, 
 eh ? " 
 
 "Well, I have no doubt there have been applications, but 
 you know how it is yourself: it isn't so easy to obtain the 
 situation ; and that brings me to a long story that I have to 
 tell you. Come along with me now, down town : you can 
 stop at the hotel and send up your trunk, and then I shall 
 have something to show you as well as to tell you." 
 
 As soon as they had got into the street, Luther began the 
 story of his visit to the bank, and of the mysterious increase 
 of his account. 
 
 The Captain was all attention, and wonder. 
 
 " Who do you suppose it could be ? " 
 
 " I don't know exactly yet, but I begin to have my sus 
 picions." 
 
 "It was some woman," exclaimed the Captain, suddenly 
 wheeling around in front of Luther and stopping him short in 
 his walk, " it was some woman. Oh ! Luther, you haven't 
 been getting in with any of these poor wretched women reck 
 less and generous, have you ? Wages of shame and sin, 
 Luther ! you wouldn't touch a dollar of it. They say there 
 are young men, young gentlemen they sometimes call them 
 selves, who do. Luther, I loved your mother. I love you as 
 my own son, and I would sooner know you a bold open thief 
 it would be more manly." 
 
 Luther hastened to relieve the worthy Captain's apprehen 
 sions by telling him of his suspicions of Madame Steignitz. 
 After describing the old lady, her mode of life, and her per 
 sonal habits, and explaining his relations to her, and mention 
 ing the rumors of her wealth, the Captain more than shared 
 the suspicions, and expressed the conviction that Mr. Whop 
 pers was right, and that the donor could be no other than the 
 old Frenchwoman.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 315 
 
 "Well, you will be still more sure of it when I tell jou 
 something more," replied Luther, " but in any case the money 
 is clean enough for me to use. Of course I shall always hold 
 it as a loan, but I will tell you what I think of doing with it." 
 
 Luther first unfolded his plans in relation to the brig. 
 
 " My dear boy, I cannot think of it," replied the Captain, 
 grasping Luther's hand. 
 
 "Why not ? I let you have it as a loan upon good security. 
 It will be perfectly safe. The brig's insured. You are a 
 judge of ships. We would buy only after you have made a 
 thorough examination, and are pretty fully satisfied that the 
 share is worth the money." 
 
 " Well, in that case," replied the Captain, hesitatingly, " I 
 don't know but that might do. But the fact is, Luther, you 
 are so young." 
 
 " Young ! Why I'm of age, ain't I ! You forget that I 
 have been three years in active life in New York, and one 
 ages terribly in that time. It is true I am not nominally 
 head clerk, but I am really chief managing clerk under Mr. 
 Gainsby. You don't suppose that a fellow that the great firm 
 of Ledgeral, Shippen and Co. send out to fill orders for fifty 
 thousand dollars worth of goods for a foreign market, don't 
 know what's right and what's wrong in a little matter of his own ? 
 But after all, Captain, I don't know that we will buy a share 
 into that old brig. I think that perhaps we can do better." 
 And Luther went on to inform the Captain of the proposition 
 of Madame Steignitz. "Mind you," he said, "I am not sure 
 that anything will come of it. It may have been all talk, but 
 I shouldn't wonder if she meant it. At any rate, I am going 
 to find out all about the ship. Now if you'll go and send up 
 your kit to Bleecker St. and afterwards join me at the store in 
 Burling Slip, in. about two hours, I think I shall have an hour 
 to spare, and we will go on board the Spoondrift and take a 
 look at her. Afterwards you can go over to Brooklyn, and 
 make an examination of the old brig. What do you say ? " 
 
 " Say, my dear Luther, I can't say anything just at this 
 moment," and the Captain wrung Luther's hand. " I am just
 
 3I 6 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 taken flat aback. However, I'll pay off on one tack or the 
 other in a little time; I'll take a walk by myself now, and 
 join you in about two hours. You won't have to wait for me. 
 But I am almost afraid to go on board the Spoondrift. I am 
 afraid she will spoil me for the brig. However, I don't mean 
 to let my hopes run away with me. I shall be but too thank 
 ful for the old craft, and will resign myself, as the old song 
 says, to see the Spoondrift 
 
 ' bear without a sigh 
 Some one by fortune favored more than I.' " 
 
 Oh, you need not think that I have been reading Mon 
 taigne, and Shakespeare, and Plutarch's Lives all my life for 
 nothing ; and there is as much philosophy to be fished up out 
 of sea, if one has the right kind of a hook for it, as you can 
 find on the land." 
 
 In going down to Burling Slip, Luther stopped for a mo 
 ment at the office of the agents and part owners of the Spoon- 
 drift, by whom he was recognized as a clerk of Ledgeral, Ship- 
 pen and Co. In reply to his demand if they were still desir 
 ous of disposing of a quarter-interest in the ship, an affirmative 
 answer was given. 
 
 " And if that share is bought in the name of a competent 
 and experienced man an able and energetic sailor, and a 
 skilful navigator, will it insure him the command ? " 
 
 " Certainly we are on the look-out for a commander at 
 this moment. Captain Digsby, who came home in her three 
 weeks ago, is desperately sick, and probably will never go to 
 sea again, and the first mate, who is now in charge, is well 
 enough in his way, but he knows a good deal more of seaman 
 ship than he does of navigation. She is too fine a ship to 
 risk in anything but first-rate hands." 
 
 " Well, will you give me the refusal of the share at nine 
 thousand five hundred, until to-morrow morning? That is 
 but a short time to make proper inquiries and examinations, 
 but, as I already know something of her history, it may do." 
 
 The agents held a short consultation, the result of which
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 317 
 
 was that Luther should have the refusal at that price, and an 
 appointment was made to meet Luther and the Captain at the 
 ship, in the course of a couple of hours. 
 
 At the time agreed upon, Luther found Captain Combings 
 waiting for him outside of the store in Burling Slip, and as he 
 had a good many commissions to execute, they lost no time in 
 setting off for the pier where lay the Spoondrift. 
 
 They found the agent awaiting them, and together they 
 had a half hour's ramble over the noble craft, at the end of 
 which Luther, as he had no time to spare, bade the Captain 
 good-bye, leaving him for a more deliberate and thorough 
 examination. 
 
 " Now, Captain," exclaimed Luther, as he descended the 
 gang-plank, " don't get yourself so completely tangled up in 
 the rigging of this ship, or buried so deep in her hold as to 
 forget the lively craft you were admiring this morning. Rec 
 ollect our dinner is six o'clock, and Miss Jones likes punctu 
 ality." 
 
 "Never fear, youngster. I shall be within hail, and when 
 she gives the signal to close in, you'll see I'll spring my luff 
 with the best of you." 
 
 It wanted an hour yet of six when the Captain, having fin 
 ished his examination of the ship, and paid a visit to the brig 
 at Brooklyn, returned to the house in Bleecker St. He had a 
 good hour in which to overhaul matters, and put things a lit 
 tle more ship-shape. He comprehended, at a glance, that 
 the furniture had not been arranged with the requisite atten 
 tion to economy of space, and he at once threw off his coat 
 and began to shift his bureau, sofa, and chairs into their 
 proper places. This done, he unlocked his trunk, which had 
 been sent up from the hotel during his absence, and took out, 
 carefully wrapped in paper, two or three sprigs of coral, and 
 five or six shells, all of which he had gathered with his own 
 hand on the shores of distant seas, and which, by a happy 
 accident, had survived, in the custody of a friend, the catas 
 trophe which had sent his other goods and chattels to the 
 bottom of the Hudson. These arranged upon the mantel-
 
 318 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 piece and bureau so as best to display their beautiful tints 
 and graceful forms, the Captain next made a dive into his 
 trunk, and emerged with his library in his arms. No Mag- 
 leabichie or Casaubon, no crazy old bibliophile, no musty old 
 Professor of Heidelberg or Guttingen ever had a more intense 
 love for his books. He never moved without his library. 
 Luckily it was not large. A classified catalogue would hardly 
 occupy two lines. The Bible, Bowditch, Shakespeare, Plu 
 tarch, and Montaigne that was all. The books were new 
 and of cheap editions, and many a sad thought had they sug 
 gested of the old, worn, but better printed and better bound 
 copies which were lying, if still in existence, fifty fathom deep 
 at the foot of the Storm King. Still the Captain was not un 
 grateful. He often thanked God for small type, straw paper, 
 and muslin covers, and the books had begun to show in va 
 rious places marks of the thumb all except the Bowditch. 
 There is no use for tables of logarithms on Lake Ontario. 
 
 The Captain carefully arranged his books on his rickety 
 centre-table, took a deliberate observation, from several points, 
 of them and the shells, and concluded that there was nothing 
 that he could do to improve their position or add to the gen 
 eral effect. 
 
 " And now I suppose," muttered the Captain, " I must 
 dress for dinner. I don't like that much. Washing one's 
 hands and face and brushing one's clothes that is necessary 
 and natural, but I always feel like a fool in a swallow-tail and 
 white cravat. But what does Montaigne say ? 
 
 ' The countries' custom to observe 
 Is proper, and doth praise deserve.' " 
 
 Fumbling in the recesses of his trunk he finally produced 
 a white neck-tie, of a somewhat gorgeous style, with embroid 
 ered ends. It had been used at the charity ball for the Lake- 
 faring-men's Wives and Children's Aid Society of which the 
 Captain had been persuaded to act as one of the managers, 
 but it was still serviceable. With some misgivings the Captain 
 lied this in a most elaborate knot ; but he had no hesitation
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 319 
 
 about the brilliant yellow waistcoat and the bright blue 
 coat and brass buttons : those were a portion of costume that 
 any lubber would admit to be necessary and perfectly comme 
 il faut all the seas over. 
 
 The Captain had just given the last finishing brush to his 
 side locks and had seated himself; and, while awaiting the 
 signal for dinner, was turning over a few pages of Plutarch's 
 treatise on the virtuous behavior of women, when Luther en 
 tered the room. 
 
 " All ready, Captain, eh ? and en grande tenue. Why, what 
 have you put on a white cravat for ? are you going to a party 
 after dinner ? " 
 
 " I have put it on, youngster," deliberately replied the Cap 
 tain, " because Montaigne says, ' A wise man ought within to 
 withdraw, and retire his soul from the crowd, but as to this 
 outward garb and appearance, he ought absolutely to follow 
 and conform himself with the fashions of the time.' " 
 
 " Well, that is all right in Montaigne, but I don't see how 
 that compels you to don a white cravat when no one at the 
 table wears one but Parson Droney." 
 
 " Do you mean to say that I can go to the table in my 
 black scarf? " said the Captain, jumping up briskly and pro 
 ceeding to make the change. " Why I thought from the gen 
 eral style of Miss Jones' rig that a fellow would have to crack 
 on everything that would draw to keep way with her. Bless 
 me, what a relief this is ! Do you know, Luther, that that white 
 choker has already almost taken away my appetite ; I couldn't 
 have made more than half a meal. I should have made as 
 poor a fist of it as a chaplain at his prayers the first Sunday 
 out." 
 
 " Ah ! there is the bell ; we shan't have time now to talk 
 about the ship ; but after dinner we will come up to my room 
 and smoke a cigar over it ; and then I will take you round to 
 Wooster Street, and we will see what Madame Steignite has to 
 say. You can tell me, however, in one word what conclusions 
 you have come to. I suppose she is all they represent." 
 
 " She is a perfect beauty," said the Captain, as they entered
 
 3 20 NEVER AC A IX. 
 
 the dining-room. " She is the handsomest thing I've seen 
 this many a day," and the gallant Captain made his best quar 
 ter deck bow to his hostess, who had just taken her seat at 
 the head of the table. 
 
 Miss Jones heard the words, and blushed almost as red as 
 the plate of pickled beets that supported on one side the mag 
 nificent piece of roast beef behind which, for an instant, she 
 hid her confusion. " The monster ! the abominable monster ! 
 This is some monster of the isle, but if I can recover him, and 
 keep him tame, and get him to church with me, he's a present 
 for any she that ever trod on neats leather." 
 
 We won't say that Miss Jones parodied Stephano in this 
 absurd manner, but she might perhaps have done so had she 
 known as much of the Tempest as the Captain knew. 
 
 Room had been made for the Captain alongside of Luther, 
 which brought him opposite Mrs. Lasher and Dr. Droney. 
 This was an opportunity which Mrs. Lasher seldom enjoyed, 
 and which she could not, as one of the most important and 
 influential advocates of women's rights, neglect an oppor 
 tunity to ring in a new and unsophisticated male human, and 
 lead him through the flowery mazes of feminine logic up to 
 the philosophic heights of Sorosis, 
 
 Mrs. Lasher was in her happiest and most fluent vein, and 
 the Captain listened with an air of the profoundest defer 
 ence as her conversation, at first diverging in equally distrib 
 uted volleys among several auditors, became a fierce, concen 
 trated fire directly into him. 
 
 Mrs. Lasher had just come from making a speech at the 
 Cooper Institute a most important speech, in which she had 
 taken a stride beyond far beyond her faint-hearted sisters 
 who were lingering in the rear of the battle. 
 
 " Do you know," she exclaimed, looking straight at the 
 Captain, " that I no longer care to contend for women's rights 
 so called, for their legal rights, their social rights, their polit 
 ical rights. I go a step further. I throw myself into the van 
 of the movement. I contend for their physical rights. The 
 difference of sex ! what is it but development ? There was
 
 NEVER AGAIN, 
 
 321 
 
 no difference originally. It is a mistake to suppose the hu 
 man race was created male and female. The principle of nat 
 ural selection discovered by Darwin, aided by the principles 
 of repellent differentiation discovered by myself, has, in the 
 course of ages, disturbed the reproductive conditions, and di 
 vided humanity into the two equal segments which we call 
 male and female. Now these principles can be controlled : 
 can be, not only modified and mitigated, but absolutely nulli 
 fied. The mischief can be undone. It will take time, it is 
 true, but countless ages would be well spent in the effort, if 
 the human race could, in the end, get back to its original uni 
 fied germinal condition." 
 
 " You look incredulous, sir," said Mrs. Lasher. 
 
 " Do I, Madam ? " replied the Captain, smiling and bow 
 ing. " I beg your pardon. I did not mean it." 
 
 " Well, sir, I know that at the present time this divarica 
 ting influence this centrifugal force " 
 
 " Mrs. Lasher means," interposed Mr. Whoppers, looking 
 up for the first time from his plate, " by centrifugal force, a 
 tendency to fly off the handle." 
 
 The lady raised her eyebrows, and directed a look of scorn 
 at the speaker, that would have withered anybody but a New 
 York editor. 
 
 " This centrifugal force," she continued, " is too strong to 
 be overcome in a day ; but, in the meantime, I do not neglect 
 the present. I contend that women should no longer be de 
 prived of their physical rights. They have the same rights in 
 every respect as men. I make no distinction. I put all wo 
 men upon the same physical platform as all men." 
 
 " Do you mean to say," demanded Mr. Whoppers, " that all 
 women have the right to chew tobacco ? In that case there 
 would not be anything to choose between them. No, no, you 
 can't mean it ; that would be a little too strong. That would 
 be flinging your principles, or rather your Cavendish and fine- 
 cut, right into the teeth of public opinion." 
 
 Mrs. Lasher waved her hand in contemptuous depreca 
 tion. 
 
 21
 
 322 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " I mean to say that women have a right to all of the oc 
 cupations of men. That there are no duties that a man can 
 perform, that women with proper practice and training cannot 
 perform as well." 
 
 " Would you make soldiers of them ? " demanded Luther. 
 
 " No, I wouldn't make soldiers of them," said Mrs. Lasher 
 testily, "but I would make officers of them." 
 
 "And let them lead on to death or victory on side 
 saddles? A good idea that," exclaimed Mr. Whoppers. 
 " The men would be sure in that case to follow their leaders." 
 
 " To be sure, and female officers would lead them as they 
 have never been led before. Do you know that I maintain 
 that women have a peculiar genius for war. Do you forget 
 Boadicea, and Joan of Arc, and the Maid of Saragossa, and 
 many others ? Do you forget the Amazons, whose armies 
 were composed entirely of women ? " 
 
 " And don't forget the armies of Dahomey," interposed 
 Mr. Whoppers. " 'Tis said that they are very formidable, es 
 pecially for home service they keep all des hommes in order." 
 
 Mrs. Lasher glared contemptuously for a moment at the 
 speaker, and resumed her discourse. " I insist upon it, that 
 an army of women would fight as well in the present day as 
 in the days of the Amazons. Don't you agree with me, Cap 
 tain ? " 
 
 This was a direct appeal, and the Captain, who had been 
 listening lost in wonder and admiration, bowed and smiled 
 blandly. 
 
 " Undoubtedly, Madam, if our women would make the 
 same preparation for battle." 
 
 " How so, sir ? " 
 
 "Why, Montaigne says, not that he knew anything about 
 it personally, but I have no doubt he had good authority, 
 he says that they mutilated themselves ; that in order to han 
 dle their weapons properly, they cut off their right right 
 what shall I say ? " and the Captain's rubicund face grew 
 slightly redder, as he made a significant gesture. 
 
 Miss Jones' eyes were cast down into her plate. She was
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 523 
 
 pleased at anything tending to the discomfiture of Mrs. 
 Lasher, but then it was a little doubtful how far the Captain 
 might go. The ignorant monster might overstep the propri 
 eties of boarding-house life, and in pure innocence utter words 
 forbidden. The other ladies within hearing seemed to share 
 these apprehensions, and regarded the Captain askance from 
 lids ready to drop before anything too indelicate. Even Dr. 
 Droney drew himself up, puffed out his cheeks, uttered a pre 
 liminary " hem ! " and prepared himself to protest against the 
 introduction of anatomical subjects at the dinner-table. 
 
 " Nonsense ! Captain," at length exclaimed Mrs. Lasher, 
 " I don't believe a word of it. It is absurd ; but if it is true, 
 it shows what women were capable of. Our women are capa 
 ble of the same, and more ; or rather they would be capable 
 of it, if they were fully emancipated and had their complete 
 rights. Yes, sir : in case of foreign invasion, or in case of a 
 grand intersexual contest, they would be capable of cutting 
 off not only one, sir, but but both both, sir." 
 
 " That would be the safe thing to do," put in Mr. Whop 
 pers. " They could fight then without exposing their breasts 
 to any danger." 
 
 "Mr. Whoppers," exclaimed Dr. Droney, " you forget your 
 self. You are in the presence of ladies." 
 
 " And of the Church, too, my dear Doctor. I beg par 
 don. I confess my fault. I would ask for absolution, if you 
 were not always so hard on the high church." 
 
 "You see, sir," continued Mrs. Lasher, " that I have 
 demonstrated the capacity of women for all occupations and 
 employments. I like to take the bull by the horns. There 
 are many considerations, I admit, arising out of the grand fun 
 damental question of sex, which have been kept too much by 
 both sides in the back ground, but they have got to be dis 
 cussed fully before this thing is settled, and I for one am not 
 afraid of them. I am willing to throw aside all false delicacy, 
 and meet any masculine physiologist half way. But pending 
 such discussion, and in reply to the sneers and impertinent 
 and illogical assumptions and questions of the male human, I
 
 ; 2 4 NEVER AGAIX. 
 
 claim for women all occupations, all employments, all places. 
 Don't you think I am right, sir ? " 
 
 The Captain hesitated, but smiled benignantly, and in 
 reply to the lady's fierce stare of inquiry, gave a dubious 
 shake of the head. 
 
 " I have settled the question as to fighting. Mention a 
 duty that a woman whose brain and body have been properly 
 exercised and developed cannot perform a place that she 
 cannot fill. Mind you, I do not speak of woman demoralized, 
 devitalized by slavery ; etiolated soul and body by domestic 
 drudgery ; but as she might be a true woman. I pause for 
 your reply." 
 
 " Madam," said the Captain with a slight twinkling of the 
 eye, " what do you say to sitting astraddle of a yard-arm and 
 hauling out the weather earing in a sou'-wester." 
 
 The Captain intended nothing jocose, but a loud laugh 
 from several bearded brutes, headed by the Editor of the Uni 
 verse, greeted the remark. Mrs. Lasher, quite disgusted, in 
 dignantly swallowed a few mouthfuls of pudding, while a pro 
 found silence of two minutes fell upon the whole table. After 
 which the tide of talk resumed its flow ; at first by little jets, 
 until Mrs. Lasher, giving a few preliminary conversational 
 jerks, turned on a full head, and sailed in on a current of 
 spiritualistic discussion. 
 
 " She had that very morning been attending a most suc 
 cessful seance. The manifestations were truly wonderful. 
 The most contemptible skeptic that ever lived would have 
 believed and trembled. Such sights and sounds ; such raps 
 and taps ; such a ringing of bells ; such a jingling of guitars 
 and piano-strings ; such a waving of phantom hands ; such a 
 floating about of bodies generally, had never been seen be 
 fore." 
 
 " And pray, Madam," demanded Dr. Droney, " were the 
 communications from the spirit world unusually important? " 
 
 " I cannot say that they were," replied Mrs. Lasher, " or 
 that they were quite as clear as usual. The spirits seemed 
 to content themselves with exuberant manifestations of their
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 325 
 
 presence, and did not seem to desire, as much as they gener 
 ally do, verbal communication. They were evidently in great 
 giee, and seemed as if unable to compose themselves suffi 
 ciently to answer our questions. We had, however, one im 
 portant communication, and from a member of the highest 
 sphere. Who do you suppose it was Dr. Droney ? No less 
 than the spirit of the great Hahneman. He said that he sel 
 dom had a greater pleasure than that which he had just en 
 joyed in reading some lines of a modern English poet." 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Lasher," exclaimed Dr. Droney in a tone of 
 anxious interest, " did he repeat the lines ? " 
 
 " He did." 
 
 " And do you, my dear Mrs. Lasher, remember them ? " , 
 
 " I do ; listen. 
 
 ' Sound the loud medical eclectic timbrel, 
 O'er the British Isles, and across the wide sea, 
 Till the hosts of despotic, rascally regulars, 
 And tyrannical allopaths are completely vanquished, 
 And the people and the independent eclectic doctors 
 Are forever set free forever set free.' 
 
 When, oh ! when, Dr. Droney, shall we have such a poet 
 a true American poet ? One who will attune his lyre to the 
 music of the spheres, one who will time his chant to the 
 gigantic stride of the ages, one who can pluck a plume from 
 the pinions of the great American eagle, and inscribe amid 
 rolling worlds, upon the blue vault of heaven, in letters of 
 fire, the word FREEDOM ? " 
 
 " Neither the Doctor nor myself," exclaimed Mr. Whop 
 pers, " can answer you when such a poet will appear ; but 1 
 think I can venture to say that if he appears, and writes that 
 word in the place you propose, no mortal on this earth will 
 have a better right to say ' How is that for high ? ' " 
 
 There was a general laugh. Even the bland and, towards 
 women, ever deferential Captain smiled a broader smile 
 than usual. 
 
 Mrs. Lasher turned upon him somewhat fiercely. " Are 
 you too among the scorners ? Are you too a skeptic? Do
 
 3 2 6 A VER A CA IN. 
 
 you doubt all manifestations ? Do you doubt that a table 
 can move without human hands touching it ? " 
 
 "Oh no, Madam," replied the Captain. "I have not the 
 slightest doubt of that. I have known it. I have seen it 
 with my own eyes." 
 
 " You have ! " exclaimed Mrs. Lasher, a sudden smile 
 rippling from brow to chin, and breaking the rigid lines of 
 her face. " Listen, Dr. Droney. Listen all. The Captain 
 will tell us his experience. You have seen a table move ! 
 under what circumstances pray ? Who was the medium ? " 
 
 "There wasn't any medium, Madam. We never do have 
 any medium in those latitudes. It is always flap-flap, roll- 
 roll, as lazy as a dead donkey in a duck pond, or else you 
 have the very devil himself tearing away at your gaskets and 
 ring-bolts. There is no medium about it." 
 
 "But the table-turning? " 
 
 " Oh yes, Madam. I have seen a table turn completely 
 over. I have seen it break its lashings and jump up and 
 smash the lamp hanging over it." 
 
 " What a violent spirit ! " 
 
 " What an evil spirit ! " exclaimed Dr. Droney. " It 
 proves my theory : evil spirits all the devil and his imps, 
 nothing but the devil ! nothing but the devil !" 
 
 "When was this, Captain? when was it?" demanded 
 Mrs. Lasher in a tone of intense interest. 
 
 " Well, it was in a tornado just oft" the Isle of Bourbon. 
 You see we lay on our beam ends for more than five hours, 
 and when the wind lulled the sea got up, and I thought more 
 than a dozen times that the old ship would turn bottom 
 upwards. I tell you what, I felt like saying with Gonzalo, 
 ' Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of 
 barren ground, long heath, brown furze, anything' " 
 
 " Pshaw ! ' exclaimed Mrs. Lasher, rising from the table. 
 " Nothing but a tornado ! " 
 
 "Nothing but a tornado?" echoed the Captain. "I can 
 tell you what, ma'am, if you had been there you would have 
 cned anything but a tornado. Why, ma'am, do you know
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 327 
 
 what a tornado is ? a big storm, now, I presume you think. 
 Permit me to explain the difference ; if you had five or 
 six big storms all blowing together one way, say nor'- 
 west by north, and you brought along a tornado blowing 
 the other way, say sou'-east by south, the tornado would 
 blow all your storms into a dead flat calm, blow clean 
 over them, and blow a double-reefed-topsail breeze on 
 the other side. Why, ma'am, a tornado has been known to 
 twist a ship's masts right off short by the deck, and then 
 scoop the hull up, and smash it down a hundred rod inland. 
 I have known a hurricane, which is the same thing, roll 
 heavy cannon along a rampart like chips, and at Turk's 
 Island, once, a tornado took a bundle of shingles, tore it open, 
 and sent the shingles flying with such force, that one 
 striking a negro on the neck, cut his head clean off, and 
 the head went bowling along until it lodged in the wreck 
 of a salt-house three miles off." 
 
 Mrs. Lasher had no great taste for physical phenomena. 
 The aridity of mere facts the dulness and littleness of or 
 dinary nature, disgusted her. Like most women, she felt a 
 strong disinclination to cramp her mind down to the petty 
 rules and regulations of scientific observation. As she said 
 to herself, her world was the world of theory there, up-borne 
 upon the pinions of an enlightened faith, she could float from 
 peak to peak of knowledge far above the bands of miserable 
 scientists toiling amid the dust and mud of science and strug 
 gling for facts in the bonds of a self-imposed logic. What 
 interest could an adept in the supernatural and the transcen 
 dental a professor of socialistic and spiritualistic philosophy, 
 take in storms and tornadoes, and such foolish subjects ; so she 
 at once rose from the table, and, followed by her disciple, D.\ 
 Droney, stalked off to the drawing-room ; while Miss Jones 
 and a half-a-dozen others, including Luther and Mr. Whop 
 pers, drew round the Captain and encouraged him to go on 
 with his stories of marine table-tipping. Tea came and went 
 and still the Captain remained master of the field, while Mrs. 
 Lasher fingered her teaspoon in jealous silence. Even Dr.
 
 328 NEVER AGAIN, 
 
 Droney was more than once choked off from some profound 
 utterance, by an energetic call upon the Captain for more 
 talk. 
 
 At length Luther was compelled to interfere and inform 
 the Captain that it was time to make their contemplated visit 
 to Madame Steignitz, if they were to see her that evening. 
 
 In anticipation of this visit Madame had bought a third 
 chair. It had seen service, but was still fit for duty, and cer 
 tainly more comfortable than the top of a rough deal box, 
 which, in default of the chair, one of the three would have 
 had to occupy. She received the Captain courteously but 
 cautiously, and asked a variety of questions, finally coming 
 down to the subject of the ship in a hesitating way, that beto 
 kened, as Luther thought, no very brilliant prospect of their 
 being able to purchase the share. His heart began to sink 
 within him. 
 
 The Captain gave a glowing description of the vessel, 
 praised her rig, her model, and her construction generally, and 
 expressed his satisfaction with her sailing qualities, as repre 
 sented by her agents and first mate. 
 
 Madame listened with interest, but suddenly glancing at 
 Luther, her eyes drooped, and her face lengthened. " Oh, I 
 am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am such a poor woman," she 
 exclaimed. " If I were rich you should see, but I have so 
 little money. Oh, it is so very hard for a poor woman to get 
 along. I go round, I try to borrow some money on this 
 house. Everybody say, ' No, I do not like a second mort 
 gage.' But I cry, Mon Dieu, I must have the money ! 'tis for 
 to buy a ship for my dear boy here, and his brave friend, and 
 they say, ' Go away, we have no money to lend.' I say, What 
 can I do ? And then I think, think. Oh, I rack my brain, as 
 you say in English. But if I rack my brain till I go mad, 
 that will not make money. Besides that, no one likes a sec 
 ond mortgage. Money is very tight now. Nobody has got 
 money to lend. You know that, eh ? The newspapers all 
 say the money-market is so tight. One per cent., two per 
 cent, a month, eh ? "
 
 . NEVER AGAIN. 329 
 
 "Well, Captain, that puts an end to the Spoondrift," and 
 Luther could not keep his mortification from showing itself in 
 his tone of voice. 
 
 " Never mind, youngster, it is of no great consequence," 
 and the Captain took Luther's hand in his own, and gave it a 
 cordial squeeze. " It is perhaps better so, and you know I'm 
 used to it. As Edgar says, I am 
 
 ' A most poor man, made tame by fortune's blows.' 
 
 I have built me castles in the air before now, and have seen 
 them tumble without crying. As I walked her deck this 
 morning, I thought to myself that the old brig would better 
 correspond to my fortunes. Much obliged to you, ma'am, all 
 the same. You have shown your good will, and, as one of 
 my old friends says, ' hearty endeavor deserves a meed the 
 same in kind, if not so rich, as does a full performance.' 
 Much and deeply obliged to you, ma'am. So I'll bid you 
 good-night now, and leave you and Luther to your German 
 lesson in quiet." 
 
 " No ! no ! " cried Madame Steignitz, " sit you still. I 
 have not finished all I have to say. Take your chair take 
 your chair I insist." 
 
 As the Captain resumed his seat, the old lady rose, and 
 bustling across the room to the old buffet, pulled open a 
 drawer, and took out a parcel wrapped in brown paper, which 
 she placed on the table between her two guests. 
 
 The Captain eyed the greasy-looking package with some 
 curiosity. 
 
 " She can't be going to console us with a red herring," 
 whispered Luther, as he sniffed up a strong odor of that in 
 teresting animal. 
 
 " You see," said Madame, resuming her seat, " I could 
 get no money upon mortgage. Everybody refuse a second 
 mortgage. But somebody, he say to me, I like this house. I 
 will buy this house. I say, How much you give. He say. 
 Twenty thousand dollars. But, I say, I cannot move from my 
 room. He say, You need not ; you shall keep your rooms for 
 nothing, because you shall be my agent to rent the apart-
 
 33 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 ments. I say, Very well ; there is a mortgage of twelve thou 
 sand dollars that you can pay when it is due, and eight thou 
 sand you can pay me cash down, and two thousand afterward." 
 
 Luther and the Captain earnestly protested against any 
 such sacrifice for them. The price was too low. She must 
 not should not give up a property that was so rapidly rising 
 in value, and would be soon wanted for business purposes. Jr 
 wouKl be really throwing it away. 
 
 Madame Steignitz nodded her head in a knowing way 
 three or four times, and screwed her face into a cunning leer. 
 
 " Chut ! Don't you be afraid. I cheat him two thou 
 sand dollars. I know how old and rotten it is. I know all the 
 rat-holes. I know all the nuisance. Don't you be afraid. I 
 make a good bargain. My money will be better in a new 
 ship than in such an old tumble-down thing as this." 
 
 " But how long," demanded Luther, " will it be in forth 
 coming ? It takes so long to search titles and draw deeds, 
 and I am afraid they will not hold the share for us." 
 
 " Ah ! I think of that. I say to him I must have the 
 cash right down. You can wait for the deed, but I must have 
 the money now, to-day. There it is ; count it, and put it in 
 your pocket." 
 
 Luther took up the package, and untied the dirty piece of 
 coarse twine that encircled it. He unrolled five or six cover 
 ings of the stififest yellow straw paper, bearing the marks of 
 the pound of salt pork round which it had at first come from 
 the corner grocery, and took out eight new crisp bank-notes 
 of a thousand dollars each. 
 
 The old lady sat with her elbows on the table, and her 
 chin in her hands, evidently enjoying the looks of mingled sat 
 isfaction and astonishment with which the two men alter 
 nately regarded her, each other, and the bank-bills. "All 
 right, eh ? That will do, eh ? You put your monies to that, 
 and Monsieur le Captain will have his ship to-morrow. I 
 think, Luther, he must ask us to come down to his cabin, and 
 give us a little something good, eh ! Let me see, what shall 
 it be, -pati de foie gras ? No, no, that cost too much. We will
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 33* 
 
 have just an omelette aux rognons, or a fricandeau aux epi- 
 nards, and one small bottle of Champagne, and I will think 
 that I am once more in the little cabinet sur r entresol of the 
 cafe Anglais, Ah mon Dicu ! mon Dieu / Comme le temps 
 passe." 
 
 Arrangements for the purchase next day of the share in 
 the old lady's name were settled upon ; she seeming quite in 
 different to the details, her only apparent anxiety being that 
 the money should be securely pinned into Luther's vest 
 pocket. The gentlemen took leave of her with a few but 
 hearty acknowledgments. 
 
 Upon getting into the street they walked along together 
 for some moments in silence. 
 
 " What do you think Captain ? " suddenly demanded 
 Luther. 
 
 " I don't know what to think." 
 
 " Well, I'll tell you what I begin to think, and that is, that 
 all that story about selling the house is just a complete bit of 
 gammon, or in other words, a confounded lie." 
 
 " Possibly ; but it isn't for us to give it so hard a name. 
 Call it a little bit of feminine romancing that would be 
 nearer the mark. One thing I think, and that is that a woman 
 who points up eight thousand dollars for such a poor devil as 
 myself, out of pure affection for his young friend, has a per 
 fect right to tell any stories about it she pleases." 
 
 It was ten o'clock when they reached Bleecker Street. 
 Luther was not sorry to get in the house, and feel the money 
 all safe in his pocket. By the merest accident, Miss Jones 
 happened to be in the hall when they entered, and insisted 
 upon their stepping down into her private parlor in the front 
 basement, where she had ready a hot fried oyster with some 
 toasted ship-biscuit the nearest approach to a marine dish 
 that she could command. Both the gentlemen were in good 
 spirits, and somewhat hungry ; and as may be supposed, the 
 general geniality was not impaired by a glass of hot whiskey 
 punch, brewed by the fair hands of Miss Jones herself, and in 
 which, with some sly complimentary remarks, the gallant
 
 33 2 
 
 NEVER AGAIX. 
 
 Captain pledged his fair hostess, and afterwards drank to Lu 
 ther, Madame Steignitz, the Spoondrift, himself, and the 
 world in general 
 
 The Captain retired to dream beautiful dreams ; to glide 
 over halcyon seas in a splendid clipper ship under full sail, 
 without the necessity of touching braces or clewlines ; and to 
 wander hand in hand with a buxom maiden in frizettes and 
 flounces, through the flowery meads of a nice little box on the 
 Hudson. 
 
 Miss Jones retired, but not to sleep, her active fancy 
 converting the sounds that came from her neighbor in the 
 next room a hard sleeper into the creaking of bulkheads, 
 the moan of the waves, and the sighing of the wind through 
 the tightened rigging. 
 
 Luther was soon in a sound sleep, but was several times 
 startled out of his slumber by a frantic effort to jump a golden 
 gulf, and one time almost flung himself out of bed by a des 
 perate attempt to swim a silver sea, and lay a sprig of forget- 
 me-not, which he carried in his mouth, at the feet of a female 
 figure standing on the other side all decked in chignon and 
 crinoline, and costumed in a resplendent robe of some mate 
 rial so delicate and fine, that while concealing the form, it 
 allowed the general luminosity of the angel within to flash 
 through.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 The Spoondrift has sailed Spooner and Boggs on Aristocratic For 
 eigners Mrs. Ledgeral in trouble A Matrimonial Confab An 
 Anonymous Bouquet. 
 
 TT)LESSED be the man that first invented the chapter. I 
 JD don't mean an arbitrary and inartistic division at the 
 end of every fifteen or twenty pages, but the division that 
 marks the natural, yet connective sections of an organic whole, 
 like the joints of a bamboo, or the segments of a tape-worm. 
 A necessary indication and out-growth of an inherent specific 
 vitality. 
 
 Sentences are, and probably always have been, a common 
 and universal necessity of life. Paragraphs have their vir 
 tues and utilities, but the chapter is the crowning mercy of 
 novel-wrights, and, we may add, of novel-readers. 
 
 The chapter stands for so much time elapsed, so many in 
 cidents unrecorded, and, in fact, unmentioned ; so much sup 
 posititious development of character and plot, that it must be 
 considered one of the chiefest instruments of the novelist. It 
 saves so much of uninteresting description ; so much of tedi 
 ous detail ; so much of interlinking twaddle, that the novel- 
 reader is under equal obligations. 
 
 It covers ground, as well as time, so nicely ; and, when 
 used adroitly, shifts scenes so deftly, that both can join in the 
 invocation, blessed be the man who first invented the chapter. 
 
 We will take advantage, then, of this invention, and sup 
 pose the Spoondrift has taken her departure, and, under the 
 skilful guidance of her happy captain, is already nearing her 
 destined port. Luther still continues his visits to Madame
 
 334 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Steignitz ; and that not alone for his German, in which he is 
 making great progress, but because he has really become very 
 much interested in her. Despite some of her disagreeable 
 personal habits, and the actual squalor of her apartment, he 
 could not but admit the influence of her vivacity, her knowl 
 edge of the world, her great conversational powers, and her 
 most decided and manifest affection for himself. Even if he 
 had disliked her he would still have continued his visits. 
 They seemed to give her pleasure. She might- not be poor, 
 but she was evidently forlorn, and, in addition to pity, and a 
 stronger feeling of affection than he was aware of, he felt that 
 he owed her a deep debt of gratitude for his progress in the 
 languages, and above all for her aid in carrying out his 
 scheme for the advancement of the Captain. Luther was of 
 too generous a nature to speculate upon future benefits, but 
 he could not conceal from himself the fact, that in the balance 
 of obligations, the old lady might have it in her power to hold 
 him always at a disadvantage, however much he might do for 
 her. 
 
 Nothing unusual had occurred in Luther's life. Close at 
 tention to business, some study, and occasional theatre and 
 opera-going on nights when he was not visiting Madame, made 
 up the daily routine. His opportunities of meeting Miss 
 Helen Ledgeral continued few and far between. Once since 
 his first party he had been invited to Aunt Shippen's. He 
 saw her regularly at church, and had contrived to meet her 
 two or three times in the street, but there was always some 
 one with her, and there was no chance for anything more than 
 a bow and a passing remark. But looks and tones, like tele 
 graph wires, can be made to convey a great deal of informa 
 tion that the ordinary observer cannot even guess at ; even if 
 the message is intercepted, it is generally in cipher, and can 
 be read only by persons that have the key by heart. In this 
 way a great deal of sentimental progress can be made, with 
 out even the parties themselves being fully aware how far they 
 have gone. Like water percolating through a quicksand, the 
 slender, confined, impeded stream of love makes its way
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 335 
 
 silently, without surface indications, until the whole being is 
 saturated with passion, and ready to slump off into the ocean 
 of matrimony at the first high tide. 
 
 It won't do, perhaps, to say that Helen Ledgeral was 
 deeply in love with Luther ; but there can be no hesitation 
 in stating the fact that he was most desperately in love with 
 her. 
 
 It was, therefore, with a sentiment of deep mortification 
 that he found that there was to be a party at the Ledgerals to 
 which he was not invited. What could be the reason ? Had 
 she deserted him ? Impossible ! She had replied to his 
 passing salutation the week before by the brightest, most 
 cunning little smile, and the least touch of a blush, which said 
 as plain as words could say, " I am afraid that I am a little 
 too glad to see you." Could she have lost her influence with 
 her mother and Aunt Shippen, and dared no longer to suggest 
 an invitation for him ? Not probable. What could it be ? 
 Were the old folks getting jealous of him ? Perhaps ! But 
 how about that young Count who was coming from Germany, 
 consigned to the care of Mr. Ledgeral, was he good-look 
 ing ? He was very rich, that was certain, and a real Count 
 none of your impostors who have so frequently exploited the 
 ingrained flunkyism of the Anglo-Saxon character which 
 obtains everywhere, but, perhaps, with more intensity than 
 anywhere else, in New York society. 
 
 Luther's mortification took a tincture of rage as he cogi 
 tated the case of a veritable Count, young, rich, and hand 
 some. He will certainly fall in love with her, and how can 
 she resist him ? and why should she resist him ? Any verita 
 ble Count, old, rich, and ugly, could undoubtedly pick and 
 choose among all the other girls in New York. Didn't every 
 body say so ? Didn't all the newspapers say so ? Don't 
 Spooner, the head clerk, and the one who has been sent out 
 several times on foreign business for the house, say that the 
 funniest sight he has ever seen, both at home and abroad, 
 is a lot of American girls of high fashion running after some 
 vagabond sprig of English nobility, or some fiddling, dancing,
 
 336 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 gambling, frog-eating, macaroni-sucking, fortune-hunting loafer^ 
 with a Continental title about equal in real value, as titles 
 go, to a continental d n. Spooner says that the fellow has 
 only to pirouet, flap his wings, crow a little, and all the fash 
 ionable girls who have a drop of English blood in their bodies, 
 however diluted, will rush round him, fluttering and cackling, 
 and ready to swallow any stuff he can scratch up for them. 
 
 It is true, Boggs says that Spooner is, to some extent, 
 mistaken. He says that the girls are really too busy with 
 their own little flirtations with cousin Tom, and Tom's cousin, 
 Jim, to bother themselves much about aristocratic foreigners. 
 Their first social plumings and flutterings are enough for the 
 young things, or, in other words, the mere sparkle and foam 
 of the Champagne gets into their unpractised heads, and until 
 that goes off they never care for downright draughts of a for 
 eign vintage. It is the old ones, Boggs says, especially the 
 married women, and antiquated damsels of eight-and-twenty, 
 who really do all the gobmouching of society. You'll find 
 that the cackling over a sprig of nobility all comes from them, 
 and it don't indicate that they are such downright fools as you 
 might at first think. It is the reflex action that they care 
 about. Their attentions to foreigners of rank are merely 
 social boomerangs. They launch them out, apparently, with 
 a clear aim at the head of the unlucky foreigner, but really in 
 the hope that they will twist themselves around, and coming 
 back, knock down the thrower's own friends. Mr. Boggs 
 may be right, thought Luther, but it is doubtful. Spooner is 
 very emphatic. 
 
 Now, if an old, rich, and ugly Count could take his pick 
 from the general mass, why should Helen Ledgeral, who, to 
 be sure, is not of the general mass, refuse one young, rich, and 
 handsome ? Of course she would take him. 
 
 But then, what a donkey he, Luther, was making of him 
 self. The Count hadn't arrived yet. Perhaps he never 
 would arrive. So, as Whoppers would say, what's the use 
 counting on that Count. 
 
 But then, why had he not received an invitation ? Well,
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 337 
 
 he'd have his revenge. He'd do something desperate. What 
 should it be ? 
 
 Luther cogitated for some moments in silence. " I have 
 it," said he. " Yes, I'll send her an anonymous bouquet, and 
 I'll send her some verses with it. She'll know who it comes 
 from. It isn't the first time. True, I made up my mind that 
 I never would again. I would act fairly if they would act fairly 
 by me. I know it's wrong, but I'll go hang but I will do it. 
 I'll put in an allusion to her writing verses herself. If I can't 
 be present in person I will be in spirit. I'll make her think 
 more of me than if I were there," and with this diabolical in 
 tention Luther sat down to his desk. 
 
 Now it was with these verses in her hands that Mrs. Ledgeral, 
 the morning after the party, entered the library and carefully 
 closed the door after her. " My dear," she said, " I have 
 come to have a few words of private conversation with you. 
 You do not expect any visitor, do you ? " 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral started. He had grown, of late, very taci 
 turn ; very moody ; in fact, morose, except at times when an 
 occasional flash of forced jollity lighted up his manner. He 
 sat alone in his study most of his time when at home, and re 
 pelled, as an intrusion, any visits of his wife and daughters. 
 His looks began to betray some internal cause of anxiety. 
 He grew thinner, lost color, and a wan expression was fast 
 settling about eyes and mouth. But he would not tolerate 
 the slightest question about his health. His daughter Helen 
 was the only one with whom he maintained anything like the 
 old pleasant relations. 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral evidently had his secrets. Mrs. Ledgeral 
 watched him closely. At first she thought there was some 
 woman in the case. What more natural ? After fifty all men 
 are such confounded fools and simpletons when a pretty face 
 is concerned. Any woman with a little tact, and the slightest 
 modicum of good looks, can twist them around her finger. 
 But she was a sensible woman, and she wasn't going to trou 
 ble herself about anything of that kind. Besides she had 
 always exacted a fair amount of liberty for herself, and she
 
 338 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 recollected, not without a pleasant little blush, several flirta 
 tions amiable and innocent, of course which Mr. Ledgeral 
 had kindly overlooked, and which, at the time, as she must 
 admit, she had not been desirous of having investigated too 
 closely. 
 
 But, after all, there could hardly be a woman in the case. 
 The symptoms were decidedly against it. He seldom went 
 out of an evening ; never went to his club ; even the meetings 
 of the Historical Society were neglected. His allowance of 
 sherry at dinner had gained rapidly, and the Sunday Cham 
 pagne was becoming a daily custom. The single night-cap 
 of Bourbon had been frequently doubled, and more than once 
 Joseph had grown almost white in the face at a requisition for 
 gin and bitters before breakfast. It couldn't be a woman. 
 It must be that confounded "business," and yet there were no 
 rumors of disaster since they had got through so nicely the 
 last great panic. She knew he had lost a great deal of money 
 by outside speculation ; but then, if men will be so foolish as 
 to lose money, it serves them right, so long as their wives and 
 daughters have enough to pay Madame Volorem's bills, with 
 all the charges for corresponding " fixings " generally ; and 
 of any want in that way there was no sign. Why, then, should 
 she borrow trouble and bother herself about her husband's 
 secret cause of /anxiety ? Middle age is short and fashion 
 fleeting. No good-looking woman in society can afford to 
 waste her time over anything but her own troubles. Her 
 rouge-pot, together with the patent invisible wrinkle eradica- 
 tor, and Phalon's dcgrizleizer, come soon enough without 
 that. 
 
 " I have looked in, my dear," said Mrs. Ledgeral, " to 
 consult you about a matter that I think is beginning to require 
 consideration. Not that it is at all serious, but in these cases 
 one can't be too prompt. That clerk of yours Luther is a 
 very good-looking young fellow." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral lighted up at once when he found that his 
 wife was not about to probe any of his secret sores. 
 
 " Yes, very good-looking ; but I should hardly have sup-
 
 A~F.l'A' AGAIN. 339 
 
 posed his personal beauty sufficiently striking to have attracted 
 your observation particularly." 
 
 " Not mine particularly, others as well ; and among them, 
 if I am not mistaken, your daughter." 
 
 " Laura ? Pooh ! No danger, my dear. She has been 
 too well trained to look for manly beauty anywhere but in a 
 fellow's pocket." 
 
 " You're too stupid, my dear. Laura is older than he is, 
 and besides she is just on the eve of getting a proposition 
 from Jimmy Billinger. Goodness knows I have tried hard 
 enough for it. If the little wretch should back out now, and 
 carry his million over to those Brooklyn people, I shall be ter 
 ribly disappointed. You need not look so disgusted. You 
 know as well as I do that a girl like Laura can't marry at all 
 unless she marries a fortune. The miserable hundred thou 
 sand that you say you will give her doesn't permit her any free 
 dom of choice. She's got to marry, if she marries at all, a 
 rich man. Society will have it so. She cannot slink out of 
 Society ; give up all her tastes and habits and associations, 
 and live without sympathy or companionship, or else live with 
 people whose manners and habits she detests, and who, after 
 all, are just as mercenary and mean as people of the highest 
 fashion. I know it's disgraceful and demoralizing, and all 
 that, but what is the use of mincing matters between our 
 selves. I tell you what, I am so utterly tired of the daily lies 
 and shams and pretensions that fall to my share in the busi 
 ness of life, that it is quite refreshing to speak the truth once 
 in a while, if it is only to one's husband." 
 
 "Well, my dear," quietly rejoined Mr. Ledgeral, "I don't 
 suppose you have come here to convince me of the high esti 
 mate which the world and society, in all its grades, places 
 upon money." 
 
 " No, indeed ; I have wandered away from my real sub 
 ject. I came to tell you that if you don't look out for that 
 clerk of yours, your youngest daughter may give you some 
 trouble." 
 
 " What ? Helen ! You don't mean it ? "
 
 340 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 And, as usual when anything agitated him, Mr. Ledgeral 
 started from his seat and began to pace up and clown the 
 room. What if Helen should refuse to aid him in certain 
 vague plans which had been floating through his brain ? The 
 young Count Isenthal would soon arrive. It would be the 
 duty of Mrs. Ledgeral to entertain him, to amuse him, to 
 show him around, and no one could certainly do it better. 
 He would, of course, be a great deal at the house, if he did 
 not take up his actual residence with them. A travelling trip 
 might be arranged for Niagara and the West. Helen would 
 go along the young man could not fail to be charmed \\ith 
 her. Mrs. Ledgeral would, of course, favor the scheme, and 
 in the end, if events came to the worst in certain pending 
 affairs, it might be much easier settling uncomfortable busi 
 ness matters with a son-in-law than with an outsider, who 
 would have no special interest in the honor of the family. 
 
 Everything, then, depended upon Helen. No dependence 
 could be placed upon Laura. The Count never would fall in 
 love with her ; but with Helen there was some chance. She 
 had just the manners to suit a foreigner, and more especially 
 a nobleman and the training and education. And then she 
 had sense and feeling ; and Mr. Ledgeral felt that he him 
 self could work upon her affections, and make her, despite 
 herself, an instrument of his designs, and a means of salvation 
 at least from open disgrace. He turned sharply to Mrs. Ledg 
 eral with the question : " What ? Helen ! You don't mean 
 it?" 
 
 " I do mean it. I saw it the night he was first wanted to 
 fill up a quadrille set. I know she had been reading some 
 poetry of his in the Universe, that Mr. Whoppers had given 
 her. Well, there was nothing in that ; but I overheard her 
 promise to let him see some verses about the steam-boat acci 
 dent which she had written, and which we all thought so clever 
 for one so young. You recollect Professor Dozer, at Madame 
 Clangin's, said it was the best poetical composition written in 
 that school. Don't you recollect he paid her such a neat lit 
 tle compliment about changing her name from Helen to Sap-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 341 
 
 pho, and Whoppers would have published them if I had con 
 sented. Well, says I to myself, here are two young people 
 talking poetry, and both make verses, and instantly it struck 
 me that the young man was the sender of that bunch of roses, 
 with some lines, that Helen got a long time ago, before you 
 took the young man into the counting-house. Don't you re 
 collect there was something about Moses and the peak of 
 Pisgah, which you used to plague Helen about for a month 
 afterwards ? Be that as it may, I made sure there was danger 
 the last night at Aunt Shippen's ; so when his name was pro 
 posed for yesterday evening I just gave a positive refusal. I 
 expected Helen to persist, or at least to sulk a little, but she 
 did neither. She merely turned off as if it was not of the 
 slightest consequence whether he was invited or not." 
 
 " Well, I hope that relieved your mind," replied Mr. Ledg- 
 eral. 
 
 "Just the reverse, my dear. I began at once to grow anx 
 ious, and I kept my eye upon her. Well, last evening there 
 came a magnificent bouquet and a note. Helen opened it, 
 said there was no name, and slipped the note into her bosom. 
 I did not say anything then, because the Benxes had come. 
 Those people always do come so early. One would think 
 they might stay up in the dressing-room a reasonable time ; 
 but no, down they went, and I had to rush down the back 
 stairs to get into the parlor in time to receive them. I saw 
 Helen in the course of the evening slip out and go up to her 
 room. I knew it was to read her letter ; so this morning I 
 went into her room before she was up. I saw at a glance 
 that the note was not upon her dressing-table. If it had been 
 I should have felt relieved, and perhaps said nothing about it. 
 Said I : ' Helen, I want to see those verses you got with the 
 bouquet last night." She jumped out of bed with the key in 
 her hand I believe she had it under the pillow and went 
 and opened her writing-desk the one, you know, Uncle 
 Shippen gave her and got them out ; and as she did so I 
 really believe her hand trembled, and that she blushed a little, 
 but I can't be sure, as the blinds were not turned open, and
 
 342 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 she always has such good color. Dear me, I wish Laura had 
 as good a complexion,' but she is getting as sallow as can be, 
 and Americans are such geese, it won't do for her to be sus 
 pected of rouging. But there are the verses poem, the fel 
 low calls them and if they are not by your clerk, Luther 
 Lansdale, I don't know from whence they can come. Read 
 them, and see if you don't think that, if they come from him, 
 there is more than meets the eye. If he had not some kind 
 of understanding with her he would not dare address her in 
 that easy, bantering style. I wouldn't mind the usual senti 
 ment with sighs, and darts, and hearts, and all that stuff. It 
 might mean nothing, and be perhaps all on one side. But 
 there is, it seems to me, a spice of loving badinage here that 
 makes me apprehend trouble. I don't like to have a clever, 
 good-looking young fellow, who isn't worth a dollar, sending 
 such kind of verses to such a queer girl as Helen." 
 
 " That young fellow may have a brilliant future before 
 him," said Mr. Ledgeral, slowly nodding his head ; " he's one 
 of the rising kind." 
 
 " I don't care ; I want some one who has already risen 
 for my daughter. I want some one who has his future in his 
 pocket, even if he hasn't quite so much brains in his head. 
 But read it, and see what you think of it." 
 
 "A disguised hand, and too fine for my eyes," said Mr. 
 Ledgeral, resuming his seat. " Read it for me ; you have 
 mastered the writing, and can do the poetry justice." 
 
 " Oh, it is not at all difficult. It is as plain as fine type," 
 replied the lady, as she opened the paper and began to read : 
 
 "'JSy Petrarchus. 
 AD VITAM REDUX SED MORIBUNDUS.' 
 
 . " What does that mean ? " 
 
 " It means," replied Mr. Ledgeral, " Petrarch led back to 
 life, but dying." 
 
 " Oh, ho ! dying again for the love of Laura ! " exclaimed 
 Mrs. Ledgeral. " I wish it was Laura the fellow was dying
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 343 
 
 for. She'd soon send him to the right about ; but Helen is so 
 different ; and I can't trust her with such stuff as this : 
 
 THE ARGUMENT. The poem opens, after a motto from Propertius, with 
 an objurgatory allusion to bad news the possibility of its being 
 true questioned. The poet becomes classical and astronomical, and 
 invokes the planetary gods in vain. Appeals to Venus, and asks her 
 to send some heavenly express, some spiritual penny-postman. The 
 inexorable Parcae. The poet becomes still more astronomical the 
 Goddess of Love defines her position, or rather the poet does it 
 for her. She waves her Cestus a curious meteoric phenomenon. 
 Venus sends Chloris the Goddess of Flowers. Chloris enters, and, 
 for the sake of the rhyme, throws her flowers on the floor instead 
 of the table. She suggests a magnetized bouquet. Chloris becomes 
 decidedly complimentary, but not more so than the subject war 
 rants. The poet charges Chloris with a message : he makes a phys 
 iological supposition, and boasts, somewhat extensively, of what he 
 would do if there was a passage from the nose to the heart. Chloris 
 promises to deliver the message, suggests that it should be written, 
 but whether on perfumed paper or not the poem don't say. 
 
 I would not envy Linus his wide fame, 
 
 Nor Orpheus his power to charm Pieria's trees 
 . And call from Ismarus wild beasts to tame, 
 If only Cynthia my strains shall please. 
 
 PROPERTIUS. 
 
 " What say you ? Heavens ! It can't, it shan't be so, 
 
 That I, to-night, must Helen's smile forego ! 
 
 O Jupiter, and Juno, Saturn, Mars, 
 
 Bright Luna, and ye hosUof twinkling stars, 
 
 Help ! help ! You won't? Well then, O gracious Venus, 
 
 Who when in drink or love hast ever seen us 
 
 With pitying eyes, 
 
 Send from the skies 
 
 Some messenger, some heavenly go-between-us 
 Send Cupid, Iris, Zephyr, one of the Muses, 
 Or else that wing'd-heeled imp, with his caduc'us, 
 To bear to Helen's ear my best excuses, 
 And say, ' I wish to come, but cruel Fate refuses, 
 And that weak man must do as stern Lachesis chooses.' " 
 
 Smiled Paphia, sweetly, from her astral station, 
 Far down the Ecliptic line, 
 In the tenth Zodiac sign
 
 344 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 (She ne'er had greater southern declination) ; 
 And starting from old Capricornus' breast, 
 She waved the zone that binds her purple vest ; 
 When, swiftly, 'long the Occident, did fly 
 A shower of gems that lighted all the sky : 
 She waved the zone, and smiled, and, to my prayer, 
 Sent Chloris rosy Chloris, bright-eyed, fair, 
 Her with the plenteous horn, and flower-twined hair ; 
 Who, quickly throwing wide my chamber door, 
 Swept in, and strewed, all over on the floor, 
 A load of flowers that in her arms she bore. 
 
 " Come, now," she cried, " make up a nice bouquet, 
 And, while you make it, magnetize it o'er, 
 Charge it with sighs, and smiles, and tender kisses. 
 Then will I bear it where thy hope of bliss is 
 To tuneful Helen I'll it swift convey, 
 To her who knows how well ! 
 To strike the sounding shell, 
 And pour her full soul in melodious lay ; 
 To her whose dulcet rhyme, 
 Framed for all time, 
 The Aganippides themselves inspire : 
 To her, in whose sweet voice, 
 The listening gods rejoice ; 
 Whose lips, with Hybla's store, 
 Are sugared o'er ; 
 
 Whose hands, by Musagetes nerved with fire, 
 Shall draw yet nobler chords from out her deep-toned lyre.* 
 
 " And tell her, Bride of Zephyrus," cried I, 
 
 " Though poor this gift, if, through the sense of smell, 
 Her heart were reachable, that I'd compel, 
 
 From every flower that grows, 
 
 From every wind that blows, 
 
 From every stream that flows, 
 
 E'en from the scentless snows, 
 
 Sweet odors for her nose : 
 To hang her door with garlands I would fly : 
 With nosegays fill her area, and, in hours 
 Of dark midnight, I'd pile her stoop with flowers : 
 Cut off" her hydrant, and, in place of Croton, 
 Infuse Patchouly the perfume I dote on : 
 Bring out an engine, and profusely spatter 
 
 Whate'er the cost no matter
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 345 
 
 Her bed-room windows with best Persian attar : 
 
 Waylay her in the streets, 
 
 Rill her with sweets ; 
 And bury her beneath such heaps of roses, 
 That, if she had ten thousand thousand noses, 
 She'd cry, ' Enough ! enough ! take off your posies 
 My heart was icy, but it now un-froze is ! ' " 
 
 " I'll tell her," said Chloris, " but, perhaps you'd better 
 Write it down nicely, and send it in a letter." 
 
 " There now ! " exclaimed the lady, as she finished. " If 
 that had come from Jimmy Winthrop, or Bobby Beekman, or 
 Georgy Cutter, or Dickey Buggies, I wouldn't object to it, and 
 I wouldn't mind it ; but I know it isn't from either of them. 
 Ham Boggs, or Pete Weddemall might have written it ; but 
 they are out of the question." 
 
 " Is there no one else ? " demanded Mr. Ledgeral. 
 
 " No one, unless it might be Sammy Gillesland, or Franky 
 Dusenbury ; but I don't think it is either of them. No, it's 
 that Luther Lansdale, and no one else." 
 
 " I am glad to see," said Mr. Ledgeral in a testy tone, 
 " that you can give one young man his full name." 
 
 " Well, I admit," replied the lady, " that the fashion of 
 calling gentlemen by the diminutives of their Christian names 
 is absurd ; but I hear the girls do it so much nowadays that I 
 quite forget how vulgar it is. However, about this Luther?" 
 
 " Well, what would you have me do about him ? " demanded 
 Mr. Ledgeral. 
 
 " I don't know ; I suppose it wouldn't do to discharge him 
 at once." 
 
 " How would that help the matter ? Gainsby says that he 
 is getting to be perfectly invaluable. He could get a dozen 
 situations in a week. Besides Uncle Shippen wouldn't like it. 
 He has taken a great notion to the fellow. Do you know I 
 rather think that Uncle Shippen would favor him if he wished 
 to make suit to Helen. I heard the old man say to Mr. 
 Whoppers the other day : ' Why, sir, I have examined him , 
 there is no scrofula about him ; never had any consumption,
 
 346 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 or cancer, or insanity in his family ; all die of accidents, acute 
 diseases, or old age. Why, sir, he had a great-grandfather 
 that lived to one hundred and six, and then died of too much 
 whiskey. I consider him a match for the bust girl in town. I 
 should be proud of him for a son-in-law.' You know, my 
 dear, your brother is half mad about breeding out disease and 
 improving the human race." 
 
 " Oh, yes," replied Mrs. Ledgeral, with a sigh ; " he is so 
 queer. There is no doing anything with him. Well, I sup 
 pose we can't do any more just now. However, I will keep 
 a keen look-out. After all we may trust to Helen's good 
 sense. She is not a girl to be dictated to, and she don't care 
 half as much about dress and show as her sisters, but still she 
 is not a girl to make a fool of herself. I should despair of 
 making her marry a rich man whom she did not like, but I 
 should feel quite confident of persuading her out of any notion 
 for a poor one." 
 
 " You are taking the thing very seriously. I don't see 
 anything to be alarmed at. A young man sends her a bou 
 quet with some absurd verses where is the harm in that ? " 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral spoke testily, almost angrily, for at heart he 
 was more disturbed than my lady. The idea of Helen taking 
 a fancy for any young man just at that time, before the arrival 
 of Count Isenthal, interfered with the first faint shadow of a 
 plan which he was almost unconsciously forming in his mind. 
 
 " Well, my dear, perhaps you're right. If it were any other 
 young man I should not mind ; but somehow I am afraid of 
 that Luther. One thing, however," said Mrs. Ledgeral, 
 " I am not going to allow any more invitations to be sent to 
 Burling Slip. I never did approve of that kind of condescen 
 sion to employes. If you invite the whole set yuu get an 
 awkward squad. If you invite only those who are comme il 
 faut in dress and manner, you puff them up and offend all the 
 rest. There is no use in it. I don't care if it is a tradition 
 in the firm or the family. Traditions must end. Nobody 
 does it nowadays ; not even the most primitive people. I 
 don't suppose one of Tibbit's clerks ever entered the street
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 347 
 
 door, and catch Mrs. Hickson inviting one of her husband's 
 law students unless he was a good society young man. I 
 won't have it any more. I don't care what Uncle Shippen 
 and Helen say." 
 
 A tap at the door, and Joseph appeared with a plateful of 
 letters. Mrs. Ledgeral tobk her departure, and Mr. Ledgeral, 
 running the letters over, selected one post-marked Hamburg, 
 which he opened with a trembling hand. 
 
 " Good heavens ! " he exclaimed, starting up from his 
 chair. " So soon ! the next steamer ! I did not dream of 
 that. Taken passage in the Hansa ! Let's see she has not 
 arrived out yet she'll be due here in about three weeks. But 
 what is three weeks in such a strait ? Two hundred and fifty 
 thousand ! It isn't much. It wouldn't have been anything 
 two years ago ; but that first half million played the devil. 
 D n the luck ! " 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral ground his teeth and gesticulated violently. 
 
 " If he is of an inquiring turn, and presses matters, I see 
 nothing but a perfect smash ; in fact, if he should get into the 
 hands of some of those sharks I am not sure that he could 
 not drive me up with criminal proceedings." 
 
 The idea ! He a great merchant ; the head of the famous 
 firm of Ledgeral, Shippen & Co. ; director in a bank ; presi 
 dent of the Society for the Suppression of Juvenile Delin 
 quency ; vestryman of St. Cyprian's, and husband of the most 
 fashionable woman in town, to be in danger of criminal pro 
 ceedings ! Who in the world would imagine that a man of his 
 social and commercial portliness could stand in such a tight 
 place ? 
 
 Let us leave Mr. Ledgeral to his meditations. He won't 
 suffer much after he gets down town. If he does Delmonico's 
 is handy, and a little hot Scotch at the bar though that is not 
 very dignified, and must be swallo.vecl with rapidity, as a mat 
 ter of hurry and extreme business pressure or a bottle of 
 Champagne up stairs, always relieves one very much. 
 
 Luckily, he has many exciting matters to occupy his mind 
 and distract his attention by day but at night ah ! that is
 
 34 8 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 the time of trial, and he dreads it. Fear, the product of guilt, 
 is a true njght-plant Like some of those gigantic fungi the 
 botanists tell of, it springs up in the dark, and in an hour of 
 restless tossing, sudorific, horripilating wretchedness, canopies 
 our bed with a phantom toad-stool of gigantic size. The load 
 that the conscience can jauntily stigger under in the broad 
 light of day, amid the noise and bustle of the street, or the 
 crush of the crowded mart, will, in the gloom and silence of 
 the night, wear its bearer to his knees. In those wakeful 
 watches the moral sense grows doubly keen, and, oh horror ! 
 the deed gilded into a venial glow by sun-light assumes its 
 own true sombre hue of damning guilt. What can be more 
 awful than the thought that, perhaps, the darkness that comes 
 of death may likewise instantly clear the moral sense and ex 
 pose all the moral quality of our actions, freed from earthly 
 glitter, and force long-buried memories in upon the quickened 
 consciousness of the disillusioned soul ? The sternest ortho 
 dox Christian, with a Calvinistic turn of mind, who deems that 
 God's justice requires, in a single generation, the doom of 
 eternal perdition for fourteen hundred millions of souls, save 
 a couple of hundred thousand or so of the elect, need ask t >r 
 no better form or mode of punishment than that
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 The Count has come ! Social Commotion American Freedoms Helen 
 and the Count Helen and her Father A terrible Secret. 
 
 IT was a great day in certain circles the day the Hansa 
 arrived. Count Isenthal and two servants ! What can 
 he want with two servants ? Why the Marquis of Hartcourt 
 had only one when he was here. But there it was Count 
 Isenthal and two servants ! 
 
 "Perhaps one is his cook," said Mrs. Struggles, "and he 
 means to entertain us at dinner." 
 
 " More likely," said Mr. Whoppers, " the Count thinks 
 that we don't know how to dish sauer-kraut and sausages, and 
 has brought the fellow along for his own private table." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral had taken rooms for the Count at the New 
 York Hotel as being more convenient. It wouldn't do to let 
 the Count wander off up among the ravenous beasts of prey 
 in the Fifth Avenue. Unless a sharp eye was kept upon him he 
 would be carried off bodily, and completely monopolized. 
 Now the Count must be held well in hand, and doled out in 
 regulation doses. 
 
 The very first day Madame D'Oberge had come down 
 upon him with a card and an invitation to a musicale, and Mrs. 
 Adam T. Timmings had sent an invitation to dinner, and had 
 even gone so far as to consult Brown about the propriety and 
 possibility of having in the hall of her little twenty-five-foot 
 house half a dozen men in full armor, with flambeaux to light 
 the Count up stairs, " mediaeval style, you know." 
 
 " Now this kind of thing," as Mrs. Ledgeral emphatically 
 said, " would never, never do."
 
 35 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Mrs. Struggles called at once at the Ledgerals. She saw 
 the Count, and was introduced to him, and if there was any 
 astonishment at the performance it was not felt by her. It 
 more than rivalled in intensity of kotou the style of a great 
 American diplomat in the presence of titled celebrities, while 
 it infinitely excelled all his awkward and angular attempts at 
 genteel flunkyism in the way of grace. 
 
 Mr. Boggs happened to be present, and he told Mrs. 
 Stichen that it beat anything he had ever seen ; " and I have 
 seen," said he, " some pretty tall specimens of American ' fou- 
 fou-ism ' in my time. I recollect seeing Mrs. Timmings at a 
 small party at Rome. Somehow, by sheer pluck and push, 
 she had got in, and was figuring in a cotillion with divers and 
 sundry members of the old Roman noblesse. Well I never 
 before saw any one dive deeper, stay longer under, come up 
 in a bigger flutter, and duck again quicker ; but Mrs. Struggles 
 can jump off of the same plank and beat her two to one." 
 
 Mrs. Struggles, however, after all, did the right thing. She 
 took Mrs. Ledgeral aside and begged the use of the Count for 
 one matinee. " And if you could, my dear Carry," Mrs. 
 Struggles had advanced from Mrs. Ledgeral to dear Carry 
 " if you could, my dear Carry, let me have him, say about 
 Thursday of next week, for a dinner and a small German 
 after it, I should be so happy." 
 
 " I don't know, my dear," replied Mrs. Ledgeral ; " we 
 shall have to consult the Count ; it won't do to neglect his 
 tastes and wishes entirely. But I'll see what I can do for 
 you. I think I'll get you the dinner at least; but you must 
 give Delmonico carte blanche; particularly in the wine. Boggs 
 says that the last time he dined with you your Champagne had 
 a smack of Yvorn, and your cutlets, d la proven<;ale, were noth 
 ing but tough mutton-chops, with a little potato sauce over 
 them. And mind you, my dear, I won't have any of that 
 Pushton set." 
 
 Happily the Count knew nothing of the schemes and in 
 trigues of which he, or rather his title, was the object. He 
 was disposed to be affable and generally agreeable. He had
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 351 
 
 come out to see the country and to study the manners and 
 customs of an energetic, practical, thriving, but utterly uncul 
 tured, unassthetic, semi-barbarous people. Of course, in his 
 own country, he had not the least idea of associating, except 
 occasionally, upon terms of acknowledged superiority, with 
 bankers, merchants, and professional men. But in Rome one 
 must do as the Romans do ; and, after all, what can you have 
 better than the best. The Americans are, perhaps, not to 
 blame for having no established aristocracy ; besides it is 
 possible that there are classes and sets in society at large 
 where the division is too fine for ordinary observation. The 
 Count was of a philosophic turn ; he would inquire into that. 
 There might perhaps be found, even in democratic America, 
 something to appease the ingrained prejudice of German junk- 
 erism. 
 
 One thing, more than anything else, had tended to awaken 
 this prejudice in the Count, and to lower American society 
 in his eyes, and that was the facility with which certain of 
 his countrymen assumed prominent social positions, who, at 
 home, would stand about as much chance of figuring in the 
 best society as they would of soaring to the moon. The 
 Count was ignorant that the same thing takes place with 
 Americans abroad. He did not know that hundreds of push 
 ing, unscrupulous, underbred representatives of the Great Re 
 public, with manners perhaps stereotyped by a few dips into 
 the fashionable life of hotels and boarding-houses, but so 
 thinly coated that the native brass and pewter shines through 
 upon the slightest social friction he did not know that hun 
 dreds of such people abroad enjoy a position which they could 
 never achieve at home, and that many of them really do mount 
 into the seventh heaven of republican enjoyment into the 
 company of the fashionably just,made perfect into the crowd 
 of blessed titled people who have nothing to do but sit all day 
 long with coronets upon their heads, singing praises to the 
 great ineffable BOSH. 
 
 But all this deep-seated contempt for American society 
 was more than counterbalanced by the profound respect, com-
 
 352 NEVER AGAIN 
 
 mon to most Germans of the upper or educated classes, for 
 the practicality of the American people. Why, they are a more 
 practical people than the English, and the Germans have long 
 sighed with secret envy of them. No sooner is a theory 
 started, or a principle of science discovered, than the Ameri 
 cans seize it and try to turn it to practical account get some 
 thing out of it money, comfort, some kind of utility. Of course 
 ^this is not a very lofty national characteristic ; of course the 
 Americans have no real culture ; they have no solid learning ; 
 no accurate scholarship ; no profound thinking ; no assthetical 
 development ; no depth in anything. It is all hurry-scurry, 
 slap-dash ; cut down woods, run up cities, start churches, make 
 laws, build steamboats, and telegraphs, and mowing-machines, 
 and sewing-machines ; all of which are really German inven 
 tions, and with every turn or twist grind out dollars. Now 
 the German has in his heart the wish to do so likewise. He 
 longs to show that he is not merely the learned dreamer that 
 people take him for ; that if he has the chance and the room 
 that is, if he can only extend himself a little ; say, for in 
 stance, somewhat more firmly on the Adriatic and the North 
 Sea, and a good deal more squarely upon the German Ocean 
 he can develop a practical spirit equal to that of any nation ; 
 can become as aggressive, as pushing, as realistic as an Amer 
 ican or an Englishman ; and that ships, colonies, and com 
 merce would prevent the swallowing up of his surplus popu 
 lation by English-speaking people, and the consequent rapid 
 spread of the English tongue, which, more than anything else, 
 to many Germans, is an object of avowed envy. 
 
 Physically, the young Count was a Teuton of the yellow- 
 haired type, even to his long straggling whiskers and mous 
 tache. Blue eyes, and a complexion to match, and a lanky 
 form with big hands and feet, made up his claims to manly 
 beauty. There was, however, a certain style ; a hodge-podge 
 of ease and awkwardness, of simplicity and pretension, which, 
 precluding anything like elegance, and far removed from the 
 Yankee ideal of aristocratic manner, was nevertheless, in it 
 self, rather effective, especially as he was unquestionably a
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 353 
 
 real Count, and rich at that, which was a merit that few other 
 German Counts or Barons, genuine or bogus, visiting America, 
 had ever possessed. He was well educated, talked well, spoke 
 English nicely, touched the piano delicately, and managed 
 about five notes of a tenor voice skilfully. He was, in fact, 
 ein Mann von Geist. 
 
 He was also, clearly, a young man who had a proper and 
 prudent regard for the great business of making or saving 
 money, and getting as big an interest upon what he had as 
 could be done without too great a risk of the principal. In 
 other words, he had in him the makings of a cautious specu 
 lator. It needed but a knowledge of this trait to make him a 
 most interesting character in New York society ; but not even 
 Mr. Ledgeral knew that almost the first thing he did upon 
 landing was to make some quiet inquiries as to the financial 
 standing of the great merchant, and the estimation in which 
 certain securities were held in the market. Nothing could 
 be more satisfactory than the answers : " Mr. Ledgeral was a 
 safe man if there was one to be found in the world ; not so 
 rich, of course, as Astor, or Yanderbilt, or Stewart, but just 
 as good, and the securities were fully as safe as United States 
 bonds, and those, you know, are better than Consols, because 
 they are sure to be paid." There was no necessity, therefore, 
 for going into business matters at once. He could give him 
 self up to the festivities of the day ; dance and sing and flirt 
 with the girls, who, in general, can do all three with more 
 spirit and style than either the slow and simple-minded maid 
 ens of Fatherland, or the speedy but rather ponderous belles 
 of the British Isles. The mother-and-governess-ridden demoi 
 selles of France are, of course, nowhere in such a compari 
 son, and the only rival an American girl need fear is the fully 
 emancipated married Parisienne. 
 
 The Count was charmed. The opera season happened to 
 be brilliant, and a spirited rivalry in the theatres. The drives 
 and rides in the Central Park he thought delightful ; and then 
 there was every day somewhere for dinner terappin, prairie 
 hen, and canvas-back, with better Champagne, and more of it, 
 2 3
 
 354 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 than he had ever drunk before. And then the oysters ! Well, 
 the Count agreed in opinion with the late Karl of Carlisle that, 
 for an ante-prandial whet, the Imperial, the Ostend, the Na 
 tive, do pretty well ; but that for solid enjoyment, in a hun 
 dred forms rising, at times, to the highest pitch of bivalvu- 
 late ecstasy you must go the Blue-Pointers, the Chingorora's, 
 the East Rivers, to the tiny crustacean of Massachusetts, or 
 the fat, pungent, golden-hued mollusk of Shrewsbury Inlet. 
 But it was not alone in the question of oysters that the Count 
 showed his good judgment and taste. 
 
 The superiority of Helen Ledgeral in general cultivation 
 and in manner to her sister, and to girls of her own set, struck 
 him strangely and strongly, and, while eliciting his warmest 
 admiration, exercised his philosophic insight, and gave him a 
 very agreeable object of profound study. 
 
 Unluckily, the Count was ignorant of some of the condi 
 tions of the problem. The influence of Aunt and Uncle 
 Shippen was a quantity without which he couldn't well work 
 out his equation, and which, on so short an acquaintance, he 
 could hardly suspect. That she had better training than gen 
 erally falls to the lot of American girlhood was evident ; but 
 how could he know that she had been subjected to the close 
 supervision of a sensible, practical woman of the world a 
 fashionable woman, it is true but a born and bred fashiona 
 ble woman, whose one look on humanity was thus not neces 
 sarily limited to the narrow confines of her set. 
 
 " Whence comes it " exclaimed the Count, " that this girl 
 has by so much, of superiority to any of her sex that I have yet 
 seen ? Why do I look at her with an eye so deeply curious ? 
 Why do I begin to consider her with a mind so profoundly 
 inquiring ? Is it that I commence to see in her not her, but 
 an eidolin of passion, and that it is my imagination that effulges 
 the light that crowns her brow ? No, no ; I am cool, I am 
 unimpassioned ; I am not in love ; I see her and not an eikon. 
 What efficient cause, then, upheaves her above the plane of 
 American common-place into the region of the universal 
 ideal ? I will question her."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 355 
 
 The next morning the Count called at Washington square 
 at an early hour too early an hour, for the ladies were still 
 in high conclave with a priestess of the modes. Helen, as 
 being the only one disengaged at the moment, had to go down 
 to entertain him until her sister and mother should be able to 
 descend. 
 
 " Hurry down as soon as possible, mamma. I can't un 
 dertake your high-born Herr more than ten or fifteen min 
 utes," and Helen closed the chamber door and rushed to the 
 head of the stairs at a most undignified and unladylike pace. 
 A passing stroke of the hand, and a dexterous circular sweep 
 of the foot, sufficed for adjusting her plumage, as she flew 
 down the staircase, her feet barely brushing the steps, and 
 alighted with a little bound in the hall. 
 
 Old Joseph put his head out of his den. 
 
 "What's dat? Oh, Miss Helen, I tought you ben gone 
 and sliding down de banisters agin." 
 
 " Agin, you old goose, you ! When did I ever slide down 
 the banisters ? " 
 
 " Well, den, you mussen do it now, I tell you, cause you 
 see what it is ; you break someting sometime," and the old 
 man threw open the parlor door. 
 
 " Ki ! " he exclaimed to himself with a grin, " can't she 
 go up and down stairs jiss like a streak of lightnum. Don't 
 have to kind of drag up and settle down, like some ob de 
 young ones dat come here. But I don't want she should 
 break someting ; sprain her oncle, or dilumcate her instep, 
 and have to scuffle round all de rest of her life. I must look 
 out for dat." 
 
 The Count had seen a good many things curious and 
 strange in America, but perhaps nothing more strange than 
 that freedom of manner which permits a young unmarried fe 
 male to receive and entertain alone a male visitor. A viola 
 tion of all the proprieties, a horrible and dangerous license he 
 was at first disposed to consider it, but his views had been 
 somewhat modified in a discussion of the subject with Mr. 
 Boggs.
 
 356 NEVER AGAIX. 
 
 " You see, Count, ' propriety ' is a mere relative term ; 
 what is proper in one place is not proper in another. Among 
 some of the politest and best-mannered nations of the world, 
 a man expresses respect by taking his shoes off and keeping 
 his head covered but let a fellow here come into a drawing- 
 room barefoot, and with his hat on, eh ! Now, whenever any 
 one is doing something, however shocking it may be to others, 
 which does not seem improper to the doer, it does not neces 
 sarily imply any demoralization. A French girl, in the case 
 we have mentioned, would think that she was doing some 
 thing very wrong ; and the gentleman would think so too, and 
 fancy himself excusable in taking any advantage of the con 
 scious and intentional indelicacy." 
 
 " I see," said the Count. " The stranger has a right to 
 criticise a custom in the abstract, but he must not jump too 
 rapidly to conclusions as to mental and moral conditions 
 which, in his own country, would be perfectly legitimate from 
 similar premises." 
 
 " Precisely," replied Mr. Boggs ; " a good illustration may 
 be seen in the difference on certain points between the two 
 sexes. A gentleman, you know, may smoke, chew, drink, and 
 swear that is, within bounds without absolutely losing his 
 character of gentleman without completely dropping all self- 
 respect. But it is not so with women, even in this country ; 
 at least not as yet. If a lady, with us, should openly indulge 
 in drinking, chewing, smoking, and swearing, she would lose 
 caste ; she would feel that she was doing wrong, doing some 
 thing not warranted by fashion. She would consequently 
 lose all self-respect, perhaps lose all control of herself, and 
 go from bad to worse. But in time ajl this may change. 
 Women's Rights are making such progress that the change 
 may come very soon, and women be elevated to all the privi 
 leges of the male sex. And when that time arrives it would 
 be a great mistake in a stranger to argue, because a lady 
 regularly takes her eleven o'clock bitters, or blows a weed as 
 she gapes out of the windows of Sorosis, or interlards her 
 conversation with a few mild oaths, that she is not a lady, or
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 357 
 
 that there is anything really wrong about her. You see the 
 point, don't you ? " 
 
 " I do," replied the Count. And thus corrected and in 
 structed by the philosophic Boggs, it was with nothing but a 
 sentiment of pure pleasure that he saw Helen enter the room 
 alone. 
 
 The usual society chit-chat at first, and soon the conversa 
 tion wandered away from the region of personalities into the 
 wider fields of literature and art. The Count got so much 
 interested that, for the moment, he forgot to push his perqui 
 sitions in the direction he intended. Suddenly he bethought 
 himself of the inquiries he wanted to make. 
 
 " Why, Miss Helen ! " he exclaimed, " do you know we 
 have been talking ten minutes without one bit. of gossip 
 without any of that miserable, personal twaddle which makes 
 up so much of the conversation of society." 
 
 " Oh, you must not abuse society for indulging so much in 
 personal gossip. It has its uses and its utilities. It fills an 
 office that no other kind of conversation could." 
 
 " Do you think so ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ; Mr. Boggs explained it all to me one day. He 
 says that it is absurd to denounce it as an evidence of the stu 
 pidity of society. Very clever people indulge in it from a natural 
 curiosity about persons rather than things, which is the founda 
 tion and essence of all history. But beyond this, Mr. Boggs says 
 that personal gossip is of the greatest utility as a kind of shib 
 boleth. Society is nothing without exclusiveness. Now, if 
 you are exclusive you must exclude somebody, and we have 
 no artificial lines drawn for us as you have in Europe. There 
 is needed some test, and society instinctively turns to and en 
 courages personal gossip, the knowledge of ' who's who,' as a 
 kind of safeguard against invasion." 
 
 " Well, your friend, Mr. Boggs, is a very clever man," said 
 the Count ; " I perceive that he can find a reason and an ex 
 cuse for almost anything. But I should like to ask you one 
 question. Why is it that Miss Helen Ledgeral indulges in it 
 so little?"
 
 3 5 8 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 It was the look and tone, rather than the words, that made 
 Helen color up at the Count's question. 
 
 " Why is it," continued the Count, " that Miss Helen 
 Leclgeral always excites a disposition to talk and think of 
 other subjects than the little miserable -pardon the epithets, 
 but I will repeat them the little miserable personal twaddle 
 which, I must say, makes up more of the staple of conversa 
 tion here than in any set or circle it has hitherto been my for 
 tune to fall into ? " 
 
 " Oh ! thank you, Count, for the implied compliment. I 
 only wish I deserved it ; but " and with feminine art Helen 
 dodges out of the dangerous corner " we were talking of 
 Goethe ; you know his minor poems ? Do you recollect the 
 cathedral window, and how truly he presents it as an emblem 
 of poesy. I remember a verse or two in the translation. You 
 can see how they sound in English," and Helen repeated the 
 lines : 
 
 " ' Look on it from the outer square, 
 And it is only dark and dreary ; 
 Yon blockhead always views it there, 
 And swears its aspect makes him weary. 
 
 " ' But enter once the holy portal 
 
 What splendor bursts upon the eye ! 
 There symbols, deeds, and forms immortal, 
 Are blazing forth in majesty.'" 
 
 " Oh, I understand, Miss Helen ! " exclaimed the Count. 
 " You mean to say that you have accustomed yourself to look 
 at the windows from the inside. I understand." 
 
 Helen's laughing protest was cut short by the entrance of 
 her mother and sister. 
 
 "Where are you going, my dear?" demanded Mrs. 
 Ledgeral, as Helen, wishing to disclaim any share in the 
 Count's visit, was gliding through the open door into (lie 
 back parlor. 
 
 Thus addressed, she was compelled to take a more formal 
 leave ; she replied " that she was going at once to Aunt Ship-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 359 
 
 pen's that she had promised her aunt to be with her early in 
 the day." 
 
 And making her parting salutations to the Count, who rose 
 to open the door, she stepped into the hall, just in time to en 
 counter her father, who was coming out from his study. 
 
 " Helen," said Mr. Ledgeral as he stood in a hesitating 
 attitude with his hand upon the door. " Helen, I want to see 
 you for a minute, and it may as well be now as any other 
 time. You are disengaged ? " 
 
 Struck with a certain hollow cadence in his voice, Helen 
 started and looked around, and for the first time noticed the 
 very great change that had taken place in his face and figure. 
 She had known for several weeks that he had not been looking 
 quite as well as usual, but as he had made no complaints, and 
 had repelled all sympathizing inquiry or remark, and had even 
 at the dinner-table testily rejected, or rather resented a sug 
 gestion of Mrs. Ledgeral's, that he should send for Dr. Pet- 
 kaff, she had supposed that it was some passing ailment ; or 
 nothing more than the wear and tear of an exciting business 
 season. Now the change came upon her at one glance with 
 startling suddenness. 
 
 She saw her father standing in the doorway, and almost 
 leaning against the side, as if for support. His clothes, 
 usually fitting so nicely, and carried so jauntily, seemed to 
 hang upon him, if not in decided folds, at least in slight down 
 ward curves, that hinted of a shrunken form within. His 
 cheeks had not fallen away so much, but their healthy hue had 
 disappeared. In place of solid flesh there was a growing 
 puffiness ; and in place of the clear red and white complexion, 
 there was the thick muddy tint that comes when care and fear 
 govern all the movements of the heart, and send out with its 
 every pulsation an unhealthy current of half-oxygenated, bile- 
 laden blood. 
 
 "What is it, father?" exclaimed Helen, as she rushed 
 across the hall, and seized her father's hand. " Why, how 
 cold your hand is, and it trembles too. You are not well ! 
 What is the matter ? "
 
 360 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " Hush, my daughter ! You will disturb them in the par 
 lor. I am well enough. You need not fear for me, but I ad 
 mit 1 have some troubles, some cares," and Mr. Ledgeral led 
 his daughter into the study and closed the door. 
 
 " Troubles ! " exclaimed Helen, " and I can 1 ! help you ! 
 I can do nothing for you you " 
 
 " I don't know, my dear," replied Mr. Ledgeral as he drew 
 Helen down to the sofa at his side. " I don't know ; perhaps 
 the time may come ; but not now ; some other time : sooner 
 than we think perhaps. But now I want to say a word about 
 yourself. What is this that I hear from your mother about a 
 bouquet and verses ? " 
 
 Helen laughed, quite innocently, but she could not prevent 
 the tell-tale blood from momentarily deepening the delicate 
 tinge of her complexion. 
 
 " Y~ou mean the last that I have received the one that 
 came last night ? " 
 
 " Why, have you received more than one ? " 
 
 " Bouquets ? oh yes, mamma could have told you that I 
 have received a great many. Mamma takes a great interest 
 in my bouquets. She is quite proud of the quantity. Why, 
 they come pouring in sometimes by the dozen." 
 
 " And verses with them ? " 
 
 " Oh, not always." 
 
 "Well, we will stick to the one with the verses that came 
 last evening. I suppose you know where it came from ? " 
 
 " How could I, papa ? It was anonymous." 
 
 " Well, if you don't know I will tell you. It was from 
 Luther Lansdale. Don't you think I am right ? " 
 
 Helen laughed quite heartily. " Why, papa, I did not 
 dream that you were so good at guessing." 
 
 " You admit it then ? " 
 
 " I suppose so. You see mamma would not invite him, so, 
 to revenge himself, he sends me these absurd verses. They 
 are rather clever, don't you think ? I recollect you said a long 
 time ago that something he had written for the Universe 
 evinced decided literary ability."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 361 
 
 " That may be, my dear ; but that is nothing to the point. 
 I am willing to admit that he is clever, well-mannered and 
 good-looking, and he is certainly capable and attentive as a 
 clerk, but all that won't excuse impertinence." 
 
 " Impertinence ? Father ! " 
 
 "Well, perhaps not impertinence, for I suppose the young 
 man has some warrant for writing to you in the verses you 
 have given him in return, for I take it for granted you have 
 together discussed some of your own scribblings. Oh, you 
 need not turn away your head ; I am not going to ask you if 
 it is so or not. I will take back the word impertinence, and 
 substitute the word presumption. Yes, presumption, down 
 right idiotic presumption." 
 
 " Oh, papa, that word is fully as bad as the other. I don't 
 see how it applies any better ; Mr. Lansdale sends me a bou 
 quet : but that is nothing ; all the young men send all the 
 girls bouquets nowadays ; it is the fashion. Now why should 
 it be presumption in Luther, Mr. Lansdale, I mean, to send 
 me one ? you know he thinks he is under great obligations to 
 me for getting him his present position, and you don't think it 
 presumption to express his gratitude, do you ? " 
 
 " Gratitude ! " and Mr. Ledgeral roused himself for a mo 
 ment, and shook off his subdued and languid manner. Pass 
 ing his hand caressingly over the wealth of curls that made a 
 chignon superfluous, he gave his daughter a penetrating look 
 in which sparkled an arch vivacity to which Helen had for 
 merly been no stranger, but which she had not seen in his 
 eyes for months. 
 
 " Gratitude ! what a precious little goose it is, thinking that 
 she can humbug her old father so easily ! gratitude ! no, I 
 don't object to the young man's expressing his gratitude, but 
 I very much object to his making love." 
 
 "Oh, father! How can you suppose, how can you 
 think" 
 
 " Gently, my dear ; don't get excited, and I will tell you, 
 not only what I think, but what I know. The ordinary little 
 attentions and gallantries of society may mean nothing, in
 
 362 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 fact they generally do mean nothing ; a young lady may re 
 ceive any quantity of flowers from a young gentleman of her 
 set without seeing in them anything more than a very pretty 
 compliment which, perhaps, she but shares with others, 
 without having any right to draw conclusions more weighty 
 than that the young man, having more money than brains, 
 has ambition to be thought aux petits soins in some fashionable 
 quarter, and makes the flowers express a compliment he 
 would find it difficult to turn in words ; or that he finds him 
 self in unexpected credit with some incautious florist, and 
 must jump at any excuse to improve the opportunity of run 
 ning in debt ; or that his uncle in the country, who cares 
 nothing for flowers, keeps up a conservatory, and he thinks it 
 a pity to waste the chance of utilizing the clippings. But in 
 this matter of Luther Lansdale the thing is very different ; the 
 affair is much more serious. I will not stop now to say why, 
 and in what manner it is more serious. You understand what 
 I would say as well as if I had spoken it. In him it means 
 downright love-making ; and in him it means also, considering 
 all the circumstances, downright presumption if not something 
 worse I won't say a want of common honesty, but I will say 
 a want of correct feeling." 
 
 "Oh, papa ! " exclaimed Helen, "you are too hard upon 
 the poor young man ! I am sure he has a great deal of ex 
 cellent feeling." 
 
 " I did not say excellent feeling," dryly replied Mr. Ledg- 
 eral. " I've no doubt that he has plenty of it, and he has a 
 pretty good excuse for it too," and Mr. Ledgeral again laid 
 his hand upon Helen's curls, " but he knows that nothing can 
 come of it ; that he is not in a condition to make love in 
 earnest, and with a purpose ; that he can advance no proper 
 pretensions to your favor ; that he has nothing to offer a girl 
 brought up in fashionable life, and in habits of luxury and ele 
 gance, but his good looks, good manners, and a salary of fif 
 teen hundred a year." 
 
 Helen tapped her little foot upon the carpet, and screwed 
 up her month into an expression mutine.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 363 
 
 " Is he always going to be so poor ? " she demanded. " I 
 thought that in this country some of our richest men com 
 menced by being poor, and that a youth of industry and 
 energy, and knowledge, and talent, and ambition, was the best 
 foundation of a fortune." 
 
 " I have no doubt of his ultimate success," replied Mr. 
 Ledgeral, " although thousands full as clever as he fail. In 
 ten or fifteen years, perhaps, he may be able to offer a girl a 
 respectable if not a very elegant home. Can you afford to 
 wait for him so long ? " 
 
 " I don't know, papa. I shan't decide that question until 
 he asks me, and I don't think that he has the least disposi 
 tion to do so at present." 
 
 " That is, my dear, just what I find fault with. He has 
 no intention of asking such a foolish question, and yet the 
 simpleton is, by his silly gallantries and attention, encourag 
 ing his own absurd feelings and trying to engage yours. You 
 had better put an end to it, my dear, and not leave the task 
 to your mother or myself." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral marked the flush that mantled his daughter's 
 face, and he hastened to correct his mistake. A threat is the 
 last weapon of American parental authority, and must be used 
 with great caution. American girls have so much of their 
 own way, and do so much of their own bringing up, that in 
 matters of the heart a parental threat, in nine cases out of ten, 
 only arouses opposition. Plead with them, argue with them 
 in a gentle way ; coax them, wheedle them, laugh at them, 
 make fun of their idol, pick them up in time and break up 
 associations by flitting to the Rhine, or, if necessary, to the 
 Danube and the Nile ; and, if possible, start Jim in opposi 
 tion to Tom, but don't drive your loving daughter into the 
 arms of the adoring and adorable Tommy by getting angry 
 and threatening to "break things." 
 
 " Mind, I don't insist upon your duty to us, my dear," re 
 sumed Mr. Ledgeral ; " that I leave to your own judgment 
 and heart ; but I think that you owe it to the young man to 
 put an end to his attentions. He no doubt thinks that you
 
 364 NEVER A C.I IX. 
 
 are, or will be, rich ; oh, you need not think that I mean he is 
 after your money ; but well well " 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral started up in an agitated, almost frightened 
 manner, and made two or three turns up and down the room. 
 There was something in the excited tone of his voice, and in 
 the sudden dropping over his whole visage of such an expres 
 sion of intense misery, that Helen sat riveted to her seat in 
 wonder and alarm. 
 
 " I'll tell you something," he suddenly cried, flinging him 
 self on to the sofa by her side. " A secret a profound se 
 cret as yet, though God knows how soon the whole world will 
 know it but I must tell it to some one >x I will tell it to you 
 to my daughter -to my little Helen." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral threw his arms round his daughter, and 
 clasped her in a passionate embrace. He pressed her head 
 convulsively against his heart, kissed her on the forehead, and 
 laid his cheek against the soft masses of her lustrous hair. 
 
 Helen felt the deep sob that shook his frame felt the hot 
 scalding tear that fell upon her upturned face. Her own 
 emotion a compound of love, curiosity, astonishment, and 
 fear was, for an instant, too violent for speech. She clutched 
 his hand in hers, and as her voice came to her she whispered 
 with scanty breath, " What is it, father ? Tell me say what 
 is the matter ! What can I do ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes," muttered Mr. Ledgeral ; " I will tell my little 
 daughter ! why should I not '? whom else should I tell ? She 
 has more sense than any of them, and she loves her father 
 more than any one else does ; don't she, my darling my 
 dearest darling? Yes, yes, I will tell you, Helen," he re 
 sumed, in a firmer tone. " It will relieve my mind ; it will 
 lighten my burden. I know it is selfish to load your young 
 heart prematurely, if only by a day or an hour, with trouble ; 
 but I am a weak, wicked man in more things than this, and it 
 is, after all, necessary that you should know." 
 
 A sudden wave of terror swept through the young girl's 
 veins ; a sharp, swift thrill of anguish vibrated through every 
 nerve ; a something gigantic, horrible, ghastly, seemed all at
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 365 
 
 once to leap out from the shadow of the future and en 
 velop her in an atmosphere of black despair. Her father 
 was about to announce his apprehension of the most terrible 
 malady that affects humanity a mind diseased, and Oh hor 
 ror ! he is perhaps already insane ! She suddenly threw her 
 arm around her father's neck. 
 
 " No, no, father ! it cannot be ; it must not be ! You are 
 deceived ; I know you are." 
 
 " No, Helen, I am not deceived. I am there can be no 
 doubt of it a ruined man." 
 
 " Some temporary ailment some curable disease ! I 
 know it must be. We will have the best advice ; we'll seek 
 it here in Europe everywhere ! " 
 
 " No, no, Helen, I do not mean my health. Would to 
 God it were merely my health. I am ruined in fortune ! You 
 need not look so blankly incredulous it is true utterly 
 ruined in fortune ! No one knows it as yet ; nobody must 
 know it so long as it can be kept a secret. Your mother must 
 not know it ; your sister must not know it ; and, above all, 
 your uncle Shippen must not know it. My only hope is in 
 keeping it secret. But I tell you you only I am ruined ! If 
 you were to be married to-morrow it would be expected that I 
 should treat you as I have promised to treat your sister, and 
 give you a house and a hundred thousand dollars. My poor 
 little darling, I could do nothing of the kind. I might give 
 you a trousseau and a splendid wedding, but not a cent be 
 sides ; and even that would be robbery." 
 
 Helen felt something of a sense of relief at the announce 
 ment. Her first fear, so strong, so overwhelming, having in ^, 
 degree blunted her sensibility to any less horrifying emotion. 
 
 " I cannot understand it ! " she exclaimed. " So sudden, 
 so strange ! But, father, why should you worry about it? We 
 can live without fortune. Everybody is not rich ; and I am 
 sure everybody says that wealth is not happiness. We can 
 live ; we can love each other just as well." 
 
 " Ah, Helen, you know nothing of what the crash will be 
 when it comes. Wealth is not always happiness, but it is, in
 
 366 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 this age, and in the society to which we belong, the sine qua 
 non of happiness ; the something without which happiness or, 
 in lieu of happiness, comfort, amusement, and mental and 
 physical enjoyment are difficult of attainment. But it is non 
 sense for me to sit here and entertain my little girl with the 
 common-place twaddle, pro and con, of the moralists, about 
 wealth. No doubt in practice we could be as philosophic as 
 other people. No doubt we should be able to adapt ourselves 
 to altered circumstances. No doubt that we should have some 
 resources of enjoyment, even in poverty, if that poverty were 
 not disgraceful." 
 
 " And would our poverty be disgraceful ? Why to us more 
 than others ? " demanded Helen. 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral passed his arm round his daughter, and 
 drew her down to him. 
 
 " I cannot explain it all to you, my darling. You would 
 not understand it, if I did ; but I fear, in fact I know, that if 
 I fail now, I shall not only be a ruined, but a dishonored 
 man." 
 
 " Dishonored ! oh father ! Is there no possible way to 
 avoid it. Cannot Uncle Shippen " 
 
 " Hush, my dear, not a word of him. He will suffer im 
 mensely, and I am afraid will prove, at least in words, my 
 hardest friend. The only thing that will save me can save 
 my honor, and the honor of us all can save you, your mother 
 and your sister, is time. A year, or at most two years, would 
 put all things right, and nobody but you and I be any the 
 wiser." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral paused, and looked at his daughter with a 
 most woe-begone and pitying expression, but the pity that 
 was in his heart was entirely for himself. He was too much 
 taken up with his own misfortunes, and the consequent im 
 pending calamities, to think of anything else or to properly 
 estimate any sacrifice that would save him. He loved his 
 daughter with something more than mere blind paternal affec 
 tion. He had learned to admire her, and to respect her. 
 She occupied a place in his heart to which neither his wife
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 367 
 
 nor his eldest daughter had attained, and yet no thought of her 
 feelings moved him, when hesitating as to how best to extort 
 from her a consent to his plans. Still, let us do him justice 
 and modify our ideas of his selfishness by a proper considera 
 tion of all the circumstances. Had he .been put to it, he 
 would have argued that it was not alone to save himself, to 
 save his honor, to save the credit of the great American Mer 
 chant, but to save his family, to save this very daughter from 
 the evils and miseries and degradation that would attend his 
 failure, and he would have argued still more strenuously, that 
 his plan involved on her part no sacrifice at all. That to 
 urge upon his daughter a husband with rank, fortune, and 
 fashion, is nothing more than the duty of any father, and that 
 he ought, apart from any advantage to himself, to exert his 
 parental influence to that end. 
 
 But Mr. Ledgeral had his doubts as to the best way of 
 presenting the subject. He felt that Helen had a certain ele 
 vation of character that might lead her to spurn considera 
 tions which have such an overwhelming influence on the ordi 
 nary female mind. He felt that while her good sense, and 
 sound judgment, and family training, and the influence of the 
 social atmosphere which she had breathed all her life, would 
 prevent her making a fool of herself, and yielding all pros 
 pects of comfort and enjoyment for life to the promptings of 
 passion, or the suggestions of a silly and absurd sentimental- 
 it} 7 , on the other hand she might be equally indisposed to buy 
 the comforts and pleasures of wealth and position by any sac 
 rifice of feeling or affection. She might prove quite deaf to 
 any arguments of mere self-interest, quite blind to any pic 
 tures of mere worldly splendor and pleasure. 
 
 No ; the better way would be to trust to her affection for 
 himself, allow the terrible necessities of the case, and make 
 an appeal to her heart. 
 
 It needed no acting on his part for his white countenance 
 to assume a most beseeching expression. 
 
 "Can nothing be done ?" murmured Helen. 
 
 " It all depends upon you," replied Mr. Ledgeral.
 
 368 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 "Upon me?" 
 
 " Yes ! there is no other help that can avail me. You 
 alone can secure the necessary time. Listen to me. This 
 young Count you see what he is : tolerably good-looking, 
 cultivated, refined in his manners that is for a German and 
 rich. Well, there is not a girl in town that would not jump at 
 him for a husband. Now, I can see that he has conceived a 
 desperate admiration of whom do you suppose ? Of you ! 
 You doubt it ? You need not. Your mother thinks so too. 
 In fact he has as good as told us so." 
 
 Helen jumped up from the sofa, and stood before her 
 father with her hands firmly clasped. 
 
 " Oh, father, it is impossible ! I can't have it ! I won't 
 have it ! I don't dislike him, but I don't love him ! I never 
 can love him. He may be all that you say he is, but I have 
 made up my mind. I won't marry a European. They don't 
 make good husbands, everybody says so. They have at the 
 bottom of their hearts a contempt for women. I am not go 
 ing to be the slave or servant of any man. I don't want a 
 husband who looks upon me as an appendage instead of a 
 partner, who thinks it ought to be enough happiness that I 
 have the felicity of waiting upon him and attending to his 
 whims, and keeping his house, or showing off his generosity 
 and good taste at parties and balls. I don't want a husband 
 at all, but if I have one, I want an American husband ; I 
 want a husband to love me and respect me and wait upon me 
 and take care of me ; I want a husband who will make me 
 love him with a perfect love, with a love that casteth out all 
 fear, all sense of obligation ; all feeling of inequality on the 
 one hand, and all feeling of self all sense of contrariety of 
 interest, on the other. But I don't want any husband ! I 
 won't marry any one. You must stop this thing, don't let it 
 go any further. I can't have it, I won't have it ! " 
 
 Helen stopped short in her energetic tirade. Her bosom 
 heaved, and her breath came short, and she clutched her 
 hands tightly to keep them from rudely gesticulating in her 
 passionate excitement.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 369 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral took her hand in his and drew her down 
 again to his side. 
 
 " Hush, hush, my daughter ! you will alarm them across 
 in the parlor." 
 
 " And besides ! " suddenly exclaimed Helen, " what has 
 the CounL to do with the subject we were talking about, and 
 how can I secure you the necessary time ? The Count can 
 have no influence with your creditors ? " 
 
 " Yes, all powerful influence." 
 
 " He is not one of them ? " 
 
 " Yes, the principal." 
 
 " And he makes my hand the price of his forbearance ? " 
 
 " No, no, Helen ; you do the Count great injustice. He 
 makes no such bargain as that. In fact I may be mistaken 
 in supposing that he will be disposed to make any bargain at 
 all. It is quite possible that his admiration may not go to the 
 extent of proposing for your hand. You must recollect that 
 he has a great many prejudices to overcome, as well as your 
 self. There is your want of rank. True, your birth and breed 
 ing are the best in this country, and he would not esteem it a ter 
 rible mesalliance, as he would a marriage with the daughter of a 
 banker or merchant of Frankfort or Hamburg. But you are 
 a republican and he a member of the most stupidly prejudiced 
 the most absurdly narrow-minded aristocracy in Europe. 
 So it may be, then, that there is not any very strong founda 
 tion for either jny hopes or your fears. Let us wait awhile be 
 fore we make any resolves that we may repent of. What I 
 want of my little daughter now is, that she should turn the 
 thing over in her mind, and try her best to save her father, 
 and her mother, and herself too, from a very great calamity. 
 Try and see if you can't cultivate a little higher estimate of 
 the young man's numerous good qualities. I would not urge 
 you to anything that I thought disadvantageous or disagreea 
 ble, but I think that you have taken a wrong view of the mat 
 ter ; that in your mind you have not given the Count fair 
 play. I think that he is the most eligible match in town, and 
 I will say that I have never seen any one to whom I would 
 24
 
 370 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 more willingly intrust your happiness. Nay, nay, I know 
 what you would say. I don't want you to make love to him, 
 but don't be rude to him ; don't refuse to listen to him. You 
 can't fully realize what consequences may follow any action 
 of yours. I can't explain the matter fully, but you can take 
 my word for it, the most terrible fate hangs over your father 
 by a single thread. Mere failure, ruin, poverty, could be 
 borne. But come closer to me, my darling, that I may whis 
 per it to you. Mercantile dishonor and social disgrace may 
 mean much or little ; but what do you say to a felon's cell ; 
 to a public court with judge and jury, and your father at the 
 bar ? " 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral's looks and tones were even more impressive 
 than his words, and aroused in Helen a feeling of dread that 
 seemed to benumb all her faculties, and almost stifle the action 
 of her heart. 
 
 " Oh, father," she murmured, " can it be that in this coun 
 try an innocent man can suffer so ? I thought such things 
 were only in novels. You surely can never have done any 
 thing to offend the law. The law must be cruel, unjust, 
 wrong " 
 
 " Many laws, my dear, are so, and it is difficult for a man 
 in business to always steer clear of their clutches. But this is 
 a thing you can't understand. Nevertheless you must believe 
 me my fate depends upon you. Decide against me," con 
 tinued Mr. Ledgeral, a sudden inspiration of frightened self 
 ishness coming to his aid " decide against me and you de 
 cide my death. I will never live to see the wreck of all things. 
 I will not live to see my little daughter a beggar, almost an 
 outcast." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral gazed into the great gray eyes, motionless, 
 almost rigid, and blank with the blankness of a wild, horrify 
 ing fear. His own looks fell, and his whole form shrank, 
 and cowered, and shivered, not alone at the apprehensions he 
 had been endeavoring to make his daughter share ; not alone 
 at a conviction of mingled folly and guilt, which swept not 
 unfrequently through his heart with the force of a moral hurri-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 371 
 
 cane, but as much, or more, beneath a sense of intense per 
 sonal degradation, implied in this effort to play upon the 
 innocent affection of his child to deceive her loving heart to 
 his own selfish ends. It is true stern necessity demanded it ; 
 but even if he secured his fame and fortune in the eyes of the 
 public, would he dare to hold up his head again ? He a gen 
 tleman ! Bah ! there was not a rag or tatter of the gentle 
 man left to him. He did not deceive himself he knew that 
 there was no refuge left for his self-love ; but in a pretence 
 of piety so strong as to impose somewhat upon himself, as the 
 world, and a great increase in the fervor and frequency of 
 his public devotions ; he might he would make himself a 
 loud-mouthed, active, energetic church member, but a gentle 
 man he could never be again. People might consider him 
 one, but he himself would always know better. 
 
 It could hardly be said that he thought this all out in so 
 many words upon the instant, but the substance of it flashed 
 out upon his consciousness in a flare of light, and so he sat 
 shivering and shrinking, a poor, sneaking, guilty thing, be 
 neath the gaze of his loving child. 
 
 A noise in the hall aroused him. " Hush ! " he exclaimed, 
 as Helen was about to speak. " The Count is leaving. Rouse 
 up, and smooth your collar and hair. Your mother will, per 
 haps, look in ; she must not see you so discomposed. Recol 
 lect what I have told you is a profound secret. I will talk 
 with you again about it. There, now they have gone back 
 into the parlor ; you can run up stairs, and I must go down 
 town. I am very late to-day." 
 
 And Mr. Ledgeral hastily seized his hat and gloves, and 
 nervously hurried Helen from the room. He watched her as 
 she slowly mounted the stairs, with one hand on the balluster. 
 If old Joseph had seen her he would have been slow to accuse 
 her movements of any excess of vivacity. Mr. Ledgeral, ob 
 tuse as he had become to all little external circumstances, 
 could not but no:ice the change. He uttered a sigh, that was 
 almost a groan, and dashed out of the front door, and down 
 the steps, into the street.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Lights and Shadows An Accidental Rencontre A Declaration Very 
 wrong in Luther to talk so " Good-bye, sweetheart." 
 
 IF Helen had needed proof of the fact that the lights and 
 shadows of sentiment and feeling often qualify for us the 
 appearances of outside objects as markedly as the lights and 
 shadows of Nature herself, she could have found it in the 
 altered aspect of her room after the interview with her father. 
 No one had entered it since she had last left it, yet somehow 
 there seemed to be a change. It was clearly not so bright 
 and cheerful as usual. Carpet and paper-hanging had sud 
 denly grown dingy, and the curtains were evidently beginning 
 to fade. The aureola of tender light which had always sur 
 rounded the little book-case, with its neatly-bound volumes, 
 had vanished. Half-a-dozen engravings in carved oaken 
 frames had assumed a thick, muddy tint. The canary saluted, 
 as usual, the arrival of his mistress with a song, but his tones 
 were screechy, and his tune badly turned. Helen glanced at 
 the chandelier. Was the gas escaping ? No ; it was the 
 odor of that pot of heliotrope in the window. How could 
 she have thought it so pleasant an hour ago ? The neat little 
 French escritoire in bois de rose, no longer glittered with its 
 usual lustre de Paris. After all, bois de rose is not a very 
 handsome wood. It has not been run into the ground, with 
 us Americans, like Palisandre, and we like, it for its rarity and 
 novelty ; but it is not really handsome. 
 
 Helen seated herself at the desk, unlocked and rolled 
 back the revolving top, and then listlessly opened and shut 
 the drawers one after the other. She turned over two or three
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 373 
 
 letters and flung them back into their places. She hauled 
 out several manuscripts but replaced them without reading. 
 She unlocked a secret drawer and took out the " Legend of 
 Charlemagne," but after running down a page she put it back 
 in its case and returned it to its hiding-place. 
 
 What to do ! What could the poor girl do ? She sud 
 denly rested her arms upon the desk and buried her face in 
 her hands, and thought no, not thought, she only felt felt 
 as feels the young heart when for the first time comes the 
 conviction, which sooner or later comes to all, that this world 
 is not, as Mr. Whoppers would say, " what it is cracked up to 
 be ; " that it is not a globe of gilded and glorious glamour, 
 made up of flowery meads and rainbow-tinted skies, and sun- 
 touched clouds, and summer breezes ; but that it is a hard, 
 rocky, earthquake-shaken, volcano-riven, tornado-swept, wreck- 
 strewn ball, almost the smallest in size, leaving out of view the 
 fragments of the great planetary " burst-up," and quite possibly 
 the meanest in destiny of all the little globules of matter 
 whiiling within the limits of our comparatively contracted 
 solar system. 
 
 It is not pretended that Helen's thoughts wandered off in this 
 absurdly astronomical fashion. Her thoughts, if she had any, 
 would unquestionably have dealt only with the human and 
 moral elements that enter into the composition of the world. 
 But, as has been said, she felt rather than thought. No doubt 
 there was a good deal of unconscious cerebration which, if it 
 had been capable of expression, and if the quotation had not 
 been so trite, might have vented itself in the verse : 
 
 " This world is all a fleeting show, 
 For man's illusion given." 
 
 But Helen did not think ; she tried to, but she couldn't ; 
 and as she had no taste for common-place, there was no ne 
 cessity for her to quote Tom Moore. 
 
 She did, however, the best thing possible: she put her 
 head down upon her folded arms and burst into a hearty fit 
 of crying. In a few moments her tears fell fast, and deep
 
 374 NEVER AGA1X. 
 
 sobs shook her frame. Suddenly she started. What if some 
 one should come to her room ? her mother, perhaps ! It 
 would be impossible to evade inquiry, and yet impossible to 
 answer any questions as to the cause of her grief. Had not 
 her father charged her to give no one the slightest intimation 
 of the horrible secret ? She would slip out and first walk her 
 self into a more composed state of mind, and then stop for 
 ^her visit at Aunt Shippen's. 
 
 Helen jumped up, rearranged her hair and dress, and 
 wetting the corner of a towel, carefully wiped the traces of 
 tears from her cheeks. As she did this, and while putting on 
 her hat and sack, she was conscious of treading more carefully, 
 so that her steps should not be noticed by any one below in 
 her mother's room ; and she blushed at the thought ; and she 
 blushed still deeper as she held her room door open for a few 
 mmutes, and listened for the sound of any one on the stairs 
 or in the hall, and then carefully closed it in silence. She 
 felt like a guilty thing as she glided down the stairs ; she had 
 never been compelled to anything furtive before, and now the 
 world of guilt and misery had laid its heavy hand upon her, 
 and the touch she felt had sullied her soul. 
 
 She had gone but a few blocks up from the quiet lower 
 end of Fifth Avenue, when she began to be sensible of the 
 thickening tide of fashion, and to get glimpses of the rush and 
 whirl of life in the great artery that crossed at Twenty-third 
 Street. She thought to herself that if she wished to escape the 
 notice of strolling friends, and enjoy, for a few minutes, a soli 
 tary walk, she had better turn into one of the cross streets. 
 
 For a single block a double line of sombre brown-stone 
 fronts, despite the individual littleness and meanness of their 
 tall fa9ades, and the utter absence of unity or breadth of de 
 sign, glowered at each other with a certain stately uniformity 
 of ugliness, quite in harmony with the deep shadows and 
 solemn stillness of the narrow street. 
 
 And here about the middle of the block occurred a coin 
 cidence not one of those grand coincidences that distressed 
 novelists so often employ, but one of those little every-day,
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 375 
 
 yet nevertheless curious coincidences that happen to almost 
 everybody, and which has given rise to the proveib in every 
 language " Talk of the devil or rather speak or think of an 
 angel and you will hear his wings." Now Helen was not ex 
 actly thinking of an angel, still less of the other fellow. She 
 was not even thinking of Luther Lansdale. It is true she had 
 accidentally encountered him once or twice before on the same 
 street, as he 'was returning from business up among the large 
 lumber-yards on the west side of the town. But, as he had 
 explained, calls for that purpose, in fact calls up town in bus 
 iness hours for any purpose, were very rare ; so that she could 
 hardly have expected to encounter him. She was not then 
 really thinking of him, at least not with that magnetic force, 
 not with that volitional evolution of the odic influence which 
 is supposed to be the only invocative of a bodily presence. She 
 was only thinking of Imma, and wondering what would have 
 been the result, if the grim old Kaiser had cut Engenhard's 
 head off, and had insisted upon his daughter marrying one of 
 his paladins, say Ganelon the Faithless, or Ogier the Dane. 
 She was thinking whether it was most probable that Imma 
 would have refused and killed herself, or have submitted to 
 her father's wishes and gone mad ; and so absorbed was she in 
 her thoughts that she did not notice the footstep of a gentle 
 man approaching from behind, until they were quite close to 
 her, and a familiar voice exclaimed, " Good-morning, Miss 
 Helen. I thought I could not be mistaken. I saw a figure 
 that I knew must be yours, and I have ventured to follow you 
 to say good-morning, and inquire after your health." 
 
 " Thank you, Mr. Lansdale, I am quite well. It would 
 seem hardly right to feel otherwise such a lovely day. But 
 you I don't think that you are looking quite as well as 
 usual." 
 
 " Don't you ? Well, I am conscious of feeling a little 
 worn and dragged out lately." 
 
 " You work too hard, and perhaps apply yourself to your 
 duties and your studies too closely." 
 
 " No, but I have had a good deal to worry me during the 
 past week."
 
 376 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " I don't suppose any one can escape worry and trouble in 
 this life," replied Helen, speaking in a reflecting and ques 
 tioning, rather than a sententious and dogmatic tone. 
 
 Luther took an eager step forward, and bowed his head so 
 as to front a little more fully the fair face, but he instantly 
 drew back again. He knew that anything impressive in gesture 
 or movement would draw the close scrutiny of a hundred pair 
 of eyes from behind the curtains of the second-story windows. 
 Besides, the scraps of lace, flowers, and feathers, called bon 
 nets afford little or no excuse for craning one's head into a 
 lady's face in walking no protruding frames or protecting 
 cheek-pieces to look round, as in the old-fashioned times. 
 " Everything is open and above-board," as Captain Combing 
 said in discussing the subject. " Yes," or as you might say, 
 " flush from ear to ear," replied Whoppers. " I suppose if it 
 wern't for the name of the thing, the women would all go 
 bareheaded." 
 
 Luther drew back, and resumed a proper, nonchalant 
 erectness, but he could not discard a tone of affectionate solici 
 tude from his voice, as he said, " And you, Helen, Miss Ledg- 
 eral I mean, you have trouble too ! Nothing very serious 
 has happened, I hope ? " 
 
 Helen looked up at him and simply nodded her head. 
 
 " I knew it," passionately exclaimed Luther. " I knew it 
 the moment I saw you. I saw that something was the matte; 
 I saw it in your gait in your eyes, in your smile. Now 
 tell me what it is. Is it anything in which I can help you ? 
 Can I do anything for you ; or can I help you by by," 
 Luther hesitated, and the blood rushed to cheek and brow, 
 while a sympathetic blush flashed over Helen's face "by 
 not doing that is, by by avoiding to do something? " 
 
 Helen made no reply, and they walked along a few steps 
 in silence. 
 
 " I know it is presumption," said Luther, " but may I not 
 ask if I have anything to do with your trouble ? You don't 
 speak you won't answer me. I am sure you can trust me." 
 
 Still no answer.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 377 
 
 " Believe me, Helen," continued Luther after a pause. " I 
 am capable of much in the way of self-sacrifice. I feel that 
 I could sacrifice anything and everything for you. I could 
 sacrifice all my prospects in life life itself, and what is infi 
 nitely harder, my love." 
 
 As he uttered the last word Luther's voice sank almost to 
 a whisper, but had assumed the clear thrilling tone of passion 
 which has passed the hesitating or husky stage. 
 
 " Yes, my love ; Helen, my love, and God knows I love 
 you, and He alone ever can know how much and how well, 
 and with what a fierce, desperate, but unselfish love. I 
 thought never to make the avowal, and least of all at this 
 time and place, but I cannot help it. It bursts from my heart 
 without my will. But it can do you no harm. I expect noth 
 ing from you. I ask for nothing in return. I know how 
 hopeless my love is, and must be, I have known it for three 
 years, ever since our first encounter that fatal night on the 
 Hudson, three long years of passionate, but hopeless love." 
 
 A low cry of suppressed feeling forced its way through 
 the young girl's lips. " Oh, oh, Mr. Lansdale, Luther," she 
 exclaimed, " don't, don't speak so ! You must not say such 
 words to me ; and here, at this time. Oh, it's unkind ! It is 
 ungenerous ! " and Helen felt disposed for a moment to defy 
 the proprieties of the public street, and raising her hands to 
 her face, indulge in a good sob. 
 
 Ungenerous ? yes it was ungenerous in Luther to make such 
 a declaration at a time and place when her hands were tied 
 so that she could not make even the slighest gesture, when 
 her feet were restricted to a steady walking pace, when every 
 feature had to be held in the rigid lines of a mask to a he&rt 
 full of boiling emotion. Oh ! if he had chosen some place 
 where she could have thrown herself upon his breast, and 
 hidden her confusion, and confessed her feelings in the shad 
 ows of a loving embrace ! 
 
 Truly the street is a very poor place for a declaration of 
 love. It does very well for a simple proposal of marriage, 
 and no doubt many a very excellent and sensible affair has
 
 378 A'EVEK AGAIN. 
 
 been arranged there ; and no doubt many a protracted flirta 
 tion has culminated there, and either flared up, or fizzled away 
 into a slow-match, but for a declaration of downright pas 
 sionate love, the street is not a good place. And it is much 
 worse for the gentleman than it is for the lady. He has to 
 depend almost entirely upon words, and that is the thing that 
 he is generally weakest in. The eyes are of no account ; the 
 hands are sadly hampered ; and there is, as Hosea Biglow 
 might say, no " hitching up closer." No, the street is a poor 
 place to make a declaration in, except when acceptance or re 
 jection is a mere toss of a copper on both sides. 
 
 "No, no; not ungenerous, nor yet unkind," exclaimed 
 Luther, " but foolish thoughtless. I forgot myself. You 
 will forgive me, Helen ? You will forget that I have been so 
 weak, so silly. But you are in trouble, and how could I resist 
 saying what I should not have dared to say at any other time ? 
 You will forgive me, won't you ? And you will let me ask you 
 again if it is anything that I may know anything that I can 
 help you in ? " 
 
 " You are very kind, Luther, but you must never talk so to 
 me again. It is very wrong, and very improper, or rather it 
 would be very wrong and improper for me to listen to you. 
 Father would be very angry with me. You don't know all 
 the circumstances. You never can know," exclaimed Helen 
 in a mournful tone, and with a sudden sinking of the voice, 
 " all the circumstances." , 
 
 "Circumstances!" exclaimed Luther, "Aye, that's the 
 word. Circumstances ! I know them too well. I don't pre 
 tend to the slightest hope, or even wish to resist them. I 
 wcruld like to alter them, but of that I have only the most 
 distant prospect. Defy them ! I might if I alone were in 
 terested ; but not when your interests, and tastes, and habits, 
 and happiness are concerned. Your father thinks you a 
 match for the best, and highest, and richest in the land and 
 he is right. And why should I, who love you so well and so 
 truly, permit me to say it just this once, I who love you as 
 you will never be loved again, why should I think or wish to 
 prevent your proper destiny ? "
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 379 
 
 Somewhat of bitter feeling Luther could not prevent show 
 ing itself in the emphatic cadences of his voice. Helen 
 made no reply, and for half a block they walked in silence. 
 At length she raised her eyes with a timid furtive glance. ''I 
 should like to say something," she murmured, " if if you 
 would not misunderstand. I would not have you think that I 
 am such a poor slave of the world of society of conven 
 tionality as as " 
 
 Luther made an energetic gesture. 
 
 " No, no," exclaimed Helen, hurriedly. " I will not say 
 I need not say what might be under ordinary circumstan 
 ces. But I would like to have you know that. in anything I 
 may do I am constrained by powers that I cannot resist." 
 
 " Your father ! " demanded Luther. 
 
 " No, no ; not my father but it is a secret a terrible se 
 cret." 
 
 And again both were silent for some steps. 
 
 " May I ask," suddenly exclaimed Luther, " if the right 
 parti has shown himself? It is impertinent, I own, but, Helen, 
 haven't I a right to know as much as that? No, not a right. 
 I have no rights but don't I deserve to be trusted a little?" 
 
 Helen glanced up in the eager face of her companion 
 with an imploring expression that was more eloquent than any 
 word could have been. 
 
 " Yes, I see it is so," said Luther, " and I know now," he 
 continued with sudden vehemence, and striking one hand into 
 the palm of the other, " who it is. Yes, Whoppers warned 
 me, and he was right. It is that young German Count." 
 
 " You have no right to say so," exclaimed Helen. " No 
 body has any right to say so ; and I won't allow it. He has 
 been friendly with me, but nothing more ; and there is no 
 prospect of his being 
 
 This last phrase had a slight inclination towards a fib, and 
 Helen knew it, and hastened with clever self-imposition to 
 connect it with a phrase having in it truth enough to restore 
 the general rectitude of the sentence. 
 
 " And there is no prospect of his being ; and I have no
 
 380 NEVER AGAIX. 
 
 wish that he should be ; and I don't want my name connected 
 with his in any such way. But we have had enough of this 
 talk ; it is not right ; and it is of no use. It can do neither 
 of us any good. Let us talk about something else. You say 
 you have been worried and troubled the past week ; what has 
 been the cause of that ? Nothing has gone wrong down in 
 Burling Slip ? " 
 
 " No ; but I have had a terrible thing happen to me. I 
 have lost my best friend. 
 
 " I told you," continued Luther, after a pause, " about the 
 old Frenchwoman, Madame Steignitz. I wish you could have 
 known her. No description of mine would do her justice. 
 You would have been much interested in her. I don't say 
 that you would have liked her, but I have learned not only to 
 like her, but to love her, and certainly if any one owes a 
 heavy debt of gratitude to a friend, I do to her. Well, she 
 has gone." 
 
 " Dead ! " exclaimed Helen. 
 
 " I don't know," replied Luther, " I hope not ; I doubt if 
 she is dead. I hardly know what to think, but she is gone, 
 and we can find no trace of her." 
 
 " That is very strange : did she never say anything to you, 
 indicating an intention to leave the city ? " 
 
 " Not a word," replied Luther. " I was with her the even 
 ing before. We took leave of each other, both expecting to 
 meet the very next evening. When I went there, her door 
 was locked. I waited till ten o'clock, when I began to think 
 it strange, but I was not fully alarmed until the next morning. 
 I am quite sure that she has been carried off. I have my 
 suspicions, but I cannot make the police share them. I have 
 offered a reward of all the money I can command, but it 
 is not enough to make any of the clever detectives take hold 
 of the matter with any energy, and now I am going to devote 
 myself to the affair. I have given notice to Mr. Gainsby 
 that I must have leave for a month. If they don't choose to 
 grant it, why they must find some one for my place. One 
 tiling ; I am going to find her if she is living, or ferret out 
 and punish her assassins if she is dead."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 381 
 
 " Won't there be a good deal of danger in such an affair?" 
 demanded Helen. 
 
 " Perhaps. The parties whom I suspect are a pretty des 
 perate set, and I don't suppose they will surrender their prey 
 readily." 
 
 Helen slipped her hand, quite unconsciously, into Luther's 
 arm. 
 
 " Why not leave the whole matter to the police? " she de 
 manded. " I will undertake to make father and Uncle Ship- 
 pen contribute towards a reward that will interest the services 
 of the whole force." 
 
 Luther looked at the little hand resting upon his arm won- 
 deringly, when it was quietly withdrawn, and he dropped his 
 own hand with a sigh. 
 
 " No ; you would not advise me to do that if you knew 
 how much I love her ; and besides I am satisfied that the 
 police are really incapable of conducting the search. They 
 have made a spasmodic effort or two in the line of burglars 
 and thieves, and that more at my instance than of their own 
 good will. They won't believe that the old woman has been 
 abducted. They think she has gone off herself and will turn 
 up in good time. No, I am satisfied that she has been carried 
 off, and I am satisfied that none of the regular members of 
 the so-called criminal class have had anything to do with it." 
 
 " But may it not be that the police are in the right, and 
 that she has gone off herself, and will return when she gets 
 ready? I recollect you told me yourself that she was very 
 queer." 
 
 " Yes, that is true ; but I can't explain, at this time, all 
 the reasons that make me think that it is a case of violent 
 abduction, and I cannot make the police feel the force of 
 them. Because there are no doors broken open, and no draw 
 ers rifled, and no property stolen, they won't listen to me." 
 
 Luther and his companion had returned on their steps, 
 and were now very near to Fifth Avenue. They walked as 
 slowly as possible, but still five minutes at most would put 
 them in the tide of the brilliant thoroughfare.
 
 5 g 2 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " We must part in a few moments, as I am expected at Aunt 
 Shippen's," said Helen. " Tell me how I can learn the result 
 of your quest how I can learn from day to day of your 
 safety." 
 
 " And you wish, Helen, to hear of me ? " exclaimed Luther, 
 eagerly. " You take interest enough in me to care for my 
 :> ifoty ? " 
 
 " How can I help it ? But, Luther Lansdale, don't mis 
 take me ; I have been very weak to-day, very foolish; to let 
 you talk as you have ; I- am not going to do so any more. As 
 a friend I shall always like to hear of you ; but now that you 
 are going into peril, as I know you are, it would be strange if 
 I should not wish to hear something of your doings." 
 
 Wicked and improper thoughts will occasionally flash 
 across the minds of the best of men. We cannot all help 
 that. Enough if we vigorously resist them. In this way 
 Luther thought for an instant of proposing to Helen to meet 
 him at stated times in the street. It was a foolish thought as 
 well as wicked, for what chance was there that such a girl 
 would consent to such a thing ? The idea was a profanation 
 of that divinity which, in his imagination, did hedge her in, 
 and his cheek grew red with shame as he stammered out 
 
 "You are kind too kind but I don't know how. I 
 shan't I can't see you, I suppose ? " 
 
 " No," interrupted Helen. " I have promised father that 
 is, I have as good as promised him that all intercourse be 
 tween us should cease. You cannot know you never can 
 know the reasons that make him exact this of me, and make 
 me consent to his wishes. You need not look so scornful and 
 so incredulous. There is a great and terrible secret that I 
 can never tell. But I have just thought of a way. Mr. 
 Whoppers is still your friend ? " 
 
 " Yes ; and he is going to assist me in this matter of Ma 
 dame Steignitz." 
 
 " Well, then, I shall see him sometimes, and he shall tell 
 me of you. Good-bye." 
 
 Helen held out her hand. Luther took it in his, held it
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 383 
 
 for a moment, limp and nerveless, in his half-closed fingers, 
 and then let it slip from his grasp. For a moment they looked 
 into the depths of each other's eyes, and then, without other 
 speech, simultaneously turned away and moved off in different 
 directions. 
 
 " Not much feeling in that quarter," was the mental com 
 ment of a gentleman passing. " Brother and sister, perhaps, 
 and no love lost at that." 
 
 He little thought what a tremendous sacrifice was taking 
 place before his eyes upon the altar of the " Proper." Boggs 
 always maintained that there was more downright self-denial 
 in the worship of the great Pam-bam-sham than in the services 
 of any church in the city.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 A Hark-hound More Nuisance Mrs. Doolan and Mrs. Macarty Fifth 
 Avenue Meanness A slight Clue. 
 
 " T T'S a big job you have undertaken," exclaimed Whop- 
 JL pers, as he and Luther sat in consultation at a late hour 
 in the editorial sanctum ; " and the chances, I can tell you, 
 are decidedly against you. Still, I don't advise you to give 
 it up ; but to do anything you must do it artistically and 
 understandingly." 
 
 " How so ? " 
 
 " Why, in the first place, you must get all the stories by 
 Dickens and others of detective exploits, and read up. Fill 
 your mind with instances of secret passages, and mysterious 
 noises, and dubious clues, and wonderful coincidences, and 
 subtle expedients, and delicate intuitions, and happy guesses ; 
 and, to crown all, you must resolve upon the most indomita 
 ble persistence and the most brilliant audacity." 
 
 " Pshaw ! " exclaimed Luther pettishly. 
 
 " Well, ' pshaw ! ' perhaps it is mostly ; but still there is 
 something in it. It is a real land of adventure, and why 
 shouldn't story-tellers make the most of it. They may have 
 overdone it perhaps, but it is a cardinal principle of detective - 
 ism to despise hints from no quarter, and you will find some 
 general notions by which you may profit. I suppose you have 
 read all that kind of stuff?" 
 
 "Oh, lots of it," replied Luther impatiently. 
 
 " Well, then you know all about the paraphernalia old 
 clothes, false whiskers, dyed hair, slouched hats, revolvers, 
 spring daggers, and dark lanterns eh ?
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 385 
 
 " Now don't get mad your real detectives never let their 
 angry passions rise. Seriously, however, I don't see how you 
 are to get along without going through something of the usual 
 routine, and I don't think you can do it alone. Just look at 
 the case for a moment. You are young and good-looking. 
 No compliment ; I didn't call you handsome, so you need not 
 rise and return thanks. You are a pretty smart young fellow, 
 and know a heap of things, but you are woefully ignorant on 
 many points. ' Why, in the great field of poverty and vice 
 and crime which underlies all the shiny conventionalities of 
 city life, you are just as green as grass. What do you know 
 of the real habits, manners, feelings, or even language, of any 
 one of the various denizens of our vast tenement-house popu 
 lation ? and still more, what do you know of the strictly so- 
 called dangerous, or criminal classes ? Have you been in the 
 habit of frequenting the haunts of vice ? Do you know where 
 our haunts of vice are situated ? Do you know a haunt of 
 vice when you see it ? What do you know about the drinking- 
 saloons and the gambling-houses, to say nothing of the thieves' 
 dens, and the holes and hiding-places of utter desperate ruf 
 fianism ? Now, you are going to look for two men probably 
 desperate characters, foreigners, certainly of whose person 
 ality you have only the faintest idea ; you are not even sure 
 that you will be able to recognize either of them when you see 
 them"." 
 
 " But the voice ! you forget," replied Luther. " I am sure 
 of the voice." 
 
 " Well, that is something ; but I don't see how you are to 
 find your game by the ear alone. By-the-by, that -suggests 
 something. Did you ever hear of a hark-hound ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Nor I either." 
 
 " But is there such an animal as the hark-hound ? " impa 
 tiently demanded Luther. 
 
 "Well, I don't suppose there is." 
 
 " What the devil do you ask such a question for then ? " 
 
 " Why, your remark about knowing the fellow's voice sug- 
 25
 
 386 NEVER AC A IX. 
 
 gested the idea that such a thing as a hark-hound might be 
 made. We have the gaze-hound and the scent-hound dogs 
 in which the senses of sight and smell have been enormously 
 developed why could we not, by proper breeding, develop 
 the sense of hearing in the same way, and get a dog that 
 could hunt by ear a veritable hark-hound ? Artificial selec 
 tion for a few generations would do it, and what a valuable 
 thing when done ! I have a great mind to give up journalism 
 and devote the rest of my life to making a hark-hound." 
 
 " Pish ! Why do you turn all things into a joke ? " 
 
 " Joke ! You miscomprehend. I never was more serious. 
 And besides I never try to turn all things into a joke. I only 
 try to turn a joke into all things. There is a distinction for 
 you. Dull people can't see it. Don't you make the same 
 mistake. You are impatient because the idea of a hark-hound 
 whisked across my fancy well, we will hark back to our sub 
 ject. I don't see how you are to prosecute your quest with 
 out a companion. If I could go with you but I can't. I 
 think we must secure the services of a detective. And yet I 
 don't know any one, and I know the whole force, that is ex 
 actly the man." 
 
 " No," replied Luther, " I have had enough to do with the 
 police lately. They are all so taken up with their own theo 
 ries and conclusions that an outsider like myself can't get an 
 idea in edgeways." 
 
 " Well, it is evident that you must undertake the job in 
 some character ; prosecute it upon some system. You can 
 not go about in your present style of clothes ; you would at 
 once arouse suspicion, excite remark, and get yourself into 
 plenty of trouble." 
 
 A great many plans were now canvassed, and all the pros 
 and cons considered. Mr. Whoppers was really a man of re 
 source. His occupation, for years, as a reporter on the staff 
 of a noted daily newspaper had given him a fund of informa 
 tion, all applicable in this case. Luther could hardly have 
 had as adviser any one more thoroughly posted in all the de 
 tails of New York low life.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 387 
 
 " I'll tell you what, Luther, we need not decide upon any 
 special plan for ultimate operations now. One thing is per 
 fectly clear : that you must first find out what has become of 
 the old inventor. You can begin regularly to-morrow, and 
 see what success you have. You won't need any disguise for 
 that. But begin at the beginning ; visit the house, search his 
 room thoroughly, and look out for the slightest clue. And 
 now to bed, but not to dream. Discharge thy mind, for the 
 night, of this perilous stuff. I see it worries you you are 
 growing thin. If you get into a nervous state you may as well 
 give it up. Many is the battle that has been lost by a clever 
 general because he allowed the responsibilities of the case to 
 worry and flurry him. Not that the thing is entirely volun 
 tary. Take two cases one a general with plenty of brains, 
 universal information, and an astonishing fecundity in the 
 way of brilliant plans, and all combined with the highest 
 physical courage ; but when it comes to action the blood goes 
 to his brain in too great quantities, he gets excited, and thinks 
 and feels too fast and too much ; that is, he has the brains 
 of a general. The other fellow is rather dull, and don't know 
 a great deal, but action exerts an elevating and soothing influ 
 ence upon him. He thinks quicker, and calculates and com 
 bines more accurately under the moderate stimulus of the 
 battle-field. He has not the brains of a great general, but he 
 has the temperament. Now and then you have a fellow with 
 the brains and temperament united, and then you have one of 
 those great generals that appear, on an average, about one to 
 a century. 
 
 " Now, in this matter, I admit nature is powerful, but still 
 much can be done by art coolness can be cultivated. The 
 habit of throwing off, pro tern., all pressure upon the mind, can 
 be acquired. Don't let anything worry you or flurry you ; 
 don't let the moral dominate too strongly over the intellectual. 
 Look around you. Who are the rulers of our city ? Who are 
 the wise men, the great men, the men whom all good citizens 
 delight to honor with place and profit are they the men who 
 permit the moral to dominate too strongly over the intellect-
 
 388 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 ual ? Go thou, my son, and do likewise. Sleep the sleep of 
 a Gothamite made alderman, and awake to thy labors with 
 brain and body invigorated and strengthened for the day. 1 ' 
 
 " Sleep ! " exclaimed Luther ; " you may say sleep, but I 
 don't believe I shall close my eyes to-night ; I can't get the 
 old woman out of my head." 
 
 " I can tell you how to get rid of her. Suppose we go 
 out and get half-a-dozen raw oysters, and a pint of brown 
 stout. You'll sleep like a top, and your head in the morning 
 will be as clear as a bell. You won't ? Then I can tell you 
 another plan. It is homoeopathic similia similibiis, you know. 
 To drive the old woman out of your head, suppose you let 
 a young one in. You deceitful young humbug ! it isn't the 
 old woman that will keep you awake to-night. I am sorry for 
 you. If I was in your place I'd bar up every avenue to sense 
 with two pints of porter sooner than let her in." 
 
 " And would you bar up with two pints every night? " 
 
 "Yes, for a month." 
 
 " But suppose it was for six months a year, five years?" 
 
 "Ah! Luther," exclaimed Mr. Whoppers in a mournful 
 tone, and taking the young man by the hand, as he stood with 
 one foot on the stairs ready to mount to his room, " ah, 
 Luther, is it really so bad as that ? Has the shaft flown home 
 to the very vitals ? I did not think it. Shakespeare has de 
 ceived me. I do not see your hose ungartered, your bonnet 
 unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and ev 
 erything about you demonstrating a careless desolation. Well, 
 in that case porter won't help you. You do right not to apply 
 to the bar, you must carry your load yourself until you get 
 rid of it in the natural way. I've carried the same load my 
 self; it is always relieved, and by the same process." 
 
 " What process V " demanded Luther. 
 
 " It dwindles. Ah yes," continued Mr. Whoppers with a 
 mournful shake of the head, " it dwindles. Like an Irish 
 dirt-cartman, you jolt along some distance over the stones of 
 life to a distant dumping-ground, and you find you have noth 
 ing to dump ; it has all leaked out by the way.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 389 
 
 " One moment, my dear boy," continued Mr. Whoppers, 
 holding on to Luther, who was pulling himself away to ascend 
 the stairs, " one moment and I can bid you good-night with 
 a clear conscience. Everything is like and unlike everything 
 else in this world. I have told you why you are like an Irish- 
 jTian carting dirt. Can you tell me why you are unlike him ? 
 In this : that you have all your dumps at the beginning of 
 your course, and he all his at the end. 
 
 "Luther, Luther," shouted Mr. Whoppers as Luther tore 
 himself away and bounded up the stairs, " what says Theoc 
 ritus ? ' There is no salve, O Nicias, or plaster or other rem 
 edy for love than the Muses.' Write some poetry. That's a 
 good fellow. It's not only a remedy for love, but for sleep 
 lessness. Have pen and paper at your bedside, like Pope, 
 and every time you turn over, turn out and turn a couplet, and 
 then turn back again, and keep turning, you may be sure it 
 will all turn out right in the end. Luther ! Luther ! " 
 
 " Well, what is it ? " 
 
 " Ding-dong ! Ding-dong ! Don't you hear it ? Turn 
 again, Lansdale, Lord Mayor of New York." 
 
 " Oh, go to the devil ! " 
 
 " Too long a journey. I'll turn in," and Mr. Whoppers, 
 chuckling with pleasure at having provoked Luther's parting 
 exclamation, re-entered his room. 
 
 Early morning found Luther at the house in Wooster 
 street. He had never before visited it at that hour, and had 
 never before fully noted the marks of dilapidation and decay. 
 It seemed as if the ten days' absence of the owner had worked 
 a great change for the worse, but in reality tl^ere was very lit 
 tle change. A trifle more dirt perhaps three or four freshly 
 broken panes stuffed with rags or paper, and the rickety 
 newel-post of the balusters wrenched out and missing ; but, 
 beyond these comparatively trifling strides on the road to ruin, 
 everything remained the same. 
 
 The tenants were more than usually orderly and quiet. 
 Instinctively they had combined to prevent all suspicion of 
 anything unusual in the house, and to the inquiries of the po'
 
 39 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 lice, they one and all expressed their conviction that Madame 
 Steignitz had gone off of her own will for a short trip, and 
 would soon return. They scouted the idea of there being 
 anything in her absence that called for an investigation by the 
 authorities. Their unanimity on this point was curious ; es 
 pecially as they had never actually put their heads together in 
 council ; and as each one really had strong hopes that they 
 might never see the old woman again. But, from the fighting 
 couple upstairs to the cobbler in the basement, one and all 
 agreed that there was not the slightest ground for suspicion of 
 foul play. The conviction that, if they could keep matters 
 quiet, the disappearance of the landlady might mean weeks 
 and perhaps months of free quarters, was strong enough to 
 bridle the tongues of the women, even when talking among 
 themselves. 
 
 " A bright mornin' an' a fresh one to yees," said Mrs. 
 Macarty, the charwoman, to Mrs. Dennis Doolan, the tailor's 
 wife, as they met on the landing. " Yer walkin' I see, by the 
 basket on yer arm ; an' it's quite early indade." 
 
 " An' it's early I'm forced to be," replied Mrs. Doolan. 
 " Ye see my brother-in-law's cousin is cook to the Hagans in 
 the Fifth Avenue, an' I've to go up early to receive the little 
 perkisites. Ould Hagan, ye must know, was never edicated ; 
 an' shure it's a great misfortune for a gintleman not to have 
 an edication. He was a butcher wonst, an' now the ould vil 
 lain prowls round in the dusk o' the mornin' like a hyena, or 
 a cat-o'-nine-tails." 
 
 "Oh, but he's the rich one." 
 
 " Rich ! He rolls in gould ; ye can hear the bank-notes 
 crinkle every step he takes ; and Mrs. Forlie, wrro is my 
 brother-in-law's cousin, twice removed, tells me that just the 
 gould and the silver and the chinee in that house would build 
 a cathaydral." 
 
 " Well, I don't believe that he's as rich as the old one who 
 is, that is who was, above," replied Mrs. Macarty, signifi 
 cantly jerking her thumb upwards. 
 
 "Whist ! my dear. It doesn't do for us to be canvass 
 ing the ni?ri'.s of our shuperiors."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 391 
 
 " Ah, never fear, the lamentable occurrence will never 
 pass my lips ; but I was just thinking who will collect the 
 rent in the end ? There is that young man who used to visit 
 her so often : will he call for the money?" 
 
 " No, sure ; he has no idea of the kind. He is just as 
 puzzled as we and more. The old lady has gone, and has 
 evadintly left no power. We must just rest aisy ontil her re 
 turn, which in my opinion, Mrs. Macarty, and I say it to you 
 in confidence, is shure but may not be spaidy. Now you go 
 out a grate dale into the world, and you see a grate dale of 
 society, and I don't think it will be becoming in you, any more 
 than in me, to indulge, during her absence, in any idle and 
 unnecessary conjactures about the rint." 
 
 " I quite agree with you, Mrs. Doolan. It is a subject bet 
 ter to think over, than to talk about. A pleasant morning's 
 walk to you, ma'am, and may you find your cousin's arms 
 greased to her elbows," and Mrs. Macarty gave a sly and sig 
 nificant wink. 
 
 " Ah ! it's but little grease that you can find in old Hagan's 
 larder," replied Mrs. Doolan with a mournful shake of the 
 head as she descended the stairs. " The old villain makes a 
 barrel o' soft soap every three months with his own hands." 
 
 " Och, that is despisable ; I didn't know that the old cow- 
 skinner was so mean as that." 
 
 " Mean ! Why it's meaner than that he is. Perhaps you 
 wouldn't believe it without my affidavy, but it's as true as gos 
 pel, that he sweetens his tay wid powdered sugar just to keep 
 any honest and desarving individual from pocketing a few 
 lumps from the sugar-pot. Whist ! here is the young man 
 now. It's onaisy in his mind he is, or he'd niver put his head 
 in his hat so early in the morning. Don't let him cajole ye, 
 Mrs. Macarty." 
 
 " Divil the word, my dear." 
 
 " Good mornin', sir," replied Mrs. Doolan to Luther's 
 salutation. " It's good news you have of the madam, I'm 
 sure. And ye havn't heard of her ? Well, it's queer in her, 
 anyhow, to run off so widout letting you know ; but thim fur
 
 392 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 rinners are always peculiar. She'll bring back news of her 
 self. We'll see her in a few days trotting up and down these 
 stairs, and dunning the rint as usual. Well, she'll find every 
 thing kept nice and dacent for her, and no row in the house. 
 I'm sure she'd not like to find any of us had been making a 
 rumpus about her. And it's Mr. Planly you want to inquire 
 about the little man with one eye ? No ! Ah ! well the tall 
 man? I mind me now about six months ago wasn't it, 
 Mrs. Macarty ? " 
 
 " Six months or a year," replied Mrs. Macarty, from the 
 head of the stairs. 
 
 " Six months ! " replied Luther. " Why you told me your 
 self that you saw him removing his things not three weeks 
 ago." 
 
 " Did I ? I thought it was the other one shure. Which 
 one ? Why the bald-headed one. Shure I've no memory for 
 names j and what with looking after the old man and six 
 children, I never know who comes and goes in the house." 
 
 Luther, finding that nothing could be made out of the two 
 women, mounted the stairs, pulled out the key, which he had 
 taken possession of since Madame Steignitz' disappearance, 
 and unlocking the door entered her room. Everything re 
 mained pretty much as it was the evening of his last German 
 lesson. About the same amount of confusion and disorder, 
 slightly aggravated by the visit which he had induced the po 
 lice to pay to the house, but no marks of personal violence, or 
 any indications that could serve as a clue to certain mysteri 
 ous circumstances that marked the case. 
 
 It had been upon a second visit, two or three days after 
 his last interview with the old lady, that Luther, finding her 
 door still locked, began to be alarmed. He at once made 
 inquiries of the inmates of the house. No one had seen 
 anything of her. He clambered out of the window of the 
 empty room formerly occupied by Mr. Planly, and made his 
 way along by the roof to the window of the old lady's room, 
 and looked in. He could not raise the window, for it was fast 
 ened by the catch which he had himself put on ; but he could
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 393 
 
 look over the half-curtain of spotted muslin and satisfy himself 
 that no one was moving within. The conclusion would have' 
 been irresistible that the occupant had gone out, and had not 
 yet returned, were it not for one circumstance. Upon examin 
 ing the door it was evident that the key was in the lock within. 
 
 Luther decided to open the door, and for this purpose 
 went out and secured the services of a neighboring locksmith, 
 and to give an air of legality to the affair, invited the com 
 pany of the policeman of the beat. The locksmith readily in 
 serted his nippers and turned the key, still the door would not 
 open. It was not only locked, but bolted. Luther explained 
 that the bolt was a tiny piece of brass, and would readily 
 give way to moderate pressure ; but bursting open a door by 
 main force was too serious a thing to be done in such an in 
 formal manner, and the policeman advised a- sesort to head 
 quarters. 
 
 Upon Luther's representation of his relations to the old 
 lady, and his suspicions of something wrong, the proper officer 
 was deputed to accompany him and force an entrance. Noth 
 ing, however, was found that could assist conjecture as to the 
 truth of the case. 
 
 " The door is fastened on the inside ; she could not have 
 gone out through that," argued Luther. 
 
 " The window is fastened down ; she could not have gone 
 out of that," replied the police. 
 
 It was mysterious, it was true, but then so many mysteries 
 turn up every day that in the end are susceptible of easy solu 
 tion ; and besides there was no money in the case ; and, more 
 than that, all thoughts were occupied with two terrible affairs 
 of recent occurrence a great bank robbery and a murder 
 twenty thousand dollars offered in rewards, besides the pros 
 pect of immense collateral pickings. 
 
 Luther, even assisted by Mr. Whoppers, could make no 
 impression ; and, moreover, he was for the first few days by 
 no means assured, in his own mind, that the police were not 
 right^and that the old woman would not reappear of herself 
 and explain the matter satisfactorily. But as time went on he
 
 394 KEVER AGAIN. 
 
 became more and more convinced that she had been foully 
 dealt with ; and now, on the tenth day since her disappear 
 ance, he sat in his accustomed seat at the little old pine table, 
 and as he looked around felt himself more and more strength 
 ened in his determination to devote himself to the investiga 
 tion of the affair. 
 
 As he raised his head he glanced at the dormer window 
 and started almost with fright, so clearly and with such inten 
 sity did memory reproduce the image of that face which he 
 had seen one night, for an instant, pressed against the glass. 
 He got up and closely examined the window. She could not 
 have gone out of the door and left it bolted behind her, that 
 was clear. She must have gone out of the window. But 
 how, when it was fastened on the inside ? He had previously 
 tried to shove .back the catch from the outside with a slender 
 knife-blade, but had not succeeded. But if the window could 
 not be unfastened, might it not be that it could be fastened 
 from the outside ? He proceeded to examine the catch care 
 fully. He satisfied himself that with a knife, or even a piece 
 of curved wire, the thing could not be done ; but with a 
 piece of twine ? Yes, with a piece of twine, no doubt. And, 
 by heavens ! what is that ? A delicate film of hemp half 
 the size of a fine hair and less than a third of an inch long 
 sticking to the catch-plate ! Luther picked it out carefully. 
 No tress of maiden's hair was ever more electric. The tiny 
 fragment sent a tingling sensation through his whole frame ; 
 and there, in the gutter below, lay a piece of twine. Luther 
 stared at it for some moments in silence before he raised the 
 window, and with trembling hand secured it. A mixed emo 
 tion, partly of wonder that he should not have noticed it be 
 fore, and partly of real fright, as if the dirty string was a thing 
 living and venomous, held him motionless. At length he 
 pulled out a slender filament and compared it with the one 
 taken from the catch. Oh for a microscope ! But as far as 
 sharp eyes went he could see no difference, or only what 
 might be attributed to the mud and dust of the gutter in 
 which the twine had been half buried.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 395 
 
 At any rate he would try it. He put the string round the 
 atch, and then pushed the two ends out between the upper 
 and lower sash. He then raised the lower sash, got out upon 
 the roof, and closed the window behind him. A moderate 
 pull upon the cord dangling from the crack between the 
 sashes now drew the catch into its place, and then, by releas 
 ing one end and pulling upon the other, the whole string 
 came away readily, leaving the window firmly fastened. 
 
 Luther tried the window. Yes, it was firmly fastened. 
 He satisfied himself of that fact, and then crept along the 
 roof to the window of the other room. That, too, was fast 
 ened. He recollected that he had nailed it up himself. His 
 experiment had succeeded better than he had anticipated. 
 He had decidedly barred himself out. What was he to do? 
 He did not dare creep over the roofs to the windows of any 
 of the other houses ; he might be taken for a burglar and 
 compelled to make his explanations. That would be absurd, to 
 say the least. No ; better break the pane of glass over the 
 catch and let himself in. 
 
 But first he would see if he could make his situation 
 known to any of the inmates of the house. He stretched 
 himself at length upon the roof, and drew himself down until 
 his face projected over the gutter, and his eye could command 
 a view of the windows and the back door directly below. 
 Really, a nice position for a genteel young man ; flat on his 
 breast on the roof of a tenement-house, to the great endam- 
 agement of a clean shirt-bosom and a new necktie, and cran 
 ing over the dirty gutter into a range of deplorable back slums, 
 and liable, if seen from the other houses, to have a hue and 
 cry of " Burglar ! " raised at his expense. 
 
 But suppose certain other persons could see him suppose 
 Helen Ledgeral could see him ? would a consideration of the 
 real danger of his position, and of the lofty sentiments of 
 right and duty which had led him into it, counterpoise in her 
 mind what might at first seem the absurd and the ridiculous ? 
 At any rate, he would rather that she should see him than that 
 Whoppers should. Whoppers would be sure to bore him about
 
 396 NEVER AGAIX. 
 
 his attack of gutter serena, with allusions to the dangers of 
 eavesdropping ; and would perhaps indite an article for the 
 Universe upon " the absurd positions men are sometimes led 
 into in the pursuit of knowledge." There was no let up to 
 Whoppers. He had one terrible talent the talent of threshing 
 out the smallest sheaf of wit into countless bushels of chaff. 
 
 Luckily Mrs. Macarty soon showed herself upon the back 
 porch. She seemed at first a little dubious as to whether the 
 hail that reached her ear from above was human or not, but 
 Luther after a while succeeded in satisfying her on that point,- 
 and in making her comprehend that he wanted her to come 
 up stairs and unfasten the window for him. 
 
 It was clear now to his mind that the old lady had made 
 her exit through the window, and he was also satisfied that it 
 had not been done with her own free will. The man with the 
 horrible face had no doubt been the principal actor, and the 
 suspicion that Mr. Planly's visitor, whom he had encountered 
 several times on the stairs, was also connected with the affair, 
 broadened in Luther's mind as he considered all the circum 
 stances. 
 
 There had clearly been no robbery. Drawers and clothes 
 had probably been opened and examined, but as far as could 
 be seen hardly anything had been disturbed, and nothing 
 taken. There was no derangement of the furniture : every 
 thing looked to Luther's eye in about its usual disorderly 
 condition, with the exception perhaps of the bed, which seemed 
 to be more tumbled and pulled about than he had ever noticed 
 it before. It could not then be a case of robbery, but and 
 the few words in that foreign voice that he had first heard from 
 Mr. Planly's room rang in his ears might it not well be that 
 she had fallen victim to some scheme to extort money from 
 her, or perhaps, and Luther shuddered at the thought, to 
 put her out of the way forever, and secure her estate ? 
 
 Evidently the first thing to do was to find Mr. Planly. A 
 closer examination of his room afforded not the slightest clue. 
 A few screws, some bits of wood and brass, and two or three 
 broken boxes were all the evidences that remained of his 
 former occupancy.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 397 
 
 Luther resolved to question every inmate of the house ; 
 even the children. It was wonderful the apparent stolidity, 
 but real cunning with which the examination on all hands was 
 met. A universal suspicion that there might be danger in 
 answering any questions had converted all the inmates of the 
 house of Irish descent into a perfect community of know-noth 
 ings. The Alsacian cobbler in the basement, however, was a 
 little more communicative, and the more so as Luther ad 
 dressed him in French. He recollected seeing the effects of 
 Mr. Planly brought down stairs early one morning, some two 
 weeks before, and placed upon a cart. He was not sure it 
 was a cart ; thought it had four wheels ; did not observe any 
 number upon it, it might be a furniture van, but his impres 
 sion was that it was an unlicensed country wagon. Still it 
 might be, upon second thought, a cart ; was pretty sure there 
 was but one horse, although there might have been two. The 
 driver, who aided Mr. Planly in bringing down his things, there 
 was less uncertainty about. He was a large, stout man with 
 red whiskers ; could recollect nothing else curious or charac 
 teristic. 
 
 All this was not very encouraging. In fact it was down 
 right discouraging. But don't your true detective begin al 
 most always under discouraging circumstances ? What would 
 the famous Mr. Waters do in such a case ? Why he'd can 
 vass the city until he had found out every stout red-whiskered 
 drayman in town. And what if he should light upon the right 
 man in the end ? Why, that would prove that Mr. Planly had 
 moved out of town, and narrow the question down to Hoboken 
 and Jersey City on the west, and Brooklyn and Williamsburg 
 on the east, with a chance of Morrisania on the north. 
 
 " Don't you see," said Mr. Whoppers, who was at the 
 breakfast-table, when Luther returned from his morning per 
 quisitions, " don't you see that it will be an immense stride ? 
 It will eliminate the great city of New York from the prob 
 lem. You can then attack the neighboring towns, and elimi 
 nate them in succession. It may be something of a job, to be 
 sure, but patience and perseverance ! Faint heart never won 
 an old lady."
 
 398 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " Let us see, however, if we have not forgotten something," 
 continued Mr. Whoppers, " something which should be at 
 tended to first. You think that Madame Steignitz has been 
 taken out of the window of her room, and I am rather in 
 clined to agree with you. Well, dead or alive, she must have 
 been taken into the window of some other house in the row. 
 Now, I think it would be best to find out who occupy the attic 
 rooms of the other houses." 
 
 The suggestion of Mr. Whoppers was an excellent one, 
 but Luther found great difficulty in carrying it out. His first 
 idea was to secure the aid of an officer, but to this there were 
 several objections. The main one being, that it would excite 
 a general commotion in the street, and for the present it was 
 a great object to keep everything quiet, and not to alarm the 
 guilty parties, whoever they might be. Although his visits to 
 the house of Madame Steignitz had been almost always made 
 in the evening, it was not improbable that his person was 
 well known to many of the inmates of the other houses, and 
 if he should undertake the investigation in the company of an 
 officer suspicion would be excited, and a degree of publicity 
 given to the matter, that would render it impossible to obtain 
 any correct information. For this reason Luther resolved to 
 go alone, avowedly with the object of looking for rooms. 
 
 Several attic rooms were vacant. He was repeatedly in 
 formed he must apply to the agent, who had an office at the 
 foot of the street. But the distance was too great, or Luther 
 too ignorant, and so he blundered on into the inhabited rooms 
 with his inquiries, in a few instances meeting with rather rude 
 rebuffs, but generally getting courteous answers, and in many 
 cases, thanks to his youth and good looks, he was allowed a 
 long gossiping conversation. Still he could obtain no infor 
 mation that, as far as he could see, had any bearing upon, or 
 connection with, the matter in hand. In fact everything that 
 he could see and hear rather went to excite a doubt as to 
 whether the old lady, if she had gone out of her own window, 
 could have gone into any other. Clearly she must have been 
 carried over the roof to the farthest extremity of the block.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 399 
 
 There was but one house left. Well, he would make a finish 
 of that, and then to take up the quest for Mr. Planly. 
 
 He mounted, as usual, directly to the garret. The click 
 ing of a sewing-machine sounded from one of the rooms. 
 Luther had but little idea of any difference between hand- 
 sewing and machine-sewing. He knew nothing of the myste 
 ries of single and double lock-stitch. He knocked at the 
 door, and expected to see it opened by the delicate, refined, 
 consumptive-looking gentlewoman of his last novel, and was 
 not a little astonished at being confronted by a fat, ruddy- 
 cheeked, good-looking damsel, who seemed to be equally as 
 tonished with himself. 
 
 " Looking for rooms ? Well, there was a vacant room 
 right opposite to them. The agent had left the keys in her 
 charge ; would he like to see it ? It was a nice room ; it had 
 been vacant about ten days. Didn't know the last occupant, 
 and didn't want to know him." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Why ? because." 
 
 " What kind of a looking man ? " 
 
 "Well, he was a bad-looking man as ugly as sin pock 
 marked ; had hair all over his face. Never had anything to 
 say to him ; never wanted to ; guess he couldn't speak much 
 English. His business ? Don't believe he had any. He 
 never was in his room much why should he be ? he had 
 hardly any furniture in his room. Don't believe he had a bed 
 even ; guess he slept on the floor. When he went away he 
 carried off pretty much all he had in one big box." 
 
 "What kind of a box?" 
 
 " Why, a box like a sailor's chest quite long. He had 
 some one to help him carry it, and it had rope handles, and 
 was painted lead-color." 
 
 By this time Luther had made his way into the room, 
 where he found a comely, well-fed dame, who seemed to be 
 the mother, and who, while eagerly joining in the conversation, 
 never ceased for more than an instant working the treadles 
 of her Wheeler and Wilson. Both mother and daughter were
 
 400 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 disposed to be particularly communicative, especially upon 
 the subject which had begun to be of most interest to Luther. 
 It was evident that some degree of fear had sharpened their 
 dislike of their late neighbor, and his personal appearance 
 was described in such vivid and picturesque terms, that Luther 
 left the house with not a doubt upon his mind that the late 
 occupant of the room was the owner of the face he had seen 
 peering into the apartments of Madame Steignitz, and that 
 that face was the same he had a glimpse of in the street by 
 gas-light. If so, it was clear that there was some connection 
 between him and Mr. Planly's visitor. 
 
 Mr. Planly must be found, and to find him there seemed 
 to be no clue, except through the stout red-whiskered truck 
 man who had carried away his things ; that might be a job 
 of many days. 
 
 Luther resolved to set himself resolutely at the work, and 
 for two days, from early morn to dewy eve, he trudged the 
 city in all directions, examining carts and furniture trucks, and 
 hunting up stout red-whiskered draymen. 
 
 It was wonderful the number of stout red-whiskered dray 
 men he encountered. They seemed to start up in all direc 
 tions. He had never noticed half a dozen red-whiskered 
 draymen before in his life, now there seemed to be nothing 
 but red-whiskered draymen. Luther was astonished, but he 
 had a scientific turn of mind. He did not at once jump to 
 the conclusion that there had been a sudden cropping out of 
 red whiskers among the fraternity, but the apparent pheno 
 menon was due to his own sharpened perceptions. A good 
 illustration, he thought, of how much more we might see in 
 the way of natural phenomena if we looked about us with our 
 mental eyes open.
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Light Literature The Utility of Novels Crossing the Ferry An Iinnu 
 grant Steamer Bay of New York. 
 
 AT the end of the third day Luther retired to his lodg 
 ings, weary of foot and quite discouraged in mind. He 
 did not wish to talk to Mr. Whoppers. He had nothing to 
 tell him, not a word to say except one, and that was " fail 
 ure " so, as he had taken a late luncheon down town, and 
 had no need of dinner, he mounted at once to his own room. 
 
 But he was not long allowed to remain in solitude a 
 slight knock at his door, and in entered the irrepressible edi 
 tor of the Universe. 
 
 " Ah, youngster ! sitting all alone, chewing the cud of 
 sweet and bitter fancy. I saw you come in while I was at 
 the dinner-table ; you looked forlorn, fagged out come, tell 
 us all about it." 
 
 " I have literally nothing to tell," replied Luther. 
 
 "Oh yes you have," returned Mr. Whoppers. "Every 
 body has something to tell. It does 'em good, as the poet 
 
 says, to 
 
 ' Slop over the wearied mind's sad thoughts 
 Into the responsive bosom of a friend.' 
 
 Come, tell me all about your ill-luck. I ask it for your sake, 
 not mine. For what says Pythagoras ? ' Cor ne edite eat 
 not the heart,' which, according to Lord Bacon, means that 
 unless we talk of our troubles to a friend we are cannibals of 
 our own hearts. Now, I know you havn't any heart to nib 
 ble at, but you may as well tell me what you have been doing 
 to-day." 
 
 " I have been walking and riding fifty miles ; asking about 
 26
 
 402 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 five thousand questions of five hundred people, and filling 
 that to no purpose," and Luther jerked his note-book into 
 Mr. Whoppers' lap. 
 
 " Well, now, you have done capitally. I hardly thought it 
 was in you. No detective could do more or better." 
 
 " But it don't amount to anything." 
 
 " You are wrong it don't seem to amount to anything, 
 but you'll see in the end. Just stick to it I'll bet on you. 
 I don't want any better evidence than this note-book ; three 
 hundred -red-whiskered cartmen found out and interviewed in 
 three days, to say nothing of general miscellaneous work 
 among whiskers black, brown, gray, and dyed. Good ! very 
 good ! " continued Mr. Whoppers, raising his eye over the 
 book, " faithful, honest work you see I am such a lazy 
 man, such a procrastinating shirk myself, that there is nothing 
 in this world I so much admire as good honest work. I am 
 sure you ought not to be discouraged. Don't you see you 
 are rapidly eliminating the great city of New York ? Keep 
 on eliminating, and you may be sure that you will come 
 sooner or later upon the unknown desideratum the veritable 
 X of a cartman will turn up somewhere in the solution. 
 
 " I see you are tired out," added Mr. Whoppers after a 
 pause. " You need a little stimulus. No, I don't mean wine- 
 bitters, or a gin cocktail, but a little mental stimulus, and I 
 happen to have a small dose for you. I saw somebody to-day. 
 Yes just for a moment. She said she hoped you would per 
 severe and find out something about the old woman. No di 
 rect message pon my word. Her father was present, and I'll 
 tell you what I think. I think the old man is going to jump 
 his rails. I do. He looks bad, and somehow his vanity and 
 conceit seem to be fizzling out of him. He's an altered man, 
 and if he was not so rich, and so confoundedly respectable, I 
 should say he had a big lump of something on his mind. 
 Helen seems to feel that there is danger, and she looks troub 
 led, but the rest of the family are quite jolly. Count Isenthal 
 seems to be there pretty much all his time. I kind of conceit 
 that the little god has got his arrow in, clean through the fel-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 43 
 
 low's pericardium. Oh, you are willing to talk now are you ? 
 Well, I've nothing more to say, and no more time to say it in. 
 I must finish at least a dozen book-notices to-night, and get 
 'em in early to-morrow, as the foreman wants to lock up the 
 form by eleven o'clock. You're tired ; now go to bed soon. 
 Don't sit up mopy and miserable, and don't let any light lit 
 erature weigh upon your brain. Light literature indeed ! 
 Heavy literature it should be called. I see you have got Miss 
 Rousentales' forty-ninth ; I am going to write a puff of it : a 
 charming book intensely interesting ; original plot, devised 
 and developed with the well-known constructive skill of the 
 accomplished authoress ; style pure and powerful, and such a 
 tremendous knowledge of the depths of human feeling and 
 passion, and of all the actions, and reactions and interactions 
 of the profoundest social influences. A book that ought to 
 be in the hands of every man, woman and child in the coun 
 try. That's the style, or rather that was the style, but I am 
 going to give it up, and I am glad to see that some of the 
 daily we-we's are doing the same thing. If we were only 
 honest and united we might put a dam I don't mean the one 
 with an n to it that kind is put easy and often but a regu 
 lar dam to this flood of leaden trash. It ought to be done in 
 the interests of humanity. Ah, a good idea that, I will 
 recommend it to Bergh and his society for the prevention of 
 cruelty to animals. If the hatters should revive the fifty- 
 pound leaden scull-cap of the old judicial torture system, 
 wouldn't he be down upon them, and make his power 
 felt, eh ? Well, the pressure on the brain of this kind of 
 thing is far greater, and the torture more excruciating. It's 
 worse than the old dropping water torture. Drop ! drop ! 
 drop ! one, two, three, half-a-dozen novels a day. It's ter 
 rible." 
 
 " Look here, now, Whoppers," interrupted Luther ; "you're 
 a great fellow to talk in that way. It isn't more than ten 
 days ago that you were lecturing Mr. Boggs and myself upon 
 the vast utility of novels. Didn't you say that we cannot 
 over-estimate the utility of novels ; that they are useful for in-
 
 404 NEVER AC 
 
 struction as well as amusement ; that they stir up the stolid 
 intellects of the masses, lighten the tedium of life, lift thou 
 sands of people above the dull realities that surround them, 
 and give them almost the only ideas they have of beauty and 
 culture, and ideal sweetness and gentleness ? Didn't you say 
 all that ? Consistency is a jewel." 
 
 " I know it is, my dear boy, but I'm not a city official ; I 
 am an editor, and I can't afford to wear jewels. Well, well, 
 it only shows that there is more than one side to any ques 
 tion, and, like the intemperate teetotaller, we are all of us apt 
 to confound uses with abuses. It takes a flood of trash, I 
 suppose, to secure us a few good novels, just as it took five 
 hundred or a thousand daubers, of whom we have no record, 
 to make a Raphael or a Domenichino ; so we must try to 
 direct and restrict the flood, not arrest it." 
 
 " Dam it with an n" said Luther. 
 
 " Exactly ! And do you know, Luther, I seriously think 
 of writing a novel myself." 
 
 " Going to pitch yourself into the flood, eh ? " 
 
 " I suppose so ; one can't judge of these kind of things for 
 one's self beforehand. But what of that ? I have never seen a 
 lot of children in all my watering-place experience that have 
 ever excited in my mind, towards their parents, the slightest 
 emotion of envy. Well, what right have I to suppose that my 
 children would be one bit handsomer, or more engaging, or 
 better trained ? and yet is that consideration going to prevent 
 me from trying the thing on, and some day launching out into 
 all the glories of paternity ? So with my novel. I am going to 
 write it for the fun of the thing pour irfamuser, as we say, 
 now that we have got to talk French so beautifully, and I 
 shall publish it." 
 
 " Pour amieser la publique" said Luther. 
 
 " I hope so ; and elevate and instruct, and all that kind of 
 thing ; but mainly because I am naturally a very lazy man, 
 and can't afford to throw so much labor away. As to its re 
 ception, no author can predict anything about that ; so much 
 depends upon style, and incident, and treatment, and, above
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 405 
 
 all, upon the characters, and in that particular you are more 
 interested than I am." 
 
 " Hov so ? " demanded Luther. 
 
 " Why, I am going to put in you and your old woman." 
 
 " Oh, get out with you ! " impatiently exclaimed Luther. 
 
 "A nice parting salutation, sir," replied Mr. Whoppers, 
 rising and opening the door ; " very nice, indeed. If my 
 memory fails me not, you have three times in the couse of 
 your life told me to go to the devil, but you have never yet, 
 until this moment, told me to get out. A nice exclamation, sir. 
 I will put it in my novel, sir ; we will see how you will like 
 it then we will see how the public will like it, sir. May you 
 live to repent, sir," continued Mr. Whoppers, hastily closing 
 the door in time to intercept one of Luther's slippers that 
 was flying through the air. " May you live to repent, sir, is 
 the only prayer of yours, affectionately, J. T. W." 
 
 The next moment Mr. Whoppers put his head again into 
 the room. " I'll tell you what, Luther, an idea has just oc 
 curred to me that may save you much labor and time, and 
 that is to inquire at all the ferries. It will not take long to do 
 so, and you will, perhaps, find some one connected with the 
 boats who will recollect such a striking-looking man, with a 
 load of queer-looking traps, if, as I am inclined to believe, he 
 has left the city and crossed either of the rivers. Good-night, 
 
 my dear boy ; 
 
 ' May slumbers light, 
 Hold thee all night, 
 Till morning bright.' 
 
 as Syllycus Italicus, or some other cuss, says." 
 
 It was a happy suggestion that Mr. Whoppers made, as 
 Luther found upon his application at Canal Street ferry. At 
 first the gate-keeper rather gruffly replied that it was absurd 
 o suppose that he could remember any person, or any thing, 
 that had come and gone two or three weeks ago ; besides "that 
 he might not have been on duty. But as he talked, youth, 
 good looks, and good manners exerted their usual influence. 
 His mien softened, and his tone became more subdued, and
 
 406 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 the end of five minutes found him listening with signs of 
 marked interest to so much of the story as Luther judged it 
 proper to tell. 
 
 " Let me see ! " he exclaimed. "About two weeks ago, you 
 say, and about eight o'clock in the morning. There wouldn't 
 be a great many people crossing over from this side at that 
 hour. You say he was a tall man, with a wide-brimmed hat, 
 and long, straggling white hair, and a cart loaded with an old 
 forge and a lathe, and tool-chests, and an old-fashioned brass- 
 nailed trunk, and bedding, and iron bedstead ? " 
 
 As the gate-keeper slowly enumerated the list, Luther re 
 plied with an emphatic nod of the head. 
 
 "Well, now, do you know if it wasn't for the cart I almost 
 think I do recollect something of the kind. Are you sure it 
 was a cart ? " 
 
 " By no means," replied Luther. " It may have been a 
 two-horse dray ; in fact, now I think of the load of things 
 there was to carry, and that the old cobbler in the basement 
 seems to have an idea of two horses, the more inclined I am 
 to think that it must have been a double team." 
 
 " The old fellow's hair came clear down on to his shoul 
 ders ; and did he wear an old plaid cloak, with one of those 
 old-fashioned brass chains and hook to fasten at the neck ? 
 
 " Well, then," continued the gate-keeper, after a pause, 
 " I think I have got your man." 
 
 " Do you think so ? " eagerly demanded Luther, his voice 
 trembling with his excitement. 
 
 " Yes ;" and the gate-keeper deliberately nodded his head 
 three or four times. " Yes, sir ; and your drayman to match 
 red whiskers and all. I got into a boggle with him about 
 making change. He's from the other side. I don't know 
 him myself, but I'll tell you. Jim Waters, one of the hands 
 on the boat that is just coming in, knows him, for I saw them 
 shake hands, and heard him ask how his folks were. That's 
 Jim there, just throwing off the guard-chain. I'll introduce 
 you." 
 
 " Hollo, Jim ! here's a friend of mine going over wants
 
 XF.l'ER AGAL\~ 
 
 407 
 
 to ask you a few questions. ; T\vorTt hurt you to answer. 1 ' and 
 the gate-keeper turned to his duties, as the boat, having dis 
 charged its contents, was now ready to receive the long line 
 of carts and carriages of all kinds waiting an entrance. 
 
 Tinkle sounds the pilot's bell plash go the wheels and 
 the boat shoots out into one of the most magnificent and in 
 teresting panoramas in the world. As she recedes from her 
 berth all the littleness of brick and mortar, all the meanness 
 of decaying wooden docks, all the squalor of the markets, 
 and filth and stench of the streets, slip away into the distance, 
 as slips away the crime, the sin, the misery, the rudeness, the 
 ignorance of the past, into the obscuring distance of history, 
 leaving nothing for our observation but the wavy and mellow 
 outlines of the classical and chivalric institutions, the more 
 brilliant tints of social and political groupings, or the loftier 
 sunlit towers and spires of buried genius. In this way the 
 city glorifies itself as it recedes, and the delighted passenger at 
 the stern of the ferry-boat glances backward and exclaims, 
 " How beautiful ! how grand ! " Really, New York, if one 
 only gets far enough from it for a proper view, is the most 
 lovely city in the world. Sighing a sigh of melancholy pleas 
 ure, he walks to the bow to take in more fully the glorious 
 natural features of a scene that needs no mellowing, or rather 
 obscuring circumstance, to enhance its beauty. The broad, 
 placid bay shimmering in the morning sun, and tickled here 
 and there into rippling smiles by the playful breeze ; the 
 grand reach of water stretching through the Narrows into the 
 lower bay, and thence onward throughout and around the 
 world ; the noble river on the other side, bearing on its flood 
 of waters more wealth in loaded barge and boat than ever 
 poured into Venice or Lisbon, when those two cities were in 
 turn sole " marts of Inde ; " the distant out-posts of the 
 ranged Palisades on the one hand ; the hills of Weehawken 
 and Hoboken in front ; and the rounded heights of Staten Isl 
 and on the left all make up a picture of unmatched magnifi 
 cence, especially to an American who has cultivated the habit, 
 as all good Americans do, of modifying his perceptions of
 
 408 NE VER A GA IN. 
 
 what is by glimpses of what maybe. To him appear visions 
 of the magnificent stone docks, the beautiful elevated belt 
 railroads, the magnificent bridges, with arches spanning a 
 million of masts and steam-funnels, and springing from but 
 tresses, or swinging from towers that pierce the clouds. 
 
 If anything, then, is really wanting to the view that one 
 gets from a Hoboken ferry-boat in mid-passage, it is more 
 than made up by this aura, or ether of suggested probabili 
 ties, that bathes the whole scene in its peculiar and heavenly 
 light. This alone more than makes up for the superior height 
 and grander form of the green slopes that gird the magnifi 
 cent bay of Rio, or for the wider sweep and darker blue of the 
 beautiful water sentried by stately Capri, and across which 
 raging Vesuvius, belching smoke and flames, and lashing his 
 flanks with rocks, forever threatens the Syren city, v 
 
 It would be unreasonable, then, it would be wrong, to ex 
 pect that a foreigner should quite come up in his estimate of 
 New York bay and harbor to the conceptions of an enthusi 
 astic native, especially one whose imagination has never been 
 blunted by contact with the hackneyed glories of the old 
 world. 
 
 There was a large steamer just dropping anchor. The 
 ferry-boat passed so close to her that the faces of the emi 
 grants who crowded her forward deck were distinctly visible. 
 What more impressive object ? what more vivifying adjunct 
 of natural scenery? what more suggestive subject of specula 
 tion ? that is, of speculation mental. The other kind of spec 
 ulation, the speculation of runners and touters, and sharks 
 and swindlers of every degree, has, thanks to the Board of 
 Emigration Commissioners, been pretty nigh destroyed. But 
 for mental speculation nothing can equal her. Look at her 
 as she swings to her moorings, with a thousand anxious faces 
 gazing over her bulwarks and peering down into the steam- 
 barges drawn up to her sides, and say if that great floating 
 dice-box, ready to cast its cubes of humanity out upon the 
 tables of the West, is not the most interesting and suggestive 
 thing in the harbor.
 
 VEVER AGAIN. 409 
 
 She has had a happy passage, perhaps she has brought 
 her charge kindly to port ; she was not " built in the eclipse 
 or rigged with curses," but who can tell how many curses 
 dark, how many sighs and groans, went to make up that 
 cargo a cargo of, perhaps, equally mingled hopes and fears, 
 but of also very far from equally mingled joys and sorrows ; 
 a freight of human passions and affections and memories ; a 
 load of God-made flesh and blood squeezed out from home 
 and fatherland by institutions heavy as hoary ; or, as Mr. 
 Whoppers would say, an ark full of wild animals escaping from 
 the heavy reigns of the Old World to the milder showers and 
 more genial clime of Democracy. 
 
 Luther stood entranced. The huge ship and its freight 
 of life dropped into his consciousness with an effect similar 
 to that of a piece of stick or string into some saturated saline 
 solution. A whole host of fancies and historic memories in 
 stantly coalesced and crystallized around her ; and into his 
 imagination sailed the emigrant barks and galleys of all time 
 past. Here was the Mayflower, with her load of sturdy Prot 
 estant bigots, bearing with them the seeds of a liberty they 
 little dreamed of. There were the fleets of Spain, loaded 
 with hosts of Catholic fanatics eager, with sword and rack, to 
 destroy a more promising civilization, and a religion hardly 
 less cruel and bloody than their own. There were the staunch 
 barks of the Northmen following in the wake of their fierce 
 Vikings, and landing their cargo of women and children upon 
 the banks of the Humber and the shores of Normandy. 
 There were the crowded boats of the Saxon, as, bearing in 
 his veins the blood of empire, he swarmed to the New World 
 of Hengest and Horsa. There were the countless emigrant 
 galleys of Greece tracking the victorious trireme to the shores 
 of Sicily and the mouths of the Rhone, or up the coast of 
 Ionia and through the yawning jaws of the Symplegades. 
 There was the tall ship of unfortunate Dido, and, following in 
 its wake, the barks of pious ^Eneas and his friends. There 
 were the boats of Cadmus loaded with the weight of an 
 Alphabet the coracles of migratory hordes in the bronze
 
 4io 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 age ; the supporting rafts, bladders, and blown-up skins of the 
 stone age ; and so on, away back unto the time when a tribe 
 of the hairy, pointed-eared arboreal quadrumane, from whom 
 we are descended, first straddled a lot of logs, and, favored 
 by wind and tide, crossed a reach of water to a land of bigger 
 nuts and larger roots, with the small game more tame and 
 plentiful : or, still further back, and Luther could not but 
 smile at the funny sight, as, with his mind's eye, he caught a 
 view of a herd of our ancestors, when in the marsupial state, 
 on their migrations, and while crossing a river in precisely the 
 way still practised by our squirrels of the present day each 
 human potentiality seated upon a large strip of bark, with 
 his broad tail curled up over his back to catch the favoring 
 breeze. Luther smiled, and any one would have smiled to 
 have seen the little ones peeping, with anxious curiosity, from 
 their snug maternal pouches, as the whole fleet swept on to a 
 new world, bearing in its perilous course that is, if these 
 may be supposed to be the ancestors of that particular tribe 
 of arboreans who were the ancestors of our progenitors the 
 Aryans the destinies of civilized and Christianized human 
 ity. Ah ! who can think without a shudder of the possibili 
 ties had a sudden storm dashed those frail barks to pieces, 
 or had gigantic saurians from below, or pterodactyls from above, 
 pouched that exposed herd of migratory marsupials in their 
 ruthless maws ? The whole world would have been given over 
 to the Semitic, the Ethiopian, and the heathen Chinee. True 
 religion would have been nowhere. The avid and fertile field 
 for the cultivation of all that is truly pious, and good, and 
 true, afforded by the Aryan mind would have been wholly 
 wanting. Charles Martel would never have fought the battle 
 of Tours, and all discussion as to what might have been if he 
 had not then and there slain three hundred thousand Moslems 
 would have been not only useless, but impossible. 
 
 It may seem improbable, especially to the slow-minded 
 reader, that Luther could have compassed such afar-reaching 
 train of thought in the three minutes that the ferry-boat occu 
 pied in passing the steamer, but, as has been before said, he
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 411 
 
 was a youth of a very active imagination, and there is no say 
 ing that he might not have run back to the Ascidian grand 
 father of everything human, just as the old fellow had made 
 up his mind to tuck up his tunic, tear himself from his ances 
 tral rock, and float away to some spot more favorable for de 
 velopment some nook where higher floods and lower ebbs 
 would enable his family to go under deeper, and come out 
 higher and dryer, and otherwise better train themselves for 
 their great destinies we say Luther's imagination might have 
 run back to the extreme links of the chain connecting a Bre 
 men immigrant steamer with the lower eocene, had his musings 
 not been cut short by the voice of Jim Waters. 
 
 " You want to speak to me about something ? Well, sir, 
 I'm agreeable. What is it ? " 
 
 Luther stated his case, to which Jim responded with a mem 
 ory perfectly clear and lively. " Recollected the drayman of 
 course. He was an old friend of his. Talked with him when he 
 first crossed in the morning, and talked with him upon going 
 back with his load. In fact he knew Mr. Planlyby sight; had 
 seen him on the boat several times. Couldn't tell exactly 
 whereabouts in Hoboken the drayman lived ; but Lord ! that 
 was easy enough to find out ; just inquire at Tim Casey's, 
 where he always hangs out o'nights ; guessed he'd got a slate 
 at Casey's ; but they'll know where he lives at any rate. His 
 name is Downey William Downey and just as likely as not 
 he is at this moment to be found right round the corner, at 
 the stand in first street from the dock." 
 
 This last suggestion proved to be correct, and relieved 
 Luther from the necessity of calling at Tom Casey's. The 
 only drayman in sight was a stout, red-whiskered man, and in 
 person corresponded so closely to the idea of the man he was 
 in search of, that Luther had hardly a doubt. 
 
 " Your name is Downey, is it not ? " he demanded, 
 politely touching his hat. 
 
 " That's my name, sir. Anything I can do for you ? " 
 
 " I want to find the address of Mr. Planly. You brought 
 a load of things for him about three weeks ago. I have lost
 
 412 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 his address. I am a friend of his, and I want very much to 
 find him." 
 
 " You do ? Well, do you know I rather think that Mr. 
 Planly don't care about his friends finding him. Don't know 
 anything about it, but that's my opinion." 
 
 " He'll be willing to see me, I'm sure," replied Luther. 
 
 " You're sure of that ? You haven't come to bother the 
 old fellow about any money troubles, have you ? Haven't 
 any little papers, and that kind of thing about ye, eh ? Well, 
 you don't look like it. I guess you're right. You'll find him, 
 
 I guess, in a back building in Street, between 
 
 Don't know the number, but you go in by an alleyway in the 
 middle of the block." 
 
 Luther waited not for further conversation, but eagerly 
 started off up the street. 
 
 " Don't know," muttered red-whiskered Bill Downey, " if 
 I have done exactly the fair thing by the old fellow in setting 
 that young one on him. However, it's none of my busi 
 ness."
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 How to begin a Chapter Inventions of all kinds The noiseless Gun- 
 Glimpses of Madame Steignitz's Fate A Clue to the Bandits. 
 
 IT seems with almost all modern writers a matter de rigueur 
 to commence a new chapter as often as possible with 
 some profound reflection ; some sententious and wisdom-laden 
 saying ; or, at least, an illustrative anecdote, or a witty re 
 mark. The profound reflection is, perhaps, most generally 
 in vogue. It is the easiest to come at. Have you not a vol 
 ume of Proverbial Philosophy at your elbow ? 
 
 The profound reflection can be drawn out to any length. 
 The old illustration of the divisibility of matter the coat 
 ing of gold upon a silver wire hardly conveys an idea of 
 the thinness and tenuity, the excessive exility, the profound 
 reflection is capable of. It is this quality which enables it 
 best to serve the purpose of art in introducing it. The reader 
 may skip, if he or she pleases, and as he and she most gen 
 erally do especially she, but the profound reflection at the 
 head of a chapter produces its effect. It emphasizes the 
 break and rests the mind by marking the solution of a weary 
 ing continuity. Like rocks in the bed of a shallow stream, 
 it breaks the flow, and enables you to perceive how deep the 
 water is, and which way it runs. Like a dam, it checks the 
 current of narrative until you have accumulated a head that, 
 upon suddenly opening your sluice-gates, will carry your 
 rickety raft of story clear over the flats and shoals of the 
 following chapter ; or, to use a figure better suited to the- 
 meridians of Maine or Michigan than to those of New York 
 or London, the profound reflection is a kind of boom that
 
 414 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 holds the saw-logs of incident and character from slipping 
 over the dam too fast, and before they have been properly 
 slit up into beams, boards, and laths, suited to the construct 
 ive capacity of the general reader's mind. 
 
 The profound reflection, as we have said, can be skipped. 
 It generally is skipped. It is, perhaps, universally skipped ; 
 and an instance that recently came under observation shows 
 with what cool, calculating precaution, with what deliberate 
 malice prepense, the thing can be done. 
 
 A young girl of fifteen is seated in one corner of the spa 
 cious and elegant drawing-room of Cozzens' West Point hotel, 
 poring over the last volume of a fashionable English novelist. 
 A pencil in her hand, frequently applied to the page, attracts 
 attention, and to her enters a gentleman loquitur. 
 
 " You must have an interesting book there, Miss Rosa, 
 you seem to be so absorbed in it ; may I ask the title ? '' 
 
 " It is ' Hiding his Light; or, Now You See It and Now 
 You Don't See It.' I don't like it much. It's awful dull 
 work for me. I'm not reading it for myself." 
 
 " Not reading it for yourself! " 
 
 " No ; mother and sister want to read it, and they make 
 me read it first and mark all the passages they are to leave 
 out all the reflections and observations, and that kind of 
 stuff, you know. Mother says she'll give me one of those 
 Japanese fans they only cost thirty cents at Fountain's and 
 sister promises to give me half a dollar. I am sure it's worth 
 more than that to read every word and mark all the stuff, 
 and I know I shan't get the money sister never does pay 
 her debts." 
 
 Could the author himself have turned over the pencilled 
 pages he would have been struck with admiration at the an- 
 erring tact with which the young girl had detupperized his 
 latest and best. 
 
 Yes, the human mind is lamentably given to skipping. It 
 is perhaps, however, lucky that it is so. Lucky, in this universal 
 deluge of novels, that the general reader always skips that 
 he loves to skip. 13ut to skip it is necessary to have some-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 415 
 
 thing skipable. It won't do for an author to leave out all 
 the plums from his pudding, simply because, not being able 
 to put in the genuine Malaga No. i box the real Saturday 
 Review article and having nothing but the common " keg" 
 handy, his readers will pick them all out and throw them dis 
 dainfully away. The veriest skimmer who begins a novel at 
 the end and reads it by snatches here and there backward, 
 wouldn't be satisfied without a certain amount of padding and 
 profundity. 
 
 And now, having dammed our narrative long enough for all 
 the necessities of profane art, we will turn to Luther, who has 
 just wriggled himself up the narrow alley, and in obedience to 
 a sharp, querulous " Come in," is pulling at the cord that lifts 
 the heavy wooden latch of the inventor's door. 
 
 Mr. Planly was seated at a strong deal table, furnished 
 With a vice, and covered with tools. In his hand he held a 
 glass disk of a few inches in diameter, which he was atten 
 tively examining. This disk was plainly the flint-glass sec 
 tion of the object-glass of a telescope. There was a deep cut 
 across the face of it, almost dividing it into halves. A little 
 more work and the division would be complete. 
 
 The old man was so wholly absorbed in his work that he 
 did not, for an instant, recognize his visitor. But as he turned 
 his head more fully towards the door, Luther noticed that he 
 started, and that a frightened expression came over his face, 
 which, however, gradually passed as the young man came 
 briskly forward and shook him warmly by the hand. 
 
 " You see I have found you out," said Luther. " I hope I 
 am welcome. I know you don't want to be interrupted by 
 visitors, but I thought that you would not object to see me. I 
 am so anxious to know how all the inventions come on I 
 couldn't wait any longer." 
 
 " You came, then, of your own motion that is, no one 
 sent you ? " demanded Mr. Planly. " I mean," he continued, 
 seeing Luther's puzzled look " I mean that you do not come 
 at the instigation of the old woman." 
 
 " How so ? " asked Luther. " I don't exactly understand."
 
 4 i 6 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " Well, I thought she might have got you to hunt me out, 
 but it was ridiculous to suppose so. I beg your pardon. 
 You are not her agent, it is true, but you visited her so often 
 that at the first sight of you I could not but connect you with 
 her. I suppose you know I had a little difficulty about my 
 room. She insisted upon it that I had hired it by the month, 
 whereas I distinctly hired it by the week. I paid her for the 
 week in which I had made up my mind to leave, but she in 
 sisted upon my paying for the remaining fortnight ; so, to 
 avoid having any squabble, I took advantage of her absence 
 that morning she went to Staten Island and just quietly packed 
 up and cleared out." 
 
 " You need not have taken that precaution," replied Lu 
 ther. " She told me herself in the evening that she believed 
 you were right, and that you were the only really honest ten 
 ant she had in the house. I am sure she would not have 
 given you any trouble." 
 
 " Well, it was not precisely fear of the old woman that 
 made me steal away so quietly," returned Mr. Planly ; " but 
 to tell the truth, there were some other folks that I wanted to 
 get rid of. They bored me a good deal, and took up too 
 much of my time, and as I wanted a larger room and a better 
 place to work, and a cheaper rent, I thought I would slip 
 away for a while over here." 
 
 " Why, I didn't know you had many visitors. I have never 
 seen but two in your room that Italian fellow and myself 
 which of us is the bore you ran away from ? " demanded 
 Luther, laughingly. 
 
 Mr. Planly glanced suspiciously for an instant at the young 
 man. 
 
 " Oh, I don't mean to say," he replied, " that I really ran 
 away from any one ; but I have taken up an old idea of 
 mine, and I could not have had space enough to work it out 
 in an attic. You see here I am on the ground floor ; and here 
 I have an old glass-blower's furnace still good enough for 
 my purposes. I am going to try some experiments in making 
 glass for optical purposes. Just look through that."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 417 
 
 Mr. Planly handed Luther a disk of ground glass about 
 six inches in diameter and an inch thick, which, at two points 
 opposite to each other, upon the edge or periphery of the disk, 
 had polished spaces of about an inch in diameter. 
 
 Luther placed one of these to his eye and looked through 
 the six inches of solid glass. 
 
 " Beautiful ! " he exclaimed. " How wonderfully trans 
 parent. I can see through it as plainly as through the thin 
 nest sheet of window-glass. That disk must be perfect." 
 
 " You think so ? Well, I can tell you that it is probably 
 very far from perfect. It is quite likely utterly unfit for opti 
 cal purposes. You can't tell until it has been ground into a 
 lens, and tried, and then, perhaps, you will find that you have 
 your labor for your pains. There may be nothing that you 
 can see with the naked eye, but the delicate waves of light 
 from a star or planet will search out the imperfections. Your 
 lens may be made with the greatest accuracy, the curves cal 
 culated with mathematical precision, and the surfaces polished 
 with the utmost nicety, but your glass is far from pure ; and 
 being composed of materials of different specific gravities, 
 will have in different portions different degrees of density, and, 
 in consequence, different degrees of refractive power. It is 
 this last which is the great trouble. Now, my improvements 
 contemplate not only making glass free from air-bubbles 
 free from all the load of impurities, the dust and dirt that the 
 purest air contains but also free from the imperfections that 
 arise from the different gravities of the materials employed in 
 making glass." 
 
 A long explanation of the principle of the refracting tele 
 scope followed, to which Luther listened not only patiently 
 but with interest, but which it would, perhaps, take too much 
 of our space and the reader's time to give here. 
 
 . " I am not a young man," continued Mr. Planly, " but I 
 may live to see the time when some Crassus or Crcesus will 
 find a fitting use for one of the vast, overgrown, and appall 
 ing fortunes which the rising tides of population, of industry, 
 and luxury, have thrown into the laps of our rich men, in sup- 
 27
 
 4 i8 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 plying the imperative demands of science. There must come 
 some one soon who, tired of a wearing heaping up of riches 
 of a sordid saving on the one hand, or a vulgar ostentation 
 of wealth on the other, and indisposed to waste his money 
 upon the questionable schemes of a reckless and demoralizing 
 philanthropy, or a mercenary and perfunctory piety will set 
 himself and his fortune to the task of opening up in various 
 ditections, and paving with dollars, the rugged paths of ex 
 perimental research. 
 
 " Then," continued Mr. Planly, waving his hands in an 
 oratorical manner, " we shall, perhaps, see a refracting tele 
 scope of five or six feet aperture, and one hundred and fifty 
 feet focal length, or, in fact, one of twice that size ; an instru 
 ment that will extend the boundaries of knowledge to the far 
 thest realms of creation ; that will make us minutely acquain 
 ted with the structure and conditions of our own little solar 
 system ; that will reveal the countless planetary systems that 
 revolve round each star as a centre ; that will take us into full 
 vision of the remotest nebulae, and bring us face to face with 
 every phase in the manufactory of worlds. But I am making 
 a speech. I beg pardon." 
 
 " Oh, no excuses ! " exclaimed Luther. "The subject is a 
 good one. I am only sorry you have so small an audience. 
 I wish old Winergelt could hear you. He might take it into 
 his head to show us the limitations of space, and reconcile the 
 finite and the infinite. But you must first show him how 
 such a telescope could be made." 
 
 "Well, that I am going to do," replied Mr. Planly. "I 
 have got here a lot of glass. I am going to ascertain the ex 
 act densities and specific gravities of different portions ; that 
 is to start with ; and then I am going to make a disk-shaped 
 vessel, or pot, to melt my glass in ; and this vessel I shall 
 hang on trunnions, and keep in constant revolution while the 
 glass is in a liquid state." 
 
 " Have you ever tried it ? " demanded Luther. 
 
 " Yes, in a small way, and with every indication of suc 
 cess. But it is too expensive for a poor man to attempt on a
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 419 
 
 large scale. Oh ! if old Winergelt would devote a. hundred 
 thousand dollars to making a pot of glass ! We could find 
 pi-en ty of men to work it into form and mount it afterward, 
 even if it weighed a ton." 
 
 " But would not such a mass be liable to a change of form 
 in different positions, from the effect of gravity ? " asked Lu 
 ther. 
 
 " Undoubtedly ; and to a reflector your objection would be 
 fatal. But a huge refracting lens would not suffer so much, 
 and I am satisfied that it could be corrected for gravity, and 
 then if its use was limited in space, as it would necessarily 
 have to be in time, from the disturbances of the earth's at 
 mosphere, I don't think the change of shape from weight 
 would prevent it from doing wonderful work. To get a disk 
 of perfectly pure homogenous glass of equal density through 
 out is the great difficulty. 
 
 " Do you see this ? " continued Mr. Planly, showing Lu 
 ther a complicated-looking apparatus. "Well, this is a model 
 of an arrangement by which, with water passing through these 
 tubes, covered with fire-clay, I could hang my pot of glass on 
 gimbals and keep it revolving in every direction ; but " and 
 Mr. Planly shook his head sadly " that would cost a great 
 deal of'money. I should have to rob your old woman to do 
 that." 
 
 The perfectly easy and natural voice in which Mr. Planly 
 made the last observation instantly removed certain dim sus 
 picions that had haunted Luther's mind. He felt sure that 
 the old inventor knew of nothing that had happened at the 
 house in Wooster Street since his departure. 
 
 " Ah ! you are too late for that," he replied. " Some one 
 has been before you in that business." 
 
 "What do you mean?" demanded Mr. Planly, with a 
 frightened look. 
 
 " Well, I don't know that they have robbed her ; but they 
 have stolen her carried her off perhaps something worse." 
 
 "What ! Madame Steignitz carried off? " 
 
 " That's my belief she's gone has been missing for ten
 
 4 20 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 days. The police seem to think that is, if they take the 
 trouble to think at all about it that she has gone off of her 
 self on some trip, and will return of her own pleasure ; but I 
 know better." 
 
 Luther now related to Mr. Planly all the circumstances of 
 the case, and dwelt particularly upon the reasons, physical and 
 moral, which convinced him that the old woman did not leave 
 the room by the door, or of her own will, and that she 
 would not have left her home for so long a time without letting 
 him know her intentions during the evening previous, that he 
 had passed with her. 
 
 Mr. Planly listened, hardly asking a question, but with 
 marks of interest increasing to the end. As Luther concluded 
 he turned away, lifted the cover of a glue-pot simmering over 
 a lamp, and seemed for a moment or two to be deeply occu 
 pied in examining the consistence of the viscous fluid. " I 
 knew it," he muttered to himself in tones so low that Luther 
 could catch only here and there a word. " I was certain of 
 it. But, what could I have done ? Warned the old woman ? 
 Warned her of what? Bah ! she would have laughed in my 
 face ; but I might have known it ! a reckless, desperate, 
 daring rascal, if ever there was one ! 
 
 " Do you suspect any one ? " he demanded, suddenly 
 raising his head and looking Luther full in the face. 
 
 "I do," replied Luther, nodding his head emphatically, 
 and adding, after a pause, " I believe you do, too, Mr. 
 Planly." 
 
 " And that some one is ? " 
 
 " Your former frequent visitor," continued Luther, " the 
 small, dark-complexioned foreigner, for whom you were doing 
 ;ome kind of work making some kind of machine which 
 you would never let me see. I overheard a few words of his 
 conversation two or three times. I saw him one night join a 
 man waiting for him in the street just after a visit to you, which 
 man I am satisfied is the owner of the eyes I saw peering into 
 the window of Madame Steignitz' room. So, putting all 
 things together, I am satisfied that he is the party who has
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 421 
 
 caused the disappearance of the old lady ; with what object J 
 can't exactly make out ; she never carried any valuables on 
 her person, and kept no money in her room." 
 
 " Well, that is a point upon which, perhaps, I can enlighten 
 you," deliberately replied Mr. Planly. " The old woman 
 couldn't be robbed she had nothing on, or about her, to 
 steal, she has been carried off to extort money from her, 
 the crazy scheme of some of her desperate countrymen. 
 They'll stop at nothing." 
 
 " You don't think that she has been murdered ? " demanded 
 Luther. 
 
 " Not yet," replied Mr. Planly. " You see there would be 
 no use of killing her, until they had compelled her to sign a 
 check, or an order for any unregistered bonds or securities she 
 may have. That they wouldn't kill her afterwards, I am not 
 so sure. But the old woman is game, she won't give in until 
 the last moment. You have been to the bank to inquire if 
 anything has been heard of her ? " 
 
 Luther replied in the affirmative. 
 
 " Well, then, they haven't got anything out of her yet. 
 She's still living, but I shouldn't wonder if they were employ 
 ing torture." 
 
 " Torture ! " exclaimed Luther, and the blood for an instant 
 forsook his cheeks, and his heart, oppressed with its burden, 
 thumped like a lump of lead against his ribs. 
 
 " Why not ? What more natural ? You have plenty of 
 imagination suppose we put ourselves for a moment in the 
 position of the two men we suspect. Ruined, desperate, and 
 ruthless, we have an obstinate old woman in our power, and 
 we have resolved to make her disgorge the one thing needful 
 to our lives, or to the success of schemes that we value more 
 than life itself. She won't yield ! Don't you think that the 
 idea of some cheap and easy substitute for the old-fashioned 
 rack and thumb-screw would occur to such ingenious fellows 
 as we are ? " 
 
 " Could such a thing be ! " exclaimed Luther. " Pooh ! it 
 must be impossible in this age and country."
 
 422 
 
 NEVER A-GAIN. 
 
 " Not at all ; there is no form of crime of the olden day 
 that cannot be paralleled in the present age ; that could not, 
 in fact, be repeated if the occasion called for it. Certain 
 crimes are now really impossible, simply because of a change 
 of fashion, not because of any improvement of the moral 
 sense. The credit and banking systems have altered things, 
 and valuables are not so easily conveyed as they used to be ; 
 but don't you suppose that, if a reasonable sum could be made 
 by it, there are plenty of men in this city who would undertake 
 to seduce some rich Jew into a quiet apartment, and subject 
 him to the thumb-screws, with a clever dentist standing by, 
 ready to pull out every tooth in his head ? " 
 
 " You have no objections, I suppose, to tell me what you 
 know about this man whom you admit we both suspect?" 
 inquired Luther. 
 
 " No, none," replied Mr. Planly, thoughtfully ; "but I don't 
 want the nature of my connection with him to go any further 
 than yourself. And first I will tell you how I got acquainted 
 with him. It was at an oyster saloon on Broadway. The 
 room was full, and no place for him but at my table. I was 
 struck with his looks, his glossy beard and moustache, and 
 dangling curls of black. His restless dark eyes, his firm, well- 
 cut mouth, and a general expression of subdued fierceness 
 overlying his whole face, took my fancy. I could not tell 
 then, and I don't know yet, whether he is French or Italian. 
 I have heard him speak both languages. We were soon in 
 full conversation, and when I had finished my stew he asked 
 me to join him in a glass of beer. This gave us still more 
 time to talk, and after the beer we strolled up Broadway 
 together. At last we got a-talking about inventions and im 
 provements in fire-arms, in which he seemed to be very much 
 interested. I told him about my breech-loading cannon, 
 which I spent so much time and money upon thirty years ago, 
 and about my plan for casting cannon all in a lump, as at 
 present, but with the centre composed of iron having great 
 elasticity or power of expansion, and the outside layers of iron 
 having less, so as to compel these last to take up their full
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 423 
 
 share of the strain. I don't think I ever told you about that, 
 did I ? " 
 
 Luther was loath to reply distinctly no, for fear of diverting 
 Mr. Planly from the more immediate subject in hand. He 
 merely shook his head, but that was enough. The inventor 
 at once rushed to one corner of the room, rumaged for a few 
 minutes in a box half-filled with scraps in all forms of wood, 
 and iron, and brass. His search proved successful. 
 
 " Look here now," he said, showing two disks of cast iron, 
 each about three inches across, and half-an-inch thick. Each 
 one had been bored through in the centre. 
 
 " You see there two disks, or flat rings if you please to 
 call them ; they look like a pair of quoits for children. Well, 
 they are sections of iron cylinders, one of which was cast out 
 of the best gun-metal, the other was cast according to my 
 plan, with the most expansible iron in the centre and the most 
 rigid outside. You see they are exactly alike in looks and 
 size ; with the hole in the centre exactly an inch in diameter. 
 Now if you take the first one, and into that hole you insert a 
 tapering steel plug, and then apply a sufficient weight to the 
 plug, you will see how a cannon bursts. As the plug is 
 pressed in, a little crack begins at the centre, and gradually 
 extends outwardly as the pressure is increased. That is, the 
 ring is torn in two, or, in other words, the inner layer of metal 
 is strained a great deal more than the outer layer, and gives 
 way first. The outer layer does not do its full duty, and is 
 not put to the full stretch, before the inner layer is broken, 
 and then, when it is too late, it has to yield, itself, in turn. 
 Now take the other disk, and insert the plug, you will find a 
 different state of things. The inner layer is stretched the 
 most, but it is able to stand being stretched the most. It does 
 not give way until the full strain is brought in an equal share 
 upon the outside layer. You will find that it takes from 
 twenty-five to thirty per cent, more weight or power applied to 
 the plug to burst this, than the other, and when it does burst, 
 it gives way altogether. That's my plan for casting cannon. 
 Hold on just one moment, and I will show you the model and 
 drawings."
 
 424 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " Not now, Mr. Planly," exclaimed Luther. " Some other 
 time I shall be delighted to go into the subject, but just now I 
 feel as if I had not a moment to give to anything but the 
 business of the old woman." 
 
 " You're right," good humoredly replied Mr. Planly. " I 
 quite forget myself. However, I am not worse than some 
 others. I knew a fellow once, he had nothing in his head but 
 a revolving steam boiler, to prevent scale, and enable high 
 pressure, without condensers, to be used for marine engines. 
 But Lord, you'd better insure your life before talking with 
 him he'd bore you to death. Well, as I was saying, Mr. 
 Fuiyard that is the name he gave me expressed himself 
 very much interested in all these things, and finally it ended 
 by his coming round to my rooms to see the drawings of my 
 plan for mounting a howitzer or carronade upon a spar, hinged 
 to the stem of the ship. The gun, usually carried inboard, 
 could be lowered at any moment five or six feet below the 
 surface of the water, and fired by coming in contact with the 
 side of an adversary's ship. It was intended to have all the 
 effect of the present beak or ram, now so much in vogue, but 
 which will be found to be utterly useless so soon as vessels are 
 furnished, on my plan, with the power of twisting themselves 
 around, when otherwise motionless, and by means independent 
 of any machinery of propulsion. Well, my plan for mounting 
 the gun, and firing it under water, was at least thirty years old. 
 I had forgotten pretty much all about it, and could not find 
 the drawings. So, we talked, and he was about to take his 
 leave, when I happened to say something about a noiseless 
 gun." 
 
 " A nofseless gun !" exclaimed Luther. " Do you mean a 
 gun that would make no report when fired ? " 
 
 "Just that." 
 
 " Well, you have it in the air-gun." 
 
 " Not at all," replied Mr. Planly. " The air-gun is a very 
 poor and inefficient affair. No, I mean a real gun accurate 
 and of long range, one that will put a bullet through a man at 
 a thousand yards. Well, Mr. Fuiyard jumped at the idea ;
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 425 
 
 said that if I would make such a gun he would take it 
 over to Europe and get an immense sum for it, which he would 
 share with me. I was in want of money, as you know, and I 
 listened to him, and as he was really eloquent, I got more and 
 more interested and excited." 
 
 " But the man meant murder ! " interrupted Luther. " I 
 can't conceive the use for such a gun, especially as I see by 
 your model that it must be a cumbrous apparatus, except to 
 take a quiet long shot at some offending potentate. That man 
 is a Red, and he meant to sell your gun out to some secret 
 radical or communistic society." 
 
 " So I thought, but he convinced me, for a while, at least, 
 that he was going to take it to the French Emperor, and de 
 mand a certain sum for its suppression. He seemed to have 
 no doubt about it. The facility with which a good marksman 
 could establish himself in a distant attic on the other side of 
 the Seine, or in the Rue de Rivoli, and take a long shot at the 
 emperor, or the young prince, every time they appeared in 
 public, without giving the police the slightest clue to his hiding- 
 place, he was quite confident would strike the imagination of 
 the great imperial humbug, and that almost any amount 
 of money might be had for sinking the invention right out of 
 sight." 
 
 " But I should think," said Luther, " that even if you 
 succeeded in preventing all noise, the smoke and smell of the 
 powder would render it impossible to use such a gun with any 
 great certainty of secrecy." 
 
 "Oh, that is all provided for. You don't suppose I would 
 leave such an element as that out of the calculation ? Perfectly 
 pure gun-cotton, or a powder composed of chlorate of potash, 
 would do on a pinch ; but I have a composition of loaf sugar, 
 treated in a certain way, and combined with nitro-glycerine, 
 that is perfectly without smoke or smell. Mr. Fuiyard tried 
 some cartridges I prepared for him, and was delighted with 
 them. 
 
 " Well, to make a long story short, I set to work upon the 
 gun. I got absorbed in the preliminary experiments and in
 
 426 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 the mechanical details of the invention. I hardly gave a 
 thought as to the results or the moral questions that might 
 arise." 
 
 " And you succeeded ? " demanded Luther. 
 
 Mr. Planly nodded his head, and pointed to a long wooden 
 box resting upon trestles at one side of the room. 
 
 " Yes, there it is ; I can't show it to you, and T can't ex 
 plain it to you. I never even allowed Mr. Fuiyard to know 
 anything of the principle or details ; I only showed him the 
 results as the experiments went on. You see there were 
 three different ways of attacking the subject preventing 
 vibrations, absorbing vibrations, or counteracting vibrations by 
 vibrations the same as when two interfering waves of light 
 produce darkness. As I have said, for reasons, I have made 
 up my mind to keep the secret for the present to myself. And 
 I cannot tell or show you any of the details, but I will just 
 say that I found each way successful. But in one there were 
 so many advantages that I have finally accepted it, and there 
 it stands." 
 
 Luther stared steadily at the long slender box, but as his 
 eyes were unable to penetrate a pine board he turned and 
 directed them to Mr. Planly, who, from his usual subdued and 
 slouching attitude, had drawn himself up and was pointing his 
 ringer with the proud and confident look of a successful 
 inventor. 
 
 " You doubt it ? " demanded Mr. Planly. " Well, I can't 
 show you the machine, but I can show you its effect, with the 
 understanding of strict secrecy on your part." 
 
 Mr. Planly paused, and Luther nodded his head. 
 
 " Have the goodness to look out of the window for a mo 
 ment while I charge the gun." 
 
 Luther had hardly time to turn to the window before Mr. 
 Planly announced that he had finished the operation. 
 
 " We will now," he continued, " extemporize a target out 
 of these inch boards," and taking ten of them he placed them 
 one over the other against the wall, and facing one end of the 
 tube, which was furnished with a trap-door, opening by means 
 of a spring.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 427 
 
 Mr. Planly placed himself at the other end of the box 
 and pulled the string of the trap-door. 
 
 ' Now look and listen," he exclaimed. " I am going to 
 touch this little wire which springs the lock." 
 
 Luther strained eyes and ears. He could see nothing, and 
 he could hear nothing but a slight hiss and the thud of the 
 bullet against the target. 
 
 The bullet had gone through the ten boards and flattened 
 itself up against the rough brick wall of the room. 
 
 " What do you think of that ? " demanded Mr. Planly, put 
 ting his fingers into the deep indenture in the brick-work. 
 
 " It's murder made easy," replied Luther. 
 
 " It's more than that," replied Mr. Planly, impressively 
 squeezing Luther's arm. "It is murder made safe." 
 
 " Then what the devil possessed you to invent the 
 thing ? " demanded Luther. 
 
 " You've hit it exactly. I suppose it was the devil ; at any 
 rate one of his imps urged me on, and to get rid of him was 
 the main reason why I left Wooster Street. I'll tell you how it 
 was : I had begun to suspect the fellow for some time. I found 
 that he was a political refugee, and a most furious red repub 
 lican. It occurred to me more than once that he might be 
 humbugging me, and that, so far from getting any money for 
 the suppression of the invention, and sharing it with me, he 
 would much prefer to get money for the use of it and keep 
 it all to himself. You may, perhaps, think that this last idea 
 quickened my perceptions of the true moral bearings of the 
 case. Well, perhaps it did," added Mr. Planly, reflectively. 
 "There is so much human nature in man that one can't 
 always tell how big a portion of it he has himself. At any 
 rate I began to feel dubious about trusting the fellow any way. 
 One day I went round with him to a kind of restaurant and 
 drinking-shop in Prince Street for a glass of ale. It seemed 
 to be a place of resort for foreigners only ; at least I saw none 
 but French and Italians. A few days afterward I happened 
 in there again. There was in the front a noisy, chattering 
 crowd, and among them a party of quarrelsome French watch-
 
 428 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 case makers, who, according to weekly custom, were drinking 
 up the large, easily won wages of the last days of the week, 
 by a carouse on Champagne, lasting the first three. I wan 
 dered into the back room, which was comparatively quiet, and 
 put my mug of ale upon a table placed close to a window 
 closed with a wire screen, and opening on to the back piazza. 
 The glass was up, and there was nothing but the screen be 
 tween me and two men seated at a table on the piazza.. They 
 were busy drinking and talking, and had no suspicion of any 
 one being so near. I at once recognized my friend, Mr. Fui- 
 yard, and was going to salute him through the window when I 
 heard some allusion to the gun. You know I understand 
 French tolerably, and, notwithstanding there was a good deal 
 of patois and argot too, I could make out most of what they 
 said. They were discussing the question as to whether it 
 would be best to try the gun on the little one or on the old 
 fellow first. I was not left long in doubt as to who were 
 meant by these terms. 
 
 " ' Kill the old fellow,' said the stranger, ' and we shall 
 have afterward to kill the young one, and his mother too. 
 There will be a regency, and, perhaps, a strong one, and God 
 knows how long it may last. But kill the little one and there 
 can be no regency, and the old one may take it hard and die 
 off at once, and at any rate he can't last long, and then well, 
 we know what will happen then.' 
 
 " ' But I can't let the old fellow off,' returned Mr. Fuiyard, 
 and he struck the table and rattled out a volley of oaths, half 
 Italian and half French. ' I have watched and waited, and 
 prayed for an opportunity to take that rascal's life, and now 
 here comes my chance ; I cannot forego it. It will be the 
 happiest moment of my life when I draw a bead upon that 
 stumpy, yellow-skinned, fish-eyed humbug, as he slouches 
 along the terrace, or squints through his opera-glass from the 
 Pavilion window.' 
 
 " Of course," said Mr. Planly, " I don't pretend to give 
 you an exact translation of what they said, but that was about 
 the substance. The other one still urged that it would be
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 429 
 
 best to kill the little one first ; that in reality he was the cause 
 of his father going all wrong ; that if he had not been born 
 the father would have made a very good ruler ; that having 
 no dynasty to look after he would really have tried to educate 
 the people of France for the inevitable republic, but that the 
 birth of that brat had spoiled all. Mr. Fuiyard would not ad 
 mit this the father was a villain from the first. He attained 
 power by lying, and fraud, and wholesale murder ; that as to 
 both blood and brains he was an impostor ; that everything 
 about him was a vile sham ; that the rule of such a perjured 
 humbug was emasculating France, and, as far as French in 
 fluence went, demoralizing the world ; that the only way to 
 break up his entourage of pretentious and reckless rascality 
 and mendacity was to strike at him. He was the tool by 
 which political villainy and religious bigotry worked the vast 
 fund of popular ignorance to their own selfish ends. Kill 
 him and you would break up the clique that made him and 
 upheld him, and scatter in confusion the conglomeration of 
 infamous influences that fed his fictitious power. 
 
 " Imagine this," continued Mr. Planly, " or something very 
 much like it, uttered in a subdued voice, but with passionate 
 volubility, and you will get an idea of what struck my ear and 
 enlightened my mind very much. I slipped out without being 
 seen, and at once made arrangements to get away from Wooster 
 street the next morning, and now you have the real reason for 
 my stealthy demenagement, and the reason why your appearance 
 here gave me such a start. Every time that door opens, I 
 have been afraid that Mr. Fuiyard would enter, and that I 
 should have a fine scene with the fiery jacobin when I had to 
 tell him plumply that I would have nothing more to do with 
 him." 
 
 " And do you think that he is the abductor of Madame 
 Steignitz ? " asked Luther. 
 
 " I do. I don't know that he is or has been the principal 
 actor, but as the chief concocter of the scheme, I am pretty 
 sure that he is the man. And I'll tell you why. He is a 
 bold, reckless, scheming fellow. He knew that Madame
 
 43 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Steignitz was enormously rich, in fact he knew it much better 
 than I. He knew the how and the why of her riches. He 
 knew that the old woman never kept any valuables about her 
 or in her room. He was in want of money, in fact often in 
 desperate straits ; and often talked of the old woman's wealth ; 
 and, one day, I recollect he said he would like to put a wooden 
 jillabeah on her. He said he'd bet she'd yield a million. I 
 asked him what he meant by a wooden jillabeah. He said 
 that it was a garment consisting of two planks with screws 
 between them, used by the Emperor of Morocco for collecting 
 his dues. Whenever a man gets to be too wealthy, the Em 
 peror sends for him to come to court, puts him between these 
 two planks, and turns the screws until he consents to disgorge 
 into the imperial treasury." 
 
 " He must be the man," muttered Luther. " There can 
 be no doubt of it" 
 
 " Another item," continued Mr. Planly, after a pause, " is, 
 that I have seen him in company with a man owning just such 
 a hideous face as you saw looking into the room." 
 
 " And that man is the same man that lived in the attic of 
 one of the houses in the block, and who vacated his room the 
 morning after the old woman disappeared. I see it all now," 
 continued Luther. " It is just as clear as day. But what is 
 to be done ? what is the next step? how shall I find the old 
 woman, or ferret out and punish her murderers ? " 
 
 " I'll tell you one thing you had better try and find, and 
 that is her will. I shouldn't wonder if she had left you 
 something handsome ! " 
 
 "I will prove her to be dead first, before I think about 
 that," replied Luther. 
 
 "You think she has left a will, then ?" 
 
 " I don't know," replied Luther. " She told me one day 
 that she was a very poor woman, and that she had not a rela 
 tion in the world, but that she was going to make her will so 
 as to leave me an old brown candlestick with a most horrible 
 dog's-head for a handle, and her colored plaster bust of Na 
 poleon, something, she said, by which I could remember her
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 431 
 
 Mr. Plahly could give Luther no advice as to his future 
 proceedings. He merely made one remark, and that was that 
 he felt pretty sure that Mr. Fuiyard or his companion would 
 not be found by merely visiting the drinking-shop in Prince 
 street. He doubted whether either would venture in there at 
 present. The place was too public, and they would not show 
 themselves where they knew that he Mr. Planly had been 
 sometimes in the habit of going. 
 
 Luckily Luther had in Mr. Whoppers a more experienced 
 adviser. To him he communicated the secrets of his day's 
 work, concealing nothing but the character and objects of the 
 wonderful gun. 
 
 The result of his earnest consultation with the astute 
 Editor of the Universe may be summed up in a few words 
 Luther was to look out for his man, or men, himself. He must 
 expect to find them disguised, and most probably frequenting 
 some of the lowest haunts for foreigners in the neighborhood 
 of Canal street or Broome street ; that he would have to 
 assume some kind of disguise himself, and that, once on the 
 track, he could then get some assistance from the detective 
 force, and shadow them to their most secret lair. 
 
 " Good-night, my dear fellow," was Mr. Whoppers' parting 
 salutation. " It's a nasty job, but if ever there was a youngster 
 without much experience fitted for it, I suppose you are the 
 one. If you had less coolness and pluck, I should say give it 
 up ; but you are determined, and I must say for your comfort 
 I am not at all sure that you are not right."
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 A Moroccan Institution New York Squeezing Processes A Terrible 
 Spectre Mrs. Ledgeral's Medical Advice Joseph's Reflections- 
 Fond Memories A Mother's Anxieties A new Cure for Neuralgia. 
 
 WOULD it, or would it not, be possible to introduce 
 that happiest institution of Morocco, the wooden 
 jillabeah, into this country? The question must have occui- 
 red to the attentive reader of the last chapter. The pure 
 Anglo-Saxon is ever loath to accept anything as an improve 
 ment from inferior branches of the Aryan race ; and for any 
 thing coming from barbarians of Semitic blood no words can 
 sufficiently express contempt. Now, the American of mixed 
 blood above all a New Yorker of the dominant Celtic race, 
 ought to be more liberal but is he ? Can you knock it into 
 his head that the " blatherin furrigners" can teach us anything 
 at all ? He goes for developing old institutions rather than 
 adopting new ones. For instance, what more striking than 
 the extension of the jury system to meet the wants and re 
 quirements of our ruling classes ? A system as old as the 
 days of Alfred is, with the happiest ingenuity, made to sub 
 serve a purpose newer than Tammany as new as the new 
 Court House. Pass a law to " rope in" for duty every one from 
 twenty-one to seventy, and you have an almost inexhaustible 
 fund of fifty-dollar fees for quietly scratching names off the 
 jury lists ; so that from being a system for determining legal 
 justice, it has become mainly a beautiful instrument for the 
 collection of the taxes that rich people owe their rulers for 
 taking care of their property. So with all our other institu 
 tions ; they are either fully developed, or in the process of de 
 velopment, to suit the times.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 433 
 
 Still, it may be contended that the wooden jillabeah might 
 be advantageously introduced. Its superiority in many par 
 ticulars is manifest. It would be a great saving in time. 
 Now, when the ruling classes wish to make a rich man contrib 
 ute his proper quota to the support of his superiors, the pro 
 cesses are roundabout and wasteful. There is the slow sys 
 tem of legal taxation. Beautiful, it is true, and the easy see 
 saw movement pleases the people. You run up the rate and 
 diminish the valuation, or you diminish the rate and run up 
 the valuation. Of course no sensible man cares much 
 whether he pays five per cent, on a million, or two-and-a-half 
 per cent, on two millions. The movement is simple, but the 
 machinery is complicated, and the mill grinds neither fast nor 
 fine. 
 
 A better way is to repair the street before Mr. Crcesus' 
 door and charge him double the contractor's price. If the 
 foolish fellow trusts to the law, which says that he can be 
 assessed only for first paving, not repairing, a street, why all 
 you have to do is to alter the grade of the street half an inch. 
 Give the poor devil a new street, and add twenty-five per 
 cent, to his bills for grumbling. 
 
 What with the Croton Aqueduct Department and the Board 
 of Health, and the various other boards and departments of 
 the city administration, there are a hundred ways of touching 
 up a recalcitrant citizen, or, in other words, making a balky 
 Crcesus step up to his collar. All these work well, especially 
 if you can get the Citizen's Association, or a committee of our 
 most respectable citizens, to first put a little mud in his nose. 
 
 The indignant reader may justly demand an apology for 
 this metaphor, but it will suit the meridian of certain magnifi 
 cent up-town stables built with corporation money, and will 
 be easily understood by parties who cannot only handle the 
 reins of government, but can tool their buggies alongside of a 
 Vanderbilt or a Bonner. 
 
 As we have said, all these plans are beautiful ; but, per 
 haps, the neatest is opening a new street on paper ; levy 
 ing assessments on property anywhere within five miles, and 
 28
 
 434 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 then why then, leaving the new street for ten years on paper. 
 If ever the time comes for doing anything at it, property all 
 around can be reassessed to pay for working the street, and 
 then, when it is finished, there may be a third assessment for 
 tearing it all up again and altering the grade. 
 
 Some foolish people get into a passion when talking about 
 these things, and may even go so far as to deny the ordinary 
 amount of flesh and blood to a writer who refuses to treat 
 them to a little vigorous denunciation. How absurd ! How 
 perfectly ridiculous ! If the rich men, the respectable men, 
 the pious men of Gotham are content to neglect their public 
 duties, to fritter their time and influence in vain schemes of 
 impossible moral or religious reform, to waste their time in 
 passionate abuse of an energy they dare not, or cannot, emu 
 late ; or they content themselves with a spasmodic effort 
 which, because it heads off for a moment a Tweed or a 
 Sweeny, is supposed to be the regeneration of the whole com 
 munity if they are willing to walk, each his own way, in the 
 vain shadows of national politics, why should a poor devil of 
 an author disquiet himself in vain ? He can only pass on his 
 way quietly, consoling himself at the death of all municipal 
 honor, and honesty, and decency with the melancholy force 
 of the words of the burial service : " Man heapeth up riches, 
 and can not tell who shall gather them. And now, O Lord, 
 what is my hope ? Truly, my hope is only in thee." 
 
 But we are wasting time and space, and wandering from 
 our text, which is the wooden jillabeah. Beautiful as are the 
 squeezing processes of Gotham, the Moroccan process is more 
 beautiful still, and its simplicity is wonderful. Suppose that 
 the late worthy Comptroller of New York, when he had se 
 cured his well-known voluntary auditing committee of wealthy 
 and eminently respectable gobmouches, and just when they 
 were listening with open mouths to his explanation of the 
 curious fact in the natural history of the little joker that 
 sometimes you see it and sometimes you don't see it just 
 suppose for an instant that he had had the wooden jillabeah 
 handy, he might have slipped it on a dozen turns of the
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 435 
 
 screw ! and crack a few bones only and twenty millions 
 would have fallen into his lap, Vith which he could have an 
 swered the demands of our ruling class for six months at least, 
 after sending home the compressed committee-men in the 
 shape and condition of perfect flats, with no stomachs to put 
 their dinner in, even if they had money enough left to buy it. 
 
 A happy way this of determining the great social question 
 what is going to be done with our enormous overgrown for 
 tunes. Is accumulation and concentration to be allowed to go 
 on indefinitely? Shall we be permitted to heap up money, or, 
 still worse, to have it heaped up for us, without the least exer 
 tion on our part of either labor, capital, or brains, into vast 
 tottering piles that threaten at any moment to fall, perhaps 
 under the reckless agony of a death-bed repentance, and 
 overwhelm the community in one universal wave of demoraliz 
 ing philanthropy? Of course it's revolting it is worse it is 
 communistic and revolutionary even to state the question, 
 but Well, the spectre is gigantic when fully developed, and 
 we won't uncork the bottle until we can give him more room 
 to expand himself in. 
 
 Enough to say here, that if all fortunes would dissipate 
 themselves, like Mr. Ledgeral's, for instance, there would be 
 no question of the kind. He, poor man, had pretty nearly 
 approached the solution of the question for himself. He was 
 still shivering in the agonies of doubt as to whether in a few 
 days there would be anything of his fortune left whether, in 
 fact, there would be even a few rags of reputation remaining, 
 in which he might wrap himself, and wait while recuperating 
 under the invigorating influence of the business in Burling 
 Slip. 
 
 Luckily, so far, no one had any suspicions of the real state 
 of his affairs. Mr. Gainsby knew that he was pressed for 
 money, and had to draw to the utmost limit upon the spare 
 funds of the concern ; but Mr. Ledgeral had responded so 
 readily to the call of the firm at the time of the great panic, 
 that he could not think of his partner as being seriously em 
 barrassed by his outside speculations. He looked upon all
 
 436 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 speculations, except, of course, legitimate speculations in a 
 few standard articles, coffee and sugar for instance, and occa 
 sionally speculative advances to secure crops or cargoes, as 
 not only wrong, but worse as absolutely foolish, and it never 
 entered his head that his partner, a man of sense and high 
 social position, a little flighty, it is true, and over-fond of 
 parade and show, and who was the head of a business that 
 yielded to his share, in the good years, seventy or eighty 
 thousand a year, could have plunged so recklessly into the ocean 
 of speculation, and was now all afloat with his head hardly 
 above water, and supported only by financial bubbles and 
 bladders, that were daily bursting and collapsing around him. 
 He looked upon his partner's supposed doings, not with the 
 utter abhorrence due to the regular gamester, but rather with 
 the feelings with which the feminine entourage of Jones or 
 Robinson watch paterfamilias as he slyly slips a napoleon or 
 two on the green cloth at Baden. Naughty man ! but then 
 there is not the least fear that pa will really gamble only just 
 a little, for the fun of the thing ; not the least apprehension 
 that when the Saratoga season is in full blast he will do more 
 than look at the outside of our American Gully's handsome 
 club-house. 
 
 Mr. Gainsby, in the quiet of his secluded counting-room, 
 little appreciated the full force of that blast of passionate 
 longing for sudden fortune, of intense burning desire for vast- 
 wealth, mingled with an utter contempt for small gains, that is 
 now sweeping over the land, whirling into fritters honesty, 
 piety, decency, and self-respect. A tornado of greed ! And 
 yet, that is hardly the term for it one cannot think of the 
 whirling zephyr that merely raises the dust on the road as one 
 and the same thing with the cyclone that, as Mr. Whoppers 
 would say, levels forests and sinks navies at a single blow. 
 
 The Americans, as we have said before, never did care as 
 much for the almighty dollar as their penny-loving cousins of 
 England, their kreutzer-saving kindred of Germany, or their 
 centime-cherishing friends of France. But now, the miserable 
 coin, except in conglomerated masses of millions, can hardly
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 437 
 
 be considered money of account ; and no doubt the time will 
 soon arrive when children just out of the arms will indignantly 
 chuck dollars at the heads of niggardly uncles and aunts, and 
 refuse anything under double eagles or fifty-dollar bank-notes. 
 
 Uncle Shippen knew that Mr. Ledgeral had been fooling 
 around in " the street," because he had been called upon sev 
 eral times to help lift the load when Mr. Ledgeral's usually un 
 failing resource, the general money-market, tightened up for the 
 time. " I hope he will lose every cent of it," was his muttered 
 speech as he drew his last check. " Courtlandt always was a 
 gambler at best, and he'll go on, unless he gets his fingers 
 burnt now, until he gets into the fiery furnace of financial 
 affliction, heels over head." But Uncle Shippen had no idea 
 that his debtor was already fairly within reach of the flames. 
 
 And so stood matters at home. Mr. Ledgeral grew thinner, 
 and paler, and feebler in gait, but his wife had no suspicion 
 that anxiety of mind had anything to do with his failing health. 
 It was nothing but indigestion. He must be more careful in 
 his eating the poor- man hardly tasted food; he must stop 
 drinking Champagne, it was bad for the stomach, and try 
 Catawba. Now if there was anything Mr. Ledgeral detested 
 it was American wine of any kind, unless it were of some of 
 the later California brands, which are really getting to be quite 
 drinkable. He must try Dr. Swindleson's " Safronitic Vital 
 Reformers." Mrs. Johnston's baby was so sick, and they just 
 gave her half a lozenge, and it cured her right off. Well, if 
 he did not want any baby-stuff, there was Dr. Billkens' " Corpse 
 Reviving Bitters." It had cured hundreds and thousands. 
 The wrapper on the bottle had the certificates of more than 
 a dozen clergymen ; and, besides, there was the case of Julia 
 Jenkins she was so thin and pale, and couldn't stay through 
 the whole of the German. Well, she has been taking quanti 
 ties of those Bitters for a year past, and do you know she is 
 getting quite plump ; and such a color ! Quackery ? Well, 
 perhaps you're right. No one can approve as a general thing, 
 and for universal use, of quack medicines. But, my dear, you 
 will see Dr. Petkaff, won't you ? He is coming to see Helen.
 
 438 :\E VER A GAIN. 
 
 She is looking so peaked, although she declares nothing is the 
 matter with her. Now when he comes you will let him see 
 you, won't you ? He is so pleasant, and so agreeable, and so 
 scientific ; and he knows all that is going on in society, and 
 can be so entertaining ; and he don't give much medicine 
 unless you really need it. You will let him see you, my dear, 
 just to let him find out what is the matter with you? You 
 look wretched you do, upon my word ; you need not be 
 afraid of Petkaff ordering you anything disagreeable. He 
 was explaining the other day how to take pepsin horrible- 
 tasting stuff. You just take pains azyme, a kind of large 
 wafer, and you dip one in water and lay it in the palm of your 
 hand, and then you throw the pepsin powder on it and double 
 it over and over, and then swallow the little package down 
 just like a small oyster. Oh, it's perfectly delightful ! " 
 
 Mr. Leclgeral was obstinate. He would take no quack 
 medicines, and he would consult no doctor. He had no idea 
 of having the shrewd Petkaff prying into his maladies, even 
 if the doctor kept, as lie most probably would, his diagnosis 
 to himself. 
 
 The only one in the house who had any idea of the true 
 state of the case was old Joseph. He had just answered Mr. 
 Ledgeral's summons, and had deposited on his study-table a 
 bottle of Bourbon and a decanter of iced-water. 
 
 " I don't dislike de Champagne," he muttered, as he re 
 turned to his pantry. " De Champagne merely indumcates 
 dat de tight is in de money-market. But when it comes to 
 'most a bottle of Bourbon in de day, 'pears to me I don't 
 know what to tink," and Joseph pulled out his bandanna and 
 mopped his bald head for some time in silence. 
 
 He got up and reached down from a shelf a Champagne- 
 bottle which had been carefully recorked, and placed in an 
 inverted position behind a pile of plates. There was the third 
 of its contents left in the bottle, and the vigor with which the 
 cork was blown out when loosened a little, indicated that the 
 wine was still as lively as ever. 
 
 " Dat Roederer is the genoowine, dat's de fac'. It holds
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 439 
 
 on to de gas furst rate, but dat American stuff fizzle furst like 
 de debble, and den it's as flat as a pancake. You can't no 
 more get a fizzle out ob him de second day den you can git a 
 sigh out ob a dead nigger. One is the genoowine, and de 
 oder 'taint no wine at all." 
 
 Joseph deliberately poured the wine into a tumbler, and 
 after recorking and replacing the bottle, proceeded to add a 
 few lumps of ice to his glass. He resumed his seat, took a 
 sip of Champagne, and commenced brushing up, the outside 
 at least, of his reflective faculties with his old spotted ban 
 danna. Suddenly there was a slight knock, and the door of 
 the pantry opened. 
 
 " Who's dat ? Who's dar ? " cried Joseph, starting and 
 pushing his glass of Champagne behind a neighboring tureen. 
 
 A young colored man, Joseph's assistant in his table du 
 ties, put his bland and smiling face into the pantry, but was 
 met by such an objurgatory salute that he was glad to beat a 
 hasty retreat. 
 
 " What you want, eh ? Nothing ? Well, take it and clare 
 out den. Go down stairs and stay dar till de bell ring, or till 
 I call you. I'm reflectum, I is ; and when I'm reflectum I 
 don't want any niggers round; and I won't hab 'em ; I tell 
 you I won't hab 'em." 
 
 " Oh my ! oh my ! " he soliloquized, as the intruder hastily 
 withdrew, " it is mighty hard work to git 'long wid dese 
 'mancipated darkies ; dey is so sassy and perient," and 
 Joseph sat down again to his Champagne and his reflections, 
 the result of which latter was that Mr. Ledgeral must have 
 something very heavy on his mind, and that that something 
 must be a money trouble, and that it was a duty he owed to 
 his master, and the family of which he was such an important 
 component part, and, above all, to Miss Helen, " de chile dat 
 he'd a gwone and brung up hisself," to get his savings-bank 
 balance somehow into the hands of Mr. Ledgeral. But how 
 to do it. 
 
 " Dat's jiss 'zactly what dis ere chile don't know," solilo 
 quized Joseph. " 'Cause you see, honey, when I looks at
 
 440 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 him, and jiss a gwine to speak, he looks back at me and sits 
 me all in a tremble. He looks at me black as a roasted nig 
 ger, and his eyes, oh my ! his eyes shine way down in the 
 back ob his head like two holes in a charcoal heap, and I 
 'spect to hear him yell out, 'What de debble you fooling 
 round here for, you old snow head ? Clare out ! ' and so I 
 clare out ; and I don't hab de courage to gib him dis bank 
 book, and to speak right out and say, ' Looker heah, Misser 
 Courtlandt Ledgeral, I don't like dis ere kind ob going on. 
 It's a killin' you, and it's a killin' Miss Helen, and it's a kill- 
 in' me. Der's de money, and let us go right back to one bot 
 tle of Champagne on Sunday, 'ceptin' dar is company.' " 
 
 The old man took two or three sips in silence, and then 
 turned over the leaves of his bank-book, dwelling with partic 
 ular attention upon several large items of credit, until he 
 came to the end. 
 
 " 'Pears to me dat nobody could objec to dat balance. It 
 reads fust rate ; tree thousand seben hundred and sebenty- 
 seben dollar and sebenty-seben cents. I tell you what, honey, 
 ye can't do it verberally, but ye can do it writingly. I'll jess 
 enwellop dis ar book and leab it on his table annermousely. 
 Golly ! I got it," continued the old man, slapping his thigh 
 as a brilliant idea struck him ; " I got it. I'll jess do it up, 
 and I'll get Miss Helen to write her fader's name upon it, and 
 I won't let her know what is in it, and she won't let him know 
 whar it come from." 
 
 Joseph chuckled for some time over this ingenious plan of 
 getting his bank balance into the hands of Mr. Ledgeral with 
 out him, or anybody else, knowing anything about it. The idea 
 seemed to be so clever that he decided to sop it in a little 
 more Champagne. 
 
 In the meantime Mr. Ledgeral was walking up and down 
 his study, taking occasionally a heavy sip of Bourbon, and ut 
 terly unconscious of the friendly plans brewing in the butler's 
 pantry. Affairs had gone neither better nor worse with him 
 since we last saw him. Perhaps, considering all things, he was 
 a little easier in his mind. He had been stretched so long
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 441 
 
 upon the rack of speculation that his mental muscles and ten 
 dons were becoming somewhat used to the strain. They say 
 that it was often so in the olden torture times ; and that when 
 the poor wretch on the rack ceased to groan, and shriek, and 
 began to yawn and give signs of sleepiness, they were forced 
 to take the strain off lest his capacity for suffering should be 
 wholly used up. Those were cases of exhausted sensibility. 
 Perhaps the relief that comes to the tortured speculator may 
 rather be considered cases of blunted or destroyed sensibility. 
 Like the Indian Fakir, the first time the poor speculator lies 
 down on his bed of spikes he writhes in torture, but after a 
 few weeks or months in Wall Street the cuticle of conscience 
 thickens up, and mental callosities develop themselves, and 
 his aciculated couch becomes downy. 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral was very far from the downy stage. He was 
 still suffering, but with the help of Champagne and whiskey, 
 he was getting a little used to it. In the great bulk of his 
 speculations in stocks, and cotton, and in petroleum, there 
 was just that uncertainty as to the final result which leaves the 
 freest rein to the imagination, the widest field for the disport 
 of hopes and fears. If he could go on borrowing long enough 
 he might squeeze through without the loss of much money, and, 
 still better, without the loss of reputation. But that business 
 with the Count ! there was the trouble, that was the cloud 
 from which the bolt that would crush him lifeless to the earth 
 might at any instant come. 
 
 Sometimes he almost wished that it would come, and that 
 he could know the worst. No doubt Damocles, if he had sat 
 at the table long enough, would, in time, have eyed the sus 
 pended sword with curiosity rather than fear, and at length 
 have wished that the devilish thing would fall. 
 
 But the Count gave no sign of any hurry for business. He 
 was too much taken up with the study of the faults, follies and 
 shortcomings of American society in general, and with the 
 peculiar graces and charms of Helen Ledgeral in particular. 
 And Mr. Ledgeral had plenty of time to nurse his plan of bat 
 tle, pushing out his daughter upon the Hanks of his enemy,
 
 442 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 capturing him and converting him from a cold, hard stranger 
 into a considerate and submissive son-in-law. 
 
 In this plan Mr. Ledgeral enjoyed the cordial co-operation 
 of his wife. She knew nothing of his real reasons, but she 
 fully agreed with him that it would be a very good thing. 
 Indeed what fashionable and affectionate American mother 
 could be insensible to the advantages of such an aristocratic 
 match, and the consequent opening up in its innermost veins 
 and lodes of the mine of happiness enclosed in the court circle 
 at Berlin. Her own position at home was of course good 
 enough. She stood on the very pinnacle, but she hadn't any 
 glory around her head ; and as mother-in-law to a real Count 
 she would be entitled to that heavenly distinction. 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral stopped short in his walk, seated himself at 
 his desk, and unlocked a secret drawer. He took out from 
 its recesses the long golden tress which we have seen him 
 once before examining. His eyes shone with a softened lus 
 tre, and the lines of his face lost some of their rigidity, as he 
 slowly pulled it through his fingers, and naughty man ! even 
 once raised it to his lips. 
 
 But was it naughty in him to do so ? The act implied no 
 infidelity, even in thought, to his most respectable and respec 
 ted partner in life. It was simply the memento of an extinct 
 passion it was simply the reminder of a glorious time when 
 the glamour of youth had made him master of the world and 
 the kingdoms thereof; and then, the mystery ! Well, naughty 
 or not, it amused his mind, it diverted attention for a moment 
 from his cares and troubles, and took him out, as it were, 
 from his own present miserable and contemptible self. Let 
 a jury of middle-aged respectables, who have never secretly 
 indulged in any fond fancies of the past ; who have never, 
 even perhaps when lying side by side in the legitimate and 
 dignified seclusion of the marriage bed, had visions pleasant, 
 although perhaps shocking, of that last flirtation, that whis 
 pered declaration, that tender caress, that impassioned 
 kiss, etc., etc., let such a jury, if one can be found without 
 exhausting the panel of society, condemn him.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 443 
 
 Mrs. Ledgeral, like a wise woman as she was, always gave 
 a slight knock before opening the door of her husband's room, 
 and this enabled Mr. Ledgeral to huddle back into its recep 
 tacle, the wicked little tress of golden hair. 
 
 " My dear," she began, " I have come to tell you that I 
 have made up my mind to take a run up to West Point, that 
 is, if you are well enough." 
 
 "I am well enough for you to go," replied Mr. Ledgeral, 
 rousing himself and speaking with an unusual degree of 
 vivacity. He understood his wife thoroughly, and he knew 
 that she would not dream of going away from the city unless 
 she had secured the Count as one of her party. The Count 
 in the country for a month or two, any inquiry into business 
 matters must be deferred, at least until his return. The con 
 demned in his cell hails with joy a respite on some frivolous 
 points of law, even if assured he will ultimately be hanged. 
 The prospect of temporary relief from the spectre of the ruin 
 that would overwhelm him, at the daily, hourly expected 
 intimation from the Count that he would like to examine his 
 bonds and securities, and otherwise look into his own busi 
 ness matters himself, sent the color to Mr. Ledgeral's cheeks, 
 and for the moment quite drove out the worn and haggard 
 expression that had become the habit of his face. 
 
 " Of course, he will go along with us," replied Mrs. Ledg 
 eral, "but unless you go, I don't know that I can go myself. 
 I can't bear to go away and leave you ailing, although I know 
 you won't let me do anything for you if I stay. You're sure 
 you can spare me for a few days ? Well then, you will send 
 me word every day how you are ; the trains run so often, and 
 the distance is so short. I wouldn't think of going to New 
 port or Saratoga, but only to West Point, and Helen is really 
 looking so very poorly, and I think needs change of air. The 
 Count wants to visit the Military Academy with us. I'm sure 
 you might leave the city for a few days. Com now, make 
 up your mind. I know it will do you good." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral shook his head. 
 
 "It is impossible," he said, "but I think it a very good
 
 444 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 plan for you to go, only, my dear, there is one thing : there 
 may be a great many girls at West Point, and the Count you 
 know But you understand that kind of thing." 
 
 " Oh ! you can trust to me, my dear. The Count has had 
 Mother Bevens with her beautiful daughters after him, and 
 Mrs. D'Oberge has been following him up, but he don't seem 
 to mind them. The only one I should be afraid of, is Delie 
 Chasseur. She is so clever you know, so lively and piquant, 
 and the Count seems to like her, but I have just ascertained 
 that she's going for a fortnight with Mrs. Frank down to Long 
 Island, so she will be out of the way. 
 
 "The only thing that troubles me," continued Mrs. Ledg- 
 eral, after a short pause, "is the way Helen acts and looks. 
 She won't exert herself a bit. She don't exactly avoid the 
 Count, and she don't treat him coolly. She rather seems to 
 like him, but she is so listless and has so little to say. She 
 never touches the piano now, and won't sing a note. And 
 she has got so careless about her dress, I don't know what to 
 make of the girl. I told her I should order Madame Vo- 
 lorem to make her six dresses, and she said, ' Very well 
 mamma,' ami nothing more. She didn't seem to have the 
 least curiosity about color, or material, or trimming, and 
 when I told her that panniers were going to be cut at least a 
 finger's length longer, she said, 'Very well, mamma.' Says I, 
 'Helen, there is your blue organdy sprigged with orange- 
 blossoms ; Madame Volorem purposes to trim that with 
 petites coquilles d rescargot. I think it will be perfectly lovely. 
 ' Just as you please, mamma,' said she, l escargot or escarbot 
 it is all the same to me.' Just to think of it! If there is any 
 thing in the world she hates, I know it is a black beetle. Now, 
 my dear, what do you think can be the matter ? " 
 
 Mrs. Ledgeral darted a penetrating look at her husband, 
 who sat gloomy and glowering, in silence. The idea of 
 Luther Lansdale was in her mind, and his name upon her 
 tongue, when Mr. Ledgeral turned to her as if to speak. 
 
 " My business is just now so pressing," he said at length, 
 "and I see and know so little of what is going on, that
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 445 
 
 I am no judge of the matter. You think the Count is in 
 earnest?" 
 
 " Well, he puzzles me almost as much as Helen does he 
 acts so queerly. He is devoted to her, but whether he's in 
 love with her I can't make out. He stares at her with his 
 great blue eyes, in such a way that sometimes I think it's 
 more curiosity than admiration. He has such a puzzled 
 expression ; and he don't seem in the least jealous. The night 
 of the tableaux at the Delorains I wish you had gone with me, 
 they were really beautiful Helen would have nothing to do 
 with them until it was proposed to have a short scene, or 
 rather a kind of tableau chantant, from Lucia ; the Count to 
 sing Edward's famous song. He said he would if Helen 
 would pose with him as Lucy. Well, no one ever saw such a 
 Lucy before ; she was so lovely, but so wan and so woe-be- 
 gone, and really looked so heart-stricken that everybody was 
 in raptures. But I could see that it was Edward and not the 
 Count she was thinking of, and I could see that the Count 
 thought so too." 
 
 " And you think that there is a real Edward in the case ? " 
 demanded Mr. Ledgeral. 
 
 " I do," replied the lady emphatically. 
 
 "And he is ?" 
 
 "That Luther Lansdale ! " 
 
 " I don't think you need trouble yourself about him. I 
 thought that you had come to that conclusion some time since." 
 
 " No, he will give me no trouble, except so far as he troub 
 les the mind of my daughter. Helen knows the utter impos 
 sibility of marrying any one without a fortune a very large 
 fortune." 
 
 " We did not have a great deal to begin with," muttered 
 Mr. Ledgeral. 
 
 " True, my dear, but that was twenty-five years ago. 
 Things are not now as they used to be. If a man was a rising 
 man ; if he had a good future before him ; that was enough then. 
 But now, a girl of position must marry a risen man a man 
 with a good present. Then, a girl might marry a poor man as
 
 446 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 a matter of sentiment ; now, every sentiment of society is 
 against it ; and talking about a present, puts me in mind of 
 the presents. I have always said to my girls, ' Girls, when you 
 are married, you will have to exhibit your presents will have 
 to let everybody, that is everybody in society, Tom, Dick, and 
 Harry, and their wives and daughters, come in and examine 
 all the cards, and make their remarks. Well, you will want 
 your presents to be as fine and as costly as anybody's, but if 
 you marry a poor man, nobody will want to give you any pres 
 ents. That's human nature, you know." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral made a gesture of impatience. 
 
 " I see, my dear, you are tired, and really there is no use 
 in my talking to you in this way. I quite agree with you that 
 this business of presents is excessively vulgar, but it is the 
 fashion ; as Boggs says, more ton than taste : and, really, since 
 all the thieves and rascals, and politicians, and office-holders, 
 and such kind of people are getting to parade their wedding 
 presents in the newspapers, I suppose we shall have to give 
 it up ; and I say so to the girls. I say, 'Girls, the time may 
 come when you will have to get married without a single fish- 
 knife Julia Newcombe had fifteen or butter-boat, or sugar- 
 bowl,' but the necessity of a large fortune to people of our po 
 sition will never, never grow less imperious. You know this, 
 my dear, as well as I do, and Helen knows it, and I am much 
 mistaken if the young man don't know it too. I had a talk 
 with Mr. Whoppers about him the other day, and he quite 
 relieved my mind. He quite satisfied me that the young man, 
 although nothing but a clerk, has all the feelings of a real gen 
 tleman, and would no more think of marrying a fashionable 
 girl, unless he had a great fortune to offer her, than he would 
 do any mean and rascally thing in businsss. No, we shall 
 have no real trouble with him. But I am sorry for Helen. 
 She has less ambition, and more heart, than her sister, and 
 don't take so kindly to the yoke that high social position 
 imposes. The fact is, aunt Shippen has permitted her to read 
 so much poetry, and all that kind of stuff, that I am afraid she 
 is getting quite unfitted for actual life. I have always been
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 447 
 
 opposed to it. And then her writing poetry herself I feel I 
 have been guilty in not setting my foot down at once on that 
 point, but you and oMr. Whoppers have laughed at her so en 
 couragingly, and I did not know but that it might have a good 
 effect and quiet her imagination, and teach her what foolish 
 ness it all is teach her how absurd all dreams and fancies 
 of ideal life are, compared with the real facts and duties of her 
 high position. But she is such a queer girl, and I don't know 
 that I fully understand her yet ; but I don't think that she 
 would do anything really wrong I don't think that she would 
 go and marry a poor devil of an author, or a poet, or a doctor, 
 or a navy-officer, just because she fancied him. No ! she 
 wouldn't do such a foolish thing as that. Still I should really 
 like her to love the man she marries a little, at first. Of 
 course she will do so afterwards all girls of society do." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral fairly groaned. 
 
 " Well, well, I don't want to bother you with these things. 
 It will all come right. And now, as I was saying, I am going 
 up to the Point for a week or two ; don't you think you had 
 better go along? You can't? Well, I shall tell the house 
 keeper and Joseph to take good care of you ; and, my dear, 
 if you should get worse, don't fail to write me word and I will 
 come down to you at once ; and, my dear, I hope you will 
 take some care of yourself, and see Dr. Petkaff every day ; 
 and if I were you I wouldn't take so much of that Bourbon ; 
 it's strengthening, I know, but it don't seem to agree with 
 you. And it isn't half as good for neuralgia as Burgundy. 
 You know what Ell Gelston says ! He is not a Doctor, I 
 admit, but he stands very high at the Bar ; and he says there 
 is nothing like Burgundy and buckskin for neuralgia. I wish 
 I could get you to wear a suit of chamois." 
 
 " A suit of chamois ! " groaned Mr. Ledgeral ; " and in 
 the dog days ? " 
 
 " Well, well ! my dear. I don't insist upon that ; but be 
 sure you exchange Bourbon for Burgundy, and don't fail to 
 write regularly and let me know how you are. I wouldn't go 
 if I didn't think you would write or telegraph at once."
 
 448 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " Oh, go ! go ! and " Mr. Ledgeral almost uttered some 
 thing not only profane, but quite impolite. He refrained 
 however, and merely added " go and enjoy yourself, and 
 don't hurry home on my account ; I shall do well enough. 
 You can devote yourself wholly to looking after Helen and 
 the Count without regard to me. Keep them together and 
 away from the city as long as you can. There is nothing like 
 a course at a summer hotel or watering-place when you have 
 once got the inside track. You know your philosophic friend, 
 Boggs, says that the elective affinity of the sexes follows the 
 law of gravitation and increases inversely as the square of the 
 distance, and that nine-tenths of marriages are merely the 
 result of propinquity. Keep them then in as close contact as 
 possible and in time they will coalesce." And Mr. Ledgeral 
 condescended to a delicate matrimonial pinch, and a sly con 
 nubial wink, as he almost pushed her out of the room. 
 
 Mrs. Ledgeral was delighted ; she had not seen him so 
 vivacious and so facetious for a long time.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Arrival of the Spoondrift Coincidences Table-talk The Doctor's 
 Conundrum Specimen of Whoppers' style. 
 
 THE morning after Luther's visit to Hoboken he went 
 down to his breakast at the usual hour. Miss Jones was 
 at her seat in a morning robe of white embroidered muslin, 
 so nicely got up, and fitting so neatly, that two or three of the 
 ladies at the lower end of the table put their heads together, 
 and pronounced it perfectly ridiculous. In fact, if it could 
 have been proved, then and there, that it had just come from 
 Worth's, it could not have more justly excited their honest 
 indignation. " The idea ! An old maid, forty years old if 
 she is a single day, although she calls herself thirty-five, to go 
 and dress like a girl of twenty ; and such extravagance ! 
 Says it's all machine, and that she did it herself. Don't 
 believe a word of it. More likely she got it at Stewart's, and 
 ran in debt for it." 
 
 "But they wouldn't trust her at Stewart's." 
 
 "I shouldn't think they would a woman that would wear 
 such an absurd little cap, blue and orange bows ; just like a 
 flock of humming birds ; because she thinks she has got such 
 a delicate complexion ! That ridiculous fellow, Whoppers, 
 humbugged her one day, by telling her that her cheeks were 
 like primroses." 
 
 "More like a peony, I think." 
 
 " Yes, or like a hard-burned brick ; and look at the size 
 of it. Why don't she wear a decent-sized cap, or go with 
 out, if she wishes to show that she hasn't any gray hairs, 
 instead of that little unbecoming fmnicky thing, hardly large 
 enough to cover the bald spot on the top of her head?"
 
 450 XEl'ER ACALY. 
 
 Mr. Whoppers sat in his usual seat, and in his usual po 
 sition, that is sideways, or " bias" as Miss Jones called it, 
 with his elbow resting on the table, and the morning paper in 
 his hand. 
 
 As Luther entered, Mr. Whoppers handed the journal to 
 him. " There's good news for you, he cried ; there in the 
 shipping list. Arrived yesterday afternoon, the Spoondrift, 
 Captain Combings, one hundred and ten days from Sidney, 
 New South Wales." 
 
 Luther scanned the paper with avidity, and fastened his 
 eyes upon the item, so that he did not observe the sudden 
 start of his hostess, or her heightened color. The coffee-urn 
 concealed her confusion from the more acute eyes of the 
 ladies; but it was noticed that she allowed the hot water to 
 dribble over the clean cloth, and actually put in three lumps 
 of sugar to Luther's cup instead of two. She recovered her 
 self, however, in time to look downright mad, as Mrs. Lunsly 
 remarked to Mrs. Bignall, when Mr. Whoppers suggested that 
 the Captain might want his old room, fortunately vacant 
 and might be expected to ring the bell at any moment. 
 
 Mr. Whoppers' words were hardly out of his mouth when 
 the door-bell did ring, and the Captain's voice was heard in 
 the hall. 
 
 It is curious how frequently these little coincidences occur. 
 " Speak of the devil," is a proverb in all languages. And not 
 alone little coincidences, but many striking and wonderful 
 ones, happening in the course of each individual life, leave 
 but few excited minds unbewildered by their glare. They are 
 the great, but not the peculiar, staple of the novelist. They 
 play as important a part in real life as in the pages of fiction. 
 They are the pabulum of spiritualism, and superstition, and 
 quackery. If one-half of all that the majority of men think, 
 know, and believe is wrong and false ; the coincidence of 
 events and circumstances that have no real connection, and 
 the sustenance thus afforded to the illogical faculty, will be 
 found at the bottom of the trouble. And no wonder, perhaps, 
 when we consider the wonderful character sometimes of the
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 45 T 
 
 coincidence. We have half a mind to stop here and relate a 
 case in point that actually occurred. We will, since it is not at 
 all necessary that the reader should stop with us. 
 
 It was on the broad Atlantic, below the Island of Tene- 
 riffe, and on the deck of a man-of-war, commanded by a rough 
 sailor of the old school. Excessively eccentric and irascible, 
 he had acquired by his strange freaks, and ebullitions of tem 
 per, the sobriquet of Mad Jack. He was known also to be 
 excessively uxorious, fond of talking about his wife, and des 
 perately anxious for news from Boston. A young man, having 
 a close resemblance to the writer, but alas ! with a difference 
 for which Time is justly to be blamed a passenger in the 
 Captain's cabin, having no official connection with the ship 
 was standing among a group of officers, with a spy-glass in his 
 hand directed to a distant sail, that was just lifting her top 
 sails above the horizon. The Captain bustled out of his cabin 
 in his usual impetuous and impatient manner. " What's that ! 
 What's that ! " he exclaimed without deigning a glance at the 
 distant ship. The glimmer of a good joke flashed through the 
 idle brain of the youngster. Does the reader understand what 
 it is, or rather was, to joke with a Captain of a man-of-war, on 
 his own quarter-deck ? The folly of such a performance can 
 not perhaps be fully conceived by a landsman. Knowing the 
 Captain's desire to hear from Boston, but having no personal 
 knowledge of that intellectual city ; and having only, to his 
 shame be it said, the most vague and indefinite associations 
 with any notable body or thing Bostonian, the young man, 
 dropping the spy-glass, replied jokingly, with the first name 
 that came into his head. " Oh, she's the Josiah Quincy of 
 Boston." Instantly, without listening for another word, and 
 without waiting for the intervention of the officer of the deck, 
 the Captain shouted out orders for a change in the corvette's 
 course. Not a word of explanation could be got in, and the 
 frightened joker saw the yards braced up and the spanker 
 hauled out, and in less than two minutes the ship standing 
 close hauled for the stranger, while the Captain bustled back 
 into his cabin.
 
 452 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 "Well, if you don't catch it! " said one officer. 
 
 "The old man will go stark staring mad, when we over 
 haul her," said another. 
 
 " What could possess you ? She is not even an American, 
 to judge by the set of her sails," exclaimed a third. 
 
 The stranger, seeing the alteration in the frigate's course, 
 altered her course to match, and, the two vessels rapidly 
 approaching each other, she soon backed her main topsail 
 under the stern of the man-of-war. The Captain rushed from 
 his cabin, mounted the poop-deck, and seized the trumpet 
 himself. 
 
 " What ship is that ? " 
 
 Imagine the amazement of the group of officers and the 
 almost consternation of the reckless joker, when the answer 
 came back "The Quincy of Boston." 
 
 "How long out? " demanded the Captain. 
 
 " Three weeks." 
 
 " Got any letters for anybody ? " 
 
 " Not a letter." 
 
 " Got any newspapers ? " 
 
 " Not a newspaper." 
 
 "Well, fill away, sir. You're a d d pretty fellow to 
 come out without any newspapers. I'd like to have you on 
 board here about ten minutes ; I'd teach you. Fill away, 
 sir; fill away," and cursing and grumbling, the irate Captain 
 dove down again into his cabin. 
 
 It was with difficulty that the companions of the young 
 man could disabuse their minds of a belief in some special 
 power of vision that had enabled him to read the name on 
 the stern of the stranger when her hull was below the hori 
 zon ; or, bating that manifest impossibility, to resist the 
 suggestion that some intimate relations with the Evil One 
 had endowed him with a supernatural power of guessing the 
 names of any and all vessels afloat. Ten thousand failures 
 would have been forgotten in the brilliancy of that one single 
 successful hit, which was nothing but a coincidence, almost 
 infinitely more lucky than likely.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 453 
 
 Captain Combings' rubicund face glowed with added 
 color, and his eyes beamed with unwonted light at the 
 reception that awaited him. More than half the boarders 
 rose from the table to grasp his hand, and expressions of 
 welcome were showered on all sides. Even Dr. Droney 
 condescended to say that " he was gratified to observe that 
 God had seen fit to preserve a person for whom he had so 
 much respect through all the perils of the great deep." 
 
 But it was when it came the turn of Miss Jones and the 
 Captain that the scene reached its highest manifestations of 
 pleasing and profound sentiment. The Captain worked his 
 way steadily to the head of the table. Miss Jones rose from 
 her seat, every little bow and frill quivering with delight. The 
 Captain squared himself, gave one glance alow and aloft ; 
 took in, in an instant, every little perfection of hull and rig 
 ging ; and bowed two or three times in his most impressive 
 quarter-deck style. Miss Jones responded with a graceful 
 courtesy, and extended her hand, which the Captain seized 
 in both of his and retained longer than was at all necessary, 
 according to Miss Billings, who said she "believed he 
 squeezed it Miss Jones turned so red in the face." At any 
 rate, Miss Jones had to struggle a little to get it away. 
 
 " Oh, Captain, we are delighted ! " But the Captain's 
 look of intense admiration cut short the complimentary 
 speech she hung her head and dropped into her chair, while 
 he continued bowing, and blandly smiling. 
 
 " We are delighted," she resumed, " that you have got 
 safe back again. Come, Captain, here is a vacant seat do 
 you take coffee or tea ? " 
 
 ' Pardon me : I kept you standing," replied the Captain 
 glancing round the table, " but we sailors are a singular set, 
 and when we meet such a beautiful, neatly rigged craft, we 
 forget ourselves. I hope you will excuse me. I was too 
 busy ducking my flag, and lowering my topsails, but it was 
 all out of admiration." And the Captain pointed the compli 
 ment by placing his hand on his heart, and again bowing to 
 Miss Jones.
 
 454 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " Was there ever such a monster ? " Miss Billings would 
 have parodied Trinculo, and exclaimed, " a most ridiculous 
 monster, to make a wonder of a plain overdressed old maid ! " 
 
 Miss Jones hardly knew which way to turn, and had to 
 hide her face behind the coffee-urn, while the Captain dropped 
 into the chair at her side. 
 
 For a few moments his attention was taken in reply to the 
 inquirers as to his voyage and adventures, and the conversa 
 tion became quite general. 
 
 " Very sweet, Captain ?" murmured Miss Jones, with the 
 sugar-tongs in her hand. 
 
 " Very sweet," replied the Captain, sotto voce, and looking 
 Miss Jones full in the eyes. 
 
 " Sarah, bring some hot hash for the Captain. You will 
 take hash, Captain ? " 
 
 " Certainly, my dear Miss Jones. As Speed says, ' though 
 the chameleon love can feed on air, I am one that am nour 
 ished by my victuals, and would fain have meat.'" 
 
 " Ah ! Captain, you don't like hash then ; let me order 
 you a mutton-chop or a beef-steak." 
 
 "No, no, thank you. I am not that ravenous that hash 
 will not serve my turn. Few things are better than hash," 
 observed the Captain aloud, "especially when the chopping- 
 knife has been plied under the supervision of such bright eyes 
 as those of our hostess." 
 
 Miss Jones' blushes tumbled, a perfect cataract of color, 
 from her cheeks, down her dimpled neck, until they could be 
 seen flashing their crimson tints through the fluttering folds 
 of her chemisette. 
 
 " Did you ever ? " said Miss Billings to her neighbor. 
 
 " No I never ! " replied Mrs. Bignall. 
 
 " Hash," continued the Captain sententiously, " is first 
 cousin to lobscouse, and lobscouse is food for kings. Pardon 
 me, ladies ; I should say food for queens." 
 
 " Lobscouse ! lobscouse ! Oh, Captain, what is lob 
 scouse?" chorused half-a-dozen voices. 
 
 The Captain gravely shook his head. " Lobscouse is a
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 455 
 
 iiiystery, it would take me an hour at least to explain. I 
 will, however, give the cook a lesson some day, and she shall 
 show you what it is, that is, with the permission of our fair 
 hostess." 
 
 "Oh, certainly, Captain," murmured Miss Jones. "Any 
 thing you please, Captain ; it must be lovely." 
 
 "But do you always eat lobscouse at sea?" inquired 
 Miss Billings. 
 
 " Oh ! no, ma'am ; if we did, we should have everybody 
 going to sea. We often have to come down to chickens and 
 duff." 
 
 " Chickens ! oh dear, do you have chickens ? How do 
 you get them at sea ? " 
 
 " Catch them," interposed Mr. Whoppers. " Off Cape 
 Horn is a good place, they always have/tf^/ weather there." 
 
 " Pshaw, Mr. Whoppers ! how can you make a pun upon 
 such a sublime subject ? ' The sea, the sea, the rolling 
 sea.' " 
 
 " No pun at all, Miss Billings. You've heard of the wings 
 of the wind, haven't you ? Well you take a chopping sea and 
 slice off a wing and serve it up, hot or cold, depending upon 
 your latitude, with a nice roll of the sea stuffed with currents." 
 
 " The mighty deep must truly be a sublime object," inter 
 posed Dr. Droney. " I should like very much to contem 
 plate it ; I don't mean from the sea-shore. That pleasure it 
 has pleased Providence to grant me, on sundry and divers 
 occasions, from the piazza of the hotel at Long Branch ; but 
 I mean from some point on the broad ocean." 
 
 " You mean, Doctor, you would like to go down in the 
 horse latitudes, and time the sea running, and watch the 
 jockey waves in their white caps comb the Spanish main," 
 
 "How can you be so absurd?" ejaculated Mrs. Lashet. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Mrs. Lasher ; you may be a judge 
 of all kinds of land spirits. I never said you were not, but 
 you don't understand the spirits of the vasty deep. There is 
 nothing absurd in what I have said. If the Doctor goes 
 down into the great deep, he will come up again with a white
 
 456 XKVER AGAIN. 
 
 cap and a piece of real salt spray stuck in it ; and that you 
 must admit would be a feather in his cap ! Don't you think 
 so, Mrs. Lasher ? And I do hope that if he encounters any hur 
 ricanes he will select the biggest and put a head on it. You 
 know he can take the head off a head sea and bring it home 
 with him ; one good blow with such a cane would send all 
 the Spencerites and Darwinites scudding." 
 
 The Doctor gave a groan, and trying to swallow a sip of 
 tea at the same time, there was for a few moments a terrible 
 sputtering. 
 
 "Or perhaps, Doctor, you mean that you would like to get 
 into an inland sea. That would suit you better. Say an 
 Episcopal see the see of New York or New Jersey, for 
 instance." 
 
 " I mean, sir, what I say, sir. I always mean what I say. 
 I should like to launch my bark upon the broad ocean. I 
 should like to see the glory of God and His wonders in the 
 great deep. I should like to see what the illimitable expanse 
 of the ocean is like." 
 
 " Like ! I don't think you would like it at all. Take my 
 word for it, Doctor, it isn't a likely place ; you'd find it a 
 retched affair ; you'd soon get sick of it ; and as for your bark 
 well, your bark would be a great deal better than your bite, 
 even if you did not find your bark drowned by the howl of the 
 winds and waves. Content yourself in marine matters with 
 the sea-shore and the docks and wharves, and now and then 
 getting half seas over and taking a roll on the beach, or under 
 the beeches ; it's all the same thing you know, when you are 
 in that condition of see-saw that you say you would like to be 
 in. I've had experience, and I can tell you that it is a great 
 deal nicer to see a ship than to ship a sea. And think of 
 another fact, Doctor, that the raging billows are never con 
 tent with heaving up the ship, they'd make you heave up too. 
 I'm told its harder on clergymen than other people." 
 
 " Why so, sir ? " demanded the Doctor. 
 
 "Because your profession is one that makes it, almost for 
 any reason, a sin to throw up. I don't say that you would go
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 457 
 
 as far as that, but if you should happen to over-eat yourself, 
 and, from what the Captain says of lobscouse, that might hap 
 pen, you would unquestionably have to throw up your sur 
 plice. 
 
 ' Besides," continued the incorrigible Whoppers, "the sea 
 is not much to see ; it is no great shakes ; it is no better than 
 a street row ! " 
 
 " A street row ! " exclaimed the Doctor. " What nonsense, 
 sir. How is the sea like a street row ? " 
 
 "Ladies and gentlemen," said Mr. Whoppers, giving a 
 slight tap on the table, " the Doctor does us the honor to 
 propose a conundrum " 
 
 " I have proposed no conundrum," testily interposed the 
 Doctor. " I never did propose a conundrum." 
 
 " Oh yes, you did, sir. You asked why the ocean is like a 
 street row. Isn't that a conundrum ? Ladies, can any of you 
 answer the Doctor's conundrum ? You can't? Well I think I 
 can guess it. It's because there is plenty of breakers -o'head. 
 Good, isn't it ? Doctor, I'll mark you down one." 
 
 The Doctor shoved back his chair in sheer disgust, and 
 was followed by the sympathizing Mrs. Lasher ancf Miss Bil 
 lings. To be accused thus publicly of making a conundrum 
 to have a pun thrust upon him at the breakfast-table in this 
 outrageous way it was too much it was more than clerical 
 flesh and blood could bear ! Something must be done. 
 Whoppers was getting to be intolerable ; he must be quelled, 
 subdued, reduced to order, and taught the respect that is due 
 to the cloth ! 
 
 The Doctor was not a ready man, but with proper premedi 
 tation he was powerful. He would concoct a reproof that 
 would wither Whoppers. Mrs. Lasher and Miss Billings prom 
 ised to assist in its administration. He had several times 
 deeply offended both ladies, and though not drawing very close 
 together in other matters they both felt alike in this, that, if 
 the Doctor could once get the offender fairly down, they 
 would gladly join hands, or rather tongues, in a little feminine 
 objurgation.
 
 458 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Luther had been impatiently waiting for the Captain to 
 finish his breakfast. The Captain, however, glowing and 
 expanding with more than his usual benignity under the 
 smiles of Miss Jones, seemed in no hurry, and the lady herself 
 evidently felt none of her usual impatience for the conclusion 
 of the meal. The insinuating persistence with vhich she 
 pressed plate after plate of buckwheat cakes upon her guest 
 was remarked by all lingering at the table, and by none more 
 clearly than by Mr. Whoppers, who, alternately sipping his 
 coffee and running his eye over the newspaper, seemed to have 
 his attention fully employed. 
 
 " Do, Captain, try these. These are beauties. The first 
 that come up are never so nice ; it is only towards the last 
 that you can get them really crisp and beautiful." 
 
 "I suppose later the griddle gets hotter, my dear Miss 
 Jones ? " 
 
 "Yes, and the batter gets smoother and stronger." 
 
 " Typical, isn't it ? " demanded the Captain, with a sly 
 look that made Miss Jones' drop her eyes to her plate. 
 
 "Of what, you would ask? of love, my dear Miss Jones. 
 The first ladleful of fond fancies that Cupid tries to cook, 
 almost always turn out pale, flabby affairs. But wait a while, 
 and then you have the crisp, well-done article. The griddle 
 is hotter, my dear Miss Jones, and frequent stirring has made, 
 as you say, the batter stronger and smoother." 
 
 " Hurry up them cakes ! " ejaculated Mr. Whoppers. 
 
 "Dear me, Mr. Whoppers, do you want a plate of fresh 
 cakes? Here, Sarah." 
 
 "Oh no, Madam. No more cakes for me. I was only 
 thinking that if a fellow does wait till the griddle is hot, the 
 cakes will coo unless you hurry 'em up. Good morning, 
 Miss Jones. 
 
 " Good-morning, Captain," and Mr. Whoppers rose from 
 the table and strolled out of the room, and his example was 
 immediately followed by Luther and the Captain. 
 
 " Oh, Captain, I am so glad you have got back," exclaimed 
 Luther as he led the way into his own room, and, shutting the 
 door, turned and seized the Cantain's hand.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 459 
 
 "Are you, my dear boy? Well, I am delighted to get 
 back myself. I ought to have been in ten days ago, but good 
 news always sails with double-reefed topsails; her sheets 
 hauled well aft ; while bad news shakes out every thing and 
 keeps stun-sails set every minute from tripping to mooring." 
 
 " By which figure," said Luther, " I am to understand that 
 you have something pleasant to tell." 
 
 " Exactly ; and first and foremost the voyage has been gen 
 erally a most successful one. Have had a good run out and 
 back; cargo delivered in fine order; ship sails like a witch. 
 You should see her on a bowline ! and so weatherly ! No 
 slumping off to leeward like a parson preaching politics. She 
 makes a close point, and weathers on it. But there is no use 
 in praising her. She'll do, and I tell you what, we have made 
 a good thing in buying into her. God bless you, my boy, for 
 it, and after you your old Frenchwoman. May you both 
 live to see the Spoondrift die a natural death and be broken 
 up for fire-wood, and that will be nigh on to a hundred years, 
 if there is any virtue in copper bolts, live-oak futtocks, and 
 locust top-timbers. 
 
 "But I must tell you about our venture," continued the 
 Captain, "your venture, rather. Nothing could be luckier. 
 The market was completely bare of everything in the way of 
 Yankee notions. There wasn't a pail, churn, bowl, or wooden 
 spoon in town. Not even a clothes-pin, and as for clocks, 
 why every woman and child in Sydney was hankering after a 
 wooden clock. I just cleared out the whole lot in a lump, 
 and as the fellow offered one hundred per cent, profit, and 
 cash down, I thought I wouldn't try to brace up any closer 
 on that tack. You can pay back your loan to Madame Steig- 
 nitz, and chalk yourself up a clean five thousand ! " 
 
 Instead of expressing any elation, Luther replied with a 
 downright doleful look, and a shake of the head. 
 
 The Captain was astonished and disturbed. 
 
 "Why, Luther, you didn't dream of over a hundred per 
 cent, did you ? You did not expect to more than double your 
 money, did you?"
 
 460 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 The Captain repeated his question in such an anxious and 
 lugubrious tone that it made Luther laugh outright. 
 
 " My good friend, pardon me. I received your good news 
 with an ill grace. Five thousand dollars ! why it's a fortune, 
 or rather it's the germ of a fortune ; what an acorn is tc an 
 oak, five thousand dollars is to a fortune. It contains, as Dr. 
 Johnson would phrase it, the potentiality of wealth beyond the 
 dreams of avarice. I have heard that it was a saying of 
 Astor, that his first thousand cost him more trouble than his 
 millions did afterward. I ought to jump for joy, and if you 
 had arrived about ten days ago, I suppose I should have given 
 a specimen of my agility, but now, Captain, I have got some 
 thing that weighs me down. I am good for nothing, in a sal 
 tatory way, but a clog-dance. You said that I could pay the 
 money I owe Madame Steignitz. Alas ! that is just what I 
 can't do. I can find no Madame Steignitz to pay it to." 
 
 The Captain jumped up from his chair, and put his hand 
 on Luther's shoulder. " What do you mean ?" he exclaimed. 
 
 " Just what I say, that I can find no Madame Steignitz 
 to pay it to." 
 
 " Run under ? Gone down ? demanded the Captain 
 with an expressive gesture. 
 
 " No ! that is, I hope not, and I think not ;" and Mr. 
 Whoppers here thinks as I do," replied Luther, opening the 
 door in answer to a slight tap and ushering the Editor into the 
 room. 
 
 " I do. I thought differently at first, but I quite agree with 
 our young friend now," exclaimed Mr. Whoppers ; " the old 
 woman hasn't gone under yet, I'm sure, but she has got 
 among the breakers, and there is no telling how long she will 
 last. But I want you to come down to my room. Boggs is 
 there, and we'll have a regular conspiracy. He is quite inter 
 ested in the affair, and I don't know a fellow whose opinion 
 on matters and things in general I'd take sooner than Boggs'. 
 Socially, Boggs is a humbug, but strip off his kid gloves, and 
 you won't easily find a fellow who can hit out straighter or 
 harder, physically, intellectually, or morally than Boggs. 
 
 I
 
 NE VER A GAIN. 46 1 
 
 Come down, come down, or I shall bring him up here. There 
 is more room in my quarters. Come down Captain, and Lu 
 ther shall go over the whole story." 
 
 Bustling about his room, Whoppers arranged seats, and 
 rubbed his hands with delight. Here was an inkling of real 
 adventure. Here was the beginning of an actual acted maga 
 zine romance. Wouldn't he dress it all up and fill in all the 
 details and give character, conversation, and incident all as 
 large as life and a little larger, and not a newspaper reporter 
 should know a word of it until it appeared in the Universe? 
 
 The Captain explained that he was pressed for time and 
 must be back to his shop within an hour, at the farthest, but 
 Luther had not half finished his story before he quite got over 
 his hurry. Mr. Boggs also grew thoroughly excited, although 
 with him it was much more purely an intellectual problem. 
 He had no personal interest in the old woman, except so far 
 as her oddities of character or manner, as detailed by Luther, 
 excited his curiosity, but he felt strongly the detective spirit> 
 which more or less animates us all when we have presented 
 to us a case of mysterious crime. And he felt fiercely the 
 hunting instinct, the desire to pursue and run down something 
 or somebody, the disposition to follow the furtive common 
 to dogs and men; which was in his case intensified by the 
 unconscious longing of a vigorous animality to escape for a 
 while from the utterly inane and stupid conventionalities of 
 society, and from the lazy, lounging unexciting life of a society- 
 man. 
 
 As the reader is acquainted with the facts, so far as Luther 
 could relate them, it would be a waste of time to go into all 
 the details of the conference. 
 
 There could be but one opinion as to the necessity of find 
 ing out, as a first step, the haunts and abodes of the suspected 
 parties. This could only be done by Luther himself, as he 
 alone had a sufficient idea of their personal appearance, while 
 at the same time he himself was to them quite unknown, or 
 at least so little known that a moderate disguise would answer 
 the purposes of perfect concealment
 
 462 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 But what kind of disguise? it was evident that the search 
 must be pursued in. some kind of character. It would never 
 do for him to visit all the low cafes and foreign drinking-dens 
 in the city dressed up in the usual style of young and genteel 
 America. A hundred suspicious eyes would mark him in an 
 instant ; and, if the objects of his search were at all on their 
 guard, his quest would fail, even if he himself came by no per 
 sonal misadventures. The difficulty was settled by a propo 
 sition from the Captain, the nature and character of which 
 will, develop itself in due course. It met with unanimous ap 
 probation. 
 
 "Just the thing," exclaimed Mr. Whoppers; " between you 
 both you won't have to make-believe more than half the char 
 acter ; and, by-the-by, I will have the things to rig out Luther 
 down at my editorial rooms. My office will be a good point 
 o'f departure." 
 
 " But, " exclaimed Luther, addressing the Captain, " how 
 can you afford the time ? I cannot lose a day, and the affairs 
 of the Spoonclrift are also urgent." 
 
 " I must manage it somehow, my dear boy," replied the 
 Captain. '' The Spoondrift can't begin to unload for a week 
 yet, and in the meantime somebody must look out for her. 
 Meet me on board of her in a couple of hours, and I will have 
 ii all settled, and we will then go up to Mr. Whoppers' office 
 in Park Row, and take our departure at once." 
 
 " And I am to be left out of the adventure altogether," 
 said Mr. Boggs, reproachfully, almost mournfully. 
 
 Mr. Boggs at heart knew that he had been masquer 
 ading all his life in the character of a society-man, 
 and at times he was very much bored ; at times he felt 
 horribly disgusted with himself. Here was a chance to try 
 a little masquerading in another line. He had an instinct 
 ive longing to step out of his habitual sphere ; to seriously 
 knock against something or somebody ; to prove to himself 
 that he had the thews and sinews of a man. He felt that 
 he had talents and energies which had never been exer 
 cised, but he knew it was too late now for more than a fitful
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 463 
 
 spurt into the regions of adventure for more than a short 
 turn now and then with the actual hard-hitting realities of 
 vulgar life. He knew that,, alas! he was a society-man 
 nothing but a society-man ; better, perhaps, than most of 
 his class, inasmuch as he felt the sad fact to his very vitals. 
 Years of balls, receptions, operas, dinners, pctits soupers 
 at Delmonico's, and th'es dansants at Sharon and Newport 
 had done their work upon him, and melted his will to wax. 
 At times he felt his demoralization acutely and mourned it 
 heartily ; at times, when wandering into the courts of law 
 when sitting under the pulpit oratory of St. Thomas', or St. 
 Mark's, or St. Bartholomew's or Grace Church or when 
 listening to some learned lecture at Steinway Hall or the 
 Cooper Institute, or when noticing Parker or Agnew, or 
 Vanburen or Wood, 01 a dozen others rolling from their 
 crowded consultation-rooms to appointments at College 
 and Hospital, and bearing to both the results of a life-long 
 devotion of the highest talents to the noblest of arts, at 
 such times he could not help feeling a pang of envy none 
 the less acute because modified by a sentiment of contempt 
 for himself. At times he even envied men of his own class 
 men intellectually his inferiors, and just as useless. At 
 times he envied, and with reason, Jules Harding, who keeps 
 up a fair degree of mental as well as physical stamina by oc 
 casional trips around the world. He also envied at times 
 Sholty Lento, his impassibility and self-conceit, his utter 
 inability to comprehend how big a fool he is, and how big 
 a bore all the girls think him. He sometimes envied Billy 
 Burbank his complete absorption in the onerous duties of 
 chief gossip-monger and tittle-tattle-bearer in society. He 
 even envied Pete Lumley, not his ability to make vers de 
 societe, but his surprising ability of belief in them as poetry, 
 after they were made, and his intense faith in the fact, 
 patent to every one, that the Graces had been even still 
 more kind to him than the Muses his complete and absorb 
 ing conviction that not a young girl in society had the 
 least idea that the season of the sere and yellow leaf had
 
 464 NEVER AGA1-N. 
 
 advanced upon him, or that if it had, there was any 
 thing more than a slight change of foliage, infinitely more 
 beautiful and enchanting than the crude green of early 
 spring time. 
 
 Mr. Boggs envied at times all these, but it was a harmless 
 and innocent envy. It was but the scum of bubbling emotion 
 that at bottom was rather creditable than otherwise. It 
 simply indicated higher instincts, and a clearer self-apprecia 
 tion at such instants than usual. It was nothing more or 
 less than part and parcel of the feeling that made him join 
 so heartily in a portion of the general confession. He did 
 not heed much the words " we have done many things which 
 we ought not to have done," for Mr. Boggs didn't believe that 
 he had done many things that he ought not to have done, or 
 that, under the same circumstances, he would not do again, 
 but, at the words " we have left undone many things that we 
 ought to have done," his heart always gave a jump up towards 
 his throat, and he always felt perfectly willing to add the 
 supplication " Lord, have mercy upon us miserable sinners." 
 
 Mr. Boggs, then, as the Captain spoke, could not conceal 
 his mortification at seeing the chance of something-to-do slip 
 away from you are going to leave me out of the adventure. 
 
 " Not at all," exclaimed both the Captain and Mr. Whop 
 pers. "There is no adventure as yet. Luther has to find 
 the game first before we can run it down. There'll be an 
 adventure then, and a pretty desperate one too. I think we 
 shall want your aid then, sure." 
 
 " Well, promise me that you won't take any important step 
 without consulting me." 
 
 " Oh, no fear of that," replied Mr. Whoppers, " and to make 
 sure of it suppose we all agree to meet here each night at ten, for 
 consultation and to hear a report from Luther and the Captain." 
 
 " I am afraid, said Luther, there will be nothing to report." 
 
 " Well then, we shall be quite as well off as the Historical 
 Society, or the American Institute ; we'll have a report perhaps 
 about nothing, but at any rate we'll have a report." 
 
 "With this understanding the Captain, Luther, and Mr.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 465 
 
 Boggs took their departure, while Mr. Whoppers settled him 
 self, first to making a few notes of consultation, which could be 
 amplified to any extent, when he came to write out in all its de 
 tails the whole story for the Universe, and then to the finish 
 ing of one of his most slashing editorials. Master of a vigor 
 ous sledge-hammer style, nothing the Editor of the Universe 
 liked better than to "pitch in," as he phrased it, to any and all 
 of the " isms" of the day : but what particularly excited his 
 ire was any effort to effect by legislation reforms that are 
 wholly within the province of society any perversions of the 
 power of government to the purposes of rampant and confi 
 dent, but ignorant and ill-considered philanthropy any attempt 
 by direct force of law to make men more godly, more temper 
 ate, more abstinent, or more continent than they are compelled 
 to be by the slowly improving moral sense of the community. 
 The text of the article before him was a remark of the great 
 thinker of the age, Herbert Spencer, d propcs of the efforts 
 made by Cromwell and the Puritans of England to suppress 
 all kinds of ungodliness. 
 
 " What, now, was the result of this attempt to dragoon men 
 into virtue ! What came when the strong man who thought he 
 was thus helping ' God to mend all,' died ? a dreadful reaction 
 brought in one of the most degraded periods of our history. 
 Into the newly-garnished house entered ' seven other spirits 
 more wicked than the first.' For generations, the English 
 character was lowered : vice was gloried in ; virtue was ridi- 
 c lied ; pro fane ness and obscenity flourished ; high aspirations 
 ceased ; the whole age was corrupt." 
 
 Mr. Whoppers' pen, with an ironical and sarcastic twist in 
 it best indicated perhaps for the reader's contemptous judg 
 ment by the following extract ran rapidly over the paper: 
 
 Alas ! the Maine Liquor Law has never been thoroughly 
 enforced yet. And it never will be until we are agitated up 
 to the proper mark, until we are willing to begin at the begin 
 ning hang all the distillers and brewers, and sentence every 
 fellow found with a lager jug or a pewter pint-pot in his hand 
 to six months of penitential -psalm singing on Graham bread
 
 466 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 and water. Sunday Observances have not yet been enforced 
 with sword and bayonet ; and there is no law by which the 
 wicked wretch who looks upon every seventh day as a day of 
 rest and relaxation, and a time for the enjoyment of the 
 beauties of nature and art. can be shot clown at once, if he 
 steps over his own door-sill, except on his way to church. 
 The tobacco sin has not yet received its full and proper 
 attention. Think of the lectures, arid speechifications, and 
 conventions, and collections, that will have to be made betore 
 the extirpation of the evil, and the coming of that glorious 
 time when the miserable devotees of nicotine shall be com 
 pelled to flee to the wildest recesses of the Alleghanies and 
 the Rocky Mountains. 
 
 I will indulge myself for a moment with a picture which 
 my imagination conjures up, but which at the rate we are 
 " progressing" I believe that is the phrase will perhaps, 
 ere long, be gloriously realized. I fancy I see a group of 
 pale-faced, dyspeptic-looking chewers and smokers flying, like 
 the old Covenanters of Scotland, before their unrelenting 
 foes, who have followed, with godly perseverance, their trails 
 of tobacco-spittle from valley to valley, from crag to crag. 
 I see the fugitives, worn out and exhausted, partly by the us 
 of the weed, and partly by the rapidity of their flight and the 
 obstacles of the road, as they halt in some supposed place of 
 safety. Each man draws his tobacco-pouch from his pocket, 
 and proceeds at once to fill and light his pipe or to mumble 
 his quid. The odorous smoke rises amid the umbrageous 
 foliage ; it floats on the balmy air of the wilderness, and, for 
 the first time, in this secluded spot, since the great fiat of crea 
 tion, it affronts the proboscis of the astonished mosquito. The 
 tobacco-spit trickles down the mossy rocks, spots the flowery 
 sward, and tints the surface of the limpid lake. Lapped in 
 nicotinean elysium, the incautious worshippers of the weed 
 recline in fancied security, and dreamily talk of the glorious 
 olden time when the spittoon was a necessity of household 
 tidiness; when bunches of golden Havanas hung in every 
 shop-window, and fine-cut and pig-tail flowed in the streets 
 like water. 
 
 Suddenly, with a yell that fairly makes the peaks of the 
 mountains tremble on their rocky basis, there bursts upon 
 them, through an unguarded mountain-pass, a legion of strong- 
 minded philanthropists, male and female, all astraddle of the 
 biggest and most rampant hobbies, and led by a gallant 
 Boston Claverhouse. Who can depict the scene that ensues?
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 467 
 
 the consternation of the despairing but desperate band, on 
 the one hand ; or the dash, the spirit, the elan, as the French 
 call it, on the other of the gleaming legion that, with flowing 
 reins and bloody rowels, leaps the crest of the mountain and 
 sweeps down the gorge, each man with a pistol in one 'iand 
 and a sword in the other, and each woman armed in the same 
 manner, with the addition of a double-edged bowie-knife 
 held firmly in her teeth. 
 
 " One volley from your electric twenty-barrelled revolvers, 
 and then, in the name of St. Philips and our puritan ances 
 tors, upon them with the cold steel ! " shouts the Bostonian 
 Claverhouse. 
 
 " Hack and hew ! " scream his lieutenants, quoting the 
 Bible, just as if they believed in it. " Hack and hew ! even 
 as Asa hewed Zera and his hundred thousand Ethiopians in 
 the valley of Zephatha. Smite and spare not ! for have we 
 not sworn with a loud voice, before the Lord, and with 
 shouting and with trumpets, and with much blowing in the 
 daily journals, even as did Benjamin and Judah, and the 
 strangers with them out of Ephraim and Manasseh, at the 
 words of Azariah, that whosoever will not seek the Lord of 
 Massachusetts, and the nations lying around about and there 
 unto appertaining, shall be put to death, whether small or 
 great, whether man or woman ? And shall we not do even as 
 we have covenanted before the Lord ? Shall we not sternly 
 execute the law in such cases made and provided ? Shall we 
 not utterly destroy these idolaters, and their friends who 
 have joined themselves unto them the wine-bibbers and the 
 drinkers of lager, and the drinkers of coffee, and the drinkers 
 of tea ; and lay waste their high places, and cut down their 
 idols, even as the king of Israel cut down the idol of Maachah, 
 his mother; and spoil all their shops and their stores, and 
 smite all their farm-houses and their shanties, even as the 
 king of Israel aforesaid spoiled all the cities, and smote all 
 the tents round about Gerar ? On ! on, then ! let us do 
 swiftly a mighty work the work of the Lord ! " 
 
 The battle rages ! swords rise and fall with the rapidity 
 and regularity of flails on a barn floor at a threshing-bee. 
 The gleam of ten thousand bowie-knives lights up, with a 
 terrific glare, the sombre hemlock foliage of the secluded 
 valley. The brook for a while flows with blood and water, 
 but soon the crimson tide coagulates and dams itself with 
 huge clots. Pipes ancl cigars fall from lips quivering in 
 death, and quids jump from gaping mouths as the severed
 
 468 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 heads bound down the reddened rocks and roll along through 
 the bloody bushes. Morality and philanthropy, and the 
 laws of a paternal government have triumphed ! The last 
 smoker has smoked his last pipe ; the last chewer has chewed 
 his last quid ; or, as Tennyson, or Longfellow, or some other 
 poet beautifully but mournfully expresses it: 
 
 " No more, no more, fine cut or twisted plug 
 Shall pouch the chewer's lean and ugly mug. 
 No more, no more, the circumgyral smoke 
 Shall tuneful Bigger's mighty wrath provolce. 
 No more, no more, the ambrosial reek shall flout 
 A Chouser's pious eyes or saintly snout. 
 No more shall brave and burly Belcher sniff 
 The scent of hell in every passing whiff. 
 No more the mandrake voice of fiuent Bing 
 Shall round and round St. Martha's chancel ring, 
 With curses dark and dire, alike invoked 
 On Cuba's best or meanest Dutch that's smoked. 
 No more shall guileless Growley grimly feed 
 His sacred ire upon the slav'rous weed ; 
 Or waste his time, or spend his strength and wit 
 In damming floods of vile tobacco-spit." 
 
 The victors stop only to lift the hair of their foes, thus 
 beautifully tinting the amenities of civilized warfare with the 
 more energetic coloring of unsophisticated life. Then, sol 
 emnly chanting Yankee-Doodle, and bearing proudly aloft 
 the loaded scalp-poles devoted to the adornment and decora 
 tion of the high altar of Faneuil Hall and the lecture-room of 
 the Cooper Institute, they return to a regenerate and happy 
 community where everybody has the glorious privilege of 
 thinking and speaking, and eating and drinking, just as he 
 pleases, provided he thinks, speaks, eats and drinks precisely 
 as the good people, who know everything and more too, shall 
 decide in their own minds, and by their own peculiar intu 
 itions and inspirations, to be consistent with the good of the 
 world and the will of God, not forgetting the immediate 
 delectation and emphysematous glorification of his self-styled 
 saints and prophets. 
 
 But enough or, as the reader probably thinks, more 
 than enough of editorial slangwhanging. The excuse, how 
 ever, for giving these specimens of Whoppers' brutal style, is 
 the received dictum that " style is the man," and that some 
 times, in the interests of character drawing, it is as well to 
 quote what a man writes as what he says.
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 The Hudson American endings The distinguished party arrive at the 
 Point Helen's meditations Mrs. Struggles and the Count. 
 
 THE glories of the Hudson ! Yes, the Hudson is a glori 
 ous river ; but is there any use of our making such an 
 everlasting brag and boast about it as we do ? True, we have 
 Anglo-Saxon blood in our veins ; and everything of ours is of 
 course the greatest, the finest, the best, or else the poorest, 
 the meanest, the smallest the world can show. That is nat 
 ural and comes by inheritance, but we need not intensify our 
 brag in such matters as natural scenery by the gaping, gavvkey 
 exaggerations of provincial ignorance. While lauding our 
 Abanas and Pharphars, we should not forget or despise the 
 Jordans of 'other people. The Rhine has perhaps justly sunk 
 somewhat in public estimation, but no American ever sailed 
 down through the hills of the upper Danube, or across the 
 broad plains of Hungary, perhaps when at flood the mighty 
 river stretches for a score of miles on either side, a great 
 lake or sea dotted with hamlets and towns, and groves of 
 magnificent trees, and little islets on which are huddled for 
 refuge vast herds of cattle, or glided on the rushing waters 
 along the rocks, still bearing the marks of the road-way of 
 Trajan's .egions, and so on through the frowning Iron Gates, 
 but must ad' nit that even in rivers we are not so far ahead 
 of all the rest of the world. 
 
 The question of mountains is still more easily settled. 
 Luckily the height of the Himalayas is a school-book fact, and 
 for anything approximating Mont Blanc we have to go two or 
 three thousand miles away to the Rocky Mountains and the
 
 470 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Sierra Nevada. If there is anything that an American ought 
 to be profoundly thankful for, it is that the Catskills are only 
 good-sized hills, and that neither the Alleghanies nor the 
 White Mountains have a peak twenty thousand feet high. If 
 they had, it is to be feared that there would roll down upon 
 us such an avalanche of brag that every particle of sense, 
 modesty, and taste would be swamped forever. 
 
 Still the Hudson, taken moderately, is a glorious river, 
 with a good deal of very fine and varied scenery in its course. 
 The geological freak of the Palisades is unquestionably strik 
 ing ; the expansions of Tappan Sea and Haverstraw Bay are, 
 with the graceful outlines and picturesque fillings in of the 
 wooded hills sloping down with more or less abruptness to the 
 town and villa-dotted shore, an unquestionably pleasing and 
 scenically satisfactory sight, while the reach of the Highlands, 
 especially if approached by a stranger without a preliminary 
 course of great expectations, is really superb almost grand 
 and very beautiful. 
 
 The Count was loud in his expressions of delighted admi 
 ration as the boat bearing Mrs. Ledgeral's party entered the 
 strait between St. Anthony's Nose and Stony Point. He 
 had visited the Trossachs ; had boated on Lake Wallenstadt 
 and the Bay of Uri ; had steamed through the Iron Gates ; 
 had strolled from Trefoy up the Stelvio in the shadow of the 
 great Orteler Spitz ; had gazed from the Corner Grats, at the 
 awful range of Alpine monsters glittering with glaciers, and 
 had studied the majesty of Mont Blanc with his attendant 
 Aiguilles from the heights of the Brevant, and of course he 
 did not make the mistake of applying to the Highlands of the 
 Hudson any of the common tourist epithets of grand, majes 
 tic, sublime, or wonderful. 
 
 Helen sat silent, and only partly listening to the conversa 
 tion going on between the different members of the party, 
 which included, besides her mother and the Count, the two 
 Miss Honesdales, who were going up to the Point for a short 
 run around among the cadets and officers, under the guardian 
 ship of Mrs. Ledgeral, who had accepted the responsibility,
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 471 
 
 slight as it was, with some little hesitation. The Honesdales 
 had the reputation of being the most amiable girls and the 
 most loving sisters in society, and Mrs. Ledgeral knew that 
 the supervision required was only nominal all she would 
 have to do would be to let them take care of themselves, 
 and go and come as it pleased them ; but then there was the 
 Count ! it would never do to run any risk, and the Misses 
 Honesdale were such nice girls. Everybody said so that 
 is everybody who was anybody. They were tall, good-look 
 ing ; dressed well, danced well ; and while Lizzie, the eldest, 
 was musical, and had been finished by Mills and Albetus, 
 Dolly, the youngest, showed the neatest ankle at croquet of 
 any girl in the avenue. 
 
 A bad girl to take into the country, thought Mrs. Ledgeral 
 as she recalled the Count's often-expressed admiration of the 
 American ladies' small feet. But she comforted herself with 
 the reflection that Helen's feet and ankles were equally neat 
 and well turned, even if she did not show them quite so freely. 
 " And so they ought to be," muttered the fond mother as she 
 glanced down at her own nicely shod extremities, "if she is a 
 daughter of mine," and then she thought of a compliment that, 
 in her younger days, when she could afford bottines of the 
 tightest, she had received almost under the shadow of Melrose. 
 Her carriage had drawn up at the neighboring inn. The little 
 bustling landlady had hurried out to help her down, and the 
 moment Mrs. Ledgeral had put her foot upon the marche pied 
 exclaimed, "You're welcome from over the seas, my lady." 
 
 " How do you know that I'm from over the seas ? " de 
 manded Mrs. Ledgeral. 
 
 " Oh, I knew it the moment I saw your 'endings.' We get 
 such ' endings' only from America," was the reply. 
 
 Mrs. Ledgeral thought of her daughter's inherited endings, 
 and decided to take Dolly Honesdale to West Point. 
 
 Mrs. Struggles was also of the party ; she had not been 
 urged to go hardly even invited. But Mrs. Struggles did not 
 need to be urged. She had the happy faculty, necessary to 
 the struggling woman, of converting the slightest intimations
 
 472 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 or suggestions into pressing invitations ; and so she was of 
 the party ; and not the least delighted member of it. Not that 
 she cared anything for the ordinary commonplace pleasures 
 of such a trip. She had no love for the country, no eye for 
 natural scenery, no particular pleasure in fresh air ; but then 
 the party was so exclusive, and a visit to West Point, in the 
 right kind of company, is preeminently the proper thing ; and 
 then she would have such stories to tell when she got back of 
 all the little adventures of the distinguished party, and an end 
 less quantity of sly, but seemingly careless allusions as to what 
 " me and the Count" had seen and done when " we was" at 
 West Point together. She felt that she would be able to cap 
 Mrs. Insby's anecdotes of the Prince and the Duke, and Lord 
 this and Lord that, and fairly bluff the Hazencourts off the 
 course with their poor German Baron and their miserable un 
 washed Portuguese Don. 
 
 " Oh Count," exclaimed Mrs. Struggles, putting the usual 
 American question, " do you think this as fine as the Rhine? " 
 
 " Well, Madam," he said hesitatingly, " the two rivers are 
 very unlike. This is as beautiful, but the Rhine is a very in 
 teresting river." 
 
 " Oh yes ; you mean its ruined castles." 
 
 " Not alone its castles, but its romantic traditions, and its 
 historic associations." 
 
 " Oh yes ; we have no romantic traditions here," ex 
 claimed Miss Honesdale. 
 
 " No, nor any historic associations," put in Dolly. 
 
 Helen roused herself from her revery, and turned a swift 
 sharp glance at the last speaker. 
 
 " You don't think so, Miss Helen," smilingly demanded 
 the Count. 
 
 " I think that there is no comparison between the two riv 
 ers in that respect, but our Hudson is not wholly destitute of 
 romance, and certainly not of historic associations. If Rip 
 Van Winkle and Captain Kidd go for nothing, look around, 
 and every hill and promontory speaks of one of the most piti 
 able tragedies in history. You have heard, Count, of the 
 story of Andre?"
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 473 
 
 " I remember the name, but the story dwells not strongly on 
 my mind. Won't you have the goodness to recite it to me? " 
 
 Helen rapidly ran over the chief incidents of the lamen 
 table tale, and the Count listened with an expression of inter 
 est and admiration that was very satisfactory to Mrs. Ledgeral. 
 
 " Helen is as good as a book," whispered Miss Hones- 
 dale to her sister. 
 
 " As stupid as a book," returned Dolly, piqued that her 
 chatter had failed to fix the Count's attention. 
 
 " I can tell you what," returned the elder, " if you had a 
 little more of that kind of stupidity, it would be the better for 
 you. All men can't gabble about nothing forever, and some 
 of the best of them don't dance." 
 
 " And all men can't listen to screechy music forever. 1 
 guess my dancing will last as long and go as far as your 
 singing." 
 
 " Hush, didn't you promise mother not to squabble ? " 
 
 " Well, who began it ? " 
 
 " Why, you did." 
 
 " No, you did." 
 
 The sudden slowing of the engine preparatory to landing 
 at the wharf produced a general hush throughout the boat. 
 The engineer in handling his cut-off had cut off Helen's story 
 and the whispered sparring of the loving sisters. The transi 
 tion from the plashings, the rumblings, and the tremblings of 
 a full head to half steam, is startling. There is a curious 
 question, and one that has no doubt often occurred to the 
 statistical mind How many tender declarations trembling on 
 the tongue have been indefinitely postponed by the sudden 
 silence of shutting off steam how many have been drowned 
 forever in the awful whizzing of the escape-pipe. The ques 
 tion commends itself to the consideration of Sorosis. Per 
 haps the evil might be remedied by putting the cut-off and 
 starting-bar into the softer and more delicate hands of petti- 
 coated engineers. 
 
 The boat drew up at the dock, and rapidly disembarked 
 its passengers, who as rapidly hurried into the carriages in
 
 474 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 waiting, and were drawn up the steep and picturesque road 
 through a cut in the rocks almost worthy of the epithet 
 " g r & e /' t tne small rocky plateau on which stands perched, 
 like an old baronial castle, on ground of greatest vantage, the 
 magnificent hotel. Magnificent, not perhaps for its sixe 
 there are many summer hotels twice as large but magnifi 
 cent from its air of architectural amplitude ; its wide sweep of 
 encircling veranda, and above all, from its singularly bold and 
 striking position, commanding as it does splendid views of 
 the river, with the most charming and picturesque features of 
 the surrounding hills. 
 
 Rooms were ready for the party, and Mrs. Ledgeral and 
 her maid were soon deep in the mysteries of the immense 
 packing-cases, that invariably constitute the impedimenta of 
 the fashionable Americaine. It is said that the nationality of 
 an American party abroad can be recognized not only by the 
 shape and quality of their trunks, but by the size. Whoppers 
 says that a big trunk is as characteristic of a Yankee girl as it 
 is of an elephant. 
 
 And what do the huge things contain ? No man knows, 
 but there have been rumors of thirty, forty, fifty, and even of 
 eighty, dresses, for a single short summer season at Saratoga 
 and Sharon. Surely " Solomon in all his glory, was not 
 arrayed like one of these." 
 
 Luckily West Point is not a very " dressy" place, and, 
 besides, Mrs. Ledgeral had too much sense and taste to affect 
 to make a blaze of gentility to the world by dress. She knew 
 that generally the most pretentious specimens of " flashing 
 bravery," as Ben Jonson phrases it, are women scarcely 
 within, or who are just without, the pale of the selectest set. 
 
 She knew and felt her independent position. She had 
 brought only a dozen dresses, and yet she contemplated a 
 month's stay. She was even debating whether she would 
 change her dress for the evening. 
 
 " Are you not going to change your dress ? " she demanded 
 of Helen. 
 
 " No, mamma ; I think not."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 475 
 
 "Well, it's hardly worth while. There is nobody here, I 
 suppose. Still, you might find somebody in the parlor thii 
 .evening. Come, hurry ; it will be time for tea, and I want to 
 get down and see the head waiter about our places before the 
 crowd pour in." 
 
 " Oh, don't wait for me, mamma. I shan't change my 
 dress. I am not going into the parlor this evening. I shall 
 stay out on the piazza, the weather is so lovely," and Helen 
 slipped out of the room, and descending the stairs, strolled 
 out into the broad veranda which, running round the sides 
 and end of the house, constitutes in its extent and amplitude 
 one of the most agreeable and characteristic features of the 
 hotel. 
 
 The sun had gone down behind the western hills ; but one 
 golden gleam flashed across far overhead and gilded in the 
 east the tip of Sugarloaf, leaving the slopes of the valley and 
 the intervening river in the soft gray and amber tints of 
 advancing eve. Helen took a seat in a deserted corner of the 
 piazza.. It commanded a near view of the bluff under which 
 Captain Combings had anchored his sloop the night of 
 the collision. How vividly the scene came up to her mind, 
 as she gazed at the very spot where perchance the remnant 
 of wreck still reposed beneath the placid water. The shouts 
 of alarm, the crash of timbers, the whizzing of steam, the 
 rattling of blocks and boat-falls ! the huddling crowds rush 
 ing from cabins and state-rooms ! the fright, the confu 
 sion, and then the rapid return of calmness and confidence 
 when it was found that it was only the other one that was run 
 down and destroyed. And then Helen saw the unshipped crew 
 clambering up the guards of the steamer, but luckily for her, 
 as the Captain and his mates were clad only in their scanty 
 habillements de nuit, she had no eye but for the youth who had 
 since grown to occupy so much of her attention. 
 
 Why had it all happened just so, when it might so easily 
 have been different ? Was it that she was no better, no firmer, 
 no more assured against the little trips and trickeries of fickle 
 fortune than a novel heroine? Grand misfortunes and cus-
 
 476 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 ternary chances and calamities, she could understand, might 
 lie in wait in her life-path. 
 
 But here was a thing, that the slightest turn of the steer 
 ing wheel could have prevented, and yet something had come 
 out of it that would color her whole life. She could not under 
 stand it. And did she regret that the pilot had not shifted 
 a spoke or two in time ? Well, there was no use of her ask 
 ing herself such a silly question, and so her thoughts wan 
 dered off to a great secret that her father, as she thought, had 
 confided to her. She could not say to herself exactly what it 
 was, but it was a heavy secret, a terrible secret, one that no 
 one else must ever know. One thing was clear ; her father 
 had told her so ; to keep the world from knowing this terrible 
 secret; to save him from utter, irredeemable ruin she must 
 marry the Count. 
 
 " Must marry him," sighed Helen. " Marry and not love 
 him ! Marry him when my imagination 'carries no favor in it 
 but Bertram's ! ' And I must accept. Must accept ! why 
 everybody says there is not a girl in the city who would not 
 jump with joy at an offer from him. What a vulgar phrase 
 jump for joy ; and yet is it half as vulgar as the act? Can any 
 words equal in meanness the act of accepting an offer of mar 
 riage without love ? Without love ! and Helen smiled a little 
 smile as she thought how easily any or all of the girls could 
 make themselves fall in love with the Count ; and why not ? '' 
 Her thoughts ran on in the sense of Olivia's answer to Viola : 
 
 " I suppose him virtuous, know him noble, of great estate ; 
 of fresh and stainless youth ; in voices well divulged ; free, 
 learned, and valiant, and in demeanor and in the shape of 
 nati.re a gracious person: but I cannot love him." 
 
 Helen sighed deeply, and leaned over the heavy balu 
 trade her delicate hands scarce feeling the roughness of th 
 coarsely sanded wood-work. 
 
 The gloom of night was stealing over the scene ; and 
 stealing over her heart a flood of gloomy sentiment which 
 was hardly grief, or sorrow, or deep affliction. Sad, melan 
 choly, triste either is the proper word. Apart from her
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 477 
 
 father's troubles why should she feel any great distress ? If 
 the apparently inevitable had presented itself in the shape of 
 an old, ugly, disagreeable man without money, there could be 
 no doubt about the answer. But the truth is it takes a cer 
 tain number of years, and a certain knowledge of the world, 
 before a young girl can fully understand either her sentimen 
 tal rights or capacities. Although not technically "a girl 
 of the period," Helen was nevertheless a girl of modern 
 society her nature qualified by its laws and its rules and 
 with a loving and lovable but fortuneless youth on the one 
 hand, and a young, rich, noble and agreeable suitor on the 
 other, she could, in her innocence and ignorance, hardly com 
 prehend the terrible strait in which she stood. She did 
 not know that she had either the right or the power to feel her 
 self as desperately set upon by fate as any Amanda or Be 
 linda in the most doleful pages of fiction. 
 
 " Die ist s/ion," said the Count, and he placed his hand 
 on the balustrade and leaned over by Helen's side. Helen 
 said nothing. 
 
 " Beautiful ! it's more than beautiful, it is soul filling and 
 heart satisfying." 
 
 Helen made no reply. 
 
 " Don't you think so, Miss Helen ? don't you think that 
 there are special aspects of nature that sometimes give us an 
 almost startling sentiment of universal harmony, and that 
 serve to put us into a \vonderful intimate relation with the di 
 vine essence of things ? " 
 
 " I think," sai j Helen slowly without raising her head, 
 " that the perceptii, of harmony depends as much upon our 
 own moods as upon the phases of nature. In some states 
 of the mind we are awake only to the dissonances of life and 
 society, and then it is pretty hard to feel the harmonies of 
 nature or see the commonest outlines or elements of beauty.' 
 
 " And is that your condition of mind ? " 
 
 Helen made no reply. 
 
 "You must admit that objectively this scene is beautiful 
 very beautiful, and full of a deep rich sentiment of power 
 and repose."
 
 478 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " Objectively ! yes," replied Helen in a somewhat pas 
 sionate tone, "but subjectively" 
 
 "Well, subjectively?" demanded the Count. 
 
 " I'll tell you," exclaimed Helen, " if you want I should 
 use your big scientific words ; objectively I find the view 
 fine enough, and the emotion it excites or ought to excite 
 one of beauty; but subjectively mixed up with my present 
 feelings, I think that it is as ugly as sin. There now, you 
 have got my opinion." 
 
 And Helen turned again and looked down upon the 
 river; and she half held her breath and pressed her lips 
 together and scowled a little gentle scowl, so provoked was 
 she with herself for letting the words slip off her tongue 
 in such a tone of passionate petulance. 
 
 The Count bent his head down gently and deferentially, 
 and turned his face so as fully to confront hers : " And is 
 it so, Miss Helen ? Is it that some trouble has come to you ? 
 Is it, as your poet Shakespeare has it, that to your bosom 
 has come some perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart ? 
 Oh, I have thought so. I have felt for some time that 
 something has happened. I have been in this country but 
 a few weeks, yet how much change. I found you a mirthful 
 girl, and now you are a mournful woman. I won't ask why 
 this is I won't ask what it is, but I should so much like 
 to ask one question." 
 
 " Oh, no ! no ! " exclaimed Helen, " don't ask me any 
 question, not just now." 
 
 " I should so much like to know," persisted the Count, 
 " if I have anything to do with your trouble. It is perhaps 
 all presumption and impertinence on my part, but somehow 
 it seems so." 
 
 Helen's memory glanced back to her last interview with 
 Luther, when he had asked the same question in almost the 
 same words. It was absurd it was provoking, to have all the 
 men putting such questions, and bothering a poor girl so ! 
 
 " Am I disagreeable to you ? " continued the Count ; " you 
 don't seem to say so, and yet and yet you treat me so
 
 NEVER AGAIN, 
 
 479 
 
 inconsistently : politely, kindly, I admit, but my presence 
 seems lately to ever make you sad and troubled. Is it that 
 you hate me ? that I give you pain ? I will take myself away 
 from the city, from the country, and I shall have but one 
 regret that I ever came." 
 
 Helen knew not what to say. She felt greatly relieved 
 at finding that the proposed question of the Count was not 
 the one she so much dreaded, but still she was very much 
 embarrassed for an answer that should be sufficiently kindly 
 and yet not express too much that should rebut his self- 
 accusation, and yet not be a downright fib. 
 
 Helen did not know on the instant what to say, and 
 so instinctively she straightened herself up and gave him a 
 look a bewildering look, one of those looks that contain all 
 kinds of meaning just as suits a man's capacity. 
 
 There was enough of the twilight left for the Count to 
 study that look for the space of half a second. 
 
 The French sometimes say of a woman elle a coutume de 
 regarder les homines dans le blanc des ycux and it is some 
 times said somewhat disparagingly, as indicating a bold, hard 
 look. But it may be purely a bewildering look, or a fasci 
 nating look. It may be used furtively a swift, sharp stroke, 
 like a blow with a stiletto ; or it may be laid on calmly and 
 steadily like a sluice-pipe on a California gold-hill, melting 
 away in its steady flood everything earthy and stony in the 
 maleformation. In either case it's a wonderfully effective social 
 weapon, and many of the queens of society have been indebted 
 to it for their victims. 
 
 Take Mrs. Wallace Benton, for instance : a dozen men 
 more or less clever are gathered about her old men and 
 young men business men and society men unsophisticated 
 men and blase fogies of forty seasons. What keeps the ani 
 mated, excited group around her, while belles of infinite pre 
 tension revolve the tedious order of society chit-chat with per 
 haps a single solitary satellite, and he dying to burst his orbit 
 and dash off into the regions of infinite chicken salad and 
 Champagne ? Is it her wit, her vivacity, her quick apprecia-
 
 480 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 tion of the humorous, her flattering sallies and brilliant repar 
 tees? or the tact with which she stimulates, yet controls with 
 in due bounds the intellectual struggles of her arena? Not 
 so, although these all serve. The truth is, that each fellow in 
 turn gets the regard, dircctiment dans le blanc des yeux, and it 
 goes to his very vitals. Each thinks that he alone has it, and 
 it doubles him up like a gladiator under the " habet" of the 
 amphitheatre. Mentally he falls at her feet exclaiming 
 while his self-love is oozing out at every stab, and the sweat 
 of tickled vanity moistens and softens the hard lines of brow 
 and lip, O empress, dying I salute thee. 
 
 Helen gave the Count this kind of a look, but a look can 
 not be properly too long indulged in. To be effective it must 
 be more or less fleeting. The regard may be pushed into a 
 stare, or it may be prolonged into a leer. Sooner or later it is 
 necessary to say something, and Helen was beginning to feel 
 the want of words when her embarrassment was happily 
 relieved by the strident voice of Mrs. Struggles. 
 
 " Oh, Helen ! your mother sends me after you. She wants 
 you to come in ; it is time to go in to tea." 
 
 Helen grasped quite joyfully at the proffered relief. 
 
 " Oh, thank you, Mrs. Struggles. I am sorry you should 
 have had the trouble of coming for me. I had quite forgotten 
 how late it is ; this scene is so beautiful, and the twilight lasts 
 so long now, see, it has not gone yet. Count, you are a great 
 admirer of Wordsworth. Do you recollect his address to 
 twilight? It might have been occasioned, one would think, by 
 a scene like this. It begins 
 
 ' Hail twilight ! sovereign of one peaceful hour, 
 
 Not dullard thou as undiscerning night, 
 
 But studious only to remove from sight 
 
 Day's mutable distinctions ' 
 
 But I won't keep you, Mrs. Struggles. I know both you and 
 mamma are tired, and want your tea. Allans done" and 
 Helen slipped round on the other side of the lady as the 
 Count extended his arm, leaving Mrs. Struggles to grasp the 
 proffered support
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 481 
 
 Mrs. Struggles had seldom before had an opportunity of 
 putting her hand on the arm of a count, and the touch electri 
 fied her. It lifted her on to her toes, and made her at least 
 two inches taller. It swelled the fine proportions of her bust, 
 craned her neck with a graceful curve, and stuck her pannier 
 out far in advance, or rather in arrear of the sternest demands 
 of fashion. 
 
 As she minced her way through the drawing-room across 
 the marble hall, and down the sweep of the dining-room in the 
 wake of Miss Ledgeral and the Honesdales she held her face 
 upturned full into the light of the Count's countenance, 
 appearing to be wholly absorbed in an animated discussion; 
 of which the virtues of the imperial Russian overland tea com 
 pared with the vulgar sea-brought product of China and 
 Japan seemed to be the chief staple. "Oh, I am sure, Count, 
 it must be much finer. The Emperor orders it all himself, 
 you know, Count. An imperial ukase, I believe they call it ; 
 and they bring it all to him in a caravan, and he gives it 
 round to the different courts. He must have sent it to your 
 court in Berlin have you never tasted it? You have? Oh 
 charming ! and the Princess Royal, how does she like it ? 
 she can't prefer that horrid English breakfast-tea." And 
 then Mrs. Struggles wandered, or rather wondered off with a 
 dozen questions about the Princess, as to her age, tastes, 
 looks, etc., and no explanations of the Count could make her 
 exactly understand how a Princess Royal could get along in 
 years, and how she could grow really stout, or how it was 
 that her mother, Queen Victoria, or her father-in-law, King 
 William, or her husband, the Prince, could allow her to like 
 any tea in preference to that which comes directly from the 
 Czar's own hands. 
 
 Mrs. Struggles appeared, as we have said, to be wholly ab 
 sorbed in this voluble chat, but more than one acute eye 
 noticed the furtive but wide-sweeping glance with which she 
 made sure Mr. and Miss Somebody were awake to the fact 
 that the Count was taking her down to tea, and that all the 
 nobodies present were getting a realizing sense of a state of 
 3 1
 
 482 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 beatitude beyond their sphere. Poor Mrs. Struggles ! let us 
 laugh at you just a little bit you can very well stand it. You 
 are the type of a very large class ; and ridicule, even the 
 coarsest and strongest, becomes the feeblest badinage when 
 frittered up among so many. Besides, you are having all 
 that you want in this life ; you are getting on in fashionable 
 society ; you see your way to the highest heaven of bon ton. 
 Let the world wag its tongue, then ! Let the poor devils sneer ! 
 Only, my dear Mrs. Struggles, if you could modify or conceal 
 some of the little infirmities of our common nature, if you 
 could suppress upon all occasions as you so well know how 
 to do on some your pride and arrogance and envy and 
 malice, and all the various modes and manners of unchari- 
 tableness ; if you could permit yourself a glimpse of the fact 
 that there is in the world in society yes, even in fashion 
 able society, something worth thinking about besides dress 
 and visiting and gossip ; if you could realize for a moment 
 that there are a great many worthy and respectable people 
 who really don't consider that posturing and kotowing before 
 the Great Pam-bam-sham is the end-all and be-all of exist 
 ence ; if you could I say but then you can't, what is the use 
 of talking about it ? If you could, however, don't you think 
 that it would be an improvement ? We should still sneer, to be 
 sure, but then our sneers would of course be the sneers of pure 
 envy and jealousy, and not so largely qualified by contempt.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 Amateur Detectives Our Foreign Immigration Roset, Restaurateur A 
 Game of Billiards The Conspirators. 
 
 IT was a little past noon, on the same day, that Captain 
 Combings had announced by his presence the arrival of 
 the Spoondrift, that the passers in Broadway might have noticed 
 two. men one young, the other of middle age who, crossing 
 the park diagonally, emerged from its north-western angle, and 
 entering the great thoroughfare, directed their course, " up 
 town." 
 
 They paused for a moment to look at the new Court 
 House, then in the course of construction. 
 
 "That is going to be a fine building; quite an ornament 
 to a city that can't brag of much in the way of architecture," 
 observed the elder. 
 
 " It's going to be a monument of infinite infamy and shame," 
 replied the younger. 
 
 " How so ? " 
 
 " Why it's going to be, so everybody thinks, the biggest 
 swindle the world has ever known. Do you know, our friend 
 over there has calculated what it would have cost to build 
 St. Peter's or Versailles on the same plan. He says that neither 
 could have been finished for a cent less than five hundred 
 thousand millions." 
 
 We have said that the passers on Broadway might have 
 noticed the speakers ; but probably not one person did notice 
 them, as there was nothing about them to attract attention ; 
 unless it might be, in both, good stalwart figures, proportioned 
 to their ages ; and in the younger man a rather striking and 
 handsome face.
 
 484 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 And this face, perhaps, might have been noticed by a close 
 observer, not because it was handsome, but because it con 
 tributed to a noticeable inconsistency. It was too smooth, too 
 delicate, and too refined for the old battered tarpaulin th:;; 
 shaded it ; and for the frayed, dingy black silk handkerchief 
 that scarcely concealed the whiteness of the throat, round 
 which it was carelessly knotted; and for the coarse and worn 
 pea-jacket, and the faded blue checked shirt, with its baggy 
 bosom stuffed with an old red bandanna. 
 
 The elder man had much less of the sailor cut in his 
 garb. Any one acquainted only with the sailor of the stage 
 and the novel, might have doubted whether he had seen blue 
 water. The only indications of it in his dress were in the 
 knot of his black necktie, and the large bows of ribbon that 
 decorated his shoes, and in a fine and easy roll in his gait. 
 Otherwise, a broad-brimmed Panama hat, and a long-skirted 
 frock-coat, might as well have girded a city missionary, or a 
 tailor on a spree. 
 
 The young man put his hand into his bosom, and adjusted 
 his red bandanna so as to expose a little more of it to view. 
 
 It was faded, stained, and full of holes, but its owner 
 seemed to regard it with looks of pride and affection. 
 
 It was the gift of a friend. " Take it," said this friend ; 
 " It will be the salt-sea sprayiest thing about you it speaks 
 through every hole of the briny. It is a long time since it left 
 its home in Barcelona. It has been blown about the world on 
 a thousand breezes, and a thousand sneezes. See ! it is as 
 holy as the Santo Volto of St. Veronica. Come now, none of 
 your No, no's. Put your other nose into this handkerchief. 
 It knows more than you think for. It is a learned handker 
 chief. If you knew as much as it knows, you wouldn't turn 
 up your nose at it. 
 
 Oh! the acuteness of an intellect trained upon the con 
 structive milk of our many modern mothers of fiction. The 
 most complicated plot yields up its mystery at a glance. A 
 mental equation, and the most recondite of an author's inven 
 tions flashes out from the regions of the unknown. A man
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 485 
 
 must be either a donkey or a Wilkie Collins, to think of 
 dressing an incident, or masking a character, much less con 
 structing a plot transcending the guessing power of the novel- 
 reader, who, as in this case, instantly touches the clue, and 
 exclaims " Whoppers ! " 
 
 Yes, it was Mr. Whoppers who had been assisting at the 
 toilet of Luther and the Captain, and aiding and advising 
 them as to their make-up with all the authority derived from 
 an extensive experience, acquired when a member of an ama 
 teur Thespian club in Division Street. 
 
 " Now Luther," exclaimed the Captain, "just look here a 
 minute before we get fairly to work. I don't think that Mr. 
 Whoppers fully understands the subject. He points well, but 
 he sags off to leeward terribly sometimes. For just see, who 
 are we, and where bound ? We pretend to be runaway sailors, 
 and we are up in this quarter of the city to escape observation. 
 We are disguised sailors, and it would be absurd to flaunt our 
 bunting like one of those stage fellows. Don't you see we are 
 supposed to be lying to with all our top hamper sent down 
 so as to give the enemy the go-by, and yet Mr. Whoppers 
 wants to rig you up like Jack on a spree, with his pocket full 
 of bank-notes, and sailing around Greenwich or Cherry streets 
 and splicing the main brace about every fifteen minutes. Mr. 
 Whoppers' only idea of a sailor is one of your shiver-my-tim- 
 bers and damn-my tarry-top-lights sort of fellows. He has 
 made you mount that tarpaulin. I don't' like it. I think we 
 had better find a second-hand hat store, and change it for 
 such a cap as a runaway sailor would be likely to buy for a 
 disguise ; something that would suit a Bowery boy or a butch 
 er's apprentice. And that baggy bosom and red handker 
 chief, I don't like that either. You had better button up 
 your jacket, and make believe you want to conceal all the 
 marks of a seaman. No one seeing you now would think you 
 had any such design. You will be taken at once for a bold 
 sailor-boy, and all will wonder what you are up in this part of 
 the town for. You won't make a man believe that you are 
 skulking about here to keep out of the way of the police
 
 486 NEVER AGAIN, 
 
 sharks. Some, perhaps, will see that you are only acting sail 
 or, for there is a whiff of the land breeze about you, hitch up 
 your trowsers, and roll about as much as you please ; and 
 others will believe that you are a jolly one on a lark, and they 
 will watch you, expecting to see you about every five minutes 
 pull out that old handkerchief, flourish it over your head, cut 
 a pigeon wing, and sing 
 
 ' Oh, I loved a gal, and her name was Hannah ; 
 
 Rouse her in ! Rouse her in ! 
 And she played me a tune on her planner ; 
 
 Rouse her in ! Rouse her in ! 
 Oh, I made her a present of a red bandanner ; 
 Rouse her in ! Rouse her in ! ' 
 
 I'll tel. you what, Luther, the folks we are going among are 
 wide awake I guess. It won't do to let them get their smell 
 ers on us. If they do, they'll scent a rat as sure as you're 
 alive. I didn't want to argue the matter with Mr. Whoppers. 
 'Taint no use to argue with an editor, and in his own sanctum 
 too; you always get the worst of it. You might as well 
 argue with a female missionary, or a preacher in his pulpit, or 
 a skipper on his own quarter-deck. I thought we'd just 
 quietly make our alterations as we go along up town." 
 
 The suggestions of the Captain were so unquestionably 
 judicious, that Luther had no objections to make, and a few 
 blocks down Canal Street, they were able to replace Luther's 
 tarpaulin with a cap that better consorted with the idea of a 
 sailor in disguise. It had a broad brim that could be pulled 
 well down over the eyes. The other changes of costume were 
 easily made, even to the substitution of a pair of corduroy 
 pantaloons for the white duck trowsers, which last Mr. Whop 
 pers had especially ordered from a slop-shop, and which he 
 had insisted upon Luther's getting into. 
 
 The shop, narrow, dark, and dirty, seemed to be a recep 
 tacle for every kind of half-worn remnants of defunct or bank 
 rupt humanity. Hats, coats, and pantaloons, new and second 
 hand, a quantity of women's gear, a show-case of an infinite 
 variety of fancy trinkets, tcys, weapons, and musical instru-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 487 
 
 ments, piles of rickety furniture, and rolls of worn and torn 
 matting, and carpeting, and oil cloth all suggested a pawn 
 broker's shop, but the idea was negatived by the utter want of 
 neatness and order, and by the absence of the Lombard arms 
 over the door. It was evidently one of those unlicensed and 
 illegal loan offices, which to the disgrace of municipal govern 
 ment abound. 
 
 The keeper of this den was a burly fellow, with no very 
 striking characteristics. In any other place one would 
 hardly have known for what to have taken him. A certain 
 vulgar bonhomie he evidently had by nature, but his ac 
 quired manner was as clearly a compound of servility and 
 brutality, in what the physicists call a condition of unstable 
 equilibrium. Behind his counter he looked eminently fitted 
 to his position, but in Wall Street his mien and presence 
 might have been perhaps considered equally appropriate. 
 In that lovely street he would have been taken, or perhaps 
 mistaken, for a gold speculator, or the latest and most as 
 tounding development of a railroad director. 
 
 This fellow, as he handed the Captain his change, made 
 him a comical grimace, as much as to say, " I know what 
 you are and what you're after." The Captain returned it 
 by a regular east-north-east wink. 
 
 "You haven't seen nothing of a couple of sailors, an old 
 one and a young one, about here have you ? " demanded 
 the Captain. 
 
 " Not a sight," replied the shopman, his leer running into 
 a broad grin. " The only thing I seed is a couple of very 
 nice gentlemen, in long togs city missionaries, I guess, or 
 travelling dry-good drummers ; and I think I ought to knovi 
 a sailor when I sees him. I've been before the mast one 
 voyage myself." 
 
 " Well, then, if the perlice should be inquiring round." 
 
 " Oh, mum is the word. I ain't such a fou-fou as to stand 
 round all day, with my mouth wide open, and my tongue a 
 wagging like a terrier's tail. But I say, I hope the ship 
 has got a good offing, by this time."
 
 4 88 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " Well, the wind is fair, and she was short apeak, \viih 
 the tug alongside, all day yesterday ; but I guess it's best to 
 run a little further up town, and heave to in some of the by 
 streets. Wooster Street is a good holding ground ain't it ? " 
 
 " First-rate. It is full of foreign holes, where no one 
 would think of looking for a Yankee." 
 
 "Oh, we are not Yankees, we are Swedes," said the 
 Captain. 
 
 " Oh ho. I see," and the speaker winked his eye, and 
 jerked his thumb over his left shoulder! "I see; you're 
 Swedes. Can't speak a word of English, eh I " 
 
 " Oh, no, not so bad as that," returned the Captain ; " we 
 can muster English enough to say, How are you ship-mate ? 
 won't you go round into some quiet place, in Wooster Street, 
 and set up your backstays a little ? " 
 
 " Well, that's good English ! No parla voo, about that. 
 And seeing it's you, I don't care if I do, as the poet says. 
 Here, Jem, look out for the shop. I am going out on business 
 with these gentlemen. I shall be back in an hour." 
 
 Luther looked inquiringly at the Captain. " He is a bloat, 
 and a blab," whispered the latter ; " but he's not bad com 
 pany for us just now, and if we can get him up as far as Spring 
 Street, he'll give us a first-rate introduction to your saloon. 
 He can tell our story for us better than we can. He'll let the 
 saloon-keeper know in five minutes that we are runaway 
 sailors, and Swedes." 
 
 " Well, come along, my hearties. I don't know your 
 names, but you may call me Cooner that's my name, Bill 
 Cooner, and your name, is Bill too? Oh. Jack, ha? Well, 
 of course it's Jack, and the youngster's name is Jem ? " 
 
 " My name is Luther." 
 
 "Oh, Luth! Well I'll be hanged if ever I heard that 
 name before for a sailor. But it will do for a land-lubber's 
 hailing handle, eh ? " and with a knowing leer, and his hat 
 cocked over his left eye, in true b'hoy style, the speaker led 
 the way around the corner into Wooster Street. 
 
 There is perhaps nothing that strikes with such force the
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 489 
 
 eye of an old New Yorker, especially upon his return to his 
 native city, after an absence of several years, as the astonish 
 ing change of names upon the signs adorning the shops and 
 si loons. He finds that Smith and Jones, and Green and 
 Brown and Black, and all the other good old names of 
 Anglo-Saxon, and even Celtic origin, have been swept away ; 
 and in their place the names of Schmidt and Schwartz and 
 Grunz, and others of the purest Teutonic sound. He hears 
 of the vast immigration pouring on to our shores from the 
 teeming hives of faderland ; but he pays little attention to 
 newspaper statistics perhaps, and only wakes up to the great 
 fact when he reads it in the big painted or gilded letters that 
 salute his wondering eyes at every turn. Suddenly he 
 becomes aware that we are rapidly becoming very much Ger 
 manized. He is a little startled at first, but in view of the 
 enormous Celtic element he cannot find it in his heart to 
 regret that the neutralizing influence of the German immigra 
 tion is so powerful. 
 
 May it not, however, become too powerful ? Hardly ; the 
 Anglo-Saxon stock has an immense vitality ; it has a wonder 
 ful power of absorption and assimilation, and luckily it had 
 taken full possession of the country, and brought over its lan 
 guage and literature, and overrun and subdued al'l things to 
 itself years before the tide of immigration swelled to anything 
 like its present proportions ; and besides, the character of 
 the immigration is growing more and more heterogeneous. 
 There is, perhaps, a threatened proportionate decrease in the 
 number of Irish immigrants, but the flow of other nationali 
 ties is rapidly increasing. The Scandinavian element is 
 afloat, vigorous and daring as when under their Vikings they 
 colonized the shores of Kent, or visited the far-off coasts of 
 Vineland. There is an increasing immigration from England 
 itself, and the current once fully established, and the 
 stolid masses awakened to the allurements of cheap land and 
 high wages, and yielding to the attraction of affinities of blood 
 and language, will, in time, crowd the North Atlantic with 
 ships. The steady influx of Hungarians, and Poles, and Ital-
 
 490 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 ians, and French, shows a tendency to increase in volume. 
 All these separate nationalities have no choice but to crystal 
 lize in time upon the solid nucleus of English language, litera 
 ture and law. 
 
 This gratifying heterogeneity of our immigration is nowhere 
 better seen than in a stroll up and down the first three or four 
 streets bisected by Bleecker St., and it was with somewhat 
 such speculations as the reader has been stopped to indulge 
 in, that Luther, following his companions, read the signs of 
 jumbled-up nationalities. 
 
 They had passed two or three groggeries, but the Captain 
 had objected to each, and had persisted in his course up the 
 street. 
 
 " You did not like that cellar because it was too pokey," 
 exclaimed Mr. Cooner, "and you don't like this gin shop 
 because it's too public. Where the devil will you go? You'll 
 dive into this lager beer saloon? Well, I'll be d d if I will. 
 I hate lager. You've got to drink so much of it before it does 
 you any good. But I'll tell you what, there's a place just 
 above here where the fellow has got some old Bourbon. I 
 tried if one night as I was coming along here. I just dropped 
 down into a rum-looking hole as ever you laid eyes on ; such 
 an infernar jabber of French and Dutch you never heard, and 
 they were all drinking sour wine, and lager, and such stuff. 
 Hollo, covey, says I, have you got any old rye ? I'll be shot 
 if the fellow knew what I meant. Have you got any Bourbon ? 
 said I. Do you know what that means Oh, oui, oui, said 
 he, ze Frenchmens knows ze Bourbon. 'Ha ! ha ! and I swear 
 the fellow rumaged around and found a bottle of real ' blue 
 grass.' I have never been there since. What do you say, 
 shall we go there and try it ? " 
 
 " How far up?" demanded the Captain. 
 
 " Oh, only a block or two now. You can't see it till you 
 stand right over it almost, and then you dive right down a 
 cellar steps as straight and cramped as a ladder to a for'k'sel. 
 It must be somewhere in the neighborhood of Bleecker." 
 
 The Captain and Luther exchanged looks. The fellow
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 491 
 
 was, perhaps, leading them to the very den they wanted to 
 explore. 
 
 "Well, heave ahead," replied the Captain. "We'll just 
 keep our lead agoing ; Luther, you give a look astern once in 
 a while and see that we don't overrun it." 
 
 "I've got it," ejaculated Mr. Cooner, after they had 
 pushed on for a few steps. "I think that must be it, just 
 over there. Do you see those two billiard-cues painted red 
 on the water-table just level with the curb-stone ? Amudce 
 Roset Restaurateur Franais Lager-bier and wein saloon 
 Vins Franyais, Mittag something or other, Saile de billiard. 
 That must be the place ; come, we'll try it anyway." 
 
 " That's our place," whispered Luther, as they crossed the 
 street. " I feel quite certain of it." 
 
 The Captain gave a sweeping look around, and, with the 
 swift conclusiveness of a sailor's glance, took in every object 
 in view. 
 
 " I hope so," he replied in a low voice. " It is nicely 
 situated. If we can spot our men down in that hole, we can 
 slip out and watch them from Michael O'Reilley's corner 
 yonder. Do you see his side-window commands this en 
 trance ? 
 
 Mr. Cooner led the way ; Luther and the Captain fol 
 lowed, and found themselves in a small room almost wholly 
 below ground, furnished only with three or four tables and a 
 corresponding number of chairs. Across the back of the 
 rear ran a bar of black walnut, but destitute of all attempts at 
 ornamentation, such as usually characterize the Amen'can 
 institution. No glitter of cut glass and plated ware. A 
 general jumble of black bottles, evidently more for use than 
 show, and arranged on shelves without any regard to artistic 
 effect, occupied the background, with the exception of a space 
 allotted to a large square mirror whose reflective power had 
 been very much modified by the work of some clever artist in 
 soap. Numerous designs, and among them the JE Pluribus 
 Unum bearing bird of freedom, executed in that unctuous 
 material, gave the surface of the glass the appearance of 
 having been beautifully engraved.
 
 492 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 This room communicated by a narrow arch-way \vitli a 
 larger room beyond. Besides the arch, a further portion of 
 the partition had been cut away at the back of the bar, making 
 an opening through which the bar-tender could see into the 
 larger room, and pass in any liquors demanded. 
 
 This large room contained two billiard-tables and was 
 lighted only by gas. At the upper end were a dozen round 
 tables similar to those in the front. A door, so framed in the 
 wood-work, however, as scarcely to attract attention, indi 
 cated a further room of some kind beyond. 
 
 The ceilings of both rooms were so low that they could 
 easily be reached by even a man of short stature. Evidence 
 that more than one man's hand had reached the ceiling of the 
 room was furnished in numerous charcoal and red chalk 
 sketches which adorned it. The sides of the room were also 
 liberally ornamented with similar artistic touches. Few of 
 them had any merit either in design or execution, consisting 
 mostly of scrolls and arabesques run wild, or distorted faces 
 and figures, and attempts, and generally very poor attempts, 
 at caricature. Only one " design" really merited observation. 
 
 It represented the first Napoleon dressed up in his shroud 
 to resemble an old cook. Napoleon the third, representing a 
 charcutier, stands behind his counter and offers a dead eagle. 
 " Quoi ! un aigle ? What ! an eagle ? " demands the great 
 Emperor. 
 
 " Autrefois, man onde, mats maintenant un beau coq de bru- 
 ylre. Formerly, my uncle, but now a nice grouse." 
 
 The uncle pulls a handful of tail feathers, and applies 
 them to his nose. "Pah! que Jest mur ! trap de fumct" he 
 exclaims. " Voiis Favez garde, trap longtemps. It is too high, 
 you have kept him too long." 
 
 Luther had wandered into this room, and his attention 
 was attracted by the spirit and vigor that characterized the de 
 sign. He particularly admired the neat way in which the 
 labels from the mouths of the speakers were interlaced, so as 
 to indicate the succession of the conversation. He was so 
 occupied in studying the various mural decorations that, fav-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 493 
 
 ored also by the kindly oversight of the Captain, ne escaped 
 his share in the first potations. 
 
 The only occupants of the rooms besides the landlord a 
 short burly mongrel, half German, half French, from the 
 neighborhood of Strasburg and his bar-keeper and billiard- 
 marker, a little black-haired, black-eyed, dirty-skinned speci 
 men of the stumpy race, to which a few generations more of 
 conscription and war will reduce the whole population of 
 France were two men in seedy costume seated at one of the 
 four round tables. A pack of cards was lying between them, 
 but they were not playing, probably because playing involved 
 paying, at least for drinks, and, to judge from their looks, it 
 was very doubtful whether they could muster the price of a 
 glass between them. 
 
 The Captain gave them a glance, and then winked at the 
 landlord. Generosity is ever the role of the sailor. " I say, 
 Cooner," he exclaimed, " those fellows haven't freshened their 
 nip yet this morning." 
 
 " Well, I guess they are ready to take a new hold if they 
 have." 
 
 " Well, give 'em a chance at any rate," and the Captain 
 advanced toward them a step, and pulling the brim of his 
 straw hat, scraped his foot on the sanded floor. " Parlez 
 TJOUS Fran^ais, Mounseers ? " he demanded. 
 
 " Oh, out," replied one of the men. " C^est ma langue 
 natale, mats Monsieur id est It a lien." 
 
 "Well, Italian or- French, it's all the same thing, since 
 you parla voo franpais. So, will you join us in a horn ?" 
 
 " What do you say, sir ? " 
 
 " What do I say ? Why I say parla voo francais, but per 
 haps I'd better try the other fellow in Italian. Parlate voi 
 Italianno ? " 
 
 " Si, Signer." 
 
 " Well then, will you step up here and join us in a horn ? 
 Libate, eh ? per Baccho." The Captain's gestures were easily 
 understood, however unintelligible his language might be. 
 
 " Name your liquors, mounseers ; what shall it be ? Ab-
 
 494 VEVER AGAIN. 
 
 sinthe. Well, two glasses of the pisin. Do you hear, Rummy ? 
 Doo vere of absinthe. Cooner, you go for the Bourbon straight. 
 Here's to you, mounseers ; all the hair off your heads, and if 
 you do have to scud under bare poles, may you never yaw, so 
 as to come by the lee. Come, Jet us sit down. It don't cost 
 any more, I believe Americans are the only people that stand 
 up to their liquor." 
 
 Mr. Cooner remained at the bar, talking to the landlord, 
 while the Captain and his new acquaintances seated them 
 selves at one of the tables, and were soon on the most friendly 
 terms, clinking their glasses and exchanging compliments in 
 a jumble of sea-talk and broken English, with scraps of French, 
 Italian, and even Latin thrown in. 
 
 " I'll tell you what, signor, we sailors ama the Italianos," 
 he exclaimed, as the conversation grew animated, " they are 
 devilish good fellows, bono fellores, comprenez vous ? And 
 they are good sailors, only it takes such a bloody lot of 'em 
 to do any work. Why, I've seen twenty-five fellows making 
 sail on a felucca of thirty tons ; but they are devilish bono fel 
 lores, if it does take a good many of them to make a crew. 
 And we owe 'em mollo grazzos. There's Columbus, vous 
 savez. Ah ! molto grande homo ; no greater skipper ever 
 walked a quarter-deck. Why, I'll be d d if senze questo 
 grande Capitano we should not have been all cussed Indians 
 here to this day. Comprenez vous, signor? malditos Indi- 
 anos ! Let us boirez a la sante of il grande Skipperano." 
 
 A general clinking of glasses followed this invitation. 
 
 " Do you know, mounseers," continued the Captain, " we 
 get a good deal of our lingo from the Italians. Why, you can 
 hardly give an order on ship-board without talking Italian. 
 You know, mounseers, what starboard and larboard means?" 
 
 -" Oh, oui, oui. Starboard d droite, so ; larboard d gauche, so.'' 
 
 " Ah ! I see, you savez. Well, where the devil do you 
 suppose those words come from ? Look here now, ecoutez, 
 as we say in France ; questa borda ! good Italian ain't it, sig 
 nor ? I thought so ; and what does it mean ? translate it into 
 English, si 1 1 vous plait"
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 495 
 
 " Questo borda, this side," replied the Italian. 
 
 " Good, signer, I knew you'd guess it, you've hit it exactly, 
 you've got it as straight as a purser's log devil the figure on 
 either side more or less. Well, don't you see now, questa 
 borda sta borda starboard. There you have it every 
 time a fellow says starboard your helm, or hard a starboard, 
 he talks just as good Italian as the king of Italy. And now 
 for a pull on your larboard braces. Qiiella borda, what is 
 that ? " 
 
 " Qitetto borda, this side." 
 
 " Quello or quella, just as you please. I wouldn't give a 
 pig's grunt between an oh ! and an ah ! It's all bono Itali- 
 ano ? I thought so. Well, quella borda la borda larboard. 
 You capisco that you do '? Well, you'd be a d d fool if 
 you didn't. It's as plain as a kink in a pig's tail. Here's 
 to you, gents, all, and may you never want a drop or two 
 of water to season your grog with." 
 
 This last salutation was addressed to two or three new 
 comers, who, although tolerably well clad, and evidently be 
 longing to a very different order of society, had all that 
 shrunken and not-well-to-do-look so characteristic of a certain 
 class of foreigners, especially those who frequent restaurants 
 like that of Mr. Roset. 
 
 ' ; See here, Rosy," shouted the Captain to the landlord. 
 " Do you see these ere gentlemen, with nothing in their fists 
 to hold on by ; and you've got liquor enough there to float a 
 line-of battle ship ? Come, bail it out here now; bail it out. 
 It's my treat, gents. You won't refuse to lend a helping hand 
 to a sailor in distress, will you ? I've got to clean that fellow's 
 bar out. The revenue folks sent me here. They said, " Jack, 
 you can't sail to-day ; you must go up and drink that Rosy 
 fellow as dry as a pampero. So lend a hand, and don't cut up 
 proud ; you may be Dukes and Counts, and I don't doubt you 
 are, but that's no reason why you should spring your luff at 
 the first hail. Come, what shall it be ? " 
 
 At the order for unlimited liquors, Mr. Roset turned to 
 Mr. Cooner. He knew nothing of Cooner. Perhaps if he
 
 496 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 had, he would not have turned to him. " He's old friend of 
 yers. Eh ! you know him var well ? " 
 
 " Know him," replied Cooner, " I know him all to pieces ! 
 Why, I'd know his hide in a tanyard. He's an old messmate 
 of mine, used to sail in the same ship ; saved his life once. 
 I'll tell you how it was. You see, it was blowing like the 
 devil dark as Egypt ; a gust came along and took the Cap 
 tain's hat off. 'Jack,' said he, 'jump overboard and pick my 
 hat up.' So overboard Jack went. ' My Heavens,' said I, 
 ' Captain, he can't swim a stroke.' ' Can't he ? ' said he ; 
 ' well, jump overboard and help him;' so overboard I went. 
 I caught him by the hair of his head, just as he was going 
 down for the third and last time. Well, at that minute the 
 hurricane blew its d dest, and the ship flew off to leeward so 
 that I couldn't get aboard. The captain threw us an old hen 
 coop, and with that I kept Jack up all night, and the next 
 morning we met a vessel bound for Liverpool, and she picked 
 us up and took us in." 
 
 Was Mr. Cooner lying? Hardly; he was like a many 
 post-prandial story-tellers, in good society, merely indulg 
 ing his imagination. When a gentleman like Mr. Dingly 
 or Mr. Budds finds himself at the mercy of an o'ermastering 
 imagination, it is admitted to be wrong, very wrong, for his 
 club friends and companions to call him the biggest liar in town. 
 Why should not, then, a poor blackguard like Cooner have 
 a similar mantle of charity thrown over his comparatively 
 moderate exercise of the romancing faculty ? 
 
 "Zay, got money?" demanded the landlord. "Oh, you 
 bet," was the answer. " They can pay for all the liquor you 
 can pour into them. They have got their advance in their 
 pockets. They just want to keep shady for a day or two ; and 
 I don't believe there is any money to be made by blowing on 
 'em. I brought 'em in here on account of that old Bourbon. 
 I'll take another small horn, and then I must clear out. 
 Got something to look after at home, but I'll come in and 
 try it again some time. You can chalk it all in the bill, you 
 know ;" and Cooner winked and put his thumb to his nose.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 497 
 
 " Oh, je twig, je twig. Very happy to see you any time, 
 every time," exclaimed Mr. Roset. "I sail take care for 
 your friends. If somebody comes for them, nobody sail find 
 'em in dis place." 
 
 " Good-bye, shipmate," exclaimed Mr. Cooner, shaking 
 hands with the Captain. " I'll see you again. I'll drop in 
 this afternoon. I guess you can't do better than stay here. 
 First-rate place to lay low in. Mr. Roset he'll make you 
 comfortable ; give you a bed up-stairs, and something to eat. 
 You can keep shady for a week here if you choose." 
 
 " Yes, sar, everything dat's convenable is here at your 
 service," interposed Mr. Roset. 
 
 "Much obliged," replied the Captain. "I'm sure I'm 
 satisfied ; this is a first-rate place to wood and water in 
 good holding-ground ; liquor good, and enough of it to float 
 a fellow safely, I guess I'll come to an anchor here, but I'm 
 not going to bitt too short. I'll give her a smart scope. 
 You see we must have a little room to swing to moorings. 
 Can't stick down here all the time. The youngster '11 get 
 tired ; so we'll just float around a little in this neighborhood, 
 and heave short whenever we want to take in a little more 
 ballast. You'll find us here this evening." 
 
 Luther was'knocking about the billiard-balls in the other 
 room. Mr. Cooner went in to bid him good-bye, and availed 
 himself of the opening at the back of the bar, to try another 
 small glass of Bourbon. Coming out into the front room, the 
 Captain proposed one more drink. To this Mr. Cooner at 
 first demurred, but suddenly recollecting himself, he pulled 
 out his watch. "Well," he exclaimed, "it is just eleven 
 o'clock. I don't care if I do. I always take a drink exactly 
 at eleven o'clock. I don't think an eleven o'clocker hurts 
 any fellow, if he's only regular." 
 
 " That's right, my hearty," responded the Captain, giving 
 Mr. Cooner a friendly slap on the back. " Nothing like regu 
 lar drinks for a man's constitution, especially if he minds his 
 dunnage. I don't like this drinking on an empty stomach. 
 If you want to carry your liquor easy on a long voyage, you 
 32
 
 498 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 must put down something for it to lie on. This drinking 
 before breakfast is like stowing a cargo of railroad iron on to 
 your kelson ; sooner or later it will snap your sticks out of 
 you. But eat a good hearty breakfast, and then drink regular 
 say every half hour, and swamp my gig if you can't stand 
 it forever." 
 
 Mr. Cooner swallowed his fourth glass, and after renewed 
 hand-shakings, started for his den in Canal Street, to bully and 
 brow-beat, perchance, some poor devil of a mechanic out of 
 work, or some miserable wretch of a seamstress, while making 
 him or her a loan at two hundred per cent. 
 
 A game of billiards was proposed by the bar-keeper, 
 between himself and Luther, and the Captain and his compan 
 ions moved, with their glasses, in to the back saloon to watch 
 the play. The gas, turned on in full force, flared and flick 
 ered under two dingy tin shades attached to the low ceiling, 
 lighting up the bed of a shabby table. The cloth, worn here 
 and there quite threadbare, and even patched in places, had 
 nearly lost, under the influence of time, chalk, dust, and the 
 constant friction of dirty hands, its original color, and assumed 
 what might be described as either a filthy yellowish gray, or a 
 dirty whitish brown. A slight, but suspicious want of level, 
 indicated by the balls hugging the cushion on one side, and 
 exhibiting a decided inclination to one corner pocket, would 
 at once have led a strange expert to the idea that perhaps the 
 mal-adjustment was allowed in the hopes that an exact knowl 
 edge of the run of the balls might occasionally give a decided 
 advantage to Monsieur Roset or his markers, over their igno- 
 ant opponents. Luther had played hardly a dozen games in 
 his life, but, for one of his limited experience, he was unusu 
 ally expert. He knew at least enough of the game to suspect 
 at the first stroke or two, made with affected awkardness, that 
 his opponent was a strong hand. 
 
 "We shall bet a little something. One dollar, two dollar, 
 eh ? " demanded the fellow. 
 
 Luther demurred. " I don't know anything about billiards 
 or betting. You are much stronger than I. You can give 
 me seventy-five in a hundred."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 499 
 
 " No, sar. I know nothing. I play just two, three games 
 in all my life. Everybody beat me ; but if you want, I give 
 you twenty points ; 'tis too much, but I give you twenty 
 points, and we play three games for five dollar." 
 
 " Nothing of the kind, Mr. Velvet Jacket," interposed Cap 
 tain Combings, swaggering up to the table. " I don't allow 
 this youngster to bet. He's nothing but a sucking sailor yet, 
 and I ain't going to have any land-sharks get hold of him. 
 Besides, he ain't got any money. I carry the swag. Look-a- 
 here, do you see that ? " and the Captain slapped a large roll of 
 bills down on the table. " I'll tell you what I'll play you ; but 
 it's dry work playing for money, and no fun in it. I'll play 
 you for Champagne for all hands. Let me see," and the Cap 
 tain counted up the company, which had received several 
 accessions from the outside. " Ten in all, and more coming," 
 he exclaimed, as two men entered and took their places at 
 one of the round tables. " Bring on a basket of your fizzling 
 stuff. Gentlemen, you must all liquor-up at the expense of 
 Velvy or myself. We are going to see who's got to foot the 
 bill." 
 
 Luther, thus relieved, quietly returned to one corner, 
 where, unobserved himself, he could watch the game and at 
 the same time study the faces of the company, and especially 
 notice any new-comers. His attention was particularly at 
 tracted by the two who had just entered. One was a small, 
 compact, good-looking man, with something of the air of a 
 gentleman about him. The face seemed to Luther's eye to 
 have a familiar look. He thought of Mr. Planly's visitor, and 
 his heart began to beat. But this man had no whiskers or 
 mustache, and upon further examination he seemed to be a 
 much younger man. His companion, a large, powerfully- 
 built man, was also closely shaven, and kept his slouched hat 
 drawn down well over his face. 
 
 Luther dared not look too attentively at them, but he was 
 able to satisfy himself that the big man had a skin that bore 
 no evidences of the small pox. That settled the question. 
 The face he was in search of was deeply pitted, and that was 
 the only certain thins; he knew about it.
 
 500 XF.VER AC A IX. 
 
 He tried to catch their voices, but, although he sat quite 
 near them, not a word reached his ear ; in fact, as he noticed, 
 they scarcely exchanged a syllable. The small man quietly 
 accepted his glass of Champagne, and the big one, pulling 
 his brule-gueule from his pocket, proceeded to fill it and smoke 
 in silence. 
 
 The noisy antics of the Captain attracted the general atten 
 tion of the company, as, amid much laughter and loud com 
 ments in various languages, the game went on. Luther was 
 not only amused but astonished. He could hardly believe 
 that the talkative, swearing, swaggering sailor could be his 
 old dignified and gentlemanly friend, Captain Combings, and 
 the thought occurred to him that perhaps the Captain was get 
 ting, as he himself would have expressed it, a little too much 
 by the head. He would have been quite convinced of it if he 
 had not received an assuring wink now and then, and had 
 not noticed that the Captain took every opportunity to flirt 
 under the table the largest-sized heel-taps. 
 
 Luther was also amused by the evident skill with which 
 the Captain's opponent succeeded in preventing his score ever 
 running more than two or three points ahead, and his funny 
 affectation of rage when an adroit miss gave the Captain the 
 first game, as well as by the Captain's equally funny affecta 
 tion of triumphant glee when some lucky scratch rewarded an 
 unusually bungling effort. 
 
 It was a fair match, although to most of the company it 
 looked so wholly one-sided. Both were acting. Luther alone 
 knew that the Captain was the deepest player. How often is 
 it so in all the affairs of life, particularly in the affairs of love ? 
 Deceiver and deceived ! and out gush the sympathies of the 
 lookers on, when, perhaps, both have been equally playing a 
 part, and the latter, perhaps, the deepest role of the two. 
 
 In the midst of his noisy demonstrations of triumph, the 
 Captain found an opportunity of giving Luther a sharp, swift 
 glance, which said as plainly as words could say " Do you 
 see any indications ?" 
 
 Luther shook his head hesitatingly, and glanced in turn at
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 501 
 
 the couple we have noticed, who still occupied their table in 
 silence, quietly sipping their Champagne and watching, but 
 without uny marks of interest, the progress of the game. 
 Luther conjectured that they had an appointment with some 
 one, and were awaiting his arrival. 
 
 Again the noisy game came to an end, but this time the 
 marker gained the victory by ten points. This result the 
 Captain demonstrated to the company was due entirely to the 
 scratches of his opponent and his own bad luck. " Why just 
 look, all you parlez voos, just look-a-here now. Don't you 
 see the deep red was just there; my ball was just here; 
 and there was the light red. Well, says I to myself, I'll try 
 that bloody red on the port tack, and fly-doozle off into that 
 infernal pale fellow. It was just as simple a thing as a dose 
 of salts. Nothing could be plainer it was as plain as a cap 
 stan-bar, or a belaying-pin in the hand of a knock-me-down 
 mate. I just took my ball so, a little under the counter ; 
 but I suppose I must have given her a cant to starboard, for 
 d n me if she didn't go down, pitch in on the wrong side, 
 scoot off to the lower bank, come up and catch the bloody 
 red again just as he was getting his port tacks aboard. She 
 gave him a regular stern-lifter, knocked him kersmash into 
 the pale fellow, and all squiggled into moorings on the same 
 tide just here in this corner. Now, mounseers, perhaps you 
 can't all of you uncoil the English as nicely, fake after fake, 
 as you can your own lingo, but you can understand this much 
 that any lubber who don't know the difference between a 
 squillgee and a marling-spike can drive a pair of grains into 
 a shoal of rudder fish, and that's the way Velvy gets the 
 game. All he had to do was just to smash in his ball here 
 he must hit something. Don't you see it was mere luck ? A 
 kind of knock-my-neighbor affair. If you don't hit Jack, you 
 can kick Bill, and get some enjoyment out of the muss. 
 Don't you think so, mounseers?" 
 
 " Vero," politely replied an Italian in the crowd. 
 
 "Veer her? I don't care two straws whether you veer or 
 haul on that line. It's a solid fact, and you can't swing her 
 head off a single pint."
 
 502 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 The third game was commenced. 
 
 "Moor your ball, Velvy; anywhere you please. I don't 
 care. You can't get out of my way. I'm coming down on a. 
 full flood, and you may be devilish sure I'll fetch up athwart 
 your hawse somehow." 
 
 The Captain looked up after making his shot, glanced at 
 Luther, and saw him staring with all his eyes at a man who at 
 this moment showed himself in the doorway. 
 
 The new-comer was of medium height, but with something 
 colossal in his physical make up, that at once impressed the 
 beholder with the idea of enormous muscular strength and 
 vigor. From a deep chest and immensely wide shoulders, 
 rose a bull neck, and this was surmounted by a large head 
 covered with a thick matting of black, curly hair. The face 
 was more than half concealed by beard and mustache of the 
 same color, but what could be seen of it was deeply marked 
 with pits of the small-pox. Small, but piercing eyes gleamed 
 from beneath shaggy eyebrows, and gave an expression of 
 acuteness, combined with ferocity, to a countenance which 
 otherwise might have been noted only for its simple ugliness. 
 
 As the man paused for a moment in the doorway, Luther 
 had time to recover his composure of external manner, but his 
 heart beat violently, as he distinctly recognized the face that 
 he had seen peering into the attic window of Madame Steignitz' 
 room. 
 
 And now a reaction of feeling assisted him in recovering 
 entire command of himself. Here under his eyes was the 
 man beyond a doubt, and Luther resolved that he would never 
 let him up, until he had tracked him to his most secret lair. 
 But what if he had had nothing to do with the disappearance 
 of the old woman ? What if she had gone off herself, as the 
 police believed? For the moment, Luther did not feel quite so 
 sure of his conclusions, and yet it was certain that Mr. Planly 
 took the same view of the case and had even furnished the 
 most incontestable proof that an enl'evement had been contem 
 plated. 
 
 Luther drew his cap down over his eyes, and threw him-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 503 
 
 self half reclining into the furthest corner of the settee, upon 
 which he had been lounging. This brought his head in close 
 contact with the wooden partition that separated the back area 
 from the billiard-room, and further away from the table at 
 which were seated in silence the two men whose voiceg he 
 had been so anxious to overhear, but it enabled him to keep a 
 furtive watch upon the movements of the new-comer, who, for 
 some moments, seemed undecided whether to enter the room 
 or not. He hesitated, peered round the room, through the 
 thick haze of smoke emitted by a dozen cigarettes, spoke to 
 some one near him, as if demanding an explanation of the 
 scene, and only at last in obedience to a beckoning gesture, 
 advanced across the room. 
 
 " You're late, Brochu," exclaimed the smallest of the two. 
 " The Doctor here has been getting impatient, but I thought 
 I would say nothing about our affair until you came. He is 
 willing to help us if he likes the job, and anyway he will keep 
 our counsel." 
 
 Luther was too far off to catch all the words, but the tone 
 of voice in which they were uttered sent a thrill through every 
 pulse of his frame. 
 
 The man addressed as Brochu made no reply, but 
 motioned towards the door in the partition ; at the same 
 time giving an inquiring glance at the young man who was 
 reclining on the settee with his cap drawn over his face, in a 
 pretended sleep. 
 
 " Oh, nothing to fear," remarked the small man, as, in 
 obedience to the new-comer's gesture, the two rose from 
 their seat and moved to the table indicated. 
 
 " Nothing to fear ; they are runaway sailors." 
 
 "Yankees?" 
 
 " Yes, without doubt." 
 
 " And this youngster ? I will just take a look at his 
 face." 
 
 " No, no, don't disturb him ; he is drunk, I think, and his 
 companion there is a quarrelsome fellow ; there is no use 
 getting into a row."
 
 54 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 All this was uttered in French, and in a low tone, but 
 Luther's ear caught nearly every word of it. He expected 
 each moment to have his cap snatched away, and to stand 
 face to face with the man whose eyes had, perhaps, more 
 than once watched him while seated in the room of Madame 
 Steignitz. 
 
 Luckily the Captain swaggered up just in time, with 
 a bottle of Champagne in his hand. " Come, mounseer, 
 you must boirez or beuvez, or whatever you call it, as well as 
 the rest. No skulking allowed ; fill up, fill up all around. 
 Here's to you, mounseer, here's to your sante. May you 
 never be taken aback by the winds of adversity may you 
 never founder in the seas of distress. May you always 
 keep way with fortune. May you get the weather-gauge of 
 old Time, and jam him hard down into the nineties, and may 
 you go to Heaven at last, with everything drawing, from 
 courses to royals, and a fresh gospel breeze right over your 
 taffrail." 
 
 The action and words of the Captain seemed to remove 
 any feeling of suspicion, and the man thus addressed quietly 
 took his glass of Champagne, replied to the Captain's 
 sentiment with a nod, and turned back to his companions. 
 
 The game of billiards was resumed with vigor the 
 three men looking on in silence for a few minutes, and then 
 quietly stepping out of the door that opened into the passage 
 way between the kitchen and the small room into which the 
 enclosed area had been divided. 
 
 Luther started, and looked after them, but the door closed 
 and he could see nothing. The next moment he knew, from 
 the sound of feet and voices, that they had entered the small 
 room, and had taken seats at a table separated only by a thin 
 curtained window from the large room, and within a foot or 
 two of the end of the settee upon which he had been lying ; 
 in fact by shifting his position to the other end of the settee, 
 he could bring his ear to within three or four inches of the 
 cracked panes, and by throwing back his head as far into the 
 corner as possible he could see by the edge of the curtain,
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 505 
 
 and catch a glimpse of the table around which they were 
 seated. 
 
 He could hear but imperfectly, amid the noisy conversation 
 going on at the lower end of the large room, but occasionally 
 sentences, especially when the voices on the other side of the 
 window were raised a little, came to his ear quite distinctly. 
 Familiar as he had become with the French, there were 
 every now and then phrases that he could hardly understand, 
 mixed up, as they were, with argot and slang. For some of 
 these he needed a translation almost as much as the reader. 
 The allusions, not in all cases so obscure, it is unnecessary to 
 explain. 
 
 A silence of a few moments ensued after placing them 
 selves at the table. The small man, addressed by his com 
 panions as Monsieur Ricord, amused himself by drumming 
 with his fingers and humming an air from Massaniello, while 
 the one called the Doctor, and Brochu, the last comer, pulled 
 away vigorously in silence at their pipes oftetes culott'ees. 
 
 " Ainsi" at length exclaimed Brochu, " le comite a encore 
 une fois manque son coup. Le brigand est invulnerable. So the 
 committee has again missed its blow. The brigand is invul 
 nerable." 
 
 Mr. Ricord stopped his drumming with a loud tap upon 
 the table. 
 
 " Mais, aussi," he exclaimed, "pourquoi diable s>acharnent 
 Us toujours d viser cette carcasse cuirassee ? Le gredin est pourri ; 
 il mourra bientot de sa belle mort. C*est le petit qu'il faut escof- 
 fier. But why do they always aim at that armored carcass. 
 The scoundrel is rotten, and he will soon die of himself. It 
 is the little one that we ought to squelch." 
 
 " Cest ce quefai toujours dit" replied the Doctor. " II faut 
 avant tout exterminer la eouvee. Les Jobards et les Chauvains 
 n'auraienf plus de point d'appui. Ah, si jamais je remets />> 
 pieds en France, nom (Pun " 
 
 " Fiche moi T empire" interposed Brochu, in a gruff and im 
 patient voice, " avec tes bravades, tu fi'en as done pas encore eu 
 assez de Cayenne."
 
 506 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 "Tonnerre! ne me rappelle pas pa" and the rest of the 
 Doctor's exclamation was lost in the noise of the room, but 
 he could hear Mr. Ricord exclaim : " Allans, allons ! Calmc 
 toi ; bois plutot au succes d'une nouvelle tentative etfypense. 
 I will soon have in my hands the means of striking a blow ! 
 We shall see we shall see ! Your revenge will come in good 
 time, Doctor. If it don't you may call me le plus grand blagu- 
 eur que la terre ait ported 
 
 " Bah ! you have said so this year past. Tu nous ember- 
 lucoqties avec tes contes bleus" 
 
 " Tiens, tiens. The Doctor has a right to be a little impa 
 tient," interrupted Brochu. " If you had had your mistress 
 shot down by your side in that fusilade on the Boulevard 
 Poissonnu're you would be impatient too, until you see the 
 chief murderer get his deserts. But the coup d'etat is not our 
 subject just now. We have another coup something nearer 
 home, Doctor, and we want your help. II y a unfameux coup 
 qui mettra des jaunets dans nos goussets, s>il rcussil." 
 
 " Ah voil<l ! s'il reussit" exclaimed the Doctor, " if it suc 
 ceeds. Mais en quoi consiste-t-il ? " 
 
 " En ceci; ecoutez moi bien." 
 
 The speakers now bent over the table, their heads coming 
 so closely together, and their voices subdued to so low a tone, 
 that Luther could only catch now and then a word or two. 
 But every word he did hear fell upon an ear strained to the 
 utmost, and was interpreted by an imagination that flashed a 
 blaze of light upon what would to an ordinary listener have 
 been the most enigmatical expressions. 
 
 Une payse qui a amasse, des ecus, could mean only Madame 
 Steignitz. This was rendered certain, when the same voice 
 spoke of la quelle paysecelle qui se donne pour une pauvre-souf- 
 freteuse pour mieux tromper le monde et dcpister les voleurs. 
 
 Who but Madame Steignitz had money, and pretended to 
 be a poor old miserable woman? But, as if to settle the ques 
 tion, there came to his ear the words, une miserable mait- 
 sarde dans Wooster Street That described her lodging 
 exactly a miserable mansard!
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 507 
 
 A long consultation now took fllace, in a very low tone, 
 and again Luther caught a phrase or two, of which he could find 
 a meaning a meaning that fairly made his hair stand on end. 
 
 " Obstinate old devil ! have tried flogging ! afraid I'd 
 kill her ! starvation no use ! no water for three days ! 
 thought she'd die! won't eat now a mouthful! very sick ! 
 can't speak ! " And again followed a long conversation, 
 of which not a word could be heard, and which was again suc 
 ceeded by a few phrases blurted out in a louder tone. 
 
 " You must help us, Doctor. Vous m'avouerez qu'il serait 
 du dernier ridicule de laisser une vielle meg^re echapper de nos 
 mains sans payer son layer. If she dies, we have the credit, 
 but none of the profit of murder. I don't mind that. I 
 don't think it any harm to put such a miserable devil out of 
 the way, but I don't wan't to make a fool of myself, faire une 
 sottisc pour ricn, any more than our friend Ricord here. You 
 must contrive some way, Doctor, to keep her alive until she 
 disgorges." 
 
 " Soyez tranquille" replied the Doctor in a low tone suffi 
 ciently loud for Luther to follow the whole phrase. "Be 
 easy. Nous laforcerons a degorger. Mais aprt s ? " 
 
 "Aprls! v o u s connaissez le Hudson? You know the Hudson, 
 don't you ? Well, it has covered heavier business than this, 
 but we won't talk of that just now. Une fois en possession du 
 ma got, nous aurons du pain sur la planche. We will have bread 
 for a while, my dear Doctor, and we can wait the completion 
 of our friend Ricord's infernal gun. C'est a dire si nos cocotes 
 ne sont pas trop dpre d la curee." 
 
 Luther had heard enough. He began to be apprehensive 
 that the conference might break up, and the speakers sud 
 denly leave the house without his being able to follow them 
 unobserved. It would be better for him and the Captain to 
 leave first and watch from, the outside. 
 
 The game of billiards had come to an end. The Captain 
 admitted himself beaten, by his own bad luck, mainly. 
 " Although I kind of suspgct, Velvy, that you can weather on 
 me anyway ; however, some other time, I'll try you again. I
 
 508 NEVER AGAIX. 
 
 say, Rummy, what is the damage ? Forty dollars, eh ? Well, 
 cider and turnip juice has riz, I guess. But d n the odds, if 
 they only put in the fiz strong and hearty. Here's the money. 
 What is it, youngster?" whispered the Captain. 
 
 "Let us get into the street as soon as possible," replied 
 Luther in a low tone, but with a voice that sounded strange 
 and husky to his own ear. 
 
 " I understand," replied the Captain. " I knew him the 
 moment I put my eye on him. Go on, I'll follow in a minute. 
 Here, Rummy, count your rags. Good, ain't they? Oh 
 never mind the change now, pay me when I come back. I 
 am just going to box about here a little get some fresh air, 
 and see the lay of the land. I'll be in again soon," and with 
 a profusion of swaggering salutations the Captain followed 
 Luther into the street. 
 
 " Hold on, youngster. I ain't quite so steady on my pins. 
 My head is clear enough, but that confounded stuff has got 
 down into my ankles and loosened the joints. But what is 
 the matter? You look as if you had been keel-hauled, or 
 had been down in the fore peak with Bill Hutching's ghost. 
 You've seen em ? I was sure of it." 
 
 " Seen them and heard them too," replied Luther. " But 
 come around the corner here ; we must not lose sight of that 
 door. The murderous villains are all in there now. They have 
 the old woman secreted somewhere, and we must track them 
 when they come out." 
 
 "Well, let us go in here. Mr. O'Reilley has got aside 
 window there that we can look out of. We've got to "sample" 
 some of his imported liquor, I suppose," said the Captain, 
 looking up and reading the sign. " Imported from a Brooklyn 
 distillery, I guess. Confound it, I don't want to drink any 
 more, but \ suppose I must. I can't say with Cassio, that I 
 have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking ; but still I've 
 had enough. 
 
 Mr. Michael O'Reilley's " sample-room" happened to be 
 remarkably quiet. The crew of thieves, bruisers and black 
 guards in general that mostly constituted the custom of the
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 509 
 
 place were all " on the prowl,'' and only a few old " soakers" of 
 no account, and too infirm for active predatory exertions, 
 were dozing away the time and waiting the advent of some 
 successful junior for a treat. 
 
 The two chairs by the side window looking into the street 
 were vacant, and Luther and the Captain made their way 
 down the length of the room, and seated themselves so as to 
 put the entrance to Monsieur Roset's saloon directly in view, 
 
 " NQW, Luther," said the Captain, " keep your weather eye 
 open, and go on with your story. I'll order two whiskey-skins. 
 That means a couple of glasses of alcohol, with a drop of 
 creosote in each. It is no more hot Scotch than it's Holland 
 gin or Nantes brandy, but it's better than their other liquors, 
 because it has not so much fusil oil in it, and it won't lay a fel 
 low out cold so quick." 
 
 The hot Scotch was brought. It recommended itself to 
 Luther's palate, as it was well sweetened ; and besides, his 
 nerves had received such a shaking that a little stimulus was 
 almost necessary to steady them, and enable him to quietly 
 relate all that he had seen and heard. 
 
 As may be imagined, not for an instant did either Luther 
 or the Captain fail to keep an eye upon the door of Mr. 
 Roset's saloon. People came and went, but no sign for a 
 long time of either of the three conspirators. It began to 
 grow late in the afternoon. An hour later and it would be 
 too dark, perhaps, to recognize their persons ; at least from 
 so great a distance as the side window of Mr. O'Reilley's 
 "sample-room." 
 
 Might it not be that there was some back-way by which 
 they had made their exit ? No, there they were at last all 
 three of them. 
 
 Luther and the Captain jumped to their feet, and pre 
 pared to follow them, keeping as much out of sight and as 
 far in the distance as possible. 
 
 A few blocks and the three men turned a corner and 
 were out of sight. Luther and the Captain hurried their 
 steps, and were just in time to see them turning the next
 
 ij IO NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 corner of the block and then the next, so as to bring them 
 again into Wooster Street. 
 
 Increasing their pace, the pursuers caught a glimpse of 
 Mons. Brochu ascending the steps of one of a row of old- 
 fashioned, dilapidated houses, while his companions sauntered 
 on for some distance, turned deliberately, walked back to 
 the same house, mounted the steps and entered without 
 pausing, the door seeming to open of itself. 
 
 " It beats the forty thieves," was the Captain's comment. 
 " I wonder if open sesame is the word." 
 
 Luther and the Captain took a good view of the house 
 from one corner. Then went round the block and took a 
 good view from the other corner. It grew darker, and they 
 decided that there could be no harm in strolling past the 
 door. 
 
 The house was one of six all occupied except one, 
 the last of the row, upon which there was a bill. 
 
 The Captain stepped up to a man picking over a pile of 
 rotten cabbage belonging to the corner grocery evidently 
 a German. In fact he could hardly be anything else but 
 a German, for it is a curious truth, and one well worthy 
 the careful consideration of the Ethnographical Society, 
 that the German has almost entirely superseded the Irishman 
 in the corner-grocery business. Time was when the Celtic 
 element was supreme ; when every corner was surrendered 
 to the busy brogue of Milesian enterprise and activity; 
 when the angles of every block were smoothed off, and filled 
 in with rounds of inviting corned beef, and piles of ap 
 pealing potatoes ; when the association of ideas in the case 
 of the Green Isle and green groceries was supposed to have 
 its foundation deep down in the essence of universal hu 
 manity in the very ultimate and absolute nature of things. 
 But now all is changed. The Teuton has come. He squats 
 by the Celt, and the latter can no more bear the contact 
 than the Indian can the touch of the Anglo-Saxon. He finds 
 himself undersold, out-worked, used up, and driven out from 
 his corner in a shower of sausages and sauerkraut and lager,
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 511 
 
 with nothing but his bottle of whiskey to protect him from 
 the peltings of the pitiless storm. Henceforth he must seek 
 other fields of labor. The corner grocery is as irrevocably 
 a German conquest as Strasburg or Metz. 
 
 "Do you know anything about what rent they ask for 
 that vacant house?" demanded the Captain. 
 
 " Vacant house ! nein, nein, there bees not some vacant 
 house there this time. Maybe ten days go by there bees 
 one." 
 
 " Why there is a bill upon one of them." 
 
 " Bill ! There is ? Well, I it not seen him. I tink he put 
 has been on to-day." 
 
 " Well, the house that was to rent a few days ago. Who 
 has taken that ?" 
 
 " Ich weiss nicht. I not know. I not seen have some 
 body to go in or to come out. All I say, they don't buy much 
 at this shop." 
 
 Not a doubt remained. That was the house, but nothing 
 was to be gained by standing looking at the* outside of it, 
 especially as it was getting dark, and inasmuch as it would 
 take at least half an hour to change their clothes and to get 
 themselves in trim for Miss Jones' dinner-table.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 What can be done ? The Captain's proposition The question of Arms 
 The amenities of Journalism. 
 
 IT was with a good deal of reluctance that both Luther and 
 the Captain turned back into Bleecker Street. They 
 would have liked to enter the house by main force, it was 
 probably the only way they could have entered it, and then 
 and there make a thorough search for what they firmly believed 
 to be concealed in it the old woman. But it was too evident 
 that the effort would be the sheerest folly, and in the end 
 defeat the object they had at heart. A premature alarm was, 
 above all things, to be avoided. They had succeeded beyond 
 all expectation in tracing so soon the villains to their hiding- 
 place. Any further efforts must be decided upon in council 
 with Mr. Whoppers and Mr. Boggs, who, as we have seen, 
 were to meet them and hear their report that evening in the 
 Editor's room. 
 
 The reader may think that it must have been a very easy 
 and simple thing to decide upon the next movements in the 
 game. Rush off at once to some Judge, Justice, the Chief of 
 Police, or some officer or other, and get a warrant or order or 
 some other kind of document, and give it to some policeman, 
 or detective, or constable, or some myrmidon of justice or 
 other, and go and make those fellows give up the old woman 
 at once. Not quite so easy. 
 
 Luther had had something to do with the police in the 
 matter already, and he had not been at all satisfied with the 
 result. The fact is, as Mr. Whoppers suggested, the detective
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 513 
 
 system has got to be we won't say corrupt that perhaps 
 would be doing great injustice to many very worthy men, but 
 such a money-making system, that, without being able to man 
 age the ropes and grease the wheels, it was difficult to set the 
 machinery a going, or to make it work with any rapidity or 
 certainty when started. 
 
 Besides, the system, even when doing its best, did not 
 happen at that time to be in the enjoyment of the highest 
 public favor. There had recently been a horrible murder a 
 man struck down at night in his own house on one of the most 
 public thoroughfares, and although immense rewards had 
 been offered for the detection of the criminal not the slighest 
 clue had been discovered. An unusual number of dead 
 bodies had been found floating in the Hudson and East rivers, 
 but in no case had the police taken any effective steps to 
 unravel the mystery. The public, without going quite so far, 
 perhaps, as a venerable and distinguished member of the bar 
 and of society, who maintains that the murders in New York 
 average at least one in every twenty-four hours, had begun to 
 believe that a large proportion of the worst crimes the police 
 were either disinclined or unable to prevent or detect. 
 
 And Luther had in this case very little to go upon. If he 
 entered a complaint, or applied for a search-warrant or order 
 of arrest, he had really so little to show, except his own sus 
 picions, that it was evident, when his statements were reduced 
 to the dry and formal language of a legal declaration or 
 affidavit, the police would make no move until they had sup 
 plemented his complaint by their own perquisitions and 
 investigations. This would take time, and besides there 
 would be the risk of alarming the conspirators, while the life 
 of Madame Steignitz, supposing her to be living and in their 
 power, might be instantly sacrificed in their efforts to conceal 
 the crime. 
 
 What then could be done ? 
 
 The Captain made a characteristic proposition. 
 
 " We want to get into that house, and see if we can find 
 the old woman. If we find her there we are all right, no
 
 5 ! 4 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 matter how we get in. If we don't find her we shall be all 
 wrong. But we have good motives to plead, and they won't 
 be too hard upon us. And it often happens that in this life 
 you have to take some risk. When the rocks are right under 
 your lee, in a heavy gale, what can you do? You haven't 
 room to ware, and you know devilish well that if you try to 
 tack ship, you will miss stays. Weil, there is nothing to do 
 but to clubhaul her; but I tell you what, it is ticklish busi 
 ness just touch and go. If you don't chop your cable at the 
 right instant, and pay her head off on t'other tack, you're down 
 upon the rocks in no time, with masts overboard, bulwarks 
 carried away, and with your keel, kelson, garboard streaks 
 and futtocks ground out of you in about five minutes. You 
 have to take risks sometimes ; you can't help it. Now sup 
 pose that I pick up half-a-dozen of the Spoondrift's crew. I 
 know where to find 'em. All I have to do is to go down to 
 Joe Jigger's dance-house, and there I can put my hand upon 
 any one of 'em ; they havn't had time to spend all their 
 money yet, and get kicked out. Well, we will take and saw 
 off about six or eight feet from the butt end of a spare top- 
 gallantmast lash a hand-rope along on either side, so that 
 half-a-dozen men can pick it up and swing it easily. We'll 
 put this on a cart and drive up to the house. The men will 
 come along at the same instant ; each one will jump and 
 seize his lanyard, and all rush up the steps with the battering- 
 ram ; heave with a will my hearties ! one, two, bang ! a single 
 blow, and in goes the door smashed all to flinders. We fol 
 low pell-mell, and spread ourselves all over the house. If 
 we find the old woman, well and good; if we don't, why we 
 have committed flat burglary, that's all. But I don't think 
 they can make a yard-arm business of it. They can't do 
 more than tie us up to the gratings, and I shouldn't wonder 
 if, considering circumstances, and character, and all that, they 
 would let us off with a little moderate colting of some kind. 
 The only thing is I don't see the use of more than one of us 
 being concerned, and so if it suits you I will take the whole 
 matter on my shoulders."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 515 
 
 The Captain's proposition was received with thanks and 
 compliments upon its boldness, its ingenuity, and generosity. 
 
 " Charming ! " exclaimed Mr. Whoppers. " Splendid ! in 
 fact, considering that first smash, it would be really a//<?rable ; 
 but you mustn't forget how soon a crowd is collected in New 
 York. We shouldn't have time to look through the first-floor 
 rooms, supposing that we met with no opposition inside, and 
 we may well calculate upon that, before you have the house 
 filled with ruffians and loafers of every class, and in five min 
 utes you might have cases of robbery, homicide and arson 
 added to your indictment for forcible entry and illegal search 
 and seizure." 
 
 Mr. Boggs had been sitting for some time seemingly 
 wholly occupied in stroking his long goatee, which graceful 
 amusement was sometimes varied by an effort to bend down, 
 and catch in his teeth, the ends of his mustache. 
 
 Mr. Whoppers turned to him appealingly. 
 
 Mr. Boggs took a final vicious bite at the ends of his mus 
 tache, and roused himself from his fit of mental abstraction, 
 or rather perhaps it would be more correct to say, of mental 
 concentration. 
 
 " It won't do ; but I have a plan that will, he exclaimed. 
 There is a vacant house in the row. No one knows me, and 
 no one will suspect me. I will go to-morrow and hire that 
 house. I suppose they will rent it by the month. The 
 owner or agent will jump to the conclusion that I take it for 
 some female friend. It is well known that there is more than 
 one fellow in our club who is interested in private lodgings in 
 out-of-the-way streets. I'll let him think so. Well, don't you 
 see, once in possession of the house, we can operate from it in 
 precisely the same way as we suppose Monsieur Brochu and his 
 friends to have done in the case of Madame Steignitz. We 
 can enter their house at night, over the roof, through the dormer 
 window, and perhaps be able to carry her off in the same way." 
 
 " Good ! " exclaimed Mr. Whoppers. " I like that; it is 
 upon the principle of a hair of the dog, etc. It's strictly 
 according to the lex talionis, and it's scriptural too; 'an eye
 
 516 NEVER AGAIN, 
 
 for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth ;' an old woman for an old 
 woman ; en&vement pour enlevement, as she would say in her 
 own language." 
 
 " But I don't see how we can get over the roofs without 
 alarming the inmates of the intervening houses," said Luther. 
 
 " Oh, pooh ! There is no difficulty about that ; it's just a 
 case of ' Still so gently o'er me stealing.' We can step noise 
 less as the foot of Time, when he only treads on flowers. We 
 won't creep along the eaves, and affront the dormer 
 windows ; eaves-dropping is disreputable, you know. We 
 must just slip out of our window, give one wild, ringing 
 cheer of Excelsior, and mount to the ridge-pole. Luckily, it 
 is not a steep affair. It won't be so hard to climb as ' the steep 
 where Fame's proud temple shines afar.' Once there, we will 
 ride as on a rail, not quite so fast and furious as an old fish- 
 woman on a rail, but slow and sure, ' astride the anticlinal 
 slopes of great events.' We arrive at the house facilis 
 descensus, you know we drop down upon them like a dew-drop 
 from a lion's mane. Oh ! I'm for Mr. Boggs' plan." 
 
 " But," objected the Captain, " we just as much make an 
 illegal and burglarious entry by breaking in at the dormer win 
 dow as by breaking in at a door, and are just as responsible 
 for the homicide that may follow, and that probably will follow ; 
 for these fellows will show fight." 
 
 " Ah, but we have a chance of making our perquisitions in 
 private, and perhaps of finding the old woman and carrying 
 her off without any row," replied Mr. Boggs. " That chance 
 is worth something." 
 
 "That is true," replied the Captain, "and I don't oppose 
 the plan, but we must be prepared for all events. There is 
 no use of blinking the fact that the service is one of difficulty 
 and danger. I have seen Monsieur Brochu and his compan 
 ions, and I am much mistaken if they are not about as ugly 
 customers as can be found in the city. Shall we go armed ? " 
 
 The Captain's question led to a long discussion, in which 
 all the arguments on either side were fully examined, and finally 
 it was decided that it would be best not to carry pistols 01
 
 NEVER AGAIN. c; I7 
 
 knives ; that they might put themselves terribly in the wrong 
 by using deadly weapons, afnd that knuckle-dusters and police 
 men's bludgeons would be all that it would be best to allow 
 themselves. 
 
 "'Tis the wisest way," concluded the Captain. "There is 
 a terrible temptation to use a pistol or a knife unnecessarily 
 sometimes. I have known an officer rush for his pistol and 
 shoot two or three men simply because he had it capped and 
 loaded all loose at the head of his berth, whereas if he had 
 had it locked up, unloaded, in his chest he would just have con 
 tented himself with a belaying-pin or marling-spike, and ended 
 the muss with a few knock-downs that would hardly have hurt 
 a sucking infant ; and besides," he continued, " we ought not 
 to need the pistols. Here's Luther, young and active, and 
 wiry as a panther, and I understand that with the gloves on 
 he can take the kinks out of some of the best men they've got 
 at the gymnasium. Then, here's Mr. Boggs. I am a pretty 
 good judge of thews and sinews, and there is an easy length 
 of limb and a depth of chest there that mean a monstrous 
 sight of work, I guess, at a short call ; and as to Mr. Whop 
 pers well, Whoppers, your frame was not got out for a double- 
 decker, but I suspect you can carry a good deal more than 
 your measured tonnage. I should doubt a little whether your 
 backstays were as well set up as they might be, but you're 
 pretty well sparred, and they do say that when you flogged the 
 fighting editor of the New York Hurly-Burly you made a 
 handsome job of it, and finished him off in first-rate style." 
 
 " Oh, belay that, Captain. You make me blush before 
 Boggs and Luther here." 
 
 ' Oh no, it was the other fellow that blushed. I hap 
 pened to mention your name to Mr. Mills, my first mate, 
 yesterday, when he said that he saw the whole thing. He 
 was in Wall Street at the time. He says that the way you 
 sailed into your enemy was a sight for the curious. If 
 Barnum could have bought it and put it in his museum, it 
 would have been worth five thousand dollars to him. Mills 
 says that he at first thought the other fellow was going to
 
 518 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 weather on you when he hit you a sockdologer on the mug, 
 but you boxed off a little, and then sprung your luff, got your 
 grappling-irons on his throat, bore him down on to his beam- 
 ends, and then flourished your feet and fists like a regular 
 artist, and in about half a minute after you had boarded him 
 you had put his dead eyes in and painted a black streak 
 under them ; had worked a Turk's head on his nose as big 
 as a lemon ; had smashed in his head rails and started two or 
 three of them down his progway. Mr. Mills says that the 
 blood ran from his scuppers like a sluice from a tan-yard or 
 a Cincinnati pork-mill, and that in the half minute you had 
 his head careened down over the curb-stone it colored the 
 gutter from Trinity Church to Pearl Street." 
 
 " Mr. Mills is a a d d Well, I won't say what 
 Mr. Mills is," exclaimed Mr. Whoppers in a tone that 
 showed he by no means relished the Captain's comical ex 
 aggerations. In fact it was a sore subject, and any allusion 
 to it was apt to disturb the usual serenity of his temper. It 
 is often observed that no people more readily wince under any 
 little rubbing of their sore spots than those who are forever 
 seeking out and touching up the raws of their neighbors. 
 
 " Beg pardon. I meant no offence," replied the Captain. 
 
 " Oh, no offence ! " replied Mr. Whoppers. " A fellow is 
 bound to make a devilish fool of himself some time in his 
 life ; but it isn't always the pleasantest subject of conver 
 sation afterwards." 
 
 " But I don't see that it was such a foolish business. If 
 the Hurly-Burly fellow had got the better of you ah, in 
 that case perhaps. But tell us how it came about." 
 
 "Well, it's too long a story to go into all the details. 
 You've all of you heard of the -amenities of newspaper litera 
 ture ? that is, when one editor calls another cheat, liar and 
 villain." 
 
 " Why, do they ever do that? " demanded the Captain in 
 a tone of surprise. 
 
 "Sometimes, but it is considered bad taste to use the 
 naked words. The better style is do it by implication, or
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 519 
 
 what you may call the roundabout or circumlocutory process ; 
 as for instance, instead of calling a man a thief, you begin an 
 article on 'Kleptomania in general.' Show that it is not a 
 new disease, but that it was known to the ancients, and that 
 it was clearly alluded to by Celsus in one of his eight books 
 de medirina ; that it was also described, in more modern 
 times, by the great Boerhaave, and by the famous Fabricius ab 
 Aquapendente in his treatise dc furtivis. You then suggest 
 a hospital for the treatment of patients afflicted with that dis 
 ease, from which category, however, you of course except 
 cases like that of the editor of the Flipper. For his case there 
 is already a capital asylum established at Sing Sing, where the 
 Autolycus of the press would find a suitable regime, and where 
 the gentle exercise of cutting and carving a compound of 
 carbonic acid and lime might exert a curative effect upon his 
 diseased habits. At any rate, as you suggest, that is his only 
 chance, for it is well known that when total depravity assumes 
 the continuous type characterized by one universal and never 
 ending exacerbation, the prescriptions of a criminal judge, or 
 police magistrate, are always infinitely more efficacious than 
 those of any physician. 
 
 Or suppose you want to accuse a fellow of lying, begin 
 in this wise, as far off as possible: 'It is generally admit 
 ted that Plutarch's works on morals are far inferior to 
 his lives of distinguished ancients. But even as a mor 
 alist, although accused of entertaining erroneous doctrines, 
 superstitious fancies, and puerile and even disgusting 
 sentiments, he sometimes makes a remark of singular pro 
 fundity. As for instance, in his life of Lysander he says 
 that to lie is to manifest both a contempt of God and a fear 
 of man. Now this suggests a question we would like to ask 
 the United States Radiator, hoping that an answer if answer 
 is vouchsafed will for once in the way be given with some 
 of that regard to the decencies of language which we are 
 proud to say has ever characterized the columns of this jour 
 nal. And our question is this: "Did the Editor of the 
 Radiator, in his recent passage of senile declamation, evince a
 
 520 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 greater contempt of God than fear of man, or a greater fear 
 of man than contempt of God? " 
 
 " Or, you can begin with Sir Thomas Browne, or Lord 
 Bacon, or Jeremy Taylor, or Montaigne. Something in this 
 style: 'What a vivid idea of the atrocious cruelty that char 
 acterized the Spanish conquest of America do we get when 
 we find that Montaigne, who lived and wrote so short a time 
 after the great discovery in 1492, is compelled to apologize 
 for not giving the names of certain nations, whose laws and 
 customs he has occasion to mention. And his excuse is, 
 that the desolation of that conquest had extended to the 
 utter abolition of names. Only the fraction of a century, and 
 the pall of oblivion is drawn by the cruel hands of greed and 
 bigotry over the very places where they existed. Luckily, 
 some memory of their laws and customs remained in the 
 time of the great essayist, and he has happily recorded them 
 for us. Among others, he especially mentions one a curious 
 religious ceremony the offering to their gods of human 
 blood, but blood drawn only from the ears and tongue in 
 expiation of the sin of lying. What a curious, but what a 
 lucky thing for some of us, but especially for our friend and 
 neighbor, the Editor of the New York Comet, that we live in 
 a country where no such sacrifice is required. In his case, 
 crapulous tongue however crass, and pendulous ears however 
 long, would hardly contain blood enough to expiate the sins 
 of a single issue, or to appease the manes of whole hosts of 
 murdered truths who stalk in indignant and ghastly ghostli- 
 ness through his columns. We are afraid that it would be 
 found necessary to tap that rubicund proboscis, and let out 
 some of that blood which, as it is the product of libations, or 
 potations rather, of old rye and Bourbon, in common fairness, 
 perhaps, ought to be devoted only to the altars of Bacchus.' 
 
 " Now that," continued Mr. Whoppers, "is the true way to 
 do it. Thief, liar, and rascal, is decidedly vulgar and of no 
 force. We don't really reach our adversary with such shot. 
 I had been called all those epithets by the Hurly-Burly 
 over and over again. I didn't mind it ; I just conformed to
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 521 
 
 the amenities of journalism, and dug away at him in the 
 circumlocutory style ; sticking a pun into him now and then, 
 and whipping him up, whenever he slopped over, with a Latin 
 quotation or two. At last he struck a little harder. He 
 called me, what do you suppose? A paranomastical pre 
 tender ; said that I had never made a decent pun ; and that 
 just after we had been dining together, and I had let off 
 half-a-dozen of my very best. He said that I had entirely 
 mistaken the aphorism about punning and pocket-picking, and 
 that I must not suppose that, because I had frequently been 
 caught at the one, I had any talent for the other. It was 
 cutting pretty close, but you won't suppose that, for such a 
 cause, I made an infernal fool of myself, and resorted to per 
 sonal violence. No, it was something more aggravating than 
 that. It was just the one single thing that no editor can stand. 
 He said that my circulation had fallen off that it never had 
 amounted to much ; in fact, that if I had my deserts, I ought 
 to be indicted for swindling my poor, deluded advertisers, and 
 obtaining their money under false pretences. That was right 
 on the raw. I not only winced, but fairly kicked over the 
 traces, and down I rushed, and pitched into him. But 
 enough of that subject. I don't like to think of it, still less to 
 talk about it ; so we will go back to the question of arms. I 
 agree with you, Captain, that it will be best for us to go 
 unarmed, and that four of us ought to be able to manage any 
 three desperadoes in town." 
 
 It required but little further discussion to settle their plan 
 of operations so far as any plan could be settled beforehand. 
 Only one thing could be decidedly determined at the time, and 
 that was, Mr. Boggs was to secure the vacant house at an 
 early hour in the morning, and that at night they were to com 
 mence operations and be governed by circumstances. 
 
 " Let us hope for darkness," exclaimed Mr. Whoppers, as 
 the party broke up at a late hour. " Not that our deeds are 
 evil. ' Merker the night the better tyde for love,' says old 
 Rowley ; but I say, ' merker the night the better tyde for loafing 
 round chimney-pots and peering into dormer windows. ' '
 
 522 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 Boggs hires a House Uncle Shippen's Lecture The Nature and Origin 
 
 of Evil. 
 
 IT is a curious fact that if we go to sleep with the mind fully 
 charged with the idea that some necessity exists for our 
 waking at an hour earlier than our usual habit, the mind 
 seldom forgets to call itself at the right time. When we trust 
 to an alarm-clock, or to the services of a domestic or night- 
 watchman, it is true we are, if through accident or neglect 
 undisturbed, apt to oversleep ourselves. But that is because 
 we have not entered in a legible hand on the innermost leaves 
 of memory the hour at which we wish to be awakened, and 
 have trusted to outward forces rather than to the unconscious 
 cerebration which goes on perhaps more actively in a sleeping 
 than in a waking state. 
 
 Mr. Boggs seldom had occasion to be called at an early 
 hour, but his internal monitor was alert and punctual. He 
 was up, dressed, and out by nine o'clock. For a society-man, 
 and one, too, who fully coincided in opinion with Uncle 
 Shippen on the subject of sleep, nine may be considered 
 wonderfully early. In fact too early, if it is, as Uncle Shippen 
 maintains, the absolute duty of every man who can to sleep 
 up to his constitution. That is, he ought to stop sleeping 
 only just long enough to allow his assimilative and absorbent 
 functions fair play. " For don't you see," says Uncle Shippen, 
 " life is justly defined to be nothing more or less than an 
 effort of force to reveal itself in consciousness. Now this 
 effort is a wearing and a tearing one, and life is short in 
 consequence. But in sleep this effort is partially or wholly
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 523 
 
 suspended ; there is no consciousness then, and the conse 
 quence is that the more you sleep the longer you live. 1 ' 
 
 It was not always safe to say when Uncle Shippen was 
 joking, and when in earnest, but Mr. Boggs had accepted 
 his aphorism, that it was proper for a man to sleep up to his 
 constitution, and was always astonished, and somewhat 
 chagrined, and more than half determined to try a little hy 
 drate of chloral, when he was up and out before twelve. 
 
 Mr. Mealy was luckily at home, and negotiation for the 
 vacant house was unusually short. Mr. Boggs' reference to 
 the portly sexton of Grace Church was satisfactory, especially 
 as the rent was to be paid monthly in advance. There was 
 only a little delay of fifteen minutes, and that was required 
 for Mr. Mealy's protestations, made over and over again, that 
 he would not for the world let the house for any improper 
 purposes, or to any improper characters ; that he never did 
 let his houses to any but the most respectable persons. In a 
 few cases he may have been deceived. He could not always 
 help being deceived ; no one could. In fact, there were two 
 or three wealthy house-owners in his own church who had been 
 deceived, but as long as a house was let with pure intentions, 
 the inmates, however abandoned, might perhaps be made the 
 subject of prayer, but could not very well be turned out. He 
 had heard of some wicked people who evaded the statute by 
 selling a house to an improper female, and then taking back a 
 mortgage for the purchase-money. There is no law against 
 collecting interest on a mortgage from whatever source. But 
 that is a subterfuge, an evasion of the law. No right-minded 
 and pious person could be guilty of it. He, at least, could 
 not, and therefore he never let any of his houses except to 
 respectable persons. And he was satisfied that in this case 
 he was getting a respectable tenant. The mere mention of 
 Mr. Brown's name was sufficient. He knew Brown ; he had 
 bought horse-feed from him, and Mr. Brown had buried his 
 brother-in-law's first cousin in highly-respectable style. Had 
 never seen the ashes-to -ashes and dust-to-dust part of the per 
 formance done more splendidly ; and the coffin beg pardon
 
 524 
 
 .V/.T/.Yv' AGAIN. 
 
 those old-fashioned words will slip out sometimes the casket 
 was of such beautifully polished rose wood, and the handles, 
 hinges, screw-heads, and all of the finest Gorham plate. Mr. 
 Boggs couldn't have given a better reference. Everybody 
 knows that Mr. Brown has to do only with our \erybest and 
 most fashionable people. Not that he should refer to him, 
 because he was perfectly satisfied that he was letting his 
 house to a gentleman of high character and correct morals. 
 It was thought by many of his friends that he ought, perhaps, 
 to make some inquiry into the religious sentiments of his 
 tenants. But he did not go so far as that. This is a free 
 country, and liberty of conscience is guaranteed by the Con 
 stitution. And, in fact, he had always been something of 
 a liberal. He had always contented himself with high 
 morality, and strict punctuality, in his tenants, and he didn't 
 mind if some of them did go to the little church round the 
 corner ha ! ha ! 
 
 This last piece of facetiousness was too much for Mr. Boggs. 
 He seized the keys and started for the door. 
 
 " Hold on for a moment, and I will go with you, and put 
 you in possession." 
 
 " Not at all necessary. I can unlock the doors myself. I 
 won't trouble you." 
 
 " Prefer to move your family in without observation ? All 
 nice and quiet, eh ! Well, I hope your wife will be pleased 
 with the house. His wife indeed," continued Mr. Mealy, 
 turning to his clerk. " He thinks I don't know him, but I do. 
 He's a fashionable man, and as big a sinner as there is in 
 town." 
 
 The house proved to be dilapidated, dirty, and generally 
 disgusting. Mr. Boggs made a thorough survey, from the cellar 
 to the garret. From the lower apartment he was glad to 
 retreat on the double quick, driven out by the fierce stench of 
 piles of decaying kitchen refuse. A sickening perfume an 
 indescribable odor of something which addressed itself, per 
 haps, as much to the imagination as the senses pervaded 
 the upper rooms. The gaudy wall-paper of the parlors hung
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 525 
 
 here and there in strips. It bore the marks of dirt) 7 hands, 
 and the scratches of roughly-handled tables and sofas, and the 
 indentations of tilted up chairs. It was stained with cigar 
 smoke and spattered and spotted with Champagne ; and all 
 around, about the height of a man when in a sitting posture, 
 it had been smooched by dirty heads into a brown wainscoting 
 of grease. A wide dark stain marked the rickety flooring, 
 and at every step the boards squeaked and groaned, as if the 
 ghosts of half-a-dozen murdered men were gibbering out their 
 useless cries for vengeance. 
 
 Mr. Boggs paused and looked around. He was no senti 
 mentalist, no idealist, no philanthropist, no enthusiast ; he 
 was, and prided himself on being, a man of the world; a man 
 who looked at the facts of real life in the face. A man who 
 knew that the world had, been growing better very, very slowly, 
 and, while admitting something of progress, had no confidence 
 in the crude whimsies of rampant reform. Yet when Mr. 
 Boggs stood in the middle of that room, and the visions of 
 countless orgies rose up before him orgies characterized by 
 no refinement, no elegance, no taste, but coarse and vulgar and 
 obscene orgies of pure sensuality and sin, at which hundreds 
 of men, some of respectability and promise, had assisted ; and 
 when he thought of the poor helpless victims, not of man's 
 faithlessness and treachery, as the case is usually put, but the 
 victims of society's inhumanity and unsympathetic reckless 
 ness ; the victims of feminine frivolity and vanity and prodi 
 gality ; the victims of the circumstances and surroundings into 
 which they were born when Mr. Boggs thought of this, and 
 of the vast net- work of social evil with all its consequences, 
 physical and moral, immediate and remote, patent to all or 
 the secret of the moralist and pathologist, he felt a little some 
 thing of that intense contempt for existing institutions, that 
 fierce burning desire to tear up the whole social system by the 
 roots, and replace it by anything provided with the great merit 
 of being something utterly different, and entirely new, which 
 characterizes the radical reformer of the day. He could not 
 help it.
 
 526 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " And yet," sighed Mr. Boggs, " what is the use ? Why 
 disturb one's mind with ugly thoughts to no purpose ? This 
 world is probably the best possible world that could be under 
 the circumstances. As Uncle Shippen says, considering that 
 it is an inferior member of probably a very inferior solar sys 
 tem, it is a very good world." Mr. Boggs took a few turns 
 up and down the room. He recurred to a recent conversa 
 tion with Uncle Shippen, or rather to several conversations, 
 for Uncle Shippen was fond of getting upon such subjects. 
 He had his speculative hobbies, gaunt, shaggy, ill-fed fellows, 
 not to be compared with the sleek, smooth roadsters of the great 
 thinkers of the day, but, nevertheless, once mounted it was im 
 possible to dismount him, and difficult to make him draw rein. 
 " Pain, sir, and sin, are the essential demerits of progress. With 
 out what we call evil this world would be, if it could be at all, a 
 miserable world. Beg pardon for the seeming paradox, but 
 it is wholly owing to the imperfection of language. You see 
 we are placed ! ere like a railroad train on a set of rails. We 
 can't stand still forever we must move ; we do move, but 
 about every five minutes we run off the rails, and what is the 
 consequence? Why a smash, and that smash is what we call 
 evil the penalty for not sticking to the rails. We improve 
 the road-bed a little and start again. Smash, smash, smash. 
 It won't do ; we must lengthen our curves, ballast again 
 here and there, widen our flanges, couple up shorter, and oil 
 our axles. It goes better, but it won't do ; there is a screw 
 loose somewhere, and there is consequently ajar, shake, noise, 
 and now and then a smash. Find out where it is, screw it up, 
 and whiz ! we should go up and down the grades of a life of 
 perfect happiness without a jolt. 
 
 " Inevitable and unavoidable evils, you say ? Bah ! sir ; 
 there is no such thing. All alike the result of ignorance, but 
 much more of carelessness and contempt of the simplest laws. 
 Mental, moral, and physical evil ! All man's work, sir, directly, 
 or existing only by man's sufferance. Talk of disease and 
 pain and premature death ! Who's to blame, eh ? Say that 
 God sends them ! Why it's flat blasphemy. Take disease.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 527 
 
 Nine-tenths of disease come from idio or koino private or pub 
 lic miasma. Now the disease that comes from your private 
 miasma your typhus and ship-fevers, as well as your scarlet 
 fever and small-pox, and a whole host of similar diseases, are 
 made and disseminated by society with the most industrious 
 care. It creates or it catches its miasma, or its nice little 
 germ of contagion, and prepares its hot-bed, and nurses it, and 
 cultivates it as if it was some lovely flower. And as for koiiio 
 miasma what we call malaria, man is wholly to blame there, 
 too. Man makes it, or tolerates and encourages it, or refuses 
 the commonest precautions against its influence. The laws 
 of malaria are well known, and Mr. Planly has an invention 
 for taking advantage of them in the worst cases, as in Italy 
 for instance, and cultivating the malaria out of existence. But 
 he's too soon, as I told him, by about a thousand years. Fe 
 vers and epidemics of all kinds have luckily not yet finished 
 their proper work, which is to keep down and thin out the 
 human race until the reproduction of mankind is reduced to 
 scientific rule and method. Why, do you know, sir, they say 
 that every mouthful of air we draw contains not only the 
 germs of from fifteen to twenty different forms of cryptoga- 
 mous vegetation, but also a certain number of starch grains, 
 and that not only in the air we actually breathe, but in the air 
 we might breathe standing up on the top of the Peak of Ten- 
 eriffe or Chimborazo. Now did God put these starch grains 
 there directly, or did man ? And if man, how long a time has 
 it taken him to do it, and how much flour has he made to 
 enable him to do it ? Don't you see the question of the an 
 tiquity of man comes up strong ? but that isn't the point. A 
 third and more pertinent question is, If man put those starch 
 grains there, why can't he take 'em out ? Do you suppose 
 that, a thousand years hence, when for want of soil and pabu 
 lum most of our diseases have died out of existence, and when 
 men will no more think of breathing or drinking unfiltered or 
 unpurified air or water than they will of breeding consumptive 
 or scrofulous children, the generations then existing will 
 look back upon the manners and customs of our day with any
 
 528 WE VER A GA IN. 
 
 less contempt than we now feel for the manners and customs 
 of our ancestors before their tails were worn off, when mar 
 riage was unknown, and cannibalism was common?" 
 
 In this way Uncle Shippen would ramble en whenever he 
 got a chance, and there was no one whom he liked to lecture 
 better than Mr. Boggs, who had, as we have said, a philo 
 sophic streak in his composition, which, combined with a 
 lazy streak, made him an excellent subject. 
 
 Mr. Boggs stopped short in his work, and shook his head. 
 " I am afraid it won't do, Uncle Shippen," he exclaimed 
 aloud. " The idea that progress is necessarily so very slow, 
 and so much the result of a very gradual development under 
 the guidance of inexorable general law, and that misery and 
 sin are such essential conditions and concomitants that it 
 isn't worth while for a philosopher to trouble himself much 
 about the matter", is very nice for a lazy man like myself, but 
 I am afraid the doctrine isn't quite true. I don't exactly 
 believe it ; I wish I could, but I can't. And yet, with a 
 sense of duty weighing upon me, I sit still and do nothing, 
 while Uncle Shippen, with his maxim ever on his lips, ' Let 
 the world wag,' is the most industrious philanthropist in the 
 city. Well, it only shows that habits and emotions are 
 unfortunately stronger guides of conduct than principles. So 
 now let us see what there is up-stairs." 
 
 Mr. Boggs found nothing but vacant rooms. He mounted 
 to the attic, tried the windows, found them unfastened, and 
 ascertained that they could be thrown open without noise. 
 He examined the roof and made sure that its slant was of 
 that easy angle that clambering along it would not be at all 
 difficult. 
 
 Having made all the investigations necessary, he descen 
 ded rapidly to the street, glad to get once more into the free 
 and comparatively pure air. 
 
 It was a blustering, cloudy, lowering morning. There 
 was something triste in the air, but, in comparison with the 
 heavy atmosphere and doleful melancholic suggestiveness of 
 everything within, the street seemed joyful, and the weather 
 bright and delightful.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 5? g 
 
 Mr. Boggs hurried around into Bleecker Street to keep 
 his appointment with Luther and the Captain, and to make 
 his report. He found them in company with Mr. Whoppers, 
 who had not yet gone down to his office ; all were impatiently 
 awaiting his arrival. A few words sufficed to put them in 
 possession of the facts, and not a little discussion followed, 
 but it was evident that nothing more could be done until 
 night. 
 
 Luther felt a strong disposition to spend the rest of the 
 day in a close reconnoissance of the enemies' quarters, but 
 the danger of recognition was too great. He must do some 
 thing, however ; he could not sit still ; he could not read or 
 write ; he refused the Captain's invitation to visit the Spoon- 
 drift ; he would take a long walk by himself; and his walk, 
 in order that it might be of sufficient length, led him more 
 than half-a-dozen times around Washington Square. He 
 knew that she was at West Point, but more than one senti 
 mental young gentleman has found a satisfaction in hanging 
 around the spot where she the she par excellence the one 
 bright particular she the only she in the whole world had 
 been, or was likely to be again. 
 
 Mr. Boggs, left to himself, thought at first that he would 
 go to his club, but upon second thoughts he would be sure to 
 meet that terrible fellow, Fred Tompkins, and if he didn't 
 meet him, there was nothing to do there. No billiards too 
 early ; and if not, billiards in the morning are disreputable 
 and bad tone. As to euchre, that would be still worse, if it 
 were possible, which it is not, to get up a hand until just 
 before dinner. True, there was the amusement of staring 
 nut of the windows at the ladies on the avenue. That can be 
 done at almost any hour, but a fellow with any brains gets 
 awfully tired of that. And Boggs had brains. A bright 
 idea ! He would, yes, he would go around to his rooms, 
 arrange his toilet, get himself up in his normal style, and go 
 and see if Mrs. Stichen was still in town. 
 
 Mr. Boggs really fancied that this was a sudden inspira 
 tion, whereas there had been a little devil whispering over 
 34
 
 53 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 his shoulder for the last three or four days urging him to go 
 to Mrs. Stichen's, and partly because the little devil had so 
 urged him he would not go. And yet the thought seemed 
 now new and spontaneous, so completely doe's the sudden 
 snap of volition, the sudden giving way of the will in some 
 cases, obscure the previous intellectual processes and mystify 
 the conscience. He had not seen her in some time almost a 
 week. In fact it was a much longer time than that since he 
 had paid her a morning visit. He knew the censoriousness 
 of society, and he knew that there was more danger in one 
 pull at a lady's door-bell in the morning, under the inevitable 
 eye of some passing male gossip, or of some antiquated but 
 active member of the scandal-mongering sisterhood, and at a 
 time when the husband is presumably down town, than there 
 is in a dozen evening visits. Any number of whirls in the 
 German, my dear fellow, any amount of chat, with Champagne 
 and chicken-salad attentions at matinees and receptions ; but 
 if you have any regard for Mrs. Sophronisbie's reputation, 
 beware of often-repeated morning calls.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Mrs. Stichen's Boudoir A Morning Call Just touch-and-go Society 
 here and abroad. 
 
 OF a very peculiar style of finish and furnish is the second 
 floor front of the Stichen house. Nothing like it on 
 the avenue. Many people don't admire it. Boggs did, and 
 well he might ; he had assisted Mrs. Stichen in getting it up. 
 Stichen did not admire it, but then, with a generosity and 
 self-abnegation worthy of a distinguished financier, worthy of 
 a man whose soul is absorbed in the great things of the Street, 
 he said, "As you please, my dear. I've no taste, you know. 
 It is your room. Don't spare expense. Make it as elegant 
 and unique, I believe that was the word you used, Mr. Boggs, 
 as unique as you please, but down-stairs I must have a little 
 of the ordinary and the commonplace. Lots of gilding, var 
 nish, real lace and brocade for the windows, and above all 
 things the biggest kind of pier and mantel glasses. And I 
 want plenty of that fresco stuff overhead, and a regular up and 
 down imperial flower-garden on the floor. Some pictures? 
 Well, yes, I believe that is respectable. Some jimcrackery, of 
 course. Everybody has it. And I don't mind if you get a 
 great big ebony centre-table, inlaid with ivory Milan work. 
 Winnergelt has got one in his house, and he says it stands the 
 furnace better than that French brass work. But as to this 
 up-stairs sitting-room, or parlor, or boudoir, or whatever you 
 are going to call it, do as you please. Make it as Moorish or 
 as Turkeyfied as you like. 
 
 And so it came about that Mrs. Stichen and Mr. Boggs 
 had had their own way. The doors and windows had all
 
 532 NEVER AGAI\ T . 
 
 been remodelled, and finished in horse-shoe arches, and sup 
 ported on slender double columns, and all carved in divers 
 specks and spots, and doited all over with little symmetrical 
 dashes of yellow, blue, and red paint : the whole producing 
 that kind of general harmony of color that we often see in a 
 Chinese plate, but which is sometimes wanting in the more ele 
 gant and correct designs of Christian art. The ceiling was 
 panelled in wood and similarly treated. A wide archway with 
 sliding doors opened into the small room over the hall, mak 
 ing it in fact part of the larger saloon. This small room was 
 completely surrounded with book-cases, treated in the Moor 
 ish style. One peculiarity consisted in their being raised 
 about five feet from the floor, on slender carved columns, al 
 lowing space below for a continuous divan and cushions. This 
 arrangement had the advantage of saving space, although it did 
 not allow a large number of books, only three or four rows ; 
 but if Mrs. Stichen's private library was small, it was exceed 
 ingly choice and select. 
 
 Around the walls of the larger room, at a height, ran a 
 broad rail, or rather panel, formed of pallisandre, bois de rose, 
 and that most beautiful of all woods, the galls of the ash. 
 From this rail or panel depended in folds to the floor a hang 
 ing of the richest Cashmere shawls. Above this panelling, or 
 rather making part of it, a dozen or more plates, of exquisite 
 Sevres, were imbedded in the carved wood. This idea Mr. 
 Boggs admitted he had stolen from that most lovely of all 
 rooms, the royal bedroom in the Moncalieri, outside Turin. 
 Above this again the wall was panelled with silken hangings, 
 made only in Milan, in which the beautiful arabesques, begin 
 ning with a deep rose-color, ran by an invisible gradation into a 
 pale apple-green at the cornice, which was but little more than 
 a slender beading of gold, connecting the silken walls and 
 carved ceiling. The lambrequins of the window corresponded 
 in texture and color, coming low down upon voluminous cur 
 tains of the richest thread lace. A chimney-piece of carved ash 
 and maple was enlivened with a row of arabesques in Floren 
 tine mosaic. A rich, deep-toned Turkey carpet suggested the
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 533 
 
 height or rather depth of quiet and repose, as well in its tex 
 ture as in its color. From the ceiling depended a chandelier 
 in Bohemian glass, the branches separating into clusters of 
 cacti and fuchsias. A small malachite table here, and another 
 of mosaic there ; and still another of carved wood covered 
 with a Persian scarf, and supporting a few articles of virtu, 
 mostly in ivory or mother-of-pearl, or Dresden porcelain, 
 assisted in lighting up the room. But the brightest thing in it 
 \vas a jardiniere in Sevres work filled with natural flowers. 
 
 We say the brightest thing in it, but that is a mistake. 
 The brightest thing in it was Mrs. Stichen herself. Habited 
 in a delicately embroidered cambric robe, enlivened here and 
 there with a slight insertion of Valenciennes, her yellow hair 
 en coiffure de matin in English, artistically dishevelled and 
 falling around her brow and cheeks and neck in an indescrib 
 able labyrinth of lustrous frizettes and demi-ringlets a book 
 in her hand, and reclining in molluscous languor upon a mother- 
 of-pearl reading-lounge, she seemed the centre and point from 
 which emanated all the light in the room. It is doubtful if 
 the Art Committee of the Century Club could have arranged 
 the thing in more artistic style. And yet Mrs. Stichen had 
 no affectations, no conscious strainings after effect, no small 
 vanities, and no especial liking for the common patent admira 
 tion-traps of society-women. She was really simple-minded, 
 honest-hearted, and clear-headed, but she ha^ been endowed 
 at her birth with a keen sense of the beautiful, with a taste for 
 the elegant, with, it must be confessed, a liking and a longing 
 for the gorgeous ; with, in fact, a grand talent, needing but the 
 slightest cultivation, for the highest sphere of luxurious refine 
 ment. In other words, she was born with the soul of an artist. 
 Like Venus Anadyomene, the earlier circumstances of her 
 life were against her. For years she lay buried beneath a sea 
 of shirting, muslin, and Irish linen, but when she rose, she had 
 the faculty of shaking off the foam of frills and plaits, of gus 
 sets and hems, and stepping right on to her proper pedestal 
 in the inner courts of the temple of Fashion, where none but 
 the initiated are permitted to kotou and rub their noses in 
 the dust, in humble adoration of the transcendent mystery.
 
 534 NE VER A GA IN - 
 
 A little negro boy, of the blackest type, and habited in a 
 tasselled fez and embroidered caftan, trimmed with rows of 
 tiny gold bells, and in baggy Moorish trowsers of the finest 
 white flannel, fastened at the knee with large buckles of gar 
 net and topaz uniting them to red stockings, and with green 
 slippers, embroidered with pearls, held open the door for Mr. 
 Boggs, who cast an admiring glance at the imp. " It is as 
 good as a play," he muttered ; " better than an ordinary play ; 
 it is as good as the Black Crook ; it is as good as the circus." 
 
 Mr. Boggs paused at the threshold for an instant. A fine 
 invisible something seemed to check him, and hold him spell 
 bound. Was it the sudden peeping out of some little lurking 
 villain of a sentiment which had been lying perdue all this 
 while ? No, it was of course nothing but the peculiar light in 
 which the lustrous hair, the snowy dress, the graceful attitude 
 happened to be exhibited. Still Mr. Boggs did not feel quite 
 so much at his ease as usual. The conviction that the old 
 relation of master and pupil might be slipping away, and that 
 he might yet be found taking as .well as giving lessons in a 
 science deeper than any social or society science, deep as the 
 science of humanity itself, had hardly time to formulate itself 
 in words ; but a swift flash of vague fear darted through him 
 a suspicion that perhaps after all he had not of late been 
 quite so platonic as he had supposed himself. "Confound it," 
 he muttered. "If this should be like all the rest of 'em." 
 The idea pricked his pride, slightly it is true, and still more 
 slightly his conscience. 
 
 He was not however a man to allow any slight prickings 
 of conscience to disturb the easy equanimity of his manners. 
 He advanced into the room. " Don't rise, my dear Mrs. 
 Stichen," he exclaimed. " I should be sorry to disturb an 
 attitude of such perfect grace." 
 
 Mrs. Stichen colored slightly, said nothing, but held out 
 her hand. Perhaps Mr. Boggs pressed it a little more 
 warmly than usual. At any rate the lady colored still more 
 deeply and drew her hand rapidly away. 
 
 " We have not seen you for almost a week,' 1 she said.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 535 
 
 " No. and I don't think you will see me again for some 
 time," replied Mr. Boggs, throwing himself into a Shaker 
 rocking-chair. 
 
 " Why so ? " demanded the lady. 
 
 " Because if you continue to get yourself up in such an 
 enchanting style I can't afford to visit you. It is running too 
 much risk." 
 
 The lady looked about uneasily for a moment, and her 
 countenance assumed a very sad expression. 
 
 Mr. Boggs leaned forward so as to lessen the distance 
 between them. "You look unhappy," he said. "Something 
 troubles you. Tell me what it is. You know that you can 
 not have a sincerer friend than I am. Don't you, my dear" 
 alas, he could not make himself pronounce the ugly words, 
 Mrs. Stichen, so he said, " my dear Lizzie ? " 
 
 It was the first time he had ever called her Lizzie, unless 
 in jest and before Stichen himself, and now it had such 
 a wonderfully thrilling sound. The simple word, Lizzie ! It 
 cut so swiftly and keenly into her heart that she did not feel 
 much pain, and that frightened her. 
 
 Her decision was made on the instant. A moment more 
 and she might lose her friend. She would not she could not 
 afford to lose her friend. If Goethe had whispered to her : 
 
 " Fast asleep is Amor lying 
 Do not touch him do not wake him," 
 
 she could not have been more resolute and more clear. 
 Suddenly she turned with vivacity to Mr. Boggs, and laid her 
 hand imploringly on his arm. 
 
 " Mr. Boggs, may I talk to you plainly about something ? " 
 "Certainly ! Is there any subject forbidden us ? " 
 "Yes," replied Mrs. Stichen emphatically, and sinking 
 back into her seat. " There are subjects forbidden for 
 bidden by every feeling of honor and honesty forbidden, 
 of all people in the world, to us." 
 
 Her voice began to assume the slight huskiness that 
 often betrays a deeper feeling than the speaker intends to
 
 536 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 show, and which invariably grows worse the more violent 
 the effort to prevent it. The only way is to stop and take 
 a different pitch. 
 
 Mrs. Stichen paused, and looked embarrassed. 
 
 " Go on," exclaimed Mr. Boggs in an encouraging tone. 
 
 "May I?" said the lady. "But why should I ask ? I 
 know I may j you are both too kind and too wise to mis 
 understand me. Well what I want to say is, that at our 
 first acquaintance you promised that you would never pay 
 me any of the usual idle compliments of society." 
 
 " But what if any compliments I now pay you, however 
 exaggerated or stilted in form, are not idle, or meaningless^ 
 or false ? " demanded Mr. Boggs. 
 
 " You promised more," continued Mrs. Stichen, un 
 heeding the interruption, " voluntarily promised, you will 
 recollect ; you promised to be an honest, straightforward 
 friend. You promised to advise me, direct me, reprove me ; 
 never to flatter me, never to pay me any attentions that 
 would excite remark ; never to permit anything between us 
 that looked like flirtation ; no idle gallantries on your part, 
 no sentimental demonstrations on mine. When you said, 
 jokingly it is true, but, as I knew, in dead earnest, that you 
 were not going to allow me to fall in love with you, I did not 
 feel it as an impertinence, as in the case of a single man to 
 a married woman it might well be. I took it thankfully as 
 a warning. I know my weakness, my ignorance ; and I felt 
 proud to have a friend who had the honesty and the courage 
 to say such a thing to me. You said openly and candidly 
 that my beauty and general atractions were well worthy of 
 any man's gallant attentions. And I saw no harm in that, 
 because I thought that you spoke the plain truth in a proper 
 way and on a proper occasion ; but you also said that one 
 consideration, if there were no other, would prevent you from 
 being the man. You said that my husband was your friend, 
 that you were under many obligations to him, and that, as a 
 man of honor and a gentleman, you were bound to never 
 think, say, or do anything unworthy of the confidence he
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 537 
 
 had placed in you. Oh, Mr. Boggs, you know perfectly well, 
 and it can do no harm to confess it, that my husband is net 
 my highest idea of a man, but he is a true man a man with 
 a big and pure heart a generous man, an honest man, and 
 a confiding man ; and I declare to you, Mr. Boggs, with my 
 whole soul, that sooner than give him one pang of jealousy, 
 one doubt of my entire rectitude as his wife, I would be 
 willing to walk out of this house, give up society, friends, 
 music, dress, everything ; and go back, and work by his side 
 again in the little old factory in Broome Street." 
 
 Mrs. Stichen had reached a climax, and as every one 
 knows this figure, when of the feminine order, has but one 
 natural close, she buried her face in her handkerchief 
 and burst into a passion of tears. 
 
 Mr. Boggs never moved a muscle. He sat quietly, 
 staring with all his eyes ; staring not only at her, but beyond 
 her, and around her, and by a curious introversion of vision, 
 at himself. He saw, as it were, by the flash of an electric 
 lamp, his own condition. He saw himself plunged, in one 
 swift moment, into the depths of a helpless, hopeless love. 
 
 Mr. Boggs had but little religion proper. He had been 
 born of a good old family, in a day when the term good old 
 families really meant something in the then select society of 
 New Y@rk. That is, before the irruption of outside bar 
 barians from the east and from the west from the valleys 
 of Rhine and the slopes of Taunus, on the one hand, and 
 the gulches of Nevada and placers of California on the 
 other from the great Centre of the Universe whence, to-day 
 as of yore, issues the miraculous mandate, " Let there be 
 light," together with all its outlying lands of New England, 
 on this side, and from the cities of the South on that before, 
 long before this invasion had so diluted the Knickerbocker 
 element, or had so completely cowed the veritable aristocracy 
 of the city, that its social assertiveness has almost fallen 
 into a pitiful plaint, with now and then a spasmodic but 
 useless denunciation of the growth of uncultured, ill-man 
 nered, noisy vulgarity.
 
 538 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 From one of these old families Mr. Boggs was descended. 
 Was not his grandmother the daughter of Livingstone, L. 
 Livingstone of Livingstone Livingstone Upper Manor, no, 
 Livingstone Lower Manor well, it makes no difference ; tht 
 Manor, any way. As for his father, didn't he come in with the 
 first English Governor, and hold all manner of offices, and 
 when he died didn't his son succeed him, and when this son 
 died, was there not the biggest funeral ever known ? Don't 
 the chronicles of New York gives us all the details and the 
 cost ? A thousand pounds sterling if a penny, and the revels 
 lasted three whole days after the defunct was in his tomb, to 
 which he had been escorted by the highest burghers of the 
 high Order of Noble Burghers founded by the great Petrus 
 with Lovelace, the English Governor, and Balthasar, the son 
 of Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Governor, heading the 
 crowd. And let him that doubts that more good old wine 
 was expended upon that occasion than ever fell in libation to 
 the manes of an Augustus Caesar, let him search the chronicles 
 or ask' Bancroft, or Dr. O'Callagan, or Broadhead, or George 
 ]\Ir.ore. \Ye wash our hands of such skepticism, and hasten 
 back to our text. 
 
 Boggs had little or no religion, but coming of such a family 
 he had been baptized and confirmed, of course. He couldn't 
 help that, but he had never made a profession, or experienced 
 a change. He was not much stronger in morals; true he had 
 looked into the theories. He had just received a shock from 
 reading Lecky's prefatory chapter. He was a thorough 
 derivatist, but in practice he \\?s> not strong; he did not pre 
 tend to be a strictly moral man. He did not plume himself 
 upon principle. 
 
 Certainly it is a very creditable thing when a man of that 
 kind resists temptation, sends the devil off with a flea in his 
 ear, and resolutely sets himself about doing the right thing. 
 It speaks well also for the society which produces him. It 
 makes one think that perhaps fashionable people are almost 
 as good as unfashionable people, and that society par excellence 
 is not a mere gathering of all that is frivolous, worthless, and
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 539 
 
 vile. It makes one almost question the authority of the knowing 
 country parson, the learned college professor, or the gentle 
 provincial moralist in general, as to the irredeemable demor 
 alization that pervades the upper ranks of city life. 
 
 The correlation of vulgarity and virtue is a doctrine 
 which has been extensively taught by very good authority 
 the novel of society; but its truth may well be doubted. Closer 
 and more extended observation, a more copious induction of 
 fashionable facts, will lead to the conclusion that all the bad 
 ness is not confined to the extreme upper sets of the upper-ten- 
 thousand, and that when Mrs. Smith denounces her whilom 
 humble, but now fashionable friend, Mrs. Brown, as " such a 
 a dreadfully worldly woman," she herself is not any more 
 surely and directly in the road to Heaven, albeit she never had 
 cards for the three or four balls of the season, and still less 
 ever had an invitation to show at the elegant and elevated 
 "gabble-gobbles," as Mr. Whoppers calls them, of the Fair- 
 fields, the Arelins, and others of the Square, or the Starlings, 
 the Montabellos, the De Belleverts, et id omne genus of the 
 Avenue, or ever had an opportunity of gratifying a taste for 
 the delicate baroque and rococo at any of Malleusly's orig 
 inal and recherche entertainments. 
 
 As Mrs. Stichen ceased to sob, Mr. Boggs leaned forward 
 and gently pulled away the handkerchief, and looked down 
 into those glistening eyes with an open, earnest glance. He 
 took her little plump hand, and squeezed it, no longer in a 
 fondling way, but rather roughly, and gave it a good honest 
 shake. 
 
 " You're right, my dear Mrs. Stichen ; quite right. You 
 make me proud of my pupil ; have no fear of my misunder 
 standing what you have said ; you did well to speak in time. 
 Things of this kind grow so fast, it is well to root them up 
 early. Pull idle weeds in the morning, and they'll wither 
 before night. Chuck them at once on Lethe's tide, and you'll 
 never be bothered with the seed. That's a nice figure isn't 
 it ? ha ! ha ! " 
 
 Mr. Boggs laughed, and resolutely buttoned the folds of
 
 54 
 
 NEVER AGA/.Y. 
 
 his heart over a " varmint" that threatened to gnaw into his 
 vitals as deeply as did the stolen fox of the famous Spartan 
 boy. 
 
 No use in pausing ; but get back at once to the jaunty 
 style, and plunge at once into the gossipy or the didactic, no 
 matter how commonplace or stupid. "How is Stichen-?" he 
 suddenly demanded. " He has quite recovered? " 
 
 " Oh yes, strong as ever. It was just a little vertigo. He 
 never entirely lost consciousness, you know. He says it was 
 nothing but those sweet things at Delmonico's that disagreed 
 with him, but I think it was the excitement of business. And 
 that makes me a little afraid, now, for you know they say 
 there is a terrible time in the Street." 
 
 The determined, easy tone of this question and answer 
 banished all trace of emotion. It was just touch-and-go, but 
 the danger was past. No use of another word. The dark, 
 lurid mists of passion had lifted, and disclosed nothing but 
 the. cool glitter of a landscape lighted only by the full pure 
 moon of friendship. Ah, false Sir Launcelot and faithless 
 Guinevere why could you not have behaved as nicely ? " 
 
 "A terrible time, indeed," responded Mr. Boggs, "but 
 you need not be frightened about Stichen. His mind is easy. 
 He must be raking it in now like a hay-maker in June, and it 
 never hurts any man's health to make money. That last little 
 thing he let me into netted me a clean five thousand. I assure 
 you I never felt less like dyspepsia in my life. Ah, money is 
 a most excellent tonic, and making it the best exercise. I 
 suppose that if we rightly estimate mundane matters it is the 
 greatest, if not the highest, pleasure in life." 
 
 " You don't believe a word you say." 
 
 " You think so ? " 
 
 " I do, and for several reasons," replied Mrs. Stichen. 
 "In the first place I have heard you express yourself very dif 
 ferently, and in the next place, not believing much in money 
 myself, I can't think that a man of your sense should believe 
 in it either. It is true you have never had so wide an experi 
 ence as I have. I have known the utter want of money, and 
 now I know what it is to have too much."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 541 
 
 " Too much, my dear Mrs. Stichen ? That's impossible." 
 
 " Indeed it is not. Do you know, Mr. Boggs, I am getting 
 very tired of all this thing? Shall I confess to you, what I 
 hardly dare confess to myself, that I am not satisfied with all 
 this luxury ? I thought it would be such a fine thing, and I 
 knew it would come some day, and so I studied for it, and 
 tried to prepare myself for it. I endured my mean boarding- 
 house life without a murmur, because I knew and felt nothing 
 of the present. I lived only in the future. I confided in my 
 dreams. I knew that the elegant, the refined, the gorgeous, 
 and the glorious would some day be mine. Why, do you know, 
 I worked at my music, not half so much for the pleasure it 
 then gave me as music, but for the delight I should take in it 
 when I should hear my voice ringing through gilded saloons 
 and marble halls, and listen to the gentle ' bravas' and to the 
 muffled clappings of kid gloves. And now it has all, and 
 more than all, come true ; and I have nothing left in the way 
 of luxury and dress and show to wish for, and I am a poor 
 miserable woman." 
 
 Mrs. Stichen uttered these last words in such a sincerely 
 mournful tone that any man would have felt justified in express 
 ing his sympathy in words, but Mr. Boggs merely looked the 
 feeling he felt no fellow can control the expression of his. 
 eyes, you know and said nothing. 
 
 " My husband," continued Mrs. Stichen, " says to me 
 you know that he has plenty of sense, if he is a little coarse 
 he says, ' Lizzie, you have tried society now, and it don't 
 pay. Why don't you dive into philanthropy ? Get yourself 
 in as Directoress, or Governoress, or Presidentess, or some 
 thing or other, and draw on me for the expenses ? ' Well, I 
 do draw on him for the expenses pretty roundly. I give and 
 give, but it don't seem to do any good, at least to me, and as 
 for anything more, why in some cases I don't like the manage 
 ment, in others I doubt the utility, but worse than all, I have 
 none of the right habits and no tastes or inclinations that 
 way." 
 
 " But society, my dear Mrs. Stichen."
 
 542 NE VER A GA IN. 
 
 " Pshaw, Mr. Boggs, you know society better than I do, 
 and I really believe you like it less. You know what a hum 
 bug it is " 
 
 " A comparative humbug not exactly a humbug perse 
 not a positive humbug," interrupted Mr. Bo2jgs. 
 
 " You mean as compared with society abroad," said Mrs. 
 Stichen. 
 
 " Not at all. I don't think that ours is a humbug as com 
 pared with society abroad. Our society dresses almost as 
 well, and dances quite as well, as the French. It is not so 
 intellectual not so spirituelle partly because many of our 
 clever men have but little to do with it, and partly because 
 the French women have cultivated habits of conversation. 
 They have traditions of famous saloons." 
 
 " Ah, that French causerie that I have read so much of," 
 exclaimed Mrs. Stichen. " I should so like to hear something 
 of it. Do you believe, Mr. Boggs, that what Jules Janin says 
 is true, ' If there is any one knows more of the anecdotes 
 and ideas, the facts and the fancies, the passions and the feel 
 ings, the doings in literature and art and politics, that move 
 the world of to-day, than the Parisian, it is the Parisienne ? " 
 
 " I'll show you," replied Mr. Boggs, " the style of thing, as 
 .1 see you have a book here handy." 
 
 Mr. Boggs stepped up to the cases in the small room 
 and took down a bookj and running over the pages quickly 
 found the passage he sought. " Listen. We will pay a visit 
 to a French salon, and just have the goodness to imagine an 
 infinite degree of vivacity, grace, and wit, which the reporter 
 has not here indicated. 
 
 " Our women trust to nature in this," said Mr. Boggs as h e 
 finished reading a passage too long for us to give here. " They 
 think it enough to warble their wood-notes wild, and devilish 
 wild they are, too, sometimes. But it isn't the tone or pitch 
 that I mind, it's the want of compass. The gamut of our 
 society-women has only about five notes. Our church and its 
 parson, our children and servants, Mrs. Grundy's sayings and 
 doings, with the Opera, and perhaps the last novel, make
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 543 
 
 about the range, but within that I must say they trill, and run 
 and generally appogiaturize nicely." 
 
 " Ah, then you think that, as compared with the English 
 our society is a humbug? The Hon. Mr. Flipperkin told 
 me as much the other evening." 
 
 " Flipperkin is a donkey, and not the first one they have 
 sent us from the other side. He really believes that Amer 
 icans talk, think, and dream of nothing but the 'Britishers.' 
 And mentioning that word, I have asked fifty men at least 
 if they ever heard an American use the word ' Britisher,' 
 and I have never found one who had ever known a man 
 who had heard or seen the word, except in the English press. 
 I'll tell you what I happened to come across the other 
 day, which illustrates this point exactly. I accidentally 
 picked up a book of travels in America, by the Honorable 
 Mr. Something or other ; I forget his name. He had got a 
 notion of American prudery. He had probably heard the 
 story of the Yankee girl who, for decency's sake, put the 
 legs of her piano in pantalets, and had gobbled it down 
 and stowed it away in his innermost sanctum of profound 
 verities. He wanted to be funny, and at the same time 
 illustrate this striking American characteristic. Funny and 
 profound at the same time ! No travelling John Bull that 
 we have ever seen here could be expected to resist the 
 te mptation. He stops at the Astor House, and does as no 
 one but a ' Britisher' is supposed to do more than once in 
 six months he takes a bath and changes his shirt. Alas ! 
 there was a button loose on the unmentionable garment. He 
 had no needle and thread, so he steps out of his door 
 into the hall and encounters an American chambermaid, 
 and holding up the horrible thing in full view, asks her if 
 she can get the button fastened on to his shirt ! She, like a 
 true Yankee girl, throws up both hands in an agony of shame, 
 screams out ' Lawk, sir,' and turns and rushes down the corridor. 
 Now what can you make of a fellow like that ? He don't 
 seem to have the least idea that he is romancing, and yet 
 I'd like to make an even bet that there never has been a
 
 544 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Yankee chambermaid in the Astor House, and that if it had 
 been filled with them, nothing that he could have said, done, 
 or exhibited, would have made one of them scream ' Lawk, 
 sir.' Flipperkins is one of this kind. He reads the 
 Saturday Review, and he would sooner believe its assertion 
 of any facts, in relation to the manners and customs 01 
 American society, than his own eyes. He has been here a 
 a year, and has really gone about a good deal in sets that 
 Dickens from the first got himself absolutely shunted out of ; 
 and yet I'll venture to say that, in his "secret mind, he really 
 believes that there is not a gentleman or lady in the land 
 who don't ram knives down their throats in eating ; that 
 there is not a chair, ottoman, or sofa-cushion in the city un 
 marked by boot-heels, and not a square yard of Moquet, Im 
 perial, or Wilton unspotted with tobacco 'spittle. I like to 
 amuse myself sometimes with Flipperkins. I said to him 
 one day, when he was talking about the coarse customs of 
 Americans, ' Flipperkins, do you know, the only gentleman 
 that ever I saw stick a knife into his mouth in eating, was an 
 English earl; a famous man too. He "was my vis-a-vis at 
 table in Milan ; a big burly old fellow, pretty well crippled 
 with the gout. I saw him distinctly twice, if not three times, 
 mash his peas on his plate and load his knife with the mass.' 
 Flipperkins stood for two minutes with his mouth wide open, 
 but unable to say a word." 
 
 " Perhaps he thought you were telling a story, and was too 
 polite to say so," said Mrs. Stichen. 
 
 " Just so ; I don't suppose he believed a word of it, but he 
 was aghast thunderstruck that such a story could have been 
 invented. 'I don't suppose,' said I, in a patronizing tone, 
 ' that is the common custom among the English nobility, as it 
 is here, to mash peas on a plate and ram them down the throat 
 with a knife, is it ? ' I marched off and left him speechless. 
 Once upon a time," continued Mr. Boggs, " we had a visit from 
 a great English philosopher proverbially the greatest philoso 
 pher in England, and he brought along an amazing amount of 
 condescension for the uncouth habits and customs of the
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 545 
 
 transatlantic savage. So, one night, at a little gathering made 
 in his honor, he pulls a chair with its back towards him, hoists 
 his leg over it, and rests his foot on the seat, while he went 
 on with his animated conversation. We all understood it, and 
 enjoyed it mightily. It was not a piece of coarseness, or rude 
 ness no offence was intended ; on the contrary, it was a most 
 amiable conformity to the manners of the country. It was sim 
 ply saying, ' Ladies and gentlemen, I'm the lion of the evening, 
 it is true, but don't mind me ; cock your feet upon the chimney- 
 piece, and slap your legs around on the chairs. I'm a phi 
 losopher, and can accommodate myself to anything short of 
 cannibalism or tattooing.' I caught Flipperkins, and said, 
 What do you think of that ? He took a long stare through his 
 eye-glass and exclaimed: 'How very extraordinary; why, he 
 has not been more than three or four days in the country.' " 
 
 " Well, I'm glad I made Stichen give up tobacco-chewing 
 some time ago," said Mrs. Stichen. 
 
 " Of course, American gentlemen don't chew, with very 
 rare exceptions, and then they are generally from the South. 
 We all smoke smoke terribly." 
 
 " Yes," interrupted Mrs. Stichen, " you not only smoke 
 terribly, but horribly." 
 
 " And yet," replied Mr. Boggs, " the thing is not as bad 
 here as in other countries. We don't smoke as much as the 
 Germans ; we don't smoke as much as they do in Spain, where 
 I have seen, more than once, a whole family come out on to the 
 balcony half dressed, of an early morning, yawning and rub 
 bing their as yet unwashed eyes, and each and every one, father 
 and mother, brothers and sisters, down to a little feminine s'ix- 
 year-old, with cigarettes in their mouths. We don't smoke 
 more than the English; perhaps not so much ; but there is no 
 doubt we smoke too much. The tradition abroad, however, 
 is that we all chew. The idea of fine-cut or pig-tail appears 
 to be so intimately associated with the idea of an American in 
 the mind of an Englishman, that to separate them would be 
 simply to unjoin t the whole universe, and upset church and 
 state and creation generally." 
 35
 
 546 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 "But what can you say, Mr. Boggs, about the cars?' 
 demanded the lady, with a slight shudder, and an instinctive 
 grasping of her skirts. 
 
 "Oh, there you have touched the point exactly, and a soie 
 one it is," replied Mr. Boggs. "An Englishman finds himself 
 among a car-load of people, more than one-half of whom are 
 tinkers, and tailors, and mechanics of every degree ; country 
 shop-keepers or small farmers, and common laborers, and 
 mingled with these, loafers and gamblers ; and because they 
 are all tolerably well-dressed, and quite intelligent-looking, 
 and in general behave themselves with decency and dignity, 
 he imagines himself to have had a thorough inlook into Amer 
 ican society, and that the filth on the floor must have come 
 from the lips of the elite. 
 
 " That is the kind of mistake, too, that is made about our 
 folks abroad. We do send some very queer people abroad, 
 and some of our best give themselves great license in the 
 rowdy line, when over there. This comes of their English 
 blood. It rises from the brutal contempt for all other people 
 ingrained in the Anglo-Saxon race. Different forces have 
 softened manners in different countries. No one, however, will 
 pretend that with us, and our cousins, self-respect has any 
 great restraining energy. Public opinion is the great thing. 
 That is the public opinion of our set. Let up a little on that, 
 and the brutal barbarians of Hengest and Horsa begin to play, 
 and we may be satisfied if we don't get sight of the nude 
 woaded savage, or even that fellow with his stone hatchet, and 
 his anthropophagous habits." 
 
 " It is not English society, then, that y&u think so superior 
 to ours ? "' asked Mrs. Stichen. 
 
 " No, I am inclined to think, from what little I have seen, 
 that, compare the two, set by set, and class by class, they 
 are about even. The American women dress better, and 
 dance better; and the exceptional women here talk as well as 
 the exceptional women there, and the rest prattle, or gossip, 
 or gabble about alike ; well or ill, just as you please. As to 
 vulgarity, I rather think there is not much to choose. You
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 547 
 
 recollect Becky Sharp speaks of a Duchess as a most vulgar 
 woman, and Becky was a good observer. I never shall for 
 get the shock my youthful sensibilities received, a good many 
 years ago, at the old Club House Hotel in Gibraltar. There 
 was a coarse, vulgar-looking, red-faced old dowdy, one morning, 
 standing in the hall below, and in a voice that would have 
 been lovely in the driver of a shad-cart, was 'jawing,' yes, that 
 is the only word for it, coarse as it is, was 'jawing' her maid, 
 who. up three pairs of stairs, was leaning over the ballustrade, 
 and giving back to her mistress about as good as she got. 
 Who is that horrible old woman ? said I. The Dowager 
 
 Duchess of . Good Heavens ! one of the best-known 
 
 titles in the peerage of Great Britain." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Boggs, if you should tell that story to Mrs. Slum- 
 son," exclaimed Mrs. Stichen, throwing up her hand in a pretty 
 little affectation of terror. " You know she thinks that we 
 must have an aristocracy here, and that if we do, we ought to 
 copy the English aristocracy ; because the aristocracy of 
 England is a great deal more aristocratic than the aristocracy 
 of any other aristocratic country." 
 
 " Oh Lord ! I have told her the story half-a-dozen times." 
 
 " What does she say ? " 
 
 " Why, she says it's flat blasphemy, and that I am horrid, 
 perfectly horrid, and that if she did not know that I came of 
 an aristocratic family she should think me low very low. 
 Oh, she's a funny old piece. Her grandfather kept an oyster- 
 stand in Washington Market. Her father rose to the dignity 
 of cotton-broker and speculator, failed three times, and, of 
 course, made money. Her maiden name was Hinny Kate 
 Hinny ; so she traces a clear pedigree to Walter de Brienne, who 
 became Duke of Apulia and King of Sicily. Don't you see B 
 always changes into P, so Brienne becomes Prienne, and what 
 more natural than that Prienne should become Prinny through 
 mispronunciation? Just look at it it's as clear as can be. 
 Walter, surnamed the son of the first Walter, went on a Cru 
 sade, and was captured and put to death by the Saracens, in 
 1251. It is known in the family that he had a son by one of
 
 548 NEVER AGAIX. 
 
 those marriages common then, and which \ve are coining to 
 now a kind of limited liability concern a marriage pro tern 
 with an Arabian princess. Well, at his death there was no 
 one to look after the child, and it was taken in charge by an 
 English Knight and brought home to England. From him 
 came the Prynnes, who frequently intermarried with the best 
 blood in England, until the time of James and his son, 
 when William Prynne, the lawyer and political writer, got into 
 trouble, had his ears cut off by sentence of the famous Star 
 Chamber, and the name made an object of suspicion. Our 
 direct ancestor, a cousin of William, was Sir Cantlon Prynne, 
 an immensely rich merchant, who sent out large fleets to the 
 coast of Guinea, from whence he got the name of Guinea 
 Frynne, and then in the troubles of the great revolution his 
 descendants lost their money and also the last half of the 
 name, their real name, and became Ginnys. Then followed 
 the emigration to America and the phonetic change of G to H 
 in the word Hinny. So that, although she was called Kate 
 Hinny, her real name was Catherine de Brienne. Of course 
 she has a perfect right to style herself la Princesse de Sidle ct 
 Comtesse (T Apulia. So she says, and I don't know any law to 
 prevent her. 
 
 " But, as I was saying, it is not with English fashionable 
 society that I would compare ours and call it altogether a 
 humbug, but it is with itself and its own pretensions, or rather 
 with society as should be and easily might be. The only ex 
 cuse, I take it, for the existence in this country of a set or sets 
 pretending to be at the head of social life, is that they really 
 fulfil certain important functions ; that they really offer a higher 
 standard of elegance and culture ; that they really encour 
 age an improvement in manners and stimulate the growth anc 
 spread of refined taste. That is their only raison d'Htre. If 
 they do not do that, their exclusiveness is an insolent preten 
 sion ; a contemptible humbug; a big bag of nothing; a blad 
 der that every decent man and woman ought to kick till it 
 bursts. 
 
 ' But, my dear Mrs. Stichen, I must go now,' 1 continued
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 549 
 
 Mr. Boggs, rising from his chair. " I am making you a very 
 long visit. I will come again and hear your complaints about 
 society. You must be getting a little tired of it all you have 
 been going it so strongly this last year." 
 
 " Oh, I am very, very tired of it," replied Mrs. Stichen. 
 "Do you know, Mr. Boggs, that I think that I ought to have 
 been an artist ? " 
 
 " Oh, my dear Mrs. Stichen, you have been reading 
 Ruskin." 
 
 " How can you think so ? I'm sure he would frighten all 
 such fancies out of my head. No, I have been reading the 
 life of Madame Le Brun. I thought I would try a little." 
 
 "In oil?" 
 
 " Oh ! no no. I am not so bold as that ; but I had an 
 idea that I might have more of a talent for modelling. So 
 I sent for some clay, and got Lucca to come and give me 
 two or three lessons, and show me how to set things up. 
 My model is rather restive, and I have to watch my chances ; 
 fortunately, I know his head so well that I can work while he 
 is away. Will you see it? Touch that bell on the table." 
 
 Mr. Boggs obeyed, and instantly the little negro appeared 
 in the doorway leading to the back rooms of the suit. 
 
 " Tell the waiter to go into the bath-room and get me the 
 board with the clay bust upon it." 
 
 " Tse bring it, Missis." 
 
 " No, I can't trust you, it is too heavy ; but you can see 
 that John brings it with great care ; no shaking, mind." 
 
 " How long," demanded Mr. Boggs, " since you have 
 taken to this line ? " 
 
 " Oh, ever since my last reception. My room had been 
 jammed, you recollect; the old folks had come and gone, 
 and all had eaten and drunken, and the young folks, who 
 staid for the German, had danced themselves out, and I 
 stood alone. Don't start ; I am not going to quote Moore's 
 lines, but I sat down and thought to myself, what does it all 
 amount to ? Stichen put his honest old head into the door, 
 and said, ' Don't mope, Lizzie ; it's no use ; can't help it,
 
 550 NEVER AGAf.Y. 
 
 perhaps. I can't always ; cleared fifty thousand on Wabash 
 to-day ; made me feel very dull. Life is a game, Lizzie.' I 
 thought he was going to say, ' Play well your part, there all 
 the honor lies,' but he doesn't know Pope. He said, ' Life 
 is a game. I think you play it about as fairly as most of 
 'em, and when the time comes, I don't believe you need be 
 afraid to pass in your chips, if I know anything about the 
 Being who keeps the bank.' I laughed. I know he didn't 
 mean any profanity by his figure, and I told him I wasn't 
 thinking of the future, it was the present that bothered me. 
 Stichen went off to bed, and I sat and thought and thought, and 
 the result was, that I sent off for some clay the next morn 
 ing. One must do something, you know, except to dress and 
 go to balls and opera, and all that." 
 
 Poor Mrs. Stichen ! exclaims some one. Could she not 
 have occupied herself in her religious duties ? Could she not 
 have fully employed her time and her money in acts of benefi 
 cence? And how do you know that she did not, in such mat 
 ters, come up very nearly, if not quite, to the mark of her high 
 calling, as a rich, fashionable, Christian woman ? I have said 
 nothing to the contrary. I only say what I think, and what 
 Mr. Boggs thought, but couldn't say, that if she had had a nice 
 family of children to look after, she never would have under 
 taken to model Stichen's bust. 
 
 The servant brought the thing in, and lifted the water 
 proof hood, disclosing a most wonderful likeness. 
 
 " Stichen himself," exclaimed Mr. Boggs. " But you have 
 made him look too handsome. You have idealized too much." 
 
 " No, he looks like that to me. I see all that I have put 
 there, in him." 
 
 Mr. Boggs took a long, steady look, and as he looked an 
 undefined feeling grew, and grew, until it expanded into a full 
 blaze of jealousy. Jealous of Stichen ? Bah ! and yet if his 
 wife really saw him in that light and perhaps, after all, that 
 was the real light in which to look at his common and comical 
 mug the feeling might not be so unwarranted or ridiculous. 
 
 Mr. Boggs almost repented himself of any forbearance in
 
 NEVER AGAIN: 
 
 -551 
 
 the case. Yes, he would, he certainly would make what no 
 one knew better how to make, earnest, but cool, crafty, unscru 
 pulous, and irresistible love. And yet what nonsense, to knock 
 under to the devil so soon and when he had just resolved to 
 resist him to the uttermost ! Would it be right? would it be 
 generous ? would it be honorable ? 
 
 Some of us, occupying that vantage-ground of virtue which 
 gives us the undoubted right to denounce shall I say the vani 
 ties and follies ? oh no, worse than that the crimes and vices 
 of fashionable life, may well doubt whether a society-man could 
 stop to ask himself such questions. But the statement is 
 strictly true, and, perhaps, in the interests of art, a pity 'tis 'tis 
 true, for no one cares for a tale with not a real villain in it, 
 and Mr. Boggs would have been so much more interesting, so 
 much more shocking and horrid, and every way a more satis 
 factory character, as the unscrupulous and successful lover of 
 Mrs. Stichen. 
 
 Mr. Boggs seized his hat and stick, forced himself to a 
 little flourish about art, made his adieus in his usual style, and 
 rushed into the street. 
 
 " D n the thing," he exclaimed to himself, but in quite 
 an audible tone. " I wish it was night and the row had begun. 
 I hope to heavens those fellows will show fight, and give us a 
 bloody good time of it." 
 
 You don't think that is very elegant language for the ele 
 gant Mr. Boggs ! You don't, eh ? Wait, my dear sir, until 
 you are in a similar case, with the fiend tugging and jerking 
 at your heart-strings, and trying to trip you up, and let us 
 know, then, how nicely you choose words, or how delicately 
 you let off pent-up feeling.
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 The Amateur Police at Work Reconnoitring The Fight Madame 
 Steignitz found. 
 
 " I "HE evening set in dark, dismal, and gusty. The wind 
 -L was not so very strong, but it came in puffs, and howled 
 horribly. The phenomenon of cats and dogs is generally sup 
 posed to accompany only the rain. It did not rain, but cats 
 and dogs, and a variety of wild animals, could be distinctly 
 heard in the blast. 
 
 It did not rain, but it threatened to do so before morning. 
 And that was just the observation made by Mr. Whoppers, as, 
 with his three companions, he started from Miss Jones' board 
 ing-house to go round to the house in Wooster Street. 
 
 " It don't rain, but the fellows above have clearly got out 
 their water-pitchers, and they'll pitch it into us before morn 
 ing. There, don't you hear that ? It says as plainly as ever 
 did a top-floor lodger in the olden time, ' Look out, below there 
 gare reau." 1 " 
 
 " It won't rain till the wind gets a little more southing in 
 it," said the Captain, looking up at the dark, scudding masses 
 of cloud. 
 
 "Well, I'm glad of that. I hope the southing will stay at 
 home for a while. Just now it would make those slates slip 
 pery. I don't want to be presented with my last account on 
 one of them. I can wait for death. I have no desire to be 
 
 Mr. Boggs, with Luther, went on and entered the house. 
 The Captain and Mr. Whoppers followed in a few moments, 
 after first passing and repassing the length of the block, and
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 553 
 
 making a thorough reconnoissance of the suspected house, and 
 satisfying themselves that not a ray of light came from any of 
 the front rooms. Luther holding the door ajar, they slipped 
 in without notice, apparently, from any one. In fact, at that 
 time of the evening, and the weather threatening rain, there 
 were but few passers, and no loungers, in the street the neigh 
 boring grog-shops had too many attractions. 
 
 Further consultation was unnecessary, and the only addi 
 tional preparation was on the part of the Captain. He had 
 brought with him, in his hand, a coil of half-inch rope. This 
 he deliberately proceeded to wind around his waist in several 
 turns. Luther held the candle, and all looked on inquiringly. 
 
 " I never knew the harm," said the Captain, " of having a 
 piece of rope about you. That is, about your body. I don't 
 mean about your neck. That can't be so pleasant." 
 
 Mr. Whoppers, for once, neglected to put in any jocular 
 remark ; and the party crept carefully upstairs, lighted by 
 one solitary candle, which did little more than break the gloom 
 of the deserted house into masses of dark shadows, which 
 darted in and out of the empty rooms, and stalked along the 
 halls, and ran up and down the stairs in a very weird and 
 ghost-like manner. The rickety stairs creaked and groaned 
 at every step ; a party of rats, cut off by this unexpected inva 
 sion of their premises from their retreat in the cellar, scamp 
 ered about in every direction, squeaking their anger and dis 
 may. The ill-fastened and ill-fitted windows, and broken- 
 slatted Venetian blinds rattled and flapped, as if a thousand 
 angry spirits of the air were knocking for admission. And 
 enter some of them did, through a broken pane over the front 
 door, and made a desperate attack upon the light that Luther 
 carried. 
 
 " Where is our lantern ? A candle is not the thing for 
 this kind of work," muttered the Captain. 
 
 " Oh ! here it is, safe in my pocket," replied Mr. Boggs; 
 but I thought we would not light it until we need it in the 
 other house." 
 
 "Well, heave ahead then;" and the party pushed open
 
 554 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 the attic door, and entered the room Luther first securing 
 his candle in the outer garret, so that its light should not be 
 seen from the street, or the flame be extinguished by the rush 
 of air from the open window. 
 
 It was no difficult thing to creep out upon the low-pitched 
 roof; Luther leading, as he was the lightest and most agile; 
 the Captain following, with sailor-like activity; then Mr. Boggs, 
 and then Mr. Whoppers. It was not difficult to creep up, 
 slowly and carefully, to the ridge of the roof; but it would be 
 absurd to suppose that men resolved on desperate purpose 
 could attain such a position, furtively, noiselsssly creeping 
 creeping and crouching under the shelter of murky night, 
 without some little elevation of feeling ; without some slight 
 quickening of the heart's contractions ; without a certain 
 increased activity of the imagination ; without that slight degree 
 of apprehension that touches just touches the border-land 
 of fear, but is quite consistent with perfect coolness. How 
 many a gallant fellow has felt it, mounting into almost an agony 
 of pleasure, in night assaults or cuttings-out. Just fancy the 
 stealthy step, the low " Hist, tread carefully men, no noise 
 in the ranks ! close up ! close up ! " and then the rush, and 
 the wild ringing shout, the clash of steel, the livid flashes, 
 the rattle of musketry, and the groans ! Oh yes, don't leave 
 out the groans from the picture. Or, in another case, the 
 restless sea, panting and sighing, as dark night settles down 
 upon its bosom the soft swish of the boats at each impulse 
 from vigorous arms the low chafing of the muffled oars the 
 orders in bated breath the occasional splash " Take care, 
 you lubber feather your oar more smoothly you have 
 alarmed them ! they hear us ! they see us ! give way, my 
 hearties ! pull, men ! pull your d dest! hurrah ! " and 
 then the wild scramble up the sides and over the bulwarks, 
 with pistols and blunderbusses flashing in your face, and a 
 dozen pike-heads thrusting and picking away at your very 
 eyes ! 
 
 I declare, as I sit now before the flickering fire, in dress 
 ing-gown and slippers, with a mild Havana in my mouth, and
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 555 
 
 with the option of a little old Golconda or Blackbourn, in case 
 of necessity, and critically examine and estimate matters from 
 a position which any one must admit is eminently favorable 
 for a calm judgment, I cannot conceive any pleasure in life 
 greater, unless, it may be, that of a good, bold, daring burglary. 
 However, it would not, perhaps, be best to speak too strongly 
 on this point. Burglary, in the abstract, may be delightful, 
 but yet in practice lack some of the charms with which an 
 ardent imagination invests it. The ideal burglar is, in fact, 
 rare; and the actual burglar may, perhaps, necessarily, take 
 such a business view of things, and have his mind so closely 
 set upon his prospective swag, as to be precluded many of the 
 finer and more aesthetical emotions. 
 
 Slowly and noislessly the party worked its way over the 
 intervening roofs each one hiding himself as much as he 
 could from any possible view from the street, by crouching 
 low on the back slope of the roo". 
 
 " Keep down, Whoppers," whispered Mr. Boggs; " you'll 
 certainly be seen. Devil take it, man, did you never stalk a 
 deer ? " 
 
 " Oh dear, no ; you're the fellow to stalk the dears. But 
 you're right ; ' I'll stalk behind thee like a witches' fiend 
 pressing to be employed.' And, by-the-by, that reminds me 
 I've got a conundrum." 
 
 " Oh, d n your conundrums ! " 
 
 " Well, then, I won't put it in that form. A simple obser 
 vation merely, which, as a member of the Traveller's Club, you 
 will appreciate. This would be safer work on the roof of 
 some house in Holland." 
 
 " Pshaw ! They are all ten times as steep." 
 
 "Yes, but then they are used to storks." 
 
 Mr. Boggs' smothered objurgation, with a faint chuckle 
 from the Editor, was borne away upon a gust, that compelled 
 them all to lie flat and motionless until it had passed. 
 
 Arrived at the right house, Luther, according to agreement, 
 crept down first to examine the windows, and to make sure 
 that there was no one in the rooms. Cautiously he put
 
 556 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 his head around the window frame, so as to look within. He 
 recollected the glimpse that he had got of the horrible 
 visage looking into the window of Madame Steignitz' 
 room, and at first he was very careful not to expose too much 
 of his own face. Gradually he leaned forward until he could 
 command the entire view. *' Dark as Erebus," he mut 
 tered. He could see nothing, but slowly the darkness 
 melted a little, and he fancied that he could see the outlines 
 sufficiently to make sure that the room was empty. Still, 
 he looked, and listened, and waited. There could be no 
 doubt of it ; at any rate he would try the window. 
 
 He crept around in front, supporting himself with his 
 feet in the gutter. He could not help a slight shudder when 
 he thought what a nice mark he must now present for a 
 pistol-shot from within the room, or how easy it would be for 
 a strong man to suddenly throw up the window and push 
 him into the court below. 
 
 Twisting himself around so that he could use his hands 
 freely, he tried the window. 
 
 " I suppose we shall have to force it," he mattered. " It 
 would be too good luck to find it unfastened." 
 
 It resisted at first, but readily gave way to a little more 
 force. He pushed it up to its catch, and stepped into the 
 room, which was of the usual size and pattern, and entirely 
 empty. 
 
 Luther listened intently. He fancied that he heard the noise 
 of voices, and he was going to open the door leading into the 
 garret, when he suddenly bethought him that the rush of air 
 down stairs from the open window might give an alarm. He 
 had better get back and summon his comrades before going 
 further. 
 
 But first he must examine the adjoining window and room. 
 This examination, made with the same precautions, resulted in 
 the conviction that it, too, was unoccupied, but, the window 
 being more securely fastened, he was unable to enter. 
 
 A good half hour, and more, had been spent in these 
 preliminary explorations, and the party above were getting a
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 557 
 
 little impatient, especially as the temperature was falling, 
 and the weather growing quite "shivery," as Mr. Whoppers 
 called it. 
 
 " I say, Captain," and the Captain had to stretch himself 
 with difficulty by Mr. Boggs in order to catch Mr. Whoppers 
 communication. " I say, Captain, you need not say ' shiver 
 my timbers' up here." 
 
 " Pshaw ! I never do talk such nonsense." 
 
 " Well, don't you do it. It isn't necessary, for if we wait 
 here much longer, what with the fright and cold, my timbers 
 will shiver themselves. Ah, there is Luther, and it's high time 
 up here the highest time I've seen in a long time. So you 
 got into the dormer? Well, we thought you had got into the 
 dormant, too, you staid so long." 
 
 " Do stop your everlasting chatter." 
 
 " Can't ! It's the weather the confounded thing chatters 
 of itself, whether or no : but lead on, I'll slope after you." 
 
 The party quietly slid clown the roof, and following Luther 
 through the open window, entered the room. A moment 
 or two they stood listening. No alarm in any quarter not 
 even a window raised in any of the five or six intervening 
 houses not a sound except the noise of the wind and the 
 beating of their own hearts. 
 
 The window was carefully closed, and Mr. Boggs produced 
 his lantern, but the difficulty was to light it without sending a 
 glimmer through the glass. Luther, with ready inventiveness, 
 whipped off his coat, and placing the lantern on the floor, threw 
 the coat over it. Under this effectual cover he succeeded in 
 striking a match and lighting the wick with hardly the escape 
 of a single ray. 
 
 And now for the door, which proved to be locked from the 
 further side. Fortunately the lock was on the inside, and was 
 one of the commonest kind. Luther was prepared for the 
 emergency. The slightest gleam of the lantern showed two 
 screws holding the bolt-latchet. He produced a screw-driver, 
 and in half a minute they were out, the bolt free, and the door 
 slowly and carefully opened.
 
 558 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Nothing but a wide, open, and empty garret, with a narrow 
 pair of stairs leading down to the floor below. 
 
 Cautiously, but not without a creaking of the loose boards, 
 they crept to the head of the stairs andJistened. There were 
 sounds of voices, evidently men's voices, and they seemed to 
 come up from the parlor floor ; and there was an occasional 
 sound, like a woman's voice, that apparently came from the 
 first floor below. A feeble glimmer of light, so faint as barely 
 to reveal the intensity of the darkness, seemed to come from 
 some one of the rooms on the same floor. 
 
 A consultation, and it was decided that Luther should 
 again go on first and reconnoitre. 
 
 " Give me time enough this time," he whispered, " and 
 don't you begin to be impatient under half an hour at least." 
 
 " Take your time, Miss Lucy," hummed quite audibly Mr. 
 Whoppers, and would perhaps have continued in a louder tone 
 if he had not felt Mr. Boggs' powerful fingers closing upon his 
 arm with no gentle force. 
 
 The lighest step could not have prevented the rickety stairs 
 from creaking, but fortunately the wind made all kinds of com 
 mingling noises. 
 
 Arrived at the last step all was silent on that floor. Even 
 the glimmer of light had disappeared, and he was compelled 
 to slightly raise the slide of his lantern to show him the turn 
 of the stairs going down to the parlor floor, and to let him see 
 if there was any obstruction in his path. 
 
 He leaned over the railing, and looked down into the 
 dark hall, and listened. Decidedly, there were men in the 
 parlor. He could hear their voices distinctly. They were 
 speaking in quite loud tones. He could almost distinguish the 
 words. He heard the clink of glasses, and there was a strong 
 odor of tobacco pervading the air. 
 
 He must venture down, and try and make out something 
 from their conversation that might serve as a clue. 
 
 As he descended, the voices became louder. The con 
 versation was evidently growing more animated, and the tones 
 less muffled and indistinct. He stopped mid-way on the
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 559 
 
 stairs just where his head cleared the ceiling, and leaned 
 across the ballusters. He could almost reach across the nar 
 row hall, and touch the door. 
 
 " Bah ! " exclaimed a voice that Luther could not recog 
 nize as belonging to either of the three, with which he was 
 familiar. "You should have consulted me : I could have told 
 you that , there could be no magot. This is not the count r\ 
 for that thing I don't believe she ever trusted herself with ;. 
 dollar over night. Everything she has is invested, or deposi 
 ted, and if you had her bank-book, or a check signed by her 
 self, it would do no good. You couldn't get a dollar on it. 
 It is too late." 
 
 A jumble of oaths, exclamations, and questions followed, 
 amid which Luther recognized the deep voice of the one they 
 called Brochu. 
 
 " Why ? " replied the first speaker. " I'll tell you why 
 because they have all been warned of her disappearance. 
 That young fellow has been busy with the police, you admit. 
 Do you suppose he has not put her bankers and brokers on 
 their guard ? " 
 
 " Sacre matin ! " ejaculated Brochu. " *Je reglerai mon 
 compte avec cet brouillon M." 
 
 " Fiche avcc tes menaces en fair! " exclaimed the voice of 
 Monsieur Ricord. "We have enough to do to get out of this 
 scrape. We can't put her back again." 
 
 " No, and if we did we should all be arrested in twenty- 
 four hours. She's vindictive, that old witch. I think I should 
 prefer Cayenne again to Sing Sing." 
 
 " The thing is simple enough," rejoined the first speaker. 
 " She's almost dead already ! Well then" and the voices 
 assumed so low a tone that Luther could only catch now and 
 then a word. But those words were enough to outline a pic 
 ture that fancy readily filled up. " C'est bien facile coupe de 
 Monsieur le Docteur une malade comprenez dedans vite 
 au bout anqiiantibme rue une fois dans Veau c'est fini. 
 Demain soir? Non ! non ! -pas de temps a perdre" 
 
 Such were the words that came to Luther's ear, mingled
 
 560 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 with a good many others which he could not have distin 
 guished, perhaps, even if they had been in English. But he 
 had heard enough to make his heart beat still quicker, and 
 to start the big beads of sweat upon his brow. 
 
 A fierce oath from Brochu, and a sudden slapping down 
 of his glass upon the marble mantel-piece, arrested the con 
 versation for an instant. 
 
 " So it comes to this we are to have all this trouble for 
 nothing," he exclaimed. " The cursed old witch ! I don't 
 mind^making an end of her, but who wants to run so much 
 risk and get nothing for his pains ? It's all very well for 
 Monsieur Ricord here, who loses only his famous gun, or for 
 the Doctor, who may have to put off presenting his com 
 pliments at the 'brickyard,' but for me I lose everything. 
 Murder is too cheap when it's done for nothing at all." 
 
 " Hush ! you use ugly words, my friend. There is no 
 use in getting provoked. It is too late to go back now, 
 and the thing can be made to pay yet if we work it right." 
 
 " How so ? " 
 
 " Why, don't you see, as long as she lives we can get no 
 money, but once dead, and her body fished up out of the 
 river, we can manufacture an heir. It will take a little time, 
 it is true, but it can be done. She hasn't a relation in the 
 world no one to contradict us, unless it may be that young 
 fellow, and if he gets in the way, why we must knock him 
 out of it, if we have to knock his head off to do it." 
 
 " I see. The thing is feasible, but there are difficulties." 
 
 " Certainly, there are always difficulties, but they can be 
 got over. I have a nephew, a dirty little blackguard, but he'd 
 make a good heir for the old one. Listen now," and there 
 was some movement and a shuffling of feet, and Luther con 
 cluded that the party had drawn closer together, especially as 
 the voices fell, and the conversation came to his ear so indis 
 tinctly that he could make nothing of it further. 
 
 He drew back from his uncomfortable position and straight 
 ened himself up. What should he do? It was time for him 
 to go back to the' garret, but he had not as yet received the
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 561 
 
 slightest indication as to the room in which Madame Steignitz 
 must be confined. 
 
 Perhaps, however, she was not in the house, and yet where 
 else could she be? She must be found, and that at once. 
 There was clearly no time to be lost. A night, an hour, might 
 seal her fate. 
 
 Luther could hardly keep himself from groaning out. He 
 could have shouted aloud in his agony of impatience and 
 apprehension. He felt a desperate impulse to dash himself 
 against the door behind which the conspirators were concoct 
 ing their foul plans, but he restrained himself with effort. He 
 controlled the tension of his muscles, straining to explode into 
 immediate and unwise action. He set his teeth, and shrank 
 himself in upon himself, as it were, to confine the sense of 
 intense, powerful anxiety that threatened each instant to over 
 master sense and will. 
 
 What should he do ? If he went back to his companions 
 what should what could he tell them to do ? 
 
 He turned, and made a step or two upward. This brought 
 his head on a level with the floor above. 
 
 Ha ! there was that glimmer of light again. The light 
 he had first seen, upon reaching the stairs above. Luther 
 stopped, and bent his head to the floorj and waited and 
 watched. Faint and wavering, but still distinct, it marked 
 its track from beneath the door of the small hall room, at the 
 back of the house. And now the light had passed into the 
 adjoining large room, and gleamed through the ventilating 
 window over the door. It came in flashes, and was evidently 
 carried with an effort at concealment in a lantern. But the 
 brightest flash was so feeble, that had not Luther's eyes been 
 rendered unusually sensitive by the long darkness they had 
 been enduring, it might almost have passed unnoticed. 
 
 If that door should open now, he would clearly be caught 
 between two fires, or rather two lights, and be cut off from the 
 stairway leading to the attic. But, at any and all risks, he 
 must know what was in that room. Once make sure that 
 Madame Steignitz was in there, and the course was plain. 
 36
 
 562 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 They would make a rush, burst in the door, secure the old 
 woman, and while one of them carried her up and off over 
 the roof, the other three could defend the stair-head, even if 
 there were half-a-dozen or more men, as Luther suspected, in 
 the parlor below. The fight could not last long, however 
 desperate the conspirators. They would be afraid of alarm 
 ing the police, and of being taken in the rear. 
 
 It is useless to say that Luther's step was stealthy. His 
 feet had been slippered for the purpose, and even a careless 
 step could have made no noise that would not have been 
 drowned in the rattling of the loose windows, and the flap 
 ping and creaking of the broken blinds. 
 
 He gained the door. There was no crack, and through 
 the key-hole he could see nothing. There were but two ways ; 
 either open the door and look in, or take a look through the 
 ventilating-window above. The door was probably locked, 
 and any attempt upon it would give a premature alarm. 
 
 The moulding above the door was broad, strong, and just 
 within reach of his fingers. 
 
 Luther was a good gymnast, and he found no difficulty in 
 drawing himself up without touching the door with toe or knee, 
 and holding himself steadily for more than a minute in a posi 
 tion to command a good view of all in the room. 
 
 A common tin lantern, with a candle in it, stood upon the 
 mantel. There was no other place for it to stand, as the room 
 was destitute of furniture not a chair or table nothing but 
 one low wooden bench, standing nearly in the middle of the 
 room, and a heap of bedding, or a pile of old clothes, either, 
 or perhaps both, in one corner. 
 
 Upon the bench sat a woman, with one elbow on her knee, 
 and supporting her head with her hand, while the other arm 
 fell listlessly by her side. She was dressed in a light-blue 
 silk. A stronger light would probably have shown that it 
 had seen much service, but it would also have shown that it 
 fitted nicely, and had been cut in good styles A stronger 
 light would have shown that the black hair had been coiffed 
 with a strange cave and art, for the occupant of such a miser-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 563 
 
 able, empty house, and vacant room, but, as it was, the gleam 
 from the open door of the lantern, falling full upon her face, 
 revealed to Luther's sharp eyes enough to excite his wonder 
 and curiosity. 
 
 She was not handsome perhaps never had been, although 
 that hollow cheek, and those pinched features might once 
 have been attractive, and, assisted by the gleam of bright eyes 
 and the flash of white teeth, the whole face might have been 
 piquant and interesting. It would have been difficult for a 
 man more experienced in women's ways than Luther to have 
 judged of her age. She might be thirty perhaps five years 
 older perhaps two or three years less. Who can tell the 
 age of a Frenchwoman who has passed her fifth lustrum ? 
 
 She sat motionless, lost in revery, and her thoughts, it 
 was plain to see, were not pleasant. How could they be ? 
 It needed no remorse no stings of conscience, to make them 
 bitter. The accidents of fortune, the hard contrasts of now 
 and then, were enough to excite the mingled emotions of 
 regret, despair, and hate. The very contemplation of past 
 joys sometimes fills the soul with bitterness. Should we 
 wonder that one who has passed through the various stages 
 of demi-monde life can hardly contain herself when sitting 
 forlorn,- surrounded only by bare walls, in a miserable house 
 in Wooster Street, and thinking of her dearly loved Paris, and 
 all its pleasures? When thinking of her first engagement at 
 the Cafe Chantant in the Champs Elyse'e, when she sang her 
 " Me void! une autre pucelle D* Orleans" after Therese had 
 given her Femme d barbe, and always got a round of applause : 
 or when thinking of the drives in the Bois ; and the excur 
 sions to Vincennes ; and balls at the Opera ; and the 
 jolly little dinners here, there, and everywhere ; and that par 
 ticular supper in that little entresol cabinet of the Cafe' An 
 glais, when she made Larken, the rich young American, who 
 had not much money, but who luckily had less brains, and 
 who, by dint of a jumbling up of the ideas of income and prin 
 cipal, contrived for a few months to raise a very considerable 
 ripple on the surface of a certain portion of Parisian society
 
 564 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 when she made him promise to take her on that trip to 
 Baden and Homburg, where he lost three hundred thousand 
 francs, and the Director of the play gave him twenty francs to 
 take them to Frankfort, where she sold her diamond pin for 
 the rest of their journey to Paris, and then, oh, then, came a 
 step down the ladder ! but, oh, the mad delights of Mabille 
 and Valentino ; and now this stupid country, with poverty, 
 ill health, and the brutal companionship of Monsieur Brochu. 
 
 Luther hung, bat-like, by his finger-tips in silence ; con 
 templating this apparently only person in the room. But 
 suddenly the bundle of bedding stirred in the corner, an 
 arm was thrust out with a feeble moan, and the conviction 
 darted on his mind that there lay the object of his search. 
 The body there in the corner, of course, could belong to no 
 one else. 
 
 He still waited an instant, although his fingers, strong 
 and supple as they were, were on the point of failing him. 
 
 The young woman started at the moan, and turned her 
 head towards the corner, but did not rise from her seat. 
 
 " Let her die," she muttered in French. " I can do noth 
 ing for her ; and why should I ? it is best so. Ah, man 
 Dieu, I almost wish I were in her place.'' 
 
 At this instant Luther was startled by a sudden flash of 
 light directly behind him, and simultaneously a heavy step 
 and a muttered oath. His hands completely benumbed, he 
 dropped to his feet and turned himself around ; and there, 
 at the head of the stairs in front of him, at some ten feet 
 distance, stood a man with a lantern, the light of which he 
 had directed full upon Luther's person while he was yet 
 hanging to the casing of the door. 
 
 The dark figure, that of a large and powerful man, was 
 clearly outlined, but the face was hidden in the shadow of 
 the lantern ; and more than that, Luther's eyes were dazzled 
 by the sudden glare. 
 
 The next moment and the door behind him opened, and 
 the woman whom he had been observing stood behind him 
 with the candle in her hand, and the additional light at once
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 565 
 
 revealed the repulsive and deeply marked visage of Monsieur 
 Brochu. 
 
 A few guttural sounds, like the gruntings of an enraged 
 boar when about to make a charge, came from between the 
 clenched teeth. But still he moved not, and Luther had 
 time to draw his club and prepare for an attack. 
 
 "It is you, ha ! I know you, young one! I have an 
 account to settle with you ! You have been trying to put the 
 police on my heels, and now you come here as a spy, eh ? 
 You know the fate of a spy of a burglar of a thief ? " 
 And suddenly the speaker withdrew his hand from his pocket 
 grasping a revolver, and levelled it at the young man's heart. 
 
 The movement was rapid, but not so rapid as thought, 
 and Luther had time to think what a fool he had been not 
 to have closed with him before. But it was too late. 
 
 " Back, Lizzette, back ; out of my line," hissed Brochu. 
 
 It took but an instant to utter the warning to his mistress, 
 but an instant rightly used is sometimes the turning-point 
 between life and death ! 
 
 With the rapidity of lightning, Luther flung back his arm, 
 grasped the woman, swung her round in front of him, and 
 the next minute had jumped backward through the doorway 
 into the room. 
 
 Uttering a horrible imprecation, Monsieur Brochu made a 
 step or two in advance. At that instant a smart blow on his 
 hand from a club behind him, knocked the pistol from his 
 grasp, and the next instant a crack on the crown brought 
 him to his knees, but he was still able to grapple with his 
 assailant, the Captain, who was no ways backward in accept 
 ing the invitation to close quarters. Both were powerful 
 men, and the struggle might have been indefinitely pro 
 longed, or have ended only in blood, as Brochu was striving 
 desperately to get at his knife, if Luther had^not come to 
 the assistance of the Captain. 
 
 " Hold on to his starboard fin Luth for an instant 
 and I'll get eh eh this noose on his left and we'll 
 gasket him up so tight that there ugh ugh " and the
 
 566 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Captain tugged, and talked, and grunted, " so tight that he 
 may blow as much as he pleases, and he won't be able to 
 show an inch of sail." And suiting the action to the word, 
 the Captain whipped off the rope from around his own body, 
 and coiled it, and knotted, and double knotted it about the 
 arms, wrists, and legs of the struggling giant, with a rapid dex 
 terity that no one but a trained seaman could have equalled. 
 
 And all this time Lixzette stood looking on, as rigid as a 
 cataleptic, and holding the candle aloft as if her sole business 
 was to light up the battle-ground, which, illuminated alone by 
 Brochu's lantern, would have been gloomy enough. As they 
 finished, and Luther jumped away to join in the terrible melee 
 that was going on behind them, a tremendous crash of ballus- 
 ters and staircase was added to the infernal din arising from 
 the desperate struggles of powerful men in so narrow a space. 
 
 At the first loud oath from Brochu, the party assembled in 
 the parlor below had sallied into the hall. At the instant 
 the Captain had struck the pistol, which exploded as it fell, 
 they made a rush for the stairs. The large man known as 
 the Doctor had succeeded in reaching the last step, when Mr. 
 Boggs made a blow at him with his club, but the slope of the 
 stairs was in the way, and it was ineffectual, and the next 
 moment they had their hands on each other's throats. 
 
 In the meantime, three or four men were pressing their 
 way up stairs, but Mr. Whoppers was just in time. Swinging 
 himself over from mid-way of the staircase above, he alighted 
 on the hall railing for an instant, and from that coign of van 
 tage dealt a heavy kick under the chin to the foremost, turn 
 ing him over upon his companions, and sending them all down 
 in a pile at the bottom of the stairs. 
 
 Again they attempted a rush, but Whoppers kicked so 
 desperately, and struck out with his club so fiercely, and 
 jumped about so nimbly, and sputtered and swore, and quoted 
 poetry something about 
 
 ' How can a man die better than fighting against odds, 
 
 For the temples of his fathers, and the ashes of his gods," 
 that they were beaten back, or held at bay.
 
 NEVER AGAIN 567 
 
 And so the struggle between Mr. Boggs and the Doctor 
 went on. But not for long. The reader must recollect that 
 the whole affair hardly occupied two minutes. There are few 
 positions in which men improve the time more faithfully than 
 on such an occasion, and a good deal of hard fighting, if it is 
 to the death, can be done in a short time. 
 
 At the instant Luther, followed by the Captain, freed 
 himself from the grasp of the now prostrate and corded 
 Brochu, and dashed to the assistance of his companions, Mr. 
 Boggs had forced his antagonist against and partially over 
 the railing of the stairs, and had succeeded in liberating his 
 right hand and planting two or three heavy blows directly in 
 his opponent's face, when suddenly the railing gave way, and 
 over both went head first on to the stairs. Two or three men 
 were borne down by this tremendous avalanche of humanity, 
 and underneath the accumulated weight the staircase gave way 
 on one side and they all rolled into the hall below together. 
 
 This was the turning-point of the fight, and all of the con 
 spirators who could, gathered themselves up as quickly as 
 possible and rushed for the street door, leaving the Doctor 
 in the grip of Mr. Boggs, who, even in going head first down 
 the stairs, had never loosened his hold. 
 
 The light streamed into the hall from the open parlor 
 door and showed that the Doctor was insensible. Leaving 
 Mr. Whoppers to guard Brochu and to prevent the woman at 
 tempting to liberate him, the Captain clambered down the 
 broken staircase, and in a moment the Doctor was so securely 
 corded that, with returning animation, he had no power to 
 renew the fight. 
 
 Mr. Boggs had evidently suffered the most of any of his 
 party. His coat was hanging by shreds his shirt-bosom 
 had disappeared entirely, and his face was deeply marked. 
 
 " Am I hurt much ? Why no, I can't say that I am," said 
 Mr. Boggs, and, giving himself a shake, "no bones broken, I 
 believe. Ugh ! Where can all this blood come from ? " he 
 exclaimed, wiping his face. " I guess I'm pretty well marked. 
 Shan't be able to show for some time. But I don't mind
 
 568 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 that It's my hand that is the worst. I've mashed it up so 
 on that fellow's head, that I don't believe I'll be able to touch 
 the piano for six months." 
 
 " All right ! " shouted Luther, who had darted up-stairs, 
 and, seizing the candle which Lizzette held in her hand, had 
 rushed to the corner of the room where lay the pile of old 
 clothes on which he had noticed a movement. 
 
 A haggard figure supported itself on its wasted arm, in a 
 feeble effort to assume a sitting posture ; a pair of piercing 
 black eyes gleamed out from the wan and pinched face. 
 Luther would have known the eyes of Madame Steignitz, even 
 if no other feature had been recognizable. 
 
 As he knelt by her side, those eyes fairly blazed like black 
 diamonds in a death's-head. She seized his hand, and her 
 voice rose almost into a shriek : " Oh, man JDie/t, que vous 
 ties bon I Cest mon petit. Yes, it is ! it is my little one. I 
 knew you would come, I was sure of it. I knew the good 
 God would not let them kill me until I had seen you. They 
 wanted my money, and they starved me and beat me, but I 
 said ' No, I will have it all all every dollar for my little 
 one.' Oh, but God is good to me. Yes, yes, God is a good 
 God. I thank Him. I thank Him." 
 
 The old woman's grasp relaxed, and she fell back utterly 
 exhausted. 
 
 " All right ! " shouted Luther. " I have found her ; but 
 she is dying ; what shall we do? I must run for a doctor." 
 
 " Hold on ! " exclaimed Mr. Whoppers. " Guard this 
 fellow, and I'll run round to the police-station ; I know the 
 Captain. I'll have him here with some men to secure our 
 captives in five minutes, and I'll bring a police-surgeon with 
 me. Here, take this chap's pistol, and don't hesitate to blow 
 his brains out if he gets an arm loose ; and look out for the 
 girl she looks dazed and harmless now, but she may give 
 trouble yet." 
 
 Mr. Whoppers had not far to run. There was a crowd 
 beginning to collect around the house, and upon opening 
 the door there was the pitrol squad upon the steps. For
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 569 
 
 a block or two, up and down, the whole street was in alarm, 
 and before the police could get in and close the door, there 
 was a reporter, note-book in hand, elbowing his way through 
 the crowd. 
 
 A reinforcement of police arriving, all intruders were 
 expelled, Brochu and the Doctor unpinioned and, with Liz 
 zette, marched off to the station. 
 
 The girl had not uttered a word had hardly moved from 
 her first position, at the beginning of the fight. She had been 
 astonished and frightened into absolute silence. As they 
 led her off, she seemed like one in a dream. Poor thing ! 
 One cannot help feeling sorry for her. She might be guilty, 
 might be degraded, but her fate was nevertheless a hard one. 
 Hard to be forced step by step down the gradients of Pa 
 risian life, and then to this dull, stupid country, where they 
 don't speak French, and there is no Mabille, no Jardin des 
 Fleurs, nothing nothing but the Black Crook ! 
 
 A little brandy and water was the first prescription of the 
 police-surgeon, and Luther darted down to the French 
 restaurant, estaminet et saile de lillard^ on the corner. 
 
 "Non, non, you sail no run away with my tumbler," 
 shouted the keeper of the den, as Luther started for the 
 door. 
 
 "There then," and the young man threw back a ten- 
 dollar bill as he sprang out into the street. 
 
 An idea struck him ; he turned, put his head back into 
 the room, and shouted : " Get a bowl of soup ready ; keep 
 the change if the soup is ready in five minutes. I will be 
 back after it." 
 
 The" bar-keeper was morose and tired, and the dirty 
 waiters, and the greasy billiard-markers worn out and sleepy, 
 as it was now past twelve o'clock, but there was something 
 in the tone in which the order was given, and in the sight of 
 the ten-dollar bill fluttering in the air, that electrified the 
 whole establishment, and set them screaming in chorus, 
 " Potage ! Un potage sec, un pot age alter e" 
 
 Perhaps the reader does not know what a dry soup or a
 
 570 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 thirsty soup is, and it is quite possible that the kitchens in 
 Paris would plead guilty to similar ignorance, the term being 
 nothing but Monsieur Grandbceufs translation of New York 
 eating-house slang, meaning a plate of soup to which an ex 
 tra glass of hot water had not been added, as is usual, at 
 the moment of serving, to insure a paying and proper degree 
 of dilution and heat. 
 
 It was a bright idea in Luther to order it, for after 
 -administering the brandy and water that was the very next 
 thing the Doctor suggested, and in less than ten minutes 
 Luther produced it, hot, strong, and odorous, and Madame 
 Steignitz was swallowing it with trembling voracity, and 
 sensibly gaining in strength with every spoonful. 
 
 "Can she be moved to night, Doctor?" demanded 
 Luther. 
 
 The Doctor shook his head. 
 
 "Oh yes," cried Madame. "Don't leave me here an 
 hour. I must go out of this. I will go away from this. I 
 will get back once more to my room." 
 
 " But I am afraid to leave you in the old room alone." 
 
 " No, no. I must go back. There is no danger for me 
 none. You have that horrible man safe in the prison. But 
 if not he never try again. He know that he can not get the 
 money which I have save for my little one. Oh, mon Dieu, 
 but I have been tempted. Ten thousand ! If I would 
 promise just ten thousand dollar ; but no, I would not, and 
 then he struck me with his fist, and then he whip me with a 
 cravache till' my arms and back are all blood, and then he tore 
 my hair, my poor gray hair, from my head, and then I had 
 nothing to eat, and then nothing to drink not a drop of 
 water for three whole days, but I would not, I would not rob 
 my little one, and I would not give such a villain a sou pas 
 un soil. And now, oh, I must go. Oh ! oh ! I cannot stay 
 here. I must to my home. Oh, take me away ! take me 
 away ! The good God has sent you to take me away. I knew 
 He would. Yes, yes, I knew He would. Blessed be His 
 name! "
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 571 
 
 There was nothing else to do, so Luther dashed down to 
 the restaurant, and flourishing a handful of notes, a cane- 
 seated arm-chair, and three or four pillows and blankets 
 were produced in no time. 
 
 It is wonderful how many activities a little money will 
 set in motion. It is frequently said that such or such a thing 
 cannot be had for love or money. The saying may be true ; 
 it probably is sometimes true. It is unquestionably true of 
 many things as far as love is concerned, but just at this 
 moment it is difficult to recall anything that a man can't get 
 at any hour, even at midnight, in New York for money, if he 
 has only plenty of it and knows where to go. 
 
 Luther found upon his return that his companions had 
 got back from the station, after seeing the prisoners fairly 
 entered upon the police records, and locked in their cells. 
 
 Madame Steignitz was at once lifted into her chair, and, 
 with a couple of police-officers and the surgeon, the proces 
 sion started for her house. Luther, with the Captain, ran 
 ahead to prepare the way, and in hope that he should find 
 Mrs. Jolly, the nurse, at home and disengaged. He moun 
 ted the stairs, and knocked at her door two or three times ; 
 there was no answer. " She can't be in," said Luther from 
 the head of the stairs. " How unlucky." 
 
 "Knock again, my boy," responded the Captain. "Bang 
 hard. She's a nurse, you know, and that sort always sleep 
 sound. You've no idea how much calling and knocking a 
 genuine nurse will stand. It's their business. They are 
 brought up to it." 
 
 Thus encouraged, Luther renewed his efforts, and at 
 length secured a response. Yes, Mrs. Jolly was at home, 
 and disengaged, and for the double fees that Luther, with 
 reckless prodigality, promised to pay out of his own pocket, 
 was ready at once to do anything for anybody. 
 
 The noise by this time had aroused all the inmates of 
 the house, and as Madame Steignitz was carried up to her 
 room, her tenants crowded the landings and halls, or put 
 their heads out of the half-opened doors, as if to welcome
 
 572 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 her return. Not a very joyful welcome, as may be supposed, 
 although there were none there who bore the old woman any 
 personal ill-will ; a sorrowful welcome in fact, if we may 
 judge from some of the expressions. 
 
 " Lord preserve us, Mrs. Flanigan, but it's she herself has 
 come back to us. Ah, but the Lord is hard on us pooi 
 people." 
 
 " Whist, woman, didn't I tell you so ? " 
 
 " Ye did, but I didn't believe it. Her corse to the sod, 
 and her sowl to God, was what I made sure of, and now here 
 she comes, and me with a month's back rint on my mind." 
 
 " Ah, hush ; don't 'mind her of it. Ain't we all biling 
 and bubbling in the same pot ? " 
 
 "Remind her? Niver you fear, if I don't the devil will. 
 Look at the eyes of her. They glimmer and shine like two 
 holes in a blower." 
 
 " Oh, you may say that, or like the peeps in a brick-kiln. 
 And don't they say, I know every one of yees owes me a 
 month's rint, and I'll take it for breakfast to-morrow morning? 
 Och ! that I should come to be so defrauded. By my sowl it 
 is enough to make one sick and tired of life. I say, Donegan, 
 what are ye staring at ? Did ye niver see the Madame 
 before ? " 
 
 " Indeed I have, thank God for His mercies ; but " 
 
 "And that was enough for ye, eh? Ye didn't want to 
 see her again ? Well, you may say that, for indeed there is 
 nothing enticing about her. Your wife knows you're o'er fond 
 of gallivanting wid de young ones, but she'll trust yees to 
 morrow morning wid the ould one, whin ye go to her wid the 
 rint in your hand. Go to bed, Donegan, and thank the divil 
 for sending her back to comfort us once more." 
 
 Some time after Madame Steignitz had been borne into 
 her room, and left in charge of Mrs. Jolly, the conversation 
 was continued by little groups in the halls. But gradually, 
 comments and conjectures were exhausted, and the tenants 
 went back to bed again, but not to sleep, or, if they did, 
 most assuredly to dream of one of the heaviest and common 
 est afflictions of poor humanity rent in arrears.
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 Oil-wells The Big Thing Petroleum Company Mr. Ledgeral's visit 
 to the Oil Regions Whoppers and Luther visit West Point. 
 
 THE chief, and in fact the only well of the Big Thing 
 Petroleum Company had suddenly stopped flowing. 
 One of the greatest geological curiosities of the Oil Region had 
 ceased to be, and with it had gone Mr. Ledgeral's last hope. 
 Two hundred thousand dollars he had put in a barren piece 
 of ground, and dry well after dry well had repaid his liberal 
 ity, and the more he bored, the less chance he had of shoving 
 the Big Thing off, at a profit of five hundred per cent, 
 upon a nice set of stockholders. To be sure, there was a 
 pretty good well on the adjoining land. He might have 
 bought that out, and laid a pipe from it to one of his dry 
 wells, and then, letting her " head up" at night, have man 
 aged to pump out by day about forty barrels, and so have 
 pumped in some greedy speculators, and thus at least have 
 got his money back. But Mr. Ledgeral was no villain ; if 
 he had been, he never would have appeared in this book. 
 He was a strictly honorable man, unfortunate in having been 
 suddenly soused into a whirlpool of irresistible temptation, 
 but not a man who would go deliberately to the current of 
 rascality, and strip himself for a swim. He could not have 
 done such a thing, and, besides, it was too late. The trick 
 had been tried more than once, and in one instance with 
 success on two or three original " ilers" experienced fellows, 
 who had bored holes themselves, and bought and sold fees 
 and royalties, and rights and fractional interests, and floated 
 half-a-dozen companies fellows all over " ile," and as sleek 
 and slippery as a Greek gymnast just greased for the arena.
 
 574 NEVER AC A IX. 
 
 It was too late then to do anything of that kind, even had 
 Mr. Ledgeral been so disposed, which I am happy to say he 
 was not. Such virtue could not go without reward, and one 
 morning, the very next after Mrs. Ledgeral had started for 
 West Point, he received a telegram announcing 
 
 " The tubing all in. Seed-bag in place. Sucker rods just going down. 
 Begin pumping in an hour." 
 
 Not much hope had Mr. Ledgeral. He had received the 
 same kind of announcement so often, and then a weary week's 
 pumping and no oil, or just enough to grease the engine. 
 
 At noon he received another telegram : 
 
 " Plenty of salt water a little oil, but increasing ; shall get her up to 
 five barrels at least." 
 
 Five barrels ! And Mr. Ledgeral threw the telegram into 
 the waste-basket, and, leaning his elbows on the table, rested 
 his head in his hands, and thought and thought oh such 
 ugly and disagreeable thoughts ; and what made the matter 
 so bad and imparted an element of peculiar bitterness was the 
 clearness with which he could see that if he only had time he 
 would come out all right ; and yet to ask for time, to barely 
 hint at the necessity for that precious commodity, would be to 
 overwhelm himself with ruin and disgrace. And then he 
 thought of Helen, and how uncertain the scheme to which she 
 was to be sacrificed, and that, even if successful, his character 
 as a godly, church-going, honest, honorable man and merchant 
 was at the mercy of a comparative stranger. 
 
 And thus he thought, and thought. He thought all the 
 thoughts over and over again which for weeks he had been 
 thinking over and over. In fact the one train of thought 
 streamed through his mind with desperate peu/nacity, until he 
 felt as if he should go crazy. 
 
 But he did not go crazy. He got up and helped himself 
 to a large glass of Bourbon, which diverted his mind, and his 
 thoughts rambled a little. He thought, among other things, 
 of all that had been said, pro and con, about suicide ; and how 
 absurd it is, even if a man has a right to take his own life, to 
 do so when he can not know but, by waiting a little, his pains 
 and troubles may be relieved.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 575 
 
 And then as to the mode of suicide. That was a capital 
 plan of Dr. Signal, who, it is supposed, stood at his open 
 window with a bottle of prussic acid, and with one move 
 ment emptied its contents into his mouth, and jerked the 
 bottle into the street. When his body was found some time 
 had elapsed there was nothing but the faintest possible 
 odor of bitter almonds, and a few fragments of a glass vial 
 in the street nothing for the coroner to go upon, and nobody 
 but a few medical friends suspected that he had committed 
 suicide. And Mr. Ledgeral thought of Uncle Shippen, who 
 always had a plan for everything, from burglary to paying 
 the national debt ; from flying in the air to reducing England 
 to an uninhabitable island by taking away from her shores 
 the Gulf Stream. The only difficulty in relation to this feat 
 might be the impossibility of deciding whether it would be 
 best to cut a channel across the Isthmus of Panama and let 
 the current go through that way, or whether it would be best 
 to build a dyke between Florida and Cuba, and stop it 
 altogether. 
 
 "I'll tell you what, sir," said Uncle Shippen; "I could 
 commit suicide, and I'd defy all the doctors in creation to 
 find it out. There are fifty different ways. I'd do it with 
 chloroform. You see, I'd take a handkerchief, and tie a 
 string to it, and lead the string through a little pulley on the 
 mantel-piece, and so on to the clock-weight, so that when the 
 weight ran down it would pull the handkerchief into the fire 
 and burn it up. Well, I would saturate the handkerchief 
 with chloroform, lie down, apply it to my nose, and half an 
 hour after the fire would remove all evidence, and the verdict 
 couldn't be anything but 'Died by the visitation of God.'" 
 
 "Oh, no," exclaimed Mr. Whoppers. "They'd find 
 scraps of burnt handkerchief and remnants of string, and 
 they would string all together. They would see through it at 
 once, and bring you infelo de se, and besides, you might want 
 to kill yourself in summer, when there are no fires. Most 
 suicides do, they say." 
 
 " Well, then, I'd try another way. I'd catch a cat one
 
 576 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 of those wild fellows from off the back fences, then I'd tie a 
 long string to her, and at the other end have some soft paper 
 soaked in chloroform. Well, I'd open the window, lie dow ,, 
 hold on to the cat with one hand, and apply the chloroform 
 with the other, and when my grasp relaxed in death, away 
 would bound the cat and take with her all evidence as to the 
 manner of the deed. What could they say to that?" 
 
 " Well, I don't know what the jury might say, but be sure 
 I'd have your obituary in the Universe, under the head of 
 awful ^z/astrophe." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral had laughed at the time of this conversa 
 tion, and he smiled a little now as he thought of it. But the 
 smile did not last long ; still the train of cognate ideas did 
 not go quite so easily. 
 
 It is not a wholesome state of mind when a man is con 
 tinually turning over in his brain thoughts of suicide, although 
 he may perhaps fully admit the wickedness, the awful and 
 supreme absurdity of the act, and although he continually 
 says to himself that by no possibility could he be guilty of 
 such sin and folly. 
 
 Relief from such dangerous thoughts, however, came at 
 last, when later in the day Mr. Ledgeral received another 
 telegram : 
 
 " Pumped five hours. Oil all the time increasing. Four o'clock, 
 started to flow. Five hundred barrels, and gaining every mimite. Will 
 reach a thousand. All the tanks full, and oil running to waste." 
 
 Here was a change. One single bound from the depths 
 of despair to the heights of hope and joy ! It may be imag 
 ined with what exultation Mr. Ledgeral packed his carpet 
 bag. He was an honest man after all. He always thought 
 so. How could he, a proud New York merchant, one of the 
 stateliest respectabilities of the city, ever have allowed him 
 self to fall into the dumps as he had ? He knew enough of 
 the exaggerations of the oil business not to rely on the esti 
 mate of a thousand barrels. But take it at one-half that quan 
 tity, and let it run one year and it ought to last two he was 
 saved !
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 577 
 
 In half an hour he was in the Erie train and on his way 
 to Oil City. It was the lightning express, and on it rushed 
 through the gloom of night, past town and hamlet, through 
 tunnels and forests, across rivers and ravines, and ever 
 unfortunately for the poor stockholders up hill and down 
 dale j on it rushed, but hardly with the rapidity that Mr. Leclg- 
 eral would have liked. If the wings of hope so often talked 
 of were only real bona fide flappable entities, he would have 
 stretched out, and left the train far behind. His spirit 
 craned itself out over the road, beyond the locomotive, and at 
 least ten seconds to the mile ahead of the time-table ; his pec 
 toral and abdominal muscles were drawn into that painful 
 state of constriction which accompanies and luckily controls 
 the yearning of the viscera for more motion, and which is not 
 inaptly expressed by the phrase " feeling as if one could fly." 
 Faster, faster, then ! Never mind the broken rails, the mis 
 placed switches, the rotten ties and bridges, or the wandering 
 cattle ! There is something ahead worth any risk to see, even 
 as a mere matter of curiosity an oil-well spouting one thou 
 sand barrels a day ! 
 
 Talk of the geysers of Iceland, the mud volcanoes of Mex 
 ico, the bubbling clay-cones of Modena, or the jets of flame 
 ever springing from the field of Pietramala ; they are all as 
 nothing compared to that greatest geological mystery a flow 
 ing oil-well. 
 
 Fancy a jet of oil springing suddenly, from a hole bored 
 six hundred feet into the solid rock, and mounting fifty or sixty, 
 or, as in the case of the great Phillips well, one hundred feet 
 into the air. Again, and again, men rush at it with desperate 
 determination to tube it, or plug it, until means can be applied 
 to direct and control its flow. And again, and again, covered 
 with oil, blinded by the spray of petroleum, and choked with 
 the gas, they yield to the force of the jet, and the intense cold 
 of the fluid, and are compelled to retreat. Hours, perhaps 
 days, elapse before they succeed, and in the meantime all sur 
 rounding nature is deluged with oil. It lies ankle deep over 
 acres of ground ; it runs in streams into Oil Creek, and on to 
 37
 
 578 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 the Alleghany, and spreads its iridescent pellicle clear to the 
 Ohio. Everything is oil. The trees drip oil. It dribbles 
 from derrick and engine-house. Clothing is soaked in oil. 
 The air for miles is filled with its gas. You taste it ; you smell 
 it ; you see it. You live in as dense an atmosphere of pure gas 
 as you would were you a member of Congress. You wade in 
 oil halfway to your knees. You talk oil, tbink oil, dream oil. 
 All creation seems turning into oil, and you wonder how long 
 the continent of America will last, and how soon it will come 
 the turn of Europe, and whether Africa will not run all into 
 the black lubricating kind. 
 
 And still she spouts spouts as persistently as a woman's 
 rights lecturer. Good Heavens ! what if Nature has dosed the 
 world for some of its colicky pains with oil, and the oil won't 
 stay down ; may we not anticipate a terrible writhing and 
 twisting, when it has all been thrown up? Pardon me, my 
 dear madam, if this idea has a smack of the shop. But an old 
 M. D., you know, may take liberties ; and besides, you have 
 children darling little angels and you know how it is your 
 self. And, moreover and that is the best excuse it was the 
 precise idea that came into Mr. Ledgeral's head as he stood 
 and listened to the workings of his new well. 
 
 It was not a steadily flowing well. It was intermittent, like 
 the famous Fox well at Petroleum Centre on Oil Creek. It 
 flowed by spurts at regular intervals, and at the time Mr. 
 Ledgeral had reached the ground was yielding about a hun 
 dred and forty barrels a day. A pretty deep and sudden drop 
 in forty-eight hours from a thousand barrels ! But Mr. Ledg 
 eral had to make some allowance for the excited fancy that 
 at the first spurt measured the flow, especially as he found upon 
 close examination no evidence in his tanks of any such pro 
 duction. 
 
 Still, a flowing well of one hundred and forty barrels, with 
 oil even at four dollars a barrel, is not to be despised. And 
 Mr. Ledgeral didn't despise it. He respected it he admired 
 it he rejoiced in it with a deep and grateful joy. He 
 watched it by day with a sentiment of profound thankfulness. 
 He listened to it at night in a state of solemn delight.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 579 
 
 Things have changed very much for the better in the oil 
 regions, although flowing wells are now pretty much among 
 the things that were. The world has moved there as well as 
 here. And why should it not, since nowhere have its ways 
 been more thoroughly lubricated. 
 
 Railroads now have taken the place of the rows of gullies 
 and holes, formerly called roads, where wheel carriages were 
 matters of sheer desperation ; where even a cavalier took his 
 life in his hand every time he threw his leg over the saddle ; 
 or where a pedestrian could pursue his oleaginous way only 
 at the imminent risk, every ten yards, of slumping quite 
 through into the regions of eternal slush. 
 
 It is understood now, that a gentleman can walk the 
 streets of Franklin, or Oil City, or Titusville, even in wet 
 weather without getting much over his knees in mud ; and 
 as for hotel accommodation, it is quite superb. Any one 
 can now get a good, " square" meal that is, if he is used to 
 the usual horrors of American cooking at many places 
 where formerly he would have had to sit down to a table 
 groaning or perhaps a better word would be grunting 
 with rancid butter, rusty mackerel, salt junk, and sodden 
 bread, with perhaps nothing but a boiled watery potato 
 between him and absolute starvation. And as for lodging, 
 one has no longer to pass the night in a feverish doze over a 
 red-hot stove in the bar-room, or sleep three in a bed, without 
 sheets, and every man with his boots on. 
 
 There are various geological theories as to the origin of 
 petroleum. Mr. Ledgeral had studied them all, and had 
 decided in his own mind in favor of the slow distillation of the 
 marine, animal, and vegetable matter that loaded the sea- 
 beaches of the ancient world, but as he stood by his well in 
 the silence of the night, and listened to the panting and 
 wheezing sound preceding each ejection, and then to the 
 fierce, spiteful spitting of oil in three or four rapid jets, and 
 then to the gurgling grunts and sighs that followed the exer 
 tion, the whole process lasting perhaps a minute, with an inter 
 val of only fifteen or twenty seconds, he could hardly keep
 
 580 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 himself from the belief that the thing was alive that some 
 great monster was at the bottom of it that the drill had 
 tapped the blubber of some antediluvian kraken. 
 
 And now, as has been said at the beginning of this 
 chapter, the monster was dead. He had given the last sign 
 of animation ; not another sigh or groan ; not another drop 
 of oil. 
 
 The well had lasted only three weeks, when it stopped 
 almost as suddenly as it had begun. Everything to resusci 
 tate it was tried, the tubing was drawn ; the drill inserted ; 
 the bore retubed, all to no use. The seed-bag a leather 
 pouch surrounding the tube, and filled with flax-seed, which, 
 swelling with the water and thus stopping up two or three feet 
 in length of the space between the tube and the sides of the 
 well, cuts off the superincumbent water from the well below 
 had been changed half-a-dozen times. Up and down 
 now above the first sandstone now below it and now 
 almost to the bottom ; the pump had been worked for a week 
 nothing but salt water, hardly a barrel of oil. As a last 
 resort a torpedo of nitro-glycerine was lowered to the bot 
 tom, and exploded by the electric spark. No result. The 
 monster was dead. And what killed him? There was no 
 regular jury impanelled, but everybody from Oil City to 
 Titusville sat upon the question, and some thought he died 
 for want of breath, and some thought that he had choked 
 himself with a big lump of paraffine , but the majority of the 
 more experienced decided that he had been drowned, and 
 that the accident came about from boring two or three wells 
 in close proximity. And what made the matter worse, these 
 wells, which had been pushed down with greedy energy, upon 
 being tubed and tested, yielded little or nothing. 
 
 A dark cloud at once settled down upon the territory of 
 the Big Thing Petroleum Company, and a still darker cloud 
 settled down again upon Mr. Ledgeral's mind. He had, as 
 it seemed, been lifted to the heights of hope only to make 
 more fearful his plunge into the depths of despair. 
 
 He came back to the city looking worse and feeling worse
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 581 
 
 than before he started. And in every respect the situation 
 was worse. He owed more money. He could clearly fore 
 see the time when his debts would become very pressing, and 
 every day that had passed had only brought him nearer to a 
 time for settlement with the Count. He was again a dis 
 honest, and soon to be a dishonored, man, hanging over the 
 brink of ruin. 
 
 Success gilds evil, covering up its deformities, and con 
 cealing its harms. It has always done so in the public mind, 
 perhaps always will do so. Why ask or expect a man, then, 
 to be much better than the age, and why demand a much 
 clearer sight, a sharper, swifter judgment from the conscience 
 of the individual than from the common moral sense in 
 which, and by which, his whole character has been moulded ? 
 
 Piactically and actually, then, success justifies and sanc 
 tifies much that theoretically we know to be evil, and on the 
 other hand failure exhibits it in all its deformity. Oh yes, 
 when the great man is " down," " burst up," or has been 
 stripped of his money or his power, we can all see what a 
 wicked man he was, and not only wicked, but foolish. And 
 just so with a man's own estimate of his own deeds and 
 thoughts. People talk, especially the good people of the 
 " intuitive" school, as if conscience in each man was of a 
 fixed force the same always in quantity, and they really 
 seem to think that it requires a violent effort of the will to 
 turn away from its warnings. Whereas, in the full blaze of 
 successful villainy, a man loses for the time all moral sense, and 
 his conscience selects the darkest and most secluded cham 
 ber of his brain, and falls into such a sound sleep that it can 
 only be awakened by the loud knocking of evil conse 
 quences. He is not capable of judging of the moral qualities 
 of his actions, so that we might in many cases adopt the 
 paradox "the bigger the rascal the more honest the man." 
 
 But take away the glow and glitter of success. Ah ! 
 then conscience begins to wake and work, and, in working, 
 grows more strong and more clear. The egg of remorse 
 is hatched out under the rotting leaves of unfruitful sin.
 
 582 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 The little animal peeps into the light of consciousness, and 
 rapidly grows into a snake of a dozen rattles. Serpents 
 are viviparous ! Thank you, kind sir, but we'll let the figure 
 stand ; any reptilian form will do "basilisk, or cockatrice, 
 or mailed saurian." The owner of the animal feels his 
 fangs, and if questioned upon the subject will be ready to 
 admit that a man never feels so sorry for any wicked thing 
 that he has done as when he has awakened fully to the 
 conviction that he has done it for nothing that he has 
 served the devil without pay. 
 
 And that was precisely Mr. Ledgeral's case. Poor man ! 
 Let us pity him, and firmly resolve that we never will give 
 Satan tick for a penny's worth of sin. Ready money, and 
 cash down, Old Boy, if you want any of your rascally jobs 
 done by us. 
 
 " So you think it was the new well that killed the old 
 one," exclaimed Mr. Whoppers. " Well, well, that illustrates 
 the old saying, 'Better let well alone.'" 
 
 It is doubtful whether it was not as much a desire to 
 escape from Mr. Whoppers, as a determination to see for 
 himself how matters were standing between Helen and the 
 Count, that induced Mr. Ledgeral to decide suddenly on a 
 visit to West Point. 
 
 There had been numerous notices in the daily papers of 
 the affair in Wooster Street, but all of them rather meagre. 
 Mr. Whoppers had exerted his tact and diplomatic skill, and 
 his influence with the police-officers and reporters to this 
 end. He alone had all the details from the beginning, and he 
 was not going to lose the opportunity, for a grand sensational 
 in the Universe. 
 
 He called Luther into his office two or three days after 
 the fight, to show him the proof of his article. " Here we 
 all are," he exclaimed. " Got us all three columns : Bril 
 liant Exploits of Amateur Detectives Professionals Nowhere 
 Inefficiency of the Police Rottenness and Corruption of 
 the system Gallant Rescue, from the hands of a desperate 
 Band of Kidnappers and Murderers, of the great French 
 Millioneuse."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 583 
 
 " Millioneuse ! Where did you get that word ? " 
 
 " Oh, that's newspaper French. You don't suppose that 
 a fellow who has all his life been taking liberty with his native 
 tongue, hasn't a right to do what he pleases with a foreign 
 language ? If the French haven't the word, it's because they 
 haven't the thing, that's all. Well, here we are. I've immor 
 talized the whole of us Boggs in particular. He is the 
 hero. His blood flowed, you know, most freely." 
 
 "I see you have done it in your grand style," said 
 Luther looking over the proof. " I'm afraid you will make 
 us all look ridiculous." 
 
 " Must have some fine writing nowadays," replied Mr. 
 Whoppers, shaking his head. "The taste of the general 
 public demands the highfalutin. Look here now ; suppose I 
 should say, Mr. Boggs got his arm free, and struck his op 
 ponent several severe blows on the face and head. That 
 would be plain English, and tell the story, but do you sup 
 pose it would give a man his money's worth ? Look now 
 how I have put it. ' Mr. Boggs succeeded in disembarrassing 
 his dexter arm, and availing himself, with lightning-like 
 rapidity, of the opportunity, proceeded to deliver, with the 
 velocity and percussive violence of a steam hammer, a series 
 of blows immediately upon and in a direct normal to the 
 nasal and supraorbital regions of his adversary's sinciput.' 
 Don't you see the difference ? Here's something for your 
 money, a half-dozen first-class words, and one at least that 
 would drive any bar-room loafer or country-store lounger 
 to his dictionary, if he had one. Read it through, you will 
 find that it is all in the same liberal style. For instance, 
 did you at once suspect those rascals ? Not a bit of it ; see, 
 here it is ; the conclusion was irresistible, and the conviction 
 flashed itself instantaneously through your mind. Did you 
 rush up to the old woman in the corner ? No, you advanced 
 with rapidity to the recumbent form occupying one angle of 
 the room, and so on. You don't like it ! Well, I can tell 
 you that you have no choice between this kind of thing and 
 downright slang."
 
 584 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " Well, I rather think," said Luther, " that I prefer the 
 slang." 
 
 " So do I," said Mr. Whoppers, "but it wouldn't do in this 
 case ; besides, I try to keep the Universe clear from slang. 
 You know the Universe goes in for the genteel, as well as for 
 the moral and religious. Why, I'd no more admit a slangy 
 article, however vigorous, than I would admit a page of Her 
 bert Spencer, a lecture by John Fiske, or any exposition of the 
 real views and discoveries of Tyndal and Huxley and Agassiz 
 and Darwin, or any other of the host of wicked scientific men 
 who are upsetting the good old geology and ethnology of Gen 
 esis. However, that is neither here nor there. At present I 
 wanted to say something to you. And first, how is your old 
 friend ? " 
 
 " Oh, she's gaining." 
 
 " Gaining, of course she is. She'll gain to the last moment 
 of her life. And all the better for you, my boy that is, if she 
 don't live too long. But I suppose, now she is getting better, 
 you will be thinking about going back to your old place in 
 Burling Slip. It is still open for you." 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Gainsby informed me yesterday that they were 
 wanting me back. He had the politeness to say that he did 
 not see how they could get along without me." 
 
 "Well, then, my advice is, don't be in a hurry. A few 
 days more or less don't make any difference. You have been 
 hard worked lately; so have I. Suppose we take two or 
 three days, and run up to West Point? " 
 
 " Why the Ledgerals are there." 
 
 " Well, suppose they are ; they can't hurt us. At any 
 rate, we can keep clear of them." 
 
 Luther at first resolutely refused, and for some time he 
 tried to fortify his determination with reasons drawn from the 
 condition of Madame Steignitz, and from the necessity of re 
 turning at once to his work. But there was a secret traitor in 
 the camp, quietly undermining the walls of resolution a lurk 
 ing devil of a desire to see her to be near her to live in the 
 same house with her perchance to speak to her, and to tell
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 585 
 
 her that if she did marry the Count he hoped she would do 
 better, and be happier, than most American girls who have 
 married foreign titles yes, he would go. 
 
 " And I'll propose the thing to Boggs. His face is almost 
 well, and the Stichens have gone off to Saratoga, 1 
 
 " Gone ! I didn't know that," exclaimed Luther. " I 
 meant to have called there this evening." 
 
 " Yes, Dr. Petcalf told Stichen that he wouldn't guarantee 
 his life a day if he did not clear right out. I'll tell you what 
 my opinion is. I think the little man is in a bad way. He 
 has been making too much money lately, and it has gone to 
 his liver. I'm afraid he'll step out suddenly. He's had one 
 touch, you know." 
 
 " Let us hope, for her sake, that he may never have 
 another." 
 
 " Amen ! Although I don't know that it would be such a 
 misfortune for her. She'd make a widow, young, handsome, 
 clever, and rich. I don't see how you could crowd more of 
 human bliss into a small package, and then you know the old 
 saying, ' There's as good fish in the sea,' etc., applies as well 
 to a dead husband as to a lost lover." 
 
 " Meaning yourself," exclaimed Luther, somewhat indig 
 nantly. 
 
 " Well, I don't say no. I might be disposed, in such a 
 case, to angle a little in that water, if it weren't for one thing. 
 I'm afraid Boggs could, and would, outcast me." 
 
 Luther turned on his heel. " Well then, it's understood, 
 to-morrow, at half-past three, we all meet on board the Mary 
 Powell."
 
 CHAPTER XXXH. 
 
 Fashionable Hotels Luther and Helen at West Point Uncle Shippen 
 on Dancing His opinion of the German. 
 
 THERE are, as is well known, perhaps half-a-dozen sum 
 mer resorts of the highest fashion, places where the 
 hotel registers have the power of the libra d*oro, the mere 
 entering of your name is a distinction ; places where a dinner 
 is a step upward, your bed-room key the insignia of rank, and 
 your week's bill quite a patent of nobility. 
 
 There are, besides, innumerable watering-places, great and 
 small, where fashionable people can and do go without losing 
 caste, some quiet, respectable, and stupid ; some noisy, fast, 
 and amusing or disgusting, according to taste; but there is 
 hardly more than half-a-dozen, if so many, where the aura of 
 fashion settles down upon the place in a visible cloud. 
 
 Not that these consecrated places are confined to one class. 
 They may be cliquish, but they are not exclusive. You will 
 meet thousands of queer people, fast people, and slow people, 
 vulgar and refined people ladies who get all their dresses 
 from Paris, and ladies who never heard the name of Worth 
 or Vasseur or L'Archeveque, and who don't even know Diclon 
 or Madame Volorem women who have pushed their way, 
 and women who are pushing their way ; but notwithstanding 
 this jumble, a certain odor of haut ton pervades the atmos 
 phere, an' ^iheres persistently in the constitution of the 
 place. 
 
 ' And yet these places are not at all alike not alike even 
 in the character of the fashionable aureole that hangs over them. 
 But this difference is one to be felt rather than described.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 587 
 
 The brush of a painter may make the variations in the glory 
 of sunset apparent, but words are powerless to more than in 
 dicate their existence. We might, perhaps, with our own poor 
 pen, convey a tolerable idea of the geographical and topo 
 graphical position, the character and extent of the accommo 
 dations at Sharon, Saratoga, West Point, Newport, and New 
 London with an analysis of the company, and a summary of 
 the amusements, the whole winding up with an estimate of the 
 comparative amounts of health, strength, moral improvement 
 and social enjoyment afforded by each in a season; but that 
 would not touch the point we are trying to get at. We should 
 be just as far as ever from conveying a sense of those delicate 
 varieties in the parfum de societ'e ; those softened variations in 
 the lustre of the pure purple of fashion, characteristic of each 
 place. Boggs, perhaps, might do it ; or, still better, Peter 
 Weddemall. He has all the profound knowledge of a society- 
 man, and wields the pen of a poet. 
 
 The subject is difficult, and might, perhaps, have better 
 not been broached; but it is not too late for the reader to 
 leave it, and jump on board the Mary Powell, the pride of 
 the lower Hudson, as she throws off her fasts from the wharf, 
 and starts on her afternoon trip up the river. All our party 
 are on board. 
 
 Mr. Boggs has a scratch or two on his cheek, and a black 
 mark under his eye. He don't care about showing himself 
 among the crowd of ladies on the upper deck. Captain 
 Combings wants to smoke ; Mr. Whoppers wants to read the 
 newspaper, and Luther wants to look at the scenery and enjoy 
 the cool, pure breeze, and there is no better place for all than 
 below forward in the bow of the boat. What with pure air, 
 fine scenery, pleasant conversation, the second edition of an 
 evening journal, and a mild cigar, a fellow must be very ex 
 acting if he can't manage to pass pleasantly the two hours 
 and a half between the city and West Point. 
 
 The Powell has the tide with her it is one of her quick 
 trips, and she is going along at the rate of twenty-five miles 
 an hour. It would be a shame, when her passengers are
 
 5 88 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 travelling so fast, to detain the reader with any unnecessary 
 details. We will, therefore, suppose everybody to have landed, 
 and the coaches and carriages to have delivered their loads 
 under the inquisitive eyes of the well-dressed crowd assembled 
 on the piazza, avowedly to greet friends, but as much or more 
 to criticise strangers. 
 
 It was not until Luther had secured his room, and was 
 quietly seated at his window looking out on to the slopes of 
 Sugar Loaf, that he fairly put the question to himself " Why 
 had he come ? what a weak irresolute fool ! " and the old simile 
 of the moth and the candle is too common not to have oc 
 curred to him. " Just one last look ! But why a last look, if 
 that look is to be painful, or, worse, full of peril ? Just to 
 say good-bye for the last time. But why good-bye once more, 
 if the parting is to be immediate and formal ? Would there 
 be any sense in mending a broken chain only to sever it the 
 next instant ? Yes, yes ! to be near her for one instant, to 
 speak to her once more, perhaps to touch her hand ! It is 
 worth any pain, any peril, any sacrifice. What ! just for a few 
 moments ? and then and then nothing but blank misery, 
 and oh ! such a long life before me. God help me, but I wish 
 I had gone with the old Montaigne to the bottom, below that 
 bluff! No, no, not that, for then I never should have seen 
 her. But if I could have starved to death that night ! " 
 
 And suddenly Luther, giving full sway to the passionate 
 tide of feeling, flung his head upon his arms resting on the 
 window-sill, and fairly groaned as his compressed eyelids 
 squeezed out two or three drops of boiling fluid, and all the 
 world vanished from his view. 
 
 " O God, I cannot, will not, live without her, I will die ! 
 I must die." 
 
 At the sound of his own passionate exclamation, he 
 jumped to his feet and stared for a moment wildly around 
 the room. 
 
 Can it be that such a nice young man is going to give 
 way to an access of suicidal mania ? Not a bit of it ; he 
 does something much more sensible. He goes to the wash-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 589 
 
 stand, and laves his face, head and all, in a basin of cold 
 water. 
 
 You should have seen him when he emerged, and was 
 drying his dripping locks his face all aglow, his eyes spar 
 kling, and his brown hair standing all over his head in curls 
 that fairly quivered and danced with freshened vitality. He 
 kill himself! and for love? Bah! the world can't do without 
 a few such. Are all its honors, and riches, and rewards to 
 be forever and eternally inherited we won't say enjoyed 
 by the gross, sensual, and selfish, or by sickly, mean, 
 miserable, dirty devils, who have no idea but to heap up 
 wealth without using it, and extort consideration without pay 
 ing for it ! whose sole ambition is to swindle the public, 
 by passing off the false counters of notoriety for the pure 
 gold of fame ! 
 
 No ; our Luther had no such foolish thoughts. He was 
 in love desperately in love, as a good many strong men 
 have been before him. But he was no silly swain to sigh his 
 life away for love. The world might never be so bright 
 again, but it had its interests, and worthy ones too. There 
 iomes a time to all men, it is said, when the glamour of life 
 wears away and we wake to a sense of the dull, poor reality. 
 Why not as well reach that point suddenly with one quick 
 sharp shock, as to wait the slow attrition of mean cares and 
 disagreeable duties the slow and deliberate tapping of 
 time ? The most that could be said would be that he was 
 old early. 
 
 No ! come what might, he was lord of himself and master 
 of his convictions. He was not the slave of passion, and he 
 would not be drawn by it into any selfish and reckless disre 
 gard of right and duty. 
 
 The idea of trying to induce his beloved to run off with 
 him never occurred to him ; he never thought of such a thing. 
 
 The obstacles to his love, he saw and admitted, were in 
 superable. He was dominated by the social conditions under 
 which he lived. Why shouldn't he be ? You may rail, if you 
 please, against the pricks, but it is very foolish to kick against 
 them.
 
 590 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 It used to be a doctrine taught by our great teachers ot 
 all knowledge, the novelists that a hero who wouldn't jump 
 out of a two-story window into the gutter with his beloved, in 
 defiance of a prudent parent, must necessarily be lacking in 
 all the better elements of a spirited lover. Nothing can be 
 more silly or more erroneous. There may, perhaps, be a few 
 cases where prudence and good sense, as well as passion, 
 counsel the furtive ; but, in general, the young man who urges 
 an elopement, or who will persist in marrying a girl against 
 the wishes of her family and the suggestions of prudence, is a 
 selfish, mean-spirited, and very often, in every way, a worth 
 less cur. And the girl ! What of the girl ? Why, she's a 
 weak, silly goose, and, perhaps, deserves to be punished, as 
 she probably will be, by a life of domestic misery. 
 
 A fair match, then ! why not let them marry ? 
 
 So I would, were it not that they are sure to have a family of 
 ill-bred, ignorant, wayward children to perpetuate and dissemi 
 nate all of their parents' mean foibles and petty vices of char 
 acter and manners. 
 
 This was the way Uncle Shippen talked, and we can't 
 think that the comical old quiz was much out on this point ; 
 at any rate Luther practically coincided with him. 
 
 If it had been a mere question of bread and butter, it 
 might have been different. Luther had no want of confidence 
 in his own power to earn what the world would call a good 
 living. And he felt, moreover, that he and Helen could live 
 together very well on bread without butter, if that were all. 
 But taking a girl out of her social sphere bringing her down 
 from her fashionable estate to the dull realities of simple well- 
 fed respectability it was impossible. The very genius of 
 conventionality forbids it ; the united voice of society forbids ; 
 every feeling of honor, magnanimity, and generosity forbids 
 it ; even love itself forbids it. It is impossible. As well un 
 dertake to bring down the planets for billiard-balls, or the 
 stars of the milky-way to light up the opera-bouff. 
 
 Mrs. Ledgeral never exhibited more tact than she did 
 when she first met Luther at the foot of the stairs leading to
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 59* 
 
 the grand hall. He had suddenly become famous his name 
 was in the newspapers and though inwardly disturbed at his 
 unexpected appearance, it would never do to convert him into 
 a persecuted and ill-treated hero by any supercilious or 
 haughty manifestations on her part. A neglected hero, or a 
 hero with a grievance, might be dangerous ; whereas, as things 
 stood, it was to be hoped that all danger had neairy or quite 
 passed by. 
 
 She advanced to him, presented her hand with a certain 
 warmth of manner, and made numerous inquiries about the 
 adventure that she had seen noticed in the journals. 
 
 Luther was pleased, but hardly deceived. It is easy to 
 see through a friendly manner when the unfriendliness that it 
 covers is mingled with fear. The man who is about to strike 
 may conceal his design with sweet smiles and honeyed 
 phrases, but the man who anticipates a blow finds it much 
 more difficult to impose upon his adversary by jaunty confi 
 dence and affected ease. Luther felt that Mrs. Ledgeral de 
 tested him, but he felt grateful to her for having helped him 
 so nicely through the embarrassment of a first meeting, and 
 he in turn made, in a free, matter-of-course style, his inquiries 
 after the members of the family. 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral ? Yes, Mr. Ledgeral came up from the city 
 two days ago. Couldn't say how long he would stay ; was 
 looking very bad, and she really had great fears for his health. 
 And Helen ? She was not looking very well either ; was 
 afraid that West Point had not agreed very well with her. A 
 trip to Europe some of those German springs would be the 
 thing. Hoped that Helen would be able to go out this fall. 
 "I go ? Oh, no ; I'm afraid not. I shall have to stay to look 
 after Mr. Ledgeral, but Helen will be well taken care of she 
 will go in the charge of a very good friend," and here Mrs. 
 Ledgeral gave an emphatic nod of the head and a little confi 
 dential smirk, as much as to say, It's all settled. 
 
 Luther was saved from the necessity of a reply by Mr. 
 Whoppers, who flourished up at this moment. 
 
 " Ah ! Mrs. Ledgeral, I must congratulate you. Pray tell
 
 592 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 us when it'll be. Luther and myself are great hands at a 
 secret." 
 
 " Indeed, Mr. Whoppers, the report is, to say the least of 
 it, premature. There has been no announcement of anything 
 of the kind." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I see. You won't authorize the journals to say 
 anything about it just yet, but in private you count upon it, 
 eh ? I must ask Helen." 
 
 " Oh, no, no ; don't say a word to her about it. She is so 
 sensitive she will deeply resent any allusion of the kind, I as 
 sure you. She will be very angry with you." 
 
 "With me! Whoppers! Impossible. Where is she ?'' 
 
 " She has gone to the evening parade with Count Isen- 
 thal." 
 
 " It's all settled ! " exclaimed Mr. Whoppers, taking Lu 
 ther's arm and leading him out for a turn on the piazza; "it's 
 all settled, but I'll be hanged if I like it. Hope it hasn't hit 
 you hard, old fellow ? Well, well, it isn't, perhaps, a bad 
 thing in the end to have a fellow's affections rubbed up a 
 little the wrong way. It's like rubbing up a cat's back ; it 
 makes the sparks fly at the time, but both fur and feeling lie 
 snugger after it. 
 
 " Confound it," continued Mr. Whoppers ; " those fellows 
 with handles to their names come over here and set our 
 women-folks half mad. And I never knew any good come of 
 it. At the first go off there were those Caton cases. Well, 
 they made rather brilliant matches, but since then look at 'em. 
 There was Molly Boggs, one of the prettiest and sweetest 
 girls and biggest dots in New York. She could have had the 
 pick and choice of the jeisnesse doree, which perhaps is no great 
 privilege, but also of the rising young men the fellows with 
 a future before them possible editors or, if not quite so high 
 as that, novelists, statesmen, bankers, commission-merchants, 
 and seven-ciphered millionnaires. Well, now, I don't believe 
 one-twentieth part of the lies afloat, but one can't say that 
 the match was a brilliant one. And then look at the Stich- 
 neys. What did they gain by hankering after the aristocracy ?
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 593 
 
 And then there was that miserable affair of Miss Perrywinkle. 
 And there is Billet he married off his daughter, d la mode de 
 Paris, and they say that he is quite willing to admit that all 
 marriage is a lottery. There's Madame la Duchesse d'An- 
 guelain, de Ville cour, I guess she wishes she had married 
 with the Basse cour. And then there was that affair of Mrs. 
 De Graw Brown. Why the fellow robbed her and mistreated 
 her in every way locked her up a close prisoner, and threat 
 ened to murder her by running a needle in between her cervical 
 vertebra. To be sure there are some who have not done so 
 very badly. There's the Jones faction. They might perhaps 
 have stayed at home and fared worse especially the Duchess. 
 Don't know much of the Marquise, but the Duke is a jolly 
 good fellow. But perhaps the most appropriate thing of the 
 kind has been in the matter of the Duchessa delle Turretti: but 
 then she was brought up with foreign tastes, habits and lan 
 guages, and the Duke, no one can deny, is a nice young man. 
 Still, one swallow don't make a good long drink, and for two 
 or three girls who have bought not only a title but a decent 
 husband with it, there are more than a hundred who have 
 found themselves swindled out of youth, beauty and fortune, 
 and with nothing but some worthless sprig of broken-down 
 and vagabond nobility to show for it all. 
 
 " I don't like this business," continued Mr. Whoppers 
 after a pause. " The Count is a Count, no doubt, and rich 
 too ; but why the Ledgerals should push matters so determin 
 edly, and what Helen can see in him to make her consent I 
 can't see, and especially if, as I suspect, she don't care much 
 for him personally. She can't want his title. She is the most 
 sensible girl in New York society, and society-girls are not all 
 fools. No thanks, however, to their education and training. 
 Why I know a dozen who would spurn the Grand Duke of 
 Nephelococcygia himself, unless he came as a nice young 
 man and Helen is one of them. No, I don't believe she 
 cares a straw for his title of Count but there is no account 
 ing for feminine tastes. Some girls like slate-pencils better 
 than sugar-candy, and prefer chalk to cheese. 
 38
 
 594 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " Ah, there's Boggs with a cigar in his mouth." And Mr. 
 Whoppers pulled out his cigar-case, and selecting a Partiga of 
 what he called the Srichen brand, darted off to Mr. Boggs for 
 a light. 
 
 Luther, left to himself, wandered into the spacious draw 
 ing-room. He found himself alone ; the lamps were not yet 
 lighted for the evening, but the reflex glow of mellow twilight 
 streamed into the eastern windows, and filled the vast room 
 with a flood of quiet, subdued radiance. He could just dis 
 tinguish the features of the fine head of a young girl, by Sully, 
 hanging upon the wall ; and he stood before the portrait for 
 some minutes in silence. 
 
 There was a light footstep and the delicate froufrou of 
 organdy, and a soft voice exclaimed, " It is a fine picture and 
 a charming face, don't you think ? " 
 
 Luther turned, and quietly took Helen's extended hand. 
 His nerves had been recently too well exercised in emotions 
 of all kinds to even quiver or tremble again. He held the 
 soft hand for a moment. It was not so plump as he had 
 known it. He looked into her face. A less eager and pene 
 trating glance would have shown him that it had grown wan 
 and thin. 
 
 Helen began to feel a little embarrassed at the scrutiny ; 
 she must force herself to some commonplace. 
 
 " You were very much absorbed," she said, indicating the 
 picture. " It's a fine painting, and not a bad face. Do you 
 know, some people insist upon paying me the compliment of 
 saying that it looks a little like me." 
 
 " There is a possible resemblance," replied Luther, " be 
 tween you and the original." 
 
 " In the features ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " In the expression ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " What then ? " 
 
 " In this : that with such beauty of face, such indications 
 of soul and sentiment and intellect, it may well be that she, 
 too, has ere this given some poor devil the heart-ache."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 595 
 
 The words were uttered in a low voice, but there was 
 something intensely bitter in the tone. 
 
 Helen turned her eyes up at the picture with one wild 
 flash, that almost instantly melted into a dreamy gaze. 
 
 " Perhaps the resemblance is still more striking," she mut 
 tered, as if speaking to herself. 
 
 "How so?" 
 
 " In this" and the whisper almost died in her throat 
 " in this : that she, poor wretch, may have had the heart-ache 
 too." 
 
 And as she spoke her form seemed to shrink down, until 
 Luther instinctively stretched out his arm to support her ; and 
 her cheek grew gray, almost ashen, in the fading light. 
 
 " Helen ! oh Helen ! " But she motioned his arm away. 
 
 There was no one in the room, but a dozen people were 
 flitting by the windows encircling it on three sides, and occa 
 sionally looking in. No one saw anything but two young 
 people standing quietly before Sully's picture. 
 
 'Tis often thus, that the most impassioned scenes in the 
 drama of life pass directly beneath our idle eyes, and we see 
 nothing. The flashes and corruscations of harmless heat- 
 lightning we gaze at and wink and wonder ; but the thunder 
 bolt that rives the oak to its heart often gathers its force in 
 silence, and tells us nothing of itself until the grand crash. 
 A mild flirtation, especially if it have a spice of the improper 
 as, for instance, between a gray -headed old roue with mar 
 ried children and somebody's pretty young wife will furnish 
 talk for the town, that is, for the town of " our set ; " but a 
 deep, desperate passion, on which hang the issues of life or 
 death, will sometimes play its game to the end without a single 
 gossiping member of the galerie being able to distinguish coin 
 or counter. 
 
 But why interrupt a love-scene with stupid reflections 
 and lame comparisons and halting figures ? It is wrong, and 
 we haste back to the young couple, who, side by side, in 
 silence made two or three turns up and down the room. 
 
 " This is folly," at length said Helen.
 
 596 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " I know it, worse than folly ; madness ! " 
 
 " Why then did you come here ? " 
 
 " Simply because I could not help myself. I had to see 
 you once more. I wanted to hear from your own lips that 
 the thing is settled." 
 
 " It is settled that we never can be anything to each other 
 but friends. You know that." 
 
 " Yes ; but I never can seem to be sure of it until I hear 
 you are engaged to the Count. Tell me that it is so, and I 
 will go away to-morrow morning. Don't say that I have no 
 right to question you. I have the right the right of mortal 
 pain and agony ; your own heart tells you that I have the 
 right to know the exact truth. It can do me no good 
 perhaps, in either way, but it seems to me that settled misery 
 must be better than this fitful fever of doubt, and hope, and 
 despair. Tell me then, are you going to marry the Count?" 
 
 Helen stopped short in her walk, and clasping her hands 
 passionately uttered a low moan. " I must," she cried ; " I 
 cannot help myself. I have promised my father this very 
 day that I would within the week give the Count a favorable 
 answer." 
 
 " And you love him ? " 
 
 " How can you ask such a question? You mock me. I 
 do not love him," added Helen in a firmer tone ; " but I 
 shall try, and I believe I shall succeed, for I believe him to be 
 all that is noble and good ! He certainly behaves to me with 
 great generosity and consideration. But, had I reasons to 
 dislike him, I still must marry him ; not for the poor pitiful 
 reasons that all the world will suppose." 
 
 Helen slipped her arm within Luther's and looked up im 
 ploringly in his face. " You will not think so meanly of me. 
 You will believe that I have better and stronger reasons than 
 I can tell. Luther Lansdale, you must believe me ! It is a 
 secret, a terrible secret, between my father and myself. You 
 have seen him ; you know what a sick man he is. He is 
 dying, and I I alone know the cause ; I alone can save him. 
 Don't think that he is trying to deceive me to what he thinks
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 597 
 
 my good. You have but to see him and you would be satis 
 fied. You have no idea how much he has failed in two or 
 three weeks. He looks like a ghost almost like a corpse." 
 
 " But how can your marrying the Count relieve him ? " ex 
 claimed Luther. 
 
 "Oh, that I can't tell you it is a secret and and I 
 don't know that I fully understand it myself. But father tells 
 me so, and I must believe him. He assures me that he will 
 be a well man in a month if I marry the Count, and that the 
 whole family will be saved." 
 
 " Saved ! from what ? " 
 
 "Well, perhaps I I should not I ought not to say 
 what. No, no, I cannot say what." 
 
 " I cannot understand it," muttered Luther. 
 
 "You need not understand it. It could make no differ 
 ence to you to me to any one, if you did understand it. Oh, 
 I could tell you something that would make you at least feel 
 it I will tell you why should I not ? " 
 
 The little hand clasped Luther's arm with convulsive ener 
 gy, and yet with no motion or gesture that would have attrac 
 ted attention, or disturbed the cool decorum of the drawing- 
 room had it been filled. But as yet not a soul had come into 
 the rapidly darkening room, save the old porter with his torch 
 for lighting the gas. 
 
 " I will tell you something ! you will never mention it ! 
 something which will let you see how impossible it is for me 
 to resist. Father went down upon his knees to me to his 
 daughter, down on his knees this very day, scarce two hours 
 since, begging me by all my love for him, by every considera 
 tion of affection and duty, to consent." 
 
 Something in the young man's look something electric in 
 the slight tremor that ran through his frame, startled the young 
 girl. 
 
 " Oh, Luther ! " she exclaimed, " you must forgive me ; 
 you must forget me ! " 
 
 " Forgive you ! " he replied, and the low, stern tones of 
 his voice went through and through her heart with a sweeping
 
 598 . NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 thrust. "Forgive you, why should I not? what have I to for 
 give ? Yes, I will forgive you, but I will curse fate forever. 
 And as to forgetting you," he continued, swiftly slipping his 
 arm round her waist and holding her with convulsive force to 
 his heart, while their parched and bloodless lips met for an 
 instant in one fierce, despairing kiss ; " forget you, never ! 
 never ! " 
 
 She tottered back from the sudden embrace, and instinct 
 ively stretched out her hand to the marble mantel piece for 
 support, just as the first jet sprang into rlame under old John's 
 torch. 
 
 It is astonishing the amount of conventionality and social 
 propriety developed by one single gas-jet. The subject is a 
 curious one, and intimately connected with the doctrine of 
 correlation of forces. Professor Tyndal, who has done so 
 much to decide the musical properties of flames, ought to take 
 up the question, and let us know exactly how much carbon is 
 consumed to a certain quantity of good conduct, either in the 
 streets or the drawing-room ; and how much decorum is devel 
 oped by a stated number of particles of oxygen, clashing with 
 a given number of particles of hydrogen. The gas companies 
 could afford to pay the expenses of the investigation. They 
 could add an item to their bills Dr. to so much propriety ; 
 and at once stop all the grumbling about their extortion and 
 swindling. 
 
 The young couple felt the influence of the light, and in 
 stinctively drew back into positions that would have satisfied 
 the requisitions of Mrs. Grundy, had she stopped in her walk 
 round and round the piazza, to look into the room. 
 
 Luckily a minute was allowed for the half-fond, half- 
 reproachful expression of mingled fright, and misery, and 
 despair in her face, and the fierce, reckless passion of his, to 
 resolve itself in both into a quiet and subdued look, in which 
 hardly the keen and jealous eyes of Mrs. Ledgeral could have 
 traced any evidences of profound feeling. Half a minute only, 
 when that lady came through one of the open windows, fol 
 lowed by the Count.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 599 
 
 " Oh, Helen ! you here ? I have been looking all over for 
 you. And Mr. Lansdale too ! He has been telling you all 
 about his adventure, I suppose ? Count, let me present to 
 you Mr. Lansdale, one of our clerks in the store down town," 
 and Mrs. Ledgeral slightly emphasized the last phrase. 
 
 Luther winced a little. There was something in the bald 
 New Yorkism, " a store clown town," that flashed such a bright 
 light into the depths of the golden gulf. If she had said the 
 house, or the company, or the counting-room but a clerk in 
 a store down town ! 
 
 It had an excellent effect upon Luther's manner. It 
 brought out, as if by an electric ray, the fact engraven on his 
 mind, but which, nevertheless, had a strange disposition to 
 occasionally fade out of consciousness, that the Count was 
 not the only or the chief barrier between him and Helen ; 
 that she would be as far from him if the Count had never 
 risen above the horizon of New York fashion. And so to the 
 presentation Luther bowed quite graciously. 
 
 " Mr. Whoppers has been telling us about the affair, but I 
 should like to have your account a little more in detail. Count, 
 it won't interest you, perhaps, and, Helen, you won't want to 
 hear it all over again we won't keep you. Luther will sit 
 down here and talk to me quietly for a little while. Mind, 
 my dear, don't stroll away too far ; I want to go in to tea in 
 half an hour. 
 
 " Lovers are so apt to forget everything and everybody but 
 themselves, and the Count is so agreeable," continued Mrs. 
 Ledgeral. 
 
 " Dear Helen, she is a good girl, and I hope she will be 
 happy ; but I don't know how she will like living in Germany. 
 The Count, however, is getting very much Americanized, and 
 I have great hopes. There are so many foreigners who come 
 over and live here for some length of time, grumbling and 
 fault-finding every moment of their stay. They return to their 
 own country for a while, when back they come. They have 
 had enough of the old home, and they always make much 
 more quiet and agreeable citizens on their second visit. So 
 I have great hopes of the Count.
 
 600 NE VER A GA IN. 
 
 "And now tell me something about this old woman you 
 rescued. Mr. Boggs says she is quite a character and that 
 she is worth considerable property owns a house or two 
 have you any idea who she is and where she comes from ? Is 
 she really French or German ? " 
 
 Luther had hardly time to reply to the question when Mr. 
 Boggs, accompanied by Mr. Ledgeral, entered the room. The 
 smallest nod of the head was all the salutation the latter 
 vouchsafed to the young man. But Luther was so shocked 
 by the change in the great man's appearance, that he hardly 
 noticed the scant courtesy. 
 
 "If every man's internal care was written on his brow as 
 plainly as it is on that man's," thought Luther, 
 
 " ' How many would our pity share who claim our envy now.' " 
 
 " What can it be ? and how can Mrs. Ledgeral be so blind ? 
 Has she no eyes ? Can't she see ? The man is dying of men 
 tal misery what can it be? I cannot, cannot understand it ! " 
 and Luther took advantage of Mrs. Struggles' appearance at 
 this moment to step off for a solitary stroll to the falls. 
 
 Later in the evening, he was standing in an angle of the 
 piazza, overlooking the river. The parlors, large and small, 
 were all lighted, but as the weather was warm the company, 
 generally, remained outside. The colored band, in the large 
 room, kept pouring forth its inviting strains of dance-music, 
 but no one heeded. West Point never was a great place for 
 dancing. It never could compare in this respect with many 
 of its rivals. The cotillion was never known to begin there at 
 ten o'clock in the morning, and last without intermission until 
 twelve at night. 
 
 Mr. Boggs says that this is owing to the fact that there are 
 never so many young dancing people as at the other places, 
 and that the traditions of the place are not of the saltatious 
 kind. But this only explains the matter in part. We must 
 look deeper. Mr. Whoppers says the air is not so jiggerous 
 as at Sharon, or New London, or Newport ; but that is non 
 sense, as well in idea as in words. Two reasons, however,
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 60 1 
 
 stand out distinctly one is, that an immense amount of dan 
 cing capacity is used up by the system of academic hops. The 
 Government has a lot of young bears in training, and it skil 
 fully avails itself of feminine influence ; and it adroitly keeps 
 up the supply by somehow disseminating the notion among 
 the very young girls that it is quite a privilege. There is a 
 back action in this as in all motion. Miss Dickenchild is the 
 belle of the season. She has danced all over America and all 
 over Europe. She has danced at Constantinople, and Cairo, and 
 Jerusalem, and Damascus, and once even, while travelling in 
 the Holy Land, took a turn, just for fun, with Bucky Stringsby 
 one evening, in front of the tent on the shore of the Dead 
 Sea, very much to the delectation of Sheik Abdurahman ben 
 Soulimun iben Abram and his friends can it be expected that 
 she a girl who has stood up with_ Count Fidil Fadal at Com- 
 piegne, and had Prince Charming's arm round her waist for 
 half-an-hour at Delmonico's, should take any interest in cadet 
 hops ? Not she, and thus comes a reflex air, or aura, that is 
 not favorable to dancing at the Large Hotel. 
 
 Another reason is, unquestionably, the width and extent 
 of the piazzas. Everybody likes to get outside, and keep 
 outside, when the weather will permit. There is a fine large 
 room almost vacant, and plenty of light and music, but 
 somehow people prefer to sit around and look through the 
 windows, and the dancing is half the time left to the 
 children. 
 
 And this illustrates a curious law of aggregation. Just 
 in proportion as people at parties and social junketings of 
 all kinds are crowded together, the saltatory disposition is 
 generated. Segregate them give them plenty of room and 
 nobody cares for dancing ; but crowd your small parlors with 
 a solid, panting mass of humanity, fill your hall as com 
 pactly as a box of red herrings, and load your staircase till 
 it cracks, and instantly forty couple will spring into the air 
 with bacchantic fury, and woe ! woe ! unto any obese old fogy, 
 or corpulent dowager, whose too solid flesh won't melt, 
 thaw, or resolve itself for the occasion.
 
 602 NEVER AGALV. 
 
 Why is this ? The terms of the problem are as patent as the 
 solution is difficult. It is a mystery. Darwin don't allude 
 to it ; Herbert Spencer barely touches the question ; Ham 
 ilton and Mill ignore it entirely ; Gladstone, in his imitations 
 of Homer, gives it the go-by, and Disraeli, in his treatise de 
 mysterio Asiatico omnibiisque rebus et quibusdam aliis, treats 
 it from a wrong point of view. On this side of the water we 
 are equally destitute of philosophical acumen directed to 
 this subject. Beecher, in his lectures, touches everything under 
 and above heaven, but he has not touched the rationale of 
 this law of aggregation. Whence and why is it ? General 
 Grant may perhaps know, but he won't tell. Greeley is of 
 course willing to tell, but he don't know. Agassiz would be 
 good authority, but he is not sound on the evolution ques 
 tion ; and Emerson and the autocrat of the breakfast-table 
 could talk about it delightfully by the hour, but perhaps 
 without anybody except themselves being a bit the wiser. 
 
 We want, then, some one who, aided only by the pure 
 light of science, can grope his way back to the origin of 
 things, put his finger upon the ultimate fact, and thus solve 
 the mystery in the terms of simple well-known physical 
 conditions, and in strict accordance with the theory of de 
 velopment. Now, I know no one who has even made the 
 attempt except Uncle Shippen, and at the risk of being 
 tedious and of keeping Luther standing too long in that 
 dark angle of the piazza, we must as succinctly as possible 
 give his views. 
 
 The old gentleman takes off his wig, in order to allow his 
 ideas clear play. 
 
 " Now I am not going into the development theory in 
 general, or into the sufficiency of Darwin's principles of nat 
 ural and sexual selection ; but I'll just answer your question, 
 why aggregation excites the idea of dancing, why in society 
 the greater the jam the more everybody wants to dance. 
 The fact is, dancing was originally the product, the outgrowth, 
 of aggregation. The idea that there is any natural and 
 necessary connection between certain musical sounds, or the
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 603 
 
 mental emotions excited, and certain regular and rhythmic 
 movements of the body, is absurd. The whole thing comes 
 in this wise : Away back, just after the glacial period, eight 
 hundred and fifty six thousand years ago, when the earth was 
 beginning to renounce the extreme eccentricity which had char 
 acterized her motions, the climate was still exceedingly cold in 
 winter, and man or man's progenitors suffered at times 
 terribly. 'Tis true, as the biologists prove, that at that 
 time our folks were all covered with thick coats of ha-ir, but, 
 in the entire absence of artificial clothing and without the 
 knowledge of fire, that was hardly sufficient to keep them 
 warm at all times. Gradually the fact began to dawn upon 
 their minds that by crowding up close together a degree of 
 pleasant warmth was generated and preserved. Gradually, in 
 the course of ages, the knowledge of this fact spread until 
 it became the general custom to huddle up together to keep 
 out of the cold. The idea, at first the result of observation 
 and reason, becomes at length, in the course of a hundred 
 thousand years or so, instinctive ; it passes beyond the region of 
 mere consciousness forces its way along the iter a tertio ad 
 quartum ventriculum, where it is stowed away, and becomes for 
 ever the property of the human mind. And now another fact is 
 observed another idea is generated, and either stowed away in 
 a ventricle, or hung up on the hippocampus major to dry. It 
 is observed that muscular exertion jumping up and down 
 generates warmth ; and in the course of another hundred ' 
 thousand years the shivering crowds of quiescent proto-homos 
 become active, jumping masses of intelligent humanity. Ancl the 
 colder it is the closer they huddle, and the closer they huddle 
 the harder they jump, until the ideas of aggregation and 
 saltation become indissolubly associated, while the original 
 and common cause the cold or in other words the necessity 
 of adapting life to the conditions under which it is developed, 
 if there is to be any life at all, is forgotten. In this way 
 comes dancing, and it can hardly be supposed that its devel 
 opment was unaccompanied by many changes. Jumping up 
 and down in a crowd for ages must have materially assis-
 
 604 NEVER AC A IV. 
 
 ted in wearing the fur off; millions of tails must have been 
 trodden upon millions of times ; and it may be partly owing 
 to that fact that we are without that graceful appendage at 
 this day. Language was in the course of development at 
 that time, and gradually the jumping came to be accom 
 panied by shouts and cries sometimes of pleasure, as when 
 a proto-homo found a genial warmth diffusing itself through 
 his veins ; sometimes of pain or rage, as he found his tail 
 trodden upon ; sometimes of affection, when his immediate 
 relations alone were dancing ; sometimes of anger and dis 
 gust and jealousy, when outside jumpers squeezed themselves 
 into his family circle. And from these cries and shouts, 
 the transition to chants and singing would not take more 
 than another hundred thousand years. And now the sound 
 of ^Eolus among the reeds is noticed. Imitation and in 
 vention come in play. The tabor and pipe is added to the 
 voice, and in the course of fifty thousand years more the 
 association of music and dancing, which at first was one 
 only of concomitance, becomes one of fundamental neces 
 sity. 
 
 " The Bible and the ancient classics are full of delightful 
 pictures of joyous crowds dancing; sometimes the domestic 
 dance in the cool shade sub tegminefagi. 
 
 ' When softly slow the Lydian measures move, 
 Or when to brisk airs and speaking pipe 
 They frisk they bound.' 
 
 Sometimes it was the mediatorial dance around the altar, or 
 before the god, and sometimes the grave, majestic war-dance 
 the Pyrrhica, that Cornelius Scriblerius and many other 
 learned men have so often regretted has not been kept in fash 
 ion to our day. 
 
 " Of course," continued Uncle Shippen, mopping his bald 
 head with a voluminous blue silk handkerchief, " I cannot 
 dwell upon these pictures not even upon that extraordinary 
 performance of King David, or upon that wonderful dance 
 of Diana in the temple of Delphi, nor upon the dance of Venus 
 at the rising of the moon
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 605 
 
 ' Tarn Cytherea chores ducit Venus, immanente Luna, 
 j unctaeque nymphis Gratia decentes 
 Alterno terrain quatiunt pede.' 
 
 I cannot go into a consideration of Plato's division of dances 
 into orchestric and palistric, or more than enumerate the 
 noble and severe emmeleai, the lively cordax, the satyric sich- 
 inis, the Dionesice^ sacred to Bacchus, and the memphitick of the 
 Athenians, which was danced with sword, javelin and buckler. 
 I will only allude to one of the earliest instances of dancing 
 on the grand scale that of the great Osiris, of which we have 
 the authentic account in Diodorus. Whether Bacchus and 
 Osiris were the same or separate individualities ; whether the 
 Greeks stole the story of their god's Indian expedition from 
 the Egyptians, it matters not the great Osiris was unquestion 
 ably the most renowned dancing-master of ancient times 
 the Charruaud, the Ferrero, the Dodsworth of Egypt, and he 
 led his crowded school of dancers from Father Nilus to " 
 
 " Farther Inde," interposed Mr. Whoppers. 
 
 " Don't interrupt me, sir. Diodorus tells us that he was a 
 right jolly fellow that he took along with him the nine muses, 
 headed by Apollo, and of course there was among them 
 Terpsichore, and there was Pan, who could not only pipe for 
 others, but who could shake a featly hoof for himself; and then 
 there was Silenus, and the satyrs regular dancing fellows, who 
 would, were they members of our society, be the very first on 
 Brown's list of saltatory availables ; and gayly this crowd dan 
 ced its way through Lydia and Ethiopia through the country 
 of the Pygmies, through the country of the Rhizophages, or root- 
 eaters ; the Icthyophages, or fish-eaters ; the Chelonophages, 
 or terrapin-eaters; the Hylophages, or wood-eaters; the 
 Acridophages or locust-eaters, and all the other phages, and 
 so on across to India, and again up west to where at home 
 the treacherous Typhoon, who probably couldn't dance, a.waited 
 the coming of his too-confiding brother. 
 
 " And now, why do I mention this old story? Just for a con 
 trast. In fancy I have gone over the ground with this dan 
 cing expedition a hundred times, but I declare to you that the
 
 606 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 picture of this army, even when dancing its best, is not half so 
 striking, not half so curious, as we get by running back along 
 the clue of science a million years or so to the beginning of things, 
 and in imagination assisting at one of those earlier dancing 
 assemblies. A thousand, ten thousand, perhaps fifty thou 
 sand hairy, long-tailed catarrhine proto-homos are assembled 
 in the cool of the evening ; a herd of megatheria are brows 
 ing on the upper slopes of the valley; a gigantic icthyosau- 
 rus, forty feet long, flounders on the sand of the lake shore ; 
 a cloud of pterodactyl^ a kind of bat as big as an elephant 
 whirl in rapid and graceful circles through the air. Our an 
 cestors shelter themselves from the cold wind under the lee 
 of a grove of huge conifers that stretch their heads away up five 
 hundred feet into the sky. But the thermometer falls ; the 
 air grows colder ; they huddle up closer, closer still. They 
 at length begin to jump and scream the fur flies tails curl 
 and snap the human race, in one of its brightest aspects, in 
 one of its loveliest instincts, is amaking. Wonderful sight ! it 
 beats the grand dance of Osiris or Bacchus. It beats all the 
 ancient dances which I have enumerated. It beats even the 
 German, which, in the intense childishness of its figures, the 
 concentrated silliness of its movements, and the general air 
 of solemn and profound donkeyism that pervades it, is one of 
 the most mysterious instances of development one of the 
 most remarkable cases of the adaptation of life, striving to be 
 elegant and cultivated, to the imperious conditions of super 
 fine and tasteless inanity, that we can see in modern times." 
 
 And so "Uncle Shippen would run on. Perhaps we 
 ought to apologize to the reader for giving his ravings, but 
 we certainly owe no apology to Luther, whom we left 
 standing in an angle of the piazza. He has been too well 
 occupied. The view was one of unsurpassed beauty. But 
 we have described it, and will not now dwell upon it 
 stopping only to say that the sentiment of the scene was, at 
 that hour of the evening, one of mysterious tenderness and 
 calm repose of feeling. 
 
 Luther looked down upon the placid river a silver band
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 607 
 
 of water quietly floating a world of wealth nothing but a 
 narrow river, but of such an awful depth, and it divides 
 mountains ! The mountains, however, make no fuss about 
 it ; they take it easy, and calmly fulfil the duties of ar 
 resting the clouds, and hoarding the rain, and shading the 
 valleys, and reflecting the sunsets. 
 
 The reader must have perceived, ere this, that Luther's 
 mind was of the discursive order, and that he sometimes 
 rambled far afield for his figures so far perhaps, that when 
 he got back again his flowers of rhetoric were not always 
 of the freshest perfume or color. Never mind, my dear 
 young man; the clever critics, and stern purists, and logical 
 thinkers of the Nation, or the Athenceum, or the Spectator, may 
 be'down upon your future opus magnum, like a devil's darning- 
 needle on a blue bottle fly, but in the matter of figures, it is, 
 as in diamond-hunting, better to have sought and missed the 
 lustrous gem only to find 
 
 " The carbuncle glowering blood and milder amethyst, 
 And sapphire with its ray serene" 
 
 than not to have sought at all. Thorn-trees and wild sage- 
 bushes are not beautiful things in and of themselves, but they 
 brighten up wonderfully the scenery of Sahara and Nevada. 
 So an ugly or stunted metaphor or simile may perchance 
 relieve a stretch of aridity that without them the carping 
 critic would utterly refuse to travel over. 
 
 Luther was thus learning by heart the lesson of the land 
 scape when two ladies, stopping in their walk, and leaning 
 over the ballustrade beside him, continued their conversation 
 apparently unconscious of his presence. He knew by their 
 voices that the speakers were Mrs. Ledgeral and her friend 
 Mrs. Struggles. 
 
 " No, I don't like his being here," said Mrs. Ledgeral. 
 "I hive every confidence in Helen, and I have every confi 
 dence in him. He is a young man of very correct notions. 
 He knows how cruel it would be for a young man of no fortune 
 to destroy forever the happiness of a young girl of Helen's 
 position. If Helen was ir. a different set now" and Mrs.
 
 608 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Ledgeral paused, and gave a gentle sigh, perhaps a tribute 
 of memory to her old East Broadway days when her heart 
 was young. 
 
 Luther would have withdrawn from his corner, but he 
 could not do so without attracting attention, and he rested in 
 hopes that the ladies would resume their walk. 
 
 " As you say, my dear," replied Miss Struggles, " if Helen 
 were not a girl of society, a fashionable girl in short, your 
 daughter, my dear it might not be so bad. They say such 
 kind of things are happening among common people every 
 day. But Helen ! Oh, I assure you there is not a girl of our 
 set whom I should regret more to see throw herself away." 
 
 " There is no danger of that," replied Mrs. Ledgeral a lit 
 tle sharply ; " she will take the Count. Her father has set 
 his heart upon it. I never knew him so determined about any 
 thing before, and she has promised to obey him. But the 
 young man has, I am afraid, touched her fancy with his fine 
 person and his good manners, and his poetry, and all that ; 
 and besides, that steamboat adventure, and his rapid rise in 
 the firm, has given him a hold on her feelings. She looks 
 upon him as a kind of protege, so that, although I don't dis 
 trust her, or fear him, I am afraid that his presence here may 
 trouble her mind -may give her unnecessary pain." 
 
 "Why not tell him to go away?" demanded Mrs. Strug 
 gles. " Tell him to go back at once to the city. I am sure 
 you have a right to say as much as that to a common clerk in 
 the firm." 
 
 " You are perfectly absurd, my dear ; you always are. 
 How can I tell him that ? I don't want him to go back to the 
 city. Not that I am at all afraid of him, but I want to take 
 Helen down to the city in a day or two. It is getting very 
 late in the season, and you know when people begin to leave 
 here they all go off in flocks, like the birds. One week the 
 house is full and the next empty and shut up ; and I want to 
 get back now, for I have so much to do so many prepara 
 tions to make. Mr. Whoppers tells me that he has half a 
 mind to set off for a long trip to the White Mountains and
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 609 
 
 Canada and the lakes, if he can get this young Lansdale to 
 go with him. That would suit me best. I hope he will go. 
 I hope, for Helen's sake, they will start at once. Come, let 
 us go in ; it is getting chilly, "and I see they are trying to get 
 up a dance." 
 
 Luther turned, a moment afterwards, and saw the yellow 
 whiskers of Mr. Whoppers lighted up by the glow of his 
 Havana. 
 
 " Look here, old fellow ! " exclaimed Luther, " are you 
 disposed for that trip yet ? " 
 
 "I am; I shall never have a better opportunity. Are you 
 willing to go? " 
 
 " Go ! I am ready to go anywhere Canada, Labrador, 
 Baffin's Bay, or the devil." 
 
 " So ! Well, if you are ready to travel as far as that you 
 are willing to start early ? " 
 
 " Yes, to-morrow. We must take the seven o'clock up- 
 train." 
 
 " Well, that's early. I should like to stay here a day or 
 two longer." 
 
 " Not a day, not an hour beyond seven to-morrow morn 
 ing," exclaimed Luther, in a passionate tone, "if you want 
 my company ! " 
 
 " Ah, youngster, you feel bad now, but 
 
 " Feel bad ! not a bit of it. I've got no feelings, good, 
 bad, or indifferent. I've chucked feelings, sentiments, desires, 
 everything, over the cliff there. They are down with the wreck 
 of the old Montaigne, full forty fathoms deep, and I mean to 
 keep 'em there the rest of my life." 
 
 " What the devil possessed me to bring you up here"! " 
 exclaimed Mr. Whoppers, pressing Luther's arm. 
 
 " Oh, you are not to blame, my dear old fellow. You 
 didn't know that I was so foolish ; but it takes pretty tight 
 squeezing to get out the last drop of hope, it's such 
 sticky stuff; but I believe this evening I have scrubbed my 
 heart out clean. And now I'll go into the parlor and see if 
 I can get just one dance." 
 39
 
 6 io NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " Like a silly moth, eh ? " 
 
 " Not a bit of it. I've got no wings to singe. I'm noth 
 ing but a grub, you know. Come on, I'll show you. I feel 
 like dancing. Now, if never again, my first book of life is 
 finished, and I want to stamp a colophon to it. That's some 
 thing in your style, eh? only it's a great deal better than most 
 of yours." 
 
 "Ah, I understand 
 
 'And now I have come, with this lost love of mine, 
 To tread but one measure, drink one cup of wine.' 
 
 Go ahead, young one, and get through with it ; if we get 
 off so early in the morning we must write our letters to-night." 
 
 The Ledgeral party sat, the centre of a large group, in one 
 corner of the room Mr. Ledgeral himself a little apart, and 
 although apparently looking, and occasionally replying to some 
 of the female chatter going on around him, he was evidently, 
 in mind, far from the spirit of the scene. 
 
 Luther went up to him, saluted him respectfully in an easy, 
 quiet tone ; told him of his intention to travel with Mr. 
 Whoppers ; stated his own conviction that they would not 
 need him for several weeks at Burling Slip, and expressed a 
 hope that on his return he should have the pleasure of hear 
 ing that the great merchant's health had been completely re 
 stored. 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral was quite dumfounded. Luther's assured, 
 but respectful tone and manner, was irresistible. If he had 
 been an old established merchant, one of that class for whom 
 Providence especially designed creation in general and New 
 York in particular, his aplomb could not have been more per 
 fect and more effective. Mr. Ledgeral started, fidgeted for a 
 moment in his chair, and ended by half rising and extending 
 his hand. Luther took it, pressed it respectfully it was the 
 hand of Helen's father and turned away, luckily in time to 
 prevent Mr. Ledgeral so far committing himself as to mumble 
 out something about the young man's coming some time or 
 other to dine with him. 
 
 Luther turned to Mrs. Ledgeral. Formidable as she had
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 6ll 
 
 always seemed to his excitable imagination, he now felt 
 himself elevated by the dignity of his despair to an equality 
 with her, or any other leader of society. He paid his com 
 pliments and took his conge with a decisive grace that aston 
 ished, as well as pleased, Mrs. Ledgeral, and that, for the 
 moment, laid the affected fine-ladyism of Mrs. Struggles quite 
 flat. Mr. Boggs looked on and enjoyed the little scene. It 
 had often required all the supercilious insouciance of a society- 
 man to put down Mrs. Struggles, and now Luther's quiet self- 
 assertiveness toppled her over at the first touch. 
 
 " You have not danced this evening," whispered Luther, 
 as he leaned over Helen's chair. " Won't you give me one 
 turn?" 
 
 " I can't," she replied ; " the Count has just this moment 
 asked me and I have declined. I cannot dance to-night." 
 
 " You cannot refuse me. Just one turn or two. I shall 
 never trouble you again, you know. I am going away ; per 
 haps we shall never meet again ; but if we do, you can trust 
 my sense of propriety, my savoir faire. I should never pre 
 sume to ask such a favor from Madame la Comtesse." 
 
 This was said with a sarcastic intonation of the voice, a 
 something of injured and angry innocence lending emphasis 
 to the words. 
 
 Why is it that men are so apt to assume this tone, as if the 
 woman is alone responsible for any muddle in matters that 
 love gets into ? We should say that it is because he is in 
 general the pleading and imploring party, and finds the 
 sarcastic tone and the reproach by implication a powerful 
 weapon. But if Mr. Whoppers were asked he would probably 
 more concisely reply : " It is the nature of the beast." 
 
 Helen looked up over her shoulder with a reproachful 
 glance. Her lip quivered, and it required a violent effort to 
 keep the sharp spasm of agony from finding expression in her 
 face. 
 
 Ah ! had the best steed in the west been standing saddled 
 and bridled at the hall-door, beshrew me if I don't think that 
 Luther could have swung her to the croup without much re-
 
 612 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 sistance on her part. But and mark the advance of civiliza 
 tion there would have been no mounting of clansmen, not a 
 soul would have ridden or ran. People would simply have 
 said, " How shocking ! " 
 
 Luther bowed politely to the Count and addressed him in 
 French. 
 
 " I am going away to-morrow. I shall, perhaps, never 
 have an opportunity of dancing with Miss Ledgeral again. 
 She refuses me, and says she has already declined to dance 
 with you. Won't you allow me to ask you to help me in this ? 
 I am sure, if you will have the generosity to join me in the 
 request, she will not refuse. 
 
 The Count looked a little confused for a moment at this 
 sudden address, but instantly recovering he replied pleasantly, 
 " Oh, as Mademoiselle pleases ; I have no claims upon her." 
 
 " You see," said Luther, turning to Helen and offering his 
 hand ; and the next moment his arm was around her waist, 
 supporting her in the giddy gyrations that sometimes excite 
 and oftentimes cover so much tumultuous whirling of the 
 heart 
 
 " So stately his form and so lovely her face, 
 That never a hall such a polka did grace," 
 
 whispered Mr. Whoppers to Mrs. Struggles. 
 
 " La, Mr. Whoppers, you editors do say such funny things. 
 Is those lines yours ? " 
 
 " No, ma'am ; I am not in that line. I borrowed them 
 from Sir Walter." 
 
 " Oh yes, Sir Walter Raleigh. I've seen one of his 
 books ; I forget the title something about the floss." 
 
 " A floss of silk?" gently queried Mr. Whoppers. 
 
 " I suppose so." 
 
 "Oh, then I recollect; it is 'The Knot in the Floss.'" 
 
 " That's it. Don't you think it beautiful, Mr. Whoppers ? " 
 
 "I do ; the characters are so natural." 
 
 " Oh yes, especially what's-her-name, when she unlaces the 
 helmet of the wounded knight." 
 
 " Oh yes, or when the other fellow, what-do-you-call-him,
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 613 
 
 throws his battle-axe at her head, and exclaims in a voice of 
 thunder and with a deep frown on his brow, ' Avaunt thee, 
 thou miserable old made-up sham of a woman.' " 
 
 Mrs. Struggles fidgeted for a moment, and then decis 
 ively turned the conversation from literature to the dance. 
 
 " Look, Mr. Whoppers, don't you think that couple per 
 form the ' Boston dip' beautiful ? " 
 
 " Beautiful, indeed ; I don't know that I have ever seen 
 a couple do it better. But I don't like it as well as the ' Balti 
 more loll.' " 
 
 " The ' Baltimore loll,' Mr. Whoppers ? " 
 
 " Why, don't you know the ' Baltimore loll,' Mrs. Strug 
 gles?" 
 
 It was very difficult for Mrs. Struggles to admit that 
 there was anything in the fashionable line that she did not 
 know ; but, in reply to Mr. Whoppers, she was obliged to 
 shake her head. 
 
 " And don't you know the ' Philadelphia squirm ? ' Ah, 
 that is because you haven't been to Sharon this season. Lucy 
 Judkins has been setting them all wild with it ; but the latest 
 and decidedly the best thing out is the ' California hug.' 
 Haven't seen it yet ? Why, they say that young Sopkins gave 
 it at Miss Jones' soiree dansante, at Newport, last week, to the 
 perfect delight of every woman he danced with. Mr. Boggs 
 knows all about it ; you must get him to show you." 
 
 " Hallo, Boggs ! " exclaimed Mr. Whoppers, rising from his 
 seat and beckoning to that gentleman, who happened at the 
 instant to enter the room through one of the open windows. 
 " Come here ; Mrs. Struggles wants you to show her the 
 'California hug.' It's a shame for you fashionable fellows to 
 keep all that kind of thing to yourselves. Show her how it's 
 done, d la grizzly, and don't look so glum about it ; one would 
 think you were going to be hugged by the Scottish maiden, 
 rather than to hug an elegant and accomplished American 
 matron." 
 
 Luther retired to his room, and after scribbling a note to 
 the Captain, and one to be by him delivered to Madame
 
 6 14 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Steignitz, sat by his open window for hours gazing out into 
 the starlit night. A slight glow along the eastern hills startled 
 him from his profound revery. He relighted his candle, 
 seized his pen and wrote rapidly, then paused for a moment 
 again a line or two, and again a hesitation and an erasure, and 
 then a rapid movement of the pen. 
 
 When a despairing lover takes to verse it may be consid 
 ered a favorable symptom ; the crisis is passed, and unless 
 some imprudent exposure occasions a relapse, the patient is 
 generally considered to have a fair chance for life. Luther, 
 not only as we have said, but as we have given the reader an 
 opportunity of judging for himself, had something of a knack 
 at rhyme. Of course no one will pretend, least of all himself, 
 that he was a real poet, or attempt to class him among the 
 thousand-and-one great masters of the art who are daily witch 
 ing the world with their melodious warblings. But this may 
 be said, that although he was as far as anybody from ever 
 writing the great original Choctaw or Comanche epic that our 
 cousins on the other side have been vainly demanding from 
 us so long, there was probably not a clerk in a store down 
 town who could more rapidly string a lot of trochees and 
 iambics than he could. 
 
 He folded up his paper, and going into the hall sought the 
 room of Mr. Boggs, who, luckily awake, responded at once to 
 his gentle knock. Luther gave him the note, and requested 
 that he would hand it to Miss Helen Ledgeral in the morn 
 ing. 
 
 "Just a few lines of verse," continued Luther ; " nothing 
 wrong, I assure you. You can look at them, the envelope is 
 not sealed ; but I don't want any one else to see it, so if you 
 will please hand it to her when she is alone you understand, 
 eh ? well, I shall be so much obliged to you." 
 
 Mr. Boggs was really a good-natured fellow, and he got up 
 an hour earlier than usual in order to see Helen, whose ma 
 tutinal habits he knew. 
 
 He found her in the little rustic summer-house, on the 
 edge of the precipice overhanging the river. She was leaning
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 615 
 
 upon the rough rail and gazing across the water at the whizzing 
 up-train that was rapidly nearing the station. She would have 
 made a pretty picture of Sappho 
 
 " High o'er the surge on craggy, rough Leucate." 
 
 But there was this difference : Helen had no more idea of 
 throwing herself over the cliff than Sappho had of Phaon's 
 riding away from her in a railway train. 
 
 Mr. Boggs handed her the note, and, with gentlemanly 
 delicacy, turned off for a morning stroll. 
 
 It was so early that, with the exception of nurses and 
 children, Helen knew that she would have the summer-house 
 to herself for an hour. She opened the note and read and 
 re-read and mused, with now and then a sigh, and shall we 
 say it ? ah, silly girl, with the bright fresh morning floating in 
 floods of mellow coolness all about you with now and then 
 a tear. But upon the whole the poetry did her good; she felt 
 better for it. Why and how we might explain ; but perhaps 
 it will be better to give the verses, and let the reader judge 
 for him or herself: 
 
 " Oh, Spirit of Night ! 
 
 Of loving Mother Night ! 
 
 I see thee now, in robes of gray and dusky light, 
 Stealing across the slopes of yonder hills ; 
 Now hiding in clefts where bide the silver rills ; 
 And now, with star-specked garments all aglow, 
 Trailing, with undulating step and slow, 
 Thy shimmering train along the sleepy river. 
 
 Oh, Spirit of Night ! 
 Come, come to me, for I am sick at heart ; 
 
 I burn, I faint, I shiver. 
 Oh, come to me, with all thy nursing art, 
 
 And bring the balm thy tenderness distils 
 For life's bewildering ills. 
 
 " Oh, Spirit of Night ! 
 
 Kindly responsive Night ! 
 Already doth thy soft depuring light 
 
 Mine eyes unfilm, and, gently pressing now, 
 Thy medic touch becalms my throbbing brow,
 
 616 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 And scatters ghastly dreams and thoughts of death ; 
 And waking now, beneath the stillness of thy breath, 
 To a new sense of passion's use and power 
 
 Oh, Spirit of Night ! 
 I see as if I stood above, apart, 
 
 Upon some lofty tower, 
 
 And conned the lesson with an opened heart 
 ' Better, than joys of pale and pulseless life, 
 The agony of Strife.' 
 
 " Oh, Spirit of Night ! 
 
 Of weird and wondrous Night ! 
 I said, in blinded and revengeful spite, 
 
 That I, with desperate curse, would counter Fate ; 
 Learn, against Life, to steel my heart with hate ; 
 Learn Hope to scorn and duty deprecate ; 
 And idly float on lush and lusky flow 
 Of sense but now, ah ! now I know 
 That Love, my heart, from selfish sin should sever, 
 That foiled desire should urge to large endeavor. 
 
 Oh, Spirit of Night ! 
 Nor pride nor passion can withstand thy power ; 
 
 And now and ever, 
 
 My hapless love, thy ebon hours shall measure 
 To me as richest treasure."
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 The Captain visits Madame Steignitz French and American Cooking 
 Madame in trouble about the Count To bed, but not to sleep. 
 
 " AH, Captain, que je suis Men aise de vous voir. I am 
 L~\. very glad to see you. It is so very easy to forget a poor 
 old woman that I began to think well I began to think 
 bad things. I began to think, oh, the poor old thing, she 
 has got no beauty she has got no money ; she has not got 
 anything to please anybody, and yet we have done so much 
 for her we have saved her life we work hard we risk 
 much to get her from the bandits now that is enough 
 let her go let her slide, poor old thing. Very naughty 
 thoughts, Captain, eh ? " 
 
 " Wicked madame, downright wicked, and very unjust 
 to Luther as well as to myself. The fact is, during the day 
 I have been every moment occupied with the business of 
 the ship our ship I should say, for you have a good interest 
 in her, and then in the evening it has so happened that I have 
 not had an hour to spare for anything." 
 
 The Captain did not go on to explain the nature of the 
 business that occupied his evenings. He did not mention 
 the fact that he had been compelled to take Miss De Belvoir 
 Jones to Wallack's one night, and as he had done that, it 
 was only fair that he should take her to Booth's the next, 
 and, as tragedy is so trying, both the Captain and Miss 
 Jones thought it would be right to restore the balance 
 of feeling by a little opera-bouffe. Oh yes, the Captain had 
 been fully occupied wickedly occupied, if we may believe 
 some of Miss Jones' boarders.
 
 6i3 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " I think it is wrong, downright sinful," exclaimed Miss 
 Stingel ; " don't you, Mrs. Billings ? " 
 
 "Wrong! it's horrid, it's shameful, to be going about 
 alone with a man in that way, and she a young single 
 woman." 
 
 " Well, I don't know about age, she's old enough to go 
 anywhere ; but she's an unmarried woman, not that I think 
 a married woman has any more right to go around with other 
 men than a single woman ; and as a general thing I don't 
 see any harm in it, done properly ; but the way she goes 
 about with the Captain, or rather makes him go about with 
 her, I think is wicked ; not that I would go so far as to say 
 that there is anything improper between them, but it is 
 shameful and it does not look well. They could not do more 
 if they were engaged." 
 
 " Perhaps they are engaged." 
 
 " Pshaw ! I don't believe a word of it. It would be too 
 ridiculous. She'd jump at almost anything in broadcloth, I 
 know ; but I will say this for her, that I don't believe she'd 
 take such an old, red-faced fellow. And as for him well, I 
 don't believe he'd marry such an ugly, spuddy lump of a wo 
 man no more than he'd fly, and if he does, he's the biggest 
 donkey I know." 
 
 Miss Stingel paused for a moment, thinking of the lovely 
 time when, staying at her aunt's over at the Wallabout, she 
 had once had with a young lieutenant in the navy. But, alas ! 
 one day, the marine villain took his shoulder-straps to sea 
 and " didn't say nothing." 
 
 " Yes, a big donkey he would be," repeated Miss Stingel. 
 " However, I believe all sailors au: fools." 
 
 Tin.: Captain heard nothing, and, in fact, never dreamed 
 of all the comment his actions evoked. Miss Jones not only 
 heard somewhat of it, but was able to guess the rest from her 
 profound knowledge of the workings of the female heart under 
 the influence of boarding-house life. But she didn't care for 
 it she scorned it ; she was above all such scandalous talk. 
 Her only anxiety was to keep her poor, innocent monster's
 
 NE VER A GAIN. 6 19 
 
 feelings from being lacerated. And so the Captain walked 
 the primrose paths of dalliance without winking, and with nc 
 idea that he was doing anything so horrid. 
 
 Still he did not think it worth while to tell Madame Steig- 
 nitz what pressing business had prevented his seeing her 
 sooner in the evening. 
 
 " I am downright glad to find you, madame, looking so 
 well," he said ; " a week has done wonders for you." 
 
 " Ah, I am not well," replied madame. " I am not sick. 
 Mats, je suis encore souffrante what you call suffering and I 
 shall be always suffering, I think. Those villains did not quite 
 kill me, but I shall never be well again. I am a feeble old 
 woman ; but what matters it for one so poor? No money, 
 eh ? Monsieur le Captain. Who cares when I go ? let the 
 end come. Pouf ! et voila la chandelle etcinte. It will not 
 cost much, eh ? An old pine coffin and I shall leave a few 
 dollars, enough to pay for putting it in the pauper's ground." 
 
 " Look here, madame ! " exclaimed the Captain, grasping 
 her hand rather roughly, " I don't like to hear you talk that 
 way. You do injustice to me, and I know you do injustice to 
 Luther. Luther really loves you. I know he does. I have 
 heard him say so a hundred times ; and I don't think, after 
 what he has gone through for two or three weeks past, that 
 you have any right to doubt him. He writes to me to look 
 after his dear old m&re Fran$aise until he can get back to take 
 care of her himself; and do you suppose that 1 can ever for 
 get to whom I owe it that I now command the finest ship out 
 of New York ? " 
 
 " Ah, pardon, Captain, I am wrong ; but I have been 
 alone here for two or three days I am not afraid there is 
 no more danger from the brigands, since they are all in jail, 
 but I am a little triste I knew Luther was out of town, but 
 I did think to see you. But no no excuse. I know New 
 York is very big, and life is very hard in it what you call 
 hurry-skurry. Ah ! that is a good word, hurry-skurry. It 
 makes me think of the squirrel. He come out of the ground, 
 he look about, he hurry here he skurry there he dash up this
 
 620 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 tree, he run down that, and, whiff! he go in the ground and 
 you don't see him again. That is just life in New York. But 
 we forget the news, which you shall have to tell me. Where 
 is mon petit? How is the little one ?" 
 
 " He is well," answered the Captain ; " but where he is 
 exactly at this moment I cannot tell you. I have a letter 
 from him, dated West Point, saying that he was going to leave 
 for the north with Mr. Whoppers, and that he didn't know, 
 and didn't care, how long he might be gone." 
 
 " Did not care! What would he to say by that? I have 
 suspect something myself, but it was not for me to question 
 him too much. Tell me all about it. What you know, 
 eh?" 
 
 " I don't know, but I guess he has been a little upset in 
 this region," and the Captain tapped his heart significantly. 
 " But here is a letter that he sent to me for you." 
 
 Madame Steignitz took the note, and, adjusting her specta 
 cles, read it over two or three times, and then sat for some 
 time musing, occasionally taking a huge pinch of snuff, and 
 then tapping the table with the fingers of her still handsome 
 hand. 
 
 " You read French ? No ! Well, he tells me nothing. 
 He says that he is well in body but not in the best of spirits, 
 and thinks a voyage will do him good. What makes him in 
 bad spirits ? You shall tell me all." 
 
 And the Captain, under her adroit questioning, did tell all 
 that he knew, and much more that he supposed. 
 
 " Ledgeral ! Ledgeral ! " exclaimed the old woman, inter 
 rupting the Captain. " Every time I hear that name I think 
 there is something. I recollect a name like that so well. Can 
 it be the same ? Yes, yes. Let me see. Ah ! que je suis btte ! 
 What you call stupid like an owl, not to think so before. Yes, 
 yes it may be I think it is." 
 
 " Is what ? " demanded the Captain. 
 
 " Oh, something long time ago. Yes, yes ; I think it must 
 be," and Madame nodded her head repeatedly and tapped the 
 table vigorously.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 621 
 
 " Tell me. I wish to know of this great merchant. I 
 never thought to talk with my little one about him. You 
 have seen him, eh ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ; I have seen him several times." 
 
 " What age is he, eh ? " 
 
 " I should say about fifty, or fifty-two or three." 
 
 " Fifty years, ha ! Well, well, that is just the age. Tall, 
 handsome man long nose, black eyes, curly hair eh ? " 
 
 " Well," replied the Captain, " I never noticed him par 
 ticularly, but I should think that was about his photograph." 
 
 " Ha, ha ! I think I know him ; and you say he has a 
 daughter. Come, tell me of this daughter. I have suspect 
 much for long time. I am a poor old woman, with no money, 
 but I have the sharp eyes ; I can see, and I have much sus 
 pected. I am no fool, eh ? " 
 
 Something in Madame's expression made the Captain think 
 that perhaps she knew more about the whole matter than he 
 did, and he said as much ; but she emphatically denied any 
 and all knowledge beyond the mere fact that Mr. Ledgeral 
 had a daughter, and that she had long suspected that Luther 
 was in love with some one. 
 
 " Tell that to the marines," was the Captain's mental com 
 ment. " You are too sharp and shrewd, and too much inter 
 ested in Luther, not to have done your best to poke and 
 pry to the bottom of the matter." He, however, said noth 
 ing aloud in reply. 
 
 " This daughter is she beautiful, eh ? " demanded Ma 
 dame. 
 
 " I have never seen her but once, and then at a distance," 
 replied the Captain ; " but it struck me that she was about as 
 neat a model as I have ever seen nice head-lines, and a neat, 
 clean run, and she appeared to be better ballasted than usual 
 not quite so much down by the head. Mr. Whoppers says 
 that she is the most splendid girl in the town, but he is sorry 
 that Luther ever laid eyes on her." 
 
 " What for he say that ? Does she not love him ? What 
 girl could look at him and not love him ? There is no such 
 fool in the world."
 
 622 NEVER AC. -I IX. 
 
 " Well, I believe she has a kind of a notion for him, but 
 the youth has no fortune. I don't exactly see the force of that 
 myself, but Mr. Whoppers says that in society it is every 
 thing." 
 
 " No fortune ! Bah ! Is any girl too good, too rich for 
 him? Un ganjon beau, bra ve un prince, cotnweya. Bah! No 
 money, eh ? Who knows that ? Who knows how much 
 money he has ? Bah ! A young man like that has the whole 
 world in his pocket. I tell you what, Monsieur le Captain, 
 the great man had not so much good prospects before him 
 when he was twenty-three, as mon petit. I shall say to him, 
 You will sell your daughter ? My little one will buy her. 
 How much you ask ? " 
 
 " Yes ; but she is going to be married, they say." 
 
 " Ah voild quelque chose de mauvais that alters the case 
 that is bad ; and she such a girl une demoiselle parfaitement 
 comme il faut, si gentille, si douce what you call sweet so 
 nice, so handsome, so lady-like." 
 
 ' Then you have seen her?" demanded the Captain. 
 
 " Well, well ! suppose I have. I thought one day I would 
 go to see if she would give something for a poor French family. 
 She came down to me in the hall, and the first thing I hear, 
 she say, ' Joseph, why did you not show the lady into the par 
 lor ? Walk in, madam, and take a chair.' ' Oh, oh,' said I, 
 ' you have the penetration, and, more, you have the heart of a 
 lady ; and still more because you find it nowhere now, you 
 have the something thejenesats quoi which will grow, in 
 time, into the best manner of the gran de dame' And then I 
 tell my story of a poor French family a veritable story, and 
 the tears came in her eyes, and she gave me all the money 
 she had ten dollars, and then we talk a long time about 
 France and Germany, and all the places where I have lived ; 
 and she made me promise to come again and tell her all about 
 the poor people. But then I was carried off by these maudit 
 brigands. And now, you say, that she is going to be married. 
 Oh, mon petit, mon chcr Luthere! I can understand it now 
 why you are in bad spirits, and I can do nothing ! Oh, mon
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 623 
 
 Dieu! 'tis always so. Everybody 1 love suffer! Yes, every 
 body," she repeated, her voice rising almost into a scream of 
 mingled rage and grief. " Yes, everybody. I make them all 
 to suffer. They lose fortune ; they have horrible maladies ; 
 they are crushed by the railroad ; they drown in the steam 
 boat they die ! Yes, yes, I kill them all ! My breath is 
 poison my touch is death ! 
 
 " Captain," she continued, starting forward, and thumping 
 the table .violently with her clenched hand, "Captain, don't 
 go to sea again in that cursed ship you will go down to your 
 grave. I see it ; I know it. She comes to you through me, 
 and she will sink you to the bottom." 
 
 " Oh, never fear, madam ; she is stout and well found. 
 A fellow must take his chance, you know; and no chap will 
 have time to cast up his reckoning rightly if he is all the time 
 bothering about starting a butt. She's a good, sound ship, 
 and if she does run under it won't be your fault." 
 
 " Well, well," replied Madame, in a calmer tone, " tell me 
 v.'ho he is ? Who is the fellow who is going to rob my poor 
 Luthare ? " 
 
 " A young German Count, who has been drifting about here 
 for two or three months." 
 
 " A German Count! Remember you his name?" 
 "Yes; it is Isen something let me see Isenthal 
 Count Isenthal." 
 
 The Captain drew back in his chair, and nothing but the 
 wall saved him from lilting over entirely, as Madame Steignitz 
 sprang from her seat and suddenly placed both hands on his 
 shoulders and peered into his face with eyes that seemed to 
 pierce right through him. 
 
 " Qitoi! What ! What do you say? No, no, it cannot 
 be ! Count Isenthal ? Oh, mon Dieu ! what do I think. Oh / 
 oh / quelle horreur ! " 
 
 And Madame Steignitz sank back into her seat, and clasped 
 her head with her hands, and rocked herself back and forth, 
 muttering to herself in French, for several minutes, while the 
 Captain sat looking on, unable to say a word. As he said
 
 624 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 afterwards, he was taken flat aback, and didn't know what 
 tack to pay off on. 
 
 " Pardon, Monsieur le Captain," exclaimed Madame Steig- 
 nitz, suddenly resuming her usual tone. " I quite forgot my 
 self. You think I am a very strange old woman ; but I am 
 nothing wrong here," tapping her forehead. " I have seen 
 some things that I should be mad for, but I was not mad. I 
 did not go mad, and I could not die. Oh ! when they brought 
 him to me all cut with the dreadful bowie, and he died in my 
 arms ; and when they buried my little one in the mud of that 
 cursed Mississippi, I did not go mad, and I could not die ! 
 And now these maudit brigands they almost kill me, but I do 
 not go mad. And now comes this thing. Ah ! ah ! I must 
 think much about it." 
 
 " Well, madam, I won't disturb your thinking, so I will 
 bid you good-night," exclaimed the Captain, rising. " There 
 is nothing that I can do for you, is there ? You have the 
 nurse below, have you not ? " 
 
 " Bah ! I sent her away yesterday. She said that Luthare 
 promised to pay her double. I tell her that he shall not pay 
 her one cent, because she is such a cheat. Oh, she would 
 ruin me in one week. What do you think ? she would cook a 
 piece of beef gros comme pa, for us two. O/t, mon Dieu ! they 
 talk about the cost of the living in this country ! 'Tis the ig 
 norance and the carelessness. Oh, the waste of the kitchen 
 in this city would make to live thousands of French families. 
 They know nothing about the little dishes. It is all roast 
 beef, mutton-chops, beefsteak ; or beefsteak, mutton-chops, 
 roast beef. And then they must have the grand roast turkey, 
 and the chicken, for a little family of two or three people. 
 Tenez! Je vats vous faire voir quelque chose. I show you 
 something." 
 
 And Madame put her hand on the Captain's arm to detain 
 liim, and then rushed off to the old sideboard and pulled out 
 the leg of a chicken which she held up triumphantly. " Re- 
 gardez done! You see this ? it is what you call the drumstick. 
 It is an insult to your servants to make them eat it. Well, I
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 625 
 
 take it, I take out the bone, I press it out, I make some 
 Jarcie what you call force-meat, avec un morceau de truffe, 
 if you have some, but if not, a little piece of onion, and I 
 stuff it well out, round as an apple, and when it is cooked, 
 what have I got for a few sous? un ballotin de volatile 
 a dish for a king ! un plat le plus recherche qifon puisse trouver 
 dans le cafe Anglais. But I beg pardon, I speak so much 
 French, but it is the language for the kitchen." 
 
 Madame Steignitz jerked open her sideboard door and threw 
 her drumstick in, without heeding whether it went fairly into 
 the plate standing on the shelf, or whether it fell on to a con 
 fused pile of potatoes, onions and dried apples. 
 
 " Oh, I understand very well, Madame ; I know you 
 French have the art of making good things." 
 
 " But it is not the good I talk of only ; it is the cheap. 
 Take the mutton-chop, I do not mean the cotelette panee, the 
 cotelctte en papilotte, or more, the cotelette a la provencal ; that 
 costs in the time and the money, and is not for poor people 
 who have just got a few cents to keep themselves from starve, 
 like myself, but take the American mutton-chop, coarse, 
 tough and very badly cooked ; you eat about half the meat 
 and throw the bones away. Maintenant ecoutez un moment, 
 I take the bones, I put them in a mortar, I pound them up 
 fine, I add a little Champignon, a little truffe. and some onion, 
 or a petite goussecfail, what you call garlic, one or all ; a little 
 piece of boiled chicken-liver, a little hard-boiled egg chopped 
 fine, with a sprig of parsley, a soupcon of Worcestershire sauce, 
 and then, with a few drops of o\\,faire sauter for a moment and 
 then empty the casserole upon a piece of buttered toast. Oh 
 mon Dieu ! but it is dclicieux. You have saved your bones, 
 and it does not only for to-day, but I assure you you can live 
 three days on the memory." 
 
 "I am afraid," replied the Captain, laughing, "that my 
 memory would be hardly strong enough for that. I am very 
 apt to forget the last meal before the others come round. But I 
 have no doubt what you say is very true. I believe that what 
 with overeating and the waste of the kitchen, there is more food 
 36
 
 626 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 thrown away in this country than all the world beside. The 
 sailors know what can be done sometimes with a little econ 
 omy and ingenuity. We have it knocked into us. I tell you 
 what, with nothing on board but salt-junk and weavely biscuit, 
 it takes no slouch at the stewpan to set on the table a dozen 
 dishes. But good-evening, madam, I am glad I have found 
 you looKing so smart. I shall write to Luther that you are 
 getting along as well as could be expected." 
 
 " You will come again soon, and let me know all the 
 news ? " 
 
 "Oh yes, madam." 
 
 " And are you sure that his name is Isenthal Count Isen 
 thai ? " 
 
 " Oh, perfectly sure. I have heard it a dozen times, and I 
 have seen it in the newspapers : Count Herman von Isen 
 thal." 
 
 " Count Herman ! " moaned the old lady after the Captain 
 had closed the door. " Yes, that would certainly be the name. 
 The grandfather was Count Herman," and her thoughts ran 
 back to the earlier scenes of her life when she was Annette, 
 maitresse des robes chief dresser and surintendante des femmcs- 
 de-chambre at Isenthal, besides being reader, confidante, and, 
 in some degree, companion to the Countess. Oh, those were 
 pleasant days. The Count was a very gallant and polite gen 
 tleman, if people did say that he had been such a wicked 
 man ; and then Madame was so good, a little imperious, a 
 little haughty, but she did not show that to those in her ser 
 vice, she kept all that for the relatives of her husband. No 
 wonder there was such a bitter feud with that cousin, and then 
 Madame Steignitz thought on all the incidents of that journey 
 to Baden, and the encounter with the young American, and the 
 desperate passion that her mistress had -suddenly conceived 
 for him she who had turned a cold shoulder to so many 
 admirers. Ah, it was strange. But as my poor husband said 
 sometimes, ' the crust of ice may cover the volcano.' 
 
 " And then," continued Madame Steignitz, still muttering 
 to herself, " when Steignitz and I got married, and the Count
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 627 
 
 said that we had better leave the castle and go to America, 
 and that he would give us twenty thousand guilders, I was so 
 sorry to part with Madame ; but I have kept my word, I 
 have never made one inquiry about Isenthal since, only when 
 I land in New York I see in that Vienna journal that a son 
 had been born to the Count and Countess of Isenthal. Never 
 one word more ; and then we go West. ; then comes that horri 
 ble life at St. Louis, and then the old life at Isenthal go out of 
 my head, until now it come back so strong oh, so strong 
 I would I knew if the Countess be living or dead. This young 
 man must be her son. Oh, if she knew that he was going to 
 marry the daughter of Monsieur Ledgeral, what would she say ? 
 what would she say ? I am sure she would say, ' It cannot 
 be it must not be.' I must act for her; she was a good 
 friend to me. I must do something. And there is man petit, 
 he shall not be cheated out of life. Oh, I have the double 
 reason to do something ; but what shall I do ? Let me think. 
 I must go to see this Monsieur Ledgeral, but I cannot go to 
 see him for two, three days a week, perhaps." 
 
 Madame Steignitz moved as rapidly as possible two or three 
 times across the floor. 
 
 " No, no," she exclaimed, " I have not yet the strength. 
 I cannot go like an old beggar with a cane. I should not 
 get in. II faut attendre jusqu'ci ce que mes jambs soient assez 
 fortes. I must wait for my legs to get strong again. But I 
 will write ; yes, I will write ; and if what I think is true, I 
 will put a name to my note that will make him jump from his 
 ?kin." 
 
 The old woman threw herself back in her chair and mused 
 for some time in silence. Suddenly starting up, she began 
 her preparations for bed. 
 
 " I am 'fraid I shall not sleep much ; no, no. I cannot stop 
 to think what to do. Some money two, three hundred thou 
 sand would have prevented this a few months ago, may be ; 
 but now she is engaged ! Ah, ha ! it must be something more 
 than the money now. But to bed. I shall not sleep, I know ; 
 mats la nuit porte conseil, and in bed one need not be at the
 
 628 NEVER AC A IX. 
 
 expense of a candle, just to think. Oh, the candles in this 
 country cost much money, and I am afraid of that miserable 
 kerosene. Tis not the way I would go out of the world 
 blown up by an inexplodable fluid !"
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 Whoppers and Luther on their travels Sad News Stichen's Death 
 Its effect on the Market. 
 
 LUTHER and Mr. Whoppers sauntered into the reading- 
 room of the St. Lawrence Hotel, at Montreal, at which 
 house they had just arrived, after a pleasant visit to the White 
 Mountains. 
 
 " What splendid weather we have had," exclaimed Luther. 
 " I hope it will last us until we get through with the Upper 
 Lakes." 
 
 " Yes, the autumn is the time to travel," replied Mr. Whop 
 pers. " You have all the means and appliances of travel left over 
 from the summer, and no rushing, struggling, sweating crowds, 
 and you are always sure of fine weather in this country, or, in 
 fact, in any other. I have been about the world some, and I 
 have yet to find a country where they have a decent spring or 
 an unpleasant autumn. It's the English poets who have hum 
 bugged us about spring. The fact is, we get too many of our 
 notions about things from the English literature we gobble 
 up in our infancy. All that stuff, for instance, about the won 
 derful superiority of Italian skies and sunsets we get from the 
 English, who haven't any skies or sunsets. What does an 
 untravelled Englishman know about mountains or rivers ? 
 Why he doesn't even know what a bad road is. I once 
 asked a couple of English pedestrians whether the road 
 through the Emmenthal, which they had just passed, was a 
 good carriage road. ' Why, sir, you can get through, I sup 
 pose,' was the answer ; ' but, sir, it's a horrid road perfectly 
 horrid.' Well, I turned into it, and found a bad road, but a 
 much better road than any five miles of road we have outside
 
 630 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 of Central Park. No, an Englishman don't know what a bad 
 road is." 
 
 " Do you suppose that it is a species of ignorance that he 
 has any great reason to regret ? " demanded Luther. 
 
 " Well, I can't say that it is. It is one of those cases in 
 which ignorance is bliss, I suppose ; but I mentioned it merely 
 to show how cautious we ought to be in accepting English 
 opinions." 
 
 " That is to say, when our cousins point out a bad road 
 we ought to dash into it." 
 
 " Yes, the chances are that we get through and come out 
 somewhere as in the matter of protective duties now." 
 
 " Well," replied Luther, " I can only say that you have 
 mentioned a mighty hard road to travel." 
 
 " But if it's a short-cut to the New Jerusalem, eh ? " 
 
 " Is it ? I doubt, and had rather take the long road." 
 
 " Oh, here come the New York papers, at last," exclaimed 
 Mr. Whoppers, jumping up and seizing the Herald. " Provi 
 dential, Luther ; we were just beginning to talk political econ 
 omy, and that is a thing, you know, that no fellow can find 
 out." 
 
 Both gentlemen secured their journals, and were in a mo 
 ment immersed in columns of awful accidents, interesting 
 murders, audacious highway robberies, municipal swindlings 
 and judicial rascalities, international flurries and stories of 
 battles and bloodshed. 
 
 " Is the world really growing any better or wiser ? " 
 groaned Luther. 
 
 " Certainly," replied Mr. Whoppers. " No doubt of it, if 
 you make allowance for two facts : the world is getting more 
 populous, and reporting is attaining a state of perfection. 
 You have no idea how much this perfection contributes to the 
 bad look of things. Formerly the scum of sin floated quietly 
 by, and you did not notice it. Now the reporters stand with 
 their rakes and drag-nets and collect it all, and heap it up 
 right under our noses. Why, no doubt the time will come 
 when every man will be interviewed before breakfast, and
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 6 3J 
 
 every wicked thought he has had during the night and every 
 wicked deed he intends to commit during the day will be in 
 the morning journals." 
 
 "That will be nice," replied Luther; "a fellow will be 
 able to see how his sins look in print, and give 'em the 
 go-by if he likes. That will be holding a ' mirror up to 
 nature.' What an aid to the moral sense ! " 
 
 "Yes, a typified conscience a method of getting an 
 abstract view of one's own particular naughtinesses an in 
 strument enabling us to obtain an objective look at ourselves 
 ' to see ourselves as others see us,' ha ! wouldn't that be 
 grand ? " 
 
 Mr. Whoppers dropped his journal and rubbed his hands, 
 and his whole countenance glowed with the ecstatic vision 
 of a time when every man's most private thoughts as well as 
 deeds should appear regularly in the newspapers. 
 
 " It will come ! It will come ! " he exclaimed. " The 
 world moves. When I was a youngster, many people dreaded 
 newspaper notoriety. To be put in the newspapers was then 
 a fear, now it is a hope. Mere notoriety is now an element 
 of power ; and, up to a certain limit, entirely independent 
 of the moral elements of the case. Conviction and punish 
 ment for infamous crime does certainly injure a man's 
 chances for high social or political position, no matter how 
 notorious the newspapers may have made him; but if he has 
 not actually had the hot iron to his skin, or, in other words, 
 if he has not really served at Sing Sing, there is no telling 
 but that he may be nominated, if not elected, to serve at the 
 Capitol. What is' it, youngster ? what is the matter ? " 
 
 This question was called forth by an exclamation from 
 Luther. 
 
 In reply the young man handed the journal to Mr. Whop 
 pers, pointing at the same time to the list of deaths. 
 
 Mr. Whoppers ran his eye down the column. " What ! 
 Stichen; died suddenly of apoplexy," etc., etc. "Alas, poor 
 Stichen ! 
 
 " Luther," continued Mr. Whoppers, leaning forward and
 
 632 NEVER AGAIX. 
 
 grasping the hand of the young man. " we have both lost a 
 good friend ; but I knew him longer and knew him better 
 than you, and it cuts me down quite strangely. There is not 
 a man in New York I shall miss more. He was a little man, 
 but he had a big heart ; and he was an honest man. Yes, 
 considering that he was a stock-broker, he was an honest 
 man." 
 
 And Mr. Whoppers shook Luther's hand effusively, and 
 squeezed it as if to squeeze out for his own comfort a few 
 drops of the sympathy with which Luther was filled. 
 
 " Yes," he continued, " Stichen was an honest man the 
 noblest work of God and such a good friend. I shall feel 
 his death a long time, it touches me so near ; but there is one 
 comfort I can write his obituary for the Universe, and it is 
 a pleasure to write an obituary when you can put it on thick 
 without lying. I'll go up to my room and do it at once, so as 
 to get it off by to-night's mail. You can occupy yourself 
 with the cathedral. I've seen it when I was here before. 
 Ascend the tower ; splendid view ; well worth an aspiring 
 mind. You won't miss me. A cathedral is a thing that is 
 more easily swallowed alone. This one won't trouble your 
 digestion. It's large enough, but there are no memories of 
 a thousand years' devotion to strain your mind with. It is 
 hardly one of those 
 
 ' Dark places in times far aloof, 
 Cathedrals called/ 
 
 such as Keats talked about, but it will do for an uncultivated 
 mental stomach like yours." 
 
 Yes, Stichen was dead ! A great and shining light had 
 suddenly gone out in Wall street one of the seven-branched 
 golden candle-sticks on the altar of Mammon had been 
 toppled over, or rather, as a more appropriate figure, one of 
 the high-priests serving within the very vail, in the full blaze 
 of the golden Shekinah, had fallen. Not even his million, 
 which he had rapidly quadrupled by bold and successful 
 speculation, could save him. 
 
 The last observation is a truism, and smacks of the pulpit,
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 633 
 
 but let us think for a moment how lucky 'tis 'tis true. Ah, 
 if wealth could secure immunity from death, if it could stave 
 off a judgment in Heaven as easily as it does a judgment in 
 the Supreme Court of New York, how it would intensify the 
 passionate desire of fortune! how it would inflame the fury of 
 
 greed ! 
 
 " Go back six thousand years 
 
 And make a world where death should never come, 
 And tell me what a hell such world would be." 
 
 The poet supposes the whole world absolved from the 
 rule of death, but a much more curious state of things would 
 arise under a law of nature limiting death to people who are 
 worth say under half a million a law absolutely prohibiting 
 Him from touching a man who had made his full pile. 
 
 We have no room to pursue this subject, and pause only 
 to correct one mistake that impulsive thinkers may fall into. 
 The first idea that springs into the mind is the injustice 
 to merely well-to-do people involved in such a law. Not so ; 
 death would be more then than now a boon to persons in 
 moderate circumstances a refuge, a resource, a something to 
 fall back upon after years of petty dicker or halting specula 
 tion ; an alternative goal which, as in some few cases of 
 exalted patriotism, every man could propose to himself, shout 
 ing exultingly, as he enters the arena of trade, " Give me for 
 tune, or give me death ! " 
 
 Yes, Stichen was dead ! and he had the finest funeral that 
 had been seen in a long time. The sententious sexton of 
 Grace Church was heard to say that it was a pity he hadn't 
 lasted till Lent. Such an agreeable funeral would have 
 come in so nicely to relieve the gloom of the season when 
 balls and weddings are prohibited by by fashion, he was 
 going to say, but he caught himself in time and said the 
 Church. 
 
 Stichen's funeral was magnificent so magnificent that the 
 idea occurred to more than one of the pall-bearers (all men 
 of mark nothing under a bank president) that it was a pity 
 he couldn't come to just for a few minutes to enjoy it.
 
 634 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 It was particularly magnificent and costly in the matter of 
 flowers. The coffin was covered, and the steps of the chancel 
 were filled with crosses, anchors, hearts, wreaths, and crowns, 
 while the flowers were of the rarest and most beautiful quite 
 equal to anything at the Horticultural. 
 
 Now, flowers at the funeral of a child, a maiden, or a 
 young bride is undoubtedly a pretty idea " quite tasty and 
 genteel," as our friend the sexton says ; but isn't such a pro 
 fuse floral display, especially in the case of elderly fogies, 
 rather without intending slang rather running the thing 
 into the ground ? Doesn't it savor a little of ostentation ? 
 Doesn't it speak of a strange jumble of grief and vanity on 
 the part of the bereaved, and a slight mixture of toadyism and 
 loving respect on the part of sympathizing friends ? Isn't it 
 a little hard on people of moderate means, who wish to see 
 their dead buried out of their sight in a proper style, and who 
 have neither a large circle of rich and interested friends nor a 
 conservatory of their own ? 
 
 We ask these questions with all deference, because, 
 although we are for reform in this as in many things, we have 
 not the courage of our convictions ; we are not so bold as 
 Uncle Shippen. He cares nothing for the opinion of society. 
 He turns up his nose at Fashion, and would just as lief as 
 not snap his fingers in the face of Mrs. Grundy. Once 
 mounted on one of his reform hobbies, he don't mind canter 
 ing right over or through the most sacred fences of conven 
 tionality. He says that this custom of flowers at funerals has 
 got to be a downright nuisance ; that it is a swindle and a sham ; 
 that it has been gradually eviscerated of all true feeling, leav 
 ing nothing but a sentiment of ostentatious prodigality. "I 
 tell you, sir," says the old gentleman, warming up to his work, 
 "it is getting to be worse than wicked it is getting to be 
 ridiculous. Rose-buds, sir, and japonicas, at a dollar a piece ! 
 Poor, perishable things their sentiment as flowers utterly 
 swallowed up by the feeling of their costliness as merchandise ! 
 It is absurd, sir. Our ancestors of the stone age knew better, 
 and did better. They buried the dead with lots of flint
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 635 
 
 hatchets and spear-heads, and then had a jolly good feast at 
 the door of the tomb. There was something sound and sol 
 emn in their customs ; but now, in the matter of death, we get 
 down upon our knees and grovel before the infernal joss of 
 fashion, and employ the sexton and the undertaker and the 
 florist to come and pick our pockets. I wouldn't mind it if we 
 did not try to humbug ourselves into the belief that it is all out 
 of respect and affection for the dead. If people would just come 
 out honestly and say, for instance, ' Here, now, I run my de 
 funct son against your deceased sister : match to come off at 
 Grace Church, P. P., within the year, and I'll bet I have more 
 carved rosewood, more silver plate, and more flowers, and a 
 bigger and more costly funeral, anyhow,' I think it would be a 
 great deal more honest, and not exert such a demoralizing 
 influence upon poor people who can't afford it, and yet think 
 they must indulge in all this extravagance ; or, in other words, 
 the superfluous and absurd prodigalities of woe would not be 
 mistaken for its necessary and fitting decencies, as they are 
 now." 
 
 We have sometimes regretted that we had not the space 
 and that it was not consistent with the course of our story 
 to introduce Uncle Shippen more fully, but perhaps it is best 
 as it is. He is so well known about town that it would be 
 hardly worth while, and perhaps the reader, either from 
 knowing him personally, or from the specimens we have 
 given of the wild way in which he sometimes rants, may be 
 quite content that he has not been brought more directly into 
 notice as one of the dramatis persona of our simple story. 
 
 Yes, Stichen was dead ! It couldn't be said of him, as 
 of Lycidas " dead ere his prime." He was ripe, and what is 
 more, he was ready. Nevertheless, the shock to the public 
 was very great. There was scarcely a breakfast-table in our 
 society, or a broker's office or counting-room down town 
 where the death was not a prominent subject of conversation. 
 The Street responded to it at once. The Lunasota and 
 Jiggermaree Grand Central fell two per cent, and Tuscarorah 
 sixes were five-eighths off at the first call.
 
 636 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 And is that all ? After a life of labor, of close, almost 
 sleepless, personal attention to business, and after years of 
 feverish excitement in the Street is that all ? It is a pity to 
 be compelled to say that, in most cases, that is about all. 
 However, an enormous pile of leavings may be some little 
 satisfaction, even on a death-bed. Let us see if a slight 
 analysis will not expose good grounds for the feeling. The idea 
 of leaving one's wife and children well provided for, as the 
 phrase is, is a very consoling one, and so far the preacher goes 
 with us. But, despite the preacher, the world will think, or 
 will act as if it thought, a great fortune an utterly useless 
 amount of superfluous gold a great good. The dying mil- 
 lionnaire, with his eyes turned away from the glories of the 
 Street, and just opening to a clearer vision of the glories of 
 eternity, may, judging from his personal experience, feel 
 some doubt of this ; but the universal conviction of the 
 world is against him, and he submits to authority. He dies 
 in the hope that his family may be the better for even heaped- 
 up riches ; and if the pile is large enough he may even have 
 hopes that some of it may dribble down to descendants in the 
 second, perhaps the third generation. This reflection must 
 be a comfort, inasmuch as Mammon, however fiercely he 
 clutches his victim, don't always squeeze out all of the poor 
 man's affections. The grip of greed on heart and brain 
 merely prevents those little daily manifestations that secure 
 affection in return. The unfortunate money-maker frequently 
 cares for family and friends, when family and friends don't 
 care for him. He would like to love and be loved, but he 
 hasn't time to say so ; and when he comes to his nunc dhnittis, 
 he sings the canticle with an unexpected unction born of the 
 conviction that, though he has spent his whole strength in 
 the pursuit of unnecessary wealth, yet that it has not 
 been wholly for himself that he has sacrificed so much of the 
 best part of his nature. 
 
 That, we say, is to some extent sometimes the case. In 
 the instance of Stichen it was preeminently so. The little 
 man had worked as much or more for his wife than himself.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 637 
 
 True, there was the excitement of financial operations the 
 mere pleasure of rolling up; but then the great thing was 
 to make his wife a fashionable woman to put her in the best 
 set. He did not care about becoming a fashionable man 
 himself; he knew that he was not qualified for society ; but 
 Mrs. Stichen was. She had beauty, talent, education and 
 style. All she needed was money and a fair chance. True, a 
 great many women with money had failed ; but then they 
 were not equal to Mrs. Stichen ! In fact no woman was 
 equal to Mrs. Stichen. 
 
 And this opinion was found running all through the pro 
 visions of his will, which stipulated as follows : First and 
 foremost, one million to Mrs. Stichen outright ; second, a 
 life interest in one-half of the remainder ; then various 
 legacies, a few donations to religious and charitable so 
 cieties, and then a very curious provision, commencing : 
 " Whereas my friend Mr. Whoppers thinks that too large a 
 proportion of money left by rich men is given to ill-con 
 sidered religious and philanthropic objects ; and whereas, 
 when any money is devoted to other ends, it always goes 
 into pictures or books, duplicating and reduplicating third 
 and fourth class galleries and libraries ; and whereas noth 
 ing at all is ever given to pure science, and whereas Mr. 
 Whoppers says that upon the progress of science depends 
 the development of humanity, the advance of civilization, 
 and the spiritual, moral, and physical comfort and well do 
 ing and being of society : Therefore, I give and bequeath 
 the remainder of my estate, which I estimate at a million and 
 a half of dollars, be the same more or less, first to my 
 clear wife and to my good friend Mr. Whoppers, to be by 
 them held in trust, until such times as the legislature shall 
 incorporate a society to be called the Medico Biological 
 Society of New York ; when the said money or moneys, with 
 all interest, increase or accumulations whatever, shall be by 
 the trustees aforesaid, viz., my dear wife and my good friend 
 Whoppers, given, paid, transferred, assigned and made over 
 to the society aforesaid, to be by said society, viz., the Medico
 
 638 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Biological Society of New York, held in trust forever, or 
 as much longer as shall be thought proper, in and for, and the 
 interest thereof annually applied to, the purposes, objects, and 
 designs, as hereinafter stated, to wit: The erection of a 
 building with suitable rooms for all kinds of physiological 
 and pathological research ; said building not to exceed in 
 actual cost of erection more than two hundred and fifty 
 thousand dollars ; which limitation is hereunto affixed and 
 made final in order to counteract the universal tendency 
 to expend, lay out, throw away, use up and otherwise be-devil 
 any and all moneys whatsoever left for any purposes con 
 nected with building, in useless and absurd architectural 
 designs. The said building shall also contain rooms for a 
 chemical laboratory of the first class ; and for a complete 
 scientific library of reference; and each and every depart 
 ment shall be furnished with all the means, appliances, 
 books, instruments, machines, and apparatus, of and for 
 physiological, pathological, and biological research, that can 
 be got, obtained, bought, begged or borrowed, for love or 
 money, or any other consideration whatsoever. 
 
 " And I hereby authorize the said society to dispose of 
 the income of the remainder of the fund in paying the 
 salaries of a head worker ; at least four workers in ordinary, 
 and any number of workers extraordinary, in no wise re 
 stricting the said society as to the amount of salary, character 
 and quantity of work, or general direction of research, except in 
 the manner and form following, and in the items herein men 
 tioned to wit : No worker shall be required to do any public 
 teaching, and he shall be permitted to teach or lecture in 
 public only under such restrictions as the society, by and with 
 the advice of my friend Whoppers and my dear wife, may at 
 first establish ; secondly, no money shall be received from 
 pupils, but any young man of a scientific turn, or old man 
 either, who wishes to pursue any line of research or experi 
 ment shall, upon furnishing proofs of the requisite talent and 
 the importance, of the subject he wishes to investigate, have, 
 by permission of the proper authorities appointed by the so-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 639 
 
 ciety, every necessary opportunity; shall have the use of 
 room and instruments, be aided with advice and assisted 
 when necessary by money ; Thirdly, inasmuch as it would be 
 impossible under the varying circumstances of biological re 
 search to prescribe the amount and character of the work 
 to be done, and very presumptuous in me to do so were it 
 possible, I will only indicate a point or two in relation to 
 said work, research, investigation and experiment, wherein 
 this my last will and testament shall be considered imper 
 ative. I require, then, that for the next twenty-five years, each 
 and every year, there shall be made twenty complete and 
 careful chemical analyses of every secretion and excretion 
 of healthy human bodies, with microscopic and spectroscopic 
 examinations of tissues and fluids, and I require an equal 
 number of full and complete investigations of the composition, 
 character, and mechanical, chemical, electrical, magnetical 
 and vitalical changes of all secretions and excretions in 
 a state of disease. 1 require, order, and command this 
 much, not with the design of interfering with the regular 
 scientific conduct of the Institution, but to secure a certain 
 attention to matters which the practising physician has no 
 time or opportunity or ability to examine thoroughly ; and 
 because, as Mr. Whoppers assures me, according to the doc 
 trine of chances, in such systematic and prescribed routine 
 work, something may appear, develop, turn up, come to 
 light and show itself. And whereas nothing is known of the 
 action of medicines in and on the human body in a state 
 of health, and but very little more of their action in a state of 
 disease, and the whole science of Therapeutics is very much 
 of a muddle, founded upon imperfect observations and dis 
 puted assumptions ; therefore I direct a certain portion of 
 the yearly income of said Medico Biological Society to be 
 by it devoted to direct experiment upon the healthy subject. 
 That is to say, a certain number of men, women and chil 
 dren, in full and robust health and strength, shall be engaged, 
 hired or employed to take, at regular and chosen intervals, 
 doses of divers and sundry medicines of varying weight,
 
 640 WEVER AGAIN. 
 
 volume and concentration, and otherwise to subject themselves 
 to such regimen, and submit themselves to such observations 
 and experiments, as may be judged requisite or advisable, 
 in the interests of science. Always provided, that nothing 
 contained in this provision conflicts with the rules of the 
 Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and that 
 its worthy President does not decide that aiding, abetting, 
 assisting or permitting a well man to take castor oil, or any 
 other noxious allopathic drug three times a week, is con 
 trary to the laws of the land, or that no court of equity shall 
 decide that, inasmuch as so many sick people get their 
 death by swallowing medicine, it would be contra bonos mores, 
 and therefore unlawful, under the common law, to permit 
 well persons to get their living by doing the same thing. 
 
 " And I especially direct that the charter of the society 
 aforenamed, to be hereafter incorporated, shall have in order 
 to enable the said society to take and hold, under the 
 provision of this, my last will and testament inserted a clause 
 to the effect that if ever the said society forgets the para 
 mount interests of science ; if it ever degenerates into a close 
 corporation of scheming, self-seeking pretenders ; if ever it 
 becomes a refuge for second and third rate talents, or a mere 
 cover under which a lot of jealous, squabbling, mercenary 
 Doctors can push out their claims for professional practice ; 
 then the Governor of the State shall have the power to 
 summarily and suddenly dissolve, extinguish, abolish, shut 
 up and clear out said society, and hand over all money 
 and property thereunto appertaining to the society for the 
 conversion of the Jews. 
 
 " And whereas the moneys hereby devised and set apart 
 for the purposes herein specified may not prove sufficient, 
 I hereby authorize and direct my dear wife to terminate 
 the trust held for her at any moment she may see fit, in this 
 wise, by directing a division of the million ; one half to the 
 aforesaid Medico Biological Society, if she and my good 
 friend Whoppers are satisfied with the working and manage 
 ment of the said society, and the other half to the construe-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 641 
 
 tion of a refracting telescope of ten feet aperture, and two 
 hundred and fifty feet focal length that or thereabouts ac 
 cording to the designs and embracing the novelties and in 
 ventions of Mr. Planly, and under the direction of my en 
 thusiastic and scientific young friend, Luther Lansdale ; 
 provided, however, that if my dear wife does not approve of 
 the work, doings, or management of the aforesaid society, she 
 can, in consideration that my good friend Whoppers thinks that 
 the South Pole has been neglected, and the North Pole 
 rather overdone, either employ the five hundred thousand 
 dollars in fitting out an Antarctic expedition, furnished and 
 supplied for general work, but particularly to be devoted to 
 ascertaining the possibility of connecting the two poles by 
 a series of copper wires, and the probable effect that such a 
 connection would have ; or, in lieu of such expedition, she 
 can devote the whole million to the construction of the 
 telescope aforesaid, and in this way spend the money with 
 perhaps less harm to the community than in any other \v^.y, 
 and certainly to the increase of knowledge, the advancement 
 and elevation of the human mind, and the glory of God. 
 Amen." 
 
 Cannot the reader see, running all through the provisions 
 of this will, and underlying the phraseology of this last portion, 
 which we have almost literally quoted, as any one can see for 
 himself by going to the Surrogate's office, the profound 
 respect that the worthy man had for his wife ; the confidence 
 that he had in her judgment ; the admiration that he had for 
 her character, as well as her person ; the affection, the love with 
 which she had inspired him ? Few women ever had such a 
 compliment from a dying husband as being intrusted with the 
 fitting out of an Antarctic exploring expedition. 
 
 And she deserved it. Mrs. Stichen was an honest, true- 
 hearted woman, a faithful and affectionate wife and, although 
 she had become a very fashionable woman, or, as Mrs. Lasher 
 phrased it, a very worldly woman, she yet took the death of 
 her husband very much to heart. 
 
 This may seem strange to country clergymen, who so fre-
 
 642 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 quently indulge in discourses upon the heartless frivolity of 
 city high life strange to the female novelist, who so ruthlessly 
 bares the corrupting and utterly demoralizing influence of 
 fashion strange to the provincial mind generally, which is 
 more or less infected with the idea that all great cities, and 
 New York in particular, are nothing but foci of vice and 
 crime and general ungodliness. But the statement is never 
 theless true, and it almost warrants the conclusion at which 
 we have more than once hinted, that almost as much heart 
 and soul and feeling, and even piety and charity and benev 
 olence can be found among the upper ten thousand aye, 
 even among the ultimate five hundred, as among any virtuous 
 crowd of nobodies of the same size. 
 
 Yes, Mrs. Stichen was a widow a young widow, an 
 immensely rich widow, and getting quite well spread in fash 
 ionable life, and yet no dear departed ever had a more sincere 
 mourner than poor Stichen.
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 Opening Oi the fall Campaign Mrs. Ledgeral's Invention Joseph's 
 Proposition A Startling Note. 
 
 THE Ledgeral party has returned to the city. In fact 
 everybody has returned to the city, and for three or 
 four weeks there is that lull in social activities that in the fall 
 invariably precedes the opening of the social campaign an 
 ominous lull, with creeping murmur filling the wide vessel of 
 the universe. 
 
 " From camp to camp 
 The hum of either army stilly sounds, 
 That the fixed sentinels almost receive 
 The secret whispers of each other's watch." 
 
 From all sides comes the dreadful note of preparation. 
 The noise of busy hammers smashing up the vast packing- 
 boxes of new goods makes hideous roar in Broadway. The 
 clicking of the sewing-machine, accomplishing the dames, 
 pierces the night's dull ear, and needle and shears better than 
 cocks or clocks " do the third hour of morning name." 
 
 And then but we will parody Shakespeare no longer 
 then such a getting of households in order ; such a fitting up 
 and furbishing ; such a running around after new servants; 
 such a chasing of Biddies into their holes in tenement-houses ; 
 such mysterious audiences with cooks, many of them just 
 landed from the " ould counthry," with, as the whole of their 
 professional knowledge, the maxim that " a pertatie ought to 
 be biled." Such unsatisfactory researches into the character 
 of waiters, resulting not unfrequently in the information that 
 if the fellow can be persuaded to keep sober he will do very
 
 644 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 well ; or that, if you don't say or do anything to irritate him, 
 and don't notice any little eccentricities of manner, you may 
 perhaps get along with him ; or that if you don't put too much 
 upon him, give him a night-key for the front door, with his 
 mornings to himself, and three evenings a week out for his 
 club and the theatre, you will find him a capital servant. 
 
 At length all these preliminaries are settled, and the social 
 forces advance to the attack. A few small dinner and theatre 
 parties occupy the skirmish line and cover the approaches. 
 Suddenly Mrs. Pushton, on the left, lets fly a volley of cards 
 for the first regular " gabble-gobble." It is instantly answered 
 by Mrs. Struggles on the right, with a German in the evening 
 thrown in. 
 
 Boom ! boom ! What is that ? It is Mrs. Montebello, 
 who has opened her batteries, charged with a big ball, 
 right in the centre of the line. Good heavens, how it rakes 
 'em ! Toadies and flunkies and snobs fall in countless 
 crowds. Notes begging for invitations for left out friends 
 darken the sky, and the musical voice of more than one des 
 perate damsel rises on the air in shrieks of supplication for 
 an invitation for herself. 
 
 The battle has fairly begun. Mrs. Boutshard and Mrs. 
 Vitalstein are wheeling their artillery on to the vantage- 
 ground of Delmonico's, whence, with their heavy mortars, 
 they can bombard the universe if they please, and a very 
 mortifying thing it will be for any poor people left beyond 
 range. Mrs. Karzon crosses the East River for a night attack 
 in boats, and takes her friends in the rear, drives the vast 
 crowd before her, pens them up in the gorge of Fourteenth 
 Street, and before morning has them all half dead with admi 
 ration and delight. Bold Mrs. Robyn Hood and Mrs. Allen 
 A. Dale, from beneath the umbrage of the dreadfully thinned 
 out forest of the Square, shoot out their pasteboard shafts 
 with that practised aim which has so often laid low the gallant 
 of a dozen tynes. And now, like that generous knight who at 
 the lady's cry 
 
 " Through Sherwood's glades so fresh and green 
 Spurred fiercely to the desperate scene."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 64^ 
 
 a nobly-mounted dame appears, armed cap-a-pie with the 
 weapons of eld as well as with an intellectual many-cham 
 bered revolver of the latest fashion, and joins in the fray. Mrs. 
 Frank garners her cohort of beautiful damsels and rushes 
 into the melee, pouring in a volley of splendid dinners 
 until the whole air of society is betruffled and the ground 
 white with soup a la reine. While Mrs. Cutters, and Mrs. 
 Smithers, and Mrs. Stephens, and Mrs. Jones, and Mrs. 
 Robinson, and Mrs. Livingston, and Mrs. Stuyvesant, and 
 Mrs. Van Courtlandt, and a host of others, each surrounded 
 by a gallant band of devoted virgins, make overwhelming 
 charges clear up and into the innermost defences of the Inef 
 fable Bosh. 
 
 Ah, why have we not why have we never had any writer, 
 author, poet, or novelist competent to deal with this subject ; 
 to depict the varying phases of the fashionable battle-field ; to 
 note the many chances and changes of the fight ; to describe 
 the feats of arms ; to record the names of the chief derring doers, 
 and above all to moralize the scene from a high philosophic 
 point of view, and, while holding in full light the splendor 
 of achievement, give us a clear glimpse of the accompanying 
 pain and misery, the mortifications, the snubbings, the wounded 
 vanities, the heart-burnings, the jealousies, the meannesses, the 
 mendacities, so that all of us common people can fairly 
 judge for ourselves whether the game is really worth the 
 candle ? 
 
 Alas ! our society must wait for its Thackerays, and Balzacs, 
 and La Bruyeres. It must wait yet awhile for the true artist 
 who can touch its black keys here and there without unduly 
 sharping or flatting every note of its key-board. It must wait 
 for the deft surgery that can carve the cancers and probe the 
 sores without leaving the idea that the whole body is a mass 
 of vulgar corruption, permeated and nourished by a circulation 
 of unmitigated foufouism. It must wait for a finer analysis 
 than is furnished by Slangwhanger's essays, an observation 
 nicer and truer than is in the novels of Mrs. Slaphem, and an 
 induction a little more copious, and a generalization a little
 
 646 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 more correct than is commonly found among those of our 
 English cousins who kindly condescend to don their green 
 goggles and mingle with our best society in hotels, rail-cars 
 and steamboats. 
 
 The Ledgerals had been back two or three weeks, and a 
 busy time Mrs. Ledgeral had had of it. Shopping alone is 
 terribly exacting work for very rich women who have no sense 
 of the necessity of economy to guide them ; who are turned 
 loose into Stewart's, Arnold & Constable's, or Lord & Tay 
 lor's, and compelled to do their duty without any regard to 
 price now buying this, now buying that, at the suggestion 
 of the slightest whim or caprice, and now being talked into 
 something perfectly splendid, with two yards extra, by an 
 insinuating gentleman behind the counter. Think of it, ye 
 happy dames in moderate circumstances, whose pathway 
 through the labyrinth of dry goods is luckily fenced in for you 
 by ideas of something cheap. 
 
 But it was not alone shopping, or servants, or house-clean 
 ing and renovating, or the new furniture, that exercised Mrs. 
 Ledgeral's mind. She, too, was an inventor. She had a 
 plan a grand plan, but she kept it to herself. Not even 
 Mrs. Struggles had a hint of it, and now it was necessary to 
 broach the subject to Mr. Ledgeral. 
 
 " You are not going out immediately ? " she demanded, as 
 Mr. Ledgeral, having finished a cup of strong coffee, pushed 
 back his plate of untasted muffins and rose from the table. 
 
 " I shall be in for an hour yet. Why do you ask ? " 
 
 " Oh, I want a few minutes' conversation with you. I 
 have something to propose." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral hesitated for a moment. Everything now 
 startled him. But he recovered himself. It could be noth 
 ing ; some party or ball, or something of the kind ; best meet 
 it at once. 
 
 " Come into the library, then," he replied, and leading the 
 way, threw open the door for Mrs. Ledgeral. 
 
 " You know, my dear," began Mrs. Ledgeral, " that we 
 shall have to give a large, a very large, wedding reception."
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 647 
 
 " Is it settled ? Has Helen accepted him ? " demanded 
 Mr. Ledgeral in an eager tone. 
 
 " Well, yes," replied Mrs. Ledgeral. " I consider it quite 
 settled. She has promised me to accept him, and the Count 
 has gone off just for a little run on the prairies with that 
 understanding. He will be back in a fortnight, and then you 
 will have to arrange matters with him yourself." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral winced, and his cheek grew if possible a little 
 paler. It was too true that there were matters that would have 
 to be arranged with the Count. Mrs. Ledgeral little knew 
 how keenly her careless words cut home to her husband's heart. 
 
 " Now, we shall have to give," she continued, " a grand 
 reception, and our house, large as it is, is not large enough, 
 and I think going to Delmonico's is a little well, I won't 
 say vulgar, for several of our friends of undoubted posi 
 tion and refinement and taste have given there the most 
 splendid entertainments ; but I will say a little just a little 
 out of harmony with my old-fashioned and very extreme 
 notions of what is delicate and proper. Something like bor 
 rowing or hiring plates, spoons, and waiters for a dinner 
 party, you know. Uncle Shippen denounces the whole sys 
 tem, as far as dinners are concerned. He says that it is vul 
 gar in the extreme ; that it has killed the little cosy, 
 comfortable dinner, where you had a feast of soul and flow 
 of wit, and a fair share of refined geniality and enjoyment, 
 and in its place substituted the grand dinner d la Lucullus, 
 with lamprey soup, peacock's brains, and pigs' livers cooked 
 fifty-five different ways, and around which very respectable 
 and clever people sit, for the nonce, a row of unmitigated prigs 
 and humbugs. Now, you know, my dear, I don't subscribe 
 to all that Uncle Shippen says, but I am not sure that he is 
 not right in this, and I feel somewhat in the same way about 
 going to Delmonico's for a ball or party. But, more than 
 this, I don't think that a wedding reception has ever been 
 tried there by any one in our set. It will be much more 
 genteel to do the thing at home. So I have an idea, and I 
 have consulted Chipman, the builder, and he says it can be
 
 648 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 done just as well as not. I propose to have a frame of wood 
 that will enclose the whole of the back-yard, and cover the 
 frame with canvas. This will give us a large room, forty feet 
 square, communicating with the house through the dining- 
 room windows. Chipman says' he can have it all fixed so 
 that he can put it up and take it down again in two or three 
 hours, and that the Fire Department will give us leave for 
 just one day ; and then the interior can be so splendidly 
 hung in cretonne. Stewart has some rich patterns or, for 
 the matter of that, a few hundred yards of blue and yellow 
 satin " 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral jumped up from his chair and began to pace 
 up and down the room, his usual movement when irritated or 
 excited. 
 
 " Oh, my dear, if you think that would cost too much we 
 can get along with bunting and white cotton, and make it up 
 in flowers," and the lady paused inquiringly. 
 
 It is a hard case, when a man supposed to be rich is in 
 reality desperately " short," and yet don't dare own it even 
 to the wife of his bosom. However, the whole amount, even 
 with the blue and white satin, must be so ridiculously small, 
 in comparison with other and more pressing sums, that it 
 was hardly worth thinking about ; and, besides, Mr. Ledgeral 
 felt a sense of relief on finding that Mrs. Ledgeral's mys 
 terious and important communication was laden with no 
 mightier issue than a demand for permission to spend a few 
 thousands more than he had contemplated. 
 
 " Do as you please, my dear," he exclaimed, resuming his 
 seat ; " but be sure you make Chipman give you an estimate, 
 and then hold him strictly to the terms of his agreement." 
 
 " Oh, I will take good care of that," replied Mrs. Ledgeral, 
 with her hand on the door. " He is to furnish the outside 
 frame and covering, and a good floor, and put it all up com 
 plete by five o'clock in the morning, so as to give us time to 
 decorate the inside, and all for twelve hundred dollars not 
 a cent more. Oh, I will look out for that ; you need not 
 trouble yourself, my dear. You just keep quiet and take care
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 649 
 
 of your health. I think you worry too much about the 
 Count. You certainly have looked better since he has gone." 
 
 The lady closed the door, and Mr. Ledgeral sat down to 
 his table and listlessly eyed a row of letters which Joseph had 
 taken from the letter-box and arranged with formal pre 
 cision. 
 
 The old fellow shuffled in at this moment with an addi 
 tional note, which he had just taken in at the door, and for a 
 few minutes occupied himself in rearranging the row of let 
 ters, all the time with a side look at Mr. Ledgeral. 
 
 " That will do, Joseph," at length exclaimed that gentle 
 man, a little impatiently. 
 
 " Yes, dat will do. I wish some oder tings would do as 
 well." 
 
 Suddenly the old man turned himself around and ad- 
 dreesed his master in a firm and decided tone. 
 
 " Look heah, Misser Cort Ledgeral, I want to ax you 
 some questions." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral started. His mind had dwelt so long upon 
 certain questions that might some day be asked, that ques 
 tions of any kind, and from any quarter, frightened him. 
 
 " I want to ax you," continued Joseph, " if I wasn't born 
 in your fader's house a free nigger ; down in de old house 
 on the east shore ? " 
 
 " I suppose so. Why do you ask ? " 
 
 " Fifteen year before you was born, eh? And I wants to 
 ax you if I didn't take you when you was a baby and brung 
 you up myself, all 'cepting the feedin' part, till you was a big 
 boy ? and ain't I done my duty by you for fifty years jis 
 one-half of a centuary ? Well, den, how can yer go and treat 
 me in dis obliverous manner?" 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral looked surprised. 
 
 "Yes, I say in a very obliverous manner," continued 
 Joseph, bringing his hand down with some force upon the 
 table. " I'm one ob de family, I is, and dere is someting 
 goin' wrong. Firs' I tink it was de panic, 'cause you know 
 we went thro' de panic in thirty-seben, when we was boys,
 
 650 NEVER AC A IX. 
 
 and we've been through ebbery panic since den, and de rule is, 
 more panic more Champagne. But dere ain't no panic now ; 
 it's someting worse, and you don't tell me. Well, I has been 
 reflectum, I has, and I am not goin' to stan' it ; here's dem 
 city six's you got for me five ob 'em," and Joseph drew 
 out five thousand dollar bonds and laid them on the 
 table ; " and here's someting you don't know tree tousand 
 seben hundred dollars and sebenty-seben cents," and the 
 old man pulled out his bank-book and slapped it down upon 
 the bonds. " Dar, take it, and let us go right back to one 
 bottle ob Champagne on Sunday, 'cepting dere is company. 
 Oh, Misser Cort ! Misser Cort ! you recomblect de time when 
 I larn you to swim in de old mill-pond, eh ? and when I 
 buckle on your new skates, eh ? and when we went a diggin' 
 sof ' clams ober on de East Ribber, on old Pete Stuyvesant's 
 farm, just above de horse-market ; and when I lick dat big 
 fellow dat trew de stone at ye? And do ye recomblect when I 
 hold you on de old mare, eh ? Ki ! wasn't dat fun ! and now 
 you ain't a goin' back on de nigger as brung you up, eh 'i " 
 
 Joseph wheeled and shuffled out of the door before Mr. 
 Ledgeral could recover from his astonishment at this unex 
 pected and eloquent address. Mechanically he picked up 
 the bonds and bank-book and turned them over in his hands. 
 Suddenly he pushed them away, and leaning his elbows on 
 the table, buried his face in his hands. His whole frame 
 shivered, and a loud sob of agony burst from his heart. 
 Joseph's tender words and generous offer had completely 
 lifted the thin and scanty veil of self-love from his own un- 
 worthiness, and remorse, " the raven of a guilty mind," clawed 
 and picked away at his heart with renewed vigor. Think you 
 that the stern daughter of Nox always lays her hand less lightly 
 upon the sinner because she visits him in private ? I verily 
 believe that there are honorable and honored gentlemen walk 
 ing the streets this day who would welcome public prosecution 
 and punishment if it could give the peace of mind which they 
 have lost forever. 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral recovered himself in a few moments and
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 651 
 
 turned to his letters. He knew that most of them related to 
 his own private business, and that there was very little chance 
 of these offering any very agreeable reading. However, they 
 must be looked into, and he began slowly tearing off the 
 envelopes and glancing at their contents. " Stiggins and 
 Hyney ! D n those fellows, they want more margins ! Let 
 me see, ten thousand, eh? Ohio and Mississippi fallen off 
 five per cent., and still looking downward. Was there ever 
 such luck ? Let 'em sell out then. They don't get a cent 
 more from me. Ah ! here's something jolly ; well number 
 five stopped pumping ; going to draw tubing and change seed- 
 bag. Well number three the engine blew out cylinder-head 
 yesterday ; by wonderful good luck nobody was killed. 
 D n 'em, I wish it had raked everything within a mile 
 of Petroleum Centre ! Nothing more to report, except that 
 the foundations of the big tank gave way night before last. 
 She got a slight cant, and that strained her so that she sprung 
 a leak, and before we found it out in the morning we lost 
 about five hundred barrels ; not sure but that we shall have 
 to take it all down and make the whole thing over again." 
 
 " Ah ! what is this ? " exclaimed Mr. Ledgeral, with a sud 
 den and violent start, as he opened the note Joseph had last 
 brought in. " What ! Good heavens ! " and Mr. Ledgeral 
 rubbed his fingers across his eyes, as if to wipe away an 
 obstructing film, and still he read : 
 
 " Mr. Ledgeral thinks to a marriage between his daughter 
 and Count Isenthal. It cannot be. C'est defendupartoutes 
 les lois. It cannot be. I forbid it ; in the name of Madame 
 D'Okenheim, I forbid it. If that name calls up some memo 
 ries ; if Mr. Ledgeral is the Mr. Ledgeral who it is now 
 more than twenty-five years at Baden lived, for a few weeks, 
 in the passionate glow of as proud a heart as ever melted to 
 the tender touch of love ; if he recollects sitting on the bal 
 cony of the Hotel de 1'Europe one beautiful moonlight night 
 that time when hand first clasped hand, and a youthful and 
 unpractised tongue stammered out its unrebuked confessions; 
 if he recollects that midnight stroll along the banks of the 
 Oos, he will give a private audience to the writer of this note, 
 who will call to that purpose at ten o'clock to-morrow. 
 
 " ANNETTE."
 
 652 NEVER AC A IX. 
 
 Mr. Leclgeral's hands trembled so that he could scarcely 
 hold the note, as he read and re-read it. He threw it from 
 him, and the crumpled paper floated oh*" with a hiss and rattle 
 to the floor. He eyed it for a moment in mingled astonish 
 ment and horror, not diminished because of a feeling of in 
 tense curiosity. 
 
 It was impossible ! No, there it lay, and he had read 
 every word of it aright. It was no fiction of his disordered 
 fancy ; it was a real thing, and with something terribly threat 
 ening in its look vague, gigantic he could not guess what. 
 
 Can it be that the wicked deeds of hot-blooded, reck 
 less youth, condoned by sleepy conscience, ever return after 
 an oblivion of more than a quarter of a century to plague and 
 perplex a respectable gentleman of middle age ? It seems 
 ridiculous at first sight to suppose so. 
 
 Nemesis is represented with wings, and with helm and 
 wheel. She ought to have added to her emblems a fine- 
 meshed scoop-net, as indicating that, although her flight may 
 be delayed, she, in the end, fishes up all our sins, great and 
 small. 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral cowered, and looked back over his shoulder 
 with a swift, furtive glance that had almost become habitual 
 to him. No actual spectre met his eye ; no gaunt, horrible skel 
 eton flourished its fleshless bones in the air, but if such had 
 been in sight he would not, perhaps, have been a whit more 
 frightened. If he had seen standing in the middle of the 
 room the splendid statue by Phidias of the Rhammusian 
 goddess, ten cubits high, with her head touching the ceiling, 
 he could not have bowed himself in more desperate depre 
 cation. 
 
 Why wonder that he could not keep bottle and glass from 
 clinking loudly as, with trembling hand, he poured out a deep 
 draught of bourbon. 
 
 The stimulus steadied him. He picked up the letter and 
 sat down to read it once more. 
 
 Annette ! Yes, he recollected the name. There had been 
 an Annette. He could not, however, recall her personality
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 653 
 
 to mind ; he had never taken much notice of her ; his eyes 
 had been too full of the mistress to mind the maid. Annette? 
 Yes, that was her name Annette ! 
 
 But business must be attended to. He was a public man 
 a prominent man. He must at least show himself in 
 Burling Slip if he did not want half-a-dozen reporters inter 
 viewing him as to the state of his health. A suspicion of 
 a rapid breaking up might very much injure him in the 
 present complicated condition of his affairs, and as he did 
 not care to have his digestive apparatus commented upon in 
 the Daily Howler, with perhaps a chance of misrepresen 
 tation of either his lungs or his liver, he must go down town, 
 at least for an hour or two. 
 
 If he had known the comments his appearance excited, 
 he might have decided upon staying at home. It was a 
 subject of conversation in the bank parlor for ten minutes. 
 
 " How bad Ledgeral looks," exclaimed the President. 
 
 "Yes," replied a director, "looks as if he was going to 
 strike a balance soon. I suppose it's his lungs." 
 
 " No, I think it's his liver." 
 
 " He'll cut up well ! People say two millions." 
 
 " Bah ! I always divide by two. He's been speculating, 
 and I guess he's been hard hit. I don't believe he'll leave a 
 cent over a million." 
 
 " Well that's enough to leave behind one. To be sure it 
 don't count for much in this world, but you have the satisfac 
 tion of knowing that it will count for a great deal less in 
 the next. The preachers have got us there, eh ? Naked 
 we were born you know ha ! ha ! But about that discount 
 for Simpkins what do you say ? "
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 Interview with Madame Steignitz A Partnership arranged A grand 
 Reform Joseph and the Bourbon. 
 
 TEN o'clock ! 
 Mr. Ledgeral had been up since sunrise. He had no 
 appetite. He did not care for breakfast, and yet he had a 
 certain sinking of the stomach which, except in the case of 
 the confirmed inebriate, requires a stimulus very different 
 from that of alcohol the stimulus of distention. He must 
 eat something. He must at least pretend to have eaten 
 something, so he told Joseph to say at the breakfast-table 
 that he had gone out for a walk, and would take his break 
 fast at Delmonico's. 
 
 Ten o'clock ! 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral had been back for half an hour or more, 
 and had been trying to read the Herald, but the sound of 
 the door bell interrupted him so frequently that he could get 
 no further than " Enormous defalcation 500,000 missing 
 bonds Flight of the cashier ! " etc., etc. Punctual to the 
 moment there was a faint tinkle, followed in due time by a 
 tap at the library door, and Joseph, who had received his 
 orders, ushered in a female habited in black, with a black 
 lace veil concealing her features, and a bonnet and shawl 
 exhibiting just that degree of faded and worn-out gentility 
 that would have rendered it impossible for the nearest ob 
 server, even aided by the small hand and the new and fault 
 less glove, to place her with any certainity in the social 
 scale. 
 
 Joseph brought forward a chair for her, and Mr. Ledgeral
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 655 
 
 rose and by a movement of his hand rather than by any 
 words invited her to be seated. 
 
 She paused for a moment until Joseph had closed the 
 door behind him and then dropped into the chair, and draw 
 ing aside her veil, fastened a pair of piercing black eyes on the 
 gentleman. 
 
 He in his turn regarded her with a steadfast stare, and 
 for a minute and more not a word was said. 
 
 " I cannot say that I recollect you. Have I ever seen you 
 before ? what name, Madame ? To what may I attribute this 
 visit ? " 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral spoke slowly, and with intervals between his 
 questions, while the little old woman stared on, as if not hear 
 ing a word. 
 
 " You do not recollect me," she said. " Well, it is what 
 I should think. I have altered so much more than you. I 
 am such a poor old woman, and then at that time you had no 
 eyes for any one but Madame." 
 
 "Madame! madame who? what madame?" demanded 
 Mr. Ledgeral, with a feeble affectation of surprise in his 
 intonation. 
 
 " Bah ! Madame D'Okenheim ! And you would know my 
 name ? My name is Annette. My maiden name you would 
 not recollect perhaps you never heard ; but my married name 
 you will know better ; it is Steignitz Madame Steignitz d 
 votre service. 
 
 " Ah ! I see you recollect Steignitz." continued the speaker, 
 as Mr. Ledgeral excitedly moved his chair up a little nearer. 
 " I married him, and together we came to this country it is 
 now twenty-six years. You recollect him ? " 
 
 " Yes ! I recollect him, and I recollect you too, now. Is 
 your husband living ? " 
 
 " No ; he was murdered in Mississippi. He had a iand 
 quarrel with a desperado, and my husband gained the suit 
 only to be killed with the bowie on the steps of the court 
 house ; and then I was disgust with the life at St. Louis, but 
 we had some little property ; two or three houses, and some
 
 656 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 land close to the city, and so for my little boy I stay there two 
 or three years; and then we make a little trip for the summer, 
 and the steamboat explode, and oh mon Dieu I they pull me 
 up out of the water alone. What for God allows that, I don't 
 know. Oh ! I wish for one thousand times that I had been 
 let for to drown. But I could stay at the West no longer. I 
 sell everything, and come to New York." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral listened impatiently. " And Madame 
 D'Okenheim ! " he exclaimed ; " what of her ? you have 
 heard from her since you have been in this country ; what 
 has become of her ? strange that I could hear nothing of her ; 
 strange that you all left Geneva so suddenly and so secretly. 
 And Monsieur D'Okenheim ! is he still living ? " 
 
 " He must be dead," replied Madame Steignitz, nodding 
 her head emphatically. " Yes, he must be dead." 
 
 "And Madame?" 
 
 " She ! ah ! I cannot say ; I do not know. I must inform 
 myself; I must see and question the young man ; why did I 
 not think so to do sooner ? Commeje suis bute ! 
 
 Something dubious in the manner, as well as the words 
 puzzled Mr. Ledgeral, and he waited a moment for her to 
 continue, but she did not speak. 
 
 " What young man ? " he demanded. " What do you 
 mean ? " and, suddenly thinking of the note he had received, 
 he laid his hand upon her arm with some energy, and 
 exclaimed in a sharper and more imperative tone " What did 
 you mean by writing to me in the name of Madame D'Oken 
 heim ? What did you mean by conjuring up memories that 
 ought to be forgotten ? What means this visit ? speak ! I am 
 a very sick man, as you see. I have had terrible trials and 
 troubles ; I cannot stand any suspense ; speak ! say why do 
 you undertake to forbid the marriage of my daughter with 
 Count Isenthal ? " 
 
 Madame Steignitz nodded her head two or three times in 
 her peculiar way. 
 
 " Because she does not love him," she at length replied. 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral started, and pushed back his chair an angry 
 flush lending some color to his pale, wan face.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 6^7 
 
 " And did you come here to tell me that ? how can you 
 know anything about it ? what business is it of yours, even if 
 it were so? What right have you to meddle in my affairs? 
 There was nothing in your former knowledge of me to war 
 rant you. If you were obliging and discreet at the time, it 
 was for the sake of your mistress ; I was under no obligation 
 to you ; I owe you nothing." 
 
 Madame Steignitz sat perfectly imperturbable, till Mr. 
 Ledgeral paused. 
 
 " She not only does not love him," she replied, " but she 
 loves somebody else. Ah ! how could she help it ? she so 
 gentille, so comme il faut, so pleine de ban sens, how could she 
 help to love man petit, my little one, my Luthare si brave, si 
 beau, si rempli de grace virile et de vigueurV 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral's rage deepened almost into fury, and all 
 the more readily as he felt the conviction that the old woman 
 was saying nothing but the truth. He strode two or three 
 times up and down the room, and then stopped abruptly be 
 fore her. 
 
 " This is a piece of impertinence," he exclaimed, "that I 
 will not pardon in you still less in the young man if by 
 Luther, you mean that insolent and presumptuous fellow 
 my clerk, Luther Lansdale ; the nature of your connection 
 with him I know not and I care not to know ! I will clear 
 him out to-day, and you, if you will be so good as to cut 
 short your visit, you will oblige me ! I suppose you come to 
 threaten me. You have a secret of mine in your posession 
 publish it if you please. I care not if the whole world 
 know it ! You can't even annoy me and you need not 
 think that you can blackmail me in any manner or form. 
 I defy you ! Go ! " 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral pointed to the door, but Madame Steignitz 
 did not stir ; she merely nodded her head three or four times 
 and raised her eyes with a pitying expression to his face. 
 
 " Ah ! ce pauvre monsieur ! ce pauvre monsieur!" she mut 
 tered. " When a wilful man march upon a precipice, he do 
 not see you cannot call him away with the whisper ; il faut 
 42
 
 658 NEVER AC A IX. 
 
 lui arracher par un coup de tonnerre. Yes, monsieur, I must 
 crush you I must crush you to the ground. Is that door 
 locked ? " she sharply demanded. 
 
 " It is not." 
 
 " Lock it ! " 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral, surprised into obedience, turned and 
 shoved the bolt into place. 
 
 " Now sit down ! " and Mr. Ledgeral, very much to his 
 astonishment, felt himself constrained by something in tone 
 and manner to obey. 
 
 " Maintenant ecouttz. Je vat's vous faire 'dresser les cheveux. 
 I left the service of my mistress, whom you knew as 
 Madame D'Okenheim, it is now twenty-six years that 
 is, in the year we were all at Baden ; we parted very good 
 friends, but circumstances may arise which make it best for 
 friends to part. I knew too much ; Steignitz knew too much ; 
 and Monsieur and Madame knew that \ve knew too much, and 
 it might not be convenible for us to be longer in the family 
 after an event which everybody began to see must happen. 
 Well, we arrive in this country, and two weeks after I learn 
 that my mistress has given birth to a boy. That boy was 
 the heir to vast estates, but I knew that he was not the right 
 ful heir ; what do you think, Monsieur? " 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral, with a vigorous effort, restrained all ap 
 pearance of emotion, although in his heart he was burning 
 to ask a hundred questions. 
 
 " Well ! " he exclaimed coldly, " what then ? Why should 
 that interest me now ? why should you take the trouble to 
 come here to tell me that ? Have you nothing further to say ? " 
 
 The old lady nodded her head affirmatively. "Yes, a good 
 deal more. Ecoutez. When we were at Baden we were travel 
 ling incognito ; D'Okenheim was the name of a little estate in 
 Gallicia belonging to Monsieur ; his true title ah ! you never 
 knew it ! his true title was Count Herman von Isenthal ! " 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral gave a violent start, and clutched Madame 
 Steignitz' arm so fiercely that she writhed with the pain. 
 
 "And Madame D'Okenheim ?" he cried.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 659 
 
 "Was the Countess Julia von Isenthal." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral uttered a loud groan, and sank back in his 
 chair. His eyes rolled fearfully, and a convulsive shudder, 
 followed by an almost cataleptic rigidity of the muscles, passed 
 through his frame. 
 
 " Oh man Dieu ! mon Dieu /*' exclaimed Madame Steig- 
 nitz, terribly frightened. " // monrra ; he will die ! he will 
 die! que faire / que ferrai-je ! " and whipping out her scent- 
 bottle she applied it with a vigorous dab to his nose. 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral, recovering himself with a deep gasp, struck 
 the bottle with a violent gesture from her hand, sending it 
 whirling across the room, and jumped to his feet. Staggering 
 for a few steps he gazed around him wildly, like one awaken 
 ing from a dream. Instinctively he stretched out his hand to 
 the mantel-piece to keep himself from falling. An instant 
 more of impeded nervous function, and permanent paraly 
 sis would have held him powerless in its grasp. It was the 
 merest touch and go. 
 
 He threw himself back into his seat and covered his face 
 with his hands, and sobbed and groaned piteously. 
 
 Madame Steignitz looked on, amazed at the violence of 
 his emotion. She had expected him to be startled, frightened, 
 excited, but above all to be thankful that the marriage had 
 been arrested. Here appeared to be nothing but utter de 
 spair and remorse, rivalling in intensity the agony of CEdipus 
 Tyrannus over consummated incest and murder. 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral had never read Sophocles. He probably 
 had but very hazy notions of the manner in which Corneille 
 and Dryden and Lee and others have treated that very disa 
 greeable story of the kingly and incestuous parricide. If 
 he had, he might have solaced his mind with various suitable 
 quotations especially with the rantings put into the mouth of 
 the unfortunate king by the last-named poet : 
 
 " Fall darkness now, and everlasting night 
 Shadow the globe ; may the sun never dawn, 
 The silver moon be blotted from her orb ! 
 And for an universal rout of nature,
 
 660 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Through all the inmost chambers of the sky, 
 May there not be a glimpse, one starry spark, 
 But gods meet gods, and jostle in the dark. 
 That jars may rise, and wrath divitie be hurled, 
 Which may to atoms shake the solid world." 
 
 We have italicized the last lines, as being a very curious 
 combination of the forcible and the funny. But we have no 
 disposition to make fun of Mr. Ledgeral's state of mind. His 
 agony was real, and might have been treated, perhaps, a little 
 more seriously, did we not know, and did the reader not guess, 
 that one element of it, and that the most horrible, had no real 
 foundation. 
 
 Madame Steignitz fidgeted in her chair ; got up, and sat 
 down again ; loosened the strings of her bonnet, and tied them 
 again i'n a hard knot ; pinned and repinned her old shawl, and 
 nervously twitched the wristbands of her neat gloves, all the 
 time muttering in French and English, " Je voudrais bien savoir 
 ce que Jest. I would know what is the matter. Ah ! ah ! I 
 fear ; what if the marriage has taken place ! Oh mon Dieu ! 
 mon Dieu ! quclle horreur I " 
 
 As Mr. Ledgeral's emotions subsided, she drew her chair 
 closer, and touching his hand, whispered : " It is not too late, 
 is it ? They are not married ? " 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral stared at her wildly, but made no reply. 
 
 " It must be prevented, must it not ? " she continued. " It 
 cannot go on, eh ? " 
 
 " No ! " groaned Mr. Ledgeral. " Go on ? no ! no ! no ! But, 
 woman ! woman ! " he continued, flinging out his arns so vio 
 lently that Madame drew back to avoid a blow " or devil 
 for only a devil could have brought me such news do you 
 know I am ruined, utterly, irredeemably, damnably ruined ? " 
 
 " Hush ! hush ! do not talk so loud," exclaimed Madame 
 Steignitz ; " and do not say that. How can you be ruined ? 
 you are rich ; you have a grand business ; you can send this 
 young Count away at a word." 
 
 " No, no, I cannot ! " 
 
 " How ! What is that ? Oh ! I see ; you owe him some-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 66 1 
 
 thing ; you have promised him ; you are under some obliga 
 tion, eh ? " 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral, in sheer despair, nodded his head almost 
 upon his breast. 
 
 " Well, well ; tell me all ; perhaps I can do something. 
 I have some power ; and for your daughter, and more for my 
 Luthare, I will do much. Tell me ; what do you owe this 
 young man ? how much have you borrowed ? " 
 
 " You ! What could such a woman do ? Have you the 
 least idea what two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is ? 
 Do you know what two thousand and fifty dollars is ? " 
 
 " Perhaps \ I am not so ignorant. Two hundred and fifty 
 thousand dollars is not much ! I can help you if that is all that 
 prevents your freedom to break off this marriage with the 
 Count." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral roused himself, and a gleam of hope lighted 
 up his face, but it passed in a moment, and he sank back into 
 his chair. " You ! " he exclaimed. " No ! no ! it is impossi 
 ble. If I had time ; three years ! two years ! one year ! but 
 the end must come in a month a week perhaps a day ! " 
 
 " Listen to me, Monsieur," said Madame. " You don't sup 
 pose I am such a fool as to come here without knowing some 
 thing about you ; I know a good deal, and I can guess a good 
 deal more. Yes, yes, I have too much affair myself, and I 
 have too much relations with some homines d'affaire not to 
 hear something and to comprehend. I know you are a great 
 merchant, but I know you are a great speculator. A great 
 speculator is always in want of money. The Count is rich, 
 very rich ; I put those two things together ; I make up my 
 mind ; I see my road. Now listen. You have a grand busi 
 ness the great house of Ledgeral, Shippen & Co. is one of 
 the best in town, is it not ? It is all right, eh ? Well, you 
 have how much interest ? half, eh ? " 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral made a slight affirmative movement. 
 
 " Will that interest bring you in eighty thousand a year ? 
 Well, you need not say 'tis no matter some years more, 
 some years less ; but your capital, we will say, is five hundred
 
 662 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 thousand dollars ; you see I know something. I make my 
 perquisitions ; I have a smart lawyer he is a great rascal 
 they all are, and I trust him just so far as that " and Madame 
 measured off about an inch on her finger, " but he is very use 
 ful," she continued ; " he make all the inquiries for me. Now 
 I will tell you what you shall do. You shall give your daugh 
 ter to my Luthare. Ah ! you need not start so ; my Luthare is 
 a match in mind and body and character for any lady, and I 
 can make him a match, in money, for a princess of the blood ; 
 aye, aye, Monsieur, and I will, too ! " and Madame Steignitz 
 brought her little fist with some force down upon the table. 
 " 'Tis only through him," she continued, " that I learn what to 
 do with my money, and I will pay for the lesson. I was a poor 
 old woman, without one relative or friend in the world with 
 no one do you understand me, Monsieur with no one to 
 love no one to love me, with not one single soul who could 
 say 'Bon jour, Madame Steignitz, I hope you are well,' without 
 expecting to be paid; with not one person who could stand at 
 my coffin and say, ' Poor old woman ! I am sorry she has gone ; 
 she was avare, 'tis true, what you call miser ; she was greedy, 
 but she was not quite such a mean, heartless, dirty old woman 
 as she seemed.' Well, he come one day like a gleam of light 
 that makes bright my dark life. I was jealous ; I was suspi 
 cious. Oh, there is so much of the mean and dirty about 
 money in this world ; so I watch and watch, and wait, and say 
 nothing, and he go and come, and think nothing, and when he 
 must know I have some little money 'tis all the same, and 
 when I try once or twice to make him have some of my money 
 he laugh at me, and will take nothing, and still he is so good 
 to the old woman without intending to do anything more than 
 to be just the brave, beau, bon gar$on that he is. Ah f ah ! I 
 thought I could pay him some day, and not far off, either ; for 
 I am a very poor, feeble old woman, and I shall go yes, yes, 
 I shall go soon, but now I owe him more than I can pay ; he 
 save my life ; he rescue me from the bandits ; without his devo 
 tion and his courage and his perseverance I should not be in 
 this room now. But if I should say, ' Here, take my money,'
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 663 
 
 he would say, ' Bah ! old woman, go away ; I can earn my 
 fortune for myself.' Oh ! he is so proud ! it is wicked, the 
 pride that young man has ; but I will be even with him ; 1 
 will give him something that he will value more than all the 
 millions in the world and you, Monsieur, you shall help me ; 
 I must make you help me. Now I am not going to throw 
 money away ; I will make a bargain with you a bargain that 
 nobody shall know anything about. You shall give your 
 daughter to my Luthare ; he loves her oh ! oh ! I cannot tell 
 you how much ; but, Monsieur, recall that time at Baden. Did 
 you never know a love so wild, so mad, so fierce that God's 
 own warning finger in the sky could not have kept you back ? 
 Well, my Luthare loves your daughter just as much mats avec 
 si pen d'egoisme, pardon, with so much unselfishness and ten 
 derness that you could never know ; well she loves him. You 
 doubt it ? Well, well, we will leave it to be decided by her. 
 You shall give her to Mr. Luthare, if she loves him, and is will 
 ing celd va satis dire. But at any rate you shall give him 
 full chance to gain his end ; you shall take him into partner^ 
 ship, and give him half of your share of the business, and I will 
 pay you three hundred thousand dollars, and nobody shall be 
 a bit more wise than we two." 
 
 Here was a sudden lighting up of the whole sky, just 
 as the storm-cloud looks most portentous. But Mr. Ledg- 
 eral could hardly believe his eyes or his ears. " You ! " he 
 exclaimed, doubtfully, "you pay me three hundred thousand 
 dollars ! How ? when ? Impossible ! " 
 
 " Not at all impossible," replied Madame Steignitz, nod 
 ding her head emphatically. " Say that you will agree to 
 the terms, and the money either in notes or securities 
 shall be on this table to-morrow ; or you shall come to my 
 house, which will be better ; we will have no checks to show 
 where it comes from. But perhaps you will take some time 
 to consider a week, or a month, perhaps ? " 
 
 " Not a day ! Not a moment ! I consent to all every 
 thing," exclaimed Mr. Ledgeral, stretching himself up with 
 a sense of returning animation.
 
 664 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 The idea of being once more a free man ; an indubitable, 
 respectable man ; a man who could hold his aristocratic head 
 up once more in Wall Street, and carry round with untrem- 
 bling hand the plate at St. Cyprian's, diffused its genial 
 warmth through every vein and nerve of his body. Once 
 clear of the Count, and his horizon was almost cloudless. 
 True, he owed a vast deal of money but those debts were 
 all honest debts ; he could manage them in time, even if his 
 hitherto large surplus income should be shorn in two. He 
 could stave them off, and renew them, or stand suit, and pay 
 them when he should be ready. As to living, there would be, 
 with Helen married, only Mrs. Ledgeral, Laura, and himself. 
 Three people ought to be able to get along on forty thousand 
 a year ; and as to the partnership, there could be no objec 
 tion on the part of any member of the firm, as it disturbed no 
 capital ; and what more natural than that he should want to 
 release himself, as far as possible, from the cares of business, 
 or that he should decide to put such an eminently competent 
 young man as his son-in-law in his place, or that he should 
 dower his daughter so handsomely? The only question was 
 about Mrs. Ledgeral she might resist ; but well, she's a 
 wise woman, thought Mr. Ledgeral, and she will see that the 
 odds are against her. 
 
 A few minutes' further conversation settled certain details. 
 The only question was as to the time that the partnership 
 arrangement should go into effect. Mr. Ledgeral thought 
 that for appearance' sake he ought to take at least a month 
 for the excogitation of a scheme so important. 
 
 " Well, as you please," replied Madame. " I shall leave 
 it all to you. When I make up my mind to confide, I confide ; 
 but when I don't, I trust not one cent not so much as one 
 centime. You come to my house Wednesday afternoon, and 
 you shall make me an acknowledgment for three hundred 
 thousand dollars and its object, and you shall find the certi 
 fied certificate of deposit all ready for you. Take your own 
 time, then, but I shall charge you interest until the papers of 
 the partnership are signed. That is right, eh ? You know I 
 must have my interest. You will pay me the interest, eh ?"
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 665 
 
 Madame Steignitz took her departure. Mr. Ledgeral 
 watched her as she tottered down the front steps. Why had 
 he not thought to send for a carriage ? She might tumble 
 down or be run over in the street ; and then what an utter 
 wreck of his battered and tempest-worn craft, just in sight of 
 port ! 
 
 He pulled out the bottle of Bourbon from its hiding- 
 place, and was about to turn out a measure, when he sud 
 denly and with violent energy recorked the bottle, and placing 
 it and the glass upon the table, rung the bell for Joseph. 
 
 " You want me, Misser Ledgeral ? " exclaimed the old fel 
 low, in what he intended to be in a particularly cherky tone. 
 " Oh ! Oh ! Misser Cort, you ain't gwine back on dis old 
 nigger?" he continued, as Mr. Ledgeral extended his hand. 
 
 " No, my old friend," replied Mr. Ledgeral, shaking 
 old Joseph's hand, " I am not going back on you, as you call 
 it, but I'll tell you what we'll all go back to the old times. 
 I return you your bonds and bank-book only because I 
 have no real need of them ; but you must not think, that I 
 shall ever forget that you offered them. Here, take them ; 
 and take away this, too," pointing to the bottle ; " and don't 
 you ever let such miserable stuff come into this room again, 
 or into the house, either, for that matter." 
 
 The old man shuffled his feet excitedly, and winked and 
 blinked his eyes, while a big tear ran down his cheek. 
 " Why, why, Misser Cort ? " he cried. " Why ? what ? der ye 
 really mean it? Der ye mean it?" Suddenly seizing the 
 bottle, and assuming an erect and respectful attitude, he con 
 tinued, in a firm tone, " Misser Ledgeral, you hab nebber 
 giben an order in dis house dat shall be more continerously 
 obeyed. Not a drop, sir ; not a drop ! and de Champagne, 
 sir, only on Sundays, sir, eh ?" 
 
 " Only on Sundays," replied Mr. Ledgeral, nodding and 
 smiling kindly. 
 
 "'Ceptin' dere is company always 'ceptin' dere is com 
 pany ? But when we is alone, only on Sundays. Ki ! dat's 
 de day ! I don't mind de pop den. It sounds solemn, jess
 
 666 NEVER AGAI.Y. 
 
 like de church bell ; but on de week-day it go thro' my head 
 like a pistol shot 
 
 "But, Misser Ledgeral," continued Joseph, putting his 
 head back into the room, " will you permit dis darkey to ax 
 ye one question ? Are ye sartin sure de panic is all ober ? 
 Oh ! tank de Lord for all His mercies. Dis is de six panic we 
 get trew." 
 
 Joseph's first act on getting back into his pantry was to 
 smash the bottle against the marble edge of the sink. This 
 little piece of violence seemed to have a soothing effect upon 
 his feelings. He sat down, pulled out his handkerchief, 
 wiped and adjusted his spectacles, and began the examination 
 of his bank-book, all the time muttering his thoughts aloud. 
 " De dam nasty stuff! How he smells. 'Tain't approprimate 
 for no gemman to drink. 'Tain't fit for niggers ; no, not eben 
 for de low Irish ; and den it gibs eberybocly Misser Bright's 
 disease drefful. I hear 'em all say dat Misser Bright is de 
 biggest man in de English gubberment. What de dibbel de 
 English gubberment want to go and make sich a disease for, 
 dis ere darkey can't comprehend, nohow. I guess it's jess 
 bekase ob dat Alabama bisness."
 

 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 Uncle Shippen on Marriage A Family Council Letter from the Count 
 Old Memories. 
 
 " T T AS Helen been round this morning?" demanded 
 JL JL Uncle Shippen of his wife. 
 
 " No," replied Mrs. Shippen, " I have not seen her for 
 two days. That is something very unusual, you know, but I 
 suppose her time and thoughts too must be pretty well 
 occupied just now." 
 
 " I don't like this business at all," exclaimed Uncle Ship- 
 pen, pushing back his chair from the breakfast-table. " She 
 don't care for him, I am sure, and it's a sin and a shame." 
 
 " But it's such a splendid match. I don't wonder Ledg- 
 eral and your sister are so anxious for it." 
 
 " Splendid match I not a bit of it. Our Helen couldn't 
 make a poorer match. Why, do you know, his mother died 
 of consumption at thirty he told me so, and his father did 
 not reach fifty. I have not had an opportunity of measuring 
 his longevity indications ; but as far as I can judge from 
 mere observation, he's below the average. I don't like to 
 interfere in these matters, but I must in this case." 
 
 " Nonsense I " exclaimed Mrs. Shippen ; " you can do 
 nothing. You know when your sister has once got her mind 
 set upon a thing, you may as well talk to the winds. That, 
 however, would be perhaps no reason for our not meddling 
 in the matter. The chief reason is Helen herself. I don't 
 know what to make of the girl. I have talked with her, and 
 I can't find out whether she really wants to marry the Count or
 
 668 NEVER AC A IX. 
 
 not. She seems to think that she must marry him that she 
 is forced to marry him ; and yet she won't admit that she is 
 pushed to it against her will. She says that she likes him, 
 and esteems him very highly ; and yet she is evidently un 
 happy. I said to her, ' Helen, say that you don't want to 
 marry the Count, say so boldly, and I will support you in it. 
 I don't care how much your father and mother have com 
 mitted themselves to the Count, I'll settle that matter for 
 you. Just speak out boldly,' said I. 'Oh, no, no,' she cried, 
 ' don't say anything ; don't do anything ; ' and that was 
 about all that I could get out of her. The girl has got to 
 be a mystery ! I don't understand her." 
 
 " Well, I do," exclaimed Uncle Shippen, slowly walking 
 up and down the room ; " I do ! and I'll walk round and see 
 Ledgeral about the matter this morning, before he goes out. 
 I am not going to allow such a girl as Helen a girl with such 
 a rich inheritance of vitality and longevity a girl that under 
 proper circumstances would make such a splendid mother of 
 a healthy, long-lived and useful family I am not going to let 
 her throw herself away, if I can help it. Don't talk to me 
 about your Counts and your millionnaires. What is a title 
 without physical vitality ? What's a million without the prin 
 ciple of longevity? What business have people to marry and 
 bring into the world a lot of miserable, short-lived children 
 I don't care how pretty, and how plump, and how strong, ap 
 parently I say miserable children, who will grow up in a lot 
 of short-lived adults ? what right have they to do it, without any 
 regard to the ultimate regeneration of the human race ? There 
 ought to be laws against it ; society ought to make laws 
 against it ; it ought to be so and I have no doubt that it will 
 be so in time that a poor, plain girl, whose grandfathers 
 and grandmothers have averaged their threescore-and-ten all 
 around, will be as much sought after in matrimony as a 
 scrofulous belle with two or three millions is now. And what 
 will be the reply of a considerate father to one of your short 
 lived young fellows who comes to demand his consent ? ' Sir ! 
 you have deceived my daughter, or else she would never have
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 669 
 
 referred you to me ; you have concealed the fact from her that 
 you never knew a grandfather or a grandmother ; they all 
 died before you were born. But, worse, sir, your father was a 
 dyspeptic all his life, and died of gout in the stomach, as the 
 doctors call it, but a real wearing out of the apparatus ; and 
 your mother is nearly blind, from senile atrophy affecting the 
 crystalline lens, at fifty. I make no measurements, sir, but I 
 can see at a glance all the indications are against you ; dis 
 tance between the parietals ; distance between the nasal sul- 
 cus and the orifice of the ear ; distance of said orifice below a 
 circle cutting the head through the eyebrows and the occipi 
 tal protuberance ; circumference of the chest, combined with 
 length of trunk, showing the space occupied by the respiratory 
 organs and the chylopoetic viscera all all are against you. 
 I am very sorry, sir, but I cannot give you my daughter. I 
 don't like your constitution it is a deception and a fraud ! 
 Morally, that is not your fault, at least so long as you keep 
 single ; but, physically, it is an insuperable objection. You 
 are, I know, a young man of excellent character, and at 
 present in apparently vigorous health ; you have a good so 
 cial position and an immense estate, but, sir, all that is as 
 nothing when the question comes to be looked at in the 
 light of our duties to humanity, and the obligation that rests 
 upon every one to make any sacrifices for the physical regener 
 ation and improvement of the human race. I cannot, sir, give my 
 consent, and I know that my daughter will fully concur with me, 
 when I explain the reasons for my decision.' That's the way 
 they'll talk, and until it comes to that, there is not much hope 
 for any great improvement in society, and progress of all 
 kinds must continue infinitesimally slow." 
 
 Mrs. Shippen was not accustomed to pay much attention 
 to the old gentleman's tirades ; she was busy sipping her 
 coffee, and at intervals intently studying the long list of 
 chamber-maids wanting places in the Herald. What is the 
 improvement and regeneration of the human race, to a house 
 keeper whose latest acquisitions in the menial line have just 
 tuined out perfect specimens of Irish depravity, and, in ad-
 
 670 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 dition, had heightened an excited sense of their wickedness 
 by a notice to quit ? The regeneration and improvement of 
 servants is the great thing something that will elevate 
 menial service into the region of the fine arts, and enable us to 
 secure all the talents and all the virtues, with the highest 
 intellectual culture, for about fifteen dollars a month. Ah! 
 if our ladies would only look into Plautus and Terence, 
 and see how old the evil a rascally servant really is, it 
 might soothe their feelings somewhat. It might mitigate their 
 honest indignation to know that Mrs. Cassius and Mrs. Cato 
 and Miss Scipio suffered in the same manner, and that the 
 trouble is so old and so universal that it is hardly worth 
 while to waste any temper upon it. Madame De Stael says 
 that when you see two German ladies with their heads to 
 gether in confidential confab, you may safely conclude that 
 the subject of conversation is the iniquities of their ser 
 vants. While in many things our ladies may properly 
 look to Germany for an example, would it not be about as 
 well that, in this thing, they studied the habits of German 
 ladies as a warning? At any rate, it does sometimes seem 
 to the male human who perhaps, however, has no right to 
 speak or think at all on the subject that it would be right 
 to ask themselves where they would be, in the matter of 
 servants, were it not for the Irish immigration ; and whether, 
 having caught an ignorant class and degraded it to menial 
 service, they have a right to expect it to produce in any 
 great abundance the most exalted specimens of fidelity, 
 truthfulness, devotion, unselfishness, and general moral 
 worth ; and whether it would not be as well to abate some 
 what of general vituperation until the mistress can fairly 
 show the world that she herself has mounted a step or two 
 on the ladder of all the virtues. 
 
 Uncle Shippen finished his monologue, and, owing to the 
 preoccupation of Madam with more important subjects, 
 was suffered to seize his hat and get out of the street door 
 without the usual, Pish ! Pshaw ! Nonsense ! with which, 
 according to the old gentleman, all profound philosophic 
 lucubrations are ever received by the feminine mind.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 671 
 
 He found Mr. Ledgeral at home, and at once broached 
 the subject. Quite to his astonishment, Mr. Ledgeral seemed 
 disposed to take the same view of the case. 
 
 " I quite agree with you," said Mr. Ledgeral, "and I have 
 made up my mind that it won't do. I can see that Helen is 
 not at all disposed to accept the Count, and I am not one to 
 attempt to force her into a match against her inclinations, 
 merely for the sake of family or wealth or worldly position. Oh, 
 no ! it would be some much more mighty consideration that 
 would induce me to use my parental authority and influence 
 as against her own sentiments and judgment." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral uttered no falsehood, and he intended no 
 deception ; but he continued to impose upon himself a very 
 happy result often of fine sentiments boldly uttered. He 
 almost plumed himself upon the fact that it was only the 
 mightiest consideration a matter of more than life and death 
 that had actuated him. 
 
 " I have decided in my own mind," he continued, " that 
 the affair can go no further ; but do you know, I have not 
 dared to speak a word about it to your sister. She will be so 
 disappointed." 
 
 "Well, I am not afraid of her," said Uncle Shippen. 
 " Let's have her in here. I'll soon settle the matter with 
 her," and the speaker summoned Joseph. 
 
 " Yes, sah, Missis Ledgeral is still in de breakfast-room. 
 I tell her, sir," and the old man shuffled across the hall with 
 an unusually puzzled expression of face. 
 
 " I guess der's gwine to happen someting in dis house. I 
 can't 'spect what it is, but I guess it's all 'bout dat Count. 
 Ki ! I wish de dam furrener had stayed in his own country. 
 Miss Helen, she hasn't look well ebber since de Dutchman 
 been sneaking round here." 
 
 Mrs. Ledgeral answered the summons, and joined the two 
 gentlemen in the library, not without misgivings as to the 
 subject of discussion. She knew her brother well enough to 
 know that he would oppose the match in fact, he had more 
 than once intimated as much but she knew, as she supposed,
 
 672 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 that Mr. Ledgeral was very much in favor of it, and she was 
 not going to give way to anything that Uncle Shippen could 
 say, although in conclusion he put in one of his heaviest 
 arguments. 
 
 " You know, Sis, that we have made Helen as much our 
 own child as if she was born to us ; we have adopted her, in 
 fact ; she is to be my heiress ; but I tell you what, it will go 
 very much against the grain if any of my money is to go where 
 it will not assist in the physical improvement and regenera 
 tion of the human race." 
 
 " I wish," replied Mrs. Ledgeral, with a contemptuous 
 curl of her lip, " I wish, my dear brother, that you would 
 stop that nonsensical talk about the improvement of the 
 human race. At any rate, there is no use of wasting any of 
 it upon me. My husband will tell you that the match is a 
 splendid one in every way, and that he " 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral raised his hand. " I grant you, my dear," 
 he said, " that under certain circumstances the match would 
 be a most eligible one, but I have altered my mind in relation 
 to it. I am convinced that it is distasteful to Helen, and I 
 no longer wish to press her to it." 
 
 Mrs. Ledgeral was dumb for a moment with astonishment. 
 After all the anxiety he had expressed ; after having been 
 pushed up herself at his instance, and now, such a sudden 
 change ! it was the most unaccountable fickleness 1 And 
 then, after all the preparations she had begun to make ; all the 
 little intimations she had suffered to escape her, and all the 
 reports and congratulations, and no grand wedding after all ! 
 No splendid wedding presents, no dazzling display of soup- 
 tureens, and tea-sets, and butter-boats, and fish-knives not 
 even a few paper-cutters, or inkstands, or salad-forks ; no 
 crowded church ; no long array of bridesmaids and grooms 
 men ; no embodiment of elegant divinity in snowy surplices ; no 
 muttered whispers " How lovely, how stylish ; " no notices 
 in the weekly Upper-ten or the daily Smoucher of a marriage 
 in high life ; no sweeping down the aisle with the proud con 
 sciousness that all eyes are winking with envy at the mother-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 673 
 
 in-law of a monstrously rich and veritable Count ; no music ; 
 no flowers ; no Brown : no anything ! Oh, it was too bad for 
 any fashionable female heart ! How could she meet the gaze 
 of the public ? Why, she would be ashamed to look even 
 Mrs. Struggles in the face ! 
 
 Joseph entered the room at this moment with a letter 
 which the postman had just left. As the superscription 
 caught Mr. Ledgeral's eye he started, snatched the letter from 
 the salver, and with a slight bow to his wife and brother-in-law 
 tore open the envelope. A second note was folded within the 
 first. " Business something private, of course," thought Mr. 
 Ledgeral, and he slipped it quietly one side. He ran his eye 
 over the contents of the first. 
 
 Mrs. Ledgeral was not one to give up anything she had 
 set her heart upon without a struggle, and before he had 
 finished his note, she turned to her husband: " You two gentle 
 men," she observed somewhat sharply, " have come to a deci 
 sion rather suddenly, it seems to me. Permit me to observe 
 that in a matter of this kind I have something to say." 
 
 " Just so, Sis," exclaimed Uncle Shippen, " that is the 
 reason we sent for you. I know you don't care anything 
 for the physical regeneration of the human race, but I know 
 you do for your daughter's happiness." 
 
 " And who should know better what will conduce to her 
 happiness than I ? " interrupted Mrs. Ledgeral. " I have all 
 along consulted her in this matter. You must not forget that 
 she has some rights ; and as to the Count, you seem to leave 
 him out of the question entirely." 
 
 " Well, he has thrust himself into it, and pretty effectually 
 too," exclaimed Mr. Ledgeral. " This note is from him, and 
 mostly upon this subject ; I'll read the essential part of it for 
 you. After giving a short account of his trip, and the results 
 of his first buffalo-hunt, he says : ' I come now to the chief 
 object of my letter. Distance, travel, the soothing influence 
 of new scenes, the excitements of wild life, have, as it were, 
 purified my mental vision from the mists of passion. I look 
 back, and see that I was very wrong in pressing for an an 
 43
 
 674 NEVER AGAI.Y. 
 
 swer to my demand for your daughter's hand. I won't say that 
 the demand was unwarranted by my own feelings. Every 
 sentiment of my nature pride, vanity, ambition all would 
 have been gratified by a favorable answer ; all except a natu 
 ral longing for a full return to passionate affection. That, I 
 now see, your daughter could not give me. I ought to have 
 seen it sooner ; I ought to have seen the ' No ' in her hesita 
 tion, but we both deprecated a hard negative she, I can 
 readily understand, out of respect out of, perhaps, some real 
 liking ; out of consideration for the feelings of an honest lover 
 I out of the hope that a little delay might result in an affir 
 mative. It is now time that I treat your daughter with a lit 
 tle less egotism, and myself with a little more honesty, and I 
 have therefore to say that, with every wish for Miss Helen's 
 happiness, I withdraw from the position of suitor for her hand. 
 May she find some one to whom she can say 'Yes' with 
 promptitude and fervor. I have changed my mind about re 
 turning to New York ; I have determined to go on to California. 
 At San Francisco I shall decide whether I go down the coast, 
 perhaps as far as Peru and Chili, or whether I take passage 
 for Japan, and so on to China. I hope some^ day to see you 
 again, but exactly how soon it is impossible now to determine. 
 In the meantime I hope you will be willing to allow our affairs 
 to remain upon their old footing, and that you will still suffer 
 me to enjoy the benefits of a business connection which was 
 first suggested to me by finding among my father's papers the 
 enclosed letter, which I take this opportunity of sending to you. 
 
 " P. S. I have almost decided to make some heavy invest 
 ments here, and I shall probably have to draw upon you for a 
 large sum, say from two to three hundred thousand dollars. 
 You will be so good as to cash my securities when necessary 
 to put yourself in funds for said drafts." 
 
 Here was an end to all further discussion. 
 
 Uncle Shippen jumped up from his seat, and rubbed his 
 hands for a moment, while his face glowed with an expression 
 of intense delight. 
 
 " Splendid fellow ! by Jove ! " he exclaimed, " mentally,
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 675 
 
 morally, and socially ; good-looking, too ! rather a fine phy 
 sique at first glance, but vitality weak, and the principle of 
 longevity absent. What a pity ! what a pity ! " 
 
 Mrs. Ledgeral looked at her husband inquiringly. " You 
 too," she said, " seem to be satisfied with this termination of 
 an affair that three days ago you were so anxious to press on. 
 I don't understand it." 
 
 " Bah ! Sis ; I have convinced him, as I could convince 
 you, if you were not a woman, that the thing would not do ; 
 it was against common sense ; it was contrary to the plainest 
 dictates of science ; it was a flying in the face of nature ; it 
 was a neglect of our duties to posterity ; it was a contempt 
 of humanity in general. Of course he is pleased ; how could 
 he help but be pleased ? and I tell you what, Sis, if you had 
 a scientific hair in your head I don't mean gray hairs, for I 
 see you are getting quite a number of them but a real scien 
 tific hair, you would be pleased too. Go now, and tell Helen 
 that the thing is all up, and you'll see that she'll be delighted 
 most of all." 
 
 " Perhaps ! I don't know ; Helen is such a queer girl ; it 
 is possible that her affections are more deeply interested than 
 she has let us see." Mrs. Ledgeral spoke in a very subdued 
 voice, as she stood in a hesitating attitude, with her hand on 
 the door. s 
 
 " Nonsense, Sis ! go and tell her. I'd see her, and tell 
 her myself, but I have an engagement, and am behind time ; 
 go and say so to her ; give her my love, and tell her for me 
 that she will have an opportunity yet of contributing to the 
 physical regeneration of the human race. She'll be delighted, 
 you'll see." 
 
 Mrs. Ledgeral closed the door, and began slowly mount 
 ing the stairs, very slowly. It suddenly seemed as if the steps 
 were now higher or steeper than usual. Mrs. Ledgeral knew 
 that that could not be it must be then, that her slight increase 
 of fat was beginning to tell ; but then it was so little ; why even 
 the belt of last year's dress would almost hook, and Mrs. 
 Struggles had assured her that she never would have noticed
 
 676 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 it. No ; the weight, Mrs. Ledgeral felt, pressed upon her 
 mind and heart, rather than her body. The cares of fashion 
 able life she had hitherto borne jauntily ; the duties of society 
 she had always performed easily and faithfully ; all the more 
 so, perhaps, from never having inquired too strictly whether 
 " position " did not entail responsibilities beyond her set 
 responsibilities extending to society in the large acceptation 
 of the word not that she was wholly without some sense of 
 obligation in this respect, but she never allowed it to worry 
 her ; she rather admired a high standard of refinement and 
 culture, and social morality, but she was not going to put her 
 self out in any way to correct the vices, o.r elevate the tone 
 of society. There was not much of the reformer, and nothing 
 of the martyr, in her composition. " Let the world wag," had 
 always been practically her motto, but now ! well, it really did 
 seem as if the world did not wag so smoothly as it used to. 
 There was this affair of Helen's, and the ill health of Mr. 
 Ledgeral, and the careless observation of her maid, apropos of 
 a corset-lacing, that some ladies lose their figure very early, 
 and that brutal remark of her brother's about gray hairs. 
 
 There is a sentimenfal shock at the sight of the first gray 
 hair, which has often been noticed, and much good philoso 
 phizing and moralizing indulged in thereunto ; but it soon 
 passes, to be succeeded in a few years by a much more lively 
 agitation of feeling, a much broader and clearer opening of 
 consciousness to the fact that people will grow old if they live 
 long enough. This much more important epoch has been 
 never properly distinguished and noted. In many cases it 
 comes suddenly, and, very happily, in more cases, it passes 
 rapidly. A number of causes conspire to produce it, but in 
 general the most efficient is a touch of dyspepsia, occurring 
 just at that time when it is perceived that the gray hairs have 
 become too numerous for further eradication, and the awful 
 question to dye, or not to dye stares one in the face. A 
 sense of general breaking down or breaking up either or 
 both ; a conviction that old age is an actual possibility ; a per 
 ception that we have at last turned the summit of life's road,
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 677 
 
 and that there is nothing before us but a down-grade, comes 
 upon many of us all at once ; and for a while a triste, morne 
 mist of sentiment envelops every thought and feeling, and dead 
 ens to a dark neutral tint the most brilliant colors of life. We 
 can do nothing but wonder either that age should have stolen 
 upon us so silently, or should have rushed upon us so rapidly. 
 But yesterday, we were as young as the youngest, or at least 
 as young as people with a proper contempt for mere youth 
 should wish to be ; to-day, we wonder at ourselves for being 
 so old. 
 
 How long this phase of feeling lasts depends somewhat 
 on circumstances, but much more upon temperament. We 
 advance along the road a little further two, three, half a 
 dozen, or a dozen years ; why it's nothing but a dead level, or 
 if the grade is a little down, the inclination is so slight that 
 there is not the least necessity for touching the brakes. While 
 the fit lasted we were filled with wonder and disgust at find 
 ing ourselves so old ; now we are filled with wonder and 
 delight at finding ourselves still so young. 
 
 The reader must not understand us as saying that this 
 process of thought and sentiment is realized in all cases. 
 In some the undulation of feeling is so slight, or so sloping 
 and prolonged, as not to be distinctly perceived. Some are 
 so stupidly egotistical as never to know that they have grown 
 old ; and some who find early the grasshopper a burden, 
 persist in carrying their load to the last. Happy, then, are 
 those to whom the conviction of advancing age comes 
 as a sharp, short crisis, which, once past, enables them to 
 pursue a gently-sloping down-hill path of life, in vigorous 
 contentment ; and with thankfulness for what is left, rather 
 than regret for what is gone ! 
 
 Mrs. Ledgeral had reached this point, and that was 
 what was the matter with her, as she slowly ascended the 
 two flights of stairs to Helen's room. 
 
 A visit from her mother was something unusual, espe 
 cially so early in the morning. It indicated something of 
 interest; perhaps important news from her sister, or some-
 
 678 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 thing wonderful from Worth or Madame Volorem, but as she 
 caught sight of her mother's face, she saw in an instant that 
 whatever it was, it was something dreadful. 
 
 " Well, my dear," exclaimed Mrs. Ledgeral, dropping 
 herself languidly on to a lounge, " your dawdling has come 
 to a pretty end ! " 
 
 " What do you mean, mother? " 
 
 " Why, I mean that, in this affair of the Count, your hesi 
 tation your putting off a decided answer your very queer 
 conduct generally, has had its proper result ; and I must say, 
 as far as the Count is concerned, I do not blame him. No 
 man of any spirit could do anything else, and I only wonder 
 that he should have gone as far as he has, under such treat 
 ment, which I must say has been very unlady-like, and very 
 improper ! " 
 
 " My dearest mamma, what do you mean ? " with an in 
 creased emphasis on the do. 
 
 "Why I mean that you have foolishly thrown away the 
 chance of making the most splendid match that a girl could 
 make. The Count is off! Ah, you need not look so as 
 tonished and distressed about it ; what else could you expect ? 
 You could not think that he was going to stand bowing and 
 begging forever. You couldn't believe that a man of rank 
 and wealth, and good looks and accomplishments, is going 
 to let any girl shilly-shally round him for months. Your 
 father has just received a letter from him. He gives you 
 up ! You have lost him ! " 
 
 " Lost him ! " exclaimed Helen, clasping her hands, 
 while her big eyes opened wide, as if at the sight of some 
 thing frightful, and her blanched face and rigid form ex 
 pressed in every muscle and movement the height of fear 
 and despair. "Lost him ! oh, what shall I do? what can be 
 done?" she cried with an anguished wail. "Oh, father, 
 father," and, suddenly darting by her mother, she rushed 
 from the room. 
 
 Dumbfounded is the only word for Mrs. Ledgeral's state of 
 mind. Had Helen gone crazy ? Well, in a few minutes, and
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 679 
 
 before she could recover herself sufficiently to descend to her 
 room, she had further reason to ask herself the question. 
 
 Helen flew down the stairs and dashed into the library, 
 where she found her father, who had just bowed Uncle Ship- 
 pen from the house, seated at his table and preparing to open 
 the letter enclosed in the Count's note. 
 
 " Oh, father, what is this, what is this news of the Count ? 
 Can nothing be done ? I am ready to say do anything! Oh, 
 father, I am so sorry," and Helen wrung her hands excitedly. 
 " I ought to have acted differently ! I see it all now ! Oh ! 
 what shall we do ? " 
 
 " Calm yourself, my dear daughter ; there is no reason for 
 this excitement." 
 
 " But the secret, father ; our secret! Oh! what will be 
 come of you of us ? " 
 
 " Never fear, my dear," and Mr. Ledgeral put his arm round 
 his daughter's waist ; " never fear. The danger has passed ; 
 we have - nothing now to apprehend. I did not wish that 
 you should refuse the Count, but he has withdrawn, himself. 
 That makes all the difference in the world; don't you 
 see it does ? " 
 
 Helen did see, or rather thought that she did. " Yes, I 
 suppose so," she replied, " but are you sure that he has with 
 drawn and that you are perfectly satisfied ? What of the ruin, 
 the disgrace, that threatens you me all of us ? " 
 
 " There is his note, and a very nice note, too," replied Mr. 
 Ledgeral ; " and I can assure you I am perfectly satisfied. 
 As to the ruin - and disgrace, we will never mention the 
 subject again. You understand, Helen ? What has passed 
 between us is to be, now and forever, a secret that must never 
 be breathed in the faintest whisper to any one." 
 
 Helen could hardly understand it, but, luckily, she did not 
 want to understand it. It was enough to feel that a load of mis 
 ery had been suddenly lifted and cast aside. The sense of 
 freedom sent an ecstatic thrill of joy through every nerve, and, 
 under the impulse, she threw her arms around her father's neck 
 and sobbed upon his bosom.
 
 680 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " But, my dear," continued Mr. Ledgeral, disengaging her 
 arms and looking significantly in her face, " I am not go 
 ing to be cheated out of a son-in-law ; your mother's wed 
 ding arrangements will have to be deferred a year or two 
 that's all. Oh ! you need not look so frightened ; I do not 
 intend to ask you to do anything against your will again. I 
 have proved your affection for me ; I am not going to stand 
 in the way of your affection for some one else, however poor 
 he may be." 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral nodded his head. Helen was about to ask 
 an explanation, but suddenly paused, and, fearful of tell-tale 
 blushes, flitted from the room without stopping to ask any 
 further questions. 
 
 " Ki ! what's dat ? " exclaimed Joseph, as he heard the crep 
 itation of muslin skirts and his eye caught the flash of a pique 
 train that illuminated the staircase for an instant. " Ki ! 
 dat's de way, two steps at a time. I ain't a seen Miss Helen 
 do dat dis monstrous long while most a six months, two 
 steps at a time ! ki ! " and the old fellow stopped and delib 
 erately gave a short double-shuffle, accompanied by a low, 
 chuckling laugh. " Two steps at a time ! Dey say it ain't 
 lady-like and genteel. Dat's bekase dey can't do it. Dey 
 stay out so late at night, and dey dance de Jurman so much, 
 and dey drink so much Champagne, and eat so much goose 
 libbers dey get kind o' weak in de ankles, and dey get de 
 rumantics in de knees I say it's de rumantics in de 
 knees, but Misser Whoppers, he say de cause is dey get 
 de romantics in de head ; howsomeber, dey can't go up 
 de stairs two steps at a time, and dat is de reason 
 why dey is so dam genteel. Oh ! you can't fool dis chile no 
 how. I tell you what, honey, dis ere nigger ain't been a 
 member ob s'ciety more nor half ob a century for noting. But 
 I must go and look after dat darkey wid de silber. He ain't 
 wurth chucks, dat 'manci pared cuss ain't. If I had known 
 dat he warn't a real silber man ; dat he was most a good for 
 noting but electrom-plate, he nebber should hab come into 
 dis house," and Joseph waddled and shuffled off into his den.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 68 1 
 
 " Why ! Helen, what is the matter ? " exclaimed Mrs, 
 Ledgeral, as Helen flew into the room and gave her mother 
 a hearty embrace ; " are you crazy ? There, there, you have 
 crumpled my collar out of all shape, and just see how you 
 have mussed my cap-ribbons ! What is the matter with you ; 
 are you crazy ? " 
 
 " Yes, almost, with joy. Oh, mamma dear, I am so 
 happy ! " 
 
 " Happy ! and a moment ago you were in the greatest dis 
 tress. Oh, Helen, Helen," exclaimed Mrs. Ledgeral, starting 
 with a new fear, "you must calm yourself; you must lie down 
 and compose yourself, and I will go and send for the doctor ; 
 and I'll get you an assafcetida pill, because you know if you 
 should have have the hysterics, my dear." 
 
 " Oh, pshaw ! my dear mamma, how can you say such a 
 thing? I have the hysterics ! I never felt less like it in my 
 life ; and if you send for Dr. Petcalf, he shan't come into this 
 room. I'll go downstairs to see him in full dress, and I'll 
 make him talk nothing but gossip. He shan't feel my pulse 
 or look at my tongue, and he shan't even mention a tincture 
 comp. of any kind ; and if he does, I won't take a drop." 
 
 Mrs. Ledgeral was fain to take her departure without car 
 rying out her threat about Dr. Petcalf or the assafcetida pill, 
 but it was with mingled feelings of fear and wonder. There 
 was a sense of something mysterious, something in connection 
 with both husband and daughter which she could not compre 
 hend or explain. 
 
 How many of these little domestic mysteries are all around 
 us ! Often we cannot penetrate them, and often we think we 
 have opened them when we have only been fumbling with the 
 wrong key. 
 
 Perhaps Mrs. Ledgeral would have grasped the solution 
 had she turned back after leaving the room and found Helen 
 seated at her desk the drawer of her secret treasures un 
 locked, and a manuscript lying before her, of which she was 
 reading, with every mark of deep emotion, the concluding 
 lines :
 
 682 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " Oh, Spirit of Night ! 
 Nor pride nor passion can withstand thy power ; 
 
 And now and ever, 
 My hapless love, thy ebon hours shall measure 
 
 To me as richest treasure." 
 
 It was an old and somewhat worn sheet of note paper, dis 
 colored by age and dust, and evidently of a foreign manufac 
 ture, that fell from the envelope in Mr. Ledgeral's hands, and 
 in it a small slip of paper in the handwriting of the Count 
 In this last there were but a few words, as follows : 
 
 " It must be that the accompanying letter belongs by right 
 to Mr. Ledgeral. After some inquiry, I have satisfied myself 
 that, although the name of Courtlandt is, both as a Christian 
 and surname, not uncommon in America, there is no one bear 
 ing the name but Mr. Courtlandt Ledgeral to whom this letter 
 could have been addressed. If I am wrong, the letter can be 
 returned to me. It was found among the papers of my father, 
 the Count Albert von Isenthal. The writer of it, my aunt, 
 died but a few years since in a convent near Pesth." 
 
 " H. V. I." 
 
 Count Albert von Isenthal! and the Countess Julia! 
 his aunt! Mr. Ledgeral uttered a deep sigh of relief, and un 
 folded the letter, which was without date or address : 
 
 " Why do I write to thee, when I know I shall not have 
 the courage or shall I say the weakness to send thee the 
 letter ? Why do I write to thee, oh Courtlandt, why do I 
 turn to thee in this my hour of agony, when I know that thou 
 canst do nothing for me ? God knows. Perhaps it is because 
 my heart is so sick of the grief that fills it that anything that 
 brings up the memory of such passionate emotions as modu 
 lated its beats in those happy days at Baden is a relief; per 
 haps because it soothes me to thus stare my afflictions more 
 fully in the face. I expect, I hope nothing from thee ! Five 
 years have passed no man's love ever bridged such a gulf. I 
 know thy history, although I have never heard thy name men 
 tioned. Tiiou hast ranged thyself thou hast settled down 
 thou hast become a man of family married some proper 
 femme de menage possibly, and a reminder of that time of mad 
 ness would be an impertinence would it not ?
 
 NEVER AGAIN. ' 683 
 
 " But perhaps I am mistaken. Thou still thinkest of me ? 
 Thou must how canst thou help it ? I first taught thee that 
 thou hadst a heart ; thou canst not blame me. I was an un 
 willing teacher, and I myself learned the lesson for the first 
 time yes, for the first and last time. Thou canst not then 
 have forgotten me ! Forgotten me ! I were a fool to think so ! 
 'Twould be a treason to love. 'Twould be to strip my pride 
 of all excuses, and wrap myself in a mantle of disgrace and 
 shame forever. I will not think so ! 
 
 " Know, thou, that I am desolate and alone oh, how des 
 olate ! First, my husband, Count Joseph von Isenthal. Thou 
 wilt say that the blow was not severe, but then, my child, my 
 beautiful boy, oh, couldst thou have seen him ! But God 
 could not pardon the crime of which he would have been the 
 agent; He could not pardon the sins of his mother; He 
 took him away and delivered me over to the tender mercies 
 of my most bitter enemy. For the lost inheritance I care 
 nothing. It was a weight a horrible load a reproach and a 
 remorse while my child lived ; and now that he is gone, the 
 loss is less than nothing. Rank, state, fortune ! I hate them. 
 I am wrong I despise them too much to hate them. My 
 heart has no room for hate. I only ask to forget them. I 
 take myself away from this horrible place. Thank God for a 
 retreat in my own country, where I can shut out the world for 
 ever ! In time if I live tears and prayers may expiate my 
 sin ; now I have no tears. I cannot pray ! alas, I cannot re 
 pent ! God forgive me ! But that, I feel, is a mere phrase. 
 My only hope is that time will teach me to put meaning in 
 the words. All that I can ask of Him now in sincerity is 
 that He will bless you, and send me soon the only relief for 
 heart-ache like mine. I know that it will not be long. I feel 
 so sure of that, that I can venture to say what I would not 
 otherwise say, and that is, that if ever thy wanderings should 
 bring thee to Pesth, thou will find, by inquiries in the 
 neighborhood of that city, my grave in the longed-for 
 resting-place of JULIA VON ISENTHAL." 
 
 Lost in thought, Mr. Ledgeral sat with this letter in his 
 hand for more than an hour, occasionally re-reading it until 
 every word was cut into his brain with the distinctness of an 
 antique intaglio. And what a host of thoughts and feelings 
 it evoked ! Unlocking the most secret chambers of the mind, 
 vivifying dead and buried memories, and lighting up images 
 that had almost faded out in the dim distance at one mo-
 
 684 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 ment it stared at him like a transcript from the great book, 
 and the next floated before his eyes in a mist of tender, deli 
 cious, melancholy sentiment, the like of which, more than any 
 thing else, makes us elderly fellows sensible of a very, very 
 mysterious providence that so orders it that some things are 
 so very wrong and yet so very nice. 
 
 Joseph announced lunch. Mr. Ledgeral needed no lunch, 
 but it was getting a little chilly ; Joseph might send some one 
 to light the fire. Soon the fire was blazing brightly, and still 
 Mr. Ledgeral mused and mused. 
 
 At length he rose from the seat, and, after turning the key 
 in the study door, unlocked the secret drawer of his desk and 
 took out the reddish golden tress that we saw him looking at 
 once before. He examined it carefully, caressingly. He 
 held it in his hand while he deliberately re-read the letter, and 
 then advancing to the fire, flung both the tress and letter into 
 the bright blaze. He watched till the last flash and sparkle 
 had gone out. There was something propitiatory in the act. 
 It was a sacrifice to marital right, to propriety, to respectabil 
 ity to position as a man, as a great merchant, and as a ves 
 try man of St. Cyprian's. Never again, no, never again, 
 should that door of his heart be opened, even to his own con 
 sciousness. That book was closed a little balance against 
 him perhaps ; but what's the use of running over the figures 
 again to find it. Call it all square. Ah, if an old sinner's 
 accounts that he has settled so satisfactorily to himself never 
 could be opened again, how charming it would be !
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 Something beyond Whoppers' Comprehension The Captain's Engage 
 ment announced Madame Steignitz gives her Opinion of Helen. 
 
 " \ ~/l 7HAT the devil does this mean?" exclaimed Mr. 
 
 V V Whoppers, as, the morning after he and Luther re 
 turned to town, he picked up and opened a note requesting 
 the pleasure of his and Mr. Lansdale's company to dinner 
 that very day. " Is the sky about to fall ? Is the millen 
 nium dawning ? " and Mr. Whoppers sat down and put his fin 
 ger to his head in an attitude of profound reflection. 
 
 Luther took the note and read it. There it was, plain 
 enough : " We shall all be happy to see your friend, Mr. Lans- 
 dale. Be sure and insist upon his coming with you." There 
 it was, quite an informal, short notice. A family dinner evi 
 dently, and quite emphatic phraseology. 
 
 " Do you know, Luther, there are few things in this world 
 that I don't know," said Mr. Whoppers, speaking in quite a 
 melancholy tone. " I have studied law ; I have attended 
 medical lectures, and at one time I thought of going into the 
 ministry, and got myself up quite strong in divinity ; I was 
 once a clerk in a shipping-house, and once I took a stock of 
 dry-goods out to Texas and got cleaned out of the whole in less 
 than a year ; I have worked on a farm, shoved a jack-plane 
 for six months, and have set type with my own hands, in a 
 word, I'm editor of the Universe. What I don't know, I don't 
 really estimate to be worth knowing, but hang me if I can 
 make out the meaning of this thing. It surpasses my com 
 prehension." 
 
 And well it might. It went quite beyond the comprehen-
 
 686 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 sion of a good many other people, Mrs. Struggles in particu 
 lar. " You don't tell me, dear Carrie, that Mr. Ledgeral really 
 intends to have that young man up here to dinner ! " she ex 
 claimed. 
 
 Mrs. Ledgeral gave a slight affirmative toss of the chin, as 
 much as to say that the matter had passed beyond further dis 
 cussion. 
 
 " And you have encouraged the idea ? " persisted Mrs. 
 Struggles. 
 
 " No," curtly replied Mrs. Ledgeral ; "but I have submit 
 ted to it." 
 
 " Submitted ! oh, my dear ! and after all the fears you 
 have had about him ; and now this business of the Count has 
 come to an end ! " 
 
 Mrs. Ledgeral took no notice of the remark. She was 
 not in the habit of attending very closely to any observations 
 from Mrs. Struggles, and in this case her mind was taken up 
 with some points in the recent conversation she had had with 
 her husband, in which, although she had by no means learned 
 the complete truth, a few facts, with the proper glossing, 
 with which a clever husband always knows how to suit them to 
 the narrow capacity of his confiding wife, had been elicited. 
 Mrs. Ledgeral had arisen from the discussion not, perhaps, a 
 much wiser, but a sadder woman. Not the slightest suspicion 
 of any moral delinquency on his part ; but that terrible mys 
 tery " business." No woman can understand that, you know. 
 She could just get a glimpse of the awful gulf upon the edge 
 of which she had been unconsciously standing, but she had 
 no disposition to investigate the danger, inasmuch as Mr. Ledg 
 eral assured her that, thanks to some happy arrangement 
 with some unknown capitalists, involving the admission of 
 Luther in some undefined manner to a partnership in the 
 house, the danger had been passed, and that nothing was to be 
 apprehended in future except, perhaps, for a year or two, the 
 necessity of some slight retrenchment of expenditure. 
 
 " What is society coming to ? " thought Mrs. Struggles. 
 "I must alter my manner to that young man. Who knows ?
 
 NEPER AGAIN. 687 
 
 Helen is such a queer girl ; stranger things than that have 
 happened, and if they should, why they would be the hand 
 somest, and perhaps the most fashionable, young couple in the 
 city. And, after all, they say that his father was once a very 
 fashionable man, and that is something in these days, when 
 society is getting to be so demoralized and so many common 
 people ?re pushing their way up ;" and Mrs. Struggles gave 
 the usual toss of her head with which whenever her favorite 
 term "shoddy" arose to her lips she threw off, as it were, all 
 remembrance of the time when she had strolled the forlornest 
 of forlorn nobodies up and down the piazza' at Sharon. 
 ***** 
 
 " I have a note for you," said Miss Jones, addressing 
 Luther, after breakfast, and slyly pulling it out from some of the 
 recesses of her dress, she tendered the letter with her plump 
 hand, upon which Luther would have been very unobservant 
 not to have noticed a very pretty diamond ring. Others had 
 noticed it, too. Miss Billings said she believed that foolish 
 old fellow had gone and spent his last cent for it. 
 
 " Well, it don't mean anything," exclaimed Mrs. Waldie. 
 " These sailors get engaged to everybody they can all over 
 the world. He'll never marry her. He's not such a fool as 
 to go and marry an old maid." 
 
 " Old maid ! " exclaimed Miss Billings. " Well, so she is. 
 She's thirty-seven if she's a day ; but I don't see why he 
 shouldn't marry an old maid as well as to marry an old widow." 
 
 " Don't -you, my dear?" replied Mrs. Waldie, smiling 
 grimly, but softening her voice to its sweetest tones ; " don't 
 you ? Well, that is because, although gracious knows you 
 have lived long enough, you never had any experience." 
 
 " Experience ! " retorted Miss Billings. " Experience in 
 deed ! I hope not. There is such a thing as having too much 
 experience yes, Mrs. Waldie. I hope it may never be my 
 lot to hang out a sign in the matrimonial market ' Second 
 hand goods for sale very cheap.' " 
 
 " Miss Billings ! " The tone was up an octave, at least. 
 
 " Mrs. Waldie ! " and a corresponding descent of the 
 scale.
 
 688 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 The compression of feeling was awful. A passion safety 
 valve would have indicated a hundred pounds pressure to the 
 square inch at least. But there was no explosion. Mrs. 
 Waldie opened the escape-pipe. 
 
 " My dear Miss Billings, I really didn't mean anything." 
 
 " Nor I either, my dear Mrs. Waldie." 
 
 " It is all that abominable woman." 
 
 " Yes, and that foolish old man." 
 
 "You are right, and it would be absurd in us now, 
 wouldn't it, Clara dear?" 
 
 " It would indeed, my dear Kitty, and I am quite ashamed 
 to think of it. Come up to my room now. I want to show 
 you a pattern from Stewart's the sweetest thing for a Dolly 
 Varden you ever did see. The clerk told me that Mrs. Strug 
 gles took a dress off it, and she, you know, is the very tip 
 top of fashion." 
 
 Luther's letter was from the Captain, and contained only 
 a few characteristic lines : 
 " MY DEAR BOY : 
 
 " When a sailor has fairly passed the ' roaring forties ' on the 
 voyage of life, and got down into the horse latitudes, say about 
 forty-five, he may reasonably look out for fine weather and 
 smooth sailing, and can all the better enjoy the pleasure and 
 comfort of a nice trim consort to share with him the pleasures 
 of the voyage. Now, that is my case exactly. I have run 
 over my reckoning and made my observations, and find 
 latitude and longitude all right. There are no shoals 
 near, and I shall have plenty of sea-room. I have concluded, 
 then, to take a pull on my weather braces and square away 
 for the gulf of matrimony. I don't know much about the 
 navigation. I hear that there are plenty of rocks and shoals, 
 but I have known several fellows who have tried a cruise in 
 those waters, and their crafts have been so finely moulded, 
 and nicely ballasted, and skilfully handled, that, although 
 compelled, in some cases, to push out dead to windward, they 
 have stood on to Felicity Point, when they eased off their 
 sheets, caught the favorable domestic breezes, and have come 
 back again loaded with happiness enough to last for life. 
 
 " In my case, I have, perhaps, like all mariners in .strange 
 seas, felt a little dubious. Like old Captain Snyddle, when 
 the sea-serpent flopped his tail that is, the serpent's tail
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 689 
 
 over the bulwarks, right into the oil kettles, I was dubious 
 whether to try or not. But I have decided ; and these few 
 lines are to announce that Miss Jones has consented to the 
 voyage matrimonial with me. If everything goes right we 
 will be spliced upon my return, when I hope to receive your 
 congratulations and those of Mr. Whoppers. 
 
 " I am sorry not to have seen you before getting off; but 
 the Spoondrift can't wait, and the sooner I go the sooner I 
 shall return, not only to the girl I leave behind me, but to the 
 young friend whom I love so dearly, and in whose love I shall 
 hope ever to remain, your 
 
 " Most obliged servant to command." 
 
 Luther seized the plump hand of Miss Jones, and shook it 
 heartily. " My dear Miss Jones, I don't know how to express 
 my congratulations in language strong enough. You've got the 
 best man in the world." 
 
 " But men are such deceivers," simpered Miss Jones. 
 
 " So they are," replied Luther, " and you'll find the Cap 
 tain one of them. He'll deceive you. You'll find him a 
 thousand times better than he pretends or you can think. You 
 ought to be a happy woman." 
 
 " Oh, I am too happy ! too happy ! except when the 
 wind blows ; then I am so miserable." 
 
 " Ha ! sets the wind in that quarter ? " puts in Mr. Whop 
 pers. " My dear Miss Jones, you should say ' Blow, winds, 
 and crack your cheeks ! there is a little cherub that sits up 
 aloft that keeps watch over the life of poor Jack.' But I sup 
 pose you would prefer to sing, ' Breathe soft, ye winds ; ye 
 waves, in silence sleep.' But, at any rate, you should comfort 
 yourself when the wind blows fiercest, that perhaps it ' sits 
 in the shoulder of his sail^ and is bravely distending the 
 courses and royals of eager love. Wait but a little, and the 
 favoring winds will waft him to your feet ; and then then 
 you can wind him around your finger, and you'll never be so 
 cruel as to let that wind wreck his fairest hopes." 
 
 How long Mr. Whoppers would have run on with his non 
 sense there is no telling, but it was time for Luther to go 
 round to Wooster Street for a visit to Madame Steignitz, and 
 44
 
 690 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 he carried Mr. Whoppers off with him. but he himself was 
 not destined to get rid of the editor so easily. 
 
 " You must come up to my room ; I want to read you 
 something. You must know I sat up till three o : clock this 
 morning although I was tired to death with our railroad ride 
 writing the first chapter of my novel. Remember I told 
 you that I think incongruity one of the first elements of a 
 good story, and that it has never been properly worked. I 
 can't get the fellows to do it. so I have to do it myself. Mak 
 ing a Persian Emperor talk like a New York soap-fat man, or 
 the ancient Queen of Palmyra act and think like a boarding- 
 school miss, is all very well as far as it goes, but the incidents 
 are so poor and commonplace no invention, no style, no 
 natural and easy development of an incomprehensible incon 
 gruity. Those kind of things do for journals with a large cir 
 culation in the country, and I don't say that they are not very 
 fine and clever, but I do say that the incongruous is a mine 
 that has not as yet been fully worked for city circulation. 
 Come up, come up ! I'll just read you the first chapter ; it 
 won't take two minutes." 
 
 Luther pleaded his engagements. " I haven't time, and 
 besides, I don't want to hear any of your nonsense." 
 
 " Ah, Luther, I did not expect that of you ; but hold on a 
 moment. You won't ? Well, good-bye ; give my love to your 
 old woman, and hark ye ! ask her if she knows anything of 
 this sudden shift of wind in Washington Square." 
 
 Luther found his old friend anxiously expecting him. But 
 what a change in her appearance ! She seemed suddenly to 
 have grown much older. Her vivacity of manner had all 
 gone ; she had grown thin, and^the deadly pallor of her wan 
 countenance was aggravated rather than relieved by the bril 
 liant sparkle of her deeply sunken eyes. 
 
 Luther was shocked, and expressed his feelings. 
 
 " Oh, my health is as it should be, after all those cursed 
 bandits did to me. But now I shall get better now I see 
 you once more." 
 
 Luther reproved her for letting him go awav in the belief
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 691 
 
 that she was getting quite strong, and for not sending him 
 one word as to her health. 
 
 " Oh, I would not that the old should be exigeant to the 
 young," she replied ; " and I knew that you needed the jour 
 ney. I knew that you had good cause to wish for some dis 
 traction. Ah ! ah ! you think I don't understand, but I 
 know the distance between a young man of no fortune and 
 a great merchant's daughter. People think that it is only in 
 Europe that it is so, because there they are more honest and 
 come right out, and say ' What have you got ? and how much 
 will you give ? and my daughter is worth so much.' But here 
 the barrier is not so plain in words, but just as strong more 
 strong to a young man of honor, because 'tis not alone the 
 parents, but 'tis the miserable society that says, ' No, no, you 
 have not got the money you must have very much money. 
 She can double her fortune with some rich man ; you would 
 not cheat her what you call humbug her with your love 
 that isn't worth one dollar in the market.' " 
 
 The old lady paused, leaned her arms upon the table, 
 and looked sharply at Luther, who made no reply. 
 
 " You see I understand," she continued, " and I under 
 stand more than that. I have seen her." 
 
 " Seen who? " demanded Luther. 
 
 " Miss Helen Ledgeral ! Oh, you need say nothing. 
 Did you th-nk that I did not know from the day you 
 put your foot in this house, three years ago, all that pass 
 through your mind you a garcon si doux, si brave, si beau, mais 
 si-si green, what you call innocent, and I a woman old be 
 fore my time and at your age already si rusee et si instruite 
 dans tous les mysteres du cceur. Ah, I should be an old 
 fool if I could not read you like a book. Oh you need not 
 blush or grow angry. I read you, but I read nothing but 
 what is good ; and oh, I have read so much in men's minds 
 that is very bad ! Yes, I have seen her, and I do not wonder 
 at your despair. 'Twas all the same as turning your back 
 on a glimpse of Heaven and walking off towards the other 
 place, was it not ? Well, well, I have seen her and I approve.
 
 692 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 Yes, I approve. I know what many young girls are ; I knovr 
 how stupid how mesguin, what you call mean, all their no 
 tions are. 'Tis bad in Europe, but it's worse here ; because 
 they have no training ; they have some school education, but 
 no training. They have the vivacity of youth they can 
 dance and dress, and take their share in the poor little 
 badinage de socicte, but still they are stupid. They live shut 
 up in their little world of fashion. They think that the 
 sun shines only to make their bouquets that the good God 
 is a kind of pastry cook, and that he works only to make bon 
 bons for them. They think that the handsome little Johnny, 
 or the elegant Billy, or the dancing Jacky, are the finest 
 flowers of manhood. 
 
 " But she is not one of them. No, no, I have seen her. 
 I have inquired. No, she is not one of them. She is full 
 of passion and feeling she has education she has ideas, 
 she has simplicity and honesty she will grow into a woman 
 with a large soul, and a clear head, and a grand manner , 
 and her set and society at large, and the world, may be, will 
 be the better for her. Such a woman must not wreck her 
 heart upon some poor sprig of fashion, who has no soul 
 beyond the horse-race, the billiard-table, the drive in the 
 park, or the silly figures of the cotillion. What you think, 
 eh?" 
 
 Luther had listened in silent wonder to Madame's voluble 
 flow of almost pure English, but as his fancy yielded to the 
 picture her words conjured up, he dropped his head upon 
 the table and fairly groaned aloud. 
 
 " Come, come, my dear boy," exclaimed Madame, running 
 her little delicate hand through his brown locks. " Come ! 
 come ! you are not one of those foolish fellows that think 
 there is nothing in the world but love not one of those 
 silly fellows that the women writers put so much into their 
 novels. Oh, I read them a good many times, when I am 
 alone, and I say ' Bah ! you foolish women, you do not know 
 the men. You have not seen so much of them as I. You 
 do not know that the man whose love is the biggest and the
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 693 
 
 strongest has plenty of other things in his mind, besides 
 his love.' No ! you are not one of them ! But courage. 
 The sky shall brighten soon ! " 
 
 Luther roused himself, and, suddenly recollecting his dirt 
 ner invitation, put the inquiry that Mr. Whoppers had sug 
 gested. But the old woman turned his question by a series 
 of rapid and voluble inquiries in her turn. 
 
 " Well, well, I know nothing I can say nothing ; but 
 did I not say that the sky shall brighten soon ? Nous verrons, 
 nous verrons" 
 
 And Luther was compelled to content himself with her 
 " nous verrons " and a profusion of significant words and 
 winks. 
 
 " I really believe Whoppers is right," muttered Luther, 
 as he took his departure. " She does know something about it 
 perhaps all about it. She is a real old witch, or, better, a 
 fairy ;" and Luther's thoughts wandered away to the many 
 wonderful things done by fairies, as recorded in the authentic 
 pages of poetry and prose fiction. Need it be said that his 
 spirits rose, and rose, until he hardly knew which way to turn ? 
 Decidedly he would not go down to resume his stupid duties 
 that day. He would yes, he would make a little excursion 
 across the river, and have a quiet talk with his old friend, Mr. 
 Planly, and see how all the inventions were coming on.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 Luther visits Mr. Planly Inventions of all kinds The laws of Mala 
 ria The Casa Planly A grand plan of Englishizing Africa A fam 
 ily Dinner-Party. 
 
 " A PENNY for your thoughts!" exclaimed Luther, as 
 /~V he quietly raised the latch of Mr. Planly's door, and 
 stepped into the room without disturbing the old inventor, 
 who, profoundly buried in thought, had not heeded the young 
 man's preliminary tap. " A penny for your thoughts." 
 
 At the sound of the pleasant voice Mr. Planly started up 
 from his chair so suddenly that his arm swept from the table 
 several tools, drawings, and pieces of modelled wood. Grasp 
 ing Luther's extended hand, he greeted him with a degree of 
 warmth that left no doubt of a cordial appreciation of the 
 visit. 
 
 " A penny for your thoughts." 
 
 " My dear boy, you would be cheated at that price. They 
 are not worth the money." 
 
 "They seemed to be far enough away, at any rate," said 
 Luther. 
 
 " Yes, a thousand years ahead, at least. I was just indulg 
 ing imagination with an excursion into the future pleasurable 
 but profitless a kind of mental intoxication which I have 
 been in the habit of indulging all my life a kind of intel 
 lectual dissipation more wasteful of mind and soul power than 
 downright hard drinking. Take warning, take warning, my 
 young friend, and don't become a dreamer. Seize the pass 
 ing moment. Live in the present, and don't take up a per-
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 695 
 
 manent residence in the future as I have done, however at 
 tractive its glories may be." 
 
 "Well, to come down to the present," replied Luther, 
 laughing ; " how comes on the object-glass that I left you at 
 work on ? " 
 
 " Put aside, as usual, for the present." 
 
 "Tired of it? or wouldn't the plan work? " 
 
 " No, the usual difficulty. I found that I should require 
 some platinum bands to strengthen my revolving crucible, 
 and platinum costs money ; and so I'll just wait until Van- 
 derbilt, or Stewart, or some other Croesus, thinks proper to 
 do something for science something for the increase of 
 knowledge, rather than for its diffusion." 
 
 " Well, you won't have to wait long," and Luther went on 
 to give the astonished inventor an account of Mr. Stichen ; of 
 his death, and the proviso in his will for the construction of a 
 telescope of at least two hundred and fifty feet focal length, 
 and with an objective of corresponding aperture, and made 
 of glass, prepared by Mr. Planly himself. 
 
 A faint glow suffused for a moment the inventor's cheeks, 
 but it rapidly passed. He leaned his head upon his hand, 
 and mused for some moments in silence. 
 
 " You don't seem to receive the news as enthusiastically 
 as I expected," remarked Luther. 
 
 " Shall I tell you why ? " replied Mr. Planly. 
 
 " I have, by close observation of myself, made a psycholog 
 ical discovery. There is a marked tendency in all minds to 
 periodicity in intellectual movements, but this tendency is so 
 obscured, or thwarted by the will, or by enforced habits, that 
 in most cases it is not easily felt or perceived. People only 
 know that they get .tired of certain trains of thought or 
 certain ideas after a while, but they compel the mind to go 
 on with them, or to take them up after short intervals of rest. 
 Now, as I have no will, my mind wanders without control, and 
 this law of periodicity shows itself in full force. I am satis 
 fied that there is a tendency to think by monthly fits, and that 
 left to itself, the mind will pursue a single idea or a single
 
 696 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 train of thought for only that length of time, and that it will 
 recur to it again only after a similar interval. Now my mind 
 look up an old and favorite subject the telescope, and for a 
 month it had nothing in it but an improved objective, but it 
 has gone now. It will come again, and perhaps, again and 
 again, long before anything can be done under the will of Mr. 
 Stichen." 
 
 " And may I ask," demanded Luther, " what your mind 
 turned to after it had got through with its monthly telescope 
 fit ? Any of these things ? " and Luther pointed to several 
 models apparently of shells for a rifled cannon. 
 
 " Yes, just those. You know what a fuss they are making 
 over the torpedo system of defence not only here, but all 
 over the world. Well, it's all a big humbug ; in fact, in view 
 of these things, the biggest humbug going. This is what 
 I call my torpedo exterminator. You see here is a shell : 
 when filled with powder, or dynamite, this hole will be stopped 
 up with a tightly-fitting screw plug, and here in the head, in 
 lieu of a fuse hole, is a cavity into which fits, as you see, this 
 little piece of simple and strong mechanism ; the whole kept 
 firm and motionless by this steel plug. The operation of the 
 thing is this : You charge a gun with this shell, and fire it ; 
 the powerful impact of the exploding charge draws back this 
 steel plug ; the little fly-wheel is now liberated and set in 
 motion by this spring ; the shell goes on its way, strikes the 
 water, and sinks to the bottom. After an interval of one, 
 two or five minutes, governed by the motions of the fly-wheel 
 and the fineness of the thread of this screw, this little bolt is 
 liberated, and, striking this cap, fires the shell and explodes 
 all the torpedoes in its neighborhood, or breaks up the wires 
 connecting them with the torpedo batteries. Well, now, im 
 agine a fleet of English iron-clads coming up our harbor. 
 There are no forts or land-batteries that could stop them five 
 minutes. What we have are not, and probably never will be, 
 fully armed ; and even if they were, the guns would be good 
 for nothing. With our great fifteen and twenty-inch smooth 
 bores it would be a case of great cry and little wool, as the
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 697 
 
 devil said when he sheared the pig. Oh, but the torpedoes ! 
 There is salvation for you ! and I suppose we should have 
 time to strew the channel with them. But on come the iron 
 clads under a cloud of torpedo exterminators that would not 
 leave a foot of mud in the channel undisturbed, or a gallon 
 of water that would not have been thrown in the air not a 
 torpedo unexploded or an electric wire intact. The same sys 
 tem can be applied by boats at night, and the exterminator 
 laid down quietly, and its mechanism so arranged that the ex 
 plosion shall take place only after an interval of one, two or 
 three hours, or more." 
 
 " But don't you think," demanded Luther, " that the shock 
 of the discharge upon your exterminators would damage the 
 mechanism upon which its explosion depends ? " 
 
 Mr. Planly rubbed his hands together softly, and a gentle 
 smile of satisfied and triumphant inventiveness stole over his 
 countenance as he replied : " Your objection is well taken, 
 but it is a mere question of mechanical detail, and I have 
 guarded against any danger of that kind, but" and Mr. Planly 
 nodded his head in a confidential way, " I have another 
 plan to which no such objection can be made. You see this 
 little globule of glass ? well, it contains a certain fluid. And 
 you see this little ball ? it is made of certain chemicals I 
 won't say, what. Well, I put this glass globule and this ball 
 into this tube perforated with holes, and screw it into the head 
 of the exterminator. When fired from the gun the impact 
 of the powder breaks the glass the fluid strikes the ball, and 
 in five minutes or more the chemical action that takes place 
 sends a flame through these perforations and fires the con 
 tents of the shell. Suppose fifty or five hundred of these ex 
 terminators exploding, many of them simultaneously, at the 
 bottom of our channel, how much of our torpedo system would 
 be left at the end of a few hours ? " 
 
 " But war never comes without due notice, and of course 
 we should have time to prepare ourselves," remonstrated Lu 
 ther. 
 
 " Have time ! but would we avail ourselves of it? Not at
 
 698 NEVER AGAI.Y. 
 
 all. Official routine and stolidity would stand in the way, and 
 we might wake up some day and find our miserable torpedo 
 system blown up about our ears, and a fleet of iron-clacls in 
 the East and North Rivers demanding, as a penalty of ignor 
 ance and conceit, a contribution of every dollar that could be 
 raised in the city. 
 
 The picture in all its horrors, of New York under the guns 
 of an enemy, rose up in Luther's active imagination. He 
 heard and saw the roar of cannon, the bursting of shells, the 
 crackling of flaming houses; the fright and fury, the conster 
 nation and despair of the maddened people, the excitement 
 in the " street," the undignified hurry-skurry of corpulent 
 bankers and bank presidents, and the mad rushing and roar 
 ing of horrified " bulls," with one only one dignified point 
 in the picture, but that, rivalling in interest the renowned 
 calmness and confidence of those brave old senators who, 
 when the leaguer pressed hardest on the gates of Rome, coolly 
 bought and sold Tiber river lots beyond the walls that point 
 was a party of steady old " bears," with Uncle Daniel at their 
 head, sternly covering their shorts. 
 
 He turned emphatically to Mr. Planly. " Why don't you 
 show your exterminator at once to the government at Wash 
 ington ? " he demanded. 
 
 " Bah ! What would be the use ? I did make one effort. 
 During the war I wrote offering to attempt clearing the har 
 bor of Charleston, and for reply g-ot a well-turned compliment 
 about my genius, etc. that was all. No, I don't want to 
 have anything to do with governments. I had enough of 
 that kind of work in Italy, with my plan for eradicating mala 
 ria, or counteracting its influence." 
 
 " And what was that plan ? " demanded Luther. 
 
 The question was an incautious one. In an instant Mr. 
 Planly started from his attitude of languid indifference, brushed 
 back his hair from his forehead with his hand, as if brushing 
 back the cobwebs from his brain, rolled his eyes- gleaming 
 with a sudden light as if taking a comprehensive view of all 
 creation, and opened his mouth at the proper angle for a 
 torrent of talk.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 699 
 
 " Mind you," he exclaimed, " I have nothing to do with 
 the origin and constitution of malaria. I have my opinion on 
 this point, and a pretty strong one after twenty-five years' ex 
 periment and observation." 
 
 " At any rate," said Luther, " you think that whatever it 
 is, it is the result of vegetable decomposition in moist places." 
 
 " I think nothing of the kind. There are objections to 
 this old and nearly exploded theory that are insuperable. 
 The low temperature at which disease is frequently caused ; 
 the unaccountable productions of disease when there is no de 
 caying vegetation, and no marsh or even moisture, as in many 
 places in Peru, or the wood tracts of Nepaul or Malwa, or in 
 the dryest and most barren parts of the Maremma ; the ex 
 emption of certain places where occur all the supposed ele 
 ments, as in 'New South Wales, the Polynesian Islands; 
 the inexplicable effects of cultivation in eradicating disease, 
 and the unexplained vicissitudes of health in the same places 
 in different, though similar, years, all forbid us to longer 
 entertain the old theory of vegetable decomposition. Ovo- 
 lan, one of the Fejee Islands is as volcanic as Sardinia, and 
 as hot as the Maremma, and yet fevers are unknown there; 
 Menouf, is as dirty and moist a city as there is in Egypt, and 
 yet remarkably healthy ; Singapore, surrounded by jungles, is 
 yet a sanatorium for oriental invalids. 
 
 " But," continued Mr. Planly, " all this has nothing to do 
 with my plan. I care not in what it consists, or what the 
 cause. I propose only to take advantage of some of the laws 
 governing its action, and the first great law is that it is opera 
 tive only at night." 
 
 "That corresponds, I believe, to popular opinion," said 
 Luther. 
 
 " And scientific opinion, too. Mitchell says malarious 
 diseases are not producible by exposure in sickly places dur 
 ing the daytime ; darkness appears to be essential. Lancisi, 
 from extensive observations in Italy, confirms the same idea. 
 The records of the British and American navies are full 
 of proof that men visiting unhealthy shores in the daytime
 
 700 
 
 NEVER AGA1X. 
 
 only will not take disease, but that sleeping one single night 
 ashore is almost certain death. I will not keep you with 
 these cases, but just listen to one single instance that I 
 know of myself. Doctor Tyrrel, of Georgia, had some swamp 
 land which he wished to reclaim. A large gang of negro 
 slaves were stationed upon the ground, but most of them were 
 at once taken sick, and many of them died. The attempt was 
 repeated several times with the same result, until Dr. Tyrrel 
 adopted the plan of removing the slaves a distance of three 
 miles at sundown, and sending them to their work after sun 
 rise in the morning. Not a slave was taken sick after this. 
 They could work in the swamp during the day with impunity, 
 although it was so deadly at night that the acclimated negro 
 could not escape the contagion. 
 
 " I could produce a thousand proofs," continued Mr. 
 Planly, " of the rigid universality of this law, as well as of 
 another fact, and that is, that whatever malaria may be, 
 it is easily strained from the atmosphere, and is incapable 
 of rising above a very moderate height, say forty or fifty feet. 
 There is not an intelligent physician in Italy who cannot 
 produce facts enough from his own observation to prove that 
 malaria is confined to a low and thin stratum of the atmos 
 phere. A hedge, a low fence, frequently shuts it out. It is 
 safe to sleep on the top of a tower in the worst places in the 
 Maremma. Sailors in the tops of ships are safe, while those 
 below are attacked. The writers on malaria all agree on this 
 point with each other, and with popular opinion, which makes 
 the highest apartment in an exposed house the healthiest. 
 That it can be strained from the atmosphere, there is over 
 whelming proof. Popular sentiment and custom proves it. 
 McCulloch says that by surrounding the head with a gauze 
 veil, or canopium, the action of malaria is prevented, and 
 that it is possible to sleep in the most pernicious parts of 
 Italy without hazard of fever. 
 
 " Many of the Spanish peasants, when at work in the morn 
 ing or the evening, in the rice-fields, in the neighborhood 
 of Valencia, wear a helmet or head-piece covered with 
 gauze, which completely shields the nose and mouth.
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 701 
 
 " In some localities in the Western United States it is a 
 common custom to fill in the windows on the sides of the 
 house exposed to the air of the swamps with gauze screens. 
 Experience proves this practice to be a most effectual 
 preventive. 
 
 " A gentleman, who had a large and unhealthy plantation 
 at the South, told me that he had adopted the plan of filling 
 the windows of his house with gauze screens, and that he 
 had thus been able to spend the most unhealthy seasons in 
 safety. 
 
 " The efficacy of screens of wood and shrubbery has been 
 long known. We learn from Theophrastus that the plain of 
 Latium was covered, especially toward the sea, by forests 
 of laurel and myrtle, that served to protect the country from 
 the pernicious southern winds, and to check the propagation 
 of malaria. 
 
 " Two young medical officers left their ship, for a short ex 
 cursion of two or three days on Princes Island in the Gulf 
 of Guinea. The famous Dr. Kane was one of them. One. 
 took the precaution of muffling his head at night in a thick 
 veil, and escaped all disease. The other could not endure 
 the discomfort of the veil, and contracted a violent fever. 
 
 " I wish you had a little time, and I would give you a 
 thousand cases that I have accumulated, but we will hurry 
 to the question which I know has occurred to you, whether 
 advantage may not be taken of these laws to prevent the 
 injurious effects of malaria, and enable the most deadly soils 
 to be cultivated in safety ; and thus, in time, over large districts 
 of country, to eradicate the evil, and destroy the destroyer ! " 
 
 " And you really think that that can be done ? " de 
 manded Luther. 
 
 ' Easily. You have only to build malaria-proof houses 
 something like this," replied Mr. Planly, running to his desk 
 and pulling out an architectural drawkig ; " an air-tight house 
 that will accommodate a large body of laborers, with their 
 wives and children, a kind of enclosed village, with all the 
 appurtenances and appliances of village life, and supplied
 
 702 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 with air from a lofty tower, furnished at the top with ven 
 tilating windows filled in with some kind of gauze. Oh, I 
 have calculated all the details ; the cost either of iron or of 
 stone or wood lined with tin plates, the amount of ventilation 
 required, the amount of steam or animal power to give the 
 required ventilation, and every little question of form, size 
 and internal arrangement. Well, I went out to Italy in hopes 
 of getting a concession of malarious land large enough to war 
 rant the formation of a company, and the trial of the experi 
 ment on a large scale. The plan was received with universal 
 approbation. It was discussed in the scientific journals and 
 reported upon by scientific men, and received the favorable 
 notice of members of the government. You would have 
 thought, as I did, that the thing was in a fair way to be tried. 
 Lord bless you ! you know not, and I hope you never may 
 know, anything of the mysteries of Italian red tape. Talk 
 of the military burdens of Italy ! It is the civil service that 
 is eating the heart out of that great and glorious country ; it 
 is the vast army of under-paid, hungry barnacles that are the 
 great drag upon the ship of State. Reform the civil service 
 dismiss at once a hundred thousand lounging and lazy offi 
 cials who think that they have a vested right in their useless 
 oftices, and you'd see Italy come up like a giant unchained ! 
 The people are all right one of the finest races ; and I will 
 say this for them one of the most industrious on the globe, 
 if they only had fair-play." 
 
 " In thinking of malaria," interposed Luther, " it is very 
 natural to turn to Italy ; but I should think that the English 
 could best try such an experiment." 
 
 " In India ? " said Mr. Planly. 
 
 " Well, yes ; but more particularly in Africa. Think of a 
 line of your casa Planlys extending directly into the heart of 
 the country, easily defensible against any native force, af 
 fording protection at night against the climate, and carrying 
 English trade and English civilization into the centre of an 
 active trading population." 
 
 Luther did think of it, and his imagination at once lighted
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 73 
 
 up long lines of malaria-proof trading-houses running up 
 the rivers, or extending directly through swamp and jungle 
 back from the shore, and carrying swarms of ruddy-faced 
 Englishmen with uncongested livers into the great marts of 
 Killoam and Saccatoo. He grew so excited, so interested, 
 that he would have stayed all day talking over the scheme with 
 its inventor had not the thought of his dinner invitation come 
 into his mind. He must hurry home and dress for the great 
 occasion ; but it was only at the last moment that he tore 
 himself away from Mr. Planly's fascinating plans and calcu 
 lations. 
 
 Punctual to the hour of six, Luther and Mr. Whoppers as 
 cended the steps of the Ledgeral mansion and rang the bell. 
 The latter silent, almost speechless, and evidently weighed 
 down in spirit by a consciousness of ignorance a feeling that 
 there might be perhaps several things in the world that even 
 he the editor of the Universe could not comprehend. 
 
 Promptly old Joseph threw open the door. 
 
 " What does this mean ? " demanded Mr. Whoppers in a 
 confidential whisper. 
 
 " Don't know, sar ; 'spec someting is gwine to happen. 
 Can't say, sar, but I kinder hope dat Billy Dugan is going to 
 get his nose put out of jint. Call me old woolly head, eh ? " 
 
 Mrs. Ledgeral received her guests with an abstracted air, 
 but still politely ; in fact, cordially. " I need not present you 
 Mr. Lansdale ; you know Mr. and Mrs. Shippen already, and 
 Mrs. Struggles and Mr. Gainsby and Mr. Boggs. I am sorry 
 that my daughter Laura is compelled to keep her room this 
 everfing, but my daughter Helen will be down in .a moment. 7 ' 
 
 Luther had hardly finished his salutations, especially as 
 Mrs. Struggles hung on to his hand with the most affectionate 
 interest, when Mr. Ledgeral entered the room. Barely nod 
 ding to Mr. Whoppers, he extended his hand to Luther with 
 a bland impressiveness that seldom characterized his manner, 
 except when shaking the hand of a bank president during the 
 time of a tight money-market. 
 
 " We shall have half an hour before dinner is ready," he
 
 704 
 
 NEVER AGAIN, 
 
 said, " and I wish a little conversation with you. Will you 
 walk into the library." 
 
 As the door closed upon them, Luther recalled his first 
 visit to that room. Hardly three short years, yet what a 
 change in external circumstances, and what a still greater 
 change in himself ! He could not help feeling a little excited, 
 but with a manner perfectly cool and collected, he seated 
 himself, prepared to hear with equanimity anything the great 
 man could say, even if it should be that, through Uncle Ship- 
 pen's recommendation, his salary had been doubled. 
 
 In concise terms Mr. Ledgeral explained how he had 
 found the cares of business pressing upon him so heavily that 
 he had resolved to take a partner ; that he wanted a young 
 man, active, energetic and industrious one in whom he could 
 have full confidence ; that although he (Luther) was so very 
 young, a great many people might think that he (Mr. Ledg 
 eral) was taking a very imprudent step, yet that nevertheless 
 he was so firmly assured of his (Luther's) ability and general 
 fitness, that, inasmuch as the question of capital had been fully 
 arranged, he (Mr. Ledgeral) had selected him above all others 
 for the position. 
 
 Here was a communication unexpected, overwhelming, 
 enough to daze any young man with a proper sense of the 
 awful elevation of an old-established, wealthy mercantile firm. 
 Luther sat speechless for some minutes while the murmur of 
 Whoppers' silver sea and the reverberations of Whoppers' 
 golden gulf one or both, once so mournful and dishearten 
 ing stole upon his senses as sweetest music. But but 
 once on the other side, would he find the angel with spangled 
 wings and diamond slippers ? If not, why he felt that he 
 could hardly say " thank you " for the ferriage. 
 
 " You say, sir," he replied, " that the question of capital 
 has been arranged. I don't see how that can be." 
 
 "Your friend, Madame Steignitz, has advanced the 
 money." 
 
 " Impossible !" exclaimed Luther, starting from his chair. 
 
 "Nothing impossible about it; it has already been paid.'
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 705 
 
 " As a loan to me ? " 
 
 " That is as you may settle between you, but I rather think 
 as a gift." 
 
 " One other question, sir, if you please. What has become 
 of Count Isenthal ? " 
 
 " He has left the city. There was a time," continued Mr. 
 Ledgeral after a pause, " when we thought that he and my 
 daughter Helen might make a match. Perhaps you heard 
 the rumor. But that has all passed, and he will sail in a few 
 days from California on a trip around the world." 
 
 At this instant old Joseph knocked at the door, and 
 announced that dinner was served. 
 
 Mr. Ledgeral led Luther across the hall to the drawing- 
 room. "My friends," he exclaimed, "allow me to present to 
 you the new partner in the house of Ledgeral, Shippen & Co. 
 Dinner is waiting, and we have no time for congratulations," 
 he continued, cutting short Mrs. Struggles, who was rushing 
 up to shake hands. " Mr. Lansdale, be so good as to give 
 your arm to Mrs. Ledgeral, and she will show you the way to 
 the dining-room." 
 
 Whoppers was all in a maze, but he did not lose his pres 
 ence of mind. He dexterously whipped around Mrs. Strug 
 gles, leaving her to Mr. Gainsby, and offered his arm to 
 Aunt Shippen, while Mr. Ledgeral, with Uncle Shippen and 
 Mr. Boggs and Helen, brought up the rear. 
 
 A general tension of feeling is often unfavorable to con 
 versational brilliancy. Even Mr. Whoppers, accustomed as 
 he was to taking the lead in clearing away any obstructions to 
 the tide of talk, was wanting in his usual vivacity, and sat 
 almost silent until the dessert, when he roused himself and let 
 slip a couple of puns, and even proposed to Mr. Ledgeral a 
 conundrum, which there is no use in giving here, as it has 
 since gone the rounds of the press. 
 
 The dinner would, indeed, have been a doleful one, had 
 not Uncle Shippen got upon the physical regeneration of the 
 human race, and Mrs. Struggles upon the demoralization of 
 New York society " so much shoddy, you know." 
 45
 
 706 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 And then came up the subject of early marriages and long 
 engagements, upon which Aunt Shippen was full authority. 
 She did not approve of long engagements, but, on the other 
 ha^cl, she did not approve of the very early marriages so com 
 mon among our young people. 
 
 " Not a day before a girl is twenty-one, and the gentleman 
 from two to ten years older. Younger than that is mere fool 
 ishness they know nothing of life, they can't know their 
 own minds." 
 
 " Yes," interposed Uncle Shippen, " and I don't think 
 these very early marriages can contribute towards the physi 
 cal regeneration of the human race." 
 
 "The 'Cardinal's tears,' sar," whispered Joseph, as he 
 filled Luther's glass, and then Mr. Ledgeral had to tell for 
 the five hundredth time the singular circumstances by which 
 that very old Madeira had come into his father's possession. 
 
 The ladies retired, and the gentlemen soon followed, after 
 sitting just long enough to drink long life and success to the 
 new partner in the firm. 
 
 Luther made his way into the drawing-room ; but why 
 should he linger there with the old ladies however polite and 
 condescending they might be ? Helen was in the front parlor, 
 he could see her through the open folding-door turning over 
 some books at the music-stand. A little internal tremor, but he 
 was resolute, and slipped away from Mrs. Struggles' clutches 
 just as she was in the midst of the latest fashionable news 
 the how and the why of the rupture between Sophie Slangton 
 and old Joe Bilkers, leaving her to expend her information 
 upon Mr. Boggs, who had heard it all ten days before, at the 
 club. 
 
 " I haven't had a chance to speak to you, Miss Helen, all 
 this time." 
 
 What a fib ! when Helen knew that he had been talking 
 to her with his eyes all the time at dinner. 
 
 " How could you ? " she replied. " You know you are the 
 great man of the occasion, and the seat of honor is next to 
 mamma. You seemed to have a good deal of conversation 
 with her."
 
 NE VER A GAIN'. 707 
 
 "Your mamma was very pleasant and agreeable, but I 
 don't understand it at all." 
 
 " Nor I either," said Helen. " I don't comprehend it at all 
 it seems like a dream ; but you must know more about it 
 than I do." 
 
 " Well, let us sit down here," replied Luther, instinctively 
 choosing a sofa quite hidden from view of all in the back 
 room, " and I will tell you all I know, and and Helen, you 
 will let me tell you a little of something what I feel, won't 
 you ? " 
 
 And Luther did tell her all that he knew, and was going 
 on to tell her a good deal that he felt and hoped, and to assist 
 his explanations had secured her little hand in one of his, 
 while his other was resting along the back of the sofa, in very 
 great danger of dropping every moment to her waist, when 
 Uncle Shippen, with an enormous pair of open callipers in his 
 hand, bustled in. 
 
 " Where is he ? Oh, here you are. I just want to take 
 that measure over again from the sulcus at the root of the 
 nose to the orifice of the ear, combined with the width through 
 the centre of the parietals tremendous ! Look here, Mrs . 
 Struggles, look here, Sis ; tremendous ! never saw the prin 
 ciple of longevity so strongly indicated." 
 
 And there was an end of love-making for that evening; 
 the callipers did the business. Let us hope, for poor Luther's 
 sake, that opportunities, and many of them, may occur again 
 when no such formidable steel instruments may stand in the 
 way. 
 
 Luther and Mr. Whoppers took their departure together. 
 As the door closed behind them, Mr. Whoppers suddenly 
 wheeled in front of Luther and put both hands on his breast. 
 " Tell me," he exclaimed, " what all this means ! " 
 
 " I hardly know myself," replied Luther; " it is all like a 
 dream perhaps it is a dream ; but I believe I am to be a 
 partner in the firm." 
 
 " But how. and why ? " 
 
 " Why you see my old mere has gone and done it. She 
 has advanced for me the necessary capital."
 
 yo8 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 " Capital ! I might have known it. Fool that I was to 
 doubt for an instant. Capital ! that one word has done more 
 for me than all the ' Cardinal's tears.' Luther, you have 
 restored me to myself," and Mr. Whoppers seized his com 
 panion's hand and wrung it heartily. 
 
 " Do you know," he continued, " that I was fool enough to 
 think for a moment that old Ledgeral had discerned your 
 merit, and that purely out of consideration for you and his 
 daughter, he had resolved to give you a share of his business 
 and receive you as his son-in-law ! and I allowed myself to 
 be overwhelmed by the idea that there were depths of mag 
 nanimity and generosity and disinterestedness which I could 
 never fathom. But I am all right now. That one word, 
 ' Capital paid in,' restores my confidence in my knowledge of 
 human-nature restores to me the pleasant and profound con 
 nection of the general I won't say universal, because that, 
 Luther, would be personal of the general selfishness, the 
 littleness, the meanness of humanity. Never again, no, 
 never again will I humbug myself in that style ! " 
 
 " Never again, you precious old soft-hearted humbug ! " 
 exclaimed Luther. 
 
 " Never again, no, never again," murmured Mr. Whoppers, 
 and the ' Cardinal's tears' trembled in his voice.
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 TERMINAL. 
 
 ~^HE reader will perhaps be disappointed at finding that 
 JL the marriage which he or she had such a good right to 
 expect has not taken place yet, although it is now two 
 years since the date of the little dinner-party mentioned in 
 the last chapter. The fact is, Uncle Shippen set his foot 
 down strong against it, and Aunt Shippen coincided with him. 
 The young people were too young ; they must wait full two 
 years. Not a tedious time for Luther and Helen, however. 
 They have contrived to fill up the interval quite to their own 
 satisfaction, and we have the authority of the poet for the 
 fact that Time's footsteps fall very lightly under some cir 
 cumstances. 
 
 But the season of probation is evidently drawing to a close. 
 Mrs. Struggles had for some time been giving little confiden. 
 tial nods and winks, and has even been heard to mutter quite 
 positively something about " early in the spring." It would 
 never do for us to be more communicative than Mrs. Strug 
 gles. As an atonement, however, for our reticence, we think 
 we can promise our few unfashionable readers invitations to 
 the church ; to the reception would be perhaps beyond our 
 influence. The fashionable reader will of course go to the 
 house and be ushered into the very presence of the bride by 
 half-a-dozen fellows chanting epithalamiums with wreaths of 
 marjoram around their heads and lacs (f amour of white rib 
 bons in their button-holes.
 
 7IO NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 But if compelled to disappoint the reader in relation to a 
 marriage so easily and, let us hope, so earnestly antici 
 pated, we more than make up by announcing a marriage which 
 no one could have dreamed of. The news comes to us in the 
 shape of a notice in Galignani: 
 
 " MARRIED At the American Embassy, on the loth inst., by the Rev. 
 Mr. HONEYALL, Mr. HAMILTON L. BOGGS to Mrs. ELIX.AHKTH P>. 
 STICHEN, widow of the late-lamented JOHN STICHEN ; all of New York." 
 
 The happy couple have taken passage in the steamer of 
 the 2oth inst., very much to the delight of Mrs. Struggles, as 
 they will arrive just in time for her grand "Gabble-Gobble" 
 on the i3th proximo. 
 
 Another marriage we may mention, although it is rather 
 an old affair that of the Captain and Miss Jones. It is 
 more than a year since it took place time enough for the 
 happy couple to make a trip out to Sydney, New. South Wales, 
 thence to Hong Kong and San Francisco, and so around 
 Cape Horn, home. They are now in New York, and, as 
 boarders with the new landlady, Mrs. Smith, they occupy with 
 their infant and nurse the identical second floor front that 
 Mrs. Combings once prided herself upon as the chief attrac 
 tion of her home. Whether the Captain will ever go to sea 
 again is doubtful. As he says himself, he is going to take a 
 pull on his clew-lines, and may even go so far as to furl and 
 pass gaskets, but that he don't think he will unbend sails 
 and send down spars yet awhile. However, from the way 
 he looks sometimes at that baby, it wouldn't be wonderful 
 if he should decide to strip to a girt-line and go into ordinary 
 for the rest of his life. 
 
 Dr. Droney has received a call, and has undertaken the 
 duty of building up a church among the Pottowatomies. 
 Let us hope that he may be successful. He is a very worthy 
 man, and not at all to blame for a system, or state of society, 
 that allows in fact encourages a slow, dull man to slip 
 nto a calling that requires the highest intellect, the most 
 catholic spirit and the profoundest and most advanced learn 
 ing, and then starves him afterwards !
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 711 
 
 Mrs. Lasher, however, is a fixture of the house in Bleeck- 
 er Street, and she holds forth as learnedly as ever ; the last 
 grand discovery in medicine is the theme. Listen, dear 
 reader, for a moment. The subject may not be interesting, 
 but you will perhaps get some useful information, and we can 
 not bear to let a foolish novel go into the world without car 
 rying on its pages at least some one little fact or reflection, 
 useful for mental edification or spiritual improvement. 
 
 The Captain is listening good-naturedly, while Mrs. Lasher 
 expounds the new system of electro-biosopathy, apropos of 
 some trouble in the nursery upstairs. 
 
 "You say, Captain, that you doctor your sailors yourself, 
 and that whenever any one is sick you give him a big dose of 
 calomel and jalop. Now I warn you, that if you give that 
 baby a big dose of calomel and jalop, you will be sorry for it. 
 Let me urge you to try the electro-biosopathic system of 
 treatment. It is better than allopathy it is better even than 
 homoeopathy. It requires no medicine at all, and the cures 
 are wonderful. The theory of it is so reasonable, and the 
 practice of it so simple, that it is astonishing it has not been 
 introduced sooner. It is just the application of humanized 
 magnets to the diseased organ. It is the latest discovery of 
 the great Dr. Quackenhammer. You see he found by wind 
 ing the human body with many turns of covered copper wire, 
 and then sending tlie galvanic fluid from a powerful battery 
 through this wire, that the body is rendered strongly magnetic. 
 It at once occurred to him that, by means of a series of human 
 magnets, the magnetic influence might be converted into vitali- 
 cal force, and applied to the cure of disease. He arranges 
 his human magnets in pairs male and female, always 
 selecting, of course, strong, healthy persons. They join 
 hands a female and a male, alternately to the number of 
 five, six, or more pairs. The patient is placed between the 
 two ends of this vitalical chain. The polar couple now clasp 
 or press their free hands upon either side of the diseased por 
 tion of the patient's body and the circuit is complete. The 
 galvanir influence is sent through the wire each member of
 
 712 
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 the chain is converted into a magnet: this human magnetism 
 at once begins to run through the diseased portion or organ, 
 and is instantly, as it stands to reason, converted into vital ical 
 force: any one can see at once that it must operate in this 
 way. It works like a charm nothing can resist the influence 
 of this vis vitce. The most stubborn diseases yield almost 
 instantly to this current of vitalical force, which can be in 
 creased to any extent by increasing the number of magnets. 
 Why there was one old fellow who had had an enlarged and 
 congested liver for forty years. The doctor went up to seven 
 couple with no effect. ' I'll fetch that liver down,' said the 
 doctor, 'if it takes fourteen couple,' and it did. It took four 
 teen couple ; but that liver collapsed after three sittings to a 
 highly healthy and normal condition." 
 
 Mrs. Lasher cited a great many wonderful cases. We 
 don't vouch for them, but we must say that if one-half of them 
 only are true, electro-biosopathy is indeed the greatest boon 
 of latter-day science to humanity, and is evidently destined to 
 have a great run. 
 
 " And what has become of Mr. Whoppers ? " asks, perhaps, 
 some benighted reader. Gracious me, what a question ! 
 Don't everybody know how the Universe has increased in cir 
 culation, and how its editor has engaged all the talent in the 
 country for its columns, and how it has come out in new type, 
 and how it has been recently enlarged to double its primitive 
 size ? If any fellow don't know this he must be a hopeless 
 case quite beyond the reach of the double-leaded, reiterative 
 advertisement ; and not only ignorant, but a bad fellow, to 
 boot one who doesn't read regularly his daily Galvanizer, as 
 he ought to. 
 
 Madame Steignitz still dwells in her little attic ; no persua 
 sion can induce her to change. Helen visits her frequently, 
 and upon one occasion urged that she should take a more 
 comfortable, if not a more elegant, apartment. " No, no, my 
 dear young lady," replied Madame Steignitz, " I know what 
 you think, and it is very good in you to think so, but it can 
 not be. I am a poor old woman. This place is good enough
 
 NEVER AGAIN. 713 
 
 for me, and besides, it will not be long before I shall be 
 lodged just as well any queen." 
 
 The old lady is evidently failing fast. We are very sorry, 
 and hope the reader is, too, especially as there will be no 
 great consolation in reading her will, inasmuch as it is well 
 understood that, after a few trifling legacies to benevolent 
 institutions, she leaves Luther universal legatee ; and the 
 public can never know exactly how rich she was. What a 
 pity ! Nothing, it is universally admitted, can be more sooth 
 ing to the mind of the sorrowing general mourner over the 
 grave of a millionnaire than to be informed by the newspapers 
 exactly " how fat he cuts up," and it is well known that there 
 are half-a-dozen cases that are daily watched for with extra 
 ordinary interest. What a pity, then, that such a legiti 
 mate curiosity, very much intensified in the case of a very 
 rich woman, should be baulked by the indefinite terms of a 
 bequest in the lump ! 
 
 There is not much to add, unless it may be something 
 which we ought not to add, as it is a profound diplomatic 
 secret. But after all, there is perhaps no harm in mentioning 
 it, as the English government have succeeded in completing 
 their arrangement with the Dutch government, by which the 
 Dutch, in return for some concessions on the southern shore 
 of the west African coast, have ceded to the English all their 
 possessions on the northern coast and the Gulf of Guinea. 
 " Now what does this mean ? " more than one reader has 
 already asked, and no newspaper not even the Herald has 
 been able to give a satisfactoiy reply. But if the reader could 
 see Luther's correspondence with the English government since 
 he has so energetically taken up Mr. Planly's project of a 
 series of anti-malarial caravansaries, trading-houses or forts 
 up and down the Niger, and extending in lines back into the 
 interior of a country the richest in natural productions of any 
 in the world, he would not long be in doubt, he would see 
 that it simply means that the English government, seeing the 
 practicability and vast importance of the plan, wants the exclu 
 sive control of a long extent of coast before commencing oper-
 
 714 NEVER AGAIN. 
 
 ations for carrying a steady stream of trade and tracts of the 
 comforts of civilization and the consolations of religion 
 directly into the heart of a benighted continent. 
 
 Let us, as people of the same blood and language and 
 literature, hope that our English cousins may succeed in this 
 great undertaking. No mean jealousies now ! Let all miser 
 able prejudices and antipathies if there are any sink out 
 of sight, and the petty feelings of a narrow nationality be 
 buried beneath the pride of race. 
 
 But, even as Americans, we are deeply interested in the 
 success of our cousins. It cannot but inure to our benefit in 
 various ways, but especially in this we have achieved politi 
 cal equality for the negro, but we have not as yet obtained for 
 him social equality. Who knows, though, what may be done 
 for him here when the court circles of Timbuctoo and Sac- 
 catoo are once opened up to our leaders of fashion, and inti 
 mate relations are established between the ultimates of Bos 
 ton, New York and Philadelphia, and the ultimates of the 
 imperial cities of Dahomey, Bambarra and Dafour? 
 
 If this time ever arrives, great credit will unquestionably 
 be due to Luther. Mr. Planly is so unenergetic and so apa 
 thetic that he never could have done anything alone. Luther, 
 almost unaided, except by the advice and sympathy of Uncle 
 Shippen, has so far, despite the pressure of business in Bur 
 ling Slip, succeeded in pushing the thing on. At one time he 
 had hopes of interesting Mr. Ledgeral, but that gentleman had 
 made up his mind never again to have anything to do with 
 any scheme, plan, speculation or business of any kind outside 
 the affairs of the firm. He listened, shook his head, and, in a 
 subdued but decisive tone, murmured, " NEVER AGAIN ! " 
 
 THE END.
 
 No. 3. Supplement to Catalogue, Nov., 1872, 
 
 Or. P. PUTNAM & SONS' 
 
 LIST OF 
 
 NEW PUBLICATIONS 
 
 FOB THE 
 
 AUTUMN SEASON, 18T2. 
 
 i. 
 
 A New Work by the author of " KALOOLAH." 
 TVTEVER AGAIN. 
 
 * Illustrated with numerous engravings, designed ana 
 engraved by Gaston Fay. In one volume, about 700 pages, 
 uniform with "KALOOLAH." $2.50. 
 
 II. 
 
 Also, a New Edition of 
 TXALOOLAH : 
 
 *^- THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JONATHAN ROMER OF NAN- 
 TUCKET. i2ino, cloth extra, $1.75. 
 
 *** SOUK; 15,000 copies of this celebrated work have been sold, and it is justly en 
 titled to enduring popularity. 
 
 " One of the most admirable pictures ever produced in this country." Washington 
 Irving. 
 
 " The most singular and captivating romance since Robinson Crusoe." Homt 
 Journal. 
 
 " By far the most fascinating and entertaining book we have read since we were 
 bewitched by the graceful inventions of the Arabian Nights." Democratic Review. 
 
 III. 
 
 A veritable history of permanent interest. 
 A/TEMOIRS OF A HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 Translated from the Original Autobiography ot Rev. 
 JAMES FONTAINE, by ANN MAURY. With a translation of 
 the Edict of Nantes (now first printed in English). 12010, 
 pp. 508, cloth extra, $1.75.
 
 IV. 
 
 A MANUAL OF POTTERY AND PORCELAIN, 
 **" FOR AMERICAN COLLECTORS. By J. H. TREADWELL. 
 Richly illustrated, and containing full lists of Marks, Mono- 
 Trams, &c. Svo, cloth extra, beveled, gilt top, $2.75. 
 
 T^HE 
 * 
 
 v. 
 
 GREEKS OF TO-DAY. 
 
 By The HON. CHARLES K. TUCKERMAN, late Minister 
 of the United States at Athens. i2mo, cloth extra, $1.50. 
 
 Mr. Tuckerman has had exceptional opportunities for becoming acquainted with 
 Greece and the Greeks" ; and he has given the results of his observations in a series of 
 clear and vivid studies that convey to the reader information of the greatest value and 
 interest. 
 
 T 
 
 VI. 
 
 HE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 EARLY ANNALS. By Professor M. SCHELE DE VERE, 
 author of " Wonders of the Deep," " Comparative Philology, 
 &c. I2mo, cloth extra, $1.50. 
 
 CONTENTS : 
 
 Lo The Poor Indian. Onr First Romance. Kaiscrc , Kings anil Kni-^litg. 
 
 The Ilidden River. A Few'fown Names. Lo*t Towns. 
 
 Lost Lands. 
 
 VII. 
 
 '-THE MOTHER'S WORK WITH SICK CHILDREN 
 By Prof. F. B. FOXSSAGRIVES, M.D. Translated and 
 edited by F. P. Foster, M.D. A volume full of the most prac 
 tical advice and suggestions for mothers and nurses. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 HTHE GREAT PROBLEM: 
 
 * THE HIGHER MINISTRY OF NATURE, Viewed l.i the 
 Light of Modern Science, and as an Aid to Advanced Chris 
 tian Philosophy. By JOHN R. LEIFCHILD, A.M., author of 
 " Our Coal Fields and Our Coal Pits," " Cornwall : Its Mine-: 
 and Miners," &c., &c. With an Introduction, by Rev. HOWARD 
 CROSY, D.D. Large I2mo, pp. 550, cloth, $2.25. 
 
 IX. 
 
 TV/TORE WORLDS THAN ONE: 
 
 * * THE CREED OF THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE HOPE OF 
 THE CHRISTIAN. By Sir DAVID BREWSTER, K.H., M.A.. 
 D.C.L. i2rao, cloth, beveled, $1.75.
 
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