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 A
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES'S WRITINGS. 
 
 32loru.fi. 
 
 The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. 
 
 With Illustrations from Designs by HOPPIM. A copious In 
 dex is appended to the volume, i vol. Cloth, gi.oo. 
 
 The Professor at the Breakfast-Table. 
 
 With the Story of Iris. A complete Index is placed at the 
 end of the volume, i vol. Cloth, $1.00. 
 
 O" There \B also an elegant octavo edition of each of these volumes, upon 
 tinted paper, hot-pressed. Cloth, bevelled boards, gilt edges, $3.00 ; full Tur 
 key morocco autique, 95-00. 
 
 Elsie Venner : a Romance of Destiny. 
 a vols. Cloth, $1.75. 
 
 Nearly Ready : 
 Currents and Counter-Currents in Medical 
 
 Science. 
 With other Essays, i vol. Cloth, $1.25. 
 
 Poems. 
 
 A new and much enlarged Edition, revised by the Author. A 
 fine Portrait embellishes this Edition. Illustrated with 
 Wood-cuts, i vol. i6mo. Cloth, $1.00. 
 
 Astrasa, the Balance of Illusions, 
 i vol. i6mo. Price, 25 cents. 
 
 Songs in Many Keys. 
 A new volume of Poems. In Press. 
 
 TICKNOR AND FIELDS, Publishers.
 
 ELSIE VENNER.
 
 ELSIE VENNER: 
 
 A ROMANCE OF DESTINY, 
 
 BY OLIVER WENDELL B^OLMES, 
 
 AUTHOR OF " THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE," ETC. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 
 
 M DCCC LXI.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
 STEREOTVIT.Il AND PRINTED BT II. 0. HOUQBTON.
 
 To THB 
 SCHOOLMISTRESS 
 
 WHO HAS FURNISHED SOME OUTLINES MADE USE OF IN THESE 
 PAGES AND ELSEWHERE, 
 
 2T J) ( s S t o r 2 is JDcttcatcU 
 
 .BY HER OLDEST SCHOLAR.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THIS tale was published in successive parts 
 in the " Atlantic Monthly," under the name of 
 " The Professor's Story," the first number hav 
 ing appeared in the third week of December, 
 1859. The critic who is curious in coincidences 
 must refer to the Magazine for the date of pub 
 lication of the Chapter he is examining. 
 
 In calling this narrative a " romance," the Au 
 thor wishes to make sure of being indulged in 
 the common privileges of the poetic license. 
 Through all the disguise of fiction a grave sci 
 entific doctrine may be detected lying beneath 
 some of the delineations of character. He has 
 used this doctrine as a part of the machinery 
 of his story without pledging his absolute be 
 lief in it to the extent to which it is asserted 
 or implied. It wa. adopted as a convenient 
 medium of truth rather than as an accepted 
 scientific conclusion. The reader must judge
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 for himself what is the value of various stories 
 cited from old authors. He must decide how 
 much of what has been told he can accept, 
 either as having actually happened, or as pos 
 sible and more or less probable. The Author 
 must be permitted, however, to say here, in his 
 personal character, and as responsible to the stu 
 dents of the human mind and body, that since 
 this story has been in progress he has received 
 the most startling confirmation of the possibility 
 of the existence of a character like that which 
 he had drawn as a purely imaginary conception 
 in Elsie Venner. 
 
 BOSTON, January, 1861.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 THE BRAHMIN CASTE OF NEW ENGLAND . . .13 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE STUDENT AND HIS CERTIFICATE ... 20 
 
 CHAPTER IH. 
 MR. BERNARD TRIES HIS HAND 87 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE MOTH FLIES INTO THE CANDLE ... 60 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 AN OLD-FASHIONED DESCRIPTIVE CHAPTER . . 74 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THE SUNBEAM AND THE SHADOW . . . . 92 
 
 CHAPTER VH. 
 THE EVENT OF THE SEASON 106 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE MORNING AFTER . 151
 
 xii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE DOCTOR ORDERS THE BEST SULKY (WITH A DI 
 GRESSION ON "HIRED HELP") 170 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE DOCTOR CALLS ON ELSIE VENNER . . .176 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 cousix RICHARD'S VISIT 188 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE APOLLINEAN INSTITUTE (WITH EXTRACTS FROM 
 
 THK "REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE") . . . 206 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 CURIOSITY .' 222 
 
 CHAPTER XTV. 
 FAMILY SECRETS ...'.... 240 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 PHYSIOLOGICAL 253 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 EPISTOLARY 272
 
 ELSIE VENNER 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE BRAHMIN CASTE OP NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 THERE is nothing in New England correspond 
 ing at all to the feudal aristocracies of the Old 
 World. Whether it be owing to the stock from 
 which we were derived, or to the practical work 
 ing of our institutions, or to the abrogation of the 
 technical "law of honor," which draws a sharp 
 line between the personally responsible class of 
 "gentlemen" and the unnamed multitude of 
 those who are not expected to risk their lives for 
 an abstraction, whatever be the cause, we have 
 no such aristocracy here as that which grew up 
 out of the military systems of the Middle Ages. 
 
 What we mean by " aristocracy " is merely the 
 richer part of the community, that live in the 
 tallest houses, drive real carriages, (not "ker- 
 ridges,") kid-glove their hands, and French-bon 
 net their ladies' heads, give parties where the 
 persons who call them by the above title are not 
 invited, and have a provokingly easy way of
 
 14 ELSIE TENNER. 
 
 dressing, walking, talking, and nodding to peo 
 ple, as if they felt entirely at home, and would 
 not be embarrassed in the least, if they met the 
 Governor, or even the President of the United 
 States, face to face. Some of these great folks 
 are really well-bred, some of them are only purse- 
 proud and assuming, but they form a class, 
 and are named as above in the common speech. 
 
 It is in the nature of large fortunes to diminish 
 rapidly, when subdivided and distributed. A 
 million is the unit of wealth, now and here in 
 America. It splits into four handsome proper 
 ties ; each of these into four good inheritances ; 
 these, again, into scanty competences for four 
 ancient maidens, with whom it is best the fam 
 ily should die out, unless it can begin again as 
 its great-grandfather did. Now a million is a 
 kind of golden cheese, which represents in a com 
 pendious form the summer's growth of a fat 
 meadow of craft or commerce ; and as this kind 
 of meadow rarely bears more than one crop, it is 
 pretty certain that sons and grandsons will not 
 get another golden cheese out of it, whether they 
 milk the same cows or turn in new ones. In 
 other words, the millionocracy, considered in a 
 large way, is not at -all an affair of persons and 
 families, but a perpetual fact, of money with a 
 variable human element, which a philosopher 
 might leave out of consideration without falling 
 into serious error. Of course, this trivial and 
 fugitive fact of personal wealth does not create a
 
 ELSIE TENNER. 15 
 
 permanent class, unless some special means are 
 taken to arrest the process of disintegration in 
 the third generation. This is so rarely done, at 
 least successfully, that one need not live a very 
 long life to see most of the rich families he knew 
 in childhood more or less reduced, and the mil 
 lions shifted into the hands of the country-boys 
 who were sweeping stores and carrying parcels 
 when the now decayed gentry were driving their 
 chariots, eating their venison over silver chafing- 
 dishes, drinking Madeira chilled in embossed 
 coolers, wearing their hair in powder, and casing 
 their legs in top boots with silken tassels. 
 
 There is, however, in New England, an aris 
 tocracy, if you choose to call it so, which has a 
 far greater character of permanence. It has 
 grown to be a caste, not in any odious sense, 
 but, by the repetition of the same influences, gen 
 eration after generation, it has acquired a distinct 
 organization and physiognomy, which not to 
 recognize is mere stupidity, and not to be willing 
 to describe would show a distrust of the good 
 nature and intelligence of our readers, who like 
 to have us see all we can and tell all we see. 
 
 If you will look carefully at any class of stu 
 dents in one of our colleges, you will have no 
 difficulty in selecting specimens of two different 
 aspects of youthful manhood. Of course I shall 
 choose extreme cases to illustrate the contrast be 
 tween them. In the first, the figure is perhaps 
 robust, but often otherwise, inelegant, partly
 
 16 l.l>IK VF.NXKR. 
 
 from careless attitudes, partly from ill-dressing, 
 the face is uncouth in feature, or at least com 
 mon, the mouth coarse and unformed, the 
 eye unsympathetic, even if bright, the move 
 ments of the face are clumsy, like those of the 
 limbs, the voice is unmusical, and the enun 
 ciation as if the words were coarse castings, in 
 stead of fine carvings. The youth of the other 
 aspect is commonly slender, his face is smooth, 
 and apt to be pallid, his features are regular 
 and of a certain delicacy, his eye is bright and 
 quick, his lips play over the thought he utters as 
 a pianist's fingers dance over their music, and 
 his whole air, though it may be timid, and even 
 awkward, has nothing clownish. If you are a 
 teacher, you know what to expect from each of 
 these young men. With equal willingness, the 
 first will be slow at learning ; the second will 
 take to his books as a pointer or a setter to his 
 field-work. 
 
 The first youth is the common country-boy, 
 whose race has been bred to bodily labor. Na 
 ture has adapted the family organization to the 
 kind of life it has lived. The hands and feet by 
 constant use have got more than their share of 
 development, the organs of thought and ex 
 pression less than their share. The finer instincts 
 are latent and must be developed. A youth of 
 this kind is raw material in its first stage of elab 
 oration. You must not expect too much of any 
 such. Many of them have force of will and
 
 ELSIE VEXXER. 17 
 
 character, and become distinguished in practical 
 life ; but very few of them ever become great 
 scholars. (^A scholar is, in a large proportion of 
 cases, the son of scholars or scholarly persons. / 
 
 That is exactly what the other young man is. 
 He comes of the Brahmin caste of New Eng 
 land. This is the harmless, inoffensive, untitled 
 aristocracy referred to, and which many readers 
 will at once acknowledge. There are races of 
 scholars among us, in which aptitude for learn 
 ing, and all these marks of it I have spoken 
 of, are congenital and hereditary. Their names 
 are always on some college catalogue or other. 
 They break out every generation or two in some 
 learned labor which calls them up after they 
 seem to have died out. At last some newer 
 name takes their place, it may be, but you 
 inquire a little and you find it is the blood of 
 the Edwardses or the Chauncys or the Ellerys 
 or some of the old historic scholars, disguised 
 under the altered name of a female descendant. 
 
 There probably is not an experienced instructor 
 anywhere in our Northern States who will not 
 recognize at once the truth of this general dis 
 tinction. But the reader who has never been a 
 teacher will very probably object, that some of 
 our most illustrious public men have come direct 
 from the homespun-clad class of the people, 
 and he may, perhaps, even find a noted scholar 
 or two whose parents were masters of the Eng 
 lish alphabet, but of no other.
 
 18 ELSIE VENXER. 
 
 It is not fair to. pit a few chosen families 
 against the great multitude of those who are 
 continually working their way up into the intel 
 lectual classes. The results which are habitually 
 reached by hereditary training are occasionally 
 brought about without it. There are natural 
 filters as well as artificial ones ; and though the 
 great rivers are commonly more or less turbid, 
 if you will look long enough, you may find a 
 spring that sparkles as no water does which drips 
 through your apparatus of sands and sponges. 
 So there are families which refine themselves into 
 intellectual aptitude without having had much 
 opportunity for intellectual acquirements. A se 
 ries of felicitous crosses develops an improved 
 strain of blood, and reaches its maximum perfec 
 tion at last in the large uncombed 'youth who 
 goes to college and startles the hereditary class- 
 leaders by striding past them all. That is Na 
 ture's republicanism ; thank God for it, but do 
 not let it make you illogical. The race of the 
 hereditary scholar has exchanged a certain por 
 tion of its animal vigor for its new instincts, and 
 it is hard to lead men without a good deal of ani 
 mal vigor. The scholar who comes by Nature's 
 special grace from an unworn stock of broad- 
 chested sires and deep-bosomed mothers must 
 always overmatch an equal intelligence with a 
 compromised and lowered vitality. A man's 
 breathing and digestive apparatus (one is tempt 
 ed to add muscular) are just as important "to him
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 19 
 
 on the floor of the Senate as his thinking organs. 
 You broke down in your great speech, did you ? 
 Yes, your grandfather had an attack of dyspepsia 
 in '82, after working too hard on his famous Elec 
 tion Sermon. All this does not touch the main 
 fact : four scholars come chiefly from a privileged 
 order, just as our best fruits come from well- 
 known grafts, though now and then a seedling 
 apple, like the Northern Spy, or a seedling pear, 
 like the Seckel, springs from a nameless ancestry 
 and grows to be the pride of all the gardens in 
 the land. 
 
 Let me introduce you to a young man who be 
 longs to the Brahmin caste of New England.
 
 20 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 THE STUDENT AND HIS CERTIFICATE. 
 
 BERNARD C. LANGDON, a young man attending 
 Medical Lectures at the school connected with 
 one of our principal colleges, remained after the 
 Lecture one day and wished to speak with the 
 Professor. He was a student of mark, first 
 favorite of his year, as they say 'of the Derby 
 colts. There are in every class half a dozen 
 bright faces to which the teacher naturally directs 
 his discourse, and by the intermediation of whose 
 attention he seems to hold that of the mass of 
 listeners. Among these some one is pretty sure 
 to take the lead, by virtue of a personal magnet 
 ism, or some peculiarity of expression, which 
 places the face in quick sympathetic relations 
 with the lecturer. This was a young man with 
 such a face; and I found, for you have guessed 
 that 1^ was the " Professor " above-mentioned, 
 that, when there was anything difficult to be ex 
 plained, or when I was bringing out some favor 
 ite illustration of a nice point, (as, for instance, 
 when I compared the cell-growth, by which Na 
 ture builds up a plant or an animal, to the glass-
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 21 
 
 blower's similar mode of beginning, always 
 with a hollow sphere, or vesicle, whatever he is 
 going to make,) I naturally looked in his face 
 and gauged my success by its expression. 
 
 It was a handsome face, a little too pale, 
 perhaps, and would have borne something more 
 of fulness without becoming heavy. I put the 
 organization to which it belongs in Section B of 
 Class 1 of my Anglo-American Anthropology 
 (unpublished). The jaw in this section is but 
 slightly narrowed, just enough to make the 
 width of the forehead tell more decidedly. The 
 moustache often grows vigorously, but the whis 
 kers are thin. The skin is like that of Jacob, 
 rather than like Esau's. One string of the ani 
 mal nature has been taken away, but this gives 
 only a greater predominance to the intellectual 
 chords. To see just how the vital energy has 
 been toned down, you must contrast one of this 
 section with a specimen of Section A of the 
 same class, say, for instance, one of the old- 
 fashioned, full-whiskered, red-faced, roaring, big 
 Commodores of the last generation, whom you 
 remember, at least by their portraits, in ruffled 
 shirts, looking as hearty as butchers and as plucky 
 as bull-terriers, with their hair combed straight up 
 from their foreheads, which were not commonly 
 very high or broad. The special form of physical 
 life I have been describing gives you a right to 
 expect more delicate perceptions and a more 
 reflective nature than you commonly find in
 
 22 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 shaggy-throated men, clad in heavy suits of mus 
 cles. 
 
 The student lingered in the lecture-room, look 
 ing all the time as if he wanted to say something 
 in private, and waiting for two or three others, 
 who were still hanging about, to be gone. 
 
 Something is wrong ! I said to myself, when 
 I noticed his expression. Well, Mr. Langdon, 
 I said to him, when we were alone, can I do 
 anything for you to-day ? 
 
 You can, Sir, he said. I am going to leave 
 the class, for the present, and keep school. 
 
 Why, that's a pity, and you so near graduat 
 ing ! You'd better stay and finish this course, 
 and take your degree in the spring, rather than 
 break up your whole plan of study. 
 
 I can't help myself, Sir, the young man an 
 swered. There's trouble at home, and they can 
 not keep me here as they have done. So I must 
 look out for myself for a while. It 's^what I 've 
 done before, and am ready to do again. I came 
 to ask you for a certificate of my fitness to teach 
 a common school, or a high school, if you think 
 I am up to that. Are you willing to give it to 
 me? 
 
 Willing ? Yes, to be sure, but I don't want 
 you to go. Stay ; we '11 make it easy for you. 
 There 's a fund will do something for you, per 
 haps. Then you can take both the annual prizes, 
 if you like, and claim them in money, if you 
 want that more than medals.
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 23 
 
 I have thought it all over, he answered, 
 and have pretty much made up my mind to go. 
 
 A perfectly gentlemanly young man, of cour 
 teous address and mild utterance, but means at 
 least as much as he says. There are some people 
 whose rhetoric consists of a slight habitual under 
 statement. I often tell Mrs. Professor that one of 
 her " I think it 's sos " is worth the Bible-oath of all 
 the rest of the household that they " know it 's 
 so." When you find a person a little better than 
 his word, a little more liberal than his promise, a 
 little more than borne out in his statement by his 
 facts, a little larger in deed than in speech, you 
 recognize a kind of eloquence in that person's 
 utterance not laid down in Blair or Campbell. 
 
 This was a proud fellow, self-trusting, sensitive, 
 with family-recollections that made him unwill 
 ing- to accept the kind of aid which many stu 
 dents would have thankfully welcomed. I<knew 
 him too well to urge him, after the few words 
 which implied that he was determined to go. 
 Besides,! I have great confidence in young men 
 who believe in themselves, and are accustomed to 
 rely on their own resources from an early period. 
 When a resolute young fellow steps up to the 
 great bully, the s World, and takes him boldly by 
 the beard, he is often surprised to find it come off 
 in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare 
 away timid adventurers. I have seen young men 
 more than once, who came to a great city without 
 a single friend, support themselves and pay for
 
 24 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 their education, lay up money in a few years, 
 grow rich enough to travel, and establish them 
 selves in life, Without ever asking a dollar of any 
 person which they had not earned. But these are 
 exceptional cases. There are horse-tamers, born 
 so, as we all know ; there are woman-tamers who 
 bewitch the sex as the pied piper bedeviled the 
 children of Hamelin ; and there are world-tamers, 
 who can make any community, even a Yankee 
 one, get down and let them jump on its back as 
 easily as Mr. Rarey saddled Cruiser. 
 
 Whether Langdon was of this sort or not I 
 could not say positively ; but he had spirit, and, 
 as I have said, a family-pride which would not 
 let him be dependent. The New England Brah 
 min caste often gets blended with connections of 
 political influence or commercial distinction. It 
 is a charming thing for the scholar, when his for 
 tune carries him in this way into some of the 
 " old families" who have fine old houses, and city- 
 lots that have risen in the market, and names 
 written in all the stock-books of all the dividend- 
 paying companies. His narrow study expands 
 into a stately library, his books are counted by 
 thousands instead of hundreds, and his favorites 
 are dressed in gilded calf in place of plebeian 
 sheepskin or its pauper substitutes of cloth and 
 paper. 
 
 The Reverend Jedediah Langdon, grandfather 
 of our young gentleman, had made an advan 
 tageous alliance of this kincfr Miss Dorothea
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 25 
 
 Wentworth had read one of his sermons which 
 had been printed " by request," and became 
 deeply interested in the young author, whom 
 she had never seen. Out of this circumstance 
 grew a correspondence, an interview, a dec 
 laration, a matrimonial alliance, and a family 
 of half a dozen children. Wentworth Lang- 
 don, Esquire, was the oldest of these, and 
 lived in the old family-mansion. Unfortunately, 
 tliat principle of the diminution of estates by 
 division, to which I have referred, rendered 
 it somewhat difficult to maintain the estab 
 lishment upon the fractional income" which the 
 proprietor received from his share of the prop 
 erty. Wentworth Langdon, Esq., represented 
 a certain intermediate condition of life not at 
 all infrequent in our old families. He was the 
 connecting link between the generation which 
 lived in ease, and even a kind of state, upon its 
 own resources, and the new brood, which must 
 live mainly by its wits' or industry, and make it 
 self rich, or shabbily subside into that lower stra 
 tum known to social geologists by a deposit of 
 Kidderminster carpets and the peculiar aspect 
 of the fossils constituting the family furniture 
 and wardrobe. This slack-water period of a 
 race, which comes before the rapid ebb of its 
 prosperity, is familiar to all who live in cities. 
 There are no more quiet, inoffensive people than 
 these children of rich families, just above the ne 
 cessity of active employment, yet not in a condi-
 
 26 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 tion to place their own children advantageously, 
 if they happen to have families. Many of them 
 are content to live unmarried. Some mend their 
 broken fortunes by prudent alliances, and some 
 leave a numerous progeny to pass into the obscu 
 rity from which their ancestors emerged ; so that 
 you may see on handcarts and cobblers' stalls 
 names which, a few generations back, were upon 
 parchments with broad seals, and tombstones with 
 armorial bearings. 
 
 In a large city, this class of citizens is familiar 
 to us in the streets. They are very courteous in 
 their salutations ; they have time enough to bow 
 and take their hats off, which, of course, no 
 business-man can afford to do. Their beavers are 
 smoothly brushed, and their boots well polished; 
 all their appointments are tidy ; they look the re 
 spectable walking gentleman to perfection. They 
 are prone to habits to frequent reading-rooms, 
 insurance-offices, to walk the same streets at 
 the same hours so that one becomes familiar 
 with their faces and persons, as a part of the 
 street-furniture. 
 
 There is one curious circumstance, that all city- 
 people must have noticed, which is often illus 
 trated in our experience of the slack-water gentry. 
 We shall know a certain person by his looks, fa 
 miliarly, for years, but never have learned his 
 name. About this person we shall have accumu 
 lated no little circumstantial knowledge ; thus, 
 his face, figure, gait, his mode of dressing, of sa-
 
 ELSIE VENNEK. 27 
 
 luting, perhaps even of speaking, may be familiar 
 to us ; yet who he is we know not. In another 
 department of our consciousness, there is a very 
 familiar name, which we have never found the per 
 son to match. We have heard it so often, that it 
 has idealized itself, and become one of that mul 
 titude of permanent shapes which walk the cham 
 bers of the brain in velvet slippers in the company 
 of Falstaff and Hamlet and General Washington 
 and Mr. Pickwick. Sometimes the person dies, 
 but the name lives on indefinitely. But now and 
 then it happens, perhaps after years of this inde 
 pendent existence of the name and its shadowy 
 image in the brain, on the one part, and the per 
 son and all its real attributes, as we see them 
 daily, on the other, that some accident reveals 
 their relation, and we find the name we have car 
 ried so long in our memory belongs to the person 
 we have known so long as a fellow-citizen. Now 
 the slack-water gentry are among the persons 
 most likely to be the subjects of this curious di 
 vorce of title and reality, for the reason, that, 
 playing no important part in the community, there 
 is nothing to tie the floating name to the actual 
 individual, as is the case with the men who belong 
 in any way to the public, while yet their names 
 have a certain historical currency, and we cannot 
 help meeting them, either in their haunts, or going 
 to and from them. 
 
 To this class belonged Wentworth Langdon, 
 Esq. He had been " dead-headed " into the world
 
 28 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 some fifty years ago, and had sat with his hands 
 in his pockets staring at the show ever since. I 
 shall not tell you, for reasons before hinted, the 
 whole name of the place in which he lived. I 
 will only point you in the right direction, by say 
 ing that there are three towns lying in a line with 
 each other, as you go " down East," each of them 
 with a Port in its name, and each of them having 
 a peculiar interest which gives it individuality, in 
 addition to the Oriental character they have in 
 common. I need not tell you that these towns 
 are Newburyport, Portsmouth, and Portland. The 
 Oriental character they have in common consists 
 in their large, square, palatial mansions, with sun 
 ny gardens round them. The two first have seen 
 better days. They are in perfect harmony with 
 the condition of weakened, but not impoverished, 
 gentility. Each of them is a " paradise of demi- 
 fortunes." Each of them is of that intermedi 
 ate size between a/- village and a city which 
 any place has outgrown when the presence of a 
 well-dressed stranger walking up and down the 
 main street ceases to be a matter of public curi 
 osity and private speculation, as frequently hap 
 pens, during the busier months of the year, in 
 considerable commercial centres like Salem. 
 They both have grand old recollections to fall 
 back upon, times when they looked forward 
 to commercial greatness, and when the portly 
 gentlemen in cocked hats, who built their now 
 decaying wharves and sent out their ships all over
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 29 
 
 the world, dreamed that their fast-growing port 
 was to be the Tyre or the Carthage of the rich 
 British Colony. Great houses, like that once 
 lived in by Lord Timothy Dexter, in Newbury- 
 port, remain as evidence of the fortunes amassed 
 in these places of old. Other mansions like 
 the Rockingham House in Portsmouth (look at 
 the white horse's tail before you mount the broad 
 staircase) show that there was not only wealth, 
 but style and state, in these quiet old towns dur 
 ing the last century. It is not with any thought 
 of pity or depreciation that we speak of them as 
 in a certain sense decayed towns ; they did not 
 fulfil their early promise of expansion, but they 
 remain incomparably the most interesting places 
 of their size in any of the three northernmost 
 New England States. They have even now pros 
 perity enough to keep them in good condition, and 
 offer the most attractive residences for quiet fami 
 lies, which, if they had been English, would have 
 lived in a palazzo at Genoa or Pisa, or some other 
 Continental Newburyport or Portsmouth. 
 
 As for the last of the three Ports, or Portland, 
 it is getting too prosperous to be as attractive 
 as its less northerly neighbors. Meant for a fine 
 old town, to ripen like a Cheshire cheese within 
 its walls of ancient rind, burrowed by crooked 
 alleys and mottled with venerable mould, it 
 seems likely to sacrifice its mellow future to a 
 vulgar material prosperity. Still it remains in 
 vested with many of its old charms, as yet, and
 
 30 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 will forfeit its place among this admirable trio 
 only when it gets a hotel with unequivocal 
 marks of having been built and organized in 
 the present century. 
 
 It was one of the old square palaces of 
 
 the North, in which Bernard Langdon, the son 
 of Wentworth, was born. If he had had the 
 luck to be an only child, he might have lived 
 as his father had done, letting his meagre com 
 petence smoulder on almost without consuming, 
 like the fuel in an air-tight stove. But after 
 Master Bernard came Miss Dorothea Elizabeth 
 Wentworth Langdon, and then Master William 
 Pepperell Langdon, and others, equally well 
 named, a string of them, looking, when they 
 stood in a row in prayer-time, as if they would 
 fit a set of Pandean pipes, of from three feet 
 upward in dimensions. The door of the air 
 tight stove has to be opened, under such circum 
 stances, you may well suppose ! So it happened 
 that our young man had been obliged, from an 
 early period, to do something to support himself, 
 and found himself stopped short in his studies 
 by the inability of the good people at home to 
 furnish him the present means of support as a 
 student. 
 
 You will understand now why the young man 
 wanted me to give him a certificate of his fit 
 ness to teach, and why I did not choose to urge 
 him to accept the aid which a meek country- 
 boy from a family without ante-Revolutionary
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 31 
 
 recollections would have thankfully received. Go 
 he must, that was plain enough. He would 
 not be content otherwise. He was not, how 
 ever, to give up his studies ; and as it is cus 
 tomary to allow half-time to students engaged 
 in school-keeping, that is, to count a year, so 
 employed, if the student also keep on with his 
 professional studies, as equal to six months of 
 the three years he is expected to be under an 
 instructor before applying for his degree, he 
 would not necessarily lose more than a few 
 months of time. He had a small library of pro 
 fessional books, which he could take with him. 
 
 So he left my teaching and that of my estima 
 ble colleagues, carrying with him my certificate, 
 that Mr. Bernard C. Langdon was a young gen 
 tleman of excellent moral character, of high in 
 telligence and good education, and that his ser 
 vices would be of great value in any school, 
 academy, or other institution, where young per 
 sons of either sex were to be instructed. 
 
 I confess, that expression, " either sex," ran a 
 little thick, as I may say, from my pen. For, 
 although the young man bore a very fair char 
 acter, and there was no special cause for doubt 
 ing his discretion, I considered him altogether 
 too good-looking, in the first place, to be let loose 
 in a room-full of young girls. I didn't want him 
 to fall in love just then, and if half a dozen 
 girls fell in love with him, as they most assuredly 
 would, if brought into too near relations with
 
 32 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 him, why, there was no telling what gratitude 
 and natural sensibility might bring about. 
 
 Certificates are, for the most part, like ostrich- 
 eggs ; the giver never knows what is hatched out 
 of them. But once in a thousand times they act 
 as curses are said to, come home to roost. Give 
 them often enough, until it gets to be a mechanical 
 business, and, some day or other, you will get 
 caught warranting somebody's ice not to melt in 
 any climate, or somebody's razors to be safe in 
 the hands of the youngest children. 
 
 I had an uneasy feeling, after giving this cer 
 tificate. It might be all right enough ; but if it 
 happened to end badly, I should always reproach 
 myself. There was a chance, certainly, that it 
 would lead him or others into danger or wretch 
 edness. Any one who looked at this young man 
 could not fail to see that he was capable of 
 fascinating and being fascinated. Those large, 
 dark eyes of his would sink into the white soul 
 of a young girl as the black cloth sunk into the 
 snow in Franklin's famous experiment. Or, on 
 the other hand, if the rays of a passionate nature 
 should ever be concentrated on them, they would 
 be" absorbed into the very depths of his nature, 
 and then his blood would turn to flame and burn 
 his life out of him, until his cheeks grew as white 
 as the ashes that cover a burning coal. 
 
 I wish I had not said either sex in my certificate. 
 An academy for young gentlemen, now ; that 
 sounds cool and unimaginative. A boys' school ;
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 33 
 
 that would be a very good place for him ; some 
 of them are pretty rough, but there is nerve 
 enough in that old Wentworth strain of blood ; 
 he can give any country fellow, of the common 
 stock, twenty pounds, and hit him out of time in 
 ten minutes. But to send such a young fellow 
 as that out a girl's-nesting! to give this falcon a 
 free pass into all the dove-cotes ! I was a fool, 
 that's all. 
 
 I brooded over the mischief which might come 
 out of these two words until it seemed to me 
 that they were charged with destiny. I could 
 hardly sleep for thinking what a train I might 
 have been laying, which might take a spark any 
 day, and blow up nobody knows whose peace or 
 prospects. What I dreaded most was one of 
 those miserable matrimonial misalliances where 
 a young fellow who does not know himself as 
 yet flings his magnificent future into the checked 
 apron-lap of some fresh-faced, half-bred country- 
 girl, no more fit to be mated with him than her 
 father's horse to go in double harness with Flora 
 Temple. To think of the eagle's wings being 
 clipped so that he shall never lift himself over the 
 farm-yard fence ! / Such things happen, and al 
 ways must, 4 because, as one of us said awhile 
 ago, a man always loves a woman, and a woman 
 a man, unless some good reason exists to the 
 contrary. You think yourself a very fastidious 
 young man, my friend ; but there are probably at 
 least five thousand young women in these United
 
 34 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 States, any one of whom you would certainly 
 marry, if you were thrown much into her com 
 pany, and nobody more attractive were near, and 
 she had no objection. And you, my dear young 
 lady, justly pride yourself on your discerning del 
 icacy ; but if I should say that there are twenty 
 thousand young men, any one of whom, if he 
 offered his hand and heart under favorable cir 
 cumstances, you would 
 
 " First endure, then pity, then embrace," 
 
 I should be much more imprudent than I mean 
 to be, and you would, no doubt, throw down a 
 story in which I hope to interest you. 
 
 I had settled it in my mind that this young 
 fellow had a career marked out for him. He 
 should begin in the natural way, by taking care 
 of poor patients in one of the public charities, 
 and work his way up to a better kind of practice, 
 better, that is, in the vulgar, worldly sense. 
 The great and good Boerhaave used to say, as 
 I remember ver^y well, that the poor were his best 
 patients; for God was their paymaster. But 
 everybody is not as patient as Boerhaave, nor as 
 deserving ; so that the rich, though not, perhaps, 
 the best patients, are good enough for common 
 practitioners. I suppose Boerhaave put up with 
 them when he could not get poor ones, as he left 
 his daughter two millions of florins when he died. 
 
 Now if this young man once got into the wide 
 streets, he would sweep them clear of his rivals of
 
 ELSIE TENNER. 35 
 
 the same standing; and as I was getting indif 
 ferent to business, and old Dr. Kilham was grow 
 ing careless, and had once or twice prescribed 
 morphine when he meant quinine, there would 
 soon be an opening into the Doctor's Paradise, 
 the streets with only one side to them. Then I 
 would have him strike a bold stroke, set up a 
 nice little coach, and be driven round like a first- 
 class London doctor, instead of coasting about 
 in a shabby one-horse concern and casting anchor 
 opposite his patients' doors like a Cape- Ann fish 
 ing-smack. By the time he was thirty, he would 
 have knocked the social pawns out of his way, 
 and be ready to challenge a wife from the row of 
 great pieces in the background. I would not have 
 a man marry above his level, so as to become the 
 appendage of a powerful family-connection ; but 
 I would not have him marry until he knew his 
 level, that is, again, looking at the matter in a 
 purely worldly point of view, and not taking the 
 sentiments at all into consideration. But remem- \ 
 /ber, that a young man, using large endowments \ 
 / wisely and fortunately, may put himself on a VI 
 level with the highest in the land in ten brilliant A\ 
 years of spirited, unflagging labor. /And to stand 1} \ 
 at the very top of your calling in a great city is / 
 something in itself, V- that is, if you like money 
 ) and influence, and a seat on the platform at pub 
 lic lectures, and gratuitous tickets to all sorts of 
 places where you don't want to go,^and, what is 
 a good deal better than any of these things, a
 
 36 KLSIE VENNER. 
 
 sense of power, limited, it may be, but absolute, 
 in its range, so that all the Cassars and Napoleons 
 would have to stand aside, if they came between 
 you and the exercise of your special vocation.,} 
 
 That is what I thought this young fellow might 
 have come to ; and now I have let him go off into 
 the country with my certificate, that he is fit to 
 teach in a school for either sex! Ten to one he 
 will run like a moth into a candle, right into one 
 of those girls'-nests, and get tangled up in some 
 sentimental folly or other, and there will be the 
 end of him. Oh, yes! country doctor, half a 
 dollar a visit, ride, ride, ride all day, get up 
 at night and harness your own horse, ride again 
 ten miles in a snow-storm, shake powders out 
 of two phials, (pulv. glycyrrhiz., pulv. gum. acac. 
 aa paries equates,*) ride back again, if you 
 don't happen to get stuck in a drift, no home, 
 no peace, no continuous meals, no unbroken 
 sleep, no Sunday, no holiday, no social inter 
 course, but one eternal jog, jog, jog, in a sulky, 
 until you feel like the mummy of an Indian who 
 had been buried in the sitting posture, and was 
 dug up a hundred years afterwards! Why didn't 
 I warn him about love and all that nonsense ? 
 Why didn't I tell him he had nothing to do with 
 it, yet awhile ? Why didn't I hold up to him 
 those awful examples I could have cited, where 
 poor young fellows who could just keep them 
 selves afloat have hung a matrimonial millstone 
 round their necks, taking it for a life-preserver ? 
 
 All this of two words in a certificate !
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 37 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MR. BERNARD TRIES HIS HAND. 
 
 WHETHER the Student advertised for a school, 
 or whether he fell in with the advertisement of a 
 school-committee, is not certain. At any rate, it 
 was not long before he found himself the head of 
 a large district, or, as it was called by the inhab 
 itants, "deestric" school, in the nourishing inland 
 village of Pequawkett, or, as it is commonly 
 spelt, Pigwacket Centre. The natives of this 
 place would be surprised, if they should hear 
 that any of the readers of a work published in 
 Boston were unacquainted with so remarkable a 
 locality. As, however, some copies of it may be 
 read at a distance from this distinguished me 
 tropolis, it may be well to give a few particulars 
 respecting the place, taken from the Universal 
 Gazetteer. 
 
 " PIGWACKET, sometimes spelt Pequawkett. A post-village 
 and township in Co., State of , situated in a fine agri 
 cultural region, 2 thriving villages, Pigwacket Centre and 
 Smithvillc, 3 churches, several school-houses, and many hand 
 some private residences. Mink River runs through the town, 
 navigable for small boats after heavy rains. Muddy Pond at
 
 38 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 N. E. section, well stocked with born pouts, eels, and shiners. 
 Products, beef, pork, butter, cheese. Manufactures, shoe-pegs, 
 clothes-pins, and tin-ware. Pop. 1373." 
 
 The reader may think there is nothing very 
 remarkable implied in this description. If, how 
 ever, he had read the town-history, by the Rey. 
 Jabez Grubb, he would have learned, that, like 
 the celebrated Little Pedlington, it was distin 
 guished by many very remarkable advantages. 
 Thus: 
 
 " The situation of Pigwacket is eminently beautiful, looking 
 down the lovely valley of Mink River, a tributary of the Mus 
 quash. The air is salubrious, and many of the inhabitants 
 have attained great age, several having passed the allotted 
 period of ' three-score years and ten ' before succumbing to 
 any of the various ' ills that flesh is heir to.' Widow Comfort 
 Leevins died in 1836, JEt. LXXXVII. years. Venus, an 
 African, died in 1841, supposed to be C. years old. The peo 
 ple are distinguished for intelligence, as has been frequently 
 remarked by eminent lyceum-Iecturers, who have invariably 
 spoken in the highest terms of a Pigwacket audience. There 
 is a public library, containing nearly a hundred volumes, free 
 to all subscnbers. The preached word is well attended, there 
 is a flourishing temperance society, and the schools are excel 
 lent. It is a residence admirably adapted to refined families 
 who relish the beauties of Nature and the charms of society. 
 The Honorable John Smith, formerly a member of the State 
 Senate, was a native of this town." 
 
 That is the way they all talk. After all, it is 
 probably pretty much like other inland New Eng 
 land towns in point of "salubrity," that is, gives 
 people their choice of dysentery or fever every au-
 
 ELSIE VENNER. ' 39 
 
 tumn, with a season-ticket for consimjtion a good 
 all the year roundJ And so of the other pretences. 
 " Pigwacket audience,." forsooth ! Was there ever 
 an audience anywhere, though there wasn't a pair 
 of eyes in it brighter than pickled oysters, that 
 didn't think it was " distinguished for intelli 
 gence " ? " The preached word " ! That means 
 the Rev. Jabez Grubb's sermons. " Temperance 
 society " ! " Excellent schools " ! Ah, that is just 
 what we were talking about. 
 
 The truth was, that District No. 1, Pigwacket 
 Centre, had had a good deal of trouble of late 
 with its schoolmasters. The committee had done 
 their best, but there were a number of well-grown 
 and pretty rough young feUows who had got the 
 upperhand of the masters, and meant to keep it. 
 Two dynasties had fallen before the uprising of 
 this fierce democracy. This was a thing that 
 used to be not very uncommon ; but in so " in 
 telligent " a community as that of Pigwacket 
 Centre, in an era of public libraries and lyceum- 
 lectures, it was portentous and . alarming. 
 
 The rebellion began under the ferule of Mas 
 ter Weeks, a slender youth from a country col 
 lege, under-fed, thin-blooded, sloping-shouldered, 
 knock-kneed, straight-haired, weak-bearded, pale- 
 eyed, wide-pupilled, half-colored ; a common type 
 enough in in-door races, not rich enough to pick 
 and choose in their alliances. Nature kills off a 
 good many of this sort in the first teething-time, 
 a few in later childhood, a good many again in
 
 40 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 early adolescence ; but every now and then one 
 runs the gauntlet of her 'various diseases, or rather 
 forms of one disease, and grows up, as Master 
 Weeks had done. 
 
 It was a very foolish thing for him to try to in 
 flict personal punishment on such a lusty young 
 fellow as Abner Briggs, Junior, one of the " hard 
 est customers " in the way of a rough-and-tumble 
 fight that there were anywhere round. No doubt 
 he had been insolent, but it would have been bet 
 ter to overlook it. It pains me to report the events 
 which took place when the master made his rash 
 attempt to maintain his authority. Abner Briggs, 
 Junior, was a great, hulking fellow, who had been 
 bred to butchering, but urged by his parents to 
 attend school, in order to learn the elegant accom 
 plishments of reading and writing, in which he 
 was sadly deficient. He was in the habit of talk 
 ing and laughing pretty loud in school-hours, of 
 throwing wads of paper reduced to a pulp by a 
 natural and easy process, of occasional insolence 
 and general negligence. One of the soft, but un 
 pleasant missiles just alluded to, flew by the mas 
 ter's head one morning, and flattened itself against 
 the wall, where it adhered in the form of a convex 
 mass in alto rilievo. The master looked round 
 and saw the young butcher's arm in an attitude 
 which pointed to it unequivocally as the source 
 from which the projectile had taken its flight. 
 
 Master Weeks turned pale. He must " lick " 
 Abner Briggs, Junior, or abdicate. So he deter 
 mined to lick Abner Briggs, Junior.
 
 ELSIE VENNEIJ. 41 
 
 " Come here, Sir ! " he said ; " you have in 
 sulted me and outraged the decency of the school 
 room often enough ! Hold out your hand ! " 
 
 The young fellow grinned and held it out. 
 The master struck at it with his black ruler, with 
 a will in the blow and a snapping of the eyes, as 
 much as to say that he meant to make him smart 
 this time. The young fellow pulled his hand 
 back as the ruler came down, and the master hit 
 himself a vicious blow with it on the right knee. 
 There are things no man can stand. The master 
 caught the refractory youth by the collar and 
 began shaking him, or rather shaking himself 
 against him. 
 
 " Le' go o' that are coat, naow," said the fellow, 
 " or I '11 make ye ! 'T '11 take tew on ye t' handle 
 me, I tell ye, 'n' then ye caant dew it ! " and the 
 young pupil returned the master's attention by 
 catching hold of his collar. 
 
 When it comes to that, the best man, not ex 
 actly in the moral sense, but rather in the mate 
 rial, and more especially the muscular point of 
 view, is very apt to have the best of it, irrespec 
 tively of the merits of the case. So it happened 
 now. The unfortunate schoolmaster found him 
 self taking the measure of the sanded floor, amidst 
 the general uproar of the school. From that mo 
 ment his ferule was broken, and the school-com 
 mittee very soon had a vacancy to fill. 
 
 Master Pigeon, the successor of Master Weeks, 
 was of better stature, but loosely put together,
 
 42 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 and slender-limbed. A dreadfully nervous kind 
 of man he was, walked on tiptoe, started at sud 
 den noises, was distressed when he heard a whis 
 per, had a quick, suspicious look, and was always 
 saying, " Hush ! " and putting his hands to his 
 ears. The boys were not long in finding out 
 this nervous weakness, of course. In less than 
 a week a regular system of torments was in 
 augurated, full of the most diabolical malice and 
 ingenuity. The exercises of the conspirators 
 varied from day to day, but consisted mainly of 
 foot-scraping, solos on the slate-pencil, (making it 
 screech on the slate,) falling of heavy books, at 
 tacks of coughing, banging of desk-lids, boot- 
 creaking, with sounds as of drawing a cork from 
 time to time, followed by suppressed chuckles. 
 
 Master Pigeon grew worse and worse under 
 these inflictions. The rascally boys always had 
 an excuse for any one trick they were caught at. 
 Couldn' help coughin', Sir." Slipped out o' 
 m' ban', Sir." " Didn' go to, Sir." " Didn' dew 't 
 o' purpose, Sir." And so on, always the best 
 of reasons for the most outrageous of behavior. 
 The master weighed himself at the grocer's on a 
 platform balance, some ten days after he began 
 keeping the school. At the end of a week he 
 weighed himself again. He had lost two pounds. 
 At the end of another week he had lost five. He 
 made a little calculation, based on these data, 
 from which he learned that in a certain number 
 of months, going on at this rate, he should come
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 43 
 
 to weigh precisely nothing at all ; and as this 
 was a sum in subtraction he did not care to 
 work out in practice, Master Pigeon took to him 
 self wings and left the school-committee in pos 
 session of a letter of resignation and a vacant 
 place to fill once more. 
 
 This was the school to which Mr. Bernard 
 Langdon found himself appointed as master. 
 He accepted the place conditionally, with the 
 understanding that he should leave it at the end 
 of a month, if he were tired of it. 
 
 The advent of Master Langdon to Pigwacket 
 Centre created a much more lively sensation than 
 had attended that of either of his predecessors. 
 Looks go a good way all the world over, and 
 though there were several good-looking people 
 in the place, and Major Bush was what the na 
 tives of the town called a " hahnsome mahn," 
 that is, big, fat, and red, yet the sight of a really 
 elegant young fellow, with the natural air which 
 grows up with carefully-bred young persons, was 
 a novelty. The Brahmin blood which came from 
 his grandfather as well as from his mother, a di 
 rect descendant of the old Flynt family, well 
 known by the famous tutor, Henry Flynt, (see 
 Cat. Harv. Anno 1693,) had been enlivened and 
 enriched by that of the Wentworths, which had 
 had a good deal of ripe old Madeira and other 
 generous elements mingled with it, so that it ran 
 to gout sometimes in the old folks, and to high 
 spirit, warm complexion, and curly hair in some
 
 44 ELSIE VENNEK. 
 
 of the younger ones. The soft curling hair Mr. 
 Bernard had inherited, something, perhaps, of 
 the high spirit ; but that we shall have a chance 
 of finding out by-and-by. But the long sermons 
 and the frugal board of his Brahmin ancestry, 
 with his own habits of study, had told upon his 
 color, which was subdued to something more of 
 delicacy than one would care to see in a young 
 fellow with rough work before him. This, how 
 ever, made him look more interesting, or, as the 
 young ladies at Major Bush's said, " intere"stin'." 
 
 When Mr. Bernard showed himself at meet 
 ing, on the first Sunday after his arrival, it may 
 be supposed that a good many eyes were turned 
 upon the young schoolmaster. There was some 
 thing heroic in his coming forward so readily to 
 take a place which called for a strong hand, and 
 a prompt, steady will to guide it. In fact, his 
 position was that of a military chieftain on the 
 eve of a battle. Everybody knew everything in 
 Pigwacket Centre ; and it was an understood 
 thing that the young rebels meant to put down 
 the new master, if they could. It was natural 
 that the two prettiest girls in the village, called 
 in the local dialect, as nearly as our limited al 
 phabet will represent it, Alminy Cutterr, and Ar- 
 villy Braowne, should feel and express an interest 
 in the good-looking stranger, and that, when their 
 flattering comments were repeated in the hear 
 ing of their indigenous admirers, among whom 
 were some of the older "boys" of the school, it
 
 ELSIE VENKER. 45 
 
 should not add to the amiable dispositions of the 
 turbulent youth. 
 
 Monday came, and the new schoolmaster was 
 in his chair at the upper end of the schoolhouse, 
 on the raised platform. The rustics looked at 
 his handsome face, thoughtful, peaceful, pleas 
 ant, cheerful, but sharply cut round the lips and 
 proudly lighted about the eyes. The ringleader 
 of the mischief-makers, the young butcher who 
 has before figured in this narrative, looked at him 
 stealthily, whenever he got a chance to study 
 him unobserved ; for the truth was, he felt uncom 
 fortable, whenever he found the large, dark eyes 
 fixed on his own little, sharp, deep-set, gray ones. 
 But he managed to study him pretty well, first 
 his face, then his neck and shoulders, the set of 
 his arms, the narrowing at the loins, the make of 
 his legs, and the way he moved. In short, he ex 
 amined him as he would have examined a steer, 
 to see what he could do and how he would cut 
 up. If he could only have gone to him and felt 
 of his muscles, he would have been entirely satis 
 fied. He was not a very wise youth, but he did 
 know well enough, that, though big arms and 
 legs are very good things, there is something be 
 sides size that goes to make a man ; and he had 
 heard stories of a fighting-man, called " The 
 Spider," from his attenuated proportions, who 
 was yet a terrible hitter in the ring, and had 
 whipped many a big-limbed fellow, in and out of 
 the roped arena.
 
 46 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 Nothing could be smoother than the way in 
 which everything went on for the first day or 
 two. The new master was so kind and cour 
 teous, he seemed to take everything in such a 
 natural, easy way, that there was no chance to 
 pick a quarrel with him. He in the mean time 
 thought it best to watch the boys and young men 
 for a day or two with as little show of authority 
 as possible. It was easy enough to see that he 
 would have occasion for it before long. 
 
 The schoolhouse was a grim, old, red, one- 
 story building, perched on a bare rock at the top 
 of a Mil, partly because this was a conspic 
 uous site for the temple of learning, and partly 
 because land is cheap where there is no chance 
 even for rye or buckwheat, and the very sheep 
 find nothing to nibble. About the little porch 
 were carved initials and dates, at various heights, 
 from the stature of nine to that of eighteen. In 
 side were old unpainted desks, unpainted, but 
 browned with the umber of human contact, 
 and hacked by innumerable jack-knives. It was 
 long since the walls had been whitewashed, as 
 might be conjectured by the various traces left 
 upon them, wherever idle hands or sleepy heads 
 could reach them. A curious appearance was 
 noticeable on various higher parts of the wall, 
 namely, a wart-like eruption, as one would be 
 tempted to call it, being in reality a crop of the 
 soft missiles before mentioned, wtrich, adhering in 
 considerable numbers, and hardening after the
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 47 
 
 usual fashion of papier mach, formed at last per 
 manent ornaments of the edifice. 
 
 The young master's quick eye soon noticed 
 that a particular part of the wall was most fa 
 vored with these ornamental appendages. Their 
 position pointed sufficiently clearly to the part of 
 the room they came from. In fact, there was a 
 nest of young mutineers just there, which must 
 be broken up by a coup d'etat. This was easily 
 effected by redistributing the seats and arranging 
 the scholars according to classes, so that a mis 
 chievous fellow, charged full of the rebellious 
 imponderable, should find himself between two 
 non-conductors, in the shape of small boys of 
 studious habits. It was managed quietly enough, 
 in such a plausible sort of way that its motive 
 was not thought of. But its effects were soon 
 felt ; and then began a system of correspondence 
 by signs, and the throwing of little scrawls done 
 up in pellets, and announced by preliminary 
 a'h'ms ! to call the attention of the distant youth 
 addressed. Some of these were incendiary doc 
 uments, devoting the schoolmaster to the lower 
 
 divinities, as " a stuck-up dandy," as " a 
 
 purse-proud aristocrat," as " a sight too big 
 
 for his, etc.," and holding him up in a variety of 
 equally forcible phrases to the indignation of the 
 youthful community of School District No. 1, 
 Pigwacket Centre. 
 
 Presently the draughtsman of the school set 
 a caricature in circulation, labelled, to prevent
 
 48 ELSIE VENNER 
 
 mistakes, with the schoolmaster's name. An 
 immense bell-crowned hat, and a long, pointed, 
 swallow-tailed coat showed that the artist had 
 in his mind the conventional dandy, as shown in 
 prints of thirty or forty years ago, rather than 
 any actual human aspect of the time. But it 
 was passed round among the boys and made its 
 laugh, helping of course to undermine the mas-' 
 ter's authority, as " Punch " or the " Charivari " 
 takes the dignity out of an obnoxious minister. 
 One morning, on going to the schoolroom, Mas 
 ter Langdon found an enlarged copy of this 
 sketch, with its label, pinned on the door. He 
 took it down, smiled a little, put it into his 
 pocket, and entered the schoolroom. An insid 
 ious silence prevailed, which looked as if some 
 plot were brewing. The boys were ripe for mis 
 chief, but afraid. They had really no fault to 
 find with the master, except that he was dressed 
 like a gentleman, which a certain class of fellows 
 always consider a personal insult to themselves. 
 But the older ones were evidently plotting, and 
 more than once the warning a! Km, I was heard, 
 and a dirty little scrap of paper rolled into a wad 
 shot from one seat to another. One of these 
 happened to strike the stove-funnel, and lodged 
 on the master's desk. He was cool enough not 
 to seem to notice it. He secured it, however, 
 and found an opportunity to look at it, without 
 being observed by the boys. It required no im 
 mediate notice.
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 49 
 
 He who should have enjoyed the privilege of 
 looking upon Mr. Bernard Langdon the next 
 morning, when his toilet was about half finished, 
 would have had a very pleasant gratuitous exhi 
 bition. First he buckled the strap of his trousers 
 pretty tightly. Then he took up a pair of heavy 
 dumb-bells, and swung them for a few minutes ; 
 then two- great " Indian clubs," with which he en 
 acted all sorts of impossible-looking feats. His 
 limbs were not very large, nor his shoulders re 
 markably broad ; but if you knew as much of 
 the muscles as all persons who look at statues 
 and pictures with a critical eye ought to have 
 learned, if you knew the trapezius, lying dia 
 mond-shaped over the back and shoulders like 
 a monk's cowl, or the deltoid, which caps the 
 shoulder like an epaulette, or the triceps, which 
 furnishes the calf oi the upper arm, or the hard- 
 knotted biceps, any of the great sculptural land 
 marks, in fact, you would have said there was 
 a pretty show of them, beneath the white satiny 
 skin of Mr. Bernard Langdon. And if you had 
 seen him, when he had laid down the Indian 
 clubs, catch hold of a leather strap that hung 
 from the beam of the old-fashioned ceiling, and 
 lift and lower himself over and over again by his 
 left hand alone, you might have thought it a very 
 simple and easy thing to do, until you tried to do 
 it yourself. Mr. Bernard looked at himself with 
 the eye of an expert. " Pretty well ! " he said ; 
 " not so much fallen off as I expected." Then
 
 50 ELSIE TENNER. 
 
 he set up his bolster in a very knowing sort of 
 way, and delivered two or three blows straight 
 as rulers and swift as winks. " That will do," 
 he said. Then, as if determined to make a cer 
 tainty of his condition, he took a dynamometer 
 from one of the drawers in his old veneered 
 bureau. First he squeezed it with his two hands. 
 Then he placed it on the floor and lifted, steadily, 
 strongly. The springs creaked and cracked ; the 
 index swept with a great stride far up into the 
 high figures of the scale ; it was a good lift. 
 He was satisfied. He sat down on the edge of 
 his bed and looked at his cleanly-shaped arms. 
 " If I strike one of those boobies, I am afraid I 
 shall spoil him," he said. Yet this young man, 
 when weighed with his cla'ss at the college, 
 could barely turn one hundred and forty-two 
 pounds in the scale, not a heavy weight, 
 surely; but some of the middle weights, as the 
 present English champion, for instance, seem to 
 be of a far finer quality of muscle than the bulk 
 ier fellows. 
 
 The master took his breakfast with a good 
 appetite that morning, but was perhaps rather 
 more quiet than usual. After breakfast he went 
 up-stairs and put on a light loose frock, instead 
 of his usual dress-coat, which was a close-fitting 
 and rather stylish one. On his way to school 
 he met Alminy Cutterr, who happened to be 
 walking in the other direction. " Good morn 
 ing, Miss Cutter," he said ; for she and another
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 51 
 
 young lady had been introduced to him, on a 
 former occasion, in the usual phrase of polite so 
 ciety in presenting ladies to gentlemen, "Mr. 
 Langdon, let me make y' acquainted with Miss 
 Cutterr; let me make y' acquainted with Miss 
 Braowne." So he said, " Good morning " ; to 
 which she replied, ".Good morn in', Mr. Lang 
 don. Haow's your haalth ? " The answer to 
 this question ought naturally to have been the 
 end of the talk ; but Alminy Cutterr lingered 
 and looked as if she had something more on 
 her mind. 
 
 A young fellow does not require a great ex 
 perience to read a simple country-girl's face as 
 if it were a signboard. Alminy was a good soul, 
 with red cheeks and bright eyes, kind-hearted as 
 she could be, and it was out of the question for 
 her to hide her thoughts or feelings like a fine 
 lady. Her bright eyes were moist and her red 
 cheeks paler than their wont, as she said, with 
 her lips quivering, " Oh, Mr. Langdon, them 
 boys '11 be the death of ye, if ye don't take 
 caar ! " 
 
 " Why, what's the matter, my dear ? " said Mr. 
 Bernard. Don't think there was anything very 
 odd in that " my dear," at the second interview 
 with a village belle ; some of these woman- 
 tamers call a girl " My dear," after five minutes' 
 acquaintance, and it sounds all right as they say 
 it. But you had better not try it at a venture. 
 
 It sounded all right to Alminy, as Mr. Bernard
 
 52 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 said it. "I '11 tell ye what's the mahtterr," she 
 said, in a frightened voice. " Ahbner's go'n' to 
 car' his dog, V he '11 set him on ye 'z sure 'z y' V 
 alive. 'T 's the same cretur that haaf eat up 
 Eben Squires's little Jo, a year come nex' Faiist- 
 day." 
 
 Now this last statement was undoubtedly over- 
 colored ; as little Jo Squires was running about 
 the village, with an ugly scar on his arm, it is 
 true, where the beast had caught him with his 
 teeth, on the occasion of the child's taking liber 
 ties with him, as he had been accustomed to do 
 with a good-tempered Newfoundland dog, who 
 seemed to like being pulled and hauled round by 
 children. After this the creature was commonly 
 muzzled, and, as he was fed on raw meat chiefly, 
 was always ready for a fight, which he was 
 occasionally indulged in, when anything stout 
 enough to match him could be found in any of 
 the neighboring villages. 
 
 Tiger, or, more briefly, Tige, the property of 
 Abner Briggs, Junior, belonged to a species not 
 distinctly named in scientific books, but well 
 known to our country-folks under the name 
 " Yallah dog." They do not use this expres 
 sion as they would say black dog or white dog, 
 but with almost as definite a meaning as when 
 they speak of a terrier or a spaniel. A " yallah 
 dog," is a large canine brute, of a dingy old- 
 flannel color, of no particular breed except his 
 own, who hangs round a tavern or a butcher's
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 53 
 
 shop, or trots alongside of a team, looking as if 
 he were disgusted with the world, and the world 
 with him. Our inland population, while they 
 tolerate him, speak of him with contempt. Old 
 
 , of Meredith Bridge, used to twit the sun 
 
 for not shining on cloudy days, swearing, that, 
 if he hung up his " yallah dog," he would make 
 a better show of daylight. A country fellow, 
 abusing a horse of his neighbor's, vowed, that, 
 " if he had such a boss, he'd swap him for a 
 ' yallah dog,' and then shoot the dog." 
 
 Tige was an ill-conditioned brute by nature, 
 and art had not improved him by cropping his 
 ears and tail and investing him with a spiked 
 collar. He bore on his person, also, various not 
 ornamental scars, marks of old battles ; for Tige 
 had fight in him, as was said before, and as might 
 be guessed by a certain bluntness about the muz 
 zle, with a projection of the lower jaw, which 
 looked as if there might be a bull-dog stripe 
 among the numerous bar-sinisters of his lineage. 
 
 It was hardly fair, however, to leave Alminy 
 Cutterr waiting while this piece of natural his 
 tory was telling. As she spoke of little Jo, who 
 had been " haaf eat up " by Tige, she could not 
 contain her sympathies, and began to cry. 
 
 " Why, my dear little soul," said Mr. Bernard, 
 " what are you worried about ? J used to play 
 with a bear when I was a boy ; and the bear 
 
 used to hug me, and I used to kiss him, 
 
 so!"
 
 54 ELSIE VENXER. 
 
 It was too bad of Mr. Bernard, only the second 
 time he had seen Alminy; but her kind feelings 
 had touched him, and that seemed the most nat 
 ural way of expressing his gratitude. Alminy 
 looked round to see if anybody was near ; she 
 saw nobody, so of ..course it would do no good 
 to " holler." She saw nobody ; but a stout young 
 fellow, leading a yellow dog, muzzled, saw her 
 through a crack in a picket fence, not a great 
 way off the road. Many a year he had been 
 " hangin' 'raoun' " Alminy, and never did he see 
 any encouraging look, or hear any " Behave, 
 naow ! " or " Come, naow, a'n't ye 'shamed ? " 
 or other forbidding phrase of acquiescence, such 
 as village belles understand as well as ever did 
 the nymph who fled to the willows in the eclogue 
 we all remember. 
 
 No wonder he was furious, when he saw the 
 schoolmaster, who had never seen the girl until 
 within a week, touching with his lips those rosy 
 cheeks which he had never dared to approach. 
 But that was all ; it was a sudden impulse ; and 
 the master turned away from the young girl, 
 laughing, and telling her not to fret herself about 
 him, he would take care of himself. 
 
 So Master Langdon walked on toward his 
 schoolhouse, not displeased, perhaps, with his lit 
 tle adventure, nor immensely elated by it ; for he 
 was one of the natural class of the sex-subduers, 
 and had had many a smile without asking, which 
 had been denied to the feeble youth who try to
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 55 
 
 win favor by pleading their passion in rhyme, and 
 even to the more formidable approaches of young 
 officers in volunteer companies, considered by 
 many to be quite irresistible to the fair who 
 have once beheld them from their windows in the 
 epaulettes and plumes and sashes of the " Pig- 
 wacket Invincibles," or the " Hackmatack Ran 
 gers." 
 
 Master Langdon took his seat and began the 
 exercises of his school. The smaller boys recited 
 their lessons well enough, but some of the larger 
 ones were negligent and surly. He noticed one 
 or two of them looking toward the door, as if ex 
 pecting somebody or something in that direction. 
 At half past nine o'clock, Abner Briggs, Junior, 
 who had not yet shown himself, made his appear 
 ance. He was followed by his " yallah dog," 
 without his muzzle, who squatted down very 
 grimly near the door, and gave a wolfish look 
 round the room, as if he were considering which 
 was the plumpest boy to begin with. The young 
 butcher, meanwhile, went to his seat, looking 
 somewhat flushed, except round the lips, which 
 were hardly as red as common, and set pretty 
 sharply. 
 
 "Put out that dog, Abner Briggs !" The 
 master spoke as the captain speaks to the helms 
 man, when there are rocks foaming at the lips, 
 right under his lee. 
 
 Abner Briggs answered as the helmsman an 
 swers, when he knows he has a mutinous crew
 
 56 ELSIK VEXXER. 
 
 round him that mean to run the ship on the reef, 
 and is one of the mutineers himself. " Put him 
 aout y'rself, 'f ye a'n't afeard on him ! " 
 
 The master stepped into the aisle. The great 
 cur showed his teeth, and the devilish instincts 
 of his old wolf-ancestry looked out of his eyes, 
 and flashed from his sharp tusks, and yawned in 
 his wide mouth and deep red gullet. 
 
 The movements of animals are so much quicker 
 than those of human beings commonly are, that 
 they avoid blows as easily as one of us steps out 
 of the way of an ox-cart. It must be a very stu 
 pid dog that lets himself be run over by a fast 
 driver in his gig ; he can jump out of the wheel's 
 way after the tire has already touched him. So, 
 while one is lifting a stick to strike or drawing 
 back his foot to kick, the beast makes his spring, 
 and the blow or the kick comes too late. 
 
 It was not so this time. The master was a 
 fencer, and something of a boxer ; he had played 
 at single-stick, and was used to watching an ad 
 versary's eye and coming down on him without 
 any of those premonitory symptoms by which 
 unpractised persons show long beforehand what 
 mischief they meditate. 
 
 "Out with you!" he said, fiercely, and ex 
 plained what Ire meant by a sudden fla.-h of his 
 foot that clashed the yellow dog's white teeth to 
 gether like the springing of a bear-trap. The cur 
 knew he had found his master at the first word 
 and glance, as low animals on four legs, or a
 
 ELSIE VEXXER. 57 
 
 smaller number, always do ; and the blow took 
 him so by surprise, that it curled him up in an 
 instant, and he went bundling out of the open 
 schoolhouse-door with a most pitiable yelp, and 
 his stump of a tail shut down as close as his 
 owner ever shut the short, stubbed blade of his 
 jack-knife. 
 
 It was time for the other cur to find who his 
 master was. 
 
 " Follow your dog, Abner Briggs ! " said Mas 
 ter Langdon. 
 
 The stout butcher-youth looked round, but the 
 rebels were all cowed and sat still. 
 
 "I'll go when I'm ready," he said, "'n' I 
 guess I won't go afore I'm ready." 
 
 " You're ready now," said Master Langdon, 
 turning up his cuffs so that the little boys noticed 
 the yellow gleam of a pair of gold sleeve-buttons, 
 once worn by Colonel Percy Weritworth, famous 
 in the Old French War. 
 
 Abner Briggs, Junior, did not apparently think 
 he was ready, at any rate ; for he rose up in his 
 place, and stood with clenched fists, defiant, as 
 the master strode towards him. The master 
 knew the fellow was really frightened, for all his 
 looks, and that he must have no time to rally. 
 So he caught him suddenly by the collar, and, 
 with one great pull, had him out over his desk 
 and on the open floor. He gave him a sharp 
 fling backwards and stood looking at him. 
 
 The rough-and-tumble fighters all clinch, as
 
 58 KLSIE VKXXER. 
 
 everybody knows ; and Abner Briggs, Junior, was 
 one of that kind. He remembered how he had 
 floored Master Weeks, and he had just " spunk " 
 enough left in him to try to repeat his former 
 successful experiment on the new master. He 
 sprang at him, open-handed, to clutch him. So 
 the master had to strike, once, but very hard, 
 and just in the place to tell. No doubt, the au 
 thority that doth hedge a schoolmaster added to 
 the effect of the blow ; but the blow was itself a 
 neat one, and did not require to be repeated. 
 
 " Now go home," said the master, " and don't 
 let me see you or your dog here again." And he 
 turned his cuffs down over the gold sleeve-but 
 tons. 
 
 This finished the great. Pigwacket Centre School 
 rebellion. What could be done with a master 
 who was so pleasant as long as the boys behaved 
 decently, and such a terrible fellow when he got 
 " riled," as they called it ? In a week's time, 
 everything was reduced to order, and the school- 
 committee were delighted. The master, however, 
 had received a proposition so much more agreea 
 ble and advantageous, that he informed the com 
 mittee he should leave at the end of his month, 
 having in his eye a sensible and energetic young 
 college-graduate who would be willing and fully 
 competent to take his place. 
 
 So, at the expiration of the appointed time, 
 Bernard Langdon, late master of the School Dis 
 trict No. 1, Pigwacket Centre, took his departure
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 59 
 
 from that place for another locality, whither we 
 shall follow him, carrying with him the regrets 
 of the committee, of most of the scholars, and 
 of several young ladies ; also two locks of hair, 
 sent unbeknown to payrents, one dark and one 
 warmish auburn, inscribed with the respective in 
 itials of Alminy Cutterr and Arvilly Braowne.
 
 60 ELSIE VEXNER. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE MOTH FLIES IXTO THE CAXDLE. 
 
 THE invitation which Mr. Bernard Langdon 
 had accepted came from the Board of Trustees 
 of the " Apollinean Female Institute," a school 
 for the education of young ladies, situated in the 
 nourishing town of Rockland. This was an es 
 tablishment on a considerable scale, in which a 
 hundred scholars or thereabouts were taught the 
 ordinary English branches, several of the modern 
 languages, something of Latin, if desired, with a 
 little natural philosophy, metaphysics, and rheto 
 ric, to finish off with in the last year, and music 
 at any time when they would pay for it. At the 
 close of their career in the Institute, they were 
 submitted to a grand public examination, and re 
 ceived diplomas tied in blue ribbons, which pro 
 claimed them with a great nourish of capitals to 
 be graduates of the Apollinean Female Institute. 
 
 Rockland was a town of no inconsiderable pre 
 tensions. It was ennobled by lying at the foot 
 of a mountain, called by the working-folks of 
 the place " the Maounting," which sufficiently 
 showed that it was the principal high land of the
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 61 
 
 district in which it was situated. It lay to the 
 south of this, and basked in the sunshine as Italy 
 stretches herself before the Alps. To pass from 
 the town of Tamarack on the north of the moun 
 tain to Rockland on the south was like crossing 
 from Coire to Chiavenna. 
 
 There is nothing gives glory and grandeur and 
 romance and mystery to a place like the impend 
 ing presence of a high mountain. Our beautiful 
 Northampton with its fair meadows and noble 
 stream is lovely enough, but owes its surpassing 
 attraction to those twin ^mmits which brood 
 over it like living presences, looking down into its 
 streets as if they were its tutelary divinities, dress 
 ing and undressing their green shrines, robing 
 themselves in jubilant sunshine or in sorrowing 
 clouds, and doing penance in the snowy shroud 
 of winter, as if they had living hearts under their 
 rocky ribs and changed their mood like the chil 
 dren of the soil at their feet, who grow -up under 
 their almost parental smiles and frowns. Happy 
 is the child whose first dreams of heaven are 
 blended with the evening glories of Mount Hoi- 
 yoke, when the sun is firing its treetops, and gild 
 ing the white walls that mark its one human 
 dwelling ! If the other and the wilder of the 
 two summits has a scowl of terror in its over 
 hanging brows, yet is it a pleasing fear to look 
 upon its savage solitudes through the barred 
 nursery-windows in the heart of the sweet, com 
 panionable village. 'And how the mountains
 
 62 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 love their children ! The sea is of a facile virtue, 
 and will run to kiss the first comer in any port he 
 visits ; but the chaste mountains sit apart, and 
 show their faces only in the midst of their own 
 families. 
 
 The Mountain which kept watch to the north of 
 Rockland lay waste and almost inviolate through 
 much of its domain. The catamount still glared 
 from the branches of its old hemlocks on the 
 lesser beasts that strayed beneath him. It was 
 not long since a wolf had wandered down, fam 
 ished in the winter's dearth, and left a few bones 
 and some tufts of wool of what had been a lamb 
 in the morning. Nay, there were broad-footed 
 tracks in the snow only two years previously, 
 which could not be mistaken ; the black bear 
 alone could have set that plantigrade seal, and 
 little children must come home early from school 
 and play, for he is an indiscriminate feeder when 
 he is hungry, and a little child would not come 
 amiss when other game was wanting. 
 
 But these occasional visitors may have been 
 mere wanderers, which, straying along in the 
 woods by day, and perhaps stalking through the 
 streets of still villages by night, had worked their 
 way along down from the ragged mountain-spurs 
 of higher latitudes. The one feature of The 
 Mountain that shed the brownest horror on its 
 woods was the existence of the terrible region 
 known as Rattlesnake Ledge, and still tenanted 
 by those damnable reptiles, which distil a fiercer
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 63 
 
 venom under our cold northern sky than the 
 cobra himself in the land of tropical spices and 
 poisons. 
 
 From the earliest settlement of the place, this, 
 fact had been, next to the Indians, the reign 
 ing nightmare of the inhabitants. It was easy 
 enough, after a time, to drive away the savages ; 
 for " a screeching Indian Divell," as our fathers 
 called him, could not crawl into the crack of a 
 rock to escape from his pursuers. But the ven 
 omous population of Rattlesnake Ledge had a 
 Gibraltar for their fortress that might have defied 
 the siege-train dragged to the walls of Sebasto- 
 pol. In its deep embrasures and its impregnable 
 casemates they reared their families, they met in 
 love or wrath, they twined together in family 
 knots, they hissed defiance in hostile clans, they 
 fed, slept, hybernated, and in due time died in 
 peace. Many a foray had the town's-people made, 
 and many a stuffed skin was shown as a trophy, 
 nay, there were families where the children's 
 first toy was made from the warning appendage 
 that once vibrated to the wrath of one of these 
 " cruel serpents." Sometimes one of them, coax 
 ed out by a warm sun, would writhe himself 
 down the hillside into the roads, up the walks 
 that led to houses, worse, than this, into the 
 long grass, where the bare-footed mowers would 
 soon pass with their swinging scythes, more 
 rarely into houses, and on one memorable oc 
 casion, early in the last century, into the meeting-
 
 64 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 house, where he took a position on the pulpit- 
 stairs, as is narrated in the " Account of Some 
 Remarkable Providences," etc., where it is sug 
 gested that a strong tendency of the Rev. Didy- 
 nrms Bean, the Minister at that time, towards the 
 Arminian Heresy may have had something to do 
 with it, and that the Serpent supposed to have 
 been killed on the Pulpit-Stairs was a false show 
 of the Daemon's Contrivance, he having come 
 in to listen to a Discourse which was a sweet 
 Savour in his Nostrils, and, of course, not being 
 capable of being killed Himself. Others said, 
 however, that, though there was good Reason 
 to think it was a Daemon, yet he did come with 
 Intent to bite the Heel of that faithful Servant, 
 etc. 
 
 One Gilson is said to have died of the bite of 
 a rattlesnake in this town early in the gresent 
 century. After this there was a great snake-hunt, 
 in which very many of these venomous beasts 
 were killed, one in particular, said to have been 
 as big round as a stout man's arm, and to have 
 had no less than forty joints to his rattle, in 
 dicating, according to some, that he had lived 
 forty years, but, if we might put any faith in 
 the Indian tradition, that he had killed forty 
 human beings, an idle fancy, clearly. This 
 hunt, however, had no permanent effect in keep 
 ing down the serpent population. Viviparous 
 creatures are a kind of specie-paying lot, but 
 oviparous ones only give their notes, as it were,
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 65 
 
 for a future brood, an egg being, so to speak, 
 a promise to pay a young one by-and-by, if 
 nothing happen. Now the domestic habits 
 of the rattlesnake are not studied very closely, 
 for obvious reasons ; but it is, no doubt, to 
 all intents and purposes oviparous. Conse 
 quently it has large- families, and is not easy 
 to kill out. 
 
 In the year 184 , a melancholy proof was 
 afforded to the inhabitants of Rockland, that the 
 brood which infested The Mountain was not 
 extirpated. A very interesting young married 
 woman, detained at home at the time by the 
 state of her health, was bitten in the entry of 
 her own house by a rattlesnake which had found 
 its way down from The Mountain. Owing to 
 the almost instant employment of powerful rem- 
 edies, the bite did not prove immediately fatal ; 
 but she died within a few months of the time 
 when she was bitten. 
 
 All this seemed to throw a lurid kind of 
 shadow over The Mountain. Yet, as many 
 years passed without any accident, people grew 
 comparatively careless, and it might rather be 
 said to add a fearful kind of interest to the ro 
 mantic hillside, that the banded reptiles, which 
 had been the terror of the red men for nobody 
 knows how many thousand years, were there still, 
 with the same poison-bags and spring-teefh at 
 the white men's service, if they meddled with 
 them.
 
 66 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 The other natural features of Rockland were 
 such as many of our pleasant country-towns can 
 boast of. A brook came tumbling down the 
 mountain-side and skirted the most thickly set 
 tled portion of the village. In the parts of its 
 course where it ran through the woods, the water 
 looked almost as brown as coffee flowing from 
 its urn, to say like smoky quartz would per 
 haps give a better idea, but in the open plain 
 it sparkled over the pebbles white as a queen's 
 diamonds. There were huckleberry-pastures on 
 the lower flanks of The Mountain, with plenty 
 of the sweet-scented bay berry mingled with the 
 other bushes. In other fields grew great store of 
 high-bush blackberries. Along the road-side were 
 barberry-bashes, hung all over with bright red 
 coral pendants in autumn and far into the winter. 
 Then there were swamps set thick with dingy 
 alders, where the three-leaved arum and the 
 skunk's-cabbage grew broad and succulent, 
 shelving down into black boggy pools here and 
 there, at the edge of which the green frog, stupid 
 est of his tribe, sat waiting to be victimized by 
 boy or snapping-turtle long after the shy and 
 agile leopard-frog had taken the six-foot spring 
 that plumped him into the middle of the pool. 
 And on the neighboring banks the maiden-hair 
 spread its flat disk of embroidered fronds on the 
 wiffe-like stem that glistened polished and brown 
 as the darkest tortoise-shell, and pale violets, 
 cheated by the cold skies of their hues and per-
 
 ELSIE TENNER. 67 
 
 fame, sunned themselves like white-cheeked in 
 valids. Over these rose the old forest-trees, 
 the maple, scarred with the wounds which had 
 drained away its sweet life-blood, the beech, its 
 smooth gray bark mottled so as to look like the 
 body of one of those great snakes of old that 
 used to frighten armies, always the mark of 
 lovers' knives, as in the days of Musidora and her 
 swain, the yellow birch, rough as the breast of 
 Silenus in old marbles, the wild cherry, its little 
 bitter fruit lying unheeded at its foot, and, soar 
 ing over all, the huge, coarse-barked, splintery- 
 limbed, dark -mantled hemlock, in the depth of 
 whose aerial solitudes the crow brooded on her 
 nest unscared, and the gray squirrel lived un 
 harmed till his incisors grew to look like ram's- 
 horns. 
 
 Rockland would have been but half a town 
 without its pond ; Quinnepeg Pond was the 
 name of it, but the young ladies of the Apol- 
 linean Institute were very anxious that it should 
 be called Crystalline Lake. It was here that the 
 young folks used to sail in summer and skate in 
 winter; here, too, those queer, old, rum-scented, 
 good-for-nothing, lazy, story -telling, half-vaga 
 bonds, who sawed a little wood or dug a few 
 potatoes now and then under the pretence of 
 working for their living, used to go and fish 
 through the ice for pickerel every winter. And 
 here those three young people were drowned, a 
 few summers ago, by the upsetting of a sail-boat
 
 68 ELSIE VEXXER. 
 
 in a sudden flaw of wind. There is not one of 
 these smiling ponds which has net devoured more 
 youths and maidens than any of those monsters 
 the ancients used to tell such lies about. But 
 it was a pretty pond, and never looked more in 
 nocent so the native " bard " of Rockland said 
 in his elegy than on the morning when they 
 found Sarah Jane and Ellen Maria floating 
 among the lily-pads. 
 
 The Apollinean Institute, or Institoot, as it 
 was more commonly called, was, in the language 
 of its Prospectus, a " first-class Educational Es 
 tablishment." It employed a considerable corps 
 of instructors to rough out and finish the hundred 
 young lady scholars it sheltered beneath its roof. 
 First, Mr. and Mrs. Peckham, the Principal and 
 the Matron of the school. Silas Peckham was 
 a thorough Yankee, born on a windy part of the 
 coast, and reared chiefly on salt-fish. Everybody 
 knows the type of Yankee produced by this cli 
 mate and diet : thin, as if he had been split and 
 dried ; with an ashen kind of complexion, like 
 the tint of the food he is made of; and about as 
 sharp, tough, juiceless, and biting to deal with as 
 the other is to the taste. Silas Peckham kept a 
 young ladies' school exactly as he would have 
 kept a hundred head of cattle, for the sim 
 ple, unadorned purpose of making just as much 
 money in just as few years as could be safely 
 done. Mr. Peckham gave very little personal at 
 tention to the department of instruction, but was
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 69 
 
 always busy with contracts for flour and pota 
 toes, beef and pork, and other nutritive staples, 
 the amount of which required for such an estab 
 lishment was enough to frighten a quartermaster. 
 Mrs. Peck ham was from the West, raised on In 
 dian corn and pork, which give a fuller outline 
 and a more humid temperament, but may per 
 haps be thought to render people a little coarse- 
 fibred. Her specialty was to look after the 
 feathering, cackling, roosting, rising, and general 
 behavior of these hundred chicks. An honest, 
 ignorant woman, she could not have passed an 
 examination in the youngest class. So this dis 
 tinguished institution was under the charge of a 
 commissary and a housekeeper, and its real busi 
 ness was making money by taking young girls in 
 as boarders. 
 
 Connected with this, however, was the inci 
 dental fact, which the public took for the prin 
 cipal one, namely, the business of instruction. 
 Mr. Peckham knew well enough that it was just 
 as well to have good instructors as bad ones, so 
 far as cost was concerned, and a great deal better 
 for the reputation of his feeding-establishment. 
 He tried to get the best he could without pay 
 ing too much, and, having got them, to screw all 
 the work out of them that could possibly be ex 
 tracted. 
 
 There was a master for the English branches, 
 with a young lady assistant. There was another 
 young lady who taught French, of the ahvahng
 
 70 ELSIE YEXXER. 
 
 and pahndahng style, which does not exactly 
 smack of the asphalt of the Boulevards. There 
 was also a German teacher of music, who some 
 times helped in French of the ahfaung and bami- 
 taung style, so that, between the two, the young 
 ladies could hardly have been mistaken for Paris 
 ians, by a Committee of the French Academy. 
 The German teacher also taught a Latin class 
 after his fashion, benna, a ben, gahboot, a head, 
 and so forth. 
 
 The master for the English branches had lately 
 left the school for private reasons, which need not 
 be here mentioned, but he had gone, at any 
 rate, and it was his place which had been offered 
 to Mr. Bernard Langdon. The offer came just 
 in season, as, for various causes, he was willing 
 to leave the place where he had begun his new 
 experience. 
 
 It was on a fine morning, that Mr. Bernard, 
 ushered in by Mr. Peckham, made his appearance 
 in the great schoolroom of the Apollinean Insti 
 tute. A general rustle ran all round the seats 
 when the handsome young man was introduced. 
 The principal carried him to the desk of the 
 young lady English assistant, Miss Parley by 
 name, and introduced him to her. 
 
 There was not a great deal of study done that 
 day. The young lady assistant had to point out 
 to the new master the whole routine in which the 
 classes were engaged when their late teacher left, 
 and which had gone on as well as it could since.
 
 ELSIE VENXER. 71 
 
 Then Master Langdon had a great many ques 
 tions to ask, some relating to his new duties, and 
 some, perhaps, implying a degree of curiosity not 
 very unnatural under the circumstances. The 
 truth is, the general effect of the schoolroom, 
 with its scores of young girls, all their eyes 
 naturally centring on -him with fixed or furtive 
 glances, was enough to bewilder and confuse a 
 young man like Master Langdon, though he 
 was not destitute of self-possession, as we have 
 already seen. 
 
 You cannot get together a hundred girls, tak 
 ing them as they come, from the comfortable and 
 affluent classes, probably anywhere, certainly not 
 in New England," without seeing a good deal of 
 beauty. In fact, we very commonly mean by 
 beauty the way young girls look when there is 
 nothing to hinder their looking as Nature meant 
 them to. And the great schoolroom of the Apol- 
 linean Institute did really make so pretty a show 
 on the morning when Master Langdon entered 
 it, that he might be pardoned for asking Miss 
 Darley more questions about his scholars than 
 about their lessons. 
 
 There were girls of all ages : little creatures, 
 some pallid and delicate-looking, the offspring 
 of invalid parents, much given to books, not 
 much to mischief, commonly spoken of as partic 
 ularly good children, and contrasted with another 
 sort, girls of more vigorous organization, who 
 were disposed to laughing and play, and re-
 
 72 ELSIE YEXXER. 
 
 quired a strong hand to manage them ; then 
 young growing misses of every shade of Saxon 
 complexion, and here and there one of more 
 Southern hue : blondes, some of them so trans 
 lucent-looking, that it seemed as if you could see 
 the souls in their bodies, like bubbles in glass, if 
 souls were objects of sight; brunettes, some with 
 rose-red colors, and some with that swarthy hue 
 which often carries with it a heavily-shaded lip, 
 and which with pure outlines and outspoken re 
 liefs, gives us some of our handsomest women, 
 the women whom ornaments of plain gold 
 adorn more than any other parures ; and again, 
 but only here and there, one with dark hair and 
 gray or blue eyes, a Celtic type, perhaps, but 
 found in our native stock occasionally ; rarest 
 of all, a light-haired girl with dark eyes, hazel, 
 brown, or of the color of that mountain-brook 
 spoken of in this chapter, where it ran through 
 shadowy woodlands. With these were to be 
 seen at intervals some of maturer years, full 
 blown flowers among the opening buds, with 
 that conscious" look upon their faces which so 
 many women wear during the period when they 
 never meet a single man without having his mon 
 osyllable ready for him, tied as they are, poor 
 things! on the rock of expectation, each of them 
 an Andromeda waiting for her Perseus. 
 
 "Who is that girl in ringlets, the fourth in 
 the third row on the right ? " said Master Lang- 
 don.
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 73 
 
 " Charlotte Ann Wood," said Miss Darley ; 
 " writes very pretty poems." 
 
 " Oh ! And the pink one, three seats from 
 her ? Looks bright ; anything in her ? " 
 
 " Emma Dean, day-scholar, Squire Dean's 
 daughter, nice girl, second medal last year." 
 
 The master asked these two questions in a 
 careless kind of way, and did not 'seem to pay 
 any too much attention to the answers. 
 
 " And who and what is that," he said, " sit 
 ting a little apart there, that strange, wild-look- 
 ing girl?" 
 
 This time he put the real question he wanted 
 answered ; the other two were asked at random, 
 as masks for the third. 
 
 The lady-teacher's face changed ; one would 
 have said she was frightened or troubled. She 
 looked at the girl doubtfully, as if she might hear 
 the master's question and its answer. But the 
 girl did not look up ; she was winding a gold 
 chain about her wrist, and then uncoiling it, as if 
 in a kind of reverie. 
 
 Miss Darley drew close to' the master and 
 placed her hand so as to hide her lips. " Don't 
 look at her as if we were talking about her," she 
 whispered softly ; " that is Elsie Venner."
 
 74 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 CHAPTER. V. 
 
 AN OLD-FASHIONED DESCRIPTIVE CHAPTER. 
 
 IT was a comfort to get to a place with some 
 thing like society, with residences which had pre 
 tensions to elegance, with people of some breeding, 
 with a newspaper, and "stores" to advertise in it, 
 and with two or three churches to keep each 
 other alive by wholesome agitation. Rockland 
 was such a place. 
 
 Some of the natural features of the town have 
 been described already. The Mountain, of course, 
 was what gave it its character, and redeemed it 
 from wearing the commonplace expression which 
 belongs to ordinary country-villages. Beautiful, 
 wild, invested with the mystery which belongs to 
 untrodden spaces, and with enough of terror to 
 give it dignity, it had yet closer relations with 
 the town over which it brooded than the passing 
 stranger knew of. Thus, it made a local climate 
 by cutting off the northern winds and holding the 
 sun's heat like a garden-wall. Peach-trees, which, 
 on the northern side of the mountain, hardly ever 
 came to fruit, ripened abundant crops in Rock- 
 land.
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 75 
 
 But there was still another relation between 
 the mountain and the town at its foot, which 
 strangers were not likely to hear alluded to, and 
 which was oftener thought of than spoken of by 
 its inhabitants. Those high-impending forests, 
 " hangers," as White of Selborne would have 
 called them, sloping far upward and backward 
 into the distance, had always an air of menace 
 blended with their wild beauty. It seemed as if 
 some heaven-scaling Titan had thrown his shag 
 gy robe over the bare, precipitous flanks of the 
 rocky summit, and it might at any moment slide 
 like a garment flung carelessly on the nearest 
 chance-support, and, so sliding, crush the village 
 out of being, as the Rossberg when it tumbled 
 over on the valley of Goldau. 
 
 Persons have been known to remove from the 
 place, after a short residence in it, because they 
 were haunted day and night by the thought of 
 this awful green wall piled up into the air over 
 their heads. They would lie awake of nights, 
 thinking they heard the muffled snapping of 
 roots, as if a thousand acres of the mountain 
 side were tugging to break away, like the snow 
 from a house-roof, and a hundred thousand trees 
 were clinging with all their fibres to hold back 
 the soil just ready to peel away and crash down 
 with all its rocks and forest-growths. And yet, 
 by one of those strange contradictions we are 
 constantly finding in human nature, there were 
 natives of the town who would come back thirty
 
 76 ELSIE TENNER. 
 
 or forty years after leaving it, just to nestle under 
 this same threatening mountain-side, as old men 
 sun themselves against southward-facing walls. 
 The old dreams and legends of danger added to 
 the attraction. If the mountain should ever slide, 
 they had a kind of feeling as if they ought to be 
 there. It was a fascination like that which the 
 rattlesnake is said to exert. 
 
 This comparison naturally suggests the recol 
 lection of that other source of danger which was 
 an element in the every-day life of the Rockland 
 people. The folks in some of the neighboring 
 towns had a joke against them, that a Rock- 
 lander couldn't hear a bean-pod rattle without 
 saying, " The Lord have mercy on us ! " It is 
 very true, that many a nervous old lady has had 
 a terrible start, caused by some mischievous 
 young rogue's giving a sudden shake to one of 
 these noisy vegetable products in her immediate 
 vicinity. Yet, strangely enough, many persons 
 missed the excitement of the possibility of a fatal 
 bite in other regions, where there were nothing 
 but black and green and striped snakes, mean 
 ophidians, having the spite of the nobler serpent 
 without his venom, poor crawling creatures, 
 whom Nature would not trust with a poison-bag. 
 Many natives of Rockland did unquestionably 
 experience a certain gratification in this infinitesi 
 mal sense of danger. It was noted that the old 
 people retained their hearing longer than in other 
 places. Some said it was the softened climate,
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 77 
 
 but others believed it was owing to the habit of 
 keeping their ears open whenever they were walk 
 ing through the grass or in the woods. At any 
 rate, a slight sense of danger is often an agreea 
 ble stimulus. People sip their creme de noyau 
 with a peculiar tremulous pleasure, because there 
 is a bare possibility that it may contain prussic 
 acid enough to knock them over ; in which case 
 they will lie as dead as if a thunder-cloud had 
 emptied itself into the earth through their brain 
 and marrow. 
 
 But Rockland had other features which helped 
 to give it a special character. First of all, there 
 was one grand street which was its chief glory. 
 Elm Street it was called, naturally enough, for its 
 elms made a long, pointed-arched gaUery of it 
 through most of its extent. No natural Gothic 
 arch compares, for a moment, with that formed 
 by two American elms, where their lofty jets 
 of foliage shoot across each other's ascending 
 curves, to intermingle their showery flakes of 
 green. When one looks through a long double 
 row of these, as in that lovely avenue which the 
 poets of Yale remember so well, 
 
 " O, could the vista of my life but now as bright appear 
 As when I first through Temple Street looked down thine espalier! " 
 
 he beholds a temple not built with hands, fairer 
 than any minster, with all its clustered stems and 
 flowering capitals, that ever grew in stone. 
 
 Nobody knows New England who is not on 
 terms of intimacy with one of its elms. The
 
 78 ELSIE YEXXER. 
 
 elm comes nearer to having a soul than any other 
 vegetable creature among us. It loves man as 
 man loves it. It is modest and patient. It has 
 a small flake of a seed which blows in every 
 where and makes arrangements for coming up 
 by-and-by. So, in spring, one finds a crop of 
 baby-elms among his carrots and parsnips, very 
 weak and small compared to those succulent 
 vegetables. The baby-elms die, most of them, 
 slain, unrecognized or unheeded, by hand or hoe, 
 as meekly as Herod's innocents. One of them 
 gets overlooked, perhaps, until it has established 
 a kind of right to stay. Three generations of 
 carrot and parsnip-consumers have passed away, 
 yourself among them, and now let your great- 
 grandson look for the baby-elm. Twenty-two 
 feet of clean girth, three hundred and sixty feet 
 in the line that bounds its leafy circle, it covers 
 the boy with such a canopy as neither glossy- 
 leafed oak nor insect-haunted linden ever lifted 
 into the summer skies. 
 
 Elm Street was the pride of Rockland, but not 
 only on account of its Gothic-arched vista. In 
 this street were most of the great houses, or 
 " mansion-houses," as it was usual to call them. 
 Along this street, also, the more nicely kept and 
 neatly painted dwellings were chiefly congre 
 gated. It was the correct thing for a Rockland 
 dignitary to have a house in Elm Street. 
 
 A New England " mansion-house " is naturally 
 square, with dormer windows projecting from the
 
 ELSIE VEXNER. 79 
 
 roof, which has a balustrade with turned posts 
 round it. It shows a good breadth of front-yard 
 before its door, as its owner shows a respectable 
 expanse of clean shirt-front. It has a lateral 
 margin beyond its stables and offices, as its mas 
 ter wears his white wrist-bands showing beyond 
 his coat-cuffs. It may not have what can prop 
 erly be called grounds, but it must have elbow- 
 room, at any rate. Without it, it is like a man 
 who is always tight-buttoned for want of any 
 linen to show. The mansion-house which has ' 
 had to button itself up tight in fences, for want 
 of green or gravel margin, will be advertising for 
 boarders presently. The old English pattern of 
 the New England mansion-house, only on a 
 somewhat grander scale, is Sir Thomas Abney's 
 place, where dear, good Dr. Watts said prayers 
 for the family, and wrote those blessed hymns of 
 his that sing us into consciousness in our cradles, 
 and come back to us in sweet, single verses, be 
 tween the moments of wandering and of stupor, 
 when we lie dying, and sound over us when we 
 can no longer hear them, bringing grateful tears 
 to the hot, aching eyes beneath the thick, black 
 veils, and carrying the holy calm with them 
 which filled the good man's heart, as he prayed 
 and sung under the shelter of the old English, 
 mansion-house. 
 
 Next to the mansion-houses, came the two-story, 
 trim, white-painted, " genteel " houses, which, be 
 ing more gossipy and less nicely bred, crowded
 
 80 ELSIE TENNER. 
 
 close up to the street, instead of standing back 
 from it with arms akimbo, like the mansion- 
 houses. Their little front-yards were very com 
 monly full of lilac and syringa and other bushes, 
 which were allowed to smother the lower story 
 almost to the exclusion of light and air, so that, 
 what with small windows and small window- 
 panes, and the darkness made by these choking 
 growths of shrubbery, the front parlors of some 
 of these houses were the most tomb-like, mel- 
 'ancholy places that could be found anywhere 
 among the abodes of the living. Their garnish 
 ing was apt to assist this impression. Large- 
 patterned carpets, which always look discontented 
 in little rooms, hair-cloth furniture, black and 
 shiny as beetles' wing-cases, and centre-tables, 
 with a sullen oil-lamp of the kind called astral 
 by our imaginative ancestors, in the centre, 
 these things were inevitable. In set piles round 
 the lamp was ranged the current literature of the 
 day, in the form of Temperance Documents, un 
 bound numbers of one of the Unknown Public's 
 Magazines with worn-out steel engravings and 
 high-colored fashion-plates, the Poems of a dis 
 tinguished British author whom it is unnecessary 
 to mention, a volume of sermons, or a novel or 
 two, or both, according to the tastes of the family, 
 and the Good Book, which is always Itself in the 
 cheapest and commonest company. The father 
 of the family with his hand in the breast of his 
 coat, the mother of the same in a wide-bordered
 
 ELSIE VEJMNER. 81 
 
 cap, sometimes a print of the Last Supper, by no 
 means' Morghen's, or the Father of his Country, 
 or the old General, or the Defender of the Constitu 
 tion, or an unknown clergyman with an open book 
 before him, these were the usual ornaments 
 of the walls, the first two a matter of rigor, the 
 others according to politics and other tendencies. 
 
 This intermediate class of houses, wherever 
 one finds them in New England towns, are very 
 apt to be cheerless and unsatisfactory. They 
 have neither the luxury of the mansion-house nor 
 the comfort of the farm-house. They are rarely 
 kept at an agreeable temperature. The mansion- 
 house has large fireplaces and generous chimneys, 
 and is open to the sunshine. The farm-house 
 makes no pretensions, but it has a good warm 
 kitchen, at any rate, and one can be comfortable 
 there with the rest of the family, without fear 
 and without reproach. These lesser country- 
 houses of genteel aspirations are much given to 
 patent subterfuges of one kind and another to get 
 heat without combustion. The chilly parlor and 
 the slippery hair-cloth seat take the life out of the 
 warmest welcome. If one would make these 
 places wholesome, happy, and cheerful, the first 
 precept would be, The dearest fuel, plenty of 
 it, and let half the heat go up the chimney. If 
 you can't afford this, don't try to live in a " gen 
 teel " fashion, but stick to the ways of the hon 
 est farm-house. 
 
 There were a good many comfortable farm-
 
 82 ELSII: v I:\NKI:. 
 
 houses scattered about Rockland. The best of 
 them were something of the following pattern, 
 which is too often superseded of late by a more 
 pretentious, but infinitely less pleasing kind of 
 rustic architecture. A little back from the road, 
 seated directly on the green sod, rose a plain 
 wooden building, two stories in front, with a long 
 roof sloping backwards to within a few feet of 
 the ground. This, like the " mansion-house," is 
 copied from an old English pattern. Cottages 
 of this model may be seen in Lancashire, for in 
 stance, always with the same honest, homely 
 look, as if then: roofs acknowledged their rela 
 tionship to the soil out of which they sprung. 
 The walls were unpainted, but turned by the 
 slow action of sun and air and rain to a quiet 
 dove- or slate-color. An old broken mill-stone at 
 the door, a well-sweep pointing like a finger 
 to the heavens, which the shining round of water 
 beneath looked up at like a dark unsleeping eye, 
 a single large elm a little at one side, a barn 
 twice as big as the house, a cattle-yard, with 
 
 " The white horns tossing above the wall," 
 
 some fields, in pasture or in crops, with low stone 
 walls round them, a row of beehives. a gar 
 den-patch, with roots, and currant-bushes, and 
 rnany-hued hollyhocks, and swollen-stemmed, 
 globe-headed, seedling onions, and marigolds, 
 and flower-de-luces, and lady's-delights, and pe 
 onies, crowding in together, with southernwood
 
 ELSIE VEXXER. 83 
 
 in the borders, and woodbine and hops and 
 morning-glories climbing as they got a chance, 
 these were the features by which the Rock- 
 land-born children remembered the farm-house, 
 when they had grown to be men. Such are the 
 recollections that come over poor sailor-boys 
 crawling out on reeling yards to reef topsails as 
 their vessels stagger round the stormy Cape ; and 
 such are the flitting images that make the eyes 
 of old country-born merchants look dim and 
 dreamy, as they sit in their city palaces, warm 
 with the after-dinner flush of the red wave out 
 of which Memory arises, as Aphrodite arose from 
 the green waves of the ocean. 
 
 Two meeting-houses stood on two eminences, 
 facing each other, and looking like a couple of 
 fighting-cocks with their necks straight up in the 
 air, as if they would flap their roofs, the next 
 thing, and crow out of their upstretched steeples, 
 and peck at each other's glass eyes with their 
 sharp-pointed weathercocks. 
 
 The first was a good pattern of the real old- 
 fashioned New England meeting-house. It was 
 a large barn with windows, fronted by a square 
 tower crowned with a kind of wooden bell in 
 verted and raised on legs, out of which rose a 
 slender spire with the sharp-billed weathercock at 
 its summit. Inside, tall, square pews with flap 
 ping seats, and a gallery running round three 
 sides of the building. On the fourth side the 
 pulpit, with a huge, dusty sounding-board hang-
 
 84 ELSIK VF.XNKR. 
 
 ing over it. Here preached the Reverend Pierre- 
 pont Honeywood, D. D., successor, after a number 
 of generations, to the office and the parsonage 
 of the Reverend Didymus Bean, before men 
 tioned, but not suspected of any of his alleged 
 heresies. He held to the old faith of the Puri 
 tans, and occasionally delivered a discourse which 
 was considered by the hard-headed theologians 
 of his parish to have settled the whole matter 
 fully and finally, so that now there was a good 
 logical basis laid down for the Millennium, which 
 might begin at once upon the platform of his 
 demonstrations. Yet the Reverend Dr. Honey- 
 wood was fonder of preaching plain, practical 
 sermons about the duties of life, and showing his 
 Christianity in abundant good works among his 
 people. It was noticed by some few of his flock, 
 not without comment, that the great majority of 
 his texts came from the Gospels, and this more 
 and more as he became interested in various be 
 nevolent enterprises which brought him into re 
 lations with ministers and kind-hearted laymen 
 of other denominations. He was in fact a man 
 of a very warm, open, and exceedingly human 
 disposition, and, although bred by a clerical 
 father, whose motto was "Sit anima mea cum 
 Puritanis" he exercised his human faculties in 
 the harness of his ancient faith with such free 
 dom that the straps of it got so loose they did 
 not interfere greatly with the circulation of the 
 warm blood through his system. Once in a
 
 ELSIE VKNXER. 85 
 
 while he seemed to think it necessary to come 
 out with a grand doctrinal sermon, and then he 
 would lapse away for a while into preaching on 
 men's duties to each other and to society, and hit 
 hard, perhaps, at some of the actual vices of the 
 time and place, and insist with such tenderness 
 and eloquence on the great depth and breadth 
 of true Christian love and charity, that his oldest 
 deacon shook his head, and wished he had shown 
 as much interest when he was preaching, three 
 Sabbaths back, on Predestination, or in his dis 
 course against the Sabellians. But he was sound 
 in the faith ; no doubt of that. Did he not pre 
 side at the council held in the town -of Tama 
 rack, on the other side of the mountain, which 
 expelled its clergyman for maintaining heretical 
 doctrines ? As presiding officer, he did not vote, 
 of course, but there was no doubt that he was all 
 right ; he had some of the Edwards blood in him, 
 and that couldn't very well let him go wrong. 
 
 The meeting-house on the other and opposite 
 summit was of a more modern style, considered 
 by many a great improvement on the old New 
 England model, so that it is not uncommon for a 
 country parish to pull down its old meeting-house, 
 which has been preached in for a hundred years 
 or so, and put up one of these more elegant edi 
 fices. The new building was in what may be 
 called the florid shingle- Gothic manner. Its pin 
 nacles and crockets and other ornaments were, 
 like the body of the building, all of pine wood,
 
 86 ELSIE YEXNER. 
 
 an admirable material, as it is very soft and 
 easily worked, and can be painted of any color 
 desired. Inside, the walls were stuccoed in imita 
 tion of stone, first a dark -brown square, then 
 two light-brown squares, then another dark-brown 
 square, and so on, to represent the accidental dif 
 ferences of shade always noticeable in the real 
 stones of which walls are built. To be sure, the 
 architect could not help getting his party-colored 
 squares in almost as regular rhythmical order as 
 those of a chess-board ; but nobody can avoid 
 doing things in a systematic and serial way ; in 
 deed, people who wish to plant trees in natural 
 clumps know very well that they cannot keep 
 from making regular lines and symmetrical fig 
 ures, unless by some trick or other, as that one of 
 throwing a peck of potatoes up into the air and 
 sticking in a tree wherever a potato happens to 
 fall. The pews of this meeting-house were the 
 usual oblong ones, where people sit close together 
 with a ledge before them to support their hymn- 
 books, liable only to occasional contact with the 
 back of the next pew's heads or bonnets, and a 
 place running under the seat of that pew where 
 hats could be deposited, always at the risk 
 of the owner, in case of injury by boots or 
 crickets. 
 
 In this meeting-house preached the Reverend 
 Chauncy Fairweather, a divine of the " Liberal " 
 school, as it is commonly called, bred at that fa 
 mous college which used to be thought, twenty
 
 ELSIE tENNER. 87 
 
 or thirty years ago, to have the monopoly of train 
 ing young men in the milder forms of heresy. 
 His ministrations were attended with decency, 
 but not followed with enthusiasm. " The beauty 
 of virtue " got to be an old story at last. " The 
 moral dignity of human nature " ceased to excite 
 a thrill of satisfaction, after some hundred repeti 
 tions. It grew to be a dull business, this preach 
 ing against stealing and intemperance, while he 
 knew very well that the thieves were prowling 
 round orchards and empty houses, instead of be 
 ing there to hear the sermon, and that the drunk 
 ards, being rarely church-goers, get little good by 
 the statistics and eloquent appeals of the preacher. 
 Every now and then, however, the Reverend Mr. 
 Fairweather let off a polemic discourse against 
 his neighbor opposite, which waked his people up 
 a little ; but it was a languid congregation, at 
 best, very apt to stay away from meeting in 
 the afternoon, and not at all given to extra even 
 ing services. The minister, unlike his rival of 
 the other side of the way, was a down-hearted 
 and timid kind of man. He went on preaching 
 as he had been taught to preach, but he had mis 
 givings at times. There was a little Roman 
 Catholic church at the foot of the hill where his 
 own was placed, which he always had to pass on 
 Sundays. He could never look on the thronging 
 multitudes that crowded its pews and aisles or 
 knelt bare-headed on its steps, without a longing 
 to get in among them and go down on his knees
 
 88 ELSIE VEXNKK. 
 
 and enjoy that luxury of devotional contact which 
 makes a worshipping throng as different from the 
 same numbers praying apart as a bed of coals is 
 from a trail of scattered cinders. 
 
 " Oh, if I could but huddle in with those poor 
 laborers and working-women ! " he would say to 
 himself. " If I could but breathe that atmosphere, 
 stifling though it be, yet made holy by ancient 
 litanies, and cloudy with the smoke of hallowed 
 incense, for one hour, instead of droning over 
 these moral precepts to my half-sleeping congre 
 gation ! " The intellectual isolation of his sect 
 preyed upon him ; for, of all terrible things to 
 natures like his, .the most terrible is to belong to 
 a minority. No person that looked at his thin 
 and sallow cheek, his sunken and sad eye, his 
 tremulous lip, his contracted forehead, or who 
 heard his querulous, though not unmusical voice, 
 could fail to see that his life was an uneasy one, 
 that he was engaged in some inward conflict. 
 His dark, melancholic aspect contrasted with his 
 seemingly cheerful creed, and was all the more 
 striking, as the worthy Dr.. Honeywood, profess 
 ing a belief which made him a passenger on 
 board a shipwrecked planet, was yet a most good- 
 humored and companionable gentleman, whose 
 laugh on week-days did one as much good to 
 listen to as the best sermon he ever delivered on 
 a Sunday. 
 
 A mile or two from the centre of Rockland was 
 'a pretty little Episcopal church, with a roof like a
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 89 
 
 wedge of cheese, a square tower, a stained win 
 dow, and a trained rector, 'who read the service 
 with such ventral depth of utterance and rrredu- 
 plication of the rrresonant letter, that his own 
 mother would not have known him for her son, 
 if the good woman had not ironed his surplice 
 and put it on with her own hands. 
 
 There were two public-houses in the place : 
 one dignified with the name of the Mountain 
 House, somewhat frequented by city-people in 
 the summer months, large-fronted, three-storied, 
 balconied, boasting a distinct ladies'-drawing- 
 room, and spreading a table d'hote of some pre 
 tensions ; the other, " Pollard's Tahvern," in the 
 common speech, a two-story building, with a 
 bar-room, once famous, where there was a great 
 smell of hay and boots and pipes and all other 
 bucolic-flavored elements, where games of 
 checkers were played on the back of the bel 
 lows with red and white kernels of corn, or with 
 beans and coffee, where a man slept in a box- 
 settle at night, to wake up early passengers, 
 where teamsters came in, with wooden-handled 
 whips and coarse frocks, reinforcing the bucolic 
 flavor of the atmosphere, and middle-aged male 
 gossips, sometimes including the squire of the 
 neighboring law-office, gathered to exchange a 
 question or two- about the news, and then fall 
 into that solemn state of suspended animation 
 which the temperance bar-rooms of modern days 
 produce in human beings, as the Grotta del Cane
 
 90 ELSIi: YKXXER. 
 
 does in dogs in the well-known experiments re 
 lated by travellers. This bar-room used to be 
 famous for drinking and story-telling, and some 
 times fighting, in old times. That was when 
 there were rows of decanters on the shelf behind 
 the bar, and a hissing vessel of hot water ready, 
 to make punch, and three or four loggerheads 
 (long irons clubbed at the end) were always lying 
 in the fire in the cold season, waiting to be 
 plunged into sputtering and foaming mugs of 
 flip, a goodly compound, speaking according 
 to the flesh, made with beer and sugar, and a 
 certain suspicion of strong waters, over which a 
 little nutmeg being grated, and in it the hot iron 
 being then allowed to sizzle, there results a pe 
 culiar singed aroma, which the wise regard as a 
 warning to remove themselves at once out of the 
 reach of temptation. 
 
 But the bar of Pollard's Tahvern no longer 
 presented its old attractions, and the loggerheads 
 had long disappeared from the fire. In place of 
 the decanters, were boxes containing " lozengers," 
 as they were commonly called, sticks of candy in 
 jars, cigars in tumblers, a few lemons, grown 
 hard-skinned and marvellously shrunken by long 
 exposure, but still feebly suggestive of possible 
 lemonade, the whole ornamented by festoons 
 of yellow and blue cut fly-paper. On the front 
 shelf of the bar stood a large German-silver 
 pitcher of water, and scattered about were ill- 
 conditioned lamps, with wicks that always wanted
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 91 
 
 picking, which burned red and smoked a good 
 deal, and were apt to go out without any obvious 
 cause, leaving strong reminiscences of the whale- 
 fishery in the circumambient air. 
 
 The common school-houses of Rockland were 
 dwarfed by the grandeur of the Apollinean Insti 
 tute. The master passed one of them, in a walk 
 he was taking, soon after his arrival at Rockland. 
 He looked in "at the rows of desks, and recalled 
 his late experiences. He could not help laugh 
 ing, as he thought how neatly he had knocked the 
 young butcher off his pins. 
 
 " ' A little science is a dangerous thing,' 
 
 as well as a little 'learning,'" he said to himself; 
 " only it 's dangerous to the fellow you try it on." 
 And he cut him a good stick, and began climbing 
 the side of The Mountain to get a look at that 
 famous Rattlesnake Ledge.
 
 92 ELSIE VEXNER. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE SUNBEAM AND THE SHADOW. 
 
 THE virtue of the world is not mainly in its 
 leaders. In the midst of the multitude which 
 follows there is often something better than in the 
 one that goes before. Old generals wanted to 
 take Toulon, but one of their young colonels 
 showed them how. The junior counsel has been 
 known not unfrequently to make a better argu 
 ment than his senior fellow, if, indeed, he did 
 not make both their arguments. Good ministers 
 will tell you they have parishioners who beat 
 them in the practice of the virtues. A great 
 establishment, got up on commercial principles, 
 like the Apollinean Institute, might yet be well 
 carried on, if it happened to get good teachers. 
 And when Master Langdon came to see its man 
 agement, he recognized that there must be fidelity 
 and intelligence somewhere among the instruc 
 tors. It was only necessary to look for a moment 
 at the fair, open forehead, the still, tranquil eye of 
 gentle, habitual authority, the sweet gravity that 
 lay upon the lips, to hear the clear answers to the 
 pupils' questions, to notice how every request had
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 93 
 
 the force without the form of a command, and 
 the young man could not doubt that the good 
 genius of the school stood before him in the per 
 son of Helen Darley. 
 
 It was the old story. A poor country-clergy 
 man dies, and leaves a widow and a daughter. 
 In Old England the daughter would have eaten 
 the bitter bread of a governess in some rich fam 
 ily. In New England she must keep a school. 
 So, rising from one sphere to another, she at 
 length finds herself the prima donna in the de 
 partment of instruction in Mr. Silas Peckham's 
 educational establishment. 
 
 What a miserable thing it is to be poor! 
 She was dependent, frail, sensitive, conscien 
 tious. She was in the power of a hard, grasp 
 ing, thin-blooded, tough-fibred, trading educator, 
 who neither knew nor cared for a tender woman's 
 sensibilities, but who paid her and meant to have 
 his money's worth out of her brains, and as much 
 more than his money's worth as he could get. 
 She was consequently, in plain English, over 
 worked, and an overworked woman is always a 
 sad sight, sadder a great deal than an over 
 worked man, because she is so much more fertile 
 in capacities of suffering than a man. She has / 
 so many varieties of headache, sometimes as / 
 if Jael were driving the nail that killed Sisera/ 
 into -her temples, sometimes letting her work! 
 with half her brain while the other half throbs as 
 if it would go to pieces, sometimes tightening!
 
 V 
 
 94 ELSIE TENNER. 
 
 round the brows as if her cap-band were a ring 
 of iron, and then her neuralgias, and her back 
 aches, and her fits of depression, in which she 
 thinks she is nothing and less than nothing, and 
 those paroxysms which men speak slightingly of 
 as hysterical, convulsions, that is all, only not 
 commonly fatal ones, so many trials which 
 belong to her fine and mobile structure, that 
 she is always entitled to pity, when she is placed 
 in conditions which develop her nervous tenden 
 cies. 
 
 The poor young lady's work had, of course, 
 been doubled since the departure of Master Lang- 
 don's predecessor. Nobody knows what the wea 
 riness of instruction is, as soon as the teacher's 
 faculties begin to be overtasked, but those who 
 have tried it. The relays of fresh pupils, each 
 new set with its exhausting powers in full ac 
 tion, coming one after another, take out all the 
 reserved forces and faculties of resistance from 
 the subject of their draining process. 
 
 The day's work was over, and it was late in 
 the evening, when she sat down, tired and faint, 
 with a great bundle of girls' themes or compo 
 sitions to read over before she could rest her 
 weary head on the pillow of her narrow trundle- 
 bed, and forget for a while the treadmill stair of 
 labor she was daily climbing. 
 
 How she dreaded this most forlorn of .all a 
 teacher's tasks ! She was conscientious in her 
 duties, and would insist on reading every sen-
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 95 
 
 tence, there was no saying where she might 
 find faults of grammar or bad spelling. There 
 might have been twenty or thirty of these themes 
 in the bundle before her. Of course she knew 
 pretty well the leading sentiments they could con 
 tain : that beauty was subject to the accidents 
 of time ; that wealth was inconstant, and exist 
 ence uncertain ; that virtue was its own reward ; 
 that youth exhaled, like the dewdrop from the 
 flower, ere the sun had reached its meridian ; that 
 life was o'ershadowed with trials ; that the lessons 
 of virtue instilled by our beloved teachers were to 
 be our guides through all our future career. The 
 imagery employed consisted principally of roses, 
 lilies, birds, clouds, and brooks, with the cele 
 brated comparison of wayward genius to a me 
 teor. Who does not know the small, slanted, 
 Italian hand of these girls'- compositions, their 
 stringing together of the good old traditional 
 copy-book phrases, their occasional gushes of 
 sentiment, their profound estimates of the world, 
 sounding to the old folks that read them as 
 the experience of a bantam-pullet's last-hatched 
 young one with the chips of its shell on its head 
 would sound to a Mother Gary's chicken, who 
 knew the great ocean with all its typhoons and 
 tornadoes ? Yet every now and then one is liable 
 to be surprised with strajige clairvoyant flashes, 
 that can hardly be explained, except by the mys 
 terious inspiration which every now and then 
 seizes a young girl and exalts her intelligence,
 
 96 ELSIE VKXKF.R. 
 
 just as hysteria in other instances exalts the sen 
 sibility, a little something of that which made 
 Joan of Arc, and the Barney girl who prophesied 
 " Evelina," and the Davidson sisters. In the 
 midst of these commonplace exercises which Miss 
 Darley read over so carefully were two or three 
 that had something of individual flavor about 
 them, and here and there there was an image 
 or an epithet which showed the footprint of a 
 passionate nature, as a fallen scarlet feather 
 marks the path the wild flamingo has trodden. 
 The young lady teacher read them with a cer 
 tain indifference of manner, as one reads proofs, 
 
 noting defects of detail, but not commonly 
 arrested by the matters treated of. Even Miss 
 Charlotte Ann Wood's poem, beginning 
 
 " How sweet at evening's balmy hour," 
 
 did not excite her. She marked the inevitable 
 false rhyme of Cockney and Yankee beginners, 
 morn and dawn, and tossed the verses on the pile 
 of papers she had finished. She was looking over 
 some of the last of them in a rather listless way, 
 
 for the poor thing was getting sleepy in spite of 
 herself, when she came to one which seemed 
 to rouse her attention, and lifted her drooping 
 lids. She looked at it a moment before she 
 would touch it. Then she took hold of it by 
 one corner and slid it off from the rest. One 
 would have said she was afraid of it, or had some 
 undefined antipathy which made it hateful to her.
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 97 
 
 Such odd fancies are common enough in young 
 persons in her nervous state. Many of these 
 young people will jump up twenty times a day 
 and run to dabble the tips of their fingers in 
 water, after touching the most inoffensive objects. 
 This composition was written in a singular, 
 sharp-pointed, long, slender hand, on a kind 
 of wavy, ribbed paper. There was something 
 strangely suggestive about the look of it, but 
 exactly of what, Miss Darley either could not or 
 did not try to think. The subject of the paper 
 was The Mountain, the composition being a 
 sort of descriptive rhapsody. It showed a start 
 ling familiarity with some of the savage scenery 
 of the region. One would have said that the 
 writer must have threaded its wildest solitudes 
 by the light of the moon and stars as well as by 
 day. As the teacher read on, her color changed, 
 and a kind of tremulous agitation came over her. 
 There were hints in this strange paper she did not 
 know what to make of. There was something in 
 its descriptions and imagery that recalled, Miss 
 Darley could not say what, but it made her 
 frightfully nervous. Still she could not help 
 reading, till she came to one passage which so 
 agitated her, that the tired and overwearied girl's 
 self-control left her entirely. She sobbed once or 
 twice, then laughed convulsively, and flung her 
 self on the bed, where she worked out a set hys 
 teric spasm as she best might, without anybody 
 to rub her hands and see that she did not hurt
 
 98 ELSIE VEXNER. 
 
 herself. By-and-by she got quiet, rose and went 
 to her book-case, took down a volume of Cole 
 ridge, and read a short time, and so to bed, to 
 sleep and wake from time to time with a sudden 
 start out of uneasy dreams. 
 
 Perhaps it is of no great consequence what it 
 was in the composition which set her off into 
 this nervous paroxysm. She was in such a 
 state that almost any slight agitation would 
 have brought on the attack, and it was the ac 
 cident of her transient excitability, very proba 
 bly, which made a trifling catise the seeming oc 
 casion of so much disturbance. The theme was 
 signed, in the same peculiar, sharp, slender hand, 
 E. Venner^ and was, of course, written by that 
 \vi Id-looking girl who had excited the master's 
 curiosity and prompted his question, as before 
 mentioned. 
 
 The next morning the lady-teacher looked pale 
 and wearied, naturally enough, but she was in her 
 place at the usual hour, and Master Langdon 
 in his own. The girls had not yet entered the 
 school-room. 
 
 " You have been ill, I am afraid," said Mr. 
 Bernard. 
 
 " I was not well yesterday," she answered. " I 
 had a worry and a kind of fright. It is so dread 
 ful to have the charge of all these young souls 
 and bodies! Every young girl ought to walk, 
 locked close, arm in arm, between two guar 
 dian angels. Sometimes I faint almost with
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 99 
 
 the thought of all that I ought to do, and of my 
 own weakness and wants. Tell me, are there 
 not natures born so out of parallel with the lines 
 of natural law that nothing short of a miracle can 
 bring them right ? " 
 
 Mr. Bernard had speculated somewhat, as all 
 thoughtful persons of his profession are forced 
 to do, on the innate organic tendencies with 
 which individuals, families, and races are born. 
 He replied, therefore, with a smile, as one to 
 whom the question suggested a very familiar 
 class of facts. 
 
 " Why, of course. Each of us is only the foot- 
 ing-up of a double column of figures that goes 
 back to the first pair. Every unit tells, and 
 some of them are plus, and some minus. If the 
 columns don't add up right, it is commonly be 
 cause we can't make out all the figures. I don't 
 mean to say that something may not be added 
 by Nature to make up for losses and keep the 
 race to its average, but we are mainly nothing 
 but the answer to a long sum in addition and 
 subtraction. No doubt there are people born 
 with impulses at every possible angle to the 
 parallels of Nature, as you call them. If they 
 happen to cut these at right angles, of course 
 they are beyond the reach of common influ 
 ences. Slight obliquities are what we have most 
 to do with in education. Penitentiaries and in 
 sane asylums take care of most of the right-angle 
 cases. I am afraid I have put it too much like
 
 100 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 a professor, and I am only a student, you know. 
 Pray, what set you to asking me this ? Any 
 strange cases among the scholars ? " 
 
 The meek teacher's blue eyes met the lumi 
 nous glance that came with the question. She, 
 too, was of gentle blood, not meaning by that 
 that she was of any noted lineage, but that she 
 came of a cultivated stock, never rich, but long 
 trained to intellectual callings. A thousand de 
 cencies, amenities, reticences, graces, which no 
 one thinks of until he misses them, are the tra 
 ditional right of those who spring from such 
 families. And when two persons of this excep 
 tional breeding meet in the midst of the com 
 mon multitude, they seek each other's company 
 at once by the natural law of elective affinity. 
 It is wonderful how men and women know their 
 peers. \ If two stranger queens, sole survivors of 
 two shipwrecked vessels, were cast, half-naked, 
 on a rock together, each would at once address 
 the other as " Our Royal Sister." '/P' a^-^f 
 
 Helen Darley looked into the dark eyes of 
 Bernard Langdon glittering with the light which' 
 flashed from them with his question. Not as 
 those foolish, innocent country-girls of the small 
 village did she look into them, to be fascinated 
 and bewildered, but to sound them with a calm, 
 steadfast purpose. " A gentleman," she said to 
 herself, as she read his expression and his feat 
 ures with a woman's rapid, but exhausting 
 glance. "A lady," he said to himself, as he
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 101 
 
 met her questioning look, so brief, so quiet, 
 yet so assured, as of one whom necessity had 
 taught to read faces quickly without offence, as 
 children read the faces of parents, as wives read 
 the faces of hard-souled husbands. All this was 
 but a few seconds' work, and yet the main point 
 was settled. If there had been any vulgar curi 
 osity or coarseness of any kind lurking in his ex 
 pression, she would have detected it. If she had 
 not lifted her eyes to his face so softly and kept 
 them there so calmly and withdrawn them so 
 quietly, he would not have said to himself, 
 " She is a lady" for. that word meant a good 
 deal to the descendant of the courtly Went- 
 worths and the scholarly Langdons. 
 
 " There are strange people everywhere, Mr. 
 Langdon," she said, " and I don't think our 
 school-room is an exception. I am glad you 
 believe in the force of transmitted tendencies. 
 It would break my heart, if I did not think that 
 there are faults beyond the reach of everything 
 but God's special grace. I should die, if I 
 thought that my negligence or incapacity was 
 alone responsible for the errors and sins of those 
 I have charge of. Yet there are mysteries I do 
 not know how to account for." She looked all 
 round the school-room, and then said, in a whis 
 per, " Mr. Langdon, we had a girl that stole, in 
 the school, not long ago. Worse than that, we 
 had a girl who tried to set us on fire. Children 
 of good people, both of them. And we have a 
 girl now that frightens me so "
 
 102 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 The door opened, and three misses came in to 
 take their seats : three types, as it happened, of 
 certain classes, into which it would not have been 
 difficult to distribute the greater number* of the 
 girls in the school. Hannah Martin. Four 
 teen years and three months old. Short-necked, 
 thick-waisted, round-cheeked, smooth, vacant fore 
 head, large, dull eyes. Looks good-natured, with 
 little other expression. Three buns in her bag, 
 and a large apple. Has a habit of attacking 
 her provisions in school-hours. Rosa Mi/burn. 
 Sixteen. Brunette, with a rareripe flush in her 
 cheeks. Color comes and goes easily. Eyes 
 wandering, apt to be downcast. Moody at 
 times. Said to be passionate, if irritated. Fin 
 ished in high relief. Carries shoulders well back 
 and walks well, as if proud of her woman's life, 
 with a slight rocking movement, being one of the 
 wide-flanged pattern, but seems restless, a hard 
 girl to look after. Has a romance in her pocket, 
 which she means to read in school-time. Char 
 lotte Ann Wood. Fifteen. The poetess before 
 mentioned. Long, light ringlets, pallid com 
 plexion, blue eyes. Delicate child, half unfold 
 ed. Gentle, but languid and despondent. Does 
 not go much with the other girls, but reads a 
 good deal, especially poetry, underscoring favor 
 ite passages. Writes a great many verses, very 
 fast, not very correctly ; full of the usual human 
 sentiments, expressed in the accustomed phrases. 
 Undervitalized. Sensibilities not covered with
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 103 
 
 their normal integuments. A negative condi 
 tion, often confounded with genius, and some 
 times running into it. Young people who fall 
 out of line through weakness of the active facul 
 ties are often confounded with those who step out 
 of it through strength of the intellectual ones. 
 
 The girls kept coming in, one after another, or 
 in pairs or groups, until the school-room was 
 nearly full. Then there was a little pause, and a 
 light step was heard in the passage. The lady- 
 teacher's eyes turned to the door, and the master's 
 followed them in the same direction. 
 
 A girl of about seventeen entered. She was 
 tall and slender, but rounded, with a peculiar un 
 dulation of movement, such as one sometimes 
 sees in perfectly untutored country-girls, whom 
 Nature, the queen of graces, has taken in hand, 
 but more commonly in connection with the very 
 highest breeding of the most thoroughly trained 
 society. She was a splendid scowling beauty, 
 black-browed, with a flash of white teeth which 
 was always like a surprise when her lips parted. 
 She wore a checkered dress, of a curious pattern, 
 and a camel's-hair scarf twisted a little fantasti 
 cally about her. She went to her seat, which she 
 had moved & short distance apart from the rest, 
 and, sitting down, began playing listlessly with 
 her gold chain, as was a common habit with her, 
 coiling it and uncoiling it about her slender wrist, 
 and braiding it in with her long, delicate fingers. 
 Presently she looked up. Black, piercing eyes, not
 
 104 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 large, a low forehead, as low as that of Clytie 
 in the Townley bust, black hair, twisted in 
 heavy braids, a face that one could not help 
 looking at for its beauty, yet that one wanted to 
 look away from for something in its expression, 
 and could not for those diamond eyes. They 
 were fixed on the lady-teacher now. The latter 
 turned her own away, and let them wander over 
 the other scholars. But they could not help com 
 ing back again for a single glance at the wild 
 beauty. The diamond eyes were on her still. 
 She turned the leaves of several of her books, as 
 if in search of some passage, and, when she 
 thought she had waited long enough to be safe, 
 once more stole a quick iook at the dark girl. 
 The diamond eyes were still upon her. She put 
 her kerchief to her forehead, which had grown 
 slightly moist; she sighed once, almost shivered, 
 for she felt cold ; then, following some ill-defined 
 impulse, which she could not resist, she left her 
 place and went to the young girl's desk. 
 
 " What do you want of me, Elsie Venner ? " It 
 was a strange question to put, for the girl had 
 not signified that she wished the teacher to come 
 to her. 
 
 " Nothing," she said. " I thought I could make 
 you come." The girl spoke in a low tone, a kind 
 of half-whisper. She did not lisp, yet her articu 
 lation of one or two consonants was not abso 
 lutely perfect, 
 
 " Where did you get that flower, Elsie ? " said
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 105 
 
 Miss Darley. It was a rare alpine flower, which 
 was found only in one spot among the rocks of 
 The Mountain. 
 
 " Where it grew," said Elsie Venner. " Take 
 it." The teacher could not refuse her. The girl's 
 finger-tips touched hers as she took it. How cold 
 they were for a girl of such an organization ! 
 
 The teacher went back to her seat. She made 
 an excuse for quitting the school-room soon after 
 wards. The first thing she did was to fling the 
 flower into her fireplace and rake the ashes over 
 it. The second was to wash the tips of her fin 
 gers, as if she had been another Lady Macbeth. 
 A poor, overtasked, nervous creature, we must 
 not think too much of her fancies. 
 
 After school was done, she finished the talk 
 with the master which had been so suddenly in 
 terrupted. There were things spoken of which 
 may prove interesting by-and-by, but there are 
 other matters we must first attend to.
 
 106 ELSIE VENNK1J. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE EVENT OF THE SEASON. 
 
 " MR. and Mrs. Colonel Sprowle's compliments 
 to Mr. Langdon and requests the pleasure of his 
 company at a social entertainment on Wednesday 
 evening next. 
 
 " Elm St. Monday." 
 
 On paper of a pinkish color and musky smell, 
 with a large <S at the top, and an embossed bor 
 der. Envelop adherent, not sealed. Addressed, 
 
 Langdon Esq. 
 
 Present. 
 
 Brought by H. Frederic Sprowle, youngest son 
 of the Colonel, the H. of course standing for the 
 paternal Hezekiah, put in to please the father, and 
 reduced to its initial to please the mother, she 
 having a marked preference for Frederic. Boy 
 directed to wait for an answer. 
 
 " Mr. Langdon has the pleasure of accepting 
 Mr. and Mrs. Colonel Sprowle's polite invitation 
 for Wednesday evening." 
 
 On plain paper, sealed with an initial.
 
 ELSIE TENNER. 107 
 
 In walking along the main street, Mr. Bernard 
 had noticed a large house of some pretensions to 
 architectural display, namely, unnecessarily p^p- 
 jecting eaves, giving it a mushroomy aspect, 
 wooden mouldings at various available points, 
 and a grandiose arched portico. It looked a little 
 swaggering by the side of one or two of the man 
 sion-houses that were not far from it, was painted 
 too bright for Mr. Bernard's taste, had rather too 
 fanciful a fence before it, and had some fruit-trees 
 planted in the front-yard, which to this fastidious 
 young gentleman implied a defective sense of the 
 fitness of things, not promising in people who 
 lived in so large a house, with a mushroom roof 
 and a triumphal arch for its entrance. 
 
 This place was known as " Colonel Sprowle's 
 villa," (genteel friends,) as " the elegant resi 
 dence of our distinguished fellow-citizen, Colonel 
 Sprowle," (Rockland Weekly Universe,) as " the 
 neew haouse," (old settlers,) as " Spraowle's 
 Folly," (disaffected and possibly envious neigh 
 bors,) and in common discourse, as "the Colo 
 nel's." 
 
 Hezekiah Sprowle, Esquire, Colonel Sprowle 
 of the Commonwealth's Militia, was a retired 
 " merchant." An India merchant he might, per 
 haps, have been properly called ; for he used to 
 deal in West India goods, such as coffee, sugar, 
 and molasses, not to speak of rum, also in tea, 
 salt fish, butter and cheese, oil and candles, dried 
 fruit, agricultural " p'doose " generally, industrial
 
 108 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 products, such as boots and shoes, and various 
 kinds of iron and wooden ware, and at one end 
 o4 the establishment in calicoes and other stuffs, 
 to say nothing of miscellaneous objects of the 
 most varied nature, from sticks of candy, which 
 tempted in the smaller youth with coppers in 
 their fists, up to ornamental articles of apparel, 
 pocket-books, breast-pins, gilt-edged Bibles, sta 
 tionery, in short, everything which was like to 
 prove seductive to the rural population. The 
 Colonel had made money in trade, and also by 
 matrimony. He had married Sarah, daughter 
 and heiress of the late Tekel Jordan, Esq., an old 
 miser, who gave the town-clock, which carries his 
 name to posterity in large gilt letters as a gener 
 ous benefactor of his native place. In due time 
 the Colonel reaped the reward of well-placed af 
 fections. When his wife's inheritance fell in, he 
 thought he had money enough to give up trade, 
 and therefore sold out his " store," called in some 
 dialects of the English language shop, and his 
 business. 
 
 Life became pretty hard work to him, of course, 
 as soon as he had nothing particular to do. Coun 
 try people with money enough not to have to 
 work are in much more danger than city people 
 in the same condition. They get a specific look 
 and character, which are the same in all the vil 
 lages where one studies them. They very com 
 monly fall into a routine, the basis of which is 
 going to some lounging-place or other, a bar-room,
 
 ELSIE YEXXEK. 109 
 
 a reading-room, or something of the kind. They 
 grow slovenly in dress, and wear the same hat for 
 ever. They have a feeble curiosity for news per 
 haps, which they take daily as a man takes his 
 bitters, and then fall silent and think they are 
 thinking. But the mind goes out under this regi 
 men, like a fire without a draught ; and it is not 
 very strange, if the instinct of mental self-preser 
 vation drives them to brandy-and-water, which 
 makes the hoarse whisper of memory musical for 
 a few brief moments, and puts a weak leer of 
 promise on the features of the hollow-eyed future. 
 The Colonel was kept pretty well in hand as yet 
 by his wife, and though it had happened to him 
 once or twice to come home rather late at night 
 with a curious tendency to say the same thing 
 twice and even three times over, it had always 
 been in very cold weather, and everybody 
 knows that no one is safe to drink a couple of 
 glasses of wine in a warm room and go suddenly 
 out into the cold air. 
 
 Miss Matilda Sprowle, sole daughter of the 
 house, had reached the age at which young ladies 
 are supposed in technical language to have come 
 out, and thereafter are considered to be in com 
 pany. 
 
 " There's one piece o' goods," said the Colonel 
 to his wife, " that we ha' n't disposed of, nor got a 
 customer for yet. That's Matildy. I don't mean 
 to set her up at vaandoo. I guess she can have 
 her pick of a dozen."
 
 110 ELSIE VENXER. 
 
 " She 's never seen anybody yet," said Mrs. 
 Sprowle, who had had a certain project for some 
 time, but had kept quiet about it. " Let 's have a 
 party, and give her a chance to show herself and 
 see some of the young folks." 
 
 The Colonel was not very clear-headed, and he 
 thought, naturally enough, that the party was his 
 own suggestion, because his remark led to the 
 first starting of the idea. He entered into the 
 plan, therefore, with a feeling of pride as well as 
 pleasure, and the great project was resolved upon 
 in a family council without a dissentient voice. 
 This was the party, then, to which Mr. Bernard 
 was going. The town had been full of it for a 
 week. "Everybody was asked." So everybody 
 said that was invited. But how in respect of 
 those who were not asked ? If it had been one 
 of the old mansion-houses that was giving a 
 party, the boundary between the favored and the 
 slighted families would have been known pretty 
 well beforehand, and there would have been no 
 great amount of grumbling. But the Colonel, 
 for all his title, had a forest of poor relations and 
 a brushwood swamp of shabby friends, for he had 
 scrambled up to fortune, and now the time was 
 come when he must define his new social posi 
 tion. 
 
 This is always an awkward business in town 
 or country. An exclusive alliance between two 
 powers is often the same thing as a declaration 
 of war against a third. Rockland was soon
 
 ELSIE VENNER. Ill 
 
 split into a triumphant minority, invited to Mrs. 
 Sprowle's party, and a great majority, uninvited, 
 of which the fraction just on the border line be 
 tween recognized " gentility " and the level of the 
 ungloved masses was in an active state of excite 
 ment and indignation. 
 
 " Who is she, I should like to know ? " said 
 Mrs. Saymore, the tailor's wife. " There was 
 plenty of folks in Rockland as good as ever Sally 
 Jordan was, if she had managed to pick up a mer 
 chant. Other folks could have married merchants, 
 if their families wasn't as wealthy as them old 
 skinflints that willed her their money," etc. etc. 
 Mrs. Saymore expressed the feeling of many be 
 side herself. She had, however, a special right to 
 be proud of the name she bore. Her husband was 
 own cousin to the Saymores of Freestone Ave 
 nue (who write the name Seymour, and claim to 
 be of the Duke of Somerset's family, showing a 
 clear descent from the Protector to Edward Sey 
 mour, (1630,) then a jump that would break a 
 herald's neck to one Seth Saymore, (1783,) 
 from whom to the head of the present family the 
 line is clear again). Mrs. Saymore, the tailor's 
 wife, was not invited, because her husband mended 
 clothes. If he had confined himself strictly to 
 making' them, it would have put a different face 
 upon the matter. 
 
 The landlord of the Mountain House and his 
 lady were invited to Mrs. Sprowle's party. Not 
 so the landlord of Pollard's Tahvern and his lady.
 
 112 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 Whereupon the latter vowed that they would 
 have a party at their house too, and made ar 
 rangements for a dance of twenty or thirty couples, 
 to be followed by an entertainment. Tickets to 
 this " Social Ball" were soon circulated, and, 
 being accessible to all at a moderate price, ad 
 mission to the " Elegant Supper " included, this 
 second festival promised to be as merry, if not as 
 select, as the great party. 
 
 Wednesday came. Such doings had never 
 been heard of in Rockland as went on that day 
 at the " villa." The carpet had been taken up in 
 the long room, so that the young folks might have 
 a dance. Miss Matilda's piano had been moved 
 in, and two fiddlers and a clarionet-player en 
 gaged to make music. All kinds of lamps had 
 been put in requisition, and even colored wax- 
 candles figured on the mantel-pieces. The cos 
 tumes of the family had been tried on the day 
 before : the Colonel's black suit fitted exceedingly 
 well ; his lady's velvet dress displayed her con 
 tours to advantage ; Miss Matilda's flowered silk 
 was considered superb ; the eldest son of the fam 
 ily, Mr. T. Jordan Sprowle, called affectionately 
 and elegantly " Geordie," voted himself " stun- 
 nin' " ; and even the small youth who had borne 
 Mr. Bernard's invitation was effective in a new 
 jacket and trousers, buttony in front, and baggy 
 in the reverse aspect, as is wont to be the case 
 with the home-made garments of inland young 
 sters.
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 113 
 
 Great preparations had been made for the re 
 fection which was to be part of the entertain 
 ment. There was much clinking of borrowed 
 spoons, which were to be carefully counted, and 
 much clicking of borrowed china, which was to 
 be tenderly handled, for nobody in the country 
 keeps those vast closets full of such things which 
 one may see in rich city-houses. Not a great 
 deal could be done in the way of flowers, for 
 there were no green-houses, and few plants were 
 out as yet ; but there were paper ornaments 
 for the candlesticks, and colored mats for the 
 lamps, and all the tassels of the curtains and bells 
 were taken out of those brown linen bags, in 
 which, for reasons hitherto undiscovered, they are 
 habitually concealed in some households. In the 
 remoter apartments every imaginable operation 
 was going on at once, roasting, boiling, bak 
 ing, beating, rolling, pounding in mortars, frying, 
 freezing ; for there was to be ice-cream to-night 
 of domestic manufacture ; and in the midst of 
 all these labors, Mrs. Sprowle and Miss Matilda 
 were moving about, directing and helping as they 
 best might, all day long. When the evening 
 came, it might be feared they would not be in 
 just the state of mind and body to entertain 
 company. 
 
 One would like to give a party now and 
 
 then, if one could be a billionnaire. " Antoine, 
 I am going to have twenty people to dine to 
 day." " Bien, Madame" Not a word or thought 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 114 ELSIE VENXER. 
 
 more about it, but get home in season to dress, 
 and come down to your own table, one of your 
 own guests. " Giuseppe, we are to have a party 
 a week from to-night, five hundred invitations, 
 
 there is the list." The day comes. " Madam, 
 do you remember you have your party to-night? " 
 " Why, so I have ! Everything right? supper and 
 all ? " " All as it should be, Madam." " Send up 
 Victorine." " Victorine, full toilet for this even 
 ing, pink, diamonds, and emeralds. Coiffeur 
 at seven. Allez" Billionism, or even million- 
 ism, must be a blessed kind of state, with health 
 and clear conscience and youth and good looks, 
 
 but most blessed in this, that it takes off all 
 the mean cares which give people the three wrin 
 kles between the eyebrows, and leaves them free 
 to have a good time and make others have a 
 good time, all the way along from the charity 
 that tips up unexpected loads of wood before 
 widows' houses, and leaves foundling turkeys 
 upon poor men's door-steps, and sets lean clergy 
 men crying at the sight of anonymous fifty-dollar 
 bills, to the taste which orders a perfect banquet 
 in such sweet accord with every sense that every 
 body's nature flowers out full-blown in its golden- 
 glowing, fragrant atmosphere. 
 
 A great party given by the smaller gentry 
 
 of the interior is a kind of solemnity, so to speak. 
 It involves so much labor and anxiety, its spas 
 modic splendors are so violently contrasted with 
 the homeliness of every-day family-life, it is
 
 ELSIE VEXNER. 115 
 
 such a formidable matter to break in the raw 
 subordinates to the manege of the cloak-room and 
 the table, there is such a terrible uncertainty in 
 the results of unfamiliar culinary operations, so 
 many feuds are involved in drawing that fatal 
 line which divides the invited from the uninvited 
 fraction of the local universe, that, if the notes 
 requested the pleasure of the guests' company on' 
 " this solemn occasion," they would pretty nearly 
 express the true state of things. 
 
 The Colonel himself had been pressed into the 
 service. He had pounded something in the great 
 mortar. He had agitated a quantity of sweet 
 ened and thickened milk in what was called a 
 cream-freezer. At eleven o'clock, A. M., he retired 
 for a space. On returning, his color was noted 
 to be somewhat heightened, and he showed a dis 
 position to be jocular with the female help, 
 which tendency, displaying itself in livelier dem 
 onstrations than were approved at head-quarters, 
 led to his being detailed to out-of-door duties, 
 such as raking gravel, arranging places for horses 
 to be hitched to, and assisting in the construction 
 of an arch of winter-green at the porch of the 
 mansion. 
 
 A whiff from Mr. Geordie's cigar refreshed the 
 toiling females from time to time ; for the win 
 dows had to be opened occasionally, while all these 
 operations were going on, and the youth amused 
 himself with inspecting the interior, encouraging 
 the operatives now and then in the phrases com-
 
 116 ELSIE TENNER. 
 
 monly employed by genteel young men, for he 
 had perused an odd volume of " Verdant Green," 
 and was acquainted with a Sophomore from one 
 of the fresh-water colleges. " Go it on the feed ! " 
 exclaimed this spirited young man. " Nothin' like 
 a good spread. Grub enough and good liquor ; 
 that's the ticket. Guv'nor'll do the heavy po 
 lite, and let me alone for polishin' off the young 
 charmers." And Mr. Geordie looked expressively 
 at a handmaid who was rolling gingerbread, as if 
 he were rehearsing for " Don Giovanni." 
 
 Evening came at last, and the ladies were 
 forced to leave the scene of their labors to array 
 themselves for the coming festivities. The tables 
 had been set in a back room, the meats were 
 ready, the pickles were displayed, the cake was 
 baked, the blanc-mange had stiffened, and the 
 ice-cream had frozen. 
 
 At half past seven o'clock, the Colonel, in cos 
 tume, came into the front parlor, and proceeded 
 to light the lamps. Some were good-humored 
 enough and took the hint of a lighted match at 
 once. Others were as vicious as they could be, 
 would not light on any terms, any more than if 
 they were filled with water, or lighted and smoked 
 one side of the chimney, or sputtered a few sparks 
 and sulked themselves out, or kept up a faint 
 show of burning, so that their ground glasses 
 looked as feebly phosphorescent as so many inva 
 lid fireflies. With much coaxing and screwing 
 and pricking, a tolerable illumination was at last
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 117 
 
 achieved. At eight there was a grand rustling of 
 silks, and Mrs. and Miss Sprowle descended from 
 their respective bowers or boudoirs. Of course 
 they were pretty well tired by this time, and very 
 glad to sit down, having the prospect before 
 them of being obliged to stand for hours. The 
 Colonel walked about the parlor, inspecting his 
 regiment of lamps. By-and-by Mr. Geordie en 
 tered. 
 
 " Mph ! mph ! " he sniffed, as he came in. 
 " You smell of lamp-smoke here." 
 
 That always galls people, to have a new 
 comer accuse them of smoke or close air, which 
 they have got used to and do not perceive. The 
 Colonel raged at the thought of his lamps' smok 
 ing, and tongued a few anathemas inside of his 
 shut teeth, but turned down two or three that 
 burned higher than the rest. 
 
 Master H. Frederic next made his appearance, 
 with questionable marks upon his fingers and 
 countenance. Had been tampering with some 
 thing brown and sticky. His elder brother grew 
 playful, and caught him by the baggy reverse of 
 his more essential garment. 
 
 " Hush ! " said Mrs. Sprowle, " there's the 
 bell ! " 
 
 Everybody took position at once, and began to 
 look very smiling and altogether at ease. False 
 alarm. Only a parcel of spoons, "loaned," as 
 the inland folks say when they mean lent, by a 
 neighbor.
 
 118 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 " Better late than never ! " said the Colonel ; 
 " let me heft them spoons." 
 
 Mrs. Sprowle came down into her chair again 
 as if all her bones had been bewitched out of her. 
 
 " I'm pretty nigh beat out a'ready," said she, 
 " before any of the folks has come." 
 
 They sat silent awhile, waiting for the first 
 arrival. How nervous they got ! and how their 
 senses were sharpened! 
 
 "Hark!" said Miss Matilda, " what's that 
 rumblin' ! " 
 
 It was a cart going over a bridge more than a 
 mile off, which at any other time they would not 
 have heard. After this there was a lull, and poor 
 Mrs. Sprowle's head nodded once or twice. Pres 
 ently a crackling and grinding of gravel ; how 
 much that means, when we are waiting for those 
 whom we long or dread to see ! Then a change 
 in the tone of the gravel-crackling. 
 
 " Yes, they have turned in at our gate. They're 
 comin' ! Mother ! mother ! " 
 
 Everybody in position, smiling and at ease. 
 Bell rings. Enter the first set of visitors. The 
 Event of the Season has begun. 
 
 " Law ! it's nothin' but the Cranes' folks ! I 
 do believe Mahala's come in that old green de 
 laine she wore at the Surprise Party ! " 
 
 Miss Matilda had peeped through a crack of 
 the door and made this observation and the re 
 mark founded thereon. Continuing her attitude 
 of attention, she overheard Mrs. Crane and her
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 119 
 
 two daughters conversing in the attiring-room, up 
 one flight. 
 
 " How fine everything is in the great house ! " 
 said Mrs. Crane, " jest look at the picters ! " 
 
 " Matildy Sprowle's drawins," said Ada Azuba, 
 the eldest daughter. 
 
 " I should think so," said Mahala Crane, her 
 younger sister, a wide-awake girl, who hadn't 
 been to school for nothing, and performed a little 
 on the lead pencil herself. " I should like to know 
 whether that's a hay-cock or a mountain!" 
 
 Miss Matilda winced ; for this must refer to 
 her favorite monochrome, executed by .laying on 
 heavy shadows and stumping them down into 
 mellow harmony, the style of drawing which 
 is taught in six lessons, and the kind of specimen 
 which is executed in something less than one 
 hour. Parents and other very near relatives are 
 sometimes gratified with these productions, and 
 cause them to be framed and hung up, as in the 
 present instance. 
 
 " I guess we won't go down jest yet," said Mrs. 
 Crane, " as folks don't seem to have come." 
 
 So she began a systematic inspection of the 
 dressing-room and its conveniences. 
 
 " Mahogany four-poster, come from the Jor- 
 dans', I cal'late. Marseilles quilt. Ruffles all 
 round the piller. Chintz curtings, jest put up, 
 o' purpose for the party, I'll lay ye a dollar. 
 What a nice washbowl ! " (Taps it with a white 
 knuckle belonging to a red finger.) " Stone cha-
 
 120 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 ney. Here's a bran' -new brush and comb, and 
 here's a scent-bottle. Come here, girls, and fix 
 yourselves in the glass, and scent your pocket- 
 handkerchers." 
 
 And Mrs. Crane bedewed her own kerchief 
 with some of the eau de Cologne of native man 
 ufacture, said on its label to be much superior 
 to the German article. 
 
 It was a relief to Mrs. and the Miss Cranes 
 when the bell rang and the next guests were 
 admitted. Deacon and Mrs. Soper, Deacon 
 Soper of the Rev. Mr. Fairweather's church, and 
 his lady. . Mrs. Deacon Soper was directed, of 
 course, to the ladies' dressing-room, and her hus 
 band to the other apartment, where gentlemen 
 were to leave their outside coats and hats. Then 
 came Mr. and Mrs. Briggs, and then the three 
 Miss Spinneys, then Silas Peckham, Head of 
 the Apollinean Institute, and Mrs. Peckham, and 
 more after them, until at last the ladies' dressing- 
 room got so full that one might have thought it 
 was a trap none of them could get out of. In 
 truth, they all felt a little awkwardly. Nobody 
 wanted to be first to venture down-stairs. At last 
 Mr. Silas Peckham thought it was time to make 
 a move for the parlor, and for this purpose pre 
 sented himself at the door of the ladies' dressing- 
 room. 
 
 " Lorindy, my dear!" he exclaimed to Mrs. 
 Peckham, " I think there can be no impropriety 
 in our joining the family down-stairs."
 
 ELSIE VEXXER. 121 
 
 Mrs. Peckham laid her large, flaccid arm in the 
 sharp angle made by the black sleeve which held 
 the bony limb her husband offered, and the two 
 took the stair and struck out for the parlor. The 
 ice was broken, and the dressing-room began to 
 empty itself into the spacious, lighted apartments 
 below. 
 
 Mr. Silas Peckham scaled into the room with 
 Mrs. Peckham alongside, like a shad convoying 
 a jelly-fish. 
 
 " Good evenin', Mrs. Sprowle ! I hope I see 
 you well this evenin'. How's your haalth, Col 
 onel Sprowle ? " 
 
 " Very well, much obleeged to you. Hope you 
 and your good lady are well. Much pleased to 
 see you. Hope you'll enjoy yourselves. We've 
 laid out to have everything in good shape, 
 spared no trouble nor ex" 
 
 " pense," said Silas Peckham. 
 
 Mrs. Colonel Sprowle, who, you remember, 
 was a Jordan, had nipped the Colonel's state 
 ment in the middle of the word Mr. Peckham 
 finished, with a look that jerked him like one 
 of those sharp twitches women keep giving a 
 horse when they get a chance to drive one. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Crane, Miss Ada Azuba, and 
 Miss Mahala Crane made their entrance. There 
 had been a discussion about the necessity and 
 propriety of inviting this family, the head of 
 which kept a small shop for hats and boots and 
 shoes. The Colonel's casting vote had carried
 
 122 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 it in the affirmative. How terribly the poor old 
 green de-laine did cut up in the blaze of so many 
 lamps and candles. 
 
 Deluded little wretch, male or female, in 
 
 town or country, going to your first great party, 
 how little you know the nature of the ceremony 
 in which you are to bear the part of victim! 
 What! are not these garlands and gauzy mists 
 and many-colored streamers which adorn you, is 
 not this music which welcomes you, this radi 
 ance that glows about you, meant solely for your 
 enjoyment, young miss of seventeen or eighteen 
 summers, now for the first time swimming into 
 the frothy, chatoyant, sparkling, undulating sea 
 of laces and silks and satins, and white-armed, 
 flower-crowned maidens struggling in their waves, 
 beneath the lustres that make the false summer 
 of the drawing-room? 
 
 Stop at the threshold! This is a hall of judg 
 ment you are entering ; the court is in session ; 
 and if you move five steps forward, you will be 
 at its bar. 
 
 There was a tribunal once in France, as you 
 may remember, called the Chambre Ardente, the 
 Burning Chamber. It was hung all round with 
 lamps, and hence its name. The burning cham 
 ber for the trial of young maidens is the blazing 
 ball-room. What have they full-dressed you, or 
 rather half-dressed you for, do you think? To 
 make you look pretty, of course ! Why have 
 they hung a chandelier above you, flickering all
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 123 
 
 over with flames, so that it searches you like the 
 noonday sun, and your deepest dimple cannot 
 hold a shadow ? To give brilliancy to the gay 
 scene, no doubt ! No, my dear ! Society is in 
 specting you, and it finds undisguised surfaces 
 and strong lights a convenience in the process. 
 The dance answers the purpose of the revolving 
 pedestal upon which the " White Captive " turns, 
 to show us the soft, kneaded marble, which looks 
 as if it had never been hard, in all its manifold 
 aspects of living loveliness. No mercy for you, 
 my love ! Justice, strict justice, you shall cer 
 tainly have, neither more nor less. For, look 
 you, there are dozens, scores, hundreds, with 
 whom you must be weighed in the balance ; 
 and you have got to learn that the " struggle 
 for life " Mr. Charles Darwin talks about reaches 
 to vertebrates clad in crinoline, as well as to mol- 
 lusks in shells, or articulates in jointed scales, or 
 anything that fights for breathing-room and food 
 and love in any coat of fur or feather! Happy 
 they who can flash defiance from bright eyes and 
 snowy shoulders back into the pendants of the 
 insolent lustres! 
 
 Miss Mahala Crane did not have these re 
 flections ; and no young girl ever did, or ever will, 
 thank Heaven ! Her keen eyes sparkled under 
 her plainly parted hair, and the green de-laine 
 moulded itself in those unmistakable lines of 
 natural symmetry in which Nature indulges a 
 small shopkeeper's daughter occasionally as well
 
 124 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 as a wholesale dealer's young ladies. She would 
 have liked a new dress as much as any other girl, 
 but she meant to go and have a good time at 
 any rate. 
 
 The guests were now arriving in the drawing- 
 room pretty fast, and the Colonel's hand began to 
 burn a good deal with the sharp squeezes which 
 many of the visitors gave it. Conversation, which 
 had begun like a summer-shower, in scattering 
 drops, was fast becoming continuous, and occa 
 sionally rising into gusty swells, with now and 
 then a broad-chested laugh from some Captain 
 or Major or other military personage, for it may 
 be noted that all large and loud men in the un- 
 paved districts bear military titles. 
 
 Deacon Soper came up presently, and entered 
 into conversation with Colonel Sprowle. 
 
 " I hope to see our pastor present this evenin'," 
 said the Deacon. 
 
 " I don't feel quite ' sure," the Colonel an 
 swered. " His dyspepsy has been bad on him 
 lately. He wrote to say, that, Providence per- 
 mittin', it would be agreeable to him to take a 
 part in the exercises of the evenin' ; but I mis 
 trusted he didn't mean to come. To tell the 
 truth, Deacon Soper, I rather guess he don't like 
 the idee of dancin', and some of the other little 
 arrangements." 
 
 " Well," said the Deacon, " I know there's 
 some condemns dancin'. I've heerd a good deal 
 of talk about it among the folks round. Some
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 125 
 
 have it that it never brings a blessin' on a house 
 to have dancin' in it. Judge Tileston died, you 
 remember, within a month after he had his great 
 ball, twelve year ago, and some thought it was in 
 the natur' of a judgment. I don't believe in any 
 of them notions. If a man happened to be struck 
 dead the night after he'd been givin' a ball," (the 
 Colonel loosened his black stock a little, and 
 winked and swallowed two or three times,) " I 
 shouldn't call it a judgment, I should call it a 
 coincidence. But I'm a little afraid our pastor 
 won't come. Somethin' or other's the matter 
 with Mr. Fairweather. I should sooner expect 
 to see the old Doctor come over out of the Ortho 
 dox parsonage-house." 
 
 " I've asked him," said the Colonel. 
 
 u Well ? " said Deacon Soper. 
 
 " He said he should like to come, but he didn't 
 know what his people would say. For his part, 
 he loved to see young folks havin' their sports 
 together, and very often felt as if he should like 
 to be one of 'em himself. ' But,' says I, ' Doc 
 tor, I don't say there won't be a little dancin'.' 
 ' Don't ! ' says he, ' for I want Letty to go,' (she's 
 his granddaughter that's been stayin' with him,) 
 ' and Letty 's mighty fond of dancin'. You know,' 
 says the Doctor, ' it isn't my business to settle 
 whether other people's children should dance or 
 not.' And the Doctor looked as if he should like 
 to rigadoon and sashy across as weh 1 as the young 
 one he was talkin' about. He's got blood in him,
 
 126 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 the old Doctor has. I wish our little man and 
 him would swop pulpits." 
 
 Deacon Soper started and looked up into the 
 Colonel's face, as if to see whether he was in 
 earnest. 
 
 Mr. Silas Peckham and his lady joined the 
 group. 
 
 " Is this to be a Temperance Celebration, Mrs. 
 Sprowle ? " asked Mr. Silas Peckham. 
 
 Mrs. Sprowle replied, " that there would be 
 lemonade and srub for those that preferred such 
 drinks, but that the Colonel had given folks to 
 understand that he didn't mean to set in judg 
 ment on the marriage in Canaan, and that those 
 that didn't like srub and such things would find 
 somethin' that would suit them better." 
 
 Deacon Soper's countenance assumed a certain 
 air of restrained cheerfulness. The conversation 
 rose into one of its gusty paroxysms just then. 
 Master H. Frederic got behind a door and began 
 performing the experiment of stopping and un 
 stopping his ears in rapid alternation, greatly 
 rejoicing in the singular effect of mixed conver 
 sation chopped very small, like the contents of a 
 mince-pie, or meat pie, as it is more forcibly 
 called in the deep-rutted villages lying along the 
 unsalted streams. All at once it grew silent just 
 round the door, where it had been loudest, and 
 the silence spread itself like a stain, till it hushed 
 everything but a few corner-duets. A dark, 
 sad-looking, middle-aged gentleman entered the
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 127 
 
 parlor, with a young lady on his arm, his 
 daughter, as it seemed, for she was not wholly 
 unlike him in feature, and of the same dark com 
 plexion. 
 
 " Dudley Venner ! " exclaimed a dozen people, 
 in startled, but half-suppressed tones. 
 
 " What can have brought Dudley out to-night? " 
 said Jefferson Buck, a young fellow, who had 
 been interrupted in one of the corner-duets which 
 he was executing in concert with Miss Susy Pet 
 ti ngill. 
 
 "How do I know, Jeff?" was Miss Susy's 
 answer. Then, after a pause, " Elsie made 
 him come, I guess. Go ask Dr. Kittredge ; he 
 knows all about 'em both, they say." 
 
 Dr. Kittredge, the leading physician of Rock- 
 land, was a shrewd old man, who looked pretty 
 keenly into his patients through his spectacles, 
 and pretty widely at men, women, and things in 
 general over them. Sixty-three years old, just 
 the year of the grand climacteric. A bald crown, 
 as every doctor should have. A consulting prac- 
 titioner's mouth ; that is, movable round the cor- 
 ners while the case is under examination, but 
 both corners well drawn down and kept so w 
 the final opinion is made up. In fact, the Doc 
 tor was often sent for to act as " caounsel," all 
 over the county, and beyond it. He kept three 
 or four horses, sometimes riding in the saddle, 
 commonly driving in a sulky, pretty fast, and 
 looking straight before him, so that people got
 
 128 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 out of the way of bowing to him as he passed 
 on the road. There was some talk about his not 
 being so long-sighted as other folks, but his old 
 patients laughed and looked knowing when this 
 was spoken of. 
 
 The Doctor knew a good many things besides 
 how to drop tinctures and shake out powders. 
 Thus, he knew a horse, and, what is harder to 
 understand, a horse-dealer, and was a match for 
 
 /Tiim. He knew what a nervous woman is, and 
 
 / how to manage her. He could tell at a glance 
 
 when she is in that condition of unstable equi- 
 
 l librium in which a rough word is like a blow to 
 
 V her, and the touch of unmagnetized fingers re- 
 \yerses all her nervous currents. It is not every 
 body that enters into the soul of Mozart's or 
 Beethoven's harmonies ; and there are vital sym 
 phonies in B flat, and other low, sad keys, which 
 a doctor may know as little of as a hurdy-gurdy 
 player of the essence of those divine musical mys 
 teries. The Doctor knew the difference between 
 what men say and what they mean as well as 
 most people. When he was listening to common 
 talk, he was in the habit of looking over his spec 
 tacles ; if he lifted his head so as to look through 
 them at the person talking, he was busier with 
 that person's thoughts than with his words. 
 
 Jefferson Buck was not bold enough to confront 
 the Doctor with Miss Susy's question, for he did 
 not look as if he were in the mood to answer 
 queries put by curious young people. His eyes
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 129 
 
 were fixed steadily on the dark girl, every move 
 ment of whom he seemed to follow. 
 
 She was, indeed, an apparition of wild beauty, 
 so unlike the girls about her that it seemed noth 
 ing more than natural, that, when she moved, the 
 groups should part to let her pass through them, 
 and that she should carry the centre of all looks 
 and thoughts with her. She was dressed to please 
 her own fancy, evidently, with small regard to the 
 modes declared correct by the Rockland milliners 
 and mantua-makers. Her heavy black hair lay 
 in a braided coil, with a long gold pin shot 
 through it like a javelin. Round her neck was 
 a golden torque, a round, cord-like chain, such as 
 the Gauls used to wear: the "Dying Gladiator" 
 has it. Her dress was a grayish watered silk ; her 
 collar was pinned with a flashing diamond brooch, 
 the stones looking as fresh as morning dew-drops, 
 but the silver setting of the past generation ; her 
 arms were bare, round, but slender rather than 
 large, in keeping with her lithe round figure. On 
 her wrists she wore bracelets : one was a cir 
 clet of enamelled scales ; the other looked as if it 
 might have been Cleopatra's asp, with its body 
 turned to gold and its eyes to emeralds. 
 
 Her father for Dudley Venner was her father 
 looked like a man of culture and breeding, but 
 melancholy and with a distracted air, as one 
 whose life had met some fatal cross or blight. 
 He saluted hardly anybody except his entertain 
 ers and the Doctor. One would have said, to
 
 130 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 look at him, that he was not at the party by 
 choice ; and it was natural enough to think, with 
 Susy Petti ngill, that it must have been a freak 
 of the dark girl's which brought him there, for he 
 had the air of a shy and sad-hearted recluse. 
 
 It was hard to say what could have brought 
 Elsie Venner to the party. Hardly anybody 
 seemed to know her, and she seemed not at all 
 disposed to make acquaintances. Here and there 
 was one of the older girls from the Institute, 
 but she appeared to have nothing in common 
 with them. Even in the school-room, it may be 
 remembered, she sat apart by her own choice, 
 and now in the midst of the crowd she made a 
 circle of isolation round herself. Drawing her 
 arm out of her father's, she stood against the 
 wall, and looked, with a strange, cold glitter in 
 her eyes, at the crowd which moved and babbled 
 before her. 
 
 The old Doctor came up to her by-and-by. 
 
 " Well, Elsie, I am quite surprised to find you 
 here. Do tell me how you happened to do such 
 a good-natured thing as to let us see you at 
 such a great party." 
 
 " It's been dull at the mansion-house," she said, 
 " and I wanted to get out of it. It's too lonely 
 there, there's nobody to hate since Dick's gone." 
 
 The Doctor laughed good-naturedly, as if this 
 were an amusing bit of pleasantry, but he lifted 
 his head and dropped his eyes a little, so as to 
 see her through his spectacles. She narrowed
 
 ELSIE TENNER. 131 
 
 her lids slightly, as one often sees a sleepy cat 
 narrow hers, somewhat as you may remember 
 our famous Margaret used to, if you remember 
 her at all, so that her eyes looked very small, 
 but bright as the diamonds on her breast. The 
 old Doctor felt very oddly as she looked at him ; 
 he did not like the feeling, so he dropped his head 
 and lifted his eyes and looked at her over his 
 spectacles again. 
 
 " And how have you all been at the mansion- 
 house ? " 'said the Doctor. 
 
 " Oh, well enough. But Dick's gone, and 
 there's nobody left but Dudley and I and the 
 people. I'm tired of it. What kills anybody 
 quickest, Doctor ? " Then, in a whisper, " I ran 
 away again the other day, you know." 
 
 " Where did you go ? " The Doctor spoke in 
 a low, serious tone. 
 
 " Oh, to the old place. Here, I brought this 
 for you." 
 
 The Doctor started as she handed him a flower 
 of the Atrag-ene Americana, for he knew that 
 there was only one spot where it grew, and that 
 not one where any rash foot, least of all a thin- 
 shod woman's foot, should venture. 
 
 " How long were you gone ? " said the Doctor. 
 
 " Only one night You should have heard the 
 horns blowing and the guns firing. Dudley was 
 frightened out of his wits. Old Sophy told him 
 she 'd had a dream, and that I should be found 
 in Dead-Man's Hollow, with a great rock lying
 
 132 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 on me. They hunted all over it, but they didn't 
 find me. I was farther up." 
 
 Doctor Kittredge looked cloudy and worried 
 while she was speaking, but forced a pleasant 
 professional smile, as he said cheerily, and as if 
 wishing to change the subject, 
 
 " Have a good dance this evening, Elsie. The 
 fiddlers are tuning up. Where 's the young mas 
 ter? Has he come yet? or is he going to be late, 
 with the other great folks ? " 
 
 The girl turned away without answering, and 
 looked toward the door. 
 
 The " great folks," meaning the mansion-house 
 gentry, were just beginning to come; Dudley 
 Venner and his daughter had been the first of 
 them. Judge Thornton, white-headed, fresh-faced, 
 as good at sixty as he was at forty, with a young 
 ish second wife, and one noble daughter, Arabella, 
 who, they said, knew as much law as her father, 
 a stately, Portia-like girl, fit for a premier's wife, 
 not like to find her match even in the great cities 
 she sometimes visited; the Trecothicks, the family 
 of a merchant, (in the larger sense,) who, having 
 made himself rich enough by the time he had 
 reached middle life, threw down his ledger as 
 Sylla did his dagger, and retired to make a little 
 paradise around him in one of the stateliest res 
 idences of the town, a 'family inheritance; the 
 Vaughans, an old Rockland race, descended from 
 its first settlers, Toryish in tendency in Revolu 
 tionary times, and barely escaping confiscation
 
 ELSIE VENNEK. 133 
 
 or worse; the Dunhams, a new family, dating 
 its gentility only as far back as the Honorable 
 Washington Dunham, M. C., but turning out a 
 clever boy or two that went to college, and some 
 showy girls with white necks and fat arms who 
 had picked up professional husbands : these were 
 the principal mansion-house people. All of them 
 had made it a point to come ; and as each of them 
 entered, it seemed to Colonel and Mrs. Sprowle 
 that the lamps burned up with a more cheerful 
 light, and that the fiddles which sounded from 
 the uncarpeted room were all half a tone higher 
 and half a beat quicker. 
 
 Mr. Bernard came in later than any of them ; 
 he had been busy with his new duties. He 
 looked well ; and that is saying a good deal ; for 
 nothing but a gentleman is endurable in full 
 dress. Hair that masses well, a head set on with 
 an air, a neckerchief tied cleverly by an easy, prac 
 tised hand, close-fitting gloves, feet well shaped 
 and well covered, these advantages can make 
 us forgive the odious sable broadcloth suit, which 
 appears to have been adopted by society on the 
 same principle that condemned all the Venetian 
 gondolas to perpetual and uniform blackness. Mr. 
 Bernard, introduced by Mr. Geordie, made his bow 
 to the Colonel and his lady and .to Miss Matilda, 
 from whom he got a particularly gracious curtsy, 
 and then began looking about him for acquaint 
 ances. He found two or three faces he knew, 
 many more strangers. There was Silas Peckham,
 
 134 ELSIE TENNER. 
 
 there was no mistaking him ; there was the 
 inelastic amplitude of Mrs. Peckham ; few of the 
 Apollinean girls, of course, they not being rec 
 ognized members of society, but there is one 
 with the flame in her cheeks and the fire in her 
 eyes, the girl of vigorous tints and emphatic out 
 lines, whom we saw entering the school-room the 
 other day. Old Judge Thornton has his eyes on 
 her, and the Colonel steals a look every now and 
 then at the red brooch which lifts itself so superb 
 ly into the light, as if he thought it a wonder 
 fully becoming ornament. Mr. Bernard himself 
 was not displeased with the general effect of the 
 rich-blooded school-girl, as she stood under the 
 bright lamps, fanning herself in the warm, lan 
 guid air, fixed in a kind of passionate surprise at 
 the new life which seemed to be flowering out in 
 her consciousness. Perhaps he looked at her 
 somewhat steadily, as some others had done ; at 
 any rate, she seemed to feel that she was looked 
 at, as people often do, and, turning her eyes sud 
 denly on him, caught his own on her face, gave 
 him a half-bashful smile, and threw in a blush 
 involuntarily which made it more charming. 
 
 " What can I do better," he said to himself, 
 " than have a dance with Rosa Milburn ? " So 
 he carried his handsome pupil into the next 
 room and took his place with her in a cotillon. 
 Whether the breath of the Goddess of Love 
 could intoxicate like the cup of Circe, whether 
 a woman is ever phosphorescent with the lumi-
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 135 
 
 nous vapor of life that she exhales, these and 
 other questions which relate to occult influences 
 exercised by certain women, we will not now 
 discuss. It is enough that Mr. Bernard was sen 
 sible of a strange fascination, not wholly new to 
 him, nor unprecedented in the history of human 
 experience, but always a revelation when it comes 
 over us for the first or the hundredth time, so 
 pale is the most recent memory by the side of 
 the passing moment with the flush of any new 
 born passion on its cheek. Remember that Na 
 ture makes every man love all women, and trusts 
 the trivial matter of special choice to the com 
 monest accident. 
 
 If Mr. Bernard had had nothing to distract his 
 attention, he might have thought too much about 
 his handsome partner, and then gone home and 
 dreamed about her, which is always dangerous, 
 and waked up thinking of her still, and then be 
 gun to be deeply interested in her studies, and 
 so on, through the whole syllogism which ends 
 in Nature's supreme quod erat demonstrandum. 
 What was there to distract him or disturb him ? 
 He did not know, but there was something. 
 This sumptuous creature, this Eve just within 
 the gate of an untried Paradise, untutored in the 
 ways of the world, but on tiptoe to reach the 
 fruit of the tree of knowledge, alive to the 
 moist vitality of that warm atmosphere palpitat 
 ing with voices and music, as the flower of some 
 dioecious plant which has grown in a lone corner,
 
 136 ELSJI. VKNNER. 
 
 and suddenly unfolding its corolla on some hot- 
 breathing June evening, feels that the air is per 
 fumed with strange odors and loaded with golden 
 dust wafted from those other blossoms with which 
 its double life is shared, this almost over-wom 
 anized woman might well have bewitched him, 
 but that he had a vague sense of a counter-charm. 
 It was, perhaps, only the same consciousness that 
 some one was looking at him which he himself 
 had just given occasion to in his .partner. Pres 
 ently, in one of the turns of the dance, he felt 
 his eyes drawn to a figure he had not distinctly 
 recognized, though he had dimly felt its presence, 
 and saw that Elsie Venner was looking at him 
 as if she saw nothing else but him. He was 
 not a nervous person, like the poor lady teacher, 
 yet the glitter of the diamond eyes affected him 
 strangely. It seemed to disenchant the air, so 
 full a moment before of strange attractions. He 
 became silent, and dreamy, as it were. The 
 round-limbed beauty at his side crushed her 
 gauzy draperies against him, as they trod the 
 figure of the dance together, but it was no more 
 to him than if an old nurse had laid her hand 
 on his sleeve. The young girl chafed at his 
 seeming neglect, and her imperious blood mount 
 ed into her cheeks ; but he appeared unconscious 
 of it. 
 
 " There is one of our young ladies I must 
 speak to," he said, and was just leaving his 
 partner's side.
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 137 
 
 " Four hands all round ! " shouted the first vi 
 olin, and Mr. Bernard found himself seized and 
 whirled in a circle out of which he could not es 
 cape, and then forced to " cross over," and then 
 to " dozy do," as the maestro had it, and when, 
 on getting back to his place, he looked for Elsie 
 Venner, she was gone. 
 
 The dancing went on briskly. Some of the 
 old folks looked on, others conversed in groups 
 and pairs, and so the evening wore along, until a 
 little after ten o'clock. About this time there 
 was noticed an increased bustle in the passages, 
 with a -considerable opening and shutting of 
 doors. Presently it began to be whispered about 
 that they were going to have supper. Many, 
 who had never been to any large party before, 
 held their breath for a moment at this announce 
 ment. It was rather with a tremulous interest 
 than with open hilarity that the rumor was gen 
 erally received. 
 
 One point the Colonel had entirely forgotten 
 to settle. It was a point involving not merely 
 propriety, but perhaps principle also, or at least 
 the good report of the house, and he had never 
 thought to arrange it. He took Judge Thornton 
 aside and whispered the important question to 
 him, in his distress of mind, mistaking pockets 
 and taking out his bandanna instead of his white 
 handkerchief to wipe his forehead. 
 
 "Judge," he said, " do you think, that, before 
 we commence refreshing ourselves at the tables,
 
 138 ELSIE VEXNER. 
 
 it would be the proper thing to crave a to 
 request Deacon Soper or some other elderly per 
 son to ask a blessing ? " 
 
 The Judge looked as grave as if he were about 
 giving the opinion of the Court in the great In 
 dia-rubber case. 
 
 " On the whole," he answered, after a pause, 
 " I should think it might, perhaps, be dispensed 
 with on this occasion. Young folks are noisy, 
 and it is awkward to have talking and laughing 
 going on while a blessing is being asked. Un 
 less a clergyman is present and makes a point 
 of it, I think it will hardly be expected." 
 
 The Colonel was infinitely relieved. " Judge, 
 will you take Mrs. Sprowle in to supper ? " And 
 the Colonel returned the compliment by offering 
 his arm to Mrs. Judge Thornton. 
 
 The door of the supper-roorn was now open, 
 and the company, following the lead of the host 
 and hostess, began to stream into it, until it was 
 pretty well filled. 
 
 There was an awful kind of pause. Many 
 were beginning to drop their heads and shut 
 their eyes, in anticipation of the usual petition 
 before a meal ; some expected the music to strike 
 up, others, that an oration would now be de 
 livered by the Colonel. 
 
 " Make yourselves at home, ladies and gentle 
 men," said the Colonel; " good things were made 
 to eat, and you 're welcome to all you see before 
 you."
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 139 
 
 So saying, he attacked a huge turkey which 
 stood at the head of the table ; and his example 
 being followed first by the bold, then by the 
 doubtful, and lastly by the timid, the clatter soon 
 made the circuit of the tables. Some were 
 shocked, however, as the Colonel had feared 
 they would be, at the want of the customary in 
 vocation. Widow Leech, a kind of relation, 
 who had to be invited, and who came with her 
 old, back-country-looking string of gold beads 
 round her neck, seemed to feel very serious about 
 it. 
 
 " If she'd ha' known that folks would begrutch 
 cravin' a blessin' over sech a heap o' provisions, 
 she'd rather ha' staid t' home. It was a bad 
 sign, when folks wasn't grateful for the baounties 
 of Providence." 
 
 The elder Miss Spinney, to whom she made 
 this remark, assented to it, at the same time 
 ogling a piece of frosted cake, which she pres 
 ently appropriated with great refinement of man 
 ner, taking it between her thumb and fore 
 finger, keeping the others well spread and the 
 little finger in extreme divergence, with a grace 
 ful undulation of the neck, and a queer little 
 sound in her throat, as of an m that wanted to 
 get out and perished in the attempt. 
 
 The tables now presented an animated spec 
 tacle. Young fellows of the more dashing sort, 
 with high stand-up collars and voluminous bows 
 to their neckerchiefs, distinguished themselves by
 
 140 ELSIE TENNER. 
 
 cutting up fowls and offering portions thereof to 
 the buxom girls these knowing ones had com 
 monly selected. 
 
 " A bit of the wing, Roxy, or of the under 
 limb ? " 
 
 The first laugh broke out at this, but it was 
 premature, a sporadic laugh, as Dr. Kittredge 
 would have said, which did not become epidemic. 
 People were very solemn as yet, many of them 
 being new to such splendid scenes, and crushed, 
 as it were, in the presence of so much crockery 
 and so many silver spoons, and such a variety of 
 unusual viands and beverages. When the laugh 
 rose around Roxy and her saucy beau, several 
 looked in that direction with an anxious expres 
 sion, as if something had happened, a lady 
 fainted, for instance, or a couple of lively fellows 
 come to high words. 
 
 " Young folks will be young folks," said Dea 
 con Soper. " No harm done. Least said soon 
 est mended." 
 
 u Have some of these shell-oysters ? " said the 
 Colonel to Mrs. Trecothick. 
 
 A delicate emphasis on the word shell implied 
 that the Colonel knew what was what. To the 
 New England inland native, beyond the reach 
 of the east winds, the oyster unconditioned, the 
 oyster absolute, without a qualifying adjective, 
 is the pickled oyster. Mrs. Trecothick, who knew 
 very well that an oyster long out of his shell (as 
 is apt to be the case with the rural bivalve) gets
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 141 
 
 homesick and loses his sprightliness, replied, with 
 the pleasantest smile in the world, that the chick 
 en she had been helped to was too delicate to be 
 given up even for the greater rarity. But the 
 word " shell-oysters " had been overheard ; and 
 there was a perceptible crowding movement tow 
 ards their newly discovered habitat, a large soup- 
 tureen. 
 
 Silas Peckham had meantime fallen upon an 
 other locality of these recent mollusks. He said 
 nothing, but helped himself freely, and made a 
 sign to Mrs. Peckham. 
 
 " Lorindy," he whispered, " shell-oysters ! " 
 
 And ladled them out to her largely, without 
 betraying any emotion, just as if they had been 
 the natural inland or pickled article. 
 
 After the more solid portion of the banquet 
 had been duly honored, the cakes and sweet 
 preparations of various kinds began to get their 
 share of attention. There were great cakes and 
 little cakes, cakes with raisins in them, cakes with 
 currants, and cakes without either ; there were 
 brown cakes and yellow cakes, frosted cakes, 
 glazed cakes, hearts and rounds, and jumbles, 
 which playful youth slip over the forefinger be 
 fore spoiling their annular outline. There were 
 moulds of blo'monje, of the arrowroot variety, 
 that being undistinguishable from such as is 
 made with Russia isinglass. There were jel 
 lies, which had been shaking, all the time the 
 young folks were dancing in the next room, as
 
 142 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 if they were balancing to partners. There were 
 built-up fabrics, called Charlottes, caky externally, 
 pulpy within ; there were also marangs, and like 
 wise custards, some of the indolent-fluid sort, 
 others firm, in which every stroke of the teaspoon 
 left a smooth, conchoidal surface like the fracture 
 of chalcedony, with here and there a little eye 
 like what one sees in cheeses. Nor was that 
 most wonderful object of domestic art called 
 trifle wanting, with its charming confusion of 
 cream and cake and almonds and jam and jelly 
 and wine and cinnamon and froth ; nor yet the 
 marvellous floating-island, name suggestive of 
 all that is romantic in the imaginations of youth 
 ful palates. 
 
 " It must have cost you a sight of work, to say 
 nothin' of money, to get all this beautiful confec 
 tionery made for the party," said Mrs. Crane to 
 Mrs. Sprowle. 
 
 " Well, it cost some consid'able labor, no 
 doubt," said Mrs. Sprowle. " Matilda and our 
 girls and I made 'most all the cake with our own 
 hands, and we all feel some tired ; but if folks get 
 what suits 'em, we don't begrudge the time nor 
 the work. But I do feel thirsty," said the poor 
 lady, " and I think a glass of srub would do my 
 throat good ; it's dreadful dry. Mr. Peckham, 
 would you be so polite as to pass me a glass 
 of srub ? " 
 
 Silas Peckham bowed with great alacrity, and 
 took from the table a small glass cup, containing
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 143 
 
 a fluid reddish in hue and subacid in taste. This 
 was srub, a beverage in local repute, of question 
 able nature, but suspected of owing its color and 
 sharpness to some kind of syrup derived from the 
 maroon-colored fruit of the sumac. There were 
 similar small cups on the table filled with lemon 
 ade, and here and there a decanter of Madeira 
 wine, of the Marsala kind, which some prefer to, 
 and many more cannot distinguish from, that 
 which comes from the Atlantic island. 
 
 " Take a glass of wine, Judge," said the Col 
 onel ; " here is an article that I rather think '11 
 suit you." 
 
 The Judge knew something of wines, and 
 could tell all the famous old Madeiras from 
 each other, "Eclipse," "Juno," the almost fab 
 ulously scarce and precious " White-top," and 
 the rest. He struck the nativity of the Mediter 
 ranean Madeira before it had fairly moistened 
 his lip. 
 
 " A sound wine, Colonel, and I should think 
 of a genuine vintage. Your very good health." 
 
 " Deacon Soper," said the Colonel, " here is 
 some Madary Judge Thornton recommends. 
 Let me fill you a glass of it." 
 
 The Deacon's eyes glistened. He was one of 
 those consistent Christians who stick firmly by 
 the first miracle and Paul's advice to Timothy. 
 
 " A little good wine won't hurt anybody," 
 said the Deacon. " Plenty, plenty, plenty. 
 There I " He had not withdrawn his glass, while
 
 144 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 the Colonel was pouring, for fear it should spill ; 
 and now it was running over. 
 
 It is very odd how all a man's philosophy 
 
 and theology are at the mercy of a few drops of 
 a fluid which the chemists say consists of nothing 
 but C 4, O 2, H 6. The Deacon's theology fell 
 off several points towards latitudinarianism in the 
 course of the next ten minutes. He had a deep 
 inward sense that everything was as it should be, 
 human nature included. The little accidents oi 
 humanity, known collectively to moralists as sin, 
 looked very venial to his growing sense of univer 
 sal brotherhood and benevolence. 
 
 " It will all come right," the Deacon said to 
 himself, " I feel a joyful conviction that every 
 thing is for the best. I am favored with a bless 
 ed peace of mind, and a very precious season of 
 good feelin' toward my fellow-creturs." 
 
 A lusty young fellow happened to make a 
 quick step backward just at that instant, and 
 put his heel, with his weight on top of it, upon 
 the Deacon's toes. 
 
 " Aigh ! What the d' d' didos are y' abaout 
 with them great huffs o' yourn ? " said the Dea 
 con, with an expression upon his features not 
 exactly that of peace and good-will to man. 
 The lusty young fellow apologized; but the 
 Deacon's face did not come right, and his the 
 ology backed round several points in the direc 
 tion of total depravity. 
 
 Some of the dashing young men in stand-up
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 145 
 
 collars and extensive neck-ties, encouraged by 
 Mr. Geordie, made quite free with the " Ma- 
 dary," and even induced some of the more styl 
 ish girls not of the mansion-house set, but of 
 the tip -top two-story families to taste a little. 
 Most of these young ladies made faces at it, and 
 declared it was " perfectly horrid," with that as 
 pect of veracity peculiar to their age and sex. 
 
 About this time a movement was made on 
 the part of some of the mansion-house people 
 to leave the supper-table. Miss Jane Treco- 
 thick had quietly hinted to her mother that she 
 had had enough of it. Miss Arabella Thornton 
 had whispered to her father that he had better 
 adjourn this court to the next room. There 
 were signs of migration, a loosening of peo 
 ple in their places, a looking about for arms 
 to hitch on to. 
 
 "Stop!" said the Colonel. "There's some 
 thing coming yet. Ice-cream ! " 
 
 The great folks saw that the play was not over 
 yet, and that it was only polite to stay and see 
 it out. The word " Ice-Cream " was no sooner 
 whispered than it passed from one to another all 
 down the tables. The effect xvas what might 
 have been anticipated. Many of the guests had 
 never seen this celebrated product of human skill, 
 and to all the two-story population of Rockland 
 it was the last expression of the art of pleasing 
 and astonishing the human palate. Its appear 
 ance had been deferred for several reasons : first, 
 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 146 ELSIE TENNER. 
 
 because everybody would have attacked it, if it 
 had come in with the other luxuries ; secondly, 
 because undue apprehensions were entertained 
 (owing to want of experience) of its tendency to 
 deliquesce and resolve itself with alarming rapid 
 ity into puddles of creamy fluid ; and, thirdly, 
 because the surprise would make a grand cli 
 max to finish off the banquet. 
 
 There is something so audacious in the con 
 ception of ice-cream, that it is not strange that 
 a population undebauched by the luxury of great 
 cities looks upon it with a kind of awe and 
 speaks of it with a certain emotion. This de 
 fiance of the seasons, forcing Nature to do her 
 work of congelation in the face of her sultriest 
 noon, might well inspire a timid mind with fear 
 lest human art were revolting against the Higher 
 Powers, and raise the same scruples which re 
 sisted the use of ether and chloroform in certain 
 contingencies. Whatever may be the cause, it 
 is well known that the announcement at any 
 private rural entertainment that there is to be 
 ice-cream produces an immediate and profound 
 impression. It may be remarked, as aiding this 
 impression, that exaggerated ideas are enter 
 tained as to the dangerous effects this con 
 gealed food may produce on persons not in the 
 most robust health. 
 
 There was silence as the pyramids of ice were 
 placed on the table, everybody looking on in ad 
 miration. The Colonel took a knife and assailed
 
 ELSIE VENKER. 147 
 
 the one at the head of the table. When he tried 
 to cut off a slice, it didn't seem to understand it, 
 however, and only tipped, as if it wanted to up 
 set. The Colonel attacked it on the other side 
 and it tipped just as badly the other way. It 
 was awkward for the Colonel. " Permit me," 
 said the Judge, and he took the knife and 
 struck a sharp slanting stroke which sliced off 
 a piece just of the right size, and offered it to 
 Mrs. Sprowle. This act of dexterity was much 
 admired by the company. 
 
 The tables were all alive again. 
 
 " Lorindy, here's a plate of ice-cream," said 
 Silas Peckham. 
 
 " Come, Mahaly," said a fresh-looking young 
 fellow with a saucerful in each hand, " here's 
 your ice-cream ; let's go in the corner and have 
 a celebration, us two." And the old green de 
 laine, with the young curves under it to make it sit 
 well, moved off as pleased apparently as if it had 
 been silk velvet with thousand-dollar laces over it. 
 
 " Oh, now, Miss Green ! do you think it's safe 
 to put that cold stuff into your stomick ? " said 
 the Widow Leech to a young married lady, 
 who, finding the air rather warm, thought a little 
 ice would cool her down very nicely. " It's jest 
 like eatin' snowballs. You don't look very rug 
 ged ; and I should be dreadful afeard, if I was 
 
 you" 
 
 " Carrie," said old Dr. Kittredge, who had over 
 heard this, " how well you're looking this even-
 
 148 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 ing ! . But you must be tired and heated ; sit 
 down here, and let me give you a good slice of 
 ice-cream. How you young folks do grow up, to 
 be sure ! I don't feel quite certain whether it's 
 ypu or your older sister, but I know it's somebody 
 I call Carrie, and that I've known ever since " 
 
 A sound something between a howl and an 
 oath startled the company and broke off the Doc 
 tor's sentence. Everybody's eyes turned in the 
 direction from which it came. A group instantly 
 gathered round the person who had uttered it, 
 who was no other than Deacon Soper. 
 
 " He's chokin' ! he's chokin' ! " was the first 
 exclamation, " slap him on the back ! " 
 
 Several heavy fists beat such a tattoo on his 
 spine that the Deacon felt as if at least one of his 
 vertebrae would come up. 
 
 " He's black in the face," said Widow Leech, 
 " he's swallered somethin' the wrong way. 
 Where's the Doctor ? let the Doctor get to him, 
 can't ye ? " 
 
 " If you will move, my good lady, perhaps I 
 can," said Doctor Kittredge, in a calm tone of 
 voice. " He's not choking, my friends," the 
 Doctor added immediately, when he got sight of 
 him. 
 
 " It's apoplexy, I told you so, don't you 
 see how red he is in the face ? " said old Mrs. 
 Peake, a famous woman for " nussin " sick folks, 
 determined to be a little ahead of the Doctor. 
 
 " It's not apoplexy," said Dr. Kittredge.
 
 ELSIE VEXXER. 149 
 
 What is it, Doctor ? what is it ? Will he die ? 
 Is he dead ? Here's his poor wife, the Widow 
 Soper that is to be, if she a'n't a'ready " 
 
 " Do be quiet, my good woman," said Dr. Kit- 
 tredge. " Nothing serious, I think, Mrs. Soper. 
 Deacon ! " 
 
 The sudden attack of Deacon Soper had begun 
 with the extraordinary sound mentioned above. 
 His features had immediately assumed an expres 
 sion of intense pain, his eyes staring wildly, and, 
 clapping his hands to his face, he had rocked his 
 head backward and forward in speechless agony. 
 
 At the Doctor's sharp appeal the Deacon lifted 
 his head. 
 
 " It's all right," said the Doctor, as soon as he 
 saw his face. " The Deacon had a smart attack 
 of neuralgic pain. That's all. Very severe, but 
 not at all dangerous." 
 
 The Doctor kept his countenance, but his dia 
 phragm was shaking the change in his waistcoat- 
 pockets with subterranean laughter. He had 
 looked through his spectacles and seen at once 
 what had happened. The Deacon, not being in 
 the habit of taking his nourishment in the con 
 gealed state, had treated the ice-cream as a pud 
 ding of a rare species, and, to make sure of doing 
 himself justice in its distribution, had taken a 
 large mouthful of it without the least precaution. 
 The consequence was a sensation as if a dentist 
 were killing the nerves of twenty-five teeth at 
 once with hot irons, or cold ones, which would 
 hurt rather worse.
 
 150 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 The Deacon swallowed something with a spas 
 modic effort, and recovered pretty soon and re 
 ceived the congratulations of his friends. There 
 were different versions of the expressions he had 
 used at the onset of his complaint, some of the 
 reported exclamations involving a breach of pro 
 priety, to say the least, but it was agreed that 
 a man in an attack of neuralgy wasn't to be 
 judged of by the rules that applied to other folks. 
 
 The company soon after this retired from the 
 supper-room. The mansion-house gentry took 
 their leave, and the two-story people soon fol 
 lowed. Mr. Bernard had staid an hour or two, 
 and left soon after he found that Elsie Venner and 
 her father had disappeared. As he passed by the 
 dormitory of the Institute, he saw a light glim 
 mering from one of its upper rooms, where the 
 lady teacher was still waking. His heart ached, 
 when he remembered, that, through all these hours 
 of gayety, or what was meant for it, the patient 
 girl had been at work in her little chamber ; and 
 he looked up at the silent stars, as if to see that 
 they were watching over her. The planet Mars 
 was burning like a red coal ; the northern con 
 stellation was slanting downward about its cen 
 tral point of flame ; and while he looked, a falling 
 star slid from the zenith and was lost. 
 
 He reached his chamber and was soon dreaming 
 over the Event of the Season.
 
 ELSIE TENNER. 151 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 THE MORNING AFTER. 
 
 COLONEL SPROWLE'S family arose late the next 
 morning. The fatigues and excitements of the 
 evening and the preparation for it were followed 
 by a natural collapse, of which somnolence was 
 a leading symptom. The sun shone into the 
 window at a pretty well opened angle when the 
 Colonel first found himself sufficiently awake to 
 address his yet slumbering spouse. 
 
 " Sally ! " said the Colonel, in a voice that was 
 a little husky, for he had finished off the even 
 ing with an extra glass or two of " Madary," and 
 had a somewhat rusty and headachy sense of re 
 newed existence, on greeting the rather advanced 
 dawn, "Sally!" 
 
 " Take care o' them custard-cups ! There they 
 go!" 
 
 Poor Mrs. Sprowle was fighting the party over 
 in her dream ; and as the visionary custard-cups 
 crashed down through one lobe of her brain into 
 another, she gave a start as if an inch of lightning 
 from a quart Leyden jar had jumped into one of 
 her knuckles with its sudden and lively poonk !
 
 152 ELSIE VEX NEB. 
 
 ." Sally ! " said the Colonel, " wake up, wake 
 up I What 'r' y' dreamin' abaout ? " 
 
 Mrs. Sprowle raised herself, by a sort of spasm, 
 sur son seant, as they say in France, up on end, 
 as we have it in New England. She looked first 
 to the left, then to the right, then straight before 
 her, apparently without seeing anything, and at 
 last slowly settled down, with her two eyes, blank 
 of any particular meaning, directed upon the 
 Colonel. 
 
 " What time is't ? " she said. 
 
 " Ten o'clock. What 'y' been dreamin' abaout ? 
 Y' giv a jump like a hoppergrass. Wake up, 
 wake up ! Th' party's over, and y' been asleep 
 all the mornin'. The party's over, I tell ye ! 
 Wake up!" 
 
 " Over ! " said Mrs. Sprowle, who began to de 
 fine her position at last, " over ! I should think 
 'twas time 'twas over! It's lasted a hundud year. 
 I've been workin' for that party longer 'n Methu 
 selah's lifetime, sence I been asleep. The pies 
 wouldn' bake, and the blo'monge wouldn' set, and 
 the ice-cream wouldn' freeze, and all the folks kep' 
 comin' 'n' comin' 'n' comin', everybody I ever 
 knew in all my life, some of 'em 's been dead 
 this twenty year 'n' more, 'n' nothin' for 'em to 
 eat nor drink. The fire wouldn' burn to cook 
 anything, all we could do. We blowed with the 
 belluses, 'n' we stuffed in paper 'n' pitch-pine kin- 
 dlin's, but nothin' could make that fire burn ; 'n' 
 all the time the folks kep' comin', as if they'd
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 153 
 
 never stop, V nothin' for 'em but empty dishes, 
 'n' all the borrowed chaney slippin' round on the 
 waiters 'n' chippin' 'n' crackin', I wouldn' go 
 through what I been through t'-night for all th' 
 money in th' Bank, I do believe it's harder t' 
 have a party than t' " 
 
 Mrs. Sprowle stated the case strongly. 
 
 The Colonel said he didn't know how that 
 might be. She was a better judge than he was. 
 It was bother enough, anyhow, and he was glad 
 that it was over. After this, the worthy pair com 
 menced preparations for rejoining the waking 
 world, and in due time proceeded down-stairs. 
 
 Everybody was late that morning, and nothing 
 had got put to rights. The house looked as if a 
 small army had been quartered in it over night. 
 The tables were of course in huge disorder, after 
 the protracted assault they had undergone. There 
 had been a great battle evidently, and it had gone 
 against the provisions. Some points had been 
 stormed, and all their defences annihilated, but 
 here and there were centres of resistance which 
 had held out against ah 1 attacks, large rounds 
 of beef, and solid loaves of cake, against which 
 the inexperienced had wasted their energies in 
 the enthusiasm of youth or uninformed maturity, 
 while the longer-headed guests were making dis 
 coveries of " shell-oysters " and " patridges " and 
 similar delicacies. 
 
 The breakfast was naturally of a somewhat 
 fragmentary character. A chicken that had lost
 
 154 ELSIE VENNKi:. 
 
 his legs in the service of the preceding campaign 
 was once more put on duty. A great ham stuck 
 with cloves, as Saint Sebastian was with arrows, 
 was again offered for martyrdom. It would have 
 been a pleasant sight for a medical man of a 
 speculative turn to have seen the prospect before 
 the Colonel's family of the next week's breakfasts, 
 dinners, and suppers. The trail that one of these 
 great rural parties leaves after it is one of its most 
 formidable considerations. Every door-handle in 
 the house is suggestive of sweetmeats for the 
 next week, at least. The most unnatural articles 
 of diet displace the frugal but nutritions food of 
 unconvulsed periods of existence. If there is a 
 walking infant about the house, it will certainly 
 have a more or less fatal fit from overmuch of 
 some indigestible delicacy. Before the week is 
 out, everybody will be tired to death of sugary 
 forms of nourishment and long to see the last of 
 the remnants of the festival. 
 
 The family had not yet arrived at this condi 
 tion. On the contrary, the first inspection of the 
 tables suggested the prospect of days of unstinted 
 luxury ; and the younger portion of the house 
 hold, especially, were in a state of great excite 
 ment as the account of stock was taken with 
 reference to future internal investments. Some 
 curious facts came to light during these re 
 searches. 
 
 " Where's all the oranges gone to ? " said Mrs. 
 Sprowle. " I expected there'd be ever so many
 
 ELSIE VENNEK. 155 
 
 of 'em left. I didn't see many of the folks eat- 
 in' oranges. Where's the skins of 'em ? There 
 ought to be six dozen orange-skins round on the 
 plates, and there a'n't one dozen. And all the 
 small cakes, too, and all the sugar things that was 
 stuck on the big cakes. Has anybody counted 
 the spoons ? Some of 'em got swallered, perhaps. 
 I hope they was plated ones, if they did ! " 
 
 The failure of the morning's orange-crop and 
 the deficit in other expected residual delicacies 
 were not very difficult to account for. In many 
 ( of the two-story Rockland families, and in those 
 favored households of the neighboring villages 
 whose members had been invited to the great 
 party, there was a very general excitement among 
 the younger people on the morning after the great 
 event. " Did y' bring home somethin' from the 
 party ? What is it ? What is it ? Is it frut- 
 cake ? Is it nuts and oranges and apples ? Give 
 me some ! Give me some ! " Such a concert of 
 treble voices uttering accents like these had not 
 been heard since the great Temperance Festival 
 with the celebrated " eolation " in the open air 
 under the trees of the Parnassian Grove, as the 
 place was christened by the young ladies of the 
 Institute. The cry of the children was not in 
 vain. From the pockets of demure fathers, from 
 the bags of sharp-eyed spinsters, from the folded 
 handkerchiefs of light-fingered sisters, from the 
 tall hats of sly-winking brothers, there was a 
 resurrection of the missing oranges and cakes and
 
 156 KLSIIC VKXXER. 
 
 sugar -things in many a rejoicing family-circle, 
 enough to astonish the most hardened " caterer " 
 that ever contracted to feed a thousand people 
 under canvas. 
 
 The tender recollection of those dear little ones 
 whom extreme youth or other pressing considera 
 tions detain from scenes of festivity a trait of 
 affection by no means uncommon among our 
 thoughtful people dignifies those social meet 
 ings where it is manifested, and sheds a ray of 
 sunshine on our common nature. It is " an oasis 
 in the desert," to use the striking expression of , 
 the last year's " Valedictorian " of the Apollinean 
 Institute. In the midst of so much that is purely 
 selfish, it is delightful to meet such disinterested 
 care for others. When a large family of children 
 are expecting a parent's return from an entertain 
 ment, it will often require great exertions on his 
 part to freight himself so as to meet their reasona 
 ble expectations. A few rules are worth remem 
 bering by all who attend anniversary dinners in 
 Faneuil Hall or elsewhere. Thus : Lobsters' 
 claws are always acceptable to children of all 
 ages. Oranges and apples are to be taken one 
 at a time, until the coat-pockets begin to become 
 inconveniently heavy. Cakes are injured by sit 
 ting upon them ; it is, therefore, well to carry a 
 stout tin box of a size to hold as many pieces as 
 there are children in the domestic circle. A very 
 pleasant amusement, at the close of one of these 
 banquets, is grabbing for the flowers with which
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 157 
 
 the table is embellished. These will please the 
 ladies at home very greatly, and, if the children 
 are at the same time abundantly supplied with 
 fruits, nuts, cakes, and any little ornamental arti 
 cles of confectionery which are of a nature to.be 
 unostentatiously removed, the kind-hearted parent 
 will make a whole household happy, without 
 any additional expense beyond the outlay for his 
 ticket. 
 
 There were fragmentary delicacies enough left, 
 of one kind and another, at any rate, to make all 
 the Colonel's family uncomfortable for the next 
 week. It bid fair to take as long to get rid of the 
 remains of the great party as it had taken to make 
 ready for it. 
 
 In the mean time Mr. Bernard had been dream 
 ing, as young men dream, of gliding shapes with 
 bright eyes and burning cheeks, strangely blended 
 with red planets and hissing meteors, and, shining 
 over all, the white, unwandering star of the North, 
 girt with its tethered constellations. 
 
 After breakfast he walked into the parlor, where 
 he found Miss Darley. She was alone, and, hold 
 ing a school-book in her hand, was at work with 
 one of the morning's lessons. She hardly noticed 
 him as he entered, being very busy with her book, 
 and he. paused a moment before speaking, and 
 looked at her with a kind of reverence. It would 
 not have been strictly true to call her beautiful. 
 For years, since her earliest womanhood, 
 those slender hands had taken the bread which
 
 158 ELSIE VEXXER. 
 
 repaid the toil of heart and brain from the coarse* 
 palms which offered it in the world's rude market. 
 It was not for herself alone that she had bartered 
 away the life of her youth, that she had breathed 
 the hot air of school-rooms, that she had forced 
 her intelligence to posture before her will, as the 
 exigencies of her place required, waking to 
 mental labor, sleeping to dream of problems, 
 rolling up the stone of education for an endless 
 twelvemonth's term, to find it at the bottom of 
 the hill again when another year called her to its 
 renewed duties, schooling her temper in unend 
 ing inward and outward conflicts, until neither 
 dulness nor obstinacy nor ingratitude nor inso 
 lence could reach her serene self-possession. Not 
 for herself alone. Poorly as her prodigal labors 
 were repaid in proportion to the waste of life 
 they cost, her value was too well established to 
 leave her without what, under other circumstances, 
 would have been a more than sufficient compensa 
 tion. But there were others who looked to her in 
 their need, and so the modest fountain which 
 might have been filled to its brim was continually 
 drained through silent-flowing, hidden sluices. 
 
 Out of such a life, inherited from a race which 
 had lived in conditions not unlike her own, beauty, 
 in the common sense of the term, coujd hardly 
 find leisure to develop and shape itself, j For it 
 must be remembered, that symmetry and elegance 
 of features and figure, like perfectly formed crys 
 tals in the mineral world, are reached only by in-
 
 ELSIE VENXEK. 159 
 
 suring a certain necessary repose to individuals 
 and to generations.] Human beauty is an agri 
 cultural product in the country, growing up in 
 men and women as in corn and cattle, where the 
 soil is good. It is a luxury almost monopolized 
 by the rich in cities, bred under glass like their 
 forced pine-apples and peaches. Both in city and 
 country, the evolution of the physical harmonies 
 which make music to our eyes requires a combi 
 nation of favorable circumstances, of which alter 
 nations of unburdened tranquillity with intervals 
 of varied excitement of mind and body are among 
 the most important. Where sufficient excitement 
 is wanting, as often happens in the country, the 
 features, however rich in red and white, get heavy, 
 and the movements sluggish ; where excitement 
 is furnished in excess, as is frequently the case in 
 cities, the contours and colors are impoverished, 
 and the nerves begin to make their existence 
 known to the consciousness, as the face very soon 
 jnforms us. 
 
 Helen Darley could not, in the nature of things, 
 have possessed the kind of beauty which pleases 
 the common taste. Her eye was calm, sad-look 
 ing, her features very still, except when her pleas* 
 ant smile changed them for a moment, all her 
 outlines were delicate, her voice was very gentle, 
 but somewhat subdued by years of thoughtful 
 labor, and on her smooth forehead one little 
 hinted line whispered already that Care was be 
 ginning to mark the trace which Time sooner or
 
 160 ELSIE VEXNER. 
 
 later would make a furrow. She could not be a 
 beauty ; if she had been, it would have been 
 much harder for many persons to be interested in 
 her. For, although in the abstract we all love 
 beauty, and although, if we were sent naked 
 souls into some ultramundane warehouse of soul 
 less bodies and told to select one to our liking, we 
 should each choose a handsome one, and never 
 think of the consequences, it is quite certain 
 that beauty carries an atmosphere of repulsion as 
 well as of attraction with it, alike in both sexes. 
 We may be well assured that there are many per 
 sons who no more think of specializing their love 
 of the other sex upon one endowed with signal 
 beauty, than they think of wanting great dia 
 monds or thousand-dollar horses. INo man or 
 woman can appropriate beauty without paying 
 for it/ in endowments, in fortune, in position, 
 in self-surrender, or other valuable stock ; and 
 there are a great many who are too poor, too 
 ordinary, too humble, too busy, too proud, to pay 
 any of these prices for it. So the unbeautiful 
 get many more lovers than the beauties ; only, as 
 there are more of them, their lovers are spread 
 thinner and do not make so much show. 
 
 The young master stood looking at Helen Dar- 
 ley with a kind of tender admiration. She was 
 such a picture of the martyr by the slow social 
 combustive process, that it almost seemed to him 
 he could see a pale lambent nimbus round her 
 head.
 
 ELSIE VENNEK. 161 
 
 " I did not see you at the great party last even 
 ing," he said, presently. 
 
 She looked up and answered, " No. I have 
 not much taste for such large companies. Be 
 sides, I do not feel as if my time belonged to me 
 after it has been paid for. There is always some 
 thing to do, some lesson or exercise, and it so 
 happened, I was very busy last night with the 
 new problems in geometry. I hope you had a 
 good time." 
 
 " Very. Two or three of our girls were there. 
 Rosa Mil burn. What a beauty she is ! I won 
 der what she feeds on ! Wine and musk and 
 chloroform and coals of fire, I believe ; I didn't 
 think there was such color and flavor in a woman 
 outside the tropics." 
 
 Miss Darley smiled rather faintly ; the imagery 
 was not just to her taste \\femineity often finds it 
 very hard to accept the fact of muliebrity. I 
 
 Was " ? ' 
 
 She stopped short ; but her question had asked 
 itself. 
 
 " Elsie there ? She was, for an hour or so. 
 She looked frightfully handsome. I meant to 
 have spoken to her, but she slipped away before I 
 knew it." 
 
 " I thought she meant to go to the party," said 
 Miss Darley. Did she look at you ? " 
 
 " She did. Why ? " 
 
 " And you did not speak to her? " 
 
 " No. I should have spoken to her, but she 
 
 VOL. I. 11
 
 162 ELSIE VEXNER. 
 
 was gone when I looked for her. A strange creat 
 ure ! Isn't there an odd sort of fascination about 
 her ? You have not explained all the mystery 
 about the girl. What does she come to this 
 school for ? She seems to do pretty much as she 
 likes about studying." 
 
 Miss Darley answered in very low tones. " It 
 was a fancy of hers to come, and they let her 
 have her way. I don't know what there is about 
 her, except that she seems to take my life out of 
 me when she looks at me. I don't like to ask 
 other people about our girls. She says very little 
 to anybody, and studies, or makes believe to study, 
 almost what she likes. I don't know what she 
 is," (Miss Darley laid her hand, trembling, on the 
 young master's sleeve,) " but I can tell when she 
 is in the room without seeing or hearing her. Oh, 
 Mr. Langdon, I am weak and nervous, and no 
 doubt foolish, but if there were women now, 
 as in the days of our Saviour, possessed of devils, 
 I should think there was something not human 
 looking out of Elsie Venner's eyes ! " 
 
 The poor girl's breast rose and fell tumultuously 
 as she spoke, and her voice labored, as if some 
 obstruction were rising in her throat. 
 
 A scene might possibly have come of it, but the 
 door opened. Mr. Silas Peckham. Miss Darley 
 got away as soon as she well could. 
 
 " Why did not Miss Darley go to the party last 
 evening ? " said Mr. Bernard. 
 
 " Well, the fact is," answered Mr. Silas Peck-
 
 ELSIE VESTNER. 163 
 
 ham, " Miss Barley, she 's pooty much took up 
 with the school. She's an industris young wom 
 an, yis, she is industris, but perhaps she a'n't 
 quite so spry a worker^ as some. Maybe, consid- 
 erin' she's paid for her time, she isn't fur out o' 
 the way in occoopyin' herself evenin's, that is, 
 if so be she a'n't smart enough to finish up all her 
 work in the daytime. Edoocation is the great busi 
 ness of the Institoot. Amoosements are objec's 
 of a secondary natur', accordin' to my v'oo." 
 [The unspellable pronunciation of this word is 
 the touchstone of New England Brahminism.] 
 
 Mr. Bernard drew a deep breath, his thin nos 
 trils dilating, as if the air did not rush in fast 
 enough to cool his blood, while Silas Peckham 
 was speaking. The Head of the Apollinean In 
 stitute delivered himself of these judicious senti 
 ments in that peculiar acid, penetrating tone, 
 thickened with a nasal twang, which not rarely 
 becomes hereditary after three or four generations 
 raised upon east winds, salt fish, and large, white- 
 bellied, pickled cucumbers. He spoke deliberate 
 ly, as if weighing his words well, so that, during 
 his few remarks, Mr. Bernard had time for a men 
 tal accompaniment with variations, accented by 
 certain bodily changes, which escaped Mr. Peck- 
 ham's observation. First there was a feeling of 
 disgust and shame at hearing Helen Darley 
 spoken of like a dumb working animal. That 
 sent the blood up into his cheeks. Then the slur 
 upon her probable want of force her incapacity,
 
 164 ELSIE VEXNER. 
 
 who made the character of the school and left 
 this man to pocket its profits sent a thrill of 
 the old Wentworth fire through him, so that his 
 muscles hardened, his hands closed, and he took 
 the measure of Mr. Silas Peckham, to see if his 
 head would strike the wall in case he went over 
 backwards all of a sudden. This would not do, 
 of course, and so the thrill passed off and the 
 muscles softened again. Then came that state 
 of tenderness in the heart, overlying wrath in the 
 stomach, in which the eyes grow moist like a 
 woman's, and there is also a great boiling-up of 
 objectionable terms out of the deep-water vocabu 
 lary, so that Prudence and Propriety and all the 
 other pious Ps have to jump upon the lid of 
 speech to keep them from boiling over into fierce 
 articulation. All this was internal, chiefly, and 
 of course not recognized by Mr. Silas Peckham. 
 The idea, that any full-grown, sensible man 
 should have any other notion than that of getting 
 the most work for the least money out of his as 
 sistants, had never suggested itself to him. 
 
 Mr. Bernard had gone through this paroxysm, 
 and cooled down, in the period while Mr. Peck- 
 ham was uttering these words in his thin, shal 
 low whine, twanging up into the frontal sinuses. 
 What was the use of losing his temper and 
 throwing away his place, and so, among the con 
 sequences which would necessarily -follow, leav 
 ing the poor lady- teacher without a friend to 
 stand by her ready to lay his hand on the grand-
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 165 
 
 inquisitor before the windlass of his rack had 
 taken one turn too many ? 
 
 " No doubt, Mr. Peckham," he said, in a grave, 
 calm voice, " there is a great deal of work to be 
 done in the school ; but perhaps we can distrib 
 ute the duties a little more evenly after a time. 
 I shall look over the girls' themes myself, after 
 this week. Perhaps there will be some other 
 parts of her labor that I can take on myself. 
 We can arrange a new programme of studies 
 and recitations." 
 
 " We can do that," said Mr. Silas Peckham. 
 " But I don't propose mater'lly alterin' Miss Bar 
 ley's dooties. I don't think she works to hurt 
 herself. Some of the Trustees have proposed 
 interdoosin' new branches of study, and I expect 
 you will be pooty much occoopied with the doo 
 ties that belong to your place. On the Sahbath 
 you will be able to attend divine service three 
 times, which is expected of our teachers. I shall 
 continoo myself to give Sahbath Scriptur'-read- 
 in's to the young ladies. That is a solemn dooty 
 I can't make up my mind to commit to other 
 people. My teachers enjoy the Lord's day as a 
 day of rest. In it they do no manner of work, 
 except in cases of necessity or mercy, such as 
 fillin' out diplomas, or when we git crowded jest 
 at the end of a term, or when there is an extry 
 number of p'oopils, or other Providential call to 
 dispense with the ordinance." 
 
 Mr. Bernard had a fine glow in his cheeks by
 
 166 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 this time, doubtless kindled by the thought of 
 the kind consideration Mr. Peckham showed for 
 his subordinates in allowing them the between- 
 meeting-time on Sundays except for some special 
 reason. But the morning was wearing away ; 
 so he went to the school-room, taking leave very 
 properly of his respected principal, who soon took 
 his hat and departed. 
 
 Mr. Peckham visited certain " stores " or shops, 
 where he made inquiries after various articles in 
 the provision-line, and effected a purchase or two. 
 Two or three barrels of potatoes, which had 
 sprouted in a promising way, he secured at a 
 bargain. A side of feminine beef was also ob 
 tained at a low figure. He was entirely satisfied 
 with a couple of barrels of flour, which, being in 
 voiced " slightly damaged," were to be had at a 
 reasonable price. 
 
 After this, Silas Peckham felt in good spirits. 
 He had done a pretty stroke of business. It 
 came into his head whether he might not follow 
 it up with a still more brilliant speculation. So 
 he turned his steps in the direction of Colonel 
 Sprowle's. 
 
 It was now eleven o'clock, and the battle-field 
 of last evening was as we left it. Mr. Peckham's 
 visit was unexpected, perhaps not very well timed, 
 but the Colonel received him civilly. 
 
 " Beautifully lighted, these rooms last night! " 
 said Mr.' Peckham. " Winter-strained ? " 
 
 The Colonel nodded.
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 167 
 
 " How much do you pay for your winter- 
 strained ? " 
 
 The Colonel told him the price. 
 
 " Very hahnsome supper, very hahnsome ! 
 Nothin' ever seen like it in Rockland. Must 
 have been a great heap of things left over." 
 
 The compliment was not ungrateful, and the 
 Colonel acknowledged it by smiling and saying, 
 " I should think the' was a trifle ! Come and 
 look." 
 
 When Silas Peckham saw how many delica 
 cies had survived the evening's conflict, his com 
 mercial spirit rose at once to the point of a 
 proposal. 
 
 " Colonel Sprowle," said he, " there's meat and 
 cakes and pies and pickles enough on that table 
 to spread a hahnsome eolation. If you'd like to 
 trade reasonable, I think perhaps I should be 
 willin' to take 'em off your hands. There's been 
 a talk about our havin' a celebration in the Par 
 nassian Grove, and I think I could work in what 
 your folks don't want and make myself whole by 
 chargin' a small sum for tickets. Broken meats, 
 of course, a'n't of the same valoo as fresh pro 
 visions ; so I think you might be willin' to trade 
 reasonable." 
 
 Mr. Peckham paused and rested on his propo 
 sal. It would not, perhaps, have been very ex 
 traordinary, if Colonel Sprowle had entertained 
 the proposition. There is no telling beforehand 
 how such things will strike people. It didn't
 
 168 ELSIE VKXXKR. 
 
 happen to strike the Colonel favorably. He had 
 a little red-blooded manhood in him. 
 
 " Sell you them things to make a eolation out 
 of?" the Colonel replied. "Walk up to that 
 table, Mr. Peckham, and help yourself! Fill 
 your pockets, Mr. Peckham ! Fetch a basket, 
 and our hired folks shall fill it full for ye ! Send a 
 cart, if y' like, V carry off them leavin's to make 
 a celebration for your pupils with ! Only let me 
 tell ye this : as sure's my name's Hezekiah 
 Spraowle, you'll be known through the taown 
 'n' through the caounty, from that day forrard, as 
 the Principal of the Broken- Victuals Institoot ! " 
 
 Even provincial human-nature sometimes has 
 a touch of sublimity about it. Mr. Silas Peck- 
 ham had gone a little deeper than he meant, and 
 come upon the " hard pan," as the well-diggers 
 call it, of the Colonel's character, before he thought 
 of it. A militia-colonel standing on his senti 
 ments is not to be despised. That was shown 
 pretty well in New England two or three gen 
 erations ago. There were a good many plain offi 
 cers that talked about their "rigiment" and their 
 " caounty " who knew very well how to say 
 " Make ready ! " " Take aim ! " " Fire ! " in 
 the face of a line of grenadiers with bullets in 
 their guns and bayonets on them. And though 
 a rustic uniform is not always unexceptionable 
 in its cut and trimmings, yet there was many an 
 ill-made coat in those old times that was good 
 enough to be shown to the enemy's front rank,
 
 ELSIE VENTSTER. 169 
 
 too often to be left on the field with a round hole 
 in its left lapel that matched another going right 
 through the brave heart of the plain country cap 
 tain or major or colonel who was buried in it 
 under the crimson turf. 
 
 Mr. Silas Peckham said little or nothing. His 
 sensibilities were not acute, but he perceived that 
 he had made a miscalculation. He hoped that 
 there was no offence, thought it might have 
 been mutooally agreeable, conclooded he would 
 give up the idee of a eolation, and backed him 
 self out as if unwilling to expose the less guarded 
 aspect of his person to the risk of accelerating 
 impulses. 
 
 The Colonel shut the door, cast his eye on 
 the toe of his right boot, as if it had had a strong 
 temptation, looked at his watch, then round 
 the room, and, going to a cupboard, swallowed a 
 glass of deep-red brandy and water to compose 
 his feelings.
 
 170 ELSIE VENDER. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE DOCTOR ORDERS THE BEST SULKY. 
 (With a Digression on "Hired Help") 
 
 " ABEL ! Slip Cassia into the new sulky, and 
 fetch her round." 
 
 Abel was Dr. Kittredge's hired man. He was 
 born in New Hampshire, a queer sort of a State, 
 with fat streaks of soil and population where 
 they breed giants in mind and body, and lean 
 streaks which export imperfectly nourished young 
 men with promising but neglected appetites, who 
 may be found in great numbers in all the large 
 towns, or could be until of late years, when they 
 have been half driven out of their favorite base 
 ment-stories by foreigners, and half coaxed away 
 from them by California. New Hampshire is in 
 more than one sense the Switzerland of New 
 England. The " Granite State " being naturally 
 enough deficient in pudding-stone, its children are 
 apt to wander southward in search of that de 
 posit, in the unpetrified condition. 
 
 Abel Stebbins was a good specimen of that 
 extraordinary hybrid or mule between democ-
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 171 
 
 racy and chrysocracy, a native-born New-England 
 serving-man. The Old World has nothing at all 
 like him. He is at once an emperor and a sub 
 ordinate. In one hand he holds one five-millionth 
 part (be the same more or less) of the power that 
 sways the destinies of the .Great Republic. His 
 other hand is in your boot, which he is about to 
 polish. It is impossible to turn a fellow-citizen 
 whose vote may make his master say, rather, 
 employer Governor or President, or who may 
 be one or both himself, into a flunky. That 
 article must be imported ready-made from other 
 centres of civilization. When a New Englander 
 has lost his self-respect as a citizen and as a man, 
 he is demoralized, and cannot be trusted with the 
 money to pay for a dinner. 
 
 It may be supposed, therefore, that this frac 
 tional emperor, this continent-shaper, ^finds his 
 position awkward when he goes into service, and 
 that his employer is apt to find it still more em 
 barrassing. It is always under protest that the 
 hired man does his duty. Every act of service is 
 subject to the drawback, " I am as good as you 
 are." This is so common, at least, as almost to 
 be the rule, and partly accounts for the rapid dis 
 appearance of the indigenous "domestic" from 
 the basements above mentioned. Paleontologists 
 will by-and-by be examining the floors of our 
 kitchens for tracks of the extinct native spe 
 cies of serving-man. The female of the same 
 race is fast dying out ; indeed, the time is not far
 
 172 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 distant when all the varieties of young woman 
 will have vanished from New England, as the 
 dodo has perished in the Mauritius. The young 
 lady is all that we shall have left, and the mop 
 and duster of the last Alrnira or Lo'izy will be 
 stared at by generations of Bridgets and Noras 
 as that famous head and foot of the lost bird are 
 stared at in the Ashmolean Museum. 
 
 Abel Stebbins, the Doctor's man, took the true 
 American view of his difficult position. He sold 
 his time to the Doctor, and, having sold it, he took 
 care to fulfil his half of the bargain. The Doctor, 
 on his part, treated him, not like a gentleman, 
 because one does not order a gentleman to bring 
 up his horse or run his errands, but he treated him 
 like a man. Every order was given in courteous 
 terms. His reasonable privileges were respected 
 as much as if they had been guaranteed under 
 hand and seal. The Doctor lent him books from 
 his own library, and gave him all friendly coun 
 sel, as if he were a son or a younger brother. 
 
 Abel had Revolutionary blood in his veins, and 
 though he saw fit to " hire out," he could never 
 stand the word " servant," or consider himself the 
 inferior one of the two high contracting parties. 
 When he came to live with the Doctor, he made 
 Up his mind he would dismiss the old gentleman, 
 if he did not behave afccording to his notions of 
 propriety. . But he soon found that the Doctor 
 was one of the right sort, and so determined to 
 keep him. The Doctor soon found, on his side,
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 173 
 
 that he had a trustworthy, intelligent fellow, who 
 would be invaluable to him, if he only let him 
 have his own way of doing what was to be done 
 
 The Doctor's hired ma'n had not the manners 
 of a French valet. He was grave and taciturn 
 for the most part, he .never bowed and rarely 
 smiled, but was always at work in the daytime 
 and always reading in the evening. He was hos 
 tler, and did all the housework that a man could 
 properly do, would go to the door or " tend table," 
 bought the provisions for the family, in short, 
 did almost everything for them but get their cloth 
 ing. There was no office in a perfectly appointed 
 household, from that of steward down to that of 
 stable-boy, which he did not cheerfully assume. 
 His round of work not consuming all his energies, 
 he must needs cultivate the Doctor's garden, which 
 he kept in one perpetual bloom, from the blowing 
 of the first crocus to the fading of the last dahlia. 
 
 This garden was Abel's poem. Its half-dozen 
 beds were so many cantos. Nature crowded them 
 for him with imagery such as no Laureate could 
 copy in the cold mosaic of language. The rhythm 
 of alternating dawn and sunset, the strophe and 
 antistrophe still perceptible through all the sudden 
 shifts of our dithyrambic seasons and echoed in 
 corresponding floral harmonies, made melody in 
 the. soul of Abel, the plain serving-man. It soft 
 ened his whole otherwise rigid aspect. He wor 
 shipped God according to the strict way of his 
 fathers;/ but a florist's Puritanism is always col-
 
 174 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 ored by the petals of his flowers, and Nature 
 never shows him a black corolla. J 
 
 He may or may not figure again in this narra 
 tive ; but as there must be some who confound 
 the New- En gland hired man, native-born, with 
 the servant of foreign bijrth, and as there is the 
 difference of two continents and two civilizations 
 between them, it did not seem fair to let Abel 
 bring round the Doctor's mare and sulky without 
 touching his features in half-shadow into our 
 background. 
 
 The Doctor's mare, Cassia, was so called by 
 her master from her cinnamon color, cassia being 
 one of the professional names for that spice or 
 drug. She was of the shade we call sorrel, or, 
 as an Englishman would perhaps say, chestnut, 
 a genuine " Morgan " mare, with a low fore 
 head, as is common in this breed, but with strong 
 quarters and flat hocks, well ribbed up, with a 
 good eye and a pair of lively ears, a first-rate 
 doctor's beast, would stand until her harness 
 dropped off her back at the door of a tedious 
 case, and trot over hill and dale thirty miles in 
 three hours, if there was a child in the next coun 
 ty with a bean in its windpipe and the Doctor 
 gave her a hint of the fact. Cassia was not large, 
 but she had a good deal of action, and was the 
 Doctor's show-horse. There were two other ani 
 mals in his stable : Quassia or Quashy, the black 
 horse, and Caustic, the old bay, with whom he 
 jogged round the village.
 
 ELSIE VENNER. . 175 
 
 " A long ride to-day? " said Abel, as he brought 
 up the equipage. 
 
 "Just out of the village that's all. There's 
 a kink in her mane, pull it out, will you ? " 
 
 " Goin' to visit some of the great folks," Abel 
 said to himself. " Wonder who it is." Then to 
 the Doctor, " Anybody get sick at Sprowles's ? 
 They say Deacon Soper had a fit, after eatin' 
 some o' their frozen victuals." 
 
 The Doctor smiled. He guessed the Deacon 
 would do well enough. He was only going to 
 ride over to the Dudley mansion-house.
 
 176 ELSIE TENNER. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE DOCTOR CALLS ON ELSIE VENNEB. 
 
 IP that primitive physician, CHIRON, M. D., ap 
 pears as a Centaur, as we look at him through 
 the lapse of thirty centuries, the modern country- 
 doctor, if he could be seen about thirty miles off, 
 could not be distinguished from a wheel-animal 
 cule. He inhabits a wheel-carriage. He thinks 
 of stationary dwellings as Long Tom Coffin did 
 of land in general ; a house may be well enough 
 for incidental purposes, but for a " stiddy " resi 
 dence give him a " kerridge." If he is classified 
 in tjje Linnaean scale, he must be set down thus : 
 Genus Homo; Species Rotifer infusorius, the 
 wheel-animal of infusions. 
 
 The Dudley mansion was not a mile from the 
 Doctor's ; but it never occurred to him to think 
 of walking to see any of his patients' families, 
 if he had any professional object in his visit. 
 Whenever the narrow sulky turned in at a gate, 
 the rustic who was digging potatoes, or hoeing 
 corn, or swishing" through the grass with his scythe, 
 in wave-like crescents, or stepping short behind a 
 loaded wheelbarrow, or trudging lazily by the side
 
 ELSIE VENNEE. 177 
 
 of the swinging, loose-throated, short-legged oxen, 
 rocking along the road as if they had just been 
 landed after a three-months' voyage, the toiling 
 native, whatever he was doing, stopped and looked 
 up at the house the Doctor was visiting. 
 
 " Somebody sick over there t' Haynes's. Guess 
 th' old man's ailin' ag'in. Winder's haaf-way 
 open in the chamber, shouldn' wonder 'f he 
 was dead and laid aout. Docterin' a'n't no use, 
 when y' see th' winders open like that. "Wahl, 
 money a'n't much to speak of to th' old man 
 naow ! He don' want but tew cents, 'n' old 
 Widah Peake, she knows what he wants them 
 for!" 
 
 Or again, 
 
 " Measles raound pooty thick. Briggs's folks 
 buried two children with 'em laas' week. Th' 
 ol' Doctor, he'd h' ker'd 'em threugh. Struck in 
 'n' p'dooced mo't'f 'cation, so they say." 
 
 This is only meant as a sample of the kind of 
 way they used to think or talk, when the narrow 
 sulky turned in at the gate of some house where 
 there was a visit to be made. 
 
 Oh, that narrow sulky! What hopes, what 
 fears, what comfort, what anguish, what despair, 
 in the roll of its coming or its parting wheels ! 
 In the spring, when the old people get the coughs 
 which give them a few shakes and their lives drop 
 in pieces like the ashes of a burned thread which 
 have kept the threadlike shape until they were 
 stirred, in the hot summer noons, when the 
 
 VOL. i. 12
 
 178 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 strong man comes in from the fields, like the son 
 of the Shunamite, crying, " My head, my head," 
 in the dying autumn days, when youth and 
 maiden lie fever-stricken in many a household, 
 still-faced, dull-eyed, dark-flushed, dry-lipped, low- 
 muttering in their daylight dreams, their fingers 
 moving singly like those of slumbering harpers, 
 in the dead winter, when the white plague of the 
 North has caged its wasted victims, shuddering 
 as they think of the frozen soil which must be 
 quarried like rock to receive them^if their perpet 
 ual convalescence should happen to be interfered 
 with by any untoward accident,! at every sea 
 son, the narrow sulky roUed round freighted with 
 unmeasured burdens of joy and woe. 
 
 The Doctor drove along the southern foot of 
 The Mountain. The " Dudley mansion " was 
 near the eastern edge of this declivity, where it 
 rose steepest, with baldest cliffs and densest 
 patches of overhanging wood. It seemed almost 
 too steep to climb, but a practised eye could see 
 from a distance the zigzag lines of the sheep- 
 paths which scaled it like miniature Alpine roads. 
 A few hundred feet up The Mountain's side was 
 a dark, deep dell, unwooded, save for a few spin 
 dling, crazy-looking hackmatacks or native larches, 
 with pallid green tufts sticking out fantastically 
 all over them. It shelved so deeply, that, while 
 the hemlock-tassels were swinging on the trees 
 around its border, all would be still at its springy 
 bottom, save that perhaps a single fern would
 
 ELSIE VENDER. 179 
 
 wave slowly backward and forward like a sabre, 
 with a twist as of a feathered oar, and this, 
 when not a breath could be felt, and every other 
 stem and blade were motionless. There was an 
 old story of one having perished here in the win 
 ter of '86, and his body having been found in the 
 spring, whence its common name of " Dead- 
 Man's Hollow." Higher up there were huge 
 cliffs with chasms, and, it was thought, concealed 
 caves, where in old times they said that Tories 
 lay hid, some hinted not without occasional aid 
 and comfort from the Dudleys then living in the 
 mansion-house. Still higher and farther west lay 
 the accursed ledge, shunned by ah 1 , unless it 
 were now and then a daring youth, or a wander 
 ing naturalist who ventured to its edge in the 
 hope of securing some infantile Crotalus durissus, 
 who had not yet cut his poison-teeth. 
 
 Long, long ago, in old Colonial times, the Hon 
 orable Thomas Dudley, Esquire, a man of note 
 and name and great resources, allied by descent 
 to the family of " Tom Dudley," as the early 
 Governor is sometimes irreverently called by our 
 most venerable, but still youthful antiquary, 
 and to the other public Dudleys, of course, of 
 all of whom he made small account, as being 
 himself an English gentleman, with little taste^br 
 the splendors of provincial office, early in the 
 last century, Thomas Dudley had built this man 
 sion. For several generations it had been dwelt 
 in by descendants of the same name, but soon
 
 180 ELSIE VENDER. 
 
 after the Revolution it passed by marriage into 
 the hands of the Venners, by whom it had ever 
 since been held and tenanted. 
 
 As the Doctor turned an angle in the road, all 
 at once the stately old house rose before him. It 
 was a skilfully managed effect, as it well might 
 be, for it was no vulgar English architect who had 
 planned the mansion and arranged its position 
 and approach. The old house rose before the 
 Doctor, crowning a terraced garden, flanked at the 
 left by an avenue of tall elms. The flower-beds 
 were edged with box, which diffused around it 
 that dreamy balsamic odor, full of ante-natal rem 
 iniscences of a lost Paradise, dimly fragrant as 
 might be the bdellium of ancient Havilah, the 
 land compassed by the river Pison that went out 
 of Eden. The garden was somewhat neglected, 
 but not in disgrace, and in the time of tulips 
 and hyacinths, of roses, of " snowballs," of hon 
 eysuckles, of lilacs, of syringas, it was rich with 
 blossoms. 
 
 From the front-windows of the mansion the 
 eye reached a far blue mountain-summit, no 
 rounded heap, such as often shuts in a village- 
 landscape, but a sharp peak, clean-angled as As- 
 cutney from the Dartmouth green. A wide gap 
 thiough miles of woods had opened this distant 
 view, and showed more, perhaps, than all the la 
 bors of the architect and the landscape-gardener 
 the large style of the early Dudleys. 
 
 The great stone-chimney of the mansion-house
 
 ELSIE YEXNER. 181 
 
 was the centre from which all the artificial feat 
 ures of the scene appeared to flow. The roofs, 
 the gables, the dormer-windows, the porches, the 
 clustered offices in the rear, all seemed to crowd 
 about the great chimney. To this central pillar 
 the paths all converged. The single poplar be 
 hind the house, Nature is jealous of proud 
 chimneys, and always loves to put a poplar near 
 one, so that it may fling a leaf or two down its 
 black throat every autumn, the one tall poplar 
 behind the house seemed to nod and whisper to 
 the grave square column, the elms to sway their 
 branches towards it. And when the blue smoke 
 rose from its summit, it seemed to be wafted 
 away to join the azure haze which hung around 
 the peak in the far distance, so that both should 
 bathe in a common atmosphere. 
 
 Behind the house were clumps of lilacs with a 
 century's growth upon them, and looking more 
 like trees than like shrubs. Shaded by a group 
 of these was the ancient well, of huge circuit, 
 and with a low arch opening out of its wall 
 about ten feet below the surface, whether the 
 door of a crypt for the concealment of treasure, 
 or of a subterranean passage, or merely of a vault 
 for keeping provisions cool in hot weather, opin 
 ions differed. 
 
 On looking at the house, it was plain that it 
 was built with Old- World notions of strength 
 and durability, and, so far as might be, with 
 Old- World materials. The hinges of the doors
 
 182 ELSIE VENNKK. 
 
 stretched out like arms, instead of like hands, as 
 we make them. The bolts were massive enough 
 for a donjon-keep. The small window-panes 
 were actually inclosed in the wood of the sashes, 
 instead of being stuck to them with putty, as in 
 our modern windows. The broad staircase was 
 of easy ascent, and was guarded by quaintly 
 turned and twisted balusters. The ceilings of 
 the two rooms of state were moulded with me 
 dallion-portraits and rustic figures, such as may 
 have been seen by many readers in the famous 
 old Philipse house, Washington's headquarters, 
 
 in the town of Yonkers. The fire-places, wor 
 thy of the wide-throated central chimney, were 
 bordered by pictured tiles, some of them with 
 Scripture stories, some with Watteau-like figures, 
 
 tall damsels in slim waists and with spread 
 enough of skirt for a modern ballroom, with bow 
 ing, reclining, or musical swains of what every 
 body calls the " conventional " sort, that is, the 
 swain adapted to genteel society rather than to a 
 literal sheep-compelling existence. 
 
 The house was furnished, soon after it was com 
 pleted, with many heavy articles made in Lon 
 don from a rare wood just then come into fash 
 ion, not so rare now, and commonly known as 
 mahogany. Time had turned it very dark, and 
 the stately bedsteads and tall cabinets and claw- 
 footed chairs and tables were in keeping with the 
 sober dignity of the ancient mansion. The old 
 " hangings " were yet preserved in the chambers,
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 183 
 
 faded, but still showing their rich patterns, 
 properly entitled to their name, for they were 
 literally hung upon flat wooden frames like trel 
 lis-work, which again were secured to the naked 
 partitions. 
 
 There were portraits of different date on the 
 walls of the various apartments, old painted 
 coats-of-arrns, bevel-edged mirrors, and in one 
 sleeping-room a glass case of wax-work flowers 
 and spangly symbols, with a legend signifying 
 that E. M. (supposed to be Elizabeth Mascarene) 
 wished not to be " forgot " 
 
 " When I am dead and lay'd in dust 
 And all my bones are" 
 
 Poor E. M. ! Poor everybody that sighs for 
 earthly remembrance in a planet with a core of 
 fire and a crust of fossils ! 
 
 Such was the Dudley mansion-house, for it 
 kept its ancient name in spite of the change in the 
 line of descent. Its spacious apartments looked 
 dreary and desolate ; for here Dudley Venner 
 and his daughter dwelt by themselves, with such 
 servants only as their quiet mode of life required. 
 He almost lived in his library, the western room 
 on the ground-floor. Its window looked upon a 
 small plat of green, in the midst of which was a 
 single grave marked by a plain marble slab. Ex 
 cept this room, and the chamber where he slept, 
 and the servants' wing, the rest of the house was 
 all Elsie's. She was always a restless, wandering
 
 184 ELSIE VK.\XI:I:. 
 
 child from her early years, and would have her 
 little bed moved from one chamber to another, 
 flitting round as the fancy took her. Sometimes 
 she would drag a mat and a pillow into one of 
 the great empty rooms, and, wrapping herself in 
 a shawl, coil up and go to sleep in a corner. 
 Nothing frightened her ; the " haunted" chamber, 
 with the torn hangings that flapped like wings 
 when there was air stirring, was one of her fa 
 vorite retreats. 
 
 She had been a very hard creature to manage. 
 Her father could influence, but not govern her. 
 Old Sophy, born of a slave mother in the house, 
 could do more with her than anybody, knowing 
 her by long instinctive study. The other servants 
 were afraid of her. Her father had sent for gov 
 ernesses, but none of them ever stayed long. She 
 made them nervous ; one of them had a strange 
 fit of sickness ; not one of them ever came back 
 to the house to see her. A young Spanish wom 
 an who taught her dancing succeeded best with 
 her, for she had a passion for that exercise, and 
 had mastered some of the most difficult dances. 
 
 Long before this period, she had manifested 
 some most extraordinary singularities of taste or 
 instinct. The extreme sensitiveness of her father 
 on this point prevented any allusion to them ; but 
 there were stories floating round, some of them 
 even getting into the papers, without her name, 
 of course, which were of a kind to excite intense 
 curiosity, if not more anxious feelings. This thing
 
 ELSIE VENNEE. 185 
 
 was certain, that at the age of twelve she was 
 missed one night, and was found sleeping in the 
 open air under a tree, like a wild creature. Very 
 often she would wander off by day, always with 
 out a companion, bringing home with her a nest, 
 a flower, or even a more questionable trophy of 
 her ramble, such as showed that there was no 
 place where she was afraid to venture. Once in 
 a while she had stayed out over night, in which 
 case the alarm was spread, and men went in 
 search of her, but never successfully, so that 
 some said she hid herself in trees, and others that 
 she had found one of the old Tory caves. 
 
 Some, of course, said she was a crazy girl, and 
 ought to be sent to an Asylum. But old Dr. 
 Kittredge had shaken his head, and told them to 
 bear with her, and let her have her way as much 
 as they could, but watch her, as far as possible, 
 without making her suspicious of them. He vis 
 ited her now and then, under the pretext of see 
 ing her father on business, or of only making a 
 friendly call. 
 
 The Doctor fastened his horse outside the gate, 
 and walked up the garden-alley. He stopped 
 suddenly with a start. A strange sound had 
 jarred upon his ear. It was a sharp prolonged 
 rattle, continuous, but rising and falling as if in 
 rhythmical cadence. He moved softly towards 
 the open window from which the sound seemed 
 to proceed.
 
 186 ELSIE TENNER. 
 
 Elsie was alone in the room, dancing one of 
 those wild Moorish fandangos, such as a matador 
 hot from the Plaza de Toros of Seville or Madrid 
 might love to lie and gaze at. She was a fig 
 ure to look upon in silence. The dancing frenzy 
 must have seized upon her while she was dress 
 ing; for she was in her bodice, bare-armed, her 
 hair floating unbound far below the waist of her 
 barred or banded , skirt. She had caught up her 
 castanets, and rattled them as she danced with a 
 kind of passionate fierceness, her lithe body un 
 dulating with flexuous grace, her diamond eyes 
 glittering, her round arms wreathing and unwind 
 ing, alive and vibrant to the tips of the slender 
 fingers. Some passion seemed to exhaust itself 
 in this dancing paroxysm ; for all at once she 
 reeled from the middle of the floor, and flung 
 herself, as it were in a careless coil, upon a great 
 tiger's-skin which was spread out in one corner 
 of the apartment. 
 
 The old Doctor stood motionless, looking at 
 her as she lay panting on the tawny, black-lined 
 robe of the dead monster, which stretched out 
 beneath her, its rude flattened outline recalling 
 the Terror of the Jungle as he crouched for his 
 fatal spring. In a few moments her head drooped 
 upon her arm, and her glittering eyes closed, 
 she was sleeping. He stood looking at her 
 still, steadily, thoughtfully, tenderly. Presently 
 he lifted his hand to his forehead, as if recall 
 ing some fading remembrance of other years.
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 187 
 
 "Poor Catalina!" 
 
 This was all he said. He shook his head, 
 implying that his visit would be in vain to-day, 
 returned to his sulky, and rode away, as if in 
 a dream.
 
 188 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 COUSIN RICHARD'S 
 
 THE Doctor was roused from his reverie by the 
 clatter of approaching hoofs. He looked forward 
 and saw a young fellow galloping rapidly towards 
 him. 
 
 A common New-England rider with his toes 
 turned out, his elbows jerking and the daylight 
 showing under him at every step, bestriding a 
 cantering beast of the 1 plebeian breed, thick at 
 every point where he should be thin, and thin at 
 every point where he should be thick, is not one 
 of those noble objects that bewitch the world. 
 The best horsemen outside of the cities are the 
 unshod country-boys, who ride " bare-back," with 
 only a halter round the horse's neck, digging their 
 brown heels into his ribs, and slanting over back 
 wards, but sticking on like leeches, and taking the 
 hardest trot as if they loved it. This was a dif 
 ferent sight on which the Doctor was looking. 
 The streaming mane and tail of the unshorn, 
 savage-looking, black horse, the dashing grace 
 with which the young fellow in the shadowy som 
 brero, and armed with the huge spurs, sat in his
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 189 
 
 high-peaked saddle, could belong only to the 
 mustang of the Pampas and his master. This 
 bold rider was a young man whose sudden appari 
 tion in the quiet inland town had reminded some 
 of the good people of a bright, curly-haired boy 
 they had known some eight or ten years before as 
 little Dick Venner. 
 
 This boy had passed several of his early years 
 at the Dudley mansion, the playmate of Elsie, 
 being her cousin, two or three years older than 
 herself, the son of Captain Richard Venner, a 
 South American trader, who, as he changed his 
 residence often, was glad to leave the boy in his 
 brother's charge. The Captain's wife, this boy's 
 mother, was a lady of Buenos Ayres, of Spanish 
 descent, and had died while the child was in his 
 cradle. These two motherless children were as 
 strange a pair as one roof could well cover. Both 
 handsome, wild, impetuous, unmanageable, they 
 played and fought together like two young leop 
 ards, beautiful, but dangerous, their lawless in 
 stincts showing through all their graceful move 
 ments. 
 
 The boy was little else than a young Gaucho 
 when he first came to Rockland ; for he had 
 learned to ride almost as soon as to walk, and 
 could jump on his pony and trip up a runaway 
 pig with the bolas or noose him with his minia 
 ture lasso at an age when some city-children 
 would hardly be trusted out of sight of a nursery 
 maid. It makes men imperious to sit a horse ;
 
 190 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 no man governs his fellows so well as from this 
 living throne. And so, from Marcus Aurelius in 
 Roman bronze, down to the " man on horseback " 
 in General Cushing's prophetic speech, the saddle 
 has always been the true seat of empire. The 
 absolute tyranny of the human will over a noble 
 and powerful beast develops the instinct of per 
 sonal prevalence and dominion ; so that horse- 
 subduer and hero were almost synonymous in 
 simpler times, and are closely related still. An 
 ancestry of wild riders naturally enough be 
 queaths also those other tendencies which we 
 see in the Tartars, the Cossacks, and our own 
 Indian Centaurs, and as well, perhaps, in the 
 old-fashioned fox-hunting squire as in any of 
 these. Sharp alternations of violent action and 
 self-indulgent repose ; a hard run, and a long 
 revel after it : this is what over-much horse tends 
 to animalize a man into. Such antecedents may 
 have helped to make little Dick Venner a self- 
 willed, capricious boy, and a rough playmate for 
 Elsie. 
 
 Elsie was the wilder of the two. Old Sophy, 
 who used to watch them with those quick, ani 
 mal-looking eyes of hers, she was said to be 
 the granddaughter of a cannibal chief, and in 
 herited the keen senses belonging to all creatures 
 which are hunted as game, Old Sophy, who 
 watched them in their play and their quarrels, al 
 ways seemed to be more afraid for the boy than 
 the girl. " Massa Dick ! Massa Dick ! don' you
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 191 
 
 be too rough wi' dat gal ! She scratch you las' 
 week, 'n' some day she bite you ; 'n' if she bite you, 
 Massa Dick ! " Old Sophy nodded her head omi 
 nously, as if she could say a great deal more ; 
 while, in grateful acknowledgment of her cau 
 tion, Master Dick put his two little fingers in the 
 angles of his mouth, and his forefingers on his 
 lower eyelids, drawing upon these features until 
 his expression reminded her of something she 
 vaguely recollected in her infancy, the face of 
 a favorite deity executed in wood by an African 
 artist for her grandfather, brought over by her 
 mother, and burned when she became a Christian. 
 These two wild children had much in common. 
 They loved to ramble together, to build huts, to 
 climb trees for nests, to ride the colts, to dance, to 
 race, and to play at boys' rude games as if both 
 were boys. JBut wherever two natures have a 
 great deal in common, the conditions of a first- 
 rate quarrel are furnished ready-made. ] Relations \ 
 are very apt to hate each other just because they 
 are too much alike. It is so frightful to be in an 
 atmosphere of family idiosyncrasies ; to see all the 
 hereditary uncomeliness or infirmity of body, all 
 the defects of speech, all the failings of temper, 
 intensified by concentration, so that every fault of 
 our own finds itself multiplied by reflections, like /' 
 our images in a saloon, lined with mirrors ! Na 
 ture knows what she is about. The centrifugal 
 principle which grows out of the antipathy of like\ 
 to like is only the repetition in character of the
 
 192 ELSIE VEXXER. 
 
 /arrangement we see expressed- materially in cer 
 tain seed-capsules, which burst and throw the 
 seed to all points of the compass. A house is a 
 large pod with a human germ or two in each of 
 its cells or chambers ; it opens by dehiscence of 
 the front-door by-and-by, and projects one of its 
 germs to Kansas, another to San Francisco, an 
 other to Chicago, and so on ; and this that Smith 
 may not be Smithed to death and Brown may 
 not be Browned into a mad-house, but mix in 
 with the world again and struggle back to average 
 humanity. 
 
 Elsie's father, whose fault was to indulge her in 
 everything, found that it would never do to let 
 these children grow up together. They would 
 either love each other as they got older, and pair 
 like wild creatures, or take some fierce antipathy, 
 which might end nobody could tell where. It was 
 not safe to try. The boy must be sent away. A 
 sharper quarrel than common decided this point. 
 Master Dick forgot Old Sophy's caution, and 
 vexed the girl into a paroxysm of wrath, in which 
 she sprang at him and bit his arm. Perhaps they 
 made too much of it; for they sent for the old 
 Doctor, who came at once when he heard what 
 had happened. He had a good deal to say about 
 the danger there was from the teeth of animals or 
 human beings when enraged ; and as he empha 
 sized his remarks by the application of a pencil 
 of lunar caustic to each of the marks left by the 
 sharp white teeth, they were like to be remem 
 bered by at least one of his hearers.
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 193 
 
 So Master Dick went off on his travels, which 
 led him into strange places and stranger company. 
 Elsie was half pleased and half sorry to have him 
 go ; the children had a kind of mingled liking 
 and hate for each other, just such as is very com 
 mon among relations. Whether the girl had most 
 satisfaction in the plays they shared, or in teasing 
 him, or taking her small revenge upon him for 
 teasing her, it would have been hard to say. At 
 any rate, she was lonely without him. She had 
 more fondness for the old black woman than any 
 body ; but Sophy could not follow her far beyond 
 her own old rocking-chair. As for her father, she 
 had made him afraid of her, not for his sake, but 
 for her own. Sometimes she would seem to be 
 fond of him, and the parent's heart would yearn 
 within him as she twined her supple arms about 
 him ; and then some look she gave him, some 
 half-articulated expression, would turn his cheek 
 pale and almost make him shiver, and he would 
 say kindly, " Now go, Elsie, dear," and smile upon 
 her as she went, and close and lock the door softly 
 after her. Then his forehead would knot and fur 
 row itself, and the drops of anguish stand thick 
 upon it. He would go to the western window of 
 his study and look at the solitary mound with the 
 marble slab for its head-stone. After his grief 
 had had its way, he would kneel down and pray 
 for his child as one who has no hope save in that 
 special grace which can bring the most rebellious 
 spirit into sweet subjection. All this might seem 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 ELSIE VENNEK. 
 
 like weakness in a parent having the charge of 
 one sole daughter of his house and heart ; but he 
 had tried authority and tenderness by turns so 
 long without any good effect, that he had become 
 sore perplexed, and, surrounding her with cautious 
 watchfulness as he best might, left her in the main 
 to her own guidance and the merciful influences 
 which Heaven might send down to direct her 
 footsteps. 
 
 Meantime the boy grew up to youth and early 
 manhood through a strange succession of adven 
 tures. He had been at school at Buenos Ayres, 
 had quarrelled with his mother's relatives, 
 had run off to the Pampas, and lived with the 
 Gauchos, had made friends with the Indians, 
 and ridden with them, it was rumored, in some 
 of their savage forays, had returned and made 
 up his quarrel, had got money by inheritance 
 or otherwise, : had troubled the peace of certain 
 magistrates, had found it convenient to leave 
 the City of Wholesome Breezes for a time, and 
 had galloped off on a fast horse of his, (so it was 
 said), with some officers riding after him, who 
 took good care (but this was only the popular 
 story) not to catch him. A few days after this 
 he was taking his ice on the Alameda of Men- 
 doza, and a week or two later sailed from Val 
 paraiso for New York, carrying with him the 
 horse with which he had scampered over the 
 Plains, a trunk or two with his newly purchased 
 outfit of clothing and other conveniences, and
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 195 
 
 a belt heavy with gold and with a few Brazilian 
 diamonds sewed in it, enough in value to serve 
 him for a long journey. 
 
 Dick Venner had seen life enough to wear out 
 the earlier sensibilities of adolescence. He was 
 tired of worshipping or tyrannizing over the bis- 
 tred or umbered beauties of mingled blood among 
 whom he had been living. Even that piquant 
 exhibition which the Rio de Mendoza presents 
 to the amateur of breathing sculpture failed to 
 interest him. He was thinking of a far-off vil 
 lage on the other side of the equator, and of the 
 wild girl with whom he used to play and quarrel, 
 a creature of a different race from these degener 
 ate mongrels. 
 
 " A game little devil she was, sure enough ! " 
 and as Dick spoke, he bared his wrist to look 
 for the marks she had left on it : two small white 
 scars, where the two small sharp upper teeth had 
 struck when she flashed at him with her eyes 
 sparkling as bright as those glittering stones 
 sewed up in the belt he wore. " That's a filly 
 worth noosing ! " said Dick to himself, as he 
 looked in admiration at the sign of her spirit 
 and passion. " I wonder if she will bite at 
 eighteen as she did at eight ! She shall have 
 a chance to try, at any rate ! " 
 
 Such was the self-sacrificing disposition with 
 which Richard Venner, Esq., a passenger by the 
 Condor from Valparaiso, set foot upon his native 
 shore, and turned his face in the direction of
 
 196 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 Rockland, The Mountain and the mansion- 
 house. He had heard something, from time to 
 time, of his New-England relatives, and knew 
 that they were living together as he left them. 
 And so he heralded himself to " My dear Uncle " 
 by a letter signed " Your loving nephew, Richard 
 Venner," in which letter he told a very frank 
 story of travel and mercantile adventure, ex 
 pressed much gratitude for the excellent coun 
 sel and example which had helped to form his 
 character and preserve him in the midst of 
 temptation, inquired affectionately after his un 
 cle's health, was much interested to know wheth 
 er his lively cousin who used to be his playmate 
 had grown up as handsome as she promised to 
 be, and announced his intention of paying his 
 respects to them both at Rockland. Not long 
 after this came the trunks marked R. V. which 
 he had sent before him, forerunners of his ad 
 vent : he was not going to wait for a reply or 
 an invitation. 
 
 What a sound that is, the banging down 
 of the preliminary trunk, without its claimant 
 to give it the life which is borrowed by all per 
 sonal appendages, so long as the owner's hand 
 or eye is on them ! If it announce the coming 
 of one loved and longed for, how we delight to 
 look at it, to sit down on it, to caress it in our 
 fancies, as a lone exile walking out on a windy 
 pier yearns towards the merchantman lying along 
 side, with the colors of his own native land at her
 
 ELSIE VENNEK. 197 
 
 peak, and the name of the port he sailed from 
 long ago upon her stern ! But if it tell the near 
 approach of the undesired, inevitable guest, what 
 sound short of the muffled noises made by the / 
 undertakers as they turn the corners in the dim- j 
 lighted house, with low shuffle of feet and whis- [ 
 pered cautions, carries such a sense of knocking- \ 
 kneed collapse with it as the thumping down / 
 in the front entry of the heavy portmanteau, i 
 rammed with the changes of uncounted coming' 
 weeks ? 
 
 Whether the R. V. portmanteaus brought one 
 or the other of these emotions to the tenants of 
 the Dudley mansion, it might not be easy to 
 settle. Elsie professed to be pleased with the 
 thought of having an adventurous young stran 
 ger, with stories to tell, an inmate of their quiet, 
 not to say dull, family. Under almost any other 
 circumstances, her father would have been un 
 willing to take a young fellow of whom he knew 
 so little under his roof ; but this was his nephew, 
 and anything that seemed like to amuse or please 
 Elsie was agreeable to him. He had grown al 
 most desperate, and felt as if any change in the 
 current of her life and feelings might save her 
 from some strange paroxysm of dangerous men 
 tal exaltation or sullen perversion of disposition, 
 from which some fearful calamity might come 
 to herself or others. 
 
 . Dick had been several weeks at the Dudley 
 mansion. A few days before, he had made a
 
 198 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 sudden dash for the nearest large city, and 
 when the Doctor met him, he was just return 
 ing from his visit. 
 
 It had been a curious meeting between the 
 two young persons, who had parted so young 
 and after such strange relations with each other. 
 When Dick first presented himself at the man 
 sion, not one in the house would have known 
 him for the boy who had left them all so sud 
 denly years ago. He was so dark, partly from 
 his descent, partly from long habits of exposure, 
 that Elsie looked almost fair beside him. He 
 had something of the family beauty which be 
 longed to his cousin, but his eye had a fierce 
 passion in it, very unlike the cold glitter of 
 Elsie's, j Like many people of strong and im 
 perious temper, he was soft-voiced and very 
 gentle in his address, when he had no special 
 reason for being otherwise. \ He soon found rea 
 sons enough to be as amiable as he could force 
 himself to be with his uncle and his cousin. 
 Elsie was to his fancy. She had a strange at 
 traction for him, quite unlike anything he had 
 ever known in other women. There was some 
 thing, too, in early associations : when those who 
 parted as children meet as man and woman, there 
 is always a renewal of that early experience 
 which followed the taste of the forbidden fruit, 
 a natural blush of consciousness, not without 
 its charm.
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 199 
 
 Nothing could be more becoming than the be 
 havior of " Richard Venner, Esquire, the guest of 
 Dudley Venner, Esquire, at his noble mansion," 
 as he was announced in the Court column of the 
 " Rockland Weekly Universe." He was pleased 
 to find himself treated with kindness and atten 
 tion as a relative. He made himself very agreea 
 ble by abundant details concerning the religious, 
 political, social, commercial, and educational 
 progress of the South American cities and 
 states. He was himself much interested in 
 everything that was going on about the Dudley 
 mansion, walked all over it, noticed its valuable 
 wood-lots with special approbation, was delighted 
 with the grand old house and its furniture, and 
 would not be easy until he had seen all the 
 family silver and heard its history. In return, 
 he had much to tell of his father, now dead, 
 the only one of the Venners, beside themselves, 
 in whose fate his uncle was interested. With 
 Elsie, he was subdued and almost tender in his 
 manner ; with the few visitors whom they saw, 
 shy and silent, perhaps a little watchful, if any 
 young man happened to be among them. 
 
 Young fellows placed on their good behavior 
 are apt to get restless and nervous, all ready 
 to fly off into some mischief or other. Dick 
 Venner had his half-tamed horse with him to 
 work off his suppressed life with. When the 
 savage passion of his young blood came over 
 him, he would fetch out the mustang, screaming
 
 200 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 and kicking as these amiable beasts are wont to 
 do, strap the Spanish saddle tight to his back, 
 vault into it, and, after getting away from the 
 village, strike the long spurs into his sides and 
 whirl away in a wild gallop, until the black horse 
 was flecked with white foam, and the cruel steel 
 points were red with his blood. When horse 
 and rider were alike tired, he would fling the 
 bridle on his neck and saunter homeward, al 
 ways contriving to get to the stable in a quiet 
 way, and coming into the house as calm as 
 a bishop after a sober trot on his steady-going 
 cob. 
 
 After a few weeks of this kind of life, he began 
 to want some more fierce excitement. He had 
 tried making downright love to Elsie, with no 
 great success as yet, in his own opinion. The 
 girl was capricious in her treatment of him, some 
 times scowling and repellent, sometimes familiar, 
 very often, as she used to be of old, teasing and 
 malicious. All this, perhaps, made her more in 
 teresting to a young man who was tired of easy 
 conquests. There was a strange fascination in 
 her eyes, too, which at times was quite irresisti 
 ble, so that he would feel himself drawn to her 
 by a power which seemed to take away his will 
 for the moment. It may have been nothing but 
 the common charm of bright eyes ; but he had 
 never before experienced the same kind of at 
 traction. 
 
 Perhaps she was not so very different from
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 201 
 
 what she had been as a child, after all. At any 
 rate, so it seemed to Dick Venner, who, as was 
 said before, had tried making love to her. They 
 were sitting alone in the study one day ; Elsie 
 had round her neck that somewhat peculiar orna 
 ment, the golden torque, which she had worn to 
 the great party. Youth is adventurous and very 
 curious about necklaces, brooches, chains, and 
 other such adornments, so long as they are worn 
 by young persons of the female sex. Dick was 
 seized with a great passion for examining this 
 curious chain, and, after some preliminary ques 
 tions, was rash enough to lean towards her and 
 put out his hand toward the neck that lay in the 
 golden coil. She threw her head back, her eyes 
 narrowing and her forehead drawing down so 
 that Dick thought her head actually flattened 
 itself. He started involuntarily ; for she looked 
 so like the little girl who had struck him with 
 those sharp flashing teeth, that the whole scene 
 came back, and he felt the stroke again as if it 
 had just been given, and the two white scars 
 began to sting as they did after the old Doctor 
 had burned them with that stick of gray caustic, 
 which looked so like a slate pencil, and felt so 
 much like the end of a red-hot poker. 
 
 It took something more than a gallop to set 
 him right after this. The next day he mentioned 
 having received a letter from a mercantile agent 
 with whom he had dealings. What his busi 
 ness was is, perhaps, none of our business. At
 
 202 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 any rate, it required him to go at once to the 
 city where his correspondent resided. 
 
 Independently of this " business " which called 
 him, there may have been other motives, such as 
 have been hinted at. People who have been 
 living for a long time in dreary country-places, 
 without any emotion beyond such as are occa 
 sioned by a trivial pleasure or annoyance, often 
 get crazy at last for a vital paroxysm of some 
 kind or other. In this state they rush to the 
 great cities for a plunge into their turbid life- 
 baths, with a frantic thirst for every exciting 
 pleasure, which makes them the willing arid easy 
 victims of all those who sell the Devil's wares 
 on commission. The less intelligent and in 
 structed class of unfortunates, who venture with 
 their ignorance and their instincts into what is 
 sometimes called the " life " of great cities, are 
 put through a rapid course of instruction which 
 entitles them very commonly to a diploma from 
 the police court. But they only illustrate the 
 working of the same tendency in mankind at 
 large which has been occasionally noticed in the 
 sons of ministers and other eminently worthy 
 people, by many ascribed to that intense con 
 genital hatred for goodness which distinguishes 
 human nature from that of the brute, but per 
 haps as readily accounted for by considering it 
 as the yawning and stretching of a young soul 
 cramped too long in one moral posture. 
 
 Richard Venner was a young man of remark-
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 203 
 
 able experience for his years. He ran less risk, 
 therefore, in exposing himself to the temptations 
 and dangers of a great city than many older men, 
 who, seeking the livelier scenes of excitement to 
 be found in large towns as a relaxation after the 
 monotonous routine of family-life, are too often 
 taken advantage of and made the victims of their 
 sentiments or their generous confidence in their 
 fellow-creatures. Such was not his destiny. There 
 was something about him which looked as if he 
 would not take bullying kindly. He had also 
 the advantage of being acquainted with most of 
 those ingenious devices by which the proverbial 
 inconstancy of fortune is steadied to something 
 more nearly approaching fixed laws, and the dan 
 gerous risks which have so often led young men 
 to ruin and suicide are practically reduced to 
 somewhat less than nothing. So that Mr. Rich 
 ard Venner worked off his nervous energies with 
 out any troublesome adventure, and was ready 
 to return to Rockland in less than a week, with 
 out having lightened the money-belt he wore 
 round his body, or tarnished the long glittering 
 knife he carried in his boot. 
 
 Dick had sent his trunk to the nearest town 
 through which the railroad leading to the city 
 passed. He rode off on his black horse and left 
 him at the place where he took the cars. On ar 
 riving at the city station, he took a coach and 
 drove to one of the great hotels. Thither drove 
 also a sagacious-looking, middle-aged man, who
 
 204 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 entered his name as "W. Thompson" in the book 
 at the office immediately after that of " R. Ven- 
 ner." Mr. " Thompson " kept a carelessly ob 
 servant eye upon Mr. Venner during his stay at 
 the hotel, and followed him to the cars when he 
 left, looking over his shoulder when he bought 
 his ticket at the station, and seeing him fairly 
 off without obtruding himself in any offensive 
 way upon his attention. Mr. Thompson, known 
 in other quarters as Detective Policeman Terry, 
 got very little by his trouble. Richard Venner 
 did not turn out to be the wife-poisoner, the 
 defaulting cashier, the river-pirate, or the great 
 counterfeiter. He paid his hotel-bill as a gentle 
 man should always do, if he has the money, 
 and can spare it. The detective had probably 
 overrated his own sagacity when he ventured to 
 suspect Mr. Venner. He reported to his chief 
 that there was a knowing-looking fellow he had 
 been round after, but he rather guessed he was 
 nothing more than " one o' them Southern sports 
 men." 
 
 The poor fellows at the stable where Dick 
 had left his horse had had trouble enough with 
 him. One of the ostlers was limping about with 
 a lame leg, and another had lost a mouthful of 
 his coat, which came very near carrying a piece 
 of his shoulder with it. When Mr. Venner came 
 back for his beast, he was as wild as if he had 
 just been lassoed, screaming, kicking, rolling 
 over to get rid of his saddle, and when his
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 205 
 
 rider was at last mounted, jumping about in a 
 way to dislodge any common horseman. To 
 all this Dick replied by sticking his long spurs 
 deeper and deeper into his flanks, until the crea 
 ture found he was mastered, and dashed off as 
 if all the thistles of the Pampas were pricking 
 him. 
 
 " One more gallop, Juan ! " This was in the 
 last mile of the road before he came to the town 
 which brought him in sight of the mansion-house. 
 It was in this last gallop that the fiery mustang 
 and his rider flashed by the old Doctor. Cassia 
 pointed her sharp ears and shied to let them 
 pass. The Doctor turned and looked through 
 the little round glass in the back of his sulky. 
 
 " Dick Turpin, there, will find more than his 
 match!" said the Doctor.
 
 206 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 THE APOLLI5TEAN INSTITUTE. 
 (With Extracts from the "Report of the Committee.") 
 
 THE readers of this narrative will hardly ex 
 pect any elaborate details of the educational 
 management of the Apollinean Institute. They 
 cannot be supposed to take the same interest in 
 its affairs as was shown by the Annual Commit 
 tees who reported upon its condition and pros 
 pects. As these Committees were, however, an 
 important part of the mechanism of the estab 
 lishment, some general account of their organi 
 zation and a few extracts from the Report of the 
 one last appointed may not be out of place. 
 
 Whether Mr. Silas Peckham had some contriv 
 ance for packing his Committees, whether they 
 happened always to be made up of optimists by 
 nature, whether they were cajoled into good-hu 
 mor by polite attentions, or whether they were 
 always really delighted with the wonderful ac 
 quirements of the pupils and the admirable order 
 of the school, it is certain that their Annual Re-
 
 ELSIE VENNEE. 207 
 
 ports were couched in language which might 
 warm the heart of the most cold-b] coded and cal 
 culating father that ever had a family of daugh 
 ters to educate. In fact, these Annual Reports 
 were considered by Mr. Peckham as his most 
 effective advertisements. 
 
 The first thing, therefore, was to see that the 
 Committee was made up of persons known to 
 the public. -Some worn-out politician, in that 
 leisurely and amiable transition-state which comes 
 between official extinction and the paralysis which 
 will finish him as soon as his brain gets a little 
 softer, made an admirable Chairman for Mr. Peck- 
 ham, when he had the luck to pick up such an 
 article. / Old reputations, like old fashions, are 
 more prized in the grassy than in the stony dis 
 tricts. An effete celebrity, who would never be 
 heard of again in the great places until the fu 
 neral sermon waked up his memory for one part 
 ing spasm, finds himself in full flavor of renown 
 a little farther back from the changing winds of 
 the sea-coast. \ If such a public character was not 
 to be had, so that there was no chance of heading 
 the Report with the name of the Honorable Mr. 
 Somebody, the next best thing was to get the 
 Reverend Dr. Somebody to take that conspicu 
 ous position. Then would follow two or three 
 local worthies with Esquire after their names. 
 If any stray literary personage from one of the 
 great cities happened to be within reach, he was 
 pounced upon by Mr. Silas Peckham. It was a
 
 208 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 hard case for the poor man, who had travelled a 
 hundred miles or two to the outside suburbs after 
 peace and un watered milk, to be pumped for a 
 speech in this unexpected way. It was harder 
 still, if he had been induced to venture a few 
 tremulous remarks, to be obliged to write them 
 out for the " Rockland Weekly Universe," with 
 the chance of seeing them used as an advertising 
 certificate as long as he lived, if he lived as long 
 as the late Dr. Waterhouse did after giving his 
 certificate in favor of Whitwell's celebrated Ce 
 phalic Snuff. 
 
 The Report of the last Committee had been 
 
 signed by the Honorable , late of 
 
 , as Chairman. (It is with reluctance that 
 
 the name and titles are left in blank ; but our pub 
 lic characters are so familiarly known to the whole 
 community that this reserve becomes necessary.) 
 The other members of the Committee were the 
 Reverend Mr. Butters, of a neighboring town, 
 who was to make the prayer before the Exercises 
 of the Exhibition, and two or three notabilities 
 of Rockland, with geoponic eyes, and glabrous, 
 bumpless foreheads. A few extracts from the 
 Report are subjoined : 
 
 " The Committee have great pleasure in record 
 ing their unanimous opinion, that the Institution 
 was never in so flourishing a condition. . . . 
 
 " The health of the pupils is excellent ; the ad 
 mirable quality of food supplied shows itself in
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 209 
 
 their appearance ; their blooming aspect excited 
 the admiration of the Committee, and bears tes 
 timony to the assiduity of the excellent Matron. 
 
 " moral and religious condition most 
 
 encouraging, which they cannot but attribute to 
 the personal efforts and instruction of the faithful 
 Principal, who considers religious instruction a 
 solemn duty which he cannot commit to other 
 people. 
 
 " great progress in their studies, un 
 der the intelligent superintendence of the accom 
 plished Principal, assisted by Mr. Badger, [Mr. 
 Langdon's predecessor,] Miss Darley, the lady 
 who superintends the English branches, Miss 
 Crabs, her assistant and teacher of Modern Lan 
 guages, and Mr. Schneider, teacher of French, 
 German, Latin, and Music 
 
 " Education is the great business of the Insti 
 tute. Amusements are objects of a secondary 
 nature ; but these are by no means neglected. . . . 
 
 " English compositions of great 
 
 originality and beauty, creditable alike to the 
 head and heart of their accomplished authors. 
 
 several poems of a very, high order of 
 
 merit, which would do honor to the literature 
 
 of any age or country life-like drawings, 
 
 showing great proficiency. . . . Many converse 
 fluently in various modern languages per 
 form the most difficult airs with the skill of pro 
 fessional musicians 
 
 " advantages unsurpassed, if equalled, 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 210 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 by those of any Institution in the country, and 
 reflecting the highest honor on the distinguished 
 Head of the Establishment, SILAS PECKHAM, Es 
 quire, and his admirable Lady, the MATRON, with 
 their worthy assistants " 
 
 The perusal of this Report did Mr. Bernard 
 more good than a week's vacation would have 
 done. It gave him such a laugh as he had not 
 had for a month. The way in which Silas Peck- 
 ham had made his Committee say what he wanted 
 them to for he recognized a number of expres 
 sions in the Report as coming directly from the 
 lips of his principal, and could not help thinking 
 how cleverly he had forced his phrases, as jug 
 glers do the particular card they wish their dupe 
 to take struck him as particularly neat and 
 pleasing. 
 
 He had passed through the sympathetic and 
 emotional stages in his new experience, and had 
 arrived at the philosophical and practical state, 
 which takes things coolly, and goes to work to 
 set them right. He had breadth enough of view 
 to see that there was nothing so very excep 
 tional in this educational trader's dealings with 
 his subordinates, but he had also manly feeling 
 enough to attack the particular individual in 
 stance of wrong before him. There are plenty 
 of dealers in morals, as in ordinary traffic, who 
 confine themselves to wholesale business. They 
 leave the small necessity of their next-door neigh- 

 
 ELSIE VENNEK. 211 
 
 bor to the retailers, who are poorer in statistics 
 and general facts, but richer in the every-day char 
 ities. Mr. Bernard felt, at first, as one does who 
 sees a gray rat steal out of a drain and begin 
 gnawing at the bark of some tree loaded with 
 fruit or blossoms, which he will soon girdle, if he 
 is let alone. The first impulse is to murder him 
 with the nearest ragged stone. Then one re 
 members that he is a rodent, acting after the law 
 of his kind, and cools down and is contented to 
 drive him off and guard the tree against his teeth 
 for the future. As soon as this is done, one can 
 watch his attempts at mischief with a certain 
 amusement. 
 
 This was the kind of process Mr. Bernard had 
 gone through. First, the indignant surprise of a 
 generous nature, when it comes unexpectedly into 
 relations with a mean one. Then the impulse of 
 extermination, a divine instinct, intended to 
 keep down vermin of all classes to their working 
 averages in the economy of Nature. Then a re 
 turn of cheerful tolerance, a feeling, that, if the 
 Deity could bear with rats and sharpers, he could ; 
 with a confident trust, that, in the long run, ter 
 riers and honest men would have the upperhand, 
 and a grateful consciousness that he had been 
 sent just at the right time to come between a 
 patient victim and the master who held her in 
 peonage. 
 
 Having once made up his mind what to do, 
 Mr. Bernard was as good-natured and hopeful as
 
 212 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 ever. He had the great advantage, from his pro 
 fessional training, of knowing how to recognize 
 and deal with the nervous disturbances to which 
 overtasked women are so liable. He saw well 
 enough that Helen Darley would certainly kill 
 herself or lose her wits, if he could not lighten 
 her labors and lift off a large part of her weight 
 of cares. The worst of it was, that she was one 
 V of those women who naturally overwork them- 
 / selves, like those horses who will go at the top 
 of their pace until they drop. Such women are 
 \ dreadfully unmanageable. It is as hard reasoning 
 I with them as it would have been reasoning with 
 / lo, when she was flying over land and sea, driven 
 by the sting of the never-sleeping gadfly. 
 
 This was a delicate, interesting game that he 
 1 played. Under one innocent pretext or another, 
 he invaded this or that special province she had 
 made her own. He would collect the themes 
 and have them all read and marked, answer all 
 the puzzling questions in mathematics, make the 
 other teachers come to him for directions, and in 
 this way gradually took upon himself not only ah 1 
 the general superintendence that belonged to his 
 office, but stole away so many of the special 
 duties which might fairly have belonged to his 
 assistant, that, before she knew it, she was look 
 ing better and feeling more cheerful than for many 
 rd many a month before. 
 When the nervous energy is depressed by any 
 /bodily cause, or exhausted by overworking, there
 
 ELSIE VENDER. 213 
 
 follow effects which have often been misinterpret 
 ed by moralists, and especially by theologians. 
 The conscience itself becomes neuralgic, some 
 times actually inflamed, so that the least touch is 
 agony. Of all liars and false accusers, a sick 
 conscience is the most inventive and indefatiga 
 ble. The devoted daughter, wife, mother, whose 
 life has been given to unselfish labors, who has 
 filled a place which it seems to others only an 
 angel would make good, reproaches herself with 
 incompetence and neglect of duty. The humble 
 Christian, who has been a model to others, calls 
 himself a worm of the dust on one page of his 
 diary, and arraigns himself on the next for com 
 ing short of the perfection of an archangel. 
 I Conscience itself requires a conscience, or noth 
 ing can be more unscrupulous. /It told Saul that 
 he did well in persecuting the Christians. It has 
 goaded countless multitudes of various creeds to 
 endless forms of self-torture. The cities of India 
 are full of cripples it has made. The hill-sides 
 of Syria are riddled with holes, where miserable 
 hermits, whose lives it had palsied, lived and died 
 like the vermin they harbored. /Our libraries are 
 crammed with books written by spiritual hypo 
 chondriacs, who inspected all their moral secretions 
 a dozen times a day. They are full of interest, 
 but they should be transferred from the shelf of 
 the theologian to that of the medical man who 
 makes- a study of insanity. \ 
 
 This was the state into which too much work
 
 214 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 and too much responsibility were bringing Helen 
 Darley, when the new master came and lifted so 
 much of the burden that was crushing her as 
 must be removed before she could have a chance 
 to recover her natural elasticity and buoyancy. 
 Many of the noblest women, suffering like her, 
 but less fortunate in being relieved at the right 
 moment, die worried out of life by the perpetual 
 teasing of this inflamed, neuralgic conscience. 
 So subtile is the line which separates the true 
 and almost angelic sensibility of a healthy, but 
 exalted nature, from the soreness of a soul which 
 is sympathizing with a morbid state of the body, 
 that it is no wonder they are often confounded. 
 And thus many good women are suffered to per 
 ish by that form of spontaneous combustion in 
 which the victim goes on toiling day and night 
 with the hidden fire consuming her, until all at 
 once, her cheek whitens, and, as we look upon her, 
 she drops away, a heap of ashes. The more they 
 overwork themselves, the more exacting becomes 
 the sense of duty, as the draught of the loco 
 motive's furnace blows stronger and makes the 
 fire burn more fiercely, the faster it spins along 
 the track. 
 
 It is not very likely, as was said at the begin 
 ning of this chapter, that we shall trouble our 
 selves a great dea] about the internal affairs of 
 the Apollinean Institute. These schools are, in 
 the nature of things, not so very unlike each other 
 as to require a minute description for each partic-
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 215 
 
 ular one among them. They have all very much 
 the same general features, pleasing and displeas 
 ing. All feeding-establishments have something 
 odious about them, from the wretched country- 
 houses where paupers are farmed out to the low 
 est bidder, up to the commons-tables at colleges, 
 and even the fashionable boarding-house. A per 
 son's appetite should be at war with no other 
 purse than his own. Young people, especially, 
 who have a bone-factory at work in them, and 
 have to feed the living looms of innumerable 
 growing tissues, should be provided for, if possi 
 ble, by those who love 4hem like their own flesh 
 and blood. Elsewhere their appetites will be sure 
 to make them enemies, or, what are almost as 
 bad, friends whose interests are at variance with 
 the claims of their exacting necessities and de 
 mands. 
 
 Besides, all commercial transactions in regard 
 to the most sacred interests of life are hateful 
 even to those who profit by them. The clergy 
 man, the physician, the teacher, must be paid ; 
 but each of them, if his duty be performed in 
 the true spirit, can hardly help a shiver of disgust 
 when money is counted out to him for adminis 
 tering the consolations of religion, for saving some 
 precious life, for sowing the seeds of Christian 
 civilization in young, ingenuous souls. 
 
 And yet all these schools, with their provincial 
 French and their mechanical accomplishments, 
 with their cheap parade of diplomas and com-
 
 216 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 mencements and other public honors, have an 
 ever fresh interest to all who see the task they are 
 performing in our new social order. These girls 
 are not being educated for governesses, or to be 
 exported, with other manufactured articles, to 
 colonies where there happens to be a surplus of 
 males. Most of them will be wives, and every 
 American-born husband is a possible President 
 of these United States. Any one of these girls 
 may be a four-years' queen. There is no sphere 
 of human activity so exalted that she may not 
 be called upon to fill it. 
 
 But there is another consideration of far higher 
 interest. The education of our community to all 
 that is beautiful is flowing in mainly through its 
 women, and that to a considerable extent by the 
 aid of these large establishments, the least perfect 
 of which do something to stimulate the higher 
 tastes and partially instruct them. Sometimes 
 there is, perhaps, reason to fear that girls will be 
 too highly educated for their own happiness, if 
 they are lifted by their culture out of the range of 
 the practical and every-day working youth by 
 whom they are surrounded. But this is a risk we 
 must take. /Our young men come into active life 
 so early, that, if our girls were not educated to 
 something beyond mere practical duties, our ma 
 terial prosperity would outstrip our culture j as 
 it often does in large places where money is made 
 too rapidly. This is the meaning, therefore, of 
 that somewhat ambitious programme common
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 217 
 
 to most of these large institutions, at which we 
 sometimes smile, perhaps unwisely or uncharita 
 bly. 
 
 We shall take it for granted that the routine of 
 instruction went on at the Apollinean Institute 
 much as it does in other schools of the same class. 
 People, young or old, are wonderfully different, if 
 we contrast extremes in pairs. They approach 
 much nearer, if we take them in groups of twenty. 
 Take two separate hundreds as they come, with 
 out choosing, and you get the gamut of human 
 character in both so completely that you can 
 strike many chords in each which shall be in per 
 fect unison with corresponding ones in the other. 
 If we go a step farther, and compare the popula 
 tion of two villages of the same race and region, 
 there is such a regularly graduated distribution 
 and parallelism of character, that it seems as if 
 Nature must turn out human beings in sets like 
 chessmen. 
 
 It must be confessed that the position in' which 
 Mr. Bernard now found himself had a pleasing 
 danger about it which might well justify all the 
 fears entertained on his account by more experi 
 enced friends, when they learned that he was 
 engaged in a Young Ladies' Seminary. The 
 school never went on more smoothly than during 
 the first period of his administration, after he had 
 arranged its duties, and taken his share, and even 
 more than his share, upon himself. But human 
 nature does not wait for the diploma of the Apol-
 
 218 ELSIE TENNER. 
 
 linean Institute to claim the exercise of its in 
 stincts and faculties. These young girls saw but 
 little of the youth of the neighborhood. The 
 mansion-house young men were off at college or 
 in the cities, or making love to each other's sis 
 ters, or at any rate unavailable for some reason or 
 other. There were a few " clerks," that is, 
 young men who attended shops, commonly called 
 " stores," who were fond of walking by the In 
 stitute, when they were off duty, for the sake of 
 exchanging a word or a glance with any one of 
 the young ladies they might happen to know, if 
 any such were stirring abroad: crude young men, 
 mostly, with a great many " Sirs " and " Ma'ams " 
 in their speech, and with that style of address 
 sometimes acquired in the retail business, as if 
 the salesman were recommending himself to a 
 customer, " First-rate family article, Ma'am ; 
 warranted to wear a lifetime ; just one yard and 
 three quarters in this pattern, Ma'am ; sha'n't I 
 have the pleasure ? " and so forth. If there had 
 been ever so many of them, and if they had been 
 ever so fascinating, the quarantine of the Institute 
 was too rigorous to allow any romantic infection 
 to be introduced from without. 
 
 Anybody might see what would happen, with 
 a good-looking, well-dressed, well-bred young 
 man, who had the authority of a master, it is 
 true, but the manners of a friend and equal, mov 
 ing about among these young girls day after day, 
 his eyes meeting theirs, his breath mingling with
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 219 
 
 theirs, his voice growing familiar to them, never 
 in any harsh tones, often soothing, encouraging, 
 always sympathetic, with its male depth and 
 breadth of sound among the chorus of trebles, as 
 if it were a river in which a hundred of these 
 little piping streamlets might lose themselves ; 
 anybody might see what would happen. Young 
 girls wrote home to their parents that they en 
 joyed themselves much, this term, at the Institute, 
 and thought they were making rapid progress in 
 their studies. There was a great enthusiasm for 
 the young master's reading-classes in English 
 poetry. Some of the poor little things began to 
 adorn themselves with an extra ribbon, or a bit of 
 such jewelry as they had before kept for great oc 
 casions. Dear souls! they only half knew what 
 they were doing it for. Does the bird know why 
 its feathers grow more brilliant and its voice be 
 comes musical in the pairing season ? 
 
 And so, in the midst of this quiet inland town, 
 where a mere accident had placed Mr. Bernard 
 Langdon, there was a concentration of explosive 
 materials which might at any time change its Ar 
 cadian and academic repose into a scene of dan 
 gerous commotion. What said Helen Darley, 
 when she saw with her woman's glance that more 
 than one girl, when she should be looking at her 
 book, was looking over it toward the master's 
 desk ? Was her own heart warmed by any live 
 lier feeling than gratitude, as its life began to 
 flow with fuller pulses, and the morning sky
 
 220 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 again looked bright and the flowers recovered 
 their lost fragrance ? "Was there any strange, 
 mysterious affinity between the master and the 
 dark girl who sat by herself? Could she call him 
 at will by looking at him ? Could it be that 
 
 ? It made her shiver to think of it. And 
 
 who was that strange horseman who passed Mr. 
 Bernard at dusk the other evening, looking so like 
 Mephistopheles galloping hard to be in season at 
 the witches' Sabbath-gathering ? That must be 
 the cousin of Elsie's who wants to marry her, 
 they say. A dangerous-looking fellow for a rival, 
 if one took a fancy to the dark girl ! And who is 
 she, and what ? by what demon is she haunted, 
 by what taint is she blighted, by what curse is 
 she followed, by what destiny is she marked, that 
 her strange beauty has such a terror in it, and 
 that hardly one shall dare to love her, and her eye 
 glitters always, but warms for none ? 
 
 Some of these questions are ours. Some were 
 Helen Barley's. Some of them mingled with the 
 dreams of Bernard Langdon, as he slept the night 
 after meeting the strange horseman. In the morn 
 ing he happened to be a little late in entering the 
 school-room. There was something between the 
 leaves of the Virgil which lay upon his desk. He 
 opened it and saw a freshly gathered mountain- 
 flower. He looked at Elsie, instinctively, invol 
 untarily. She had another such flower on her 
 breast. 
 
 A young girl's graceful compliment, that is
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 221 
 
 all, no doubt, no doubt. It was odd that the 
 flower should have happened to be laid between 
 the leaves of the Fourth Book of the "JBneid," 
 and at this line, 
 
 " Incipit effari, mediaque in voce resistit." 
 
 A remembrance of an ancient superstition flashed 
 through the master's mind, and he determined to 
 try the Sortes Virgillance. He shut the volume, 
 and opened it again at a venture. The story 
 of Laocoon! 
 
 He read, with a strange feeling of unwilling 
 fascination, from " Horresco referens " to " Bis 
 medium amplexi" and flung the book from him, 
 as if its leaves had been steeped in the subtle poi 
 sons that princes die of.
 
 222 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 CURIOSITY. 
 
 PEOPLE will talk. Ciascun lo dice is a tune 
 that is played oftener than the national air of 
 this country or any other. 
 
 " That's what they say. Means to marry her, 
 if she is his cousin. Got money himself, that's 
 the story, but wants to come and live in the 
 old place, and get the Dudley property by-and- 
 by." " Mother's folks was wealthy." " Twen 
 ty-three to twenty-five year old." " He a' n't 
 more'n twenty, or twenty-one at the outside." 
 " Looks as if he knew too much to be only 
 twenty year old." " Guess he's been through 
 the mill, don't look so green, anyhow, hey ? 
 Did y' ever mind that cut over his left eye 
 brow ? " 
 
 So they gossipped in Rockland. The young 
 fellows could make nothing of Dick Venner. 
 He was shy and proud with the few who made 
 advances to him. The young ladies called him 
 handsome and romantic, but he looked at them 
 like a many-tailed pacha who was in the habit 
 of ordering his wives by the dozen.
 
 ELSIE VENNEK. 223 
 
 " What do you think of the young man over 
 there at the Venners' ? " said Miss Arabella 
 Thornton to her father. 
 
 " Handsome," said the Judge, " but dangerous- 
 looking. His face is indictable at common law. 
 Do you know, my dear, I think there is a blank 
 at the Sheriff's office, with a place for his name 
 in it?" 
 
 The Judge paused and looked grave, as if he 
 had just listened to the verdict of the jury and 
 was going to pronounce sentence. 
 
 " Have you heard anything against him ? " said 
 the Judge's daughter. 
 
 " Nothing. But I don't like these mixed bloods 
 and half-told stories. Besides, I have seen a good 
 many desperate fellows at the bar, and I have a 
 fancy they all have a look belonging to them. 
 The worst one I ever sentenced looked a good 
 deal like this fellow. A wicked mouth. / All our 
 other features are made for us ; but a man makes 
 his own mouth." / 
 
 " Who was the person you sentenced?" 
 
 " He was a young fellow that undertook to 
 garrote a man who had won his money at 
 cards. The same slender shape, the same cun 
 ning, fierce look, smoothed over with a plausi 
 ble air. Depend upon it, there is an expression 
 in all the sort of people who live by their wits 
 when they can, and by worse weapons when 
 their wits fail them, that we old law-doctors 
 know just as well as the medical counsellors
 
 224 ELSIE VEXXER. 
 
 know the marks of disease in a man's face. Dr. 
 Kittredge looks at a man and says he is going to 
 die ; I look at another man and say he is going 
 to be hanged, if nothing happens. I don't say so 
 of this one, but I don't like his looks. I wonder 
 Dudley Venner takes to him so kindly." 
 
 " It's all for Elsie's sake," said Miss Thornton ; 
 " I feel quite sure of that. He never does any 
 thing that is not meant for her in some way. I 
 suppose it amuses her to have her cousin about 
 the house. She rides a good deal since he has 
 been here. Have you seen them galloping about 
 together ? He looks like my idea of a Spanish 
 bandit on that wild horse of his." 
 
 " Possibly he has been one, or is one," said 
 the Judge, smiling as men smile whose lips 
 have often been freighted with the life and death 
 of their fellow-creatures. " I met them riding the 
 other day. Perhaps Dudley is right, if it pleases 
 her to have a companion. What will happen, 
 though, if he makes love to her ? Will Elsie be 
 easily taken with such a fellow ? You young 
 folks are supposed to know more about these 
 matters than we middle-aged people." 
 
 " Nobody can tell. Elsie is not like anybody 
 else. The girls who have seen most of her think 
 she hates men, all but ' Dudley,' as she calls her 
 father. Some of them doubt whether she loves 
 him. They doubt whether she can love anything 
 human, except perhaps the old black woman who 
 has taken care of her since she was a baby. The
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 225 
 
 village people have the strangest stories about her: 
 you know what they call her ? " 
 
 She whispered three words in her father's ear. 
 The Judge changed color as she spoke, sighed 
 deeply, and was silent as if lost in thought for 
 a moment. 
 
 " I remember her mother," he said, " so well ! 
 A sweeter creature never lived. Elsie has some 
 thing of her in her look, but those are not her 
 mother's eyes. They were dark, but soft, as in 
 all I ever saw of her race. Her father's are dark 
 too, but mild, and even tender, I should say. I 
 don't know what there is about Elsie's, but 
 do you know, my dear, I find myself curiously 
 influenced by them ? I have had to face a good 
 many sharp eyes and hard ones, murderers' 
 eyes and pirates', men who had to be watched 
 in the bar, where they stood on trial, for fear 
 they should spring on the prosecuting officers like 
 tigers, but I never saw such eyes as Elsie's ; 
 and yet they have a kind of drawing virtue or 
 power about them, I don't know what else to 
 call it : have you never observed this ? " 
 
 His daughter smiled in her turn. 
 
 " Never observed it ? Why, of course, nobody 
 could be with Elsie Venner and not observe it. 
 There are a good many other strange things about 
 her : did you ever notice how she dresses ? " 
 
 " Why, handsomely enough, I should think," 
 the Judge answered. " I suppose she dresses as 
 she likes, and sends to the city for what she 
 
 VOL. 4. 15
 
 226 ELSIE TENNER. 
 
 wants. What do you mean in particular ? We 
 men notice effects in dress, but not much in de 
 tail." 
 
 " You never noticed the colors and patterns of 
 her dresses ? You never remarked anything curi 
 ous about her ornaments ? Well ! I don't be 
 lieve you men know, half the time, whether a 
 lady wears a ninepenny collar or a thread-lace 
 cape worth a thousand dollars. I don't believe 
 you know a silk dress from a bombazine one. I 
 don't believe you can tell whether a woman is in 
 black or in colors, unless you happen to know 
 she is a widow. Elsie Venner has a strange 
 taste in dress, let me tell you. She sends for 
 the oddest patterns of stuffs, and picks out the 
 most curious things at the jeweller's, whenever 
 she goes to town with her father. They say 
 the old Doctor tells him to let her have her way 
 about all such matters. Afraid of her mind, if 
 she is contradicted, I suppose. You've heard 
 about her going to school at that place, the 
 ' Institoot,' as those people call it ? They say 
 she's bright enough in her way, has studied 
 at home, you know, with her father a good deal, 
 knows some modern languages and Latin, I 
 believe : at any rate, she would have it so, she 
 must go to the * Institoot.' They have a very 
 good female teacher there, I hear ; and the new 
 master, that young Mr. Langdon, looks and talks 
 like a well-educated young man. I wonder what 
 they'll make of Elsie, between them ! "
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 227 
 
 So they talked at the Judge's, in the calm, 
 judicial-looking mansion-house, in the grave, still 
 library, with the troops of wan-hued law-books 
 staring blindly out of their titles at them as they 
 talked, like the ghosts of dead attorneys fixed 
 motionless and speechless, each with a thin, 
 golden film over his unwinking eyes. 
 
 In the mean time, everything went on quietly 
 enough after Cousin Richard's return. A man 
 of sense, that is, a man who knows perfectly 
 well that a cool head is worth a dozen warm 
 hearts in carrying the fortress of a woman's affec 
 tions, (not yours, " Astarte," nor yours, " Viola,") 
 who knows that men are rejected by women 
 every day because they, the men, love them, and 
 are accepted every day because they do not, and 
 therefore can study the arts of pleasing, a man 
 of sense, when he finds he has established his 
 second parallel too soon, retires quietly to his 
 first, and begins working on his covered ways 
 again. [The whole art of love may be read in 
 any Encyclopaedia under the title Fortification, 
 where the terms just used are explained.] After 
 the little adventure of the necklace, Dick retreated 
 at once to his first parallel. Elsie loved riding, 
 and would go off with him on a gallop now 
 and then. He was a master of all those 
 strange Indian horseback-feats which shame the 
 tricks of the circus-riders, and used to astonish 
 and almost amuse her sometimes by disappear 
 ing from his saddle, like a phantom horseman,
 
 228 ELSIE VEXNER. 
 
 lying flat against the side of the bounding creat 
 ure* that bore him, as if he were a hunting leop 
 ard with his claws in the horse's flank and flat 
 tening himself out against his heaving ribs. 
 Elsie knew a little Spanish too, which she had 
 learned from the young person who had taught 
 her dancing, and Dick enlarged her vocabulary 
 with a few soft phrases, and would sing her a 
 song sometimes, touching the air upon an an 
 cient-looking guitar they had found with the 
 ghostly things in the garret, a quaint old in 
 strument, marked E. M. on the back, and sup 
 posed to have belonged to a certain Elizabeth 
 Mascarene, before mentioned in connection with 
 a work of art, a fair, dowerless lady, who 
 smiled and sung and faded away, unwedded, a 
 hundred years ago, as dowerless ladies, not a 
 few, are smiling and singing and fading now, 
 God grant each of them His love, and one 
 human heart as its interpreter ! 
 
 As for school, Elsie went or stayed away as 
 she liked. Sometimes, when they thought she 
 was at her desk in the great school-room, she 
 would be on The Mountain, alone always. 
 Dick wanted to go with her, but she would never 
 let him. Once, when she had followed the zigzag 
 path a little way up, she looked back and caught 
 a glimpse of him following her. She turned and 
 passed him without a word, but giving him a look 
 which seemed to make the scars on his wrist tin 
 gle, went to her room, where she locked herself
 
 ELSIE VENXER. 229 
 
 up, and did not come out again till evening, 
 Old Sophy having brought her food, and set it 
 down, not speaking, but looking into her eyes 
 inquiringly, like a dumb beast trying to feel out 
 his master's will in his face. The evening was 
 clear and the moon shining. As Dick sat at his 
 chamber-window, looking at the mountain-side, 
 he saw a gray-dressed figure flit between the trees 
 and steal along the narrow path which led up 
 ward. Elsie's pillow was unpressed that night, 
 but she had not been missed by the household, 
 for Dick knew enough to keep his own counsel. 
 The next morning she avoided him and went off 
 early to school. It was the same morning that 
 the young master found the flower between the 
 leaves of his Virgil. 
 
 The girl got over her angry fit, and was pleas 
 ant enough with her cousin for a few days after 
 this ; but she shunned rather than sought him. 
 She had taken a new interest in her books, and 
 especially in certain poetical readings which the 
 master conducted with the elder scholars. This 
 gave Master Langdon a good chance to study her 
 ways when her eye was on her book, to notice the 
 inflections of her voice, to watch for any expres 
 sion of her sentiments ; for, to tell the truth, he 
 had a kind of fear that the girl had taken a fancy 
 to him, and, though she interested him, he did not 
 wish to study her heart from the inside. 
 
 The more he saw her, the more the sadness of 
 her beauty wrought upon him. She looked as if
 
 230 ELSIE TENNER. 
 
 she might hate, but could not love. She hardly 
 smiled at anything, spoke rarely, but seemed to 
 feel that her natural power of expression lay all in 
 her bright eyes, the force of which so many had 
 felt, but none perhaps had tried to explain to 
 themselves. A person accustomed to watch the 
 faces of those who were ailing in body or mind, 
 and to search in every line and tint for some un 
 derlying source of disorder, could hardly help an 
 alyzing the impression such a face produced upon 
 him. The light of those beautiful eyes was like 
 the lustre of ice ; in all her features there was 
 nothing of that human warmth which shows that 
 sympathy has reached the soul beneath the mask 
 of flesh it wears. The look was that of remote 
 ness, of utter isolation. There was in its stony 
 apathy, it seemed to him, the pathos which we 
 find in the blind who show no film or speck over 
 the organs of sight ; for Nature had meant her to 
 be lovely, and left out nothing but love. And yet 
 the master could not help feeling that some in 
 stinct was working in this girl which was in some 
 way leading her to seek his presence. She did 
 not lift her glittering eyes upon him as at first. It 
 seemed strange that she did not, for they were 
 surely her natural weapons of conquest. Her 
 color did not come and go like that of young girls 
 under excitement. She had a clear brunette com 
 plexion, a little sun-touched, it may be, for the 
 master noticed once, when her necklace was 
 slightly displaced, that a faint ring or band of a
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 231 
 
 little lighter shade than the rest of the surface en 
 circled her neck. What was the slight peculiarity 
 of her enunciation, when she read ? Not a lisp, 
 certainly, but the least possible imperfection in 
 articulating some of the lingual sounds, just 
 enough to be noticed at first, and quite forgotten 
 after being a few times heard. 
 
 Not a word about the flower on either side. It 
 was not uncommon for the school-girls to leave a 
 rose or pink or wild flower on the teacher's desk. 
 Finding it in the Virgil was nothing, after all ; it 
 was a little delicate flower, which looked as if it 
 were made to press, and it was probably shut in 
 by accident at the particular place where he found 
 it. He took it into his head to examine it in a 
 botanical point of view. He found it was not 
 common, that it grew only in certain localities, 
 and that one of these was among the rocks of 
 the eastern spur of The Mountain. 
 
 It happened to come into his head how the 
 Swiss youth climb the sides of the Alps to find 
 the flower called the Edelweiss for the maidens 
 whom they wish to please. It is a pretty fancy, 
 that of scaling some dangerous height before the 
 dawn, so as to gather the flower in its freshness, 
 that the favored maiden may wear it to church on 
 Sunday morning, a proof at once of her lover's 
 devotion and his courage. Mr. Bernard deter 
 mined to explore the region' where this flower was 
 said to grow, that he might see where the wild 
 girl sought the blossoms of which Nature was so 
 jealous.
 
 232 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 It was on a warm, fair Saturday afternoon that 
 he undertook his land-voyage of discovery. He 
 had more curiosity, it may be, than he would have 
 owned ; for he had heard of the girl's wandering 
 habits, and the guesses about her sylvan haunts, 
 and was thinking what the chances were that he 
 should meet her in some strange place, or come 
 upon traces of her which would tell secrets she 
 would not care to have known. 
 
 The woods are all alive to one who walks 
 through them with his mind in an excited state, 
 and his eyes and ears wide open. The trees are 
 always talking, not merely whispering with their 
 leaves, (for every tree talks to itself in that way, 
 even when it stands alone in the middle of a pas 
 ture,) but grating their boughs against each other, 
 as old horn-handed farmers press their dry, rus 
 tling palms together, dropping a nut or a leaf or a 
 twig, clicking to the tap of a woodpecker, or rus 
 tling as a squirrel flashes along a branch. It was 
 now the season of singing-birds, and the woods 
 were haunted with mysterious, tender music. 
 The voices of the birds which love the deeper 
 shades of the forest are sadder than those of the 
 open fields : these are the nuns who have taken 
 the veil, the hermifs that have hidden themselves 
 away from the world and tell their griefs to the 
 infinite listening Silences of the wilderness, for 
 the one deep inner silence that Nature breaks 
 with her fitful superficial sounds becomes multi 
 plied as the image of a star in ruffled waters.
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 233 
 
 Strange ! The woods at first convey the impres 
 sion of profound repose, and yet, if you watch their 
 ways with open ear, you find the life which is in 
 them is restless and nervous as that of a woman : 
 the little twigs are crossing and twining and sep 
 arating like slender fingers that cannot be still ; 
 the stray leaf is to be flattened into its place like a 
 truant curl ; the limbs sway and twist, impatient 
 of their constrained attitude ; and the rounded 
 masses of foliage swell upward and subside from 
 time to time with long soft sighs, and, it may 
 be, the falling of a few rain-drops which had lain 
 hidden among the deeper shadows. I pray you, 
 notice, in the sweet summer days which will soon 
 see you among the mountains, this inward tran 
 quillity that belongs to the heart of the woodland, 
 with this nervousness, for I do not know what 
 else to call it, of outer movement. One would 
 say, that Nature, like untrained persons, could not 
 sit still without nestling about or doing something 
 with her limbs or features, and that high breeding 
 was only to be looked for in trim gardens, where 
 the soul of the trees is ill at ease perhaps, but their 
 manners are unexceptionable, and a rustling 
 branch or leaf falling out of season is an in 
 decorum. The real forest is hardly still except 
 in the Indian summer ; then there is death in the 
 house, and they are waiting for the sharp shrunk 
 en months to come with white raiment for the 
 summer's burial. 
 
 There were many hemlocks in this neighbor-
 
 234 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 hood, the grandest and most solemn of all the 
 forest-trees in the mountain regions. Up to a 
 certain period of growth they are eminently beau 
 tiful, their boughs disposed in the most graceful 
 pagoda-like series of close terraces, thick and dark 
 with green crystalline leaflets. In spring the ten 
 der shoots come out of a paler green, finger-like, 
 as if they were pointing to the violets at their 
 feet. But when the trees have grown old, and 
 their rough boles measure a yard and more 
 through their diameter, they are no longer beau 
 tiful, but they have a sad solemnity all their own, 
 too full of meaning to require the heart's com 
 ment to be framed in words. Below, all their 
 earthward-looking branches are sapless and shat 
 tered, splintered by the weight of many winters' 
 snows ; above, they are still green and full of life, 
 but their summits overtop all the deciduous trees 
 around them, and in their companionship with 
 heaven they are alone. On these the lightning 
 loves to fall. One such Mr. Bernard saw, or 
 rather, what had been one such ; for the bolt had 
 torn the tree like an explosion from within, and 
 the ground was strewed all around the broken 
 stump with flakes of rough bark and strips and 
 chips of shivered wood, into which the old tree 
 had been rent by the bursting rocket from the 
 thunder-cloud. 
 
 The master had struck up The Mountain 
 
 obliquely from the western side of the Dudley 
 mansion-house. In this way he ascended until
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 235 
 
 he reached a point many hundred feet above the 
 level of the plain, and commanding all the coun 
 try beneath and around. Almost at his feet he 
 saw the mansion-house, the chimney standing out 
 of the middle of the roof, or rather, like a black 
 square hole in it, the trees almost directly over 
 their stems, the fences as lines, the whole nearly 
 as an architect would draw a ground-plan of the 
 house and the inclosures round it. It fright 
 ened him to see how the huge masses of rock 
 and old forest-growths hung over the home be 
 low. As he descended a little and drew near 
 the ledge of evil name, he was struck with the 
 appearance of a long narrow fissure that ran 
 parallel with it and above it for many rods, not 
 seemingly of very old standing, for there were 
 many fibres of roots which had evidently been 
 snapped asunder when the rent took place, and 
 some of which were still succulent in both sep 
 arated portions. 
 
 Mr. Bernard had made up his mind, when he 
 set forth, not to come back before he had exam 
 ined the dreaded ledge. He had half persuaded 
 himself that it was scientific curiosity. He 
 wished to examine the rocks, to see what flow 
 ers grew there, and perhaps to pick up an ad 
 venture in the zoological line ; for he had on a 
 pair of high, stout boots, and he carried a stick 
 in his hand, which was forked at one extremity, 
 so as to be very convenient to hold down a 
 crotalus with, if he should happen to encounter
 
 236 ELSIE VENSTER. 
 
 one. He knew the aspect of the ledge from a 
 distance; for its bald and leprous-looking de 
 clivities stood out in their nakedness from the 
 wooded sides of The Mountain, when this was 
 viewed from certain points of the village. But 
 the nearer aspect of the blasted region had some 
 thing frightful in it. The cliffs were water-worn, 
 as if they, had been gnawecl for thousands of 
 years by hungry waves. In some places they 
 overhung their base so as to look like leaning 
 towers which might topple over at any minute. 
 In other parts they were scooped into niches or 
 caverns. Here and there they were cracked in 
 deep fissures, some of them of such width that 
 one might enter them, if he cared to run the 
 risk of meeting the regular tenants, who might 
 treat him as an intruder. 
 
 Parts of the ledge were cloven perpendicu 
 larly, with nothing but cracks or slightly project 
 ing edges in which or on which a foot could 
 find hold. High up on one of these precipitous 
 walls of rock he saw some tufts of flowers, and 
 knew them at once for the same that he had 
 found between the leaves of his Virgil. Not 
 there, surely! No woman would have clung 
 against that steep, rough parapet to gather an 
 idle blossom. And yet the master looked round 
 everywhere, and even up the side of that rock, 
 to see if there were no signs of a woman's foot 
 step. He peered about curiously, as if his eye 
 might fall on some of those fragments of dress
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 237 
 
 which women leave after them, whenever they 
 run against each other or against anything else, 
 in crowded ballrooms, in the brushwood after 
 picnics, on the fences after rambles, scattered 
 round over every place which has witnessed an 
 act of violence, where rude hands have been 
 laid upon them. Nothing. Stop, though, one 
 moment. That stone is smooth and polished, 
 as if it had been somewhat worn by the press 
 ure of human feet. There is one twig broken 
 among the stems of that clump of shrubs. He 
 put his foot upon the stone and took hold of 
 the close-clinging shrub. In this way he turned 
 a sharp angle of the rock and found himself on 
 a natural platform, which lay in front of one of 
 the wider fissures. whether the mouth of a cav 
 ern or not he could not yet tell. A flat stone 
 made an easy seat, upon which he sat down, as 
 he was very glad to do, and looked mechanically 
 about him. A small fragment splintered from 
 the rock was at his feet. He took it and threw 
 it down the declivity a little below where he sat. 
 He looked about for a stem or a straw of some 
 kind to bite upon, a country -instinct, relic, 
 no doubt, of the old vegetable-feeding habits of 
 Eden. Is that a stem or a straw? He picked it 
 up. It was a hair-pin. 
 
 To say that Mr. Langdon had a strange sort 
 of thrill shoot through him at the' sight of this 
 harmless little implement would be a statement 
 not at variance with the fact of the case. That
 
 238 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 smooth stone had been often trodden, and by 
 what foot he could not doubt. He rose up from 
 his seat to look round for other signs of a wom 
 an's visits. What if there is a cavern here, where 
 she has a retreat, fitted up, perhaps, as anchorites 
 fitted their cells, nay, it maybe, carpeted and 
 mirrored, and with one of those tiger-skins for a 
 couch, such as they say the girl loves to lie on ? 
 Let us look, at any rate. 
 
 Mr. Bernard walked to the mouth of the cav 
 ern or fissure and looked into it. His look was 
 met by the glitter of two diamond eyes, small, 
 sharp, cold, shining out of the darkness, but glid 
 ing with a smooth, steady motion towards the 
 light, and himself. He stood fixed, struck dumb, 
 staring back into them with dilating pupils and 
 sudden numbness of fear that cannot move, as in 
 the terror of dreams. The two sparks of light 
 came forward until they grew to circles of flame, 
 and all at once lifted themselves up as if in angry 
 surprise. Then for the first time thrilled in Mr. 
 Bernard's ears the dreadful sound that nothing 
 which breathes, be it man or brute, can hear 
 unmoved, the long, loud, stinging whirr, as the 
 huge, thick-bodied reptile shook his many-jointed 
 rattle and adjusted his loops for the fatal stroke. 
 His eyes were drawn as with magnets toward the 
 circles of flame. His ears rung as in the over 
 ture to the swooning dream of chloroform. Na 
 ture was before man with her anaesthetics : the 
 cat's first shake stupefies the mouse ; the lion's
 
 ELSIE VENNEK. 2.39 
 
 first shake deadens the man's fear and feeling ; 
 and the crotalus paralyzes before he strikes. He 
 waited as in a trance, waited as one that longs 
 to have the blow fall, and all over, as the man who 
 shall be in two pieces in a second waits for the 
 axe to drop. But while he looked straight into 
 the flaming eyes, it seemed to him that they were 
 losing their light and terror, that they were grow 
 ing tame and dull ; the charm was dissolving, the 
 numbness was passing away, he could move once 
 more. He heard a light breathing close to his 
 ear, and, half turning, saw the face of Elsie Ven- 
 ner, looking motionless into the reptile's eyes, 
 which had shrunk and faded under the stronger 
 enchantment of her own.
 
 240 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 FAMILY SECRETS. 
 
 IT was commonly understood in the town of 
 Rockland that Dudley Venner had had a great 
 deal of trouble with that daughter of his, so hand 
 some, yet so peculiar, about whom there were so 
 many strange stories. There was no end to the 
 tales which were told of her extraordinary doings. 
 Yet her name was never coupled with that of any 
 youth or man, until this cousin had provoked re 
 mark by his visit ; and even then it was oftener 
 in the shape of wondering conjectures whether he 
 would dare to make love to her, than in any pre 
 tended knowledge of their relations to each other, 
 that the public tongue exercised its village-pre 
 rogative of tattle. 
 
 The more common version of the trouble at the 
 mansion-house was this: Elsie was not exactly 
 in her right mind. Her temper was singular, her 
 tastes were anomalous, her habits were lawless, 
 her antipathies were many and intense, and she 
 was liable to explosions of ungovernable anger. 
 Some said that was not the worst of it. At 
 nearly fifteen years old, when she was growing
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 241 
 
 fast, and in an irritable state of mind and body, 
 she had had a governess placed over her for 
 whom she had conceived an aversion. It was 
 whispered among a few who knew more of the 
 family secrets than others, that, worried and ex 
 asperated by the presence and jealous oversight 
 of this person, Elsie had attempted to get finally 
 rid of her by unlawful means, such as young girls 
 have been known to employ in their straits, and 
 to which the sex at all ages has a certain instinct 
 ive tendency, in preference to more palpable in 
 struments for the righting of its wrongs. At any 
 rate, this governess had been taken suddenly ill, 
 and the Doctor had been sent for at midnight. 
 Old Sophy had taken her master into, a room 
 apart, and said a few words to him which turned 
 him as white as a sheet. As soon as he recov 
 ered himself, he sent Sophy out, called in the old 
 Doctor, and gave him some few hints, on which 
 he acted at once, and had the satisfaction of see 
 ing his patient out of danger before he left in the 
 morning. It is proper to say, that, during the fol 
 lowing days, the most thorough search was made 
 in every nook and cranny of those parts of the 
 house which Elsie chiefly haunted, but nothing 
 was found which might be accused of having 
 been the intentional cause of the probably acci 
 dental sudden illness of the governess. From 
 this time forward her father was never easy. 
 Should he keep her apart, or shut her up, for fear 
 of risk to others, and so lose every chance of 
 
 VOL. I. 16
 
 242 ELSIE VEXXER. 
 
 restoring her mind to its healthy tone by kindly 
 influences and intercourse with wholesome na 
 tures ? There was no proof, only presumption, 
 as to the agency of Elsie in the matter referred 
 to. But the doubt was worse, perhaps, than cer 
 tainty would have been, for then he would have 
 known what to do. 
 
 He took the old Doctor as his adviser. The 
 shrewd old man listened to the father's story, his 
 explanations of possibilities, of probabilities, of 
 dangers, of hopes. When he had got through, 
 the Doctor looked him in the face steadily, as if 
 he were saying, Is that all? 
 
 The father's eyes fell. This was not all. There 
 was something at the bottom of his soul which 
 he could not bear to speak of, nay, which, as 
 often as it reared itself through the dark waves 
 of unworded consciousness into the breathing air 
 of thought, he trod down as the ruined angels 
 tread down a lost soul trying to come up out of. 
 the seething sea of torture. Only this one daugh 
 ter ! No ! God never would have ordained such 
 a thing. There was nothing ever heard of like it ; 
 it could not be ; she was ill, she would outgrow 
 all these singularities ; he had had an aunt who 
 was peculiar ; he had heard that hysteric girls 
 showed the strangest forms of moral obliquity for 
 a time, but came right at last. She would change 
 all at once, when her health got more firmly set 
 tled in the course of her growth. Are there not 
 rough buds that open into sweet flowers ? Are
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 243 
 
 there not fruits, which, while unripe, are not to be 
 tasted or endured, which mature into the richest 
 taste and fragrance? In God's good time she 
 would come to her true nature ; her eyes would 
 lose that frightful, cold glitter ; her lips would not 
 feel so cold when she pressed them against his 
 cheek ; and that faint birth-mark, her mother 
 swooned when she first saw, would fade wholly 
 out, it was less marked, surely, now than it 
 used to be ! 
 
 So Dudley Venner felt, and would have thought, 
 if he had let his thoughts breathe the air of his 
 soul. But the Doctor read through words and 
 thoughts and all into the father's consciousness. 
 There are states of mind which may be shared 
 by two persons in presence of each other, which 
 remain not only unworded, but unthoughtedJif 
 such a word may be coined for our special need. 
 Such a mutually interpenetrative consciousness 
 there was between the father and the old physi 
 cian. By a common impulse, both of them rose 
 in a mechanical way and went to the western 
 window, where each started, as he saw the other's 
 look directed towards the white stone which 
 stood in the midst of the small plot of green turf. 
 
 The Doctor had, for a moment, forgotten him 
 self, but he looked ur> at the clouds, which were 
 angry, and said, as if speaking of the weather, 
 " It is dark now, but we hope it will clear up by- 
 and-by. There are a great many more clouds 
 than rains, and more rains than strokes of light-
 
 244 ELSIE TENNER. 
 
 ning, and more strokes of lightning than there are 
 people killed. We must let this girl of ours have 
 her way, as far as it is safe. Send away this 
 woman she hates, quietly. Get her a foreigner 
 for a governess, if you can, one that can dance 
 and sing and will teach" her. In the house old 
 Sophy will watch her best. Out of it you must 
 trust her, I am afraid, for she will not be fol 
 lowed round, and she is in less danger than you 
 think. If she wanders at night, find her, if you 
 can ; the woods are not absolutely safe. If she 
 will be friendly with any young people, have 
 them to see her, young men, especially. She 
 will not love any one easily, perhaps not at all ; 
 yet love would be more like to bring her right 
 than anything else. If any young person seems 
 in danger of falling in love with her, send him to 
 me for counsel." 
 
 Dry, hard advice, but given from a kind heart, 
 with a moist eye, and in tones which tried to be 
 cheerful and were full of sympathy. This advice 
 was the key to the more than indulgent treatment 
 which, as we have seen, the girl had received 
 from her father and all about her. The old Doc 
 tor often came in, in the kindest, most natural 
 sort of way, got into pleasant relations with El 
 sie by always treating her in the same easy man 
 ner as at the great party, encouraging all her 
 harmless fancies, and rarely reminding her that 
 he was a professional adviser, except when she 
 came out of her own accord, as in the talk they
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 245 
 
 had at the party, telling him of some wild trick 
 she had been playing. 
 
 " Let her go to the girls' school, by all means," 
 said the Doctor, when she had begun to talk 
 about it. u Possibly she may take to some of 
 the girls or of the teachers. Anything to interest 
 her. Friendship, love, religion, whatever will 
 set her nature at work. We must have head 
 way on, or there will be no piloting her. Action 
 first of all, and then we will see what to do 
 with it." 
 
 So, when Cousin Richard came along, the 
 Doctor, though he did not like his looks any too 
 well, told her father to encourage his staying for 
 a time. If she liked him, it was good ; if she 
 only tolerated him, it was better than nothing. 
 
 " You know something about that nephew of 
 yours, during these last years, I suppose ? " the 
 Doctor said. " Looks as if he had seen life. 
 Has a scar that was made by a sword-cut, and 
 a white spot on the side of his neck that looks 
 like a bullet-mark. I think he has been what 
 folks call a ' hard customer.' " 
 
 Dudley Venner owned that he had heard little 
 or nothing of him of late years. He had invited 
 himself, and of course it would not be decent 
 not to receive him as a relative. He thought 
 Elsie rather liked having him about the house 
 for a while. She was very capricious, acted 
 as if she fancied him one day and disliked him 
 the next. He did not know, but sometimes
 
 246 ELSII: YKXNKI;. 
 
 thought that this nephew of his might take a seri 
 ous liking to Elsie. What should he do about 
 it, if it turned out so ? 
 
 The Doctor lifted his eyebrows a little. He 
 thought there was no fear. Elsie was naturally 
 what they call a man-hater, and there was very 
 little danger of any sudden passion springing up 
 between two such young persons. Let him stay 
 awhile ; it gives her something to think about. 
 So he stayed awhile, as we have seen. 
 
 The more Mr. Richard became acquainted 
 with the family, that is, with the two persons 
 of whom it consisted, the more favorably the 
 idea of a permanent residence in the mansion- 
 house seemed to impress him. The estate was 
 large, hundreds of acres, with woodlands and 
 meadows of great value. The father and daugh 
 ter had been living quietly, and there could not 
 be a doubt that the property which carne through 
 the Dudleys must have largely increased of late 
 years. It was evident enough that they had an 
 abundant income, from the way in which Elsie's 
 caprices were indulged. She had horses and car 
 riages to suit herself ; she sent to the great city 
 for everything she wanted in the way of dress. 
 Even her diamonds and the young man knew 
 something about these gems must be of con 
 siderable value ; and yet she wore them care 
 lessly, as it pleased her fancy. She had precious 
 old laces, too, almost worth their weight in dia 
 monds, laces which had been snatched from
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 247 
 
 altars in ancient Spanish cathedrals during the 
 wars, and which it would not be safe to leave a 
 duchess alone with for ten minutes. The old 
 house was fat with the deposits of rich genera 
 tions which had gone before. The famous " gold 
 en " fire-set was a purchase of one of the family 
 who had been in France during the Revolution, 
 and must have come from a princely palace, if 
 not from one of the royal residences. As for 
 silver, the iron closet which had been made in the 
 dining-room wall was running over with it : tea 
 kettles, coffee-pots, heavy-lidded tankards, chafing- 
 dishes, punch-bowls, all that all the Dudleys had 
 ever used, from the caudle-cup which used to be 
 handed round the young mother's chamber, and 
 the porringer from which children scooped their 
 bread-and-milk with spoons as solid as ingots, 
 to that ominous vessel, on the upper shelf, far 
 back in the dark, with a spout like a slender 
 italic $, out of which the sick and dying, all 
 along the last century, and since, had taken the 
 last drops that passed their lips. Without being 
 much of a scholar, Dick could see well enough, 
 too, that the books in the library had been ordered 
 from the great London houses, whose imprint 
 they bore, by persons who knew what was best 
 and meant to have it. A man does not require 
 much learning to feel pretty sure, when he takes 
 one of those solid, smooth, velvet-leaved quartos, 
 say a Baskerville Addison, for instance, bound in 
 red morocco, with a margin of gold as rich as
 
 248 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 the embroidery of a prince's collar, as Vandyck 
 drew it, he need not know much to feel pretty 
 sure that a score or two of shelves full of such 
 books mean that it took a long purse, as well 
 as a literary taste, to bring them together. 
 
 To all these attractions the mind of this 
 thoughtful young gentleman may be said to have 
 been fully open. He did not disguise from him 
 self, however, that there were a number of draw 
 backs in the way of his becoming established as 
 the heir of the Dudley mansion-house and for 
 tune. In the first place, Cousin Elsie was, un 
 questionably, very piquant, very handsome, game 
 as a hawk, and hard to please, which made her 
 worth trying for. But then there was something 
 about Cousin Elsie, (the small, white scars 
 began stinging, as he said this to himself, and he 
 pushed his sleeve up to look at them,) there 
 was something about Cousin Elsie he couldn't 
 make out. What was the matter with her eyes, 
 that they sucked your life out of you in that 
 strange way ? What did she always wear a 
 necklace for? Had she some such love-token on 
 her neck as the old Don's revolver had left on 
 his ? How* safe would anybody feel to live with 
 her ? Besides, her father would last forever, if 
 he was left to himself. And he may take it 
 into his head to marry again. That would be 
 pleasant ! 
 
 So talked Cousin Richard to himself, in the 
 calm of the night and in the tranquillity of his
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 249 
 
 own soul. There was much to be said on both 
 sides. It was a balance to be struck after the 
 two columns were added up. He struck the 
 balance, and came to the conclusion that he 
 would fall in love with Elsie Venner. 
 
 The intelligent reader will not confound this 
 matured and serious intention of falling in love 
 with the young lady with that mere impulse of 
 the moment before mentioned as an instance of 
 making love. On the contrary, the moment Mr. 
 Richard had made up his mind that he should fall 
 in love with Elsie, he began to be more reserved 
 with her, and to try to make friends in other 
 quarters. Sensible men, you know, care very 
 little what a girl's present fancy is. The ques 
 tion is : Who manages her, and how can you get 
 at that person or those persons ? Her foolish 
 little sentiments are all very well in their way ; 
 but business is business, and we can't stop for 
 such trifles. The old political wire-pullers never 
 go near the man they want to gain, if they can 
 help it; they .find out who his intimates and 
 managers are, and work through them. Always 
 handle any positively electrical body, whether it 
 is charged with passion or power, with some non 
 conductor between you and it, not with your 
 naked hands. The above were some of the 
 young gentleman's working axioms ; and he pro 
 ceeded to act in accordance with them. 
 
 He began by paying his court more assiduously 
 to his uncle. It was not very hard to ingratiate
 
 250 ELSIE VENXER. 
 
 himself in that quarter ; for his manners were in 
 sinuating, and his precocious experience of life 
 made him entertaining. The old neglected bil 
 liard-room was soon put in order, and Dick, who 
 was a magnificent player, had a series of games 
 with his uncle, in which, singularly enough, he 
 was beaten, though his antagonist had been out 
 of play for years. He evinced a profound interest 
 in the family history, insisted on having the de 
 tails of its early alliances, and professed a great 
 pride in it, which he had inherited from his father, 
 who, though he had allied himself with the daugh 
 ter of an alien race, had yet chosen one with the 
 real azure blood in her veins, as proud as if she 
 had Castile and Aragon for her dower and the 
 Cid for her grandpapa. He also asked a great 
 deal of advice, such as inexperienced young per 
 sons are in need of, and listened to it with due 
 reverence. 
 
 It is not very strange that Uncle Dudley took 
 a kinder view of his nephew than the . Judge, 
 who thought he could read a questionable his 
 tory in his face, or the old Doctor, who knew 
 men's temperaments and organizations pretty 
 well, and had his prejudices about races, and 
 could tell an old sword-cut and a bullet-mark 
 in two seconds from a scar got by falling against 
 the fender, or a mark left by king's evil. He 
 could not be expected to share our own preju 
 dices ; for he had heard nothing of the wild 
 youth's adventures, or his scamper over the Pam-
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 251 
 
 pas at short notice. So, then, " Richard Venner, 
 Esquire, guest of Dudley Venner, Esquire, at his 
 elegant mansion," prolonged his visit until his 
 presence became something like a matter of hab 
 it, and the neighbors began to think that the fine 
 old house would be illuminated before long for 
 a grand marriage. 
 
 He had done pretty well with the father : the 
 next thing was to gain over the nurse.* Old So 
 phy was as cunning as a red fox or a gray wood- 
 chuck. She had nothing in the world to do but 
 to watch Elsie ; she had nothing to care for but 
 this girl and her father. She had never liked Dick 
 too well ; for he used to make faces at her and 
 tease her when he was a boy, and now he was a 
 man there was something about him she could 
 not tell what that made her suspicious of him. 
 It was no small matter to get her over to his side. 
 
 The jet-black Africans know that gold never 
 looks so well as on the foil of their dark skins. 
 Dick found in his trunk a string of gold beads, 
 such as are manufactured in some of our cities, 
 which he had brought from the gold region of 
 Chili, so he said, for the express purpose of 
 giving them to old Sophy. These Africans, too, 
 have a perfect passion for gay-colored clothing; 
 being condemned by Nature, as it were, to a per 
 petual mourning-suit, they love to enliven it with 
 all sorts of variegated stuffs of sprightly patterns, 
 aflame with red and yellow. The considerate 
 young man'had remembered this, too, and brought 
 home for Sophy some handkerchiefs of rainbow
 
 252 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 hues, which had been strangely overlooked till 
 now, at the bottom of one of his trunks. Old 
 Sophy took his gifts, but kept her black eyes open 
 and watched every movement of the young peo 
 ple all the more closely. It was through her that 
 the father had always known most of the actions 
 and tendencies of his daughter. 
 
 In the mean time the strange adventure on The 
 Mountain had brought the young master into new 
 relations with Elsie. She had led him out of dan 
 ger ; perhaps saved him from death by the strange 
 power she exerted. He was grateful, and yet 
 shuddered at the recollection of the whole scene. 
 In his dreams he was pursued by the glare of cold 
 glittering eyes, whether they were in the head 
 of a woman or of a reptile he could not always 
 tell, the images had so run together. But he 
 could not help seeing that the eyes of the young 
 girl had been often, very often, turned upon him 
 when he had been looking away, and fell as his 
 own glance met them. Helen Darley told him 
 very plainly that this girl was thinking about him 
 more than about her book. Dick Venner found 
 she was getting more constant in her attendance 
 at school. He learned, on inquiry, that there was 
 a new master, a handsome young man. The 
 handsome young man would not have liked the 
 look that came over Dick's face when he heard 
 this fact mentioned. 
 
 In short, everything was getting tangled up 
 together, and there would be no chance of disen 
 tangling the threads in this chapter.
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 253 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 PHYSIOLOGICAL. 
 
 IF Master Bernard felt a natural gratitude to 
 his young pupil for saving him from an imminent 
 peril, he was in a state of infinite perplexity to 
 know why he should have needed such aid. He, 
 an active, muscular, courageous, adventurous 
 young fellow, with a stick in his hand, ready to 
 hold down the Old Serpent himself, if he had 
 come in his way, to stand still, staring into those 
 two eyes, until they came up close to him, and 
 the strange, terrible sound seemed to freeze him 
 stiff where he stood, what was the meaning of 
 it ? Again, what was the influence this girl had 
 seemingly exerted, under which the venomous 
 creature had collapsed in such a sudden way ? 
 Whether he had been awake or dreaming he did 
 not feel quite sure. He knew he had gone up 
 The Mountain, at any rate ; he knew he had 
 come down The Mountain with the girl walking 
 just before him ; there was no forgetting her 
 figure, as she walked on in silence, her braided 
 locks falling a little, for want of the lost hair-pin, 
 perhaps, and looking like a wreathing coil of
 
 254 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 Shame on such fancies ! to wrong that su 
 preme crowning gift of abounding Nature, a rush 
 of shining black hair, which, shaken loose, would 
 cloud her all round, like Godiva, from brow to 
 instep ! He was sure he had sat down before the 
 fissure or cave. He was sure that he was led 
 softly away from the place, and that it was Elsie 
 who had led him. There was the hair-pin to show 
 that so far it was not a dream. But between 
 these recollections came a strange confusion; and 
 the more the master thought, the more he was 
 perplexed to know whether she had \vaked him, 
 sleeping, as he sat on the stone, from some fright 
 ful dream, such as may come in a very brief slum 
 ber, or whether she had bewitched him into a 
 trance with those strange eyes of hers, or whether 
 it was all true, and he must solve its problem as 
 he best might. 
 
 There was another recollection connected with 
 this mountain adventure. As they approached 
 the mansion-house, they met a young man, whom 
 Mr. Bernard remembered having seen once at 
 least before, and whom he had heard of as a 
 cousin of the young girl. As Cousin Richard 
 Venner, the person in question, passed them, he 
 took the measure, so to speak, of Mr. Bernard, 
 with a look so piercing, so exhausting, so prac 
 tised, so profoundly suspicious, that the young 
 master felt in an instant that he had an enemy in 
 this handsome youth, an enemy, too, who was 
 like to be subtle and dangerous.
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 255 
 
 Mr. Bernard had made up his mind, that, come 
 what might, enemy or no enemy, live or die, he 
 would solve the mystery of Elsie Venner, sooner 
 or later. He was not a man to be frightened out 
 of his resolution by a scowl, or a stiletto, or any 
 unknown means of mischief, of which a whole 
 armory was hinted at in that passing look Dick 
 Venner had given him. Indeed, like most adven 
 turous young persons, he found a kind of charm 
 in feeling that there might be some dangers in the 
 way of his investigations. Some rumors which 
 had reached him about the supposed suitor 'of 
 Elsie Venner, who was thought to be a desperate 
 kind of fellow, and whom some believed to be an 
 unscrupulous adventurer, added a curious, roman 
 tic kind of interest to the course of physiological 
 and psychological inquiries he was about insti 
 tuting. 
 
 The afternoon on The Mountain was still up 
 permost in his mind. Of course he knew the 
 common stories about fascination. He had once 
 been himself an eye-witness of the charming of a 
 small bird by one of our common harmless ser 
 pents. Whether a human being could be reached 
 by this subtile agency, he had been skeptical, not 
 withstanding the mysterious relation generally felt 
 to exist between man and this creature, " cursed 
 above all cattle and above every beast of the 
 field," a relation which some interpret as the 
 fruit of the curse, and others hold to be so in 
 stinctive that this. animal has been for that reason
 
 256 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 adopted as the natural symbol of evil. There was 
 another solution, however, supplied him by his 
 professional reading. The curious work of Mr. 
 Braid of Manchester had made him familiar with 
 the phenomena of a state allied to that produced 
 by animal magnetism, and called by that writer 
 by the name of hypnotism. He found, by refer 
 ring to his note-book, the statement was, that, by 
 fixing the eyes on a bright object so placed as to 
 produce a strain upon the eyes and eyelids, and to 
 maintain a steady fixed stare, there comes on in a 
 few seconds a very singular condition, character 
 ized by muscular rigidity and inability to move, 
 with a strange exaltation of most of the senses, and 
 generally a closure of the eyelids, this condition 
 being followed by torpor. 
 
 Now this statement of Mr. Braid's, well known 
 to the scientific world, and the truth of which had 
 been confirmed by Mr. Bernard in certain experi 
 ments he had instituted, as.it has been by many 
 other experimenters, went far to explain the 
 strange impressions, of which, waking or dream 
 ing, he had certainly been the subject. His ner 
 vous system had been in a high state of exalta 
 tion at the time. He remembered how the little 
 noises that made rings of sound in the silence of 
 the woods, like pebbles dropped in still waters, 
 had reached his inner consciousness. He remem 
 bered that singular sensation in the roots of the 
 hair, when he came on the traces of the girl's 
 presence, reminding him of a line in a certain
 
 ELSIE TENNER. 257 
 
 poem which he had read lately with a new and 
 peculiar interest. He even recalled a curious evi 
 dence of exalted sensibility and irritability, in the 
 twitching of the minute muscles of the internal 
 ear at every unexpected sound, producing an odd 
 little snap in the middle of the head, which proved 
 to him that he was getting very nervous. 
 
 The next thing was to find out whether it were 
 possible that the venomous creature's eyes should 
 have served the purpose of Mr. Braid's " bright 
 object " held very close to the person experi 
 mented on, or whether they had any special 
 power which could be made the subject of ex 
 act observation. 
 
 For this purpose Mr. Bernard considered it ne 
 cessary to get a live crotalus or two into his pos 
 session, if this were possible. On inquiry, he 
 found that there was a certain family living far 
 up the mountain-side, not a mile from the ledge, 
 the members of which were said to have taken 
 these creatures occasionally, and not to be in any 
 danger, or at least in any fear, of being injured 
 by them. He applied to these people, and offered 
 a reward sufficient to set them at work to cap 
 ture some of these animals, if such a thing were 
 possible. 
 
 A few days after this, a dark, gypsy-looking 
 woman presented herself at his door. She held 
 up her apron as if it contained something pre 
 cious in the bag she made with it. 
 
 VOL. I. 17
 
 258 ELSIE TENNER. 
 
 " Y'wanted some rattlers," said the woman. 
 " Here they be." 
 
 She opened her apron and showed a coil of 
 rattlesnakes lying very peaceably in its fold. 
 They lifted their heads up, as if they wanted to 
 see what was going on, but showed no sign of 
 anger. 
 
 " Are you crazy ? " said Mr. Bernard. " You're 
 dead in an hour, if one of those creatures strikes 
 you ! " 
 
 He drew back a little, as he spoke ; it might be 
 simple disgust ; it might be fear ; it might be 
 what we call antipathy, which is different from 
 either, and which will sometimes show itself in 
 paleness, and even faintness, produced by objects 
 perfectly harmless and not in themselves offensive 
 to any sense. 
 
 " Lord bless you," said the woman, " rattlers 
 never touches our folks. I'd jest 'z lieves handle 
 them creaturs as so many striped snakes." 
 
 So saying, she put their heads down with her 
 hand, and packed them together in her apron as 
 if they had been bits of cart-rope. 
 
 Mr. Bernard had never heard of the power, or, 
 at least, the belief in the possession of a power 
 by certain persons, which enables them to handle 
 these frightful reptiles with perfect impunity. 
 The fact, however, is well known to others, and 
 more especially to a very distinguished Professor 
 in one of the leading institutions of the great 
 city of the land, whose experiences in the neigh-
 
 ELSIE VENDER. 259 
 
 borhood of Graylock, as he will doubtless inform 
 the curious, were very much like those of the 
 young master. 
 
 Mr. Bernard had a wired cage ready for his 
 formidable captives, and studied their habits and 
 expression with a strange sort of interest. What 
 did the Creator mean to signify, when he made 
 such shapes of horror, and, as if he had doubly 
 cursed this envenomed wretch, had set a mark 
 upon him and sent him forth, the Cain of the 
 brotherhood of serpents ? It was a very curious 
 fact that the first train of thoughts Mr. Bernard's 
 small menagerie suggested to him was the grave, 
 though somewhat worn, subject of the origin of 
 evil. There is now to be seen in a tall glass jar, 
 in the Museum of Comparative Anatomy at 
 Cantabridge in the territory of the Massachusetts, 
 a huge crotalus, of a species which grows to more 
 frightful dimensions than our own, under the hot 
 ter skies of South America. Look at it, ye who 
 would know what is the tolerance, the freedom 
 from prejudice, which can suffer such an incarna 
 tion of all that is devilish to lie unharmed in the 
 cradle of Nature ! Learn, too, that there are 
 many things in this world which we are warned 
 to shun, and are even suffered to'slay, if need be, 
 but which we must not hate, unless we would 
 hate what God loves and cares for. 
 
 Whatever fascination the creature might exercise 
 in his native haunts, Mr. Bernard found himself 
 not in the least nervous or affected in any way
 
 260 ELSIE TENNER. 
 
 while looking at his caged reptiles. When their 
 cage was shaken, they would lift their heads and 
 spring their rattles ; but the sound was by no 
 means so formidable to listen to as when it re 
 verberated among the chasms of the echoing 
 rocks. The expression of the creatures was 
 watchful, still, grave, passionless, fate-like, sug 
 gesting a cold malignity which seemed to be wait 
 ing for its opportunity. Their awful, deep-cut 
 mouths were sternly closed over the long hollow 
 fangs which rested their roots against the swollen 
 poison-gland, where the venom had been hoard 
 ing up ever since the last stroke had emptied it. 
 They never winked, for ophidians have no mov 
 able eyelids, but kept up that awful fixed stare 
 which made the two unwinking gladiators the 
 survivors of twenty pairs matched by one of the 
 Roman Emperors, as Pliny tells us, in his " Nat 
 ural History." Their eyes did not flash, but shone 
 with a cold still light. They were of a pale- 
 golden or straw color, horrible to look into, with 
 their stony calmness, their pitiless indifference, 
 hardly enlivened by the almost imperceptible 
 vertical slit of the pupil, through which Death 
 seemed to be looking out like the archer behind 
 the long narro\t^ loop-hole in a blank turret-wall. 
 On the whofe, the caged reptiles, horrid as they 
 were, hardly matched his recollections of what 
 he had seen or dreamed he saw at the cavern. 
 These looked dangerous enough, but yet quiet. 
 A treacherous stillness, however, as the unfor-
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 261 
 
 tunate New York physician found, when he put 
 his foot out to wake up the torpid creature, 
 and instantly the fang flashed through his boot, 
 carrying the poison into his blood, and death 
 with it. 
 
 Mr. Bernard kept these strange creatures, and 
 watched all their habits with a natural curiosity. 
 In any coUection of aninxals the venomous beasts 
 are looked at with the greatest interest, just as 
 the greatest villains are most run after by the un 
 known public. Nobody troubles himself for a 
 common striped snake or a petty thief, but a cobra 
 or a wife-killer is a centre of attraction to all eyes. 
 These captives did very little to earn their living, 
 but, on the other hand, their living was not expen 
 sive, their diet being nothing but air, au naturel. 
 Months and months these creatures will live and 
 seem to thrive well enough, as any showman who 
 has them in his menagerie will testify, though 
 they never touch anything to eat or drink. 
 
 In the mean time Mr. Bernard had become very 
 curious about a class of subjects not treated of 
 in any detail in those text-books accessible in 
 most country-towns, to the exclusion of the more 
 special treatises, and especially of the rare and 
 ancient works found on the shelves of the larger 
 city-libraries. He was on a visit to old Dr. Kit- 
 tredge one day, having been asked by him to call 
 in for a few moments as soon as convenient. 
 The Doctor smiled good-humoredly when he asked 
 him if he had an extensive collection of medical 
 works.
 
 262 ELSIE TENNER. 
 
 " Why. no," said the old Doctor, " I haven't 
 got a great many printed books ; and what I 
 have I don't read quite as often as I might, I'm 
 afraid. I read and studied in the time of it, 
 when I was in the midst of the young men who 
 were all at work with their books ; but it's a 
 mighty hard matter, when you go off alone into 
 the country, to keep up. with all that's going on 
 in the Societies and the Colleges. I'll tell you, 
 though, Mr. Langdon, when a man that's once 
 started right lives among sick folks for five-and- 
 thirty years, as I've done, if he hasn't got a library 
 of five-and-thirty volumes bound up in his head 
 at the end of that time, he'd better stop driving 
 round and sell his horse and sulky. I know the 
 bigger part of the families within a dozen miles' 
 ride. I know the families that have a way of 
 living through everything, and I know the other 
 set that have the trick of dying without any kind 
 of reason for it I know the years when the 
 fevers and dysenteries are in earnest, and when 
 they're only making believe. I know the folks 
 that think they're dying as soon as they're sick, 
 and the folks that never find out they're sick till 
 they're dead. I don't want to undervalue your 
 science, Mr. Langdon. There are things I never 
 learned, because they came in after my day, and 
 I am very glad to send my patients to those that 
 do know them, when I am at fault ; but I know 
 these people about here, fathers and mothers, and 
 children and grandchildren, so as all the science
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 263 
 
 in the world can't know them, without it takes 
 time about it, and sees them grow up and grow 
 old, and how the wear and tear of life comes to 
 them. You can't tell a horse by driving him 
 once, Mr. Langdon, nor a patient by talking half 
 an hour with him." 
 
 " Do you know much about the Venner fam 
 ily ? " said Mr. Bernard, in a natural way enough, 
 the Doctor's talk having suggested the question. 
 
 The Doctor lifted his head with his accustomed 
 movement, so as to command the young man 
 through his spectacles. 
 
 " I know all the families of this place and its 
 neighborhood," he answered. 
 
 " We have the young lady studying with us at 
 the Institute," said Mr. Bernard. 
 
 " I know it," the Doctor answered. " Is she a 
 good scholar ? " 
 
 All this time the Doctor's eyes were fixed stead 
 ily on Mr. Bernard, looking through the glasses. 
 
 " She is a good scholar enough, but I don't 
 know what to make of her. Sometimes I think 
 she is a little out of her head. Her father, I be 
 lieve, is sensible enough ; what sort of a woman 
 was her mother, Doctor? I suppose of course, 
 you remember all about her ? " 
 
 " Yes, I knew her mother. She was a very 
 lovely young woman." The Doctor put his 
 hand to his forehead and drew a long breath. 
 " What is there you notice out of the way about 
 Elsie Venner ? "
 
 264 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 " A good many things," the master answered. 
 " She shuns all the other girls. She is getting a 
 strange influence over my fellow-teacher, a young 
 lady, you know Miss Helen Darley, perhaps ? 
 I am afraid this girl will kill her. I never saw or 
 heard of anything like it, in prose at least ; do you 
 remember much of Coleridge's Poems, Doctor ? " 
 
 The good old Doctor had to plead a negative. 
 
 " Well, no matter. Elsie would have been 
 burned for a witch in old times. I have seen 
 the girl look at Miss Darley when she had not 
 the least idea of it, and all at once I would see 
 her grow pale and moist, and sigh, and move 
 round uneasily, and turn towards Elsie, and per 
 haps get up and go to her, or else have slight 
 spasmodic movements that looked like hysterics ; 
 do you believe in the evil eye, Doctor ? " 
 
 " Mr. Langdon," the Doctor said, solemnly, 
 " there are strange things about Elsie Venner, 
 very strange things. This was what I wanted to 
 speak to you about. Let me advise you all to.be 
 very patient with the girl, but also very careful. 
 Her love is not to be desired, and " he spoke 
 in a lower tone " her hate is to be dreaded. 
 Do you think she has any special fancy for any 
 body else in the school besides Miss Darley ? " 
 
 Mr. Bernard could not stand the old Doctor's 
 spectacled eyes without betraying a little of the 
 feeling natural to a young man to whom a home 
 question involving a possible sentiment is put 
 suddenly.
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 265 
 
 " I have suspected," he said, "I have had a 
 
 kind of feeling that she Well, come, 
 
 Doctor, I don't know that there's any use in 
 disguising the matter, I have thought Elsie 
 Venner had rather a fancy for somebody else, 
 I mean myself." 
 
 There was something so becoming in the blush 
 with which the young man made this confession, 
 and so manly, too, in the tone with which he 
 spoke, so remote from any shallow vanity, such 
 as young men who are incapable of love are apt 
 to feel, when some loose tendril of a woman's 
 fancy which a chance wind has blown against 
 them twines about them for the want of anything 
 better, that the old Doctor looked at him admir 
 ingly, and could not help thinking that it was no 
 wonder any young girl should be pleased with him. 
 
 " You are a man of nerve, Mr. Langdon ? " said 
 the Doctor. 
 
 " I thought so till very lately," he replied. " I 
 am not easily frightened, but I don't know but 
 I might be bewitched or magnetized, or whatever 
 it is when one is tied up and cannot move. I 
 think I can find nerve enough, however, if there 
 is any special use you want to put it to." 
 
 " Let me ask you one more question, Mr. 
 Langdon. Do you find yourself disposed to take 
 a special interest in Elsie, to fall in love with 
 her, in a word? Pardon me, for I do not ask 
 from curiosity, but a much more serious motive." 
 
 " Elsie interests me," said the young man, " in-
 
 266 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 terests me strangely. She has a wild flavor in 
 her character which is wholly different from that 
 of any human creature I ever saw. She has 
 marks of genius, poetic or dramatic, I hardly 
 know which. She read a passage from Keats's 
 'Lamia' the other day, in the school-room, in 
 such a way that I declare to you I thought some 
 of the girls would faint or go into fits. Miss Dar- 
 ley got up and left the room, trembling all over. 
 Then I pity her, she is so lonely. The girls are 
 afraid of her, and she seems to have either a dis 
 like or a fear of them. They have all sorts of 
 painful stories about her. They give her a name 
 which no human creature ought to bear. They 
 say she hides a mark on her neck by always 
 wearing a necklace. She is very graceful, you 
 know, and they will have it that she can twist 
 herself into all sorts of shapes, or tie herself in a 
 knot, if she wants to. There is not one of them 
 that will look her in the eyes. I pity the poor 
 girl ; but, Doctor, I do not love her. I would risk 
 my life for her, if it would do her any good, but 
 it would be in cold blood. If her hand touches 
 mine, it is not a thrill of passion I feel running 
 through me, but a very different emotion. Oh, 
 Doctor! there must be something in that creat 
 ure's blood which has killed the humanity in her. 
 God only knows the cause that has blighted such 
 a soul in so beautiful a body ! No, Doctor, I do 
 not love the girl." 
 
 " Mr. Langdon," said the Doctor, " you are
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 267 
 
 young, and I am old. Let me talk to you with 
 an old man's privilege, as an adviser. You have 
 come to this country-town without suspicion, and 
 you are moving in the midst of perils. There 
 are things which I must not tell you now ; but I 
 may warn you. Keep your eyes open and your 
 heart shut. If, through pitying that girl, you 
 ever come to love her, you are lost. If you deal 
 carelessly with her, beware! This is not all. 
 There are other eyes on you beside Elsie Ven- 
 ner's. Do you go armed ? " 
 
 " I do ! " said Mr. Bernard, and he " put his 
 hands up " in the shape of fists, in such a way as 
 to show that he was master of the natural weap 
 ons at any rate. 
 
 The Doctor could not help smiling. But his 
 face fell in an instant. 
 
 " You may want something more than those 
 tools to work with. Come with me into my 
 sanctum." 
 
 The Doctor led Mr. Bernard into a small room 
 opening out of the study. It was a place such 
 as anybody but a medical man would shiver to 
 enter. There was the usual tall box with its 
 bleached, rattling tenant ; there were jars in rows 
 where " interesting cases " outlived the grief of 
 widows and heirs in alcoholic immortality, for 
 your " preparation-jar" is the true " monumentum 
 cere perennius " ; there were various semipossibil- 
 ities of minute dimensions and unpromising de 
 velopments; there were shining instruments of
 
 268 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 evil aspect, and grim plates on the walls, and on 
 one shelf by itself, accursed and apart, coiled in 
 a long cylinder of spirit, a huge crotalus, rough- 
 scaled, flat-headed, variegated with dull bands, 
 one of which partially encircled the neck like a 
 collar, an awful wretch to look upon, with 
 murder written all over him in horrid hieroglyph 
 ics. Mr. Bernard's look was riveted on this creat 
 ure, not fascinated certainly, for its eyes looked 
 like white beads, being clouded by the action of 
 the spirits in which it had been long kept, but 
 fixed by some indefinite sense of the renewal of 
 a previous impression; everybody knows the 
 feeling, with its suggestion of some past state of 
 existence. There was a scrap of paper on the 
 jar, with something written on it. He was reach 
 ing up to read it when the Doctor touched him 
 lightly. 
 
 " Look here, Mr Langdon ! " he said, with a 
 certain vivacity of manner, as if wishing to call 
 away his attention, " this is my armory." 
 
 The Doctor threw open the door of a small 
 cabinet, where were disposed in artistic patterns 
 various weapons of offence and defence, for he 
 was a virtuoso in his way, and by the side of the 
 implements of the art of healing had pleased him 
 self with displaying a collection of those other 
 instruments, the use of which renders the first 
 necessary. 
 
 " See which of these weapons you would like 
 best to carry about you," said the Doctor.
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 269 
 
 Mr. Bernard laughed, and looked at the Doc 
 tor as if he half doubted whether he was in 
 earnest. 
 
 " This looks dangerous enough," he said, 
 " for the man who carries it, at least." 
 
 He took down one of the prohibited Spanish 
 daggers or knives which a traveller may occa 
 sionally get hold of and smuggle out of the 
 country. The blade was broad, trowel-like, but 
 the point drawn out several inches, so as to look 
 like a skewer. 
 
 " This must be a jealous bull-fighter's weapon," 
 he said, and put it back in its place. 
 
 Then he took down an ancient-looking broad- 
 bladed dagger, with a complex aspect about it, 
 as if it had some kind of mechanism connected 
 with it. 
 
 " Take care ! " said the Doctor ; " there is a 
 trick to that dagger." 
 
 He took it and touched a spring. The dagger 
 split suddenly into three blades, as when one 
 separates the forefinger and the ring-finger from 
 the middle one. The outside blades were sharp 
 on their outer edge. The stab was to be made 
 with the dagger shut, then the spring touched 
 and the split blades withdrawn. 
 
 Mr. Bernard replaced it, saying, that it would 
 have served for side-arm to old Suwarrow, who 
 told his men to work their bayonets back and 
 forward when they pinned a Turk, but to 
 wriggle them about in the wound when they 
 stabbed a Frenchman.
 
 270 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 " Here," said the Doctor, " this is the thing 
 you want." 
 
 He took down a much more modern and fa 
 miliar implement, a small, beautifully finished 
 revolver. 
 
 " I want you to carry this," he said ; " and 
 more than that, I want you to practise with it 
 often, as for amusement, but so that it may be 
 seen and understood that you are apt to have a 
 pistol about you. Pistol-shooting is pleasant 
 sport enough, and there is no reason why you 
 should not practise it like other young fellows. 
 And now," the Doctor said, " I have one other 
 weapon to give you." 
 
 He took a small piece of parchment and shook 
 a white powder into it from one of his medicine- 
 jars. The jar was marked with the name of a 
 mineral salt, of a nature to have been serviceable 
 in case of sudden illness in the time of the Bor- 
 gias. The Doctor folded the parchment carefully 
 and marked the Latin name of the powder upon 
 it. 
 
 " Here," he said, handing it to Mr. Bernard, 
 " you see what it is, and you know what service 
 it can render. Keep these two protectors about 
 your person day and night ; they will not harm 
 you, and you may want one or the other or both 
 before you think of it." 
 
 Mr. Bernard thought it was very odd, and not 
 very old-gentlemanlike, to be fitting him out for 
 treason, stratagem, and spoils, in this way.
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 271 
 
 There was no harm, however, in carrying a 
 doctor's powder in his pocket, or in amusing 
 himself with shooting at a mark, as he had often 
 done before. If the old gentleman had these fan 
 cies, it was as well to humor h,im. So he thanked 
 old Doctor Kittredge, and shoojc his hand warmly 
 as he left him. 
 
 " The fellow's hand did not tremble, nor his 
 color change," the Doctor said, as he watched 
 him walking away. " He is one of the right 
 sort."
 
 272 ELSIE VEXXER. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 EPISTOLARY. 
 
 Mr. Langdon to the Professor. 
 MY DEAR PROFESSOR, 
 
 You were kind enough to promise me that you 
 would assist me in any professional or scientific 
 investigations in which I might become engaged. 
 I have of late become deeply interested in a class 
 of subjects which present peculiar difficulty, and 
 I must exercise the privilege of questioning you 
 on some points upon which I desire information 
 I cannot otherwise obtain. I would not trouble 
 you, if I could find any person or books compe 
 tent to enlighten me on some of these singular 
 matters which have so excited me. The leading 
 doctor here is a shrewd, sensible man, but not 
 versed in the curiosities of medical literature. 
 
 I proceed, with your leave, to ask a considera 
 ble number of questions, hoping to get answers 
 to some of them, at least. 
 
 Is there any evidence that human beings can 
 be infected or wrought upon by poisons, or other 
 wise, so that they shall manifest any of the pecu 
 liarities belonging to beings of a lower nature?
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 273 
 
 Can such peculiarities be transmitted by inheri 
 tance ? Is there anything to countenance the 
 stories, long and widely current, about the " evil 
 eye " ? or is it a mere fancy that such a power 
 belongs to any human being? Have you any 
 personal experience as to the power of fasci 
 nation said to be exercised by certain animals? 
 What can you make of those circumstantial 
 statements we have seen in the papers, of chil 
 dren forming mysterious friendships with ophid 
 ians of different species, sharing their food with 
 them, and seeming to be under some subtile in 
 fluence exercised by those creatures ? Have you 
 read, critically, Coleridge's poem of " Christabel," 
 and Keats's " Lamia " ? If so, can you under 
 stand them, or find any physiological foundation 
 for the story of either ? 
 
 There is another set of questions of a different 
 nature I should like to ask, but it is hardly fair to 
 put so many on a single sheet. There is one, 
 however, you must answer. Do you think there 
 may be predispositions, inherited or ingrafted, 
 but at any rate constitutional, which shall take 
 out certain apparently voluntary determinations 
 from the control of the will, and leave them as 
 free from moral responsibility as the instincts of 
 the lower animals ? Do you not think there may 
 be a crime which is not a sin ? 
 
 Pardon me, my dear Sir, for troubling you with 
 such a list of notes of interrogation. There are 
 some very strange things going on here in this 
 
 VOL. I. 18
 
 274 ELSIE VENNEI!. 
 
 place, country-town as it is. Country-life is apt 
 to be dull ; but when it once gets going, it beats 
 the city hollow, because it gives its whole mind 
 to what it is about. These rural sinners make 
 terrible work with the middle of the Decalogue, 
 when they get started. However, I hope I shall 
 live through my year's school-keeping without 
 catastrophes, though there are queer doings about 
 me which puzzle me and might scare some peo 
 ple. If anything should happen, you will be one 
 of the first to hear of it, no doubt. But I trust 
 not to help out the editors of the " Rockland 
 Weekly Universe " with an obituary of the late 
 lamented, who signed himself in life 
 Your friend and pupil, 
 
 BERNARD C. LANGDON. 
 
 The Professor to Mr. Langdon. 
 MY DEAR MR. LANGDON, 
 
 I DO not wonder that you find no answer from 
 your country friends to the curious questions you 
 put. They belong to that middle region between 
 science and poetry which sensible men, as they 
 are called, are very shy of meddling with. Some 
 people think that truth and gold are always to be 
 washed for; but the wiser sort are of opinion, 
 that, unless there are so many grains to the peck 
 of sand or nonsense respectively, it does not pay 
 to wash for either, so long as one can find any 
 thing else to do. I don't doubt there is some
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 275 
 
 truth in the phenomena of animal magnetism, 
 for instance ; but when you ask me to cradle 
 for it, I tell you that the hysteric girls cheat so, 
 and the professionals are such a set of pickpock 
 ets, that I can do something better than hunt for 
 the grains of truth among their tricks and lies. 
 Do you remember what 1 used to say in my 
 lectures ? or were you asleep just then, or cut 
 ting your initials on the rail? (You see I can 
 ask questions, my young friend.) Leverage is 
 everything, was what 1 used to say ; don't 
 begin to pry till you have got the long awn on 
 your side. 
 
 To please you, and satisfy your doubts as far 
 as possible, I have looked into the old books, 
 into Schenckius and Turner and Kenelm Digby 
 and the rest, where I have found plenty of curious 
 stories which you must take for what they are 
 worth. 
 
 Your first question I can answer in the affirma 
 tive upon pretty good authority. Mizaldus tells, 
 in his " Memorabilia," the well-known story of the 
 girl fed on poisons, who was sent by the king of 
 the Indies to Alexander the Great. " When 
 Aristotle saw her eyes sparkling and snapping like 
 those of serpents, he said, ' Look out for yourself, 
 Alexander! this is a dangerous companion for 
 you ! ' " and sure enough, the young lady proved 
 to be a very unsafe person to her friends. Carda- 
 nus gets a story from Avicenna, of a certain man 
 bit by a serpent, who recovered of his bite, the
 
 276 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 snake dying therefrom. This man afterwards had 
 a daughter whom venomous serpents could not 
 harm, though she had a fatal power over them. 
 
 I suppose you may remember the statements of 
 old authors about lycanthropy, the disease in which 
 men took on the nature and aspect of wolves. 
 Aetius and Paulus, both men of authority, de 
 scribe it. Altomaris gives a horrid case ; and 
 Fincelius mentions one occurring as late as 1541, 
 the subject of which was captured, still insisting 
 that he was a wolf, only that the hair of his hide 
 was turned in! Versipelles, it may be remembered, 
 was the Latin name for these " were-wolves." 
 
 As for the cases where rabid persons have 
 barked and bit like dogs, there are plenty of such 
 on record. 
 
 More singular, or at least more rare, is the ac 
 count given by Andreas Baccius, of a man who 
 was struck in the hand by a cock, with his beak, 
 and who died on the third day thereafter, looking 
 for all the world like a fighting-cock, to the great 
 horror of the spectators. 
 
 As to impressions transmitted at a very early 
 period of existence, every one knows the story of 
 King James's fear of a naked sword, and the way 
 it is accounted for. Sir Kenelm Digby says, 
 " I remember when he dubbed me Knight, in the 
 ceremony of putting the point of a naked sword 
 upon my shoulder, he could not endure to look 
 upon it, but turned his face another way, inso 
 much, that, in lieu of touching my shoulder, he
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 277 
 
 had almost thrust the point into my eyes, had 
 not the Duke of Buckingham guided his hand 
 aright." It is he, too, who tells the story of the 
 mulberry mark upon the neck of a certain lady of 
 high condition, which " every year, in mulberry 
 season, did swell, grow big, and itch." And Gaf- 
 farel mentions the case of a girl born with the 
 figure of a. fish on one of her limbs, of which the 
 wonder was, that, when the girl did eat fish, this 
 mark put her to sensible pain. But there is no 
 end to cases of this kind, and I could give some 
 of recent date, if necessary, lending a certain 
 plausibility at least to the doctrine of transmitted 
 impressions. 
 
 I never saw a distinct case of evil eye, though I 
 have seen eyes so bad that they might produce 
 strange effects on very sensitive natures. But the 
 belief in it under various names, fascination, jet- 
 tatura, etc., is so permanent and universal, from 
 Egypt to Italy, and from the days of Solomon to 
 those of Ferdinand of Naples, that there must be 
 some peculiarity, to say the least, on which the 
 opinion is based. There is very strong evidence 
 that some such power is exercised by certain of 
 the lower animals. Thus, it is stated on good 
 authority that " almost every animal becomes 
 panic-struck at the sight of the rattlesnake, and 
 seems at once deprived of the power of mo 
 tion, or the exercise of its usual instinct of self- 
 preservation." Other serpents seem to share this 
 power of fascination, as the Cobra and the Bu-
 
 278 KLSIE VKXXER. 
 
 cephalus Capensis. Some think that it is nothing 
 but fright ; others attribute it to the 
 
 " strange powers that lie 
 Within the magic circle of the eye," 
 
 as Churchill said, speaking of Garrick. 
 
 You ask me about those mysterious and fright 
 ful intimacies between children and serpents, of 
 which so many instances have been recorded. I 
 am sure I cannot tell what to make of them. I 
 have seen several such accounts in recent papers, 
 but here is one published in the seventeenth cen 
 tury, which is as striking as any of the more mod 
 ern ones : 
 
 " Mr. Herbert Jones of Monmouth, when he was 
 a little Boy, was used to eat his Milk in a Gar 
 den in the Morning, and was no sooner there, but 
 a large Snake always came, and eat out of the 
 Dish with him, and did so for a considerable time, 
 till one Morning, he striking the Snake on the 
 Head, it hissed at him. Upon which he told his 
 Mother that the Baby (for so he call'd it) cry'd 
 Hiss at him. His Mother had it kill'd, which oc 
 casioned him a great Fit of Sickness, and 'twas 
 thought would have dy'd, but did recover." 
 
 There was likewise one " William Writtle, con 
 demned at Maidston Assizes for a double murder, 
 told a Minister that was with him after he was 
 condemned, that his mother told him, that when 
 he was a Child, there crept always to him a 
 Snake, wherever she laid him. Sometimes she
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 279 
 
 would convey him up Stairs, and leave him never 
 so little, she should be sure to find a Snake in the 
 Cradle with him, but never perceived it did him 
 any harm." 
 
 One of the most striking alleged facts con 
 nected with the mysterious relation existing be 
 tween the serpent and the human species is the 
 influence which the poison of the Crotalus, taken 
 internally, seemed to produce over the moral fac 
 ulties, in the experiments instituted by Dr. Hering 
 at Surinam. There is something frightful in the 
 disposition of certain ophidians, as the whip- 
 snake, which darts at the eyes of cattle without 
 any apparent provocation or other motive. It is 
 natural enough that the evil principle should have 
 been represented in the form of a serpent, but it 
 is strange to think of introducing it into a human 
 being like cow-pox by vaccination. 
 
 You know all about the Psylli, or ancient ser 
 pent-tamers, I suppose. Savary gives an account 
 of the modern serpent-tamers in his " Letters on 
 Egypt." These modern jugglers are in the habit 
 of making the venomous Naja counterfeit death, 
 lying out straight and stiff, changing it into a 
 rod, as the ancient magicians did with their ser 
 pents, (probably the same animal,) in the time of 
 Moses. 
 
 I am afraid I cannot throw much light on 
 " Christabel " or " Lamia " by any criticism I can 
 offer. Geraldine, in the former, seems to be sim 
 ply a malignant witch-woman, with the evil eye,
 
 280 ELSIE VENXER. 
 
 but with no absolute ophidian relationship. La 
 mia is a serpent transformed by magic into a 
 woman. The idea of both is mythological, and 
 not in any sense physiological. Some women 
 unquestionably suggest the image of serpents ; 
 men rarely or never. I have been struck, like 
 many others, with the ophidian head and eye of 
 the famous Rachel. 
 
 Your question about inherited predispositions, 
 as limiting the sphere of the will, and, conse 
 quently, of moral accountability, opens a very 
 wide range of speculation. I can give you only 
 a brief abstract of my own opinions on this deli 
 cate and difficult subject. Crime and sin, being 
 the preserves of two great organized interests, 
 have been guarded against all reforming poachers 
 with as great jealousy as the Royal Forests. It 
 is so easy to hang a troublesome fellow ! It is so 
 much simpler to consign a soul to perdition, or 
 say masses, for money, to save it, than to take 
 the blame on ourselves for letting it grow up in 
 neglect and run to ruin for want of humanizing 
 influences! They hung poor, crazy Bellingham 
 for shooting Mr. Perceval. The ordinary of New 
 gate preached to women who were to swing at 
 Tyburn for a petty theft as if they were worse 
 than other people, just as though he would not 
 have been a pickpocket or shoplifter, himself, if 
 he had been born in a den of thieves and bred up 
 to steal or starve ! The English law never began 
 to get hold of the idea that a crime was not neces-
 
 ELSIE VENXEK. 281 
 
 sarily a sin, till Hadfield, who thought he was the 
 Saviour of mankind, was tried for shooting at 
 George the Third; lucky for him that he did 
 not hit his Majesty ! 
 
 It is very singular that we recognize all the 
 bodily defects that unfit a man for military ser 
 vice, and all the intellectual ones that limit his 
 range of thought, but always talk at him as if all 
 his moral powers were perfect. I suppose we 
 must punish evil-doers as we extirpate vermin; 
 but I don't know that we have any more right to 
 judge them than we have to judge rats and mice, 
 which are just as good as cats and weasels, though 
 we think it necessary to treat them as criminals. 
 
 The limitations of human responsibility have 
 never been properly studied, unless it be by the 
 phrenologists. You know from my lectures that 
 I consider phrenology, as taught, a pseudo-science, 
 and not a branch of positive knowledge; bu', lor 
 all that, we owe it an immense debt. It has 
 melted the world's conscience in its crucible, and 
 cast it in a new mould, with features less like 
 those of Moloch and more like those of humanity. 
 If it has failed to demonstrate its system of spe 
 cial correspondences, it has proved that there are 
 fixed relations between organization and mind 
 and character. It has brought out that great 
 doctrine of moral insanity, which has done more 
 to make men charitable and soften legal and the 
 ological barbarism than any one doctrine that I 
 can think of since the message of peace and 
 good-will to men.
 
 282 ELSIE VEKNER. 
 
 Automatic action in the moral world ; the reflex 
 movement which seems to be self-determination, 
 and has been hanged and howled at as such 
 (metaphorically) for nobody knows how many 
 centuries : until somebody shall study this as 
 Marshall Hall has studied reflex nervous action 
 in the bodily system, I would not give much for 
 men's judgments of each other characters. Shut 
 up the robber and the defaulter, we must. But 
 what if your oldest boy had been stolen from his 
 cradle and bred in a North-Street cellar ? What 
 if you are drinking a little too much wine and 
 smoking a little too much tobacco, and your son 
 takes after you, and so your poor grandson's brain 
 being a little injured in physical texture, he loses 
 the fine moral sense on which you pride yourself, 
 and doesn't see the difference between signing 
 another man's name to a draft and his own ? 
 
 I suppose the study of automatic action in the 
 moral world (you see what I mean through the 
 apparent contradiction of terms) may be a danger 
 ous one in the view of many people. It is liable 
 to abuse, no doubt. People are always glad to 
 get hold of anything which limits their responsi 
 bility. But remember that our moral estimates 
 come down to us from ancestors who hanged 
 children for stealing forty shillings' worth, and 
 sent their souls to perdition for the sin of being 
 born, who punished the unfortunate families 
 of suicides, and in their eagerness for justice exe 
 cuted one innocent person every three years, on 
 the average, as Sir James Mackintosh tells us.
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 283 
 
 I do not know in what shape the practical 
 question may present itself to you ; but I will 
 tell you my rule in life, and I think you will find 
 it a good one. Treat bad men exactly as if they 
 were insane. They are in-sane, out of health, 
 morally. Reason, which is food to sound minds, 
 is not tolerated, still less assimilated, unless ad 
 ministered with the greatest caution ; perhaps, not 
 at all. Avoid collision with them, so far as you 
 honorably can ; keep your temper, if you can, 
 for one angry man is as good as another ; restrain 
 them from violence, promptly, completely, and 
 with the least possible injury, just as in the case 
 of maniacs, and when you have got rid of them, 
 or got them tied hand arid foot so that they can 
 do no mischief, sit down and contemplate them 
 charitably, remembering that nine tenths of their 
 perversity comes from outside influences, drunken 
 ancestors, abuse in childhood, bad company, from 
 which you have happily been preserved, and for 
 some of which you, as a member of society, may 
 be fractionally responsible. I think also that there 
 are special influences which work in the blood like 
 ferments, and I have a suspicion that some of 
 those curious old stories I cited may have more 
 recent parallels. Have you ever met with any 
 cases which admitted of a solution like that which 
 I have mentioned ? 
 
 Yours very truly,
 
 284 ELSIE VEXXER. 
 
 Bernard Lang-don to Philip Staples. 
 
 MY DEAR PHILIP, 
 
 I HAVE been for some months established in 
 this place, turning the main crank of the machin 
 ery for the manufactory of accomplishments 
 superintended by, or rather worked to the profit 
 of, a certain Mr. Silas Peckham. He is a poor 
 wretch, with a little thin fishy blood in his body, 
 lean and flat, long-armed and large-handed, thick- 
 jointed and thin-muscled, you know those un 
 wholesome, weak-eyed, half-fed creatures, that 
 look not fit to be round among live folks, and 
 yet not quite dead enough to bury. If you ever 
 hear of my being in court to answer to a charge 
 of assault and battery, you may guess that I 
 have been giving him a thrashing to settle off old 
 scores ; for he is a tyrant, and has come pretty 
 near killing his principal lady-assistant with over 
 working her and keeping her out of all decent 
 privileges. 
 
 Helen Darley is this lady's name, twenty-two 
 or -three years old, I should think, a very sweet, 
 pale woman, daughter of the usual country- 
 clergyman, thrown on her own resources from 
 an early age, and the rest : a common story, but 
 an uncommon person, very. All conscience and 
 sensibility, I should say, a cruel worker, no 
 kind of regard for herself, seems as fragile and 
 supple as a young willow-shoot, but try her and
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 285 
 
 you find she has the spring in her of a steel cross 
 bow. I am glad I happened to come to this 
 place, if it were only for her sake. I have saved 
 that girl's life ; I am as sure of it as if I had pulled 
 her out of the fire or water. 
 
 Of course I'm in love with her, you say, we 
 always love those whom we have benefited : 
 " saved her life, her love was the reward of his 
 devotion," etc., etc., as in a regular set novel. In 
 love, Philip ? Well, about that, I love Helen 
 Darley very much: there is hardly anybody I 
 love so well. What a noble creature she is ! 
 One of those that just go right on, do their own 
 work and everybody else's, killing themselves inch 
 by inch without ever thinking about it, singing 
 and dancing at their toil when they begin, worn 
 and saddened after a while, but pressing steadily 
 on, tottering by-and-by, and catching at the rail 
 by the way-side to help them lift one foot before 
 the other, and at last falling, face down, arms 
 stretched forward 
 
 Philip, my boy, do you know I am the sort 
 of man that locks his door sometimes and cries 
 his heart out of his eyes, that can sob like a 
 woman and riot be ashamed of it? I come of 
 fighting-blood on one side, you know ; I think I 
 could be savage on occasion. But I am tender, 
 more and more tender as I come into my ful 
 ness of manhood. I don't like to strike a man, 
 (laugh, if you like, I know I hit hard when I 
 do strike,) /but what I can't stand is the sight 
 
 MiMaMMV
 
 286 ELSIE VEXXER. 
 
 of these poor, patient, toiling women, who never 
 find out in this life how good they are, and never 
 know what it is to be told they are angels while 
 they still wear the pleasing incumbrances of hu 
 manity.! I don't know what to make of these 
 cases. To think that a woman is never to be 
 a woman again, whatever she may come to as 
 an unsexed angel, and that she should die 
 unloved ! Why does not somebody come and 
 carry off this noble woman, waiting here all ready 
 to make a man happy ? Philip,do you know the 
 pathos there is in the eyes of unsought women, 
 oppressed with the burden of an inner life un 
 shared?} I can see into them now as I could not 
 in those earlier days. I sometimes think their 
 pupils dilate on purpose to let my consciousness 
 glide through them ; indeed, I dread them, I come 
 so close to the nerve of the soul itself in these 
 momentary intimacies. You used to tell me I 
 was a Turk, that my heart was full of pigeon 
 holes, with accommodations inside for a whole 
 flock of doves. I don't know but I am still as 
 Youngish as ever in my ways, Brigham- 
 Youngish, I mean; at any rate, I always want 
 to give a little love to all the poor things that 
 cannot have a whole man to themselves. If they 
 would only be contented with a little ! ' 
 
 Here now are two girls in this school where I 
 am teaching. One of them, Rosa M., is not 
 more than sixteen years old, I think they say ; 
 but Nature has forced her into a tropical luxuri-
 
 ELSIE VENNER. 287 
 
 ance of beauty, as if it were July with her, in 
 stead of May. I suppose it is all natural enough 
 that this girl should like a young man's attention, 
 even if he were a grave school-master; but the 
 eloquence of this young thing's look is unmis 
 takable, and yet she does not know the lan 
 guage it is. talking, they none of them do ; and 
 there is where a good many poor creatures of our 
 good-for-nothing sex are mistaken. There is no 
 danger of my being rash, but I think this girl 
 will cost somebody his life yet. She is one of 
 those women men make a quarrel about and 
 fight to the death for, the old feral instinct, you 
 know. 
 
 Pray, don't think I am lost in conceit, but 
 there is another girl here who I begin to think 
 looks with a certain kindness on me. Her name 
 is Elsie V., and she is the only daughter and heir 
 ess of an old family in this place. She is a por 
 tentous and almost fearful creature. If I should 
 tell you all I know and half of what I fancy 
 about her, you would tell me to get my life in 
 sured at once. Yet she is the most painfully 
 interesting being, so handsome! so lonely! 
 for she has no friends among the girls, and sits 
 apart from them, with black hair like the flow 
 of a mountain-brook after a thaw, with a low 
 browed, scowling beauty of face, and such eyes 
 as were never seen before, I really believe, in any 
 human creature. 
 
 Philip, I don't know what to say about this
 
 288 ELSIE VENNER. 
 
 Elsie. There is something about her I have not 
 fathomed. I have conjectures which I could not 
 utter to any living soul. I dare not even hint 
 the possibilities which have suggested themselves 
 to me. This I will say, that I do take the most 
 intense interest in this young person, an interest 
 much more like pity than love in its common 
 sense. If what I guess at is true, of all the trag 
 edies of existence I ever knew this is the saddest, 
 and yet so full of meaning ! Do not ask me any 
 questions, I have said more than I meant to 
 already ; but I am involved in strange doubts and 
 perplexities, in dangers too, very possibly, 
 and it is a relief just to speak ever so guardedly 
 of them to an early and faithful friend. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 BERNARD. 
 
 P. S. I remember you had a copy of Fortu- 
 nius Licetus " De Monstris " among your old 
 books. Can't you lend it to me for a while ? I 
 am curious, and it will amuse me. 
 
 END OF VOL. I.
 
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