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 THE WORKS OF 
 ORPHEUS C. KEISK. 
 
 THE ORPHEUS C. KERR PAPERS. A new edition of 
 these famous humorous War Letters, being a condensa- 
 tion of three volumes in one. Price $2.00. 
 
 AVERY GLIBUN. A new American novel. Price $2.00. 
 
 SMOKED GLASS. A comic history of "Reconstruction." 
 Price $1.50. 
 
 THE CLOVEN FOOT. A burlesque adaptation of Charles 
 Dickens's "Mystery of Edwin Drood." Price $1.50. 
 
 These volumes are all elegantly printed and bound in cloth : 
 
 are sold everywhere, and will be sent by mail, free 
 
 of postage, on receipt of price, 
 
 C'arlrlon, Publisher) 
 New York.
 
 THE CLOVEN FOOT 
 
 AN ADAPTATION OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 
 
 "THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD," 
 
 (gg Cfcarlts 
 
 'Co o 
 
 TO AMERICAN SCENES, CHARACTERS, CUSTOMS, AND NOMENCLATURE. 
 
 BY 
 
 ORPHEUS C. KERR, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE ORPHEUS C. KERR PAPERS," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 Carleton, Publisher, Madison Square. 
 
 LONDON : S. LOW, SON & CO. 
 MDCCCLXX.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by 
 
 GEORGE W. CARLETON, 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 Stereotyped at the 
 
 WOMEN'S PRINTING HOUSE, 
 
 Corner Avenue A and Eighth Street, 
 
 New York.
 
 CONTENTS.* 
 
 Page 
 
 APOLOGY 7 
 
 mts . . . . . . : - ! 17 
 
 SKETCH OF THE ADAPTER . . . . ; . -19 
 CHAPTER I. DAYLIGHT IN THE MORN ... 23 
 " II. A DEAN, AND A CHAP OR Two ALSO . 28 
 
 " III. THE ALMS-HOUSE . . . . . 34 
 " IV. MR. SWEENEY . . . . .41 
 
 " V. MR. MCLAUGHLIN AND FRIEND . . 48 
 
 " VI. INSURANCE IN GOSPELLER'S GULCH . 54 
 
 " VII. MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE . . 61 
 " VIII. A DAGGERY TYPE OF FOETALKRAPHY . 67 
 " IX. BALKS IN A BRUSH . . . . 75 
 
 " X. OILING THE WHEELS .... 83 
 
 " XI. A PICTURE AND A PARCEL ... 96 
 
 * The titles of Chapters in " The Mystery of Edwin Drood" are as follows : I., 
 The Dawn ; II., A Dean, and a Chapter also ; III., The Nuns' House ; IV., Mr. Sap- 
 sea ; V., Mr. Durdles and Friend ; VI., Philanthropy in Minor Canon Corner ; VII., 
 More Confidences than one; VIII., Daggers Drawn; IX., "Birds in the Bush; X., 
 Smoothing the Way ; XL, A Picture and a Ring ; XII., A Night with Durdles ; 
 XIII., Both at their Best; XIV., When shall these Three meet again? XV., Im- 
 peached; XVI., Devoted; XVII., Philanthropy, Professional and Unprofessional; 
 XVIII., A Settler in Cloisterham ; XIX., Shadow on the Sun-Dial ; XX., A Flight ; 
 XXL, A Recognition; XXIL, A Gritty State of Things comes on; XXIII., The 
 Dawn again . . . . 
 
 V
 
 VI CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 CHAPTER XII. A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN . 1 12 
 
 " XIII. FOR THE BEST ., . . v. 130 
 
 " XIV. CLOVES FOR THREE . ... . 144 
 
 " XV. "SPOTTED" . ... . .156 
 
 " XVI. AVUNCULAR DEVOTION .... 166 
 
 " XVII. INSURANCE AND ASSURANCE . . . 177 
 
 " XVIII. A SUBTLE STRANGER . . . .188 
 
 " XIX. THE H. AND H. OF J. BUMSTEAD . . 198 
 
 " XX. AN ESCAPE 208 
 
 " XXI. BENTHAM TO THE RESCUE . . . 218 
 
 " XXII. A CONFUSED STATE OF THINGS . . 227 
 
 " XXIII. GOING HOME IN THE MORNING . . 240 
 
 XXIV. MR. CLEWS AT HIS NEW NOVEL . . 245 
 
 XXV. THE SKELETON IN MCLAUGHLIN'S CLOSET 254 
 
 XXVI. FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE . . . 264 
 
 XXVII. SOLUTION . . ... .272
 
 APOLOGY. 
 
 As the work upon which the great Master of modern 
 English Fiction was engaged when death claimed all of 
 him that could die, the half-finished Mystery of Edwin 
 Drood, possesses a quality far beyond the estimation of 
 literary criticism ; and, by the sympathetic eloquence even 
 of its incompleteness, is more preciously suggestive of the 
 immortal Writer's own mortal personality than is any one 
 of the many inimitable creations that his genius was per- 
 mitted to complete. Perused with an understanding of the 
 intimate relations existing between intellectual endeavor 
 and physical and moral passivity, it has a positively pain- 
 ful interest, as a revelation of the tired Worker in the Work 
 never to be finished ; nobly striving to compass the round 
 fulness of a living reality from a dying dream, and, in the 
 occasional unconscious despair of prophetic instinct, invol- 
 untarily showing fate-struck Nature upon the page as the 
 evening shadow, and the prayer, of faltering Art. 
 
 The Story, opening with an elaboration of masterly pur- 
 pose in which the strength of intense concentration for 
 a moment counterfeits the strength of spontaneity, soon
 
 8 APOLOGY. 
 
 halts with the halting power of the Story-teller so near his 
 rest; then turns intractable and prone to break beneath 
 the relaxing hand uncertain of its former cunning ; a little 
 later, shows the indomitable mind, constrained almost con- 
 vulsively to a greater light because of the approaching 
 shadow of the body's dissolution, and in its darkening premo- 
 nitions throwing a shadow of that shade, and even a de- 
 fined portion of the physical struggle against it,* upon the 
 wavering mimic scene ; and, at tost, breaks off, half told, 
 to remain the tenderest of all its Master's stories the story 
 of his Death ! 
 
 If as that, alone, the Mystery of Edwin Drood could be 
 accepted and 'estimated by the critic, its completeness in 
 incompleteness would be questioned by none ; but, as an 
 effort of art, in which the artist still lives, it has, and must 
 have, another aspect ; and in the latter is the justification of 
 such exacting commentary, as unprejudiced literary judg- 
 ment may properly award, to any published work challeng- 
 ing its verdict. The half of the novel which we have, is 
 unmistakable evidence that another half could not possibly 
 have formed a whole in any way equal to the standard 
 which the author's previous triumphs had erected for himself. 
 To read it critically, is to believe readily the current report, 
 that its writer regarded it with peculiar uneasiness, as a 
 
 *It is well known that Mr. Dickens passed so many hours daily in the open air, to 
 keep down that inherited sanguine tendency to the brain, of which he ultimately 
 died. See opening of Chapter XII. and note to Chapter XIV.
 
 APOLOGY. 9 
 
 task in which he was anything but confident of artistic suc- 
 cess, and that, after committing its first monthly numbers to 
 the press, he expressed to several friends a fear that it might 
 injure his literary reputation. The art of Dickens, like that 
 of all great genius, comes by the immediate inspiration of his 
 unpremeditated sympathy with what, to others, might seem 
 the most unlikely of human subjects ; and it becomes a mere 
 forced and lifeless imitation of itself, when, as in this case, 
 anticipated and pledged for a deliberately complicated plot 
 and what is called a psychological study of abnormal char- 
 acter. Mr. Jasper, the central personage of the Mystery, is 
 an unwholesome monstrosity, of which the writer of " David 
 Copperfield," even in the fullest flush of his matchless 
 powers, could never have made happy imaginative use ; 
 and, from his first appearance in the narrative, there is an 
 overwrought laboriousness of mystification about him which, 
 in illustration of extremes meeting, has very soon the awk- 
 ward effect of making him no mystery at all. The design 
 of representing a man with a dual existence, in one phase 
 of which he intends to, and thinks he does, commit murder, 
 while in the other he confounds the deed and doer with a 
 personality distinct from his own, is kept so nervously ap- 
 parent at the beginning, as a justification of the plotted 
 denottment, that any reader fairly skilled in the necessary- 
 artistic relations of one part of a story to another, must 
 derive therefrom a premature knowledge of what the de- 
 signer supposably wishes to conceal for the time being. The 
 1*
 
 10 APOLOGY. 
 
 author could scarcely have been without some presentiment 
 of this likelihood, while striving to manipulate an artificial 
 type of character so wholly unnatural to his wholesome, 
 straightforward genius; and the depressing effect upon him- 
 self is plainly to be seen, not more in furthers pasmodic ex- 
 cesses of shade, than in the falsity of his unequalled Humor 
 to itself, in such a mechanical " side light " as Mr. Sapsea. 
 
 It is because his Adaptation of The Mystery of Edwin 
 Drood serves, in unavoidable proportion to its fidelity, to 
 make prominent the artistic infelicities of the latter, that the 
 adapter has ventured such a preface as the foregoing to his 
 apology for turning the serious work of an illustrious foreign 
 writer to ludicrous native use. 
 
 As one not without some studious knowledge of the scope 
 and various approved methods of art in Fiction, and prac- 
 tice in the difficulties of American novel-writing, the present 
 scribe has more than once employed the sober print of 
 literary journalism to assert his belief, that the notorious 
 lack of the higher order of imaginative writing in this Country 
 is due rather to the physical, social, and artistic crudity of 
 the Country itself, than to its deficiency in that order of 
 genius which has given to older lands their greater poets, 
 artists, and novelists. Commenting, not long ago, upon 
 Mr. Disraeli's " Lothair," as a striking social and artistic 
 study, he wrote : 
 
 " The American literary student has in this elegant work 
 of fiction a most useful hint respecting the practicabilities
 
 APOLOGY. 11 
 
 of an American novel. It has scarcely any mechanical 
 plot ; yet its interest as a narrative never flags for an instant. 
 It abounds in dialogue upon trite subjects ; yet that dialogue 
 always possesses a marked intellectual value for its evidence 
 of a high mental class-cultivation. In short, ' Lothair ' is 
 such a novel as could not be written of a country like ours 
 with the smallest chance of being anything but drearily com- 
 monplace. We have our mercantile palaces on Fifth Ave- 
 nue, our gorgeous assemblies of fashion, our men of score 
 millions, our expensive churches and proselyting clergy ; but 
 they are all of yesterday, they are without tradition or his- 
 tory, and the wonders of swift creation that they give to fact 
 would furnish but prosaic monstrosities to the graceful hand 
 of Disraelitish fiction. Journalists who prate about the lack 
 of first-class imaginative writing here at home, and pretend 
 to designate materials for the native romancer, commit a 
 great mistake in presuming that a novel of society is the 
 work offering choicest matter and opportunity to the coming 
 master of home fiction. Your figures and their action in 
 the foreground will make but a cheap photograph, if there 
 is no suggestive background ; and it is lack of permanent 
 romantic background for his picture that places the novelist 
 of American higher society in the position either of a didactic 
 social essayist, or of a satirist of the caprices of shopkeeping 
 fortune. In former days, the South, with its patriarchal and 
 feudal usages, offered a background upon which our only 
 American novels proper were drawn. What artistic possi-
 
 12 APOLOGY. 
 
 bilities there still may be in that section are only to be ascer- 
 tained by future experiment ; but there can be little doubt 
 that the general American field of opportunities for the 
 writer of fiction lies rather in the picturesquery of Western 
 adventure, or the dramatic contrast of the extremes of wealth 
 and poverty in the great cities, than in the lives and abodes 
 of the native social class superficially corresponding with the 
 foreign social strata celebrated by ' Lothair.' The first rightly- 
 directed step toward effective novel-writing in America must 
 be inspired by a determination to discard all existing foreign 
 models as thoroughly impracticable, and a courage to treat 
 what there is of the genuinely picturesque and dramatic in 
 American life with an originality of style and method suited 
 especially to American subjects. Wholesome strength, 
 rather than poetical daintiness, must be the great character- 
 istic of the romancer ; and his characters must be made to 
 think and act and talk like Americans only." 
 
 To the above, after quoting it, a literary publication of 
 high character * replied : 
 
 " There is, doubtless, a large share of truth in all this ; but 
 we must still hope that a competent artistic skill would be 
 able to make of our social pictures something more than a 
 ' cheap photograph.' The absolute mastership of fictitious 
 writing, as an art, is the great need. Washington Irving suc- 
 ceeded in giving to the Hudson a series of legends that at- 
 tach a classic interest to its shores, such as no other locality 
 
 * " Appleton's Journal."
 
 APOLOGY. 13 
 
 in America possesses ; Hawthorne could give to the rudest 
 incidents of colonial life every quality of picturesque mellow- 
 ness. But these men had the superior artistic touch, and 
 this is a gift or attainment that always seems to us pecu- 
 liarly lacking in American literature. When the accom- 
 plished master shall appear, we hope he will show us how 
 ordinary American life may be photographed in blending, 
 contrasted, and vivid groups, without that rawness that 
 marks the ordinary attempts to portray us." 
 
 An accomplished theatrical critic* also attacked the prop- 
 osition, in its implied bearing upon the drama, and said : 
 
 " I am of opinion that men in America have the same in- 
 scrutable hearts, prone to love and hate and lie and vener- 
 ate, that beat in the jungles of Africa or the saloons of Lon- 
 don : they are swayed by pretty much the same vices and 
 animated by the same virtues ; swollen with vanity or col- 
 lapsed with humiliation ; roaring, defying, praying, suffering, 
 achieving, and dying everywhere with the same despera- 
 tion or devoutness. Our women, too, are they not as vain, 
 as self-sacrificing, as tender, as trivial, as any in Bath or Ba- 
 den ? Are they not everywhere the same, if we come to 
 look at them narrowly; with immortal souls under their 
 caprices and carmine, drawn by the same mysterious des- 
 tiny this way and that ? 
 
 " Society, then, even in America, is, first of all, flesh and 
 blood, with souls in it, and plays its own intense and multi- 
 
 * Mr. A. C. Wheeler, in the World newspaper.
 
 14 APOLOGY. 
 
 form comedy of life in our homes and hovels with as much 
 meaning as if it felt the pressure of all the ages since Adam, 
 and were lifted occasionally by the promise of as great a 
 hereafter as exists for communities whose art is older. Are 
 they not the fit subjects for that elder art which seeks the 
 remote and ideal beauty that is universal ? Or are they, 
 with all their kinship of flesh and immortality, to be weighed 
 only for their manners in this balance ? " 
 
 To both of whom the answer, in part, was : "Mastery of 
 art may enable the American novelist to plot a symmetrical 
 fable, devise varied incidents, plan effective alternations of 
 incidental light and shadow, and observe the various other 
 mechanical requisites of fabulous construction ; yet, after all 
 this, it is upon the specific social genius of the grade of life 
 to be reflected that his own intellectual genius must depend 
 for the yielding of a defined Romantic interest to the fiction. 
 If that social genius is incorrigibly prosaic and crude, with- 
 out stability from one day to another, and involving no sin- 
 gle permanent principle of class prestige and distinction, the 
 fabulating genius can make it romantically interesting only 
 at the expense of fidelity to nature. Our American higher 
 
 41 
 
 society, originating almost wholly as it does from the tend- 
 ency of fluctuating wealth to spasmodic sensational luxury, 
 and not from hereditary privilege or testhetical aspiration, is 
 informed much more by the logic of trade and the pride of 
 financial energy than by the obligations of illustrious ances- 
 try and the fine egotism of conscious superiority in class
 
 APOLOGY. 15 
 
 cultivation. It is without normal body, it has no distinctive 
 manner, and its saliencies are better calculated to surprise 
 than interest. While such characteristics may be republican, 
 and creditable enough for reality, they are inexorable draw- 
 backs to the romantic interest of fictitious presentment ; and 
 no charm of literary style, nor vraisemblant effort of the ima- 
 gination, can make them poetic." 
 
 It was after thus arguing the question seriously, and being 
 rather vexed at the apparent failure of his critics to appre- 
 ciate his exact meaning they talking about legends, and 
 figures in the foreground, while he, conceding those, con- 
 tended for present social coloring, permanent romantic back- 
 ground, and an atmosphere and a middle distance to give ar- 
 tistic body to the picture that the present writer conceived 
 the idea of serio-comically demonstrating the assumed accu- 
 racy of his views by deliberately reducing the current work of 
 some great foreign novelist to American equivalents. Hence 
 the CLOVEN FOOT. 
 
 In the latter, the adapter has aimed to Americanize his 
 original as conscientiously as possible, while imitating, to 
 the best of his ability, the style and idiosyncrasies of the 
 English author. Mr. John Jasper, the English opium-smoker, 
 would, if transferred to this country, be scarcely other than 
 Mr. John Bumstead, the American clove-eater. For the 
 ancient city of Cloisterham, with its venerable Cathedral and 
 Nun's House, the nearest transatlantic match, in a majority 
 of respects, is the suburban Bumsteadville, with its Ritualistic
 
 16 APOLOGY. 
 
 Church and Aims-House. The English "Rosebud's" equiva- 
 i lent by adaptation is the American " Flowerpot. " Edwin 
 \ Drood, the not very brilliant young man of London, would 
 be the mere boy in New York, and so on through all 
 the characters, scenes, and incidents of the Original and its 
 Adaptation, as varied by the social genius, usages, and char- 
 acteristics of either country. 
 
 To give the Adaptation all possible romantic illusion, an 
 illustrated "Sketch of the Author" is also "adapted" : and 
 if, after this preliminary exposition, and the elucidation of the 
 numerous foot-notes, the intelligent reader can still see no 
 more than an indifferent joke in the ensuing pages, it may 
 be as well for him to ask himself if he is so very intelligent, 
 
 after all ? 
 
 O. C. K. 
 1870.
 
 The homage of our world to thee, 
 O Matchless Scribe ! when thou wert 
 
 Was all that's loving in a Laugh, 
 And all that's tender in a Tear. 
 
 So, if with quiv'ring lip we name 
 The fellow Mortal who Departs, 
 
 A Smile shall call him back again, 
 To live Immortal in our Hearts.
 
 SKETCH OF THE ADAPTER. 
 
 IT is now nearly a twelfth of a century since the veracious 
 Historian of the imperishable Mackerel Brigade first man- 
 oeuvred that incomparably strategical military organization 
 in public, and caused it to illustrate the fine art of waging 
 heroic war upon a life-insurance principle. Equally re- 
 nowned in arms for its feats and legs, and for being always 
 on hand when any peculiarly daring retrograde movement 
 was on foot, this limber martial body continually fell back
 
 20 SKETCH OF THE ADAPTER. 
 
 upon victory throughout the war, and has been coming for- 
 ward with hand-organs ever since. Its complete History, 
 by the gentleman now adapting the literary struggles of Mr. 
 E. Drood to American minds and matters, was subse- 
 quently issued from the press of Carleton, in more or less 
 volumes, and at once attracted profound attention from the 
 author's creditors. One great American journal said of it : 
 " We find the paper upon which this production is printed 
 of a most amusing quality." Another observed : " The bind- 
 ing of this tedious military work is the most humorous we 
 ever saw. " A third added : " In typographical details, the 
 volumes now under consideration are facetious beyond com- 
 pare." 
 
 The present residence of the successful Historian is Be- 
 gad's Hill, New Jersey, and, if not existing in Shakspeare's 
 time, it certainly looks old enough to have been built at 
 about that period. Its architecture is of the no-capital Co- 
 rinthian order; there are mortgages both front and back, 
 and hot and cold water at the nearest hotel. From the cen- 
 tral front window, which belongs to the author's library, in 
 which he keeps his Patent Office Reports, there is a fine 
 view of the top of the porch ; while from the rear casements 
 you get a glimpse of blind-shutters which won't open. It is 
 reported of this fine old place, that the present proprietor 
 wished to own it even when a child ; never dreaming the 
 mortgaged halls would yet be his without a hope of re-sell- 
 ing.
 
 SKETCH OF THE ADAPTER. 21 
 
 Although fully thirty years of age, the owner of Begad' s 
 Hill Place still writes with a pen ; and, perhaps, with a finer 
 thoughtfulness as to not suffusing his fingers with ink than 
 in his more youthful moments of composition. He is sound 
 and kind in both single and double harness ; would undoubt- 
 edly be good to the Pole if he could get there ; and, although 
 living many miles from the city, walks into his breakfast 
 every morning in the year.
 
 THE CLOVEN FOOT. 
 
 [The American Press's Young Gentlemen, when taking their shady literary 
 walks among the Columns of Interesting Matter, have been known to remark 
 with a glibness and grace, by Jove, greatly in excess of their salaries that the 
 reason why we dot? t produce great works of imagination in this country, as they 
 do in other countries, is because we haveift the genius, you know. They think 
 do they ? that the bran-new localities, post-office addresses, and official titles, 
 characteristic of the United States of America, are rife with all the grand old 
 traditional suggestions so useful in helping along the romantic interest of fiction. 
 They think do they ? that if- an A merican writer could write a Novel in the 
 ejcact style of Collins, or Trollopc, or Dickens, only laying its scenes and having 
 its characters in this country, the work would be as romantically effective as one 
 by Collins, or Trollope, or Dickens ; and that the possibly necessary incidental 
 mention of such native places as Schermerhorn Street, Dobtfs Perry, or Chicago, 
 wouldn't disturb the nicest dramatic illusion of the imaginative tale. Very 
 well, then! All right! Just look here! Oh! A.P's. Young Gentlemen, just 
 look here ] 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 DAYLIGHT IN THE MORN. 
 
 A MODERN American Ritualistic Spire ! * How can the 
 modern American Ritualistic Spire be here ? The well- 
 known tapering brown Spire, like a closed umbrella on end ! 
 How can that be here? There is no rusty rim of a shock- 
 ing bad hat between the eye and that Spire in the real pros- 
 
 * In the original, " an ancient English Cathedral Tower."
 
 24 DA YLIGHT IN THE MORN. 
 
 pect. What is the rusty rim that now intervenes, and con- 
 fuses the vision of at least one eye ? It must be an intoxi- 
 cated hat that wants to see, too. It is so, for ritualistic 
 choirs strike up, acolytes swing censers dispensing the heavy 
 odor of punch, and the ritualistic rector and his gaudily 
 robed assistants in alb, chasuble, maniple and tunicle, intone 
 a Nux Vomica in gorgeous procession. Then come twenty 
 young clergymen in stoles and bivettas, running after twenty 
 marriageable young ladies of the congregation who have 
 sent them worked slippers. Then followed ten thousand 
 black monkies swarming all over everybody and up and 
 down everything, chattering like fiends. Still the Ritualistic 
 Spire keeps turning up in impossible places, and still the 
 intervening rusty rim of a hat inexplicably clouds one eye. 
 There dawns a sensation as of writhing grim figures of 
 snakes in one's boots, and the intervening rusty rim of the 
 hat that was not in the original prospect takes a snake-like 
 but stay ! Is this the rim of my own hat tumbled all 
 awry ? I' mushbe ! A few reflective moments, not un- 
 relieved by hiccups, mush be d'voted to co-shid-ERATiON of 
 th' posh'bil'ty. 
 
 Nodding excessively to himself with unspeakable gravity, 
 the gentleman whose diluted mind has thus played the 
 Dickens with him, slowly arises to an upright position by a 
 series of complicated manoeuvres with both hands and feet ; 
 and, having carefully balanced himself on one leg, and shak- 
 ing his aggressive old hat still further down over his left
 
 DA YLIGHT IN THE MORN. 25 
 
 eye, proceeds to take a cloudy view of his surroundings., 
 He is in a room giving on one side to a bar, and on the 
 other side to a pair of glass doors and a window, through the 
 broken panes of which various musty cloth substitutes for 
 glass ejaculate toward the outer Mulberry Street. Tilted 
 back in chairs against the wall, in various attitudes of dis- 
 location of the spine and compound fracture of the neck, 
 are an Alderman of the ward, an Assistant-Assessor, and the 
 lady who keeps the hotel.* The first two are shapeless with 
 a slumber defying every law of comfortable anatomy ; the 
 last is dreamily attempting to light a stumpy pipe with the 
 wrong end of a match, and shedding tears, in the dim morn- 
 ing ghastliness, at her repeated failures. 
 
 " Thiy another," says this woman, rather thickly, to the 
 gentleman balanced on one leg, who is gazing at her, and 
 winking very much. " Have another, wid some bitters." 
 
 He straightens himself extremely, to an imminent peril of 
 falling over backward, sways slightly to and fro, and becomes 
 as severe in expression of countenance as his one uncovered 
 eye will allow. 
 
 The woman falls back in her chair again asleep, and he, 
 walking with one shoulder depressed, and a species of side- 
 wise, running gait, approaches and poises himself over her. 
 
 "What vision can she have?" the man muses, with his 
 hat now fully upon the bridge of his nose. He smiles un- 
 expectedly ; as suddenly frowns with great intensity ; and 
 - s 
 
 * In the original, a low haunt of opium-smokers, in London.
 
 26 DA YLIGHT IN THE MORN". 
 
 involuntarily walks backward against the sleeping Alderman. 
 Him he abstractedly sits down upon, and then listens in- 
 tently for any casual remark he may make. But one word 
 comes " Wairzernat'chal'zationc'tif kits." 
 
 " Unintelligent ! " mutters the man, wearily ; and, rising 
 dejectedly from the Alderman, lurches, with a crash, upon 
 the Assistant-Assessor. Him he shakes fiercely for being so 
 bony to fall on, and then hearkens for a suitable apology. 
 
 " Warzwaz-yourwifesincome-lash' lash' -year ? " 
 
 A thoughtful pause, partaking of a doze. 
 
 " Unintelligent ! " 
 
 Complicatedly arising from the Assessor, with his hat now 
 almost hanging by an ear, the gentleman, after various futile 
 but ingenious efforts to face toward the door by turning his 
 head alone that way, finally succeeds by walking in a circle 
 until the door is before him. Then, with his whole counte- 
 nance charged with almost scowling intensity of purpose, 
 though finding it difficult to keep his eyes very far open, he 
 balances himself with the utmost care, throws his shoulders 
 back, steps out daringly, and goes off at an acute slant 
 toward the Alderman again. Recovering himself by a 
 tremendous effort of will and a few wild backward move- 
 ments, he steps out jauntily once more, and cannot stop 
 himself until he has gone twice around a chair on his ex- 
 treme left and reached almost exactly the point from which 
 he started the first time. He pauses, panting, but with the 
 scowl of determination still more intense, and concentrated
 
 DA YLIGHT IN THE MORN. 27 
 
 chiefly in his right eye. Very cautiously extending his 
 dexter hand, that he may not destroy the nicety of his per- 
 pendicular balance, he points with a ringer at the knob of 
 the door, and suffers his stronger eye to fasten firmly upon 
 the same object. A moment's balancing, to make sure, and 
 then, in three irresistible, rushing strides, he goes through 
 the glass doors with a burst, without stopping to turn the 
 latch, strikes an ash-box on the edge of the sidewalk, re- 
 bounds to a lamp-post, and then, with the irresistible rush 
 still on him, describes a hasty wavy line, marked by irregular 
 heel-strokes, up the street. 
 
 That same afternoon, the modern American Ritualistic 
 Spire rises in duplicate illusion before the multiplying vision 
 of a traveller recently off the ferry-boat, who, as though not 
 satisfied with the length of his journey, makes frequent and 
 unexpected trials of its width. The bells are ringing for 
 vesper service ; and, having fairly made the right door at 
 last, after repeatedly shooting past and falling short of it, he 
 reaches his place in the choir and performs voluntaries and 
 involuntaries upon the organ, in a manner not distinguishable 
 from almost any fashionable church-music of the period.
 
 28 A DEAN, AND A CHAP OR TWO ALSO. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A DEAN, AND A CHAP OR TWO ALSO. 
 
 WHOSOEVER has noticed a party of those sedate and Ger- 
 
 * 
 
 manesquely philosophical animals, the pigs, scrambling pre- 
 cipitately under a gate from out a cabbage-patch toward 
 nightfall, may, perhaps, have observed, that, immediately 
 upon emerging from the sacred vegetable preserve, a couple 
 of the more elderly and designing of them assumed a sudden 
 air of abstracted musing, and reduced their progress to a 
 most dignified and leisurely walk, as though to convince the 
 human beholder that their recent proximity to the cabbages 
 had been but the trivial accident of a meditative stroll. 
 
 Similarly, service in the church being over, and divers per- 
 sons of piggish solemnity of aspect dispersing, two of the 
 latter detach themselves from the rest, and try an easy lounge 
 around toward a side door of the building, as though willing 
 to be taken by the outer world for a couple of unimpeach- 
 able low-church gentlemen, who merely happened to be in 
 that neighborhood at that hour for an airing. 
 
 The day and year are waning, and the setting sun casts a 
 ruddy but not warming light upon two figures under the 
 rch of the side door ; while one of these figures locks the
 
 A DEAN, AND A CHAP OR TWO ALSO. 29 
 
 door, the other, who seems to have a music-book under his 
 arm, comes out, with a strange, screwy motion, as though 
 through an opening much too narrow for him, and, having 
 poised a moment to nervously pull some imaginary object 
 from his right boot and hurl it madly from him, goes unex- 
 pectedly off with the precipitancy and equilibriously con- 
 centric manner of a gentleman in his first private essay on a 
 tight-rope. 
 
 "Was that Mr. Bumstead, Smythe ?"* 
 
 " It wasn't anybody else, your Reverence." 
 
 " Say ' his identity with the person mentioned scarcely 
 comes within the legitimate domain of doubt,' Smythe to 
 Father Dean," the younger of the piggish persons softly inter- 
 poses. 
 
 " Is Mr. Bumstead unwell, Smythe ? " 
 
 "He's pretty bad to-night." 
 
 "Say 'incipient cerebral effusion marks him especially 
 for its prey at this vesper hour,' Smythe to Father Dean," 
 again softly interposes Mr. Simpson, the Gospeller, f 
 
 " Mr. Simpson," pursues Father Dean,J whose name has 
 been modified, by various theological stages, from its original 
 form of Paudean, to Pere Dean Father Dean, "I regret 
 to hear that Mr. Bumstead is so delicate in health; you 
 
 * In the original, Mr. John Jasper, Chorister of the Cathedral ; and Tojie, a 
 Verger. 
 
 t In the original, Mr. Crisparkle, Minor Canon. 
 t In the original, " the Dean,"
 
 30 A DEAN, AND A CHAP OR TWO ALSO. 
 
 may stop at his boarding-house on your way home, and ask 
 him how he is, with my compliments. Pax vobiscum" 
 
 Shining so with a sense of his own benignity that the 
 retiring sun gives up all rivalry at once and instantly sets in 
 despair, Father Dean departs to his dinner, and Mr. Simp- 
 son, the Gospeller, betakes himself cheerily to the second- 
 floor-back, where Mr. Bumstead lives. Mr. Bumstead is a 
 shady-looking man of about six-and-twenty, with black hair 
 and whiskers of the window-brush school, and a face remind- 
 ing you of the Bourbons. As, although lighting his lamp, he 
 has, abstractedly, almost covered it with his hat, his room is 
 but imperfectly illuminated, and you can just detect the 
 accordeon on the window-sill, and, above the mantel, an 
 unfinished sketch of a school-girl. (There is no artistic 
 merit in this picture; in which, indeed, a simple triangle 
 on end represents the waist, another and slightly larger 
 triangle the skirts, and straight-lines with rake-like termina- 
 tions the arms and hands.) 
 
 " Called to ask how you are, and offer Father Dean's 
 compliments," says the Gospeller. 
 
 " I'm allright, shir ! " says Mr. Bumstead, rising from the 
 rug where he has been temporarily reposing, and dropping 
 his umbrella. He speaks almost with ferocity. 
 
 " You are awaiting your nephew, Edwin Drood ? " 
 
 " Yeshir." As he answers, Mr. Bumstead leans languidly 
 far across the table, and seems vaguely amazed at the aspect 
 of the lamp with his hat upon it.
 
 A DEAN, AND A CHAP OR TWO ALSO. 31 
 
 Mr. Simpson retires softly, stops to greet some one at the 
 foot of the stairs, and, in another moment, a young man 
 fourteen years old enters the room with his carpet-bag. 
 
 " My dear boys ! My dear Edwins !" 
 
 Thus speaking, Mr. Bumstead sidles eagerly at the new- 
 comer, with open arms, and, in falling upon his neck, does 
 so too heavily, and bears him with a crash to the floor. 
 
 " Oh, see here ! this is played out, you know," ejaculates 
 the nephew, almost suffocated with travelling- shawl and 
 Bumstead. 
 
 Mr. Bumstead rises from him slowly and with dignity. 
 
 " Excuse me, dear Edwin ; I thought there were two of 
 you." 
 
 Edwin Drood regains his feet with alacrity and casts aside 
 his shawl. 
 
 " Whatever you thought, uncle, I am still a single man, 
 although your way of coming down on a chap was enough 
 to make me beside myself. Any grub, Jack ? " 
 
 With a check upon his enthusiasm and a sudden gloom of 
 expression amounting almost to a squint, Mr. Bumstead 
 motions with his whole right side toward an adjacent room 
 in which a table is spread, and leads the way thither in a 
 half-circle. 
 
 "Ah, this is prime !" cries the young fellow, rubbing his 
 hands ; the while he realizes that Mr. Bumstead' s squint is 
 an attempt to include both himself and the picture over the
 
 32 A DEAN, AND A CHAP OR TWO ALSO. 
 
 mantel in the next room in one incredibly complicated 
 look. 
 
 Not much is said during dinner, as the strength of the 
 boarding-house butter requires all the nephew's energies for 
 single combat with it, and the uncle is so absorbed in a 
 dreamy effort to make a salad with his hash and all the con- 
 tents of the castor, that he can attend to nothing else. At 
 length the cloth is drawn, Edwin produces some peanuts 
 from his pocket, and passes some to Mr. Bumstead, and the 
 latter, with a wet towel pinned about his head, drinks a great 
 deal of water. 
 
 "This is Sissy's birthday, you know, Jack," says the 
 nephew, with a squint through the door and around the 
 corner of the adjoining apartment toward the crude picture 
 over the mantel, " and, if our respective respected parents 
 hadn't bound us by will to marry, I'd be mad after her." 
 
 Crack. On Edwin Drood's part. 
 
 Hie. On Mr. Bumstead's part. 
 
 "Nobody's dictated a marriage for you, Jack. You can 
 choose for yourself. Life for you is still fraught with free- 
 dom's intoxicating " 
 
 Mr. Bumstead has suddenly become very pale, and per- 
 spires heavily on the forehead. 
 
 " Good Heavens, Jack ! I haven't hurt your feelings ? " 
 
 Mr. Bumstead makes a feeble pass at him with the water- 
 decanter, and smiles in a very ghastly manner.
 
 A DEAN, AND A CHAP OR TWO ALSO. 33 
 
 *' Lem me be a mis' able warning to you, Edwin," says Mr. 
 Bumstead, shedding tears. 
 
 The scared face of the younger recalls him to himself, and 
 he adds : 
 
 "Don't mind me, my dear boys. It's cloves; you may 
 notice them on my breath. I take them for my nerv'shness." 
 Here he rises in a series of trembles to his feet, and balances, 
 still very pale, on one leg. 
 
 " You want cheering up," says Edwin Drood, kindly. 
 
 " Yesh cheering up. Let's go and walk in the grave- 
 yard," says Mr. Bumstead. 
 
 " By all means. You won't mind my slipping out for half 
 a minute to the Alms House* to leave a few gum-drops for 
 Sissy? Rather spoony, Jack." 
 
 Mr. Bumstead almost loses his balance in an imprudent 
 attempt to wink archly ; and says,"Norring-half-sh'-shweet-'n- 
 life." He is very thick with Edwin Drood, for he loves 
 him. 
 
 "Well, let's skedaddle, then." 
 
 Mr. Bumstead very carefully poises himself on both feet, 
 puts on his hat over the wet towel, gives a sudden horrified 
 glance downward toward one of his boots, and leaps franti- 
 cally over an object. 
 
 " Why, that was only my cane," says Edwin. 
 
 Mr.' Bumstead breathes hard, and leans heavily on his 
 nephew as they go out together. 
 
 * In the original. " the Nv>fs House." 
 
 2*
 
 34: THE ALMS-HOUSE. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE ALMS-HOUSE. 
 
 FOR the purpose of preventing an inconvenient rush of 
 literary tuft-hunters and sight-seers thither next summer, a 
 fictitious name must be bestowed upon the town of the Rit- 
 ualistic church. Let it stand in these pages as Bumstead- 
 ville.* Possibly it was not known to the Romans, the 
 Saxons, nor the Normans by that name, if by any name at 
 all ; but a name more or less weird and full of damp syllables 
 can be of little monent to a place not owned by any adver- 
 tising Suburban-Residence benefactors. 
 
 A disagreeable and healthy suburb, Bumsteadville, with a 
 strange odor of dried bones from its ancient pauper burial- 
 ground, and many quaint old ruins in the shapes of elderly 
 men engaged as contributors to the monthly magazines of 
 the day. Antiquity pervades Bumsteadville ; nothing is 
 new ; the very Rye is old ; also the Jamaica, Santa Cruz, 
 and a number of the native maids. A drowsy place, with 
 all its changes lying far behind it; or, at least, the sun- 
 browned mendicants passing through say they never saw a 
 place offering so little present change. 
 
 * In the original, Cloisterham.
 
 THE ALMS-HOUSE. 35 
 
 In the midst of Bumsteadville stands the Aims-House ; a 
 building of an antic order of architecture ; still known by its 
 original title to the paynobility and indigentry of the sur- 
 rounding country, several of whose ancestors abode there in 
 the days before voting was a certain livelihood ; although 
 now bearing a door-plate inscribed, " Macassar Female 
 College, Miss Carowthers."* Whether any of the country 
 editors, projectors of American Comic papers, and other 
 immates of the edifice in times of yore, ever come back in 
 spirit to be astonished by the manner in which modern ser- 
 ious and humorous print can be made productive of anything 
 but penury by publishing True Stories of Lord Byron and 
 the autobiographies of detached wives, may be of interest to 
 philosophers, but is of no account to Miss Carowthers. 
 Every day, during school-hours, does Miss Carowthers, in 
 spectacles and high-necked alpaca, preside over her Young 
 Ladies of Fashion, with an austerity and elderliness before 
 which every mental image of Man, even as the most poetical 
 of abstractions, withers and dies. Every night, after the 
 young ladies have retired, does Miss Carowthers put on a 
 freshening aspect, don a more youthful low-necked dress 
 
 As though a rose 
 Should leave its clothes 
 And be a bud again, 
 
 and become a sprightlier Miss Carowthers. Every night at 
 the same hour, does Miss Carowthers discuss with her First 
 
 * In the original, Miss Twinkleton.
 
 36 THE ALMS-HOUSE. 
 
 Assistant, Mrs. Pillsbury, * the Inalienable Rights of 
 Women ; always making certain casual reference to a gen- 
 tleman in the dim past, whom she was obliged to sue for 
 breach of promise, and to whom, for that reason, Miss Ca- 
 rowthers airily refers, with a toleration bred of the lapse of 
 time, as, " Breachy Mr. Blodgett." 
 
 The pet pupil of the Aims-House is Flora Potts,f of 
 course called the Flowerpot ; for whom a husband has been 
 chosen by the will and beques* of her departed papa, and at 
 whom none of the other Macassar young ladies can look 
 without wondering how it must feel. On the afternoon after 
 the day of the dinner at the boarding-house, the Macassar 
 front-door bell rings, and Mr. Edwin Drood is announced as 
 waiting to see Miss Flora. Having first rubbed her lips and 
 cheeks, alternately, with her fingers, to make them red; 
 held her hands above her head to turn back the circulation 
 and make them white ; and added a little lead-pencilling to 
 her eyebrows to make them black ; the Flowerpot trips in- 
 nocently down to the parlor, and stops short at some dis- 
 tance from the visitor in a curious sort of angular deflection 
 from die perpendicular. 
 
 " O, you absurd creature ! " she says, placing a finger in 
 her mouth and slightly wriggling at him. "To go and have 
 to be married to me whether we want to or not! It's per- 
 fectly disgusting." 
 
 * In the original, Mrs. Tisher. 
 t In the original, Rosa Bud, "of course called Rosebud."
 
 THE ALMS-HOUSE. 37 
 
 " Our parents did rather come a little load on us," says 
 Edwin Drood, not rendered enthusiastic by his reception. 
 
 " Can't we get a habeas corpus, or some other ridiculous 
 thing, and ask some perfectly absurd Judge to serve an in- 
 junction on somebody ? " she asks, with pretty earnestness. 
 "Don't, Eddy do-o-n't." 
 
 " Don't what, Flora ? " 
 
 " Don't try to kiss me, please." 
 
 "Why not, Flora?" 
 
 " Because I'm enamelled." 
 
 " Well, I do think," says Edwin Drood, " that you put on 
 the Grecian Bend rather heavily with me. Perhaps I'd 
 better go." 
 
 " I wouldn't be so exquisitely hateful, Eddy. I got the 
 gum-drops last night, and they were perfectly splendid." 
 
 " Well, that's a confort, at any rate," says her affianced, 
 dimly conscious of a dawning civility in her last remark. " If 
 it's really possible for you to walk on those high heels of 
 yours, Flora, let's try a promenade out-doors." 
 
 Here Miss Carowthers glides into the room to look for 
 her scissors, is reminded by the scene before her of Breachy 
 Mr. Blodgett ; whispers, "Don't trifle with her young affec- 
 tions, Mr. Drood, unless you want to be sued, besides being 
 interviewed by all the papers ; " and glides out again with a 
 sigh. 
 
 Flora then puts upon her head a fig-leaf trimmed with lace 
 and ribbon, and gets her hoop and stick from behind the
 
 38 THE ALMS-HOUSE. 
 
 hall-door. Edwin Drood takes from one of his pockets an 
 india-rubber ball, to practice fly-catches with as he walks ; 
 and driving the hoop and throwing and catching the ball, the 
 two go down the ancient turnpike of Bumsteadville together. 
 
 " Oh, please, Eddy, scrape yourself close to the fences, 
 so that the girls can't see you out of the windows," pleads 
 Flora. " It's so utterjy absurd to be walking with one that 
 one's got to marry whether one likes it or not; and you do 
 look so perfectly ridiculous in that short coat, and all your 
 other things so tight." 
 
 He gloomily scrapes against the fences, dropping his ball 
 and catching it on the rebound at every step. "Which way 
 shall we go ? " 
 
 " Up by the store, Eddy, dear." 
 
 They go to the all-sorts country store in question, where 
 Edwin Drood buys her some sassafras bull's-eye candy, and 
 then they turn toward home again. 
 
 "Now be a good-tempered Eddy," she says, trundling her 
 hoop beside him, "and pretend that you aren't going to be 
 my husband." 
 
 " Not if I can help it," he says, catching the ball almost 
 spitefully. 
 
 "Then you're going to have somebody else?" 
 
 " You make my head ache, so you do," whimpers Edwin 
 Drood. " I don't want to marry anybody at all ! " 
 
 She tickles him under the arm with her hoop-stick, and 
 turns eyes that are all serious upon his.
 
 THE ALMS-HOUSE. 39 
 
 " I wish, Eddy, that we could be perfectly absurd friends 
 to each other, instead of utterly ridiculous engaged people. 
 It's exquisitely awful, you know, to have a husband picked 
 out for you by dead folks, and I'm so sick about it some- 
 times that I hardly have the heart to fix my back-hair. Let 
 each of us forbear, and stop teazing the other." 
 
 Greatly pleased by this perfectly intelligent and forgiving 
 arrangement, Edwin Drood says : " You're right, Flora. 
 Teazing is played out ; " and drives his ball into a perfect 
 frenzy of bounces. 
 
 They have arrived near the Ritualistic church, through the 
 windows of which come the organ-notes of one practising 
 within. Something familiar in the grand air rolling out to 
 them causes Edwin Drood to repeat, abstractedly, " I feel 
 I feel I feel " 
 
 Flora, simultaneously affected in the same way, unconsci- 
 ously murmurs, " I feel like a morning star." 
 
 They then join hands, under the same irresistible spell, 
 and take dancing steps, humming, in unison, " Shoo, fly ! 
 don't bodder me." 
 
 "That's Jack Bumstead's playing," whispers Edwin 
 Drood ; " and he must be breathing this way, too, for I can 
 smell the cloves." 
 
 " O, take me home," cries Flora, suddenly throwing her 
 hoop over the young man's neck, and dragging him violently 
 after her. " I think cloves are perfectly disgusting."
 
 40 THE ALMS-HOUSE. 
 
 At the door of the Aims-House the pretty Flowerpot blows 
 a kiss to Edwin, and goes in. He makes one trial of his 
 ball against the door, and goes off. She is an in-fant, he is 
 an off-'un.
 
 MR. SWEENEY. 41 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MR. SWEENEY. 
 
 ACCEPTING the New American Cyclopaedia as a fair stand- 
 ard of stupidity although the prejudice, perhaps, may 
 arise rather from the irascibility of the few using it as a ref- 
 erence, than from the calm judgment of the many employ- 
 ing it to fill-out a showy book-case then the newest and 
 most American Cyclopaedist in Bumsteadville is Judge 
 Sweeney.* 
 
 It is Judge Sweeney's pleasure to found himself upon Father 
 Dean, whom he greatly resembles in the intellectual details 
 of much forehead, stomach, and shirt-collar. When upon 
 the bench in the city, even, granting an injunction in favor 
 of some railroad company in which he owns a little stock, he 
 frequently intones his accompanying remarks with an eccle- 
 siastical solemnity eminently calculated to suppress every 
 possible tendency to levity in the assembled lawyers ; and 
 his discharge from arrest of any foreign gentleman brought 
 
 * Mr. Sapsea the original of this character in Mr. Dickens' romance, is an auc- 
 tioneer. The present Adapter can think of no nearer American equivalent, in the way 
 of a person at once resident in a suburb and who sells to the highest bidder, than a 
 supposable member of the New York judiciary.
 
 42 MR. SWEENEY. 
 
 before him for illegal voting, has often been found strikingly 
 similar in sound to a pastoral Benediction. 
 
 That Judge Sweeney has many admirers, is proved by the 
 immense local majority electing him to judicial eninence ; 
 and that the admiration is mutual is likewise proved by his 
 subsequent appreciative dismissal of certain frivolous com- 
 plaints against a majority of that majority for trifling misap- 
 prehensions of the Registry law. He is a portly, double- 
 chinned man of about fifty, with a moral cough, eye-glasses 
 making even his red nose seem ministerial, and little gold 
 ballot-boxes, locomotives, and five-dollar pieces, hanging as 
 " charms" from the chain of his Repeater. 
 
 Judge Sweeney's villa is on the turnpike, opposite the 
 Aims-House, with doors and shutters giving in whichever 
 direction they are opened ; and he is sitting near a table, 
 with a sheet of paper in his hands, and a bowl of warm 
 lemon tea before him, when his servant-girl announces " Mr. 
 Bumstead." 
 
 " Happy to see you, sir, in my house, for the first time," 
 is Judge Sweeney's hospitable greeting. 
 
 " You honor me, sir," says Mr. Bumstead, whose eyes are 
 set, as though he were in some kind of a fit, and who shakes 
 hands excessively. " You are a good man, sir. How do 
 you do, sir ? Shake hands again, sir. I am very well, sir, I 
 thank you. Your hand, sir. I'll stand by you, sir though 
 I never spoke f you b'fore in my life. Let us shake hands, 
 sir."
 
 MR. SWEENEY. 43 
 
 But instead of waiting for this last shake, Mr. Bum stead 
 abruptly turns away to the nearest chair, deposits his hat in 
 the very middle of the seat with great care, and recklessly 
 sits down upon it. 
 
 The lemon tea in the bowl upon the table is a fruity com- 
 pound, consisting of two very thin slices of lemon, which are 
 maintained in horizontal positions, for the free action of the 
 air upon their upper surfaces, by a pint of whiskey procured 
 for that purpose. About half a pint of hot water has been 
 added to help soften the rind of the lemon, and a portion of 
 sugar to correct its acidity. 
 
 With a wave of the hand toward this tropical preserve, 
 Judge Sweeney says : " You have a reputation, sir, as a man 
 of taste. Try some lemon tea." 
 
 Energetically, if not frantically, his guest holds out a tum- 
 bler to be filled, immediately after which he insists upon 
 shaking hands again. " You're a man of insight, sir," he 
 says, working Judge Sweeney back and forth in his chair. 
 " I am a man of taste, sir, and you know the world, sir." 
 
 " The World? " says Judge Sweeney, complacently. " If 
 you mean the religious female daily paper of that name, I 
 certainly do know it. I used to take it for my late wife 
 when she was trying to learn Latin." 
 
 " I mean the terrestrial globe, sir," says Mr. Bunastead, 
 irritably. " The great spherical foundation, sir, upon which 
 Boston has since been built." 
 
 " Ah, I see," says Judge Sweeney, genially. " I believe,
 
 44 MR. SWEENEY. 
 
 though, that I know that world, also, pretty well ; for, if I 
 have not exactly been to foreign countries, foreign countries 
 have come to me. They have come to me on hem ! 
 business, and I have improved my opportunities. A man 
 comes to me from a vessel and I say ' Cork,' and give him 
 Naturalization Certificates for himself and his friends. An- 
 other comes, and I say ' Dublin ; ' another, and I say ' Bel- 
 fast.' If I want to travel still further, I take them all to- 
 gether and say ' the Polls.' " 
 
 "You'll do to travel, sir," responds Mr. Bumstead, ab- 
 stractedly helping himself to some more lemon tea; " but I 
 thought we were to talk about the late Mrs. Sweeney." 
 
 " We were, sir," says Judge Sweeney, abstractedly remov- 
 ing the bowl to a sideboard on his farther side. " My late 
 wife, young man, as you may be aware, was a Miss Hag- 
 gerty, and was imbued with homage to Shape. It was rum- 
 ored, sir, that she admired me for my Manly Shape. When 
 I offered to make her my bride, the only words she could 
 articulate were, " O, my ! I? " meaning that she could 
 scarcely believe that I really meant her. After which she 
 fell into strong hysterics. We were married, despite certain 
 objections on the score of temperance by that corrupt Radi- 
 cal, her father. From looking up to me too much she con- 
 tracted! an affection of the spine, and died about nine months 
 ago. Now, sir, be good enough to run your eye over this 
 Epitaph, which I have composed for the monument row 
 erecting to her memory."
 
 MR. SWEENEY. 45 
 
 Mr. Bumstead, rousing from a doze for the purpose, fixes 
 glassy eyes upon the slip of paper held out to him, and reads 
 as follows : 
 
 MARY ANN, 
 
 Unlitigating and Unliterary Wife of 
 
 HIS HONOR, JUDGE SWEENEY. 
 
 In the darkest hours of 
 
 Her Husband's fortunes 
 
 She was never once tempted to Write for 
 
 THE TRIBUNE, OR THE INDEPENDENT ; * 
 
 Nor did even a disappointment about a 
 
 new bonnet ever induce her to 
 
 threaten her husband with 
 AN INDIANA DIVORCE. 
 
 STRANGER, PAUSE, 
 and consider if thou canst say 
 - the same about 
 THINE OWN WIFE ! 
 ' 4. if not, 
 
 WITH A RUSH RETIRE, t 
 
 Mr. Bumstead, affected to tears, interspersed with nods, 
 by his reading, has barely time to mutter that such a wife 
 was too good to live long- in these days, when the servant 
 announces that " McLaughlin has come, sir." 
 
 John McLaughlin, \ who now enters, is a stone-cutter and 
 
 * Two journals notoriously rich in strong-minded female contributors. 
 
 t In the original ; "Ethelinda, Reverential wife of Mr. Thomas Sapsea, Auctioneer, 
 Valuer, Estate Agent, etc. of this city. Whose knowledge of the world, though^some- 
 what extensive, never brought him acquainted with a Spirit more capable of looking 
 up to Him. Stranger, pause and ask thyself the question ; canst thou do likewise? 
 If not, with a Blush Retire." 
 - * In the original, Durdles, a stone mason.
 
 46 MR. SWEENEY. 
 
 mason, much employed in patching dilapidated graves and 
 cutting inscriptions, and popularly known in Bumsteadville, 
 on account of the dried mortar perpetually hanging about 
 him, as "Old Mortarity." He is a ricketty man, with a 
 chronic disease called bar-roomatism, and so very grave- 
 yardy in his very ' Hie ' that one almost expects a jacet to 
 follow it as a matter of course. 
 
 "John McLaughlin," says Judge Sweeney, handing him 
 the paper with the Epitaph, " there is the inscription for the 
 stone." 
 
 " I guess I can get it all on, sir," says McLaughlin. 
 " Your servant, Mr. Bumstead." 
 
 "Ah, John McLaughlin, how are you?" says Mr. Bum- 
 stead, his hand with the tumbler vaguely wandering toward 
 where the bowl formerly stood. " By the way, John Mc- 
 Laughlin, how came you to be called ' Old Mortarity ? ' It 
 has a drunken sound, John McLaughlin, like one of Sir 
 Walter Scott's characters disguised in liquor." 
 
 "Never you mind about that," says McLaughlin. "I 
 carry the keys of the Bumsteadville churchyard vaults, and 
 can tell to an atom, by a tap of my trowel, how fast a 
 skeleton is dropping to dust in the pauper burial-ground. 
 That's more than they can do who call me names." With 
 which ghastly speech John McLaughlin retires unceremoni- 
 ously from the room. 
 
 Judge Sweeney now attempts a game of backgammon 
 with the man of taste, but becomes discouraged after Mr.
 
 MR. SWEENEY. 47 
 
 Bumstead has landed the dice in his vest-opening three times 
 running and fallen heavily asleep in the middle of a move. 
 An ensuing potato salad is made equally discouraging by Mr. 
 Bumstead' s persistent attempts to cut up his handkerchief in 
 it. Finally, Mr. Bumstead wildly finds his way to his feet, 
 is plunged into profound gloom at discovering the condition 
 of his hat, attempts to leave the room by each of the win- 
 dows and closets in succession, and at last goes tempestu- 
 ously through the door by accident.
 
 48 MR. MCLAUGHLIN AND FRIEND. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MR. MCLAUGHLIN AND FRIEND. 
 
 JOHN BUMSTEAD, on his way home along the unsteady 
 turnpike upon which he is sure there will be a dreadful 
 accident some day, for want of railings is suddenly 
 brought to an unsettled pause in his career by the spectacle 
 of Old Mortarity leaning against the low fence of the pauper 
 burial-ground, with a shapeless boy throwing stones at him 
 in the moonlight. The stones seem never to hit the vener- 
 able John McLaughlin, and at each miss the spry monkey of 
 the moonlight sings " sold again,", and casts another missile 
 still further from the mark. One of these give violently to 
 the nose of Mr. Bumstead, who, after a momentary enjoy- 
 ment of the evening fireworks thus lighted off, makes a 
 wrathful rush at the playful child, and lifts him from the 
 ground by his ragged collar, like a diminished suit of Mr. 
 Greeley's customary habiliments. 
 
 "Miserable snipe," demands Bumstead, eying his trophy 
 gloomily, and giving him a turn or two as though he were a 
 mackerel under inspection, "what are you doing to that 
 gooroleman ? " 
 
 " Oh, come now ! " says the lad sparring at him in the air,
 
 MR. MCLAUGHLIN AND FRIEND. 49 
 
 "you just lemme be, or I'll fetch you a wipe in the jaw. I 
 ain't doing nothink ; and he's werry good to me, he is." 
 
 Mr. Bumstead drops the presumptuous viper, but imme- 
 diately seizes him by an ear and leads him to McLaughlin, 
 whom he asks : " Do you know this insect ?" 
 
 " Smalley," * says McLaughlin with a nod. 
 
 "Is that the name of the sardine ? " 
 
 " Blagyerboots," adds McLaughlin. 
 
 " Shine 'em up, red hot," explains the boy. " I'm one 
 of them fellers." Here he breaks away and hops out again 
 into the road, singing : 
 
 "Aina, maina, mona, Mike, 
 Bassalona, bona, strike ! 
 Hay, way, crown, rack, 
 Hallico, ballico, we wo wack ! " 
 
 which he evidently intends as a kind of Hitalian ; for sim- 
 ultaneously, he aims a stone at John McLaughlin, grazes 
 Mr. Bumstead' s whiskers instead, and in another instant a 
 sound of breaking glass is heard in the distance. 
 
 "Peace, young scorpion!" says Mr. Bumstead, with a 
 commanding gesture. " John McLaughlin, let me see you 
 home. The road is too unsteady to-night for an old man 
 like you. Let me see you home, as far as my house, at 
 least." 
 
 "Thank you, sir, I'd make better time alone. When you 
 
 * In the original, '"Deputy! man-servant up at the Travellers' two-penny in 
 Gas Works Carding." 
 
 3
 
 50 MR. MCLAUGHLIN AND FRIEND. 
 
 came up, sir, Old Mortarity was meditating on this bone- 
 farm," says Mr. McLaughlin, pointing with a trowel, which 
 he had drawn from his pocket, into the pauper burial-ground. 
 " He was thinking of the many laid here when the Aims- 
 House over yonder used to be open as a Aims-House. I've 
 patched up all these graves, as well as them in the Ritual 
 churchyard, and know 'em all, sir. Over there, Editor of 
 Country Journal ; next, Stockholder in Erie ; next, Gentle- 
 man who Undertook to be Guided in His Agriculture by 
 Mr. Greeley's ' What I Know about Farming ; ' next, 
 Original Projector of American Punch; next, Pro- 
 prietor of Rural Newspaper; next, another Projector 
 of American Punch ; indeed, all the rest of that 
 row is American Punches ; next, Conductor of Rustic 
 Daily; next, Manager of Italian Opera; next, Stockholder in 
 Morris and Essex ; next, American Novelist ; next, Husband 
 of Literary Woman ; next, Pastor of Southern Church ; next, 
 Conductoi>of Provincial Press. I know 'em ALL, sir," says 
 Old Mortarity, with exquisite pathos, " and if a flower could 
 spring up for every tear a friendless old man has dropped 
 upon their neglected graves, you couldn't see the wooden 
 head-boards for the roses." 
 
 " Tharsverytrue," says Mr. Bumstead, much affected 
 "Not see 'em for your noses beaut'ful idea! You're a 
 gooroleman, sir. Here comes Smalley again." 
 
 "I ain't doing nothink, and you're all the time wanting 
 me to move on, and he's werry good to me, he is," whimpers
 
 MR. MCLAUGHLIN AND FRIEND. 51 
 
 Smalley, throwing a stone at Mr. Bumstead and hitting Old 
 Mortality. 
 
 " Didn't I tell you to always aim at me /" cries the latter, 
 angrily rubbing the place. " Don't I give you a penny a 
 night to aim right at me ? " 
 
 " I only chucked once at him," says the youth penitently. 
 
 "You see, Mr. Bumstead," explains John McLaughlin, "I 
 give him an Object in life. I am that Object, and it pays 
 me. If you've ever noticed these boys, sir, they never hit 
 what they aim at. If they throw at a pigeon on a tree, the 
 stone goes through a garret winder. If they throw at a 
 dog, it hits some passer-by on the leg. If they throw at 
 each other, it takes you in the back as you're turnin' a cor- 
 ner. I used to be getting hit all over every night from 
 Smalley' s aiming at dogs, and pigeons, and boys, like him- 
 self; but now I hire him to aim at me, exclusively, and I'm 
 all safe. There he goes, now, misses me, and breaks an- 
 other winder." 
 
 "Here, Smalley," says Mr. Bumstead, as another stone, 
 aimed at McLaughlin, strikes himself, "take this other 
 penny, and aim at both of us." 
 
 Thus perfectly protected from painful contusion, although 
 the air continues full of stones, Mr. Bumstead takes John 
 McLaughlin's arm, as they move onward, to protect the old 
 man from harm, and is so careful to pick out the choice 
 parts of the road for him that their progress is digressive in 
 the extreme.
 
 52 MR. MCLAUGHLIN AND FRIEND. 
 
 " I have heard," says Mr. Bumstead, " that at one end of 
 the pauper burial-ground there still remains the cellar of a 
 former chapel to the Aims-House, and that you have 
 broken through into it, and got a step-ladder to go down. 
 Isthashso ? " 
 
 "Yes ; and there's coffins down there." 
 
 " Yours is a hic-stremely strange life, John McLaughlin." 
 
 "It's certainly a very damp one," says McLaughlin, 
 silently urging his strange conpanion to support a little more 
 of his own weight in walking. "But it has its science. 
 Over in the Ritualistic burial-yard, I tap the wall of a vault 
 with my trowel-handle, and if the sound is hollow I say to 
 myself: ' Not full yet.' Say it's the First of May, and I tap 
 a coffin, and don't hear anything move in it, I say : ' Either 
 you're not a woman in there, or, if you are, you never kept 
 house.' Because, you see, if it was a woman that ever kept 
 house, it would take but the least thing in the world to make 
 her insist upon ' moving ' on the First of May." 
 
 "Won'rful!" says Mr. Bumstead. "Sometime when 
 you're sober, John McLaughlin, I'll do a grave or two with 
 you." 
 
 On their way they reach a bar-room, into which Mr. Bum- 
 stead is anxious to take Old Mortality, for the purpose of 
 getting something to make the latter stronger for his remain- 
 ing walk. Failing in his ardent entreaties to this end 
 even after desperately offering to eat a few cloves himself 
 for the sake of company he coldly bids the stone-cutter
 
 MR. MCLAUGHLIN AND FRIEND. 53 
 
 good-night, and starts haughtily in a series of spirals for his 
 own home. Suddenly catching sight of Smalley in the dis- 
 tance, he furiously grasps a stone to throw at him ; but 
 allowing his hand to describe too much of a circle before 
 parting with the stone, the latter strikes the back of his own 
 head, and he goes on, much confused. 
 
 Arriving in his own room, and arising from the all-fours 
 attitude in which, from eccentricity, he has ascended the 
 stairs,* Mr. Bumstead takes from a cupboard a curious 
 antique flask, and nearly fills a tumbler from its amber-hued 
 contents. He drinks the potion with something like frenzy ; 
 then softly steals to the door of a room opening into his own, 
 and looks in upon Edwin Drood. Calm and untroubled lies 
 his nephew there, in pleasant dreams. "They are both 
 asleep," whispers Mr. Bumstead to himself. He goes back 
 to his own bed, accompanied unconsciously by a chair 
 caught in his coat-tail ; puts on his hat, opens an umbrella 
 over his head, and lies down to dread serpentine visions.
 
 54: INSURANCE IN GOSPELLER'S GULCH. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 INSURANCE IN GOSPELLER'S GULCH. 
 
 THE Reverend Octavius Simpson (Octavius, because there 
 had been seven other little Simpsons, who all took after 
 their father when he died of mumps, like seven kittens after 
 the parental tail,) having thrown himself all over the room 
 with a pair of dumb-bells much too strong for him, and taken 
 a seidlitz powder to oblige his dyspepsia, was now parting 
 his back hair before a looking-glass. An unimpeachably 
 consumptive style of clerical beauty did the mirror reflect ; 
 the countenance contracting to an expression of almost 
 malevolent piety when the comb went over a bump, and 
 relaxing to an open-mouthed charity for all mankind, 
 amounting nearly to imbecility, when the more complex re- 
 quirements of the parting process compelled twists of the 
 head scarcely compatible with even so much as a squint at 
 the glass. 
 
 It being breakfast time, Mrs. Simpson mother of Octa- 
 vius was just down for the meal, and surveyed the opera- 
 tion with a look of undisguised anxiety. 
 
 '-' You'll break one of them yet, some morning, Octave," 
 said the old lady.
 
 INSURANCE IN GOSPELLER'S GULCH, 55 
 
 " Do what, Oldy ? " asked the writhing Gospeller, appar 
 ently speaking out of his right ear. 
 
 "You'll break either the comb, or your neck, some morn- 
 ing." 
 
 Rendered momentarily irritable by this aggravating re- 
 mark, the Reverend Octavius made a jab with the comb at 
 the old lady's false-front, pulling it down quite askew over 
 her left eye ; but, upon the sudden entrance of a servant 
 with the tea-pot, he made precipitate pretence that his hand 
 was upon his mother's head to give her a morning blessing. 
 
 They were a striking pair to sit at breakfast together in 
 Gospeller's Gulch,* Bumsteadville : she with her superb old 
 nut-cracker countenance, and he with the dyspepsia of more 
 than thirty summers causing him to deal gently with the fish- 
 balls. They sat within sound of the bell of the Ritualistic 
 Church, the ringing of which was forever deluding the peas- 
 antry of the surrounding country into the idea that they 
 could certainly hear their missing cows at last (hence the 
 name of the church Saint Cow's) ; while the sonorous hee- 
 hawing of an occasional Nature's Congressman in some 
 distant field reminded them of the outer political world. 
 
 "Here is Mr. Schenck's letter," said Mrs. Simpson, hand- 
 ing an open epistle across the table, as she spoke, to her 
 son, " and you might read it aloud, my Octave." 
 
 Taking the tea-cup off his face, the Reverend Octavius 
 accepted the missive, which was written from "A Perfect 
 
 * In the original, Minor Cation Corner.
 
 56 INSURANCE IN GOSPELLER'S GULCH. 
 
 Stranger's Parlor, New York," and began reading thus : 
 " Dear Ma-a-dam 
 
 I wri-i-te in the-e 
 Chai-ai-ai-air " 
 
 " Dear me, Octave," interrupted the old lady, " can't you 
 read even a letter without Intoning and to the tune of 
 ' Old Hundredth,' too ? " 
 
 " I'm afraid not, dear Oldy," responded the Gospeller. 
 " I'm so much in the habit of it. You're not so ritualistic 
 yourself, and may be able to do better." 
 
 " Give it back to me, my sing-sing-sonny," said the old 
 lady ; who at once read as follows : " Dear Madam, I write 
 from the chair which I have now occupied for six hours, in 
 the house of a man whom I never saw before in my life, but 
 who comes next in the Directory to the obstinate but finally 
 conquered being under whose roof I resolutely passed the 
 greater part of yesterday. He sits near me in another 
 chair, so much weakened that he can just reply to me in 
 whispers, and I believe that a few hours more of my talk 
 will leave him no choice between dying of exhaustion at my 
 feet and taking a Policy in the Boreal Life Insurance Com- 
 pany, of which I am Agent. I have spoken to my wards, 
 Montgomery and Magnolia Pendragon,* concerning Mag- 
 nolia's being placed at school in the Macassar,' and Mont- 
 gomery's acceptance of your son, Octavius, as his tutor, and- 
 shall take them with me to Bumsteadville to-morrow, foi 
 
 * In the original, Neville and Helena Landless, from Celyon.
 
 INSURANCE IN GOSPELLERS GULCH. 57 
 
 such disposition. Hoping, Madam, that neither you not 
 your son will much longer fly into the face of Providence by 
 declining to insure your lives, through me, in the Boreal, 
 I have the honor to be Yours, for two Premiums, Melanc- 
 thon Schenck."* 
 
 "Well, Oldy," said Octavius, with dismal countenance, 
 " do you think we'll have to do it ? " 
 
 " Do what? " asked the old lady. 
 
 " Let him insure us." 
 
 "I'm afraid it will come to that yet, Octave. I've known 
 persons to die under him." 
 
 " Well, well, Heaven's will be done," muttered the pa- 
 tient Gospeller. 
 
 "And now, mother, we must do something to make the 
 first coming of these young strangers seem cheerful to them. 
 We must give a little dinner-party here, and invite Miss 
 Carowthers, and Bumstead and his nephew, and the Flower- 
 pot. Don't you think the codfish will go round ? " 
 
 "Yes, dear : that is, if you and I take the spine r " replied 
 the old lady. 
 
 So the party of reception was arranged, and the invitations 
 hurried out. 
 
 At about half an hour before dinner there was a sound in 
 the air of Bumsteadville as of a powerful stump-speaker ad- 
 dressing a mass-meeting in the distance ; rapidly intensify- 
 ing to stentorian phrases, such as " provide for your 
 
 * In the original, Luke Honey thunder, professional Philanthropist. 
 
 3*
 
 58 INSURANCE IN GOSPELLER'S GULCH. 
 
 miserable surviving offspring " " lower rates than any 
 other company" "full amount cheerfully paid upon hear- 
 ing of your death " until a hack appeared coming down 
 the cross-road descending into Gospeller's Gulch, and 
 stopped at the Gospeller's door. As the faint driver, trem- 
 bling with nervous debility from great excess of deathly ad- 
 monition addressed to him, through the front window of his 
 hack, all the way from the ferry, checked his horses in one 
 feeble gasp of remaining strength, the Reverend Octavius 
 stepped forth from the doorway to greet Mr. Schenck and 
 the dark-complexioned, sharp-eyed young brother and sister 
 who came with him. 
 
 " Now remember, fellow," said Mr. Schenck to the driver, 
 after he had come out of the vehicle, shaking his cane 
 menacingly at him as he spoke, " I've warned you in time, 
 to prepare for death, and given you a Schedule of our rates 
 to *ead to your family. If you should die of apoplexy in a 
 week, as you probably will, your wife must pick rags, and 
 your children play a harp and fiddle. Dream of it, think of 
 it, dissolute man, and take a Policy in the Boreal." 
 
 As the worn-out hackman, too despondent at thought of 
 his impending decease and family-bankruptcy to make any 
 other answer than a groan, drove wretchedly away, the 
 genial Mr. Schenck hoarsely introduced the young Pendra- 
 gons to the Gospeller, and went with them after the latter 
 into the house. 
 
 The Reverend Octavius Simpson, with dire forebodings of
 
 INSURANCE IN GOSPELLER'S GULCH. 59 
 
 the discomfiture of his dear old nut-cracker of^a mother, did 
 the honors of a general introduction with a perfect failure of 
 a smile ; and, thenceforth, until dinner was over, Mr. Schenck 
 was the Egyptian festal skeleton that continually reminded 
 the banqueters of their latter ends. 
 
 "Great Heavens ! what signs of the seeds of the tomb do 
 I not see all around me here," observed Mr Schenck, in a 
 deep base voice, as he helped himself to more codfish. 
 " Here is my friend, Mr. Simpson, withering under our 
 very eyes with Dyspepsia. In Mr. Bumstead's manly, eye 
 you can perceive Congestion of the Brain. General De- 
 bility has marked the venerable Mrs. Simpson for its own. 
 Miss Potts and Magnolia can bloom and eat caramels now ; 
 but what will be their anguish when malignant Small Pox 
 rages, as it surely must, next month ! Mr. Drood and 
 Montgomery are rejoicing in the health and thin legs of 
 youth ; but how many lobster salads are there between thj^m 
 and fatal Cholera Morbus? As for Miss Elizabeth Cady 
 Carowthers, there, her Skeleton is already coming through 
 at the shoulders. Oh, my friends ! " exclaimed the ghastly 
 Mr. Schenck, with beautiful enthusiasm, " insure while yet 
 there is time ; that the kindred, or friends, whom you will all 
 leave behind, probably, within the next three months, may 
 have something to keep them from the Poor-House, or, its 
 dread alternative Crime ! " He considerately paused un- 
 til the shuddering was over, and then added with melting 
 softness "I'll leave a few of our Schedules with you."
 
 60 INSURANCE IN GOSPELLER'S GULCH. 
 
 When, at last, this boon-companion said that he must go, 
 it was surprising to see with what passionate cordiality 
 everybody helped him off. Mr. Bumstead frenziedly crammed 
 his hat upon his beaming head, and, with one eager blow 
 on the top, drove it far down over his ears ; Flora Potts and 
 Magnolia thrust each a buckskin glove far up either sleeve ; 
 Miss Carowthers frantically stuck one of his overshoes under 
 each arm ; Mr. Drood wildly dragged his coat over his form, 
 without troubling him at all about the sleeves, and breathless- 
 ly buttoned it to the neck ; and the Reverend Octavius and 
 Montgomery hurried him forth by the shoulders, as though 
 the house were on fire and he the very last to be snatched 
 from the falling beams. 
 
 These latter two then almost ran with him to the livery 
 stable where he was to obtain a hack for the ferry ; leaving 
 him in charge of the liveryman who, by the way, he at 
 once frightened into a Boreal Policy, by a few felicitous re- 
 marks (while the hack was preparing) upon the curious 
 recent fatality of Heart-Disease amongst middle-aged podgy 
 men with bulbous noses.
 
 MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE. 61 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE. 
 
 " You and your sister have been insured, of course," said 
 the Gospeller to Montgomery Pendragon, as they returned 
 from escorting Mr. Schenck. 
 
 " Of course," echoed Montgomery, with a suppressed 
 moan. " He is our guardian, and has trampled us into a 
 couple of policies. We had to yield, or excess of Boreal 
 conversation would have made us maniacs." 
 
 "You speak bitterly for one so young," observed the Rev- 
 erend Octavius Simpson. " Is it derangement of the stom- 
 ach, or have you known sorrow ? " 
 
 " Heaps of sorrow," answered the young man. " You 
 may be aware, sir, that my sister and I belong to a fine old 
 heavily mortgaged Southern family the Penrutherses and 
 Munchausens of Chipmunk Court House, Virginia, are our 
 relatives and that Sherman marched through us during 
 the late southward projection of certain of your Northern 
 military scorpions. After our father's felo-desease, ensuing 
 remotely from an overstrain in attempting to lift a large 
 mortgage, our mother gave us a step-father of Northern 
 birth, who tried to amend our constitutions and reconstruct 
 us."
 
 62 MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE. 
 
 " Dreadful ! " murmured the Gospeller. 
 
 " We hated him ! Magnolia threw her scissors at him sev- 
 eral times. My sister, sir, does not know what fear is. She 
 would fight a lion ; inheriting the spirit from our father, who, 
 I have heard said, frequently fought a tiger. She can fire a 
 gun and pick off a State Senator as well as any man in all 
 the South. Our mother died. A few mornings thereafter 
 our step-father was found dead in his bed, and the doctors 
 said he died of a pair of scissors which he must have swal- 
 lowed accidentally in his youth, and which were found, after 
 his death, to have worked themselves several inches out of 
 his side, near the heart." 
 
 "Swallowed a pair of scissors !" exclaimed the Reverend 
 Octavius. 
 
 " He might have had a stitch in his side at the time, you 
 know, and wanted to cut it," explained Montgomery. - " At 
 any rate, after that we became wards of Mr. Schenck, up 
 North here. And now let me ask you, sir, is this Mr. 
 Edwin Drood a student with you ? " 
 
 " No. He is visiting his uncle, Mr. Bumstead," answered 
 the Gospeller, who could not free his mind from the horrible 
 thought that his young companion's fearless sister might 
 have been in some way acscissory to the sudden cutting off 
 of her step-father's career. 
 
 " Is Miss Flora Potts his sister ? " 
 
 Mr. Simpson told the story of the betrothal of the young 
 couple by their respective departed parents.
 
 MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE. 63 
 
 ' Oh, that's the game, eh ? " said Montgomery. " I un- 
 derstand now his whispering to me that he wished he was 
 dead." In a moment afterwards they re-entered the house 
 in Gospeller's Gulch. 
 
 The air was slightly laden with the odor of cloves as they 
 went into the parlor, and Mr. Bumstead was at the piano, 
 accompanying the Flowerpot while she sang. Executing 
 without notes, and with his stony gaze fixed intently between 
 the nose and chin of the singer, Mr. Bumstead had a certain 
 mesmeric appearance of controlling the words coming out 
 of the rosy mouth. Standing beside Miss Potts was Mag- 
 nolia Pendragon, seemingly fascinated, as it were, by the 
 Bumstead method of playing, in which the performer's fin- 
 gers performed almost as frequently upon the woodwork of 
 the instrument as upon the keys. Mr. Pendragon surveyed 
 the group with an arm resting on the mantel ; Mr. Simpson 
 took a chair by his maternal nut-cracker, and Mr. Drood 
 stealthily practised with his ball on a chair behind the sofa. 
 
 The Flowerpot was singing a neat thing by Longfellow 
 about the Evening Star, and seemed to experience the most 
 remarkable psychological effects from Mr. Bumstead' s 
 wooden variations and extraordinary stare at the lower part 
 of her countenance. Thus, she twitched her plump shoul- 
 ders strangely, and sang 
 
 " Just a-bove yon sandy bar, 
 As the day grows faint (te-hee-he-he !) 
 Lonely and lovely a single (now do-o-n't !) 
 Lights the air with " (sto-o-op ! It tickles )
 
 64: MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE. 
 
 Convulsively giggling and exclaiming, alternately, Miss Potts 
 abruptly ended her beautiful bronchial noise with violent dis- 
 tortion of countenance, as though there were a spider in her 
 mouth, and sank upon a chair in a condition almost hyster- 
 ical. 
 
 " Your playing has made Sissy nervous, Jack," said Ed- 
 win Drood, hastily concealing his ball and coming forward. 
 " I noticed, myself, that you played more than half the notes 
 in the air, or on the music-rack, without touching the keys 
 at all." 
 
 " That is because I am not accustomed to playing upon 
 two pianos at once," answered Bumstead, who, at that very 
 moment, was industriously playing the rest of the air some 
 inches from the nearest key. 
 
 "He couldn't make me nervous!" exclaimed Miss Pen- 
 dragon, decidedly. 
 
 They bore the excited Flowerpot (who still tittered a lit- 
 tle, and was nervously feeling her throat) to the window, for 
 air; and when they came back Mr. Bumstead was gone. 
 "There, Sissy," said Edwin Drood, "you've driven him 
 away ; and I'm half afraid he feels unpleasantly confused 
 about it ; for he's got out of the rear door of the house by 
 mitake, and I can hear him trying to find his way home in 
 the back-yard." 
 
 The two young men escorted Miss Carowthers and the 
 two young ladies to the door of the Aims-House, and there 
 bade them good-night ; but, at a yet later hour, Flora Potts
 
 MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE. 65 
 
 and the new pupil still conversed in the chamber which they 
 were to occupy conjointly. 
 
 After discussing the fashions with great excitement ; ask- 
 ing each other just exactly what each gave for every article 
 she wore; and successively practising male-discouraging, 
 male-encouraging and chronically-indifferent expressions of 
 face in the mirror (as all good young ladies always do pre- 
 paratory to their evening prayers), the lovely twain made 
 solemn nightcap-oath of eternal friendship to each other, and 
 then, of course, began picking the men to pieces. 
 
 " Who is this Mr. Bumstead ? " asked Magnolia, who was 
 now looking much like a ghost. 
 
 " He's that absurd Eddy's ridiculous uncle, and my mu- 
 sic-teacher," answered the Flowerpot, also presenting an 
 emaciated appearance. 
 
 " You do not love him ? " queried Magnolia. 
 
 " Now go'wa-a-ay ! How perfectly disgusting ! " protested 
 FJora. 
 
 " You know that he loves you ! " 
 
 " Do-o-n't !" pleaded Miss Potts, nervously. "You'll 
 make me fidgetty again, just thinking of to-night. It was too 
 perfectly absurd." 
 
 "What was?" 
 
 " Why, he was, Mr. Bumstead. It gave me the funni- 
 est feeling ! It was as though some one was trying to see 
 through you, you know." 
 
 " My child ! " exclaimed Miss Pendragon, dropping her
 
 66 MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE. 
 
 cheek-distenders upon the bureau, "you speak strangely. 
 Has that man gained any power over you ? " 
 
 " No, dear," returned Flora, wiping off a part of her left 
 eyebrow with cold cream. " But didn't you see ? He was 
 looking right down my throat all the time I was singing, un- 
 til it actually tickled me ! " 
 
 " Does he always do so ? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't know what he always does !" whimpered the 
 nervous Flowerpot. " Oh, he's such an utterly ridiculous 
 creature ! Sometimes when we're in company together, and 
 I smell cloves, and look at him, I think that I see the lid of 
 his right eye drop over the ball and tremble at me in the 
 strangest manner. And sometimes his eyes seem fixed mo- 
 tionless in his head, as they did to-night, and he'll appear to 
 wander off into a kind of a dream, and feel about in the air 
 with his right arm as though he wanted to hug somebody. 
 Oh ! my throat begins to tickle again ! Oh, stay with me, 
 and be my absurdly ridiculous friend ! " 
 
 The dark-featured Southern linen spectre leaned sooth- 
 ingly above the other linen spectre, with a bottle of camphor 
 in her hand, near the bureau upon which the back-hair of 
 both was piled ; and in the flash of her black eyes, and the 
 defiant flirt of the kid-gloves dipped in glycerine which she 
 was drawing on her hands, lurked death by lightning and 
 other harsh usage, for whomsoever of the male sex should 
 ever be caught looking down in the mouth again.
 
 A DAGGERY TYPE OF FOETALKRAPHY. 67 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A DAGGERY TYPE OF FOETALKRAPHY. 
 
 THE two young gentlemen, having seen their blooming 
 charges safely within the door of the Aims-House, and vainly 
 endeavored to look through the keyhole at them going up- 
 stairs, scuffle away together with that sensation of blended 
 imbecility and irascibility which is equally characteristic of 
 callow youth and inexperienced Thomas Cats when retiring 
 together from the society of female friends who seem to be 
 still on the fence as regards their ultimate preferences. 
 
 " Do you bore your friends here long, Mr. Drood ? " in- 
 quires Montgomery ; as who should say : Maouiw-ow-ooo 
 sp't ! sp't ! 
 
 " Not this time, Secesh," is the answer ; as though it were 
 observed, ooo-ooo sp't ! "I leave for New York again to- 
 morrow ; but shall be off and on again in Bumsteadville un- 
 til midsummer, when I go to Egypt, Illinois, to be an en- 
 gineer on a railroad. The stamps left me by my father are 
 all in the stock of that road, and the Mr. Bumstead whom 
 you saw to-night is my uncle and guardian." 
 
 "Mr. Simpson informs me that you are destined to as- 
 sume the expenses of Miss Potts, when you're old enough,"
 
 68 A DAGGER Y TYPE OF FOETALKRAPHY. 
 
 remarks Montgomery, his eyes shining quite greenly in the 
 moonlight. 
 
 " Well, perhaps you'd like to make something out of it," 
 says Edwin, whose orbs have assumed a yellowish glitter. 
 " Perhaps you Southern Confederacies didn't get quite 
 enough of it at Gettysburg and Five Forks." 
 
 " We had the exquisite pleasure of killing a few thousand 
 Yankee free-lovers," intimates Montgomery, with a hollow 
 laugh. 
 
 "Ah, yes, I remember at Andersonville," suggests 
 Edwin Drood, beginning to roll back his sleeves. 
 
 "This is your magnanimity to the conquered, is it !" ex- 
 claims Montgomery, scornfully. " I don't pretend to have 
 your advantages, Mr. Drood, and I've scarcely had any more 
 education than an American Humorist ; but where I came ' 
 from, if a carpet-bagger should talk as you do, the cost of 
 his funeral would be but a trifle." 
 
 " I can prepare you, at shortest notice, for something very 
 neat and tasteful in the silver-trimmed rosewood line, with 
 plated handles, my dark-complexioned Ku-klux," returns 
 Mr. Drood, preparing to pull off his coat. 
 
 "Who would have believed," soliloquizes Montgomery 
 Pendragon, "that even a scalawag Northern spoon-thief, 
 like our scurrilous contemporary, would get so mad at being 
 reminded that he must be married some day ! " 
 
 "Whoever says that I'm mad," is the answer, "lies delib-
 
 A DAGGER Y TYPE OF FOETALKRAPHY. 69 
 
 erately, wilfully, wickedly, with naked intent to defame and 
 malign." 
 
 But here a heavy hand suddenly smites Edwin on the back, 
 almost snapping his head off, and there stands spectrally be- 
 tween them Mr. Bumstead, who has but recently found his 
 way out of the back-yard in Gospeller's Gulch, by removing 
 at least two yards of picket fence from the wrong place, and 
 wears upon his head a gingham sun-bonnet, which, in his 
 hurried departure through the hall of the Gospeller's house, 
 he has mistaken for his own hat. Sustaining himself against 
 the fierce evening breeze by holding firmly to both shoulders 
 of his nephew, this striking apparition regards the two young 
 men with as much austerity as is consistent with the flap- 
 ping of the cape of his sun-bonnet. 
 
 " Gentlelemons," he says, with painful syllabic distinct- 
 ness, " can I believe my ears ? Are you already making 
 journalists of yourselves ? " 
 
 They hang their heads in shame under the merciless but 
 just accusation. " Here you are," continues Bumstead, " a 
 quartette of young fellows who should all be friends. Neds, 
 Neds ! I am ashamed of you ! Montgomeries, you should 
 not let your angry passions rise ; for your little hands were 
 never made to bark and bite." After this, Mr. Bumstead 
 seems lost for a moment, and reclines upon his nephew, with 
 his eyes closed in meditation. "But let's all five of us go 
 up to my room," he finally adds, and restore friendship with
 
 TO A DAGGERY TYPE OF FOETALKRAPHY. 
 
 lemon tea. It is time for the North and South to be recon- 
 ciled over something hot. Come." 
 
 Leaning upon both of them now, and pushing them into a 
 walk, he exquisitely turns the refrain of the rejected Na- 
 tional Hymn 
 
 '"Twas by a mistake that we lost Bull Run, 
 When we all skedaddled to Washington, 
 And we'll all drink stone blind, 
 Johnny fill up the bowl ! " 
 
 Thus he artfully employs music to soothe their sectional 
 animosities, and only skips into the air once as they walk, 
 with a " Whoop ! That was something like a snake ! " 
 
 Arriving in his room, the door of which he had some 
 trouble in opening, on account of the knob having wandered 
 in his absence to the wrong side, Mr. Bumstead indicates a 
 bottle of lemon tea, with some glasses, on the table, acci- 
 dentally places the lamp so that it shines directly upon 
 Edwin's triangular sketch of Flora over the mantel, and tak- 
 ing his umbrella under his arm, smiles horribly at his young 
 guests from out of his sun-bonnet. 
 
 " Do you recognize that picture, Pendragons?" he asks, 
 after the two have drunk fierily at each other. " Do you 
 notice its stereoscopic effect of being double ? " 
 
 " Ah," says Montgomery, critically, " a good deal in the 
 style of Hennessy, or Winslow Homer, I should say. Some- 
 thing in the school- slate method." 
 
 " It's by Edwins, there ! " explains Mr. Bumstead, tri-
 
 A DAGGERY TYPE OF FOETALKRAPIIY. 71 
 
 umphantly. "Just look at him as he sits there both to- 
 gether, with all his happiness cut out for him, and his dislike 
 of Southerners his only fault." 
 
 " If I could only draw Miss Pendragon, now," says Edwin 
 Drood, rather flattered, " I might do better. A good sharp 
 nose and Southern complexion help wonderfully in the ex- 
 pression of a picture." 
 
 " Perhaps my sister would prefer to choose her own ar- 
 tist," remarks Montgomery, to whom Mr. Bumstead has just 
 poured out some more lemon tea. 
 
 " Say a Southern one, for instance, who might use some 
 of the flying colors that were always warranted to run when 
 our boys got after yours in the late war," responds Edwin, to 
 whom his attentive uncle has also poured out some more 
 lemon tea for his cold. 
 
 " For instance at Fredericksburg," observes Mont- 
 gomery. 
 
 " I was thinking of Fort Donelsoh," returns Edwin. 
 
 The conservative Bumstead strives anxiously to allay the 
 irritation of his young guests by prodding first one and then 
 the other with his umbrella ; and, in an attempt to hold both 
 of them and the picture behind him in one commanding 
 glance under his sun-bonnet, presents a phase of strabismus 
 seldom attained by human eyes. 
 
 " If I only had you down where I come from, Mr. Drood," 
 cries Montgomery, tickled into ungovernable wrath by the
 
 72 A DAGGERY TYPE OF FOETALKRAPHY. 
 
 ferule of the umbrella, I'd tar and feather you like a Yankee 
 teacher, and then burn you like a freedman's church." 
 
 Oh ! if you only had me there, you'd do so," cries Ed- 
 win Drood, springing to his feet as the umbrella tortures his 
 ribs. "If, eh? Pooh, pooh, my young fellow, I perceive 
 that you are a mere Cincinnati Editor." 
 
 The degrading epithet goads Pendragon to fury, and, after 
 throwing his remaining lemon tea about equally upon Edwin 
 and the sun-bonnet, he extracts the sugar from the bottom 
 of the glass with his fingers, and uses the goblet to ward off 
 a last approach of the umbrella. 
 
 " Edwins ! Montgomeries ! " exclaims Mr. Bumstead, 
 opening the umbrella between them so suddenly that each is 
 grazed on the nose by a whalebone rib, " I command you to 
 end this Congressional debate at once. I never saw four 
 such young men before ! Montgomeries, put up your pen- 
 knife thizinstant ? " 
 
 Pushing aside the barrier of alpaca and whalebone from 
 under his chin, Montgomery dashes wildly from the house, 
 tears madly back to Gospeller's Gulch, and astounds the 
 Gospeller by his appearance. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Simpson," he cries, as he is conducted to the 
 door of his own room, " I believe that I, too, inherit some 
 tigerish qualities from that tiger my father is said to have 
 fought so often. I've had a political discussion with Mr. 
 Drood in Mr. Bumstead' s apartments, and, if I'd stayed
 
 A DAGGERY l^YPE OF FOETALKRAPHY. 73 
 
 there a moment longer, I reckon I should have murdered 
 somebody in a moment of Emotional Insanity." 
 
 The Reverend Octavius Simpson makes him unclose his 
 clenched fist, in which there appears to be one or two cloves, 
 and then says : "I am shocked to hear this, Mr. Pendragon. 
 As you have no political influence, and have never shot a 
 Tribune man,* neither New York law nor society would al- 
 low you to commit murder with impunity. I regret, too, to 
 see that you have been drinking, and would advise you to 
 try a chapter from one of Professor De Mine's novels, as a 
 mild emetic, before retiring. After that, two or three sen- 
 tences from one of Mr. George Ticknor Curtis's Constitu- 
 tional essays will ensure sleep to you for the remainder of 
 the night." 
 
 Returning the unspeakably thankful pressure of the grate- 
 ful young man's hand, the Gospeller goes thoughtfully down 
 stairs, where he is just in time to answer the excited ring of 
 Mr. Bumstead. 
 
 " Dear me, Mr. Bumstead ! " is his first exclamation, 
 " what's that you've got on your head ? " 
 
 " Perspiration, sir," cries Bumstead, who, in his agitation, 
 is still ringing the bell. " We've nearly had a murder to- 
 night, and I've come around to offer you my umbrella for 
 your own protection." 
 
 * A " Tribune man " had been slain, recently, by a lady's husband, and the slayer 
 pronounced " Not Guilty" by a jury of his fellow-countrymen.
 
 74 A DAGGERY TYPE OF FOETALKRAPHY. 
 
 " Umbrella ! " echoes Mr. Simpson, " why, really, I don't 
 see how " 
 
 "Open it on him suddenly when he makes a pass at 
 you," interrupts Mr. Bumstead, thrusting the alpaca weapon 
 upon him. " I'll send for it in the morning." 
 
 The Gospeller stands confounded in his own doorway, with 
 the defence thus strangely secured in his hand ; and, look- 
 ing up the moonlighted road, sees Mr. Bumstead, in the sun- 
 bonnet, leaping high, at short intervals, over the numerous 
 adders and cobras on his homeward way, like a thorough- 
 bred hurdle-racer.
 
 BALKS IN A BRUSH. 75 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 BALKS IN A BRWSH. 
 
 FLORA, having no relations in the world that she knew of, 
 had, ever since her seventh new bonnet, known no other 
 home than Macassar Female College, in the Aims-House, 
 and regarded Miss Carowthers as her mother-in-lore. Her 
 memory of her own mother was of a lady-like person who 
 had swiftly waisted away in the effort to be always taken for 
 her own daughter, and was, one day, brought down-stairs, by 
 her husband, in two pieces, from tight lacing. The sad sep- 
 aration (taking place just before a party of pleasure), had 
 driven Flora's father into a frenzy of grief for his better 
 halves ; which was augmented to brain fever by Mr. Schenck, 
 who, having given a Boreal policy to deceased, felt it his 
 duty to talk gloomily about wives who sometimes died apart 
 after receiving unmerited cuts from their husbands, and to 
 suggest a compromise of ten per cent, upon the amount of 
 the policy, as a much more cheerful settlement than a coro- 
 ner's inquest. Flora's betrothal had grown out of the sooth- 
 ing of Mr. Potts' s last year of mental disorder by Mr. Drood, 
 an old partner in the grocery business, who, too, was a wid- 
 ower from his wife's use of arsenic and lead for her complex-
 
 70 BALKS IN A BRUSH. 
 
 ion. The two bereaved friends, after comparing tears and 
 looking mournfully at each other's tongues, had talked them- 
 selves to death over the fluctuations in sugar ; willing their 
 respective children to marry in future for the sake of keep- 
 ing up the controversy. 
 
 From the Flowerpot's first arrival at the Aims-House, her 
 new things, engagement to be married, and stock of choco- 
 late caramels, had won the deepest affections of her teach- 
 ers and schoolmates ; and, on the morning after the section- 
 al dispute between Edwin and Montgomery, when one of 
 the young ladies had heard of it as a profound secret, no 
 pains were spared by the whole tender-hearted school to 
 make her believe that neither of the young men was entire- 
 ly given up yet by the consulting physicians. It was whis- 
 pered, indeed, that a knife or two might have passed, and 
 two or three guns been exchanged ; but she was not to be 
 at all worried, for persons had been known to get well with 
 the tops of their heads off. 
 
 At an early hour, however, Miss Pendragon had paid a 
 visit to her brother, in Gospeller's Gulch ; and, coming back 
 with the intelligence, that, while he had been stabbed to the 
 heart, it was chiefly by cruel insinuations and an umbrella, 
 was enabled to assure Miss Carowthers, in confidence, that 
 nothing eligible for publication in the New York Sun had 
 really occurred. Thus, when the legal conqueror of Breachy 
 Mr. Blodgett entered that principal recitation-room of the
 
 BALKS IN A BRUSH. 77 
 
 Macassar, formally known as the Cackleorium, she had no 
 difficulty in explaining away the panic. 
 
 She said that " Unfounded Rumor, Ladies, is, we all know, 
 a descriptive phrase applied by the Associated Press to all 
 important foreign news procured a week or two in advance 
 of its own similar European advices, by the Press Associa- 
 tion. We perceive then, Ladies (Miss Jenkins will be good 
 enough to stop scratching her nose while I am talking), that 
 Unfounded Rumor sometimes means hem ! 
 
 'The Associated Press 
 In bitter distress." 
 
 In Bumsteadville, however, it has a signification more like 
 what we should give it in relation to a statement that Sena- 
 tor Sumner had delivered a Latin quotation without a speech 
 selected for it. In this sense, Ladies (Miss Parkinson can 
 scarcely be aware of how much cotton stocking can be seen 
 when she lolls so), the Unfounded Rumor concerning two 
 gentlemen of different political views in this county was not 
 correct (Miss Babcock will learn four chapters in Chroni- 
 cles by heart to-night, for making a handkerchief into a 
 baby), as proper inquiries have assured us that no more 
 blood was shed than if the parties to the strife had been a 
 Canadian and a Fenian. We will, therefore, drop the sub- 
 ject, and enter at once upon the flowery path of the first 
 lesson in algebra." 
 
 This explanation destroyed all the interest of a majority 
 of the young ladies, who had anticipated a horridly delight-
 
 78 BALKS IN A BRUSH. 
 
 ful duel, at least ; but Flora was slightly hysterical about it, 
 even late in the afternoon, when it was announced that her 
 guardian had come to see her. 
 
 Mr. Dibble,* of Gowanus, had been selected for his trust 
 on account of his pre-eminent goodness, which, as seems to 
 be invariably the case, was associated with an absence of 
 personal beauty trenching upon the scarecrow. Possibly an 
 excess of strong and disproportionate carving in nose, mouth, 
 and chin, accompanied by weak eyes and unexpectedness 
 of forehead, may tend to make the Evil One but languid in 
 his desire for the capture of its human exemplar. This may 
 help account for the otherwise rather curious coincidence of 
 frightful physiognomy and preternatural goodness in this 
 world of sinful beauties. Under such a theory, Mr. Dibble's 
 easy means of frightening the Arch-Tempter into immediate 
 flight, and keeping himself free from all possible incitement 
 to be anything but good, were a face, head and neck shaped 
 not unlike an old-fashioned water-pitcher, and a form sug- 
 gestive of an obese lobster balancing on an upright horse- 
 shoe. His nose was too high up ; his mouth and chin bulged 
 too tremendously ; his neck inside a whole mainsail of shirt- 
 collar was too much fluted, and his eyes were as much too 
 small and oyster-like as his ears were too large and horny. 
 
 Mr. Dibble found his ward in Miss Carowthers' own pri- 
 vate room, from which even the government mails were gen- 
 erally excluded ; and, after saluting both ladies, and politely 
 
 * In the original, Mr. Grewgieus, a lawyer, of London.
 
 BALKS IN A BRUSH. 79' 
 
 desiring the elder to remain present, in order to be sure that 
 his conversation was strictly moral, the monstrous old gen- 
 tleman pulled a memorandum book from his pocket and 
 addressed himself to Flora. 
 
 " I am a square man myself, dear kissling," he said, with 
 much double chin in his manner, "and like to do every- 
 thing on the square. I am now 'interviewing' you, and 
 shall make notes of your answers, though not necessarily for 
 publication. First: is your health satisfactory?" 
 
 Miss Potts admitted that, excepting occasional attacks of 
 insatiable longing for True Sympathy, chiefly produced by 
 over-eating of pickles and slate-pencils to avert excessive 
 plumpness, she could generally take pie twice without ex- 
 periencing a subsequent reactionary tendency to piety and 
 gloomy presentiments. 
 
 " Second : is your allowance of pin-money sufficient to 
 keep you in cold cream, Berlin wool, and other necessaries 
 of life ? " 
 
 The Flowerpot confessed that she had now and then 
 wished herself able to buy a church and a velvet dressing- 
 gown, (lined with cherry,) for a young clergyman with the 
 consumption and side-whiskers ; but, under common cir- 
 cumstances, her allowance was enough to procure all abso- 
 lutely requisite Edging without running her into debt, and 
 still leave sufficient to buy materials for any reasonable al- 
 tar-cloth. 
 
 "And now, my dear," said Mr. Dibble, evidently glad
 
 80 BALKS IN A BRUSH. 
 
 that all the more important and serious part of the interview 
 was over, "we come to the subject of your marriage. Mr. 
 Edwin has seen you here, occasionally, I suppose, and you 
 may possibly like him well enough to accept him as a hus- 
 band, if not as a friend ! " 
 
 " He's such a perfectly absurd creature that I can't help 
 liking him," returned Flora, gravely ; " but I am not certain 
 that my utterly ridiculous deeper woman's love is entirely 
 satisfied with the c shape of his nose." 
 
 " That'll be mostly hidden by his whiskers, when they 
 grow," observed her guardian. 
 
 " I hope they'll be bushy, with a frizzle at the ends and a 
 bald place for his chin," said the young girl, reflectively; 
 then suddenly asked : " If we shouldn't be married, would 
 either of us have to pay anything?" 
 
 "I should say not," answered Mr. Dibble, " unless you 
 sued him for breach." (Here Miss Carowthers was heard 
 to murmur " Blodgett," and hastily took an anti-nervous pill.) 
 " I should say that your respective parents wished you to 
 marry only in case you should see no other persons whose 
 noses you liked better. As on this coming Christmas you 
 will be within a few months of your marriage, I have brought 
 your father's will with me, with the intention of depositing 
 it in the hands of Mr. Edwin's trustee, Mr. Bumstead " 
 
 " Oh, leave it with Eddy, if you'll please to be so ridicu- 
 lously kind," interrupted Flora. "Mr. Bumstead would
 
 BALKS IN A BRUSH. 81 
 
 certainly insist upon it that there were two wills instead of 
 one : and that would be so absurd." 
 
 " Well, well," assented Mr. Dibble, rising to go, " I'm a 
 perfectly square man, even when I'm looking round, and 
 will do as you wish. As a slight memento of my really 
 charming visit here, might I humbly petition yonder lady to 
 remit any little penalty that may happen to be in force just 
 now against any lovely student of the College for eating 
 preserves in bed, or writing notes to the Italian music teach- 
 er, who is already married, or anything of that kind? " 
 
 " Flora," said Miss Carowthers, graciously, " you may tell 
 Miss Babcock, that, in consequence of your guardian's re- 
 quest, she will be excused from studying her Bible as a pun- 
 ishment." 
 
 After due acknowledgment of this favor, the good Mr. 
 Dibble made his farewell bow, and went forth to the turn- 
 pike. Following that high road, he presently found himself 
 near the side-door of the Ritualistic Church of Saint Cow's, 
 and, while curiously watching the minor canons who were 
 carrying in some fireworks to be used in the next day's ser- 
 vice, was confronted by Mr. Bumstead just coming out.. 
 
 " Let me see you home," said Mr. Bumstead, hastily hold- 
 ing out an arm. " I'll tell the family it's only vertigo." 
 
 " Why, nothing is the matter with me," pleaded Mr. Dib- 
 ble. " I've only been having a talk with my ward." 
 
 "I'll bet cloves for two that she didn't say she preferred 
 4*
 
 82 BALKS IN A BRUSH. 
 
 me to Ned," insinuated Mr. Bumstead, breathing audibly 
 through his nose. 
 
 " Then you'll not lose," was the answer ; "for she did not 
 tell me whom she preferred to the one she wishes to marry. 
 They never do ; and sometimes it is only discovered in In- 
 diana. You and 'I surrender our respective guardianships 
 on Christmas, Mr. Bumstead ; until when good-bye ; and be 
 early marriage their lot ! * 
 
 " Be early Divorce their lot ! " said Bumstead, thrusting 
 his book of organ-music so far under his coat-flap that it 
 stuck out at the back like a curvature of the spine. 
 
 " I said marriage," cried Mr. Dibble, looking back. 
 
 "I said Divorce," retorted Mr. Bumstead, thoughtfully 
 eating a clove. " Don't one generally involve the other ? "
 
 OILING THE WHEELS. 83 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 OILING THE WHEELS. 
 
 No husband who has ever properly studied his mother- 
 in-law can fail to be aware, that woman's perception of heart- 
 less villany and evidences of intoxication in man is often of 
 that curiously fine order of vision which rather exceeds the 
 best efforts of ordinary microscopes, and subjects the aver- 
 age human mind to considerable astonishment. The per- 
 fect ease with which she can detect murderous proclivities, 
 Mormon instincts, and addiction to maddening liquors, in a 
 daughter's husband who, to the most searching inspection 
 of everybody else, appears the most watery, hen-pecked, 
 and generally intimidated young man of his age is one of 
 those common illustrations of the infallible acuteness of fem- 
 inine judgment which are doing more and more, every day, 
 to establish the positive necessity of woman's superior insight 
 and natural dispassionate fairness of mind, for the future 
 wisest exercise of the elective franchise and most just ad- 
 ministration of the highest judicial office. It may be said 
 that the mother-in-law is the highest development of the su- 
 pernaturally perceptive and positive woman, since she usually 
 has superior opportunities to study man in all the stages
 
 84: OILING THE WHEELS. 
 
 from marriage to madness ; but with her whole sex, particu- 
 larly after certain sour turns in life, inheres an alertness of 
 observation as to the incredible viciousness of masculine 
 character, which nothing less than a bit of flattery or a hap- 
 pily equivocal reflection upon some rival sister can either 
 divert or mislead for a moment. 
 
 " Now don't you really think, Oldy," said Gospeller Simp- 
 son to his mother, as he sat watching her fabrication of an 
 immense stocking for the poor, "that Hopeless Inebriate 
 and Midnight Assassin are a rather too severe characteriza- 
 tion of my pupil, Mr. Montgomery Pendragon ? " 
 
 "No, I do not, Octave," replied the excellent old nut- 
 cracker of a lady, who was making the charity stocking as 
 nearly in the shape of a hatchet as possible. "When a 
 young man of rebel sentiments spends all his nights in drink- 
 ing lemon teas, and trying to spoil other young men's clothes 
 in throwing such teas at them, and is only to be put down 
 by umbrellas, and comes to his homes with cloves in his 
 clenched fists, and has headaches on the following days, he's 
 on his way either to political office or the gallows." 
 
 " But he hasn't done so at all with s's to it," exclaimed 
 the Reverend Octavius, exasperated by so many plurals. 
 11 He did it but once, and then he was strongly provoked. 
 Edwin mentioned the sharpness of his sister's nose to him, 
 and reflected casually upon the late well-known Southern 
 Confederacy." 
 
 " Don't tell me !" reasoned the fine old lady, holding up
 
 OILING THE WHEELS. 85 
 
 the stocking by its handle to see how much longer it must 
 be to reach the wearer's waist. "I'm afraid you're a cop- 
 perhead, Octave." 
 
 " How you do cackle, Oldy ! " said her son, who was very 
 proud of her when she kept still. " You can't see anything 
 good in Montgomery, because, after the first seven or eight 
 breakfasts with us, he said he was afraid that so many fish- 
 balls would make his head swim." 
 
 " My child," returned the old lady, thrusting an arm so 
 far into the charity stocking that she seemed to have the 
 wrong kind of blue worsted limb growing from one of her 
 shoulders, " I have judged this dissipated young man exact- 
 ly as though he were my own son-in-law, and know that he 
 possesses an incendiary disposition. After the fireworks at 
 Saint Cow's Church, on Saint Vitus's Day, that devoted Rit- 
 ualistic Christian, Mr. Bumstead, came up to me in the 
 porch, with his eyes nearly closed, on account of the solemn- 
 ity of the occasion, and began feeling around my neck with 
 both his hands. When I asked him to explain, he said that 
 he only wanted to see whether my throat was cut yet, as he 
 had heard that we kept a Southern murderer at home. He 
 was still very pale at what had taken place in his room over 
 night, when he finally said ' Good-day, ladies,' to me." 
 
 " Montgomery is certainly attached to me, at any rate," 
 murmured the Gospeller, reflectively, " and has made no at- 
 tempt upon my life." 
 
 "That's because his sister restrains him," asserted the
 
 86 OILING THE WHEELS. 
 
 mother, with a fond look. "I overheard her telling him, 
 when she was at dinner here one day, that you might be 
 taken for a Southerner, if you only wore a dress-coat all the 
 time and were heavily mortgaged. Withdraw her influence, 
 and the desperate young man would tar and feather us all in 
 our beds some night." 
 
 Falling silent after this unanswerable proof of Mr. Pen- 
 dragon's guilt, Mr. Simpson mused upon as much of the 
 dear old nut-cracker as was not hidden by the vast charity 
 stocking. In her ruffled cap, false front, and spectacles, she 
 was so exactly the figure one might picture Mr. John Stuart 
 Mill to be, after reading his latest literary knitting on the 
 Revolting Injustice of Masculine Society, that the Gospeller 
 of Saint Cow's could not help feeling how perfectly useless 
 it was to expect her to think herself capable of error. 
 
 As, whenever the Reverend Octavius gave indication of a 
 capacity for speechless thoughtfulness, his benignant mother 
 at once concluded that he needed an anti-bilious pill, she 
 now made all haste to the cupboard to procure that imita- 
 tion-vegetable and a glass of water. It was the neatest, best- 
 stored Ritualistic cupboard in Bumsteadville. Above it 
 hung a portrait of the Pope, from which the grand old Apos- 
 tolic son of an infallible dogma looked knowingly down, as 
 though with the contents of that cupboard he could get-up 
 such a schema as would be palatable to the most sceptical 
 Bishop in all the (Ecumenical Council, and of which lie 
 might justly say : Whosoever dare think that he ever tasted
 
 OILING THE WHEELS. 87 
 
 a better schema, or ever dreamed in his deepest conscious- 
 ness that a better could be made, let him be anathema mar- 
 anatha ! A most rakish looking wooden button, noiselessly 
 stealthy and sly, gave entrance to this treasury of dainties; 
 and then what a rare array of disintegrated meals intoxicated 
 the vision ! There was the Athlete of the Dairy, commonly 
 called Fresh Butter, in his gay yellow jacket, looking wore 
 to the knife. There was turgid old Brown Sugar, who had 
 evidently heard the advice, go to the ant, thou sluggard ! 
 and, mistaking the last word for Sugared, was going as 
 deliberately as possible. There was the vivacious Cheese, 
 in the hour of its mite, clad in deep, creamy, golden hue, 
 with delicate traceries of mould, like fairy cobwebs. The 
 Smoked Beef, and Doughnuts, as being more sober and un- 
 emotional features of the pageant, appeared on either side 
 the remains of a Cold Chicken, as rendering pathetic tribute 
 to hoary age ; while sturdy, reliable Hash and Fishballs re- 
 posed right and left in their mottled and rich brown coats, 
 with a kind of complacent consciousness of having been 
 created according to Mrs. Glass's standard dictum, First 
 catch your Hair. 
 
 Gospeller Simpson, by natural law, alternated from this 
 wonderful cupboard, very regularly, to another, or sister cup- 
 board, also presided over by the good old maternal nut- 
 cracker, wherein the energetic pill lived in its little paste- 
 board house next door to the crystal palace of smooth, in- 
 sinuating castor oil ; and passionate fiery essence of pepper-
 
 88 OILING THE WHEELS. 
 
 mint grew hot with indignation at the proximity of plebeian 
 rhubarb and squills. In the present case he quietly took his 
 anti-bilious globule : which, besides being a step in the di- 
 rection of removing a pimple from his chin, was also intend- 
 ed as a kind of medical preparation for his coming services 
 in the Ritualistic Church, where at a certain part of the 
 ceremonies, he was to stand on his head before the Banner 
 of St. Alban and balance Roman candles on his uplifted 
 feet. When the day had nearly passed, and the Vesper 
 hour for those services arrived, he performed them with all 
 the less rush of blood to the head for being thus prepared ; 
 yet there was still a slight sensation of congestion, and, to 
 get rid of this, when he stepped forth from Saint Cow's in 
 the twilight, it was to take an evening stroll along the shore 
 of Bumsteadville pond. 
 
 The Pond at Bumsteadville is sufficiently near the turn- 
 pike to be readily reached from the latter, and, if mentioned 
 in the advertisement of a summer boarding-house, would 
 be called Lake Buckingham, on account of the fashionable 
 ducks resorting thither for bathing and flirtation in the sea- 
 son. When July's sun turns its tranquil mirror to hues of 
 amber and gold, the slender mosquito sings Hum, sweet 
 Hum, along its margin ; and when Autumn hangs his liv- 
 ery of motley on the trees, the glassy surface breathes out 
 a mist wherefrom arises a spectre, with one hand of ice and 
 the other of flame, to scatter Chills and Fever. Strolling 
 beside this picturesque watering-place in the dusk, the Gos-
 
 OILING THE WHEELS. 89 
 
 peller suddenly caught the clatter of a female voice, and, in 
 a moment, came face to face with Montgomery and Magno- 
 lia Pendragon. 
 
 "A cold and frog-like place, this, for a lady's walk, Miss 
 Pendragon," he said, hastily swallowing a bronchial troche 
 to neutralize the damp air admitted in speaking. " I hope 
 you have on your overshoes." 
 
 " My sister brings me here," explained the brother, " so 
 that her constant talking to me may not cause other people's 
 heads to pain them." 
 
 " I believe," continued the Reverend Octavius, walking 
 slowly on with them, " I believe, Mr. Pendragon, your sister 
 finds out from you everything that you learn, or say, or 
 do?" 
 
 "Everything," assented the young man, who seemed 
 greatly exhausted. " She averages one question a minute." 
 
 "Consequently," went on Mr. Simpson, " she knows that 
 I have advised you to make some kind of apology to Edwin 
 Drood, for the editorial remarks passing between you on a 
 certain important occasion ? " He looked at the sister as 
 he spoke, and took that opportunity to quickly swallow a 
 quinine powder as a protection from the chills. 
 
 "My brother, sir," said Magnolia, "because, like the 
 Lesbian Alcaeus, fighting for the liberty of his native 
 Mitylene, he has sympathized with his native South, finds 
 himself treated by Mr. Drood with a lack of magnanimity of
 
 00 OILING THE WHEELS. 
 
 which even the renegade Pittacus would have been 
 ashamed." 
 
 " But even at that," returned the Gospeller, much educa- 
 ted by her remark, "would it not be better for us all, to 
 have this hapless misunderstanding manfully explained away, 
 and are conciliation achieved ? " 
 
 "Did ^Eschylus explain to the Areopagus, after he had 
 been unjustly abused?" asked the young female student, 
 eagerjy. " Or did he, rather, nobly prefer to remain silent, 
 even until Ameinias reminded his prejudiced Yankee judges 
 that he had fought at Salamis ? " 
 
 "Dear me," ejaculated the Gospeller, gasping, "I only 
 meant - " 
 
 " I defend my brother," continued Magnolia, passionately, 
 " as in the Antigone of Sophocles, Electra defends Orestes ; 
 and even if he has no Pylades, he shall still be not without 
 a friend in the habitation of the Pylopidoe." 
 
 " Upon my soul ! " murmured the Reverend Mr. Simp- 
 son, " this is a dreadful state of things." 
 
 " I may as well confess to you, sir," said Montgomery, 
 temporarily removing his fingers from his ears, " that I ad- 
 mire Miss Potts as much as I'm down on Drood." 
 
 " He admires her," struck in his sister, " as Alcman, of 
 Sardis, admired Megalostrata ; and, in her betrothal to a 
 Yankee, sees another Sappho matrimonially sacrificed to an- 
 other Cercolas of Andros." 
 
 "Mr. Pendragon," panted the Gospeller, "you must give
 
 OILING ^THE WHEELS. 91 
 
 up this infatuation. The Flowerpot is engaged to another, 
 and you have no business to express such sentiments for an- 
 other's bride until after she is married. Eloquently as your 
 sister " 
 
 " I pretend to be no Myrtis, in genius," continued Mag- 
 nolia, humbly. " I am not an Erinna, an Amite, a Praxilla, 
 or a Nossis ; but all that is intellectually repugnant within 
 me is stirred by this treatment of my brother, who is no 
 Philodemus to find in Mr. Drood his Piso ; and sometimes 
 I feel as though, like another Simonides, I could fly with 
 him from this inhospitable Northern house of Scopas, to the 
 refuge of some more generous Dioscuri. In the present 
 macrocosm, to which we have come from our former home's 
 microcosm, my brother is persistently maligned, even by Mr. 
 Bumstead,.who may yet, if I am any judge, meet the fate 
 of Anacreon, as recorded by Suidas ; though, in his case, 
 the choking will not be accompanied by a grape-stone, but 
 by a clove." 
 
 " Well, well," said the Reverend Octavius, in a faint voice, 
 " I shall expect you to at least meet Edwin Drood half-way 
 in a reconciliation, Mr. Pendragon, for your own sake. I 
 will see that he makes the first advance." 
 
 " Generous and dear tutor ! " exclaimed Montgomery, " I 
 will do anything, with you for my guide." 
 
 " Follow your guide penitently, brother," cried his sister, 
 pathetically, " and you will find in him a relenting Polynices. 
 Whatever we may feel towards others," she added, catching
 
 92 OILING THE WHEELS. 
 
 and kissing the overpowered Gospeller's hand, as they parted 
 company, "you shall ever be our chosen, trusted, and only 
 Psychopompos." * 
 
 Holding his throbbing head with both his hands, as he 
 walked feebly homeward, the worn-out Gospeller noticed a 
 light streaming from Mr. Bumstead's window ; and, inspired 
 by a sudden impulse, entered the boarding-house and 
 ascended straightway to the Ritualistic organist's rooms. 
 Bumstead was asleep upon the rug before ^he fire, with his 
 faithful umbrella under his arm, when Mr. Simpson, after 
 vainly knocking, opened the door ; and never could the 
 Gospeller forget how, upon being addressed, the sleeper 
 started wildly up, made a futile pass at him with the um- 
 brella, took a prolonged and staring drink from a pitcher of 
 water on the table, and hurriedly ate a number of cloves from 
 a saucer near an empty lemon-tea goblet over the mantel. 
 
 " Why, it's only I," explained the Reverend Octavius, 
 rather alarmed by the glare with which he was regarded. 
 
 " Sit down, my friends," said Mr. Bumstead, huskily ; 
 himself taking a seat upon a coal-scuttle near at hand, with 
 considerable violence. " I'm glad you aroused me from a 
 dreadful dream of reptiles. I sh'pose you want me to see- 
 you home, sir ? " 
 
 "Not at all," was the Gospeller's answer. "In fact, Mr. 
 
 * The Adapter refers confidently to any Southern female novel of the period for 
 proof, that sentimental Magnolian school-girls always talk, or write, everything educa- 
 tional, except good English, when conferring with their deafened masculine friends.
 
 OILING THE WHEELS. ' 93 
 
 Bumstead, I am anxious to bring about a reconciliation 
 between these two young men. Let us have peace." 
 
 " If you want to let's have peash," observed the other, 
 rather vaguely, "why don't you go fishing whenever there's 
 any fighting talk, shir ! Such a course is not, you'll Grant, 
 unpresidented." 
 
 "I believe," said Mr. Simpson, waiving the suggestion, 
 " that you entertain no favorable opinion of young Pendra- 
 gon!" 
 
 Reaching to a book on the table, and, after various airy 
 failures, laying hold upon it, Mr. Bumstead answered : 
 "This is my diary, gentlemen; to be presented to Mrs. 
 Stowe, when I'm no more, for a memoir. You, being two 
 clergymen, wouldn't care to read it. Here's my entry on 
 Ifche night of the caucus in this room. Lish'n now : ' Half- 
 pash Ten. Considering the Democratic sentiments of the 
 Montgomeries Pendragons, and their evident disinclination 
 to vote the Republican Ticket, I b'lieve them capable of any 
 crime. If they should kill my two nephews, it would be no 
 hie- straordinary sh' prise. Have just been in to look at my 
 nephews asleep, to make sure that the Pendragons have 
 put no snakes in their bed.' Thash is one entry," continued 
 Mr. Bumstead, momentarily pausing to make a blow with 
 the fire-shovel at some imaginary creature crawling across 
 the rug. "Here's another, written next morning after 
 cloves : ' My nephews have gone to New York together this 
 A. M. They laughed when I cautioned them against the
 
 94 OILING THE WHEELS. 
 
 Montgomeries, and said they didn't see it. I am still very 
 uneasy, however, and have hurriedly pulled off my boots to 
 kill the reptiles in them. How's this for high?'" Mr. 
 Bumstead fell into a doze for an instant, and then added : 
 "I see the name 'J. Bumstead' signed to this. Who'sh 
 he ? Oh ! i'mushbe myself." 
 
 "Well, well," commented the slightly astonished Gos- 
 peller, " whatever may be your private opinions, I ask you, 
 as a matter of evident public propriety, and for the good of 
 everybody, to soften Mr. Drood toward Mr. Pendragon, as 
 I have already softened Mr. Pendragon toward Mr. Drood. 
 You and I must put an end to this foolish quarrel." 
 
 " Thashis so," said Mr. Bumstead, with sudden assent, 
 laboriously gaining his feet to bid his guest good-bye, and 
 rather absent-mindedly opening the umbrella over his head 
 as he fumbled for the knob of the door. " You and I 
 musht reconcile these four young men. Gooright, shir. 
 Take a little soda-water in the morning and you'll be 
 awright, shir." 
 
 On the third day after this interview, Mr. Bumstead 
 waited upon Mr. Simpson with the following note, which, 
 after searching agitatedly for it in his hat and all his pockets, 
 he finally found up one of his sleeves : " My dear JACK : I 
 am much pleased to hear of your conversation about me 
 with that good man whom you call ' the Reverends Mes- 
 sieurs Simpson,' and shall gladly comply with his wish for a 
 make-up between Pendragon and myself. Invite Pendragon
 
 OILING THE WHEELS. 95 
 
 to dinner on Christmas Eve, when only we three shall be 
 together, and we'll shake hands. Ever, dear clove-y Jack, 
 yours truly, Edwin Drood." 
 
 " You think Mr. Pendragon will accept, then ? " said the 
 Gospeller. 
 
 Mr. Bumstead nodded darkly, shook hands, bowed to a 
 large arm-chair for Mrs. Simpson, and retired with much 
 stateliness.
 
 96 A PICTURE AND A PARCEL. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 A PICTURE AND A PARCEL. 
 
 BEHIND the most sample-room-y, fire-insuranceish, and 
 express-wagonized part of Broadway, New York, yawns a 
 venerable street called Nassau ; wherein architecture is a 
 monster of such hideous mien that to be hated needs but to 
 be rented, and more full-grown men stare into shoe-stores and 
 shirt-emporiums without buying anything than in any other 
 part of the world. Near the lower end of this quaint ave- 
 nue rises the Post-Office, sending aloft a wooden steeple 
 which is the coffin of a dead clock, and looking, altogether, 
 like some good old-fashioned country church, which, having 
 come to town many years ago to see its city cousins, 
 and been discouraged by their brown-stone airs, retired, 
 much demoralized, into a shady by-way, and there fell from 
 grace into a kind of dissipated cross between Poor-Hotise 
 and railroad depot. To reach this amazing edifice with too 
 much haste for more than a momentary glimpse of its har- 
 rowing exterior, and to get away from it, with a speed as 
 little complimentary to the charms of its shadow, are, appar- 
 ently, the two great and exclusive objects of the thousands 
 swarming down and up the narrow street all through a day.
 
 A PICTURE AND A PARCEL. 97 
 
 Some twenty odd boot-shops, all next-door-but-one to each 
 other, startlingly alike in their despondent outer appear- 
 ances, and uniformly conducted by embittered elderly men 
 of savage aspect seem to sue in vain from year to year 
 for at least one customer ; and as many other melancholy 
 dens for the sale of exactly the things no one but a madman 
 would want to bu/while on his way to a Post-Office, or from 
 it, appear to wait as hopelessly for the first purchaser. 
 There are, too, no end of open-air dealers in such curious 
 postal incidentals as ghastly apples, insulting neck-ties, and 
 impracticable pocket-combs; to whom, possibly, an un- 
 wholesome errand boy may be seen applying for a bargain 
 about once in the life-time of an ordinary habitue of the 
 street, but whose general wares were never see-n selling to 
 the extent of four shillings by any living observer. Still, 
 with an affront to human credulity of which only newspapers 
 are capable, it has been declared, in print, that there are 
 bootmakers and apple-women of Nassau who continually 
 buy choice up-town corner lots with their' profits ; and, if it 
 may be therefrom inferred that the other trades of the street 
 do as incredibly well, it were wise, perhaps, to be further 
 convinced that people have a well-established habit of 
 stealthily laying in their new raiment, fruit, and toilet articles 
 while going for their business-mails, and at once relinquish 
 all earthly confidence in the senses obstinately refuting the 
 theory. 
 
 About half-way between end and end of Nassau street 
 5
 
 98 A PICTURE AND A PARCEL. 
 
 stands a row of what were modest dwelling-houses in the re- 
 mote days when the city was under the rule of the Ameri- 
 cans, but are now only so many floors of law offices. Who 
 owns them is not known ; for proprietors of real-estate in 
 this extraordinary highway of antiquity are never mentioned 
 in public like owners in any other street ; but they are 
 shabby, dreary, hopeless-looking old piles, suggestive of hav- 
 ing, perhaps, been hurried and tumbled through musty law- 
 suits scores of times, and occupied at last by the robber Law 
 itself for costs. On a certain dark, foggy afternoon in De- 
 cember, one of the seediest of the fallen brick brotherhood 
 presented a particularly dingy appearance, as the gas-lights 
 necessitated by the premature gloom of the hour gleamed 
 dimly through a blearing window-pane here and there. The 
 house still retained the narrow street-door, hall-way, and ab- 
 rupt immediate stairway of its earlier days ; and had, too, the 
 old-style goodly single brown stone for a " stoop," along the 
 front fall of which, in faded. white block letters, as though 
 originally done with a stencil-plate, appeared the strange de- 
 vice : 
 
 S^T 1860 X.* 
 
 Whether this curious legend referred to the sweets or bitters 
 of the tenement's various experiences : whether it meant 
 Subjected To 1860 'Xecutions, or Sacrificed To 1860 'Xecu- 
 tors, or Sentenced To Wai t-e' en-Sixty 'Xigencies, did not 
 
 * In the original^." J. P. T. 1747."
 
 A PICTURE AND A PARCEL. 99 
 
 bother the head of Mr. Dibble, who came in from Gowanus 
 every morning to occupy his law-office upstairs, and was sit- 
 ting thoughtfully therein, before a grate fire, on the dull, win- 
 try afternoon in question. 
 
 Severely unostentatious was that office, with its two ink- 
 stained desks, shelves of lettered deed-boxes, glass case of 
 law-books in sheep, and vellum-covered reading-table in the 
 centre of the room. Its prompt lesson for the visitor was : 
 You are now in the office of an old-school Constitutional 
 Lawyer, Sir ; and if you want an Absolute Divorce, Ob- 
 tained for No Cause, in Any State ; No Publicity ; No 
 Charges ; you must step around to a certain newspaper 
 sanctum for your witnesses, and apply to some other legal 
 practitioner. In this establishment, sir, after you have left 
 your measure in the shape of a retaining fee, we fit you with 
 a suit warranted to last as long as you do. We cut your 
 pockets to suit ourselves, but furnish you as much choler as 
 you can stand. If you are a pursey man the suit will have 
 no lack of sighs for you ; if you are thin, it will make your 
 waste the greater. 
 
 Mr. Dibble's usual companion in this office was his clerk, 
 Bladams,* who generally wrote at the second desk, and, 
 consequently, was a person of another deskscription. A 
 politician in former days when he was known, as Mr. Wil- 
 liam Adams this clerk had aspired to office in New York, 
 and freely spent his means to attain the same. His name, 
 
 * In the original, Bazzard.
 
 100 A PICTURE AND A PARCEL. 
 
 however, was too much for his fortune. Public credulity re- 
 volted from the pretence that a William Adams had come 
 from Ireland some years before, on purpose to found the 
 family of which the later candidate of the same name claimed 
 to be a descendant ; and, after an election in which he had 
 spent the last of his money, he was "counted out" in favor 
 of a rather hod character named O'Glooral. Thus practi- 
 cally taught to understand the political genius of a Republic, 
 which, as gloriously contrasted with any effete monarchy 
 ruled by a Peerage, looks for its own governing class to the 
 Steerage, Mr. William Adams subsided impecuniously into 
 plain Bill Adams and a book-keepership in dry goods ; and 
 was ultimately blurred into Bladams and employment as a 
 copyist by Mr. Dibble, to whom his experience of spending 
 every cent' he had in the world, and getting nothing in the 
 world for it but wrinkles, seemed felicitously legal and almost 
 supernaturally qualifying for law-writing. Bladams was about 
 forty years old, though appearing much older : with a slight 
 cast in his left eye, a pimply pink countenance, and a cir- 
 cular piece of unimproved property on top of his head. 
 
 " Any news ? " inquired Mr. Dibble, as this member of 
 the once powerful American race entered the office and still 
 grasped the edge of the door. 
 
 "I saw Mr. Drood across the street just now," was the 
 answer. . 
 
 " And what did he say, Bladams ? "
 
 A PICTURE AND A PARCEL. 
 
 "That in turn he'd see me across the street; and here he 
 is," returned the clerk, advancing into the room. 
 
 " Ah, my dear Mr. Edwin, glad to see you ! " exclaimed 
 Mr. Dibble, rising to his feet and turning about to greet the 
 new comer. " Sit down by the fire ; and don't mind the 
 presence of Mr. Bladams, who was once a gentleman." 
 
 " Thank you, old man, I don't know but I -will take a 
 glow with you," said Edwin, accepting a chair and throwing 
 aside hat and overcoat. 
 
 " You're just in time to dine with me," continued the law- 
 yer. "I'll send across to a restaurant for three stews and as 
 many mugs of ale. We must ask Mr. Bladams to join us, 
 you see ; for he was once a decent man, and might not like 
 to be sent out for oysters unless asked to take some." 
 
 " If they're the small black ones you generally treat on, 
 I'd rather be excused," grumbled Mr. Bladams, involuntarily 
 placing a hand upon his stomach, as though already paying 
 the penalty of such bivalvular hospitality. 
 
 " Order saddle-rocks this time," was the reckless response 
 of his employer. "Mr. Edwin is so rarely our guest that we 
 must do the princely. You'll tell them, Bladams, to send 
 plenty of crackers, and request the waiters to keep their fin- 
 gers out of the stews while bringing the latter over. I've 
 known waiters to have their finger-nails boiled off in time, by 
 a habit of carrying soup and stews with the ends of their 
 digits in them." 
 
 The clerk departing to order the feast, Mr. Dibble re-
 
 102 A PICTURE AND A PARCEL. 
 
 newed his attention to Mr. E. Drood, who had already taken 
 his ball from his pocket and was practising against the man- 
 tel. 
 
 " I suppose you are on your way to Bumsteadville, again, 
 Mr. Edwin, and have called to see if I have any message for 
 my pretty ward over there." 
 
 " That's the ticket," assented Edwin, making a neat fly- 
 catch. 
 
 "You're impatient to be there, of course ? " asserted Mr. 
 Dibble, with what might have passed for an attempt at arch- 
 ness, if he had not been so wholly devoted to squareness. 
 
 " I believe the Flowerpot is expecting me," yawned the 
 young man. 
 
 " Do you keep plants there, Mr. Edwin ? " 
 
 " The whole thing is a regular plant, Mr. Dibble." 
 
 " But you spoke about a flowerpot." 
 
 Edwin stretched his feet further toward the fire, and ex- 
 plained that he meant Miss Potts. " Did she say anything 
 to you about the Pendragons, when you saw her?" he in- 
 quired. 
 
 "What are Pendragons?" asked the lawyer, wonderingly. 
 
 " One of them is a schoolmate of hers. A girl with some 
 style about her." 
 
 " No," said Mr. Dibble, " she did not. But here comes 
 Bladams." 
 
 Bladams ushered in two waiters one Irish and one Ger- 
 man who wore that look of blended long-suffering and ex-
 
 A PICTURE AND A PARCEL. 103 
 
 treme weariness of everything eatable, which, in this coun- 
 try, seems inevitably characteristic of the least personal 
 agency in the serving of meals. (There may be lands in 
 which the not essentially revolting art of cookery can 
 be practised without engendering irritable gloom in the 
 bosoms of its practitioners, and the spreading of tables does 
 not necessarily entail upon the actors therein a despon- 
 dency almost sinister ; but the American kitchen is the home 
 of beings who never laugh, save in that sardonic bitterness of 
 spirit which grimly mocks the climax of human endurance 
 in the burning of the soup ; and the waiter of the American 
 dining-room can scarcely place a dish upon the board with- 
 out making it eloquent of a blighted existence.) Having 
 dashed the stews upon the reading-table before the fire, and 
 rescued a drowning fly* from one of them with his least ap- 
 petizing thumb-nail, the melancholy Irish attendant polished 
 the spoons with his pocket-handkerchief and hurled them on 
 either side of the plates. Perceiving that his German asso- 
 ciate, in listlessly throwing the mugs of ale upon the table, 
 had spilled some of the liquid, he hurriedly wiped the stain 
 away with Edwin Brood's worsted muffler, and dried the 
 sides of the glasses upon the napkin intended for Mr. Dibble's 
 use. There was . something of the wild resources of de- 
 
 * In anticipation of any critical objection to the introduction of a living_/?_y in Decem- 
 ber, the Adapter begs leave to assert that an anachronism is always legitimate in a 
 work of fiction when a point is to be made. Thus in Chaptei VIII. of the inimitable 
 " Nicholas Nickleby," Mr. Squeers tells Nicholas that morning has come, "and ready 
 iced, too ; " and that " the pump's Jroze;" while only a few pages later, in the same 
 chapter, one of Mr. Squeers' scholars is spoken of as " weeding the garden."
 
 104 A PICTURE AND A PARCEL. 
 
 spair, too, in this man's frequent ghostly dispatch of the 
 Gennan after articles forgotten in the first trip, such as 
 another cracker, the cover of the pepper-cruet, the salt, and 
 one more pinch of butter ; and so greatly did his apparent 
 dejection of soul increase as each supplementary luxury ar- 
 rived and was recklessly slammed into its place, that, upon 
 finally retiring from the room with his associate, his utter 
 hopelessness of aspect gave little suggestion of the future 
 proud political preferment to which, by virtue of his low 
 estate and foreign birth, he was assuredly destined. 
 
 The whole scene had been a reproachful commentary 
 upon the stiff American system of discouraging waiters from 
 making remarks upon the weather, inquiring the cost of 
 one's new coat, conferring with one upon the general pros- 
 pects of his business for the season, or from indulging in any 
 of the various light conversational diversions whereby bar- 
 bers, Fulton-street tailors, and other depressed gymnasts, 
 are occasionally and wholesomely relieved from the misery 
 of brooding over their equally dispiriting avocations. 
 
 After the departure of the future aldermen, or sheriffs, of 
 the city, the good old lawyer accompanied his young guest in 
 an expeditious assimilation of the stews ; saying little, but 
 silently regretting, for the sake of good manners, that Mr. 
 Bladams could not eat oysters without making a noise as 
 though they were alive in his mouth. At last, mug of ale 
 in hand, he turned to his clerk : 
 
 "Bladams!"
 
 A PICTURE AND A PARCEL. 105 
 
 " Sir to you ! " responded Mr. Bladams, hastily putting 
 down the plate from which he had been drinking his last 
 drop of stew, and grasping his own mug. 
 
 " Your health, Bladams. Mr. Edwin joins me, I'm sure. 
 And may the may our that is, may your suppose 
 we call it bump of Happiness may your bump of Happi- 
 ness increase." 
 
 Staring thoughtfully, Mr. Bladams felt for the Bump upon 
 his head, and having scratched what he seemed to take for 
 it, replied : " It's a go, sir. The Bump has increased some 
 since Kent's Commentaries fell on it from that top-shelf the 
 other day." 
 
 "I am going to toast my lovely ward," whispered Mr. 
 Dibble to Edwin ; " but I put Bladams first, because he was 
 once a person to be respected, and I treat him with polite- 
 ness in place of a good salary." 
 
 " Success to the Bump," said Edwin Drood, rather struck 
 by this piece of practical economy, and newly impressed 
 with the standard fact that politeness costs nothing. 
 
 " And now," continued Mr. Dibble, with a wink in which 
 his very ear joined, " I give you the peerless Miss Flora 
 Potts. Bladams, please remember that there are others here 
 to eat crackers besides yourself, and join us in a health to 
 Miss Potts." 
 
 "Let the toast pass drink to the lass!" cried Mr. 
 Bladams, husky with crackers. " All ale to her ! " 
 
 " Count me in too," assented Edwin. 
 5*
 
 106 A PICTURE AND A PARCEL. 
 
 " Dear me !" said the old lawyer, breaking a momentary 
 spell of terror occasioned by Mr. Bladams having turned 
 blue and nearly choked to death in a surreptitious attempt to 
 swallow a cracker which he had previously concealed in one 
 of his cheeks. " Dear me ! although I am a square, prac- 
 tical man, I do believe that I could draw a picture of a true 
 lover's state of mind to-night." 
 
 " A regular chromo," wheezed Mr. Bladams, encourag- 
 ingly ; pretending not to notice that his employer was 
 reaching an ineffectual arm after the crackers at his own 
 elbow. 
 
 "Subject to the approving, or correcting, judgment of 
 Mr. E. Drood, I make bold to guess that the modern true 
 lover's mind, such as it is, is rendered jerky by contempla- 
 tion of the lady who has made him the object of her virgin 
 affectations," proceeded Mr. Dibble, looking intently at 
 Edwin, but still making farther and farther reaches toward 
 the distant crackers, even to the increased tilting of his 
 chair. " I venture the conjecture, that if he has any dar- 
 ling pet name for her, such as ' Pinky-winky,' ' Little Fooly,' 
 ' Chignonentity,' or 'Waxy Wobbles,' he feels horribly 
 ashamed if any one overhears it, and coughs violently to 
 make believe that he never said it." 
 
 It was curious to see Edwin listening with changing color 
 to this truthful exposure of his young mind ; the while, influ- 
 enced unconsciously, probably, by the speaker's example, 
 he, too, had begun reaching and chair-tilting toward the
 
 A PICTURE AND A PARCEL. 107 
 
 crackers across the table. What time Mr. Bladams, at 
 the opposite side of the board, had apparently sunk into a 
 sudden and deep slumber ; although from beneath one of his 
 folded arms a finger dreamily rested upon the rim of the 
 cracker-plate, and occasionally gave it a little pull farther 
 away from the approaching hands. 
 
 "My picture," continued Mr. Dibble, now quite hoarse, 
 and almost horizontal in his reaching, to Edwin Drood, also 
 nearly horizontal in the same way "my picture goes on 
 to represent the true lover as ever eager to be with his dear 
 one, for the purpose of addressing implacable glares at the 
 Other Young Man with More Property, whom She says she 
 always loved as a Brother when they were Children To- 
 gether ; and of smiling bitterly and biting off the ends of his 
 new gloves (which is more than he can really afford, at his 
 salary), when She softly tells him that he is making a perfect 
 fool of himself. My picture further represents him to be 
 continually permeated by a consciousness of such tight boots 
 as he ought not to wear, even for the Beloved Object, and 
 of such readiness to have new cloth coats spoiled, by getting 
 hair-oil on the left shoulder, as shall yet bring him to a 
 scene of violence with his distracted tailor. It shows him, 
 likewise, as filled with exciting doubts of his own relative 
 worth : that is, with self-questionings as to whether he shall 
 ever be worth enough to buy that cantering imported saddle- 
 horse which he has already promised ; to spend every sum- 
 mer in a private cottage at Newport ; to-fight off Western
 
 108 A PICTURE AND A PARCEL. 
 
 divorces, and to pay an eloquent lawyer a few thousands for 
 getting him clear, on the plea of insanity, after he shall have 
 shot the Other Young Man with More Property for wanting 
 his wife to be a Sister to him, again, as she was, you know, 
 when they were Children Together." 
 
 Edwin, despite the. coldness of the season, had perspired 
 freely during the latter part of the Picture, and sought to 
 disguise his uneasiness at its beautiful, yet severe truth, by a 
 last push of his extended arm toward the crackers. Quickly 
 observing this, Mr. Dibble also made a final desperate reach 
 after the same object; so that both old man and young, 
 while pretending to heed each other's words only, were two- 
 thirds across the table, with their feet in the air and their 
 chairs poised on one leg each. At that very moment, by 
 some unhappy chance, while nearly the whole weight of the 
 two was pressing upon their edge of the board, Mr. Bladams 
 abruptly awoke, and raised his elbows from his edge, to re- 
 lieve 'his arms by stretching. Released from his pressure, 
 the table flew up upon two legs with remarkable swiftness, 
 and then turned over upon Mr. Dibble and Mr. E. Drood ; 
 bringing the two latter and their chairs to the floor under a 
 shower of plates and crackers, and resting invertedly upon 
 their prostrate forms, like some species of four-pillared mon- 
 umental temple without a roof. 
 
 A person less amiable than the good Mr. Dibble would 
 have borrowed the name of an appurtenance of a mill, at 
 least once, as a suitable expression of his feelings upon such
 
 A PICTURE AND A PARCEL. 109 
 
 a trying occasion ; but, instead of this, when Mr. Bladams, 
 excitedly crying " Fire ! " lifted the overturned table from off 
 himself and the young guest, he merely arose to a sitting 
 position on the littered carpet, and said to Edwin, with a 
 smile and a rub : " Pray, am I at all near the mark in my 
 picture?" 
 
 " I should say, sir," responded Edwin, with a very strange 
 expression of countenance, also rubbing the back of his 
 head, " that you are rather hard upon the feelings of the un- 
 lucky lover. He may not show all that he feels " 
 
 There he paused so long to feel his nose and ascertain 
 about its being broken, that Mr. Dibble limped to his feet 
 and ended that part of the discussion by hobbling to an 
 open iron safe across the office. 
 
 Taking from a private drawer in this repository a small 
 paper parcel, containing a pasteboard box, and opening the 
 latter, the old lawyer produced what looked like a long, flat 
 white cord, with shining tips at either end. 
 
 " This, Mr. Edwin," said he, with marked emotion, " is a 
 stay-lace, with golden tags, which belonged to Miss Flora's 
 mother. It was handed to me, in the abstraction of his 
 grief, by Miss Flora's father, on the day of the funeral; he 
 saying that he could never bear to look upon it again. To 
 you, as Miss Flora's future husband, I now give it." 
 
 "A stay-lace !" echoed Edwin, coming forward as quickly 
 as his lameness would allow, and staunching his swollen 
 upper lip with a handkerchief.
 
 110 A PICTURE AND A PARCEL. 
 
 "Yes," was the grave response. "You have undoubt- 
 edly noticed, Mr. Edwin, that in every fashionable romance, 
 the noble and grenadine heroine has a habit of ' drawing 
 herself up proudly ' whenever any gentleman tries to shake 
 hands with her, or asks her how she can possibly be so ma- 
 jestic with him. This lace was used by Miss Flora's mother 
 to draw herself up proudly with ; and she drew herself up so 
 much with it, that it finally reached her heart and killed her. 
 I here place it in your hands, that you may ultimately give 
 it to your young wife as a memento of a mother who did 
 nothing by halves but die. If you, by any chance, should 
 not marry the daughter, I solemnly charge you, by the mem- 
 ory of the living and the dead, to bring it back to me." 
 
 Receiving the parcel with some awe, Edwin placed it in 
 one of his pockets. 
 
 "Bladams," said Mr. Dibble, solemnly, "you are witness 
 of the transfer." 
 
 " Deponent, being duly sworn, does swear and cuss that 
 he saw it, to the best of his knowledge and belief," returned 
 the clerk, helping Mr. Drood to resume his overcoat. 
 
 When in his own room, at Gowanus, that night, Mr. 
 Dibble, in his nightcap, paused a moment before extinguish- 
 ing his light, to murmur to himself : " I wonder, now, 
 whether poor Potts confided his orphan child to me because 
 he knew that I might have been the successful suitor to the 
 mother if I had been worth a little more money just about 
 then?"
 
 A PICTURE AND A PARCEL. Ill 
 
 What time, in the law-office in town, Mr. Bladams was 
 upon his knees on th floor, tossing crackers from all direc- 
 tions on the carpet into his month, like a farinaceous goblin, 
 and nearly suffocating whenever he glanced at the disor- 
 dered table.
 
 112 A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. 
 
 JUDGE SWEENEY, with a certain supercilious conscious- 
 ness that he is figuring in a novel, and that it will not do 
 for Mm to thwart the eccentricities of mysterious fiction by 
 any commonplace deference to the mere meteorological 
 weakness of ordinary human nature, does not allow the fact 
 that late December is a rather bleak and cold time of year to 
 deter him from taking daily airings in the neighborhood of 
 the Ritualistic churchyard. Since the inscription of his ep- 
 itaph on his late wife upon her monument therein, the 
 churchyard is to him a kind of ponderous work of imagina- 
 tion with marble leaves, to which he has contributed the 
 most brilliant chapter ; and when he sees any stranger hov- 
 ering about a part of the outer railings from whence the in- 
 scription may be read, it is with all the swelling pride of an 
 author who, having procured the publication of some trans- 
 cendental article in a Boston magazine, is thrown into an 
 ecstasy of vanity if he sees but one person glance at that 
 number of the periodical on a news-stand. 
 
 Since his first meeting with Mr. Bumstead, on the eve- 
 ning of the epitaph-reading, Judge Sweeney has cultivated
 
 A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. 113 
 
 that gentleman's acquaintance, and been received at his 
 lodgings several times with considerable cordiality and 
 lemon-tea. On such occasions, Mr. Bumstead, in his mu- 
 sical capacity, has sung so closely in Judge Sweeney's ear as 
 to tickle him, a wild and slightly incoherent Ritualistic stave, 
 to the effect that Saint Peter's of Rome, with pontifical 
 dome, would by ballot Infallible be ; but for making Call 
 sure, and Election secure, Saint Repeater's of Rum beats 
 the See. With finger in ear to allay the tickling sensation, 
 Judge Sweeney declares that this young man smelling of 
 cloves is a person of great intellectual attainments, and un- 
 derstands the political genius of his country well enough to 
 make an excellent Judge of Election. 
 
 Walking slowly near the churchyard on this particular 
 freezing December evening, with his hands behind his back, 
 and his eyes intent for any envious husband who may be 
 "with a rush retiring," monumentally counselled, after 
 reading the epitaph, Judge Sweeney suddenly comes upon 
 Father Dean conversing with Smythe, the sexton, and Mr. 
 Bumstead. Bowing to these three, who, like himself, seem 
 to find real luxury in open-air strolling on a bitter night in 
 midwinter, he notices that his model, the Ritual Rector, 
 is wearing a new hat, like a Cardinal's, only black, and is 
 immediately lost in wondering where he can obtain one like 
 it short of Rome. 
 
 "You look so much like an author, Mr. Bumstead. in 
 having no overcoat, wearing your paper collar upside down,
 
 114: A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. 
 
 and carrying a pen behind your ear," Father Dean is say- 
 ing, " that I can almost fancy you are about to write a 
 book about us. Well, Bumsteadville is just the place to fur- 
 nish a nice, dry, inoffensive domestic novel in the sedative 
 Bayard Taylor vein." 
 
 After two or three ineffectual efforts to seize the end of 
 it, which he seems to think is an inch or two higher than its 
 actual position, Mr. Bumstead finally withdraws from be- 
 tween his right ear and head a long and neatly cut hollow 
 straw. 
 
 "This is not a pen, Holy Father," he answers, after a mo- 
 mentary glance of majestic severity at Mr. Smythe, who has 
 laughed. " It is only a simple instrument which I use, as 
 a species of syphon, in certain chemical experiments with 
 sliced tropical fruit and glass-ware. In the precipitation of 
 lemon-slices into cut crystal, it is necessary for the liquid 
 medium to be exhausted gradually ; and, after using this cyl- 
 inder of straw for the purpose about an hour ago, I must 
 have placed it behind my ear in a moment of absent-minded- 
 ness." 
 
 "Ah, I see," said Father Dean, although he didn't. "But 
 what is this, Judge Sweeney, respecting your introduction of 
 McLaughlin to Mr. Bumstead, which I have heard about ? " 
 
 " Why, your Reverence, I consider John McLaughlin a 
 character," responds the Judge, "and thought our young 
 friend of the organ-loft might like to study him." 
 
 " The truth is," explains Mr. Bumstead, " that Judge
 
 A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. 115 
 
 Sweeney put it into my head to do a few pauper graves 
 with John McLaughlin, some moonlight night, for the mere 
 oddity and dampness of the thing. And I should regret to 
 believe," adds Mr. Bumstead, raising his voice as he saw 
 that .the judiciary was about to interrupt "And I should 
 really be loathe to believe that Judge Sweeney was not per- 
 fectly sober when he did so." 
 
 " Oh, yes certainly I remember to be sure," ex- 
 claims the Judge in great haste ; alarmed into speedy assent 
 by the construction which he perceives would be put upon 
 a denial. "I remember it very distinctly. I remember 
 putting it into your head by the tumblerful, if I remember 
 rightly." 
 
 " Profiting by your advice," continues Mr. Bumstead, ob- 
 livious to the last sentence, "I am going out to-night, in 
 search of the moist and picturesque, with John McLaugh- 
 lin " 
 
 "Who is here," says Father Dean. 
 
 Old Mortality, dinner-kettle in hand and more mortary 
 than ever, is indeed seen approaching them with shuffling 
 gait. Bowing to the Holy Father, he is about to pass on, 
 when Judge Sweeney stops him with 
 
 " You must be very careful with your friend Bumstead, 
 this evening, John McLaughlin, and see that he don't fall 
 and break his neck." 
 
 " Never you worry about Mr. Bumstead, Judge," growls
 
 116 A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. 
 
 Old Mortarity. " He can walk further off the perpendick- 
 lar without tumbling than any gentleman I ever see." 
 
 "Of course I can, John McLaughlin," says Mr. Bum- 
 stead, checking another unseemly laugh of Mr. Smyth e's 
 with a dreadful frown. " I often practise walking sideways, 
 for the purpose of developing the muscles on that side. 
 The left side is always the weaker, and the hip a trifle lower, 
 if one does not counteract the difference by walking side- 
 ways occasionally." 
 
 A great deal of unnecessary coughing, which follows this 
 physiological exposition, causes Mr. Bumstead to breathe 
 hard at them all for a moment, and tread with great malig- 
 nity upon Mr. Smythe's nearest corn. 
 
 While yet the sexton is groaning, Old Mortarity whispers 
 to the Ritualistic organist that he will be ready for him at 
 the appointed hour to-night, and shuffles away. After which 
 Mr. Bumstead, with the hollow straw sticking out fiercely from 
 behind his ear, privately offers to see Father Dean home if 
 he feels at all dizzy ; and, being courteously refused, retires 
 down the turnpike toward his own lodgings with military pre- 
 cision of step. 
 
 When night falls upon the earth like a drop of ink upon 
 the word Sun, and the stars glitter like the points of so 
 many poised gold pens all ready to write the softer word 
 Moon above the blot, the organist of St. Cow's sits in his 
 own room, where his fire keeps-up a kind of aspenish twi- 
 light, and executes upon his accordeon a series of wild and
 
 A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. 117 
 
 mutilated airs. The moistened towel which he often wears 
 when at home is turbaned upon his head, causing him to 
 present a somewhat Turkish appearance ; and as, when turn- 
 ing a particularly complicated corner in an air, it is his artis- 
 tic habit to hold his tongue between his teeth, twist his head 
 in sympathy with the elaborate fingering, and involuntarily 
 lift one foot higher and higher from the floor as some skit- 
 tish note frantically dodges to evade him, his general musical 
 aspect at his own hearth, is that of a partially Oriental gen- 
 tleman, agonizingly laboring to cast from him some furious 
 animal full of strange sounds. Thus engaging in desperate 
 single combat with what, for making a ferocious fight before 
 any recognizable time can be rescued from it, is, perhaps, 
 the most exhausting instrument known to evening amateurs 
 and maddened neighborhoods, Mr. Bumstead passes three 
 athletic hours. At the end of that time, after repeatedly 
 tripping-up the exasperated organist over wrong keys in the 
 last .bar, the accordeon finally relinquishes the concluding 
 note with a dismal whine of despair, and retires in complete 
 collapse to its customary place of waiting. Then the con- 
 quering performer changes his towel for a hat which would 
 look better if it had not been so often worn in bed, places 
 an antique black bottle in one pocket of his coat and a 
 few cloves in the other; hangs an unlighted lantern before 
 him by a cord passing about his neck, and, with his um- 
 brella *under his arm, goes softly down stairs and out of 
 the house.
 
 118 A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. 
 
 Repairing to the marble-yard and home of Old Mortarity, 
 which are on the outskirts of Bumsteadville, he wanders 
 through mortar-heaps, monuments brought for repair, and 
 piles of bricks, toward a whitewashed residence of small 
 dimensions with a light at the window. 
 
 " John McLaughlin, ahoy ! " 
 
 In response, the master of the mansion promptly opens 
 the door, and it is then perceptible that his basement, par- 
 lor, spare -bedroom, and attic are all on one floor, and that a 
 couple of pigs are spending the season with him. Showing 
 his visitor into this ingeniously condensed establishment, he 
 induces the pigs to retire to a corner, and then dons his hat. 
 
 " Are you ready, John McLaughlin ? " 
 
 "Please the pigs, I am, Mr. Bumstead," answers Mc- 
 Laughlin, taking down from a hook a lantern, which, like his 
 companion's, he hangs from his neck by a cord. " My spir- 
 its is equal to any number of ghosts to-night, sir, if we meet 
 'em." 
 
 " Spirits ! " ejaculates the Ritualistic organist, shifting his 
 umbrella for a moment while he hurriedly draws the antique 
 bottle from his pocket. " You're nervous to-night, J. Mc- 
 Laughlin, and need a little of the venerable James Aker*s 
 West Indian Restorative. I'll try it first, to make sure that 
 I haven't mistaken the phial." 
 
 He rests the elongated orifice of the diaphanous flask up- 
 on his lips for a brief interval of critical inspection, and then 
 applies it thoughtfully to the mouth of Old Mortarity.
 
 A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. 119 
 
 " Some more ! Some more ! " pleads the aged McLaugh- 
 lin, when the Jamaican nervine is abruptly jerked from his 
 lips. 
 
 " Silence ! Come on," is the stern response of the other, 
 who, as he moves from the house, and restores the crystal 
 antiquity to its proper pocket, eats a few cloves by stealth. 
 His manner plainly shows that he is offended at the quantity 
 the old man has managed to swallow already. 
 
 Strange indeed is the ghastly expedition to the place of 
 skulls, upon which these two go thus by night. Not strange, 
 perhaps, for Mr. McLaughlin, whose very youth in New 
 York, where he was an active politician, found him a fre- 
 quent nightly familiar of the Tombs ; but strange for the 
 organist, who, although often grave in his manner, sepulch- 
 ral in his tones, and occasionally addicted to coughin', must 
 be curiously eccentric to wish to pass into concert that eve- 
 ning with the dead heads. 
 
 Transfixed by his umbrella, which makes him look like a 
 walking cross between a pair of boots and a hat, Mr. Bum- 
 stead leads the way athwart the turnpike and several fields, 
 until they have arrived at a low wall skirting the foot of Gos- 
 peller's Gulch. Here they catch sight of the Reverend Oc- 
 tavius Simpson and Montgomery Pendragon walking to- 
 gether, near the former's house, in the moonlight, and, instan- 
 taneously, Mr. Bumstead opens his umbrella over the head 
 of Old Mortality, and drags him down beside himself under 
 it behind the wall.
 
 120 A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. 
 
 11 Hallo ! What' s all this ? " gasps Mr. McLaughlin, 
 struggling affrightedly in his suffocating cage of whalebone 
 and alpaca. "Whafs this here old lady's hoop-skirt do- 
 ing on me ? " 
 
 " Peace, giggling dotard ! " hisses Bum stead, jamming the 
 umbrella tighter over him. " If they see us they'll want 
 some of the West Indian Restorative." 
 
 Mr. Simpson and Montgomery have already heard a 
 sound ; for they pause abruptly in their conversation, and 
 the latter asks : " Could it have been a ghost." 
 
 " Ask it if it's a ghost ," whispers the Gospeller, involunta- 
 rily crossing himself. 
 
 "Are you there, Mr. G. ?" quavers the raised voice of 
 the young Southerner, respectfully addressing the inquiry to 
 the stone wall. 
 
 No answer. 
 
 " Well," mutters the Gospeller, " it couldn't have been a 
 ghost, after all ; but I certainly thought I saw an umbrella. 
 To conclude what I was saying, then, I have the confi- 
 dence in you, Mr. Montgomery, to believe that you will at- 
 tend the dinner of Reconciliation on Christmas eve, as you 
 have promised." 
 
 " Depend on me, sir." 
 
 " I shall ; and have become surety for your punctuality 
 to that excellent and unselfish healer of youthful wounds, 
 "Mr. Bumstead." 
 
 More is said after this ; but the speakers have strolled to
 
 A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. 121 
 
 the other side of the Gospeller's house, and their words can 
 not be distinguished. Mr. Bumstead closes his umbrella 
 with such suddenness and violence as to nearly pull off the 
 head of McLaughlin ; drives his own hat further upon his 
 nose with a sounding blow; takes several wild swallows 
 from his antique flask ; eats two cloves, and chuckles hoarse- 
 ly to himself for some minutes. " Here, John McLaughlin, 
 he says at last, " try a little more West Indian Restorative, 
 and then we'll go and do a few skeletons." 
 
 The pauper burial-ground toward which they now pro- 
 gress in a rather high-stepping manner, or to vary the 
 phrase toward which their steps are now very much bent, 
 is not a favorite resort of the more cheerful village-people 
 after nightfall. Ask any resident of Bumsteadville if he 
 believed in ghosts, and, if the time were mid-day and the 
 place a crowded grocery store, he would fearlessly answer 
 in the negative ; (just the same as a Positive philosopher in 
 cast-iron health and with no thunder shower approaching 
 would undauntedly deny a Deity ;) but if any resident of 
 Bumsteadville should happen to be caught near the country 
 editor's last home after dark, he would get over that part 
 of his road in a curiously agile and flighty manner ; (just 
 the same as a Positive philosopher with a sore throat, or at 
 an uncommonly showy bit of lightning, would repeat " Now 
 I lay me down to sleep," with surprising devotion.) So, 
 although no one in all Bumsteadville was in the least afraid 
 of the pauper burial-ground at any hour, it was not invaria- '
 
 122 A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. 
 
 bly selected by the great mass of the populace as a peerless 
 place to go home by at midnight ; and the two intellectual 
 explorers find no sentimental young couples rambling arm- 
 in-arm among the ghastly head-boards, nor so much as one 
 loiterer smoking his segar on a suicide's tomb. 
 
 "John McLaughlin, you're getting nervous again," says 
 Mr. Bumstead, catching him in the coat collar with the 
 handle of his umbrella and drawing the other toward him 
 hand-over-hand. "It's about time that you should revert 
 again to the hoary James Aker"s excellent preparation for 
 the human family. I'll try it first, myself, to see if it tastes 
 at all of the cork." 
 
 " Ah-h," sighs Old Mortality, after his turn has come and 
 been enjoyed at last, "that's the kind of Spirits I don't 
 mind being a wrapper to. I could wrap them up all night." 
 
 Reflectively chewing a clove, the Ritualistic organist re- 
 clines on the pauper grave of a former writer for the daily 
 press, and cogitates upon his companion's leaning to Spir- 
 itualism ; while the other produces matches and lights their 
 lanterns. 
 
 " Mr. McLaughlin," he solemnly remarks, waving his um- 
 brella at the graves around, " in this scene you behold the 
 very last of man's individual being. In this entombment he 
 ends forever. Tremble, J. McLaughlin ! forever. Soul 
 and Spirit are but unmeaning words, according to the latest 
 big things in science. The departed Dr. Davis Slavonski, 
 of St Petersburg, before setting out for the Asylum, proved,
 
 A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. 123 
 
 by his Atomic Theory, that men are neatly manufactured 
 of Atoms of matter, which are continually combining to- 
 gether until they form Man ; and then going through the 
 process of Life, which is but the mechanical effect of their 
 combination; and then wearing apart again by attrition 
 into the exhaustion of cohesion called 7"* -ath ; and then 
 crumbling into separate Atoms of native matter, or dust 
 again ; and then gradually combining again, as before, and 
 evolving another Man ; and Living, and Dying, again ; and 
 so on forever. Thus, and thus only, is Man immortal. 
 You are made exclusively of Atoms of matter, yourself, 
 John McLaughlin. So am I." 
 
 " I can understand a man's believing that he, himself, is 
 all Atoms of matter, and nothing else," responds Old Mor- 
 tarity, sceptically. 
 
 " As how, John McLaughlin, as how ? " 
 
 " When he knows that, at any rate, he hasn't got one 
 atom of common sense," is the answer. 
 
 Suddenly Mr. Bumstead arises from the grave and fran- 
 tically shakes hands with him. 
 
 "You're right, sir!" he says, emotionally. "You're a 
 gooroleman, sir, The Atom of common sense was one of 
 the Atoms that Slavonski forgot all about. Let's do some 
 skeletons now." 
 
 At the further end of the pauper burial-ground, and in 
 the rear of the former Aims-House, once stood a building 
 used successively as a cider-mill, a barn, and a kind of
 
 124 A NIGHT. OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. 
 
 chapel for paupers. Long ago, from neglect and bad 
 weather, the frail wooden superstructure had fallen into 
 pieces and been gradually carted off; but a sturdy stone 
 foundation remained underground ; and, although the floor- 
 ing over it had for many years been covered with debris and 
 rank growth, so as to be undistinguishable to common eyes 
 from the general earth around it, the great cellar still ex- 
 tended beneath, and, according to Aveird rumor, had some 
 secret access for Old Mortarity, who used it as a charnel 
 store -house for such spoils of the grave as he found in his 
 prowlings. 
 
 To the spot thus historied the two moralists of the moon- 
 light come now, and, with many tumbles, Mr. McLaughlin 
 removes certain artfully placed stones and rubbish, and 
 lifts a clumsy extemporized trap-door. Below appears a 
 ricketty old step-ladder leading into darkness. 
 
 " I heard such cries and groans down there, last Christ- 
 mas-Eve, as sounded worse than the Latin singing in the 
 Ritualistic church," observes McLaughlin. 
 
 " Cries and groans ! " echoes Mr. Bumstead, turning 
 quite pale, and momentarily forgetting the snakes which he 
 is just beginning to discover among the stones. "You're 
 getting nervous again, poor wreck, and need some more 
 West Indian cough mixture. Wait until I see for myself 
 whether it's got enough sugar in it." 
 
 In due time the great nervous antidote is passed and re- 
 placed, and then, with the lighted lanterns worked around
 
 A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. 125 
 
 under their arms, they go down the tottering ladder. Down 
 they go into a great damp, musty cavern, to which their 
 lights give a pallid illumination. 
 
 a See here," says Old Mortarity, raising a long, curved 
 bone from the floor. "Look at that: shoulder-blade of 
 unmarried Episcopal lady, aged thirty-nine." 
 
 "How do you know she was so old, and unmarried?" 
 asks the organist. 
 
 " Because the shoulder-blade's so sharp." 
 
 Mr. Bumstead is surprised at this specimen of an Agassie 
 and Waterhouse Hawkins in such a mortary old man, and 
 his intellectual pride causes him to resolve at once upon a 
 rival display. 
 
 "Look at this skull, John McLaughlin," he says, refer- 
 ring to an object that he has found behind the ladder. 
 " See thish fine, retreating brow, bulging chin, projecting 
 occipital bone, and these orifices of ears that musht've been 
 stupen'sly long. It's the skull, John McLaughlin, of a 
 twin-brother of the man who really wished really wished, 
 John McLaughlin that he could be sat'shfied, sir, in his 
 own mind, that Charles Dickens was a Christian writer." 
 
 "Why, thash's skull of a hog," explains Mr. McLaughlin, 
 with some contempt. 
 
 "Twin-brother all th' shame," says Mr. Bumstead, as 
 though that made no earthly difference. 
 
 Once more, what a strange expedition is this ! How 
 strangely the eyes of the two men look, after two or three
 
 126 A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. 
 
 more applications to the antique flask ; and how curiously 
 Mr. Bumstead walks on tip-toe at times and takes short 
 leaps now and then. 
 
 " Lesh go now," says Bumstead, after both have been 
 asleep upon their feet several times ; " I think th's snakes 
 down here, John McBumstead." 
 
 " Wh'st ! monkies, you mean, dozens of black monkies, 
 Mr. Bumplin," whispers Old Mortarity, clutching his arm as 
 he sinks against him. 
 
 "Noshir ! Serp'nts !" insists Mr. Bumstead, making futile 
 attempts to open his umbrella with one hand. " Warzesmar- 
 rer with th' light ? ansh'r me, f once Mac Johnbuncklin ! " 
 
 In their swayings under the confusions and delusions of 
 the vault, their lanterns have worked around to the neigh- 
 borhoods of their spines, so that, whichever way they turn, 
 the light is all behind them. Greatly agitated, as men are 
 apt to be when surrounded by supernatural influences, they 
 do not perceive the cause of this apparently unnatural 
 illumination ; and, upon turning round and round in irregu- 
 lar circles, and still finding the light in the wrong place, they 
 exhibit signs of great trepidation. 
 
 " Warzermarrer, wirra//^/ f '" repeats Mr. Bumstead, 
 spinning wildly until he brings up against the wall. 
 
 "Ishgotb' witched, I b'lieve," pants Mr. McLaughlin, 
 whirling as. frenziedly with his own lantern dangling behind 
 him, and coming to an abrupt pause against the opposite 
 wall.
 
 A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. 127 
 
 Thus, each supported against the stones by a shoulder, 
 they breathe hard for a moment, and then sink into a slum- 
 ber in which they both slide down to the ground. Aroused 
 by the shock, they sit up quite dazed, brush away the 
 swarming snakes and monkies, are freshly alarmed by dis- 
 covering that they are now actually sitting upon that per- 
 verse light behind them, and by a simultaneous impulse, 
 begin crawling about in search of the ladder. 
 
 Unable to see anything with all the light behind him, but 
 fancying that he discerns a gleam beyond a dark object near 
 at hand, MX. Bumstead rises to a standing attitude by a se- 
 ries of complex manoeuvres, and plants a foot on something. 
 
 " I'morth'larrer ! " he cries, spiritedly. 
 
 "Th'larrer's on me!" answers Mr. McLaughlin, in evi- 
 dently great bewilderment. 
 
 Then ensue a momentary wild struggle and muffled crash ; 
 for each gentleman, coming blindly upon the other, has 
 taken the light glimmering at the other's back for the light at 
 the top of the ladder, and, further mistaking the other in the 
 dark for the ladder itself, has attempted to climb him. Mr. 
 Bumstead, however, has got the first step ; whereupon, Mr. 
 McLaughlin, in resenting what he takes for the ladder's 
 inexcusable familiarity, has twisted both himself and his 
 equally deluded companion into a pretty hard fall. 
 
 Another interval of hard breathing, and then the organist 
 of Saint Cow's asks : " Di'youhear anything drop ? " 
 
 " Yeshir, th'larrer, got throwed, f rimpudence to a gen-
 
 128 A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. 
 
 Tm'n," is the peevish return of Old Mortarity, who imme- 
 diately falls asleep as he lies, with his lantern under his 
 spine. 
 
 In his sleep, he dreams that Bumstead examines him 
 closely, with a view to gaining some clue to the mystery of 
 the light behind both their backs ; and, on finding the lantern 
 under him, and studying it profoundly for some time, is 
 suddenly moved to feel along his own back. He dreams 
 that Bumstead thereupon finds his own lantern, and ex- 
 claims, after half an hour's analytical reflection, " It must- 
 'ave slid round while John McLaughlin was intosh'cated." 
 Then, or soon after, the dreamer awakes, and can discern 
 two Mr. Bum steads seated upon the step-ladders, with a 
 lantern, baby-like, on each knee. 
 
 " You two men are awake at last, eh ? " say the organists, 
 with peculiar smiles. 
 
 " Yes, gentlemen," return the McLaughlins, with yawns. 
 
 They ascend silently from the cellar, each believing that 
 he is accompanied by two companions, and rendered mood- 
 ily distrustful thereby. 
 
 " Aina maina mona Mike, 
 Bassalona, bona Strike ! " 
 
 sings a small, familiar voice, when they stand again above 
 ground, and a stone whizzes between their heads. 
 
 In another moment Bumstead has the fell Smalley by the 
 collar, and is shaking him like a yard of carpet. 
 
 "You wretched little tarrier ! " he cries in a fury, " you've
 
 A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. 129 
 
 been spying around to-night, to find out something about 
 my Spiritualism that may be distorted to injure my Ritual- 
 istic standing." 
 
 " I ain't done nothing ; and you jest drop me, or I'll 
 knock spots out of yer ! " carols the stony young child. " I 
 jest come to have my aim at that old Beat there." 
 
 "Attend to his case, then his and his friend's, for he 
 seems to have some one with him and never let me see 
 you two boys again." 
 
 Thus Mr. Bumstead, as he releases the excited lad, and 
 turns from the pauper burial-ground for a curious kind of 
 pitching and running walk homeward. The strange expe- 
 dition is at an end : but which end he is unable just then 
 
 to decide. 
 
 6*
 
 130 FOR THE BEST. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 FOR THE BEST. 
 
 Miss CAROWTHERS'S educational hotbed of female in- 
 nocence was about to undergo desolation by the temporary 
 dispersal of its intellectual buds and blossoms to their native 
 soils, therefrom to fill home-atmospheres with the mental 
 fragrance of " all the branches." Holiday Week drew near, 
 when, as Miss Carowthers Ritually expressed it, " all who 
 were true believers of the American Church of England in 
 their hearts would softly celebrate the devout Yearly Festi- 
 val of Apostolic Christianity, by decking the Only True 
 Church with symbolical evergreens over places where the 
 paint was scratched off, and receiving New Year's Calls 
 without intoxicating liquors." In honor of this approaching 
 solemn season of peace on earth, good will to young men, 
 the discipline of Macassar Female College was slightly re- 
 laxed : Bible-studies were no longer rigorously inflicted as 
 a punishment for criminal absence of all punctuation from 
 English Composition, and any Young Lady whose father 
 was good pay could actually sneeze in her teacup without 
 being locked into her own room on bread-and-water until 
 she was truly penitent for her sin and wished she was a
 
 FOR THE BEST. 131 
 
 Christian. Consequently, an air of unusual license per- 
 vaded the Aims-House ; woman's rights meetings \vere held 
 at the heads of stairways to declare, that, whereas Mary 
 Amanda Parkinson's male second-cousin has promised to 
 meet her at the railroad station, and thereby made her pre- 
 tend to us that the letter was from her father, when all the 
 time Ann Louisa Baker accidentally caught sight of the 
 words " My Precious Molly " while looking for her scissors 
 in the wrong drawer ; therefore, be it Resolved, that we wish 
 he knew about one shoulder being a little higher than the 
 other, (as she knows the dressmaker told her,) and about 
 that one red whisker under the left hand corner of her chin 
 which she might as well stop trying to keep cut off; dark 
 assemblages resembling walking bolsters were convened in 
 special dormitories at night, to compare brothers and tell 
 how they Byronically said that they never should care for 
 women again after what they had sacrificed for them in the 
 horse-cars without so much as a " Thank you, sir," but if 
 they ever could be brought to liking a girl now, it would be 
 on account of her not pretending to care for anything but 
 money and a husband's early grave ; and very white parties 
 of pleasure were organized in the halls, at ghostly hours, to 
 go down to the cupboard for a mince-pie under pretence of 
 hearing burglars, and subsequently to drink the mince-pie 
 from curl-papers, accompanied by whispers of " H'sh ! dou't 
 eat the crust so loud, or Miss Carowthers '11 think it's a 
 man."
 
 132 FOR THE BEST. 
 
 In addition to these signs of impending freedom, trunks 
 were packed in the rooms, with an adeptness of getting in 
 things with springs twice as wide as any trunk, and of laying 
 cologne-bottles, fans, and brushes, between objects with 
 ruffles so as to perfectly protect the latter, that would have 
 put the most conceited old bachelor to shame. Affected 
 tenderly by thoughts of a separation which, so ridiculously 
 uncertain is human life, might be forever, the young ladies 
 who couldn't bear each other, and had been quite sorry for 
 each other because she couldn't help it with such a natural 
 disposition and rough forehead as hers, poor thing ! gra- 
 ciously made-up with each other, in case they should not 
 meet again until in heaven. 
 
 You will not think any more, Henrietta Tomlinson, of 
 what I told you about Augustus Smith's remarks to me that 
 Sunday coming out of chapel. I didn't let you know 
 before, my dear, but when he had the impudence to say that 
 one of your eyebrows was longer than the other, and that 
 you had a sleepy look as though a little more in the upper- 
 story wouldn't hurt you, I stood up for you, and told him 
 he ought to be ashamed to talk so on Sunday about you, 
 after you'd taken such pains to please him. That's just all 
 there was about that whole thing, Henrietta, dear, and now 
 I hope we may part friends. 
 
 Why sliouldrtt we, Martha Jenkins ? I'm sure I've 
 never been the one to be unfriendly, and when Mr. Smith 
 told me, that he guessed my friend Miss Jenkins didn't
 
 FOR THE BEST. 133 
 
 know how much she walked like a camel, I was as sarcastic 
 as I could be, and said I didn't know before that gentlemen 
 ever ma.de fun of natural deformities. 
 
 Yes, Henrietta, my love, I know how you've always, 
 te-he ! spoken well of everybody behind their backs. Gen- 
 tlemen give you their confidence as soon as they see you, 
 without a bit of fishing for it on your part, and then you 
 have a chance to befriend your poor friends. 
 
 Oh, well, Martha, darling, there's no need of your 
 getting provoked because I wouldn't hear you called a 
 camel he! he! after you'd been so angelic with him 
 about stepping on the middle back-breadth of your poplin. 
 
 * * * Oh, never mind it at all-l, Mayistah Sa-mith ; it's of 
 No-o consequence ! Te-he-he-he ! 
 
 When is it to come off, Miss Tomlinson ? When does 
 your Augustus finally reward your perseverance with his big 
 red hand ? 
 
 I haven't asked him yet, Precious ! out of regard for 
 your feelings. He's so sensitive about having any one think 
 \u$ jilted her ; quite ridiculous, I tell him. 
 
 Henrietta Tomlinson ! you you'd get on your knees 
 to make a man look at you : EVERYbody says that! 
 
 But then, you know, Martha Jenkins, there are per- 
 sons who wouldn't be looked at much, even if they did go 
 on their knees for it, lovey. 
 
 M'm'm! Ph'h'h ! Please keep by your own trunk, 
 Henrietta. I don't want anything stolen. Miss !
 
 134: . FOR THE BEST. 
 
 He ! he ! Of course I'll go, Martha. There's so 
 much danger of my stealing your old rags ! 
 
 Dotft provoke me to slap you, Miss ! 
 
 Who are you pushing against, Camel? Aow-aouw-k ! 
 Ah-h-h ! R-r-r-r*p, sl'p, p'l-'l Miss Carowthers' com- 
 
 * II 4f 4e 
 
 ing ! ! * * 
 
 And thus to usher in the merry, merry Christmas time 
 of peace on earth, good will to young men. 
 
 At noon on the Saturday preceding Holiday-Week, Miss 
 Carowthers, assisted by her adjutant, Mrs. Pillsbury, had a 
 Reception in the Cackleorium, when emaciated lemonade 
 and tenacious gingerbread were passed around, and the 
 serene conqueror of Breachy Mr. Blodgett, addressed the 
 assembled sweetness. Ladies, the wheel of Time, who, you 
 know, is usually represented as a venerable man of Jewish 
 aspect with a scythe, had brought around once more a fes- 
 tival appealing to all the finer feelings of our imperfect 
 nature. Throbbed there a heart in any of our bos hem ! 
 in any of the superstructures of our waists, that did not 
 respond with joy and gladness to the sentiment of such a 
 season ? In view of Christmas, Ladies, did we say, in the 
 words of an acceptable Ritualistic translation from the 
 Breviary 
 
 " Day of vengeance, without morrow, 
 Earth shall end in flame and sorrow, 
 As from saint and seer we borrow?" 
 
 No ; that was not our style. We saw in Christmas a happy
 
 FOR THE BEST. 135 
 
 time to forgive all our friends, to forget all our enemies at 
 the groaning board, and to keep on remembering the poor. 
 Might we find all our relatives well in the homes we were 
 about to revisit, and ready to liquidate our little semi-annual 
 expenses of tuition. Might we find neighborhoods willing 
 to take the <re sumption of piano-practicing in the forgiving 
 spirit of the Christmas-time, and to accept the singing of 
 Italian airs, at late hours, with the tops of windows down, 
 as occurrences not to be profanely criticized in sleepless 
 beds at a time of year when all animosities should be re- 
 pressed. With love for all mankind, Ladies, where it was 
 strictly proper, we would now separate until after the Holi- 
 days, wishing each other a Merry Christmas and a Happy 
 New Year. Then ensued leave-takings all around ; termin- 
 ating with a delicate consciousness on the part of each 
 young lady present that she was not to be entirely without 
 escort on her way to her home, inasmuch as there was 
 a Bill prepared to go with her and be presented to her 
 parents. 
 
 A number of times had Flora Potts witnessed this usual 
 breaking up, without any other sensation at herself being 
 left behind in the Aims-House than one of relief from inces- 
 sant attempts of dearest friends to find out what Mr. E. 
 Drood wrote about longing to clasp her again, in his last ; 
 and on this occasion she came near being really happy in 
 having her dear Magnolia Pendragon to remain with her. 
 Magnolia had never mentioned Edwin's name since the
 
 136 FOR THE BEST. 
 
 virtual compact between herself, and her brother, and Mr. 
 Simpson, on the Pond shore ; which was, perhaps, carrying 
 woman's friendship rather too far to the other extreme : 
 she might at least have said, " Are you thinking of some- 
 thing commencing with a D. ? " once in a while : but the 
 Flowerpot, while slightly wondering, of course, found a 
 pleasant change in a companion of her own sex and age 
 who was not always raising the D. in conversation. 
 
 A lovely scene was it, and maddening to masculine imag- 
 ination, when so many of Miss Potts's blooming young 
 schoolmates kissed her good-by in the porch, and gave her 
 a last chance to tell them what he had written, then. It 
 was charming to see that willed-away little creature, without 
 her enamel, waving farewell to the stages departing for the 
 ferry ; and to hear the disappearing ones calling out to her : 
 " By-by, Flora, dear ; Eddy ought to see you now with your 
 natural complexion." " Au revoir, Pet. You'd better 
 hurry in now; here comes a man!" "Don't stay out in 
 the sun for us, Darling, or the belladonna may lose its 
 effect." 
 
 Oh, rosebud-garden of girls ! Oh, fresh young blossoms, 
 to which we of the male and cabbage growth are as cheap 
 vegetables ! Cling together while ye may in the fair bou- 
 quet of sweet school friendship, of musical parlor-sisterhood. 
 So shall your thorns be known only to each other in such 
 fragrant clustering, and never known at all to Men unless 
 they insensately persist in giving you their hands.
 
 FOR THE BEST. 137 
 
 While the Flowerpot was thus receiving fond good-byes, 
 Edwin Drood, on his way to see her, suffered an indecision, 
 of purpose which might have bred disquiet in a more gigan- 
 tic mind than his. With the package containing the memo- 
 rial stay-lace in one pocket, and his hands in two others, he 
 strode up the Bumsteadville turnpike in a light overcoat and 
 a brown study. But for good Mr. Dibble's undeniably 
 truthful picture of a modern lover's actual situation, he 
 might have allowed matters to go as they would, and sunk 
 into an early marriage without one prayer to Heaven for 
 mercy. Now, however, that picture troubled him even 
 more than the bump which he had got upon his head from 
 the tilting table in the lawyer's office, and he was disposed 
 to send the stay-lace back to the candid old man. " Flora 
 and I have about equal intellects," reasoned he to himself. 
 " Shall I leave the whole question to her, or my own deci- 
 sion ! One would be about as profound in wisdom as the 
 other. Which ? I guess I'll toss-up for it." 
 
 He stepped aside from the road, under a leafless tree, and 
 drew from a pocket a badly speckled nickel coin. " Heads 
 for her, tails for me," he said, with some awe in his tone. 
 The tasteful coin was tossed, and " Heads " stared up at 
 him from the frozen ground. " It's her inning," he mut- 
 tered, and, repocketing the money and his hands, went on 
 whistling. Thus the great crises of our laborious human 
 lives are settled by the idle inspiration of a moment, and 
 fate, for good, or evil, comes as it is cent.
 
 138 FOR THE BEST. 
 
 The Flowerpot, expecting him, was ready in her walking 
 dress, and, by tacit permission of Miss Carowthers, the two 
 started upon a promenade for the nearest confidential cross- 
 road, each eating half of an apple which Mr. Drood had 
 brought to disguise his feelings. 
 
 "My dear, absurd Eddy," said Flora, when they had 
 arrived in a secluded lane not far from St. Cow's Church, 
 " I want to give you something very serious, and oh ! I'm 
 so ridiculously nervous about doing so, especially after 
 your giving me this apple." 
 
 " Never mind the apple, Flora. It was the fruit of our 
 First Parents, and has constituted the most available pie of 
 the poor ever since. Don't allow it to fetter your freedom 
 of speech, and please try to eat it without such a gashing 
 noise." 
 
 " Thank you, Eddy. You have always been liberal with 
 me. And now are you sure you won't be angry with me if 
 I give you something ? " 
 
 He fell away from her a moment, as half anticipating a 
 kiss, but promised that he would restrain his temper. 
 
 " Then here you are, Eddy ; " and she drew from a pocket 
 in her dress and held out to him a small worsted mitten. 
 
 " You give this to me ? " he said, accepting it, and tossing 
 it from one hand to the other, as though it were something 
 hot. 
 
 " Yes, dear, ridiculous friend ; and from this day forth let
 
 FOR THE BEST. 139 
 
 us give up the cold indifference of people engaged to each 
 other, and be as truly affectionate as brother and sister." 
 
 " Never get married ? " 
 
 " Not to each other." 
 
 Under the ecstatic influence of the moment, the emanci- 
 pated young bondman began dancing and turning somer- 
 saults like one possessed ; but, quickly remembering himself, 
 hastened to regain a perpendicular position at her side, and 
 coughed energetically, as though the recent gymnastics had 
 been prescribed for his cold. 
 
 "My own sister ! " he exclaimed, "a weight is now lifted 
 from both of our minds, and both of us should be the better 
 for the lifting-cure. It is noble in you to let me off so." 
 
 "And ifs perfectly splendid in you, Eddy, to make no 
 horrid fuss about it." 
 
 The beautiful contest of generosities between these two 
 young souls made each as tender toward the other as though 
 the parents of both had been alive and frantically opposed 
 to their mutual attachment. 
 
 "We are both sorry that we have ever had any absurd 
 engagement between us," said Flora, with a manner of ex- 
 quisite softness, " and, now, that we are like brother and 
 sister, we need not be all the time playing the Pretty with 
 each other and needn't be putting on our best things every 
 time we have to meet. You think that my hair always curls 
 in this way, don't you, Eddy ?" 
 
 "Why, you don't mean to say, Flora, that it's all "
 
 140 FOR THE BEST. 
 
 " False ? No, you absurd thing ! But curling irons, 
 and oil, and crimping pins have to be used hours and 
 hours." 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! " laughed Edwin Drood, " I see the point : 
 you've had to make-up for me. Now I dare say that you 
 have thought my boots, which I have worn in your company, 
 were the right size for me ? They're really one and a half 
 sizes too small, and almost kill me. As for gloves, I never 
 wear any except when I come to see you." 
 
 " And my complexion, dear brother ? " 
 
 " Oh, I know all about that, darling sister. I couldn't 
 find any fault with that, so long as my own seal-ring which 
 you thought so rich-looking, was only plated." 
 
 The little creature burst into a laugh of delight, and 
 pressed his arm with sisterly enthusiasm. " And we can be 
 perfectly honest with ach other ; can't we, Eddy ? As a 
 partnership for life until death should us part is no longer 
 our object, we have no need to utterly deceive each other 
 in everything." 
 
 11 No," answered the equally happy young man ; "as 
 we're not trying to marry now, we may as well drop the 
 swindle." 
 
 "And just suppose we'd gone on and got married," cried 
 the Flowerpot, with dancing eyes. " When it was too late, 
 you'd have found out what I really was " 
 
 " And you'd have found me out," interrupted Edwin, viva- 
 ciously.
 
 FOR THE BEST. 141 
 
 " I should have wanted more expenditure upon myself, 
 for giving me my proper place in society, than you, with 
 your limited means, could have possibly afforded 
 
 "And I should have told you it would ruin me " 
 
 " And that would have made me more disappointed in 
 you than ever, and provoked me to call you a pauper-mon- 
 ster " 
 
 " And then I would have twitted you about being any- 
 thing but an heiress yourself when I married you " 
 
 " Which would have thrown me into hysterics ' 
 
 " Which would have made me lock you up in your 
 room, and leave the house " 
 
 " For which /would have sued you for an Indiana di- 
 vorce 
 
 "Thus driving me to commit suicide " 
 
 " And bringing myself under a cruel public prejudice 
 seriously detrimental to my future prospects." 
 
 Gloriously excited and made nearly breathless by their 
 friendly rivalry in thus specifying what must have been the 
 successive results of their union without plenty of money, 
 the animated pair panted at each other in a kind of imagina- 
 tive intoxication, and then shook hands almost deliriously. 
 
 In a moment after, however, Mr. Drood thrust his hands 
 into his pockets and presented an aspect of sudden discom- 
 fiture. 
 
 " I forgot about my uncle, Jack Bumstead," he said, un 
 easily. "It will be a dreadful blow for Jack ; he's counted
 
 142 FOR THE BEST. 
 
 so much upon my having a wife for him to flirt with. 
 There he is, now ? " 
 
 " Where ? " 
 
 " Amongst those trees down there Look ! " 
 
 In a small grove, skirting the road some distance behind 
 them, Mr. Bumstead could indeed be seen, dodging wildly 
 from one tree to another in an extraordinary manner, and 
 occasionally leaping high in the air and slashing excitedly 
 around him with his alpaca umbrella. A hoop from a bar- 
 rel, possibly cast out upon the road by somebody, had, ap- 
 parently, become entangled around the legs and in the 
 coat-tails of the Ritualistic organist ; and he, in his extreme 
 nervous sensibility, precipitately mistaking it for one of his 
 old enemies, the snakes, had evidently fled headlong with it 
 as far as the grove, and was there engaging it in frantic 
 single-combat. 
 
 " Oh, take me home, at once, please ! " begged Flora, 
 alarmed at the remarkable sight. 
 
 " Poor dear old fellow ! " exclaimed her companion, obe- 
 diently hurrying onward with her, " I shall never have the 
 heart to tell him of our separation, and must leave it to 
 your guardian. He'll think he's been the cause of it, by 
 stealing your heart from me. Here he comes ! " 
 
 They had barely time to conceal themselves in the Ma- 
 cassar porch, when, with umbrella in full play, and the barrel- 
 hoop half-way up to his waist, Mr. Bumstead came bound- 
 ing along the turnpike with frenzied agility. " Shoo ! 'S'cat,
 
 FOR THE BEST. 143 
 
 you viper ! Get out ! " cried he ; and stopped, with an 
 unearthly culminating scream of terror, immediately in 
 front of the Aims-House, where the hoop suddenly fell at 
 his feet. A moment he beat his fallen enemy with the um- 
 brella, as though madly striving to actually hammer it into 
 the earth ; then, as suddenly, suspended his attack, stooped 
 low to eye his victim more closely, and, with a fierce pounce, 
 had it in his grasp. " Was it only thisss ? " he hissed, hold- 
 ing it at arm's length : " Sold again : signed, J. Bumstead." 
 And, hanging it over his umbrella, he stalked moodily on- 
 ward. 
 
 " What a struggle his whole lonely life is ! " said Edwin 
 Drood, coming out from the porch. 
 
 Flora's parting look, as she entered the door, was as 
 though she had said, " Oh ! don't you understand ?" But 
 the young man went away unconscious of its meaning.
 
 144 CLOVES FOR THREE. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 CLOVES FOR THREE. 
 
 CHRISTMAS EVE in Bumsteadville. Christmas Eve all over 
 the world, but especially where the English language is 
 spoken. No sooner does the first facetious star wink upon 
 this Eve, than all the English-speaking millions of this Bos- 
 ton-crowned earth begin casting off their hatreds, meannesses, 
 uncharities, and Carlyleisms, as a garment, and, in a beauti- 
 ful spirit of no objections to anybody, proceed to think what 
 can be done for the poor in the way of sincerely wishing 
 them well. The princely merchant, in his counting-room, 
 involuntarily experiences the softening, humanizing influ- 
 ence of the hour, and, in tones tremulous with unwonted 
 emotion, privately directs his Chief-Clerk to tell all the other 
 clerks, that, on this night of all the round year, they may, 
 before leaving the store at 10 o'clock, take almost any ar- 
 ticle from that slightly damaged auction-stock down in the 
 front cellar, at actual cost-price. This, they are to under- 
 stand, implies their Employer's hearty wish of a Merry 
 Christmas to them ; and is a sign that, in the grand spirit of 
 the festal season, he can even forget and forgive those un- 
 natural leaner entry-clerks who are always whining for more
 
 CLOVES FOR THREE. 145 
 
 than their allotted $7 a week. The President of the great 
 railroad corporation, in the very middle of a growling fit over 
 the extra cost involved in purchasing his last Legislature, 
 (owing to the fact that some of its Members had been 
 elected upon a fusion of Radical - Reform and Honest- 
 Workingman's Tickets,) is suddenly and mysteriously im- 
 pressed with the recollection that this is Christmas Eve. 
 " Why, bless my soul, so it is ! " he cries, springing up from 
 his littered rosewood desk like a boy. " Here, you Gene- 
 ral Superintendent out there in the office ! " sings he, 
 cheerily, " send some one down to Washington Market this 
 instant, to find out whether or not any of those luscious 
 anatomical western turkies that I saw in the barrels this 
 morning are left yet. If the commercial hotels down-town 
 haven't taken them all, buy every remaining barrel at once ! 
 Not a man nor boy in this Company's service shall go 
 home to-night without his Christmas dinner in his hand ! 
 Lively, now, Mr. Jones ! and just oblige me by picking out 
 one of the birds for yourself, if you can find one at all less 
 blue than the rest. It's Christmas Eve, sir; and upon my 
 word I'm really sorry our boys have to work to-morrow as 
 usual. Ah ! it's hard to be poor, Jones ! A merry Christ- 
 mas to us all. Here's my carriage come for me." And 
 even in returning to their homes from their daily avoca- 
 tions, on Christmas Eve, how the most grasping, penurious 
 souls of men will soften to the world's unfortunate ! Who 
 is this poor old lady, looking as though she might be some- 
 7
 
 146 CLOVES FOR THREE. 
 
 body's grandmother, sitting here by the wayside, shivering, 
 on such an Eve as this ? No home to go to ? Relations 
 all dead ? Eaten nothing in two days ? Walked all the 
 way from the Woman's Rights Bureau in Boston? Dear 
 me ? can there be so much suffering on Christmas Eve ? I 
 must do something for her, or my own good dinner to-mor- 
 row will be a reproach to me. "Here! Policeman! just 
 take this poor old lady to the Station-House, and give her a 
 good warm home there until morning. There ! cheer-up, 
 Aunty ; you're all right now. This gentleman in the uni- 
 form has promised to take care of you. Merry Christ- 
 mas ! " Or, when at home, and that extremely bony lad, 
 in the thin summer coat, chatters to you, from the snow on 
 the front-stoop, about the courage he has taken from Christ- 
 mas Eve to ask you for enough to get a meal and a night's- 
 lodging how differently from your ordinary style does a 
 something soft in your breast impel you to treat him. "No 
 work to be obtained ? " you say, in a light tone, to cheer 
 him up. " Of course there's none here, my young friend. 
 All the work here at the East is for foreigners, in order that 
 they may be used at election-time. As for you, an Ameri- 
 can boy, why don't you go to h 1 mean to the West. 
 
 Go West, young man ! Buy a good, stout fanning outfit, 
 two or three serviceable horses, or mules, a portable house 
 made in sections, a few cattle, a case of fever medicine - 
 and then go out to the far West upon Government-land. 
 You'd better go to one of the hotels for to-night, and then
 
 CLOVES FOR THREE. 147 
 
 purchase Mr. Greeley's ' What I Know About Farmiiig', 
 and start as soon as the snow permits in the morning. 
 Here are ten cents for you. Merry Christmas ! " Thus 
 to honor the natal Festival of Him the Unselfish incar- 
 nate, the Divinely insighted Who said unto the lip-server : 
 Sell all that thou hast, and give it to the Poor, and follow 
 Me; and from Whom the lip-server, having great posses- 
 sions, went away exceeding sorrowful ! 
 
 Three men are to meet at dinner in the Bumsteadian 
 apartments on this Christmas Eve. How has each one 
 passed the day ? 
 
 Montgomery Pendragon, in his room in Gospeller's Gulch, 
 reads Southern tragedies in an old copy of the New Orleans 
 Picayune, until two o'clock, when he hastily tears up all his 
 soiled paper collars, packs a few things into a travelling 
 satchel, and, with the latter slung over his shoulder, and a 
 Kehoe's Indian club* in his right hand, is met in the hall by 
 his tutor, the Gospeller. 
 
 "What are you doing with that club, Mr. Montgomery?" 
 asks the Reverend Octavius, hastily stepping back into a 
 corner. 
 
 "I've bought it to exercise with in the open air," answers 
 the young Southerner, playfully denting the wall just over 
 his tutor's head with it. 
 
 "After this dinner with Mr. Drood, at Bumstead's, I 
 reckon I shall start on a walking match, and I've procured 
 
 *.In the original, a very heavy, iron-shod walking-stick.
 
 148 CLOVES FOR THREE. 
 
 the club for exercise as I go. Thus : " He twirls it high 
 in the air, grazes Mr. Simpson's nearer ear, hits his own 
 head accidentally, and breaks the glass in the hat-stand. 
 
 " I see ! I see ! " says the Gospeller, rather hurriedly. 
 " Perhaps you had better be entirely alone, and in the open 
 country, when you take that exercise." 
 
 Rubbing his skull quite dismally, the prospective pedes- 
 trian goes straightway to the porch of the Aims-House, and 
 there waits until his sister comes down in her bonnet and 
 joins him. 
 
 " Magnolia," he remarks, hastening to be the first to 
 speak, in orfler to have any conversational chance at all 
 with her, " it is not the least mysterious part of this Mystery 
 of ours, that keeps us all out of doors so much in the un- 
 seasonable winter month of December,* and now I am pe- 
 culiarly a meteorological martyr in feeling obliged to go 
 walking for two whole freezing weeks, or until the Holidays 
 and this this marriage-business, are over. I didn't tell 
 Mr. Simpson, but my real purpose, I reckon, in having this 
 club, is to save myself, by violent exercise with it, from per- 
 ishing of cold." 
 
 "Must you do this, Montgomery?" asks his colloquial 
 
 * In the original English story there is, considering the bitter time of year given, a 
 truly extraordinary amount of solitary sauntering, social strolling, confidential confab- 
 ulating, evening-rambling, and general lingering, in the open air. To "adapt" this 
 novel peculiarity to American practice, without some little violation of probability, is 
 what the present conscientious Adapter finds almost the hardest artistic requirement 
 of his task.
 
 CLOVES FOR THREE. 149 
 
 sister, thoughtfully. " Perhaps if I were to talk long enough 
 with you " 
 
 " You'd literally exhaust me into not going? Cer- 
 tainly you would, " he returns, confidently. " First, my 
 head would ache from the constant noise; then it would 
 spin ; then I should grow faint and hear you less distinctly ; 
 then your voice, although you were talking-on the same as 
 ever, would sound like a mere steady hum to me ; then I 
 should become unconscious, and be carried home, with you 
 still whispering in my ear. But do not talk, Magnolia ; for 
 I must do the walking-match. The prejudice here against 
 my Southern birth makes me a damper upon the festivities 
 of others at this general season of forgiveness to all man- 
 kind, and I can't stand the sight of that Drood and Miss 
 Potts together. I'd better stay away until they have gone." 
 
 He pauses a moment, and adds, " I wish I were not 
 going to this dinner, or that I were not carrying this club 
 there." 
 
 He shakes her hand and his own head, glances up at the 
 storm-clouds now gathering in the sky, goes onward to Mr. 
 Bumstead's boarding-house, halts at the door a moment to 
 moisten his right hand and balance the Indian club in it, 
 and then enters. 
 
 Edwin Brood's day before merry Christmas is equally 
 hilarious. Now that the Flowerpot is no longer on his 
 mind, the proneness of the masculine nature to court mis- 
 fortune causes him to think seriously of Miss Pendragon,
 
 150 CLOVES FOR THREE. 
 
 and wonder whether she would make a wife to ruin a man ? 
 It will be rather awkard, he thinks, to be in Bumsteadville 
 for a week or two after the Macassar young ladies shall 
 have heard of his matrimonial disengagement, as they will 
 all be sure to sit symmetrically at every front window in the 
 Aims-House whenever he tries to go by ; and he resolves to 
 escape tha danger by starting for Egypt, Illinois, immedi- 
 ately after he has seen Mr. Dibble and explained the situa- 
 tion to him. Finding that his watch has run down, he steps 
 into a jeweller's to have it wound, and is at once subjected 
 to insinuating overtures by the man of gems. What does 
 he think of this ring, which is exactly the thing for some 
 particular Occasions in Life ? It is made of the metal for 
 which nearly all young couples marry now-a-days, is as end- 
 less as their disagreements, and, by the new process, can be 
 stretched to fit the Second wife's hand also. Or look at this 
 pearl set. Very chaste, really soothing intended as a pres- 
 ent from a Husband after First Quarrel. These cameo ear- 
 rings were never known to fail. Judiciously presented, in a 
 velvet case, they may be depended upon to at once divert a 
 young Wife from Returning to her Mother, as she has 
 threatened. Ah ! Mr. Drood cares for no more jewellery than 
 his watch, chain, and seal-ring ? To be sure ! when Mr. 
 Bumstead was in yesterday for the regular daily new crystal 
 in his own watch how docs he break so many ! he said 
 that his beloved nephews wore only watches and rings, or 
 he would buy paste breastpins for them. Your oroide is
 
 CLOVES FOR THREE. 151 
 
 now wound up, Mr. Drood, and set at twenty minutes past 
 Two. 
 
 " Dear old Jack ! " thinks Edwin to himself, pocketing his 
 watch as he walks away ; " he thinks just twice as much of 
 me as any one else in the world, and I should feel doubly 
 grateful." 
 
 As dusk draws on, the young fellow, returning from a 
 long walk, espies an aged Irish lady leaning against a tree 
 on the edge of the turnpike, with a pipe upside-down in her 
 mouth, and her bonnet on wrong-side afore. 
 
 " Are you sick ? " he asks kindly. 
 
 " Divil a sick, gintlemen," is the answer, with a slight 
 catch of the voice, " bless the two of yez ! " 
 
 Edwin Drood can scarcely avoid a start, as he thinks to 
 himself, " Good Heaven ! how much like Jack ! " 
 
 " Do you eat cloves, madame?" he asks, respectfully. 
 
 " Cloves is it, honey? ah, thin, I do that, whin I'm ex- 
 pectin' company. Odether-nodether, but I've come here 
 the day from New York for nothing. Sure phat's the names 
 of you two darlints ? " 
 
 " Edwin," he answers, in some wonder, as he hands her 
 a currency stamp, which, on account of the large hole worn 
 in it, he has been repeatedly unable to pass himself. 
 
 " Eddy is it ? Och hone, och hone, machree ! " exclaims 
 the venerable woman, hanging desolately around the tree by 
 her arms while her bonnet falls over her left ear : "I've 
 heard that name threatened. Och, acushla wirasthu ! "
 
 152 CLOVES FOR THREE. 
 
 Believing that the matron will be less agitated if left 
 alone, and, probably, able to get a little roadside sleep, Ed- 
 win Drood passes onward in deep thought. The boarding- 
 house is reached, and he enters. 
 
 J. Bumstead's day of the dinner is also marked by exhil- 
 arating experiences. With one coat-tail unwittingly tucked 
 far up his back, so that it seems to be amputated, and his 
 alpaca umbrella under his arm, he enters a grocery-store of 
 the village, and abstractedly asks how strawberries are sell- 
 ing to-day ? Upon being reminded that fresh fruit is very 
 scarce in late December, he changes his purpose, and orders 
 two bottles of Bourbon flavoring-extract sent to his address. 
 And now he wishes to know what they are charging for 
 sponges? They tell him that he must seek those articles at 
 the druggist's, and he compromises by requesting that four 
 lemons be forwarded to his residence. Have they any good 
 Canton-flannel, suitable for a person of medium complex- 
 ion ? No ? Very well, then : send half a pound of cloves 
 to his house before night. 
 
 There are Ritualistic services at Saint Cow's, and he 
 renders the organ-accompaniments with such unusual free- 
 dom from reminiscences of the bacchanalian repertory, that 
 the Gospeller is impelled to compliment him as they leave 
 the cathedral. 
 
 "You're in fine tone to-day, Bumstead. Not quite so 
 much volume to your playing as sometimes, but still the 
 tune could be recognized."
 
 CLOVES FOR THREE. 153 
 
 " That, sir, " answers the organist, explainingly, " was be- 
 cause I held my right wrist firmly with my left hand, and 
 played mostly with only one finger. The method, I find, se- 
 cures steadiness of touch and precision in hitting the right 
 key." 
 
 "I should think it would, Mr. Bumstead. You seem to 
 be more free than ordinarily from .your occasional indisposi- 
 tion." 
 
 " I am less nervous, Mr. Simpson," is the reply. " I've 
 made up my mind to swear off, sir. I'll tell you what I'll 
 do, Simpson," continues the Ritualistic organist, with sud- 
 den confidential affability. " I'll make an agreement with 
 you, that whichever of us catches the other slipping-up first 
 in the New Year, shall be entitled to call for whatever he 
 wants." 
 
 " Bless me ! I don't understand," ejaculates the Gos- 
 peller. 
 
 "No matter, sir. No matter!" retorts the mystic of the 
 organ-loft, abruptly returning to his original gloom. " My 
 company awaits me, and I must go." 
 
 " Excuse me," cries the Gospeller, turning back a mo- 
 ment ; "but what's the matter with your coat?" 
 
 The other discovers the condition of his tucked-up coat- 
 tail with some fierceness of aspect, but immediately explains 
 that it must have been caused by his sitting upon a folding- 
 chair just before leaving home. 
 
 So, humming a savage tune in make-believe of no em- 
 7*
 
 154 CLOVES FOR THREE. 
 
 barrassment at all in regard to his recently disordered gar- 
 ment, Mr. Bumstead reaches his boarding-house. At the 
 door he waits long enough to examine his umbrella, with 
 scowling scrutiny, in every rib ; and then he enters. 
 
 Behind the red window-curtain of the room of the dinner- 
 party shines the light all night, while before it a wailing De- 
 cember gale rises higher and higher. Through leafless 
 branches, under eaves and against chimneys, the savage 
 wings of the storm are beaten, its long fingers ^caught, and 
 its giant shoulder heaved. Still, while nothing else seems 
 steady, that light behind the red curtain burns unextin- 
 guished ; the reason being that the window is closed and the 
 wind cannot get at it. 
 
 At morning comes a hush on nature ; the sun arises with 
 that innocent expression of countenance which causes some 
 persons to fancy that it resembles Mr. Greeley after shav- 
 ing ; and there is an evident desire on the part of the wind 
 to pretend that it has not been up all night. Fallen chim- 
 neys, however, expose the airy fraud, and the clock blown 
 completely out of Saint Cow's steeple reveals what a high 
 time there has been. 
 
 Christmas morning though it is, Mr. McLaughlin is sum- 
 moned from his family-circle of pigs, to mount the Ritua- 
 listic church and see what can be done ; and while a small 
 throng of early idlers a restaring up at him from Gospeller's 
 Gulch, Mr. Bumstead, with his coat on in the wrong way,
 
 CLOVES FOR THREE. 155 
 
 and a wet towel on his head, comes tearing in amongst 
 them like a congreve rocket. 
 
 "Where's them nephews? where's Montgomeries ? 
 where's that umbrella ? " howls Mr. Bumstead, catching the 
 first man he sees by the throat, and driving his hat over his 
 eyes. 
 
 "What's the matter, for goodness sake ?" calls the Gos- 
 peller from the window of his house. " Mr. Pendragon has 
 gone away on a walking match. Is not Mr. Drood at home 
 with you ? " 
 
 " Norrabit' v it," pants the organist, releasing his man's 
 throat, but still leaning with heavy affection upon him : 
 " m'nephews wen' out with'm f r li'lle walk er mir' night ; 
 an' 've norseen'm since." 
 
 There is no more looking up at Saint Cow's steeple with 
 a McLaughlin on it now. All eyes fix upon the agitated 
 Mr. Bumstead, as he wildly attempts to step over the tall 
 paling of the Gospeller's fence at a stride, and goes crashing 
 headlong through it instead.
 
 156 "SPOTTED." 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 " SPOTTED." 
 
 WHEN the bell of St. Cow's began ringing for Ritualistic 
 morning service, with a sound as of some incontinently 
 rambling daughter of the lacteal herd now near at hand in 
 cracked dissonance, as the wind blows hither ; now afar, in 
 tinkling distance, as the wind blows hence Montgomery 
 Pendragon was several miles away from Bumsteadville upon 
 his walking-match, with head already bumped like a pine- 
 apple, and face curiously swelled, from amateur practice with 
 the Indian Club. Being by that time cold enough for break- 
 fast, and willing to try the virtues of some soothing applica- 
 tion to his right eye, which, from a bruise just below it, was 
 nearly closed, the badly bandaged young man suspended his 
 murderous calisthenics at the door of a rustic hotel, and 
 there entered to secure a wayside meal. 
 
 The American country "hotel," or half-way house, is, per- 
 haps, one of the most depressing fictions ever encountered 
 by stage-passenger, or pedestrian afield : and depends so 
 exclusively upon the imagination for any earthly distinction 
 from the retired and neglected private hiding-place of some 
 decayed and morbid agricultural family, that only the conven-
 
 "SPOTTED." 157 
 
 tional swinging sign-board before the door saves the cogni- 
 zant mind from a painfully dense confusion. Smelling about 
 equally of eternal wash-day, casual cow-shed, and passing 
 feather-bed, it sustains a lank, middle-aged, gristly man to * 
 come out at the same hour every day and grunt unintelligibly 
 at the stage-driver, an expressionless boy in a. bandless 
 straw hat and no shoes, to stare blankly from the doorway at 
 the same old pole-horse he has mechanically thus inspected 
 from infancy, and one speckled hen of mature years to poise 
 observingly on single leg at the head of the shapeless black 
 dog asleep at the sunny end of the low wooden stoop. It 
 is the one rural spot on earth where a call for fresh eggs 
 evokes remonstrative and chronic denial ; where chickens 
 for dinner are sternly discredited as mere freaks of legendary 
 romance, and an order for a glass of new milk is incredu- 
 lously answered by a tumblerful of water which tastes of 
 whitewash-brush. Whosoever sleeps there of a night shall 
 be crowded by walls which rub off, into a faint feather-bed of 
 the flavor and consistency of geese used whole, and have 
 for his feverish breakfast in the morning a version of broiled 
 ham as racy of attic-salt as the rasher of Bacon's essays. 
 And to him who pays his bill there, ere he straggles weakly 
 forth to repair his shattered health by frenzied flight, shall be 
 given in change such hoary ten-cent shreds of former postal 
 currency as he has not hitherto deemed credible, sticking 
 together in inextricable conglomeration by such fragments 
 of fish-scales as he never before believed could be gathered
 
 158 "SPOTTED." 
 
 by handled small-money from palms not sufficiently washed 
 after piscatorial diversion. 
 
 It was in at a country hotel, then, that the young Southern 
 pedestrian turned for temporary rest and a meal, and pitiless 
 was the cross-examination instituted by the inevitable lank, 
 middle-aged, gristly man, before he could reconcile it with 
 his duty as a cautious public character to reveal the treasures 
 of the larder. Those bumps on the head, that swollen eye, 
 and nose, came did they? from swinging this here club 
 for exercise. Well, he wanted to know, now ! People gen- 
 erally used two of the clubs at once did they ? but one 
 was enough fora beginner. Well, he wanted to know, now! 
 Could he supply a couple of poached eggs and a cup of milk ? 
 No, young man ; but a slice of corned pork and a bowl of 
 tea were within the resources of the establishment. 
 
 When at length upon the road again, the bruised youth re- 
 solved to follow a cattle-track " across lots," for the greater 
 space in which to exercise with his Indian Club as he walked. 
 Like any other novice in the practice, he could not divest 
 his mind of the impression, that the frightful thumps he con- 
 tinually received, in twirling the merciless thing around and 
 behind his devoted head, were due to some kind of crowd- 
 ing influence from the boundaries on either side the way, and 
 it was to gain relief from such damaging contractions of area 
 that he left the highway for the wider wintry fields. Going 
 onward in these latter at an irregular pace ; sometimes mo- 
 mentarily stunned into a rangy stagger by a sounding blow
 
 "SPOTTED." 159 
 
 on the cerebrum or the cerebellum ; and again, irritated 
 almost to a run by contusion of shoulder-blade or funny- 
 bone ; he finally became aware that two men were following 
 him through the lots, and that with a closeness of attention 
 indicating more than common interest. To the perception 
 of his keenly sensitive Southern nature they at once became 
 ribald Yankee vandals, hoping for unseemly amusement 
 from the detection of some awkwardness in the Indian club- 
 play of a defeated but not conquered Southern Gentleman ; 
 and, in the haughty sectional pride of his contemptuous soul, 
 he indignantly determined to show not the least conscious- 
 ness of their disrespectful observation. Twirling the club 
 around and around his battered head with increasing velocity, 
 he smiled scornfully to himself, nor deigned a single back- 
 ward glance at the one of his two followers who approached 
 more rapidly than the other. He heard the hindermost say 
 to the foremost, " Leave him alone, I tell you, and he'll 
 knock himself down in a minute," and, in a passionately 
 reckless effort of sheer bravado to catch the club from one 
 hand with the other while it yet circled swiftly over his skull, 
 he accidentally brought the ungovernable weapon into tre- 
 mendous contact with the top of his head, and dashed him- 
 self violently to the earth. 
 
 " Didn't I tell you he'd do it?" cried the hindermost of 
 the two strangers, coming up ; while the other coolly seated 
 himself upon the prostrated victim. "These here Indian 
 clubs always throw a man if he ain't got muscle in his arms ;
 
 100 "SPOTTED." 
 
 and this here little Chivalry has got arms like a couple of 
 canes." 
 
 " Arise from me instantly, fellow ! You're sitting upon 
 my breast-pin," exclaimed Montgomery to the person sitting 
 upon him. 
 
 They suffered him to regain his feet, which he did with ex- 
 treme hauteur, and surveyed his bumped head and swollen 
 countenance with undisguised wonder. 
 
 " How dare you treat a Southerner in this way ? " con- 
 tinued the young man, his head aching inexpressibly. " I 
 thought the war was over long ago. If money is your ob- 
 ject, seek out a citizen of some other section than mine ; for 
 the South is out of funds just now, owing to the military, 
 outrages of Northern scorpions." 
 
 "We're constables, Mr. Pendragon," was the reply, "and 
 it is our duty to take you back to the main road, where a 
 couple of your friends are waiting for you." 
 
 Staring from one to the other in speechless wonder at 
 what this fresh outrage upon the down-trodden South could 
 mean, Montgomery allowed them to replace his Indian club 
 in his hand, and conduct him back to the public road ; where, 
 to his increased bewilderment, he found Gospeller Simpson 
 and the Ritualistic organist. 
 
 " What is the matter, gentlemen ? " he asked, in great 
 agitation : "must I take the oath of Loyalty ; or am I re- 
 quired by Yankee philanthropy to marry a negress ? " 
 
 At the sound of his voice, Mr. Bumstead left the shoulder
 
 "SPOTTED." 161 
 
 of Mr. Simpson, upon which he had been leaning with 
 great weight, and, coming forward in three long skips, de- 
 liberately wound his right hand in the speaker's neck- tie. 
 
 "Where are those nephews where' s that umbrella?" 
 demanded the organist, with considerable ferocity. 
 
 " Nephews ! umbrella !" gasped the other. 
 
 " The Edwins bone handle," explained Mr. Bumstead, 
 lurching toward his captive. 
 
 " Mr. Montgomery," interposed the Gospeller, sadly, "Mr. 
 Drood went out with you last night, late, from his estimable 
 uncle's lodgings, and has not been seen since. Where is 
 he?" 
 
 "He went back into the house again, sir, after I had 
 walked him up and down the road a few times." 
 
 " Well, then, where's that umbrella ?" roared the organist, 
 who seemed quite beside himself with grief and excitement. 
 
 " Mr. Bumstead, pray be more calm," implored the Rev- 
 erend Octavius. 
 
 "Mr. Montgomery, this agitated gentleman's nephew has 
 been mysteriously missing ever since he went out with you 
 at midnight : also an alpaca umbrella." 
 
 " Upon my honor, I know nothing of either," ejaculated 
 the unhappy Southerner. 
 
 Mr. Bumstead, still holding him by the neck-tie, cast a 
 fiery and unsettled glance around at nothing in particular ; 
 then ground his teeth audibly, and scowled.
 
 162 "SPOTTED." 
 
 11 My boy's missing ! " he said, hissingly. " Y'understand? 
 he's missing. I must insist upon searching the prisoner." 
 
 In the presence of Gospeller and constables, and loftily 
 regardless alike of their startled wonder and the young man's 
 protests, the maddened uncle of the lost Drood deliberately 
 examined all the captive's pockets in succession. In one 
 of them was a penknife, which, after thoughtfully trying it 
 upon his pink nails, he abstractedly placed in his own pocket. 
 Searching next the overwhelmed Southerner's travelling- 
 satchel, he found in it an apple, which he first eyed with 
 marked suspicion, and then bit largely into, as though half 
 expecting to find in it some traces of his nephew. 
 
 " I'll keep this suspicious fruit," he remarked, with a hol- 
 low laugh ; and, bearing unreservedly upon the nearer arm 
 of the hapless Montgomery, and eating audibly as he surged 
 onward, he started on the return march for Bumsteadville. 
 
 Not a word more was spoken until, after a cool Christmas 
 stroll of about eight and a quarter miles, the whole party stood 
 before Judge Sweeney, in the house of the latter. There, 
 when the story had been sorrowfully repeated by the Gospeller, 
 Mr. Bumstead exhibited the core of the apple, and tickled the 
 magistrate almost into hysterics by whispering very closely 
 in his ear, that it was a core curiously similar to that of the 
 last apple eaten by his nephew ; and, having been found in 
 an apple from the prisoner's satchel, might be useful in evi- 
 dence. Judge Sweeney wished to know if Mr. Pendragon 
 had any political relations, or could influence any votes ;
 
 "SPOTTED, 1 ' 1 163 
 
 and, upon being answered in the negative, eyed the young 
 man sternly, and said that appearances were decidedly 
 against him. He could not exactly commit him to jail with- 
 out accusation, although the apple-core and his political un- 
 importance subjected him to grave suspicion ; but he should 
 hold the Gospeller responsible for the youth's appearance 
 at any time when his presence should be required. Mr. 
 Bumstead, whose eyes were becoming very glassy, then sug- 
 gested that a handbill should be at once printed and circu- 
 lated, to the effect that there had been Lost, or Stolen, two 
 Black Alpaca Nephews, about five feet eight inches high, 
 with a bone handle, light eyes and hair, and whalebone ribs, 
 and that if the said Edwin would return, with a brass ferule 
 slightly worn, the finder should receive earnest thanks, and 
 be seen safely to his home by J. Bumstead. Mr. Gospeller 
 Simpson and Judge Sweeney agreed that a handbill should 
 be issued : but thought it might confuse the public mind if 
 the missing nephew and the lost umbrella were not kept 
 separate. 
 
 " Has either 'f yougen'l'men ever been 'n Uncle ?" asked 
 the Ritualistic organist, with dark intensity. 
 
 They shook their heads. 
 
 " Then" said Mr. Bumstead, with great force, " THEN, 
 genTmen, you-knownor-wahritis-to-lose-'n-umbrella ! " 
 
 Before they could decide in their weaker minds what the 
 immediate connection was, he had left them, at a sharp slant,
 
 164: " SPOTTED." 
 
 in great intellectual disturbance, and was passing out through 
 the entry-way with both his hands against the wall. 
 
 Early next morning, while young Mr. Pendragon was 
 locked in his room, startled and wretched, the inconsolable 
 uncle of Edwin Drood was energetically ransacking every 
 part of Bumsteadville for the missing man. House after 
 house he visited, like some unholy inspector : peering up 
 chimneys, prodding under carpets, and staying a long time 
 in cellars where there was cider. Not a bit of paper or 
 cloth blew along the turnpike but he eagerly picked it up, 
 searched in it with the most anxious care, and finally placed 
 it in his hat. Going to the pond, with a borrowed hatchet, 
 he cut a hole in the thick ice, lost the hatchet, and, after 
 bathing his head in the water, declared that his alpaca 
 nephew was not there. Finding an antique flask in one 
 of his pockets, he gradually removed all the liquid contents 
 therefrom with a tubular straw, but still could discern no 
 . traces of Edwin Drood. All the live-long day he prosecuted 
 his researches, to the great discompo sure of the populace ; 
 and, with whitewash all over the back of his coat, and very 
 dingy hands, had just seated himself at his own fireside in 
 the evening, when Mr. Dibble came in. 
 
 " This is a strange disappearance," said Mr. Dibble. 
 
 " And it was good as new," groaned the organist, with but 
 one eye open. 
 
 " Almost new ! what was ? " 
 
 "Th'urnbrella."
 
 "SPOTTED." 165 
 
 " Mr. Bumstead," returned the old man, coldly, " I am 
 not talking of an umbrella, but of Mr. Edwin." 
 
 " Yesh, I know," said the uncle. " Awright. I'm li'lle 
 sleepy ; tha'sall." 
 
 " I've just seen my ward, Mr. Bumstead." 
 
 "She puerwell, shir?" 
 
 "She is not pretty well. Nor is Miss Pendragon." 
 
 "I'm vahr* sorry," said Mr. Bumstead, just audibly. 
 
 "Miss Pendragon scorns the thought of any blame for her 
 brother," continued Mr. Dibble, eyeing the fire. 
 
 "It had a bun bone handle," muttered the other, 
 dreamily. Then, with a momentary brightening, "'Scuse 
 me, shir : whah'll y 3 take ? " 
 
 " Nothing, sir ! " was the sharp response. " I'm not at 
 all thirsty. But there is something more to tell you. At 
 the last meeting of my ward and your nephew, just before 
 your dinner here, they concluded to break their engagment 
 of marriage, for certain good reasons, and thenceforth be 
 only brother and sister to each other." 
 
 Starting forward in his chair, with partially opened eyes, 
 the white-washed and dingy Mr. Bumstead managed to get 
 off his hat, covering himself with a bandanna handkerchief 
 and innumerable old pieces of paper and cloth, as he did so, 
 from head to foot ; made a feeble effort to throw it at the 
 aged lawyer ; and, then, chair and all, tumbled forward with 
 a crash to the rug, where he lay in a refreshing sleep.
 
 166 AVUNCULAR DEVOTION. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 AVUNCULAR DEVOTION. 
 
 HAVING literally fallen asleep from his chair to the rug, J. 
 Bumstead, Esquire, was found to have reached such an 
 extraordinary depth in slumber, that Mr. and Mrs. Smythe, 
 his landlord and landlady, who were promptly called in by 
 Mr. Dibble, had at first some fear that they should never be 
 able to drag him out again. In pursuance, however, of a 
 mode of treatment commended to their judgment by frequent 
 previous practice with the same patient, the good couple 
 poured a pitcher of water over his fallen head ; hauled him 
 smartly up and down the room, first by a hand and then by 
 a foot ; singed his whiskers with a hot poker, held him head- 
 downward for a time, and tried various other approved 
 allopathic remedies. Seeing that he still slept profoundly, 
 though appearing, by occasional movements of his arms, to 
 entertain certain passing dreams of single combats, the quick 
 womanly wit of Mrs. Smythe finally hit upon the homoeopathic 
 expedient of softly shaking his familiar antique flask at his 
 right ear. Scarcely had the soft, liquid sound therefrom re- 
 sulting been addressed for a minute to the auricular orifice, 
 when a singularly pleasing smile wreathed the countenance
 
 AVUNCULAR DEVOTION. 167 
 
 of the Ritualistic organist, his eyelids flew up like the spring- 
 covers of two valuable hunting-case watches, and he suddenly 
 arose to a sitting position upon the rug, and began feeling 
 around for the bed-clothes. 
 
 " There ! " cried Mrs. Smythe, greatly affected by his 
 pathetic expression of countenance, " you're all right now, 
 sir. How worn-out you must have been, to sleep so ! " 
 
 "Do you always go to sleep with such alarming sudden- 
 ness?" asked Mr. Dibble. 
 
 " When I have to go anywhere, I make it a rule to go at 
 once : similarly, when going to sleep," was the answer. 
 " Excuse me, however, for keeping you waiting, Mr. Dibble. 
 We've had quite a rain, sir." 
 
 His hair, collar, and shoulders being very wet from the 
 water which had been poured upon him during his slumber, 
 Mr. Bumstead, in his present newly-awake frame of mind, 
 believed that a hard shower had taken place, and thereupon 
 turned moody. 
 
 "We've had quite a rain, sir, since I saw you last," he 
 repeated, gloomily, "and I am freshly reminded of my irre- 
 parable loss." 
 
 " Such an open, spring-like character ! " apostrophized the 
 lawyer, staring reflectively into the grate. \ 
 
 " Always open when it rained, and closing with a spring," 
 said Mr. Bumstead, in soft abstraction lost. 
 
 " WJw closed with a spring?" queried the elder man, 
 irascibly.
 
 168 AVUNCULAR DEVOTION. 
 
 " The umbrella," sobbed John Bumstead. 
 
 " I was speaking of your nephew, sir ! " was Mr. Dibble's 
 impatient explanation. 
 
 Mr. Bumstead stared at him sorrowfully for a moment, 
 and then requested Mrs. Smythe to step to a cupboard in 
 the next room and immediately pour him out a bottle of 
 soda-water which she should find there. 
 
 "Won't you try some?" he asked the lawyer, rising 
 limply to his feet when the beverage was brought, and drink- 
 ing it with considerable noise. 
 
 " No, thank you," returned Mr. Dibble. 
 
 "As you please, then," said the organist, resignedly. 
 " Only, if you have a headache, don't blame me. (Mr. and 
 Mrs. Smythe, you may place a few cloves where I can get 
 them, and retire.) What you have told me, Mr. Dibble, 
 concerning the breaking of the engagement between your 
 ward and my nephew, relieves my mind of a load. As a 
 right-thinking man, I can no longer suspect you of having 
 killed Edwin Drood." 
 
 " Suspect ME ? " screamed the aged lawyer, almost leaping 
 into the air. 
 
 " Calm yourself," observed Mr. Bumstead, quietly, the 
 while ife ate a sedative clove. " I say that I can not longer 
 suspect you. I can not think that a person of your age 
 would wantonly destroy a human life merely to obtain an 
 umbrella." 
 
 Absolutely purple in the face, Mr. Dibble snatched his hat
 
 AVUNCULAR DEVOTION. 169 
 
 from a chair just as the Ritualistic organist was about to sit 
 upon it, and was on the point of hurrying wrathfully from the 
 room, when the entrance of Gospeller Simpson arrested him. 
 
 Noting his agitation, Mr. Bumstead instantly resolved to 
 clear him from suspicion in the new-comer's mind also. 
 
 "Reverend Sir," he said to the Gospeller, quickly, "in 
 this sad affair we must be just, as well as vigilant. . I believe 
 Mr. Dibble to be as innocent as ourselves. Whatever may 
 be his failings so far as liquor is concerned, I wholly acquit 
 him of all guilty knowledge of my nephew and umbrella." 
 
 Too apoplectic with suffocating emotions to speak, Mr. 
 Dibble foamed slightly at the mouth and tore out a lock or 
 two of his hair. 
 
 " And I believe that my unhappy pupil, Mr. Pendragon, 
 is as guiltless," responded the puzzled Gospeller. " I do not 
 deny that he had a quarrel with Mr. Drood, in the earlier 
 part of their acquaintance ; but, as you, Mr. Bumstead, 
 yourself, admit, their meeting at the Christmas-eve dinner 
 was amicable ; as I firmly believe their last mysterious part- 
 ing to have been." 
 
 The organist raised his fine head from the shadow of his 
 right hand, in which it had rested for a moment, and said, 
 gravely : "I cannot deny, gentlemen, that I have had my 
 terrible distrusts of you all. Even now, while, in my deep- 
 est heart, I release Mr. Dibble and Mr. Pendragon from all 
 suspicion, I cannot entirely rid my mind of the impression 
 that you, Mr. Simpson, in an hour when, from undue indul- 
 8
 
 170 , AVUNCULAR DEVOTION'. 
 
 gence in stimulants, you were not wholly yourself, may have 
 been tempted, by the superior fineness of the alpaca, to slay 
 a young man inexpressibly dear to us all." 
 
 " Great heavens, Mr. Bumstead ! " panted the Gospeller, 
 livid with horror, " I never" 
 
 " Not a word, sir ! " interrupted the Ritualistic organist, 
 " not a word, Reverend sir, or it may be used against you 
 at your trial." 
 
 Pausing not to see whether the equally overwhelmed old 
 lawyer followed him, the horribly astounded Gospeller burst 
 precipitately from the house in wild dismay, and was pres- 
 ently hurrying past the pauper burial-ground. Whether he 
 had been drawn to that place by some one of the many 
 mystic influences moulding the fates of men, or because it 
 happened to be on his usual way home, let students of 
 psychology and topography decide. Thereby he was hurry- 
 ing, at any rate, when a shining object lying upon the ground 
 beside the broken fence, caused him to stop suddenly and 
 pick up the glittering thing. It was an oroide watch, marked 
 E. D. ; and, a few steps further on, a coppery-looking seal- 
 ring also attracted the finder's grasp. With these baubles in 
 his hand the genial clergyman was walking more slowly on- 
 ward, when it abruptly occurred to him, that his possession 
 of such property might possibly subject him to awkward con- 
 sequences if he did not immediately have somebody arrested 
 in advance. Perspiring freely at the thought, he hurried 
 to his house, and, there securing the company of Montgomery
 
 AVUNCULAR DEVOTION. 171 
 
 Pendragon, conveyed his beloved pupil at once before Judge 
 Sweeney, and made affidavit of finding the jewelry. Th". 
 jeweller, who had wound Edwin Drood's watch for him 01 
 the day of the dinner, promptly identified the timepiece b} 
 the innumerable scratches around the keyhole ; Mr. Bums- 
 tead, though at first ecstatic with the idea that the seal-ring 
 was a ferule from an umbrella, at length allowed himself to 
 be persuaded into a gloomy recognition of it as a part of his 
 nephew, and Montgomery was detained in custody for further 
 revelations. 
 
 News of the event circulating, the public mind of Bums- 
 teadville lost no time in deploring the incorrigible depravity 
 of Southern character, and recollecting several horrors of 
 human Slavery. It was now clearly remembered that there 
 had once been rumors of terrible cruelties by a Pendragon 
 family to an aged colored man of great piety ; who, because 
 he incessantly sang hymns in the cotton-field, was sent to a 
 field farther from the Pendragon mansion, and ultimately 
 died. Citizens reminded each other, that when, during the 
 rebellion, a certain Pendragon of the celebrated Southern 
 Confederacy met a former religious chattel of his confronting 
 him with a bayonet in the loyal ranks, and immediately 
 afterwards felt a cold, tickling sensation under one of his 
 ribs, he drew a pistol upon the member of the injured race, 
 who subsequently died in Ohio of fever and ague. What 
 wonder was it, then, that this young Pendragon with an 
 Indian club and a swelled head should secretly slaughter the
 
 172 AVUNCULAR DEVOTION. 
 
 nephew and appropriate the umbrella of one of the most 
 loyal and devoted Ritualists that ever sent a substitute to 
 battle ? In the mighty metropolis, too, the Great Dailies 
 those ponderous engines of varied and inaccurate intelli- 
 gence published detailed and mistaken reports of the 
 whole affair, and had subtle editorial theories as to the 
 nature of the crime. The Sun, after giving a cut of an old- 
 fashioned parlor-grate as a diagram of Mr. Bumstead's house, 
 said : " The retention of Mr. Fish as Secretary of State 
 " by the present venal Administration, and the official coun- 
 tenance otherwise corruptly given to friends of Spanish 
 " tyranny who- do not take the Sun, are plainly among the 
 " current encouragements to such crime as that in the full re- 
 " porting of which to-day the Sun's advertisements are 
 " crowded down to a single page, as usual. Judge Connolly, 
 " after walking all the way from Yorkville, agrees with the 
 " Sun in believing, that something more than an umbrella 
 " tempted this young Montmorency Padregon to waylay 
 " Edwin Wood. To-morrow we shall give the public still 
 " further exclusive revelations, such as the immense circula- 
 " tion of the New York Sun enables us especially to obtain, 
 " On this, as upon every occasion of the publication of the 
 " Sun, we shall leave out columns upon columns of profit- 
 "able advertising, in order that no reader of the Sun shall 
 " be stinted in his criminal news. The Sun (price two cents) 
 "has never yet been bought by advertisers, and never will 
 " be." The Tribune said : " What time the reader can spare
 
 AVUNCULAR DEVOTION. 173 
 
 " from perusing our special dispatches concerning the pro- 
 gress of Smalleyism* in Europe, shall, undoubtedly, be 
 "given to our female reporter's account of the alleged 
 " tragedy at Bumperville. There are reasons of manifest 
 "propriety to restrain us, as superior journalists, from the 
 " sensational theorizing indulged by editors choosing to ex- 
 " pend more care and money upon local news than upon 
 "European rumors; but we may not injudiciously hazard 
 " the assumption, that, were the police under any other than 
 " Democratic domination, such a murder as that alleged to 
 "have been committed by Manton Penjohnson on Baldwin 
 " Good had not been possible. Penjohnson, it shall be 
 " noticed, is a Southerner, while young Good was strongly 
 "Northern in sentiment; and it requires no straining of a 
 " point to trace in these known facts a sectional antagonism 
 " to which even a long war has not yielded full sanguinary 
 "satiation." The World said: " Acerrima proximorum 
 "odia; and, under the present infamous Radical abuse of 
 " empire, the hatred between brothers, first fostered by the 
 " eleutheromaniacs of Abolitionism, is bearing its bitter fruit 
 " of private assassination at last. Somewhere amongst our 
 " loci communes of to-day may be found a report of the sup- 
 " posed death, at Hampsteadville (not Bumperville, as a 
 " radical contemporary has it), of a young Northerner named 
 " Goodwin Blood, at the hands of a Southern gentleman be-. 
 
 * " Mr. Smalley " was the amusing name of a London reporter to this entertaining 
 journal, which, it is believed, had hopes, at one time, of his selection for the vacant 
 throne of Spain.
 
 -174: AVUNCULAR DEVOTION. 
 
 "longing to the stately old Southern family of Pentorrens. 
 " The Pentorrens are related, by old cavalier stock, to the 
 " Dukes of Mandeville, whose present ducal descendant 
 " combines the elegance of an Esterhazy with the intellect 
 " of an Argyle. That a scion of such blood as this has re- 
 "duced a fellow-being to a condition of inanimate proto- 
 " plasm, is to be regretted for his sake ; but more for that of 
 " a country in which the philosophy of Comte finds in a cor- 
 " rupt radical pantarchy all-sufficient first-cause of whatso- 
 " ever is rotten in the State of Denmark." The Times said : 
 "We give no details of the Burnstableville tragedy to-day, 
 " not being willing to pander to a vitiated public taste ; but 
 " shall do so to-morrow." 
 
 After reading these articles in the Great Dailies with con- 
 siderable distraction, and inferring therefrom, that at least 
 three different young Southerners had killed three different 
 young Northerners in three different places on Christmas- 
 Eve, Judge Sweeney had a rush of blood to the brain, and 
 discharged Montgomery Pendragon as a person of undistin- 
 guishable identity. But, when set at large, the helpless 
 youth could not turn a "Corner without meeting some bald- 
 headed reporter who raised the cry of " Stop thief ! " if he 
 sought to fly, and, if he paused, interviewed him in a magis- 
 terial manner, and almost tearfully implored him to Confess 
 his crime in time for the Next Edition. 
 
 Father Dean, Ritual Rector of St. Cow's, meeting Gos-
 
 AVUNCULAR DEVOTION. 175 
 
 peller Simpson upon one of their daily strolls through the 
 snow, said to him : 
 
 " This young man, your pupil, has sinned, it appears ; and 
 a Ritualistic church, Mr. Gospeller, is no sanctuary for sin- 
 ners." 
 
 "I cannot believe that the sin is his, Holy Father," 
 answered the Reverend Octavius, respectfully : " but, even 
 if it is, and he is remorseful for it, should not our Church 
 cover him with her wings ? " 
 
 ''There are no wings to St. Cow's yet," returned the 
 Father, coldly, " only the main building ; and that is too 
 small to harbor any sinner who has not sufficient means to 
 build a wing or two for himself." 
 
 " Then," said the Gospeller, bowing his head and speaking 
 slowly, " I suppose he must go to the Other Church." 
 
 " What Other Church." 
 
 The Gospeller raised his hat and spoke reverently : 
 
 " That which is all of God's world outside this little church 
 of ours. That in which the Altar is any humble spot 
 pressed by the knees of the Unfortunate. That in which the 
 priest is whoso doeth a good, unselfish deed, even if in the 
 shadow of the scaffold. That in which the anthem of visible 
 charity for an erring brother sinks into the listening soul an 
 echo of an unseen Father's pity and forgiveness, and the 
 choral service is the music of kind words to all who ever 
 found but unkind words before."
 
 176 AVUNCULAR DEVOTION. 
 
 " You must mean the Church of the Pooritans," said the 
 Ritual Rector. 
 
 So, Montgomery Pendragon went forth from Gospeller's 
 Gulch to seek harbor where he might ; and, a day or two 
 afterwards, Mr. Bumstead exhibited to Mr. Simpson the fol- 
 lowing entry in his famous Diary : 
 
 " No signs of that umbrella yet. Since the discovery of 
 the watch and seal-ring, I am satisfied that my umbrella, only, 
 was the temptation of the murderer. I now swear that I 
 will no more discuss either my nephew or my umbrella with 
 any living soul, until I have found once more the familiar 
 boyish form and alpaca canopy, or brought vengeance upon 
 him through whom I am nephewless and without protection 
 in the rain."
 
 INSURANCE AND ASSURANCE. 177 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 INSURANCE AND ASSURANCE. 
 
 Six months had come and gone and done it ; the weather 
 was as inordinately hot as it had before been intolerably 
 cold ; and the Reverend Octavius Simpson stood waiting, 
 in the gorgeous office of the Boreal Life Insurance Com- 
 pany,* New York, for the appearance of Mr. Melancthon 
 Schenck. 
 
 Having been directed by a superb young clerk, who 
 parted his hair in the middle, to "just stand out of the pas- 
 sage-way and amuse yourself with one of our Schedules for 
 awhile," until the great life- Agent should come in, the Gos- 
 peller read a few schedulistic pages, proving, that if a person 
 had his life Insured at the age of Thirty, and paid his pre- 
 miums regularly until he was Eighty-five, the cost to him 
 and profit to the Company would, probably, be much more 
 than the amount he had insured for. It must, then, be evi- 
 dent to him, that, upon his death, at Ninety, the Company 
 would have received, in all, sufficient funds from him to pay 
 the full amount of his Policy to the lady whom he had al- 
 ways introduced as his wife, and still retain enough to 
 
 * In the original, the "chief offices of the Haven of Philanthropy." 
 
 8*
 
 178 'INSURANCE AND ASSURANCE. 
 
 declare a handsome Dividend for itself. Such was the 
 sound business-principle upon which the Boreal was con- 
 ducted ; and the merest child must perceive, that only the 
 extremely unlikely coincidence of at least four insurers all 
 dying before Eighty-five could endanger the solvency of the 
 beneficent institution. Having mastered this convincing 
 argument, and become greatly confused by its plausibility, 
 Mr. Simpson next gave some attention to what was going on 
 around him in the Office, and allowed his overwrought mind 
 to relax cheerfully in contemplation thereof. One of human 
 nature's peculiarities was quite amusingly exemplified in the 
 different treatment accorded to callers who were "safe 
 risks," and to those who where not. Thus the whisper of 
 " Here comes old Tubercles, again ! " was prevalent amongst 
 the clerks upon the entrance of a very thin, narrow-chested 
 old gentleman, whom they informed, with considerable hu- 
 mor, that he was only wasting hours which should be spent 
 with a spiritual adviser, in his useless attempts to take out a 
 Policy in that office. The Boreal couldn't insure men who 
 ought to be upon their dying beds instead of coughing 
 around Insurance offices. Ha, ha, ha ! Another gentle- 
 man, florid of countenance, and absolutely without neck, 
 was quickly checked in the act of giving his name at one of 
 the desks ; one clerk desiring another clerk to look, under 
 the head of " A," in his book, for " Apoplexy? and let this 
 man see that we can't take such a risk as he is on any 
 terms. A third caller, who really looked quite healthy
 
 INSURANCE AND ASSURANCE. 179 
 
 except around the eyes, was also assured that he need not 
 call again "Because, you see," explained the clerkly wag, 
 "it's no go for you to try to play your Bright's Disease on 
 us/" When, however, the applicant was a robustious, 
 long-necked, fresh individual, he was almost lifted from his 
 feet in the rush of obliging young Boreals to show him into 
 the room of the Medical Examiner; and when, now and 
 then, an agent, or an insurance-broker, came dragging in, 
 by the collar, some Safe Risk, just captured, there was an 
 actual contest to see who should be most polite to the pant- 
 ing but healthy stranger, and obtain his private biography 
 for the consideration of the Company. 
 
 The Reverend Octavius studied these sprightly little 
 scenes with unspeakable interest until the arrival of Mr. 
 Schenck, and then followed that popular benefactor into his 
 private office with the air of a man who had gained a height- 
 ened admiration for his species. 
 
 " So you have come to your senses at last ! " said Mr. 
 Schenck, hastily drawing his visitor toward a window in the 
 side-room to which they had retired. " Let me look at 
 your tongue, sir." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " asked the Gospeller, endeavoring 
 to draw back. 
 
 " I mean what I say. Let me see your tongue. 
 Or, stop ! " said Mr. Schenck, seized with a new thought, 
 " I may as well examine your general organization first." 
 And, flying at the astounded Ritualistic clergyman, he had
 
 180 INSURANCE AND ASSURANCE. 
 
 sounded his lungs, caused a sharp pain in his liver, and felt 
 his pulse, before the latter could phrase an intelligent protest. 
 
 " You may die at any moment, and probably will," con- 
 cluded Mr. Schenck, thoughtfully ; " but still, on the score 
 of friendship, we'll give you a Policy for a reasonable 
 amount, and take the chance of being able to compromise 
 with your mother on a certain per centage after the funeral." 
 
 " I don't want any of your plagued policies ! " exclaimed 
 the irritated Gospeller, pushing away the hand striving to 
 feel his pulse again. 
 
 " As you have expressed a desire to resign the guardian- 
 ship of your wards, Mr. and Miss Pendragon, and I have 
 agreed to accept it, my purpose in calling here is to obtain 
 such statement of your account with those young people as 
 you may be disposed to render." 
 
 " Ah ! " returned the other, in sullen disappointment. 
 " That is all, eh ? Allow me to inform you, then, that I 
 have cancelled the Boreal policies which have been granted 
 to the Murderer and his sister ; and allow me also to re- 
 mark, that a dying clergyman like yourself might employ his 
 last moments better than encouraging a Southern destroyer 
 of human life." 
 
 " I do not, cannot believe that Montgomery Pendragon is 
 guilty," said Mr. Simpson, firmly. " Having his full confi- 
 dence, and thoroughly knowing his nature, I am sure of his 
 innocence, let appearances be what they may. Conse- 
 quently, it is my determination to befriend him."
 
 INSURANCE AND ASSURANCE. 181 
 
 " And you will not have your life insured ? " 
 " I will not, sir. Please stop bothering me." 
 " And you call yourself a clergyman ! " cried Mr. Schenck, 
 with intense scorn. "You pretend to be a Ritualistic spir- 
 itual guide ; you champion people who slay the innocent 
 and steal devout men's umbrellas ; and yet you do not scru- 
 ple to leave your own high-church Mother entirely without 
 provision at your death. In such a case," continued the 
 speaker, rising, while his manner grew ferocious with deter- 
 mination "in such a case, all other arguments having 
 failed, my duty is plain. You shall not leave this room, 
 sir, until you have promised to take out a Boreal Policy." 
 
 He started, as he spoke, for the door of the private office, 
 intending to lock it and remove the key ; but the unhappy 
 Ritualist, fathoming his design, was there before him, and 
 tore open the door for his own speedy egress. 
 
 " Mr. Schenck," observed the Gospeller, turning and 
 pausing in the doorway, " you allow your business energy 
 to violate all the most delicate amenities of private life, and 
 will yet drive some maddened mortal to such resentful use 
 of pistol, knife, or poker, as your mourning family shall 
 sincerely deplore. The articles on Free Trade and Protec- 
 tion in the daily papers have hitherto been regarded as the 
 climax of all that utterly wearies the long-suffering human 
 soul ; but I tell you, as a candid friend, that they are but 
 little more depressing and jading to the vital powers than 
 your unceasing mention of life-insurance."
 
 182 INSURANCE AND ASSURANCE. 
 
 "These are strong words, sir," answered Mr. Schenck, 
 incredulously. "The editorial articles to which you refer 
 are considered the very drought of journalism ; those by 
 Mr. Greeley, especially, being so dry that they are posi- 
 tively dangerous reading without a tumbler of water." 
 
 " You brought the comparison upon yourself, Mr. Schenck. 
 Good-day." 
 
 Thus speaking, the Reverend Octavius Simpson hurried 
 nervously from the Boreal temple ; not fairly satisfied that 
 he had escaped a Policy until he found himself safely 
 emerged on Broadway and turning a corner toward Nassau 
 Street. Reaching the latter by-way, after a brief interval 
 of sharp walking, he entered a building nearly opposite that 
 in which was the office of Mr. Dibble ; and, having ascended 
 numerous flights of twilight stairs to the lofty floor imme- 
 diately over the saddened rooms occupied by a great Amer- 
 ican Comic Paper, came into a spidery garret where lurked 
 Montgomery Pendragon. 
 
 " Hard at it ? " he asked, approaching a rickety table at 
 which sat the persecuted Southerner, reading a volume of 
 Hoyle's Games. 
 
 " My only friend ! " ejaculated the lonely reader, hurriedly 
 covering the book with an arm. " I am, as you see, study- 
 ing law here, all alone with these silent friends." 
 
 He waved his thin hand toward a rude shelf on which 
 were several well-worn City Directories of remote dates, 
 volumes of Patent Office Reports for the years '57 and '59,
 
 INSURANCE AND ASSURANCE. 183 
 
 a copy of Mr. Greeley's Essays on Political Economy, an 
 edition of the Corporation Manual, the Coast Survey for 
 1850, and other inflaming statistical works, which had been 
 sent to him in his exile by thoughtful friends who had no 
 place to keep them. 
 
 " Cheer up, brother ! " exhorted the good Gospeller, " I'll 
 send you some nice theological volumes to add to your 
 library, which will then be complete. Be not despondent 
 All will come right yet." 
 
 " I reckon it will, in time," returned the youth, moodily. 
 " I suppose you know that my sister is determined to come 
 Jiere and stay with me ? " 
 
 " Yes, Montgomery, I have heard of her noble resolution. 
 May her conversation prove sustaining to you." 
 
 "There will be enough of it, I reckon, to sustain half a 
 dozen people," was the despondent answer. " This is a 
 gloomy place for her, Mr. Simpson, situated, as it is, imme- 
 diately over the offices of a Comic Paper." 
 
 " And do- you think she would care for cheerful acces- 
 sories while you are in sorrow?" asked the Gospeller, re- 
 proachfully. 
 
 "But it is so mournful that floor below," persisted the 
 brother, doubtfully. " If there were only something the 
 least bit more lively down there say an Undertaker's." 
 
 "A Sister's Love can lessen the most crushing gloom, 
 Montgomery." 
 
 A silent pressure of the hand rewarded this encouraging
 
 184: INSURANCE AND ASSURANCE, 
 
 reminder of sanguine friendship; and, after the depressed 
 law-student had promised the Reverend Octavius to walk 
 with him as far as the ferry in a few moments, the said Rev- 
 erend departed for a hasty call upon the old lawyer across 
 the street. 
 
 Benignant Mr. Dibble sat near a front window of his 
 office, and received the visitor with legal serenity. 
 
 "And how does our young friend enjoy himself, Mr. 
 Simpson, in the retreat which I had the honor of commend- 
 ing to you for him ? " 
 
 The visitor replied, that his young friend's retreat, by its 
 very loftiness, was calculated to inspire any occupant with a 
 room-attic affection. 
 
 " And how, and when, and where did you leave Mr. 
 Bumstead ? " inquired Mr. Dibble. 
 
 " As well as could be expected ; this morning, at Bum- 
 steadville," said the Gospeller, with answer as terse and com- 
 prehensive as the question. 
 
 " Because," added the lawyer, quickly, " there he is, 
 now, coming out of a refreshment saloon immediately under 
 the building in which our young friend takes refuge." 
 
 " So he is ! " exclaimed the surprised Mr. Simpson, 
 staring through the window. 
 
 There, indeed, as indicated, was the Ritualistic organist ; 
 apparently eating cloves from the palm of his right hand as 
 he emerged from the place of refreshment, and wearing a 
 linen coat so long and a straw hat of such vast brim, that his
 
 INSURANCE AND ASSURANCE. 185 
 
 sex was not obvious at first glance. While the two behold- 
 ers gazed, in unspeakable fascination, Mr. Bumstead sud- 
 denly made a wild dart at a passing elderly man with a dark 
 sun-umbrella, ecstatically tore the latter from his grasp, and 
 passionately tapped him on the head with it. Then, before 
 the astounded elderly man could recover from his amaze- 
 ment, or regain the gold spectacles which had been knocked 
 from his nose, the umbrella, after an instant of keen exam- 
 ination, was restored to him with a humble, almost abjectly 
 apologetic air, and Mr. Bumstead hurried back, evidently 
 crushed, into the refreshment saloon. 
 
 " His brain must be turned by the loss of his relative," 
 murmured the Gospeller, pitifully. 
 
 " His umbrellative, you mean," said Mr. Dibble. 
 
 When these two gentlemen had parted, and the Reverend 
 Octavius Simpson had been escorted to the ferry, as prom- 
 ised, by Montgomery Pendragon, the latter, after a long, 
 insane walk about the city, with the thermometer at 98 de- 
 grees, returned to his attic in time to surprise a stranger 
 climbing in through one of the back windows. 
 
 " Who are you ? " exclaimed the Southern youth, much 
 struck by the funereal aspect, sexton-like dress, and inordi- 
 nately long countenance of the pallid, light-haired intruder. 
 
 " Pardon ! pardon ! " answered he at the window, with 
 much solemnity. " I am a proprietor of the Comic Paper 
 down below, and am eluding the man who comes every day 
 to tell me how such a paper should be conducted. He is
 
 186 INSURANCE AND ASSURANCE. 
 
 now talking to the young man writing the mail-wrappers, 
 who, being of iron constitution and unmarried, can bear 
 more than I. There was just time for me to glide out of 
 the window at sound of that fearful voice, and I climbed 
 the iron shutter and found myself at your casement. 
 Hark ! Do you hear the buzz down there ? He's now 
 telling the young man writing the mail-wrappers what kind of 
 Cartoons should be got-up for this country. Hark, again ! 
 He and the young man writing the mail-wrappers have 
 clinched and are rolling about the floor. Hark, once more ! 
 The young man writing the mail-wrappers has put him out." 
 
 "Won't you come in?" asked Montgomery, sincerely 
 sorry for the agitated being. 
 
 " Alas, no ! " responded the fugitive, in the tone of a 
 cathedral bell. " I must go back to my lower deep once 
 more. My name is Jeremy Bentham ; * I am very unhappy 
 in my mind ; and, with your permission, will often escape 
 this way from him who is the bane of my existence." 
 
 Being assured of welcome on all occasions, he of the long 
 countenance went clanging down the iron shutter again; 
 and the lonely law-student, burying his face in his hands, 
 prayed Providence to forgive him for having esteemed his 
 own lot so hopelessly gloomy, when there were Comic Pa- 
 per men on the very next floor. 
 
 That night, before going home to Gowanus, the old law- 
 
 * In the original, Jiff. Tartar, a retired naval officer.
 
 INSURANCE AND ASSURANCE. 187 
 
 yer across the way glanced up toward Montgomery's retreat, 
 and shook his head as though he couldn't make something 
 out. Whether he had a difficult idea in his brain, or only a 
 fly on his nose, was for the observer to discover for himself.
 
 188 A SUBTLE STRANGER. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 A SUBTLE STRANGER. 
 
 THE latest transient guest at the Roach House a hotel 
 kept on the entomological plan in Bumsteadville was a 
 gentleman of such lurid aspect as made every beholder burn 
 to know whom he could possibly be. His enormous head 
 of curled red hair not only presented a central parting on 
 top and a very much one-sided parting and puffing-out 
 behind, but actually covered both his ears ; while his ruddy 
 semi-circle of beard curled inward, instead of out, and 
 greatly surprised, if it did not positivly alarm, the looker-on, 
 by appearing to remain perfectly motionless, no matter how 
 actively the stranger moved his jaws. This ball of irhprob- 
 able inflammatory hair and totally independent face, rested 
 in a basin of shirt collar ; which, in its turn, was supported 
 by a rusty black neck -tie and a very loose suit of gritty 
 alpaca ; so that, taking the gentleman for all in all, such an 
 incredible human being had rarely been seen outside of lit- 
 erary circles. 
 
 " Landlord," said the stranger, to the brown linen host of 
 the Roach House, who was intently gazing at him with the 
 appreciative expression of one who beholds a comic ghost,
 
 A SUBTLE STRANGER. 189 
 
 " landlord, after you have finished looking at my head 
 and involuntarily opening your mouth at some occasional 
 peculiarity of my whiskers, I should like to have something 
 to eat. As you tell me that woodcock is not fit to eat this 
 year, and that broiled chicken is positively prohibited by 
 the Board of Health in consequence of the sickly season, 
 you may bring me some pork and beans, and some crackers. 
 Bring plenty of crackers, landlord, for I'm uncommon fond 
 of crackers. By absorbing the superfluous moisture in the 
 head, they clear the brain and make it more subtle." 
 
 Having been served with the wholesome country fare he 
 had ordered, together with a glass of the heady native wine 
 called applejack, the gentleman had but just moved a slice 
 of pork from its bed in the beans, when, with much interest, 
 he closely inspected the spot of vegetables he had uncov- 
 ered, and expressed the belief that there was something 
 alive in it. 
 
 "Landlord," said he, musingly, "there is something 
 amongst these beans that I should take for a raisin, if it did 
 not move." 
 
 Placing upon his nose a pair of vast silver spectacles, 
 which gave him an aspect of having two attic windows in his 
 countenance, the landlord bowed his head over the plate 
 until his nose touched the beans, and thoughtfully scruti- 
 nized the living raisin. 
 
 " As I thought, sir, it is only a water-bug," he observed,
 
 190 A SUBTLE STKANGER. 
 
 rescuing the insect upon his thumb-nail. " You need not 
 have been frightened, however, for they never bite." 
 
 Somewhat reassured, the stranger went on eating until his 
 knife encountered resistance in the secondary layer of beans; 
 when he once more inspected the dish, with marked agita- 
 tion. 
 
 " Can this be a skewer, down here ? " inquired he, prod- 
 ding out some hard, springy object with his fork. 
 
 The host of the Roach House bore both fork and object 
 to a window, where the light was less deceptive, and was 
 presently able to announce confidently that the object was 
 only a hair-pin. Then, observing that his guest looked 
 curiously at a cracker, which, from the gravelly marks on 
 one side, seemed to have been dug out of the earth, like a 
 potato, he hastened to obviate all complaint in that line by 
 carefully wiping every individual cracker with his pocket 
 handkerchief. 
 
 " And now, landlord," said the stranger, at last, pulling a 
 couple of long, unidentified hairs from his mouth as he hur- 
 riedly retired from the meal, " I suppose you are wondering 
 who I am ? " 
 
 " Well, sir," was the frank answer, " I can't deny that 
 there are points about you to make a plain man like myself 
 thoughtful. There's that about your hair, sir, with the 
 middle-parting on top and the side-parting behind, to give a 
 plain person the impression that your brain must be slightly 
 turned, and that, by rights, your face ought to be where your
 
 A SUBTLE STRANGER. 191 
 
 neck is. Neither can I deny, sir, that the curling of your 
 whiskers the wrong way, and their peculiarity in remaining 
 entirely still while your mouth is going, are circumstances 
 calculated to excite the liveliest apprehensions of those who 
 wish you well." 
 
 " The peculiarities you notice," returned the gentleman, 
 " may either exist solely in your own imagination, or they 
 may be the result of my own ill-health. My name is Tracey 
 Clews,* and I desire to spend a few weeks in the country 
 for physical recuperation. Have you any idea where a dead 
 beat,t like myself, could find inexpensive lodgings in Bum- 
 steadville ? " 
 
 The host hastily remarked, that his own bill for those 
 pork and beans was fifty cents ; and upon being paid, 
 coldly added, that a Mrs. Smythe, wife of the sexton of 
 Saint Cow's Ritualistic Church, took hash-eaters for the 
 summer. As the gentleman preferred a high-church private 
 boarding-house to an unsectarian first-class hotel, all he had 
 to do was to go out on the road again, and keep inquiring 
 until he found the place. 
 
 Donning his Panama hat, and carrying a stout cane, Mr. 
 Clews was quickly upon the turnpike ; and, his course taking 
 
 * In the original, Dick Datchery. 
 
 t " Buffer " is the term used in the English story. Its nearest native equivalent 
 is, probably, our "Dead Beat;" meaning, variously, according to circumstances, a 
 successful American politician ; a wife's male relative ; a watering-place correspondent 
 of a newspaper ; a New York detective policeman ; any person who is uncommonly 
 pleasant with people, while never asking them to take anything with him ; a pious 
 boarder ; a French revolutionist.
 
 192 A SUBTLE STRANGER. 
 
 him near the pauper burial-ground, he presently perceived 
 an extremely disagreeable child throwing stones at pigeons 
 in a field, and generally hitting the beholder. 
 
 " You young Alderman ! what do you mean ? " he ex- 
 claimed, with marked feeling, rubbing the place on his knee 
 which had just been struck. 
 
 " Then just give me a five-cent stamp to aim at yer, and 
 yer won't ketch it onc't," replied the boyish trifler. "I 
 couldn't hit what I was to fire at if it was my own daddy." 
 
 'Here are ten cents, then," said the gentleman, wildly 
 dodging the last shot at a distant pigeon, "and now show 
 me where Mrs. Smythe lives." 
 
 " All right, old brick-top," assented the merry sprite, with 
 a vivacious dash of personality. " D'yer see that house as 
 yer skoot past the Church and round the corner ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Well, that's Smythe' s, and Bumstead lives there too 
 him as is always tryin' to put a head on me. I'll play my 
 points on him yet, though. /'// play my points ! " And 
 the rather vulgar young chronic absentee from Sunday- 
 school retired to a proper distance, and from thence began 
 stoning his benefactor, to the latter* s perfect safety. 
 
 Reaching the boarding-house of Mrs. Smythe, as directed, 
 Mr. Tracey Clews soon learned from the lady that he could 
 have a room next to the apartment of Mr. Bumstead, to 
 whom he was referred for further recommendation of the es- 
 tablishment. Though that broken-hearted gentleman was
 
 A SUBTLE STRANGER. 193 
 
 mourning the loss of a beloved umbrella, accompanied by a 
 nephew, and having a bone handle, Mrs. Smythe was sure 
 he" would speak a good word for her house. Perhaps Mr. 
 Clews had heard of his loss ? 
 
 Mr. Clews could not exactly recall that particular case ; 
 but had a confused recollection of having lost several um- 
 brellas himself, at various times, and had no doubt that the 
 addition of a nephew must make such a loss still heavier. 
 
 Mr. Bumstead being in his room when the introduction 
 took place, and having Judge Sweeney for company over a 
 bowl of lemon tea, the new boarder lifted his hat politely to 
 both dignitaries, and involuntarily smacked his lips at the 
 mixture they were taking for their coughs. 
 
 " Excuse me, gentlemen," said Mr. Tracey Clews, in a 
 manner almost stealthy ; "but, as I am about to take sum- 
 mer board with the lady of this house, I beg leave to inquire 
 if she and the man she married are strictly moral except in 
 having cold dinner on Sunday ? " 
 
 Mr. Bumstead, who sat very limply in his chair, said that 
 she was a very good woman, a very good woman, and would 
 spare no pains to secure the comfort of such a head of hair 
 as he then saw before him. 
 
 " This is my dear friend, Judge Sweeney," continued the 
 Ritualistic organist, languidly waving a spoon toward that 
 gentleman, "who has a very good wife in the grave, and 
 knows much more about women and gravy than I. As for 
 me," exclaimed Mr. Bumstead, suddenly climbing upon the 
 9
 
 194: A SUBTLE STRANGER. 
 
 arm of his chair, and staring at Mr. Clews' head rather wildly, 
 "my only bride was of black alpaca, with a brass ferule, 
 and I can never care for the sex again." Here Mr. Bum- 
 stead, whose eyes had been rolling in an extraordinary man- 
 ner, tumbled into his chair again, and then, frowning intensely, 
 helped himself to lemon tea. 
 
 " I am referred to your Honor for further particulars," 
 observed Mr. Tracey Clews, bowing again to Judge Sweeney. 
 " Not to wound our friend further by discussion of the fair 
 sex, may I ask if Bumsteadville contains many objects of in- 
 terest for a stranger, like myself ? " 
 
 "One, at least, sir," answered the Judge. "I think I 
 could show you a tombstone which you would find very good 
 reading. An epitaph upon my late better-half. If you are 
 a married man you can not help enjoying it." 
 
 Mr. Clews regretted to inform his Honor, that he had 
 never been a married man, and, therefore, could not pre- 
 sume to fancy what the literary enjoyment of a widower 
 must be at such a treat. 
 
 "A journalist, I presume?" insinuated Judge Sweeney, 
 more and more struck by the other's perfect pageant of in- 
 comprehensible hair and beard. 
 
 " His Honor flatters me too much." 
 " Something in the lunatic line, then, perhaps ? " 
 "I have told your Honor that I never was married." 
 Since last speaking, Mr. Bumstead had been staring at the 
 new boarder's head and face, with a countenance expressive
 
 A SUBTLE STRANGER. 195 
 
 of mingled consternation and wrath, and now made a start- 
 ling rush at him, from his chair, and fairly forced half a glass 
 of lemon tea down his throat. 
 
 "There, sir!" said the mourning organist, panting with 
 suppressed excitement. " That will keep you from taking 
 cold until you can be walked up and down in the open air 
 long enough to get your hair and beard sober. They have 
 been indulging, sir, until the top of your head has fallen over 
 backwards, and your whiskers act as though they belonged 
 to somebody else. The sight confuses me, sir, and in my 
 present state of mind I can't bear it." 
 
 Coughing from the lemon tea, and greatly amazed by his 
 hasty dismissal, Mr. Clews followed Judge Sweeney from the 
 room and house in precipitate haste, and, when they were 
 fairly out of doors, remarked, that the gentlemen they had 
 just left had surprised him unprecedentedly, and that he was 
 very much put out by it. 
 
 " Mr. John Bumstead, sir," explained the Judge, " is al- 
 most beside himself at the double loss he has sustained, and I 
 think that the sight of your cane, there, maddened him with 
 the memory it revived." 
 
 "Why," exclaimed the gentleman of the hair, staring in 
 wonder, " you don't mean to tell me that my cane looks at 
 all like his nephew ? " 
 
 " It looks a little like the stick of his umbrella, which he 
 lost at the same time," was the grave answer. 
 
 After walking on in thoughtful silence for a while, as
 
 196 A SUBTLE STRANGER. 
 
 though deeply pondering the striking character of a man 
 whose great nature could thus at once unite the bereaved 
 uncle with the sincere mourner for the dumb friend of his 
 rainier days, Mr. Tracey Clews asked whether suspicion yet 
 pointed to any one ? 
 
 Yes, he was told, suspicion did point very decidedly at a 
 certain person ; but, as no specific reward had yet been of- 
 fered in sufficient amount to justify the exertions of police 
 officials having families to support ; and as no lifeless body 
 had yet been found; and as it was not exactly certain 
 that the abstraction of an umbrella by unknown parties 
 would justify the criminal prosecution of a person for having 
 in his possession an Indian Club : in view of all these 
 complicated circumstances, the law did not feel itself author- 
 ized to execute any assassin at present. 
 
 "And here we are, sir, at last, near our Ritualistic 
 Church," continued Judge Sweeney, " where we stand up for 
 die Rite so much that strangers sometimes complain of it as 
 fatiguing. Upon that monument yonder, in the graveyard, 
 you may find the epitaph I have mentioned. What is more, 
 here comes a rather interesting local character of ours, who 
 cut the inscription and put up the monument." 
 
 Mr. McLaughlin came shuffling up the road as he spoke, 
 followed in the distance by the inevitable Smalley and a 
 shower of promiscuous stones. 
 
 " Here, you boy ! " roared Judge Sweeney, beckoning the 
 amiable child to him with a bit of small money, "aim at all
 
 A SUBTLE STRANGER. 197 
 
 of us do you hear? and see that you don't hit any win- 
 dows. And now, McLaughlin, how do you do ? Here is a 
 gentleman spending the summer with us, who would like to 
 know you." 
 
 Old Mortarity stared at the hair and beard thus intro- 
 duced to him, with undisguised amazement, and grimly re- 
 marked, that if the gentleman would come to see him any 
 evening, and bring a social bottle with him, he would not 
 allow the gentleman's head to stand in the way of a further 
 acquaintance. 
 
 
 
 " I shall certainly call upon you," assented Mr. Clews, 
 " if our young friend, the stone-thrower, will accept a trifle 
 to show me the way." 
 
 Before retiring to his bed that night, the same Mr. Tracey 
 
 Clews took off his hair and beard, examined them closely, 
 
 
 
 and then broke into a strange smile. " No wonder they all 
 looked at me so !" he soliloquized, "for I did have my locks 
 on the topside backmost, and my whiskers turned the wrong 
 way. However, for a dead beat, with all his imperfections 
 on his head, I've formed a pretty large acquaintance for 
 one day." * 
 
 * In both conception and execution, the original of the above Chapter, in Mr. 
 Dickens's work, is, perhaps, the least felicitous page of fiction ever penned by the 
 great novelist ; and, as this Adaptation is in no wise intended as a burlesque, or carica- 
 ture, of the style of the original (but rather as a conscientious imitation of it, so far as 
 practicable), the Adapter has not allowed himself that license of humor which, in the 
 most comically effective treatment of said Chapter, might bear the appearance of such 
 an intention.
 
 198 THE H'. AND H. OF y. BUM STEAD. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE H. AND H. OF J. BUMSTEAD. 
 
 THE exquisitely sweet month of the perfectly delicious 
 summer-vacation having come, Miss Carowthers' Young 
 Ladies have returned again, for a time, to their respective 
 homes, Magnolia Pendragon has gone to the city and her 
 brother, and Flora Potts is ridiculously and absurdly alone. 
 
 Under the ardent sun of August, Bumsteadville slowly 
 bakes, like an ogre's family-dish of stuffed cottages and 
 greens, with here and there some slowly moving object, like 
 a loose vegetable on a sluggish current of tidal gravy, and 
 the spire of the Ritualistic church shooting up at one end 
 like an incorrigibly perpendicular leg of magnified mutton. 
 
 Hotter and hotter comes the fiery breath of nature's 
 cookery, until some of the stuffing boils out of one cottage, 
 in the shape of the Oldest Inhabitant, who makes his usual 
 annual remark, that this is the Warmest Day in ninety-eight 
 years, and then simmers away to some cooler nook amongst 
 the greens. MoYe and more intolerably quivers the atmos- 
 phere of the sylvan oven with stifling fervency, until there 
 oozes from beneath the shingled crust of a vegetarian coun- 
 try-boarding-house a parboiled guest from the City, who,
 
 THE H. AND H. OF J. BUMSTEAD. 199 
 
 believing himself almost ready to turn, drifts feebly to where 
 the roads fork and there is a shade more dun ; while, to the 
 speculative mind, each glowing field of corn, or buckwheat, 
 is an incipient Meal, and each chimney, or barn, a mere 
 temptation to guess how many Swallows there may be in it. 
 
 Upon the afternoon of such a day as this, Miss Potts is 
 informed, by a servant, that Mr. Bumstead has arrived, and, 
 sending her his love, would be pleased to have her come 
 down stairs to him and bring a fan. 
 
 "Why didn't you tell him I wasn't at home, you absurd 
 thing ? " cries the young girl, hurriedly practising a series of 
 agitated looks and pensive smiles before*her mirror. 
 
 "So I did, Miss," answers the attached menial, "but 
 he'd seen you looking at him with an opera-glass as he came 
 up the path, and said that he could hear you taking a clean 
 handkerchief out of the drawer, on purpose to receive him 
 with, before he'd got to the door." 
 
 " Oh, what shall I do ? My hands are so red to-day ! " 
 sighs Flora, holding her arms above her head, that the 
 blood may retire from the too pinkish members. 
 
 After a pause, and an adjustment of a curl over her right 
 eye and the scarf at her waist, to make them look innocent, 
 she yields to the meteorological mania so strikingly prevalent 
 amongst all the other characters of this narrative, and says 
 that she will receive the visitor in the yard, near the pump. 
 Then, casting carelessly over her shoulder that web-like 
 shawl without which no woman nor spider is complete, she
 
 200 THE H. AND H. OF J. BUMSTEAD. 
 
 arranges her lips in the glass for the last time, and, with a 
 garden-hat hanging from the elbow latest singed, goes down, 
 humming unsuspiciously, into the open-air, with the guileless 
 bearing of one wholly unprepared for company. 
 
 Resting an elbow upon a low iron patent-pump, near a 
 rustic seat, the Ritualistic organist, in his vast linen coat 
 and imposing straw hat, looks not unlike an eccentric gar- 
 den statue, upon which some prudish slave of modern con- 
 ventionalities has placed the summer attire of a western 
 editor. The great heat of the sun upon his back makes him 
 irritable, and when Miss Potts sharply smites with her fan 
 the knuckles of the* hand which he has affably extended to 
 take her by the chin, more than the usual symptoms of acute 
 inflammation appear at the end of his nose, and he blows 
 hurriedly upon his wounded digits. 
 
 "That hurt like the mischief!" he remarks in some anger. 
 " I don't know when I've felt anything smart so." 
 
 "Then don't be so horrid," returns the pensive girl, tak- 
 ing a seat before him upon the rustic settee, and abstract- 
 edly arranging her dress so that only two-thirds of a gaiter- 
 boot can be seen. 
 
 Munching cloves, the aroma of which ladens the air all 
 around him, Mr. Bumstead contemplates her with a calm- 
 ness which would be enthralling, but for the nervous twist- 
 ing of his features under the torments of a singularly ad- 
 hesive fly. 
 
 " I have come, dear," he observes, slowly, " to know how
 
 THE II. AND H. OF J. BUMSTEAD. 201 
 
 soon you will be ready for me to give you your next music- 
 lesson?" 
 
 " I prefer that you would not call me your ' dear,' " is the 
 chilling answer. 
 
 The organist thinks for a moment, and then nods his head 
 intelligently. "You are right," he says gravely, " there 
 might be somebody listening who could not enter into our 
 real feelings. And now, how about those music-lessons ? " 
 
 "I don't want any more, thank you," says Flora, coldly. 
 "While we are all in mourning for our poor, dear, absurd 
 Eddy, it seems like a perfectly ridiculous mockery to be 
 practising the scales." 
 
 Fanning himself with his straw hat, Mr. Bumstead shakes 
 his bushy head several times. " You do not discriminate 
 sufficiently," he replies. " There are kinds of music which, 
 when performed rapidly upon the violin, fife, or kettle- 
 drum, certainly fill the mind with sentiments unfavorable 
 to the deeper anguish of human sorrow. Of such, how- 
 ever, is not the kind made by young girls, which is at all 
 times a help to the intensity of judicious grief. Let me 
 assure you, with the candor of an idolized friend, that some 
 of the saddest hours of my life have been spent in teaching 
 you to try to sing a humorous aria from Donizetti ; and the 
 moments in which I have most sincerely regretted ever hav- 
 ing been born were those in which you have played, in my 
 hearing, the Drinking-song from La Traviata. Believe me, 
 then, my devoted pupil, there can be nothing at all incon- 
 9*
 
 202 THE H. AND H. OF J. BUMSTEAD. 
 
 sistent with a prevalence of profound melancholy in your 
 continued piano-playing ; whereas, on the contrary, your sud- 
 den and permanent cessation might at least surprise your 
 friends and the neighborhood into a light-heartedness tempo- 
 rarily oblivious of the memory of that dear missing boy, to 
 whom you could not, I hear, give the love already bestowed 
 upon me." 
 
 " I loved him ridiculously, absurdly, with my whole 
 heart," cries Flora, not altogether liking what she has heard. 
 
 " I'm real sorry, too, that they think somebody has killed 
 him." 
 
 Mr. Bumstead folds his brown linen arms as he towers 
 before her, and the dark circles around his eyes appear to 
 shrink with the intensity of his gaze. 
 
 " There are occasions in life," he remarks, " when to 
 acknowledge that our last meeting with a friend who has 
 since mysteriously disappeared, was to reject him and imply 
 a preference for his uncle, may be calculated to associate us 
 unpleasantly with that disappearance, in the minds of the 
 censorious, and invite suspicions tending to our early cross- 
 examination by our Irish local magistrate. I do not say, 
 of course, that you actually destroyed my nephew for fear 
 he should try to prejudice me against you ; but I cannot 
 withhold my earnest approval of your judicious pretence of 
 a sentiment palpably incompatible with the shedding of the 
 blood of its departed object. If you will move your dress a 
 little, so that I can sit beside you and allow your head to
 
 THE //. AND H. OF J. BUMSTEAD. 203 
 
 rest upon my shoulder, that fan will do for both of us, and 
 we may converse in whispers." 
 
 " My head upon your shoulder!" exclaims Miss Potts, 
 staring swiftly about to see if anybody is looking. " I pre- 
 fer to keep my head upon my own shoulders, sir." 
 
 "Two heads are better than one," the Ritualistic organist 
 reminds her. " If a little hair-oil and powder does come off 
 upon my coat, the latter will wash, I suppose. Come, dear- 
 est, if it is our fate to never get through this hot day alive, 
 let us be sunstruck together." 
 
 She shrinks timidly from the brown linen arm which he 
 begins insinuating along the back of the rustic settee, and 
 tells' him that she couldn't have believed that he could be so 
 absurd. He draws back his arm, and seems hurt. 
 
 "Flora," he says, tenderly, "how beautiful you are, 
 especially when fixed up. The more I see of you, the less 
 sorry I am that I have concluded to be yours. All the time 
 that my dear boy was trying to induce you to release him 
 from his engagement, I was thinking how much better you 
 might do ; yet, beyond an occasional encouraging wink, I 
 never gave the least sign of reciprocating your attachment. 
 I did not think it would be right." 
 
 The assertion, though superficially true, is so imperfect in 
 its delineation of habitual conduct liable to another con- 
 struction, that the agitated Flowerpot returns, with quick 
 indignation : " Your arm was always reaching out whenever 
 you sat in a chair anywhere near me, 3,nd whenever I sang
 
 204: THE If. AND H. OF J. BUMSTEAD. 
 
 you always kept looking straight into my mouth until it 
 tickled me. -You know you did, you hateful thing ! Be- 
 sides, it wasn't you that I preferred at all ; it was oh, it's 
 too ridiculous to tell ! " 
 
 In her bashful confusion she is about to arise and trip 
 shyly away from him into the house, when he speaks again. 
 " Miss Potts, is your friendship for Miss Pendragon and 
 her brother such, that their execution upon some Friday of 
 next month would be a spectacle to which you could give 
 no pleased attention ? " 
 
 " What do you mean, you absurd creature ? " 
 " I mean," continues Mr. Bumstead, " simply this : you 
 know my double loss. You know that, upon the person of 
 the male Pendragon was found an apple looking and tast- 
 ing like one which my nephew once had. You know, that 
 when Miss Pendragon went from here she wore an alpaca 
 waist which looked as though it had been exposed more than 
 once to the rain. See the point ? " 
 
 Flora gives a startled look, and says, " I don't see it" 
 " Suppose," he goes on " suppose that I go to a magis- 
 trate, and say : ' Judge, I voted for you, and can influence a 
 large foreign vote for you again. I have lost a nephew who 
 was very fond of apples, and a black alpaca umbrella of 
 great value. A young Southerner, who has not lived in this 
 State long enough to vote, has been found in possession 
 of an apple singularly like the kind generally eaten by my
 
 THE H. AND H. OF J. BUMSTEAD. 205 
 
 missing relative, and his sister has come out in a waist made 
 of second-hand alpaca ? ' See the point now ? " 
 
 " Mr. Bumstead," exclaims Flora, affrighted by the terri- 
 ble menace of his manner, "I don't any more believe that 
 Mr. Pendragon is guilty than that I, myself, am ; and as for 
 your old umbrella " 
 
 " Stop, woman ! " interrupts the bereaved organist, imper- 
 iously. "Not even your lips shall speak disrespectfully of 
 my lost bone-handled friend. By a chain of unanswerable 
 argument, I have shown you that I hold the fate of your 
 Southern acquaintances in my hands, and shall be particu- 
 larly sorry if you force me to hang Mr. Pendragon as a 
 rival." 
 
 Flora puts her hands to her temples, to soothe her throb- 
 bing head and display a bracelet. 
 
 " Oh, what shall I do ! I don't want anybody to be hung ! 
 It must be so perfectly awful ! " 
 
 Her touching display of generous feeling does not soften 
 him. On the contrary, he stands more erect, and smiles 
 rather triumphantly under his straw hat. 
 
 "Beloved one," he murmurs, in a rich voice, " I find that 
 I cannot induce you to make the first advance towards the 
 mutual avowal we are both longing for, and must therefore 
 precipitate our happiness myself. My poor boy would not 
 have given you perfect satisfaction, and your momentary 
 liking for the male Pendragon was but the effect of a tempo- 
 rary despair undoubtedly produced by my seeming coldness.
 
 206 THE H. AND H. OF J. BUMSTEAD. 
 
 That coldness had nothing to do with my heart, but resulted 
 partially from my habit of wearing a wet towel on my head. 
 I now propose to you " 
 
 " Propose to me ? " ejaculates Miss Potts, with heightened 
 color. 
 
 " That you pick out a worthy man belonging to your 
 own section of the Union," he continues hastily. " Here's 
 my Heart," he adds, going through the motions of taking 
 something from a pocket and placing it in his outstretched 
 palm, "and here's my Hand," placing therein an equally 
 imaginary object from another pocket. " Try the H. and 
 H. of J. Bumstead." 
 
 His manner is as though he were commending some 
 patent article of unquestionable utility. 
 
 " But I can't bear the sight of you ! " she cries, pushing 
 away the brown linen arm coming after her again. 
 
 Taking away her fan, he pats her on the head with it, and 
 seems momentarily surprised at the hollow sound. 
 
 " Future Mrs. Bumstead," he cheerfully replies, at last, 
 " my observation and knowledge of the women of America 
 teach me that there never was a wife going to Indiana for a 
 divorce, who had not at first sworn to love, as well as honor 
 and obey, her husband. Such is woman, that if she had felt 
 and said at the altar that she couldn't bear the sight of him, 
 it wouldn't have been in the power of masculine brutality 
 and dissipated habits to drive her from his side through all 
 their lives. There can be no better sign of our future hap-
 
 THE H. AND II. OF J. BUMSTEAD. 207 
 
 piness, than for you to say, beforehand, that you utterly 
 detest the man of your choice." 
 
 There is something terrible to the young girl in the origi- 
 nal turn of thought of this fascinating man. Say what she 
 may, he at once turns it into virtual devotion to himself. 
 He appears to have a perfectly dreadful power to hang 
 everybody ; he considers her strongest avowal of present 
 personal dislike the most promising indication she can give 
 of eternal future infatuation with him, and his powerful mode 
 of reasoning is more profound and confusing than an article 
 in a New York newspaper on a War in Europe. Rendered 
 dizzy by his metaphysical conversation, she arises from the 
 rustic seat, and is flying giddily into the house, when he 
 leaps athletically after her, and catches her in the doorway. 
 
 "I merely wish to request," he says, quietly, "that you 
 place sufficient restraint upon your naturally happy feelings 
 to keep our engagement a secret from the public at present, 
 as I can't bear to have the boys calling out after me, 
 'There's the feller that's goin' to get married ! There's the 
 feller that's goin' to get married ! ' When a man is about to 
 make a fool of himself, it is not for children to remind him 
 of it." 
 
 The door being opened before she can answer, Flora re- 
 ceives a parting bow of Grandisonian elegance from Mr. 
 Bumstead, and hastens upstairs to her room in a destrac- 
 tion of mind not uncommon to those having conversational 
 relations with the Ritualistic organist.
 
 208 AN ESCAPE. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 AN ESCAPE. 
 
 THE bewildered Flowerpot had no sooner gained her own 
 room, enjoyed her agitated expression of face in the mirror, 
 and tried four differently colored ribbon-bows upon her collar 
 in succession, than the thought of becoming Mr. Bumstead's 
 bride lost the charm of its first wild novelty, and became ut- 
 terly ridiculous. He was a man of commanding stature, 
 which his linen " duster " made appear still more long ; the 
 dark circles around his eyes would disappear in time, and he 
 had an abusive way of referring to women which made him 
 inexpressibly grand to women as a true poet-soul ; but would 
 it be safe, would it be religiously right, for a young girl, not yet 
 conscious of her own full power of annual monetary expen- 
 diture, to blindly risk her necessary expenses for life upon 
 one whom the cost of a single imported bonnet, in the con- 
 tingency of a General European War, might plunge into in- 
 extricable pecuniary embarrassment ? Possibly, the Gen- 
 eral European War might not occur in an ordinary married- 
 lifetime, as France was no longer in a condition to menace 
 England, Russia would be wary about provoking the new 
 Prussian giant, and Austria and Italy were not likely soon 

 
 AN ESCAPE. 
 
 to forget their last military misadventures : yet, while all the 
 great American journals had, for the last twenty years, pub- 
 lished daily editorials, by young writers from the country, to 
 show that such a War could not possibly be averted longer 
 than about the day after to-morrow, would it be judicious for 
 a young girl to marry as though that War were absolutely 
 impossible ? No ! Her woman's heart sternly reiterated 
 the pitiless negative ; and, as the Ritualistic organist had 
 plainly evinced an earnest intention to let no foreign mili- 
 tary complications prevent her marriage with him, she felt 
 that her only safety from his matrimonial violence must be 
 sought in flight. 
 
 With whom, though, could she take refuge ? If she went 
 to Magnolia Pendragon, all her dearest schoolmates would 
 say, that they had always loved her, despite her great faults, 
 yet could not disguise from themselves that she seemed at 
 last to be fairly running after Miss Pendragon' s brother. 
 Besides, Mr. Bumstead, offended by the seeming want of 
 confidence in him evinced by her flight, would, probably, 
 take measures publicly to identify Magnolia's alpaca gar- 
 ment with the covering of his lost umbrella, and thus direct 
 new suspicion against a sister and brother already bothered 
 almost into hysterics. 
 
 During the last few weeks, an attack of dyspepsia had laid 
 the foundation of a mind in the Flowerpot, as it generally 
 does in other young female American boarding-school 
 thinkers, and she was now capable of that subtle line of rea-
 
 210 AN ESCAPE. 
 
 soning which is Jthe great commendation of her sex to a 
 recognized perfect intellectual equality with man. Once de- 
 cided, by her apprehension of a General European War, 
 against marriage with J. Bumstead, she took a rather irri- 
 table view of that too attractive devotional musician, and 
 inferred, from his not being wealthy enough to stand the test 
 of possible transatlantic hostilities, that he must, himself, 
 have killed Edwin Drood. His umbrella, it was well known, 
 had been present at that fatal Christmas dinner ; and a 
 thoughtless insult offered to it, even by his nephew, might 
 have made a demon of him. Suppose that Edwin, upon re- 
 turning to the dining-room that night, after his temporary 
 exercise in the open air with Montgomery Pendragon, had 
 found his uncle, flushed with cloves, endeavoring to force a 
 social glass of lemon tea upon the umbrella, under the im- 
 pression that it was a person, and had unthinkingly accused 
 him thereat of being momentarily unsettled in his faculties ? 
 Probably, then, hot words would have passed between them ; 
 each telling the other that he would have a nice headache in 
 the morning and find it impossible not to look very sleepy 
 even if he fixed his hair ever so elaborately. Blows might 
 have followed : the uncle, in his anger, hewing the nephew 
 limb from limb with the carving knife from the table, and 
 subsequently carrying away the remains to the Pond and 
 there casting them in. Suppose, in his natural excitement, 
 the uncle had hurriedly used the umbrella, opened and held 
 downward, to. carry the remains in ; and, after coming home
 
 AN ESCAPE. 211 
 
 again, and snatching a nap under the table, had forgotten all 
 about it, and thus been ever since inconsolable for his alpaca 
 loss? As the young orphan argued thus exhaustively to 
 . herself, the extreme probability of her suppositions made her 
 more and more frenzied to fly instantly beyond the reach of 
 one who, in the event of a General European War, would 
 not be a husband whom her head could approve. 
 
 After penning a hasty farewell note to Miss Carowthers, 
 to the effect that urgent military reasons obliged her to see 
 her guardian at once, Flora lost no time in packing a small 
 leather satchel for travel. Two bottles of hair-oil, a jar of 
 glycerine, one of cold cream, two boxes of powder, a package 
 of extra back -hair, a phial of belladonna, a camel' s-hair brush 
 for the eyebrows, a rouge-saucer for pinking the nails, four 
 flasks of perfumery, a depilatory in a small flagon, and some 
 tooth-paste, were the only articles she could pause to collect 
 for her precipitate escape : and, with them in the satchel on 
 her arm, and a bonnet and shawl hurriedly thrown on, she 
 stole away down-stairs, and thus from the house. 
 
 Hastening to the Roach House, from whence started an 
 omnibus for the ferry, she was quickly rattling out of Bum- 
 steadville in a vehicle remarkable for the great number and 
 variety of noises it could make when maddened into motion 
 by a span of equine rivals in aii immemorial walking-match. 
 
 " Now, Bonner," she said to the driver, taking leave of 
 him at the ferry-boat, "be sure and let Miss Carowthers
 
 212 AN ESCAPE. 
 
 know that you saw me safely off, and that I was not a bit 
 more tired than if I had walked all the way." 
 
 Blushing with pleasure at the implied compliment to his 
 equipage from such lips, the skilful horseman had not the 
 heart to object to the wildly mutilated fragment of currency 
 with which his fare had been paid, and went back to where 
 his steeds were taking turns in holding each other up, as 
 happy a man as ever lost money by the change in woman. 
 
 Reaching the city, Miss Potts was promptly worshipped by 
 a hackman of marked conversational powers, who, whip in 
 hand, assured her that his carriage was widely celebrated 
 under the titles of the "Rocking Chair," the " Old Shoe," 
 and the " Glider," on account of its incredible ease of mo- 
 tion ; and that, owing to its exquisite abbreviation of travel 
 to the emotions, those who rode in it had actually been 
 known to dispute that they had ridden even half the distance 
 for which they were charged. Did he know where Mr. Dib- 
 ble, the lawyer, lived, in Nassau Street, near Fulton ? * If 
 she meant lawyer Dibble, near Fulton Street, in Nassau, 
 next door but one to the second house below, and directly 
 opposite the building across the way, there was just one 
 span of buckskin horses in the city that could take a car- 
 riage built expressly for ladies to that place, as naturally as 
 though it were a stable. It was a place that he the hack- 
 man always associated with his own mother, because he 
 
 * In the original, Staple Inn, London, is the lawyer's address.
 
 AN ESCAPE. 213 
 
 was so familiar with it in childhood, and had often thought 
 of driving to it blindfolded for a wager. 
 
 Proud to learn that her guardian was so well known in the 
 great city, and delighted that she had met a charioteer so 
 minutely familiar with his house of business, Flora stepped 
 readily into the providential hack, which thereupon instantly 
 began Rocking-Chair-ing, Old-Shoe-ing, and Gliding. Any 
 one of these celebrated processes, by itself, might have been 
 desirable ; but their indiscriminate and impetuous combina- 
 tion in the present case gave the Flowerpot a confused im- 
 pression that her whole ride was a startling series of incess- 
 ant sharp turns around obdurate street corners, and kept her 
 plunging about like an early young Protestant tossed in a 
 Romish blanket. Instinctively holding her satchel aloft, to 
 save its fragile contents from fracture, she rocked, shoed, and 
 glided all over the interior of the vehicle, without hope of 
 gaining breath enough for even one scream, until, nearly un- 
 conscious, and, with her bonnet driven half-way into her 
 chignon, she was helped out by the hackman at her guard- 
 ian's door. 
 
 " I am dying ! " she groaned. 
 
 " Then please remember me in your will, to the extent 
 of two dollars," returned the hackman with much humor. 
 " You're only a little sea-sick, miss ; as often happens to 
 people in humble circumstances when they ride in a ker- 
 ridge for the first time." 
 
 Still panting, Miss Potts paid and discharged this friendly
 
 214 AN ESCAPE. 
 
 man, and, weariedly entering the building, followed the signs 
 upstairs to her guardian's office. 
 
 After knocking several times at the right door, without 
 reply, she turned the knob, and entered so softly that the 
 venerable lawyer was not aroused from the slumber into 
 which he had fallen in his chair by the window. With a 
 copy of Old and New still grasped in his honest right hand, 
 good Mr. Dibble slept like a drugged person ; nor could the 
 young girl awaken him until, by a happy inspiration, she 
 had snatched away the monthly and cast it through the case- 
 ment. 
 
 " Am I dreaming ? " exclaimed the aged man, when thus 
 suddenly rescued from his deadly lethargy at last. " Is that 
 you, my dear ; or are you your late mother ? " 
 
 " I am your ridiculously unhappy ward," answered the 
 Flowerpot, tremulously. " Oh, poor, dear, absurd Eddy ! " 
 
 " And you have come here all alone ? " 
 
 "Yes; and to escape being married to Eddy's perfectly 
 hateful uncle, who has the same as ordered me to become 
 his utterly disgusted bride. Oh, why is it, why is it, that I 
 must be thus persecuted by young men without property ! 
 Why is it that perfectly horrid madmen on salaries are al- 
 lowed to claim me as their own ! " 
 
 " My dear," cried the old lawyer, leading her to a chair, 
 and striving to speak soothingly, " if Mr. Bumstead desires 
 to marry you he must indeed be insane. Such a man ought 
 really to be confined," he continued, pacing thoughtfully up
 
 AN ESCAPE. 215 
 
 and down the room. "This must have been the idea that 
 was already turning his brain when bless my soul ! he 
 actually intimated, first, that I, and then, that Mr. Simpson, 
 had killed his nephew ! " 
 
 "He thinks, now, that I, or Magnolia Pendragon, may 
 have done it, the hateful creature ! " said Flora, passion- 
 ately. 
 
 " I see, I see," assented Mr. Dibble, nodding. " When 
 he has you_in his head, my dear, he himself must clearly be 
 out of it. You shall stay here and take tea with me, and 
 then I will take you to French's Hotel for your accommo- 
 dation during the night." 
 
 It was a sight to see him tenderly help her off with her 
 bonnet ; and suggestive to hear him say, that if a man could 
 only take off his brains as easily as a woman hers, what a 
 relief it would be to him occasionally. It was curious to see 
 him peep into her bottle-filled satchel, with an old man's 
 freedom ; and to hear him audibly wonder thereat, whether 
 after all, men were any more addicted than women to the 
 social glass when they wanted to put a better face on affairs. 
 And, after the waiter, bringing him toast and tea from a 
 neighboring restaurant, had brought an additional slice and 
 cup for the guest, it was pleasant to behold him smiling 
 across the office-table at that guest, and encouraging her to 
 eat as much as she would if a member of his sex were not 
 looking. _
 
 216 AN ESCAPE. 
 
 " It must be absurdly ridiculous to stay here all alone, as 
 you do, sir," observed Flora. 
 
 "But I am not always alone," answered Mr. Dibble. 
 "My clerk, Mr. Bladams, now taking a vacation in the 
 country, is generally here ; though, to be sure, I may lose 
 'him before long. He's turned literary." 
 
 " How perfectly frightful ! " said Miss Potts. 
 
 " He has set up for a genius, my child, and is now en- 
 gaged upon a great American novel. Discontented with the 
 law, he is giving great attention to this ; but Free Trade 
 will not, I am afraid, allow any American publisher to bring 
 it out." 
 
 " Free Trade ? " repeated Flora. 
 
 " Yes, my dear, Free Trade ; that is, while American pub- 
 lishers can steal foreign novels for nothing, they are not 
 going to pay anything for native fiction." 
 
 Yawning behind her hand, the Flowerpot murmured some- 
 thing about Free Trade being positively absurd, and her 
 guardian went on : 
 
 "Nevertheless, Mr. Bladams is going on with his work, 
 which he calls 'The Amateur Detective ;' and if it ever does 
 come out you shall have a copy. But, by the by," added 
 the lawyer, suddenly, " you have not yet fully described to 
 me the interview in which poor Mr. Edwin's uncle offered to 
 become your husband." 
 
 She ^jave him a full history of the Ritualistic organist's 
 handsome offer to her of his H. and H. ; adding her own
 
 AN ESCAPE. 217 
 
 final decision in the matter as precipitated by the possibility 
 
 ^> 
 of a General European War; and Mr. Dibble heard the 
 
 whole with an air of studious attention. 
 
 " Although I have certainly no particular reason for be- 
 friending Mr. Bumstead," said he, reflectively, " I shall take 
 measures to keep him from you. Now come with me to 
 French's Hotel. * To-morrow I will call there for you, you 
 know, and then, perhaps, you may be taken to see your 
 friend, Miss Pendragon." 
 
 Having obtained for his ward a room in the hotel named, 
 and seen her safely to its shelter, the good old lawyer visited 
 the bar-room of the establishment, for the purpose of ascer- 
 taining whether any evil-disposed person could get in through 
 that way for the disturbance of his fair charge. After which 
 he departed for his home in Gowanus. 
 
 * In the original, FurnivaPs Inn. 
 
 19
 
 218 BENTHAM TO ~~THE RESCUE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 BENTHAM TO THE RESCUE. 
 
 EUROPEAN travellers in this country especially if one 
 economical condition of their coming hither has not been 
 the composition of works of imagination on America, suffi- 
 ciently contemptuous to pay all the expenses of the trip 
 have, occasionally and particularly if they have been in- 
 vited to write for New York magazines, take professorships 
 in native colleges, or lecture on the encouraging Conti- 
 nental progress of scientific atheism before Boston audi- 
 ences ; such travellers, we say, convinced that they shall 
 lose no money by it, but, on the contrary, rather sanguine 
 of making a little thereby in the long run, have occasionally 
 remarked, that, in the United States, women journeying 
 alone are treated with a chivalric courtesy and deference 
 not so habitually practised in any other second-class new- 
 nation on the face of the earth.* 
 
 What, oh, what can be more true than this ? A lady well- 
 stricken in years, and of adequate protraction of nose and 
 rectilinear undeviation of figure, can travel alone from Maine 
 to Florida with as perfect immunity from offensive mascu- 
 
 * Shades of Quintilian and Dr. Johnson, what a sentence !
 
 BENTHAM TO THE RESCUE. 219 
 
 line intrusion as though she were guarded by a regiment ; 
 while a somewhat younger girl, with, curls and an innocent 
 look, can not appear unaccompanied by an escort in an 
 American omnibus, car, ferry-boat, or hotel, without appeal- 
 ing at once to the finest fatherly feelings of every manly 
 middle-aged observer whose wife is not watching him, and 
 exciting as general a desire to make her trip socially delight- 
 ful as though each gentlemanly eye seeking hers were indeed 
 that of a tender sire. 
 
 Thus, although Miss Potts' s lonely stay in her hotel had 
 been so brief, the mysterious American instinct of chivalry 
 had discovered it very early on the first morning after her 
 arrival, and she arose from her delicious sleep to find at 
 least half a dozen written offers of hospitality from generous 
 strangers, sticking under her door. Understanding that she 
 was sojourning without natural protectors in a strange city, 
 the thoughtful writers, who appeared to be chiefly Western 
 men of implied immense fortunes, begged her (by the deli- 
 cate name of "Fair Unknown") to take comfort in the 
 thought that they were stopping at the same hotel, and 
 would protect her from all harm with their lives. In proof 
 of this unselfish disposition on their parts, several of them 
 were respectively ready to take her to a circus-matin6e, or 
 to drive in Central Park, on that very day : and her prompt 
 acceptance of these signal evidences of a disinterested 
 friendship for womanhood without a natural protector could 
 not be more simply indicated to those who now freely of-
 
 220 BENTHAM TO THE RESCUE. 
 
 fered such friendship, than by her dropping her fork twice 
 at the public breakfast table, or sending the waiter back 
 three times with the boiled eggs to have them cooked 
 rightly. 
 
 Flora had completed her chemical toilet, put all the 
 bottles, jars, and small round boxes back into her satchel 
 again, and sat down to a second reading of these gratifying 
 .intimations that a prepossessing female orphan is not neces- 
 sarily without assiduous paternal guardianship at her com- 
 mand wherever there are Western fathers, when Mr. Dibble 
 appeared, as he had promised, accompanied by Gospeller 
 Simpson. 
 
 " Miss Carowthers was so excited by your sudden flight, 
 Miss Potts," said the latter, " that she came at once to me 
 and Oldy with your farewell note, and would not stop saying 
 ' Did you ever ! ' until, to restrain my aggravated mother 
 from fits, I promised to follow you to your guardian's and 
 ascertain what your good-by note would have meant, if it 
 had actually been punctuated." 
 
 "Our reverend friend reached me about an hour ago," 
 added Mr. Dibble, " saying, that a farewell note without a 
 comma, colon, semicolon, or period in it, and with every 
 other word beginning with a capital, and underscored, was 
 calculated to drive friends to distraction. I took the 
 liberty of reminding him, my dear, that young girls from 
 boarding-school should hardly be expected to have advanced 
 as far as English composition in their French and musical
 
 BENTHAM TO THE RESCUE. 221 
 
 studies ; and I also related to him what you had told me 
 of Mr. Bumstead." 
 
 "And I don't know that, under the circumstances, you 
 could do a better thing than you have done," continued the 
 Gospeller. " Mr. Bumstead, himself, explains your flight 
 upon the supposition that you were possibly engaged with 
 myself, my mother, Mr. Dibble, and the Pendragons, in kill- 
 ing poor Mr. Drood." 
 
 "Oh, oughtn't he to be ashamed of himself, when he 
 knows that I never did kill any absurd creature," cried 
 the Flowerpot, in earnest deprecation. "And just to think 
 of darling Magnolia, too, with her poor, ridiculous brother ! 
 You're a lawyer, Mr. Dibble, and I should think you could 
 get them a habeas corpus, or a divorce, or some other per- 
 fectly absurd thing about courts, that would make the judges 
 tell the juries to bring them in Not Guilty." 
 
 Fixing upon the lovely young reasonej a look expressive 
 of his affectionate wonder at her inspired perception of legal 
 possibilities, the old lawyer said, that the first thing in order 
 was a meeting between herself and Miss Pendragon ; which, 
 as it could scarcely take place (all things considered) with 
 propriety in the private room of that lady's brother, nor 
 without publicity in his own office, or in a hotel, he hardly 
 knew how to bring about. 
 
 And here we have an example of that difference between 
 novels and real life which has been illustrated more than once 
 before in this conscientious American Adaptation of what all
 
 222 BENTHAM TO THE RESCUE. 
 
 our profoundly critical native journals pronounce the " most 
 elaborately artistic work " of the grandest of English novel- 
 ists. In an equivalent situation of real life, Mr. Dibble's 
 quandary would not have been easily relieved ; but, by the 
 magic of artistic fiction, the particular kind of extemporized 
 character absolutely necessary to help him and the novel 
 continuously along was at that moment coming up the 
 stairs ol the hotel.* 
 
 At that critical instant, a servant knocked, to say, that 
 there was a gentleman below, " with a face as long as me 
 arrum, sir, who axed me was there a man here av the name 
 av Simpson, miss ? " 
 
 " It is John it is Mr. Bumstead ! " shrieked Flora, hast- 
 ening involuntarily toward a mirror, " and just see how 
 my dress is wrinkled ! " 
 
 " My name is Bentham Jeremy Bentham," said a deep 
 voice in the doorway ; and there entered a gloomy figure, 
 with smoky, light hair, a curiously long countenance, and 
 black worsted gloves. " Simpson ! Old Octavius ! did 
 you never, never see me before ? " 
 
 " If I am not greatly mistaken," returned the Gospeller, 
 sternly, " I saw you standing in the bar-room of the hotel, 
 just now, as we came up." 
 
 "Yes," sighed the stranger, "I was there waiting for a 
 
 * Quite independently of any specific design to that end by the Adapter, this Adap- 
 tation, carefully following the original narrative, as it does, can not avoid acting as a 
 kind of practical and, of course, somewhat exaggerative commentary upon what 
 is strained, forced, or out of the line of average probabilities, in the work Adapted.
 
 BENTHAM TO THE RESCUE. 223 
 
 Western friend when you passed in. And has sorrow, 
 then, so changed me, that you do not know me ? Alas ! 
 Alack! Woe's me!" 
 
 "Bentham, you say?" cried the Ritualistic clergyman, 
 with a start, and sudden change of countenance. " Surely 
 you're not the rollicking fellow-student who saved my life at 
 Yale." 
 
 " I am ! I am ! " sobbed the other, smiting his bosom. 
 "While studying theology, you'd gone to sleep in bed read- 
 ing the Decameron. I, in the next room, suddenly smelt a 
 smell of wood burning. Breaking into your apartment, I 
 saw your candle fallen upon your pillow and your head on 
 fire. Believing that, if neglected, the flames would spread 
 to some vital part, I seized the water-pitcher and dashed the 
 contents upon you. Up you instantly sprang, with a theo- 
 logical expression upon your lips, and engaged me in violent 
 single combat. " Madman ! " roared I, "is it thus you treat 
 one who has saved your life ?" Falling upon the floor, with 
 a black eye, you at once consented to be reconciled ; and 
 from that hour forth, we were both members of the same 
 secret society." 
 
 Leaping forward, the Reverend Octavius wrung both the 
 black worsted gloves of Mr. Bentham, and introduced the 
 latter to the old lawyer and his ward. 
 
 " He did indeed save all but my head from the conflagra- 
 tion, and extinguished that, even, before it was much
 
 224: BENTHAM TO THE RESCUE. 
 
 charred," cried the grateful Ritualist, with marked emotion. 
 " But, Jeremy, why this aspect of depression ?" 
 
 "Octavius, old friend," said Bentham, his hollow voice 
 quivering, " let no man boast himself upon the gayety of his 
 youth, and fondly dream poor self-deceiver! that his 
 maturity may be one of revelry. You know what I once 
 was. Now I am conducting a first-class American Comic 
 Paper. 
 
 Commiseration, earnest and unaffected, appeared upon 
 eveiy countenance, and Mr. Dibble was the first to break 
 the ensuing deep silence. 
 
 " If I am not mistaken, then," observed the good lawyer, 
 quietly, "the scene of your daily loss of spirits is in the 
 same building with our young friend, Mr. Pendragon, whom 
 you may know." 
 
 " I do know him, sir ; and that his sister has lately come 
 unto him. His room, by means of outside shutters, was 
 once a refuge to me from the Man" here Mr. Bentham' s 
 face flamed with inconceivable hatred "who came to tell 
 me just how an American first-class Comic Paper should be 
 conducted." 
 
 " At what time does your rush of subscribers cease ? " 
 " As soon as I begin to charge anything for my paper." 
 " And the newsmen, who take it by the week, what is 
 their usual time for swarming in your office?" 
 
 " On the day appointed for the return of unsold copies." 
 " Then I have an idea," said Mr. Dibble. " It appears
 
 BENTHAM TO THE RESCUE. 225 
 
 to me, Mr. Bentham, that your office, besides being so near 
 Mr. Pendragon's quarters, furnishes all the conditions for a 
 perfectly private confidential interview between this young 
 lady here, and her friend, Miss Pendragon. Mr. Simpson, 
 if you approve, be kind enough to acquaint Mr. Bentham 
 with Miss Potts' s history, without mentioning names ; and 
 explain to him, also, why the ladies' interview should take 
 place in a spot whither that singular young man, Mr. 
 Bumstead, would not be likely to prowl, if in town, in his 
 inspection of umbrellas." 
 
 The Gospeller hurriedly related the material points of 
 Flora's history to his recovered friend, who moaned with all 
 the more cheerful parts, and seemed to think that the seri- 
 ous ones might be worked-up in comic miss-spelling for his 
 paper. "For there is nothing more humorous in human 
 life," said he, gloomily, " than the defective orthography of 
 a fashionable young girl's education for the solemnity 
 of matrimony." 
 
 Finally, they all set off for the appointed place of retire- 
 ment, upon nearing which Mr. Dibble volunteered to remain 
 outside as a guard against any possible interruption. The 
 Gospeller led the way up the dark stairs of the building, 
 when they had gained it ; and the Flowerpot following, on 
 Jeremy Bentham's arm, could not help glancing shyly up 
 into the melancholy face of her escort, occasionally. " Do 
 you never smile?" she could not help asking. 
 8*
 
 226 BENTHAM TO THE RESCUE. 
 
 "Yes," he said, mournfully, "sometimes: when I clean 
 my teeth." 
 
 No more was said ; for they were entering the room of 
 which the tone and atmosphere were those of a receiving- 
 vault.
 
 A CONFUSED STATE OF THINGS. 227 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 A CONFUSED STATE OF THINGS. 
 
 THE principal office of the Comic Paper was one of those 
 amazingly unsympathetic rooms in which the walls, windows, 
 and doors all have a stiff, unsalient aspect of the most hard- 
 finished indifference to every emotion of humanity, and a 
 perfectly rigid insensibility to the pleasures or pains of 
 the tenants within their impassive shelter. In the whole 
 configuration of the heartless, uncharacterized place, there 
 was not one gracious inequality to lean against; not a 
 ledge to rest elbow upon ; not a panel, not even a stove- 
 pipe hole, to become dearly familiar to the wistful eye ; not 
 so much as a genial crack in the plastering, or a companion- 
 able rattle in casement, or a little human obstinacy in a 
 door to base some kind of an acquaintance upon and make 
 one feel less lonely. Through the grim, untwinkling win- 
 dows, gaping sullenly the wrong way with iron shutters, 
 came a discouraged light, strained through the narrow inter- 
 vals of the dusty roofs above, to discover a large coffin- 
 colored desk surmounted by ghastly busts of Hervey, Keble, 
 and Blair ; * a smaller desk, over which hung a picture of 
 
 * Author of "The Grave."
 
 228 A CONFUSED STATE OF THINGS. 
 
 the Tomb of Washington, and at which sat a pallid assistant- 
 editor in deep mourning, opening the comic contributions 
 received by last mail ; a still smaller desk, for the nominal 
 writer of subscription-wrappers; files of the Evangelist, 
 Observer, and Christian Union hanging along the wall ; a 
 dead caq^et of churchyard-green on the floor; and a print 
 of Mr. Parke Godwin just above the mantel of monumental 
 marble. 
 
 Upon finding themselves in this temple of Momus, and 
 observing that its peculiar arrangement of sunshine made 
 their complexions look as though they had been dead a few 
 days, Gospeller Simpson and the Flowerpot involuntarily 
 spoke in whispers behind their hands. 
 
 " Does that room belong to your establishment, also, 
 Bentham?" whispered the Gospeller, pointing rather fear- 
 fully, as he spoke, towards a side -door leading apparently 
 into an adjoining apartment. 
 
 "Yes," was the low response. 
 
 " Is there is there anybody dead in there ? " whispered 
 Mr. Simpson, tremulously. 
 
 . No. Not yet." 
 
 " Then," whispered the Ritualistic clergyman, " you 
 might step in there, Miss Potts, and have your interview 
 with Miss Pendragon, whom Mr. Bentham will, I am sure, 
 cause to be summoned from upstairs." 
 
 The assistant-editor of the Comic Paper stealing softly 
 from the office to call the other young lady down, Mr. Jer-
 
 A CONFUSED STATE OF THINGS. 229 
 
 emy Bentham made a sign that Flora should follow him to 
 the supplementary room indicated ; his low-spirited manner 
 being as though he had said : " If you wish to look at the 
 body, miss, I will now show you the way." 
 
 Leaving the Gospeller lost in dark abstraction near the 
 black mantel, the Flowerpot allowed the sexton of the 
 establishment to conduct her funereally into the place 
 assigned for her interview, and stopped aghast before a huge 
 black object standing therein. 
 
 "What's this?" she gasped, almost hysterically. 
 
 " Only a safe," said Mr. Bentham, with inexplicable bit- 
 terness of tone. " Merely our fire-and-burglar-proof recep- 
 tacle for the money constantly pouring in from first-class 
 American Comic Journalism." Here Mr. Bentham slapped 
 his forehead passionately, checked something like a sob in 
 his throat, and abruptly returned to the main office. 
 
 Scarcely, however, had he closed the door of communica- 
 tion behind hinij when another door, opening from the hall, 
 was noiselessly unlatched, and Magnolia Pendragon glided 
 into the arms of her friend. 
 
 " Flora ! " murmured the Southern girl, " I can scarcely 
 credit my eyes ! It seems so long since we last met ! 
 You've been getting a new bonnet, I see." 
 
 "It's like an absurd dream ! " responded the Flowerpot, 
 wonderingly caressing her. "I've thought of you and your 
 poor, ridiculous brother twenty times a day. How much
 
 230 A CONFUSED STATE OF THINGS. 
 
 you must have gone through here ! Are they wearing skirts 
 full, or scant, this season ? " 
 
 " About medium, dear. But how do you happen to be 
 here, in Mr. Bentham's office?" 
 
 In answer to this question, Flora related all that had hap- 
 pened at Bumsteadville and since her flight from thence ; 
 concluding by warning Magnolia, that her possession of a 
 black alpaca waist, slightly worn, had subjected her to the 
 ominous suspicion of the Ritualistic organist. 
 
 " I scorn and defy the suspicions of that enemy of the 
 persecuted South, and high-handed wooer of exclusively 
 Northern women ! " exclaimed Miss Pendragon, vehemently. 
 " Is this Mr. Bentham married ? " ' 
 
 " I suppose not." 
 
 " Is he visiting any one ? " 
 
 " I shouldn't think so, dear." 
 
 "Then," added Magnolia, thoughtfully, "if dear Mr. 
 Dibble approves, he might be a friend to Montgomery and 
 myself; and, by being so near us, protect us both from 
 Mr. Bumstead. Just think, dear Flora, what heaps of sor- 
 row I should endure, if that base man's suspicions about 
 my alpaca waist should be only a pretence, to frighten me 
 into ultimately receiving his addresses." 
 
 "I don't think there's any danger, love," said Miss Potts, 
 rather sharply. 
 
 "Why, Flora, precious?"
 
 A CONFUSED STATE OF THINGS. 231 
 
 " Oh, because he's so absurdly fastidious, you know, 
 about regularity of features in women." 
 
 " More than he is about brains, I should think, dear, from 
 what you tell me of his making love to you." 
 
 Here both young ladies trembled very much, and said 
 they never, never would have believed it of each other ; and 
 were only reconciled when Flora sobbed that she was a 
 poor unmarried orphan, and Miss Pendragon moaned pite- 
 ously that an unwedded Southern girl without money had 
 better go away somewhere in the desert, with her crushed 
 brother, and die at once for their down-trodden section. 
 Then, indeed they embraced tearfully ; and, in proof of the 
 perfect restoration of their devoted friendship, agreed never 
 to marry if they could avoid it, and told each other the 
 prices of all their best clothes. 
 
 "You won't tell your brother that I've been here?" said 
 the Flowerpot. " I'm so absurdly afraid that he can't help 
 blaming me for causing some of his trouble." 
 
 " Can't I tell him, even if it would serve to amuse him in 
 his desolation ?" asked the sister, persuasively. "I want to 
 see him smile again, just as he does some days when a hand- 
 organ-man's monkey climbs up to our windows from the 
 street." 
 
 " Well, you may tell him, then, you absurd thing ! " re- 
 turned Flora, blushing; and, with another embrace, they 
 parted, and the deeply momentous interview was over. 
 
 When Miss Potts and Mr. Simpson rejoined Mr. Dibble,
 
 232 A CONFUSED STATE OF THINGS. 
 
 in the office of the latter, across the street, it was decided 
 that the flighty young girl should be made less expensive to 
 her friends by temporary accommodation in an economical 
 boarding-house, and that the Gospeller, returning to Bum- 
 steadville, should persuade Miss Carowthers to come and 
 stay with her until the time for the reopening of the Macas- 
 sar Female College. 
 
 Subsequently, with his homeless ward upon his arm, the 
 benignant old lawyer underwent a series of scathing rebuffs 
 from the various high-strung descendants of better days at 
 whose once luxurious but now darkened homes he applied 
 for the desired board. Time after time was he reminded, 
 by unspeakably majestic middle-aged ladies with bass voices, 
 that when a fine old family loses its former wealth by those 
 vicissitudes of fortune which bring out the noblest traits of 
 character and compel the letting-out of a few damp rooms, 
 it is significant of a weak understanding, or a depraved dis- 
 respect of the dignity of adversity, to expect that such fami- 
 lies shall lose money and lower their hereditary high tone by 
 waiting upon a parcel of young girls. A few single Gentle- 
 men desiring all the comforts of a home would not be con- 
 sidered insulting unless they objected to the butter, and a 
 couple of married Childless Gentlemen with their wives 
 might be pardoned for respectfully applying ; but the idea of 
 a parcel of young girls ! Wherever he went, the reproach 
 of not being a few Single Gentlemen, or a couple of married 
 Childless Gentlemen with their wives, abashed Mr. Dibble
 
 A CONFUSED STATE OF THINGS. 233 
 
 into helpless retreat; while Flora's increasing guilty con- 
 sciousness of the implacable sentiment against her as a 
 parcel of young girls, culminated at last in tears. Finally, 
 when the miserable lawyer was beginning to think strongly 
 of the House of the Good Shepherd, or the Orphan Asylum, 
 as a last resort, it suddenly occurred to him that Mrs. Skam- 
 merhorn,* a distant widowed aunt of his clerk, Mr. Bladams, 
 had been known to live upon boarders in Bleecker Street ; 
 and thither he dragged hastily the despised object on his 
 arm. 
 
 Being a widow without children, and relieved of nearly all 
 the weaknesses of her sex by the systematic refusal of the 
 opposite sex to give her any encouragement in them, Mrs. 
 Skammerhorn was a relentless advocate of Woman's In- 
 alienable Rights, and only wished that Man could just see 
 himself in that contemptible light in which he was distinctly 
 visible to One, who sooner than be his Legal Slave, would 
 never again accompany him to the Altar. 
 
 " I tell you candidly, Dibble," said she, in answer to his 
 application, "that if you had applied to be taken yourself, I 
 should have said ' Never ! ' and at once called in the police. 
 Since Skammerhorn died delirious, I have always refused to 
 have his sex in the house, and I tell you, frankly, that I con- 
 sider it hardly human. If this girl of yours, however, and 
 the elderly female whom, you say, she expects to join her in 
 a few days, will make themselves generally useful about the 
 
 * In the original, Mrs. Billickin, "of Southampton Street, Bloomsbury Square."
 
 234 A CONFUSED STATE OF THINGS. 
 
 house, and try to be companions to me, I can give them the 
 very room where Skammerhorn died." 
 
 Perceiving that Flora turned pale, her guardian whispered 
 to her that she would not be alone in the room, at any rate ; 
 and then respectfully asked whether the late Mr. Skammer- 
 horn had ever been seen around the house since his death ? 
 
 " To be frank with you," answered the widow, " I did 
 think that I came upon him once in the closet, with his back 
 to me, as often I'd seen the weak creature in life going after 
 a bottle on the top shelf. But it was only his coat hanging 
 there, with his boots standing below and my muff hanging 
 over to look like his head." 
 
 " You think, then," said Mr. Dibble, inquiringly, " that it 
 is such a room as two ladies could occupy, without awaking 
 at midnight with a strange sensation and thinking they felt 
 a supernatural presence ? " 
 
 " Not if the bed was rightly searched beforehand, and all 
 the joints well peppered with magnetic powder," was the 
 assuring answer. 
 
 " Could we see the room, madam ? " 
 
 " If the shutters were open you could ; as they're not," 
 returned the widow, not offering to stir ; " but ever since 
 Skammerhorn, starting up with a howl, said, ' Here he comes 
 again, red-hot ! ' and tried to jump out of the window, I've 
 never opened them for any single man, and never shall. I 
 couldn't bear it, Dibble, to see one of your sex in that room 
 again, and hope you will not insist."
 
 A CONFUSED STATE OF THINGS. 235 
 
 Broken in spirit as he was by preceding humiliations, the 
 old lawyer had not the heart to contest the point, and it was 
 agreed, that, upon the arrival of Miss Carowthers from Bum- 
 steadville, she and Flora should accept the memorable room 
 in question. 
 
 Upon their way back to the hotel, guardian and ward met 
 Mr. Bentham, who, from the moment of becoming a charac- 
 ter in their Story, had been possessed with that mysterious 
 madness for open-air exercise which afflicted every acquain- 
 tance of the late Edwin Drood, and now saluted them in the 
 broiling street and solemnly besought their company for a 
 long walk. " It has occurred to me," said the Comic Paper 
 man, who had resumed his black worsted gloves, " that Mr. 
 Dibble and Miss Potts may be willing to aid me in walking- 
 off some of the darker suicidal inclinations incident to first- 
 class Humorous Journalism in America. Reading the 
 ' proof of an instalment of a comic serial now publishing in 
 my paper, I contracted such gloom, that a frantic rush into 
 the fresh air was my only hope of an escape from self-de- 
 struction. Let us walk, if you please." 
 
 Led on, in the profoundest melancholy, by this chastened 
 character, Mr. Dibble and the Flowerpot were presently 
 toiling hotly through a succession of grievous side-streets, 
 and forlorn short-cuts to dismal ferries ; the state of their 
 conductor's spirits inclining him to find a certain refreshingly 
 solemn joy in the horrors of pedestrianism imposed by ob- 
 structions of merchandise on sidewalks, and repeated climb-
 
 236 A CONFUSED STATE OF THINGS. 
 
 ings over skids extending from store doors to drays. In- 
 spired to an extraordinary flow of malignant animal spirits 
 by the complexities of travel incident to the odorous mazes 
 of some hundred odd kegs of salt mackerel and boxes of 
 brown soap impressively stacked before one very enterprising 
 Commission house, Mr. Bentham lightened the journey with 
 anecdotes of self-made Commission men who had risen in 
 life by breaking human legs and city ordinances ; and dwelt 
 emotionally upon the scenes in the city hospitals when 
 ladies and gentlemen were brought in, with nails from the 
 hoops of sugar-hogsheads sticking into their feet, or limbs 
 dislocated from too-loftily piled firkins of butter falling upon 
 them. Through incredible hardships, and amongst astound- 
 ing complications of horse-cars, target companies, and bar- 
 rels of everything, Mr. Bentham also amused his friends with 
 circuits of several of the fine public markets of New York ; 
 explaining to them the relations of the various miasmatic 
 smells of those quaint edifices with the various devastat- 
 ing diseases of the day, and expatiating quite eloquently 
 upon the political corruption involved in the renting of the 
 stalls, and the fine openings there were for Cholera and 
 Yellow Fever in the Fish and Vegetable departments. 
 Then, as a last treat, he led his panting companions through 
 several lively up-hill blocks of drug-mills and tobacco firms, 
 to where they had a distant view of a tenement house next 
 door to a kerosene factory, where, as he vivaciously told 
 them, in the event of a fire, at least one hundred human
 
 A CONFUSED STATE OF THINGS. 237 
 
 beings would be slowly done to a turn. After which all three 
 returned from their walk, firmly convinced that an unctuous 
 vein of humor had been conscientiously worked, and ab- 
 stractedly wishing themselves dead.* 
 
 The exhilarating effect of the genial Comic Paper man 
 upon Flora did not, indeed, pass away, until she and Miss 
 Carowthers were in their appointed quarters under the roof 
 of Mrs. Skammerhorn, whither they went immediately upon 
 the arrival of the elder spinster from Bumsteadville. 
 
 " It could have been wished, my good woman," said Miss 
 Carowthers, casting a rather disparaging look around the 
 death-chamber of the late Mr. Skammerhorn, " that you had 
 assigned to educated single young ladies, like ourselves, an 
 apartment less suggestive of Man in his wedded aspects. 
 The spectacle of a pair of pegged boots sticking out from 
 under a bed, and a razor and a hone grouped on the mantel- 
 shelf, is not such as I should desire to encourage in the 
 dormitory of a pupil under my tuition." 
 
 " That's much to be deplored, I'm sure, Carowthers," 
 returned Mrs. Skammerhorn, severely, " and sorry am I that 
 I ever married, on that particular account. I'd not have 
 done it, if you'd only told me. But, seeing that I married 
 
 * Ordinary readers, while admiring the heavy humor of this unexpected open-air 
 episode, may wonder what on earth it has to do with the Story ; but the cultivated 
 few, understanding the ingenious mechanics of novel-writing, will appreciate it as a 
 most skilful and happy device to cover the interval between the hiring of Mrs. Skam- 
 merhorn's room, and the occupation thereof by Flora and her late teacher another 
 instance of what our profoundly critical American journals call " artistic elaboration." 
 (See corresponding Chapter of the original English Story.)
 
 238 A CONFUSED STATE OF THINGS. 
 
 Skammerhorn, and then he died delirious, his boots and 
 razor must remain, just as he often wished to throw the for- 
 mer at me in his ravings. Once married is enough, say I ; 
 and those who never were, through having no proposals, 
 must bear with those who have, and take things as they 
 come." 
 
 "There are those, I'd have you know, Mrs. Skammer- 
 horn, to whom proposals have been no inducement," said 
 Miss Carowthers, sharply ; " or, if being made, and then with- 
 drawn, have given our sex opportunities to prove, in courts 
 of law, that damages can still be got. I'm afraid of no Man, 
 my good woman, as a person named Blodgett once learned 
 from a jury ; but boots and razors are not what I would 
 have familiar to the mind of one who never had a husband 
 to die in raging torments, nor yet has sued for breach." 
 
 "Miss Potts is but a chicken, I'll admit," retorted Mrs. 
 Skammerhorn; "but you're not such, Carowthers, by many 
 a good year. On the contrary, quite a hen. Then, you 
 being with her, if the boots and razor make her think she 
 sees that poor, weak Skammerhorn a-ranging round the room, 
 when in his grave it is his place to be, you've only got to 
 say, ' A fool you are, and always were,' as often I, my- 
 self, called at him in his lifetime, and off he'll go into his 
 tomb again for fear of broomsticks." 
 
 " Flora, my dear," said Miss Carowthers, turning with 
 dignity to her pupil, " if I know anything of human nature, 
 the man who has once got away from here, will stay away.
 
 A CONFUSED STATE OF THINGS. 239 
 
 Only single ghosts have attachments for the houses in which 
 they once lived. So, never mind the boots and razor, 
 darling ; which, after all, if seen by peddlers, or men who 
 come to fix the gas, might keep us safe from robbers." 
 
 "As safe as any man himself, young woman, with pistols 
 under his head that he would never dare to fire if robbers 
 were no more than cats rampaging," added Mrs. Skammer- 
 horn, enthusiastically. " With nothing but an old black hat 
 of Skamrnerhorn's, and walking-cane, kept hanging in the 
 hall, I haven't lost a spoon by tramps or census-takers for 
 six mortal years. So make yourselves at home, I beg you 
 both, while I go down and cook the liver for our dinner. 
 You'll find it tender as a chicken, after what you've broke 
 your teeth upon in boarding-schools ; though Skammerhorn 
 declared it made him bilious in the second year, forgetting 
 what he'd drank with sugar to his taste, beforehand." 
 
 Thus was sweet Flora Potts introduced to her new home ; 
 where, but for looking down from her windows at the 
 fashions, making-up hundreds of bows of ribbons for her 
 neck, and making-over all her dresses, her woman's mind 
 must have been a blank. What time Miss Carowthers told 
 her all day how she looked in this or that style of wearing 
 her hair, and read her to sleep each night with extracts from 
 the pages of cheery Hannah More. As for the object near- 
 est her young heart, to say that she was wholly unruffled by 
 it would be inaccurate ; but by address she kept it hidden 
 from all eyes save her own.
 
 240 GOING HOME IN THE MORN7NG. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 GOING HOME IN THE MORNING. 
 
 AFTER having thrown all his Ritualistic friends at home 
 into a most unholy and exasperated condition of mind, by a 
 steady series of vague remarks as to the extreme likelihood 
 of their united implication in the possible deed of darkness 
 by which he has lost a broadcloth nephew and an alpaca 
 umbrella, the mournful Mr. Bumstead is once more awaiting 
 the dawn in that popular retreat in Mulberry Street where 
 he first contracted his taste for cloves. The Assistant- 
 Assessor and the Alderman of the Ward are again there, 
 tilted back against the wall in their chairs ; their shares in 
 the Congressional Nominating Convention held in that room 
 earlier in the night having left them too weary for further 
 locomotion. The decanters and tumblers hurled by the 
 Nominating Convention over the question of which Irish- 
 man could drink the most to be nominated, are still scattered 
 about the floor ; here and there a forgotten slung-shot marks 
 the places where rival delegations have confidently pre- 
 sented their claims for recognition ; and a few bullet-holes in 
 the wall above the bar enumerate the various pauses in the 
 great debate upon the perils of the public peace from Negro 
 Suffrage.
 
 GOING HOME IN THE MORNING. 241 
 
 Reclining with great ease of attitude upon an uncushioned 
 settee, the Ritualistic organist is aroused from dreamy slum- 
 ber by the turning-over of the pipe in his mouth, and ma- 
 jestically motions for the venerable woman of the house to 
 come and brush the ashes from his clothes. 
 
 " Wud yez have it filled again, honey ? " asks the woman. 
 " Sure, wan pipe more would do ye no harrum." 
 
 " I'mtooshleepy," he says, dropping the pipe. 
 
 "An' are yez too shlapey, asthore, to talk a little bissiness 
 wid an ould woman?" she asks, insinuatingly. "Couldn't 
 yez be afther payin' me the bit av a schore I've got agin 
 ye?" 
 
 Mr. Bumstead opens his eyes reproachfully, and wishes to 
 know how she can dare talk about money matters to an 
 organist who, at almost any moment, may be obliged to see 
 a Chinaman hired in his place on account of cheapness ? 
 
 " Could the haythen crayture play, thin ? " she asks, won- 
 deringly. 
 
 " Thairvairimitative," he tells her ; " Cookwashiron' n' 
 eatbirdsnests." 
 
 " An' vote would they, honey?" 
 
 "Yesh 'f course thairvairimitative, I tell y 1 ," snarls 
 he : "do't-cheapzdirt." 
 
 " Is it vote chaper they would, the haythen naygurs, than 
 daycint, hardworkin' white min ? " she asks, excitedly 
 
 "Yesh. Chinesecheaplabor," he says, bitterly. 
 11
 
 242 GOING HOME IN THE MORNING. 
 
 " Och, hone ! " cries the woman, in anguish ; " and That's 
 the poor to do then, honey ? " 
 
 " Gowest ; go'nfarm ! " sobs Mr. Bumstead, shedding 
 tears. "I'd go m'self if a-hadn't lost dear-re-er relative. 
 Nephew'n' umbrella." 
 
 " Saint Payther ! an' f 'hat's that ?" 
 
 " Edwins ! " cries the unhappy organist, starting to his 
 feet with a wild reel. " Th' pride of sunckle' shear t ! I see 'm 
 now, in'sh'fectionatemanhood, with whalebone ribs, made 
 'f alpaca, andyetsoyoung. ' Help me ! ' hiccries ; ' Pendra- 
 gon'sash'nate'n me ! ' hiccries and I go ! " 
 
 While uttering this extraordinary burst of feeling, he has 
 advanced toward the door in a kind of demoniac can-can, 
 and, at its close, abruptly darts into the street and frantically 
 makes off. 
 
 " The cross of the holy fathers ! " ejaculates the woman, 
 momentarily bewildered by this sudden termination of the 
 scene. Then a new expression comes swiftly over her face, 
 and she adds, in a different tone, " Odether-nodether, but 
 ifs coonin' as a fox he is, and if s off he's gone again widout 
 payin' me the schore ! Sure, but I'll follow him, if it's to 
 the wurruld's ind, and see f hat he is and where he is." 
 
 Thus it happens that she reaches Bumsteadville almost as 
 soon as the Ritualistic organist, and, following him to his 
 boarding-house, encounters Mr. Tracey Clews upon the 
 steps.
 
 GOING HOME IN THE MORNING. 243 
 
 " Well now ! " calls that gentleman, as she looks inquir- 
 ingly at him ; " who do you want ? " 
 
 "Him as just passed in, your Honor." 
 
 " Mr. Bumstead ? " 
 
 "Ah. Where does he play the organ?" 
 
 " In St. Cow's Church, down yonder. Mass at seven 
 o'clock, and he'll be there in half an hour." 
 
 " It's there, I'll be, thin," mumbles the woman; "and bad 
 luck to it that I didn't know before ; whin I came to ax him 
 for me schore, and might have gone home widout a cint but 
 for a good lad named Eddy, who gave me a sthamp. The 
 same Fddy, I'm thinkin', that I've heard him mutter about 
 in his shlape at my shebang in town, when he came there on 
 political business." 
 
 After a start and a pause, Mr. Clews repeats his informa- 
 tion concerning the Ritualistic church, and then cautiously 
 follows the woman as she goes thither. 
 
 Unconscious of the remarkable female figure intently' 
 watching him from under a corner of the gallery, and occa- 
 sionally shaking a fist at him, Mr. Bumstead attends to the 
 musical part of the service with as much artistic accuracy as 
 a hasty head-bath and a glass of soda-water are capable of 
 securing. The worshippers are too busy with risings, kneel- 
 ings, bowings, and miscellaneous devout gymnastics, to heed 
 his casual imperfections, and his headache makes him 
 fiercely indifferent to what any one else may think.
 
 244 GOING HOME IN THE MORNING. 
 
 Coming out of the athletic edifice, Mr. Clews comes upon 
 the woman again, who seems excited. 
 
 "Well?" he says. 
 
 " Sure he saw me in time to shlip out of a back dure," she 
 returns savagely; " but it's shtrait to his boording-house I'm 
 going afther him, the spalpeen." 
 
 Again Mr. Tracey Clews follows her ; but this time he 
 allows her to go up to Mr. Bumstead's room, while he turns 
 into his own apartment where his breakfast awaits him. " I 
 can make a chalk mark for the trail I've struck to-day," 
 he says ; and then thoughtfully attacks the meal upon the 
 table.* 
 
 * At this point, the English original the " Mystery of Edwin Drood " breaks 
 off forever.
 
 MR. CLEWS AT HIS NOVEL. 245 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 MR. CLEWS AT HIS NOVEL.* 
 
 THROWN into Rembrandtish relief by the light of a garish 
 kerosene lamp upon the table : with one discouraged lock 
 of hair hanging over his nose, and straw hat pushed so far 
 back from his phrenological brow that its vast rim had the 
 fine artistic effect of a huge saintly nimbus : Mr. Bumstead 
 sat gymnastically crosswise in an easy-chair, over an arm of 
 which his slender lower limbs limply dangled, and elaborate- 
 ly performed one of the grander works of Bach upon an ir- 
 ritable accordion. Now, winking with intense rapidity, and 
 going through the muscular motions of an excitable person 
 resolutely pulling out an obstinate and inexplicable drawer 
 from somewhere about his knees, he produced sustained and 
 mournful notes, as of canine distress in the backyard ; anon, 
 with eyes nearly closed and the straw nimbus sliding still 
 further back, his manipulation was that of an excessively 
 
 * The few remaining chapters, which conclude this Adaptation of" The Mystery of 
 Edwin Drood," should not be construed as involving any presumptuous attempt to 
 divine that full solution of the latter which the pen of its lamented author was not per- 
 mitted to reach. No further correspondence with the tenor of the unfinished English 
 story is intended than the Adapter will endeavor to justify to his own conscience, and 
 that of his reader, by at least one unmistakable foreshadowing circumstance of the 
 original publication.
 
 24:6 MR. CLEWS AT HIS 'NOVEL. 
 
 weary gentleman slowly compressing a large sponge, there- 
 by squeezing out certain choking, snorting, guttural sounds, 
 as of a class softly studying the German language in another 
 room ; and, finally, with an impatient start from the unex- 
 pected slumber into which the last shaky pianissimo had mo- 
 mentarily betrayed him, he caught the untamed instrument 
 in mid-air, just as it was treacherously getting away from him, 
 frantically balanced it there for an instant on all his clutching 
 finger-tips, and had it prisoner again for a renewal of the 
 weird symphony. 
 
 Seriously offended at the discovery that he could not drop 
 asleep in his own room, for a minute, without the music 
 stopping and the accordion trying to slip off, the Ritualistic 
 organist was not at all softened in temper by almost simul- 
 taneously realizing that the further skirt of his long linen 
 coat was standing out nearly straight from -his person, and, 
 apparently, fluttering in a heavy draught. 
 
 " Who' s-been-ope'nin'-th' -window ?" he sternly asked. 
 " What's-meaning-'f-such-a-gale-at thistime-'f-year ? " 
 
 "Do I intrude ?" inquired a voice close at hand. 
 
 Looking very carefully along the still extended skirt of his 
 coat toward exactly the point of the compass from which 
 the voice seemed to come, Mr. Bumstead at last awoke to 
 the conviction that the tension of his garment and its breezy 
 agitation were caused by the tugging of a human figure. 
 
 " Do I intrude ? " repeated Mr. Tracey Clews, dropping
 
 MR. CLEWS AT HIS NOVEL. 247 
 
 the skirt as he spoke. " Have I presumed too greatly in 
 coming to request the favor of a short private interview ? " 
 
 Slipping quickly into a more genteel but rather rigid po- 
 sition on his chair, the Ritualistic organist made an airy pass 
 at him with the accordion. 
 
 " Any doors where youwasborn, sir ? " 
 
 " There were, Mr. Bumstead." 
 
 " People ever knock when th' wanted t'-come-in, sir ? " 
 
 "Why, I did knock at your door," answered Mr. Clews, 
 conciliatingly. " I knocked and knocked, but you kept on 
 playing ; and after I finally took the liberty to come in and 
 pull you by the coat, it was ten minutes before you found it 
 out." 
 
 In an attempt to look into the speaker's inmost soul, Mr. 
 Bumstead fell into a doze, from which ithe crash of his ac- 
 cordion to the floor aroused him in time to behold a very 
 curious proceeding on the part of Mr. Clews. That gentle- 
 man successively peered up the chimney, through the win- 
 dows, and under the furniture of the room, and then stealth- 
 ily took a seat near his rather languid observer. 
 
 " Mr. Bumstead, you know me as a temporary boarder 
 under the same roof with you. Other people know me 
 merely as a dead-beat. May I trust you with a secret ? " 
 
 A pair of blurred and glassy eyes looked into his from 
 under a huge straw hat, and a husky question followed 
 his :
 
 248 MR. CLEWS AT HIS NOVEL. 
 
 "Did y ever read Wordsworth's poem-'f-th' Excursion, 
 sir?" 
 
 "Not that I remember." 
 
 " Then, sir," exclaimed the organist, with spasmodic ani- 
 mation "then's not in your hicsperience to know hows- 
 sleepy-I am-jus'-riow." 
 
 " You had a nephew," said his subtle companion, raising 
 his voice, and not appearing to heed the last remark. 
 
 "An' 'numbrella," added Mr. Bumstead, feebly. 
 
 " I say you had a nephew," reiterated the other, " and 
 that nephew disappeared in a very mysterious manner. 
 Now I'm a literary man " 
 
 "C'd tell that by y'r-headerhair," murmured the Ritualistic 
 organist. " Left y"r wife yet, sir ? " 
 
 " I say I'm a literary man," persisted Tracey Clews, sharp- 
 ly. "I'm going to write a great American Novel, called 
 ' The Amateur Detective,' founded upon the story of this 
 very Edwin Drood, and have come to Bumsteadville to get 
 all the particulars. I've picked up considerable from Gos- 
 peller Simpson, John McLaughlin, and even the woman from 
 the Mulberry Street place who came after you the other 
 morning. But now I want to know something from you. 
 What has become of your nephew ? " 
 
 He put the question suddenly, and with a kind of sup- 
 pressed leap at him whom he addressed. Immeasurable 
 was his surprise at the perfectly calm answer, 
 
 " I can't r* member hicsactly, sir."
 
 MR. CLEWS AT HIS NOVEL. 249 
 
 " Can't remember ! Can't remember what ? " 
 
 " Where-I-put't." 
 
 "//;" 
 
 " Yes. Th' umbrella." 
 
 " What on earth are you talking about ? " exclaimed Mr. 
 Clews, in a rage. " Come ! Wake up ! What have um- 
 brellas to do with this ? " 
 
 Rousing himself to something like temporary conscious- 
 ness, Mr. Bumstead slowly climbed to his feet, and, with a 
 wild kind of swoop, came heavily down with both hands upon 
 the shoulders of his questioner. 
 
 "What now?" asked that startled personage. 
 
 " You want f know 'bout th' umbrella ? " said Bumstead 
 with straw hat amazingly awry, and linen coat a perfect map 
 of creases. 
 
 " Yes ! You're crushing me ! " panted Mr. Clews. 
 
 "Th' umbrella ! " cried Mr. Bumstead, suddenly withdraw- 
 ing his hands and swaying before his visitor like a linen per- 
 son on springs, " This 's what there's 'bout 't : Where th' 
 umbrella is, there is Edwins also ! " 
 
 Astounded by this bewildering confession, and fearful that 
 the uncle of Mr. Drood would be back in his chair and 
 asleep again if he gave him a chance, the excited inquisitor 
 sprang from his chair, and slowly and carefully backed the 
 wildly glaring object of his solicitation until his shoulders and 
 elbows were safely braced against the mantel-piece. Then, 
 like one inspired, he grasped a bottle of soda water from the
 
 250 MR. CLEWS AT HIS NOVEL. 
 
 table, and forced the reviving liquid down his staring patient's 
 throat ; as quickly tore off his straw hat, newly moistened 
 the damp sponge in it at an eighboring wash-stand, and re- 
 placed both on the aching head ; and, finally, placed in one 
 of his tremulous hands a few cloves from a saucer on the 
 mantel-shelf. 
 
 "You are better now? You can tell me more?" he 
 said, resting a moment from his violent exertions. 
 
 With the unsettled air of one coming out of a complicated 
 dream, Mr. Bumstead chewed the cloves musingly; then, 
 after nodding excessively, with a hideous smile upon his 
 countenance, suddenly threw an arm about the neck of his 
 restorer and wept loudly upon his bosom. 
 
 " My fr'en'," he wailed, in a damp voice, " lemme confess 
 to you. I'm a mis' able man, my fr'en' ; perfectly mis' able. 
 These cloves these insidious tropical spices have been 
 thebaneofmyexistence. On Chrishm's night that Chrish- 
 m's night I toogtoomany. Wha' scons' q' nee? I put m' 
 nephew an' m' umbrella away somewhere, an 've neverb'n 
 able terremembersince ! " 
 
 Still sustaining his weight, the author of " The Amateur 
 Detective " at first seemed nonplussed ; but quickly changed 
 his expression to one of abrupt intelligence. 
 
 " I see, now ; I begin to see," he answered, slowly, and 
 almost in a whisper. " On the night of that Christmas din- 
 ner here, you were in a clove-trance, and made some secret 
 disposition (which you have not since been able to remem-
 
 MR. CLEWS AT HIS NOVEL. 251 
 
 ber), of your umbrella and nephew. Until very lately 
 until now, when you are nearly, but not quite, as much under 
 the influence of cloves again you have had a vague gen- 
 eral idea that somebody else must have killed Mr. Drood 
 and stolen your umbrella. But now, that you are partially 
 in the same condition, physiologically and psychologically, as 
 on the night of the disappearance, you have once more a 
 partial perception of what were the facts of the case. Am 
 I right?" 
 
 "Tha's it, sir. You're a ph'los'pher," murmured Mr. 
 Bumstead, trying to brush from above his nose the pendent 
 lock of hair, which he took for a fly. 
 
 " Very well, then," continued Tracey Clews, his extraor- 
 dinary head of hair fairly bristling with electrical animation : 
 " You've only to get yourself into exactly the same clove-y 
 condition as on the night of the double disappearance, when 
 you put your umbrella and nephew away somewhere, and 
 you'll remember all about it again. You have two distinct 
 states of existence, you see : a cloven one, and an uncloven 
 one : and what you have done in one you are totally obliv- 
 ious of in the other." 
 
 Something like an occult wink trembled for a moment in 
 the right eye of Mr. Bumstead. 
 
 " Tha's ver* true," said he, thoughtfully. " I've been 'bliv- 
 ious m'self, frequently. Never c'd r'member whar I-owed." 
 
 " The idea I've suggested to you for the solution of this 
 mystery," went on Mr. Clews, " is expressed by one of the
 
 252 MR. CLEWS AT HIS NOVEL. 
 
 greatest of English writers : who, in his very last work, says : 
 < in some cases of drunkenness, and in others of animal 
 magnetism, there are two states of consciousness which never 
 clash, but each of which pursues its separate course as though 
 it were continuous instead of broken. Thus, if I hide my 
 watch when I am drunk, I must be drunk again before I can 
 remember where? " * 
 
 "I'm norradrink'n'man, sir," returned Mr. Bumstead, 
 drawing coldly back from him, and escaping a fall into the 
 fireplace by a dexterous surge into the nearest chair. " Th' 
 lemon tea which I take for my cold, or to prVent the cloves 
 from disagreeing with me, is norrintoxicating." 
 
 " Of course not," assented his subtle counsellor : " but in 
 this country, at least, chronic inebriation, clove-eating, and 
 even opium-taking, are strikingly alike in their aspects, and 
 the same rules may be safely applied to all. My advice to 
 you is what I have given. Cause a table to be spread in 
 this room, exactly as it was for that memorable Christmas- 
 dinner ; sit down to it exactly as then, and at the same hour ; 
 go through all the same processes as nearly as you can re- 
 member ; and, by the mere force of association, you will 
 enact all the final performances with your umbrella and 
 your nephew." 
 
 Mr. Bumstead's arms were folded tightly across his manly 
 breast, and the fine head with the straw hat upon it tilted 
 heavily toward his bosom. 
 
 * See Chapter III., The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
 
 MR. CLEWS AT HIS NOVEL. 253 
 
 " I see't now," said he softly ; " bone han'le 'n ferule. I 
 r" member threshing 'm with it. I can r'memb'r carry* ng " 
 Here Mr. Bumstead burst into tears, and made a frenzied 
 dash at the lock of hair which he again mistook for a fly. 
 
 "To sum up all," concluded Mr. Tracey Clews, shaking 
 him violently by the shoulder, that he might remain awake 
 long enough to hear it, " to sum up all, I am satisfied, 
 from the familiar knowledge of this mystery I have already 
 gained, that the end will have something to do with exercise 
 in the Open Air! You'll have to go outdoors for something 
 important. And now good-night." 
 
 " Goornight, sir." 
 
 Retiring softly to his own room, under the same roof, the 
 author of "The Amateur Detective" smiled at himself before 
 the mirror with marked complacency. " You're a long- 
 headed one, my dead-beat friend," he said archly, " and your 
 great American Novel is likely to be a respectable success." 
 
 There sounded a crash upon a floor, somewhere in the 
 house, and he held his breath to listen. It was the Eitual- 
 istic organist going to bed.
 
 254: THE SKELETON IN MCLAUGHLIN'S CLOSET. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE SKELETON IN MCLAUGHLIN'S CLOSET. 
 
 NIGHT, spotted with stars, like a black leopard, crouched 
 once more upon Bumsteadville, and her one eye to be seen 
 in profile, the moon, glared upon the helpless place with 
 something of a caf s nocturnal stare of glassy vision for a 
 stupefied mouse. Midnight had come with its twelve tink- 
 ling drops more of opiate, to deepen the stupor of all things 
 almost unto death, and still the light shone luridly through 
 the window-curtains of Mr. Bumstead's room, and still the 
 lonely musician sat stiffly at a dinner-table spread for three, 
 whereof only a goblet, a curious antique black bottle, a 
 bowl of sugar, a saucer of lemon-slices, a decanter of water,
 
 THE SKELETON IN MCLAUGHLINS CLOSET. 255 
 
 and a saucer of cloves appeared to have been used by the 
 solitary diner. 
 
 Unconscious that, through the door ajar at his back, a 
 pair of vigilant human orbs were upon him, the Ritualistic 
 organist, who was in very low spirits, drew an emaciated 
 and rather unsteady hand repeatedly across his perspiring 
 brow, and talked in deep bass to himself. 
 
 " He came in, af'r' bein' brisgly walked up'n-down the 
 turnpike by Pendragon, and slammed himself down-'n-that- 
 chair," ran the soliloquy, with a ghostly nod towards an 
 opposite chair, drawn back from the table. ".' Inebrious 
 boy ! ' says I, sternly, ' how-are-y'-now ? ' He said ' Poora- 
 well;' 'n' wen' down on-er-floor fas'hleep ! I w's scan'l'ized. 
 Whowoonbe ? I took m' umbrella 'n' thrashed ' m with 
 it, remarking *F shame! waygup! mis' able boy! 's poory- 
 sight-f'r-'nuncle-t' see-'s-nephew-'n-this-p'litical-c'ndit'n.' 
 H'slep on ; 'n' 't last I picked up him, 'n' umbrella, 'n' took 
 'm out t' some cool place t'shleep 't off. WJierJd 1 I take 
 him? Thashwazmarrer WherJcT I leave 'm?" 
 
 Repeating this question to himself, with an almost frenzied 
 intensity, the gloomy victim of a treacherous memory threw 
 an unearthly stare of bloodshot questioning all over the 
 room, and, after a swaying motion or two of the upper half 
 of his body, pitched forward, with his forehead crashing upon 
 the table. Instantly recovering himself, and starting to rub 
 his head, he as suddenly checked that palliative process by a 
 wild run to his feet and a hideous bellow.
 
 256 THE SKELETON IN MCLAUGHLINS CLOSET. 
 
 " / SmemVr, now ! " he ejaculated, walking excitedly at 
 a series of obtuse angles all over the apartment. " Got-'t- 
 knockedinto-m'-head-'t-last. Pauper bur 1 ! ground J. M'- 
 GLAUGHLIN. Down'n cellar cool placefa' man's tight 
 lef m' umbrella there by m'stake go'n' ge^t thishmin't ." 
 
 Managing, after several inaccurate aims at the doorway, to 
 plunge into the adjacent bedroom, he presently reap- 
 peared from thence, veering hard-aport, with a lighted lantern 
 in his right hand. Then, circuitously approaching the neg- 
 lected dining-table, he grasped with his disengaged digits at 
 the antique black bottle, missed it, went all the way around 
 the board before he could stop himself, clutched and missed 
 again, went clear around once more, and finally effected the 
 capture. " Th 'peared f be, two," he muttered, placing the 
 prize in one of his pockets ; and, with a triumphant stride, 
 made for the half-open hall-door through which the eyes had 
 been watching him. 
 
 The owner of those eyes, and of a surprising head of florid 
 hair, had barely time to draw back into the shadow of the 
 corridor and notice an approaching face like that of one 
 walking in his sleep, when the clove-eater swung disjoint- 
 edly by him, with jingling lantern, and went fiercely bump- 
 ing down the stairway. Closely, without sound, followed 
 the watcher, and the two, like man and shadow, went out 
 from the house into the quarry of the moon-eyed black 
 leopard. 
 
 Fully bound now in the sinister spell of the spice of the
 
 THE SKELETON IN MCLAUGHLIN'S CLOSET. 257 
 
 Molucca islands, Mr. Bumstead had regained that condition 
 of his duplex existence to which belonged the disposition he 
 had made of his lethargic nephew and alpaca umbrella on 
 that confused Christmas night ; and with such realization of 
 a distinct duality came back to him at least a partial recol- 
 lection of where he had put the cherished two. Finding 
 Mr. E. Drood rather overcome by the more festive features 
 of the meal, notwithstanding his walk at midnight with 
 Mr. Pendragon, he had allowed his avuncular displeasure 
 thereat to betray itself in a threshing administered with 
 the umbrella. Observing that the young man still slept be- 
 side the chair from which he fell, he had ultimately, and with 
 the umbrella still under his arm, raised the dishevelled 
 nephew head-downward in his arms, and impatiently con- 
 veyed him from the heated room and house to the coolest 
 retreat he could think of. There depositing him, and, in his 
 hurry, the umbrella also, to sleep off, under reviving atmos- 
 pheric influences, the unseemly effect of the evening's ban- 
 quet, he had gone back on both sides of the road to his 
 boarding-house, and, with his boots upon the pillow, sunk into 
 an instantaneous sleep of unfathomable depth. Dreaming, 
 towards morning, that he was engaging a large boa-con- 
 strictor in single combat, and struggling energetically to re- 
 strain the ferocious reptile from getting into his boots, he 
 had suddenly awakened, with a crash, upon the floor to 
 miss his umbrella and nephew, to forget where he had put 
 them, and to fly to Gospeller's Gulch with incoherent charges
 
 258 THE SKELETON IN MCLAUGHLIN'S CLOSET. 
 
 of larceny and manslaughter. All this he could now vaguely 
 recall, his present pyschological condition, or trance-state, 
 being the same as then ; and was going entrancedly back to 
 the hiding-place where, with the best of motives, he had for- 
 getfully left the two objects dearest to him in life. 
 
 On, then, proceeded the Ritualistic organist, in the tawny 
 light of the black leopard's eye : his stealthy follower trail- 
 ing closely after in the shade of the roadside trees where the 
 star-spotted leopard's black paws were plunged deepest. 
 On he went, in zig-zag profusion of steps and occasional 
 high skips over incidental shadows of branches which he took 
 for snakes, until the Pauper Burial Ground was reached, 
 and McLaughlin's hidden subterranean retreat therein at- 
 tained. It was the same weird spot to which he had been 
 brought by Old Mortarity on the wintry night of their unholy 
 exploring party ; and, without appearing to be surprised 
 that the entrance to the excavation was open, he eagerly 
 descended by the rickety step-ladder, and held himself steady 
 by the latter while throwing the light of his lantern around 
 the mouldy walls. . % 
 
 His immediate hiccup, provoked by the dampness of the 
 situation, was answered by a groan, which, instead of being 
 solid, was very hollow ; and, as he peered vivaciously for- 
 ward behind his extended lantern, there advanced from a far 
 corner O, woeful man ! O, thrice unhappy uncle ! the 
 spectral figure of the missing Edwin Drood ! 
 
 After a moment's inspection of the apparition, which
 
 THE SKELETON IN MCLAUGHLIN'S CLOSET. 259 
 
 paused terribly before him with hand hidden in breast, Mr. 
 Bumstead placed his lantern upon a step of the ladder, drew 
 and profoundly labiated his antique black bottle, thought- 
 fully crunched a couple of cloves from another pocket 
 staring stonily all the while and then addressed the youth- 
 ful shade : 
 
 " Where's th' umbrella?" 
 
 " Monster of forgetfulness ! murderer of memory ! " 
 spoke the spirit, sternly. " In this, the last rough resting 
 place of the impecunious dead, do you dare to discuss com- 
 monplace topics with one of the departed ? Look at me, O 
 uncle, clove-befogged, and shrink appalled from the dread 
 sight, and pray for mercy." 
 
 " Ishthis prop'r language t' address-t'-y'r-relative ? " in- 
 quired Mr. Bumstead, in a severely reproachful manner. 
 
 " Relative ! " repeated the apparition, sepulchrally. 
 " What sort of relative is he, who, when his sister's orphaned 
 son is sleeping at his feet, conveys the unconscious orphan, 
 head downward, through a midnight tempest, to a place like 
 this, and leaves him here, and then forgets where he has put 
 him ? " 
 
 " I give 't up," said the organist, after a moment's consid- 
 eration. 
 
 " The answer is : he's a dead-beat," continued the young 
 ghost, losing his temper. "And what, John Bumstead, did 
 you do with my oroide watch and other jewels ? " 
 
 "Musht've spilfm on the road here," returned the musing
 
 260 THE SKELETON IN MCLAUGHLIN'S CLOSET. 
 
 uncle, faintly remembering that they had been found upon 
 the turnpike, shortly after Christmas, by Gospeller Simpson. 
 " Are you dead, Edwin ? " 
 
 " Did you not bury me here alive, and close the opening 
 to my tomb, and go away and charge everybody with my 
 murder?" asked the spectre, bitterly. "O, uncle, hard of 
 head and paralyzed in recollection ! is it any good excuse for 
 sacrificing my poor life, that, in your cloven state, you put 
 me down a cellar, like a pan of milk, and then could not re- 
 member where you'd put me ? And was it noble, then, to 
 go to her whom you supposed had been my chosen bride, 
 and offer wedlock to her on your own account ? " 
 
 " I was acting as /r-executor, Edwin," explained the un- 
 cle. " I did ev'thing forth' besht." 
 
 " And does the sight of me fill you with no terror, no re- 
 morse, unfeeling man ? " groaned the ghost. 
 
 "Yeshir," answered Mr. Bumstead, with sudden energy. 
 " Yeshir. I'm r'morseful on 'count of th' umbrella. Who-d'- 
 yMend-'tto?" 
 
 It is an intellectual characteristic of the more advanced 
 degrees of the clove-trance, that, while the tranced individ- 
 ual can perceive objects, even to occasional duplexity, and 
 hear remarks more or less distinctly, neither objects nor re- 
 marks are positively associated by him with any perspicuous 
 idea. Thus, while the Ritualistic organist had a blurred per- 
 ception of his nephew's conversational remains, and was 
 dimly conscious that the tone of the supernatural remarks
 
 THE SKELETON IN MCLAUGHLINS CLOSET. 261 
 
 addressed to himself was not wholly congratulatory, he still 
 presented a physical and moral aspect of dense insensi- 
 bility. 
 
 Momentarily nonplussed by such unheard-of calmness un- 
 der a ghostly visitation, the apparition, without changing po- 
 sition, allowed itself to roll one inquiring eye toward the 
 opening above the step-ladder, where the moonlight revealed 
 an attentive head of red hair. Catching the glance, the head 
 allowed a hand belonging to it to appear at the opening and 
 motion downward. 
 
 " Look there, then," said the intelligent ghost to its uncle, 
 pointing to the ground near its feet. 
 
 Mr. Bumstead, rousing from a brief doze, glanced indiffer- 
 ently toward the spot indicated; but in another instant, 
 was on his knees beside the undefined object he there be- 
 held. A keen, breathless scrutiny, a frenzied clutch with 
 both hands, and then he was upon his feet again, holding 
 close to the lantern the thing he had found. 
 
 The barred light shone on a musty skeleton, to which still 
 clung a few mouldy shreds left by the rats ; and only the 
 celebrated bone handle identified it as what had once been 
 the maddened finder's idolized Alpaca Umbrella. 
 
 " Aha ! " twitted the apparition ; " then you have some 
 heart left, John Bumstead ? " 
 
 " Heart ! " moaned the distracted organist, fairly kissing 
 the dear remains, and restored to perfect speech and com- 
 prehension by the awful shock. " I had one, but it is bro-
 
 262 THE SKELETON IN MCLAUGHLIN'S CLOSET. 
 
 ken now ! Allie, my long-lost Allie ! " he continued, ten- 
 derly apostrophizing the skeleton, " do we meet thus at last 
 again ? 
 
 'What thought is folded in thy leaves ! 
 
 What tender thought, what speechless pain ! 
 I hold thy faded lips to mine, 
 Thou darling of the April rain ! ' 
 
 Where is thine old familiar alpaca dress, my Allie ? Where 
 is the canopy that has so often sheltered thy poor master's 
 head from the storm ? Gone ! gone ! and through my own 
 forgetfulness ! " 
 
 " And have you no thought for your nephew ?" asked the 
 persevering apparition, hoarsely. 
 
 " Not under the present circumstances," retorted the 
 mourner; he and the ghost both coughing with the colds 
 which they had taken from standing still so long in such a 
 damp place "not under the present circumstances," he 
 repeated, wildly, making a fierce pass at the spectre with the 
 skeleton, and then dropping the latter to the ground in nerve- 
 less despair. "To a single man, his umbrella is wife, mother, 
 sister, venerable maiden aunt from the country all in one. 
 In losing mine, I've lost my whole family, and want to hear 
 no more about relatives. Good-night, sir." 
 
 " Here ! hold on ! Can't you leave the lantern for a mo- 
 ment?" cried the ghost. But the heart-stricken Ritualist 
 had swarmed up the ladder and was gone. 
 
 Then, going up too, the spectre appeared also unto two
 
 THE SKELETON IN MCLAUGHLIN'S CLOSET. 263 
 
 other men, who crawled from behind pauper headstones at 
 his summons ; the face of the one being that of J. McLaugh- 
 lin, that of the other Mr. Tracey Clews'. And the spectre 
 walked between these two, carrying Mr. Bumstead's skele- 
 ton in his hand.* 
 
 * The cut accompanying the above chapter is from the illustrated title-page of the 
 English monthly numbers of The Mystery of Edmin Drood ; in which it is the 
 last of a series of border-vignettes ; and plainly shows that it was the author's in- 
 tention to bring back his hero a living man before the conclusion of the story.
 
 264: FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE. 
 
 Miss CAROWTHERS having gone out with Mrs. Skammer- 
 horn to skirmish with the world of dry-goods clerks for one 
 of those alarming sacrifices in feminine apparel which wo- 
 man onselfishly, yet never needlelessly, is always making, 
 Flora sat alone in her new home, working the latest beaded 
 pin-cushion of her useful life. Frequently experiencing the 
 truth of the adage, that as you sew so shall you rip, the fair 
 young thing was passing half her valuable time in ripping 
 out the mistaken stitches she had made in the other half; 
 and the severe moral discipline thus endured made her mad, 
 as equivalent vexation would have made a man the reverse 
 of that word. Flippant social satirists cannot dwell with 
 sufficient sarcasm upon the difference between the invincible 
 amiability affected by artless girls in society and their occa- 
 sional bitterness of aspect in the privacy of home ; never 
 stopping to reflect that there are sore private trials for these 
 industrious young crochet creatures in which the thread of the 
 most equable female existence is necessarily worsted. Miss 
 Potts, then, although looking up from her trying worsted oc- 
 cupation at the servant who entered with a rather snappish
 
 FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE. 265 
 
 expression of countenance, was guilty of no particularly hypo- 
 critical assumption in at once suffering her features to relax 
 into a sweetly pensive smile upon learning that there was a 
 gentleman to see her in the parlor. 
 
 " ' Montgomery Pendragon,' " she softly read from the 
 card presented. " Is he alone, Bridget, dear ?" 
 
 " Sorra any wan with him but his cane, Mjss ; and that he 
 axed me wud I sthand it behind the dure for him." 
 
 There was a look of desperate purpose about this. When 
 a sentimental young man seeks a private interview with a 
 marriageable young woman, and recklessly refuses at the 
 outlet to retain at least his cane for the solution of the intri- 
 cate conversational problem of what to do with his hands, it 
 is an infallible sign that some madly rash intention has tem- 
 porarily overpowered his usual sheepish imbecility, and that 
 he may be expected to speak and act with almost human in- 
 telligence. 
 
 With hand instinctively pressed upon her heart, to mod- 
 erate its too sanguine pulsations and show the delicate lace 
 around her cuffs, Flora shyly entered the parlor, and. sur- 
 prised Mr. Pendragon striding up and down the apartment 
 like one of the more comic of the tragic actors of the day. 
 
 " Miss Potts ! " ejaculated the wild young Southern pedes- 
 trian, pausing suddenly at her approach, with considerable 
 excitement of manner, " scorn me, spurn me, if you will ; 
 but do not let sectional embitterment blind you to the fact 
 that I am here by the request of Mr. Dibble."
 
 266 FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE. 
 
 " I wasn't scorning and spurning anybody," explained the 
 startled orphan, coyly accepting the chair he pushed for- 
 ward. " I'm sure I don't feel any sectional hatred, 'nor any 
 other ridiculous thing." 
 
 " Forgive me ! " pleaded Montgomery. " I reckon I'm a 
 heap too sensitive about my Southern birth ; but only think, 
 Miss -Potts, what I've had to go through since I've been 
 amongst you Yankees ! Fancy what it is to be suspected 
 of a murder, and have no political influence." 
 
 "It must be so absurd !" murmured Flora. 
 
 " I've felt wretched enough about it to become a contribu- 
 tor to the first-class American comic paper on the next floor 
 below me," he continued, gloomily. "And here, to-day, 
 without any explanation, your guardian desires me to come 
 here and wait for him." 
 
 " I'm sorry that's such a trial for you, Mr. Pendragon," 
 simpered the Flowerpot. " Perhaps you'd prefer to wait on 
 the front stoop, and appear as though you'd just come, you 
 know?" 
 
 " And can you think," cried the young man with increased 
 agitation, " that it would be any trial for me to be in your 
 
 society, if ? But tell me, Miss Potts, has your guardian 
 
 the right to dispose of your hand in marriage ? " 
 
 " I suppose so," answered Flora, with innocent surprise 
 and a pretty blush ; " he has charge of all my money mat- 
 ters, you know." 
 
 " Then it is as I feared," groaned her questioner, smiting
 
 FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE. 267 
 
 his forehead. " He is coming here to-day to tell you what 
 man of opulence he wants you to have, and I am to be wit- 
 ness to my own hopelessness ! " 
 
 " What makes you think anything so ridiculous, you ab- 
 surd thing ? " asked the orphan, not unkindly. 
 
 " He as good as said so," sighed the unhappy Southerner. 
 " He told me, with his own mouth, that he wanted to get 
 you off his hands as soon as possible, and thought he saw 
 his way clear to do it." 
 
 The girl knew what bitter, intolerable emotions were tear- 
 ing the heart of the ill-fated secessionist before her, and, in 
 her own gentle heart, pitied him. 
 
 "He needn't be so sure about it," she said, with indignant 
 spirit. "I'll never marry any stranger, unless he's awful 
 rich oh, as rich as anything ! " 
 
 " Oh, Miss Potts ! " roared Montgomery, suddenly, folding 
 down upon one knee before her, and scratching his nose 
 with a ring upon the hand he sought to kiss, " why will you 
 not bestow upon me the heart so generously disdainful of 
 everything except the most extreme wealth? Why waste 
 your best years in waiting for proposals from a class of 
 Northern men who occasionally expect that their brides, also, 
 shall have property, when here I offer you the name and 
 hand of a loving Southern gentleman, who only needs the 
 paying off of a few mortgages on his estate in the South to 
 be beyond all immediate danger of starvation ? " 
 
 Turning her pretty head aside, but unconsciously allowing
 
 268 FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE. 
 
 him to retain her hand, she faintly asked how they were to 
 live? 
 
 " Live ! " repeated the impetuous lover. "On love, hash, 
 mutual trust, bread pudding : anything that's cheap. I'll do 
 the washing and ironing myself." 
 
 " How perfectly ridiculous ! " said the orphan, bashfully 
 turning her head still further aside, and bringing one ear- 
 ring to bear strongly upon him. " You'll never be able to 
 do fluting and pinking in the world." 
 
 " I could do anything, with you by my side ! " he retorted, 
 eagerly. " Oh, Miss Potts ! Flora ! think how lonely I 
 am. My sister, as you may have heard, has accepted Gos- 
 peller Simpson's proposal, by mail, for her hand, and is 
 already so busy quarrelling with his mother, that she is no 
 longer any company for me. My fate is in your hands ; it 
 is in woman's power to either make or marry the man who 
 loves her " 
 
 "Provided, always, that her legal guardian consents," in- 
 terrupted the benignant voice of Mr. Dibble, who, unper- 
 ceived by them, had entered the room in time to finish the 
 sentence. 
 
 Springing alertly to an upright position, and coughing ex- 
 cessively, Mr. Pendragon was a shamefaced reproach to his 
 whole sex, while the young lady used the edge of her right 
 foot against a seam of the carpet with that extreme solicitude 
 as to the result which, in woman, is always so entirely deceiv-
 
 FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE. 2G9 
 
 ing to those who have hoped to see her show signs of pain- 
 ful embarrassment. 
 
 After surveying them in thoughtful silence for a moment, 
 the old lawyor bent over his ward, and hugged and kissed 
 her with an unctuousness justified by his great age and ex- 
 treme goodness. It was his fine old way of bestowing an 
 inestimable blessing upon all the plump younger women of 
 his acquaintance, and the benediction was conferred on the 
 slightest pretexts, and impartially, up to a certain age. 
 
 " Am I to construe what I have seen and heard, my dear 
 as equivalent to the conclusion of my guardianship ? " he 
 asked, smilingly. 
 
 "Oh, please don't be so ridiculous oh, I never was so 
 exquisitely nervous," pleaded the helpless, fluttered young 
 creature. 
 
 " I reckon I've betrayed your confidence, sir," said Mont- 
 gomery, desperately; "but you must have known, from hear- 
 say at least, how I have felt toward this young lady ever 
 since our first meeting, and should not have exposed me to 
 a temptation stronger than I could bear. I have, indeed, 
 done myself the honor to offer her the hand and heart of one 
 who, although but a poor gentleman, will be richer than 
 kings if she deigns to make him so." 
 
 " Why, how absurd ! " ejaculated the orphan, quickly. 
 " It's perfectly ridiculous to call me well off; and how could 
 I make you richer than kings and things, you know ! '
 
 270 FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE. 
 
 The old and the young man exchanged looks of unspeak- 
 able admiration at such touching artlessness. 
 
 " Sweet innocence ! " exclaimed her guardian, playfully 
 pinching her cheek and privately surprised at its floury feel- 
 ing. " What would you say if I told you that, since our 
 shrewd Eddy retired from the contest, I have been wishing 
 to see you and our Southern friend here brought to just such 
 terms as you appear to have reached ? What would you say 
 if I added that, such consummation seeming to be the best 
 you or yaur friends could do for yourself, I have determined 
 to deal with you as a daughter, in the matter of seeing to it 
 that you begin your married life with a daughter's portion 
 from my own estate ? " 
 
 Both the young people had his hands in theirs, on either 
 side of him, in an instant. 
 
 " There ! there ! " continued the excellent old gentleman, 
 "don't try to express yourselves. Flora, place one of your 
 hands in the breast of my coat, and draw out the parcel you 
 find there. . . . That's it. The article it contains once 
 belonged to your mother, my dear, and has been returned 
 to me by the hands to which I once committed it in the hope 
 that they would present it to you. I loved your mother well, 
 my child, but had not enough property at the time to con- 
 tend with your father. Open the parcel in private, and be. 
 warned by its moral : Better is wilful waist than woful want 
 of it." 
 
 It was the stay-lace by which Mrs. Potts, from too great
 
 FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE. 271 
 
 * 
 
 persistence in drawing herself up proudly, had perished in 
 her prime. 
 
 " Now come into the open air with me, and let us walk to 
 Central Park," continued Mr. Dibble, shaking off his momen- 
 tary fit of gloom. " I have strange things to tell you both. 
 I have to teach you, in justice to a much-injured man, that 
 we have, in our hearts, cruelly wronged that excellent and 
 devout Mr. Bumstead, by suspecting him of a crime whereof 
 he is now proved innocent at least / suspected him. To- 
 morrow night we must all be in Bumsteadville. I will tell 
 you why as we walk." f
 
 272 SOLUTION. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 SOLUTION. 
 
 IN the darkness of a night made opaque by approaching 
 showers, a man stands under the low-drooping branches of 
 the edge of a wood skirting the cross-road leading down to 
 Gospeller's Gulch. 
 
 " Not enough saved from the wreck even to buy the 
 merciful rope that should end all my humor and impecu- 
 niosity ! " he mutters, over his folded arms and heaving 
 chest. " I have come to this out-of-the-way suburb to end 
 my miserable days, and not so much as one clothes-line have 
 I seen yet. There is the pond, however ; I can jump into 
 that, I suppose : but how much more decent were it to make 
 one's quietus under the merry greenwood tree with a cord " 
 
 He stops suddenly, holding his breath ; and, almost simul- 
 taneously with a sharp, rushing noise in the leaves overhead, 
 something drops upon his shoulder. He grasps it, cautiously 
 feels of it, and, to his unspeakable amazement, discovers 
 that it is a rope apparently fastened to the branches above ! 
 
 " Wonderful ! " he ejaculates, in an awe-stricken whisper. 
 "Providence helps a wretch to die, if not to live. At any 
 other time I should think this very strange, but just now I've
 
 SOLUTION. 273 
 
 got but one thing to do. Here's my rope, here's my neck, 
 and here goes ! " 
 
 Heedless of everything but his dread intention, he rapidly 
 ties the rope about his throat, and is in the act of throwing 
 forward his whole weight upon it, when there is a sharp jerk 
 of the rope, he is drawn up about three feet in the air, and, 
 before he can collect his thoughts, is as abruptly let down 
 upon his feet again. Simultaneously, a sound almost like sup- 
 pressed swearing comes very clearly to his ear, and he is 
 conscious of something dimly white in the profound darkness, 
 not far away. 
 
 " Sold again : signed, J. Bumstead," exclaims a deep voice 
 "I thought the rope was caught in a crotch; but 'twasn't. 
 Try't once more." 
 
 The astounded hearer feels the rope tugging at his own 
 neck again, and, with a half comprehension of the situation, 
 calls " Stop ! " in a suffocating voice. 
 
 "Who's there ?" comes from the darkness. 
 
 " Jeremy Bentham, late proprietor of first-class American 
 Comic Paper. Died of Comic Serial. Want to hang my- 
 self," is the jerky reply from the other side. 
 
 " Got your own rope, sir ? " 
 
 " No. One fell down on my shoulders just as I was wish- 
 ing for it ; but it seems to be too elastic." 
 
 " That's the other end 'f my rope, sir," rejoins the second 
 voice, as in wrath. " I threw* t over the branches and
 
 274 SOLUTION. 
 
 thought it had caught, and instead of that it let me down, 
 sir." 
 
 " And drew me up," says Mr. Bentham. 
 
 Before another word can be spoken by either, the light of 
 a dark-iantern is flashed upon them. There is Mr. Bum- 
 stead, not three yards from Mr. Bentham ; each with an 
 end of the same rope about his neck, and the head of the 
 former turbaned with a damp towel. 
 
 "Are ye men?" exclaims the deep voice of Mr. Me- 
 lancthon Schenck from behind the lantern, " and would ye 
 madly incur death before having taken out life -policies in 
 the Boreal ? " 
 
 " And would my uncle celebrate my return in this style ? " 
 cries still another voice from the darkness. 
 
 " Who's that spoke just then ? " cries the Ritualistic organ- 
 ist. 
 
 The answer comes like the note of a trumpet : 
 
 " Edwin Drood ! " 
 
 At the same instant a great glare of light breaks upon the 
 scene from a bonfire of tar-barrels, ignited at the higher end 
 of the cross-road by young Smalley ; and, to the mingled 
 bewilderment and exasperation of Mr. Bumstead, the radi- 
 ance reveals, as in noonday, 'Mr. Schenck and his long-lost 
 nephew standing before him ; and, coming toward the min 
 festive procession from Gospeller's Gulch, Montgomery Pen- 
 dragon with Flora on his arm, the Reverend Octavius Simp- 
 son escorting Magnolia, Mr. Dibble guarding Mrs. Simpson,
 
 t SOLUTION. 275 
 
 Mr. Clews arm in arm with John McLaughlin, Father Dean 
 and Judge Sweeney, Miss Carowthers, and the Smythes. 
 
 " Trying to hang yourselves ! " exclaims Mr. Dibble, as 
 the throng gathers curiously around the two gentlemen of 
 the rope. 
 
 " And my old friend Bentham, too ! " cries the Gos- 
 peller. 
 
 " How perfectly ridiculous ! " warbles Flora. 
 
 Staring majestically from one face to the other, and from 
 thence toward the illuminating bonfire, Mr. Bumstead, 
 quite unconscious of the picturesque effect of the towel on 
 his head, deliberately draws an antique black bottle from 
 his pocket, moistens his lips therewith, passes it to the Com- 
 ic Paper man, and eats a clove. 
 
 " What is the meaning of this general intoxication ? " he 
 then asks, quite severely. "Why does this mass-meeting, 
 greatly under the influence of inferior liquor as it plainly is, 
 intrude thus upon the last hours of a Ritualistic gentleman 
 and a humorous publisher ? " 
 
 "Because, Uncle Jack," returns Edwin Drood, holding 
 his hands curiously behind him as he speaks, " this is a 
 night of general rejoicing in Bumstead ville, in honor of my 
 reappearance ; and, directed by your landlord, Mr. Smythe, 
 we have come out to make you join in our cheer. We are 
 all heartily sorry for the great anguish you have endured in 
 consequence of my unexplained absence. Let me tell you 
 how it was, as I have already told all our friends' here. You
 
 276 SOLUTION. 
 
 know where you placed me while you were in your clove- 
 trance, and I .was so unbecomingly asleep, on Christmas 
 night. Well, I was discovered there, in less than three 
 hours thereafter, by John McLaughlin, who carried me to 
 his own house, and there managed to awaken me. Recover- 
 ing my senses, I was disgusted with myself, ashamed of what 
 had happened, and anxious to leave Bumsteadville. I swore 
 ' Old Mortality ' to secrecy " 
 
 " Which I have observed," explains McLaughlin, nod- 
 ding. 
 
 " And started immediately for Egypt, in Illinois," con- 
 tinues Mr. Drood. " There I went into railroading ; am en- 
 gaged to a nice little girl there ; and came back two days 
 ago to explain myself all around. Returning here, I saw 
 John McLaughlin first, who told me that a certain Mr. 
 Clews was here to unravel the Mystery about me, and per- 
 suaded me to let Mr. Clews work you into another visit to 
 the cellar in the Pauper Burial Ground, and there appear to 
 you as my own ghost, before finally revealing myself as I 
 now do." 
 
 The glassy eyes of the Ritualistic organist are fixed upon 
 him in a most uncomfortable manner, but no comment 
 comes. 
 
 "And I, Mr. Bumstead," says the old lawyer, "must 
 apologize to you for having indulged a wrong suspicion. 
 Possibly you were rather rash in charging everybody else 
 with assassination and larceny, and offering to marry my
 
 SOLUTION. 277 
 
 ward upon the strength of her dislike to you : but we'll say 
 no more of those things now. Miss Potts has consented 
 to become Mrs. Pendragon ; Miss Pendragon is the betrothed 
 of Rev. Mr. Simpson. " 
 
 " Miss Carowthers honors me with a matrimonial pref- 
 erence," interpolates Judge Sweeney, gallantly bowing to that 
 spinster. 
 
 " Breachy Mr. Blodgett ! " sighs the lady to herself. 
 
 " And three weddings will help us to forget everything 
 but that which is bright and pleasant," concludes the lawyer. 
 
 Next steps to the front Mr. Tracey Clews, with his sur- 
 prising head of hair, and archly remarks : 
 
 " I believe you take me for a literary man, Mr. Bum- 
 stead." 
 
 "What is that to me, sir? Pve no money to lend," re- 
 turns the organist, with marked uneasiness. 
 
 " To tell you the truth," proceeds the author of " The 
 Amateur Detective," "to tell you the whole truth, I have 
 been playing the detective with you by order of Mr. Dibble, 
 and hope you will excuse my practice upon you." 
 
 " He is my clerk," explains Mr. Dibble. 
 
 Whereupon Mr. Tracey Clews dexterously whips off his 
 brush of red hair, and stands revealed as Mr. Bladams.* 
 
 Merely waiting to granulate one more clove, Mr. Bum- 
 
 * In the original, the conversation of Mr. Greivgious and Rosa, in Chapter XX., 
 concerning the mysteriously absent Bazzard, the old lawyer's clerk, justifies this 
 identity in the Adaptation.
 
 278 SOLUTION. 
 
 stead settles the rope about his neck anew, squints around 
 under the wet towel in a curiously ghastly manner, and thus 
 addresses the meeting : 
 
 " Ladies and' gen' le' men I've listened to y*r impudence 
 with patience, and on any other 'casion would be happy to 
 see y"all safe home. At present, however, Mr. Bentham 
 and I desire to be left alone, if 'ts all th' same t' you. You 
 can come for the bodies in th' morning." 
 
 " Bentham ! Bentham ! " calls the Gospeller, " I can't 
 see you acting in that way, old friend. Come home with 
 me to-night, and we'll talk of starting a Religious Weekly 
 together. That's your only successful American Comic 
 Paper." 
 
 " By Jove ! so it is ! " bawls Jeremy Bentham, like one 
 possessed. "I never thought of that before ! I'm with 
 you, my boy." And, hastily slipping the rope from his 
 neck, he hurries to his friend's side. 
 
 " And you, Uncle Jack look at this ! " exclaims Mr. E. 
 Drood, bringing from behind his back and presenting to the 
 melancholy organist a thing that looks, at first glance, like 
 an incredibly slim little black girl, headless, with no waist 
 at all, and balanced on one leg. 
 
 Mr. Bumstead reaches for it mechanically; a look of 
 intelligence comes into his glassy eyes; then they fairly 
 flame. 
 
 " Allie ! " he cries, dancing ecstatically.
 
 SOLUTION. 279 
 
 It is the Umbrella old familiar bone-handle, brass fer- 
 rule in a bran-new dress of alpaca ! 
 
 All gaze at him with unspeakable emotion, as, with the 
 rope cast from him, he pats his dear old friend, opens her 
 half way, shuts her again, and the while smiles with ineffable 
 tenderness. 
 
 Suddenly a shriek the voice of Flora breaks the si- 
 lence : 
 
 " It rains ! oh, my complexion ! " 
 
 " Rains ? " thunders the regenerated Bumstead, in a tone 
 of inconceivable triumph. " So it does. Now then, Allie, 
 do your duty ! " and with a softly wooing, hospitable air, he 
 opens the umbrella and holds it high over his head. 
 
 By a common instinct they all swarm in upon him, cran- 
 ing their heads far over each other's shoulders to secure a 
 share of the Providential shelter. The glare of the great 
 bonfire falls upon the scene ; the rain pours down in tor- 
 rents : they crowd in upon him on all sides, until what was 
 once a stately Ritualistic man resembles some tremendous 
 monster with seventeen wriggling bodies, thirty-Tour legs, 
 and an alpaca canopy above all ! 
 
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