JBRARY I NIVtftSITV f CALtH)ftmA SAN DIEGO A / srL^ V RAI *SIT M>W DIE 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 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 ! THE END. A Catalogue of BOOKS ISSUED BY CARLETON, There is a kind of physiognomy in the titlu of books no less than in the faces of men, by which a skilful observer will know as well what to ex- pect from the one as the ttiur." BUTLK*. NEW BOOKS And New Editions Recently Is^jed by CARLETON, Publisher, New York, [Madison Square, corner Fifth AY. and Broadway. N. B. THE PCBLIBHERS, upon receipt of the price In advance, wfll nend any ol the following Books by matt, POSTAGE FREE, to any part of the United States. This convenient and very safe mode may be adopted wnen the neighboring Book- sellers are cot supplied with the desired work. State name and address in toil. Marlon Harlaud's Works. ALONE. . . \ novel. . 1 2 mo. cloth. $1.50 HIDDEN PATH. , do. do. $1.50 MOSS SIDH. . do. do. $1.50 NEMESIS. . . do. do. $1.50 MIRIAM. . . do. do. $1.50 AT LAST. do. Just Published. $1.50 HELEN GARDNER'S WEDDING-DAY. do. $1.50 BCNNYBANK. . do. do. $1.50 HUSBANDS AND HOMES. do. do. $1.50 RUBY'S HUSBAND. do. do. $1.50 PHEMIE'S TEMPTATION. do. $1.50 IWnlocb. JOHN HALIFAX. A novel. With illustration. I2mo. cloth, $1.75 A LIFE FOB A LIFE. . * do. do. $1-75 Charlotte Bronte (Cnrrer Bell). JANE EYRE. A novel. With illustration. 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