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 POEMS, STORIES, AND ESSAYS, 
 
 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JOHN GREENLEAF 
 WHITTIER, JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, RICHARD 
 HENRY STODDARD, VICTOR HUGO, BERTHOLD AUERBACH, WILKIE COLLINS, 
 HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD, JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE, WIL 
 LIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER, LYDIA MARIA CHILD, GAIL HAMILTON, 
 NORA PERRY, " H. H.," LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON, ED 
 WARD EGGLESTON, PAUL HAYNE, GEORGE CARY EGGLES- 
 TON, R. SHELTON MACKENZIE, WILL M. CARLETON, 
 JULIA C. R. DORR, JAMES PARTON, AMANDA 
 M. DOUGLAS, JOHN HABBERTON, GEORGE 
 B. LORING, ABBY LANGDON ALGER, 
 JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY, GEORGE 
 PARSONS LATHROP, JAMES T. 
 FIELDS, AND WILLIAM 
 FEARING GILL. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 WILLIAM FEARING GILL. 
 
 X-Uustratrtr. 
 
 CHICAGO AND NEW YORK: 
 
 EELFORD, CLARKE & CO 
 
 1885.
 
 COPYRIGHTED. 
 
 W. F. GILL, 
 
 DONOHUE & HENNEBERRY, PRINTERS AND BINDERS, CHICAGOI
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 HE series of holiday annuals of which 
 this forms the third was, as is very 
 generally known, suggested by the fa 
 vor with which the initial volume, " Lo 
 tos Leaves," was received. Unlike its first predecessor, 
 it is not in any sense a " club " book. It is rather a 
 twin brother to the second of the series, " Laurel 
 Leaves," which included selections from many of the 
 same distinguished authors whose names grace the title- 
 page of the current volume. It has been the editor's de 
 sign, so far as was practicable, to inc ude only such papers 
 as had not previously found a permanent place between 
 the covers of a bound book. Of such, the commemo 
 rative verses penned by our native poets on the occa 
 sion of the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of 
 Thomas Moore, form a feature of especial interest. 
 The editor's plan, as indicated in " Laurel Leaves," of 
 combining a collection of poems, stories, and essays of
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 standard value, will, it is believed, be found as worthily 
 borne out by its companion, and its offerings as far re 
 moved from the ephemeral works incident to the holi 
 days; while yet, every available opportunity has been 
 taken to embellish these jewels of the mind with the 
 brilliant pictorial settings of the eminent artists of the 
 day. 
 
 To authors and publishers who have kindly co-op 
 erated with him in aiding the work of preparation 
 of this volume, the editor returns his sincere acknow 
 ledgments.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 FROM MY ARM-CHAIR Henry W. Longfellow . . 19 
 
 VICTOR SED VICTUS Victor Hugo 25 
 
 OUR POET-NATURALIST James T. Fields . . . > 29 
 
 IN RESPONSE Oliver Wendell Holmes . . 39 
 
 RoUGEGORGE Harriet Prescott Spofford 43 
 
 SUMMER GONE Gail Hamilton . . 83 
 
 SONNET James Russell Lowell . . . 87 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF OLE BULL .... Lydia Maria Child 89. 
 
 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM ..... William Cullen Bryant . 
 
 OLD DOMINION DAYS . George Gary Eggleston . . m 
 
 NEW YEAR'S MORNING H. H. I45 
 
 THE Too SOON DEAD G. P. Lathrop , *49 
 
 LADY WENTWORTH ........ Nora Perry l6 5 
 
 PRISCILLA Edward Eggleston 
 
 A DIRGE OF THE LAKE Will Carleton 
 
 JEROMETTE ... Wilkie Collins .
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I- ACE 
 
 LOOKING INTO THE WELL . Louisc Chandler Moiilton . 24I 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE ...... Gl , orge B _ Loring . . . . 24? 
 
 IN MEMORIAM-THOMAS MOORE . . 0. W. Holmes and Others . . 269 
 
 MY FRIEND MOSES y ohn jj a , lbcrton _ 2 ^ 
 
 THE LAST OF THE NARWHALE .... John Boyle O'Reilly ... 303 
 
 THE GENIUS OF COMMON SENS:; ...//. //. . ~ r , 
 
 THE LIGHT OF AGES y ff / in c. IVhittier . . . . 319 
 
 ON GUARD . . . Bert kohl Anerbach .... 323 
 
 MUSCADINES Paul JIayne . .... 345 
 
 How ONE MAN WAS SAVED Amanda M. Douglas ... 353 
 
 A BIRTHDAY William R. Alger .... 375 
 
 OUR FUTURE DRAMATISTS James Parton .... 379 
 
 THE GERALDINE A'. SJu-lhm Mackenzie ... 385 
 
 THE RATIONALE- OF " THE RAVEN" . . William Fearing Gill , . 393
 
 HALF-TITLE ILLUSTRATIONS AND TAIL-PIECES. 
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES R. Lewis Title-page 
 
 THE PAPYRUS-FLOWER E. M Wimperis .... iS 
 
 CHESTNUT-TREE AND FLOWERS . . . . A. R. Waud 23 
 
 THE LEAFLESS BRANCH A. R. Waud 24 
 
 IMPERIAL CROWN AND SCEPTRE ....//. Billings 25 
 
 THE BABY-KING H. Billings 
 
 THE NATURALIST'S COMPANIONS . . . R. Lewis 
 
 FRUIT AND BASKET R. Lewis 
 
 HARP AND LAUREL E. M. Wimperis .... 
 
 THE GOLD-FREIGHTED ARGOSIES. . . . Thomas Muran . . . . 
 
 THE SEA-NYMPHS Alfred Fredericks . . . 
 
 THE POISON- SWEETS fi. Lewis 
 
 THE ROUGEGORGE ARMS R. Lewis 
 
 THE DEATH-FLOWER ....... R. Lewis 
 
 SUMMER-TIME J. H. Dell 
 
 28 
 29 
 36 
 37 
 4i 
 42 
 
 43 
 
 81 
 82 
 83
 
 Xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SUMMER FRUITS R. Lewis 86 
 
 AMONG THE LEAVES E. M* IVimperis .... 87 
 
 THE BIRDS' HOME E. M. IVimperis .... 88 
 
 EMBLEMS OF Music R, Lewis 105 
 
 ROME . Thomas Mo ran 106 
 
 THE EVENING STAR '. . . E. M. IVimperis .... 107 
 
 LANDSCAPE AND HOLLY E. M. IVimperis . . . . in 
 
 AN "OLD DOMINION" SUNDAY , . . . A. ft. IVand 143 
 
 THE PALMETTO AND THE PINE . . . . R, Lewis 144 
 
 THE OLD AND NEW YEAR R. Lewis 145 
 
 SUNRISE Thomas Mo ran 148. 
 
 THE HAMPSHIRE MANSION A. R. Wand 176 
 
 CROSS AND CROWN R. Lewis 177 
 
 SPIRIT FACES A'. Lewis 205 
 
 ANGEL FORMS H. Billings 206 
 
 CROWN AND THORNS ....... L. B. Humphreys .... 240 
 
 LOOKING INTO THE WELL R. Lewis 241 
 
 UNDER THE MAPLES . . . . . . . . Thomas Moran 246 
 
 THE ASTROLOGPR AND CALDRON . . . ~R. Lewis 247 
 
 FAME Alfred Fredericks .... 269 
 
 SWORD AND RIFLE R. Lewis 285 
 
 CAPSTAN AND ANCHOR R. Lewis 303 
 
 LOTOS AND TORTOISE //. Billings 313 
 
 EGYPTIAN HEAD AND LOTOS H Billings ...... 318 
 
 THE LIGHT OF AGES R Lewis 319 
 
 THE PANTHEON OF THE PAST . . . . A. R. Waud 322
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. XV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 HOME, SWEET HOME. . . . ... R. Lewis ..... 374 
 
 THE CHRISTENING-FONT A'. Lewis 375 
 
 THE BIRTHDAY PLEDGE . R. Lewis 377 
 
 PANSIES E. M. Wimperis .... 378 
 
 TRAGEDY AND COMEDY (MODERN) ...//. Billings 379 
 
 TRAGEDY AND COMEDY (ANTIQUE) ...//. Billings 384 
 
 THE MUSE OF IRELAND R. Lewis 385 
 
 THE TOURNAMENT R. Lewis 392 
 
 THE LOTOS-EATER H. Billings 393
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Engraved by A. Bobbett, J. L. Speer, John Andrew & Son, Russell & Rich 
 ardson, and the Gravuretype Co. 
 
 THE MUSES 
 
 THE LAND OF THE PAPYRUS .... 
 
 LILIES OF THE VALLEY 
 
 THE BLOSSOMS AND THE BEES . . . 
 
 THE SMITHY 
 
 THE DOWNFALL OF TYRANNY . . . 
 
 THE POET-NATURALIST 
 
 HARVEST FIELD (Moonlight) . . . . 
 HARVEST FIELD (Daylight) . . . . 
 
 AT THE MESSIAH'S FEET 
 
 THE NATURAL BRIDGE, VIRGINIA . 
 
 Alfred Fredericks . 
 V. Lo:iis .... 
 E. J\f. Wimperis . 
 R. Lewis .... 
 J?. //. Dell . . . 
 Alfred Fredericks . 
 R. H. Dell . . . 
 E. M. Wimperis . 
 R. H. Dell . . . 
 L. B. Humphreys . 
 C. Manrand . 
 
 Frontispiece. 
 
 Front. 
 
 Front. 
 ... 21 
 . . . 23 
 ... 28 
 
 ... 23 
 
 ... 86 
 
 ... 88 
 
 . . . nc 
 
 . . . 113
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 LADY WENTWORTH ........ Robert Lewis . ..... 172 
 
 THE LAKE R. H. Dell . . ... 204 
 
 JEROMETTE Sol. Ey tinge, Jr. . . . 238 
 
 UNDER THE LOCUSTS Thomas Moran . , . . 245 
 
 SCENES FROM LALLA ROOKH John Tcnniel . , , . 271-280 
 
 ON GUARD D. L. Shcpperd . , ... 338 
 
 FAR AWAY IN THE WEST C. Maurand ...... 373
 
 FROM MY ARM-CHAIR,
 
 FROM MY ARM-CHAIR. 
 
 TO THE CHILDREN OF CAMBRIDGE, 
 
 Who presented to me, on my Seventy-second Birthday, February 27, 
 
 ' 1879, this Chair, made from the Wood of the Village 
 
 Blacksmiths Chestnut- Tree. 
 
 BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 t 
 
 Mia king, that I should call my own 
 
 This splendid ebon throne ? 
 Or by what reason, or what right divine, 
 Can I proclaim it mine? 
 
 Only, perhaps, by right divine of song 
 
 It may to me belong; 
 Only because the spreading chestnut-tree 
 
 Of old was sung by me. 
 
 Well I remember it in all its prime, 
 
 When in the summer time 
 The afHuent foliage of its branches made 
 
 A cavern of cool shade. 
 
 There by the blacksmith's forge beside the street 
 
 Its btossoms white and sweet 
 .Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive, 
 
 And murmured like a hive.
 
 22 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 And when the winds of autumn, with a shout v 
 
 Tossed its great arms about, 
 The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath,.. 
 
 Dropped to the ground beneath. 
 
 And now some fragments of its branches bare, 
 
 Shaped as a stately chair, 
 Have by my hearthstone found a home at last, 
 
 And whisper of the Past. 
 
 The Danish king could not in all his pride 
 
 Repel the ocean tide ; 
 But, seated in this chair, I can in rhyme 
 
 Roll back the tide of Time. 
 
 I see again, as one in vision sees, 
 
 The blossoms and the bees, 
 And hear the children's voices shout and call, 
 
 And the brown chestnuts fall. 
 
 I see the smithy with its fires aglow ; 
 
 I hear the bellows blow, 
 And the shrill hammers on the anvil beat 
 
 The iron white with heat ! 
 
 And thus, dear children, have ye made for me 
 
 This day a jubilee, 
 And to my more than threescore years and ten. 
 
 Brought back my youth again.
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 The heart hath its own memory, like the mind, 
 
 And in it are enshrined 
 The precious keepsakes into which is wrought 
 
 The giver's loving thought. 
 
 Only your love and your remembrance, could 
 
 Give life to this dead wood, 
 And make these branches, leafless now so long, 
 
 Blossom again in song. 
 
 FEBRUARY 27, 1879.
 
 VICTOR SED VICTUS.
 
 VICTOR SED VICTUS.* 
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 N this our age of strife a warrior scarred 
 Am I, and eke with emperors have warred ; 
 With Sodom's bands obscene I've battled 
 
 long; 
 
 Millions of men and waves a million 
 strong 
 
 'Gainst me have roared, but never made me quail ; 
 
 Old ocean's depths sent up defiant wail, 
 
 But I resisted still the billows surging, 
 
 And 'neath the darkness all-submerging 
 
 Still stood unshaken as primeval rock; 
 
 I'm not of those whom gloomy skies can shock, 
 
 Avernus and the Styx to sound afraid, 
 
 Who tremble at each shallow cavern's shade. 
 
 When tyrants hurled against me from their height 
 
 Their thunders grim, with crime for lightning's light,. 
 
 At these foul shapes my verse severe I aimed ; 
 
 Monarchs I've branded, with their minions shamed, 
 
 False deities, each with his lying creed ; 
 
 Thrones, too, I've given to the gallows' greed; 
 
 * Addressed to his little granddaughter. 
 27
 
 28 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 Falsehood, the vicious sword, the wand sublime of state, 
 I've crumbling hurled into the dreadful gulf of fate ; 
 O'er these vile nullities I soar, triumphant, strong, 
 These odious Caesars, princes, giants, kings of wrong, 
 Before the Joves supreme of every state, 
 The men whom men adore, applaud, or hate, 
 For forty years I've reared untamed my haughty head ; 
 And now behold me conquered, by a baby led. 
 Translated from "L Art d'etre Grandpere" by Abby Lang don Alger.
 
 OUR POET-NATURALIST.
 
 OUR POET-NATURALIST. 
 
 JAMES T. FIELDS. 
 
 HERE are few writers who have died and 
 left more interesting books behind them 
 than Henry Thoreau. What more delight 
 ful reading can there be than his " Life 
 in the Woods," his " Excursions in Field 
 and Forest," his "Week on the Concord 
 ;and Merrimac Rivers," his "Yankee in Canada," and his 
 adventures in the " Maine Woods and on Cape Cod " ? 
 These books never fail to bring their own enchantment 
 with them, and I do not wonder at the eulogies bestowed 
 upon them oy such rare judges as Emerson, Curtis, Alcott, 
 and Channing. In summer and winter, by the fireside or 
 in the open air, they are sweet and invigorating compan 
 ions, and they can be read over and over again with 
 profit and pleasure. When you walk beside Thoreau you 
 .get nature at first hand, and no mere hearsay reports of 
 shipwrecks, mountains, rivers, and animals. The birds 
 knew him by heart, and all forest and meadow people were 
 his intimates. You can learn from Thoreau many things 
 you can be taught nowhere else ; and so he is always a 
 nutritious author, to young people especially. 
 
 Like Agassiz, he was a tcacJier in the best sense of that 
 much-abused office. An hour's silent talk from him is a 
 real boon, and the more you get out of him the richer you 
 become.
 
 32 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 Originality is a patent quality with him. Many modern 
 works on natural history are made as apothecaries make a 
 new mixture, by pouring out of several vessels into a new 
 bottle ; but Thoreau went into the open laboratories of 
 nature and gathered what he offers with his own hands. He 
 was one of the sharpest observers who ever lived, and when- 
 over he went abroad among the scenes he loved to study,, 
 his eyes were never absent from his face. He took nothing 
 for granted, and what he could not see he would never 
 report. " Accuracy or silence " was his motto. He had a 
 hunger and thirst for the truth in matters of information, 
 and rested only at the fountain-head when he was hunting 
 for a fact, believing with Charles Kingsley that it is better- 
 to know one thing than to know about a thousand things. 
 He believed that God was always educating man, and he 
 wished to avail himself of the situation. 
 
 When you go to Concord, in the State of Massachusetts, 
 do not fail to visit the old-fashioned house where Thoreau 
 was born, in the year 1817. Almost any one you meet on 
 the road will tell you where to find the ancient dwelling, 
 for he is a prophet with much honor in his own birth- 
 place, and the inhabitants love to speak of him to this day.. 
 It would be a great piece of good fortune if you should, 
 chance on Mr. Emerson, or Mr. Alcott, or Mr. Channing,. 
 during your ramble, for either of them, having on hand 
 always a certain amount of priceless leisure to bestow on a 
 stranger in search of Thoreau-localities, will kindly lead you 
 perhaps to the Old Virginia Road, as it is called, and show 
 you the sunny meadows and the old New England house 
 you are looking for. If you evince a proper enthusiasm for 
 the place, you will, no doubt, be taken out to Walden Pond,.
 

 
 OUR POET-NATURALIST. 33 
 
 which will be a treat indeed, for you will get good talk all 
 the way thither. You will see the path along which bare 
 footed Henry, when a boy, drove the cows to pasture, and 
 pondered, no doubt, his juvenile lesson by the way. I re 
 member he once described to me, on that very road, a 
 favorite cow which he had the care of thirty years before ; 
 and if she had been his own grandmother, he could not 
 have employed tenderer phrases about her. In youth his 
 eyes and ears were ever on the alert, seeing and hearing 
 what was going on in that delightful region where his first 
 years were passed. It was his great good luck to be born 
 in the country, and to have his ideas nurtured in the pure 
 air of such a rural life as the one he came up in. 
 
 When he was old enough he went to Harvard College, 
 and graduated in the year 1837. Like many other students, 
 he taught a school in his young manhood, but he soon re 
 linquished that employment and went to work with his 
 father at the trade of lead-pencil making. When he had 
 achieved the art of producing as good pencils as could be 
 made anywhere in the world, he made his bow to that calling, 
 and declined to do any more service in a line where he had 
 perfected himself. He had the wise art of living, contentedly 
 on very little, and so when he needed funds for a livelihood 
 so simple as hi.s, he made a pause in his wood-craft studies, 
 stepped out and built a fence, or planted a garden, or grafted 
 a tree, and so got a sufficient sum of money to float him 
 along comfortably for another month or two. Sufficient unto 
 the day is the good thereof, was, no doubt, his wise reply 
 when he was urged to lay up for the future. ' His skill as a 
 surveyor gave him plenty to do when he wanted employment 
 of that kind, and his mathematical knowledge being known
 
 34 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 and appreciated, 'gave him currency as a measurer of land 
 and timber. His senses were so acute, he utilized his special 
 faculties as few men were able to do. It is said he could 
 pace sixteen rods more accurately than another could mea 
 sure them with the chain. His feet in the wood-paths at 
 night were surer than other people's eyes. He was never 
 daunted by the weather, and July and January were alike 
 friendly to his pursuits. He had no expensive tastes, and if 
 he wished to smoke he twisted up dry lily-stems and puffed 
 away over his task. He knew where grapes and chestnuts 
 could be had for nothing, and so he browsed away without a 
 thought of table luxuries. When he was hungry a ripe apple 
 supplied him with something to eat, and he always carried a 
 supply in his pocket when on a tramp into the forest. A 
 man with so few wants could bivouac contentedly over his 
 studies two years alone in a small farm-house on the borders 
 of Walden Pond, and never be troubled about champagne 
 and oyster-patties outside the green world he lived in. His 
 necessities were an old volume to press plants in, a diary for 
 observations on country things, a spy-glass for birds, a micro 
 scope, a jack-knife, and some twine. His dress must be 
 simple and strong, and thus equipped, he was ready for all 
 emergencies, and could sing in this wise : 
 
 "I hearing get, who had but ears ; 
 
 And sight, who had but eyes before ; 
 I moments live, who lived but years, 
 
 And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore." 
 
 He was a true bard of the woods and fields, and his say 
 ings in prose are sometimes redolent of exquisite poetry, as 
 when he says: " The blue-bird carries the sky on his back." 
 He had lived so much under the open heavens that somehow
 
 OUR POET -NATURALIST. 35 
 
 he always seemed a part of outdoors. I used to think I 
 could tell when he was in Boston by a kind of pine-tree and 
 apple-tree odor that preceded him, and accordingly counted on 
 a call that day from him. Sydney Smith said that a certain 
 London cockney, when he visited the country, made all the 
 region round about smell like Piccadilly. When Thoreau 
 came to Boston from Concord he brought a rural fragrance 
 with him from his native fields into our streets and lanes. 
 Spicy odors of black birch, hickory buds, and pennyroyal 
 lingered about his garments and made his presence welcome 
 and sweet. 
 
 In his way, Thoreau was a wide reader, but his books 
 were not those commonly chosen ; the quotations in his pub 
 lished works show his quaint and carefal excursions among 
 authors. Dr. Donne, Samuel Daniel, Charles Cotton, Izaak 
 Walton, Michael Drayton, were among his admired writers. 
 Familiar with the classics, he made translations from Homer, 
 Pindar, Pliny, and many other wise men of antiquity, but his 
 teachers were the woods, the rivers, and the skies, and his 
 communion with them was unceasing. His journals, if they 
 are ever published, will give him a place among the keenest 
 observers who have ever lived, and it is to be hoped some 
 editor will be found competent to prepare them for the press. 
 He was the poet-naturalist of America, and our literature 
 will never be complete without his truthful records of so 
 many years of patient observations. The works he has 
 printed and left for our perusal teach self-reliance, courage, 
 and love of the country. He believed that only in nature 
 can pure health be found, and endeavored all his life to prove 
 the doctrine he taught. " I would keep," he says, " some 
 book of natural history always by me as a sort of elixir, the
 
 30 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 reading of which should restore the tone of the system.'" 
 And that is just what his own writings are eminently capable 
 of doing. A fresh, invigorating breeze is always stirring 
 through his pages, and the reader gets the benefit of it wher 
 ever he chances to turn the leaf. 
 
 Mr. Emerson, reflecting on Thoreau's death, which oc 
 curred on the 6th of May, 1862, says: "The country knows 
 not yet, or in the least part, how great a son it has lost. 
 ... He had, in a short life, exhausted the capabilities 
 of this world ; wherever there is knowledge, wherever there 
 is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home."
 
 IN RESPONSE.
 
 IN RESPONSE. 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 UCH kindness the scowl of a cynic would 
 
 soften, 
 His pulse beat its way to some eloquent 
 
 word : 
 Alas ! my poor accents have echoed too 
 
 often, 
 Like that " Pinafore " music you've some of you heard. 
 
 Do you know me, dear strangers, the hundredth-time comer, 
 At banquets and feasts, since the days of my spring? 
 
 Ah ! would I could borrow one rose of my summer, 
 But this is the leaf of my autumn I bring. 
 
 I look at your faces : I'm sure there are some from 
 The three-breasted mother I count as my own ; 
 
 You think you remember the place you have come from, 
 But how it has changed in the years that have flown ! 
 
 
 Unaltered, 'tis true, is the hall we call.'" Funnel,!' 
 
 Still fights the " Old South " in the battle for life; 
 But we've opened the door to the West through the tunnel, 
 
 And we've cut off Fort Kill with our Amazon knife. 
 
 Read at the breakfast tendered to Dr. Holmes by the Century Club, New York, May, 1879.
 
 40 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 You should see the new Westminster, Boston has builded, 
 Its mansions, its spires, its museums of arts ; 
 
 You should see the great dome, we have gorgeously gilded- 
 'Tis the light of our eyes, 'tis the joy of our hearts. 
 
 When' first in his path a young asteroid found it, 
 
 As he sailed through the skies with the stars in his wake, 
 
 He thought 'twas the sun, and kept circling around it 
 Till Edison signalled " You've made a mistake ! " 
 
 We are proud of our city her fast- growing figure, 
 The warp and the woof of her brain and her hands ; 
 
 But we're proudest of all that her heart has grown bigger, 
 And warms with fresh blood as her girdle expands. 
 
 One lesson the rubric of conflict has taught her, 
 
 Though parted awhile by war's earth-rending shocks: 
 
 The lines that divide us are written in water, 
 The love that unites us, cut deep in the rock. 
 
 As well might the Judas of treason endeavor 
 To write his black name on the disc of the sea, 
 
 As try the bright star-wreath that binds us to sever, 
 And blot the fair legend of " Many in One." 
 
 We love YOU, tall sister, the stately, the splendid 
 The banner of empire floats high on your towers, 
 
 Yet ever in welcome, your arms are extended ; 
 We share in your splendors, your glory is ours.
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 Al 
 
 Yes, Queen of the Continent ! all of us own thee, 
 The gold-freighted argosies flock at thy call ; 
 
 The naiads, the sea nymphs leave me to enthrone thee, 
 But the Broadway of one, is the highway of all. 
 
 I thank you three words that can hardly be mended, 
 Though phrases on phrases their eloquence pile, 
 
 If you hear the heart's throb with their syllables blended, 
 And read all they mean in a sunshiny smile.
 
 ROUGEGORGE.
 
 ROUGEGORGE. 
 
 HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. 
 
 HE Baron Rougegorge had a friend whom he 
 loved with the sole passion of which he had 
 ever seemed capable. The two had been 
 associated together in their studies through 
 boyhood ; they had gone through a cam 
 paign side by side ; they had traversed 
 Europe the byways of Bavaria, the high 
 ways of the Apennines pouring their fancies, surprises, and 
 pleasures into each other's ear as if they had been two mar 
 ried lovers. 
 
 There was something singularly pure and noble about St. 
 Marc ; he had a half-boyish beauty of his own ; his winning 
 manners made every one turn to do him favors; and Rouge- 
 gorge used to say that he himself breathed through him ; 
 that he found in him his salvation ; that it was St. Marc who 
 l<ept his faith alive, for how could he disbelieve in miracles 
 when here was the constant miracle before his eyes of such a 
 inan as St. Marc being the friend of such a man as Rouge- 
 igorge ? 
 
 For the Baron Rougegprge was by no means a precioso 
 'neither a saint nor a hypocrite ; but the possessor of un 
 bounded wealth, exposed to every temptation, and unpro 
 tected since his early youth ; there were stains upon his 
 memory that used now and then to darken his face when he 
 -looked upon the fair and open countenance of his friend.
 
 46 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 One day, in a sudden fury, Rougegorge quitted Paris alone. 
 
 St. Marc had become enamored of a woman who was. 
 breathing beauty, and about whom all the world was going 
 mad just then the more singularly mad since she was young 
 and unmarried, and since it is no custom of Paris to ecstacize 
 itself over youth and innocence. To St. Marc, Mademoiselle 
 Ayacinthe de Valentinois became the cynosure of existence ;. 
 but to Mademoiselle' Ayacinthe, St. Marc was merely one in 
 a thousand : she sharpened her weapons on him, perhaps,, 
 preparatory to entrance on her grand career. St. Marc,, 
 moreover, was poor, and Mademoiselle de Valentinois had no- 
 fortune but her name and that blood which blossomed out in 
 such roses on her velvet cheek, which burned with such splen 
 did fire in her dark eyes. 
 
 Rougegorge had never seen her, but he forefelt what the 
 end must be of such a love as this. Yet he did not know 
 how to wait for it. He fled. Anger and hostile apprehensioni 
 together goaded him on, and he did not pause till he stood 
 under the fervid suns of the far East. For this inconsiderate- 
 flight of his he never forgave himself; and he had reason. 
 The first mail which he opened brought him the intelligence 
 that St. Marc had cut his throat. 
 
 For a moment the blow crushed him into the earth as a 
 thunderbolt might have done. The one thing he loved in alt 
 the world lost lost, murdered, slain by a woman's whim, a 
 coquette's caprice ! The life which had been the universe to 
 him gone out into darkness to flatter the vanity of a Valen 
 tinois ! Dead for her holiday, to swell the purple of her 
 triumph !, Suddenly Rougegorge rose and turned his face 
 homeward. St. Marc was dead indeed, but he had left him 
 the legacy of his vengeance.
 
 ROUGEGORGE. 47 
 
 When the Baron Rougegorge reached his old quarters in the 
 faubourg, it was at first more than he could bear the familiar 
 rooms, the pipes, the foils, the music, the cushions where yet 
 lingered the very imprint of St. Marc's golden head. Pros 
 trate there, he wet them with tears that his eyes had never 
 known before. Then he plunged out of the place and forgot 
 it in a week's debauch. After that, as if the touch of fresh 
 sin had strengthened all his purposes and given him a bitter 
 delight in their fulfilment, he took life up where he left it ; 
 -and no one would have dreamed that Rougegorge had an 
 emotion who saw him lounging by on a horse that was only 
 black fire obedient to his finger, or met him loitering, with his 
 lazy repartee like a half-sheathed rapier, through the elegant 
 salons, every one of which opened magically to receive him, 
 and where a polished manner, an absolute indifference, and 
 mysterious rumors of wicked adventure which latter be 
 witch women as Terra Incognita does a traveller made him 
 the hero of the hour. Poor work for a man of naturally 
 proud and courageous temper ! He knew it well, but only 
 smiled and bided his time. 
 
 It was a few days after his return to Paris, and before he 
 had joined the gay rout which night and day kept its revel, 
 that Rougegorge paused one moment in the lobby just as the 
 carriages were being called at the door of the opera-house. 
 He had merely paused to look about and see of whom the 
 world consisted ; and, glancing o\'er the throng, it was some 
 seconds before his glance returned and rested on a group 
 beside him a group of chaperon and gallants, a gray-haired 
 nobleman wearing decorations of the African wars, and on his 
 arm a lady in full dress, and with one end of the rose-colored 
 .gauze of a transparent burnous thrown veil-like over her head
 
 48 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 and face. For an instant, Rougegorge, startled by the- 
 bewildering beauty of that face, said half unconsciously to. 
 himself that so some spirit might look out through th^ 
 sunset-tinged clouds of heaven. Then his eye wandered over* 
 the chevaliers beyond, and came back to her again just as the 
 old nobleman offered a fur mantle, and, turning her head, her 
 glance during one moment lay full upon the Baron and lin 
 gered there. No spirit certainly, for it was the beating blood 
 that rioted upon that cheek, in those voluptuous lips ; it was. 
 rapturous earthly life that shone from that long, languishing 
 eye, where the darkness of iris and lash smothered radiance 
 at its source from that smile that thrilled the heart's core 
 of the beholder. She seemed some incarnation of the 
 Oriental rose with all its damask flushes, its intoxicating 
 sweetness. And in the same breath with these swift fancies 
 a voice called from without, and the group moved forward 
 at the words, " Monsieur de Valentinois' carriage stops 
 the way." The crowd swung up round her as she went, 
 and Rougegorge gnashed his teeth and followed after. 
 
 It would have been well for Rougegorge if he had deigned 
 to bethink himself. He had seen the power before which St. 
 Marc fell : better for him to have confessed its omnipotence 
 and fled while yet he might. But Fate does not allow us to 
 attempter her purposes with ours : he went straight on. 
 
 Had she been twice as unapproachable in the attractile 
 distance at which she held all men, had she been twice as foul 
 as she was fair, indeed, that would not have hindered his 
 formal request to the old African soldier, a month thereafter, 
 for the hand of Mademoiselle de Valentinois, but not until 
 he had endeavored to make himself as past success told 
 him, without conceit, that he well knew how to do a.
 
 ROUGEGORGE. 49 
 
 familiar and pleasant thought to her mind. It required some 
 determination, but not much art, for him to become the cen 
 tral point around which all other events of her day revolved. 
 
 The state of the Valentinois finances told better than any 
 other historian could hope to do the character of the race, of 
 the stream that ran in their veins the rich red stream fed on 
 old wines and lavish dainties whose pride and pleasure had 
 been pampered till estate after estate, vanishing beneath its 
 insatiate desires, had left this generation nothing but the 
 name it had inherited and the pension it had earned. 
 
 When therefore the salons heard that the Baron Rouge- 
 gorge had made his proposals of marriage for the Valentinois, 
 " Ah, well," said the united voice there, " dukes require a 
 dower princes flatter but hesitate. Rougegorge is of an old 
 house, and his fortune is immense. He is made of gold. 
 Voila ! " No one there ventured for a moment upon such an 
 absurdly romantic thing as to imagine that Mademoiselle de 
 Valentinois loved the Baron loved him with all that passion 
 and abandonment with which her race had always loved and 
 hated. 
 
 Rougegorge did not find the time that intervened between 
 the day of his first success and of his nuptials hanging at all 
 heavily upon his hands. There were countless places where 
 he had the opportunity of being constantly beside his be 
 trothed, and of endearing himself to her by the mere fact of 
 presence on the drive, at the theatre, at fete cJiampetre, in 
 the drawing-room at her uncle's house. There was nothing 
 in all that to warn him of any accident : it had been, on the 
 contrary, a part of his plan. To win her love, he said, 
 he must at least first make her acquaintance. It pleased 
 him that she should see him gallant, gracious, and followed
 
 50 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 after. His good-fortune, thus far, gave him a buoyant 
 humor, which shed a sort of lustre upon his face, his manner 
 that made him, where he chose to be so, irresistible. They 
 were always in the company of several, saying little to each 
 other: he had never yet seen her alone. He had not uttered 
 a tender word, she had confessed no love ; but he was as sure 
 of the emotion in her bosom as the diviner is of the ore 
 beneath his quivering hazel-rod : eagerly he trod forward 
 toward the completion of his purpose already he saw his 
 friend avenged ! 
 
 One day he met her just issuing from the church door, 
 and joined her in a half-dozen steps, while her servant dis 
 creetly fell behind till the carriage drove up. She had been 
 at the confessional for the last time before her marriage : 
 there was on her face such a grave sweetness, such a simple 
 air supplying the place of all her archest witcheries, that 
 Rougegorge forgot everything else in the brief moment he 
 stood by her side. A strange tremble vibrated through his 
 heart, and told him in a muffled way to beware lest he loved 
 her. " This woman can mean nothing but good," said he to 
 himself. " Too young to be anything but innocent, it is not 
 her fault that men blow out their brains at her feet. If St. 
 Marc chose an impossibility, so much the worse for St. 
 Marc." 
 
 So much the worse for Rougegorge! With the thought 
 his brow darkened : that muffled tremor disquieted him again. 
 Another thought flashed after it upon him a sense of danger 
 in the air. He had turned toward a lapidary's before the 
 carriage, with its happy burden, rolled from sight, and the 
 great diamond, which he had worn upon his finger, blank for 
 so many years, after that carried a death's head engraved
 
 ROU GE GORGE. 51 
 
 upon its table, the better that its every lance 'of light might 
 prick him to his purpose might pierce him with remem 
 brance of the debt behind, of the work before might call up 
 that golden head, that pure white face of St. Marc, and her 
 voice dealing him death. 
 
 If ever any single drop of any proud old ancestor's blood 
 ran cold. at the violence he did it in this lie which he was 
 living, mounted to his forehead with shame of flowing in the 
 veins of a hypocrite and dastard, Rougegorge had but to 
 remember that one dread moment of St. Marc's desperation 
 to drown it in a hot and hating torrent of his own to find 
 himself more keenly attempered to his deed than he was 
 before. 
 
 On the night before the day appointed for the bridal 
 the two were alone together momentarily ere Rougegorge 
 departed, and standing by the first door of the suite. 
 41 Adieu, mademoiselle, until to-morrow, and then no more 
 adieux," said he. 
 
 She hesitated a moment, looking up, the blush deepening 
 in her lovely cheek, while she tangled her fingers in the 
 shadow of a heavily-drooping tress. " Monsieur," she said, 
 half under her breath, " I have not known how to approach 
 it you have not given me opportunity before but I have 
 feared lest ' 
 
 " Lest I hurried my marriage too much?" he said, gayly, 
 yet with a certain haughtiness. 
 
 " Because, monsieur," she went on in her simplicity, " I 
 fear that you may not know me that you are but imposed 
 upon by what is called my beauty 
 
 " Fear nothing less," he answered, bending over her as she 
 leaned her hand on the console, so that the fragrance of her
 
 52 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 mouth swept over upon his. Her eyes fell, her lips trem 
 bled. 
 
 " Since I can imagine no destiny more melancholy, more 
 maddening, than for a woman to receive the caresses of a 
 man who does not love her," she murmured. 
 
 " Fate that cannot be yours!" he exclaimed. He meant 
 no falsehood then : he meant a threat. But in the same 
 moment she had lifted her face, with its still drooping eyelids, 
 where he bent. All her love loaded the virgin lips : he bent 
 lower, and they clung to his one instant, while a thrill of 
 heavenly fire seemed to shoot from them through his brain ; 
 and Rougegorge knew that the fruit was ripe to his hand. 
 He went out without a word : the house was stifling him. 
 Had a Rougegorge lied ? or why was his heart beating so 
 strongly beneath his breast ? not beating, but shaking, flut 
 tering and shaking like a leaf in the wind ? 
 
 The civil contract had been already signed, and the next 
 day all the world walked in orange blossoms and myrtles, and 
 the Baroness Rougegorge went home. 
 
 Not down to the old Burgundian estates, the ancient 
 castle whose stones were almost hidden with the clambering 
 white roses whose demesnes lay in leagues of sunshine 
 and the shadow of thick forests. Without acknowledging 
 it in as many words to himself, Rougegorge spared that 
 abode for the bliss of some future day: at present he 
 had work on hand, and in his fancy of the future 
 the first Baroness Rougegorge was to be a short-lived 
 woman. 
 
 They went to the house through which Haussmann cut an 
 archway the other day in making an alley from the Street of 
 the Empire into the old Street of the Malediction an anti-
 
 RO U GEGORGE. 53 
 
 quated family residence, whose stone fagade had been yester 
 day gloomily barred from the street with great dismal 
 shutters, and one that had somewhat the air of a prison with 
 its deep and heavily mullioned windows, even when thrown 
 open festally a house familiar with revolutions and for ever 
 on its guard ; yet a magnificent mansion still, although the 
 pleasure-grounds and shrubbery once surrounding it had been 
 given up long ago, and palaces built in their stead. Within, 
 its sumptuous suites were already caprices of luxury. At cer 
 tain hours the sunshine fell in joyous illumination through 
 the deep casements. There were pictures that brought ail 
 glories of earth and heaven to rest upon the walls, and 
 statues that made it seem as if gods and goddesses yet wan 
 dered among us. There wanted nothing to complete its 
 charm except the happy face, the singing voice of this young 
 and exquisite being now moving through it on the arm of her 
 bridegroom, the silent Baron, already beginning to be tor 
 mented with a strange, unnatural struggle. To him it 
 wanted something more the face, the voice of St. Marc. 
 Yet why not forget it all? why not compassionate? Did 
 she compassionate ? They were alone she, timid, tearful, 
 tender; he, courtly, but making no protest of passion 
 strangely still, indeed, whether with suppressed stress of 
 feeling or from the nature of his kind, how should she 
 say? She felt toward him perhaps a singular, new fear, 
 half awe and half respect, that could but deepen all the 
 rest yearning affection and admiring faith. 
 
 It was after midnight when the young Baroness awoke 
 from her sweet, deep sleep. For the first moment she 
 imagined that she was alone. The light burned softly, 
 moonbeams lay on the purple velvet of the floor, and out cf
 
 54 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 the lofty rose-window she saw the moon drifting through 
 clouds of foam across the perfect sapphire of the night. Di 
 rectly afterward her eye fell upon the Baron sitting beneath 
 the lamp, his face in white relief against the curtain that shut 
 off the alcove-like room where they were from the larger one 
 of the apartment. She suffered her gaze to rest upon him 
 with a trembling, lovely smile no longer the secure, assured 
 radiance of the proud queen of hearts, but a blushing and 
 beseeching smile on him from whom all the sunshine and 
 happiness of her life must come. .The Baron did not return 
 it. He was gazing at her with a steady sternness that at first 
 perplexed and then alarmed her. 
 
 "You are not well?" she cried. 
 
 " Perfectly so," he answered. "I have something to say 
 to you." 
 
 The tone of his voice seemed already to have said it. 
 She listened in a dumb amazement. Just out of the rosy 
 slumber of supreme happiness, this icy breath froze her, 
 while she heard it, into stone. 
 
 " I had a friend," said the Baron. " He was all I had ; he 
 was my life. His name was St. Marc." 
 
 "Ah, I remember him!" she exclaimed. Then, as he 
 paused, and half-rising from her pillow, with a vague intuition 
 that she was upon her defence that she must answer, though 
 to what she knew not "Ah, I remember him St. Marc. 
 He had the face of Guido's angel who slays the dragon," 
 hesitatingly; "yet he was like a woman 
 
 "You remember him? He took his own life" looking 
 at her with eyes that transpierced her and made her writhe 
 in a dreadful premonition of unknown disaster beneath their 
 glance, despite herself and her unconscious ignorance. The
 
 ROUGEGORGE. 55 
 
 drops stood on his forehead. It was not so easy, after all ; 
 and this woman was so beautiful ! 
 
 " They told me so," she was saying, gently. " It made 
 me shiver. It was dreadful. Some woman, they thought, 
 was the reason." 
 
 " A woman was the reason ! A woman trolled him on 
 with her false promises, her damnable wiles lured him to 
 his ruin, betrayed him to death ! " For suddenly the awful 
 scene of that death grew real again to him. He felt the 
 pangs St. Marc himself had felt the empty earth, the black 
 despair. 
 
 " Do not speak so you terrify me ! " she cried, growing 
 paler and paler with presentiment of evil. " It is cruel. She 
 never could have known what she did? Is it not so? Ah> 
 your eyes are like lightnings! Why do you look at me so ? " 
 she demanded, with the sob in her throat, and thrusting back 
 her falling hair from her bewildered eyes. " Do not think of 
 her, my husband. Forgive her, since you loved him thus. 
 Forgive her as he must do, now that he sees " 
 
 "Forgive her? I vowed vengeance upon her! I came 
 with it from Assyria!" he cried, rising and advancing with 
 uplifted hand, so that she cowered, but in a moment rose 
 again. Death from that hand were better than the insane 
 words he was uttering. " I found her, I won her her love, 
 her first love. I know what I say! " his voice swelling till it 
 was like a groan. " I won her love that I might wither her 
 with the knowledge of my abhorrence ; that I might make 
 the world as hollow to her as she made it to St. Marc ; that 
 she might suffer the same contempt, the same misery, the 
 same despair ! " 
 
 " I do not I do not comprehend," she murmured over
 
 56 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 and over again, between chattering teeth, pressing her hands 
 tightly on her temples, and still surveying him with those 
 wild eyes. " I do not I have lost something has happened 
 to me. Do you mean 
 
 " I mean that you, you are his murderess," the syllables 
 falling as distinct as the strokes of a thresher's flail. " That 
 you love the man who detests you," he added, " that you 
 love me, I know. And I have avenged St. Marc," he said 
 then, quite in his ordinary tone, and turning on his heel to 
 go, but pausing first, as if, greedy of distress, he would not 
 lose one line, one shade of hers. 
 
 "I?" she cried, piercingly, and throwing up her arms, as 
 if to ward off some descending blow " I ? Oh, is it possi 
 ble? And you? Am I mad?" in a choking gasp. "Tell 
 me, am I mad?" Her face began to look no longer like a 
 face, but like a dead cloth that has taken the impress of dead 
 features from which the living presence has fled. " Oh, you 
 have broken my heart !" she cried. 
 
 The Baron Rougegorge breakfasted and dined alone for 
 some three weeks after his marriage. To say that he experi 
 enced ennui is to make a mild statement of his condition. 
 Strange to tell, in planning his little melodrama of breaking 
 the heart of a woman, he had never carried his ideas one 
 moment beyond the grand coup the dealing of the blow. 
 Now he found that people still lived, even with that deli 
 cate organ shattered, and practically and before the world he 
 had a wife upon his hands. 
 
 Somehow, in the obscure undercurrent of his mind, he 
 was not entirely willing to let the world in upon the truth of 
 his late transaction ; or it may be that, being a modest man, 
 he preferred not to boast over his victory. He had a stately
 
 ROUGEGORGE. 57 
 
 way of keeping up the appearances of affairs as they should 
 be before the servants themselves, though how far those 
 astute individuals were to be hoodwinked is a matter for the 
 philosophers. And thus he eked out his feuilleton in the 
 morning, lounged with his books and maps and portfolios and 
 .siestas by day, took his exercise by night. And, meanwhile, 
 both Baron and Baroness were denied to all guests, and by 
 very simple means the Baron began to discover that, if he 
 had ruined life for another, he had not created any great por 
 tion of bliss for himself. Certainly he was very uncomfort 
 able. He could not exactly determine on a future. To 
 throw up his hand and quit the town that exposed him to 
 the jeers of old comrades; nor was he sure that he wished to 
 do so. To remain there, in fact, the Baroness might have a 
 word to say. Perhaps he found the situation piquant ; at any 
 rate, he awaited some event. It is possible, too, that he was 
 the least trifle ashamed of the part he had played. It is pos 
 sible that a morsel of pity, now that it was too late, weighed 
 upon him as he remembered the smile with which that 
 woman had awakened, the woful look with which she had 
 fallen back among her pillows the smile of rosy shyness, the 
 look dazed and distraught with the creeping torture of shame 
 and horror. He was disturbed, indeed, with a singular sensa 
 tion for a Rougegorge a dim and misty shadow in his con 
 sciousness, the mere outline of a thought the sensation that 
 he had been a knave. But with all that, whenever, through 
 the lonesome day, he chanced to glance up at the portrait of 
 St. Marc, with all its eager brightness gilding it like a trans 
 figuring atmosphere, then again his heart would rise in his 
 throat with an unchecked, swift gulp of satisfaction. That 
 woman had deprived him of St. Marc, the one delight and
 
 58 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 consolation of his being, his summer and his sunshine ; with 
 whom he needed nothing else, neither wife nor child ; without 
 whom She had stolen him, had destroyed him ; and he in 
 turn had destroyed her! 
 
 It was toward the close of what was supposed to be his 
 honeymoon that the Baron sat delaying over his coffee one 
 morning, now and then reading a paragraph of his paper, 
 thinking he might yet turn his attention to politics now and 
 then pausing to examine the filmy sheen of the wings of a 
 dragon-fly that, wandering in its flight from some palace gar 
 dens, had darted in at the open window, and still lingered, 
 poised upon the edge of a crystal carafe. It was rather a 
 welcome- interruption of his monotony. He fancied himself 
 becoming a naturalist : he had already formed the friendship 
 of an agreeable spider ; and he laughed, a little bitterly, at 
 himself, remembering other prisoners who had done the 
 same. He was just returning to his article on the " Ancient 
 Frontiers," after a microscopic sort of examination of the 
 dragon-fly's complex eyes, when the door was thrown open ; 
 there was a soft rustle, and Madame the Baroness was 
 announced. 
 
 To tell you the real truth, he was for one instant delighted 
 to see her. He sprang to meet her by his natural instinct of 
 courtesy. Then, recollecting himself, although he conducted 
 her to her place at the head of the table, it was without so 
 much as touching her hand, and with a behavior that was not 
 only glazed in iciness, but was ice itself. Then he resumed 
 his seat and refolded his paper, while with a motion of her 
 hand the Baroness dismissed the servant, and the two were 
 alone again, save for the dragon-fly and the morning breeze 
 that stole in and fluttered damask and drapery.
 
 ROUGEGORGE. 59 
 
 "I have something to say to you," said the Baroness, 
 upon that quoting, perhaps unconsciously, his own words 
 on the occasion of their last interview. 
 
 The paper fell from the Baron's hands. The same rip 
 pling music as ever in the tones that thus addressed him ; 
 but this was not the voice of the woman who cried out that 
 he had broken her heart. A single hurried glance at her, and 
 lie stooped to regain the sheet. It was not the same woman. 
 To be sure, there was the oval of the cheek, to which the 
 rich carnation just now came mantling; there were the eyes 
 -as velvet soft as the darkest petals of a pansy are ; there was 
 again the waving shadow of that heavy and perfumed curl. 
 But no longer were those the lips loaded with kisses, nor 
 could lips ever be so again that had learned to feel that faint 
 constriction now wrinkling around them. If absent at this 
 moment, there had been flame behind that eye. Was it the 
 least fine trace of scorn in the quiver of that chiselled 
 nostril ? 
 
 The Baron Rougegorge could not in that instantaneous 
 glance gather and assimilate the whole sense of what he saw 
 the same being, yet another. He had come once in his 
 travels upon a landscape lying in the sun with golden dis 
 tances and violet hazes : he had returned to that landscape 
 after an earthquake had disturbed it, ever so slightly, and it 
 had settled down again as of old, encrusting its central fires. 
 
 O *-> 
 
 It was unaccountably to himself that he recalled that scene 
 now, with the one black fissure seaming all its sunlit azure, as 
 he gazed at his wife. In effect, there was something as pecu 
 liarly fearful in this young and faultlessly fair creature could 
 he but have detected it whose bloom-bathed flesh, whose 
 dissolving outlines, whose fresh and dewy color and sparkle
 
 60 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 were all but the mere mask of youth and sweetness above a 
 soul from which the wine of life had been wrung as desic 
 cated and juiceless and hard as substance that has lain 
 between the upper and nether millstones. In future, as she 
 moved among one and' another again, unless her artifice 
 rivalled the power of Nature, she would scarcely be as allur 
 ing as of old ; there might be a dazzle about her, a cold 
 glitter, the brilliancy of a thousand facets. She said once 
 that that was because she had been cut and ground upon 
 the adamant of Fate. Until her marriage day she had been 
 joyous, careless, conquering; if afterward she should become 
 a diabolic thing, it would be as much the guilt of Rouge- 
 gorge as her own. " Why not ? " she said. " In these three 
 weeks I have already known the tortures of the damned. 
 There can be nothing worse." 
 
 The Baron, however, would have needed to be as pene 
 trating as he was impetuous to have imagined the beginning 
 of all this. He only saw that the youthful Baroness had 
 experienced some curious and intimate change, the probable 
 result of that operation known as breaking the heart a seal 
 and recognition of his vengeance. But he had had that ven 
 geance : he was satisfied, perchance satiated with it; and he 
 felt no longer any vivid and unbroken animosity toward the 
 lovely lady who laid her white hand so quietly along the 
 table and repeated, silverly: " I have something to say to 
 you." 
 
 " I shall be pleased to listen, madame," responded the 
 Baron, graciously. 
 
 Looking over at him, she smiled an unconcerned and dis 
 engaged smile, such as she might give to the bluebottle buzz 
 ing in the window. One would hardly believe how muchi
 
 ROUGEGORGE. 6l 
 
 that simple smile annoyed the Baron, such are the inconsis 
 tencies and contradictions of human nature: it seemed to tell 
 him that he had not done his work effectually. But if he 
 even dreamed that, the dream was presently dissipated. 
 
 " Monsieur," she said with gentleness, " I am not come to 
 bandy reproaches with you. I will not tell you that you 
 judged me, sentenced me, executed me, without allowing me 
 a defence ; nor that, since my execution has taken place, a. 
 disembodied spirit would be addressing you with as much 
 interest in the affairs of life. Certainly, if it is a ghost, it is 
 one that came out of hell," she said, in a slow, reflective way. 
 "You see, monsieur, that I am frank with you. I do not 
 conceal that you dealt me a dreadful doom. It was dreadful 
 indeed," with a shiver, and fastening her eyes on the Baron : 
 " did you ever realize how dreadful? You outraged me, you 
 robbed me, you murdered me ! Well I am not crying for 
 mercy : I know well that the house of Rougegorge has none. 
 Nor can I say a word," she exclaimed, with a sudden flash : 
 " neither have the Valentinois ! As for me, it is true that I 
 loved, I trusted, I confided : I will not take from you a tittle 
 of your vengeance. I believed my bridegroom was nobility 
 itself was manliness and courage and honor impersonate." 
 The Baron moved uneasily in his chair, across which too 
 much of the warm sunshine fell. " He was an ideal," con 
 tinued the Baroness, " and I was idolatrous. It is something 
 to destroy one's husband, but what punishment," she cried, 
 hotly, " is sufficient for him who destroys one's god ? " 
 
 The ejaculation of Rougegorge was checked, half unut- 
 tered, by her gesture ; and directly afterward she had 
 resumed as calmly as before. " I shall not speak of my 
 shame, either," she murmured " of the mortification I have
 
 62 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 suffered while the blush seemed burning into my bones ; nor 
 of my loss. I was reared in the country, in a home I am 
 perhaps sentimental, but such a home was always in my 
 hopes a charming home, a man who loved me and whose 
 happiness I was ; dear children. Well, all that you have 
 made impossible, you see ; and, more than all, you have 
 taken my youth youth, love, hope." 
 
 The Baron rose and walked across the room, pacing up 
 and down its length in a somewhat agitated way. " Do not 
 think that I am imploring you- to reconsider what is done," 
 she said, following him with her melancholy eyes, "to give 
 me still a corner in your affections ; for listen, monsieur I 
 no longer love you ! I struggled with my sick heart, I over 
 came it : I am used to conquest, you know," with another 
 smile. " If I do not hate you, it is a part of my folly and 
 of the simplicity that mad-e me so easily your dupe. And, 
 besides I am too old. You are young still, a young French 
 noble with a career opening before you ; but I I came into 
 this house a child ; now my hair ought to be gray. I have 
 lived in this month a longer time than you will ever live, 
 monsieur than you will ever live," she repeated, with the 
 sad cadence in her voice, as he started and paused in his 
 walk. " I have lived and died," she breathed. " Yes, yes, 
 Ayacinthe de Valentinois is indeed no more. The Baroness 
 Rougegorge is another person. Monsieur," she continued 
 in a moment, which seemed an hour to the man whom she so 
 skilfully arraigned, and during which he had retaken his seat 
 opposite her, " Monsieur, fancying we might hardly care to 
 recur to this subject for some time to come, and feeling it 
 necessary that everything should be clear and our future 
 relations determined, I came here to speak with you this
 
 ROUGEGORGE. 63 
 
 morning, and also to justify myself, if that might be, in some 
 measure. I do not mean to upbraid you that, being a man, 
 you took revenge upon a woman ; nor that, being a nobleman, 
 you took it in an ignoble manner and with the aid of a false 
 oath 
 
 " I will hear no more of this! " cried the Baron, springing 
 to his feet. She did not raise her voice, but she went on, 
 and the Baron found himself compelled to hearken. 
 
 "All that is understood, of. course," she said. "But I 
 would vindicate myself in one particular. I am perhaps a 
 coquette. Being an orphan and the mistress of my uncle's 
 house, I have had more freedom than many have. I may 
 have deserved some rigors. But not from you ; for of the 
 crime of which you accuse me and for which you destroyed 
 me I am innocent. Monsieur St. Marc asked my uncle for 
 my hand, and was refused by him so contemptuously as to 
 annihilate hope. I never knew it till, learning by accident 
 that you were usually absent at a late hour, I sent for my 
 uncle to see me, and then discovered it, but without betray 
 ing you. Had St. Marc spoken to me, I should assuredly 
 have taught him his rashness more kindly and have left him 
 with something to live for. Had you taken one step in that 
 investigation which should be made where life is the penalty, 
 you would have blundered less blindly. You might have 
 challenged the old soldier, who would not have refused to 
 whet his sword on your vengeance. So, Baron Rougegorge," 
 said the lady, rising, and leaning only her finger-tips on the 
 table, " I do not say that I despise you, but you have done a 
 pitiful piece of work for nothing. For nothing? You have 
 paid the price of your freedom! Now that I am your wife, 
 monsieur, what do you intend to do with me?"
 
 64 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 She was assuredly more beautiful now than he had ever 
 seen her, as she stood, during the last sentence of her extra 
 ordinary harangue, with the flushes of a proud indignation 
 sweeping over her. But he was only sentient of the fact 
 not distinctly conscious of that or of anything else. He was 
 tingling with a species of humiliation from head to foot, and 
 by an antagonistic necessity he must assume a brazen front. 
 
 " Madame," he replied, " I do not intend to ask you to 
 forgive me." 
 
 " As you please," she said, lightly. 
 
 " We both have perhaps been unwise," began the Baron 
 " you, in speaking with vehemence ; I, in acting precipitately. 
 Since, then, we have ruined life for each other 
 
 " We ! " she cried, in a smothered tone " we ! " 
 
 " We have only to endure the remnant together," he said, 
 without noticing the brief outbreak. " As for the world, our 
 secret is our own." 
 
 " Our secret is our own," she said, her head drooping for 
 ward on her breast a little. 
 
 " You are a Baroness Rougegorge, my wife, and the head 
 of my establishment. Make it all it should be. I will not 
 weary you with too much of my society. Meanwhile, we 
 will issue the cards for our first dinner. Have you any 
 names for my list ? " 
 
 Perhaps the Baron would be able to carry this high hand 
 triumphantly to the close. 
 
 The newly-married pair swept out again on the full tide 
 of the world after having arrived at this understanding. Ac 
 cording to the part which he had ordained himself to fill for 
 a limited time, the Baron was seen in constant attendance 
 upon his bride at operas, at balls, sometimes in her carriage.
 
 ROUGEGORGE. 65 
 
 Men envied him his felicity; women envied her her dia 
 monds. One person even reported that he had seen the 
 romantic creatures wandering through the flower-market 
 together at sunrise ; but then nobody believed him. Nobody 
 believed him ; yet, nevertheless, it was true. The Baroness, 
 in throwing open her house, had sportively declared that it 
 was patent it had been a haunt of bachelors and cigarettes, 
 for the conservatory was a desert, with neither moss, nor vine, 
 nor blossom unwithered by gas and smoke and the exhala 
 tions of absinthe ; and she gayly proceeded to refurnish the 
 little dominion with all the sweet, old-fashioned plants which 
 the first blush of morning might find exposed along the 
 stalls, till its new wealth fairly overflowed into the adjacent 
 rooms. Rehearsing her adventures one day to the guests at 
 her breakfast-table, they had a little sunrise party on the next 
 to visit the place and behold what they never had seen be 
 fore ; and on another morning the Baron dismissed the 
 groom, upon her invitation, and went with her himself. 
 
 " It is an imposition upon the good-nature of one who 
 does not care for flowers," she said, as he handed her down 
 some steps " as if the martyr should pile his own fagots." 
 She was buying hyacinths that morning blue, and blush- 
 colored, and golden, white as a lily, single as a jasmine, double 
 as a rose, purpler than nightshade ; and the dark, mysterious 
 bulbs without number. "They are my 'patron saints, you 
 know," she said, laughingly! " My mother named me from 
 the stem of flowers my father gave her when he saw her first ; 
 so I surround myself with them by right. And I am starved 
 for them, since my uncle would not have them in the house. 
 Moreover, it is a charming little drama the planting of the 
 bulb, the shooting of the first spire, the wonder and conjee-
 
 66 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 ture concerning the final flower. One would content me were 
 I in a prison cell. Ah, I am never in the future without 
 hyacinths ! " 
 
 After that there were birds to be had canaries, a blind 
 greenfinch, a nightingale. " Sha-11 my name be Rougegorge 
 and I not have a red-breast under my eaves?" she cried, in 
 that new and joyous manner of hers that seemed as natural 
 and as unvaried as her breath, but which yet made the Baron, 
 remembering what he did, pause and turn more than once to 
 look at her, as if she were a sphinx. " It is the crest of the 
 house, is it not?" she said. "Those ancient barons never 
 could have been but gentlemen of the road, and Rougegorge 
 the noble for cut-throat." And she tossed the lory on her 
 wrist, and sent it sailing and screaming over to its perch on a 
 bust of Hecate. In fact, with her pets and her flowers, she 
 enchanted the whole place; and the Baron himself, who had 
 but slight horticultural tastes, confessed, when all was done,, 
 that this gush of bird-song, these brilliant blossoms, these 
 clambering vines and myrtles, these hanging baskets of 
 orchids with the sunshine making their gorgeous tissues look 
 like living flame, and with the long-tailed paroquets clinging 
 to them, as gorgeous as themselves all gave his house a 
 charming sort of radiance, a warm, gay atmosphere, that told 
 one, on entrance there, that here a woman held her court > 
 admired and sovereign. 
 
 For, if Ayacinthe de Valentinois had ever ruled a pro 
 vince, this woman's sway was imperial. Her artifice did, in 
 deed, rival Nature her gladsomeness was like the pine 
 upgushing of a sunny identity. It was varied with now and 
 then a melancholy moment, with now and then a swift 
 passion of anger. All seemed the unforced freedom of a
 
 R O U G E G O R G E . 67 
 
 child of Nature. She enslaved the hearts and souls of men - r 
 her salon was a region of delight ; she herself was feted and 
 followed after ; and wherever she went she dragged captives 
 in her chain these vanquished by her wit, those by her 
 sweetness. Apparently she enjoyed her life to the lees of it 
 none better. Sometimes her voice bubbled up, as she 
 passed from room to room of her own abode, in an irrepres 
 sible warble; sometimes, as if too trivial to remember long 
 any bitterness that she could forget, she would even shed a 
 smile upon the Baron, disturbing his stately quiet with a 
 capricious kindness. All the time, with her gay extrava 
 gances, her happy sallies, her sunbursts of smiles, she seemed 
 to fairly sparkle. All this puzzled the Baron at first, excitect 
 his attention, and he could not escape from the perplexity it 
 occasioned him ; and when one day, upon entering, he saw 
 the Archduke Max sitting by her side, an old field-marshal,, 
 whose gray locks lay along his shoulders, kissing her hand 
 in departure, and a younger Lothario securing the rose that 
 had fallen from her breast-knot to the floor, then he was 
 enraged with himself to find that, instead of being any longer 
 puzzled by her inexplicable joyousness and heedless accept 
 ance of her misfortunes, he was exceedingly displeased with 
 this scene discomposed, annoyed, oppressed. He sat down 
 presently with a feeling as if he had heard some ill news, but 
 could not remember what it was. The Baroness saw his dis 
 turbance, as a quick color hung out its treacherous signal on 
 her cheek to testify ; while over her face gathered the smile 
 out of which a sudden look leaped, like a deadly creature 
 from its lair. "Ah, monsieur," she said to herself, as she su-r- 
 veyed him, " the philter begins to work presently the incan 
 tation." It was nothing of the kind which she said to him,.
 
 68 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 though, when happening by. and by to pause for one lingering 
 instant at his side, and forgetting her glove upon the table 
 near at hand. It would be hard for one to say what idleness 
 it was that made him lay his hand upon that glove and 
 gather it into his palm and hide it away like a trea 
 sure. 
 
 He did not find opportunity to speak with her till some 
 days thereafter, when she sought him in crossing a hall, and 
 said simply that she regretted she had not known that the 
 alcoved apartment was a favorite one of his, since he might 
 have resumed the use of it so much earlier, as she had long 
 ago vacated it for one in the opposite wing, where the sun 
 shine did not trouble her at so early an hour of the dawn. 
 " It must have pleasanter remembrances for you, monsieur, 
 than it has for me," she said, with a strain of pathos in her 
 voice. 
 
 The sunshine was falling then where she stood on the 
 Egyptian marble of the hall, making, with its reflection in 
 the shining floor, a halo of separation around her; a flitting 
 damask stained her cheek and stayed there ; her downcast 
 eyes shed a shadow round them ; her half- parted lips seemed 
 trembling as she spoke. The Baron was mad at that 
 moment. " It can be no memory but a bitter one for me ! " 
 he cried, and seized her hand and would have raised it to 
 his lips. 
 
 "Alas, monsieur!" she murmured, sadly, " such compli 
 ments are unnecessary between you and me," and then was 
 gone again. 
 
 When the Baron, installed himself in his former apart 
 ments once more, it was with a singular desire and dislike to 
 do so. It struck him a little oddly at first that the gaunt
 
 ROUGEGORGE. 69 
 
 bloodhound, who had been wont to stretch himself at ease 
 there in the old days before the Baron took destiny into his 
 own hands, now absolutely refused to cross the threshold, but 
 lay with his nose along the sill, giving forth such dismal 
 howls that he had to be taken down and chained in his 
 kennel. The Baron forgot about it shortly in noting the 
 aspect of the place, familiar yet unfamiliar ; for the Baroness 
 could not have dwelt there what time she did and not have 
 left some trace of her loveliness behind her; and here a 
 shutter that had not been unbarred for the lifetime of a 
 generation slurred a new light across the ancient panel- 
 painting of an avenging Dian and her dogs, and there a 
 windowful of sunbeams nestled around the blossoming plants 
 that she had suffered to remain there remain perhaps as 
 mementos of herself. He sat down beneath them, and for 
 a time drew in deep breaths of their satisfying sweetness ; 
 and it seemed to him that her shadow in flying from the 
 place, bleak though December whistled without, had left 
 only summer within. 
 
 Events moved quickly for the Baron Rougegorge now. 
 He had forgotten St. Marc, and sometimes, when accident 
 led his eyes to the portrait, he found himself looking on it 
 only with a shudder. No Rougegorge had ever bent aside 
 from a purpose, yet the fire and impulse that had propelled 
 this one to his revenge lasted barely to its consummation, 
 and then there had been a vicious struggle which made that 
 issue cost him some drops of his heart's blood. Now hatred 
 had died in him, and half his being with it, one might say ; 
 pity had surprised him ; wonder and perplexity had awa 
 kened scrutiny that became pleasure ; and then Regret, a 
 dark-robed shadow, had laid her finger on his heart and bade
 
 70 I' A P Y R U S L K A V E S . 
 
 him follow her. He followed, but looked still behind, for 
 down that other way 
 
 The Baron indeed was in a strangely fevered condition at 
 this point. A thousand emotions tore him, as his own 
 hounds tore Actaeon. He had reached that period where he 
 could not live without the music of this woman's voice, yet 
 he heard it only addressed to others ; he needed the sym 
 pathy of her thoughts, yet doubted and disbelieved their 
 expression ; he dared not trust himself to live alone with her, 
 yet he could not endure to see another approach her ; she was 
 his, yet only by a fiction of law ; he was as indifferent to her, 
 he declared to himself, as the wind is to the rose it rifles, yet 
 he knew that his Avhole nature was corroded by jealousy. 
 
 It was perhaps the mood induced by all these attractions 
 and repulsions, desires and denials, that caused him one 
 night, as the doors closed behind the last guest of their 
 grand ball, where the young hostess, beaming on all who 
 drew near, had danced almost as wildly as a Maenad, sweep 
 ing along like a meteor in the flash of her jewels, her gauzes, 
 her blushes, her glances, and shining on him only from the 
 arms of other men caused him to accost her, as she delayed 
 one second gathering up her drapery, at the foot of the great 
 staircase. "Madame," he said hoarsely, just beside her, 
 "do you remember tint you have my honor in your 
 keeping ? " 
 
 " Monsieur," she answered him in the gay malice which 
 the subsiding spirit of the revel lent her, " do you remember 
 that you put it there? " But with an after-thought she lifted 
 her head haughtily. " Do not fear that I shall not guard it 
 more carefully than you yourself have done," she said ; add 
 ing softly in a moment, " Monsieur, you forget that ycur
 
 ROUGEGORGE. ?I 
 
 honor is my own." And she went softly up the stairs, the 
 long train of frosty lace and rosy silk creeping serpent-like 
 behind her, as regardlessly as though, instead of a living 
 being, the Baron were nothing more than the bronze effigy 
 of an ancestor. 
 
 He stood as motionless there for a long time as though 
 
 o o 
 
 indeed he had been cast in metal, and gazing at the place 
 where she had vanished, while the light of dawn came 
 stealing silently in around him. And during all that time 
 the Baroness Rougegorge herself was standing as motionless, 
 leaning before an antique mirror that for more than a century 
 had reflected the proud ladies who had continued the line she 
 extinguished. So some witch might have incanted her 
 familiar, for it was a sort of demoniac beauty gleaming back 
 at her from the depths of the mirror into which she gazed. 
 The wreathing smiles, the bloom, the blush were gone ; the 
 sweetness had been stripped off like a mist , only the eyes, 
 fierce, fatal eyes, blazed from the shadowy sphere as if they 
 but gathered the rest of that white and cruel face about them 
 that they might themselves be visible. " Thou art the only 
 friend I have," said the Baroness to this familiar. " Do not 
 fail me! " And then, as she gazed, her heart began to beat 
 against her side like a bird against its cage, and the familiar 
 smiled upon her a wicked, splendid, and triumphant smile, 
 that promised and performed at once. 
 
 Had some Asmodeus of the household but disclosed that 
 little scene to him, the Baron might have inhaled less 
 ardently the perfumes that swept out to meet him as he 
 opened the door of his own apartment that curled swath- 
 ingly around him in welcome as he lifted the curtain of the 
 alcove and saw the early daylight welling through the leaves
 
 72 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 and blossoms that veiled the great rose-window of the place 
 which once had been an oratory, and now was only an 
 oubliette. As .it was, he lay with open eyes, watching the 
 first sunbeam come staining a white petal into fire, exalting a 
 crimson one to airy ruby, filtering a purple into pure azure, 
 intoxicating himself with the rich odors that always there 
 replaced the freshness of the morning air, the dewiness of the 
 evening breeze; until at last he fell into a brief, uneasy 
 drowse, in which the needle of the great dragon-fly that the 
 Baroness had captured from the carafe on the morning of her 
 reappearance, and 'had transfixed here upon the wall, seemed 
 to be piercing his brain. 
 
 There had been a change lately in the appearance of the 
 Baron gradual and slight perhaps to all but a single pair of 
 eager eyes. If one had looked at him as he lay in his trou 
 bled dream, it would have been as apparent as Death's 
 imprint. A deceitful hectic illumined his countenance at 
 other times, yet even then, whenever he moved, all strength 
 seemed to have left his. lagging gait, and he scarcely held 
 himself erect. The Baron was far from well, in fact. He 
 measured his own pulse and believed himself fevered by his 
 folly, and said that his disease, if such it were, was not one 
 that medicine could minister to. A strange lassitude weighed 
 him down, mind as well as body; ambition seemed an idle 
 word ; the grasshopper had become a burden ; evil dreams 
 pursued him till he ceased to sleep at all ; he lived only upon 
 stimulants, which did but feed the internal heat ; and lately 
 the unfelt luxury of the breath had grown to be a pain when 
 now and then there followed with it a sharp agony in the 
 side, that made it seem to him as if the earth might feel the 
 same when some branching thing were torn up by the roots.
 
 ROUGEGORGE 73 
 
 All this, however, made but slight difference in his going and 
 coming, for there is a season when absorption in another 
 causes one to forget one's self; and wherever the Baroness, 
 appeared, there, by fell sorcery, sooner or later was the 
 Baron drawn. 
 
 And who, indeed, could have helped it ? Who could have 
 resisted that charm, that summery warmth of manner, that 
 spontaneous kindliness given to him as to all sometimes to 
 him more than to all ? To-day she shone upon him in sweet 
 forgetfulness : to-morrow a fitful memory chilled her and 
 kept him on the alert ; and always, when she passed, the 
 faint rose deepening into damask on her cheek, the dimples 
 creeping into smiles around her month, the dark eyes glowing 
 softly from the shadows of those heavy rings of fragrant hair 
 that floated about them, a pride of possession thrilled him 
 thrilled him and angered him, and set his heart on fire. 
 
 One night the Baroness was standing with the Abbe Mar- 
 forio opposite a new picture of Judith, where the artist had 
 painted according to modern ideas of interpretation, and had 
 terribly wrought out the wrestling love and sacrifice. 
 
 " A tremendous thing," said the Abbe. 
 
 "In paints and pigments," replied the Baroness. "But 
 for the rest, it is false." 
 
 " How is that? You join issue?" he asked. 
 
 " For the sake of womanhood only," she responded, with 
 more earnestness than she usually employed in speech. 
 "Can love of country outweigh all other love? But a 
 woman has no country. Her country is her lover. Will 
 she abandon him for the sake of other women's lovers? 
 This Judith has slain one to save the others. But the action 
 is simply impossible to the woman loving as she does. Slay
 
 74 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 him? She will rather slay herself! She lives for him, she is 
 his, both soul and body she gives him her present, she 
 pledges him her eternity!" 
 
 " Ah ! with her whole being in one emotion. That is the 
 way such a woman loves?" 
 
 "And hates, monsieur," she answered, covering her 
 earnestness with her radiant smile again. 
 
 " Ah, madame," said the Abbe, pleasantly, " it is the 
 liappy wife that speaks. Rougegorge," for the Baron was 
 dallying in the neighborhood while he bent over the chair of 
 another lady " Rougegorge, you are a fortunate fellow ! " 
 
 " A fortunate fellow," repeated the Baron, lifting his head, 
 and only his wife knew the bitterness hidden in the tone. 
 *' And I have thrown away great Heavens! " it said, " a 
 love like that ! " 
 
 That night was the same night with one of the workmen's 
 riots which occasionally break out in Paris like lurking scro 
 fula in the system ; and it was just as the Baroness was 
 driving out of the courtyard that a large mob of reckless 
 wretches emptied into the street, their torches and their wild 
 cries terrifying her horses, who began to prance in the tossing 
 light which glittered on all their costly caparison. Instantly 
 the carriage-lamps, the golden bits, the leaping horses caught 
 the eye of the mob, and as instantly afterward the beautiful 
 aristocrat, who had thrown open her carriage-door and stood 
 hesitating whether to spring ; and a paving-stone flew 
 through the air, grazing her forehead, and felling her upon 
 the spot. Not more instantly, though, than a form had 
 started out of the darkness with a command to the cowering 
 servants, and, gathering a residue of strength, had caught her 
 and flung himself with her into the coach, which wheeled
 
 ROUGEGORGE. 75 
 
 about and was beyond the reach of all assailants in less time 
 than it takes to tell it. And yet too swiftly for the Barori, 
 who saw her, by the light of the street-lamps that flashed in 
 upon them as they dashed along, lying white across his 
 breast who, unforbidden then, was covering her lips, her 
 cheeks, her eyes with passionate kisses. Moment of wild 
 stolen rapture, let him have it : he would never know 
 another! Her eyes slowly opened, and he looked into them 
 as he might have looked upon two great drops of frozen ink 
 a stare of utter scorn, an icy blank. 
 
 The Baroness was well enough next day; she was perhaps 
 a trifle paler, though her slight wound was hidden by her 
 hair, and she remained at home. But the Baron was worse. 
 The moment of rapture and of pain, the succeeding moment 
 of unmixed anguish, like an electric shock had aroused him 
 to a truth he had feared to look upon to the fact that, at 
 last and after all, he loved with infinite yearning one as 
 insensate as a star. 
 
 Baron Rougegorge was ill. As he entered his apartment 
 that night, the pungent air of the hyacinths, wantoning 
 through all the spacious suite, seemed to rasp like a black 
 frost, and presently a sudden surge of blood had overflowed 
 his mouth. Since the Baroness remained at home, he him 
 self no longer went out. A deadly physical reaction had 
 followed upon his late exertion, and he lay much of the time 
 in his alcoved bed-chamber, soothed by the odors of his 
 hyacinths, that resumed their snake-like fascination growing 
 every day more languid and listless, his heart stirring to 
 suffocation when a lifting curtain, an opening or closing door, 
 gave him the sound of her voice. The frequenters of the 
 house had long since noticed a change in him the spare
 
 76 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 hand, the hollow temple, the quick breath. The, Baroness 
 herself had summoned his physician, who, with a glance, had 
 ordered him away from Paris into purer air. " The trouble is 
 malarial," said the man of science; "a change is all we 
 need." But the Baron rejected the advice and remained at 
 home. " As well die by the sword as the famine," said he, 
 and clung to his calamity like a limpet to its rock. Then, 
 when the Court began to concern itself with the Baron's 
 health, his physician, vexed with an inscrutable difficulty to 
 which symptoms afforded no clew, prescribed a chaos of reme 
 dies together ; and at last, looking about him in his bewilder 
 ment, ordered such a wilderness of flowers to be removed 
 from his sleeping-room. " There is no oxygen left for you," 
 he exclaimed. " No wonder that you are shrinking into an 
 anatomy. Toss them into the street ! " This the Baron 
 refused to do. " He is an insane man! " cried the physician. 
 Then the Baron dismissed the physician. 
 
 Rougegorge had grown singularly fond of those hya 
 cinths. He knew well that they would never blossom so 
 richly without the attending and replacing hand of her who 
 first planted them ; he was sure he should surprise her some 
 day bending over them ; he grew envious of them, as if they 
 were living things. 
 
 o o 
 
 And indeed they seemed to grow like living things, with 
 their fresh, sharp spikes of flowers, making the room splendid 
 with their color and its air heavy with their breath. A light 
 frame hung on high in the great rose-window, knotted in a 
 hundred intricate windings of the lithe bamboo, and in every 
 loop a bulb was set, its leaf springing up rankly to the light,. 
 and the whole reticulation of blossoms swung there like a 
 brilliant bubble in the sun ; while in the outer room the deep-
 
 ROUGEGORGE. '77 
 
 windows seemed stained in vivid hues where, lined with these 
 translucent stems, they let the daylight fall through them 
 only in gold and amethyst and emerald. And every hyacinth 
 among them all seemed to dart toward the light with swift 
 purpose, to bristle with 'eager life of its own, to toss off its 
 cloud of oppressive perfume and suck in the unsoiled air, to 
 throw it back again in poison. Now and then, when the 
 Baron found himself light-headed for a moment, he fancied 
 that he saw tiny images, fierce faces, wicked eyes, and point 
 ing fingers once a bat's wing, again a dragon's claw clus 
 tering round every bract and blossom. Then he would smile 
 at himself, seeing the loveliness of some cream-thick petal, 
 the precision of one constantly-recurring curve, to think his 
 sick fancies could have conjured up anything freakish or 
 venomous in things whose every vein was subject to the pure 
 law of beauty. Nevertheless, when any draught brought to 
 him a stronger waft of their scent, a gust of cloying incense, 
 his head began to swim as dizzily as though he had been 
 breathing the noxious vapor of a miasma -, ye*t other air 
 seemed barren and dead to him, and after any absence in the 
 salon where the Baroness entertained her guests, or a loiter 
 ing stroll through gallery and billiard-room, he sought again 
 the stimulating deliciousness of this, which the hyacinths 
 distilled from vases on the tripods, from shells upon the 
 brackets, from a bed of moss that covered the table beside 
 his couch, where they overtopped the innocent ferns and 
 maiden-hair that had been planted with them, and seemed to 
 gather courage and strength from their multitude. " They 
 are her namesakes," said the infatuated man, and he went 
 and bent over them, himself trying idly if he could detect 
 the fabled characters written on their leaves and syllabic
 
 78 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 them into any exclamation of his own sorrow. One day, as 
 he stood over them, leaning more and more heavily upon his 
 staff for he seemed now to have lived his life and to have 
 become an old man already doting he reeled and fell 
 senseless to the floor, his brain at length stupefied with their 
 fumes. 
 
 When the Baron RougeGforge regained such consciousness 
 
 o o o o 
 
 as the atmosphere of the room, steaming with sweetness, 
 allowed him, the Baroness was standing beside him, offering 
 him no help, but looking down upon him with a fixed quiet. 
 There was something peculiar about her. It was not the 
 Ayacinthe de Valentinois whose heart he had broken, nor yet 
 the woman who had taken the dragon-fly from the carafe and 
 pinned it to the wall ; but rather, in woman's shape, a beauti 
 ful fiend filled with satisfaction over some evil fruition. Dark 
 yet lustrous, and lovely in tempting flesh, she stood just 
 above him, and he lifted an imploring hand that fell back 
 ungrasped and powerless. 
 
 " Do you know that you are dying?" she said. 
 
 It had never entered his thoughts. Instantaneously with 
 her words the whole pitiful drama flashed before him. Then 
 the rich and heavy air seemed suddenly corrupt with foul 
 ness ; he would have given the universe for one gasp of the 
 fresh breeze playing without the lattice ; and at the same 
 moment the courage of all the Rougegorges came back to 
 blaze in him with a final flash of the expiring race. He 
 looked up at her and never asked for quarter. 
 
 " It was in this room that you dealt me my doom," she 
 said then, gazing absently about her. " I recall it well the 
 purple shadow, the moonbeams through that window full of 
 hyacinths, your pitiless face. It is in this room that I have
 
 ROUGEGORGE. 79 
 
 destroyed you. I pinned that fly to the wall that I might 
 remember that so you had transfixed me upon your 
 purpose remember to have no mercy upon you. These 
 flowers that you worship, regard them. They are all the 
 subtle spirits of death, each one of them an agent of mine 
 and of destruction, slaves doing my bidding, tiny devils clog 
 ging pore and duct, poisoning your breath and your blood, 
 till, though you live this hour, the next you shall be a mass 
 of mere decay. You have thought the atmosphere here was 
 fragrance ? It is the air of a charnel-house. Presently you 
 will be dead, and all your lineage with you ; the name of 
 Rougegorge is known no more its honor and its valor gone 
 for nothing, since you transmit to no one the memory of a 
 noble deed. Once there was a Rougegorge who flung him 
 self between death and his king, and the ballads sing of him 
 to-day; once there was a Rougegorge who died in a dungeon 
 sooner than betray his queen, and his statue stands in the 
 market-place yet ; once there was a Rougegorge who pledged 
 castles and jewels to build a fleet for France ; a Rougegorge 
 who slew a tyrant ; a Rougegorge who fought a mob single- 
 handed and back to the wall, that others might find time to 
 flee. What proud action do you add to the list ? Ah, this 
 that you broke the heart of a woman ! Now they are sha 
 dows'; they no longer live with the strength of their great 
 right arms in the right arm of some descendant ; they are 
 shadows, and you are nothing more. Yes, presently you 
 will be dead," her cruel voice was tolling out like a bell. 
 " Nor is the work altogether mine. For, look ! When you 
 threw away a wife, love, children, happiness, home in the 
 hour when you made me a fiend you began to die by your 
 own hand. And here," she cried, striking her breast, " look
 
 80 PAPYRUS' LEAVES. 
 
 again, and see what your hand has done here ! I was a young 
 and happy girl, as innocent of evil as ignorant. Why was I 
 chosen for this lot ? I should have been a faithful wife, a 
 tender mother, a good woman, my heart warm toward all the 
 world, for I loved you then I loved you ! " 
 
 He raised his faint hand again and drew the fold of her 
 dress across his lips. She plucked it away and looked down 
 on him with a nauseous disdain. " Once your fangs met in 
 me," she cried, "and still, you hound, do you fawn?" 
 
 The sunshine that poured through the great rose-window 
 covered her as she stood there, her hair glistening in it, the 
 purple and azure and blush of the hyacinths laying flakes of 
 their color around her. She seemed ensphered in a separat 
 ing atmosphere like some terrible enchantress, beneath whose 
 will his soul was impotent. His eyes burned upon her and 
 grew dull. 
 
 " Dying," she said, " and I do not repent me. No destiny 
 can pursue me ill as that I escape. Shut me within prison 
 walls? This house and your name have been bondage darker 
 and more stifling. Chain me in the galleys side by side with 
 a murderer? I am chained side by side with him now. Ah, 
 it is that from which presently your death sets me free. Re 
 morse? You crushed my heart between your fingers. If I 
 live a thousand years, when I think of how I served you for 
 it, my soul will bubble to my lips with joy." And she 
 laughed as she looked at him. 
 
 The Baron rose on his hand, the fire relit in his eye, the 
 death-rattle arrested in his throat. " Death is not all," he 
 said, in a hoarse and horrible tone, as if he had come up from 
 the mould of the grave to say it. " And I was right in 
 avenging St. Marc!"
 
 ROUGEGORGE. 
 
 Si 
 
 And then, as a suit of empty armor clashes down, he fell 
 back again at her feet, and if the Baron Rougegorge had a 
 soul, that soul had flown. 
 
 When the Abbe Marforio paused once at a cell behind 
 whose grating, stripped of name and title and splendor, and 
 even of her tresses, a woman sat weaving straw in plaits, he 
 made her a mock reverence. " And is this the way she lives 
 for him, gives him her present, pledges him her eternity?" he 
 said. "Is this the way such a woman loves?" 
 
 She looked up with the old dazzling smile, of which they 
 could not strip her. " And hates, monsieur," she answered, 
 quietly, and went back to her weaving.
 
 SUMMER GONE
 
 SUMMER GONE. 
 
 BY GAIL HAMILTON. 
 
 SUMMER days !*so flushed with royal beauty, 
 I trod not careless through your golden 
 
 hours ; 
 
 I bared my brow to meet your floating fra 
 grance, 
 
 I filled my bosom with your passion-flowers, 
 I kissed the honey from your lily-cups, 
 
 My happy soul thrilled at your light caress ; 
 Tranced in delicious dreams, my grateful heart 
 Beat warm against your throbbing tenderness. 
 
 summer nights ! robed in a pallid splendor, 
 I knelt with silent lips before your shrine, 
 
 1 hushed my heart while you unveiled your glory, 
 And, reverent, saw the mystery divine. 
 
 My weary soul, clogged with life's earthliness, 
 Laved gladly in your boundless deeps of calm, 
 
 And, floating through the slumberous, silver air, 
 All harshest discords voiced themselves in psalm.
 
 86 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 And yet you left me. Vain my dumb imploring, 
 
 My speechless love, my silent anguish vain ; 
 Not for a moment could they stay your going, 
 
 Nor can they ever bring you back again. 
 The sun wheels up the blue, unchanging heaven,. 
 
 The stars still marshal slowly, one by one ; 
 But never may the cold light of September 
 
 Woo forth June roses, or by star or sun. 
 
 I know that under warm-breathed skies far off 
 
 The loitering day treads with reluctant feet; 
 There orange-blossoms stir the scented air, 
 
 And proud magnolias wave their incens.e sweet. 
 I know there is a land beyond earth's vision, 
 
 Where crystal waters murmur all the year, 
 Where purple-tinted mornings dawn for ever, 
 
 Where blooms forget to fade nor leaves grow sere. 
 
 But through the autumn winds now wildly wailing 
 
 I scarcely catch the summer songs that are. 
 Once more an outcast from the warmth and sunshine. 
 
 Those pleasant lands seem very dim and far. 
 I should be well content with future promise, 
 
 Yet, O my God, whose hand appoints the year, 
 Look pitying on the famished, fainting hearts 
 
 That crave a little summer now and here.
 
 SONNET
 
 SONNET. 
 
 BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 HE little bird sits at his door in the sun, 
 
 Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 
 And lets his illumined being o'errun 
 
 With the deluge of summer it receives; 
 His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 
 And the heart in her dumb breast flutters 
 
 and sings ; 
 He sings to the wide world and she to 
 
 her nest 
 
 In the nice ear of Nature, which song is the 
 best ? 
 
 88
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 OLE BULL
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF OLE BULL. 
 
 BY L. MARIA CHILD. 
 
 , in the language of Norway, means the trunk 
 of a tree, and doubtless has the same origin as the 
 Saxon word Bole, so often used by Dryden, and 
 the older English poets. The musical Christian 
 name is extremely common in Norway. Two 
 friends seeing a boat full of fishermen about to 
 land, one of them laid a wager that more than 
 half of them were named Ole. Upon inquiry, it was found 
 they all bore that name, except one, and he was called Ole 
 Olesson, or Ole the son of Ole. At home, the popular title 
 of the beloved and honored musician is " Ole Olesson Fiole," 
 or Ole the Violin. 
 
 This allusion to the violin calls to mind one among many 
 envious remarks which have been excited by his extraordi 
 nary popularity. It has been said that he does not, like- a 
 true artist, rely on his own genius for success, but resorts to 
 tricks to excite and interest the public, such as romantic 
 fictions about his violin, &c. Those who know his unpre 
 tending simplicity and manly independence of character are 
 well aware that the charge is most unjust. The romantic his 
 tory of his violin is no fiction, and few men could possess 
 such a unique gem and say so little about it as he does. He 
 sometimes tells its history to friends, in answer to inquiries
 
 92 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 which the singularity of its appearance naturally excites ; and 
 if they impart the information to the public, it is merely what 
 they would very naturally do concerning anything so curious 
 in the history of art. 
 
 This remarkable instrument was manufactured by Gaspar 
 da Salo, in Brescia, one of the three oldest violin makers on 
 record ; and it was considered the best one he ever made. It 
 was sculptured at Rome by the famous Benvenuto Cellini, 
 celebrated as a goldsmith in his early life, and afterward as 
 a sculptor. Pope Clement VII. employed him to make a 
 variety of medals, golden chalices, and other rich ornaments 
 for churches and palaces. One of them, a present from the 
 Pope to Charles V., was a beautifully illuminated prayer- 
 book, which cost the Cardinal de Medici above two thousand 
 crowns. The golden covers were wrought by Cellini with 
 figures in basso-relievo, and enamelled arabesques, studded 
 with rich jewels. The Emperor was exceedingly struck with 
 the beauty of the design and workmanship, in which he at 
 once recognized the hand of an extraordinary artist. Indeed, 
 so decidedly did everything he touched bear the impress of 
 genius, that stamps which he made for coins in the Roman 
 mint are still preserved as rare specimens of art. Michael 
 Angelo and Titian were his friends, and thought veiy highly 
 of his productions. He was a great favorite with Francis 
 I., for whom he executed many admirable works in gold, 
 silver and bronze. Though accustomed for years to make 
 small figures with exquisite delicacy of finish, he produced, 
 later in life, several noble works on a grander scale. The 
 most celebrated of these is a statue of Perseus in bronze, exe 
 cuted for Duke Cosmo, of Florence. 
 
 The violin now in possession of Ole Bull was made to the 
 order of Cardinal Aldobrandini, one of a noble family at 
 Rome, memorable for their patronage of the fine arts. He
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF OLE BULL. 93 
 
 gave for it 3000 Neapolitan ducats, and presented it to the 
 treasury of Innspruck, where it became a celebrated curiosity, 
 under the name of "The Treasury Chamber Violin." When 
 that city was taken by the French in 1809, it was carried to 
 Vienna and sold to Rjheazhek, a wealthy Bohemian, whose 
 splendid collection of rare and ancient stringed instruments 
 had attracted universal attention in the musical world. The 
 gem of his museum was the violin manufactured by Da Salo 
 and sculptured by Cellini. He was offered immense sums for 
 it by English, Russian and Polish noblemen ; but to all such 
 offers he answered by demanding the price of half Vienna. 
 
 A few years ago Ole Bull gave fifteen concerts in Vienna, 
 with the brilliant success which usually attends him. The 
 Bohemian, who went with the crowd to hear him, was an en 
 thusiastic admirer of his genius, and soon became personally 
 acquainted with him. Until then he had considered himself 
 the most learned man in Europe in the history of violins, the 
 peculiar merits of all the most approved manufacturers, and 
 the best methods of repairing deficiencies, or improving the 
 tones. But with Ole Bull, love of the violin had been an ab 
 sorbing passion from his earliest childhood. He never saw 
 one of a novel shape, or heard one with a new tone, without 
 studying into the causes of the tone and the effects produced 
 by the shape. Through every nook and corner of Italy he 
 sought for new varieties of his favorite instrument as eagerly 
 as an Oriental merchant seeks for rare pearls. He had tried all 
 manner of experiments ; he knew at sight the tuneful quali 
 ties of every species of wood, and precisely how the slightest 
 angle or curve in the fashion of an instrument would affect 
 the sound. He imparted to the Bohemian amateur much 
 information that was new and valuable ; and this sympathy of 
 tastes and pursuits produced a warm friendship between them. 
 Of course, Ole looked with a longing eye on the oldest and
 
 94 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 best of his violins ; but the musical antiquarian loved it like 
 .an only child. He could not bring himself to sell it at that 
 time, but he promised that if he ever did part with it, the 
 Minstrel of Norway should have the preference over every 
 other man in the world. He died two years afterward, and a 
 letter from his son informed Ole Bull that his dying father 
 remembered the promise he had given. He purchased it 
 forthwith, and it was sent to him at Leipsic. 
 
 On the head of this curious violin is carved and colored an 
 angel's face, surrounded by flowing curls of hair. Behind 
 this figure, leaning against the shoulders, is a very beautiful 
 little mermaid, the human form of which terminates in scales 
 of green and gold. The neck of the instrument is orna 
 mented with arabesques in blue, red and gold. Below the 
 bridge is a mermaid in bronze. Thorwaldsen took great 
 delight in examining these figures, and bestowed enthusiastic 
 praise on the gracefulness of the design and the excellence 
 of the workmanship. Ole Bull was born in February, and 
 by an odd coincidence the bridge of his darling violin is deli 
 cately carved with two intertwined fishes, like the zodiacal 
 sign of February. Two little tritons, cut in ivory, are in one 
 corner of the bow. Altogether, it is a very original and sin 
 gularly beautiful instrument. It has the rich look of the mid 
 dle ages, and would have been a right royal gift for some 
 princely troubadour. Amateurs praise its fine proportions, 
 and say that its form combines many of the characteristics of 
 Amati, Stradivarius and Guarnerius. Indeed, it is univer 
 sally admitted to be the most valuable violin in the world- 
 The wood is extremely soft and very thick. The upper 
 covering is of an exceedingly rare species of Swiss pine, cele 
 brated in the manufacture of violins. It grows on the Italian 
 side of the Alps, for sunshine and song seem inseparably con 
 nected, and the balmy atmosphere which makes Italy so rich
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF OLE BULL. 95 
 
 in music, and imparts to her language such liquid melody, 
 seems breathed into her trees. 
 
 Those acquainted with music are well aware that the value 
 of an instrument is prodigiously increased by the age of the 
 wood, and that the purity of its tone depends very much on 
 the skilfulness of the hand which has played upon it. As 
 the best and brightest human soul can never free itself en 
 tirely from the influence of base and vulgar associations in 
 youth, so a violin never quite recovers from the effect of dis 
 cordant vibrations. So perceptible is this to a delicate ear, 
 that when Ole Bull first performed in Philadelphia he at once 
 perceived that the double bass viol in the orchestra was a very 
 old instrument, and had been well played on. Some time 
 after, the horse and rider that represented General Putnam's 
 leap down the precipice, plunged into the orchestra of the 
 theatre, and crushed the old bass viol. As soon as Ole Bull 
 became aware of the accident, he hastened to buy the frag 
 ments. The wood of his violin was so old, and so thoroughly 
 vibrated, that he had never been able to obtain a sounding 
 post adapted to it. This post is an extremely small piece of 
 wood in the interior of the instrument, but the inharmonious 
 vibration between the old and the new disturbed his sensitive 
 ear until he was enabled to remedy the slight defect by a 
 fragment of the double bass. 
 
 One of the most curious facts in connection with this mem 
 orable violin is, that it was probably never played upon by 
 any other hand than Ole Bull's, though it is three hundred 
 years old. It had always been preserved as a curiosity, and 
 when it came into his possession it had no bar inside, nor any 
 indication that such a necessary appendage had ever been put 
 into it. The inward spiritual carving has been entirely done 
 by this " Amphion of the North," as he is styled by Andersen,, 
 the celebrated Danish novelist. The interior is completely
 
 96 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 covered with indentations in ovals and circles, produced by 
 the vibration of his magic tones. Doubtless the angels could 
 sing from them fragmentary melodies of the universe ; but to 
 us they reveal no more than wave-marks on the shores of the 
 ever-rolling sea. 
 
 Whatever importance may be attached to one or other of 
 the circumstances connected with the history of this violin, all 
 America can testify to the peculiar sweetness and purity of 
 its tone ; nor can the combined musical criticism of the w r orld 
 ever convince Americans that it was not the genuine power of 
 genius which carried this heavenly voice so deep into the uni 
 versal heart of the nation. They can never be reasoned out 
 of the feeling that the most skilful artistic performances, com 
 pared with those simple but richly tinted melodies, are like 
 the cold beauty of a statue in contrast with the bright, warm 
 coloring of Titian. 
 
 The story that Paganini bequeathed one of his violins to 
 Ole Bull is a fiction. He never owned an instrument that had 
 belonged to the renowned Italian. The other violin, which 
 he brought to the United States with him, is a Cremona, made 
 in 1742 by the famous manufacturer, Joseph Guarnerius. 
 The diamonds in the bow, forty-five in number, were pre 
 sented to Ole Bull by the Queen of Norway and Sweden. 
 
 One day, when he returned to his lodgings in Paris, he 
 found his two little boys dragging these two precious violins 
 about the floor. They had tied strings to them, and thought 
 they made extremely pretty carts. The eldest, being a very 
 sensitive child, turned pale when his father entered with an ex 
 clamation of surprise and distress. His terrified look touched 
 the tender-hearted parent, and he began to caress the children 
 instead of scolding them, for he reflected that the poor little 
 souls could not know the profanation of which they had been
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF OLE BULL. 97 
 
 guilty in dragging about a Da Salo and a Guarnerius for play 
 things. 
 
 Ole Bull owns several violins. One of them is a Cremona, 
 made in 1687, for the king of Spain, by Antonius Stradi- 
 varius. The wood is very flexible, and it is elaborately fin 
 ished, being inlaid with garlands of ebony and ivory, inter 
 twisted with serpents and little birds. He never speaks of it 
 without dwelling with delighted enthusiasm on its " sweet, in 
 sinuating voice." To hear him talk of his violins, one would 
 suppose he was describing a band of beloved human beings, 
 or a collection of rare singing birds at the least. No other 
 instrument has ever inspired musicians with such enthusiastic 
 and absorbing affection, for no other gives such full utterance 
 to the yearnings of the heart. 
 
 His passion for violins manifested itself at a very early age. 
 A maternal uncle, who was passionately fond of music, fre 
 quently had quartette clubs at his house. He played well on 
 the violoncello, and had a curious collection of rare instru 
 ments. He loved to amuse himself with little Ole's extreme 
 susceptibility to music. When he was three years old he 
 often put him in the violoncello case, and hired him with 
 sweetmeats to stay there while he played. But the candy 
 could not keep him quiet long. The eyes gradually kindled, 
 and the little feet began to beat time. At last his nervous ex 
 citement would become too great to admit of his staying in 
 the violoncello case. The music was dancing all through him, 
 and he must give it utterance. When he returned home he 
 would seize the yard measure, and, with a small stick for a 
 bow, endeavor to imitate what his uncle had played. He 
 heard it with the inward ear all the time ; but for fear his 
 parents were not so pervaded with the tune as he was, he 
 would explain as he went along, telling how beautifully the 
 bass came in at such and such a place. At five years old his
 
 98 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 uncle bought him a very small violin, as yellow is a lemon. 
 He says he never felt carried up into the third heaven as he 
 did when his own little hand first brought out a tune from that 
 
 o 
 
 yellow violin. He loved it and kissed it ; it seemed to him so 
 beautiful, that little yellow violin ! To the surprise of the 
 family, he immediately played well upon it, though he had 
 received no instruction. He had always been present at the 
 family concerts, and he observed everything and remembered 
 everything. On his little yellow violin he played a quartette 
 of Pleyel ; 3 to the assembled club, and they inquired with 
 astonishment who had taught the child, for they knew not 
 that God had taught him by a process as simple as that of 
 the mocking-bird. 
 
 When he was eight years old, a Frenchman arrived in Ber 
 gen with violins for sale. One of them, bright red in its 
 color, gained the boy's heart at first sight, and he pleaded 
 with his father till he consented to buy it. It was purchased 
 late in the afternoon and put away in its case. Ole slept in a 
 small bed in the same apartment with his parents, and the 
 much-coveted instrument was in the adjoining room. " I 
 could not sleep," said he, "for thinking of my new violin. 
 When I heard father and mother breathing deep, I rose softly 
 and lighted a candle, and in my night-clothes did go on tip 
 toe to open the case and take one little peep. The violin was 
 so red, and the pretty pearl screws did smile at me so ! I 
 pinched the strings just a little with my fingers. It smiled at 
 me ever more and more. I took up the bow and looked at it. 
 It said to me that it would be pleasant to try it across the 
 strings. So I did try it, just a very, very little ; and it did 
 sing to me so sweetly ! Then I did creep further away from 
 the bedroom. At first I did play very soft. I make very, 
 very little noise. But presently I did begin a capriccio, which 
 I like very much ; and it did go ever louder and louder ; and
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF OLE BULL. 99 
 
 I forgot that it was midnight, and that everybody was asleep. 
 Presently I hear something go crack ! and the next minute I 
 feel my father's whip across my shoulders. My little red 
 violin dropped on the floor and was broken. I weep much 
 for it, but it did no good. They did have a doctor to it next 
 day, but it never recovered its health." 
 
 Ole Bull never learned to read music by the usual method. 
 From infancy he had been accustomed to hear music fre 
 quently, and he knew the sound of each written note long 
 before he could call it by name. At ten years old, a foreign 
 music master urged upon his father the necessity of having 
 him taught scientifically. The attempt was accordingly 
 made. He was instructed how to hold his violin and handle 
 his bow according to rule, and was told that he must leave 
 off improvising, and practise by note. He could at that time 
 play a capriccio of Paganini's, considered impracticable by 
 older and skilful performers ; but nothing would come to him 
 by the mechanical process. His genius positively refused to 
 go into the strait-jacket ; and when father and teacher coaxed 
 and scolded, the nervous child at last screamed with agony. 
 This untamable freedom was his earliest characteristic, and 
 will probably remain strongest to the last. At school, the 
 confinement of four walls would sometimes press upon him 
 so that he would suddenly spring out of the window into 
 God's sunshine and free air. He would leap fences, swim 
 rivers, scale precipices, turn somersets on horses, and climb 
 to the tops of high trees to rock himself in the wind. The 
 manner in which he dived and rushed about caused the 
 family to bestow on him the name of "The Bat." 
 
 It is this abhorrence of fetters which now imparts to his 
 genius that freshness and overleaping life which constitutes 
 its greatest charm. Critics constantly complain that he pays 
 no attention to the rules ; but the public everywhere agree
 
 100 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 that they do not care for this, so long as the glow of his music 
 warms and electrifies their souls. 
 
 The Concerto in E Minor, played at his farewell concert 
 in this city, is a favorite composition with him, but he seldom 
 brings it out, on account of the difficulty of the instrumenta 
 tion. It was composed at Prague, for the benefit of the 
 widows and orphans of musicians. He imagined a daughter 
 lingering by the bed-side of her departed father, with 
 whom she had watched during the night. The intensity of 
 grief gradually becomes calmer, and is mingled with pleasant 
 recollections of childhood, as the faint gleams of morning dis 
 pel the darkness of night. To express this flickering twi 
 light, the different parts of the orchestra play in different 
 rhythm. One is in four-time, and the other in six-eight, 
 while his violin alternates between the two. Light triumphs, 
 the uncertainty vanishes, and with the bright aurora all comes 
 into the same rhythm. " This contrariety of rhythm in the 
 different parts is one of the things in which they accuse me 
 of violating the rules," said he ; "but what do I care? It pro 
 duces the effect I wish to produce ; and I have always re 
 garded many of the rules of music as perfectly arbitrary and 
 useless." This Concerto in E Minor is extremely beautiful 
 and poetic. In the part which expresses deep grief, the 
 music sobs audibly, and the adagio movement of twilight is 
 indescribably sweet and dreamy. 
 
 " The Mother's Prayer, " which has been such a universal 
 favorite in this country, was composed at Florence, at the re 
 quest of the Dominicans, who wanted some new music for 
 their church. He promised to do it, but neglected it from 
 day to day. At last, they waited upon him early in the 
 morning, and told him it must be ready for rehearsal the next 
 day. "I was in bed when they came," said he; "I had 
 been up all night with the moon, sympathizing with her. I
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OP' OLE BULL. IOI 
 
 hue. thought of Norway, of home, and of many sad things. 
 I said to the Dominicans that they should have their music 
 the next morning. So I took my violin, and it did sing to 
 me so sweetly the thoughts of the night ! It spoke to me so 
 kindly ! I wrote down its voice, and the Dominicans com 
 plained it was too plaintive. They said they already had 
 so much sad, solemn music, that they wanted something 
 cheerful. So I did compose something in a more lively 
 strain for them ; and because this brought before me the 
 image of a mother kneeling at the altar, entreating for her 
 child, I called it ' The Mother's Prayer.' " These friars be 
 came very warmly attached to him, and tried hard to per 
 suade him to join their fraternity. A tame finale this would 
 have been, to the life-opera, which began with swinging to 
 he winds in the tops of Norwegian pines. 
 
 The "Polacca Guerriera " was first conceived at Naples, 
 alone at midnight, gazing on Mt. Vesuvius, flaming through the 
 darkness. He went to Rome soon after, and carried the 
 vague conception in his mind, intending to arrange it there, 
 and bring it out at his first concert. At Rome he shared the 
 apartment of a talented young artist, who became warmly 
 attached to him. The intimate relation between music and 
 painting was a favorite theme with this young man, and to 
 the musician the sounds of an orchestra had always sug 
 gested colors. When he slept late in the morning, the artist 
 would often rouse him, by saying, "Come, Ole, get up and 
 play to me ! I can't paint unless you play to me." Being 
 urged and urged, he would at last shake off his drowsiness, 
 and, half-dressed, begin to play. The violin would soon 
 absorb him, till' an exclamation from the painter broke in 
 upon his reverie. "Ah, dear Ole, give me that once more. 
 It is such a brilliant red ! " or, "Play that again, dear Ole, it 
 is such a heavenly blue."
 
 102 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 Thorwaldsen, who was then at Rome, loved Ole Bull with 
 most devoted affection, and delighted in his genius. These 
 friends, of course, felt a deep interest in his success. From 
 day to day they would ask whether he had done anything 
 toward completing the Polacca. His answer always was, 
 "No, but I shall do it." As the time for the concert drew 
 nigh, they remonstrated against such dangerous delay. "How 
 can you be so careless of your fame, Ole?" said Thorwaldsen. 
 "Do try to have this new piece done in season ; if not for your 
 own sake, at least for mine ; for, independent of my affection 
 for you, you know I claim you as a countryman, and my 
 pride of country is at stake." * The concert was advertised, 
 and the Polacca was in the programme ; still, it had no exist 
 ence, except in the musician's soul. "Have you written that 
 music?" said Thorwaldsen. "Are you crazy?" inquired the 
 painter. But he would throw his arms around them, and 
 laugh and jest, as if his musical reputation concerned every 
 body more than it did himself. The day before the concert 
 his friends were in despair when they saw him prepare to go 
 out after breakfast. " Have you written any of that music?" 
 said they, entreatingly. "No, my dear friends, but I have it 
 all here," replied he, playfully touching his forehead. They 
 urged that the concert was to be the next day, and that the 
 piece must be rehearsed. " I will do it this evening," said he. 
 "You are an imprudent man," they replied; "the public of 
 Rome will not bear such treatment. You will make a com 
 plete failure." He laughed, and coaxed them caressingly not 
 to be troubled on his account. The evening was far spent 
 when he returned. The artist, in anxious tones, asked, 
 " Dear Ole, have you done anything about that music?" "No, 
 I have not had time." "Well, do set about it this moment." 
 
 * Norway and Denmark are included under the same government.
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF OLE BULL. 103 
 
 " Oh, I cannot ; I am so tired that I must go directly to bed." 
 In vain the artist remonstrated and entreated. A spirit of 
 mischief had taken possession of the wayward minstrel. He 
 plunged into bed, and soon pretended to be sound asleep. 
 The young man had the habit of talking to himself, and as 
 he listened to the bass solo of the counterfeit sleeper, he mut 
 tered, "How can he go to sleep with nothing done about that 
 music? It is more than I can comprehend. I wish I could 
 feel as easy about it as he does." He retired to rest early, 
 and as soon as he was fairly asleep Ole sprang out of bed, 
 lighted a candle, and stepped softly into an adjoining room, 
 where he began to write down his music with prestissimo 
 speed. The outline had long been in his mind, and new 
 thoughts for the filling up came with a rush of inspiration. 
 He wrote as fast as the pen could fly. At four o'clock the 
 score for all the orchestral parts was written out. For his 
 violin part he trusted entirely to his own wonderful memory. 
 Having arranged all, he crept quietly back into his bed. The 
 artist, who was an early riser, soon began to stir. Ole breathed 
 sonorously, as if he were in a deep sleep. "Still asleep," 
 murmured his friend, "as quietly as if the music were all 
 ready for the orchestra. I wish we were safely through this 
 evening." It was not long before his anxiety took a more 
 active form. He began to shake the sleeper, saying, "Ole, 
 do wake up, and try to do something about the music." But 
 he obtained only the drowsy answer, "Oh, I cannot, I am so 
 very sleepy." Vexed and discouraged, the painter went to 
 his easel and said no more. At breakfast Ole was full of fun 
 and frolic ; but Thorwaldsen and the artist were somewhat 
 impatient with what they deemed such thoughtless trifling 
 with public expectation. "You will come to my concert to 
 night, will you not?" said the mischievous musician. In dis 
 mal tones they replied: "No, Ole; we love you too well to
 
 104 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 witness your disgrace. Take it as lightly as you please ; but 
 you may be assured the public of Rome will not bear such 
 treatment." "Oh, do come," pleaded the musician, coax- 
 ingly. Just a little, little within the door; and then, when I 
 am disgraced, you can easily slip away." They would not 
 promise, however, and he hurried off to keep his appointment 
 with the orchestra. He had an excellent band of musicians 
 who could play the most difficult music with the slightest pre 
 paration. The rehearsal went off to his complete satisfaction, 
 and he returned to his friends as gay as a lark. His apparent 
 recklessness made them still more sad. The dreaded evening 
 came. The house was crowded. Ole was full of that joyful 
 confidence which genius is so apt to feel in effusions that have 
 just burst freshly from its overflowing fountain. The orches 
 tra delighted in the composition, and played it with their 
 hearts. The brilliancy of the theme and the uncommon 
 beauty of the cantabile took the audience by surprise. The 
 novelty and marvellous difficulty of the finale, in which the 
 violin alone performs four distinct parts, and keeps up a con 
 tinuous shake through fifteen bars, completely electrified them. 
 There was a perfect tempest of applause. In the midst of his 
 triumph, the composer, looking as quiet and demure as possi 
 ble, glanced toward the door. There stood Thorwaldsen and 
 the artist. The latter had a trick of moving tobacco from one 
 side of his mouth to the other when he was excited and 
 pleased. It was now flying from cheek to cheek almost as 
 rapidly as the violin bow through the continuous shake of 
 fifteen bars. 
 
 The moment he left the stage his friends rushed into his 
 arms, exclaiming, "When on earth did you do it? Only tell 
 us that. Oh, it was too beautiful ! " " Don't be so gay, my 
 dear friends," replied he, with mock gravity ; "you know the
 
 RECOLLECTIONSOF OLE BULL. 
 
 105 
 
 public of Rome won't bear such trifling. Why did you come 
 to witness my disgrace?" 
 
 The next day all Rome was ringing with praises of the 
 Norwegian violinist. They knew not which to applaud most, 
 his genius or his superhuman strength in performing the four 
 distinct parts on the violin at once, and keeping up the motion 
 of his bow with such lightning swiftness for so long a time. 
 No person who has not tried it can conceive of the extreme 
 difficulty of playing at once distinct parts on each of the 
 strings. It requires muscles strong as iron, and elastic as in- 
 dia rubber. Paganini had sufficient elasticity, but not suffi 
 cient strength. Ole Bull is the only man in the world that 
 ever did it. When the Parisians first heard him produce this 
 wonderful effect of four violins, it seemed so incredible that a 
 story was circulated in the papers that it was all a deception ; 
 that some other musician was playing two of the parts behind 
 the scenes. Thus originated the charge of "charlatanry," so 
 often and so unjustly repeated. 
 
 The Polacca brought its composer a brilliant reputation at 
 once, and musical critics were obliged to content themselves 
 with saying that it was not written in the right measure for a 
 Polacca.
 
 r= =5 _
 
 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 
 
 S shadows, cast by cloud and sun, 
 
 Flit o'er the summer grass, 
 So in thy sight, Almighty One, 
 Earth's generations pass. 
 
 And while the years, an endless host, 
 
 Come swiftly pressing on, 
 The brightest names that earth can boast 
 
 Just glisten, and are gone. 
 
 Yet doth the Star of Bethlehem shed 
 
 A lustre pure and sweet ; 
 And still it leads, as once it led, 
 
 To the Messiah's feet. 
 
 Oh ! Father, may that holy star 
 Grow every year more bright, 
 
 And send its glorious beams afar 
 To fill the world with light. 
 
 109
 
 OLD DOMINION DAYS.
 
 THE BRAVE OLD OAK.
 
 OLD DOMINION DAYS. 
 
 GEORGE GARY EGGLESTON. 
 
 T was a very beautiful and enjoyable life that the Vir 
 ginians led in that ancient time, for it certainly seems 
 ages ago, before the war came to turn old ideas upside 
 down and convert the picturesque commonwealth 
 into a commonplace modern State. It was a soft, 
 dreamy, deliciously quiet life, a lite of repose, an old 
 life, with all its sharp corners and rough surfaces long ago- 
 worn round and smooth. Everything fitted everything else, 
 and every point in it was so well settled as to leave no work 
 of improvement for anybody to do. The Virginians were 
 satisfied with things as they were, and if there were reform 
 ers born among them, they went elsewhere to work changes. 
 Society in the Old Dominion was like a well-rolled and 
 closely-packed gravel-walk, in which each* pebble has found 
 precisely the place it fits best. There was no giving way 
 under one's feet, no uncomfortable grinding of loose mate 
 rials as one walked about over the firm and long-used ways 
 of the Virginian social life. 
 
 Let me hasten to say that I do not altogether approve of 
 that life, by any means. That would be flat blasphemy 
 against the god Progress, and I have no stomach for martyr 
 dom, even of our modern, fireless sort. I frankly admit in 
 the outset, therefore, that the Virginians of that old time, 
 between which and the present there is so great a gulf fixed,
 
 114 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 were idle people. I am aware that they were, when I lived 
 among them, extravagant for the most part, and in debt alto 
 gether. It were useless to deny that they habitually violated 
 all the wise precepts laid down in the published writings of 
 Poor Richard, and set at naught the whole gospel of thrift. 
 But their way of living was nevertheless a very agreeable one 
 to share or to contemplate, the more because there was noth 
 ing else like it anywhere in the land. 
 
 A whole community with as nearly as possible nothing to 
 do is apt to develop a considerable genius for enjoyment, and 
 the Virginians, during somewhat more than two centuries of 
 earnest and united effort in that direction, had partly dis 
 covered and partly created both a science and an art of plea 
 sant living. Add to idleness and freedom from business 
 cares a climate so perfect that existence itself is a luxury 
 within their borders, and we shall find no room for wonder 
 that these people learned how to enjoy themselves. What 
 they learned, in this regard, they remembered too. Habits 
 and customs once found good were retained, I will not say 
 carefully for that would imply effort, and the Virginians 
 avoided unnecessary effort, always but tenaciously. The 
 Virginians were born conservatives, constitutionally opposed 
 to change. They loved the old because it was old, and dis 
 liked the new, if for no better reason, because it was new; 
 for newness and rawness were well-nigh the same in their 
 eyes. 
 
 This constitutional conservatism, without which their 
 mode of life could never have been what it was, was nour 
 ished by both habit and circumstance. The Virginians were 
 not much given to travelling beyond their own borders, and 
 when they did go into the outer world it was only to find a
 
 OLD DOMINION DAYS. 115 
 
 manifestation of barbarism in every departure from their own 
 prescriptive standards and models. Not that they were more 
 bigoted than other people, for in truth I think they were not, 
 but their bigotry took a different direction. They thought 
 well of the old and the moss-grown, just as some people 
 admire all that is new and garish and fashionable. 
 
 But chief among the causes of that conservatism which 
 gave tone and color to the life we are considering was the 
 fact that ancient estates were carefully kept in ancient fami 
 lies, generation after generation. If a Virginian lived in a 
 particular mansion, it was strong presumptive proof that his 
 father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather had lived 
 there before him. There was no law of primogeniture, to be 
 sure, by which this was brought about, but there were well- 
 established customs which amounted to the same thing. 
 
 o 
 
 Family pride was a ruling passion, and not many Virginians 
 of the better class hesitated to secure the maintenance of 
 their family's place in the ranks of the untitled peerage by 
 the sacrifice of their own personal, prosperity, if that were 
 necessary, as it sometimes was. To the first-born son went 
 the estate usually, by the will of the father and with the 
 hearty concurrence of the younger sons, when there happened 
 to be any such. The eldest brother succeeded the father as 
 head of the house, and took upon himself the father's duties 
 and the father's burdens. Upon him fell the management 
 of the estate; the maintenance of the mansion, which, under 
 the laws of hospitality obtaining there, was no light task ; 
 the education of the younger sons and daughters ; and last, 
 though commonly not by any means least, the management 
 of the hereditary debt. The younger children always had a 
 home in the old mansion, secured to them by the will of
 
 Il6 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 their father sometimes, but secure enough in any case by a 
 custom more binding than any law ; and tl^ere were various 
 other ways of providing for them. If the testator were rich, 
 he divided among them his bonds, stocks, and other personal 
 property not necessary to the prosperity of the estate, or 
 charged the head of the house with the payment of certain 
 legacies to each. The mother's property, if she had brought 
 a dower with her, was usually portioned out among them, and 
 the law, medicine, army, navy, and church offered them gen 
 teel employment if they chose to set up for themselves. But 
 these arrangements were subsidiary to the main purpose of 
 keeping the estate in the family, and maintaining the man 
 sion-house as a seat of elegant hospitality. So great was the 
 importance attached to this last point, and so strictly was its 
 observance enjoined upon the new lord of the soil, that he 
 was frequently the least to be envied of all. I remember a 
 case in which a neighbor of my own, a very wealthy gentle 
 man whose house was always open and always full of guests, 
 dying, left each of his children a plantation. To the eldest 
 son, however, he gave the home estate, worth three or four 
 times as much as any of the other plantations, and with it he 
 
 
 
 gave the young man also a large sum of money. But he 
 charged him with the duty of keeping open house there at all 
 times, and directed that the household affairs should be con 
 ducted always precisely as they had been during his own life 
 time ; and the charge well-nigh outweighed the inheritance. 
 The new master of the place lived in Richmond, where he 
 was engaged in manufacturing, and after the death of the 
 father the old house stood tenantless, but open as before. 
 Its troops of softly-shod servants swept and dusted and 
 polished as of old. Breakfast, dinner, and supper were laid
 
 OLD DOMINION DAYS. I]/ 
 
 out every day at the accustomed hours, under the old butler's 
 supervision, and as the viands grew cold his silent subordi 
 nates waited, trays in hand, at the back of the empty chairs, 
 during the full time appointed for each meal. I have stopped 
 there for dinner, tea, or to spend the night, many a time, in 
 company with one of the younger sons, who lived elsewhere, 
 or with some relation of the family, or alone, as the case 
 might be, and I have sometimes met others there. But our 
 coming or not was a matter of indifference. Guests knew 
 themselves always welcome, but whether guests came or not 
 the household affairs suffered no change. The destruction of 
 the house by fire finally lifted this burden from its owner's 
 shoulders, as the will did not require him to rebuild. But 
 while it stood its master's large inheritance was of very small 
 worth to him. And in many other cases the apparent pre 
 ference given to the eldest son, in the distribution of pro 
 perty, was in reality only a selection of his shoulders to bear 
 the family's burdens. 
 
 In these and other ways old estates of greater or less 
 extent were kept together, and old families remained lords 
 of the soil ; and it is not easy to overestimate the effect of 
 this upon the people. As there is nothing so successful as 
 success, so there is nothing so conservative as conservatism ; 
 and a man to whom a great estate, with an historical house 
 upon it and an old family name attached to it, has descended 
 through several generations, could hardly be other than a 
 conservative in feeling and influence. These people were the 
 inheritors of the old and the established. Upon them had 
 devolved the sacred duty of maintaining the reputation of a 
 family name. They were no longer mere individuals, whose 
 acts affected only themselves, but were chiefs and representa-
 
 Il8 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 tives of honorable houses, and as such bound to maintain a 
 reputation of vastly more worth than their own. Their 
 fathers before them were their exemplars, and in a close 
 adherence to family customs and traditions lay their safety 
 from unseemly lapses. The old furniture, the old wainscot 
 on the walls, the old pictures, the old house itself, perpetually 
 warned them against change as in itself unbecoming and 
 dangerous to the dignity of their race. 
 
 And so changes were unknown in their social system. As 
 their fathers lived so lived they, and there was no feature of 
 their life pleasanter than its fixity. One always knew what 
 to expect and what to do. There were no perplexing uncer 
 tainties to breed awkwardness and vexation. There was no 
 room for shams and no temptation to vulgar display, and so 
 shams and display had no chance to become fashionable. 
 
 Aside from the fact tha-t the old and the substantial were 
 the respectable, the social status of every person was so fixed 
 and so well known that display was unnecessary on the part 
 of the good families, and useless on the part of others. The 
 old ladies constituted a college of heralds, and could give 
 you, at a moment's notice, any pedigree. you might choose to 
 ask for. The goodness of a good family was a fixed fact, and 
 needed no demonstration, and no parvenu could work his way 
 into the charmed circle by vulgar ostentation, or by any other 
 means whatever. As one of the old dames used to phrase it, 
 ostentatious people were thought to be " rich before they 
 were ready." 
 
 As the good families gave law to the society of the land, 
 so their chiefs ruled the State in a more positive and direct 
 sense. The plantation owners, as a matte/ of course, consti 
 tuted only a minority of the voting population, at least after
 
 OLD DOMINION DAYS. , 1 19 
 
 the constitution of 1850 swept away the rule making the 
 ownership of real estate a necessary qualification for suffrage ; 
 but they governed the State, nevertheless, as completely as 
 if they had been in the majority. Families naturally followed 
 the lead of their chiefs, voting together as a matter of clan 
 pride, when no principle was involved, and so the plantation 
 owners controlled directly a large part of the population. 
 But a more important point was that the ballot was wholly 
 unknown in Virginia until after the war, and as the large 
 land-owners were deservedly men of influence in the commu 
 nity, they had little difficulty, under a system of viva voce 
 voting, in carrying things their own way, in all matters on 
 which they were at all agreed among themselves. It often 
 happened that a Whig would continue year after year to 
 represent a Democratic district, or vice versa, in the Legisla 
 ture or in Congress, merely by force of his large family con 
 nection and influence. 
 
 All this was an evil, if we choose to think it so. It was 
 undemocratic, certainly, but it worked wonderfully well, and 
 the system was good in this, at least, that it laid the founda 
 tions of politics among the wisest and best men the State 
 had ; for, as a rule, the planters were the educated men of the 
 community, the reading men, the scholars, the thinkers, and 
 well-nigh every one of them was familiar with the whole his 
 tory of parties and of statesmanship. Politics was deemed 
 a necessary part of every gentleman's education, and the 
 youth of eighteen who could not recapitulate the doctrines 
 set forth in the resolutions of 1798, or tell you the history of 
 the Missouri compromise or the Wilmot proviso, was thought 
 lamentably deficient in the very rudiments of culture. They 
 had little to do, and they thought it the bounden duty of
 
 I2O PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 every free American citizen to prepare himself thus for the 
 proper and intelligent performance of his functions in the 
 body politic. As a result, if Virginia did not always send 
 wise men to the councils of the State and nation, she sent no 
 politically ignorant ones at any rate. 
 
 It was a point of honor among Virginians never to shrink 
 from any of the duties of a citizen. To serve as road over 
 seer or juryman was often disagreeable to men who loved 
 ease and comfort as they did, but every Virginian felt himself 
 in honor bound to serve whenever called upon, and that with- 
 out pay, too, as it was deemed in the last degree disreputable 
 to accept remuneration for doing the plain duty of a citizen. 
 
 It was the same with regard to the magistracy. Magis 
 trates were appointed until 1850, and after that chosen by 
 election, but under neither system was any man free to seek 
 or to decline the office. Appointed or elected, one must 
 serve, if he would not be thought to shirk his duties as a 
 good man and citizen ; and though the duties of the office 
 were sometimes very onerous, there was practically no return 
 of any sort made. Magistrates received no salary, and it was 
 not customary for them to accept the small perquisites 
 allowed them by law. Under the old constitution the senior 
 justice of each county was ex-officio high sheriff, and the 
 farming of the shrievalty for the high sheriff always farmed 
 the office yielded some pecuniary profit ; . but any one ma 
 gistrate's chance of becoming the senior was too small to be 
 reckoned in the account ; and under the new constitution of 
 1850 even this was taken away, and the sheriffs were elected 
 by the people. But to be a magistrate was deemed an honor, 
 and very properly so, considering the nature of a Virginian 
 magistrate's functions. The honor was one never to be
 
 OLD DOMINION DAYS. 121 
 
 sought, however, by direct or indirect means, and to seek it 
 was to lose caste hopelessly., 
 
 The magistrates were something more than justices of the 
 peace. A bench of three or more of them constituted the 
 county court, a body having a wide civil and criminal juris 
 diction of its own, and concurrent jurisdiction with the 
 circuit court over a still larger field. This county court sat 
 monthly, and in addition to its judicial functions was charged 
 with considerable legislative duties for the county, under a 
 system which gave large recognition to the principle of local 
 self-government. Four times a year it held grand jury terms 
 an anomaly in magistrates' courts, I believe, but an excel 
 lent one nevertheless, as experience proved. In a large class 
 of criminal cases a bench of five justices, sitting in regular 
 term, was a court of oyer and terminer. 
 
 The concurrent jurisdiction of this county court, as I 
 have said, was very large, and as its sessions were monthly, 
 while those of the circuit judges were held but twice a year, 
 very many important civil suits, involving considerable inte 
 rests, were brough't there, rather than before the higher tri 
 bunal. And here we encounter a very singular fact. The 
 magistrates were usually planters, never lawyers; and yet, as 
 the records show, the proportion of county-court decisions 
 reversed on appeal for error was always smaller than that of 
 decisions made by the higher tribunals, in which regular 
 judges sat. At the first glance this seems almost incredible; 
 and yet it is a fact, and its cause is not far to seek. The 
 magistrates, being unpaid functionaries, were chosen for their 
 fitness only. Their election was a sort of choosing of arbi 
 trators, and the men elected were precisely the kind of men 
 commonly selected by honest disputants as umpires men of
 
 122 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 integrity, probity, and intelligence. They came into court 
 conscious of their own ignorance of legal technicalities, and 
 disposed to decide questions rather upon principles of "right 
 between man and man " than upon the letter of the law ; and 
 as the law is, in the main, founded upon precisely these prin 
 ciples of abstract justice, their decisions usually proved sound 
 in law as well as right in fact. 
 
 But the magistrates were not wholly without instruction, 
 even in technical matters of law. They learned a good deal 
 by long service their experience often running over a period 
 of thirty or forty years on the bench and, in addition to the 
 skill which intelligent men must have gained in this way, 
 they had still another resource. When the bench thought it 
 necessary to inform itself on a legal point, the presiding 
 magistrate asked in open court for the advice of counsel ; and 
 in such an event every lawyer not engaged in the case at bar,, 
 or in another involving a like principle, was under obligation 
 to give a candid expression of his opinion. 
 
 The system was a very peculiar and interesting one, and 
 in Virginia it was about the best, also, that could have been 
 hit upon, though it is more than doubtful whether it would 
 work equally well anywhere else. All the conditions sur 
 rounding it were necessary to its success, and those condi 
 tions were of a kind that cannot be produced at will they 
 must grow. In the first place, the intelligence and culture of 
 the community must not be concentrated in certain centres, 
 as is usually the case, especially in commercial and manufac 
 turing States, but must be distributed pretty evenly over the 
 country, else the material out of which such a magistracy can 
 be created will not be where it is needed, and in the very 
 nature of the case it cannot be imported for the purpose.
 
 OLD DOMINION DA.YS. 123 
 
 There must be also a fixed public sentiment sufficiently 
 strong to compel the best men to serve when chosen, and the 
 best men must be men of wealth and leisure, else they cannot 
 afford to serve, for such a magistracy must of necessity be 
 unpaid. In short, the system can work well only under the 
 conditions which gave it birth in Virginia, and those condi 
 tions will probably never again exist in any of these States. 
 But the fact that, under our system of government, the peo 
 ple of each State are free to suit their local institutions to 
 their local circumstances, so sharply illustrated in the pecu 
 liar constitution of the Virginian county courts, is one which 
 no thinking man can contemplate with indifference. It is a 
 matter of small moment to the citizen of Massachusetts or 
 New York that Virginia once had a very peculiar judiciary ; 
 but it is not a matter of slight importance that our scheme 
 of government leaves every State free to devise for itself a 
 system of local institutions adapted to its needs and the 
 character and situation of its people ; that it is not uniform 
 ity we have sought and secured in our attempt to establish a 
 government by the people, but a wise diversity, rather ; that 
 experience, and not theory, is our guide ; that our institutions 
 are cut to fit our needs, and not to match a fixed pattern ; 
 and that the necessities of one part of the country do not 
 prescribe a rule for another part. 
 
 But this is neither a philosophical treatise nor a centennial 
 oration. Return we, therefore, to the region of small facts. 
 It is a little curious that, with their reputed fondness for 
 honorary titles of all kinds, the Virginians never addressed 
 a magistrate as "judge," even in that old time when the 
 functions of the justice fairly entitled him to the name. 
 And it is stranger still, perhaps, that in Virginia members of
 
 1 24 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 the legislature were never called " honorable," that distinc 
 tion being strictly held in reserve for members of Congress 
 and of the national Cabinet. This fact seems all the 
 more singular when we remember that in the view of Vir 
 ginians the States were nations, while the general govern 
 ment was little more than their accredited agent, charged 
 with the performance of certain duties and holding cer 
 tain delegated powers, which were subject to recall at any 
 time. 
 
 I have said that every educated Virginian was familiar 
 with politics; but this is only half the truth. They knew the 
 details quite as well as the general facts, and there were very 
 many of them, not politicians and never candidates for office 
 of any kind, who could give from memory an array of dates 
 and other figures of which the " Tribune Almanac " would 
 have no occasion to be ashamed. Not to know the details of 
 the vote in Connecticut in any given year was to lay one's 
 self open to a suspicion of incompetence. To confess forget- 
 fulness of the " ayes and noes " on any important division in 
 Congress was to rule one's self out of the debate as an igno 
 ramus. I say debate advisedly, for there was always a debate 
 on political matters when two Virginia gentlemen met any 
 where, except in church during sermon-time. They argued 
 earnestly, excitedly, sometimes even violently, but ordinarily 
 without personal ill-feeling. In private houses they could 
 not quarrel, being gentlemen and guests of a common host, 
 or standing in the relation of guest and host to each other. 
 In more public places for they discussed politics in all 
 places and at all times they refrained from quarrelling be 
 cause to quarrel would not have been proper. But they 
 never lost an opportunity to make political speeches at each
 
 OLD DOMINION DAYS. 125 
 
 other alternately, sometimes, but quite as often both, or all 
 at once. 
 
 It would sometimes happen, of course, that two or more 
 gentlemen, meeting, would find themselves agreed in their 
 views ; but the pleasure of indulging in a heated political 
 discussion was never foregone for any such paltry reason as 
 that. Finding no point upon which they could disagree, 
 they would straightway join forces and do valiant battle 
 against the common enemy. That the enemy was not present 
 to answer made no difference. They knew all his positions 
 and all the arguments by which his views could be sustained 
 quite as well as he did, and they combated these. It was 
 funny, of course ; but the participants in these one-sided de 
 bates never seemed to see the ludicrous points of the picture. 
 
 A story is told of one of the fiercest of these social politi 
 cal debaters a story too well vouched for among his friends 
 to be doubted which will serve, perhaps, to show how un 
 necessary the presence of an antagonist was to the successful 
 conduct of a dispute. It was " at a dining day," to speak in 
 the native idiom, and it so happened that all the guests were 
 Whigs, except Mr. E., who was the stanchest of Jefferson- 
 ian Democrats. The discussion began, of course, the moment 
 the ladies left the table, and it speedily waxed hot. Mr. E., 
 getting the ear of the company in the cutset, laid on right 
 and left with his customary vigor, rasping the Whigs on their 
 sorest points, arguing, asserting, denouncing, demonstrating 
 to his own entire satisfaction for perhaps half an hour, 
 silencing every attempt at interruption by saying: 
 
 " Now wait, please, till I get through. I'm one against 
 seven, and you must let me make my points. Then you can 
 reply."
 
 126 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 He finished at last, leaving every Whig nerve quivering, 
 every Whig face burning with suppressed indignation, and 
 every Whig breast full, almost to bursting, with a speech in 
 reply. The strongest debater of them all managed to begin 
 first ; but, just as he pronounced the opening words, Mr. E. 
 interrupted him. 
 
 " Pardon me," he said, " I know all your little arguments, 
 so I'll go and talk with the ladies for half an hour, while you 
 run them over ; when you get through send for me, and I'll 
 come and sweep you clear out of the arena," 
 
 And with that the exasperating man bowed himself out 
 of the dining-room. 
 
 But with all its ludicrousness, this universal habit of 
 "talking politics" had its uses. In the first place, politics, 
 with these men was a matter of principle, and not at all a 
 question of shrewd management. They knew what they had 
 and what they wanted. Better still, they knew every office 
 holder's record, and held each to a strict account of his 
 stewardship. 
 
 Under the influence of this habit in social life, every man 
 was constantly on his mettle, of course, and every young man 
 was bound to fortify himself for contests to come by a dili 
 gent study of history and politics. He must know, as a 
 necessary preparation for ordinary social converse, all those 
 things that are commonly left to the professional politicians. 
 As well might he go into society in ignorance of yesterday's, 
 weather or last week's news as without full knowledge of 
 Benton's" Thirty Years' View " and a familiar acquaintance 
 with the papers in the Federalist. In short, this odd habit 
 compelled thorough political education, and enforced upon 
 every man old enough to vote an active, earnest participation;
 
 OLD DOMINION DAYS. I2/ 
 
 in politics. Perhaps a country in which universal suffrage 
 exists would be the better if both were more general than 
 they are. 
 
 But politics did not furnish the only subjects of debate 
 among these people. They talked politics, it is true, when 
 ever they met at all, but when they had mutually annihilated 
 each other, when each had said all there was to say on the 
 subject, they frequently turned to other themes. Of these 
 the ones most commonly and most vigorously discussed were 
 points of doctrinal theology. The great battle-ground was 
 baptism. Half the people, perhaps, were Baptists, and when 
 Baptist and " pedo-Baptist " met, they sniffed the battle at 
 once that is to say, as soon as they had finished the inevi 
 table discussion of politics. On this question of baptism 
 each had been over the ground many hundreds of times, and 
 each must have known, when he put forward an argument, 
 what the answer would be. But this made no manner of dif 
 ference. They were always ready to go over the matter 
 again. I amused myself once (for I was only a looker-on in 
 Virginia, a Virginian by inheritance and brevet, but not by 
 birth or early education) by preparing a " part " debate on 
 the subject. I arranged the remarks of each disputant, in 
 outline, providing each speech with its proper " cue," after 
 the manner of stage copies of a play, and, taking a friend 
 into my confidence, I used sometimes to follow the discus 
 sion, with my copy of it in hand, and except in the case of a 
 very poorly-informed or wholly unpractised debater, my 
 cues and speeches were always found to be amusingly 
 accurate. 
 
 The Virginians were a very religious as well as a very 
 polemical people, however, and I do not remember that I
 
 128 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 ever knew them, even in the heat of their fiercest discussions 
 upon doctrine, to forget the brotherly kindness which lay as 
 a broad foundation under their card-houses of creed. They 
 believed with all their souls in the doctrines set forth by their 
 several denominations, and maintained them stoutly on all 
 occasions; but they loved each other, attended each other's 
 services, and joined hands right heartily in every good work. 
 There was one other peculiarity in their church relations 
 worthy of notice. The Episcopal church was once an estab 
 lishment in Virginia, as every reader knows, but every reader 
 does not know, perhaps, that up to the outbreak of the war 
 it remained in some sense an establishment in some parts of 
 the State. There were little old churches in many neighbor 
 hoods which had stood for a century or two, and the ances 
 tors of the present generation all belonged to them in their 
 time. One of these churches I remember lovingly for its old 
 traditions, for its picturesqueness, and for the warmth of the 
 greeting its congregation gave me not as a congregation, but 
 as individuals when I, a lad half grown, returned to the land 
 of my fathers. Every man and woman in that congregation 
 had known my father and loved him, and nearly every one 
 was my cousin, at least in the Virginian acceptation of that 
 word. The church was Episcopal, of course, while the great 
 majority, perhaps seven-eighths, of the people who attended 
 and supported it were members of other denominations 
 Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists. But they all felt 
 themselves at home here. This was the old family church 
 where their forefathers had worshipped, and under the sha 
 dow of which they were buried. They all belonged here, no 
 matter what other church might claim them as members, 
 They paid the old clergyman's salary; served in the vestry;
 
 OLD DOMINION DAYS. 1 29 
 
 attended the services ; kept church, organ, and church-yard 
 in repair ; and in all respects regarded themselves, and were 
 held by others, as members here of right and by inheritance. 
 It was church and family instead of church and state, and 
 the sternest Baptist or Presbyterian among them would have 
 thought himself wronged if left out of the count of this little 
 church ^ membership. This was their heritage, their home, 
 and the fact that they had also united themselves with 
 churches of other denominations made no difference what 
 ever in their feeling toward the old mother church there 
 in the woods, guarding and cherishing the dust of their 
 dead. 
 
 All the people, young and old, went to church ; it was 
 both pleasant and proper to do so, though not all of them 
 went for the sake of the sermon or the service. The churches 
 were usually built in the midst of a grove of century oaks, 
 and their surroundings were nearly always pleasantly pic 
 turesque. The gentlemen came on horseback, the ladies in 
 their great, lumbering, old-fashioned carriages, with an ebony 
 driver in front and a more or less ebony footman or two 
 behind. Beside the driver sat, ordinarily, the old "mammy" 
 of the family, or some other equally respectable and 
 respected African woman, whose crimson or scarlet turban, 
 and orange neckerchief gave a dash of color to the picture, 
 a trifle barbarous, perhaps, in combination, but none the less 
 pleasant in its effect for that. The young men came first, 
 mounted on superb riding-horses, wearing great buckskin 
 gauntlets, and clad in full evening dress that being en regie 
 always in Virginia with the skirts of the coat drawn for 
 ward over the thighs and pinned in front, as a precaution 
 against possible contact with the reeking sides of the hard-
 
 130 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 ridden steeds. When I first saw young gentlemen riding to 
 church dressed in this fashion, the grotesqueness 'of the thing 
 impressed me strongly ; but one coon gets used to the habi 
 tual, and I have worn full evening dress on horseback many a 
 time, once even in a cavalry parade. 
 
 The young men came first to church, I said, and they did 
 so for a purpose. The carriages were elegant and costly, 
 many of them, but nearly all were extremely old-fashioned ; 
 perched high in air, they were not easy of entrance or exit 
 by ladies in full dress without assistance, and it was ac 
 counted the prescriptive duty and privilege of the young men 
 to render the needed service at the church door. When this 
 preliminary duty was fully done, some of the youths took 
 seats inside the church ; but if the weather were fine many 
 preferred to stroll through the woods, or to sit in little 
 groups under the trees, awaiting the exit of the ladies, who 
 must of course be chatted with and helped into their car 
 riages again. Invitations to dinner or to a more extended 
 visit were in order the moment the service was over. Every 
 gentleman went to dine with a friend, or took a number of 
 friends to dine with him. But the arrangements depended 
 largely upon the young women, who had a very pretty habit 
 of visiting each other and staying a week or more, and these 
 visits nearly always originated at church. Each young lady 
 invited all the rest to go home with her, and after a deal of 
 confused consultation, out of whose chaos only the feminine 
 mind could possibly have extracted anything like a conclu 
 sion, two or three would win all the others to themselves, 
 each taking half a dozen or more with her, and promising to 
 send early next morning for their trunks. With so many of 
 the fairest damsels secured for a visit of a week or a fort-
 
 OLD DOMINION DAYS. 131 
 
 night, the young hostess was sure of cavaliers in plenty to do 
 her guests honor. And upon my word it was all very plea 
 sant ! I have idled away many a week in those old country- 
 houses, and for my life I cannot manage to regret the fact, or 
 to remember it with a single pang of remorse for the wasted 
 hours. Perhaps after all they were not wholly wasted. Who 
 shall say? Other things than gold are golden. 
 
 As a guest in those houses one was not welcome only, but 
 free. There was a servant to take your horse, a servant to 
 brush your clothes, a servant to attend you whenever you 
 had a want to supply or a wish to gratify. But you were 
 never oppressed with attentions, or under any kind of 
 restraint. If you liked to sit in the parlor, the ladies there 
 would entertain you very agreeably, or set you to entertain 
 them by reading aloud or by anything else which might sug 
 gest itself. If you preferred the piazza., there were sure to be 
 others like-minded with yourself. If you smoked, there were 
 always pipes and tobacco on the sideboard, and a man-ser 
 vant to bring them to you if you were not inclined to go 
 after them. In short, each guest might do precisely as he 
 pleased, sure that in doing so he should best please his host 
 and hostess. 
 
 My own favorite amusement I am the father of a family 
 now, and may freely confess the fancies and foibles of a 
 departed youth was to accompany the young lady mistress 
 of the mansion on her rounds of domestic duty, carrying her 
 key-basket for her, and assisting her in various ways, unlock 
 ing doors and really I cannot remember that I was of any 
 very great use to her, after all ; but willingness counts for a 
 good deal in this world, and I was always very willing, at any 
 rate. As a rule, the young lady of the mansion was house-
 
 132 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 keeper, and perhaps this may account for the fact that the 
 habit of carrying housekeepers' key-baskets for them was 
 very general among the young gentlemen in houses where 
 they were upon terms of intimate friendship. 
 
 Life in Virginia was the pursuit of happiness, and its 
 attainment. Money was a means only, and was usually 
 spent very lavishly whenever its expenditure could add in 
 any way to comfort, but as there was never any occasion to 
 spend it for mere display, most of the planters were abun 
 dantly able to use it freely for better purposes that is ta 
 say, most of them were able to owe their debts and to renew 
 their notes when necessary. Their houses were built for 
 comfort, and had grown gray with age long before the pres 
 ent generation was born. A great passage-way ran through 
 the middle, commonly, and here stood furniture which would 
 have delighted the heart of a mediaevalist ; great, heavy 
 oaken chairs, black with age and polished with long usage 
 chairs whose joints were naked and not ashamed ; sofas of 
 ponderous build, made by carpenters who were sceptical as 
 to the strength of woods, and thought it necessary to employ 
 solid pieces of oak four inches in diameter for legs, and to 
 shoe each with a solid brass lion's paw as a precaution against 
 abrasion. A great porch in front was shut out at night by 
 the ponderous double doors of the hall-way ; but during the 
 day the way was wide open through the house. 
 
 The floors were of white ash, and in summer no carpets 
 were anywhere to be seen. Early every morning the floors 
 were polished by diligent scouring with dry pine needles, and 
 the furniture similarly brightened by rubbing with wax and 
 cork. In the parlors the furniture was usually very rich as to 
 woods, and very antique in workmanship. The curtains were
 
 OLD DOMINION DAYS. 133 
 
 of crimson damask, with lace underneath, and the contrast 
 between these and the bare, white, polished floor was singu 
 larly pleasing. 
 
 The first white person astir in the house every morning 
 was the lady who carried the keys, mother or daughter, as the 
 case might be. Her morning work was no light affair, and 
 its accomplishment consumed several hours daily. To begin 
 with, she must knead the light bread with her own hands, and 
 send it to the kitchen to be baked and served hot at break 
 fast. She must prepare a skilletful of light rolls for the 
 same meal, and " give out " the materials for the rest of the 
 breakfast. Then she must see to the sweeping and garnish 
 ing of the lower rooms, passages, and porches, lest the maids 
 engaged in that task should entertain less extreme views than 
 herself on the subject of that purity and cleanliness which 
 constitute the house's charm and the housekeeper's crown of 
 honor. She must write two or three notes, to be despatched 
 by the hands of a small negro, to her lady acquaintances in 
 the neighborhood a kind of correspondence much affected 
 (n that society. In the midst of all these duties the young 
 housekeeper for somehow it is only the youthful ones whom 
 I remember vfvidly must meet and talk with such of the 
 guests as might happen to be early risers, and must not for 
 get to send a messenger to the kitchen once every ten min 
 utes to " hurry up breakfast " ; not that breakfast could be 
 hurried under any conceivable circumstances, but merely be 
 cause it was the custom to send such messages, and the 
 young lady was a duty-loving maid who did her part in the 
 world without enquiring why. She knew very well that 
 breakfast would be ready at the traditional hour, the hour 
 at which it always had been served in that house, and that
 
 134 PAPYRUS 'LEAVES. 
 
 there was no power on the plantation great enough to hasten 
 it by a single minute. But she sent out to " hurry " it, 
 nevertheless. 
 
 When breakfast is ready the guests are ready for it. It is 
 a merit of fixed habits that one can conform to them easily, 
 and when one knows that breakfast has been ready in the 
 house in which he is staying precisely at nine o'clock every 
 morning for one or two centuries past, and that the immova 
 ble conservatism of an old Virginian cook stands guard over 
 the sanctity of that custom, he has no difficulty in determiiu 
 ing when to begin dressing. 
 
 The breakfast is sure to be a good one, consisting of 
 everything obtainable at the season. If it be in summer, the 
 host will have a dish of broiled roe herrings before him, a 
 plate of hot rolls at his right hand, and a cylindrical loaf of 
 hot, light bread which it is his duty to cut and serve on 
 his left. On the flanks will be one or two plates of beaten 
 biscuit and a loaf of batter bread i.e., corn-bread made rich 
 with milk and eggs. A dish of plain corn "pones" sits on 
 the dresser, and the servants bring griddle-cakes or waffle? 
 hot from the kitchen; so much for breads. A knuckle of 
 cold boiled ham is always present, on either the table or the 
 dresser, as convenience may dictate. A dish of sliced toma 
 toes and another of broiled ditto are the invariable vege 
 tables, supplemented, on occasion, with lettuce, radishes, 
 and other like things. These are staples of breakfast, and 
 additions are made as the season serves. 
 
 Breakfast over, the young lady housekeeper scalds and 
 dries the dishes and glassware with her own hands. Then 
 she goes to the garden, smoke-house, and storeroom, to 
 " give out" for dinner. Morning rides, backgammon, music.
 
 OLD DOMINION DAYS. 135 
 
 reading, etc., furnish amusement until one o'clock, or a little 
 later. The gentlemen go shooting or fishing, if they choose, 
 or join the host in his rides over the plantation, inspecting 
 his corn, tobacco, wheat, and live stock. About one the 
 house grows quiet. Tue ladies retire to their chambers, the 
 gentlemen make themselves comfortable in various ways. 
 About two it is the duty of the master of the mansion to 
 offer toddy or juleps to his guests, and to ask one of the din 
 ing-room servants if " dinner is 'most ready?" Half an hour 
 later he must send the cook word to " hurry it up." It is 
 to be served at four, of course, but as fhe representative of 
 an ancient house, it is his bounden duty to ask the two 
 o'clock question and send the half-past two message. 
 
 Supper is served at eight, and the ladies usually retire for 
 the night at ten or eleven. 
 
 If hospitality was deemed the chief of virtues among the 
 Virginians, the duty of accepting hospitality was quite as 
 strongly insisted upon. One must visit his friends, whatever 
 the circumstances, if he would not be thought churlish ; and 
 especially were young men required to show a proper respect 
 and affection for elderly lady relatives, by dining with them 
 as frequently as at any other house. I shall not soon forget 
 some experiences of my own in this regard. The most state 
 ly and elegant country-house I have ever seen stood in our 
 neighborhood. Its master had lived in great state there, and 
 after his death his two maiden sisters, left alone in the great 
 mansion, scrupulously maintained every custom he had estab 
 lished or inherited. They were my cousins, in the Virginian 
 sense of the word, and I had not been long a resident of the 
 State when my guardian reminded me of my duty toward 
 them. I must ride over and dine there, without a special in-
 
 1 36 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 vitation, and I must do this six or eight times a year, at the 
 least. As a mere boy, half grown, I made ready for my visit 
 with a good deal of awe and trepidation. I had already 
 met the two stately dames, and. was disposed to distrust my 
 manners in their presence. I went, however, and was re 
 ceived with warm, though rather stiff and formal, cordiality. 
 My horse was taken to the stable. I was shown to my room 
 by a thoroughly-drilled servant, whose tongue had been 
 trained to as persistent a silence as if his functions had been 
 those of a mute at a funeral. His name, I discovered, was 
 Henry; but beyond 'this I could make no progress in his 
 acquaintance. He prided himself upon knowing his place^ 
 and the profound respect with which he treated me made it 
 impossible that I should ask him for the information on 
 which my happiness, perhaps my reputation, just then de 
 pended. I wanted to know for what purpose I had been 
 shown to my room, what I was expected to do there, and at 
 
 
 
 what hour I ought to descend to the parlor or library. 
 
 But it was manifestly out of the question to seek such 
 information at the hands of so well regulated a being as 
 Henry. He had ushered me into my room, and now stood 
 bolt upright, gazing fixedly at nothing, and waiting for my 
 orders in profound and immovable silence. He had done his 
 part well, and it was not for him to assume that I was unpre 
 pared to do mine. His attitude indicated, or perhaps I 
 should say aggressively asserted, the necessity he was under 
 of assuming my entire familiarity with the usages of good 
 society and the ancient customs of this ancient house. The 
 worst of it was I fancied that the solemn rogue guessed my 
 ignorance and delighted in exposing the fraudulent character 
 of my pretensions to gentility; but in this I did him an in-
 
 OLD DOMINION DAYS. 137 
 
 justice, as future knowledge of him taught me. He was 
 well drilled and delighted in doing his duty, that was all. No 
 gancJierie on my part would have moved him to smile. He 
 knew his place and his business too well for that. Whatever 
 I might have done he would have held to be perfectly proper. 
 It was for him to stand there like a statue until I should bid 
 him do otherwise ; and if I had kept him there a week, I 
 think he would have given no sign of weariness or impa 
 tience. As it was, his presence appalled and oppressed me, 
 and, in despair of discovering the proper thing to do, I deter 
 mined to put a bold face upon the matter. 
 
 " I am tired and warm," I said, " and will rest awhile on 
 the bed. I will join the ladies in half an hour. You may go 
 now." 
 
 At dinner, Henry stood at the sideboard and silently di 
 rected the servants. When the cloth was removed, he 
 brought a wine-tub, with perhaps a dozen bottles in it, and 
 silently awaited my signal before decanting one of them. 
 When I had drunk a glass with the ladies, they rose and re 
 tired, leaving me alone with the wine and the cigars and 
 Henry, whose erect solemnity converted the great, silent 
 dining-room into something very like a funeral- chamber. He 
 stood there like a guardsman on duty, immovable, speechless, 
 patient, while I sat at the board, a decanter of wine before 
 me and a tub of unopened bottles on the floor by my side. 
 I did not want any wine, or anything else, except a sound ol 
 some sort to break the horrible stillness. I tried to think of 
 some device by which to make Henry go out of the room, or 
 move one of his hands, or turn his eyes a little, or even 
 wink ; but I failed utterly. There was nothing whatever to 
 be done and no order to give him. Every want was supplied
 
 138 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 and everything was at my hand. The cigars were under my 
 nose, the ash-pan by them, and a lighted wax candle stood 
 within reach. I toyed with the decanter, in hope of break 
 ing the stillness ; but its stand was too well cushioned above 
 and below to make a sound. I ventured at last to move one 
 of my feet ; but a strip of' velvet carpet lay between it and 
 the floor. I could stand it no longer. Filling a glass of 
 wine, I drank it off, lighted a fresh cigar, and boldly strode 
 out of the house to walk on the lawn in front. 
 
 On the occasion of subsequent visits I got on well 
 enough, knowing precisely what to expect and what to do,, 
 and in time I came to regard this as one of the very pleasant- 
 est houses in which I visited at all, if on no other account 
 than because I found myself perfectly free tnere to do as I 
 pleased. But until I learned that I was expected to consult 
 only my own comfort while a guest in the house, the atmos 
 phere of the place oppressed me. 
 
 Not in every house were the servants so well trained as 
 Henry ; but what they lacked in skill they fully made up in 
 numbers, and in hardly anything else was the extravagance 
 of the Virginians so manifest as in their wastefulness of labor. 
 On nearly every plantation there were ten or twelve able- 
 bodied men and women employed about the house, doing 
 the work which two or three ought to have done and might 
 have done ; and in addition to this there were usually a dozen 
 or a score of others with merely nominal duties or no duties, 
 at all. But it was useless to urge their master to send any of 
 them to the field, and idle to show him that the addition 
 which might thus be made to the force of productive labor 
 ers would so increase his revenues as to acquit him of debt 
 within a few years. He did not much care to be free e-
 
 OLD DOMINION DAYS. 139 
 
 debt, for one thing, and he liked to have plenty of servants 
 always within call. As his dinner-table bore every day food 
 enough for a regiment, so his nature demanded the presence 
 of half a dozen servitors whenever one was wanted. Indeed, 
 these people usually summoned servants in squads, calling 
 three or four to take one guest's horse to stable, or to bring 
 one pitcher of ice-water. 
 
 And yet I should do the Virginians great injustice were I 
 to leave the impression that they were lazy. With abundant 
 possessions, superabundant household help, and slave labor, 
 they had a good deal of leisure, of course; but they were, 
 nevertheless, very industrious .people, in their way. It was 
 no light undertaking to manage a great plantation, and at the 
 same time fulfil the large measure of duties to friends and 
 neighbors which custom imposed. One must visit and re 
 ceive visitors, and must go to court every month, and to all 
 planters' meetings. Besides this, there was a certain amount 
 of fox-hunting and squirrel and bird and turkey-shooting and 
 fishing to be done, which it was really very difficult to escape 
 with any credit to one's self. On the whole, the time of the 
 planters was pretty fully occupied. The ladies had house 
 hold duties, and these included the cutting and making of 
 clothes for all the negroes on the plantation a heavy task 
 which might as well have been done by the negro seam 
 stresses, except that such was not the custom. Fair women, 
 who kept a dressmaker for themselves, worked day after day 
 on coarse cloths, manufacturing coats and trousers for the 
 field-hands. They did a great deal of embroidery and 
 worsted work, too, and personally instructed negro girls in 
 the use of the needle and scissors. All this, with their 
 necessary visiting and entertaining, and their daily attendance
 
 140 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 upon the sick negroes, whom they always visited and cared 
 for in person, served to make the Virginian ladies about the 
 busiest women I have ever known. Even Sunday brought 
 them little rest, as, in addition to other duties, on that day 
 each of the ladies spent some hours at the "quarters," hold 
 ing a Sunday-school. 
 
 But the Virginians had, notwithstanding, a good deal of 
 leisure on their hands, and their command of time was a very 
 important agent, I should say, in the formation of their char 
 acters, as individuals and as a people. It bred habits of out 
 door exercise, which gave the young men stalwart frames and 
 robust constitutions; it gave form to their social life; and, 
 above all, it made reading men and students of many, though 
 their reading and their study were of a somewhat peculiar 
 kind. They were all Latinists, inasmuch as Latin formed 
 the staple of their ordinary school course. It was begun 
 early and continued to the end, and even in after life very 
 many gentleman planters were in the habit of reading their 
 Virgil ana their Horace and their Ovid as an amusement, so 
 that it came to be assumed quite as a matter of course that 
 every gentleman with any pretension to culture could read 
 Latin easily, and quote Horace and Juvenal from memory. 
 
 But they read English literature still more largely, and in 
 no part of the country, except in distinctly literary centres 
 like Cambridge or Concord, are really good household libra 
 ries so common a possession, I think, as they were among 
 the best classes of Virginian planters. Expcnde Hannibalem ! 
 Quot libros in summo duce inveniit ? Let us open the old 
 glass doors and see what books the Virginians read. The 
 libraries in the old houses were the growth of many genera 
 tions, begun, perhaps, by the English cadet who founded the
 
 OLD DOMINION DAYS. 141 
 
 family on this side of the water in the middle of the seven 
 teenth century, and added to little by little from that day to 
 this. They were especially rich in the English classics, in 
 early editions with long s's and looped ct's, but sadly defi 
 cient in the literature of the present. In one of them, I 
 remember, I found nearly everything from Chaucer to Byron, 
 and comparatively little that was later. From Pope to 
 Southey it furnished a pretty complete geologic section of 
 English literature, and from internal evidence I conclude that 
 when the founder of the family and the library first took up 
 his residence in the Old Dominion, Swift was still a con 
 tributor to the Gentleman s Magazine, and Pope was a poet 
 not many years dead. There was a copy of " Tom Jones,'' 
 and another of " Joseph Andrews," printed in Fielding's own 
 time. The Spectator was there, not in the shape of a reprint, 
 but the original papers rudely bound, a treasure brought 
 from England, doubtless, by the immigrant. Richardson, 
 Smollett, Swift, and the rest were present in contemporary 
 editions; the poets and essayists, pretty much all of them, 
 in quaint old volumes; Johnson's "Lives of the Poets"; 
 Sheridan's plays, stitched ; Burke's works ; Scott's novels in 
 force, just as they came one after another from the press of 
 the Edinburgh publishers; Miss Edgeworth's moralities 
 elbowing Mrs. Aphra Behn's strongly tainted romances; Miss 
 Burney's "Evelina," which was so "proper" that all the 
 young ladies used to read it, but so dull that nobody ever 
 opens it nowadays ; and scores of other old " new books " 
 which I have no room to catalogue here, even if I could 
 remember them all. Byron appeared, not as a whole but in 
 separate volumes, bought as each was published. Even, the 
 poor little " Hours of Idleness " was there, ordered from
 
 142 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 across the sea, doubtless, in consequence of the savage treat 
 ment it received at the hands of the Edinburgh Review, 
 bound volumes of which were on the shelves below. There 
 was no copy of " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," but 
 as nearly all the rest of Byron's poems were there in original 
 editions, it seems probable that the satire also had once held 
 a place in the library. It had been read to pieces, perhaps, 
 or borrowed and never returned. There were histories of 
 all kinds, and collected editions of standard works in plenty,, 
 covering a wide field of law, politics, theology, and what not. 
 Of strictly modern books the assortment was comparatively 
 meagre. Macaulay's " Miscellanies," Motley's " Dutch Re 
 public," Prescott's " Mexico," " Peru," etc.; stray volumes 
 of Dickens, Thackeray, Bulvver, and Lever; Kennedy's 
 " Swallow Barn," Cooke's " Virginia Comedians," half a 
 dozen volumes of Irving, and a few others, made up the list. 
 Of modern poetry there was not a line, and in this, as in 
 other respects, the old library burned during the war 
 <airly represented the literary tastes and reading habits of the 
 Virginians in general. They -read little or no recent poetry, 
 nnd not much recent prose. I think this was not so much 
 the result of prejudice as of education. The schools in Vir 
 ginia were excellent ones of their kind, but their system was 
 that of a century ago. They gave attention, chiefly, to " the 
 humanities " and logic, and the education of a Virginian gen 
 tleman resembled that of an Englishman of the last century 
 far more closely than that of any modern American. The 
 writers of the present naturally address themselves to men 
 of to-day, and this is precisely what the Virginians were not, 
 wherefore modern literature was not at all a thing to their 
 taste. To all this of course there were exceptions. I have
 
 OLD DOMINION DAYS. 
 
 known some Virginians who appreciated Tennyson, enjoyed 
 Longfellow and Lowell, and understood Browning ; just as 
 I have known a few who affected o. modern pronunciation 
 of the letter a in such words as master, basket, glass, and 
 grass.
 
 NEW YEAR'S MORNING. 
 
 145
 
 NEW YEAR'S MORNING. 
 
 H. H. 
 
 NLY a night from Old to New ! 
 
 Only a night and so much wrought! 
 The Old Year's heart all weary grew, 
 
 But said, " The New Year rest has brought.' 
 The Old Year's heart its hopes laid down, 
 
 As in a grave ; but, trusting, said : 
 " The blossoms of the New Year's crown 
 
 Bloom from the ashes of the dead." 
 The Old Year's heart was full of greed ; 
 With selfishness it longed and ached, 
 And cried : " I have not half I need, 
 
 My thirst is bitter and unslaked. 
 But to the New Year's generous hand 
 
 All gifts in plenty shall return ; 
 True loving, it shall understand, 
 By all my failures it shall learn, 
 
 I have been reckless : it shall be 
 
 
 
 Quiet and calm and pure of life. 
 I was a slave : it shall go free, 
 
 And find sweet peace where I leave strife." 
 
 Only a night from Old to New ! 
 
 Never a night such changes brought. 
 The Old Year had its work to do ; 
 
 No New Year miracles are wrought.
 
 148 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 Always a night from old to new ! 
 
 Night and the healing balm of sleep ! 
 Each morn is New Year's morn come true, 
 
 Morn of a festival to keep. 
 All nights are sacred nights to make 
 
 o o 
 
 Confession and resolve and prayer; 
 All days are sacred days to wake 
 
 New gladness in the sunny air. 
 Only a night from old to new ; 
 
 Only a sleep from night to morn. 
 The new is but the old come true ; 
 
 Each sunrise sees a new year born !
 
 THE TOO SOON DEAD.
 
 THE TOO SOON DEAD. 
 
 (A SUICIDE'S RETROSPECT.) 
 G. P. LATHROP. 
 
 O describe as I am about to do my sensa 
 tions and experience after committing sui 
 cide, may at first seem to others an act 
 of some presumption on my part. 
 
 I will concede to prejudice so far as to 
 admit that I feel a certain delicacy, an irre 
 pressible reluctance, at touching upon the 
 theme. I regret, perhaps more keenly than any one else 
 -can, that none who have enjoyed similar opportunities have 
 yet taken the trouble to record their views of suicide in 
 retrospect, this regret being heightened by the added sense 
 of duty thus thrown upon' me, compelling me to make public 
 my opinions and reminiscences connected with this strange 
 episode in my life, shall I say? for really I am at a loss 
 just how to describe the date of that which, as I look back 
 upon it, appears to have no place whatever in time. But it 
 is plain that we have had too many accounts of suicide as the 
 end of a familiar phase, and that we need to have the per 
 spective reversed, so that we may look at the act from 
 another side viz., as the beginning of a new phase. There 
 fore I shall offer no. further excuse, but proceed at once with 
 my narrative, merely explaining in advance that I do not
 
 I$2 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 mean to make a complete revelation some degree of reserve 
 being distinctly allowable. 
 
 It is not worth while now to enter into the motives that 
 led me to commit suicide ; but I did not approach the criti 
 cal act without long meditation. The intense emotion, in 
 fact, with which I first looked forward to it was checked by 
 and gave place to a singular coolness of reflection that almost 
 amused me. Perhaps it was due to personal peculiarities, 
 perhaps to the inevitable tendency of the human will to 
 excuse itself even for deeds the most repugnant to right ; 
 but, whatever the cause, the fact remains that I was 
 governed by an exacting desire to reason out the justice 
 of making away with myself. This may have been partly 
 because I sought to make the most of what was clearly 
 my last chance to pursue a course of human reason 
 ing. In these meditations I was met by the conventional 
 notion that the wrong of self-destruction lies in our in 
 terfering with some preordained allotment of life. It is 
 said that under such circumstances we die too soon. For a 
 time I was tempted to oppose to this an argument from the 
 same premises ; granting that the term of my life is appointed 
 in advance, who shall say that this very, impulse of mine to 
 drown or shoot myself is not by the same method decreed 
 in advance? If it be so, I may be accused of positive 
 wrong in not obeying the impulse. That argument I thought 
 was tough enough to bear a considerable strain ; but I soon 
 found support in still stronger reasonings. The real basis for 
 debate I saw to be this: How can we ever tell with certainty 
 whether a person has died too soon or not ? 
 
 It is true, we do not hesitate to declare that the young 
 who pass away before reaching full manhood or womanhood
 
 THE TOO SOON DEAD. 153 
 
 have been prematurely removed from earth ; but are there 
 not as many cases of persons in middle life or on the verge 
 of old age who also appear to have died without enjoying 
 their due tenure of existence? That a husband, a wife, 
 the parents of a family, should be cut off before they 
 have been able to make more than momentary provision 
 for the creatures who are dependent on them for daily 
 happiness and daily bread, this is surely more worthy to 
 be called a precipitate calamity, than the breaking off of 
 lives that have no such complication of parts. Or, if ex 
 amples like this do not convince, you have only to recall 
 the name of some great scholar who has collected masses of 
 material for a work of general enlightenment, but is petrified 
 by death before he has put the half in order, and loses his 
 lifelong impetus as easily as the pen that drops from his 
 senseless fingers. Then, too, with what a weight upon the 
 spirit falls the memory of those who have held high trusts in 
 time of peril men on whom the liberty of multitudes hung, 
 or whose voices were uplifting some noble principle in 
 politics or sociology and with whose too swift extinction 
 freedom and truth have also been for many years thrown into 
 eclipse ! 
 
 On a careful survey of the whole field, it seemed to me, 
 indeed, that the inconsistency of death so to speak was 
 even greater when forced upon those who have become 
 stored with the wisdom, knowledge, and strength of three 
 score than in those who are provided with youth, hope, and 
 energy, but seldom with the discretion that makes these 
 forces efficient. If, then, all but that small number of per 
 sons who are actually superannuated may be said to die 
 too soon, it is clear that to establish any degrees we must
 
 154 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 yse varying and relative criteria. Kant shows that to state 
 the age of the earth in centuries means nothing, and that to 
 ascertain its present period we should have to measure its 
 aion or planetary duration, presupposed and involved in its 
 whole constitution. Just so must we, in order to discover 
 whether or not an individual life is closed too soon, ascertain 
 the principle on which it was planned. It may be that we 
 shall then find it to be consistent with an early end, and with 
 that alone. I need not gc into detail as to my peculiar cir 
 cumstances ; it is enough that, reasoning as above, I decided 
 that to terminate my earthly history by my own hand was 
 justifiable and right. But let it be borne in mind that I do 
 not repeat my arguments here with a view to their being 
 used in defence of any other suicide. I do so only to explain 
 how it was possible for me to come to the resolve which I 
 finally took ; and, speaking from my present point of view, 
 far beyond all such mental processes, I unhesitatingly pro 
 nounce the reflections just rehearsed, specious though they 
 are, to be miserably dark and false in their result. But you 
 are anxious to know of my transition, which I have under 
 taken to describe. The instrument which I had chosen was 
 the pistol, and in this at least my choice was prudent. The 
 pain it inflicted was scarcely perceptible. There was a deaf 
 ening report. . . . When the smoke had cleared away 
 for the dull, obliterating cloud seemed to have penetrated 
 every channel and corner of my being infinite spaces seemed 
 to buoy me up and draw me onward. I could not, however,, 
 perceive anything distinctly ; all was suffused with a strange 
 gray darkness, unlike anything I had ever known before, and 
 whether this had its source within me or without me, I could 
 not tell. But gradually I descried dim forms not far away
 
 THE TOO SOON DEAD. IfJS 
 
 a cloud of solemn, hovering shapes that seemed to wait for 
 me. I knew myself to be without my wonted form, and in 
 some way different from what I had been but a few moments 
 before. Among other things, I no longer had any conception 
 of one direction as distinguished from another; but, never 
 theless, I was aware that this waiting swarm of beings, 
 hovering with a certain discontent and sorrow in that waste 
 obscurity, and yet in their unrest motionless I knew that 
 these were soon to be my companions. When I found 
 myself amidst them, they floated slowly about me, some 
 coming so close as to touch me, or what seemed like touch 
 ing, while others circled around at a greater distance, peering 
 at me with eyes full of the power of unearthliness. 
 
 A sudden consciousness smote me that these were the 
 TOO SOON DEAD that I was henceforth to be numbered 
 with them. And immediately when that knowledge became 
 mine, I heard a faint and far-extending sound, slight and to 
 mortal ears indescribable, but mysteriously pathetic the 
 sound of falling tears ; or let me rather call it, to make it 
 better understood, the memory or the spirit of that sound 
 for we know none such on earth, yet it is a sound conveying 
 all the pity and the anguish which in human life the sight of 
 tears calls up. 
 
 But this impression passed over and on like a moving 
 cloud ; and when I saw that I was one of the host, and 
 accepted as such, I began to take my part in it naturally and 
 observantly. 
 
 For the present, that was my world. Until removed 
 thence, I found no limit to the multitude, a-nd I could never 
 retrace my way to that void through which I had first 
 come. My companions were of all ages and conditions
 
 156 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 men, women, and children, at every stage of advancement or 
 retrogression in character and years. They were not exactly 
 as they had been in the previous life, but their general aspect 
 so far resembled its former phase that I could easily translate 
 it to myself. I soon came to understand that what I saw 
 was not the persons themselves, but a sort of impermanent 
 record, or, as it was termed there, " Record-Image " of them. 
 This I learned partly through the development of new senses 
 adapted to my new surroundings, and partly from the Record- 
 Images themselves with whom I came in contact; particularly- 
 one old gentleman, who was annoyed at some expression 
 of regret on my part that I had quitted the human state so 
 rashly. 
 
 "Pooh, pooh," said he, testily, "you black-headed young 
 fellows are plenty in the world. What does it matter if you 
 die? But there's some cause for complaint in my lot. I was 
 a successful manufacturer; I had toiled faithfully and assi 
 duously from my nineteenth year up to my fifty-third, deny 
 ing myself most of the pleasures and satisfactions of life, 
 though well fitted to enjoy them books, pictures, society, 
 and seasons of rest and reflection in the lap of nature. I was 
 also moderate in my desires as to money. But when I had 
 amassed only twelve hundred thousand dollars I died with 
 out having time to establish a noble charity to which I meant 
 to devote a great part of my fortune and most of my leisure 
 after retiring from business." 
 
 " But if you died too soon," I suggested, " it seems strange 
 that you couldn't have some compensation by being sent to a 
 more agreeable region than this." 
 
 "Very true," he answered, mollified by my sympathy. 
 " But the situation seems to be this : Most persons who die
 
 THE TOO SOON DEAD. 157 
 
 too soon have their own errors to thank for it, and are there 
 fore sent here to lead a kind of half-life as a punishment. Of 
 course, as you must have seen, there was no fault in my 
 case ; but in the disposition of millions of lives it may quite 
 likely happen that a few have to suffer innocently, merely 
 for the sake of the system and the general law. Still, I sup 
 pose things may be balanced hereafter. Our souls, you 
 know, are not permanently located here. They are held in 
 a kind of suspense somewhere else until we are allowed to 
 go and join them. Then all these Record- Images you and 
 I among the rest are wiped out. It'll be a relief when our 
 turn comes ; but I'd rather go back where I came from." 
 
 However correct this old gentleman might be as to our 
 condition and destiny, I suspected that he did not entirely 
 comprehend his own case. I was sorry for him, because I 
 learned -from the popular lecturers or preachers of my new 
 abode that no one could pass away into a better sphere until 
 he should fully solve the problem of why he had been con 
 signed to this dim stopping-place, and become penitent for 
 his errors in a former life. But it was singular how closely 
 the true and the false were mixed together here, just as on 
 the earth. It was very hard, sometimes, to make out why 
 certain persons should have been classed among the too soon 
 dead ; I could not discover on what principle the distribution 
 was made. It appeared to depend, in some instances, on the 
 opinion of the individual himself, in others on the sentiments 
 of his friends in the world he had left, or again there were 
 cases where neither of these rules would apply. Sometimes, 
 also, figures appeared of those who had been dead a long 
 time, the chronology of whose demise had been supposed to 
 be perfectly correct, but who were now suddenly remanded
 
 158 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 to our realm because some late event or revelation had 
 proved conclusively that ,they should have lived longer. In 
 this way so I gathered from historians of the region Wick- 
 liffe had been brought among the too soon dead when the 
 reign of Bloody Mary had shown what horrors might have 
 been averted if the early reformer had been able to utilize 
 the regenerating forces he was. charged with. The Italian 
 painter Masaccio had likewise been returned to this sphere 
 when the historians and critics found out that, but for his 
 untimely end, he would have taken his place amongst 
 the greatest and ripest artists of the epoch immediately fol 
 lowing him, to which he really belonged, it seems. But I 
 was much surprised when one day I came upon a great and 
 popularly-beloved novelist of the present century, whom, 
 indeed, I had mourned with many thousands as snatched 
 .away when the world could ill spare him, but whose loss had 
 been partly compensated, I thought, by the magnificent 
 spread of his fame and the influences scattered among men 
 by his humor and pathos. But it turned out that the publi 
 cation of his biography had shown that he ought to have 
 remained beneath the sky until that work was issued, in 
 order to see how quickly the weeds of cynic disbelief and 
 depreciation could overrun the path he had trodden with 
 such world-wide honor. The Record-Image which stood for 
 him confessed as much to me. 
 
 " I used to think, when alive," he said, " that I had an in 
 exhaustible fund of humor. But this biography and the 
 merciless attacks that have been made upon me in conse- 
 qence of it have given me a terribly serious turn." 
 
 Wonderingly and sadly I asked myself could this be Charles 
 Dickens?
 
 THE TOO SOON DEAD. 159 
 
 On the other hand, those who are confidently looked Ifor 
 by new-comers among the too soon dead are not always met 
 with. I expected to see John Keats there. But I learned 
 that his stay had been very short. When Shelley's " Ado- 
 nais " was written it could no longer be thought that there 
 was anything premature in the fate which had quenched the 
 primrose flame of Keats' poetry so soon. Out of the domain 
 of the too soon dead he was borne triumphantly, and the 
 sympathy of all sensitive and artist souls, pulsating like an 
 echo of Shelley's sobbing music, ever since, has confirmed 
 that triumph. 
 
 I pass over as not meriting individual mention a long 
 list of young men and women of whom it had been pre 
 dicted that they would shake the world in some tremendous 
 manner could they but remain long enough on the scene. 
 Some of them had grown to be gray-haired, but as they 
 had never accomplished what they were supposed to have 
 been born for, they had finally, at their demise, been 
 put into our unhappy category. Others of them were 
 youthful, but the world would now never be able to tell 
 how great or how small they might have turned out 
 to be. 
 
 Besides these there were hundreds of politicians who had 
 never been elected President of the United States. 
 
 I found a few ministers of the Gospel who were considered 
 to have missed the chief end of the clerical life because they 
 had died before being cast off in old age and destitution by 
 their congregations. 
 
 There were tramps, who had never had a " good square 
 meal," and a great many communists, who had died of over 
 feeding ; besides corporation directors and striking laborers.
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 who had none of them succeeded in discovering the laws of 
 mutual duty and equal justice. 
 
 In an obscure corner I met a thoughtful man, who, it 
 appears, was the inventor of machines that made fortunes 
 for several other parties. He died before he could perfect 
 an invention for getting the money away from them. 
 
 To these must be added a few physicians, who had worked 
 hard among the poor at the cost of actual and serious priva 
 tion to themselves, and a small number of people whom no 
 one could bribe in any way to violate the truth neither the 
 villanous nor the virtuous, social convention nor the tyranny 
 of church organizations, nor the sometimes mistaken softness 
 of modern manners. Truly these should have stayed longer on 
 your globe ! I suppose they died too soon because they were 
 too honest to live, considering that as we are all mortal it is 
 more or less fraudulent for any man to pretend to be alive. 
 
 The most remarkable thing, probably, that happened while 
 1 was one of that strange community was the circulation of 
 a thrilling .rumor that William Shakspeare was at last to be 
 numbered among us. The reason given for this was that had 
 Shakspeare lived till now he could have been of far greater 
 usefulness than he ever proved to be during his lifetime, by 
 explaining to modern commentators and eminent actors the 
 fine points in his chief representations of character. Public 
 opinion was much agitated by this report ; meetings were 
 held, and it was discussed in print and in conversation. But 
 a party was soon formed which contended that if Shak- 
 speare's life had been abnormally prolonged so as to reach 
 into the nineteenth century, his memory would by this time 
 have become so feeble that he would not be able to tell what 
 he really had meant by Ins plays; and, secondly, it was main-
 
 THE TOO SOON DEAD. l6l 
 
 tained that even if he could state his original conception and 
 intent, the critics would set aside his explanations by telling 
 him that he did not look at his own work with the same 
 objectiveness and impartiality that professional reviewers 
 employ. In short, the critics, without any aid from the 
 great poet, know more about Shakspeare than he could have 
 known about himself; and we must not suppose that they 
 could really be satisfied by his crude and uninstructed way 
 of viewing his own productions. This party finally pre 
 vailed ; and, in fact, Shakspeare never did enter the tedious 
 and shadowy mid-world of the too soon dead at least while 
 I was there. There were no critics there, either ; for the 
 generality of critics cannot die a moment too soon 
 
 You probably wish to question me concerning those whom 
 in your own experience you have known to be endowed with 
 powers beneficent for your world, yet whose path illumined 
 for a short stretch by the glow of their own genius and 
 honesty has crumbled abruptly at the verge of the abyss, 
 letting them sink out of sight into fathomless depths of life 
 unknown to us. You do well to mourn them ; but remember 
 that their departure has left you bettered by the memory of 
 their goodness and their beauty, and by the hope that you 
 may accomplish some of those high missions which they were 
 debarred from following. Remember, also, that they per 
 haps did their fairest and fullest service in this way. 
 
 I have little more to say, but it is important. Beware that 
 you let not your mind wander eagerly towards death as a 
 relief from suffering. In the world of the too soon, dead I 
 found that the desire to return to the world of men cut short 
 all advancement to a higher state of being in those who in 
 dulged it. I myself, conscious of the wrong I had committed,
 
 l62 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 could not forbear to wish myself once more in the human 
 form, and for a time this pardonable weakness imprisoned 
 me ; but at last I shook it off, and then I was able to move 
 into another and nobler sphere. Now, if you conceive of 
 most men and women on the terrene globe longing to go 
 back to some condition which they suppose themselves to 
 have been in before they were born, you will have an exact 
 parallel to the irrationality of the too soon dead who would 
 like to go back, hoping to complete their broken careers ; 
 and I can assure you that to long to escape from the human 
 state through death is just as irrational. On the other hand, 
 dread not death. To die too soon is a crisis of the journey 
 through the universe which must be met with courage ; to 
 live too long is equally a burden. If we do not do our duty 
 on the earth, and are not ready to meet either destiny with 
 fortitude, some shadow of our error will stretch after us and 
 darken our next life, making it at least what you can under 
 stand to be a half hell, even if you do not believe in a whole 
 hell. 
 
 Concerning the above curious record I, who have under 
 taken to vouch for it by giving it publicity, will make only 
 one remark, though it suggests several others. I wish merely 
 to point out that the suicide's post-mortem state, though in 
 some respects a transposition of our own situation in the 
 present life, in others hints a similarity. He knows where he 
 came from, but does not know whither he is going. We do 
 not know where we came from, but we have at least vivid 
 ideas of our goal hereafter. But we are all of us both the 
 suicide and ourselves longing in some degree to get away 
 from present surroundings; and just as it may seem to some
 
 THE TOO SOON DEAD. 
 
 163 
 
 people here that there is a certain indifference in the govern 
 ment of the universe as to what becomes of us, so the too 
 soon dead probably feels that the misfortune of his exit 
 hence is explained away more easily than is flattering to him. 
 Can it be possible that the phase which he describes is 
 merely a variation of our own, and that we also live in a 
 fractional region devoted to the too soon dead of another 
 sphere ?
 
 LADY WENTWORTH. 
 
 165
 
 LADY WENTWORTH. 
 
 NORA PERRY. 
 
 HE shall marry me yet !" he smiling said 
 Smiling, and under his breath but red 
 As flame his dark cheek glowed, and bale 
 fire burned 
 In his passionate eyes, as he swiftly turned 
 
 Out of the sunshine into the shade 
 Out of the sunshine she had made 
 But a moment before this girl with a face 
 Whose very frown had a winsome grace. 
 
 They used to swear, in that old, old time, 
 When her beauty was in its wonderful prime, 
 When her laughing eyes of golden brown 
 Were the toast and rage of Portsmouth town, 
 
 Of Hampshire's Portsmouth, there by the sea, 
 Where the Wentworths ruled and held in fee 
 Half the country-side of rock and shore 
 For a hundred and fifty years or more. 
 
 " She shall marry me yet !" Twas the Wentworth blood 
 That rose up then in that turbulent flood 
 The Wentworth purpose that under his breath 
 
 Would hold to its passionate will till death. 
 167
 
 l68 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 " She shall marry me yet !" And down he strode 
 Across the pathway, across the road, 
 With a firm quick step and a firm quick heart, 
 To work his will and to play his part. 
 
 And a difficult part it was to play, 
 For the Wentworth blood ran either way 
 His mother's blood that held him tied 
 By kinsman bonds on either side. 
 
 But, as mother's blood leaves stronger trace 
 Than father's blood in a turbulent race, 
 It may have been that his wilful way 
 Had the stronger current to move and sway. 
 
 At all events, as the months wore on 
 And no tidings came from her cousin John 
 To the beautiful toast of Portsmouth town, 
 The Wentworth temper rose up to drown 
 
 The passionate Wentworth love in her breast, 
 And the Wentworth pride helped on the rest ; 
 And six months after her laughing scorn 
 Of her dark-eyed suitor, suing forlorn, 
 
 She stood by his side, one autumn day, 
 A beautiful bride. He had won his way; 
 But the gossips said that a bride never wore 
 In Portsmouth town such a look before.
 
 LADY WENTWORTH. 169 
 
 Seven years after, John Wentworth came 
 Back to his home with a foreign fame ; 
 Back he came to rule and to reign, 
 As the Wentworths had ruled and ruled again, 
 
 From father to son, in Hampshire State. 
 Seven years after why he tarried so late, 
 So late and so long in a foreign land, 
 Was a riddle not easy to understand. 
 
 Yet, late as he caine, a welcome burned 
 In a hundred hearth-fires. . Wherever he turned 
 A hand stretched out and a smile awaited 
 This kinsman of theirs so long belated. 
 
 But amid this lavish neighborly cheer 
 He missed a face he had once held dear. 
 " My Cousin Frances: where doth she hide?" 
 He questioned at last. " She watches beside 
 
 " A sick man's bed a good nurse, I should say, 
 To keep the blue-devil bailiffs away." 
 That night John Wentworth knocked at the door 
 Of his cousin's house. A foot on the floor, 
 
 A whisper of silk, and there she stood. 
 
 In that moment John Wentworth's cousinly mood 
 
 Melted away like frost at the fire. 
 
 He thought he had killed the old desire ;
 
 I/O PAPYRUC LEAVES. 
 
 He thought that love and hate both lay 
 
 Slain by the past at that long, late day ; 
 
 He thought but what matters it now 
 
 The thought that had been, when on cheek and brow 
 
 Flames the signal-torch from his wakened heart ? 
 What matters it now the cousinly part 
 He had fancied was his, when on his pulses beat, 
 With that swift, wild throb, as their glances meet ? 
 
 But he curbed the Went worth temper awhile, 
 As he bent in greeting, arid hoped, with a smile, 
 That he found her well. Hearing the state 
 Of her good man's health, he could not wait 
 
 His cousinly sympathy to convey. 
 A tedious illness he had heard them say ; 
 But the town was eloquent of her care, 
 Which had certainly left her 1:0 less fair 
 
 Than he remembered her seven years since^- 
 He turned a moment, as he saw hei wince 
 Turned, and with a purpose fell, 
 In a sneering, passionate tone : " Ah, wej), 
 
 " Women, we know, have a potent charru 
 To ward themselves from trouble and harm 
 She caught the sneer, and stayed him there 
 With a passionate cry: how did he dare,
 
 LADY WENTWORTH. 
 
 Who had played so falsely these seven long years, 
 To fling at her feet his idle sneers? 
 / false !" He laughed. " Madam, where went 
 Those fine love-letters I foolishly sent 
 
 " Across the seas, in those old, old days ? 
 I waited long 'tis a pretty amaze 
 You feign, my cousin I waited long 
 For a word or a sign, for my faith was strong 
 
 " In that old, sweet time ; but the months went by, 
 And never a line came back, and I 
 Still clung to my faith, till a morning in May 
 There came to me news of a wedding-day 
 
 " Here in Portsmouth town, and the bride 
 Was the girl who had stood at my side 
 And sworn to be mine six months before 
 You shiver, my cousin ; the wind from the shore 
 
 " Blows harshly to-night." A gesture here 
 Checked his bitter reproach, his menacing sneer, 
 And a hoarse voice cried : " John Wentworth, wait 
 Ere you dower me with the dower of hate. 
 
 " No letter of yours from over the sea 
 In that old, old time came ever to me ; 
 Day after day, the months went by 
 Day after day, and what was I
 
 172 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 " But a maiden scorned? Day after day, 
 The months went by ; when I heard them say 
 That John Wentworth staid 
 To woo and to win an English maid. 
 
 " My spirit rose like our swift shore tide 
 Twas the Wentworth temper, the Wentworth pride- 
 And your cousin and mine had wooed me long; 
 His love was sure, and my hate was strong 
 
 " Quick passionate hate for the suitor fine, 
 The false, false gallant who over his wine 
 Could pledge new loves while the old love waited, 
 Faithful and fond, this lover belated." 
 
 " Sweetheart !" Back she started in swift affright 
 At this fond, bold cry, and the red turned white 
 In her oval cheek. A moment more, 
 And, swiftly striding across the floor, 
 
 This lover belated, who missed his bride 
 Seven years ago, is at her side ; 
 And the fond, bold voice on her listening ear, 
 On her listening heart, over every fear, 
 
 Like a rising river, gains and gains, 
 While unreckoned, unheeded, the swift night wanes,. 
 Till the clock strikes twelve on the landing stair ; 
 Then John Wentworth turns with a gallant air,
 
 LADY WENTWORTH. 173 
 
 And embraces hi? cousin as a kinsman may, 
 Though all the gossips be lacking that way. 
 Yet his parting words, whispered low in her ear, 
 Were never meant for a gossip to hear. 
 
 But long before the spring had come 
 
 To Portsmouth shores, in many a home 
 
 The gossips' tongues were making bold 
 
 With the Wentworth name ; and the story told, 
 
 Which ran through the town like a breath of flame, 
 Was this that John Wentworth never came 
 To his cousin's house but by signal or sign, 
 A silken scarf or a 'kerchief fine 
 
 Flung out of the casement, or at night 
 In the western window a candle's light. 
 And the gossips, observant, would smile, and say, 
 " So ! the sick man sleeps at this hour of the day ! " 
 
 Or at evening, when the candle flares 
 
 In the western window, " Dame Frances cares 
 
 Are over early, it seems, to-night." 
 
 If Dame Frances caught this bale and blight 
 
 Of the gossips' tongues, little she recked : 
 
 No Wentworth yet was ever checked 
 
 By a gossip's tongue, however bold. 
 
 But there comes a day when the 'kerchief's fold
 
 1 74 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 Is missed at the casement, and that night 
 No candle flares its signal-light. 
 When another morning dawns again 
 The tolling Portsmouth bells explain 
 
 The missing candle, the 'kerchief fine. 
 Dame Frances now of signal or sign 
 Has little need ; in the chamber there, 
 Where a sick man yesterday claimed her care, 
 
 A dead man lies in solemn state; 
 And peering at the linen and plate 
 Downstairs, the neighbors, under their breath, 
 Talk of the sick man, and his death ; 
 
 Of the widow's prospects ; and one more bold 
 Hints that ere the year's grown old 
 The Wentworth mansion across the way 
 Will have a mistress fine and gay. 
 
 But ere a month had passed of the year, 
 All the seamstresses far and near, 
 In and out of Portsmouth town, 
 Were sewing fast at a wedding-gown 
 
 Of brocaded satin, foreign and rare, 
 For Dame Frances Atkinson to wear. 
 " Shame ! " cried the gossips, far and wide, 
 And " Shame ! " cried the Wentworths in their pride-
 
 LADYWENTWORTH. 175 
 
 All the Wentworth kin in Hampshire State. 
 This haste was unseemly; she'd only to wait 
 In her widow's weeds a year and a day, 
 And not a gossip could say her nay. 
 
 Then up she spoke, this wilful dame 
 Scornfully spoke, with a tongue of flame : 
 *' Seven years I have served the Wentworth pride ; 
 Seven years with a Wentworth courage lied 
 
 To the world with my smiling face, 
 To find at the end. no sovereign grace 
 
 o o 
 
 To save my soul, but a curse alone, 
 The curse of a lie that shamed my own ! 
 
 Cheated and tricked seven weary years, 
 
 Won by a lie no lying tears 
 
 Have I to waste, no time to wait 
 
 On the man who dies seven years too late ! " 
 
 Scared and shocked, the Wentworths stared 
 At this reckless dame, whose passion dared 
 To cast at the dead man, scarcely cold 
 In his fresh-turned grave, these accusals bold. 
 
 Scared and shocked, but never a word 
 Of ban or blame was ever heard 
 From their lips again, and come the day 
 When my lady Wentworth, fine and gay,
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 Reigned in the Wentworth mansion there, 
 Not a gossip in Portsmouth but spoke her fair. 
 But under their breaths, when twilight fell, 
 Under their breaths, they would sometimes tell! 
 
 The old, old story of signal and sign, 
 The candle flame and the 'kerchief fine ; 
 And under their breaths would croak a fear 
 That my lady had lent but too willing an ear 
 
 To the evil whispered against the dead, 
 The doubtful tale so suddenly sped 
 From mouth to mouth, while for yea or nay, 
 Helpless and dumb the dead man lay. 
 
 But never upon my lady's face, 
 Never a doubt showed sign or trace, 
 As she looked the curious gossips down 
 In the little world of Portsmouth town 
 
 Never a doubt from year to year, 
 
 Never a doubt, and never a fear; 
 
 For whatever the truth of the troubled past, 
 
 My lady had come to her own at last !
 
 PRISCILLA.
 
 PRISCILLA. 
 
 BY EDWARD EGGLESTON. 
 
 ft HE trained novel readers, those who have made 
 a business of it (if any such should honor this 
 poor little story with their attention), will 
 glunce down the opening paragraphs for a 
 description of the heroine's tresses. Th 
 opening sentences of Miss Braddon are enough 
 to show how important a thing a head of hair is in the getting 
 up of a heroine for the popular market. But as my heroine 
 is not gotten up for the market, and as I cannot possibly re 
 member even the color of her hair or her eyes as I recall her 
 now, I fear I shall disappoint the "professionals," who never 
 feel that they have a complete heroine till the " long waving 
 tresses of raven darkness, reaching nearly to the ground, en 
 veloping her as with a cloud," have been artistically stuck on 
 by the author. But be it known that I take Priscilla from 
 memory, and not from imagination. And the memory of 
 Priscilla, the best girl in the school, the most gifted, the 
 most modest, the most gentle and true, is a memory too 
 sacred to be trifled with. I would not make one hair li<jht or 
 
 O 
 
 dark ; I would not change the shading of the eye-brows. 
 Priscilla is Priscilla forever, to all who knew her. And as I 
 cannot tell the precise color of her hair and eyes, I shall not 
 invent a shade for them. I remember that she was on the 
 blonde side of the grand division line. But she' \vas not 
 blonde. She was Priscilla. I mean to say that since you
 
 1 8O PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 never lived in that dear old-fogy Ohio River village of New 
 Geneva, and since, consequently, you never knew our Pris- 
 cilla, no words of mine can make you exactly understand 
 her. Was she handsome? No yes. She was "jimber- 
 jawed ;" that is, her lower teeth shut a little outside her upper. 
 Her complexion was not faultless. Her face would not bear 
 criticism. And yet there is not one of her old schoolmates 
 that will not vow that she was beautiful. And indeed she 
 was. For she was Priscilla. And I never can make you un 
 derstand it. 
 
 As Priscilla was always willing to oblige any one, it was 
 only natural enough that Mrs. Leston should send for her to 
 help entertain the Marquis. It was a curious chance that 
 threw the young Marquis d'Entremont for a whole summer 
 into the society of our little village. His uncle, who was his 
 guardian, a pious abbe, wishing to remove him from Paris to 
 get him out of socialistic influences, had sent him to New Or 
 leans, consigned to the care of the great banking-house of 
 Challeau, Lafort et Compagnie. Not liking to take the 
 chances of yellow fever in the summer, he had resolved to 
 journey to the north, and as Challeau, Lafort et Cie. had a 
 Correspondent in Henry Leston, the young lawyer, and as 
 French was abundantly spoken in our Swiss village of New 
 Geneva, what more natural than that they should despatch the 
 Marquis to our pleasant town of vineyards, giving him a 
 letter of introduction to their attorney, who fortunately spoke 
 some book French? He had presented the letter, had been 
 invited to dinner, and Priscilla Haines, who had learned 
 French in childhood, though she was not Swiss, was sent for 
 to help entertain the guest. 
 
 I cannot but fancy that d'Entremont was surprised at meet 
 ing fust such a girl as Priscilla in a rustic village. She was 
 not abashed at finding herself vis-a-vis with a nobleman, no
 
 PRISCILLA. l8l 
 
 did she seem at all anxious to attract his notice. The vanity 
 of the Marquis must have been a little hurt at finding a lady 
 that did not court his attention. But wounded vanity soon 
 gave place to another surprise. Even Mrs. Leston, who un 
 derstood not one word of the conversation between her hus 
 band, the Marquis and Priscilla, was watching for this second 
 surprise, and did not fail to read it in d'Entremont's eyes. 
 Here was a young woman who had read. She could admire 
 Corinne, she could oppose Saint Simon. The Marquis 
 d'Entremont had resigned himself to the ennui of talking to 
 Swiss farmers about their vineyards, of listening to Swiss grand 
 mothers telling stories of their childhood in Neufchatel and 
 Berne. But to find in this young village school teacher on* 
 who could speak, and listen while he spoke, of his favorite 
 writers, was to him very strange. Not that Priscilla had 
 read many French books, for there were not many within her 
 reach. But she had read some, and she had read Ste. Beuve 
 and Grimm's Correspondence, and he who reads these two 
 has heard the echo of all the great voices in French literature. 
 And while David Haines had lived, his daughter had wanted 
 nothing to help her to the highest culture. 
 
 But I think what amazed the Marquis most was that Pris 
 cilla showed no consciousness of the unusual character of her 
 attainments. She spoke easily and naturally of what she 
 knew, as if it were a matter of course that the teacher of a 
 primary school should have read Corneille, and should be 
 able to combat Saint-Simonism. As the dinner drew to a 
 close, Leston lifted his chair round where his wife sat, and 
 interpreted the brilliant conversation at the other side of the 
 table. 
 
 I suspect that Saint Simon had lost some of his hold upon 
 the Marquis since his arrival in a country where life is more 
 beautiful and the manner of thought more practical. At an}'
 
 1 82 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 rate, he dated the decline of his socialistic opinions from his 
 discussion with Priscilla Haines. 
 
 The next Sunday morning he strolled out of the Le Vert 
 house, breathing the sweet air perfumed with the blossoms of 
 a thousand apple-trees. For what yard is there in New 
 Geneva that has not apple trees and grape-vines? And 
 every family in the village keeps a cow, and every cow 
 wears a bell, and every bell is on a different key ; so that 
 the three things that penetrated the senses of the Marquis on 
 this Sunday morning were the high hills that stood sentinels 
 on every hand about the valley in which New Geneva stood, 
 the smell of the apple blossoms, and the tinkle and tankle and 
 tonkle of hundreds of bells on the cows grazing on the " com 
 mons," as the open lots were called. On this almost pain 
 fully quiet morning, d'Eutremont noticed the people going one 
 way and another to the Sunday schools in the three churches. 
 Just as he came to the pump that stood in front of the " public 
 square," he met Priscilla. At her heels were ten ragged little 
 ruffians, whom she was accustomed to have come to her house 
 every Sunday morning and walk with her to Sunday school. 
 
 "You are then a Sister of Charity also? " he said in French, 
 bowing low with sincere admiration as he passed her. And 
 then to himself the young Marquis reflected: "We Saint- 
 Simonists theorize and build castles in Spain for poor people, 
 but we do not take hold of them." He walked clear round 
 the square, and then followed the steps of Priscilla into the 
 little brick Methodist church, which in that day had neither 
 steeple nor bell, which had nothing church-like about it ex 
 cept the two arched front windows. There was not even a 
 fence to enclose it, nor an evergreen nor an ivy about it ; 
 only a few black locusts. For the Congregational puritanism 
 of New England was never so hard a puritanism as the 
 Methodist puritanism of a generation ago in the West a
 
 PRISCILLA. 183 
 
 puritanism that forbade jewelry, that stripped the artificial 
 flowers out of the bonnets of country girls, that expelled and 
 even yet expels a country boy for looking with wonder at a 
 man hanging head downward from a trapeze in a circus tent. 
 No other church, not even the Quaker, ever laid its hand 
 more entirely upon the whole life of its members. The dead 
 hand of Wesley has been stronger than the living hand of 
 any pope. 
 
 Upon the hard, open-backed, unpainted and unvarnished 
 oak benches, which seemed devised to produce discomfort, 
 sat the Sunday-school classes, and upon one of these, near 
 the door, d'Entremont sat down. He looked at the bare 
 walls, at the white pulpit, at the carpetless floors, at the 
 general ugliness of things, the box-stove, which stood in the 
 only aisle, the tin chandeliers with their half-burned candles, 
 the eight-by-ten lights of glass in the windows, and he was 
 favorably impressed. With a quick conscience he had often 
 felt the frivolous emptiness of a worldly life, and had turned 
 toward the religion of his uncle the abbe only to turn away 
 again disgusted with the frivolity of the religious pomp that 
 he saw. But here was a religion not only without the attrac 
 tions of -sensuous surrounding, but a religion that maintained 
 its vitality despite a repelling plainness, not to say a repulsive 
 ugliness, in its external forms. For could he doubt the force 
 of a religious principle that had divested every woman in the 
 little church of every ornament? Doubtless he felt the nar 
 rowness that could read the Scriptural injunction so literally, 
 but none could doubt the strength of a religious principle that 
 submitted to such self-denial. And then there was Priscilla, 
 with all her gifts, sitting in the midst of her boys, gathered 
 from that part of the village known as "Slabtown." Yes, 
 there must be something genuine in this religious life, and its
 
 1 84 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 entire contrast to all that the Marquis had known and grown 
 weary of, attracted him. 
 
 As eleven o'clock drew on, the little church filled with peo 
 ple. The men sat on one side the aisle and the women on 
 the other. The old brethren and sisters, and generally those 
 who prayed in prayer meeting and spoke in love-feast, sat 
 near the front, many of them on the cross-seats near the 
 pulpit, which were thence said by scoffers to be the "Amen 
 corners." Any one other than a leader of the hosts of Israel 
 would as soon have thought of taking a seat in the pulpit as 
 on one of these chief seats in the synagogue. The Marquis 
 sat still and watched the audience gather, while one of the 
 good brethren led the congregation in singing, 
 
 "When I can read my title clear," 
 
 which hymn was the usual voluntary at the opening of 
 service. Then the old minister said, "Let us continue the 
 worship of God by singing hymn on page 554." He "lined" 
 the hymn, that is, he read each couplet before it was sung. 
 With the coming in of hymn-books and other new-fangled 
 things the good old custom of "lining the hymn" has disap 
 peared. But on that Sunday morning the Marquis d'Entre- 
 mont thought he had never heard anything more delightful 
 than these simple melodies sung thus lustily by earnest voices. 
 The reading of each couplet by the minister before it was 
 sung, seemed to him a sort of recitative. He knew enough of 
 English to find that the singing was hopeful and triumphant. 
 "Wearied with philosophy and blase with the pomp of the 
 world, he wished that he had been a villager in New Geneva, 
 and that he might have had the faith to sing of the 
 
 " land of pure delight 
 Where saints immortal reign,"
 
 PRISCILLA. 185 
 
 with as much earnestness as his friend Priscilla on the other 
 side of the aisle. In the prayer that followed, d'Entremont 
 noticed that all the church members knelt, and that the hearty 
 amens were not intoned, but were as spontaneous as the rest 
 of the service. After reverently reading a chapter the old 
 minister said, " Please sing, without lining, 
 
 " ' A charge to keep I have ; ' " 
 
 and then the old tune of " Kentucky " was sung with anima 
 tion, after which came the sermon, of which the Marquis un 
 derstood but few words, though he understood the pantomine 
 by which the venerable minister represented the return of the 
 prodigal and the Welcome he received. When he saw the 
 tears in the eyes of the hearers, and heard the half-repressed 
 "Bless the Lord" of an old brother or sister, and saw them 
 glance joyfully at each others' faces as the sermon went on, 
 he was strangely impressed with the genuineness of the feel 
 ing. 
 
 But the class meeting that followed, to which he remained, 
 impressed him still more. The venerable Scotchman who 
 led it had a face that beamed with sweetness and intelligence. 
 It was fortunate that the Marquis saw so good a specimen. 
 In fact, Priscilla trembled lest Mr. Boreas, the stern, hard- 
 featured " exhorter," should have been invited to lead. But 
 as the sweet-faced old leader called upon one and another to 
 speak, and as many spoke with streaming eyes, d'Entremont 
 quivered with sympathy. He was not so blind that he could 
 not see the sham and cant of some of the speeches, but in 
 general there was much earnestness and truth. When Pris 
 cilla rose in her turn and spoke, with downcast eyes, he felt 
 the beauty and simplicity of her religious life. And he 
 rightly judged that from the soil of a culte so severe, 
 must grow some noble and heroic lives.
 
 1 86 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 Last of all the class leader reached the Marquis, whom he 
 did not know. 
 
 "Will our strange brother tell us how it is with him to 
 day?" he asked. 
 
 Priscilla trembled. What awful thing might happen when 
 a class-leader invited a marquis, who could speak no English, 
 and who was a disciple of Saint Simon, to tell his religious 
 experience, was more than she could divine. If the world 
 had come to an end in consequence of such a concatenation, 
 I think she would not have been surprised. But nothing of 
 the sort occurred. To her astonishment the Marquis rose 
 and said : 
 
 "Is it that any one can speak French? " 
 
 A brother who was a member of one of the old Swiss fami 
 lies volunteered his services as interpreter, and d'Entremont 
 proceeded to tell them how much he had been interested in 
 the exercises ; that it was the first time he had ever been in 
 such a meeting, and that he wished he had the simple faith 
 which they showed. 
 
 Then the old leader said, "Let us engage in prayer for our 
 strange brother." 
 
 And the Marquis bowed his knees upon the hard floor. 
 
 He could not understand much that was said, but he knew 
 chat they were praying for him : that this white-haired class- 
 leader, and the old ladies in the corner, and Priscilla, were 
 interceding with the Father of all for him. He felt more con 
 fidence in the efficacy of their prayers than he had ever had 
 in all the intercessions of the saints of which he was told 
 when a boy. For surely God would hear such as Priscilla ! 
 
 It happened not long after this that d'Entremont was drawn 
 even more nearly to this simple Methodist life, which had al 
 ready made such an impression on his imagination, by an inci 
 dent which would make a chapter if this story were intended
 
 PRISCILLA. 187 
 
 for the "New York Weekly Dexter." Indeed, the story of his 
 peril in a storm and freshet on Indian Creek, and of his 
 deliverance by the courage of Henry Stevens, is so well 
 suited to that periodical and others of its class, that I am 
 almost sorry that Mrs. Eden, or Cobb, Jr., or Optic, was not 
 the author of this story. Either of them could make a 
 chapter which would bear the title cf"A Thrilling Incident." 
 But with an unconquerable aversion to anything and every 
 thing "thrilling," this present writer can only say in plainest 
 prose and without a single startling epithet, that this incident 
 made the young Marquis the everlasting friend of his deliv 
 erer, Henry Stevens, who happened to be a zealous Metho 
 dist, and about his own age. 
 
 The effort of the two friends to hold intercourse was a curi 
 ous spectacle. Not only did they speak different languages, 
 but they lived in different worlds. Not only did d'Entremont 
 speak a very limited English while Stevens spoke no French, 
 but d'Entremont's life and thought had nothing in common 
 with the life of Stevens, except the one thing that made a 
 friendship possible. They were both generous, manly men, 
 and each felt a strong drawing to the other. So it came 
 about that when they tired of the Marquis' English, and of 
 die gulf between their ideas, they used to call on Priscilla at 
 her home with her mother in the outskirts of the village. 
 She was an interpreter indeed ! For with the keenest sympa 
 thy she entered into the world in which the Marquis lived, 
 which had always been a sort of intellectual paradise to her. 
 It seemed strange, indeed, to meet a living denizen of a world 
 that seemed to her impossible except in books. And as for 
 the sphere in which Stevens moved, it was her own. He and 
 she had been schoolmates from childhood, had looked on the 
 same green hills, known the same people, been moulded of 
 the same strong religious feeling. Nothing was more delight-
 
 188 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 ful to d'Entremont than to be able to talk to Stevens, unless it 
 was to have so good an excuse for conversation with Priscilla ; 
 and nothing was so pleasant to Henry Stevens as to be able 
 to understand the Marquis, unless it was to talk with Priscilla ; 
 while to Priscilla those were golden moments, in which she 
 passed like a quick-winged messenger between her own na 
 tive world and the world that she knew only in books, be 
 tween the soul of one friend and that of another. And thus 
 grew up a triple friendship, a friendship afterward sorely 
 tried. For how strange it is that what brings together at one 
 time may be a wall of division at another. 
 
 I am not writing an essay on Christian experience. I can 
 not pretend to explain just how it came about. Doubtless 
 Henry Stevens' influence had something to do with it, though 
 I feel sure Priscilla's had more. Doubtless the Marquis was 
 naturally susceptible to religious influences, and I cannot but 
 feel that after all he was led by the gentle drawings of the 
 Divine Oracle in his own breast. But the erratic opinions, 
 never very deeply rooted, and at most but a reaction from a 
 religion of " postures and impostures," disappeared, and there 
 came a sense of unworthiness and a sense of trust. They 
 came simultaneously, I think ; certainly d'Entremont could 
 never give any chronological order to the two experiences. 
 At any rate, he was drawn to the little class meeting, which 
 seemed to him so simple a confessional that all his former 
 notions of "liberty, fraternity and equality " were satisfied by 
 it. I believe he became a " probationer," but his creed was 
 never quite settled enough for him to accept of " full member 
 ship." 
 
 Some of the old folks could not refrain from expressions of 
 triumph that " the Lord had got a-hold of that French infi 
 del ; " and old Sister Goodenough seized his hand, and, with 
 many sighs and much upturning of the eyes, exhorted him
 
 PRISCILLA. 1 89 
 
 * Brother Markus ! Give up everything ! Give up everything, 
 and come out from the world and be separated ! " Which -led 
 d'Entremont to remark to Stevens as they walked away, that 
 " Madame Goodenough was vare curus indeed ! " And Brother 
 Boreas, the exhorter, who had the misfortune not to have a 
 business reputation without blemish, but who made up for it 
 by rigid scruples in regard to a melodeon in the church, and 
 by a vicarious conscience which was kindly kept at every 
 body's service but his own, old Brother Boreas always re 
 marked in regard to the Marquis, that " as for his part he liked 
 a deeper repentance and a sounder conversion." But the 
 gray-haired old Scotch class leader, whose piety was at a pre 
 mium everywhere, would take d'Entremont's hand and talk of 
 indifferent subjects while he beamed on him his affection and 
 Christian fellowship. 
 
 To the Marquis, Priscilla was a perpetual marvel. More 
 brilliant women he had known in Paris, more devout women 
 he had seen there ; but a woman so gifted and so devout, and 
 above all, a woman so true, so modest, and of such perfect 
 delicacy of feeling, he had never known. And how poorly 
 these words describe her ! For she was Priscilla ; and all who 
 knew her will understand how much more that means than 
 any adjectives of mine. Certainly Henry Stevens did, for he 
 had known her always, and would have loved her always had 
 he dared. It was only now, as she interpreted him to the 
 Marquis and the Marquis to him, idealizing and elevating the 
 thoughts of both, that he surrendered himself to hope. And 
 so, toward the close of the summer, affairs came to this awk 
 ward posture, that these two sworn friends loved the same 
 ivoman. 
 
 D'Entremont discovered this first. More a man of the 
 world than Henry Stevens, he read the other's face and voice. 
 He was perturbed. Had it occurred two years before, he
 
 19 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 might have settled the matter easily, by a duel for instance. 
 And even now his passion got the better for a while of all his 
 good feelings and Christian resolutions. When he got back 
 to the Le Vert house with his unpleasant discovery, he was 
 burning like a furnace. In spite of a rain-storm just begin 
 ning and a dark night, he strode out and walked he knew not 
 whither. He found himself, he knew not how, on the bank of 
 the river. Seizing an old board for a paddle, he unloosed a 
 skiff and pushed out into the river. How to advance himself 
 over his rival was his first thought. But this darkness and 
 this beating rain and this fierce loneliness, reminded him of 
 that night when he had clung desperately to the abutment of 
 the bridge that spanned Indian Creek, and when the courage 
 and self-possession of Henry Stevens had rescued him. Could 
 he be the rival of a man who had gone down into that flood 
 that he might save the exhausted Marquis? 
 
 Then he hated himself. Why had he not drowned that 
 night on Indian Creek ? And with this feeling of self-disgust 
 added to his general mental misery, and the physical misery 
 that the rain brought to him, there crime the great temptation 
 to write "Fin " in French fashion, by jumping into the water. 
 But something in the influence of Priscilla and that class 
 meeting caused him to take a better resolution, and he re 
 turned to the hotel. 
 
 The next day he sent for Henry Stevens to come to his 
 room. 
 
 " Henry, I am going to leave to-night on the mail boat. I 
 am going back to New Orleans, and thence to France. You 
 love Priscilla. You are a noble man ; you will make her 
 happy. I have read your love in your face. Meet me at the 
 river to-night. When you are ready to be married, let me know, 
 that I may send some token of my love for both. Do not tell
 
 PRISCILLA. 191 
 
 mademoiselle that I am going ; but tell her good-bye for me 
 afterwards. Go now, I must pack." 
 
 Henry went out stupefied. What did it mean ? And why 
 was he half-glad that d'Entremont was going ? By degrees he 
 got the better of his selfishness. In fact, he had the habit of 
 keeping his selfishness under in little things, so that the vic 
 tory in a great thing was not so difficult. 
 
 "Marquis d'Entremont," he said, breaking into his room, 
 "you must not go away. You love Priscilla. You have 
 everything learning, money, travel. I have nothing." 
 
 "Nothing but a good heart, which I have not," said d'En 
 tremont. 
 
 "I will never marry Priscilla," said Henry, "unless she de 
 liberately chooses to have me in preference to you.'* 
 
 My readers will say that this incident, of two men unselfish 
 in an affair of this sort, is impossible. I should never have 
 written it but that this incident is fact. 
 
 To this arrangement, so equitable, the Marquis consented* 
 and the matter was submitted to Priscilla by letter. Could 
 she love either, and if either, which? She asked a week for 
 deliberation. 
 
 It was not easy to decide. By all her habits of thought 
 and feeling, by all her prejudices, by all her religious life, she 
 was drawn toward the peaceful and perhaps prosperous life 
 that opened before her as the wife of Henry Stevens, living in 
 her native village, near to her mother, surrounded by her old 
 friends, and with the best of Christian men for a husband- 
 But by all the clamor of her intellectual nature for something 
 better than her narrow life by all her joy in the conversation 
 of d'Entremont, the only man her equal in culture she had ever 
 known, she felt drawn to be the wife of the Marquis. But if 
 there were roses, there were thorns in such a path. The vil 
 lage girl knew that Madame la Marquise must lead a life very
 
 IQ 2 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 different from any she had known. She must bear with a 
 husband whose mind was ever in a state of unrest and scep 
 ticism, and she must meet the great world. 
 
 In truth there were two Priscillas. There was the Priscilla 
 that her neighbors knew, the Priscilla that went to church, the 
 Priscilla that taught Primary School No. 3. There was the 
 other Priscilla that read Chaucer and Shakspeare, Moliere 
 and De Stael. With this Priscilla, New Geneva had nothing 
 to do. And it was the doubleness of her nature that aggravat 
 ed her indecision. 
 
 Then her conscience came in. Because there might be 
 worldly attractions on the one side, she leaned to the other. 
 To reject a poor suitor and accept a rich and titled one, had 
 something of treason in it. 
 
 At the end of a week she sent for them both. Henry Ste 
 vens' flat-boat had been ready to start for New Orleans for 
 two days. And Challeau, Lafort & Cie. were expecting the 
 Marquis, who was in some sort a ward of theirs. Henry Ste 
 vens and the Marquis Antoine d'Entremont walked side by 
 iide, in an awkward silence, to the little vine-covered cottage. 
 Of that interview I do not know enough to write fully. But I 
 know that Priscilla said such words as these : 
 
 " This is an awful responsibility. I suppose a judge trem 
 bles when he must pass sentence of death. But I must make 
 a decision that involves the happiness of both my friends and 
 myself. I cannot do it now. God does not give me to see 
 my duty clearly, and nothing but duty should speak in mak 
 ing such a decision. Will you wait until you both return in 
 the spring ? I have a reason that I cannot explain for wishing 
 this matter postponed. God will decide for me, perhaps." 
 
 I do not know that she said just these words ; and I know 
 she did not say them at all once. But so they parted. And 
 Miss Nancy More, who retailed ribbons and scandal, and
 
 PRISCILLA. Ig3 
 
 whose only effort at mental improvement had been the pluck 
 ing out of the hairs contiguous to her forehead, that she might 
 look intellectual, Miss Nancy More from her look-out at the 
 window descried the two friends walking away from Mrs. 
 Haines' cottage, and remarked, as she had often remarked 
 before, that it was " absolutely scandalous for a young woman 
 who was a professor to have two beaux at once, and such 
 good friends, too ! " 
 
 I have noticed that gifted girls like Priscilla have a back 
 ground in some friend, intelligent, quiet, restful. Anna Poin- 
 dexter, a dark, thoughtful, and altogether excellent girl, was 
 sometimes spoken of as " Priscilla's double ; " but she was 
 rather Priscilla's opposite : all her gifts were complementary 
 to those of her friend. The two were all but inseparable ; and 
 so, when Priscilla found herself the next evening on the bank 
 of the river, she naturally found Anna with her. Slowly the 
 flat-boat, of which Henry Stevens was owner and captain, 
 drifted by, while the three or four men at each long oar strode 
 back and forward on the deck as they urged the boat on. 
 Henry was standing on the elevated bench made for the pilot, 
 holding the long "steering-oar" and guiding the craft. As his 
 manly form in the western sunlight attracted their attention, 
 both the girls were struck with admiration for the noble fellow. 
 Both waved their handkerchiefs, and Henry returned the adieu 
 by swinging his hat. So intent was he on watching them that 
 he forgot his duty, and one of the men was obliged to call out, 
 "Swing her round, captain, or the mail-boat '11 sink us." 
 
 Hardly was the boat swung out of the way when the tall- 
 chimneyed mail-boat swept by. 
 
 "See the Marquis," cried Anna, and again adieux were 
 waved ; and the Marquis stepped to the guard and called out 
 to Henry, "I'll see you in New Orleans ;" and the swift steamer 
 immediately bore him out of speaking distance. And Henry
 
 194 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 watched him disappear, with a choking feeling that thus the 
 nobleman was to outstrip him in life. 
 
 "See ! " said Anna, "you are a lucky girl. You have your 
 choice : you can go through life on the steamboat or on the 
 flat-boat. Of course you'll go b^ steam." 
 
 "There are explosions on steamboats sometimes," said Pris- 
 cilla. Then turning, she noticed a singular expression on 
 Anna's face. Her insight \vas quick, and she said, "Confess 
 that you would choose the flat-boat." And Anna turned away. 
 
 "Two strings to her bow, or two beaux to her string, I should 
 say," and she did say it ; for this was Miss More's comment on 
 the fact which she had just learned, that Miss .Haines had 
 received letters from " the lower country," the handwriting on 
 the directions of which indicated that she had advices from 
 both her friends. But poor Miss More, with never a string 
 to her bow, and never a beau to her string, might be forgiven 
 for shooting arrows that did no harm. 
 
 There was a time when Priscilla had letters from only one. 
 Henry was very sick, and d'Entremont wrote bulletins of his 
 condition to Priscillra and to his family. In one of these it 
 was announced that he was beyond recovery, and Priscilla 
 and Anna mingled their tears together. Then there came a 
 letter that he was better. Then he was worse again ; and 
 then better. 
 
 In those days the mail was brought wholly by steamboats, 
 and it took many days for intelligence to come. But the next 
 letter that Priscilla had was from Henry Stevens himself. It 
 was filled from first to last with praises of the Marquis : how 
 he had taken Henry out of his boarding place, put him in his 
 own large room in the St. Charles ; how he had nursed him 
 with more than a brother's tenderness, scarcely sleeping at all ; 
 how he had sold his cargo, relieved his mind of care, em-
 
 PRISCILLA. 195 
 
 ployed the most eminent physicians, and anticipated his every 
 want all this, and more, the letter told. 
 
 And the next steamboat brought Henry, wellnigh restored, 
 and his noble nurse. Both were impatient to learn the deci 
 sion of Priscilla ; each was sure the other was to carry off the 
 prize. 
 
 And so they walked together, the day after their arrival, to 
 the little cottage. The conversation was begun by each of the 
 gentlemen expressing his conviction that her decision was 
 against him, and offering to retire. 
 
 Priscilla leaned her head on her hand a minute. Then she 
 began: "I told you, my friends, that I thought God would 
 decide for me. He has. I can marry neither of you." 
 
 The two friends looked at one another in doubt and amaze 
 ment. 
 
 " Three sisters, four brothers, and my father died of pul 
 monary disease. Of eight children, I only am left, and in 
 three mouths my mother will be childless. God has decided 
 for me. Why should I give either of you pain by making a 
 decision?" 
 
 For the first time, in the imperfect light, they noticed the 
 flushed cheeks, and for the first time they detected the quick 
 breathing. It was a sad hour ; and when they walked away, 
 the two friends were nearer than ever, for nothing brings souls 
 together so much as a common sorrow. 
 
 And as day after day the two friends visited her in com 
 pany, the public, and particularly that part of the public which 
 peeped out of Miss Nancy More's windows, was not a little 
 mystified. Miss More thought a girl who was drawing near 
 to the solemn and awful realities of eternal bliss should let 
 such worldly vanities as Markusses alone ! 
 
 A singular change came over Priscilla in one regard. As 
 the prospect of life faded out, she was no longer in danger of
 
 196 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 being tempted by the title and wealth of the Marquis. She 
 could be sure that her heart was not bribed. And when this 
 restraint of a conscience abnormally sensitive was removed, it 
 became every day more arid more clear to her that she loved 
 d'Entremont. Of all whom she had ever known, he was a 
 companion. And as he brought her choice passages from 
 favorite writers every day, and as her mind grew with un 
 wonted rapidity under the influence of that strange disease 
 which shakes the body down while it ripens the soul, she felt 
 more and more that she was gi owing out of sympathy with 
 all that was narrow and provincial in her former life, and into 
 sympathy with God's great world, and with Antoine d'Entre 
 mont, who was the representative of the world to her. 
 
 This rapidly growing gulf between his own intellectual, life 
 and that of Priscilla, Henry Stevens felt keenly. But there is 
 one great compensation for a soul like Henry's. Men and 
 women of greater gifts might outstrip him in intellectual 
 growth. He could not add one cell to his brain, or make the 
 slightest change in his temperament. But neither the Marquis 
 nor Priscilla could excel him in that gift of noble generosity 
 which does not always go with genius, and which is not de 
 nied to the man of the plainest gifts. He wrote to the Mar 
 quis : 
 
 " MY DEAR FRIEND : You are a good and generous friend. I have read 
 in her voice and her eyes what the decision ot Priscilla must have been. If I 
 had not been blind. I ought to have seen it before in the difference between 
 us. Now I know that it will be a comfort to you to have that noble woman 
 die your wife. I doubt not it will be a comfort to her. Do you think it will 
 be any consolation to me to have been an obstacle in the way? I hope you do 
 not think so meanly of me. and that you and Priscilla will give me the only 
 consolation I can have in our common sorrow the feeling that I have been 
 able to make her last days more comfortable and your sorrow more bearable. 
 If you refuse, I shall always reproach myself. HENRY." 
 
 I need not tell of the discussions that ensued. But it was
 
 PRISCILLA. 197 
 
 concluded that it was best for all three that Priscilla and the 
 Marquis should be married, much to the disgust of Miss 
 Nancy More, who thought that "she'd better be sayin' hei 
 prayers. What good would it do to be a Marchoness, and all 
 that, when she was in her coffin ? " 
 
 A wedding in prospect of death is more affecting than a 
 fuueral. Only Henry Stevens and Anna Poindexter were to 
 be present. Priscilla's mother had completed the arrange 
 ments, blinded by tears. I think she could have dressed Pris 
 cilla for her coffin with less suffering. The white dress looked 
 so like a shroud, under those sunken cheeks as white as the 
 dress ! Once or twice Priscilla had drawn her mother's head 
 to her bosom and wept. 
 
 " Poor mother !" she would say, "so soon to be alone. But 
 Antoine will be your son." 
 
 There was one more at the wedding than was intended. 
 The family physician was there ; for, just as the dressing of 
 the pale bride was completed, there came one of those sudden 
 breakdowns to which a consumptive is so liable. The doctor 
 said that there was internal hemorrhage, and gave but a few 
 hours of life. When the Marquis came he was heart-broken 
 to see her lying there, so still, so white dying. She took his 
 hand. She beckoned to Anna and Henry Stevens to stand by 
 her, and then, with tear-blinded eyes, the old minister married 
 them for eternity ! Then the door opened, and the ten little 
 Sunday-school boys from Slabtown marched in. Each of 
 them had a bouquet provided by Henry Stevens for the wed 
 ding. When the leader of the file saw her so sick he began 
 to cry. She took his bouquet and kissed him. Then the little 
 fellow rushed out, weeping piteously. Each of the others 
 followed his example. 
 
 Feeling life ebbing, she took the hand of the Marquis. 
 Then, holding to the hand of d'Entremont, she beckoned
 
 198 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 Henry to come near. As he bent over her she said, looking 
 significantly at the Marquis, " Henry, God bless you, my noble- 
 hearted friend ! " and as Henry turned away, the Marquis put 
 his arm about him and said gratefully, "Henry, God will bless 
 you." 
 
 Priscilla's nature abhorred anything dramatic in dying, or 
 rather she did not think of effect at all ; so she made no fine 
 speeches. But when she had ceased to breathe, the old 
 preacher said, "The bridegroom has come." And he was 
 more eloquent than he knew. 
 
 She left an envelope for Henry. What it had in it no one 
 but Henry ever knew. I have heard him say that it was one 
 word, which became the key to all the happiness of his after 
 life. Judging from the happiness he has in his home with 
 Anna, his wife, it would not be hard to tell what the word was. 
 The last time I was at his house I noticed that their eldest 
 child was named Priscilla, and that the boy who came next 
 was Antoine. Henry told me that Priscilla left a sort of 
 "will" for the Marquis, in which she asked him to do the 
 Christian work that she would have liked to do. Nothing 
 could have been wiser if she had only sought his own happi 
 ness, for in activity for others is the only safety for a restless 
 and sceptical mind. He had made himself the special pro 
 tector of the ten little Slabtown urchins. 
 
 Henry told me in how many ways, through Challeau, La- 
 fort & Cie., the Marquis had contrived to contribute to his pros 
 perity without offending his delicacy. He found himself 
 possessed of practically unlimited credit through the guar 
 antee which the great New Orleans banking-house was always- 
 ready to give. 
 
 "What is that fine building?" I said, pointing to a picture 
 on the wall.
 
 P R I S C I L L A . 
 
 I 99 
 
 " Oh, that is the ' Hospice de Sainte Priscille,' " which 
 Antoine has erected in Paris. People there call it ' La 
 Marquise.' ' 
 
 " By the way," said Priscilla's mother, who sat by, "An 
 toine is coming to see us next month, and is to look after 
 his Slabtown friends when he comes. They used to call him 
 at first ' Priscilla's Frenchman.' ' 
 
 And to this day Miss More declares that Markusses is a 
 thing she can't noways understand.
 
 A DIRGE OF THE LAKE.
 
 A DIRGE OF THE LAKE/ 
 
 BY WILL CAKLETON. 
 
 N the lake on the lake 
 
 The summer day is shining ; 
 The sky's rich hue shows deeper blue 
 
 Above its forest-lining. 
 The breezes high blow far and nigh 
 
 White cloudlets, like a feather : 
 The breezes low sweep to and fro, 
 And blue waves race together. 
 
 Up the lake up the lake 
 
 The busy oars are dipping ; 
 Their blades of wood that cleave the flood 
 
 With streamlets fresh are dripping. 
 A graceful throng of golden song 
 
 Comes floating smoothly after ; 
 Like silver chains ring back the strains 
 
 Of childhood's merry laughter. 
 
 By the lake by the lake 
 
 The lilies' heads are lifting; 
 But into night the warmth and light 
 
 Of happy homes are drifting. 
 
 * Dedicated to the bereaved of the Baw Beese Lake disaster, August i, 1876. 
 
 203
 
 204 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 The sky's sun-gem looks up at them 
 
 In pity unavailing ; 
 With laughing eyes, between two skies, 
 
 They for the grave are sailing. 
 
 In the lake in the lake 
 
 The barge is sinking steady ; 
 A startled hush, a frightened rush, 
 
 And Death is over-ready. 
 A pleading cry, a faint reply, 
 
 A frenzied, brave endeavor, 
 And o'er them deep the wavelets creep, 
 
 And smile as sweet as ever. 
 
 'Neath the lake 'neath the lake 
 
 The wearied forms are lying ; 
 They sleep away their gala-day 
 
 Too fair a day for dying. 
 With hands that grasped and nothing clasped- 
 
 With terror-frozen faces 
 In slimy caves and gloomy graves 
 
 They nestle to their places. 
 
 From the lake from the lake 
 
 They one by one are creeping ; 
 Their very rest is grief-possessed, 
 
 And piteous looks their sleeping. 
 Upon no face is any trace 
 
 Of sickness' friendly warn.ng ; 
 But sad they lie 'neath evening's sky, 
 
 Who were so gay at morning.
 
 A DIRGE OF THE LAKE. 
 
 O'er the lake o'er the lake 
 
 A spectre-bark is sailing ; 
 There is no cry of danger nigh 
 
 There is no sound of wailing. 
 They who have died gaze from its side 
 
 With spirit-faces glowing ; 
 For toward the skies the life-boat plies, 
 
 And angel hands are rowing. 
 
 20$
 
 JROMETTE.
 
 JEROMETTE. 
 
 BY WILKIE COLLINS. 
 
 PART FIRST. 
 
 I. 
 
 Y BROTHER, the clergyman, looked over my 
 shoulder before I was aware of him, and discov 
 ered that the volume which completely absorbed 
 my attention was a collection of famous trials, 
 published in a new edition and in a popular form. 
 He laid his finger on the trial which I hap 
 pened to be reading at the moment. I looked up at him ; his 
 face startled me. He had turned pale. His eyes were fixed 
 on the open page of the book with an expression which puz 
 zled and alarmed me. 
 
 "My dear fellow," I said, "what in the world is the matter 
 with you ? " 
 
 He answered in an odd, absent manner, still keeping his 
 finger on the open page. 
 
 "I had almost forgotten, "he said, "and this reminds me." 
 "Reminds you of what? "I asked. "You don't mean to 
 say you know anything about the trial ? " 
 
 "I know this," he said : "the prisoner was guilt}'." 
 "Guilty?"! repeated. "Why, the man was acquitted by 
 the jury, with the full approval of the judge ! What can you 
 possibly mean ? " 
 
 "There are circumstances connected with that trial," my
 
 210 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 brother answered, "which were never communicated to the 
 judge or the jury which were never so much as hinted or 
 whispered in court. / know them of my own knowledge 
 by my own personal experience. They are very sad, very 
 strange, very terrible. I have mentioned them to no mortal 
 creature. I have done my best to forget them. You, quite 
 innocently, have brought them back to my mind. They op 
 press, they distress me. I wish I had found you reading any 
 book in your library, except that book ! " 
 
 My curiosity was now strongly excited. I spoke out plainly. 
 
 "Might it not relieve your mind," I suggested, "if you ad 
 mitted some one into your confidence ? You might surely tell 
 your brother what you are unwilling to mention to persons less 
 nearly related to you. We have followed different professions, 
 and have lived in different countries, since we were boys at 
 school. But you know you can trust me." 
 
 He considered a little with himself. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "I know I can trust you." He waited a 
 moment, and then he surprised me by a strange question. 
 
 " Do you believe," he asked, "that the spirits of the dead 
 can return to earth, and show themselves to the living?" 
 
 I answered cautiously, adopting as my own the words of a 
 great English writer, touching the subject of ghosts. 
 
 "You ask me a question," I said, " which, after five thou 
 sand years, is yet undecided. On that account alone it is a 
 question not to-be trifled with." 
 
 My reply seemed to satisfy him. 
 
 "You suggested just now," he resumed, "that it might re 
 lieve my mind if I took you into my confidence. You may 
 be right ; and, as my nearest living relative, you are certainly 
 the fittest person whom I can trust. Promise me that you will 
 keep what I tell you a secret as long as I live. After my 
 death I care little what happens. Let the story of my strange
 
 JEROMETTE. 211 
 
 experience be added to the published experience of those 
 other men who have seen what I have seen, and who believe 
 what I believe. The world will not be the worse, and may 
 be the better, for knowing one day what I am now about to 
 confide to your ear alone." 
 
 He began his narrative, as nearly as I can remember, in 
 these words : 
 
 II. 
 
 On a fine summer evening, many years since, I left my 
 chambers in the Temple, to meet a fellow-student who had 
 proposed to me a night's amusement in the public gardens at 
 Cremorne. 
 
 You had then gone out to India, and I had just taken my 
 degree at Oxford. I had sadly disappointed my father by 
 choosing the law as my profession, in preference to the Church. 
 At that time, to own the truth, I had no serious intention of 
 following any special vocation. I sitnply wanted an excuse 
 for enjoying the pleasures of a London life. The study of 
 the law supplied me with that excuse, and I chose the law as 
 my profession accordingly. 
 
 On reaching the place at which we had arranged to meet, I 
 found that my friend had not kept his appointment. After 
 waiting vainly for ten minutes, my patience gave way, and I 
 went into the gardens by myself. 
 
 I took two or three turns round the platform devoted to the 
 dancers, -without discovering my fellow-student, and without 
 seeing any other person with whom I happened to be acquaint 
 ed at that time. 
 
 For some reason, which I cannot now remember, I was not 
 in my usual good spirits that evening. The noisy music jarred 
 on my nerves ; the sight of the gaping crowd round the plat 
 form irritated me ; the blandishments of the painted ladies of
 
 212 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 the profession of pleasure saddened and disgusted me. I 
 opened my cigar case, and turned aside into one of the quiet 
 by-walks of the gardens. 
 
 A man who is habitually, careful in choosing his cigar has 
 this advantage over a man who is habitually careless : he can 
 always count on smoking the best cigar in his case, down to 
 the last. I was still absorbed in choosing my cigar, when I 
 heard these words behind me, spoken in a foreign accent, and 
 in a woman's voice : 
 
 " Leave me directly, sir ! I wish to have nothing to say to 
 you." 
 
 I turned round, and discovered a little lady, very simply and 
 tastefully dressed, who looked both angry and alarmed as she 
 rapidly passed me on her way to the more frequented part of 
 the gardens. A man (evidently the worse for the wine he had 
 drunk in the course of the evening) was following her, and 
 was pressing his tipsy attentions on her with the coarsest inso 
 lence of speech and manner. She was young and pretty, and 
 she cast one entreating look at me as she went by, which it was 
 not in manhood perhaps I ought to say in young manhood 
 to resist. 
 
 I instantly stepped forward to protect her, careless whether 
 I involved myself in a discreditable quarrel with a blackguard 
 or not. As a matter of course, the fellow resented my inter 
 ference, and my temper gave way. Fortunately for me, just 
 as I lifted my hand to knock him down, a policeman appeared, 
 who had noticed that he was drunk, and who settled the dis 
 pute, officially, by turning him out of the gardens. 
 
 I led her away from the crowd that had collected. She 
 was evidently frightened I felt her hand trembling on my arm 
 but she had one great merit : she made no fuss about it. 
 
 " If I can sit down for a few minutes," she said, in her pretty 
 foreign accent, " I shall soon be myself again, and I shall nol
 
 J E R O M E T T E . 213 
 
 trespass any further on your kindness. I thank you very 
 much, sir, for taking care of me." 
 
 We sat down on a bench in a retired part of the gardens, 
 near a little fountain. A row of lighted lamps ran around the 
 outer rim of the basin. I could see her plainly. 
 
 I have spoken of her as " a little lady." I could not have 
 described her more correctly in three words. 
 
 Her figure was slight and small. She was a well-made 
 miniature of a woman from head to foot. Her hair and her 
 eyes were both dark. The hair curled naturally ; the expres 
 sion of the eyes was quiet and rather sad ; the complexion, *as 
 I then saw it, very pale ; the little mouth perfectly charming. 
 I was especially attracted, I remember, by the carriage of her 
 head. It was strikingly graceful and spirited. It distin 
 guished her, little as she was, and quiet as she was, among 
 the thousands of other women in the gardens, as a creature 
 apart. Even the one marked defect in her a slight "cast" 
 in the left eye seemed to add, in some strange way, to the 
 quaint attractiveness of her face. I have already spoken of 
 the tasteful simplicity of her dress. I ought now to add that 
 it was not made of any costly material, and that she wore no 
 jewels or ornaments of any sort. My little lady was not rich. 
 Even a man's eye could see that. 
 
 She was perfectly unembarrassed and unaffected. We fell 
 as easily into talk as if we had been friends instead of strangers. 
 
 I asked how it was that she had no companion to take care 
 of her. "You are too young and too pretty," I said in my 
 blunt English way, " to trust yourself alone in such a place as 
 this." 
 
 She took no notice of the compliment. She calmly put it 
 away from her as if it had not reached her ears. 
 
 " I have no friend to take care of me," she said, simply. w 1 
 was sad and sorry this evening, all by myself, and I thought .1
 
 214 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 would go to the 'gardens and hear the music, just to amuse me. 
 It is not much to pay at the gate. Only a shilling." 
 
 "No friend to take care of you?" I repeated. "Surely 
 there must be one happy man who might have been here with 
 you to-night." 
 
 "What man do you mean?" she asked. 
 
 "The man," I answered, thoughtlessly, "whom we call in 
 England a sweetheart." 
 
 I would have given worlds to have recalled those foolish 
 words the moment they passed my lips. I felt that I had 
 taken a vulgar liberty with her. Her face saddened ; her 
 eyes dropped to the ground. I begged her pardon. 
 
 "There is no need to beg my pardon," she said. "If you 
 wish to know, sir yes, I had once a sweetheart, as you call 
 it in England. He has gone away and left me. No more of 
 him, if you please. I am rested now. I will thank you again, 
 and go home." 
 
 She rose to leave me. 
 
 I was determined not to part with her in that way. I 
 begged to be allowed to see her safely back to her own door. 
 She hesitated. I took a man's unfair advantage of her : I ap 
 pealed to her fears. I said, " Suppose the blackguard who an 
 noyed you should be waiting outside the gates? " That decided 
 her. She took my arm. We went away together by the 
 bank of the Thames in the balmy summer night. 
 
 A walk of half an hour brought us to the house in which 
 she lodged a shabby little house in a by-street, inhabited 
 evidently by very poor people. 
 
 She held out her hand at the door, and wished me good 
 night. I was too much interested in her to consent to leave 
 my little French lady without the hope of seeing her again. I 
 asked permission to call on her the next day. We were stand-
 
 JEROMETTE. 21$ 
 
 ing under the light of the street lamp. She studied my face 
 with a grave and steady attention before she made any reply. 
 
 "Yes," she said at last. "I think I do know a gentleman 
 when I see him. You may come, sir, if you please, and call 
 upon me to-morrow." 
 
 So we parted. So I entered doubting nothing, foreboding 
 nothing on a scene in my life which I now look back on 
 with unfeigned repentance and regret. 
 
 III. 
 
 I am speaking, at this later time, in the position of a clergy 
 man, and in the character of a man of mature age. Remem 
 ber that, and you will understand why I pass as rapidly as 
 possible over the events of the next year of my life ; why I 
 say as little as I can of the errors and the delusions of my 
 youth. 
 
 I called on her the next day. I repeated my visits during 
 the days and weeks that followed, until the shabby little house 
 in the by-street had become a second and (I say it with shame 
 and self-reproach) a dearer home to me. 
 
 All of herself and her story which she thought fit to con 
 fide to me under the circumstances, may be repeated to you in 
 a few words. 
 
 The name by which letters were addressed to her was 
 "Mademoiselle J^romette." Among the ignorant people of 
 the house and the small tradesmen of the neighborhood, who 
 found her name not easy of pronunciation by the average 
 English tongue, she was known by the friendly nickname of 
 " the French miss." When I knew her she was resigned to 
 her lonely life among strangers. Some years had elapsed 
 since she had lost her parents and had left France. Possess 
 ing a small, a very small, income of her own, she added to it
 
 2l6 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 by coloring miniatures for the photographers. She had rela 
 tives still living in France, but she had long since ceased to 
 correspond with them. "Ask me nothing more about my 
 family," she used to say. " I am as good as dead in my own 
 country and among my own people." 
 
 This was all literally all that she told me of herself. I 
 have never discovered more of her sad story from that day to 
 this. 
 
 She never mentioned her family name never even told me 
 what part of France she came from, or how long she had lived 
 in England. That she was by birth and breeding a lady, I 
 could entertain no doubt ; her manners, her accomplishments, 
 her ways of thinking and speaking, all proved it. Looking 
 below the surface, her character showed itself in aspects not 
 common among young women in these days. In her quiet 
 way she was an incurable fatalist, and a firm believer in the 
 ghostly reality of apparitions from the dead. Then, again, in 
 the matter of money she had strange views of her own. 
 Whenever my purse was in my hand, she held me resolutely 
 at a distance from first to last. She refused to move into 
 better apartments. The shabby little house was clean inside, 
 and the poor people who lived in it were kind to her, and 
 that was enough. The most expensive present that she ever 
 permitted me to offer her was a little enamelled ring, the 
 plainest and cheapest thing of the kind in the jeweller's 
 shop. In all her relations with me she was sincerity itself. 
 On all occasions, and under all circumstances, she spoke her' 
 mind (as the phrase is) with the same uncompromising plain 
 ness. 
 
 "I like you," she said to me ; W I respect you ; I shall always 
 be faithful to you while you are faithful to me. But my love 
 has gone from me. There is another man who has taken it 
 away with him, I know not where."
 
 JEROME TTE. 2 1 / 
 
 Who was the other man ? 
 
 She refused to tell me. She kept his rank and his name 
 strict secrets from me. I never discovered how he had met 
 with her, or why he had left her, or whether the guilt was his 
 of making her an exile from her country and her friends. 
 She despised herself for still loving him ; but the passion was 
 too strong for her she owned it and lamented it with the 
 frankness which was so preeminently a part of her character. 
 More than this, she plainly told me, in the early days of oui 
 acquaintance, that she believed he would return to her. It 
 might be to-morrow, or it might be years hence. Even if he 
 failed to repent of his own cruel conduct, the man would still 
 miss her as something lost out of his life, and sooner or later 
 htj would come back. 
 
 " And will you receive him if he does come back?" I asked. 
 
 "I shall receive him," she replied, " against my own better 
 judgment in spite of my own firm persuasion that the day of 
 his return to me will bring with it the darkest days of my life." 
 
 I tried to remonstrate with her. 
 
 " You have a will of your own," I said. " Exert it if he 
 attempts to return to you." 
 
 "I have no will of my. own," she answered, quietly, "where 
 he is concerned. It is my misfortune to love him." Her eyes 
 rested for a moment on mine with the utter self-abandonment 
 of despair. "We have said enough about this," she added, 
 abruptly ; " let us say no more." 
 
 From that time we never spoke again of the unknown man. 
 During the year that followed our first meeting, she heard 
 nothing of him, directly or indirectly. He might be living, or 
 he might be dead. There came no word of him or from him. 
 I was fond enough of her to be satisfied with this he never 
 disturbed us.
 
 2l8 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The year passed, and the end came. Not the end as you may 
 have anticipated it, or as I might have foreboded it. 
 
 You remember the time when your letters from home 
 informed you of the fatal termination of 4 our mother's illness ? 
 It is the time of which I am now speaking. A few hours only 
 before she breathed her last she called me to her bedside, and 
 desired that we might be left together alone. Reminding me 
 that her death was near, she spoke of my prospects in life ; 
 she noticed my want of interest in the studies which were then 
 supposed to be engaging my attention, and she ended by 
 entreating me to reconsider my refusal to enter the Church. 
 
 "Your father's heart is set upon it," she said. " Do what I 
 ask of 3 r ou, my dear, and you will help to comfort him when 
 I am gone." 
 
 Her strength failed her; she could say no more. Could 1 
 refuse the last request she would ever make to me? I knelt 
 at the bedside and took her wasted hand in mine, and solemnly 
 promised her the respect which a son owes to his mother's last 
 wishes. 
 
 Having bound myself by this sacred engagement, I had no 
 choice but to accept the sacrifice which it imperatively exacted 
 from me. The time had come when I must tear myself free 
 from all unworthy associations. No matter what the effort 
 cost me, I must separate myself at once and forever from the 
 unhappy woman who was not, who never could be, my wife. 
 
 At the close of a dull, foggy 'day I set forth, with a heavy 
 heart, to say the words which were to part us forever. 
 
 Her lodging was not far from the banks of the Thames. 
 As I drew near the place the darkness was gathering, and the 
 broad surface of the river was hidden from me in a chill, white
 
 JEROMETTE. 2IQ 
 
 mist. I stood for a while with my eyes fixed on the vaporous 
 shroud that brooded over the flowing water, I stood and 
 asked myself, in despair, the one dreary question : "What am 
 I to say to her ? " 
 
 The mist chilled me to the bones. I turned from the river 
 bank, and made my way to her lodgings hard by. " It must 
 be done," I said to myself, as I took out my key and opened 
 the house door. 
 
 She was not at her work as usual, when I entered her little 
 sitting-room. She was standing by the fire, with her head 
 down, and with an open letter in her hand. 
 
 The instant she turned to meet me I saw in her face that 
 something was wrong. Her ordinary manner was the manner 
 of an unusually placid and self-restrained person. Her tem 
 perament had little of the liveliness which we associate in 
 England with the French nature. She was not ready with 
 her laugh, and in all my previous experience I had never yet 
 known her to cry. Now, for the first time, I saw the quiet 
 face disturbed ; I saw tears in the pretty brown eyes. She 
 ran to meet me, and laid her head on my breast, and burst 
 into a passionate fit of weeping that shook her from head to 
 foot. 
 
 Could she, by any human possibility, have heard of the 
 coming change in my life? Was she aware, before I had 
 opened my lips, of the hard necessity which had brought me 
 to the house? 
 
 It was simply impossible ; the thing could not be. 
 
 I waited until her first burst of emotion had worn itself out. 
 Then I asked, with an uneasy conscience, with a sinking 
 heart, what had happened to distress her. 
 
 She drew herself away from me, sighing heavily, and gave 
 me the open letter which I had seen in her hand.
 
 22O PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 " Read that," she said, " and remember I told you what 
 might happen when we first met." 
 
 I read the letter. 
 
 It was signed in initials only ; but the writer plainly re 
 vealed himself as the man who had deserted her. He had 
 repented ; he had returned to her. In proof of his penitence 
 he was willing to do her the justice which he had hitherto 
 refused ; he was willing to marry her, on the condition 
 that she would engage to keep the marriage a secret so long 
 as his parents lived. Submitting this proposal, he waited to 
 know whether she would consent, on her side, to forgive and 
 forget. 
 
 I gave .her back the letter in silence. This unknown rival 
 had done me the service of paving the way for our separation. 
 In offering her the atonement of marriage, he had made it, on 
 my part, a matter of duty to her as well as to myself to say the 
 parting words. I felt this instantly ; and yet I hated him for 
 helping me. 
 
 She took my hand and h:d me to the sofa. We sat down 
 side by side. Her face was composed to a sad tranquillity. 
 She was quiet ; she was herself again. 
 
 "I have refused to see him," she said, "until I had first 
 spoken to you. You have read his letter. What do you say?" 
 
 I could make but one answer. It was my duty to tell her 
 what my own position was in the plainest terms. I did my 
 duty, leaving her free to decide on the future for herself. 
 Those sad words said, it was useless to prolong the wretched 
 ness of our separation. I rose, and took her hand for the last 
 time. 
 
 I see her again now, at that final moment, as plainly as if 
 it had happened yesterday. She had been suffering from an 
 affection of the throat, and she had a white silk handkerchief 
 tied loosely round her neck. She wore a simple dress of
 
 JEROMETTE. 221 
 
 purple merino, with a black silk apron over it. Her face was 
 deadly pale ; her fingers felt icily cold as they closed round 
 ray hand. 
 
 "Promise me one thing," I said, "before I go. While I live 
 I am your friend, if I am nothing more. If you are ever in 
 trouble, promise that you will let me know it." 
 
 She started, and drew back from me as if I had struck her 
 with a sudden terror. 
 
 " Strange ! " she said, speaking to herself. " He feels as I 
 feel. He is afraid of what may happen to me in my life to 
 come." 
 
 I attempted to re-assure her. I tried to tell her what was 
 indeed the truth that I had only been thinking of the ordi 
 nary chances and changes of life when I spoke. 
 
 She paid no heed to me ; she came back and put her hands 
 on my shoulders, and thoughtfully and sadly looked up in my 
 face. 
 
 "My mind is not your mind in this matter," she said. " 1 
 once owned to you that I had my forebodings when we first 
 spoke of this man's return. I may tell you now more than I 
 told you then. I believe I shall die young, and die miserably. 
 If I am right, have you interest enough still left in me to wish 
 to hear of it ? " 
 
 She paused, shuddering, and added these startling words : 
 
 " You shall hear of it ! " 
 
 The tone of steady conviction in which she spoke alarmed 
 and distressed me. My face showed her how deeply and how 
 painfully I was affected. 
 
 "There, there !" she said, returning to her natural manner, 
 * don't take what I say too seriously ! A poor girl who has 
 led a lonely life like mine thinks strangely and talks strangely 
 sometimes. Yes, I give you my promise. If I am ever i
 
 222 . PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 trouble I will let you know it. God bless you you have 
 been very kind to me. Good-bye ! " 
 
 A tear dropped on my face as she kissed me. The door 
 closed between us. The dark street received me. 
 
 It was raining heavily. I looked up at her window through 
 the drifting shower. The curtains were parted ; she was 
 standing in the gap, dimly lit by the lamp on the table behind 
 her, waiting for our last look at each other. Slowly lifting 
 her hand, she waved her farewell at the window with the 
 unsought native grace which had charmed me on the night 
 when we first met. The curtains fell again ; she disappeared 
 nothing was before me, nothing was round me, but the 
 darkness and the night. 
 
 V. 
 
 In two years from that time I had redeemed the promise 
 given to my mother on her death-bed. I had entered the 
 Church. 
 
 My father's interest made my first step in my new profes 
 sion an easy one. After serving my preliminary apprentice 
 ship as a curate, I was appointed, before I was thirty years of 
 age, to a living in the west of England. 
 
 My new benefice offe/ed me every advantage that I could 
 possibly desire, with the one exception of a sufficient income. 
 Although my wants were few, and although I was still an 
 unmarried man, I found it desirable, on many accounts, to add 
 to my resources. Following the example of other young 
 clergymen in my position, I determined to receive pupils who 
 might stand in need of preparation for a career at the Univer 
 sities. My relatives exerted themselves, and my good fortune 
 still befriended me. I obtained two pupils to start with. A 
 third would complete the number which I was at present pre-
 
 JEROME TTE. 225 
 
 pared to receive. In course of time this third pupil made his 
 appearance, under circumstances sufficiently remarkable to 
 merit being mentioned in detail. 
 
 It was the summer vacation, and my two pupils had gone 
 home. Thanks to a neighboring clergyman, who kindly un 
 dertook to perform my duties for me, I too obtained a fort 
 night's holiday, which I spent at my father's house in London. 
 
 During my sojourn in the metropolis, I was offered an 
 opportunity of preaching in a church made famous by the 
 eloquence of one of the popular pulpit orators of our time. 
 In accepting the proposal I felt naturally anxious to do my 
 best before the unusually large and unusually intelligent con 
 gregation which would be assembled to hear me. 
 
 At the period of which I am now speaking, all England 
 had been startled by the discovery of a terrible crime, perpe 
 trated under circumstances of extreme provocation. I chose 
 this crime as the main subject of my sermon. Admitting that 
 the best among us were frail mortal creatures, subject to evil 
 promptings and provocations like the worst among us, my 
 object was to show how a Christian man may find his certain 
 refuge from temptation in the safeguards of his religion. I 
 dwelt minutely on the hardship of the Christian's first strug 
 gle to resist the evil influence on the help which his Chris 
 tianity inexhaustibly held out to him in the worst relapses of the 
 weaker and viler part of his nature on the steady and certain 
 gain which was the ultimate reward of his faith and his firmness 
 and on the blessed sense of peace and happiness which 
 accompanied the final triumph. Preaching to this effect, with 
 the fervent conviction which I really felt, I may say for myself, 
 at least, that I did no discredit to the choice which had placed 
 me in the pulpit. I held the attention of my congregation 
 from the first word to the last. 
 
 While I was resting in the vestry, on the conclusion of the
 
 224 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 service, a note was brought to me written in pencil. A 
 member of my congregation a gentleman wished to see 
 me on a matter of considerable importance to himself. He 
 would call on me at any place, and at any hour, which I 
 might choose to appoint. If I wished to be satisfied of his 
 respectability, he would beg leave to refer me to his father, 
 with whose name I might possibly be acquainted. 
 
 The name given in the reference was undoubtedly familiar 
 to me as the name of a man of some celebrity and influence 
 in the world of London. I sent back my card appointing an 
 hour for the visit of my correspondent on the afternoon of 
 the next day.
 
 TEROMETTE. 225 
 
 PART SECOND. 
 
 VI. 
 
 |HE stranger made his appearance punctually. 1 
 guessed him to be some two or three years younger 
 than myself. He was undeniably handsome ; his 
 manners were the manners of a gentleman ; and 
 yet, without knowing why, I felt a strong dislike to him the 
 moment he entered the room. 
 
 After the first preliminary words of politeness had been 
 exchanged between us, my visitor informed me as follows of 
 the object which he had in view : 
 
 "I believe you live in the country, sir?" he began. 
 
 "I live in the west of England," I answered. 
 
 " Do you make a long stay in London ? " 
 
 " No. I go back to my rectory to-morrow." 
 
 "May I ask if you take pupils?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Have you any vacancy ? " 
 
 "I have one vacancy." 
 
 " Would you object to let me go back with you to-morrow 
 as your pupil ? " 
 
 The abruptness of the proposal took me by surprise. I 
 hesitated. 
 
 In the first place (as I have already said), I disliked him. 
 In the second place, he was too old to be a fit companion for 
 my other two pupils both lads in their teens. In the third 
 place, he had asked me to receive him at least three weeks 
 before the vacation came to an end. I had my own pursuits 
 and amusements in prospect during that interval, and saw no 
 reason why I should inconvenience myself by setting them 
 aside.
 
 226 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 He noticed my hesitation, and did not conceal from me that 
 f had disappointed him. 
 
 "I have it very much at heart," he said, "to repair without 
 delay the time that I have lost. My age is against me, I 
 know. The truth is, I have wasted my opportunities since I 
 left school, and I am anxious, honestly anxious, to mend my 
 way? before it is too late. I wish to prepare myself for one 
 of the Universities ; I wish to show, if I can, that I am not 
 quite unworthy to inherit my father's famous name. You are 
 the man to help me, if I can only persuade you to do it. I 
 was struck by your sermon yesterday, and, if I may ven 
 ture to make the confession in your presence, I took a strong 
 liking to you. Will you see my father before you decide to 
 say no? He will be able to explain whatever may seem 
 strange in my present application, and he will be happy to 
 see you this aftei aoon, if you can spare the time. As to the 
 question of termj, I am quite sure it can be settled to your 
 entire satisfaction." 
 
 He was evidently in earnest gravely, vehemently in ear 
 nest. I unwillingly consented to see his father. 
 
 The interview was a long one. All my questions were 
 answered fully and frankly. 
 
 The young man had led an idle and desultory life. He 
 was weary of it, and ashamed of it. His disposition was a 
 peculiar one. He stood sorely in need of a guide, a teacher 
 and a friend in whom he was disposed to confide. If I dis 
 appointed the hopes which he had centred in me he would be 
 discouraged, and he would relapse into the aimless and indo 
 lent existence of which he was now ashamed. Any terms foi 
 which. I might stipulate were at my disposal, if I would con 
 sent to receive him for three months, to begin with, on trial. 
 
 I still hesitated. I consulted my father and my friends. 
 
 They were all of opinion (and justly of opinion so far) th&t
 
 JEROMETTE. 227 
 
 the new connection would be an excellent one for me. They 
 all reproached me for taking a purely capricious dislike to a 
 well-born and well-bred young man, and for permitting it to 
 influence me at the outset of my career against my own inter 
 ests. Pressed by these considerations, I allowed myself to be 
 persuaded to give the new pupil a fair trial. He accompanied 
 me the next day on my way back to the rectory. 
 
 VII. 
 
 My senior pupil (you will find out his name for yourself 
 'before I have done) began well in one respect, at least he 
 produced a decidedly favorable impression on the persons 
 attached to my little household. 
 
 The women especially admired his beautiful light hair, his 
 crisply curling beard, his delicate complexion, his clear blue 
 eyes, and his finely shaped hands and feet. Even the invete 
 rate reserve in his manner, and the downcast, almost sullen, 
 look which had prejudiced me against him, aroused a com 
 mon feeling of romantic enthusiasm in my servants' hall. It 
 was decided on the high authority of the housekeeper herself 
 that "the new gentleman" was in love, and, more interesting 
 still, that he was the victim of an unhappy attachment which 
 had driven him away from his friends and his home. 
 
 For myself, I tried hard, and tried vainly, to get over my 
 first dislike to the senior pupil. 
 
 I could find no fault with him. All his habits were quiet 
 and regular, and he devoted himself conscientiously to his 
 reading. But, little by little, I became satisfied that his heart 
 was not in bis studies. More than this, I had my reasons for 
 -suspecting that he was concealing something from me, and 
 that he felt painfully the reserve on his own part, which he 
 could not, or dared not, break through. There were moments
 
 228 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 when I almost doubted whether he had not chosen my remote 
 country rectory as a safe place of refuge from some person or 
 persons of Whom he stood in dread. 
 
 For example, his ordinary course of proceeding in the mat 
 ter of his correspondence was, to say the least of it, strange. 
 
 He received no letters at my house. They waited for him 
 at the village post-office. He invariably called for them him 
 self, and invariably forbore to trust any of my servants with 
 his own letters for the post. Again, when we were out walk 
 ing together, I more than once caught him looking furtively 
 over his shoulder, as if he suspected some person of following 
 him for some evil purpose. Being constitutionally a hater of 
 mysteries, I determined at an early stage of our intercourse 
 on making an effort to clear matters up. There might be just 
 a chance of my winning the senior pupil's confidence, if I 
 spoke to him while the last days of the summer vacation still 
 left us alone together in the house. 
 
 " Excuse me for noticing it," I said to him one morning, 
 while we were engaged over our books, " I cannot help ob 
 serving that you appear to have some trouble on your mind. 
 Is it indiscreet on my part to ask if I can be of any use to 
 you?" 
 
 He changed color, looked up at me quickly, looked down 
 again at his book, struggled hard with some secret fear or 
 secret reluctance that was in him, and suddenly burst out with 
 this extraordinary question : 
 
 " I suppose you were in earnest when you preached that 
 termon in London ? " 
 
 " I am astonished that you should doubt it," I replied. 
 
 He paused again, struggled with himself again, and startled 
 me by a second outbreak, even stranger than the first. 
 
 " I am one of the people you preached at in your sermon, " 
 he said. "That's the true reason why I asked you to take me
 
 JEROMETTE. 229 
 
 for your pupil. Don't turn me out ! When you talked to 
 your congregation of tortured and tempted people, you talked 
 of me." 
 
 I was so astonished 'by the confession that I lost my presence 
 of mind. For the moment I was unable to answer him. 
 
 " Don't turn me out ! " he repeated. " Help me against my 
 self. I am telling you the truth. As God is my witness, I 
 am telling you the truth ! " 
 
 "Tell me the -whole truth," I said, "and rely on my consol 
 ing and helping you rely on my being your friend." 
 
 In the fervor of the moment I took his hand. It lay cold 
 and still in mine ; it mutely warned me that I had a sullen and 
 secret nature to deal with. 
 
 " There must be no concealment between us," I resumed. 
 "You have entered my house, by your own confession, under 
 false pretences. It is your duty to me, and your duty to your 
 self, to speak out." 
 
 The man's inveterate reserve, cast off for the moment only., 
 renewed its hold on him. He considered, carefully consid 
 ered, his next words before he permitted them to pass his 
 lips. 
 
 "A person is in the way of my prospects in life," he began, 
 slowly, with his eyes cast down on his book. "A person pro 
 vokes me horribly. I feel dreadful temptations (like the man 
 you spoke of in your sermon) when I am in the person's 
 company. Teach me to resist temptation ! I am afraid of 
 myself if I see the person again. You are the only man who 
 can help me. Do it while you can." 
 
 He stopped, and passed his handkerchief over his forehead. 
 
 "Will that do?" he asked, still with his eyes on his book. 
 
 "It will not do," I answered. "You are so far from really 
 opening your heart to me that you won't even let me know 
 whether it is a man or a woman who stands in the way of
 
 230 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 your prospects in life. You use the word ' person ' over and 
 over again, rather than say ' he ' or ' she,' when you speak of 
 the provocation which is trying you. How can I help a man 
 who has so little confidence in me as that?" 
 
 He twisted and untwisted his handkerchief in his hands. 
 He tried, tried desperately, to say more than he had said yet. 
 No ! The words seemed to stick in his throat. Not one of 
 them would pass his lips. 
 
 "Give me time," he pleaded, piteously. "I can't bring my 
 self to it all at once. I mean well. Upon my soul, I mean 
 well. But I am slow at this sort of thing. Wait till to-mor 
 row." 
 
 To-morrow came, and again he put it off. 
 
 "One more day," he said. "You don't know how hard it 
 is to speak plainly. I am half afraid ; I am half ashamed. 
 Give me one more day." 
 
 I had hitherto only disliked him. Try as I might, and did, 
 to make merciful allowance for his reserve, I began to despise 
 him now. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The day of the deferred confession came, and brought an 
 event with it for which both he and I were alike unprepared. 
 Would he really have confided in me but for that event? He 
 must either have done it, or have abandoned the purpose 
 which had led him into my house. 
 
 We met as usual at the breakfast table. My housekeeper 
 brought in my letters of the morning. To my surprise, in 
 stead of leaving the room again as usual, she walked around 
 to the other side of the table, and laid a letter before my sen 
 ior pupil the first letter since his residence with me which 
 had been delivered to him under my roof.
 
 J E R O M E T T E . 231 
 
 He started, and took up the letter. He looked at the ad 
 dress. A spasm of suppressed fury passed across his face ; 
 his breath came quickly ; his hand trembled as it held the 
 letter. So far I said nothing. I waited to see whether he 
 would open the envelope in my presence or not. 
 
 He was afraid to open it in my presence. He got on his 
 feet ; he said, m tones so low that I could barely hear him, 
 "Please excuse me for a minute," and left the room. 
 
 I waited for half an hour for a quarter of an hour after 
 that and then I sent to ask if he had forgotten his breakfast. 
 
 In a minute more I heard his footstep in the hall. He 
 opened the breakfast-room door, and stood on the threshold, 
 with a small travelling-bag in his hand. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," he said, still standing at the door. 
 " I must ask for leave of absence for a day or two. Business 
 in London." 
 
 " Can I be of any use? " I asked. " I am afraid your lettei 
 has brought you bad news." 
 
 "Yes," he said, shortly; "bad news. I have no time foi 
 breakfast." 
 
 "Wait a few minutes," I urged. "Wait long enough to 
 treat me like your friend, to tell me what your trouble is, 
 before you go." 
 
 He made no reply. He stepped into the hall and closed 
 the door ; then opened it again a little way without showing 
 himself. 
 
 "Business in London," he repeated, as if he thought it 
 highly important to inform me of the nature of his errand. 
 The door closed for the second time. He was gone. 
 
 I went into my study and carefully considered what had 
 happened. 
 
 The result of my reflections is easily described. I deter 
 mined on discontinuing my relations with my senior pupil
 
 232 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 In writing to his father (which I did, with all due courtesy 
 and respect, by that day's post) , I. mentioned as my reason for 
 arriving at this decision, first, that I had found it impossible 
 to win the confidence of his son. Secondly, that his son had 
 that morning suddenly and mysteriously left my house for 
 London, and that I must decline accepting any further re 
 sponsibility toward him, as the necessary consequence. 
 
 I had put my letter in the post-bag, and I was beginning to 
 feel a little easier after having written it, when my house 
 keeper appeared in the study, with a very grave face, and 
 with something hidden, apparently, in her closed hand. 
 
 "Would you please look, sir, at what we have found in the 
 gentleman's bedroom since he went away this morning ? " 
 
 I knew the housekeeper to possess a woman's full share of 
 that amiable weakness of the sex which goes by the name of 
 "curiosity." I had also, in various indirect ways, become 
 aware that my senior pupil's strange departure had largely in 
 creased the disposition among the women of my household to 
 regard him as the victim of an unhappy attachment. The 
 time was ripe, as it seemed to me, for checking any further 
 gossip about him, and any renewed attempts at prying into 
 his affairs in his absence. 
 
 "Your only business in my pupil's bedroom," I said to the 
 housekeeper, "is to see that it is kept clean, and that it is pro 
 perly aired. There must be no interference, if you please, 
 with his letters or his papers, or with anything else that he 
 has left behind him. Put back directly whatever you may 
 have found in his room." 
 
 The housekeeper had her full share of a woman's temper, 
 as well as of a woman's curiosity. She listened to me with a 
 rising color, and a just perceptible toss of the h~ad. 
 
 " Must I put it back, sir, on the floor, between the bed and 
 the wall? "she inquired, with an ironical assumption of the
 
 JEROMETTE. 233 
 
 humblest deference to my wishes. " That's where the girl 
 found it when she was sweeping the room. Anybody can 
 see for themselves,'' pursued the housekeeper, indignantly, 
 "that the poor gentleman has gone away broken-hearted. 
 And there, in my opinion, is the hussy who is the cause of 
 it!" 
 
 With those words she made me a low courtesy, and laid a 
 small photographic portrait on the desk at which I was sitting. 
 
 I looked at the photograph. 
 
 In an instant my heart was beating wildly my head 
 turned giddy the housekeeper, the furniture, the walls of 
 the room, all swayed and whirled round me. 
 
 The portrait that had been found in my senior pupil's bed 
 room was the portrait of Jeromette ! 
 
 IX. 
 
 I had sent the housekeeper out of my study. I was alone, 
 with the photograph of the Frenchwoman on my desk. 
 
 There could surely be little doubt about the discovery that 
 had burst upon me. The man who had stolen his way into 
 my house, driven by the terror of a temptation that he dared 
 tiot reveal, and the man who had been my unknown rival in 
 the by-gone time, were one and the same. 
 
 Recovering self-possession enough to realize this plain 
 truth, the inferences that followed forced their way into my 
 mind as a matter of course. The unnamed person who was 
 the obstacle to my pupil's prospects in life, the unnamed per 
 son in whose company he was assailed by temptations which 
 made him tremble for himself, stood revealed to me now as 
 being, in all human probability, no other than Jeromette. Had 
 she bound him in the fitters of the marriage which he had 
 himself proposed? Had she discovered his place of refuge in
 
 234 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 my house? And was the letter that had been delivered to him 
 of her writing? Assuming those questions to be answered in 
 the affirmative, what, in that case, was his "business in Lon 
 don "? I remembered what he had said to me about his temp 
 tations, I recalled the expression that had crossed his face 
 when he recognized the handwriting on the letter and the 
 conclusion that followed literally shook me to the soul. Order 
 ing my horse to be saddled, I rode instantly to the railway 
 station. 
 
 The train by which he had travelled to London had reached 
 the terminus nearly an hour since. The one useful course 
 that I could take, by way of quieting the dreadful misgivings 
 crowding one after another on my mind, was to telegraph t< 
 Jeromette at the address at which I had last seen her. I senv 
 the subjoined message, prepaying the reply : 
 
 " If you are in any trouble, telegraph to me. I will be with 
 you by the first train. Answer, in any case." 
 
 There was nothing in the way of the immediate dispatch of 
 my message. And yet the hours passed, and no answer was 
 received. By the advice of the clerk, I sent a second tele 
 gram to the London office, -requesting an explanation. The 
 reply came back in these terms : 
 
 " Improvements in street. Houses pulled down. No trace 
 of person named in telegram." 
 
 I mounted my horse and rode back slowly to the rectory. 
 
 " The day of his return to me will bring with it the darkest 
 days of my life." "I shall die young, and die miserably. 
 " Have you interest enough still left in me to wish to hear of 
 it?" "You shall hear of it ! " Those words were in my 
 memory while I rode home in the cloudless moonlight night. 
 They were so vividly present to me that I could hear again 
 her pretty foreign accent, her quiet, clear tones, as she spoke 
 them. For the rest, the emotions of that memorable day had
 
 JEROMETTE. 235. 
 
 worn me out. The answer from the telegraph office had 
 struck me with a strange and stony despair. My mind was a 
 blank. I had no thoughts. I had no tears. 
 
 I was about half-way on my road home, and I had just 
 heard the clock of a village church strike ten, when I became 
 conscious, little by little, of a chilly sensation slowly creeping 
 through and through me to the bones. The warm balmy air 
 of a summer night was abroad. It was the month of July. 
 In the month of July was it possible that any living creature, 
 in good health, could feel cold? It was not possible and 
 yet the chilly sensation still crept through and through me to 
 the bones. 
 
 I looked up. I looked all around me. 
 
 My horse was walking along an open high-road. Neither 
 trees nor waters were near me. On either side the flat fields 
 stretched away bright and broad in the moonlight. 
 
 I stopped my horse, and looked around me again. 
 
 Yes, I saw it. With my own eyes I saw it. A pillar of 
 white mist between five and six feet high, as well as I could 
 judge was moving beside me at the edge of the road, on my 
 left hand. When I stopped, the white mist stopped. When 
 I went on, the white mist went on. I pushed my horse to a 
 trot, the pillar of mist was with me. I urged him to a gallop, 
 the pillar of mist was with me. I stopped him again, the 
 pillar of mist stood still. 
 
 The white color of it was the white color of the mist which 
 I had seen over the river on the night when I had gone ta 
 bid her farewell. And the chill which had then crept 
 through me to the bones was the chill that was creeping 
 through me now. 
 
 I went on again slowly. The white mist went on agair> 
 slowly, with the clear bright night all round it.
 
 236 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 I was awed rather than frightened. There was one mo 
 ment, and one only, when the fear came to me that my rea 
 son might be shaken. I caught myself keeping time to the 
 slow tramp of the horse's feet with the slow utterance of these 
 words, repeated over and over again: "Jeromette is dead. 
 Jeromette is dead." But my will was still my own ; I was 
 able to control myself, to impose silence on my own mutter 
 ing lips. And I rode on quietly. And the pillar of mist 
 went quietly with me. 
 
 My groom was waiting for my return at the rectory gate. 
 I pointed to the mist, passing through the gate with me. 
 
 "Do you see anything there?" I said. 
 
 The man looked at me in astonishment. 
 
 I entered the rectory. The housekeeper met me in the 
 hall. I pointed to the mist entering with me. 
 
 " Do you see anything at my side ? " I asked. 
 
 The housekeeper looked at me as the groom had looked at 
 me. "I am afraid you are not well, sir,'' she said. "Your 
 color is all gone ; you are shivering. Let me get you a 
 glass of wine." 
 
 I went into my study, on the ground-floor, and took the 
 chair at my desk. The photograph still lay where I had left 
 it. The pillar of mist floated round the table, and stopped 
 opposite to me, behind the photograph. 
 
 The housekeeper brought in the wine. I put the glass to 
 my lips, and set it down again. The chill of the mist was in 
 the wine. There was no taste, no reviving spirit in it. The 
 presence of the housekeeper oppressed me. My dog had fol 
 lowed her into the room. The presence of the animal op 
 pressed me. I said to the woman, " Leave me by myself, 
 and take the dog with you." 
 
 They went out, and left me alone in the room.
 
 JEROMETTE. 237 
 
 I sat looking at the pillar of mist hovering opposite to me. 
 
 It lengthened slowly until it reached to the ceiling. As it 
 lengthened it grew bright and luminous. A time passed, and 
 a shadowy appearance showed itself in the centre of the light. 
 Little by little the shadowy appearance took the outline of a 
 human form. Soft brown eyes, tender and melancholy, 
 looked at me through the unearthly light in the mist. The 
 head and the rest of the face broke next slowly on my view. 
 Then the figure gradually revealed itself, moment by mo 
 ment, downward arid downward to the feet. She stood before 
 me as I had last seen her, in her purple merino dress, with 
 the black silk apron, with the white handkerchief tied loosely 
 round her neck. She stood before me in the gentle beauty 
 that I remembered so well, and looked at me as she had 
 looked when she gave me her last kiss, when her tears had 
 dropped on my cheek. 
 
 I fell on my knees at the table. I stretched out my hands 
 to her imploringly. I said, "Speak to me, oh, once again 
 speak to me, Jeromette ! " 
 
 Her eyes rested on me with a divine compassion in them. 
 She lifted her hand, and pointed to the photograph on my 
 desk with a gesture which bade me turn the card. I turned 
 it. The name of the man who had left my house that morn 
 ing was inscribed on it in her own handwriting. 
 
 I looked up at her again when I had read it. She lifted 
 her hand once more, and pointed to the handkerchief round 
 her neck. As I looked at it the fair white silk changed hor 
 ribly in color ; the fair white silk became darkened and 
 drenched in blood. 
 
 A moment more, and the vision of her began to grow dim. 
 By slow degrees the figure, then the face, faded back into the 
 shadowy appearance that I had first seen. The luminous
 
 .238 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 inner light died out in the white mist. The mist itself 
 dropped slowly downward, floated a moment in airy circles 
 on the floor, vanished. Nothing was before me but the 
 familiar wall of the room, and the photograph lying face 
 downward on my desk. 
 
 X. 
 
 The next day the newspapers reported the discovery of a 
 murder in London. A Frenchwoman was the victim. She 
 had been killed by a wound in the throat. The crime had 
 been discovered between ten and eleven o'clock on the previ 
 ous night. 
 
 I leave you to draw your conclusion from what I have 
 related. My own faith in the reality of the apparition is im 
 movable. I say and believe that Jeromette kept her word 
 with me. She died young, and died miserably. And I 
 heard of it from herself. 
 
 Take up the trial again, and look at the circumstances 
 that were revealed during the investigation in court. His 
 motive for murdering her is there. 
 
 You will see that she did indeed marry him privately ; that 
 they lived together contentedly until the fatal day when she 
 discovered that his fancy had been caught by another woman ; 
 that violent quarrels took place between them from that time 
 to the time when my sermon showed him his own deadly 
 hatred toward her, reflected in the case of another man ; that 
 she discovered his place .of retreat in my house, and threat 
 ened him by letter with the public assertion of her conjugal 
 rights ; lastly, that a man, variously described oy dilferent 
 witnesses, was seen leaving the door of her lodgings on the 
 night of the murder. The law, advancing no further than
 
 J E R O M E T T E . 
 
 239 
 
 this, may have discovered circumstances of suspicion, but no 
 certainty. The law, in default of direct evidence to convict 
 the prisoner, may have rightly decided in letting him go free. 
 But / persist in believing that the man was guilty, /de 
 clare that he, and he alone, was the murderer of Jercmette, 
 And now you know why.
 
 LOOKING INTO THE WELL.
 
 LOOKING INTO THE WELL. 
 
 BY LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. 
 
 I. 
 
 P in the maples the robins sung, 
 
 The winds blew over the locusts high, 
 And along the path by their boughs o'er 
 
 hung 
 
 We wandered gaily, Lulu and I 
 Wandered along in pleasant talk, 
 Pausing our nursery tales to tell, 
 Till we came to the end of the shaded walk, 
 And sat, at last, by the moss-grown well. 
 She was a child, and so was I : 
 
 What matter, then, that we told our love 
 Whispered it there, with no one nigh, 
 
 Save birds that sang in the trees above. 
 I looked down into her shy blue eyes, 
 She at my face in the shaded well ; 
 I saw the glow to her fair cheek rise, 
 Like red in the heart of an ocean shell.
 
 244 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 II. 
 
 Again in the trees the robins sung 
 The gold had deepened upon her hair 
 
 The locusts over the pathway hung, 
 To look at her face so still and fair. 
 
 I said no word I sat by her side, 
 Contented to hold her hand in mine, 
 
 Dreaming of love and a fair young bride- 
 Visions that truth had made divine. 
 
 The robin's song took a clearer tone, 
 
 . The sky wore a tenderer, deeper blue; 
 
 Her face in the limpid waters shone, 
 I thought her eyes were holy and true. 
 
 III. 
 I walked alone to the shaded well, 
 
 When locusts bloomed in the next yea /A. June 
 The shadows along my pathway fell, 
 
 The wild birds sang a sorrowful tune. 
 She had given her shining hair's young gold, 
 
 Her holy brow and her eyes of blue, 
 The form I had scarcely dared to fold, 
 
 To a wealthy suitor who came to woo 
 Sold, for jewels and land and name, 
 
 Youth and beauty, and love and grace. 
 Alone I cursed the sin and shame, 
 
 And started to see my own dark face 
 Mirrored there in the well below, 
 
 With its haggard cheek and its lines of care, 
 Where I once had seen a girlish brow, 
 
 And shy blue eyes and golden hair.
 
 LOOKING INTO THE WELL. 245 
 
 IV. 
 
 Years have passed since that summer day 
 
 Went over the hills with its silent tread : 
 I walk alone where its glory lay 
 
 I am lonely, and Lulu is dead. 
 Dust is thick on her shining hair, 
 
 A shroud is folded across her breast, 
 The winds blow over the locusts where 
 
 She lies at last, alone and at rest. 
 Youth and beauty, and love and grace, 
 
 Wealth and station, joy and pain ; 
 If she dream at all in that lonely place, 
 
 She will know, at length, that her life was vain. 
 
 V. 
 I do not think of her heart's disgrace, 
 
 o * 
 
 Looking into the waters there, 
 For I seem to see once more a face 
 
 With shy blue eyes and golden hair. 
 Out among men she walks by my side 
 
 For me she lives whom the world calls dead 
 I talk at night to my shadow bride, 
 
 And pillow in dreams her golden head 
 They broke her heart so the gossips tell 
 
 Who sold her hand for wealth and a name ; 
 But I see her face in the cool, deep well, 
 
 And its virginal beauty is still the same.
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
 GEORGE B. LORING. 
 
 URING one of the profound and interesting- 
 conversations said to have taken place 
 between Mr. Hopkins and Dr. Parker, at 
 the cheerful fireside of the former in the 
 town of Jotham, the subject of human 
 development was briefly and pointedly discussed. Said Dr s 
 Parker, with some degree of warmth and perhaps a little 
 dogmatism : " But man defies all laws. He is not as strong 
 as a horse it is true, but what of disease or medicine will 
 kill a horse twice harms him not at all. He is not physi 
 cally powerful, but he is physically enduring, and, through 
 the agency of his spirit, physically triumphant over space 
 and time. At a certain point he leaves the animal economy 
 and soars into the regions of a Divine power, lives and works 
 in spite of disease ; implants upon his race, through the 
 agency of his soul, faculties, moral and intellectual, which 
 become at last a part of his physical organization, and pro 
 claims everywhere, and in every way, that he is not a beast. 
 Reverently and devoutly I recognize the Divine power which 
 manifested itself, not so much when it made the earth and 
 the sea, as when it breathed into man an immortal spirit." 
 The doctor was undoubtedly a keen observer, and some 
 what disposed to philosophical investigation. He knew how
 
 250 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 much of his own moral character and mental power, how 
 much of his tastes, and modes of thought, and impulse, how 
 much of his inspiration, how much of his peculiarities even 
 and his physical organization, were due not only to the quali 
 ties transmitted to him by many generations of ancestors, 
 but to the modifying influences of associations, interests, 
 habits of thought and life, occupations, affections, which had 
 surrounded him and his fathers, both in the open light of 
 day and before they had begun to draw the breath of life. 
 Man's spiritual impressions are a law unto his body. And, as 
 he steps forth into life, he carries not only his ancestral shape 
 and feature, but those higher powers which mould his form, 
 give light to his countenance, and receive their own ex 
 istence from the Divine Hand which, because it is spiritual, 
 has shaped and ruled the material world, from the dawn of 
 creation. All nature contributes to the development of man. 
 The best angels are always ready to wait on him from his. 
 birth, as they have tenderly watched his coming ; and they 
 only retire from their sacred service, when they are rudely 
 driven away. The subtile and delicate forces which combine 
 to work out commanding human greatness, come not with 
 observation, and we must content ourselves with surveying 
 the field from whose bosom the great creation springs. We 
 would gladly know more ; but we must content ourselves 
 with this. 
 
 When, therefore, we approach the investigation of a 
 character like Hawthorne's, we start with a feeling that our 
 vision must inevitably be limited. His horizon is so much 
 more vast than ours, that we hardly expect to view it, either 
 with the naked eye, or with any artificial aid within our 
 reach. But we can turn with interest and satisfaction to the
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 2$ I 
 
 circumstances under which he was developed, and the in 
 fluences by which he was surrounded. The fact that he was 
 born in Salem may not amount to much to other people, but 
 it amounted to a great deal to him. The sturdy and defiant 
 spirit of his progenitor, who first landed on these shores, 
 found a congenial abode among the people of Naumkeag, 
 after having vainly endeavored to accommodate itself to the 
 more imposing ecclesiasticism of Winthrop and his colony at 
 Trimountain, and of Endicott at his new home. He was a 
 stern separatist, it is true, and had that liberal religious faith 
 which made the Plymouth colony the home of the perse 
 cuted, and gave it immortal power in controlling the religious 
 and political systems of our land ; but he was also a warrior, 
 a politician, a legislator, a legal adviser, a merchant, an orator 
 with persuasive speech. His piety seldom drove him to 
 fanaticism, and he had a sound and just understanding of the 
 wants of those about him, and of the form of government 
 under which they were to live an understanding so clear 
 that whenever he surrendered as a magistrate to the heated 
 and intolerant spirit of his times, he did it reluctantly and 
 with mental and moral protest. He had great powers of 
 mind and body, and forms a conspicuous figure in that im 
 posing and heroic group which stands around the cradle of 
 New England. The generations of the family that followed 
 took active and prominent part in the manly adventures 
 which marked our entire colonial period. With less religious 
 demonstration than the first of their line on this continent, 
 they were severe and gloomy justices, strong and successful 
 farmers, bold and adventurous mariners, down to the time 
 when the great author was born. It was among the family 
 traditions gathered from the Indian wars, the tragic and
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 awful spectre of the witchcraft delusion, the wild life of the 
 privateer, that he first saw the light, and while he was yet a 
 child the death of his father in a distant port was impressed 
 upon his mind as one of the solemn mysteries of the sea. It 
 was not a conspicuous, but it was an intimate part which his 
 progenitors performed in that period which constitutes the 
 romance of American history. Brought by the necessities of 
 their life into immediate contact with the hardy elements of 
 society in fact, forming a part of them, and being in no way 
 removed from them either by wealth or civil position they 
 preserved the characteristics of that era in all their freshness 
 and power. They were yeomanry on the land sea-gods on 
 the sea. They grew up and performed their part among the 
 tough experiences of a maritime people, and they lived in a 
 social atmosphere filled with all the peculiarities and eccentri 
 cities which gather in the purlieus of a town, where every kin 
 dred nation and tongue under heaven find their abode, and 
 into whose daily life the highways of the sea pour every 
 variety of instinct, thought, and speech. No adventitious 
 circumstances enervated their natural faculties. There was 
 never a more intense Hathorne than the father of Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne, the silent, sombre sailor, who represented all the 
 courage and power of the family, with a busy and thoughtful 
 mind which dwelt upon that curious and interesting family-re 
 cord with a sort of superstitious awe and deep admiration. So 
 far as any inheritance of faculties from his father's line is 
 concerned, Hawthorne had a right to be a powerful, thought 
 ful, reticent, dreamy, brooding, sensible, unambitious, retiring 
 man and he was. And it so happened that his mother 
 simply added to all these qualities greater intensity and more 
 fervor from her own soul, solemn enough by nature, but
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 253 
 
 doubly solemn under the weight of that calamity which left 
 her a widow with a young family in early life. 
 
 The qualities of mind and heart, which were active in these 
 many generations of toil, and trial, and varied experience on. 
 land and sea, strong as they were in their primitive state, 
 were full of admirable power when, free from depressing cir 
 cumstances and purified of all dross, they entered upon a 
 field of intellectual labor. The boy, who, in after life, was 
 counted by some as gloomy and sombre, was abounding in a 
 rich and mellow humor the seafaring humor of his class. 
 "John Knights is a boy of a very quarrelsome disposition," 
 he quaintly remarked of a schoolmate with whom he was in 
 constant battle. " Swapped pocket-knives with Robinson 
 Cook, yesterday. Jacob Dingley says that he cheated me ; 
 but I think not, for I cut a fishing-pole this morning and did 
 it well ; besides, he is a Quaker, and they never cheat " he 
 enters in his youthful book of thoughts. His description of a 
 " solemn-faced old horse hitched to the trough " is inimitable 
 in its boyish pathos. It was a delicate and chaste humor 
 which he had as a boy, and it never deserted him through his 
 long literary life. Even his wit soared into the regions of 
 humor, and avoided the low association of ideas which lies at 
 the foundation of much of the acceptable wit of the world. 
 Of " Gulliver's Travels" he says: " The wit is obscene, and 
 the lies too false." Hawthorne's perception was exquisitely 
 keen also. His eyes were as quick and sharp as were those 
 of his ancestor with his " eye to the wind'ard " in a gale at 
 sea. Not a bird, not a beast, nor a flower, nor a twig, nor 
 cloud, nor tree escaped him, when he followed his uncle and. 
 his men on their tramps along the shores of Sebago Lake. 
 And so it was through life. Strolling along the street in
 
 254 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 apparent reverie, dreaming on his tall stool at the custom 
 house, pacing his solitary walk in the country, at 'home or 
 abroad, he saw all that was to be seen ; saw more with his 
 eyes shut than most people do with their eyes open. He 
 admired facts and things, and reached their philosophical 
 meaning by instinct, and not by a process of reasoning. He 
 saw things, too, just as they are, whether things of the past 
 or the present. If any one supposes that he had a distorted 
 and discolored view of society, its thoughts and incidents 
 and individuals in the early periods of our Colonial history, 
 he must remember that no man has ever described persons 
 and things about him better than he did few so well ; and 
 that the eye which saw England and Rome as no one else has 
 seen them, saw also Naumkeag and Trimountain just as clear 
 ly. He had, moreover, the keen insight into and understand 
 ing of human nature, which belongs to those who are early 
 thrown upon their own resources, and are tossed about from 
 shore to shore over all seas and among all peoples. We have 
 had many essays upon the Puritan character, many treatises 
 of Puritan history, many pictures of Puritan life in New Eng 
 land ; but the secret chambers were first unlocked and opened 
 by him in the " Scarlet Letter," and we saw the Puritan as 
 he was, his heaven and his hell. We have had many bright 
 and elaborate descriptions of Rome, its art and architecture ; 
 but never an inside view of the artist's life there, never a 
 picture of the Italian genius which presides over that land of 
 beauty and the beast, until this great magician created the 
 " Marble Faun." Salem in the " House of the Seven Ga 
 bles," and Concord in " Mosses from an old Manse," are 
 Salem and Concord in intense reality. His pictures are not 
 the fruits of a diseased imagination, but they are the actual
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 255 
 
 life as seen by the eye of Him who made it. If he makes 
 virtue as beauteous as a star, and vice as hideous as a rayless 
 night, so do nature and the divine law. He gives us life 
 as it is, stripped of all disguises and all ornament ; not un 
 lovely and repulsive, but the mysterious and fascinating pro 
 blem which has always been the great study of mankind. The 
 heroic qualities may be concealed by adverse circumstances, 
 as the low and mean ones may be by the gloss of good for 
 tune. The work of portraying this may seem dark and 
 gloomy and mysterious, but it is the work of a creator who 
 so often 4< behind a frowning providence " " hides a smiling 
 face," and " whose ways are not as our ways " and " whose 
 thoughts are not as our thoughts." Hawthorne's pictures 
 may at times have been gloomy but they are always true to 
 nature, and the gloom is only the shadow falling upon the 
 landscape to perfect its beauty. His art was so guided and 
 controlled by natural laws that all artistic design was thor 
 oughly hidden ; and even the most fantastic of his shapes 
 filled the places assigned them with as much fitness and pro 
 priety as do the mountains and the sea. For this work, he 
 preserved his natural powers as few writers, great or small, 
 have done. He seems not to have derived great strength 
 from books. He was never a student. He read with the 
 same eagerness that he looked about him ; read " Hogg's 
 Tales " and " Caleb Williams," " Pilgrim's Progress," Scott 
 -and Godwin, and his contemporaries in every literary walk 
 but not science, nor theology, nor law, nor medicine, nor the 
 literature of other lands. He was no investigator, no explorer. 
 He never read to sharpen his wits, or studied to crowd his 
 mind. He read, because he liked the companionship of 
 books; they were good friends for his solitude. But, although
 
 256 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 he had the humor of Charles Lamb, and the pathos of Rich- 
 ter, and the penetration of Goldsmith, he had no need of 
 their support. He knew well what he did know, but he sel 
 dom introduced his knowledge into his books never ostenta 
 tiously or like a pedant. He never presented his knowledge 
 of history in a novel, like Scott ; he never poured out his 
 contempt for social wrong in tales, like Dickens; he never 
 exposed the hollow folly of society, like Thackeray ; but he 
 wrought the work of all into his marvellous volumes, not as 
 the result of careful study, but as the consequence of that 
 commanding vision with which he surveyed society and the 
 acuteness with which he read the heart of man. And yet, 
 while he embraces within himself the many sides of human 
 experience, and has .an appropriate word for all, and evi 
 dently understands and is familiar with them all, it has been 
 justly said of him : " He is no philosopher for the poor or 
 the rich, for the ignorant or the learned, for the righteous or 
 the wicked, for any special rank or condition in life, but for 
 human nature as given by God into the hands of man. He 
 calls us to be indignant witnesses of no particular social, reli 
 gious, or political enormity. He asks for no admiration of 
 this or that individual or associated virtue. The face of so 
 ciety, with its manifold features, never comes before you as. 
 you study the extraordinary experience of his men and 
 women, except as a necessary setting of the picture." 
 
 In the performance of his literary work, I repeat, Haw 
 thorne's pictures are all extraordinary. They may be com 
 pared with the domestic groups of the Dutch painters, with 
 the addition of the dreamy, misty coloring which gives such a 
 charm to Allston's dark landscape, where some mysterious 
 figure is used to give life to the scene. His characters, which
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 257 
 
 are all strong and natural, are never left by him until the 
 supernatural has been expressed. His grotesqueness is inimi 
 table. His little cannibal devoured a whole caravan before 
 he reached his growth. His Pyncheon hens, with their aris 
 tocratic attenuation, are the very expression of gallinaceous 
 absurdity. Old Venner is a model of a fussy fixture of an 
 active pauper. Hepzibah has not her equal as a representa 
 tive of her peculiar class. Starved, and withered, and pinched, 
 in her poor old heart for the want of human sympathy and 
 warm human experience, she is pursed and prim in her griefs- 
 and joys, and peevish in her kindness. Never has there been 
 seen a better delineation of an active, uneasy, protean Yan 
 kee, half speculator and half philosopher, than Hoigrave. 
 We know of no man who, with all this universality of percep 
 tion and all this quaintness of conception, deserves to be 
 called American so truly as Hawthorne. Cooper has deline 
 ated the forest life and its savage actors. Judd has carried 
 you "down East," and, in the midst of the crudest mixture 
 of half-fledged philosophy and extravagant sentiment and 
 unnatural speculation, has taught the vulgar provincialisms 
 of the sawmill and the barn-yard. And we have had scenes 
 from the Revolution, from life at the South, East, and West, 
 from the plantation, the prairie, and the village. But the 
 past and present of American thought, of American psycho 
 logy, especially as exhibited in New England, has had no 
 interpreter like Hawthorne, in the Puritanism of the " Scar 
 let Letter " and in the Yankeeism of the " House of the 
 Seven Gables." Nor have ever before the physical features 
 of society met with so true an artist. The stiff, formal crowd 
 which gathered around Hester Prynne, and the busy, gossip 
 ing neighbors who came morning and evening to trade with
 
 258 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 Hepzibah in her cent-shop the children of that day and the 
 children of this, are all American. And yet, while we are 
 constantly struck with these graphic touches of truth, we are 
 sometimes lost in the apparent inconsistency of the design. 
 It may be correct, and from the highest standpoint it un 
 doubtedly is; but it is difficult to see it. It is pleasant, we 
 confess, to have something left for the imagination to do, if 
 that something be not too much. But we are not quite pre 
 pared for such an unexplained determination, for instance, as. 
 Holgrave and Phcebe arrive at, in the " House of the Seven 
 Gables," when, on the threshold of the " chamber of horrors," 
 they rush into the beauty of everlasting love, and we can 
 only account for it on the ground that they could be aroused 
 only by an extraordinary occasion. We feel compelled to< 
 question whether the unsuspecting Phoebe was quite willing 
 to recognize "the miracle without which every human exis 
 tence is a blank," " the bliss which makes all things true and 
 beautiful and holy," on so short a notice, however much it 
 may have filled the heart of Holgrave, who had evidently 
 gone through the various degrees initiatory ; and yet there 
 has been many a sudden burst of sunlight upon many an 
 astonished Phrebe in this world. The beauty and grandeur 
 and grace of art are very visible in Hawthorne, but they are 
 often veiled in an awful mystery, as is the majesty in Michael 
 Angelo's " Day and Night." In addition to this charm, his. 
 literary phraseology is most fascinating. Some of his sen 
 tences might pass into proverbs, such as : " This feeling had 
 the energy of disease " ; " The topsy-turvy commonwealth of 
 sleep " ; " To spend an eternity in a vain effort to make: his 
 accounts balance "; " The shadowy food of aristocratic re 
 miniscences " ; " Still flickered his gusty mirth " ; " Sprouted
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 259 
 
 up in graveyard grass," are a few instances of a constantly- 
 recurring felicity of expression, full of strength when even 
 thus isolated, and immeasurably forcible with their context. 
 
 Throughout his life, Hawthorne led a twofold existence^ 
 a real and a supernatural. As a man, he was the realest of 
 men. From childhood to old age he had great physical pow 
 ers. His massive head sat upon a strong and muscular neck, 
 and his chest was broad and capacious. His strength was 
 great ; his hand and foot were large and well made. He never 
 knew the feebleness of youth, that unlucky check to many a 
 promising career, nor the weakness of old age. In walking, 
 he had a firm step and a great stride without effort. In early 
 manhood he had abounding health, a good digestion, a hearty 
 enjoyment of food. His excellent physical condition gave 
 him a placid and even temper, a cheerful spirit. He was a 
 silent man, and often a moody one, but never irritable or 
 morose; his organization was too grand for that. He was a 
 most delightful companion. In conversation he was never 
 controversial, never authoritative, and never absorbing. In a 
 multitude, his silence was oppressive ; but, with a single com 
 panion, his talk flowed on sensibly, quietly, and full of wis 
 dom and shrewdness. He discussed books with wonderful 
 acuteness, sometimes with startling power and with an unex 
 pected verdict, as if Shakspere were discussing Ben Jonson. 
 He analyzed men, their characters and motives and capacity, 
 with great penetration, impartially if a stranger or an enemy, 
 with the tenderest and most touching justice if a friend. He 
 was fond of the companionship of all who were in sympathy 
 with this real and human side of his life. A genuine charac 
 ter was very attractive to him. And so in the " Scarlet Let 
 ter " he warms over the custom-house clerk and the old col-
 
 260 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 lector, because each was perfect in his way, although, perhaps, 
 that way might not, in all things, be of the best. Men who 
 did not meddle with him he loved, men who made no de 
 mands on him, who offered him the repose of genial com 
 panionship. His life-long friends were of this description, 
 and his loyalty to them was chivalrous and fearless, and so 
 generous that when they differed from him in matters of 
 opinion he rose at once above the difference and adhered to 
 them for what they really were ; and these friends were usu 
 ally remarkable for great force of one description or another. 
 Of General Pierce, after a long discussion of his character and 
 career, he said, with inexpressible sadness in his tone: " It is 
 so hard for Frank to get a new idea ! " Of the dedication of 
 " Our Old Home " to General Pierce, he said, in face of the 
 most bitter opposition, the strongest threats, the most urgent 
 appeals : " I cannot withdraw that dedication and wound my 
 friend. My loyalty to him is involved. I would not do it, 
 even if the financial success of the book depended upon it." 
 And he said this, not in the heat of passion, but with a calm 
 and generous courage. In his intercourse with his friends, he 
 seldom discussed his books. Adverse criticism, he never 
 read ; and while he was encouraged by approval he never 
 required the stimulus of flattery, nor was he disheartened by 
 dissent. Placid, peaceful, calm, and retiring as he was, in all 
 the ordinary events of life, he was tempestuous and irresisti 
 ble when roused. An attempt on the part of a rough and 
 overbearing sea-captain to interfere with his business as an 
 inspector of the customs in charge of his ship, was met with 
 such a terrific uprising of spiritual and physical wrath that 
 the dismayed captain fled up the wharf and took refuge at 
 the feet of him who sat at the receipt of customs, enquiring,
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 26l 
 
 with a sailor's emotion and a sailor's tongue, " What, in God's 
 name, have you sent on board my ship for an inspector ? " 
 He knew no such thing as fear ; was scrupulously honest ; 
 was unwavering in his fidelity; conscientious in the discharge 
 of his duty. There may have been men of more latent 
 power, but I have known no man more impressive, none in 
 whom the great reposing strength seemed clad in such a robe 
 of sweetness as he wore. I saw him on the day General Pierce 
 was elected to the Presidency. It was a bright and delicious 
 afternoon in late autumn. He was standing under the little 
 shaded and embowered piazza of the " Wayside " at Concord, 
 in the full vigor of his manhood, radiant with joy at the good 
 fortune of his friend, and with that shy, sad smile playing 
 over his face, which was so touching and charming. I have 
 seen him fishing from the rocks of the Essex County shore at 
 Swampscott, enjoying the bliss of absolute repose and the 
 sweet uncertainty which attends the angler's line. I have sat 
 with him in the dimly-lighted room on autumnal evenings, 
 cheerful and vocal with the cricket's chirp, and have heard 
 his wise and sensible talk, uttered in that soft, melodious tone 
 which gave such a peculiar charm to his utterances a tone so 
 shy that an intruder would hush it into silence in an instant. 
 I have strolled with him in the darkness of a summer night 
 through the lanes of Concord, assured by his voice, which 
 came up from the grass-grown roadside in a sort of myste 
 rious murmur, that he was my companion still. And every 
 where, and at all times, he bore about him a strong and com 
 manding presence, an impression of unpretending power. I 
 can hardly tell how Hawthorne succeeded in entertaining his 
 companions and securing, their entire confidence, unless it was 
 that he displayed great good sense and acuteness and good
 
 262 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 temper in his intercourse with them, and never misled them 
 by false promises or low appeals. This, in addition to his. 
 subtile genius, everywhere recognized and never wholly con 
 cealed to even the most commonplace associates, made him a 
 most fascinating friend, as he was really and truly a man of 
 rare quality among ordinary men. 
 
 have in my possession the following letter, written by 
 Hawthorne to an old friend, who bequeathed it to me on his 
 dying bed, which illustrates so well his practical view of 
 affairs, his just estimate of the civil service, and his exact 
 appreciation of matters about him, that I feel I should not 
 withhold it from the public to whom his words now belong.. 
 It is dated September 13, 1853, twenty-four years ago this. 
 day on which I am copying it, and was written in Liverpool 
 shortly after he entered upon his duties as Consul there, to 
 his friend, who evidently desired a position under him : 
 
 "DEAR P : I have been intending to write to you this 
 some time, but wished to get some tolerably clear idea of the 
 state of things here before communicating with you. I find 
 that I have three persons in my office : the head clerk, or 
 vice-consul, at 200, the second clerk at ^150, and the 
 messenger, who also does some writing, at ^80. They are 
 all honest and. capable men, and do their duty to perfection. 
 No American would take either of these places for twice the 
 sums which they receive ; and no American without some 
 months' practice would undertake the duty. Of the two I 
 would rather displace the vice-consul than the second clerk, 
 who does a great amount of labor, and has a remarkable 
 variety of talent ; whereas the old gentleman, though perfect 
 in his own track, is nothing outside of it. I will not part
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 263 
 
 with either of these men, unless compelled to do so; and I 
 don't think Secretary Marcy can compel me. 
 
 " Now as to the Manchester branch : it brings in only 
 about 200. There is no consular agent there, all the business 
 being transacted here in Liverpool. The only reason for 
 appointing an agent would be that it might shut off all 
 attempts to get a separate consulate there. There is no 
 danger, I presume, of such an event for some time to come ; 
 for Pierce made a direct promise that the place should be 
 kept open for my benefit. Nevertheless, efforts will be made 
 to fill it, and v"ery possibly representations may be made 
 from the business men of Manchester that there is a necessity 
 for a consul there. In a pecuniary point of view it would 
 make very little difference to me whether the place Avere 
 filled by an independent consul or by a vice-consul of my 
 own appointment ; for the latter, of course, would not be 
 satisfied with less than the whole ^200. What I should like 
 would be to keep the place vacant and receive the proceeds 
 as long as possible, and, at last, when I could do no better,, 
 to give the office to you. No great generosity in that, to be 
 sure. Thus I have put the matter fairly before you. Do- 
 you tell me as frankly how your own affairs stand, and 
 whether you can live any longer in that cursed old Custom 
 house without hanging yourself. Rather than that you should 
 do so, I would let you have the place to-morrow, although 
 it would pay you about ;ioo less than your present office. I 
 suppose, as a single man, you might live within your income 
 at Manchester; but judging from my own experience as a 
 married man, it would be a very tight fit. With all the econ 
 omy I could use I have already got rid of $2,000 since landing 
 in England. Hereafter I hope to spend less and save more.
 
 264 . PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 " In point of emolument, my offer will turn out about 
 what I expected. If I have ordinary luck I shall bag from 
 '$5,000 to $7,000 clear per annum ; but to effect this I shall 
 have to deny myself many things which I would gladly have. 
 Colonel Crittenden told me that it cost him $4,000 to live 
 with only his wife at a boarding-house, including a journey to 
 London now and then. I am determined not to spend more 
 than this keeping house with my wife and children. I have 
 hired a good house, furnished, at 160, on the other side of 
 the river Mersey, at Rock Park, where there is good air and 
 play-ground for the children ; and I come over to the city 
 "by steamboat every morning. I like the situation all the 
 better because it will render it impossible for me to go to 
 parties, or to give parties myself, and will keep me out of a 
 great deal of nonsense. 
 
 " Liverpool is the most detestable place as a residence 
 that ever my lot was cast in smoky, noisy, dirty, pesti 
 lential, and the Consulate is situated in the most detestable 
 part of the city. The streets swarm with beggars by day 
 and by night. You never saw the like; and I pray that you 
 may never see it in America. It is worth while coming 
 across the sea in order to feel one's heart warm towards his 
 own country ; and I feel it all the more because it is plain to 
 be seen that a great many of the Englishmen whom I meet 
 here dislike us, whatever they may pretend to the contrary. 
 
 "On the morning when I left America, Mr. W. M. 
 requested me to give him a letter of introduction to Pierce. 
 I promised to send him one, and accordingly enclose it. 
 When you deliver it, I enjoin it upon you to talk to the old 
 man like a father to his son, and tell him the absolute absur 
 dity of his going to Washington in pursuit of office, and the
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 265. 
 
 impossibility of his obtaining anything through a personal 
 interview with the President. I expressed all this to him in 
 the strongest terms at the time when he asked me for the 
 letter. It did no good, however ; neither will you do any good 
 by your remonstrances ; but as a matter of conscience, I be 
 seech you to let him have the naked truth. 
 
 " My family and myself have suffered very much from 
 the elements. There has not been what we should call a 
 fair day since our arrival, nor a single day when a fire would 
 not be agreeable. It is always threatening to rain, but sel 
 dom rains in good earnest. It never does rain, and it never 
 don't rain ; but you are pretty sure to get a sprinkling if you 
 go out without an umbrella. I long for one of our sunny 
 days, and one of our good hearty rains. Except by the fire 
 side I have not once been as warm as I should like to be ; 
 but the Englishmen call it a sultry day whenever the ther 
 mometer rises above 60. There has not been heat enough 
 in England this season to ripen an apple. 
 
 " My wife and the children often talk of you. Even the 
 baby has not forgotten you ; and I need not say that nothing 
 would give us so much pleasure as to see you here. It must 
 come by and by. 
 
 " When you write to me send your letter to the care of 
 Ticknor & Co., Boston, and they will get the despatch agent 
 to transmit it to me free of cost. Write often, and say as 
 much as you can about yourself, and as little as you please 
 about A., N., B., and all the rest of those wretches, of whom 
 my soul was weary to death before I made my escape. 
 "Your friend, ever, 
 
 "NATHL. HAWTHORNE."
 
 266 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 And now, having given this letter of a matter-of-fact, 
 sensible, perhaps a little hard, certainly manly and honest, 
 government officer, to an official and practical friend the 
 letter of a commanding and sensible man to another man 
 standing on the earth and engaged in the toil of life, I pre 
 sent the other side. 
 
 It is the supernatural element in Hawthorne which has 
 given him his high distinction. When he entered upon his 
 work as a writer, he left this personality which I have just 
 described entirely behind him. In this work, he allowed no 
 interference, he asked for no aid. He was shy of those whose 
 intellectual power and literary fame might seem to give them 
 a right to enter his sanctuary. In an assembly of illustrious 
 authors and thinkers, he floated, reserved and silent, around 
 the margin in the twilight of the room, and at last vanished 
 into the outer darkness; and when he was gone Mr. Emerson 
 said of him : " Hawthorne rides well his horse of the night." 
 The working of his mind was so sacred and mysterious to 
 him that he was impatient of any attempt at familiarity or 
 even intimacy with the divine power within him. His love 
 of personal solitude was a ruling passion, his intellectual soli 
 tude was an overpowering necessity. Barry Cornwall says : 
 41 A spider, my dear, the meanest thing that crawls, or lives, 
 has its mate, or fellow ; but a scholar has no mate or fellow " ; 
 and yet the isolation of the scholar is mere twilight when 
 compared with the solitude which settles around the great 
 creative genius. Hawthorne said himself that his work grew 
 in his brain as it went on, and was beyond his control or 
 direction, for nature was his guide. And so in great loneli 
 ness he toiled, conscious that no human power could guide 
 him, and that human sympathy was of no avail. I have often
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 267 
 
 thought that he understood his own greatness so imperfectly, 
 that he dared not expose the mystery to others, and that the 
 sacredness of his genius was to him like the sacredness of his 
 .love. That this sentiment, so natural and admirable, made 
 him somewhat unjust to his literary associates, there can be 
 but little doubt. For, while he applied to them the powerful 
 test of his own genius, before whose blaze many of them 
 withered, his retiring disposition kept him at a distance 
 almost fatal to any estimate of their true proportions. And, 
 even when he admired and respected the authors among 
 whom he moved, and was proud of the companionship into 
 which his genius had elevated him, he never got over his 
 natural sensitiveness with regard to the demand they might 
 make on him as a fellow-artist to open his creations to their 
 vision, and with regard to the test that they might apply to 
 him. For his sturdy manhood he sought intimates and com 
 panions not many, but enough to satisfy his natural longing 
 for a fellow ; for his genius he neither sought nor desired nor 
 -expected to find companionship. For his old official friend, 
 he had a tender affection ; for the strong and practical young 
 men with whom he had set forth in life, he had an abiding 
 love and attachment ; they satisfied the longings of the 
 weaker side of his existence. For the throne on which he sat 
 in the imperial realm of his own creative thought, he desired 
 no associate ; his seat there was for him alone, his reign there 
 was supreme. And, when he retired to that lonely room 
 which he had set apart at the height of the tower which 
 overtopped his humble abode in Concord, and, without book 
 or picture, alone with a solitary seat and desk, having none to 
 commune with except nature which stood before his windows 
 to cheer his heart, entered upon his work, his creation
 
 268 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 moved steadily and majestically on, as when the morning stars 
 sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. 
 
 And so, when Hawthorne died, the world felt that a great 
 light had gone out, and a most brilliant star had dropped 
 from the firmament of the heavens. The scholars and the 
 men of genius hastened to pay tribute to his greatness. 
 Freed at last from associations which many of the refined 
 and thoughtful could not and would not understand, he took 
 in an instant his recognized place among the few great 
 masters whom God had sent on earth to teach man the glory 
 of the place assigned him in creation. But it was the com 
 panions of his human side, who mourned for him as for a 
 brother, and who felt that, when he passed away, the strong 
 staff of their lives was broken. He died peacefully, under the 
 affectionate care of the least poetical and most purely practi 
 cal man of his time, and found with him his natural repose. 
 It was the scholars and poets, however, who gathered around 
 his grave and paid a tender tribute to those supernatural 
 powers which they could not approach while he was oa 
 earth.
 
 IN MEMORIAM-THOMAS MOORE: 
 
 * Poems written in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of the poet.

 
 ENCHANTER OF ERIN. 
 
 BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 NCHANTER of Erin, whose magic has bound us, 
 Thy wand for one moment we fondly would 
 
 claim, 
 !i> Entranced while it summons the phantoms 
 
 around us, 
 That blush into life at the sound of thy name. 
 
 The tell-tales of memory wake from their slumbers 
 I hear the old song with its tender refrain ; 
 
 What passion lies hid in those honey-voiced numbers! 
 What perfume of youth in each exquisite strain ! 
 
 The home of my childhood comes back as a vision 
 Hark! hark! a soft chord from its song-haunted room; 
 
 'Tis a morning of May, when the air is Elysian; 
 The syringa in bud, and the lilac in bloom. 
 
 We are clustered around the " Clementi " piano 
 
 There were six of us then, there are two of us now; 
 She is singing the girl with the silver soprano 
 
 How " The Lord of the Valley" was false to his vow: 
 
 271
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 " Let Erin remember," the echoes are calling; 
 
 Through the " Vale of Avoca " the waters are rolled ; 
 The " Exile " laments while the night-dews are falling, 
 The " Morning of Life " dawns again as of old. 
 
 But ah! those warm love-songs of fresh adolescence, 
 Around us such raptures celestial, they flung 
 
 That it seemed as if Paradise breathed its quintessence 
 Through the seraph-toned lips of the maiden that sung. 
 
 Long hushed are the chords that my boyhood enchanted, 
 As when the smooth wave by the angel was stirred, 
 
 Yet still with their music is memory haunted, 
 And oft in my dreams are their melodies heard. 
 
 I feel like the priest to his altar returning ; 
 
 The crowd that was kneeling no longer is there ; 
 The flame has died down, but the brands are still burning, 
 
 And sandal and cinnamon sweeten the air. 
 
 The veil for her bridal young Summer is weaving 
 In her azure-domed hall with its tapestried floor, 
 
 And Spring, the last tear-drops of May-dew is leaving 
 On the daisy of Burns and the Shamrock of Moore. 
 
 How like, how unlike, as we view them together, 
 The song of the minstrels whose record we scan ; 
 
 One fresh as the breeze blowing over the heather, 
 One sweet as the breath from an odalisque's fan.
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 273 
 
 Ah ! passion can glow 'mid a palace's splendor ; 
 
 The cage does not alter the song of the bird, 
 And the curtain of silk has known whispers as tender 
 
 As ever the blossoming hawthorn has heard. 
 
 No fear lest the step of the soft-slippered Graces 
 
 Should fright the young loves from their warm little nest, 
 
 For the heart of a queen, under jewels and laces, 
 
 Beats time with the pulse in the peasant-girl's breast. 
 
 Thrice welcome each gift of kind Nature's bestowing ! 
 
 Her fountain heeds little the goblet we hold ; 
 Alike, when its musical waters are flowing, 
 
 The shell from the sea-side, the chalice of gold. 
 
 The twins of the lyre to her voices had listened ; 
 
 Both laid their best gifts upon Liberty's shrine ; 
 For Coila's loved minstrel the holly-wreath glistened : 
 
 For Erin's, the rose and the myrtle entwine. 
 
 And while the fresh blossoms of summer are braided 
 For the sea-girdled, stream-silvered, lake-jewelled isle, 
 
 While her mantle of verdure is woven unfaded, 
 While Shannon and Liffey shall dimple and smile, 
 
 The land where the staff of Saint Patrick was planted, 
 Where the shamrock grows green from the cliffs to the 
 
 shore, 
 The land of fair maidens and heroes undaunted, 
 
 Shall wreathe her bright harp with the garlands of 
 Moore.
 
 2/4 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 THOMAS MOORE, 
 
 May 29, 1879. 
 BY RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 
 
 A LORD of lyric song was born 
 A hundred years ago to-day 
 
 Lord of that race that long has worn 
 The shamrock for the bay ! 
 
 He sung of -wine and sung of flowers, 
 Of woman's smile, and woman's tear; 
 
 Light songs that suit our lighter hours, 
 But oh ! how bright and dear. 
 
 Who will, may build the epic verse, 
 And, Atlas-like, its weight sustain ; 
 
 Or solemn tragedies, rehearse 
 In high heroic strain : 
 
 So be it ; but, when all is done, 
 The heart demands for happy days 
 
 The lyrics of Anacreon 
 And Sappho's tender lays. 
 
 Soft souls with these are satisfied ; 
 
 He loved them, but exacted more; 
 For this the lash that Horace plied, 
 
 The sword Harmodius wore !
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 2/5 
 
 Where art thou, Brian, and thy knights, 
 
 So dreaded by the flying Dane? 
 And thou, Con of the Hundred Fights? 
 
 Yo'ur spirits are not slain ! 
 
 Strike for us, as ye did of yore ; 
 
 Be with us ; we shall conquer still, 
 Though Irish kings are crowned no more 
 
 On Tara's holy hill ! 
 
 Perhaps he was not hero born, 
 
 Like those he sung Heaven only knows; 
 He had the rose without the thorn, 
 
 But he deserved the rose ! 
 
 For underneath its odorous light 
 
 His heart was warm, his soul was strong; 
 
 He kept his love of country bright, 
 And sung her sweetest song! 
 
 Therefore, her sons have gathered here 
 
 To honor him as few before, 
 And blazon on his hundredth year 
 
 The fame of Thomas Moore !
 
 276 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF " LALLA 
 ROOKH." 
 
 BY J. T. TROWBRIDGE. 
 
 WHEN we were farm-boys, years ago, 
 
 I dare not tell how many, 
 When, strange to say, the fairest day 
 
 Was often dark and rainy ; 
 
 No work, no school, no weeds to pull, 
 
 No picking up potatoes, 
 No copy-page to fill with blots, 
 
 With little o's or great O's ; 
 
 But jokes and stories in the barn 
 
 Made quiet fun and frolic; 
 Draughts, fox-and geese, and games like these, 
 
 Quite simple and bucolic ; 
 
 Naught else to do but just to braid 
 
 A lash, or sing and whittle, 
 Or go, perhaps, and set our traps, 
 
 If it " held up" a little; 
 
 On one of those fine days, for which 
 We boys were always wishing 
 
 Too wet to sow, or plant, or hoe, 
 Just right to go a-fishing
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 277 
 
 I found, not what I went to seek, 
 
 In the old farmhouse gable, 
 Nor line, nor hook, but just a book 
 
 That lay there on the table 
 
 Beside my sister's candlestick 
 
 (The wick burned to the socket) ; 
 A handy book to take to bed, 
 
 Or carry in one's pocket. 
 
 I tipped the dainty cover back, 
 
 With little thought of rinding 
 Anything half so bright within 
 
 The red morocco binding, 
 
 And let by chance my careless glance 
 
 Range over song and story ; 
 When from between the magic leaves 
 
 There streamed a sudden glory, 
 
 As from a store of sunlit gems 
 
 Pellucid and prismatic, 
 That edged with gleams the rough old beams, 
 
 And filled the raftered attic. 
 
 I stopped to read ; I took no heed 
 
 Of time or place, or whether 
 The window-pane was streaked with rain 
 
 Or bright with clearing weather.
 
 278 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 Of chore-time or of supper-time 
 I had no thought or feeling 
 
 If calves were bleating to be fed, 
 Or hungry pigs were squealing. 
 
 The tangled web of tale and rhyme, 
 Enraptured, I unravelled ;' 
 
 By caravan, through Hindostan, 
 Toward gay Cashmere I travelled. 
 
 Before the gate of Paradise 
 I pleaded with the Peri ; 
 And even of queer old Fadladeen 
 I somehow did not weary ; 
 
 Until a voice called out below : 
 " Come, boys ! the rain is over. 
 
 It's time to bring the cattle home. 
 The lambs^are in the clover." 
 
 My dream took flight ; but, day or night, 
 It came again, and lingered. 
 
 I kept the treasure in my coat, 
 And many a time I fingered 
 
 Its golden leaves among the sheaves 
 In the long harvest nooning, 
 
 Or in my room till fell the gloom 
 And low boughs let the moon in.
 
 J
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 279 
 
 About me beamed another world, 
 
 Refulgent, oriental 
 Life all aglow with poetry, 
 
 Or sweetly sentimental. 
 
 My hands were filled with common tasks, 
 
 My head with rare romances ; 
 My old straw hat was bursting out 
 
 With light locks and bright fancies. 
 
 In field or wood, my thoughts threw off 
 
 The old prosaic trammels ; 
 The sheep were grazing antelopes, 
 
 The cows a train of camels. 
 
 Under the shady apple-boughs 
 
 The book was my companion ; 
 And while I read the orchard spread 
 
 One mighty branching banyan. 
 
 To mango-trees or almond-groves 
 
 Were changed the plums and quinces. 
 / was the poet, Feramorz, 
 
 And had, of course, my Princess. 
 
 The well-curb was her canopied, 
 
 Rich palanquin ; at twilight 
 'Twas her pavilion overhead, 
 
 And not my garret skylight.
 
 280 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 Ah, Lalla Rookh ! O charmed book ! 
 
 First love, in manhood slighted ! 
 To-day we rarely turn the page 
 
 In which our youth delighted. 
 
 Moore stands upon our shelves to-day, 
 
 I fear a trifle du-sty ; 
 With Scott, beneath a cobweb wreath, 
 
 And Byron, somewhat musty. 
 
 But though his orient cloth-of-gold 
 
 Is hardly now the fashion, 
 His tender Melodies will live 
 
 While human hearts have passion. 
 
 The centuries roll ; but he has left, 
 
 Beside the ceaseless river, 
 Some flowers of rhyme untouched by Time, 
 
 And songs that sing for ever.
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 281 
 
 SHAMROCK AND LAUREL. 
 
 BY G. P. LATHROP. 
 
 DECK not his harp with the bay, 
 
 Nor chant him too formal a strain ; 
 But garland his memory with shamrock to-day, 
 
 Grown sweet in an Irish rain ! 
 
 Lift ye the wine cup, lift ! 
 
 The cup that he loved without sin ; 
 But pause ere you drain it, and think on the gift 
 
 Of his song, like a pearl, dropp'd therein. 
 
 Then smile where the festival glows ! 
 
 If remembrance brings tears, let them be 
 Those tears in his verse (like the dew on the rose) 
 
 That tremble and turn to glee. 
 
 There may have been grander men, 
 
 And patriot minds more austere ; 
 But a nation's music drew life from his pen, 
 
 The nation whose cause he held dear. 
 
 And the people are more than the poet ! 
 
 In their bosoms they cherish his song : 
 He may gather the melody's seed, and sow it, 
 
 But their hearts its bloom shall prolong. 
 
 Honor and love, then, shall crown 
 
 The singer who trusted his fame 
 To the breath of the people and now looks down 
 
 On an echoing world's acclaim,
 
 282 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 THE MEMORY OF MOORE, 
 
 BY JAMES T. FIELDS. 
 
 PLEDGE now to the minstrel whose undying numbers; 
 
 Still set the heart bounding wherever they rise 
 The laurel-crowned singer, whose fame never slumbers 
 
 Or wanders unknown beneath alien skies. 
 
 Can we ever forget them, the notes so enchanting, 
 That stole on our senses with youth's fairy chimes ; 
 
 Those magical sounds all our after years haunting, 
 That echo like watch-words from happier climes ? 
 
 Who taught us that music and song were both given 
 To kindle the soul to love, valor, and joy? 
 
 Whose melodies charmed us like strains out of heaven, 
 When a mother's dear voice sang them first to her boy.. 
 
 Who taught us to welcome that swelling emotion 
 Which soldiers and martyrs and patriots feel 
 
 That wave which rolls on like the floods of the ocean 
 When despots are forging their fetters of steel ? 
 
 Who taught us that chains for the mind are unholy 
 That speech should be safe as wild birds on the wing? 
 
 Who strove to uplift from their bondage the lowly, 
 And ope the dumb lips that were longing to sing? 
 
 Let freedom unroll her bright flag, for beneath it, 
 
 Proudly smiling, she points to her bard's cherished name. 
 
 Oh ! garland his tomb, let the shamrock enwreathe it, 
 And Erin for ever exult in his fame.
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 283 
 
 While we gather the leaf of three, 
 
 And pledge him with song and with wine 
 
 In a mood as gay as his own could be 
 Were his face on our revels to shine. 
 
 THOMAS MOORE -MAY 28, 1779-1879. 
 
 BY MRS. JULIA C. R. DORR. 
 
 HUSH ! O be ye silent, all ye birds of May ! 
 Cease the high, clear trilling of your roundelay ! 
 Be the merry minstrels mute in vale, on hill, 
 And in every tree-top let the song be still ! 
 
 O ye winds, breathe softly ! Let your voices die 
 In a low, faint whisper, sweet as love's first sigh; 
 O ye zephyrs, blowing over beds of flowers, 
 Be ye still as dews are in the starry hours ! 
 
 O ye laughing waters, leaping here and there, 
 Filling with sweet clamor all the summer air, 
 Can ye not be quiet? Hush, ye mountain streams. 
 Dancing to glad music from the world of dreams ! 
 
 And thou, mighty ocean, beating on the shore, 
 Bid thy angry billows stay their thunderous roar! 
 O ye waves, lapse softly in such slumberous calm 
 As ye know when circling isles of crested palm ! 
 
 Bells in tower and steeple, be ye mute to-day 
 As the bell-flowers rocking in the winds of May ! 
 Cease awhile, ye minstrels, though your notes be clear 
 As the strains that soar in heaven's high atmosphere !
 
 284 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 Earth, bid all thy children hearken, for a voice, 
 Sweeter than a seraph's, bids their hearts rejoice ; 
 Floating down the silence of a hundred years, 
 Lo ! its deathless music thrills our listening ears ! 
 
 'Tis the one our fathers loved so long ago, 
 The same songs it taught them warbling clear and low ; 
 " Hark, ye disconsolate ! " while the voice so pure 
 Sings " Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot cure ! " 
 
 Sings of love's wild rapture triumphing o'er pain, 
 Glorying in giving, counting loss but gain; 
 Sings the warrior's passion and the patriot's pride, 
 And the brave, unshrinking, who for glory died ; 
 
 Sings of Erin smiling, through a mist of tears, 
 Of her patient waiting all the weary years ; 
 Sings the pain of parting, and the joy divine, 
 When the bliss of meeting stirs the heart like wine ; 
 
 Sings of memories waking in " the stilly night " ; 
 Of the "young dreams" fading in the morning light ; 
 Of the "rose of summer" perishing too soon, 
 Of the early splendors waning ere the noon ! 
 
 O thou tender singer! All the air to-day 
 Trembles with the burden of thy " farewell " lay ; 
 Crowns and thrones may crumble, into darkness hurled, 
 Yet is song immortal; song shall rule the world ! 
 
 " THE MAPLES," May 22, 1879.
 
 MY FRIEND MOSES.
 
 MY FRIEND MOSES. 
 
 BY JOHN HABBERTON. 
 
 i^HILE the late civil war was in progress I 
 unwillingly gained an acquaintance who 
 finally became my dearest friend, and from 
 whom I parted with a regret which I can 
 not hope to outlive. His position was 
 far too lowly for his deserts, yet he 
 seemed always to be loyally content 
 therewith. Although a tried and approved hero, Congress 
 never tendered him a vote of thanks, nor was he ever 
 the recipient of a dress-sword, a gold-mounted revolver, or a 
 handsome set of accoutrements from his native town or State. 
 It was perhaps as well for all concerned that my friend 
 Moses had not been offered any of these evidences of the 
 occasional fallacy of the*.rule regarding the ingratitude of 
 republics, for so complete was his satisfaction with his cus 
 tomary surroundings that he would have regarded any con 
 ventional testimonial with good-natured wonder not unmixed 
 with contempt. The privilege to act, and the consciousness 
 of brave deeds dared and arduous toils accomplished, were to- 
 Moses the fulness of reward for all his successes. To camp 
 vices he was an utter stranger ; he never gambled, swore, drank, 
 or used tobacco in any form. About property rights his mind 
 
 was not always clear, but even here his transgressions were 
 
 287
 
 288 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 dictated by the purest sentiment of self-preservation ; he 
 appropriated the property of others only so far as was neces 
 sary to the maintenance of life ; and what in his individual 
 case was called theft was that operation which, when per 
 formed by a collective military body, was known as the justi 
 fiable act of " foraging." 
 
 Loyal, intelligent, honest, industrious, enduring, handsome, 
 and brave, there was yet one fatal bar to the promotion of 
 Moses he was a horse. Rumor hath it that members of a 
 family closely allied to that of Moses, but exhibiting more 
 generosity of ear, have been found within the uniforms of 
 brigadiers, and even under the stars of major-generals; but 
 the shortness and delicacy of Moses's organs of hearing made 
 it impossible for him to hope for promotion through family 
 influence. His nearest approach to preferment occurred when 
 I, his temporary owner, added one stripe to the two which 
 were already on my sleeve, and became, by virtue of my posi 
 tion as sergeant, the commander of a platoon of cavalry, with 
 the right to ride upon the flank of the column. Moses 
 seemed to grow a hand in stature when he realized that he 
 was not thereafter to have his dainty nose switched by the 
 tail of a file-leader, or his tender feet trodden on by a clumsy 
 follower. 
 
 Like many others of the blessings I have enjoyed, Moses 
 came not only unsought, but against my will. When the 
 company to which I belonged had been in service a scant 
 month, and before it possessed a horse or a fire-arm, the regi 
 ment was ordered out as a scouting party, and a hurried 
 issue of horses and arms was made. As at this time the war 
 had lasted but a year and a half, it was not wonderful that 
 no ammunition could be had for the revolvers. The quarter-
 
 MY FRIEND MOSES. 289 
 
 master had plenty of carbine cartridges, however, and the 
 only three members of the company who had ever used loose 
 ammunition in revolvers were detailed to break up the cart 
 ridges, remould the bullets, and charge the hundred pistols. 
 I was one of the three. Between reluctant machinery in the 
 weapons, and the trimming of some bullets which a warped 
 mould left misshapen, the task lasted from the tattoo of one 
 night until an hour or two after the reveille of the following 
 morning. When, with aching eyes, I sought the stables, the 
 wonders oi' which I had heard of so many times since the 
 company had been aroused, the stable-orderly led me to a 
 stall, pointed to its occupant, and remarked, " That's your 
 hoss." 
 
 The animal, an angular, sorry-looking beast, laid his ears 
 upon his neck and shot forth his heels, perhaps by way of 
 introduction. 
 
 " I won't ride such a brute ! " I roared, retreating upon 
 the orderly's feet in my anxiety to escape the animal's flying 
 hoofs. 
 
 "Won't, eh ?" snarled the official, mumbling over some 
 dreadful oaths as he squeezed his bruised toes. " Then 
 you'll have to walk, I guess, for he's the last hoss of the lot 
 all the rest is give out." 
 
 I had already been a soldier long enough to recognize at 
 sight the inevitable ; but the longer I gazed at my charger 
 the more dismally my spirits drooped. I had long thought 
 that the most desirable approach to danger would be to have 
 a horse shot under me ; the contemplation of this particular 
 animal confirmed me in my impression, and caused me to 
 hope for a speedy realization of my pet dream of glory. But 
 contemplation was out of order at seven o'clock of a morning
 
 2QO PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 on which "boots and saddles" was to sound at 7.30; so I 
 hastily attempted to become acquainted with my horse. The 
 stables were open at the rear, but closed in front, and roofed 
 with loose pine poles upon which brushwood had been 
 thrown. Attempting to enter the stall, I was warned by 
 the occupant's cars to desist, and my ejaculation in imperious 
 tones of ''Whoa, sir! stand over!" was treated with silent 
 contempt. There was but one hope left ; so, followed by the 
 jeers of the orderly, I climbed the frame of the stables, and 
 let myself down through the roof. Compelled at last to 
 grant me an interview, my new acquisition noticed that I held 
 in one hand a piece of an army biscuit, upon which I had 
 been breakfasting. This he sniffed at and appropriated, as 
 suming slowly the eye of a gratified connoisseur. I imme 
 diately extracted another biscuit from my pocket, and pre 
 sented it, a morsel at a time, following up as rapidly as 
 possible the impression I had made. I stroked his nose, 
 patted his withers, rubbed down his legs, and smoothed his 
 flanks. When, finally, I gently scratched the underpart of 
 his jaw (a service which no horse can perform for himself) he 
 expressed his confidence by rubbing his nose on the breast 
 of my jacket, and we parted, temporarily, with assurances of 
 mutual understanding. 
 
 When, however, " boots and saddles " finally sounded, and 
 I led my charger, duly caparisoned, to the company street, he 
 hinted pretty strongly his disapprobation of the whole pro 
 ceeding. " Prepare to mount mount ! " shouted the cap 
 tain. The instant I gained the saddle my horse shot from 
 the line, galloped to the stables, and dashed into his stall, his 
 master dropping over the animal's neck just in time to escape 
 impalement on the poles which constituted the low-hanging
 
 MY FRIEND MOSES. 29! 
 
 eaves. Tightening his curb-chain, I again led the animal 
 toward his company line, mounted him, and tried to ride into 
 my place. But the noble steed preferred to select his society 
 for himself. On the general parade-ground a group of 
 mounted officers sat chatting, and towards these my horse 
 moved sidewise, in spite of bit and spur. Edging his way 
 into the group, he manifested his satisfaction by a series of 
 vigorous kicks. Numerous, and of scriptural derivation, were 
 the remarks which these operations called forth, as by merci 
 less spurring I urged the brute back to his own troop. 
 Reaching the troop, he moved along its rear, kicking without 
 intermission, and finally took position on the extreme left, 
 where the captain was glad to leave him. 
 
 During our first expedition a Trinity (Dublin) man called 
 my attention to the brands on my horse's shoulder. Above 
 the U. S., which each army horse displayed, was the letter of 
 my own troop, M ; beneath the Government brand, and not 
 so distinct, was the letter A, which had been bestowed in 
 earlier days. " M U S A," quoth my Irish friend, 
 "that's the Greek for Moses." A bad pun or two came 
 from listeners, one to the effect that Moses was a profit to 
 the man who sold him and that he seemed at home in 
 rushes, such as that which he had made on the stables ; then 
 the troop decided, with my consent, that Moses was to be my 
 horse's name. 
 
 From that day to the sad one which witnessed his un 
 timely taking-off, Moses never failed to create entertainment 
 and demand admiration. Under good treatment, and with 
 the assistance of more oats than he was legally entitled to, 
 his form soon lost all lines but such as were graceful. When 
 occasion presented, he proved himself the fastest horse in the
 
 292 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 regiment. His watchful eye took in all details of camp and 
 road, while his sleepless heels commanded the respect of his 
 comrades. So skilled was he in the use of these natural 
 weapons that when a contraband gravely suggested that 
 Moses's early education had been superintended by a mule, 
 the troop unhesitatingly accepted the theory. So gleefully 
 and neatly were his kicks delivered, so regardless was Moses 
 of the object which they might strike, that my comrades, ex 
 cepting only those who had been kicked, regarded Moses's 
 efforts with that admiration which Englishmen are wont to 
 accord to skilful boxers. On our first battalion drill, as we 
 wheeled from column of platoons into line, the successful 
 completion of the movement was hailed by Moses with a 
 joyous kick, which broke the leg of the sergeant upon the 
 flank of the platoon at my right ; the sergeant, who was an 
 old soldier, remained in hospital a year and a half with his 
 fracture and its sequences, but upon his return to duty he 
 never spoke reproachfully to or of Moses. It mattered not 
 whose horse happened to be tied near him when the column 
 halted temporarily ; he injured a general's horse once, because 
 of a trifling disagreement about some oats belonging right 
 fully to the latter, and when, one lovely evening, the chaplain 
 tied his horse near mine and retired to the forest and his. 
 devotions, the holy man's charger was so effectually lamed 
 that his owner completed the expedition on the caisson of a 
 mountain ho-vitzer. During short halts, general and staff 
 officers, looking along a well-occupied rail fence for a tying 
 place, were often attracted by the vacant space which mem 
 bers of my own troop had learned to leave on each side of 
 Moses. Then it was that the weariest patriot in the regi 
 ment would cheerfully raise his head in anticipation of the
 
 MY FRIEND MOSES. 293 
 
 excitement which was sure to follow, and men. who lived not 
 for themselves alone would steal silently among the unwary, 
 rousing every one who slept, knowing well that the smother 
 ed curse would be mentally retracted the instant the sleeper 
 learned why he had been awakened. 
 
 Moses was a consistent materialist. Of any source of 
 strength, other than that whose organic basis was in his own 
 stomach he had no conception ; his operations in provisions 
 were therefore as guileless as the unlawful acts of a pagan. 
 This concession was not always made as cheerfully as it 
 should have been by those whom Moses despoiled of their 
 property. He would quietly gnaw a hole in the grain-bag 
 upon the saddle of some horse near him, and do it with 
 such intelligence that only such oats as he himself removed 
 would be lost. No one knew better than he the way of a 
 : haversack ; could he find one of these carry-alls at a saddle 
 bow or upon a tree, he would open it with his teeth, and ex 
 tract such vegetable diet as it contained, not excepting coffee 
 and sugar. The familiarity born of true friendship was the 
 apparent cause of my being occasionally relieved of three 
 days' rations by Moses, who would deftly examine my haver 
 sack as I stood before him in that obliviousness which comes 
 of interested conversation. Occasionally I wounded his feel 
 ings by rebuking him for his thoughtlessness, but when one 
 day, Moses, with penitent countenance, offered back to me, 
 with his teeth, the much-chewed bag which had held my 
 coffee and sugar, I vowed that I would thereafter forestall by 
 watchfulness the necessity for reproof. 
 
 Like most beings who are successful in appropriating the 
 property of others, Moses was grandly generous when occa 
 sion demanded. In a large cavalry camp, permanently lo-
 
 294 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 cated, there are generally a few horses which are hopelessly 
 worthless, and only await the formality of survey to gain 
 admittance to the eternal shades by the way carefully marked 
 out in the Army Regulations. These poor animals are fre 
 quently turned loose, and compelled to find material for their 
 own sustenance, while the rations drawn for them are distri 
 buted among serviceable horses. On a cold winter morning, 
 one of these poor veterans who had been denied admissioa 
 everywhere else timidly approached Moses's stall. The alert 
 ears pointed warningly, and an uplifting of the terrible heels 
 seemed imminent, when Moses, who had looked around at 
 the intruder, suddenly forbore all hostile demonstrations ; he 
 signified his sympathy, in some manner known only to horses, 
 so promptly and unmistakably that a moment later the way 
 farer was eating the oats which I had shortly before deposited 
 for Moses, while the benefactor, first passing his nose gently 
 along the stranger's neck, licked his shoulder, which was as 
 near an approach to the human pat on the back as could be 
 expected of a horse. Never before or afterward did I detect 
 Moses in the act of going hungry for sweet charity's sake, 
 but in subsequent days I never ceased to suspect him of 
 gentle deeds, and I scorned to discuss the question with that 
 wretched clique of philosophers who demanded proof in sup 
 port of every moral theory. 
 
 When I was upon the back of Moses I could easily divine 
 the origin of the myth of the centaur. My own sentiment 
 seemed always to communicate itself to my horse ; after we 
 had passed the first week of our acquaintanceship, I was 
 never conscious of any effort to impart my will to Moses. So 
 long as my hand touched the bridle-rein, he knew my every 
 mood, and even when the rein dropped he would not mani-
 
 MY FRIEND MOSES. 295 
 
 fest serious doubt. Never was I startled but Moses's great 
 heart began to thump violently under the saddle, the distur 
 bance quieting only when my own mind became reassured. 
 In like manner, Moses's feelings were quickly impressed upon 
 his rider. It was impossible for me to feel despondent when 
 Moses was cheerful ; good spirits always increased his dignity 
 and grace, so that even out of shame I would reform my own 
 spirits until they corresponded with his. Occasionally he 
 would discover the superiority of his own intelligence, and 
 then, instead of displaying the arrogance which is natural to 
 beings of low birth and defective breeding, he would be 
 simply firm and insist upon his supremacy. On the darkest 
 night I ever knew my regiment was in a strange neighbor 
 hood in Virginia, endeavoring to effect a surprise, but neither 
 duty nor danger deterred me from dropping asleep in my 
 saddle. I must have guided Moses unconsciously out of the 
 road and halted him, for when I awoke everything about us 
 was still. Our situation was unenviable, for before I had 
 fallen asleep we were nearer Richmond than our own camp 
 (at Williamsburg). Trying to find the road, an- occasional 
 encounter between a tree and one of my knees showed me 
 that we were in a forest, and the evidence became cumulative 
 too rapidly to let me imagine that 1 had succeeded. At 
 length I dropped the rein, despairing of finding the road 
 before day-break, but no sooner had I abandoned the search 
 than Moses took command ; he threaded his way among the 
 trees, found the road (which was excellent), and at once took 
 a gait which I knew without ocular demonstration to be 
 unusual. So much time was consumed on this solitary ride 
 that I determined that Moses must be returning to camp, 
 and I endeavored to check his speed, lest I might alarm the
 
 296 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 pickets and be favored with a shot for not having the coun 
 tersign. But for once Moses was refractory; lie rightly 
 objected to divided responsibility in a case where it was evi 
 dent that all the positive convictions were on one side. 
 Gloomy forebodings of a trial by court-martial for abandon 
 ment of duty while in the face of the enemy were suddenly 
 arrested by a cry of " Halt ! Who comes there?" I pulled 
 desperately at the bridle and shouted " Friend ! " but Moses 
 for the first time in our mutual career disregarded a summons 
 which he understood as well as I did ; he dashed furiously 
 along, and I heard a familiar voice exclaiming, " Look out, 
 boys ! It's H on that infernal kickin' plug of his !" Then 
 I knew we were passing our own rear-guard ; a moment later, 
 though I could not discern even a shadow, the jubilant kicks 
 which Moses launched, and the vigorous oaths which they 
 elicited, showed me that I was again in my rightful position 
 on the flank of iny own troop. 
 
 On another occasion, Moses displayed his intelligence in a 
 manner more nearly human. He and I had been sent from 
 the front to a post twenty miles away, to pilot an infantry 
 regiment to the general rendezvous ; we had, therefore, 
 endured forty miles of extra duty between dusk and day 
 light. Utterly exhausted, I threw myself on the ground in 
 an old corn-fie-ld where my company was in bivouac, and with 
 Moses's bridle over my arm, and a corn-hill for a pillow, I 
 dropped asleep. I was finally aroused by some one raising 
 my feet alternately and then dropping them. My capabilities 
 as a sound sleeper had made me the subject of many a similar 
 trick, but that any one could mistreat me on this particular 
 morning seemed maliciously cruel. Feigning sleep, I slowly 
 moved my hands over the ground in search of a clod with
 
 MY FRIEND MOSES. 297 
 
 which to punish my tormentor; finding this, I sprang up 
 hastily, to find that Moses was the offender, and that he was 
 about to repeat the operation. An alarm had been sounded, 
 the company was mounted and ready to go into action, and 
 Moses had taken upon himself the responsibility of waking 
 me, the whole troop smiling approval and greeting his success 
 with three hearty cheers, to which he responded by some 
 veritable horse-play. 
 
 Like all other beings of fine organization, Moses held 
 death in utter horror. His first encounter with the destroyer 
 nearly deprived him of my companionship, for at the sight of 
 a dead horse he shied so violently that I nearly lost my seat. 
 Then he approached the body ; wistfully and wonderingly he 
 looked it over with solemn earnestness, and then he turned 
 his head and looked enquiringly at me, his great eyes taking 
 a deep violet hue, and seeming to melt. I did all that I 
 could to comfort him, but that which was a mystery to me I 
 could not hope to explain to Moses, so for the remainder of 
 the day he was subdued and pensive of mien. 
 
 I was one of three men who alone, out of the hundred re 
 cruited for my company, were politically in sympathy with 
 the party in power ; when, therefore, in the autumn of 1863, 
 the Government began to raise colored troops and officer 
 them from the rank and file of the volunteers, my compa 
 triots were untiring in their suggestions that I should join 
 myself to individuals who, by half of my company, were 
 styled my " dharlin' naygurs." I was " passed " by the Ex 
 amining Board which sat in Washington, but when I learned 
 that no cavalry appointments were to be made, my heart 
 sank within me. For what was to become of Moses? I had 
 longed for a cavalry appointment, in which case I hoped,
 
 298 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 with the connivance of my old captain, to convey Moses to 
 the department quartermaster, from whom I might purchase 
 him at the Government valuation. Hope came from an un 
 expected source, however ; the department commander, who 
 was a favorite of the Administration, was organizing cavalry 
 regiments from the contrabands within his*line, and he offered 
 me an appointment. With this in my pocket, in the same 
 envelope with an order from Mr. Stanton to report for duty 
 to the commandant of an infantry regiment organizing in 
 New York, I set out one morning for department headqu^r- 
 ters, forty miles away. During a preliminary ride of ten 
 miles, on the back of Moses, my mind was so distressed by 
 conflicting emotions that I had no heart for rejoicing over the 
 certainty of promotion from the ranks. For a cavalry ser 
 geant to accept any infantry position which would compel 
 him to march on foot seemed wilful degradation ; on the 
 other hand, my family was in New York, and not even the 
 pride of a trooper could stifle natural affection. I finally 
 grew reasonably cheerful, under the hope that, on reporting 
 for duty at department headquarters, an earnest appeal might 
 secure me a short furlough, in which case I could visit my 
 family, roll my infantry appointment into cigar-lighters, and 
 hurry back to Moses and duty. I did not communicate my 
 plans; even could I have been sure of making him under 
 stand them, I trembled at the thought of the jealousy which 
 might be his when he learned that he was not alone in my 
 regard, and I dreaded to wound his pride by the suggestion 
 that he could be bought at the price of an ordinary horse. 
 But Moses seemed instinctively to gain a knowledge of the 
 whole matter; he exercised that prophetic faculty which is 
 peculiar to beings of exalted ideals and pure lives. Many
 
 MY FRIEND MOSES. 299 
 
 times, in the course of this short ride, he turned his head sud 
 denly to look at me ; when, finally, I dismounted, and, deter 
 mined not even to imagine a final good-by, spoke cheerily to 
 him as I handed his halter to the man who was to lead him 
 back to camp, Moses cast upon me a look of sorrow not e'n- 
 tirely unmixed with reproach. This was too much. I threw 
 my arms about his neck, <3rew his head down, and told him 
 the whole story. For a moment he seemed somewhat to 
 doubt the sincerity of my devotion, but at length he rubbed 
 his nose in my bosom, and I felt that confidence between us 
 was fully restored. To be prepared against the worst, I took 
 -a generous strand from his wavy mane and hid it in my 
 breast-pocket, offering in return a piece of bread, which I 
 rejoiced to think would become a part of Moses's very life. 
 He intently watched my embarkation by steamer, and as the 
 boat left her pier and I hurried aft and shouted " Good-by, 
 Mose ! " the faithful fellow stopped suddenly on his home 
 ward journey, and took that observing pose which is above 
 all others intelligent. I never doubted that his eyes discov 
 ered the friend for whom they were seeking, for the royal 
 switch which he gave with his tail was not prompted by any 
 external irritation. 
 
 At department headquarters I learned that the command 
 ant was absent, and the New York steamer was just ready to 
 depart ; then it was that the fates strove successfully for my 
 relatives and against Moses. When it became known in my 
 old camp that the rider of Moses had departed, nine out of 
 ten of the regimental officers and privates wanted the horse ; 
 my captain, however, who was the sole legal arbiter of 
 Moses's fate, was a gentleman, and therefore able to sympa 
 thize with a bereaved horse! He consulted me and complied
 
 300 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 with my desire that my special two-footed friend should 
 thereafter act as chief companion to Moses ; as this soldier 
 had long been Moses's faithful admirer, without ever mani 
 festing a single sign of selfishness in his feelings, and had even; 
 stolen oats for Moses when I was sick, I felt that the arrange 
 ment would be consolatory and beneficial to my old charger, 
 though I never once believed that Moses would forget his, 
 first love. I demanded and received frequent bulletins of 
 Moses's health, and sent many affectionate messages to him, 
 but I never allowed my jealous feelings to disturb the peace- 
 for which I was unable to substitute anything better. 
 
 Like many another hero of the war, Moses was not al 
 lowed to meet a hero's death. A stupid boor (who after 
 wards became a deserter) one day felled a tree in such man 
 ner that it fell upon Moses and crushed him. An old friend 
 of mine, controlling an impulse to shoot the murderer, made 
 haste to put a merciful bullet into Moses's ear. No hole of 
 earth received his remains, for the forest, taking fire soon 
 after his death, afforded a funeral pyre of a magnitude some 
 what in keeping with the virtues of the dead hero. 
 
 Since parting from Moses I have formed acquaintanceship 
 with many estimable horses, whose mental and physical vir 
 tues I have never been reluctant to acknowledge ; I have, 
 passed many a pleasant hour in studying the faces and forms-, 
 of horses of fine family and faultless breeding ; but no other 
 horse has ever had the slightest success in attempts to step- 
 into that place in my heart which Moses vacated. The spur 
 which occasionally never with cause had touched Moses's 
 side is as dear to me as lady's glove ever was to lover, and no 
 treasured curl in America can inspire more tenderly mournful 
 reveries than does a braid of hair taken from the mane and,
 
 MY FRIEND MOSES. 
 
 301 
 
 tail of Moses. When I recall the friends of other days, 
 Moses is among the first of those who respond ; and some 
 times, when in dreams of the night I imagine myself to have 
 passed into that land for which even the worst doubters find 
 themselves often hoping, and am surrounded by a welcoming 
 group of dear old friends of every age and condition, among 
 and between them is sure to steal, first a sensitive nose, then 
 an honest brown face, two soft eyes, and a starred brow, over 
 which waves a lock of coal-black hair.
 
 THE LAST OF THE NARWHALE.
 
 THE LAST OF THE NARWHALE. 
 
 THE STORY OF AN ARCTIC NIP. 
 BY JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 
 
 Y, ay, I'll tell you, shipmates, 
 
 If you care to hear the tale, 
 How myself and the royal yard alone 
 Were left of the old Narwhale. 
 
 "A stouter ship was never launched 
 
 Of all the Clyde-built whalers ; 
 And forty years of a life at sea 
 
 Haven : t matched her crowd of sailors. 
 Picked men they were, all young and strong, 
 
 And used to the wildest seas, 
 From Donegal and the Scottish coast, 
 
 And the rugged Hebrides. 
 Such men as women cling to, mates, 
 
 Like ivy round their lives ; 
 And the day we sailed, the quays were lined 
 
 With weeping mothers and wives. 
 They cried and prayed, and we gave 'em a cheer, 
 
 In the thoughtless way o' men ; 
 God help them, shipmates thirty years 
 
 They've waited and prayed since then !
 
 3.06 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 ".We sailed to the North, and I mind it well 
 
 The pity we felt, and pride 
 When we sighted the cliffs of Labrador 
 
 From the sea where Hudson died. 
 We talked of ships that never came back ; 
 
 And when the great floes passed, 
 Like ghosts in the night, each moonlit peak 
 
 Like a great war-frigate's mast, 
 'T was said that a ship was frozen up 
 
 In the iceberg's awful breast ; 
 The clear ice holding the sailor's face 
 
 As he lay in his mortal rest. 
 And I've thought since then, when the ships came home 
 
 That sailed for the Franklin band, 
 A mistake was made in the reckoning 
 
 That looked for the crews on land. 
 ' They're floating still,' I've said to myself, 
 
 ' And Sir John has found the goal ; 
 The Erebus and the Terror, mates, 
 
 Are icebergs up at the pole ! ' 
 
 " We sailed due north, to Baffin's Bay, 
 
 And cruised through weeks of light, 
 T was always day, and we slept by the bell, 
 
 And longed for the dear old night, 
 And the blessed darkness left behind, 
 
 Like a curtain round the bed ; 
 But a month dragged on like an afternoon 
 
 With the wheeling sun o'erhead.
 
 THE LAST OF THE NARWHALE. 307 
 
 We found the whales were farther still, 
 
 The farther north we sailed ; 
 Along the Greenland glacier coast, 
 
 The boldest might have quailed, 
 Such Shapes did keep us company ; 
 
 No sail in all that sea ; 
 But thick as ships in Mersey's tide 
 
 The bergs moved awfully 
 Within the current's northward stream ; 
 
 But, ere the Jong day's close, 
 We found the whales and filled the ship 
 
 Amid the friendly floes. 
 
 " Then came a rest ; the day was blown 
 
 Like a cloud before the night; 
 In the south the sun went redly down 
 
 In the north rose another light. 
 Neither sun nor moon, but a shooting dawn. 
 
 That silvered our lonely way; . 
 It seemed we sailed in a belt of gloom, 
 
 Upon either side a day. 
 The north wind smote the sea to death ; 
 
 The pack-ice closed us round 
 The Narwhale stood in the level fields 
 
 As fast as a ship aground. 
 A weary time it was to wait, 
 
 And to wish for spring to come, 
 With the pleasant breeze and the blessed sun. 
 
 To open the way toward home.
 
 308 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 " Spring came at last, and the ice-fields groaned 
 
 Like living things in pain ; 
 They moaned and swayed, then rent amain, 
 
 And the Nanvhale sailed again. 
 With joy the dripping sails were loosed, 
 
 And round the vessel swung ; 
 To cheer the crew, full south she drew, 
 
 The shattered floes among. 
 We had no books in those old days 
 
 To carry the friendly faces ; 
 But I think the wives and lasses then 
 
 Were held in better places. 
 The face of sweetheart and wife to-day 
 
 Is locked in the sailor's chest ; 
 But aloft on the yard, with the thought of home, 
 
 The face in the heart was best. 
 Well, well God knows, mates, when and where 
 
 To take the things he gave ; 
 We steered for home but the chart was his, 
 
 And the port ahead the grave. 
 
 "' We cleared the floes ; through an open sea 
 
 The Narvvhale south'ard sailed, 
 Till a day came round when the white fog rose, 
 
 And the wind astern had failed. 
 In front of the Greenland glacier line 
 
 And close to its base were we ; 
 Through the misty pall we could see the wall 
 
 That beetled above the sea.
 
 THE LAST OF THE NARWHALE. 309 
 
 A fear like the fog crept over our hearts 
 
 As were heard the hollow roar 
 Of the deep sea thrashing the cliffs of ice 
 
 For leagues along the shore. 
 
 " The years have come and the years have gone, 
 
 But it never wears away 
 The sense I have of the sights and sounds 
 
 That marked that woful day. 
 Flung here and there at the ocean's will, 
 
 As it flung the broken floe 
 What strength had we 'gainst the tiger sea 
 
 That sports with a sailor's woe ? 
 The lifeless berg and the lifeful ship 
 
 Were the same to the sullen wave, 
 As it swept them far from ridge to ridge, 
 
 Till at last the Narwhale dravc 
 With a crashing rail on the glacier wall, 
 
 As sheer as the vessel's mast 
 A crashing rail and a shivered yard ; 
 
 But the worst, we thought, was past. 
 The brave lads sprang to the fending work, 
 
 And the skipper's voice rang hard : 
 ' Aloft there, one with a ready knife 
 
 Cut loose that royal yard ! ' 
 I sprang to the rigging, young I was, 
 
 And proud to be first to dare ; 
 The yard swung free, and I turned to gaze 
 Toward the open sea, o'er the field of haze,
 
 310 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 And my heart grew cold, as if frozen through, 
 At the moving Shape that met my view 
 O Christ ! what a sight was there ! 
 
 " Above the fog, as I hugged the yard, 
 
 I saw that an iceberg lay 
 A berg like a mountain, closing fast 
 
 Not 'a cable's length away! 
 I could not see through the sheet of mist 
 
 That covered all below, 
 But I heard their cheery voices still. 
 
 And I screamed to let them know. 
 The cry went down, and the skipper hailed, 
 
 But before the word could come 
 It died in his throat, and I knew they saw 
 
 The shape of the closing Doom ! 
 
 " No sound. but that but the hail that died 
 
 Came up through the mist to me ; 
 Thank God, it covered the ship like a veil, 
 
 And I was not forced to see ; 
 But I heard it, mates : oh ! I heard the rush 
 
 And the timbers rend and rive, 
 As the yard I clung to swayed and fell. 
 
 I lay on the ice alive ! 
 Alive ! O Lord of Mercy ! ship and crew and sea were 
 
 gone ! 
 
 The hummocked ice and the broken yard, 
 And a kneeling man alone !
 
 THE LAST OF THE NARWHALE. 311 
 
 A kneeling man on a frozen hill, 
 
 The sounds of life in the air 
 All death and ice and a minute before 
 
 The sea and ship were there .' 
 I could not think they were dead and gone. 
 
 And I listened for a sound or word ; 
 But the deep sea roar on the desolate shore 
 
 Was the only sound I heard. 
 'O mates ! I had no heart to thank 
 
 The Lord for the life he gave ; 
 I spread my arms on the ice and cried 
 
 Aloud on my shipmates' grave. 
 The brave strong lads, with their strength all vain, 
 
 I called them name by name ; 
 And it seemed to me from the dying hearts 
 
 A message upward came 
 Ay, mates, a message, up through the ice 
 
 From every sailor's breast : 
 'Go tell our motJicrs and our wives at home 
 
 To pray for us here at rest. ' 
 
 ' Yes, .that's what it means ; 'tis a little word ; 
 
 But, mates, the strongest ship 
 That ever was built is a baby's toy 
 When it comes to an Arctic Nip."
 
 THE GENIUS OF COMMON SENSE. 
 
 3 r 3
 
 THE GENIUS OF COMMON SENSE. 
 
 T never passes for genius. It is always 
 underrated, it is continually overlooked 
 and forgotten, even by the very peo 
 ple who are most dependent upon it. 
 It is always so quiet, this genius, so 
 different from the poetic genius, from 
 the artistic genius, from the commer 
 cial or diplomatic genius, in fact, from everything which is 
 in the habit of calling itself or being called genius. It is al 
 ways so modest, too, this genius. It never " contributes '* 
 (Heaven save the mark ! What a superfluous condescension 
 there doth seem to be in that phrase !) to the periodical 
 literature of its day. It never paints anything, invents any 
 thing, achieves anything of which the world hears. It very 
 rarely even says anything which has a wise or witty sound. 
 Diners-out do not find a use for it. Shows and spectacles of 
 all kinds scorn and ignore it. On the surface of life, at great 
 festivals and famous gatherings, its na\ne is never counted. 
 From all the fine presentations which our conceited humanity 
 is forever making of itself this humble genius stays away, like 
 a very Cinderella, washing pots and kettles in the ashes at 
 home, and not dreaming that it shall ever see the prince; not 
 even knowing, in fact, that there is any prince to be seen. 
 For, if this dear genius of common sense has any one dis 
 tinguishing trait, it is a lack of curiosity as to all that part of 
 
 3'S
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 the world which lies outside its own modest circle of affec 
 tions and duties. It is too busy to attend to rumors; too 
 satisfied in its industry to long for a larger sphere. It has 
 much more to do than anybody supposes. If it is a woman, 
 the chances are that she is what the world calls " plain," and 
 that she will live and die without any man seeking her for his 
 wife so little is there of fascination about this ood eenius 
 
 o o 
 
 of common sense. But when she dies there will be countless 
 places to miss her ; many good causes that will have lost their 
 most efficient helper ; homes that have lost the unsuspected 
 lever which lightened every burden ; and lives that have lost 
 the staff on which, without knowing it, they have been always 
 leaning. 
 
 If it is a man, the chances are that he will lead a lonely 
 life, rather than a social one. Common sense is always busy. 
 Common sense is honest, uncompromising, and clear-sighted. 
 Common sense has no patience with shams, and has an in 
 stinctive distrust of much of what is called sentiment. 
 Hence it is clear that the common-sense genius will be left 
 much alone. His kind are few and far between, and those 
 not of his kind have as little fellowship with him as he has 
 with them. He is not apt to marry till he has begun to grow 
 old. He makes a good husband, loyal and kind ; a good 
 father, wise and firm ; but he is almost sure to be underrated, 
 even in the bosom of his own family, so little is there of 
 demonstrativeness or self-assertion in the true genius of com 
 mon sense. But when he dies the space that he has filled is 
 for the first time measured measured by the void it is im 
 possible to supply. He it is who has been an efficient centre 
 of influence in the community; a mainstay of wisdom and 
 counsel ; an unconscious guaranty and security for men's con-
 
 THE GENIUS OF COMMON SENSE. 317 
 
 fidence in enterprises ; a help and a blessing, over whose lack 
 friends and strangers mourn alike in an astonished sense of 
 loss. 
 
 This is the thing and this is the sort of character by 
 whose strength nations last, communities prosper, and indi 
 viduals succeed. Exceptional powers in exceptional direc 
 tions produce startling results. Commanders conquer, states 
 men devise, poets and painters create, fame dowers them all, 
 and life goes on with great show of their progress and 
 blazonry of their successes ; but it was the ten righteous men 
 that saved the city, after all saved it because they were 
 righteous, not because they were great. The genius of com 
 mon sense saves the world, after all; saves it because there is 
 no safety, no true principle of harmony in anything else or 
 anything less. 
 
 In the olden time this genius of common sense was better 
 esteemed than it is now. Men who had this frame of mind 
 and habit of behavior were called philosophers, and the whole 
 world listened to their sayings. Socrates and Plato and 
 Epictetus, their maxims are simply the first principles of 
 common sense applied to human affairs as true to-day as 
 three thousand years ago ; true once, true for ever. 
 
 I said that this humble genius of common sense stayed 
 away from the surface presentations and fine shows of life, 
 like a very Cinderella left at home to wash pots and kettles 
 in the ashes. But it has an all-powerful godmother, named 
 Time. Its triumph and exaltation are certain to come at 
 last. Not, as in the old fairy tale, with a sudden outburst of 
 the splendor and pomp of a night; but slowly and surely, as 
 come all things which are good ; quietly and unostentatiously, 
 as come all things which are true.
 
 318 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 In one more respect is this good genius of common sense 
 greater than any other sort of genius. It cannot be acquired. 
 Hard-working and persevering talent can lift itself nearly if 
 not quite to the level of genius in any of its realms; but a 
 lifetime of effort would be thrown away in trying to win com 
 mon sense, if one were born without it. The old Scotchman 
 was as right as he was droll when he said : 
 
 " There are three things a man needs : gude health, 
 religion, and gude sense. If he can hae but one o' these, let 
 it be gude sense ; for God can gie him health, and God can 
 gie him grace, but. naebody can gie him common sense."
 
 THE LIGHT OF AGES.
 
 THE LIGHT OF AGES." 
 
 BY JOHN G. WilITTIR. 
 
 f/ET there be light .' " God spake of oid, 
 And over Chaos, dark and cold, 
 And through the dead and formless frame 
 Of Nature, life and order came. 
 
 Faint was the light at first that shone 
 On giant fern and mastodon, 
 On half- formed plant and beast of prey, 
 And man as rude and wild as they. 
 
 Age after age, like waves, o'erran 
 The earth, uplifting brute and man ; 
 And rnind, at length, in symbols dark, 
 Its meanings traced en stone and bark. 
 
 On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought roll, 
 On plastic clay and leathern scroll, 
 Man wrote his thought : the ages passed, 
 When lo ! the Press was found at last. 
 
 Then dead souls woke ; the thoughts of men 
 Whose bones were dust, revived again : 
 The cloister's silence found a tongue, 
 Old prophets spake, old poets sung. 
 
 * Written for the dedication of the Haverhill (Mass.) Library, November n, 1875. 
 
 321
 
 322 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 And here, to-day, the dead look down, 
 And kings of mind again we crown ; 
 We hear the sage's word ; we trace 
 The footprints of our human race. 
 
 Here Greek and Roman find themselves 
 Alive along these crowded shelves ; 
 And Shakspere treads again his stage, 
 And Chaucer paints anew his age. 
 
 \s if some Pantheon's marbles broke 
 Their stony trance, and lived and spoke s 
 Life thrills around the alcoved hall, 
 The lords of thought awake our call !
 
 ON GUARD.
 
 \ 1? 
 
 &',M lii f . I V Vn >-
 
 ON GUARD. 
 
 BY BERTHOLD AUERBACH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 'HEN are the carriages ordered?" was 
 asked of the servant in court-dress, 
 who opened the carriage-door. 
 " At one o'clock," was the answer. 
 In the meanwhile, the ladies, wrapped 
 in cloaks, with their flower-decked heads 
 uncovered, or with a light veil thrown over, went with satin- 
 shod little feet over the carpet that was spread far out into the 
 street. 
 
 The governor of the castle, General von Kronwaechter, gave 
 this evening the first ball ;' and the first ball of the season has 
 ever something fresh and enlivening, like the first spring : there 
 were new faces, and fresh toilettes too. 
 
 The facade of the solemn, large government building was 
 brightly illuminated, on the street were burning torches, two 
 policemen kept the staring crowd apart, so that the guests could 
 freely enter the open door, before which two grenadiers kept 
 guard, and ever, according to the rank of the arrivals, carried 
 
 or presented arms. 
 
 325
 
 326 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 Carriage after carriage rolled up ; many pedestrians also 
 appeared, almost exclusively in uniform. On the broad stair 
 case the young officers gave to their servants their cloaks and 
 ordered them at the appointed hour ; then they mounted the 
 wide, carpeted, flower-adorned stairs ; above, before the immense 
 mirrors, they took a last look at themselves, and then stepped 
 forward with erect bearing, carrying the helmet under the left 
 arm. The folding-doors opened, they entered. 
 
 In the first apartment, which on the right and left opened into 
 brilliantly-lighted rooms, stood the governor, a tall, stately 
 man, with short and thick gray hair, and a light beard. On his 
 breast glistened numerous high orders. He greeted his guests 
 most cordially. Each individual might have believed himself 
 especially invited, and himself especially, or above all, welcome. 
 Many a time it seemed as if the old gentleman was most 
 delighted at the happiness of welcoming at his house this or 
 that gentleman, or this or that lady. In the mean time, how 
 ever, there were discriminations, sometimes one hand only 
 was given, often was an offered one taken between both ; a sig 
 nificant glance, a quick nodding of the head had, meaning. The 
 usually stern nobleman was ever affable and in a happy mood 
 when he was entertaining company ; and this excessive friendli 
 ness was not throughout a mere appearance or illusion, for he 
 felt that he represented the highest person in the land, so it was. 
 his duty to be gracious. Moreover, he had, like many old 
 officers, a great resemblance to the reigning prince, and he in 
 creased this resemblance still more by copying the exact fashion 
 of the prince's beard. 
 
 Next to the governor stood his only daughter, Gabriele, and 
 she greeted, with as much grace as dignity, those who, to her 
 youthful eyes, appeared to be so deserving.
 
 ON GUARD. 327 
 
 Had the Greeks of ancient times known this soldier's daugh 
 ter, they would have made a statue like her; for she was ad 
 mirable in a way that is not easy to define. She was not only 
 dignified and graceful, but there was a certain security in her 
 expression and carriage a formed firmness which had, how 
 ever, something of smiling sociability and self-understanding 
 propriety, all of which seemed to ordinary citizens new and 
 peculiar. Evidently, these singularities were the results of 
 moving in a position which, like no other, required the display 
 of extreme intelligence with respect to the gradations of rank. 
 Gabriele had now, for three winters, dispensed the honors of 
 the house since her return from boarding-school. The little 
 blonde head, with fair hair, blue eyes, beautiful lips, and care 
 fully-chiselled features, rested on a most beautifully shaped neck 
 and shoulders. She wore no ornaments ; she was simply dressed 
 in white, with a crimson sash, and her figure was pliant and 
 delicate. 
 
 " Gracious lady, may I have the pleasure of dancing with 
 you ? " asked a young lieutenant, with brown hair and sparkling 
 brown eyes. 
 
 " Certainly. Will you put down your name? The cotillon, 
 if that suits you." 
 
 Only a single answering glance of the young man seemed to 
 reply, as if this dialogue had been previously arranged. He 
 wrote his name simply, " Hanenstein," for that he was first 
 lieutenant was known just as well as that he was Baron von 
 Hanenstein. 
 
 Hanenstein went back ; a beam of joy had passed over his 
 bright young countenance, but it soon again yielded to a medi 
 tative earnestness. He heard here and there said, as very much 
 to be regretted, that this would indeed for a long time be the
 
 328 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 last ball that would be graced by the governor's lovely daughter^ 
 for it was already announced that she would enter as court lady 
 with the reigning princess, whose first lady-in-waiting, Countess 
 Truben, was the sister of her dead mother. 
 
 The dancing began, the hall with the gayly-arrayed people 
 was beautiful to look at. It was an apartment of the good 
 renaissance time, with handsome stucco-work and a bright- 
 colored mythological fresco on the ceiling ; for the government 
 building was once a royal residence. 
 
 The band of musicians sat behind an ivy-covered lattice in an, 
 adjoining room ; one could not see how the musicians toiled,., 
 one only perceived the delightful dance-measure. 
 
 Hanenstein passed the recognized beauties, who were imme 
 diately surrounded by a swarm of suppliants, without further 
 trying his luck. He put the dance-programme in his breast 
 pocket he had, indeed, nothing more to mark on it. 
 
 He went into the saloons and remained, standing here and 
 there before a painting, a statuette, or another work of art. At 
 last he seated himself in the round hall, and read in an album 
 lying before him. 
 
 " Thus idle? " was said to him. 
 
 He quickly arose and saluted his major, while he explained 
 that he, this evening particularly, was not in a mood for 
 dancing. 
 
 " Oh, yes ; I can believe it," answered the major. " I have 
 also read it to-day in the newspaper. It is, moreover, painful,, 
 cruel ! He was certainly an incorrigible revolutionist, but with 
 it all he had, however, a certain nobility something distin 
 guished. Do you know whether he has parents or brothers and 
 sisters living? '' 
 
 " Only one sister ; but, so far as I know, she lives in France."'
 
 ON GUARD. 329 
 
 " He told you that himself? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " He would have gone to France? " 
 
 " He said nothing to me about it, and I never asked concern 
 ing things that he did not himself confide to me." 
 
 The major laid his hand on Hanenstein's shoulder, and said, 
 
 " It is not well, or it is rarely well, for one to overstep the 
 bounds to concern himself with the prisoners and enter into any 
 sort of relations with them. The officer on duty there is only 
 the supporter of the keepers of the prison. We have not to 
 think of what material is stored in the structure- whether 
 ammunition or living men. And now, come with me to the 
 smoking-room ; there is wine there." 
 
 The two went one story higher, and up there was quite another 
 life. In the billiard-room, where the game was being busily 
 played, sat groups, partly by the walls, and partly at round 
 tables. These were smoking, and the major led Hanenstein in 
 to seat him at a table, where several officers were already seated, 
 and among them the colonel of his regiment. 
 
 They spoke of promotions, of exchanges, of the new rifle 
 practice, and who should be ordered to it, and at intervals also 
 of love affairs. 
 
 An officer then exclaimed, 
 
 " Ah, Hanenstein ! You know, . surely, the Pole of whom 
 to-day's paper speaks. I remember that you once related of 
 him " 
 
 " The major is also acquainted with him." 
 
 " But it was you who delivered him over." urged the first, 
 again. 
 
 "Indeed!" cried the colonel. "How was it? Relate it, 
 and give all the particulars."
 
 330 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 Hanenstein began : 
 
 "You know that the man he was only one-and-twenty 
 years old had taken part in the revolution at the capital, and 
 on that account was condemned to imprisonment. He had an 
 extraordinary fine voice, but at first he sang only at night, for 
 as yet no light was allowed him. It was granted him after an 
 intercession ; whose, I don't know." 
 
 " Yes," assented the major, " I received the permission, and 
 then I came into relations with the prisoner. But relate farther, 
 I beg you." 
 
 " He had continued," Hanenstein resumed, " to study mili 
 tary construction ; and one day, when I was on guard, I got into 
 a conversation with him, and found a highly cultivated, enthusi 
 astic young man, whose ideas were unhappily perverted in es 
 sential points. I naturally very soon gave up the attempt to 
 convert him, for that was neither my office, nor was I capa 
 ble of it. He confessed to me often that he, in -his seclusion, 
 wanted to fit himself for a general ; for he was determined, if 
 that which he called freedom called him again, to place himself 
 at the head of the revolutionary host. I entreated him not to 
 speak of it, and he amiably begged to apologize. I supplied 
 him still with music, for which I had before asked permission. 
 He liked to read music in score. An instrument, for which he 
 had often petitioned, was not granted him ; still music, as com 
 mon, neutral ground, gave us many pleasant conversations and 
 debates, for he maintained that the Germans and Italians are 
 adapted to political life, because they are pre-eminently musical." 
 
 " Strange ! " cried the colonel ; " but, I pray you, tell . us 
 more. He interests me much." 
 
 Hanenstein went on : 
 
 " And there arose gradually in the course of these years, a
 
 ON GUARD. 331 
 
 friendly feeling between us, so that the young man assured me, 
 with overflowing expressions, how much he thanked me, and 
 promised to visit me as soon as he regained his freedom. I 
 answered nothing to that, but gave the order that when he sent 
 in his name, they should tell him I was not at home. The 
 young man at the beginning of the last six weeks made marks 
 on the wall, and every day rubbed one out; each of these 
 erased lines brought the point of time nearer to him when his 
 prison should open. I was on guard at the citadel, when the 
 young Pole, at eight o'clock, was to have his release. I was 
 awakened at five o'clock in the morning ; the city director of 
 police was there, and with him two foreigners. He gave me an 
 order from the minister that I should deliver the young prisoner 
 to the two men. I did not know what it meant, but I must say 
 it was a bitter task, In the mean time, I led the two men into 
 the cell to him. When the Pole descried them, he called, with 
 a heart-piercing voice, ' These are my executioners, and you 
 must immediately deliver me from them. But you have noth 
 ing to do with it. Pardon me ! ' I left, and the two men led 
 the way, while two soldiers, on this side and on that, with loaded 
 weapons, led the prisoner between them. He did not look to 
 wards me again, and " 
 
 Hanenstein broke off and sighed deeply. He felt that he had 
 not controlled himself in a military way, at a ball, too, and 
 that the superior opposite would not forget it. He therefore 
 continued : 
 
 " The rest you have seen in to-day's, paper. As the young 
 man was brought over the Russian border he tried tx> flee, and 
 was bayoneted to death." - 
 
 " It is indeed a pity about him," added the major. *' He had, 
 as you said, a noble nature, in spite of "
 
 332 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 " Herr von Hanenstein," cried an ensign who entered in haste, 
 " Fraulein von Kronwaechter permits me to tell you that the 
 cotillon is beginning." 
 
 Hanenstein quickly arose, and went down to the salon. Hap 
 pily he was in time, although the first preparations were made. 
 
 " Why have you not danced for so long? " inquired Gabriele. 
 
 " I stopped so as to be so much the fresher now," returned 
 Hanenstein, recovering himself, and led the cotillon with Gabri 
 ele. It was evident that many playful and graceful figures had 
 been previously arranged between them. 
 
 Old ladies, who sat on sofas against the wall on a platform, 
 spoke with each other, and and all agreed that Hanenstein was 
 remarkably favored : he was, without doubt, of a good family, 
 but poor as a church mouse. Gabriele seemed to prefer him ; 
 but it would be laughable above all if he proposed to himself, 
 one day, to lead this child to his home, because the governor 
 permitted him to play duets with her. 
 
 One of the ladies, in whose strongly-marked countenance for 
 mer beauty and present love of power were unmistakable, said, 
 with a laugh that challenged further gossip, 
 
 " It will be very useful for Fraulein Gabriele to live a long 
 time at the court in order to learn self-discipline ; for it is very 
 dangerous for so young a child to have her own way without 
 contradiction in so large a house, and Gabriele has from nature 
 her own share of strength of will, which perhaps approaches 
 obstinacy." 
 
 No one answered her. The young people in the mean time 
 asked each other nothing of the future they seemed contented 
 in the present; but still, during a pause, Gabriele inquired, 
 
 " It seems to me there is this evening an indelible seriousness 
 in your face. Can you tell me what distresses you ? "
 
 ON GUARD. 
 
 "Not here not now! But thus much can I tell you, it 
 does not concern me personally." 
 
 " Now, then, endeavor to forget it." 
 
 The young man appeared to succeed in doing so. 
 
 The old gentlemen from the card-room and the smoking-room 
 had come here in order to look at the ingenious new figures, and 
 all agreed that this evening a galaxy of most exquisite beauties 
 was to be seen at the ball ; but one of the loveliest was 
 Gabriele. 
 
 Hanenstein had, as last dancer, the pleasure of leading 
 Gabriele to the table. After the last dance the tables in the 
 salon and the adjoining rooms were arranged as if by magic. 
 
 Hanenstein sat next to Gabriele. She excused herself after a 
 moment, and laid her large bouquet on her chair, saying, 
 
 " I must now, as hostess, see if everything is in order." 
 
 She went, and Hanenstein looked thoughtfully at the empty 
 place and at the large bouquet. Gabriele came back and 
 said, 
 
 " You have again the solemn look. Can you tell me what 
 afflicts you ? " 
 
 " It is not suitable for here. We are so gay that one cannot 
 believe there is anything mournful in the world ; and why should 
 we conjure it up here? Besides, I need all my energy. I must 
 go on guard at the citadel at six o'clock in the morning." 
 
 " Is that so hard? " 
 
 " Not that." 
 
 " Then something else torments you. Tell me at once. 
 Cannot I perhaps contribute something to the lessening of your 
 gloomy mood? If I can, relate it to me, I beg; if not, forget it 
 now, and tell it me another time." 
 
 " You cannot help me. I cannot tell you anything. But
 
 334 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 you are right. Away with all sorrow! Life is so beautiful. 
 Let us touch our glasses, to the wish that we may ever find life 
 as now." 
 
 The two clinked their glasses. The ball was at an end. One 
 said to another, while wrapping themselves in cloaks, that there 
 had seldom been a pleasanter evening, arid the thanks that were 
 spoken to the governor and his daughter were given in tones 
 of truthfulness. It created much amusement when Gabriele 
 once answered that she also felt there had seldom been so 
 pleasant an evening. 
 
 When Hanenstein took leave, there were no more words 
 exchanged between him and Gabriele. He only placed, as 
 he turned away, his hand on a lily-of-the-valley that was stuck 
 in his buttonhole. She had taken the same from her bouquet, 
 and given it to him. 
 
 On the street brother-officers called, 
 
 " Hanenstein, come along ! We are going to the club. Nor- 
 deck has lost three bottles of champagne by a bet. Come with 
 us ! " 
 
 Hanenstein excused himself. He was tired and must go on 
 guard in the morning. A few of his comrades still called after 
 him, 
 
 " We are coming to-morrow evening to you for a rubber of 
 whist. Prepare a bowl of punch."
 
 ON GUARD. 335 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 |T was a raw autumn morning, when Hanenstein 
 marched up the hill with his company, for the cita 
 del stood on high ground, in the middle of the city. 
 The surrounding wall and casemates concealed the 
 extent of the plateau and the buildings which were erected upon 
 it. A considerable number of prisoners were here confined : only 
 a few on account of duels, for these events occurred in the year 
 of 1850; most were imprisoned on account of political offences. 
 One overlooked from here the whole city, with its confusion of 
 houses, the before-mentioned fortifications, and the surrounding 
 villages beyond. 
 
 Hanenstein relieved the guard, took the list of prisoners, and 
 gazed long at one name that was cancelled, but, throwing his 
 head back, he said to himself, 
 
 "The major is right: we have nothing to ask about the 
 material, whether ammunition or men's lives are in question." 
 
 Hanenstein was weary, and after he had visited the guard 
 he stretched himself on the bed of boards. He ordered the 
 sergeant that, if he slept, they should not awaken him the 
 sergeant might see to everything himself. 
 
 But hardly had he laid himself down than he was roused. 
 The keeper of the prison stood before him and begged his 
 assistance. 
 
 " What is the matter? Has a prisoner broken loose? " 
 
 " Oh, no. The only trouble is, I do not know how to manage, 
 and have promised the prisoner to bring you to him." 
 
 " I have nothing to do with him."
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 " That I have also said, but the man will do himself an 
 injury if we do not quiet him, and his case is so sad." 
 
 "Who is he?" 
 
 " Number Five." 
 
 Hanenstein looked. The name was that of a lawyer's clerk 
 from one of the adjoining villages. Hanenstein dressed himself 
 quickly, and went to the man's cell. 
 
 " Herr Lieutenant," cried a man with a gray beard and severe 
 expression, " I shall become crazy, or I shall die, if you do not 
 help me." 
 
 "What is it what is the matter?" 
 
 " I have a letter my wife lies dying. With all her remain 
 ing strength she calls me. Herr Lieutenant ! by all that 
 remains to me, by the Holiest, by my respect for myself and for 
 the truth, I swear to you, I will be here again by ten o'clock. 
 Let me out let me bear to my sorely-tried wife the last con 
 solation." 
 
 " You know what is before me if I set you free." 
 
 " I do. And therefore I promise you I will be innocent of 
 the worst thing in the world ; and the worst is, that you should 
 have no more faith in man. I will not be innocent of that if I 
 break my word. And thereupon I swear to you, if you let me 
 free a few hours, I will be here again at the appointed minute. 
 Herr Lieutenant, you are my master, but you are also a son ! 
 You have a father, you have a mother. There stands the dwell 
 ing over yonder you can see it. If you could also hear 
 the cries of grief uttered by a dying woman, a loving wife ! 
 Some future day, when you have a loving wife of your own, 
 may this be repaid you a thousand times ! When you stand at 
 the altar, an invisible blessing will descend upon you. Think
 
 ON GUARD. 337 
 
 now of nothing else but that you have a heart. I swear to you, 
 a dying one speaks with me." 
 
 " I will at once state the case to the commandant." 
 
 " That will be too late." 
 
 " I will give you a guard to go with you." 
 
 "That will at once betray you. O Herr Lieutenant, you 
 feel my terrible position ; have the courage to believe in a man 
 your confidence will not be abused. A despairing one pleads, 
 a dying one pleads with him. Let me be free for a few hours ! " 
 
 " Good; so be it! ' Spend no more strength in speaking 
 you need all your strength. Give me your hand. ' 
 
 " Here is my hand. Every word that I should further swear 
 would be a sin. My hand says all to you, and now I beg you, 
 not a moment longer. Every minute may be the last ! " 
 
 The man was liberated, and Hanenstein returned to the guard 
 room. 
 
 He did not think much further about what had passed ; he was 
 soldier enough not to worry over a finished deed. He had 
 acted from impulse, the deed was done, and every other 
 thought was superfluous. He sought for sleep he did not 
 easily find it ; but at last youth and weariness conquered. 
 
 He was awakened it struck ten. 
 
 " Is the man at Number Five back? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Go out, and look if he is not on the road. But return at 
 once." 
 
 The orderly went out, and came back immediately, reporting 
 that no one was to be seen. 
 
 "Well, just go out again, and look around you. I will come 
 soon after."
 
 338 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 Hanenstein dressed himself, took his sword, and went on the 
 drawbridge. One could there see around over all the country. 
 He had his field-glass, but he saw nothing. But now, now he 
 sees something ! There comes the colonel riding thither on his 
 white horse, and behind him the orderly. The agitated counte 
 nance of the young man betrayed the storm within, and he said 
 to himself, " Now you are ruined." 
 
 The colonel came nearer and nearer ; he stopped on the 
 bridge and asked, "Why are you here? " 
 
 " Herr Colonel, I have committed a crime, a serious one." 
 
 In a few words Hanenstein related what he had done. 
 
 " How did you come to commit so serious a crime as that? 
 You know well what follows it. I cannot save you, I noticed 
 yesterday that you are not without sympathy for certain crimi 
 nals. Go on ahead. Do you not hear? Go on ahead I fol 
 low right behind you." 
 
 Hanenstein went forward with sunken head, the soldiers 
 marched under arms, and the colonel dismounted. Hanenstein 
 was relieved, and there, in the guard-room, must he give up his 
 spurs and sword, and be taken in arrest to the very cell which 
 the Pole had once occupied. There were to be recognized still 
 the crossed-out strokes on the wall. 
 
 Mournfully and despondently sat Hanenstein in the cell, and 
 his first thought was not of his own pain, but of Gabriele's. 
 How would her heart be torn ! But it must be borne. What a 
 fathomless gulf lies between to-day and yesterday ! How can 
 it be possible that the man who spoke so earnestly could be so 
 faithless? Oh, truly, the men who want to overthrow the gov 
 ernment, to whom no oath is holy, few or none of whom hold 
 anything true and sacred, how should this one be the excep 
 tion? And the man said, " I will take the guilt of your never
 
 ON GUARD. 339 
 
 believing in man again upon myself." Absurd ! That he can 
 easily bear. 
 
 In addition to his bitterness, Hanenstein felt sorrow and con 
 sciousness of guilt. Suddenly he cries aloud, " You also are 
 a revolutionist ; you have bent and broken the laws, while you 
 believed yourself warranted thereto. You have shaken the rock 
 of order, now it descends crushingly on you. It will go through 
 the garrison from mouth to mouth, and the best that they will 
 say will be, ' It is a pity about Hanenstein, that he is to be 
 cashiered. He was a good soldier, and had every expectation 
 of coming into the staff. But certainly his sympathies were 
 with the revolutionists.' " 
 
 CHAPTER III : 
 
 |T the same hour as Hanenstein sat in his cell, there 
 was joy in the house of the governor, for the morn 
 ing after a successful entertainment has always a 
 peculiar pleasure, and, through the numerous and 
 well-trained domestics, there were in the sitting-rooms no trace 
 of the festivities of the preceding night. 
 
 The breakfast-room was pretty, and showed the taste of the 
 daughter of the house. In a low grate a fire burned brightly, 
 and on the table stood two pale-green vases of Venetian glass 
 filled with flowers left from the day before. 
 
 When the father had entered and heartily greeted Gabriele, 
 she said, " You also must be happy in thinking how smoothly 
 and delightfully the evening passed. I believe the people who 
 said to us that they had spent happy hours. But why do you 
 look so severe about it? "
 
 340 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 " I think you ought, however, to have said to me that you 
 were to dance the cotillon with Lieutenant Hanenstein. It sur 
 prised me, and, in my opinion, many others also. Why did 
 you do so ? " 
 
 "Why? He is the best dancer in the garrison, and you 
 think a great deal of him, too. You have often told me what a 
 good comrade his father was." 
 
 " Yes, that is all very fine, and there is nothing improper in 
 it; but, as I said, it surprised me." 
 
 " Surprised you? " 
 
 " Yes. You are my good and clever child, and I am no 
 tyrant father. I will only say to you : You are now entering 
 the great world, and it would be painful to me if you were to 
 engage yourself in anything that you might regret afterwards. 
 I would wish that no thought from you was turned towards 
 another; that your whole soul maybe given to him to whom 
 you will one day listen. I would also wish that you, before 
 you have learned to know the world and the world knows you, 
 should give no one a hope. Under this ' no one,' my child 
 pay attention under this ' no one ' I include yourself. You 
 comprehend this?" 
 
 Gabriele nodded silently, and the governor needed no other 
 answer. He knew how truly his child perceived his meaning. 
 
 The waiter brought, on a salver, several letters. The gover 
 nor took one from among them and said, 
 
 " That is from Aunt Truben. It is for you, Gabriele." 
 
 He handed the letter over to her. Gabriele opened it and 
 read, while her father looked through those directed to him. 
 He laid the letters back and asked, 
 
 "What does your aunt write? Tell me only the substance." 
 
 " She writes," said Gabriele : " ' The princess is much pleased
 
 ON GUARD. 341 
 
 "with your photograph ; she thinks you much resemble your 
 blessed mother. She would, in addition, wish to read a letter 
 from you, in order to have a photograph of your mind. I, how 
 ever, have none that I can show her. Write ostensibly to me, 
 but let your letter contain nothing that will be unsuitable for 
 the princess.' What shall I write? " asked Gabriele. 
 
 "Describe last evening's ball. Only write quite naturally; 
 that is always the best." 
 
 While the governor lighted a cigar, an orderly was an 
 nounced. 
 
 " Let him come in." 
 
 Gabriele went away quickly. 
 
 A young ensign -entered and related what had happened. 
 
 " How is that possible ? " cried the governor, half to himself. 
 '"How could he do that? The affair was indeed not at all 
 in his jurisdiction." 
 
 The ensign was very careful what to answer, for fear he 
 should be ordered away; and now the governor turned to him 
 and 3aid, 
 
 " Good. Go. Answer, I shall come myself. He is already 
 in arrest? " 
 
 " At your command." 
 
 The ensign went, thereupon, and the governor ordered them 
 to saddle his horse. 
 
 He did not consider long whether he should tell Gabriele. 
 He had her called, and said, 
 
 " The First Lieutenant von Hanenstein has broken the laws 
 of the service in the most flagrant way. He is to come before 
 a court-martial." He stopped. 
 
 Gabriele did not hesitate ; she asked, with a steady voice, 
 
 " What has he done? "
 
 34 2 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 The governor related it shortly, and added, 
 " He will be condemned to death, but he will not be shot." 
 " Then that is what he had before him, and that is why he 
 was so sad," cried she ; " and how could he say that I could not 
 help in the least? I could have stopped him ; he ought to have 
 told me. How could he destroy our lives so wantonly, so use 
 lessly? " 
 
 The governor would have said, " I fear my warning cornea 
 already too late." But he suppressed it, and only said, 
 
 " It is well, Gabriele, that I alone hear that; and I hope that 
 I must hear nothing more of the kind from you. Calm yourself 
 with the thought that you are still saved in time from an error." 
 " But you also have loved him protect him ! " 
 "I do not deny it; but now he is lost! A pity ! It is a 
 blessing that his father is no longer living ! 'Oh, the world, the 
 world, youth ! " 
 
 The governor rode alone to the citadel. As he was riding up 
 the hill, he saw a man panting and coming towards him, motion 
 ing with his hands. He stopped, and the man, with agitated 
 countenance, cried, 
 
 " Oh, what a happy thing that I should meet you ! " 
 It was the liberated one. He related that Hanenstein had 
 given him his freedom ; that he had promised to come back 
 before the patrol was made, but that he could not help stop 
 ping for when he reached home, his wife lay in a deep sleep; 
 she had not shut an eye for three days she had been calling 
 for him instead. He sat on her bed ; hour after hour passed by ; 
 he wanted to go away, to keep his word, but he could not leave.. 
 The sick one awoke and died in his arms. He prayed earnestly 
 that they might not make the lieutenant suffer because he had 
 ]et the heart under his uniform speak.
 
 ON GUARD. 343 
 
 The governor only said, 
 
 " It is well. You must explain yourself to all the authorities." 
 
 He turned and considered whether he should tell Gabriele 
 that the man had returned voluntarily. To communicate this to 
 Gabriele would be like an encouragement. Better is it, there 
 fore, that she should suffer; then, in her pain, she will tear him 
 completely out of her soul, and Hanenstein will suffer for the 
 rest of his life. 
 
 The governor rode home and asked for his daughter. They 
 said she had driven out. 
 
 "Whither?" 
 
 The village was named in which the family of the lawyer's 
 clerk lived. The horse was again saddled, the governor rode 
 to his daughter, and met her in the house of grief with the 
 daughter of the prisoner. Gabriele came towards him and 
 cried, 
 
 " The man has kept his word, and our friend will be free." 
 
 The governor seated himself by Gabriele in the carriage and 
 said, 
 
 " How could you, as my diughter, so far forget yourself as to 
 come hither? " 
 
 " O father, frankly, because I have the happiness of having 
 you for my father ! Because we are in this high position, it is 
 our duty to support and guide the erring ! " 
 
 The governor looked with astonishment at his child ; she 
 ^seemed in this one day to have matured to a new life. 
 
 When they reached home, Gabriele locked herself in her 
 chamber, and wrote the whole day and nearly the whole night. 
 
 It was in the evening. In the royal castle they were sitting 
 at tea. 
 
 The princess said,
 
 344 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 " Dear Countess Truben, have you still no letter from your 
 niece? " 
 
 " Certainly I have." 
 
 She handed over Gabriele's letter, and the princess said, 
 
 " That is very long. Will you not read it to us? " 
 
 And the countess read her niece's interesting letter of the 
 death of the young Pole and the return of the lawyer's clerk, 
 and, without design, Hanenstein stood forth in full brightness. 
 Besides the description of the family and the house, the narra 
 tion of how the prisoner tore himself away from tht dead body 
 was deeply moving. 
 
 One place in the letter must, however, be read twice over. 
 She read : " I have seen an entirely strange world. There 
 are people of another religion they call it political freedom ; 
 and they are ready for any martyrdom. Are not love and tol 
 eration also needed ? They have the strongest faith in their re 
 ligion. As I stood by the girl, whose father is in prison, while 
 the mother lay dead ' Oh, there,' I cried, ' from God cometh 
 the favor, enabling those who sit on the thione here to pardon 
 and dispense grace ! ' 
 
 A few days after that, a letter of pardon came. The lawyer's, 
 clerk was set free ; he emigrated with his daughter. 
 
 Hanenstein must expiate a longer probation. He first suc 
 ceeded, at the storming of the Diippeler Schauzen, in obtaining 
 with joy his full military position again. 
 
 The truth of the beloved one proved itself victorious over all 
 hindrances and opposition. In the letter to his comrades 
 about the wedding, it was said, 
 
 " She has to you and to me done many good and beautiful 
 things. May hers be the joy of continuing to do good and 
 beautiful things through a long life."
 
 MUSCADINES. 
 
 345
 
 MUSCADINES. 
 
 (A VISION IN THE WOODS.} 
 BY PAUL HAYNE. 
 
 OBER September, robed in grey and dun, 
 Smiled from the forest in half-pensive wise; 
 A misty sweetness shone in her wild eyes, 
 And o'er her cheek a shy flush went and 
 
 came, 
 
 As flashing warm between 
 The autumnal leaves of slowly dying green, 
 
 The sovereign sun 
 
 Did gently kiss her ; then (in ruthful mood 
 For the vague fears of modest maidenhood^ 
 As gently and as lovingly retire, 
 Behind the foliaged screen, 
 Veiling his swift desire 
 Even as a king, wed to some virgin queen, 
 Might doom his sight to blissful, brief eclipse, 
 
 After his tender lips 
 Had touched the maiden's trembling soul to flame. 
 
 Through shine and shade, 
 Thoughtful, I trod the tranquil forest glade, 
 
 Upglancing oft 
 To watch the rainless cloudlets, white and soft, 
 
 347
 
 348 PAPYRUS LEAVES. . 
 
 Sail o'er the placid ocean of the sky. 
 The breeze was like a sleeping infant's sigh, 
 Measured and low, or, in quick palpitant thrills, 
 An instant swept the sylvan depths apart 
 
 To pass, and die 
 Far off, far off, within the shrouded heart 
 
 Of immemorial hills. 
 
 Through shade and shine 
 I wandered, as one wanders in a dream, 
 Till near the borders of a beauteous stream, 
 
 O'erhung by flower and vine, 
 I pushed the dense, perplexing boughs aside, 
 
 To mark the temperate tide 
 Purpled by shadows of the Muscadine. 
 
 Reclining there, at languid length I sank, 
 One idle hand outstretched beyond the bank, 
 
 With careless grasp 
 
 The sumptuous globes of those rare grapes to clasp ; 
 Ah ! how the ripened wild fruit of the South 
 
 Melted upon my mouth ! 
 Its magic juices through each captured vein 
 
 Rose to the yielding brain, 
 Till, like the hero of an old romance 
 Caught by the fays, my spirit lapsed away, 
 Lost to the sights and sounds of mortal day. 
 
 Lost to all earthly sounds and sights was I ; 
 
 But blithesomely, 
 
 As stirred by some new being's wonderous dawn, 
 I heard about me, swift, yet gently dawn,
 
 MUSCADINES. 349. 
 
 The footsteps of light creatures on the grass. 
 Mine eyelids seemed to open, and I saw, 
 
 With joyance checked by awe, 
 
 A multitudinous company 
 Of such strange forms and faces, quaint, or bright 
 
 With true Elysian light, 
 As once, in fairy fantasies of eld, 
 High-hearted poets through the wilds beheld 
 Of shadowy dales and lone sea-beaches pass 
 At spring-tide morn or holy hush of night. 
 
 Then to an airy measure, 
 
 Low as the sea winds when the night at noon 
 Clasps the frail beauty of an April moon, 
 Through woven paces, at soft-circling leisure, 
 They glided with elusive grace adown 
 The forest coverts all live woodland things, 
 
 Black-eyed or brown, 
 
 Firm-footed, or uppoised on changeful wings, 
 Glinting about them, 'mid the indolent motion 
 
 Of billowy verdures rippling slow. 
 
 As the long languid underflow 
 
 o o 
 
 Of some star-tranced, voluptuous Southern ocean 
 
 The circle widened, and as flower-wrought bands, 
 
 Stretched by incautious hands, 
 Break in the midst with noiseless wrench asunder, 
 So break the dancers now, to form in line 
 Down the deep glade ; above, the shifting lights 
 Through massive tree-boles on majestic heights
 
 350 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 The blossomed turf thereunder 
 
 Whence, fair and fine, 
 Twinkling like stars that hasten to be drawn 
 
 Close to the breast of dawn 
 Shone, with their blue veins pulsing fleet, 
 
 Innumerable feet, 
 
 White as the splendors of the Milky Way, 
 Yet rosy warm as opening tropic day, 
 With lithe free limbs of curvature divine, 
 And dazzling bosoms of unveiled glow, 
 Save where the long ethereal tresses stray 
 Across their unimaginable snow. 
 
 One after one, 
 
 By sun-rays kissed or fugitive shades o'errun, 
 All vision-like they passed me. First there came 
 A Dryad coy, her sweet head bowed in shame, 
 And o'er neck and half-averted face 
 
 The faintest delicate trace 
 Of the charmed life-blood pulsing softly pure. 
 
 Next, with bold footsteps, sure 
 And firm as bases of her own proud hills, 
 Fair-haired, blue-eyed, upon her lofty head 
 A fragrant crown of leaves, purple and red, 
 Chanting a lay clear as the mountain rills, 
 A frank-faced Oxead turned on me 
 Her fearless glances, laughter-lit, and free 
 As the large gestures and the liberal air 
 
 With which I viewed her fare 
 
 Down the lone valley land, 
 Pausing betimes to wave her happy hand
 
 MUSCADINES. 351 
 
 As in farewell ; but ere her presence died 
 
 Wholly away, 
 Her voice of golden swell 
 Did also breathe farewell. 
 Farewell, farewell ; the sylvan echoes sighed, 
 From rock-bound summit to rich-blossoming bay 
 Farewell, farewell ! 
 
 Fauns, Satyrs, flitted past me the whole race 
 
 Of woodland births uncouth 
 
 Until I seemed, in sooth, 
 
 Far from the garish track 
 
 Of these loud days to have wandered, joyful, back 
 Along the paths, beneath the crystal sky, 
 
 Of long, long perished Arcady. 
 
 But las-t of all; filling the haunted space 
 With odors of the flower-enamored tide, 
 Whose wavelets love through many a secret place 
 Of the deep dell and breezeless bosk to glide, 
 
 Stole by, lightsome and slim 
 As Dian's self in each soft sinuous limb, 
 Her arms outstretched, as if in act to swim 
 The air, as erst the waters of her home, 
 A Naiad, sparkling as the flcckless foam 
 Or the cool fountain-head whereby she dwells. 
 
 O'er her sloped shoulders and the pure pink bud 
 Of either virginal breast is richly rolled 
 
 (O rare, miraculous flood !) 
 The torrent of her freed locks' shimmering gold,
 
 352 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 Through which the gleams of rainbow-colored shells 
 And pearls of noonlike radiance flash and float 
 Round her immaculate throat. 
 
 Clothed in her beauty only, wandered she, 
 'Mid the moist herbage, to the streamlet's edge, 
 Where, girt by silvery rushes and brown sedge, 
 She faded slowly, slowly, as a star * 
 
 Fades in the gloaming on the bosom bowed 
 
 Of some half-luminous cloud 
 Above the wan waste waters of the sea. 
 
 'Then, sense and spirit fading inward too, 
 I slept oblivious; through the dim dumb hours, 
 Safely encouched on autumn leaves and flowers, 
 I slept as sleep the unperturbed dead. 
 At length the wind of evening, keenly chill, 
 
 Swept round the darkening hill ; 
 
 There throbbed the rush of hurried wings o'erhead, 
 Blent with aerial murmurs of the pine, 
 Just whispering twilight. On my brow the dew 
 Dropped softly; and I woke to all the low 
 Strange sounds of twilight woods that come and go 
 So fitfully; and o'er the sun's decline, 
 Through the green mist of foliage flickering high, 
 
 Beheld, with dreamy eye, 
 Sweet Venus glittering in the stainless blue. 
 
 Thus the day closed whereon I drank the wine 
 The liquid magic of the Muscadine.
 
 HOW ONE MAN WAS SAVED. 
 
 358
 
 BY AM AND AM. DOUGLASS. 
 
 I. 
 
 But love is indestructible. Sonthey. 
 
 E walked slowly along that dusty highway, Mark 
 Bradley, revolving many thoughts in his busy 
 brain. A summer afternoon melting gradually 
 into evening, a sun sinking behind the hill-tops, 
 burnishing the spires with molten gold. In the 
 still atmosphere those trees were outlined against 
 the crimson dappled sky with wonderful distinctness. Not a 
 leaf stirred. Down the sloping sides wide stubble-fields took 
 on a new glory. Here acres of grass, early mown, nodding a 
 serene satisfaction over the comforting idea of a second crop. 
 Cornfields turned yellow, the browned and faded tassels hanging 
 listlessly on ripening stalks. A sort of lazy, over-ripe August 
 picture. 
 
 Had it been never so beautiful he would not have paused to 
 study it. He had other matters on hand. What was the paltry 
 landscape to him? He could not make money out of it, and 
 that was his whole thought by day and night. How many 
 times he had walked over this road, dreaming of what awaited 
 him at the end, hurried on with a buoyant step and hopeful 
 heart. Now he lagged unconsciously, and when he came in
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 sight of the gray cottages down yonder among the trees, he 
 almost paused. 
 
 " She must know some time," he said, and this thought urged 
 him on. 
 
 The road began to wind downward. It grew shadier, and 
 fragrant with spice of fir and pine. Here and there some wild 
 asters starred it, or a spray of golden rod. Common things, 
 all. Dusty and dull. They fretted him strangely. How 
 many times he had found this road lovely to look upon 
 the end delightful. He seemed to have outgrown it all at a 
 bound. 
 
 Before he reached the cottage there was a little flutter at the 
 door. A white dress, and the flash of a scarlet ribbon at the 
 throat. A gleam of soft brown hair, just as the last reflection 
 of sunset through the trees took it, and played about like an 
 aureole. 
 
 She came to meet him, this little Janet Raeburn. An hour 
 ago her face was worn and gray ; every limb tired and over 
 strained, working at her machine. She had sighed wearily 
 over the last long seam, shut down the cover with an impatient 
 nap, hurried around with the supper things, and found at last 
 a few brief moments in which to wash her face, comb out her 
 brown hair, and change her dress. It had transformed her, or 
 else the hope that brightened her cheeks ; for now, coming 
 out to meet her lover, she looked really pretty. 
 
 He scanned her face earnestly. A broad, low forehead, 
 small, but irregular, features, a mouth compressed by emotions 
 or trials to a firmness and reticence rarely seen in two-and- 
 twenty. He fancied, and perhaps rightly enough, that she wa= 
 growing old and worn. He was in a mood to note these things, 
 so she had put on her smiles and brightness in vain
 
 HOW ONE MAN WAS SAVED. 357 
 
 He took the little hands in his and kissed her. Then he 
 'held her quiet for a moment and sighed. 
 
 "What is it, Mark? " 
 
 She had a low, smooth, cool voice. One pleasant to hear in 
 a sick room, or at any time of great trial. As if one would 
 like to hear her pronounce a benediction over this dying sum 
 mer day. 
 
 " Let us walk out here. I am stifled all day with that hot, 
 smothering air in the shop ! It almost makes me hate to enter 
 -a house." 
 
 She was a trifle surprised at his vehement tone. 
 
 They took the edge of the soft, short grass, as it was too 
 early yet for dew, down as far as the great sycamore tree 
 back again, and all in silence. 
 
 Janet studied his face furtively. It was gloomy and impene 
 trable. Of late he had been unlike himself. She tried to make 
 him talk ; but at first he responded only in monosyllables. And 
 then she returned to the old query, 
 
 " What is the matter, Mark? " 
 
 " Sit down here," and he paused at a great stone by the road 
 side, " for I have much to tell you, Janet." 
 
 She looked at him wonderingly. 
 
 " I am going away." 
 
 A woman would have skirmished about this fact, and broken 
 it by degrees, to make the suffering less for the listener. He, 
 being a man, went straight to the point at once. 
 
 She studied him with her brown eyes. There was something 
 in the fearless scrutiny that made him wince. 
 
 "Why?" She could not trust herself to any longer sen 
 tence, for the blow seemed to have struck some vital part. 
 
 " I'll tell you why. I've been a fool for weeks and weeks.
 
 358 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 I've beat about the bush and staved off the truth, when I ought 
 to have spoken. I am tired and sick of this dragging life. 
 The same, month in and month out. If a man was a stick or 
 stone he might be satisfied to go on the treadmill round. But 
 I am not. Life isn't endurable on such terms ! " 
 
 His enunciation was rapid, his voice hoarse with dull passion. 
 
 " I thought you had a good situation, Mark? " 
 
 " Good enough, I suppose, as the matter goes ; but I'm tired 
 of drudgery. A man just keeps soul and body together. If 
 one saves up a few dollars, the machinery's out of gear, and all. 
 hands off for a week or two. Or orders don't come in. Some 
 thing continually to drain a man of his last cent. So there's, 
 nothing ahead, nothing between one and starvation, if an un 
 lucky stroke should befall him. It frets me to death ! " 
 
 " What can you do ? " 
 
 " I'll show you what I can do, some day. I mean to be a 
 rich man, Janet," and he brought his clenched fist down on the 
 rock with a force that numbed his fingers. 
 
 " O Mark," she said, with a little cry. " wealth doesn't, 
 always bring happiness." 
 
 " Don't take up that cant ; I'm sick and tired of it. I'd risk 
 wealth bringing me happiness. All I want in this world is, 
 money. With that will come everything else. And why have 
 not I as good right to it as any other person ? When I see 
 these men riding around in their carriages, dressed in broad 
 cloth and fine linen, giving sumptuous dinners, their houses, 
 perfect palaces of elegance, I am filled with envy. Why, their 
 very servants have an easier life than mine ! " 
 
 " I believe God gives us what is best." She spoke slowly, 
 but in a steady tone. 
 
 " No, you cant think it, Janet. The clergymen preach about
 
 HOW ONE MAN WAS SAVED. 359 
 
 it on Sundays, and some weak, deluded people hug a sort of 
 martyr belief to their hearts and glory in it. As if for every 
 evil here, every misfortune, every loss, some great gain was to 
 be met with in that other and fabulous country." 
 
 A bitter, bitter fear smote Janet Raeburn's heart. How many 
 times she had trembled at the half knowledge that this man 
 affected to sneer at a Supreme Ruler. 
 
 " You can't think it," he went on with more vehemence. " Is 
 it right that you, a weak and frail woman, should have the 
 care of a bedridden mother and a feeble old father who is as 
 much charge as a child ? There is your brother and his wife 
 taking their pick of everything, making money, scrimping and 
 squeezing until the very stones cry out. See how they are 
 prospered while you are working yourself to death ! Is there 
 any justice in that? Is God pleased to see you tired and worn, 
 and worried, here in your youth, when everything should be 
 bright and restful? No, I don't believe it. Here's the world 
 and here's the struggle. Strong souls win, and I mean to dare 
 it.'' 
 
 In the earlier days of their acquaintance she used to argue. 
 More than once it seemed as if she had almost persuaded him. 
 But he had always gone back to his old skepticism ; so she had 
 trusted to the future day of love. Would it ever come? F~or 
 now she felt tired and faint-hearted. She, with her woman's 
 -eyes saw how he could have lightened her burdens ; but she 
 would sooner die than thrust them upon him. 
 
 " So I am going away. I've had it planned for several weeks, 
 and been putting off the announcement in a cowardly fashion. 
 I knew how the separation would hurt you. If it could be, I'd 
 take you with me. God knows I shall miss you sorely. But 
 I'm bound to get above this stagnant level. I'll have enough to
 
 360 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 - 
 
 satisfy my wants without grovelling like a dog from Monday 
 morn until Saturday night." 
 
 " What will you do? " How curiously calm her voice was. 
 
 " I've some brains and a tolerable education. There's a friend 
 of mine in New York who has made a good deal of money one 
 way and another. He was in town a month ago, and wanted 
 me to join him in some ventures. It's just the life I should like 
 hurry, excitement, something for your pains. I've saved up a 
 little, and I mean to double it, quadruple it, make a fortune in, 
 short." 
 
 " And then ? " 
 
 " I'll come back for you." 
 
 She stood up straight and firm before him. The twilight was. 
 falling now, and making purple shadows at the edges of the 
 trees. Her white dress looked almost ghostly, but her eyes, 
 were unnaturally bright. 
 
 " No, Mark," she said, " you will not come back for me then. 
 You think so now, I'll do you that justice ; but in the new life, 
 when wealth and station and refinement are yours, I should be an 
 unsightly blot, mar the picture with my plainness, my worn face, 
 my tired heart. You will need youth, and grace, and beauty." 
 
 " Do you doubt me my truth, my honor ? " 
 
 He rose too, then, and folded his arms across his broad chest. 
 How proud she had been of him ! How many times she had 
 nestled to that bosom, been folded in those arms ! Forgive her 
 if she had longed for the time when it would be her home, her 
 shelter. She felt so utterly lost and forlorn without him, and 
 yet he seemed to be drifting rapidly away from her. She could 
 make no answer. 
 
 "The old, stale romance, '' he said, with a little sneer. "You 
 don't give me much credit in fancying it."
 
 HOW ONE MAN WAS SAVED. 361 
 
 " I shall not be fit for you then." Her voice was lo-v and 
 sad. 
 
 He walked up and down past her. He hated to have her 
 doubt him, for he was so confident of his own strength. 
 
 " No," he went on, " I want you to believe, whatever comes, 
 that no woman can ever fill your place to me. I shall not be 
 so weak after my struggle as to long for the youth and beauty 
 that can be purchased with gold. And for your sake I want to 
 be rich. To marry as men do on precarious wages, and rear a 
 family that may be doomed to beggary by another's whim, is 
 v/hat I could never do. And to go on waiting year after year 
 in this fashion '' 
 
 Something roused her strangely. A fire flashed into the eyes 
 and the pale cheeks. 
 
 " And I want you to believe," she said, in a strong, clear tone. 
 " that poverty has no terrors for me, that work is no hardship, 
 It was my birthright. I feel as if I should distrust any life that 
 was easy and luxurious." 
 
 He laughed, a trifle scornfully. 
 
 "Well," he said, " when I come back a rich man, reject me 
 if you will, but now do not refuse me your love. Some of your 
 true believers pretend to look upon woman's love as a sort of 
 safeguard in an evil hour. So don't deprive me of this 
 strength." 
 
 His words cut deeply into her heart, but, for all that, she 
 came to him, leaned her throbbing head against his shoulder. 
 He could not see the tears that overflowed her eyes. 
 
 They both paced the rapidly darkening path in silence 
 Once, as they neared the cottage, she said : 
 
 " You will come in? " 
 
 " Not to-night, Janet. I must go back immediately,"
 
 3 62 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 "When shall you leave?" 
 
 " Next week. Monday is pay-night. It will be a relief not 
 to drudge at the old toil any more." 
 
 " And what you mean to do, Mark, is perfectly honest and 
 honorable ? " 
 
 He laughed scornfully. 
 
 " Janet," he said presently, " the world isn't as you think it. 
 These overstrained virtues do not pay in a great city, or any 
 where, if a man means to get along. This high theoretical 
 honesty sounds well enough in a book or a sermon people 
 are paid for writing and preaching it ; but it never made the 
 listeners rich, that I heard. How much of it do your church- 
 members carry into business? They're sharp enough, Heaven 
 knows ! " 
 
 He had taunted her more than once, lately, in this manner. 
 She turned now. 
 
 " I do not know that the treachery of Judas was ever con 
 sidered a better deed because he was one of the disciples," she 
 said, in a strong, sad tone, almost coming to tears. 
 
 " We will not quarrel when there is a prospect of a long 
 separation before us. I shall be out on Sunday evening. Good 
 night ! " and he kissed her tenderly. 
 
 She stood in the dusk for man}' minutes after he had left her, 
 but not following out her first impulse, which was to weep. 
 For it seemed as if she must gird herself anew now. Down the 
 long future somewhere there would be plenty of time for 
 weeping.
 
 HOW ONE MAN WAS SAVED. 
 
 II. 
 
 ANET RAEBURN entered the cottage at length. 
 Hastily lighting a candle, she ran up to her room and 
 pulled off the white dress she had put on with so 
 much pride an hour or two ago. Then she arranged her 
 mother comfortably for the night, roused her father from his 
 nap on the rude settle, and sent him to bed as if he had been a 
 child. After being sure that everything was safe, she retired 
 once more to the room where she had dreamed many a sweet 
 young dream. Her life had always been hard, but being glori 
 fied these two years by Mark Bradley's love had made it seem 
 at times positively delightful. She had thought if Mark would 
 marry her, and come there to live, share the profits of the farm 
 with her brother John ! for it would easily afford them both 
 employment. She had ventured to hint this to him. 
 
 " It wouldn't do, Janet," he said ; " John would look uponme 
 as an interloper. We don't like each other any too well now. 
 He's your brother ; but I must say he and his wife are close- 
 fisted, grasping people, and he's bound to get all he can out of 
 the farm. It would be more sensible for you to marry me and 
 go away. The old folks are as much his parents as they are 
 yours, and it is as much his place to do for them. I haven't 
 much of a start, to be sure, but you are welcome to it. We 
 would get along somehow." 
 
 Leave her parents to the care of Martha Raeburn, who 
 regarded every moment wasted that was not devoted to money- 
 getting ! No, she could never do this. They were young and 
 would wait.
 
 364 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 And yet the waiting appeared to stretch itself out indefi 
 nitely. 
 
 When John Raeburn married; he had built a cottage quite at 
 the upper end of the farm, being urged to the step by Martha, 
 who had said, and wisely, they would be better friends apart. 
 They worked the farm, and took the profits, supplying the old 
 people so scantily that Janet, a handy little seamstress, bought 
 a machine in order to render herself more independent of them. 
 John was a loud and dogmatic talker, and whenever Janet tried 
 to appeal to brotherly kindness, he invariably fell back upon the 
 fact that he and Martha slaved from morning till night and 
 what did they have but a living? " I should be a good deal the 
 gainer if I hired a farm for myself," he said ; but, in her heart 
 of hearts, Janet believed if he really thought so he would do it. 
 Her very soul revolted at his meanness and selfishness. 
 
 It had come to be an accepted fact between the lovers that 
 Janet's duty was here for the present. And since Mark Brad 
 ley had been smitten with this fever for wealth he had cared 
 less for marriage. Poor Janet's heart died within her. Was 
 the whole world going mad in a thirst for wealth? 
 
 Janet Raeburn prayed fervently that night, She had a sort ol 
 blind faith, if you will, that in the darkest hour God would not let 
 his storms,overwhelm her. Some way it would come out right in 
 the end. But the waiting was so long, so hard ! She had been 
 trying to solve Mark's doubts, to lead him to the same belief 
 that stayed her soul in hours of trial. But even here she had 
 failed. And now he was going away ! 
 
 There seemed to be a great deal of unfinished work in the 
 world. Toil left off before fruition was reached, thwarted plans, 
 people getting into wrong paths for want of some friendly hand 
 to guide them aright. How perplexing it all was !
 
 HOW ONE MAN WAS SAVED. 365 
 
 If she could have married Mark six months ago ! John was 
 counting on his father's death, impatient for a division of the 
 property. She could see how this would simplify matters, and 
 Mark would not object to having one invalid with them. There 
 would be money enough to start him in some business, and then 
 the restlessness, the sort of kicking against fate that embitters 
 him so, would be over. Now and then this thought crept into 
 her heart, but she strove to banish it. It tempted her cruelly 
 this night. For, if Mark went away, who would guide him in a 
 new home? 
 
 A weak man, you say? Well, the most of us are weak. Now 
 and then a temptation touches us like a galvanic shock, reveal 
 ing the vulnerable spot. We thrust it out of sight, but there in 
 the darkness and loneliness it does not heal to sound, solid flesh, 
 although we tell ourselves it will. Blind always, until we turn 
 into the narrow path where God's light makes it a new day. 
 
 In some intuitive way Janet understood this weakness of her 
 lover's. He was not a mean man he would have cut off his 
 right hand sooner than stoop to the petty deeds whereby John 
 Raeburn managed to screw another dollar out of the estate. 
 He would not have defrauded his employer out of ten minutes. 
 Honesty in all little matters was ingrained in him. But he had 
 a restless, dissatisfied nature ; he hated to be one of the plod 
 ders ; he smarted under the airs men with money gave them 
 selves, and wanted to be on the higher social plane where he 
 would not have them to endure. 
 
 Janet was helpless, and could only pray. Somehow, God 
 would not fail to bring it all out right. Though he had listened 
 for over eighteen hundred years, he was not weary. And 
 believing this, she fell asleep. 
 
 Friday, Saturday, and then Sunday. What long, long days
 
 366 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 they were ! Janet performed all her duties with a silent air and 
 grave face. Her poor old mother noticed this. But not until 
 Monday did Janet announce the separation that was in store for 
 her. 
 
 Mrs. Raeburn, too, had accepted the fact that Janet could not 
 marry. Perhaps the most bitter trial of all was the knowledge 
 that no one considered it specially hard for her. 
 
 " He's a smart young fellow, Janet, and I think it's a sensible 
 move. Now, while he has no incumbrance, he can live cheaply 
 and go anywhere he likes, and if he means to make anything, 
 it is best for him to attempt it while he's young and strong. 
 Two or three years won't seem much to you now." 
 
 That was her mother's comfort. Indeed, she wished her hus 
 band had been more energetic and ambitious in his young days ; 
 but he had always taken life too easy. 
 
 John commended the plan also, and proposed he and Martha 
 should come over to tea at Mark's last visit. And so when 
 Mark found he had suited them all he began to take heart, 
 though he had told himself before, that it was a mean shame to 
 go off and leave Janet to struggle alone. 
 
 " I'm right glad," Martha said, walking home with her hus 
 band. " Janet will stay contented now. If she'd married, I 
 don't know what we should have done, for I couldn't have taken 
 care of your mother and father, and hiring a nurse is so expen 
 sive. It would have eaten up the whole estate." 
 
 Somehow John and Martha Raeburn seemed to have an im 
 pression that these old people, in living on, wronged them. Not 
 that either would have put it in so many words, but Martha 
 always said to her neighbors : " It's so hard to have the old 
 folks sick and helpless," as if it increased her labors and cares. 
 
 Janet Raeburn took up her burden, making no moan. These
 
 HOW ONE MAN WAS SAVED. 367 
 
 i 
 
 evenings with Mark had been such an indescribable comfort to 
 her the only bright spots in her life. Heaven only knew how 
 hard and weary it was for the girl. The whirr of the machine 
 sounded pleasantly to her at last, because in its noise she could 
 not think. So, between sewing, nursing, and housework, her 
 days went on slowly, and it was a pleasure to know they were 
 past. Then, Mark's letters were a solace ; though they were 
 often brief. 
 
 He came to visit her the next summer. He had been success 
 ful beyond his anticipations. He had improved so much in his 
 bearing and manner ; for, instead of the slow, thoughtful look, 
 his eyes were bright and keen, his air brisk, his clothes jaunty 
 and stylish, and the whole man seemed to have undergone some 
 potent change. 
 
 He felt how hardly the twelve months had used Janet. He 
 knew now that he could win fairer and fresher women, with hun 
 dreds where she would have but a penny. And in a discouraged 
 mood, one day, she offered him his freedom. 
 
 I think it would have been a temptation to any man situated 
 as he was, as they both were. And I am glad I can tell you, 
 in spite of the little struggle, his love for her had the true ring. 
 
 " Janet," (his voice was husky with emotion), " never say such 
 a thing to me again. Do you take me for a villain, child? To 
 leave you in this loneliness, in this toilsome round, with no hope 
 to count on no, I am not so bitterly cruel." 
 
 She came to his arms and wept some happy tears. Thank 
 God that she had something to remember at a later day. 
 
 " If I could take you away from it all, and see you growing 
 bright again ! " 
 
 " Not now," she. said softly, willing to wait. 
 
 That winter her mother died, and her father was stricken with
 
 368 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 paralysis. John and Martha moaned over the hard fate, but 
 offered little assistance. Old Mr. Raeburn was really less 
 trouble than his wife, for he was neither querulous nor impatient, 
 so Janet's burden did not seem any heavier. At last the end 
 came, and it was summer again, but one of those seasons that 
 fill men's hearts with dread, for a pestilence was stalking forth 
 through the land. 
 
 In this quiet country place they scarcely dreaded the cholera. 
 Even in the town, two miles beyond, there had been but few 
 sporadic cases, not sufficient to drive the inhabitants wild with 
 apprehension. 
 
 " Of course," Martha Raeburn said, walking home from the 
 funeral, " the property'll have to be divided. You'll buy out 
 Janet's part." 
 
 " The old house isn't worth anything," John mused. " I've 
 worked the ground up pretty well. The days and days I've 
 spent over it! And now I suppose Janet will want the increased 
 value. It's hard when a man's worked so ! If it hadn't been 
 /or me, the farm would not be worth half what it is. Father 
 always was a poor manager." 
 
 " Let's take Janet home with us. It's best to talk the matter 
 over with her before that Bradley puts her up to anything. He's 
 mighty fond of a good bargain." 
 
 " Yes," John said. So Janet, utterly worn out, was glad of 
 the kindly invitation. 
 
 After she ate her supper she begged them to excuse her. 
 
 "Don't go to bed yet, Janet; I want to have a little talk. 
 There are some things we may as well settle between our 
 selves." 
 
 " Not to-night, John," and her pale lip quivered. 
 
 " I am sure you can sit up in this easy-chair," interposed
 
 il O W ONE MAN WAS SAVED. 369 
 
 Martha. " I often drop down into it, and it rests me as much 
 as going to bed." 
 
 " You're very kind, but I can't talk to-night, I'm so tired. To 
 morrow must do." 
 
 Martha ungraciously attended her to the spare room, to take 
 off the best pillows and remove the counterpane. " I've such 
 lots of work to do that I have to be careful," she said in a com 
 plaining tone ; and as she went downstairs she grumbled to 
 John: " If Mark had been here she could have walked up and 
 down the road half the night with him ! " 
 
 " I'll take her first thing in the morning. I want the business 
 settled before Bradley can come on." 
 
 Janet cried herself to sleep in five minutes. But it hardly 
 seemed as many more before some one burst in the. room with 
 a shriek. 
 
 " Janet ! for Heaven's sake come down. I believe John's been 
 taken with the cholera." 
 
 Janet Raeburn groped her way along the stairs as if she were 
 half blind. The old clock in the sitting-room struck three. 
 The candle was flaring on the table, and in the chamber beyond, 
 John, the strong man, was groaning in mortal agony. Janet did 
 all she could in a wild, dazed way, and then went for the doctor. 
 What if it was night? she was not afraid. 
 
 At noon the next day John Raeburn died. Martha was in a 
 panic of the wildest terror. She blamed Janet; she declared, if 
 old Mr. Raeburn had not died just as he did, all would have 
 gone well with John. It was his grief and his overwork. And 
 now she was to be left destitute and alone, for she knew she 
 could only hold a paltry third of what was coming to her hus 
 band. But she need not have worried. Two days from the 
 .burial of John Raeburn, they " carried her out also."
 
 370 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 For many weeks after that Janet lay as if in a dream. Not 
 conscious of pain or anxiety, too weak even to have a wish, and 
 with not mind enough to express it, even if she had. A peace 
 ful rest for both body and soul was that low fever. But she 
 came out of it at length, and began to think about herself and 
 one other. Good Dr. Miles had taken her home in the begin 
 ning of her illness, and his w ? ife cared for her in a manner quite 
 new to the forlorn girl. Yet she wondered why they watched 
 her so, and why they gave each other such sorrowful looks. 
 Surely she was getting well. If Mark would only write. " It was 
 three months since she had heard from him. She had written 
 him the second letter in answer to his, detailing her father's 
 death and that of John. That was nearly two months ago. 
 And so she told Dr. Miles every day to look for a letter, but he 
 always came back empty-handed. What did it mean? 
 
 " I know Mark too well to think he would be false to me," 
 she said proudly, one day. 
 
 The doctor winced. 
 
 " What is it? " .she began. " You know something. He is not 
 dead? I couldn't bear that, after all the rest." 
 
 " Better a hundred times if he was, God knows ! " Dr. Miles 
 said, hoarsely. 
 
 "What can be worse?" She came and looked into his face 
 with curious calmness. 
 
 " There are worse things, child, and he's done one of 'em. He's. 
 a villain, and it's good you found it out so soon." 
 
 Janet could think of but one thing. " I want you to know, " 
 she said, proudly, " that more than a year ago I offered him back 
 his freedom. He was so bright and handsome, and life looked so 
 fair before him, while I was always in a black shadow. He. 
 wouldn't take it, but I've hardly considered it an engagement since.'^
 
 HOW ONE MAN WAS SAVED. 3/1 
 
 " I'm glad you're a little weaned off. For, Janet, child, he's a 
 felon in State Prison." 
 
 The soft eyes dilated with incredulous horror, at first. The 
 lip quivered, the very limbs shook, as she moaned : 
 
 " Oh, no, no, you are mistaken." 
 
 He took a paper out of his desk, and showed her the para 
 graph. Five years in State Prison ! The room whirled round, 
 and it seemed as if she were dying. Then she roused herself, 
 and asked what he did. 
 
 "Embezzled funds no, that wasn't it, either. He took 
 some money that didn't belong to him to speculate with, and 
 the thing went to smash. His partner ran away, but then he 
 pleaded guilty, so the matter was clear enough. You're young, 
 Janet, and you're coming into a good property; so forget the 
 scamp." 
 
 She went out of the room without another word. Dr. Miles 
 did not like the stony calm into which she settled, but he never 
 had the heart to discuss the matter again. 
 
 The Raeburn farm was sold in two parcels. Little did John 
 or Martha imagine the end, while they were toiling so relent 
 lessly. And Janet Raeburn found herself mistress of seven 
 thousand dollars. The interest would support her in the simple 
 fashion in which she chose to live. 
 
 She went on with Dr. Miles for a year, but all the while she 
 was slowly working out a plan that haunted her, day and night. 
 And then she left them for some cousins, who lived in the State 
 of Delaware, and who urged her to make them a visit. She 
 had another motive in view. She went to New York, and, 
 sought out the man Mark Bradley had defrauded. And 
 after hearing all the particulars, she offered him her for 
 tune, and promised to assume the remainder, three thousand
 
 372 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 dollars, if he would interest himself in procuring a pardon 
 for Mark. 
 
 s< I declare, I never was so touched in my life," Mr. Cum- 
 mings said to his lawyer. " I don't know but she might have 
 convinced me that he was a positive hero, if she had tried. 
 And, Thorpe, she absolutely means to marry him. She is sure 
 she can save him. I don't know but we were pretty hard on 
 him. I meant it to teach others a lesson as well. There's too 
 much of this speculating, and making haste to be rich. If you . 
 can do anything for him " 
 
 " Do you mean to take the money?" the lawyer asked, with 
 a curious expression. 
 
 " D.o you think me a Jew usurer, Thorpe? The money? 
 Why, I'd as soon take a pound of her flesh ! No, if she can 
 make a good man of him, she'll be a missionary, the like of 
 which you won't see more than once in your lifetime. She's 
 nearer an angel than many of them will be in heaven." 
 
 One day Mark Bradley cast off his prison clothes, and walked 
 tremblingly through the long corridor to the reception-room. 
 Why Mr. Cummings should interest himself in his behalf was a 
 great mystery. He was to meet him now, and his lip twitched 
 nervously, his face flushed with shame, that he coiild have 
 wronged so noble a man. 
 
 The figure that turned upon him was not Mr. Cummings's. 
 With the first glance he staggered back to the door-post, his 
 whole frame \veak at the very sight. She came nearer Janet 
 Raeburn. 
 
 " Don't," he exclaimed, brokenly ; " go away, Janet. The one 
 thing I prayed most fervently for was that you should forget me." 
 
 " Mark," she answered, " in your prosperity you didn't deser* 
 me."
 
 HOW ONE MAN WAS SAVED. 3/3 
 
 " Prosperity! " He made a bitter gesture. " Oh, that wild, 
 mad dream ! I can never forgive myself. I didn't mean to be 
 a thief, Heaven knows ! but it looked so fair. I thought I could 
 replace the money long before it was needed. Other men have 
 done such things. I was blind and dumb. I said, like the fool, 
 'There is no God; ' and he found me out; brought me face to 
 face with himself. O Janet, it was terrible at first ! The 
 blackness of darkness the very gates of hell ! And somehow 
 through it all I came to your faith the old belief we used to 
 talk about." 
 
 " Oh ! " and, with a cry, she came to him, and laid her head 
 upon his broad chest. 
 
 " Janet, you are in a dream. For all the pardon, I shall be 
 a marked man. No one will have faith in me. Go away, 
 child, and find happiness in some brighter life." 
 
 " I have faith in you. I love you with a tenderness beyond 
 that of the old days. I went to f Mr. Cummings. He thinks it 
 right that I should marry you if you want me," and her 
 voice sank into a sob. 
 
 " God only knows Jww I want you. But it is selfish and un 
 just." 
 
 "You can justify my faith in you, and can reward my love. 
 Will you do it, Mark? " 
 
 " I will," he said, humbly, making a great struggle with him 
 self. 
 
 Far away at the West there is a happy home, made the more 
 glad by children's voices. But of all the things fortune has sent 
 this sad-eyed man, who is living a useful and noble life, there is 
 cne gift for which he offers a perpetual thanksgiving the love 
 of his wife- - Janet Raeburn. 
 
 And thus \vas Mark Bradley' s salvation worked out.
 
 A BIRTHDAY
 
 A BIRTHDAY. 
 
 WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER. 
 
 in this world, though deep delu 
 sions mask it, 
 Forth underneath the sun of truth to 
 
 bask get ; 
 And, freshly still to have your mental 
 
 flask wet, 
 
 Seek nectared meanings in each outward casket. 
 In sport unbent or closely at your task, yet, 
 Whenever comes an interruption, ask it, 
 " Art thou with a secret sign divinely sent me? 
 Then show me clear the clue of guidance lent thee, 
 While I conspire, whatever Fate's intent be, 
 To say with all, ' This, this for ever meant we ! ' ' 
 Live thus; for you, when taxing years shall spent flee, 
 Possess an endless lease of being, rent free. 
 
 377
 
 OUR FUTURE DRAMATISTS. 
 
 37V
 
 OUR FUTURE DRAMATISTS, 
 
 BY JAMES PARTON. 
 
 OLTAIRE used to say that the stage was 
 only capable of about thirty good comic 
 effects. He was the wittiest man of 
 his time, perhaps the wittiest man of 
 any time ; but he could not write a 
 good comedy. He "tried many times, 
 and never quite failed ; but he never came near a genu 
 ine success, and though some of his tragedies keep the 
 stage, his comedies are never heard of. As it is natural for 
 us to underrate what we cannot do, his assertion that there 
 are only thirty ways of making an audience laugh may have 
 been merely an expression of his own disappointment. 
 
 But in truth the stage is capable of only a very small num 
 ber of good effects, whether serious, comic, or romantic, and 
 this is one of the chief reasons why it is so hard to write a 
 good acting play. The novelist has the whole scene of hu 
 man life at his command, and he can avail himself of every 
 passion of the human heart. The dramatist is limited in 
 every way. His subject may include the reign of a king, the 
 overthrow of a dynasty, or the lifetime of a hero, but he must 
 dismiss his audience soon after eleven o'clock, and he can 
 
 only interest them by a few strong effects and situations. 
 
 381
 
 382 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 He cannot explain, or argue, or minutely delineate. In front 
 of the stage sits a hot, uncomfortable, impatient audience, 
 who will tolerate the unnatural, the violent, the absurd, but 
 will not bear for two consecutive minutes the dull or the 
 slow. They will roar with laughter if a gentleman sits down 
 upon a pin, or if he is hit in the face with a handful of flour, 
 but they cannot catch the finer allusions of wit and humor. 
 Everything on the stage must be strong, distinct, short, and 
 rapid. There must be in the humor something of the bois 
 terous, in the wit plenty of sharp epigram, in the serious 
 scenes fire and passion ; and, above all, everything has to be 
 given with the extreme of possible brevity. The play of 
 " Macbeth " includes part of the reign of three kings, two 
 revolutions, a wide-spread conspiracy, the successful invasion 
 of a kingdom, and a domestic tragedy, and yet the specta 
 tors are taking their oysters at a quarter past eleven. In 
 three hours it is all over. 
 
 I discovered the difference between writing for the eye and 
 writing for the car when first I attempted to lecture. I 
 found that a lecture had to be something essentially different 
 from an essay had to be twenty essays packed into one, 
 with all the needless words omitted. If you tell a story to 
 an audience, you must leave out everything but the point. 
 If you desire to utter a conviction, you must state it in half a 
 minute, and illustrate it in five minutes. A reader has the 
 blessed privilege of skipping a dull page, but to an audience 
 every word has to be spoken at a certain pace, and if they are 
 not interested, you lose them, and find it hard to get them 
 back again. If a good essay may be compared to an acre of 
 prairie, bright with emerald and flowers, an effective speech 
 is an acre composed entirely of mountain tops. You must
 
 OUR FUTURE DRAMATISTS. 383 
 
 hide the dull and ponderous mountains, and exhibit only the 
 sharp and glittering peaks. 
 
 All actors know this from nightly feeling an audience ; and 
 this is the reason why the best plays are written by actors. 
 They know by painful experience what an uneasy, hard-to- 
 hold creature an audience is, and they soon learn the few sure 
 effects. Shakspere would never have been the dramatist he 
 was if he had not been actor, manager, and proprietor, as 
 well as spectator; for the qualities which make a play effect 
 ive are also the qualities which, other things being equal, 
 make it excellent. I am not sure that the grave-digger in 
 <; Hamlet " was not put into the play for the purpose of get 
 ting a favorite comic actor into the cast ; but such was the 
 mastery of Shakspere over the resources of his art that he 
 converted this manager's necessity into a dramatist's tri 
 umph. The only dramatist of modern times worthy to be 
 named with Shakspere is Moliere, and we know that he 
 made a laughing part in one of his comedies solely because 
 an actress in his company had a particularly musical and 
 ringing stage-laugh. 
 
 And here we have the reason why so many American at 
 tempts to produce acting plays have not succeeded. The 
 authors have not studied the stage. They have not closely 
 observed stage effects and discovered what can and what 
 cannot be represented so as to hold and impress an audi 
 ence. 
 
 There is just one thing which all good acting plays have in 
 common, from the sublimest creations of Shakspere and 
 Schiller to the emptiest farces of Buckstone or Reynolds. A 
 good acting play gives the actors a chance to display tJicir ta 
 lents. There is not a weaker play upon the stage than the
 
 384 
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 " Hunchback"; but Sheridan Knowles was an actor, and he 
 has afforded an opportunity to every person that appears in 
 it to produce a certain effect. Observe the " Shaughraun " 
 of Mr. Boucicault. Every part in the play gives the per 
 former some opportunity to use and show his powers. The 
 golden rule, therefore, for him who would write good acting 
 plays is this : Give the actors a chance to do what they can 
 do best. 
 
 The numerous young gentlemen and ladies who are now 
 cherishing the very worthy ambition of supplying the Ameri 
 can stage with plays should pass days and nights in seeing 
 and studying dramas that have run a hundred nights, nor yet 
 omit to consider carefully plays that have failed. It would 
 not be a bad introduction to the career of a dramatist to go 
 upon the stage for a year or two, and face the good-natured,, 
 impatient, restless, terrible monster which has to be held 
 attentive and entertained an audience. This experience, if 
 accompanied by a profound study of subjects in history and 
 in life, might give us the dramatist for whom " the stage 
 waits."
 
 THE GERALDINE. 
 
 185
 
 THE GERALDINE. 
 
 BY R. SHELTON MACKENZIE, D.C.L. 
 
 I. 
 
 MOURNFUL wail, all sad and low, like 
 
 the murmur which the breeze 
 On an autumnal eve might make among 
 
 the sere-leaved trees; 
 Then a rapt silence, soul-subdued ; a 
 
 listening silence there, 
 With earnest, supplicating eyes, and hand-clasped hush of 
 
 prayer. 
 Talk not of grief till thou hast seen the tears which warriors 
 
 shed, 
 "When the Chief who led them on to fame, lies almost of tht 
 
 dead ; 
 AVhen the eagle eye is dim and dull, and the eagle spirit 
 
 cold ; 
 
 When fitfully and feebly throbs the heart which was so bold. 
 Thou might'st have fancied grief like this, if ever it were 
 
 thine, 
 
 To hear a minstrel sing the deeds of the valiant Geraldine. 
 
 387
 
 388 PAPYRUS LEA YES. 
 
 II. 
 
 Where is that gallant name unknown ? Wherever valor 
 
 shone, 
 Wherever mightiest chiefs were named, the Geraldine was 
 
 one ; 
 
 Wherever Erin's banner waved, the Geraldine was there, 
 Winning honor from his prince's praise and favor from the. 
 
 fair. 
 
 But now his course is closing, for his final hour has come, 
 And, like a peaceful peasant, 'tis his hap to die at home. 
 The priest hath been to shrive him, and the leech hath been- 
 
 to tend, 
 And the old man, with a Christian heart, prepared to meet 
 
 his end. 
 
 " It is God's will, the abbot says, that, unlike to all my line, 
 I should die not on the battle-field," said the gallant 
 
 Geraldine. 
 
 III. 
 
 Within his tent the warrior lay ; by his side his childrea 
 
 three : 
 There "was Thomas, with the haughty brow, the Lord of 
 
 Offaly ; 
 There was gentle Ina, wedded to proud Desmond's gallant 
 
 son ; 
 There was Richard, he the youngest-born and best beloved 
 
 one. 
 
 Lord Thomas near his father stood ; fair Ina wept apace ; 
 Young Richard by the couch knelt down, and hid his pale v 
 
 sad face.
 
 THE GERALDINE. 389 
 
 He would not that the common eye should gaze upon his 
 
 woe, 
 JSTor that how very much he mourned, his dying sire should 
 
 know ; 
 But the old man said, " My youngest-born, the deepest grief 
 
 is thine "; 
 And then the pent-up tears rained fast on the face of 
 
 Geraldine. 
 
 IV. 
 
 "" Lead out my steed the Arab barb, which, lately, in 
 
 Almaine, 
 
 I won, in single combat, from a Moorish lord of Spain 
 And bring my falchion hither, with its waved Damascene 
 
 blade, 
 
 In temper true and sharpness keen as ever armorer made. 
 Thou seest, my son, this falchion keen, that war-horse paw 
 
 the plain ; 
 Thou nearest thy father's voice, which none may ever hear 
 
 again ; 
 
 Thou art destined for the altar, for the service of the Lord, 
 But if thy spirit earthward tend, take thou the steed and 
 
 sword. 
 Ill doth it hap, when human thoughts do clash with thoughts 
 
 divine 
 Steel armor, better than the stole, befits a Geraldine! " 
 
 V. 
 
 " My father, thou hast truly said. This soaring spirit swells 
 Beyond that dreary living tomb yon dark monastic cells.
 
 390 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 The cold in heart and weak in hand may seek their pious, 
 gloom, 
 
 And mourn, too late, the hapless vow which cost them such 
 a doom ; 
 
 Give me the flashing falchion and the fiery steed of war 
 
 The shout, the blow, the onset quick, where serried thou 
 sands are. 
 
 Thine eldest-born may claim and take thy lordship and thy 
 land ; 
 
 I ask no more than that bold steed, this good sword in my- 
 hand, 
 
 To win the fame that warriors win, and haply to entwine, 
 
 In other lands, some honors new, round the name of" 
 Geraldine." 
 
 VI. 
 
 Flashed then into the chieftain's eyes the light of other days, 
 And the pressure of his feeble hand spoke more than words. 
 
 of praise : 
 
 " So let it be, my youngest-born ! Thine be a warrior's life ; 
 And may God safely speed thee through thy coming deeds. 
 
 of strife ! 
 Take knighthood from thy father's sword before his course 
 
 be run, 
 
 Be valiant, fortunate, and true ; acquit thee as my son ! 
 My harper here ? Ere life depart, strike me some warlike 
 
 strain 
 Some song of my own battle-fields I would hear once more- 
 
 again ; 
 
 Unfurl the silken Sunburst in the noontide's golden shine : 
 In death, as in the pride of life, let it wave o'er Geraldine ! "'
 
 THE GERALDINE. 391 
 
 VII. 
 
 The banner fluttered in the breeze ; the harper's strain 
 
 went on 
 
 A song it was of mighty deeds by the dying chieftain done. 
 At first he listen'd calmly the strain grew bold and strong 
 Like things of life within his heart, did memory's quick 
 
 thoughts throng. 
 Louder and stronger swelled the strain, like a river in its 
 
 course ; 
 From his couch the chieftain started " To horse !" he cried, 
 
 " to horse !" 
 And .proudly, like a warrior, waved his sword above his 
 
 head ; 
 One onward step, one gurgling gasp, and the chief is of the 
 
 dead ! 
 
 The harper changed his strain to grief: the coronach was 
 
 thine, 
 Who died, as thou hadst lived, a Man, O white-haired 
 
 Geraldine !
 
 THE RATIONALE OF 'THE RAVEN/
 
 THE RATIONALE OF "THE RAVEN" 
 
 WILLIAM FEARING GILL. 
 
 the constituency so graphically described by~ 
 Powell in his " Living Authors " the genius 
 of Poe was forced to address itself or remain 
 silent for ever. That he met its cold, hard, 
 unsympathetic reception with the fierce dis 
 dain that found its outlet in his scathing criticisms of the 
 typical men of the time is not to be wondered at, nor is it 
 less surprising that he should shrink from laying bare the 
 secrets of his soul to those so incapable of comprehending 
 their depths. 
 
 When, therefore, in his silent vigils, enthralled by the 
 imaginative ecstasy which often possessed and overpowered 
 him, he conceived and wrought out this marvellous inspira 
 tion, what wonder is it that his delicate sensibility should 
 prompt him to conceal from the rude gnze of his material 
 audience the secret springs of his inner consciousness, by 
 printing his weird fancies over an assumed name, and hedg 
 ing its origin about with the impenetrable veil of fiction ? 
 
 Had "The Raven" been, as he described it in his paper, 
 "The Philosophy of Composition," a product of art simply, 
 and not of inspiration, his ambition for fame would infallibly 
 have led him not only to claim the poem openly from the
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 395 
 
 outset, but to have preluded it with the descriptive analysis,, 
 using the verse as an illustration of the alleged philosophy 
 of the composition. It is, on the contrary, a most suggest 
 ive fact that " The Raven " was the only important com 
 position of Poe's ever printed by him over a noni- de-plume. 
 To his intimates Poe frequently spoke of the exalted 
 state, which he defined as ecstasy, in which he wrote 
 his poems of imagination. From one of his nearest 
 friends, who knew him in prosperity and adversity, in sick 
 ness and health, I learn that none of Poe's romances were 
 more fictitious than his romances about himself and his writ 
 ings, and his accepted analysis of " The Raven " is confessedly 
 as thorough a specimen of plausible fabrication as is his 
 familiar story of " The Facts in the Case of Monsieur de 
 Valdemar." Like all persons of a morbidly sensitive tem 
 perament, he resented the slightest approach from the world 
 at large, and from practical people in particular, to the inner 
 citadel of his soul, and he knew well how to use his invincible 
 weapons of defence. 
 
 Many admirers of the poet's genius will doubtless prefer 
 that the origin of the inspiration of "The Raven " shall re 
 main enshrouded in the chiaro-oscuro of the mystic sugges- 
 tiveness of the verse. 
 
 But in a much wider circle there unquestionably exists a 
 pardonable desire to learn the true source of this wonderful 
 poem, that, written in any age, in any language, would have 
 given to its author a world-wide fame. 
 
 Basing the opinions which we venture to advance here 
 upon the result of a process of psychological introversion, 
 which conclusion is confirmed by several of Poe's most in-
 
 396 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 timate acquaintances now living, strengthened by a chain 
 of conclusive circumstantial evidence, we have arrived at a 
 theory of the origin of the poem that has received the ap 
 proval of Mr. George R. Graham and others of Poe's friends. 
 
 A letter received from Mr. Graham May I, 1877, in this 
 connection will be read with interest, from the writer's near 
 and friendly intimacy with the poet : 
 
 ' W. F. GILL, ESQ : 
 
 " DEAR SIR- From my near acquaintance with Edgar A. Poe at the time 
 'The Raven' was written I have no doubt that your theory as to the source 
 of the inspiration of The Raven ' is in the main correct. It was his foible to 
 mislead and mystify his readers. 
 
 " His published analysis of ' The R.iven ' is a good specimen of his capa 
 bility in this kind of fiction. 
 
 " Your impression that the poet was accessible to fear is entirely correct. 
 He was singularly sensitive to outside influences, more so than most imagi 
 native men. 
 
 " His organization, as I have always said, was extremely delicate and fine. 
 Hence his impressibility and subjection at times to influences which would 
 not have a feather's weight with ordinary men. 
 
 "Even when absorbed in writing I noticed that a sudden breath of air, a 
 noise unheard by others around him. would staitle him. 
 
 "He disliked the dark, and was rarely out at night when I knew him. On 
 one occasion he said to me: ' I believe that demons take advantage of the 
 night to mislead the unwary although you know,' he added, ' I don't be 
 lieve in them.' 
 
 "The mysteries of his inner life were never revealed to any one, but his 
 intimates well understood that to mystify his hearer was a strong element of 
 his mind. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 "GEO. R. GRAHAM. 
 
 " NEW YORK, May i, 1877." 
 
 It is a singular fact that Poe's reading of " The Raven "
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 397 
 
 in private was totally at variance with the reading of it as a 
 mere composition. 
 
 Had it been constructed as described by him in his essay 
 on composition, his reading would, unquestionably, have been 
 in accordance with this description, for Foe was too good an 
 elocutionist to fail to adequately voice his conceptions. 
 
 As a mere composition, it is impossible to give to the 
 reading of the poem a tithe of the vraiscmblance which at 
 taches to it, when rendered according to the theory of its 
 foundation upon an actual experience of the poet. 
 
 But for Poe's evident intent to conceal his authorship of 
 the poem there would be but little expectation of finding 
 any clue to the source of its inspiration. But the fact of the 
 deliberate and exceptional concealment evidences conclusively 
 enough that there was, in the poet's own experience, some 
 basis of fact whereon his imaginative structure was erected. 
 
 That some of the most exquisite imaginative fabrics ever 
 constructed have been wrought from t.he suggestions af 
 forded by some special experience, or by a chance incident 
 or circumstance, there are many familiar examples to de 
 monstrate. 
 
 Beethoven's beautiful " Moonlight Sonata " was suggested 
 by a romantic incident during the composer's sojourn at 
 Bonn. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe's " Battle Hymn of the Re 
 public " was a special inspiration which came to her after 
 witnessing a romantic moonlight march of the troops during 
 the war of the American rebellion. 
 
 In seeking for the clue to " The Raven " we find, in recall 
 ing the situation of the poet at this time, that he was living 
 at Bloomingdale, New York.
 
 398 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 While at this place, and previous to the appearance of 
 "The Raven," his child-wife, Virginia, for whom he had 
 come to feel a deeper affection than that of fraternal love., 
 was prostrated by a serious illness, which had previously 
 afflicted her, and for weeks her life hung by a thread. Ani 
 mation was at times, indeed, seemingly suspended, and on 
 one dreary December night the poet was agonized to find 
 her cold and breathless, apparently dead. 
 
 In his lonely, silent vigils, in what was, to all intents and 
 purposes, the presence of death, many strange imageries and 
 much bitter self-accusation naturally possessed him. Al 
 though latterly devoted to his wife, he had caused her pain 
 in the first years of his married life by his romantic admira 
 tion of other women ; * and an exaggerated sense of wrong 
 done to his lost loved one, through his neglect, not unnatu 
 rally came to him at this time, exciting the most irrational 
 remorse, and completely surcharging his mind with the im 
 aginative reveries " that no mortal ever dared to dream be 
 fore." In picturing to himself his wife as departed, his 
 remorse also forbade him any hope of meeting her in the 
 distant Aidenn of the future. 
 
 With the added factor of some fugitive bird, or domes 
 tic pet (the Poes always kept them), breaking in upon his 
 wild reveries with some slight interruption which the poet's 
 distorted fancy exaggerated into some supernatural visi 
 tant, an adequate basis for his masterpiece is found. 
 
 * Mrs. Weiss states that he had frequently had sentimental afachments 
 for intellectual women, sometimes nothing more than a distant adoration 
 the poet never speaking to the lady " as a devotee might worship the Ma 
 donna."
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 399 
 
 That this suggestion of the possible origin of " The Ra 
 ven " is at least plausible, an analysis of the construction of 
 the poem, coupled with the peculiar characteristics of the 
 poet, will perhaps evidence. 
 
 Like many persons of an imaginative, nervous tempera 
 ment, Poe was susceptible, in certain moods, to a positive 
 sense of the supernatural. This sense he has defined in his 
 letters, describing visions suggesting singular fancies. 
 
 In his normal state, he did not possess the element of 
 fear ; but when his mind was abnormally overwrought to 
 the extent that it frequently was, he was susceptible to 
 impressions that at other times would have affected him 
 very differently. 
 
 We find this dread of the supernatural barely hinted at 
 in the first verse, wherein his weariness and loneliness are 
 principally depicted. 
 
 The second verse simply describes his isolation and his 
 .sorrow for his lost love. The train of thought, inspired by 
 his breathing his hopeless sorrow, is quickly followed by the 
 self-accusation of his remorse for his past ; and the vision of 
 an accusing fate dawns upon him, as he recalls the strange 
 sharp sound that interrupted his loneliness. 
 
 He is, in fact, beside himself with fear, and, as a person 
 in such a state would be likely to do, he endeavors to allay 
 his imaginative terrors by ascribing them to some common 
 place cause : 
 
 " 'Tis some visitor en'reating entrartce at my chamber door 
 Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door : 
 This it is, and nothing more." 
 
 He nerves himself up to the effort required to throw off
 
 400 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 his supernatural terror, and opens the door to discover the 
 cause of the noise. He finds nothing but the darkness. 
 His fears, not having been dispelled, as they would have 
 been had he, at this time, discovered some practical cause 
 for the interruption, are, naturally, confirmed, and new visions 
 are inspired, and the supposed mysterious visitant takes the 
 haunting form of the spirit of his lost one. 
 
 In an ecstasy of dread and excitement, he returns to his 
 lonely watch, only to be again interrupted by a similar noise 
 at the window. 
 
 To his delight and surprise, his mysterious visitor takes 
 the welcome form of a truant bird, or some other pet, that 
 had escaped and returned after the house was closed for the 
 night. 
 
 His supernatural dread immediately gives place to a sense 
 of relief at the material presence of his dumb visitor, and, 
 pacified for the moment, his imaginative fears take flight, and 
 he sits down and holds a merry colloquy with his guest, glad 
 of any opportunity of occupying himself and taking his mind 
 off from the morbid imaginings that had possessed it. But 
 under all this would be blithesome colloquy with his visitor,. 
 his fancy will revert to the hopeless dread that has over 
 powered him, and, like the haunted criminal in MM. Erck- 
 mann and Chatrian's drama of "The Bells," his imagination 
 coins but one word in answer to his every query , and as 
 Matthias Kant, in the play, is pursued everywhere by the 
 weird jingle of the bells, so the mocking "Nevermore!" 
 seemed to hover in the air, sounding the knell of his lost 
 hopes. 
 
 The refrain is not, however, to my mind, invested with.
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 4-OI 
 
 any supernatural suggestiveness in the earlier portions cf the 
 poem. Were it so, the poet would have indicated it in the 
 verse. On the contrary, he writes: 
 
 " Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, 
 Though its answer little meaning, little relevancy, bore," 
 
 clearly indicating that his impression was simply one of sur 
 prise, not, at first, of fear. 
 
 This idea is confirmed in the opening line of the twelfth 
 stanza of the poem : 
 
 " But the raven Etill beguiling all my sad soul into smiling" 
 
 which clearly evidences that, up to this point, the impression 
 produced by the appearance of the bird, had not excited any 
 other emotions than the very natural effects of surprise and 
 amusement. But immediately after this, the poet permits 
 himself to do a very hazardous thing for his peace of mind, 
 for he betook himself " to linking fancy unto fancy,'' until, at 
 the end of the next stanza, we find him just where he was at 
 the beginning, the lighter train of thought suggested by the 
 entrance of his visitor, having merged itself in the reminis 
 cences of his lost Lenore, with whom, for the first time in the 
 course of the interview, it occurs to him to connec.t the bird. 
 
 Nothing, it seems to us, is at once so natural and inge 
 nious as the manner of the leading up, in the verse, to this 
 necessary connection of the bird with the subject of the poet's 
 imageries. 
 
 The careless, blithesome opening line of the twelfth stan 
 za, already quoted, is in such bold contrast to the sad closing 
 line of the next stanza, that it seems inexplicable that these
 
 402 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 
 
 opposing ideas could have been so congruously reconciled by 
 so simple a device as the deft placing of the " cushioned seat '^ 
 with its " violet velvet lining." 
 
 From this point, the atmosphere of the scene changes and 
 becomes merged in the supernatural, the changes of the at 
 mosphere being clearly indicated by the lines : 
 
 " Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer 
 Swung by seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor." 
 
 The bird, no longer a bird to the distorted vision of the 
 poet, assumes to his gaze the shape, first, of an angel, then of 
 an avenging demon. 
 
 In one moment of rhapsody, he grasps with frantic joy at 
 the fitful hope of " Nepenthe " for his remorse, only to be 
 cast down to the depths of despair by the reaction which suc 
 ceeds this still-born hope. 
 
 Invested by the poet's fancy with the spirit of prophecy, 
 the bird from that moment assumes to him the form of a 
 Nemesis, and replies to his plaints with the oracular solemni 
 ty of a remorseless fate. There are no bounds to the men 
 tal anguish depicted in the stanza beginning: 
 
 " Be that word our sign of parting," 
 
 and no limit to the abject despair portrayed in the following, 
 the closing, stanza. 
 
 In voicing his imaginary conception inverse, it is not singu 
 lar that Poe should have selected the raven as typical of his. 
 fateful visitor; for the raven has for ages past been renowned 
 as the symbol of ill-omen, and for the purposes of the narra 
 tion of the story, a talking bird was indispensable. What 
 other than the raven could have been effectively employed ?
 
 PAPYRUS LEAVES. 405 
 
 The refrain " Nevermore ! " was not less obviously selected 
 as suggestive, both in sense and sound, of the poet's fateful 
 fancy. 
 
 It will, I think, be conceded that the spontaneity which 
 is an all-pervading characteristic of such of the poems as are 
 known to have been inspired by some actual person, such as 
 " To Helen," " Annabel Lee," and "For Annie," exists not 
 less palpably in " The Raven." Like these others, it sings 
 itself, to a strange melody, it is true, but not less naturally or 
 truly, and with an exalted beauty of rhythm that seems bora 
 of a special inspiration.

 
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