m THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES v m *n 5o ' THE HORTONS: OB merican Jife at 10 me. BY DAVIS B. CASSEDAY. FOR SALE BY ^ JAMES S. CLAXTON, PHILADELPHIA: D. APPLETON A Co., NEW YORK: LEE & SHEPPARD, BOSTON": B. W. CARROLL & Co., CINCINNATI: S. C. GRIGGS & Co., CHICAGO: TRUBNER A Co., LONDON. 1866. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by DAVIS B. CASSEDAY, In the Office of the Clerk of the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. STKKKOTTPED AND PRINTED BY ALFRED MAUTIEN. PS /JU cm*. TO ARTHUR W. MITCHELL, MARYLAND, THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 1661488 BflltltlS, PAGE CHAPTER I. Bad News by the Telegraph Father and Daughter 5 CHAPTER II. The Breakfast-room at Belair The Merchant in his Counting- house An Old Clerk 11 CHAPTER III. A Commercial "Panic" Bartimeus Scroggs, and other creditors 21 CHAPTER IV. l^Tlower-faucies 29 CHAPTER V. Autumn days, and the Family at Belair A Ctfvalier encountered at Farmer Gregg's 33 CHAPTER VI. Y "Women in town and country contrasted Caroline Mellen 43 CHAPTER VII. y A Birthday Party at Belair, and what was said and done thereat.... 47 CHAPTER VIII. Some account of the Crosbys, and of a poor neighbor of theirs...)^... 60 CHAPTER IX. Storm at Sea, and a Calm Ashore Bradley Horton 67 CHAPTER X. The Spirits iii Clement Horton's Counting-house 73 V CONTENTS. CHAPTER XI. Bradley Horton at The Cedars Lydia Bardl'eigh The Sick- chamber 88 CHAPTER XII. Bloker and Ball The Captain's Widow 100 CHAPTER XIII. A small Dinner-party at Belair, including two representatives of Commerce 107 CHAPTER XIV. How the Anniversary of the Battle of Hickory Hollow was cele brated at Slumptown 115 i^ CHAPTER XV. A Moonlight Excursion on the water Doctor Pledget tells the Story of a Nervous Patient, and becomes acquainted with an Astronomer 128 CHAPTER XVI. Warned to Move 145 CHAPTER XVII. A.t The Cedars Rail- shooting 149 CHAPTER XVIII. .L. A Farm-house at evening Two Lovers talk reasonably in the moonlight 157 CHAPTER XIX. Clinkers and Charity 1C2 CHAPTER XX. ^"~ A Woman's Letter Christinas at Belair without Grog, and what the guests thought of it 174 CHAPTER XXI. Too much Whiskey-punch, together with a queer Experience of Mr. Broon's 185 CHAPTER XXII. fr Winter in the Country, Sleighing and Courtship, and a Lover called to answer 196 CONTENTS. Vll PAGE CHAPTER XXIII. Judge Bardleigh talks Ghost in the twilight 205 CHAPTER XXIV. A Notable Couple How Bartimeus Scroggs failed to go to Congress, and how Orator Puffin went 210 CHAPTER XXV. Father and Daughter again 216 CHAPTER XXVI. Brentlands Scenery and Humor of the Country Max Heyhurst A Talk about Poetry, and Political Morals 219 CHAPTER XXVII. Brentlands A day's duck-shooting 229 CHAPTER XXVIII. Brentlands Bradley Horton as a Farmer Field, "Wood, and Gar den Tom Hance Mr. Potteril of New Paradise, and his man, Simon Horseradish 234 CHAPTER XXIX. At The Cedars The Lovers Uncle Steve Trencher 248 CHAPTER XXX. Lydia Bardleigh at Aunt Dinah's death-bed 259 CHAPfER XXXI. Jane "Warner Sewing for Bread Little Lame Frank An Accident and an Old Acquaintance 262 CHAPTER XXXII. Jane Warner Jacob Bloker The Private Mad-Houso 274 CHAPTER XXXIII. Tare and Tret out at Grass Little Frank Henry Davenport seeks for information 282 CHAPTER XXXIV. Bloker's Benevolence 292 CHAPTER XXXV. How a Christian woman can die 297 Vlll CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER XXXVI. I/ At the Old Clerk's A Discovery 304 CHAPTER XXXVII. A party in a city mansion, at which there is conversation both grave and gay: together with some account of Doctor Peter Mellen, and how a dispute concerning Hydrophobia was settled... 308 CHAPTER XXXVIII. A Conference concerning Jane Warner 321 CHAPTER XXXIX. / / A Search for Jane Warner, and a Habeas Corpus 327 CHAPTER XL. / /Borne pleasant rides behind an old cab-horse Friends part 333 CHAPTER XLI. A Funeral at The Cedars Bradley Horton at Brentlands Hail The old saddle sorrel 337 CHAPTER XLII. New York Bradley Horton becomes an "Able Editor" 342 CHAPTER XLIII. Washington Patriots, vulpine and vulturine The Great Horse Fair at Hepzida'm Bloker reaps the Field of Blood 345 CHAPTER XClV. Bartimeus Scroggs is loyal to the Administration, and makes a Name in History 349 CHAPTER XLV. Paul Mervine 353 CHAPTER XLVI. . ^/A Death, and a Marriage '. 353 CHAPTER XLVII. A Few Last Words.... 361 THE HORTONS. CHAPTER I. Believe me, sir, had I such venture forth, The better part of my affections would Be with my hopes abroad. * * And every object that might make me fear Misfortune to my ventures, out of doubt, "Would make me sad. MERCHANT OP VENICE. HE slow, soft breeze of a July night, odorous with the exhalations of the landscape, sported capriciously along the elm-bordered terrace, and bore its benison through the open windows of the drawing-room at Belair. Cle ment Horton sat gazing at shadows of foliage, traced by the moonlight, that trembled on the pallid marble of an opposite pedestal. Without, between the droning trees, were vistas and uncertain reaches of amber-tinted prospect, where growing corn and oat-fields sentinelled with shocks merged in the indistinguishable meadows that margin the Tarnell. O O The clank of a closing gate aroused the watcher. Rising, with alert step he passed to the terrace. A sound of hoofs upon a wooden bridge, which fell harsh 1* 6 THE HORTONS; OB and heavy upon his heart, then a duller thud approach ing on the gravelled avenue, and a horseman emerged from a clump of shrubbery. "Is it you, Walsh? The steamer's in, then?" "Yes, sir; and here is the dispatch." "You will find your room ready. Goodnight." And Mr. Horton reentered the house and retired to his chamber. Warm as was the night he shut the jalousie with scrupulous care, and drew the curtains close, as if he would stifle in the pent-up air from all the world the impressions of impending disaster which oppressed him. Eagerly, but with unsteady hands, he broke the en velope of the dispatch. For a moment its contents seemed blurred; then, at a glance, he comprehended all. His fears were more than realized. A heavy fall in the value of sugars in the British markets, in a measure indicated by previous advices, which involved the sacrifice of large shipments that he had made, and the failure of the old and extensive house of Price, Irving & Co., custodians of his affairs abroad, was an nounced. The magnitude of his misfortune was sharply defined in the mind of Clement Horton. 'Hope offered no illusion to break the force of the blow, which was bankruptcy. Very curious are the alternations of feeling occasioned by calamity in men of rugged fibre. The countenance of the merchant to him who had surveyed it then would Lave betrayed little indication of care or struggle of passion. Nor was it the face of one stunned to insensi bility. The tension of suspense was loosed, and for the AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 7 moment the conflict of hope and apprehension was allayed. A conflict, ah! how agonizing to a man who beholds in his fears the belief of others in him, the result of laborious years and fidelity to honorable courses, passing into suspicion and censure. Allayed for the moment; fleeting and fallacious relief I Dis quiet returned strengthened, like the evil spirit to its swept and garnished house. It is scarcely extrava gance of language to declare that Clement Horton groaned in his anguish out of a body of death. As he contemplated the wreck of his fortune, too fragmented to float him over the gulf the sudden shutting of the grooves of his career, his soul sank within him, and, casting himself upon the floor of his chamber, the stricken man wrestled and moaned away the sultry summer night. Mr. Horton was a widower. Imbued with an abiding regard for the memory of his wife, although at the meridian of life and possessed of an ample fortune, in seven years he had not again married. While it was a sterling, Clement Ilorton's was not altogether an attractive character. With a disposition to confide, justly checked by knowledge of the world and habits of self-reliance, his manners were not prepossessing. His temper was somewhat rigorous. While he con scientiously cherished the larger virtues, and was aware, as one is when educated by books and travel, of the conventionalism of society, he bestowed an insufficient cultivation upon the smaller, those benevolences that are called the amenities of life. Truthful, punctual, inflexibly honest, unostentatiously generous as an alms- 8 THE HORTONS; OR giver, scorning sneakingness in all its shapes, he was respected and trusted ; unbending, taciturn, occasionally severe, he restrained in others germs of regard from ripening to ardent friendship. Mr. Horton's surviving children were a son and daughter. The abounding life of nineteen flowed rejoicingly in the veins of Emily Horton. Far above the level of that womanhood where millinery ecstacies blend with platitudes of affected simplicity and lacka daisical complaints, the lineaments of her character displayed in well-harmonized proportions delicacy and strength; for, as it sexually should, delicacy predomi nated. A rare union of qualities, which in a better social organization will be more frequent, when deter mination and sentiment shall not, as now, expend themselves in distinct and often conflicting courses. Bodily exercise in full measure had made her robust, though not ungraceful. Dumb-bells alternated with French, and she tripped lightly and eagerly from the music-stool to the saddle. Carefully taught, at her father's requirement, the matr6nly duties of the house hold, the art, seldom possessed, of investing coarse, common-place labors with seemliness, dignified her industry. A healthy constitution of mind was made fruitful by culture. Tall and symmetrical in figure, her carriage was buoyant with athletic animation. Of fair complexion, her countenance, tranquilized by the play of eyes which were tender in repose, derived an air of archness from a nose slightly retrousse. Luxu riant tresses of light brown hair depended from a simple coiffure. Here was not the lithe loveliness of AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 9 oriental beauty, fashioned in the fervor which purples the clusters of the lilac, and paints with Persian noons the voluptuous cheek of the peach a faultless mould about a shrivelled core of soul, but the sound and spiritualized result of a lusty Christian civilization. The moral character of a true woman, in which the virtues stand thick, may seem easy of analysis. Sere nity, earnestness, self-sacrifice, endurance, and benevo lence quicken and ennoble life. But unexpected developments of excellence constantly occur, and suggest in turn latent and indefinite possibilities. Besides, there is abatement for alloy. He who has felt the influence of such a character most, knows how hard it is to adequately express it; like light, it is a diffused beneficence pure, pervading, and subtle. Enough, to remember the presence of a spiritual woman as that of one, like Spenser's Una, whose " angel's face, As the great eye of heaven, shined bright, And made a sunshine in the shady place." Yet there are wretched beings among men, lagos and Stenos of society, whose souls are shut to this refreshing; who sneer with the incredulity of the pit at every portraiture of female purity, and value it by the attributed standard of the coulisse. So infernal frogs know only the ooze of Acheron. Even Satan, in the presence of Eve, " abstracted stood, From his own evil." But the virtues and graces are not necessarily asso- 10 THE IIORTONS; OR elated. Often the most dangerous thing in bad women is their fascinating self-possession; while goodness is of plain case and uncourtly. Correggio, instinctively truthful, has depicted the Furies not old, withered, and deformed, the awful Memories of ^Eschylus in shapes of hideous sisterhood, but as women, comely with the rounded freshness of youth, a solitary serpent filletting each head, but faces faces infernally implacable with perverted passions. Emily Horton's nature was not ductile. Her virtues and defects tended to the positive. Hence she shunned shams, and was without prudery. Some caprices she showed, being a woman, but claimed no prerogative to cherish them; and in matters of moment, she was not uncertain. Least of all was there varying in the stead fastness of her love, which did not cling with the wan tonness of whim, but clave with the directness and strength of passion. She strove to inspire her actions with a pure regard for wisdom and goodness; to live in the exercise of charity, which is the method of a comprehensive righteousness. Self-appreciation some times disported on the level of a spiritualized pride, which was not Pharisaism. Excess was apt to be the measure of her antipathies. The contemplation of wrong and meanness swelled her resentment to hatred, or sank it to contempt. Her nature, sensitive in its strength, capable alike of love and loathing, was rich in solace for sore occasions. AMERICAN LIFE AT liOME. 11 CHAPTEE II. MEN are as so many emmets, busy, busy still, going to and fro, in and out, and crossing one another's projects, as the lines of several sea-cards cut each other in a globe or map. Now light and merry, but by-and- by sorrowful and heavy; now hoping, then distrusting; now patient, to-morrow crying out. ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. GRISTING-, attended by the warm South, was trailing her pall, glit tering with dew, upon wood and field. From the bay-window of the breakfast-room a parterre of verbenas violet-hued and crimson, orange-suited jonquils, and roses of imperial aspect though garbed in saintly white, stretched pic turesquely irregular until it was lost behind a copse of shrubbery. Gravelled avenues exhaling coolness in the shadow of overarching trees, alleys meandering through sunny spaces of turf, a jubilant choir of robins fresh from the morning feast of cherries, the sober and familiar wren, the oriole, a gleam of gold and jet, cleaving the tresses of the willow, the bugles of bees faintly blowing in the jessamine- scented air, contributed their several de lights to the enchanting summer morning scene. 12 THE HORTONS; OE It was not until twice summoned that Mr. Ilorton, but little refreshed by daylight dozes, appeared. If this unusual breach of punctuality excited the atten tion of his daughter, his haggard look, despite an assumption of briskness as little like healthy animation as the restlessness of fever, aroused her solicitude. It was new to her, that look of one whose "heart taketh not rest in the night." "Breakfast has been ready this half-hour, father; you are late, and seern ill." " The hot night and wakefulness, Emily. I confess to being out of sorts, and I don't feel hungry now I'm here." The repast proceeded in an uneasy silence. " Really you should not call that a breakfast, man pere a bit of meat no bigger than a lozenge! Try this pigeon." "No, child; nature is clogged. After all, I believe a cup of strong coffee is the best crutch for an ailing man." "Don't the doctors forbid it?" "Yes and drink it. In India, I knew captains of the country ships who lived almost on curry and coffee. One shrivelled, sallow-skinned old fellow took a score of cups a day, was eighty when I met him, and perfectly clear-headed, but, it must be owned, much like a palsy in a bundle of parchment." Reserved as was Mr. Horton in his intercourse with the world, with his daughter he was easy and unre strained; still this bizarre sprightliiiess was unusual, AMERICAN. LIFE AT HOME. 13 and set awkwardly upon him. A servant announced the carriage, and Mr. Horton rose. "Be quiet to-day, father, and keep from the sun. I think I shall be in the city for some dresses. If we go to Newport next month I must get ready. A note from Caroline Mellen tells me that she will be at my service, and you know ladies hate solitary shopping. Did you like the pearl-colored silk I showed you?" " Yes, Emily, I thought it pretty, but your taste is better taught than mine." Newport ! The word to the merchant was a pang. But the carriage wheels had not ceased to crunch the gravel of his grounds when weightier cares thronged his mind. Much of his paper was daily falling due, and large payments would be demanded within the week. He could still go on for some days, perhaps several weeks, at the price of further involvement. To this as an upright man he would not consent. Yet hardly was he resolved to stop at once, when a more sanguine mood controlled him. He could yet contrive to get through his difficulties without the humiliation of proclaimed failure; it only, needed management and nerve, and both were his. He would accomplish all by a masterly adroitness; there should be no equivocal finesse. The unsullied credit and large concerns of his house, the fair growth of a quarter of a century, should not thus topple in an hour. Brief beguilement. Behind it, an enduring background, was necessity, stark and stringent, and importunate as an avenging shade. Along the dusky highway; cityward. The plodding 2 14 THE HOKTONS; OR teamster swerves with call and crack of lash his sinewy leader, and thinks the smart equipage which hurries by, the very shrine of happiness. A misan thropic butcher's boy, driving a herd of beeves, con torts his tallow-hued expanse of face to a scowl of envy, curses in shamble-seasoned adjectives his scurvy fortune, and poles the nearest ox. A pedler in the hedge, biting his frugal crust, catches a glimpse of cosy cushions and a portly gentleman in spruce attire, and thinks of the burden of the long, sweaty day. A brace of fast young gentlemen ogle languidly the car riage and its occupants, and bandy sententious com ments. "Old Horton rich as a Jew 'mazing pretty daughter, Bob: Old f'ler himself 'cidedly slow s'prisin how them 'fernal slow men wear!" Across converging railroad tracks; by brick-yards, patches of truck, and grimy factories ; by suburban taverns redo lent of bitters, with their groups of morning idlers, and hostlers doing stable sleights with chunks of sponge and empty buckets ; by limbo-looking spaces cumbered with refuse lumber, car-wheels, and grindstones, and superannuated coaches, warped, blistered, bare, and dismal, doing righteous penance for the hypocrisy of their running days when they were never full; by cemeteries, where falsehood suns itself in stone atop, while underneath reality takes refuge in dead night and the wormy corpse-stuffed mould; then on the street, among the currents of existence that set toward the greedy vortex of the town. The counting-house of Clement Horton was entered from a narrow lane which skirted the river. You AMERICAN MFE AT HOME. 15 reached it along an entry dimly lighted by a single cobwebbed window, and a flight of well-worn steps. Over a stone archway, through which heavy drays laden with bales and tierces from the adjacent wharves rumbled all day long, scraping the damp granite sides, and rats scudded stealthily in the black mud, it gar nered year by yp.ar its inky fruit in iron chests, be tween ponderous lids of tawny leather, and upon stems of wire that cropped along the walls. Its prospect was a lean slice of water scenery sandwiched in a brick per spective; ships at their moorings discharging cargo, or sweltering lazily in the caulker's reek of pitch, and passing steamboats that left legacies of smoke athwart the view. The region and its dwellers wore a dingy, not to say Stygian aspect. The huge warehouses rose sullenly above the life which surged beside them and took nothing of its impress; a sense of separateness like that of coffins from the funeral concourse striking the beholder, who as he passed the open doors and got glimpses of porters laboring far back in the cavernous gloom thought they seemed rummaging a sepulchre. From the coopers' shops came the knocking of busy adzes, and an odor of freshly whittled oak. Weighmas- ters and their men bustled among bales and bags, and stevedores shoved with slow labor grating casks. Massive anchors and coils of rust-eaten chain, stowed in sideway recesses, mocked humanity with their grim impassiveness. For the habitable buildings, they were groggeries and junk-shops, where thieves sold their plunder, sailor boarding-houses, and brothels of the baser sort pustules into which run the peccant humors 16 THE HORTONS; OK of urban civilization. The inhabitants were chiefly remarkable for an avoidance of cleanliness, a tendency to blear-eyes, and the consumption of clams. The musty air was toned with an exhaustless smell of onions. Such was the hallowed ground where Mam mon owned his altars. Seated in his private office, Mr. Horton engaged with accustomed regularity in the perusal of the day's cor respondence. He was interrupted while making some memoranda concerning it by the entrance of his confi dential clerk, who, having received the instruction which he sought, was retiring, iHien the merchant with an effort detained him. "Mr. Davenport, please wait a moment: I have something to say." The pause which followed, and the steady and serious gaze of the speaker disconcerted his subordi nate. "Henry, I am a broken man; (twitching of the mouth) I must stop." "You are joking, sir," faltered Davenport, "trying me?" "Would to God I were!" Then a new notion possessed the clerk his em ployer's mind was unbalanced. If Henry Davenport had faith in anything, not properly the object of devo tion, it was the stability of the house of Horton. Iden tified with it by a service of nearly twenty years, no waking thought or nightmare of mercantile disaster had ever disturbed him. As soon would he have con fessed the rcits could demolish the old granite archway. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 17 Often had he counted Mr. Ilorton's estate; a quarter of a million at low valuation not a dollar less. It was growing yearly, too, with improved vicinity and growth of revenue. He knew -of losses, indeed, in excess of the customary business per centage; but compared with the capital which was pitted against them they might justly seem insignificant; as well question a ship's staunchness for the barnacles upon its, bottom and failed? Lunacy, clearly lunacy; dulness itself might see it. And so, his mind a tumult of incredulity, Davenport gazed upon his principal, who was refold ing mechanically the morning's letters. Presently the merchant broke the silence. "There is minous news from Europe, where I have large consignments. I operated silently, looking for a happy stroke of fortune, and mortgaged my property to make payments. My sagacity has been at fault, and I have lost. In the present tightness of money I see it is impossible for me to go on ; and that only do I see plainly. I must consult my friends. My farms at Brentlands will be attached, of course, and I desire some special debts to have priority, and that may pre vent an arrangement with all my creditors, which I hope for, but hardly expect. It is a shocking business, but I will hold nothing back; they shall impute to me no dishonesty. I have extended indulgence to others in distress; heaven knows whether I shall receive it!'' The old clerk blew his nose with energy, and replied in a husky voice: "If it be so bad as you think, sir, still it cannot be desperate. The house of Clement Horton has a 2* 18 THE HORTONS; OR character which must command terms. No creditor however churlish, dare brave public opinion by re fusing them. After so many years, this is a rough turn of affairs for me, sir. But," he quickly added, with an attempt at cheerfulness which, despite the jaunty flourishing of his bandana, was sorry assurance, "it will all come right, and end a balance in our favor." "God bless you for your sympathy, my friend! I hope 1 shall meet the worst firmly, as becomes an up right man," responded the merchant. The law of the old clerk's life was method, stronger than the utmost spite of fortune, and he trod his round of duties with the same systematic steps, but his heart reeled beneath the burden of a noble sorrow. The young men over whom he presided observed that his characteristic equanimity, happily tempered with deci sion, had given place to a restless and querulous de meanor. Aroused from moodily brooding over his accounts, he would respond to the occasion with splenetic activity. "By George, Wilson!" whispered Snively seven teen, with a faint down on his upper lip "old Dav's bagged at last. Now I know the meaning of the flashy r est he sported Sunday. Reg'lar loud pattern saw ne of the Yigee boys as Dav passed her house look as if he'd like to garote him for it Twig?" The interrogated, sucking the tip of his pen-holder the while, regarded his superior with an air of senti mental interest, lapsed into a despairing sigh, and, under cover of his desk-lid, whistled sotto voce a bar of " Un happy Jeremiah." AMERICAN -LIFE AT HOME. 19 Fancy not, O brother, who art travelling through "this vale," that our afflictions, thine and mine, will be read aright; or understood, educe tearful responses from Stokes, or Gibbs, or Thompson, fellow-creatures altogether lovely though they be, and parcel of the general caravan. The rue we cherish may not exhale their favorite odor, nor possess for them an inspiring 'tint. Leave them without upbraiding to the flora of their choice. Their orange blossoms, roses, poppies, will seem even to us, for all our present drapery of woe, a twelve-month hence less vapid. Let drollery thfin do on, and laugh, if it will, behind its hand, with dear, delightful Elia, at a funeral. Mr. Horton confided his difficulties to two business and personal intimates. Relieved by the hearty offor of their services, and the relinquishment of part of his burden its shearing in our meaning-full Saxon tongue he was about to go home, when Davenport entered and handed him a package. " There is something, sir, I will thank you to use for me." "Use I What is it? Stop, Henry!" "Well, if I must, certificates of stock. I have invested about nine thousand dollars. Half of it is devoted to the support of my mother, should I dia before her; with her frugal habits, and a small annuity of her own, it will be enough. For myself, I cannot live without employment. Besides, just in my prime lustier than half the sickly spawn of twenty, now-a- days. Whatever happens, I shall tick on till I run down. Eh! don't smile, sir; a little bald, but it runs 20 THE HORTONS; OR in the family sign of a strong constitution, they say, and convenient for shower-baths." "I thank you with all my heart, but I cannot ." "Nor can I," exclaimed the ardent Davenport with brisk determination, as he disappeared. "What is the matter with old Dav, Snively?" asked Wilson that night in a convivial lull at the weekly union of the " Musical Owls," Juddle, of the wholesale provision line, famous for his stunning solo of the "Blue-tailed Fly" to a jews-harp accompaniment, in the chair. "Hang me, sir, if I didn't see him this after noon, when you'd all gone, before the glass tieing fancy knots in his cravat, and looking a perfect Romeo. Well, when he turned quick and caught me spotting him, and some astonished I was I rather think, he laughed, took his hat, gave me a parting punch in the ribs with a volume of McCullough, and sloped." "Hit by the little archer, my boy! Wooman; lovely woo-man!" and the experienced youth thrust the suction-tube, with scientific precision, through the centre of a slice of lemon in his cobbler. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. CHAPTEE III. How now, Shylock? what news among the merchants? MERCHANT OP VENICE. ,HAT splendid sunsets we have, father," remarked Emily. They were lingering over their tea. "Yes? I confess inattention. Perhaps I appreciate sunset more as a relief -this hot weather than a show." "Look! I think of Italian skies, and Bradley. Are 'blue Friuli's mountains' laved by a more imperial flood ? I fancy it is an efflux of para dise, where sainted shadows, untouched by gross influ ences, may lean and listen to our clamor, and find their happiness increased." Perhaps she was invoking good angels for the absent, and so came to think it, for she immediately added, "I wonder brother Bradley has not written in so long a time; it is more than a month." There had been no such pressure in the money mar ket as now prevailed, since the memorable crisis inau gurated by the "smash," as it was emphatically called, of the famous firm of Splinter & Splurge. That, it will be recollected, brought down half the banks of the 22 THE HOKTONS; OR country by the run. Splinter was thought to have made a rather good thing of the failure, being "smart." Certain it is that he lived in pious opulence ever after on the income of a bankrupt, was particular about his wines, sold his billiard table, built a private chapel, and entertained the bishop with holy hospitality. It is also consolatory to know, as showing that secular merit is, at least, rewarded in this calumniated world, that Splurge was subsequently elected secretary of the Epirus and Bungville Bailroad, "realized" a snug sum by an over-issue of its bonds, and died, in an afflu ence of bequests, proprietor of a Cuban sugar estate and two hundred tattooed and musculous Bozales. The pressure was growing daily, too. Stout gentle men, with double chins and claret-colored counte nances, discussed with lean and bilious gentlemen at the insurance offices whether it would become a panic, delivering, as they swung their watch-seals, portentous periods in a big, infallible tone, to which the bilious men croaked confirmatory tremendous prophecies of woe. There was the same unflagging buzz of voice* on 'Change, the droning worship of Plutus, till the janitor came and rang it out, when it stagnated on the steps, and eddied in the passages, and flowed into the convenient refectory to mix with the ring of glasses and the tinkle of pounded ice. The same buzz of voices, but there were inflections now culminations of sound when groups got fresh intelligence of disaster, and short, sharp expressions of surprise in features and movement; bubbles, so to speak, above .the foundered firms. Many a rich argosy escaped shipwreck in the AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 23 shelter of the Barbary Coast of three per cent, a month, and sailed a long voyage afterward with its signal of distress, a usurer's heart sprouting vultures' claws. The pinched "drags" bodies pea-green, and wheels daintily picked in red and brimstone of horsey-look ing men who dealt in dry-goods were not seen of after noons upon the road. Elderly citizens, uxorious no longer, rebuked testily Madame's propensity to gad when she proposed the sea-side or Saratoga, declared these were contrivances for the encouragement of heat, racket, dust, dysentery, and mosquitoes, and that, con- trarily, the city was an elysium of freshness and ease. Poor women, nurses, seamstresses, and schoolmistresses, with their little all hoarded in stocks, bore anxious hearts, in which every rumor roused a pang. The blind and bed-ridden annuitants full of years, stripped of their small support let us trust that heaven made of their adversity a blessing, and sanctified their crust and cruse as were never Splinter's sapid viands by grace episcopal, uttered in the bishop's most mellifluent manner, and bodied with turtle and Green Seal. Among others, Mr. Horton's failure had been an nounced, and had occasioned a little stir in the great world of traffic. His property was hastily attached. Brentlands, near Wilton, was seized. The village law yers were busy and blithesome, and the sheriff was a happy man in view of fees. There came, however, a lifting of the clouds. Brentlands was a productive estate of fifteen hun dred acres. Under the skilful management of Mr. Horton it had furnished a yearly revenue equal to the 24 THE HOKTONS; OR interest of more than twice its market value, and even that value, because of the financial distress, perhaps for a long period would be depreciated. These considera tions tended to abate the eagerness of a few who were sordid, and who stood for a speedy sale of the lands and chattels, and prepared the way for an arrangement. A call, to effect this, appeared in the Commercial Register for a meeting of the creditors of Clement Hor- , ton at the offices of Lytell Jowl, Esquire, Attorney at Law and Solicitor in Chancery. Many phases of character were presented to amuse the spectator pleased with variant views of human nature in the assembly at Jowl's. There was the ven erable Bliggs who contradicted nobody, whose lips dis tilled honey of Hybla, while his head was a perpetual ambush for the unwary; Glump, whose moral nature oozed in rigorous sentiments of piety, and at whose approach his children feared and trembled; the manly Duncan; Jacob Bloker, of the firm of Bloker and Ball; the fair-minded Lamed ; and Eapin, extensive " ope rator'' in salt fish, who knew by heart the British peerage, and wore a moustache of such unparalleled ierocity that it suggested gunpowder rations and train ings before Sebastopol. There, too, luminous " emongst the lesser lights," beamed Bartimeus Scroggs. The vanity of Scroggs would have scouted less than a separate and especial paragraph. A solitary feat of his babyhood was preserved by tradition, the habit of closing his fist upon a coveted object with a singular obstinacy of grasp. The builder of his own fortune, he oegan and continued life with a purpose the acquisi- AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 25 tion of wealth ; and he was successful, for his energy cropped from a rich sub-soil of self-esteem. Assidu ously he prosecuted his aim, holding crooked courses to be rather unsightly, but necessary to the aptitudes of business. He deposited, perhaps sometimes with disrelish, his eggs of contrivance in any carcass, satis fied if they returned plump and early maggots. Un profitable in the end, if Scroggs but knew of any other world than that of tare and tret. And it has been well said that "he who destroys confidence murders the generations." By others, Scroggs was styled an infidel ; he called himself a spiritualist, and talked glibly of an inevitable disembodied progression, an assured devel opment and exaltation of the soul hereafter; of which, averred the scoffers, that of Bartimeus would stand in urgent need. The heaven into which he looked to enter was a mixture of Mahomet's paradise and the elysium of classic paganism. Such being his creed, it cannot surprise that his cherished maxim was, to live entirely in and for this world; while he contemplated the next as he would a Chinese puzzle, with curiosity but without concern. With inordinate ambition, wealth, and a consciousness of its power, and with out any spiritualizing faith, there was to be found no check in this man's life higher than the opinion of the mart to assure it just. In politics he was a fierce Republican, not from the impulses of a benevolent nature, but from jealousy of the educated and arrogant aristocracy of the South, whose pretensions, seldom temperate and sometimes thrasonical, offended his enormous vanity. Yet he had some sense of equity 3 26 THE HORTONS; OR in the abstract as Alexander Carlyle's carousing and wenching Scotch lairds had of religion which sup plied him with a basis of semi-sincerity. It was his vanity which kept him steadfast during the weakness and unpopularity of his party, and impelled him to aspire when it had acquired strength and power to offices and honors for which he was unfitted either by nature or cultivation. To secure place and its profits, although generosity was not the method of his blood, he opened his purse to infirm newspapers, and kept in pay a crew of pothouse politicians. Even in this selfish bounty he recompensed himself by a more selfish provision, and while claiming full credit for a gift, exacted a promissory note. "When Wriggle of the Bugle, who coaxed from able writers of the party editorials in charity, and ostentatiously claimed them for his own, was unprosperous, he offered inky incense at the shrine of Scroggs, and settled his weekly bills. One two-column biography, intensely seasoned, of which ten thousand extra copies were forthwith scat tered broadcast, Scroggs in areas and doorways, until the town, as with an Egyptian plague, was Scroggs- infested, supplied the Bugle with wind enough for several months of tooting. Perfect temperance in drinking, and toleration of the shortcomings of others provided neither his prejudice nor interest was .in vaded, were among his sources of strength. Yet with all his advantages Bartimeus was not Machiavel, and was sometimes surpassed by abler and shrewder men. In person he was robust "alimentiveness large," said the phrenologists his hair was red, and AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 27 his gray eyes, from which diverged busy wrinkles, would have been hard but for a tendency to moisture scarcely emotional. For his occupation, he was a heavy dealer in brass. It was the last of several meetings to discuss Mr. Horton's affairs, Jowl presiding, and looking, with a stretch of fancy, as if he had plunged into all the commentators and was present to be wrung. "Any of our friends gone up to-day, Mr. Glump?" asked Bliggs: "Not that I have heard." "Wait till the first of the month," said Rapin: " Houses will go like a row of bricks on edge when the end one tumbles. Never knew such deuced kite flying. Paper on the street is as hard to move as lead gilt-edged and short at that." "Things will settle, perhaps, after that," observed Glump. "Dunno. Is this Hulger's fourth or fifth stop, Lamed?" , " Uhm I forget. He fails as regularly as a Dutch almanac in its predictions of the weather. Ninety thousand this time, I'm told ; but he'll be right again in a month. Can't afford to lose him on 'change; he makes more business than any three men there." " He's living fast, though drinks hard, and will go off yet with a Frenchman. I saw Mrs. H. on the street to-day, not sombre and sorrowful, but fresh as Aurora and beautiful as Aphrodite," said Eapin. "Not his wife not married 1" exclaimed Glump. 28 THE HORTONS; OR "I never asked to see the certificate," responded Rapin. Duncan laughed, and thought he had heard that Hulger had left it at Cyprus in his travels. "Nothing can exceed the thoughtlessness of our young men in these trying times," reflected Bliggs. 'There's Sherrard Timmins breadstuff Timmius's son who, I'm told, has actually taken to writing poetry ; and I saw him myself carrying a switch cane in busi ness hours. Ah 1" Just then there was some cross talk about a sale of building lots on the line of the proposed Slowcut rail way, and Scroggs, who had been sitting with closed eyes in a highly developed state of fat smile, it was supposed communing with spirits, relapsed to mor tality with this sententious offering to the general fund, "Wouldn't give it there's no money in 'em at that price 1" Finally, the conclave rose, the attorney rung in his man Scipio with a bundle of cigars, and Rapin soli cited subscriptions to procure a silver spanner for the Phoenix. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 29 CHAPTER IV. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. WORDSWORTH. invalid with a sprained ancle, Mr. Horton was stretched upon a cane settee in his piazza at Belair. In reaching to thrust aside a bough which overshadowed the dial, he had slipped upon the gravel walk. In this little, though painful accident, what embryo vastness of casualty. "A simple sprain!" quoth the reader; "anything short of a luxation is a personal affront, and a heroic nature would have given us a compound fracture." Alas, that the conscientious historian cannot make events at pleasure, like tha writer of mere fiction, and rise superior to flannel and' opodeldoc. Quiet rested upon the merchant. Afflictions spirit ualize virtuous men ; and there was nothing obsequious in the now subdued bearing of Mr. Horton in his inter course with the world; he walked invested with the dignity of gentleness. The old roughnesses were 3* 30 THE HORTONS; OB rasped down, and the old bluntness was swallowed in a new benevolence. Emily, seated beside her father, was plying her needle. Since she knew of his difficulties she first heard them from his lips under the elms in the serenity of a bright Sabbath her attendance upon him had been tinctured with those nameless graces and subtle amenities which make much of the charm and even strength of domestic life so blossoming trailers make fast the rifted crag the delicate Corinthian combined with the chaste, fixed Doric in the family structure when Cultivation and Love are the builders. Besting, she picked from her work-basket a rose, and surveyed it musingly. It was surpassingly beautiful. Its petals where they started, from a stem dark with excess of green blood, were in color alabaster faintly incarnadined, which gradually deepened to a glow of gorgeous crimson spread below pollen-laden stamens of blush-tinted am ber. Emily embraced its splendor and inhaled its fragrance with sensuous delight. "All the poetry it has occasioned, from the smooth lines of Waller to the exquisite conceptions of Eliza f beth Browning, is not worth five minutes communion with this September flower," she said. " 'Sultana of the nightingale.' And a right queenly look it has." " Fit, father, to have inspired the memory of the blind. Aunt Dinah, by the mill, will talk to you all the hour of her old-time garden treasures, with, What AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 31 a season that was for dahlias ! recalling their various colors, exhaled a score of years, and painting now more poetry perhaps the plumage of rare birds, or Brazilian butterflies, or strange shapes of tropical bloom; and famous double hollyhocks, that ran out at last, and tantalize her in dreams." "So, my dear, our great poet regrets, in that pathetic apostrophe to Light which has moved many hearts, that to him returned not the 'Sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose.' If there be aught spiritual in us, we find our surest and purest satisfaction, under God, in contemplating nature. It is then toil is thankful in its strength, and pleasure penitent." " Often in delirium," said Emily, " the mind wanders in mazes of flowers; and sometimes to the dying they color the dawn of the great change. Nature's fashion ing of these glowing, graceful shapes from the common clod and the impalpable gases is a daily miracle which warrants the belief in a higher transfiguration. Can such impressions be glimpses of arcana ccelestia?" "Are like appearances produced by narcotics? I forget, and De Quincey sleeps to no earthly awaken- ing." "He could have told perhaps he has," said Emily. " My recollection of the ' Confessions' is like that of a dream a rigid countenance ghastly in the play of laudanum lightnings from dark, cavernous eyes a gleam of candles falling upon a decanter and revealing its ruby contents, which, distilled through a singularly 32 THE HORTONS; OR subtle brain take spectral similitudes of faces terrible or grotesque, fear-stricken fugitives from disaster, majestic processions, wreak and wretchedness, and all the pageantry of triumph. Never poppies arnid the friendly corn outglowed his pages." There was a pause. "Every manifestation of the beautiful," urged Emily with enthusiasm, "which is a blessing here, may be such intensified hereafter; and the meek violet acquire to our heightened sensibility a supernal effulgence infinitely surpassing the glory which we now acknow ledge in the august lily of Surinam. And who shall say that color there, where there is 'no night,' is not an exquisite musical expression." AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 33 CHAPTEE Y. As some men gaze with admiration at the colors of a tulip, or the wings of a butterfly, so I was by nature an admirer of happy human faces. VICAR OP WAKEFIELD. ERY enjoyable were the soft, dreamy- autumn days at Belair. September would yet a space recline upon his stubble and listen to the low fretting of the crisp corn blades, the black bird's call, and the whirr of the startled partridge, or saunter with his lazy zephyrs in the groves; then give place to lustier October clad in russet, who brings no wrinkles to the year, but is fragrant with the mow, full of bread, and jolly with cider. The orchards were heavy with their pride of spheres, golden and garnet-freaked; and from wall and trellis drooped the clusters of the vine, a repose of sunny purple, such as pretended by the old Greek on his canvas drew the festal clamor of the birds. More enjoyable to Emily that she had much of the society of her father, who for a time could only move in a chair on castors, and then with stick and crutch. Besides, Caroline Mellen was spending several weeks at Belair. 4 34 THE HOETONS; OR Time owed no spite to the wholesome lasses. rode, drove, angled, trespassed upon the domain of tlit old Scotch gardener to his undissembled disgust, gathered fruit and made bouquets for their friends in town, laughed over their schoolday frolics and re counted and conjectured the fortunes of their former mates, stringing on the thread of memory which they held in common, as it happened, beads black and white. Among the odors of the boudoir could be recognized the aroma of new books, and scattered paper-knives might have been collected in piazzas, arbors, and other retreats. In the evenings they played the last music for Mr. Horton's pleasure as he reclined on a sofa; or a social gathering was made happy by the exuberant gaiety of Mellen. Sometimes they drove to the city, and mixed with the blithe throng of the world. But their regard was not exhausted by the sprightly and modish. On one of these occasions Emily called on her mother's friend, Mrs. Allen, aad carried her some pears. Everything about the modest house was neat and well kept, but the decayed fortune of the family was to be seen else where than in the faded widow's weeds of the lady. Mr. Allen had been a merchant of worth and standing it was the old story of bankruptcy, unvaried by impres sive incidents, but not therefore the less pathetic; a syllable of that solemn monotone of our busy Ameri can life. The thoughtful face of the widow was still delicate, despite the wear of more than fifty years. It was a Christian's countenance calm, resigned, and sweetly benevolent. They found her in her little AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 35 garden with a neighbor, who was lifting fron? its spot of soil a luxuriant shrub. Her husband had planted, and for many years she had nurtured it. She turned to greet them, with tearful eyes and a constrained smile, but their presence jarred the chords of associa tion, already tense, and her speech faltered. "It was his," she said, " but I cannot keep it ; there is no yard where I shall move." And bowing her head in a burst of grief, she passed with them into the house. Emily's birth-day occurred in Indian-summer, the vintage-time of Solitude, when, robed in a tranquil glory of sun-sublimated haze, she quaffs her wine among the hills and is glad. Mr. Horton insisted, so a small party was arranged for the occasion. There was cream to be got for freezing at Farmer Gregg's. This worthy agriculturist toiled and worried through the seasons on his fruitful acres, such cham paign as the tiller loves, which skirted a bend of the Tarnell. Andrew, the gardener, cheerfully consented to row the ladies. The fresh morning lay upon fields of grass, and stubble, and shocked cornstalks, where . beads of dew trembled like quicksilver in the cobwebs. A '"Tis a pleasant lift the day. Miss Cawroline, gie me your hand, and step light upon the gunwaul." The oars thumped in the row-locks and the boat sprang forward, with Emily at the tiller. "Luff! luff a-lee, Emily, or you'll shipwreck us on that sand-bar, and consecrate it forever to the elegiac muse. Think of our becoming newspaper naiads in one of Max Heyhurst's effusions! There goes my 36 THE HOETONS; OR umbrella!" and the lively "Cawroline" reached over board. The boat dipped sideways quick and deep, releasing Andrew's port oar as he was bending to the stroke, and sprawling him on his back. With the bound of an athlete the old gardener was again upright. He con templated the vivacious Mellen with a look of solemn wrath. His sense of decorum had been outraged in its entirety. Slowly he spake: "Seat you, Miss, anent Miss Emily, and hold your freeskyness, or it will be a far cry to Belair!" The culprit answered nothing, and sat an edifying spectacle of contrition. Presently she burst into song, and the ploughman paused afield to listen to "Ettrick banks." "Aweel, weel," murmured Andrew; "'tis a bonnie sang," and for a moment he beheld the smoke curling above the heath-thatched shielins. They found Farmer Gregg in tribulation concerning a dead horse. Quite a group the farmer and his men, with two or three sympathizing neighbors surrounded the defunct quadruped. The doctor also was present, a practitioner without a coat, in a broad-brimmed white hat, gingham cravat, and an undue proportion of sus penders. His thoughtful style of sucking a straw, as he contemplated the bearings of the case, was a triumph of art, and hinted at illimitable hoards of veterinary wisdom. All seemed duly impressed with this appear ance of profundity, except the horse; so lately most interested, but now a breathless bulk of muscle. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 37 "Jeemes!" said the farmer, "take off his shoes. 1 know'd it war'nt no use." "He'd be a live hoss now if I'd been fetched in time," remarked the doctor, with decision. "Think 'twas the kolery?" asked a hand. "Too much fever," replied the doctor; "it was a disease of the wital innards." * "Bots, mebbe?'{ pursued a speculative neighbor. The farmer scouted the idea. "It was all along of the shootin' of the fish-hawk down in the river-field," he declared, and there was unshakable conviction in his tone. "What had its nest in the old hickory?" asked the speculative neighbor, brightening with new light. " Yes, Billy. There was some strange men gunning there a week ago, and I haint seen it since. It kind o' worried me to miss it; and when Mike was taken with a gripin' like, I knowed it warnt no use: it allus happens." Aunt Becky, as Mrs. Gregg was commonly called, was in the act of a family baking. A brisk lass was raking the coals from the ample oven, and puffed batches of dough, pies knobby where slices of apple bulged the crust, inchoate rusks, pippins, and ginger bread sweating molasses at every pore, were ready to be shoved to its hot inclosure. Then there was a churning in the background twelve or fourteen pounds, Aunt Becky said, as she nudged the handle of the well-scoured barrel. After that, and dinner, and the moving work, our housewife would put on her heavy silver spectacles and ply her needle on the 4 38 THE HORTONS; OK "men folks" clothes, inspect and feed her poultry, and look up in the almanac the changes of the moon, or copy with slow labor from the county newspaper, prudently anticipatory of the afflictions, a speedy cure for cancer, and a remedy for the bite of a mad dog, which was never known to fail when rubbed in well. Aunt Becky was hugely pleased to see her favorite, Emily, and in the exuberance of hfer spirits poured forth such a multitude of orders and expostulations that the bewildered "help" looked wild in the eyes and showed symptoms of derangement. She would have them with her to the dairy to see the goodly files of bright milk basins that dripped coolness and showed a thick, unctuous surface of contents, so differ ent from the pellicle which mantles the lacteal supplies of city cellars. Then, to survey her cheeses, a tawny store of curd; the hives and their busy architects; the sleek young calves with their blundering heads, clear, full eyes, and bright nozzles; and her fatting turkeys, glossy and plump with a plethora of mush, and happily ignorant of Christmas. While they were seated in the rustic porch listen ing to Aunt Becky's large discourse, a horseman came racking up the lane. At the runlet midway, in the shadow of a beech, he drew bridle that his beast might drink. The horse, a stalwart sorrel, shone like satin with good grooming, and as it stood at ease with fora limbs flexed and stooped neck, quaffing the stream, it was a study fit for Rosa Bonheur. The rider was stout, full-bearded, seemed faultlessly attired, and sat well in the saddle. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 39 ""Who on earth/' pondered Aunt Becky aloud after a prolonged survey, "can that be? Law sakes! if it aint Mr. Bloker." "Who lately bought the Smise farm?" inquired Emily. "Yes, darling, a rich merchant in the city, with ships that trades to the Ingies; and they do say," continued the old lady impressively, but with some reservation in her tone implying doubt, "that he owns an indigo mine." "He is an acquaintance of father's," remarked Emily to her friend, "at whose request I have invited him to my birth- day." In a little time the visitor, having finished- his business, sauntered to the house. The disconsolate Gregg, plucking his wristband diffidently, performed the introduction "Mr. Bloker, mother and ladies." "Your servant, madame," responded Bloker, raising his hat, "Miss Horton's, and her friend's," pausing interrogatively. "Miss Mellen, sir," said Emily. "I had the honor, Miss Horton, to receive your invitation through Mrs. Klett, and I shall surely not forget it." Deportment composed, tones bland. His unrumpled dress was an agreeable result of cultivated taste. Linen purely white, uncreased patent leather boots of a refulgent jet, a brown silk cravat tied neglige, a vest of unblemished marseilles, ample trowsers of light cassimere, and an olive-colored frock, constituted it 40 TITE IIORTOXS; OR a costume which was well displayed on a musculai figure. "The builders at my bachelor's quarters deny me possession, and I am at present on the bounty of Mrs. Klett." " I suppose, sir, you intend great improvements." "I mean to make the place snug, if I can a sort of box, you know, with comforts." "Folks all about is talking of your water- works," remarked the old lady. "I think it will be a grand thing on wash-days in a drowth, when you have to haul, and lose half on't by jolting in the ox-cart." "Mrs. Gregg alludes to a fountain I am contriving," lie explained with comical serenity. "Of course you will christen your new property what may we learn to call it ?" "Eeally, Miss Horton, I shall be fortunate if you make me your debtor for its christening." An un pleasant gleam about his mouth. "It is impossible, sir, from my slender resources to oblige you suitably; Miss Mellen," laughing and gesturing toward her friend, "has a quicker genius." "Now I call that a cowardly shifting of respon sibility. I dare say Mr. Bloker would gladly empty his bottles over a failure in izzard from you. But stop 'tis wise to withhold. You confess to being a bachelor, sir, and for aught I know you have all the faculty of fancy and satirical temper of Bachelor Benedick, and can do better a dozen times than our best, which would only whet your sarcasms. I grow quite afraid ; you shall have no naming from me." AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 41 Hospitable rites were not forgotten by the kind hostess. Upon the little spider-legged table in her parlor she spread a spotless cloth, and placed regale ment of currant wine, rusks, and honey. "Aunt Becky, I will turn beggar for one of your nice baked apples and a bowl of milk," said Emily. "Bring a plate of 'em, mother," said the farmer, "mebbe the other folks would like. They ought to eat greedy for they've got a road before them." " Seems to me there's no apples nowadays will bake as they used to when I was a girl," observed Aunt Becky, as she placed the dish before her guests. "I mind a tree on father's place, that bore the fullest; a goodish-sized, reddish-streaked apple, that come out of the pan coated with a thick, rich jelly, sweet as sugar. 1 often think things don't grow as they used to, owing tu the seasons I suppose; and I'm sure people was a deal honester in old times, as I told Jed'diah only yesterday, when that swindlin' peddler took me in with the vail." "How did he cheat you, Aunt Becky?" asked Emily. "Why, he offered it so cheap, considering it was real lace, that I thought I'd buy it for Sairey Ann. He said he got a lot of 'em in some damaged goods from a fire by mistake, at auction in the city, and it cost five dollars apiece to import them, and he'd let me have one for two dollars and a quarter, and warrant it. So I took it, and after he'd gone we was examining it, and Sairey Ann found a big hole in one corner gummed over with blotting-paper where the ticket was. I called out to Jed'diah, who'd just come in, to follow on 4* 42 THE HORTONS; OB at once to the river and make the man take it back ; but all the horses was out ploughing, and when Jed'diah got to the ferry it was too late." " Well, mother, no such doings can come to a good end," remarked the farmer, consolingly. The guests partook with heartiness, though Mr. Bicker's face was thought to gloorn as he sipped the wine, which might have wanted the relish of Verzenay Perhaps it was only an intrusion of the indigo mine. "One sprightly and clever; the one, charminglj ^hy," thought Jacob Bloker, as he rode away. " Freezingly formal," summed up Caroline. "Something more disagreeable ihau that ^ tf <-nk/' said Emily. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. CHAPTEE VI. like the elements, That know not what, nor why, yet do effect Rare issues by their operance, our souls Did so to one another; what she liked, Was then of me approved ; what not condemned, No more arraignment; the flower that I would pluck, And put between my breasts, Oh she would long Till she had such another, and commit it To the like innocent cradle, where phoenix-like They died in perfume. THE Two NOBLE KINSMEN. , T is happiness to contemplate the attach ment of two pure and lovely women. The friendship of women who live in what is called "society" is seldom so sincere and enduring as is that of those who have been reared and are resident among the scenes of nature. In cities are jealousy and fret, the growth of a forced rivalry of beauty, manners, wealth and position. Nor is it possible for even persons of exalted culture, unless they are vitalized by religion, to rise entirely above the influences of a highly artificial condition of life, in which "envy and deceit glare through the flimsy mask of complaisance, and strengthen in the buzz of vanity and hate." The early education of country girls is pursued at home, and in 44 THE HOETON'S; OB comparative seclusion. They are morally and physi cally strengthened by innocent zests and employments. Less exposed to rancorous strife for ephemeral distinc tion, they are as far exempt from the pangs of rivalry, and untempted to entertain its spites and practise its subterfuges. The country girl does not regard her companions as obstructions to her shining, but as enliveners of her quiet and regular existence. Her healthy impulses are not sacrificed to the tyranny of etiquette, nor is her personality lost in the pageantry of fashion. Her sound body is a spring of cheerful ness; and her mind, though happily ignorant of paste board pomps, is not uninformed of life's loftier purposes. The girlish joys, disappointments, and movements of country life have been in common the children have learned and played together at the school-house in the grove, and the maidens have slept and risen together under the farm-house roof. The gay world is a stir of strangers in which events lie thick, and those separate impressions are choked before they strengthen to dura bility which in their sum constitute friendship. While, then, the pleasures of intellectual intercourse are fullest and freshest in the metropolis, the affections find kind liest nurture among fields and woods. The civic best of social bloom and fruitage is fed by country roots. The staminal collapse of cities is constantly counter acted by an infusion from God's wide domain, and the mothers of the belles who languish in concert rooms and blanch at midnight routs, were cheered at their labors by the sunrise choir of robins and challenged in their cheeks the orchard's bloom. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 45 Emily and Caroline had been trained companionably, like kindred shoots, from childhood; though the nature of each had taken its proper shape of development. Their lives had been nourished generously by the same scenes and sympathies they had read the same books, felt an ownership in each other's household surround ings, enjoyed together the same natural prospects, hummed together the same new airs. Caroline was the daughter of a physician whose for tune permitted him to decline practice and devote himself to scientific investigation ; one of that honora ble class who " live laborious days," giving time and sacrificing pleasure to the pursuit of physical truth by which the world is profited so much, and which it thanks so little. The imagination of Dante would have made of her an etherial vision. She possessed, rarities it has been said among American women, a classical bust and well-rounded arms. Her head reigned exultant above the luxuriant loveliness of throat and thorax. The black tresses which were shed from her brow timidly returned to dally with the flexure of her white neck. Her eyes were not wells of tenderness as they should have been to satisfy an orthodox rapture but as the humor was, sparkled with mirth, or flashed with scorn in glances that trooped forth beneath an ample arch of forehead, which rose from the shaft of a Grecian nose. The eyelashes were flickering filamentous shadow. The contour of her cheeks was best displayed when the heart showed emotionally in their soft carnation, and the chin, fairer 46 THE HOETONS; OR than a turning in ivory, just trembled responsive to their emergent flush and the compression of her coral line lips. In her unusual strains, the joyfulness which dimpled round her mouth was more jubilant than vic torious trumpets. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. CHAPTER VII. Capulet. Nay, gentlemen, prepare not to be gone: We have a trifling foolish banquet towards. ROMEO AND JULIET. HE tenth of November came to teem with placid merriment. Away be Meditation and her sober lessons when Beauty celebrates birthday or bridal stay for a happy space the hours that wear us out, and make them rich with lights, and glad with garlands, and sounding with har mony! A gay company was assembled at Bel air. Gentlemen long and lean, gallants short and solid, tesselated the group with ladies of equally vari ous appearance, though not so common-place; Mr. Brown was simply fat and perspired, but Miss Julia's rotundity was embonpoint, and "A fan, sir ? it deserves my best curtsey; I protest spirits are contagious here, and put one in quite a glow." "'Through Coron's lattices the lamps are bright, For Seyd the Pacha makes a feast to-night.' How. are you, Dolman?" "Shark- hungry, Max." 48 THE HORTONS; OB '"Sirrah! go hire me twenty cunning cooks,'" ex claimed Max Heyhurst, with an affectation of generous earnestness, as he half-turned toward an astonished ser vant. " Ah !" he continued, "you should try the vir tues of your 'true Sherris', which means at Belair, Horton's. It is liquid amber infused with the sublima tion of all delicate pungencies, 'pon my taste!" " Can't ; it would plague me next morning." "A sad case, truly I feel for you. Headachey myself after milk-punch." "Milk-punch is it you're discussing?" "Imputatively, doctor." "Incalculable amount of sustenance in milk-punch. Heard of a sailor who was marooned on a desolate island with a tame goat. Captain relented at the last moment so far as to ask if he could do anything for Crusoe at parting. Got a request for a puncheon of Santa Cruz out of the cargo, to be charged against wages for the round voyage. Skipper acceded. Limes were indigenous, and Crusoe got sugar from sweet grapes. There passed two years of rum, milk, and meditation of choicer draughts than the Amalthean that nourished the infant god on Ida. Then, goat tumbled from a cliff into the sea and was drowned. The hermit thrown upon Santa Cruz neat, went off in delirium tremens. Before he died, however, mission ary ship arrived. Last words were, 'More punch!' " "If that unfortunate seaman had but lived, with grizzled hair and glittering eye!" ejaculated Max; and, as he wiped a damp optic, he murmured, with reflec tive pathos, AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 49 'It is an ancient mariner, And he stoppeth one of three .' " "You enlarge upon sherry with, so much gust, Max, that I am almost persuaded you are descended from one of the critics whom Cervantes tells of," said Dol man. "Which one?" inquired Max, gravely. " Well, there were two, called to pronounce upon the contents of a butt of celebrated Xeres. One connois seur lingered at the brim of the glass, and immerged his mind in the liquor at every sip. The quiet by standers watched the process, and glanced from the taster to each other admiringly. But when it was announced, with emphasis, that instead of the true vinous aroma there was a tang of iron, they thrust their tongues into their cheeks and shrugged in deri sion. The other judge, put to his mettle, deliberated long, while the juice with pleasant titillation lapped the edges of his tongue, or he marked with upraised eye its transparency. The spectators looked expect ant, as they would say Now for an opinion which will make the reputation of the vintage! It came. 'Yes, I am dead sure,' blurted number two, 'the flavor is of leather, if there be a side in Cordova.' Everybody now laughed outright, and one or two tapped their heads as intimating lunacy, and winked aside. But when they pumped the wine from the cask they found a thong looped in a rusty key." "That sherris sack, at least, had a 'two-fold qual ity,' " commented Max. 5 50 THE HOETONS; Oil "The veterans are gone," said the doctor, as he mopped his purplish visage ; "you rarely meet even a two-bottle man now-a-days. The present generation drinks negus, and thinks itself heroic; the next, I suppose, will stagger under the nutmeg-grater." "I admit your wit, doctor, but I object to the sneer," said George Dolman. "'I like good wine well enough, short of being brought to grief, but I hold that so far as the age is more temperate, it is not only more virtu ous and happy, but it has more humor, mirth, and genuine gaiety; for the larger part of your vaunted maudlin humor is downright profanity, or grotesque conceits, lacquered often with bawdy. I know well that English literary history is full of tavern life; and I grant that the wit which everywhere scintillates about the Mermaids and the Mitres, the Apollos, Will's, and Button's, attaches a fascination to the localities themselves. And it is the consecrated associations of letters which prejudice so many educated men against modern temperance which, as it is preached, is some times intemperate enough but the wit of 'Rare Ben' and his compotators never grew from the Canaries or gin; the drawee, never brought it from the cellar; it was only too strong for the malt and juniper, and as the asp-wreathed arm of Cleopatra was still a limb of beauty was wit in spite of them. By-the-by, a little less brandy -and- water would take nothing from the flavor of some of the most genial and humanizing of our modern fiction, which has no need to hiccough its way to posterity. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 51 ' the lore Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core Of human hearts the ruin of a wall Where dwelt the wise and wondrous ' So those old taverns are open still. , "While we listen to the talk of Templars at the Grecian, or of Garrick and Foote at the Bedford, we cannot hear the 'bar barous dissonance' of the common carouse, and it is impertinent to ask us to sign the pledge. Yet, valua ble as they were, appointed though erring almoners, the world could have better spared the tipsy poets and the tipsy Persons than the fair imaginations and capa cious intellects which they have blighted. Pagan soci ety fabled the drunken inspiration of Silenus, and pro duced the temperate philosophy of Socrates. I believe, sir, to ring a change on a famous saying, that hell it; nebulous with empty bottles." "Newfangled notions crop so thick in these latter days' that I dare say we are on the verge of the millen nium," declared the doctor, testily. "Even our poets have got a mythology with Ganymede abolished. There was a kindly thirst in friendship before the old serpent wriggled all his iniquity into the cork-screw;" and, playing with his glass ribbon, he sauntered to amuse with conversational whimseys another knot of talkers. Caroline was looking over some plates of Audubon, Imperial in vigor and fidelity were these representations of the beautiful in nature, bird-pictures gathered from a thousand miles of wilderness to delight, amid the appointments of luxury, fair women clothed in fine 52 THE HOETOXS; OR textures and such is a single aspect of civilization. Conscious of a presence, Caroline raised her eyes. It was Bloker. "Now, there's a duck, Miss Mellen, to gladden a cook's heart. With green peas, say, of tender age, and an apricot tart?" "Yes a cook's. I fancied it nestling its glossy breast in the desert waters of Labrador. You are right, sir, an irreproachable bird for larding, and deli cious with olives." " Better worth is a voyage from Europe to know it by the palate," and Bloker passed his hand with uncon scious complacency along his expanse of waistcoat, "than a voyage thither to know the Rhine and its scenery, the marvels of Rome, which I am told is a tumble-down place, or the bepraised pictures and skies of Florence." A beetle which had been buzzing about the sconces plumped upon Caroline's neck. The young lady beside her recoiled, with a little scream she was at the Lalla Rookh period of maidenhood, and sighed for Bende- meer bowers and nightingales and Bloker, with praiseworthy promptitude, sought his pocket-hand kerchief. Caroline calmly grasped and withdrew the insect, its 'barbed feet vexing her white flesh to a ruddy blotch, and dropped it in a vase, which sho covered with some sheets of music. "Lay you there in sepulture, and dream of old Egypt. Is that your chivalry, Mr. Bloker, to a damsel in distress!" "Really, you are unjust." AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 53 "Urgent, you mean. Were you merely thinking of a vinaigrette for Miss Grayson?" "You don't seem to stagnate here. I hope, Mr. Bloker, you find these ladies entertaining/' said Emily, who joined them. "Charming." "You hear that, bella donna? 'How dangerous is it, that this man goes loose!' " Bloker coughed, "I think Mr. Bloker's sincerity needs no vindication when he compliments Caroline Mellen and her friend." Miss Grayson's pleasure perched very prettily upon her lips. " Exquisite, Emily ; but I will disappoint you ; you shall have no delicious little speeches in return, how ever much you may. deserve them we will burn you no incense,'' replied Caroline. "It would be but just homage," said Bloker, ardently. Then, suddenly recovering himself, he added, "if homage were possible among peers." '' My dear Miss Horton" it was brisk little Doctor Pledget "take the word of a patriarch, who has no account in flattering when he declares you to be as blooming as Hygeia, and is ready to meet in mortal combat any recreant knight who disputes it with a thumb lancet," and the doctor put himself ludicrously atilt. "I am proud, doctor, to have such a formidable champion it completes my happiness," replied Emily. "If he were less like still Champagne to-night; I 6* 54 THE HORTONS; OB don't question the bouquet, but we miss the efferves cence," urged the mocking Caroline. "Miss Mellen will impute my gravity to a sermon I was forced to listen to this morning as a director of a charity, and which was not in the manner of Jeremy Taylor ; and to too much roast beef at dinner to satisfy exhausted nature after the effort of attention. Melan choly meat, if we believe Galen." "For a contrite countenance, now and then, I would pension you liberally with dull sermons." "Abandon the intention, my dear Miss Mellen, and I will never transgress to levity again. But there is enough in contrast here to make an old fellow like me a little sad. The exultant teens, and the crowning triumph of twenty," inclining toward Emily, "and sounding life before, like a majestic march of heralds. Even the hurried flow of my shrunk veins reminds me or spent forces by the feebleness of the wave. I am a long link between knee-breeches and the electric tele graph. Like a quaint old coin slipped from a bank rupt collector, I show odd among the bravery of the new mintage, but I have lost fixed rate, and they higgle about my value at the shops. My 'babes of memory' are now children of the wood, and each year adds to their covering of dead leaves. But what last- will-and-testament stuff is this ! Fill my snuff-box and shut me up with the beetle, fair gaoler, for I believe I am only fit to sneeze away my remnant of life." "I thought, doctor, when I saw you the other day at the steamboat pier with a lady, that you might be AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 55 looking to matrimony as a refuge from your 'sea of troubles/ " observed Bloker. "Steamboat pier? old lady, with two bandboxes?" "When the pedler nearly jostled you into the river." " By the libeled Cupid ! spinster aunt Israelite, who wanted me to buy a watch made her debut before the last war with Great Britain, in the time of turret head dresses, and part of the beauty Packenham threatened at New Orleans." "A striking group for an artist," said Caroline. "How should you name it, now?" " 'The Finding of Moses,' I suppose. Am I so very gray, Miss Mellen?" "Just white enough in your beard to sanction your role of the venerable and, doctor, permit me to say it is a beard worthy of a Bedouin. I fancy you a sheik, scouring the desert on a fiery barb, and followed by a band in burnoozes." "Perish every hair if I must be conjured to such an unseemly shape. No : patriotism forbid ; to say noth ing of religion." "Apropos of beards. What becomes of the trade- fallen barbers, doctor?" "I hardly know. They don't take to suicide, and cut their own throats: though I have noticed a ten dency among them to go mad, and open wide ways with their razors for the lives of other people. Perhaps they emigrate; or get prudently run over and go into hospitals; or, as a last resource of garrulous destitution, edit the Sunday newspapers. Ah! Mr. Davenport, I 56 THE IIORTOXS; OB am glad to see you. Well out of your ailments; I hope v ?" "Why, no, doctor; there's still a sinking here;" and the old clerk placed his hand upon his stomach. "An excellent symptom, my dear sir, if you sink enough there," responded Pledget. "You don't think it pulmonary? Ours is a cancer family." "No, my dear fellow; no bellows to mend," and the doctor, with a nicer regard to anatomy, tapped Daven port above the bulge of his buff waistcoat. "Perhaps, doctor, Mr. Davenport's disease is of the type of inward bruises apt to afflict middle-agod bachelors," suggested Mr. Horton. "Eh, love?" "The lady is'nt invoiced yet," sententiously averred the patient. "So, so, when the article is wanted we will order a Creole beauty to be forwarded, with a cargo of sugar, from Porto Rico or Barbadoes," said Caroline. "I have known two or three of those expensive exotics, Miss Mellen; who were proud as Lucifer, capricious, and pretty enough to the turn of twenty- five, when they ran to gamboge complexions and ear-rings, and delighted in monkeys and macawc." "It's odd how likings differ," philosophized Daven port. "I knew a bookkeeper of a romantic turn of mind, in the China trade we called him Nankeen Fortescue, because in warm weather he always wore trowsers of that stuff, and pumps who would get quite hot asserting the charms of the female portraits AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 57 on the tea-caddies. I saw him the very day he died, of an apoplexy, opening some cases of crapes in August, the windows shut to keep out the dust," continued the old clerk, with a touch of pathos in his tone. "Talking of love, doctor; how will you define it?" asked Mr. Horton. " One may spend a great deal of fine talk in trying, and know less of it at the end than his cook and coachman. It is in the mind, and, free of all other control, is servant to its own conception, which it holds precious beyond all other values. It is, when at its purest, the highest placidity below that of heaven diffused about an imperial image, which creates, and in which is concentred, hope and happi ness. It is a pervading something which is electrical, exploits, and explodes." "And, like lightning, never strikes the same people twice the sanr, day?" demurely questioned Caroline Mellen. The doctor continued. "Love working in the blood may be a spell of tame- ness, or of turbulence. The same passion which made Max Piccolomini, in Schiller's play, long to exchange the crimson laurel for the first March violet plucked in familiar fields, when distorted to jealousy, has pointed many a stiletto. You remember Gibbon's description of his Lausanne flame, the excellent .Made- moiselle Curchod afterwards Keeker's wife and the mother of De Stael it is in the same stately strain which he employs when depicting the Antonines 58 THE IIORTOXS; OR and how his love was 'the union of desire, friendship, and tenderness, inspired by a single female;' yet its disappointment does not seem to have at all disturbed the evenness of his after life. If Coleridge's love was up to the measure in 'Genevieve,' what a long reach was it above that of the historian! Indeed, the poet sings his own rapture; 'You stood before me like a thought, A dream rerhember'd in a dream. But when those meek eyes first did seem To tell me, Love within you wrought Greta, dear domestic stream !' " " The sudden transition in the last line is natural and pleasing," said Caroline. " An instinctive criticism," observed Mr. Horton, bnnteringly. The doctor smiled, and continued. " So, with women the climate of love may vary. 'They are but beggars that can count their worth,' exclaims the impassioned Juliet. There have been, I dare say, ladies less ardent. The black-eyed of Andalusia and the blue-eyed of the Elbe woo and are won with a difference. Perhaps it is this diversity of its manifestation which tempers and restrains the passion. Emigration and conquest merge nationalities, correct the redundant characteristic of one people by an infusion of its converse from another, and preserve a general balance." "Beyond doubt," said Mr. Horton, "the love of the sexes is the perfection of mere human bliss; that love which when wedded is pure, and sanctified before AMERICAN LIFE AT HOJTS. 59 God and angels; upon the happy bed of which the sword of the Spirit severs from all lust, and the bower in Paradise 'showered roses.'" "You called love electrical, doctor, and you mean, I suppose, love at first sight. If it be, heaven hinder a multitude of modern marriages!" " Yea, and amen. I don't profess to know more of the human heart than did Shakespeare. The ill- starred pair of 'Fair Verona,' and Ferdinand and Miranda surrendered to each other at the instant, and neither of the ladies stipulated for pin-money." "But Beatrice, while inspiring with angelic visions the great poet of Italy, did not surrender to him," rejoined Caroline. ' I believe Beatrice to have been a lusus naturae she was, at least, an Italian blonde," said the doctor, laughing. " / cry out with Eosalind, ' O how full of briers is this working-day world!'" jested Caroline. "Love in the heart, though profound and hidden, is all graceful inflexions, like the wash of the lower sea in the windings of a shell." The speaker was Emily, who had paused to listen in passing. " Splendid image 1" attested Bloker, with sentimental fervor. "Or, not to stray from the shell, love is like a coal of fire on the back of a tortoise," said Caroline. " Or like quicksilver, which eludes the grasp of the living and will rest in a dead man's hand," added Doctor Pledget, tapping his snuff-box. 60 THE HORTONS; OB CHAPTER VIII. " what do ye call the place? A plague upon't it is in Gloucestershire." HENRY IV. -BOUT thirty miles from Belair was the residence of Mr. Crosby, who was well known through all the country side. A considerable estate, which had descended to him through seve ral generations of Crosbys, was care lessly cultivated, as the broken fences, grass-grown middles, and rusty tools abundantly declared. In reality, the daughter of the proprie tor, Adelaide, was both master and mistress of the premises. She bought the necessaries, household and farming, settled the accounts, cut the garments, and mixed the physic of the working people, did the busi ness correspondence, overlooked the condition of the cattle as well as of the pantry, and gave the overseer such general instructions as he received. And she exercised this authority because Mr. Crosby was so eccentric as to be a little mad, and his helpmeet was a hippish invalid. Walter Crosby when a young man was celebrated AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 61 for strength and comeliness; which, inasmuch as he was the inheritor of many acres, made him a favorite theme of speculation with matrons possessed of mar riageable daughters. His understanding was fair, and it was cultivated to the respectable standard of collegi ate requirements, perhaps beyond, for he was fond of books. A year or two of European travel enlarged his views, and invested him with gracefulness of deportment. He married, and entered prosperously and hopefully upon life. "With health, possessions, an inquisitive disposition, and the invigorating employ ments and exercises of the field, nothing seemed want ing to promote his happiness. But man's mind refuses to conform to fortune; and perhaps a portion of adver sity would have kept his in ballast. When Mr. Crosby cast loose from rational habits, he persisted in his fox hunting. A change of manners, made by a new class of population, had left among remembered things the meet of gentry, of whom some were dead and some were old ; and a few small farmers and country idlers had succeeded to the sport. To join these, when he was in the mood, implied no hospitality to be received or returned. Abandoning the society of his family and his neighbors, renouncing the world and books, he lived separately with his hounds, and lavished upon them and a couple of favorite hunters the whole sum of his attentions. A hale, grizzled man, of slovenly appearance, stagnant except in physical vigor, he reigned the monarch of a kennel. To the left of the avenue which approached the mansion was an old brick chapel, very homely, nes- 6 62 THE HORTONS; OB tied in a grove of buttonwoods; the Crosbys had been Catholics since colony times. It was a quiet spot for a dreamer on a calm autumn day, where he might blow at ease bubbles of fancy, or, reclined, watch through the rifts of the half leafless trees the fleecy cumulus shift ing in the blue cope above, and listen to the cattle audibly feeding around. The grounds were well shaded, and there was a garden, which exhibited traces of former taste and care, despite crumbling terrace and ragged espalier. Still there were efforts at amendment, sincere and satirical, where a piece of ladder, masked in whitewash, closed a gap in the fence, or a decayed trellis leaned helplessly on the rough-hewn support of a rail. Even in the vegetable garden, the weediness of the spaces and rank- ness of the thistles, and beyond all the tardy locomotion of Ned, the guardian of the spot, an aged negro who might have been inoculated with rheumatism in his sable infancy and have never recovered, he was so cramped and gnarled, suggested slender asparagus and early peas at midsummer. The mouldering roof of the ice-house, upon which perched a peacock, was patched with a thatching of cornstalks; and its door, which hung by a solitary strap, was kept in place by props The weather-beaten martin-box, conspicuously aloft, from which the birds were gone for the season, looked ripe for the Limbo of outworn things. Nothing was needed to make this dreariness a charm but a tough- constitutioned October rain. A half-grown cadet of the family and a ragged cub of a companion were pry ing for rats in the foundation of an old chimney, AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 63 assisted by a truculent terrier, which they alternately cursed and encouraged by the name of Brandy. Through the centre of the house ran a hall wide enough for the passage of a wagon, on each side of which the ample rooms, deep wainscoted, subsided in capacious recesses of chimneys, where had blazed many a hospitable fire. But the paint was. very dingy, and the cracked panes were unseemly with an eruption of putty. The occupants expelled, ghosts might have revelled there of gusty nights to the clatter of the broken lightning-rods it was just the building for town boys to play in and remember all their lives. At this weather-tinted mansion Emily and Caroline, on a visit to Adelaide Crosby, were now arrived. An old negro, hight Jake, shambled from the region of the offices, and with, ceremonious scraping proceeded to distribute his attentions between the horses, the guests, and his individual legs. He was much molested by fleas upon a tender cuticle, which he entrapped with twine ligatured about his trowsers, dexterously secur ing them at the barriers. As no one appeared to receive the ladies, Jacob was questioned. It was useless to ask for Mr. or Mrs. Crosby, so, Where was Miss Adelaide? "Young Missus' gwon to Mr. Steve Loyd him child dead." "Is there nobody at home but Mrs. Crosby?'' "Missuses aunt's yer." "Well, let her know some friends are come," said Emily, alighting. "Tell Susan jemediate, Missus," and, with an obei sance, Jacob was off. 64 THE HORTONS; OR Susan shortly presented herself and ushere'd the vis itors into the house, and was followed in due season by "Missuses aunt," a shrivelled old lady in black, wear ing a cap which glowed with a profusion of ribbon, and which was set in the exigence of the occasion slightly awry. The dame made a stately bow, which the visitors appropriately returned. " We are sorry, ma'am, not to find Adelaide at home, but suppose, from what the servant said, that she will soon return." " 'Nan ?" responded the old lady, with a hand to her ear. Emily repeated the substance of her remark. f " 'Na an ?" again, with a tremor of excitement. Evidently an auricular defect. Emily, in despair, urged her friend to an essay. With a preliminary inflation of the lungs, Caroline enunciated this striking observation "Delightful weather to-day, ma'am." "Yes; I've heerd of several cases I hope it isn't ketching," replied the old lady, with briskness. . " I hope not," exclaimed Caroline, seized with a sud den freak which she knew she could indulge in unde tected. " So the doctors say," returned the matron, with the promptness of an answering battery, " but I don't put much dependence in them. 1 ' Her look of lofty incre dulity was sufficient to crush the whole college of phy sicians. The arrival of Adelaide Crosby terminated this ludi crous practise with cross-purposes. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 65 "I have been," she said, "to see the wife of a labor ing man who lives near, and whose child, an infant, died yesterday. I promised to go again this afternoon, but I will send and excuse myself." "Certainly not; on the contrary, if you will allow us, we will go with you." " I am to take some necessaries. I must get ice, and we have none have suffered provokingly all summer for want of it." "Yet, if I recollect, last winter was very cold/' re marked Emily. "Yes; our pond was frozen, but it was infested with muskrats, and the darn having been neglected they gnawed through it and let out the water, when the ice fell into the mud and was lost." Loyd's house was in the skirts of a wood, and was a comfortable cabin of moderate size, which derived from, the sylvan surroundings an air of picturesqueness. Upon the rough stone chimney which buttressed the house were hung some calabashes above a slab bench, the stand of a piggin and kitchen utensils. The well, with its low wooden curb and long sweep of pole, was near at hand. A stone's throw off the cow was ruminating in an open byre. By the door-sill a dog lay blinking in the sun, heedless of the efforts of a flaxen-haired little girl to rouse him to a sportive humor. In a contiguous lot belonging to Loyd was an an cient burial ground, which had been used, perhaps, in the early days of the settlement by some family now scattered or extinct. It occupied a knoll which was topped by a wide- spreading walnut tree, and the heaped 66 THE HOKTONS; OB turf of the old graves, still marked in places by unpre tending lichen-covered stones, had subsided below the general level into shallow cavities where the grass grew ranker and greener. -Here, with mattock and spade, Stephen Loyd was sternly at work. Upon a swelling of root sat his eldest son, a lad of thirteen, with his thoughtful face rested on his hands. The Loyds were poor. That night, while the mother of the buried babe lay wrestling with her grief, the schoolmates blithely lived again the past. After next day's dinner, at which was served a Brahmapootra brought by "Missuses aunt'' to stock with exclusive poultry the Crosby domain, and which had been slain in the general inattention by a blundering scullion, like any dunghill fowl, the Belair ladies departed. In a wooded dell on the grounds of Mr. Horton there gushed a hill-side spring, cool and limpid, which was bordered with rustic seats. It was a place where Retirement might nestle and pensively muse away the hours, sobered by the hue of evergreens, and startled only by the rustling of the leaves, the little stir of rabbit or squirrel, and the crackle of the bird- molested brambles. One morning the ladies were seated there after a ramble, and occupied with theii respective fancies, when Caroline exclaimed, " Here is Bradley!" Emily raised her eyes, beheld him descending the slippery path, and started quickly to welcome him. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 67 CHAPTEK IX. 'Twas twilight, for the sunless day went down Over the waste of waters; like a veil, "Which, if withdrawn, would but disclose the frown Of one whose hate is masked but to assail; Thus to their hopeless eyes the night'was shown And grimly darkled o'er their faces pale And the dim desolate deep twelve days had .Fear Been their familiar, and now Death was here. DON JPAW. KADLEY HOKTCXN" had not apprised the family at Belair of his intention to return from his travels. The omission to write was a caprice, and a happy one which prevented much painful suspense. The Icaria, in which he sailed from Europe, never reached its American port. Sometimes in the calms of after life did Bradley mentally recall the inci dents and impressions of those days at sea the joyous company flushed with anticipations of affection, busi ness, and pleasure; the lapse of placid hours; the grate ful stimulus of new and various acquaintanceship ; the serenity of sky and ocean; the discipline of unac customed movement aboard; the spouting of distant whales; flocks of flying-fish scudding before the raven- 68 THE HORTONS; OB ous bonito; and the impetuous charge of porpoises across the bows, black and furious legions, leaping and plunging, now sunk then seen, beating a long track of foam against the wind in the gray waste; the lazy regularity of meals; the dreamy satisfaction of the after-dinner cigar; music by moonlight, and books and cards in the snug saloon; and then the sudden fury of the storm! And then, eventful days and nights of fearful peril. How the brave ship struggled and shuddered in the turmoil, and still went on with " solemn face" against the angry waters! How would have sunk the din of hostile navies in that great symphony of wind and wave! The blast, misty with spray, swept upon the leaning ship. The billows, gathered in swells of hundreds of feet in breadth, bore it upon their undula tions buoyantly as a cork, or broke along the bulwarks, sending a throb through every timber, and jarring to its iron heart, which still beat on in slow pulsations. Then there was a lull. "Wild weather," said the captain cheerily, "but it has blown its worst look to the ladies." Anxious faces lightened; faces before serious over open Bibles retained no vestige of the text in their new assurance. Some of the most timid ventured pleasant ries, and talked of hunger; and waiters stumbled about with trays of biscuits and cold meat. The pause in the gale was short. Again the blasts burst appallingly, and goaded anew the watery onset. A rumor spread muttered, but more distinctly heard than the shrill cordage- of a discovered leak. The few AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 69 passengers who cowered and clung on deck searched for evidence of disaster in the captain's unimpassioned face, and searched in vain. Soon apprehension became cer tainty; mattresses and blankets for the breach were passed below. The pumps were worked to their utmost capacity. Still the water gained. Tubs were rigged, and the tackle manned by passengers and crew. Gangs, relieving each other, worked day and night unceasingly. Still the water gained. It rose upon the furnaces and hissed among the fires. The force of the engine ebbed like the breath of a dying mastodon; then, with a shiver, the strong limbs were still. The ship, but half owning her helm, wavered and pitched ominously. Men were hurled overboard with the wrecked spars which they strove to clear. As if envious of the elements, disease came, swift and fell, to its banquet. The unshrouded victims of cholera, with no funeral service but the clamor of the storm half a score a day were buried in the sea. Steadily with hopeful Christian steadiness, a few awaited death; others were stoically dumb. Some were drunk with fear, wildly appealing to heaven to bridle the ruthless winds, or silent and blanched as the dead. Once more the gale subsided; but it was plain the ship would soon go down. At daylight on the sixth morning preparation was made to launch the boats. There was still discipline, which was due to the firm ness of the commander, but the moment of final test was come, and vehemence and distrust swelled threaten ingly, when arose an eager cry "A sail!" and within the same hour another "Sail ho!" The vessel which 70 THE HORTONS; OR was first seen bore down upon them, and proved to be a barque. "We are sinking will you stand by us?" "Aye, aye! while I can float Men! give them three cheers." And the brave shouts, heard above the sullen tumult of the sea, thrilled sturdy hearts with hope and thank fulness, as suddenly turned from its ebb the tide of life; and some shouted in return, and some sobbed out right. Now God bless all true sailor men ! That evening, at Belair, before a cheerful blaze the weather had changed and rain came down in gusts there was gathered a united family. The manner of Mr. Horton was unwontedly serene and tender; Emily was earnest and fond ; and the gaiety of Caroline was subdued to a sober and silent satisfaction, for " there is a joy in which the stranger intermeddleth not." Bradley talked of his perils on the ocean, while the wind wrestled with the trees and shook the casements. Jt was observed that he dwelt with enthusiasm upou. the heroic demeanor of a Miss Bardleigh. When the others had retired, Emily still lingered with her brother. Leaning upon his chair-back she listened rapt, or ques tioned to provoke talk. The clock in the hall had struck midnight, in familiar tones which the traveller joyfully heard once more, when they separated. Andrew, the gardener, had much horticultural his tory to relate to Bradley, of hopes realized, or disap pointed by slug, curculio and fungus; of failures in flowering and favorable frutescence. "These be clips, sir, from your father's choice vine, the Nawth Cawr- AMERICAN LIFE AT HUME. 71 liney, which that feckless chiel Barney cut down to sling the weights for the hayrick with." " What has become of the humorous fellow?" " O sir, on his leaving here- he hired with Farmer Gregg, and spered so anent this and thot he nearly drove the auld mon daft. One day they were empty ing the pig-yard, and Barney wrought hard with the spade atop of a well loose filled, which settling sudden, took the noble descendant of the O'Keefes toward Auld Nick and brimstane rations afore his time. The mistress bro't the clothes line, and they lugged him up the matter of fifteen feet. He went off straight, and clean disappeared." "That ending of his career, Andrew, suited well its beginning." "^ic a steer! It was the red-faced major's wig, which he left in the swath while he tried a turn with the scythe, and which Barney found, misconceivin' it for a strange bur-urd's nest." "A fine fuchsia." "One I set by. I suppose, sir, you hae seen unco grand gardens abroad." "Many. The loveliest I saw, though ragged from neglect, were in Italy; delightful without being trim, with flowers and flowering vines, the rich green of the orange and myrtle, and cool retreats fenced with shrub - bery and shaded by poplars and pines, where brooks meandered among fallen statues and by broken foun tains." " And did you meet in your travels in Italee a Sandy Gillivray?" 72 THE HOBTONS; OB "No, Andrew." " He was my mother's sister's son ; a pawky lad, wha became what they call a coorier. It is forty year since we played thegither, and dwelt anear by the burn. I mind the time as yesterday when Deacon Deans took him by the lug at kirk, in the first psalm, for jobbin me wi' a preen. There's a new terrace, sir, raised since you left. The magnolias, foreby, did bad this year. "Weel, weel, each must gang his gait!" While in Europe, Bradley Horton chose his occupa tion. He determined to be an engineer. He was now twenty-two, and old according to the notion of many stirring and superficial Americans to be a learner. A natural fondness for mathematics and mechanics which he possessed had been stimulated by association with men of science, and by the contemplation abroad of massive roads, tunnels, aqueducts, and bridges, that combine a portion of the old Eoman strength and durability in stone we build less massively than they who laid foundations for the ages with the lightness and grace of modern civilization, whose talisman, as was that of the rude Gothic days, is Iron. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 73 CHAPTER X. It was managed with proper spirit on both sides: he asserted that I was heterodox, I retorted the charge; he replied and I rejoined. VICAR OF WAKEFIEIJ). If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow, and which will not, Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear Your favors, nor your hate. MACBETH. N" a winter's afternoon unemployed IT business acquaintance would visit Clement Horton's counting-room for familiar conversation. Assembled around the stove are Scroggs, Bliggs, Glump, and a stout gentleman of lei surely appearance, who has been in troduced by Bliggs as Mr. Blumen- bach. The stranger's accent is Ger man, and his talk indicates him to be a man of culture. His sense of propriety seems outraged by the closeness of Scroggs' unbooted foot, which emits an unsavory steam as it toasts at the fire, the dingy stocking being stroked the while with its owner's usual complacency. It is always the left foot which Bartimeus comforts, having lost two of the toes proper to it by a trap in his marauding boyhood; and it was this calamity which -brought him his little limp. There is a quick 7 74 THE HOKTONS; OR play of thought and sensibility in the German's face, as he listens and replies to Mr. Horton, so different from the show of narrow and oily cunning in that of the venerable Bliggs, that it is clear the association of the two men is not of affinity, but of accident. Glump's solemn visage is over the market report of the Evening Popgun. "Now, do you think, Mr. Scroggs, this is a ginuine communication from Julius Caesar?" asked Bliggs, incredulously, as he finished the perusal of a crabbed piece of penmanship on a soiled and crumpled scrap of paper. "Every word on't; look at the internal evidence," responded Scroggs, with calm emphasis. The querist bent his gaze again upon the paper, but failing to find the proof referred to, slowly folded and surrendered it to Scroggs, who put it deferentially in a little pocket-book, with an air of triumph. ""Well," pursued Bliggs, after a pause, "I don't profess, Mr. Scroggs, to be a philosopher, but if I'm right informed Caesar lived in the world before the English language was spoke, I may say invented, yet you nor me could have writ that document plainer." " Ah ! there it is the work of spiritual progression. He learnt it in the Speers," replied Scroggs, benignly. "Would you make a time purchase on such advices, Frijnd Scroggs?" asked Glump over the Popgun. " Would you take the ghost's word for a thousand pound ?" asked Bradley. "No; the communication might be a counterfeit. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 75 There's lieing spirits. There is no money in them. Besides, bargaining 's for our common sense, not our higher nature," replied Scroggs. " Mebbe this one was bogus," suggested Bliggs. " How then could he have known John Bunyan, and be able to tell all about him when he was in this state of existence, living, as they did, so many hundred years apart?" responded the unperplexed Scroggs. " Well, it is a little curious," admitted Bliggs. "More credible, Mr. Bliggs, than some of the won ders of the Bible in which you believe. I dare say you never doubted the Jewish passage of the Bed Sea ?" said Scroggs. " Which you disbelieve ?" asked Mr. Horton. "It is all a fable, sir," answered Scroggs. "Yet you contend that tables and chairs can be lifted by supernatural forces, and held in mid-air. If the law of gravitation can be suspended for such trifling, why could it not have been for a momentous purpose ?" urged Mr. Horton. " Spiritualism as a human faith is new, and we don't know yet its capacities. I won't undertake to limit them. A spiritual army, for instance, divested of the incumbrance of flesh and bone, which is so much dead weight to be overcome here, might do amazing things." "' so soft And uncompounded is their essence pure; Not tied or manacled with joint or limb, Nor founded on the brittle strength of bonea, Like cumbrous flesh ' Thus runs the epic measure," said Bradley. 76 THE HORTONS; OR "Exactly: Epic was a spiritualist," responded Scroggs. " I must deny, however, the novelty of spiritualism," continued Bradley. "It was believed in Pagan times. a score of centuries ago, about as it is now, Spheres and all. If you want easily consulted evidence, I shall be glad to lend you, Mr. Scroggs, Old Burton, mine Author. And was it not also the reservoir whence Simon of Samaria, and Elymas of Paphos, and the soothsaying damsel of Philippi drew their inspiration?" " That rather s'prises me ; I didn't think it dated so far back," pondered Bliggs. "The Carthagenians was Pagan, as well as the Philistines; I expect we Americans ought to be more enlightened than them." " It is nothing but the wiles of the Enemy," re marked Glump, with decision. "We liberal people are prepared to encounter the prejudices of education," blandly observed Scroggs. "Mr. Glump has certainly warrant for that 'prejudice' in the Gospel and the epistles to the primitive church," remarked Mr. Horton. "Perhaps he was thinking of Paul's warning against 'seducing spirits and doc trines of devils,' which he foretold. But, apart from that, what evidence have you I mean proof, in the rigorous sense of the word to establish the authorship of these communications and manifestations, granting that they are not produced by earthly agencies, in the disembodied spirits of men. How do you know they are not utterances from Jupiter, say ; of superior intelligences, if you please, to ourselves? If this sup- AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 77 position is sufficient to account for them, how will you prove that it does not?" " Jis as like as not of Hushel," said Bliggs, con- v tributing his quota of astronomy. "Extremely improbable," insisted Glump with some asperity, as scorning an abandonment of the dia bolism hypothesis. Scroggs made no response, but lapsed into his fat smile of serene compassion. Un friendly cavillers contended that in these fits of abstraction, which seemed to radiate placidity and innocence to such an extent that his very eyes were misty, Bartimeus planned doubtful schemes of profit. But others, who knew him to give respectably of his substance to projects of philanthropy when they were not evangelic for they had seen his donations conspicuously set forth in the newspapers disbelieved the imputation, as they surely ought. "But grant," continued Clement Horton, "that these tapping propagandists are the disembodied spirits of men; what kind of spirits are they which are so affectionately familiar with the worldly and wicked? Goodness does not thus easily mingle with evil the spice-laden ships do not steer for the icebergs, be the treacherous sea about them never so inviting." "The spiritual bodies of men have been seen by the endowed in the process of formation," said Blu- menbach. "Thomas Jefferson Spriggens, the seer," added Scroggs, impressively, " saw the spirit of G- , the distinguished scholar who was executed, form. It was awakened in the Speer by soft music. And 7* 78 THE HOBTONS; OR what corroborates him is, G was very fond of just such music in this life." "Was Spriggens, Friend Scroggs, the seer who saw .so many people without souls in Boston?" asked Glump, scomngly. "Seven hundred and thirty-two he counted; many of them highly respectable," was the tranquil reply of Scroggs. "Now, though I'm no philosopher, I expect spiritu alism is only the national genius on a new shoot that it is being smart in a new shape, which pays by making people stare and spend. If that seer could have invented an improved steam-engine I reckon he wouldn't have seen spirits," said Bliggs. "There's clearly a spark of 'the main chance' in the new ' religion.' " said Clement Horton. "The thauma- turgists who receive regular mails from Hades, take care, I am told, to collect the postage in advance of delivery ; and the great American miracle-monger, who puzzled the kings and councillors of Europe, married a princess, or somebody of the sort, the other day. Much I fear that the bland bishops who dispense the stira bout of spiritualism for gospel meat are given to filthy 'ucre." * "As to spirits, Mr. Bliggs, the mejeums see 'em con stantly, walking up and down, and sometimes can't distinguish them from us," said Scroggs. "Then it's the kingdom of Beelzebub displayed What's the use of seeing them ?" growled Glump. "The elevation of human nature," replied Scroggs, with an air of contempt. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 79 "I don't perceive that; nor how a perpetual motion of ghost-traps is to lift it a peg," said Glump. "Because you're a supralapsarian, sir," retorted Bar- timeus Scroggs, with lofty commiseration. "Mebbe: But the straightest Calvinism is something more than a mixture of sorcery and twattle," said Glump. "Dr. Pledget, sir," remarked Bradley, by way of a diversion, addressing his father, "objects to spiritu alism on conservative ground. A ghost used to be an event something creditable to have in a family. It stuck to the pedigree, and gave it a smack of mys terious importance. This is over since the unpolite Smiths and Joneses have taken to walking out of their winding-sheets." "We are certainly entitled to ask, what's the use of hearing the spirits, when we consider that^vhich they are declared to utter. It is melancholy to reflect how the intellects of Erasmus and President Edwards have dwindled, and what a Miss Nancy's warble the muse of Milton is become in 'the music of the spheres;' nay, even Satan himself is shrivelled, and no longer stands ' Like Teneriffe or Atlas unremov'd,' " said Mr. Horton. " Sir, you say true," assented Blumenbach, with en ergy. "Yery much of the inspiration is miserable, what you will call atrocious, abominable such as the schoolgirl may despise. Most people have little brains in this world, why should they have more in the next? The pretence of such cheap intercourse with the spirits 80 THE HORTONS; OR of great thinkers and scholars is one humbug. The phi- losophers do not much know the mountebanks here, when they are together; why should they seek com munion when they get out of their company ? Fudge ! Yet the grand subject of spiritualism is sure and not fabricated." Scroggs referred to his watch, as he rose to leave. "As well doubt that there is mon morals she's stopped: the work of some mischievous spirit/' he said. "Permit me?" asked Mr. Horton, reaching his hand. He held the watch a minute in his warm grasp, gave it a vigorous shake, and returned it ticking. " The work of Jack Frost rather ; the oil in the move ments was congealed," he said, smiling. "Though I don't profess to be a philosopher, I shouldn't wonder," acquiesced Bliggs. "To believe such doctrine evinces a low order of intellect," said Glump, when Scroggs had departed. "Spiritualism has converts who are much desired for wit," replied the German, curtly. " Yes," said Mr. Horton, " poets, and persons of ima ginative power. To them the soothing revelation of- Madame, 'who died o' Wednesday,' to her surviving spouse, seems no more inappropriate than the con sola tion which Creusa gave to ^neas; and they do not care to inquire too curiously if it be simulated. Yet Shakespeare makes Hamlet, who is one of them, doubt if the Devil in the shape of the spirit be not abusing him through his melancholy. They can frame from the AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 81 commonplaces of the creed the architecture of a sensuous and intellectual paradise but how unsatis- fying!" "Why say you so?" asked Blumenbach. " Because man's moral nature is far above his intel lect, and the highest development of^hat nature impels to self-denial, which produces a purer and more ex quisite happiness than sensuousness." " Not alone poets, but philosophers, from Socrates to Swedenborg, have believed in the spiritual existences," asserted Blumenbach. "Surely you cannot claim that the Greek and the Swede were in any wise identified with the spiritism of to-day. Granted the 'infernal' theory of Mr. Glump, and the old partnership of the Witch of Endor and the Devil renewed, with an extended connection, would be more in point," said Mr. Horton, pleasantly. " You cannot so suppress the strange story of Saul, grand and wayward man, from whose nature every ele ment in that of your Shakespeare's Othello might have been drawn courage, credulity, jealousy, fiery pas sion with a sneer. Spiritualism is the belief in here after, and cherished knowledge of the wise few of the ages, aggregated at last into a religious system ; just as the Church is the complement of Christianity : and the great, queer Athenian is its Paul," asserted Blumen bach. "Concerning the 'daemon' of Socrates, his 'prophetic voice,' of which he talked familiarly, it is enough to say that he believed it, that to him it was a revelation, whether true or false, which originated beyond himself 82 THE HORTONS; OK and the operations of his intellect. That such a faith should have been professed by the first of the heathen sages, a faith which was a virtual confession of his own insufficiency, is the sharpest satire upon empty carpers at the element of revelation in Christianity, and an argument by implication against the ablest objectors. Of the belief of the pure-minded Swede we are fully informed. He held, that on their separation from the body the good become angels, and the unregenerate spirits; their conditions respectively being celestial, and infernal; and unchangeably fixed. He declared, that both good spirits and evil spirits are attendant upon every man. That the former live in the good affections, or the internal and spiritual man ; and that the latter live in the evil affections, or the external and natural man. But the internal spiritual man may be and continue so closed as to admit of no communica tion with heaven; which is a kingdom established in the hearts of living men, as well as a disembodied con dition; and which is only attainable by prayer through the Lord Christ, who is the fulness of the Divinity. Your spirits give lessons in good morals, you say 'teach the morals of Jesus,' I believe is the phrase yet all the time they deny his divine competency, by which those 'morals' in their great 'results are recommended to men; they pretend to accept the doctrine while they degrade the authority. 'Satan himself/ says St. Paul, 'is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness.' It is simply tempta tion in the garb of virtue the wasp in the peach. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 83 Accept Swedenborg, and modern spiritualism would indeed seem to be the invisible Satanic en rapport with unregenerate natures in this world." "In such sort, I can conceive your credulous man mistake dyspepsia for temptation from his evil spirits : the devil is fond of the liver, and hates calomel worse than holy water," said Blumenbach. " Well, not accepting for an argument that which is only a sarcasm, compare the practical results of Chris tianity with those of spiritism in this world," urged Mr. Horton. "You will!" exclaimed the German. "War, despot ism envassaling the mind of Europe, Paris barricades and Naples dungeons, Frenchmen roasting Arabs and Englishmen mangling Hindoos?" "It is true that the French Eevolutionists who be headed Louis were infidels, but the English Puritans who doomed Charles fought their battles between a prayer and a psalm; and while the end in the one instance is a self- perpetuating military despotism, in the other it is constitutional liberty, vital with possibilities , ( of beneficent development. And as to war, hateful as it is, Hobbes had the countenance of history, at least, when he declared it to be the natural state of man. You can verify Hobbes in the next street. Go watch unsanctified human tendency in the riotous rancor of boys at a stone -fight, or see Hogarth justified by a crew of young ruffians cruelly hunting to death a harm less cur. It was always pleasant to destroy, and noth ing but the Christian Church, corrupted as it was, curbed the impulse short of a resulting anarchy a 84 THE HOETONS; OR European Jacquerie in the rude ages of social oppres sion ; and preserved, even advanced, the civilization of the world." " The one germ in all human tendency is order you will behold it in a street mob," interposed Blumenbach. "Certainly; there is an order of infernal force. Hell is organized; and the damned of that 'dark monarchy' tempt men nay, limitedly, perhaps each other with systematic subtilty. In new societies, where there are no established laws, assassins and gamblers will com bine to hang a burglar. There is nothing in your spiritualism which stimulates to virtuous actions here; for if a man is convinced that he will be virtually the same hereafter, a shadowy duplicate of himself, or pro bably better, he will be apt to be better at his leisure: and still more unconcerned will he be if he believes in a certainty of amendment; for then he will surrender his sense of responsibility to the law of development. I cannot think that the aspirations of a creature who may possess the heart of David united to the brain of Shakespeare will end, if you will pardon me the phrase, in this horse-heaven business. Wisely may atheism crave its annihilation if the innate longings of man, the tribulations of the race, are to terminate only in the unsubstantial projection of the present, and a mounte bank ghost." "Could we make what is, from an ideal pattern, everybody would prove a master-workman. By specu lative perfections you will not change the universal humanity," observed the German. "Now, that's very true," said Bliggs. "Human AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 85 * nature is a strange thing ; though I don't profess to be a philosopher, if I could afford to quit business, I've often thought, I would turn my attention to the study of human nature." "You refuse all moral truth and beauty which spiritualism can render. The painter who sees angels, can put them on his canvas; the man of meditation can bless his soul with a glory from the vast and perfect spiritual order; the composer will hear unearthly melodies, ravishing, and utter them for earthly ears. Spiritualism opens our obstructions here; therefore it is knowledge wisdom, if we will, and joy," said Blumenbach. "It is not in spiritism that this capacity of enjoy ment exists, but in the painter, the meditative man, and the melodist; that is, in the imaginative faculty of each under stimulation. Let us be exact. That which in the pagan hind of Greece of Italy was a debasing superstition, in the pagan poet is an alluring allegory. The purer and higher happiness of Christianity is the boon of the humble and the dull," insisted Mr. Horton. The German replied with a shrug. "I will tell you a case," he said, "which I can avouch the fact. It is of a friend, very near, the expe rience observable. He was a composer, and had got much esteem for his works. He gave all his earnest nature, a strong love, to his subjects. He was produc ing an oratorio, and inspired himself with the grand Hebrew prophets, and thought his music day and night it was always, always in his mind. The brain was made sick, and for two weeks life was one weak 8 86 THE HOKTONS; OB light behind your hand in the wind. Again he roso from his bed ; but with memory no more. He could not even read. It was very sad, the strong man, in mind grown feeble as a babe; sitting still and alone in his chamber day after day, dumb between his cry ings. At a time when thus drooping, on a calm, sunny morn ing, he fell asleep. Then he saw saw grand specta cles, . which told would cause smiles and be called dreams. I shall not tell them only this: He lay tranquilly looking at the light which flowed through the colored windows of an old cathedral. An atmos phere of subtle poison subdued all his being but con sciousness a pleasing poison which it was bliss to breathe. The Titian-like figures of dusky pictures brightened gradually into exquisite shapes of beauty, and faded again into indistinguishable cobweb grey. Then the pent air shook with the vibrations of the organ, and his own lost music was reproduced. The organ ceased, and for a space he was unconscious. Then it was midnight in the cathedral, and he lay in a coffin, and the moonlight streamed through the painted panes upon his shroud. Out of the darkness of a dis tant aisle was raised a pedestal crowned by a wreathed bust in pure white stone, which rested on a scroll. As if drawn with phosphorus, shone characters upon the scroll, and, behold a resurrection of his own brain child the score of the oratorio, traced by a luminous finger !" "Though I don't believe in ghosts, there does seem sumfin supernatural about that," said Bliggs. "No doubt the phenomenon was the result of brain AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 87 fever, and the recovery a good providence: when the impressions were received the disease had spent its force, and the mind was reassuming its wonted clear ness and harmony," remarked Mr. Horton. "Did your friend go on with business afterwards, or had he made enough to give it up?" asked Bliggs, with sudden vivacity. "He came not to want, sir," replied the German. 88 THE HOETONS; OB CHAPTEE XI. Having often received an invitation from my friend Sir Roger de Coverley to pass away a month with him in the country, I last week accompanied him thither, and am settled with him for some time at his country-house, where I intend to form several of my ensuing speculations. SPECTATOR. KADLEY HOKTON'S shipboard ac quaintance with Miss Bardleigh was continued, and he became a familiar visitor at The Cedars, her father's seat. Judge Bardleigh was a jovial gentle man, with a big waist, a big heart, and a face which glowed in laughter purple as his wines. In the line of paternity the Judge had a well supplied quiver; and he so abounded with geniality and benevolence that he might have set up creditably as a stepfather besides. And a very pleasant place was The Cedars, the broad, fat acres of which bred no anchore- tic tendencies. You could read savory plenty in the sleek red flanks of the straight-backed Devons, as they browsed with slow content the juicy herbage. Better mutton never sheltered under fleece than was killed and dressed at The Cedars. The ducklings there illus trated the peas ; and the peas, ravished from their pods in the adolescence of early marrowfats, were creditable AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 89 to the ducklings. The good cheer was appreciated throughout the country side, and as the judge, who was at once a hospitable host and a hearty talker, had beneath his roof- tree a rout of frolicsome boys and sprightly girls, there were frequent merry-meetings at The Cedars. On a warm, sullen day in early June, Bradley Hor- ton and Lydia Bardleigh were pacing a shady walk which skirted the garden at this rendezvous of good fellowship. A few large drops of rain which pelted through the leaves overhead drove them to shelter. In the earnestness of their conversation they failed to observe the close of the shower. A peal of laughter drew their attention, and looking forth from the cool retreat down a lane of sun-glistened shrubbery, they beheld, at an old well nestled beneath a noble English elm, a couple in playful altercation. "Your brother Charley," said Bradley. "And Kose Stuvesant," added Lydia. "Pshaw! sir; you can never catch it; let me try," said the young lady at the well. "Look out now, Eosel Like as not the little beast will jump your way," expostulated the youth, as he made sudden dashes with the tincup into the well- bucket. " What monster have you got?" called Lydia. "A little fellow in Lincoln green, and more ftian a match for us," returned the young lady. "Yes; jolly green to get himself in this fix," ex claimed Charley, as with a jerk he brought up a frog by one of its convulsed hind legs. 8* 90 THE HORTONS; OB "You began your gipsying to-day in other company, Rose," said Lydia, as that young lady and her escort entered the arbor. " O yes Luke Bardleigh. He was stupid enough to get a fish-hook in his finger ; so, when he went about cutting it out, I left." "Now would you think, Lyd," said Master Charles, " that I've been betting against you ? Beg pardon, Mr. Horton, I didn't notice your foot." " But I do your head, sir, and will take the liberty to remove your hat;" which Rose proceeded to do, regardless of an appealing look from Lydia. "Quite right," exclaimed Bradley, flushing; "I de clare I was so absent that I forgot " "The presence of ladies. Well, your forgetfulness is atoned for there," tapping smartly with a willow switch the placed hat. Bradley amusedly assented, with a penitent bow. "You see, Mr. Horton," said Charley, "I've been improving Rose in the practice of the saddle, till ] think I can count on her against our brag horsewoman in these parts, Miss Lyddy, here. Rose says she's nof afraid to try, on my Cricket. Come, don't back out, Lyddy!" " I can't think of humoring your nonsense, and risk ing your cousin's neck," replied Lydia, laughing. ' ' What charming consideration !" mocked Rose Stu- vesant. "That won't do, Lyddy; Rose is not a baby, you know, to be nursed. You can't escape that way challenge still open!" said Charley. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 91 "Well, Charley, perhaps I wouldn't refuse Rose a chance for victory and applause, but this is her last day at The Cedars," said his sister. " Then what is to hinder the trial coming off this afternoon in our ride to Cranberry Beach? You know we are all to go," urged Charley. Cranberry Beach margined a bold curve of the bay, some six miles from The Cedars. It was a road, which gradually shelved sideways, of compacted sand with here and there a little shingle, where at the height of the tide several horsemen could ride comfortably abreast a long reach, with the beasts of the inner at times fetlock deep in the yeast of the encroaching waves. In the ample cove, at the season, fishermen cast their seine; and their squat, weather-beaten cabins, deserted now, seemed very lonely and desolate as one listened to the melancholy plaint the water, in slower or quicker measure, beat upon the shore. Under a rude shed were some empty barrels, a few scattered float-corks, and a broken pitch kettle. The skeleton of a boat lay just beyond the tide-line, where the wash had left its edge of scum chips, weeds, dead crabs, and the dart-like remains of the gar. The wheatfields and groves of the remote opposite highlands Jiow looked gusty in shadow, and then the spreading sun shine swept away the frown, and gaily chased it over the water, where a flaw of wind wasted itself in a feeble show of white-caps and shivered in the slanted sail of the shallop, from which the creak of the jibing boom came to the ear with sharp distinctness. They had turned their bridles homeward and ridden 92 THE HORTONS; OR together a few hundred yards, a party of four gay ladies and their cavaliers, when Rose Stuvesant, twirl ing her riding-whip defiantly, cried, "Now, Lydia, for a gallop !" Their horses were nearly neck to neck when they started gallantly from their companions, who, catching the enthusiasm, spurred after them. A young and gentle woman in a jaunty, feather- festooned hat, which scarce half conceals her waves of hair; in trailing drapery of skirt which depends from a petite mould of creaseless bodice, upon a horse of mettle, is a pretty picture, though a common. The charms that belong to it are heightened by rapid motion. The doe which, startled from its lair, clears at a bound the crackling branchlets, nor pauses till it gains the neighboring crest, and then turns its faultless neck and looks behind with pleading eyes, is a type of Beauty in action, which spells you to compassion. A ship before the trade- wind, ploughing a phosphorescent sea on a soft tropical night, her full sails straining, while her leeward bulwarks lean and dip as she glides swiftly through the long swells that heave to meet her her full sails straining, still steadily straining toward Tahiti asleep beneath a purple sky, is Beauty in an other shape <>{" movement, which lulls you like a deli cious dream. Your lady in the saddle, Sir Knight, sans helmet, with her bridle free, her flexible body, forward face, aaid glowing cheek, surpasses mountain deer and trimmest yacht that ever wooed the gale is a display of loveliness at once graceful, tender, and impetuous. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 93 A cloud of dust and a clatter of hoofs. An easy going countryman who is jogging in his dearborn be hind " Betz." the sleek old mare bushy with wild indigo to keep off flies, hears in a doze the approaching caval cade, cranes out his neck to reconnoitre, and draws up to the fence. Eustics in the fields lean upon their plough-handles and gaze stolidly. Dogs at the infre quent farmhouses bark, and housewives pause at wash- tub labors in the shade to look. Colts at pasture catch the congenial spirit of the scene arid frisk at speed the length of their enclosures. Even the stage is civil and makes room, though it carries the mail and runs on its official dignity. Lydia and Eose are before; Charley Bardleigh and Bradley are close after, gallantly curb ing their horses. As they were passing a cornfield in which were scare crows, Eose Stuvesant's horse shied. Perceiving the start, Lydia made a quick movbinent to seize the bridle of the frightened animal. In her anxiety for her cousin she lost her own seat, failed to recover it, and was flung violently to the ground. A shriek from Eose an nounced the accident. The men were quickly dis mounted, and beside the fallen lady. She was caje- fully lifted by them, found to be insensible, and carried to the roadside. From a wound in her head, where it had struck upon a jagged stone, blood freely flowed. At Bradley's desire, Charley Bardleigh, half frantic with excitement, rode off to summon the doctor to The Cedars. Other members of the party procured near by a mattress and a country wagon. Judge Bardleigh sat in his piazza, smoking and chat- 94 THE HOBTONS; OR ting with a neighbor, when the party with his injured daughter approached. Instinctively he divined disaster in the array, which he started down the avenue to meet. Shocked and solicitous, he insisted on removing his child in his own arms to her chamber. Nor were his restless attentions diminished until the arrival of the doctor, who calmly examined the case, and after due, and, it seemed to the judge, tedious deliberation, said, in a tone where matter-of-fact and sympathy were oddly commingled, "Badly hurt, sir, but not fatally, I believe I have known worse damage got over." And then, from an alarm in which he regarded the speedy death of his child as probable, the mind of the father was incongruously moved to an earnest concern at the ascertained seriousness of her injury,. The doctor kindly undertook the organization of the sick room, and prevented Eose, in her inexperience and perturbation, spreading a mustard poultice on her lace- edged handkerchief. For a week the situation of Lydia Bardleigh seemed critical indeed, and scarcely to warrant the not unfavor able prognostication of the physician. That excellent man was placid and assiduous; welcome alike at bed side and board; for, strictly professional duties done, and well done, his acute and informed conversation, cheerful conceits and pleasant gossip, dispelled for a time the household gloom, and imparted to the judge a breadth of satisfaction which he would sometimes acknowledge by an. approach to his customary inclu sive laugh. Doctor Grow was a stout, wide-chested gentleman AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 95 with a stoop in his figure, the wear of over sixty years, a bronzed complexion, and a full white beard. In creed he was a devout presbyterian. His innate vigor had fruited variously. He had invented and modified surgical instruments, produced a seedling strawberrj of rare merit, performed a successful amputation of the hip-joint, and published an ingenious essay on the civil polity of Moses. At much trouble and cost he had contrived to import a pair of Peruvian llamas, and he eloquently urged their adoption by the agricultural interest ; but the sturdy farmers stuck to their Morgans. Ancient females were terrified by the exotics, associat ing them mentally with jungles and an escape from a menagerie, and horses were incited by them to run away upon the road ; whereat a feeling of public injury was aroused which culminated in a suit at law, when the doctor gloomily gave up his patriotic undertaking. By the rude poor his science was reverentially extolled; it was generally confessed that he knew more than the celebrated Indian who practised with herbs ; and, upon the whole, that he exceeded in a knowledge of remedies old Black Baltic, who was infallible in the treatment of worms and famous in the line of fits. By the culti vated, he was cherished as much for his feeling and manly nature as for his acquaintance with the pharma copoeia. Scores of men sit in cabinets and senates, even among those who have not attained conspicuity by low artifices, or have not been thrust upward on a little dis tended rhetoric, with far less of the intellectual fertility, promptitude, energy, patience and courage which are 96 THE HOETONS; OB sometimes possessed by the unpretending country phy sician. At the request of Judge Bardleigh, Bradley remained at The Cedars, and made himself serviceable as a relief to his host. For some days, except a few moments once or twice, the rigorous proprieties of the sick room forbade his presence there ; and these glimpses of a pale, unobserving, half- conscious face, which he had so lately seen aglow with health and vivacity, inexpressi bly saddened him. At hours when callers were not expected for he represented the master of the man sion, whose unavoidable employment and vigils com pelled him to sleep much of days Bradley would saunter alone in field or wood, and partake of that peculiar enjoyment which characterizes the brief re spites of the watcher who is gloomed in the presence of sickness and of care. For such occasions blow fresher zephyrs then added incense rises from the landscape; the little stir of man and his events sub sides in the confident calm of nature, which seems to say, "Cling to me; /am steadfast, and remain!" It was a warm and quiet summer afternoon. En veloped in a light role de charribre, the fair invalid reclined in an extension chair wheeled to present her wan face to the shadow.of the room. At a jalousie, vainly wooing a breeze, Bradley Horton was seated, book in hand. Upon a servant rustling at the door, he rose softly and received a plate of ice. When he turned toward his companion he saw that her eyes were shut, and that she seemed to doze. He stood for a moment and gazed upon her, and felt that there AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. ' 97 was an expression of tranquil rapture in her face very exalted and lovely. Then lie musingly resumed his seat and book, glancing through the blinds occasionally into the effusive sunlight without, where a humming bird at the casement balanced with a musical flutter, or a load of hay drawn by panting oxen straining on their yokes went up the dusty lane. Then the midsummer stillness was enthroned again in the arid air. Awhile, and a brisk patter of approaching footsteps was followed by the joyous exclamation of a child, as she burst into the room regardless of Bradley's monitory gesture. "O, see here what nice Mr. Cole made for me Fanny Spot. He calls it, 'Pet Asleep.' I must show it to Aunt Lyddy, and its just like her." "What is, Kate?" asked the lady. "Make haste and look at it, sir, and let me take it," said little Kate, impatiently reaching for the Bristol board. It was a pencil sketch of a kitten sprawled on a kitchen floor, sleep-overtaken in the act of playing with the strings of an apron. It laid on its side, its ears perked forward, its face turned half upward, and its upper legs still flexed as in the final pat. " Aunt Martha thinks it's beau-ti-ful," said Kate, "and I wanted Mr. Cole to make the old cat too; and Mr. Cole said, I must catch and hold it, then; and I found it in the wash-house, and it tried to scratch me it's very vicious, and I don't like it a bit." The child seated herself on a stool at Lydia's feet while the picture was examined and commended. The 9 98 THE HORTONS; OB lady passed her thin white fingers through the golden ringlets that fell upon her robe. Sobered by the tone of the place, the child sat long quiet. The picture lay unregarded beside her as she watched a radiant concern m the thoughtful eyes of her aunt. "Suffer little children," the lady gently repeated. After a pause, she turned her head toward Bradley and addressed him. "A poet, I suppose by the blue and gold of the binding?" "It is Tennyson; and I hav.e been reading that gusty lamentation, 'Locksley Hall!'" "I remember it a story of disappointed love, told in a strain of keen distress?" "Yes." "Do you think there are many such griefs, Mr. Horton?" "Many; of which the world is mostly ignorant. The anguish of unrequited love is not an affliction to be hawked in the market-place. Perhaps its history will end undivulged before a battery, and be buried in a trench perhaps it will be buried in a mad-house. It is an English malady. Miss Edith's Roman nose is inherited from a Norman pirate, so she is constrained to be a social purist. 'She was sprang of English nobles, I was born of English peasants; What was /that I should love her save for feeling of the pain?'" " The prescriptive sundering of natures which were created to approach, and which are worthy of each other, is a cruelty of British caste as abhorrent, I AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 99 think, to reason, &s is any assumption of Braminism," said Lydia. " The English Bramins hedge their lives with arro gated social sanctities to the very threshold of eternity and nakedness; and hoard poor butterfly dust as though it were gold of heaven's own minting, seven times refined cherish their narrow conventionalism to the last punctilio, to make grim merriment for waiting ghosts, that laugh at the fools whom they welcome," said Bradley. 100 THE HORTONS; OB CHAPTER XII. Overreach. I am of a solid temper, and steer on a constant course. A NEW WAY TO PAY OLD DEBTS. HE house of Bloker and Ball was one of the most substantial in the city. It had survived a half dozen "panics," and had not been known to ask for even an extension. Ball, indeed, was >' no longer in the flesh: a gaunt, ambi dextrous quaker, he had gone out of the firm years before, and disap peared with the fashion of small clothes, to which, including buckled shoes, he tad adhered staunchly to the end of his earthly career. Jacob Bloker's was the brain and bank-account of the house of Bloker and Ball. The counting-rooms of Bloker and Ball were light, airy apartments, aristocratically aloof from the region of warehouses, in a solid and ugly brown-stone building of the bastard Egyptian style, which they shared with a popular insurance company the Diddlum Mutual, with ample assets in wild lands and the notes of kin dred corporations a bill engraver, two or three bro kers, and a stationer. Bloker and Ball's clerks never AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 101 presented themselves to the public gaze hurrying in inked jackets, but were notable for club-house move ment, spotless linen, the neatest of neckties and boots, "nobby" hats, and in general a pick-the-teeth air of deliberation. They could put one up to a move or two in billiards, give all the fine points, operatical and occult, of that magnificent creature, Calypso Tuberose, and talk "dog" acceptably to the veterans at the "Sportsman's Bag." Yet the affairs of the house were administered with system and courtesy, and even bilious people were known to have declared it a plea sure of existence to do business with Bloker and Ball. "Of course, Mr. Cripps, you have brought home Captain Warner's effects I wish you would let his wife know of his death, if she has not already seen it announced in the marine intelligence; I hate scenes," said Jacob Bloker. "Well, I won't skulk a dead man's message, and I am charged with one; but I'd sooner face a pampero," said the first officer of the merchant's ship Swan. "Good weather and run from Bio?" asked Bloker, examining some papers. "First-rate, sir, till we got in the stream, except squall off Pernambuco." "How long was Captain Warner sick with the fever?" "Ten days in hospital, and they took him ashore the second day." "It kept you back with cargo nearly a week, it 9* 102 THE HORTONS; OR seems. Um! bad; but it can't be helped," said Bloker. "It went liard -with Warner to go on account of his helpless family, he said." "Helpless? yes I believe so," said Bloker, slowly, while making a memorandum on the back of an in voice. "He always kept close drawn." " He had been in your employment fifteen years, I think he told me," said Cripps. " About that time. A careful man, and wide enough awake seldom lost a spar. How many vessels were waiting in port when you left?" "Eight Americans, and more North of Europe craft than I ever saw at once at Eio," answered the mate. " Freights will rule low, then. Captain Warner got three dozen fowls at Marseilles, I see; yet I believe he took out four pigs," remarked Bloker. " We had a passenger from Marseilles.' "So yes: well, the accounts, on the whole, seem unobjectionable. I'm glad you are here at last, for cof fee has taken quite a jump, and I don't think it will stay up," said the chief of Bloker and Ball as he gath ered the papers for his bookkeeper. The following day Jacob Bicker's private office was he scene of another conversation. A sorrowful woman, of middle age, addressed the merchant. "He was a tender husband, sir. I had something heavy on my mind, but I was not prepared for such a blow." " My dear madame, it is only a question of time with us all," said Bloker. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 103 "True, sir; but that consideration lessens little the bitterness of our loss," replied the lady. "Our poor Frank is worse again with his spine, and he is expect ing his father daily; I have not dared to break the news to him, though I think he guesses that some thing is wrong my poor, patient child!" and the mother wept. " Pie has been an invalid for several years? I remem ber to have met you two or three summers since cross ing him on the ferry-boats for the air. Does nothing help him?" asked the merchant, civilly. "It is but too likely that nothing ever will the doc tors give no hope," said Mrs. Warner. " That is discouraging. Perhaps, Mrs. Warner, this is hardly the time for the formality of a settlement, but I have by me the balance of your husband 1 s account, and will give you a check at once. At the time of his death there was one hundred and sixty-one dollars due him. There were some expenses, which I will not mention. I will make the check two hundred dollars, and ask you to accept it," said Jacob Bloker, in a tone large with generosity. It is not probable that the widow had thought of a gratuity just then, but as it was offered thirty-nine dollars to represent the appreciation of fifteen years of faithful service in a responsible station and in a man ner which said plainly, "This is final,'' she was bereft of all power of utterance. "But, stop!" exclaimed the merchant, arresting him self in the act of handing the check to Mrs. Warner, and summoning a clerk, "how thoughtless I am; I will 104 THE HORTONS; OR have it drawn for you, madame Charles, get gold for this." When the widow recovered from her surprise at Bloker's offer she flashed with indignation; but she was a mother ; she thought of her bereaved and depen dent family; of her stricken, helpless boy; and she stifled her anger. In anguish of heart she dropped the yellow pieces into her purse, and went to her desolate home. Yet not altogether desolate. The God of the widow is bountiful of compensations. Poor, patient Frank, though a cause of solicitude, was also a source of com fort. Thin and wasted, his pale, meek face seemed to have, taken on a fore-look of spiritual glory. It was surpassingly pleasant to mark the electric glances of affection which passed between mother and child. They were a language in themselves the voiceless communing of sympathetic souls. Week after week, all day, the lad laid propped with pillows on a lounge, reading his story books, watching and listening to his canary, or, his couch wheeled to the window-seat, clean ing his few pot plants of insects. A feeble, misshapen child, but dear to the family heart, and precious in the sight of angels; with the town's tumultuous tide sweep ing about him the fortunes, strifes, and crimes of men, quiet, thankful, and heedless of its roar. Two other steady boys received scant wages in places where they looked for advancement ; and Jane, the eldest daughter, taught at a rural seminary. Upon hearing of her father's death, Jane Warner came home to mingle her grief with her mother's. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 105 When told of Bicker's gift, she kindled at once to a decision: "The thirty-nine dollars must be returned to this man, mamma; my father's memory shall not be thus insulted I will send the sum out of my savings." Shortly afterward, among the merchant's correspond ence was a letter which contained a remittance of seven five-dollar bills, and four gold dollars glued to the sheet. Its written contents were concise and conclu sive. MR. JACOB BLOKER, Shipowner. SIR: You will receive, here inclosed, the benefac tion which you graciously bestowed on my mother. In a condition of mental uncertainty, produced by sudden and deep distress, it was mechanically accepted by her ; reflection, which has occasioned a proper sense of self-respect in the living and a just regard for the memory of the dead, has determined her to return it. The probity, carefulness, and energy in a responsible station^ which you have freely confessed characterized the services rendered to you by my father during many years, can hardly, in the most stringent estimation, be requited by the inconsequential sum of thirty-nine dollars. If you should urge that the current wages received from you by the deceased were adequate pay ment for his exertions in your interest, there is no room in equity for a gift. In neither case ought the money to be retained. Your humble servant, JANE WARNER. 106 THE HORTONS; OR Perhaps while Bloker was angrily pouching his rejected bounty, a person, as the world goes, with a very different . social stamp, was cheerfully surrender ing his little fortune ,in acknowledgment of an unre corded favor; for the abstraction of five-and-twenty dollars relieved a rare turgidity in the purse of Terence O'Eourke. " And this is how it was, ma'am," explained Terence to Mrs. Warner; "I'd wrought for the captain God rist him years ago at stavadoring, when he kept from saa bad cess to it and he know'd me for an honest, hard-working, industhrious mon ; when one shudderin' winter there was no thrade, and not even odd jobs, and Biddy and the childer wanting the bit to ate. It was then the good captain rist his soul gave me the manes to live; saying, 'Terence, whin you get foremist the wur-uld with the loike of this sum, I will recave it; if you niver do, it don't matther use it with aconomy.' And, ma'am, it was the good that money did me that can't be tould! But, somehow, I could niver make it convenient to return it, till racently a society of which I was a member, the Hoibernia Bineficial, broke and di voided the funds; and Father McGuire says, 'Terence, as you don't requoire that sum for the present nades of your family, is there no old obligation on your mind you would wish to attind to?' And thin, ma'am, I thought for the first of the captain's ginerosity, though, in troth, I hadn't forgot it." AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 10Y CHAPTBE XIII. Saint Cupid, then ! and, soldiers, to the field ! LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST. SMALL party surrounded the ma hogany at Belair, drinking claret and eating the September peaches. "This melocoton, Mr. Horton, is easier to take than was Sevastopol," observed Jacob Bloker, essaying a harmless joke. "You must thank Mr. Davenport then, whp budded the tree." "I like them best in dumplings, with the right sort of dip," said the old clerk, modestly avoiding the arborary sponsorship. "Fortescue Nankeen Fortescue we called him in the India trade, a very sensible man who died of apoplexy, always stood up for cherry pie in preference, with good farm house milk, but I never agreed with him." "You will have choice fruit, Mr. Bloker, in a year or two. Bradley tells me that some of your Van Mons pears are rare in Belgium. I should be glad to exchange grafts with you," said the host. " Of course when you please. By-the-by, Horton, that gray colt which I was about to sell, and you THE HOETONS; OK thought of as a saddle horse for Miss Hortou, wants exercising he's perfectly broke, and I'll send him over," said Bloker. "You didn't fix on a price, I believe." "No: try him awhile, and you can judge better of his value. There may be some defect unknown to me we won't close the matter just now." Presently they joined the ladies, Emily Horton and Caroline Mellen, and sauntered about the grounds to enjoy the beauty and freshness of the approaching sunset. "You shall take charge of me, Mr. Davenport, and teach me botany," said Caroline. "Should be glad to, but I'm not well advised on the subject. -Yet my family has, I may say, a botanical genius. My mother is counted very skilful in sickness to make herb teas, and I recollect my grand mother would talk by the hour of plants, and could describe a half dozen sorts of snakeroot alone. The old lady had a drawer in her bureau full of valuable receipts for almost every complaint, which she left to mother. She had been all her life collecting and writing them out, but, as they were mixed together and she was a slow reader, it would sometimes take nearly a day to find a particular one, which was inconvenient when a neighbor was taken sudden." "I suppose bachelors are fond of flowers, for I find, when they don't smoke, that they carry in their clothes a smell of lavender," said Caroline. " I like them when they are bright-colored, such as roses and sunflowers. And I like to watch the bees AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 109 about them. When I was a youngster, next to our warehouse yard there was a drug-mill, the owner of which, a low-spirited man, kept a hive, and in the season I bought bouquets of the market-women that I might draw the bees and see their pleased and busy movements. More than once, thus occupied, I have fallen asleep on a packing-case at the open window, and done my letter copying at night," said the old clerk. As they went leisurely down the walk they heard shouts before them, and upon looking in that direction they perceived a violent ripple in a growth of shrub bery, and then a heifer in headlong rush toward them, with Andrew the gardener and a bawling lad hard after. There was a summer-house close by, and, gal lantly seizing Caroline, Davenport made for the conve nient refuge. Having thrust her in, the old clerk was entering with elastic step, when his hat struck the lintel and rolled away on the gravel walk. While he turned to recover it, the cow charged upon him. The situation had been suddenly sprung, the brute was unfamiliar, and Henry Davenport had heard of hydro phobia in rampant cattle. He ran; and coursing fleetly down a side path only halted when he reached a tree with an accessible fork, nor then until he was sheltered in it. As he mopped his face in this place of safety, he was pleased to behold the incensed gardener punch the head of the boy, whose carelessness he accused as the cause of the mischief to his horticulture. "You wullin!" exclaimed Andrew, "will you mind the heck next time?" 10 110 THE HOETONS; OB Then, turning to Davenport, "Hoot, mon, come doon!" "Certainly;" said the fugitive, as he dropped with difficulty to the ground, "I was just going to. If only I had my fowling-piece! A cow did you say! By Saint George! I took it to be a bull." "Disobedience and heedlessness, lad," said Andrew, in a strain of moral reproof, "is foreby the deil; and if ye nae mend, you'll howl and greet worse than thot. Gin it was nae for patience, which is the wale of a' virtues there's the head of yon Ageeptian lily bit clean off!" and at this fresh provocation the gardener made a threatening movement toward the culprit, by whose superior agility it was eluded. Caroline welcomed Davenport from the window of the summer-house with seasonable banter. "I don't believe, sir, a more masterly retreat could have been executed but, what's the matter with your hat?"* "I accidentally put my foot on it." "Had your head been in it, it had been the better for your hat, Mr. Davenport." " You may laugh, Miss Caroline, and I like to hear you, though it is at my expense; but he would be a desperate man who would stand before an infuriated animal with horns, without even an umbrella for de fence. I've known cattle to go through plate-glass windows, and in hot weather the hospitals take in a number of tossed people. Many years ago, an ac quaintance of mine Tarbox, salt provisions was his line was shook up awful." AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. Ill " You did quite right to run away, Mr. Davenport ; I should have done the same," said Caroline. "Tarbox," continued the old clerk, musingly, " didn't recover short of an operation, and then it was a tedious-case." "'Twas only a woman's raillery, Mr. Davenport; I don't think you a bit nervous." "Yet if I wasn't, I would have spoken my mind about some things long since," replied Davenport, with confused briskness. Seeing that her companion regarded her appealingly, as if to emphasize his remark, Caroline responded to the look with respectful attention. "It must be a hard thing which staggers your frankness, Mr. Davenport." The simple reply of the lovely woman, half sympa thy and half compliment, touched the old clerk sensi bly, and emboldened him to proceed. "It is a hard thing for me, and I can't keep it longer Miss Caroline, I am your devoted admirer !" She flushed and started ; but in a moment, when she had conquered her surprise, she answered with affected misconception, "And I am your admiring friend, Mr. Davenport; I hope we shall always feel for each other, even if chance should permanently part us, a cordial esteem." When Caroline began to speak in her kind accents, Henry Davenport's face mantled with eagerness; when she finished, he drew a long breath and was silent. "Night will catch us playing truant if we stay longer; the frogs in Cattail Marsh have been prac- 112 TITE ITORTONS; OR tising this half-hour, and there's the first lightning- bug," said Caroline, pleasantly. Bloker and Emily Horton are standing where the ground is mossy by the poplars. "So you know Mrs. "Warner? A very worthy lady; though, I am bound to say, a little imprudent that is with expensive tastes," said Bloker. "Because she refuses proffered bounty?" replied Emily, with a tone of sarcasm. "Ah! I see you have been told a certain circum stance, and that, doubtless, in 'the telling I have been treated without mercy. I suppose my slight gift was represented as final a closing of the account?" "As you urge me I believe it was so regarded." "Now see the mischief of misconception. I assure you that it was only an instalment of what I intended to bestow. It was my desire to serve Mrs. Warner in the amount, who, to be plain, has no just notion of the value of money. The captain's ample salary was always needed when it was due." "With some chances for observation, I have not noticed extravagance in Mrs. Warner's housekeeping. There were a half-dozen children to rear, and some of them sickly." " The last is the most distressing feature in the situa tion of the family," said Bloker, with an attempt at commiseration. "The condition of that poor boy touches me deeply. I spoke to Dr. Conium, who stands at the head of our faculty, about him, and requested his attention to him." "Yes; they told me the doctor sent. Poor Mrs. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 113 Warner is so weak as to"have an unconquerable aver sion to clinics; fearing the effect upon her long se cluded child of three or four hundred inquisitive, noisy students." " You surprise me. That proceeding is Conium's, and I am not to be held answerable for it. Love of science, amounting to a passion, I suppose explains it," responded Bloker. "Perhaps, sir; good manners don't, in the light of your statement." "I hear Miss Jane Warner is praised for a fine understanding," said Bloker. "And justly." " When I saw her, several years since, I thought her rather pretty." "About that opinions may vary; she is certainly not the reverse," said Emily, with womanly noncom- mittalism. "One of my clerks tells me that she was a belle at Leasowes, last summer very amiable and gay," said Bloker, dubiously smiling, though not obtrusively. "Garth was rapturous about her; I overheard him depicting in the counting-room the happiness of late dances and moonlight drives. But Garth, I believe, is fresh at watering-places, and like, enough mistook the young lady's toleration for favor." "Her friends consider her discreet." "0, I dare say she is. No one who knows the world will regard the rattle of a smitten and prating boy. I hope that she will make a good marriage." The deshabille conversation of the Belair ladies, 10* 114 THE HOETO*NS; OR while they were arranging their hair for the night, among other topics, touched upon Jacob Bloker. "I can't think so ill, Emily, of our fastidious bache lor as you do. I grant that he might be thawed to advantage, but predominating duplicity I don't dis cern." "That "Warner business?" asked Emily. "Shabby, if you reject his explanation, but not that I see deceitful." ^ "Well, Carrie, I can't translate tone and manner into words, but to me they are reasons; and if I had no reasons, I have an instinctive dislike to him." "Life's a battle, in which such instincts are some times conquered," said Caroline, merrily, as she took her candle and bade her friend Good-night. AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 115 CHAPTER XIV. Snug. Have you the lion's part written? pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study. Quince. You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring. Bottom. Let me play the lion too. I will roar, that I will do any man's heart-good to hear me: I will roar, that I will make the duke say, Let him roar again: let him roar again. MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM. his Sittings to and from The Cedars, Bradley Horton passed through the flourishing village of Slumptown. It was an ancient place impelled by a rail road to suburban issues of wooden archi tecture. There were churches with Gothic fronts of stuccoed pine, in the well-known style of the middle ages, and a square weather-stained court-house of brick, which 'was margined with maple trees and flanked by its attendant jail. Slump- town had its lawyers, who preyed on the politics of the region, or passed their vulturine lives in scenting for lean retainers in assault-and-battery cases, and, with rapacious wrangle, in gorging their maws from the car casses 01 encumbered estates. Of course Slumptown was blessed with rival editors, who maintained a state of chronic hostility ; and it was an exquisite display of 116 THE HORTONS; OB reciprocal unconsciousness when the Palladium passed the Spirit of Jefferson upon the street. 'There was an opulence of " store goods" on Court-house square, the trading and professional centre of the town ; an open air arrangement about doors and porches of hay -rakes, pitch-forks and scythes, brooms, rolls of carpet, crockery, horse-collars, and straw hats; and at a heavy dealer's, perhaps, there was placed an empty sugar hogshead conspicuously in the way; while two or three "Cheap Johns," with city- made slops, kept the native tailors at their wits ends and half-starved. There was a bank at Slumptown, which held mortgages on half of the county farms, and which occasioned in the minds of very distant people a lively interest in the geography of the place, for its bills, illustrated by a couchant dog before a prodigious iron chest suggestive of bullion in every knob, stuffed the wallets of drovers on Illinois prairies and were carried by lumbermen into the forests of the Atlantic slope. At the lyceum, in weekly debates, Young Slumptown shaped that elo quence which was to rouse from the rostrum and capti vate the senate. Nor was Slumptown unknown to literature. One or two of its parsons had written books which were printed, and it boasted of a sweet poetess who invoked a sappy muse over three initials and an asterisk. But the reputation of this prosperous borough was subordinate to that of a neighboring locality. Figura tively, the glorious eagle of our country still screamed in triumph over the battle-field of Hickory Hollow. Eighty years of peaceful tillage had, indeed, obliterated AMERICAN LIFE AT HOME. 117 every trace of conflict; the rural historians who had repulsed, in willing narratives over their cider on winter nights, the English grenadiers, slept with their fathers; but the surrounding population sometimes assembled among "the embattled corn" to sustain their patriotism with the reminiscences of a martial anni- ver