My Wife and I

THE YOUNG LADY PHILOSOPHER.

Seated, reading by a shaded study-lamp, was a young woman of what I should call the Jeanie Deans order—one whose whole personal appearance indicated that sort of compact, efficient union of energy and simplicity characteristic of the Scottish heroine. Her hair, of a pretty curly brown, was cut short, à la Rosa Bonheur; her complexion glowed with a sort of a wholesome firmness, indicative of high health; her large, serious grey eyes had an expression of quiet resolution, united with careful observation. Her figure inclined to the short, stout and well-compacted order, which gave promise of vitality and power of endurance—without pretensions to beauty. There was a wholesome, thoughtful cheerfulness and good humor in the expression of the face that made it decidedly prepossessing and attractive.

The furniture of the room, too, was in contrast with all the other appointments of the house. It was old and worn, and of that primitive kind that betokened honest and respectable mediocrity. There was a quaint, old-fashioned writing-desk, with its array of drawers and pigeon-holes; there were old slippery wooden arm-chairs, unrelieved by cushions; while the floor was bare, excepting in front of the fire, where it was covered by a large square of what New England housekeepers call rag-carpet. The room, in fact, was furnished like the sitting-room of an old New England farm-house. A cheerful, bountiful wood-fire, burning on a pair of old-fashioned brass andirons, added to the resemblance.

"You see, Mr. Henderson," said Miss Eva, when I had been introduced and seated, "you are now in the presence of Miss Van Arsdel proper. This room is Papa's and Ida's joint territory, where their own tastes and notions have supreme sway; and so you see it is sacred to the memories of the past. There is all the old furniture that belonged to papa when he was married. Poor man! he has been pushed out into grandeur, step by step, till this was all that remained, and Ida opened an asylum for it. Do you know, this is the only room in the house Papa cares much for. You see, he was born on a farm, dear gentleman, and he has an inveterate yearning after primitive simplicity—huckleberries and milk, you know, and all that. Don't this look like the old 'keeping-room' style?"

"Yes," said I, "it looks like home. I know rooms just like it."

"But I like these old primitive things," said Ida. "I like hardness and simplicity. I am sick to death of softness and perfumed cushions and ease. We women are sweltered under down beds, and smothered with luxuries, in our modern day, till all the life dies out of us. I want to live while I live, and to keep myself in such trim that I can do something—and I won't pet myself nor be petted."

"There," said Eva, laughing, "blood will tell; there's the old Puritan broken loose in Ida. She don't believe any of their doctrines, but she goes on their track. She's just like a St. Bernard dog that she brought home once. As soon as snow came, he was wild to run out and search in it, and used to run off whole days in the woods, just because his ancestors were trained to hunt travelers. Ida is as bent on testifying and going against the world as any old Covenanter."

"The world needs going against," said Ida. "By the by, Mr. Henderson, you must allow me to thank you for your article on the 'Woman of our Times,' in the Milky Way. It is bracing, and will do good."

"And I," said Eva, kindling with a sort of flame-like vivacity, "have been perfectly dying to tell you that you don't know us fashionable girls, and that we are not, after all, such poor trash as you seem to think. All the out-of-jointness of society is not our fault."

"I protest, Miss Eva," said I, astonished at the eagerness of her manner. "I'm sure I don't know what I have said to give that impression."

"Oh, I dare say not. You have only used the good stock phrases and said the usual things. You reformers and moralists, and all that have got a way of setting us girls down as sinners as a matter of course, so that you never think when you do it. The 'Dolls of fashion,' the 'Butterflies,' &c., &c., are used to point the moral and adorn the tale. The girl of the period is the scapegoat for all the naughty things going. Now, I say the girl of the period isn't a particle worse than the boy of the period; and I think reformers had better turn their attention to him."

"But I don't remember," said I, astonished and confused at the sudden vivacity of this attack, "that I said anything."

"Oh, yes, but I do. You see it's the party that's hit that knows when a blow is struck. You see, Mr. Henderson, it isn't merely you, but everybody, from the London Spectator down, when they get on their preaching-caps, and come forth to right the wrongs of society, begin about us—our dressiness, our expensiveness, our idleness, our extravagance, our heartlessness. The men, poor, dear creatures, are led astray and ruined by us. It's the old story of Adam: 'The woman beguiled me.'"

"You see," said Ida, laughing, "Eva's conscience troubles her; that's why she's so sensitive."

"Well, that's the truth," said Eva. "I'm in the world, and Ida has gone out of it; and so she can sit by, all serene, when hits are made at us, and say, 'I told you so.' But, you see, I am in, and am all the while sure that about half what they say of us is true, and that makes me sensitive when they say too much. But, I insist upon it, it isn't all true; and if it is, it isn't our fault. We are in the world just as we are in a railroad-car, and we can't help its carrying us on, even if we don't like the places it takes us through."

"Unless you get out of it," said Ida.

"Yes, but it takes courage to get out alone, at some desolate way station, and set up your tent, and make your way, and have everybody in the cars screaming remonstrances or laughing at you. Ida has the courage to do it, but I haven't. I don't believe in myself enough to do it, so I stay in the car, and wish I didn't, and wish we were all going a better way than we do."

"No," said Ida; "women are brought up in a way to smother all the life out of them. All literature from the earliest ages teaches them that it is graceful to be pretty and helpless; they aspire to be superficial and showy. They are directed to look on themselves as flowers—

Gay without toil, and lovely without art,
They spring to cheer the sense, and warm the heart;
Nor blush, my fair, to be compared to these—
Your best, your noblest mission, is to please."

"Well," said Eva, flushing, "wasn't it a man that wrote that? and don't they always misunderstand us? We are soft—we are weak—we do love beauty, and ease, and comfort; but there is a something in us more than they give us credit for. Where is that place in Carlyle?" she said, rising with a hasty impulse, and taking down a volume, and running rapidly over the leaves—"Oh, here it is!" and she read with energy from Carlyle's Hero Worship:

'It is a calumny to say that men are nerved to heroic action by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense—sugar-plums of any kind—in this world or the next. In the meanest mortal there is something nobler. The poor, swearing soldier, hired to be shot, has his honor of a soldier different from drill, regulations, and the shilling a day. It is not to taste sweet things, but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, and the dullest drudge kindles into a hero.

'They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, and you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations.'

"Now," she said, her face glowing, and bringing down her little fist with emphasis, "that is true of women as well as men. They wrong woman greatly who say she is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are allurements that act on the heart of woman. Now, Mr. Henderson, every woman that is a woman, feels this in the depths of her heart, and it is this feeling suppressed that is at the bottom of a great deal of unhappiness in woman's life. You men have your chance to express it—that is your great good fortune. You are called to be heroes—your hour comes—but we are buried under eternal common-places and trifles."

"Yet, Miss Eva," said I, "I don't think we are so very much better off than you. The life of the great body of men is a succession of mere ignoble drudgeries, with nothing great or inspiring. Unless we learn to ennoble the common-place by a heroic spirit, most of us must pass through life with no expression of this aspiration; and I think that more women succeed in doing this than men—in fact, I think it is the distinctive prerogative of woman to idealize life by shedding an ennobling spirit upon its very trifles."

"That is true," she said, frankly; "but I confess it never occurred to me; yet don't you think it harder to be heroic in every-day affairs?"

"Certainly; but those that can inspire common-place drudgery with noble and heroic meanings are the true heroes. There was a carpenter once in Nazareth who worked thirty years quietly at his bench; but who doubts that every stroke of that work was inspired and heroic, as much as the three public years that followed? And there are women, like him, toiling in poverty—hard-working wives, long-suffering mothers, whose every breath is heroic. There can be no common-place where such noble creatures live and suffer."

"Yes, Mr. Henderson," said Ida, "heroism can be in any life that is a work-life—any life which includes energy and self-denial. But fashionable life is based on mere love of ease. All it seeks is pleasurable sensation and absence of care and trouble, and it starves this heroic capability; and that is the reason, as Eva says, why there is so much repressed unhappiness in women. It is the hunger of starving faculties. What are all these girls and women looking for? Amusement, excitement. What do they dread more than anything? Effort, industry, self-denial. Not one of them can read a serious book through—not because they are not able, but because it takes an effort. They read nothing but serial stories, and if there is much thought in them, they skip it, to get at the story. All the education they get in schools lies idle; they do nothing with it, as a general thing. They neither read, write, nor speak their French, Italian, or German—and what is the use of having got them? Men study languages as a key to literature, and use literature for some purpose; women study only to forget. It does not take four languages and all the ologies to enable them to dance the German and compose new styles of trimming. They might do all they do equally as well without these expensive educations as with——"

"There now, you have got sister Ida on her pet topic," said Eva, with heightened color; "she will take up her prophecy now, and give it to us wicked daughters of Zion; but, after all, it only makes one feel worried and bad, and one doesn't know what to do. We don't make the world; we are born into and find it ready made. We find certain things are customs—certain things are expected of us—and we begin to say A, and then we must say B, and so on through the whole alphabet. We don't want to say B, but we must because we have said A. It isn't every one that is brave and strong enough to know where to stop, and face the world, and say, 'No, I will not do it.' We must keep step with our neighbors."

"Well," said Ida, "who is it that says, 'Be not conformed to the world'?"

"Yes—I know," said Eva; "there's the Bible—there are all the lessons and prayers and hymns of the Church all going one way, and our lives all going the other—all our lives—everybody's life—even nice people's lives—all go the other way; except now and then one. There's our new rector, now, he is beginning to try to bring us up to live as the Church directs; but mamma and Aunt Maria, and all of them, cry out that he is High Church, and going to Popery, and all that; they say that if one is to live as he says, and go out to prayers morning and evening, and to Holy Communion every Sunday, it will just upset our whole plan of life, that one might as well go into a convent—and so it will. One can't be in parties all night, and go to prayers every morning; one can't go through that awful Holy Communion every Sunday, and live as we generally do through the week. All our rector is trying to do, is simply to make a reality of our profession; he wants us to carry out in good faith what is laid down in the Prayer-book; but you see we can't do it without giving up the world as we have it arranged now. For my part, I'm going to the daily services in Lent, if I don't any other time, and though it does make me feel dreadfully wicked and uncomfortable."

"Oh, you poor child!" said Ida; "why haven't you strength to do as you please?"

"Why haven't I the arm of a blacksmith? why can't I walk ten miles? There are differences of power in mind as well as body," said Eva.

The conversation was interrupted at this moment by Mr. Van Arsdel, who entered quietly, with his spectacles and newspapers.

"The children are having lively times in there," he said, "and I thought I'd just come here and sit where it's quiet, and read my papers."

"Papa says that every evening," said Eva.

"Well, the fact is, Mr. Henderson," said he, with a confiding sort of simplicity, "Ida and I feel at home in here, because it's just the little old place wife and I had when we began. You see, these are all my old things that we first went to housekeeping with, and I like them. I didn't want to have them sent off to auction, if they are old and clumsy."

"And he should have them, so he should, Pa-sey dear," said Eva, caressingly, putting her arm round his neck. "But come, Mr. Henderson, I suppose the gay world outside will expect us."

I had risen and was looking over the library. It was largely composed of modern scientific and physiological works.

"You see my light reading," said Ida, with a smile.

"Ida's books are a constant reproach to me," said Eva; "but I dip in now and then, and fish up some wonderful pearl out of them; however, I confess to just the fatal laziness she reprobates—I don't go through anything."

"Well, Mr. Henderson, we won't keep you from the world of the parlors," said Ida; "but consider you have the entrée here whenever you want a quiet talk; and we will be friends," she said, stretching out her hand with the air of a queen.

"You honor me too much, Miss Van Arsdel," said I.

"Come now, Mr. Henderson, we can't allow our principal literary lion to be kept in secret places," said Miss Eva. "You are expected to walk up and down and show yourself; there are half a dozen girls to whom I have promised to present you."

And in a moment I found myself standing in a brilliant circle of gay tropical birds of fashion, where beauty, or the equivalent of beauty, charmingness, was the rule, and not the exception. In foreign lands, my patriotic pride had often been fed by the enthusiasm excited by my countrywomen. The beauty and grace of American women their success in foreign circles, has passed into a proverb; and in a New York company of young girls one is really dazzled by prettiness. It is not the grave, grand, noble type of the Madonna and the Venus de Milo, but the delicate, brilliant, distracting prettiness of young birds, kittens, lambs, and flowers—something airy and fairy—belonging to youth and youthful feeling. You see few that promise to ripen and wax fairer in middle life; but almost all are like delicate, perfectly-blossomed flowers—fair, brilliant and graceful, with a fragile and evanescent beauty.

The manners of our girls have been criticised, from the foreign standpoint, somewhat severely. It is the very nature of republican institutions to give a sort of unconventional freedom to its women. There is no upper world of court and aristocracy to make laws for them, or press down a framework of etiquette upon them. Individual freedom of opinion and action pervades every school; it is breathed in the very air, and each one is, in a great degree, a law unto herself. Every American girl feels herself in the nobility; she feels adequate to the situation, and perfectly poised in it. She dares do many things not permitted in foreign lands, because she feels strong in herself, and perfectly sure of her power.

Yet he who should presume on this frank generosity of manner, will find that Diana has her arrows; and that her step is free only because she knows her strength, and understands herself perfectly, and is competent to any situation.

At present, the room was full of that battledore-and-shuttlecock conversation, in which everything in heaven above or earth beneath is bantered to and fro, flitting and flying here and there from one bright lip to another.

"Now, really and truly, girls, are you going to the early services this Lent? Oh, Mr. Selwyn is such a good man! and wasn't his pastoral letter beautiful? We really ought to go. But, girls, I can't get up—indeed, I can't; do you know, it's dreadful—seven o'clock—only think of it. You won't go, Eva?"

"Yes, I shall."

"I lay you a pair of gloves you won't, now," quoth a mouth, adorned with a long pair of waxed moustaches of a true Imperial type.

"See if I don't."

"Oh, mamma says I mustn't try," said another; "I haven't the strength."

"And I tell Eva she can't do it," said Mrs. Van Arsdel. "Eva is always over-doing; she worked herself to death in a mission class last year. The fact is, one can't do these things, and go into society."

"But what's the use of society, mamma?" said Eva.

"Oh, well; we can't all turn into monks and nuns, you know; and that's what these modern High Church doings would bring us to. I'm a good, old-fashioned Episcopalian; I believe in going to church on Sundays—and that's all we used to hear about."

"Do you know, Mr. Fellows, I saw you at St. Alban's," said Miss Alice.

"On your knees, too," said Miss Eva.

"Do you believe in bowing to the altar?" said a third; "I think it's quite Popish."

"Girls, what are going to be worn for hats this spring? have you been to Madame De Tullerigs? I declare it's a shame! but Lent is just the busiest time about one's clothes, one must have everything ready for Easter, you know. How do you like the new colors, Mr. Fellows?"

"What! the hell-fire colors?" said Jim.

"Oh, horrors! You dreadful creature, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!" screamed in four or five voices.

"Am ashamed—sackcloth and ashes, and all that; eat nothing but codfish," said Jim. "But that's what they call 'em, any way—hell-fire colors."

"I never did hear such a profane creature. Girls, isn't he dreadful?"

"I say, Miss Alice," said Jim, "do you go to confession up there? 'Cause, you see, if that thing is getting about, I think I'll turn priest."

"I think you ought to go to confession," said she.

"I shall in the good times coming, when we have lady priests."

"Oh, Mr. Henderson, do you believe in women's rights?"

"Certainly."

"Well, for my part, I have all the rights I want," said Miss Alice.

"I should think you did," said Jim Fellows; "but it's hard on us."

"Well, I think that is all infidelity," said another—"goes against the Bible. Do you think women ought to speak in public?"

"Ristori and Fanny Kemble, for instance," said I.

"Oh, well—they are speaking other people's words; but their own?"

"Why not as well as in private?"

"Oh, because—why, I think it's dreadful; don't you?"

"I can't perceive why. I am perfectly charmed to hear women speak, in public or private, who have anything good or agreeable to say."

"But the publicity is so shocking!"

"Is it any more public than waltzing at the great public balls?"

"Oh, well, I think lecturing is dreadful; you'll never convince me. I hate all those dreadful, raving, tearing, stramming women."

In which very logical and consecutive way the leading topics of the age were elegantly disposed of; and at eleven o'clock I found myself out on the pavement with the inexhaustible Jim, who went singing and whistling by my side as fresh as a morning blackbird. My head was in a pretty thorough whirl; but I was initiated into society,—to what purpose shall hereafter appear.

---

FLIRTATION.

"Look there," said Jim Fellows, throwing down a pair of Jouvin's gloves. "There's from the divine Alice."

"A present?"

"A philopena."

"Seems to me, Jim, you are pushing your fortunes in that quarter?"

"Yes; having a gay time! Adoring at the shrine and all that," said Jim. "The lovely Alice is like one of the Madonna pictures—to be knelt to, sworn to, vowed to—but I can't be the possessor. In the meanwhile, let's have as good a time as possible. We have the very best mutual understanding. I am her sworn knight, and wear her colors—behold!"

And Jim opened his coat, and showed a pretty knot of carnation-colored ribbon.

"But, I thought, Jim, you talked the other night as if you could get any of them you wanted?"

"Who says I couldn't, man? Does not the immortal Shakespeare say, 'She is a woman; therefore to be won'? You don't go to doubting Shakespeare at this time of day, I hope?"

"Well, then—"

"Well, then; you see Hal, we get wiser every day—that is, I do—and it begins to be borne in on my mind that these rich girls won't pay, if you could get them. The game isn't worth the candle."

"But there is real thought and feeling and cultivation among them," said I, taking up the gauntlet with energy.

"So there is real juice in hot-house grapes; but if I should have a present of a hot-house to-morrow, what should I have to run it with? These girls have the education of royal princesses, and all the habits and wants of them; and what could a fellow do with them if he got them? We haven't any Parliament to vote dowries to keep them up on. I declare, I wish you had heard those girls the other night go on about that engagement, and what they expected when their time comes. Do you know the steps of getting engaged?"

"I cannot say I have that happiness," said I.

"Well, first, there's the engagement-ring, not a sign of love, you understand, but a thing to be discussed and compared with all the engagement-rings, past, present, and to come, with Tom's ring, and Dick's ring, and Harry's ring. If you could have heard the girls tell over the prices of the different engagement-rings for the last six months, and bring up with Rivington's, which, it seems, is a solitaire worth a thousand! Henceforth nothing less is to be thought of. Then the wedding present to your wife. Rivington gives $30,000 worth of diamonds. Wedding fees, wedding journey to every expensive place that can be thought of, you ought to have a little fortune to begin with. The lovely creatures are perfectly rapacious in their demands under these heads. I heard full lists of where they were going and what they wanted to have. Then comes a house, in a fashionable quarter, to the tune of fifty thousand dollars; then furniture, carriages, horses, opera-boxes. The short of the matter is, old Van Arsdel's family are having a jolly time on the income of a million. There are six of them, and every one wants to set up in life on the same income. So, you see, the sum is how to divide a million so as to make six millions out of it. The way to do it is plain. Each son and daughter must marry a million, and get as much of a man or woman with it as pleases heaven."

"And suppose some of them should love some man, or woman, more than gold or silver, and choose love in place of money?" said I.

"Well," said Jim, "that's quite supposable; any of these girls is capable of it. But after all, it would be rough on a poor girl to take her at her word. What do they know about it? The only domestic qualification the most practical of them ever think of attaining, is how to make sponge-cake. I believe, when they are thinking of getting married, they generally make a little sponge-cake, and mix a salad dressing, that fits them for the solemn and awful position of wife and mother, which you hear so much about. Now, the queenly Alice is a splendid girl, and can talk French and German and Italian; but her knowledge of natural history is limited. I imagine she thinks gloves grow in packs on the trees, and artificial flowers are raised from seed, and dresses develop by uniform laws of nature at the rate of three or four a month. If you could get the darling to fly to your arms, and the old gentleman should come 'round, and give her what he could afford, how could you console her when she finds out the price of gloves and gaiter-boots, and all the ordinary comforts? I'm afraid the dear child will be ready to murder you for helping her to her own way. So you see, Jim doesn't invest in engagement-rings this year."

Thereupon I sung:

"Sing away, my good fellow," said Jim. "Maybe I am the fox; but I'm a fox that has cut his eye-teeth. I'm too cute to put my neck in that noose, you see. No, sir; you can mention to Queen Victoria that if she wants Jim Fellows to marry one of her daughters, why Parliament has got to come down handsomely with dowry to keep her on. They are worth keeping, these splendid creations of nature and art; but it takes as much as to run a first-class steamer. They go exactly in the line of fine pictures and statuary, and all that. They may be adorable and inspiring, and exalting and refining and purifying, the very poetry of existence, the altogether lovely; but, after all, it is only the rich that can afford to keep them. A wife costs more in our day than a carriage or a conscience, and both those are luxuries too expensive for Jim."

"Jim! Jim!! Jim!!!" I exclaimed, in tones of expostulation; but the impracticable Jim cut a tall pirouette, and sung,

The crescendo here made the papers flutter, and created a lively breeze in the apartment.

"And now, farewell, divinest Alice, Jim must go to work. Let's see. Oh! I've promised a rip-staving skinner on Tom Brown in that Custom House affair."

"What is that business? What has Brown done? If all is true that is alleged he ought to be turned out of decent society."

"Oh pshaw! you don't understand; its nothing but a dust we're kicking up because its a dry time. Brown's a good fellow enough, I dare say, but you know we want to sell our papers and these folks want hot hash with their breakfast every morning, and somebody has got to be served up. You see the Seven Stars started this story, and sold immensely, and we come in on the wave; the word to our paper is 'pitch in' and so I'm pitching in."

"But, Jim, is it the fair thing to do when you don't know the truth of the story?"

"The truth! well, my dear fellow, who knows or cares anything about truth in our days? We want to sell our papers."

"And to sell your papers you will sell your honor as a man and a gentleman."

"Oh! bother, Hal, with your preaching."

"But, Jim, you ought to examine both sides and know the truth."

"I do examine; generally write on both sides when these rows come on. I'm going to defend Brown in the Forum; you see they sent round yesterday for an article, so you see Jim makes his little peculium both ways."

"Jim, is that the square thing?"

"Why not? It would puzzle the Devil himself to make out what the truth is in one of our real double and twisted New York newspaper rows. I don't pretend to do it, but I'll show up either side or both sides if I'm paid for it. We young men must live! If the public must have spicery we must get it up for them. We only serve out what they order. I tell you, now, what this great American people wants is a semi-occasional row about something, no matter what; a murder, or a revival, or a great preacher, or the Black Crook; the Lord or the Devil, anything to make matters lively, and break up the confounded dull times round in the country."

"And so you get up little personal legends, myths, about this or that man?"

"Exactly, that's what public men are good for. They are our drums and tamborines; we beat on 'em to amuse the people and make a variety; nobody cares for anything more than a day; they forget it to-morrow, and something else turns up."

"And you think it right," said I, "to use up character just as you do boot-blacking to make your boots shine? How would you like to be treated so yourself?"

"Shouldn't mind it a bit—Bless your buttons—it don't hurt anybody. Nobody thinks the worse of them. Why, you could prove conclusively that any of our public men break the whole ten commandments at a smash—break 'em for breakfast, dinner and supper, and it wouldn't hurt 'em. People only oh and ah and roll up their eyes and say "Terrible!" and go out and meet him, and it's "My dear fellow how are you? why haven't you been round to our house lately?" By and by they say, "Look here, we're tired of this about Brown, give us more variety." Then Jones turns up and off go the whole pack after Jones. That keeps matters lively, you see."

I laughed and Jim was perfectly satisfied. All that he ever wanted in an argument was to raise a laugh, and he was triumphant, and went scratching on with his work with untiring industry. He always left me with an uneasy feeling, that by laughing and letting him alone I was but half doing my duty, and yet it seemed about as feasible to present moral considerations to a bob-o-link.

"There," he said, after half an hour of scribbling, "there's so much for old Mam."

"Who's old 'Mam'?"

"Haven't heard! why, your mistress and mine, the old Mammon of unrighteousness; she is mistress of all things here below. You can't even carry on religion in this world but through her. You must court old Mam, or your churches, and your missions, and all the rest go under, and Jim works hard for her, and she owes him a living."

"There have been men in our day who prevailed in spite of her."

"Who, for example?"

"Garrison."

"Well, he's top of the heap now, sure enough, but I tell you that was a long investment. Jim has to run on ready cash and sell what's asked for now. I stand at my counter, "Walk up, gentlemen, what'll you take; orders taken and executed with promptness and despatch. Religion? yes sir. Here's the account of the work of Divine grace in Skowhegan; fifty awakened and thirty-nine indulging in hope. Here's criticism on Boanerges' orthodoxy, showing how he departs from the great vital doctrines of grace, giving up Hell and all the other consolations of our holy religion. We'll serve you out orthodoxy red hot. Anything in this line? Here's the latest about sweet little Dame Aux Camelias, and lovely little Kitty Blondine.

'Oh! Kitty is my darling, my darling, my darling, etc.'

And here's the reformatory, red hot, hit or miss, here's for the niggers and the paddies and the women and all the enslaved classes. Jim will go it for any of them, only give him his price." I think of getting up a show bill with list of prices affixed. Jim will run anybody up or run anybody down to order."

I put my hand over his mouth. "Come, you born magpie," said I, "you shan't make yourself out so much worse than you are."

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[Eva Van Arsdel to Isabel Convers.]

My Dear Belle:—I told you I would write the end of my little adventure, and whether the "hermit" comes or not. Yes, my dear, sure enough, he did come, and mamma and we all like him immensely; he had really quite a success among us. Even Ida, who never receives calls, was gracious and allowed him to come into her sanctum because he is a champion of the modern idea about women. Have you seen an article in the "Milky Way" on the "Women of our Times," taking the modern radical ground? Well, it was by him; it suited Ida to a hair, but some little things in it vexed me because there was a phrase or two about the "fashionable butterflies," and all that; that comes a great deal too near the truth to be altogether agreeable. I don't care when Ida says such things, because she's another woman, and between ourselves we know there is a deal of nonsense current among us, and if we have a mind to talk about it among ourselves, why its like abusing one's own relations in the bosom of the family, one of the sweetest domestic privileges, you know; but, when lordly man begins to come to judgment and call over the roll of our sins, I am inclined to tell him to look at home, and to say, "Pray, what do you know about us sir?" I stand up for my sex, right or wrong; so you see we had a spicy little controversy, and I made the hermit open his eyes, (and, between us, he has handsome eyes to open). He looked innocently astonished at first to be taken up so briskly, and called to account for his sayings. You see the way these men have of going on and talking without book about us quite blinds them; they can set us down conclusively in the abstract when they don't see us or hear us, but when a real live girl meets them and asks an account of their sayings they begin to be puzzled. However, I must say my lord can talk when he fairly is put up to it. He is a true, serious, earnest-hearted man, and does talk beautifully, and his eyes speak when he is silent. The forepart of the evening, you see we were in a state of most charming agreement; he was in our little "Italy," and we had the nicest of times going over all the pictures and portfolios and the dear old Italian life; it seems as if we had both of us seen, and thought of, and liked the same things—it was really curious!

Well, like enough, that's all there is to it. Ten to one he never will call again. Mamma invited him to be here every Wednesday, quite urged it upon him, but he said his time was so filled up with work. There you see is where men have the advantage of girls! They have something definite to fill up their time, thought and hearts; we nothing, so we think of them from sheer idleness, and they forget us through press of business. Ten to one he never calls here again. Why should he? I shouldn't think he would. I wouldn't if I were he. He isn't a dancing man, nor an idler, but one that takes life earnestly, and after all I dare say he thinks us fashionable girls a sad set. But I'm sure he must admire Ida; and she was wonderfully gracious for her, and gave him the entrée of her sanctum, where there never are any but rational sayings and doings.

Well, we shall see.

I am provoked with what you tell me about the reports of my engagement to Mr. Sydney, and I tell you now once again "No, no." I told you in my last that I was not engaged, and I now tell you what is more that I never can, shall or will be engaged to him; my mind is made up, but how to get out of the net that is closing round me I don't see. I think all these things are "perplexing and disagreeable." If a girl wants to do the fair thing it is hard to know how. First you refuse outright, and then my lord comes as a friend. Will you only allow him the liberty to try and alter your feelings, and all that? You shall not be forced; he only wants you to get more acquainted, and the result is you go on getting webbed and meshed in day after day more and more. You can't refuse flowers and attentions offered by a friend; if you take them you may be quite sure they will be made to mean more. Mamma and Aunt Maria have a provoking way of talking about it constantly as a settled thing, and one can't protest from morning till night, apropos to every word. At first they urged me to receive his attentions; now they are saying that I have accepted so many I can't honorably withdraw. And so he doesn't really give me an opportunity to bring the matter to a crisis; he has a silent taking-for-granted air, that is provoking. But the law that binds our sex is the law of all ghosts and spirits; we can't speak till we are spoken to; meanwhile reports spread, and people say hateful things as if you were trying and failing. How angry that makes me! One is almost tempted sometimes to accept just to show that one can; but, seriously, dear Belle, this is wicked trifling. Marriage is an awful, a tremendous thing, and we of the church are without excuse if we go into it lightly or unadvisedly, and I never shall marry till I see the man that is my fate. I have what mamma calls domestic ideas, and I'm going to have them, and when I marry it shall be for the man alone, not a pieced up affair of carriages, horses, diamonds, opera boxes, cashmeres with a man, but a man for whom all the world were well lost; then I shall not be afraid of the church service which now stands between me and Mr. Sydney. I cannot, I dare not lie to God and swear falsely at the altar, to gain the whole world.

I wish you could hear our new rector. He is making a sensation among us. If the life he is calling on us all to live is the real and true one, we shall soon have to choose between what is called society, and the church; for if being a church-woman means all he says, one cannot be in it without really making religion the life's business—which, you know, we none of us do or have. Dear man, when I see him tugging and straining to get our old, sleepy, rich families into heavenly ways, I think of Pegasus yoked to a stone cart. He is all life and energy and enthusiasm, he breathes fire, and his wings are spread heavenward, but there's the old dead, lumbering cart at his heels! Poor man!—and poor cart too—for I am in it with the rest of the lumber!

We are in all the usual Spring agonies now about clothes. The house reverberates with the discussion of hats and bonnets, and feathers and flowers, and overskirts and underskirts, and all the paraphernalia—and what an absurd combination it makes with the daily services in Lent. Absurd? No—dreadful! for at church we are reading of our Saviour's poverty and fasting and agonies—what a contrast between his life and ours! Was it to make us such as we are that he thus lived and died?

Cousin Sophia is happy in her duties in the sisterhood. Her church life and daily life are all of a piece—one part is not a mockery of the other. There's Ida too—out of the church, making no profession of churchly religion, but living wholly out of this bustling, worldly sphere, devoted to a noble life purpose—fitting herself to make new and better paths for women. Ida has none of these dress troubles; she has cut loose from all. Her simple black dress costs incredibly less than our outfit—it is all arranged with a purpose—yet she always has the air of a lady, and she has besides a real repose, which we never do. This matter of dress has a thousand jars and worries and vexations to a fastidious nature; one wishes one were out of it.

I have heard that nuns often say they are more blessed than ever they were in the world, and I can conceive why,—it is a perfect and blissful rest from all that troubles ordinary women. In the first place, the marriage question. They know that they are not to be married, and it is a comfort to have a definite settlement of that matter. Then all agitations and fluctuations about that are over. In the next place, the dress question. They have a dress provided, put it on, and wear it without thought or inquiry; there is no room for thought, or use for inquiry. In the third place, the question of sphere and work is settled for them; they know their duties exactly; and if they don't, there is a director to tell them; they have only to obey. This must be rest—blissful rest.

I think of it sometimes, and wonder why it is that this dress question must smother us women and wear us out, and take our whole life and breath as it does! In our family it is perfectly fearful. If one had only one's self to please, it is hard enough—what with one's own fastidious taste, with dressmakers who never keep their word, and push you off at the last moment with abominable things; but when one has pleased one's self, then comes mamma, and then all the girls, every one with an opinion; and then when this gauntlet is run, comes Aunt Maria, more solemn and dictatorial than the whole—so that by the time anything gets really settled, one is so fatigued that life doesn't seem really worth having.

I told Mr. Henderson, in our little discussion last night, that I envied men because they had a chance to live a real, grand, heroic life, while we were smothered under trifles and common-places, and he said, in reply, that the men had no more chances in this way than we; that theirs was a life of drudgeries and detail; and that the only way for man or woman was to animate ordinary duties by a heroic spirit. He said that woman's speciality was to idealize life by shedding a noble spirit upon its ordinary trifles. I don't think he is altogether right. I still think the opportunities for a noble life are ten to one in the hands of men; but still there is a great deal in what he says. He spoke beautifully of the noble spirit shown by some women in domestic life. I thought perhaps it was his mother he was thinking of. He must have known some noble woman, for his eye kindled when he spoke about it.

How I have run on—and what a medley this letter is. I dare not look it over, for I should be sure to toss it into the fire. Write to me soon, dearest Bella, and tell me what you think of matters so far.

Your ever loving

Eva.

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I BECOME A FAMILY FRIEND.

I have often had occasion to admire the philosophical justice of popular phrases. The ordinary cant phraseology of life generally represents a homely truth because it has grown upon reality like a lichen upon a rock. "Falling in love" is a phrase of this kind; it represents just that phenomenon which is all the time happening among the sons and daughters of Adam in most unforeseen times and seasons, and often when the subject least intends it, and even intends something quite the contrary.

The popular phrase "falling in love" denotes something that comes unexpectedly. One may walk into love preparedly, advisedly, with the eyes of one's understanding open; but one falls in love as one falls down stairs in a dark entry, simply because the foot is set where there is nothing for it to stand on, which I take to be a simile of most philosophical good resolutions.

I flattered myself at this period of my existence, that I was a thorough-paced philosopher; a man that had outlived the snares and illusions of youth, and held himself and all his passions and affections under most perfect control.

The time had not yet come marked out in my supreme wisdom for me to meditate matrimonial ideas: in the mean while, I resolved to make the most of that pleasant and convenient arbor on the Hill Difficulty which is commonly called Friendship.

Concerning this arbor I have certain observations to make. It is most commodiously situated, and commands charming prospects. We are informed of some, that on a clear day one can see from it quite plainly as far as to the Delectable Mountains. From my own experience I have no doubt of this fact. For a young man of five-and-twenty or thereabouts, not at present in circumstances to marry, what is more charming than to become the intimate friend in a circle of vivacious and interesting young ladies, in easy circumstances, who live in a palace surrounded by all the elegancies, refinements, and comforts of life?

More blissful still, if he be welcomed to these bowers of beauty by a charming and courteous mamma who hopes he will make himself at home, and assures him that they will treat him quite as one of the family. This means, of course, that perfect confidence is reposed in his discretion. He is labeled—"Safe." He is to gaze on all these charms, with a disinterested spirit, without a thought of personal appropriation. Of course he is not to stand in the way of eligible establishments that may offer, but meanwhile he can make himself generally agreeable and useful. He may advise the fair charmers as to their reading and superintend the cultivation of their minds; he may be on hand whenever an escort is needed to a party, he may brighten up dull evenings by reading aloud, and in short may be that useful individual that is looked on "quite as a brother, you know."

Young men who glide into this position in families, generally, I believe, enjoy it quite as much as the moth-millers who seem to derive such pleasure from the light and beat of the evening lamp, and with somewhat similar results. But though thousands of these unsophisticated insects singe their wings every evening, the thousand-and-first one comes to the charge with a light heart in his bosom, and quite as satisfied of his good fortune as I was when Mrs. Van Arsdel with the sweetest and most motherly tones said to me, "I know, Mr. Henderson, the lonely life you young men must lead when you first come to cities; you have been accustomed to the home circle, to mother and sisters, and it must be very dreary. Pray, make this a sort of home; drop in at any time, our parlors are always open, and some of us about; or if not, why, there are the pictures and the books, you know, and there is the library where you can write."

Surely it was impossible for a young man to turn away from all this allurement. It was the old classic story:—

Mrs. Van Arsdel, as I said, was one of three fair sisters who had attained a great celebrity, in the small provincial town where they were born, for their personal charms. They were known far and near as the beautiful Miss Askotts. Their father was a man rather in the lower walks of life, and the fortunes of the family were made solely by the personal attractions of the daughters.

The oldest of these, Maria Askott, married into one of the so-called first New York families. The match was deemed in the day of it a very brilliant one. Tom Wouverman was rich, showy, and dissipated; and in a very few years ran through both with his property and constitution, and left his wife the task of maintaining a genteel standing on very limited means.

The second sister, Ellen, married Mr. Van Arsdel when he was in quite modest circumstances, and had been carried up steadily by his business ability to the higher circles of New York life. The third had married a rich Southern planter whose fortunes have nothing to do with my story.

The Van Arsdel household, like most American families, was substantially under feminine rule. Mr. Van Arsdel was a quiet, silent man, whose whole soul was absorbed in business, and who left to his wife the whole charge of all that concerned the household and his children.

Mrs. Van Arsdel, however, was under the control of her elder sister. There are born dictators as well as born poets. Certain people come into the world with the instinct and talent for ruling and teaching, and certain others with the desire and instinct of being taught and ruled over. There are people born with such a superfluous talent for management and dictation that they always, instinctively and as a matter of course, arrange not only their own affairs but those of their friends and relations, in the most efficient and complete manner possible. Such is the tendency of things to adaptation and harmony, that where such persons exist we are sure to find them surrounded by those who take delight in being guided, who like to learn and to look up. Such a domestic ruler was Mrs. Maria Wouverman, commonly known in the Van Arsdel circle as "Aunt Maria," a name of might and authority anxiously interrogated and quoted in all passages of family history.

Now the fact is quite striking that the persons who hold this position in domestic policy are often not particularly strong or wise. The governing mind of many a circle is not by any means the mind best fitted either mentally or morally to govern. It is neither the best nor the cleverest individual of a given number who influences their opinions and conduct, but the person the most perseveringly self-asserting. It is amusing in looking at the world to see how much people are taken at their own valuation. The persons who always have an opinion on every possible subject ready made, and put up and labeled for immediate use, concerning which they have no shadow of a doubt or hesitation, are from that very quality born rulers. This positiveness, and preparedness, and readiness may spring from a universal shallowness of nature, but it is none the less efficient. While people of deeper perceptions and more insight are wavering in delicate distresses, balancing testimony and praying for light, this common-place obtuseness comes in and leads all captive, by mere force of knowing exactly what it wants, and being incapable of seeing beyond the issues of the moment.

Mrs. Maria Wouverman was all this. She always believed in herself, from the cradle. The watchwords of her conversation were always of a positive nature. "To be sure," "certainly," "of course," "I see," and "I told you so."

Correspondingly to this, Mrs. Van Arsdel, her next sister, was one who said habitually, "What would you do, and how would you do it?" and so the domestic duet was complete. Mrs. Wouverman did not succeed in governing or reclaiming her husband, but she was none the less self-confident for that; and having seen him comfortably into his grave, she had nothing to do but get together the small remains of the estate and devote herself to "dear Ellen and her children." Mrs. Wouverman managed her own house, where everything was arranged with the strictest attention and economy, and to the making a genteel appearance on a small sum, and yet found abundance of time to direct sister Ellen and her children.

She was a good natured, pleasant-mannered woman, fond of her nieces and nephews; and her perfect faith in herself, the decision of all her announcements, and the habitual attitude of consultation in which the mother of the family stood towards her, led the Van Arsdel children as they grew up to consider "Aunt Maria," like the Bible or civil government, as one of the great ready-made facts of society, to be accepted without dispute or injury.

Mrs. Wouverman had her own idea of the summum bonum, that great obscure point about which philosophers have groped in vain. Had Plato or Anaxagoras or any of those ancient worthies appealed to her, she would have smiled on them benignantly and said: "Why yes, of course, don't you see? the thing is very simple. You must keep the best society and make a good appearance."

Mrs. Van Arsdel had been steadily guided by her in the paths of fashionable progression. Having married into a rich old family, Aunt Maria was believed to have mysterious and incommunicable secrets of gentility at her command. She was always supposed to have an early insight into the secret counsels of that sublime, awful, mysterious "they," who give the law in fashionable life. "They don't wear bonnets that way, now!" "My love, they wear gloves sewed with colored silks, now!" or, "they have done with hoops and flowing sleeves," or, "they are beginning to wear hoops again! They are going to wear long trains," or, "they have done with silver powder now!" All which announcements were made with a calm solemnity of manner calculated to impress the youthful mind with a sense of their profound importance.

Mr. Van Arsdel followed Aunt Maria's lead with that unquestioning meekness which is so edifying a trait in our American gentlemen. In fact he considered the household and all its works and ways as an insoluble mystery which he was well pleased to leave to his wife; and if his wife chose to be guided by "Maria" he had no objection. So long as his business talent continued yearly to enlarge his means of satisfying the desires and aspirations of his family, so long he was content quietly and silently to ascend in the scale of luxurious living, to have his house moved from quarter to quarter until he reached a Fifth Avenue palace, to fill it with pictures and statuary, of which he knew little and cared less.

Under Aunt Maria's directions Mrs. Van Arsdel aspired to be a leader in fashionable society. No house was to be so attractive as her's, no parties so brilliant, no daughters in greater demand. Nature had generously seconded her desires. Her daughters were all gifted with fine personal points as well as a more than common share of that spicy genial originality of mind which is as a general thing rather a characteristic of young American girls.

Mr. Van Arsdel had had his say about the education of his sons and daughters. No expense had been spared. They had been sent to the very best schools that money could procure, and had improved their advantages. The consequences of education had been as usual to increase the difficulties of controlling the subject.

The horror and dismay of Mrs. Van Arsdel and of Aunt Maria cannot be imagined when they discovered almost immediately on the introduction of Ida Van Arsdel into society that they had on their hands an actual specimen of the strong minded young woman of the period; a person who looked beyond shows, who did her own thinking, and who despised or approved with full vigor without consulting accepted standards, and was resolutely resolved not to walk in the ways her pastors or masters had hitherto considered the only appointed ones for young ladies of good condition.

To work embroidery, go to parties, entertain idlers and wait to be chosen in marriage, seemed to a girl who had spent six years in earnest study a most lame and impotent conclusion to all that effort; and when Ida Van Arsdel declared her resolution to devote herself to professional studies, Aunt Maria's indignation and disgust is not to be described.

"So shocking and indelicate! For my part I can't imagine how anybody can want to think on such subjects! I'm sure it gives me a turn just to look into a work on physiology, and all those dreadful pictures of what is inside of us! I think the less we know about such subjects the better; women were made to be wives and mothers, and not to trouble their heads about such matters; and to think of Ida, of all things, whose father is rich enough to keep her like a princess whether she ever does a thing or not! Why should she go into it? Why, Ida is not bad looking. She is quite pretty, in fact; there are a dozen girls with not half her advantages that have made good matches, but it's no use talking to her. That girl is obstinate as the everlasting hills, and her father backs her up in it. Well, we must let her go, and take care of the others. Eva is my god-child, and we must at any rate secure something for her." Something, meant of course a splendid establishment.

The time of my introduction into the family circle was a critical one.

In the race for fashionable leadership Mrs. Van Arsdel had one rival whose successes were as stimulating and as vexatious to her as the good fortune of Mordecai the Jew was to Haman in Old Testament times.

All her good fortune and successes were spoiled by the good fortune and successes of another woman, who was sure to be a little ahead of her in everything that she attempted; and this was the more trying as this individual began life with her, and was a sort of family connection.

In days of her youth there was one Polly Sanders, a remote cousin of the Askotts, who was reputed a beauty by some. Polly was what is called in New England "smart." She was one who never lost an opportunity, and, as the vulgar saying is, could make every edge cut. Her charms were far less than those of the Misses Askott, and she was in far more straitened circumstances; but she went at the problem of life in a sort of tooth-and-nail fashion, which often is extremely successful. She worked first in a factory, till she made a little money, with which she put herself to school—acquired showy accomplishments, and went up like a balloon; married a man with much the same talent for getting along in the world as herself; went to Paris and returned a traveled, accomplished woman, and the pair set up for first society people in New York; and to the infinite astonishment of Mrs. Wouverman, were soon in a position to patronize her, and to run a race, neck and neck, with the Van Arsdels.

What woman's Christian principles are adequate to support her under such trials? Nothing ever impressed Aunt Maria with such a sense of the evils of worldliness as Polly Elmore's career. She was fond of speaking of her familiarly as "Polly;" and recalling the time when she was only a factory-girl. According to Aunt Maria, such grasping, unscrupulous devotion to things seen and temporal, had never been known in anybody as in the case of Polly. Aunt Maria, of course, did not consider herself as worldly. Nobody ever does. You do not, I presume, my dear madam. When your minister preaches about worldly people, your mind immediately reverts to the Joneses and the Simpsons round the corner, and you rather wonder how they take it. In the same manner Aunt Maria's eyes were always being rolled up, and she was always in a shocked state at something these dreadful, worldly, dressy Elmores were doing. But still they went on from conquering to conquer. Mrs. Elmore was a dashing leader of fashion—spoke French like a book—was credibly reported to have skated with the Emperor at the Bois de Boulogne—and, in short, there was no saying what feathers she didn't wear in her cap.

The Van Arsdels no sooner did a thing than the Elmores did more. The Van Arsdels had a house in Fifth Avenue; the Elmores set up a French chateau on the Park. The Van Arsdels piqued themselves on recherché society. The Elmores made it a point to court all the literati and distinguished people. Hence, rising young men were of great value as ornaments to the salons of the respective houses—if they had brought with them a name in the literary world, so much the more was their value—it was important to attach them to our salon, lest they should go to swell the triumphs of the enemy.

The crowning, culminating triumph of the Elmores was the engagement, just declared, of Maria, the eldest daughter, to young Rivington, of Rivington Manor, concerning which Aunt Maria and Mrs. Van Arsdel were greatly moved.

The engagement was declared, and brilliant wedding preparations on foot that should eclipse all former New York grandeurs; and what luminary was there in the Van Arsdel horizon to draw attention to that quarter?

"Positively, Ellen," said Aunt Maria, "the engagement between Eva and Wat Sydney must come out. It provokes me to see the absurd and indelicate airs the Elmores gives themselves about this Rivington match. It's really in shocking taste. I'm sure I don't envy them Sam Rivington. There are shocking stories told about him. They say he is a perfect roué—has been taken home by the police night after night. How Polly, with all her worldliness, can make such an utter sacrifice of her daughter is what I can't see. Now Sydney everybody knows is a strictly correct man. Ellen, this thing ought to come out."

"But, dear me, Maria, Eva is such a strange child. She won't admit that there is any engagement."

"She must admit it, Ellen—of course she must. It's Ida that puts her up to all her strange ideas, and will end by making her as odd as she is herself. There's that new young man, that Henderson—why don't we turn him to account? Ida has taken a fancy to him, I hear, and it's exactly the thing. Only get Ida's thoughts running that way and she'll let Eva alone, and stop putting notions into her head. Henderson is a gentleman, and would be a very proper match for Ida. He is literary, and she is literary. He is for all the modern ideas, and so is she. I'm sure, I go with all my heart for encouraging him. It's exactly the thing."

And Aunt Maria

"Shook her ambrosial curls and gave the nod,"

with a magnificence equal to Jupiter in the old Homeric days.

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I DISCOVER THE BEAUTIES OF FRIENDSHIP.

Much has been written lately concerning the doctrine of friendship between men and women. It is thought and said by some that there lies an unexplored territory in our American life, and we have the example of Madame Récamier set before us to show how perfectly intimate and devoted a whole circle of manly friends may be with one fair woman, without detriment or disadvantage to their domestic ties or hers. The adorable Juliet is the intimate friend at once of Matthew Montmorenci, the saint, of Chateaubriand, the poet, and of an indefinite number of artists and men of letters, all of whom address her in language of adoration and devotion, and receive from her affectionate messages in return. Chateaubriand spends every afternoon with Juliet, and every evening with his invalid wife, like a devoted and dutiful husband, and this state of things goes on from year to year without trouble and without scandal.

It was with some such sublimated precedent in my head that I allowed myself to yield to the charming temptation opened to me by my acquaintance with Eva Van Arsdel. Supposing by Jim's account that she was already engaged, looking on myself as yet far off from the place where I could think of marriage, what was there to hinder my enjoying her society? Of course, there was no possible danger to myself, and it would be absolute coxcombry to think that there would be any to her. She, who had been a queen of fashion, and who had the world under her feet, if she deigned to think kindly of a poor littérateur, it could surely lead to nothing dangerous. I might have been warned, if I were wise, by the fact that the night after my first presentation I lay awake and thought over all she had said, and counted the days that should intervene before next Wednesday evening. I would not for the world have had Jim Fellows divine what was going on within me; in fact I took as much pains to cajole and pacify and take myself in as if I had been a third party.

I woke about six o'clock in the dim grey of the next morning, from a dream in which Eva and I were talking together, when she seemed so vivid that I started up almost feeling that I saw her face in the air. Suddenly I heard the bell of a neighboring church strike the hour, and thought of what she had said the evening before about attending morning services.

What was to hinder my going to the church and seeing her again? There was a brisk morning walk, that was a good thing, and certainly morning devotion was something so altogether right and reasonable that I wondered I never had thought of it before. I dressed myself and turned out into the streets to seek the little church of the Holy Sepulcher where the new Rector of whom Eva had spoken held early Lenten services.

There was something quaint and rather exciting to my imagination to be one of a small band who sought the church at this early hour. The sunlight of the rising day streamed through the painted window and touched with a sort of glory the white dress of the priest; the organ played softly in subdued melody, and the words of the morning service had a sort of touching lovely sound. "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" seemed to come to my thoughts with new force as I looked on the small number, two or three in a pew, who were scattered up and down through the church. She was there in a seat not far from me, shrouded in a simple black dress and veil, and seemed wholly and entirely absorbed by her prayer-book and devotions.

As the little company dispersed at the close of the services, I stood in the door and joined her as she passed out.

"Good morning, Miss Van Arsdel," I said.

She started and looked surprised, and a bright color flushed in her cheeks.

"Mr. Henderson! you quite astonish me."

"Why so?"

"There are so very few who get out at this hour; and you, I believe, are not of the church."

"I don't know what you mean by the church, exactly," said I.

"Oh," said she, looking at me with a conscious smile, "I know what everybody means that says the church—it generally means our church—the one that is the church for us; but you, I think, belong to the Bethany," she added.

"I do," said I, "but I have large sympathies for all others, particularly for yours, which seems to me in some points more worthily to represent what a church should be, than any other."

She looked pleased, and said with warmth, "Mr. Henderson, you must not judge our church by such very imperfect specimens as you see among us. We are very unworthy children of a noble mother; our church has everything in it to call us to the highest and best life, only we fall far below her teaching."

"I think I can see," I said, "that if the scheme of living set forth by the Episcopal Church were carried out with warmth and devotion, it would make an ideal sort of society."

"It would be a really consecrated life," she said, with warmth. "If all would agree to unite in daily morning and evening prayers for instance," she said, "how beautiful it would be." "I never enjoy reading my Bible alone in my room as I do to have it read to me here in church; somehow to me there is a sacred charm about it when I hear it read there, and then to have friends, neighbors and families meet and pray together as one, every day, would be beautiful. I often think I should like to live close by one of those beautiful English cathedrals where they have choral services every day, and I would go morning and evening, but here, in this dreadful, flashy, busy, bustling New York, there is no such thing, I suppose, as getting any number of people to agree to daily worship."

"In that respect," said I, "we modern Christians seem to be less devout than the ancient heathen or the Mohammedans; you recollect Huju Buba sums up the difference between the Englishman and the Persian by saying, 'We Persians pray seven times a day, and they, never.'"

"I like to come to church," she said, "it seems a shelter and a refuge. Nowadays there are so many things said that one doesn't know what to think of; so many things disputed that one has always supposed to be true; such a perfectly fatiguing rush of ideas and assertions and new ways that for my part I am glad to fall back upon something old and established, that I feel sure isn't going to melt away into mist before to-morrow."

"I can well appreciate that feeling," I said, "for I have it myself."

"Do you? Oh, Mr. Henderson, you don't know how it perplexes one. There's sister Ida, now! she has a circle of friends—the very nicest sort of people they seem to be!—but, dear me! when I am with them a little while, I get perfectly bewildered. No two of them seem to believe alike on any subject; and if you quote the Bible to them, they just open their eyes and look amazed at you, as if that was something quite behind the age; and as there is no standard with them, of course there is nothing settled. You feel as if life was built on water, and everything was rocking and tilting till you are quite dizzy. Now, I know I am a poor sort of a specimen of a Christian; but I couldn't live so! I fly back from this sort of thing, like a frightened bird, and take refuge in the church—there is something fixed, positive, and definite, that has stood the test of time; it is noble and dignified, and I abide by that."

"There is all that about it," said I; "and so very much that is attractive and charming in the forms of your church, that I think if you would only open your arms wide, and be liberal as the spirit of this age, you would indeed be the church of the world."

"You think we are not liberal?" she said.

"When you call yourselves the church, and make no account of all that true, pure, good souls—true followers of the same Saviour—are doing, it seems to me you are not."

"Ah, well, Mr. Henderson, perhaps we are wrong there—I cannot say. I know there are many churches and many dear, good souls in all; it is only to me that mine is the church; if that is an illusion, it is a happy one."

"Now," said I, "what a dreary picture should we have of New York Christianity, if we judged it by the few morning worshipers at Lenten services!"

"Yes, indeed," she said. "I am often sorry for our rector—he is so earnest, and so few care to come; and yet he told us in his sermon, last Sunday, that these Lenten services were an act of union with our Saviour's self-denials and sufferings."

"Well, Miss Van Arsdel," said I, "I doubt not there are hundreds of thousands in this city who do really, in spirit, unite with the Saviour in self-denials and sufferings, daily, who do not express it in this form. If all who really love the Saviour, and are living in his spirit, should make a point of early morning service in Lent, I verily believe the churches would be crowded to overflowing."

"You do really think so?"

"I do. In spite of all that appears, I think ours is really, at heart, a religious age—it is only that we do not agree in the same external forms of expression."

"But how beautiful! oh, how beautiful it would be if we could!" she said. "Oh, it would be lovely if all the good and true could see each other, and stand side by side! I long for visible unity—and do you think, Mr. Henderson, we could unite in more beautiful forms than ours?"

"No; I do not," said I; "for me, for you, for many like us, these are the true forms, and the best; but we must remember that others have just as sacred associations, and are as dearly attached to other modes of worship as we to these."

"Then you really do prefer them yourself?"

"Well, Miss Van Arsdel, I unite with the church of my father and mother, because I was brought up in it; yet if I were to choose another, it would be yours."

She looked pleased, and I added: "It seems to me one of the most beautiful things about it is a daily service."

"Yes," she said, "and it is pleasant to have churches where you feel that worship is daily offered, whether people attend or not. There was something sacred and beautiful about the Church of St. Peter's in Rome—to think that at every hour of day or night worship was going on in it. I used to like to think of it when I awoke nights—that they were praying and adoring there—in this cold, dreary world; it seems as if it was like a Father's house, always light, and warm, and open."

"There is a beauty and use in all these forms and images," I said; "and I think if we are wise, we may take comfort in them all, without being enslaved by any."

Here our interview closed, as with a graceful salutation she left me at the door of her house.

The smile she gave me was so bright and heart-warm, that it lightened all my work through the day; a subtle sense of a new and charming companionship began to shed itself through all my labors, and, unconsciously and unwatched, commenced that process of double thought which made everything I read or wrote suggest something I wanted to say to her. The reader will not, therefore, wonder that I proved my sense of the beauty of a daily morning service by going with great regularity after this, and as regularly walking home with my enchanting companion.

I was innocently surprised to find how interesting the morning scenery in prosaic old New York had become. It was April, and the buds in the Park were swelling, and the green grass springing in the cracks of the pavement, and little sparrows twittered and nestled in the ivy that embowered the church—and all these things had a strange, new charm for me. I told myself, every day, that I was not in love with Eva Van Arsdel, or going to be; I took myself to witness that all our conversation was on the most correct and dispassionate subjects, and not in the slightest degree inclining to any vanity of that nature. Since then, I have learned that Eva was the kind of woman with whom it made no difference what the subject matter of conversation was. It might be religion, or politics, or conic sections, but the animus of it was sure to be the same thing. It was her vital magnetism that gave the interest. It was, in fact, hardly any matter what we talked about, or whether we talked at all, it was the charm of being together that made these morning interviews so delightful; though I believe we discussed nearly everything under the sun, with the most astonishing unanimity of sentiment.

I was very careful to keep the knowledge of my increasing intimacy from Jim Fellows. Early rising was not his forte, and I, very improperly, congratulated myself on the fewness of the worshipers at early service. By and by, I grew so conscious that I got a way of stealing out at an opposite door, appearing to walk off another way, and joining Eva at the next corner—lest haply my invariable constancy should attract attention. She noticed all these things with a droll, amused, little, half-conscious look. True daughter of Eve as she was, she had probably seen many a shy fish before, swimming around her golden net as artlessly as I was doing.

I soon became her obedient slave and servant, interpreting all her motions and intimations with humble assiduity. Of course I presented myself duly with Jim in the Wednesday evening receptions, where, as the rooms were filled with other company, we already began to practice an involuntary hypocrisy, keeping up our friendly intimacy by that kind of intuitive and undemonstrative communication natural to those who know each other by sympathy, and learn to understand each other without words.

I was a great deal in Ida's studio, probably much to the satisfaction of Aunt Maria and Mrs. Van Arsdel—while Eva glanced and twinkled in and out like a fire-fly in a meadow, taking my heart with her as she came and went, yet awing me with a dutiful reticence, lest "people should talk."

Ida was one of those calm, quiet, essentially self-poised women, with whom it would be quite possible for a man to have a very intimate friendship, without its toning off into anything warm, either on her part or on his. Everything with her was so positive and definite, that there was no possibility of going over the limits. I think that she really had a very warm esteem for me; but she looked at me and judged me solely in relation to Eva, and with a quiet persistency favored the intimacy that she saw growing between us. Her plans of life were laid far ahead; she was wedded to a purpose which she would not have renounced for any man on earth; but Eva was the very apple of her eye, and I think she had her own plans as to the settling of her life's destiny; in short, Ida was from the start the best friend I could have.

---

I AM INTRODUCED TO THE ILLUMINATI.

A young man who commences life as a reformer, and a leader in the party of progress, while saying the best and most reasonable things in the world, and advocating what appear to him the most needed reforms, often finds himself, in consequence, in the condition of one who has pulled the string of a very large shower-bath. He wanted cold water, and he gets a deal more than he bargained for; in fact, often catches his breath, and wonders when this sort of thing is going to stop. My articles on the "Modern Woman," in the Milky Way, had brought me into notice in certain enthusiastic circles, and I soon found myself deluged with letters, appeals, pamphlets, newspapers, all calling for the most urgent and immediate attention, and all charging me on my allegiance to "the cause," immediately, and without loss of time, to write articles for said papers gratuitously, to circulate said pamphlets, to give favorable notices of said books, and instantly to find lucrative situations for hosts of distressed women who were tired of the humdrum treadmill of home-life, and who wished to have situations provided where there was no drudgery and no labor, but very liberal compensation. The whole large army of the incapables,—the blind, the halt, the lame, the weary, and the forlorn,—all seemed inclined to choose me as their captain, and to train under my banner. Because I had got into a subordinate position on the Great Democracy, they seemed to consider that it was my immediate business to make the Great Democracy serve their wants, or to perish in the attempt.

My friend, Ida Van Arsdel, was a serious, large-minded, large-brained woman, who had laid a deep and comprehensive plan of life, and was adhering to it with a patient and silent perseverance. Still she had no sympathy in that class of society where her lot was cast. Her mother and her Aunt Maria were women who lived and breathed merely in the opinions of their set and circle, and were as incapable of considering any higher ideal of life, or any unworldly purpose, as two canary-birds. Mr. Van Arsdel, a quiet, silent man, possessed a vein of good sense which led him to appreciate his eldest daughter at her real worth; and he was not insensible to the pleasure of having one feminine companion who, as he phrased it, "understood business," and with whom he could talk and advise understandingly. But even he had no sympathy with those larger views of the wants and needs of womanhood, in view of which Ida was acting. It followed very naturally that as Ida got no sympathy in her own circle, she was led to seek it in the widening sphere of modern reformers—a circle in which so much that is fine and excellent and practical, is inevitably mixed with a great deal that is crude and excessive.

At her request I accompanied her and Eva one evening to a sort of New-Dispensation salon, which was held weekly at the house of Mrs. Stella Cerulean. Mrs. Stella Cerulean was a brilliant woman—beautiful in person, full of genius, full of enthusiasm, full of self-confidence, the most charming of talkers, and the most fascinating of women. Her career from early life had been one of those dazzling successes which always fall to the lot of beauty, seconded by a certain amount of tact and genius. Of both these gifts Mrs. Cerulean had just enough to bewilder the head of any gentleman who made her acquaintance. She had in her girlhood made the tour of Europe, shone as a star in the courts of France and Russia, and might be excused for a more than ordinary share of complacency in her successes. In common with handsome women generally, she had, during the greater part of her life, never heard anything but flattery from gentlemen, and it always agreed with her remarkably well. But Mrs. Cerulean was one of those women, with just intellect and genius enough to render her impatient of the mere common-place triumphs of beauty. She felt the intoxicating power of the personal influence which she possessed, and aspired to reign in the region of the mind as well as to charm the senses. She felt herself called to the modern work of society regeneration, and went into it with all the enthusiasm of her nature, and with all that certainty of success which comes from an utter want of practical experience. Problems which old statesmen contemplated with perplexity, which had been the despair of ages, she took up with a cheerful alacrity.

She had one simple remedy for the reconstruction of society about whose immediate application she saw not the slightest difficulty. It was simply and only to be done by giving the affairs of the world into the hands of women, forthwith. Those who only claim equality for women were, in Mrs. Cerulean's view, far behind the age. Woman was the superior sex, the divine sex. Had not every gentleman of her acquaintance, since she could remember, told her this with regard to herself? Had they not always told her that she could know everything without study, simply by the divine intuitions of womanhood; that she could flash to conclusions without reasoning, simply by the brilliancy of her eyes; that her purity was incorruptible in its very nature; that all her impulses were heavenly and God-given? Naturally enough, then, it was her deduction that all that was wanting to heal the woes and wants of society was that she and other such inspired beings should immediately take to themselves their power, and reign.

Such is a general sketch of Mrs. Cerulean's view of the proper method of introducing the millennium. Meanwhile, she did her part in it by holding salons once a week, in which people entertaining similar views met for the purpose, apparently, of a general generation of gas, without any particular agreement as to the method in which it should be applied. This was the company of people to whom Eva rather pathetically alluded in one of her conversations once, as such nice people, who were so very puzzling to her, because no two of them ever seemed to think alike on any subject; and all agreed in opening their eyes very wide in astonishment if anybody quoted the Bible to them as an authority in faith and practice.

Ida was much courted and petted by this circle. And sensible, good girl as she was, she was not wholly without pleasure in the admiration they showed for her. Then, again, there were, every evening, ventilated in this company quantities of the most splendid and heroic ideas possible to human beings. The whole set seemed to be inspired with the spirit of martyrdom, without any very precise idea of how to get martyred effectually. It was only agreed that everything in the present state of society was wrong, and was to be pulled down forthwith. But as to what was to come after this demolition, there were as many opinions in the circle as there were persons, and all held with a wonderful degree of tenacity. A portion of them were of opinion that a new dispensation fresh from the heavenly realms was being inaugurated by means of spiritualistic communications daily and hourly conveyed to privileged individuals. It was, however, unfortunate that these communications were, very many of them, in point-blank opposition to each other; so that the introduction of revelations from the invisible world seemed only likely to make the confusion worse confounded. Then again, as to all the existing relations of life, there was the same charming variety of opinion. But one thing seemed to be pretty generally conceded among the whole circle, that in the good time coming, nobody was ever to do anything that he did not want to do, or feel at the moment just like doing. The great object of existence apparently was to get rid of everything that was disagreeable and painful. Thus, quite a party of them maintained that all marriage relations ought to drop, from the moment that either party ceased to take pleasure in them, without any regard to the interest of the other party or the children; because the fundamental law of existence was happiness—and nothing could make people happy but liberty to do just as they had a mind to.

I must confess that I found my evening at Mrs. Cerulean's salon a very agreeable one; the conversation of thoroughly emancipated people has a sparkling variety to it which is exactly the thing to give one a lively, pleasant evening. Everybody was full of enthusiasm, and in the very best of spirits. And there appeared to be nothing that anybody was afraid to say. Nobody was startled by anything. There was not a question, as it appeared, that had been agitated since the creation of the world, that was not still open to discussion.

As we were walking home after spending an evening, Ida asked me:

"Now, Mr. Henderson, what do you think of it?"

"Well, Miss Ida," said I, "after all, I'm a believer in the old-fashioned Bible."

"What, really, Mr. Henderson?"

"Really and squarely, Miss Ida. And never more so than when I associate with very clever people who have given it up. There is, to my mind, a want of common sense about all theories of life that are not built on that."

"Well," said Ida, "I have long since made up my mind, for my own part, that if the cause of woman is to be advanced in this world, it is not so much by meeting together and talking about it, as by each individual woman proposing to herself some good work for the sex, and setting about it patiently, and doing it quietly. That is rather my idea; at the same time, I like to hear these people talk, and they certainly are a great contrast to the vapid people that are called good society. There is a freshness and earnestness of mind about some of them that is really very interesting; and I get a great many new ideas."

"For my part," said Eva, "to be sure I have been a sad idler, but if I were going to devote myself to any work for women, it should be in the church, and under the guidance of the church. I am sure there is something we can do there. And then, one's sure of not running into all sorts of vagaries."

"Now," said Ida, "all I want is that women should do something; that the lives of girls, from the time they leave school till the time they are married, should not be such a perfect waste as they now are. I do not profess to be certain about any of these theories that I hear; but one thing I do know: we women will bear being made a great deal more self-sustaining and self-supporting than we have been. We can be more efficient in the world, and we ought to be. I have chosen my way, and mean to keep to it. And my idea is that a woman who really does accomplish a life-work is just like one that cuts the first path through a wood. She makes a way where others can walk."

"That's you, Ida," said Eva; "but I am not strong enough to cut first paths."

I felt a little nervous flutter of her hand on my arm as she said this. It was in the dark, and involuntarily, I suppose, my hand went upon hers, and before I thought of it I felt the little warm thing in my own as if it had been a young bird. It was one of those things that people sometimes do before they know it. But I noticed that she did not withdraw her hand, and so I held it, querying in my own mind whether this little arrangement was one of the privileges of friendship. Before I quite resolved this question we parted at the house-door.

---

I RECEIVE A MORAL SHOWER-BATH.

A day or two after, as I was sitting in my room, busy writing, I heard a light footstep on the stairs, and a voice saying, "Oh yes! this is Mr. Henderson's room—thank you," and the next moment a jaunty, dashing young woman, with bold blue eyes, and curling brown hair, with a little wicked looking cap with nodding cock's-feather set askew on her head, came marching up and seated herself at my writing-table. I gazed in blank amazement. The apparition burst out laughing, and seizing me frankly by the hand, said—

"Look here, Hal! don't you know me? Well, my dear fellow, if you don't it's time you did! I read your last 'thingumajig' in the Milky Way, and came round to make your acquaintance."

I gazed in dumb amazement while she went on,

"My dear fellow, I have come to enlighten you,"—and as she said this she drew somewhat near to me, and laid her arm confidingly on my shoulder, and looked coaxingly in my face. The look of amazement which I gave, under these circumstances, seemed to cause her great amusement.

"Ha! ha!" she said, "didn't I tell 'em so? You ain't half out of the shell yet. You ain't really hatched. You go for the emancipation of woman; but bless you, boy, you haven't the least idea what it means—not a bit of it, sonny, have you now? Confess!" she said, stroking my shoulder caressingly.

"Really, madam—I confess," I said, hesitatingly, "I haven't the honor"—

"Not the honor of my acquaintance, you was going to say; well, that's exactly what you're getting now. I read your piece in the Milky Way, and, said I, that boy's in heathen darkness yet, and I'm going round to enlighten him. You mean well, Hal! but this is a great subject. You haven't seen through it. Lord bless you, child! you ain't a woman, and I am—that's just the difference."

Now, I ask any of my readers, what is a modest young man, in this nineteenth century,—having been brought up to adore and reverence woman as a goddess—to do, when he finds himself suddenly vis-à-vis with her, in such embarrassing relations as mine were becoming? I had heard before of Miss Audacia Dangyereyes, as a somewhat noted character in New York circles, but did not expect to be brought so unceremoniously, and without the least preparation of mind, into such very intimate relations with her.

"Now, look here, bub!" she said, "I'm just a-going to prove to you, in five minutes, that you've been writing about what you don't know anything about. You've been asserting, in your blind way, the rights of woman to liberty and equality; the rights of women, in short, to do anything that men do. Well, here comes a woman to your room who takes her rights, practically, and does just what a man would do. I claim my right to smoke, if I please, and to drink if I please; and to come up into your room and make you a call, and have a good time with you, if I please, and tell you that I like your looks, as I do. Furthermore, to invite you to come and call on me at my room. Here's my card. You may call me 'Dacia, if you like—I don't go on ceremony. Come round and take a smoke with me, this evening, won't you? I've got the nicest little chamber that ever you saw. What rent do you pay for yours? Say, will you come round?"

"Indeed—thank you, miss—"

"Call me 'Dacia for short. I don't stand on ceremony. Just look on me as another fellow. And now confess that you've been tied and fettered by those vapid conventionalities which bind down women till there is no strength in 'em. You visit in those false, artificial circles, where women are slaves, kept like canary birds in gilded cages. And you are afraid of your own principles when you see them carried out in a real free woman. Now, I'm a woman that not only dares say, but I dare do. Why hasn't a woman as much a right to go round and make herself agreeable to men, as to sit still at home and wait for men to come and make themselves agreeable to her? I know you don't like this, I can see you don't, but it's only because you are a slave to old prejudices. But I'm going to make you like me in spite of yourself. Come, now, be consistent with your principles; allow me my equality as a woman, a human being."

I was in such a state of blank amazement by this time as seemed to deprive me of all power of self-possession. At this moment the door opened, and Jim Fellows appeared. A most ludicrous grimace passed over his face as he saw the position and he cut a silent pirouette in the air, behind her. She turned her head, and he advanced.

"Fairest of the sex! (with some slight exceptions)—to what happy accident are we to attribute this meeting?"

"Hallo, Jim! is this you?" she replied.

"Oh, certainly, it's me," said Jim, seating himself familiarly. "How is the brightest star of womanhood—the Northern Light; the Aurora Borealis; the fairest of the fair? Bless its little heart, has it got its rights yet? Did it want to drink and smoke? Come along with Jim, now, and let's have a social cocktail."

"Keep your distance, sir," said she, giving him a slight box on his ear. "I prefer to do my own courting. I have been trying to show your friend here how little he knows of the true equality of women, and of the good time coming, when we shall have our rights, and do just as we darn please, as you do. I'll bet now there aint one of those Van Arsdel girls that would dare to do as I'm doing. But we're opening the way sir, we're opening the way. The time will come when all women will be just as free to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as men."

"Good heavens!" said I, under my breath.

"My beloved Audacia," said Jim, "allow me to remark one little thing, and that is, that men also must be left free to the pursuit of happiness, and also, as the Scripture says, new wine must not be put into old bottles. Now my friend Hal—begging his pardon—is an old bottle, and I think you have already put as much new wine into him as his constitution will bear. And as he and I both have got to make our living by scratching, and tempus fugit, and we've got articles to write, and there is always, so to speak, the devil after us folks that write for the press, may I humbly request that you will withdraw the confusing light of your bright eyes from us for the present, and, in short, take your divine self somewhere else?"

As Jim spoke these words, he passed his arm round Miss Audacia's waist, and drew her to the door of the apartment, which he threw open, and handed her out, bowing with great ceremony.

"Stop!" she cried, "I aint going to be put out that way. I haven't done what I came for. You both of you have got to subscribe for my paper, The Emancipated Woman."

"Couldn't do it, divinest charmer," said Jim, "couldn't do it; too poor; mill runs low; no water; modest merit not rewarded. Wait till my ship comes in, and I'll subscribe for anything you like."

"Well, now, you don't get rid of me that way. I tell you I came in to get a subscription, and I am going to stay till I get one," said Miss Audacia. "Come, Hal," she said, crossing once more to me, and sitting down by me and taking my hand, "write your name there, there's a good fellow."

I wrote my name in desperation, while Jim stood by, laughing.

"Jim," I said, "come, put yours down quick, and let's have it over."

"Well, now," said she, "fork out the stamps—five dollars each."

We both obeyed mechanically.

"Well, well," said she, good naturally, "that'll do for this time, good morning," and she vanished from the apartment with a jaunty toss of the head and a nod of the cock's feathers in her hat.

Jim closed the door smartly after her.

"Mercy upon us! Jim," said I, "who, and what is this creature?"

"Oh, one of the harbingers of the new millennium," said Jim. "Won't it be jolly when all the girls are like her? But we shall have to keep our doors locked then."

"But," said I, "is it possible, Jim, that this is a respectable woman?"

"She's precisely what you see," said Jim; "whether that's respectable, is a matter of opinion. There's a woman that's undertaken, in good faith, to run and jostle in all the ways that men run in. Her principle is, that whatever a young fellow in New York could do, she'll do."

"Good heavens!" said I, "what would the Van Arsdels think of us, if they should know that she had been in our company?"

"It's lucky that they don't, and can't," said Jim. "But you see what you get for belonging to the new dispensation."

"Boys, what's all this fuss?" said Bolton, coming in at this moment.

"Oh, nothing, only Dacia Dangyeeyes has been here," said Jim, "and poor Hal is ready to faint away and sink through the floor. He isn't up to snuff yet, for all he writes such magnificent articles about the nineteenth century."

"Well," said I, "it was woman as woman that I was speaking of, and not this kind of creature. If I believed that granting larger liberty and wider opportunities was going to change the women we reverence to things like these, you would never find me advocating it."

"Well, my dear Hal," said Bolton, "be comforted; you're not the first reformer that has had to cry out, 'Deliver me from my friends.' Always when the waters of any noble, generous enthusiasm rise and overflow their banks, there must come down the drift-wood—the wood, hay, and stubble. Luther had more trouble with the fanatics of his day, who ran his principles into the ground, as they say, than he had with the Pope and the Emperor, both together. As to this Miss Audacia, she is one of the phenomenal creations of our times; this time, when every kind of practical experiment in life has got to be tried, and stand or fall on its own merits. So don't be ashamed of having spoken the truth, because crazy people and fools caricature it. It is true, as you have said, that women ought to be allowed a freer, stronger, and more generous education and scope for their faculties. It is true that they ought, everywhere, to have equal privileges with men; and because some crack-brained women draw false inferences from this, it is none the less true. For my part, I always said that one must have a strong conviction for a cause, if he could stand the things its friends say for it, or read a weekly paper devoted to it. If I could have been made a pro-slavery man, it would have been by reading anti-slavery papers, and vice versa. I had to keep myself on a good diet of pro-slavery papers, to keep my zeal up."

"But," said I, anxiously, to Jim, "do you suppose that we're going to be exposed to the visits of this young woman?"

"Well," said Jim, "as you've subscribed for her paper, perhaps she'll let us alone till she has some other point to carry."

"Subscribe!" said I; "I did it from compulsion, to get her out of the office; I didn't think the situation respectable; and yet I don't want her paper, and I don't want my name on her subscription list. What if the Van Arsdels should find it out? People are apt enough to think that our doctrines lead to all sorts of outré consequences; and if Mrs. Wouverman, their Aunt Maria, should once get hold of this, and it should get all through the circle in which they move, how disagreeable it would be."

"Oh, never fear," said Jim; "I guess we can manage to keep our own secrets; and as to any of them ever knowing, or seeing, anything about that paper, it's out of the question. Bless you! they wouldn't touch it with a pair of tongs!"

---

AUNT MARIA.

Aunt Maria came into the parlor where Eva and Alice were chatting over their embroidery. A glance showed that she had been occupied in that sensible and time-honored method of keeping up the social virtues, which is called making calls. She was all plumed and rustling in flowers and laces, and had on her calling manners. She had evidently been smiling and bowing and inquiring after people's health, and saying pretty and obliging things, till the very soul within her was quite dried up and exhausted. For it must be admitted that to be obliged to remember and inquire for every uncle, aunt and grandmother, every baby, and young master and miss in a circle of one's three hundred particular friends, is an exercise of Christian benevolence very fatiguing. Aunt Maria, however, always went through with it with exhaustive thoroughness, so that everybody said, What a kind-hearted, pleasant woman that Mrs. Wouverman is.

"Well, there!" she said, throwing herself into an arm-chair, "I've nearly cleared my list, thank heaven! I think Lent is a grand good season to get these matters off your mind. You know Mr. Selwyn said last Sunday, that it was the time to bring ourselves up to the disagreeable duties."

"How many have you made, aunty?" said Eva.

"Just three dozen, my dear. You see I chose a nice day when a good many are sure to be out. That shortens matters a good deal. Well, girls, I've been to the Elmore's. You ought to see what a state they are in! In all my experience I never saw people so perfectly tipped over, and beside themselves with delight. I'm sure if I were they I wouldn't show it quite so plain."

"I suppose," said Alice, "they are quite benignant and patronizing to us now."

"Patronizing! Well, I wish you could have seen Poll Elmore and her airs! You would have thought her a duchess from the Faubourg St. Germain, and no less! She was so very sweet and engaging! Dear me, she patronized me within an inch of my life; and 'How are your dear girls?' she said. 'All the world is expecting to hear some news of Miss Eva, should we soon have an opportunity of returning congratulations?'"

"Oh, pshaw! aunt," said Eva uneasily, "what did you say?"

"Oh! I told her that Eva was in no hurry, that she was very reticent of her private affairs, and did not think it in good taste to proclaim them. 'Ah, then, there really is something in it,' said she. I was telling my girls perhaps after all it is mere report; people say so many things. 'The thing was reported about Maria,' she said, 'long before there was any truth in it'; and then she went on to tell me how much Maria had been admired, and how many offers she had rejected, and among other things she said that Mr. Sidney had been at her disposal,—only she couldn't fancy him. 'You know,' she said with a sentimental air, that 'the heart is all in such cases.'"

"How perfectly absurd of her," said Eva.

"I know," said Alice eagerly, "that Wat Sidney doesn't like Maria Elmore. She was perfectly wild after him, and used to behave so that it really disgusted him."

"Oh, well," said Eva, "all these things are excessively disagreeable to me; it seems to me where such matters are handled and talked about and bandied about, they become like shop-worn goods, utterly disgusting. Who wants every fool and fop and every gossip who has nothing better to do talking over what ought to be the most private and delicate affairs of one's own heart!"

"Well, dear, you can't help it in society. Why, every person where I have called inquired about your engagement to Wat Sidney. You see you can't keep a thing of this sort private. Of course you can't. You are in the world, and the world will have you do as others do. Of course I didn't announce it, because I have no authority; but the thing is just as much out as if I had. There was old Mrs. Ellis, dear old soul, said to me, 'Give my love to dear Eva, and tell her I hope she'll be happy. I suppose,' she added, 'I may send congratulations, though it isn't announced.' Oh, said I, Eva doesn't like to have matters of this sort talked about."

"But aunty," said Eva, who had been coloring with vexation, "this is all gratuitous—you are all engaging and marrying me in spite of my screams as appears. I am not engaged to Mr. Sidney, and never expect to be; he is gone off on a long Southern tour, and I hope out of sight will be out of mind, and people will stop talking."

"But my dear Eva, really now you ought not to treat a nice man like him in that way."

"Treat him in what way?" said Eva.

"Why, keep him along in this undecided manner without giving him a definite answer."

"He might have had a definite answer any time in the last three months if he had asked for it. It isn't my business to speak till I'm spoken to."

"You don't mean, Eva, that he has gone off without saying anything definite—bringing matters to a point."

"I do mean just that, Aunty, and what's more I'm glad he's gone, and I hope before he comes back he'll see somebody that he likes better, and then it'll be all off; and, Aunty, if any one speaks to you about it you'll oblige me by saying decidedly there is nothing in it."

"Well, I shan't say there never has been anything in it. I shall say you refused him."

"And why so? I am not anxious to have the credit of it, and besides I think it is indelicate when a man has paid a lady the highest possible compliment he can pay, to make a public parade of it. Its sufficient to say there is nothing in it and never will be; its nobody's business how it happened."

"Oh, come Eva, don't say there never will be anything in it. That is a subject on which girls are licensed to change their minds."

"For my part," said Alice, "I only wish it were I. I'd have him in a minute. Aunty, did you see that nobby phæton he was driving the last day he was on the park; those horses, and that white fur lap-robe, with the long pluffy hair like silver? I must say, Eva, I think you are a little goose."

"I've no objection to the park phæton, or horses or lap-robe; but it isn't those I'm to marry, you see."

"But Eva," said Aunt Maria, "if you wouldn't fancy such a match as Wat Sidney, who would you? he is a man of correct and temperate habits, and that's more than you can say of half the men."

"But a woman doesn't necessarily want to make her most intimate and personal friend of a man merely because he doesn't drink," said Eva.

"But he's good looking."

"So they say, but not to me, not my style. In short, aunty, I don't love him, and never should; and if I were tied too close to him might end by hating him. As it is, he and I are the best friends possible. I hope we always shall stay so."

"Well, I should like to know whoever will suit you Eva," said Aunt Maria.

"Oh, he will come along, Aunty, never fear! I shall know him when I see him, and I dare say everybody will wonder what in the world possessed me, but I shall be content. I know exactly what I want, I'm like the old party in the Ancient Mariner. I shall know when I see him 'the man that must have me,' and then I shall 'hold him with my glittering eye.'"

"Well, Eva, you must remember one thing. There are not many men able to keep you in the way you always have lived."

"Then, when the right one comes I shall live as he is able to keep me."

"Go to housekeeping in three rooms, perhaps. You look like it."

"Yes; and do my own cooking. I'm rather fond of cooking; I have decided genius that way too. Ask Jane down in the kitchen if I don't make splendid fritters. The fact is, Aunty, I have so much superfluous activity and energy that I should be quite thrown away on a rich man. A poor country rector, very devout, with dark eyes like Longfellow's Kavanah is rather my ideal. I would get up his surplices myself, and make him such lovely frontals and altar cloths! Why doesn't somebody of that sort come after me? I'm quite impatient to have a sphere and show what I can do."

"Well," said Alice, "you don't catch me marrying a poor man. Not I. No home missionaries, nor poor rectors, nor distressed artists need apply at this office."

"Now, girls," said Aunt Maria, "let me tell you it's all very pretty at your turn of life to dream about love in a cottage and all that, but when you have seen all of life that I have, you will know the worth of the solid; when one has been used to a certain way of living, for example, one can't change; and if you married the angel Gabriel without money, you would soon repent it."

"Well," said Eva, "I'd risk it if Gabriel would have me, and I'd even try it with some man a little lower than the angels; so prepare your mind to endure it, Aunty, for one of these days everybody will be holding up their hands and saying, What, Eva Van Arsdel engaged to him! Why, what could have possessed her? That's just the way I heard Lottie Simmons talking last week about Belle St. John's engagement. She is going to marry a college professor in New Haven on one of those very homœopathic doses of salary that people give to really fine men that have talent and education, and she's just as happy as she can be about it, and the girls are all scraping their throats, 'oh-ing and ah-ing' and wondering what could have led her to it. No engagement ring to show! private wedding! and just going off together up to his mother's in Vermont instead of making the bridal tour of all the watering places! It must be so charming, you see, to be exhibited as a new bride, along with all the other new brides at Trenton and Niagara and the White Mountains, so that everybody may have a chance to compare your finery with everybody else's, also to see how you conduct yourself in new circumstances. For my part I shall be very glad if my poor rector can't afford it."

"By the by, speaking of that girl," said Aunt Maria, "what are you going to wear to the wedding. It's quite time you were attending to that. I called in at Tullegig's, and of course she was all in a whirl, but I put in for you. 'Now, Madame,' said I, 'you must leave a place in your mind for my girls,' and of course she went on with her usual French rodomontade, but I assure you you'll have to look after her. Tullegig has no conscience, and will put you off with anything she can make you take, unless you give your mind to it and follow her up."

"Well, I'm sure, aunty, I don't feel equal to getting a new dress out of Tullegig," said Eva, with a sigh, "and I have dresses enough, any one of which will do. I am blasée with dresses, and I think weddings are a drug. If there's anything that I think downright vulgar and disagreeable it's this style of blaring, flaring, noisy, crowded disagreeable modern weddings. It is a crush of finery; a smash of china; a confusion of voices; and everybody has the headache after it; it's a perfect infliction to think of being obliged to go to another. For my part I believe I am going to leave all those cares to Alice; she is come out now, and I am only Queen Dowager."

"Oh pshaw, Eva, don't talk so," said Aunt Maria, "and now I think of it you don't look well, you ought to take a tonic in the Spring. Let me see, Calisaya Bark and iron is just the thing. I'll send you in a bottleful from Jennings as I go home, and you must take a tablespoonful three times a day after eating, and be very particular not to fatigue yourself."

"I think," said Alice, "that Eva gets tired going to all those early services."

"Oh my dear child, yes; how can you think of such a thing? It's very inconsiderate in Mr. Selwyn, I think, to have so many services when he must know many weddings and things are coming off just after Easter. People will be all fagged out, just as Eva is. Now I believe in the church as much as anybody, but in our day I think there is danger in running religion to extremes."

"Ah!" said Eva, "I suppose there is no danger of one running to extremes in anything but religion—in dress or parties for instance?"

"But you know one has these things to attend to, my dear; one must keep up a certain style; and of course, there is a proper medium that I hold to as much as anybody. Nobody is more particular about religion in its place than I am. I keep Sunday strictly; very few people more so. I never ride in the park Sundays, nor write a letter, though I have seen people who called themselves religious that would. No. I believe in giving full observance to the Lord's day, but then I think one ought to have the week clear for action. That belongs to us, as I view it, and our old rector was very easy with us about all the Saint's days, and week-day services, and things in the prayer-book. To be sure there are Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. One, of course, should attend to these, that is no more than is proper, but the way Mr. Selwyn goes on! why, one wouldn't be able to think of much else than religion if he had his way."

"What a dreadful state of society that would bring on!" said Eva.

"But come, Aunty," said Alice, "don't talk theology, tell us what discoveries you made at the Elmore's. I know they showed you everything."

"Oh, of course they did. Well there's the wedding veil, cost two thousand dollars; for my part I thought it looked ordinary after all; it's so thick and stiff with embroidery, you see, no lightness to it."

"I wouldn't take it as a gift," said Eva. "I think such expensive things are simply vulgar."

"Go on, Aunty," said Alice, "what next?"

"Well, then the dress has a new style of trimming, and really is very elegant. I must do it the justice to say that it's something quite recherché. And then they took me up stairs to see the trousseau, and there was a perfect bazar! all her things laid out by dozens and tied up with pink ribbons,—you would have thought it got for the Empress. Those Elmores are the most worldly family I ever did hear of; all for dash and show! They seemed to be perfectly transported with these things,—and that reminds me, Eva, I noticed last Sunday at church your new poplin suit was made with quillings; now they are not going to wear quillings any more. I noticed none of those Paris dresses had it. You should have Jacobs alter yours at once, and substitute fringes; fringes is the style now."

"And, Aunty, what do you suppose would happen to me if I should wear quillings when They don't?" said Eva.

"Well, of course, you don't want to be odd, child. There is a certain propriety in all these things. I will speak to Jacobs about it, and send him up here. Shall I?"

"Well, Aunty, anything to suit you. You may take off quillings, or put on fringe, if you won't insist on marrying me to anybody," said Eva; "only I do wish any one fashion would last long enough to give one time to breathe and turn round before it has to be altered, but the Bible says the fashion of this world passeth quickly away, and so I suppose one must put up with it."

"Eva, do you correspond with Mr. Sydney?" said Aunt Maria, after a moment's reflection.

"Correspond? No, to be sure I don't. What should I do that for?"

"He writes to mamma, though," said Alice, laughing.

"It's his own affair, if he does," said Eva. "I told him, before he went, I never corresponded with gentlemen. I believe that is the correct thing to say. I never mean to, either, unless it's with one whose letters are particularly interesting to me."

"How do you like that young Henderson?"

"What, Ida's admirer?" said Eva, coloring. "Oh, we think him nice enough. Don't we Alice?—rather jolly, in fact."

"And does Ida continue gracious?"

"Certainly. They are the best of friends," said Eva. "The fact is, he is quite a fine fellow; and he reads things to Ida, and she advises him about his style, you know."

"He and Jim Fellows always come together," said Alice; "and I think they are both nice—in fact, rather better than the average. He isn't quite such a rattle-cap as Jim, but one trusts him more."

"Well," said Eva, "I don't like a professed joker. A man that never is in earnest ought to wear the cap and bells, as the court fools used to do in old times."

"O, bless you, child," said Alice, "that's what Jim is for; he always makes me laugh, and I like to laugh."

"Don't you think that Mr. Henderson would do nicely for Ida," said Aunt Maria.

"Oh, as to that," said Alice, "neither he nor Jim Fellows are marrying men. You see they haven't anything, and of course that they can't be thinking of such things."

"But," said Aunt Maria, "Ida is just the wife for a poor man. She has a turn for economy, and doesn't care for dress and show; and could rub and scrub along, and help to support the family. I really think she likes work for the sake of it. I wish to mercy she could be engaged, and get all these dreadful queer plans and notions out of her head. I am always so puzzled what in the world to tell people when they ask why she doesn't visit and go into society."

"Why not tell the truth," said Eva, "that she prefers to help papa in his business."

"Because, love, that's so odd. People can't understand it."

"They can't understand," said Eva, "that a woman may be tired of leading a lazy life, and want to use her faculties. Well, I'm sure I can understand it. I'd give all the world to feel that I was of as much real use to anybody as Ida is to papa; and I think papa likes it too. Poor, dear old papa, with his lovely old white head, who just toils and slaves for us. I wish I could help him too."

"Well, dear, I can tell you how you can help him."

"How?"

"Marry Wat Sydney."

"Nonsense, Aunt, what has that to do with papa?"

"It would have more to do than you think," said Aunt Maria, shaking her head, mysteriously.

---

A DISCUSSION OF THE WOMAN QUESTION FROM ALL POINTS.

The bold intrusion of Miss Audacia Dangereyes into my apartment had left a most disagreeable impression on my mind. This was not lessened by the reception of her paper, which came to hand in due course of next mail; and which I found to be an exposition of all the wildest principles of modern French communism. It consisted of attacks directed about equally against Christianity, marriage, the family state, and all human laws and standing order, whatsoever. It was much the same kind of writing with which the populace of France was indoctrinated and leavened in the era preceding the first revolution, and which in time bore fruit in blood. In those days, as now, such doctrines were toyed with in literary salons and aristocratic circles, where their novelty formed an agreeable stimulus in the vapid common-place of fashionable life. They were then, as now, embraced with enthusiasm by fair illuminati, who fancied that they saw in them a dawn of some millennial glory; and were awakened from their dream, like Madame Roland, at the foot of the guillotine, bowing their heads to death and crying, "O Liberty, what things are done in thy name!"

The principal difference between the writers on the Emancipated Woman, and those of the French illuminati, was that the French prototypes were men and women of elegance, culture, and education; whereas their American imitators, though not wanting in a certain vigor and cleverness, were both coarse in expression, narrow in education, and wholly devoid of common decency in their manner of putting things. It was a paper that a man who reverenced his mother and sisters could scarcely read alone in his own apartments without blushing with indignation and vexation.

Every holy secret of human nature, all those subjects of which the grace and the power consists in their exquisite delicacy and tender refinement, were here handled with coarse fingers. Society assumed the aspect of a pack of breeding animals, and all its laws and institutions were to return to the mere animal basis.

It was particularly annoying to me that this paper, with all its coarseness and grossness, set itself up to be the head leader of Woman's Rights; and to give its harsh clamors as the voice of woman. Neither was I at all satisfied with the manner in which I had been dragooned into taking it, and thus giving my name and money to its circulation. I had actually been bullied into it; because, never having contemplated the possibility of such an existence as a female bully, I had marked out in my mind no suitable course of conduct adequate to the treatment of one. "What should I have done?" I said to myself. "What is a man to do under such circumstances? Shall he engage in a personal scuffle? Shall he himself vacate his apartment, or shall he call in a policeman?"

The question assumed importance in my eyes, because it was quite possible that, having come once, she might come again; that the same course of conduct might be used to enforce any kind of exaction which she should choose to lay on me. But, most of all was I sensitive, lest by any means some report of it might get to the Van Arsdels. My trepidation may then be guessed, on having the subject at once proposed to me by Mr. Van Arsdel that evening as I was sitting with him and Ida in her study.

"I want to know, Mr. Henderson," he said, "if you are a subscriber for the Emancipated Woman, the new organ of the Woman's Rights party?"

"Now, papa," said Ida, "that is a little unjust! It only professes to be an organ of the party, but it is not recognized by us."

"Have you seen the paper?" said Mr. Van Arsdel to me.

Like a true Yankee I avoided the question by asking another.

"Have you subscribed to it, Mr. Van Arsdel?"

"Well, yes," said he laughing, "I confess I have; and a pretty mess I have made of it. It is not a paper that any decent man ought to have in his house. But the woman came herself into my counting-room and, actually, she badgered me into it; I couldn't get her out. I didn't know what to do with her. I never had a woman go on so with me before. I was flustered, and gave her my five dollars to get rid of her. If she had been a man I'd have knocked her down."

"Oh, papa," said Ida, "I'll tell you what you should have done; you should have called me. She'd have got no money and no subscriptions out of me, nor you either if I'd been there."

"Now, Mr. Henderson, misery loves company; has she been to your room?" said Mr. Van Arsdel.

"I confess she has," said I, "and that I have done just what you did—yielded at once."

"Mr. Henderson, all this sort of proceeding is thoroughly vexatious and disagreeable," said Ida; "and all the more so that it tends directly to injure all women who are trying to be self-supporting and independent. It destroys that delicacy and refinement of feeling which men, and American men especially, cherish toward women, and will make the paths of self-support terribly hard to those who have to tread them. There really is not the slightest reason why a woman should cease to be a woman because she chooses to be independent and pursue a self-supporting career. And claiming a right to dispense with womanly decorums and act like a man is just as ridiculous as it would be for a man to claim the right to wear woman's clothes. Even if we supposed that society were so altered as to give to woman every legal and every social right that man has; and if all the customs of society should allow her to do the utmost that she can for herself, in the way of self-support, still, women will be relatively weaker than men, and there will be the same propriety in their being treated with consideration and delicacy and gentleness that there now is. And the assumptions of these hoydens and bullies has a tendency to destroy that feeling of chivalry and delicacy on the part of men. It is especially annoying and galling to me, because I do propose to myself a path different from that in which young women in my position generally have walked; and such reasoners as Aunt Maria and all the ladies of her circle will not fail to confound Miss Audacia's proceedings and opinions, and mine, as all belonging to the same class. As to the opinions of the paper, it is mainly by the half truths that are in it that it does mischief. If there were not real evils to be corrected, and real mistakes in society, this kind of thing would have no power. As it is, I have no doubt that it will acquire a certain popularity and do immense mischief. I think the elements of mischief and confusion in our republic are gathering as fast as they did in France before the revolution."

"And," said I, "after all, republics are on trial before the world. Our experiment is not yet two hundred years old, and we have all sorts of clouds and storms gathering—the labor question, the foreign immigration question, the woman question, the monopoly and corporation question, all have grave aspects."

"You see, Mr. Henderson," said Ida, "as to this woman question, the moderate party to which I belong is just at that disadvantage that people always are when there is a party on ahead of them who hold some of their principles and are carrying them to every ridiculous extreme. They have to uphold a truth that is constantly being brought into disrepute and made ridiculous by these ultra advocates. For my part, all I can do is to go quietly on with what I knew was right before. What is right is right, and remains right no matter how much ultraists may caricature it."

"Yes, my daughter," said Mr. Van Arsdel, "but what would become of our country if all the women could vote, and people like Miss Audacia Dangyereyes should stump the country as candidates for election?"

"Well, I am sure," said Ida, "we should have very disagreeble times, and a great deal to shock us."

"It is not merely that," said Mr. Van Arsdel, "the influence of such women on young men would be demoralizing."

"When I think of such dangers," said Ida, "I am, on the whole, very well pleased that there is no immediate prospect of the suffrage being granted to women until a generation with superior education and better balanced minds and better habits of consecutive thought shall have grown up among us. I think the gift of the ballot will come at last as the result of a superior culture and education. And I am in no hurry for it before."

"What is all this that you are talking about?" said Eva, who came into the room just at this moment. "Ma and Aunt Maria are in such a state about that paper that Papa has just brought home! They say there are most horrid things in it, Mr. Henderson; and they say that it belongs to the party which you, and Ida, and all your progressive people are in."

"It is an excresence of the party," said I; "a diseased growth; and neither Miss Ida nor I will accept of it as any expression of our opinion, though it does hold some things which we believe."

"Well," said Eva, "I am curious to see it, just because they don't want I should. What can there be in it so very bad?"

"You may as well keep out of it, chick," said her father, caressing her. "And now, I'll tell you, Ida, just what I think; you good women are not fit to govern the world, because you do not know, and you oughtn't to know, the wickedness that you have got to govern. We men have to know all about the rogues, and the sharpers, and the pickpockets, and the bullies; we have to grow hard and sharp, and 'cut our eye-teeth,' as the saying is, so that at last we come to not having much faith in anybody. The rule is, pretty much, not to believe anybody that you meet, and to take for granted that every man that you have dealings with will cheat you if he can. That's bad enough, but when it comes to feeling that every woman will cheat you if she can, when women cut their eye-teeth, and get to be sharp, and hard, and tricky, as men are, then I say, Look out for yourself, and deliver me from having anything to do with them."

"Why, really!" said Eva, "papa is getting to be quite an orator. I never heard him talk so much before. Papa, why don't you go on to the platform at the next Woman's Rights Convention, and give them a good blast?"

"Oh I'll let them alone," said Mr. Van Arsdel; "I don't want to be mixed up with them, and I don't want my girls to be, either. Now, I do not object to what Ida is doing, and going to do. I think there is real sense in that, although Mother and Aunt Maria feel so dreadfully about it. I like to see a woman have pluck, and set herself to be good for something in the world. And I don't see why there shouldn't be women doctors; it is just the thing there ought to be. But I don't go for all this hurrah and hullaballoo, and pitching women head-first into politics, and sending them to legislatures, and making them candidates for Congress, and for the Presidency, and nobody knows what else."

"Well," said I, "why not a woman President, as well as a woman Queen of England?"

"Because," said he, "look at the difference. The woman Queen in England comes to it quietly; she is born to it, and there is no fuss about it. But whoever is set up to be President of the United States is just set up to have his character torn off from his back in shreds, and to be mauled, pummeled, and covered with dirt by every filthy paper all over the country. And no woman that was not willing to be draggled through every kennel, and slopped into every dirty pail of water, like an old mop, would ever consent to run as a candidate. Why, it's an ordeal that kills a man. It killed Gen. Harrison, and killed old Zack. And what sort of a brazen tramp of a woman would it be that could stand it, and come out of it without being killed? Would it be any kind of a woman that we should want to see at the head of our government? I tell you, it's quite another thing to be President of a democratic republic, from what it is to be hereditary Queen."

"Good for you, papa!" said Eva, clapping her hands. "Why how you go on! I never did hear such eloquence. No, Ida, set your mind at rest, you shan't be run for President of the United States. You are a great deal too good for that."

"Now," said Mr. Van Arsdel, "there's your friend, Mrs. Cerulean, tackled me the other night, and made a convert of me, she said. Bless me! she's a handsome woman, and I like to hear her talk. And if we didn't live in the world we do, and things weren't in any respect what they are, nothing would be nicer than to let her govern the world. But in the great rough round of business she's nothing but a pretty baby after all,—nothing else in the world. We let such women convert us, because we like to have them around. It amuses us, and don't hurt them. But you can't let your baby play with matches and gunpowder, if it wants to ever so much. Women are famous for setting things agoing that they don't know anything about. And then, when the explosion comes, they don't know what did it, and run screaming to the men."

"As to Mrs. Cerulean," said Eva, "I never saw anybody that had such a perfectly happy opinion of herself, as she has. She always thinks that she understands everything by intuition. I believe in my heart that she'd walk into the engine-room of the largest steamship that ever was navigated, and turn out the chief engineer and take his place, if he'd let her. She'd navigate by woman's God-given instincts, as she calls them."

"And so she'd keep on till she'd blown up the ship," said Mr. Van Arsdel.

"Well," said I, "one fact is to be admitted, that men, having always governed the world, must by this time have acquired a good deal of traditional knowledge of the science of government, and of human nature, which women can't learn by intuition in a minute."

"For my part," said Ida, "I never was disposed to insist on the immediate granting of political rights to women. I think that they are rights, and that it is very important for the good of society that these rights should finally be respected. But I am perfectly willing, for my part, to wait and come to them in the way, and at the time, that will be best for the general good. I would a great deal rather come to them by gradual evolution than by destructive revolution. I do not want them to be forced upon society, when there is so little preparation among women that they will do themselves no credit by it. All history shows that the most natural and undeniable human rights may be granted and maintained in a way that will just defeat themselves, and bring discredit on all the supporters of them, just as was the case with the principles of democratic liberty in the first French Revolution. I do not want the political rights of woman advocated in a manner that will create similar disturbances, and bring a lasting scandal on what really is the truth. I do not want women to have the ballot till they will do themselves credit and improve society by it. I like to have the subject proposed, and argued, and agitated, and kept up, in hopes that a generation of women will be educated for it. And I think it is a great deal better and safer, where it can be done, to have people educated for the ballot, than to have them educated by the ballot."

"Well, Ida, there's more sense in you than in the most of 'em," said Mr. Van Arsdel.

"Yes," said Ida, "I think that an immediate rush into politics of such women as we have now, without experience or knowledge of political economy of affairs, would be, as Eva says, just like women's undertaking to manage the machinery of a large steamer by feminine instincts. I hope never to see women in public life till we have had a generation of women who have some practical familiarity with the great subjects which are to be considered, about which now the best instructed women know comparatively nothing. The question which mainly interests me at present is a humanitarian one. It's an absolute fact that a great portion of womankind have their own living to get; and they do it now, as a general rule, with many of the laws and institutions of society against them. The reason of this is, that all these laws and institutions have been made by men, without any consent or concurrence of theirs. Now, as women are different from men, and have altogether a different class of feelings and wants and necessities, it certainly is right and proper that they should have some share in making the laws with which they are to be governed. It is true that the laws have been made by fathers and brothers and husbands; but no man, however, near, ever comprehends fully the necessities and feelings of women. And it seems to me that a State where all the laws are made by men, without women, is just like a family that is managed entirely by fathers and brothers, without any concurrence of mothers and sisters. That's my testimony, and my view of the matter."

"I don't see," said Eva, "if women are to make the laws in relation to their own interests, or to have a voice in making them, why they need go into politics with men in order to do it, or why they need cease to act like women. If the thing has got to be done, I would have a parliament of women meet by themselves, and deliberate and have a voice in all that concerns the State. There, that's my contribution to the programme."

"That's the way the Quakers manage their affairs in their yearly meetings," said Ida. "I remember I was visiting Aunt Dinah once, during a yearly meeting, and learned all about it. I remember the sisters had a voice in everything that was done. The Quaker women have acquired in this way a great deal of facility in the management of business, and a great knowledge of affairs. They really seem to me superior to the men."

"I can account for that," said I. "A man among the Quakers is restricted and held in, and hasn't as much to cultivate and develop him as ordinary men in the world; whereas, woman, among the Quakers, has her sphere widened and developed."

At this moment our conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Jim Fellows. He seemed quite out of breath and excited, and had no sooner passed the compliments of the evening, than he began.

"Well," said he, "Hal, I have just come from the Police Court, where there's a precious row. Our friend Dacia Dangyereyes is up for blackmailing and swindling; and there's a terrible wash of dirty linen going on. I was just in time to get the very earliest notes for our paper."

"Good!" said Mr. Van Arsdel. "I hope the creature is caught at last."

"Never believe that," said Jim. "She has as many lives as a cat. They never'll get a hold on her. She'll talk 'em all round."

"Disgusting!" said Ida.

"Ah!" said Jim, "it's part of the world as it goes. She'll come off with flying colors, doubtless, and her cock's feathers will be flaunting all the merrier for it."

"How horribly disagreeable," said Eva, "to have such women around. It makes one ashamed of one's sex."

"I think," said Ida, "there is not sufficient resemblance to a real woman in her to make much trouble on her account. She's an amphibious animal, belonging to a transition period of human society."

"Well," said Jim, "if you'll believe it, Mrs. Cerulean and two or three of the ladies of her set are actually going to invite Dacia to their salon, and patronize her."

"Impossible!" said Ida, flushing crimson; "it cannot be!"

"Oh, you don't know Mrs. Cerulean," said Jim; "Dacia called on her with her newspaper, and conducted herself in a most sweet and winning manner, and cast herself at her feet for patronage; and Mrs. Cerulean, regarding her through those glory spectacles which she usually wears, took her up immediately as a promising candidate for the latter-day. Mrs. Cerulean don't see anything in Dacia's paper that, properly interpreted, need make any trouble; because, you see, as she says, everything ought to be love, everywhere, above and below, under and over, up and down, top and side and bottom, ought to be love, LOVE. And then when there's general all-overness and all-throughness, and an entire mixed-up-ativeness, then the infinite will come down into the finite, and the finite will overflow into the infinite, and, in short, Miss Dacia's cock's feathers will sail right straight up into heaven, and we shall see her cheek by jowl with the angel Gabriel, promenading the streets of the new Jerusalem. That's the programme. Meanwhile, Dacia's delighted. She hadn't the remotest idea of being an angel, or anything of the sort; but since good judges have told her she is, she takes it all very contentedly."

"Oh," said Ida, "it really can't be true, Mr. Fellows; it really is impossible that such ladies as Mrs. Cerulean's set—ladies of family and position, ladies of real dignity and delicacy—are going to indorse the principles of that paper; principles which go to the immediate dissolution of civilized society."

"That's just what they are doing," said Jim; "And they are having a glorious high old time doing it too. Mrs. Cerulean herself intends to write for the paper on the subject of fortyfication and twentification and unification, and everything else that ends with ation. And it is thought it will improve the paper to have some nice little hymns inserted in it, to the tune of 'I Want to be an Angel.' I asked Mrs. Cerulean what if my friend Dacia should rip an oath in the midst of one of her salons—you know the little wretch does swear like a pirate; and you ought to see how serenely she looked over my head into the far distant future, and answered me so tenderly, as if I had been a two hours' chicken peeping to her. 'Oh, James,' says she, 'there are many opinions yet to be expressed on the subject of what is commonly called profanity. I have arrived at the conclusion myself, that in impassioned natures, what is called profanity, is only the state of prophetic exaltation which naturally seeks vent in intensified language. I shouldn't think the worse of this fine vigorous creature if, in a moment's inspired frenzy, she should burst the tame boundaries of ordinary language. It is true, the vulgar might call it profane. It requires anointed eyes to see such things truly. When we have risen to these heights where we now stand, we behold all things purified. There is around us a new heaven and a new earth.' And so you see, Dacia Dangyereyes turns out a tip-top angel of the new dispensation."

"Well," said Ida, rising, with heightened color, "this, of course, ends my intercourse with Mrs. Cerulean, if it be true."

"But," said Eva, "how can they bear the scandal of this disgraceful trial? This certainly will open their eyes."

"Oh," said Jim, "you will see, Mrs. Cerulean will adhere all the closer for this. It's persecution, and virtue in all ages has been persecuted; therefore, all who are persecuted, are virtuous. Don't you see the logical consistency? And then, don't the Bible say, 'Blessed are ye when men persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you?'"

"It don't appear to me," said Ida, "that she can so far go against all common sense."

"Common sense!" said Jim; "Mrs. Cerulean and her clique have long since risen above anything like common sense; all their sense is of the most uncommon kind, and relates to a region somewhere up in the clouds, where everything is made to match. They live in an imaginary world, and reason with imaginary reasons, and see people through imaginary spectacles, and have glorious good times all the while. All I wish is, that I could get up there and live; for you see I get into the state of prophetic ecstasy pretty often with this confounded hard grind below here, and then, when I rip out a naughty word, nobody sees the beauty of it. Mother looks glum. Sister Nell says, 'Oh, Jim!' and looks despairing."

"But the fact is," said Mr. Van Arsdel, "Mrs. Cerulean is a respectable woman, of respectable family, and this girl is a tramp; that's what she is; and it is absolutely impossible that Mrs. Cerulean can know what she is about."

"Well, I delicately suggested some such thing to Mrs. Cerulean," said Jim; "but, bless me! the way she set me down! Says she, 'Do you men ever inquire into the character of people that you unite with to carry your purposes? You join with anybody that will help you, without regard to antecedents!"

"She don't speak the truth," said Mr. Van Arsdel. "We men are very particular about the record of those we join with to carry our purposes. You wouldn't find a board of bankers taking a man that had a record for swindling, or a man that edited a paper arguing against all rights of property. Doctors won't admit a man among them who has the record of a quack or a malpractitioner. Clergymen won't admit a man among them who has a record of licentiousness or infidel sentiments. And if women will admit women, in utter disregard to their record of chastity, or their lax principles as to the family, they act on lower principles than any body of men."

"Besides," said I, "that kind of tolerance cuts the very ground from under the whole woman movement; for the main argument for proposing it, was to introduce into politics that superior delicacy and purity, which women manifest in family life. But if women are going to be less careful about delicacy and decorum and family purity than men are, the quagmire of politics, foul enough now, will become putrid."

"Oh, come," said Eva, "the subject does get too dreadful; I can't bear to think of it, and I move that we have a game of whist, and put an end to it. Come, now, do let's sit down sociably, and have something agreeable."

We went out into the parlor and sat down to the whist-table, Eva and Alice, with Jim Fellows and myself respectively as partners, and indulged ourselves in one of those agreeable chatty games which make the designation "whist" quite an amusing satire—one of those games played with that charming disregard of all rules which is so inspiring. In the best of spirits we talked across the table to each other, trumped our partners' queens, and did all sorts of enormities in the excitement of the brilliant by-play of conversation which we kept up all the while. It may be a familiar experience to many, that one never thinks of so many things to say, and so many fruitful topics for immediate discussion, as when one professes to be playing whist. But then, if a young gentleman wishes a good opportunity to reconnoiter a certain face, no more advantageous position can be given him than to have it vis à vis at the whist-table.

"Now, Mr. Henderson," said Alice, "we are going to make a good churchman of you."

"I am happy to hear it," said I. "I am ready to be made anything good of, that you can mention."

"Well," said Alice, "we are going to press you and Mr. Fellows, here, into the service of the church."

"Shall be perfectly enchanted!" said Jim. "If the church only knew my energies, they would have tried to get me long before."

"Then," said Eva, "you must go with us to-morrow evening; for we are going to be up all night, about the floral decorations of our church for Easter morning. Oh! you have no idea what splendid things we are going to do. We shall be at work hard, all day to-morrow, upon our wreaths and crosses; and the things must all be put up late at night so as to keep them from withering. Then, you know, we must be out again to the sunrise service."

"Why," said I, "it is a regular piece of dissipation."

"Certainly,—religious dissipation, you know," said Alice.

"Well," said Eva, "I don't know why we should not be up all night to dress the church, for once in our lives, as well as to be up all night dancing the German. Ida says it is wicked to do either. Ida makes a perfect hobby of everybody's keeping their health."

"Yes, but," said I, "if people keep themselves, generally, in temperance and soberness, they can afford a great strain, now and then, if it be for a good purpose."

"At any rate," said Eva, "you and Mr. Fellows come round and take tea with us and help us carry our trophies to the church."

---

COUSIN CAROLINE AGAIN.

About this time I received the following letter from my Cousin Caroline:

"Dear Cousin:—I have had no time to keep up correspondence with anybody for the past year. The state of my father's health has required my constant attention, day and night, to a degree that has absorbed all my power, and left no time for writing. For the last six months father has been perfectly helpless with the most distressing form of chronic rheumatism. His sufferings have been protracted and intense, so that it has been wearing even to witness them; and the utmost that I could do seemed to bring very little relief. And when, at last, death closed the scene, it seemed to be in mercy, putting an end to sufferings which were intolerable.

"For a month after his death, I was in a state of utter prostration, both physical and mental,—worn out with watching and care. My poor father; he was himself to the last, reticent, silent, undemonstrative and uncommunicative. It seemed to me that I would have given worlds for one tender word from him. I felt a pity and a love that I dared not show; his sufferings went to my very heart; but he repelled every word of sympathy, and was cold and silent to the last. Yet I believe that he really loved me and that far within this frozen circle of ice, his soul was a lonely prisoner, longing to express itself, and unable; longing for the light and warmth of that love which never could touch him in its icy depths; and I am quite sure, it is my comfort to know, that death has broken the ice and melted the bands; and I believe that he has entered the kingdom of heaven as a little child.

"The hard skies of our New England, its rocky soil, its severe necessities, make characters like his; and they intrench themselves in a similar religious faith which makes them still harder. They live to aspire and to suffer, but never to express themselves; and every soft and warm heart that is connected with them pines and suffers and dies like flowers that are thrown upon icebergs.

"Well, all is now over, and I am free of the world. I have, in the division of the property, a few acres of wood-lot, and many acres of rough, stony land, and about a hundred dollars of yearly income. I must do something, therefore, for my own support. Ever since you left us I have been reading and studying under the care of your uncle, who, since your conversation with him, has been very kind and thoughtful. But then, of course, my studies have been interrupted by some duties, and, during the last year, suspended altogether by the necessity of giving myself to the care of father.

"Now, my desire is, if I could in any way earn the means, to go to France and perfect myself in medical studies. I am told that a medical education can be obtained there by women cheaper than anywhere else; and I have cast about in my own mind how I might earn money enough to enable me to do it. Now I ask you, who are in New York and on the press, who know me thoroughly, and it also, could I, should I come to New York, gain any situation as writer for the press, which would give me an income for a year or two, by which I could make enough to accomplish my purpose? I should not wish to be always a writer; it would be too exhausting; but if I could get into a profession that I am well adapted for, I should expect to succeed in it.

"I have the ability to live and make a respectable appearance upon a very little. I know enough, practically, of the arts of woman-craft to clothe myself handsomely for a small sum, and I am willing to live in cheap obscure lodgings, and think I could board myself, also, for a very moderate sum. I am willing to undergo privations, and to encounter hard work to carry my purpose, and I write to you, dear cousin, because I know you will speak to me just as freely as though I were not a woman, and give me your unbiased opinion as to whether or no I could do anything in the line that I indicate. I know that you would give me all the assistance in your power, and feel a perfect reliance upon your friendship."

The letter here digressed into local details and family incidents not necessary to be reproduced. I resolved to lay it before Bolton. It seemed to me that his reception of it would furnish some sort of clew to the mystery of his former acquaintance with her. The entire silence that he had always maintained with regard to his former knowledge of her, while yet he secretly treasured her picture, seemed to me to indicate that he might somehow have been connected with that passage of her life referred to by my mother when she said that Caroline's father had, at one period of her life, crushed out an interest that was vital to her.

"The sly old fox," said I to myself, "always draws me on to tell him everything, while he keeps a close mouth, and I learn nothing of him." Of course, I felt that to ask any questions or seek to pry into a past which he evidently was not disposed to talk about, would be an indelicate impertinence. But my conscience and sense of honor were quite appeased by this opportunity presented by Caroline's letter. Bolton was older in the press than I, and, with all his reticence and modesty, had a wide circle of influence. He seemed contented to seek nothing for himself; but I had had occasion to notice in my own experience that he was not boasting idly when he said, on our first acquaintance, that he had some influence in literary quarters. He had already procured for me, from an influential magazine, propositions for articles which were both flattering to my pride and lucrative in the remuneration. In this way, the prospect of my yearly income, which on the part of the Great Democracy was so very inadequate, was enlarged to a very respectable figure.

I resolved, therefore, to go up to Bolton's room and put this letter into his hands. I knocked at the door, but no one answering I opened it and went in. He was not there, but an odd enough scene presented itself to me. The little tow-headed, freckled boy, that I had formerly remarked as an inmate of the apartment, was seated by the fire with a girl, somewhat younger than himself, nursing between them a large fat bundle of a baby.

"Hallo," said I, "what have we here? What are you doing here?" At this moment—before the children could answer—I heard Bolton coming up the stairs. He entered the room; a bright color mounted to his cheeks as he saw the group by the fire, and me.

"Hallo, Hal!" he said, with a sort of conscious laugh.

"Hallo, Bolton!" said I. "Have you got a foundling hospital here?"

"Oh, well, well," said he; "never mind; let 'em stay there. Do you want anything? There," said he, pulling a package of buns out of his pocket, "eat those; and when the baby gets asleep you can lay her on the bed in the other room. And there,"—to the boy,—"you read this story aloud to your sister when the baby is asleep. And now, Hal, what can I do for you? Suppose I come down into your room for awhile and talk?"

He took my arm, and we went down the stairs together; and when we got into my room he shut the door and said:

"The fact is Hal, I have to take care of that family—my washerwoman, you know. Poor Mrs. Molloy, she has a husband that about once a month makes a perfect devil of himself, so that the children are obliged to run and hide for fear of their lives. And then she has got the way of sending them to me, and I have to go down and attend to him."

[276]

"Bless me!" said I, "why will women live with such brutes? Why don't you make her separate from him?"

Bolton seated himself at my table, and leaned back in his chair, with a curious expression of countenance, very sad, yet not without a touch of humor in it.

"Well, you see," he said, "the fact is, Hal, she loves him."

"Well, she oughtn't to love him," said I.

"May be not; but she does," said he. "She loves that poor Pat Molloy so much that to be angry with him is just like your right hand being angry with your left hand. Suppose there's a great boil on the left hand, what's the right to do about it but simply bear the suffering and wait for it to get well? That, you see, is love; and because of it, you can't get women away from their husbands. What are you going to do about it?"

"But," said I, "it is perfectly absurd for a woman to cling to such a man."

"Well," said Bolton, "three weeks of the month Pat Molloy is just as kind and tender a father and husband as you will find, and then by the fourth week comes around his drunken spell, and he's a devil. Now she says, 'Sure sir, it's the drink. It's not Pat at all sir; he's not himself sir.' And she waits till it's over—taking care that he doesn't kill the children. Now, shall I persuade her to let him go to the devil? Does not Jesus Christ say, 'Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost'? He said it about a basket of bread; wouldn't he say it still more about the fragments of the human soul? If she leaves Pat, where will he go to? First, to some harlot, then to murder, and the gallows—and that gets him out of the way."

"Well," said I, "isn't he better out than in?"

"Who knows?" said Bolton. "All I have to say is, that poor Molly Molloy, with her broad Irish brogue, and her love that can't be tired, and can't give him up, and that bears, and believes, and hopes, and endures, seems to me a revelation of the Christ-like spirit a thousand times more than if she was tramping to a woman's rights convention and exposing her wrongs and calling down justice on his head."

"But," said I, "look at the children! Oughtn't she to part with him on their account?"

"Yes, look at the children," said he. "The little things have learned already, from their mother, to care for each other, and to care for their father. In their little childish way, they love and bear with him just as she does. The boy came to me this afternoon and said, 'Father's got another crazy spell.' Already he has a delicacy in his very mode of speaking; and he doesn't say his father is drunk, but that he is crazy, as he is. And then he and the little girl are so fatherly and motherly with the baby. Now, I say, all this growth of virtue around sin and sorrow is something to be revered. The fact is"—he added—

"The day for separating the tares from the wheat hasn't come yet. And it seems to me that the moral discipline of bearing with evil, patiently, is a great deal better and more ennobling than the most vigorous assertion of one's personal rights. I can see a great deal of suffering in that family from poor Pat's weakness and wickedness, but I also see most noble virtues growing up, even in these children, from the straits to which they are put. And as to poor Pat himself, he comes out of his demon-baptism penitent and humble, and more anxious to please than ever. It is really affecting to see with what zeal he serves me, when I have brought him through a 'drunk.' And yet I know that it will have to be gone over, and over, and over again. Sometimes it seems to me he is like the earth after a thunder-shower—fresher and clearer than he was before. And I am quite of Mrs. Molloy's mind—there is too much good in Pat to have him swept off into the gutter for the bad; and so, as God gives her grace to suffer, let her suffer. And if I can bear one little end of her cross, I will. If she does not save him in this life, she'll save him from sinking lower in demonism. She may only keep his head above water till he gets past the gates of death, and then, perhaps, in the next life, he will appear to be saved by just that much which she has done in keeping him up."

Bolton spoke with an intense earnestness, and a sad and solemn tone, as if he were shaken and almost convulsed by some deep, internal feeling. For some moments there was a silence between us,—the silence of a great unuttered emotion. At last, he drew a long breath, and said, "Well, Hal, what was it you wanted to talk about?"

"Oh," said I, "I have a letter from a friend of mine that I wanted to show you, to see whether you could do anything"—and I gave him Caroline's letter.

He sat down under the gas-light to read it. The sight of the hand-writing seemed to affect him at once. His large, dark eyes flashed over the letter, and he turned it quickly, and looked at the signature; a most unutterable expression passed over his face, like that of a man who is in danger of giving away to some violent emotion; and then, apparently by a great effort of self-constraint, he set himself carefully to reading the letter. He read it over two or three times, folded it up, and handed it back to me without any remark, and then sat leaning forward on the table with his face shaded with his hand.

"My cousin is a most uncommon character," I said; "and, as you will observe by this letter, has a good deal of ability as a writer."

"I am acquainted with her," he said, briefly, making a sudden movement with his hand.

"Indeed? Where did you know her?"

"Years ago," he said, briefly. "I taught the academy in her village, and she was one of my scholars. I know the character of her mind."

There was a dry brevity in all this, of a man who is afraid that he shall express more than he means to.

Said I, "I showed this letter to you because I thought you had more influence in the press than I have; and if you are acquainted with her, so much the better, as you can judge whether she can gain any employment here which would make it worth her while to come and try. I have always had an impression that she had very fine mental powers."

"There is no doubt about that," he said, hurriedly. "She is an exceptional woman."

He rose up, and took the letter from me. "If you will allow me to retain this a while," he said, "I will see what I can do; but just now I have some writing to finish. I will speak to you about it to-morrow."

That evening, I introduced the subject to my friend, Ida Van Arsdel, and gave her a sketch of Caroline's life-history. She entered into it with the warmest interest, and was enthusiastic in her desire that the plan might succeed.

"I hope that she will come to New York," she said, "so that we can make her acquaintance. Don't, pray, fail to let me know, Mr. Henderson, if she should be here, that I may call on her."

---

EASTER LILIES.

The next afternoon Jim and I kept our appointment with the Van Arsdel's. We found one of the parlors transformed to a perfect bower of floral decorations. Stars and wreaths and crosses and crowns were either just finished or in process of rapid construction under fairy fingers. When I came in, Eva and Alice were busy on a gigantic cross, to be made entirely of lilies of the valley, of which some bushels were lying around on the carpet. Ida had joined the service, and was kneeling on the floor tying up the flowers in bunches to offer them to Eva.

"You see, Mr. Henderson, the difference between modern religion and the primitive Christians," she said. "Their cross was rough wood and hard nails; ours is lilies and roses made up in fashionable drawing-rooms."

"I'm afraid," said Eva, "our crown may prove much of the same material!"

"I sometimes wonder," said Ida, "whether all the money spent for flowers at Easter could not better be spent in some mode of relieving the poor."

"Well," said Eva, "I am sorry to bring up such a parallel, but isn't that just the same kind of remark that Judas made about the alabaster vase of ointment?"

"Yes," said I; "what could be more apparently useless than a mere perfume, losing itself in the air, and vanishing entirely? And yet the Saviour justified that lavish expenditure when it was the expression of a heart-feeling."

"But," said Ida, "don't you think it very difficult to mark the line where these services and offerings to religious worship become excessive?"

"Of course it is," said I; "but no more difficult on this subject than any other."

"That's the great trouble in this life," said Eva. "The line between right and wrong seems always so indefinite, like the line between any two colors of the prism—it is hard to say just where one ends and another begins."

"It is the office of common sense," I said, "to get the exact right in all such matters—there is a sort of instinct in it."

"Well, all I have to say about it is," said Eva, "since we do spend lavishly and without stint in our houses and in our dress for adornment, we ought to do at least as much for our religion. I like to see the adornment of a church generous, overflowing, as if we gave our very best. As to these lilies, I ordered them of an honest gardener, and it goes to help support a family that would be poor if it were not for these flowers. It is better to support one or two families honestly, by buying their flowers for churches than it is to give the money away. So I look on it."

"Oh, well," said Alice, "there is no end to anything. Everything you do tends to something else; and everything leads to something; and there is never any knowing about anything; and so I think it is best just to have as good a time as you can, and do everything that is agreeable, and make everything just as pretty as it can be. And I think it is fun to trim up the church for Easter. There now! And it don't do any harm. And I just like to go to the sunrise service, if it does make one sleepy all day. What do you say, Mr. Fellows? Do you think you could go through with the whole of it?"

"Miss Alice, if you only go you will find me inspired with the spirit of a primitive Christian in this respect," said Jim. "I shall follow wherever you lead the way, if it's ever so late at night, or ever so early in the morning."

"And Mr. Henderson," said she, "may we depend on you, too?"

"By all means," said I, as I sat industriously gathering up the lilies into bunches and tying them.

"Mr. Henderson is in a hopeful way," said Eva. "I think we may have him in the true church some of these times."

"I am afraid," said Ida, "that Mr. Henderson, having seen you only in Lent, won't be able to keep track of you when the Easter rejoicings begin, and the parties recommence."

"Oh dear me!" said Eva, with a sort of shudder, "To think of that horrid wedding!"

"That's just like Eva," said Alice. "She's been, and been, and been to these things till she's tired out with them; whereas, I am just come out, and I like them, and want more of them. I don't think they are horrid at all. I am perfectly delighted about that Elmore wedding. One will see there all the new things, and all the stunning things, and all the latest devices from Paris. I was in at Tullegig's the other day, and you never saw such a sight as her rooms are! Somebody said it looked as if rainbows had been broken to pieces and thrown all round. She showed me all the different costumes that she was making up for the various parties. You know there are to be seven bride's-maids, and each of them is to wear a different color. Madame thinks 'C'est si gentil.' Then, you know, they are making such grand preparations up at that chateau of theirs. The whole garden is to be roofed in and made a ball room of. I think it will be gorgeous. I say, Mr. Fellows, if you and Mr. Henderson would like it, I know I could manage cards for you."

Jim assented, heartily, for both of us; and I added that I should like to see the affair; for I had never seen enough of that sort of thing to take away the novelty.

After tea we all sallied out to the church with our trophies. We went in two carriages, for the better accommodation of these, and had a busy time disembarking at the church and carrying them in. Here we met a large committee of co-workers, and the scene of real business commenced. Jim and I worked heroically under the direction of our fair superintendents. By midnight the church was a bower of fragrance and beauty. The chancel seemed a perfect bed of lilies, out of which rose the great white cross, shedding perfume upon the air. The baptismal font was covered with a closely woven mosaic of fragrant violets, and in each panel appeared an alternate red or white cross formed of flowers. The font was filled with a tall bouquet of white saint's-lilies, such as gardeners force for Easter.

Eva and I worked side by side this evening, and never had I seemed to know her more intimately. The fact is, among other dangerous situations to a young man's heart, none may be mentioned more seductive than to be in a church twining flowers and sorting crosses and emblems in the still holy hours of the night. One's head gets, somehow, bewildered; all worldly boundaries of cold prudence fade away; and one seems to be lifted up to some other kind of land where those that are congenial never part from each other. So I felt when, our work being all done, I retired with Eva to the shadow of a distant pew to survey the whole result. We had turned on the gas-light to show our work, and its beams, falling on thousands of these white lily-bells and on all the sacred emblems, shed a sort of chastened light. Again, somehow, as if it had been a rose-leaf floating down from heaven, I found that little hand in mine; and we spoke low to each other, in whispers, of how good and how pleasant it was to be there, and to unite in such service and work—words that meant far more than they seemed to say. Once, in the course of the evening, I saw her little glove where it had fallen into a nest of cast-off flowers, and, as no one was looking, I seized upon it as a relic, and appropriated it to my own sacred memories. Nor would I surrender it, though afterward I heard her making pathetic inquiries for it. Late at night I went home to think and dream, and woke with the first dim gray of morning, thinking of my appointment to meet her at the church.

It is a charming thing to go out in the fresh calm morning before any one is stirring. The bells for early service were dropping their notes here and there, down through the air, as if angels were calling men to awake and remember that great event which happened so silently and so unregarded, many, many years ago. I thought as I walked through the dim streets and saw here and there an early worshiper, prayer-book in hand, stealing along, of the lonely women who, years ago, in Jerusalem, sought the sepulchre to see where they had laid Him.

Little twittering sparrows filled the ivy on the outside of the church and made it vibrate with their chirpings. There was the promise in the brightening skies of a glorious sunrise. I stood waiting awhile, quite alone, till one by one the bands of youths and maidens came from different directions.

I had called Jim as I went out, but he, preferring to take the utmost latitude for sleep, looked at his watch and told me he would take another half hour before he joined us.

Eva was there, however, among the very first. The girls, she said, were coming. We went into the dim church together and sat ourselves down in the shady solitude of one of the slips waiting for the morning light to pour through the painted windows. We said nothing to each other; but the silence was sociable and not blank. There are times in life when silence between two friends is better than speech; for they know each other by intuition.

Gradually the church filled with worshipers; and as the rising sun streamed through the painted windows and touched all the lilies with brightness, a choir of children in the organ-loft broke forth into carols like so many invisible birds. And then, the old chant,

"Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more,"

seemed to thrill every heart.

After the service came a general shaking of hands and greetings from neighbors and friends, as everybody walked round examining the decorations.

"Now, Mr. Henderson," said Eva, as she stood with me surveying this scene, "is not a church which preserves all these historical memorials a most lovely one? Ought we not thus to cherish the memory of that greatest event that ever happened in this world? And how beautiful it is to bring up children year after year by festivals like these, to mark off their life in acts of remembrance."

"You speak truly," I said, sharing her enthusiasm. "I could wish the church of all good people had never ceased to keep Easter; indeed, they who do disregard it seem to me a cold minority out of the great fellowship. I think it is fortunate that the Romish and the Episcopal churches are bringing us, descendants of the Puritans, back to those primitive customs. I, for one, come back willingly and joyfully."

[Eva Van Arsdel to Isabel Convers.]

My Darling Belle:—I have been a naughty girl to let your letter lie so long. But my darling, it is not true, as you there suggest, that the bonds of sisterly affection, which bound us in school, are growing weaker, and that I no longer trust you as a confidential friend. Believe me, the day will never come, dearest Belle, when I shall cease to unfold to you every innermost feeling.

And now to come to the point about "that Mr. Henderson." Indeed, my love, your cautions are greatly mistaken. It is true that, much to my surprise, he has taken a fancy to visit quite intimately at our house, and has made himself a general favorite in the family. Mamma, and Aunt Maria, and all the girls like him so much. But, then, you must know he is generally set down as Ida's admirer. At all events Ida and he are extremely good friends; and when he calls here he generally spends the largest part of the evening in her sanctum; and they have most edifying conversations on all the approved modern topics—the Darwinian theory, woman's rights, and everything else you can think of. One thing I admit is a little peculiar—he notices everything that I say in conversation—I must own. I never saw such an observing creature. For example, the first evening he was at our house, I just accidentally dropped before him the remark that I was going to early morning services in Lent, and would you believe it?—the next morning he was there too, and walked home with me. I was the more astonished, because he does not belong to the Church—so one would not expect it, you know. He is a member of the Bethany Church himself, but he seems delighted with our services, and talks about them beautifully—as well as our rector could. I really wish you could have heard him! He seems to have such an earnest, thoughtful mind; and what I like in him is, that he never flatters, and talks that matter-of-course complimentary nonsense, that some men think is the thing to be talked to ladies; neither has he that way of talking down to one that superior men sometimes have, when they are talking with us girls. I read somewhere this sentiment—that we may know the opinion people have of us by the kind of conversation they address to us—and if this is so I ought to be flattered by the way Mr. Henderson talks to me; for I think he shows quite as much anxiety to find out my opinion on all subjects as he does Ida's. You will, perhaps, think it rather peculiar if I tell you that ever since that first morning he has been as constant at the morning services as I have, and always walks home with me. In this way we really are getting quite intimately acquainted. Now, Belle, don't put on that knowing look of yours, and intimate that there is anything particular in all this, for there is not. I do assure you there is not a bit of nonsense in it. You would be perfectly astonished to hear how gravely and philosophically we talk. We moralize and philosophize, and as Jim Fellows would say, "come the high moral dodge" in a way that would astonish you.

And yet, Belle, they wrong us who are called fashionable girls, when they take for granted that we are not capable of thinking seriously, and that we prefer those whose conversation consists only of flattery and nonsense. It is mainly because I feel that Mr. Henderson has deep, serious purposes in life, and because he appreciates and addresses himself to the deepest part of my nature that his friendship is so valuable to me. I say friendship advisedly, dear Belle, because I insist upon it that there can be friendship, pure and simple, between a gentleman and a lady; in our case there is "only this and nothing more."

How very teasing and provoking it is that there cannot be this friendship without observation and comment! Now I am very careful to avoid any outward appearance of special intimacy that might make talk, and he appears to be very careful also. After the first day at morning service he did not join me immediately on going out of church, but went out at another door and joined me at the next corner. I was so thankful for it, for old Mrs. Eyelett was there with her sharp eyes, and I know by experience that though she is a pillar of the church she finds abundance of leisure from her devotions to watch all the lambs of the flock; and I am one that everybody seems to keep specially in mind as proper to be looked after. If I only speak to, or look at, or walk with the same person more than once, the airy tongues of rumor are busy engaging and marrying me. Isn't it horrid? I would not have old Mrs. Eyelett get anything of this sort into her head for the world; it's so disagreeable to have such a thing get to a gentleman's hearing when he knows there is no truth in it; and the world has condescended to interest itself so much in my fortunes that it seems dangerous for anybody to be more than civil without being set down as an aspirant.

The only comfort there is in being persistently reported engaged to Mr. Sydney is that it serves to keep off other reports, and I sometimes think of the old fable of the fox who would not have the present swarm of flies driven off lest there should come a new one in its place. How I wish people would let one's private affairs alone! Here I must break off, for there is company down stairs.

Wednesday Eve.

I have let this thing lie some days, dear Belle, because there has been so much going and coming, time has flitted away. Mr. H. has been at our house a good deal. I have made a discovery about him. He has a beautiful cousin that he thinks everything of—"Cousin Caroline"—and she is a very superior woman. So you see how silly all your suggestions are, Belle. For aught I know he may be engaged to this cousin Caroline. I believe she is coming to New York, and I am just wild to see her. You know I want to see if I shall like her. She must be just the thing for him; and I hope I shall like her. Ida thinks she shall. Aunt Maria, who wants to portion off the fate of mortals, has made up her mind that Mr. H. must be an admirer of Ida's; and in short, that they are to be for each other.

Ida looks down on all this sort of thing with her placid superiority. She has a perfect contempt for it, so very perfect that it is quiet. She does not even trouble herself to express it. Ida likes Mr. H. very much, and has a straightforward, open, honest friendship with him, and doesn't trouble her head a bit what people may say.

Saturday Morning.

We are all busy now about Easter decorations. We have ordered no end of flowers, and are going into adornments on a great scale. We press all hands in that we can get. Mr. Henderson and Jim Fellows are coming to-night to tea to help us carry our things to church and get them up.

Monday Morning.

I am so tired. We were up nearly all night Saturday, and then at the sunrise service Easter morning, and services all day. Beautiful! Lovely as they could be! But if one has a good time in this world, one must pay for it—and I am all tired out.

Mr. Henderson was with us through the whole affair. One thing seemed to me quite strange. I dropped my glove among some flowers, while I was busy putting up a wreath of lilies, and I saw him through a bower of hemlock trees walk up to the spot, and slyly confiscate the article. In a moment I came back, and said, "I dropped my glove here. Where can it be?" The wretched creature helped me search for it, with every appearance of interest, but never offered to restore the stolen goods. It was all so quiet—so private! You know, gentlemen often pretend, as a matter of gallantry, that they want your glove, or a ribbon, or some such memento; but this was all so secret. He evidently thinks I don't know it; and, Belle—what should you think about it?

Eva.

---

ENCHANTMENT AND DISENCHANTMENT.

During a month after Easter, I was, so to speak, in a state of mental somnambulism, seeing the visible things of this mortal life through an enchanted medium, in which old, prosaic, bustling New York, with its dry drudgeries and uninteresting details, became suddenly vivified and glorified; just as when some rosy sunset floods with light the matter-of-fact architecture of Printing-House Square, and etherealizes every line, and guides every detail, and heightens every bit of color, till it all seems picturesque and beautiful.

I did not know what was the matter with me, but I felt somehow as if I had taken the elixir of life and was breathing the air of an immortal youth. Whenever I sat down to write I found my inspiration. I no longer felt myself alone in my thoughts and speculations; I wrote to another mind, a mind that I felt would recognize mine; and then I carried what I had written, and read it to Ida Van Arsdel for her criticisms. Ida was a capital critic, and had graciously expressed her willingness and desire to aid me in this way, to any extent. But was it Ida who was my inspiration?

Sitting by, bent over her embroidery, or coming in accidentally and sitting down to listen, was Eva; full of thought, full of inquiry; sometimes gay and airy, sometimes captious and controversial—always suggestive and inspiring. From these readings grew talks protracted and confidential, on all manner of subjects; and each talk was the happy parent of more talks, till it seemed that there was growing up an endless series of occasions for our having long and exciting interviews; for, what was said yesterday, in the reflections and fancies of the night following, immediately blossomed out into queries and consequences and inferences on both sides, which it was immediately and pressingly necessary that we should meet to compare and adjust. Now, when two people are in this state of mind, it is surprising what a number of providential incidents are always bringing them together. It was perfectly astonishing to us both to find how many purely accidental interviews we had. If I went out for a walk, I was sure, first or last, to meet her. To be sure I took to walking very much in streets and squares where I had observed she might be expected to appear—but that did not make the matter seem to me the less unpremeditated.

I had been in the habit of taking a daily constitutional stroll in Central Park, and the Van Arsdels were in the habit of driving there, at orthodox fashionable hours. In time, it seemed to happen that this afternoon stroll of mine always brought forth the happy fruit of a pleasant interview.

There was no labyrinth or bower or summer-house, no dingle or bosky dell, so retired that I did not find it occasionally haunted by the presence of this dryad.

True she was not there alone; sometimes with Ida, sometimes with Alice, or with a lively bevy of friends—but it made no difference with whom, so long as she was there.

The many sins of omission and commission of which the City Fathers of New York are accused, are, I think, wonderfully redeemed and covered by the beauties of the provision for humanity which they have made in Central Park. Having seen every park in the world, I am not ashamed to glorify our own, as providing as much beauty and cheap pleasure as can anywhere be found under the sun.

Especially ought all lovers par excellence to crown the projectors and executors of this Park with unfading wreaths of olive and myrtle. It is so evidently adapted to all the purposes of falling in love and keeping in love that the only wonder is that any one can remain a bachelor in presence of such advantages and privileges! There is all the peacefulness, all the seclusion, all the innocent wildness of a country Arcadia, given for the price of a five cents' ride in the cars to any citizen who chooses to be made moral and innocent.

The Central Park is an immortal poem, forever addressing itself to the eye and ear in the whirl and bubble of that hot and bewildered city. It is a Wordsworth immortalized and made permanent, preaching to the citizens.

Certainly during this one season of my life I did full justice to the beauties of Central Park. There was not a nook or corner where wild flowers unfolded, where white-stemmed birches leaned over still waters, or ivies clambered over grottoed rocks, which I did not explore; and when in the winding walks of "the Ramble" I caught distant sight of a white drapery, or heard through budding thickets the silvery sounds of laughing and talking, I knew I was coming on one of those pleasant surprises for which the Park grounds are so nicely arranged.

Sometimes Eva would come with a carriage full of children, and with the gay little fairies would pass a sunny afternoon, swinging them, watching them riding in the little goat-carriages, or otherwise presiding over their gaieties. We had, under these circumstances, all the advantage of a tête-à-tête without any of the responsibility of seeking or prolonging it. In fact, the presence of others was a salvo to my conscience, and to public appearance, for, looking on Eva as engaged to another, I was very careful not to go over a certain line of appearances in my relations to her. My reason told me that I was upon dangerous ground for my own peace, but I quieted reason as young men in my circumstances generally do, by the best of arguments.

I said to myself that, "No matter if she were engaged, why shouldn't I worship at her shrine, and cherish her unage as Dante did that of Beatrice, and Tasso that of Eleanora d'Este?" and so on.

"To be sure," I reflected, "this thing can never come to anything; of course she never can be anything to you more than a star in the heavens. But," I said in reply, "she is mine to worship and adore with the worship that we give to all beautiful things. She is mine as are fair flowers, and the blue skies, and the bright sunshine, which cheer and inspire."

I was conscious that I had in my own most sacred receptacle at home, a little fairy glove that she had dropped, to which I had no claim; but I said to myself, "When a leaf falls from the rose, who shall say that I shall not gather it up?" So, too, I had one of those wonderful, useless little bits of fairy gossamer, which Eve's daughters call a pocket-handkerchief. I had yet so little sense of sin that I stole that too, kept the precious theft folded in my prayer-book, and thought she would never know it. I began to understand the efficacy that is ascribed to holy relics, for it seemed to me that if ever any deadly trouble or trial should come upon me, I would lay these little things upon my heart, and they would comfort me.

And yet, all this while, I solemnly told myself I was not in love,—oh, no, not in the least. This was friendship—the very condensed, distilled essence of friendship, that and nothing more. To be sure it was friendship set to a heroic key—friendship of a rare quality. I longed to do something for her, and often thought how glad I would be to give my life for her. Having a very active imagination, sometimes as I lay awake at night I perpetrated all sorts of confusions in the city of New York, for the sole purpose of giving myself an opportunity to do something for her. I set fire to the Van Arsdel mansion several times, in different ways, and, rushing in, bore her through the flames. I inaugurated a horrible plot against the life of her father, and rushing in at the critical moment, delivered the old gentleman that I might revel in her delight. I became suddenly a millionaire by the death of a supposititious uncle in the East Indies, and immediately proceeded to lay all my treasures at her feet.

As for Mr. Wat Sydney, it is incredible the resignation with which I saw him ship-wrecked, upset in stages, crushed in railroad accidents, while I appeared on the scene as the consoling friend; not that I had, of course, any purpose of causing such catastrophes, but there was a degree of resignation attending the view of them that was soothing.

I had in my heart a perfect certainty that Sydney was unworthy of her, but of course racks and thumbscrews should not draw from me the slightest intimation of the kind, in her presence.

So matters went on for some weeks. But sometimes it happens when a young fellow has long wandered in a beautiful dream of this kind, a sudden and harsh light of reality and of common-sense, every-day life, is thrown upon him in an unforeseen moment; and this moment at last arrived for me.

One evening, when I dropped in for a call at the Van Arsdel mansion, the young ladies were all out at a concert, but Mrs. Van Arsdel was at home, and for some reason, unusually bland and motherly.

"My dear Mr. Henderson," she said, "it is rather hard on you to be obliged to accept an old woman like me, as a substitute for youth and beauty; but really, I am not sorry, on the whole, that the girls are out, for I would like a little chance of having a free, confidential talk with you. Your relations with us have been so intimate and kindly, I feel, you know, quite as if you were one of us."

I replied, of course, that 'I was extremely flattered and gratified by her kindness,' and assured her with effusion, and if I mistake not, with tears in my eyes, that 'she had made me forget that I was a stranger in New York, and that I should always cherish the most undying recollection of the kindness that I had received in her family, and of the pleasant hours I had spent there.'

"Ah, yes, indeed!" she said, "Mr. Henderson, it is pleasant to me to think that you feel so. I like to give young men a home feeling. But after all," she continued, "one feels a little pensive once in a while, in thinking that one cannot always keep the home-circle unbroken. Indeed, I never could see how some mothers could seem to rejoice as they do in the engagement of their daughters. There is Mrs. Elmore, now, her feelings are perfectly inexplicable to me."

I assured her that I was quite of her way of thinking, and agreed with her perfectly.

"Now," she said, "as the time comes on, when I begin to think of parting with Eva, though to the very best man in the world, do you know, Mr. Henderson, it really makes me feel sad?"

I began at this moment to find the drift of the conversation becoming very embarrassing and disagreeable to me, but I mustered my energies to keep up my share in it with a becoming degree of interest.

"I am to understand, then," said I, forcing a smile, "that Miss Eva's engagement with Mr. Sydney is a settled fact?"

"Well, virtually so," she replied. "Eva is averse to the publicity of public announcements; but—you know how it is, Mr. Henderson, there are relations which amount to the same thing as an engagement." Here Mrs. Van Arsdel leaned back on the sofa and drew a letter from her pocket, while the words of my part of the conversation did not seem to be forthcoming. I sat in embarrassed silence.

"The fact is, Mr. Henderson," she said, settling the diamonds and emeralds on her white, shapely fingers, "I have received a letter to-day from Mr. Sidney,—he is a noble fellow," she added, with empressment.

I secretly wished the noble fellow at Kamtschatka, but I said, in sympathetic tones, "Ah, indeed?" as if waiting for the farther communication, which I perceived she was determined to bestow on me.

"Yes," she said, "he is coming to New York in a short time, and then, I suppose, there is no doubt that all will be finally arranged. I confess to you I have the weakness to feel a little depressed about it. Did you ever read Jean Ingelow's Songs of Seven, Mr. Henderson? I think she touches so beautifully on the trials of mothers in giving up their daughters?"

I said, "I only trust that Mr. Sydney is in some degree worthy of Miss Van Arsdel; though," I added with warmth, "no man can be wholly so."

"Eva is a good girl," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, "and I must confess that the parting from her will be the greatest trial of my life. But I thought I would let you know how matters stood, because of the very great confidence which we feel in you."

I found presence of mind to acknowledge politely my sense of the honor conferred. Mrs. Van Arsdel continued playing prettily with her rings.

"One thing more perhaps I ought to say, Mr. Henderson, while your intimacy in our family is and has been quite what I desire, yet you know people are so absurd, and will say such absurd things, that it might not be out of the way to suggest a little caution; you know one wouldn't want to give rise to any reports that might be unpleasant—anything, you know, that might reach Mr. Sydney's ear—you understand me."

"My dear Mrs. Van Arsdel, is it possible that anything has been said?"

"Now, now, don't agitate yourself, Mr. Henderson; I know what you are going to say—no, nothing of the kind. But you know that we elderly people, who know the world and just what stupid and unreasonable things people are always saying, sometimes have to give you young folks just the slightest little caution. Your conduct in this family has been all that is honorable, and gentlemanly, and unexceptionable, Mr. Henderson, and such as would lead us to repose the most perfect confidence in you. In fact, I beg you to consider this communication with regard to Eva's connection with Mr. Sydney, as quite in confidence."

"I certainly shall do so," said I, rising to take my leave, with much the same sort of eagerness with which one rises from a dentist's chair, after having his nerves picked at. As at this moment the voices of the returning party broke up our interview, I immediately arose, and excusing myself with the plea of an article to finish, left the house and walked home in a state of mind as disagreeable as my worst enemy could have wished. Like all delicate advisers who are extremely fearful of hurting your feelings, Mrs. Van Arsdel had told me nothing definite, and yet had said enough to make me supremely uncomfortable. What did she mean, and how much did she mean? Had there been reports? Was this to be received as an intimation from Eva herself? Had she discovered the state of my feelings, and was she, through her mother, warning me of my danger?

All my little romance seemed disenchanted. These illusions of love are like the legends of hidden treasures guarded by watchful spirits which disappear from you if you speak a word; or like an enchanting dream, which vanishes if you start and open your eyes. I tossed to and fro restlessly all night, and resolved to do precisely the most irrational thing that I could have done, under the circumstances, and that was to give up going to the Van Arsdel house, and to see Eva no more.

The next morning, however, showed me that I could not make so striking a change in my habits without subjecting myself to Jim Fellows' remarks and inquiry. I resolved on a course of gradual emancipation and detachment.

[Eva Van Arsdel to Isabel Convers.]

My Dearest Belle:—Since I wrote to you last there have been the strangest changes. I scarcely know what to think. You remember I told you all about Easter Eve, and a certain person's appearance, and about the stolen glove and all that. Your theory of accounting for all this was precisely mine; in fact I could think of no other. And, Belle, if I could only see you I could tell you of a thousand little things that make me certain that he cares for me more than in the way of mere friendship. I thought I could not be mistaken in that. There has been scarcely a day since our acquaintance began when I have not in some way seen him or heard from him; you know all those early services, when he was as constant as the morning, and always walked home with me; then, he and Jim Fellows always spend at least one evening in a week at our house, and there are no end of accidental meetings. For example, when we take our afternoon drives at Central Park we are sure to see them sitting on the benches watching us go by, and it came to be quite a regular thing when we stopped the carriage at the terrace and got out to walk to find them there, and then Alice would go off with Jim Fellows, and Mr. H. and I would stroll up and down among the lilac hedges and in all those lovely little nooks and dells that are so charming. I'm quite sure I never explored the treasures of the Park as I have this Spring. We have rambled everywhere—up hill and down dale—it certainly is the loveliest and most complete imitation of wild nature that ever art perfected. One could fancy one's self deep in the country in some parts of it; far from all the rush and whirl and frivolity of this great, hot, dizzy New York. You may imagine that with all this we have had opportunity to become very intimate. He has told me all about himself, all the history of his life, all about his mother, and his home; it seems hardly possible that one friend could speak more unreservedly to another, and I, dear Belle, have found myself speaking with equal frankness to him. We know each other so perfectly that there has for a long time seemed to be only a thin impalpable cob-web barrier between us; but you know, Belle, that airy filmy barrier is something that one would not by a look or a word disturb. For weeks I have felt every day that surely the next time we meet all this must come to a crisis. That he would say in words what he says in looks—in involuntary actions—what in fact I am perfectly sure of. Till he speaks I must be guarded. I must hold myself back from showing him the kindly interest I really feel. For I am proud, as you know, Belle, and have always held the liberty of my heart as a sacred treasure. I have always felt a secret triumph in the consciousness that I did not care for anybody, and that my happiness was wholly in my own hands, and I mean to keep it so. Our friendship is a pleasant thing enough, but I am not going to let it become too necessary, you understand. It isn't that I care so very much, but my curiosity is really excited to know just what the real state of the case is; one wants to investigate interesting phenomena you know. When I saw that little glove movement on Easter Eve I confess I thought the game all in my own hands, and that I could quietly wait to say "checkmate" in due form and due time; but after all nothing came of it; that is, nothing decisive; and I confess I didn't know what to think. Sometimes I have fancied some obstacle or entanglement or commitment with some other woman—this Cousin Caroline perhaps—but he talks about her to me in the most open and composed manner. Sometimes I fancy he has heard the report of my engagement to Sydney. If he has, why doesn't he ask me about it? I have no objection to telling him, but I certainly shall not open the subject myself. Perhaps, as Ida thinks, he is proud and poor and not willing to be a suitor to a rich young good-for-nothing. Well, that can't be helped, he must be a suitor if he wins me, for I shan't be; he must ask me, for I certainly shan't ask him, that's settled. If he would "ask me pretty," now, who knows what nice things he might hear? I would tell him, perhaps, how much more one true noble heart is worth in my eyes than all that Wat Sydney has to give. Sometimes I am quite provoked with him that he should look so much, and yet say no more, and I feel a naughty wicked inclination to flirt with somebody else just to make him open those "grands yeux" of his a little wider and to a little better purpose. Sometimes I begin to feel a trifle vindictive and as if I should like to give him a touch of the claw. The claw, my dear, the little pearly claw that we women keep in reserve in the "patte de velours," our only and most sacred weapon of defense.

The other night, at Mrs. Cerulean's salon, she was holding forth with great effect on woman's right to court men—as natural and indefeasible—and I told her that I considered our right to be courted far more precious and inviolable. Of course it is so. The party that makes the proposals is the party that must take the risk of refusal, and who would wish to do that? It puts me out of all patience just to think of it. If there is anything that vexes me it is that a man should ever feel sure that a woman's heart is at his disposal before he has asked for it prettily and properly in all due form, and, my dear, I have the fear of this before my eyes, even in our most intimate moments. He shall not feel too sure of me.

Wednesday Evening.

My dear Belle, I can't think what in the world is up now; but something or other has happened to a certain person that has changed all our relations. For more than a week I have scarcely seen him. He called with Jim Fellows on the usual evening, but did not go into Ida's room, and hardly came near me, and seemed all in a flutter to leave all the time. He was at the great Elmore wedding, and so was I, but we scarcely spoke all the evening. I could see him following all my motions and watching me at a distance, but as sure as I came into a room he seemed in a perfect flutter to get out of it, and yet no sooner had he done so than he secured some position where he could observe me at a distance. I was provoked enough, and I thought if my lord wanted to observe, I'd give him something to see, so I flirted with Jerrold Livingstone, whom I don't care a copper about, within an inch of his life, and I made a special effort to be agreeable to all the danglers and moustaches that I usually take delight in snubbing, and I could see that he looked quite wretched, which was a comfort—but yet he wouldn't come near me till just as I was going to leave, when he came to beg I would stay longer and declared that he hadn't seen anything of me. It was a little too much! I assumed an innocent air and surveyed him "de haut en bas" and said, "Why, dear me, Mr. Henderson, possible that you've been here all this time? Where have you kept yourself?" and then I handed my bouquet to Livingstone and swept by in triumph; his last look after me as I went down stairs was tragical, you may believe. Well, I can't make him out, but I don't care. I won't care. He was free to come. He shall be free to go; but isn't it vexatious that in cases of this kind one cannot put an end to the tragedy by a simple common-sense question?

One doesn't care so very much, you know, what is the matter with these creatures, only one is curious to know what upon earth makes them act so. A man sets up a friendship with you, and then looks and acts as if he adored you, as if he worshiped the ground you tread on, and then is off at a tangent with a tragedy air, and you are not allowed to say "My dear sir, why do you behave so? why do you make such a precious goose of yourself?"

The fact is, these friendships of women with men are all fol-de-rol. The creatures always have an advantage over you. They can make every advance and come nearer and nearer and really make themselves quite agreeable, not to say necessary, and then suddenly change the whole footing and one cannot even ask why. One cannot say, as to another woman, "What is the matter? what has altered your manner?" She cannot even show that she notices the change, without loss of self-respect. A woman in friendship with a man is made heartless by this very necessity, she must always hold herself ready to change hands and make her chassé to right or left with all suitable indifference whenever her partner is ready for another move in the cotillion.

Well, so be it. I fancy I can do this as well as another. I never shall inquire into his motives. I'm sorry for him, too, for he looked quite haggard and unhappy. Well; it's his own fault; for if he would only be open with me he'd find it to his advantage—perhaps.

You are quite mistaken, dear, in what you have heard about his belonging to that radical party of strange creatures who rant and rage about progress in our times. Like all generous, magnanimous men, who are conscious of strength, he sympathizes with the weak, and is a champion of woman wherever she is wronged; and certainly in many respects, we must all admit women are wronged by the laws and customs of society. But no man could be nicer in his sense of feminine delicacy and more averse to associating with bold and unfeminine women than he. I must defend him there. I am sure that nothing could be more distasteful to him than the language and conduct of many of these dreadful female reformers of our day. If I am out of sorts with him I must at least do him this justice.

You inquire about Alice and Jim Fellows; my dear, there can be nothing there. They are perfectly well matched; a pair of flirts, and neither trusts the other an inch farther than they can see. Alice has one of those characters that lie in layers like the geologic strata that our old professor used to show us. The top layer is all show, and display and ambition; dig down below that and you find a warm volcanic soil where noble plants might cast root. But at present she is all in the upper stratum. She must have her run of flirting and fashion and adventure, and just now a splendid marriage is her ideal, but she is capable of a great deal in the depths of her nature. All I hope is she will not marry till she has got down into it, but she is starting under full sail now, coquetting to right and left, making great slaughter.

She looked magnificently at the wedding and quite outshone me. She has that superb Spanish style of beauty which promises to wear well and bloom out into more splendor as time goes on, and she has a good heart with all her nonsense.

Well, dear, what a long letter! and must I add to it the account of the wedding glories—lists of silver and gold tea sets, and sets of pearls and diamonds? My dear, only fancy Tiffany's counters transferred bodily, with cards from A., B., and C., presenting this and that; fancy also the young men of your acquaintance silly-drunk, or stupid-drunk in the latter part of the night in the supper-room; fancy, if you can, the bridegroom carried up stairs, because he couldn't go up on his own feet!—this is a wedding! Never mind! the bride had three or four sets of diamond shoe-buckles, and rubies and emeralds in the profusion of the Arabian Nights. Well, it will be long before I care for such a wedding! I am sick of splendors, sated with nick-nacks, my doll is stuffed with saw-dust, &c., &c., but I shall ever be your loving

Eva.

P. S.—My Dear—A case of conscience!—Would it be a sin to flirt a little with Sydney, just enough to aggravate somebody else? Sydney's, you mind, is not a deep heart-case. He only wants me because I am hard to catch, and have been the fashion. I'll warrant him against breaking his heart for anybody. However, I don't believe I will flirt after all I'll—try some other square of the chess-board.

The confidential conversation held with me by Mrs. Van Arsdel had all the effect on my mental castle-building that a sudden blow had on Alnaschar's basket of glass ware in the Arabian tales.

Nobody is conscious how far he has been in dreamland till he is awakened. I was now fully aroused to the fact that I was in love with Eva Van Arsdel, to all intents and purposes, so much in love as made the nourishing and cherishing of an intimate friendship an impossibility, and only a specious cloak for a sort of moral dishonesty. Now I might have known this fact in the beginning, and I scolded and lectured myself for my own folly in not confessing it to myself before. I had been received by the family as a friend. I had been trusted with their chief treasure, with the understanding that it was to belong not to me but another, and there was a species of moral indelicacy to my mind in having suffered myself to become fascinated by her as I now felt that I was. But I did not feel adequate to congratulating her as the betrothed bride of another man; nay, more, when I looked back on the kind of intimate and confidential relations that had been growing up between us, I could not but feel that it was not safe for me to continue them. Two natures cannot exactly accord, cannot keep time and tune together, without being conscious of the fact and without becoming necessary to each other; and such relations in their very nature tend to grow absorbing and exclusive. It was plain to me that if Eva were to marry Wat Sydney I could not with honor and safety continue the kind of intimacy we had been so thoughtlessly and so delightfully enjoying for the past few weeks.

But how to break it off without an explanation, and how make that explanation? There is a certain responsibility resting on a man of conscience and honor, about accepting all that nearness of access, and that closeness of intimacy which the ignorant innocence of young girls often invites. From his very nature, from his education, from his position in society, a young man knows more of what the full significance and requirements of marriage are to be than a young woman can, and he must know the danger of absorbing and exclusive intimacy with other than a husband. The instincts of every man teach that marriage must be engrossing and monopolizing, that it implies a forsaking of all others, and a keeping unto one only; and how could that be when every taste and feeling, every idiosyncracy and individual peculiarity made the society of some other person more agreeable?

Without undue personal vanity, a man will surely know when there is a special congeniality of nature between himself and a certain woman, and he is bound in conscience and honor to look ahead in all his intimacies and see what must be the inevitable result of them according to the laws of the human mind. Because I had neglected this caution, because I had yielded myself blindly to the delicious enchantment of a new enthusiasm, I had now come to a place where I knew neither how to advance nor recede.

I could not drop this intimacy, so dangerous to my peace and honor, without risk of offending; to explain was, in fact, to solicit. I might confess all, cast myself at her feet—but supposing she should incline to mercy—and with a woman's uncalculating disinterestedness accept my love in place of wealth and station, what should I then do?

Had I been possessed of a fortune even half equal to Mr. Sydney's; had I, in fact, any settled and assumed position to offer, I would have avowed my love boldly and suffered her to decide. But I had no advantage to stand on. I was poor, and had nothing to give but myself; and what man is vain enough to think that he is in himself enough to make up for all that may be wanting in externals?

Besides this, Eva was the daughter of a rich family, and an offer of marriage from me must have appeared to all the world the interested proposal of a fortune-hunter. Of what avail would it be under such circumstances to plead that I loved her for herself alone? I could fancy the shout of incredulous laughter with which the suggestion would be received in the gay world.

Now, if there was anything that my pride revolted from as an impossibility, it was coming as a poor suitor to a great rich family. Were I even sure that Eva loved me, how could I do that? Would not all the world say that to make use of my access in the family to draw her down from a splendid position in life to poverty and obscurity was on my part a dishonorable act? Could I trust myself enough to feel that it was justice to her?

The struggle that a young man has to engage in to secure a self-supporting position, is of a kind to make him keenly alive to material values. Dr. Franklin said, "If you would learn the value of money, try to borrow some." I would say rather, Try to earn some, and to live only on what you earn. My own hard experience on this subject led me to reflect very seriously on the responsibility which a man incurs in inducing a woman of refinement and culture to look to him as her provider.

In our advanced state of society there are a thousand absolute wants directly created by culture and refinement; and whatever may be said about the primary importance of personal affection and sympathy as the foundation of a happy marriage, it is undoubtedly true that a certain amount of pecuniary ease and security is necessary as a background on which to develop agreeable qualities. A man and woman much driven, care-worn, and overtaxed, often have little that is agreeable to show to each other. I queried with myself then, whether, as Eva's true friend, I should not wish that she might marry a respectable man, devoted to her, who could keep her in all that elegance and luxury she was so fitted to adorn and enjoy; and whether if I could do it, I ought to try to put myself in his place in her mind.

A man who detects himself in an unfortunate passion has always the refuge of his life-object. To the true man, the thing that he hopes to do always offers some compensation for the thing he ceases to enjoy.

It was fortunate therefore for me, that just in this crisis of my life, my friendship with Bolton opened before me the prospect of a permanent establishment in connection with the literary press of the times.

---

A NEW OPENING.

"Henderson," said Bolton to me, one day, "how long are you engaged on the Democracy?"

"Only for this year," said I.

"Because," said he, "I have something to propose to you which I hope may prove a better thing. Hestermann & Co. sent for me yesterday in secret session. The head manager of their whole set of magazines and papers has resigned, and is going to travel in Europe, and they want me to take the place."

"Good! I am heartily glad of it," said I. "I always felt that you were not in the position that you ought to have. You will accept, of course."

"Whether I accept or not depends on you," he replied.

"I cannot understand," said I.

"In short, then," said he, "the responsibility is a heavy one, and I cannot undertake it without a partner whom I can trust as myself—I mean," he added, "whom I can trust more than myself."

"You are a thousand times too good," said I. "I should like nothing better than such a partnership, but I feel oppressed by your good opinion. Are you sure that I am the one for you?"

"I think I am," said he, "and it is a case where I am the best judge; and it offers to you just what you want—a stable position, independence to express yourself, and a good income. Hestermann & Co. are rich, and wise enough to know that liberality is the best policy."

"But," said I, "their offers are made to you, and not to me."

"Well, of course, their acquaintance with me is of old standing; but I have spoken to them of you, and I am to bring you round to talk with them to-morrow; but, after all, the whole power of arranging is left with me. They put a certain sum at my disposal, and I do what I please with it. In short," he said, smiling, "I hold the living, and you are my curate. Well," he added, "of course you need time to think matters over; here is paper on which I have made a little memorandum of an arrangement between us; take it and dream on it, and let me know to-morrow what you think of it."

I went to my room and unfolded the agreement, and found the terms liberal beyond all my expectations. In fact, the income of the principal was awarded to me, and that of the subordinate to Bolton.

I took the paper the next evening to Bolton's room. "Look here, Bolton," said I, "these terms are simply absurd."

"How so?" he said, lifting his eyes tranquilly from his book. "What's the matter with them?"

"Why, you give me all the income."

"Wait till you see how I'll work you," he said, smiling. "I'll get it out of you; you see if I don't."

"But you leave yourself nothing."

"I have as much as I would have, and that's enough. I'm a literary monk, you know, with no family but Puss and Stumpy, poor fellow, and I need the less."

Stumpy upon this pricked up his ragged ears with an expression of lively satisfaction, sat back on his haunches, and rapped the floor with his forlorn bit of a tail.

"Poor Stumpy," said Bolton, "you don't know that you are the homeliest dog in New York, do you? Well, as far as you go, you are perfect goodness, Stumpy, though you are no beauty."

Upon this high praise, Stumpy seemed so elated that he stood on his hind paws and rested his rough fore-feet on Bolton's knee, and looked up with eyes of admiration.

"Man is the dog's God," said Bolton. "I can't conceive how any man can be rude to his dog. A dog," he added, fondling his ragged cur, "why, he's nothing but organized love—love on four feet, encased in fur, and looking piteously out at the eyes—love that would die for you, yet cannot speak—that's the touching part. Stumpy longs to speak; his poor dog's breast heaves with something he longs to tell me and can't. Don't it, Stumpy?"

As if he understood his master, Stumpy wheezed a doleful whine, and actual tears stood in his eyes.

"Well," said Bolton, "Stumpy has beautiful eyes; nobody shall deny that—there, there! poor fellow, maybe on the other shore your rough bark will develop into speech; let's hope so. I confess I'm of the poor Indian's mind, and hope to meet my dog in the hereafter. Why should so much love go out in nothing? Yes, Stumpy, we'll meet in the resurrection, won't we?" Stumpy barked aloud with the greatest animation.

"Bolton, you ought to be a family man," said I. "Why do you take it for granted that you are to be a literary monk, and spend your love on dogs and cats?"

"You may get married, Hal, and I'll adopt your children," said Bolton; "that's one reason why I want to establish you. You see, one's dogs will die, and it breaks one's heart. If you had a boy, now, I'd invest in him."

"And why can't you invest in a boy of your own?"

"Oh, I'm a predestined old bachelor."

"No such thing," I persisted, hardily, "Why do you immure yourself in a den? Why won't you go out into society? Here, ever since I've known you, you have been in this one cave—a New York hermit; yet if you would once begin to go into society, you'd like it."

"You think I haven't tried it; you forget that I am some years older than you are," said Bolton.

"You are a good-looking young fellow yet," said I, "and ought to make the most of yourself. Why should you turn all the advantages into my hands, and keep so little for yourself?"

"It suits me," said Bolton; "I am lazy—I mean to get the work out of you."

"That's all hum," said I; "you know well enough that you are not lazy; you take delight in work for work's sake."

"One reason I am glad of this position," he said, "is that it gives me a chance to manage matters a little, as I want them. For instance, there's Jim Fellows—I want to make something more than a mad Bohemian of that boy. Jim is one of the wild growths of our New York life; he is a creature of the impulses and the senses, and will be for good or evil according as others use him."

"He's capital company," said I, "but he doesn't seem to me to have a serious thought on any subject."

"And yet," said Bolton, "such is our day and time, that Jim is more likely than you or I to get along in the world. His cap and bells win favor everywhere, and the laugh he raises gives him the privilege of saying anything he pleases. For my part, I couldn't live without Jim. I have a weakness for him. Nothing is so precious to me as a laugh, and, wet or dry, I can always get that out of Jim. He'll work in admirably with us."

"One thing must be said for Jim," said I, "with all his keenness he's kind-hearted. He never is witty at the expense of real trouble. As he says, he goes for the under dog in the fight always, and his cheery, frisky, hit-or-miss morality does many a kind turn for the unfortunate, while he is always ready to help the poor."

"Jim is not of the sort that is going to do the world's thinking for them," said Bolton; "neither will he ever be one of the noble army of martyrs for principle. He is like a lively, sympathetic horse that will keep the step of the team he is harnessed in, and in the department of lively nonsense he'd do us yeoman service. Nowadays people must have truth whipped up to a white froth or they won't touch it. Jim is a capital egg-beater."

"Yes," said I; "he's like the horse that had the GO in him; he'll run any team that he's harnessed in, and if you hold the reins he won't run off the course."

"Then again," said Bolton, "there's your cousin; there is the editorship of our weekly journal will be just the place for her. You can write and offer it to her."

"Pardon me," said I, maliciously, "since you are acquainted with the lady, why not write and offer it yourself? It would be a good chance to renew your acquaintance."

Bolton's countenance changed, and he remained a moment silent.

"Henderson," he said, "there are very painful circumstances connected with my acquaintance with your cousin. I never wish to meet her, or renew my acquaintance with her. Sometime I will tell you why," he added.

The next evening I found on my table the following letter from Bolton:

Dear Henderson:—You need feel no hesitancy about accepting in full every advantage in the position I propose to you, since you may find it weighted with disadvantages and incumbrances you do not dream of. In short, I shall ask of you services for which no money can pay, and till I knew you there was no man in the world of whom I had dared to ask them. I want a friend, courageous, calm, and true, capable of thinking broadly and justly, one superior to ordinary prejudices, who may be to me another, and in some hours a stronger, self.

I can fancy your surprise at this language, and yet I have not read you aright if you are not one of a thousand on whom I may rest this hope.

You often rally me on my lack of enterprise and ambition, on my hermit habits. The truth is, Henderson, I am a strained and unseaworthy craft, for whom the harbor and shore are the safest quarters. I have lost trust in myself, and dare not put out to sea without feeling the strong hand of a friend with me.

I suppose no young fellow ever entered the course of life with more self-confidence. I had splendid health, high spirits, great power of application, and great social powers. I lived freely and carelessly on the abundance of my physical resources. I could ride, and row, and wrestle with the best. I could lead in all social gaieties, yet keep the head of my class, as I did the first two years of my college life. It seems hardly fair to us human beings that we should be so buoyed up with ignorant hope and confidence in the beginning of our life, and that we should be left in our ignorance to make mistakes which no after years can retrieve. I thought I was perfectly sure of myself; I thought my health and strength were inexhaustible, and that I could carry weights that no man else could. The drain of my wide-awake exhausting life upon my nervous system I made up by the insidious use of stimulants. I was like a man habitually overdrawing his capital, and ignorant to what extent. In my third college year this began to tell perceptibly on my nerves. I was losing self-control, losing my way in life; I was excitable, irritable, impatient of guidance or reproof, and at times horribly depressed. I sought refuge from this depression in social exhilaration, and having lost control of myself became a marked man among the college authorities; in short, I was overtaken in a convivial row, brought under college discipline, and suspended.

It was at this time that I went into your neighborhood to study and teach. I found no difficulty in getting the highest recommendations as to scholarship from some of the college officers who were for giving me a chance to recover myself; and for the rest I was thoroughly sobered and determined on a new course. Here commenced my acquaintance with your cousin, and there followed a few months remembered ever since as the purest happiness of my life. I loved her with all there was in me,—heart, soul, mind and strength,—with a love which can never die. She also loved me, more perhaps than she dared to say, for she was young, hardly come to full consciousness of herself. She was then scarcely sixteen, ignorant of her own nature, ignorant of life, and almost frightened at the intensity of the feeling which she excited in me, yet she loved me. But before we could arrive at anything like a calm understanding, her father came between us. He was a trustee of the Academy, and a dispute arose between him and me in which he treated me with an overbearing haughtiness which aroused the spirit of opposition in me. I was in the right and knew I was, and I defended my course before the other trustees in a manner which won them over to my way of thinking—a victory which he never forgave.

Previously to this encounter I had been in the habit of visiting in his family quite intimately. Caroline and I enjoyed that kind of unwatched freedom which the customs of New England allow to young people. I always attended her home from the singing-school and the weekly lectures, and the evening after my encounter with the trustees I did the same. At the door of his house he met us, and as Caroline passed in he stopped me, and briefly saying that my visits there would no longer be permitted, closed the door in my face. I tried to obtain an interview soon after, when he sternly upbraided me as one that had stolen into the village and won their confidence on false pretences, adding that if he and the trustees had known the full history of my college life I should never have been permitted to teach in their village or have access to their families. It was in vain to attempt a defense to a man determined to take the very worst view of facts which I did not pretend to deny. I knew that I had been irreproachable as to my record in the school, that I had been faithful in my duties, that the majority of parents and pupils were on my side; but I could not deny the harsh facts which he had been enabled to obtain from some secret enemy, and which he thought justified him in saying that he would rather see his daughter in her grave than to see her my wife. The next day Caroline did not appear in school. Her father, with prompt energy, took her immediately to an academy fifty miles away.

I did not attempt to follow her or write to her; a profound sense of discouragement came over me, and I looked on my acquaintance with her with a sort of remorse. The truth bitterly told by an enemy with a vivid power of statement is a tonic oftentimes too strong for one's power of endurance. I never reflected so seriously on the responsibility which a man assumes, in awakening the slumbering feelings of a woman, and fixing them on himself. Under the reproaches of Caroline's father I could but regard this as a wrong I had done, and which could be expiated only by leaving her to peace in forgetfulness.

I resolved that I would never let her hear from me again, till I had fully proved myself to be possessed of such powers of self-control as would warrant me in offering to be the guardian of her happiness.

But when I set myself to the work, I found what many another does, that I had reckoned without my host. The man who has begun to live and work by artificial stimulant, never knows where he stands, and can never count upon himself with any certainty. He lets into his castle a servant who becomes the most tyrannical of masters. He may resolve to turn him out, but will find himself reduced to the condition in which he can neither do with nor without him.

In short, the use of stimulant to the brain-power brings on a disease, in whose paroxysms a man is no more his own master than in the ravings of fever, a disease that few have the knowledge to understand, and for whose manifestations the world has no pity.

I cannot tell you the dire despair that came upon me, when after repeated falls, bringing remorse and self-upbraiding to me, and drawing upon me the severest reproaches of my friends, the idea at last flashed upon me that I had indeed become the victim of a sort of periodical insanity in which the power of the will was overwhelmed by a wild unreasoning impulse. I remember when a boy reading an account of a bridal party sailing gaily on the coast of Norway who were insidiously drawn into the resistless outer whirl of the great Maelström. The horror of the situation was the moment when the shipmaster learned that the ship no longer obeyed the rudder; the cruelty of it was the gradual manner in which the resistless doom came upon them. The sun still shone, the sky was still blue. The shore, with its green trees and free birds and blooming flowers, was near and visible as they went round and round in dizzy whirls, past the church with its peaceful spire, past the home cottages, past the dwelling of friends and neighbors, past parents, brothers, and sisters who stood on the shore warning and shrieking and entreating; helpless, hopeless, with bitterness in their souls, with all that made life lovely so near in sight, and yet cut off from it by the swirl of that tremendous fate!

There have been just such hours to me, in which I have seen the hopes of manhood, the love of woman, the possession of a home, the opportunities for acquisition of name, and position, and property, all within sight, within grasp, yet all made impossible by my knowledge and consciousness of the deadly drift and suction of that invisible whirlpool.

The more of manliness there yet is left in man in these circumstances, the more torture. The more sense of honor, love of reputation, love of friends, conscience in duty, the more anguish. I read once a frightful story of a woman whose right hand was changed to a serpent, which at intervals was roused to fiendish activity and demanded of her the blood of her nearest and dearest friends. The hideous curse was inappeasable, and the doomed victim spell-bound, powerless to resist. Even so the man who has lost the control of his will is driven to torture those he loves, while he shivers with horror and anguish at the sight.

I have seen the time when I gave earnest thanks that no woman loved me, that I had no power to poison the life of a wife with the fear, and terror, and lingering agony of watching the slow fulfillment of such a doom.

It is enough to say that with every advantage—of friends, patronage, position—I lost all.

The world is exigéant. It demands above everything that every man shall keep step. He who cannot, falls to the rear, and is gradually left behind as the army moves on.

The only profession left to me was one which could avail itself of my lucid intervals.

The power of clothing thought with language is in our day growing to be a species of talent for which men are willing to pay, and I have been able by this to make myself a name and a place in the world; and what is more, I hope to do some good in it.

I have reflected upon my own temptation, endeavoring to divest myself of the horror with which my sense of the suffering and disappointment I have caused my friends inspires me. I have settled in my own mind the limits of human responsibility on this subject, and have come to the conclusion that it is to be regarded precisely as Mary Lamb and Charles Lamb regarded the incursion of the mania which destroyed the peace of their life. A man who undertakes to comprehend, and cure himself, has to fight his way back alone. Nobody understands, nobody sympathizes with him, nobody helps him—not because the world is unfeeling, but because it is ignorant of the laws which govern this species of insanity.

It took me, therefore, a great while to form my system of self-cure. I still hope for this. I, the sane and sound, I hope to provide for the insane and unsound intervals of my life. And my theory is, briefly, a total and eternal relinquishment of the poisonous influence, so that nature may have power to organize new and healthy brain-matter, and to remove that which is diseased. Nature will do this, in the end, for she is ever merciful; there is always "forgiveness with her, that she may be feared." Since you have known me, you have seen that I live the life of an anchorite—that my hours are regular, that I avoid exciting society, that I labor with uniformity, and that I never touch any stimulating drink. It is a peculiarity of cases like mine that for lengths of time the morbid disease leaves us, and we feel the utmost aversion to any thing of the kind. But there is always a danger lying behind this subtle calm. Three or four drops of alcohol, such as form the basis of a tincture which a doctor will order without scruple, will bring back the madness. One five-minutes inadvertence will upset the painful work of years, and carry one away as with a flood. When I did not know this, I was constantly falling. Society through all its parts is full of traps and pitfalls for such as I, and the only refuge is in flight.

It has been part of my rule of life to avoid all responsibilities that might involve others in my liability to failure. It is now a very long time since I have felt any abnormal symptoms, and if I had not so often been thrown down after such a period of apparent calm, I might fancy my dangers over, and myself a sound man.

The younger Hestermann was a class-mate and chum of mine in college, and one whose friendship for me has held on through thick and thin. He has a trust in me that imposes on me a painful sense of responsibility. I would not fail him for a thousand worlds, yet if one of my hours of darkness should come I should fail ignominiously.

Only one motive determined me to take their offer—it gave me a chance to provide for you and for Caroline.

I dare do it only through trusting you for a friendship beyond that of the common; in short, for a brotherly kindness such as Charles Lamb showed to Mary, his sister. If the curse returns upon me, you must not let me ruin myself and you; you must take me to an asylum till I recover.

In asking this of you, I am glad to be able to offer what will be to you an independent position, and give you that home and fireside which I may not dare to hope for myself.

In the end, I expect to conquer, either here or hereafter. I believe in the Fatherhood of God, and that He has a purpose even in letting us blindly stumble through life as we do; and through all my weakness and unworthiness I still hold his hand. I know that the whole temptation is one of brain and nerves, and when He chooses He can release me. The poor brain will be cold and still for good and all some day, and I shall be free and able to see, I trust, why I have been suffered thus to struggle. After all, immortality opens a large hope, that may overpay the most unspeakable bitterness of life.

Meanwhile, you can see why I do not wish to be brought into personal relations with the only woman I have ever loved, or ever can love, and whose happiness I fear to put in peril. It is an unspeakable delight and relief to have this power of doing for her, but she must not know of it.

Also, let me tell you that you are to me more transparent than you think. It requires only the penetration of friendship to see that you are in love, and that you hesitate and hang back because of an unwillingness to match your fortunes with hers.

Let me suggest, do you not owe it as a matter of justice, after so much intimacy as has existed, to give her the opportunity to choose between a man and circumstances? If the arrangement between us goes into effect, you will have a definite position and a settled income. Go to her like a man and lay it before her, and if she is worthy of you she will come to you.

God grant you a home and fireside, Harry, and I will be the indulgent uncle in the chimney-corner.

Yours ever,

Bolton.

---

PERTURBATIONS.

Scene.—Ida's Study—Ida busy making notes from a book— Eva sitting by, embroidering.

Eva—"Heigho! how stupid things are. I am tired of everything. I am tired of shopping—tired of parties—tired of New York—where the same thing keeps happening over and over. I wish I was a man. I'd just take my carpet-bag and go to Europe. Come now, Ida, pray stop that, and talk to me, do!"

Ida, putting down her book and pen:

"Well—and what about?"

"Oh, you know!—this inextricable puzzle—what does ail a certain person? Now he didn't come at all last night, and when I asked Jim Fellows where his friend was (one must pass the compliment of inquiring, you know), he said, 'Henderson had grown dumpy lately,' and he couldn't get him out anywhere."

"Well, Eva, I'm sure I can't throw any light on the subject. I know no more than you."

"Now, Ida, let me tell you, this afternoon when we stopped in the park, I went into that great rustic arbor on the top of the hill there, and just as we came in on one side, I saw him in all haste hurrying out on the other, as if he were afraid to meet me."

"How very odd!"

"Odd! Well, I should think it was; but what was worse, he went and stationed himself on a bench under a tree where he could hear and see us, and there my lord sat—perhaps he thought I didn't see him, but I did.

"Lillie and Belle Forrester and Wat Jerrold were with me, and we were having such a laugh! I don't know when I have had such a frolic, and how silly it was of him to sit there glowering like an owl in an ivy bush, when he might have come out and joined us, and had a good time! I'm quite out of patience with the creature, it's so vexatious to have him act so!"

"It is vexatious, darling, but then as you can't do anything about it why think of it?"

"Because I can't help it. Can you have a real friendship for a person and enjoy his society, and not care in the least whether you have it or not? Of course you can't. We were friends—quite good friends, and I'm not ashamed to say I miss him, very much, and then to have such an unaccountable mystery about it. I should think you'd miss him too."

"I do somewhat," said Ida, "but then you see I have so much more to think of. I have my regular work every day for papa, and I have my plan of study, and to say the truth, so far as I am concerned, though I liked Mr. Henderson very much, yet I don't miss him."

"Well, Ida, now I want to ask you, didn't you think he acted as if——"

"As if he were in love with you, you would say."

"Well—yes."

"He certainly did, if I am any judge of symptoms; but then, dear, men are often in love with women they don't mean to marry."

"Who wants to marry him, I should like to know? I'm not thinking of that."

"Well, then, Eva, perhaps he has discovered that he wants to marry you; and, perhaps, for some reason he regards that as impossible, and so is going to try to keep away."

"How perfectly hateful and stupid of him! I'd rather never have seen him."

"A man generally has this advantage over a woman in a matter of this sort, that he has an object in life which is more to him than anything else, and he can fill his whole mind with that."

"Well, Ida, that's all very true, but what object in life can a girl have who lives as we do; who has everything she can want without an effort—I for instance."

"But I have an object."

"Yes, I know you have, but I am different from you. It would be as impossible for me to do as you do, as for a fish to walk upright on dry land."

"Well, Eva, this objectless, rootless, floating kind of life that you and almost all girls lead, is at the bottom of nearly all your troubles. Literally and truly you have nothing in the world to do but to amuse yourselves; the consequence is that you soon get tired of almost every kind of amusement, and so every friendship, and flirtation assumes a disproportioned interest in your minds. There is real danger now that you may think too much of Mr."——

"Oh, stuff and nonsense, Ida! I won't, so there! I'll put him out of my head forthwith and bolt the door. Give me a good stiff dose of reading, Ida; one of your dullest scientific books, and get me to write you an analysis of it as we did at school. Here, let me see, 'Descent of Man.' Come, now, I'll sit down and go at it."

Eva sits down with book, pencil and paper, and turns over the leaves.

"Let's try how it looks. 'Sexual Selection'! Oh, horrid! 'Her Ape-like Proportions'! I should be ashamed to talk so about my ancestors. Apes!—of all things—why not some more respectable animal? lions or horses, for example. You remember Swift's story about the houyhnhums. Isn't this a dreadfully dull book, Ida?"

"No, I don't find it so. I am deeply interested in it, though I admit it is pretty heavy."

"But, then, Ida, you see it goes against the Bible, doesn't it?"

"Not necessarily as I see."

"Why, yes; to be sure. I haven't read it; but Mr. Henderson gave me the clearest kind of a sketch of the argument, and that is the way it impressed me. That to be sure is among the things I principally value him for; he is my milk-skimmer; he gets all the cream that rises on a book and presents it to me in a portable form. I remember one of the very last really comfortable long talks we had; it was on this subject, and I told him that it seemed to me that the modern theory and the Bible were point blank opposites. Instead of men being a fallen race, they are a rising race, and never so high as now; and then, what becomes of the Garden of Eden, and St. Paul? Now, for my part, I told Mr. Henderson I wasn't going to give up all the splendid poetry of Milton and the Bible, just because Mr. Darwin took it into his head that it was not improbable that my seventy fifth millionth grandfather might have been a big baboon with green nose and pointed ears!"

"My dear Eva, you have capital reasons for believing and not believing. You believe what seems most agreeable and poetic."

"Exactly, Ida; and in those far-off regions, sixteen million billion ages ago, why shouldn't I? Nobody knows what happened there; nobody has been there to see what made the first particle of jelly take to living, and turn into a germ cell, and then go working on like yeast, till it worked out into all the things we see. I think it a good deal easier to believe the Garden of Eden story, especially as that is pretty and poetical, and is in the dear old Book that is so sweet and comfortable to us; but then Mr. Henderson insists that even if we do hold the Evolution theory, the old book will be no less true. I never saw a man of so much thought who had so much reverence."

"I thought you were going to study Darwin and not think of him," said Ida.

"Well, somehow, almost every thing puts me in mind of him, because we have had such long talks about everything; and, Ida, to tell the truth, I do believe I am intellectually lazy. I don't like rough hard work, I like polishing and furbishing. Now, I want a man to go through all this rough, hard, stupid, disagreeable labyrinth of scientific terms, and pick out the meaning and put it into a few, plain words, and then I take it and brighten it up and put on the rainbows. Look here, now, think of my having to scrabble through a bog like this in the "Origin of the Species":

"'In Carthamus and some other compositæ the central achenes alone are furnished with a pappus; and in Hyoseris the same head yields achenes of three different forms. In certain Umbelliferæ the exterior seeds, according to Tanch, are orthospermous, and the central one cœlospermous, and this difference has been considered by De Candolle as of the highest systematic importance in the family.'

"Now all this is just as unintelligible to me as if it were written in Choctaw. I don't know enough to know what it means, and I'm afraid I don't care enough to know. I want to know the upshot of the whole in good plain English, and then see whether I can believe it or not; and isn't it a shame that things are so that one cannot have a sensible man to be one's guide, philosopher and friend, without this everlasting marriage question coming up? If a woman makes an effort to get or keep a valuable friend, she is supposed to be intriguing and making unfeminine efforts for a husband. Now this poor man is perfectly wretched about something—for I can see he has really gone off shockingly, and looks thin and haggard, and I can't just write him a note and ask him to come and finish his resumé of Darwin for me, without going over the boundaries; and the worst of it is, it is I who set these limits;—I myself who am a world too proud to say the first word or give the slightest indication that his absence isn't quite as agreeable as his presence."

"Well, Eva, I can write a note and request him to call and see me," said Ida, "and if you like, I will. I have no sort of fear what he will think of me."

"I would not have you for the world. It would look like an advance on our part—no indeed. These creatures are so conceited, if they once find out that you can't do without them——"

"I never observed any signs of conceit in Mr. Henderson."

"Well, I have made it an object to keep him a little humble, so far as his sex will permit, you see. But seriously, Ida, is not it curious about this marriage matter? Everybody says it's what we are made for, all the novels end with it, all the poems are about it, you are hearing about it in one way or other all the time; and yet all this while you are supposed not to care anything about it one way or the other. If a man be ever so agreeable to you, and do ever so much to make you like him, you must pretend that you are quite indifferent to him, and don't care whether he comes or goes, until such time as he chooses to launch the tremendous question at you."

"Well," said Ida, "I admit that there is just this absurdity in our life: but I avoid it all by firmly laying a plan of my own, and having a business of my own. To me marriage would be an interruption; it would require a breaking up and reconstruction of my whole plan, and of course I really think nothing about it."

"But are you firmly resolved never to marry?"

"No; but never, unless I find some one more to me than all on which I have set my heart. I do not need it for my happiness. I am sufficient to myself; and besides I have an object I hope to attain, and that is to open a way by which many other women shall secure independence and comfort and ease."

"Deary me, Ida, I wish I were like you: but I'm not. It seems to me that the only way to give most girls any concentration or object is to marry them. Then, somehow, things seem to arrange themselves, and, at all events, the world stops talking about you, and wondering what you are going to do; they get you off their minds. That I do believe was the reason why at one time I came so near drifting into that affair with Wat Sydney. Aunt Maria was so vigorous with me and talked in such a commanding manner, and with so many 'of courses,' that I really began to think I was one of the 'of courses' myself; but my acquaintance with Mr. Henderson has shown me that it would be intolerable to live with a man that you couldn't talk with about everything that comes into your head; and now I can't talk with him, and I won't marry Wat Sydney; and so what is to be done? Shall I go to Stewart's and buy me a new suit of Willow Green, or gird up the loins of my mind and go through Darwin like a man, and look out all the terms in the dictionary and come out the other side a strong minded female? or shall I go and join the Sisters of St. John, and wear a great white cape and gray gown, and have all the world say I did it because I couldn't get Wat Sydney (for that's exactly what they would say), or what shall I do? The trouble is, mamma and Aunt Maria with their expectations. It's much as mamma can do to survive your course, and if I take to having a 'purpose' too, I don't know but mamma would commit suicide, poor dear woman."

(Enter Alice with empressement):

"Girls, what do you think? Wat Sydney come back and going to give a great croquet party out at Clairmont, and of course we are all invited with notes in the most resplendent style, with crest and coat of arms, and everything—perfectly 'mag!' There's to be a steamboat with a band of music to take the guests up, and no end of splendid doings; marquées and tents and illuminations and fireworks, and to return by moonlight after all's over; isn't it lovely? I do think Wat Sydney's perfectly splendid! and it's all on your account, Eva, I know it is."

"Pooh, nonsense, you absurd child, I don't believe it. I dare say its a party just to proclaim that he is engaged to somebody else."

"Do you know," added Alice, "I met Jim Fellows, and he says everybody is wild about this party—just stark, tearing wild about it—for it isn't going to be a crush—something very select."

"Is Jim going?"

"Yes, he showed me his ticket and Henderson's, and he declared he was going to take 'Hal,' as he called him, spite of his screams; he said that he had been writing and studying and moping himself to death, and that he should drag him out by the hair of the head. Come, Eva, let's go down to Tullegig's and have a 'kank' about costumes. I haven't a thing fit to wear, nor you either."

---

THE FATES.

Bolton's letter excited in my mind a tumult of feeling. From the beginning of my acquaintance I had regarded him with daily increasing admiration. Young men like a species of mental fealty—a friendship that seems to draw them upward and give them an ideal of something above themselves. Bolton's ripe, elegant scholarship, his rare, critical taste, his calm insight into men and things, and the depth of his moral judgment, had inspired me with admiration, and his kindness for me with gratitude. It had always been an additional source of interest that there was something veiled about him—something that I could not exactly make out. This letter, so dignified in its melancholy frankness, seemed to let me into the secret of his life. It showed me the reason of that sort of sad and weary tolerance with which he seemed to regard life and its instincts, so different from the fiery, forward-looking hope of youth. He had impressed me from the first as one who had made up his mind to endure all things and hope for nothing. To keep watch every moment, to do the duty of the hour thoroughly, bravely, faithfully, as a sentinel paces through wind, rain and cold—neither asking why, nor uttering complaints—such seemed to be Bolton's theory of life.

The infirmity which he laid open to my view was one, to be sure, attributable in the first place to the thoughtless wrong-doing of confident youth. Yet, in its beginning, how little there was in it that looked like the deep and terrible tragedy to which it was leading! Out of every ten young men who begin the use of stimulants as a social exhilaration, there are perhaps five in whose breast lies coiled up and sleeping this serpent, destined in after years to be the deadly tyrant of their life—this curse, unappeasable by tears or prayers or agonies—with whom the struggle is like that of Laocoön with the hideous Python. Yet songs and garlands and poetry encircle the wine-cup, and ridicule and contumely are reserved for him who fears to touch it.

There was about this letter such a patient dignity, such an evident bracing of the whole man to meet in the bravest manner the hard truth of the situation, and such a disinterested care for others, as were to me inexpressibly touching. I could not help feeling that he judged and sentenced himself too severely, and that this was a case where a noble woman might fitly co-work with a man, and by doubling his nature give it double power of resistance and victory.

I went hastily up to his room with the letter in my hand after reading it. It was in the dusk of the evening twilight, but I could see him sitting there gazing out of the window at the fading sky; yet it was too dark for either of us to see the face of the other. There are some conversations that can only be held in darkness—the visible presence of the bodily form is an impediment—in darkness, spirit speaks directly to spirit.

"Bolton," I said, "I am yours to every intent and purpose, yours for life and death."

"And after," he said in a deep undertone, grasping my hand. "I knew you would be, Harry."

"But, Bolton, you judge yourself too severely. Why should you put from yourself the joys that other men, not half so good as you, claim eagerly? If I were a woman like Caroline, I can feel that I would rather share life with you, in all your dangers and liabilities, than with many another."

He thought a moment, and then said slowly, "It is well for Caroline that she has not this feeling; she probably has by this time forgotten me, and I would not for the world take the responsibility of trying to call back the feeling she once had."

At this moment my thoughts went back over many scenes, and the real meaning of all Caroline's life came to me. I appreciated the hardness of that lot of women which condemns them to be tied to one spot and one course of employment, when needing to fly from the atmosphere of an unhappy experience. I thought of the blank stillness of the little mountain town where her life had been passed, of her restlessness add impatience, of that longing to fly to new scenes and employments that she had expressed to me on the eve of my starting for Europe; yet she had told me her story, leaving out the one vital spot in it. I remembered her saying that she had never seen the man with whom she would think of marriage without a shudder. Was it because she had forgotten? Or was it that woman never even to herself admits that thought in connection with one who seems to have forgotten her? Or had her father so harshly painted the picture of her lover that she had been led to believe him utterly vile and unprincipled? Perhaps his proud silence had been interpreted by her as the silence of indifference; perhaps she looked back on their acquaintance with indignation that she should have been employed merely to diversify the leisure of a rusticated student and abandoned character. Whatever the experience might be, Caroline had carried it through silently.

Her gay, indifferent, brilliant manner of treating any approach to matters of the heart, as if they were the very last subjects in which she could be supposed to have any experience or interest, had been a complete blind to me, nor could I, through this dazzling atmosphere, form the least conjecture as to how the land actually lay.

In my former letters to her I had dwelt a good deal on Bolton, and mentioned the little fact of finding her photograph in his room. In reply, in a postscript at the end of a letter about everything else, there was a brief notice. "The Mr. Bolton you speak of taught the Academy in our place while you were away at college—and of course I was one of his scholars—but I have never seen or heard of him since. I was very young then, and it seems like something in a preëxistent state to be reminded of him. I believed him very clever, then, but was not old enough to form much of an opinion." I thought of all this as I sat silently in the dark with Bolton.

"Are you sure," I said, "that you consult for Caroline's best happiness in doing as you have done?"

There was a long pause, and at last he said with a deep, drawn breath,

"Yes. I am sure, the less I am to her the better."

"But may not your silence and apparent neglect and indifference have given pain?"

"Probably; but they helped her to cease caring for me; it was necessary that she should."

"Bolton, you are morbid in your estimate of yourself."

"You do not know all, Hal; nor what nor where I have been. I have been swept far out to sea, plunged under deep waters, all the waves and billows have been over me."

"Yet now, Bolton, surely you are on firm land. No man is more established, more reliable, more useful."

"Yet," he said with a kind of shudder, "all this I might lose in a moment. The other day when I dined with Westerford, the good fellow had his wines in all frank fellowship and pressed them on me, and the very smell distracted me. I looked at the little glass in which he poured some particularly fine sherry, and held to me to taste, and thought it was like so much heart's blood. If I had taken one taste, just one, I should have been utterly worthless and unreliable for weeks. Yet Westerford could not understand this; nobody can, except one who has been through my bitter experience. One sip would flash to the brain like fire, and then, all fear, all care, all conscience would be gone, and not one glass, but a dozen would be inevitable, and then you might have to look for me in some of those dens to which the possessed of the devil flee when the fit is on them, and where they rave and tear and cut themselves with stones till the madness is worn out. This has happened to me over and over, after long periods of self-denial and self-control and illusive hope. It seems to me that my experience is like that of a man whom some cruel fiend condemns to go through all the agonies of drowning over and over again—the dark plunge, the mad struggle, the suffocation, the horror, the agony, the clutch at the shore, the weary clamber up steep rocks, the sense of relief, recovery, and hope, only to be wrenched off and thrown back to struggle, and strangle, and sink again."

He spoke with such a deep intensity of voice that I drew in my breath, and a silence as of the grave fell between us.

"Harry," he said, after a pause, "you know we read in the Greek tragedies of men and women whom the gods have smitten with unnatural and guilty purposes. In which they were irresistibly impelled toward what they abominated and shuddered at! Is it not strange that the Greek fable should have a real counterpart in the midst of our modern life? That young man in all the inexperience and thoughtlessness of youth should be beguiled into just such a fatality; that there should be a possibility that they could be blighted by just such a doom, and yet that song, and poetry, and social illusion, and society customs should all be thrown around courses which excite and develop this fatality! What opera is complete without its drinking chorus? I remember when it used to be my forte to sing drinking songs; so the world goes! Men triumph and rejoice going to a doom to which death is a trifle. If I had fallen dead, the first glass of wine I tasted, it would have been thought a horrible thing; but it would have been better for my mother, better for me, than to have lived as I did."

"Oh, no, no, Bolton! don't say so: you become morbid in dwelling on this subject."

"No, Hal. I only know more of it than you. This curse has made life an unspeakable burden, a doom instead of a privilege. It has disappointed my friends, and subjected me to humiliations and agonies such that death seems to me a refuge; and yet it was all in its beginning mere thoughtlessness and ignorance. I was lost before I knew it."

"But you are not lost, and you shall not be!" I exclaimed, "you are good for more than most men now, and you will come through this."

"Never! to be just as others are. I shall be a vessel with a crack in it, always."

"Well, a vase of fine porcelain with a crack in it is better than earthenware without," I said.

"If I had not disappointed myself and my friends so often," said Bolton, "I might look on myself as sound and sane. But the mere sight and smell of the wine at Westerford's dinner gave me a giddy sensation that alarmed me; it showed that I was not yet out of danger, and it made me resolve to strengthen my self by making you my keeper. You have the advantage of perfectly healthy nerves that have come to manhood without the strain of any false stimulus, and you can be strong for both of us."

"God grant it!" said I, earnestly.

"But I warn you that, if the curse comes upon me you are not to trust me. I am a Christian and a man of honor in my sane moments, but let me tell you one glass of wine would make me a liar on this subject. I should lie, and intrigue, and deceive the very elect, to get at the miserable completion of the aroused fury, and there are times when I am so excited that I fear I may take that first irrevocable step; it is a horror, a nightmare, a temptation of the devil,—for that there is a devil, men with my experience know; but there is a kind of safety in having a friend of a steady pulse with me who knows all. The mere fact that you do know helps hold me firm."

"Bolton," said I, "the situation you offer to Caroline in the care of the Ladies' Cabinet will of course oblige her to come to New York. Shall you meet her and renew your acquaintance?"

"I do not desire to," he said.

There was a slight hesitancy and faltering of his voice as he spoke.

"Yet it can hardly be possible that you will not meet; you will have arrangements to make with her."

"That is one of the uses, among others, of having you. All that relates to her affairs will pass through you; and now, let us talk of the magazine and its programme for the season. What is the reason, Hal, that you waste your forces in short sketches? Why do you not boldly dash out into a serial story? Come, now, I am resolved among other things on a serial story by Harry Henderson."

"And I will recommend a taking title," cried Jim Fellows, who came in as we were talking, and stood behind my chair. "Let us have

HENDERSON'S HORROR; or, The Mystery of the Bloody Latch-Key.

There's a title to take with the reflecting public! The readers of serials are generally girls from twelve to twenty, and they read them with their back-hair down, lounging on the bed, just before a nap after dinner, and there must be enough blood and thunder, and murder and adultery and mystery in them to keep the dear creatures reading at least half an hour."

"I think serial stories are about played out in our day," said I.

"Not a bit of it. There's sister Nell, don't read anything else. She is regularly running on five serial stories, and among them all they keep her nicely a-going; and she tells me that the case is the same with all the girls in her set. The knowledge of the world and of human nature that the pretty creatures get in this way is something quite astounding. Nell is at present deeply interested in a fair lady who connives with her chambermaid to pass off her illegitimate child upon her husband as his own; and we have lying and false swearing, I say nothing of all other kinds of interesting things on every page. Of course this is written as a moral lesson, and interspersed with pious reflections to teach girls as how they hadn't oughter do so and so. All this, you see, has a refining effect upon the rising generation."

"But, really, Bolton, don't you think that it is treating our modern society as children, to fall in with this extreme fashion of story-telling? It seems so childish to need pictures and stories for everything. Isn't your magazine strong enough to lead and form public taste instead of following it?"

"Well, if I owned my magazine I would try it," said Bolton. "But, you see, the Westerfords, while they give me carte blanche as to means to run it, expect of course that it is to be run in the approved popular grooves that the dear thoughtless ten million prefer. The people who lounge on beds after dinner are our audience, and there must be nothing wiser nor stronger than they can apprehend between sleeping and waking. We talk to a blasé, hurried, unreflecting, indolent generation, who want emotion and don't care for reason. Something sharp and spicy, something pungent and stinging—no matter what or whence. And now as they want this sort of thing, why not give it to them? Are there no other condiments for seasoning stories besides intrigues, lies, murders, and adulteries? And if the young and unreflecting will read stories shouldn't some of the thoughtful and reflecting make stories for them to read?"

"Of course they should, Q. E. D.," said Jim Fellows, touching the gas with a match, and sending a flare of light upon our conference. "But come, now, behold the last novelty of the season," said he, tossing two cards of invitation. "This is for us, as sons of the press and recording angels, to be present at Wat Sydney's grand blow-out next Tuesday. All the rank and fashion are to go. It is to be very select, and there are people who would give their eye-teeth for these cards, and can't get 'em. How do ye say, Old Man of the Mountain, will you go?"

"No," said Bolton; "not my line."

"Well, at all events, Hal has got to go. I promised the fair Alice that I'd bring him if I had to take him by the hair."

I had a great mind to decline. I thought in my heart it was not at all the wisest thing for me to go; but then, Amare et sapere vix Deo—I had never seen Sydney, and I had a restless desire to see him and Eva together—and I thought of forty good reasons why I should go.

---

THE GAME OF CROQUET.

Now I advise all serious, sensible individuals who never intend to do anything that is not exactly most reasonable and most prudent, and who always do exactly as they intend, not to follow my steps on the present occasion, for I am going to do exactly what is not to be recommended to young gentlemen in my situation, and certainly what is not at all prudent.

For if a young man finds himself without recall, hopelessly in love with one whose smiles are all for another, his best way is to keep out of her society, and in a course of engrossing business that will leave him as little time to think of her as possible.

I had every advantage for pursuing this course, for I had a press of writing upon me, finishing up a batch of literary job-work which I wished to get fairly out of the way so that I might give my whole energies to Bolton in our new enterprise. In fact, to go off philandering to a croquet party up the North River was a sheer piece of childish folly, and the only earthly reason I could really give for it was the presence of a woman there that I had resolved to avoid. In fact I felt that the thing was so altogether silly that I pretended to myself that I was impregnably resolved against it, and sat myself down in Bolton's room making abstracts from some of his books, knowing all the while that Jim would seek me out there and have his moral fish-hook fast in my coat collar, as in truth he did.

"Come, come, Hal," he said, bursting in, "I promised the divinest of her sex to bring you along."

"Oh nonsense, Jim! it's out of the question," said I. "I've got to get this article done."

"Oh, you be hanged with your article, come along! What's the use of a fellow's shutting himself up with books? I tell you, Hal, if you're going to write for folks you must see folks and folks must see you, and you must be around and into and a part of all that's going on. Come on! Why, you don't know the honor done you. Its a tip-top select party, and all the handsomest girls and all the nobby fellows will be there, and no end of fun. Sydney's place alone is worth going to see. Its the crack place on the river; and then they say the engagement is going to be declared, and everybody is wild to know whether it is or isn't to be, and the girls are furbishing up fancy suits to croquet in. Miss Alice treated me to a glimpse of hers as I met her on Tullegig's steps, and its calculated to drive a fellow crazy, and so come now," said Jim, pulling away my papers and laying hold of me, "let's go out and get some gloves and proceed to make ourselves up. We have the press to represent, and we must be nobby, so hang expense! here's for Jouvin's best, and let to-morrow take care of itself."

Now, seconding all these temptations was that perverse inclination that makes every man want to see a little more and taste a little more of what he has had too much already. Moreover I wanted to see Eva and Wat Sydney together. I wanted to be certain and satisfy myself with my own eyes, not only that they were engaged but that she was in love with him. If she be, said I to myself, she is certainly an exquisite coquette and a dangerous woman for me to keep up an acquaintance with.

In thinking over as I had done since Mrs. Van Arsdel's motherly conversation, all our intercourse and acquaintance with each other, her conduct sometimes seemed to me to be that of a veritable "Lady Clara Vere de Vere," bent on amusing herself, and diversifying the tedium of fashionable life by exciting feelings which she had no thought of returning. When I took this view of matters I felt angry and contemptuous and resolved to show the fair lady that I could be as indifferent as she. Sometimes I made myself supremely wretched by supposing that it was by her desire that Mrs. Van Arsdel had held the conversation with me, and that it was a sort of intimation that she had perceived my feelings, and resolved to put a decided check upon them. But of course nothing so straightforward and sensible as going to her for an explanation of all this was to be thought of. In fact our intercourse with one another ever since the memorable occasion I refer to had been daily lessening, and now was generally limited to passing the most ordinary common-places with each other. She had grown cold and dry, almost haughty, and I was conscious of a most unnatural rigidity and constraint. It seemed to me sometimes astonishing when I looked back a little, to reflect how perfectly easy and free and unconstrained we always had been up to a certain point, to find that now we met with so little enjoyment, talked and said so little to any purpose. It was as if some evil enchanter had touched us with his wand stiffening every nerve of pleasure. To look forward to meeting her in society was no longer, as it had been, to look forward to delightful hours; and yet for the life of me I could not help going where this most unsatisfactory, tantalizing intercourse was all I had to hope for.

But to-day, I said to myself, I would grasp the thorns of the situation so firmly as to break them down and take a firm hold on reality. If, indeed, her engagement were to-day to be declared, I would face the music like a man, walk up to her and present my congratulations in due form, and then the acquaintance would make a gallant finale in the glare of wedding lamps and the fanfaronade of wedding festivities, and away to fresh fields and pastures new.

In short, whatever a man is secretly inclined to do there are always a hundred sensible incontrovertible reasons to be found for doing, and so I found myself one of the gay and festive throng on board the steamer. A party of well-dressed people floating up the North River of a bright Spring day is about as ideal a picture of travel as can be desired. In point of natural scenery the Rhine is nothing compared with the Hudson, and our American steamboats certainly are as far ahead of any that ever appeared on the Rhine as Aladdin's palace is ahead of an ordinary dwelling. The most superb boat on the river had been retained for the occasion, and a band of music added liveliness to the scene as we moved off from the wharf in triumph, as gay, glittering, festive a company as heart could wish.

Wat Sydney as host and entertainer was everywhere present, making himself agreeable by the most devoted attentions to the comfort of the bright band of tropical birds, fluttering in silks and feathers and ribbons, whom he had charge of for the day. I was presented to him by Jim Fellows, and had an opportunity to see that apart from his immense wealth he had no very striking personal points to distinguish him from a hundred other young men about him. His dress was scrupulously adjusted, with a care and nicety which showed that he was by no means without consideration of the personal impression he made. Every article was the choicest and best that the most orthodox fashionable emporiums pronounced the latest thing, or as Jim Fellows phrased it, decidedly "nobby." He was of a medium height, with very light hair and eyes, and the thin complexion which usually attends that style, and which, under the kind of exposure incident to a man's life, generally tends to too much redness of face.

Altogether, my first running commentary on the man as I shook hands with him was, that if Eva were in love with him it was not for his beauty; yet I could see glances falling on him on all sides from undeniably handsome eyes that would have excused any man for having a favorable conceit of his own personal presence.

Mr. Sydney was well accustomed to being the cynosure of female eyes, and walked the deck with the assured step of a man certain of pleasing. A rich good-humored young man who manifests himself daily in splendid turn-outs, who rains down flowers and confectionery among his feminine acquaintances, and sends diamonds and pearls as philopœna presents, certainly does not need a romantic style of beauty or any particular degree of mental culture to make his society more than acceptable. Prudent mammas were generally of opinion that the height of felicity for a daughter would be the position that should enable her to be the mistress and dictatrix of his ample fortune. Mr. Sydney was perfectly well aware of this state of things. He was a man a little blasé with the kind attentions of matrons, and tolerably secure of the good-will of very charming young ladies. He had the prestige of success, and had generally carried his points in the world of men and things. Miss Eva Van Arsdel had been the first young lady who had given him the novel sensation of a repulse, and thenceforth became an object of absorbing interest in his eyes. Under the careless good-humor of his general appearance Sydney had a constitutional pertinacity, a persistence in his own way that had been a source of many of his brilliant successes in business. He was one of those whom obstacles and difficulties only stimulate, and whose tenacity of purpose increases with resistance. He was cautious, sagacious, ready to wait and watch and renew the attack at intervals, but never to give up. To succeed was a tribute to his own self-esteem, and whatever was difficult of attainment was the more valuable.

A little observation during the course of the first hour convinced me that there was as yet no announcement of an engagement. Mrs. Van Arsdel and Aunt Maria Wouvermans, to be sure, were on most balmy and confidential terms with Mr. Sydney, addressing him with every appearance of mysterious intimacy, and quite willing to produce the impression that the whole fête was in some manner a tribute to the family, but these appearances were not carried out by any coöperative movements on the part of Eva herself. She appeared radiant in a fanciful blue croquet suit which threw out to advantage the golden shade of her hair, and the pink sea-shell delicacy of her cheek, and as usual she had her court around her and was managing her circle with the address of a practiced habituée of society.

Unlike many of her sex, Eva had the faculty of carrying the full cup of bellehood without spilling an unseemly drop, and as she was one of those who seem to have quite as much gift in charming her feminine as her masculine acquaintances, she generally sat surrounded by an admiring body-guard of girls who laughed at her jests and echoed her bon mots and kept up a sort of radiant atmosphere of life and motion and gayety around her. Her constitutional good-nature, her readiness to admire other people, and to help each in due season to some small portion of the applause and admiration which is lying about loose for general circulation in society, all contributed to her popularity. As I approached the circle they were discussing with great animation the preliminaries of a match game of croquet that was proposed to be played at Clairmont to-day.

"Oh, here comes Mr. Henderson! let's ask him," she said, as I approached the circle.

"Don't you think it will be a nice thing?" she said. "Mr. Sydney has arranged that after playing the first games as a trial the four best players shall be elected to play a match game, two on each side."

"I think it will vary the usual monotony of croquet," said I.

"Hear him," she said, gaily, "talk of the usual monotony of croquet! For my part I think there is a constant variety to it, no two games are ever alike."

"To me," I said, "it seems that after a certain amount of practice the result is likely to be the same thing, game after game."

"Girls," she said, "I perceive that Mr. Henderson is used to carrying all before him. He is probably a champion player who will walk through all the wickets as a matter of course."

"Not at all," I said. "On the contrary I shouldn't wonder if I should 'booby' hopelessly at the very first wicket."

"And none the worse for that," said Sydney. "I've boobied three times running, in the first of a game, and yet beaten; it gets one's blood up, and one will beat."

"For my part," said Miss Alice, "the more my blood is up the less I can do; if I get excited I lose my aim, my hand trembles, and I miss the very simplest move."

"I think there is nothing varies so much as one's luck in croquet," said Eva. "Sometimes for weeks together I am sure to hit every aim and to carry every wicket, and then all of a sudden, without rhyme or reason, I make the most absurd failures, and generally when I pique myself on success."

"I think, Miss Eva, I remember you as the best player in Newport last Summer," said Mr. Sydney.

"And likely as not I shall fail ingloriously to-day," said she.

"Well, we shall all have a time for bringing our hands in," said Mr. Sydney. "I have arranged four croquet grounds, and the fifth one is laid out for the trial game with longer intervals and special difficulties in the arrangement, to make it as exciting as possible. The victorious side is to have a prize."

"Oh, how splendid! What is the prize to be? was the general exclamation."

"Behold, then!" said Mr. Sydney, drawing from his pocket a velvet case which when opened displayed a tiny croquet mallet wrought in gold and set as a lady's pin. Depending from it by four gold chains were four little balls of emerald, ruby, amethyst, and topaz.

"How perfectly lovely! how divine! how beautiful!" were the sounds that arose from the brilliant little circle that were in a moment precipitated upon the treasure.

"You will really set them all by the ears, Mr. Sydney," said Mrs. Van Arsdel. "Croquet of itself is exciting enough; one is apt to lose one's temper."

"You ought to see mamma and Mrs. Van Duzen and Aunt Maria play," said Eva, "if you want to see an edifying game, it's too funny. They are all so polite and so dreadfully courtly and grieved to do anything disagreeable to each other, and you know croquet is such a perfectly selfish, savage, unchristian game; so when poor Mrs. Van Duzen is told that she ought to croquet mamma's ball away from the wicket, the dear lady, is quite ready to cry and declares that it would be such a pity to disappoint her, that she croquets her through her wicket, and looks round apologizing for her virtues with such a pitiful face! 'Indeed, my dear, I couldn't help it!'"

"Well," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, "I really think it is too bad when a poor body has been battering and laboring at a difficult wicket to be croqueted back a dozen times."

"It's meant for the culture of Christian patience, mamma," said Eva. "Croquet is the game of life, you see."

"Certainly," said Mr. Sydney, rubbing his hands, "and it teaches you just how to manage, use your friends to help yourself along, and then croquet them into good positions; use your enemies as long as you want them, and then send them to——."

"The devil," said Jim Fellows, who never hesitated to fill up an emphatic blank in the conversation.

"I didn't say that," said Mr. Sydney.

"But you meant it, all the same; and that's the long and the short of the philosophy of the game of life," said Jim.

"And" said I, "one may read all sorts of life-histories in the game. Some go on with a steady aim and true stroke, and make wickets, and hit balls, yet are croqueted back ingloriously or hopelessly wired and lose the game, while others blunder advantageously and are croqueted along by skillful partners into all the best places."

"There are few of us girls that make our own wickets in life," said Eva. "We are all croqueted along by papas and mammas."

"And many a man is croqueted along by a smart wife," said Sydney.

"But more women by smart husbands," said Mrs. Van Arsdel.

On that there was a general exclamation, and the conversation forthwith whisked into one of those animated whirlwinds that always arise when the comparative merits of the sexes are moved. There was a flutter of ribbons and a rustle of fans and a laughing cross-fire of sharp sayings, till the whole was broken up by the announcement that we were drawing near the landing.

---

THE MATCH GAME.

The lawn at Clairmont made a brilliant spectacle, all laid out with different croquet sets. The turf was like velvet, and adjoining every ground was a pretty tent, with seats and every commodious provision for repairing at once any temporary derangement of the feminine toilet. The fluttering of gay flags and pennons from these various tents gave an airy and breezy look to the scene, and immediately we formed ourselves into sets, and the games began. It had been arranged that the preliminary playing should take place immediately, and the match game be reserved till after lunch. The various fancy costumes of the players, lit up by the bright sunshine, and contrasted with the emerald green of the lawn, formed a brilliant and animated picture, watched with interest by groups of non-combatants from rustic seats under the trees. Of course everybody was a little nervous in the trial games, and there was the usual amount of ill luck, and of "Ohs and Ahs" of success or failure. I made myself a "booby" twice, in that unaccountable way that seems like fatality. Then suddenly, favored of the fates, made two wickets at once, seized an antagonist's ball, and went with it at one heat through the side wicket, the middle and other side wicket up to the stake and down again, through the middle wicket to the stake again, and then struck back a glorious rover to join my partner. It was one of those prodigiously lucky runs, when one's ball goes exactly where it is intended, and stops exactly in the right place, and though it was mostly owing to good luck, with the usual prestige of success I was covered with glory and congratulations, and my partner, Miss Sophie Elmore, herself a champion at croquet, was pleased to express most unbounded admiration, especially as our side came out decidedly victorious.

Miss Sophie, a neat little vigorous brunette, in a ravishing fancy croquet-suit, entered into the game with all that whole-hearted ardor which makes women such terrible combatants.

"Oh, I do hope that we shall be in at that final match-game!" she said, with a charming abandon of manner. "I should so like to beat Eva Van Arsdel. Those Van Arsdels always expect to carry all before them, and it rather provokes me, I confess. Now, with you to help me, Mr. Henderson, I am sure we could beat."

"Don't put too much faith in my accidental run of luck," I said; "'one swallow does not make a summer.'"

"Oh, I'm quite sure by the way you managed your game that it wasn't luck. But you see I want to try with Eva Van Arsdel again, for she and I were held to be the best players at Newport last summer, and she beat in the last 'rubber' we played. It was so provoking—just one slip of the mallet that ruined me! You know, sometimes, how your mallet will turn in your hands. She made just such a slip and took the stroke over again. Now that is what I never will do, you see," &c., &c.

In short, I could see that for pretty Miss Sophie, at present, croquet was to all intents and purposes, the whole game of life, that every spangle and every hair-pin about her were vital with excitement to win.

After lunch came the ballot for the combatants who were to play the deciding game, and the parties elected were: Miss Sophie Elmore, Miss Eva Van Arsdel, Mr. Sydney, and myself.

"Miss Van Arsdel," said Mr. Sydney, "you must be my captain. After the feats that you and Mr. Henderson have been performing it would be impossible to allow you both on one side."

"I think just as likely as not you will be worsted for your pains," said Eva. "I know Sophie of old for a terrible antagonist, and when she pulls on her croquet-gloves like that, it means war to the knife, and no quarter. So, my dear, begin the tournament."

The wickets were arranged at extra distances upon this trial ground, and it was hardly prudent to attempt making two wickets at once, but Miss Sophie played in the adventurous style, and sent her ball with a vigorous tap not only through both the first wickets, but so far ahead that it was entangled in the wires of the middle wicket, in a way that made it impossible to give it a fair stroke.

"Now, how vexatious!" she cried.

"I have two extra strokes for my two wickets, but I shall make nothing by it." In fact, Miss Sophie, with two nervous hits, succeeded only in placing her ball exactly where with fair luck the next player must be sure to get it.

Eva now came through the two first wickets, one at a time, and with a well-directed tap took possession of Miss Sophie, who groaned audibly, "Oh, now she's got me! well, there's no saying now where she'll stop."

In fact, Miss Eva performed very skillfully the rôle of the "cat who doth play, and after—slay." She was perfect mistress of the tactics of split-shots, which sent her antagonist's ball one side the wicket and hers the other, and all the other mysteries of the craft, and she used them well, till she had been up and hit the stake and come down to the middle wicket, when her luck failed.

Then came my turn, and I came through the first two wickets, struck her ball and used it for the two next wickets, till I came near my partner, when with a prosperous split-shot I sent her off to distant regions, struck my partner's ball, put it through its wicket, and came and stationed myself within its reach for future use.

Then came Mr. Sydney with a vigorous succession of hits, and knocked us apart; sent one to one side of the ground, and one to the other, and went gallantly up to his partner. By this time our blood was thoroughly up, and the game became as Eva prophesied, "war to the knife." Mohawk indians could not have been more merciless in purposes of utter mischief to each other than we, and for a while it seemed as if nothing was done but to attack each other's balls, and send them as far as possible to the uttermost part of the grounds. As each had about equal skill in making long shots the re-union however was constantly effected, and thus each in turn were beaten back from the wickets, till it seemed for a while that the game would make no progress.

At last, however, one slip of our antagonists threw the power into our hands, and Miss Sophie used it to take herself and me up through three wickets to the stake, and thence down again till the intricate middle wicket stopped our course.

A burst of cheering greeted her success, and the dark little lady seemed to glow like a coal of fire. I wasn't sure that sparks did not snap from her eyes as she ended her performance with a croquet that sent Eva's ball spinning to the most inaccessible distances.

A well-pointed shot from Wat Sydney again turned the tide of battle, and routed the victors, while he went to the rescue of the banished princess, and took her back to position.

Every turn of the tide, and every good shot was hailed with cheers, and the excitement became intense. There were points in the battle as hard to carry as the Malakoff, and we did nothing but fight, without advancing a step. It seemed for a while that none of us would ever so far get the advantage of another as to pass that downward middle wicket. Every successive step was won by battles. The ladies were so excited that they seemed two flames of fire. Every nerve in them was alive, and we men felt ourselves only clumsy instruments of their enkindled ardor. We were ordered about, commanded, rebuked, encouraged, and cheered on to the fray with a pungency and vigor of decision that made us quite secondary characters in the scene. At last a fortunate stroke gave Miss Sophie the command of the game, and she dashed through the middle wicket, sent Eva's ball to farthest regions up, and Mr. Sydney's down to the stake, took mine with her in her victorious race through wicket after wicket, quite through to the stake, and then leaving me for a moment she croqueted Sydney's ball against the stake, and put it out. A general cheer and shouts of "victory" arose.

"We've got it! We're quite sure to go out the next move!" she said, in triumph, as she left her ball by my side. "She never can hit at that distance."

"I can try, though," said Eva, walking across the ground, and taking her place by her ball, pale and resolved, with a concentrated calmness. She sighted the balls deliberately, poised her mallet, took aim, and gave a well-considered stroke. Like a straight-aimed arrow the ball flew across the green, through the final wicket, and struck Sophie's ball!

A general cheering arose, and the victorious markswoman walked deliberately down to finish her work. One stroke put Sophie out of the combat, the next struck upon me and then from me up to the head of the two last wickets that yet remained to be made. She came through these with one straight stroke, and hit me again.

"Now for it," she said, setting her red-slippered foot firmly on the ball, and with one virulent tap, away flew my ball to the other end of the ground, while at the same time hers hit the stake and the victory was won.

A general shout, and three cheers, and all the spectators started from their seats like a troop of gay tropical birds, and came flocking around the victors.

I knelt down, and laid my mallet at her feet. "Beautiful princess!" said I, "behold your enemies, conquered, await your sentence."

"Arise, Sir Knight," she said, laughing; "I sentence you to write a ballad describing this battle. Come, Sophie," she added, turning gayly to the brunette, "let's shake hands on it. You shall have your revenge of me at Newport this summer," and the two rival fair ones shook hands in all apparent amity.

Wat Sydney now advancing presented the prize with a gallant bow, and Eva accepted it graciously, and fastened the blue scarf that floated over her shoulder with it, and then the whole party adjourned to another portion of the lawn, which had been arranged for dancing; the music struck up and soon we were all joining in the dance with a general hilarity.

And so ended the day at Clairmont, and we came home under a broad full moon, to the sound of music on the waters.

---

[Eva Van Arsdel to Isabel Convers.]

My dearest Belle:—Since I last wrote you wondrous things have taken place, and of course I must keep you au courant.

In the first place Mr. Sydney came back to our horizon like a comet in a blaze of glory. The first harbinger of his return was not himself in propriâ, but cards for a croquet fête up at Clairmont got up with the last degree of elegance.

Mr. Sydney, it appears, understands the effect of a gilded frame to set off a picture, and so resolved to manifest himself to us in all his surroundings at Clairmont.

The party was to be very select and recherché, and of course everybody was just wild to go, and the Elmores in particular were on the qui vive to know if we had invitations before them. Sophia Elmore called down for nothing but to see. We had all the satisfaction there was to be got in showing her our cards and letting her know that they had come two days sooner than theirs. Aunt Maria contrived to give them to understand that Mr. Sydney gave the entertainment mostly on my account, which I think was assuming quite too much in the case. I am positively tired of these mean little rivalries and these races that are run between families.

It is thought that Sophia Elmore is quite fascinated by Mr. Sydney. Sophia is a nice, spirited girl, with a good, generous heart as I believe, and it's a thousand pities she shouldn't have him if she cares for him.

But, to my story. You may imagine the fuss at Tullegig's. Of course we belong to the class who live in the enjoyment of "nothing to wear," and the first result of a projected entertainment is to throw us all on our knees before Tullegig, who queens it over us accordingly.

I was just dying to find out if a certain person was to be there. Of late our intercourse has been so very stately and diplomatic that it really becomes exciting. He has avoided every appearance of intimacy, every approach to our old confidential standing, and yet apparently for the life of him cannot keep from taking views of me at safe distance; so, as I said, it was something to see if he would be there.

As to Clairmont, I think in the course of my life I have seen fine grounds, fine houses, fine furniture, and fine fêtes before. Nevertheless I must do Sydney the justice to say that he gave a most charming and beautiful entertainment where everything was just as lovely as could be. We went up on a splendid boat to the sound of music. We had a magnificent lunch under the trees, and there were arrangements for four games to go on at once, which made a gay and animated tableau. All the girls wore the prettiest costumes you can imagine, each one seeming prettier than the other; and when they were all moving about in the game it made a bright, cheerful effect. Mr. Henderson was there and distinguished himself to such a degree that he was appointed one of the four who were to play a match-game, in conclusion, for a prize. Curiously enough he played with Sophia against Sydney and myself. How we did fight! Sophie is one of these girls that feel everything to the tips of their fingers, and I am another, and if we didn't make those men bestir themselves! I fancy they found women rulers were of a kind to keep men pretty busy.

I can imagine the excitement we women would make of an election if we should ever get into politics. Would we not croquet our adversaries' balls, and make stunning split-shots in parties, and wire ourselves artfully behind wickets, and do all sorts of perplexing things? I confess if the excitement should get to be half as great as in playing croquet, I should tremble to think of it.

Well, it was some excitement at all events to play against each other, he and I. Didn't I seek out his ball, didn't I pursue it, beat it back from wickets, come on it with most surprising and unexpected shots? Sophie fought with desperation on the other side, and at last they seemed to have carried the day, there was but one stroke wanting to put them out; they had killed Sydney at the stake and banished me to the farthest extremity of the ground. Mamma always said I had the genius for emergencies, and if you'll believe me I struck quite across the ground and hit Sophie's ball and sent it out, and then I took his back to make my two last wickets with, and finally with an imposing coup de théâtre I croqueted him to the other end of the ground, and went out amid thunders of applause. He took it with great presence of mind, knelt down and laid the mallet handsomely at my feet, and professed to deliver himself captive, and I imposed it on him as a task to write a ballad descriptive of the encounter. So he was shut up for about half an hour in the library, and came out with a very fine and funny ballad in Chevy Chase measure describing our exploits, which was read under the trees, and cheered and encored in the liveliest manner possible.

On the whole, Mr. Henderson may be said to have had quite a society success yesterday, as I heard him very much admired, and the Elmores overwhelmed him with pressing invitations to call, to come to their soirées, etc., etc. You see these Elmores have everything money can buy, and so they are distracted to be literary, or at least to have literary people in their train, and they have always been wanting to get Henderson and Jim Fellows to their receptions. So I heard Mrs. Elmore overwhelming him with compliments on his poem in a way that quite amused me, for I knew enough of him to know exactly how all this seemed to him. He is of all persons one of the most difficult to flatter, and has the keenest sense of the ridiculous; and Mrs. Elmore's style is as if one should empty a bushel basket of peaches or grapes on your head instead of passing the fruit dish.

But I am so busy traducing my neighbors that I forgot to say I won the croquet prize, which was duly presented. It was a gold croquet mallet set as a pin with four balls of emerald, amethyst, ruby, and topaz depending from it. It had quite an Etruscan effect and was very pretty, but when I saw how much Sophia really took the defeat to heart, my soul was moved for her and I made a peace-offering by getting her to accept it. It was not easy at first, but I made a point of it and insisted upon it with all my logic, telling her that in point of skill she had really won the game, that my last stroke was only a lucky accident, and you know I can generally talk people into almost anything I set my heart on, and so as Sophie was flattered by my estimate of her skill and as the bauble is a pretty one, I prevailed on her to take it. I am tired and sick of this fuss between the Elmores and us, and don't mean to have more of it, for Sophie really is a nice girl, and not a bit more spoiled than any of the rest of us, notwithstanding all the nonsense of her family, and she and I have agreed to be fast friends for the future, whatever may come.

I had one other motive in this move. I never have accepted jewelry from Sydney, and I was quite willing to be rid of this. If I could only croquet his heart down to Sophie to use, it might be a nice thing. I fancy she would like it.

I managed my cards quite adroitly all day to avoid a tête-à-tête interview with Sydney. I was careful always to be in the center of a group of two or three, and when he asked me to walk through the conservatories with him I said, "Come, Amy and Jane," and took them along.

As to somebody else, he made no attempt of the kind, though I could see that he saw me wherever I went. Do these creatures suppose we don't see their eyes, and fancy that they conceal their feelings? I am perfectly certain that whatever the matter is, he thinks as much of me as ever he did.

Well, it was moonlight and music all the way home, the band playing the most heart-breaking, entrancing harmonies from Beethoven and melodies from Schubert, and then Wat Sydney annoyed me beyond measure by keeping up a distracting chit-chat when I wanted to be quiet and listen. He cares nothing for music, and people who don't are like flies, they have no mercy and never will leave you a quiet moment. The other one went off and sat by himself, gazed at the moon and heard the music all in the most proper and romantic style, and looked like a handsome tenor at an opera.

---

So far, my dear, the history of our affairs. But something more surprising than ever you heard has just happened, and I must hasten to jot it down.

Yesterday afternoon, being worried and wearied with the day before, I left your letter, as you see, and teased Ida to go out driving with me in the Park. She had promised Effie St. Clere to sketch some patterns of arbors and garden seats that are there, for her new place at Fern Valley, and I had resolved on a lonely ramble to clear my heart and brain.

Moreover, the last time I was there I saw from one of the bridges a very pretty cascade falling into a charming little wooded lake in the distance. I resolved to go in search of this same cascade which is deep in a shady labyrinth of paths.

Well, it was a most lovely perfect day, and we left our carriage at the terrace and started off for our ramble, Ida with her sketch-book in hand. She was very soon hard at work at a rustic summer-house while I plunged into a woody tangle of paths guided only by the distant sound of the cascades. It was toward evening and the paths seemed quite solitary, for I met not a creature. I might really have thought I was among the ferns and white birches up in Conway, or anywhere in the mountains, it was so perfectly mossy and wild and solitary. A flock of wild geese seemed to be making an odd sort of outlandish noise, far in a deep, dark tangle of bushes, and it appeared to me to produce the impression of utter solitude more than anything else. Evidently it was a sort of wild lair seldom invaded. I still heard the noise of the cascade through a thicket of leaves, but could not get a sight of it. Sometimes it seemed near and sometimes far off, but at last I thought I hit upon a winding path that seemed to promise to take me to it. It wound round a declivity and I could tell by the sound I was approaching the water. I was quite animated and ran forward till a sudden turn brought me to the head of the cascade where there was a railing and one seat, and as I came running down I saw suddenly a man with a book in his hand sitting on this seat, and it was Mr. Henderson.

He rose up when he saw me and looked pale, but an expression of perfectly rapturous delight passed over his face as I checked myself astonished.

"Miss Van Arsdel!" he said. "To what happy fate do I owe this good fortune!"

I recovered myself and said that "I was not aware of any particular good fortune in the case."

"Not to you, perhaps," he said, "but to me. I have seen nothing of you for so long," he added, rather piteously.

"There has been nothing that I am aware of to prevent your seeing me," I said. "If Mr. Henderson chooses to make himself strange to his friends it is his own affair." He looked confused and murmured something about "many engagements and business."

"Mr. Henderson, you will excuse me," said I, resolved not to have this sort of thing go on any longer. "You have always been treated at our house as an intimate and valued friend; of late you seem to prefer to act like a ceremonious stranger."

"Indeed, you mistake me, entirely, Miss Van Arsdel," he said, eagerly. "You must know my feelings; you must appreciate my reasons; you see why I cannot and ought not."

"I am quite in the dark as to both," I said. "I cannot see any reason why we should not be on the old footing, I am sure. You have acted of late as if you were afraid to meet me; it is all perfectly unaccountable to me. Why should you do so? What reason can there be?"

"Because," he said, with a sort of desperation, "because I love you, Miss Van Arsdel. Because I always shall love you too well to associate with you as the wife or betrothed bride of another man."

"There is no occasion you should, Mr. Henderson. I am not, so far as I understand, either wife or betrothed to any man," I said.

He looked perfectly thunderstruck.

"Yet I heard it from the best authority."

"From what authority?" said I, "for I deny it."

"Your mother."

"My mother?" I was thunderstruck in my turn; here it was to be sure. Poor mamma! I saw through the whole mystery.

"Your mother told me," he went on, "that there was a tacit engagement which was to be declared on Mr. Sydney's return, and cautioned me against an undue intimacy."

"My mother," I said, "has done her utmost to persuade me to this engagement. I refused Mr. Sydney out and out in the beginning. She persuaded me to allow him to continue his attentions in hope of changing my mind, but it never has changed."

He grew agitated and spoke very quickly.

"Oh, tell me, Miss Van Arsdel, if I may hope for success in making the same effort?"

"I shouldn't be surprised if you might," said I.

There followed a sort of electric flash and a confusion of wild words after this—really my dear I cannot remember half what he said—only the next I knew, somehow, we were walking arm in arm together.

"What a talk we had, and what a walk up and down those tangled alleys! going over everything and explaining everything. It was a bright long twilight and the great silver moon rose upon us while yet we were talking. After a while I heard Ida calling up and down the paths for me. She came up and met us with her sketch-book under her arm."

"Ida, we're engaged, Harry and I," I said.

"So I thought," she said, looking at us kindly and stretching out both hands.

I took one and he the other.

"Do you think I have any chance with your parents?" asked Harry.

"I think," said Ida, "that you will find trouble at first, but you may rely on Eva, she will never change; but we must go home."

"Yes," said I, "it would not do to introduce the matter by getting up a domestic alarm and sending a party to drag the lake for us; we must drive home in a peaceable, orderly manner," and so, it being agreed among us that I should try my diplomatic powers on mamma first, and Harry should speak to papa afterward, we drove home.

Well, now Belle, it is all over—the mystery I mean; and the struggle with the powers, that bids to begin. How odd it is that marriage, which is a thing of all others most personal and individual, is a thing where all your friends want you to act to please them!

Mamma probably in her day felt toward papa just as I feel, but I am sure she will be drowned in despair that I cannot see Wat Sydney with her eyes, and that I do choose to see Harry with mine. But it isn't mamma that is to live with him, it is I; it is my fearful venture for life, not hers. I am to give the right to have and to hold me till life's end. When I think of that I wonder I am not afraid to risk it with any man, but with him I am not. I know him so intimately and trust him so entirely.

What a laugh I gave him last night, telling him how foolishly he had acted; he likes to have me take him off, and seemed perfectly astonished that I had had the perspicuity to read his feelings. These men, my dear, have a kind of innocent stupidity in matters of this kind that is refreshing!

Well, if I am not mistaken, there was one blissful individual sent home in New York last night, notwithstanding the terrors of the 'stern parents,' that are yet to be encountered.

How I do chatter on! Well, my dear Belle, you see I have kept my word. I always told you that I would let you know when I was engaged, the very first of any one, and now here it is. You may make the most of it and tell whom you please, for I shall never change. I am as firm as Ben Lomond.

Ever your loving

Eva.

---

DOMESTIC CONSULTATIONS.

On the afternoon after the croquet party Aunt Maria Wouvermans and Mrs. Van Arsdel, withdrawn to the most confidential recess of the house, held mysterious council.

"Well, Nelly," said Aunt Maria, "how did you think things looked yesterday?"

"I thought a crisis was impending, but after all nothing came. But you see, Maria," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, "that girl! she is the most peculiar creature. She wouldn't give him the least chance; she just held herself away from him. Two or three times I tried to arrange that they should be alone together, but she wouldn't. She would keep Susan and Jane Seaton at her elbow as if they had been glued to her."

"It was so provoking," said Aunt Maria, "because all the Elmores were there watching and whispering. Those Elmores are in such an elated state on account of the wedding in their family. You'd really think it was a royal marriage at the very least; and they whisper about and talk as if we had been trying to catch Sydney and couldn't; that's what provokes me! they were all on tiptoe watching every turn, and I did long to be able to come down on them with an announcement! What ails Eva? Of course she must mean to have him; no girl at her age would be fool enough to refuse such an offer; you see she's three-and-twenty."

"Well, if you'll believe me, Eva actually went and gave that croquet pin Sydney gave her to Sophie Elmore! I overheard her urging it on her, and he overheard it too, and I know he didn't like it; it was so very marked a thing, you see!"

"Eva gave that pin to Sophie Elmore! The girl is crazy. She is too provoking for anything! I can't think what it is, Nelly, makes your girls so singular."

Mrs. Wouvermans, it will appear, was one of that very common class of good people who improve every opportunity to show how very senseless their neighbors are compared with themselves. The sole and only reason, as might be gathered from her remarks, why anything disagreeable happened to anybody, was because they did not do, or had not done just as she should have done in their circumstances.

Now Mrs. Van Arsdel, though conceding in general that sister Maria was stronger and brighter than herself, was somewhat rebellious under the process of having it insisted in detail that every unfortunate turn of affairs was her fault, and so she answered with some spirit.

"I don't see that my girls are any more singular than other people's. Very few mothers have brought up nicer girls than mine. Everybody says so."

"And I say, Nelly, they are peculiar," insisted Mrs. Wouvermans. "There's Ida going off at her tangent! and Miss Eva! Well! one thing, it isn't my fault. I've done the very best I could in instructing them! It must come from the Van Arsdel side of the house. I'm sure in our family girls never made so much trouble. We all grew up sensible, and took the very best offer we had, and were married and went about our duties without any fuss. Though of course we never had a chance like this."

"Now, I shouldn't wonder in the least," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, "if Sydney should fly off to Sophie Elmore. It's evident that she is perfectly infatuated with him! and you know men's hearts are caught on the rebound very often."

"Oh, yes," said Aunt Maria, "I shouldn't wonder, just as Jerold Macy flew off to Blanche Sinclair, when Edith Enderly coquetted so with him. He never would have gone to Blanche in the world if Edith had not thrown him off. Edith was sorry enough afterward when it was too late to help it."

"I declare," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, "one never knows what trouble is till one has girls at the marrying age!"

"It's all your own fault," said Aunt Maria, "you indulge them too much. For my part," she continued, "I like the French way of arranging these things. It ought not to be left to the choice of a young silly girl. The parents ought to arrange for her, and then the thing is settled without any trouble. Of course people of experience in mature life can choose better for a girl than she can choose for herself! Our girls in America have too much liberty. If I had daughters to bring up I should bring them up so that they would never think of disputing what I told them."

"So you are always saying, Maria," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, "it's quite safe to say what you'll do when you haven't any, but it's very provoking to me. I only wish you had Ida and Eva to manage."

"I only wish I had!" said Aunt Maria. "I should have had them both well married by this time. There shouldn't be any of this kind of nonsense that you allow. I'd set down my foot. I wouldn't have it. My daughters should obey me. You let them make a perfect nose-of-wax of you. They treat you in any way they please."

"You always think so much of yourself, Maria, and whatever happens you turn round and blame me. I wish to mercy you'd had children and then you'd see! People who haven't are always delighted with themselves and always criticising people who have. If you had a family of children to manage they'd soon bring you down."

"Well, Nelly, you'll just see, you'll have a lot of old maids on your hands, that's all," said Aunt Maria. "Ida is a gone case now, and Eva is on the certain road. Girls that are so difficult and romantic and can't tell their own mind are sure to make old maids at last. There was Ellen Gilliflower, and Jane Seabright, they might both have had houses and horses and carriages of their own if they had taken offers when they could get them."

"You know poor Jane lost her lover."

"To be sure. Well, he was dead, wasn't he? and she couldn't marry him, but was that any reason why she never should marry anybody? There was John Smithson would have put her at the head of one of the best establishments about New York, and she might have had her own coupé and horses just as Mrs. Smithson does now. It's all this ridiculous idea about loving. Why, girls can love anybody they'd a mind to, and if I had a daughter she should."

"Oh! I don't know, Maria," said Mrs. Van Arsdel. "I think it is a pretty serious thing to force a daughter's affections."

"Fiddlestick upon affections, Nelly, don't you begin to talk. It makes me perfectly sick to hear the twaddle about it. People in good circumstances always like each other well enough, and any girl can get along with any man that puts her in a good position and takes good care of her. If Ida had been made to marry a good man when she first came out of school she never would have gone off at all these tangents, and she'd have been a contented woman, and so would Eva. She ought to be made to marry Wat Sydney, it is a tempting of Providence to let the thing drag on so. Now, if Sydney was like Sim Rivington, I wouldn't say a word. I think Polly's conduct is perfectly abominable, and if Sim goes on getting drunk and raises a hell upon earth at home Polly may just have herself to thank for it, for she was told all about him. She did it with her eyes open, but Eva's case is different."

At this moment the door-bell rung, and the waiter brought in a letter on a silver salver. Both ladies pounced upon it, and Aunt Maria saying, "It's to you, from Sydney," eagerly broke it open and began reading.

"I should think, sister," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, in an injured tone, "I might be allowed the first reading of my own letters."

"Oh, pshaw, don't be so peevish," said Aunt Maria, pushing it petulantly toward her. "If you don't want me to take any interest in your affairs I'm sure I don't see why I should. I'll go, and you may manage them yourself."

"But, Maria," said poor Mrs. Van Arsdel, apologetically, "one naturally has the wish to see one's own letters first."

"Well, mercy on us, child, don't be in a passion about it," said Aunt Maria, "you've got your letter, haven't you? Do read it, and you'll see it's just as I thought. That girl has offended him with her airs and graces, and he is just on the point of giving her up."

"But, you see, he says that he still desires to propose to her," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, reading, "only that as her manner to him is so marked he does not wish to expose himself to another refusal."

"Well," said Aunt Maria, "now you see, Nelly, after all, that letter leaves the game in Eva's own hands. If now she will behave herself and let you invite him to an interview and treat him properly, it can all be settled. The letter, in fact, amounts to a proposal in form. Now, Nelly, that girl must be made to behave herself. I wish I could put some pluck into you; you must be decided with her."

"It's of no use, sister, you don't know Eva. She's an easy child to be coaxed, but she has a terrible will of her own. The only way to manage her is through her affections. I can't bear to cross her, for she always was a good child."

"Well, then, tell her just how critical the state of the family is. She may have it in her power to save her father from failure. It may be just life or death with us all. Put it to her strongly. It would be a pretty thing, indeed, if instead of being mistress of Clairmont and that place at Newport, we should all be driven to take second-rate houses and live like nobodies, just for her foolish fancies. You ought to frighten her, Nelly. Set it out strongly. Appeal to her affections."

"Well, I shall do my best," said Mrs. Van Arsdel.

"Where is she? let me talk with her," said Aunt Maria.

"She and Ida are both gone driving in the Park this afternoon, but after all, sister, I think I had best manage it. I think I understand Eva better than you do. She would do more for me than for anybody, I think, for the child is very affectionate."

"There can't be anybody else in the case, can there?" said Aunt Maria. "I began to think it rather imprudent to have that Henderson round so much, but of late he seems to have stopped coming."

"I flatter myself, I managed him," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, with complacency. "I gave him a little motherly admonition that had a wonderful effect. After all it was a duty I owed to him, poor youth! Eva is wonderfully fascinating, and I could see he was getting too much interested in her. I have a regard for him. He is a nice fellow."

"I intended to have him take Ida," said Aunt Maria. "That would have been the proper thing to do."

"Well, Maria, I should think you might have found out by this time that everybody in the world isn't going to walk in the ways you mark out for them."

"It would be better for them if they would," said Aunt Maria. "If I had had the bringing up of your children from the beginning, Nelly, and you had never interfered, I think you would have seen results that you never will see now. It seems mysterious that Providence shouldn't send children to those best fitted to bring them up. Well, you must do the best you can. What time is it? Dear me, it is almost dinner time and I have a new table girl to-day. I expect she'll have everything topsy-turvey. I'll call round to-morrow to see how things come on."

---

WEALTH versus LOVE.

Eva Van Arsdel was seated in her apartment in all that tremulous flush of happiness and hope, that confusion of feeling, which a young girl experiences when she thinks that the great crisis of her life has been past, and her destiny happily decided.

"Yes, yes," she said to herself, "I like him, I like him; and I am going to like him, no matter what mamma, or Aunt Maria, or all the world say. I'll stand by him through life and death."

At this moment her mother came into the room.

"Dear me! Eva, child, not gone to bed yet! Why, what's the matter? how flushed your cheeks are! Why, you look really feverish."

"Do I?" said Eva, hardly knowing what she was saying. "Well, I suppose that is becoming, at any rate."

"Aren't you well?" said her mother. "Does your head ache?"

"Well? certainly, nicely; never better, mamma dear," said Eva, caressingly, coming and seating herself on her mother's knee, and putting her arm around her neck—"never better, mother."

"Well, Eva, then I am glad of it. I just wanted a few minutes alone with you to-night. I have got something to tell you"—and she drew a letter from her pocket. "Here's this letter from Mr. Sydney; I want to read you something from it."

"Oh dear mamma! what's the use? Don't you think it rather stupid, reading letters?"

"My dear child, Mr. Sydney is such a good man, and so devoted to you."

"I haven't the least objection, mamma, to his being a good man. Long may he be so. But as to his being devoted to me, I am sorry for it."

"At least, Eva, just read this letter—there's a dear; and I am sure you must see how like a gentleman he writes."

Eva took the letter from her mother's hand, and ran it over hurriedly.

"All no use, mamma, dear," she said, when she had done. "It won't hurt him. He'll get over this just as people do with the chicken pox. The fact is, mamma, Mr. Sydney is a man that can't bear to be balked in anything that he has once undertaken to do. It is not that he loves me so very dreadfully, but he has set out to have me. If he could have got me, ten to one, he would have tired of me before now. You know he said that he never cared anything about a girl that he knew he could have. It is simply and only because I have kept myself out of his way and been hard to get that he wants me. If he once had me for a wife, I should be all well enough, but I should be got, and he'd be off after the next thing he could not get. That's just his nature, mamma."

"But, Eva dear, such a fine man as he is."

"I do not see that he is so very fine."

"But, Eva, only look at the young men that girls marry! Why, there's that young Rivington; he's drunk three nights in a week, so they tell me. And there are worse stories than that about him. He has been bad in every kind of way that a man could be bad. And yet, Polly Elmore is perfectly crazy with delight to have her daughter get him. And here's Wat Sydney, who, everybody says, is always perfectly sober and correct."

"Well, mamma dear, if it is only a sober, correct man that you want me to have, there's that Mr. Henderson, just as sober and correct, and a great deal more cultivated and agreeable."

"How absurd of you, my daughter! Mr. Henderson has not anything to support a wife on. He is a good moral young man, I admit, and agreeable, and has talent and all that; but my dear Eva, you are not fitted to contend with poverty. You must marry a man that can support you in the position that you have always been in."

"Whether I love him or not, mamma?"

"My dear Eva, you would, of course, love your husband. A man that is able to take care of you and get you everything that you want—give you every wish of your heart—you would love of course."

"Well, mamma, I have got a man that does exactly that for me, now," said Eva, "and I don't need another. That's just what papa does for me. And now, when I marry, I want a companion that suits me. I have got now all the bracelets, and jewelry, and finger rings that I can think of; and if I wanted forty more I could tease them out of papa any day, or kiss them out of him. Pa always gets me everything I want; so I don't see what I want of Mr. Sydney."

"Well, now, my dear Eva, I must speak to you seriously. You are old enough now not to be talked to like a child. The fact is, my darling, there is nothing so insecure as our life here. Your father, my love, is reported to be a great deal richer than he is. Of course we have to keep up the idea, because it helps his business. But the last two or three years he has met with terrible losses, and I have seen him sometimes so nervous about our family expenditures that, really, there was no comfort in life. But, then, we had this match in view. We supposed, of course, that it was coming off. And such a splendid settlement on you would help the family every way. Mr. Sydney is a very generous man; and the use of his capital, the credit that the marriage would give to your father in business circles, would be immense. And then, my child, just think of the establishment you would have! Why, there is not such an establishment in the country as his place on the North River! You saw it yesterday. What could you ask more? And there is that villa at Newport. You might be there in the Summer, and have all you sisters there. And he is a man of the most splendid taste as to equipages and furniture, and everything of that sort. And as I said before, he is a good man."

"But, mamma, mamma, it will never do. Not if he had the East and West Indies. All that can't buy your little Eva. Tell me, now, mamma dear, was pa a rich man when you married him—I mean when you fell in love with him?"

"Well, no, dear, not very; though people always said that he was a man that would rise."

"But you didn't begin in a house like this, mamma. You began at the beginning and helped him up, didn't you?"

"Well, yes, dear, we did begin in a quiet way; and I had to live pretty carefully the first years of my life; and worked hard, and know all about it; and I want to save you from going through the same that I did."

"May be if you did I should not turn out as you are now. But really, mother, if pa is embarrassed, why do we live so? Why don't we economize? I am sure I am willing to."

"Oh, darling! we mustn't. We mustn't make any change; because, if the idea should once get running that there is any difficulty about money, everybody would be down on your father. We have to keep everything going, and everything up, or else things would go abroad that would injure his credit; and he could not get money for his operations. He is engaged in great operations now that will bring in millions if they succeed."

"And if they don't succeed," said Eva, "then I suppose that we shall lose millions—is that it?"

"Well, dear, it is just as I tell you, we rich people live on a very uncertain eminence, and for that reason I wanted to see my darling daughter settled securely."

"Well, mamma, now I will tell you what I have been thinking of. Since 'riches make to themselves wings and fly away,' what is the sense of marrying a man whose main recommendation is, that he is rich? Because that is the thing that makes Mr. Sydney more, for instance, than Mr. Henderson, or any other nice gentleman we know. Now what if I should marry Mr. Sydney, who, to say the truth, dear mamma, I do not fancy, and who is rather tiresome to me—and then some fine morning his banks should fail, his railroads burst up, and his place on the North River, and his villa at Newport have to be sold, and he and I have to take a little unfashionable house together, and rough it—what then? Why, then, when it came to that, I should wish that I had chosen a more entertaining companion. For there isn't a thing that I am interested in that I can talk with him about. You see, dear mother, we have to take it 'for better or for worse;' and as there is always danger that the wheel may turn, by and by it may come so that we'll have nothing but the man himself left. It seems to me that we should choose our man with great care. He should be like the pearl of great price, the Bible speaks of, for whom we would be glad to sell everything. It should be somebody we could be happy with if we lost all beside. And when I marry, mother, it will be with a man that I feel is all that to me."

"Well, Eva dear, where'll you find such a man?"

"What if I had found him, mother—or thought I had?"

"What do you mean, child?"

"Mother, I have found the man that I love, and he loves me, and we are engaged."

"Eva, child! I would not have thought this of you. Why haven't you told me before?"

"Because, mamma, it was only this afternoon that I found out that he loved me and wanted me to be his wife."

"And may I presume to ask now who it is?" said Mrs. Van Arsdel, in a tone of pique.

"Dear mother, it is Harry Henderson."

"Mr. Henderson! Well, I do think that is too dishonorable; when I told him your relations with Mr. Sydney."

"Mother, you gave him to understand that I was engaged to Mr. Sydney, and I told him, this afternoon, that I was not, and never would be. He was honorable. After you had that conversation with him, he avoided our house a long time, and avoided me. I was wretched about it, and he was wretched; but this afternoon we met accidentally in the Park; and I insisted on knowing from him why he avoided us so. And, at last, I found out all; and he found out all. We understand each other perfectly now, and nothing can ever come between us. Mother, I would go with him to the ends of the earth. There is nothing that I do not feel able to do or suffer for him. And I am glad and proud of myself to know that I can love him as I do."

"Oh well, poor child! I do not know what we shall do," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, with profound dejection.

"Deary mother, I will do everything I can to help you, and everything I can to help papa. I do not believe there is one of us children that would not. And I think it is true, what Ida is always telling us, that it would be a great deal better for us if we had less, and had to depend on ourselves and use our own faculties more. There are the boys in college; there is no need of their having spending-money as they do. And I know if papa would tell them of his difficulties it would make men of them, just as it would make a woman of me."

"Well, I do not know," said Mrs. Van Arsdel. "Your father has not told me of any particular embarrassments, only I see he is anxious and nervous, and I know him so well that I always know when his affairs trouble him. And this is a great blow to me, Eva."

"Well, dear mother, I am very sorry it is so; but I cannot help it. It would be wicked for me, mother, to marry any other man when I love Harry as I do. Love is not a glove that you can take off as you please. It is something very different. Now, with him, I never felt tired. I always like to be with him; I always like to talk with him; he never makes me nervous; I never wish he was gone; he can always understand me, and I can understand him. We can almost tell what the other is thinking of without speaking. And I will risk our not being happy together. So please do, dear mother, look a little cheerful about it. Let me be happy in my own way."

"Well, I suppose I must," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, with a deep sigh, taking up the lamp. "You always did have your own way, Eva."

"Oh, well, mother dear; some day you'll be glad of it. Good night."

---

FURTHER CONSULTATIONS.

After the departure of her mother, Eva in vain tried to compose herself to sleep. Her cheeks were flushed, and her brain was in a complete whirl. Her mother had said and hinted just enough about the financial condition of the family to fill her with vague alarms. She walked uneasily up and down her luxurious chamber, all whose appointments spoke of wealth and taste; and it was with an unpleasant feeling of insecurity that she regarded the pictures and statues and sofas, and all the charming arrangements, in perfecting which her father had always allowed her carte blanche as to money. She reflected uneasily, that in making all these expensive arrangements, she had ordered simply what pleased her fancy, without inquiry as to price, and without ever glancing over a bill to know the result; and now, she found herself affianced to a young man without any other resources than those which must come from the exertion of his talents, seconded by prudence and economy. And here, again, offered to her acceptance, was another marriage, which would afford her the means of gratifying every taste, and of continuing to live in all those habits of easy luxury and careless expenses that she could not but feel were very agreeable to her. Not for one moment did she feel an inclination, or a temptation, to purchase that luxury, and that ease, by the sale of herself; but still, when she thought of her lover—of the difficulties that he must necessarily meet, of the cares which she must bring upon him—she asked herself, "Was it not an act of injustice to him to burden him with so incapable and helpless a wife, as she feared she should prove?"

"But I am not incapable," she said to herself, "and I will not be helpless. I have strength in me, and I will use it; I will show that I am good for something. I wonder if it is true that papa is embarrassed. If he is, I wish he would trust us; I wish he would tell us at once, and let us help him economize. I would do it; I am sure we all would do it."

It was in vain, under the pressure of these thoughts, to try to compose herself to sleep; and, at last, she passed into her sister Ida's room, who, with her usual systematic regularity as to hours, had for a long time been in the enjoyment of quiet slumber.

"Ida, dear!" she said, stooping over and speaking to her sister, "Ida, look here!"

Ida opened her eyes, and sat up in bed. "Why Eva, child, not gone to bed yet? What is the matter with you? You will certainly ruin your health with these irregular hours."

"Oh Ida, I am so nervous I can't sleep! I am sorry to disturb you, but, indeed, I want to talk to you about something that worries me; and you know you are always gone before I am up in the morning."

"Well, dear, what is it?" said Ida, stroking her head.

"Do you know mamma has just been into my room with a letter from Mr. Sydney. He is coming into the field again, and has written to mamma, and mamma has been in talking to me till I am just ready to cry. Now, Ida, you know all that took place between Mr. Henderson and me yesterday in the Park; we are engaged, are we not, as much as two people can be?"

"Certainly you are," said Ida, decisively.

"Well now, mamma is so distressed and disappointed."

"You told her about it, then?" said Ida.

"Certainly; yes, I told her all about it; and oh, Ida! what do you think? mamma really made me feel as if something dreadful was going to happen in the family, that papa was getting embarrassed in his business, and perhaps we might all fail and come to ruin if I did not help him by marrying Mr. Sydney. Now, do you think it would be right for me? It certainly can not be my duty!"

"Ask yourself that question," said Ida; "think what you must promise and vow in marriage."

"To be sure! and how wicked it would be to promise and vow all that to one man when I know that I love another one better!"

"Then," said Ida, "asking a woman to take false marriage vows to save her family, or her parents from trouble, is just like asking her to steal money, or forge a false note to save them. Eva, you cannot do it."

"Well," said Eva, "that is what I told mamma. But, Ida dear, is it really true, do you think, that papa is troubled in his business?"

"Papa is not a man that would speak freely to any woman on business matters," said Ida, "not even to me; but I know that his liabilities and ventures are terrific; and nothing would surprise me less than to have this whole air-castle that we have been living in dissolve like a morning mist, and let us down on the pavement. All I have to say is, that if it comes it is just what I have been preparing for all my life. I have absolutely refused to be made such a helpless doll as young girls in our position commonly are. I have determined that I would keep my faculties bright, and my bodily health firm and strong; and that all these luxuries should not become a necessity to me, so but what I could take care of myself, and take care of others, without them. And all I have to say is, if a crash comes it will find me ready, and it won't crush me."

"But, Ida, don't you think it would be a great deal better if we would all begin now to economize, and live very differently? Why, I am sure I would be willing to move out of this house, and rent it, or sell it, and live in a smaller one, and give up the carriages and horses. We could live a great deal cheaper and more quietly than we do, and yet have everything that I care about. Yes, I'd even rather sell the pictures—all except a few—and feel safe and independent, than to live in this sort of glittering, uncertain way, and be pressed to marry a man that I do not love, for the sake of getting out of it."

"Well, dear," said Ida, "you never will get Aunt Maria to let ma stop running this race with the Elmores till the last gun fires, and the ship is ready to sink; that's the whole of it. It is what people will say, and the thought of being pitied by their set, and being beaten in the race, that will go further than anything else. If you talk about any drawing in of expenses, they say that we must not do anything of the sort—that it will injure papa's credit. Now I know enough of what things cost, and what business estimates are, to know that we are spending at a tremendous rate. If we had an entailed estate settled upon us with an annual income of two or three hundred thousand dollars, there might be some sense in living as we do; but when all depends on the value of stocks that are going up to-day and down to-morrow, there is never any knowing what may happen; and that is what I have always felt. Father made a lucky hit by investing in stocks that doubled, and trebled, and quadrupled in value; but now, there is a combination against them, and they are falling. I know it gives father great anxiety; and, as I said before, I should not wonder in the least—nothing would surprise me less, than that we should have a great crisis one of these times."

"Poor Harry!" said Eva, "it was the thought of my being an heiress that made him hesitate so long; perhaps he'll have a chance to take me without that obstacle. Ida, do you think it would be right and just in me to let him take such an inefficient body as I am? Am I quite spoiled, do you think—past all redemption?"

"Oh, no, darling!" said Ida; "I have good hopes of you. In the first place, a woman that has strength of mind enough to be true to her love against all the pressure that has been brought to bear on you, has strength of mind to do anything that may be required of her. Of course, dear, it will come to the practical point of living in an entirely different style from what we now live in; and you must count the cost. In the first place, you must give up fashionable society altogether. You must consent to be pitied and wondered at as one that has fallen out of her sphere and gone down in the world. All the Mrs. Grundys will stop calling on you; and you won't have any turn-out in the Park; and you may have to take a small house on an unfashionable street, and give your mind to the business of calculating expenses, and watching outgoes and incomes."

"Well, now, seriously, Ida, I shouldn't mind these things a bit. I don't care a penny for Mrs. Grundy, nor her works and ways. As to the little house, there'll be the less care to keep it; and as to its being on an unfashionable street, what do I care for that? Nobody that I really care for would fail to come and see me, let me live where I would. And Harry and I just agree in our views of life. We are not going to live for the world, but for ourselves and our friends. We'll have the nicest little home, where every true friend of ours shall feel as much at home as we do. And don't you think, Ida, that I should make a good manager? Oh! I know that I could make a house pretty—charming—on ever so little money, just as I get up a Spring hat, sometimes, out of odds and ends; and I quite like the idea of having it to do. Of course, poor papa, I don't want him to fail; and I hope he won't; but I'm something like you, Ida, if all should go to ruin, I feel as if I could stand up, now, that I have got Harry to stand up with me. We can begin quietly at first, and make our fortune together. I have thought of ever so many things that I could do for him to help him. Do you know, Ida,—(I rather guess you'll laugh)—that I brought home his gloves and mended them this very evening? I told him I was going to begin to take care of him. You see I'll make it cheaper for him in a thousand ways—I know I can. He never shall find me a burden. I am quite impatient to be able to show what I can do."

"To begin, darling," said Ida, "one thing you must do is, to take care of your body; no late hours to waste your little brain. And so don't you think you had better go to your room and go quietly to sleep?"

"Oh Ida! I am going to be so good and so regular after to-night; but to-night, you know, is a kind of exception. Girls don't get engaged every day of their lives, and so you must forgive me if I do make a run upon you to-night. The fact is, what with my talk with Harry this afternoon, and with mamma to-night, and all the fuss that I see impending, my eyes are just as wide open as they can be; and I don't believe I could go to sleep if I were to try. Oh Ida! Harry told me all about his mother, and all about that handsome cousin of his, that he has spoken of so many times. Do you know I used to have such worries of mind about that cousin? I was perfectly sure that she stood in my way. And now, Ida, I have a most capital idea about her! She wants to go to France to study, just as you do; and how nice it would be if you could join company and go together."

"It would be pleasant," said Ida. "I must confess I don't like the idea of being 'damsel errant,' wandering off entirely alone in the world; and if I leave you, darling, I shall want somebody to speak to. But come, my dear little pussy, you must lie down and shut your eyes, and say your prayers, and try to go to sleep."

"You darling good little doctor, you," said Eva, "it is too bad of me to keep you up! There, I will be good—see how good I am! Good night"—and kissing her sister, she sought her own apartment.

---

MAKING LOVE TO ONE'S FATHER-IN-LAW.

Life has many descents from romance to reality that are far from agreeable. But every exalted hour, and every charming passage in our mortal pilgrimage, is a luxury that has to be paid for with something disagreeable. The German story teller, Tieck, has a pretty legend of a magical region where were marvelous golden castles, and fountains, and flowers, and bright-winged elves, living a life of ceaseless pleasure; but all this was visible only to the anointed eyes of some favored mortal to whom was granted the vision. To all others this elfin country was a desolate wilderness. I had had given me within a day or two that vision of Wonderland, and wandered—scarce knowing whether in the body or out—in its enchanted bowers. The first exhilarating joy of the moment when every mist rose up from the landscape of love; when there was perfect understanding, perfect union, perfect rest; was something that transfigured life. But having wandered in this blessed country and spoken the tongue of angels, I was now to return to every-day regions and try to translate its marvels and mysteries into the vernacular of mortals. In short, I was to wait upon Mr. Van Arsdel and ask of him the hand of his daughter.

Now however charming, with suitable encouragement, to make love to a beautiful lady, making love to a prospective father-in-law is quite another matter.

Men are not as a general thing inclined to look sympathetically on other men in love with any fine woman of their acquaintance, and are rather provoked than otherwise to have them accepted. "What any woman can see in that fellow!" is a sort of standing problem. But possessors of daughters, are, a fortiori, enemies ready made to every pretender to their hands. My own instincts made me aware of this, and I could easily fancy that had I a daughter like Eva I should be ready to shoot the fellow who came to take her from me.

Mr. Van Arsdel, it is true, had showed me, hitherto, in his quiet way, marked favor. He was seldom much of a talker, though a shrewd observer of all that was said by others. He had listened silently to all our discussions and conversations in Ida's library, and oftentimes to the reading of the articles I had subjected to the judgment of the ladies; sometimes, though very rarely, interposing little bits of common sense—criticism which showed keen good sense, and knowledge of the world.

Mr. Van Arsdel, like many of our merchant princes, had come from a rural distinct, and an early experience of the hard and frugal life of a farm. Good sense, acute observation, an ability to take wide and clear views of men and things, and an incorruptible integrity, had been the means of his rise to his present elevation. He was a true American man in another respect, and that was his devotion to women. In America, where we have a clear democracy, women hold that influence over men that is exerted by the aristocracy in other countries. They are something to be looked up to, petted, and courted. The human mind seems to require something of this kind. The faith and fealty that the middle-class Englishman has toward his nobility is not all snobbery. It has something of poetry in it—it is his romance of life. Up in those airy regions where walk the nobility, he is at liberty to fancy some higher, finer types of manhood and womanhood than he sees in the ordinary ways of life, and he adores the unseen and unknown. The American life would become vulgar and common-place did not a chivalrous devotion to women come in to supply the place of recognized orders of nobility. The true democrat sees no superior in rank among men, but all women are by courtesy his superiors.

Mr. Van Arsdel had married a beauty and a belle. When she chose him from among a crowd of suitors he could scarcely believe his own eyes or ears, or help marveling at the wondrous grace of the choice; and, as he told her so, Mrs. Van Arsdel believed him, and their subsequent life was arranged on that understanding. The Van Arsdel house was an empire where women ruled, though as the queen was a pretty, motherly woman, her reign was easy and flowery.

Mr. Van Arsdel delighted in the combinations of business for its own sake. It was his form of mental activity. He liked the effort, the strife, the care, the labor, the success of winning; but when money was once won he cared not a copper for all those forms of luxury and show, for the pride, pomp, and circumstance of fashion, which were all in all to his wife.

In his secret heart he considered the greater part of the proceedings in and about his splendid establishment as a rather expensive species of humbug; but then it was what the women wanted and desired, and he took it all quietly and without comment. I felt somewhat nervous when I asked a private interview with him in Ida's library.

"I have told mamma, Harry," whispered Eva, "and she is beginning to get over it."

Mrs. Van Arsdel received me with an air of patient endurance, as if I had been the toothache or any of the other inevitable inflictions of life, Miss Alice was distant and reserved, and only Ida was cordial.

I found Mr. Van Arsdel dry, cold, and wary, not in the least encouraging any sentimental effusion, and therefore I proceeded to speak to him with as matter-of-fact directness as if the treaty related to a bag of wool.

"Mr. Van Arsdel, I love your daughter. She has honored me so far as to accept of my love, and I have her permission to ask your consent to our marriage."

He took off his spectacles, wiped them deliberately while I was speaking, and coughed drily.

"Mr. Henderson," he said, "I have always had a great respect for you so far as I knew you, but I must confess I don't know why I should want to give you my daughter."

"Simply, sir, because in the order of nature you must give her to somebody, and I have the honor to be chosen by her."

"Eva could do better, her mother thinks."

"I am aware that Miss Van Arsdel could marry a man with more money than I have, but none who would love her more or be more devoted to her happiness. Besides I have the honor to be the man of her choice, and perhaps you may be aware that Miss Eva is a young lady of very decided preferences."

He smiled drily, and looked at me with a funny twinkle in his eye.

"Eva has always been used to having her own way," he remarked.

"Then, my dear sir, I must beg leave to say that the choice of a companion for life is a place where a lady has a good right to insist on her own way."

"Well, Mr. Henderson, you may be right. But perhaps her parents ought to insist that she shall not make an imprudent marriage."

"Mr. Van Arsdel, I do not conceive that I am proposing an imprudent marriage. I have not wealth to offer, it is true, but I have a reasonable prospect of being able to support a wife and family. I have good firm health, I have good business habits, I have a profession which already assures me a certain income, and an influential position in society."

"What do you call your profession?"

"Literature," I replied.

He looked skeptical, and I added—"Yes, Mr. Van Arsdel, in our day literature is a profession in which one may hope for both fame and money."

"It is rather an uncertain one, isn't it?" said he.

"I think not. A business which proposes to supply a great, permanent, constantly increasing demand you must admit to be a good one. The demand for current reading is just as wide and steady as any demand of our life, and the men who undertake to supply it have as certain a business as those that undertake to supply cotton cloth, or railroad iron. At this day fortunes are being made in and by literature."

Mr. Van Arsdel drummed on the table abstractedly.

"Now," said I, determined to speak in the language of men and things, "the case is just this: If a young man of good, reliable habits, good health, and good principles, has a capital of seventy thousand dollars invested in a fair paying business, has he not a prospect of supporting a family in comfort?"

"Yes," said Mr. Van Arsdel, regarding me curiously, "I should call that a good beginning."

"Well," rejoined I, "my health, my education, my power of doing literary work, are this capital. They secure to me for the next year an income equal to that of seventy thousand dollars at ten per cent. Now, I think a capital of that amount invested in a man, is quite as safe as the same sum invested in any stocks whatever. It seems to me that in our country a man who knows how to take care of his health is less likely to become unproductive in income than any stock you can name."

"There is something in that, I admit," replied Mr. Van Arsdel.

"And there's something in this, too, papa," said Eva, who entered at this moment and could not resist her desire to dip her oar in the current of conversation, "and that is, that an investment that you have got to take for better or worse and can't sell or get rid of all your life, had better be made in something you are sure you will like."

"And are you sure of that in this case, Pussy?" said her father, pinching her cheek.

"Tolerably, as men go. Mr. Henderson is the least tiresome man of my acquaintance, and you know, papa, it's time I took somebody; you don't want me to go into a convent, do you?"

"How about poor Mr. Sydney?"

"Poor Mr. Sydney has just called, and I have invited him to a private audience and convinced him that I am not, in the least, the person to make him happy—and he is one of the sort that feel that it is of the last importance that he should be made happy."

"Well, well! Mr. Henderson, I presume you have seen, in the course of your observations, that this is one of the houses where the women rule. You and Eva will have to settle it with her mother."

"Then I am to understand," exclaimed I, "that, as far as you are concerned——!"

"I submit," said Mr. Van Arsdel.

"The ayes have it, then," said Eva.

"I'm not so sure of that, young lady," said Mr. Van Arsdel, "if I may judge by the way your mother lamented to me last night."

"Oh, that's all Aunt Maria! You see, papa, this is an age of revolution, and there's going to be a revolution in the Aunt Maria dynasty in our house. She has governed mamma and all the rest of us long enough, and now she must go down and I must rule. Harry and I are going to start a new era and have things all our own way. I'm going to crown him King, and he then will crown me Queen, and then we shall proceed to rule and reign in our own dominions, and Aunt Maria, and Mrs. Grundy, and all the rest of them, may help themselves; they can't hinder us. We shall be happy in our own way, without consulting them."

"Well, well!" said Mr. Van Arsdel, following with an amused eye, a pirouette Eva executed at the conclusion of her speech, "you young folks are venturesome."

"Yes, papa, I am 'The woman who dared,'" said Eva.

"'Nothing venture, nothing have,'" quoted I.

"Eva knows no more about managing money than a this year's robin," said her father.

"Yet this year's robins know how to build respectable nests when their time comes," said she. "They don't bother about investments and stocks and all those things, but sing and have a good time. It all comes right for them, and I don't doubt it will for us."

"You have a decided talent for spending money most agreeably, I confess," said Mr. Van Arsdel.

"Now, papa, it's too bad for you to be running down your own daughter! I'm not appreciated. I have a world of undeveloped genius for management. Harry has agreed to teach me accounts, and as I belong to the class who always grow wiser than their teachers, I'm sure that before six months are over I shall be able to suggest improved methods to him. When I get a house you'll all be glad to come and see me, I shall make it so bright and sunny and funny, and give you such lovely things to eat; and in my house everybody shall do just as they please, and have their own way if they can find out what it is. I know people will like it."

"I believe you, Pussy," said Mr. Van Arsdel; "but houses don't grow on bushes, you know."

"Well, haven't I six thousand dollars, all my own, that grandma left me?"

"And how much of a house do you think that would buy?"

"Perhaps as big a one as you and mother began in."

"You never would be satisfied with such a house as we began in."

"Why not? Are we any better than you were?"

"No. But nowadays no young folks are contented to do as we did."

"Then, papa, you are going to see a new thing upon the earth, for Harry and I am going to be pattern folks for being rational and contented. We are going to start out on a new tack and bring in the golden age. But, bless me! there's Aunt Maria coming down the street! Now, Harry, comes the tug of war. I am going now to emancipate mamma and proclaim the new order of things," and out she flitted.

"Mr. Henderson," said Mr. Van Arsdel, when she had gone, "I think it is about certain that I am to look on you as a future member of our family. I'll be fair with you, that you may take steps with your eyes open. My daughters are supposed to be heiresses, but, as things are tending, in a very short time I may be put back to where I started in life and have all to begin over. My girls will have nothing. I see such a crisis impending and I have no power to help it."

"My dear sir," said I, "while I shall be sorry for your trouble, and hope it may not come, I shall be only too glad to prove my devotion to Eva."

"It is evident," said Mr. Arsdel, "that her heart is set on you, and, after all, the only true comfort is in having the one you want. I myself never cared for fashion, Mr. Henderson, nor parties, nor any of this kind of fuss and show the women think so much of; and I believe that Eva is a little like me. I like to go back to the old place in summer and eat huckleberries and milk, and see the cows come home from pasture, and sit in father's old arm-chair. It wouldn't take so much running and scheming and hard thinking and care to live, if folks were all of my mind. Why, up in New Hampshire where I came from, there's scarcely ever an estate administered upon that figures up more than five thousand dollars, and yet they all live well—have nice houses, nice tables, give money in charity, and make a good thing of life."

There was something really quite pathetic in this burst of confidence from the worthy man. Perhaps I was the first one to whom he had confessed the secret apprehensions with which he was struggling.

"You see, Mr. Henderson, you never can tell about investments. Stocks that seem to stand as firm as the foundations of the earth, that the very oldest and shrewdest and longest-headed put into, run down and depreciate—and when they get running you can't draw out, you see. Now I advanced capital for the new Lightning Line Railroad to the amount of two hundred thousand, and pledged my Guatemala stock for the money, and then arose this combination against the Guatemala stock, and it has fallen to a fourth of its value in six months, and it takes heavy rowing—heavy. I'd a great deal rather be in father's old place, with an estate of five thousand dollars, and read my newspaper in peace, than to have all I have with the misery of managing it. I may work out and I may not."

---

ACCEPTED AND ENGAGED.

And so at last I was accepted, and my engagement with Eva was recognized as a fait accompli.

In the family of my betrothed were all shades of acquiescence. Mrs. Van Arsdel was pensively resigned to me as a mysterious dispensation of Providence. Mr. Van Arsdel, though not in any way demonstrative, showed an evident disposition to enter into confidential relations with me. Ida was whole-hearted and cordial; and Alice, after a little reconnoitering, joined our party as a gay, generous young girl, naturally disposed to make the best of things, and favorably inclined toward the interests of young lovers.

Mr. Trollope, in The Small House at Allington, represents a young man just engaged, as feeling himself in the awkward position of a captive led out in triumph, for exhibition. The lady and her friends are spoken of as marching him forth with complacency, like a prize ox with ribbons in his horns, unable to repress the exhibition of their delight in having entrapped him. One would infer from this picture of life such a scarcity of marriageable men that the capture even of such game as young Crosbie, who is represented to be an untitled young man, without fortune or principle, is an occasion of triumph.

In our latitudes, we of the stronger sex are not taught to regard ourselves as such overpoweringly delightful acquisitions, and the declaration of an engagement is not with us regarded as evidence of a lady's skill in hunting. I did not, as young Crosbie is said to have done, feel myself somehow caught. On the contrary, I was lost in wonder at my good fortune. If I had found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, or dug up the buried treasures of Captain Kidd, I could not have seemed to myself more as one who dreamed.

I wrote all about it to my mother, who, if she judged by my letters, must have believed "Hesperian fables" true for the first time in the world, and that a woman had been specially made and created out of all impossible and fabulous elements of joy. The child-wife of my early days, the dream-wife of my youth, were both living, moving, breathing in this wonderful reality. I tried to disguise my good fortune—to walk soberly and behave myself among men as if I were sensible and rational, and not dazed and enchanted. I felt myself orbed in a magical circle, out of which I looked pityingly on everybody that was not I. A spirit of universal match-making benevolence possessed me. I wanted everybody I liked to be engaged. I pitied and made allowances for everybody that was not. How could they be happy or good that had not my fortune? They had not, they never could have, an Eva. There was but one Eva, and I had her!

I woke every morning with a strange, new thrill of joy. Was it so? Was she still in this world, or had this impossible, strange mirage of bliss risen like a mist and floated heavenward? I trembled when I thought how frail a thing human life is. Was it possible that she might die? Was it possible that an accident in a railroad car, a waft of drapery toward an evening lamp, a thoughtless false step, a mistake in a doctor's prescription, might cause this lovely life to break like a bubble, and be utterly gone, and there be no more Eva, never, nevermore on earth? The very intensity of love and hope suggested the possibility of the dreadful tragedy that every moment underlies life; that with every joy connects the possibility of a proportioned pain. Surely love, if nothing else, inclines the soul to feel its helplessness and be prayerful, to place its treasures in a Father's hand.

Sometimes it seemed to me too much to hope for, that she should live to be my wife; that the fabulous joy of possession should ever be mine. Each morning I left my bunch of fresh violets with a greeting in it at her door, and assured myself that the earth yet retained her, and all day long I worked with the under-thought of the little boudoir where I should meet her in the evening. Who says modern New York life is prosaic? The everlasting poem of man and woman is as fresh there at this hour as among the crocuses and violets of Eden.

A graceful writer, in one of our late magazines, speaks of the freedom which a young man feels when he has found the mistress and queen of his life. He is bound to no other service, he is anxious about no other smile or frown. I had been approved and crowned by my Queen of Love and Beauty. If she liked me, what matter about the rest?

It did not disturb me a particle to feel that I was submitted to as a necessity, rather than courted as a blessing, by her parents. I cared nothing for cold glances or indifferent airs so long as my golden-haired Ariadne threw me the clew by which I threaded the labyrinth, and gave me the talisman by which to open the door. Once safe with her in her little "Italy," the boudoir in which we first learned to know each other, we laughed and chatted, making ourselves a gay committee of observation on the whole world besides. Was there anybody so fortunate as we? and was there any end to our subject-matter for conversation?

"You have no idea, Harry," she said to me, the first evening after our engagement had been declared, "what a time we've been having with Aunt Maria! You know she is mamma's oldest sister, and mamma is one of the gentle, yielding sort, and Aunt Maria has always ruled and reigned over us all. She really has a way of ordering mamma about, and mamma I think is positively afraid of her. Not that she's really ill-tempered, but she is one of the sort that thinks it's a matter of course that she should govern the world, and is perfectly astonished when she finds she can't. I have never resisted her before, because I have been rather lazy, and it's easier to give up than to fight; and besides one remembers one's catechism, and doesn't want to rise up against one's pastors and masters."

"But you thought you had come to a place where amiability ceased to be a virtue?" said I.

"Exactly. Ida always said that people must have courage to be disagreeable, or they couldn't be good for much; and so I put on all my terrors, and actually bullied Aunt Maria into submission."

"You must have been terrific," said I, laughing.

"Indeed, you ought to have seen me! I astonished myself. I told her that she always had domineered over us all, but that now the time had come that she must let my mother alone, and not torment her; that, as for myself, I was a woman and not a child, and that I should choose my lot in life for myself, as I had a right to do. I assure you, there was warm work for a little while, but I remained mistress of the field."

"It was a revolutionary struggle," said I.

"Exactly,—a fight at the barricades; and as a result a new government is declared. Mamma reigns in her own house and I am her prime minister. On the whole I think mamma is quite delighted to be protected in giving me my own way, as she always has. Aunt Maria has shaken dreadful warnings and threatenings at me, and exhausted a perfect bead-roll of instances of girls that had married for love and come to grief. You'd have thought that nothing less than beggary and starvation was before us; and the more I laughed the more solemn and awful she grew. She didn't spare me. She gave me a sad character. I hadn't been educated for anything, and I didn't know how to do anything, and I was nothing of a housekeeper, and I had no strength; in short, she made out such a picture of my incapacities as may well make you tremble."

"I don't tremble in the least," said I. "I only wish we could set up our establishment to-morrow."

"Aunt Maria told me that it was ungenerous of me to get engaged to a man of no fortune, now when papa is struggling with these heavy embarrassments, and can't afford the money to marry me, and set me up in the style he would feel obliged to. You see, Aunt Maria is thinking of a wedding twice as big as the Elmores, and a trousseau twice as fine, and a brown-stone front palace twice as high and long and broad as the Rivingtons; and twice as many coupés and Park wagons and phaetons as Maria Rivington is to have; and if papa is to get all this for me, it will be the ruin of him, she says."

"And you told her that we didn't want any of them?" said I.

"To be sure I did. I told her that we didn't want one of these vulgar, noisy, showy, expensive weddings, and that I didn't mean to send to Paris for my things. That a young lady who respected herself was always supplied with clothes good enough to be married with; that we didn't want a brown stone palace, and could be very happy without any carriage; and that there were plenty of cheap little houses in unfashionable streets we could be very happy in; that people who really cared for us would come to see us, live where we would, and that those who didn't care might keep away."

"Bravo, my queen! and you might tell her how Mad. Récamier drew all the wit and fashion of Paris to her little brick-floored rooms in the old Abbey. People will always want to come where you are."

"I don't set up for a Récamier," she exclaimed, "but I do say that where people have good times, and keep a bright pleasant fireside, and are always glad to see friends, there will always be friends to come; and friends are the ones we want."

"Ah! we will show them how things can be done, won't we?"

"Indeed we will. I always wanted a nice little house all my own where I could show what I could do. I have quantities of pet ideas of what a home should be, and I always fancied I could make things lovely."

"If you couldn't, who could?" said I, enchanted.

"See here," she added, "I have just begun to think what we have to start with. All the pictures in this little room are mine, bought with my own allowance; they are my very own. Pictures, you know, are a great thing, they half furnish a house. Then you know that six thousand dollars that grandmamma left me! Besides, sir, only think, a whole silver cream-pitcher and six tablespoons! Why Harry, I'm an heiress in my own right, even if poor papa should come to grief."

Something in this talk reminded me of the far-off childish days when Susie and I made our play-houses under the old butternut tree, and gathered in our stores of chestnuts and walnuts and laid our grave plans for life as innocently as two squirrels, and I laughed with a tear in my eye. I recounted to her the little idyl, and said that it had been a foreshadowing of her, and that perhaps my child angel had guided me to her.

"Some day you shall take me up there, Harry, and show me where you and she played together, and we will gather strawberries and lilies and hear the bobolinks," she said. "How little the world knows how cheap happiness is!"

"To those that know where to look for it," said I.

"I heard papa telling you that half the estates on which good New England families live in comfort up there in the country don't amount to more than five thousand dollars, yet they live well, and they have all those lovely things around them free. Here in this artificial city life people struggle and suffer to get money for things they don't want and don't need. Nobody wants these great parties, with their candy pyramids and their artificial flowers and their rush and crush that tire one to death, and yet they pay as much for one as would keep one of those country houses going for a year. I do wish we could live there!"

"I do too—with all my heart, but my work must lie here. We must make what the French call an Interior here in New York. I shall have to be within call of printers and the slave of printers' devils, but in summer we will go up into the mountains and stay with my mother, and have it all to ourselves."

"Do you know, Harry," said Eva after a pause, "I can see that Sophie Elmore really does admire Sydney. I can't help wondering how one can, but I see she does. Now don't you hope she'll get engaged to him?"

"Certainly I do," said I, "I wan't all nice people to be engaged if they have as good a time as we do. It's my solution of the woman question."

"Well, do you know I managed my last interview with Sydney with reference to that? I made what you would call a split-shot in croquet to send him from me and to her."

"How did you do it?"

"Oh, don't ask me to describe. There are ways of managing these men that are incommunicable. One can play on them as upon a piano, and I'll wager you a pair of gloves that Sydney goes off after Sophie. She's too good for him, but she likes him, and Sophie will make him a nice wife. But only think of poor Aunt Maria! It will be the last stroke that breaks the camel's back to have the Elmores get Sydney."

"So long as he doesn't get you, I shall be delighted," said I.

"Now only think," she added, "this Spring I was drifting into an engagement with that man just because I was idle, and blasé, and didn't know what to do next, and didn't have force enough to keep saying 'No' to mamma and Aunt Maria and all the rest of them."

"And what gave you force?"

"Well, sir, I couldn't help seeing that somebody else was getting very prettily entangled, and I felt a sort of philosophic interest in watching the process, and somehow—you know—I was rather sorry for you."

"Well?"

"Well, and I began to feel that anybody else would be intolerable, and you know they say there must be somebody."

"But me you could tolerate? Thank you, for so much."

"Yes, Harry, I think you are rather agreeable. I couldn't fancy myself sitting a whole evening with Sydney as I do with you. I always had to resort to whist and all sorts of go-betweens to keep him entertained; and I couldn't fancy that I ever should run to the window to see if he were coming in the evening, or long for him to come back when he was on a journey. I'm afraid I should long quite the other way and want him to go journeys often. But Sophie will do all these things. Poor man! somebody ought to, for he wouldn't be a bit satisfied if his wife were not devoted. I told him that, and told him that he needed a woman capable of more devotion than I could feel and flattered him up a little—poor fellow, he took to it so kindly! And after a while I contrived to let fall a nice bit of a compliment I had once heard about him from a lady, who I remarked was usually a little fastidious, and hard to please, and you ought to have seen how animated he looked! A mouse in view of a bit of toasted cheese never was more excited. I wouldn't tell him who it was, yet I sent him off on such a track that he inevitably will find out. That's what I call sending Sophie a ball to play on. You see if they don't have a great wedding about the time we have our little one!"

---

CONGRATULATIONS, ETC.

The announcement of my engagement brought the usual influx of congratulations by letter and in person. Bolton was gravely delighted, shook my hand paternally, and even promised to quit his hermit hole and go with me to call upon the Van Arsdels.

As to Jim, he raised a notable breeze among the papers.

"Engaged!—you, sly dog, after all! Well! well! Let your sentimental fellows alone for knowing what they're about. All your sighing, and poetry, and friendship, and disinterestedness and all that don't go for nothing. Up to 'biz' after all! Well, you've done a tolerably fair stroke! Those Van Arsdel girls are good for a hundred thousand down, and the rest will come in the will. Well, joy to you my boy! Remember your old grandfather."

Now there was no sort of use in going into high heroics with Jim, and I had to resign myself to being congratulated as a successful fortune hunter, a thing against which all my resolution and all my pride had always been directed. I had every appearance of being caught in the fact, and Jim was prepared to make the most of the situation.

"I declare, Hal," he said, perching himself astride a chair, "such things make a fellow feel solemn. We never know when our turn may come. Nobody feels safe a minute; it's you to-day and me to-morrow. I may be engaged before the week is out—who knows!"

"If nothing worse than that happens to you, you needn't be frightened," said I. "Better try your luck. I don't find it bad to take at all."

"Oh, but think of the consequences, man! Wedding journey, bandboxes and parasols to look after; beefsteaks and coffee for two; house rent and water taxes; marketing, groceries; all coming down on you like a thousand of brick! And then 'My dear, won't you see to this?' and 'My dear, have you seen to that?' and 'My dear, what makes you let it rain?' and 'My dear, how many times must I tell you I don't like hot weather?' and 'My dear, won't you just step out and get me the new moon and seven stars to trim my bonnet?' That's what I call getting a fellow into business! It's a solemn thing, Hal, now I tell you, this getting married!"

"If it makes you solemn, Jim, I shall believe it," I said.

"Well, when is it to come off? When is the blissful day?"

"No time fixed as yet," said I.

"Why not? You ought to drive things. Nothing under heaven to wait for except to send to Paris for the folderols. Well, I shall call up and congratulate. If Miss Alice there would take me, there might be a pair of us. Wouldn't it be jolly? I say, Hal, how did you get it off?"

"Get what off?"

"Why, the question."

"You'll have to draw on your imagination for that, Jim."

"I tell you what, Harry, I won't offer myself to a girl on uncertainties. I'd pump like thunder first and find out whether she'd have me or not."

"I fancy," said I, "that if you undertake that process with Miss Alice, you'll have your match. I think she has as many variations of yes and no as a French woman."

"She doesn't catch this child," said Jim, "though she's mag. and no mistake. Soberly, she's one of the nicest girls in New York—but Jim's time isn't come yet.

So now, Hal, don't disturb my mind with these trifles. I've got three books to review before dinner, and only an hour and a half to do it in."

In my secret heart I began to wish that the embarrassments that were hanging over the Van Arsdel fortunes would culminate and come to a crisis one way or another, so that our position might appear to the world what it really was. Mr. Van Arsdel's communications to me were so far confidential that I did not feel that I could allude to the real state of things even with my most intimate friends; so that while I was looked upon from the outside as the prospective winner of an heiress, Eva and I were making all our calculations for the future on the footing of the strictest prudence and economy. Everybody was looking for splendor and festivities; we were enacting a secret pastoral, in which we forsook the grandeurs of the world to wander forth hand in hand in paths of simplicity and frugality.

A week after this I received a note from Caroline which announced her arrival in the city, and I lost no time in waiting on her and receiving her congratulations on my good fortune. Eva and Ida Van Arsdel were prompt in calling upon her, and the three struck up a friendship which grew with that tropical rapidity and luxuriance characteristic of the attachments of women. Ida and Caroline become at once bosom friends.

"I'm so glad," Eva commented to me, "because you and I are together so much now that I was afraid Ida might feel a little out in the cold; I have been her pet and stand-by. The fact is, I'm like that chemical thing that dyers call a mordant—something that has an affinity for two different colors that have no affinity for each other. I'm just enough like mamma and just enough like Ida to hold the two together. They both tell me everything, and neither of them can do without me."

"I can well believe that," said I, "it is an experience in which I sympathize. But I am coming in now, like the third power in a chemical combination, to draw you away from both. I shouldn't think they'd like it."

"Oh, well, it's the way of nature! Mamma left her mother for papa—but Ida!—I'm glad for her to have so nice a friend step in just now—one that has all her peculiar tastes and motives. I wish she could go to Paris and study with Ida when she goes next year. Do you know, Harry, I used to think you were engaged to this cousin of yours? Why weren't you?"

"She never would have had me,—her heart was gone to somebody else."

"Why isn't she married, then?"

"Oh! the course of true love, you know."

"Tell me all about it."

"She never made me her confidant," said I, evasively.

"Tell me who it was, at all events," demanded she.

"Bolton."

"What! that serious, elegant Bolton that you brought to call on us the other night! We all liked him so much! What can be the matter there? Why, I think he's superb, and she's just the match for him. What broke it off?"

"You know I told you she never made me her confidant."

"Nor he, either?"

"Well," said I, feeling myself cornered, "I throw myself on your mercy. It's another man's secret, and I ought not to tell you, but if you ask me I certainly shall."

"Right or wrong?"

"Yes, fair Eve, just as Adam ate the apple, so beware!"

"I'm just dying to know, but if you really ought not to tell me I won't tease for it; but I tell you what it is, Harry, if I were you I should bring them together."

"Would you dare take the responsibility of bringing any two together?"

"I suppose I should. I am a daring young woman."

"I have not your courage," said I, "but if it will do you any good to know, Bolton is in a fair way to renew the acquaintance, though he meant not to do it."

"You can tell me how that happened, I suppose?"

"Yes, that is at your service. Simply, the meeting was effected as some others of fateful results have been,—in a New York street-car."

"Aha!" she said, laughing.

"Yes; he was traveling up Sixth Avenue the other night when a drunken conductor was very rude to two ladies. Bolton interfered, made the man behave himself, waited on the ladies across the street to their door as somebody else once did,—when, behold! a veil is raised, the light of the lamp flashes, and one says 'Mr. Bolton!' and the other 'Miss Simmons!' and the romance is opened."

"How perfectly charming! Of course he'll call and see her. He must, you know."

"That has proved the case in my experience."

"And all the rest will follow. They are made for each other. Poor Ida, she won't have Caroline to go to Paris with her!"

"No? I think she will. In fact I think it would be the best thing Caroline could do."

"You do! You don't want them to be married?"

"I don't know. I wouldn't say—in fact it's a case I wouldn't for the world decide."

"Oh, heavens! Here's a mystery, an obstacle, an unknown horror, and you can't tell me what it is, and I must not ask. Why, this is perfectly dreadful! It isn't anything against Bolton?"

"Bolton is the man I most love, most respect, most revere," I said.

"What can it be then?"

"Suppose we leave it to fate and the future," said I.

---

THE EXPLOSION.

"Hal! it's too confounded bad!" said Jim Fellows, bursting into my room; "your apple cart's upset for good. The Van Arsdels are blown to thunder. The old one has failed for a million. Gone to smash on that Lightning Railroad, and there you all are! Hang it all, I'm sorry now!"

And to say the truth Jim's face did wear an air of as much concern as his features were capable of. "Seems to me," he added, "you take it coolly."

"The fact is, Jim, I knew all about this the day I proposed. I knew it must come, and I'm glad, since it had to be, to have it over and be done with it. Mr. Van Arsdel told me exactly what to expect when I engaged myself."

"And you and Miss Eva Van Arsdel are going to join hands and play 'Babes in the Woods'?"

"No," said I, "we are going to play the interesting little ballet of 'Man and Wife.' I am to work for her, and all that I win is to be put into her hands."

"Hum! I fancy she'll find things on quite another scale when it comes to your dividends."

"We're not at all afraid of that—you'll see."

"She's a trump—that girl!" said Jim; "now that's what I call the right sort of thing. And there's Alice! Now, I declare it's too confounded rough on Alice! Just as she's come out and such a splendid girl too!"

At this moment the office boy brought up a note.

"From Eva," I said, opening it.

It ran thus:

"Well, dearest, the storm has burst and nobody is killed yet. Papa told mamma last night, and mamma told us this morning, and we are all agreed to be brave as possible and make it seem as light as we can to papa. Dear papa! I know it was for us he struggled, it was for us he was anxious, and we'll show him we can do very well. Come down now. Mamma says she feels as if she could trust you as a son. Isn't that kind?

Your own Eva."

"I'm going right down to the house," said I.

"I declare," said Jim, "I want to do something, and one doesn't know what. I say, I'll buy a bouquet for Alice, and you just take it with my compliments." So saying Jim ran down with me, crossed to a florist's cellar, and selected the most extravagant of the floral treasures there.

"Hang it all!" he said, "I wouldn't send her such a one when she was up in the world, but now a fellow wants to do all he can, you know."

"Jim," said I, "you are not a mere smooth-water friend."

"Not I. 'Go for the under dog in the fight' is my principle, so get along with you and stay as long as you like. I can do your book notices; I know just the sort of thing you would say, you know—do 'em up brown, so that you wouldn't know my ideas from your own."

Arrived at the Van Arsdel house, I thought I could see and feel the traces of a crisis, by that mysterious intimation that fills the very air of a place where something has just happened. The elegant colored servant who opened the door wore an aspect of tender regret like an undertaker at a funeral.

"Miss Eva was in her boudoir," he said, "but Miss Alice hadn't come down." I sent up the bouquet with Mr. Fellows' compliments, and made the best of my way to Eva.

She was in the pretty little nook in which we had had our first long talk and which now she called our Italy. I found her a little pale and serious, but on the whole in cheerful spirits.

"It's about as bad as it can be," said she. "It seems papa has made himself personally responsible for the Lightning Railroad and borrowed money to put into it, and then there's something or other about the stock he borrowed on running down till it isn't worth anything. I don't understand a word of it, only I know that the upshot of it all is, papa is going to give up all he has and begin over. This house and furniture will be put into a broker's hands and advertised for sale. All the pictures are going to Goupil's sale rooms and will make quite a nice gallery."

"Except yours in this room," said I.

"Ah well! I thought we should keep these, but I find papa is very sensitive about giving up everything that is really his—and these are his in fact. I bought them with his money. At all events, let them go. We won't care, will we?"

"Not so long as we have each other," said I. "For my part, though I'm sorry for you all, yet I bless the stroke that brings you to me. You see we must make a new home at once, you and I, isn't it so? Now, hear me; let us be married in June, the month of months, and for our wedding journey we'll go up to the mountains and see my mother. It's perfectly lovely up there. Shall it be so?"

"As you will, Harry. And it will be all the better so, because Ida is going to sail for Paris sooner than she anticipated."

"Why does Ida do that?"

"Well, you see, Ida has been the manager of papa's foreign correspondence and written all the letters for three years past, and papa has paid her a large salary, of which she has spent scarcely anything. She has invested it to make her studies with in Paris. She offered this to papa, but he would not take it. He told her it was no more his than the salary of any other of his clerks, and that if she wouldn't make him very unhappy she would take it and go to Paris; and by going immediately she could arrange some of his foreign business. So you see she will stay to see us married and then sail."

"We'll be married in the same church where we put up the Easter crosses," said I.

"How little we dreamed it then," she said, "and that reminds me, sir, where's my glove that you stole on that occasion? You naughty boy, you thought nobody saw you, but somebody did."

"Your glove," said I, "is safe and sound in my reliquary along with sundry other treasures."

"You unprincipled creature! what are they? Confess."

"Well! a handkerchief."

"Wretched man! and besides?"

"Two hair pins, a faded rose, two beads that dropped from your croquet suit, and a sleeve button. Then there is a dry sprig of myrtle that you dropped, on, let me see, the 14th of April, when you were out at the Park in one of those rustic arbors."

"And you were sitting glowering like an owl in an ivy bush. I remember I saw you there."

We both found ourselves laughing very much louder than circumstances seemed really to require, when Eva heard her father's footstep and checked herself.

"There goes poor papa. Isn't it a shame that we laugh? We ought to be sober, now, but for the life of me I can't. I'm one of the imponderable elastic gases; you can't keep me down."

"One may 'as well laugh as cry,' under all circumstances," said I.

"Better, a dozen times. But seriously and soberly, I believe that even papa, now it's all over, feels relieved. It was while he was struggling, fearing, dreading, afraid to tell us, that he had the worst of it."

"Nothing is ever so bad as one's fears," said I. "There is always some hope even at the bottom of Pandora's box."

"Sententious, Mr. Editor, but true. Now in illustration. Last week Ida and I wrote to the boys at Cambridge all about what we feared was coming, and this very morning we had such nice manly letters from both of them. If we hadn't been in trouble we never should have known half what good fellows they are. Look here," she said, opening a letter, "Tom says, 'Tell father that I can take care of myself. I'm in my senior year and the rest of the course isn't worth waiting for and I've had an opportunity to pitch in with a surveying party on the Northern Railroad along with my chum. I shall work like sixty, and make myself so essential that they can't do without me. And, you see, the first that will be known of me I shall be one of the leading surveyors of the day. So have no care for me.' And here's a letter from Will which says, 'Why didn't father tell us before? We've spent ever so much more than we needed, but are going about financial retrenchments with a vengeance. Last week I attended the boat race at Worcester and sent an account of it to the Argus, written off-hand, just for the fun of it. I got a prompt reply, wanting to engage me to go on a reporting tour of all the great election meetings for them. I'm to have thirty dollars a week and all expenses paid; so you see I step into the press at once. We shall sell our pictures and furniture to some freshies that are coming in, and wind up matters so as not to come on father for anything till he gets past these straits. Tell mother not to worry, she shall be taken care of; she shall have Tom and me both to work for her.'"

"They are splendid fellows!" said I, "and it is worth a crisis to see how well they behave in it. Well, then," I resumed, "our wedding day shall be fixed, say for the 14th of June?"

"How very statistical! I'm sure I can't say, I've got to talk with mamma and all the powers that be, and settle my own head. Don't let's set a day yet; it soils the blue line of the distance—nothing like those pearl tints. Our drawing master used to tell us one definite touch would spoil them."

"For the present, then, it is agreed that we are to be married generally in the month of June?" said I.

"P. P.—Providence permitting," said she—"Providence, meaning mamma, Ida, Aunt Maria, and all the rest."

---

THE WEDDING AND THE TALK OVER THE PRAYER-BOOK.

If novels are to be considered true pictures of real life we must believe that the fall from wealth to poverty is a less serious evil in America than in any other known quarter of the world.

In English novels the failure of a millionaire is represented as bringing results much the same as the commission of an infamous crime. Poor old Mr. Sedley fails and forthwith all his acquaintances cut him; nobody calls on his wife or knows her in the street; the family who have all along been courting his daughter for their son and kissing the ground at her feet, now command the son to break with her, and turn him out of doors for marrying her.

In America it is quite otherwise. A man fails without losing friends, neighbors, and the consideration of society. He moves into a modest house, finds some means of honest livelihood, and everybody calls on his wife as before. Friends and neighbors as they have opportunity are glad to stretch forth a helping hand, and a young fellow who should break his engagement with the daughter at such a crisis would simply be scouted as infamous.

Americans have been called worshipers of the almighty dollar, and they certainly are not backward in that species of devotion, but still these well-known facts show that our worship is not, after all, so absolute as that of other quarters of the world.

Mr. Van Arsdel commanded the respect and sympathy of the influential men of New York. The inflexible honesty and honor with which he gave up all things to his creditors won sympathy, and there was a united effort made to procure for him an appointment in the Custom House, which would give him a comfortable income. In short, by the time that my wedding-day arrived, the family might be held as having fallen from wealth into competence. The splendid establishment on Fifth Avenue was to be sold. It was, in fact, already advertised, and our wedding was to be the last act of the family drama in it. After that we were to go to my mother's, in the mountains of New Hampshire, and Mr. Van Arsdel's family were to spend the summer at the old farm-homestead where his aged parents yet kept house.

Our wedding preparations therefore went forward with a good degree of geniality on the part of the family, and with many demonstrations of sympathy and interest on the part of friends and relations. A genuine love-marriage always and everywhere evokes a sort of instinctive warmth and sympathy. The most worldly are fond of patronizing it as a delightful folly, and as Eva had been one of the most popular girls of her set she was flooded with presents.

And now the day of days was at hand, and for the last time I went up the steps of the Van Arsdel mansion to spend a last evening with Eva Van Arsdel.

She met me at the door of her boudoir: "Harry, here you are! oh, I have no end of things to tell you!—the door bell has been ringing all day, and a perfect storm of presents. We have duplicates of all the things that nobody can do without. I believe we have six pie-knives and four sugar-sifters and three egg-boilers and three china hens to sit on eggs, and a perfect meteoric shower of salt-cellars. I couldn't even count them."

"Oh well! Salt is the symbol of hospitality," said I, "so we can't have too many."

"And look here, Harry, the wedding-dress has come home. Think of the unheard-of incomprehensible virtue of Tullegig! I don't think she ever had a thing done in time before in her life. Behold now!"

Sure enough! before me, arranged on a chair was a misty and visionary pageant of vapory tulle and shimmering satin.

"All this is Ida's gift. She insisted that she alone would dress me for my wedding, and poor Tullegig actually has outdone herself and worked over it with tears in her eyes. Good soul! she has a heart behind all her finery, and really seems to take to me especially, perhaps because I've been such a model of patience in waiting at her doors, and never scolded her for any of her tricks. In fact, we girls have been as good as an annuity to Tullegig; no wonder she mourns over us. Do you know, Harry, the poor old thing actually kissed me!"

"I'm not in the least surprised at her wanting that privilege," said I.

"Well, I felt rather tender toward her. I believe it's Dr. Johnson or somebody else who says there are few things, not purely evil, of which we can say without emotion, 'This is the last!' And Tullegig is by no means a pure evil. This is probably the last of her—with me. But come, you don't say what you think of it. What is it like?"

"Like a vision, like the clouds of morning, like the translation robes of saints, like impossible undreamed mysteries of bliss. I feel as if they might all dissolve away and be gone before to-morrow."

"Oh, shocking, Harry! you mustn't take such indefinite cloudy views of things. You must learn to appreciate details. Open your eyes, and learn now that Tullegig out of special love and grace has adorned my dress with a new style of trimming that not one of the girls has ever had or seen before. It is an original composition of her own. Isn't it blissful, now?"

"Extremely blissful," said I, obediently.

"You don't admire,—you are not half awake."

"I do admire—wonder—adore—anything else that you like—but I can't help feeling that it is all a vision, and that when those cloud wreaths float around you, you will dissolve away and be gone."

"Poh! poh! You will find me very visible and present, as a sharp little thorn in your side. Now, see, here are the slippers!" and therewith she set down before me a pair of pert little delicious white satin absurdities, with high heels and tiny toes, and great bows glistening with bugles.

Nothing fascinates a man like a woman's slipper, from its utter incomprehensibility, its astonishing unlikeness to any article subserving the same purpose for his own sex. Eva's slippers always seemed to have a character of their own,—a prankish elfin grace, and these as they stood there seemed instinct with life as two white kittens just ready for a spring.

I put two fingers into each of the little wretches and made them caper and dance, and we laughed gayly.

"Let me see your boots, Harry?"

"There," said I, putting best foot forward, a brand new pair bought for the occasion. "I am wearing them to get used to them, so as to give my whole mind to the solemn services to-morrow."

"Oh, you enormous creature!" she said, "you are a perfect behemoth. Fancy now my slippers peeping over the table here and wondering at your boots. I can imagine the woman question discussed between the slippers and the boots."

"And I can fancy," said I, "the poor, stumping, well-meaning old boots being utterly perplexed and routed by the elfin slippers. What can poor boots do? They cannot follow them, cannot catch or control them, and if they come down hard on them they ruin them altogether."

"And the good old boots nevertheless," said she, "are worth forty pairs of slippers. They can stamp through wet and mud and rain, and come out afterward good as new; and lift the slippers over impossible places. Dear old patient long-suffering boots, let the slippers respect them! But come, Harry, this is the last evening now, and do you know I've some anxiety about our little programme to-morrow? You were not bred in the Church, and you never were married before, and so you ought to be well up in your part beforehand."

"I confess," said I, "I feel ignorant and a bit nervous."

"Now, I've been a bridesmaid no end of times, and seen all the possibles that may happen under those interesting circumstances, and men are so awkward—their great feet are always sure to step somewhere where they shouldn't, and then they thumb and fumble about the ring, and their gloves always stick to their hands, and it's uncomfortable generally. Now don't, I beg you, disgrace me by any such enormities."

"This is what the slippers say to the boots," said I.

"Exactly. And here is where the boots do well to take a lesson of the slippers. They are 'on their native heath,' here."

"Well, then," said I, "get down the Prayer-book and teach me my proprieties. I will learn my lesson thoroughly."

"Well, now, we have the thing all arranged for to-morrow; the carriages are to be here at ten; ceremony at eleven. The procession will form at the church door; first, Jim Fellows and Alice, then you and mamma, then papa and me, and when we meet at the altar be sure to mind where you step, and don't tread on my veil or any of my tulle clouds, because, though it may look like vapor, you can't very well set your foot through it; and be sure you have a well-disciplined glove that you can slip off without a fuss; and have the ring just where you can lay your hand on it. And now let's read over the service and responses and all that."

We went through them creditably till Eva, putting her finger on one word, looked me straight in the eye.

"Obey, Harry, isn't that a droll word between you and me? I can't conceive of it. Now up to this time you have always obeyed me."

"And 'turn about, is fair play,' the proverb says," said I, "you see, Eva, since Adam took the apple from Eve men have obeyed women nem. con.—there was no need of putting the 'obey' into their part. The only puzzle is how to constrain the subtle, imponderable, ethereal essence of womanhood under some law; so the obey is our helpless attempt."

"But now, really and truly, Harry, I want to talk seriously about this. The girls are so foolish! Jane Seymour said she said 'be gay' instead of 'obey'—and Maria Elmore said she didn't say it at all. But really and truly, that is God's altar—and it is a religious service, and if I go there at all, I must understand what I mean, and say it from my heart."

"My dear, if you have any hesitancy you know that you can leave it out. In various modern wedding services it is often omitted. We could easily avoid it."

"Oh nonsense, Harry! Marry out of the Church! What are you thinking of? Not I, indeed! I shouldn't think myself really married."

"Well, then, my princess, it is your own affair. If you choose to promise to obey me, I can only be grateful for the honor; if it gives any power, it is of your giving, not my seeking."

"But what does a woman promise when she promises at the altar to obey?"

"Well, evidently, she promises to obey her husband in every case where he commands, and a higher duty to God does not forbid."

"But does this mean that all through life in every case where there arises a difference of opinion or taste between a husband and wife she is to give up to him?"

"If," said I, "she has been so unwise as to make this promise to a man without common sense or gentlemanly honor, who chooses to have his own will prevail in all cases of differences of taste, I don't see but she must."

"But between people like you and me, Harry?"

"Between people like you and me, darling, I can't see that the word can make any earthly difference. There can be no obeying where there never is any commanding, and as to commanding you I should as soon think of commanding the sun and moon."

"Well; but you know we shall not always think alike or want the same thing."

"Then we will talk matters over, and the one that gives the best reasons shall prevail. You and I will be like any other two dear friends who agree to carry on any enterprise together, we shall discuss matters, and sometimes one and sometimes the other will prevail."

"But, Harry, this matter puzzles me. Why is there a command in the Bible that wives should always obey? Very many times in domestic affairs, certainly, the woman knows the most and has altogether the best judgment."

"It appears to me that it is one of those very general precepts that require to be largely interpreted by common sense. Taking the whole race of man together, for all stages of society and all degrees of development, I suppose it is the safest general direction for the weaker party. In low stages of society where brute force rules, man has woman wholly in his power, and she can win peace and protection only by submission. But where society rises into those higher forms where husbands and wives are intelligent companions and equals, the direction does no harm because it confers a prerogative that no cultivated man would think of asserting any more than he would think of using his superior physical strength to enforce it."

"I suppose," said Eva, "it is just like the command that children should obey parents. When children are grown up and married and settled, parents never think of it."

"Precisely," said I, "and you and I are the grown-up children of the Christian era—all that talk of obedience is the old calyx of the perfect flower of love—'when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.'"

"So, then, it appears you and I shall have a free field of discussion, Harry, and may be I shall croquet your ball off the ground sometimes, as I did once before, you know."

"I dare say you will. There was an incipient spice of matrimonial virulence, my fair Eva, in the way you played that game! In fact, I began to hope I was not indifferent to you from the zeal with which you pursued and routed me on that occasion."

"I must confess it did my heart good to set your ball spinning,—and that puts me in mind. I have the greatest piece of news to tell you. If you'll believe me, Sydney and Sophie are engaged already!She came here this morning with her present, this lovely amethyst cross—and it seems funny to me, but she is just as dead in love with Sydney as she can be, and do you know he is so delighted with the compliment, that he has informed her that he has made the discovery that he never was in love before."

"The scamp! what does he mean?" said I.

"Oh, he said that little witch Eva Van Arsdel had dazzled him—and he had really supposed himself in love, but that she never had 'excited the profound,' etc., etc., he feels for Sophie."

"So 'all's well that ends well,'" said I.

"And to show his entire pacification toward me," said Eva, "he has sent me this whole set of mantel bronzes—clock, vases, candlesticks, match-box and all. Aren't they superb?"

"Magnificent!" said I. "What an air they will give our room! On the whole, dear, I think rejected lovers are not so bad an article."

"Well, here, I must show you Bolton's present, which came in this afternoon," with which she led me to a pair of elegantly carved book-racks enriched with the complete works of Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, and Hawthorne. They were elegantly gotten up in a uniform style of binding.

"Isn't that lovely?" said she, "and so thoughtful! For how many happy hours he has provided here!"

"Good fellow!" said I, feeling the tears start in my eyes. "Eva, if there is a mortal absolutely without selfishness, it is Bolton."

"Oh, Harry, why couldn't he marry and be as happy as we are?"

"Perhaps some day he may," said I, "but dear me! who gave that comical bronze inkstand? It's enough to make one laugh to look at it."

"Don't you know at once? Why, that's Jim Fellows' present. Isn't it just like him?"

"I might have known it was Jim," said I, "it's so decidedly frisky."

"Well, really, Harry do you know that I am in deadly fear that that wicked Jim will catch my eye to-morrow in the ceremony or do something to set me off, and I'm always perfectly hysterical when I'm excited, and if I look his way there'll be no hope for me."

"We must trust to Providence," said I; "if I should say a word of remonstrance it would make it ten times worse. The creature is possessed of a frisky spirit and can't help it."

"Alice was lecturing him about it last night, and the only result was we nearly killed ourselves laughing. After all, Harry, who can help liking Jim? Since our troubles he has been the kindest of mortals; so really delicate and thoughtful in his attentions. It was something I shouldn't have expected of him. Harry, what do you think? Should you want Alice to like him, supposing you knew that he would like her? Is there stability enough in him?"

"Jim is a queer fellow," said I. "On a slight view he looks a mere bundle of comicalities and caprices, and he takes a singular delight in shocking respectable prejudices and making himself out worse than he is, or ever thinks of being. But after all, as young men go, Jim is quite free from bad habits. He does not drink, and he doesn't even smoke. He is the most faithful assiduous worker in his line of work among the newspaper-men of New York. He is a good son; a kind brother."

"But, somehow, he doesn't seem to me to have real deep firm principle."

"Jim is a child of modern New York—an élève of her school. A good wife and a good home, with good friends, might do much for him, but he will always be one that will act more from kindly impulses than from principle. He will be very apt to go as his friends go."

"You know," she said, "in old times, when Alice was in full career, I never thought of anything serious as possible. It is only since our trouble and his great kindness to us that I have thought of the thing as at all likely."

"We may as well leave it to the good powers," said I, "we can't do much to help or hinder, only, if they should come together I shall be glad for Jim's sake, for I love him. And now, my dear Eva, have you any more orders, counsels, or commands for the fateful to-morrow?" said I, "for it waxes late, and you ought to get a beauty-sleep to-night."

"Oh, I forgot to tell you I'm not going to wear either my new traveling dress or hat, or anything to mark me out as a bride; and look here, Harry, you must try and study the old staid married man's demeanor. Don't let's disgrace ourselves by being discovered at once."

"Shall I turn my back on you and read the newspaper? I observe that some married men do that."

"Yes, and if you could conjugally wipe your boots on my dress, it would have an extremely old married effect. You can read the paper first, and then pass it to me—that is another delicate little point."

"I'm afraid that in your zeal you will drive me to excesses of boorishness that will overshoot the mark" said I. "You wouldn't want me to be so negligent of 'that pretty girl,' that some other gentleman would feel a disposition to befriend her?"

"Well, dear, but there's a happy medium. We can appear like two relatives traveling together."

"I am afraid," said I "after all, we shall be detected; but if we are, we shall be in good company. Our first day's journey lies in the regular bridal route, and I expect that every third or fourth seat will show an enraptured pair, of whom we can take lessons—after all, dear, you know there is no sin in being just married."

"No, only in acting silly about it as I hope we shan't. I want us to be models of rationality and decorum."

Here the clock striking twelve warned me that the last day of Eva Van Arsdel's life was numbered.

---

BOLTON.

I returned to my room past midnight, excited and wakeful. Seeing a light through the crack of Bolton's door, I went up and knocked and was bidden to enter. I found him seated under his study-lamp, looking over a portfolio of papers, some of which lay strewed around him open. I observed at a glance that the hand-writing was that of Caroline. He looked at me. Our eyes met—a slight flush rose in his cheeks as he said:

"I have been looking over a collection of writings belonging to your cousin, the fruits of the solitary years of her secluded life."

"And you find them—?"

"A literary treasure," he said, with emphasis. "Yes," he added, "what there is here will, I think, give her reputation and established position, and a command of prices which will enable her to fullfil her long cherished intention of studying in Paris. She will go out with Miss Ida Van Arsdel, soon after you are gone. I can assure her the means, and I have already procured her the situation of correspondent to the Chronicle, with very liberal terms. So you see her way is all plain."

"But what shall we do with the Ladies' Cabinet?"

"O, we'll manage it among us. Caroline will write for it occasionally."

"Caroline!" There was a great deal in the manner in which Bolton spoke that name. It was full of suppressed feeling. Some can express as much intensity of devotion by the mere utterance of a name, as others by the most ardent protestations.

I was in the mood that holds every young man on the eve of a happy marriage. I could conceive of no bliss outside of that; and there was in the sound of Bolton's voice, as he spoke, a vibration of an intense pain which distressed me.

"Bolton," I said, imploringly, "why will you sacrifice yourself and her? She loves you—you love her. Why not another marriage—another home?"

His face quivered a moment, and then settled firmly. He smiled.

"Hal, my boy," he said, "you naturally see nothing for man and woman but marriage just now. But it is not every man and woman who love each other who have the right to marry. She does love me," he added, with a deep, inward breathing. "She is capable of all that magnanimity, all that generous self-sacrifice that make women such angels to us——"

"Then, oh! why not——?" began I, eagerly.

"Because I LOVE her dearly, devotedly, I will not accept such a sacrifice. I will not risk her wrecking her life on me. The pain she feels now in leaving me will soon die out in the enthusiasm of a career. Yes, the day is now come, thank God, when a woman as well as a man can have some other career besides that of the heart. Let her study her profession—expand her mind, broaden her powers—become all that she can be. It will not impede her course to remember that there is in the world one friend who will always love her above all things; and the knowledge that she loves me will save me—if I am salvable."

"If—oh, Bolton, my brother! why do you say if?"

"Because the danger is one I cannot comprehend and provide for. It is like that of sudden insanity. The curse may never return—pray God it may not—but if it should, at least I shall wreck no other heart."

"Bolton, can you say so if there is one that loves you?"

"Not as a wife would love. Her whole being and destiny are not intertwined with mine, as marriage would unite them. Besides, if there is somewhere hid away in my brain and blood the seed of this fatal mania, shall I risk transmitting them to a helpless child? Shall I expose such a woman to the danger of suffering over again, as a mother, the anguish she must suffer as a wife?—the fears, the anxieties, the disappointment, the wearing, wasting pain? As God is my Judge, I will not make another woman suffer what my mother has."

In all my intercourse with Bolton, I never heard him speak of his mother before, and he spoke now with intense vehemence; his voice vibrated and quivered with emotion. In a few moments, however, he resumed his habitual self-possession.

"No, Hal," he said, cheerily; "build no air-castles for me. I shall do well enough; you and yours will be enough to occupy me. And now show me first what I am to do for you while you are gone. Jim and I will trudge to all impossible places, to look you up that little house with a good many large rooms in it, that all young housekeepers are in search of. I will cut out advertisements and look over nice places and let you know the result; and I'll see to the proof-sheets of your articles for the Milky Way, and write your contributions to the Democracy. If you want to be our special correspondent from the Garden of Eden, why you may send us back letters on your trip. You can tell us if the 'gold of that land' is still 'good,' and if there are there still 'bdellium and onyx stone,' as there were in the Bible days."

"Thank you," said I. "I shall send you letters, but hardly of a kind to appear in the Democracy."

"What with your engagements on that sheet, and what I shall have ready to pile in on you by the time you come back, you will have little time for philandering after your return. So take it out now and get all the honey there is in this next moon. For me, I have my domestic joys. Finnette has presented me with a charming batch of kittens. Look here."

And sure enough, snugly ensconced in a large, well-padded basket by the fire, lay madam asleep, with four downy little minikins snuggled to her. Bolton took the lamp and kneeled down to show them, with the most absorbed intent. Stumpy came and stood by the basket, wagging what was left of his poor tail, and looking as if he had some earnest responsibility in the case.

As to Finnette, she opened her yellow eyes, sleepily stretched out her claws, purred and rolled over, as if in excess of pride and joy.

"Who says there isn't happiness on earth?" said Bolton. "A cat is a happiness-producing machine. Hal, I shall save one of those kittens to set you up with. No family is complete without a cat. I shall take one in training for you. You should have a dog, too; but I can't spare Stumpy. I don't believe there is anything like him in the world."

"I verily believe you," said I.

"Stumpy's beauty is so entirely moral that I fear it never would be popularly appreciated; besides, poor brute, he is quite capable of dying for love of me if I gave him up. That's an accomplishment few men attain to. Well, Hal, go to bed now, or you'll be too sleepy to behave respectably to-morrow. God bless you!"

---

THE WEDDING JOURNEY.

A wedding journey,—what is it? A tour to all the most expensive and fashionable hotels and watering-places. The care of Saratoga trunks and bonnet-boxes. The display of a fashionable wardrobe made purposely for this object, and affording three altogether new and different toilets a day.

Very well.

Doubtless all this may coexist with true love; and true lovers, many and ardent, have been this round, and may again, and been and be none the worse for it. For where true love is, it is not much matter whatever else is or is not.

But when the Saratoga trunks, the three dresses a day, and the display of them to Mrs. Grundy, have been the substitute for love and one of the impelling motives to marriage, or when they absorb all those means and resources on which domestic comfort and peace should be built during the first years of married life, then they are simply in Scriptural phrase "the abomination of desolation, standing where it ought not."

Yet apart from that there is to me a violation of the essential sacredness of the holiest portion of mortal life in exposing it to the glare of everyday observation. It seems as if there were something so wonderful and sacred in that union by which man and woman, forsaking all others, cleave to each other, that its inception requires quiet solitude, the withdrawal from the common-place and bustling ways of ordinary life.

The two, more to each other than all the world besides, are best left to the companionship of nature. Carpets of moss are better than the most elaborate of fashionable hotel furniture; birds and squirrels are more suitable companions than men and women.

Our wedding was a success, so far as cheerfulness and enjoyment was concerned. The church had been garlanded and made fair and sweet by the floral tributes of many friendly hands. Jim Fellows and one or two of the other acquaintances of the family had exerted themselves to produce a very pretty effect. The wedding party was one of relatives and near friends only, without show or parade, but with a great deal of good taste. There was the usual amount of weeping among the elderly female relatives, particularly on the part of Aunt Maria, who insisted on maintaining a purely sepulchral view of our prospects on life.

Ever since the failure of Mr. Van Arsdel, Aunt Maria had worn this aspect, and seemed to consider all demonstrations of lightness of heart and cheerfulness on the part of the family as unsuitable trifling with a dreadful dispensation.

But the presence of this funereal influence could not destroy the gayety of the younger members, and Jim Fellows seemed to exert himself particularly to whip up such a froth and foam of merriment and jollity as caused the day to be remembered as one of the gayest in our annals.

We had but one day's ride in the cars to bring us up to the old simple stage route of the mountain country. During this said day in the cars, under the tutelage of my Empress, I was made to behave myself with the grimmest and most stately reserve of manner. Scarcely was I allowed the same seat with her, and my conversation with her, so far as could be observed, was confined to the most unimpassioned and didactic topics.

The reason for this appeared to be that having married in the very matrimonial month of June, and our track lying along one of the great routes of fashionable travel, we were beset behind and before by enraptured couples, whose amiable artlessness in the display of their emotions appeared particularly shocking to her taste. On the row of seats in front of us could be seen now a masculine head lolling confidentially on a feminine shoulder, and again in the next seat an evident bridal bonnet leaning on the bosom of the beloved waistcoat of its choice in sweet security.

"It is perfectly disgusting and disagreeable," she said in my ear.

"My dear," I replied, "I don't see as we can do anything about it."

"I don't see—I cannot imagine how people can make such a show of themselves," she said.

"Well, you see," said I, "we are all among the parvenus of married life. It isn't everybody that knows how to behave as if he had always been rich—let us comfort ourselves with reflections on our own superiority."

The close of the day brought us, however, to the verge of the mountain region where railroads cease and stages begin,—the beautiful country, of hard, flinty, rocky roads, of pines and evergreens of silvery cascades and brooks of melted crystal, and of a society, as yet homely and heart-some, and with a certain degree of sylvan innocence. At once we seemed to have left the artificial world behind us—the world of observers and observed. We sat together on the top of the stage, and sailed like two birds of the air through the tree-tops of the forest, looking down into all the charming secrets of woodland ways as we went on, and feeling ourselves delivered from all the spells and incantations of artificial life. We might have been two squirrels, or a pair of robins, or blue birds. We ceased to think how we appeared. We forgot that there were an outer world and spectators, and felt ourselves taken in and made at home in the wide hospitality of nature. Highland, where my mother lived, was just within a day's ride of the finest part of the White Mountains. The close of a charming leisurely drive upward brought us at night to her home, and I saw her sweet face of welcome at the door to meet us, and gave her new daughter to her arms with confident pride.

The village was so calm, and still, and unchanged! The old church where my father had preached, the houses where still lived the people I had known from a boy, the old store, the tavern with its creaking sign-post, and best of all, Uncle Jacob's house, with its recesses and corners full of books, its quiet rooms full of comfort, its traditions of hospitality, and the deep sense of calm and rest that seemed ever brooding there. This was a paradise where I could bring my Eve for rest and for refuge.

What charming days went over our heads there! We rambled like two school children, hand in hand, over all the haunts of my boyhood. Where I and my little child-wife had gathered golden-hearted lilies, and strawberries, we gathered them again. The same bobolink seemed to sit on the top twig of the old apple tree in the corner of the meadow and say "Chack, chack, chack!" as he said it when Susie and I used to sit with the meadow grass over our heads to watch him while he poured down on us showers of musical dew drops. It seemed as if I had gone back to boyhood again, so much did my inseparable companion recall to me the child-wife of my early days. We were both such perfect children, living in the enjoyment of the bright present, without a care or a fear for the future.

Every day when we returned from our rambles and excursions the benignant face of my mother shone down on us with fullness of appreciation and joy in our joy; while Uncle Jacob, still dry, quizzical, and active as ever, regarded us with an undisguised complacency.

"You've done the right thing now, Harry," he said to me. "She'll do. You're a lucky boy to get such a one, even though she is a city girl."

Eva, after a little experience in mountain climbing, proceeded to equip herself for it with feminine skill. Our village store supplied her with material out of which with wonderful quickness she constructed what she called a mountain suit, somewhat of the bloomer order, but to which she contrived to impart a sort of air of dapper grace and fitness. And once arrayed in this she climbed with me to the most impossible places, and we investigated the innermost mysteries of rock, forest, and cavern.

My uncle lent me his horse and carriage, and with a luncheon-basket well stored by my mother's providing care, we went on a tour of exploration of two or three days into the mountains, in the course of which we made ourselves familiar in a leisurely manner with some of the finest scenery.

The mutual acquaintance that comes to companions in this solitude and face-to-face communion with nature, is deeper and more radical than can come when surrounded by the factitious circumstances of society. When the whole artificial world is withdrawn, and far out of sight, when we are surrounded with the pure and beautiful mysteries of nature, the very best and most genuine part of us comes to the surface, we know each other by the communion of our very highest faculties.

When Eva and I found ourselves alone together in the heart of some primeval forest, where the foot sunk ankle-deep in a carpet of more exquisite fabric than any loom of mortal workmanship could create, where the old fallen trunks of trees were all overgrown with this exquisite mossy tapestry, and all around us was a perfect broidery and inlay of flower and leaf, while birds called to us overhead, down through the flickering shadows of the pine boughs, we felt ourselves out of the world and in paradise, and able to look back from its green depths with a dispassionate judgment on the life we had left.

Then, the venture we had made in striking hands with each other to live, not for the pomps and vanities of this world, but for the true realities of the heart, seemed to us the highest reason. Nature smiled on it. Every genuine green thing, every spicy fragrant bush and tree, every warbling bird, true to the laws of its nature, seemed to say to us "Well done."

"I suppose," said Eva, as we sat in one of these mountain recesses whence we could gain a view of the little silvery cascade, "I suppose that there are a great many people who look on me as a proper subject of pity. My father has failed. I have married a man with no fortune, except what he has in himself. We can't afford to spend our honeymoon at Niagara, Saratoga, and the rest of the show places; and we don't contemplate either going to parties or giving them when we go back to New York."

"Poor, poor Eva Van Arsdel! how art thou fallen!" said I.

"Poor Aunt Maria!" said Eva. "I honestly and truly am sorry for her. She really loves me in her way—the way most people love you, which is to want you to be happy in doing as they please. Her heart was set on my making an astoundingly rich match, and having a wedding that should eclipse all former weddings, and then becoming a leader of fashionable society; and to have me fail of all this is a dreadful catastrophe. I want somehow to comfort her and make up with her, but she can't forgive me. She kissed me at last with a stern and warning air that seemed to say: 'Well, if you will go to destruction, I can't help it.'"

"Perhaps when she sees how happy we are, she will get over it," said I.

"No, I fear not. Aunt Maria can't conceive of anybody's being happy that has to begin life with an ingrain carpet on the floor. She would think it a positive indecorum to be happy under such circumstances—a want of a proper sense of the fitness of things. Now, I propose to be very happy under precisely those circumstances, and to try to make you so; consequently you see I shall offend her moral sense continuously, and, as I said, I do wish it weren't so, because I love Aunt Maria, and am sorry I can't please her."

"I suppose," said I, "there is no making her comprehend the resources we have in each other—our love of just this bright, free, natural life?"

"Oh dear, no! All Aunt Maria's idea of visiting the mountains would be having rooms at the Profile House in the height of the season, and gazing in full dress at the mountains from the verandahs. I don't think she really cares enough for any thing here to risk wetting her feet for it. I dare say the poor dear soul is lying awake nights now, lamenting over my loss of what I don't care for, and racking her brains how we may contrive to patch up a little decent gentility."

"And you are as free and gay as an oriole!"

"Certainly I am. All I wish is that we could live in one of these little mountain towns, just as your mother and uncle do. I love the hearty, simple society here."

"Well," said I, "as we cannot, we can only try to make a home in New York, as simple-hearted, and kindly, and unworldly as if we lived here."

"Yes, and we can do that," said she. "You have only to resolve to be free, and you are free. Now, that is the beauty of our being married. Alone, we are parts of other families, drawn along with them—entrained, as the French say: now we are married, we can do as we please; we become king and queen of a new state. In our own house we can have our own ways. We are monarchs of all we survey."

"True," said I, "and a home and a family that has an original and individual life of its own, is always recognized in time as a fait accompli. You and I will be for the future 'The Hendersons;' and people will say the Hendersons do this and that, or the Hendersons don't do the other. They will study us as one studies a new State."

"Yes," said she, taking up my idea in her vivacious way, "and when they have ascertained our latitude and longitude, soil and productions, manners and customs, they can choose whether they like to visit us."

"And you are not in the least afraid of having it said, 'The Hendersons are odd?'" asked I.

"Not a bit of it," replied Eva, "so long as the oddity is some unusual form of comfort. For example, a sitting-room like your uncle's, with its brass andirons and blazing wood fire, its books and work, its motherly lounges, would be a sort of exotic in New York, where people, as a matter of course, expect a pier-glass and marble slab, a somber concatenation of cord and tassels and damask curtains, and a given number of French chairs and ottomans, veiled with linen covers, and a general funereal darkness of gentility. Now, I propose to introduce the country sitting room into our New York house. Your mother already has given me her wedding andirons—perfect loves—with shovel and tongs corresponding; and I am going to have a bright, light, free and easy room which the sunshine shall glorify."

"But you know, my love, wood is very dear in New York."

"So are curtains, and ottomans, and mirrors, and marble slabs, and quantities of things which we shall do without. And then, you see, we don't propose to warm our house with a wood-fire, but only to adorn it. It is an altar fire that we will kindle every evening, just to light up our room and show it to advantage. How charming every thing looks at your mother's in that time between daylight and dark, when you all sit round the hearth, and the fire lights up the pictures and the books, and makes every thing look so dreamy and beautiful!"

"You are a little poet, my dear; it will be your specialty to turn life into poetry."

"And that is what I call woman's genius. To make life beautiful; to keep down and out of sight the hard, dry, prosaic side, and keep up the poetry—that is my idea of our 'mission.' I think woman ought to be, what Hawthorne calls, 'The Artist of the Beautiful.'"

---

MY WIFE'S WARDROBE.

Let not the reader imagine by the paragraph on Saratoga trunks that my little wife had done what the Scripture assumes is the impossibility for womankind, and as a bride forgotten her attire.

Although possessing ideas of great moderation, she had not come to our mountain home without the appropriate armor of womanhood.

I interpreted the duties of a husband after the directions of Michelet, and was my wife's only maid, and in all humility performed for her the office of packing and unpacking her trunks, and handling all those strange and wonderful mysteries of the toilet, which seemed to my eyes penetrated with an ineffable enchantment.

I have been struck with dismay of late, in reading the treatises of some very clever female reformers concerning the dress of the diviner sex.

It is really in contemplation among them to reduce it to a level as ordinary and prosaic as it occupies among us men, heavy-footed sons of toil? Are sashes and bows, and neck ribbons and tiny slippers and gloves to give way to thick-soled boots and buckskin gauntlets and broadcloth coats? To me my wife's wardrobe was a daily poem, and from her use of it I derived the satisfaction of faculties which had lain dormant under my heavy black broadcloth, like the gauzy tissue under the black horn wings of a poor beetle. I never looked at the splendid pictures of Paul Veronese and Titian in the Venetian galleries, without murmuring at the severe edicts of modern life which sends every man forth on the tide of life, like a black gondola condemned to one unvarying color. Those gorgeous velvets in all the hues of the rainbow, those dainty laces and splendid gems, which once were allowed to us men, are all swept away, and for us there remains no poetry of dress. Our tailor turns us out a suit in which one is just like another with scarce an individual variation.

The wife, then, the part of one's self which marriage gives us, affords us a gratification of these suppressed faculties. She is our finer self; and in her we appreciate and enjoy what is denied to us. I freely admit the truth of what women-reformers tell us, that it is the admiration of us men that stimulates the love of dress in women. It is a fact—I confess it with tears in my eyes—but it is the truth, that we are blindly enchanted by that play of fancy and poetry in their externals, which is forever denied to us; and that we look with our indulgent eyes even on what the French statesman calls their "fureurs de toilette."

In fact, woman's finery never looks to another woman as it does to a man. It has to us a charm, a sacredness, that they cannot comprehend.

Under my wife's instruction I became an expert guardian of these filmy treasures of the wardrobe, and knew how to fold and unfold, and bring her everything in its place, as she daily performed for me the charming work of making up her toilet. To be sure, my slowness and clumsiness brought me many brisk little lectures, but my good will and docility were so great that my small sovereign declared herself on the whole satisfied with my progress. There was a vapory collection apparently made up of bits and ends of rainbows, flosses of clouds, spangles of stars, butterflies and humming bird's wings, which she turned and tossed over daily, with her dainty fingers, selecting a bit here and a morsel there, which went to her hair, or her neck, or her girdle, with a wonderful appropriateness, and in a manner to me wholly incomprehensible; only the result was a new picture every day. This little, artless tableau was expensive neither of time nor money, and the result was a great deal of very honest pleasure to us both. It was her pride to be praised and admired first by me, and then by my mother, and aunt, and uncle Jacob, who turned her round and admired her, as if she had been some rare tropical flower.

Now, do the very alarmingly rational women-reformers I speak of propose to forbid to women in the future all the use of clothes except that which is best adapted to purposes of work? Is the time at hand when the veil and orange flowers and satin slippers of the bride shall melt away into mist, and shall we behold at the altar the union of young parties, dressed alike in swallow-tailed coats and broadcloth pantaloons, with brass buttons?

If this picture seems absurd, then, it must be admitted that there is a reason in nature why the dress of woman should forever remain different from that of man, in the same manner that the hand of her Creator has shaped her delicate limbs and golden hair differently from the rugged organization of man. Woman was meant to be more than a worker; she was meant for the poet and artist of life; she was meant to be the charmer; and that is the reason, dear Miss Minerva, why to the end of time you cannot help it that women always will, and must, give more care and thought to dress than men.

To be sure, this runs into a thousand follies and extravagances; but in this as in everything else the remedy is not extirpation, but direction.

Certainly my pretty wife's pretty toilets had a success in our limited circle, which might possibly have been denied in fashionable society at Saratoga and Newport. She was beauty, color, and life to our little world, and followed by almost adoring eyes wherever she went. It was as real an accession of light and joy to the simple ways of our household to have her there, as a choice picture, or a marvelous strain of music. My wife had to perfection the truly artistic gift of dress. Had she lived in Robinson Crusoe's island with no one to look at her but the paroquets and the monkeys, and with no mirror but a pool of water, she would have made a careful toilet every day, from the mere love of beauty; and it was delightful to see how a fresh, young, charming woman, by this faculty of adornment, seemed to make the whole of the sober, old house like a picture or a poem.

"She is like the blossom on a cactus," said my Uncle Jacob. "We have come to our flower, in her; we have it in us; we all like it, but she brings it out; she is our blossom."

In fact, it was charming to see the delight of the two sober, elderly matrons, my mother and my aunt, in turning over and surveying the pretty things of her toilet. My mother, with all her delicate tastes and love of fineness and exquisiteness, had lived in these respects the self-denied life of a poor country minister, who never has but one "best pocket handkerchief," and whom one pair of gloves must last through a year. It was a fresh little scene of delight to see the two way-worn matrons in the calm, silvery twilight of their old age, sitting like a pair of amicable doves on the trunks in our room, while my wife displayed to them all her little store of fineries, and all three chatted them over with as whole-hearted a zeal as if finery were one of the final ends in creation.

Every morning it was a part of the family breakfast to admire some new device of berries or blossoms adapted to her toilet. Now, it was knots of blue violets, and now clusters of apple blossoms, that seemed to adapt themselves to the purpose, as if they had been made for it. In the same manner she went about the house filling all possible flower vases with quaint and original combinations of leaves and blossoms till the house bloomed like a garland.

Then there were days when I have the vision of my wife in calico dress and crisp white apron, taking lessons in ornamental housewifery of my mother and aunt in the great, clean kitchen. There the three proceeded with all care and solemnity to perform the incantations out of which arose strange savory compounds of cakes and confections, whose recipes were family heir-looms. Out of great platters of egg-whites, whipped into foamy masses, these mystical dainties arose, as of old rose Venus from the foam of the sea.

I observe that the elderly priestesses in the temple of domestic experience, have a peculiar pride and pleasure in the young neophyte that seeks admission to these Eleusinian mysteries.

Eva began to wear an air of precocious matronly gravity, as she held long discourses with my mother and aunt on all the high mysteries of household ways, following them even to the deepest recesses of the house where they displayed to her their hidden treasures of fine linen and napery, and drew forth gifts wherewith to enrich our future home.

In the olden times the family linen of a bride was of her own spinning and that of her mother and kinswomen; so that every thread in it had a sacredness of family life and association. One can fancy dreams of peace could come in a bed, every thread of whose linen has been spun by loving and sainted hands. So, the gift to my wife from my mother was some of this priceless old linen, every piece of which had its story. These towels were spun by a beloved aunt Avis, whose life was a charming story of faith and patience; and those sheets and pillow-cases were the work of my mother's mother; they had been through the history of a family life, and came to us fragrant with rosemary and legend. We touched them with reverence, as the relics of ascended saints.

Then there were the family receipt books, which had a quaint poetry of their own. I must confess, in the face of the modern excellent printed manuals of cookery and housekeeping, a tenderness for these old-fashioned receipt books of our mothers and grandmothers, yellow with age, where in their own handwriting are the records of their attainments and discoveries in the art of making life healthful and charming. There was a loving carefulness about these receipts—an evident breathing of human experience and family life—they were entwined with so many associations of the tastes and habits of individual members of the family, that the reading of my mother's receipt-book seemed to bring back all the old pictures of home-life; and this precious manual she gave to Eva, who forthwith resolved to set up one of her own on the model of it.

In short, by the time our honeymoon had passed, Eva regarded herself as a passed mistress in the grand free-masonry of home life, and assumed toward me those grave little airs of instruction blent with gracious condescension for male inferiority which obtain among good wives. She began to be my little mother no less than wife.

My mother and aunt were confident of her success and abilities as queen in her new dominions. It was evident that though a city girl and a child of wealth and fashion, she had what Yankee matrons are pleased to denominate "faculty," which is, being interpreted, a genius for home life, and she was only impatient now to return to her realm and set up her kingdom.

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LETTERS FROM NEW YORK.

About this time we got a very characteristic letter from Jim. Here it is:

Dear Hal:—My head buzzes like a swarm of bees. What haven't I done since you left? The Van Arsdels are all packing up and getting ready to move out, and of course I have been up making myself generally useful there. I have been daily call-boy and page to the adorable Alice. Mem:—That girl is a brick! Didn't use to think so, but she's sublime! The way she takes things is so confounded sensible and steady! I respect her—there's not a bit of nonsense about her now—you'd better believe. They are all going up to the old paternal farm to spend the summer with his father, and by Fall there'll be an arrangement to give him an income (Van Arsdel I mean), so that they'll have something to go on. They'll take a house somewhere in New York in the Fall and do fairly; but think what a change to Alice!

Oh, by the by, Hal, the Whang Doodle has made her appearance in our parts again. Yesterday as I sat scratching for dear life, our friend 'Dacia sailed in, cock's feathers and all, large as life. She was after money, as usual, but this time it's her book she insisted on my subscribing for. She informed me that it was destined to regenerate society, and she wanted five dollars for it. The title is:

THE UNIVERSAL EMPYREAN HARMONIAD,
BEING
An Exposition of the Dual Triplicate
Conglomeration of the Infinite.

There, now, is a book for you.

'Dacia was in high spirits, jaunty as ever, and informed me that the millennium was a-coming straight along, and favored me with her views of how they intended to manage things in the good time.

The great mischief at present, she informs me, lies in possessive pronouns, which they intend to abolish. There isn't to be any my or thy. Everybody is to have everything just the minute they happen to want it, and everybody else is to let 'em. Marriage is an old effete institution, a relic of barbarous ages. There is to be no my of husband and wife, and no my of children. The State is to raise all the children as they do turnips in great institutions, and they are to belong to everybody. Love, she informed me, in those delightful days is to be free as air; everybody to do exactly as they've a mind to; a privilege she remarked that she took now as her right. "If I see a man that pleases me," said she, "I shall not ask Priest or Levitt for leave to have him." This was declared with so martial an air that I shrank a little, but she relieved me by saying, "You needn't be frightened. I don't want you. You wouldn't suit me. All I want of you is your money." Whereat she came down to business again.

The book she informed me was every word of it dictated by spirits while she was in the trance state, and was composed conjointly by Socrates, St. Paul, Ching Ling, and Jim Crow, representing different races of the earth and states of progression. From some specimens of the style which she read to me, I was led to hope that we might all live as long as possible, if that sort of thing is what we are coming to after death.

Well, it was all funny and entertaining enough to hear her go on, but when it came to buying the book and planking the V, I flunked. Told 'Dacia I couldn't encourage her in possessive pronouns, that she had no more right to the book than I had, that truth was a universal birthright, and so the truths in that book were mine as much as hers, and as I needed a V more than she did I proposed she should buy the book of me. She didn't see it in that light, and we had high words in consequence, and she poured down on me like a thousand of brick, and so I coolly walked down stairs, telling her when she had done scolding to shut the door.

Isn't she a case? The Domini was up in his den, and I believe she got at him after I left. How he managed her I don't know. He won't talk about her. The Domini is working like a Trojan, and his family are doing finely. The kittens are all over his room with as many capers as the fairies, and I hear him laughing all by himself at the way they go on. We have looked at a dozen houses advertised in the paper, but not one yet is the bargain you want; but we trudge on the quest all our exercise-time daily. It will turn up yet, I'm convinced, the very thing you want.

Height, Hal, you are a lucky dog. I'm like a lean old nag out on a common, looking over a fence and seeing you in clover up to your hat-band. If my kettle only could boil for two I'd risk about the possessive pronouns. To say the truth I am tired of I and my, and would like to say we and our if I dared.

Come home any way and kindle your tent fire, and let a poor tramp warm himself at it.

Your dog and slave,

Jim.

Bolton's letter was as follows:

Dear Hal:—I promised you a family cat, but I am going to do better by you. There is a pair of my kittens that would bring laughter to the cheeks of a dying anchorite. They are just the craziest specimens of pure jollity that flesh, blood, and fur could be wrought into. Who wants a comic opera at a dollar a night when a family cat will supply eight kittens a year? Nobody seems to have found out what kittens are for. I do believe these two kittens of mine would cure the most obstinate hypochondria of mortal man, and, think of it, I am going to give them to you! Their names are Whisky and Frisky, and their ways are past finding out.

The house in which the golden age pastoral is to be enacted has not yet been found. It is somewhere in fairy land, and will probably suddenly appear to you as things used to, to good knights in enchanted forests.

Jim and I went down to the steamer yesterday to see Miss Van Arsdel and your cousin off for Europe. They are part of a very pleasant party that are going together and seem in high spirits. I find her articles (your cousin's) take well, and there is an immediate call for more. So far, good! Stay your month out, my boy, and get all you can out of it before you come back to the "Dem'd horrid grind" of New York.

Ever yours,

Bolton.

P. S.—While I have been writing, Whisky and Frisky have pitched into a pile of the proof-sheets of your Milky Way story, and performed a ballet dance with them so that they are rather the worse for wear. No fatal harm done however, and I find it reads capitally. I met Hestermann yesterday quite enthusiastic over one of your articles in the Democracy that happened to hit his fancy, and plumed myself to him for having secured you next year for his service. So you see your star is in the ascendant. The Hestermanns are liberal fellows, and the place you have is as sure as the Bank of England. So your pastoral will have a good bit of earthly ground to begin on.

B.

The next was from Alice.

Dear Sister:—I am so tired out with packing, and all the thousand and one things that have to be attended to! You know mamma is not strong, and now you and Ida are gone, I am the eldest daughter, and take everything on my shoulders. Aunt Maria comes here daily, looking like a hearse, and I really think she depresses mamma as much by her lugubrious ways as she helps. She positively is a most provoking person. She assumes with such certainty that mamma is a fool, and that all that has happened out of the way comes by some fault of hers, that when she has been here a day mamma is sure to have a headache. But I have discovered faculties and strength I never knew I possessed. I have taken on myself the whole work of separating the things we are to keep from those which are to be sold, and those which we are to take into the country with us, from those which are to be stored in New York for our return. I don't know what I should have done if Jim Fellows hadn't been the real considerate friend he is. Papa is overwhelmed with settling up business matters, and one wants to save him every care, and Jim has really been like a brother—looking up a place to store the goods, finding just the nicest kind of a man to cart them, and actually coming in and packing for me, till I told him I knew he must be giving us time that he wanted for himself—and all this with so much fun and jollification that we really have had some merry times over it, and quite shocked Aunt Maria, who insists on maintaining a general demeanor as if there were a corpse in the house.

One wicked thing about Jim is that he will take her off; and though I scold him for it, between you and me, Eva, and in the "buzzom of the family," as old Mrs. Knabbs used to say, I must admit that it's a little too funny for anything. He can make himself look and speak exactly like her, and breaks out in that way every once in a while; and if we reprove him, says, "What's the matter? Who are you thinking of? I wasn't thinking of what you were." He is a dreadful rogue, and one can't do anything with him; but what we should have done without him, I'm sure I don't know.

Sophie Elmore called the other day, and told me all about things between her and Sydney. She is sending to Paris for all her things, and Tullegig's is all in commotion. They are to be married early in October and go off for a tour in Europe. You ought to see the gloom on Aunt Maria's visage when the thing is talked about. If it had been anybody but the Elmores I think Aunt Maria could have survived it, but they have been her Mordecai in the gate all this time, and now she sees them triumphant. She speaks familiarly about our being ruined, and finally the other day I told her that I found ruin altogether a more comfortable thing than I expected, whereat she looked at me as if I were an abandoned sinner, sighed deeply, and said nothing. Poor soul! I oughtn't to laugh, but she does provoke me so I am tempted to revenge myself in a little quiet fun at her expense.

The other day Jim was telling me about a house he had been looking at. Aunt Maria listened with a severe gravity and interposed with, "Of course nobody could live on that street. Eva would be crazy to think of it. There isn't a good family within squares of that quarter."

I said you didn't care for fashion, and she gave me one of her looks and said, "I trust I sha'n't see Eva in that street; none but most ordinary people live there." Only think, Eva, what if you should live on a street where ordinary people live? How dreadful!

Well, darling, I can't write more; my hands are dusty with packing and overhauling, and I am writing now on the top of a box waiting for the man to cart away the next load. We are all well, and the girls behave charmingly, and are just as handy and helpful as they can be, and mamma says she never knew the comfort of her children before.

God bless you, dear, and good by,

Your loving

Alice.

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AUNT MARIA'S DICTUM.

Our lovely moon of moons had now waned, and the time drew on when, like Adam and Eve, we were hand in hand to turn our backs on Paradise and set our faces toward the battle of life.

"The world was all before us where to choose." In just this crisis we got the following from Aunt Maria:

My Dear Eva:—Notwithstanding all that has passed, I cannot help writing to show that interest in your affairs, which it may be presumed, as your aunt and godmother, I have some right to feel, and though I know that my advice always has been disregarded, still I think it my duty to speak, and shall speak.

Of course, as I have not been consulted or taken into your confidence at all, this may seem like interference, but I overheard Mr. Fellows talking with Alice about looking for houses for you, and I must tell you that I am astonished that you should think of such a thing. Housekeeping is very expensive, if you keep house with the least attention to appearance; and genteel board can be obtained at a far less figure. Then as to your investing the little that your grandmother left you in a house, it is something that shows such childish ignorance as really is pitiable. I don't suppose either you or your husband ever priced an article of furniture at David and Saul's in your lives, and have not the smallest idea of the cost of all those things which a house makes at once indispensable. You fancy a house arranged as you have always seen your father's, and do not know that the kind of marriage you have chosen places all these luxuries wholly out of your reach. Then as to the house itself, the whole of your little property would go but a small way toward giving you a dwelling any way respectable for you to live in.

It is true there are cheap little houses in New York, but where, and on what streets? You would not want to live among mechanics and dentists, small clerks, and people of that description. Everything when one is first married depends on taking a right stand in the beginning. Of course, since the ruin that has come on your father, and with which you will see I never reproach you, though you might have prevented it, it is necessary for all of us to be doubly careful. Everybody is very kind and considerate, and people have called and continue to invite us, and we may maintain our footing as before, if we give our whole mind to it, as evidently it is our duty to do, paying proper attention to appearances. I have partially engaged a place for you, subject of course to your and your husband's approval, at Mivart's, which is a place that can be spoken of—a place where the best sort of people are. Mrs. Mivart is a protégée of mine, and is willing to take you at a considerable reduction, if you take a small back room. Thus you will have no cares, and no obligations of hospitality, and be able to turn your resources all to keeping up the proper air and appearances, which with the present shocking prices for everything, silks, gloves, shoes, etc., and the requirements of the times, are something quite frightful to contemplate.

The course of conduct I have indicated seems specially necessary in view of Alice's future. The blight that comes on all her prospects in this dreadful calamity of your father's is something that lies with weight on my mind. A year ago Alice might have commanded the very best of offers, and we had every reason to hope such an establishment for her as her beauty and accomplishments ought to bring. It is a mercy to think that she will still be invited and have her chances, though she will have to struggle with her limited means to keep up a proper style; but with energy and attention it can be done. I have known girls capable of making, in secret, dresses and bonnets that were ascribed to the first artists. The puffed tulle in which Sallie Morton came to your last German was wholly of her own make—although of course this was told me in confidence by her mother and ought to go no farther. But if you take a mean little house among ordinary low classes, and live in a poor, cheap, and scrubby way, of course you cut yourself off from society, and you see it degrades the whole family. I am sure, as I told your mother, nothing but your inexperience would lead you to think of it, and your husband being a literary man naturally would not understand considerations of this nature. I have seen a good deal of life, and I give it as the result of my observation that there are two things that very materially influence standing in society; the part of the city we live in, and the church we go to. Of course, I presume you will not think of leaving your church, which has in it the most select circles of New York. A wife's religious consolations are things no husband should interfere with, and I trust you will not fling away your money on a mean little house in a fit of childish ignorance. You will want the income of that money for your dress, and carriages for calls and other items essential to keep up life.

I suppose you have heard that the Elmores are making extensive preparations for Sophie's wedding in the Fall. When I see the vanity and instability of earthly riches, I cannot but be glad that there is a better world; the consolations of religion at times are all one has to turn to. Be careful of your health, my dear child, and don't wet your feet. From your letters I should infer that you were needlessly going into very damp unpleasant places. Write me immediately what I am to tell them at Mivart's.

Your affectionate aunt,

Maria Wouvermans.

It was as good as a play to see my wife's face as she read this letter, with flushed cheeks and an impatient tapping of her little foot that foreboded an outburst.

"Just like her for all the world," she said, tossing the letter to me, which I read with vast amusement.

"We'll have a house of our own as quick as we can get one," she said. "I think I see myself gossipping in a boarding house, hanging on to the outskirts of fashion in the way she plans, making puffed tulle dresses in secret places and wearing out life to look as if I were as rich as I am not, and trying to keep step with people of five times our income. If you catch Eva Van Arsdel at that game, then tell me!"

"Eva Van Arsdel is a being of the past, fortunately for me, darling."

"Well, Eva Van Arsdel Henderson, then," said she. "That compound personage is stronger and more defiant of worldly nonsense than the old Eva dared to be."

"And I think your aunt has no idea of what there is developing in Alice."

"To be sure she hasn't; not the remotest. Alice is proud and sensible, proud in the proper way I mean. She was full willing to take the goods the gods provided while she had them, but she never will stoop to all the worries, and cares, and little mean artifices of genteel poverty. She never will dress and go out on hunting expeditions to catch a rich husband. I always said Alice's mind lay in two strata, the upper one worldly and ambitious, the second generous and high minded. Our fall from wealth has been like a land slide, the upper stratum has slid off and left the lower. Alice will now show that she is both a strong and noble woman. Our engagement and marriage has wholly converted her, and she has stood by me like a little Trojan all along."

"Well," said I, "about this letter?"

"Oh! you answer it for me. It's time Aunt Maria learned that there is a man to the fore; besides you are not vexed, you are only amused, and you can write a diplomatic letter."

"And tell her sweetly and politely, with all ruffles and trimmings, that it is none of her business?" said I.

"Yes, just that, but of course with all possible homage of your high consideration. Then tell we can find a house. I suppose we can find nice country board for the hot months near New York, where you can come out every night on the railroad and stay Sundays."

"Exactly. I have the place all thought of and terms arranged long ago. A charming Quaker family where you will find the best of fruit, and the nicest of board, and the quietest and gentlest of hosts, all for a sum quite within our means."

"And then," said she, "by Fall I trust we shall find a house to suit us."

"Certainly," said I. "I have faith that such a house is all waiting for us somewhere in the unknown future. We are traveling toward it, and shall know it when we see it."

"Just think," said my wife, "of Aunt Maria as suggesting that we should board so that we could shirk all obligations of hospitality! What's life good for if you can't have your friends with you, and make people happy under your roof?"

"And who would think of counting the money spent in hospitality?" said I.

"Yet I have heard of people who purposely plan to have no spare room in their house," answered Eva. "I remember, now, Aunt Maria's speaking of Mrs. Jacobs with approbation for just this piece of economy."

"By which she secures money for party dresses and a brilliant annual entertainment I suppose," said I.

"Well," said Eva, "I have always imagined my home with friends in it. A warm peculiar corner for each one of yours and mine. It is the very charm of the prospect when I figure this, that, and the other one enjoying with us, and then I have the great essential of "help" secured. Do you know that there was one Mary McClellan married from our house years ago who was a perfect adorer at my shrine and always begged me to be married that she might come and live with me? Now she is a widow with a little girl eight years old, and it is the desire of her heart to get a place where she can have her child with her. It will fit exactly. The little cub, under my training, can wait on the table and tend the door, and Mary will be meanwhile a mother to me in my inexperience."

"Capital!" said I. "I am sure our star is in the ascendant, and we shall hear from our house before the summer is through."

One day, near the first of October, while up for a Sunday at our country boarding-place, I got the following letter from Jim Fellows:

My Dear Old Boy:—I think we have got it, I mean got the house. I am not quite sure what your wife will say, but I happened to meet Miss Alice last night and I told her, and she says she is sure it will do. Hear and understand.

Coming down town yesterday I bought the Herald and read to my joy that Jack Fergus had been appointed Consul to Algiers. To say the truth we fellows have thought the game was pretty much up with poor Jack; his throat and lungs are so bad, and his family consumptive. So I said when I read it, 'Good! there's a thing that'll do.' I went right round to congratulate him and found three or four of our fellows doing the same thing. Jack was pleased, said it was all right, but still I could see there was a hitch somewhere, and that in fact it was not all right, and when the other fellows went away I staid, and then it came out. He said at once that he was glad of the appointment, but that he had no money; the place at Algiers does not support a man. He will have to give up his bank salary, and unless he could sell his house for ready money he could do nothing. I never knew he had any house. Heaven knows none of the rest of us have got any houses. But it seems some aunt of his, an old Knickerbocker, left him one. Well, I asked him why he didn't sell it. He said he couldn't. He had had two agents there that morning. They wouldn't give him any encouragement till the whole place was sold together. They wouldn't offer anything, and would only say they would advertise it on his account. You see it is one of those betwixt and between places which is going to be a business place, but isn't yet. So he said; and it was that which made me think of you and your wife.

I asked where it was, and he told me. It is one of those little streets that lead out of Varick street, if you know where that is, I'll bet Mrs. Henderson a dozen pair that she doesn't. Well, I went with him to see it when the bank closed, for I still thought of you. By George, I think you will like it. It is the last house in a block, the street is dull enough but is inhabited by decent quiet people, who mind their own business. Of course the respectable Mrs. Wouverman's would think it an unknown horror to live there; and be quite sure they were all Jews or sorcerers, or some other sort of come-outers. Well, this house itself is not like the rest of the block—having been built by this old Aunt Martila, or Van Beest, or whatever else her name was, for her own use. It is a brick house, with a queer stoop, two and a half stories high (the house, not the stoop), with a bay-window on the end, going out on a sort of a church-yard, across which you look to what is, I believe, St. John's Park[1]—a place with trees, and English sparrows, and bird-houses and things. Jack and his wife have made the place look quite cosy, and managed to get a deal of comfort out of it. I wish I could buy it and take my wife there if only I had one. This place Jack will sell for eight thousand dollars—four thousand down and four thousand on mortgage. I call that dirt cheap, and Livingstone, our head book-keeper, who used to be a house-broker, tells me it is a bargain such as he never heard of, and that you can sell it at any time for more than that. I have taken the refusal for three days, so come down, both of you, bright and early Monday and look at it.

So down we came; we saw; we bought. In a few days we were ready, key in hand, to open and walk into "Our House."

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OUR HOUSE.

There are certain characteristic words which the human heart loves to conjure with, and one of the strongest among them is the phrase, "Our house." It is not my house, nor your house, nor their house, but Our House. It is the inseparable we who own it, and it is the we and the our that go a long way towards impregnating it with the charm that makes it the symbol of things most blessed and eternal.

Houses have their physiognomy, as much as persons. There are common-place houses, suggestive houses, attractive houses, mysterious houses, and fascinating houses, just as there are all these classes of persons. There are houses whose windows seem to yawn idly—to stare vacantly—there are houses whose windows glower weirdly, and look at you askance; there are houses, again, whose very doors and windows seem wide open with frank cordiality, which seem to stretch their arms to embrace you, and woo you kindly to come and possess them.

My wife and I, as we put our key into the door and let ourselves into the deserted dwelling, now all our own, said to each other at once that it was a home-like house. It was built in the old style, when they had solid timbers and low ceilings with great beams and large windows, with old-fashioned small panes of glass, but there was about it a sort of homely individuality, and suggestive of cosy comforts. The front room had an ancient fire-place, with quaint Dutch tiles around it. The Ferguses had introduced a furnace, gas, and water, into it; but the fire-place in most of the rooms still remained, suggestive of the old days in New York when wood was plenty and cheap. One could almost fancy that those days of roaring family hearths had so heartened up the old chimneys that a portion of the ancient warmth yet inhered in the house.

"There, Harry," said my wife, exultantly pointing to the fire-place, "see, this is the very thing that your mother's brass andirons will fit into—how charmingly they will go with it!"

And then those bright, sunny windows, and that bay-window looking across upon those trees was perfectly lovely. In fact, the leaves of the trees shimmering in October light, cast reflections into the room suggestive of country life, which, fresh from the country as we were, was an added charm.

The rooms were very low studded, scarcely nine feet in height—and, by the by, I believe that that feature in old English and Dutch house-building is one that greatly conduces to give an air of comfort. A low ceiling insures ease in warming, and in our climate where one has to depend on fires for nine months in the year, this is something worth while. In general, I have noticed in rooms that the sense of snugness and comfort dies out as the ceiling rises in height—rooms twelve and fifteen feet high may be all very grand and very fine, but they are never sociable, they never seem to brood over you, soothe you, and take you to their heart as the motherly low-browed room does.

My wife ran all over her new dominions-exploring and planning, telling me volubly how she would arrange them. The woman was Queen here; her foot was on her native heath, and she saw capabilities and possibilities with the eye of an artist.

Now, I desire it to be understood that I am not indifferent to the charms of going to housekeeping full-handed. I do not pretend to say that my wife and I should not have enjoyed opening our family reign in a stone palace, overlooking New York Central Park, with all the charms of city and country life united, with all the upholsterers and furniture shops in New York at our feet. All this was none too good for our taste if we could have had it, but since we could not have it, we took another kind of delight, and one quite as vivid, in seeing how charmingly we could get on without it. In fact, I think there is an exultation in the constant victory over circumstances, in little inventions, substitutions, and combinations, rendered necessary by limited means which is wanting to those to whose hand everything comes without an effort.

If, for example, the brisk pair of robins, who have built in the elm tree opposite to our bay-window, had had a nest all made, and lined, and provided for them to go into, what an amount of tweedle and chipper, what a quantity of fluttering, and soaring, and singing would have been wanting to the commencement of their housekeeping! All those pretty little conversations with the sticks and straw, all that brave work in tugging at a bit of twine and thread, which finally are carried off in triumph and wrought into the nest, would be a loss in nature. How much adventure and enterprise, how many little heart-beats of joy go into one robin's nest simply because Mother Nature makes them work it out for themselves!

We spent a cheerful morning merely in running over our house, and telling each other what we could do with it, and congratulating each other that it was "such a bargain," for, look, here is an outlook upon trees; and here is a little back yard, considerably larger than a good sized pocket-handkerchief, where Mrs. Fergus had raised mignonette, heliotropes, and roses and geraniums enough to have a fresh morning bouquet of them daily; and an ancient grape-vine planted by some old Knickerbocker, which Jack Fergus had trained in a sort of arbor over the dining-room window, and which at this present moment was hanging with purple clusters of grapes. We ate of them, and felt like Adam and Eve in Paradise. What was it to us that this little Eden of ours was in an unfashionable quarter, and that, as Aunt Maria would say, there was not a creature living within miles of us, it was still our mystical "garden which the Lord God had planted eastward in Eden." The purchase of it, it is true, had absorbed all my wife's little fortune, and laid a debt upon us—but we told each other that it was, after all, our cheapest way of renting a foothold in New York. "For, you see," said my wife instructively, "papa says it is a safe investment, as it is sure to rise in value, so that even if we want to sell it we can get more than we paid."

"What a shrewd little trader you are getting to be!" I said, admiring this profound financial view.

"Oh, indeed I am; and, now, Harry dear, don't let's go to any expense about furniture till I've shown you what I intend to do. I know devices for giving a room an air with so little; for example, look at this recess. I shall fill this up with a divan that I shall get up for nine or ten dollars."

"You get it up!"

"Yes, I—with Mary to help me—you'll see in time. We'll have all the comfort that could be got out of a sofa, for which people pay eighty or ninety dollars, and the eighty or ninety dollars will go to get other things, you see. And then we must have a stuffed seat running round this bay-window. I can get that up. I've seen at Stewart's such a lovely piece of patch, with broad crimson stripes, and a sort of mauresque figure interposed. I think we had better get the whole of it, and that will do for one whole room. Let's see. I shall make lambrequins for the windows, and cover the window-seats, and then we shall have only to buy two or three great stuffed chairs and cover them with the same. Oh, you'll see what I'll do. I shall make this house so comfortable and charming that people will wonder to see it."

"Well, darling, I give all that up to you, that is your dominion, your reign."

"To be sure, you have all your work up at the office there, and your articles to write, and besides, dear, with all your genius, and all that, you really don't know much about this sort of thing, so give yourself no trouble, I'll attend to it—it is my ground, you know. Now, I don't mean mother or Aunt Maria shall come down here till we have got every thing arranged. Alice is going to come and stay with me and help, and when I want you I'll call on you, for, though I am not a writing genius, I am a genius in these matters as you'll see."

"You are a veritable household fairy," said I, "and this house, henceforth, lies on the borders of the fairy land. Troops of gay and joyous spirits are flocking to take possession of it, and their little hands will carry forward what you begin."

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PICNICKING IN NEW YORK.

Our house seemed so far to be ours that it was apparently regarded by the firm of good fellows as much their affair as mine. The visits of Jim and Bolton to our quarters were daily, and sometimes even hourly. They counseled, advised, theorised, and admired my wife's generalship in an artless solidarity with myself. Jim was omnipresent. Now he would be seen in his shirt-sleeves nailing down a carpet, or unpacking a barrel, and again making good the time lost in these operations by scribbling his articles on the top of some packing-box, dodging in and out at all hours with news of discoveries of possible bargains that he had hit upon in his rambles.

For a while we merely bivouacked in the house, as of old the pilgrims in a caravansary, or as a picnic party might do, out under a tree. The house itself was in a state of growth and construction, and, meanwhile, the work of eating and drinking was performed in moments snatched in the most pastoral freedom and simplicity. I must confess that there was a joyous, rollicking freedom about these times that was lost in the precision of regular housekeepers. When we all gathered about Mary's cooking-stove in the kitchen, eating roast oysters and bread and butter, without troubling ourselves about table equipage, we seemed to come closer to each other than we could in months of orderly housekeeping.

Our cooking-stove was Bolton's especial protégé and pet. He had studied the subject of stoves, for our sakes, with praiseworthy perseverance, and after philosophic investigation had persuaded us to buy this one, and of course had a fatherly interest in its well-doing. I have the image of him now as he sat, seriously, with the book of directions in his hand, reading and explaining to us all, while a set of muffins were going through the "experimentum crucis"—the oven. The muffins were excellent and we ate them hot out of the oven with gladness and singleness of heart, and agreed that we had touched the absolute in the matter of cooking-stoves. All my wife's plans and achievements, all her bargains and successes, were reported and admired in full conclave, when we all looked in at night, and took our snack together in the kitchen.

One of my wife's enterprises was the regeneration of the dining-room. It had a pretty window draped pleasantly by the grape-vine, but it had a dreadfully common wall-paper, a paper that evidently had been chosen for no other reason than because it was cheap. It had moreover a wainscot of dark wood running round the side, so that what with our low ceiling, the portion covered by this offending paper was only four feet and a half wide.

I confess, in the multitude of things on hand in the work of reconstruction, I was rather disposed to put up with the old paper as the best under the circumstances.

"My dear," said I, "why not let pretty well alone."

"My darling child!" said my wife, "it is impossible—that paper is a horror."

"It certainly isn't pretty, but who cares?" said I. "I don't see so very much the matter with it, and you are undertaking so much that you'll be worn out."

"It will wear me out to have that paper, so now, Harry dear, be a good boy, and do just what I tell you. Go to Berthold & Capstick's and bring me one roll of plain black paper, and six or eight of plain crimson, and wait then to see what I'll do."

The result on a certain day after was that I found my dining-room transformed into a Pompeiian saloon, by the busy fingers of the house fairies.

The ground-work was crimson, but there was a series of black panels, in each of which was one of those floating Pompeiian figures, which the Italian traveler buys for a trifle in Naples.

"There now," said my wife, "do you remember my portfolio of cheap Neapolitan prints? Haven't I made good use of them?"

"You are a witch," said I. "You certainly can't paper walls."

"Can't I! haven't I as many fingers as your mother? and she has done it time and again; and this is such a crumb of a wall. Alice and Jim and I did it to-day, and have had real fun over it."

"Jim?" said I, looking amused.

"Jim!" said my wife, nodding with a significant laugh.

"Seems to me," said I.

"So it seems to me," said she. After a pause she added, with a smile, "but the creature is both entertaining and useful. We have had the greatest kind of a frolic over this wall."

"But, really," said I, "this case of Jim and Alice is getting serious."

"Don't say a word," said my wife, laughing. "They are in the F's; they have got out of Flirtation and into Friendship."

"And friendship between a girl like Alice and a young man, on his part soon gets to mean——."

"Oh, well, let it get to mean what it will," said my wife; "they are having nice times now, and the best of it is, nobody sees anything but you and I. Nobody bothers Alice, or asks her if she is engaged, and she is careful to inform me that she regards Jim quite as a brother. You see that is one advantage of our living where nobody knows us—we can all do just as we like. This little house is Robinson Crusoe's island—in the middle of New York. But now, Harry, there is one thing you must do toward this room. There must be a little gilt molding to finish off the top and sides. You just go to Berthold & Capstick's and get it. See, here are the figures," she said, showing her memorandum-book. "We shall want just that much."

"But, can we put it up?"

"No, but you just speak to little Tim Brady, who is a clerk there—Tim used to be a boy in father's office—he will like nothing better than to come and put it up for us, and then we shall be fine as a new fiddle."

And so, while I was driving under a great pressure of business at the office daily, my home was growing leaf by leaf, and unfolding flower by flower, under the creative hands of my home-queen and sovereign lady.

Time would fail me to relate the enterprises conceived, carried out, and prosperously finished under her hands. Indeed I came to have such a reverential belief in her power that had she announced that she intended to take my house up bodily and set it down in Japan, in the true "Arabian Nights" style, I should not in the least have doubted her ability to do it. The house was as much an expression of my wife's personality, a thing wrought out of her being, as any picture painted by an artist.

Many homes have no personality. They are made by the upholsterers; the things in them express the tastes of David and Saul, or Berthold & Capstick, or whoever else of artificers undertake the getting up of houses. But our house formed itself around my wife like the pearly shell around the nautilus. My home was Eva,—she the scheming, the busy, the creative, was the life, soul, and spirit of all that was there.

Is not this a species of high art, by which a house, in itself cold and barren, becomes in every part warm and inviting, glowing with suggestion, alive with human tastes and personalities? Wall-paper, paint, furniture, pictures, in the hands of the home artist, are like the tubes of paint out of which arises, as by inspiration, a picture. It is the woman who combines them into the wonderful creation which we call a home.

When I came home from my office night after night, and was led in triumph by Eva to view the result of her achievements, I confess I began to remember with approbation the old Greek mythology, and no longer to wonder that divine honors had been paid to household goddesses.

It seemed to me that she had a portion of the talent of creating out of nothing. Our house had literally nothing in it of the stereotyped sets of articles expected as a matter of course in good families, and yet it looked cosy, comfortable, inviting, and with everywhere a suggestion of ideal tastes, and an eye to beauty. There were chambers which seemed to be built out of drapery and muslins, every detail of which, when explained, was a marvel of results at small expense. My wife had an aptitude for bargains, and when a certain article was wanted, supplied it from some second-hand store with such an admirable adaptation to the place that it was difficult to persuade ourselves after a few days that it had not always been exactly there, where now it was so perfectly adapted to be.

In fact, her excursions into the great sea of New York and the spoils she brought thence to enrich our bower reminded me of the process by which Robinson Crusoe furnished his island home by repeated visits to the old ship which was going to wreck on the shore. From the wreck of other homes came floating to ours household belongings, which we landed reverently and baptized into the fellowship of our own.

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NEIGHBORS.

"Do you know, Harry," said my wife to me, one evening when I came home to dinner, "I have made a discovery?"

Now, the truth was, that my wife was one of those lively, busy, active, enterprising little women, who are always making incident for themselves and their friends; and it was a regular part of my anticipation, as I plodded home from my office, tired and work-worn, to conjecture what new thing Eva would find to tell me that night. What had she done, or altered, or made up, or arranged, as she always met me full of her subject?

"Well," said I, "what is this great discovery?"

"My dear, I'll tell you. One of those dumb houses in our neighborhood has suddenly become alive to me. I've made an acquaintance."

Now, I knew that my wife was just that social, conversing, conversable creature that, had she been in Robinson Crusoe's island, would have struck up confidential relations with the monkeys and paroquets, rather than not have somebody to talk to. Therefore, I was not in the least surprised, but quite amused, to find that she had begun neighboring in our vicinity.

"You don't tell me," said I, "that you have begun to cultivate acquaintances on this street, so far from the centers of fashion?"

"Well, I have, and found quite a treasure, in at the very next door."

"And pray now, for curiosity's sake, how did you manage it?"

"Well, to tell the truth, Harry, I'm the worst person in the world for keeping up what's called select society; and I never could bear the feeling of not knowing anything about anybody that lives next to me. Why, suppose we should be sick in the night, or anything happen, and we not have a creature to speak to! It seems dreary to think of it. So I was curious to know who lived next door; and I looked down from our chamber-window into the next back-yard, and saw that whoever it was had a right cunning little garden, with nasturtiums and geraniums, and chrysanthemums, and all sorts of pretty things. Well, this morning I saw the sweetest little dove of a Quaker woman, in a gray dress, with a pressed crape cap, moving about as quiet as a chip sparrow among the flowers. And I took quite a fancy to her, and began to think how I should make her acquaintance."

"If that isn't just like you!" said I. "Well, did you run in and fall on her neck?"

"Not exactly. But, you see, we had all our windows open to air the rooms, and my very best pocket handkerchief lay on the bureau. And the wind took it up, and whirled it about, and finally carried it down into that back-yard; and it lit on her geranium bush. 'There, now,' said I to Alice, 'there's a providential opening. I'm just going to run right down and inquire about my pocket handkerchief.' Which I did: I just stepped off from our stoop on to her door-step, and rang the bell. Meanwhile, I saw, on a nice, shining door plate, that the name was Baxter. Well, who should open the door but the brown dove in person, looking just as pretty as a pink in her cap and drab gown. I declare, Harry, I told Alice I'd a great mind to adopt the Quaker costume right away. It's a great deal more becoming than all our finery."

"Well, my dear," said I, "that introduces a large subject; and I want to hear what came next."

"Oh, well, I spoke up, and said, 'Dear Mrs. Baxter, pray excuse me; but I've been so very careless as to lose my handkerchief down in your back-yard.' You ought to have seen the pretty pink color rise in her cheeks; and she said in such a cunning way, 'I'll get it for thee!'

"'Oh, dear, no,' said I, 'don't trouble yourself. Please let me go out into your pretty little garden there.'

"Well, the upshot was, we went into the garden and had a long chat about the flowers. And she picked me quite a bouquet of geraniums. And then I told her all about our little garden, and how I wanted to make things grow in it, and didn't know how; and asked her if she wouldn't teach me. Well, then, she took me into the nicest little drab nest of a parlor that ever you saw. The carpet was drab, and the curtains were drab, and the sofas and chairs were all covered with drab; but the windows were perfectly blazing with flowers. She had most gorgeous nasturtium vines trained all around the windows, and scarlet geraniums that would really make your eyes wink to look at them. I couldn't help laughing a little to myself, that they make it a part of their religion not to have any color, and then fall back upon all these high-colored operations of the Lord by way of brightening up their houses. However, I got a great deal of instruction out of her, and she's going to come in and show me how to arrange my ferns and other things I gathered in the country, in a Ward's case; and she's going to show me, too, how to plant an ivy, so as to have it grow all around this bay-window. The inside of hers is a perfect bower."

"I perceive," said I, "the result of all was that you swore eternal friendship on the spot, just like the Eva that you are."

"Precisely."

"And you didn't have the fear of your gentility before your eyes?"

"Not a bit. I always have detested gentility."

"You don't even know the business of her husband."

"But I do, though. He's a watchmaker, and works for Tiffany & Co. I know, because she showed me a curious little clock of his construction; and these things came out in a parenthesis, you see."

"I see the hopeless degradation which this will imply in Aunt Maria's eyes," said I.

"A fig for Aunt Maria, and a fig for the world! I'm married now, and can do as I've a mind to. Besides, you know Quakers are not world's people. They have come out from it, and don't belong to it. There's something really refreshing about this dear little body, with her 'thee's' and her 'thou's' and her nice little ways. And they're young married people, just like us. She's been in this house only a year. But, Harry, she knows everybody on the street,—not in a worldly way, but in the way of her sect. She's made a visitation of Christian love to every one of them. Now, isn't that pretty? She's been to see what she could do for them, and to offer friendship and kind offices. Isn't that sort of Arcadian, now?"

"Well, and what does she tell you?"

"Oh, there are a great many interesting people on this street. I can't tell you all about it now, but some that I think we must try to get acquainted with. In the third story of that house opposite to us is a poor French gentleman, who came to New York a political refugee, hoping to give lessons; but has no faculty for getting along, and his wife, a delicate little woman with a baby, and they're very, very poor. I'm going with her to visit them some time this week. It seems this dear little Ruth was with her when her baby was born,—this dear little Ruth! It struck me so curiously to see how interesting she thinks everybody on this street is."

"Simply," said I, "because she looks at them from the Christian stand-point. Well, dear, I can't but think your new acquaintance is an acquisition."

"And only think, Harry, this nice little person is one of the people that Aunt Maria calls nobody; not rich, not fashionable, not of the world, in short; but just as sweet and lovely and refined as she can be. I think those plain, sincere manners are so charming. It makes you feel so very near to people to have them call you by your Christian name right away. She calls me Eva and I call her Ruth; and I feel somehow as if I must always have known her."

"I want to see her," said I.

"You must. It'll amuse you to have her look at you with her grave, quiet eyes, and call you Harry Henderson. What an effect it has to hear one's simple, common name, without fuss or title!"

"Yes," said I, "I remember how long I called you Eva in my heart, while I was addressing you at arm's length as Miss Van Arsdel."

"It was in the Park, Harry, that we lost the Mr. and Miss, never to find them again."

"I've often thought it strange," said I, "how these unworldly modes of speaking among the Quakers seem to have with them a certain dignity. It would be an offense, a piece of vulgar forwardness, in most people to address you by your Christian name. But, with them it seems to be an attempt at realizing a certain ideal of Christian simplicity and sincerity, which one almost loses sight of in the conventional course of life."

"I was very much amused," said my wife, "at her telling me of one of her visits of Christian love to a Jew family, living on this street. And really, Harry, she has learned an amount of good about the Jews, from cultivating an intimacy with this family, that is quite astonishing. I'd no idea how good the Jews were."

"Well, my little High-Church darling," said I, "you're in a fair way to become ultra-liberal, and to find that what you call the Church doesn't come anywhere near representing the whole multitude of the elect in this world. I comfort myself with thinking, all the time, how much more good there is in the world and in human nature than appears on the surface."

"And, now, Harry, that you and I have this home of our own, we can do some of those things with it that our friends next door seem to be doing. I thought we might stir about and see if we couldn't get up a class for this poor Frenchman, and I'm going to call on his wife. In fact, Harry, I've been thinking that it must be one's own fault if one has no friends in one's neighborhood. I can't believe in living on a street, and never knowing or caring whether your next-door neighbor is sick or dead, simply because you belong to a circle up at the other end of the city."

"Well, dear, you know that I am a democrat by nature. But I am delighted to have you make these discoveries for yourself. It was bad enough, in the view of your friends, presume, for me to have come between you and a fashionable establishment, and a palace on the Park, without being guilty of introducing you into such very mixed society as the course that you're falling into seems to promise. But wherever you go I'll follow."

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MY WIFE PROJECTS HOSPITALITIES.

"My dear," said my wife to me at breakfast, "our house is about done. To be sure there are ever so many little niceties that I haven't got as yet, but it's pretty enough now. So that I'm not at all ashamed to show it to mamma or Aunt Maria, or any of them."

"Do you think," said I, "that last-named respectable individual could possibly think of countenancing us, when we have only an ingrain carpet on our parlor and nothing but mattings on the chambers, and live down here where nobody lives?"

"Well, poor soul!" said Eva, "she'll have to accept it as one of the trials of life, and have recourse to the consolations of religion. Then, after all, Harry, I really am proud of our parlor. Of course, we've had the good luck to have a good many handsome ornaments given to us; so that, though we haven't the regulation things that people generally get, it does look very bright and pretty."

"It's perfectly lovely," said I. "Our house to me is a perfect dream of loveliness. I think of it all day from time to time when I'm at work in my office, and am always wanting to come home and see it again, and have a little curiosity to know what new thing you've accomplished. So far, your career has been a daily succession of triumphs, and the best of it is that it's all so much like you."

"So," said she, "that I can't be jealous at your loving the house so much. I suppose you think it as much a part of me as the shell on a turtle's back. Well, now, before we invite mother and Aunt Maria, and all the folks down here, I propose that we have just a nice little housewarming, with our own little private particular set, who know how to appreciate us."

"Agreed!" said I; "Bolton, and Jim, and Alice, and you and I will have a commemoration-dinner together. Our fellows, you see, seem to feel as much interested in this house as if it were their own."

"I know it," said she. "Isn't it really amusing to see the grandfatherly concern that Bolton has for our cooking-stove?"

"Oh! Bolton has staked his character on that stove," I said. "Its success is quite a personal matter now."

"Well, it does bake admirably," said my wife, "and I think our dinner will be a perfect success, so far as that is concerned. And, do you know, I'm going to introduce that new way of doing up cold chicken which I've invented."

"Yes," said I, "we shall christen it Chicken à la Eva."

"And I've been talking with our Mary about it, and she's quite in the spirit of the affair. You see, like all Irish women, Mary perfectly worships the boys, and thinks there never was anybody like Mr. Bolton, and Mr. Jim; and of course it's quite a labor of love with her. Then I've been giving her little cub there a series of lessons to enable her to wait on table; and she is all exercised with the prospect."

"Why," said I, "the little flibberty-gibbet is hardly as high as the table."

"Oh, never say that before her. She feels very high indeed in the world, and is impressed with the awful gravity and responsibility of being eight years old. I have made her a white apron with pockets, in which her soul delights; and her mother has starched and ironed it till it shines with whiteness. And she is learning to brush the table-cloth, and change plates in the most charming way, and with a gravity that is quite overcoming."

"Capital!" said I. "And when shall it be?"

"To-morrow night."

"Agreed! I'll tell the fellows this is to be a regular blow-out, and we must do our very prettiest, which is very pretty indeed," said I, "thanks to the contributions of our numerous friends. For my part, I think the fashion of wedding-presents has proved a lucky thing for us."

"Even if we have six pie-knives, and no pie to eat with them," said my wife, "as may happen in our establishment pretty often."

"Still," said I, "among them all there are a sufficiency of articles that give quite another aspect to our prudent little house from what it would wear if we were obliged to buy everything ourselves."

"Yes," said my wife, "and one such present as that set of bronzes on the mantel-piece gives an air to a whole room. A mantel-piece is like a lady's bonnet. It's the headpiece of a room, and if that be pleasing the rest is a good deal taken for granted. Then, you see, our parlor is all of a warm color,—crimson carpet, crimson curtains,—everything warm and glowing. And so long as you have the color it isn't a bit of matter whether your carpet cost three dollars and a half a yard or eighty-seven cents, and whether your curtains are damask or Turkey red. Color is color, and will produce its effects, no matter in what material."

"And we men," said I, "never know what the material is, if only the effect is pleasant. I always look at a room as a painting. It never occurs to me whether the articles in it are cheap or dear, so that only the general effect is warm, and social, and agreeable. And that is just what you have made these rooms. I think the general effect of the rooms, either by daylight, or lamp-light, or firelight, would be to make a person like to stay in them, and when he had left them want to come back."

"Yes," said my wife, "I flatter myself our rooms have the air of belonging to people that are having nice times, and enjoying themselves, as we are. And, for my own part, I feel like sitting right down in them. All that round of party-going, and calling, and visiting, that I used to have to keep up, seems to me really wearisome. I want you to understand, Harry, that it's not the slightest sacrifice in the world for me to give it up. I'm just happy to be out of it."

"You see," said I, "we can sit down here and make our own world. Those that we really like very much and who like us very much will come to us. My ideal of good society is of a few congenial persons who can know each other very thoroughly, so as to feel perfectly acquainted and at home with one another. That was the secret of those reunions that went on so many years around Madame Récamier. It made no difference whether she lived in a palace, or a little obscure street; her friends were real friends, and followed her everywhere. The French have made a science of the cultivation of friendship, which is worth study."

Thus my wife and I chatted, and felicitated each other, in those first happy home making days. There was never any end to our subjects of mutual conversation. Every little change in our arrangements was fruitful in conversation. We hung our pictures here at first, and liked them well, but our maturer second-thoughts received bright inspirations to take them down and hang them there; and then we liked them better. I must say, by the by, that I had committed one of those extravagances which lovers do commit when they shut their eyes and go it blind. I had bought back the pictures of Eva's little boudoir from Goupil's. The fact was that there was a considerable sympathy felt for Mr. Van Arsdel, and one of the members of the concern was a nice fellow, with whom I had some pleasant personal acquaintance. So that the redemption of the pictures was placed at a figure which made it possible for me to accomplish it. And the pictures themselves were an untold store of blessedness to us. I believe we took them all down and hung them over four times, on four successive days, before we were satisfied that we had come to ultimate perfection.

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PREPARATIONS FOR OUR DINNER PARTY.

"Harry," said my wife, the morning of the day of our projected house-warming, "there's one thing you must get me."

"Well, Princess?"

"Well, you know you and I don't care for wine and don't need it, and can't afford it, but I have such a pretty set of glasses and decanters, and you must get me a couple of bottles just to set off our table for celebration."

Immediately I thought of Bolton's letter, of what he had told me of the effect of wine upon his senses at Hestermanns dinner table. I knew it must not be at ours, but how to explain to my wife without compromising him! At a glance I saw that all through the future my intimacy with Bolton must be guided and colored by what I knew of his history, his peculiar struggles and temptations, and that not merely now, but on many future occasions I should need a full understanding with my wife to act as I should be obliged to act. I reflected that Eva and I had ceased to be two and had become one, that I owed her an unlimited confidence in those respects where my actions must involve her comfort, or wishes, or coöperation.

"Eva, darling," I said, "you remember I told you there was a mystery about the separation of Bolton and Caroline."

"Yes, of course," said she, wondering, "but what has this to do with this wine question?"

"A great deal," I said, and going to my desk I took out Bolton's letter and put it into her hand. "Read that my dear and then tell me what to do." She took it and read with something of the eagerness of feminine curiosity while I left the room for a few moments. In a little while she came after me and laid her hand on my arm.

"Harry, dear," she said "I'll stand by you in this thing. His secret shall be sacred with me, and I will make a safe harbor for him where he may have a home without danger. I want our house to seem like a home for him."

"You are an angel, Eva."

"Well, Harry, I must say I always have had conscience about offering wine to some young men that I knew ought to keep clear of it, but it never occurred to me in regard to such a grave noble man as Bolton."

We never know who may be in this danger. It is a diseased action of the nervous system—often inherited—a thing very little understood, like the tendency to insanity or epilepsy. But while we know such things are, we cannot be too careful.

"I should never have forgiven myself, Harry, if I had done it."

"The result would have been that Bolton would never have dined with us again, he is resolute to keep entirely out of all society where this temptation meets him."

"Well, we don't want it, don't need it, and won't have it. Mary makes magnificent coffee and that's even so much better. So that matter is settled, Harry, and I'm ever and ever so glad you told me. I do admire him so much! There is something really sad and noble in his struggle."

"Many a man with that temptation who fails often exercises more self-denial, and self-restraint, than most Christians," said I.

"I'm sure I don't deny myself much. I generally want to do just what I do," said Eva.

"You always want to do all that is good and generous," said I.

"I think, on the whole," said Eva, reflectively, "my self-denial is in not doing what other people want me to. I'm like Mrs. Quickly. I want to please everybody. I wanted to please mamma and Aunt Maria."

"And came very near marrying a man you couldn't love purely to oblige people."

"If you hadn't rescued me," she said, laughing. "But now, Harry, really I want some little extravagance about our dinner. So if we don't have wine, buy the nicest of grapes and pears, and I will arrange a pretty fruit piece for the center of the table."

"My love, I will get you all the grapes and pears you want."

"And my little Ruth has sent me in this lovely tumbler of apple jelly. You see I held sweet council with her yesterday on the subject of jelly-making, where I am only a novice, and hers is splendid; literally now, splendid, for see how the light shines through it! And do you think the generous little Puss actually sent me in half a dozen tumblers."

"What a perfect saint!" said I.

"And I am to have all the flowers in her garden. She says the frost will take them in a day or two if we don't. Harry, next summer we must take lessons of her about our little back yard. I never saw so much made of so little ground."

"She'll be only too delightful," said I.

"Well, now, mind you are home at five. I want you to look the house over before your friends come, and see if I have got everything as pretty as it can be."

"Are they to "process" through the house and see your blue room, and your pink room, and your guest chamber, and all?"

"Yes. I want them to see all through how pretty the rooms are, and then sometimes, perhaps, we shall tempt them to stay all night."

"And sleep in the chamber that is called Peace," said I, "after the fashion of Pilgrim's Progress."

"Come, Harry, begone. I want you to go, so as to be sure and come back early."

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THE HOUSE-WARMING.

Dear reader, fancy now a low-studded room, with crimson curtains and carpet, a deep recess filled a crimson divan with pillows, the lower part of the room taken up by a row of book-shelves, three feet high, which ran all round the room and accommodated my library. The top of this formed a convenient shelf, on which all our pretty little wedding presents—statuettes, bronzes, and articles of vertu—were arranged. A fire-place, surrounded by an old-fashioned border of Dutch tiles, with a pair of grandmotherly brass andirons, nibbed and polished to an extreme of brightness, exhibits a wood fire, all laid in order to be lighted at the touch of the match. My wife has dressed the house with flowers, which our pretty little neighbor has almost stripped her garden to contribute. There are vases of fire-colored nasturtiums and many-hued chrysanthemums the arrangement of which has cost the little artist an afternoon's study, but which I pronounce to be perfect. I have come home from my office an hour earlier to see if she has any commands.

"Here, Harry," she says, with a flushed face, "I believe everything now is about as perfect as it can be. Now come and stand at this door, and see how you think it would strike anybody, when they first came in. You see I've heaped up those bronze vases on the mantel with nothing but nasturtiums; and it has such a surprising effect in that dark bronze! Then I've arranged those white chrysanthemums right against these crimson curtains. And now come out in the dining-room, and see how I've set the dinner-table! You see I've the prettiest possible center-piece of fruit and flowers. Isn't it lovely?"

Of course I kissed her and said it was lovely, and that she was lovelier; and she was a regular little enchantress, witch, and fairy-queen, and ever so much more to the same purport. And then Alice came down, all equipped for conquest, as pretty an additional ornament to the house as heart could desire. And when the clock was on the stroke of six, and we heard the feet of our guests at the door, we lighted our altar-fire in the fire-place; for it must be understood that this was a pure coup de théâtre, a brightening, vivifying, ornamental luxury—one of the things we were determined to have, on the strength of having determined not to have a great many others. How proud we were when the blaze streamed up and lighted the whole room, fluttered on the pictures, glinted here and there on the gold bindings of the books, made dreamy lights and deep shadows, and called forth all the bright glowing color of the crimson tints which seemed to give out their very heart to firelight! My wife was evidently proud of the effect of all things in our rooms, which Jim declared looked warm enough to bring a dead man to life. Bolton was seated in due form in a great, deep arm-chair, which, we informed him, we had bought especially with reference to him, and the corner was to be known henceforth as his corner.

"Well," said he, with grave delight, "I have brought my final contribution to your establishment;" and forthwith from the capacious hinder pockets of his coat he drew forth a pair of kittens, and set them down on the hearth-rug. "There, Harry," he said, gravely, "there are a pair of ballet dancers that will perform for you gratis, at any time."

"Oh, the little witches, the perfect loves!" said my wife and Alice, rushing at them.

Bolton very gravely produced from his pocket two long strings with corks attached to them, and hanging them to the gas fixtures, began, as he said, to exhibit the ballet dancing, in which we all became profoundly interested. The wonderful leaps and flings and other achievements of the performers occupied the whole time till dinner was announced.

"Now, Harry," said my wife, "if we let Little Cub see the kittens, before she's waited on table, it'll utterly demoralize her. So we must shut them in carefully," which was done.

I don't think a dinner party was ever a more brilliant success than ours; partly owing to the fact that we were a mutual admiration society, and our guests felt about as much sense of appropriation and property in it as we did ourselves. The house was in a sort of measure "our house," and the dinner "our dinner." In short, we were all of us strictly en famille. The world was one thing, and we were another, outside of it and by ourselves, and having a remarkably good time. Everybody got some share of praise. Mary got praised for her cooking. The cooking-stove was glorified for baking so well, and Bolton was glorified for recommending the cooking-stove. And Jim and Alice and my wife congratulated each other on the lovely looks of the dining-room. We shuddered together in mutual horror over what the wall-paper there had been; and we felicitated the artists that had brought such brilliant results out of so little. The difficulties that had been overcome in matching the paper and arranging the panels were forcibly dwelt upon; and some sly jokes seemed to pass between Jim and Alice, applicable to certain turns of events in these past operations. After dinner we had most transcendent coffee, and returned to our parlor as gay of heart as if we had been merry with wine. The kittens had got thoroughly at home by that time, having investigated the whole of the apartment, and began exhibiting some of their most irresistible antics, with a social success among us of a most flattering nature. Alice declared that she should call them Taglioni and Madame Céleste, and proceeded to tie blue and pink bows upon their necks, which they scratched and growled at in quite a warlike manner. A low whine from the entry interrupted us; and Eva, opening the door and looking out, saw poor old Stumpy sitting on the mat, with the most good-dog air of dejected patience.

"Why, here's Stumpy, poor fellow!" she said.

"Oh, don't trouble yourself about him," said Bolton. "I've taught him to sit out on the mat. He's happy enough if he only thinks I'm inside."

"But, poor fellow," said Eva, "he looks as if he wanted to come in."

"Oh, he'll do well enough; never mind him," said Bolton, looking a little embarrassed. "It was silly of me to bring him, only he is so desolate to have me go out without him."

"Well, he shall come in," said Eva. "Come in, you poor homely old fellow," she said. "I daresay you're as good as an angel; and to-night's my house-warming, and not even a dog shall have an ungratified desire, if I can help it."

So poor Stumpy was installed by Bolton in the corner, and looked perfectly beatified.

And now, while we have brought all our characters before the curtain, and the tableau of the fireside is complete, as we sit there all around the hearth, each perfectly at home with the other, in heart and mind, and with even the poor beasts that connect us with the lower world brightening in our enjoyment, this is a good moment for the curtain to fall on the fortunes of

My Wife and I.
THE END.

P. S.—If our kind readers still retain a friendly interest in the fortunes of any of the actors in this story, they may hear again from us at some future day, in the

Records of an Unfashionable Street.

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