p523-012 MISS LUCINDA.

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BUT that Solomon is out of fashion I should quote
him, here and now, to the effect that there is a
time for all things; but Solomon is obsolete, and
never, no, never, will I dare to quote a dead language,
“for raisons I have,” as the exiles of Erin say. Yet, in
spite of Solomon and Horace, I may express my own less
concise opinion, that even in hard times, and dull times,
and war times, there is yet a little time to laugh, a brief
hour to smile and love and pity, just as through this dreary
easterly storm, bringing clouds and rain, sobbing against
casement and door with the inarticulate wail of tempests,
there comes now and then the soft shine of a sun behind it
all, a fleeting glitter, an evanescent aspect of what has
been.

But if I apologize for a story that is nowise tragic, nor
fitted to “the fashion of these times,” possibly somebody
will say at its end that I should also have apologized for its
subject, since it is as easy for an author to treat his readers
to high themes as vulgar ones, and velvet can be thrown
into a portrait as cheaply as calico; but of this apology I
wash my hands. I believe nothing in place or circumstance
makes romance. I have the same quick sympathy
for Biddy's sorrows with Patrick that I have for the Empress
of France and her august, but rather grim lord and
master. I think words are often no harder to bear than
“a blue bating,” and I have a reverence for poor old maids
as great as for the nine Muses. Commonplace people are

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only commonplace from character, and no position affects
that. So forgive me once more, patient reader, if I offer
to you no tragedy in high life, no sentimental history of
fashion and wealth, but only a little story about a woman
who could not be a heroine.

Miss Lucinda Jane Ann Manners was a lady of unknown
age, who lived in a place I call Dalton, in a State of these
Disuniting States, which I do not mention for good cause.
I have already had so many unconscious personalities visited
on my devoted head, that but for lucidity I should never
mention persons or places, inconvenient as it would be.
However, Miss Lucinda did live, and lived by the aid of
“means,” which, in the vernacular, is money. Not a great
deal, it is true, — five thousand dollars at lawful interest,
and a little wooden house, do not imply many luxuries even
to a single-woman; and it is also true that a little fine
sewing taken in helped Miss Manners to provide herself
with a few small indulgences otherwise beyond her reach.
She had one or two idiosyncrasies, as they are politely
called, that were her delight. Plenty of dish-towels were
necessary to her peace of mind; without five pair of
scissors she could not be happy; and Tricopherous was
essential to her well-being: indeed, she often said she
would rather give up coffee than Tricopherous, for her hair
was black and wiry and curly, and caps she abhorred, so
that of a winter's day her head presented the most irrelevant
and volatile aspect, each particular hair taking a twist
on its own responsibility, and improvising a wild halo about
her unsaintly face, unless subdued into propriety by the
aforesaid fluid.

I said Miss Lucinda's face was unsaintly, — I mean un
like ancient saints as depicted by contemporary artists:
modern and private saints are after another fashion. I met
one yesterday, whose green eyes, great nose, thick lips, and
sallow wrinkles, under a bonnet of fifteen years' standing,
further clothed upon by a scant merino cloak and cat-skin
tippet, would have cut a sorry figure in the gallery of the

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Vatican or the Louvre, and put the tranquil Madonna of
San Sisto into a state of stunning antithesis; but if Saint
Agnes or Saint Catharine was half as good as my saint, I
am glad of it!

No, there was nothing sublime and dolorous about Miss
Manners; her face was round, cheery, and slightly puckered,
with two little black eyes sparking and shining under dark
brows, a nose she unblushingly called pug, and a big mouth
with eminently white and regular teeth, which she said
were such a comfort, for they never ached, and never would
to the end of time. Add to this physiognomy a small and
rather spare figure, dressed in the cleanest of calicoes,
always made in one style, and rigidly scorning hoops, —
without a symptom of a collar, in whose place (or it may
be over which) she wore a white cambric handkerchief,
knotted about her throat, and the two ends brought into
subjection by means of a little angular-headed gold pin,
her sole ornament, and a relic of her old father's days
of widowhood, when buttons were precarious tenures. So
much for her aspect. Her character was even more quaint.

She was the daughter of a clergyman, one of the old
school, the last whose breeches and knee-buckles adorned
the profession, who never “outlived his usefulness,” nor lost
his godly simplicity. Parson Manners held rule over an
obscure and quiet village in the wilds of Vermont, where
hard-handed farmers wrestled with rocks and forests for
their daily bread, and looked forward to heaven as a land
of green pastures and still waters, where agriculture should
be a pastime, and winter impossible. Heavy freshets from
the mountains that swelled their rushing brooks into annual
torrents, and snow-drifts that covered five-rail fences a foot
above the posts and blocked up the turnpike-road for weeks,
caused this congregation fully to appreciate Parson Manners's
favorite hymns, —

“There is a land of pure delight,”

“On Jordan's stormy banks I stand.”

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Indeed, one irreverent, but “pretty smart feller,” who lived
on the top of a hill known as Drift Hill, where certain
adventurous farmers dwelt for the sake of its smooth sheeppastures,
was heard to say, after a mighty sermon by Parson
Manners about the seven-times heated furnaces of judgment
reserved for the wicked, that “Parson had n't better
try to skeer Drift-Hillers with a hot place; 't would n't more
'n jest warm 'em through down there, arter a real snappin'
winter.”

In this out-of-the-way nook was Lucinda Jane Ann born
and bred. Her mother was like her in many things, — just
such a cheery, round-faced little body, but with no more
mind than found ample scope for itself in superintending
the affairs of house and farm, and vigorously “seeing to”
her husband and child. So, while Mrs. Manners baked,
and washed, and ironed, and sewed, and knit, and set the
sweetest example of quiet goodness and industry to all her
flock, without knowing she could set an example, or be
followed as one, the Parson amused himself, between sermons
of powerful doctrine and parochial duties of a more
human interest, with educating Lucinda, whose intellect
was more like his own than her mother's. A strange training
it was for a young girl, — mathematics, metaphysics,
Latin, theology of the driest sort; and after an utter failure
at Greek and Hebrew, though she had toiled patiently
through seven books of the “Æneid,” Parson Manners
mildly sniffed at the inferiority of the female mind, and
betook himself to teaching her French, which she learned
rapidly, and spoke with a pure American accent, perhaps
as pleasing to a Parisian ear as the hiss of Piedmont or
the gutturals of Switzerland. Moreover, the minister had
been brought up, himself, in the most scrupulous refinement
of manner; his mother was a widow, the last of an “old
family,” and her dainty, delicate observances were inbred,
as it were, in her only son. This sort of elegance is perhaps
the most delicate test of training and descent, and all
these things Lucinda was taught from the grateful

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recollection of a son who never forgot his mother, through all the
solitary labors and studies of a long life. So it came to
pass, that, after her mother died, Lucinda grew more and
more like her father, and, as she became a woman, these
rare refinements separated her more and more from those
about her, and made her necessarily solitary. As for marriage,
the possibility of such a thing never crossed her
mind; there was not a man in the parish who did not
offend her sense of propriety and shock her taste, whenever
she met one; and though her warm, kind heart made her
a blessing to the poor and sick, her mother was yet bitterly
regretted at quiltings and tea-drinkings, where she had
been so “sociable-like.”

It is rather unfortunate for such a position as Lucinda's,
that, as Deacon Stowell one day remarked to her father,
“Natur' will be Natur' as much on Drift Hill as down to
Bosting”; and when she began to feel that “strong necessity
of loving” that sooner or later assails every woman's
heart, there was nothing for it to overflow on, when her
father had taken his share. Now Lucinda loved the Parson
most devoutly. Ever since the time when she could
just remember watching through the dusk his white stockings,
as they glimmered across the road to evening-meeting,
and looked like a supernatural pair of legs taking a walk
on their own responsibility, twilight concealing the black
breeches and coat from mortal view, Lucinda had regarded
her father with a certain pleasing awe. His long abstractions,
his profound knowledge, his grave, benign manners,
and the thousand daily refinements of speech and act that
seemed to put him far above the sphere of his pastorate, —
all these things inspired as much reverence as affection;
and when she wished with all her heart and soul she had
a sister or a brother to tend and kiss and pet, it never once
occurred to her that any of those tender familiarities could
be expended on her father: she would as soon have thought
of caressing any of the goodly angels whose stout legs,
flowing curls, and impossible draperies sprawled among the

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pictures in the big Bible, and who excited her wonder as
much by their garments as their turkey-wings and brandishing
arms. So she betook herself to pets, and growing
up to the old-maidenhood of thirty-five before her father
fell asleep, was by that time the centre of a little world of
her own, — hens, chickens, squirrels, cats, dogs, lambs, and
sundry transient guests of stranger kind; so that, when
she left her old home, and removed to the little house in
Dalton that had been left her by her mother's aunt, and
had found her small property safely invested by means of
an old friend of her father's, Miss Manners made one more
journey to Vermont to bring in safety to their future dwelling
a cat and three kittens, an old blind crow, a yellow
dog of the true cur breed, and a rooster with three hens,
“real creepers,” as she often said, “none of your long-legged,
screaming creatures.”

Lucinda missed her father, and mourned him as constantly
and faithfully as ever a daughter could; but her
temperament was more cheerful and buoyant than his, and
when once she was quietly settled in her little house, her
garden and her pets gave her such full occupation that she
sometimes blamed herself for not feeling more lonely and
unhappy. A little longer life or a little more experience
would have taught her better: power to be happy is the
last thing to regret. Besides, it would have been hard to
be cheerless in that sunny little house, with its queer old
furniture of three-legged tables, high-backed chairs, and
chintz curtains where red mandarins winked at blue pagodas
on a deep-yellow ground, and birds of insane ornithology
pecked at insects that never could have been
hatched, or perched themselves on blossoms totally unknown
to any mortal flora. Old engravings of Bartolozzi, from
the stiff elegances of Angelica Kaufman and the mythologies
of Reynolds, adorned the shelf; and the carpet in the
parlor was of veritable English make, older than Lucinda
herself, but as bright in its fading and as firm in its usefulness
as she. Up stairs the tiny chambers were decked with

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spotless white dimity, and rush-bottomed chairs stood in
each window, with a strip of the same old carpet by either
bedside; and in the kitchen the blue settle that had stood
by the Vermont fireside now defended this lesser hearth
from the draught of the door, and held under the seat
thereof sundry ironing-sheets, the blanket belonging to
them, and good store of ticking and worsted holders. A
half-gone set of egg-shell china stood in the parlor-closet,—
cups, and teapot, and sugar-bowl, rimmed with brown
and gold in a square pattern, and a shield without blazon
on the side; the quaint tea-caddy with its stopper stood
over against the pursy little cream-pot, and held up in its
lumps of sparkling sugar the oddest sugar-tongs, also a
family relic; — beside this, six small spoons, three large
ones, and a little silver porringer comprised all the “plate”
belonging to Miss Manners, so that no fear of burglars
haunted her, and but for her pets she would have lived a life
of profound and monotonous tranquillity. But this was a
vast exception; in her life her pets were the great item
now; — her cat had its own chair in the parlor and kitchen;
her dog, a rug and a basket never to be meddled with by
man or beast; her old crow, its special nest of flannel and
cotton, where it feebly croaked as soon as Miss Lucinda
began to spread the little table for her meals; and the
three kittens had their own playthings and their own saucer
as punctiliously as if they had been children. In fact,
Miss Manners had a greater share of kindness for beasts
than for mankind. A strange compound of learning and
unworldliness, of queer simplicity, native penetration, and
common sense, she had read enough books to despise
human nature as it develops itself in history and theology,
and she had not known enough people to love it in its
personal development. She had a general idea that all
men were liars, and that she must be on her guard against
their propensity to cheat and annoy a lonely and helpless
woman; for, to tell the truth, in her good father's overanxiety
to defend her from the snares of evil men after his

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death, his teachings had given her opinion this bias, and
he had forgotten to tell her how kindly and how true he
had found many of his own parishioners, how few inclined to
harm or pain him. So Miss Lucinda made her entrance
into life at Dalton, distrustful, but not suspicious; and
after a few attempts on the part of the women who were
her neighbors to be friendly or intimate, they gave her up
as impracticable: not because she was impolite or unkind:
they did not themselves know why they failed, though she
could have told them; for, old maid as she was, poor and
plain and queer, she could not bring herself to associate
familiarly with people who put their teaspoons into the
sugar-bowl, helped themselves with their own knives and
forks, gathered up bits of uneaten butter and returned them
to the plate for next time, or replaced on the dish pieces of
cake half eaten or cut with the knives they had just introduced
into their mouths. Miss Lucinda's code of minor
morals would have forbidden her to drink from the same
cup with a queen, and have considered a pitchfork as suitable
as a knife to eat with, nor would she have offered to a
servant the least thing she had touched with her own lips
or her own implements of eating; and she was too delicately
bred to look on in comfort where such things were
practised. Of course these women were not ladies; and
though many of them had kind hearts and warm impulses
of goodness, yet that did not make up to her for their social
misdemeanors, and she drew herself more into her own
little shell, and cared more for her garden and her chickens,
her cats and her dog, than for all the humanity of Dalton
put together.

Miss Manners held her flowers next dearest to her pets,
and treated them accordingly. Her garden was the most
brilliant bit of ground possible. It was big enough to hold
one flourishing peach-tree, one Siberian crab, and a solitary
egg-plum; while under these fruitful boughs bloomed mossroses
in profusion, of the dear old-fashioned kind, every
deep pink bud with its clinging garment of green breathing

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out the richest odor; close by, the real white rose, which
fashion has banished to country towns, unfolded its cups
of pearl flushed with yellow sunrise to the heart; and by
its side its damask sister waved long sprays of bloom and
perfume. Tulips, dark-purple and cream-color, burning
scarlet and deep-maroon, held their gay chalices up to
catch the dew; hyacinths, blue, white, and pink, hung
heavy bells beneath them; spiced carnations of rose and
garnet crowded their bed in July and August, heart's-ease
fringed the walks, May honeysuckles clambered over the
board-fence, and monthly honeysuckles overgrew the porch
at the back-door, making perpetual fragrance from their
moth-like horns of crimson and ivory. Nothing inhabited
those beds that was not sweet and fair and old-fashioned.
Gray-lavender-bushes sent up purple spikes in the middle
of the garden and were duly housed in winter, but these
were the sole tender plants admitted, and they pleaded
their own cause in the breath of the linen-press and the
bureau-drawers that held Miss Lucinda's clothes. Beyond
the flowers, utility blossomed in a row of bean-poles, a
hedge of currant-bushes against the farther fence, carefully
tended cauliflowers, and onions enough to tell of their use
as sparing as their number; a few deep-red beets and
golden carrots were all the vegetables beside: Miss Lucinda
never ate potatoes or pork.

Her housekeeping, but for her pets, would have been
the proper housewifery for a fairy. Out of her fruit she
annually conserved miracles of flavor and transparence, —
great plums like those in Aladdin's garden, of shining topaz,—
peaches tinged with the odorous bitter of their pits, and
clear as amber, — crimson crabs floating in their own ruby
sirup, or transmuted into jelly crystal clear, yet breaking
with a grain, — and jelly from the acid currants to garnish
her dinner-table or refresh the fevered lips of a sick neighbor.
It was a study to visit her tiny pantry, where all these
“lucent sirops” stood in tempting array, — where spices,
and sugar, and tea, in their small jars, flanked the

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sweetmeats, and a jar of glass showed its store of whitest honey,
and another stood filled with crisp cakes. Here always a
loaf or two of home-made bread lay rolled in a snowy
cloth, and another was spread over a dish of butter; pies
were not in favor here, — nor milk, save for the cats; salt
fish Miss Manners never could abide, — her savory taste
allowed only a bit of rich old cheese, or thin scraps of
hung beef, with her bread and butter; sauces and spices
were few in her repertory, but she cooked as only a lady
can cook, and might have asked Soyer himself to dinner.
For, verily, after much meditation and experience, I have
divined that it takes as much sense and refinement and
talent to cook a dinner, wash and wipe a dish, make a bed
as it should be made, and dust a room as it should be
dusted, as goes to the writing of a novel or shining in high
society.

But because Miss Lucinda Manners was reserved and
“unsociable,” as the neighbors pronounced her, I did not,
therefore, mean to imply that she was inhuman. No neighbor
of hers, local or Scriptural, fell ill, without an immediate
offer of aid from her: she made the best gruel known
to Dalton invalids, sent the ripest fruit and the sweetest
flowers: and if she could not watch with the sick, because
it interfered with her duties at home in an unpleasant and
inconvenient way, she would sit with them hour after hour
in the day-time, and wait on all their caprices with the
patient tenderness of a mother. Children she always eyed
with strange wistfulness, as if she longed to kiss them,
but did n't know how; yet no child was ever invited across
her threshold, for the yellow cur hated to be played with,
and children always torment kittens.

So Miss Lucinda wore on happily toward the farther side
of the middle ages. One after another of her pets passed
away and was replaced, the yellow cur barked his last
currish signal, the cat died and her kittens came to various
ends of time or casualty, the crow fell away to dust and
was too old to stuff, and the garden bloomed and faded ten

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times over, before Miss Manners found herself to be forty-six
years old, which she heroically acknowledged one fine
day to the census-taker. But it was not this consciousness,
nor its confession, that drew the dark brows so low over
Miss Lucinda's eyes that day; it was quite another trouble,
and one that wore heavily on her mind, as we shall proceed
to explain. For Miss Manners, being, like all the rest of
her sex, quite unable to do without some masculine help,
had employed, for some seven years, an old man by the
name of Israel Slater, to do her “chores,” as the vernacular
hath it. It is a mortifying thing, and one that strikes at
the roots of Women's Rights terribly sharp blows, but I
must even own it, that one might as well try to live without
one's bread-and-butter as without the aid of the dominant
sex. When I see women split wood, unload coal-carts, move
wash-tubs, and roll barrels of flour and apples handily down
cellar-ways or up into carts, then I shall believe in the
sublime theories of the strong-minded sisters; but as long
as I see before me my own forlorn little hands, and sit
down on the top stair to recover breath, and try in vain to
lift the water-pitcher at table, just so long I shall be glad
and thankful that there are men in the world, and that
half a dozen of them are my kindest and best friends. It
was rather an affliction to Miss Lucinda to feel this innate
dependence, and at first she resolved to employ only small
boys, and never any one of them more than a week or two.
She had an unshaped theory that an old maid was a match
for a small boy, but that a man would cheat and domineer
over her. Experience sadly put to flight these notions;
for a succession of boys in this cabinet-ministry for the
first three years of her stay in Dalton would have driven
her into a Presbyterian convent, had there been one at
hand. Boy Number One caught the yellow cur out of
bounds one day, and shaved his plumy tail to a bare stick,
and Miss Lucinda fairly shed tears of grief and rage when
Pink appeared at the door with the denuded appendage
tucked between his little legs, and his funny yellow eyes

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casting sidelong looks of apprehension at his mistress.
Boy Number One was despatched directly. Number Two
did pretty well for a month, but his integrity and his appetite
conflicted, and Miss Lucinda found him one moonlight
night perched in her plum-tree devouring the half-ripe fruit.
She shook him down with as little ceremony as if he had
been an apple; and though he lay at Death's door for a
week with resulting cholera-morbus, she relented not. So
the experiment went on, till a list of casualties that numbered
in it fatal accidents to three kittens, two hens and a
rooster, and at last Pink himself, who was sent into a
decline by repeated drenchings from the watering-pot, put
an end to her forbearance, and she instituted in her viziership
the old man who had now kept his office so long, —
a queer, withered, slow, humorous old creature, who did
“chores” for some six or seven other households, and got
a living by sundry “jobs” of wood-sawing, hoeing corn,
and other like works of labor, if not of skill. Israel was
a great comfort to Miss Lucinda: he was efficient counsel
in the maladies of all her pets, had a sovereign cure for
the gapes in chickens, and could stop a cat's fit with the
greatest ease; he kept the tiny garden in perfect order,
and was very honest, and Miss Manners favored him accordingly.
She compounded liniment for his rheumatism,
herb-sirup for his colds, presented him with a set of flannel
shirts, and knit him a comforter; so that Israel expressed
himself strongly in favor of “Miss Lucindy,” and she said
to herself he really was “quite good for a man.”

But just now, in her forty-seventh year, Miss Lucinda had
come to grief, and all on account of Israel and his attempts
to please her. About six months before this census-taking
era, the old man had stepped into Miss Manners's kitchen
with an unusual radiance on his wrinkles and in his eyes,
and began without his usual morning greeting, —

“I 've got so'thin' for you naow, Miss Lucindy. You 're
a master-hand for pets, but I 'll bet a red cent you ha'n't an
idee what I 've got for ye naow!”

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“I 'm sure I can't tell, Israel,” said she; “you 'll have to
let me see it.”

“Well,” said he, lifting up his coat and looking carefully
behind him as he sat down on the settle, lest a stray kitten
or chicken should preoccupy the bench, “you see I was
down to Orrin's abaout a week back, and he hed a litter o'
pigs, — eleven on 'em. Well, he could n't raise the hull on
'em, — 't a'n't good to raise more 'n nine, — an' so he said,
ef I 'd 'a' had a place o' my own, I could 'a' had one on 'em,
but, as 't was, he guessed he 'd hev to send one to market
for a roaster. I went daown to the barn to see 'em, an'
there was one, the cutest little critter I ever sot eyes on,
and I 've seen more 'n four pigs in my day, — 't was a little
black-spotted one, as spry as an ant, and the dreffullest
knowin' look out of its eyes! I fellowshipped it right off,
and I said, says I, “Orrin, ef you 'll let me hev that 'ere
little spotted feller, I 'll git a place for him, for I do take
to him consarnedly.' So he said I could, and I fetched
him hum, and Miss Slater and me we kinder fed him up
for a few days back, till he got sorter wonted, and I 'm
a-goin' to fetch him to you.”

“But, Israel, I have n't any place to put him in.”

“Well, that a'n't nothin' to hender. I 'll jest fetch out
them old boards out of the wood-shed, and knock up a little
sty right off, daown by the end o' the shed, and you ken
keep your swill that I 've hed before, and it 'll come handy.”

“But pigs are so dirty!”

“I don't know as they be; they ha'n't no great conveniences
for washin' ginerally; but I never heerd as they was
dirtier 'n other critters, where they run wild. An' beside,
that a'n't goin' to hender, nuther; I calculate to make it
one o' the chores to take keer of him; 't won't cost no more
to you; and I ha'n't no great opportunities to do things for
folks that 's allers a-doin' for me; so 't you need n't be
afeard, Miss Lucindy: I love to.”

Miss Lucinda's heart got the better of her judgment. A
nature that could feel so tenderly for its inferiors in the

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scale could not be deaf to the tiny voices of humanity,
when they reached her solitude; and she thanked Israel
for the pig so heartily that the old man's face brightened
still more, and his voice softened from its cracked harshness,
as he said, clicking up and down the latch of the
back-door, —

“Well, I 'm sure you 're as welcome as you are obleeged,
and I 'll knock up that 'ere pen right off; he sha'n't pester
ye any, — that 's a fact.”

Strange to say, — yet perhaps it might have been expected
from her proclivities, — Miss Lucinda took an astonishing
fancy to the pig. Very few people know how intelligent an
animal a pig is; but when one is regarded merely as pork
and hams, one's intellect is apt to fall into neglect: a moral
sentiment which applies out of Pigdom. This creature
would not have passed muster at a county fair; no Suffolk
blood compacted and rounded him; he belonged to the
“racers,” and skipped about his pen with the alacrity of a
large flea, wiggling his curly tail as expressively as a dog's,
and “all but speakin',” as Israel said. He was always glad
to see Miss Lucinda, and established a firm friendship with
her dog Fun, a pretty, sentimental, German spaniel. Besides,
he kept tolerably clean by dint of Israel's care, and
thrust his long nose between the rails of his pen for grass,
or fruit, or carrot- and beet-tops, with a knowing look out
of his deep-set eyes that was never to be resisted by the
soft-hearted spinster. Indeed, Miss Lucinda enjoyed the
possession of one pet who could not tyrannize over her.
Pink's place was more than filled by Fun, who was so
oppressively affectionate that he never could leave his mistress
alone. If she lay down on her bed, he leaped up and
unlatched the door, and stretched himself on the white
counterpane beside her with a grunt of satisfaction; if she
sat down to knit or sew, he laid his head and shoulders
across her lap, or curled himself up on her knees; if she
was cooking, he whined and coaxed round her till she
hardly knew whether she fried or broiled her steak; and

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if she turned him out and buttoned the door, his cries were
so pitiful she could never be resolute enough to keep him
in exile five minutes, — for it was a prominent article in her
creed, that animals have feelings that are easily wounded,
and are of “like passions” with men, only incapable of
expression. Indeed, Miss Lucinda considered it the duty
of human beings to atone to animals for the Lord's injustice
in making them dumb and four-legged. She would have
been rather startled at such an enunciation of her practice,
but she was devoted to it as a practice: she would give
her own chair to the cat and sit on the settle herself; get
up at midnight, if a mew or a bark called her, though the
thermometer was below zero; the tenderloin of her steak
or the liver of her chicken was saved for a pining kitten or
an ancient and toothless cat; and no disease or wound
daunted her faithful nursing, or disgusted her devoted tenderness.
It was rather hard on humanity, and rather reversive
of Providence, that all this care and pains should
be lavished on cats and dogs, while little morsels of flesh
and blood, ragged, hungry, and immortal, wandered up and
down the streets. Perhaps that they were immortal was
their defence from Miss Lucinda; one might have hoped
that her “other-worldliness” accepted that fact as enough
to outweigh present pangs, if she had not openly declared,
to Israel Slater's immense amusement and astonishment,
that she believed creatures had souls, — little ones perhaps,
but souls after all, and she did expect to see Pink again
some time or other.

“Well, I hope he 's got his tail feathered out ag'in,” said
Israel, dryly. “I do'no' but what hair 'd grow as well as
feathers in a speretooal state, and I never see a pictur' of
an angel but what hed consider'ble many feathers.”

Miss Lucinda looked rather confounded. But humanity
had one little revenge on her in the shape of her cat, a
beautiful Maltese, with great yellow eyes, fur as soft as
velvet, and silvery paws as lovely to look at as they were
thistly to touch. Toby certainly pleaded hard for Miss

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Lucinda's theory of a soul; but his was no good one: some
tricksy and malign little spirit had lent him his share of
intellect, and he used it to the entire subjugation of Miss
Lucinda. When he was hungry, he was as well-mannered
and as amiable as a good child, — he would coax, and purr,
and lick her fingers with his pretty red tongue, like a “perfect
love”; but when he had his fill, and needed no more,
then came Miss Lucinda's time of torment. If she attempted
to caress him, he bit and scratched like a young
tiger, he sprang at her from the floor and fastened on her
arm with real fury; if he cried at the window and was not
directly let in, as soon as he had achieved entrance his first
manœuvre was to dash at her ankles and bite them, if he
could, as punishment for her tardiness. This skirmishing
was his favorite mode of attack; if he was turned out of
the closet, or off the pillow up stairs, he retreated under
the bed and made frantic sallies at her feet, till the poor
woman got actually nervous, and if he was in the room
made a flying leap as far as she could to her bed, to escape
those keen claws. Indeed, old Israel found her more than
once sitting in the middle of the kitchen-floor with Toby
crouched for a spring under the table, his poor mistress
afraid to move, for fear of her unlucky ankles. And this
literally cat-ridden woman was hazed about and ruled over
by her feline tyrant to that extent that he occupied the
easiest chair, the softest cushion, the middle of the bed,
and the front of the fire, not only undisturbed, but caressed.
This is a veritable history, beloved reader, and I offer it as
a warning and an example: if you will be an old maid,
or if you can't help it, take to petting children, or donkeys,
or even a respectable cow, but beware of domestic tyranny
in any shape but man's!

No wonder Miss Lucinda took kindly to the pig, who
had a house of his own, and a servant, as it were, to the
avoidance of all trouble on her part, — the pig who capered
for joy when she or Fun approached, and had so much
expression in his physiognomy that one almost expected

[figure description] Page 315.[end figure description]

to see him smile. Many a sympathizing conference Miss
Lucinda held with Israel over the perfections of Piggy, as
he leaned against the sty and looked over at his favorite
after this last chore was accomplished.

“I say for 't,” exclaimed the old man, one day, “I b'lieve
that cre'tur' knows enough to be professor in a college.
Why, he talks! he re'lly doos: a leetle through his nose,
maybe, but no more 'n Dr. Colton allers doos, — 'n' I declare
he appears to have abaout as much sense. I never
see the equal of him. I thought he 'd 'a' larfed right out
yesterday, when I gin him that mess o' corn: he got up
onto his forelegs on the trough, an' he winked them knowin'
eyes o' his'n, an' waggled his tail, an' then he set off an'
capered round till he come bunt up ag'inst the boards. I
tell you, — that sorter sobered him; he gin a growlin' grunt,
an' shook his ears, an' looked sideways at me, and then he
put to and eet up that corn as sober as a judge. I swan!
he does beat the Dutch!”

But there was one calculation forgotten both by Miss
Lucinda and Israel: the pig would grow, — and in consequence,
as I said before, Miss Lucinda came to grief; for
when the census-taker tinkled her sharp little door-bell, it
called her from a laborious occupation at the sty, — no
more and no less than trying to nail up a board that Piggy
had torn down in struggling to get out of his durance. He
had grown so large that Miss Lucinda was afraid of him;
his long legs and their vivacious motion added to the
shrewd intelligence of his eyes, and his nose seemed as
formidable to this poor little woman as the tusk of a rhinoceros:
but what should she do with him? One might
as well have proposed to her to kill and cut up Israel as to
consign Piggy to the “fate of race.” She could not turn
him into the street to starve, for she loved him; and the
old maid suffered from a constancy that might have made
some good man happy, but only embarrassed her with the
pig. She could not keep him forever, — that was evident;
she knew enough to be aware that time would increase his

[figure description] Page 316.[end figure description]

disabilities as a pet, and he was an expensive one now, —
for the corn-swallowing capacities of a pig, one of the
“racer” breed, are almost incredible, and nothing about
Miss Lucinda wanted for food even to fatness. Besides, he
was getting too big for his pen, and so “cute” an animal
could not be debarred from all out-door pleasures, and
tantalized by the sight of a green and growing garden
before his eyes continually, without making an effort to
partake of its delights. So, when Miss Lucinda indued
herself with her brown linen sack and sun-bonnet to go
and weed her carrot-patch, she was arrested on the way by
a loud grunting and scrambling in Piggy's quarter, and
found to her distress that he had contrived to knock off the
upper board from his pen. She had no hammer at hand;
so she seized a large stone that lay near by and pounded
at the board till the twice-tinkling bell recalled her to the
house, and as soon as she had made confession to the
census-taker she went back, — alas, too late! Piggy had
redoubled his efforts, another board had yielded, and he
was free! What a thing freedom is! how objectionable in
practice, how splendid in theory! More people than Miss
Lucinda have been put to their wits' end when “Hoggie”
burst his bonds and became rampant instead of couchant.
But he enjoyed it; he made the tour of the garden on a
delightful canter, brandishing his tail with an air of defiance
that daunted his mistress at once, and regarding her
with his small bright eyes as if he would before long taste
her and see if she was as crisp as she looked. She retreated
forthwith to the shed and caught up a broom with which
she courageously charged upon Piggy, and was routed entirely;
for, being no way alarmed by her demonstration,
the creature capered directly at her, knocked her down,
knocked the broom out of her hand, and capered away
again to the young carrot-patch.

“O dear!” said Miss Manners, gathering herself up
from the ground, — “if there only was a man here!”

Suddenly she betook herself to her heels, — for the

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animal looked at her, and stopped eating: that was enough
to drive Miss Lucinda off the field. And now, quite desperate,
she rushed through the house and out of the frontdoor,
actually in search of a man! Just down the street
she saw one. Had she been composed, she might have
noticed the threadbare cleanliness of his dress, the odd
cap that crowned his iron-gray locks, and the peculiar
manner of his walk; for our little old maid had stumbled
upon no less a person than Monsieur Jean Leclerc, the
dancing-master of Dalton. Not that this accomplishment
was much in vogue in the embryo city; but still there were
a few who liked to fit themselves for firemen's balls and
sleighing-party frolics, and quite a large class of children
were learning betimes such graces as children in New
England receive more easily than their elders. Monsieur
Leclerc had just enough scholars to keep his coat threadbare
and restrict him to necessities; but he lived, and was
independent. All this Miss Lucinda was ignorant of; she
only saw a man, and, with the instinct of the sex in trouble
or danger, she appealed to him at once.

“O, sir! won't you step in and help me? My pig has
got out, and I can't catch him, and he is ruining my garden!”

“Madame, I shall!” replied the Frenchman, bowing low,
and assuming the first position.

So Monsieur Leclerc followed Miss Manners, and supplied
himself with a mop that was hanging in the shed as
his best weapon. Dire was the battle between the pig and
the Frenchman. They skipped past each other and back
again as if they were practising for a cotillon. Piggy had
four legs, which gave him a certain advantage; but the
Frenchman had most brain, and in the long run brain gets
the better of legs. A weary dance they led each other, but
after a while the pet was hemmed in a corner, and Miss
Lucinda had run for a rope to tie him, when, just as she
returned, the beast made a desperate charge, upset his
opponent, and, giving a leap in the wrong direction, to his

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manifest astonishment, landed in his own sty! Miss Lucinda's
courage rose; she forgot her prostrate friend in
need, and, running to the pen, caught up hammer and nailbox
on her way, and, with unusual energy, nailed up the
bars stronger than ever, and then bethought herself to
thank the stranger. But there he lay quite still and pale.

“Dear me!” said Miss Manners, “I hope you have n't
hurt yourself, sir?”

“I have fear that I am hurt, Madame,” said he, trying to
smile. “I cannot to move but it pains me.”

“Where is it? Is it your leg or your arm? Try and
move one at a time,” said Miss Lucinda, promptly.

The left leg was helpless, it could not answer to the effort,
and the stranger lay back on the ground pale with the pain.
Miss Lucinda took her lavender-bottle out of her pocket
and softly bathed his head and face; then she took off her
sack and folded it up under his head, and put the lavender
beside him. She was good at an emergency, and she
showed it.

“You must lie quite still,” said she; “you must not try
to move till I come back with help, or your leg will be hurt
more.”

With that she went away, and presently returned with
two strong men and the long shutter of a shop-window.
To this extempore litter she carefully moved the Frenchman,
and then her neighbors lifted him and carried him into
the parlor, where Miss Lucinda's chintz lounge was already
spread with a tight-pinned sheet to receive the poor man,
and while her helpers put him to bed she put on her bonnet
and ran for the doctor.

Doctor Colton did his best for his patient, but pronounced
it an impossibility to remove him till the bone should be
joined firmly, as a thorough cure was all-essential to his
professional prospects. And now, indeed, Miss Lucinda
had her hands full. A nurse could not be afforded, but
Monsieur Leclerc was added to the list of old Israel's
“chores,” and what other nursing he needed Miss Lucinda

[figure description] Page 319.[end figure description]

was glad to do; for her kind heart was full of self-reproaches
to think it was her pig that had knocked down
the poor man, and her mop-handle that had twisted itself
across and under his leg, and aided, if not caused, its
breakage. So Israel came in four or five times a day to do
what he could, and Miss Lucinda played nurse at other
times to the best of her ability. Such flavorous gruels and
porridges as she concocted! such tisanes after her guest's
instructions! such dainty soups, and sweetbreads, and cutlets,
served with such neatness! After his experience of
a second-rate boarding-house, Monsieur Leclerc thought
himself in a gastronomic paradise. Moreover, these tiny
meals were garnished with flowers, which his French taste
for color and decoration appreciated: two or three stems
of lilies-of-the-valley in their folded green leaves, cool and
fragrant; a moss-rosebud and a spire of purple-gray lavender
bound together with ribbon-grass; or three carnations
set in glittering myrtle-sprays, the last acquisition of the
garden.

Miss Lucinda enjoyed nursing thoroughly, and a kindlier
patient no woman ever had. Her bright needle flew faster
than ever through the cold linen and flaccid cambric of the
shirts and cravats she fashioned, while he told her, in his
odd idioms, stories of his life in France, and the curious
customs both of society and cuisinerie, with which last he
showed a surprising acquaintance. Truth to tell, when
Monsieur Leclerc said he had been a member of the Duc
de Montmorenci's household, he withheld the other half
of this truth, — that he had been his valet-de-chambre: but
it was an hereditary service, and seemed to him as different
a thing from common servitude as a peer's office in the
bedchamber differs from a lackey's. Indeed, Monsieur
Leclerc was a gentleman in his own way, — not of blood,
but of breeding; and while he had faithfully served the
“aristocrats,” as his father had done before him, he did
not limit that service to their prosperity, but in their greatest
need descended to menial offices, and forgot that he

[figure description] Page 320.[end figure description]

could dance and ride and fence almost as well as his young
master. But a bullet from a barricade put an end to his
duty there, and he hated utterly the democratic rule that
had overturned for him both past and future, so he escaped,
and came to America, the grand resort of refugees, where
he had labored, as he best knew how, for his own support,
and kept to himself his disgust at the manners and customs
of the barbarians. Now, for the first time, he was at
home and happy. Miss Lucinda's delicate fashions suited
him exactly; he adored her taste for the beautiful, which
she was unconscious of; he enjoyed her cookery, and
though he groaned within himself at the amount of debt
he was incurring, yet he took courage from her kindness
to believe she would not be a hard creditor, and, being
naturally cheerful, put aside his anxieties and amused himself
as well as her with his stories, his quavering songs, his
recipes for pot-au-feu, tisane, and pâtés, at once economical
and savory. Never had a leg of lamb or a piece of
roast beef gone so far in her domestic experience, a chicken
seemed almost to outlive its usefulness in its various forms
of reappearance, and the salads he devised were as wonderful
as the omelets he superintended, or the gay dances he
played on his beloved violin, as soon as he could sit up
enough to manage it. Moreover, — I should say mostover,
if the word were admissible, — Monsieur Leclerc
lifted a great weight before long from Miss Lucinda's mind.
He began by subduing Fun to his proper place by a mild
determination that completely won the dog's heart. “Women
and spaniels,” the world knows, “like kicking”; and
though kicks were no part of the good man's Rareyfaction
of Fun, he certainly used a certain amount of coercion,
and the dog's lawful owner admired the skill of the teacher
and enjoyed the better manners of the pupil thoroughly;
she could do twice as much sewing now, and never were
her nights disturbed by a bark, for the dog crouched by
his new friend's bed in the parlor and lay quiet there.
Toby was next undertaken, and proved less amenable to

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discipline; he stood in some slight awe of the man who
tried to teach him, but still continued to sally out at Miss
Lucinda's feet, to spring at her caressing hand when he felt
ill-humored, and to claw Fun's patient nose and his approaching
paws when his misplaced sentimentality led him
to caress the cat; but after a while a few well-timed slaps
administered with vigor cured Toby of his worst tricks,
though every blow made Miss Lucinda wince, and almost
shook her good opinion of Monsieur Leclerc: for in these
long weeks he had wrought out a good opinion of himself
in her mind, much to her own surprise; she could not have
believed a man could be so polite, so gentle, so patient, and
above all so capable of ruling without tyranny. Miss Lucinda
was puzzled.

One day, as Monsieur Leclerc was getting better, just
able to go about on crutches, Israel came into the kitchen,
and Miss Manners went out to see him. She left the door
open, and along with the odor of a pot of raspberry-jam
scalding over the fire, sending its steams of leaf-and-insect
fragrance through the little house, there came in also the
following conversation.

“Israel,” said Miss Lucinda, in a hesitating and rather
forlorn tone, “I have been thinking, — I don't know what
to do with Piggy. He is quite too big for me to keep.
I 'm afraid of him, if he gets out; and he eats up the
garden.”

“Well, that is a consider'ble swaller for a pig, Miss Lucindy;
but I b'lieve you 're abaout right abaout keepin' on
him. He is too big, — that 's a fact; but he 's so like a
human cre'tur', I 'd jest abaout as lieves slarter Orrin. I
declare, I don't know no more 'n a taown-haouse goose
what to do with him!”

“If I gave him away, I suppose he would be fatted and
killed, of course?”

“I guess he 'd be killed, likely; but as for fattenin' on
him, I 'd jest as soon undertake to fatten a salt codfish.
He 's one o' the racers, an' they 're as holler as hogsheads:

[figure description] Page 322.[end figure description]

you can fill 'em up to their noses, ef you 're a mind to
spend your corn, and they 'll caper it all off their bones in
twenty-four haours. I b'lieve, ef they was tied neck an'
heels an' stuffed, they 'd wiggle thin betwixt feedin'-times.
Why, Orrin, he raised nine on 'em, and every darned
critter 's as poor as Job's turkey, to-day: they a'n't no good.
I 'd as lieves ha' had nine chestnut rails, — an' a little
lieveser, 'cause they don't eat nothin'.”

“You don't know of any poor person who 'd like to have
a pig, do you?” said Miss Lucinda, wistfully.

“Well, the poorer they was, the quicker they 'd eat him
up, I guess, — ef they could eat such a razor-back.”

“O, I don't like to think of his being eaten! I wish he
could be got rid of some other way. Don't you think he
might be killed in his sleep, Israel?”

This was a little too much for Israel. An irresistible
flicker of laughter twitched his wrinkles and bubbled in
his throat.

“I think it 's likely 't would wake him up,” said he, demurely.
“Killin' 's killin', and a cre'tur' can't sleep over
it 's though 't was the stomach-ache. I guess he 'd kick
some, ef he was asleep, — and screech some, too!”

“Dear me!” said Miss Lucinda, horrified at the idea.
“I wish he could be sent out to run in the woods. Are
there any good woods near here, Israel?”

“I don't know but what he 'd as lieves be slartered to
once as to starve, an' be hunted down out in the lots.
Besides, there a'n't nobody as I knows of would like a hog
to be a-rootin' round amongst their turnips and young
wheat.”

“Well, what I shall do with him I don't know!” despairingly
exclaimed Miss Lucinda. “He was such a dear little
thing when you brought him, Israel! Do you remember
how pink his pretty little nose was, — just like a rose-bud, —
and how bright his eyes looked, and his cunning legs?
And now he 's grown so big and fierce! But I can't help
liking him, either.”

[figure description] Page 323.[end figure description]

“He 's a cute critter, that 's sartain; but he does too
much rootin' to have a pink nose now, I expect; — there 's
consider'ble on 't, so I guess it looks as well to have it gray.
But I don't know no more 'n you do what to do abaout it.”

“If I could only get rid of him without knowing what
became of him!” exclaimed Miss Lucinda, squeezing her
fore-finger with great earnestness, and looking both puzzled
and pained.

“If Mees Lucinda would pairmit?” said a voice behind
her.

She turned round to see Monsieur Leclerc on his crutches,
just in the parlor-door.

“I shall, Mees, myself dispose of Piggee, if it please. I
can. I shall have no sound; he shall to go away like a
silent snow, to trouble you no more, never!”

“O, sir! if you could! But I don't see how!”

“If Mees was to see, it would not be to save her pain.
I shall have him to go by magique to fiery land.”

Fairy-land, probably! But Miss Lucinda did not perceive
the équivoque.

“Nor yet shall I trouble Meester Israyel. I shall have
the aid of myself and one good friend that I have; and
some night when you rise of the morning, he shall not be
there.”

Miss Lucinda breathed a deep sigh of relief.

“I am greatly obliged, — I shall be, I mean,” said she.

“Well, I 'm glad enough to wash my hands on 't,” said
Israel. “I shall hanker arter the critter some, but he 's
a-gettin' too big to be handy; 'n' it 's one comfort abaout
critters, you ken get rid on' em somehaow when they 're
more plague than profit. But folks has got to be let alone,
excep' the Lord takes 'em; an' He don't allers see fit.”

What added point and weight to these final remarks of
old Israel was the well-known fact that he suffered at home
from the most pecking and worrying of wives, and had
been heard to say in some moment of unusual frankness
that he “did n't see how 't could be sinful to wish Miss

[figure description] Page 324.[end figure description]

Slater was in heaven, for she 'd be lots better off, and other
folks too!”

Miss Lucinda never knew what befell her pig one fine
September night; she did not even guess that a visit paid
to Monsieur by one of his pupils, a farmer's daughter just
out of Dalton, had anything to do with this enlèvement;
she was sound asleep in her bed up stairs, when her guest
shod his crutches with old gloves, and limped out to the
garden-gate by dawn, where he and the farmer tolled the
animal out of his sty and far down the street by tempting
red apples, and then Farmer Steele took possession of him,
and he was seen no more. No, the first thing Miss Lucinda
knew of her riddance was when Israel put his head
into the back-door that same morning, some four hours
afterward, and said, with a significant nod, —

“He 's gone!”

After all his other chores were done, Israel had a conference
with Monsieur Leclerc, and the two sallied into the
garden, and in an hour had dismantled the low dwelling,
cleared away the wreck, levelled and smoothed its site,
and Monsieur, having previously provided himself with an
Isabella-grape-vine, planted it on this forsaken spot, and
trained it carefully against the end of the shed: strange
to say, though it was against all precedent to transplant a
grape in September, it lived and flourished. Miss Lucinda's
gratitude to Monsieur Leclerc was altogether disproportioned,
as he thought, to his slight service. He could
not understand fully her devotion to her pets, but he respected
it, and aided it whenever he could, though he never
surmised the motive that adorned Miss Lucinda's table
with such delicate superabundance after the late departure,
and laid bundles of lavender-flowers in his tiny portmanteau
till the very leather seemed to gather fragrance.

Before long, Monsieur Leclerc was well enough to resume
his classes, and return to his boarding-house; but the
latter was filled, and only offered a prospect of vacancy
in some three weeks after his application; so he returned

[figure description] Page 325.[end figure description]

home somewhat dejected, and as he sat by the little parlorfire
after tea, he said to his hostess, in a reluctant tone, —

“Mees Lucinda, you have been of the kindest to the
poor alien. I have it in my mind to relieve you of this
care very rapidly, but it is not in the Fates that I do. I
have gone to my house of lodgings, and they cannot to give
me a chamber as yet. I have fear that I must yet rely me
on your goodness for some time more, if you can to entertain
me so much more of time?”

“Why, I shall like to, sir,” replied the kindly, simplehearted
old maid. “I 'm sure you are not a mite of trouble,
and I never can forget what you did for my pig.”

A smile flitted across the Frenchman's thin, dark face,
and he watched her glittering needles a few minutes in
silence before he spoke again.

“But I have other things to say of the most unpleasant
to me, Mees Lucinda. I have a great debt for the goodness
and care you to me have lavished. To the angels of the
good God we must submit to be debtors, but there are also
of mortal obligations. I have lodged in your mansion for
more of ten weeks, and to you I pay yet no silver, but it is
that I have it not at present. I must ask of your goodness
to wait.”

The old maid's shining black eyes grew soft as she looked
at him.

“Why!” said she, “I don't think you owe me much of
anything, Mr. Leclerc. I never knew things last as they
have since you came. I really think you brought a blessing.
I wish you would please to think you don't owe me anything.”

The Frenchman's great brown eyes shone with suspicious
dew.

“I cannot to forget that I owe to you far more than any
silver of man repays; but I should not think to forget that
I also owe to you silver, or I should not be worthy of a
man's name. No, Mees! I have two hands and legs. I
will not let a woman most solitary spend for me her good
self.”

[figure description] Page 326.[end figure description]

“Well,” said Miss Lucinda,” if you will be uneasy till
you pay me, I would rather have another kind of pay than
money. I should like to know how to dance. I never did
learn, when I was a girl, and I think it would be good
exercise.”

Miss Lucinda supported this pious fiction through with
a simplicity that quite deceived the Frenchman. He did
not think it so incongruous as it was. He had seen women
of sixty, rouged, and jewelled, and furbelowed, foot it deftly
in the halls of the Faubourg St. Germain in his earliest
youth; and this cheery, healthy woman, with lingering
blooms on either cheek, and uncapped head of curly black
hair but slightly strewn with silver, seemed quite as fit a
subject for the accomplishment. Besides, he was poor, —
and this offered so easy a way of paying the debt he had so
dreaded! Well said Solomon, — “The destruction of the
poor is their poverty!” For whose moral sense, delicate
sensitiveness, generous longings, will not sometimes give
way to the stringent need of food and clothing, the gall of
indebtedness, and the sinking consciousness of an empty
purse and threatening possibilities?

Monsieur Leclerc's face brightened.

“Ah! with what grand pleasure shall I teach you the
dance!”

But it fell dark again as he proceeded, —

“Though not one, nor two, nor three, nor four quarters
shall be of value sufficient to achieve my payment.”

“Then, if that troubles you, why, I should like to take
some French lessons in the evening, when you don't have
classes. I learned French when I was quite a girl, but not
to speak it very easily; and if I could get some practice
and the right way to speak, I should be glad.”

“And I shall give you the real Parisien tone, Mees
Lucinda!” said he proudly. “I shall be as if it were no
more an exile when I repeat my tongue to you!”

And so it was settled. Why Miss Lucinda should learn
French any more than dancing was not a question in

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Monsieur Leclerc's mind. It is true, that Chaldaic would, in all
probability, be as useful to our friend as French; and the
flying over poles and hanging by toes and fingers, so eloquently
described by the Apostle of the Body in these
“Atlantic” pages, would have been as well adapted to
her style and capacity as dancing; — but his own language,
and his own profession! what man would not have regarded
these as indispensable to improvement, particularly
when they paid his board?

During the latter three weeks of Monsieur Leclerc's stay
with Miss Lucinda he made himself surprisingly useful.
He listed the doors against approaching winter breezes, —
he weeded in the garden, — trimmed, tied, trained, wherever
either good office was needed, — mended china with an
infallible cement, and rickety chairs with the skill of a
cabinet-maker; and whatever hard or dirty work he did,
he always presented himself at table in a state of scrupulous
neatness: his long brown hands showed no trace of
labor; his iron-gray hair was reduced to smoothest order;
his coat speckless, if threadbare; and he ate like a gentleman,
an accomplishment not always to be found in the
“best society,” as the phrase goes, — whether the best in
fact ever lacks it is another thing. Miss Lucinda appreciated
these traits, — they set her at ease; and a pleasanter
home-life could scarce be painted than now enlivened the
little wooden house. But three weeks pass away rapidly;
and when the rusty portmanteau was gone from her spare
chamber, and the well-worn boots from the kitchen-corner,
and the hat from its nail, Miss Lucinda began to find herself
wonderfully lonely. She missed the armfuls of wood
in her wood-box, that she had to fill laboriously, two sticks
at a time; she missed the other plate at her tiny round
table, the other chair beside her fire; she missed that dark,
thin, sensitive face, with its rare and sweet smile; she
wanted her story-teller, her yarn-winder, her protector, back
again. Good gracious! to think of an old lady of forty-seven
entertaining such sentiments for a man!

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Presently the dancing-lessons commenced. It was thought
advisable that Miss Manners should enter a class, and, in
the fervency of her good intentions, she did not demur.
But gratitude and respect had to strangle with persistent
hands the little serpents of the ridiculous in Monsieur Leclerc's
soul, when he beheld his pupil's first appearance.
What reason was it, O rose of seventeen, adorning thyself
with cloudy films of lace and sparks of jewelry before the
mirror that reflects youth and beauty, that made Miss Lucinda
array herself in a brand-new dress of yellow muslinde-laine
strewed with round green spots, and displace her
customary handkerchief for a huge tamboured collar, on
this eventful occasion? Why, O why did she tie up the
roots of her black hair with an unconcealable scarlet string?
And most of all, why was her dress so short, her slipperstrings
so big and broad, her thick slippers so shapeless by
reason of the corns and bunions that pertained to the feet
within? The “instantaneous rush of several guardian
angels” that once stood dear old Hepzibah Pynchon in
good stead was wanting here, — or perhaps they stood by
all-invisible, their calm eyes softened with love deeper than
tears, at this spectacle so ludicrous to man, beholding in
the grotesque dress and adornments only the budding of
life's divinest blossom, and in the strange skips and hops
of her first attempts at dancing only the buoyancy of those
inner wings that goodness and generosity and pure self-devotion
were shaping for a future strong and stately flight
upward. However, men, women, and children do not see
with angelic eyes, and the titterings of her fellow-pupils
were irrepressible: one bouncing girl nearly choked herself
with her handkerchief trying not to laugh, and two or three
did not even try. Monsieur Leclerc could not blame them,—
at first he could scarce control his own facial muscles;
but a sense of remorse smote him, as he saw how unconscious
and earnest the little woman was, and remembered
how often those knotty hands and knobbed feet had waited
on his need or his comfort. Presently he tapped on his

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violin for a few moments' respite, and approached Miss
Lucinda as respectfully as if she had been a queen.

“You are ver' tired, Mees Lucinda?” said he.

“I am a little, sir,” said she, out of breath. “I am not
used to dancing; it 's quite an exertion.”

“It is that truly. If you are too much tired, is it better
to wait? I shall finish for you the lesson till I come to-night
for a French conversation?”

“I guess I will go home,” said the simple little lady. “I
am some afraid of getting rheumatism; but use makes
perfect, and I shall stay through next time, no doubt.”

“So I believe,” said Monsieur, with his best bow, as
Miss Lucinda departed and went home, pondering all the
way what special delicacy she should provide for tea.

“My dear young friends,” said Monsieur Leclerc, pausing
with the uplifted bow in his hand, before he recommenced
his lesson, “I have observe that my new pupil does make
you much to laugh. I am not so surprise, for you do not
know all, and the good God does not robe all angels in one
manner; but she have taken me to her mansion with a leg
broken, and have nursed me like a saint of the blesséd,
nor with any pay of silver except that I teach her the dance
and the French. They are pay for the meat and the drink,
but she will have no more for her good patience and care.
I like to teach you the dance, but she could teach you the
saints' ways which are better. I think you will no more to
laugh.”

“No! I guess we won't!” said the bouncing girl with
great emphasis, and the color rose over more than one
young face.

After that day Miss Lucinda received many a kind smile
and hearty welcome, and never did anybody venture even a
grimace at her expense. But it must be acknowledged
that her dancing was at least peculiar. With a sanitary
view of the matter, she meant to make it exercise, and fearful
was the skipping that ensued. She chasséd on tiptoe,
and balancéd with an indescribable hopping twirl, that

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made one think of a chickadee pursuing its quest of food
on new-ploughed ground; and some late-awakened feminine
instinct of dress, restrained, too, by due economy,
indued her with the oddest decorations that woman ever
devised. The French lessons went on more smoothly. If
Monsieur Leclerc's Parisian ear was tortured by the barbarous
accent of Vermont, at least he bore it with heroism,
since there was nobody else to hear; and very pleasant,
both to our little lady and her master, were these long
winter evenings, when they diligently waded through Racine,
and even got as far as the golden periods of Chateaubriand.
The pets fared badly for petting in these days;
they were fed and waited on, but not with the old devotion;
it began to dawn on Miss Lucinda's mind that something
to talk to was preferable, as a companion, even to Fun, and
that there might be a stranger sweetness in receiving care
and protection than in giving it.

Spring came at last. Its softer skies were as blue over
Dalton as in the wide fields without, and its footsteps as
bloom-bringing in Miss Lucinda's garden as in mead or
forest. Now Monsieur Leclerc came to her aid again at
odd minutes, and set her flower-beds with mignonette borders,
and her vegetable-garden with salad herbs of new and
flourishing kinds. Yet not even the sweet season seemed
to hurry the catastrophe that we hope, dearest reader, thy
tender eyes have long seen impending. No, for this quaint
alliance a quainter Cupid waited, — the chubby little fellow
with a big head and a little arrow, who waits on youth and
loveliness, was not wanted here. Lucinda's God of Love
wore a lank, hard-featured, grizzly shape, no less than that
of Israel Slater, who marched into the garden one fine June
morning, earlier than usual, to find Monsieur in his blouse,
hard at work weeding the cauliflower-bed.

“Good mornin', sir! good mornin'!” said Israel, in answer
to the Frenchman's greeting. “This is a real slick
little garden-spot as ever I see, and a pooty house, and a
real clever woman too. I 'll be skwitched, ef it a'n't a

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fust-rate consarn, the hull on 't. Be you ever a-goin' back
to France, Mister?”

“No, my goot friend. I have nobody there. I stay
here; I have friend here: but there, — oh, non! je ne reviendrai
pas! ah, jamais! jamais!”

“Pa's dead, eh? or shamming? Well, I don't understand
your lingo; but ef you 're a-goin' to stay here, I don't
see why you don't hitch hosses with Miss Lucindy.”

Monsieur Leclerc looked up astonished.

“Horses, my friend? I have no horse!”

“Thunder 'n' dry trees! I did n't say you hed, did I?
But that comes o' usin' what Parson Hyde calls figgurs, I
s'pose. I wish 't he 'd use one kind o' figgurin' a leetle
more; he 'd pay me for that wood-sawin'. I did n't mean
nothin' about horses. I sot out fur to say, Why don't ye
marry Miss Lucindy?”

“I?” gasped Monsieur, — “I, the foreign, the poor? I
could not to presume so!”

“Well, I don't see 's it 's sech drefful presumption. Ef
you 're poor, she 's a woman, and real lonesome too; she
ha'n't got nuther chick nor child belongin' to her, and
you 're the only man she ever took any kind of a notion to.
I guess 't would be jest as much for her good as yourn.”

“Hush, good Is-ray-el! it is good to stop there. She
would not to marry after such years of goodness: she is a
saint of the blesséd.”

“Well, I guess saints sometimes fellerships with sinners;
I 've heerd tell they did; and ef I was you, I 'd make trial
for 't. Nothin' ventur', nothin' have.”

Whereupon Israel walked off, whistling.

Monsieur Leclerc's soul was perturbed within him by
these suggestions; he pulled up two young cauliflowers
and reset their places with pigweeds; he hoed the nicely-sloped
border of the bed flat to the path, and then flung
the hoe across the walk, and went off to his daily occupation
with a new idea in his head. Nor was it an unpleasant
one. The idea of a transition from his squalid and

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pinching boarding-house to the delicate comfort of Miss
Lucinda's ménage, the prospect of so kind and good a wife
to care for his hitherto dreaded future, — all this was pleasant.
I cannot honestly say he was in love with our friend;
I must even confess that whatever element of that nature
existed between the two was now all on Miss Lucinda's side,
little as she knew it. Certain it is, that, when she appeared
that day at the dancing-class in a new green calico flowered
with purple, and bows on her slippers big enough for a
bonnet, it occurred to Monsieur Leclerc, that, if they were
married, she would take no more lessons! However, let
us not blame him; he was a man, and a poor one; one
must not expect too much from men, or from poverty; if
they are tolerably good, let us canonize them even, it is so
hard for the poor creatures! And to do Monsieur Leclerc
justice, he had a very thorough respect and admiration for
Miss Lucinda. Years ago, in his stormy youth-time, there
had been a pair of soft-fringed eyes that looked into his as
none would ever look again, — and they murdered her, those
mad wild beasts of Paris, in the chapel where she knelt at
her pure prayers, — murdered her because she knelt beside
an aristocrat, her best friend, the Duchess of Montmorenci,
who had taken the pretty peasant from her own estate to
bring her up for her maid. Jean Leclerc had lifted that
pale shape from the pavement and buried it himself; what
else he buried with it was invisible; but now he recalled
the hour with a long, shuddering sigh, and, hiding his face
in his hands, said softly, “The violet is dead, — there is
no spring for her. I will have now an amaranth, — it is
good for the tomb.”

Whether Miss Lucinda's winter dress suggested this floral
metaphor let us not inquire. Sacred be sentiment, when
there is even a shadow of reality about it! — when it becomes
a profession, and confounds itself with millinery and
shades of mourning, it is — “bosh,” as the Turkeys say.

So that very evening Monsieur Leclerc arrayed himself
in his best, to give another lesson to Miss Lucinda. But,

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somehow or other, the lesson was long in beginning; the
little parlor looked so home-like and so pleasant, with its
bright lamp and gay bunch of roses on the table, that it
was irresistible temptation to lounge and linger. Miss
Lucinda had the volume of Florian in her hands, and was
wondering why he did not begin, when the book was drawn
away, and a hand laid on both of hers.

“Lucinda!” he began, “I give you no lesson to-night.
I have to ask. Dear Mees, will you to marry your poor
slave?”

“O dear!” said Miss Lucinda.

Don't laugh at her, Miss Tender-eyes! You will feel
just so yourself some day, when Alexander Augustus says,
“Will you be mine, loveliest of your sex?” only you won't
feel it half so strongly, for you are young, and love is
Nature to youth, but it is a heavenly surprise to age.

Monsieur Leclerc said nothing. He had a heart after all,
and it was touched now by the deep emotion that flushed
Miss Lucinda's face, and made her tremble so violently, —
but presently he spoke.

“Do not!” said he. “I am wrong. I presume. Forgive
the stranger!”

“O dear!” said poor Lucinda again, — “O, you know
it is n't that! but how can you like me?”

There, Mademoiselle! there 's humility for you! you will
never say that to Alexander Augustus!

Monsieur Leclerc soothed this frightened, happy, incredulous
little woman into quiet before very long; and if he
really began to feel a true affection for her from the moment
he perceived her humble and entire devotion to him, who
shall blame him? Not I. If we were all heroes, who
would be valet-de-chambre? if we were all women, who
would be men? He was very good as far as he went; and
if you expect the chivalries of grace out of Nature, you
“may expect,” as old Fuller saith. So it was peacefully
settled that they should be married, with a due amount of
tears and smiles on Lucinda's part, and a great deal of

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tender sincerity on Monsieur's. She missed her dancing-lesson
next day, and when Monsieur Leclerc came in the
evening he found a shade on her happy face.

“O dear!” said she, as he entered.

“O dear!” was Lucinda's favorite aspiration. Had she
thought of it as an Anglicizing of “O Dieu!” perhaps she
would have dropped it; but this time she went on headlong,
with a valorous despair, —

“I have thought of something! I 'm afraid I can't!
Monsieur, are n't you a Romanist?”

“What is that?” said he, surprised.

“A Papist, — a Catholic!”

“Ah!” he returned, sighing, “once I was bon Catholique,—
once in my gone youth; after then I was nothing but the
poor man who bats for his life; now I am of the religion
that shelters the stranger and binds up the broken poor.”

Monsieur was a diplomatist. This melted Miss Lucinda's
orthodoxy right down; she only said, —

“Then you will go to church with me?”

“And to the skies above, I pray,” said Monsieur, kissing
her knotty hand like a lover.

So in the earliest autumn they were married, Monsieur
having previously presented Miss Lucinda with a delicate
plaided gray silk for her wedding attire, in which she looked
almost young; and old Israel was present at the ceremony,
which was briefly performed by Parson Hyde in Miss
Manners's parlor. They did not go to Niagara, nor to
Newport; but that afternoon Monsieur Leclerc brought a
hired rockaway to the door, and took his bride a drive into
the country. They stopped beside a pair of bars, where
Monsieur hitched his horse, and, taking Lucinda by the
hand, led her into Farmer Steele's orchard, to the foot of
his biggest apple-tree. There she beheld a little mound, at
the head and foot of which stood a daily rose-bush shedding
its latest wreaths of bloom, and upon the mound itself
was laid a board on which she read, — “Here lie the bones
of poor Piggy.”

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Mrs. Lucinda burst into tears, and Monsieur, picking a
bud from the bush, placed it in her hand, and led her
tenderly back to the rockaway.

That evening Mrs. Lucinda was telling the affair to old
Israel with so much feeling that she did not perceive at all
the odd commotion in his face, till, as she repeated the
epitaph to him, he burst out with, — “He did n't say what
became o' the flesh, did he?” — and therewith fled through
the kitchen-door. For years afterward Israel would entertain
a few favored auditors with his opinion of the matter,
screaming till the tears rolled down his cheeks, —

“That was the beateree of all the weddin'-towers I ever
heerd tell on. Goodness! it 's enough to make the Wanderin'
Jew die o' larfin'!”