This brought matters to a crisis. The battle
would have taken place then and there; but at
that moment the school-bell rang, and the gladiators
were obliged to give their attention to Smith's
Speller. But a gloom hung over the morning's
exercises,—a gloom that was not dispelled in
the back row, when the Barnabee Boy stealthily
held up to Johnny's vision a slate, whereon was
inscribed this fearful message:—

Johnny got it “put down in writin' ” that
time!

After a hasty glance at the slate, the General
went on with his studies composedly enough.
Eleven o'clock came, and with it came recess,
and with recess the inevitable battle.

Now I do not intend to describe the details of
this brilliant action, for the sufficient reason that,
though there were seven young gentlemen (

[figure description] Page 146.[end figure description]

connected with the Primary School) on the field as
war correspondents, their accounts of the engagement
are so contradictory as to be utterly worthless.
On one point they all agree, — that the
contest was sharp, short, and decisive. The
truth is, the General is a quick, wiry, experienced
old hero; and it did not take him long to rout
the Barnabee Boy, who is in reality a coward, as
all bullies and tyrants have ever been, and always
will be.

I do not approve of boys fighting; I do not
defend Johnny; but if the General wants an
extra ration or two of preserved pear, he shall
have it!

I am thoroughly aware that, socially speaking,
Johnny is a Black Sheep. I know that I have
brought him up badly, and that there is not an
unmarried man or woman in the United States
who would n't have brought him up “very differently.”
It is a great pity that the only people
who know how to manage children never
have any. At the same time, Johnny is not a
black sheep all over. He has some white spots.
His sins — if wiser folks had no greater! — are

[figure description] Page 147.[end figure description]

the result of too much animal life. They belong
to his evanescent youth, and will pass away; but
his honesty, his generosity, his bravery, belong
to his character, and are enduring qualities. The
quickly crowding years will tame him. An expensive
pane of glass, or a protrusive bell-knob,
ceases in time to have attractions for the most
susceptible temperament. And I am confident
that Johnny will be a great statesman, or a valorous
soldier, or, at all events, a good citizen,
after he has got over being A Young Desperado.

p447-153 MISS MEHETABEL'S SON.

[figure description] Page 148.[end figure description]

YOU will not find Greenton, or Bayley's Four-Corners
as it is more usually designated, on
any map of New England that I know of. It is
not a town; it is not even a village; it is merely
an absurd hotel. The almost indescribable place
called Greenton is at the intersection of four
roads, in the heart of New Hampshire, twenty
miles from the nearest settlement of note, and
ten miles from any railway station. A good
location for a hotel, you will say. Precisely;
but there has always been a hotel there, and for
the last dozen years it has been pretty well patronized—
by one boarder. Not to trifle with an
intelligent public, I will state at once that, in the
early part of this century, Greenton was a point
at which the mail-coach, on the Great Northern

[figure description] Page 149.[end figure description]

Route, stopped to change horses and allow the
passengers to dine. People in the county, wishing
to take the early mail Portsmouth-ward, put
up overnight at the old tavern, famous for its
irreproachable larder and soft feather-beds. The
tavern at that time was kept by Jonathan Bayley,
who rivalled his wallet in growing corpulent,
and in due time passed away. At his death the
establishment, which included a farm, fell into
the hands of a son-in-law. Now, though Bayley
left his son-in-law a hotel, — which sounds handsome, —
he left him no guests; for at about the
period of the old man's death the old stage-coach
died also. Apoplexy carried off one, and steam
the other. Thus, by a sudden swerve in the tide
of progress, the tavern at the Corners found
itself high and dry, like a wreck on a sand-bank.
Shortly after this event, or maybe contemporaneously,
there was some attempt to build a town
at Greenton; but it apparently failed, if eleven
cellars choked up with débris and overgrown
with burdocks are any indication of failure. The
farm, however, was a good farm, as things go in
New Hampshire; and Tobias Sewell, the son-in-law,
could afford to snap his fingers at the

[figure description] Page 150.[end figure description]

travelling public if they came near enough, — which
they never did.

The hotel remains to-day pretty much the same
as when Jonathan Bayley handed in his accounts
in 1840, except that Sewell has from time to time
sold the furniture of some of the upper chambers
to bridal couples in the neighborhood. The bar
is still open, and the parlor door says Parlour
in tall black letters. Now and then a passing
drover looks in at that lonely bar-room, where a
high-shouldered bottle of Santa Cruz rum ogles
with a peculiarly knowing air a shrivelled lemon
on a shelf; now and then a farmer comes across
country to talk crops and stock and take a friendly
glass with Tobias; and now and then a circus
caravan with speckled ponies, or a menagerie with
a soggy elephant, halts under the swinging sign,
on which there is a dim mail-coach with four
phantomish horses driven by a portly gentleman
whose head has been washed off by the rain.
Other customers there are none, except that one
regular boarder whom I have mentioned.

If misery makes a man acquainted with strange
bedfellows, it is equally certain that the profession
of surveyor and civil engineer often takes one

[figure description] Page 151.[end figure description]

into undreamed-of localities. I had never heard of
Greenton until my duties sent me there, and kept
me there two weeks in the dreariest season of the
year. I do not think I would, of my own volition,
have selected Greenton for a fortnight's
sojourn at any time; but now the business is
over, I shall never regret the circumstances that
made me the guest of Tobias Sewell and brought
me into intimate relations with Miss Mehetabel's
Son.

It was a black October night in the year of
grace 1872, that discovered me standing in front
of the old tavern at the Corners. Though the
ten miles' ride from K——had been depressing,
especially the last five miles, on account of the
cold autumnal rain that had set in, I felt a pang
of regret on hearing the rickety open wagon turn
round in the road and roll off in the darkness.
There were no lights visible anywhere, and only
for the big, shapeless mass of something in front
of me, which the driver had said was the hotel, I
should have fancied that I had been set down by
the roadside. I was wet to the skin and in no
amiable humor; and not being able to find bell-pull
or knocker, or even a door, I belabored the side

[figure description] Page 152.[end figure description]

of the house with my heavy walking-stick. In a
minute or two I saw a light flickering somewhere
aloft, then I heard the sound of a window opening,
followed by an exclamation of disgust as a
blast of wind extinguished the candle which had
given me an instantaneous picture en silhouette
of a man leaning out of a casement.

“I say, what do you want, down there?” said
an unprepossessing voice.

“I want to come in, I want a supper, and a
bed, and numberless things.”

“This is n't no time of night to go rousing
honest folks out of their sleep. Who are you,
anyway?”

The question, superficially considered, was a
very simple one, and I, of all people in the world,
ought to have been able to answer it off-hand;
but it staggered me. Strangely enough, there
came drifting across my memory the lettering on
the back of a metaphysical work which I had
seen years before on a shelf in the Astor Library.
Owing to an unpremeditatedly funny collection
of title and author, the lettering read as follows:
“Who Am I? Jones.” Evidently it had puzzled
Jones to know who he was, or he would n't

[figure description] Page 153.[end figure description]

have written a book about it, and come to so
lame and impotent a conclusion. It certainly
puzzled me at that instant to define my identity.
“Thirty years ago,” I reflected, “I was nothing;
fifty years hence I shall be nothing again,
humanly speaking. In the mean time, who am
I, sure enough?” It had never occurred to me
before what an indefinite article I was. I wish
it had not occurred to me then. Standing there
in the rain and darkness, I wrestled vainly with
the problem, and was constrained to fall back
upon a Yankee expedient.

“Is n't this a hotel?” I asked finally.

“Well, it is a sort of hotel,” said the voice,
doubtfully. My hesitation and prevarication had
apparently not inspired my interlocutor with confidence
in me.

“Then let me in. I have just driven over
from K—— in this infernal rain. I am wet
through and through.”

“But what do you want here, at the Corners?
What's your business? People don't come here,
least ways in the middle of the night.”

“It is n't in the middle of the night,” I returned,
incensed. “I come on business connected

[figure description] Page 154.[end figure description]

with the new road. I'm the superintendent of
the works.”

“Oh!”

“And if you don't open the door at once, I'll
raise the whole neighborhood,—and then go to
the other hotel.”

When I said that, I supposed Greenton was a
village with three or four thousand population at
least, and was wondering vaguely at the absence
of lights and other signs of human habitation.
Surely, I thought, all the people cannot be abed
and asleep at half past ten o'clock: perhaps I am
in the business section of the town, among the
shops.

“You jest wait,” said the voice above.

This request was not devoid of a certain accent
of menace, and I braced myself for a sortie
on the part of the besieged, if he had any
such hostile intent. Presently a door opened
at the very place where I least expected a door,
at the farther end of the building, in fact, and
a man in his shirt-sleeves, shielding a candle
with his left hand, appeared on the threshold.
I passed quickly into the house with Mr.
Tobias Sewell (for this was Mr. Sewell) at my

[figure description] Page 155.[end figure description]

heels, and found myself in a long, low-studded
bar-room.

There were two chairs drawn up before the
hearth, on which a huge hemlock backlog was
still smouldering, and on the unpainted deal
counter contiguous stood two cloudy glasses with
bits of lemon-peel in the bottom, hinting at recent
libations. Against the discolored wall over
the bar hung a yellowed handbill, in a warped
frame, announcing that “the Next Annual N. H.
Agricultural Fair” would take place on the 10th
of September, 1841. There was no other furniture
or decoration in this dismal apartment, except
the cobwebs which festooned the ceiling,
hanging down here and there like stalactites.

Mr. Sewell set the candlestick on the mantel-shelf,
and threw some pine-knots on the fire,
which immediately broke into a blaze, and showed
him to be a lank, narrow-chested man, past sixty,
with sparse, steel-gray hair, and small, deep-set
eyes, perfectly round, like a carp's, and of no
particular color. His chief personal characteristics
seemed to be too much feet and not enough
teeth. His sharply cut, but rather simple face,
as he turned it towards me, wore a look of

[figure description] Page 156.[end figure description]

interrogation. I replied to his mute inquiry by taking
out my pocket-book and handing him my
business-card, which he held up to the candle and
perused with great deliberation.

“You're a civil engineer, are you?” he said,
displaying his gums, which gave his countenance
an expression of almost infantile innocence. He
made no further audible remark, but mumbled
between his thin lips something which an imaginative
person might have construed into, “If
you're a civil engineer, I'll be blessed if I would
n't like to see an uncivil one!”

Mr. Sewell's growl, however, was worse than
his bite, — owing to his lack of teeth probably,—
for he very good-naturedly set himself to work
preparing supper for me. After a slice of cold
ham, and a warm punch, to which my chilled
condition gave a grateful flavor, I went to bed in
a distant chamber in a most amiable mood, feeling
satisfied that Jones was a donkey to bother
himself about his identity.

When I awoke the sun was several hours high.
My bed faced a window, and by raising myself
on one elbow I could look out on what I expected
would be the main street. To my

[figure description] Page 157.[end figure description]

astonishment I beheld a lonely country road winding up
a sterile hill and disappearing over the ridge.
In a cornfield at the right of the road was a
small private graveyard enclosed by a crumbling
stone-wall with a red gate. The only thing suggestive
of life was this little corner lot occupied
by death. I got out of bed and went to the
other window. There I had an uninterrupted
view of twelve miles of open landscape, with
Mount Agamenticus in the purple distance. Not
a house or a spire in sight. “Well,” I exclaimed,
“Greenton does n't appear to be a very closely
packed metropolis!” That rival hotel with
which I had threatened Mr. Sewell overnight was
not a deadly weapon, looking at it by daylight.
“By Jove!” I reflected, “maybe I'm in the
wrong place.” But there, tacked against a panel
of the bedroom door, was a faded time-table
dated Greenton, August 1, 1839.

I smiled all the time I was dressing, and went
smiling down stairs, where I found Mr. Sewell,
assisted by one of the fair sex in the first bloom
of her eightieth year, serving breakfast for me
on a small table — in the bar-room!

“I overslept myself this morning,” I

[figure description] Page 158.[end figure description]

remarked apologetically, “and I see that I am putting
you to some trouble. In future, if you will
have me called, I will take my meals at the usual
table-d'hôte.”

“At the what?” said Mr. Sewell.

“I mean with the other boarders.”

Mr. Sewell paused in the act of lifting a chop
from the fire, and, resting the point of his fork
against the woodwork of the mantel-piece, grinned
from ear to ear.

“Bless you! there is n't any other boarders.
There has n't been anybody put up here sence —
let me see — sence father-in-law died, and that
was in the fall of '40. To be sure, there's Silas;
he's a regular boarder; but I don't count him.”

Mr. Sewell then explained how the tavern had
lost its custom when the old stage line was
broken up by the railroad. The introduction of
steam was, in Mr. Sewell's estimation, a fatal
error. “Jest killed local business. Carried it
off I'm darned if I know where. The whole
country has been sort o' retrograding ever sence
steam was invented.”

“You spoke of having one boarder,” I said.

“Silas? Yes; he came here the summer

[figure description] Page 159.[end figure description]

'Tilda died, — she that was 'Tilda Bayley, —
and he's here yet, going on thirteen year. He
could n't live any longer with the old man. Between
you and I, old Clem Jaffrey, Silas's father,
was a hard nut. Yes,” said Mr. Sewell, crooking
his elbow in inimitable pantomime, “altogether
too often. Found dead in the road hugging
a three-gallon demijohn. Habeas corpus
in the barn,” added Mr. Sewell, intending, I
presume, to intimate that a post-mortem examination
had been deemed necessary. “Silas,” he
resumed, in that respectful tone which one should
always adopt when speaking of capital, “is a
man of considerable property; lives on his interest,
and keeps a hoss and shay. He's a great
scholar, too, Silas; takes all the pe-ri-odicals and
the Police Cazette regular.”

Mr. Sewell was turning over a third chop,
when the door opened and a stoutish, middle-aged
little gentleman, clad in deep black, stepped
into the room.

“Silas Jaffrey,” said Mr. Sewell, with a comprehensive
sweep of his arm, picking up me and
the new-comer on one fork, so to speak. “Be
acquainted!”

[figure description] Page 160.[end figure description]

Mr. Jaffrey advanced briskly, and gave me his
hand with unlooked-for cordiality. He was a
dapper little man, with a head as round and
nearly as bald as an orange, and not unlike an
orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling
gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the
numerous freckles upon which were deepened by
his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He reminded
me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird,
which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage,
looked like an undertaker eating an omelet.

“Silas will take care of you,” said Mr. Sewell,
taking down his hat from a peg behind the door.
“I've got the cattle to look after. Tell him, if
you want anything.”

While I ate my breakfast, Mr. Jaffrey hopped
up and down the narrow bar-room and chirped
away as blithely as a bird on a cherry-bough,
occasionally ruffling with his fingers a slight
fringe of auburn hair which stood up pertly
round his head and seemed to possess a luminous
quality of its own.

“Don't I find it a little slow up here at the
Corners? Not at all, my dear sir. I am in
the thick of life up here. So many

[figure description] Page 161.[end figure description]

interesting things going on all over the world, — inventions,
discoveries, spirits, railroad disasters,
mysterious homicides. Poets, murderers, musicians,
statesmen, distinguished travellers, prodigies
of all kinds turning up everywhere. Very
few events or persons escape me. I take six
daily city papers, thirteen weekly journals, all
the monthly magazines, and two quarterlies. I
could not get along with less. I could n't if you
asked me. I never feel lonely. How can I,
being on intimate terms, as it were, with thousands
and thousands of people? There's that
young woman out West. What an entertaining
creature she is! — now in Missouri, now in Indiana,
and now in Minnesota, always on the go,
and all the time shedding needles from various
parts of her body as if she really enjoyed it!
Then there's that versatile patriarch who walks
hundreds of miles and saws thousands of feet of
wood, before breakfast, and shows no signs of
giving out. Then there's that remarkable, one
may say that historical colored woman who knew
Benjamin Franklin, and fought at the battle of
Bunk — no, it is the old negro man who fought
at Bunker Hill, a mere infant, of course, at that

[figure description] Page 162.[end figure description]

period. Really, now, it is quite curious to observe
how that venerable female slave — for-merly
an African princess — is repeatedly dying
in her hundred and eleventh year, and coming to
life again punctually every six months in the
small-type paragraphs. Are you aware, sir, that
within the last twelve years no fewer than two
hundred and eighty-seven of General Washington's
colored coachmen have died?”

For the soul of me I could n't tell whether this
quaint little gentleman was chaffing me or not.
I laid down my knife and fork, and stared at
him.

“Then there are the mathematicians!” he
cried vivaciously, without waiting for a reply.
“I take great interest in them. Hear this!”
and Mr. Jaffrey drew a newspaper from a pocket
in the tail of his coat, and read as follows: “It
has been estimated that if all the candles manufactured
by this eminent firm (Stearine & Co.)
were placed end to end, they would reach 2 and
⅞ times around the globe. Of course,” continued
Mr. Jaffrey, folding up the journal reflectively,
“abstruse calculations of this kind are not, perhaps,
of vital importance, but they indicate the

[figure description] Page 163.[end figure description]

intellectual activity of the age. Seriously, now,”
he said, halting in front of the table, “what with
books and papers and drives about the country, I
do not find the days too long, though I seldom
see any one, except when I go over to K — for
my mail. Existence may be very full to a man
who stands a little aside from the tumult and
watches it with philosophic eye. Possibly he
may see more of the battle than those who are
in the midst of the action. Once I was strug-gling
with the crowd, as eager and undaunted as
the best; perhaps I should have been struggling
still. Indeed, I know my life would have been
very different now if I had married Mehetabel, —
if I had married Mehetabel.”

His vivacity was gone, a sudden cloud had
come over his bright face, his figure seemed to
have collapsed, the light seemed to have faded
out of his hair. With a shuffling step, the very
antithesis of his brisk, elastic tread, he turned
to the door and passed into the road.

“Well,” I said to myself, “if Greenton had
forty thousand inhabitants, it could n't turn out
a more astonishing old party than that!”

[figure description] Page 164.[end figure description]

A man with a passion for bric-à-brac is always
stumbling over antique bronzes, intaglios, mosaics,
and daggers of the time of Benvenuto
Cellini; the bibliophile finds creamy vellum folios
and rare Alduses and Elzevirs waiting for him at
unsuspected bookstalls; the numismatist has but
to stretch forth his palm to have priceless coins
drop into it. My own weakness is odd people,
and I am constantly encountering them. It was
plain I had unearthed a couple of very queer
specimens at Bayley's Four-Corners. I saw that
a fortnight afforded me too brief an opportunity
to develop the richness of both, and I resolved to
devote my spare time to Mr. Jaffrey alone, instinctively
recognizing in him an unfamiliar
species. My professional work in the vicinity
of Greenton left my evenings and occasionally
an afternoon unoccupied; these intervals I

[figure description] Page 165.[end figure description]

purposed to employ in studying and classifying my
fellow-boarder. It was necessary, as a preliminary
step, to learn something of his previous
history, and to this end I addressed myself to
Mr. Sewell that same night.

“I do not want to seem inquisitive,” I said
to the landlord, as he was fastening up the
bar, which, by the way, was the salle à manger
and general sitting-room, — “I do not want to
seem inquisitive, but your friend Mr. Jaffrey
dropped a remark this morning at breakfast
which — which was not altogether clear to
me.”

“About Mehetable?” asked Mr. Sewell, uneasily.

“Yes.”

“Well, I wish he would n't!”

“He was friendly enough in the course of
conversation to hint to me that he had not
married the young woman, and seemed to regret
it.”

“No, he did n't marry Mehetabel.”

“May I inquire why he did n't marry Mehetabel?”

“Never asked her. Might have married the

[figure description] Page 166.[end figure description]

girl forty times. Old Elkins's daughter, over at
K——. She'd have had him quick enough.
Seven years, off and on, he kept company with
Mehetabel, and then she died.”

“And he never asked her?”

“He shilly-shallied. Perhaps he didn't think
of it. When she was dead and gone, then Silas
was struck all of a heap,—and that's all about
it.”

Obviously Mr. Sewell did not intend to tell me
anything more, and obviously there was more to
tell. The topic was plainly disagreeable to him
for some reason or other, and that unknown
reason of course piqued my curiosity.

As I was absent from dinner and supper
that day, I did not meet Mr. Jaffrey again
until the following morning at breakfast. He
had recovered his bird-like manner, and was
full of a mysterious assassination that had
just taken place in New York, all the thrilling
details of which were at his fingers' ends. It
was at once comical and sad to see this harmless
old gentleman, with his naïve, benevolent
countenance, and his thin hair flaming up in
a semicircle, like the foot-lights at a theatre,

[figure description] Page 167.[end figure description]

revelling in the intricacies of the unmentionable
deed.

“You come up to my room to-night,” he cried,
with horrid glee, “and I'll give you my theory
of the murder. i'll make it as clear as day to
you that it was the detective himself who fired
the three pistol-shots.”

It was not so much the desire to have this
point elucidated as to make a closer study of Mr.
Jaffrey that led me to accept his invitation. Mr.
Jaffrey's bedroom was in an L of the building,
and was in no way noticeable except for the
numerous files of newspapers neatly arranged
against the blank spaces of the walls, and a huge
pile of old magazines which stood in one corner,
reaching nearly up to the ceiling, and threatening
to topple over each instant, like the Leaning
Tower at Pisa. There were green paper shades
at the windows, some faded chintz valances about
the bed, and two or three easy-chairs covered
with chintz. On a black-walnut shelf between
the windows lay a choice collection of meerschaum
and brierwood pipes.

Filling one of the chocolate-colored bowls for
me and another for himself, Mr. Jaffrey began

[figure description] Page 168.[end figure description]

prattling; but not about the murder, which appeared
to have flown out of his mind. In fact, I
do not remember that the topic was oven touched
upon, either then or afterwards.

“Cosey nest this,” said Mr. Jaffrey, glancing
complacently over the apartment. “What is
more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than
an open wood-fire? Do you hear those little
chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of
apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins
and bluebirds that sang upon the bough when it
was in blossom last spring. In summer whole
flocks of them come fluttering about the fruittrees
under the window: so I have singing birds
all the year round. I take it very easy here, I
can tell you, summer and winter. Not much
society. Tobias is not, perhaps, what one would
term a great intellectual force, but he means
well. He's a realist, — believes in coming down
to what he calls `the hard pan'; but his heart is
in the right place, and he's very kind to me.
The wisest thing I ever did in my life was to sell
out my grain business over at K——, thirteen
years ago, and settle down at the Corners. When
a man has made a competency, what does he

[figure description] Page 169.[end figure description]

want more? Besides, at that time an event occurred
which destroyed any ambition I may have
had. Mehetabel died.”

“The lady you were engaged to?”

“N-o, not precisely engaged. I think it was
quite understood between us, though nothing had
been said on the subject. Typhoid,” added Mr.
Jaffrey, in a low voice.

For several minutes he smoked in silence, a
vague, troubled look playing over his countenance.
Presently this passed away, and he fixed
his gray eyes speculatively upon my face.

“If I had married Mehetabel,” said Mr. Jaffrey,
slowly, and then he hesitated. I blew a ring
of smoke into the air, and, resting my pipe on my
knee, dropped into an attitude of attention. “If
I had married Mehetabel, you know, we should
have had — ahem! — a family.”

“Very likely,” I assented, vastly amused at
this unexpected turn.

“A Boy!” exclaimed Mr. Jaffrey, explosively.

“By all means, certainly, a son.”

“Great trouble about naming the boy. Mehetabel's
family want him named Elkanah Elkins,
after her grandfather; I want him named

[figure description] Page 170.[end figure description]

Andrew Jackson. We compromise by christening
him Elkanah Elkins Andrew Jackson Jaffrey.
Rather a long name for such a short little fellow,”
said Mr. Jaffrey, musingly.

“Andy is n't a bad nickname,” I suggested.

“Not at all. We call him Andy, in the family.
Somewhat fractious at first, — colic and things.
I suppose it is right, or it would n't be so; but
the usefulness of measles, mumps, croup, whooping-cough,
scarlatina, and fits is not visible to
the naked eye. I wish Andy would be a model
infant, and dodge the whole lot.”

This suppositious child, born within the last
few minutes, was clearly assuming the proportions
of a reality to Mr. Jaffrey. I began to feel
a little uncomfortable. I am, as I have said, a
civil engineer, and it is not strictly in my line to
assist at the births of infants, imaginary or otherwise.
I pulled away vigorously at the pipe, and
said nothing.

“What large blue eyes he has,” resumed Mr.
Jaffrey, after a pause; “just like Hetty's; and
the fair hair, too, like hers. How oddly certain
distinctive features are handed down in families!
Sometimes a mouth, sometimes a turn of the

[figure description] Page 171.[end figure description]

eyebrow. Wicked little boys, over at K——, have
now and then derisively advised me to follow my
nose. It would be an interesting thing to do. I
should find my nose flying about the world, turning
up unexpectedly here and there, dodging this
branch of the family and reappearing in that,
now jumping over one great-grandchild to fasten
itself upon another, and never losing its individuality.
Look at Andy. There's Elkanah Elkins's
chin to the life. Andy's chin is probably
older than the Pyramids. Poor little thing,” he
cried, with sudden indescribable tenderness, “to
lose his mother so early!” And Mr. Jaffrey's
head sunk upon his breast, and his shoulders
slanted forward, as if he were actually bending
over the cradle of the child. The whole gesture
and attitude was so natural that it startled me.
The pipe slipped from my fingers and fell to the
floor.

“Hush!” whispered Mr. Jaffrey, with a
deprecating motion of his hand. “Andy 's
asleep!”

He rose softly from the chair and, walking
across the room on tiptoe, drew down the shade
at the window through which the moonlight was

[figure description] Page 172.[end figure description]

streaming. Then he returned to his seat, and
remained gazing with half-closed eyes into the
dropping embers.

I refilled my pipe and smoked in profound
silence, wondering what would come next. But
nothing came next. Mr. Jaffrey had fallen into
so brown a study that, a quarter of an hour
afterwards, when I wished him good night
and withdrew, I do not think he noticed my
departure.

I am not what is called a man of imagination;
it is my habit to exclude most things not capable
of mathematical demonstration; but I am not
without a certain psychological insight, and I
think I understood Mr. Jaffrey's case. I could
easily understand how a man with an unhealthy,
sensitive nature, overwhelmed by sudden calamity,
might take refuge in some forlorn place like
this old tavern, and dream his life away. To
such a man — brooding forever on what might
have been and dwelling wholly in the realm of
his fancies — the actual world might indeed become
as a dream, and nothing seem real but his
illusions. I dare say that thirteen years of Bayley's
Four-Corners would have its effect upon

[figure description] Page 173.[end figure description]

me; though instead of conjuring up golden-haired
children of the Madonna, I should probably see
gnomes and kobolds, and goblins engaged in
hoisting false signals and misplacing switches for
midnight express trains.

“No doubt,” I said to myself that night, as I
lay in bed, thinking over the matter, “this once
possible but now impossible child is a great comfort
to the old gentleman, — a greater comfort,
perhaps, than a real son would be. May be
Andy will vanish with the shades and mists of
night, he's such an unsubstantial infant; but if
he does n't, and Mr. Jaffrey finds pleasure in
talking to me about his son, I shall humor the
old fellow. It would n't be a Christian act to
knock over his harmless fancy.”

I was very impatient to see if Mr. Jaffrey's
illusion would stand the test of daylight. It did.
Elkanah Elkins Andrew Jackson Jaffrey was, so
to speak, alive and kicking the next morning.
On taking his seat at the breakfast-table, Mr.
Jaffrey whispered to me that Andy had had a
comfortable night.

“Silas!” said Mr. Sewell, sharply, “what are
you whispering about?”

[figure description] Page 174.[end figure description]

Mr. Sewell was in an ill-humor; perhaps he
was jealous because I had passed the evening in
Mr. Jaffrey's room; but surely Mr. Sewell could
not expect his boarders to go to bed at eight
o'clock every night, as he did. From time to
time during the meal Mr. Sewell regarded me
unkindly out of the corner of his eye, and in
helping me to the parsnips he poniarded them
with quite a suggestive air. All this, however,
did not prevent me from repairing to the door of
Mr. Jaffrey's snuggery when night came.

“Well, Mr. Jaffrey, how's Andy this evening?”

“Got a tooth!” cried Mr. Jaffrey, vivaciously.

“No!”

“Yes, he has! Just through. Gave the nurse
a silver dollar. Standing reward for first tooth.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to express surprise
that an infant a day old should cut a tooth,
when I suddenly recollected that Richard III.
was born with teeth. Feeling myself to be on
unfamiliar ground, I suppressed my criticism. It
was well I did so, for in the next breath I was
advised that half a year had elapsed since the
previous evening.

[figure description] Page 175.[end figure description]

“Andy's had a hard six months of it,” said
Mr. Jaffrey, with the well-known narrative air
of fathers. “We've brought him up by hand.
His grandfather, by the way, was brought up by
the bottle” — and brought down by it, too, I
added mentally, recalling Mr. Sewell's account
of the old gentleman's tragic end.

Mr. Jaffrey then went on to give me a history
of Andy's first six months, omitting no detail
however insignificant or irrelevant. This history
I would, in turn, inflict upon the reader, if I were
only certain that he is one of those dreadful
parents who, under the ægis of friendship, bore
you at a street-corner with that remarkable thing
which Freddy said the other day, and insist on
singing to you, at an evening party, the Iliad of
Tommy's woes.

But to inflict this enfantillage upon the unmarried
reader would be an act of wanton cruelty.
So I pass over that part of Andy's biography,
and, for the same reason, make no record
of the next four or five interviews I had with
Mr. Jaffrey. It will be sufficient to state that
Andy glided from extreme infancy to early youth
with astonishing celerity, — at the rate of one

[figure description] Page 176.[end figure description]

year per night, if I remember correctly; and —
must I confess it? — before the week came to
an end, this invisible hobgoblin of a boy was
only little less of a reality to me than to Mr.
Jaffrey.

At first I had lent myself to the old dreamer's
whim with a keen perception of the humor of the
thing; but by and by I found I was talking and
thinking of Miss Mehetabel's son as though he
were a veritable personage. Mr. Jaffrey spoke
of the child with such an air of conviction! — as
if Andy were playing among his toys in the next
room, or making mud-pies down in the yard. In
these conversations, it should be observed, the
child was never supposed to be present, except
on that single occasion when Mr. Jaffrey leaned
over the cradle. After one of our séances I
would lie awake until the small hours, thinking
of the boy, and then fall asleep only to have indigestible
dreams about him. Through the day,
and sometimes in the midst of complicated calculations,
I would catch myself wondering what
Andy was up to now! There was no shaking
him off; he became an inseparable nightmare to
me; and I felt that if I remained much longer

[figure description] Page 177.[end figure description]

at Bayley's Four-Corners I should turn into just
such another bald-headed, mild-eyed visionary as
Silas Jaffrey.

Then the tavern was a grewsome old shell any
way, full of unaccountable noises after dark, —
rustlings of garments along unfrequented passages,
and stealthy footfalls in unoccupied chambers
overhead. I never knew of an old house
without these mysterious noises. Next to my
bedroom was a musty, dismantled apartment, in
one corner of which, leaning against the wainscot,
was a crippled mangle, with its iron crank
tilted in the air like the elbow of the late Mr.
Clem Jaffrey. Sometimes,

“In the dead vast and middle of the night,”

[figure description] Page 178.[end figure description]

Miss Mehetabel's son, who, after all, was less
unearthly than Mr. Jaffrey himself, and seemed
more properly an inhabitant of this globe than
the toothless ogre who kept the inn, not to mention
the silent Witch of Endor that cooked our
meals for us over the bar-room fire.

In spite of the scowls and winks bestowed
upon me by Mr. Sewell, who let slip no opportunity
to testify his disapprobation of the intimacy,
Mr. Jaffrey and I spent all our evenings together,—
those long autumnal evenings, through
the length of which he talked about the boy, laying
out his path in life and hedging the path with
roses. He should be sent to the High School at
Portsmourth, and then to college; he should be
educated like a gentleman, Andy.

“When the old man dies,” said Mr. Jaffrey,
rubbing his hands gleefully, as if it were a great
joke, “Andy will find that the old man has left
him a pretty plum.”

“What do you think of having Andy enter
West Point, when he's old enough?” said Mr.
Jaffrey on another occasion. “He need n't necessarily
go into the army when he graduates; he
can become a civil engineer.”

[figure description] Page 179.[end figure description]

This was a stroke of flattery so delicate and
indirect that I could accept it without immodesty.

There had lately sprung up on the corner of
Mr. Jaffrey's bureau a small tin house, Gothic in
architecture, and pink in color, with a slit in the
roof, and the word Bank painted on one façade.
Several times in the course of an evening Mr.
Jaffrey would rise from his chair without interrupting
the conversation, and gravely drop a
nickel into the scuttle of the bank. It was pleasant
to observe the solemnity of his countenance
as he approached the edifice, and the air of
triumph with which he resumed his seat by the
fireplace. One night I missed the tin bank. It
had disappeared, deposits and all. Evidently
there had been a defalcation on rather a large
scale. I strongly suspected that Mr. Sewell was
at the bottom of it; but my suspicion was not
shared by Mr. Jaffrey, who, remarking my glance
at the bureau, became suddenly depressed. “I'm
afraid,” he said, “that I have failed to instil into
Andrew those principles of integrity which —
which —” and the old gentleman quite broke
down.

[figure description] Page 180.[end figure description]

Andy was now eight or nine years old, and for
some time past, if the truth must be told, had
given Mr. Jaffrey no inconsiderable trouble;
what with his impishness and his illnesses, the
boy led the pair of us a lively dance. I shall not
soon forget the anxiety of Mr. Jaffrey the night
Andy had the scarlet-fever,—an anxiety which
so infected me that I actually returned to the
tavern the following afternoon earlier than usual,
dreading to hear the little spectre was dead, and
greatly relieved on meeting Mr. Jaffrey at the
door-step with his face wreathed in smiles.
When I spoke to him of Andy, I was made aware
that I was inquiring into a case of scarlet-fever
that had occurred the year before!

It was at this time, towards the end of my
second week at Greenton, that I noticed what
was probably not a new trait,—Mr. Jaffrey's
curious sensitiveness to atmospherical changes.
He was as sensitive as a barometer. The
approach of a storm sent his mercury down
instantly. When the weather was fair, he was
hopeful and sunny, and Andy's prospects were
brilliant. When the weather was overcast and
threatening, he grew restless and despondent,

[figure description] Page 181.[end figure description]

and was afraid the boy was n't going to turn out
well.

On the Saturday previous to my departure,
which had been fixed for Monday, it rained heavily
all the afternoon, and that night Mr. Jaffrey
was in an unusually excitable and unhappy frame
of mind. His mercury was very low indeed.

“That boy is going to the dogs just as fast as
he can go,” said Mr. Jaffrey, with a woful face.
“I can't do anything with him.”

“He'll come out all right, Mr. Jaffrey. Boys
will be boys. I would not give a snap for a lad
without animal spirits.”

“But animal spirits,” said Mr. Jaffrey sententiously,
“should n't saw off the legs of the piano
in Tobias's best parlor. I don't know what Tobias
will say when he finds it out.”

“What! has Andy sawed off the legs of the old
spinet?” I returned, laughing.

“Worse than that.”

“Played upon it, then!”

“No, sir. He has lied to me!”

“I can't believe that of Andy.”

“Lied to me, sir,” repeated Mr. Jaffrey, severely.
“He pledged me his word of honor that he

[figure description] Page 182.[end figure description]

would give over his climbing. The way that boy
climbs sends a chill down my spine. This morning,
notwithstanding his solemn promise, he
shinned up the lightning-rod attached to the
extension and sat astride the ridge-pole. I saw
him, and he denied it! When a boy you have
caressed and indulged, and lavished pocket-money
on, lies to you and will climb, then there's
nothing more to be said. He's a lost child.”

“You take too dark a view of it, Mr. Jaffrey.
Training and education are bound to tell in the
end, and he has been well brought up.”

“But I did n't bring him up on a lightning-rod,
did I? If he is ever going to know how to
behave, he ought to know now. To-morrow he
will be eleven years old.”

The reflection came to me that if Andy had
not been brought up by the rod, he had certainly
been brought up by the lightning. He was eleven
years old in two weeks!

I essayed, with that perspicacious wisdom
which seems to be the peculiar property of
bachelors and elderly maiden ladies, to tranquillize
Mr. Jaffrey's mind, and to give him
some practical hints on the management of youth.

[figure description] Page 183.[end figure description]

“Spank him,” I suggested at length.

“I will!” said the old gentleman.

“And you'd better do it at once!” I added,
as it flashed upon me that in six months Andy
would be a hundred and forty-three years old!—
an age at which parental discipline would have
to be relaxed.

The next morning, Sunday, the rain came
down as if determined to drive the quicksilver
entirely out of my poor friend. Mr. Jaffrey sat
bolt upright at the breakfast-table, looking as
woe-begone as a bust of Dante, and retired to
his chamber the moment the meal was finished.
As the day advanced, the wind veered round to
the northeast, and settled itself down to work.
It was not pleasant to think, and I tried not to
think, what Mr. Jaffrey's condition would be if
the weather did not mend its manners by noon;
but so far from clearing off at noon, the storm
increased in violence, and as night set in, the
wind whistled in a spiteful falsetto key, and the
rain lashed the old tavern as if it were a balky
horse that refused to move on. The windows
rattled in the worm-eaten frames, and the doors
of remote rooms, where nobody ever went,

[figure description] Page 184.[end figure description]

slammed to in the maddest way. Now and then
the tornado, sweeping down the side of Mount
Agamenticus, bowled across the open country,
and struck the ancient hostelry point-blank.

Mr. Jaffrey did not appear at supper. I knew
he was expecting me to come to his room as
usual, and I turned over in my mind a dozen
plans to evade seeing him that night. The landlord
sat at the opposite side of the chimney-place,
with his eye upon me. I fancy he was aware of
the effect of this storm on his other boarder, for
at intervals, as the wind hurled itself against the
exposed gable, threatening to burst in the windows,
Mr. Sewell tipped me an atrocious wink, and
displayed his gums in a way he had not done
since the morning after my arrival at Greenton.
I wondered if he suspected anything about Andy.
There had been odd times during the past week
when I felt convinced that the existence of Miss
Mehetabel's son was no secret to Mr. Sewell.

In deference to the gale, the landlord sat up
half an hour later than was his custom. At halfpast
eight he went to bed, remarking that he
thought the old pile would stand till morning.

He had been absent only a few minutes when

[figure description] Page 185.[end figure description]

I heard a rustling at the door. I looked up, and
beheld Mr. Jaffrey standing on the threshold,
with his dress in disorder, his scant hair flying,
and the wildest expression on his face.

“He's gone!” cried Mr. Jaffrey.

“Who? Sewell? Yes, he just went to bed.”

“No, not Tobias,—the boy!”

“What, run away?”

“No,—he is dead! He has fallen off of a
step-ladder in the red chamber and broken his
neck!”

Mr. Jaffrey threw up his hands with a gesture
of despair, and disappeared. I followed him
through the hall, saw him go into his own apartment,
and heard the bolt of the door drawn to.
Then I returned to the bar-room, and sat for an
hour or two in the ruddy glow of the fire, brooding
over the strange experience of the last fortnight.

On my way to bed I paused at Mr. Jaffrey's
door, and, in a lull of the storm, the measured
respiration within told me that the old gentleman
was sleeping peacefully.

Slumber was coy with me that night. I lay
listening to the soughing of the wind, and

[figure description] Page 186.[end figure description]

thinking of Mr. Jaffrey's illusion. It had amused me
at first with its grotesqueness; but now the poor
little phantom was dead, I was conseious that
there had been something pathetic in it all along.
Shortly after midnight the wind sunk down, coming
and going fainter and fainter, floating around
the eaves of the tavern with a gentle, murmurous
sound, as if it were turning itself into soft wings
to bear away the spirit of a little child.

Perhaps nothing that happened during my stay
at Bayley's Four-Corners took me so completely
by surprise as Mr. Jaffrey's radiant countenance
the next morning. The morning itself was not
fresher or sunnier. His round face literally
shone with geniality and happiness. His eyes
twinkled like diamonds, and the magnetic light
of his hair was turned on full. He came into
my room while I was packing my valise. He
chirped, and prattled, and carolled, and was sorry
I was going away,—but never a word about
Andy. However, the boy had probably been dead
several years then!

The open wagon that was to carry me to the
station stood at the door; Mr. Sewell was placing

[figure description] Page 187.[end figure description]

my case of instruments under the seat, and Mr.
Jaffrey had gone up to his room to get me a certain
newspaper containing an account of a remarkable
shipwreck on the Auckland Islands. I
took the opportunity to thank Mr. Sewell for his
courtesies to me, and to express my regret at
leaving him and Mr. Jaffrey.

“I have become very much attached to Mr.
Jaffrey,” I said; “he is a most interesting person;
but that hypothetical boy of his, that son
of Miss Mehetabel's—”

“Yes, I know!” interrupted Mr. Sewell, testily.
“Fell off a step-ladder and broke his dratted
neck. Eleven year old, was n't he? Always
does, jest at that point. Next week Silas will
begin the whole thing over again, if he can get
anybody to listen to him.”

“I see. Our amiable friend is a little queer
on that subject.”

Mr. Sewell glanced cautiously over his shoulder,
and, tapping himself significantly on the
forehead, said in a low voice,

“Room To Let—Unfurnished!”

p447-193 A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

[figure description] Page 188.[end figure description]

ONE morning as I was passing through Boston
Common, which lies between my home and
my office, I met a gentleman lounging along The
Mall. I am generally preoccupied when walking,
and often third my way through crowded streets
without distinctly observing any one. But this
man's face forced itself upon me, and a singular
face it was. His eyes were faded, and his hair,
which he wore long, was flecked with gray. His
hair and eyes, if I may say so, were sixty
years old, the rest of him not thirty. The youthfulness
of his figure, the elasticity of his gait, and
the venerable appearance of his head were incongruities
that drew more than one pair of curious
eyes towards him. He excited in me the painful
suspicion that he had either got somebody else's
head or somebody else's body. He was evidently
an American, at least so far as the upper part

[figure description] Page 189.[end figure description]

of him was concerned,—the New England cut
of countenance is unmistakable,—evidently a
man who had seen something of the world,
but strangely young and old.

Before reaching the Park Street gate, I had
taken up the thread of thought which he had unconsciously
broken; yet throughout the day this
old young man, with his unwrinkled brow and
silvered locks, glided in like a phantom between
me and my duties.

The next morning I again encountered him on
The Mall. He was resting lazily on the green
rails, watching two little sloops in distress, which
two ragged ship-owners had consigned to the
mimic perils of the Pond. The vessels lay becalmed
in the middle of the ocean, displaying
a tantalizing lack of sympathy with the frantic
helplessness of the owners on shore. As the
gentleman observed their dilemma, a light came
into his faded eyes, then died out, leaving them
drearier than before. I wondered if he, too,
in his time, had sent out ships that drifted and
drifted and never came to port; and if these poor
toys were to him types of his own losses.

“That man has a story, and I should like to

[figure description] Page 190.[end figure description]

know it,” I said, half aloud, halting in one of
those winding paths which branch off from the
pastoral quietness of the Pond, and end in the
rush and tumult of Tremont Street.

“Would you?” exclaimed a voice at my side.
I turned and faced Mr. H—, a neighbor of
mine, who laughed heartily at finding me talking
to myself. “Well,” he added, reflectingly, “I
can tell you this man's story; and if you will
match the narrative with anything as curious, I
shall be glad to hear it.”

“You know him then?”

“Yes and no. That is to say, I do not know
him personally; but I know a singular passage
in his life. I happened to be in Paris when
he was buried.”

“Buried!”

“Well, strictly speaking, not buried; but something
quite like it. If you've a spare half-hour,”
continued my friend H——, “we'll sit on this
bench, and I will tell you all I know of an affair
that made some noise in Paris a couple of years
ago. The gentleman himself, standing yonder,
will serve as a sort of frontispiece to the romance,—
a full-page illustration, as it were.”

[figure description] Page 191.[end figure description]

The following pages contain the story which
Mr. H—— related to me. While he was telling
it, a gentle wind arose; the miniature sloops
drifted feebly about the ocean; the wretched
owners flew from point to point, as the deceptive
breeze promised to waft the barks to either shore;
the early robins trilled now and then from the
newly fringed elms; and the old young man
leaned on the rail in the sunshine, little dreaming
that two gossips were discussing his affairs
within twenty yards of him.

Three people were sitting in a chamber whose
one large window overlooked the Place Vendôme.
M. Dorine, with his back half turned on the
other two occupants of the apartment, was reading
the Journal des Débats in an alcove, pausing
from time to time to wipe his glasses, and taking
scrupulous pains not to glance towards the lounge
at his right, on which were seated Mlle. Dorine
and a young American gentleman, whose handsome
face rather frankly told his position in the
family. There was not a happier man in Paris
that afternoon than Philip Wentworth. Life
had become so delicious to him that he shrunk

[figure description] Page 192.[end figure description]

from looking beyond to-day. What could the
future add to his full heart? what might it not
take away? The deepest joy has always something
of melaneholy in it,—a presentiment, a
fleeting sadness, a feeling without a name. Wentworth
was conscious of this subtile shadow that
night, when he rose from the lounge and thoughtfully
held Julie's hand to his lip for a moment
before parting. A careless observer would not
have thought him, as he was, the happiest man
in Paris.

M. Dorine laid down his paper, and came forward.
“If the house,” he said, “is such as
M. Cherbonneau describes it, I advise you to
close with him at once. I would accompany
you, Philip, but the truth is, I am too sad at
losing this little bird to assist you in selecting
a cage for her. Remember, the last train for
town leaves at five. Be sure not to miss it;
for we have seats for Sardou's new comedy
to-morrow night. By to-morrow night,” he
added laughingly, “little Julie here will be an
old lady,— 't is such an age from now until
then.”

The next morning the train bore Philip to one

[figure description] Page 193.[end figure description]

of the loveliest spots within thirty miles of Paris.
An hour's walk through green lanes brought him
to M. Cherbonneau's estate. In a kind of dream
the young man wandered from room to room, inspected
the conservatory, the stables, the lawns,
the strip of woodland through which a merry
brook sang to itself continually; and, after dining
with M. Cherbonneau, completed the purchase,
and turned his steps towards the station
just in time to catch the express train.

As Paris stretched out before him, with its
lights twinkling in the early dusk, and its spires
and domes melting into the evening air, it
seemed to Philip as if years had elapsed since
he left the city. On reaching Paris he drove to
his hôtel, where he found several letters lying on
the table. He did not trouble himself even to
glance at their superscriptions as he threw
aside his travelling surtout for a more appropriate
dress.

If, in his impatience to return to Mlle. Dorine,
the cars had appeared to walk, the fiacre which
he had secured at the station appeared to creep.
At last it turned into the Place Vendôme, and
drew up before M. Dorine's hôtel. The door

[figure description] Page 194.[end figure description]

opened as Philip's foot touched the first step.
The servant silently took his cloak and hat, with
a special deference, Philip thought; but was he
not now one of the family?

“M. Dorine,” said the servant slowly, “is unable
to see Monsieur at present. He wishes
Monsieur to be shown up to the salon.”

“Is Mademoiselle—”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

“Alone?”

“Alone, Monsieur,” repeated the man, looking
curiously at Philip, who could scarcely repress an
exclamation of pleasure.

It was the first time that such a privilege had
been accorded him. His interviews with Julie
had always taken place in the presence of M.
Dorine, or some member of the household. A
well-bred Parisian girl has but a formal acquaintance
with her lover.

Philip did not linger on the staircase; with
a light heart, he went up the steps, two at a
time, hastened through the softly lighted hall,
in which he detected the faint scent of her favorite
flowers, and stealthily opened the door of
the salon.

[figure description] Page 195.[end figure description]

The room was darkened. Underneath the
chandelier stood a slim black casket on trestles.
A lighted candle, a crucifix, and some white
flowers were on a table near by. Julie Dorine
was dead.

When M. Dorine heard the sudden cry that
rang through the silent house, he hurried from
the library, and found Philip standing like a
ghost in the middle of the chamber.

It was not until long afterwards that Wentworth
learned the details of the calamity that
had befallen him. On the previous night Mlle.
Dorine had retired to her room in seemingly perfect
health, and had dismissed her maid with a
request to be awakened early the next morning.
At the appointed hour the girl entered the chamber.
Mlle. Dorine was sitting in an arm-chair,
apparently asleep. The candle in the bougeoir
had burnt down to the socket; a book lay half
open on the carpet at her feet. The girl started
when she saw that the bed had not been occupied,
and that her mistress still wore an evening
dress. She rushed to Mlle. Dorine's side.
It was not slumber; it was death.

Two messages were at once despatched to

[figure description] Page 196.[end figure description]

Philip, one to the station at G——, the other to
his hôtel. The first missed him on the road, the
second he had neglected to open. On his arrival
at M. Dorine's house, the valet, under the
supposition that Wentworth had been advised
of Mlle. Dorine's death, broke the intelligence
with awkward cruelty, by showing him directly
to the salon.

Mlle. Dorine's wealth, her beauty, the suddenness
of her death, and the romance that had in
some way attached itself to her love for the
young American, drew crowds to witness the
funeral ceremonies, which took place in the
church in the rue d'Aguesseau. The body was
to be laid in M. Dorine's tomb, in the cemetery
of Montmartre.

This tomb requires a few words of description.
First there was a grating of filigraned iron;
through this you looked into a small vestibule
or hall, at the end of which was a massive door
of oak opening upon a short flight of stone steps
descending into the tomb. The vault was fifteen
or twenty feet square, ingeniously ventilated from
the ceiling, but unlighted. It contained two sarcophagi:
the first held the remains of Madame

[figure description] Page 197.[end figure description]

Dorine, long since dead; the other was new, and
bore on one side the letters J. D., in monogram,
interwoven with fleurs-de-lis.

The funeral train stopped at the gate of the
small garden that enclosed the place of burial,
only the immediate relatives following the bearers
into the tomb. A slender wax candle, such as
is used in Catholic churches, burnt at the foot of
the uncovered sarcophagus, casting a dim glow
over the centre of the apartment, and deepening
the shadows which seemed to huddle together in
the corners. By this flickering light the coffin
was placed in its granite shell, the heavy slab
laid over it reverently, and the oaken door revolved
on its rusty hinges, shutting out the
uncertain ray of sunshine that had ventured to
peep in on the darkness.

M. Dorine, muffled in his cloak, threw himself
on the back seat of the landau, too abstracted in
his grief to observe that he was the only occupant
of the vehicle. There was a sound of
wheels granting on the gravelled avenue, and then
all was silence again in the cemetery of Montmartre.
At the main entrance the carriages
parted company, dashing off into various streets

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at a pace that seemed to express a sense of
relief.

The rattle of wheels had died out of the air
when Philip opened his eyes, bewildered, like a
man abruptly roused from slumber. He raised
himself on one arm and stared into the surrounding
blackness. Where was he? In a second
the truth flashed upon him. He had been left
in the tomb! While kneeling on the farther
side of the stone box, perhaps he had fainted,
and during the last solemn rites his absence
had been unnoticed.

His first emotion was one of natural terror.
But this passed as quickly as it came. Life had
ceased to be so very precious to him; and if it
were his fate to die at Julie's side, was not
that the fulfilment of the desire which he had expressed
to himself a hundred times that morning?
What did it matter, a few years sooner or later?
He must lay down the burden at last. Why not
then? A pang of self-reproach followed the
thought. Could he so lightly throw aside the
love that had bent over his cradle? The sacred
name of mother rose involuntarily to his lips.
Was it not cowardly to yield up without a

[figure description] Page 199.[end figure description]

struggle the life which he should guard for her sake?
Was it not his duty to the living and the dead to
face the difficulties of his position, and overcome
them if it were within human power?

With an organization as delicate as a woman's,
he had that spirit which, however sluggish in
repose, leaps with a kind of exultation to measure
its strength with disaster. The vague fear
of the supernatural, that would affect most men
in a similar situation, found no room in his
heart. He was simply shut in a chamber from
which it was necessary that he should obtain
release within a given period. That this chamber
contained the body of the woman he loved, so far
from adding to the terror of the case, was a
circumstance from which he drew consolation.
She was a beautiful white statue now. Her soul
was far hence; and if that pure spirit could
return, would it not be to shield him with her
love? It was impossible that the place should
not engender some thought of the kind. He did
not put the thought entirely from him as he rose
to his feet and stretched out his hands in the
darkness; but his mind was too healthy and
practical to indulge long in such speculations.

[figure description] Page 200.[end figure description]

Philip, being a smoker, chanced to have in his
pocket a box of allumettes. After several ineffectual
essays, he succeeded in igniting one
against the dank wall, and by its momentary
glare perceived that the candle had been left
in the tomb. This would serve him in examining
the fastenings of the vault. If he could force the
inner door by any means, and reach the grating,
of which he had an indistinct recollection, he
might hope to make himself heard. But the
oaken door was immovable, as solid as the wall
itself, into which it fitted air-tight. Even if he
had had the requisite tools, there were no fastenings
to be removed; the hinges were set on the
outside.

Having ascertained this, Philip replaced the
candle on the floor, and leaned against the wall
thoughtfully, watching the blue fan of flame that
wavered to and fro, threatening to detach itself
from the wick. “At all events,” he thought,
“the place is ventilated.” Suddenly he sprang
forward and extinguished the light.

His existence depended on that candle!

He had read somewhere, in some account
of shipwreck, how the survivors had lived for

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days upon a few candles which one of the passengers
had insanely thrown into the long-boat.
And here he had been burning away his very
life!

By the transient illumination of one of the
tapers, he looked at his watch. It had stopped at
eleven, — but eleven that day, or the preceding
night? The funeral, he knew, had left the
church at ten. How many hours had passed
since then? Of what duration had been his
swoon? Alas! it was no longer possible for
him to measure those hours which crawl like
snails by the wretched, and fly like swallows over
the happy.

He picked up the candle, and seated himself
on the stone steps. He was a sanguine man,
but, as he weighed the chances of escape, the
prospect appalled him. Of course he would
be missed. His disappearance under the circumstances
would surely alarm his friends; they
would instigate a search for him; but who would
think of searching for a live man in the cemetery
of Montmartre? The préfet of police would set
a hundred intelligences at work to find him; the
Seine might be dragged, les misérables turned

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over at the Morgue; a minute description of him
would be in every detective's pocket; and he —
in M. Dorine's family tomb!

Yet, on the other hand, it was here he was last
seen; from this point a keen detective would
naturally work up the case. Then might not the
undertaker return for the candlestick, probably
not left by design? Or, again, might not M.
Dorine send fresh wreaths of flowers, to take the
place of those which now diffused a pungent,
aromatic odor throughout the chamber? Ah!
what unlikely chances! But if one of these
things did not happen speedily, it had better
never happen. How long could he keep life in
himself?

With his pocket-knife Wentworth cut the
half-burned candle into four equal parts. “Tonight,”
he meditated, “I will eat the first of
these pieces; to-morrow, the second; to-morrow
evening, the third; the next day, the fourth;
and then — then I'll wait!”

He had taken no breakfast that morning, unless
a cup of coffee can be called a breakfast.
He had never been very hungry before. He was
ravenously hungry now. But he postponed the

[figure description] Page 203.[end figure description]

meal as long as practicable. It must have been
near midnight, according to his calculation, when
he determined to try the first of his four singular
repasts. The bit of white-wax was tasteless; but
it served its purpose.

His appetite for the time appeased, he found a
new discomfort. The humidity of the walls, and
the wind that crept through the unseen ventilator,
chilled him to the bone. To keep walking
was his only resource. A kind of drowsiness,
too, occasionally came over him. It took all his
will to fight it off. To sleep, he felt, was to die;
and he had made up his mind to live.

The strangest fancies flitted through his head
as he groped up and down the stone floor of
the dungeon, feeling his way along the wall
to avoid the sepulchres. Voices that had long
been silent spoke words that had long been forgotten;
faces he had known in childhood grew
palpable against the dark. His whole life in detail
was unrolled before him like a panorama; the
changes of a year, with its burden of love and
death, its sweets and its bitternesses, were epitomized
in a single second. The desire to sleep
had left him, but the keen hunger came again.

[figure description] Page 204.[end figure description]

It must be near morning now, he mused; perhaps
the sun is just gilding the pinnacles and
domes of the city; or, may be, a dull, drizzling
rain is beating on Paris, sobbing on these mounds
above me. Paris! it seems like a dream. Did
I ever walk in its gay boulevards in the golden
air? O the delight and pain and passion of that
sweet human life!

Philip became conscious that the gloom, the
silence, and the cold were gradually conquering
him. The feverish activity of his brain brought
on a reaction. He grew lethargic, he sunk down
on the steps, and thought of nothing. His hand
fell by chance on one of the pieces of candle; he
grasped it and devoured it mechanically. This
revived him. “How strange,” he thought, “that
I am not thirsty. Is it possible that the dampness
of the walls, which I must inhale with every
breath, has supplied the need of water? Not a
drop has passed my lips for two days, and still I
experience no thirst. That drowsiness, thank
Heaven, has gone. I think I was never wide
awake until this hour. It would be an anodyne
like poison that could weigh down my eyelids.
No doubt the dread of sleep has something to do
with this.”

[figure description] Page 205.[end figure description]

The minutes were like hours. Now he walked
as briskly as he dared up and down the tomb;
now he rested against the door. More than once
he was tempted to throw himself upon the stone
coffin that held Julie, and make no further struggle
for his life.

Only one piece of candle remained. He had
eaten the third portion, not to satisfy hunger,
but from a precautionary motive. He had taken
it as a man takes some disagreeable drug upon
the result of which hangs safety. The time was
rapidly approaching when even this poor substitute
for nourishment would be exhausted. He
delayed that moment. He gave himself a long
fast this time. The half-inch of candle which he
held in his hand was a sacred thing to him. It
was his last defence against death.

At length, with such a sinking at heart as he
had not known before, he raised it to his lips.
Then he paused, then he hurled the fragment
across the tomb, then the oaken door was flung
open, and Philip, with dazzled eyes, saw M.
Dorine's form sharply defined against the blue
sky.

When they led him out, half blinded, into the

[figure description] Page 206.[end figure description]

broad daylight, M. Dorine noticed that Philip's
hair, which a short time since was as black as a
crow's wing, had actually turned gray in places.
The man's eyes, too, had faded; the darkness
had dimmed their lustre.

“And how long was he really confined in the
tomb?” I asked, as Mr. H—— concluded the
story.

“Just one hour and twenty minutes!” replied
Mr. H——, smiling blandly.

As he spoke, the Lilliputian sloops, with their
sails all blown out like white roses, came floating
bravely into port, and Philip Wentworth lounged
by us, wearily, in the pleasant April sunshine.

Mr. H——'s narrative haunted me. Here was
a man who had undergone a strange ordeal.
Here was a man whose sufferings were unique.
His was no threadbare experience. Eighty minutes
had seemed like two days to him! If he had
really been immured two days in the tomb, the
story, from my point of view, would have lost its
tragic element.

After this it was but natural I should regard

[figure description] Page 207.[end figure description]

Mr. Wentworth with deepend curiosity. As
I met him from day to day, passing through
the Common with that same introspective air,
there was something in his loneliness which
touched me. I wondered that I had not read
before in his pale, meditative face some such sad
history as Mr. H—— had confided to me. I
formed the resolution of speaking to him, though
with no very lucid purpose. One morning we
came face to face at the intersection of two
paths. He halted courteously to allow me the
precedence.

“Mr. Wentworth,” I began, “I—”

He interrupted me.

“My name, sir,” he said, in an off-hand manner,
“is Jones.”

“Jo-Jo-Jones!” I gasped.

“No, not Joseph Jones,” he returned, with a
glacial air, “Frederick.”

A dim light, in which the perfidy of my friend
H—— was becoming discernible, began to break
upon my mind.

It will probably be a standing wonder to Mr.
Frederick Jones why a strange man accosted him
one morning on the Common as “Mr.

[figure description] Page 208.[end figure description]

Wentworth,” and then dashed madly down the nearest
foot-path and disappeared in the crowd.

The fact is, I had been duped by Mr. H——,
who is a gentleman of literary proclivities, and
has, it is whispered, become somewhat demented
in brooding over the Great American Novel, —
not yet hatched. He had actually tried the effect
of one of his chapters on me!

My hero, as I subsequently learned, is a commonplace
young person who had some connection,
I do not know what, with the building of
that graceful granite bridge which spans the
crooked silver lake in the Public Garden.

When I think of the readiness with which Mr.
H—— built up his airy fabric on my credulity, I
feel half inclined to laugh, though I am deeply
mortified at having been the unresisting victim
of his Black Art.

p447-214 THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH.

[figure description] Page 209.[end figure description]

IN one of the episodes in his entertaining volume
of Vagabond Adventures, Mr. Keeler takes
the reader with him on a professional cruise in
Dr. Spaulding's Floating Palace. This Floating
Palace, a sort of Barnum's Museum with a keel,
was designed for navigation in Southern and
Western rivers, and carried a cargo of complex
delights that must have much amazed the simple
dwellers on the banks of the Ohio and the
Mississippi. Here, on board of this dramatical
Noah's Ark, the reader finds himself on the pleasantest
terms conceivable with negro minstrels,
danseuses, apostolic wax-works, moral acrobats,
stuffed animals, vocalists, and a certain Governor
Dorr.

It was with a thrill of honest pleasure that
I came upon this picturesque outcast unexpectedly
embalmed, like a fly in amber, in Mr. Keeler's
autobiography. There was a time when I was

[figure description] Page 210.[end figure description]

proud to know this Governor Dorr, when I hung
upon the rotund music of his lips, listened to his
marvellous stories of moving accidents by flood
and field, and was melted to the very heart at
those rare moments when, in a three-cornered
room in the rear of Wall's Drug Store, he would
favor me with some of the most lacrymose and
sentimental poems that ever came of a despondent
poet. At this epoch of my existence, Governor
Dorr, with his sarcastic winks, his comic melancholy,
his quotations from Shakespeare, and his
fearful knowledge of the outside world, was in
my eyes the personification of all that was learned,
lyrical, romantic, and daring. A little later my
boyish admiration was shattered by the discovery
that my Admirable Crichton was — well, it is of
no use now to mince words — an adventurer and
a gambler. With a kind of sigh that is at
present a lost art to me, I put him aside with
those dethroned idols and collapsed dreams which
accumulate on one's hands as one advances in
life, and of which I already had a promising
collection when I was about twenty. I cast off
Governor Dorr, I repeat; but, oddly enough,
Governor Dorr never cast me off, but persisted in

[figure description] Page 211.[end figure description]

turning up at intervals of four or five years in the
tender and pathetic character of “the friend
of my youth.”

As Governor Dorr is the only gentleman
in his line of business who ever evinced any
interest in me, I intend to make the most of
him; and, indeed, among my reputable acquaintances
there is none who deserves to fare better
at my hands. My reputable acquaintances have
sometimes bored me, and taught me nothing.
Now Governor Dorr, in the ethereal shape of
a reminiscence, has not only been a source of
great amusement to me at various times, but
has taught me by his own funest example that
whatever gifts a man may possess, if he have
no moral principle he is a failure. Wanting the
gift of honesty, Governor Dorr was a gambler
and a sharper, and is dead.

I was a school-boy at Rivermouth when Governor
Dorr swept like a brilliant comet into
the narrow are of my observation.* One day in

[figure description] Page 212.[end figure description]

the summer of 18—I was going home from
school when I saw standing in front of Wall's
Drug Store a showily dressed person, who seemed
to me well advanced in years, that is to say,
twenty-five or thirty; he was the centre of a
small circle of idle fellows about town, who were
drinking in with obvious relish one of those
pre-Raphaelite narratives which I was afterwards
destined to swallow with open-mouthed wonder.
The genial twinkle of the man's blue eyes, the
glow of his half-smoked cigar, and the blaze
of the diamond on his little finger, all seemed the
members of one radiant family. To this day
I cannot disassociate a sort of glitter with the
memory of my first glimpse of Governor Dorr.
He had finished speaking as I joined the group;
I had caught only the words, “and that was
the last of gallant Jack Martinway,” delivered
in a singularly mellow barytone voice, when he
turned abruptly and disappeared behind the
orange and purple jars in Dr. Wall's shopwindow.

Who is gallant Jack Martinway, I wondered,
and who is this dazzling person that wears his
best clothes on a week-day? I took him for

[figure description] Page 213.[end figure description]

some distinguished military hero, and with a
fine feeling for anachronism immediately connected
him with the portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh in
Mitchell's Geography, — a work I was at that
time neglecting with considerable perseverance.

The apparition of so bewildering a figure in
our staid, slow-going little town was likely to
cause a sensation. The next day in school I
learned all about him. He was Governor Dorr;
he had once been a boy in Rivermouth, like us,
but had gone off years ago to seek his fortune,
and now he had come back immensely wealthy
from somewhere,—South America or the Chincha
Islands, where he was governor,—and was going
to settle down in his native town and buy the
“Janvrin Place,”—an estate which the heirs
were too poor to keep and nobody else rich enough
to purchase.

This was appetizing, and after school I wandered
up to Wall's Drug Store to take a look
at my gilded townsman, of whom I was not a
little proud.

I was so dazed at the time, that I do not recollect
how it all came about; but Governor Dorr
was in the shop holding a glass of soda-water in

[figure description] Page 214.[end figure description]

one hand and leaning elegantly on the Gothic
fountain; I entered with the weak pretence of
buying a slate pencil; the Governor spoke to me,
and then—I can recall nothing except that, when
I recovered from my embarrassment and confusion,
I was drinking soda-water with the Great
Mogul, strangling myself with the lively beverage,
and eliciting from him the laughing advice
that I should n't drink it while it was boiling.

It was an aggravated case of friendship at first
sight. In less than a week my admiration for
Governor Dorr was so pure, unselfish, and unquestioning
that it saddens me now to remember
it, knowing that the stock is exhausted.
Every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon—our
half-holidays—I hurried to Wall's Drug Store to
meet my friend. Here were his head-quarters,
and a most profitable customer he must have
been, for when he was not drinking soda-water
he was smoking the Doctor's cigars.

In the rear of the shop was a small triangular
room where Dr. Wall manufactured a patent
eclectic cough sirup, and where he allowed us to
sit rainy afternoons. Nothing about me as I
write is so real as a vision of that musty,

[figure description] Page 215.[end figure description]

pennyroyal-smelling little room, with Governor Dorr
sitting on a reversed mortar and accenting the
spirited parts of some Homeric story with a circumflex
flourish of the Doctor's iron pestle, on
the end of which was always a thin crust of the
prescription last put up, Rows of croupy square
bottles filled with a dark-colored mixture and
labelled “Cough Sirup” look down on me from
their dusty shelves, and I am listening again as
of old!

In pleasant weather we sauntered about town,
or strolled off into those pretty lanes which make
Rivermouth, and rural places like Rivermouth, a
paradise for lovers. In all these hours with Governor
Dorr, I never knew him to let fall a word
that a child should not hear. Perhaps my innocence
and my unconcealed reverence for him
touched and drew the better part of his heart to
me, for it had a better part,—one uncontaminated
little piece for children.

Our conversation turned chiefly on his travels,
literature, literary men, and actors. His talk, I
may remark, was very full on literary men; he
knew them well, and was on astonishingly familiar
personal terms with all the American authors

[figure description] Page 216.[end figure description]

quoted in my Third Reader, especially with Joel
Barlow, who, I subsequently learned, had quitted
this planet about half a century previous to the
birth of my friend. He called him “Joel,” quite
familiarly, and sometimes his “dear old friend
Joe Barlow, the Hasty-Pudding Man!”

Shakespeare, however, was the weakness or
the strength of Governor Dorr. I am glad he
did not have the effrontery to claim his acquaintance
in propria persona. I am afraid that would
have shaken my faith and spoiled me for enjoying
my comrade's constant quotations. I am not
sure, though, for I trusted so implicitly in the
superior knowledge of Governor Dorr that on
one occasion he convinced me that Herrick was
a contemporary American author, and not an old
English poet as I had read somewhere. “Why,
my dear boy,” he exclaimed, “I know him well.
He is a fellow of infinite jest, and his father edits
the New York Sunday Atlas!” And the Governor
drew forth a copy of the journal and
showed me the name of Anson Herrick in large
capitals at the head of the paper. After that I
was entirely adrift on what is called “the sea
of English literature.”

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