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THE ensuing summer I returned
North depressed by the result of
my sojourn in New Orleans. It
was only by devoting myself, body
and soul, to some intricate pursuit
that I could dispel the gloom which
threatened to seriously affect my
health.

The Moon-Apparatus was insufficient to distract
me. I turned my attention to mechanism,
and was successful in producing several wonderful
pieces of work, among which may be mentioned
a brass butterfly, made to flit so naturally in the
air as to deceive the most acute observers. The

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motion of the toy, the soft down and gorgeous
damask-stains on the pinions, were declared quite
perfect. The thing is rusty and wont work now,
I tried to set it going for Dr. Pendegrast, the
other day.

A manikin musician, playing a few exquisite
airs on a miniature piano, likewise excited much
admiration. This figure bore such an absurd,
unintentional resemblance to a gentleman who
has since distinguished himself as a pianist, that
I presented the trifle to a lady admirer of
Gottschalk.

I also became a taxidermist, and stuffed a pet
bird with springs and diminutive flutes, causing it
to hop and carol, in its cage, with great glee.
But my master-piece was a nimble white mouse,
with pink eyes, that could scamper up the walls,
and masticate bits of cheese in an extraordinary
style. My chamber-maid shrieked, and
jumped up on a chair, whenever I let the little
fellow loose in her presence. One day, unhappily,
the mouse, while nosing around after its favorite

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aliment, got snapt in a rat-trap that yawned in
the closet, and I was never able to readjust the
machinery.

Engaged in these useful inventions,—useful.
because no exercise of the human mind is ever in
vain,—my existence for two or three years was
so placid and uneventful, I began to hope that the
shadows which had followed on my path from
childhood, making me unlike other men, had
returned to that unknown world where they
properly belong; but the Fates were only taking
breath to work out more surely the problem of my
destiny. I must keep nothing back. I must
extenuate nothing.

I am about to lift the vail of mystery which,
for nearly seven years, has shrouded the story of
Mary Ware; and though I lay bare my own
weakness, or folly, or what you will, I do not
shrink from the unvailing.

No hand but mine can now perform the task.
There was, indeed, a man who might have done

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this better than I. But he went his way ir
silence. I like a man who can hold his tongue.

On the corner of Clarke and Crandall streets,
in New York, stands a dingy brown frame-house.
It is a very old house, as its obsolete style of
structure would tell you. It has a morose, unhappy
look, though once it must have been a
blythe mansion. I think that houses, like human
beings, ultimately become dejected or cheerful,
according to their experience. The very air of
some front-doors tells their history.

This house, I repeat, has a morose, unhappy
look, at present, and is tenanted by an incalculable
number of Irish families, while a picturesque
junk-shop is in full blast in the basement; but at
the time of which I write, it was a second-rate
boarding-place, of the more respectable sort, and
rather largely patronized by poor, but honest,
literary men, tragic-actors, members of the chorus,
and such like gilt people.

My apartments on Crandall street, were opposite
this building, to which my attention was

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directed soon after taking possession of the rooms,
by the discovery of the following facts:

First, that a charming lady lodged on the
second-floor front, and sang like a canary every
morning.

Second, that her name was Mary Ware.

Third, that Mary Ware was a danseuse, and
had two lovers—only two.

Fourth, that Mary Ware and the page, who,
years before, had drawn Howland and myself into
that fatal masquerade, were the same person.

This last discovery moved me strangely, aside
from the fact that her presence opened an old
wound. The power which guides all the actions
of my life constrained me to watch this woman.

Mary Ware was the leading-lady at The
Olympic. Night after night found me in the
parquette. I can think of nothing with which to
compare the airiness and utter abandon of her
dancing. She seemed a part of the music. She
was one of beauty's best thoughts, then. Her
glossy gold hair reached down to her waist,

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shading one of those mobile faces which remind
you of Guido's picture of Beatrix Cenci —
there was something so fresh and enchanting in
the mouth. Her luminous, almond eyes, looking
out winningly from under their drooping fringes,
were at once the delight and misery of young men.

Ah! you were distracting in your nights of
triumph, when the bouquets nestled about your
elastic ankles, and the kissing of your castanets
made the pulses leap; but I remember when you
lay on your cheerless bed, in the blank daylight,
with the glory faded from your brow, and “none
so poor as to do you reverence.”

Then I stooped down and kissed you — but
not till then.

Mary Ware was to me a finer study than her
lovers. She had two, as I have said. One of
them was commonplace enough — well-made, welldressed,
shallow, flaccid. Nature, when she gets
out of patience with her best works, throws off
such things by the gross, instead of swearing.

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He was a lieutenant, in the navy I think. The
gilt button has charms to soothe the savage breast.

The other was a man of different mould, and
interested me in a manner for which I could not
then account. The first time I saw him did not
seem like the first time. But this, perhaps, is an
after-impression.

Every line of his countenance denoted character;
a certain capability, I mean, but whether
for good or evil was not so plain. I should have
called him handsome, but for a noticeable scar
which ran at right angles across his mouth, giving
him a sardonic expression when he smiled.

His frame might have set an anatomist wild
with delight — six feet two, deep-chested, knitted
with tendons of steel. Not at all a fellow to
amble on plush carpets.

“Some day,” thought I, as I saw him stride
by the house, “he will throw the little Lieutenant
out of that second-story window.”

I cannot tell, to this hour, which of those two
men Mary Ware loved most — for I think she

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loved them both. A woman's heart was the
insolvable charade with which the Sphinx nipt
the Egyptians. I was never good at puzzles.

The flirtation, however, was food enough for
the whole neighborhood. But faintly did the
gossips dream of the strange drama that was
being shaped out, as compactly as a tragedy of
Sophocles, under their noses.

They were very industrious in tearing Mary
Ware's good name to pieces. Some laughed at
the gay Lieutenant, and some at Julius Kenneth;
but they all amiably united in condemning Mary
Ware.

This, possibly, was strictly proper, for Mary
Ware was a woman: the woman is always to
blame in such cases; the man is hereditarily and
constitutionally in the right; the woman is born in
the wrong. That is the world's verdict, that is what
Justice says; but we should weigh the opinion of
Justice with care, since she is represented, by
poets and sculptors, not satirically, I trust, as a
blind Woman.

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It was so from the beginning. Was not the
first lady of the world the cause of all our woe?
I feel safe in leaving it to a jury of gentle dames.
But from all such judges, had I a sister on trial
good Lord deliver her.

This state of affairs had continued for five or
six months, when it was reported that Julius
Kenneth and Mary Ware were affianced. The
Lieutenant was less frequently seen in Crandall
street, and Julius waited upon Mary's footsteps
with the fidelity of a shadow.

Mrs. Grundy was somewhat appeased.

Yet. — though Mary went to the Sunday concerts
with Julius Kenneth, she still wore the
Lieutenant's roses in her bosom.

Mrs. Grundy said that.

p448-100

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