After it was all over, Helen was leaving with the rest, when Dudley Venner begged her to stay a little, and he would send her back: it was a long walk; besides, he wished to say some things to her, which he had not had the opportunity of speaking. Of course Helen could not refuse him; there must be many thoughts coming into his mind which he would wish to share with her who had known his daughter so long and been with her in her last days.

She returned into the great parlor with the wrought cornices and the medallion-portraits on the ceiling.

"I am now alone in the world," Dudley Venner said.

Helen must have known that before he spoke. But the tone in which he said it had so much meaning, that she could not find a word to answer him with. They sat in silence, which the old tall clock counted out in long seconds; but it was a silence which meant more than any words they had ever spoken.

"Alone in the world! Helen, the freshness of my life is gone, and there is little left of the few graces which in my younger days might have fitted me to win the love of women. Listen to me,—kindly, if you can; forgive me, at least. Half my life has been passed in constant fear and anguish, without any near friend to share my trials. My task is done now; my fears have ceased to prey upon me; the sharpness of early sorrows has yielded something of its edge to time. You have bound me to you by gratitude in the tender care you have taken of my poor child. More than this. I must tell you all now, out of the depth of this trouble through which I am passing. I have loved you from the moment we first met; and if my life has anything left worth accepting, it is yours. Will you take the offered gift?"

Helen looked in his face, surprised, bewildered.

"This is not for me,—not for me," she said. "I am but a poor faded flower, not worth the gathering of such a one as you. No, no,—I have been bred to humble toil all my days, and I could not be to you what you ought to ask. I am accustomed to a kind of loneliness and self-dependence. I have seen nothing, almost, of the world, such as you were born to move in. Leave me to my obscure place and duties; I shall at least have peace;—and you—you will surely find in due time some one better fitted by Nature and training to make you happy."

"No, Miss Darley!" Dudley Venner said, almost sternly. "You must not speak to a man who has lived through my experiences of looking about for a new choice after his heart has once chosen. Say that you can never love me; say that I have lived too long to share your young life; say that sorrow has left nothing in me for Love to find his pleasure in; but do not mock me with the hope of a new affection for some unknown object. The first look of yours brought me to your side. The first tone of your voice sunk into my heart. From this moment my life must wither out or bloom anew. My home is desolate. Come under my roof and make it bright once more,—share my life with me,—or I shall give the halls of the old mansion to the bats and the owls, and wander forth alone without a hope or a friend!"

To find herself with a man's future at the disposal of a single word of hers!—a man like this, too, with a fascination for her against which she had tried to shut her heart, feeling that he lived in another sphere than hers, working as she was for her bread, a poor operative in the factory of a hard master and jealous overseer, the salaried drudge of Mr. Silas Peckham! Why, she had thought he was grateful to her as a friend of his daughter; she had even pleased herself with the feeling that he liked her, in her humble place, as a woman of some cultivation and many sympathetic! points of relation with himself; but that he loved her,—that this deep, fine nature, in a man so far removed from her in outward circumstance, should have found its counterpart in one whom life had treated so coldly as herself,—that Dudley Venner should stake his happiness on a breath of hers,—poor Helen Darley's,—it was all a surprise, a confusion, a kind of fear not wholly fearful. Ah, me! women know what it is,—that mist over the eyes, that trembling in the limbs, that faltering of the voice, that sweet, shame-faced, unspoken confession of weakness which does not wish to be strong, that sudden overflow in the soul where thoughts loose their hold on each other and swim single and helpless in the flood of emotion,—women know what it is!

No doubt she was a little frightened and a good deal bewildered, and that her sympathies were warmly excited for a friend to whom she had been brought so near, and whose loneliness she saw and pitied. She lost that calm self-possession she had hoped to maintain.

"If I thought that I could make you happy,—if I should speak from my heart, and not my reason,—I am but a weak woman,—yet if I can be to you—What can I say?"

What more could this poor, dear Helen say?

* * * * *

"Elbridge, harness the horses and take Miss Darley back to the school."

What conversation had taken place since Helen's rhetorical failure is not recorded in the minutes from which this narrative is constructed. But when the man who had been summoned had gone to get the carriage ready, Helen resumed something she had been speaking of.

"Not for the world! Everything must go on just as it has gone on, for the present. There are proprieties to be consulted. I cannot be hard with you, that out of your very affliction has sprung this—this—well—you must name it for me,—but the world will never listen to explanations. I am to be Helen Darley, lady assistant in Mr. Silas Peckham's school, as long as I see fit to hold my office. And I mean to attend to my scholars just as before; so that I shall have very little time for visiting or seeing company. I believe, though, you are one of the Trustees and a Member of the Examining Committee; so that, if you should happen to visit the school, I shall try to be civil to you."

Every lady sees, of course, that Helen was quite right; but perhaps here and there one will think that Dudley Venner was all wrong,—that he was too hasty,—that he should have been too full of his recent grief for such a confession as he has just made, and the passion from which it sprung. Perhaps they do not understand the sudden recoil of a strong nature long compressed. Perhaps they have not studied the mystery of allotropism in the emotions of the human heart. Go to the nearest chemist and ask him to show you some of the dark-red phosphorus which will not burn, without fierce heating, but at 500 deg., Fahrenheit, changes back again to the inflammable substance we know so well. Grief seems more like ashes than like fire; but as grief has been love once, so it may become love again. This is emotional allotropism.

Helen rode back to the Institute and inquired for Mr. Peckham. She had not seen him during the brief interval between her departure from the mansion-house and her return to Old Sophy's funeral. There were various questions about the school she wished to ask.

"Oh, how's your haaelth, Miss Darley?" Silas began. "We've missed you consid'able. Glad to see you back at the post of dooty. Hope the Squire treated you hahnsomely,—liberal pecooniary compensation,—hey? A'n't much of a loser, I guess, by acceptin' his propositions?"

Helen blushed at this last question, as if Silas had meant something by it beyond asking what money she had received; but his own double-meaning expression and her blush were too nice points for him to have taken cognizance of. He was engaged in a mental calculation as to the amount of the deduction he should make under the head of "damage to the institootion,"—this depending somewhat on that of the "pecooniary compensation" she might have received for her services as the friend of Elsie Venner.

So Helen slid back at once into her routine, the same faithful, patient creature she had always been. But what was this new light which seemed to have kindled in her eyes? What was this look of peace, which nothing could disturb, which smiled serenely through all the little meannesses with which the daily life of the educational factory surrounded her,—which not only made her seem resigned, but overflowed all her features with a thoughtful, subdued happiness? Mr. Bernard did not know,—perhaps he did not guess. The inmates of the Dudley mansion were not scandalized by any mysterious visits of a veiled or unveiled lady. The vibrating tongues of the "female youth" of the Institute were not set in motion by the standing of an equipage at the gate, waiting for their lady teacher. The servants at the mansion did not convey numerous letters with superscriptions in a bold, manly hand, sealed with the arms of a well-known house, and directed to Miss Helen Darley; nor, on the other hand, did Hiram, the man from the lean streak in New Hampshire, carry sweet-smelling, rose-hued, many-layered, criss-crossed, fine-stitch-lettered packages of note-paper directed to Dudley Venner, Esq., and all too scanty to hold that incredible expansion of the famous three words which a woman was born to say,—that perpetual miracle which astonishes all the go-betweens who wear their shoes out in carrying a woman's infinite variations on the theme, "I love you."

But the reader must remember that there are walks in country-towns where people are liable to meet by accident, and that the hollow of an old tree has served the purpose of a post-office sometimes; so that he has her choice (to divide the pronouns impartially) of various hypotheses to account for the new glory of happiness which seemed to have irradiated our poor Helen's features, as if her dreary life were awakening in the dawn of a blessed future.

With all the alleviations which have been hinted at, Mr. Dudley Venner thought that the days and the weeks had never moved so slowly as through the last period of the autumn that was passing. Elsie had been a perpetual source of anxiety to him, but still she had been a companion. He could not mourn for her; for he felt that she was safer with her mother, in that world where there are no more sorrows and dangers, than she could have been with him. But as he sat at his window and looked at the three mounds, the loneliness of the great house made it seem more like the sepulchre than these narrow dwellings where his beloved and her daughter lay close to each other, side by side,—Catalina, the bride of his youth, and Elsie, the child whom he had nurtured, with poor Old Sophy, who had followed them like a black shadow, at their feet, under the same soft turf, sprinkled with the brown autumnal leaves. It was not good for him to be thus alone. How should he ever live through the long months of November and December?

The months of November and December did, in some way or other, get rid of themselves at last, bringing with them the usual events of village-life and a few unusual ones. Some of the geologists had been up to look at the great slide, of which they gave those prolix accounts which everybody remembers who read the scientific journals of the time. The engineers reported that there was little probability of any further convulsion along the line of rocks which overhung the more thickly settled part of the town. The naturalists drew up a paper on the "Probable Extinction of the Crotalus Durissus in the Township of Rockland." The engagement of the Widow Rowens to a Little Millionville merchant was announced,—"Sudding 'n' onexpected," Widow Leech said,—"waaelthy, or she wouldn't ha' looked at him,—fifty year old, if he is a day, 'n' ha'n't got a white hair in his head." The Reverend Chauncy Fairweather had publicly announced that he was going to join the Roman Catholic communion,—not so much to the surprise or consternation of the religious world as he had supposed. Several old ladies forthwith proclaimed their intention of following him; but, as one or two of them were deaf, and another had been threatened with an attack of that mild, but obstinate complaint, dementia senilis, many thought it was not so much the force of his arguments as a kind of tendency to jump as the bellwether jumps, well known in flocks not included in the Christian fold. His bereaved congregation immediately began pulling candidates on and off, like new boots, on trial. Some pinched in tender places; some were too loose; some were too square-toed; some were too coarse, and didn't please; some were too thin, and wouldn't last;—in short, they couldn't possibly find a fit. At last people began to drop in to hear old Doctor Honeywood. They were quite surprised to find what a human old gentleman he was, and went back and told the others, that, instead of being a case of confluent sectarianism, as they supposed, the good old minister had been so well vaccinated with charitable virus that he was now a true, open-souled Christian of the mildest type. The end of all which was, that the liberal people went over to the old minister almost in a body, just at the time that Deacon Shearer and the "Vinegar-Bible" party split off, and that not long afterwards they sold their own meeting-house to the malecontents, so that Deacon Soper used often to remind Colonel Sprowle of his wish that "our little man and him [the Reverend Doctor] would swop pulpits," and tell him it had "pooty nigh come trew."—But this is anticipating the course of events, which were much longer in coming about; for we have but just got through that terribly long month, as Mr. Dudley Venner found it, of December.

On the first of January, Mr. Silas Peckham was in the habit of settling his quarterly accounts, and making such new arrangements as his convenience or interest dictated. New-Year was a holiday at the Institute. No doubt this accounted for Helen's being dressed so charmingly,—always, to be sure, in her own simple way, but yet with such a true lady's air that she looked fit to be the mistress of any mansion in the land.

She was in the parlor alone, a little before noon, when Mr. Peckham came in.

"I'm ready to settle my account with you now, Miss Darley," said Silas.

"As you please, Mr. Peckham," Helen answered, very graciously.

"Before payin' you your selary," the Principal continued, "I wish to come to an understandin' as to the futur'. I consider that I've been payin' high, very high, for the work you do. Women's wages can't be expected to do more than feed and clothe 'em, as a gineral thing, with a little savin', in case of sickness, and to bury 'em, if they break daown, as all of 'em are liable to do at any time. If I a'n't misinformed, you not only support yourself out of my establishment, but likewise relatives of yours, who I don't know that I'm called upon to feed and clothe. There is a young woman, not burdened with destitoot relatives, has signified that she would be glad to take your dooties for less pecooniary compensation, by a consid'able amaount, than you now receive. I shall be willin', however, to retain your services at sech redooced rate as we shall fix upon,—provided sech redooced rate be as low or lower than the same services can be obtained elsewhere."

"As you please, Mr. Peckham," Helen answered, with a smile so sweet that the Principal (who of course had trumped up this opposition-teacher for the occasion) said to himself she would stand being cut down a quarter, perhaps a half, of her salary.

"Here is your accaount, Miss Darley, and the balance doo you," said Silas Peckham, handing her a paper and a small roll of infectious-flavored bills wrapping six poisonous coppers of the old coinage.

She took the paper and began looking at it. She could not quite make up her mind to touch the feverish bills with the cankering copper in them, and left them airing themselves on the table.

The document she held ran as follows:

Silas Peckham, Esq., Principal of the Apollinean Institute, In Account with Helen Darley, Assist. Teacher.

Dr. To Salary for quarter ending Jan. 1st, @ $75 per quarter . . . . . . $75.00

_ $75.00

_Cr._ By Deduction for absence, 1 week 8 days . . . . . . . . . . $10.00 " Board, lodging, etc., for 10 days, @ 75 cts. per day . . . . . . 7.50 " Damage to Institution by absence of teacher from duties, say . . . 25.00 " Stationery furnished . . . . . 43 " Postage-stamp . . . . . . . 01 " Balance due Helen Darley . . $32.06 _ $75.00

ROCKLAND, Jan. 1st, 1859.

Now Helen had her own private reasons for wishing to receive the small sum which was due her at this time without any unfair deduction,—reasons which we need not inquire into too particularly, as we may be very sure that they were right and womanly. So, when she looked over this account of Mr. Silas Peckham's, and saw that he had contrived to pare down her salary to something less than half its stipulated amount, the look which her countenance wore was as near to that of righteous indignation as her gentle features and soft blue eyes would admit of its being.

"Why, Mr. Peckham," she said, "do you mean this? If I am of so much value to you that you must take off twenty-five dollars for ten days' absence, how is it that my salary is to be cut down to less than seventy-five dollars a quarter, if I remain here?"

"I gave you fair notice," said Silas. "I have a minute of it I took down immed'ately after the intervoo."

He lugged out his large pocket-book with the strap going all round it, and took from it a slip of paper which confirmed his statement.

"Besides," he added, slyly, "I presoom you have received a liberal pecooniary compensation from Squire Venner for nussin' his daughter."

Helen was looking over the bill while he was speaking.

"Board and lodging for ten days, Mr. Peckham,—whose board and lodging, pray?"

The door opened before Silas Peckham could answer, and Mr. Bernard walked into the parlor. Helen was holding the bill in her hand, looking as any woman ought to look who has been at once wronged and insulted.

"The last turn of the thumbscrew!" said Mr. Bernard to himself. "What is it, Helen? You look troubled."

She handed him the account.

He looked at the footing of it. Then he looked at the items. Then he looked at Silas Peckham.

At this moment Silas was sublime. He was so transcendency unconscious of the emotions going on in Mr. Bernard's mind at the moment, that he had only a single thought.

"The accaount's correc'ly cast, I presoom;—if the' 's any mistake of figgers or addin' 'em up, it'll be made all right. Everything's accordin' to agreement. The minute written immed'ately after the intervoo is here in my possession."

Mr. Bernard looked at Helen. Just what would have happened to Silas Peckham, as he stood then and there, but for the interposition of a merciful Providence, nobody knows or ever will know; for at that moment steps were heard upon the stairs, and Hiram threw open the parlor-door for Mr. Dudley Venner to enter.

He saluted them all gracefully with the good-wishes of the season, and each of them returned his compliment,—Helen blushing fearfully, of course, but not particularly noticed in her embarrassment by more than one.

Silas Peckham reckoned with perfect confidence on his Trustees, who had always said what he told them to, and done what he wanted. It was a good chance now to show off his power, and, by letting his instructors know the unstable tenure of their offices, make it easier to settle his accounts and arrange his salaries. There was nothing very strange in Mr. Venner's calling; he was one of the Trustees, and this was New Year's Day. But he had called just at the lucky moment for Mr. Peckham's object.

"I have thought some of makin' changes in the department of instruction," he began. "Several accomplished teachers have applied to me, who would be glad of sitooations. I understand that there never have been so many fust-rate teachers, male and female, out of employment as doorin' the present season. If I can make sahtisfahctory arrangements with my present corpse of teachers, I shall be glad to do so; otherwise I shell, with the permission of the Trustees, make sech noo arrangements as circumstahnces compel."

"You may make arrangements for a new assistant in my department, Mr. Peckham," said Mr. Bernard, "at once,—this day,—this hour. I am not safe to be trusted with your person five minutes out of this lady's presence,—of whom I beg pardon for this strong language. Mr. Venner, I must beg you, as one of the Trustees of this Institution, to look at the manner in which its Principal has attempted to swindle this faithful teacher, whose toils and sacrifices and self-devotion to the school have made it all that it is, in spite of this miserable trader's incompetence. Will you look at the paper I hold?"

Dudley Venner took the account and read it through, without changing a feature. Then he turned to Silas Peckham.

"You may make arrangements for a new assistant in the branches this lady has taught. Miss Helen Darley is to be my wife. I had hoped to announce this news in a less abrupt and ungraceful manner. But I came to tell you with my own lips what you would have learned before evening from my friends in the village."

Mr. Bernard went to Helen, who stood silent, with downcast eyes, and took her hand warmly, hoping she might find all the happiness she deserved. Then he turned to Dudley Venner, and said,—

"She is a queen, but has never found it out. The world has nothing nobler than this dear woman, whom you have discovered in the disguise of a teacher. God bless her and you!"

Dudley Venner returned his friendly grasp, without answering a word in articulate speech.

Silas remained dumb and aghast for a brief space. Coming to himself a little, he thought there might have been some mistake about the items,—would like to have Miss Darley's bill returned,—would make it all right,—had no idee that Squire Venner had a special int'rest in Miss Darley,—was sorry he had given offence,—if he might take that bill and look it over—

"No, Mr. Peckham," said Mr. Dudley Venner; "there will be a full meeting of the Board next week, and the bill, and such evidence with reference to the management of the Institution and the treatment of its instructors as Mr. Langdon sees fit to bring forward, will be laid before them."

Miss Helen Darley became that very day the guest of Miss Arabella Thornton, the Judge's daughter. Mr. Bernard made his appearance a week or two later at the Lectures, where the Professor first introduced him to the reader.

He stayed after the class had left the room.

"Ah, Mr. Langdon! how do you do? Very glad to see you back again. How have you been since our correspondence on Fascination and other curious scientific questions?"

It was the Professor who spoke,—whom the reader will recognize as myself, the teller of this story.

"I have been well," Mr. Bernard answered, with a serious look which invited a further question.

"I hope you have had none of those painful or dangerous experiences you seemed to be thinking of when you wrote; at any rate, you have escaped having your obituary written."

"I have seen some things worth remembering. Shall I call on you this evening and tell you about them?"

"I shall be most happy to see you."

* * * * *

This was the way in which I, the Professor, became acquainted with some of the leading events of this story. They interested me sufficiently to lead me to avail myself of all those other extraordinary methods of obtaining information well known to writers of narrative.

Mr. Langdon seemed to me to have gained in seriousness and strength of character by his late experiences. He threw his whole energies into his studies with an effect which distanced all his previous efforts. Remembering my former hint, he employed his spare hours in writing for the annual prizes, both of which he took by a unanimous vote of the judges. Those who heard him read his Thesis at the Medical Commencement will not soon forget the impression made by his fine personal appearance and manners, nor the universal interest excited in the audience, as he read, with his beautiful enunciation, that striking paper entitled "Unresolved Nebulas in Vital Science." It was a general remark of the Faculty,—and old Doctor Kittredge, who had come down on purpose to hear Mr. Langdon, heartily agreed to it,—that there had never been a diploma filled up, since the institution which conferred upon him the degree of Doctor Medicinae was founded, which carried with it more of promise to the profession than that which bore the name of

Bernardus Caryl Langdon

CHAPTER XXXII

CONCLUSION.

Mr. Bernard Langdon had no sooner taken his degree, than, in accordance with the advice of one of his teachers whom he frequently consulted, he took an office in the heart of the city where he had studied. He had thought of beginning in a suburb or some remoter district of the city proper.

"No," said his teacher,—to wit, myself,—"don't do any such thing. You are made for the best kind of practice; don't hamper yourself with an outside constituency, such as belongs to a practitioner of the second class. When a fellow like you chooses his beat, he must look ahead a little. Take care of all the poor that apply to you, but leave the half-pay classes to a different style of doctor,—the people who spend one half their time in taking care of their patients, and the other half in squeezing out their money. Go for the swell-fronts and south-exposure houses; the folks inside are just as good as other people, and the pleasantest, on the whole, to take care of. They must have somebody, and they like a gentleman best. Don't throw yourself away. You have a good presence and pleasing manners. You wear white linen by inherited instinct. You can pronounce the word view. You have all the elements of success; go and take it. Be polite and generous, but don't undervalue yourself. You will be useful, at any rate; you may just as well be happy, while you are about it. The highest social class furnishes incomparably the best patients, taking them by and large. Besides, when they won't get well and bore you to death, you can send 'em off to travel. Mind me now, and take the tops of your sparrowgrass. Somebody must have 'em,—why shouldn't you? If you don't take your chance, you'll get the butt-ends as a matter of course."

Mr. Bernard talked like a young man full of noble sentiments. He wanted to be useful to his fellow-beings. Their social differences were nothing to him. He would never court the rich,—he would go where he was called. He would rather save the life of a poor mother of a family than that of half a dozen old gouty millionnaires whose heirs had been yawning and stretching these ten years to get rid of them.

"Generous emotions!" I exclaimed. "Cherish 'em; cling to 'em till you are fifty,—till you are seventy,—till you are ninety! But do as I tell you,—strike for the best circle of practice, and you'll be sure to get it!"

Mr. Langdon did as I told him,—took a genteel office, furnished it neatly, dressed with a certain elegance, soon made a pleasant circle of acquaintances, and began to work his way into the right kind of business. I missed him, however, for some days, not long after he had opened his office. On his return, he told me he had been up at Rockland, by special invitation, to attend the wedding of Mr. Dudley Venner and Miss Helen Darley. He gave me a full account of the ceremony, which I regret that I cannot relate in full. "Helen looked like an angel,"—that, I am sure, was one of his expressions. As for her dress, I should like to give the details, but am afraid of committing blunders, as men always do, when they undertake to describe such matters. White dress, anyhow,—that I am sure of,—with orange-flowers, and the most wonderful lace veil that was ever seen or heard of. The Reverend Doctor Honeywood performed the ceremony, of course. The good people seemed to have forgotten they ever had had any other minister,—except Deacon Shearer and his set of malecontents, who were doing a dull business in the meeting-house lately occupied by the Reverend Mr. Fairweather.

"Who was at the wedding?"

"Everybody, pretty much. They wanted to keep it quiet, but it was of no use. Married at church. Front pews, old Doctor Kittredge and all the mansion-house people and distinguished strangers,—Colonel Sprowle and family, including Matilda's young gentleman, a graduate of one of the fresh-water colleges,—Mrs. Pickins (late Widow Rowens) and husband,—Deacon Soper and numerous parishioners. A little nearer the door, Abel, the Doctor's man, and Elbridge, who drove them to church in, the family-coach. Father Fairweather, as they all call him now, came in late, with Father McShane."

"And Silas Peckham?"

"Oh, Silas had left The School and Rockland. Cut up altogether too badly in the examination instituted by the Trustees. Had moved over to Tamarack, and thought of renting a large house and 'farming' the town-poor."

* * * * *

Some time after this, as I was walking with a young friend along by the swell-fronts and south-exposures, whom should I see but Mr. Bernard Langdon, looking remarkably happy, and keeping step by the side of a very handsome and singularly well-dressed young lady? He bowed and lifted his hat as we passed.

"Who is that pretty girl my young doctor has got there?" I said to my companion.

"Who is that?" he answered. "You don't know? Why, that is neither more nor less than Miss Letitia Forester, daughter of—of—why, the great banking-firm, you know, Bilyuns Brothers & Forester. Got acquainted with her in the country, they say. There's a story that they're engaged, or like to be, if the firm consents."

"Oh!" I said.

I did not like the look of it in the least. Too young,—too young. Has not taken any position yet. No right to ask for the hand of Bilyuns Brothers & Co.'s daughter. Besides, it will spoil him for practice, if he marries a rich girl before he has formed habits of work.

I looked in at his office the next day. A box of white kids was lying open on the table. A three-cornered note, directed in a very delicate lady's-hand, was distinguishable among a heap of papers. I was just going to call him to account for his proceedings, when he pushed the three-cornered note aside and took up a letter with a great corporation-seal upon it. He had received the offer of a professor's chair in an ancient and distinguished institution.

"Pretty well for three-and-twenty, my boy," I said. "I suppose you'll think you must be married one of these days, if you accept this office."

Mr. Langdon blushed.—There had been stories about him, he knew. His name had been mentioned in connection with that of a very charming young lady. The current reports were not true. He had met this young lady, and been much pleased with her, in the country, at the house of her grandfather, the Reverend Doctor Honeywood,—you remember Miss Letitia Forester, whom I have mentioned repeatedly? On coming to town, he found his country-acquaintance in a social position which seemed to discourage his continued intimacy. He had discovered, however, that he was a not unwelcome visitor, and had kept up friendly relations with her. But there was no truth in the current reports,—none at all.

Some months had passed, after this visit, when I happened one evening to stroll into a box in one of the principal theatres of the city. A small party sat on the seats before me: a middle-aged gentleman and his lady, in front, and directly behind them my young doctor and the same very handsome young lady I had seen him walking with on the side-walk before the swell-fronts and south-exposures. As Professor Langdon seemed to be very much taken up with his companion, and both of them looked as if they were enjoying themselves, I determined not to make my presence known to my young friend, and to withdraw quietly after feasting my eyes with the sight of them for a few minutes.

"It looks as if something might come of it," I said to myself.

At that moment the young lady lifted her arm accidentally, in such a way that the light fell upon the clasp of a chain which encircled her wrist. My eyes filled with tears as I read upon the clasp, in sharp-cut Italic letters, E.V. They were tears at once of sad remembrance and of joyous anticipation; for the ornament on which I looked was the double pledge of a dead sorrow and a living affection. It was the golden bracelet,—the parting-gift of Elsie Venner.

* * * * *

BUBBLES.

I.

I stood on the brink in childhood, And watched the bubbles go From the rock-fretted sunny ripple To the smoother lymph below;

And over the white creek-bottom, Under them every one, Went golden stars in the water, All luminous with the sun.

But the bubbles brake on the surface, And under, the stars of gold Brake, and the hurrying water Flowed onward, swift and cold.

II.

I stood on the brink in manhood, And it came to my weary heart,— In my breast so dull and heavy, After the years of smart,—

That every hollowest bubble Which over my life had passed Still into its deeper current Some sky-sweet gleam had cast;

That, however I mocked it gayly, And guessed at its hollowness, Still shone, with each bursting bubble, One star in my soul the less.



CITIES AND PARKS:

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE NEW YORK CENTRAL PARK.

The first murderer was the first city-builder; and a good deal of murdering has been carried on in the interest of city-building ever since Cain's day. Narrow and crooked streets, want of proper sewerage and ventilation, the absence of forethought in providing open spaces for the recreation of the people, the allowance of intramural burials, and of fetid nuisances, such as slaughter-houses and manufactories of offensive stuffs, have converted cities into pestilential inclosures, and kept Jefferson's saying—"Great cities are great sores"—true in its most literal and mortifying sense.

There is some excuse for the crowded and irregular character of Old-World cities. They grew, and were not builded. Accumulations of people, who lighted like bees upon a chance branch, they found themselves hived in obdurate brick and mortar before they knew it; and then, to meet the necessities of their cribbed, cabined, and confined condition, they must tear down sacred landmarks, sacrifice invaluable possessions, and trample on prescriptive rights, to provide breathing-room for their gasping population. Besides, air, water, light, and cleanliness are modern innovations. The nose seems to have acquired its sensitiveness within a hundred years,—the lungs their objection to foul air, and the palate its disgust at ditch-water like the Thames, within a more recent period. Honestly dirty, and robustly indifferent to what mortally offends our squeamish senses, our happy ancestors fattened on carbonic acid gas, and took the exhalations of graveyards and gutters with a placidity of stomach that excites our physiological admiration. If they died, it was not for want of air. The pestilence carried, them off,—and that was a providential enemy, whose home-bred origin nobody suspected.

It must seem to foreigners of all things the strangest, that, in a country where land is sold at one dollar and twenty-five cents the acre by the square mile, there should in any considerable part of it be a want of room,—any necessity for crowding the population into pent-up cities,—any narrowness of streets, or want of commons and parks. And yet it is an undeniable truth that our American cities are all suffering the want of ample thoroughfares, destitute of adequate parks and commons, and too much crowded for health, convenience, or beauty. Boston has for its main street a serpentine lane, wide enough to drive the cows home from their pastures, but totally and almost fatally inadequate to be the great artery of a city of two hundred thousand people. Philadelphia is little better off with her narrow Chestnut Street, which purchases what accommodation it affords by admitting the parallel streets to nearly equal use, and thus sacrificing the very idea of a metropolitan thoroughfare, in which the splendor and motion and life of a metropolis ought to be concentrated. New York succeeds in making Broadway what the Toledo, the Strand, the Linden Strasse, the Italian Boulevards are; but the street is notoriously blocked and confused, and occasions more loss of time and temper and life and limb than would amply repay, once in five years, the widening of it to double its present breadth.

It is a great misfortune, that our commercial metropolis, the predestined home of five millions of people, should not have a single street worthy of the population, the wealth, the architectural ambition ready to fill and adorn it. Wholesale trade, bankers, brokers, and lawyers seek narrow streets. There must be swift communication between the opposite sides, and easy recognition of faces across the way. But retail trade requires no such conditions. The passers up and down on opposite sides of Broadway are as if in different streets, and neither expect to recognize each other nor to pass from one to the other without set effort. It took a good while to make Broad and Canal Streets attractive business-streets, and to get the importers and jobbers out of Pearl Street; but the work is now done. The Bowery affords the only remaining chance of building a magnificent metropolitan thoroughfare in New York; and we anticipate the day—when Broadway will surrender its pretensions to that now modest Cheapside. Already, about the confluence of the Third and Fourth Avenues at Eighth Street are congregated some of the chief institutions of the city,—the Bible House, the Cooper Institute, the Astor Library, the Mercantile Library. Farther down, the continuation of Canal Street affords the most commanding sites for future public edifices; while the neighborhoods of Franklin and Chatham Squares ought to be seized upon to embellish the city at imperial points with its finest architectural piles. The capacities of New York, below Union Square, for metropolitan splendor are entirely undeveloped; the best points are still occupied by comparatively worthless buildings, and the future will produce a now unlooked-for change in the whole character of that great district.

The huddling together of our American cities is due to the recentness of the time when space was our greatest enemy and sparseness our chief discouragement. Our founders hated room as much as a backwoods farmer hates trees. The protecting walls, which narrowed the ways and cramped the houses of the Old-World cities, did not put a severer compress upon them, than the disgust of solitude and the craving for "the sweet security of streets" threw about our city-builders. In the Western towns now, they carefully give a city air to their villages by crowding the few stores and houses of which they are composed into the likeliest appearance of an absolute scarcity of space.

They labor unconsciously to look crowded, and would sooner go into a cellar to eat their oysters than have them in the finest saloon above ground. And so, if a peninsula like Boston, or a miniature Mesopotamia like New York, or a basin like Cincinnati, could be found to tuck away a town in, in which there was a decent chance of covering over the nakedness of the land within a thousand years, they rejoiced to seize on it and warm their shivering imaginations in the idea of the possible snugness which their distant posterity might enjoy.

Boston owes its only park worth naming—the celebrated Common—to the necessity of leaving a convenient cow-pasture for the babes and sucklings of that now mature community. Forty acres were certainly never more fortunately situated for their predestined service, nor more providentially rescued for the higher uses of man. May the memory of the weaning babes who pleaded for the spot where their "milky mothers" fed be ever sacred in our Athens, and may the cows of Boston be embalmed with the bulls of Egypt! A white heifer should be perpetually grazing, at her tether, in the shadow of the Great Elm. Would it be wholly unbecoming one born in full view of that lovely inclosure to suggest that the straightness of the lines in which the trees are planted on Boston Common, and the rapidly increasing thickness of their foliage, destroy in the summer season the effect of breadth and liberty, hide both the immediate and the distant landscape, stifle the breeze, and diminish the attractiveness of the spot? Fewer trees, scattered in clumps and paying little regard to paths, would vastly improve the effect. The colonnades of the malls furnish all the shade desirable in so small an inclosure.

For the most part, the proper laying-out of cities is both a matter of greater ease and greater importance in America than anywhere else. We are much in the condition of those old Scriptural worthies, of whom it could be so coolly said, "So he went and built a city," as if it were a matter of not much greater account than "So be went and built a log-house." Very likely some of those Biblical cities, extemporized so tersely, were not much more finished than those we now and then encounter in our Western and Southern tours, where a poor shed at four cross-roads is dignified with the title. We believe it was Samuel Dexter, the pattern of Webster, who, on hanging out his shingle in a New England village, where a tavern, a schoolhouse, a church, and a blacksmith's shop constituted the whole settlement, gave as a reason, that, having to break into the world somewhere, he had chosen the weakest place. He would have tried a new Western city, had they then been in fashion, as a still softer spot in the social crust. But this rage for cities in America is prophetic. The name is a spell; and most of the sites, surveyed and distributed into town-lots with squares and parks staked out, are only a century before their time, and will redound to the future credit, however fatal to the immediate cash of their projectors. Who can doubt that Cairo of Illinois—the standing joke of tourists, (and the standing-water of the Ohio and Mississippi,) though no joke to its founders—will one day rival its Egyptian prototype? America runs to cities, and particularly in its Northern latitudes. As cities have been the nurses of democratic institutions and ideas, democratic nations, for very obvious reasons, tend to produce them. They are the natural fruits of a democracy. And with no people are great cities so important, or likely to be so increasingly populous, as with a great agricultural and commercial nation like our own, covered with a free and equal population. The vast wealth of such a people, evenly distributed, and prevented from over-accumulation in special families by the absence of primogeniture and entail,—their general education and refined tastes,—the intense community of ideas, through the all-pervading influence of a daily press reaching with simultaneous diffusion over thousands of square miles,—the facilities of locomotion,—all inevitably cooperate with commercial necessities to create great cities,—not merely as the homes of the mercantile and wealthy class, but as centres where the leisure, the tastes, the pride, and the wants of the people at large repair more and more for satisfaction. Free populations, educated in public schools and with an open career for all, soon instinctively settle the high economies of life.

Many observers have ascribed the rapid change which for twenty years past has been going on in the relative character of towns and villages on the one hand, and cities on the other, to the mere operation of the railroad-system. But that system itself grew out of higher instincts. Equal communities demand equal privileges and advantages. They tend to produce a common level. The country does not acquiesce in the superiority of the city in manners, comforts, or luxuries. It demands a market at its door,—first-rate men for its advisers in all medical, legal, moral, and political matters. It demands for itself the amusements, the refinements, the privileges of the city. This is to be brought about only by the application, at any cost, of the most immediate methods of communication with the city; and behold our railroad system,—the Briarean shaking of hands which the country gives the city! The growth of this system is a curious commentary on the purely mercenary policy which is ordinarily supposed to govern the investments of capital. The railroads of the United States are as much the products of social rivalries and the fruits of an ineradicable democratic instinct for popularizing all advantages, as of any commercial emulation. The people have willingly bandaged their own eyes, and allowed themselves to believe a profitable investment was made, because their inclinations were so determined to have the roads, profitable or not. Their wives and daughters would shop in the city; the choicest sights and sounds were there; there concentrated themselves the intellectual and moral lights; there were the representative splendors of the state or nation;—and a swift access to them was essential to true equality and self-respect.

One does not need to be a graybeard to recall the time when every county-town in New England had, because it needs must have, its first rate lawyer, its distinguished surgeon, its comprehensive business-man,—and when a fixed and unchanging population gave to our villages a more solid and a more elegant air than they now possess. The Connecticut river-villages, with a considerable increase in population, and a vast improvement in the general character of the dwellings, have nevertheless lost their most characterizing features,—the large and dignified residences of their founders, and the presence of the once able and widely known men that were identified with their local importance and pride. The railroads have concentrated the ability of all the professions in the cities, and carried thither the wealth of all the old families. To them, and not to the county-town, repair the people for advice in all critical matters, for supplies in all important purchases, for all their rarest pleasures, and all their most prized and memorable opportunities.

Cities, and the immediate neighborhood of cities, are rapidly becoming the chosen residences of the enterprising, successful, and intelligent. As might be supposed, the movement works both ways: the locomotive facilities carry citizens into the country, as well as countrymen into the city. But those who have once tasted the city are never wholly weaned from it, and every citizen who moves into a village-community sends two countrymen back to take his place. He infects the country with civic tastes, and acts as a great conductor between the town and the country. It is apparent, too, that the experience of ten years, during which some strong reaction upon the centripetal tendencies of the previous ten years drove many of the wealthy and the self-supposed lovers of quietude and space into the country, has dispersed several very natural prejudices, and returned the larger part of the truants to their original ways. One of these prejudices was, that our ordinary Northern climate was as favorable to the outdoor habits of the leisurely class as the English climate; whereas, besides not having a leisurely class, and never being destined to have any, under our wise wealth-distributing customs, and not having any out-door habits, which grow up only on estates and on hereditary fortunes, experience has convinced most who have tried it that we have only six months when out-of-doors allows any comfort, health, or pleasure away from the city. The roads are sloughs; side-walks are wanting; shelter is gone with the leaves; non-intercourse is proclaimed; companionship cannot be found; leisure is a drug; books grow stupid; the country is a stupendous bore. Another prejudice was the anticipated economy of the country. This has turned out to be, as might have been expected, an economy to those who fall in with its ways, which citizens are wholly inapt and unprepared to do. It is very economical not to want city comforts and conveniences. But it proves more expensive to those who go into the country to want them there than it did to have them where they abound. They are not to be had in the country at any price,—water, gas, fuel, food, attendance, amusement, locomotion in all weathers; but such a moderate measure of them as a city-bred family cannot live without involves so great an expense, that the expected economy of life in the country to those not actually brought up there turns out a delusion. The expensiveness of life in the city comes of the generous and grand scale on which it there proceeds, not from the superior cost of the necessaries or comforts of life. They are undoubtedly cheaper in the city, all things considered, than anywhere in the country. Where everything is to be had, in the smallest or the largest quantities,—where every form of service can be commanded at a moment's notice,—where the wit, skill, competition of a country are concentrated upon the furnishing of all commodities at the most taking rates,—there prices will, of course, be most reasonable; and the expensiveness of such communities, we repeat, is entirely due to the abundant wealth which makes such enormous demands and secures such various comforts and luxuries;—in short, it is the high standard of living, not the cost of the necessaries of life. This high standard is, of course, an evil to those whose social ambition drives them to a rivalry for which they are not prepared. But no special pity is due to hardships self-imposed by pride and folly. The probability is, that, proportioned to their income from labor, the cost of living in the city, for the bulk of its population, is lighter, their degree of comfort considered, than in the country. And for the wealthy class of society, no doubt, on the whole, economy is served by living in the city. Our most expensive class is that which lives in the country after the manner of the city.

A literary man, of talents and thorough respectability, lately informed us, that, after trying all places, cities, villages, farmhouses, boarding-houses, hotels, taverns, he had discovered that keeping house in New York was the cheapest way to live,—vastly the cheapest, if the amount of convenience and comfort was considered,—and absolutely cheapest in fact. To be sure, being a bachelor, his housekeeping was done in a single room, the back-room of a third-story, in a respectable and convenient house and neighborhood. His rent was ninety-six dollars a year. His expenses of every other kind, (clothing excepted,) one dollar a week. He could not get his chop or steak cooked well enough, nor his coffee made right, until he took them in hand himself,—nor his bed made, nor his room cleaned. His conveniences were incredibly great. He cooked by alcohol, and expected to warm himself the winter through on two gallons of alcohol at seventy-five cents a gallon. This admirable housekeeping is equalled in economy only by that of a millionnaire, a New-Yorker, and a bachelor also, whose accounts, all accurately kept by his own hand, showed, after death, that (1st) his own living, (2d) his support of religion, (3d) his charities, (4th) his gifts to a favorite niece, had not averaged, for twenty years, over five hundred dollars. Truly, the city is a cheap place to live in, for those who know how! And what place is cheap for those who do not?

Contrary to the old notion, the more accurate statistics of recent times have proved the city, as compared with the country, the more healthy, the more moral, and the more religious place. What used to be considered the great superiority of the country—hardship, absence of social excitements and public amusements, simple food, freedom from moral exposure—a better knowledge of the human constitution, considered either physically or morally, has shown to be decidedly opposed to health and virtue. More constitutions are broken down in the hardening process than survive and profit by it. Cold houses, coarse food unskilfully cooked, long winters, harsh springs, however favorable to the heroism of the stomach, the lungs, and the spirits, are not found conducive to longevity. In like manner, monotony, seclusion, lack of variety and of social stimulus lower the tone of humanity, drive to sensual pleasures and secret vices, and nourish a miserable pack of mean and degrading immoralities, of which scandal, gossip, backbiting, tale-bearing are the better examples.

In the Old World, the wealth of states is freely expended in the embellishment of their capitals. It is well understood, not only that loyalty is never more economically secured than by a lavish appeal to the pride of the citizen in the magnificence of the public buildings and grounds which he identifies with his nationality, but that popular restlessness is exhaled and dangerous passions drained off in the roominess which parks and gardens afford the common people. In the New World, it has not yet proved necessary to provide against popular discontents or to bribe popular patriotism with spectacles and state-parade; and if it were so, there is no government with an interest of its own separate from that of the people to adopt this policy. It has therefore been concluded that democratic institutions must necessarily lack splendor and great public provision for the gratification of the aesthetic tastes or the indulgence of the leisure of the common people. The people being, then, our sovereigns, it has not been felt that they would or could have the largeness of view, the foresight, the sympathy with leisure, elegance, and ease, to provide liberally and expensively for their own recreation and refreshment. A bald utility has been the anticipated genius of our public policy. Our national Mercury was to be simply the god of the post-office, or the sprite of the barometer,—our Pan, to keep the crows from the corn-fields,—our Muses, to preside over district-schools. It begins now to appear that the people are not likely to think anything too good for themselves, or to higgle about the expense of whatever ministers largely to their tastes and fancies,—that political freedom, popular education, the circulation of newspapers, books, engravings, pictures, have already created a public which understands that man does not live by bread alone,—which demands leisure, beauty, space, architecture, landscape, music, elegance, with an imperative voice, and is ready to back its demands with the necessary self-taxation. This experience our absolute faith in free institutions enabled us to anticipate as the inevitable result of our political system; but let us confess that the rapidity with which it has developed itself has taken us by surprise. We knew, that, when the people truly realized their sovereignty, they would claim not only the utilitarian, but the artistic and munificent attributes of their throne,—and that all the splendors and decorations, all the provisions for leisure, taste, and recreation, which kings and courts have made, would be found to be mere preludes and rehearsals to the grander arrangements and achievements of the vastly richer and more legitimate sovereign, the People, when he understood his own right and duty. As dynasties and thrones have been predictions of the royalty of the people, so old courts and old capitals, with all their pomp and circumstance, their parks and gardens, galleries and statues, are but dim prefigurings of the glories of architecture, the grandeur of the grounds, the splendor and richness of the museums and conservatories with which the people will finally crown their own self-respect and decorate their own majesty. But we did not expect to see this sure prophecy turning itself into history in our day. We thought the people were too busy with the spade and the quill to care for any other sceptres at present. But it is now plain that they have been dreaming princely dreams and thinking royal thoughts all the while, and are now ready to put them into costly expression.

Passing by all other evidences of this, we come at once to the most majestic and indisputable witness of this fact, the actual existence of the Central Park in New York,—the most striking evidence of the sovereignty of the people yet afforded in the history of free institutions,—the best answer yet given to the doubts and fears which have frowned on the theory of self-government,—the first grand proof that the people do not mean to give up the advantages and victories of aristocratic governments, in maintaining a popular one, but to engraft the energy, foresight, and liberality of concentrated powers upon democratic ideas, and keep all that has adorned and improved the past, while abandoning what has impaired and disgraced it. That the American people appreciate and are ready to support what is most elegant, refined, and beautiful in the greatest capitals of Europe,—that they value and intend to provide the largest and most costly opportunities for the enjoyment of their own leisure, artistic tastes, and rural instincts, is emphatically declared in the history, progress, and manifest destiny of the Central Park; while their competency to use wisely, to enjoy peacefully, to protect sacredly, and to improve industriously the expensive, exposed, and elegant pleasure-ground they have devised, is proved with redundant testimony by the year and more of experience we have had in the use of the Park, under circumstances far less favorable than any that can ever again arise. As a test of the ability of the people to know their own higher wants, of the power of their artistic instincts, their docility to the counsels of their most judicious representatives, their superiority to petty economies, their strength to resist the natural opposition of heavy tax-payers to expensive public works, their gentleness and amenableness to just authority in the pursuit of their pleasures, of their susceptibility to the softening influences of elegance and beauty, of their honest pride and rejoicing in their own splendor, of their superior fondness for what is innocent and elevating over what is base and degrading, when brought within equal reach, the Central Park has already afforded most encouraging, nay, most decisive proof.

The Central Park is an anomaly to those who have not deeply studied the tendencies of popular governments. It is a royal work, undertaken and achieved by the Democracy,—surprising equally themselves and their skeptical friends at home and abroad,—and developing, both in its creation and growth, in its use and application, new and almost incredible tastes, aptitudes, capacities, and powers in the people themselves. That the people should be capable of the magnanimity of laying down their authority, when necessary to concentrate it in the hands of energetic and responsible trustees requiring large powers,—that they should be willing to tax themselves heavily for the benefit of future generations,—that they should be wise enough to distrust their own judgment and defer modestly to the counsels of experts,—that they should be in favor of the most solid and substantial work,—that they should be willing to have the better half of their money under ground and out of sight, invested in drains and foundations of roads,—that they should acquiesce cheerfully in all the restrictions necessary to the achievement of the work, while admitted freely to the use and enjoyment of its inchoate processes,—that their conduct and manners should prove so unexceptionable,—their disposition to trespass upon strict rules so small,—their use and improvement of the work so free, so easy, and so immediately justificatory of all the cost of so generous and grand an enterprise: these things throw light and cheer upon the prospects of popular institutions, at a period when they are seriously clouded from other quarters.

We do not propose to enter into any description of the Central Park. Those who have not already visited it will find a description, accompanying a study for the plan submitted for competition in 1858, by Messrs. Olmsted and Vaux, and published among the Documents of the New York Senate, which will satisfy their utmost expectations. We wish merely to throw out some replies to the leading objections we have met in the papers and other quarters to the plan itself. We need hardly say that the Central Park requires no advocate and no defence. Its great proprietor, the Public, is perfectly satisfied with his purchase and his agents. He thinks himself providentially guided in the choice of his Superintendent, and does not vainly pique himself upon his sagacity in selecting Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted for the post. This gentleman, in his place, offsets at least a thousand square plugs in round holes. He is precisely the man for the place,—and that is precisely the place for the man. Among final causes, it would be difficult not to assign the Central Park as the reason of his existence. To fill the duties of his office as he has filled them,—to prove himself equally competent as original designer, patient executor, potent disciplinarian, and model police-officer,—to enforce a method, precision, and strictness, equally marked in the workmanship, in the accounts, and in the police of the Park,—to be equally studious of the highest possible use and enjoyment of the work by the public of to-day, and of the prospects and privileges of the coming generations,—to sympathize with the outside people, while in the closest fellowship with the inside,—to make himself equally the favorite and friend of the people and of the workmen: this proves an original adaptation, most carefully improved, which we seriously believe not capable of being paralleled in any other public work, of similar magnitude, ever undertaken. The union of prosaic sense with poetical feeling, of democratic sympathies with refined and scholarly tastes, of punctilious respect for facts with tender hospitality for ideas, has enabled him to appreciate and embody, both in the conception and execution of the Park, the beau-ideal of a people's pleasure-ground. If he had not borne, as an agriculturist, and as the keenest, most candid, and instructive of all our writers on the moral and political economy of our American Slavery, a name to be long remembered, he might safely trust his reputation to the keeping of New York city and all her successive citizens, as the author and achiever of the Central Park,—which, when completed, will prove, we are confident, the most splendid, satisfactory, and popular park in the world.

Two grand assumptions have controlled the design from the inception.

First, That the Park would be the only park deserving the name, for a town of twice or thrice the present population of New York; that this town would be built compactly around it (and in this respect of centrality it would differ from any extant metropolitan park of magnitude); and that it would be a town of greater wealth and more luxurious demands than any now existing.

Second, That, while in harmony with the luxury of the rich, the Park should and would be used more than any existing park by people of moderate wealth and by poor people, and that its use by these people must be made safe, convenient, agreeable; that they must be expected to have a pride and pleasure in using it rightly, in cherishing and protecting it against all causes of injury and dilapidation, and that this is to be provided for and encouraged.

A want of appreciation of the first assumption is the cause of all sincere criticism against the Transverse Roads. Some engineers originally pronounced them impracticable of construction; but all their grounds of apprehension have been removed by the construction of two of them, especially by the completion of the tunnel under Vista Rock, and below the foundation of the Reservoir embankment and wall. They were planned for the future; they are being built solidly, massively, permanently, for the future. Less thoroughly and expensively constructed, they would need to be rebuilt in the future at enormously increased cost, and with great interruption to the use of the Park; and the grounds in their vicinity, losing the advantage of age, would need to be remodelled and remade. An engineer, visiting the Park for the first time, and hearing the criticism to which we refer applied to the walls and bridges of the Transverse Roads, observed,—"People in this country are so unaccustomed to see genuine substantial work, they do not know what it means when they meet with it." We think he did not do the people justice.

The Transverse Roads passing through the Park will not be seen from it; and although they will not be, when deep in the shadow of the overhanging bridges and groves, without a very grand beauty, this will be the beauty of utility and of permanence, not of imaginative grace. The various bridges and archways of the Park proper, while equally thorough in their mode of construction, and consequently expensive, are in all cases embellished each with special decorations in form and color. These decorations have the same quality of substantiality and thorough good workmanship. Note the clean under-cutting of the leaves, (of which there are more than fifty different forms in the decorations of the Terrace arch,) and their consequent sharp and expressive shadows. Admitting the need of these structures, and the economy of a method of construction which would render them permanent, the additional cost of their permanent decoration in this way could not have been rationally grudged.

Regard for the distant future has likewise controlled the planting; and the Commissioners, in so far as they have resisted the clamor of the day, that the Park must be immediately shaded, have done wisely. Every horticulturist knows that this immediate shade would be purchased at an expense of dwarfed, diseased, and deformed trees, with stinted shade, in the future. No man has planted large and small trees together without regretting the former within twenty years. The same consideration answers an objection which has been made, that the trees are too much arranged in masses of color. Imagine a growth of twenty years, with the proper thinnings, and most of these masses will resolve each into one tree, singled out, as the best individual of its mass, to remain. There is a large scale in the planting, as in everything else.

Regard to the convenience, comfort, and safety of those who cannot afford to visit the Park in carriages has led to an unusual extent and variety of character in the walks, and also to a peculiar arrangement by which they are carried in many instances beneath and across the line of the carriage-roads. Thus access can be had by pedestrians to all parts of the Park at times when the roads are thronged with vehicles, without any delays or dangers in crossing the roads, and without the humiliation to sensitive democrats of being spattered or dusted, or looked down upon from luxurious equipages.

The great irregularity of the surface offers facilities for this purpose,—the walks being carried through the heads of valleys which are crossed by the carriage-ways upon arches of masonry. Now with regard to these archways, if no purposes of convenience were to be served by them, the Park would not, we may admit, be beautified by them. But we assume that the population of New York is to be doubled; that, when it is so, if not sooner, the walks and drives of the Park will often be densely thronged; and, for the comfort of the people, when that shall be the case, we consider that these archways will be absolutely necessary.[A] Assuming further, then, that they are to be built, and, if ever, built now,—since it would involve an entirely new-modelling of the Park to introduce them in the future,—it was necessary to pay some attention to make them agreeable and unmonotonous objects, or the general impression of ease, freedom, and variety would be interfered with very materially. It is not to make the Park architectural, as is commonly supposed, that various and somewhat expensive design is introduced; on the contrary, it is the intention to plant closely in the vicinity of all the arches, so that they may be unnoticed in the general effect, and be seen only just at the time they are being used, when, of course, they must come under notice. The charge is made, that the features of the natural landscape have been disregarded in the plan. To which we answer, that on the ground of the Lower Park there was originally no landscape, in the artistic sense. There were hills, and hillocks, and rocks, and swampy valleys. It would have been easy to flood the swamps into ponds, to clothe the hillocks with grass and the hills with foliage, and leave the rocks each unscathed in its picturesqueness. And this would have been a great improvement; yet there would be no landscape: there would be an unassociated succession of objects,—many nice "bits" of scenery, appropriate to a villa-garden or to an artist's sketch-book, but no scenery such as an artist arranges for his broad canvas, no composition, no park-like prospect. It would have afforded a good place for loitering; but if this were all that was desirable, forty acres would have done as well as a thousand, as is shown in the Ramble. Space, breadth, objects in the distance, clear in outline, but obscure, mysterious, exciting curiosity, in their detail, were wanting.

[Footnote A: The length of roads, walks, etc., completed, will be found in the last Annual Report, pp. 47-52.

The length of the famous drive in Hyde Park (the King Road) is 2 1/2 miles. There is another road, straight between two gates, 1 1/4 miles in length. "Rotten Bow" (the Ride) is a trifle over a mile in length.

The length of Drive in Central Park will be 9 1/3 miles; the length of Bridle Roads, 5 1/3 miles; the length of Walks, 20 miles.

Ten miles of walk, gravelled and substantially underlaid, are now finished.

Eighteen archways are planned, beside those of the Transverse Roads, equal 1 to 46 acres. When the planting is well-grown, no two of the archways will be visible from the same point.]

To their supply there were hard limitations. On each side, within half a mile of each other, there were to be lines of stone and brick houses, cutting off any great lateral distance. Suppose one to have entered the Park at the south end, and to have moved far enough within it to dispossess his mind of the sentiments of the streets: he will have threaded his way between hillocks and rocks, one after another, differing in magnitude, but never opening a landscape having breadth or distance. He ascends a hill and looks northward: the most distant object is the hard, straight, horizontal line of the stone wall of the Reservoir, flanked on one side by the peak of Vista Rock. It is a little over a mile distant,—but, standing clear out against the horizon, appears much less than that. Hide it with foliage, as well as the houses right and left, and the limitation of distance is a mile in front and a quarter of a mile upon each side. Low hills or ridges of rock in a great degree cut off the intermediate ground from view: cross these, and the same unassociated succession of objects might be visited, but no one of them would have engaged the visitor's attention and attracted him onward from a distance. The plan has evidently been to make a selection of the natural features to form the leading ideas of the new scenery, to magnify the most important quality of each of these, and to remove or tone down all the irregularities of the ground between them, and by all means to make the limit of vision undefined and obscure. Thus, in the central portion of the Lower Park the low grounds have been generally filled, and the high grounds reduced; but the two largest areas of low ground have been excavated, the excavation being carried laterally into the hills as far as was possible, without extravagant removal of rock, and the earth obtained transferred to higher ground connecting hillocks with hills. Excavations have also been made about the base of all the more remarkable ledges and peaks of rock, while additional material has been conveyed to their sides and summits to increase their size and dignity.

This general rule of the plan was calculated to give, in the first place, breadth, and, in the second, emphasis, to any general prospect of the Park. A want of unity, or rather, if we may use the word, of assemblage, belonged to the ground; and it must have been one of the first problems to establish some one conspicuous, salient idea which should take the lead in the composition, and about which all minor features should seem naturally to group as accessories. The straight, evidently artificial, and hence distinctive and notable, Mall, with its terminating Terrace, was the resolution of this problem. It will be, when the trees are fully grown, a feature of the requisite importance, —and will serve the further purpose of opening the view toward, and, as it were, framing and keeping attention directed upon, Vista Rock, which from the southern end of the Mall is the most distant object that can be brought into view.

For the same purpose, evidently, it was thought desirable to insist, as far as possible, upon a pause at the point where, to the visitor proceeding northward, the whole hill-side and glen before Vista Rock first came under view, and where an effect of distance in that direction was yet attainable. This is provided for by the Terrace, with its several stairs and stages, and temptations to linger and rest. The introduction of the Lake to the northward of the Terrace also obliges a diversion from the direct line of proceeding; the visitor's attention is henceforth directed laterally, or held by local objects, until at length by a circuitous route he reaches and ascends (if he chooses) the summit of Vista Rock, when a new landscape of entirely different character, and one not within our control, is opened to him. Thus the apparent distance of Vista Rock from the lower part of the Park (which is increased by means which we have not thought it necessary to describe) is not falsified by any experience of the visitor in his subsequent journey to it.

There was a fine and completely natural landscape in the Upper Park. The plan only simplifies it,—removing and modifying those objects which were incongruous with its best predominating character, and here and there adding emphasis or shadow.

The Park (with the extension) is two and three quarter miles in length and nearly half a mile wide. It contains 843 acres, including the Reservoir (136 acres).

Original cost of land to 106th Street, $5,444,369.90 Of this, assessed on adjoining property, 1,657,590.00 To be paid by corporation direct, 3,786,779.90 Assessed value of extension land, (106th to 110th,) 1,400,000.00 Total cost of land, $6,800,000.00[B]

[Footnote B: The amount thus far expended in construction and maintenance is nearly $3,000,000. The plan upon which the work is proceeding will require a further expenditure of $1,600,000. The expenditure is not squandered. Much the larger part of it is paid for day-labor. Account with laborers is kept by the hour, the rate of wages being scarcely above the lowest contractor's rates, and 30 per cent. below the rate of other public works of the city; always paid directly into the laborer's hands,—in specie, however.

The thorough government of the work, and the general efficiency of its direction, are indicated by the remarkable good order and absence of "accidents" which have characterized it. See p. 64 of Annual Report, 1860. For some particulars of cost, see pp. 61, 62, of same Report.]

In all European parks, there is more or less land the only use of which is to give a greater length to the roads which pass around it,—it being out of sight, and, in American phrase, unimproved. There is not an acre of land in Central Park, which, if not wanted for Park purposes, would not sell for at least as much as the land surrounding the Park and beyond its limits,—that is to say, for at least $60,000, the legal annual interest of which is $4,200. This would be the ratio of the annual waste of property in the case of any land not put to use; but, in elaborating the plan, care has been taken that no part of the Park should be without its special advantages, attractions, or valuable uses, and that these should as far as possible be made immediately available to the public.

The comprehensiveness of purpose and the variety of detail of the plan far exceed those of any other park in the world, and have involved, and continue to involve, a greater amount of study and invention than has ever before been given to a park. A consideration of this should enforce an unusually careful method of maintenance, both in the gardening and police departments. Sweeping with a broom of brush-wood once a week is well enough for a hovel; but the floors of a palace must needs be daily waxed and polished, to justify their original cost. We are unused to thorough gardening in this country. There are not in all the United States a dozen lawns or grass-plots so well kept as the majority of tradesmen's door-yards in England or Holland. Few of our citizens have ever seen a really well-kept ground. During the last summer, much of the Park was in a state of which the Superintendent professed himself to be ashamed; but it caused not the slightest comment with the public, so far as we heard. As nearly all men in office, who have not a personal taste to satisfy, are well content, if they succeed in satisfying the public, we fear the Superintendent will be forced to "economize" on the keeping of the Park, as he was the past year, to a degree which will be as far from true economy as the cleaning of mosaic floors with birch brooms. The Park is laid out in a manner which assumes and requires cleanly and orderly habits in those who use it; much of its good quality will be lost, if it be not very neatly kept; and such negligence in the keeping will tend to negligence in the using.

In the plan, there is taken for granted a generally good inclination, a cleanly, temperate, orderly disposition, on the part of the public which is to frequent the Park, and finally to be the governors of its keeping, and a good, well-disposed, and well-disciplined police force, who would, in spite of "the inabilities of a republic," adequately control the cases exceptional to the assumed general good habits of that public,—at the same time neglecting no precaution to facilitate the convenient enforcement of the laws, and reduce the temptation to disorderly practices to a minimum.

How thoroughly justified has been this confidence in the people, taking into account the novelty of a good public ground, of cleanliness in our public places, and indeed the novelty of the whole undertaking, we have already intimated. How much the privileges of the Park in its present incomplete condition are appreciated, and how generally the requirements of order are satisfied, the following summary, compiled from the Park-keeper's reports of the first summer's use after the roads of the Lower Park were opened, will inadequately show.

Number of visitors in six months. Foot. Saddle. Carriages. May, 184,450 8,017 26,500 June, 294,300 9,050 31,300 July, 71,035 2,710 4,945 August, 63,800 875 14,905 September, 47,433 2,645 20,708 October, 160,187 3,014 26,813 Usual number of visitors on a fine summer's day, 2,000 90 1,200 Usual number of visitors on a fine Sunday, 35,000 60 1,500 (Men 20,000, Women 13,000, Children 2,000.) Sunday, May 29, entrances counted, 75,000 120 3,200 Usual number of visitors, fine Concert day, 7,500 180 2,500 Saturday, Sept. 22, (Concert day,) entrances counted, 13,000 225 4,650

During this time, (six months,) but thirty persons were detected upon the Park tipsy. Of these, twenty-four were sufficiently drunk to justify their arrest,—the remainder going quietly off the grounds, when requested to do so. That is to say, it is not oftener than once a week that a man is observed to be the worse for liquor while on the Park; and this, while three to four thousand laboring men are at work within it, are paid upon it, and grog-shops for their accommodation are all along its boundaries. In other words, about one in thirty thousand of the visitors to the Park has been under the influence of drink when induced to visit it.

On Christmas and New-Year's Days, it was estimated by many experienced reporters that over 100,000 persons, each day, were on the Park, generally in a frolicksome mood. Of these, but one (a small boy) was observed by the keepers to be drunk; there was not an instance of quarrelling, and no disorderly conduct, except a generally good-natured resistance to the efforts of the police to maintain safety on the ice.

The Bloomingdale Road and Harlem Lane, two famous trotting-courses, where several hundred famously fast horses may be seen at the top of their speed any fine afternoon, both touch an entrance to the Park. The Park roads are, of course, vastly attractive to the trotters, and for a few weeks there were daily instances of fast driving there: as soon, however, as the law and custom of the Park, restricting speed to a moderate rate, could be made generally understood, fast driving became very rare,—more so, probably, than in Hyde Park or the Bois de Boulogne. As far as possible, an arrest has been made in every case of intentionally fast driving observed by the keepers: those arrested number less than one to ten thousand of the vehicles entering the Park for pleasure-driving. In each case a fine (usually three dollars) has been imposed by the magistrate.

In six months there have been sixty-four arrests for all sorts of "disorderly conduct," including walking on the grass after being requested to quit it, quarrelling, firing crackers, etc.,—one in eighteen thousand visitors. So thoroughly established is the good conduct of people on the Park, that many ladies walk daily in the Ramble without attendance.

A protest, as already intimated, is occasionally made against the completeness of detail to which the Commissioners are disposed to carry their work, on the ground that the habits of the masses of our city-population are ill-calculated for its appreciation, and that loss and damage to expensive work must often be the result. To which we would answer, that, if the authorities of the city hitherto have so far misapprehended or neglected their duty as to allow a large industrious population to continue so long without the opportunity for public recreations that it has grown up ignorant of the rights and duties appertaining to the general use of a well-kept pleasure-ground, any losses of the kind apprehended, which may in consequence occur, should be cheerfully borne as a necessary part of the responsibility of a good government. Experience thus far, however, does not justify these apprehensions.

To collect exact evidence showing that the Park is already exercising a good influence upon the character of the people is not in the nature of the case practicable. It has been observed that rude, noisy fellows, after entering the more advanced or finished parts of the Park, become hushed, moderate, and careful. Observing the generally tranquil and pleased expression, and the quiet, sauntering movement, the frequent exclamations of pleasure in the general view or in the sight of some special object of natural beauty, on the part of the crowds of idlers in the Ramble on a Sunday afternoon, and recollecting the totally opposite character of feeling, thought, purpose, and sentiment which is expressed by a crowd assembled anywhere else, especially in the public streets of the city, the conviction cannot well be avoided that the Park already exercises a beneficent influence of no inconsiderable value, and of a kind which could have been gained in no other way. We speak of Sunday afternoons and of a crowd; but the Park evidently does induce many a poor family, and many a poor seamstress and journeyman, to take a day or a half-day from the working-time of the week, to the end of retaining their youth and their youthful relations with purer Nature, and to their gain in strength, good-humor, safe citizenship, and—if the economists must be satisfied—money-value to the commonwealth. Already, too, there are several thousand men, women, and children who resort to the Park habitually: some daily, before business or after business, and women and children at regular hours during the day; some weekly; and some at irregular, but certain frequent chances of their business. Mr. Astor, when in town, rarely misses his daily ride; nor Mr. Bancroft; Mr. Mayor Harper never his drive. And there are certain working-men with their families equally sure to be met walking on Sunday morning or Sunday afternoon; others on Saturday. The number of these habitues constantly increases. When we meet those who depend on the Park as on the butcher and the omnibus, and the thousands who are again drawn by whatever impulse and suggestion of the hour, we often ask, What would they have done, where would they have been, to what sort of recreation would they have turned, if to any, had there been no park? Of one sort the answer is supplied by the keeper of a certain saloon, who came to the Park, as he said, to see his old Sunday customers. The enjoyment of the ice had made them forget their grog.

Six or seven years ago, an opposition brought down the prices and quadrupled the accommodations of the Staten Island ferry-boats. Clifton Park and numerous German gardens were opened; and the consequence was described, in common phrase, as the transformation of a portion of the island, on Sunday, to a Pandemonium. We thought we would, like Dante, have a cool look at it. We had read so much about it, and heard it talked about and preached about so much, that we were greatly surprised to find the throng upon the sidewalks quite as orderly and a great deal more evidently good-natured than any we ever saw before in the United States. We spent some time in what we had been led to suppose the hottest place, Clifton Park, in which there was a band of music and several thousand persons, chiefly Germans, though with a good sprinkling of Irish servant-girls with their lovers and brothers, with beer and ices; but we saw no rudeness, and no more impropriety, no more excitement, no more (week-day) sin, than we had seen at the church in the morning. Every face, however, was foreign. By-and-by came in three Americans, talking loudly, moving rudely, proclaiming contempt for "lager" and yelling for "liquor," bantering and offering fight, joking coarsely, profane, noisy, demonstrative in any and every way, to the end of attracting attention to themselves, and proclaiming that they were "on a spree" and highly excited. They could not keep it up; they became awkward, ill at ease, and at length silent, standing looking about them in stupid wonder. Evidently they could not understand what it meant: people drinking, smoking in public, on Sunday, and yet not excited, not trying to make it a spree. It was not comprehensible. We ascertained that one of the ferry-boat bars had disposed of an enormous stock of lemonade, ginger-beer, and soda-water before three o'clock,—but, till this was all gone, not half a dozen glasses of intoxicating drinks. We saw no quarrelling, no drunkenness, and nothing like the fearful disorder which had been described,—with a few such exceptions as we have mentioned of native Americans who had no conception of enjoyment free from bodily excitement.

To teach and induce habits of orderly, tranquil, contemplative, or social amusement, moderate exercises and recreation, soothing to the nerves, has been the most needed "mission" for New York. We think we see daily evidence that the Park accomplishes not a little in this way. Unfortunately, the evidence is not of a character to be expressed in Federal currency, else the Commissioners would not be hesitating about taking the ground from One-Hundred-and-Sixth to One-Hundred-and-Tenth Street, because it is to cost half a million more than was anticipated. What the Park is worth to us to-day is, we trust, but a trifle to what it will be worth when the bulk of our hard-working people, of our over-anxious Marthas, and our gutter-skating children shall live nearer to it, and more generally understand what it offers them,—when its play-grounds are ready, its walks more shaded,—when cheap and wholesome meals, to the saving, occasionally, of the dreary housewife's daily pottering, are to be had upon it,—when its system of cheap cabs shall have been successfully inaugurated,—and when a daily discourse of sweet sounds shall have been made an essential part of its functions in the body-politic.

We shall not probably live to see "the gentility of Sir Philip Sidney made universal," but we do hope that we shall live to know many residents of towns of ten thousand population who will be ashamed to subscribe for the building of new churches while no public play-ground is being prepared for their people.



LIFE IN THE IRON-MILLS.

"Is this the end? O Life, as futile, then, as frail! What hope of answer or redress?"

A cloudy day: do you know what that is in a town of iron-works? The sky sank down before dawn, muddy, flat, immovable. The air is thick, clammy with the breath of crowded human beings. It stifles me. I open the window, and, looking out, can scarcely see through the rain the grocer's shop opposite, where a crowd of drunken Irishmen are puffing Lynchburg tobacco in their pipes. I can detect the scent through all the foul smells ranging loose in the air.

The idiosyncrasy of this town is smoke. It rolls sullenly in slow folds from the great chimneys of the iron-foundries, and settles down in black, slimy pools on the muddy streets. Smoke on the wharves, smoke on the dingy boats, on the yellow river,—clinging in a coating of greasy soot to the house-front, the two faded poplars, the faces of the passers-by. The long train of mules, dragging masses of pig-iron through the narrow street, have a foul vapor hanging to their reeking sides. Here, inside, is a little broken figure of an angel pointing upward from the mantel-shelf; but even its wings are covered with smoke, clotted and black. Smoke everywhere! A dirty canary chirps desolately in a cage beside me. Its dream of green fields and sunshine is a very old dream,—almost worn out, I think.

From the back-window I can see a narrow brick-yard sloping down to the river-side, strewed with rain-butts and tubs. The river, dull and tawny-colored, (la belle riviere!) drags itself sluggishly along, tired of the heavy weight of boats and coal-barges. What wonder? When I was a child, I used to fancy a look of weary, dumb appeal upon the face of the negro-like river slavishly bearing its burden day after day. Something of the same idle notion comes to me to-day, when from the street-window I look on the slow stream of human life creeping past, night and morning, to the great mills. Masses of men, with dull, besotted faces bent to the ground, sharpened here and there by pain or cunning; skin and muscle and flesh begrimed with smoke and ashes; stooping all night over boiling caldrons of metal, laired by day in dens of drunkenness and infamy; breathing from infancy to death an air saturated with fog and grease and soot, vileness for soul and body. What do you make of a case like that, amateur psychologist? You call it an altogether serious thing to be alive: to these men it is a drunken jest, a joke,—horrible to angels perhaps, to them commonplace enough. My fancy about the river was an idle one: it is no type of such a life. What if it be stagnant and slimy here? It knows that beyond there waits for it odorous sunlight,—quaint old gardens, dusky with soft, green foliage of apple-trees, and flushing crimson with roses,—air, and fields, and mountains. The future of the Welsh puddler passing just now is not so pleasant. To be stowed away, after his grimy work is done, in a hole in the muddy graveyard, and after that,—not air, nor green fields, nor curious roses.