MADAM DELIA'S EXPECTATIONS.

Madam Delia sat at the door of her show-tent, which, as she discovered too late, had been pitched on the wrong side of the Parade. It was "Election day" in Oldport, and there must have been a thousand people in the public square; there were really more than the four policemen on duty could properly attend to, so that half of them had leisure to step into Madam Delia's tent, and see little Gerty and the rattlesnakes. It was past the appointed hour; but the exhibition had never yet been known to open for less than ten spectators, and even the addition of the policemen only made eight. So the mistress of the show sat in resolute expectation, a little defiant of the human race. It was her thirteenth annual tour, and she knew mankind.

Surely there were people enough; surely they had money enough; surely they were easily pleased. They gathered in crowds to hear crazy Mrs. Green denouncing the city government for sending her to the poorhouse in a wagon instead of a carriage. They thronged to inspect the load of hay that was drawn by the two horses whose harness had been cut to pieces, and then repaired by Denison's Eureka Cement. They all bought whips with that unfailing readiness which marks a rural crowd; they bought packages of lead-pencils with a dollar so skilfully distributed through every six parcels that the oldest purchaser had never found more than ten cents in his. They let the man who cured neuralgia rub his magic curative on their foreheads, and allowed the man who cleaned watch-chains to dip theirs in the purifying powder. They twirled the magic arrow, which never by any chance rested at the corner compartments where the gold watches and the heavy bracelets were piled, but perpetually recurred to the side stations, and indicated only a beggarly prize of india-rubber sleeve-buttons. They bought ten cents' worth of jewelry, obtaining a mingled treasure of two breast-pins, a plain gold ring, an enamelled ring, and "a piece of California gold." But still no added prizes in the human lottery fell to the show-tent of Madam Delia.

As time went on and the day grew warmer, the crowd grew visibly less enterprising, and business flagged. The man with the lifting-machine pulled at the handles himself, a gratuitous exhibition before a circle of boys now penniless. The man with the metallic polish dipped and redipped his own watch-chain. The men at the booths sat down to lunch upon the least presentable of their own pies. The proprietor of the magic arrow, who had already two large breastpins on his dirty shirt, selected from his own board another to grace his coat-collar, as if thereby to summon back the waning fortunes of the day. But Madam Delia still sat at her post, undaunted. She kept her eye on two sauntering militia-men in uniform, but they only read her sign and seated themselves on the curbstone, to smoke. Then a stout black soldier came in sight; but he turned and sat down at a table to eat oysters, served by a vast and smiling matron of his own race. But even this, though perhaps the most wholly cheerful exhibition that the day yielded, had no charms for Madam Delia. Her own dinner was ordered at the tavern after the morning show; and where is the human being who does not resent the spectacle of another human being who dines earlier than himself?

It grew warmer, so warm that the canvas walls of the tent seemed to grasp a certain armful of heat and keep it inexorably in; so warm that the out-of-door man was dozing as he leaned against the tent-stake, and only recovered himself at the sound of Madam Delia's penetrating voice, and again began to summon people in, though there was nobody within hearing. It was so warm that Mr. De Marsan, born Bangs, the wedded husband of Madam Delia, dozed as he walked up and down the sidewalk, and had hardly voice enough to testify, as an unconcerned spectator, to the value of the show. Only the unwearied zeal of the showwoman defied alike thermometer and neglect, She kept her eye on everything,—on Old Bill as he fed the monkeys within, on Monsieur Comstock as he hung the trapeze for the performance, on the little girls as they tried to peddle their songs, on the sleepy out-of-door man, and on the people who did not draw near. If she could, she would have played all the parts in her own small company, and would have put the inexhaustible nervous energies of her own New England nature (she was born at Meddibemps, State of Maine) into all. Apart from this potent stimulus, not a soul in the establishment, save little Gerty, possessed any energy whatever. Old Bill had unfortunately never learned total abstinence from the wild animals among which he had passed his life; Monsieur Comstock's brains had chiefly run into his arms and legs; and Mr. De Marsan, the nominal head of the establishment, was a peaceful Pennsylvanian, who was wont to move as slowly as if he were one of those processions that take a certain number of hours to pass a given point. This Madam Delia understood and expected; he was an innocent who was to be fed, clothed, and directed; but his languor was no excuse for the manifest feebleness of the out-of-door man. "That man don't know how to talk no more 'n nothin' at all," said Madam Delia reproachfully, to the large policeman who stood by her. "He never speaks up bold to nobody. Why don't he tell 'em what's inside the tent? I don't want him to say no more 'n the truth, but he might tell that. Tell 'em about Gerty, you nincum! Tell 'em about the snakes. Tell 'em what Comstock is. 'T ain't the real original Comstock" (this to the policeman), "it's only another that used to perform with him in Comstock Brothers. This one can't swaller, so we leave out the knives."

"Where's t' other?" said the sententious policeman, whose ears were always open for suspicious disappearances.

"Didn't you hear?" cried the incredulous lady. "Scattered! Gone! Went off one day with a box of snakes and two monkeys. Come, now, you must have heard. We had a sight of trouble pay-in' detectives."

"What for a looking fellow was he?" said the policeman.

"Dark complected," was the reply. "Black mustache. He understood his business, I tell you now. Swallered five or six knives to onst, and give good satisfaction to any audience. It was him that brought us Gerty and Anne,—that's the other little girl. I didn't know as they was his children, and didn't know as they was, but one day he said he got 'em from an old woman in New York, and that was all he knew."

"They're smart," said the man, whom Gerty had just coaxed into paying three cents instead of two for Number Six of the "Singer's Journal,"—a dingy little sheet, containing a song about a fat policeman, which she had brought to his notice.

"You'd better believe it," said Madam Delia, proudly. "At least Gerty is; Anne ain't. I tell 'em, Gerty knows enough for both. Anne don't know nothin', and what she does know she don't know sartin. All she can do is just to hang on: she's the strongest and she does the heavy business on the trapeze and parallel bars."

"Is Gerty good on that?" said the public guardian.

"I tell you," said the head of the establishment.—"Go and dress, children! Five minutes!"

All this time Madam Delia had been taking occasional fees from the tardy audience, had been making change, detecting counterfeit currency, and discerning at a glance the impostures of one deceitful boy who claimed to have gone out on a check and lost it. At last Stephen Blake and his little sister entered, and the house was regarded as full. These two revellers had drained deep the cup of "Election-day" excitement. They had twirled all the arrows, bought all the jewelry, inspected all the colored eggs, blown at all the spirometers, and tasted all the egg-pop which the festal day required. These delights exhausted, they looked round for other worlds to conquer, saw Madam Delia at her tent-door, and were conquered by her.

She did, indeed, look energetic and comely as she sat at the receipt of custom, her smooth black hair relieved by gold ear-rings, her cotton velvet sack by a white collar, and her dark gingham dress by a cheap breastpin and by linen cuffs not very much soiled. The black leather bag at her side had a well-to-do look; but all else in the establishment looked a little poverty-stricken. The tent was made of very worn and soiled canvas, and was but some twenty-five feet square. There were no seats, and the spectators sat on the grass. There was a very small stage raised some six feet; this was covered with some strips of old carpet, and surrounded by a few old and tattered curtains. Through their holes you could easily see the lithe brown shoulders of the little girls as they put on their professional suits; and, on the other side, Monsieur Comstock, scarcely hidden by the drapery, leaned against a cross-bar, and rested his chin upon his tattooed arms as he counted the spectators. Among these, Mr. De Marsan, pacing slowly, distributed copies of this programme:—

THIRTEENTH ANNUAL TOUR. —— MADAM DELIA'S MUSEUM AND VARIETY COMBINATION-WILL EXHIBIT. —— PROCLAMATION TO THE PUBLIC.—The Proprietors would say that they have abandoned the old and played-out practice of decorating the outer walls of all principal streets with flaming Posters and Handbills, and have adopted the congenial, and they trust successful, plan of advertising with Programmes, giving a full and accurate description as now organized, which will be distributed in Hotels, Saloons, Factories, Workshops, and all private dwellings, by their Special Agents, three days before the exhibition takes place. —— MADAM DELIA WITH HER PET SNAKES. MISS GERTY, THE CHILD WONDER, DANSEUSE AND CONTORTIONIST,

will appear in her wonderful feats at each performance.

MONS. COMSTOCK, THE CHAMPION SWORD-SWALLOWER,

will also exhibit his wonderful power of swallowing Five Swords, measuring from 14 to 22 inches in length.

It is not so much the beauty of this feat that makes it so remarkable, as its seeming impossibility. —— MASTER BOBBY, THE BANJO SOLOIST AND BURLESQUE. —— COMIC ACROBAT, BY MISS GERTY AND MONS. COMSTOCK. —— MADAM DELIA, THE WONDERFUL AND ORIGINAL SNAKE-TAMER, with her Pets, measuring 12 feet in length and weighing 50 lbs. A pet Rattlesnake, 15 years of age, captured on the Prairies of Illinois,— oldest on exhibition. —— In connection with this Exhibition there are ANT-EATERS, AFRICAN MONKEYS, &C. Cosmoramic Stereoscopic Scenes in the United States and other Countries, including a view of the Funeral Procession of President Taylor, which is alone worth the price of admission. —— Exhibition every half-hour, during day and evening. Secure your seats early! —— ADMISSION 20 CENTS. Particular care will be taken and nothing shall occur to offend the most fastidious.

Stephen and his little sister strolled about the tent meanwhile. The final preparations went slowly on. The few spectators teased the ant-eater in one corner, or the first violin in another. One or two young farmers' boys were a little uproarious with egg-pop, and danced awkward breakdowns at the end of the tent. Then a cracked bell sounded and the curtain rose, showing hardly more of the stage than was plainly visible before.

Little Gerty, aged ten, came in first, all rumpled gauze and tarnished spangles, to sing. In a poor little voice, feebler and shriller than the chattering of the monkeys, she sang a song about the "Grecian Bend," and enacted the same, walking round and round the stage whirling her tawdry finery. Then Anne, aged twelve, came in as a boy and joined her. Both the girls had rather pretty features, blue eyes, and tightly curling hair; both had pleasing faces; but Anne was solid and phlegmatic, while Gerty was keen and flexible as a weasel, and almost as thin. Presently Anne went out and reappeared as "Master Bobby" of the hills, making love to Gerty in that capacity, through song and dance. Then Gerty was transformed by the addition of a single scarf into a "Highland Maid," and danced a fling; this quite gracefully, to the music of two violins. Exeunt the children and enter "Madam Delia and her pets."

The show-woman had laid aside her velvet sack and appeared with bare neck and arms. Over her shoulders hung a rattlesnake fifteen feet long, while a smaller specimen curled from each hand. The reptiles put their cold, triangular faces against hers, they touched her lips, they squirmed around her; she tied their tails together in elastic knots that soon undid; they reared their heads above her black locks till she looked like a stage Medusa, then laid themselves lovingly on her shoulder, and hissed at the audience. Then she lay down on the stage and pillowed her head on the writhing mass. She opened her black bag and took out a tiny brown snake which she placidly transferred to her bosom; then turned to a barrel into which she plunged her arm and drew out a black, hissing coil of mingled heads and tails. Her keen, goodnatured face looked cheerfully at the audience through it all, and took away the feeling of disgust, and something of the excitement of fear.

The lady and the pets retiring, Gerty's hour of glory came. She hated singing and only half enjoyed character dancing, but in posturing she was in her glory. Dressed in soiled tights that showed every movement of her little body, she threw herself upon the stage with a hand-spring, then kissed her hand to the audience, and followed this by a back-somerset. Then she touched her head by anslow effort to her heels; then turned away, put her palms to the ground, raised her heels gradually in the air, and in this inverted position kissed first one hand, then the other, to the spectators. Then she crossed the stage in a series of somersets, then rolled back like a wheel; then held a hoop in her two hands and put her whole slender body through it, limb after limb. Then appeared Monsieur Comstock. He threw a hand-spring and gave her his feet to stand upon; she grasped them with her hands and inverted herself, her feet pointing skyward. Then he resumed the ordinary attitude of rational beings and she lay on her back across his uplifted palms, which supported her neck and feet; then she curled herself backward around his waist, almost touching head and heels. Indeed, whatever the snakes had done to Madam Delia, Gerty seemed possessed with a wish to do to Monsieur Comstock, all but the kissing. Then that eminent foreigner vanished, and the odors of his pipe came faintly through the tattered curtain, while Anne entered to help Gerty in the higher branches.

A double trapeze—just two horizontal bars suspended at different heights by ropes and straps—had been swung from the tent-roof. Gerty ascended to the upper bar, hung from it by her hand, then by her knees, then by her feet, then sat upon it, leaned slowly backward, suddenly dropped, and as some children in the audience shrieked in terror, she caught by her feet in the side-ropes and came up smiling. It was a part of the play. Then another trapeze was hung, and was set swinging toward the first, and Gerty flung herself in triumph, with varied somersets, from one to the other, while Anne rattled the banjo below and sang,

"I fly through the air with the greatest of ease, A daring young man on the flying trapeeze."

Then the child stopped to rest, while all hands were clapped and only the unreverberating turf kept the feet from echoing also. People flocked in from outside, and Madam Delia was kept busy at the door. Then Gerty came down to the lower bar, while Anne ascended the upper, and hung to it solidly by her knees. Thus suspended, she put out her hands to Gerty, who put her feet into them, and hung head-downward. There was a shuddering pause, while the two children clung thus dizzily, but the audience had seen enough of peril to lose all fear.

"Those straps are safe?" asked Stephen of Mr. De Marsan.

"Law bless you, yes," replied that pleasant functionary. "Comstock's been on 'em."

Precisely as he spoke one of the straps gave downward a little, and then rested firm; it was not a half-inch, but it jarred the performers.

"Gerty, I'm slipping," cried Anne. "We shall fall!"

"No, we sha'n't, silly," said the other, quickly. "Hold on. Comstock, swing me the rope."

Stephen Blake sprang to the stage and swung her the rope by which they had climbed to the upper bar. It fell short and Gerty missed it. Anne screamed, and slipped visibly.

"You can't hold," said Gerty. "Let go my feet. Let me drop."

"You'll be killed," called Anne, slipping still more.

"Drop me, I say!" shouted the resolute Gerty, while the whole audience rose in excitement. Instantly the hands of the elder girl opened and down fell Gerty, headforemost, full twelve feet, striking heavily on her shoulder, while Anne, relieved of the weight, recovered easily her position and slipped down into Stephen's arms. She threw herself down beside the little comrade whose presence of mind had saved at least one of them.

"O Gerty, are you killed?" she said.

"I want Delia," gasped the child.

Madam Delia was at her side already, having rushed from the door, where a surging host of boys had already swept in gratis. Gerty writhed in pain. Stephen felt her collar-bone and found it bent like a horseshoe; and she fainted before she could be taken from the stage.

When restored, she was quite exhausted, and lay for days perfectly subdued and gentle, sleeping most of the time. During these days she had many visitors, and Mr. De Marsan had ample opportunity for the simple enjoyments of his life, tobacco and conversation. Stephen Blake and his sister came often, and while she brought her small treasures to amuse Gerty, he freely pumped the proprietor. Madam Delia had been in the snake business, it appeared, since early youth, thirteen years ago. She had been in De Marsan's employ for eight years before her marriage, and his equal and lawful partner for five years since. At first they had travelled as side-show to a circus, but that was not so good.

"The way is, you see," said Mr. De Marsan, "to take a place like Providence, that's a good showtown, right along, and pitch your tent and live there. Keep-still pays, they say. You'd have to hire a piece of ground anywhere, for five or six dollars a day, and it don't cost much more by the week. You can board for four or five dollars a week, but if you board by the day it's a dollar and a half." To which words of practical wisdom Stephen listened with pleased interest. It was not so very many years since he had been young enough to wish to run away with a circus; and by encouraging these simple confidences, he brought round the conversation to the children.

But here he was met by a sheer absence of all information as to their antecedents. The original and deceitful Comstock had brought them and left them two years before. Madam Delia had received flattering offers to take her snakes and Gerty into circuses and large museums, but she had refused for the child's own sake. Did Gerty like it? Yes, she would like to be posturing all day; she could do anything she saw done; she "never needed to be taught nothin'," as Mr. De Marsan asserted with vigorous accumulation of negatives. He thought her father or mother must have been in the business, she took to it so easily; but she was just as smart at school in the winter, and at everything else. Was the life good for her? Yes, why not? Rough company and bad language? They could hear worse talk every day in the street. "Sometimes a feller would come in with too much liquor aboard," the showman admitted, "and would begin to talk his nonsense; but Comstock wouldn't ask nothin' better than to pitch such a feller out, especially if he should sarce the little gals. They were good little gals, and Delia set store by 'em."

When Stephen and his sister went back that night to their kind hostesses, Miss Martha and Miss Amy, the soft hearts of those dear old ladies were melted in an instant by the story of Gerty's courage and self-sacrifice. They had lived peacefully all their lives in that motherly old house by the bay-side, where successive generations had lived before them. The painted tiles around the open fire looked as if their fops and fine ladies had stepped out of the Spectator and the Tatler; the great mahogany chairs looked as hospitable as when the French officers were quartered in the house during the Revolution, and its Quaker owner, Miss Martha's grand-uncle, had carried out a seat that the weary sentinel might sit down. Descended from one of those families of Quaker beauties whom De Lauzun celebrated, they bore the memory of those romantic lives, as something very sacred, in hearts which perhaps held as genuine romances of their own. Miss Martha's sweet face was softened by advancing deafness and by that gentle, appealing look which comes when mind and memory grow a little dimmer, though the loving nature knows no change. "Sister Amy says," she meekly confessed, "that I am losing my memory. But I do not care very much. There are so few things worth remembering!"

They kept house together in sweet accord, and were indeed trained in the neat Quaker ways so thoroughly, that they always worked by the same methods. In opinion and emotion they were almost duplicates. Yet the world holds no absolute and perfect correspondence, and it is useless to affect to conceal—what was apparent to any intimate guest—that there was one domestic question on which perfect sympathy was wanting. During their whole lives they had never been able to take precisely the same view of the best method of grinding Indian meal. Miss Martha preferred to have it from a wind-mill; while Miss Amy was too conscientious to deny that she thought it better when prepared by a water-mill. She said firmly, though gently, that it seemed to her "less gritty."

Living their whole lives in this scarcely broken harmony by the margin of the bay, they had long built together one castle in the air. They had talked of it for many an hour by their evening fire, and they had looked from their chamber windows toward the Red Light upon Rose Island to see if it were coming true. This vision was, that they were to awake some morning after an autumnal storm, and to find an unknown vessel ashore behind the house, without name or crew or passengers; only there was to be one sleeping child, with aristocratic features and a few yards of exquisite embroidery. Years had passed, and their lives were waning, without a glimpse of that precious waif of gentle blood. Once in an October night Miss Martha had been awakened by a crash, and looking out had seen that their pier had been carried away, and that a dark vessel lay stranded with her bowsprit in the kitchen window. But daylight revealed the schooner Polly Lawton, with a cargo of coal, and the dream remained unfulfilled. They had never revealed it, except to each other.

Moved by a natural sympathy, Miss Martha went with Stephen to see the injured child. Gerty lay asleep on a rather dingy little mattress, with Mr. Comstock's overcoat rolled beneath her head. A day's illness will commonly make even the coarsest child look refined and interesting; and Gerty's physical organization was anything but coarse. Her pretty hair curled softly round her head; her delicate profile was relieved against the rough, dark pillow; and the tips of her little pink ears could not have been improved by art, though they might have been by soap and water. Warm tears came into Miss Martha's eyes, which were quickly followed from corresponding fountains in Madam Delia's.

"Thy own child?" said or rather signalled Miss Martha, forming the letters softly with her lips. Stephen had his own reasons for leaving her to ask this question in all ignorance.

"No, ma'am," said the show-woman. "Not much. Adopted."

"Does thee know her parents?" This was similarly signalled.

"No," said Madam Delia, rather coldly.

"Does thee suppose that they were—"

And here Miss Martha stopped, and the color came as suddenly and warmly to her cheeks as if Monsieur Comstock had offered to marry her, and to settle upon her the snakes as exclusive property. Madam Delia divined the question; she had so often found herself trying to guess the social position of Gerty's parents.

"I don't know as I know," said she, slowly, "whether you ought to know anythin' about it. But I'll tell you what I know. That child's folks," she added, mysteriously, "lived on Quality Hill."

"Lived where?" said Miss Martha, breathless.

"Upper crust," said the other, defining her symbol still further. "No middlins to 'em. Genteel as anybody. Just look here!"

Madam Delia unclasped her leather bag, brought forth from it a mass of checks and tickets, some bird-seed, a small whip, a dog-collar, and a dingy morocco box. This held a piece of an old-fashioned enamelled ring, and a fragment of embroidered muslin marked "A."

"She'd lived with me six months before she brought 'em," said the show-woman, whispering.

The bit of handkerchief was enough. Was it a dream? thought the dear old lady. What the ocean had refused, was this sprite who had lived between earth and air to fulfil? Miss Martha bent softly over the bedside, resting her clean glove on the only dirty mattress it had ever touched, and quietly kissed the child. Then she looked up with a radiant face of perfect resolution.

"Mrs. De Marsan," said she, with dignity that was almost solemnity, "I wish to adopt this child. No one can doubt thy kindness of heart, but thee must see that thee is in no condition to give her suitable care and Christian nurture."

"That's a fact," interposed Madam Delia with a pang

"Then thee will give her to me?" asked Miss Martha, firmly.

Madam Delia threw her apron over her face, and choked and sobbed beneath it for several minutes. Then reappearing, "It's what I've always expected," said she. Then, with a tinge of suspicion, "Would you have taken her without the ring and handkerchief?"

"Perhaps I should," said the other, gently. "But that seems to make it a clearer call."

"Fair enough," said Madam Delia, submitting. "I ain't denyin' of it." Then she reflected and recommenced. "There never was such a smart performin' child as that since the world began. She can do just anythin', and just as easy! Time and again I might have hired her out to a circus, and she glad of the chance, mind you; but no, I would keep her safe to home. Then when she showed me the ring and the other things, all my expectations altered very sudden; I knowed we couldn't keep her, and I began to mistrust that she would somehow find her folks. I guess my rathers was that she should, considerin'; but I did wish it had been Anne, for she ain't got nothin' better in her than just to live genteel."

"But Anne seems a nice child, too," said Miss Martha, consolingly.

"Well, that's just what she is," replied Madam Delia, with some contempt. "But what is she for a contortionist? Ask Comstock what she's got in her! And how to run the show without Gerty, that's what beats me. Why, folks begin to complain already that we advertise swallerin', and yet don't swaller. But never you mind, ma'am, you shall have Gerty. You shall have her," she added, with a gulp, "if I have to sell out! Go ahead!" And again the apron went over her face.

At this point, Gerty waked up with a little murmur, looked up at Miss Martha's kind face, and smiled a sweet, childish smile. Half asleep still, she put out one thin, muscular little hand, and went to sleep as the old lady took it in hers. A kiss awaked her.

"What has thee been dreaming about, my little girl?" said Miss Martha.

"Angels and things, I guess," said the child, somewhat roused.

"Will thee go home with me and live?" said the lady.

"Yes'm," replied Gerty, and went to sleep again.

Two days later she was well enough to ride to Miss Martha's in a carriage, escorted by Madam Delia and by Anne, "that dull, uninteresting child," as Miss Amy had reluctantly described her, "so different from this graceful Adelaide." This romantic name was a rapid assumption of the soft-hearted Miss Amy's, but, once suggested, it was as thoroughly-fixed as if a dozen baptismal fonts had written it in water.

Madam Delia was sustained, up to the time of Gerty's going, by a sense of self-sacrifice. But this emotion, like other strong stimulants, has its reactions. That remorse for a crime committed in vain, which Dr. Johnson thought the acutest of human emotions, is hardly more depressing than to discover that we have got beyond our depth in virtue, and are in water where we really cannot quite swim,—and this was the good woman's position. During her whole wandering though blameless life,—in her girlish days, when she charmed snakes at Meddibemps, or through her brief time of service as plain Car'line Prouty at the Biddeford mills, or when she ran away from her step-mother and took refuge among the Indians at Orono, or later, since she had joined her fate with that of De Marsan,—she had never been so severely tried.

"That child was so smart," she said, beneath the evening canvas, to her sympathetic spouse. "I always expected when we got old we'd kinder retire on a farm or suthin', and let her and her husband—say Comstock, if he was young enough—run the business. And even after she showed us the ring and things, I thought likely she'd just come into her property somewheres and take care of us. I don't know as I ever thought she'd leave us, either way, and there she's gone."

"She won't forget us," said the peaceful proprietor.

"No," said the wife, "but it's lonesome. If it had only been Anne! I shall miss Gerty the worst kind. And it'll kill the show!"

And to tell the truth, the show languished. Nothing but the happy acquisition of a Chinese giant nearly eight feet high, with slanting eyes and a long pigtail,—a man who did penance in his height for the undue brevity of his undersized nation,—would have saved the "museum."

Meantime the neat proprieties of orderly life found but a poor disciple in Gerty. Her warm heart opened to the dear old ladies; but she found nothing familiar in this phantom of herself, this well-dressed little girl who, after a rapid convalescence, was introduced at school and "meeting" under the name of Adelaide. The school studies did not dismay her, but she played the jew's-harp at recess, and danced the clog-dance in india-rubbers, to the dismay of the little Misses Grundy, her companions. In the calisthenic exercises she threw beanbags with an untamed vigor that soon ripped the stitches of the bags, and sowed those vegetables in every crack of the school-room floor. There was a ladder in the garden, and it was some comfort to ascend it hand over hand upon the under side, or to hang by her toes from the upper rung, to the terror of her schoolmates.

But she became ashamed of the hardness of her palms, and she grew in general weary of her life. Her clothes pinched her, so did her new boots; Madam Delia had gone to Providence with the show, and Gerty had not so much as seen the new Chinese giant.

Of all days Sunday was the most objectionable, when she had to sit still in Friends' Meeting and think how pleasant it would be to hang by the knees, head downward, from the parapet of the gallery. She liked better the Seamen's Bethel, near by, where there was an aroma of tar and tarpaulin that suggested the odors of the show-tent, and where, when the Methodist exhorter gave out the hymn, "Howl, howl, ye winds of night," the choir rendered it with such vigor that it was like being at sea in a northeaster. But each week made her new life harder, until, having cried herself asleep one Saturday evening, she rose early the next morning for her orisons, which, I regret to say, were as follows:—

"I must get out of this," quoth Gerty, "I must cut and run. I'll make it all right for the old ladies, for I'll send 'em Anne. She'll like it here first rate."

She hunted up such remnants of her original wardrobe as had been thought worth washing and preserving, and having put them on, together with a hat whose trimmings had been vehemently burned by Miss Martha, she set out to seek her fortune. Of all her new possessions, she took only a pair of boots, and those she carried in her hand as she crept softly down stairs.

"Save us!" exclaimed Biddy, who had been to a Mission Mass of incredible length, and was already sweeping the doorsteps. "Christmas!" she added, as a still more pious ejaculation, when the child said, "Good by, Biddy, I'm off now."

"Where to, thin?" exclaimed Biddy.

"To Providence," said Gerty. "But don't you tell."

"But ye can't go the morn's mornin'," said Biddy. "It's Sunday and there's no cars."

"There's legs," replied the child, briefly, as she closed the door.

"It's much as iver," said the stumpy Hibernian, to herself, as she watched the twinkling retreat of those slim, but vigorous little members.

They had been Gerty's support too long, in body and estate, for her to shrink from trusting them in a walk of a dozen or a score of miles. But the locomotion of Stephen's horse was quicker, and she did not get seriously tired before being overtaken, and—not without difficulty and some hot tears—coaxed back. Fortunately, Madam Delia came down from Providence that evening, on a very unexpected visit, and at the confidential hour of bedtime the child's heart was opened and made a revelation.

"Won't you be mad, if I tell you something?" she said to Madam Delia, abruptly.

"No," said the show-woman, with surprise.

"Won't you let Comstock box my ears?"

"I'll box his if he does," was the indignant answer. The gravest contest that had ever arisen in the museum was when Monsieur Comstock, teased beyond endurance, had thus taken the law into his own hands.

"Well," said Gerty, after a pause, "I ain't a great lady, no more 'n nothin'. Them things I brought to you was Anne's."

"Anne's things?" gasped Madam Delia,—"the ring and the piece of a handkerchief."

"Yes, 'm," said Gerty, "and I've got the rest." And exploring her little trunk, she produced from a slit in the lining the other half of the ring, with the name "Anne Deering."

"You naughty, naughty girl!" said Madam Delia. "How did you get 'em away from Anne?"

"Coaxed her," said the child.

"Well, how did you make her hush up about it?"

"Told her I'd kill her if she said a single word," said Gerty, undauntedly. "I showed her Pa De Marsan's old dirk-knife and told her I'd stick it into her if she didn't hush. She was just such a 'fraid-cat she believed me. She might have known I didn't mean nothin'. Now she can have 'em and be a lady. She was always tallkin' about bein' a lady, and that put it into my head."

"What did she want to be a lady for?" asked Madam Delia, indignantly.

"Said she wanted to have a parlor and dress tight. I don't want to be one of her old ladies. I want to stay with you, Delia, and learn the clog-dance." And she threw her arms round the show-woman's neck and cried herself to sleep.

Never did the energetic proprietress of a Museum and Variety Combination feel a greater exultation than did Madam Delia that night. The child's offence was all forgotten in the delight of the discovery to which it led. If there had been expectations of social glories to accrue to the house of De Marsan through Gerty's social promotion, they melted away; and the more substantial delight of still having someone to love and to be proud of,—some object of tenderness warmer than snakes and within nearer reach than a Chinese giant,—this came in its stead. The show, too, was in a manner on its feet again. De Marsan said that he would rather have Gerty than a hundred-dollar bill. Madam Delia looked forward and saw herself sinking into the vale of years without a sigh,—reaching a period when a serpent fifteen feet long would cease to charm, or she to charm it,—and still having a source of pride and prosperity in this triumphant girl.

The tent was in its glory on the day of Gerty's return; to be sure, nothing in particular had been washed except the face of Old Bill, but that alone was a marvel compared with which all "Election Day" was feeble, and when you add a paper collar, words can say no more. Monsieur Comstock also had that "ten times barbered" look which Shakespeare ascribes to Mark Antony, and which has belonged to that hero's successors in the histrionic profession ever since. His chin was unnaturally smooth, his mustache obtrusively perfumed, and nothing but the unchanged dirtiness of his hands still linked him, like Antaeus, with the earth. De Marsan had intended some personal preparation, but had been, as usual, in no hurry, and the appointed moment found him, as usual, in his shirt-sleeves. Madam Delia, however, wore a new breastpin and gave Gerty another. And the great new attraction, the Chinese giant, had put on a black broadcloth coat across his bony shoulders, in her honor, and made a vigorous effort to sit up straight, and appear at his ease when off duty. He habitually stooped a good deal in private life, as if there were no object in being eight feet high, except before spectators.

Anne, the placid and imperturbable, was promoted to take the place that Gerty had rejected, in the gentle home of the good sisters. The secret of her birth, whatever it was, never came to light but, she took kindly, as Madam Delia had predicted, to "living genteel," and grew up into a well-behaved mediocrity, unregretful of the show-tent. Yet probably no one reared within the smell of sawdust ever quite outgrew all taste for "the profession," and Anne, even when promoted to good society, never missed seeing a performance when her wandering friends came by. If I told you under what name Gerty became a star in the low-comedy line, after her marriage, you would all recognize it; and if you had seen her in "Queen Pippin" or the "Shooting-Star" pantomime, you would wish to see her again. Her first child was named after Madam Delia, and proved to be a placid little thing, demure enough to have been born in a Quaker family, and exhibiting no contortions or gymnastics but those common to its years. And you may be sure that the retired show-woman found in the duties of brevet-grand-mother a glory that quite surpassed her expectations.



SUNSHINE AND PETRARCH.

Near my summer home there is a little cove or landing by the bay, where nothing larger than a boat can ever anchor. I sit above it now, upon the steep bank, knee-deep in buttercups, and amid grass so lush and green that it seems to ripple and flow instead of waving. Below lies a tiny beach, strewn with a few bits of drift-wood and some purple shells, and so sheltered by projecting walls that its wavelets plash but lightly. A little farther out the sea breaks more roughly over submerged rocks, and the waves lift themselves, before breaking, in an indescribable way, as if each gave a glimpse through a translucent window, beyond which all ocean's depths might be clearly seen, could one but hit the proper angle of vision. On the right side of my retreat a high wall limits the view, while close upon the left the crumbling parapet of Fort Greene stands out into the foreground, its verdant scarp so relieved against the blue water that each inward-bound schooner seems to sail into a cave of grass. In the middle distance is a white lighthouse, and beyond lie the round tower of old Fort Louis and the soft low hills of Conanicut.

Behind me an oriole chirrups in triumph amid the birch-trees which wave around the house of the haunted window; before me a kingfisher pauses and waits, and a darting blackbird shows the scarlet on his wings. Sloops and schooners constantly come and go, careening in the wind, their white sails taking, if remote enough, a vague blue mantle from the delicate air. Sail-boats glide in the distance,—each a mere white wing of canvas,—or coming nearer, and glancing suddenly into the cove, are put as suddenly on the other tack, and almost in an instant seem far away. There is to-day such a live sparkle on the water, such a luminous freshness on the grass, that it seems, as is so often the case in early June, as if all history were a dream, and the whole earth were but the creation of a summer's day.

If Petrarch still knows and feels the consummate beauty of these earthly things, it may seem to him some repayment for the sorrows of a life-time that one reader, after all this lapse of years, should choose his sonnets to match this grass, these blossoms, and the soft lapse of these blue waves. Yet any longer or more continuous poem would be out of place to-day. I fancy that this narrow cove prescribes the proper limits of a sonnet; and when I count the lines of ripple within yonder projecting wall, there proves to be room for just fourteen. Nature meets our whims with such little fitnesses. The words which build these delicate structures of Petrarch's are as soft and fine and close-textured as the sands upon this tiny beach, and their monotone, if such it be, is the monotone of the neighboring ocean. Is it not possible, by bringing such a book into the open air, to separate it from the grimness of commentators, and bring it back to life and light and Italy?

The beautiful earth is the same as when this poetry and passion were new; there is the same sunlight, the same blue water and green grass; yonder pleasure-boat might bear, for aught we know, the friends and lovers of five centuries ago; Petrarch and Laura might be there, with Boccaccio and Fiammetta as comrades, and with Chaucer as their stranger guest. It bears, at any rate, if I know its voyagers, eyes as lustrous, voices as sweet. With the world thus young, beauty eternal, fancy free, why should these delicious Italian pages exist but to be tortured into grammatical examples? Is there no reward to be imagined for a delightful book that can match Browning's fantastic burial of a tedious one? When it has sufficiently basked in sunshine, and been cooled in pure salt air, when it has bathed in heaped clover, and been scented, page by page, with melilot, cannot its beauty once more blossom, and its buried loves revive?

Emboldened by such influences, at least let me translate a sonnet, and see if anything is left after the sweet Italian syllables are gone. Before this continent was discovered, before English literature existed, when Chaucer was a child, these words were written. Yet they are to-day as fresh and perfect as these laburnum-blossoms that droop above my head. And as the variable and uncertain air comes freighted with clover-scent from yonder field, so floats through these long centuries a breath of fragrance, the memory of Laura.

SONNET 129.

"Lieti fiori e felici." O joyous, blossoming, ever-blessed flowers! 'Mid which my queen her gracious footstep sets; O plain, that keep'st her words for amulets And hold'st her memory in thy leafy bowers! O trees, with earliest green of spring-time hours, And spring-time's pale and tender violets! O grove, so dark the proud sun only lets His blithe rays gild the outskirts of your towers! O pleasant country-side! O purest stream, That mirrorest her sweet face, her eyes so clear, And of their living light can catch the beam! I envy you her haunts so close and dear. There is no rock so senseless but I deem It burns with passion that to mine is near.

Goethe compared translators to carriers, who convey good wine to market, though it gets unaccountably watered by the way. The more one praises a poem, the more absurd becomes one's position, perhaps, in trying to translate it. If it is so admirable—is the natural inquiry,—why not let it alone? It is a doubtful blessing to the human race, that the instinct of translation still prevails, stronger than reason; and after one has once yielded to it, then each untranslated favorite is like the trees round a backwoodsman's clearing, each of which stands, a silent defiance, until he has cut it down. Let us try the axe again. This is to Laura singing.

SONNET 134.

"Quando Amor i begli occhi a terra inchina." When Love doth those sweet eyes to earth incline, And weaves those wandering notes into a sigh Soft as his touch, and leads a minstrelsy Clear-voiced and pure, angelic and divine, He makes sweet havoc in this heart of mine, And to my thoughts brings transformation high, So that I say, "My time has come to die, If fate so blest a death for me design." But to my soul thus steeped in joy the sound Brings such a wish to keep that present heaven, It holds my spirit back to earth as well. And thus I live: and thus is loosed and wound The thread of life which unto me was given By this sole Siren who with us doth dwell.

As I look across the bay, there is seen resting over all the hills, and even upon every distant sail, an enchanted veil of palest blue, that seems woven out of the very souls of happy days,—a bridal veil, with which the sunshine weds this soft landscape in summer. Such and so indescribable is the atmospheric film that hangs over these poems of Petrarch's; there is a delicate haze about the words, that vanishes when you touch them, and reappears as you recede. How it clings, for instance, around this sonnet!

SONNET 191.

"Aura che quelle chiome." Sweet air, that circlest round those radiant tresses, And floatest, mingled with them, fold on fold, Deliciously, and scatterest that fine gold, Then twinest it again, my heart's dear jesses, Thou lingerest on those eyes, whose beauty presses Stings in my heart that all its life exhaust, Till I go wandering round my treasure lost, Like some scared creature whom the night distresses. I seem to find her now, and now perceive How far away she is; now rise, now fall; Now what I wish, now what is true, believe. O happy air! since joys enrich thee all, Rest thee; and thou, O stream too bright to grieve! Why can I not float with thee at thy call?

The airiest and most fugitive among Petrarch's love-poems, so far as I know,—showing least of that air of earnestness which he has contrived to impart to almost all,—is this little ode or madrigal. It is interesting to see, from this, that he could be almost conventional and courtly in moments when he held Laura farthest aloof; and when it is compared with the depths of solemn emotion in his later sonnets, it seems like the soft glistening of young birch-leaves against a background of pines.

CANZONE XXIII.

"Nova angeletta sovra l' ale accorta." A new-born angel, with her wings extended, Came floating from the skies to this fair shore, Where, fate-controlled, I wandered with my sorrows. She saw me there, alone and unbefriended, She wove a silken net, and threw it o'er The turf, whose greenness all the pathway borrows, Then was I captured; nor could fears arise, Such sweet seduction glimmered from her eyes.

Turn from these light compliments to the pure and reverential tenderness of a sonnet like this:—

SONNET 223.

"Qual donna attende a gloriosa fama." Doth any maiden seek the glorious fame Of chastity, of strength, of courtesy? Gaze in the eyes of that sweet enemy Whom all the world doth as my lady name! How honor grows, and pure devotion's flame, How truth is joined with graceful dignity, There thou mayst learn, and what the path may be To that high heaven which doth her spirit claim; There learn soft speech, beyond all poet's skill, And softer silence, and those holy ways Unutterable, untold by human heart. But the infinite beauty that all eyes doth fill, This none can copy! since its lovely rays Are given by God's pure grace, and not by art.

The following, on the other hand, seems to me one of the Shakespearian sonnets; the successive phrases set sail, one by one, like a yacht squadron; each spreads its graceful wings and glides away. It is hard to handle this white canvas without soiling. Macgregor, in the only version of this sonnet which I have seen, abandons all attempt at rhyme; but to follow the strict order of the original in this respect is a part of the pleasant problem which one cannot bear to forego. And there seems a kind of deity who presides over this union of languages, and who sometimes silently lays the words in order, after all one's own poor attempts have failed.

SONNET 128.

"O passi sparsi; o pensier vaghi e pronti" O wandering steps! O vague and busy dreams! O changeless memory! O fierce desire! O passion strong! heart weak with its own fire; O eyes of mine! not eyes, but living streams; O laurel boughs! whose lovely garland seems The sole reward that glory's deeds require; O haunted life! delusion sweet and dire, That all my days from slothful rest redeems; O beauteous face! where Love has treasured well His whip and spur, the sluggish heart to move At his least will; nor can it find relief. O souls of love and passion! if ye dwell Yet on this earth, and ye, great Shades of Love! Linger, and see my passion and my grief.

Yonder flies a kingfisher, and pauses, fluttering like a butterfly in the air, then dives toward a fish, and, failing, perches on the projecting wall. Doves from neighboring dove-cotes alight on the parapet of the fort, fearless of the quiet cattle who find there a breezy pasture. These doves, in taking flight, do not rise from the ground at once, but, edging themselves closer to the brink, with a caution almost ludicrous in such airy things, trust themselves upon the breeze with a shy little hop, and at the next moment are securely on the wing.

How the abundant sunlight inundates everything! The great clumps of grass and clover are imbedded in it to the roots; it flows in among their stalks, like water; the lilac-bushes bask in it eagerly; the topmost leaves of the birches are burnished. A vessel sails by with plash and roar, and all the white spray along her side is sparkling with sunlight. Yet there is sorrow in the world, and it reached Petrarch even before Laura died,—when it reached her. This exquisite sonnet shows it:—

SONNET 123.

"I' vidi in terra angelici costumi." I once beheld on earth celestial graces, And heavenly beauties scarce to mortals known, Whose memory lends nor joy nor grief alone, But all things else bewilders and effaces. I saw how tears had left their weary traces Within those eyes that once like sunbeams shone, I heard those lips breathe low and plaintive moan, Whose spell might once have taught the hills their places. Love, wisdom, courage, tenderness, and truth, Made ill their mourning strains more high and dear Than ever wove sweet sounds for mortal ear; And heaven seemed listening in such saddest ruth The very leaves upon the boughs to soothe, Such passionate sweetness filled the atmosphere.

These sonnets are in Petrarch's earlier manner; but the death of Laura brought a change. Look at yonder schooner coming down the bay, straight toward us; she is hauled close to the wind, her jib is white in the sunlight, her larger sails are touched with the same snowy lustre, and all the swelling canvas is rounded into such lines of beauty as scarcely anything else in the world—hardly even the perfect outlines of the human form—can give. Now she comes up into the wind, and goes about with a strong flapping of the sails, smiting on the ear at a half-mile's distance; then she glides off on the other tack, showing the shadowed side of her sails, until she reaches the distant zone of haze. So change the sonnets after Laura's death, growing shadowy as they recede, until the very last seems to merge itself in the blue distance.

SONNET 251.

"Gli occhi di ch' io parlai." Those eyes, 'neath which my passionate rapture rose, The arms, hands, feet, the beauty that erewhile Could my own soul from its own self beguile, And in a separate world of dreams enclose, The hair's bright tresses, full of golden glows, And the soft lightning of the angelic smile That changed this earth to some celestial isle, Are now but dust, poor dust, that nothing knows. And yet I live! Myself I grieve and scorn, Left dark without the light I loved in vain, Adrift in tempest on a bark forlorn; Dead is the source of all my amorous strain, Dry is the channel of my thoughts outworn, And my sad harp can sound but notes of pain.

"And yet I live!" What a pause is implied before these words! the drawing of a long breath, immeasurably long; like that vast interval of heart-beats that precedes Shakespeare's "Since Cleopatra died." I can think of no other passage in literature that has in it the same wide spaces of emotion.

The following sonnet seems to me the most stately and concentrated in the whole volume. It is the sublimity of a despair not to be relieved by utterance.

SONNET 253.

"Soleasi nel mio cor." She ruled in beauty o'er this heart of mine, A noble lady in a humble home, And now her time for heavenly bliss has come, 'T is I am mortal proved, and she divine. The soul that all its blessings must resign, And love whose light no more on earth finds room Might rend the rocks with pity for their doom, Yet none their sorrows can in words enshrine; They weep within my heart; and ears are deaf Save mine alone, and I am crushed with care, And naught remains to me save mournful breath. Assuredly but dust and shade we are, Assuredly desire is blind and brief, Assuredly its hope but ends in death.

In a later strain he rises to that dream which is more than earth's realities.

SONNET 261.

"Levommi il mio pensiero." Dreams bore my fancy to that region where She dwells whom here I seek, but cannot see. 'Mid those who in the loftiest heaven be I looked on her, less haughty and more fair. She touched my hand, she said, "Within this sphere, If hope deceive not, thou shalt dwell with me: I filled thy life with war's wild agony; Mine own day closed ere evening could appear. My bliss no human brain can understand; I wait for thee alone, and that fair veil Of beauty thou dost love shall wear again." Why was she silent then, why dropped my hand Ere those delicious tones could quite avail To bid my mortal soul in heaven remain?

It vindicates the emphatic reality and pesonality of Petrarch's love, after all, that when from these heights of vision he surveys and resurveys his life's long dream, it becomes to him more and more definite, as well as more poetic, and is farther and farther from a merely vague sentimentalism. In his later sonnets, Laura grows more distinctly individual to us; her traits show themselves as more characteristic, her temperament more intelligible, her precise influence upon Petrarch clearer. What delicate accuracy of delineation is seen, for instance, in this sonnet!

SONNET 314.

"Dolci durezze e placide repulse." Gentle severity, repulses mild, Full of chaste love and pity sorrowing; Graceful rebukes, that had the power to bring Back to itself a heart by dreams beguiled; A soft-toned voice, whose accents undefiled Held sweet restraints, all duty honoring; The bloom of virtue; purity's clear spring To cleanse away base thoughts and passions wild; Divinest eyes to make a lover's bliss, Whether to bridle in the wayward mind Lest its wild wanderings should the pathway miss, Or else its griefs to soothe, its wounds to bind; This sweet completeness of thy life it is That saved my soul; no other peace I find.

In the following sonnet visions multiply upon visions. Would that one could transfer into English the delicious way in which the sweet Italian rhymes recur and surround and seem to embrace each other, and are woven and unwoven and interwoven, like the heavenly hosts that gathered around Laura.

SONNET 302.

"Gli angeli eletti."

The holy angels and the spirits blest, Celestial bands, upon that day serene When first my love went by in heavenly mien, Came thronging, wondering at the gracious guest. "What light is here, in what new beauty drest?" They said among themselves; "for none has seen Within this age come wandering such a queen From darkened earth into immortal rest." And she, contented with her new-found bliss, Ranks with the purest in that upper sphere, Yet ever and anon looks back on this, To watch for me, as if for me she stayed. So strive, my thoughts, lest that high path I miss. I hear her call, and must not be delayed.

These odes and sonnets are all but parts of one symphony, leading us through a passion strengthened by years and only purified by death, until at last the graceful lay becomes an anthem and a Nunc dimittis. In the closing sonnets Petrarch withdraws from the world, and they seem like voices from a cloister, growing more and more solemn till the door is closed. This is one of the last:—

SONNET 309.

"Dicemi spesso il mio fidato speglio." Oft by my faithful mirror I am told, And by my mind outworn and altered brow, My earthly powers impaired and weakened now, "Deceive thyself no more, for thou art old!" Who strives with Nature's laws is over-bold, And Time to his commandments bids us bow. Like fire that waves have quenched, I calmly vow In life's long dream no more my sense to fold. And while I think, our swift existence flies, And none can live again earth's brief career, Then in my deepest heart the voice replies Of one who now has left this mortal sphere, But walked alone through earthly destinies, And of all women is to fame most dear.

How true is this concluding line! Who can wonder that women prize beauty, and are intoxicated by their own fascinations, when these fragile gifts are yet strong enough to outlast all the memories of statesmanship and war? Next to the immortality of genius is that which genius may confer upon the object of its love. Laura, while she lived, was simply one of a hundred or a thousand beautiful and gracious Italian women; she had her loves and aversions, joys and griefs; she cared dutifully for her household, and embroidered the veil which Petrarch loved; her memory appeared as fleeting and unsubstantial as that woven tissue. After five centuries we find that no armor of that iron age was so enduring. The kings whom she honored, the popes whom she revered are dust, and their memory is dust, but literature is still fragrant with her name. An impression which has endured so long is ineffaceable; it is an earthly immortality.

"Time is the chariot of all ages to carry men away, and beauty cannot bribe this charioteer." Thus wrote Petrarch in his Latin essays; but his love had wealth that proved resistless and for Laura the chariot stayed.



A SHADOW.

I shall always remember one winter evening, a little before Christmas-time, when I took a long, solitary walk in the outskirts of the town. The cold sunset had left a trail of orange light along the horizon, the dry snow tinkled beneath my feet, and the early stars had a keen, clear lustre that matched well with the sharp sound and the frosty sensation. For some time I had walked toward the gleam of a distant window, and as I approached, the light showed more and more clearly through the white curtains of a little cottage by the road. I stopped, on reaching it, to enjoy the suggestion of domestic cheerfulness in contrast with the dark outside. I could not see the inmates, nor they me; but something of human sympathy came from that steadfast ray.

As I looked, a film of shade kept appearing and disappearing with rhythmic regularity in a corner of the window, as if some one might be sitting in a low rocking-chair close by. Presently the motion ceased, and suddenly across the curtain came the shadow of a woman. She raised in her arms the shadow of a baby, and kissed it; then both disappeared, and I walked on.

What are Raphael's Madonnas but the shadow of a mother's love, so traced as to endure forever? In this picture of mine, the group actually moved upon the canvas. The curtains that hid it revealed it. The ecstasy of human love passed in brief, intangible panorama before me. It was something seen, yet unseen; airy, yet solid; a type, yet a reality; fugitive, yet destined to last in my memory while I live. It said more to me than would any Madonna of Raphael's, for his mother never kisses her child. I believe I have never passed over that road since then, never seen the house, never heard the names of its occupants. Their character, their history, their fate, are all unknown. But these two will always stand for me as disembodied types of humanity,—the Mother and the Child; they seem nearer to me than my immediate neighbors, yet they are as ideal and impersonal as the goddesses of Greece or as Plato's archetypal man.

I know not the parentage of that child, whether black or white, native or foreign, rich or poor. It makes no difference. The presence of a baby equalizes all social conditions. On the floor of some Southern hut, scarcely so comfortable as a dog-kennel, I have seen a dusky woman look down upon her infant with such an expression of delight as painter never drew. No social culture can make a mother's face more than a mother's, as no wealth can make a nursery more than a place where children dwell. Lavish thousands of dollars on your baby-clothes, and after all the child is prettiest when every garment is laid aside. That becoming nakedness, at least, may adorn the chubby darling of the poorest home.

I know not what triumph or despair may have come and gone through that wayside house since then, what jubilant guests may have entered, what lifeless form passed out. What anguish or what sin may have come between that woman and that child; through what worlds they now wander, and whether separate or in each other's arms,—this is all unknown. Fancy can picture other joys to which the first happiness was but the prelude, and, on the other hand, how easy to imagine some special heritage of human woe and call it theirs!

"I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest, Lord of thy house and hospitality; And Grief, uneasy lover, might not rest Save when he sat within the touch of thee."

Nay, the foretaste of that changed fortune may have been present, even in the kiss. Who knows what absorbing emotion, besides love's immediate impulse, may have been uttered in that shadowy embrace? There may have been some contrition for ill-temper or neglect, or some triumph over ruinous temptation, or some pledge of immortal patience, or some heart-breaking prophecy of bereavement. It may have been simply an act of habitual tenderness, or it may have been the wild reaction toward a neglected duty; the renewed self-consecration of the saint, or the joy of the sinner that repenteth. No matter. She kissed the baby. The feeling of its soft flesh, the busy struggle of its little arms between her hands, the impatient pressure of its little feet against her knees,—these were the same, whatever the mood or circumstance beside. They did something to equalize joy and sorrow, honor and shame. Maternal love is love, whether a woman be a wife or only a mother. Only a mother!

The happiness beneath that roof may, perhaps, have never reached so high a point as at that precise moment of my passing. In the coarsest household, the mother of a young child is placed on a sort of pedestal of care and tenderness, at least for a time. She resumes something of the sacredness and dignity of the maiden. Coleridge ranks as the purest of human emotions that of a husband towards a wife who has a baby at her breast,—"a feeling how free from sensual desire, yet how different from friendship!" And to the true mother however cultivated, or however ignorant, this period of early parentage is happier than all else, in spite of its exhausting cares. In that delightful book, the "Letters" of Mrs. Richard Trench (mother of the well-known English writer), the most agreeable passage is perhaps that in which, after looking back upon a life spent in the most brilliant society of Europe, she gives the palm of happiness to the time when she was a young mother. She writes to her god-daughter: "I believe it is the happiest time of any woman's life, who has affectionate feelings, and is blessed with healthy and well-disposed children. I know at least that neither the gayeties and boundless hopes of early life, nor the more grave pursuits and deeper affections of later years, are by any means comparable in my recollection with the serene, yet lively pleasure of seeing my children playing on the grass, enjoying their little temperate supper, or repeating 'with holy look' their simple prayers, and undressing for bed, growing prettier for every part of their dress they took off, and at last lying down, all freshness and love, in complete happiness, and an amiable contest for mamma's last kiss."

That kiss welcomed the child into a world where joy predominates. The vast multitude of human beings enjoy existence and wish to live. They all have their earthly life under their own control. Some religions sanction suicide; the Christian Scriptures nowhere explicitly forbid it; and yet it is a rare thing. Many persons sigh for death when it seems far off, but the desire vanishes when the boat upsets, or the locomotive runs off the track, or the measles set in. A wise physician once said to me: "I observe that every one wishes to go to heaven, but I observe that most people are willing to take a great deal of very disagreeable medicine first." The lives that one least envies—as of the Digger Indian or the outcast boy in the city—are yet sweet to the living. "They have only a pleasure like that of the brutes," we say with scorn. But what a racy and substantial pleasure is that! The flashing speed of the swallow in the air, the cool play of the minnow in the water, the dance of twin butterflies round a thistle-blossom, the thundering gallop of the buffalo across the prairie, nay, the clumsy walk of the grizzly bear; it were doubtless enough to reward existence, could we have joy like such as these, and ask no more. This is the hearty physical basis of animated life, and as step by step the savage creeps up to the possession of intellectual manhood, each advance brings with it new sorrow and new joy, with the joy always in excess.

There are many who will utterly disavow this creed that life is desirable in itself. A fair woman in a ball-room, exquisitely dressed, and possessed of all that wealth could give, once declared to me her belief—and I think honestly—that no person over thirty was consciously happy, or would wish to live, but for the fear of death. There could not even be pleasure in contemplating one's children, she asserted, since they were living in such a world of sorrow. Asking the opinion, within half an hour, of another woman as fair and as favored by fortune, I found directly the opposite verdict. "For my part I can truly say," she answered, "that I enjoy every moment I live." The varieties of temperament and of physical condition will always afford us these extremes; but the truth lies between them, and most persons will endure many sorrows and still find life sweet.

And the mother's kiss welcomes the child into a world where good predominates as well as joy. What recreants must we be, in an age that has abolished slavery in America and popularized the governments of all Europe, if we doubt that the tendency of man is upward! How much that the world calls selfishness is only generosity with narrow walls,—a too exclusive solicitude to maintain a wife in luxury or make one's children rich! In an audience of rough people a generous sentiment always brings down the house. In the tumult of war both sides applaud an heroic deed. A courageous woman, who had traversed alone, on benevolent errands, the worst parts of New York told me that she never felt afraid except in the solitudes of the country; wherever there was a crowd, she found a protector.

A policeman of great experience once spoke to me with admiration of the fidelity of professional thieves to each other, and the risks they would run for the women whom they loved; when "Bristol Bill" was arrested, he said, there was found upon the burglar a set of false keys, not quite finished, by which he would certainly, within twenty-four hours, have had his mistress out of jail. Parent-Duchatelet found always the remains of modesty among the fallen women of Paris hospitals; and Mayhew, amid the London outcasts, says that he thinks better of human nature every day. Even among politicians, whom it is our American fashion to revile as the chief of sinners, there is less of evil than of good.

In Wilberforce's "Memoirs" there is an account of his having once asked Mr. Pitt whether his long experience as Prime Minister had made him think well or ill of his fellow-men. Mr. Pitt answered, "Well"; and his successor, Lord Melbourne, being asked the same question, answered, after a little reflection, "My opinion is the same as that of Mr. Pitt."

Let us have faith. It was a part of the vigor of the old Hebrew tradition to rejoice when a man-child was born into the world; and the maturer strength of nobler ages should rejoice over a woman-child as well. Nothing human is wholly sad, until it is effete and dying out. Where there is life there is promise. "Vitality is always hopeful," was the verdict of the most refined and clear-sighted woman who has yet explored the rough mining villages of the Rocky Mountains. There is apt to be a certain coarse virtue in rude health; as the Germanic races were purest when least civilized, and our American Indians did not unlearn chastity till they began to decay. But even where vigor and vice are found together, they still may hold a promise for the next generation. Out of the strong cometh forth sweetness. Parisian wickedness is not so discouraging merely because it is wicked, as from a suspicion that it is draining the life-blood of the nation. A mob of miners or of New York bullies may be uncomfortable neighbors, and may make a man of refinement hesitate whether to stop his ears or to feel for his revolver; but they hold more promise for the coming generations than the line which ends in Madame Bovary or the Vicomte de Camors.

But behind that cottage curtain, at any rate, a new and prophetic life had begun. I cannot foretell that child's future, but I know something of its past. The boy may grow up into a criminal, the woman into an outcast, yet the baby was beloved. It came "not in utter nakedness." It found itself heir of the two prime essentials of existence,—life and love. Its first possession was a woman's kiss; and in that heritage the most important need of its career was guaranteed. "An ounce of mother," says the Spanish proverb, "is worth a pound of clergy." Jean Paul says that in life every successive influence affects us less and less, so that the circumnavigator of the globe is less influenced by all the nations he has seen than by his nurse. Well may the child imbibe that reverence for motherhood which is the first need of man. Where woman is most a slave, she is at least sacred to her son. The Turkish Sultan must prostrate himself at the door of his mother's apartments, and were he known to have insulted her, it would make his throne tremble. Among the savage African Touaricks, if two parents disagree, it is to the mother that the child's obedience belongs. Over the greater part of the earth's surface, the foremost figures in all temples are the Mother and Child. Christian and Buddhist nations, numbering together two thirds of the world's population, unite in this worship. Into the secrets of the ritual that baby in the window had already received initiation.

And how much spiritual influence may in turn have gone forth from that little one! The coarsest father gains a new impulse to labor from the moment of his baby's birth; he scarcely sees it when awake, and yet it is with him all the time. Every stroke he strikes is for his child. New social aims, new moral motives, come vaguely up to him. The London costermonger told Mayhew that he thought every man would like his son or daughter to have a better start in the world than his own. After all, there is no tonic like the affections. Philosophers express wonder that the divine laws should give to some young girl, almost a child, the custody of an immortal soul. But what instruction the baby brings to the mother! She learns patience, self-control, endurance; her very arm grows strong, so that she can hold the dear burden longer than the father can. She learns to understand character, too, by dealing with it. "In training my first children," said a wise mother to me, "I thought that all were born just the same, and that I was wholly responsible for what they should become. I learned by degrees that each had a temperament of its own, which I must study before I could teach it." And thus, as the little ones grow older, their dawning instincts guide those of the parents; their questions suggest new answers, and to have loved them is a liberal education.

For the height of heights is love. The philosopher dries into a skeleton like that he investigates, unless love teaches him. He is blind among his microscopes, unless he sees in the humblest human soul a revelation that dwarfs all the world beside. While he grows gray in ignorance among his crucibles, every girlish mother is being illuminated by every kiss of her child. That house is so far sacred, which holds within its walls this new-born heir of eternity. But to dwell on these high mysteries would take us into depths beyond the present needs of mother or of infant, and it is better that the greater part of the baby-life should be that of an animated toy.

Perhaps it is well for all of us that we should live mostly on the surfaces of things and should play with life, to avoid taking it too hard. In a nursery the youngest child is a little more than a doll, and the doll is a little less than a child. What spell does fancy weave on earth like that which the one of these small beings performs for the other? This battered and tattered doll, this shapeless, featureless, possibly legless creature, whose mission it is to be dragged by one arm, or stood upon its head in the bathing-tub, until it finally reverts to the rag-bag whence it came,—what an affluence of breathing life is thrown around it by one touch of dawning imagination! Its little mistress will find all joy unavailing without its sympathetic presence, will confide every emotion to its pen-and-ink ears, and will weep passionate tears if its extremely soiled person is pricked when its clothes are mended. What psychologist, what student of the human heart, has ever applied his subtile analysis to the emotions of a child toward her doll?

I read lately the charming autobiography of a little girl of eight years, written literally from her own dictation. Since "Pet Marjorie" I have seen no such actual self-revelation on the part of a child. In the course of her narration she describes, with great precision and correctness, the travels of the family through Europe in the preceding year, assigning usually the place of importance to her doll, who appears simply as "My Baby." Nothing can be more grave, more accurate, more serious than the whole history, but nothing in it seems quite so real and alive as the doll. "When we got to Nice, I was sick. The next morning the doctor came, and he said I had something that was very much like scarlet fever. Then I had Annie take care of baby, and keep her away, for I was afraid she would get the fever. She used to cry to come to me, but I knew it wouldn't be good for her."

What firm judgment is here, what tenderness without weakness, what discreet motherhood! When Christmas came, it appears that baby hung up her stocking with the rest. Her devoted parent had bought for her a slate with a real pencil. Others provided thimble and scissors and bodkin and a spool of thread, and a travelling-shawl with a strap, and a cap with tarletan ruffles. "I found baby with the cap on, early in the morning, and she was so pleased she almost jumped out of my arms." Thus in the midst of visits to the Coliseum and St. Peter's, the drama of early affection goes always on. "I used to take her to hear the band, in the carriage, and she went everywhere I did." But the love of all dolls, as of other pets, must end with a tragedy, and here it comes. "The next place we went to was Lucerne. There was a lovely lake there, but I had a very sad time. One day I thought I'd take baby down to breakfast, and, as I was going up stairs, my foot slipped and baby broke her head. And O, I felt so bad! and I cried out, and I ran up stairs to Annie, and mamma came, and O, we were all so sorry! And mamma said she thought I could get another head, but I said, 'It won't be the same baby.' And mamma said, maybe we could make it seem so."

At this crisis the elder brother and sister departed for Mount Righi. "They were going to stay all night, and mamma and I stayed at home to take care of each other. I felt very bad about baby and about their going, too. After they went, mamma and I thought we would go to the little town and see what we could find." After many difficulties, a waxen head was discovered. "Mamma bought it, and we took it home and put it on baby; but I said it wasn't like my real baby, only it was better than having no child at all!"

This crushing bereavement, this reluctant acceptance of a child by adoption, to fill the vacant heart,—how real and formidable is all this rehearsal of the tragedies of maturer years! I knew an instance in which the last impulse of ebbing life was such a gush of imaginary motherhood.

A dear friend of mine, whose sweet charities prolong into a third generation the unbounded benevolence of old Isaac Hopper, used to go at Christmas-time with dolls and other gifts to the poor children on Randall's Island. Passing the bed of a little girl whom the physician pronounced to be unconscious and dying, the kind visitor insisted on putting a doll into her arms. Instantly the eyes of the little invalid opened, and she pressed the gift eagerly to her heart, murmuring over it and caressing it. The matron afterwards wrote that the child died within two hours, wearing a happy face, and still clinging to her new-found treasure.

And beginning with this transfer of all human associations to a doll, the child's life interfuses itself readily among all the affairs of the elders. In its presence, formality vanishes, the most oppressive ceremonial is a little relieved when children enter. Their influence is pervasive and irresistible, like that of water, which adapts itself to any landscape,—always takes its place, welcome or unwelcome,—keeps its own level and seems always to have its natural and proper margin.

Out of doors how children mingle with nature, and seem to begin just where birds and butterflies leave off! Leigh Hunt, with his delicate perceptions, paints this well: "The voices of children seem as natural to the early morning as the voice of the birds. The suddenness, the lightness, the loudness, the sweet confusion, the sparkling gayety, seem alike in both. The sudden little jangle is now here and now there; and now a single voice calls to another, and the boy is off like the bird." So Heine, with deeper thoughtfulness, noticed the "intimacy with the trees" of the little wood-gatherer in the Hartz Mountains; soon the child whistled like a linnet, and the other birds all answered him; then he disappeared in the thicket with his bare feet and his bundle of brushwood.

"Children," thought Heine, "are younger than we, and can still remember the time when they were trees or birds, and can therefore understand and speak their language; but we are grown old, and have too many cares, and too much jurisprudence and bad poetry in our heads."

But why go to literature for a recognition of what one may see by opening one's eyes? Before my window there is a pool, two rods square, that is haunted all winter by children,—clearing away the snow of many a storm, if need be, and mining downward till they strike the ice. I look this morning from the window, and the pond is bare. In a moment I happen to look again, and it is covered with a swarm of boys; a great migrating flock has settled upon it, as if swooping down from parts unknown to scream and sport themselves here. The air is full of their voices; they have all tugged on their skates instantaneously, as it were by magic. Now they are in a confused cluster, now they sweep round and round in a circle, now it is broken into fragments and as quickly formed again; games are improvised and abandoned; there seems to be no plan or leader, but all do as they please, and yet somehow act in concert, and all chatter all the time. Now they have alighted, every one, upon the bank of snow that edges the pond, each scraping a little hollow in which to perch. Now every perch is vacant again, for they are all in motion; each moment increases the jangle of shrill voices,—since a boy's outdoor whisper to his nearest crony is as if he was hailing a ship in the offing,—and what they are all saying can no more be made out than if they were a flock of gulls or blackbirds. I look away from the window once more, and when I glance out again there is not a boy in sight. They have whirled away like snowbirds, and the little pool sleeps motionless beneath the cheerful wintry sun. Who but must see how gradually the joyous life of the animal rises through childhood into man,—since the soaring gnats, the glancing fishes, the sliding seals are all represented in this mob of half-grown boyhood just released from school.

If I were to choose among all gifts and qualities that which, on the whole, makes life pleasantest, I should select the love of children. No circumstance can render this world wholly a solitude to one who has that possession. It is a freemasonry. Wherever one goes, there are the little brethren and sisters of the mystic tie. No diversity of race or tongue makes much difference. A smile speaks the universal language. "If I value myself on anything," said the lonely Hawthorne, "it is on having a smile that children love." They are such prompt little beings; they require so little prelude; hearts are won in two minutes, at that frank period, and so long as you are true to them they will be true to you. They need no argument, no bribery. They have a hearty appetite for gifts, no doubt, but it is not for these that they love the giver. Take the wealth of the world and lavish it with counterfeited affection: I will win all the children's hearts away from you by empty-handed love. The gorgeous toys will dazzle them for an hour; then their instincts will revert to their natural friends. In visiting a house where there are children I do not like to take them presents: it is better to forego the pleasure of the giving than to divide the welcome between yourself and the gift. Let that follow after you are gone.

It is an exaggerated compliment to women when we ascribe to them alone this natural sympathy with childhood. It is an individual, not a sexual trait, and is stronger in many men than in many women. It is nowhere better exhibited in literature than where the happy Wilhelm Meister takes his boy by the hand, to lead him "into the free and lordly world." Such love is not universal among the other sex, though men, in that humility which so adorns their natures, keep up the pleasing fiction that it is. As a general rule any little girl feels some glimmerings of emotion towards anything that can pass for a doll, but it does not follow that, when grown older, she will feel as ready an instinct toward every child. Try it. Point out to a woman some bundle of blue-and-white or white-and-scarlet in some one's arms at the next street corner. Ask her, "Do you love that baby?" Not one woman in three will say promptly, "Yes." The others will hesitate, will bid you wait till they are nearer, till they can personally inspect the little thing and take an inventory of its traits; it may be dirty, too; it may be diseased. Ah! but this is not to love children, and you might as well be a man. To love children is to love childhood, instinctively, at whatever distance, the first impulse being one of attraction, though it may be checked by later discoveries. Unless your heart commands at least as long a range as your eye, it is not worth much. The dearest saint in my calendar never entered a railway car that she did not look round for a baby, which, when discovered, must always be won at once into her arms. If it was dirty, she would have been glad to bathe it; if ill, to heal it. It would not have seemed to her anything worthy the name of love, to seek only those who were wholesome and clean. Like the young girl in Holmes's most touching poem, she would have claimed as her own the outcast child whom nurses and physicians had abandoned.

"'Take her, dread Angel! Break in love This bruised reed and make it thine!' No voice descended from above, But Avis answered, 'She is mine!'"

When I think of the self-devotion which the human heart can contain—of those saintly souls that are in love with sorrow, and that yearn to shelter all weakness and all grief—it inspires an unspeakable confidence that there must also be an instinct of parentage beyond this human race, a heart of hearts, cor cordium. As we all crave something to protect, so we long to feel ourselves protected. We are all infants before the Infinite; and as I turned from that cottage window to the resplendent sky, it was easy to fancy that mute embrace, that shadowy symbol of affection, expanding from the narrow lattice till it touched the stars, gathering every created soul into the armsof Immortal Love.



FOOTPATHS.

All round the shores of the island where I dwell there runs a winding path. It is probably as old as the settlement of the country, and has been kept open with pertinacious fidelity by the fishermen whose right of way it represents. In some places, as between Fort Adams and Castle Hill, it exists in its primitive form, an irregular track above rough cliffs, whence you look down upon the entrance to the harbor and watch the white-sailed schooners that glide beneath. Elsewhere the high-road has usurped its place, and you have the privilege of the path without its charm. Along our eastern cliffs it runs for some miles in the rear of beautiful estates, whose owners have seized on it, and graded it, and gravelled it, and made stiles for it, and done for it everything that landscape-gardening could do, while leaving it a footpath still. You walk there with croquet and roses on the one side, and with floating loons and wild ducks on the other. In remoter places the path grows wilder, and has ramifications striking boldly across the peninsula through rough moorland and among great ledges of rock, where you may ramble for hours, out of sight of all but some sportsman with his gun, or some truant-boy with dripping water-lilies. There is always a charm to me in the inexplicable windings of these wayward tracks; yet I like the path best where it is nearest the ocean. There, while looking upon blue sea and snowy sails and floating gulls, you may yet hear on the landward side the melodious and plaintive drawl of the meadow-lark, most patient of summer visitors, and, indeed, lingering on this island almost the whole year round.

But who cares whither a footpath leads? The charm is in the path itself, its promise of something that the high-road cannot yield. Away from habitations, you know that the fisherman, the geologist, the botanist may have been there, or that the cows have been driven home and that somewhere there are bars and a milk-pail. Even in the midst of houses, the path suggests school-children with their luncheon-baskets, or workmen seeking eagerly the noonday interval or the twilight rest. A footpath cannot be quite spoiled, so long as it remains such; you can make a road a mere avenue for fast horses or showy women, but this humbler track keeps its simplicity, and if a queen comes walking through it, she comes but as a village maid. On Sunday, when it is not etiquette for our fashionables to drive, but only to walk along the cliffs, they seem to wear a more innocent and wholesome aspect in that novel position; I have seen a fine lady pause under such circumstances and pick a wild-flower; she knew how to do it. A footpath has its own character, while that of the high-road is imposed upon it by those who dwell beside it or pass over it; indeed, roads become picturesque only when they are called lanes and make believe that they are but paths.

The very irregularity of a footpath makes half its charm. So much of loitering and indolence and impulse have gone to its formation, that all which is stiff and military has been left out. I observed that the very dikes of the Southern rice plantations did not succeed in being rectilinear, though the general effect was that of Tennyson's "flowery squares." Even the country road, which is but an enlarged footpath, is never quite straight, as Thoreau long since observed, noting it with his surveyor's eye. I read in his unpublished diary: "The law that plants the rushes in waving lines along the edge of a pond, and that curves the pond shore itself, incessantly beats against the straight fences and highways of men, and makes them conform to the line of beauty at last." It is this unintentional adaptation that makes a footpath so indestructible. Instead of striking across the natural lines, it conforms to them, nestles into the hollow, skirts the precipice, avoids the morass. An unconscious landscape-gardener, it seeks the most convenient course, never doubting that grace will follow. Mitchell, at his "Edgewood" farm, wishing to decide on the most picturesque avenue to his front door, ordered a heavy load of stone to be hauled across the field, and bade the driver seek the easiest grades, at whatever cost of curvature. The avenue followed the path so made.

When a footpath falls thus unobtrusively into its place, all natural forces seem to sympathize with it, and help it to fulfil its destiny. Once make a well-defined track through a wood, and presently the overflowing brooks seek it for a channel, the obstructed winds draw through it, the fox and woodchuck travel by it, the catbird and robin build near it, the bee and swallow make a high-road of its convenient thoroughfare. In winter the first snows mark it with a white line; as you wander through you hear the blue-jay's cry, and see the hurrying flight of the sparrow; the graceful outlines of the leafless bushes are revealed, and the clinging bird's-nests, "leaves that do not fall," give happy memories of summer homes. Thus Nature meets man half-way. The paths of the wild forest and of the rural neighborhood are not at all the same thing; indeed, a "spotted trail," marked only by the woodman's axe-marks on the trees, is not a footpath. Thoreau, who is sometimes foolishly accused of having sought to be a mere savage, understood this distinction well. "A man changes by his presence," he says in his unpublished diary, "the very nature of the trees. The poet's is not a logger's path, but a woodman's,—the logger and pioneer have preceded him, and banished decaying wood and the spongy mosses which feed on it, and built hearths and humanized nature for him. For a permanent residence, there can be no comparison between this and the wilderness. Our woods are sylvan, and their inhabitants woodsmen and rustics; that is, a selvaggia and its inhabitants salvages." What Thoreau loved, like all men of healthy minds, was the occasional experience of untamed wildness. "I love to see occasionally," he adds, "a man from whom the usnea (lichen) hangs as gracefully as from a spruce."