I felt in my bones that he would meet me there; and when Cousin Emily Elizabeth sent me word that she had got a loge—which means a little square pen in the gallery, cushioned off like a first-class pew—and wanted me to go with her to hear the great primer-donner, I just got that dress out again, and set the frizzing-pins to work, and did myself up so scrumptiously that I don't believe that a creature on Sprucehill would have known me. Don't say this is extravagant, and flying in the face of Providence. If He don't want silk dresses worn by the elect, what on earth does He make silk-worms and mulberry-leaves for? That is a question that we'll have debated over in the Society some day. Until then, oblige me by not saying, openly, that I'm a free-thinker, because I'm nothing of the sort. Not that my taste, since coming to the opera, has not got a notch above Greenbank or Old Hundred, in the way of music; I am free to own that it has.

Well, Cousin Emily Elizabeth had sent word that I mustn't wear a bonnet, or think of such a thing; and she sent me down a fur mantle, made of white kitten-skins, I reckon, with little black tails dropping all over it—just the tips, which needn't have hurt the black kittens much, if it was all day to the white ones. So, when I come down, holding up my long skirts with one hand, and folding this fur across my innocent bosom, she just screamed out from the carriage that I looked gorgeous enough to turn the great Grand Duke's head, which I felt to be true—for women are not given to praising each other for nothing, anyhow.

The opera-house in New York would take in our biggest meeting-house, and leave room for a wide strip of carpeting all round it. It has got three galleries, and ever so many places, that look like pulpits and deacon's seats, all cushioned and curtained off beautifully.

We went up to the first gallery, and got into Cousin Dempster's loge-pew, which was just big enough for four people. This was fortunate, for our skirts and fur mantles took up every mite of room that Cousin D. did not want; but he put up with it beautifully, and just scrouched down behind us, with his head rising above our shoulders, which would have been rather uncovered if it had not been for the fur, which tickled mine a little; but I bore it with fortitude. You who know me will understand that.

The opera-house was crowded full; every pew was crammed, and the benches down below couldn't be seen, the people were so thick. The pew loges were running over with handsome girls, and old ladies that tried their best to look like girls, and couldn't, not having the country freshness that some people bring with them from the mountains.

But the three pulpits on the second gallery were empty yet—all empty, and gorgeously red, waiting for him.

At last, a great green curtain that hung just beyond this sacred place rolled up. The lights in a great glittering balloon, all hung with ropes of shiny glass beads which fell down from the centre of the roof, blazed up, and when I dropped my head from looking at it, all the other end of the room was crowded with a gang of the queerest-looking people—men, women, children, and dogs—that ever you did see. That was the opera, Cousin E. E. said; though how an opera could have a house and a cart in it, beat me.

Well, sisters, I give up. Roll every singing-school in Vermont into one crowd, and they couldn't begin to burst out like that; men, women, and girls, just went in for a splendid time, and they had it. First, a pew full of fiddlers, drummers, tromboners, and bas-violers, let themselves out in a storm of music that made the ten millions of beads on the glass balloons tremble like hailstones. Then the whole gang lifted up their voices, and the music rolled out just as I reckon the water does at Niagara Falls. Such a general training of music was enough to wake the dead out of a New England grave, where they sleep sound, I guess, if they do anywhere.

By and by they rose up, and began to wander about, making their funny little white dogs play, and some of the girls began to dance about. It was a travelling-show, you see, and some of the upper-crust people came out of the house I spoke of, and listened. One was a lady, dressed out to kill in a striped skirt, black velvet, and yellow silk; another yellow skirt bunched over that, and then a blue dress puffed above both, and her hair just splendid. I tell you she was a dasher!

But the people were all busy unloading the cart; they took out bundles and baskets and things. Finally a girl, that had been lying asleep on the load, jumped down, with her shoulders hitched up, and looking cross as fire at everybody that came near her. She was barefooted and bareheaded, and had nothing but an under night-gown and petticoat on, which seemed to aggravate her, for she looked scowling enough at the handsome young lady, and would not double-shuffle worth a cent, though all the men and women were trying to make her.

The moment she jumped off from the cart, the folks in the seats just ran crazy, and began clapping their hands and stamping their feet like a house afire; I never saw people act so in my life. It was enough to frighten the poor thing half to death. Instead of that, it seemed to tickle her mightily, for she came forward, with her bare feet, and made a little mincing bow, and almost laughed.

Then the strangest thing happened. First one, and then another, of the show-people, instead of reasoning with the wilful creature, just went to waving their arms and singing at her. I declare it was enough to have made a minister laugh when she turned, and began to sing back at them, sometimes spiteful, and then, again, with tears melting through her voice. An old man in gray clothes, that looked crazy as a coot, sung at her, sort of hoarse, and mournfully. Then a young fellow, in a green coat and high boots, dropped into the affair, and he sung at her. Then the handsome lady in blue and yellow burst out and sang at her too, filling the whole opera-house with music. By watching and listening, I found out this much. This girl was an orphan, picked up by the band of players, that made her dance and sing for her keeping. The fellow with the green coat and boots felt sorry for her, and bought her up, short gown and all, from the tribe of players. Then she put on the dress of a pretty boy, and waited on the handsome woman in yellow, who was one of them actress-women, and dead in love with the young fellow in boots. He was awfully in love with the actress woman too, which just aggravated that girl-boy out of her seven senses, poor thing! When she happened to watch them together, you should have seen her fling down her cap, and kick it about. There was some human nature in that, but singing love out before folks beats me. I couldn't bring myself to anything of the kind—not if the Grand Duke were standing before me with his arms out, shouting Old Hundred.

Goodness gracious! that girl-boy had taken up my thoughts, so that I didn't know when the Grand Duke came into his pulpit loge. But there he was, standing up, and looking right toward me, so pleasant.

I threw back my fur mantle a trifle, and taking Cousin E. E.'s fan, waved it gracefully, hoping thus to cool off the blushes that bathed my cheeks with a rosiness that I feared might not harmonize with the tints already there.

Still he looked my way earnestly, and with the fire of admiration in his blue eyes. A young thing sitting in the loge-pew behind me began to turn away her head and hide behind her fan, as if she had anything to do with it. The conceit of some people is astonishing!

Cousin E. E.'s little spy-glass lay in her lap. I took it up; I held it to my eyes, and devoured him with one burning glance. His heart seemed leaping to mine through the glass. I knew it. I felt it. Indeed he won't be the first of his noble race that has lost heart and soul to a country girl.

The Prince sat down, and when there was a lull in the music, clapped his hands with joy. Oh, my sisters! it is something to have given such supreme pleasure to the Grand Ducal soul.

He looked at the play; I looked too. Souls in sympathy have but one thought. I pitied that poor girl-boy with all my heart—my own happiness made me compassionate. How she suffered when that woman with the yellow skirts and the young fellow in boots were singing love to each other! Once she got wild, and dressed herself in a pink silk, and—well, she made one of those toilets that Cousin E. E. understands so well. I was sorry to see her exposing one or two little things that should be a secret with the sex. But she did, and the yellow lady caught her at it, and sung awfully provoking things at her.

Well, she just tore off the dress, scattered the lace trimmings about, put on her old duds, and ran away.

Then the house got on fire: the whole swarm of people come out helter-skelter, singing to the flames that didn't mind the music more than if it had been buckets full of water. Firemen came running with ladders that nobody climbed, and pails of water, that the firemen carried round and round, in and out, like crazy creatures. I am sure I saw one fellow, with a white pail, pitch through the same window into the red-hot flames fifty times. The poor girl-boy, being desperate, just pitched in, determined to burn herself, while the woman in yellow and the man in boots looked on.

This went right to the cruel man's heart; he jumped in after her, carried her away from the devouring flames, and fell in love with her like a man. Of course, being a decent kind of a fellow, he couldn't keep on singing out his love to both girls at once with enthusiasm, and began to neglect the yellow girl in a way that brought tears into her voice whenever she came pleading to him under the window—which she did, not having the pride of all the Frost family in her veins.

Of course this did no good; men never come back to women that whine. The girl—for she had given up boys' clothes—had got him safe; he didn't care a chestnut-burr for all the other's singing, but took to the little vagabondess with all his heart and soul.

Now something else happened. The old man in gray got his mind again and turned out to be Mignon's father (have I told you that was her name?). He was a rich old fellow, with a house furnished with gilt chairs, and everything sumptuous—so, of course, the fellow in boots stuck to her more than ever.

I don't know what became of the woman in yellow, but as for this other girl, she came out first best in every respect; especially at the end, when ever so many flowers and baskets and things were just poured down upon her. For my part, I thought the yellow girl ought to have had full half of these things, for I liked her quite as well, if not better than the vagabondess.

Well, the green curtain went down for good, and the whole congregation got up to go out.

"How do you like Nilsson?" says Cousin E. E., as she was fastening her fur mantle.

"Nilsson!" says I, "I haven't seen her yet."

"Why, yes you have—she just came out."

"What!—that girl-boy?"

"Yes, Mignon."

"You don't say so," says I. "Who then was the girl in yellow?"

"Oh! she is Duval."

"Well, I like her at any rate, poor thing; it was a shame to treat her so."

That moment I felt that the great Grand Duke was gone. Not one more glance. It was hard!



XXV.

THE BLACK CROOK.

Sisters:—Since my intimacy with Imperial Royalty, Cousin Emily Elizabeth Dempster has been as proud as a peacock of our relationship, and speaks about the Court of all the Russias as if she expected to have an ice-palace built on the Neva for her, every winter, for the rest of her life. This may be natural—I dare say it is; but I'm afraid that Russia—being an awful despotism—wouldn't stand too many of one's relations crowding into the Imperial corn-crib, that being a free-born institution peculiar to high moral ideas which my great Grand Duke did not stay in Boston long enough to imbibe.

Still, being a relation and born under the star-spangled banner, why shouldn't she have her own little hopes? I ask myself this and resolve to do my best for her. Being a first cousin she has her rights.

This morning E. E. sent down a little straw-colored letter with a picture on the envelop just where it seals, and asked me to go with her and Dempster to see "The Black Crook," which she wrote was a spectacle worth looking at. They had got seats at Niblo's to see it after ever so much trouble, and were sure that I would be delighted.

Delighted! What about! I never hankered much for eye-glass or spectacles. I wish cousin E. E. would be a little more particular about her spelling—that sometimes makes goose-pimples creep all over me—but a spectacle, singular, spelt with an "a," gives one just a tantalizing sense of growing old, more provoking than saying the thing right out. I can't see any more sense in one spectacle than in half a pair of scissors, but maybe she can. At any rate I don't mean to go gadding down to Mr. Niblo's theatre just to see that.

But the "Black Crook," I'm beat to know what that has to do with spectacles or eye-glasses. I have read what our minister calls pastoral poetry, and almost always find it divided off into hill-side lots, where some stuck-up young creature in the farming line, is tending sheep, with a long crook-necked stick in her hand, with which she

Just trains the little bleating lambs, "With fleece as white as snow," And points out with her crooked stick Just where they ought to go.

Excuse poetry, but, like a pent-up spring, it will break forth; nor must you suspect me of plagiarism. Remark—the second line has honest quotation-marks, which is doing full justice to Mary who owned the particular lamb which has become immortal from its whiteness and exceptional training.

But all this does not bring us any nearer to what this Black Crook means. I have been studying this matter over. Of course a crook is a crook. Put the neck of a winter squash on the end of a bean pole, and you have it.

But the Black Crook. Black? Ah, why didn't I think of that before? From the name, I suppose it is some reconstruction instrument for hooking-up taxes and bonds, left behind here in New York by some run-away Southern governor.

Well, now, I should like to see that—anything left behind by one of those fellows must be a curiosity.

Yes, I made up my mind to accept Cousin E. E. D.'s invitation. The theatre would be something new anyhow, and it is the duty of my mission to see all things and hold fast to that which is good.

Well, just before dark, I got out that pink silk dress and the two long braids, and shut myself in with the looking-glass over my bureau, which is always reflecting, but says nothing, or one might be afraid to trust it on some occasions.

I was almost ready, when Cousin Emily E. come in so suddenly that I hopped up from my chair, and gave a scary scream. The face in the glass turned all sorts of colors, and seemed to scream too, and looked half-frightened to death. Cousin E. E. laughed, and shut the door. Holding up both hands, says she:

"What, in that dress! My dear cousin, it is to a theatre we are going."

"Well, I reckon your letter told me that," says I, a-spreading out the skirt of my dress along the floor.

"But we do not dress like that for a theatre," says she, a-looking down at her black silk dress, which was all fluttered over with narrow ruffles. "No trains, dear Cousin Frost, no lace—a plain walking-dress and bonnet—nothing more?"

I looked at the shiny waves of pink silk lying around my feet, and at that face in the glass, and was just ready to burst out a-crying. It was too bad.

"You thought this just the thing when we went to hear that Miss Nilsson sing," says I, looking mournfully at that face in the glass, which was almost crying.

"Yes; but that was the opera—this only a theatre. You see the difference," says she.

"No, I don't," says I.

"Well, you will," says she. "It's the fashion. You, who write about fashionable life so beautifully, ought to know that."

"Just as if I didn't," says I; and the fire flashed into my eyes while I took off my pink dress; and put on my alpaca, which has got a new overskirt trimmed with flutings.

"There," says I, flinging the pink silk down on the bed, "will that suit?"

"Beautifully," says she. "Now get your shawl and bonnet."

Which I did.

The carriage held four of us this time, for Cousin E. E. had brought that little girl of hers, who sat huddled up in the back seat. When her mother told her to change places, "The idea," says she, giving her head a fling, and eying me like an angry poodle-dog; then she flounced down in the front seat, so huffish and sulky, that her father said, in a milk-and-waterish way:

"My darling, don't be naughty."

And his wife told him not to interfere between her and her child. She knew how to bring up a young lady, and he mustn't attempt to break her spirit; at which the heap of sulks in the corner muttered that it wasn't in him to do it.

There isn't so very much difference between the Opera House and Mr. Niblo's theatre; only, one is piled up sky-high with cushioned galleries; and the theatre is considerably out-of-doors, especially in the lower story. We sat right in front, for Cousin E. E. said that the "Crook" could be seen best from there. I said nothing, but waited. Some people love to ask questions, but I would rather find out things for myself—it's a saving to one's feelings in the long run.

Well, the theatre was jammed full of people, mostly with shawls, and cloaks, and bonnets on. Cousin E. E. was right. What is genteel in one place is vulgar in another—that is fashion.

That child insisted on trying all the seats, to see which she liked best; but we got settled at last, and just then up went the picture-curtain with a rush. I screamed right out, for the very first sight took away my breath. Oh! sisters, I wish you could have seen it. Such trees, such loads of flowers, such clusters and streams of light! Oh my! if Eve ever had a paradise like that, she was just the greatest goose that ever lived to be turned out of it for the sake of one little knotty apple. I've no patience with her!

While I was looking at this beautiful world, another scream burst from my lips, for, all in a moment, it was alive with women, so lovely, so graceful, so full of life, that they almost took away one's breath. At first, they all came whirling in, as figures do in a dream; but, after a minute, I just felt like sinking through the floor. Why, sisters, they might just as well have been dressed in flowers! In short, dress a full-grown girl in a double poppy, with fringed edges, and you have an idea of what I couldn't look at. I felt my cheeks glow with fire; my fingers tingled with shame. It seemed to me that every man in the house was looking straight into my eyes, to see how I bore it. I lifted my eyes, and cast one frightened look around me, ready to jump up and run from the first face turned to mine. Then I just covered my face with my open fan.

There wasn't a face turned my way. Every soul—men, women, and children—were looking at those girls, who whirled, and moved, and tangled themselves up in some sort of a wild, wicked dance, that must have been the work of Old Nick himself, for nothing less could have made me look on. My whole heart rose right up against those beautiful creatures, but somehow they seemed to hold me to my seat. Really, sisters, you have no idea how very enticing a woman can be who puffs a lot of gauze around her waist, throws a wreath of flowers over her shoulders, and dances like a whirlwind.

At first, I just covered my face with my fan, for I could not bring myself up to a straightforward look. Then, somehow, my fingers would get apart, and I found myself peeping through the slats just as shamed as could be, but yet I could not help peeping.

Mercy on me, what a whirl and rush of light! What a flashing of gold; what a crowd of women dressed in nothing, and a little gauze thrown in—it made my head whirl like a top.

I can't tell you just when my hand dropped into my lap, but before I knew it my eyes were fixed on that great whirling picture, and my sense of shame was lost in a storm of music. All these glittering women were standing in rows, regular as the pickets on a door-yard fence, while one girl, with a wreath of green leaves and red berries on her head, was whirling on one toe round and round, till she seemed to be a dozen girls whizzing round in a cloud of white muslin.

By and by all the crowd of girls joined in and began dodging about among the trees and flowers, like—well I must say it,—like runaway angels determined to have a good time of it. Then a man, covered to his knees with silver scales like a fish, came in, and he had a dance with the girl in leaves and red berries. Such a dance—they backed, they advanced, they snapped their fingers at each other, they flung up their heels, they locked arms backwards, then broke apart, and began the most lively double-shuffle at each other that ever I dreamed of. It fairly took away my breath to see them.

"That is a splendid can-can," says that child, taking the little spy-glass from her mother's lap, and levelling it at the dancers. "Don't you think so, Miss Phoemie?"

I gave her a look; it was all I could spare just then, for some new people had come into the picture. A great tall fellow, with body supporters like bean poles, had come in with a lovely creature, who was considered a queen among the girls. Just as I was looking, he seemed to stretch himself out like a piece of india-rubber, and lifting one foot, swung it over her head without touching a curl.

So this was the "Black Crook," not that I saw anything like a crook, but the burning pictures more than made up for that, and the dancing was, well—stupendous.

Every once in a while a curtain would fall and shut out the pictures. Every time it was drawn up something more splendid than anything that had gone before came out. One picture was all in a veil of fog, through which the men and women roved like beautiful ghosts. In another, some of the cunningest little dogs you ever saw danced, and begged, and acted a play for themselves, just like human creatures. At last came a great fiery picture, all gold and glare, and flowers planted in fire, with trees that seemed to be dropping golden fruit, in which all the crowd of beautiful girls were lying on banks and under trees, and perched like splendid birds up in the air. Then the curtain came down with a thud, smothering up the fire, and hiding everything. The storm of music broke off with a crash, and the crowd began to shout and yell, and stamp their feet till the whole building shook.

Sisters, this is all I can tell you about the "Black Crook." It is splendid, and wonderfully enticing; but you might as well expect me to give you a clear idea of a burning city. It is just one picture of gorgeous confusion and confused gorgeousness.



XXVI.

LIVING APART.

Dear sisters:—There has been great tumult and trouble in New York since I wrote my last report. Something that relates to the honor of Vermont has thrilled the public mind to a fearful extent. A smart, genial, warm-hearted, dashing person, by the name of Fisk—Mr. James Fisk—born and brought up in our State, has been shot in the largest tavern in the city, where he died, I greatly fear, without a realizing sense that he was so soon to be called before his Maker.

Many of you, my sisters, can remember this man—a great, handsome, good-natured-looking fellow, with sunshiny eyes, and a mustache that curled up like a pair of horns on each side of a mouth that always seemed ready to laugh at something. There wasn't a man that ever came to Sprucehill that everybody was so sure to remember. His great wagon, painted off like a circus, with four horses a-drawing it through the village, with a splash-dash noise of whips and wheels and hoofs, was enough to make the money spring right out of one's pocket. Mercy on me! Didn't he make the dry-goods fly! Everybody bought something of him, and I must say that everybody liked him. In the peddling line he was a sort of P. T. Barnum, only he didn't know how to stick to his trade as Barnum has. He drove his four horses; he made money like everything; he outgrew Brattleborough, which was his native place, and soon got above peddling, his native business.

The next step towards his exaltation and ruin was that he left Vermont, a man who will do that of his own accord is sure to run wild. Well, he left his native State, and set up at the Hub of the Universe, which every one knows is Boston, where he began his education as a financier and a millionaire.

Boston is a great city. I should like to hear any one dare to deny that; but, then, people here say that, in the way of financing, the Hub knows how to save, and skimp, and deposit, and get twice her share of offices out of the President of the United States; but, outside of that, she is nowhere, compared to New York. She has no idea of turning a sharp stock corner, couldn't get up a Black Friday to save her life; in fact, is only good at an old-fashioned tea-party. This is what Cousin Dempster says about Boston, and he ought to know, being a first-class broker in Wall Street, and New England born.

Well, of course, it wasn't long before Mr. Fisk outgrew the Hub, which hadn't room for all the spokes which he wanted to carry to his wheel, and off he comes to New York, gets into the Erie Railroad, and, goodness knows how he did it! but before people knew who he was, he went smashing and crashing up that road, prowled through Wall Street like a roaring lion, or bear, or some other such animals as gore and claw each other in that neighborhood.

Well, after he had sent a good many brokers sky-high with his horns, and knocked others down with his paws, for he tackled in with both, he goes kiting off to sea by way of the Sound.

While people were wondering what he would do next, he had gone to work and fitted up great palatial steamboats, and invited the President to travel in them, which the President did, not dreaming that he was expected to build up a cattle-pen or a bear-garden in exchange for a little hospitality.

Well, it's hard satisfying a Vermonter when he once breaks loose from his native mountains. After gobbling up railroads and putting steamboats afloat, Mr. Fisk just swung back into Wall Street one day, and upset things generally in less time than any man ever did before. No shootist ever brought down more birds at a shot, than he left men in that street rich in the morning, and ruined at night. Cousin Dempster says it was awful.

Mr. Fisk didn't care, but wheeled out of the street just as he used to drive his pedler's wagon, with hoofs a-rattling and whips a-cracking, riding over ruined men everywhere in his track.

Besides all this, Mr. Fisk had a great, grand, overpowering Opera House, and carried on a theatre, in which women danced, like Black-crookers, and sang like—well, I can't tell what they did sing like, not having a comparison handy—but it was awfully interesting, Cousin Dempster said; and I believe him, for E. E. says he used to go to that Opera House alone so often, that she began to be afraid that he was getting into some business with Mr. Fisk that must be transacted in the evening—a thing she didn't like, the man being considered so overpoweringly fascinating.

I don't know whether Mr. Fisk belonged to the Woman's Righters or not, but there was a good deal of talk about him, such as would have compelled any religious society in Vermont to get up an investigation and some extra prayer-meetings, which he wouldn't have liked, being mostly given contrary-wise. But the one thing he hadn't done was to join a church, and, you see, nobody in particular had a right to call him to account but his wife, and she didn't.

Some people were mean enough to hint that his system of married life wasn't just the thing for a couple brought up in the purifying atmosphere of a Vermont village, and went so far as to turn up their noses because he lived about the Opera House and she in Boston, close to the very heart of the Hub, as if any woman could get further away from original sin than that.

But these slanderers knew as well as could be, that Mr. Fisk had a free pass on the telegraph and steam communication with his wife every day. Besides, didn't the newspapers give his most private actions to an admiring public, every few hours, and couldn't she read how blameless and self-sacrificing his life was.

Besides being a great financier and seafaring man, our Vermont pedler took up social life as a specialty, and distinguished himself among the high fashionables. The moral ideas that he had brought from Down East, were just as dashing as his Wall-street corners. He still kept the telegraph wires quivering with conjugal messages, and when he took domestic ease and the fresh salt air on the Jersey sea-coast, at Long Branch, in a high-swung carriage, with four seats, and stable help in trainer's clothes, wasn't his wife at another watering-place, called Newport, with a high-swinging carriage of her own, all cushioned off with silk, and with her gold-mounted harness rattling over six horses, just as black and shiny as his?

If that isn't conjugal sympathy, such as goes down among the upper crust of New York, I don't know what is.

Just the same number of horses, just the same swing in her carriage, just the same people—no, I am a little out there. She had relations in the seats, and he hadn't always.

But then, what is all that compared to a great many fashionable, married folks in New York—so extravagantly fond of each other, that they make the Atlantic Ocean for a connecting link, year after year, and correspond tenderly in bills of exchange.

Our poor, dead pedler from Vermont wasn't the only man in New York who lived and loved by steam and telegraph.



XXVII.

MORE ABOUT FISK.

When the New England mind, which is a little apt to be troubled about the marriage relations of its emigrants, asks you about my report, you can say that this New England couple were only following the upper-crust fashion with married people in our great cities, where men and their wives find the Atlantic Ocean more convenient than a divorce court. Being imbued with morality from the Hub, they only set an example of easy distances.

It takes a good, solid foundation of religion for even a born Vermonter to stand against a sudden rush of money. This man seemed to start fair. He began his life with us. Next he went to Boston, the very spring and fountain of high moral ideas, where every law has a higher law to nullify it. He left his better half in the salubrious atmosphere, where she performed her domestic duties alone, while he was toiling down Erie railroad stock, and promulgating sweet sounds from the Grand Opera House. Bound together in conjugal sympathy, by ever-vibrating telegraph wires, what could have been more satisfactory and highly fashionable than these hymeneal relations?

This is what Cousin Dempster has been saying to me with a queer smile on his lips, and something that seems almost sarcastic in his voice.

Says he, "If this way of life is persisted in, and is held respectable in social circles, who has a right to find fault when sin and sorrow spring out of it? Who among the thousands who abandon honorable homes for personal pleasures shall dare to condemn him?

"Look over the list of outgoing steamers any month in the year, and see how large a proportion of husbands and wives travel together. Society, so slanderous in other things, is wickedly tolerant here, and makes a thousand excuses for the separation of married people.

"Children must be educated. Just as if a free-born American boy or girl can't learn all he or she is capable of knowing in his own native land! Just as if any woman, who loves her husband and means to be a good mother, would listen for a moment to the idea of taking her family into foreign parts while her husband is tied down to business at home.

"Married people, who love each other, live together—temptations are serpent-like, but they seldom creep upon a hearthstone kept warm by domestic affection.

"Parents who are willing to live apart for the sake of their children, and call it a sacrifice to duty, may not know that they are hypocrites, but other people know it. Scandal thrives upon such things, and where scandal thrives domestic happiness perishes.

"The marriage relations are the soul of our social life; relax them, take away one grain of their holiness, and you blast the blossom from which wholesome fruit can spring. When love and truth dies out of marriage, its vitality is gone. God forgive the men and the women who dare to hold the most beautiful tie that links soul to soul, as a wisp of flax, to be rent or burned at the will of our most evil passions.

"Can any human being make laws for himself and trample under foot those which have been for ages laid down by society, without meeting, sooner or later, with rebuke, and perhaps, ruin? Evil passions arouse evil passions. The profligacy and power of gold is sometimes most dangerous in a generous nature. In the hot sunshine of overwhelming good fortune, fiery passions are sure to thrive and tend to a poisonous growth. War is the mother of licentiousness. How much that men should avoid, and women shudder at, has sprung out of the civil war, which ebbs and flows even yet on the borders of our land! In that war men learned to be daring in other things than brave deeds, and women learned to be shameless, and glory in free speech, free actions, and free laws of their own devising.

"These thoughts are forced from me by the violent death of a man who had the brain and the heart to be an honor to our State, whose capacity and cordial good-nature might have gained him the love of better men than he ever knew in his brief and fiery career, and who had the brain to accomplish great things in the future."

I listened with breathless attention to what Cousin Dempster said. He spoke with feeling. I didn't think there was so much in the man. He got up from his chair and began to walk the room.

"I cannot dwell upon this man's wildly brilliant career," says he, "without a feeling of melancholy. Here existed the capacities of a great man, perfect health, wonderful energy, struggling aspirations toward the right—which he might hereafter have reached—generous impulses running wild, strong affections, and overweaning ambition, all turbulent ostentations almost barbaric, and all hurled into nothingness by the blow of one bitter enemy.

"As he had lived, so they carried him to his grave, arrayed gorgeously in his coffin, lying in high state, not by the sacred altar of a church, but in the Grand Opera House, which had so long been the centre of his magnificence. Buried in flowers snow-white, as if gathered for the tomb of a vestal, glittering with gold, with clouds of perfume floating over him—in all the pomp of a monarch he was taken from New York, and carried for a last resting-place to Vermont.

"I wish it had been otherwise. Living as he did, dying as he did, with the ruin of so many lives involved in his fate, that last journey should have been taken in simplicity and quietness. The lesson his death conveys is too solemn for display, too mournful for anything but stillness. The elements of a great man left Vermont only a few years ago; New York has sent back the ruins. Let them rest in peace."

Sisters, I did not think it possible that Cousin Dempster could get so fearfully earnest; his conversation has filled me with thoughts too solemn for careless utterance. In this man's death I hear a cry for merciful consideration—a solemn warning—a protest against the headlong speed with which this generation is trampling respectability under foot. This man's death is a subject of gossip now, when it should be a subject of mournful regret.

I do not speak here of the man who killed him, or the cause of his death. One is a subject that no lady would care to discuss. The other is in the hands of the law, which should be a sanctuary for the accused. The evidence has been heard thoroughly, and a jury has decided on it, merciful or not, its verdict is final.

But for Cousin Dempster, I should not have made this death the subject of a report, but some things that he has said startled me. Is it true that the alienation and separation of married people has become so easy and so fashionable? Can a husband and wife live apart months, years, and still keep up a pretence or the reality of affection, and be honored as respectable? I, for one, have no patience with such things. To me, marriage is a beautiful institution.

Do not smile, sisters; I am not thinking of the great Grand Duke now. In fact I am not thinking of myself at all. Cousin Dempster's earnestness has impressed me with apprehension and melancholy; he places this subject before me in a new light.

The man who is dead was in the full vigor of his life. The poor wept for him; he was good to them, and they believed that he had a kind heart. Sometimes that heart went back to the prayers of his mother. Had time been given him, something tender and good might have found a noble growth in his nature. We do not yet know, and never shall know, what he might have been.



XXVIII.

SHE WOULD GO.

Dear sisters:—I have had a glorious and a refreshing season. I have felt, in the depths of my soul, that the eyes, of all Vermont were on me in a reflective way. As the moon is sometimes permitted to shine before the sun goes down, I have added the light of my little feminine luminary to the flood of public homage that surrounds the greatest and best man that our State ever gave to the world.

Saturday night, February third, was Horace Greeley's birthday. A gentleman up-town, who thinks the world of that smartest of good men, just made a house-warming on the occasion, and invited so many artists and poets, and editors and statesmen, and people that Providence had labelled as something particular, that it is a wonder the roof wasn't blown off with the yeasting of so much genius.

Of course the beauty and talent of old Vermont, wherever it could be found, was hunted up, and invited with unusual enthusiasm. Where beauty and talent could be found united in one person—modesty forbids me to point out an instance—of course an especial compliment was paid. My invitation had a picture of the man, whose birthday we went to celebrate, in the middle of the writing—a real good likeness, that I mean to put in a locket and wear round my neck in honor of this self-made man and of my own native State, which may have double cause to glorify herself when the sixty-first birthday of another person just standing in front of the Temple of Fame, with her foot on the threshold, shall come round. I say nothing, but in the female line Vermont has laid up oceans of future glory for herself.

Well, the day came. Once more I drew forth my pink silk dress, and ironed out the flounces; one of them got a little scorched, but I looped up the spot with a bow and a bunch of roses, and found the scorch an artistic improvement. I twisted my hair in corkscrews over night, and slept with my eyes wide open, contented as a kitten, though the pull was tremendous. I frizzed up the other woman's hair, for which I had paid ten dollars in the Sixth Avenue, and made ready for the occasion over night in a general way.

Of course Cousin Dempster and his wife were invited, being my cousins, and so saturated with the family genius, that people are constantly expecting it to break out, which it hasn't yet, except in a general way. But Cousin D. made lots of money in the war, and money is thought almost as much of as talent by some people. Still, between ourselves, I don't think they would have been invited if they hadn't come from Sprucehill; which is taking a literary position next to the Hub since our Society has begun to publish my humble reports.

Well, just at nine o'clock, if you had been in front of my boarding-house you might have seen a splendid carriage standing at the door, and that coachman, in his fur collar and cuffs, sitting high up on the driver's seat, and scrouching his head down while a storm of sleet and snow beat over him.

If you had looked toward the house, three or four eager and curious faces might have been seen flat against every front window as a certain dignified and queenly person came slowly down the steps, with a white opera-cloak folded over her magnificent person, and a pink silk long train bunched up under it, lining-side out.

The moment that carriage-door shut with an aristocratic bang you might have seen those faces turn from the window and look at each other—then noses turned up at sympathizing noses, giving out audible sniffs of that envy which the wonderful endowments of some persons are apt to engender in the inferior female mind.

But if you had looked into that carriage you would have seen it packed comfortably as a robin's nest in blossom time. There was my pink dress floating round me in rosy billows; there was Cousin E. E.'s corn-colored moire antique swelling like a balloon on her side; and there was Cousin Dempster rising like a black exclamation point up from one corner, and that child drumming her blue kid-boots against the seat in another corner, and snarling because a gust of sleet came in with me before the fellow outside could shut the door.

When I saw her, my blood riled in a minute.

"Why, Cousin Dempster," says I, "children were not invited."

"Children, indeed!" says the child, giving her head a fling: "I suppose Cousin Frost thinks that nothing but old maids can be young ladies—the idea!"

"Daughter!" almost shrieked Cousin Emily E., a-catching her breath, and giving a frightened look over my way.

"My child, how can you be so rude?" says Cousin Dempster, stamping down among the fur robes, and mashing my foot under the sole of his boot.

I said nothing, but sat in dignified silence, wishing those two persons to feel that it was impossible the creature could mean me, but I trembled all over with righteous indignation, and wondered why that Bible benefactor, King Herod, had limited himself to boys, when he had such a glorious chance to sweep creatures like that out of existence in the female line. Oh! if I had been a Bible potentate!

"She was so anxious to go, being born in Vermont," says Cousin Emily Elizabeth; "it seems as if she knew Mr. Greeley."

"Reads the Tribune every day," chimes in Cousin Dempster, giving me a pleading look.

"I'll thank you to take the heel of your boot off my foot, if you have held it there long enough," says I, with the firmness of a martyr and the dignity of an empress.

This wilted the whole party into silence, and we drove on, with the hail pelting against the windows, and lowering clouds inside.

All at once we got into a long line of carriages, and moved on as if we were going to a funeral instead of a birthday. Then the carriage stopped, the door was flung open, and we stepped under a long tent that stretched from the front door down a flight of stone steps and across the sidewalk. A carpet ran down the steps to the carriage, and we walked up that into the house; then through a hall, and upstairs, where we took off our cloaks and titivated up a little in a room half full of ladies, and blocked up with cloaks and things. I let down Cousin E. E.'s dress, and she let down mine; then we shook each other out, took an observation of each other from head to foot, tightened the buttons of our gloves, and went into the hall.

There stood Cousin Dempster, with his white gloves on, and a white cravat with lace edges around his neck, looking so gentlemanly. We went downstairs Indian file, for a stream of people were going down on one side all crimlicued off most gorgeously; and another stream was going up, with cloaks and hoods on, so there was no locking arms till we got into the lower hall. Then we just tackled in. I took one arm, E. E. took the other, and that creature followed after, looking like an infantile Black Crook in her short muslin skirts and bunched-up sash.



XXIX.

MR. GREELEY'S BIRTHDAY PARTY.

The parlors were large and light, and crowded full. Just beyond the door I saw a man standing, with both hands at work, shaking out welcomes to his friends, as a chestnut bough rattles down nuts after a rousing frost.

There he stood—the honored son of our dear old State—looking benign as Mr. Benjamin Franklin, and sweet-tempered as if he had fed on native maple-sugar all his life. I looked eagerly for his "old white coat," but he had on a bran-new black one; his hair, long and snow-white, fell down almost to his shoulders, that were rather broad than otherwise, which is needful considering the burdens that have been piled on them. I really think any stranger, going in there, would have known that this man owned a birthday by his face, it was so radiant with good-nature.

By and by we hustled our way to the door. A man that stood there whispered something to Cousin Dempster, who whispered back. Then the man sung out—

"Mr. and Mrs. Dempster—Miss Phoemie Frost!"

Mercy on me, wasn't there a fluttering when that name rang through the crowd, as if blown by the trumpet of Fame. I felt myself blushing from head to foot, my heart rose into my mouth. I clung with feminine reliance on my cousin's arm, and, thus supported, prepared to endure the hundreds of admiring eyes bent upon me.

Mr. Greeley came forward. The moment he heard that name he seized the two whitely gloved hands that I held out to him.

"Miss Frost, of Vermont," says he.

I pressed his hands. I could not speak. A little address, full of poetry, that I had been thinking over in my mind, melted into chaos. I could only murmur something about birthdays and long lives. Then some new people crowded me away, and I felt myself alone long enough to take a look at the rooms. They were gorgeous with pictures and flowers; radiant with gas, which fell like August sunshine through a thicket of vines, and flowers woven in among the burners in the chandelier, and dropping down half way to the floor.

The marble slabs under the looking-glass at each end of the rooms were matted over with flowers, and from the top streamed down long feathery vines which ended in little bunches of red roses that swung loose before the glass, and left another vine there. Over the doors and windows these vines and flowers trailed themselves everywhere. Some beautiful pictures were on the walls. The centre one was of Greeley himself—just like him—bland and serene, smiling down upon the crowd as if he longed to shake hands over again.

This picture was just crowned with a mat of white flowers, in which the year our Greeley was born, and the present year, were woven with bright red flowers. Down each side the feathery vines trailed and quivered. I tell you, sisters, it was beautiful.

Before I could take in a full view, people had found out where I stood, and came crowding round me so close that I had to take in a reef of my pink silk dress, and they kept Cousin Dempster busy as a bee introducing them. So many people had read my writings, so many people had been dying to see me, it was enough to bring blushes to my cheeks and tears to my eyes. This, said I, is fame—and all Vermont shall hear of it, not for my sake, but in behalf of the Society.

The rooms had been full of music all the time, but now the toot horns and fiddles stopped, and I heard the tones of a pianoforte from the further end of the room, then a voice struck in—loud, clear, ringing. We pressed forward, people made way for us, and we got into the ring.

A young lady was standing by the pianoforte, singing "Auld Lang Syne." Greeley stood by her, holding her bouquet in his hand. How smiling, how satisfied he looked as the heart-stirring old song rang over him! Close by stood his only sister, Mrs. Cleveland, a fair and real handsome woman, dressed in blue silk, with a white lace shawl a-shimmering over it. She looked happy as a blue jay on an apple-tree bough, and made everybody welcome over again when Mr. Greeley had done it once—just as a kind, warm-hearted woman ought to stand by a brother she is proud of, and looks like.

Near by were her two daughters, just the nicest girls you ever saw. One of 'em in a pink satin dress with lace over it, and the other in blue satin with lace—just lovely!

When the lady who did "Auld Lang Syne" went away from the pianoforte, every lady in the room began to clap hands, they seemed to be so glad that Mr. Greeley had found time to have a birthday. Then Miss Cleveland, in the blue dress, sat down, looking sweet and modest as a white dove; and she sang, too, real sweet; and then the people began to clap hands again. It seemed as if music just set them off into tantrums of delight because our great white-headed Vermonter had ever been born.

I joined in with a vim; for if there is anybody I like and am proud of, it is the man who was standing there smiling among his friends, with that great, lovely bunch of flowers in his hands, and a little one in the button-hole of his coat.

The wife and two daughters of our statesman and friend were over in England, so that his family connections didn't spread as if he had been President of the United States. But then he had a great many honest friends, and that made up for it considerably. There stood Mr. and Mrs. A. J. Johnson, who had carpeted their stone steps, set up a tent over their hospitable door, and turned their parlors into a blooming garden, just to show the respect they had for him; and they did it beautifully, making his friends theirs. At any rate, I can answer for one; for any person who does honor to a Vermont man who has glorified his State, can count on the faithful friendship of Phoemie Frost during his natural life.

At eleven o'clock, exactly, we all crowded around Mr. Greeley, and shook hands with him over again. Then we shook hands with Mrs. Johnson, who looked sweet, and was nice as nice could be; and with Mr. Johnson, and so on. After that, we all flocked out, with cloaks and hoods on, feeling that an evening like that was a refreshing season which will not be forgotten by some of us, so long as we live.

One thing I forgot to mention—and I do it now, with tears in my eyes. In the front parlor, on a line with Mr. Greeley's picture, was one that made the heart ache in my bosom, and which will bring tears into your eyes, one and all, I know. It was the picture of Alice Cary. You have read her poetry; you know how good she was from that poetry; but I have learned some things about her here, that, as a Society, you should hear about. But I respect her memory so much that it must be in a report by itself. She was a great friend of Mr. Greeley's, and her shadow seemed to smile on him as it hung upon the wall.



XXX.

LEAP YEAR.

Do you know that this is Leap Year? Do you begin to feel the glorious flood of liberty which it lets in upon the female women of this country? As a society and as individuals, let us press forward to the mark of the prize—I beg pardon.

This is not exactly a religious subject, though it does relate to the hymeneal altar, at which we have never yet been permitted to worship—a lasting and burning shame, which I, for one, begin to feel more deeply every day of my life.

True, my own prospects are brightening and glorifying, but circumstances have brought them, for the present, to a dead halt. But for the burst of golden sunshine let into my sad destiny by this opening Leap Year, I should be growing pale with suspense—for you know the great Grand Duke, though courteous and devotional, did not speak out in a perfectly satisfactory manner. I knew he meant it; for no robin's nest in laying time was ever so full of warm and brooding love as those blue eyes of his. But a cruel fate took him hence before the thrilling word was spoken, and left me trembling with doubt, pining in loneliness.

I know the reason of this now; there is not a doubt that he has been anxious, like myself, but imperial royalty has its impediments. My Prince must bow to the exactions of a lofty station. I took up a paper the other day, and read something that made the heart leap in my bosom as a trout jumps after a fly. The Emperor has heard of the great Grand Duke's admiration. All Russia has heard of it and me. It is even reported that he has married a lovely and talented female, without waiting for the Emperor to say yes or no. The description answers, you will perceive. I felt myself blush, like a rose in the sunset, when I read it. "Lovely and talented." Sisters, there can be no doubt about it!

I felt my cheeks burn and my heart broaden with a sense of coming exaltation. Why should the Emperor refuse? Are we not all queens in this country, and is not a woman of genius an empress among queens?

I'm afraid the Emperor of all the Russias does not yet comprehend the great social system of our country, where the fact of being a woman has infinite nobility in itself—to which peculiar privileges are attached; for instance, the privilege of carrying pistols and shooting down men in hallways and street cars in a promiscuous fashion.

As I have said—to be a woman in America is to be everything. That is why I think it unreasonable that Imperial nobility should be forbidden to match itself here. Once we had aristocracy of money, but since the war, when people became rich in no time by selling shoddy and things, that has levelled down like a sand heap. But one aristocracy is left now, and that is the aristocracy of mind. Genius is the nobility of the mind. Now as long as the Prince unites himself with that, what has any one, even his august father, to say against it?

But there is no doubt I have given the Imperial heart some anxiety. His manner was so impressive; his spy-glass was levelled at my countenance so often, that it is not to be wondered at if the violence of his passionate admiration did get about and fly on the wings of the wind to his Imperial home. There it was sure to make an excitement. American ladies have married lords and marquises in England, counts and princes in other countries, and make first-rate lordesses and marchionesses and princesses too. In fact, just as good as the born nobility, and better too; but up to this time it is left to a lovely woman of genius to exalt America into the region of imperial highness. Money—for your lords, etc., etc., etc., generally want that with American beauty and grace—money has done its utmost. Now genius comes in, and modesty crowns itself.

I am satisfied that the great Grand Duke is only waiting, from a feeling of doubt and modesty. My heart compassionates him. Up to the first of January, I could do no more. Female propriety forbade it, but now—now all is changed. Modesty is disenthralled.

It is Leap Year. St. Valentine's Day approaches. The windows of every book-store are a-blazing with valentines, burning with love, eloquent of the tender passions, pictorial and poetical.

The Queen of England offered herself to Prince Albert. It must have been a touching scene. How modestly she suggested the flame that was kindled in her youthful heart, and still lies smouldering in the ashes of that good man's grave. I don't think she waited for Leap Year—but I will. No one shall say that Phoemie Frost has forgotten what is due to her sex.

St. Valentine's Day emancipates the womanly heart. I have bought a valentine, white satin, surrounded by a frost work of silver lace, sprinkled with gold stars. On the satin is a little boy with wings, hiding behind a rose-bush, firing arrows through it from a bow which he lifts up roguishly. These arrows are aimed at an Imperial figure mounted on a wild horse, and running down a buffalo—a unique and beautifully suggestive idea. This was the poem which gushed with spontaneosity from my disenthralled mind:

Come back, come back, from the buffalo raid! Here is fairer game for you; At thy feet the lovingest heart is laid That ever a Grand Duke knew. A lady rich in womanly pride, Whose soul clings unto thine, Is ready to be an Imperial bride— Kneel with thee at Hymen's shrine. Come back, come back, or thy haughty sire Will command, and all is lost; But he cannot extinguish this holy fire In the bosom of——

Sisters, I ask you now, isn't this a gem? It isn't just the thing to put your name to a valentine, they tell me, but this is something deeper and more poetic than such things usually are. It means mischief, as Cousin Dempster says. It is a proposal, buried in roses and veiled in sweet and modest verse, such as a lady might almost send at any time with a few blushes. It will reach him out in that vast wilderness of dead grass, where he has been deluded off by Mr. Sheridan, and has risked his precious life in a terrific manner, shooting great, monstrous buffaloes, which are animals, they tell me, something like an overgrown ox, only the hair is longer, and they are kind of hunched-up about the upper end of the back, just as if the last city fashions among ladies had got to be the rage out there.

Imagine my feelings, sisters, when I heard that the Grand Duke was off with that fellow and a squad of wild Indians, all in war-paint and tomahawks, hunting these terrific creatures. It almost made me feel like a widow. There he was, brought up so tenderly, eating broiled buffalo hump, and drinking champagne and things out in the open lots, as big as all out-doors, and sleeping in a tent. Think of it! With his own right hand he shot down twenty-five of these humpbacked monsters, and means to carry their skins home with him to Russia. I suppose Mr. Philip Sheridan will be for studying the military tactics of Russia from St. Petersburg to Siberia as soon as the great Grand Duke gets back, for he isn't the sort of fellow, folks tell me, to give up a chance like that. Governor Palmer, of Illinois, has, at any rate, given him leave of absence from the Chicago fires, and there isn't anything much to keep him from hunting in Siberia if he wants to.

Well, I got my valentine all ready; directed it to the Grand Duke in a delicate, ladylike way, and took it with my own hands down to the post-office.

"Be very careful of this," says I to a young man who stood at the post-office window, "and see that it goes straight to his Royal Highness; I want it to reach him the first thing in the morning on Valentine's Day."

He looked at the address, and muttered to himself:

"For His Royal Highness the Grand Duke of all the Russias: care of Philip Sheridan and a wild Indian whose name a refined lady could not bring herself to pronounce; Buffalo Plains, America."

"My dear madame," says he, all at once, "this is no address at all; it would never reach the Grand Duke."

I caught my breath.

"Not reach him?" says I.

"No," says he; "the Grand Duke has gone beyond the reach of the mails."

"Goodness gracious!" says I; "but no matter about that, if he hasn't got out of the reach of the females."

"But he has."

My heart sank in my bosom like a soggy apple-dumpling.

"What—all females?" says I. "Won't that reach him, anyway? it is important—very. Great destinies depend upon it."

"I can put it in," says he; "but ten chances to one it will get into the dead-letter office."

My heart grew heavier and heavier, but what could I do?

"Put it in," says I; "live or die, it must go!"

He took my valentine and pitched it off into a heap of letters, just as if it had been a dead leaf. It fairly made me faint to see it handled so; but the fellow turned his back on me, and I went away heart-sick.

One comfort I had in all this—if my valentine could not reach him, that of no other female could; and my offer is sure to be first, though I shouldn't wonder if that girl who sent him her card tied round a canary bird's neck might try. She's forward enough, anyway.

Then, there is another comfort—Valentine's Day don't cover the whole Leap Year, and there are other men than the great Grand Duke in the world. We females have a whole twelvemonths to try our luck in. Of course any of us would aim high the first months; but after that, the game will grow smaller and wilder, as a general thing, and our chances less.

For my part, I mean to be up and doing. One disappointment isn't going to break my heart; I've had too many for that; but if human energy and human genius can avail anything against an adverse destiny, my signature will be changed before this year closes.



XXXI.

A MAN THAT WOULDN'T TAKE MONEY.

Cousin Dempster is real good to me; no mistake about that. A day or two ago, he says to his wife, says he:

"Supposing we take Cousin Phoemie down to an oyster lunch at Fulton Market. That is one of the lions of the city."

I fairly hopped up from my chair when he said this, just as cool and easy as if he had been talking of rabbits lapping milk. What on earth had I to do with city lions, and such animals? Wild beasts like these are in no part of my mission, now are they?

Cousin E. E. saw the scare in my eyes, and smiled.

"I know it seems strange to people from outside," says she; "and it really is a dirty place; but somehow ladies and gentlemen have made it the rage."

"Do the creatures rage fiercely?" says I.

Cousin E. E. looked puzzled a minute, then she answered:

"Oh," says she, "fashion takes queer twists sometimes; in this case it really is unaccountable. The people crowding into those wooden dens—and the eating done there is wonderful."

"Eating!" says I, feeling my eyes grow big as saucers. "Eating! Do they feed before folks, then?"

"Oh, yes; every lady goes; you never saw anything like it. Such Rockaways and other bivalves are to be found nowhere else."

"Rockaways and bivalves!" thinks I to myself; "what kind of animals are they? Never heard of bivalves before in my whole life, but the other puts me in mind of old Grandma Frost's splint-bottomed rocking-chair. No need of saying rock-away to her, for she was always on the teater. But she's dead now, and the last time I ever saw her Boston rocker it was away back of the chimney, at the old homestead, scrouged in between the stones and the clapboards, with one rocker torn off and an arm broken. I couldn't help asking Cousin E. E. if she remembered that chair.

"Oh, yes," says she; "somebody hustled it off into the garret the moment she'd done with it. I saw it there a year after the funeral, with the patchwork cushion of red and blue cloth moth-eaten and gray with dust."

Now, my father owned the old homestead while he lived, and I took this as a slur on our branch of the Frost family. This riled me internally, but I couldn't contradict her, and felt myself blushing hotly, rather ashamed of the Frost family. But the truth is, as a race, we are none of us given to much antiquity. No female of our family was ever known to get over forty-nine in her own person, though many of them have lived to a wonderful old age. This was curious, but a fact. Such unaccountable things do sometimes run in families. But these are facts that I sometimes choke down—I did it now.

"We were talking of something else, and got on to chairs," says I.

"No uncommon thing," says Cousin Dempster, laughing.

I laughed too, but that child turned up her sniffy nose, and, looking at her father, said:

"The idea!" which wilted him down at once.

"But these bivalves and Rockaways—what do they do with them?"

"Why, eat them, of course."

"Eat them? How?"

"Raw."

"Mercy on me! Raw?"

"Well, Cousin E. E., it shan't be said that you are related to a coward. I'll go down to see these city lions; but when?"

"Well, to-day," says Cousin Dempster. "Just come down to the office about noon, and I'll go with you."

"Just so," says I, feeling a little shivery.

"Would you like to go, darling?" says he speaking to his little girl, as if half afraid.

"Me, papa, down to that horrid place all meat and butter, and fish and things? The idea!"

I was so grateful to the stuck-up thing, that I'm afraid Cousin E. E. saw it in my eyes, for she sort of clouded over and said:

"That, after all, she didn't think she cared to go, but that needn't keep Cousin Phoemie at home. Mr. Dempster would take her."

"Well, just as you please," says he, a-taking his hat, "I'm at your service—singly or in groups. Good-morning."

Well, in the afternoon, I asked Cousin E. E., in a kind of natural way, if she meant to go to that feed. But that child called out:

"No, no, mamma, don't go; I won't be left alone."

So Cousin E. E. said she had a bad headache, and thought she wouldn't go, but that needn't keep me.

Now, sisters, I wasn't brought up in the woods to be scared by owls, as we say in our parts—and if that little upstart thought she would keep me at home by domineering over her mother, she soon found out her mistake, for in less than two minutes a young lady, of about my size, came downstairs, with her beehive bonnet on, a satchel in one hand and an umbrella in the other.

"You will find the way easy enough," says Cousin E. E. "The cars take you close to the office, and you will get splendid oysters at the market."

Oysters! the very word made my mouth water, for if there is a thing on earth that I deliciously adore, it is oysters—such as you get here in York.

"Oysters!" says I, "why didn't you tell me that before?"

"We did," says she; "of course we did!"

I was too polite to contradict her; but I'll take my Bible oath that not one word about shell-fish of any kind had been mentioned that morning—nothing but a great city lion, Rockaways, bivalves, and animals like them. Still I said nothing, but went out encouraged by the idea that I was to have something to eat as well as the lion.

It was afternoon, and the street-car wasn't overfull, so I took a seat in one corner and began to think over a piece of poetry that I have got into my mind, which shortened the way to Dempster's office wonderfully. In less than no time I seemed to get there, but he had just stepped out. One of the clerks said that he thought he had gone to the market for lunch.

Oh, mercy! I felt as if my oysters were all out to sea again. I was too late.

"Which is the way to the market?" says I.

"I will show you," says he—which he did—walking by my side till I got in sight of a long, low, broad-spreading building that seemed all roof, and stone floors opening everywhere right into the street.

"Now," says the young gentleman, "you won't help finding your way, for there is Mr. Dempster himself."

He lifted his hat and bowed so politely that I felt impressed with a desire to reward him. Taking out my pocket-book, I handed him a ten-cent stamp, with a grateful and most benevolent smile on my countenance. I am sure of that from the glow I felt. He blushed—he seemed to choke—he stepped back and put on his hat with a jerk, but he didn't reach out his hand with the grateful spontaneosity I expected. His modesty touched me.

"Take it," says I, "it is no more than you deserve."

"Excuse me," says he; and his face was as red as a fireman's jacket.

"Good-afternoon;" and as true as you live he went off without taking the money. I never saw anything like it.



XXXII.

A DEMOCRATIC LUNCH.

As soon as I could recover from the surprise any New England woman would feel at a thing like this, I saw Cousin Dempster coming toward me.

"Come, hurry up," says he. "You were so late, I thought perhaps you had misunderstood, and come directly here. This way; be careful where you step; Fulton market is not the neatest place on earth."

I was careful, and lifting the skirt of my alpaca dress between my thumb and finger, gave a nipping jump, and cleared a gutter that ran between Cousin D. and myself. Then we walked into the market, with a whole crowd of other people, and trained along between baskets and square wooden pens heaped up with oranges, and things called bananas—gold-colored, and bunched-up like sausages, but awful good to eat. Potatoes, apples, books, peanuts, chestnuts, pies, cakes, and no end of things, were heaped on high benches on each side of us wherever we turned, till at last we passed through an encampment of empty meat-stands, and from that into a wooden lane with open rooms on one hand, and piles on piles of oysters on each side the door.

Every one of these rooms had a great rousing fire burning and roaring before it, and a lot of men diving in amongst the oysters, with sharp knives in their hands.

"Let us go in here," says Cousin Dempster, turning toward one of the rooms that looked cheerful and neat as a pin. The floor was sprinkled with white sand, and the tables had marble tops, white as tombstones, but more cheerful by half. As we went in, a man by the door called out, "Tuw stews!" Then again, "One roast—one raw on half-shell!"

Another man began firing pots and pans at the heap of blazing coals before him the moment this fellow stopped for breath. All this made me so hungry that I really felt as if I couldn't wait; but I kind of started back when I saw ever so many gentlemen and ladies in the room, sitting by the tables and feeding deliciously. Some of the men had their hats on, which did not strike me as over-genteel. But, after this one halt, I entered with dignity, placed my satchel in a corner, and took an upright position on one of the wooden chairs. Cousin Dempster sat down, too. He took his hat off, which I felt as complimentary, and a touch of the aristocratic.

"Now, what shall we have?" says he.

"A stew," says I, with a feeling of thanksgiving in my mouth.

Cousin D. said something in a low voice to the young man, who went to the door, and called out:

"One roast! one stew—Saddlerock!"

I started up and caught that young man by the arm, a-feeling as if I had got hold of a cannibal. Saddlerocks, indeed!

"Young man," says I, "you have mistaken your party; we didn't ask for stewed grindstones—only oysters."

He looked at me, at first, wild as a night-hawk, and seemed as if he wanted to run away.

"Don't be scared," says I; "no harm is intended; it is an oyster stew that we want—nothing more. I'm not fond of hard meat. If you don't know how to cook them—which is natural, being a man—I can tell you. Now be particular—put in half milk, a considerable chunk of butter, not too much pepper, and just let them come to a boil—no more. I do hate oysters stewed to death. You understand?" says I, counting over the ingredients on my fingers—"now go and do your duty."

"Yes'm," says he, and goes right to the door, and sings out: "One stew!—one roast!" so loud that it made me jump. Then he came back into the room, while I retired, with dignity, to my seat by the table.

It seemed to me that Cousin Dempster didn't quite like what I had done, for his face was red as fire when I sat down again, and I heard him mutter something about the eccentricities of genius. Indeed, I'm afraid a profane word came with it, though I pretended not to hear.

By and by, in came the waiter-man, with two plates of cabbage cut fine, and chucked a vinegar cruet down before me; then he clapped salt and pepper before Cousin D., with a plate of little crackers. Then he went away again, and came back with two plates full of great, pussy oysters, steaming hot, and so appetizing, that a hungry person might have made a luscious meal on the steam.

Oh, Sisters! you never will know what good eating is till you've been down to the Fulton Market, and feasted on oysters there; you can't get 'em first-rate in any other place. Try it, and you'll find 'em weak as weakness compared to these. Hot, plump, delicious! The very memory of them is enough to keep a reasonable person from being hungry a week. Talk of Delmonico's! I never was there; but if it beats this room in the Fulton Market in the way of shell-fish, I'll give up all my chances this Leap Year.

Well, when we'd done eating, two pewter mugs were set on the table, and Cousin Dempster handed one to me. I've heard of these mugs as belonging to bar-rooms and over intimate with ale and beer—things that I wouldn't touch for anything on earth, maple-sap being my native drink—so I pushed the cup away, really ashamed of Cousin D.; but he pushed it back a-kind of laughing, and says he:

"Just taste it."

"Beer?" says I. "Never."

Cousin D. lifted his mug to his lip, and drank as if it tasted good. I was awful thirsty, and this was tantalizing.

"Try it," says he, fixing his bright eyes on me. "How do you know it is beer till you've tasted it?"

"Just so," says I; "I didn't think of that?"

I took up the mug, and sipped a cautious sip. Beer, indeed! That pewter cup was brimming over with champagne-cider, that flashed and sparkled up to my lips like kisses let loose. Then I bent my head to Cousin Dempster, and just nodded.

Never think you have drank champagne-cider till you've taken it flashing from a pewter mug, after oysters, in Fulton Market; till then, Sisters, you will never know how thoroughly good-natured and full of fun a lone female can become. Some people might think champagne-cider like maple-sap with a sparkle in it, for the color is just the same; but it is considerably livelier, and a good deal more so, especially when one drinks it out of a pewter cup, and hasn't any way of measuring.

Bold! I should think I was, after that. Bold as brass.

"Come," says I, taking up my satchel, "I'm ready to see that city lion, the Rockaways, and the bivalves fed. They have no terrors for me now. I've got over that. Where is their dens, or cages, and how often do they feed?

Cousin Dempster set down his pewter mug, and just stared at me with all his eyes.

"What is it? What do you mean?" says he.

"What! the lion, to be sure! Didn't you say that I would see one of the city lions when I came to Fulton Market?"

That man must have been possessed. He leaned back in his chair, he stooped forward, his face turned red, and, oh! my how he did laugh!

"What possesses you, Cousin D.," says I, riling up.

"Oh, nothing," says he, wiping the tears from his eyes, and trying to stop laughing, though he couldn't; "only—only this isn't a menagerie, but a market. Did you really think there were wild beasts on exhibition? It was the market we meant."

Then I remembered that E. E. had called me a lion once. Now it was the market, and there wasn't a sign of the wild beast in either case. There he sat laughing till he cried, because I couldn't understand that ladies and markets were not wild animals. Says I to myself, "I'll make you laugh out of the other side of your mouth,"—so I turned to him as cool as a cucumber:

"What on earth are you te-he-ing about? I only want to walk around the market and see what's going on. Isn't that what we came for?"

Cousin D. stopped laughing, and began to look sheepish enough.

"Is that it?" says he.

"What else?" says I. "You didn't think I expected this great, big, low-roofed market to have paws and growl, did you," says I. "I would growl if the city were to set me down in the mud of this pestiferous place. So you thought I really meant it. Well, the easy way in which some men are taken in is astonishing. They never can understand metaphor," says I. "But the bivalves and Rockaways. What of them?" says I.

"Swallowed them," says he. Sisters, the dizziness in my stomach was awful.



XXXIII.

DEMPSTER PROPOSES A TRIP.

Dear sisters:—I have been in Washington. The great city of a great nation. I have seen the Capitol in all its splendid magnificence, its pictures, its marbled floor, its fruit tables, and its underground eating-rooms. I have seen the White House, and have had a bird's-eye view of the President of these United States.

I will tell you how it happened. I was getting anxious and down in the mouth; my valentine had been given to the winds of heaven—no, they would have carried it safely through ten thousand herds of buffalo cattle—but it had been given to the mails, and they are so uncertain, spell the word which way you will. Day after day I waited and watched, and sent down to the post-office to be sure there was no mistake in that department; but nothing came of it; no answer reached me. I became peaked and down-hearted, so much so, dear sisters, that Cousin Dempster got anxious about me, and one day asked me, in the kindest manner, if I would like to run on to Washington with him.

"Run on to Washington," says I; "how far is it, cousin?"

"Why," says he, "about two hundred and thirty miles, I should say."

"Two hundred and thirty miles," says I, almost screaming. "Why, Cousin D., I couldn't do it to save my life."

"Oh!" says he, "it isn't a very tedious ride."

"Ride," says I. "Why, didn't you ask me just now to run on with you? How can I do both?"

Cousin D. laughed, and began to rock up and down till he almost bent double; though what it was about I couldn't begin to tell.

"Well," says he, "just get your trunk or carpet-bag packed, and I'll call for you in the morning. Emily Elizabeth can't leave home just now, and it will be a great pleasure to me if I can have you along."

"If you'd just as lief," says I, "I'll speak to Cousin E. E. about it; under present circumstances, a young girl like me can't be too particular. I'm told that a good many married men have got a habit of travelling toward Washington in what seems like a single state, and it's wonderful how many of them have unprotected females put under their charge—sometimes, both ways. If E. E. has no objection, I'll be on hand bright and early."

Dempster kept on laughing, and I went upstairs wondering what had set him off so, but when I asked Cousin E. E. if she had any objection to my travelling to Washington with her husband, she began to laugh too, as if it was the best sort of a joke that a York lady should be expected to care about her husband's travelling off with other feminine women.

"Why," says she, a-wiping the fun and tears from her eyes with a lace handkerchief, "what do you think I care! We don't keep our husbands shut up in band-boxes here in the great metropolis."

"No," says I to myself, "nor do you get much chance to shut 'em up at home, according to my thinking."

"Besides," says she, with comicality in her eyes, looking at me from head to foot: "I should never think of being jealous of you, Cousin Phoemie."

Here, that child looked up from a novel she was a-reading.

"The idea," says she, which was exasperating; especially as Cousin E. E. kept laughing.

"That is as much as to say you don't think I'm good-looking enough to be afraid of," says I, feeling as if a cold frost was creeping over my face. "Thank you."

Cousin E. E. started up from her lounge, which is a cushioned bench rounded off at one end, and a high-backed easy-chair at the other; and says she:

"I didn't mean that, cousin; there is no one for whom I have so much respect. It was on account of your high religious principle and beautiful morality that I was so willing to trust you with my husband."

"With papa. The idea!" chimed in that child, giving her head a toss. "They'll think it's his mother."

"My daughter!" shrieked E. E., holding up both her hands, and falling back into the scoop of her couch.

"Oh, let her speak!" says I, feeling the goose pimples a-creeping up my arms. "I'm used to forward children. In our parts they slap them with a slipper, if nothing else is handy."

"A slipper; the idea!" snapped that child.

I didn't seem to mind her, but went on talking to her mother.

"But here, in York, the most careful mothers wear button boots, and keep special help to put them on and off, so the poor little wretches have no check on their impudence."

"Mamma," snapped the creature, "I won't stand this; I won't stay in the same room with that hateful old maid. I hope she will go to Washington and be smashed up in ten thousand railroads. That's the idea!"

With this the spiteful thing walked out of the room with her head thrown back, and her nose in the air.

"Let her go," says E. E., sinking back on her couch as red as fire. "The child has got her share of the old Frost temper. Now let us talk about Washington. Do you mean to go incog.?"

"Incog! Oh, no," says I, beginning to cool down. "We mean to go in the railroad cars."

Another glow of fun came into Cousin E. E.'s eyes—she really is a good-natured creature; some people might have got mad about what I said to that child, but she didn't seem to care, for the laugh all came back to her eyes.

"Of course," says she, "but do you mean to go in your own character?"

"Why," says I, "don't people take their characters with them when they go to Washington?"

"They sometimes leave them there," says she, laughing, "but this is what I mean; if I were you I'd take this trip quietly, and look about a little without letting people know how great a genius they had among them. By and by we will all go and take the city by storm."

"Just so," says I, delighted with the plan, which has a touch of diplomacy in it—and I am anxious to study diplomacy under the circumstances, you know; "creep before you walk—that is what you mean."

"Just pass as Miss Frost—nothing more—and make your own observations," says E. E.

"I will," says I. "It's a good idea. I don't think the people in Washington were over polite to my great Grand Duke, and I mean to pay them off, some day."

"That's settled," says E. E. "Now you have no more than time to get ready."



XXXIV.

IN WASHINGTON.

I hurried back to my boarding-house, packed up that pink silk dress and things, put on my alpaca dress, tied a thick brown veil over my beehive, and packed my satchel till it rounded out like an apple dumpling.

We started that night. Cousin D. wanted me to go into a long car where people slept, he said; but I saw a good many men with carpet-bags going in there, which looked strange, and though I have great faith in the integrity of Cousin Dempster, a young lady in my peculiar circumstances cannot be too particular; I declined to go into that curtained, long car, and sat up in a high-backed chair all night, wide awake as a whip-poor-will, for Cousin Dempster was on the next seat sleeping like a mole, and his head more than once came down so close to my shoulder that it made me shudder for fear that people might not know that he was my cousin's husband, and snap up my character before I got to Washington.

Well, at last we got out of that train, I stood with both feet in the heart of the nation, and a great, flat, straggling heart it is.

"There it is—there is the Capitol," says Cousin Dempster. "Look how beautifully the sunshine bathes the dome and the white marble walls."

I looked upward—there, rising up over a lot of tall trees and long, green embankments, rose a great building, white as snow, and large as all out-doors. The sun was just up, and had set all its windows on fire, and a great, stout woman perched on the top of a thing they call the dome—which is like a mammoth wash-bowl turned wrong side up—looked as if she was tired out with carrying so much on her head, and longed to jump down and have a good time with the other bronze-colored girls that show themselves off, just like white folks inside the building.

Well, later that day, I went right up to that heap of marble, which in its length and breadth and depth filled my soul with pride and patriotic glory. I really don't believe there is another building like it on the face of the earth. Freedom, honesty, and greatness ought to preside there.

Why, sisters, there are whole rooms here of clouded marble, ceiling, floor, walls—everything polished like the agate stone in your brooch, and I do think that the hottest sun can hardly force a beam of warmth through.

Down in the great wandering cellars you come upon staircases of beautiful marble, fenced in with railings of iron and gold and brass all melted together and called bronze, up which deer, as big as young lambs, are jumping, and branches of trees are twisted. There are ever so many of these staircases, and they cost one hundred thousand dollars apiece. Think of that! and mostly where it is so dark that you can't but just see them.

"I hadn't only one day and night to look about in, so I went up there before Congress got to work, as I wanted to see things without having people know that I was there. But by and by a lot of men came swarming in, and I felt like making myself scarce.

I went back to the hotel and got a little sleep.

It was dinner time, and near candle-light when I woke up; and when we got through dinner, Cousin D. told me to hurry up, and we would take a look at the White House.

"Shall I get out my pink silk?" says I. "Does the President expect me?"

"Oh, no," says he; "no one is aware that we are here. We will drive to the White House, see all that is to be seen, and start home bright and early to-morrow morning."

"Then the alpaca will do," says I.

"Of course," says he; "anything."

I wasn't sorry. This travelling all night is apt to take the ambition out of the most energetic character. The difference between pink silk and alpaca was nothing to me now.

Well, in an hour after, the carriage we rode in stopped under a great square roof, set on marble pillars, which spreads out from the steps of the White House to keep people sheltered from the storm and sun when they get out of the carriages. It was dark now, and two great street-lamps were in brilliant combustion each side of the steps.

Between us, sisters, that White House that we hear so much about is no great shakes of a building. Compared to the Capitol, it is just nowhere.

Cousin D. rang the knob, which was silver, and a man opened the door.

"We should like to see the House," says Cousin D.

"Certainly," says the man. "Walk in."

We did walk into a large room, with a few chairs and two or three pictures in it; nothing particular, I can tell you.

"This way," says the man.

We went that way, into a great room, long and wide as a meeting-house, choke full of long windows, and with three awful large glass balloons, blazing with lights, a-hanging from the roof.

The carpet was thick and soft as a sandy shore, and had its colors all trampled in together, as if some one had stamped down the leaves of a maple camp into the grass as they fell last year.

"The chairs and sofas and looking-glasses were bought when General Washington was President," says the man.

"Mercy on me! you don't say so," says I. "They look rather skimpy for these times, don't they?" says I; but then his way of buying things and spending money was a little skimpy compared to the way Presidents spend money now; but, of course, we grow more deserving as we grow older. "Now, those red silk curtains that almost hide the lace ones, did they belong to Washington?"

"Them? Oh, no; we change them every four years."

"Then they go out with the President," says I.

"We don't think that he will go out yet awhile," says the man, looking a little wrathy.

"Well, I hope he won't, for great men are scarce in these times," says I, wanting to mollify him. He said nothing, and I followed him through a door into a smaller room, so full of green that it seemed like stepping out of a blazing sun into a fern hollow. The walls were green; the carpet was green as meadow grass; the sofas and chairs were cushioned with green satin. The glass balloon seemed to have a sea-green tinge in it, though it was blazing like a bonfire.

Not a soul was in the room, and we went on to the next which was long, rounded off at the ends like a lemon, and blue as the sky. Down the tall windows came curtains of blue silk, sweeping over white lace. The chairs seemed framed in solid gold; their cushions were blue silk.

"This is the celebrated blue room," says the man.

"I've heard about it," says I.

"And this," says he, "is the red room. The President has given a dinner-party to General Sickles this evening, and they are now at the table. Would you like to look in?"

Before I could answer, we were standing in the red room, and looking through at a table crowded round with gentlemen and ladies, dressed like queens and princes, some of them looking handsome as angels.

"That is General Sickles," says he, "a-sitting by Mr. Grant."

I looked in, but could only see a face, not over young, turned towards a lady who was listening to him, as if every word he dropped was a ripe cherry. She had a good, honest face, and I liked her.

"That is Mrs. Sickles, sitting by the President," says the man.

"What, that girl! you don't say so. Why, he might be her father."

It was the truth—a young, black-eyed thing, rather pretty and childish, sat there by General Grant—I knew it was Grant by his features—talking to him as if he had been her brother. Her dress was high up in the neck, but most of the ladies there wore them so low that I felt like turning my eyes away; but Cousin D. says that low-necked dresses always rage as a chronic epidemic in Washington, so I mustn't be surprised.

"That is General Sheridan," says the man.

"That little cast-iron image, General Sheridan!" says I, a-starting back. "The fellow that cured a whole tribe of Indian women of small-pox with bayonets and bullets! I don't want to see anything more! Just let us go away, cousin; I haven't been vaccinated, and he might break out again."

"Hush! hush! he isn't dangerous," says Cousin D.

"Dangerous!" says I, "just ask the Governor of Illinois. Wasn't it General Sheridan who dragged off the Grand Duke among the Indians and buffaloes? I tell you again I won't stay another minute in the house with that man!"

Sisters, I kept my word. We departed at once.



XXXV.

GETTING INFORMATION.

My dear sisters:—I made what people here call a flying visit to Washington, which means, I suppose, that the railroad cars go about as swift as a bird flies, which they do, if one is allowed to choose the bird—a white bantam, for instance, with clipped wings. Well, I really don't know much about the speed, only I was awful tired when we got out of the cars at Jersey City, and we had the lonesomest drive home just before daylight that two tired mortals ever undertook. The whole city was still as a graveyard, and put one in mind of those cities over the sea, dug out of the ashes in which they have been buried hundreds on hundreds of years.

To me, sisters, nothing is more dreary than a great city shut up and full of sleeping people. Only think of it! half a million of human beings all lying in darkness, unconscious of both happiness or misery, just as if sleeping in their tombs, only that the first glow of sunshine brings them to life again. Did you ever think of it?

Now, in the country the stillness is not so mournful—there is a sense of out-door freedom there. The leaves stir with life on the trees. The brooks murmur and gurgle and laugh by night as they do by day. The birds flutter now and then, and the winds whistle and whisper, filling the night with a stir of life. But here—here in a great city, a ghost-like policeman, or a poor straggling wretch who has no home but the street, is all that you see. Indeed, coming home before daybreak isn't a thing I hanker to do over again.

Well, after pulling at the bell-knob till I'm afraid Cousin Dempster swore internally, we got into the house, and had a good long sleep before breakfast.

"I'm so glad you've come," says Cousin E. E., "for the Liederkranz comes off to-night, and I was afraid we should lose it. Of course you'll go, Cousin Frost?"

"Well," says I, "perhaps I can tell better when I know what the thing is. It's a crabbled sort of a word, that might belong to an aligator or kangaroo; and I don't care overmuch for wild-beast shows, any way." Cousin E. E. laughed.

"Well," says she, "in some sense you are right. There will be a show of wild animals such as never roamed in field or forest, but none of them are dangerous; at any rate, in that form."

"Are they in a circus, and is there a clown with a chalky face and red patches?" says I.

"The circus!" says she, a-holding up both hands. "Why, it is to be in the Academy of Music, and the first people in the city are going."

"To see them feed?" says I.

"Well, that may be a part of it, but the principal thing is the parade."

"But where do they feed the animals—not in the boxes with red velvet cushions, I calculate?"

"Oh, how funny you are! Of course not; the supper is set out in Nilsson Hall, and is served a la carte."

"What!" says I; "do they bring in fodder by the cartload for the creatures? Now, really, Cousin E. E., there is nothing astonishing about that to a person born and bred in the country. You and I have ridden on a load of hay, piled up so high that we had to bend down our heads to keep from bumping them against the top of the barn door, when the hay went in to be put on the mow; so we need not see the same thing meached over here in York."

"Dear me!" said my cousin; "you are just the brightest and stupidest woman——"

"Young lady, if you please," says I.

"Well, young lady—that I ever set eyes on—can't you comprehend that it is a ball we are speaking of?"

"A ball?" says I; "then what did you call it a Liederkranz for?"

"The Liederkranz ball. It's a German word."

"But I don't speak Dutch. How should I, not being an old settler of York Island," says I.

"Well, never mind that. The Liederkranz is a masked ball."

"A masked ball! Now what do you mean? I've heard of masked batteries, but they went out with the war."

"There it is again; you won't take time to understand," says Cousin E. E., a-lifting both her hands in the air. "This is a ball where people go in character."

I arose at once, burning with indignation.

"Cousin E. E.," says I, "do you mean to insult me? What have you seen in my conduct to lead you into supposing that I would go to any ball that was out of character?"

"Do sit down," says she.

"Not in this house," says I. "It isn't my own dignity alone that I have got to maintain, but the whole Society of Infinite Progress is represented in my humble person."

"But you are mistaken. Was ever anything so absurd! Do speak to her, Mr. Dempster. You know how far it is from my mind to give offence to Cousin Phoemie."

Cousin Dempster, who had been rubbing his hands and enjoying himself mightily, now smoothed down his face, and spoke.