"During three years of travel I classified the fishes anew, all previous enumeration being paltry, and made the notes and queries which form the staple of my manuscript. I found fresh-water creatures to which the sheat-fish would be a morsel, and hydras to which the fabled sea-serpent would be a worm. I ascended the rivers with the salmon, and fathomed the motives of the climbing-perch. I heard the narrative of a siluris tossed out of a volcano, and talked with a haddock which produced at a birth more young than there are men upon the globe. I have noted the harlequin-angler, which lived three weeks in Amsterdam, hopping about on his fins like a toad; the sucking-fish which adhered to Marc Antony's galley and held it fast; the horned-fish (fil en dos) which the savages discard from their nets in terror and prayer; and the sprats which rise with vapors into the clouds, and are rained back into the sea. I have collected the traditions of many of these beings, and have translated some of their ballads. There is music under the ocean; but most of the fishes sing with their fins, beating the water to rude measures. Among the traditions of all the tribes is that of a time when the waters were peaceful and the fishes happy, when none were rapacious, when death was unknown, when no storms lashed the ripples into billows, and when beings of the upper air bathed at the surface, and the fishes rendered them homage. But some foul deed of which the finny folk were guiltless brought confusion into the waters; the ocean covered all the globe, corpses sank into the depths and were devoured, nets were let down from above, strange fires were kindled beneath, and whirlpools, water-spouts, storms, and volcanoes began.

"I devoted a fourth year to perfecting my system of organic communication, and made some advance toward developing life in inorganic matter. From this latter attainment it would be but a step to perpetuate life, and I should thus restore immortality to man. But the shark family having threatened to revolt, I left off my investigations for some months, and organized a military force, with which I massacred the malcontents till my subjects swam in blood. Returning victoriously at the head of my legions, a sad incident occurred. A ship was crossing our line of march, and I had an unaccountable curiosity to hear something of terrestrial affairs. Five sawfish, at my bidding, staved in the ship's bottom, and she sank almost instantly. The corpses of the drowned drifted slowly down, and as I passed among them, turning up the faces, I recognized in one the features of my mother!

"After a season of remorse I continued my investigations, but a novel and unexpected discovery deranged my plans, and wrought a change in my destiny.

"The subtlest forms of matter, as commonly known, are the imponderables—light, heat, magnetism, and electricity. I had concluded that these were manifestations of some still subtler form, and that this was life, beyond which lay the ethereal elements (called principles) of mind and soul—soul being ultimate and eternal. To demonstrate this I resolved to descend as far as possible into the depths of the sea, and examine the beings which dwelt in the remotest darkness. The conical shape of my island allowed me to descend within its shelving interior, and yet sustain no great atmospheric pressure. I selected a sturgeon, whose body was so powerfully plated that he could not be crushed, and his long-pointed shape gave him great facility for penetrating dense waters. I attached a phosphorescent light to his caudal, that I might not lose him in the gloom, and he preceded me along the sloping interior. We passed the foundations of my court, bade adieu to the deep-swimming hydras, left the profoundest polypi behind, and came at length to uninhabited regions, three thousand fathoms below the surface. My pioneer here suffered great inconvenience, and only by the most vigorous efforts was able to progress at all. The blackness was literally tangible, and our lantern, at most, only 'darkness visible.' By threat and persuasion I forced him forward, hardly able to make headway myself. He swept the almost solid element with his powerful tail, depressed his sharp snout, sucked a long breath, and we darted forward simultaneously. There was a cracking as of bones forced together, and my cranium seemed to split. We shot out of the density into lighter water, and the momentum carried us fifty fathoms beyond!

"We had passed out of the limit of solar attraction, and were being drawn toward the centre of the earth!

"Before, we had been descending; now, we were rising. The fluid grew rarer and warmer as we proceeded, the darkness more luminous, and at last we became visible to each other, swimming in a ruby and transparent liquid, unlike any aspect or part of our native domain. The fluid became so rare finally, that the sturgeon was unable to go farther, kept down by his superior gravity. Some lights glimmering above us, and some mysterious sounds alarming him, he turned and fled. I was left alone.

"I reached the surface of this peaceful sea. A scene lay before me more beautiful than any wonder of the deep. I knew that I was among immortals, and that this was 'Happy Archipelago'!

"The surface was calm. Some purple islets were sprinkled here and there, and creatures marvellously fair were basking in the roseate waters. They looked like angels half way out of heaven. Their faces were of a silvery hue; their hairs shone on the stream like tremulous beams of light; their eyes were of a tender azure, and their bosoms rose and fell as if they were all dreaming of blessedness. Some strains of ravishing harmony that were floating among the islands ceased when I appeared, and I thought I heard the snapping of a lute-string. All the spirits started at once. They were crescent-shaped, and stood upon their nether tips. A star upon their foreheads shone like a pure diamond. They saw me and vanished!

"All but one! She was the fairest of the spirits, and looked, thus frightened, like the pale new moon. The violet veins faded from her lids, and her blue eyes were full of wonder. I felt as if, for the first time, a sinless being had looked upon me, and my heart grew so black and heavy that I sank a little way. I feared to breathe, for she might vanish. I wished to lie forever with her face shining upon me. What were science, and dominion, and the secret of man's immortality to one pure glance like hers? In the agony of my soul I spoke: 'Spirit! Immortal! Woman! O stay! Speak to me!'

"'Who are you? Whence do you come? You are not of us, nor of our element.'

"The voice was like a disembodied sound, coming from nothing, floating in space eternally.

"'I am a creature of a cursed race—ruler of a blighted domain—a realm filled with violence: it lies beneath you.'

"The pale face grew tender; the star on the forehead grew dim, like a tearful eye. She pitied me.

"'There are beings above us,' she said, 'winged beings, that talk with us sometimes; but nothing below. Are they sorrowful as you are? Are their brows all heavy with sadness like yours? Why are they unhappy?'

"I wept and moaned.

"'They have not your pure eyes; they cannot hear your voice. They have sinned.'

"She glided toward me. I felt my gray hairs dropping one by one; my heavy heart grew light; my groans softened to sighs.

"A shape came suddenly between us.

"I knew the long green locks, and the glossy neck. It was Tethys who spoke. 'Man,' she said, 'you were made one of us, not one of these. Go back to your domain, for you are mortal. Resume dominion over the fish, or, striving to win more, lose all!'

"I turned my face seaward bitterly. I looked back once; the blue eyes were gleaming—oh, so tenderly!—and I could not go. I muttered an execration at my bitter fate. Straightway the sky rocked, the sea rose, the pale star vanished. I had spoken a wicked word.

"I was consigned to Euripius, the divinity of whirlpools. In vain I struggled in his watery arms; the swift current bore me circling away, and finally whirled me with frightful velocity. My feet were shaken asunder, my integument softened, my brain reeled. I was passed from eddy to eddy; I became drunken with emotion; I suffered all the tortures of the lost. A waterspout lifted me from the clutch of the sea, and deposited me upon the dry land, close to the home of my infancy.

"I have passed the weary hours of my penance in arranging the memoirs which follow. Science has again wooed me with her allurements; the stars continue their correspondence. I have not despaired of the great secret of immortality; and though these hairs are few and white, I shall be rejuvenated in the tranquil depths of the water, and reassert for ages my rightful dominion over the fish!"

I was in doubt whether to laugh or wonder when the Ancient Mariner concluded; but I was relieved from passing judgment upon his article by the unceremonious entrance of a tall, lithe, gray-eyed person, who wore gold seals and carried a thick walking-stick. The naturalist appeared to be bent on diving through the floor, and swimming away through the cellar; but he caught the stern, keen eye of the stranger and cowered. The tall man lifted his cane, and struck the manuscript out of his Highness's hands; he demolished the microscope at a blow, and flung the geological hammer out of the window.

"Come along," he said. "No! drop that trash—every article of it, or else you'll be experimenting again. Come along!"

They went away together, leaving my office littered with broken glass and sea-shells. With some astonishment I followed through the warehouse to the street; they had entered a carriage and were driving rapidly away. The next morning's paper explained the whole occurrence in the following paragraph:

"Much Learning hath made him mad.—Yesterday noon an elderly lunatic, named Robert Jones, committed suicide by leaping over the parapet of London Bridge. He was in the custody at the time of Dr. Stretveskit, the celebrated keeper of the Asylum for Monomaniacs. He had been at large some days, and was traced to several publishing-houses, whither he had gone to contrive the publication of some insane vagaries. He was finally overhauled at the office of Spry, Stromboli & Co., and placed in a carriage; but seizing a favorable moment when travel was impeded upon the bridge, he burst through the glass door and cleared the parapet at a bound. Jones was an adventurous and dangerous character. Some years ago he set fire to the Shrimpshire Asylum, where his family had confined him, and went abroad upon a whale-ship; but meeting with an accident, he underwent the process of trepanning and came home more crazy than before. At one time he attempted to drown his mother, in furtherance of some strange experiment; but it was thought at the date of his death that he was recovering his wits. Among his delusions was a strange one—that he had been made viceroy over all the fishes. His body has not been recovered."

I read the last sentence with a thrill. My late visitor might even now be presiding at some finny council; and as I should have occasion to cross the sea some day, an untimely shipwreck might place me in closer relations with him. I determined, therefore, to print the manuscript which remained in my hands. May it appease his Mightiness, the King of the Fishes!



THE CIRCUIT PREACHER.

His thin wife's cheek grows pinched and pale with anxiousness intense; He sees the brethren's prayerful eyes o'er all the conference; He hears the Bishop slowly call the long "Appointment" rolls, Where in His vineyard God would place these gatherers of souls.

Apart, austere, the knot of grim Presiding Elders sit; He wonders if some city "Charge" may not for him have writ? Certes! could they his sermon hear on Paul and Luke awreck, Then had his talent ne'er been hid on Annomessix Neck!

Poor rugged heart, be still a pause, and you, worn wife, be meek! Two years of banishment they read far down the Chesapeake! Though Brother Bates, less eloquent, by Wilmington is wooed, The Lord that counts the sparrows fall shall feed His little brood.

"Cheer up! my girl, here Brother Riggs our circuit knows 'twill please. He raised three hundred dollars there, besides the marriage fees. What! tears from us who preached the word these thirty years or so? Two years on barren Chincoteague, and two in Tuckahoe?

"The schools are good, the brethren say, and our Church holds the wheel; The Presbyterians lost their house; the Baptists lost their zeal. The parsonage is clean and dry; the town has friendly folk,— Not half so dull as Murderkill, nor proud like Pocomoke.

"Oh! Thy just will, our Lord, be done, though these eight seasons more, We see our ague-crippled boys pine on the Eastern Shore, While we, Thy stewards, journey out our dedicated years Midst foresters of Nanticoke, or heathen of Tangiers!

"Yea! some must serve on God's frontiers, and I shall fail, perforce, To sow upon some better ground my most select discourse; At Sassafras, or Smyrna, preach my argument on 'Drink,' My series on the Pentateuch, at Appoquinimink.

"Gray am I, brethren, in the work, though tough to bear my part; It is these drooping little ones that sometimes wring my heart, And cheat me with the vain conceit the cleverness is mine To fill the churches of the Elk, and pass the Brandywine.

"These hairs were brown, when, full of hope, ent'ring these holy lists, Proud of my Order as a knight—the shouting Methodists— I made the pine woods ring with hymns, with prayer the night-winds shook, And preached from Assawaman Light far north as Bombay Hook.

"My nag was gray, my gig was new; fast went the sandy miles; The eldest Trustees gave me praise, the fairest sisters smiles; Still I recall how Elder Smith of Worten Heights averred. My Apostolic Parallels the best he ever heard.

"All winter long I rode the snows, rejoicing on my way; At midnight our revival hymns rolled o'er the sobbing bay; Three Sabbath sermons, every week, should tire a man of brass— And still our fervent membership must have their extra class!

"Aggressive with the zeal of youth, in many a warm requite I terrified Immersionists, and scourged the Millerite; But larger, tenderer charities such vain debates supplant, When the dear wife, saved by my zeal, loved the Itinerant.

"No cooing dove of storms afeard, she shared my life's distress, A singing Miriam, alway, in God's poor wilderness; The wretched at her footstep smiled, the frivolous were still; A bright path marked her pilgrimage, from Blackbird to Snowhill.

"A new face in the parsonage, at church a double pride!— Like the Madonna and her babe they filled the 'Amen-side'— Crouched at my feet in the old gig, my boy, so fair and frank, Naswongo's darkest marshes cheered, and sluices of Choptank.

"My cloth drew close; too fruitful love my fruitless life outran; The townfolk marvelled, when we moved, at such a caravan! I wonder not my lads grew wild, when, bright, without the door Spread the ripe, luring, wanton world—and we, within, so poor!

"For, down the silent cypress aisles came shapes even me to scout, Mocking the lean flanks of my mare, my boy's patched roundabout, And saying: 'Have these starveling boors, thy congregation, souls, That on their dull heads Heaven and thou pour forth such living coals?

"Then prayer brought hopes, half secular, like seers by Endor's witch: Beyond our barren Maryland God's folks were wise and rich; Where climbing spires and easy pews showed how the preacher thrived, And all old brethren paid their rents, and many young ones wived!

"I saw the ships Henlopen pass with chaplains fat and sleek; From Bishopshead with fancy's sails I crossed the Chesapeake; In velvet pulpits of the North said my best sermons o'er— And that on Paul to Patmos driven, drew tears in Baltimore.

"Well! well! my brethren, it is true we should not preach for pelf— (I would my sermon on Saint Paul the Bishop heard himself!) But this crushed wife—these boys—these hairs! they cut me to the core; Is it not hard, year after year, to ride the Eastern Shore?

"Next year? Yes, yes, I thank you much! Then my reward may fall! (That is a downright fair discourse on Patmos and St. Paul!) So Brother Riggs, once more my voice shall ring in the old lists, Cheer up, sick heart, who would not die among these Methodists?"



THE BIG IDIOT.

"Sister, thy boy is a big idiot—a very big idiot!" said Gerrit Van Swearingen, the Schout of New Amstel. Then the Schout struck his long official staff on the ground, and went off in a grand manner to frighten debtors.

The Widow Cloos made no reply, but dropped a couple of tears as she saw her son, Nanking, shrink away before his uncle's frown and roll his head in deprecation of such language.

"My mother," he whispered, "won't the big wild turkeys fly away with my uncle Gerrit if he calls me such dreadful names?"

"Nanking," said the widow, kissing the big idiot, "your uncle is a very great man. I don't know what is greater, unless it is an admiral, or a stadtholder, or maybe a king!"

"Yes," conceded Nanking, "he is a dreadfully great man. He puts drunken Indians in the stocks and ties mighty smugglers up to the whipping-pump. But Saint Nicholas will punish him if he calls me an idiot."

"Ah! Nanking," replied the widow, "nothing can curb your uncle—neither the valiant Captain Hinoyossa, nor the puissant director of every thing, great Beeckman, nor hardly Pietrus Stuyvesant himself."

"I know who can frighten him," exclaimed the big idiot. "Santa Claus! He's bigger than a schout. Mother, his whip-lash can reach clear over New Amstel—isn't it so? How many deers and ponies does he drive? Will he bring me any thing this year?"

"My poor son!" said the poor mother, "we are so far from Holland and so very humble here, that Saint Nicholas may forget us this year; but God will watch over us!"

Nanking could hardly comprehend this astonishing statement: that Saint Nicholas could ever forget little boys anywhere. So he went out by the river to think about it. There were three or four Swedish boys out there rolling marbles and playing at jack-stones. They did not like to play with Dutch boys, but Nanking was only a big idiot, and they did not harbor malice against him.

"He! Zoo!" they cried; "wilt thou play?"

"Yes, directly. But tell me, Peter Stalcop, and you, Paul Mink, do the very poorest little boys in Sweden get nothing on Christmas?"

"Ah, Zon der tuijfel! without doubt," cried the boys. "Old Knecht Clobes, your Santa Claus, is a bad man. That is why he gave the Dutch our country here. And in Sweden, too, he turns people to wolves, and brothers and sisters tear each other to pieces."

"But not in Holland," exclaimed Nanking. "There he gives the strong boys skates and the weak boys Canary wine. He brought, one time, long ago, three murdered boys to life, so that they could eat goose for Christmas dinner. And three poor maidens, whose lovers would not take them because they had no marriage portions, found gold on the window-sill to get them husbands."

"Foei! Fus! You're lied to, Nanking! There is no good Christmas in this land."

Nanking said they were very wicked to doubt true and good things. He believed every thing, and particularly every thing pleasant. His mother, whose house was on the river bank, looked out with a fond sadness as she heard him playing, his heart amongst the little boys, although he was so big.

"Ach! helas!" she said to herself, "what will become of my dear man-lamb? He is simple and fatherless, poor and confiding. Thank God, at least he is not a woman!"

The Widow Cloos had come but recently from Holland, sent out by charity at the instance of her brother, Van Swearingen, the schout or bailiff of New Amstel colony. Her son, who was almost a man in years, had been kept in the Orphan House at Amsterdam until his growth made him a misplaced object there, and his feeble intellect forbade that he should become a soldier, and die, like his father, in the Dutch battles. So the Widow Cloos brought Nanking out in the ship Mill, to the city of Amsterdam's own colony on the banks of the South River, which the English called the Delaware. They came in a starving time, when the crops were drenched out by rains and all the people and the soldiery of the fort were down with bilious and scarlet fever. The widow was just getting over a long attack of this illness, and her brother, the schout, regarded the innocent Nanking as the cause of her poverty.

"Thou hadst better drown him," said the hard official; "he'll eat all thy substance or give the remainder away, for he believes every thing and everybody."

"O brother!" pleaded the widow, "if he did not believe something, how sad would he be! All the children love him, and he is company for them."

It was an odd sight to see Nanking down with the boys, as big as the father of any of them, playing as gently as the littlest. He rode them pig-a-back on his broad shoulders; they liked to see him light his pipe and smoke without getting sick. He worked for his mother, carrying water and catching fish, and was the only person in New Amstel (or Newcastle) who could go out into the woods fearlessly among the Minquas Indians; for the Indians all believed that feeble-minded people were the Great Spirit's especial friends, and saw beyond the boundaries of this world into that better heaven where shad ran all the year in the celestial rivers, and the oysters walked upon the land to be eaten. Nanking believed all this, too. It was his confiding nature which made him useless for worldly business. Hobgoblins and genii, charms and saints, and whatever he had heard in earnest, he held in earnest to be true.

"Dear me!" thought Nanking, when he was done playing marbles, "can't I be of use to somebody? Perhaps if I could do something useful my uncle would not think me a big idiot. Then, besides, little Elsje Alrichs might let me be her sweetheart and carry her doll!"

Elsje was the daughter of Peter Alrichs, the late great director's son, whose father slept in the graveyard of the little log church on Sand Hook, beside Dominie Welius, the holy psalm-tune leader. Nanking believed that when the weathercock on the church tingled in the wind, it was Dominie Welius in the grave striking his tuning-fork to catch the key-note. Peter Alrichs inherited the well-cleared farm of his papa, and had the best estate in all New Amstel except Gerrit Van Swearingen, who was accused of getting rich by smuggling, peculating, and slave-catching. Little Elsje liked Nanking, but her father too, said he was a big idiot. So Nanking had a hard time.

"Elsje," cried Nanking one day, "don't tell anybody if I give you a secret."

"No, big sweetheart!"

"I'm going to catch a stork!"

"We don't have storks in New Netherlands, Nanking."

"That's just where I'm going to be smart," exclaimed Nanking. "Because there are no storks here I'm going to catch one. Then uncle Gerrit cannot call me a big idiot."

Elsje gave Nanking her doll to hold. He sat there as big as a soldier, and handled the doll tenderly; for he believed it to be alive as much as she did, and she was a little girl.

"In Holland," said Nanking, "there is a stork on every happy chimney. The farmers put a wagon-wheel on the chimney-top, and along comes your stork and his family, and they build a nest on the wagon-wheel. There it is, Elsje, all twigs and grass, warm as pie, heated by the chimney-fire, and such a squawking you never heard. It keeps the devil away! The old stork sits up on one long straight leg, and with the other foot he hands the worms around to the family. I used to sit down and watch them by the hour in that other Amstel where ours gets its name."

"By the great city of Amsterdam?" asked Elsje.

"That's it. In Amstel, the suburb of Amsterdam, where you can see such beautiful ships from all parts of the world. If I get a stork for our chimney may I hold your doll another day?"

"Yes, Nanking, and I'll give you a kiss."

Nanking told his mother next day that he was going to the woods, and not to cry if he did not return at dark. The Widow Cloos kissed him, and saw him go happily up the street.

"Om licht en donker!" she moaned. "Between the hawk and the buzzard! Poor, simple son! The Indians may kill him, but here he will only get his uncle's curse!"

Nanking walked out through the little settlement of log and brick, and past the court-house, where the stocks and whipping-post were always standing. He saw his uncle Van Swearingen's smart dwelling, with its end to the street and notched gables, and many panes in its glazed windows, and two front doors, and large iron figures in front, telling the date his uncle built it. A little way off was the fine residence of Peter Alrichs, with a balcony on the roof where the family sat of evenings, smoking their pipes and seeing starlight come out on the river and the flag drop at sunset from Fort Casimir; or hearing the roll of drums as they changed the guard or fired a gun to overhaul a vessel.

"If I get a stork and bring it back," thought Nanking, "won't I astonish this town? It'll be proclaimed, I expect, in a public manner, that Nanking Cloos is no longer the big idiot."

The woods closed round New Amstel not very far from the houses, and only an Indian path led on through the strong timber or marshy copse. Nanking was unarmed and not afraid. He walked until long after sun-up, and waded the headwater swamps of Christine Kill, until he saw before him the hills of Chisopecke rise blue and wooded, and there he knew the Minquas kept their fort. But the Minquas had no storks. He turned the first and second of these hills and then crossed the range and descended to the rain-washed country on the other side, where, amid the low sparse pines on the lonely barrens, he could walk more readily, guided south-westward by the proceeding sun. The fierce Susquehannocks dwelt beyond the next high range, and Nanking had heard from other Indians that they only had some storks. Fierce Indians they were, but all Indians had been good to Nanking; so he advanced right merrily, and at the crossing of the second river snaked a fish out of the water with his line and made a fire with his flint and punk-wood to cook it. When he had finished his meal he looked up and was surrounded by Indians.

They were fierce, grave Indians, armed with spears and bows. Although they looked angry, Nanking wiped his mouth on his ragged sleeve and saluted them all kindly—shaking hands. He perceived that they formed around him closely, in front and rear, but he was not suspicious on this account. The Indians marched him over a long range of very high hills and stopped at a place where, through the timber, could be seen a noble bay.

"It is Chisopecke Bay," cried Nanking gladly, "and there, they say, are storks and plentiful geese. I suppose, when we come to a proper place, these Indians will ask me what I want."

The Indians turned down from the bay-view, backward, by another trail, and entered a very rocky glen, where rocks as big as the houses of New Amstel were strewn all over the country-side. Following downward, by a dangerous way like stair-steps, they entered at length a small shady amphitheatre, where a waterfall plunged down a gorge and foamed and thundered. Nanking fairly danced with delight.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, "I have seen paintings of cascades in Holland, but nothing like this. My mother and Elsje must come here."

The Indians, now present in great numbers, looked at Nanking dancing and laughing with the greatest wonder, but still they were far from affable. After a while they began to sit around in a large circle and sing a doleful sort of tune. Then two Indians produced a long piece of grapevine and tied one end of it to a tree and the other end around Nanking's wrists, which were fastened together behind his back. A fire had already been lighted at the foot of the tree, and the coals were now strewn over the ground.

"Hond mold! Keep courage!" thought Nanking. "It is only some kind of play or game. How can I get a stork from them unless I play with them?"

But the Indians still sung their doleful tune and did not laugh a bit. The month was December, and the fire, at first grateful, grew unreasonably warm. At last Nanking trod on a hot coal, which burnt his old shoe through, and raised a blister on his heel.

"Such a game as this I never learned in Amsterdam or New Amstel," thought Nanking, laughing good-naturedly; "I guess I will cut it short by riding one of their boys pig-a-back."

So he picked out a young Indian with his roving eye, one perhaps sixteen years old, and, darting upon him, lifted the Indian boy up in powerful arms and carried him around the fiery circle. The young brave struggled in vain. Nanking clinched his big fingers around the Indian and dandled him like a baby. The effect upon the Indians in the circle was exciting; they seized their spears, stopped their singing, and rushed upon their guest with apparent or assumed fury.

"Ha! herfe!" cried Nanking, "I have changed the monotony of this game, anyhow!"

At this moment an old Indian woman, the mother of the boy whom Nanking had desired to amuse, threw herself between the upraised spears and the laughing widow's son. She shouted something very earnestly, and then stretched herself at Nanking's feet. All the other Indians also flung themselves down in fear or revulsion of feeling, and some crawled in another minute to where the burning coals were strewn over the sward, and with their fingers or with tree-boughs returned these coals to the fire, while others quenched the fire itself with water from the torrent. Nanking had never lost his temper. He put the young Indian down and kissed him, and shook hands with one after another, who only rose as he approached them with a kind countenance. They unbound his hands and overwhelmed him with attentions and professions, and placed their fingers on their foreheads significantly, still looking at him.

"Well," exclaimed Nanking, "I hope they also don't take me for a big idiot! No, they do not. It is only a part of the queer game."

It was now growing late in the day, and Nanking wanted some food. The Susquehannocks produced nuts, venison, fish, hominy, and succotash. Their formerly savage countenances beamed confidence and consideration. Nanking expressed his wishes by signs. He wanted a great, long-legged, long-winged bird, a stork, to carry back alive to New Amstel. The Indian chiefs conferred, and finally replied, by signs and assurances, that they had such a bird, but that it would take two whole days to procure one.

"Very well," thought Nanking, "I may as well stay here until I get it, and not return home like a fool. My mother will trust in God, if not in Saint Nicholas, and I trust in both. Elsje will not forget me at any time!"

All the next day Nanking played ball and bandy with the Susquehannock boys, and taught them jack-stones and how to make a shuttlecock. They put eagle's feathers in his hair, and the old men adopted him into their tribe. On the third day the absent Indians returned with a stork. It was a white stork with a red bill and plenty of stork's neck, but short legs. Nanking doubted if it could stand on one leg on the top of a chimney and feed worms around to the young stork family, but he felt very proud and happy. The whole tribe seemed to have assembled to see Nanking go away. He had become the friend of all the boys and women and the protege of the tall warriors. They placed his stork in a canoe, and in a second canoe following it were a couple of large deers freshly killed, which he was to take to his mother as the gift of the fierce Susquehannocks. Amid the cheers and adieus of the nation the two canoes pushed off and, entering the broad bay, paddled up a river under the side of a bar of blue mountains, until the river dwindled to a mere creek, and finally its navigation ceased altogether. By signs upon the head of the dead stag, indicating a larger deer, Nanking knew they were at the "Head-of-Elk" River. His fierce friends left him here with many professions of apology and esteem, and soon after they departed Swedes and Minquas appeared, who had observed the hostile canoes from their lookout stations on the neighboring hills. These also welcomed Nanking, being already well acquainted with him, and taking up his venison proceeded through the woods toward New Amstel. He carried the live stork himself—a rough bird, which would not yield to blandishments or good treatment. After a very fatiguing journey and four days' absence from home, Nanking entered New Amstel in the dead of night.

"To-morrow," he thought, "I shall be repaid for all this. They will say, 'Nanking Cloos is the smartest man in the colony of New Amstel.' Perhaps I shall be a burgomaster, and eat terrapin stewed in Canary wine!"

Nanking was up betimes, looking at the chimneys on his mother's dwelling, of which there were two, and both were the largest chimneys in New Amstel. The Widow Cloos lived in a huge log building with brick ends, long and rather low, which had been built by the commissary of the colony at the expense of the city of Amsterdam as a magazine of food and supply for her colonists; but after several years of unprofitable experiment with the colony, it was resolved to give no more provisions away, and the director, great Captain Hinoyossa, when Van Swearingen became the schout, allowed the latter's sister to inhabit one end of the warehouse, and that the farthest end from the water. The rest was uninhabited, and Nanking, looking at the chimney which surmounted the river gable, said to himself:

"That will never do for my stork, as there is no fire lighted there. I never saw smoke from that chimney in my life. The stork requires a nest where there is heat, and plenty of it."

He therefore prepared to climb to the chimney on the land-side and establish a nest. There was a broken cart-wheel in the warehouse, which Nanking procured and drew to the roof, and when daylight broke upon the town the earliest loungers and fishermen saw the happy simpleton working like a chimney-sweep, as they thought, except that instead of brushing he was piling brush around the chimney on the cart-wheel. His mother came out and looked joy to see him back; the soldiers strolled down from the fort and the boys and women from the town. Uncle Van Swearingen was there, smiting the ground with his shodden staff, and ejaculating, "Foei! weg! fychaam u! Fie! leave off! fie on you! What absurdity is this on the property of our hoofstad, our metropolis?"

"Never mind, uncle!" answered the beaming Nanking. "I have been a great man in the last few days. I have lived among the fierce Susquehannocks. Presently you shall see something that you shall see!"

Peter Alrichs also came down to the quay with his pretty daughter, who could no longer keep her secret. "Good Nanking," she whispered, "is building a nest for a real stork. He has found one, just like the dear creatures in Holland!"

The news was presently dispersed, and all felt an interest, until finally Nanking produced his stork.

"It is like a stork, indeed!" uttered Peter Alrichs; "'tis big as one, too, but its wings are all white!"

"'Tis a stork, yah, op myne eer! Upon my honor, it is!" muttered uncle Van Swearingen.

"Nanking is not an idiot, papa!" said Elsje, overjoyed.

The widow was delighted at the enterprise of her son.

When Nanking had carried the great bird to the nest he made a little speech:

"Worshipful masters and good people all, I have been at great pains to get this stork, not for my own gratification entirely, though there are some here I expect to please particularly. (He looked at Elsje and his mother.) This stork will pick up the offal and eat it, and we shall have no more bad fevers here for want of a good scavenger. By and by he will bring more storks, and they will multiply; and every house, however humble, shall have its own stork family to ornament the chimney-top and remind us of our dear native land. I have done all this good with the hope of being useful, and now I hope nobody will call me wicked names any more."

Nanking cut the fastenings on the bird and set it on the new-made nest. In a minute the stork stood up on its short legs, poked its beautiful head and neck into the air, and with its wings struck Nanking so heavy a blow that it knocked him off the roof of the house, but happily the fall did not hurt him. As he arose the huge bird was spreading its wings for flight. Before Nanking could climb the ladder again, it was sailing through the air, magnificent as a ship, toward its winter pastures on the bay of Chisopecke.

"He! Zoo!" exclaimed the soldiers.

"Foei! weg!" cried the fishermen.

Only three persons said "Ach! helas!"—the Widow Cloos, pretty Elsje, and Nanking.

"Thy stork is a savage bird!" cried Peter Alrichs. "The English on the Chisopecke name it a swan!"

Nanking burst into tears. His uncle struck the ground with his schout's staff, swore dreadfully, and shouted to the Widow Cloos:

"Sister, thy boy is nothing but a big idiot. Thou hadst better drown him, as I told thee!"

Nothing could equal the mortification of Nanking. He thought he would die of grief. He was now known to be more of an idiot than ever, and the fickle Miss Elsje would not let him hold her doll for a whole week.

"My poor son," entreated the widow, "do not pine and lose courage! The venison will feed us half the winter. You can help me smoke it and dry it. Do not give up your sweet simple faith, my boy! As long as you keep that we are rich!"

The next day Schout Van Swearingen, the great dignitary, came in and said to Nanking: "As you are a big idiot and good for nothing else, I will give you an office. Even there you will be a failure, for you are too simple to steal any thing."

Nanking's mother was happy to hear this, and to see her son in a linsey-woolsey coat with large brass buttons, and six pairs of breeches—the gift of the city of Amsterdam—stride up the streets of New Amstel, with copper buckles in his shoes and his hair tied in an eel-skin queue. The schout, his uncle, who was sheriff and chief of police in one, marched him up to the jail and presented him with a beautiful plaything—a handle of wood with nine leather whip-lashes upon the end of it. "Your duties will be light," said the schout. "Every man you flog will give your mother a fee. Come here with me and begin your labors!"

In the open space before the jail and stadt huys were a pair of stocks and a whipping-post. Nanking's uncle released a rough but light-built man, who had been sitting in the stocks, and taking off the man's jacket and shirt, fastened him to the post by his wrists.

"Give this culprit fifty lashes, well laid on!" ordered the schout.

Nanking turned pale. "Must I whip him? What has he been doing that he is wicked?"

"Smuggling!" exclaimed Schout Van Swearingen. "He has taken advantage of the free port of New Amstel to smuggle to the Swedes of Altona and New Gottenburg, and the English of Maryland. Mark his back well!"

The sailor, as he seemed to be, looked at Nanking without fear. "Come, earn your money," he said.

"Uncle," cried Nanking, throwing down the whip, "how can I whip this man who never injured me? Do not all the people smuggle in New Amstel? Was it not to stop that which brought the mighty Director Stuyvesant hither with the great schout of New Amsterdam, worshipful Peter Tonneman? Yes, uncle, I have heard the people say so, and that you have smuggled yourself ever since your superior, the glorious Captain Hinoyossa, sailed to Europe."

"Ha!" exclaimed the bold smuggler. "Van Swearingen, dat is voor u! That is for you!"

"Vore God!" exclaimed the schout; "am I exposed and mocked by this idiot?"

He took up the whip and beat Nanking so hard that the strong young man had to disarm his uncle of the instrument. Then, stripped of his fine clothes and restored to his rags, Nanking was returned with contempt to his mother's house.

"Mother!" he cried, throwing himself upon the floor, "am I an idiot because I cannot hurt others? No, I will be a fool, but not whip-master!"

The shrewd Peter Alrichs came to the widow's abode and asked to see Nanking. He brought with him the worshipful Beeckman, lord of all South River, except New Amstel's little territory, which reached from Christine Hill to Bombay Hook. They both put long questions to Nanking, and he showed them his burnt heel, still scarred by the fagots of the Susquehannocks.

"Ik houd dat voor waar! I believe it is true," they said to each other. "They were burning him at the stake and he did not know it. Yes, his feeble mind saved him!"

"Not at all," protested Nanking. "It was because I thought no evil of anybody."

"Hearken, Nanking!" said Peter Alrichs, very soberly. "And you, Mother Cloos, come hither too. This boy can make our fortunes if we can make him fully comprehend us."

"Yah, mynheers!"

"He can return in safety to the land of the Susquehannocks, where no other Dutchman can go and live. Thence, down the great river of rocks and rapids, come all the valuable furs. Of these we Dutch on South River receive altogether only ten thousand a year. Nanking must take some rum and bright cloth to his friends, the chiefs, and make them promise to send no more furs to the English of Chisopecke, but bring them to Head-of-Elk. There we will make a treaty, and Nanking and thee, widow, shall have part of our profits."

"Zeer wel!" cried Nanking. "That is very well. But Elsje, may I marry her, too?"

"Well," said Peter Alrichs, smiling, "you can come to see her sometimes and carry her doll."

"Good enough!" cried Nanking, overjoyed.

Before Nanking started on his trip, the sailor-man he had refused to whip walked into his mother's house.

"Widow Cloos, no doubt," he said, bowing. "Madame, I owe your son a service. Here are three petticoats and a pair of blue stockings with red clocks; for I see that your ankles still have a fine turn to them."

The widow courtesied low; for she had not received a compliment in seven years.

Nanking now began to show his leg also, as modestly as possible.

"Ah! Nanking," cried the sailor, "I have a piece of good Holland stuff for you to make you shirts and underclothes. 'Tis a pity so good a boy has not a rich father; ha! widow?"

The widow stooped very low again, but had the art to show her ankle to the best advantage, though she blushed. She said it was very lonely for her in the New World.

"Now, Widow Cloos," continued the sailor, "I am Ffob Oothout, at your service! I am a mariner. Some years ago, when Jacob Alrichs was our director, I helped to build this great warehouse with my own hands. They were good men, then, in charge of New Amstel's government. Thieves and jealous rogues have succeeded them. Would you think it, they suspect even me, and ordered Nanking to whip me with the cat! But for Nanking I should have a bloody back at this minute, and you would be wiping the brine out of it for me, I do not doubt!"

Nanking had gone out meantime, seeing that he was to get no clock-stockings.

"Widow, come hither," said the sailor. "Do you know I like this big barn of a warehouse. It is my handicraft, you know, and that attaches me to it. Well, you say nothing to anybody, and let me sleep in the river end. In a little while the noble veteran, Alexander D'Hinoyosso, will be due from Holland on the ship Blue Cock. Then we will all have good protection. In that ship are lots of supplies of mine. Of evenings we can court and drink liquor of my own mulling. And when the Blue Cock comes to port you shall have more petticoats and high-heeled shoes than any beauty in New Amstel."

Ffob Oothout stole a couple of kisses from the widow, like a bold sailor-man, and she promised that he should lodge in the river end of the Amsterdam warehouse.

For the rest of that afternoon Nanking carried Elsje's beautiful doll, and his feelings were very much comforted.

"Big sweetheart," she said, "what a smart man you would be if you could only make me a bigger doll than this, which would open and shut its eyes and cry 'fus; hush!'"

Nanking left New Amstel at moonlight, at the head of a little procession, carrying gay cloths and plenty of rum for the Susquehannocks. The last words Peter Alrichs said to him were: "You must talk wisely, Nanking. It is a mighty responsibility you have on this errand. Remember Elsje!"

Next morning Nanking pushed off in a boat, all alone, from the Head-of-Elk, and rowed under the blue bar of mountain into the Chisopecke, and turned up the creek below the rocky mouth of the great river toward the council-fire retreat of the fierce Susquehannocks. As he was about to step ashore a band of Englishmen confronted him, with swords and muskets.

"Whom art thou?" cried their leader, a stalwart man, with long mustaches.

"Only Nanking Cloos, mynheers, who used to be the big idiot of New Amstel. But," he added, with confidence, "I am now a great man on a very responsible mission to the Indians. I am to talk much and wisely. They are to send to New Amstel thousands of furs and peltries, and I am to give them this rum and finery!"

"He talks beautifully," exclaimed the English; and the chief man added:

"Nanking, I know thee well. Thy mother is the pretty widow in the house by the river. I am Colonel Utye, who swore so dreadfully when I summoned New Amstel to surrender. Come ashore, Nanking."

Nanking felt very proud to be recognized thus and receive such compliments for his mother. The English poured out a big flagon of French brandy and gravely drank his health, touching their foreheads with their thumbs. The brandy elated and exalted Nanking very much.

"Nanking," said Colonel Utye, "we desire to spare thee a long journey and much danger. Leave here thy rum and presents, and return to thy patrons, Alrichs and Beeckman, bearing our English gratitude, and thou shalt wear a beautiful hat, such as the King of England allows only his jester to put upon his head."

Nanking felt very much obliged to these kind gentlemen. They made the hat of the red cloth he had brought. It was like a tall steeple on a house, and was at least three feet long. As proud as possible he re-entered New Amstel on the evening of the day after he left it. It was now within a few days of Christmas, and the Dutch burghers and boors, and Swedes, English and Finns, were anticipating that holiday by assembling at the two breweries which the town afforded, and quaffing nightly of beer. Beeckman and Alrichs were interested in the largest brewery, and their beer was sent by Appoquinimy in great hogsheads to the English of Maryland in exchange for butts of tobacco.

As Nanking walked into the big room where fifty men were drinking, his prodigious red hat rose almost to the ceiling, and was greeted by roars of laughter.

"Goeden avond! Hoe yaart gij! How do you do, my bully?"

Nanking bowed politely, and singling out Beeckman and Alrichs, stood before them with child-like joy.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I gave all your presents to the noble Colonel Utye, who sends his deepest gratitude, and presented me with this exalted cap in acknowledgment of my capacity."

"Thou idiot!" exclaimed Beeckman; "'tis a dunce's cap!"

"Dunder and blitzen!" swore Peter Alrichs, "hast thou lost all our provision and made fools of us, too?"

They struck the dunce's cap off Nanking's head with their staves, and threw their beer in his face.

"Two hundred guilders are we out of pocket," cried both these great men. "Was ever such a brainless dolt in our possessions?"

The room rang with the cry, "Incurable idiot!" and Gerrit Van Swearingen cried louder than any, "Go drown thyself, and spare thy mother shame!"

"Then I shall not marry Elsje?" exclaimed Nanking, bursting into tears.

"No!" stormed Peter Alrichs; "thou shalt marry a calf. Away!"

When Nanking arrived home he found his mother sitting very close to Ffob Oothout. He told his tale with a broken heart.

"My man," exclaimed the rough sailor, in his kindest tone, but still very rough, "take this advice from me: Whatever thou believest, tell it not. Where thy head is weak, hold thy teeth tight. Then thou canst still have faith in many things, and make no grief."

The next day the Blue Cock sailed into the roadstead and the fort thundered a salute. Fort and vessel dipped the tricolor flag of the States-General and the municipal banner of Amsterdam. Beeckman surrendered all the country on South River to Hinoyossa, who came ashore very drunk and very haughty, and threatened to set up an empire for himself and fit out privateers against the world.

"Let him lose no time," muttered Ffob Oothout; "the English have doomed these Western Netherlands!"

Amidst the festivity Nanking was in a condition of despair. He had seen Elsje on the street and she turned up her nose at him. Christmas was only one day off, and Santa Claus, the Swede boys insisted, never came to the sorrowing shores of New Amstel.

"My uncle Gerrit was right," thought Nanking. "I had better drown myself. Yes; I will watch on Christmas eve for Santa Claus. I will give him plenty of time to come. He is the patron saint of children, and if he neglects poor, simple boys in this needful place, there is no truth in any thing. On Christmas morning I will fall into the river without any noise. My mother will cry, perhaps, but nobody else, and they will all say, 'It was better that the big idiot should be drowned; he had not sense enough to keep out of the water.'"

Nanking spent half the day watching the chimneys of his mother's house. Both chimneys were precisely alike in form and capacity, and the largest in the place. But the chimney next the river did not retain the dark, smoky, red color of the chimney on the land side.

"No wonder," thought Nanking, "for no fire nor smoke has been made in that river chimney for years. It almost seems that the bricks therein are oozing out their color and growing pale and streaked."

Night fell while he was watching. Nanking hid himself upon the roof of the house, determined to see if Saint Nicholas ever came to bless children any more by descending into chimneys, or was only a myth.

It was a little cold, and under the moonlight the frost was forming on the marshes and fields. The broad, remorseless river flowed past with nothing on its tide except the two or three vessels tied to the river bank, of which the Blue Cock was directly under the widow's great dwelling. From the town came sounds of revelry and wassail, of singing and quarrel, and from the church on Sand Hook softer chanting, where the women were twining holly and laurel and mistletoe. Nanking lay flat on the roof, with his face turned toward the sky. The moon went down and it grew very dark.

"Lord of all things," he murmured, "forgive my rash intention and comfort my poor mother!"

The noise of the town died on the night air, and every light went out. Nanking said to himself, "Is it Christmas at all, out in this lonely wilderness of the world? Is it the same sky which covers Holland, and are these stars as gentle as yonder, where all are rich and happy?"

He heard a noise. A voice whispered, just above the edge of the chimney on the river gable: "Fus-s-s! Pas op!"

"What is that?" thought Nanking; "somebody saying, 'Hist! be careful?' Surely I see something moving on the chimney, like a living head."

The voice whispered again: "Maak hast! Kom hier!" Or, "Hasten! Come here!"

Nanking raised up and made a noise.

"Wie komt, daar?" demanded the voice, and in a minute repeated: "Wie sprecht, daar?"

They ask, "Who comes and who speaks?" said Nanking. "Blessed be the promises of heaven! It is Santa Claus!"

Then he heard movements at the chimney, and people seemed to be ascending and descending a ladder. There seemed, also, to be noises on the deck of the Blue Cock, and sounds of falling burdens and spoken words: "Maak plaats!" or make room for more.

"I never heard of Santa Claus stopping so long at one humble house," thought Nanking.

After awhile all sounds ceased. Nanking crept to the chimney and touched it with his hand. It had no opening whatever in the top.

He felt around this mysterious chimney. "He! Zoo!" he said aloud, "there is more wood here than brick. 'Tis a false chimney altogether!"

Then he saw that his close observation had not been at fault. The chimney over the river gable was a painted chimney, a mere invention. Yet, surely Santa Claus had been there.

After a time Nanking opened the top and side of this chimney as if they were two doors. He found it packed with goods of all kinds—a ton at least.

"I will run and awaken my mother," he thought. "But no. Did not Ffob Oothout tell me to blab no secrets and shut my teeth tight? I will tell nobody. These costly things are all mine; for there are no other boys in this whole dwelling but Nanking Cloos, the fatherless idiot!"

He slipped down and hastened to his boat, which lay in a cove not far below. Towing it along the bank to a sheltered place convenient, Nanking began to load up the goods from the chimney. Before daylight broke he had secured every thing, and hoisting sail was speedily carried to the island of the Pea Patch, far down the bay—that island which shone in the offing and seemed to close the river's mouth. Here, in the wreck of an old galiot, he hid every article dry and secure; kegs of liquors and wine, shawls and blankets, pieces of silk, gunpowder, beautiful pipes, bars of silver and copper, and a whole bag of gold. Nanking covered them with dry driftwood and boughs of trees, and sailed again to New Amstel, where he arrived before breakfast.

At breakfast Nanking found upon his bench a beautiful new gun.

"It is thine, good child," said Ffob Oothout, "for sparing me those lashes. Thy churlish uncle felt so reproved by thy innocent words that he set me free. Widow, here is a spiegel for thee, a looking-glass to see, unseen, whoever passes up or down the street. That is a woman's high privilege everywhere. Thou shalt be, erelong, the best-dressed wife in all New Amstel. Nanking, wouldst thou like to have a father?"

"I would like you, Ffob Oothout, for a father."

"Widow," said Ffob, "he has popped the question for me; wilt thou take an old pirate for thy man?"

"They are all pirates here," replied the blushing widow, "and thou art the best pirate or man I have seen."

"Well, then, when the English conquer this region I have that will make thee rich. Till then let us wait on the good event, but not delay the marriage."

That Christmas Day they were married in form. As the three sat before the fresh venison and drank wine from the store of the Blue Cock, Nanking said:

"Father Ffob, you are wise. Give me yet another word of advice, that I may not continue to be a big idiot."

"Trust whom thou wilt, Nanking, yet ever hold thy tongue. If thou hast now a secret, hold it close. Begin this instant!"

"Even the secrets of Santa Claus?"

"Yes, even them."

Nanking said no more. He found compensation for Elsje's contumely in his gun, and roved the forests through, and peeped from time to time at his mystic treasures.

One day the news came overland that the English had taken New Amsterdam. Then the great Hinoyossa and uncle Van Swearingen and Alrichs and Beeckman swore dreadfully, and said they would fight to the last man. Ffob Oothout went around amongst the Swedes and the citizen Dutch, and prepared them to take the matter reasonably.

One day in October of that same wonderful year, 1664, two mighty vessels of war, flying the English flag, came to anchor off New Amstel and the fort. They parleyed with the citizens for a surrender, and Ffob Oothout conducted the negotiations. The citizens were to receive protection and property. The fort replied by a cannon. Then the English soldiery landed and formed their veteran lines. They charged the ramparts and broke down the palisades, and killed three Dutchmen and wounded ten more. Proclamation was made that New Amstel should for all the future be named New-castle, and that Gerrit Van Swearingen, the refractory schout, should yield up his noble property to Captain John Carr, of the invaders, and Peter Alrichs lose every thing for the benefit of the fortunate William Tom.

The English soldiery proceeded to make barracks of the Amsterdam warehouse. The first night they inhabited it they strove to light a fire under the wooden chimney in the river gable. The chimney caught fire and burnt out like an old hollow barrel.

"Wife," exclaimed Ffob Oothout, looking grimly on, "in that chimney was all my property and thine. Poor boy," he said to Nanking, "we must all be poor together now."

"No," cried Nanking, "I have yet the gifts of Santa Claus which I took from that chimney on the night before Christmas. Yours, father, may be burnt. Mine are all safe!"

He sailed his father and mother to the island since called the Pea Patch, and Ffob Oothout recognized his property.

"Wonderful Nanking!" he cried, "thy faith was all the wisdom we had. God protects the simple! Thou art our treasure."

The great Hinoyossa condignly fled to Maryland. Uncle Van Swearingen was exported to Holland, and in the dwelling of Peter Alrichs the family of Ffob Oothout made their abode.

"Nanking," asked the houseless Alrichs, "is not Elsje pretty yet?"

"Not as pretty," answered Nanking, "as my little baby sister. I will carry nobody's doll but hers."

"Humph!" said Peter Alrichs, "you are not the big idiot I took you for!"



A BAYSIDE IDYL.

Basking on the Choptank pleasant Cambridge lies In the humid atmosphere under fluttered skies, And the oaks and willows their protection fling Round the court-house cluster and the public spring.

There the streets are cleanly and they meet oblique, Forced upon each other by the village creek Winding round the ancient lawns, till the site appears Like a moated fortress crumbling down with years.

Round the town the oysters grow within the coves, And the fertile cornfields bearing yellow loaves; And the wild duck flying o'er the parish spire Fall into the graveyard when the fowlers fire?

There the old armorial stones dwellers seldom read; There the ivy clambers like the rankest weed; There the Cambridge lawyers sometimes scale the wall To the grave of Helen, loveliest of all.

Even here the fairest of the little band Strangers call the fairest girls in Maryland, Like the peach her color ere its dyes are fast, And her form as slender as the virgin mast.

Like a vessel gliding with a net in tow, Up the street of evenings Helen seemed to flow, Leaving light behind her and a nameless spell Murmured in the young men, like an ocean shell.

Made too early conscious of her power to charm, Still unconscious ever love of men could harm, Voices whispered to her: "Beauty rare as thine Princes in the city never drank in wine!

"Hide it not in Cambridge! Cross the bay and see How a world delighted hastes to honor thee. Seek the fortune-teller and thy future hear; There is empire yonder; there is thy career!"

Oh, the sad ambition and the speedy dart! He, the fortune-reader, read poor Helen's heart; And a face created for the hearthstone's light— Fishers tell its ruin as they scud by night.

Whisper, whisper, whisper! leaf and wave and grass; Look not sidewise, maiden, as the place you pass. If you hear a restless spirit when you pray, 'Tis the voice that tempted Helen o'er the bay.



SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON'S NIGHT.

An extraordinary story, some say the recital of a dream, or scenes in somnambulism, is that of Andrew Waples, of Horntown, Va. He visited Saratoga twenty years ago, well-to-do, the owner of slaves, sloops, lands, and fisheries, and visits it now upon an income of $2000 a year, derived from boiling down fish into phosphates for the midland markets. He preserves, however, the habit and appearance of old days: that is to say, his chin is folded away under his lip like a reef in a mainsail; his cheek-bones hide his ears, so tusky and prominent are the former, and tipped with a varnish of red, like corns on old folks' feet; he has a nose which is so long and bony that it seems to have been constructed in sections, like a tubular bridge, and to communicate with itself by relays of sensation. A straight, mournful, twinkling, yet aristocratic man was Andrew Waples, "befo' de waw, sah! befo' de waw!"

He had no sooner arrived at Saratoga than he met some ancient boon companions, who took him off to the lake, exploded champagne, filled his lungs with cigar-smoke, and sent him to bed, the first night, with a decided thirst and no occasion to say his prayers. For it was Andrew's intention, being a mournful man of the Eastern Shore, to pray on every unusual occurrence. Piety is relative as well as real, but Andrew Waples on this occasion jumped into bed, said hic and amen, and "times befo' de waw," and went to sleep in the somnorific air of the Springs.

He awoke with a dry throat, a disposition to faint and surrender his stomach, and an irresistible propensity to walk abroad and drink of the waters. He looked at his watch: it was two o'clock, and Saturday night. "Alas!" said Andrew Waples aloud, "the bars are closed. Even Morrissey has gone to bed, and the club-house is in darkness, but perhaps I can climb over the gate of some spring company, or find a fountain uninclosed. Yes, there is the High Rock Spring!"

He drew on his clothes partly, slipped his feet in slippers, and wrote on a piece of paper, which he conspicuously posted on the gas bracket:

"Andrew Waples, Gentleman (befo' de waw), departed from the United States Hotel, at two o'clock A. M., precisely. If any accident happens to him, seek at the High Rock Spring, or thereabouts."

It was a sad, green, ghostly moonlight streaming through the elms as Andrew Waples walked up Broadway. The moon appeared to be dredging for oysters amongst the clouds, circling around there by bars, islets, and shoals. Bits of spotted and mackerel-back sky swam like hosts of menhaden through the pearly sheen of the more open aerial main. The leaves of the tall domes and kissing branches of the elms, that peeped on either side into open windows of people asleep and told across the street to each other the secrets there, were now themselves heavy as if with surfeit of gossip and they drooped and hardly rustled. Not a tipsy waiter lurked in the shadows, not a skylarking couple of darkey lovers whispered on doorsteps. No birds, nor even crickets, serenaded the torpid night. The shuffling feet of Andrew Waples barely made watch-dogs growl in their dreams, and started his own heart with the concussions they produced on the arborescent and deeply-shadowed aisles of the after midnight. He saw the town-hall clock pallidly illuminated above its tower. The low frame villa of Chancellor Walworth, cowering amongst the pine-trees, expressed the burden of parricidal blood that had of late oppressed its memories. There were no murmurs from the court-room where Judge Barnard had been tried, but its deep silence seemed from the clock to tick: "Removed! disqualified!" and "Disqualified! removed!"

Turning from Broadway to lesser streets of cheap hotels and plain boarding cottages, where weary women and girls had drudged all day long, and washerwomen moaned and fluting and ruffling were the amusements of the poor, Andrew Waples became haunted with the idea that Saratoga was poisoned, that every soul in the village was dead, and that he was to be the last man of the century to drink of the Springs. Nature and night were in the swoon of love or death. Parting their drowsy curtains went Waples through the muffled echoes, impelled by nothing greater than a human thirst.

He saw his shadow, at length, fall down the steep stairs of the valley of High Rock Spring, as he stood at the top of the steps uncovered to the moon. It was a shadow nearly a hundred feet long, a high-cheeked head without a chin and all nose, like the profile of a mountain. But what was extraordinary was the total absence of an abdominal part to Mr. Waples' exaggerated shadow, for he distinctly saw a young maple-tree, in perfect moonlight, grow through the cavity where his stomach ought to have been.

"I must be hollow," said Andrew, as he looked,—"the frame of a stomach removed; for surely my whole figure is in blackness, except my bread-basket." But his fears were dissipated by the sound of voices, of glasses clinking and water running, and the evident semblance of life at the High Rock Spring in the ravine beneath, to which the steep stairs descended. At the same moment he descried another shadow propelled alongside his own, as if from some far distance in the rear a human object was slowly advancing to stand beside him.

There were very old wooden houses around this precipice or promontory of Saratoga, some of them a hundred years old, and decrepit and in ruins; for here, at the High Rock, was the original fountain of the village. As if from the cover of one of these old and decaying tenements came a person of venerable aspect, with a tray of glasses fastened to the top of a staff, like a great caster of bottles on a broomstick. As this person stood by the side of Andrew Waples, and planted his staff on the top step of the stairs, his prolonged shadow, falling in the valley, gave him the appearance of a gigantic Neptune, with a trident in his hand.

"Hallo!" exclaimed Mr. Waples, "are you a town scavenger, to be up at this time of the clock?"

The man replied, after a very curious and explosive sound of his lips, like the extraction of a cork from a bottle, "No, sir; I'm only the Great Dipper."

"Very good," resumed Mr. Waples. "Then, perhaps, you'll explain to me a very great optical delusion, or tell me that I'm drunk. Do you see our two shadows as they fall yonder on the ground, and amongst the tree-tops? Now, if I have any eyes in my head, there is a stomach in your shadow and no stomach whatever in mine."

"Quite right," answered the Great Dipper. "You are the mere rim of a former stomach. Abdominally, you are defunct."

Andrew Waples put his hand instinctively where his stomach was presumed to be, and he saw the hand of his shadow distinctly imitate the motion, and repeat it through his empty centre.

"This is Sir William Johnson's night," remarked the Great Dipper. "We have a large company of guests on this anniversary, and no gentleman is admitted with a stomach, nor any lady with a character. My whole force of dippers is on to-night, and I must be spry."

As the venerable man spoke, and ceased to speak, exploding before and after each utterance, it occurred to Mr. Waples that his voice had a sort of mineral-water gurgle, which was very refreshing to a thirsty man's ears. He followed, therefore, down the flight of rickety stairs and stood in the midst of a promenading party of many hundred people, variously dressed and in the costumes of several generations.

The canopy or pavilion of the spring, which, like a fairy temple, seemed to have been exhaled from in bubbles, was yet capped, as in the broad light of day, by a gilded eagle, from whose beak was suspended a bottle of the water, and no other light was shed upon the scene than the silver and golden radiance emitted together from this bottle, as if ten thousand infinitely small goldfish floated there in liquid quicksilver. The spring itself, flowing over its ancient mound of lime, iron and clay, like the venerable beard over the Arabian prophet's yellow breast, shed another light as if through a veil fluttered the molten fire of some pulsating crater. The whole scene of the narrow valley, the group of springs, the sandy walks, dark foliage, and in closing ridges took a pale yellow hue from the effervescing water and the irradiant bottle in the eagle's beak. The people walking to and fro and drinking and returning, all carried their hands upon their stomachs or sides, and sighed amidst their flirtations. Mr. Waples saw, despite their garments, which represented a hundred years and more of all kinds, from Continental uniforms and hunting shirts to brocades, plush velvets, and court suits, that not a being of all the multitude contained an abdomen. He stopped one large and portly man, who was carried on a litter, and said:

"Have you a window through you, too, old chap?"

"'Sh!" exclaimed one of the supporters of the litter, who wore the feathers and attire of an Indian. "'Tis Sir William Johnson—he who receives to-night."

"Young man," exclaimed that great and first of Indian agents, "this is the spot where all people come to find their stomachs. Mine was lost one hundred and ten years ago. The Mohawks, my wards, then brought me through the forest to this spot. Faith! I was full of gout and humors, and took a drink from a gourd. One night in the year I walk from purgatory and quench my thirst at this font. The rest of the year I limp in the agonies of dyspepsia."

A large and short-set woman was walking in one of the paths, wearing almost royal robes, and her train was held up by a company of young gallants, some of whom whistled and trolled stanzas of foreign music. "Can you tell me her name!" asked Waples, speaking to a bystander.

"It is Madame Rush, the daughter of the banker who rivalled Girard. She was a patroness of arts and letters in her day, full of sentiment."

"But disguised in a stomacher!" interrupted our friend. The lady passed him as he spoke, and, looking regretfully in his face, murmured:

"Avoid hot joints for supper! Terrapin must crawl again. Drink nothing but claret. Adieu!"

"Really," thought Andrew Waples, "this is a sort of mass meeting of human picture-frames. But here is one I know by his portrait—the god-like head, the oxen eyes, the majestic stalk of Daniel Webster." He was about to address this massive figure, when it turned and looked upon him with rolling orbs like diamonds in dark caves.

"Brandy," said the great man, "'tis the drink of a gentleman, and the stimulus of oratory. But public life requires a thousand stomachs. Who could have saved the Constitution on only one?"

"Poor ghost!" thought Andrew Waples. "Yet here is a milder man, also of mighty girth, like the frame of a mastodon, transparent. Your name, my friend?"

"John Meredith Clayton, of Delaware! I filled my paunch of midnights with chicken soup. I arose from bed to riot in gravy. Ye who have livers and intestines, think of my fame and fate!"

The old man sobbed as he receded, and Waples had only time to get a glimpse of the next trio before they were upon him.

"I agree with Commodore Vanderbilt," said the other, the wearer of a rubicund face, and great blue eyes. "My forte was oysters and economy. I grew wondrous fat and conservative, and one day awoke with a stomach that exclaimed, 'I have become round, so that you can trundle me for the exercise you deprived me of.' Henceforward, not even the unequalled advantages of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad gave me pleasure. I live like a skeleton world, without an inner globe, without a paunch. Beware?"

"Well," cried Mr. Waples, "it is a singular thing that the conservative as well as the volatile lose their full habits. How is it with Colonel Tom Scott, I wonder?"

"No rest," exclaimed a full-necked man, "I eat at figures, and think in my sleeping car. Go slow, go fast, young man, 'But it is even, heads I win, stomach you lose!'"

The shaggy iron-gray whiskers and hair of Charles Sumner were well known to Mr. Waples, as that great Senator strutted down the maple paths. "You here, also!" shouted Mr. Waples.

"Ay!" answered the champion. "Freedom is not worth enjoying without the gastric juice. The taste of Chateau Yquem pursues me through eternity. There are times when Plymouth Rock is a pennyweight in value compared to High Rock at Saratoga, and all the acts of Congress foolish beside a pint of Congress water!"

A tall and elegant man came by and said: "I was the reviver of the running turf. My stomach was tough as my four-in-hand. 'Twas Angostura nipped my bud. It was, by Saint Jerome!"

Another passer, with a dark skin and a merry twinkle, said: "Uncle John's under the weather to-night. But he can lay out another generation yet. While there's sleep there's hope. Cecil's the word! Give me me an order."

A tremendous fellow, with a foot a little gouty, gulped down a gallon of the water, and said: "Rufe Andrews never gives up while on that high rock he builds his church!"

"The way to eat a sheep's head," exclaimed a florid man, "is with plain sauce. Clams are not kind after nightfall. Champagne destroyed the coats of W. Wickham, Mayor of the bon vivants. Sic transit overtook my rapid transit. Heigh-ho!"

"Hear me lisp a couplet," said the great poet Saxe. "Oh, how many a slip 'twixt the couplet and the cup! Abdomen dominates. When Homer had no paunch, he went blind."

"Halt! 'Sdeath! is't I, that once could put the whole Brazilian court to bed, who prowls these grounds for midnight water now? I am the Chevalier Webb. Who says it is dyspepsia? I will spit him upon my walking-staff."

"Ees! 'tis good drinkin' at the fount when one can naught sleep. Johnson, of Congress Spring, the resident cherub; that's my name. I tipped the rosy, and it tripped on me. What measure I used to take around the bread-basket!"

"The top of the foine midnight to you!" said Richard O'Gorman. "I'm here, my lords and gentle folk, to find a portion of my appetite. It was not so when I could lead a revolution in a cabbage garden."

So went past Uncle Dan Sanford and Father Farrell, and arm-in-arm, on mutual errands of thirst, Judge Hilton and Joseph Seligman.

"Shudge," said Seligman, "when you refushed me a room, it was only becaush you had no stummicks? Heigh, Shudge?"

"Ay, Joseph, me broth of a darlint," answered Hilton, "when a spalpeen has no stummick, he speaks without circum—spection. Ye can impty yer stummick wherever ye loike over the furniture, if ye'll fill this aching void."

So went the procession. All walking with hands laid heavily on their paunches, or where they used to be. Lovers had lost the light of interest from their eyes, wedded people the light of retrospection, statesmen the pride of intellect, princes and legates the pride of power. Wealth flashed in a thousand diamonds to contrast with the heavy eyes that had no vanity in them, and religion wore the asceticism of everlasting gloom instead of the hope of immortal life.

As Mr. Andrew Waples beheld these things, and felt his thirst impel him toward the fountain of the High Rock, he became sensible of a wonderful change in the proportions of that object. It had always been a mound or cone of sand, clay, magnesia, and lime, well oxidized, and made rusty-red by the particles of iron in the composition deposited with the other materials, through ages of overflow. It had never been above three feet in height, and of little more diameter than a man's stature. The water, flowing through its middle, sparkled and discharged diamond showers of bubbles, and ran down the ochre-besmeared sides, to disappear in the ground, the cavity through which it came not more than ten inches wide. Such had been the dimensions of the High Rock Spring.

But it was now a mountain, rising high in the air, and flowing crystal and gold, like a volcano in an eruption of jewels. The pyrites of sulphur and motes of iron, that formerly gleamed in the rills that trickled down its slopes, were now big as cascades, filled with carbuncles and rocks of amethyst. A mist of soft splendor, like the light of stars crushed to dust and diffused around the mountain's head, revealed an immense multitudes of people scaling the slopes, and drinking; and some were raising their hands to Heaven in praise, and some were drawing the water from the mountain's base by flumes and troughs. This extensive prospect fell to a foreground of people, such as Mr. Waples had been mingling with, and these were clamoring and supplicating for water faster than a hundred dippers there could pass it up. The dippers were of all garbs and periods, from Indians and rustics to boys in cadet uniform. The vessels with which they dipped were of all shapes and metals, from conch shells and calabashes to cups of transparent china, and goblets of gold and silver. Amongst the dippers, conspicuous by his benevolent face and clothing of a butternut color, was the Great Dipper himself, directing operations.

"Drink freely!" he exclaimed, "for the night is going by. Sir William Johnson has ordered his litter, and the company is breaking up. Drink while you may, for the sun is soon to arise, and ye who have no stomachs will be exposed and disgraced."

"Hark ye! old friend," whispered Andrew Waples to the Great Dipper, "are there here people alive, as well as dead people, and why do they fear exposure?"

The Great Dipper replied: "Nobody can be said to live who has lost his stomach. We make no other distinction here. There are thousands who have lost them, however, and who deceive mankind. Even these, you perceive, who drink at the High Rock Spring, flirt while they feel unutterable gloom, and so are dead women above the ground tied to living men, and men without a human hope of health mated to joyous beauty and animation."

It seemed at this point that Mr. Waples shrank away down to the ground, and the Great Dipper loomed up high as the mountain of High Rock. His drinking glasses were as large as Mr. Waples' body; he was a mighty giant, clad in colors like those of the overflowing mountain.

"Old chap," cried Mr. Waples, "methinks your clothing up there is of much age and tarnish. Tell me its material?"

A voice came down the long ravines of the mountain like rolling thunder. "It's calcareous tufa I'm a-wearing, wove on me by exudation and accretion in the past two thousand years."

At this point the head of the Great Dipper was quite invisible in the clouds, but the tray of glasses he carried, which were now big as barrels or full-sized casks, was set down on Mr. Waples' toe. As he sought to get out of the way a torrent of water washed him up and away, and he was spilled into one of the glasses; and then, as it appeared, he was raised an inconceivable distance in the air and plunged down like a bursted balloon from the sky to the sea, and he found himself immersed in mineral water and rapidly descending, against the current, toward the centre of the earth!

Before Mr. Waples could get his breath he was landed in a bar or shoal of mineral salt, which came nearly to the surface of the torrent in which he found himself, and the current of this torrent was ascending toward the surface, as full of mineral substances as a freshet is full of saw-logs. Explosions of gas, loud and rapid as the guns in a naval battle, took place on every side. The walls of the inclosure made a large and almost regular cave or tunnel of blue marl, and in the contrary way from the course of the stream. Mr. Waples sank along the sides of the cave in the swash or backflow, until he arrived at a grand archway of limestone, riven from a mass of slate. A voice from the roof of the archway, whispering like a sigh of pain, articulated shrilly,

"Who goes back?"

Waples discerned, in the joint or junction of the arch a huge deformed object, whose hands were caught between the masses of stone, and he still desperately pulled to divide them, so that the torrent could escape through. The eyes of this object rolled in pain, but he gave no sign of relinquishing his hold, and again the painful whisper skipped through the abyss, "Who goes back from the alluvial?" Mr. Waples got a breathful of air from an explosion of bubbles, and boldly replied, "The Great Dipper's assistant."

"Tell him," whispered the hunchback in the roof, "that Priam, the Fault Finder, is holding the strata back, but wants the relief to come on three centuries hence, that I may spit upon my hands."

Mr. Waples had no time to reply, for a large bubble of carbonic acid gas burst at that moment, and blew him through the gap or "fault" of the rock, into the coldest and clammiest cavern he had ever trodden. From every part of the walls, ceilings, and floor exuded moisture, which flowed off in rills and large canals, until they formed the torrent that disappeared at the Fault Finder's Archway.

"Magnesia, faugh!" exclaimed Mr. Waples, unconscious that he was in the presence of somebody.

"You don't like Magnesia, then?" rejoined a large, spongy object on the floor, whose forehead perspired while he looked up through the chalky-white sockets of sightless eyes. "Why, he's a sixth part of all that's drunk at the springs. Here, I'll call him up. Come Magnesia! come Potash! come Lime, Soda, Lithia, and Baryta! Come ye all to the presence of Prince Saturation."

There glided to the Sponge's feet a number of leather-looking beings, of broad, circular faces, and to every face a tail was appended on the other side.

"The gentleman don't like our laboratory," exclaimed the Sponge, purring the while like a cat. "Apply your suckers to him, ye percolating angels, and draw him to the forests of Fernandes!"

Mr. Waples felt a hundred little wafers of suction take hold of his body, and a sense of great compression, as if he was being pulled through a mortar bed. He opened his eyes on the summit of a stalagmite in a vast thicket or swamp of overthrown and decaying trees. Birds of buried ages, whose long, bittern-like cries flopped wofully through the silence, made ever and anon a call to each other, like the Nemesis of century calling to century. One of these birds, having authority and standing on one leg, observed to Mr. Waples, in a very philosophical manner:

"Stranger, are you of the Fungi family?"

"No, Fernandes," answered our bold adventurer; "I live nearer the phosphates when at home, and it's a good article."

A mournful chorus of croons from the loons went round the solitude. "Phosphates! phew! Phosphates! phew!"

"This apartment," exclaimed the one-legged bird, "is exclusively for fungi of the old families. Here we rot piecemeal and furnish gas to the nine-thousandth generation after us. By our decay the springs are fed with bubbles. Here is the world as it fell in the floral period, and our boughs are budding anew in the Eldorado of the waters above us."

"Phosphates! phew!" shouted the great birds of this land of Lethe, as Mr. Waples' stalagmite broke off and dropped him and set him astride of an ancient pterodactyl bird that flew off with its burden to an immense height, and swinging him there by the seat of his breeches, as if he were to be the pendulum of a fundamental and firmamental clock, the griffin-bird finally let go. Mr. Waples was propelled at least six miles out of gravity, and tossed into a most deep and silent lake. Nothing affected its loveliness but an oppressive shadow that came from above, and seemed to sink every floating object in the scarcely buoyant waves. No shores were visible, but distant mountains on one side; nothing lived in the waters but meteoric lights and objects that ran as if on errands for the spirit above. Broad, submissive, unevaporating, but sinking down; the great inland lonely pool was everywhere the creature of an invisible footprint. Mr. Waples knew the power it obeyed to be that prostrate, cloud-like, overbrooding presence, far above, with outlines like a mountain range. The silent sea was the water-trough of Apalachia, the western dyke of the deluge of Noah. The oppressive spirit, stretching overhead, was Bellydown, or the thing that brooded over the waters of chaos, known to schoolmasters as Atmospheric Pressure.

Mr. Waples saw it all now. The spirit overhead, with equal and eternal pressure, forced down this meteoric water through the slopes of stone, until it reascended toward the clouds of its origin and was lost in the forest of the fossils, where every decaying fibre made bubbles to drive it forward, and hold in solution the mineral substances it was to receive in the porous magnesian barrier between it and freedom. Soaking through this, the water escaped by the break in the strata at the arch of the Fault Finder.

But who had ever passed back against the current of the earth's barometry, from the spa to the reservoir, like Andrew Waples, of Horntown, Eastern Shore of Virginia?

He felt a mighty vanity overwhelm him to get recognition of some kind from Bellydown, who disdained even thunder for a language.

"Thou sprawling spirit, up yonder in the sky!" shouted Mr. Waples, with much firmness, "if thou art not mere nightmare, mere figment of the sciences, let me feel thy strength unequally, for once!"

The vast cloud object moved and yawned. Something like a small world, wearing a boot, smote Andrew Waples in the rear, as if the spirit above had kicked him on the proper spot. He felt a pain and a flying sensation, that was like paralysis on wings, and he never seemed to stop for years, until he fell and struck the ground, and, after an interval, looked around him.

He was in his room, at the United States Hotel, and had fallen out of bed. The clock in the Baptist church cupola struck two. On the gas bracket was pinned a written notice, not yet dry, that Andrew Waples had just started for the High Rock Spring.

But he knew that his adventure continued to be true, for when he went to breakfast at daylight, he found he had no stomach.



THE PHANTOM ARCHITECT.

Four hundred miles of brawling through many a mountain pass, From the shadow of the Catskills to the rocks of Havre de Grace, The Susquehanna flashes by willowy isles of May And deluges of April to the splendors of the bay.

It brings Otsego water and Juniata bright, Chenango's sunny current and dark Swatara's night, By booms of lumber winding and rafts of coal and ore, And gliding barges crossing the dams from shore to shore.

It is an aisle of silver along the mountain nave, Where towers the Alleghany reflected in its wave, By many a mine of treasure and many a borough quaint, And many a home of hero and tomb of simple saint.

The granite gates resign it to mingle with the bay, And softened bars of mountain stand glowing o'er the way; The wild game flock the offing; the great seine-barges go— From battery to windlass, and singing as they row.

The negroes watch the lighthouse, the trains upon the bridge, The little fisher's village strewn o'er the grassy ridge, The cannoneers that, paddling in stealthy rafts of brush, With their decoys around them, the juicy ducks do flush.

And oft by night, they whisper, a phantom architect Lurks round the Cape of Havre, of ruined intellect, Who had designed a city upon this eminence, To cover all the headland and rule the land from hence.

And sometimes men belated the phantom builder find, Lost on the darkened water and drifting with the wind; Then by his will a vision starts sudden on the night— The city flashing splendor o'er all that barren height.

Its dome of polished marble and tholus full of fire; The dying look of sunset just fading from the spire; The towers of its prisons, the spars and masts of fleets, And lines of lamps that clamber along the crowded streets.

The ships of war at anchor in the indented ports, The thunder of the broadsides, the answer of the forts— These by his invocation arise and flame and thrill, Raised on his faith tenacious and strengthened by his will.

My soul! there is a city, set like a diadem, Beyond a crystal river: the new Jerusalem. The architect was lowly and walked with fishermen; But only He can open the blessed sight again.



THE LOBBY BROTHER.

I.

The express train going south on the Northern Central Railroad, March 3d, 186-, carried perhaps a score of newly-elected Congressmen, prepared to take their seats on the first day of the term. For every Congressman there were at least five followers, adventurers or clients, some distinguished by their tighter-fitting faces, signifying that they were men of commerce; others, by their unflagging and somewhat overstrained amiability, not to say sycophancy, signifying that out of the aforesaid Congressmen they expected something "fat." Of the former class the hardest type was unquestionably Jabel Blake, and the business which he had in hand with the freshly Honorable Arthur MacNair, who sat at his side reading the Pittsburg news-paper, was the establishment of a national bank at the town of Ross Valley, Pennsylvania.

Jabel Blake had as little the look of a bank president as had his representative the bearing of a politician. MacNair was a thin, almost fragile young person, with light-red hair and a freckled face and clear blue eyes, which nearly made a parson of him—a suggestion carried out by his plain guard and silver watch and his very sober, settled expression. The Honorable Perkiomen Trappe, who had served three terms from the Apple-butter District, remarked of him, from the adjoining seat, "Made his canvass, I s'pose, by a colporterin' Methodist books, and stans ready to go to his hivinly home by way of the Injin Ring!"

But, in reality, the Congressman belonged to the same faith with his constituent and client—both Presbyterians like their great-grandfathers, who were Scotch pioneers among the spurs of the Alleghenies; and there still lived these twain, in fashion little changed—MacNair a lawyer at the court-house town, and Jabel Blake the creator, reviver, and capitalist of the hamlet of Ross Valley. Jabel was hard, large, bony, and dark, with pinched features and a whitish-gray eye, and a keen, thin, long voice high-pitched, every separate accent of which betrayed the love of money.

"It's an expensive trip," said Jabel Blake; "it's a costly trip. More men are made poor, Arthur MacNair, by travellin' than by sickness. Twice a year to Pittsburg and twice to Phildelfy is the whole of my gadding. I stop, in Phildelfy, at the Camel Tavern, on Second Street, and a very expensive house—two dollars a day. At Washington they rob everybody, I'm told, and I shall be glad to get away with my clothes."

"Tut! Jabel," said MacNair, "brother Elk has taken rooms for me at Willards', and for the little time you stay at the capital you can lodge with us. A man who has elected a Congressman in spite of the Pennsylvania Railroad shouldn't grudge one visit in his life-time to Washington."

"Oh!" said Jabel, "I don't know as I begrudge that, though your election, Arty, cost me four hundred and seven dollars and—I've got it here in a book."

"I know that," said MacNair quietly; "don't read it again, Jabel. You behaved like a sturdy, indignant man, paid all my expenses, though you protested against an election in a moral land involving the expenditure of a dime, and though you pass for the closest man west of the mountains. And here we are, going upon errands of duty, as little worldly as we can be, yet not anxious to belittle ourselves or our district."

"I'd cheerfully given more, Arty, to beat that corporation. A twenty-dollar bill or so, you know! But money is tight. I've scraped and scraped for years to start my bank at Ross Valley, and every dollar wasted retards the village. You boys have cost me a sight of money. There's Elk's sword and horse, and the schooling of both of you, and the burying of your father, Jim MacNair, eighteen years ago this May. Dear! dear!"

The Honorable Perkiomen Trappe, catching a part of this remark, observed that Jabel Blake, judging by his appearance, shouldn't have buried MacNair's father, but devoured him. Jabel's unfeeling remark gave MacNair no apparent pain; but he said:

"Jabel, don't speak to Elk about father. He is not as patient as he should be, and perhaps in Washington they disguise some of the matters which we treat bluntly and openly. There's Kitty Dunlevy, you know, and she is a little proud."

The glazed, whitish eye of Jabel bore the similitude of a beam of satisfaction.

"It's nothing agin you boys," he said, "that Jim MacNair, your father, didn't do well. He wronged nobody but himself, as I made the stonecutter say over his grave. That cost me upwards of eleven dollars, so I did my duty by him. You boys don't seem to have his appetite for liquor. You are a member of Congress, and Elk was one of the bravest ginerals in the war; and I don't see, if he saves his money and his health, but he is good enough even for Judge Dunlevy's girl."

Judge Dunlevy was the beau ideal of Jabel Blake, as the one eminent local statesman of the region round Ross Valley—the County Judge when Jabel was a child, the Supreme Justice of the State, and now a District Justice of the United States in a distant field. His reputation for purity, dignity, original social consideration, moral intrepidity, and direct Scotch sagacity had made his name a tower of strength in his native State. To Jabel's clannish and religious nature Judge Dunlevy represented the loftiest possibilities of human character; and that one of the two poor orphans—the sons of a wood-cutter and log-roller on the Alleghenies, and the victim of intemperance at last—whom Jabel had watched and partly reared, should now be betrothed to Catharine Dunlevy, the judge's only daughter, affected every remaining sentiment in Jabel's heart.

Absorbed in the contemplation of this honorable alliance, Jabel took out his account-book and absently cast up the additions, and so the long delay at Baltimore caused no remarks and the landscapes slipped by until, like the sharp oval of a colossal egg, the dome of the Capitol arose above the vacant lots of the suburbs of Washington.

A tall, handsome, manly gentleman in citizen black, standing expectantly on the platform of the station, came up and greeted MacNair with the word,

"Arthur!"

"Elk!"

And the brothers, legislator and soldier, stood contrasted as they clasped hands with the fondness of orphans of the same blood. They had no superficial resemblances, Arthur being small, clerical, freckled, and red-haired, with a staid face and dress and a stunted, ill-fed look, like the growth of an ungracious soil; Elk, straight and tall, with the breeding and clothing of a metropolitan man, with black eyes and black hair and a small "imperial" goatee upon his nether lip; with an adventurous nature and experience giving intonation to his regular face, and the lights and contrasts of youth, command, valor, sentiment, and professional associations adding such distinction that every lady passenger going by looked at him, even in the din of a depot, with admiration.