After leaving the hospital, he formed the acquaintance of Monsieur Jules Fleury, or, as he is better known to the world of letters, Monsieur Champfleury,—for, with that license the French take with their names, so this rising novelist styles himself. This acquaintance was of great advantage to Henry Murger. Monsieur Champfleury was a young man of energy and will, who took a practical view of life, and believed that a pen could in good hands earn bread as well as a yardstick, and command, what the latter cannot hope, fame. He believed that independence was the first duty of a literary man, and that true dignity consists in diligent labor rather than in indolent railing at fate and the scoffings of "uncomprehended" genius. Monsieur Champfleury was no poet. He detested poetry, and his accurate perception of the world showed him that poetry is a good deal like paper money, which depends for its current value rather upon the credit possessed by the issuer than upon its own intrinsic value. He pressed Murger to abandon poetry and take to prose. He was successful, and Murger labored to acquire bread and reputation by his prose-compositions. He practised his hand in writing vaudevilles, dramas, tales, and novels, and abandoned poetry until better days, when his life should have a little more silk and a little more gold woven into its woof. But the hours of literary apprenticeship even of prose-writers are long and arduous, especially to those whose only patrimony is their shadow in the sun. Monsieur Champfleury has given in one of his works an interesting picture of their life in common. We translate the painful narration:—

"T'other evening I was sitting in my chimney-corner looking over a mountain of papers, notes, unfinished articles, and fine novels begun, but which will never have an end. I discovered amid my landlords' receipts for house-rent (all of which I keep with great care, just to prove to myself that they are really and truly paid) a little copy-book, which was narrow and long, like some mediaeval piece of sculpture. I opened this little blue-backed copy-book; it bore the title, ACCOUNT-BOOK. How many memories were contained in this little copy-book! What a happy life is literary life, seen after a lapse of five or six years! I could not sleep for thinking of that little copy-book, so I rose and sat down at my table to discharge on these sheets all the delightful blue-backed copy-book memories which haunted my head. Were any stranger to pick up this little copy-book in the street, he would think it belonged to some poor, honest family. I dare say you have forgotten the little copy-book, although three-fourths of its manuscript is in your hand-writing. I am going to recall its origin to you.

"Nine years ago we lived together, and we possessed between us fourteen dollars a month. Full of confidence in the future, we rented two rooms in the Rue de Vaugirard for sixty dollars a year. Youth reckons not. You spoke to the porter's wife of such a sumptuous set of furniture that she let the rooms to you on your honest face without asking references. Poor woman, what thrills of horror ran through her when she saw our furniture set down before her door! You had six plates, three of which were of porcelain, a Shakspeare, the works of Victor Hugo, a chest of drawers in its dotage, and a Phrygian cap. By some extraordinary chance, I had two mattresses, a hundred and fifty volumes, an arm-chair, two plain chairs, a table, and a skull. The idea of making a grand sofa belongs to you, I confess; but it was a deplorable idea. We sawed off the four feet of a cot-bedstead and made it rest on the floor; the consequence of which was, that the cot-bedstead proved to be utterly worthless. The porter's wife took pity upon us, and lent us a second cot-bedstead, which 'furnished' your chamber, which was likewise adorned with several dusty souvenirs you hung on the wall, such as a woman's glove, a velvet mask, and various other objects which love had hallowed.

"The first week passed away in the most delightful manner. We stayed at home, we worked hard, we smoked a great deal. I have found among this mountain of papers a blank sheet on which is written,—

Beatrix, A Drama in Five Acts, By Henry Murger, Played at the —— Theatre on the —— day of 18—.

This sheet was torn out of an enormous blank copy-book; for you were guilty of the execrable habit of using all our paper to write nothing else but titles of dramas; you wrote 'Played' as seriously as could be, just to see what effect the title-page would produce. Our paper disappeared too fast in this way. Luckily, when all of it had disappeared, you discovered, Heaven knows where or how, some old atlas of geography whose alternate leaves were blank,—a discovery which enabled us to do without the stationer.

"Hard times began to press after the first week flew away. We had a long discussion, in which each hurled at the other reproaches on the spendthrift prodigality with which we threw away our money. The discussion ended in our agreeing, that, the moment the next instalment of our income should be received, I should keep a severe account of our expenses, in order that no more quarrels should disturb the harmony of our household, each of us taking care every day to examine the accounts. This is the little book I have found. How simple, how touching, how laconic, how full of souvenirs it is!

"We were wonderfully honest on the first of every month. I read at the date of November 1st, 1843, 'Paid Madame Bastien forty cents for tobacco due.' We paid, too, the grocer, the restaurant, (I declare there is 'restaurant' on the book!) the coal-dealer, etc. The first day of this month was a merry day, I see: 'Spent at the cafe seven cents'; a piece of extravagance for which I am sure you must have scolded me that evening. The same day you bought (the sight still makes me tremble!) thirteen cents' worth of pipes. The second of November we bought twenty-two cents' worth of ribbon: this enormous quantity of ribbon was purchased to give the last touches to our famous sofa. Our sofa's history would fill volumes. It did us yeoman's service. My pallet on the floor, formed of one single mattress and sheets without counterpane, made a poor show in our 'drawing-room,' especially as a restaurant-keeper lived in our house, and you pretended, that, if we made him bring our meals up to our 'drawing-room,' he would be so dazzled by our splendor he could not refuse us credit. I demurred, that the odd appearance of my pallet had nothing capable of fascinating a tradesman's eye; whereupon we agreed that we would spread over it a piece of violet silk which came, Heaven knows where from; but, unfortunately, the silk was not large enough by one-third. After long reflection we thought the library might be turned to some account: the quarto volumes of Shakspeare, thrown with cunning negligence on the pallet, hid the narrowness of the silk, and concealed the sheets from every eye. We managed in this way to contrive a sofa. I may add, that the keeper of the restaurant dedicated to the 'Guardian Angel,' who had no customers except hack-drivers and bricklayers, was caught by our innocent intrigues. On this same second of November we paid an immense sum of money to the laundress,—one whole dollar. I crossed the Pont des Arts, proud as a member of the Institute, and entered with a stiff upper-lip the Cafe Momus. You remember this beneficent establishment, which we discovered, gave half a cup of coffee for five cents, until bread rose, when the price went up to six cents, a measure which so discontented many of the frequenters that they carried their custom elsewhere. I passed the evening at Laurent's room. I must have been seized with vertigo,—for I actually lost ten cents at ecarte, ten cents which we had appropriated to the purchase of roasted chestnuts. Poor Laurent, who was such a democrat, who used to go 'at the head of the schools' to see Beranger, is dead and gone now! His poems were too revolutionary for this world.

"You resolved on the third of November that we would cook our own victuals as long as the fourteen dollars lasted; so you bought a soup-pot which cost fifteen cents, some thyme and some laurel: being a poet, you had such a marked weakness for laurel, you used to poison all the soup with it. We laid in a supply of potatoes, and constantly bought tobacco, coffee, and sugar. There was gnashing of teeth and curses when the expenses of the fourth of November were written. Why did you let me go out with my pockets so full of money? And you went to Dagneaux's and spent five cents. What in the name of Heaven could you have gotten at Dagneaux's for five cents?[C] Good me! how expensive are the least pleasures! Upon pretext of going with a free-ticket to see a drama by an inhabitant of Belleville, I bought two omnibus-tickets, one to go and the other to return. Two omnibus-tickets! I was severely punished for this prodigality. Seventy-four cents ran away from me, making their escape through a hole in my pocket. How could I dare to return home and confront your wrath? Two omnibus-tickets alone would have brought a severe admonition on my head; but seventy-four cents with them—! If I had not begun to disarm you by telling you the Belleville drama, I should have been a doomed man. Nevertheless, the next day, without thinking of these terrible losses, we lent G—— money; he really seemed to look upon us as Messrs. Murger and Co., his bankers. I wonder by what insidious means this G—— contrived to captivate our confidence, and the only solution I can discover is the inexperience of giddy youth; for two days afterwards G—— was audacious enough to reappear and to ask for another loan. Nothing new appears on the pages of the book, except fifteen cents for wine: this must have been one of your ideas: I do not mean to say that you were ever a wine-bibber, but we were so accustomed to water, we drank so much water without getting tired of it, that this item, 'wine,' seems very extraordinary to me. We added up every page until the eighth of November, when the sum total reached eight dollars and twelve cents; here the additions ceased. We doubtless were averse to trembling at the sight of the total. The tenth of November, you purchased a thimble: some men have skill enough to mend their clothes at their leisure moments. A few days ago I paid a visit to a charming literary man, who writes articles full of life and wit for the newspapers. I opened the door so suddenly, he blushed as he threw a pair of pantaloons into the corner. He had a thimble on his finger. Ah! wretched cits, who refuse to give your daughters in marriage to literary men, you would be full of admiration for them, could you see them mending their clothes! Smoking-tobacco absorbed more than one-third of our money; we received too many friends, and then there was a celebrated artisan-poet who used to be brought to our rooms, and who used to bawl so many stanzas I would go to bed.

"Monsieur Credit made his reappearance on the fourteenth of November. He went to the grocer, to the tobacco-shop, to the fuel-dealer, and was received tolerably well; he was especially successful with the grocer's daughter when he appeared in your likeness. Did Monsieur Credit die on the seventeenth of November? I ask, because I see on the 'credit' side of our account-book, 'Frock-coat, sixty cents.' These sixty cents came from the pawnbroker's. How his clerks humiliated us! I could make a long and terrible history of our dealings with the pawnbroker; I shall make a short and simple story of it. When money failed us, you pointed out to me an old cashmere shawl which we used as a table-cover. I told you, 'They will give us nothing on that.' You replied, 'Oh, yes, they will, if we add pantaloons and waistcoats to it.' I added pantaloons and waistcoats to it, and you took the bundle and started for the den in Place de la Croix Rouge. You soon came back with the huge package, and you were sad enough as you said, 'They are disagreeable yonder; try in the Rue de Conde; the clerks, who are accustomed to deal with students, are not so hard-hearted as they are in the Place de la Croix Rouge.' I went to the Rue de Conde. The two pair of pantaloons, the famous shawl, and the waistcoats were closely examined; even their pockets were searched. 'We cannot lend anything on that,' said the pawnbroker's clerk, disdainfully pushing the things away from him. You had the excellent habit of never despairing. You said, 'We must wait until this evening; at night all clothes are new; and to take every precaution, I shall go to the pawnbroker's shop in the Rue du Fouare, where all the poor go; as they are accustomed there to see nothing pledged but rags and tatters, our clothes will glitter like barbaric pearl and gold.' Alas! the pawnbroker in the Rue du Fouare was as cruel as his brethren. So the next morning in sheer despair I went to pledge my only frock-coat, and I did this to lend half the sum to that incessant borrower, G——. Lastly, on the nineteenth of November, we sold some books. Fortune smiled on us; we had a chicken-soup with a superabundance of laurel. Do you remember an excellent shopkeeper of the Rue du Faubourg Saint Jacques, near the city-gate, who, we were told, not only sold thread, but kept a circulating library? What a circulating library it was! Plays, three odd volumes of Anne Radcliffe's novels,—and if the old lady had never made our acquaintance, the inhabitants of the Faubourg Saint Jacques would never have known of the existence of 'Letters upon Mythology' and 'De Profundis,' two books I was heartless enough to sell, notwithstanding all their titles to my respect. The authors were born in the same neighborhood which gave me birth: one is Desmoustiers, the other Alfred Mousse. Maybe Arsene Houssaye would not be pleased, were I to remind him of one of the crimes of his youth, where one sees for a frontispiece skeletons—'twas the heyday of the Romantic School—playing tenpins with skulls for balls! The sale of 'De Profundis' enabled us to visit Cafe Tabourey that evening. You sold soon afterwards eighty cents' worth of books. Allow me to record that they came from your library; my library remained constantly upon the shelves; notwithstanding all your appeals, I never sold any books, except the lamentable history of Alfred Mousse. Monsieur Credit contrived to go to the tradesmen's with imperturbable coolness; he went everywhere until the first of December, when he paid every cent of debt. I have but one regret, and this is, that the little account-book suddenly ceases after a month; it contains only the month of November. This is not enough! Had I continued it, Its pages would have been so many mementos to recall my past life to me."

Monsieur Champfleury introduced Henry Murger to Monsieur Arsene Houssaye, who was then chief editor of "L'Artiste," and it happened oddly enough that Murger wrote nothing but poetry for this journal. Monsieur Houssaye took a great fancy to Murger, and persuaded him, for the sake of "effect" on the title-pages of books and on the backs of magazines, to change Henri to Henry, and give Murger a German physiognomy by writing it Muerger. As Frenchmen treat their names with as much freedom as we use towards old gloves, Murger instantly adopted Monsieur Houssaye's suggestion, and clung as long as he lived to the new orthography of his name. He began to find it less difficult to procure each day his daily bread, but still the gaunt wolf, Poverty, continued to glare on him. "Our existence," he said, "is like a ballad which has several couplets; sometimes all goes well, at other times all goes badly, then worse, next worst, and so on; but the burden never changes; 'tis always the same,—Misery! Misery! Misery!" One day he became so absolutely and hopelessly poor, that he was undecided whether to enlist as a sailor or take a clerk's place in the Messrs. de Rothschilds' banking-house. He actually did make application to Madame de Rothschild. Here is the letter in which he records this application:—

"15th August, 1844.

"I am delighted to be at last able to write you without being obliged to describe wretchedness. Ill-fortune seems to begin to tire of pursuing me, and good-fortune appears about to make advances to me. Madame Rothschild, to whom I wrote begging her to get her husband to give me a situation, informed her correspondent of it, and told him to send for and talk with me. I could not obtain a place, but I was offered ten dollars rather delicately, and I took it. As soon as I received it, I went as fast as I could to put myself in condition to be able to go out in broad daylight."

We scarcely know which is the saddest to see: Henry Murger accepting ten dollars from Madame de Rothschild's generous privy purse,—for it is alms, soften it as you may,—or to observe the happiness this paltry sum gives him. How deeply he must have been steeped in poverty!

But now the very worst was over. In 1848 he sent a contribution to "Le Corsaire," a petty newspaper of odds and ends, of literature and of gossip. The contribution was published. He became attached to the paper. In 1849 he began the publication in "Le Corsaire" of the story which was to make him famous, "La Vie de Boheme," which was, like all his works, something in the nature of an autobiographical sketch. Its wit, its sprightly style, its odd images, its odd scenes, its strange mixture of gayety and sadness, attracted attention immediately. But who pays attention to newspaper-articles? However brilliant and profound they may be, they are forgotten quite as soon as read. The best newspaper-writer on his most successful day can only hope to be remembered from one morning to another; if he commands attention for so long a period, his utmost ambition should consider itself satisfied.

It was not until Murger had rescued his book from the columns of the newspaper that he obtained reputation. He was indebted to Monsieur Jules Janin, the eminent theatrical reporter of the "Journal des Debats," for great assistance at this critical hour of his life. One morning Henry Murger entered Monsieur Jules Janin's study, carrying under his arm an immense bundle of old newspapers, secured by a piece of old twine. He asked Monsieur Jules Janin to read the story contained in the old newspapers, and to advise him if it was worth republication, and what form of publication was best suited to it. As soon as Murger retired, Monsieur Jules Janin took up the newspapers. Few bibliopoles in Paris are more delicate than Monsieur Janin; it is positive pain to him to peruse any volume, unless the margin be broad, the type excellent, the printing executed by a famous printer, and the binding redolent of the rich perfume of Russian leather. These newspapers were torn and tattered, stained with wine and coffee and tobacco. They were not so much as in consecutive order. Conceive the irritation they must have produced on Monsieur Janin! But when he once got fairly into the story he forgot all his delicacy, and when Henry Murger returned, two days afterwards, he said to him,—"Sir, go home and write us a comedy with Rodolphe and Schaunard and Nini and Musette.[D] It shall be played as soon as you have written it; in four-and-twenty hours it will be celebrated, and the dramatic reporters will see to the rest." The magnificent promises to the poverty-racked man fevered him almost to madness; he took up the packet, (which Monsieur Janin had elegantly bound with a rose-colored ribbon,) and off he went, without even thinking to thank Monsieur Janin for his kindness, or to close the door. Murger carried his story to a friend, Theodore Barriere, (since famous as a play-writer,) and in three months' time the piece was ready for the stage, was soon brought out at the "Varietes," and the names of Murger and Barriere were on every lip in Paris.

We have nothing like the French stage in the suddenness and extensiveness of the popularity it gives men. We have no means by which a gifted man can suddenly acquire universal fame,—can "go to bed unknown and wake famous." The most brilliant speech at the bar is heard within a narrow horizon. The most brilliant novel is slow in making its way; and before its author is famous beyond the shadow of the publisher's house, a later new novel pales the lustre of the rising star. The French stage occupies the position our Congress once held, when its halls were adorned by the great men, the Clays, Calhouns, Websters, of our fathers' days, or the Supreme Court occupied, when Marshall sat in the chief seat on its bench, and William Pinckney brought to its bar his elaborate eloquence, and William Wirt his ornate and touching oratory. The stage is to France what Parliament is to England. It is more: it is the mirror and the fool; it glasses society's form and pressure; it criticizes folly. Murger's success on the stage opened every door of publicity to him. His name was current, it had a known market-value. The success of the piece assured the success of the book. The "Revue des Deux Mondes" begged Murger to write for its pages. Murger's fortune seemed assured.

There was but one croak heard in all the applause. It came from Murger's father. He could not believe his eyes and his ears, when they avouched to him that his son's name and praises filled every paper and every mouth. It utterly confounded him. The day of the second performance of the piece Murger went to see his father.

"If you would like to see my piece again to-day, you may take these tickets."

His father replied,—

"Your piece? What! you don't mean to say that they are still playing it?"

He could not conceive it possible that his "vagabond" son should interest anybody's attention.

The very first use Murger made of his increased income was to fly Paris and to seek the country,—that rural life which Frenchmen abhor. Marlotte, a little village in the Forest of Fontainebleau, became his home; there he spent eight months of every year. Too poor, at first, to rent a cottage for himself, he lodged at the miserable village-inn, which, with its eccentric drunken landlord, he has sketched in one of his novels; and when fortune proved less unkind to him, he took a cottage which lay between the highway and the forest, and there the first happy years of his life were spent. They were few, and they were checkered. His chief petty annoyance was his want of skill as a sportsman. He could never bring down game with his gun, and he was passionately fond of shooting. On taking up his abode in the country, the first thing he had made was a full hunting-suit in the most approved fashion, and this costume he would wear upon all occasions, even when he came up to Paris. He never attained any nearer approximation to a sportsman's character. One day he went out shooting with a friend. A flock of partridges rose at their feet.

"Fire, Murger! fire!" exclaimed his friend.

"Why, great heavens, man, I can't shoot so! Wait until they light on yon fence, and then I'll take a crack at them."

He could no better shoot at stationary objects, however, than at game on the wing. Hard by his cottage a hare had burrowed in a potato-field. Every morning and every evening Murger fired at the hare, but with such little effect, that the hare soon took no notice either of Murger or his gun, and gambolled before them both as if they were simply a scarecrow. Murger bagged but one piece of game in the whole course of his life, and the way this was done happened in this wise. One day he was asleep at the foot of a tree in the Forest of Fontainebleau,—his gun by his side. He was suddenly awakened by the barking of a dog which he knew belonged to the most adroit poacher that levied illicit tribute on the imperial domain. The dog continued to bark and to look steadily up into the tree. Murger followed the dog's eyes, but could discover nothing. The poacher ran up, saying,—"Quick, Monsieur Murger! quick! Give me your gun. Don't you see it?"

Murger replied,—"See it? See what?"

"Why, a pheasant! a splendid cock! There he is on the top limb!"

The poacher aimed and fired; the pheasant fell at Murger's feet. "Take the bird and put it in your game-bag, Monsieur Murger, and tell everybody you killed it."

Murger gratefully accepted the present; and this was the first and only time that Murger ever bagged a bird.

But the cloud which darkened his sky now was the cloud which had lowered on all his life,—poverty. He was always fevered by the care and anxiety of procuring money. Life is expensive to a man occupying such a position as Murger filled, and French authors are ill paid. A French publisher thinks he has done wonders, if he sells all the copies of an edition of three thousand volumes; and if any work reaches a sale of sixteen or seventeen thousand volumes, the publisher is ready to cry, "Miracle!" Further, men who lead intellectual lives are almost necessarily extravagant of money. They know not its value. They know, indeed, that ten mills make one cent, and that ten cents make one dime, and that ten dimes make one dollar; but they are ignorant of the practical value of these denominations of the great medium of exchange. They cannot "jew," and know not that the slight percentage they would take off the price asked is a prize worth contending for. Again, the physical exhaustion or reaction which almost invariably follows mental exertion requires stimulants of some kind or other to remove the pain—it is an acute pain—which reaction brings upon the whole system. These stimulants, whether they be good dinners, or brilliant company, or generous wines, or parties of pleasure, are always costly. Besides, life in Paris is such an expensive mode of existence, the simplest pleasures there are so very costly, and there are so many microscopic issues through which money pours away in that undomestic life, in that career passed almost continually in public, that one must have a considerable fortune, or lead an extremely retired life. A fashionable author, whose books are in every book-shop window, and whose plays are posted for performance on every wall, cannot lead a secluded life; and all the circumstances we have hinted at conspire to make his life expensive. In vain Murger fled the great city. It pursued him even in the country. Admirers and parasites sought him out even in his retreat, and forced their way to his table. There is another reason for Murger's life-long poverty: he worked slowly, and this natural difficulty of intellectual travail was increased by his exquisite taste and desire of perfection. The novel was written and re-written time and again. The plot was changed; the characters were altered; each phrase was polished and repolished. Where ordinary writers threw off half a dozen volumes, Murger found it hard to fit a single volume for the press. Ordinary writers grew rich in writing speedily forgotten novels; he continued poor in writing novels which will live for many years. Then, Murger's vein of talent made him work for theatres which gave more reputation than ready money. He was too delicate a writer to construct those profitable dramas which run a hundred or a hundred and fifty nights and place ten or twenty thousand dollars in the writer's purse. His original poverty kept him poor. He could not afford to wait until the seed he had sown had grown and ripened for the sickle; so he fell into the hands of usurers, who purchased the crop while it was yet green, and made the harvest yield them profits of fifty or seventy-five per centum.

His distress during the last years of his life was as great as the distress of his youth. His published letters tell a sorrowful tale. They are filled with apprehensions of notes maturing only to be protested, or complaints of inability to go up to Paris one day because he has not a shirt to wear, another day because he cannot procure the seventy-five cents which are the railway-fare from Fontainebleau to Paris. Here is one of his letters, one of the gayest of them It is charming, but sad:—

"I send you my little stock. Carry it instantly to Monsieur Heugel, the music-publisher in the Rue Vivienne, next door to Michel Levy's. Go the day afterwards to Michel Levy's for the answer. Read it, and if it shows that Monsieur Heugel buys my songs, go to him with the blank receipt, herein inclosed, which you will fill up as he will point out, according to the usual conditions. It is ten dollars a song; but as there is a poor song among them, and money I must have, take whatever he gives you; but you must pretend as if you expected ten dollars for each song. This money must be used to take up Saccault's note, which is due the fifteenth. Take the address of the holder, and pay it before it is protested. You will be allowed till the next day to pay it. Be active in this matter, and let me hear how things turn out. I cannot, in reason, in my present situation, take a room at a rent of a hundred and twenty dollars a year.[E] We have cares enough for the present; therefore let us not sow that seed of embarrassment which flowers every three months in the shape of quarterly rent. Do not give at the outside more than eighty dollars for the room, even though we be embarrassed by its smallness. I hope we may have means before long of being more delicate in our selection; but at present put a leaf to your patience, for the horizon is black enough to make ink withal. However, the little dialogue (which has been quite successful) I have just had with the muses has given me better spirits. I have a fever of working which is high enough to give me a real fever. I have shaken the box, and see that it is not empty. But I stood in need of this evidence, for in my own eyes I had fallen as low as the Public Funds in 1848. Return here before the money Michel Levy gave you is exhausted, for I cannot get any more for you. I am working half the day and half the night. I feel that the great flood-tide of 'copy' is at hand. My laundress and my pantaloons have both deserted me. I am obliged to use grape-vine leaves for my pocket-handkerchief.... There is nothing new here. The dogs are in good health, but they do not look fat; I am afraid they have fasted sometimes. Our chimney is again inhabited by a family of swallows; they say that is a good sign: maybe it means that we shall have fire all the winter long."

To this letter was added a postscript which one of the dogs was supposed to have written:—

"My dear lady,—They say here we are going to see mighty hard times. My master talks of suppressing my breakfast, and he wants to hire me to a shepherd in order that I may earn some money for a living. But as I have the reputation of loving mutton-chops, nobody will hire me to keep sheep. If you see anywhere in Paris a pretty diamond collar which does not cost more than five-and-twenty cents, bring it to

"DOG MIRZA.

"14th March, 1855."

Hope dawned upon him in 1856. He was promised a pension of three hundred dollars from the Government out of the literary fund of the Minister of Public Instruction's budget. It would have been, from its regularity of payment, a fortune to him. It would have saved him from the anxiety of quarter-day when rent fell due. But the pension never came. The Government gave him the decoration of the Legion of Honor, which certainly gratified him. But money for bread would have been of more service. When Rachel lay upon that invalid's chair which she was never to quit except for her coffin, she gazed one morning upon the breakfast of delicacies spread before her to tempt the return of absent appetite. After some moments of silence, she took up a piece of bread as white as the driven snow, and, sighing, said in that whisper which was all that remained to her of voice,—"Ay, me! Had the world given me a little more of this, and earlier in my life, I had not been here at three-and-thirty." Those early years of want which sapped Rachel's life undermined Murger's constitution. His rustic life repaired some of the damage wrought, and would probably have entirely retrieved it, had his life then been freer from care, less visited by privation. Had the money the Government and his friends lavished on his corpse been bestowed on him living, he had probably still been numbered among the writers militant of France. Some obscure parasite got the pension. He continued to work on still hounded by debt. "Five times a week," he wrote in 1858, "I dine at twelve or one o'clock at night. One thing is certain: if I am not forced to stop writing for three or four days, I shall fall sick." In 1860 we find him complaining that he is "sick in soul, and maybe in body too. I am, of a truth, fatigued, and a great deal more fatigued than people think me." Death's shadow was upon him. The world thought him in firmer health and in gayer spirits than ever. He knew better. He felt as the traveller feels towards the close of the day and the end of the journey. It was not strange that the world was deceived, for Murger's gayety had always been factitious. He often turned off grief with a smile, where other men relieve it with a tear. Sensitive natures shrink from letting the world see their exquisite sensibility. Besides, Murger's gayety was intellectual rather than physical. It consisted almost entirely in bright gleams of repartee. It was quickness, 'twas not mirth. No wonder, then, that the world was deceived; the mind retained its old activity amid all its fatigue; and besides, the world sees men only in their hours of full-dress, when the will lights up the leaden eyes and wreathes the drawn countenance in smiles. Tears are for our midnight pillow,—the hand-buried face for our solitary study.

So when the rumor flew over Paris, Murger is sick!—Murger is dying!—Murger is dead! it raised the greatest surprise. Everybody wondered how the stalwart man they saw yesterday could be brought low so soon. Where was his youth, that it came not to the rescue? The reader can answer the question. Of a truth, the last act of the drama we have sketched in these pages moved rapidly to the catastrophe. He awoke in the middle of one night with a violent pain in the thigh, which ached as if a red-hot ball had passed through it. The pain momentarily increased in violence, and became intolerable. The nearest physician was summoned. After diagnosis, he declared the case too grave for action until after consultation. Another medical attendant was called in. After consultation they decided that the most eminent surgeons of Paris must be consulted. It was a decomposition of the whole body, attended with symptoms rarely observed. The princes of medical science in Paris met at the bedside. They all confessed that their art was impotent to alleviate, much less to cure this dreadful disease. Murger's hours were numbered. The doctors insisted upon his being transported to the hospital. To the hospital he went: 'twas not for the first,—'twas for the last time. His agonies were distressing. They wrung from him screams which could be heard from the fifth floor, where he lay, to the street. Death made his approaches like some skilful engineer against some impregnable fortress: fibre by fibre, vein by vein, atom by atom, was mastered and destroyed.

During one of the rare intervals of freedom from torture, he turned to the sick-nurse who kept watch by his pillow, and, after vacantly gazing on her buxom form and ruddy cheek, he significantly asked,—"Mammy, do you find this world a happy place, and life an easy burden?" The well-fed woman understood not the bitterness of soul which prompted this question. "Keep quiet, and sleep," was her reply. He fell back upon his pillow, murmuring, "I haven't! I haven't!" Yet he was only eight-and-thirty years old, and men's sorrows commonly commence later in life. A friend came to see him. As the physicians had forbidden him all conversation, he wrote on a card this explanation of his situation:—"Ricord and the other doctors were of opinion that I should come to Dubois's Hospital. I should have preferred St. Louis's Hospital. I feel more at home there. Enfin!..." Is there in the martyrology of poets any passage sadder than these lines? Just think of a man so bereft of home and family, so accustomed to the common cot of the hospital, so familiar to hospital sights and sounds and odors, that he can associate home with the public ward! Poor Murger!

So lived and so died the poet of youth, and of ambitious, struggling, hopeful poverty. We describe not his funeral, nor the monument reared over his grave. Our heart fails us at sight of these sterile honors. They are ill-timed. What boot they, when he on whom they are bestowed is beyond the reach of earthly voices? The ancients crowned the live animal they selected as the sacrifice for their altars; it saw the garlands of flowers which were laid on its head, and the stately procession which accompanied it, and heard the music which discoursed of its happiness.

* * * * *

THE GREAT AIR-ENGINE.

There is an odd collection of houses, and a stretch of green, with half a dozen old elms, raspberry-bushes, and pruned oaks growing on it, opening out from this window where I work; this morning, they blended curiously with this old story that I want to tell you, helping me to understand it better. And the story, too, explained to me one reason why people always choose to look at those trees rather than the houses: at any trees before any houses. Because, you see, whatever grows out of Nature is itself, and says so: has its own especial little soul-sap, and leafs that out intact, borrows no trait or trick or habit from its neighbor. The sunshine is sunshine, and the pine-burr a pine-burr, obstinately, through and through. So Nature rests us. But whatever grows out of a man's brain is like the brain, patched, uncertain: a perverse streak in it somewhere, to spoil its thorough good or ill meaning.

There is a little Grecian temple yonder, back of the evergreens, with a triangular stove-funnel revolving at its top; and next door a Dutch-built stable, with a Turk's turban for a cupola; and just beyond that, a chalet-roof, sprouting without any provocation whatever out of an engine-house. I do not think they are caricatures of some characters. I knew a politician once, very low down in even that scale; Quilp they nicknamed him; the cruelest husband; quarter-dollarish in his views and principles, and greedy for bribes even as low as that: yet I have seen that man work with a rose-bush as long and tenderly as a mother with her baby, and his eyes glow and grow wet at the sight of a new and delicate plant. Near him lived a woman,—a relative of his, I believe: one of those women who absorb so much of the world's room and air, and have a right to do it: a nature made up of grand, good pieces, with no mean bits mortared in: fresh and child-like, too, with heat or tears ready for any tale of wrong, or strongly spoken, true word. But strike against one prejudice that woman had, her religious sect-feeling, and she was hard and cruel as Nero. It was the stove-funnel in that temple.

Human nature is full of such unaccountable warts and birth-marks and sixth fingers; and the best reason that I know of why all practical schemes for a perfect social system have failed is, that they are so perfect, so compact, that they ignore all these excrescences, these untied ends, in making up their whole. Yet it is a wonderful bit of mosaic, this Communist system: a place for every man, and every man in his place; "to insure to each human being the freest development of his faculties": there is a grand fragment of absolute truth in that, a going back to primal Nature, to a like life with that of sunshine and pines, a Utopia more Christ-like than the heaven (which Christ never taught) of eternal harp-playing and golden streets. But as for making it real, every man's life should have the integrity of meaning of that of a tree. A. statesman, B. seer, C. scavenger: pines, raspberries, oaks. Impossible, as we know. And then, a thistle at the beginning knows it is a thistle, and cannot be anything else, so there is the end of it; but when Pratt, by nature ne knife-grinder, asserts himself poet, what then? How many men know their vocation? Who is going about to tie on the labels? Who would you be willing should tie on yours? Then, again, there is your neighbor Brownson, with a yeasty brain, fermenting too fast through every phase of creed or party to accept a healthful "settling"; so it is left to work itself out, and it will settle itself by-and-by, in a life or two it may be. You know other brains which, if you will but consider, prove this life to be only one stage of a many-yeared era: they are lying fallow from birth until death; they have powers latent in them, that next time, perhaps, will bear golden grain or fruit. Now they are resting, they lie fallow. Communism allows no time for fermentation, or lying fallow; God does: for brains, I mean, not souls. But what are we going to do with this blindness of human beings as to what they are fit for,—when they go, or are forced to go, stumbling along the wrong path all their lives? Why, the bitterest prayers that God bears are from men who think they have lost time in the world. The lowest matter alive, the sponges, fungi, know what they have to do, and are blessed in the doing, while we—Did you think the Socialist helped the matter? Men needed thousand years' education to make their schemes practicable; they ignored all this blindness, all selfishness, and overgrowth of the passions: no wonder these facts knobbed themselves up against their system, and so, in every instance it crumbled to pieces. The things are facts, and here; there is no use in denying that; and it is a fact, too, that almost every life seems a wasted failure, compared with what it might have been. Such hard, grimy problems there are in life! They weaken the eyes that look long at them: stories hard to understand, like that of this old machinist, Joe Starke.

But over yonder, how cool and shady it is on that sweep of green! that rests one so thoroughly, in eyes and brain! The quiet shadows ebb and flow over the uncut grass; every hazy form or color is beyond art, true and beautiful, being fresh from God; there are countless purpled vines creeping out from the earth under that grass; the air trembles with the pure spring healing and light; the gray-barked old elms wrestle, and knot their roots underground, clutching down at the very thews and sinews of the earth, and overhead unfold their shivering delicate leaves fresh in the sunlight to catch the patter of the summer rain when it comes. It is sure to come. Winter and summer, spring and autumn, shall not fail. God always stays there, in the great Fatherland of Nature. One knows now why Jesus went back there when these hard riddles of the world made his soul sorrowful even unto death, and he needed a word from Home to refresh him.

Do you know the meaning to-day of the beds of rock and pregnant loam, of the woods, and water-courses, and live growths and colors on these thousand hills near us? Is it that God has room for all things in this Life of His? for all these problems, all Evil as it seems to us? that nothing in any man's life is wasted? every hunger, loss, effort, held underneath and above in some infinite Order, suffered to live out its purpose, give up its uttermost uses? If, after all, the end of science, of fact and fiction, of watching those raspberry-bushes growing, or of watching the phases of these terrible years in which we live, were only to give us glimpses of that eternal Order, so that we could lie down in it, grow out of it, like that ground-ivy in the earth and sunshine yonder, sure, as it is, that there is no chance nor waste in our own lives? It would be something to know that sentence in which all the world's words are ordered, and to find that the war, and the Devil, and even your own life's pain, had its use, and was an accord there,—would it not? Thinking of that, even this bit of a history of Joe Starke might have its meaning, the more if there should be trouble and a cold wind blowing in it; because any idiot can know what God means by happy lives, but to find His thought behind the hunger and intolerable loss that wring the world's heart is a harder thing to do,—a better, a great, healthful thing. And one may be sure that the man, be he Christian or Pagan, who does believe in this under Order and Love, and tries to see and clear his way down to it, through every day's circumstance, will have come very near to the real soul of good and humanity,—to the Christ,—before the time comes for him to rest, and stand in his lot, at the end of the days.

But to our story. It was in Philadelphia the old machinist lived; he had been born and had grown old there; but there are only one or two days in his life you would care to hear about: August days, in the summer of '59, the culmination and end of all the years gone before for him. You know what a quiet place Philadelphia is? One might fancy that the first old Quaker, sitting down among its low, flattish hills, had left a spell of thoughtful reticence behind him. The hills never dare to rise into abrupt earnestness; the two broad, bright-faced rivers that hold it in lapse with a calm consciousness into the sleepy, oyster-bedded bay; even the accretion of human life there never has been able to utter itself in the myriad rebellious phases of a great city, but falls gravely into the drilled monotony of its streets. Brick and mortar will not yield themselves there to express any whim in the mind of their owner: the house-fronts turn the same impassive, show-hating faces on the sidewalks from the Delaware to the Schuylkill. Give the busiest street a moment's chance and it broods down into a solitary reverie, saying,—"You may force me into hotels and market-places, if you will, but I know the business of this town is to hold its tongue." Even the curiously beautiful women wrap themselves in the uniform of gray, silent color; the cast of thought of the people is critical, attentive, self-controlled. When a covered, leaden day shuts the sun out, and the meaning of the place in, hills and city and human life, one might fancy, utter the old answer of the woman accused of witchcraft:—"While I hold my thought, it is my own; when I speak it, it is my master." Out in the near hills the quietude deepens, loosening and falling back out of the rigid reserve of the city into the unconscious silence of a fresh Nature: no solitudes near a large town are so solitary as these. There is one little river in especial, that empties into the Schuylkill, which comes from some water-bed under the shady hills in Montgomery County,—some pool far underground, which never in all these ages has heard a sound, or seen the sun, nor ever shall; therefore the water flowing from it carries to the upper air a deeper silence than the spell left by the old Quaker on the hills, or even the ghostly memory of the Indian tribes, who, ages long ago, hunted and slowly faded away in these forests on its shores.

When they came to the New World, at a time so far gone from us that no dead nation even has left of it any record, they found the river flowing as strangely silent and pure as now, and the name they gave it, Wissahickon, it bears to-day. The hills are there as when they first saw them, wrapping themselves every year in heavier mantles of hemlocks and cedars; but a shaded road winds now gravely by the river-side, and along it the city sends out those who are tired, worn out, and need to hear that message of the river. No matter how dull their heads or hearts may be, they never fail to catch something of its meaning. So quiet it is there, so pure, it is like being born again, they say. So, all the time, in the cool autumn-mornings, in the heavy lull of noon, or with the low harvest-moon slanting blue and white shadows, sharp and uncanny, across its surface, the water flows steadily from its dark birthplace, clear, cheerful, bright. The hills crouch attentive on its edge, shaggy with shadows; from the grim rocks ferns and mosses sleep out delicate color unmolested, the red-bearded grass drops its seed unshaken. The sweetbrier trails its pink fingers through the water. They know what the bright little river means, as well as the mill-boy fishing by the bank: how He sent it near the city, just as He brought that child into the midst of the hackneyed, doubting old tax-gatherers and publicans long ago, with the same message. Such a curious calm and clearness rest in it, one is almost persuaded, that, in some day gone by, some sick, thirsty soul has in truth gone into its dewy solitude in a gray summer dawn, and, finding there the fabled fountain of eternal life, has left behind a blessing from all those stronger redeemed years to come.

There is a narrow road which leaves the main one, and penetrates behind the river-hills, only to find others, lower and more heavily wooded, with now and then odd-shaped bits of pasture-land wedged in between their sides, or else low brick farm-houses set in a field of corn and potatoes, with a dripping pump-trough at the door. It is a thorough country-road, lazy, choking itself up with mud even in summer, to keep city-carriages out, bordering itself with slow-growing maples and banks of lush maiden's-hair, blood-red partridge-berries, and thistles. You can find dandelions growing in the very middle of it, there is so little travel out there.

One August morning, in one of its quietest curves among the hills, there was a fat old horse, standing on it, sniffing up the cool air: pure air, it is there, so cool and rare that you can detect even the faint scent of the wild-grape blossoms or the buttercups in it in spring. The wagon to which the horse was fastened had no business there in the cedar-hills or slow-going road; it belonged to town, every inch, from hub to cover,—was square-built, shiningly clean, clear-lettered as Philadelphia itself.

"That completes the practical whole," said Andy Fawcett, polishing a tin measure, and putting it on the front seat of the wagon, and then surveying the final effect.

Andy was part-owner of it: the yellow letters on the sides were, "A. Fawcett & Co. Milk." It was very early,—gray, soggy clouds keeping back the dawn,—but light enough for Andy to see that his shoes, which he had blacked late last night, were bright, and his waistcoat, etc., "all taut."

"I like the sailor lingo," he said, curling his moustache, and turning over his pink shirt-collar. "They've a loose dash about 'em. It must go far with the girls."

Then he looked at the wagon again, and at a pinchbeck watch he carried.

"Five. No matter how neat an' easy a fellow's dress is, it's wasted this time in the mornin'. Them street-car conductors hev a chance for it all day, dang 'em!"

He went back to the house as softly as possible, and brought out a lantern, which was silver-mounted and of cut glass. He hung it carefully in the wagon.

"There's no knowin' what use I may have for it,"—shaking his head, and rubbing it tenderly.

Andy had owned that lantern for several years, and carried it with him always. "You cannot know, Jane," he used to say to the woman whom he worked for, "what a comfort I find in it. It"—He always stopped there, and she never replied, but immediately talked of something else. Their customers (for they kept half a dozen cows on the place, and Andy took the milk into town)—their customers, when they found out about the lantern, used to look oddly at Andy, and one or two of them had tried in consequence to overreach him in the bills. But no thimble-rigger had a keener eye for the cents than Fawcett. So their milk-speculation had prospered, until, this spring, they had added to their stock of cows. It was the only business in which Andy was partner; after he brought the wagon back at noon, he put on his flannel shirt, and worked as a hired hand for the woman; the other produce she sold herself.

The house was low, built of lichen-covered stone, an old buttonwood-tree tenting it over; in the sunny back-yard you could see fat pullets and glossy-backed Muscovy ducks wabbling in and out through the lilac-bushes. Comfortable and quaint the old place looked, with no bald white paint about it, no unseemly trig new fences to jar against the ashen and green tones of color in house and woods. The gate by which you passed through the stone wall was made of twisted boughs; and wherever a tree had been cut down, the stump still stood, covered with crimson-leaved ivy. "I'd like things nattier," Andy used to say; "but it's Jane's way."

The Quaker woman herself, as she stood in the gateway in her gray clothes, the hair pushed back from her sallow face, her brown, muscular arms bare, suited the quiet, earnest look of the place.

"Thee'll take neighbor Wart into town, Andrew?" she said.

"More noosances?" he growled.

"Thee'd best take her in, Andrew. It costs thee nothing," with a dry, quizzical smile.

Andy's face grew redder than his shirt, as he climbed up on the wagon-wheel.

"H'ist me up her basket here, then. A'n't I kind to her? I drink my coffee every noon at her stall, though 't's the worst in the market. If 'twas a man had sech a bamboozlin' phiz as hers, I'd bat him over th' head, that 's all."

"She's a widow, and thee's afraid of thy weak point," said Jane.

"Take yer joke, Jane." The lad looked down on the woman's bony face kindly. "They don't hurt, yer words. It's different when some folks pokes fun at me, askin' for the lantern, an'"—

"What odds?" said the woman hurriedly, a quick change coming over her face. "They mean well. Haven't I told thee since the night thee comed here first for a meal's victuals, an' all the years since, how as all the world meaned well to thee, Andrew? Not only sun an' air an' growth, an' God behind; but folks, ef thee takes them by the palm of the hand first, an' not raps them with the knuckles, or go about seekin' to make summat off of each."

Andy was in no mood for moralizing.

"Ye'r' hard on old Wart in that last remark, I'm thinkin',"—glancing at the dumpy bunch of a woman seated at their breakfast-table within, her greedy blue eyes and snub-nose close to her plate.

The Quaker turned away, trying to hide a smile, and began tugging at some dock-weeds. Her arms were tougher and stronger than Fawcett's. He used to say Jane was a better worker than he, though she did it by fits and starts, going at it sometimes as if every limb was iron and was moved by a steam-engine, and then for days doing nothing, playing with a neighbor's baby, sitting by the window, humming some old tune to herself, in a way that even Andy thought idle and childish. For the rest, he had thought little about her, except that she was a strangely clean and silent woman, and kind, even to tenderness,—to him; but to the very bats in the barn, or old Wart, or any other vermin, as well.

Perhaps an artist would have found more record in the brawny frame and the tanned, chronicled face of the woman, as she bent over her work in her gray dress in the fresh morning light. Forty years of hard, healthy labor,—you could read that in the knotted muscles and burnt skin: and no lack of strength in the face, with its high Indian cheek-bones and firm-set jaws. But there was a curious flickering shadow of grace and beauty over all this coarse hardness. The eyes were large, like the cow's under yonder tree, slow-moving, absorbing, a soft brown in color, and unreasoning; if pain came to this woman, she would not struggle, nor try to understand it: bear it dumbly, that was all. The nervous lips were not heavy, but delicately, even archly cut, with dimples waiting the slightest moving of the mouth; you would be sure that naturally the laughter and fun and cheery warmth of the world lay as close to her as to a child. But something—some loss or uncertainty in her life—had given to her smile a quick, pitiful meaning, like that of a mother watching her baby at her breast.

Andy climbed into the wagon, and cracked his whip impatiently.

"Time!" he shouted.

Neighbor Wart scuffed down the path, wiping her mouth.

"I'm glad I dropped in to breakfast, an' for company to friend Andrew here. Does thee frequent the prize-fighters' ring, that thee's got their slang so pat, lad?" as she scrambled in behind him. "Don't jerk at thy gallowses so fiercely. It's only my way. 'Sarah has a playful way with her': my father used to say that, an' it's kept by me. I don't feel a day older than when—Andrew!" sharply, "did thee bring thy lunch, to eat at my stall? The coffee'll be strong as lye this morning."

The Quaker, Jane, had a small white basket in her hand, into which she was looking.

"It's here," she said, putting it by the young man's feet. "There's ham an' bread an' pie,—plum,—enough for two. Thee'll not want to eat alone?" anxiously.

"I never do," he said, gruffly. "The old buster's savage on pie,—gettin' fat on it, I tell you, Jane, though his jaws are like nut-crackers yet."

Andy had dropped into one of the few ruts of talk in which his brain could jog easily along; he began, as usual, to rub the knees of his trousers smooth, and to turn the quid of tobacco in his mouth.

Jane, oddly enough, did not remind him that it was time to go, but stood, not heeding him, leaning on the wheel, drawing a buckle in the harness tighter.

"He! he!" giggled Andy, "if you'd seen him munch the pastry an' biscuit, an' our biggest cuts of tenderloin, an' then plank down his pennies to Mis' Wart here, thinkin' he'd paid for all! Innocent as a staggerin' calf, that old chap! Says I to him last week, when we were leavin' the market, havin' my joke, says I,—

"'Pervisions is goin' down, Mr. Starke.'

"'It hadn't occurred to me, Andrew,' he says, in his dazed way. 'But you know, doubtless,' says he, with one of his queer bows, touchin' the banged old felt he sticks on the back of his head.

"'Yes, I know,' says I. An' I took his hand an' pulled it through my arm, an' we walked down to Arch. Dunno what the girls thought, seein' me in sech ragged company. Don't care. He's a brick, old Joe.

"Says he, 'Ef I hed hed your practical knowledge, at your age, Andrew, it might hev been better for the cause of science this day,' an' buttons up his coat.

"'Pears as if he wasn't used to wearin' shirts, an' so hed got that trick o' buttonin' up. But he has a appreciatin' eye, he has,—more than th' common,—much more." And Andy crossed his legs, and looked down, and coughed in a modest, deprecating way.

"Well," finding no one spoke, "I've found that meal, sure enough, is his breakfast, dinner, an' supper. I calls it luncheon to him, in a easy, gentlemanly sort of way. I believe I never mentioned to you," looking at Jane, "how I smuggled him into the pants you made, you thinkin' him a friend of mine? As he is."

"No," said the woman.

"As with the pants, so with coat, an' shirt; likewise boots,"—checking off each with a rub on his trousers.

Andy's tongue was oiled, and ran glibly.

Mrs. Wart, on the back seat, shuffled her feet and hemmed in vain.

Jane pulled away at the dock and mullein, in one of her old fits of silent musing.

"Says I, 'See my ducks an' sack, Mr. Starke? Latest cut,' says I. 'Wish you knew my tailor. Man of enterprise, an' science, Sir. Knows mechanics, an' acoustics, an' the rest,—at his finger-ends,—well as his needle,' said I.

"The old chap's watery eyes began to open at that.

"'Heard of yer engine, by George!' I goes on.

"'What's he think of the chances?' he says. 'Hes he influence?'

"'No,—but he's pants an' sech, which is more to the purpose,' I says. 'An' without a decent suit to yer back, how kin you carry the thing before Congress?' says I. Put it to him strong, that way. 'How kin ye?' I says. 'Now look here, Mr. Starke. Ye 'r' no runner in debt, I know: not willin' to let other people fill yer stomach an' cover yer back, because you've got genius into ye, which they haven't. All right!' says I. 'American pluck. But ye see, facts is facts, an' yer coat, not to mince matters, is nothin' but rags. An' yer shirt'—

"His old wizened phiz got quite red at that, an' he caught his breath a minute.

"'Go on, Andrew,' says he, puttin' his hand on my arm, 'you mean well. I don't mind it. Indeed, no.' Smilin' kind, to let me see as he wasn't hurt. However, I dropped the shirt.

"'It can't be otherwise,' says I, soothin', you know, 'so long's you've to sleep in the markets, an' so forth,' meanin' Hayes's stable. 'Now look o' here. My tailor, wishin' to help on the cause of science, as you say, wants to advance you a suit of clothes. On the engine. Of course, on the engine. You to pay when the thing's through. Congress or patents or what not. What d'ye say?' An' so"—

"He wears them. You told me that," said the Quaker, in a dry, mechanical tone.

"You don't care to hear the ins an' outs of it? Well, there's one thing I'll mention," sulkily gathering up the reins; "to-morrow it'll be all up with the old chap, one way or t'other: him an' his engine's goin' on trial. Come up, Jerry!" jerking the horse's head; "ye ought to be in Broad Street this minute. An' if it's worsted he is, it'll be a case of manslaughter agin the judges. That old fellow's built his soul into them wheels an' pipes. An' his skin an' bone too, for that matter. There's little enough of 'em left, God knows! Come up, Jerry!"

But Jane was leaning on the shafts again. Perhaps the story of the starving old machinist had touched her; even Andy guessed how big and childish the heart was in her woman's body, and how she always choked it down. She had taken out the basket now that held the old man's lunch, and was rearranging the slices of bread and ham, her fingers trembling, and lingering curiously over each. Her lips moved, but she said nothing.

"Thy bread is amazin' soft-crusted," said Mrs. Wart. "Thee scalds the raisin', don't thee, now?"

"To-morrow, thee said, Andrew?"

"Yes, that'll be the end of the engine, for good or bad. Ten years he's been at it, he says."

"Ten years, last spring," to herself.

She had put the basket down, and was stooping over the weeds.

"Did I tell ye that? I forgot. Well, Mis' Wart, we'll be off. Don't fret, it's not late. Jerry's blooded. He'll not let the grass grow under his feet."

And the milk-wagon, with its yellow letters, went trundling down the road, the sun beginning to shine pleasantly in on the cool tin vessels within, and the crisp red curls and blue eyes of the driver,—on the lantern, too, swinging from the roof inside, as Andy glanced back. He chuckled; even Mrs. Wart looked tidy and clean in the morning air; his lunch smelt savory in the basket. Then suddenly recalling the old machinist, and the history in which he was himself part actor, he abruptly altered his expression, drawing down his red eyebrows to a tragic scowl, and glaring out into the pleasant light as one who insults fate.

"Whatever is thee glowerin' thataway about?" snapped his companion.

Andy took out his handkerchief, and wiped his forehead deliberately.

"Men see passages in human life that women suspect nothing about, Mem. Darn this wagon, how it jolts! There's lots of genius trampled underfoot by yer purse-proud tyrants, Mem."

"Theeself, for instance. Thee'd best mind thy horse, boy."

But she patted her basket comfortably. It is so easy to think people cruel and coarse who have more money than ourselves! Not for Andy, however. His agrarian proclivities were shallow and transient enough. So presently, as they bowled along the level road, he forgot Joe Starke, and began drumming on the foot-board and humming a tune,—touching now and then the stuffed breast-pocket of his coat with an inward chuckle of mystery. And when little Ann Mipps, at the toll-gate, came out with her chubby cheeks burning, and her shy eyes down, he took no notice at all. Nice little midge of a thing; but what did she know of the thrilling "Personals" of the "Ledger" and their mysterious meaning, beginning at the matrimonial advertisements last May? or of these letters in his breast-pocket from the widow of an affectionate and generous disposition and easy income on Callowhill, or from the confiding Estelle, whose maiden aunt dragonized her on Ridge Road above Parrish? When he saw them once, fate would speak out. Something in him was made for better things than this flat life: "instincts of chivalry and kindred souls,"—quoting Estelle's last letter. Poor Ann! he wondered if they had toffy-pullings at Mipps's now. He hadn't been there since April. Such a dog-trot sort of love-making that used to be! And Andy stopped to give a quart of milk to a seamstress who came out of Poole's cheap boarding-house, and who, by the bye, had just been imbibing the fashion-book literature on which he had been living lately. A sort of weak wine-whey, that gives to the brains of that class a perpetual tipsiness.

Ann Mipps, meanwhile, who had been at her scrubbing since four o'clock, so that she should be through and have on her pink calico before the milk-cart rolled by, went in and cried herself sick: tasting the tears now and then to see how bitter they were,—what a hard time she had in the world; and then remembering she had not said her prayers last night, and so comprehending this judgment on her. For the Mippses were Calvinists, and pain was punishment and not a test. So Ann got up comforted; said her prayers twice with a will, and went out to milk. It might be different to-morrow. So as she had always thought how he needed somebody to make him happy, poor Andy! And she thought she understood him. She knew how brave and noble he was! And she always thought, if he could get the toll-gate, now that her father was so old, how snug that would be!

"Oh, if that should happen, and—there wouldn't be a house in the world so happy, if"—

And then her checks began to burn again, and the light came back in her eyes, until, by the time the day had grown into the hot August noon, she went laughing and buzzing in and out of the shady little toll-house as contented as any bee in the clover yonder. Andy would call again soon,—maybe to-night! While Andy, in the hot streets, was looking at every closed shutter, wondering if Estelle was behind it.

"Poor little Ann! she"—

No! not even to himself would he say, "She likes me"; but his face grew suddenly fiery red, and he lashed Jerry spitefully.

A damp, sharp air was blowing up from the bay that evening, when the milk-wagon rumbled up the lane towards home. Only on the high tree-tops the sun lingered; beneath were broad sweeps of brown shadows cooling into night. The lindens shook out fresh perfume into the dew and quiet. The few half-tamed goats that browse on the hills hunted some dark corner under the pines to dampen out in the wet grass the remembrance of the scorching day. Here and there passed some laborer going home in his shirt-sleeves, fanning off the hot dust with his straw hat, glad of the chance to stop at the cart-wheel and gossip with Andy.

"Ye 'r' late, Fawcett. What news from town?"

So that it was nearly dark before he came under the shadow of the great oak by his own gate. The Quaker was walking backwards and forwards along the lane. Andy stopped to look at her, therefore; for she was usually so quiet and reticent in her motion.

"What kept thee all day, Andrew?" catching the shaft. "Was summat wrong? One ill, maybe?"—her lips parched and stiff.

"What ails ye, Jane?"—holding out his hand, as was their custom when they met. "No. No one ailin'; only near baked with th' heat. I was wi' old Joe,"—lowering his voice. "He took me home,—to his hole, that is; I stayed there, ye see. Well, God help us all! Come up, Jerry! D' ye smell yer oats? Eh! the basket ye've got? No, he'd touch none of it. It's not victual he's livin' on, this day. I wish 'n this matter was done with."

He drove on slowly: something had sobered the Will-o'-the-wisp in Andy's brain, and all that was manly in him looked out, solemn and pitying. The woman was standing by the barn-door when he reached it, watching his lips for a stray word as a dog might, but not speaking. He unhitched the horse, put him in his stall, and pushed the wagon under cover,—then stopped, looking at her uncertainly.

"I—I don't like to talk of this, I hardly know why. But I'm goin' to stay with him to-morrow,—till th' trial's done with."

"Yes, Andrew."

"I wish 'n he hed a friend," he said, after a pause, breaking off bits of the sunken wall. "Not like me, Jane," raising his voice, and trying to speak carelessly. "Like himself. I'm so poor learned, I can't do anything for sech as them. Like him. Jane," after another silence, "I've seen IT."

She looked at him.

"The engine. Jane"—

"I know."

She turned sharply and walked away, the bluish light of the first moonbeams lighting up her face and shoulders suddenly as she went off down the wall. Was it that which brought out from the face of the middle-aged working woman such a strange meaning of latent youth, beauty, and passion? God only knows when the real childhood comes into a life, how early or late; but one might fancy this woman had waited long for hers, and it was coming to-night, the coarse hardness of look was swept away so suddenly. The great thought and hope of her life surged up quick, uncontrollably; her limbs shook, the big, mournful animal eyes were wet with tears, her very horny hands worked together uncertainly and helpless as a child's. On the face, too, especially about the mouth, such a terror of pain, such a hungry wish to smile, to be tender, that I think a baby would have liked to put up its lips then to be kissed, and have hid its face on her neck.

"Summat ails her, sure," said Andy, stupidly watching her a moment or two, and then going in to kick off his boots and eat his supper, warm on the range.

The moonlight was cold; he shut it out, and sat meditating over his cigar for an hour or two before the Quaker came in. When she did, he went to light her night-lamp for her,—for he had an odd, old-fashioned courtesy about him to women or the aged. He noticed, as he did it, that her hair had fallen from the close, thin cap, and how singularly soft and fine it was. She stood by the window, drawing her fingers through the long, damp folds, in a silly, childish way.

"Good night, Andrew," as he gave it to her.

"Good night."

She looked at him gravely.

"I wish, lad—Would thee say, 'God bless thee, Jane'? It's long since as I've heard that, an' there's no one but thee t' 'll say it."

The boy was touched.

"Often I thinks it, Jane,—often. Ye've been good to me these six years. I was nothin' but a beggar's brat when ye took me in. I mind that, though ye think I forget, when I'm newly rigged out sometimes. God bless ye! yes, I'll say it: God knows I will."

She went out into the little passage. He heard her hesitate there a minute. It was a double house: the kitchen and sitting-room at one side of the narrow hall; at the other, Jane's chamber, and a room which she usually kept locked. He had heard her there at night sometimes, for he slept above it, and once or twice had seen the door open in the daytime, and looked in. It held, he saw, better furniture than the rest of the house: a homespun carpet of soft, grave colors, thick drab curtains, a bedstead, one or two bookcases, filled and locked, of which Jane made as little use, he was sure, as she could of the fowling-piece and patent fishing-rod which he saw in one corner. There were no shams, no cheap makeshifts in the Quaker's little house, in any part of it; but this room was the essence of cleanness and comfort, Andy thought. He never asked questions, however: some ingredient in his poor hodge-podge of a brain keeping him always true to this hard test of good breeding. So to-night, though he heard her until near eleven o'clock moving restlessly about in this room, he hesitated until then, before he went to speak to her.

"She's surely sick," he said, with a worried look, lighting his candle. "Women are the Devil for nerves."

Coming to the open door, however, he found her only busy in rubbing the furniture with a bit of chamois-skin. She looked up at him, her face very red, and the look in her face that children have when going out for a holiday.

"How does thee think it looks, Andy?" her voice strangely low and rapid.

He looked at her curiously.

"I'm makin' it ready, thee knows. Pull to this shutter for me, lad. A good many years I've been makin' it ready"—

"You shiver so, ye'd better go to bed, Jane."

"Yes. Only the white valance is to put to the bed; I'm done then,"—going on silently for a while.

"I've been so long at it,"—catching her breath. "Hard scrapin', the first years. We'd only a lease on the place at first. It's ours now, an' it's stocked, an'—Don't thee think the house is snug itself, Andrew? Thee sees other houses. Is't home-like lookin'? Good for rest"—

"Yes, surely. What are you so anxious an' wild about, Jane? It's yer own house."

"I'm not anxious,"—trying to calm herself. "Mine, is it, lad? All mine; nobody sharin' in it."

She laughed. In all these years he had never heard her laugh before; it was low and full-hearted,—a live, real laugh. Somehow, all comfort, home, and frolic in the coming years were promised in it.

"Mine?" folding up her duster. "Well, lad, thee says so. Daily savin' of the cents got it. Maybe thee thought me a hard woman?"—with an anxious look. "I kept all the accounts of it in that blue book I burned to-night. Nobody must know what it cost. No. Thee'd best go to sleep, lad. I've an hour's more work, I think. There'll be no time for it to-morrow, bein' the last day."

He did not like to leave her so feverish and unlike herself.

"Well, good night, then."

"Good night, Andrew. Mine, eh?"—her face flushing. "Thee'll know to-morrow. Thee thinks it looks comfortable?"—holding his hand anxiously. "Heartsome? Mis' Hale called the place that the other day. I was so glad to hear that! Well, good night. I think it does."

And she went back to her work, while Andy made his way up-stairs, puzzled and sleepy.

The next day was cool and grave for intemperate August. Very seldom a stream of fresh sunshine broke through the gray, mottling the pavements with uncertain lights. Summer was evidently tired of its own lusty life, and had a mind to put on a cowl of hodden-gray, and call itself November. The pale, pleasant light toned in precisely, however, to the meaning of Arch and Walnut Streets, where the old Quaker family-life has rooted itself into the city, and looks out on the passers-by in such a sober, cheerful fashion. There was one house, low down in Arch, that would have impressed you as having grown more sincerely than the others out of the character of its owner. There was nothing bigoted or purse-proud or bawbling in the habit of the man who built it; from the massive blocks in the foundation, to the great horse-chestnuts in front, and the creeping ivy over pictures and bookshelves, there was the same constant hint of a life liberal, solid, graceful. It had its whim of expression, too, in the man himself,—a small man, lean, stoop-shouldered, with gray hair and whiskers, wearing a clergyman's black suit and white cravat: his every motion was quiet, self-poised, intelligent; a quizzical, kind smile on the mouth, listening eyes, a grave forehead; a man who had heard other stories than any in your life,—of different range, yet who waited, helpful, for yours, knowing it to be something new and full of an eternal meaning. It was Dr. Bowdler, rector of an Episcopal church, a man of more influence out of the Church than any in it. He was in the breakfast-room now, trimming the hanging-baskets in the window, while his niece finished her coffee: he "usually saved his appetite for dinner, English fashion; cigars until then,"—poohing at all preaching of hygiene, as usual, as "stuff."

There were several other gentlemen in the room,—waiting, apparently, for something,—reading the morning papers, playing with the Newfoundland dog that had curled himself up in the patch of sunshine by the window, or chatting with Miss Defourchet. None of them, she saw, were men of cultured leisure: one or two millionnaires, burly, stubby-nosed fellows, with practised eyes and Port-hinting faces: the class of men whose money was made thirty years back, who wear slouched clothes, and wield the coarser power in the States. They came out to the talk fit for a lady, on the open general field, in a lumbering, soggy way, the bank-note smell on every thought. The others, more unused to society, caught its habit better, she thought, belonging as they did to a higher order: they were practical mechanicians, and their profession called, she knew, for tolerably powerful and facile faculties of brain. The young lady, who was waiting too, though not so patiently as the others, amused herself in drawing them out and foiling them against each other, with a good deal of youthful tact, and want of charity, for a while. She grew tired at last.

"They are long coming, uncle," she said, rising from her chair.

"They are here, Mary: putting up the model in the back lobby for the last hour. Did you think it would be brought in here?"

"I don't know. Mr. Aikens is not here,"—glancing at the timepiece uneasily.

"He's always slow," said one of the machinists, patting the dog's head. "But I will rely more on his judgment of the engine than on my own. He'll not risk a dollar on it, either, if there's a chance of its proving a failure."

"It cannot be a failure," she said, impatiently, her peremptory brown eyes lighting.

"It has been tried before," said her uncle, cautiously,—"or the same basis of experiment,—substitution of compressed air for steam,—and it did not succeed. But it is the man you reason from, Mary, not the machine."

"I don't understand anything about the machine," in a lower voice, addressing the man she knew to possess most influence in the party. "But this Starke has given his life to it, and a life worth living, too. All the strength of soul and body that God gave him has gone into that model out yonder. He has been dragging it from place to place for years, half starving, to get it a chance of trial"—

"All which says nothing for the wheels and pulleys," dryly interrupted the man, with a critical look at her flushing and paling face.

People of standfast habit were always shy of this young person, because, having an acute brain and generous impulses, and being a New-Englander by birth, she had believed herself called to be a reformer, and had lectured in public last winter. Her lightest remarks had, somehow, an oratorical twang. The man might have seen what a true, grand face hers would be, when time had taken off the acrid, aggressive heat which the, to her, novel wrongs in the world provoked in it.

"When you see the man," interposed her uncle, "you will understand why Miss Defourchet espouses his cause so hotly. Nobody is proof against his intense, fierce belief in this thing he has made. It reminds me of the old cases of possession by a demon."

The young girl looked up quickly.

"Demon? It was the spirit of God, the Bible says, that filled Bezaleel and that other, I forget his name, with wisdom to work in gold and silver and fine linen. It's the spirit of God that you call genius,—anything that reveals truth: in pictures, or actions, or—machines."

Friend Turner, who was there, took her fingers in his wrinkled hand.

"Thee feels strongly, Mary."

"I wish you could see the man," in a lower voice. "Your old favorite, Fichte," with a smile, "says that 'thorough integrity of purpose is our nearest approach to the Divine idea.' There never was such integrity of purpose as his, I believe. Men don't often fight through hunger and want like death, for a pure aim. And I tell you, if fate thwarts him at this last chance, it is unjust and cruel."

"Thee means God, thee knows?"

She was silent, then looked up.

"I do know."

The old Quaker put his hand kindly on her hair.

"He will find His own teachers for thee, dear," was all the reproof he gave.

There was a noise in the hall, and a servant, opening the door, ushered in Andy, and behind him the machinist, Starke. A younger man than Friend Turner had expected to see,—about fifty, his hair prematurely white, in coarse, but decent brown clothes, bearing in his emaciated limbs and face marks of privation, it was true, but with none of the fierce enthusiasm of expression or nervousness he had looked for. A quiet, grave, preoccupied manner. While Dr. Bowdler and some of the others crowded about him, he stood, speaking seldom, his hands clasped behind him and his head bent forward, the gray hair brushed straight up from his forehead. Miss Defourchet was disappointed a little: the best of women like to patronize, and she had meant to meet him as an equal, recognize him in this new atmosphere of refinement into which he was brought, set him at his ease, as she did Andy, by a few quiet words. But he was her equal: more master of this or any occasion than she, because so thoroughly unconscious, standing on something higher. She suspected, too, he had been used to a life as cultivated as this, long ago, by the low, instructed voice, the intangible simplicity of look and word belonging to the bred gentleman.

"They may fuss as they please about him now," chuckled Andy to himself, "but darn a one of 'em would have smuggled him into them clothes. Spruce they look, too; baggy about the knees, maybe. No, thank you, Miss; I've had sufficient," putting down the wine he had barely sipped,—groaning inwardly; but he knew what was genteel, I hope, and that comforted him afterwards.

"The model is ready," said Starke to Dr. Bowdler. "We are keeping your friends waiting."

"No. It is Aikens who is not here. You know him? If the thing satisfies him, he'll bring it into his factories over the Delaware, and make Johns push it through at Washington. He's a thorough-goer, Aikens. Then it will be a success. That's Johns,—that burly fellow in the frock-coat. You have had the model at Washington, I think you told me, Mr. Starke?"

"Three years ago. I exhibited it before a committee. On the Capitol grounds it was."

"Well?"

"Oh, with success, certainly. They brought in a bill to introduce it into the public works, but it fell through. Woods brought it in. He was a young man: not strong, maybe. That was the reason they laughed, I suppose. He tried it for two or three sessions, until it got to be a sort of joke. I had no influence. That has been the cause of its failure, always."

His eyes dropped; then he suddenly lifted his hand to his mouth, putting it behind him again, to turn with a smile when Miss Defourchet addressed him. Dr. Bowdler started.

"Look at the blood," he whispered to Friend Turner. "He bit his finger to the bone."

"I know," said the old Quaker. "The man is quiet from inanition and nervous tension. This trial means more to him than we guess. Get him out of this crowd."

"Come, Mr. Starke," and the Doctor touched his arm, "into my library. There are some curious plates there which"—

Andy had been gulping for courage to speak for some time.

"Don't let him go without a glass of wine," he muttered to the young lady. "I give you my honor I haven't got food across his lips for"—

She started away from him, and made the machinist drink to the success of "our engine," as she called it; but he only touched the glass to his lips and smiled at her faintly: then left the room with her uncle.

The dog followed him: he had kept by Starke since the moment he came into the breakfast-room, cuddling down across his feet when he was called away. The man had only patted him absently, saying that all dogs did so with him, he didn't know why. Thor followed him now. Friend Turner beckoned the clergyman back a moment.

"Make him talk, Richard. Be rough, hurt him, if thee chooses; it will be a safety-valve. Look in his eyes! I tell thee we have no idea of all that has brought this poor creature into this state,—such rigid strain. But if it is broken in on first by the failure of his pump, if it be a pump, I will not answer for the result, Richard."

Dr. Bowdler nodded abruptly, and hurried after Starke. When he entered the cozy south room which he called the library, he found Starke standing before an oil-painting of a baby, one the Doctor had lost years ago.

"Such a bright little thing!" the man said, patting the chubby bare foot as if it were alive.

"You have children?" Dr. Bowdler asked eagerly.

"No, but I know almost all I meet in the street, or they know me. 'Uncle Joe' they call me,"—with a boyish laugh.

It was gone in a moment.

"Are they ready?"

"No."

The Doctor hesitated. The man beside him was gray-haired as himself, a man of power, with a high, sincere purpose looking out of the haggard scraggy face and mild blue eyes,—how could he presume to advise him? Yet this Starke, he saw, had narrowed his life down to a point beyond which lay madness; and that baby had not been in life more helpless or solitary or unable than he was now, when the trial had come. The Doctor caught the bony hands in his own fat healthy ones.

"I wish I could help you," he said impetuously.

Starke looked in his face keenly.

"For what? How?"

"This engine—have you nothing to care for in life but that?"

"Nothing,—nothing but that and what it will gain me."

There was a pause.

"If it fails?"

The dark blood dyed the man's face and throat; he choked, waited a moment before he spoke.

"It would not hurt me. No. I'm nearly tired out, Sir. I hardly look for success."

"Will you try again?"

"No, I'll not try again."

He had drawn away and stood by the window, his face hidden by the curtain. The Doctor was baffled.

"You have yourself lost faith in your invention?"

Something of the old fierceness flashed into the man's eye, but died out.

"No matter," he said under his breath, shaking his head, and putting his hand in a feeble way to his mouth.

"Inanition of soul as well as body," thought the Doctor. "I'll rouse him, cruel or not."

"Have you anything to which to turn, if this disappoints you? Home or friends?"

He waited for an answer. When it came, he felt like an intruder, the man was so quiet, far-off.

"I have nothing,—no friends,—unless I count that boy in the next room. Eh? He has fragments of the old knightly spirit, if his brain be cracked. No others."

"Well, well! You'll forgive me?" said the Doctor. "I did not mean to be coarse. Only I—The matter will succeed, I know. You will find happiness in that. Money and fame will come after."

The old man looked up and came towards him with a certain impressive dignity, though the snuff-colored clothes were bagging about his limbs, and his eyes were heavy and unsteady.

"You're not coarse. No. I'm glad you spoke to me in that way. It is as if you stopped my life short, and made me look before and behind. But you don't understand. I"—

He put his hand to his head, then began buttoning his coat uncertainly, with a deprecating, weak smile.

"I don't know what the matter is. I'm not strong as I used to be."

"You need success."

How strong and breezy the Doctor's voice sounded!

"Cheer up, Mr. Starke. You're a stronger-brained man than I, and twenty years younger. It's something to have lived for a single high purpose like yours, if you succeed. And if not, God's life is broad, and needs other things than air-engines. Perhaps you've been 'in training,' as the street-talk goes, getting your muscles and nerves well grown, and your real work and fight are yet to come."

"I don't know," said the man, dully.

Dr. Bowdler, perhaps, with well-breathed body and soul, did not quite comprehend how vacant and well worn out both heart and lungs were under poor Starke's bony chest.

"You don't seem to comprehend what this engine is to me.—You said the world was broad. I had a mind, even when I was a boy, to do something in it. My father was a small farmer over there in the Jerseys. Well, I used to sit thinking there, after the day's work was done, until my head ached, of how I might do something,—to help, you understand?"

"I understand."

"To make people glad I had lived. I was lazy, too. I'd have liked to settle down and grub like the rest, but this notion kept driving me like, a sting. I can understand why missionaries cross the seas when their hearts stay behind. It grew with me, kept me restless, like a devil inside of me. I'm not strong-brained, as you said. I had only one talent,—for mechanism. They bred me a lawyer, but I was a machinist born. Well,—it's the old story. What's the use of telling it?"

He stopped abruptly, his eyes on the floor.

"Go on. It will be good for both of us. Aikens has not come."

"There's nothing to tell. If it was God or the Devil that led me on to this thing I don't know. I sold myself to it, soul and body. The idea of this invention was not new, but my application was. So it got possession of me. Whatever I made by the law went into it. I tried experiments in a costly way then, had laboratories there, and workshops in the city. My father left me a fortune; that was swallowed up. I worked on with hard struggle then. I was forty years old. I thought success lay just within my reach. God! You don't know how I had fought for it, day by day, all that long life! I was near mad, I think. And then"—

He stopped again, biting his under lip, standing motionless. The Doctor waited until he was controlled.

"Never mind," gently. "Don't go on."

"Yes, I'll tell you all. I was married. A little Quaker girl she was, uneducated, but the gentlest, truest woman God ever made, I think. It rested one to look at her. There were two children. They died. Maybe, if they had lived, it would have been different with me,—I'm so fond of children. I was of her,—God knows I was! But after the children were gone, and the property sunk, and the experiments all topped just short of success, for want of means, I grew irritable and cross,—used to her. It's the way with husbands and wives, sometimes. Well"—

He swallowed some choking in his throat, and hurried on.

"She had some money,—not much, but her own. I wanted it. Then I stopped to think. This engine seemed like a greedy devil swallowing everything. Another step, and she was penniless, ruined: common sense told me that. And I loved her,—well enough to see how my work came between us every hour, made me cruel to her, kept her wretched. If I were gone, she would be better off. I said that to myself day after day. I used to finger the bonds of that money, thinking how it would enable me to finish all I had to do. She wanted me to take it. I knew some day I should do it."

"Did you?"

"No,"—his face clearing. "I was not altogether lost, I think. I left her, settling it on herself. Then I was out of temptation. But I deceived her: I said I was tired of married life, wished to give myself to my work. Then I left her."

"What did she say?"

"She? Nothing that I remember. 'As thee will, Joseph,' that was all, if anything. She had suspected it a long time. If I had stayed with her, I should have used that money,"—his fingers working with his white whiskers. "I've been near starving sometimes since. So I saved her from that,"—looking steadily at the Doctor, when he had finished speaking, but as if he did not see him.

"But your wife? Have you never seen her since?"

"Once." He spoke with difficulty now, but the clergyman suffered him to go on. "I don't know where she is now. I saw her once in the Fulton ferry-boat at New York; she had grown suddenly old and hard. She did not see me. I never thought she could grow so old as that. But I did what I could. I saved her from my life."

Dr. Bowdler looked into the man's eyes as a physician might look at a cancer.

"Since then you have not seen her, I understand you? Not wished to see her?"

There was a moment's pause.

"I have told you the facts of my life, Sir," said the old machinist, with a bow, his stubbly gray hair seeming to stand more erect; "the rest is of trifling interest."

Dr. Bowdler colored.

"Don't be unjust to me, my friend," he said, kindly. "I meant well."

There had been some shuffling noises in the next room in the half-hour just past, which the Doctor had heard uneasily, raising his voice each time to stifle the sound. A servant came to the door now, beckoning him out. As he went, Starke watched him from under his bushy brows, smiling, when he turned and apologized for leaving him.

That man was a thorough man, of good steel. What an infinite patience there was in his voice! He was glad he had told him so much; he breathed freer himself for it. But he was not going to whine. Whatever pain had been in his life he had left out of that account. What right had any man to know what his wife was to him? Other men had given up home and friends and wife for the truth's sake, and not whimpered over it.

What a long time they were waiting to examine the engine! He began his walk up and down the room, with the habitual stoop of the shoulders, and an occasional feeble wandering of the hand to his mouth, wondering a little at himself, at his coolness. For this was the last throw of the dice. After to-day, no second chance. If it succeeded—Well, he washed his hands of the world's work then. His share was finished, surely. Then for happiness! What would she say when he came back? He had earned his reward in life by this time; his work was done, well done,—repeating that to himself again and again. But would she care? His long-jawed, gaunt face was all aglow now, and he rubbed his hands softly together, his thought sliding back evidently into some accustomed track, one that gave him fresh pleasure, though it had been the same these many years, through days of hammering and moulding and nights of sleeping in cheap taverns or under market-stalls. When they were first married, he used to bring her a peculiar sort of white shawl,—quite outside of the Quaker dress, to be sure, but he liked it. She used to look like a bride, freshly, every time she put one on. One of those should be the first thing he bought her. Dr. Bowdler was not wrong: he was a young man yet; they could enjoy life strongly and heartily, both of them. But no more work: with a dull perception of the fact that his strength was sapped out beyond the power of recuperation. That baby (stopping before the picture) was like Rob, about the forehead. But Rob was fairer, and had brown eyes and a snub-nose, like his mother. Remembering how, down in the farm-house, she used to sit on the front-porch step nursing the baby, while he smoked or read, in the evenings: where they could see the salt marshes. Jane liked them, for their color: a dead flat of brown salt grass with patches of brilliant emerald, and the black, snaky lines up which the tide crept, the white-sailed boats looking as if they were wedged in the grass. She liked that. Her tastes were all good.