On the whole, I believe I would rather go this moment to Padua than to Lowell or Lawrence, or even to Worcester; and as to the disadvantage of having seen Padua, I begin to think the whole place has now assumed so fantastic a character in my mind that I am almost as well qualified to write of it as if I had merely dreamed it.

The day that we first visited the city was very rainy, and we spent most of the time in viewing the churches. These, even after the churches of Venice, one finds rich in art and historic interest, and they in no instance fall into the maniacal excesses of the Renaissance to which some of the temples of the latter city abandon themselves. Their architecture forms a sort of border-land between the Byzantine of Venice and the Lombardic of Verona. The superb domes of St. Anthony's emulate those of St. Mark's, and the porticos of other Paduan churches rest upon the backs of bird-headed lions and leopards that fascinate with their mystery and beauty.

It was the wish to see the attributive Giottos in the Chapter which drew us first to St. Anthony's, and we saw them with the satisfaction naturally attending the contemplation of frescos discovered only since 1858, after having been hidden under plaster and whitewash for many centuries; but we could not believe that Giotto's fame was destined to gain much by their rescue from oblivion. They are in no wise to be compared with this master's frescos in the Chapel of the Annunziata,—which, indeed, is in every way a place of wonder and delight. You reach it by passing through a garden lane bordered with roses, and a taciturn gardener comes out with clinking keys, and lets you into the chapel, where there is nobody but Giotto and Dante, nor seems to have been for ages. Cool it is, and of a pulverous smell, as a sacred place should be; a blessed benching goes round the wall, and you sit down and take unlimited comfort in the frescos. The gardener leaves you alone to the solitude and the silence, in which the talk of the painter and the exile is plain enough. Their contemporaries and yours are cordial in their gay companionship; through the half-open door falls, in a pause of the rain, the same sunshine that they saw lie there; the deathless birds that they heard sing out in the garden trees; it is the fresh sweetness of the grass mown six hundred years ago that breathes through all the lovely garden grounds.

How mistaken was Ponce de Leon, to seek the fountain of youth in the New World! It is there,—in the Old World,—far back in the past. We are all old men and decrepit together in the present; the future is full of death; in the past we are light and glad as boys turned barefoot in the spring. The work of the heroes is play to us; the pang of the martyr is a thrill of rapture; the exile's longing is a strain of plaintive music touching and delighting us. We are not only young again, we are immortal. It is this divine sense of superiority to fate which is the supreme good won from travel in historic lands, and from the presence of memorable things, and which no sublimity of natural aspects can bestow. It is this which forms the wide difference between Europe and America,—a gulf that it will take a thousand years to bridge.

It is a shame that the immortals should be limited in their pleasures by the fact that they have hired their brougham by the hour; yet we early quit the Chapel of Giotto on this account. We had chosen our driver from among many other drivers of broughams in the vicinity of Pedrocchi's, because he had such an honest look, and was not likely, we thought, to deal unfairly with us.

"But first," said the signor who had selected him, "how much is your brougham an hour?"

So and so.

"Show me the tariff of fares."

"There is no tariff."

"There is. Show it to me."

"It is lost, signor."

"I think not. It is here in this pocket Get it out."

The tariff appears, and with it the fact that he had demanded just what the boatman of the ballad received in gift,—thrice his fee.

The driver mounted his seat, and served us so faithfully that day in Padua that we took him the next day for Arqua. At the end, when he had received his due, and a handsome mancia besides, he was still unsatisfied, and referred to the tariff in proof that he had been under-paid. On that confronted and defeated, he thanked us very cordially, gave us the number of his brougham, and begged us to ask for him when we came next to Padua and needed a carriage.

From the Chapel of the Annunziata he drove us to the Church of Santa Giustina, where is a very famous and noble picture by Romanino. But as this paper has nothing in the world to do with art, I here dismiss that subject, and with a gross and idle delight follow the sacristan down under this church to the prison of Santa Giustina.

Of all the faculties of the mind there is none so little fatiguing to exercise as mere wonder; and, for my own sake, I try always to wonder at things without the least critical reservation. I therefore, in the sense of deglutition, bolted this prison at once, though subsequent experiences led me to look with grave indigestion upon the whole idea of prisons, their authenticity, and even their existence.

As far as mere dimensions are concerned, the prison of Santa Giustina was not a hard one to swallow, being only three feet wide by about ten feet in length. In this limited space, Santa Giustina passed five years of the paternal reign of Nero (a virtuous and a long-suffering prince, whom, singularly enough, no historic artist has yet arisen to whitewash), and was then brought out into the larger cell adjoining, to suffer a blessed martyrdom. I am not sure now whether the sacristan said she was dashed to death on the stones, or cut to pieces with knives; but whatever the form of martyrdom, an iron ring in the ceiling was employed in it, as I know from seeing the ring,—a curiously well-preserved piece of ironmongery. Within the narrow prison of the saint, and just under the grating, through which the sacristan thrust his candle to illuminate it, was a mountain of candle-drippings,—a monument to the fact that faith still largely exists in this doubting world. My own credulity, not only with regard to this prison, but also touching the coffin of St. Luke, which I saw in the church, had so wrought upon the esteem of the sacristan, that he now took me to a well, into which, he said, had been cast the bones of three thousand Christian martyrs. He lowered a lantern into the well, and assured me that, if I looked through a certain screenwork there, I could see the bones. On experiment I could not see the bones, but this circumstance did not cause me to doubt their presence, particularly as I did see upon the screen a great number of coins offered for the repose of the martyrs' souls. I threw down some soldi, and thus enthralled the sacristan.

If the signor cared to see prisons, he said, the driver must take him to those of Ecelino, at present the property of a private gentleman near by. As I had just bought a history of Ecelino, at a great bargain, from a second-hand bookstall, and had a lively interest in all the enormities of that nobleman, I sped the driver instantly to the villa of the Signor Pacchiarotti.

It depends here altogether upon the freshness or mustiness of the reader's historical reading whether he cares to be reminded more particularly who Ecelino was. He flourished balefully in the early half of the thirteenth century as lord of Vicenza, Verona, Padua, and Brescia, and was defeated and hurt to death in an attempt to possess himself of Milan. He was in every respect a remarkable man for that time,—fearless, abstemious, continent, avaricious, hardy, and unspeakably ambitious and cruel. He survived and suppressed innumerable conspiracies, escaping even the thrust of the assassin whom the fame of his enormous wickedness had caused the Old Man of the Mountain to send against him. As lord of Padua he was more incredibly severe and bloody in his rule than as lord of the other cities, for the Paduans had been latest free, and conspired most frequently against him. He extirpated whole families on suspicion that a single member had been concerned in a meditated revolt. Little children and helpless women suffered hideous mutilation and shame at his hands. Six prisons in Padua were constantly filled by his arrests. The whole country was traversed by witnesses of his cruelties,—men and women deprived of an arm or leg, and begging from door to door. He had long been excommunicated; at last the Church proclaimed a crusade against him, and his lieutenant and nephew—more demoniacal, if possible, than himself—was driven out of Padua while he was operating against Mantua. Ecelino retired to Verona, and maintained a struggle against the crusade for nearly two years longer, with a courage which never failed him. Wounded and taken prisoner, the soldiers of the victorious army gathered about him, and heaped insult and reproach upon him; and one furious peasant, whose brother's feet had been cut off by Ecelino's command, dealt the helpless monster four blows upon the head with a scythe. By some, Ecelino is said to have died of these wounds alone; but by others it is related that his death was a kind of suicide, inasmuch as he himself put the case past surgery by tearing off the bandages from his hurts, and refusing all medicines.

II.

Entering at the enchanted portal of the Villa P——, we found ourselves in a realm of wonder. It was our misfortune not to see the magician who compelled all the marvels on which we looked, but for that very reason, perhaps, we have the clearest sense of his greatness. Everywhere we beheld the evidences of his ingenious but lugubrious fancy, which everywhere tended to a monumental and mortuary effect. A sort of vestibule first received us, and beyond this dripped and glimmered the garden. The walls of the vestibule were covered with inscriptions setting forth the sentiments of the philosophy and piety of all ages concerning life and death; we began with Confucius, and we ended with Benjamino Franklino. But as if these ideas of mortality were not sufficiently depressing, the funereal Signor P——had collected into earthern amphorae the ashes of the most famous men of ancient and modern times, and arranged them so that a sense of their number and variety should at once strike his visitor. Each jar was conspicuously labelled with the name its illustrious dust had borne in life; and if one escaped with comparative cheerfulness from the thought that Seneca had died, there were in the very next pot the cinders of Napoleon to bully him back to a sense of his mortality.

We were glad to have the gloomy fascination of these objects broken by the custodian, who approached to ask if we wished to see the prisons of Ecelino, and we willingly followed him into the rain out of our sepulchral shelter.

Between the vestibule and the towers of the tyrant lay that garden already mentioned, and our guide led us through ranks of weeping statuary, and rainy bowers, and showery lanes of shrubbery, until we reached the door of his cottage. While he entered to fetch the key to the prisons, we noted that the towers were freshly painted and in perfect repair; and indeed the custodian said frankly enough, on reappearing, that they were merely built over the prisons on the site of the original towers. The storied stream of the Bacchiglione sweeps through the grounds, and now, swollen by the rainfall, it roared, a yellow torrent, under a corner of the prisons. The towers rise from masses of foliage, and form no unpleasing feature of what must be, in spite of Signor P——, a delightful Italian garden in sunny weather. The ground is not so flat as elsewhere in Padua, and this inequality gives an additional picturesqueness to the place. But as we were come in search of horrors, we scorned these merely lovely things, and hastened to immure ourselves in the dungeons below. The custodian, lighting a candle, (which ought, we felt, to have been a torch,) went before.

We found the cells, though narrow and dark, not uncomfortable, and the guide conceded that they had undergone some repairs since Ecelino's time. But all the horrors for which we had come were there in perfect grisliness, and labelled by the ingenious Signor P—— with Latin inscriptions.

In the first cell was a shrine of the Virgin, set in the wall. Beneath this, while the wretched prisoner knelt in prayer, a trap-door opened and precipitated him down upon the points of knives, from which his body fell into the Bacchiglione below. In the next cell, held by some rusty iron rings to the wall, was a skeleton, hanging by the wrists.

"This," said the guide, "was another punishment of which Ecelino was very fond."

A dreadful doubt seized my mind. "Was this skeleton found here?" I demanded.

Without faltering an instant, without so much as winking an eye, the custodian replied, "Appunto."

It was a great relief, and restored me to confidence in the establishment. I am at a loss to explain how my faith should have been confirmed afterwards by coming upon a guillotine—an awful instrument in the likeness of a straw-cutter, with a decapitated wooden figure under its blade—which the custodian confessed to be a modern improvement placed there by Signor P——. Yet my credulity was so strengthened by his candor, that I accepted without hesitation the torture of the water-drop when we came to it. The water-jar was as well preserved as if placed there but yesterday, and the skeleton beneath it—found as we saw it—was entire and perfect.

In the adjoining cell sat a skeleton—found as we saw it—with its neck in the clutch of the garrote, which was one of Ecelino's more merciful punishments; while in still another cell the ferocity of the tyrant appeared in the penalty inflicted upon the wretch whose skeleton had been hanging for ages—as we saw it—head downwards from the ceiling.

Beyond these, in a yet darker and drearier dungeon, stood a heavy oblong wooden box, with two apertures near the top, peering through which we found that we were looking into the eyeless sockets of a skull. Within this box Ecelino had immured the victim we beheld there, and left him to perish in view of the platters of food and goblets of drink placed just beyond the reach of his hands. The food we saw was of course not the original food.

At last we came to the crowning horror of Villa P——, the supreme excess of Ecelino's cruelty. The guide entered the cell before us, and, as we gained the threshold, threw the light of his taper vividly upon a block that stood in the middle of the floor. Fixed to the block by an immense spike driven through from the back was the little slender hand of a woman, which lay there just as it had been struck from the living arm, and which, after the lapse of so many centuries, was still as perfectly preserved as if it had been embalmed. The sight had a most cruel fascination; and while one of the horror-seekers stood helplessly conjuring to his vision that scene of unknown dread,—the shrinking, shrieking woman dragged to the block, the wild, shrill, horrible screech following the blow that drove in the spike, the merciful swoon after the mutilation,—his companion, with a sudden pallor, demanded to be taken instantly away.

In their swift withdrawal, they only glanced at a few detached instruments of torture,—all original Ecelinos, but intended for the infliction of minor and comparatively unimportant torments,—and then they passed from that place of fear.

III.

In the evening we sat talking at the Caffe Pedrocchi with an abbate, an acquaintance of ours, who was a Professor in the University of Padua. Pedrocchi's is the great caffe of Padua, a granite edifice of Egyptian architecture, which is the mausoleum of the proprietor's fortune. The pecuniary skeleton at the feast, however, does not much trouble the guests. They begin early in the evening to gather into the elegant saloons of the caffe,—somewhat too large for so small a city as Padua,—and they sit there late in the night over their cheerful cups and their ices with their newspaper and their talk. Not so many ladies are to be seen as at the caffe in Venice, for it is only in the greater cities that they go much to these public places. There are few students at Pedrocchi's, for they frequent the cheaper caffe; but you may nearly always find there some Professor of the University, and on the evening of which I speak, there were two present besides our abbate. Our friend's great passion was the English language, which he understood too well to venture to speak a great deal. He had been translating from that tongue into Italian certain American poems, and our talk was of these at first. Then we began to talk of distinguished American writers, of whom intelligent Italians always know at least four, in this succession,—Cooper, Mrs. Stowe, Longfellow, and Irving. Mrs. Stowe's Capanna di Zio Tom is, of course, universally read; and my friend had also read Il Fiore di Maggio,—"The Mayflower." Of Longfellow, the "Evangeline" is familiar to Italians, through a translation of the poem; but our abbate knew all the poet's works, and one of the other Professors present that evening had made such faithful study of them as to have produced some translations rendering the original with remarkable fidelity and spirit. I have before me here his brochure, printed last year at Padua, and containing versions of "Enceladus," "Excelsior," "A Psalm of Life," "The Old Clock on the Stairs," "Sand of the Desert in an Hour-Glass," "Twilight," "Daybreak," "The Quadroon Girl," and "Torquemada,"—pieces which give the Italians a fair notion of our poet's lyrical range, and which bear witness to Professor Messadaglia's sympathetic and familiar knowledge of his works. A young and gifted lady of Parma, now unhappily no more, published only a few months since a translation of "The Golden Legend"; and Professor Messadaglia, in his Preface, mentions a version of another of our poet's longer works on which the translator of the "Evangeline" is now engaged.

At last, turning from literature, we spoke with the gentle abbate of our day's adventures, and eagerly related that of the Ecelino prisons. To have seen them was the most terrific pleasure of our lives.

"Eh!" said our friend, "I believe you."

"We mean those under the Villa P——."

"Exactly."

There was a tone of politely suppressed amusement in the abbate's voice; and after a moment's pause, in which we felt our awful experience slipping and sliding away from us, we ventured to say, "You don't mean that those are not the veritable Ecelino prisons?"

"Certainly they are nothing of the kind. The Ecelino prisons were destroyed when the Crusaders took Padua, with the exception of the tower which the Venetian Republic converted into an observatory."

"But at least these prisons are on the site of Ecelino's castle?"

"Nothing of the sort. His castle in that case would have been outside of the old city walls."

"And those tortures and the prisons are all—"

"Things got up for show. No doubt, Ecelino used such things, and many worse, of which even the ingenuity of Signor P—— cannot conceive. But he is an eccentric man, loving the horrors of history, and what he can do to realize them he has done in his prisons."

"But the custodian, how could he lie so?"

Our friend shrugged his shoulders. "Eh! easily. And perhaps he even believed what he said."

The world began to assume an aspect of bewildering ungenuineness, and there seemed to be a treacherous quality of fiction in the ground under our feet. Even the play at the pretty little Teatro Sociale, where we went to pass the rest of the evening, appeared hollow and improbable. We thought the hero something of a bore, with his patience and goodness; and as for the heroine, pursued by the attentions of the rich profligate, we doubted if she were any better than she should be.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: Salti mortali are those prodigious efforts of mental arithmetic by which Italian waiters, in verbally presenting your account, arrive at six as the product of two and two.]



POOR RICHARD.

A STORY IN THREE PARTS.

PART II.

Richard got through the following week he hardly knew how. He found occupation, to a much greater extent than he was actually aware of, in a sordid and yet heroic struggle with himself. For several months now, he had been leading, under Gertrude's inspiration, a strictly decent and sober life. So long as he was at comparative peace with Gertrude and with himself, such a life was more than easy; it was delightful. It produced a moral buoyancy infinitely more delicate and more constant than the gross exhilaration of his old habits. There was a kind of fascination in adding hour to hour, and day to day, in this record of his new-born austerity. Having abjured excesses, he practised temperance after the fashion of a novice: he raised it (or reduced it) to abstinence. He was like an unclean man who, having washed himself clean, remains in the water for the love of it. He wished to be religiously, superstitiously pure. This was easy, as we have said, so long as his goddess smiled, even though it were as a goddess indeed,—as a creature unattainable. But when she frowned, and the heavens grew dark, Richard's sole dependence was in his own will,—as flimsy a trust for an upward scramble, one would have premised, as a tuft of grass on the face of a perpendicular cliff. Flimsy as it looked, however, it served him. It started and crumbled, but it held, if only by a single fibre. When Richard had cantered fifty yards away from Gertrude's gate in a fit of stupid rage, he suddenly pulled up his horse and gulped down his passion, and swore an oath, that, suffer what torments of feeling he might, he would not at least break the continuity of his gross physical soberness. It was enough to be drunk in mind; he would not be drunk in body. A singular, almost ridiculous feeling of antagonism to Gertrude lent force to this resolution. "No, madam," he cried within himself, "I shall not fall back. Do your best! I shall keep straight." We often outweather great offences and afflictions through a certain healthy instinct of egotism. Richard went to bed that night as grim and sober as a Trappist monk; and his foremost impulse the next day was to plunge headlong into some physical labor which should not allow him a moment's interval of idleness. He found no labor to his taste; but he spent the day so actively, in the mechanical annihilation of the successive hours, that Gertrude's image found no chance squarely to face him. He was engaged in the work of self-preservation,—the most serious and absorbing work possible to man. Compared to the results here at stake, his passion for Gertrude seemed but a fiction. It is perhaps difficult to give a more lively impression of the vigor of this passion, of its maturity and its strength, than by simply stating that it discreetly held itself in abeyance until Richard had set at rest his doubts of that which lies nearer than all else to the heart of man,—his doubts of the strength of his will. He answered these doubts by subjecting his resolution to a course of such cruel temptations as were likely either to shiver it to a myriad of pieces, or to season it perfectly to all the possible requirements of life. He took long rides over the country, passing within a stone's throw of as many of the scattered wayside taverns as could be combined in a single circuit. As he drew near them he sometimes slackened his pace, as if he were about to dismount, pulled up his horse, gazed a moment, then, thrusting in his spurs, galloped away again like one pursued. At other times; in the late evening, when the window-panes were aglow with the ruddy light within, he would walk slowly by, looking at the stars, and, after maintaining this stoical pace for a couple of miles, would hurry home to his own lonely and black-windowed dwelling. Having successfully performed this feat a certain number of times, he found his love coming back to him, bereft in the interval of its attendant jealousy. In obedience to it, he one morning leaped upon his horse and repaired to Gertrude's abode, with no definite notion of the terms in which he should introduce himself.

He had made himself comparatively sure of his will; but he was yet to acquire the mastery of his impulses. As he gave up his horse, according to his wont, to one of the men at the stable, he saw another steed stalled there which he recognized as Captain Severn's. "Steady, my boy," he murmured to himself, as he would have done to a frightened horse. On his way across the broad court-yard toward the house, he encountered the Captain, who had just taken his leave. Richard gave him a generous salute (he could not trust himself to more), and Severn answered with what was at least a strictly just one. Richard observed, however, that he was very pale, and that he was pulling a rosebud to pieces as he walked; whereupon our young man quickened his step. Finding the parlor empty, he instinctively crossed over to a small room adjoining it, which Gertrude had converted into a modest conservatory; and as he did so, hardly knowing it, he lightened his heavy-shod tread. The glass door was open and Richard looked in. There stood Gertrude with her back to him, bending apart with her hands a couple of tall flowering plants, and looking through the glazed partition behind them. Advancing a step, and glancing over the young girl's shoulder, Richard had just time to see Severn mounting his horse at the stable door, before Gertrude, startled by his approach, turned hastily round. Her face was flushed hot, and her eyes brimming with tears.

"You!" she exclaimed, sharply.

Richard's head swam. That single word was so charged with cordial impatience that it seemed the death-knell of his hope. He stepped inside the room and closed the door, keeping his hand on the knob.

"Gertrude," he said, "you love that man!"

"Well, sir?"

"Do you confess it?" cried Richard.

"Confess it? Richard Clare, how dare you use such language? I'm in no humor for a scene. Let me pass."

Gertrude was angry; but as for Richard, it may almost be said that he was mad. "One scene a day is enough, I suppose," he cried. "What are these tears about? Wouldn't he have you? Did he refuse you, as you refused me? Poor Gertrude!"

Gertrude looked at him a moment with concentrated scorn. "You fool!" she said, for all answer. She pushed his hand from the latch, flung open the door, and moved rapidly away.

Left alone, Richard sank down on a sofa and covered his face with his hands. It burned them, but he sat motionless, repeating to himself, mechanically, as if to avert thought, "You fool! you fool!" At last he got up and made his way out.

It seemed to Gertrude, for several hours after this scene, that she had at this juncture a strong case against Fortune. It is not our purpose to repeat the words which she had exchanged with Captain Severn. They had come within a single step of an eclaircissement, and when but another movement would have flooded their souls with light, some malignant influence had seized them by the throats. Had they too much pride?—too little imagination? We must content ourselves with this hypothesis. Severn, then, had walked mechanically across the yard, saying to himself, "She belongs to another"; and adding, as he saw Richard, "and such another!" Gertrude had stood at her window, repeating, under her breath, "He belongs to himself, himself alone." And as if this was not enough, when misconceived, slighted, wounded, she had faced about to her old, passionless, dutiful past, there on the path of retreat to this asylum Richard Clare had arisen to forewarn her that she should find no peace even at home. There was something in the violent impertinence of his appearance at this moment which gave her a dreadful feeling that fate was against her. More than this. There entered into her emotions a certain minute particle of awe of the man whose passion was so uncompromising. She felt that it was out of place any longer to pity him. He was the slave of his passion; but his passion was strong. In her reaction against the splendid civility of Severn's silence, (the real antithesis of which would have been simply the perfect courtesy of explicit devotion,) she found herself touching with pleasure on the fact of Richard's brutality. He at least had ventured to insult her. He had loved her enough to forget himself. He had dared to make himself odious in her eyes, because he had cast away his sanity. What cared he for the impression he made? He cared only for the impression he received. The violence of this reaction, however, was the measure of its duration. It was impossible that she should walk backward so fast without stumbling. Brought to her senses by this accident, she became aware that her judgment was missing. She smiled to herself as she reflected that it had been taking holiday for a whole afternoon. "Richard was right," she said to herself. "I am no fool. I can't be a fool if I try. I'm too thoroughly my father's daughter for that. I love that man, but I love myself better. Of course, then, I don't deserve to have him. If I loved him in a way to merit his love, I would sit down this moment and write him a note telling him that if he does not come back to me, I shall die. But I shall neither write the note nor die. I shall live and grow stout, and look after my chickens and my flowers and my colts, and thank the Lord in my old age that I have never done anything unwomanly. Well! I'm as He made me. Whether I can deceive others, I know not; but I certainly can't deceive myself. I'm quite as sharp as Gertrude Whittaker; and this it is that has kept me from making a fool of myself and writing to poor Richard the note that I wouldn't write to Captain Severn. I needed to fancy myself wronged. I suffer so little! I needed a sensation! So, shrewd Yankee that I am, I thought I would get one cheaply by taking up that unhappy boy! Heaven preserve me from the heroics, especially the economical heroics! The one heroic course possible, I decline. What, then, have I to complain of? Must I tear my hair because a man of taste has resisted my unspeakable charms? To be charming, you must be charmed yourself, or at least you must be able to be charmed; and that apparently I'm not. I didn't love him, or he would have known it. Love gets love, and no-love gets none."

But at this point of her meditations Gertrude almost broke down. She felt that she was assigning herself but a dreary future. Never to be loved but by such a one as Richard Clare was a cheerless prospect; for it was identical with an eternal spinsterhood. "Am I, then," she exclaimed, quite as passionately as a woman need do,—"am I, then, cut off from a woman's dearest joys? What blasphemous nonsense! One thing is plain: I am made to be a mother; the wife may take care of herself. I am made to be a wife; the mistress may take care of herself. I am in the Lord's hands," added the poor girl, who, whether or no she could forget herself in an earthly love, had at all events this mark of a spontaneous nature, that she could forget herself in a heavenly one. But in the midst of her pious emotion, she was unable to subdue her conscience. It smote her heavily for her meditated falsity to Richard, for her miserable readiness to succumb to the strong temptation to seek a momentary resting-place in his gaping heart. She recoiled from this thought as from an act cruel and immoral. Was Richard's heart the place for her now, any more than it had been a month before? Was she to apply for comfort where she would not apply for counsel? Was she to drown her decent sorrows and regrets in a base, a dishonest, an extemporized passion? Having done the young man so bitter a wrong in intention, nothing would appease her magnanimous remorse (as time went on) but to repair it in fact. She went so far as keenly to regret the harsh words she had cast upon him in the conservatory. He had been insolent and unmannerly; but he had an excuse. Much should be forgiven him, for he loved much. Even now that Gertrude had imposed upon her feelings a sterner regimen than ever, she could not defend herself from a sweet and sentimental thrill—a thrill in which, as we have intimated, there was something of a tremor—at the recollection of his strident accents and his angry eyes. It was yet far from her heart to desire a renewal, however brief, of this exhibition. She wished simply to efface from the young man's morbid soul the impression of a real contempt; for she knew—or she thought that she knew—that against such an impression he was capable of taking the most fatal and inconsiderate comfort.

Before many mornings had passed, accordingly, she had a horse saddled, and, dispensing with attendance, she rode rapidly over to his farm. The house door and half the windows stood open; but no answer came to her repeated summons. She made her way to the rear of the house, to the barn-yard, thinly tenanted by a few common fowl, and across the yard to a road which skirted its lower extremity and was accessible by an open gate. No human figure was in sight; nothing was visible in the hot stillness but the scattered and ripening crops, over which, in spite of her nervous solicitude, Miss Whittaker cast the glance of a connoisseur. A great uneasiness filled her mind as she measured the rich domain apparently deserted of its young master, and reflected that she perhaps was the cause of its abandonment. Ah, where was Richard? As she looked and listened in vain, her heart rose to her throat, and she felt herself on the point of calling all too wistfully upon his name. But her voice was stayed by the sound of a heavy rumble, as of cart-wheels, beyond a turn in the road. She touched up her horse and cantered along until she reached the turn. A great four-wheeled cart, laden with masses of newly broken stone, and drawn by four oxen, was slowly advancing towards her. Beside it, patiently cracking his whip and shouting monotonously, walked a young man in a slouched hat and a red shirt, with his trousers thrust into his dusty boots. It was Richard. As he saw Gertrude, he halted a moment, amazed, and then advanced, flicking the air with his whip. Gertrude's heart went out towards him in a silent Thank God! Her next reflection was that he had never looked so well. The truth is, that, in this rough adjustment, the native barbarian was duly represented. His face and neck were browned by a week in the fields, his eye was clear, his step seemed to have learned a certain manly dignity from its attendance on the heavy bestial tramp. Gertrude, as he reached her side, pulled up her horse and held out her gloved fingers to his brown dusty hand. He took them, looked for a moment into her face, and for the second time raised them to his lips.

"Excuse my glove," she said, with a little smile.

"Excuse mine," he answered, exhibiting his sunburnt, work-stained hand.

"Richard," said Gertrude, "you never had less need of excuse in your life. You never looked half so well."

He fixed his eyes upon her a moment. "Why, you have forgiven me!" he exclaimed.

"Yes," said Gertrude, "I have forgiven you,—both you and myself. We both of us behaved very absurdly, but we both of us had reason. I wish you had come back."

Richard looked about him, apparently at loss for a rejoinder. "I have been very busy," he said, at last, with a simplicity of tone slightly studied. An odd sense of dramatic effect prompted him to say neither more nor less.

An equally delicate instinct forbade Gertrude to express all the joy which this assurance gave her. Excessive joy would have implied undue surprise; and it was a part of her plan frankly to expect the best things of her companion. "If you have been busy," she said, "I congratulate you. What have you been doing?"

"O, a hundred things. I have been quarrying, and draining, and clearing, and I don't know what all. I thought the best thing was just to put my own hands to it. I am going to make a stone fence along the great lot on the hill there. Wallace is forever grumbling about his boundaries. I'll fix them once for all. What are you laughing at?"

"I am laughing at certain foolish apprehensions that I have been indulging for a week past. You're wiser than I, Richard. I have no imagination."

"Do you mean that I have? I haven't enough to guess what you do mean."

"Why, do you suppose, have I come over this morning?"

"Because you thought I was sulking on account of your having called me a fool."

"Sulking, or worse. What do I deserve for the wrong I have done you?"

"You have done me no wrong. You reasoned fairly enough. You are not obliged to know me better than I know myself. It's just like you to be ready to take back that bad word, and try to make yourself believe that it was unjust. But it was perfectly just, and therefore I have managed to bear it. I was a fool at that moment,—a stupid, impudent fool. I don't know whether that man had been making love to you or not. But you had, I think, been feeling love for him,—you looked it; I should have been less than a man, I should be unworthy of your—your affection, if I had failed to see it. I did see it,—I saw it as clearly as I see those oxen now; and yet I bounced in with my own ill-timed claims. To do so was to be a fool. To have been other than a fool would have been to have waited, to have backed out, to have bitten my tongue off before I spoke, to have done anything but what I did. I have no right to claim you, Gertrude, until I can woo you better than that. It was the most fortunate thing in the world that you spoke as you did: it was even kind. It saved me all the misery of groping about for a starting-point. Not to have spoken as you did would have been to fail of justice; and then, probably, I should have sulked, or, as you very considerately say, done worse. I had made a false move in the game, and the only thing to do was to repair it. But you were not obliged to know that I would so readily admit my move to have been false. Whenever I have made a fool of myself before, I have been for sticking it out, and trying to turn all mankind—that is, you—into a a fool too, so that I shouldn't be an exception. But this time, I think, I had a kind of inspiration. I felt that my case was desperate. I felt that if I adopted my folly now I adopted it forever. The other day I met a man who had just come home from Europe, and who spent last summer in Switzerland. He was telling me about the mountain-climbing over there,—how they get over the glaciers, and all that. He said that you sometimes came upon great slippery, steep, snow-covered slopes that end short off in a precipice, and that if you stumble or lose your footing as you cross them horizontally, why you go shooting down, and you're gone; that is, but for one little dodge. You have a long walking-pole with a sharp end, you know, and as you feel yourself sliding,—it's as likely as not to be in a sitting posture,—you just take this and ram it into the snow before you, and there you are, stopped. The thing is, of course, to drive it in far enough, so that it won't yield or break; and in any case it hurts infernally to come whizzing down upon this upright pole. But the interruption gives you time to pick yourself up. Well, so it was with me the other day. I stumbled and fell; I slipped, and was whizzing downward; but I just drove in my pole and pulled up short. It nearly tore me in two; but it saved my life." Richard made this speech with one hand leaning on the neck of Gertrude's horse, and the other on his own side, and with his head slightly thrown back and his eyes on hers. She had sat quietly in her saddle, returning his gaze. He had spoken slowly and deliberately; but without hesitation and without heat. "This is not romance," thought Gertrude, "it's reality." And this feeling it was that dictated her reply, divesting it of romance so effectually as almost to make it sound trivial.

"It was fortunate you had a walking-pole," she said.

"I shall never travel without one again."

"Never, at least," smiled Gertrude, "with a companion who has the bad habit of pushing you off the path."

"O, you may push all you like," said Richard. "I give you leave. But isn't this enough about myself?"

"That's as you think."

"Well, it's all I have to say for the present, except that I am prodigiously glad to see you, and that of course you will stay awhile."

"But you have your work to do."

"Dear me, never you mind my work. I've earned my dinner this morning, if you have no objection; and I propose to share it with you. So we will go back to the house." He turned her horse's head about, started up his oxen with his voice, and walked along beside her on the grassy roadside, with one hand in the horse's mane, and the other swinging his whip.

Before they reached the yard-gate, Gertrude had revolved his speech. "Enough about himself," she said, silently echoing his words. "Yes, Heaven be praised, it is about himself. I am but a means in this matter,—he himself, his own character, his own happiness, is the end." Under this conviction it seemed to her that her part was appreciably simplified. Richard was learning wisdom and self-control, and to exercise his reason. Such was the suit that he was destined to gain. Her duty was as far as possible to remain passive, and not to interfere with the working of the gods who had selected her as the instrument of their prodigy. As they reached the gate, Richard made a trumpet of his hands, and sent a ringing summons into the fields; whereupon a farm-boy approached, and, with an undisguised stare of amazement at Gertrude, took charge of his master's team. Gertrude rode up to the door-step, where her host assisted her to dismount, and bade her go in and make herself at home, while he busied himself with the bestowal of her horse. She found that, in her absence, the old woman who administered her friend's household had reappeared, and had laid out the preparations for his mid-day meal. By the time he returned, with his face and head shining from a fresh ablution, and his shirt-sleeves decently concealed by a coat, Gertrude had apparently won the complete confidence of the good wife.

Gertrude doffed her hat, and tucked up her riding-skirt, and sat down to a tete-a-tete over Richard's crumpled table-cloth. The young man played the host very soberly and naturally; and Gertrude hardly knew whether to augur from his perfect self-possession that her star was already on the wane, or that it had waxed into a steadfast and eternal sun. The solution of her doubts was not far to seek; Richard was absolutely at his ease in her presence. He had told her indeed that she intoxicated him; and truly, in those moments when she was compelled to oppose her dewy eloquence to his fervid importunities, her whole presence seemed to him to exhale a singularly potent sweetness. He had told her that she was an enchantress, and this assertion, too, had its measure of truth. But her spell was a steady one; it sprang not from her beauty, her wit, her figure,—it sprang from her character. When she found herself aroused to appeal or to resistance, Richard's pulses were quickened to what he had called intoxication, not by her smiles, her gestures, her glances, or any accession of that material beauty which she did not possess, but by a generous sense of her virtues in action. In other words, Gertrude exercised the magnificent power of making her lover forget her face. Agreeably to this fact, his habitual feeling in her presence was one of deep repose,—a sensation not unlike that which in the early afternoon, as he lounged in his orchard with a pipe, he derived from the sight of the hot and vaporous hills. He was innocent, then, of that delicious trouble which Gertrude's thoughts had touched upon as a not unnatural result of her visit, and which another woman's fancy would perhaps have dwelt upon as an indispensable proof of its success. "Porphyro grew faint," the poet assures us, as he stood in Madeline's chamber on Saint Agnes' eve. But Richard did not in the least grow faint now that his mistress was actually filling his musty old room with her voice, her touch, her looks; that she was sitting in his unfrequented chairs, trailing her skirt over his faded carpet, casting her perverted image upon his mirror, and breaking his daily bread. He was not fluttered when he sat at her well-served table, and trod her muffled floors. Why, then, should he be fluttered now? Gertrude was herself in all places, and (once granted that she was at peace) to be at her side was to drink peace as fully in one place as in another.

Richard accordingly ate a great working-day dinner in Gertrude's despite, and she ate a small one for his sake. She asked questions moreover, and offered counsel with most sisterly freedom. She deplored the rents in his table-cloth, and the dismemberments of his furniture; and although by no means absurdly fastidious in the matter of household elegance, she could not but think that Richard would be a happier and a better man if he were a little more comfortable. She forbore, however, to criticise the poverty of his entourage, for she felt that the obvious answer was, that such a state of things was the penalty of his living alone; and it was desirable, under the circumstances, that this idea should remain implied.

When at last Gertrude began to bethink herself of going, Richard broke a long silence by the following question: "Gertrude, do you love that man?"

"Richard," she answered, "I refused to tell you before, because you asked the question as a right. Of course you do so no longer. No. I do not love him. I have been near it,—but I have missed it. And now good by."

For a week after her visit, Richard worked as bravely and steadily as he had done before it. But one morning he woke up lifeless, morally speaking. His strength had suddenly left him. He had been straining his faith in himself to a prodigious tension, and the chord had suddenly snapped. In the hope that Gertrude's tender fingers might repair it, he rode over to her towards evening. On his way through the village, he found people gathered in knots, reading fresh copies of the Boston newspapers over each other's shoulders, and learned that tidings had just come of a great battle in Virginia, which was also a great defeat. He procured a copy of the paper from a man who had read it out, and made haste to Gertrude's dwelling.

Gertrude received his story with those passionate imprecations and regrets which were then in fashion. Before long, Major Luttrel presented himself, and for half an hour there was no talk but about the battle. The talk, however, was chiefly between Gertrude and the Major, who found considerable ground for difference, she being a great radical and he a decided conservative. Richard sat by, listening apparently, but with the appearance of one to whom the matter of the discourse was of much less interest than the manner of those engaged in it. At last, when tea was announced, Gertrude told her friends, very frankly, that she would not invite them to remain,—that her heart was too heavy with her country's woes, and with the thought of so great a butchery, to allow her to play the hostess,—and that, in short, she was in the humor to be alone. Of course there was nothing for the gentlemen but to obey; but Richard went out cursing the law, under which, in the hour of his mistress's sorrow, his company was a burden and not a relief. He watched in vain, as he bade her farewell, for some little sign that she would fain have him stay, but that as she wished to get rid of his companion civility demanded that she should dismiss them both. No such sign was forthcoming, for the simple reason that Gertrude was sensible of no conflict between her desires. The men mounted their horses in silence, and rode slowly along the lane which led from Miss Whittaker's stables to the high-road. As they approached the top of the lane, they perceived in the twilight a mounted figure coming towards them. Richard's heart began to beat with an angry foreboding, which was confirmed as the rider drew near and disclosed Captain Severn's features. Major Luttrel and he, being bound in courtesy to a brief greeting, pulled up their horses; and as an attempt to pass them in narrow quarters would have been a greater incivility than even Richard was prepared to commit, he likewise halted.

"This is ugly news, isn't it?" said Severn. "It has determined me to go back to-morrow."

"Go back where?" asked Richard.

"To my regiment."

"Are you well enough?" asked Major Luttrel. "How is that wound?"

"It's so much better that I believe it can finish getting well down there as easily as here. Good by, Major. I hope we shall meet again." And he shook hands with Major Luttrel. "Good by, Mr. Clare." And, somewhat to Richard's surprise, he stretched over and held out his hand to him.

Richard felt that it was tremulous, and, looking hard into his face, he thought it wore a certain unwonted look of excitement. And then his fancy coursed back to Gertrude, sitting where he had left her, in the sentimental twilight, alone with her heavy heart. With a word, he reflected, a single little word, a look, a motion, this happy man whose hand I hold can heal her sorrows. "Oh!" cried Richard, "that by this hand I might hold him fast forever!"

It seemed to the Captain that Richard's grasp was needlessly protracted and severe. "What a grip the poor fellow has!" he thought. "Good by," he repeated aloud, disengaging himself.

"Good by," said Richard. And then he added, he hardly knew why, "Are you going to bid good by to Miss Whittaker?"

"Yes. Isn't she at home?"

Whether Richard really paused or not before he answered, he never knew. There suddenly arose such a tumult in his bosom that it seemed to him several moments before he became conscious of his reply. But it is probable that to Severn it came only too soon.

"No," said Richard; "she's not at home. We have just been calling." As he spoke, he shot a glance at his companion, armed with defiance of his impending denial. But the Major just met his glance and then dropped his eyes. This slight motion was a horrible revelation. He had served the Major too.

"Ah? I'm sorry," said Severn, slacking his rein,—"I'm sorry." And from his saddle he looked down toward the house more longingly and regretfully than he knew.

Richard felt himself turning from pale to consuming crimson. There was a simple sincerity in Severn's words which was almost irresistible. For a moment he felt like shouting out a loud denial of his falsehood: "She is there! she's alone and in tears, awaiting you. Go to her—and be damned!" But before he could gather his words into his throat, they were arrested by Major Luttrel's cool, clear voice, which in its calmness seemed to cast scorn upon his weakness.

"Captain," said the Major, "I shall be very happy to take charge of your farewell."

"Thank you, Major. Pray do. Say how extremely sorry I was. Good by again." And Captain Severn hastily turned his horse about, gave him his spurs, and galloped away, leaving his friends standing alone in the middle of the road. As the sound of his retreat expired, Richard, in spite of himself, drew a long breath. He sat motionless in the saddle, hanging his head.

"Mr. Clare," said the Major, at last, "that was very cleverly done."

Richard looked up. "I never told a lie before," said he.

"Upon my soul, then, you did it uncommonly well. You did it so well I almost believed you. No wonder that Severn did."

Richard was silent. Then suddenly he broke out, "In God's name, sir, why don't you call me a blackguard? I've done a beastly act!"

"O, come," said the Major, "you needn't mind that, with me. We'll consider that said. I feel bound to let you know that I'm very, very much obliged to you. If you hadn't spoken, how do you know but that I might?"

"If you had, I would have given you the lie, square in your teeth."

"Would you, indeed? It's very fortunate, then, I held my tongue. If you will have it so, I won't deny that your little improvisation sounded very ugly. I'm devilish glad I didn't make it, if you come to that."

Richard felt his wit sharpened by a most unholy scorn,—a scorn far greater for his companion than for himself. "I am glad to hear that it did sound ugly," he said. "To me, it seemed beautiful, holy, and just. For the space of a moment, it seemed absolutely right that I should say what I did. But you saw the lie in its horrid nakedness, and yet you let it pass. You have no excuse."

"I beg your pardon. You are immensely ingenious, but you are immensely wrong. Are you going to make out that I am the guilty party? Upon my word, you're a cool hand. I have an excuse. I have the excuse of being interested in Miss Whittaker's remaining unengaged."

"So I suppose. But you don't love her. Otherwise—"

Major Luttrel laid his hand on Richard's bridle. "Mr. Clare," said he, "I have no wish to talk metaphysics over this matter. You had better say no more. I know that your feelings are not of an enviable kind, and I am therefore prepared to be good-natured with you. But you must be civil yourself. You have done a shabby deed; you are ashamed of it, and you wish to shift the responsibility upon me, which is more shabby still. My advice is, that you behave like a man of spirit, and swallow your apprehensions. I trust that you are not going to make a fool of yourself by any apology or retraction in any quarter. As for its having seemed holy and just to do what you did, that is mere bosh. A lie is a lie, and as such is often excusable. As anything else,—as a thing beautiful, holy, or just,—it's quite inexcusable. Yours was a lie to you, and a lie to me. It serves me, and I accept it. I suppose you understand me. I adopt it. You don't suppose it was because I was frightened by those big black eyes of yours that I held my tongue. As for my loving or not loving Miss Whittaker, I have no report to make to you about it. I will simply say that I intend, if possible, to marry her."

"She'll not have you. She'll never marry a cold-blooded rascal."

"I think she'll prefer him to a hot-blooded one. Do you want to pick a quarrel with me? Do you want to make me lose my temper? I shall refuse you that satisfaction. You have been a coward, and you want to frighten some one before you go to bed to make up for it. Strike me, and I'll strike you in self-defence, but I'm not going to mind your talk. Have you anything to say? No? Well, then, good evening." And Major Luttrel started away.

It was with rage that Richard was dumb. Had he been but a cat's-paw after all? Heaven forbid! He sat irresolute for an instant, and then turned suddenly and cantered back to Gertrude's gate. Here he stopped again; but after a short pause he went in over the gravel with a fast-beating heart. O, if Luttrel were but there to see him! For a moment he fancied he heard the sound of the Major's returning steps. If he would only come and find him at confession! It would be so easy to confess before him! He went along beside the house to the front, and stopped beneath the open drawing-room window.

"Gertrude!" he cried softly, from his saddle.

Gertrude immediately appeared. "You, Richard!" she exclaimed.

Her voice was neither harsh nor sweet; but her words and her intonation recalled vividly to Richard's mind the scene in the conservatory. He fancied them keenly expressive of disappointment. He was invaded by a mischievous conviction that she had been expecting Captain Severn, or that at the least she had mistaken his voice for the Captain's. The truth is that she had half fancied it might be,—Richard's call having been little more than a loud whisper. The young man sat looking up at her, silent.

"What do you want?" she asked. "Can I do anything for you?"

Richard was not destined to do his duty that evening. A certain infinitesimal dryness of tone on Gertrude's part was the inevitable result of her finding that that whispered summons came only from Richard. She was preoccupied. Captain Severn had told her a fortnight before, that, in case of news of a defeat, he should not await the expiration of his leave of absence to return. Such news had now come, and her inference was that her friend would immediately take his departure. She could not but suppose that he would come and bid her farewell, and what might not be the incidents, the results, of such a visit? To tell the whole truth, it was under the pressure of these reflections that, twenty minutes before, Gertrude had dismissed our two gentlemen. That this long story should be told in the dozen words with which she greeted Richard, will seem unnatural to the disinterested reader. But in those words, poor Richard, with a lover's clairvoyance, read it at a single glance. The same resentful impulse, the same sickening of the heart, that he had felt in the conservatory, took possession of him once more. To be witness of Severn's passion for Gertrude,—that he could endure. To be witness of Gertrude's passion for Severn,—against that obligation his reason rebelled.

"What is it you wish, Richard?" Gertrude repeated. "Have you forgotten anything?"

"Nothing! nothing!" cried the young man. "It's no matter!"

He gave a great pull at his bridle, and almost brought his horse back on his haunches, and then, wheeling him about on himself, he thrust in his spurs and galloped out of the gate.

On the highway he came upon Major Luttrel, who stood looking down the lane.

"I'm going to the Devil, sir!" cried Richard. "Give me your hand on it."

Luttrel held out his hand. "My poor young man," said he, "you're out of your head. I'm sorry for you. You haven't been making a fool of yourself?"

"Yes, a damnable fool of myself!"

Luttrel breathed freely. "You'd better go home and go to bed," he said. "You'll make yourself ill by going on at this rate."

"I—I'm afraid to go home," said Richard, in a broken voice. "For God's sake, come with me!"—and the wretched fellow burst into tears. "I'm too bad for any company but yours," he cried, in his sobs.

The Major winced, but he took pity. "Come, come," said he, "we'll pull through. I'll go home with you."

They rode off together. That night Richard went to bed miserably drunk; although Major Luttrel had left him at ten o'clock, adjuring him to drink no more. He awoke the next morning in a violent fever; and before evening the doctor, whom one of his hired men had brought to his bedside, had come and looked grave and pronounced him very ill.



DOCTOR MOLKE.

A SKETCH FROM LIFE.

As my own fancy led me into the Greenland seas, so chance sent me into a Greenland port. It was a choice little harbor, a good way north of the Arctic Circle,—fairly within the realm of hyperborean barrenness,—very near the northernmost border of civilized settlement. But civilization was exhibited there by unmistakable evidences;—a very dilute civilization, it is true, yet, such as it was, outwardly recognizable; for Christian habitations and Christian beings were in sight from the vessel's deck,—at least some of the human beings who appeared upon the beach were dressed like Christians, and veritable smoke curled gracefully upward into the bright air above the roofs of houses from veritable chimneys.

We had been fighting the Arctic ice and the Arctic storms for so long a time, that it was truly refreshing to get into this good harbor. The little craft which had borne us thither seemed positively to enjoy her repose, as she lay quietly to her anchors on the still waters, in the calm air and the blazing sunshine of the Arctic noonday. As for myself, I was simply wondering what I should find ashore. A slender fringe of European custom bordering native barbarism and dirt was what I anticipated; for, as I looked upon the naked rocks,—which there, as in other Greenland ports, afforded room for a few straggling huts of native fishermen and hunters, with only now and then a more pretentious white man's lodge,—I could hardly imagine that much would be found seductive to the fancy or inviting to the eye. A country where there is no soil to yield any part of man's subsistence seemed to offer such a slender chance for man in the battle of life, that I could well imagine it to be repulsive rather than attractive; yet I was eager to see how poor men might be, and live.

While thus looking forward to a novel experience, I was unconsciously preparing myself for a great surprise. Whatever there might be of poverty in the condition of the few dozens of human beings who there forced a scanty subsistence from the sea, I was to discover one person in the place who did in no way share it,—who, born as it might seem to different destinies, yet, voluntarily choosing wild Nature for companionship, and rising superior to the forbidding climate and the general desolation, rejoiced here in his own strong manhood, and lived seemingly contented as well with himself as with the great world of which he heard from afar but the faint murmurs.

The anchors had been down about an hour, and the bustle and confusion necessarily attending an entrance into port had subsided. The sails were stowed, the decks were cleared up, and the ropes were coiled. A port watch was set. The crew had received their "liberty," and there was much wondering among them whether Esquimau eyes could speak a tender welcome. Nor had the Danish flag been forgotten. That swallow-tailed emblem of a gallant nationality—which, according to song and tradition, has the enviable distinction of having

"Come from heaven down, my boys, Ay, come from heaven down"—

was fluttering from a white flag-staff at the front of the government-house, and we had answered its display by running up our own Danish colors at the fore, and saluting them with our signal-gun in all due form and courtesy.

Soon after reaching the anchorage I had despatched an officer to look up the chief ruler of the place, and to assure him of the great pleasure I should have in calling upon him, if he would name an hour convenient to himself; and I was awaiting my messenger's return with some impatience, when suddenly I heard the thump of his heavy sea boots on the deck above. In a few moments he entered the cabin, and reported that the governor was absent, but that his office was temporarily filled by a gentleman who had been good enough to accompany him on board,—the surgeon of the settlement, Doctor Molke; and then stepping aside, Doctor Molke passed through the narrow doorway and stood before me, bowing. I bowed in return, and bade him welcome, saying, I suppose, just what any other person would have said under like circumstances, (not, however, supposing for a moment that I was understood,) and then, turning to the officer, I signified my wish that he should act as interpreter. But that was needless. My Greenland visitor answered me, in pure, unbroken English, with as little hesitation as if he had spoken no other language all his life; and in conclusion he said: "I come to invite you to my poor house, and to offer you my service. I can give you but a feeble welcome in this outlandish place, but such as I have is yours; and if you will accompany me ashore, I shall be much delighted."

The delight was mutual; and it was not many minutes before, seated in the stern sheets of a whale-boat, we were pulling towards the land.

My new-found friend interested me at once. The surprise at finding myself addressed in English was increased when I discovered that this Greenland official bore every mark of refinement, culture, and high breeding. His manner was wholly free from restraint; and it struck me as something odd that all the self-possession and ease of a thorough man of the world should be exhibited in this desert place. He did not seem to be at all aware that there was anything incongruous in either his dress or manner and his present situation; yet this man, who sat with me in the stern sheets of a battered whale-boat, pulling across a Greenland harbor to a Greenland settlement, might, with the simple addition of a pair of suitable gloves, have stepped as he was into a ball-room without giving rise to any other remark than would be excited by his bearing.

His graceful figure was well set off by a neatly fitting and closely buttoned blue frock-coat, ornamented with gilt buttons, and embroidered cuffs, and heavily braided shoulder-knots. A decoration on his breast told that he was a favorite with his king. His finely shaped head was covered by a blue cloth cap, having a gilt band and the royal emblems. Over his shoulders was thrown a cloak of mottled seal-skins, lined with the warm and beautiful fur of the Arctic fox. His cleanly shaven face was finely formed and full of force, while a soft blue eye spoke of gentleness and good-nature, and with fair hair completed the evidences of Scandinavian birth.

My curiosity became much excited. "How," thought I, "in the name of everything mysterious, has it happened that such a man should have turned up in such a place?" From curiosity I passed to amazement, as his mind unfolded itself, and his tastes were manifested. I was prepared to be received by a fur-clad hunter, a coppery-faced Esquimau, or a meek and pious missionary, upon whose face privation and penance had set their seal; but for this high-spirited, high-bred, graceful, and evidently accomplished gentleman, I was not prepared.

I could not refrain from one leading observation. "I suppose, Doctor Molke," said I, "that you have not been here long enough to have yet wholly exhausted the novelty of these noble hills!"

"Eleven years, one would think," replied he, "ought to pretty well exhaust anything; and yet I cannot say that these hills, upon which my eyes rest continually, have grown to be wearisome companions, even if they may appear something forbidding."

Eleven years among these barren hills! Eleven years in Greenland!! Surely, thought I, this is something "passing strange."

The scene around us as we crossed the bay was indeed imposing, and, though desolate enough, was certainly not without its bright and cheerful side. Behind us rose a majestic line of cliffs, climbing up into the clouds in giant steps, picturesque yet solid,—a great massive pedestal, as it were, supporting mountain piled on mountain, with caps of snow whitening their summits, and great glaciers hanging on their sides. Before us lay the town,—built upon a gnarled spur of primitive rock, which seemed to have crept from underneath the lofty cliffs, as a serpent from its hiding-place, and, after wriggling through the sea, to have stopped at length, when it had almost completely enclosed a beautiful sheet of water about a mile long by half a mile broad, leaving but one narrow, winding entrance to it. Through this entrance the swell of the sea could never come to disturb the silent bay, which lay there, nestling among the dark rocks beneath the mountain shadows, as calmly as a Swiss lake in an Alpine valley.

But the rocky spur which supported on its rough back what there was of the town wore a most woe-begone and distressed aspect. A few little patches of grass and moss were visible, but generally there was nothing to be seen but the cold gray-red naked rocks, broken and twisted into knots and knobs, and cut across with deep and ugly cracks. I could but wonder that on such a dreary spot man should ever think of seeking a dwelling-place; and my companion must have interpreted my thoughts, for he pointed to the shore, and said playfully, "Ah! it is true, you behold at last the fruits of wisdom and instruction,—a city founded on a rock." And then, after a moment's pause, he added: "Let me point out to you the great features of this new wonder. First, to the right there, underneath that little, low, black, peaked roof, dwells the royal cook,—a Dane who came out here a long time ago, married a native of the country, and rejoices in a brood of half-breeds, among whom are four girls, rather dusky, but not ill-favored. Next in order is the government-house,—that pitch-coated structure near the flag-staff. This is the only building, you observe, that can boast of a double tier of windows. Next, a little higher up, you see, is my own lodge, bedaubed with pitch, like the other, to protect it against the assaults of the weather, and to stop the little cracks. Down by the beach, a little farther on, that largest building of all is the store-house, &c., where the Governor keeps all sorts of traps for trade with the natives, and where the shops are in which the cooper fixes up the oil-barrels, and where other like industrial pursuits are carried on. A little farther on you observe a low structure where the oil is stored. On the ledge above the shop you see another pitchy building. This furnishes quarters for the half-dozen Danish employees,—fellows who, not having married native wives, hunt and fish for the glory of Denmark. Near the den of these worthies you observe another,—a duplicate of that in which lives the cook. There lives the royal cooper; and not far from it are two others, not quite so pretentious, where dwell the carpenter and blacksmith,—all of whom have followed the worthy example of the cook, and have dusky sons and daughters to console their declining years. You may perhaps be able to distinguish a few moss-covered hovels dotted about here and there,—perhaps there may be twenty of them in all, though there are but few of them in sight. These are the huts of native hunters. At present they are not occupied, for, being without roofs that will turn water, the people are compelled to abandon them when the snow begins to melt in the spring, and betake themselves to seal-skin tents, some of which you observe scattered here and there among the rocks. And now I've shown you everything,—just in time, too, for here we are at the landing."

We had drawn in close to the end of a narrow pier, run out into the water on slender piles, and, quickly ascending some steps, the Doctor led the way up to his house. The whole settlement had turned out to meet us, men, women, children, and dogs,—which latter, about two hundred in number, "little dogs and all," set up an ear-splitting cry, wild and strangely in keeping with every other part of the scene, and like nothing so much as the dismal evening concert of a pack of wolves. The children, on the other hand, kept quiet, and clung to their mothers, as all children do in exciting times; the mothers grinned and laughed and chattered, "as becomes the gentler sex" in the savage state; while the men, all smoking short clay pipes, (one of their customs borrowed from civilization,) looked on with that air of stolid indifference peculiar to the male barbarian. They were mostly dressed in suits of seal-skins, but some of them wore greasy Guernsey frocks and other European clothing. Many of the women carried cunning-looking babies strapped upon their backs in seal-skin pouches. The heads of men and women alike were for the most part capless; but every one of the dark, beardless faces was surmounted by a heavy mass of straight, uncombed, and tangled jet-black hair. There were some half-breed girls standing in little groups upon the rocks, who, adding something of taste to the simple need of an artificial covering for the body, were attired in dresses, which, although of the Esquimau fashion, were quite neatly ornamented. While passing through this curious crowd, the eye could not but find pleasure in the novel scene, the more especially as the delight of these half-barbarous people was excited to the highest pitch by the strange being who had come among them.

But if what the eye drank in gave delight, less fortunate the nose; for from about the store-house and the native huts, and, indeed, from almost everywhere, welled up that horrid odor of decomposing oil and fish and flesh peculiar to a fishing-town. On this account, if on no other, I was not sorry when we reached our destination.

"You like not this Greenland odor?" said my conductor. "Luckily it does not reach me here, or I should seek a still higher perch to roost on";—saying which, he opened the door and led the way inside, first through a little vestibule into a square hall, where we deposited our fur coats, and then to the right, into a small room furnished with a table, an old pine bench, a single chair, a case with glass doors containing white jars and glass bottles having Latin labels, and smelling dreadfully of doctor's stuffs.

"I always come through here," said my host, "after passing the town. It gives the olfactories a new sensation. This, you observe, is the place where I physic the people."

"Have you many patients, Doctor?" I inquired.

"Not very many; but, considering that I go sometimes a hundred miles or so to see the suffering sinners, I have quite enough to satisfy me. Not much competition, you know. But come, we have some lunch waiting for us in the next room, and Sophy will be growing impatient."

A lady, eh?

The room into which the Doctor ushered me was neatly furnished. On the walls were hung some prints and paintings of fruits and animals and flowers, and in the centre stood a small round table covered with dishes carefully placed on a snowy cloth.

All very nice, but who's Sophy?

The Doctor tinkled a little bell, the tones of which told that it was silver; and then, all radiant with smiles and beaming with good-nature, Sophy entered. A strange apparition.

"This is my housekeeper," said the Doctor, in explanation; "speak to the American, Sophy."

And, without embarrassment or pausing for an instant, she advanced and bade me welcome, addressing me in fair English, and extending at the same time a delicate little hand, which peeped out from cuffs of eider-down. "I am glad," said she, "to see the American. I have been looking through the window at him ever since he left the ship."

"Now, Sophy," said the Doctor, "let us see what you have got us for lunch."

"O, I haven't anything at all, Doctor Molke," answered Sophy; "but I hope the American will excuse me until dinner, when I have some nice trout and venison."

"'Pot-luck,' as I told you," exclaimed my host. "But never mind, Sophy, let's have it, be it what it may." And Sophy tripped lightly out of the room to do her master's bidding.

"A right good girl that," said the Doctor, when the door was closed. "Takes capital care of me."

Strange Sophy! A pretty face of dusky hue, and a fine figure attired in native costume, neatly ornamented and arranged with cultivated taste. Pantaloons of mottled seal-skin, and of silvery lustre, tapered down into long white boots, which enclosed the neatest of ankles and the daintiest of feet. A little jacket of Scotch plaid, with a collar and border of fur, covered the body to the waist, while from beneath the collar peeped up a pure white cambric handkerchief, covering the throat; and heavy masses of glossy black hair were intertwined with ribbons of gay red. Marvellous Sophy! Dusky daughter of a Danish father and a native mother. From her mother she had her rich brunette complexion and raven hair; from her father, Saxon features, and light blue Saxon eyes.

If the housekeeper attracted my attention, so did the dishes which she set before me. Smoked salmon of exquisite delicacy, reindeer sausages, reindeer tongues nicely dried and thinly sliced, and fine fresh Danish bread, made up a style of "pot-luck" calculated to cause a hungry man from the high seas and sailors' "prog" to wish for the same style of luck for the remainder of his days. But when all this came to be washed down with the contents of sundry bottles with which Sophy dotted the clean white cloth, the "luck" was perfect, and there was nothing further to desire.

"Ah! here we are," said my entertainer. "Sophy wishes to make amends for the dryness of her fare. This is a choice Margaux, and I can recommend it. But, Sophy, here, you haven't warmed this quite enough. Ah! my dear sir, you experience the trouble of a Greenland life. One can never get his wines properly tempered."

One cannot get his wines properly tempered!—and this is the trouble of a Greenland life!! "Surely," thought I, "one might find something worse than this."

"Here," picking up the next bottle, "we have some Johannisberg, very fine as I can assure you; but I have little fancy even for the best of these Rhenish wines. Too much like a pretty woman without soul. They never warm the imagination. There's something better to build upon there close beside your elbow. Since the claret's forbidden us for the present, I'll drink you welcome in that rich Madeira. Why, do you know, sir," rattled on the Doctor, as I passed the bottle, seemingly rejoiced in his very heart at having some one to talk to,—"do you know, sir, that I have kept that by me here these ten years past? My good old father sent it to me as a mark of special favor. Why, sir, it has a pedigree as long as one of Locksley's cloth-yard shafts. But the pedigree will keep: let's prove it,"—and he filled up two dainty French straw-stem glasses, and pledged me in the good old Danish style. Then, when the claret came back, this time all rightly tempered, the Doctor filled the glasses, and hoped that, when I "left this place, the girls would pull lustily on the tow-ropes."

Hunger and thirst were soon appeased. "And now," said the Doctor, when this was done, "I know you are dying for the want of something fresh and green. You have probably tasted nothing that grew out of dear old Mother Earth since leaving home";—and he tinkled his silver bell again, and Sophy of the silver seal-skin pantaloons and dainty boots tripped softly through the door.

"Sophy, haven't you a surprise for the American?"

Sophy smiled knowingly, and said, "Yes," as she retreated. In a moment she came back, carrying a little silver dish, with a little green pyramid upon it. Out from the green peeped little round red globes,—radishes, as I lived!—round red radishes!—ten round red radishes!

"What! radishes in Greenland!" I exclaimed involuntarily.

"Yes, and raised on my own farm, too; you shall see it by and by." The Doctor was enjoying my surprise, and Sophy looked on with undisguised satisfaction. Meanwhile I lost no time in tumbling the pyramid to pieces, and crunching the delicious bulbs. They disappeared in a twinkling. Their rich and luscious juices seemed to pour at once into the very blood, and to tingle at the very finger-tips. I never knew before the full enjoyment of the fresh growth of the soil. After so long a deprivation it was indeed a strange, as it will remain a lasting sensation. Never to my dying day shall I forget the ten radishes of Greenland.

"You see that I was right," exclaimed my host, after the vigorous assault was ended. "And now," continued he, addressing Sophy, "bring the other things."

The "other things" proved to be a plate of fine lettuce, a bit of Stilton cheese, and coffee in transparent little china cups, and sugar in a silver bowl, and then cigars,—everything of the best and purest; and as we passed from one thing to another, I became at length persuaded that the Arctic Circle was a myth, that my cruise among the icebergs was a dream, and that Greenland was set down wrongly on the maps. Long before this I had been convinced that Doctor Molke was a most mysterious character, and wholly unaccountable.

After we had finished this sumptuous lunch and chatted for a while, the Doctor surprised me again by asking if I would like a game of billiards. (Billiards in Greenland, as well as radishes!) "But first," said he, "let us try this sunny Burgundy. Ah! these red wines are the only truly generous wines. They monopolize all the sensuous glories and associations of the fruit. With these red wines one drinks in the very soul and sentiment of the lands which grow the grapes that breed them."

"Even if drank in Greenland?"

"Yes, or at the very Pole. Geographical lines may confine our bodies; but nature is an untamed wild, where the spirit roams at will. If I am here hemmed in by barren hills, and live in a desert waste, yet, as one of your sweetest poets has put it, my

'Fancy, like the finger of a clock, Runs the great circuit and is still at home';

and truly, I believe that I have in this retreat about as much enjoyment of life as they who taste of it more freely; for while I can here feel all the world's warm pulsations, I am freed from its annoyances: if the sweet is less sweet, the bitter is less bitter. But—Well, let's have the billiards."

My host now led the way into the billiard-room, which was tastefully ornamented with everything needful to harmonize with a handsome table standing in its centre, upon which we were soon knocking the balls about in an ill-matched game, for he beat me sadly. I was much surprised at the skilfulness of his play, and remarked that I thought it something singular that he "should there find any one to keep him so well in hand."

"Ah! my dear sir," said he, "you have yet much to learn. This country is not so bad as you think for. Sophy—native-born Sophy—is my antagonist, and she beats me three times out of five." Wonderful Sophy!

The game finished, my host next led the way into his study. A charming retreat as ever human wit and ingenuity devised. It was indeed rather a parlor than a study. The room was quite large, and was literally filled with odd bits of furniture, elegant and well kept. Heavy crimson curtains were draped about the windows, a rich crimson carpet covered the floor, and there were lounges and chairs of various patterns, adapted for every temper of mind or mood of body,—all of the same pleasing color. Odd etageres, hanging and standing, and a large solid walnut case, were all well filled with books, and other books were carefully arranged on a table in the centre of the room. Among them my eye quickly detected the works of various English authors, conspicuous among which were Shakespeare, Byron, Scott, Dickens, Cooper, and Washington Irving. Sam Slick had a place there, and close beside him was the renowned Lemuel Gulliver; and in science there were, beside many others, Brewster, Murchison, and Lyell. The books all showed that they were well used, and they embraced the principal classical stores of the French and German tongues, beside the English and his own native Danish. In short, the collection was precisely such as one would expect to find in any civilized place, where means were not wanting, the disposition to read a habit and a pleasure, and the books themselves boon companions.

A charming feature of the room was the air of refreshing neglige with which sundry robes of bear and fox skins were tossed about upon the chairs and lounges and floor; while the blank spaces of the walls were broken by numerous pictures, some of them apparently family relics, and on little brackets were various souvenirs of art and travel.

"I call this my study," said the Doctor; "but in truth there is the real shop";—and he led me into a little room adjoining, in which there was but one window, one table, one chair, no shelves, a great number of books, lying about in every direction, and great quantities of paper. On the wall hung about two dozen pipes of various shapes and sizes, and a fine assortment of guns and rifles and all the paraphernalia of a practised sportsman. It was easy to see that there was one place where the native-born Sophy did not come.

The chamber of this singular Greenland recluse was in keeping with his study. The walls were painted light blue, a blue carpet adorned the floor, blue curtains softened the light which stole through the windows, and blue hangings cast a pleasant hue over a snowy pillow. Although small, there was indeed nothing wanting, not even a well-arranged bath-room,—nothing that the most fastidious taste could covet or desire.

"And now," said my entertainer, when we had got seated in the study, "does this present attractions sufficient to tempt you from your narrow bunk on shipboard? You are most heartily welcome to that blue den which you admire so much, and which I am heartily sick of, while I can make for myself a capital 'shake-down' here, or vice versa. If neither of these will suit you, then cast your eyes out of the window, and you will observe snow enough to build a more truly Arctic lodging."

I stepped to the window, and there, sure enough, piled up beneath it and against the house, was a great bank of snow, which the summer's sun had not yet dissolved; and as I saw this, and then looked beyond it over the wretched little village, and the desolate waste of rocks on which it stood, and then on up the craggy steeps to the great white-topped mountains, I could but wonder what strange occurrence had sent this luxury-loving man, with books only for companions, into such a howling wilderness. Was it his own fancy? or was it some cruel necessity? In truth, the surprise was so great that I found myself suddenly turning from the scene outside to that within, not indeed without an impulse that the whole thing might have vanished in the interval, as the palace of Aladdin in the Arabian tale.