PREFACE. ...............................................................................................................................................1

FIRST OPENING OF THE NEW PORTFOLIO.................................................................................................2

INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................................2

I. GETTING READY............................................................................................................................14

II. THE BOATRACE..........................................................................................................................19

III. THE WHITE CANOE.....................................................................................................................22

IV...........................................................................................................................................................25

V. THE ENIGMA STUDIED. ...............................................................................................................29

VI. STILL AT FAULT..........................................................................................................................31

VII. A RECORD OF ANTIPATHIES ...................................................................................................35

VIII. THE PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY. ..................................................................................................37

IX. THE SOCIETY AND ITS NEW SECRETARY. ............................................................................45

X. A NEW ARRIVAL. ..........................................................................................................................50

XI. THE INTERVIEWER ATTACKS THE SPHINX. .........................................................................58

XII. MISS VINCENT AS A MEDICAL STUDENT. ...........................................................................65

XIII. DR. BUTTS READS A PAPER. ..................................................................................................66

XIV. MISS VINCENT'S STARTLING DISCOVERY........................................................................69

XV. DR. BUTTS CALLS ON EUTHYMIA. ........................................................................................74

XVI. MISS VINCENT WRITES A LETTER. ......................................................................................76

XVII. Dr. BUTTS'S PATIENT. .............................................................................................................80

XVIII. MAURICE KIRKWOOD'S STORY OF HIS LIFE..................................................................82

XX. DR. BUTTS REFLECTS. ..............................................................................................................94

XXI. AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION............................................................................................97

XXII. EUTHYMIA. ...............................................................................................................................99

XXIII. THE MEETING OF MAURICE AND EUTHYMIA.............................................................102

XXIV. THE INEVITABLE. ................................................................................................................108

"A MORTAL ANTIPATHY" was a truly hazardous experiment. A very wise and very distinguished

physician who is as much at home in literature as he is in science and the practice of medicine, wrote to me in

referring to this story: "I should have been afraid of my subject." He did not explain himself, but I can easily

understand that he felt the improbability of the, physiological or pathological occurrence on which the story is

founded to be so great that the narrative could hardly be rendered plausible. I felt the difficulty for myself as

well as for my readers, and it was only by recalling for our consideration a series of extraordinary but

wellauthenticated facts of somewhat similar character that I could hope to gain any serious attention to so

I need not recur to these wonderful stories. There is, however, one, not to be found on record elsewhere, to

which I would especially call the reader's attention. It is that of the middleaged man, who assured me that he

could never pass a tall hall clock without an indefinable terror. While an infant in arms the heavy weight of

one of these tall clocks had fallen with aloud crash and produced an impression on his nervous system which

The lasting effect of a shock received by the sense of sight or that of hearing is conceivable enough.

But there is another sense, the nerves of which are in close relation with the higher organs of consciousness.

The strength of the associations connected with the function of the first pair of nerves, the olfactory, is

familiar to most persons in their own experience and as related by others. Now we know that every human

being, as well as every other living organism, carries its own distinguishing atmosphere. If a man's friend

does not know it, his dog does, and can track him anywhere by it. This personal peculiarity varies with the

age and conditions of the individual. It may be agreeable or otherwise, a source of attraction or repulsion, but

its influence is not less real, though far less obvious and less dominant, than in the lower animals. It was an

atmospheric impression of this nature which associated itself with a terrible shock experienced by the infant

which became the subject of this story. The impression could not be outgrown, but it might possibly be

broken up by some sudden change in the nervous system effected by a cause as potent as the one which had

This is the best key that I can furnish to a story which must have puzzled some, repelled others, and failed to

Pray, do you remember, when there was an accession to the nursery in which you have a special interest,

whether the newcomer was commonly spoken of as a baby? Was it not, on the contrary, invariably, under

all conditions, in all companies, by the whole household, spoken of as the baby? And was the small

receptacle provided for it commonly spoken of as a cradle; or was it not always called the cradle, as if there

Now this New Portfolio is the cradle in which I am to rock my newborn thoughts, and from which I am to

lift them carefully and show them to callers, namely, to the whole family of readers belonging to my list of

intimates, and such other friends as may drop in by accident. And so it shall have the definite article, and not

There are a few personal and incidental matters of which I wish to say something before reaching the

contents of the Portfolio, whatever these may be. I have had other portfolios before this,two, more

Do not throw this volume down, or turn to another page, when I tell you that the earliest of them, that of

which I now am about to speak, was opened more than fifty years ago. This is a very dangerous confession,

for fifty years make everything hopelessly oldfashioned, without giving it the charm of real antiquity. If I

could say a hundred years, now, my readers would accept all I had to tell them with a curious interest; but

fifty years ago,there are too many talkative old people who know all about that time, and at best half a

century is a halfbaked bit of ware. A coinfancier would say that your fiftyyearold facts have just enough

of antiquity to spot them with rust, and not enough to give themthe delicate and durable patina which is

When the first Portfolio was opened the coin of the realm bore for its legend,or might have borne if the

more devout heroworshippers could have had their way,Andreas Jackson, Populi Gratia, Imp. Caesrzr.

Aug. Div., Max., etc., etc. I never happened to see any gold or silver with that legend, but the truth is I was

not very familiarly acquainted with the precious metals at that period of my career, and, there might have

been a good deal of such coin in circulation without my handling it, or knowing much about it.

In those days the Athenaeum Picture Gallery was a principal centre of attraction to young Boston people and

their visitors. Many of us got our first ideas of art, to say nothing of our first lessons in the comparatively

innocent flirtations of our city's primitive period, in that agreeable resort of amateurs and artists.

How the pictures on those walls in Pearl Street do keep their places in the mind's gallery! Trumbull's Sortie of

Gibraltar, with red enough in it for one of our sunset afterglows; and Neagle's full length portrait of the

blacksmith in his shirtsleeves; and Copley's longwaistcoated gentlemen and satinclad ladies,they

looked like gentlemen and ladies, too; and Stuart's florid merchants and high waisted matrons; and Allston's

lovely Italian scenery and dreamy, unimpassioned women, not forgetting Florimel in full flight on her

interminable rockinghorse,you may still see her at the Art Museum; and the rival landscapes of Doughty

and Fisher, much talked of and largely praised in those days; and the Murillo,not from Marshal Soup's

collection; and the portrait of Annibale Caracci by himself, which cost the Athenaeum a hundred dollars; and

Cole's allegorical pictures, and his immense and dreary canvas, in which the prostrate shepherds and the

angel in Joseph's coat of many colors look as if they must have been thrown in for nothing; and West's

brawny Lear tearing his clothes to pieces. But why go on with the catalogue, when most of these pictures can

be seen either at the Athenaeum building in Beacon Street or at the Art Gallery, and admired or criticised

perhaps more justly, certainly not more generously, than in those earlier years when we looked at them

If one happened to pass through Atkinson Street on his way to the Athenaeum, he would notice a large,

square, painted, brick house, in which lived a leading representative of oldfashioned coleopterous

Calvinism, and from which emerged one of the liveliest of literary butterflies. The father was editor of the

"Boston Recorder," a very respectable, but very far from amusing paper, most largely patronized by that class

of the community which spoke habitually of the first day of the week as "the Sahbuth." The son was the

editor of several different periodicals in succession, none of them over severe or serious, and of many

pleasant books, filled with lively descriptions of society, which be studied on the outside with a quick eye for

form and color, and with a certain amount of sentiment, not very deep, but real, though somewhat frothed

Nathaniel Parker Willis was in full bloom when I opened my first Portfolio. He had made himself known by

his religious poetry, published in his father's paper, I think, and signed "Roy." He had started the " American

Magazine," afterwards merged in the New York Mirror." He had then left off writing scripture pieces, and

He was young, therefore, and already famous. He came very near being very handsome. He was tall; his hair,

of light brown color, waved in luxuriant abundance; his cheek was as rosy as if it had been painted to show

behind the footlights; he dressed with artistic elegance. He was something between a remembrance of Count

D'Orsay and an anticipation of Oscar Wilde. There used to be in the gallery of the Luxembourg a picture of

Hippolytus and Phxdra, in which the beautiful young man, who had kindled a passion in the heart of his

wicked step mother, always reminded me of Willis, in spite of the shortcomings of the living face as

compared with the ideal. The painted youth is still blooming on the canvas, but the freshcheecked, jaunty

young author of the year 1830 has long faded out of human sight. I took the leaves which lie before me at this

moment, as I write, from his coffin, as it lay just outside the door of Saint Paul's Church, on a sad,

overclouded winter's day, in the year 1867. At that earlier time, Willis was by far the most prominent young

American author. Cooper, Irving, Bryant, Dana, Halleck, Drake, had all done their best work. Longfellow

was not yet conspicuous. Lowell was a schoolboy. Emerson was unheard of. Whittier was beginning to

make his way against the writers with better educational advantages whom he was destined to outdo and to

outlive. Not one of the great histories, which have done honor to our literature, had appeared. Our school

books depended, so far as American authors were concerned, on extracts from the orations and speeches of

Webster and Everett; on Bryant's Thanatopsis, his lines To a Waterfowl, and the Death of the Flowers,

Halleck's Marco Bozzaris, Red Jacket, and Burns; on Drake's American Flag, and Percival's Coral Grove, and

his Genius Sleeping and Genius Waking,and not getting very wide awake, either. These could be depended

upon. A few other copies of verses might be found, but Dwight's "Columbia, Columbia," and Pierpont's Airs

of Palestine, were already effaced, as many of the favorites of our own day and generation must soon be, by

the great wave which the near future will pour over the sands in which they still are legible.

About this time, in the year 1832, came out a small volume entitled "Truth, a Gift for Scribblers," which

made some talk for a while, and is now chiefly valuable as a kind of literary tombstone on which may be read

the names of many whose renown has been buried with their bones. The "London Athenaeum" spoke of it as

having been described as a "tomahawk sort of satire." As the author had been a trapper in Missouri, he was

familiarly acquainted with that weapon and the warfare of its owners. Born in Boston, in 1804, the son of an

army officer, educated at West Point, he came back to his native city about the year 1830. He wrote an article

on Bryant's Poems for the "North American Review," and another on the famous Indian chief, Black Hawk.

In this lastmentioned article he tells this story as the great warrior told it himself. It was an incident of a

"Standing by my father's side, I saw him kill his antagonist and tear the scalp from his head. Fired with valor

and ambition, I rushed furiously upon another, smote him to the earth with my tomahawk, ran my lance

through his body, took off his scalp, and returned in triumph to my father. He said nothing, but looked

This little red story describes very well Spelling's style of literary warfare. His handling of his most

conspicuous victim, Willis, was very much like Black Hawk's way of dealing with the Osage. He

tomahawked him in heroics, ran him through in prose, and scalped him in barbarous epigrams. Bryant and

If the reader wishes to see the bubbles of reputation that were floating, some of them gay with prismatic

colors, half a century ago, he will find in the pages of "Truth" a long catalogue of celebrities he never heard

of. I recognize only three names, of all which are mentioned in the little book, as belonging to persons still

living; but as I have not read the obituaries of all the others, some of them may be still flourishing in spite of

Mr. Spelling's exterminating onslaught. Time dealt as hardly with poor Spelling, who was not without talent

and instruction, as he had dealt with our authors. I think he found shelter at last under a roof which held

numerous inmates, some of whom had seen better and many of whom had known worse days than those

which they were passing within its friendly and not exclusive precincts. Such, at least, was the story I heard

That was the day of Souvenirs, Tokens, Forgetmenots, Bijous, and all that class of showy annuals. Short

stories, slender poems, steel engravings, on a level with the common fashionplates of advertising

establishments, gilt edges, resplendent binding,to manifestations of this sort our lighter literature had very

largely run for some years. The "Scarlet Letter" was an unhinted possibility. The "Voices of the Night " had

not stirred the brooding silence; the Concord seer was still in the lonely desert; most of the contributors to

those yearly volumes, which took up such pretentious positions on the centre table, have shrunk into entire

oblivion, or, at best, hold their place in literature by a scrap or two in some omnivorous collection.

What dreadful work Spelling made among those slight reputations, floating in swollen tenuity on the surface

of the stream, and mirroring each other in reciprocal reflections! Violent, abusive as he was, unjust to any

against whom he happened to have a prejudice, his castigation of the small litterateurs of that day was not

harmful, but rather of use. His attack on Willis very probably did him good; he needed a little discipline, and

though he got it too unsparingly, some cautions came with it which were worth the stripes he had to smart

under. One noble writer Spelling treated with rudeness, probably from some accidental pique, or equally

insignificant reason. I myself, one of the three survivors before referred to, escaped with a lovepat, as the

youngest son of the Muse. Longfellow gets a brief nod of acknowledgment. Bailey, an American writer,

"who made long since a happy snatch at fame," which must have been snatched away from him by envious

time, for I cannot identify him; Thatcher, who died early, leaving one poem, The Last Request, not wholly

unremembered; Miss Hannah F. Gould, a very bright and agreeable writer of light verse,all these are

commended to the keeping of that venerable public carrier, who finds his scythe and hourglass such a load

that he generally drops the burdens committed to his charge, after making a show of paying every possible

It was a good time to open a portfolio. But my old one had boyhood written on every page. A single

passionate outcry when the old warship I had read about in the broadsides that were a part of our kitchen

literature, and in the " Naval Monument," was threatened with demolition; a few verses suggested by the

sight of old Major Melville in his cocked hat and breeches, were the best scraps that came out of that first

Portfolio, which was soon closed that it should not interfere with the duties of a profession authorized to

claim all the time and thought which would have been otherwise expended in filling it.

During a quarter of a century the first Portfolio remained closed for the greater part of the time. Only now and

then it would be taken up and opened, and something drawn from it for a special occasion, more particularly

In the year 1857, towards its close, the "Atlantic Monthly," which I had the honor of naming, was started by

the enterprising firm of Phillips Sampson, under the editorship of Mr. James Russell Lowell. He thought that

I might bring something out of my old Portfolio which would be not unacceptable in the new magazine. I

looked at the poor old receptacle, which, partly from use and partly from neglect, had lost its freshness, and

seemed hardly presentable to the new company expected to welcome the newcomer in the literary world of

Boston, the least provincial of American centres of learning and letters. The gilded covering where the

emblems of hope and aspiration had looked so bright had faded; not wholly, perhaps, but how was the gold

become dim!how was the most fine gold changed! Long devotion to other pursuits had left little time for

literature, and the waifs and strays gathered from the old Portfolio had done little more than keep alive the

memory that such a source of supply was still in existence. I looked at the old Portfolio, and said to myself,

"Too late! too late. This tarnished gold will never brighten, these battered covers will stand no more wear and

In the mean time the nebula of the first quarter of the century had condensed into the constellation of the

middle of the same period. When, a little while after the establishment of the new magazine, the "Saturday

Club" gathered about the long table at "Parker's," such a representation of all that was best in American

literature had never been collected within so small a compass. Most of the Americans whom educated

foreigners cared to seeleaving out of consideration official dignitaries, whose temporary importance makes

them objects of curiositywere seated at that board. But the club did not yet exist, and the "Atlantic

Monthly" was an experiment. There had already been several monthly periodicals, more or less successful

and permanent, among which "Putnam's Magazine" was conspicuous, owing its success largely to the

contributions of that very accomplished and delightful writer, Mr. George William Curtis. That magazine,

after a somewhat prolonged and very honorable existence, had gone where all periodicals go when they die,

into the archives of the deaf, dumb, and blind recording angel whose name is Oblivion. It had so well

deserved to live that its death was a surprise and a source of regret. Could another monthly take its place and

keep it when that, with all its attractions and excellences, had died out, and left a blank in our periodical

This was the experiment which the enterprising publishers ventured upon, and I, who felt myself outside of

the charmed circle drawn around the scholars and poets of Cambridge and Concord, having given myself to

other studies and duties, wondered somewhat when Mr. Lowell insisted upon my becoming a contributor.

And so, yielding to a pressure which I could not understand, and yet found myself unable to resist, I promised

to take a part in the new venture, as an occasional writer in the columns of the new magazine.

That was the way in which the second Portfolio found its way to my table, and was there opened in the

when I risked myself, with many misgivings, in littletried paths of what looked at first like a wilderness, a

selva oscura, where, if I did not meet the lion or the wolf, I should be sure to find the critic, the most

The second Portfolio is closed and laid away. Perhaps it was hardly worth while to provide and open a new

one; but here it lies before me, and I hope I may find something between its covers which will justify me in

coming once more before my old friends. But before I open it I want to claim a little further indulgence.

There is a subject of profound interest to almost every writer, I might say to almost every human being. No

matter what his culture or ignorance, no matter what his pursuit, no matter what his character, the subject I

refer to is one of which he rarely ceases to think, and, if opportunity is offered, to talk. On this he is eloquent,

if on nothing else. The slow of speech becomes fluent; the torpid listener becomes electric with vivacity, and

The sagacious reader knows well what is coming after this prelude. He is accustomed to the phrases with

which the plausible visitor, who has a subscription book in his pocket, prepares his victim for the depressing

disclosure of his real errand. He is not unacquainted with the conversational amenities of the cordial and

interesting stranger, who, having had the misfortune of leaving his carpetbag in the cars, or of having his

pocket picked at the station, finds himself without the means of reaching that distant home where affluence

waits for him with its luxurious welcome, but to whom for the moment the loan of some five and twenty

dollars would be a convenience and a favor for which his heart would ache with gratitude during the brief

I wish to say a few words in my own person relating to some passages in my own history, and more

What can justify one in addressing himself to the general public as if it were his private correspondent? There

are at least three sufficient reasons: first, if he has a story to tell that everybody wants to hear,if be has

been shipwrecked, or has been in a battle, or has witnessed any interesting event, and can tell anything new

about it; secondly, if he can put in fitting words any common experiences not already well told, so that

readers will say, "Why, yes! I have had that sensation, thought, emotion, a hundred times, but I never heard it

spoken of before, and I never saw any mention of it in print;" and thirdly, anything one likes, provided he can

I have no story to tell in this Introduction which can of itself claim any general attention. My first pages relate

the effect of a certain literary experience upon myself,a series of partial metempsychoses of which I have

been the subject. Next follows a brief tribute to the memory of a very dear and renowned friend from whom I

have recently been parted. The rest of the Introduction will be consecrated to the memory of my birthplace.

I have just finished a Memoir, which will appear soon after this page is written, and will have been the

subject of criticism long before it is in the reader's hands. The experience of thinking another man's thoughts

continuously for a long time; of living one's self into another man's life for a month, or a year, or more, is a

very curious one. No matter how much superior to the biographer his subject may be, the man who writes the

life feels himself, in a certain sense, on the level of the person whose life he is writing. One cannot fight over

the battles of Marengo or Austerlitz with Napoleon without feeling as if he himself had a fractional claim to

the victory, so real seems the transfer of his personality into that of the conqueror while he reads. Still more

must this identification of "subject" and "object" take place when one is writing of a person whose studies or

Here are some of my metempsychoses: Ten years ago I wrote what I called A Memorial Outline of a

remarkable student of nature. He was a born observer, and such are far from common. He was also a man of

great enthusiasm and unwearying industry. His quick eye detected what others passed by without notice: the

Indian relic, where another would see only pebbles and fragments; the rare mollusk, or reptile, which his

companion would poke with his cane, never suspecting that there was a prize at the end of it. Getting his

single facts together with marvellous sagacity and longbreathed patience, he arranged them, classified them,

described them, studied them in their relations, and before those around him were aware of it the collector

was an accomplished naturalist. Whenhe died his collections remained, and they still remain, as his record

in the hieratic language of science. In writing this memoir the spirit of his quiet pursuits, the even temper they

bred in him, gained possession of my own mind, so that I seemed to look at nature through his goldbowed

spectacles, and to move about his beautifully ordered museum as if I had myself prepared and arranged its

specimens. I felt wise with his wisdom, fairminded with his calm impartiality; it seemed as if for the time

his placid, observant, inquiring, keensighted nature "slid into my soul," and if I had looked at myself in the

glass I should almost have expected to see the image of the Hersey professor whose life and character I was

A few years hater I lived over the life of another friend in writing a Memoir of which he was the subject. I

saw him, the beautiful, brighteyed boy, with dark, waving hair; the youthful scholar, first at Harvard, then at

Gottingen and Berlin, the friend and companion of Bismarck; the young author, making a dash for renown as

a novelist, and showing the elements which made his failures the promise of success in a larger field of

literary labor; the delving historian, burying his fresh young manhood in the dusty alcoves of silent libraries,

to come forth in the face of Europe and America as one of the leading historians of the time; the diplomatist,

accomplished, of captivating presence and manners, an ardent American, and in the time of trial an

impassioned and eloquent advocate of the cause of freedom; reaching at last the summit of his ambition as

minister at the Court of Saint James. All this I seemed to share with him as I tracked his career from his

birthplace in Dorchester, and the house in Walnut Street where he passed his boyhood, to the palaces of

Vienna and London. And then the cruel blow which struck him from the place he adorned; the great sorrow

that darkened his later years; the invasion of illness, a threat that warned of danger, and after a period of

invalidism, during a part of which I shared his most intimate daily life, the sudden, hardly unwelcome, final

summons. Did not my own consciousness migrate, or seem, at least, to transfer itself into this brilliant life

history, as I traced its glowing record? I, too, seemed to feel the delight of carrying with me, as if they were

my own, the charms of a presence which made its own welcome everywhere. I shared his heroic toils, I

partook of his literary and social triumphs, I was honored by the marks of distinction which gathered about

him, I was wronged by the indignity from which he suffered, mourned with him in his sorrow, and thus, after

I had been living for months with his memory, I felt as if I should carry a part of his being with me so long as

The years passed away, and the influences derived from the companionships I have spoken of had blended

intimately with my own current of being. Then there came to me a new experience in my relations with an

eminent member of the medical profession, whom I met habitually for a long period, and to whose memory I

consecrated a few pages as a prelude to a work of his own, written under very peculiar circumstances. He was

the subject of a slow, torturing, malignant, and almost necessarily fatal disease. Knowing well that the mind

would feed upon itself if it were not supplied with food from without, he determined to write a treatise on a

subject which had greatly interested him, and which would oblige him to bestow much of his time and

thought upon it, if indeed he could hold out to finish the work. During the period while he was engaged in

writing it, his wife, who had seemed in perfect health, died suddenly of pneumonia. Physical suffering,

mental distress, the prospect of death at a near, if uncertain, time always before him, it was hard to conceive a

more terrible strain than that which he had to endure. When, in the hour of his greatest need, his faithful

companion, the wife of many years of happy union, whose hand had smoothed his pillow, whose voice had

consoled and cheered him, was torn from him after a few days of illness, I felt that my, friend's trial was such

that the cry of the man of many afflictions and temptations might well have escaped from his lips: "I was at

ease, but he hath broken me asunder; he hath also taken me by my neck and shaken me to pieces, and set me

up for his mark. His archers compass me round about, he cleaveth my reins asunder, and doth not spare; he

I had dreaded meeting him for the first time after this crushing blow. What a lesson he gave me of patience

under sufferings which the fearful description of the Eastern poet does not picture too vividly! We have been

taught to admire the calm philosophy of Haller, watching his faltering pulse as he lay dying; we have heard

the words of pious resignation said to have been uttered with his last breath by Addison: but here was a trial,

not of hours, or days, or weeks, but of months, even years, of cruel pain, and in the midst of its thick darkness

the light of love, which had burned steadily at his bedside, was suddenly extinguished.

There were times in which the thought would force itself upon my consciousness, How long is the universe to

look upon this dreadful experiment of a malarious planet, with its unmeasurable freight of suffering, its

poisonous atmosphere, so sweet to breathe, so sure to kill in a few scores of years at farthest, and its

heartbreaking woes which make even that brief space of time an eternity? There can be but one answer that

will meet this terrible question, which must arise in every thinking nature that would fain "justify the ways of

has become a reality, and the anthem in which there is no discordant note shall be joined by a voice from

Such was the lesson into which I lived in those sad yet placid years of companionship with my suffering and

sorrowing friend, in retracing which I seemed to find another existence mingled with my own.

And now for many months I have been living in daily relations of intimacy with one who seems nearer to me

since he has left us than while he was here in living form and feature. I did not know how difficult a task I

had undertaken in venturing upon a memoir of a man whom all, or almost all, agree upon as one of the great

lights of the New World, and whom very many regard as an unpredicted Messiah. Never before was I so

forcibly reminded of Carlyle's description of the work of a newspaper editor,that threshing of straw already

thrice beaten by the flails of other laborers in the same field. What could be said that had not been said of

"transcendentalism" and of him who was regarded as its prophet; of the poet whom some admired without

understanding, a few understood, or thought they did, without admiring, and many both understood and

admired,among these there being not a small number who went far beyond admiration, and lost themselves

in devout worship? While one exalted him as "the greatest man that ever lived," another, a friend, famous in

the world of letters, wrote expressly to caution me against the danger of overrating a writer whom he is

After finishing this Memoir, which has but just left my hands, I would gladly have let my brain rest for a

while. The wide range of thought which belonged to the subject of the Memoir, the occasional mysticism and

the frequent tendency toward it, the sweep of imagination and the sparkle of wit which kept his reader's mind

on the stretch, the union of prevailing good sense with exceptional extravagances, the modest audacity of a

nature that showed itself in its naked truthfulness and was not ashamed, the feeling that I was in the company

of a sibylline intelligence which was discounting the promises of the remote future long before they were

due,all this made the task a grave one. But when I found myself amidst the vortices of uncounted, various,

bewildering judgments, Catholic and Protestant, orthodox and liberal, scholarly from under the tree of

knowledge and instinctive from over the potatohill; the passionate enthusiasm of young adorers and the

cool, if not cynical, estimate of hardened critics, all intersecting each other as they whirled, each around its

own centre, I felt that it was indeed very difficult to keep the faculties clear and the judgment unbiassed.

It is a great privilege to have lived so long in the society of such a man. "He nothing common" said, "or

mean." He was always the same pure and highsouled companion. After being with him virtue seemed as

natural to man as its opposite did according to the old theologies. But how to let one's self down from the

high level of such a character to one's own poor standard? I trust that the influence of this long intellectual

and spiritual companionship never absolutely leaves one who has lived in it. It may come to him in the form

of selfreproach that he falls so far short of the superior being who has been so long the object of his

contemplation. But it also carries him at times into the other's personality, so that he finds himself thinking

thoughts that are not his own, using phrases which he has unconsciously borrowed, writing, it may be, as

nearly like his longstudied original as Julio Romano's painting was like Raphael's ; and all this with the

unquestioning conviction that he is talking from his own consciousness in his own natural way. So far as

tones and expressions and habits which belonged to the idiosyncrasy of the original are borrowed by the

student of his life, it is a misfortune for the borrower. But to share the inmost consciousness of a noble

thinker, to scan one's self in the white light of a pure and radiant soul,this is indeed the highest form of

I have written these few memoirs, and I am grateful for all that they have taught me. But let me write no

more. There are but two biographers who can tell the story of a man's or a woman's life. One is the person

himself or herself; the other is the Recording Angel. The autobiographer cannot be trusted to tell the whole

truth, though he may tell nothing but the truth, and the Recording Angel never lets his book go out of his own

hands. As for myself, I would say to my friends, in the Oriental phrase, "Live forever!" Yes, live forever, and

I, at least, shall not have to wrong your memories by my imperfect record and unsatisfying commentary.

In connection with these biographies, or memoirs, more properly, in which I have written of my departed

friends, I hope my readers will indulge me in another personal reminiscence. I have just lost my dear and

honored contemporary of the last century. A hundred years ago this day, December 13, 1784, died the

admirable and ever to be remembered Dr. Samuel Johnson. The year 1709 was made ponderous and

illustrious in English biography by his birth. My own humble advent to the world of protoplasm was in the

year 1809 of the present century. Summer was just ending when those four letters, "son b." were written

under the date of my birth, August 29th. Autumn had just begun when my great precontemporary entered

this unChristian universe and was made a member of the Christian church on the same day, for he was born

Thus there was established a close bond of relationship between the great English scholar and writer and

myself. Year by year, and almost month by month, my life has kept pace in this century with his life in the

last century. I had only to open my Boswell at any time, and I knew just what Johnson at my age, twenty or

fifty or seventy, was thinking and doing; what were his feelings about life; what changes the years had

wrought in his body, his mind, his feelings, his companionships, his reputation. It was for me a kind of unison

between two instruments, both playing that old familiar air, "Life," one a bassoon, if you will, and the

other an oaten pipe, if you care to find an image for it, but still keeping pace with each other until the players

both grew old and gray. At last the thinner thread of sound is heard by itself, and its deep accompaniment

I feel lonely now that my great companion and friend of so many years has left me. I felt more intimately

acquainted with him than I do with many of my living friends. I can hardly remember when I did not know

him. I can see him in his bushy wig, exactly like that of the Reverend Dr. Samuel Cooper (who died in

December, 1783) as Copley painted him,he hangs there on my wall, over the revolving bookcase. His

ample coat, too, I see, with its broad flaps and many buttons and generous cuffs, and beneath it the long, still

more copiously buttoned waistcoat, arching in front of the fine crescentic, almost semilunar Falstaffian

prominence, involving no less than a dozen of the abovementioned buttons, and the strong legs with their

sturdy calves, fitting columns of support to the massive body and solid, capacious brain enthroned over it. I

can hear him with his heavy tread as he comes in to the Club, and a gap is widened to make room for his

portly figure. "A fine day," says Sir Joshua. "Sir," he answers, "it seems propitious, but the atmosphere is

humid and the skies are nebulous," at which the great painter smiles, shifts his trumpet, and takes a pinch of

Dear old massive, deepvoiced dogmatist and hypochondriac of the eighteenth century, how one would like

to sit at some ghastly Club, between you and the bony, "mightymouthed," harshtoned termagant and

dyspeptic of the nineteenth! The growl of the English mastiff and the snarl of the Scotch terrier would make a

duet which would enliven the shores of Lethe. I wish I could find our "spiritualist's" paper in the Portfolio, in

which the two are brought together, but I hardly know what I shall find when it is opened.

Yes, my life is a little less precious to me since I have lost that dear old friend; and when the funeral train

moves to Westminster Abbey next Saturday, for I feel as if this were 1784, and not 1884, I seem to find

Among the events which have rendered the past year memorable to me has been the demolition of that

venerable and interesting old dwellinghouse, precious for its intimate association with the earliest stages of

the war of the Revolution, and sacred to me as my birthplace and the home of my boyhood.

The "Old Gambrelroofed House" exists no longer. I remember saying something, in one of a series of

papers published long ago, about the experience of dying out of a house,of leaving it forever, as the soul

dies out of the body. We may die out of many houses, but the house itself can die but once; and so real is the

life of a house to one who has dwelt in it, more especially the life of the house which held him in dreamy

infancy, in restless boyhood, in passionate youth,so real, I say, is its life, that it seems as if something like

The slaughter of the Old Gambrelroofed House was, I am ready to admit, a case of justifiable domicide. Not

the less was it to be deplored by all who love the memories of the past. With its destruction are obliterated

some of the footprints of the heroes and martyrs who took the first steps in the long and bloody march which

led us through the wilderness to the promised land of independent nationality. Personally, I have a right to

mourn for it as a part of my life gone from me. My private grief for its loss would be a matter for my solitary

digestion, were it not that the experience through which I have just passed is one so familiar to my fellow

countrymen that, in telling my own reflections and feelings, I am repeating those of great numbers of men

It is a great blessing to be born surrounded by a natural horizon. The Old Gambrelroofed House could not

boast an unbroken ring of natural objects encircling it. Northerly it looked upon its own outbuildings and

some unpretending twostory houses which had been its neighbors for a century and more. To the south of it

the square brick dormitories and the belfried hall of the university helped to shut out the distant view. But the

west windows gave a broad outlook across the common, beyond which the historical "Washington elm" and

two companions in line with it, spread their leaves in summer and their networks in winter. And far away rose

the hills that bounded the view, with the glimmer here and there of the white walls or the illuminated

casements of some embowered, halfhidden villa. Eastwardly also, the prospect was, in my earlier

remembrance, widely open, and I have frequently seen the sunlit sails gliding along as if through the level

fields, for no water was visible. So there were broad expanses on two sides at least, for my imagination to

I cannot help thinking that we carry our childhood's horizon with us all our days. Among these western

wooded hills my daydreams built their fairy palaces, and even now, as I look at them from my library

window, across the estuary of the Charles, I find myself in the familiar home of my early visions. The "clouds

of glory" which we trail with us in after life need not be traced to a prenatal state. There is enough to

account for them in that unconsciously remembered period of existence before we have learned the hard

limitations of real life. Those earliest months in which we lived in sensations without words, and ideas not

fettered in sentences, have all the freshness of proofs of an engraving "before the letter." I am very thankful

that the first part of my life was not passed shut in between high walls and treading the unimpressible and

Our university town was very much like the real country, in those days of which I am thinking. There were

plenty of huckleberries and blueberries within half a mile of the house. Blackberries ripened in the fields,

acorns and shagbarks dropped from the trees, squirrels ran among the branches, and not rarely the henhawk

might be seen circling over the barnyard. Still another rural element was not wanting, in the form of that

fardiffused, infragrant effluvium, which, diluted by a good half mile of pure atmosphere, is no longer

odious, nay is positively agreeable, to many who have long known it, though its source and centre has an

unenviable reputation. I need not name the animal whose Parthian warfare terrifies and puts to flight the

mightiest hunter that ever roused the tiger from his jungle or faced the lion of the desert. Strange as it may

seem, an aerial hint of his personality in the far distance always awakens in my mind pleasant remembrances

and tender reflections. A whole neighborhood rises up before me: the barn, with its haymow, where the hens

laid their eggs to hatch, and we boys hid our apples to ripen, both occasionally illustrating the sic vos non

vobis; the shed, where the annual Tragedy of the Pig was acted with a realism that made Salvini's Othello

seem but a pale counterfeit; the rickety old outhouse, with the "cornchamber" which the mice knew so well;

the paved yard, with its open gutter,these and how much else come up at the hint of my faroff friend, who

is my very near enemy. Nothing is more familiar than the power of smell in reviving old memories. There

was that quite different fragrance of the woodhouse, the smell of fresh sawdust. It comes back to me now,

and with it the hiss of the saw; the tumble of the divorced logs which God put together and man has just put

asunder; the coming down of the axe and the hah! that helped it,the straightgrained stick opening at the

first appeal of the implement as if it were a pleasure, and the stick with a knot in the middle of it that mocked

the blows and the hahs! until the beetle and wedge made it listen to reason,there are just such

straightgrained and just such knotty men and women. All this passes through my mind while Biddy, whose

How different distances were in those young days of which I am thinking! From the old house to the old

yellow meetinghouse, where the head of the family preached and the limbs of the family listened, was not

much more than two or three times the width of Commonwealth Avenue. But of a hot summer's afternoon,

after having already heard one sermon, which could not in the nature of things have the charm of novelty of

presentation to the members of the home circle, and the theology of which was not too clear to tender

apprehensions; with three hymns more or less lugubrious, rendered by a villagechoir, got into voice by

many preliminary snuffles and other expiratory efforts, and accompanied by the snort of a huge bassviol

which wallowed through the tune like a hippopotamus, with other exercises of the customary

character,after all this in the forenoon, the afternoon walk to the meetinghouse in the hot sun counted for

as much, in my childish deadreckoning, as from old Israel Porter's in Cambridge to the Exchange

Coffeehouse in Boston did in after years. It takes a good while to measure the radius of the circle that is about

us, for the moon seems at first as near as the watchface. Who knows but that, after a certain number of ages,

the planet we live on may seem to us no bigger than our neighbor Venus appeared when she passed before

the sun a few months ago, looking as if we could take her between our thumb and finger, like a bullet or a

marble? And time, too; how long was it from the serious sunrise to the joyous "sun down" of an

oldfashioned, puritanical, judaical first day of the week, which a pious fraud christened "the Sabbath"? Was

it a fortnight, as we now reckon duration, or only a week? Curious entities, or nonentities, space and tithe?

When you see a metaphysician trying to wash his hands of them and get rid of these accidents, so as to lay his

dry, clean palm on the absolute, does it not remind you of the hopeless task of changing the color of the

blackamoor by a similar proceeding? For space is the fluid in which he is washing, and time is the soap which

he is using up in the process, and he cannot get free from them until he can wash himself in a mental vacuum.

In my reference to the old house in a former paper, published years ago, I said,

"By and by the stony foot of the great University will plant itself on this whole territory, and the private

recollections which clung so tenaciously to the place and its habitations will have died with those who

What strides the great University has taken since those words were written! During all my early years our old

Harvard Alma Mater sat still and lifeless as the colossi in the Egyptian desert. Then all at once, like the statue

in Don Giovanni, she moved from her pedestal. The fall of that "stony foot" has effected a miracle like the

harp that Orpheus played, like the teeth which Cadmus sowed. The plain where the moose and the bear were

wandering while Shakespeare was writing Hamlet, where a few plain dormitories and other needed buildings

were scattered about in my schoolboy days, groans under the weight of the massive edifices which have

sprung up all around them, crowned by the tower of that noble structure which stands in full view before me

For I must be permitted to remind you that I have not yet opened it. I have told you that I have just finished a

long memoir, and that it has cost me no little labor to overcome some of its difficulties,if I have overcome

them, which others must decide. And I feel exactly as honest Dobbin feels when his harness is slipped off

after a long journey with a good deal of uphill work. He wants to rest a little, then to feed a little; then, if

you will turn him loose in the pasture, he wants to roll. I have left my starry and ethereal

companionship,not for a long time, I hope, for it has lifted me above my common self, but for a while.

And now I want, so to speak, to roll in the grass and among the dandelions with the other pachyderms. So I

have kept to the outside of the portfolio as yet, and am disporting myself in reminiscences, and fancies, and

How well I understand the feeling which led the Pisans to load their vessels with earth from the Holy Land,

and fill the area of the Campo Santo with that sacred soil! The old house stood upon about as perverse a little

patch of the planet as ever harbored a halfstarved earthworm. It was as sandy as Sahara and as thirsty as

Tantalus. The rustic aiddecamps of the household used to aver that all fertilizing matters "leached" through

it. I tried to disprove their assertion by gorging it with the best of terrestrial nourishment, until I became

convinced that I was feeding the teaplants of China, and then I gave over the attempt. And yet I did love,

and do love, that arid patch of ground. I wonder if a single flower could not be made to grow in a pot of earth

from that Campo Santo of my childhood! One noble product of nature did not refuse to flourish there,the

tall, stately, beautiful, softhaired, manyjointed, generous maize or Indian corn, which thrives on sand and

defies the blaze of our shrivelling summer. What child but loves to wander in its forest like depths, amidst

the rustling leaves and with the lofty tassels tossing their heads high above him! There are two aspects of the

cornfield which always impress my imagination: the first when it has reached its full growth, and its ordered

ranks look like an army on the march with its plumed and bannered battalions; the second when, after the

battle of the harvest, the girdled stacks stand on the field of slaughter like so many ragged Niobes,say

Once more let us come back to the old house. It was far along in its second century when the edict went forth

The natural death of a house is very much like that of one of its human tenants. The roof is the first part to

show the distinct signs of age. Slates and tiles loosen and at last slide off, and leave bald the boards that

supported them; shingles darken and decay, and soon the garret or the attic lets in the rain and the snow; by

and by the beams sag, the floors warp, the walls crack, the paper peels away, the ceilings scale off and fall,

the windows are crusted with clinging dust, the doors drop from their rusted hinges, the winds come in

without knocking and howl their cruel deathsongs through the empty rooms and passages, and at last there

comes a crash, a great cloud of dust rises, and the home that had been the shelter of generation after

generation finds its grave in its own cellar. Only the chimney remains as its monument. Slowly, little by little,

the patient solvents that find nothing too hard for their chemistry pick out the mortar from between the bricks;

at last a mighty wind roars around it and rushes against it, and the monumental relic crashes down among the

wrecks it has long survived. So dies a human habitation left to natural decay, all that was seen above the

But if this sight is saddening, what is it to see a human dwelling fall by the hand of violence! The ripping off

of the shelter that has kept out a thousand storms, the tearing off of the once ornamental woodwork, the

wrench of the inexorable crowbar, the murderous blows of the axe, the progressive ruin, which ends by

rending all the joints asunder and flinging the tenoned and mortised timbers into heaps that will be sawed and

split to warm some new habitation as firewood,what a brutal act of destruction it seems!

Why should I go over the old house again, having already described it more than ten years ago? Alas! how

many remember anything they read but once, and so long ago as that? How many would find it out if one

should say over in the same words that which he said in the last decade? But there is really no need of telling

the story a second time, for it can be found by those who are curious enough to look it up in a volume of

In order, however, to save any inquisitive reader that trouble, let me remind him that the old house was

General Ward's headquarters at the breaking out of the Revolution; that the plan for fortifying Bunker's Hill

was laid, as commonly believed, in the southeast lower room, the floor of which was covered with dents,

made, it was alleged, by the butts of the soldiers' muskets. In that house, too, General Warren probably

passed the night before the Bunker Hill battle, and over its threshold must the stately figure of Washington

But the house in which one drew his first breath, and where he one day came into the consciousness that he

was a personality, an ego, a little universe with a sky over him all his own, with a persistent identity, with the

terrible responsibility of a separate, independent, inalienable existence,that house does not ask for any

If there is any person in the world to be envied, it is the one who is born to an ancient estate, with a long line

of family traditions and the means in his hands of shaping his mansion and his domain to his own taste,

without losing sight of all the characteristic features which surrounded his earliest years. The American is, for

the most part, a nomad, who pulls down his house as the Tartar pulls up his tentpoles. If I had an ideal life to

His grandfather should be a wise, scholarly, largebrained, large hearted country minister, from whom he

should inherit the temperament that predisposes to cheerfulness and enjoyment, with the finer instincts which

direct life to noble aims and make it rich with the gratification of pure and elevated tastes and the carrying out

of plans for the good of his neighbors and his fellowcreatures. He should, if possible, have been born, at any

rate have passed some of his early years, or a large part of them, under the roof of the good old minister. His

father should be, we will say, a business man in one of our great cities,a generous manipulator of millions,

some of which have adhered to his private fortunes, in spite of his liberal use of his means. His heir, our

ideally placed American, shall take possession of the old house, the home of his earliest memories, and

preserve it sacredly, not exactly like the Santa Casa, but, as nearly as may be, just as he remembers it. He can

add as many acres as he will to the narrow houselot. He can build a grand mansion for himself, if he

chooses, in the not distant neighborhood. But the old house, and all immediately round it, shall be as he

recollects it when be had to stretch his little arm up to reach the doorhandles. Then, having well provided

for his own household, himself included, let him become the providence of the village or the town where be

finds himself during at least a portion of every year. Its schools, its library, its poor,and perhaps the new

clergyman who has succeeded his grandfather's successor may be one of them,all its interests, he shall

make his own. And from this centre his beneficence shall radiate so far that all who hear of his wealth shall

Is not this a pleasing programme? Wealth is a steep hill, which the father climbs slowly and the son often

tumbles down precipitately; but there is a tableland on a level with it, which may be found by those who do

not lose their head in looking down from its sharply cloven summit.Our dangerously rich men can make

themselves hated, held as enemies of the race, or beloved and recognized as its benefactors. The clouds of

discontent are threatening, but if the goldpointed lightningrods are rightly distributed the destructive

element may be drawn off silently and harmlessly. For it cannot be repeated too often that the safety of great

wealth with us lies in obedience to the new version of the Old World axiom, RICHESS oblige.

It is impossible to begin a story which must of necessity tax the powers of belief of readers unacquainted with

the class of facts to which its central point of interest belongs without some words in the nature of

preparation. Readers of Charles Lamb remember that Sarah Battle insisted on a cleanswept hearth before

The narrator wishes to sweep the hearth, as it were, in these opening pages, before sitting down to tell his

story. He does not intend to frighten the reader away by prolix explanation, but he does mean to warn him

against hasty judgments when facts are related which are not within the range of everyday experience. Did

he ever see the Siamese twins, or any pair like them? Probably not, yet he feels sure that Chang and Eng

really existed; and if he has taken the trouble to inquire, he has satisfied himself that similar cases have been

recorded by credible witnesses, though at long intervals and in countries far apart from each other.

This is the first sweep of the brush, to clear the hearth of the skepticism and incredulity which must be got out

of the way before we can begin to tell and to listen in peace with ourselves and each other.

One more stroke of the brush is needed before the stage will be ready for the chief characters and the leading

circumstances to which the reader's attention is invited. If the principal personages made their entrance at

once, the reader would have to create for himself the whole scenery of their surrounding conditions. In point

of fact, no matter how a story is begun, many of its readers have already shaped its chief actors out of any

hint the author may have dropped, and provided from their own resources a locality and a set of outward

conditions to environ these imagined personalities. These are all to be brushed away, and the actual

surroundings of the subject of the narrative represented as they were, at the risk of detaining the reader a little

while from the events most likely to interest him. The choicest egg that ever was laid was not so big as the

nest that held it. If a story were so interesting that a maiden would rather hear it than listen to the praise of her

own beauty, or a poet would rather read it than recite his own verses, still it would have to be wrapped in

It may not be easy to find the exact locality referred to in this narrative by looking into the first gazetteer that

is at hand. Recent experiences have shown that it is unsafe to be too exact in designating places and the

people who live in them. There are, it may be added, so many advertisements disguised under the form of

stories and other literary productions that one naturally desires to avoid the suspicion of being employed by

the enterprising proprietors of this or that celebrated resort to use his gifts for their especial benefit. There are

no doubt many persons who remember the old sign and the old tavern and its four chief personages presently

to be mentioned. It is to be hoped that they will not furnish the public with a key to this narrative, and perhaps

bring trouble to the writer of it, as has happened to other authors. If the real names are a little altered, it need

not interfere with the important facts relating to those who bear them. It might not be safe to tell a damaging

story about John or James Smythe; but if the slight change is made of spelling the name Smith, the Smythes

would never think of bringing an action, as if the allusion related to any of them. The same gulf of family

distinction separates the Thompsons with a p from the Thomsons without that letter.

There are few pleasanter places in the Northern States for a summer residence than that known from the first

period of its settlement by the name of Arrowhead Village. The Indians had found it out, as the relics they left

behind them abundantly testified. The commonest of these were those chipped stones which are the medals of

barbarism, and from Which the place took its name,the heads of arrows, of various sizes, material, and

patterns: some small enough for killing fish and little birds, some large enough for such game as the moose

and the bear, to say nothing of the hostile Indian and the white settler; some of flint, now and then one of

white quartz, and others of variously colored jasper. The Indians must have lived here for many generations,

and it must have been a kind of factory village of the stone age,which lasted up to near the present time, if

we may judge from the fact that many of these relics are met with close to the surface of the ground.

No wonder they found this a pleasant residence, for it is today one of the most attractive of all summer

resorts; so inviting, indeed, that those who know it do not like to say too much about it, lest the swarms of

tourists should make it unendurable to those who love it for itself, and not as a centre of fashionable display

There is the lake, in the first place,Cedar Lake,about five miles long, and from half a mile to a mile and

a half wide, stretching from north to south. Near the northern extremity are the buildings of Stoughton

University, a flourishing young college with an ambitious name, but well equipped and promising, the

grounds of which reach the water. At the southern end of the lake are the edifices of the Corinna Institute, a

favorite school for young ladies, where large numbers of the daughters of America are fitted, so far as

education can do it, for all stations in life, from camping out with a husband at the mines in Nevada to acting

Midway between the two extremities, on the eastern shore of the lake, is a valley between two hills, which

come down to the very edge of the lake, leaving only room enough for a road between their base and the

water. This valley, half a mile in width, has been long settled, and here for a century or more has stood the

old Anchor Tavern. A famous place it was so long as its sign swung at the side of the road: famous for its

landlord, portly, paternal, whose welcome to a guest that looked worthy of the attention was like that of a

parent to a returning prodigal, and whose parting words were almost as good as a marriage benediction;

famous for its landlady, ample in person, motherly, seeing to the whole household with her own eyes,

mistress of all culinary secrets that Northern kitchens are most proud of; famous also for its ancient servant,

as city people would call her, help, as she was called in the tavern and would have called herself,the

unchanging, seemingly immortal Miranda, who cared for the guests as if she were their nursing mother, and

pressed the specially favorite delicacies on their attention as a connoisseur calls the wandering eyes of an

amateur to the beauties of a picture. Who that has ever been at the old Anchor Tavern forgets Miranda's

Nor would it be just to memory to forget that other notable and noted member of the household,the

unsleeping, unresting, omnipresent Pushee, ready for everybody and everything, everywhere within the limits

of the establishment at all hours of the day and night. He fed, nobody could say accurately when or where.

There were rumors of a "bunk," in which he lay down with his clothes on, but he seemed to be always wide

awake, and at the service of as many guest, at once as if there had been half a dozen of him.

The landlord of the Anchor Tavern had taken down his sign. He had had the house thoroughly renovated and

furnished it anew, and kept it open in summer for a few boarders. It happened more than once that the

summer boarders were so much pleased with the place that they stayed on through the autumn, and some of

them through the winter. The attractions of the village were really remarkable. Boating in summer, and

skating in winter; iceboats, too, which the wild ducks could hardly keep up with; fishing, for which the lake

was renowned; varied and beautiful walks through the valley and up the hillsides; houses sheltered from the

north and northeasterly winds, and refreshed in the hot summer days by the breeze which came over the

water,all this made the frame for a pleasing picture of rest and happiness. But there was a great deal more

than this. There was a fine library in the little village, presented and richly endowed by a wealthy native of

the place. There was a small permanent population of a superior character to that of an everyday country

town; there was a pretty little Episcopal church, with a goodhearted rector, broad enough for the Bishop of

the diocese to be a little afraid of, and hospitable to all outsiders, of whom, in the summer season, there were

always some who wanted a place of worship to keep their religion from dying out during the heathen months,

while the shepherds of the flocks to which they belonged were away from their empty folds.

What most helped to keep the place alive all through the year was the frequent coming together of the

members of a certain literary association. Some time before the tavern took down its sign the landlord had

built a hall, where many a ball had been held, to which the young folks of all the country round had resorted.

It was still sometimes used for similar occasions, but it was especially notable as being the place of meeting

This association, the name of which might be invidiously interpreted as signifying that its members knew

everything, had no such pretensions, but, as its Constitution said very plainly and modestly, held itself open

to accept knowledge on any and all subjects from such as had knowledge to impart. Its President was the

rector of the little chapel, a man who, in spite of the ThirtyNine Articles, could stand fire from the

widestmouthed heretical blunderbuss without flinching or losing his temper. The hall of the old Anchor

Tavern was a convenient place of meeting for the students and instructors of the University and the Institute.

Sometimes in boatloads, sometimes in carriageloads, sometimes in processions of skaters, they came to the

These meetings had grown to be occasions of great interest. It was customary to have papers written by

members of the Society, for the most part, but now and then by friends of the members, sometimes by the

students of the College or the Institute, and in rarer instances by anonymous personages, whose papers,

having been looked over and discussed by the Committee appointed for that purpose, were thought worth

listening to. The variety of topics considered was very great. The young ladies of the village and the Institute

had their favorite subjects, the young gentlemen a different set of topics, and the occasional outside

contributors their own; so that one who happened to be admitted to a meeting never knew whether he was

going to hear an account of recent arctic discoveries, or an essay on the freedom of the will, or a

Of late there had been a tendency to discuss the questions relating to the true status and the legitimate social

functions of woman. The most conflicting views were held on the subject. Many of the young ladies and

some of the University students were strong in defence of all the "woman's rights" doctrines. Some of these

young people were extreme in their views. They had read about Semiramis and Boadicea and Queen

Elizabeth, until they were ready, if they could get the chance, to vote for a woman as President of the United

States or as General of the United States Army. They were even disposed to assert the physical equality of

woman to man, on the strength of the rather questionable history of the Amazons, and especially of the story,

believed to be authentic, of the female bodyguard of the King of Dahomey,females frightful enough to

Miss Lurida Vincent, gold medallist of her year at the Corinna Institute, was the leader of these advocates of

virile womanhood. It was rather singular that she should have elected to be the apostle of this extreme

doctrine, for she was herself far better equipped with brain than muscles. In fact, she was a largeheaded,

largeeyed, longeyelashed, slendernecked, slightly developed young woman; looking almost like a child at

an age when many of the girls had reached their full stature and proportions. In her studies she was so far in

advance of her different classes that there was always a wide gap between her and the second scholar. So

fatal to all rivalry had she proved herself that she passed under the school name of The Terror. She learned so

easily that she undervalued her own extraordinary gifts, and felt the deepest admiration for those of her

friends endowed with faculties of an entirely different and almost opposite nature. After sitting at her desk

until her head was hot and her feet were like ice, she would go and look at the blooming young girls

exercising in the gymnasium of the school, and feel as if she would give all her knowledge, all her

mathematics and strange tongues and history, all those accomplishments that made her the encyclopaedia of

every class she belonged to, if she could go through the series of difficult and graceful exercises in which she

One among them, especially, was the object of her admiration, as she was of all who knew her exceptional

powers in the line for which nature had specially organized her. All the physical perfections which Miss

Lurida had missed had been united in Miss Euthymia Tower, whose school name was The Wonder. Though

of full womanly stature, there were several taller girls of her age. While all her contours and all her

movements betrayed a fine muscular development, there was no lack of proportion, and her finely shaped

hands and feet showed that her organization was one of those carefully finished masterpieces of nature which

sculptors are always in search of, and find it hard to detect among the imperfect products of the living

This girl of eighteen was more famous than she cared to be for her performances in the gymnasium. She

commonly contented herself with the same exercises that her companions were accustomed to. Only her

dumbbells, with which she exercised easily and gracefully, were too heavy for most of the girls to do more

with than lift them from the floor. She was fond of daring feats on the trapeze, and had to be checked in her

indulgence in them. The Professor of gymnastics at the University came over to the Institute now and then,

and it was a source of great excitement to watch some of the athletic exercises in which the young lady

showed her remarkable muscular strength and skill in managing herself in the accomplishment of feats which

looked impossible at first sight. How often The Terror had thought to herself that she would gladly give up all

her knowledge of Greek and the differential and integral calculus if she could only perform the least of those

feats which were mere play to The Wonder! Miss Euthymia was not behind the rest in her attainments in

classical or mathematical knowledge, and she was one of the very best students in the outdoor

branches,botany, mineralogy, sketching from nature, to be found among the scholars of the Institute.

There was an eightoared boat rowed by a crew of the young ladies, of which Miss Euthymia was the captain

and pulled the bow oar. Poor little Lurida could not pull an oar, but on great occasions, when there were

many boats out, she was wanted as coxswain, being a mere featherweight, and quickwitted enough to

There was also an eightoared boat belonging to the University, and rowed by a picked crew of stalwart

young fellows. The bow oar and captain of the University crew was a powerful young man, who, like the

captain of the girls' boat, was a noted gymnast. He had had one or two quiet trials with Miss Euthymia, in

which, according to the ultras of the woman's rights party, he had not vindicated the superiority of his sex in

the way which might have been expected. Indeed, it was claimed that he let a cannonball drop when he

ought to have caught it, and it was not disputed that he had been ingloriously knocked over by a sandbag

projected by the strong arms of the young maiden. This was of course a story that was widely told and

laughingly listened to, and the captain of the University crew had become a little sensitive on the subject.

When there was a talk, therefore, about a race between the champion boats of the two institutions there was

immense excitement in both of them, as well as among the members of the Pansophian Society and all the

There were many objections to be overcome. Some thought it unladylike for the young maidens to take part

in a competition which must attract many lookerson, and which it seemed to them very hoidenish to venture

upon. Some said it was a shame to let a crew of girls try their strength against an equal number of powerful

young men. These objections were offset by the advocates of the race by the following arguments. They

maintained that it was no more hoidenish to row a boat than it was to take a part in the calisthenic exercises,

and that the girls had nothing to do with the young men's boat, except to keep as much ahead of it as possible.

As to strength, the woman's righters believed that, weight for weight, their crew was as strong as the other,

and of course due allowance would be made for the difference of weight and all other accidental hindrances.

It was time to test the boasted superiority of masculine muscle. Here was a chance. If the girls beat, the whole

country would know it, and after that female suffrage would be only a question of time. Such was the

conclusion, from rather insufficient premises, it must be confessed; but if nature does nothing per

saltum,by jumps,as the old adage has it, youth is very apt to take long leaps from a fact to a possible

sequel or consequence. So it had come about that a contest between the two boatcrews was looked forward

to with an interest almost equal to that with which the combat between the Horatii and Curiatii was regarded.

The terms had been at last arranged between the two crews, after cautious protocols and many diplomatic

discussions. It was so novel in its character that it naturally took a good deal of time to adjust it in such a way

as to be fair to both parties. The course must not be too long for the lighter and weaker crew, for the staying

power of the young persons who made it up could not be safely reckoned upon. A certain advantage must be

allowed them at the start, and this was a delicate matter to settle. The weather was another important

consideration. June would be early enough, in all probability, and if the lake should be tolerably smooth the

grand affair might come off some time in that month. Any roughness of the water would be unfavorable to

the weaker crew. The rowingcourse was on the eastern side of the lake, the startingpoint being opposite the

Anchor Tavern; from that three quarters of a mile to the south, where the turningstake was fixed, so that the

whole course of one mile and a half would bring the boats back to their startingpoint.

The race was to be between the Algonquin, eightoared boat with outriggers, rowed by young men, students

of Stoughton University, and the Atalanta, also eightoared and outrigger boat, by young ladies from the

Corinna Institute. Their boat was three inches wider than the other, for various sufficient reasons, one of

which was to make it a little less likely to go over and throw its crew into the water, which was a sound

precaution, though all the girls could swim, and one at least, the bow oar, was a famous swimmer, who had

pulled a drowning man out of the water after a hard struggle to keep him from carrying her down with him.

Though the coming trial had not been advertised in the papers, so as to draw together a rabble of betting men

and illconditioned lookers on, there was a considerable gathering, made up chiefly of the villagers and the

students of the two institutions. Among them were a few who were disposed to add to their interest in the trial

by small wagers. The bets were rather in favor of the "Quins," as the University boat was commonly called,

except where the natural sympathy of the young ladies or the gallantry of some of the young men led them to

risk their gloves or cigars, or whatever it might be, on the Atalantas. The elements of judgment were these:

average weight of the Algonquins one hundred and sixtyfive pounds; average weight of the Atalantas, one

hundred and fortyeight pounds; skill in practice about equal; advantage of the narrow boat equal to three

lengths; whole distance allowed the Atalantas eight lengths,a long stretch to be made up in a mile and a

The 10th of June was a delicious summer day, rather warm, but still and bright. The water was smooth, and

the crews were in the best possible condition. All was expectation, and for some time nothing but

expectation. No boatrace or regatta ever began at the time appointed for the start. Somebody breaks an oar,

or somebody fails to appear in season, or something is the matter with a seat or an outrigger; or if there is no

such excuse, the crew of one or both or all the boats to take part in the race must paddle about to get

themselves ready for work, to the infinite weariness of all the spectators, who naturally ask why all this

getting ready is not attended to beforehand. The Algonquins wore plain gray flannel suits and white caps. The

young ladies were all in dark blue dresses, touched up with a red ribbon here and there, and wore light straw

hats. The little coxswain of the Atalanta was the last to step on board. As she took her place she carefully

deposited at her feet a white handkerchief wrapped about something or other, perhaps a sponge, in case the

At last the Algonquin shot out from the little nook where she lay, long, narrow, shining, swift as a pickerel

when he darts from the reedy shore. It was a beautiful sight to see the eight young fellows in their

closefitting suits, their brown muscular arms bare, bending their backs for the stroke and recovering, as if

"The gals can't stan' it agin them fellers," said the old blacksmith from the village.

"You wait till the gals get agoin'," said the carpenter, who had often worked in the gymnasium of the

Corinna Institute, and knew something of their muscular accomplishments. "Y' ought to see 'em climb ropes,

and swing dumbbells, and pull in them rowin'machines. Ask Jake there whether they can't row a mild in

Jake was by profession a fisherman, and a freshwater fisherman in a country village is inspectorgeneral of

all that goes on outof doors, being a lazy, wandering sort of fellow, whose study of the habits and habitats

of fishes gives him a kind of shrewdness of observation, just as dealing in horses is an education of certain

faculties, and breeds a race of men peculiarly cunning, suspicious, wary, and wide awake, with a rhetoric of

Jake made his usual preliminary signal, and delivered himself to the following effect:

"Wahl, I don' know jest what to say. I've seed 'em both often enough when they was practisin', an' I tell ye

the' wa'n't no slouch abaout neither on 'em. But them bats is allfired long, 'n' eight on 'em stretched in a

straight line eendways makes a consid'able piece aout 'f a mile 'n' a haaf. I'd bate on them gals if it wa'n't that

them fellers is naterally longer winded, as the gals 'll find aout by the time they git raound the stake 'n' over

The freshwater fisherman had expressed the prevailing belief that the young ladies were overmatched. Still

there were not wanting those who thought the advantage allowed the "Lantas," as they called the Corinna

boatcrew, was too great, and that it would be impossible for the "Quins" to make it up and go by them.

The Algonquins rowed up and down a few times before the spectators. They appeared in perfect training,

neither too fat nor too fine, mettlesome as colts, steady as draughthorses, deepbreathed as oxen, disciplined

to work together as symmetrically as a single sculler pulls his pair of oars. The fisherman offered to make his

Five minutes passed, and all eyes were strained to the south, looking for the Atalanta. A clump of trees hid

the edge of the lake along which the Corinna's boat was stealing towards the startingpoint. Presently the

long shell swept into view, with its blooming rowers, who, with their ample dresses, seemed to fill it almost

as full as Raphael fills his skiff on the edge of the Lake of Galilee. But how steadily the Atalanta came

on!no rocking, no splashing, no apparent strain; the bow oar turning to look ahead every now and then,

and watching her course, which seemed to be straight as an arrow, the beat of the strokes as true and regular

as the pulse of the healthiest rower among them all. And if the sight of the other boat and its crew was

beautiful, how lovely was the look of this! Eight young girls,young ladies, for those who prefer that more

dignified and less attractive expression,all in the flush of youth, all in vigorous health; every muscle taught

its duty; each rower alert, not to be a tenth of a second out of time, or let her oar dally with the water so as to

lose an ounce of its propelling virtue; every eye kindling with the hope of victory. Each of the boats was

cheered as it came in sight, but the cheers for the Atalanta were naturally the loudest, as the gallantry of one

"Take your places!" shouted the umpire, five minutes before the half hour. The two boats felt their way

slowly and cautiously to their positions, which had been determined by careful measurement. After a little

backing and filling they got into line, at the proper distance from each other, and sat motionless, their bodies

bent forward, their arms outstretched, their oars in the water, waiting for the word.

Away sprang the Atalanta, and far behind her leaped the Algonquin, her oars bending like so many long

"A stern chase is a long chase," especially when one craft is a great distance behind the other. It looked as if it

would be impossible for the rear boat to overcome the odds against it. Of course the Algonquin kept gaining,

but could it possibly gain enough? That was the question. As the boats got farther and farther away, it became

more and more difficult to determine what change there was in the interval between them. But when they

came to rounding the stake it was easier to guess at the amount of space which had been gained. It was clear

that something like half the distance, four lengths, as nearly as could be estimated, had been made up in

rowing the first three quarters of a mile. Could the Algonquins do a little better than this in the second half of

The boats had turned the stake, and were coming in rapidly. Every minute the University boat was getting

"Pull away, Lantas!" screamed the girls, who were crowding down to the edge of the water.

Nearer,nearer,the rear boat is pressing the other more and more closely,a few more strokes, and they

will be even, for there is but one length between them, and thirty rods will carry them to the line. It looks

desperate for the Atalantas. The bow oar of the Algonquin turns his head. He sees the little coxswain leaning

forward at every stroke, as if her trivial weight were of such mighty consequence, but a few ounces might

turn the scale of victory. As he turned he got a glimpse of the stroke oar of the Atalanta. What a flash of

loveliness it was! Her face was like the reddest of June roses, with the heat and the strain and the passion of

expected triumph. The upper button of her closefitting flannel suit had strangled her as her bosom heaved

with exertion, and it had given way before the fierce clutch she made at it. The bow oar was a staunch and

steady rower, but he was human. The blade of his oar lingered in the water; a little more and he would have

The boat, which seemed as if it had all the life and nervousness of a Derby threeyearold, felt the slight

check, and all her men bent more vigorously to their oars. The Atalantas saw the movement, and made a spurt

to keep their lead and gain upon it if they could. It was of no use. The strong arms of the young men were too

much for the young maidens; only a few lengths remained to be rowed, and they would certainly pass the

The little coxswain saw that it was all up with the girls' crew if she could not save them by some strategic

she whispered to herself,for The Terror remembered her Virgil as she did everything else she ever studied.

As she stooped, she lifted the handkerchief at her feet, and took from it a flaming bouquet. "Look!" she cried,

and flung it just forward of the track of the Algonquin. The captain of the University boat turned his head,

and there was the lovely vision which had a moment before bewitched him. The owner of all that loveliness

must, he thought, have flung the bouquet. It was a challenge: how could he be such a coward as to decline

He was sure he could win the race now, and he would sweep past the line in triumph with the great bunch of

flowers at the stem of his boat, proud as Van Tromp in the British channel with the broom at his masthead.

He turned the boat's head a little by backing water. He came up with the floating flowers, and near enough to

reach them. He stooped and snatched them up, with the loss perhaps of a second in all,no more. He felt

How can one tell the story of the finish in coldblooded preterites? Are we not there ourselves? Are not our

muscles straining with those of these sixteen young creatures, full of hot, fresh blood, their nerves all tingling

like so many tightstrained harpstrings, all their life concentrating itself in this passionate moment of

supreme effort? No! We are seeing, not telling about what somebody else once saw!

Crack goes the oar of the Atalanta's captain, and up flash its splintered fragments, as the stem of her boat

Hooraw for the Lantas! Hooraw for the Girls! Hooraw for the Institoot! shout a hundred voices.

"Hurrah for woman's rights and female suffrage!" pipes the small voice of The Terror, and there is loud

She had not studied her classical dictionary and her mythology for nothing. "I have paid off one old score,"

It was that one second lost in snatching up the bouquet which gave the race to the Atalantas.

While the two boats were racing, other boats with lookerson in them were rowing or sailing in the

neighborhood of the racecourse. The scene on the water was a gay one, for the young people in the boats

were, many of them, acquainted with each other. There was a good deal of lively talk until the race became

too exciting. Then many fell silent, until, as the boats neared the line, and still more as they crossed it, the

shouts burst forth which showed how a cramp of attention finds its natural relief in a fit of convulsive

But far away, on the other side of the lake, a birchbark canoe was to be seen, in which sat a young man, who

paddled it skillfully and swiftly. It was evident enough that he was watching the race intently, but the

spectators could see little more than that. One of them, however, who sat upon the stand, had a powerful

spyglass, and could distinguish his motions very minutely and exactly. It was seen by this curious observer

that the young man had an operaglass with him, which he used a good deal at intervals. The spectator

thought he kept it directed to the girls' boat, chiefly, if not exclusively. He thought also that the operaglass

was more particularly pointed towards the bow of the boat, and came to the natural conclusion that the bow

oar, Miss Euthymia Tower, captain of the Atalantas, "The Wonder" of the Corinna Institute, was the

"That's just what we should like to know," answered the old landlord's wife. "He and his man boarded with us

when they first came, but we could never find out anything about him only just his name and his ways of

living. His name is Kirkwood, Maurice Kirkwood, Esq., it used to come on his letters. As for his ways of

living, he was the solitariest human being that I ever came across. His man carried his meals up to him. He

used to stay in his room pretty much all day, but at night he would be off, walking, or riding on horseback, or

paddling about in the lake, sometimes till nigh morning. There's something very strange about that Mr.

Kirkwood. But there don't seem to be any harm in him. Only nobody can guess what his business is. They got

up a story about him at one time. What do you think? They said he was a counterfeiter! And so they went one

night to his room, when he was out, and that man of his was away too, and they carried keys, and opened

pretty much everything; and they foundwell, they found just nothing at all except writings and

letters,letters from places in America and in England, and some with Italian postmarks: that was all. Since

that time the sheriff and his folks have let him alone and minded their own business. He was a

gentleman,anybody ought to have known that; and anybody that knew about his nice ways of living and

behaving, and knew the kind of wear he had for his underclothing, might have known it. I could have told

those officers that they had better not bother him. I know the ways of real gentlemen and real ladies, and I

know those fellows in store clothes that look a little too fine,outside. Wait till washingday comes!"

The good lady had her own standards for testing humanity, and they were not wholly unworthy of

consideration; they were quite as much to be relied on as the judgments of the travelling phrenologist, who

sent his accomplice on before him to study out the principal personages in the village, and in the light of

these revelations interpreted the bumps, with very little regard to Gall and Spurzheim, or any other

Even with the small amount of information obtained by the search among his papers and effects, the gossips

of the village had constructed several distinct histories for the mysterious stranger. He was an agent of a great

publishing house; a leading contributor to several important periodicals; the author of that anonymously

published novel which had made so much talk; the poet of a large clothing establishment; a spy of the Italian,

some said the Russian, some said the British, Government; a proscribed refugee from some country where he

had been plotting; a schoolmaster without a school, a minister without a pulpit, an actor without an

engagement; in short, there was no end to the perfectly senseless stories that were told about him, from that

which made him out an escaped convict to the whispered suggestion that he was the eccentric heir to a great

The one unquestionable fact was that of his extraordinary seclusion. Nobody in the village, no student in the

University, knew his history. No young lady in the Corinna Institute had ever had a word from him.

Sometimes, as the boats of the University or the Institute were returning at dusk, their rowers would see the

canoe stealing into the shadows as they drew near it. Sometimes on a moonlight night, when a party of the

young ladies were out upon the lake, they would see the white canoe gliding ghostlike in the distance. And

it had happened more than once that when a boat's crew had been out with singers among them, while they

were in the midst of a song, the white canoe would suddenly appear and rest upon the water,not very near

them, but within hearing distance,and so remain until the singing was over, when it would steal away and

Naturally enough, there was intense curiosity about this young man. The landlady had told her story, which

explained nothing. There was nobody to be questioned about him except his servant, an Italian, whose name

Mr. Paul would have seemed the easiest person in the world to worm a secret out of. He was goodnatured,

childlike as a Heathen Chinee, talked freely with everybody in such English as he had at command, knew all

the little people of the village, and was followed round by them partly from his personal attraction for them,

and partly because he was apt to have a stick of candy or a handful of peanuts or other desirable luxury in his

pocket for any of his little friends he met with. He had that wholesome, happy look, so uncommon in our arid

countrymen,a look hardly to be found except where figs and oranges ripen in the open air. A kindly

climate to grow up in, a religion which takes your money and gives you a stamped ticket good at Saint Peter's

box office, a roomy chest and a good pair of lungs in it, an honest digestive apparatus, a lively temperament,

a cheerful acceptance of the place in life assigned to one by nature and circumstance,these are conditions

under which life may be quite comfortable to endure, and certainly is very pleasant to contemplate. All these

conditions were united in Paolo. He was the easiest; pleasantest creature to talk with that one could ask for a

companion. His southern vivacity, his amusing English, his simplicity and openness, made him friends

It seemed as if it would be a very simple matter to get the history of his master out of this guileless and

unsophisticated being. He had been tried by all the village experts. The rector had put a number of

wellstudied careless questions, which failed of their purpose. The old librarian of the town library had taken

note of all the books he carried to his master, and asked about his studies and pursuits. Paolo found it hard to

understand his English, apparently, and answered in the most irrelevant way. The leading gossip of the

His master's way of life was peculiar,in fact, eccentric. He had hired rooms in an oldfashioned

threestory house. He had two rooms in the second and third stories of this old wooden building: his study in

the second, his sleepingroom in the one above it. Paolo lived in the basement, where he had all the

conveniences for cooking, and played the part of chef for his master and himself. This was only a part of his

duty, for he was a manofallwork, purveyor, steward, chambermaid,as universal in his services for one

It so happened that Paolo took a severe cold one winter's day, and had such threatening symptoms that he

asked the baker, when he called, to send the village physician to see him. In the course of his visit the doctor

"Signor Kirkwood well,molto bene," said Paolo. "Why does he keep out of sight as he does?" asked the

Whether Paolo was off his guard with the doctor, whether he revealed it to him as to a father confessor, or

whether he thought it time that the reason of his master's seclusion should be known, the doctor did not feel

sure. At any rate, Paolo was not disposed to make any further revelations. Una antipatia,an

antipathy,that was all the doctor learned. He thought the matter over, and the more he reflected the more

he was puzzled. What could an antipathy be that made a young man a recluse! Was it a dread of blue sky and

open air, of the smell of flowers, or some electrical impression to which be was unnaturally sensitive?

Dr. Butts carried these questions home with him. His wife was a sensible, discreet woman, whom he could

trust with many professional secrets. He told her of Paolo's revelation, and talked it over with her in the light

of his experience and her own; for she had known some curious cases of constitutional likes and aversions.

Mrs. Butts buried the information in the grave of her memory, where it lay for nearly a week. At the end of

that time it emerged in a confidential whisper to her favorite sisterinlaw, a perfectly safe person.

Twentyfour hours later the story was all over the village that Maurice Kirkwood was the subject of a

strange, mysterious, unheardof antipathy to something, nobody knew what; and the whole neighborhood

What is a country village without its mysterious personage? Few are now living who can remember the

advent of the handsome young man who was the mystery of our great university town "sixty years since,"

long enough ago for a romance to grow out of a narrative, as Waverley may remind us. The writer of this

narrative remembers him well, and is not sure that he has not told the strange story in some form or other to

the last generation, or to the one before the last. No matter: if he has told it they have forgotten it,that is, if

they have ever read it; and whether they have or have not, the story is singular enough to justify running the

This young man, with a curious name of Scandinavian origin, appeared unheralded in the town, as it was

then, of Cantabridge. He wanted employment, and soon found it in the shape of manual labor, which he

undertook and performed cheerfully. But his whole appearance showed plainly enough that he was bred to

occupations of a very different nature, if, in deed, he had been accustomed to any kind of toil for his living.

His aspect was that of one of gentle birth. His hands were not those of a laborer, and his features were

delicate and refined, as well as of remarkable beauty. Who he was, where he came from, why he had come to

Cantabridge, was never clearly explained. He was alone, without friends, except among the acquaintances he

had made in his new residence. If he had any correspondents, they were not known to the neighborhood

where he was living. But if he had neither friends nor correspondents, there was some reason for believing

that he had enemies. Strange circumstances occurred which connected themselves with him in an ominous

and unaccountable way. A threatening letter was slipped under the door of a house where he was visiting. He

had a sudden attack of illness, which was thought to look very much like the effect of poison. At one time he

disappeared, and was found wandering, bewildered, in a town many miles from that where he was residing.

When questioned how he came there; he told a coherent story that he had been got, under some pretext, or in

some not incredible way, into a boat, from which, at a certain landingplace, he had escaped and fled for his

Whoever his enemies may have been,if they really existed,he did not fall a victim to their plots, so far

Various interpretations were put upon his story. Conjectures were as abundant as they were in the case of

Kaspar Hauser. That he was of good family seemed probable; that he was of distinguished birth, not

impossible; that he was the dangerous rival of a candidate for a greatly coveted position in one of the northern

states of Europe was a favorite speculation of some of the more romantic young persons. There was no

dramatic ending to this story,at least none is remembered by the present writer.

"He left a name," like the royal Swede, of whose lineage he may have been for aught that the village people

knew, but not a name at which anybody "grew pale;" for he had swindled no one, and broken no woman's

heart with false vows. Possibly some withered cheeks may flush faintly as they recall the handsome young

man who came before the Cantabridge maidens fully equipped for a hero of romance when the century was in

The writer has been reminded of the handsome Swede by the incidents attending the advent of the unknown

It was a very insufficient and unsatisfactory reason to assign for the young man's solitary habits that he was

the subject of an antipathy. For what do we understand by that word? When a young lady screams at the sight

of a spider, we accept her explanation that she has a natural antipathy to the creature. When a person

expresses a repugnance to some wholesome article of food, agreeable to most people, we are satisfied if he

gives the same reason. And so of various odors, which are pleasing to some persons and repulsive to others.

We do not pretend to go behind the fact. It is an individual, and it may be a family, peculiarity. Even between

different personalities there is an instinctive elective dislike as well as an elective affinity. We are not bound

to give a reason why Dr. Fell is odious to us any more than the prisoner who peremptorily challenges a

juryman is bound to say why he does it; it is enough that he "does not like his looks."

There was nothing strange, then, that Maurice Kirkwood should have his special antipathy; a great many

other people have odd likes and dislikes. But it was a very curious thing that this antipathy should be alleged

as the reason for his singular mode of life. All sorts of explanations were suggested, not one of them in the

least satisfactory, but serving to keep the curiosity of inquirers active until they were superseded by a new

theory. One story was that Maurice had a great fear of dogs. It grew at last to a connected narrative, in which

a fright in childhood from a rabid mongrel was said to have given him such a sensitiveness to the near

This hypothesis had some plausibility. No other creature would be so likely to trouble a person who had an

antipathy to it. Dogs are very apt to make the acquaintance of strangers, in a free and easy way. They are met

with everywhere,in one's daily walk, at the thresholds of the doors one enters, in the gentleman's library,

on the rug of my lady's sittingroom and on the cushion of her carriage. It is true that there are few persons

who have an instinctive repugnance to this "friend of man." But what if this socalled antipathy were only a

fear, a terror, which borrowed the less unmanly name? It was a fair question, if, indeed, the curiosity of the

public had a right to ask any questions at all about a harmless individual who gave no offence, and seemed

entitled to the right of choosing his way of living to suit himself, without being submitted to espionage.

There was no positive evidence bearing on the point as yet. But one of the village people had a large

Newfoundland dog, of a very sociable disposition, with which he determined to test the question. He watched

for the time when Maurice should leave his house for the woods or the lake, and started with his dog to meet

him. The animal walked up to the stranger in a very sociable fashion, and began making his acquaintance,

after the usual manner of wellbred dogs; that is, with the courtesies and blandishments by which the canine

Chesterfield is distinguished from the illconditioned cur. Maurice patted him in a friendly way, and spoke to

him as one who was used to the fellowship of such companions. That idle question and foolish story were

A much more common antipathy is that which is entertained with regard to cats. This has never been

explained. It is not mere aversion to the look of the creature, or to any sensible quality known to the common

observer. The cat is pleasing in aspect, graceful in movement, nice in personal habits, and of amiable

disposition. No cause of offence is obvious, and yet there are many persons who cannot abide the presence of

the most innocent little kitten. They can tell, in some mysterious way, that there is a cat in the room when

they can neither see nor hear the creature. Whether it is an electrical or quasimagnetic phenomenon, or

whatever it may be, of the fact of this strange influence there are too many well authenticated instances to

allow its being questioned. But suppose Maurice Kirkwood to be the subject of this antipathy in its extremest

degree, it would in no manner account for the isolation to which he had condemned himself. He might shun

the firesides of the old women whose tabbies were purring by their footstools, but these worthy dames do not

These two antipathies having been disposed of, a new suggestion was started, and was talked over with a

curious sort of half belief, very much as ghost stories are told in a circle of moderately instructed and

inquiring persons. This was that Maurice was endowed with the unenviable gift of the evil eye. He was in

frequent communication with Italy, as his letters showed, and had recently been residing in that country, as

was learned from Paolo. Now everybody knows that the evil eye is not rarely met with in Italy. Everybody

who has ever read Mr. Story's "Roba di Roma" knows what a terrible power it is which the owner of the evil

eye exercises. It can blight and destroy whatever it falls upon. No person's life or limb is safe if the jettatura,

the withering glance of the deadly organ, falls upon him. It must be observed that this malign effect may

follow a look from the holiest personages, that is, if we may assume that a monk is such as a matter of course.

Certainly we have a right to take it for granted that the late Pope, Pius Ninth, was an eminently holy man, and

yet he had the name of dispensing the mystic and dreaded jettatura as well as his blessing. If Maurice

Kirkwood carried that destructive influence, so that his clear blue eyes were more to be feared than the

fascinations of the deadliest serpent, it could easily be understood why he kept his look away from all around

No sensible person in Arrowhead Village really believed in the evil eye, but it served the purpose of a

temporary hypothesis, as do many suppositions which we take as a nucleus for our observations without

putting any real confidence in them. It was just suited to the romantic notions of the more flighty persons in

the village, who had meddled more or less with Spiritualism, and were ready for any new fancy, if it were

The riddle of the young stranger's peculiarity did not seem likely to find any very speedy solution. Every new

suggestion furnished talk for the gossips of the village and the babble of the many tongues in the two

educational institutions. Naturally, the discussion was liveliest among the young ladies. Here is an extract

from a letter of one of these young ladies, who, having received at her birth the everpleasing name of Mary,

saw fit to have herself called Mollie in the catalogue and in her letters. The old postmaster of the town to

which her letter was directed took it up to stamp, and read on the envelope the direction to "Miss Lulu

Pinrow." He brought the stamp down with a vicious emphasis, coming very near blotting out the nursery

name, instead of cancelling the postagestamp. "Lulu!" he exclaimed. "I should like to know if that great

strapping girl isn't out of her cradle yet! I suppose Miss Louisa will think that belongs to her, but I saw her

christened and I heard the name the minister gave her, and it was n't 'Lulu,' or any such baby nonsense." And

so saying, he gave it a fling to the box marked P, as if it burned his fingers. Why a grownup young woman

allowed herself to be cheapened in the way so many of them do by the use of names which become them as

well as the frock of a tenyearold schoolgirl would become a graduate of the Corinna Institute, the old

The letter thus scornfully treated runs over with a young girl's written loquacity:

"Oh, Lulu, there is such a sensation as you never saw or heard of 'in all your born days,' as mamma used to

say. He has been at the village for some time, but lately we have hadoh, the weirdest stories about him!

'The Mysterious Stranger is the name some give him, but we girls call him the Sachem, because he paddles

about in an Indian canoe. If I should tell you all the things that are said about him I should use up all my

paper ten times over. He has never made a visit to the Institute, and none of the girls have ever spoken to him,

but the people at the village say he is very, very handsome. We are dying to get a look at him, of

coursethough there is a horrid story about himthat he has the evil eye did you ever hear about the evil

eye? If a person who is born with it looks at you, you die, or something happensawfulis n't it?

"The rector says he never goes to church, but then you know a good many of the people that pass the summer

at the village never dothey think their religion must have vacationsthat's what I've heard they

sayvacations, just like other hard workit ought not to be hard work, I'm sure, but I suppose they feel so

about it. Should you feel afraid to have him look at you? Some of the girls say they would n't have him for

the whole world, but I shouldn't mind itespecially if I had on my eyeglasses. Do you suppose if there is

anything in the evil eye it would go through glass? I don't believe it. Do you think blue eyeglasses would be

better than common ones? Don't laugh at methey tell such weird stories! The TerrorLurida Vincent, you

knowmakes fun of all they say about it, but then she 'knows everything and doesn't believe anything,' the

girls sayWell, I should be awfully scared, I know, if anybody that had the evil eye should look at

mebutoh, I don't knowbut if it was a young man and if he was veryvery goodlookingI

thinkperhaps I would run the riskbut don't tell anybody I said any such horrid thingand burn this

It is to be hoped that no reader will doubt the genuineness of this letter. There are not quite so many "awfuls"

and "awfullys" as one expects to find in young ladies' letters, but there are two "weirds," which may be

considered a fair allowance. How it happened that "jolly" did not show itself can hardly be accounted for; no

Here is an extract from another letter. This was from one of the students of Stoughton University to a friend

whose name as it was written on the envelope was Mr. Frank Mayfield. The old postmaster who found fault

with Miss "Lulu's" designation would probably have quarrelled with this address, if it had come under his

eye. "Frank" is a very pretty, pleasantsounding name, and it is not strange that many persons use it in

common conversation all their days when speaking of a friend. Were they really christened by that name, any

of these numerous Franks? Perhaps they were, and if so there is nothing to be said. But if not, was the

baptismal name Francis or Franklin? The mind is apt to fasten in a very perverse and unpleasant way upon

this question, which too often there is no possible way of settling. One might hope, if he outlived the bearer

of the appellation, to get at the fact; but since even gravestones have learned to use the names belonging to

childhood and infancy in their solemn record, the generation which docks its Christian names in such an

unChristian way will bequeath whole churchyards full of riddles to posterity. How it will puzzle and distress

the historians and antiquarians of a coming generation to settle what was the real name of Dan and Bert and

Billy, which last is legible on a white marble slab, raised in memory of a grown person, in a certain burial

But in the mean time we are forgetting the letter directed to Mr. Frank Mayfield.

"I have made the acquaintance of 'The Mysterious Stranger'! It happened by a queer sort of accident, which

came pretty near relieving you of the duty of replying to this letter. I was out in my little boat, which carries a

sail too big for her, as I know and ought to have remembered. One of those fitful flaws of wind to which the

lake is so liable struck the sail suddenly, and over went my boat. My feet got tangled in the sheet somehow,

and I could not get free. I had hard work to keep my head above water, and I struggled desperately to escape

from my toils; for if the boat were to go down I should be dragged down with her. I thought of a good many

things in the course of some four or five minutes, I can tell you, and I got a lesson about time better than

anything Kant and all the rest of them have to say of it. After I had been there about an ordinary lifetime, I

saw a white canoe making toward me, and I knew that our shy young gentleman was coming to help me, and

that we should become acquainted without an introduction. So it was, sure enough. He saw what the trouble

was, managed to disentangle my feet without drowning me in the process or upsetting his little flimsy craft,

and, as I was somewhat tired with my struggle, took me in tow and carried me to the landing where he kept

his canoe. I can't say that there is anything odd about his manners or his way of talk. I judge him to be a

native of one of our Northern States,perhaps a New Englander. He has lived abroad during some parts of

his life. He is not an artist, as it was at one time thought he might be. He is a goodlooking fellow, well

developed, manly in appearance, with nothing to excite special remark unless it be a certain look of anxiety

or apprehension which comes over him from time to time. You remember our old friend Squire B., whose

companion was killed by lightning when he was standing close to him. You know the look he had whenever

anything like a thundercloud came up in the sky. Well, I should say there was a look like that came over this

Maurice Kirkwood's face every now and then. I noticed that he looked round once or twice as if to see

whether some object or other was in sight. There was a little rustling in the grass as if of footsteps, and this

look came over his features. A rabbit ran by us, and I watched to see if he showed any sign of that antipathy

"If you ask me what my opinion is about this Maurice Kirkwood, I think he is eccentric in his habit of life,

but not what they call a 'crank' exactly. He talked well enough about such matters as we spoke of,the lake,

the scenery in general, the climate. I asked him to come over and take a look at the college. He did n't

promise, but I should not be surprised if I should get him over there some day. I asked him why he did n't go

to the Pansophian meetings. He did n't give any reason, but he shook his head in a very peculiar way, as much

"On the whole, I think it is nothing more than the same feeling of dread of human society, or dislike for it,

which under the name of religion used to drive men into caves and deserts. What a pity that Protestantism

does not make special provision for all the freaks of individual character! If we had a little more faith and a

few more caverns, or convenient places for making them, we should have hermits in these holes as thick as

but I mean alone,all alone. Don't you ever feel as if you should like to have been a pillarsaint in the days

when faith was as strong as lye (spelt with a y), instead of being as weak as dishwater? (Jerry is looking

over my shoulder, and says this pun is too bad to send, and a disgrace to the Universitybut never mind.) I

often feel as if I should like to roost on a pillar a hundred feet high,yes, and have it soaped from top to

bottom. Wouldn't it be fun to look down at the bores and the duns? Let us get up a pillarroosters'

association. (Jerrystill looking over says there is an absurd contradiction in the idea.)

The reader will not get much information out of this lively young fellow's letter, but he may get a little. It is

something to know that the mysterious resident of Arrowhead Village did not look nor talk like a crazy

person; that he was of agreeable aspect and address, helpful when occasion offered, and had nothing about

him, so far as yet appeared, to prevent his being an acceptable member of society.

Of course the people in the village could never be contented without learning everything there was to be

learned about their visitor. All the city papers were examined for advertisements. If a cashier had absconded,

if a broker had disappeared, if a railroad president was missing, some of the old stories would wake up and

get a fresh currency, until some new circumstance gave rise to a new hypothesis. Unconscious of all these

inquiries and fictions, Maurice Kirkwood lived on in his inoffensive and unexplained solitude, and seemed

likely to remain an unsolved enigma. The "Sachem" of the boating girls became the "Sphinx " of the village

ramblers, and it was agreed on all hands that Egypt did not hold any hieroglyphics harder to make out than

It was a curious, if it was not a suspicious, circumstance that a young man, seemingly in good health, of

comely aspect, looking as if made for companionship, should keep himself apart from all the world around

him in a place where there was a general feeling of good neighborhood and a pleasant social atmosphere. The

Public Library was a central point which brought people together. The Pansophian Society did a great deal to

make them acquainted with each other for many of the meetings were open to outside visitors, and the

subjects discussed in the meetings furnished the material for conversation in their intervals. A card of

invitation had been sent by the Secretary to Maurice, in answer to which Paolo carried back a polite note of

regret. The paper had a narrow rim of black, implying apparently some loss of relative or friend, but not any

very recent and crushing bereavement. This refusal to come to the meetings of the society was only what was

expected. It was proper to ask him, but his declining the invitation showed that he did not wish for attentions

or courtesies. There was nothing further to be done to bring him out of his shell, and seemingly nothing more

In this state of things it was natural that all which had been previously gathered by the few who had seen or

known anything of him should be worked over again. When there is no new ore to be dug, the old refuse

heaps are looked over for what may still be found in them. The landlord of the Anchor Tavern, now the head

of the boarding house, talked about Maurice, as everybody in the village did at one time or another. He had

The young gentleman was good pay,so they all said. Sometimes he paid in gold; sometimes in fresh bills,

just out of the bank. He trusted his man, Mr. Paul, with the money to pay his bills. He knew something about

horses; he showed that by the way he handled that colt,the one that threw the hostler and broke his

collarbone. "Mr. Paul come down to the stable. 'Let me see that cult you all 'fraid of,' says he. 'My master,

he ride any hoss,' says Paul. 'You saddle him,' says be; and so they did, and Paul, he led that colt the

kickinest and ugliest young beast you ever see in your lifeup to the place where his master, as he calls him,

and he lives. What does that Kirkwood do but clap on a couple of long spurs and jump on to that colt's back,

and off the beast goes, tail up, heels flying, standing up on end, trying all sorts of capers, and at last going it

full run for a couple of miles, till he'd got about enough of it. That colt went off as ferce as a wildcat, and

come back as quiet as a cosset lamb. A man that pays his bills reg'lar, in good money, and knows how to

handle a hoss is three quarters of a gentleman, if he is n't a whole one,and most likely he is a whole one."

So spake the patriarch of the Anchor Tavern. His wife had already given her favorable opinion of her former

guest. She now added something to her description as a sequel to her husband's remarks.

"I call him," she said, "about as likely a young gentleman as ever I clapped my eyes on. He is rather slighter

than I like to see a young man of his age; if he was my sun, I should like to see him a little more fleshy. I

don't believe he weighs more than a hundred and thirty or forty pounds. Did y' ever look at those eyes of his,

M'randy? Just as blue as succory flowers. I do like those light complected young fellows, with their fresh

cheeks and their curly hair; somehow, curly hair doos set off anybody's face. He is n't any foreigner, for all

that he talks Italian with that Mr. Paul that's his help. He looks just like our kind of folks, the college kind,

that's brought up among books, and is handling 'em, and reading of 'em, and making of 'em, as like as not, all

their lives. All that you say about his riding the mad colt is just what I should think he was up to, for he's as

spry as a squirrel; you ought to see him go over that fence, as I did once. I don't believe there's any harm in

that young gentleman,I don't care what people say. I suppose he likes this place just as other people like it,

and cares more for walking in the woods and paddling about in the water than he doos for company; and if he

"I never see him but two or three times," Miranda said. "I should like to have waited on him, and got a chance

to look stiddy at him when he was eatin' his vittles. That 's the time to watch folks, when their jaws get

agoin' and their eyes are on what's afore 'em. Do you remember that chap the sheriff come and took away

when we kep' tahvern? Eleven year ago it was, come nex' Thanksgivin' time. A mighty grand gentleman from

the City he set up for. I watched him, and I watched him. Says I, I don't believe you're no gentleman, says I.

He eat with his knife, and that ain't the way city folks eats. Every time I handed him anything I looked

closeter and closeter. Them whiskers never grooved on them cheeks, says I to myself. Them 's paper collars,

says I. That dimun in your shirt front hain't got no life to it, says I. I don't believe it's nothiri' more 'n a bit o'

winderglass. So says I to Pushee, 'You jes' step out and get the sheriff to come in and take a look at that chap.'

I knowed he was after a fellah. He come right in, an' he goes up to the chap. 'Why, Bill,' says he, 'I'm mighty

glad to see yer. We've had the hole in the wall you got out of mended, and I want your company to come and

look at the old place,' says he, and he pulls out a couple of handcuffs and has 'em on his wrists in less than no

time, an' off they goes together! I know one thing about that young gentleman, anyhow,there ain't no better

judge of what's good eatin' than he is. I cooked him some maccaroni myself one day, and he sends word to

me by that Mr. Paul, 'Tell Miss Miranda,' says he, I that the Pope o' Rome don't have no better cooked

maccaroni than what she sent up to me yesterday,' says he. I don' know much about the Pope o' Rome except

that he's a Roman Catholic, and I don' know who cooks for him, whether it's a man or a woman; but when it

comes to a dish o' maccaroni, I ain't afeard of their shefs, as they call 'em,them he cooks that can't serve

up a cold potater without callin' it by some name nobody can say after 'em. But this gentleman knows good

The house in which Maurice Kirkwood had taken up his abode was not a very inviting one. It was old, and

had been left in a somewhat dilapidated and disorderly condition by the tenants who had lived in the part

which Maurice now occupied. They had piled their packing boxes in the cellar, with broken chairs, broken

china, and other household wrecks. A cracked mirror lay on an old straw mattress, the contents of which were

airing themselves through wide rips and rents. A lame clotheshorse was saddled with an old rug fringed

with a ragged border, out of which all the colors had been completely trodden. No woman would have gone

into a house in such a condition. But the young man did not trouble himself much about such matters, and

was satisfied when the rooms which were to be occupied by himself and his servant were made decent and

tolerably comfortable. During the fine season all this was not of much consequence, and if Maurice made up

his mind to stay through the winter he would have his choice among many more eligible places.

The summer vacation of the Corinna Institute had now arrived, and the young ladies had scattered to their

homes. Among the graduates of the year were Miss Euthymia Tower and Miss Lurida Vincent, who had now

returned to their homes in Arrowhead Village. They were both glad to rest after the long final examinations

and the exercises of the closing day, in which each of them had borne a conspicuous part. It was a pleasant

life they led in the village, which was lively enough at this season. Walking, riding, driving, boating, visits to

the Library, meetings of the Pansophian Society, hops, and picnics made the time pass very cheerfully, and

soon showed their restoring influences. The Terror's large eyes did not wear the dull, glazed look by which

they had too often betrayed the after effects of over excitement of the strong and active brain behind them.

The Wonder gained a fresher bloom, and looked full enough of life to radiate vitality into a statue of ice.

They had a boat of their own, in which they passed many delightful hours on the lake, rowing, drifting,

The Library was one of the chief centres of the fixed population, and visited often by strangers. The old

Librarian was a peculiar character, as these officials are apt to be. They have a curious kind of knowledge,

sometimes immense in its way. They know the backs of books, their titlepages, their popularity or want of

it, the class of readers who call for particular works, the value of different editions, and a good deal besides.

Their minds catch up hints from all manner of works on all kinds of subjects. They will give a visitor a fact

and a reference which they are surprised to find they remember and which the visitor might have hunted for a

year. Every good librarian, every private bookowner, who has grown into his library, finds he has a bunch

of nerves going to every bookcase, a branch to every shelf, and a twig to every book. These nerves get very

sensitive in old librarians, sometimes, and they do not like to have a volume meddled with any more than

they would like to have their naked eyes handled. They come to feel at last that the books of a great collection

are a part, not merely of their own property, though they are only the agents for their distribution, but that

they are, as it were, outlying portions of their own organization. The old Librarian was getting a miserly

feeling about his books, as he called them. Fortunately, he had a young lady for his assistant, who was never

so happy as when she could find the work any visitor wanted and put it in his hands,or her hands, for there

were more readers among the wives anddaughters, and especially among the aunts, than there were among

their male relatives. The old Librarian knew the books, but the books seemed to know the young assistant; so

Maurice had a good many volumes of his own,a great many, according to Paolo's account; but Paolo's

ideas were limited, and a few well filled shelves seemed a very large collection to him. His master

frequently sent him to the Public Library for books, which somewhat enlarged his notions; still, the Signor

was a very learned man, he was certain, and some of his white books (bound in vellum and richly gilt) were

There was no little curiosity to know what were the books that Maurice was in the habit of taking out, and the

Librarian's record was carefully searched by some of the more inquisitive investigators. The list proved to be

a long and varied one. It would imply a considerable knowledge of modern languages and of the classics; a

liking for mathematics and physics, especially all that related to electricity and magnetism; a fancy for the

occult sciences, if there is any propriety in coupling these words; and a whim for odd and obsolete literature,

like the Parthenologia of Fortunius Licetus, the quaint treatise 'De Sternutatione," books about alchemy, and

witchcraft, apparitions, and modern works relating to Spiritualism. With these were the titles of novels and

now and then of books of poems; but it may be taken for granted that his own shelves held the works he was

most frequently in the habit of reading or consulting. Not much was to be made out of this beyond the fact of

wide scholarship,more or less deep it might be, but at any rate implying no small mental activity; for he

appeared to read very rapidly, at any rate exchanged the books he had taken out for new ones very frequently.

To judge by his reading, he was a man of letters. But so widereading a man of letters must have an object, a

literary purpose in all probability. Why should not he be writing a novel? Not a novel of society, assuredly,

for a hermit is not the person to report the talk and manners of a world which he has nothing to do with.

Novelists and lawyers understand the art of "cramming" better than any other persons in the world. Why

should not this young man be working up the picturesque in this romantic region to serve as a background for

some story with magic, perhaps, and mysticism, and hints borrowed from science, and all sorts of

outoftheway knowledge which his odd and miscellaneous selection of books furnished him? That might

The funds of the Public Library of Arrowhead Village allowed the managers to purchase many books out of

the common range of reading. The two learned people of the village were the rector and the doctor. These

two worthies kept up the old controversy between the professions, which grows out of the fact that one

studies nature from below upwards, and the other from above downwards. The rector maintained that

physicians contracted a squint which turns their eyes inwardly, while the muscles which roll their eyes

upward become palsied. The doctor retorted that theological students developed a third eyelid,the

nictitating membrane, which is so well known in birds, and which serves to shut out, not all light, but all the

light they do not want. Their little skirmishes did not prevent their being very good friends, who had a

common interest in many things and many persons. Both were on the committee which had the care of the

Library and attended to the purchase of books. Each was scholar enough to know the wants of scholars, and

disposed to trust the judgment of the other as to what books should be purchased,. Consequently, the

clergyman secured the addition to the Library of a good many old theological works which the physician

would have called brimstone divinity, and held to be just the thing to kindle fires with,good books still for

those who know how to use them, oftentimes as awful examples of the extreme of disorganization the whole

moral system may undergo when a barbarous belief has strangled the natural human instincts. The physician,

in the mean time, acquired for the collection some of those medical works where one may find recorded

various rare and almost incredible cases, which may not have their like for a whole century, and then repeat

themselves, so as to give a new lease of credibility to stories which had come to be looked upon as fables.

Both the clergyman and the physician took a very natural interest in the young man who had come to reside

in their neighborhood for the present, perhaps for a long period. The rector would have been glad to see him

at church. He would have liked more especially to have had him hear his sermon on the Duties of Young Men

to Society. The doctor, meanwhile, was meditating on the duties of society to young men, and wishing that he

could gain the young man's confidence, so as to help him out of any false habit of mind or any delusion to

Dr. Butts was the leading medical practitioner, not only of Arrowhead Village, but of all the surrounding

region. He was an excellent specimen of the country doctor, selfreliant, selfsacrificing, working a great

deal harder for his living than most of those who call themselves the laboring classes,as if none but those

whose hands were hardened by the use of farming or mechanical implements had any work to do. He had that

sagacity without which learning is a mere incumbrance, and he had also a fair share of that learning without

which sagacity is like a traveller with a good horse, but who cannot read the directions on the guideboards.

He was not a man to be taken in by names. He well knew that oftentimes very innocent sounding words

mean very grave disorders; that all, degrees of disease and disorder are frequently confounded under the same

term; that "run down" may stand for a fatigue of mind or body from which a week or a month of rest will

completely restore the overworked patient, or an advanced stage of a mortal illness; that "seedy" may

signify the morning's state of feeling, after an evening's over indulgence, which calls for a glass of

sodawater and a cup of coffee, or a dangerous malady which will pack off the subject of it, at the shortest

notice, to the south of France. He knew too well that what is spoken lightly of as a "nervous disturbance" may

imply that the whole machinery of life is in a deranged condition, and that every individual organ would

groan aloud if it had any other language than the terrible inarticulate one of pain by which to communicate

When, therefore, Dr. Butts heard the word antipatia he did not smile, and say to himself that this was an idle

whim, a foolish fancy, which the young man had got into his head. Neither was he satisfied to set down

everything to the account of insanity, plausible as that supposition might seem. He was prepared to believe in

some exceptional, perhaps anomalous, form of exaggerated sensibility, relating to what class of objects he

could not at present conjecture, but which was as vital to the subject of it as the insulating arrangement to a

piece of electrical machinery. With this feeling he began to look into tho history of antipathies as recorded in

The holder of the Portfolio asks leave to close it for a brief interval. He wishes to say a few words to his

readers, before offering them some verses which have no connection with the narrative now in progress.

If one could have before him a set of photographs taken annually, representing the same person as he or she

appeared for thirty or forty or fifty years, it would be interesting to watch the gradual changes of aspect from

the age of twenty, or even of thirty or forty, to that of threescore and ten. The face might be an uninteresting

one; still, as sharing the inevitable changes wrought by time, it would be worth looking at as it passed

through the curve of life, the vital parabola, which betrays itself in the symbolic changes of the features.

An inscription is the same thing, whether we read it on slatestone, or granite, or marble. To watch the lights

and shades, the reliefs and hollows, of a countenance through a lifetime, or a large part of it, by the aid of a

continuous series of photographs would not only be curious; it would teach us much more about the laws of

The same kind of interest, without any assumption of merit to be found in them, I would claim for a series of

annual poems, beginning in middle life and continued to what many of my correspondents are pleased to

remind meas if I required to have the fact brought to my knowledgeis no longer youth. Here is the latest

of a series of annual poems read during the last thirtyfour years. There seems to have been one interruption,

but there may have been other poems not recorded or remembered. This, the latest poem of the series, was

listened to by the scanty remnant of what was a large and brilliant circle of classmates and friends when the

first of the long series was read before them, then in the flush of ardent manhood:

In thinking the whole matter over, Dr. Butts felt convinced that, with care and patience and watching his

opportunity, he should get at the secret, which so far bad yielded nothing but a single word. It might be asked

why he was so anxious to learn what, from all appearances, the young stranger was unwilling to explain. He

may have been to some extent infected by the general curiosity of the persons around him, in which good

Mrs. Butts shared, and which she had helped to intensify by revealing the word dropped by Paolo. But this

was not really his chief motive. He could not look upon this young man, living a life of unwholesome

solitude, without a natural desire to do all that his science and his knowledge of human nature could help him

to do towards bringing him into healthy relations with the world about him. Still, he would not intrude upon

him in any way. He would only make certain general investigations, which might prove serviceable in case

circumstances should give him the right to counsel the young man as to his course of life. The first thing to be

done was to study systematically the whole subject of antipathies. Then, if any further occasion offered itself,

he would be ready to take advantage of it. The resources of the Public Library of the place and his own

private collection were put in requisition to furnish him the singular and widely scattered facts of which he

It is not every reader who will care to follow Dr. Butts in his study of the natural history of antipathies. The

stories told about them are, however, very curious; and if some of them may be questioned, there is no doubt

that many of the strangest are true, and consequently take away from the improbability of others which we

But in the first place, what do we mean by an antipathy? It is an aversion to some object, which may vary in

degree from mere dislike to mortal horror. What the cause of this aversion is we cannot say. It acts sometimes

through the senses, sometimes through the imagination, sometimes through an unknown channel. The

relations which exist between the human being and all that surrounds him vary in consequence of some

adjustment peculiar to each individual. The brute fact is expressed in the phrase "One man's meat is another

In studying the history of antipathies the doctor began with those referable to the sense of taste, which are

among the most common. In any collection of a hundred persons there will be found those who cannot make

use of certain articles of food generally acceptable. This may be from the disgust they occasion or the effects

they have been found to produce. Every one knows individuals who cannot venture on honey, or cheese, or

veal, with impunity. Carlyle, for example, complains of having veal set before him,a meat he could not

endure. There is a whole family connection in New England, and that a very famous one, to many of whose

members, in different generations, all the products of the dairy are the subjects of a congenital antipathy.

Montaigne says there are persons who dread the smell of apples more than they would dread being exposed

to a fire of musketry. The readers of the charming story "A Week in a French CountryHouse" will

remember poor Monsieur Jacque's piteous cry in the night: "Ursula, art thou asleep? Oh, Ursula, thou

sleepest, but I cannot close my eyes. Dearest Ursula, there is such a dreadful smell! Oh, Ursula, it is such a

smell! I do so wish thou couldst smell it! Goodnight, my angel!Dearest! I have found them! They are

apples! "The smell of roses, of peonies, of lilies, has been known to cause faintness. The sight of various

objects has had singular effects on some persons. A boar's head was a favorite dish at the table of great

people in Marshal d'Albret's time; yet he used to faint at the sight of one. It is not uncommon to meet with

persons who faint at the sight of blood. One of the most inveterately pugnacious of Dr. Butts's collegemates

confessed that he had this infirmity. Stranger and far more awkward than this is the case mentioned in an

ancient collection, where the subject of the antipathy fainted at the sight of any object of a red color. There

are sounds, also, which have strange effects on some individuals. Among the obnoxious noises are the

crumpling of silk stuffs, the sound of sweeping, the croaking of frogs. The effects in different cases have been

spasms, a sense of strangling, profuse sweating,all showing a profound disturbance of the nervous system.

All these effects were produced by impressions on the organs of sense, seemingly by direct agency on certain

nerve centres. But there is another series of cases in which the imagination plays a larger part in the

phenomena. Two notable examples are afforded in the lives of two very distinguished personages.

Peter the Great was frightened, when an infant, by falling from a bridge into the water. Long afterward, when

he had reached manhood, this hardy and resolute man was so affected by the sound of wheels rattling over a

bridge that he had to discipline himself by listening to the sound, in spite of his dread of it, in order to

overcome his antipathy. The story told by Abbe Boileau of Pascal is very similar to that related of Peter. As

he was driving in his coach and four over the bridge at Neuilly, his horses took fright and ran away, and the

leaders broke from their harness and sprang into the river, leaving the wheelhorses and the carriage on the

bridge. Ever after this fright it is said that Pascal had the terrifying sense that he was just on the edge of an

What strange early impression was it which led a certain lady always to shriek aloud if she ventured to enter a

church, as it is recorded? The old and simple way of accounting for it would be the scriptural one, that it was

an unclean spirit who dwelt in her, and who, when she entered the holy place and brought her spiritual tenant

into the presence of the sacred symbols, "cried with a loud voice, and came out of" her. A very singular case,

the doctor himself had recorded, and which the reader may accept as authentic, is the following: At the head

of the doctor's front stairs stood, and still stands, a tall clock, of early date and stately presence. A

middleaged visitor, noticing it as he entered the front door, remarked that he should feel a great

unwillingness to pass that clock. He could not go near one of those tall timepieces without a profound

agitation, which he dreaded to undergo. This very singular idiosyncrasy he attributed to a fright when he was

She was standing near one of those tall clocks, when the cord which supported one of its heavy leaden

weights broke, and the weight came crashing down to the bottom of the case. Some effect must have been

produced upon the pulpy nerve centres from which they never recovered. Why should not this happen, when

we know that a sudden mental shock may be the cause of insanity? The doctor remembered the verse of "The

This is only poetry, it is true, but the poet borrowed the description from nature, and the records of our

More than this, hardly a year passes that we do not read of some person, a child commonly, killed outright by

terror,scared to death, literally. Sad cases they often are, in which, nothing but a surprise being intended,

the shock has instantly arrested the movements on which life depends. If a mere instantaneous impression can

produce effects like these, such an impression might of course be followed by consequences less fatal or

formidable, but yet serious in their nature. If here and there a person is killed, as if by lightning, by a sudden

startling sight or sound, there must be more numerous cases in which a terrible shock is produced by similar

apparently insignificant causes,a shock which falls short of overthrowing the reason and does not destroy

This point, then, was settled in the mind of Dr. Butts, namely, that, as a violent emotion caused by a sudden

shock can kill or craze a human being, there is no perversion of the faculties, no prejudice, no change of taste

or temper, no eccentricity, no antipathy, which such a cause may not rationally account for. He would not be

surprised, he said to himself, to find that some early alarm, like that which was experienced by Peter the

Great or that which happened to Pascal, had broken some spring in this young man's nature, or so changed its

mode of action as to account for the exceptional remoteness of his way of life. But how could any

conceivable antipathy be so comprehensive as to keep a young man aloof from all the world, and make a

hermit of him? He did not hate the human race; that was clear enough. He treated Paolo with great kindness,

and the Italian was evidently much attached to him. He had talked naturally and pleasantly with the young

man he had helped out of his dangerous situation when his boat was upset. Dr. Butts heard that he had once

made a short visit to this young man, at his rooms in the University. It was not misanthropy, therefore, which

kept him solitary. What could be broad enough to cover the facts of the case? Nothing that the doctor could

think of, unless it were some color, the sight of which acted on him as it did on the individual before

mentioned, who could not look at anything red without fainting. Suppose this were a case of the same

antipathy. How very careful it would make the subject of it as to where he went and with whom he consorted!

Time and patience would be pretty sure to bring out new developments, and physicians, of all men in the

Such were some of the crude facts as Dr. Butts found them in books or gathered them from his own

experience. He soon discovered that the story had got about the village that Maurice Kirkwood was the

victim of an "antipathy," whatever that word might mean in the vocabulary of the people of the place. If he

suspected the channel through which it had reached the little community, and, spreading from that centre, the

country round, he did not see fit to make out of his suspicions a domestic casus belli. Paolo might have

mentioned it to others as well as to himself. Maurice might have told some friend, who had divulged it. But to

accuse Mrs. Butts, good Mrs. Butts, of petit treason in telling one of her husband's professional secrets was

too serious a matter to be thought of. He would be a little more careful, he promised himself, the next time, at

any rate; for he had to concede, in spite of every wish to be charitable in his judgment, that it was among the

possibilities that the worthy lady had forgotten the rule that a doctor's patients must put their tongues out, and

The Secretary of this association was getting somewhat tired of the office, and the office was getting

somewhat tired of him. It occurred to the members of the Society that a little fresh blood infused into it might

stir up the general vitality of the organization. The woman suffragists saw no reason why the place of

Secretary need as a matter of course be filled by a person of the male sex. They agitated, they made

domiciliary visits, they wrote notes to influential citizens, and finally announced as their candidate the young

lady who had won and worn the school name of "The Terror," who was elected. She was just the person for

the place: wide awake, with all her wits about her, full of every kind of knowledge, and, above all, strong on

points of order and details of management, so that she could prompt the presiding officer, to do which is often

the most essential duty of a Secretary. The President, the worthy rector, was good at plain sailing in the track

of the common moralities and proprieties, but was liable to get muddled if anything came up requiring swift

decision and offhand speech. The Terror had schooled herself in the debating societies of the Institute, and

would set up the President, when he was floored by an awkward question, as easily as if he were a ninepin

It has been already mentioned that the Pansophian Society received communications from time to time from

writers outside of its own organization. Of late these had been becoming more frequent. Many of them were

sent in anonymously, and as there were numerous visitors to the village, and two institutions not far removed

from it, both full of ambitious and intelligent young persons, it was often impossible to trace the papers to

their authors. The new Secretary was alive with curiosity, and as sagacious a little body as one might find if

in want of a detective. She could make a pretty shrewd guess whether a paper was written by a young or old

Among the anonymous papers she received was one which exercised her curiosity to an extraordinary degree.

She felt a strong suspicion that "the Sachem," as the boatcrews used to call him, "the Recluse," "the

NightHawk," "the Sphinx," as others named him, must be the author of it. It appeared to her the production

of a young person of a reflective, poetical turn of mind. It was not a woman's way of writing; at least, so

thought the Secretary. The writer had travelled much; had resided in Italy, among other places. But so had

many of the summer visitors and residents of Arrowhead Village. The handwriting was not decisive; it had

some points of resemblance with the pencilled orders for books which Maurice sent to the Library, but there

were certain differences, intentional or accidental, which weakened this evidence. There was an undertone in

the essay which was in keeping with the mode of life of the solitary stranger. It might be disappointment,

melancholy, or only the dreamy sadness of a young person who sees the future he is to climb, not as a smooth

ascent, but as overhanging him like a cliff, ready to crush him, with all his hopes and prospects. This

interpretation may have been too imaginative, but here is the paper, and the reader can form his own opinion:

"I have been from my youth upwards a wanderer. I do not mean constantly flitting from one place to another,

for my residence has often been fixed for considerable periods. From time to time I have put down in a

notebook the impressions made upon me by the scenes through which I have passed. I have long hesitated

whether to let any of my notes appear before the public. My fear has been that they were too subjective, to

use the metaphysician's term,that I have seen myself reflected in Nature, and not the true aspects of Nature

as she was meant to be understood. One who should visit the Harz Mountains would seemight see, rather

his own colossal image shape itself on the morning mist. But if in every mist that rises from the meadows, in

every cloud that hangs upon the mountain, he always finds his own reflection, we cannot accept him as an

"There must be many persons present at the meetings of the Society to which this paper is offered who have

had experiences like that of its author. They have visited the same localities, they have had many of the same

thoughts and feelings. Many, I have no doubt. Not all, no, not all. Others have sought the companionship

of Nature; I have been driven to it. Much of my life has been passed in that communion. These pages record

some of the intimacies I have formed with her under some of her various manifestations.

"I have lived on the shore of the great ocean, where its waves broke wildest and its voice rose loudest.

"I have dwelt on the margin of a tranquil lake, and floated through many a long, long summer day on its clear

"I have learned the 'various language' of Nature, of which poetry has spoken,at least, I have learned some

words and phrases of it. I will translate some of these as I best may into common speech.

You are neither welcome nor unwelcome. I do not trouble myself with the living tribes that come down to my

waters. I have my own people, of an older race than yours, that grow to mightier dimensions than your

mastodons and elephants; more numerous than all the swarms that fill the air or move over the thin crust of

the earth. Who are you that build your palaces on my margin? I see your white faces as I saw the dark faces

of the tribes that came before you, as I shall look upon the unknown family of mankind that will come after

you. And what is your whole human family but a parenthesis in a single page of my history? The raindrops

stereotyped themselves on my beaches before a living creature left his footprints there. This horseshoecrab I

fling at your feet is of older lineage than your Adam,perhaps, indeed, you count your Adam as one of his

descendants. What feeling have I for you? Not scorn, not hatred, not love,not loathing.

No!indifference,blank indifference to you and your affairs that is my feeling, say rather absence of

feeling, as regards you.Oh yes, I will lap your feet, I will cool you in the hot summer days, I will bear

you up in my strong arms, I will rock you on my rolling undulations, like a babe in his cradle. Am I not

gentle? Am I not kind? Am I not harmless? But hark! The wind is rising, and the wind and I are rough

playmates! What do you say to my voice now? Do you see my foaming lips? Do you feel the rocks tremble as

my huge billows crash against them? Is not my anger terrible as I dash your argosy, your thunderbearing

frigate, into fragments, as you would crack an eggshell? No, not anger; deaf, blind, unheeding

indifference,that is all. Out of me all things arose; sooner or later, into me all things subside. All changes

around me; I change not. I look not at you, vain man, and your frail transitory concerns, save in momentary

glimpses: I look on the white face of my dead mistress, whom I follow as the bridegroom follows the bier of

"Ye whose thoughts are of eternity, come dwell at my side. Continents and islands grow old, and waste and

disappear. The hardest rock crumbles; vegetable and animal kingdoms come into being, wax great, decline,

and perish, to give way to others, even as human dynasties and nations and races come and go. Look on me!

"Time writes no wrinkle" on my forehead. Listen to me! All tongues are spoken on my shores, but I have

only one language: the winds taught me their vowels the crags and the sands schooled me in my rough or

smooth consonants. Few words are mine but I have whispered them and sung them and shouted them to men

of all tribes from the time when the first wild wanderer strayed into my awful presence. Have you a grief that

gnaws at your heartstrings? Come with it to my shore, as of old the priest of fardarting Apollo carried his

rage and anguish to the margin of the loudroaring sea. There, if anywhere you will forget your private and

shortlived woe, for my voice speaks to the infinite and the eternal in your consciousness.'

"To him who loves the pages of human history, who listens to the voices of the world about him, who

frequents the market and the thoroughfare, who lives in the study of time and its accidents rather than in the

deeper emotions, in abstract speculation and spiritual contemplation, the RIVER addresses itself as his

"Come live with me. I am active, cheerful, communicative, a natural talker and storyteller. I am not noisy,

like the ocean, except occasionally when I am rudely interrupted, or when I stumble and get a fall. When I am

silent you can still have pleasure in watching my changing features. My idlest babble, when I am toying with

the trifles that fall in my way, if not very full of meaning, is at least musical. I am not a dangerous friend, like

the ocean; no highway is absolutely safe, but my nature is harmless, and the storms that strew the beaches

with wrecks cast no ruins upon my flowery borders. Abide with me, and you shall not die of thirst, like the

forlorn wretches left to the mercies of the pitiless salt waves. Trust yourself to me, and I will carry you far on

your journey, if we are travelling to the same point of the compass. If I sometimes run riot and overflow your

meadows, I leave fertility behind me when I withdraw to my natural channel. Walk by my side toward the

place of my destination. I will keep pace with you, and you shall feel my presence with you as that of a

selfconscious being like yourself. You will find it hard to be miserable in my company; I drain you of

illconditioned thoughts as I carry away the refuse of your dwelling and its grounds:

But to him whom the ocean chills and crushes with its sullen indifference, and the river disturbs with its

neverpausing and neverending story, the silent LAKE shall be a refuge and a place of rest for his soul.

"'Vex not yourself with thoughts too vast for your limited faculties,' it says; 'yield not yourself to the babble

of the running stream. Leave the ocean, which cares nothing for you or any living thing that walks the solid

earth; leave the river, too busy with its own errand, too talkative about its own affairs, and find peace with

me, whose smile will cheer you, whose whisper will soothe you. Come to me when the morning sun blazes

across my bosom like a golden baldric; come to me in the still midnight, when I hold the inverted firmament

like a cup brimming with jewels, nor spill one star of all the constellations that float in my ebon goblet. Do

you know the charm of melancholy? Where will you find a sympathy like mine in your hours of sadness?

Does the ocean share your grief? Does the river listen to your sighs? The salt wave, that called to you from

under last month's full moon, today is dashing on the rocks of Labrador; the stream, that ran by you pure

and sparkling, has swallowed the poisonous refuse of a great city, and is creeping to its grave in the wide

cemetery that buries all things in its tomb of liquid crystal. It is true that my waters exhale and are renewed

from one season to another; but are your features the same, absolutely the same, from year to year? We both

change, but we know each other through all changes. Am I not mirrored in those eyes of yours? And does not

Nature plant me as an eye to behold her beauties while she is dressed in the glories of leaf and flower, and

draw the icy lid over my shining surface when she stands naked and ashamed in the poverty of winter?'

"I have had strange experiences and sad thoughts in the course of a life not very long, but with a record which

much longer lives could not match in incident. Oftentimes the temptation has come over me with dangerous

urgency to try a change of existence, if such change is a part of human destiny,to seek rest, if that is what

we gain by laying down the burden of life. I have asked who would be the friend to whom I should appeal for

the last service I should have need of. Ocean was there, all ready, asking no questions, answering none. What

strange voyages, downward through its glaucous depths, upwards to its boiling and frothing surface, wafted

by tides, driven by tempests, disparted by rude agencies; one remnant whitening on the sands of a northern

beach, one perhaps built into the circle of a coral reef in the Pacific, one settling to the floor of the vast

laboratory where continents are built, to emerge in faroff ages! What strange companions for my

pallbearers! Unwieldy seamonsters, the stories of which are counted fables by the spectacled collectors

who think their catalogues have exhausted nature; nakedeyed creatures, staring, glaring, nightmarelike

spectres of the ghastly green abysses; pulpy islands, with life in gelatinous immensity, what a company

of hungry heirs at every ocean funeral! No! No! Ocean claims great multitudes, but does not invite the

'Shall I seek a deeper slumber at the bottom of the lake I love than I have ever found when drifting idly over

its surface? No, again. I do not want the sweet, clear waters to know me in the disgrace of nature, when life,

the faithful bodyservant, has ceased caring for me. That must not be. The mirror which has pictured me so

"If I must ask the allsubduing element to be my last friend, and lead me out of my prison, it shall be the

"But Ocean and River and Lake have certain relations to the periods of human life which they who are

choosing their places of abode should consider. Let the child play upon the seashore. The wide horizon gives

his imagination room to grow in, untrammelled. That background of mystery, without which life is a poor

mechanical arrangement, is shaped and colored, so far as it can have outline, or any hue but shadow, on a vast

canvas, the contemplation of which enlarges and enriches the sphere of consciousness. The mighty ocean is

not too huge to symbolize the aspirations and ambitions of the yet untried soul of the adolescent.

"The time will come when his indefinite mental horizon has found a solid limit, which shuts his prospect in

narrower bounds than he would have thought could content him in the years of undefined possibilities. Then

he will find the river a more natural intimate than the ocean. It is individual, which the ocean, with all its

gulfs and inlets and multitudinous shores, hardly seems to be. It does not love you very dearly, and will not

miss you much when you disappear from its margin; but it means well to you, bids you good morning with

its coming waves, and goodevening with those which are leaving. It will lead your thoughts pleasantly

away, upwards to its source, downwards to the stream to which it is tributary, or the wide waters in which it

"In hours of melancholy reflection, in those last years of life which have little left but tender memories, the

still companionship of the lake, embosomed in woods, sheltered, fed by sweet mountain brooks and hidden

springs, commends itself to the wearied and saddened spirit. I am not thinking of those great inland seas,

which have many of the features and much of the danger that belong to the ocean, but of those 'ponds,' as our

countrymen used to call them until they were rechristened by summer visitors; beautiful sheets of water from

a hundred to a few thousand acres in extent, scattered like raindrops over the map of our Northern

sovereignties. The loneliness of contemplative old age finds its natural home in the near neighborhood of one

Nature does not always plant her poets where they belong, but if we look carefully their affinities betray

themselves. The youth will carry his Byron to the rock which overlooks the ocean the poet loved so well. The

man of maturer years will remember that the sonorous couplets of Pope which ring in his ears were written on

the banks of the Thames. The old man, as he nods over the solemn verse of Wordsworth, will recognize the

affinity between the singer and the calm sheet that lay before him as he wrote,the stainless and sleepy

"The dwellers by Cedar Lake may find it an amusement to compare their own feelings with those of one who

has lived by the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, by the Nile and the Tiber, by Lake Leman and by one of the

Miss Lurida Vincent, Secretary of the Pansophian Society, read this paper, and pondered long upon it. She

was thinking very seriously of studying medicine, and had been for some time in frequent communication

with Dr. Butts, under whose direction she had begun reading certain treatises, which added to such

knowledge of the laws of life in health and in disease as she had brought with her from the Corinna Institute.

Naturally enough, she carried the anonymous paper to the doctor, to get his opinion about it, and compare it

with her own. They both agreed that it was probably, they would not say certainly, the work of the solitary

visitor. There was room for doubt, for there were visitors who might well have travelled to all the places

mentioned, and resided long enough on the shores of the waters the writer spoke of to have had all the

experiences mentioned in the paper. The Terror remembered a young lady, a former schoolmate, who

belonged to one of those nomadic families common in this generation, the heads of which, especially the

female heads, can never be easy where they are, but keep going between America and Europe, like so many

pithballs in the electrical experiment, alternately attracted and repelled, never in contented equilibrium.

Every few years they pull their families up by the roots, and by the time they have begun to take hold a little

with their radicles in the spots to which they have been successively transplanted up they come again, so that

they never get a taproot anywhere. The Terror suspected the daughter of one of these families of sending

certain anonymous articles of not dissimilar character to the one she had just received. But she knew the style

of composition common among the young girls, and she could hardly believe that it was one of them who had

sent this paper. Could a brother of this young lady have written it? Possibly; she knew nothing more than that

the young lady had a brother, then a student at the University. All the chances were that Mr. Maurice

Whatever faults there were in this essay, it interested them both. There was nothing which gave the least

reason to suspect insanity on the part of the writer, whoever he or she might be. There were references to

suicide, it is true, but they were of a purely speculative nature, and did not look to any practical purpose in

that direction. Besides, if the stranger were the author of the paper, he certainly would not choose a sheet of

water like Cedar Lake to perform the last offices for him, in case he seriously meditated taking

unceremonious leave of life and its accidents. He could find a river easily enough, to say nothing of other

methods of effecting his purpose; but he had committed himself as to the impropriety of selecting a lake, so

they need not be anxious about the white canoe and its occupant, as they watched it skimming the surface of

The holder of the Portfolio would never have ventured to come before the public if he had not counted among

his resources certain papers belonging to the records of the Pansophian Society, which he can make free use

of, either for the illustration of the narrative, or for a diversion during those intervals in which the flow of

events is languid, or even ceases for the time to manifest any progress. The reader can hardly have failed to

notice that the old Anchor Tavern had become the focal point where a good deal of mental activity

converged. There were the village people, including a number of cultivated families; there were the visitors,

among them many accomplished and widely travelled persons; there was the University, with its learned

teachers and aspiring young men; there was the Corinna Institute, with its eager, ambitious, hungrysouled

young women, crowding on, class after class coming forward on the broad stream of liberal culture, and

rounding the point which, once passed, the boundless possibilities of womanhood opened before them. All

this furnished material enough and to spare for the records and the archives of the society.

The new Secretary infused fresh life into the meetings. It may be remembered that the girls had said of her,

when she was The Terror, that "she knew everything and didn't believe anything." That was just the kind of

person for a secretary of such an association. Properly interpreted, the saying meant that she knew a great

deal, and wanted to know a great deal more, and was consequently always on the lookout for information;

that she believed nothing without sufficient proof that it was true, and therefore was perpetually asking for

It was astonishing to see what one little creature like The Terror could accomplish in the course of a single

season. She found out what each member could do and wanted to do. She wrote to the outside visitors whom

she suspected of capacity, and urged them to speak at the meetings, or send written papers to be read. As an

official, with the printed title at the head of her notes, PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY, she was a privileged

personage. She begged the young persons who had travelled to tell something of their experiences. She had

contemplated getting up a discussion on the woman's rights question, but being a wary little body, and

knowing that the debate would become a dispute and divide the members into two hostile camps, she

deferred this project indefinitely. It would be time enough after she had her team well in hand, she said to

herself,had felt their mouths and tried their paces. This expression, as she used it in her thoughts, seems

rather foreign to her habits, but there was room in her large brain for a wide range of illustrations and an

ample vocabulary. She could not do much with her own muscles, but she had known the passionate delight of

being whirled furiously over the road behind four scampering horses, in a rocking stagecoach, and thought

of herself in the Secretary's chair as not unlike the driver on his box. A few weeks of rest had allowed her

nervous energy to store itself up, and the same powers which had distanced competition in the classes of her

school had of necessity to expend themselves in vigorous action in her new office.

Her appeals had their effect. A number of papers were very soon sent in; some with names, some

anonymously. She looked these papers over, and marked those which she thought would be worth reading

and listening to at the meetings. One of them has just been presented to the reader. As to the authorship of the

following one there were many conjectures. A wellknown writer, who had spent some weeks at Arrowhead

Village, was generally suspected of being its author. Some, however, questioned whether it was not the work

of a new hand, who wrote, not from experience, but from his or her ideas of the condition to which a

storyteller, a novelist, must in all probability be sooner or later reduced. The reader must judge for himself

"I have written a frightful number of stories, forty or more, I think. Let me see. For twelve years two novels a

year regularly: that makes twentyfour. In three different years I have written three stories annually: that

makes thirtythree. In five years one a year,thirtyeight. That is all, is n't it? Yes. Thirtyeight, not forty. I

wish I could make them all into one composite story, as Mr. Galton does his faces.

obstaclesmiserytearsdespairglimmer of hopeunexpected solution of difficultieshappy finale.

"Landscape for background according to season. Plants of each month got up from botanical calendars.

"I should like much to see the composite novel. Why not apply Mr. Galton's process, and get thirtyeight

stories all in one? All the Yankees would resolve into one Yankee, all the P West Britons into one

"I got along pretty well with my first few stories. I had some characters around me which, a little disguised,

answered well enough. There was the minister of the parish, and there was an old schoolmaster either of them

served very satisfactorily for grandfathers and old uncles. All I had to do was to shift some of their leading

peculiarities, keeping the rest. The old minister wore kneebreeches. I clapped them on to the schoolmaster.

The schoolmaster carried a tall goldheaded cane. I put this in the minister's hands. So with other things,I

shifted them round, and got a set of characters who, taken together, reproduced the chief persons of the

village where I lived, but did not copy any individual exactly. Thus it went on for a while; but by and by my

stock company began to be rather too familiarly known, in spite of their change of costume, and at last some

altogether too sagacious person published what he called a 'key' to several of my earlier stories, in which I

found the names of a number of neighbors attached to aliases of my own invention. All the 'types,' as he

called them, represented by these personages of my story had come to be recognized, each as standing for one

and the same individual of my acquaintance. It had been of no use to change the costume. Even changing the

sex did no good. I had a famous old gossip in one of my tales,a muchbabbling Widow Sertingly. 'Sho!'

they all said, that 's old Deacon Spinner, the same he told about in that other story of his,only the deacon's

got on a petticoat and a mobcap,but it's the same old sixpence.' So I said to myself, I must have some new

characters. I had no trouble with young characters; they are all pretty much alike,dark haired or

lighthaired, with the outfits belonging to their complexion, respectively. I had an old greataunt, who was a

tiptop eccentric. I had never seen anything just like her in books. So I said, I will have you, old lady, in one

of my stories; and, sure enough, I fitted her out with a firstrate oddsounding name, which I got from the

directory, and sent her forth to the world, disguised, as I supposed, beyond the possibility of recognition. The

book sold well, and the eccentric personage was voted a novelty. A few weeks after it was published a lawyer

called upon me, as the agent of the person in the directory, whose family name I had used, as he maintained,

to his and all his relatives' great damage, wrong, loss, grief, shame, and irreparable injury, for which the sum

of blank thousand dollars would be a modest compensation. The story made the book sell, but not enough to

pay blank thousand dollars. In the mean time a cousin of mine had sniffed out the resemblance between the

character in my book and our greataunt. We were rivals in her good graces. 'Cousin Pansie' spoke to her of

my book and the trouble it was bringing on me,she was so sorry about it! She liked my story, only those

personalities, you know. 'What personalities?' says old grannyaunt. 'Why, auntie, dear, they do say that he

has brought in everybody we know,did n't anybody tell you aboutwell,I suppose you ought to know

it,did n't anybody tell you you were made fun of in that novel?' Somebodyno matter whohappened to

hear all this, and told me. She said grannyaunt's withered old face had two red spots come to it, as if she had

been painting her cheeks from a pink saucer. No, she said, not a pink saucer, but as if they were two coals of

fire. She sent out and got the book, and made her (the somebody that I was speaking of) read it to her. When

she had heard as much as she could stand,for 'Cousin Pansie' explained passages to her,explained, you

know,she sent for her lawyer, and that same somebody had to be a witness to a new will she had drawn up.

It was not to my advantage. 'Cousin Pansie' got the corner lot where the grocery is, and pretty much

everything else. The old woman left me a legacy. What do you think it was? An old set of my own books,

"After that I grew more careful. I studied my disguises much more diligently. But after all, what could I do?

Here I was, writing stories for my living and my reputation. I made a pretty sum enough, and worked hard

enough to earn it. No tale, no money. Then every story that went from my workshop had to come up to the

standard of my reputation, and there was a set of critics,there is a set of critics now and everywhere,that

watch as narrowly for the decline of a man's reputation as ever a village half drowned out by an inundation

watched for the falling of the waters. The fame I had won, such as it was, seemed to attend me,not going

before me in the shape of a woman with a trumpet, but rather following me like one of Actaeon's hounds, his

throat open, ready to pull me down and tear me. What a fierce enemy is that which bays behind us in the

"But, as I said above, what could I do? I must write novels, and I must have characters. 'Then why not invent

them?' asks some novice. Oh, yes! Invent them! You can invent a human being that in certain aspects of

humanity will answer every purpose for which your invention was intended. A basket of straw, an old coat

and pair of breeches, a hat which has been soaked, sat upon, stuffed a broken window, and had a brood of

chickens raised in it,these elements, duly adjusted to each other, will represent humanity so truthfully that

the crows will avoid the cornfield when your scarecrow displays his personality. Do you think you can make

your heroes and heroines,nay, even your scrappy supernumeraries,out of refuse material, as you made

your scarecrow? You can't do it. You must study living people and reproduce them. And whom do you know

so well as your friends? You will show up your friends, then, one after another. When your friends give out,

who is left for you? Why, nobody but your own family, of course. When you have used up your family, there

"After my experience with my grandaunt, I be came more cautious, very naturally. I kept traits of character,

but I mixed ages as well as sexes. In this way I continued to use up a large amount of material, which looked

as if it were as dangerous as dynamite to meddle with. Who would have expected to meet my maternal uncle

in the guise of a schoolboy? Yet I managed to decant his characteristics as nicely as the old gentleman would

have decanted a bottle of Juno Madeira through that long siphon which he always used when the most sacred

vintages were summoned from their crypts to render an account of themselves on his hospitable board. It was

a nice business, I confess, but I did it, and I drink cheerfully to that good uncle's memory in a glass of wine

from his own cellar, which, with many other more important tokens of his good will, I call my own since his

"I succeeded so well with my uncle that I thought I would try a course of cousins. I had enough of them to

furnish out a whole gallery of portraits. There was cousin 'Creeshy,' as we called her; Lucretia, more

correctly. She was a cripple. Her left lower limb had had something happen to it, and she walked with a

crutch. Her patience under her trial was very pathetic and picturesque, so to speak,I mean adapted to the

tender parts of a story; nothing could work up better in a melting paragraph. But I could not, of course,

describe her particular infirmity; that would point her out at once. I thought of shifting the lameness to the

right lower limb, but even that would be seen through. So I gave the young woman that stood for her in my

story a lame elbow, and put her arm in a sling, and made her such a model of uncomplaining endurance that

my grandmother cried over her as if her poor old heart would break. She cried very easily, my grandmother;

in fact, she had such a gift for tears that I availed myself of it, and if you remember old Judy, in my novel

"Honi Soit " (Honey Sweet, the booksellers called it),old Judy, the blacknurse,that was my

grandmother. She had various other peculiarities, which I brought out one by one, and saddled on to different

characters. You see she was a perfect mine of singularities and idiosyncrasies. After I had used her up pretty

well, I came dawn upon my poor relations. They were perfectly fair game; what better use could I put them

to? I studied them up very carefully, and as there were a good many of them I helped myself freely. They

lasted me, with occasional intermissions, I should say, three or four years. I had to be very careful with my

poor relations,they were as touchy as they could be; and as I felt bound to send a copy of my novel,

whatever it might be, to each one of them,there were as many as a dozen,I took care to mix their

characteristic features, so that, though each might suspect I meant the other, no one should think I meant him

or her. I got through all my relations at last except my father and mother. I had treated my brothers and sisters

pretty fairly, all except Elisha and Joanna. The truth is they both had lots of odd ways,family traits, I

suppose, but were just different enough from each other to figure separately in two different stories. These

two novels made me some little trouble; for Elisha said he felt sure that I meant Joanna in one of them, and

quarrelled with me about it; and Joanna vowed and declared that Elnathan, in the other, stood for brother

'Lisha, and that it was a real mean thing to make fun of folks' own flesh and blood, and treated me to one of

her cries. She was n't handsome when she cried, poor, dear Joanna; in fact, that was one of the personal traits

"So as there was nobody left but my father and mother, you see for yourself I had no choice. There was one

great advantage in dealing with them,I knew them so thoroughly. One naturally feels a certain delicacy it

handling from a purely artistic point of view persons who have been so near to him. One's mother, for

instance: suppose some of her little ways were so peculiar that the accurate delineation of them would furnish

amusement to great numbers of readers; it would not be without hesitation that a writer of delicate sensibility

would draw her portrait, with all its whimsicalities, so plainly that it should be generally recognized. One's

father is commonly of tougher fibre than one's mother, and one would not feel the same scruples, perhaps, in

using him professionally as material in a novel; still, while you are employing him as bait,you see I am

honest and plain spoken, for your characters are baits to catch readers with,I would follow kind Izaak

Walton's humane counsel about the frog you are fastening to your fishhook: fix him artistically, as he

"I have at length shown up, in one form and another, all my townsmen who have anything effective in their

bodily or mental makeup, all my friends, all my relatives; that is, all my blood relatives. It has occurred to

me that I might open a new field in the family connection of my fatherinlaw and motherinlaw. We have

been thinking of paying them a visit, and I shall have an admirable opportunity of studying them and their

relatives and visitors. I have long wanted a good chance for getting acquainted with the social sphere several

grades below that to which I am accustomed, and I have no doubt that I shall find matter for half a dozen new

stories among those connections of mine. Besides, they live in a Western city, and one doesn't mind much

how he cuts up the people of places he does n't himself live in. I suppose there is not really so much

difference in people's feelings, whether they live in Bangor or Omaha, but one's nerves can't be expected to

stretch across the continent. It is all a matter of greater or less distance. I read this morning that a Chinese

fleet was sunk, but I did n't think half so much about it as I did about losing my sleeve button, confound it!

People have accused me of want of feeling; they misunderstand the artistnature, that is all. I obey that

implicitly; I am sorry if people don't like my descriptions, but I have done my best. I have pulled to pieces all

the persons I am acquainted with, and put them together again in my characters. The quills I write with come

from live geese, I would have you know. I expect to get some firstrate pluckings from those people I was

speaking of, and I mean to begin my thirtyninth novel as soon as I have got through my visit."

There is no use in trying to hurry the natural course of events, in a narrative like this. June passed away, and

July, and August had come, and as yet the enigma which had completely puzzled Arrowhead Village and its

visitors remained unsolved. The white canoe still wandered over the lake, alone, ghostly, always avoiding the

near approach of the boats which seemed to be coming in its direction. Now and then a circumstance would

happen which helped to keep inquiry alive. Good horsemanship was not so common among the young men of

the place and its neighborhood that Maurice's accomplishment in that way could be overlooked. If there was a

wicked horse or a wild colt whose owner was afraid of him, he would be commended to Maurice's attention.

Paolo would lead him to his master with all due precaution,for he had no idea of risking his neck on the

back of any illconditioned beast,and Maurice would fasten on his long spurs, spring into the saddle, and

very speedily teach the creature good behavior. There soon got about a story that he was what the

freshwater fisherman called "one o' them whisperers." It is a common legend enough, coming from the Old

World, but known in American horsetalking circles, that some persons will whisper certain words in a

horse's ear which will tame him if he is as wild and furious as ever Cruiser was. All this added to the mystery

which surrounded the young man. A single improbable or absurd story amounts to very little, but when half a

dozen such stories are told about the same individual or the same event, they begin to produce the effect of

credible evidence. If the year had been 1692 and the place had been Salem Village, Maurice Kirkwood would

Miss Lurida Vincent's curiosity had been intensely excited with reference to the young man of whom so

many stories were told. She had pretty nearly convinced herself that he was the author of the paper on Ocean,

Lake, and River, which had been read at one of the meetings of the Pansophian Society. She was very

desirous of meeting him, if it were possible. It seemed as if she might, as Secretary of the Society, request the

cooperation of any of the visitors, without impropriety. So, after much deliberation, she wrote a careful note,

of which the following is an exact copy. Her hand was bold, almost masculine, a curious contrast to that of

DEAR SIR,You have received, I trust, a card of invitation to the meetings of our Society, but I think we

have not yet had the pleasure of seeing you at any of them. We have supposed that we might be indebted to

you for a paper read at the last meeting, and listened to with much interest. As it was anonymous, we do not

wish to be inquisitive respecting its authorship; but we desire to say that any papers kindly sent us by the

temporary residents of our village will be welcome, and if adapted to the wants of our Association will be

read at one of its meetings or printed in its records, or perhaps both read and printed. May we not hope for

your presence at the meeting, which is to take place next Wednesday evening? Respectfully yours,

DEAR MISS VINCENT,I have received the ticket you refer to, and desire to express my

acknowledgments for the polite attention. I regret that I have not been and I fear shall not be able to attend the

meetings of the Society; but if any subject occurs to me on which I feel an inclination to write, it will give me

"He says nothing about the authorship of the paper that was read the other evening," the Secretary said to

herself. " No matter,he wrote it,there is no mistaking his handwriting. We know something about him,

now, at any rate. But why doesn't he come to our meetings? What has his antipathy to do with his staying

away? I must find out what his secret is, and I will. I don't believe it's harder than it was to solve that prize

problem which puzzled so many teachers, or than beating Crakowitz, the great chessplayer."

To this enigma, then, The Terror determined to bend all the faculties which had excited the admiration and

sometimes the amazement of those who knew her in her schooldays. It was a very delicate piece of

business; for though Lurida was an intrepid woman's rights advocate, and believed she was entitled to do

almost everything that men dared to, she knew very well there were certain limits which a young woman like

In the mean time Maurice had received a visit from the young student at the University,the same whom he

had rescued from his dangerous predicament in the lake. With him had called one of the teachers, an

instructor in modern languages, a native of Italy. Maurice and the instructor exchanged a few words in

Italian. The young man spoke it with the ease which implied long familiarity with its use.

After they left, the instructor asked many curious questions about him,who he was, how long he had been

in the village, whether anything was known of his history,all these inquiries with an eagerness which

"I feel satisfied," the instructor said, "that I have met that young man in my own country. It was a number of

years ago, and of course he has altered in appearance a good deal; but there is a look about him ofwhat

shall I call it?apprehension,as if he were fearing the approach of something or somebody. I think it is

the way a man would look that was haunted; you know what I mean,followed by a spirit or ghost. He does

not suggest the idea of a murderer,very far from it; but if he did, I should think he was every minute in fear

The student was curious, in his turn, to know all the instructor could recall. He had seen him in Rome, he

thought, at the Fountain of Trevi, where so many strangers go before leaving the city. The youth was in the

company of a man who looked like a priest. He could not mistake the peculiar expression of his countenance,

but that was all he now remembered about his appearance. His attention had been called to this young man by

seeing that some of the bystanders were pointing at him, and noticing that they were whispering with each

other as if with reference to him. He should say that the youth was at that time fifteen or sixteen years old,

After all, this evidence was of little or no value. Suppose the youth were Maurice; what then? We know that

he had been in Italy, and had been there a good while,or at least we infer so much from his familiarity with

the language, and are confirmed in the belief by his having an Italian servant, whom he probably brought

from Italy when he returned. If he wrote the paper which was read the other evening, that settles it, for the

writer says he had lived by the Tiber. We must put this scrap of evidence furnished by the Professor with the

other scraps; it may turn out of some consequence, sooner or later. It is like a piece of a dissected map; it

means almost nothing by itself, but when we find the pieces it joins with we may discover a very important

In a small, concentrated community like that which centred in and immediately around Arrowhead Village,

every day must have its local gossip as well as its general news. The newspaper tells the small community

what is going on in the great world, and the busy tongues of male and female, especially the latter, fill in with

the occurrences and comments of the everstirring microcosm. The fact that the Italian , teacher had, or

thought he had, seen Maurice ten years before was circulated and made the most of,turned over and over

like a cake, until it was thoroughly done on both sides and all through. It was a very small cake, but better

than nothing. Miss Vincent heard this story, as others did, and talked about it with her friend, Miss Tower.

The two young ladies who had recently graduated at the Corinna Institute remained, as they had always been,

intimate friends. They were the natural complements of each other. Euthymia represented a complete,

symmetrical womanhood. Her outward presence was only an index of a large, wholesome, affluent life. She

could not help being courageous, with such a firm organization. She could not help being generous, cheerful,

active. She had been told often enough that she was fair to look upon. She knew that she was called The

Wonder by the schoolmates who were dazzled by her singular accomplishments, but she did not overvalue

them. She rather tended to depreciate her own gifts, in comparison with those of her friend, Miss Lurida

Vincent. The two agreed all the better for differing as they did. The octave makes a perfect chord, when

shorter intervals jar more or less on the ear. Each admired the other with a heartiness which if they had been

It was a pleasant thing to observe their dependence on each other. The Terror of the schoolroom was the

oracle in her relations with her friend. All the freedom of movement which The Wonder showed in her bodily

exercises The Terror manifested in the world of thought. She would fling open a book, and decide in a swift

glance whether it had any message for her. Her teachers had compared her way of reading to the taking of an

instantaneous photograph. When she took up the first book on Physiology which Dr. Butts handed her, it

seemed to him that if she only opened at any place, and gave one look, her mind drank its meaning up, as a

moist sponge absorbs water. "What can I do with such a creature as this?" he said to himself. " There is only

one way to deal with her, treat her as one treats a silkworm: give it its mulberry leaf, and it will spin its own

"I have n't made up my mind about that," she answered, "but I want to know a little more about this terrible

machinery of life and death we are all tangled in. I know something about it, but not enough. I find some very

strange beliefs among the women I meet with, and I want to be able to silence them when they attempt to

"I am the most ignorant little wretch that draws the breath of life!" exclaimed The Terror.

The doctor smiled. He knew what it meant. She had reached that stage of education in which the vast domain

of the unknown opens its illimitable expanse before the eyes of the student. We never know the extent of

"You did not leave the Institute with the reputation of being the most ignorant young lady that ever graduated

there," said the doctor. "They tell me you got the highest marks of any pupil on their record since the school

"What a grand thing it was to be the biggest fish in our small aquarium, to be sure!" answered The Terror.

"He was six inches long, the monster,a little too big for bait to catch a pickerel with! What did you hand

me that schoolbook for? Did you think I did n't know anything about the human body?"

"You said you were such an ignorant creature I thought I would try you with an easy book, by way of

"I meant what I said, and I mean what I say. When I talk about my ignorance, I don't measure myself with

schoolgirls, doctor. I don't measure myself with my teachers, either. You must talk to me as if I were a man, a

grown man, if you mean to teach me anything. Where is your hat, doctor? Let me try it on."

The doctor handed her his wideawake. The Terror's hair was not naturally abundant, like Euthymia's, and

she kept it cut rather short. Her head used to get very hot when she studied hard. She tried to put the hat on.

"Do you see that?" she said. "I could n't wear itit would squeeze my eyes out of my head. The books told

me that women's brains were smaller than men's: "perhaps they are,most of them,I never measured a

great many. But when they try to settle what women are good for, by phrenology, I like to have them put their

tape round my head. I don't believe in their nonsense, for all that. You might as well tell me that if one horse

weighs more than another horse he is worth more,a carthorse that weighs twelve or fourteen hundred

pounds better than Eclipse, that may have weighed a thousand. Give me a list of the best books you can think

of, and turn me loose in your library. I can find what I want, if you have it; and what I don't find there I will

The doctor looked at her with a kind of admiration, but thoughtfully, as if he feared she was thinking of a task

She returned, instinctively, to the apparent contradiction in her statements about herself.

"I am not a fool, if I am ignorant. Yes, doctor, I sail on a wide sea of ignorance, but I have taken soundings of

some of its shallows and some of its depths. Your profession deals with the facts of life that interest me most

just now, and I want to know something of it. Perhaps I may find it a calling such as would suit me."

"Do you seriously think of becoming a practitioner of medicine?" said the doctor.

"Certainly, I seriously think of it as a possibility, but I want to know something more about it first. Perhaps I

sha'n't believe in medicine enough to practise it. Perhaps I sha'n't like it well enough. No matter about that. I

wish to study some of your best books on some of the subjects that most interest me. I know about bones and

muscles and all that, and about digestion and respiration and such things. I want to study up the nervous

system, and learn all about it. I am of the nervous temperament myself, and perhaps that is the reason. I want

A curious expression flitted across the doctor's features as The Terror said this.

"Nervous system. Insanity. She has headaches, I know,all those largeheaded, hardthinking girls do, as a

matter of course; but what has set her off about insanity and the nervous system? I wonder if any of her more

remote relatives are subject to mental disorder. Bright people very often have crazy relations. Perhaps some

of her friends are in that way. I wonder whether"the doctor did not speak any of these thoughts, and in fact

hardly shaped his "whether," for The Terror interrupted his train of reflection, or rather struck into it in a way

"Where is the first volume of this Medical Cyclopaedia?" she asked, looking at its empty place on the shelf.

Lurida flung it open, in her eager way, and turned the pages rapidly until she came to the one she wanted. The

doctor cast his eye on the beading of the page, and saw the large letters A N T.

"I thought so," he said to himself. "We shall know everything there is in the books about antipathies now, if

we never did before. She has a special object in studying the nervous system, just as I suspected. I think she

does not care to mention it at this time; but if she finds out anything of interest she will tell me, if she does

anybody. Perhaps she does not mean to tell anybody. It is a rather delicate business,a young girl studying

the natural history of a young man. Not quite so safe as botany or palaeontology!

Lurida, lately The Terror, now Miss Vincent, had her own plans, and chose to keep them to herself, for the

present, at least. Her hands were full enough, it might seem, without undertaking the solution of the great

Arrowhead Village enigma. But she was in the most perfect training, so far as her intelligence was concerned;

and the summer rest had restored her bodily vigor, so that her brain was like an overcharged battery which

At this time Arrowhead Village was enjoying the most successful season it had ever known. The Pansophian

Society flourished to an extraordinary degree under the fostering care of the new Secretary. The rector was a

good figurehead as President, but the Secretary was the life of the Society. Communications came in

abundantly: some from the village and its neighborhood, some from the University and the Institute, some

from distant and unknown sources. The new Secretary was very busy with the work of examining these

papers. After a forenoon so employed, the carpet of her room looked like a barn floor after a huskingmatch.

A glance at the manuscripts strewed about, or lying in heaps, would have frightened any young writer away

from the thought of authorship as a business. If the candidate for that fearful calling had seen the process of

selection and elimination, he would have felt still more desperately. A paper of twenty pages would come in,

with an underscored request to please read through, carefully. That request alone is commonly sufficient to

condemn any paper, and prevent its having any chance of a hearing; but the Secretary was not hardened

enough yet for that kind of martial law in dealing with manuscripts. The lookeron might have seen her take

up the paper, cast one flashing glance at its title, read the first sentence and the last, dip at a venture into two

or three pages, and decide as swiftly as the lightning calculator would add up a column of figures what was to

be its destination. If rejected, it went into the heap on the left; if approved, it was laid apart, to be submitted to

the Committee for their judgment. The foolish writers who insist on one's reading through their manuscript

poems and stories ought to know how fatal the request is to their prospects. It provokes the reader, to begin

with. The reading of manuscript is frightful work, at the best; the reading of worthless manuscriptand most

of that which one is requested to read through is worthlesswould add to the terrors of Tartarus, if any

If a paper was rejected by the Secretary, it did not come before the Committee, but was returned to the author,

if he sent for it, which he commonly did. Its natural course was to try for admission into some one of the

popular magazines: into " The Sifter," the most fastidious of them all; if that declined it, into "The Second

Best;" and if that returned it, into "The Omnivorous." If it was refused admittance at the doors of all the

magazines, it might at length find shelter in the corner of a newspaper, where a good deal of very readable

verse is to be met with nowadays, some of which has been, no doubt, presented to the Pansophian Society,

There was a recent accession to the transient population of the village which gave rise to some speculation.

The newcomer was a young fellow, rather careless in his exterior, but apparently as much at home as if he

owned Arrowhead Village and everything in it. He commonly had a cigar in his mouth, carried a pocket

pistol, of the nonexplosive sort, and a stick with a bulldog's bead for its knob; wore a soft bat, a coarse

check suit, a little baggy, and gaiterboots which had been halfsoled,a Bohemianlooking personage,

This individual began making explorations in every direction. He was very curious about the place and all the

people in it. He was especially interested in the Pansophian Society, concerning which he made all sorts of

inquiries. This led him to form a summer acquaintance with the Secretary, who was pleased to give him

whatever information he asked for; being proud of the Society, as she had a right to be, and knowing more

The visitor could not have been long in the village without hearing something of Maurice Kirkwood, and the

stories, true and false, connected with his name. He questioned everybody who could tell him anything about

All this naturally excited the curiosity of the village about this new visitor. Among the rest, Miss Vincent, not

wanting in an attribute thought to belong more especially to her sex, became somewhat interested to know

more exactly who this inquiring, note taking personage, who seemed to be everywhere and to know

everybody, might himself be. Meeting him at the Public Library at a fortunate moment, when there was

nobody but the old Librarian, who was hard of hearing, to interfere with their conversation, the little

"This is a very remarkable library for a small village to possess," he remarked to Miss Lurida.

"It is, indeed," she said. "Have you found it well furnished with the books you most want?"

"Oh, yes,books enough. I don't care so much for the books as I do for the Newspapers. I like a Review well

enough,it tells you all there is in a book; but a good abstract of the Review in a Newspaper saves a fellow

"Oh, I get along pretty well. It's my offtime, and I don't do much reading or writing. Who is the city

"I don't think we have any one who writes regularly. Now and then, there is a letter, with the gossip of the

place in it, or an account of some of the doings at our Society. The city papers are always glad to get the

"I suppose you write about the Society to the papers, as you are the Secretary."

This was a pointblank shot. She meant to question the young man about his business, and here she was on

"Oh, there are plenty of members who are willing enough to write, especially to give an account of their

own papers. I think they like to have me put in the applause, when they get any. I do that sometimes." (How

"I have seen some very well written articles, which, from what they tell me of the Secretary, I should have

"I have transmitted some good papers," she said, without winking, or swallowing, or changing color, precious

little color she had to change; her brain wanted all the blood it could borrow or steal, and more too. "You

spoke of Newspapers," she said, without any change of tone or manner: "do you not frequently write for them

"I should think I did," answered the young man. "I am a regular correspondent of 'The People's Perennial and

"Where! Oh, anywhere,the place does not make much difference. I have been writing chiefly from Naples

"My return? I have never been out of this country. I travel with a gazetteer and some guidebooks. It is the

cheapest way, and you can get the facts much better from them than by trusting your own observation. I have

made the tour of Europe by the help of them and the newspapers. But of late I have taken to interviewing. I

find that a very pleasant specialty. It is about as good sport as trout tickling, and much the same kind of

business. I should like to send the Society an account of one of my interviews. Don't you think they would

"I have no doubt they would. Send it to me, and I will look it over; and if the Committee approve it, we will

have it at the next meeting. You know everything has to be examined and voted on by the Committee," said

"Very well,I will risk it. After it is read, if it is read, please send it back to me, as I want to sell it to 'The

This is the paper, which was read at the next meeting of the Pansophian Society.

"I was ordered by the editor of the newspaper to which I am attached, 'The People's Perennial and Household

Inquisitor,' to make a visit to a certain wellknown writer, and obtain all the particulars I could concerning

him and all that related to him. I have interviewed a good many politicians, who I thought rather liked the

process; but I had never tried any of these literary people, and I was not quite sure how this one would feel

about it. I said as much to the chief, but he poohpoohed my scruples. 'It is n't our business whether they like

it or not,' said he; 'the public wants it, and what the public wants it's bound to have, and we are bound to

furnish it. Don't be afraid of your man; he 's used to it,he's been pumped often enough to take it easy, and

what you've got to do is to pump him dry. You need n't be modest,ask him what you like; he is n't bound to

As he lived in a rather nice quarter of the town, I smarted myself up a little, put on a fresh collar and cuffs,

and got a fivecent shine on my best highlows. I said to myself, as I was walking towards the house where

he lived, that I would keep very shady for a while and pass for a visitor from a distance; one of those

'admiring strangers' who call in to pay their respects, to get an autograph, and go home and say that they have

met the distinguished So and So, which gives them a certain distinction in the village circle to which they

"My man, the celebrated writer, received me in what was evidently his receptionroom. I observed that he

managed to get the light full on my face, while his own was in the shade. I had meant to have his face in the

light, but he knew the localities, and had arranged things so as to give him that advantage. It was like two

frigates manoeuvring,each trying to get to windward of the other. I never take out my notebook until I

and my man have got engaged in artless and earnest conversation,always about himself and his works, of

"I began by saying that he must receive a good many callers. Those who had read his books were naturally

"He assented, emphatically, to this statement. He had, he said, a great many callers.

"I remarked that there was a quality in his books which made his readers feel as if they knew him personally,

"He smiled, as if pleased. He was himself disposed to think so, he said. In fact, a great many persons,

"My dear sir, I said, there is nothing wonderful in the fact you mention. You reach a responsive chord in

Everybody feels as if he, and especially she (his eyes sparkled), were your blood relation. Do they not name

"He blushed perceptibly. 'Sometimes,' he answered. 'I hope they will all turn out well.'

"No, not at all,' he replied. 'Come up into my library; it is warmer and pleasanter there.'

"I felt confident that I had him by the right handle then; for an author's library, which is commonly his

"So we went upstairs, and again he got me with the daylight on my face, when I wanted it on has.

"You have a fine library, I remarked. There were books all round the room, and one of those whirligig square

bookcases. I saw in front a Bible and a Concordance, Shakespeare and Mrs. Cowden Clarke's book, and

other classical works and books of grave aspect. I contrived to give it a turn, and on the side next the wall I

got a glimpse of Barnum's Rhyming Dictionary, and several Dictionaries of Quotations and cheap compends

of knowledge. Always twirl one of those revolving bookcases when you visit a scholar's library. That is the

way to find out what books he does n't want you to see, which of course are the ones you particularly wish to

"Some may call all this impertinent and inquisitive. What do you suppose is an interviewer's business? Did

you ever see an oyster opened? Yes? Well, an interviewer's business is the same thing. His man is his oyster,

which he, not with sword, but with pencil and notebook, must open. Mark how the oysterman's thin blade

insinuates itself,how gently at first, how strenuously when once fairly between the shells!

"And here, I said, you write your books,those books which have carried your name to all parts of the

world, and will convey it down to posterity! Is this the desk at which you write? And is this the pen you write

"He was pleased with my questions and my way of putting them. I took up the pen as reverentially as if it had

been made of the feather which the angel I used to read about in Young's "Night Thoughts" ought to have

"Would you kindly write your autograph in my notebook, with that pen? I asked him. Yes, he would, with

"It was a spick and span new one, bought on purpose for this interview. I admire your bookcases, said I. Can

"I should like to have some like those, if I ever get rich enough, said I. Eight feet,eight feet, with the

"I sat there with my pencil and notebook in my hand, all ready, but not using them as yet.

"I have heard it said, I observed, that you began writing poems at a very early age. Is it taking too great a

"He was getting interested, as people are apt to be when they are themselves the subjects of conversation.

"I am not a very good French scholar, said I; perhaps you will be kind enough to translate that line for me.

"'Certainly. With pleasure. I made my first verses without knowing how to write them.'

"Why,yes,more or less. To tell the truth, I am not very well up in French literature. What had he to do

"'A good deal. He satirized her, and she waited at his door with a caseknife in her hand, intending to stick

him with it. By and by he came down, smoking a cigarette, and was met by this woman flourishing her

caseknife. He took it from her, after getting a cut in his dressinggown, put it in his pocket, and went on

"I could n't help thinking that I should n't have cared to interview the lively little female. He was evidently

tickled with the interest I appeared to take in the story he told me. That made him feel amiably disposed

"I began with very general questions, but by degrees I got at everything about his family history and the small

events of his boyhood. Some of the points touched upon were delicate, but I put a good bold face on my most

audacious questions, and so I wormed out a great deal that was new concerning my subject. He had been

written about considerably, and the public wouldn't have been satisfied without some new facts; and these I

meant to have, and I got. No matter about many of them now, but here are some questions and answers that

"'So far as one's vanity is concerned it is well enough. But self love is a cup without any bottom, and you

might pour the Great Lakes all through it, and never fill it up. It breeds an appetite for more of the same kind.

It tends to make the celebrity a mere lump of egotism. It generates a craving for highseasoned personalities

which is in danger of becoming slavery, like that following the abuse of alcohol, or opium, or tobacco. Think

of a man's having every day, by every post, letters that tell him he is this and that and the other, with epithets

and endearments, one tenth part of which would have made him blush red hot before he began to be what you

"Are there not some special inconveniences connected with what is called celebrity?

"'I should think so! Suppose you were obliged every day of your life to stand and shake hands, as the

President of the United States has to after his inauguration: how do you think your hand would feel after a

few months' practice of that exercise? Suppose you had given you thirtyfive millions of money a year, in

hundreddollar coupons, on condition that you cut them all off yourself in the usual manner: how do you

think you should like the look of a pair of scissors at the end of a year, in which you had worked ten hours a

day every day but Sunday, cutting off a hundred coupons an hour, and found you had not finished your task,

after all? Yon have addressed me as what you are pleased to call "a literary celebrity." I won't dispute with

you as to whether or not I deserve that title. I will take it for granted I am what you call me, and give you

"'You know there was formed a while ago an Association of Authors for SelfProtection. It meant well, and

it was hoped that something would come of it in the way of relieving that oppressed class, but I am sorry to

"I suspected he had a hand in drawing up the Constitution and Laws of that Association. Yes, I said, an

admirable Association it was, and as much needed as the one for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. I am

sorry to hear that it has not proved effectual in putting a stop to the abuse of a deserving class of men. It

ought to have done it; it was well conceived, and its public manifesto was a masterpiece. (I saw by his

"'I see I can trust you,' he said. 'I will unbosom myself freely of some of the grievances attaching to the

position of the individual to whom you have applied the term "Literary Celebrity."

"'He is supposed to be a millionaire, in virtue of the immense sales of his books, all the money from which, it

is taken for granted, goes into his pocket. Consequently, all subscription papers are handed to him for his

signature, and every needy stranger who has heard his name comes to him for assistance.

"'He is expected to subscribe for all periodicals, and is goaded by receiving blank formulae, which, with their

"'He receives two or three books daily, with requests to read and give his opinion about each of them, which

opinion, if it has a word which can be used as an advertisement, he will find quoted in all the newspapers.

"'He receives thick masses of manuscript, prose and verse, which he is called upon to examine and pronounce

on their merits; these manuscripts having almost invariably been rejected by the editors to whom they have

"'He is expected to sign petitions, to contribute to journals, to write for fairs, to attend celebrations, to make

afterdinner speeches, to send money for objects he does not believe in to places he never heard of.

"'He is called on to keep up correspondences with unknown admirers, who begin by saying they have no

claim upon his time, and then appropriate it by writing page after page, if of the male sex; and sheet after

"'If a poet, it is taken for granted that he can sit down at any moment and spin off any number of verses on

any subject which may be suggested to him; such as congratulations to the writer's great grandmother on her

reaching her hundredth year, an elegy on an infant aged six weeks, an ode for the Fourth of July in a Western

township not to be found in Lippincott's last edition, perhaps a valentine for some bucolic lover who believes

"'I would bet on the prose lover. She will show the verses to him, and they will both have a good laugh over

"I have only reported a small part of the conversation I had with the Literary Celebrity. He was so much

taken up with his pleasing self contemplation, while I made him air his opinions and feelings and spread his

characteristics as his laundress spreads and airs his linen on the clothesline, that I don't believe it ever

occurred to him that he had been in the hands of an interviewer until he found himself exposed to the wind

and sunshine in full dimensions in the columns of The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor.'"

After the reading of this paper, much curiosity was shown as to who the person spoken of as the "Literary

Celebrity" might be. Among the various suppositions the startling idea was suggested that he was neither

more nor less than the unexplained personage known in the village as Maurice Kirkwood. Why should that be

his real name? Why should not he be the Celebrity, who had taken this name and fled to this retreat to escape

from the persecutions of kind friends, who were pricking him and stabbing him nigh to death with their

The Secretary of the Pansophian Society determined to question the Interviewer the next time she met him at

"I do not know," she said, in the course of a conversation in which she had spoken warmly of his contribution

to the literary entertainment of the Society, "that you mentioned the name of the Literary Celebrity whom you

"I did not mention him, Miss Vincent," he answered, "nor do I think it worth while to name him. He might

not care to have the whole story told of how he was handled so as to make him communicative. Besides, if I

did, it would bring him a new batch of sympathetic letters, regretting that he was bothered by those horrid

correspondents, full of indignation at the bores who presumed to intrude upon him with their pages of trash,

The Secretary asked the Interviewer if he knew the young gentleman who called himself Maurice Kirkwood.

"What," he answered, "the man that paddles a birch canoe, and rides all the wild horses of the neighborhood?

No, I don't know him, but I have met him once or twice, out walking. A mighty shy fellow, they tell me. Do

"Not much. None of us do, but we should like to. The story is that be has a queer antipathy to something or to

"To newspaper correspondents, perhaps," said the interviewer. "What made you ask me about him? You did

"I did not know. I thought he might be. Why don't you interview this mysterious personage? He would make

"Why, what is there to be interviewed in him? Is there any story of crime, or anything else to spice a column

or so, or even a few paragraphs, with? If there is, I am willing to handle him professionally."

"I told you he has what they call an antipathy. I don't know how much wiser you are for that piece of

"An antipathy! Why, so have I an antipathy. I hate a spider, and as for a naked caterpillar,I believe I should

go into a fit if I had to touch one. I know I turn pale at the sight of some of those great green caterpillars that

"Afraid? What should I be afraid of? They can't bite or sting. I can't give any reason. All I know is that when

I come across one of these creatures in my path I jump to one side, and cry out, sometimes using very

"I understand what you mean," said Miss Vincent. "I used to have the same feeling about spiders, but I was

ashamed of it, and kept a little menagerie of spiders until I had got over the feeling; that is, pretty much got

over it, for I don't love the creatures very dearly, though I don't scream when I see one."

That is just the question. I told you that we don't know and we can't guess what it is. The people here are tired

out with trying to discover some good reason for the young man's keeping out of the way of everybody, as he

does. They say he is odd or crazy, and they don't seem to be able to tell which. It would make the old ladies

of the village sleep a great deal sounder,yes, and some of the young ladies, too,if they could find out

what this Mr. Kirkwood has got into his head, that he never comes near any of the people here."

"I think I can find out," said the Interviewer, whose professional ambition was beginning to be excited. "I

never came across anybody yet that I could n't get something out of. I am going to stay here a week or two,

and before I go I will find out the secret, if there is any, of this Mr. Maurice Kirkwood."

We must leave the Interviewer to his contrivances until they present us with some kind of result, either in the

When Miss Euthymia Tower sent her oar off in flashing splinters, as she pulled her last stroke in the

boatrace, she did not know what a strain she was putting upon it. She did know that she was doing her best,

but how great the force of her best was she was not aware until she saw its effects. Unconsciousness belonged

to her robust nature, in all its manifestations. She did not pride herself on her knowledge, nor reproach herself

for her ignorance. In every way she formed a striking contrast to her friend, Miss Vincent. Every word they

spoke betrayed the difference between them: the sharp tones of Lurida's headvoice, penetrative, aggressive,

sometimes irritating, revealed the corresponding traits of mental and moral character; the quiet,

conversational contralto of Euthymia was the index of a nature restful and sympathetic.

The friendships of young girls prefigure the closer relations which will one day come in and dissolve their

earlier intimacies. The dependence of two young friends may be mutual, but one will always lean more

heavily than the other; the masculine and feminine elements will be as sure to assert themselves as if the

On all common occasions Euthymia looked up to her friend as her superior. She fully appreciated all her

varied gifts and knowledge, and deferred to her opinion in everyday matters, not exactly as an oracle, but as

wiser than herself or any of her other companions. It was a different thing, however, when the graver

questions of life came up. Lurida was full of suggestions, plans, projects, which were too liable to run into

whims before she knew where they were tending. She would lay out her ideas before Euthymia so fluently

and eloquently that she could not help believing them herself, and feeling as if her friend must accept them

with an enthusiasm like her own. Then Euthymia would take them up with her sweet, deliberate accents, and

Lurida was in an excited condition, in the midst of all her new interests and occupations. She was constantly

on the lookout for papers to be read at the meetings of her Society,for she made it her own in great

measure, by her zeal and enthusiasm,and in the mean time she was reading in various books which Dr.

Butts selected for her, all bearing on the profession to which, at least as a possibility, she was looking

forward. Privately and in a very still way, she was occupying herself with the problem of the young stranger,

the subject of some delusion, or disease, or obliquity of unknown nature, to which the vague name of

antipathy had been attached. Euthymia kept an eye upon her, partly in the fear that overexcitement would

produce some mental injury, and partly from anxiety lest she should compromise her womanly dignity in her

"How do you like the books I see you reading?" said Euthymia to Lurida, one day, as they met at the Library.

"Better than all the novels I ever read," she answered. "I have been reading about the nervous system, and it

seems to me I have come nearer the springs of life than ever before in all my studies. I feel just as if I were a

telegraph operator. I was sure that I had a battery in my head, for I know my brain works like one; but I did

not know how many centres of energy there are, and how they are played upon by all sorts of influences,

external and internal. Do you know, I believe I could solve the riddle of the 'Arrowhead Village Sphinx,' as

"What paper has had anything about it, Lurida? I have not seen or heard of its being mentioned in any of the

"You know that rather queerlooking young man who has been about here for some time,the same one

who gave the account of his interview with a celebrated author? Well, he has handed me a copy of a paper in

which he writes, 'The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor.' He talks about this village in a very free

"And you have been chatting with that fellow! Don't you know that he'll have you and all of us in his paper?

Don't you know that nothing is safe where one of those fellows gets in with his notebook and pencil? Oh,

Lurida, Lurida, do be careful!" What with this mysterious young man and this very questionable

newspaperparagraph writer, you will be talked about, if you don't mind, before you know it. You had better

let the riddle of the Sphinx alone. If you must deal with such dangerous people, the safest way is to set one of

them to find out the other. I wonder if we can't get this new man to interview the visitor you have so much

curiosity about. That might be managed easily enough without your having anything to do with it. Let me

alone, and I will arrange it. But mind, now, you must not meddle; if you do, you will spoil everything, and

"Don't be frightened about me, Euthymia. I don't mean to give him a chance to work me into his paper, if I

can help it. But if you can get him to try his skill upon this interesting personage and his antipathy, so much

the better. I am very curious about it, and therefore about him. I want to know what has produced this strange

state of feeling in a young man who ought to have all the common instincts of a social being. I believe there

are unexplained facts in the region of sympathies and antipathies which will repay study with a deeper insight

into the mysteries of life than we have dreamed of hitherto. I often wonder whether there are not heartwaves

Euthymia wondered, as well she might, to hear this young woman talking the language of science like an

adept. The truth is, Lurida was one of those persons who never are young, and who, by way of compensation,

will never be old. They are found in both sexes. Two wellknown graduates of one of our great universities

are living examples of this precocious but enduring intellectual development. If the readers of this narrative

cannot pick them out, they need not expect the writer of it to help them. If they guess rightly who they are,

they will recognize the fact that just such exceptional individuals as the young woman we are dealing with

are met with from time to time in families where intelligence has been cumulative for two or three

Euthymia was very willing that the questioning and questionable visitor should learn all that was known in

the village about the nebulous individual whose misty environment all the eyes in the village were trying to

The next morning, as the Interviewer took his seat on a bench outside his door, to smoke his afterbreakfast

cigar, a brightlooking and handsome youth, whose features recalled those of Euthymia so strikingly that one

might feel pretty sure he was her brother, took a seat by his side. Presently the two were engaged in

conversation. The Interviewer asked all sorts of questions about everybody in the village. When he came to

inquire about Maurice, the youth showed a remarkable interest regarding him. The greatest curiosity, he said,

existed with reference to this personage. Everybody was trying to find out what his story was,for a story,

The Interviewer began to be unusually attentive. The young man told him the various antipathy stories, about

the evileye hypothesis, about his horsetaming exploits, his rescuing the student whose boat was

overturned, and every occurrence he could recall which would help out the effect of his narrative.

The Interviewer was becoming excited. "Can't find out anything about him, you said, did n't you? How do

you know there's anything to find? Do you want to know what I think he is? I'll tell you. I think he is an

actor,a fellow from one of the city theatres. Those fellows go off in their summer vacation, and like to

puzzle the country folks. They are the very same chaps, like as not, the visitors have seen in plays at the city

theatres; but of course they don't know 'em in plain clothes. Kings and Emperors look pretty shabby off the

The young man followed the Interviewer's lead. "I shouldn't wonder if you were right," he said. "I remember

seeing a young fellow in Romeo that looked a good deal like this one. But I never met the Sphinx, as they call

him, face to face. He is as shy as a woodchuck. I believe there are people here that would give a hundred

dollars to find out who he is, and where he came from, and what he is here for, and why he does n't act like

other folks. I wonder why some of those newspaper men don't come up here and get hold of this story. It

To all this the Interviewer listened with true professional interest. Always on the lookout for something to

make up a paragraph or a column about; driven oftentimes to the stalest of repetitions,to the biggest

pumpkin story, the tall cornstalk, the fat ox, the live frog from the human stomach story, the third set of teeth

and reading without spectacles at ninety story, and the rest of the marvellous commonplaces which are kept

in type with e o y or e 6 m (every other year or every six months) at the foot; always in want of a fresh

incident, a new story, an undescribed character, an unexplained mystery, it is no wonder that the Interviewer

fastened eagerly upon this most tempting subject for an inventive and emotional correspondent.

He had seen Paolo several times, and knew that he was Maurice's confidential servant, but had never spoken

to him. So he said to himself that he must make Paolo's acquaintance, to begin with. In the summer season

many kinds of small traffic were always carried on in Arrowhead Village. Among the rest, the sellers of

fruits oranges, bananas, and others, according to the seasonsdid an active business. The Interviewer

watched one of these fruitsellers, and saw that his handcart stopped opposite the house where, as he knew,

Maurice Kirkwood was living. Presently Paolo came out of the door, and began examining the contents of the

handcart. The Interviewer saw his opportunity. Here was an introduction to the man, and the man must

He knew very well how to ingratiate himself with the man,there was no difficulty about that. He had

learned his name, and that he was an Italian whom Maurice had brought to this country with him.

"They pretty fair," said Paolo: "no so good as them las' week; no sweet as them was."

"I know by his look,I know by his smell,he no good yaller,he no smell ripe,I know orange ever

"Good!" said he,"firstrate! Of course you know all about 'em. Why can't you pick me out a couple of

what you think are the best of 'em? I shall be greatly obliged to you. I have a sick friend, and I want to get

Paolo was pleased. His skill and judgment were recognized. He felt grateful to the stranger, who had given

him, an opportunity of conferring a favor. He selected two, after careful examination and grave deliberation.

The Interviewer had sense and tact enough not to offer him an orange, and so shift the balance of obligation.

"No, nobody said he was sick. I have n't seen him going about for a day or two, and I thought be might have

"No: he off riding. He take long, long rides, sometime gone all day. Sometime he go on lake, paddle, paddle

in the morning, very, very early,in night when the moon shine; sometime stay in house, and read, and

"He got whole shelfs full of books. Great books, little books, old books, new books, all sorts of books. He

"Has n't he some curiosities,old figures, old jewelry, old coins, or things of that sort?"

Paolo looked at the young man cautiously, almost suspiciously. "He don't keep no jewels nor no money in his

chamber. He got some old things,old jugs, old brass figgers, old money, such as they used to have in old

times: she don't pass now." Paolo's genders were apt to be somewhat indiscriminately distributed.

A lucky thought struck the Interviewer. "I wonder if he would examine some old coins of mine?" said he, in a

"I think he like to see anything curious. When he come home I ask him. Who will I tell him wants to ask him

"Tell him a gentleman visiting Arrowhead Village would like to call and show him some old pieces of

The Interviewer had just remembered that he had two or three old battered bits of copper which he had picked

up at a tollman's, where they had been passed off for cents. He had bought them as curiosities. One had the

name of Gallienus upon it, tolerably distinct,a common little Roman penny; but it would serve his purpose

of asking a question, as would two or three others with less legible legends. Paolo told him that if he came the

next morning he would stand a fair chance of seeing Mr. Kirkwood. At any rate, he would speak to his

The Interviewer presented himself the next morning, after finishing his breakfast and his cigar, feeling

reasonably sure of finding Mr. Kirkwood at home, as he proved to be. He had told Paolo to show the stranger

It was a pleasant room enough, with a lookout on the lake in one direction, and the wooded hill in another.

The tenant had fitted it up in scholarly fashion. The books Paolo spoke of were conspicuous, many of them,

by their white vellum binding and tasteful gilding, showing that probably they had been bound in Rome, or

some other Italian city. With these were older volumes in their dark original leather, and recent ones in cloth

or paper. As the Interviewer ran his eye over them, he found that he could make very little out of what their

backs taught him. Some of the papercovered books, some of the clothcovered ones, had names which he

knew; but those on the backs of many of the others were strange to his eyes. The classics of Greek and Latin

and Italian literature were there; and he saw enough to feel convinced that he had better not attempt to display

The first thing the Interviewer had to do was to account for his visiting a person who had not asked to make

his acquaintance, and who was living as a recluse. He took out his battered coppers, and showed them to

"I understood that you were very skilful in antiquities, and had a good many yourself. So I took the liberty of

calling upon you, hoping that you could tell me something about some ancient coins I have had for a good

"Is this very rare and valuable? I have heard that great prices have been paid for some of these ancient

coins,ever so many guineas, sometimes. I suppose this is as much as a thousand years old."

Maurice smiled. "A little more than the value of its weight in copper,I am afraid not much more. There are

a good many of these coins of Gallienus knocking about. The peddlers and the shopkeepers take such pieces

occasionally, and sell them, sometimes for five or ten cents, to young collectors. No, it is not very precious in

money value, but as a relic any piece of money that was passed from hand to hand a thousand or fifteen

hundred years ago is interesting. The value of such relics is a good deal a matter of imagination."

"And what do you say to these others?" asked the Interviewer. Poor old wornout things they were, with a

"Very interesting, always, if they carry your imagination back to the times when you may suppose they were

current. Perhaps Horace tossed one of them to a beggar. Perhaps one of these was the coin that was brought

when One said to those about Him, 'Bring me a penny, that I may see it.' But the market price is a different

matter. That depends on the beauty and preservation, and above all the rarity, of the specimen. Here is a coin,

now,"he opened a small cabinet, and took one from it. "Here is a Syracusan decadrachm with the head of

Persephone, which is at once rare, well preserved, and beautiful. I am afraid to tell what I paid for it."

The Interviewer was not an expert in numismatics. He cared very little more for an old coin than he did for an

old button, but he had thought his purchase at the tollman's might prove a good speculation. No matter about

the battered old pieces: he had found out, at any rate, that Maurice must have money and could be

extravagant, or what he himself considered so; also that he was familiar with ancient coins. That would do for

"That is a question which provokes a negative answer. One does not 'pick up' firstclass coins or paintings,

The Interviewer said he had never been there yet, but he hoped he should go there, one of these years.

"Everybody who goes to Rome must learn something of art and antiquities. Before you go there I advise you

to review Roman history and the classic authors. You had better make a study of ancient and modern art, and

not have everything to learn while you are going about among ruins, and churches, and galleries. You know

The Interviewer hesitated. The names sounded as if he had heard them. "Not so well as I mean to before

"Long enough to know something of what is to be seen in it. No one should go there without careful

The Interviewer felt a slight moisture on his forehead. He took out his handkerchief. "It is a warm day," he

said. "I have not had time to read allthe works I mean to. I have had too much writing to do, myself, to find

"In what literary occupation have you been engaged, if you will pardon my inquiry? said Maurice.

"I am connected with the press. I understood that you were a man of letters, and I hoped I might have the

privilege of hearing from your own lips some account of your literary experiences."

"Perhaps that might be interesting, but I think I shall reserve it for my autobiography. You said you were

By this time the Interviewer had come to the conclusion that it was a very warm day. He did not seem to be

getting hold of his pitcher by the right handle, somehow. But he could not help answering Maurice's very

"If writing for a newspaper gives one a right to be called an author, I may call myself one. I write for the

"Are you the literary critic of that wellknown journal, or do you manage the political column?"

"I am a correspondent from different places and on various matters of interest."

The Interviewer was in what he would call a tight place. However, he had found that his man was too much

for him, and saw that the best thing he could do was to submit to be interviewed himself. He thought that he

should be able to pick up something or other which he could work into his report of his visit.

"Well, Iprepared that article for our columns. You know one does not have to see everything he describes.

"Yes, Murray is generally accurate. Sometimes he makes mistakes, but I can't say how far you have copied

them. You got the Ponte Molle the old Milvian bridgea good deal too far down the stream, if I

remember. I happened to notice that, but I did not read the article carefully. May I ask whether you propose to

do me the honor of reporting this visit and the conversation we have had, for the columns of the newspaper

The Interviewer thought he saw an opening. "If you have no objections," he said, "I should like very much to

"You can ask as many questions as you consider proper and discreet, after you have answered one or two

"The curiosity of the public wishes to be gratified, and I am the humble agent of its investigations."

"I suppose it is a question of majority and minority. That settles everything in this country. You are a

minority of one opposed to a large number of curious people that form a majority against you. That is the way

Maurice could not help smiling at the quiet assumption of the American citizen. The Interviewer smiled, too,

and thought he had his man, sure, at last. Maurice calmly answered, "There is nothing left for minorities,

then, but the right of rebellion. I don't care about being made the subject of an article for your paper. I am

here for my pleasure, minding my own business, and content with that occupation. I rebel against your

system of forced publicity. Whenever I am ready I shall tell the public all it has any right to know about me.

In the mean time I shall request to be spared reading my biography while I am living. I wish you a

The Interviewer had not taken out his notebook and pencil. In his next communication from Arrowhead

Village he contented himself with a brief mention of the distinguished and accomplished gentleman now

visiting the place, whose library and cabinet of coins he had had the privilege of examining, and whose

courtesy was equalled only by the modesty that shunned the public notoriety which the organs of popular

The Interviewer had attempted the riddle of the Sphinx, and had failed to get the first hint of its solution.

The many tongues of the village and its visitors could not remain idle. The whole subject of antipathies had

been talked over, and the various cases recorded had become more or less familiar to the conversational

circles which met every evening in the different centres of social life. The prevalent hypothesis for the

moment was that Maurice had a congenital aversion to some color, the effects of which upon him were so

painful or disagreeable that he habitually avoided exposure to it. It was known, and it has already been

mentioned, that such cases were on record. There had been a great deal of discussion, of late, with reference

to a fact long known to a few individuals, but only recently made a matter of careful scientific observation

and brought to the notice of the public. This was the now wellknown phenomenon of colorblindness. It did

not seem very strange that if one person in every score or two could not tell red from green there might be

other curious individual peculiarities relating to color. A case has already been referred to where the subject

of observation fainted at the sight of any red object. What if this were the trouble with Maurice Kirkwood? It

will be seen at once how such a congenital antipathy would tend to isolate the person who was its unfortunate

victim. It was an hypothesis not difficult to test, but it was a rather delicate business to be experimenting on

an inoffensive stranger. Miss Vincent was thinking it over, but said nothing, even to Euthymia, of any

The young lady whom we have known as The Terror, as Lurida, as Miss Vincent, Secretary of the

Pansophian Society, had been reading various works selected for her by Dr. Butts,works chiefly relating to

the nervous system and its different affections. She thought it was about time to talk over the general subject

of the medical profession with her new teacher,if such a selfdirecting person as Lurida could be said to

She began at the beginning. "What is the first book you would put in a student's hands, doctor?" she said to

him one day. They were in his study, and Lurida had just brought back a thick volume on Insanity, one of

"Not that book, certainly," he said. "I am afraid it will put all sorts of notions into your head. Who or what set

"I found it on one of your shelves, and as I thought I might perhaps be crazy some time or other, I felt as if I

should like to know what kind of a condition insanity is. I don't believe they were ever very bright, those

insane people, most of them. I hope I am not stupid enough ever to lose my wits."

"There is no telling, my dear, what may happen if you overwork that busy brain of yours. But did n't it make

"Nervous? Not a bit. I could n't help thinking, though, how many people I had known that had a little touch of

craziness about them. Take that poor woman that says she is Her Majesty's Person,not Her Majesty, but

Her Majesty's Person,a very important distinction, according to her: how she does remind me of more than

one girl I have known! She would let her skirts down so as to make a kind of train, and pile things on her

head like a sort of crown, fold her arms and throw her head back, and feel as grand as a queen. I have seen

more than one girl act very much in that way. Are not most of us a little crazy, doctor,just a little? I think

so. It seems to me I never saw but one girl who was free from every hint of craziness."

"Why, Euthymia,nobody else, of course. She never loses her head, I don't believe she would in an

earthquake. Whenever we were at work with our microscopes at the Institute I always told her that her mind

was the only achromatic one I ever looked into,I did n't say looked through.But I did n't come to talk

about that. I read in one of your books that when Sydenham was asked by a student what books he should

read, the great physician said, 'Read "Don Quixote."' I want you to explain that to me; and then I want you to

tell me what is the first book, according to your idea, that a student ought to read."

"What do you say to my taking your question as the subject of a paper to be read before the Society? I think

there may be other young ladies at the meeting, besides yourself, who are thinking of pursuing the study of

medicine. At any rate, there are a good many who are interested in the subject; in fact, most people listen

"I wish you would, doctor. I want Euthymia to hear it, and I don't doubt there will be others who will be glad

to hear everything you have to say about it. But oh, doctor, if you could only persuade Eutbymia to become a

physician! What a doctor she would make! So strong, so calm, so full of wisdom! I believe she could take the

wheel of a steamboat in a storm, or the hose of a fireengine in a conflagration, and handle it as well as the

"Indeed I have. Oh, if she would only begin with me! What good times we would have studying together!"

"I don't doubt it. Medicine is a very pleasant study. But how do you think practice would be? How would you

like being called up to ride ten miles in a midnight snowstorm, just when one of your raging headaches was

"Oh, but we could go into partnership, and Euthymia is n't afraid of storms or anything else. If she would

"She does n't like the thought of it. She does n't believe in women doctors. She thinks that now and then a

woman may be fitted for it by nature, but she does n't think there are many who are. She gives me a good

many reasons against their practising medicine, you know what most of them are, doctor,and ends by

saying that the same woman who would be a poor sort of doctor would make a firstrate nurse; and that, she

thinks, is a woman's business, if her instinct carries her to the hospital or sickchamber. I can't argue her

"Neither can I argue you out of your feeling about the matter; but I am disposed to agree with your friend,

that you will often spoil a good nurse to make a poor doctor. Doctors and sidesaddles don't seem to me to go

together. Riding habits would be awkward things for practitioners. But come, we won't have a controversy

just now. I am for giving women every chance for a good education, and if they think medicine is one of their

proper callings let them try it. I think they will find that they had better at least limit themselves to certain

specialties, and always have an expert of the other sex to fall back upon. The trouble is that they are so

impressible and imaginative that they are at the mercy of all sorts of fancy systems. You have only to see

what kinds of instruction they very commonly flock to in order to guess whether they would be likely to

prove sensible practitioners. Charlatanism always hobbles on two crutches, the tattle of women, and the

certificates of clergymen, and I am afraid that half the women doctors will be too much under both those

Lurida believed in Dr. Butts, who, to use the common language of the village, had "carried her through" a

fever, brought on by over excitement and exhausting study. She took no offence at his reference to nursery

gossip, which she had learned to hold cheap. Nobody so despises the weaknesses of women as the champion

of woman's rights. She accepted the doctor's concession of a fair field and open trial of the fitness of her sex

for medical practice, and did not trouble herself about his suggested limitations. As to the imaginative

tendencies of women, she knew too well the truth of the doctor's remark relating to them to wish to contradict

"Be sure you let me have your paper in season for the next meeting, doctor," she said; and in due season it

"Next to the interest we take in all that relates to our immortal souls is that which we feel for our mortal

bodies. I am afraid my very first statement may be open to criticism. The care of the body is the first thought

with a great many,in fact, with the larger part of the world. They send for the physician first, and not until

he gives them up do they commonly call in the clergyman. Even the minister himself is not so very different

from other people. We must not blame him if he is not always impatient to exchange a world of multiplied

interests and everchanging sources of excitement for that which tradition has delivered to us as one

eminently deficient in the stimulus of variety. Besides, these bodily frames, even when worn and disfigured

by long years of service, hang about our consciousness like old garments. They are used to us, and we are

used to them. And all the accidents of our lives,the house we dwell in, the living people round us, the

landscape we look over, all, up to the sky that covers us like a bell glass,all these are but looser outside

garments which we have worn until they seem a part of us, and we do not like the thought of changing them

for a new suit which we have never yet tried on. How well I remember that dear ancient lady, who lived well

into the last decade of her century, as she repeated the verse which, if I had but one to choose, I would select

Plotinus was ashamed of his body, we are told. Better so, it may be, than to live solely for it, as so many do.

But it may be well doubted if there is any disciple of Plotinus in this Society. On the contrary, there are many

who think a great deal of their bodies, many who have come here to regain the health they have lost in the

wear and tear of city life, and very few who have not at some time or other of their lives had occasion to call

"There is, therefore, no impropriety in my offering to the members some remarks upon the peculiar

difficulties which beset the medical practitioner in the discharge of his laborious and important duties.

"A young friend of mine, who has taken an interest in medical studies, happened to meet with a very familiar

story about one of the greatest and most celebrated of all English physicians, Thomas Sydenham. The story is

that, when a student asked him what books he should read, the great doctor told him to read 'Don Quixote.'

"This piece of advice has been used to throw contempt upon the study of books, and furnishes a convenient

shield for ignorant pretenders. But Sydenham left many writings in which he has recorded his medical

experience, and he surely would not have published them if he had not thought they would be better reading

for the medical student than the story of Cervantes. His own works are esteemed to this day, and he certainly

could not have supposed that they contained all the wisdom of all the past. No remedy is good, it was said of

old, unless applied at the right time in the right way. So we may say of all anecdotes, like this which I have

told you about Sydenham and the young man. It is very likely that he carried him to the bedside of some

patients, and talked to him about the cases he showed him, instead of putting a Latin volume in his hand. I

would as soon begin in that way as any other, with a student who had already mastered the preliminary

branches,who knew enough about the structure and functions of the body in health.

"But if you ask me what reading I would commend to the medical student of a philosophical habit of mind,

you may be surprised to hear me say it would be certain passages in 'Rasselas.' They are the ones where the

astronomer gives an account to Imlac of his management of the elements, the control of which, as he had

persuaded himself, had been committed to him. Let me read you a few sentences from this story, which is

commonly bound up with the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' like a woollen lining to a silken mantle, but is full of

stately wisdom in processions of paragraphs which sound as if they ought to have a grammatical drummajor

"The astronomer has taken Imlac into his confidence, and reveals to him the secret of his wonderful

"'Hear, Imlac, what thou wilt not without difficulty credit. I have possessed for five years the regulation of the

weather and the distribution of the seasons the sun has listened to my dictates, and passed from tropic to

tropic by my direction; the clouds, at my call, have poured their waters, and the Nile has overflowed at my

command; I have restrained the rage of the dogstar, and mitigated the fervors of the crab. The winds alone,

of all the elemental powers, have hitherto eluded my authority, and multitudes have perished by equinoctial

"The reader naturally wishes to know how the astronomer, a sincere, devoted, and most benevolent man, for

forty years a student of the heavens, came to the strange belief that he possessed these miraculous powers.

"'One day, as I was looking on the fields withering with heat, I felt in my mind a sudden wish that I could

send rain on the southern mountains, and raise the Nile to an inundation. In the hurry of my imagination I

commanded rain to fall, and by comparing the time of my command with that of the inundation I found that

"'Might not some other cause,' said I, 'produce this concurrence? The Nile does not always rise on the same

"'Do not believe,' said he, with impatience, I that such objections could escape me: I reasoned long against

my own conviction, and labored against truth with the utmost obstinacy. I sometimes suspected myself of

madness, and should not have dared to impart this secret but to a man like you, capable of distinguishing the

"The good old astronomer gives his parting directions to Imlac, whom he has adopted as his successor in the

"Do not, in the administration of the year, indulge thy pride by innovation; do not please thyself with thinking

that thou canst make thyself renowned to all future ages by disordering the seasons. The memory of mischief

is no desirable fame. Much less will it become thee to let kindness or interest prevail. Never rob other

"Do you wonder, my friends, why I have chosen these passages, in which the delusions of an insane

astronomer are related with all the pomp of the Johnsonian vocabulary, as the first lesson for the young

person about to enter on the study of the science and art of healing? Listen to me while I show you the

"This history is luminous with intelligence, radiant with benevolence, but all its wisdom and all its virtue

have had to struggle with the everrising mists of delusion. The agencies which waste and destroy the race of

mankind are vast and resistless as the elemental forces of nature; nay, they are themselves elemental forces.

They may be to some extent avoided, to some extent diverted from their aim, to some extent resisted. So may

the changes of the seasons, from cold that freezes to heats that strike with sudden death, be guarded against.

So may the tides be in some small measure restrained in their inroads. So may the storms be breasted by

walls they cannot shake from their foundations. But the seasons and the tides and the tempests work their will

on the great scale upon whatever stands in their way; they feed or starve the tillers of the soil; they spare or

drown the dwellers by the shore; they waft the seaman to his harbor or bury him in the angry billows.

"The art of the physician can do much to remove its subjects from deadly and dangerous influences, and

something to control or arrest the effects of these influences. But look at the records of the lifeinsurance

offices, and see how uniform is the action of nature's destroying agencies. Look at the annual reports of the

deaths in any of our great cities, and see how their regularity approaches the uniformity of the tides, and their

variations keep pace with those of the seasons. The inundations of the Nile are not more certainly to be

predicted than the vast wave of infantile disease which flows in upon all our great cities with the growing

heats of July,than the fevers and dysenteries which visit our rural districts in the months of the falling leaf.

"The physician watches these changes as the astronomer watched the rise of the great river. He longs to

rescue individuals, to protect communities from the inroads of these destroying agencies. He uses all the

means which experience has approved, tries every rational method which ingenuity can suggest. Some

fortunate recovery leads him to believe he has hit upon a preventive or a cure for a malady which had resisted

all known remedies. His rescued patient sounds his praises, and a wide circle of his patient's friends joins in a

chorus of eulogies. Selflove applauds him for his sagacity. Self interest congratulates him on his having

found the road to fortune; the sense of having proved a benefactor of his race smooths the pillow on which he

lays his head to dream of the brilliant future opening before him. If a single coincidence may lead a person of

sanguine disposition to believe that he has mastered a disease which had baffled all who were before his time,

and on which his contemporaries looked in hopeless impotence, what must be the effect of a series of such

coincidences even on a mind of calmer temper! Such series of coincidences will happen, and they may well

deceive the very elect. Think of Dr. Rush,you know what a famous man he was, the very head and front of

American medical science in his day, and remember how he spoke about yellow fever, which he thought

"Thus the physician is entangled in the meshes of a wide conspiracy, in which he and his patient and their

friends, andNature herself, are involved. What wonder that the history of Medicine should be to so great an

"If this seems a dangerous concession to the enemies of the true science and art of healing, I will remind you

that it is all implied in the first aphorism of Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine. Do not draw a wrong

inference from the frank statement of the difficulties which beset the medical practitioner. Think rather, if

truth is so hard of attainment, how precious are the results which the consent of the wisest and most

experienced among the healers of men agrees in accepting. Think what folly it is to cast them aside in favor

of palpable impositions stolen from the records of forgotten charlatanism, or of fantastic speculations spun

"Begin your medical studies, then, by reading the fortieth and the following four chapters of 'Rasselas.' Your

first lesson will teach you modesty and caution in the pursuit of the most deceptive of all practical branches

of knowledge. Faith will come later, when you learn how much medical science and art have actually

achieved for the relief of mankind, and how great are the promises it holds out of still larger triumphs over

After the reading of this paper there was a lively discussion, which we have no room to report here, and the

The soberminded, sensible, wellinstructed Dr. Butts was not a little exercised in mind by the demands

made upon his knowledge by his young friend, and for the time being his pupil, Miss Lurida Vincent.

"I don't wonder they called her The Terror," he said to himself. "She is enough to frighten anybody. She has

taken down old books from my shelves that I had almost forgotten the backs of, and as to the medical

journals, I believe the girl could index them from memory. She is in pursuit of some special point of

knowledge, I feel sure, and I cannot doubt what direction she is working in, but her wonderful way of dealing

What marvels those "first scholars" in the classes of our great universities and colleges are, to be sure! They

are not, as a rule, the most distinguished of their class in the long struggle of life. The chances are that "the

field" will beat "the favorite" over the long racecourse. Others will develop a longer stride and more staying

power. But what fine gifts those "first scholars" have received from nature! How dull we writers, famous or

obscure, are in the acquisition of knowledge as compared with them! To lead their classmates they must have

quick apprehension, fine memories, thorough control of their mental faculties, strong will, power of

concentration, facility of expression,a wonderful equipment of mental faculties. I always want to take my

Dr. Butts felt somewhat in the same way as he contemplated The Terror. She surprised him so often with her

knowledge that he was ready to receive her without astonishment when she burst in upon him one allay with

"I do believe that I have found the secret of our strange visitor's dread of all human intercourse!"

"Wait a minute and get your breath," said the doctor. "Are you not a little overstating his peculiarity? It is not

quite so bad as that. He keeps a man to serve him, he was civil with the people at the Old Tavern, he was

affable enough, I understand, with the young fellow he pulled out of the water, or rescued somehow,I don't

believe be avoids the whole human race. He does not look as if he hated them, so far as I have remarked his

expression. I passed a few words with him when his man was ailing, and found him polite enough. No, I don't

believe it is much more than an extreme case of shyness, connected, perhaps, with some congenital or other

Lurida could hardly keep still while the doctor was speaking. When he finished, she began the account of her

"I do certainly believe I have found an account of his case in an Italian medical journal of about fourteen

years ago. I met with a reference which led me to look over a file of the Giornale degli Ospitali lying among

the old pamphlets in the medical section of the Library. I have made a translation of it, which you must read

"Tell me what your conclusion is, and I will read your paper and see for myself whether I think the evidence

Lurida's large eyes showed their whole rounds like the two halves of a map of the world, as she said,

"I believe that Maurice Kirkwood is suffering from the effects of the bite of a TARANTULA!"

The doctor drew a long breath. He remembered in a vague sort of way the stories which used to be told of the

terrible Apulian spider, but he had consigned them to the limbo of medical fable where so many fictions have

clothed themselves with a local habitation and a name. He looked into the round eyes and wide pupils a little

anxiously, as if he feared that she was in a state of undue excitement, but, true to his professional training, he

waited for another symptom, if indeed her mind was in any measure off its balance.

"I know what you are thinking," Lurida said, "but it is not so. 'I am not mad, most noble Festus.' You shall see

the evidence and judge for yourself. Read the whole case,you can read my hand almost as if it were print,

and tell me if you do not agree with me that this young man is in all probability the same person as the boy

One thing you might say is against the supposition. The young patient is spoken of as Signorino M . . . Ch. . .

. But you must remember that ch is pronounced hard in Italian, like k, which letter is wanting in the Italian

alphabet; and it is natural enough that the initial of the second name should have got changed in the record to

Before inviting the reader to follow the details of this extraordinary case as found in a medical journal, the

narrator wishes to be indulged in a few words of explanation, in order that he may not have to apologize for

allowing the introduction of a subject which may be thought to belong to the professional student rather than

to the readers of this record. There is a great deal in medical books which it is very unbecoming to bring

before the general public,a great deal to repel, to disgust, to alarm, to excite unwholesome curiosity. It is

not the men whose duties have made them familiar with this class of subjects who are most likely to offend

by scenes and descriptions which belong to the physician's private library, and not to the shelves devoted to

polite literature. Goldsmith and even Smollett, both having studied and practised medicine, could not by any

possibility have outraged all the natural feelings of delicacy and decency as Swift and Zola have outraged

them. But without handling doubtful subjects, there are many curious medical experiences which have

interest for every one as extreme illustrations of ordinary conditions with which all are acquainted. No one

can study the now familiar history of clairvoyance profitably who has not learned something of the vagaries

of hysteria. No one can read understandingly the life of Cowper and that of Carlyle without having some idea

of the influence of hypochondriasis and of dyspepsia upon the disposition and intellect of the subjects of

these maladies. I need not apologize, therefore, for giving publicity to that part of this narrative which deals

with one of the most singular maladies to be found in the records of bodily and mental infirmities.

The following is the account of the case as translated by Miss Vincent. For obvious reasons the whole name

was not given in the original paper, and for similar reasons the date of the event and the birthplace of the

"The great interest attaching to the very singular and exceptional instance of this rare affection induces us to

give a full account of the extraordinary example of its occurrence in a patient who was the subject of a recent

"Signorino M . . . Ch . . . is the only son of a gentleman travelling in Italy at this time. He is eleven years of

age, of sanguinenervous temperament, light hair, blue eyes, intelligent countenance, well grown, but rather

slight in form, to all appearance in good health, but subject to certain peculiar and anomalous nervous

"Nine years ago, the father informs us, he was travelling in Italy with his wife, this child, and a nurse. They

were passing a few days in a country village near the city of Bari, capital of the province of the same name in

the division (compartamento) of Apulia. The child was in perfect health and had never been affected by any

serious illness. On the 10th of July he was playing out in the field near the house where the family was

staying when he was heard to scream suddenly and violently. The nurse rushing to him found him in great

pain, saying that something had bitten him in one of his feet. A laborer, one Tommaso, ran up at the moment

and perceived in the grass, near where the boy was standing, an enormous spider, which he at once

recognized as a tarantula. He managed to catch the creature in a large leaf, from which he was afterwards

transferred to a wide mouthed bottle, where he lived without any food for a month or more. The creature

was covered with short hairs, and had a pair of nipper like jaws, with which he could inflict an ugly wound.

His body measured about an inch in length, and from the extremity of one of the longest limbs to the other

was between two and three inches. Such was the account given by the physician to whom the peasant carried

"The boy who had been bitten continued screaming violently while his stocking was being removed and the

foot examined. The place of the bite was easily found and the two marks of the clawlike jaws already

showed the effects of the poison, a small livid circle extending around them, with some puffy swelling. The

distinguished Dr. Amadei was immediately sent for, and applied cups over the wounds in the hope of drawing

forth the poison. In vain all his skill and efforts! Soon, ataxic (irregular) nervous symptoms declared

themselves, and it became plain that the system had been infected by the poison.

The symptoms were very much like those of malignant fever, such as distress about the region of the heart,

difficulty of breathing, collapse of all the vital powers, threatening immediate death. From these first

symptoms the child rallied, but his entire organism had been profoundly affected by the venom circulating

through it. His constitution has never thrown off the malady resulting from this toxic (poisonous) agent. The

phenomena which have been observed in this young patient correspond so nearly with those enumerated in

the elaborate essay of the celebrated Baglivi that one might think they had been transcribed from his pages.

"He is very fond of solitude,of wandering about in churchyards and other lonely places. He was once

found hiding in an empty tomb, which had been left open. His aversion to certain colors is remarkable.

Generally speaking, he prefers bright tints to darker ones, but his likes and dislikes are capricious, and with

regard to some colors his antipathy amounts to positive horror. Some shades have such an effect upon him

that he cannot remain in the room with them, and if he meets any one whose dress has any of that particular

color he will turn away or retreat so as to avoid passing that person. Among these, purple and dark green are

the least endurable. He cannot explain the sensations which these obnoxious colors produce except by saying

that it is like the deadly feeling from a blow on the epigastrium (pit of the stomach).

"About the same season of the year at which the tarantular poisoning took place he is liable to certain nervous

seizures, not exactly like fainting or epilepsy, but reminding the physician of those affections. All the other

"In other respects than those mentioned the boy is in good health. He is fond of riding, and has a pony on

which he takes a great deal of exercise, which seems to do him more good than any other remedy.

"The influence of music, to which so much has been attributed by popular belief and even by the

distinguished Professor to whom we shall again refer, has not as yet furnished any satisfactory results. If the

graver symptoms recur while the patient is under our observation, we propose to make use of an agency

discredited by modern skepticism, but deserving of a fair trial as an exceptional remedy for an exceptional

"The following extracts from the work of the celebrated Italian physician of the last century are given by the

writer of the paper in the Giornale in the original Latin, with a translation into Italian, subjoined. Here are the

extracts, or rather here is a selection from them, with a translation of them into English.

"After mentioning the singular aversion to certain colors shown by the subject of Tarantism, Baglivi writes as

follows: "'Et si astantes incedant vestibus eo colore difusis, qui Tarantatis ingrates est, necesse est ut ab

illorum aspectu recedant; nam ad intuitum molesti coloris angore cordis, et symptomatum recrudescantia

"That is, 'if the persons about the patient wear dresses of the color which is offensive to him, he must get

away from the sight of them, for on seeing the obnoxious color he is at once seized with distress in the region

"As to the recurrence of the malady, Baglivi says: "'Dam calor solis ardentius exurere incip at, quod contingit

circa initia Julii et Augusti, Tarantati lente venientem recrudescentiam veneni percipiunt.' (Ibid., page 619.)

"Which I render, 'When the heat of the sun begins to burn more fiercely, which happens about the beginning

of July and August, the subjects of Tarantism perceive the gradually approaching recrudescence (returning

symptoms) of the poisoning. Among the remedies most valued by this illustrious physician is that mentioned

in the following sentence: "'Laudo magnopere equitationes in aere rusticano factas singulis diebus, hord

potissimum matutina, quibus equitationibus morbos chronicos pene incurabiles protanus eliminavi.'

" Or in translation, "'I commend especially riding on horseback in country air, every day, by preference in the

morning hours, by the aid of which horseback riding I have driven off chronic diseases which were almost

Miss Vincent read this paper aloud to Dr. Butts, and handed it to him to examine and consider. He listened

As she finished reading her account, she exclaimed in the passionate tones of the deepest conviction,

"There, doctor! Have n't I found the true story of this strange visitor? Have n't I solved the riddle of the

Sphinx? Who can this man be but the boy of that story? Look at the date of the journal when he was eleven

years old, it would make him twentyfive now, and that is just about the age the people here think he must be

of. What could account so entirely for his ways and actions as that strange poisoning which produces the state

they call Tarantism? I am just as sure it must be that as I am that I am alive. Oh, doctor, doctor, I must be

right,this Signprino M . . . Ch . . . was the boy Maurice Kirkwood, and the story accounts for

everything,his solitary habits, his dread of people,it must be because they wear the colors he can't bear.

His morning rides on horseback, his coming here just as the season was approaching which would aggravate

all his symptoms, does n't all this prove that I must be right in my conjecture,no, my conviction?"

The doctor knew too much to interrupt the young enthusiast, and so he let her run on until she ran down. He

was more used to the rules of evidence than she was, and could not accept her positive conclusion so readily

as she would have liked to have him. He knew that beginners are very apt to make what they think are

discoveries. But he had been an angler and knew the meaning of a yielding rod and an easyrunning reel. He

"You are a most sagacious young lady, and a very pretty prima facie case it is that you make out. I can see no

proof that Mr. Kirkwood is not the same person as the M . . . Ch . . . of the medical journal,that is, if I

accept your explanation of the difference in the initials of these two names. Even if there were a difference,

that would not disprove their identity, for the initials of patients whose cases are reported by their physicians

are often altered for the purpose of concealment. I do not know, however, that Mr. Kirkwood has shown any

special aversion to any particular color. It might be interesting to inquire whether it is so, but it is a delicate

matter. I don't exactly see whose business it is to investigate Mr. Maurice Kirkwood's idiosyncrasies and

constitutional history. If he should have occasion to send for me at any time, he might tell me all about

himself, in confidence, you know. These old accounts from Baglivi are curious and interesting, but I am

cautious about receiving any stories a hundred years old, if they involve an improbability, as his stories about

the cure of the tarantula bite by music certainly do. I am disposed to wait for future developments, bearing in

mind, of course, the very singular case you have unearthed. It wouldn't be very strange if our young

gentleman had to send for me before the season is over. He is out a good deal before the dew is off the grass,

which is rather risky in this neighborhood as autumn comes on. I am somewhat curious, I confess, about the

young man, but I do not meddle where I am not asked for or wanted, and I have found that eggs hatch just as

well if you let them alone in the nest as if you take them out and shake them every day. This is a wonderfully

interesting supposition of yours, and may prove to be strictly in accordance with the facts. But I do not think

we have all the facts in this young man's case. If it were proved that he had an aversion to any color, it would

greatly strengthen your case. His 'antipatia,' as his man called it, must be one which covers a wide ground, to

account for his selfisolation,and the color hypothesis seems as plausible as any. But, my dear Miss

Vincent, I think you had better leave your singular and striking hypothesis in my keeping for a while, rather

than let it get abroad in a community like this, where so many tongues are in active exercise. I will carefully

study this paper, if you will leave it with me, and we will talk the whole matter over. It is a fair subject for

This long speech gave Lurida's perfervid brain time to cool off a little. She left the paper with the doctor,

telling him she would come for it the next day, and went off to tell the result of this visit to her bosom friend,

The doctor was troubled in thinking over his interview with the young lady. She was fully possessed with the

idea that she had discovered the secret which had defied the most sagacious heads of the village. It was of no

use to oppose her while her mind was in an excited state. But he felt it his duty to guard her against any

possible results of indiscretion into which her eagerness and her theory of the equality, almost the identity, of

the sexes might betray her. Too much of the woman in a daughter of our race leads her to forget danger. Too

little of the woman prompts her to defy it. Fortunately for this last class of women, they are not quite so likely

Dr. Butts had known Lurida and her friend from the days of their infancy. He had watched the development

of Lurida's intelligence from its precocious nurserylife to the full vigor of its trained faculties. He had

looked with admiration on the childish beauty of Euthymia, and had seen her grow up to womanhood, every

year making her more attractive. He knew that if anything was to be done with his selfwilled young scholar

and friend, it would be more easily effected through the medium of Euthymia than by direct advice to the

young lady herself. So the thoughtful doctor made up his mind to have a good talk with Euthymia, and put

her on her guard, if Lurida showed any tendency to forget the conventionalities in her eager pursuit of

For the doctor's horse and chaise to stop at the door of Miss Euthymia Tower's parental home was an event

strange enough to set all the tongues in the village going. This was one of those families where illness was

hardly looked for among the possibilities of life. There were other families where a call from the doctor was

hardly more thought of than a call from the baker. But here he was a stranger, at least on his professional

rounds, and when he asked for Miss Euthymia the servant, who knew his face well, stared as if he had held in

Euthymia did not keep the doctor waiting very long while she made ready to meet him. One look at her glass

to make sure that a lock had not run astray, or a ribbon got out of place, and her toilet for a morning call was

finished. Perhaps if Mr. Maurice Kirkwood had been announced, she might have taken a second look, but

with the good middleaged, married doctor one was enough for a young lady who had the gift of making all

the dresses she wore look well, and had no occasion to treat her chamber like the laboratory where an actress

Euthymia welcomed the doctor very heartily. She could not help suspecting his errand, and she was very glad

"I want to confer with you about our friend Lurida. Does she tell you all her plans and projects?"

"Why, as to that, doctor, I can hardly say, positively, but I do not believe she keeps back anything of

importance from me. I know what she has been busy with lately, and the queer idea she has got into her head.

What do you think of the Tarantula business? She has shown you the paper, she has written, I suppose."

"Indeed she has. It is a very curious case she has got hold of, and I do not wonder at all that she should have

felt convinced that she had come at the true solution of the village riddle. It may be that this young man is the

same person as the boy mentioned in the Italian medical journal. But it is very far from clear that he is so.

You know all her reasons, of course, as you have read the story. The times seem to agree well enough. It is

easy to conceive that Ch might be substituted for Kin the report. The singular solitary habits of this young

man entirely coincide with the story. If we could only find out whether he has any of those feelings with

reference to certain colors, we might guess with more chance of guessing right than we have at present. But I

don't see exactly how we are going to submit him to examination on this point. If he were only a chemical

compound, we could analyze him. If he were only a bird or a quadruped, we could find out his likes and

dislikes. But being, as he is, a young man, with ways of his own, and a will of his own, which he may not

choose to have interfered with, the problem becomes more complicated. I hear that a newspaper

correspondent has visited him so as to make a report to his paper,do you know what he found out?"

"Certainly I do, very well. My brother has heard his own story, which was this: He found out he had got hold

of the wrong person to interview. The young gentleman, he says, interviewed him, so that he did not learn

much about the Sphinx. But the newspaper man told Willy about the Sphinx's library and a cabinet of coins

he had; and said he should make an article out of him, anyhow. I wish the man would take himself off. I am

She blushed a little as she said, "I can't help feeling a strange sort of interest about the other, Mr. Kirkwood.

Do you know that I met him this morning, and had a good look at him, full in the face?"

"Well, to be sure! That was an interesting experience. And how did you like his looks?"

"I thought his face a very remarkable one. But he looked very pale as he passed me, and I noticed that he put

his hand to his left side as if he had a twinge of pain, or something of that sort,spasm or neuralgia,I don't

know what. I wondered whether he had what you call angina pectoris. It was the same kind of look and

movement, I remember, as you trust, too, in my uncle who died with that complaint."

The doctor was silent for a moment. Then he asked, "Were you dressed as you are now?"

"Yes, I was, except that I had a thin mantle over my shoulders. I was out early, and I have always

"It was black. I have been over all this with Lucinda. A black mantle on a white dress. A straw hat with an

old faded ribbon. There can't be much in those colors to trouble him, I should think, for his man wears a black

coat and white linen,more or less white, as you must have noticed, and he must have seen ribbons of all

colors often enough. But Lurida believes it was the ribbon, or something in the combination of colors. Her

head is full of Tarantulas and Tarantism. I fear that she will never be easy until the question is settled by

actual trial. And will you believe it? the girl is determined in some way to test her supposition!"

"Believe it, Euthymia? I can believe almost anything of Lurida. She is the most irrepressible creature I ever

knew. You know as well as I do what a complete possession any ruling idea takes of her whole nature. I have

had some fears lest her zeal might run away with her discretion. It is a great deal easier to get into a false

"I know it well enough. I want you to tell me what you think about the whole business. I don't like the look of

it at all, and yet I can do nothing with the girl except let her follow her fancy, until I can show her plainly that

she will get herself into trouble in some way or other. But she is ingenious,full of all sorts of devices,

innocent enough in themselves, but liable to be misconstrued. You remember how she won us the

"To be sure I do. It was rather sharp practice, but she felt she was paying off an old score. The classical story

of Atalanta, told, like that of Eve, as illustrating the weakness of woman, provoked her to make trial of the

powers of resistance in the other sex. But it was audacious. I hope her audacity will not go too far. You must

The doctor had great confidence in the good sense of Lurida's friend. He felt sure that she would not let

Lurida commit herself by writing foolish letters to the subject of her speculations, or similar indiscreet

performances. The boldness of young girls, who think no evil, in opening correspondence with idealized

personages is something quite astonishing to those who have had an opportunity of knowing the facts. Lurida

had passed the most dangerous age, but her theory of the equality of the sexes made her indifferent to the

bylaws of social usage. She required watching, and her two guardians were ready to check her, in case of

Euthymia noticed that her friend had been very much preoccupied for two or three days. She found her more

than once busy at her desk, with a manuscript before her, which she turned over and placed inside the desk, as

This desire of concealment was not what either of the friends expected to see in the other. It showed that

some project was under way, which, at least in its present stage, the Machiavellian young lady did not wish to

disclose. It had cost her a good deal of thought and care, apparently, for her wastebasket was full of scraps

of paper, which looked as if they were the remains of a manuscript like that at which she was at work.

"Copying and recopying, probably," thought Euthymia, but she was willing to wait to learn what Lurida was

busy about, though she had a suspicion that it was something in which she might feel called upon to interest

"Do you know what I think?" said Euthymia to the doctor, meeting him as he left his door. "I believe Lurida

is writing to this man, and I don't like the thought of her doing such a thing. Of course she is not like other

girls in many respects, but other people will judge her by the common rules of life."

"I am glad that you spoke of it," answered the doctor; "she would write to him just as quickly as to any

woman of his age. Besides, under the cover of her office, she has got into the way of writing to anybody. I

think she has already written to Mr. Kirkwood, asking him to contribute a paper for the Society. She can find

a pretext easily enough if she has made up her mind to write. In fact, I doubt if she would trouble herself for

any pretext at all if she decided to write. Watch her well. Don't let any letter go without seeing it, if you can

Young women are much given to writing letters to persons whom they only know indirectly, for the most part

through their books, and especially to romancers and poets. Nothing can be more innocent and

simplehearted than most of these letters. They are the spontaneous outflow of young hearts easily excited to

gratitude for the pleasure which some story or poem has given them, and recognizing their own thoughts,

their own feelings, in those expressed by the author, as if on purpose for them to read. Undoubtedly they give

great relief to solitary young persons, who must have some ideal reflection of themselves, and know not

where to look since Protestantism has taken away the crucifix and the Madonna. The recipient of these letters

sometimes wonders, after reading through one of them, how it is that his young correspondent has managed

Lurida did not belong to this particular class of correspondents, but she could not resist the law of her sex,

whose thoughts naturally surround themselves with superabundant drapery of language, as their persons float

in a wide superfluity of woven tissues. Was she indeed writing to this unknown gentleman? Euthymia

"Are you going to open a correspondence with Mr. Maurice Kirkwood, Lurida? You seem to be so busy

writing, I can think of nothing else. Or are you going to write a novel, or a paper for the Society,do tell me

"I will tell you, Euthymia, if you will promise not to find fault with me for carrying out my plan as I have

made up my mind to do. You may read this letter before I seal it, and if you find anything in it you don't like

you can suggest any change that you think will improve it. I hope you will see that it explains itself. I don't

This is the letter, as submitted to Miss Tower by her friend. The bold handwriting made it look like a man's

letter, and gave it consequently a less dangerous expression than that which belongs to the tinted and often

fragrant sheet with its delicate thready characters, which slant across the page like an April shower with a

MY DEAR SIR,You will doubtless be surprised at the sight of a letter like this from one whom you only

know as the Secretary of the Pansophian Society. There is a very common feeling that it is unbecoming in

one of my sex to address one of your own with whom she is unacquainted, unless she has some special claim

upon his attention. I am by no means disposed to concede to the vulgar prejudice on this point. If one human

being has anything to communicate to another,anything which deserves being communicated, I see no

occasion for bringing in the question of sex. I do not think the homo sum of Terence can be claimed for the

male sex as its private property on general any more than on grammatical grounds,

I have sometimes thought of devoting myself to the noble art of healing. If I did so, it would be with the fixed

purpose of giving my whole powers to the service of humanity. And if I should carry out that idea, should I

refuse my care and skill to a suffering fellowmortal because that mortal happened to be a brother, and not a

sister? My whole nature protests against such onesided humanity! No! I am blind to all distinctions when

You may ask me why I address you, whom I know little or nothing of, and to whom such an advance may

seem presumptuous and intrusive. It is because I was deeply impressed by the paper which I attributed to

you,that on Ocean, River, and Lake, which was read at one of our meetings. I say that I was deeply

impressed, but I do not mean this as a compliment to that paper. I am not bandying compliments now, but

thinking of better things than praises or phrases. I was interested in the paper, partly because I recognized

some of the feelings expressed in it as my own,partly because there was an undertone of sadness in all the

voices of nature as you echoed them which made me sad to hear, and which I could not help longing to cheer

and enliven. I said to myself, I should like to hold communion with the writer of that paper. I have had my

lonely hours and days, as he has had. I have had some of his experiences in my intercourse with nature. And

oh! if I could draw him into those better human relations which await us all, if we come with the right

dispositions, I should blush if I stopped to inquire whether I violated any conventional rule or not.

You will understand me, I feel sure. You believe, do you not? in the insignificance of the barrier which

divides the sisterhood from the brotherhood of mankind. You believe, do you not? that they should be

educated side by side, that they should share the same pursuits, due regard being had to the fitness of the

particular individual for hard or light work, as it must always be, whether we are dealing with the "stronger"

or the "weaker" sex. I mark these words because, notwithstanding their common use, they involve so much

that is not true. Stronger! Yes, to lift a barrel of flour, or a barrel of cider,though there have been women

who could do that, and though when John Wesley was mobbed in Staffordshire a woman knocked down three

or four men, one after another, until she was at last overpowered and nearly murdered. Talk about the weaker

sex! Go and see Miss Euthymia Tower at the gymnasium! But no matter about which sex has the strongest

muscles. Which has most to suffer, and which has most endurance and vitality? We go through many ordeals

which you are spared, but we outlast you in mind and body. I have been led away into one of my accustomed

My brother! Are you not ready to recognize in me a friend, an equal, a sister, who can speak to you as if she

had been reared under the same roof? And is not the sky that covers us one roof, which makes us all one

family? You are lonely, you must be longing for some human fellowship. Take me into your confidence.

What is there that you can tell me to which I cannot respond with sympathy? What saddest note in your

I long to know what influence has cast its shadow over your existence. I myself have known what it is to

carry a brain that never rests in a body that is always tired. I have defied its infirmities, and forced it to do my

bidding. You have no such hindrance, if we may judge by your aspect and habits. You deal with horses like a

Homeric hero. No wild Indian could handle his bark canoe more dexterously or more vigorously than we

have seen you handling yours. There must be some reason for your seclusion which curiosity has not reached,

and into which it is not the province of curiosity to inquire. But in the irresistible desire which I have to bring

you into kindly relations with those around you, I must run the risk of giving offence that I may know in what

direction to look for those restorative influences which the sympathy of a friend and sister can offer to a

brother in need of some kindly impulse to change the course of a life which is not, which cannot be, in

I have thought that there may be something in the conditions with which you are here surrounded which is

repugnant to your feelings, something which can be avoided only by keeping yourself apart from the

people whose acquaintance you would naturally have formed. There can hardly be anything in the place

itself, or you would not have voluntarily sought it as a residence, even for a single season. there might be

individuals here whom you would not care to meet, there must be such, but you cannot have a personal

aversion to everybody. I have heard of cases in which certain sights and sounds, which have no particular

significance for most persons, produced feelings of distress or aversion that made, them unbearable to the

subjects of the constitutional dislike. It has occurred to me that possibly you might have some such natural

aversion to the sounds of the street, or such as are heard in most houses, especially where a piano is kept, as it

is in fact in almost all of those in the village. Or it might be, I imagined, that some color in the dresses of

women or the furniture of our rooms affected you unpleasantly. I know that instances of such antipathy have

been recorded, and they would account for the seclusion of those who are subject to it.

If there is any removable condition which interferes with your free entrance into and enjoyment of the social

life around you, tell me, I beg of you, tell me what it is, and it shall be eliminated. Think it not strange, O my

brother, that I thus venture to introduce myself into the hidden chambers of your life. I will never suffer

myself to be frightened from the carrying out of any thought which promises to be of use to a fellowmortal

by a fear lest it should be considered "unfeminine." I can bear to be considered unfeminine, but I cannot

Euthymia had carried off this letter and read it by herself. As she finished it, her feelings found expression in

an old phrase of her grandmother's, which came up of itself, as such survivals of early days are apt to do, on

Then she loosened some button or string that was too tight, and went to the window for a breath of outdoor

What should she do about it? She could not let this young girl send a letter like that to a stranger of whose

character little was known except by inference,to a young man, who would consider it a most

extraordinary advance on the part of the sender. She would have liked to tear it into a thousand pieces, but

she had no right to treat it in that way. Lurida meant to send it the next morning, and in the mean time

There is nothing like the pillow for an oracle. There is no voice like that which breaks the silenceof the

stagnant hours of the night with its sudden suggestions and luminous counsels. When Euthymia awoke in the

morning, her course of action was as clear before her as if it bad been dictated by her guardian angel. She

She was naturally a little surprised at this early visit. She was struck with the excited look of Euthymia, being

"I have read your letter, my dear, and admired its spirit and force. It is a fine letter, and does you great credit

as an expression of the truest human feeling. But it must not be sent to Mr. Kirkwood. If you were sixty years

old, perhaps if you were fifty, it might be admissible to send it. But if you were forty, I should question its

propriety; if you were thirty, I should veto it, and you are but a little more than twenty. How do you know

that this stranger will not show your letter to anybody or everybody? How do you know that he will not send

it to one of the gossiping journals like the 'Household Inquisitor'? But supposing he keeps it to himself, which

is more than you have a right to expect, what opinion is he likely to form of a young lady who invades his

privacy with such freedom? Ten to one he will think curiosity is at the bottom of it,and,come, don't be

angry at me for suggesting it,may there not be a little of that same motive mingled with the others? No,

don't interrupt me quite yet; you do want to know whether your hypothesis is correct. You are full of the best

and kindest feelings in the world, but your desire for knowledge is the ferment under them just now, perhaps

Lurida's pale cheeks flushed and whitened more than once while her friend was speaking. She loved her too

sincerely and respected her intelligence too much to take offence at her advice, but she could not give up her

humane and sisterly intentions merely from the fear of some awkward consequences to herself. She had

persuaded herself that she was playing the part of a Protestant sister of charity, and that the fact of her not

wearing the costume of these ministering angels made no difference in her relations to those who needed her

"I cannot see your objections in the light in which they appear to you," she said gravely. "It seems to me that I

give up everything when I hesitate to help a fellowcreature because I am a woman. I am not afraid to send

"Will you go with me to the doctor's, and let him read it in our presence? And will you agree to abide by his

Lurida winced a little at this proposal. "I don't quite like," she said, "showing this letter toto" she hesitated,

but it had to come out"to a man, that is, to another man than the one for whom it was intended."

"Well, never mind about letting him read the letter. Will you go over to his house with me at noon, when he

comes back after his morning visits, and have a talk over the whole matter with him? You know I have

sometimes had to say must to you, Lurida, and now I say you must go to the doctor's with me and carry that

There was no resisting the potent monosyllable as the sweet but firm voice delivered it. At noon the two

maidens rang at the doctor's door. The servant said he had been at the house after his morning visits, but

found a hasty summons to Mr. Kirkwood, who had been taken suddenly ill and wished to see him at once.

Was the illness dangerous? The servantmaid did n't know, but thought it was pretty bad, for Mr. Paul came

in as white as a sheet, and talked all sorts of languages which she couldn't understand, and took on as if he

And so the hazardous question about sending the letter was disposed of, at least for the present.

The physician found Maurice just regaining his heat after a chill of a somewhat severe character. He knew

too well what this meant, and the probable series of symptoms of which it was the prelude. His patient was

not the only one in the neighborhood who was attacked in this way. The autumnal fevers to which our

country towns are subject, in the place of those "agues," or intermittents, so largely prevalent in the South and

West, were already beginning, and Maurice, who had exposed himself in the early and late hours of the

dangerous season, must be expected to go through the regular stages of this always serious and not rarely

Paolo, his faithful servant, would fain have taken the sole charge of his master during his illness. But the

doctor insisted that he must have a nurse to help him in his task, which was likely to be long and exhausting.

At the mention of the word "nurse" Paolo turned white, and exclaimed in an agitated and thoroughly

"No! no nuss! no woman! She kill him! I stay by him day and night, but don' let no woman come near

The doctor explained that he intended to send a man who was used to taking care of sick people, and with no

little effort at last succeeded in convincing Paolo that, as he could not be awake day and night for a fortnight

or three weeks, it was absolutely necessary to call in some assistance from without. And so Mr. Maurice

Kirkwood was to play the leading part in that drama of nature's composing called a typhoid fever, with its

regular bedchamber scenery, its properties of phials and pillboxes, its little company of stock actors, its

gradual evolution of a very simple plot, its familiar incidents, its emotional alternations, and its denouement,

It is needless to say that the sympathies of all the good people of the village, residents and strangers, were

actively awakened for the young man about whom they knew so little and conjectured so much. Tokens of

their kindness came to him daily: flowers from the woods and from the gardens; choice fruit grown in the

open air or under glass, for there were some fine houses surrounded by wellkept grounds, and greenhouses

On all these luxuries Maurice looked with dull and languid eyes. A faint smile of gratitude sometimes

struggled through the stillness of his features, or a murmured word of thanks found its way through his

parched lips, and he would relapse into the partial stupor or the fitful sleep in which, with intervals of slight

wandering, the slow hours dragged along the sluggish days one after another. With no violent symptoms, but

with steady persistency, the disease moved on in its accustomed course. It was at no time immediately

threatening, but the experienced physician knew its uncertainties only too well. He had known fever patients

suddenly seized with violent internal inflammation, and carried off with frightful rapidity. He remembered

the case of a convalescent, a young woman who had been attacked while in apparently vigorous general

health, who, on being lifted too suddenly to a sitting position, while still confined to her bed, fainted, and in a

few moments ceased to breathe. It may well be supposed that he took every possible precaution to avert the

accidents which tend to throw from its track a disease the regular course of which is arranged by nature as

carefully as the route of a railroad from one city to another. The most natural interpretation which the

common observer would put upon the manifestations of one of these autumnal maladies would be that some

noxious combustible element had found its way into the system which must be burned to ashes before the

heat which pervades the whole body can subside. Sometimes the fire may smoulder and seem as if it were

going out, or were quite extinguished, and again it will find some new material to seize upon, and flame up as

fiercely as ever. Its coming on most frequently at the season when the brush fires which are consuming the

dead branches, and withered leaves, and all the refuse of vegetation are sending up their smoke is suggestive.

Sometimes it seems as if the body, relieved of its effete materials, renewed its youth after one of these quiet,

expurgating, internal fractional cremations. Lean, pallid students have found themselves plump and

blooming, and it has happened that one whose hair was straight as gnat of an Indian has been startled to

behold himself in his mirror with a fringe of hyacinthine curls about his rejuvenated countenance.

There was nothing of what medical men call malignity in the case of Maurice Kirkwood. The most alarming

symptom was a profound prostration, which at last reached such a point that he lay utterly helpless, as unable

to move without aid as the feeblest of paralytics. In this state he lay for many days, not suffering pain, but

with the sense of great weariness, and the feeling that he should never rise from his bed again. For the most

part his intellect was unclouded when his attention was aroused. He spoke only in whispers, a few words at a

time. The doctor felt sure, by the expression which passed over his features from time to time, that something

was worrying and oppressing him; something which he wished to communicate, and had not the force, or the

tenacity of purpose, to make perfectly clear. His eyes often wandered to a certain desk, and once he had

found strength to lift his emaciated arm and point to it. The doctor went towards it as if to fetch it to him, but

he slowly shook his head. He had not the power to say at that time what he wished. The next day he felt a

little less prostrated; and succeeded in explaining to the doctor what he wanted. His words, so far as the

physician could make them out, were these which follow. Dr. Butts looked upon them as possibly expressing

wishes which would be his last, and noted them down carefully immediately after leaving his chamber.

"I commit the secret of my life to your charge. My whole story is told in a paper locked in that desk. The key

isput your hand under my pillow. If I die, let the story be known. It will show that I washumanand

He was silent for a little time. A single tear stole down his hollow cheek. The doctor turned his head away,

for his own eyes were full. But he said to himself, "It is a good sign; I begin to feel strong hopes that he will

Maurice spoke once more. "Doctor, I put full trust in you. You are wise and kind. Do what you will with this

paper, but open it at once and read. I want you to know the story of my life before it is finishedif the end is

at hand. Take it with you and read it before you sleep." He was exhausted and presently his eyes closed, but

the doctor saw a tranquil look on his features which added encouragement to his hopes.

I am an American by birth, but a large part of my life has been passed in foreign lands. My father was a man

of education, possessed of an ample fortune; my mother was considered, a very accomplished and amiable

woman. I was their first and only child. She died while I was yet an infant. If I remember her at all it is as a

vision, more like a glimpse of a prenatal existence than as a part of my earthly life. At the death of my

mother I was left in the charge of the old nurse who had enjoyed her perfect confidence. She was devoted to

me, and I became absolutely dependent on her, who had for me all the love and all the care of a mother. I was

naturally the object of the attentions and caresses of the family relatives. I have been told that I was a

pleasant, smiling infant, with nothing to indicate any peculiar nervous susceptibility; not afraid of strangers,

but on the contrary ready to make their acquaintance. My father was devoted to me and did all in his power to

I was still a babe, often carried in arms, when the event happened which changed my whole future and

destined me to a strange and lonely existence. I cannot relate it even now without a sense of terror. I must

force myself to recall the circumstances as told me and vaguely remembered, for I am not willing that my

doomed and wholly exceptional life should pass away unrecorded, unexplained, unvindicated. My nature is, I

feel sure, a kind and social one, but I have lived apart, as if my heart were filled with hatred of my

fellowcreatures. If there are any readers who look without pity, without sympathy, upon those who shun the

fellowship of their fellow men and women, who show by their downcast or averted eyes that they dread

companionship and long for solitude, I pray them, if this paper ever reaches them, to stop at this point.

Follow me no further, for you will not believe my story, nor enter into the feelings which I am about to

reveal. But if there are any to whom all that is human is of interest, who have felt in their own consciousness

some stirrings of invincible attraction to one individual and equally invincible repugnance to another, who

know by their own experience that elective affinities have as their necessary counterpart, and, as it were, their

polar opposites, currents not less strong of elective repulsions, let them read with unquestioning faith the

story of a blighted life I am about to relate, much of it, of course, received from the lips of others.

My cousin Laura, a girl of seventeen, lately returned from Europe, was considered eminently beautiful. It was

in my second summer that she visited my father's house, where he was living with his servants and my old

nurse, my mother having but recently left him a widower. Laura was full of vivacity, impulsive, quick in her

movements, thoughtless occasionally, as it is not strange that a young girl of her age should be. It was a

beautiful summer day when she saw me for the first time. My nurse had me in her arms, walking back and

forward on a balcony with a low railing, upon which opened the windows of the second story of my father's

house. While the nurse was thus carrying me, Laura came suddenly upon the balcony. She no sooner saw me

than with all the delighted eagerness of her youthful nature she rushed toward me, and, catching me from the

nurse's arms, began tossing me after the fashion of young girls who have been so lately playing with dolls

that they feel as if babies were very much of the same nature. The abrupt seizure frightened me; I sprang from

her arms in my terror, and fell over the railing of the balcony. I should probably enough have been killed on

the spot but for the fact that a low thornbush grew just beneath the balcony, into which I fell and thus had

the violence of the shock broken. But the thorns tore my tender flesh, and I bear to this day marks of the deep

That dreadful experience is burned deep into my memory. The sudden apparition of the girl; the sense of

being torn away from the protecting arms around me; the frantic effort to escape; the shriek that accompanied

my fall through what must have seemed unmeasurable space; the cruel lacerations of the piercing and rending

When I was taken up I was thought to be dead. I was perfectly white, and the physician who first saw me said

that no pulse was perceptible. But after a time consciousness returned; the wounds, though painful, were none

of them dangerous, and the most alarming effects of the accident passed away. My old nurse cared for me

tenderly day and night, and my father, who had been almost distracted in the first hours which followed the

injury, hoped and believed that no permanent evil results would be found to result from it. My cousin Laura

was of course deeply distressed to feel that her thoughtlessness had been the cause of so grave an accident.

As soon as I had somewhat recovered she came to see me, very penitent, very anxious to make me forget the

alarm she had caused me, with all its consequences. I was in the nursery sitting up in my bed, bandaged, but

not in any pain, as it seemed, for I was quiet and to all appearance in a perfectly natural state of feeling. As

Laura came near me I shrieked and instantly changed color. I put my hand upon my heart as if I had been

stabbed, and fell over, unconscious. It was very much the same state as that in which I was found

The cause of this violent and appalling seizure was but too obvious. The approach of the young girl and the

dread that she was about to lay her hand upon me had called up the same train of effects which the moment of

terror and pain had already occasioned. The old nurse saw this in a moment. "Go! go!" she cried to Laura,

"go, or the child will die! "Her command did not have to be repeated. After Laura had gone I lay senseless,

white and cold as marble, for some time. The doctor soon came, and by the use of smart rubbing and

stimulants the color came back slowly to my cheeks and the arrested circulation was again set in motion.

It was hard to believe that this was anything more than a temporary effect of the accident. There could be

little doubt, it was thought by the doctor and by my father, that after a few days I should recover from this

morbid sensibility and receive my cousin as other infants receive pleasantlooking young persons. The old

nurse shook her head. "The girl will be the death of the child," she said, "if she touches him or comes near

him. His heart stopped beating just as when the girl snatched him out of my arms, and he fell over the

balcony railing." Once more the experiment was tried, cautiously, almost insidiously. The same alarming

consequences followed. It was too evident that a chain of nervous disturbances had been set up in my system

which repeated itself whenever the original impression gave the first impulse. I never saw my cousin Laura

after this last trial. Its result had so distressed her that she never ventured again to show herself to me.

If the effect of the nervous shock had stopped there, it would have been a misfortune for my cousin and

myself, but hardly a calamity. The world is wide, and a cousin or two more or less can hardly be considered

an essential of existence. I often heard Laura's name mentioned, but never by any one who was acquainted

with all the circumstances, for it was noticed that I changed color and caught at my breast as if I wanted to

Alas! this was not all. While I was suffering from the effects of my fall among the thorns I was attended by

my old nurse, assisted by another old woman, by a physician, and my father, who would take his share in

caring for me. It was thought best to keepme perfectly quiet, and strangers and friends were alike excluded

from my nursery, with one exception, that my old grandmother came in now and then. With her it seems that

I was somewhat timid and shy, following her with rather anxious eyes, as if not quite certain whether or not

she was dangerous. But one day, when I was far advanced towards recovery, my father brought in a young

lady, a relative of his, who had expressed a great desire to see me. She was, as I have been told, a very

handsome girl, of about the same age as my cousin Laura, but bearing no personal resemblance to her in

form, features, or complexion. She had no sooner entered the room than the same sudden changes which had

followed my cousin's visit began to show themselves, and before she had reached my bedside I was in a state

Some time passed before any recurrence of these terrifying seizures. A little girl of five or six years old was

allowed to come into the nursery one day and bring me some flowers. I took them from her hand, but turned

away and shut my eyes. There was no seizure, but there was a certain dread and aversion, nothing more than

a feeling which it might be hoped that time would overcome. Those around me were gradually finding out the

The daughter of one of our near neighbors was considered the prettiest girl of the village where we were

passing the summer. She was very anxious to see me, and as I was now nearly well it was determined that she

should be permitted to pay me a short visit. I had always delighted in seeing her and being caressed by her. I

was sleeping when she entered the nursery and came and took a seat at my side in perfect silence. Presently I

became restless, and a moment later I opened my eyes and saw her stooping over me. My hand went to my

left breast,the color faded from my cheeks,I was again the cold marble image so like death that it had

Could it be possible that the fright which had chilled my blood had left me with an unconquerable fear of

woman at the period when she is most attractive not only to adolescents, but to children of tender age, who

feel the fascination of her flowing locks, her bright eyes, her blooming cheeks, and that mysterious

magnetism of sex which draws all life into its warm and potently vitalized atmosphere? So it did indeed

seem. The dangerous experiment could not be repeated indefinitely. It was not intentionally tried again, but

accident brought about more than one renewal of it during the following years, until it became fully

recognized that I was the unhappy subject of a mortal dread of woman,not absolutely of the human female,

for I had no fear of my old nurse or of my grandmother, or of any old wrinkled face, and I had become

accustomed to the occasional meeting of a little girl or two, whom I nevertheless regarded with a certain ill

defined feeling that there was danger in their presence. I was sent to a boys' school very early, and during the

first ten or twelve years of my life I had rarely any occasion to be reminded of my strange idiosyncrasy.

As I grew out of boyhood into youth, a change came over the feelings which had so long held complete

possession of me. This was what my father and his advisers had always anticipated, and was the ground of

their confident hope in my return to natural conditions before I should have grown to mature manhood.

How shall I describe the conflicts of those dreamy, bewildering, dreadful years? Visions of loveliness

haunted me sleeping and waking. Sometimes a graceful girlish figure would so draw my eyes towards it that I

lost sight of all else, and was ready to forget all my fears and find myself at her side, like other youths by the

side of young maidens,happy in their cheerful companionship, while I, I, under the curse of one

blighting moment, looked on, hopeless. Sometimes the glimpse of a fair face or the tone of a sweet voice

stirred within me all the instincts that make the morning of life beautiful to adolescence. I reasoned with

Why should I not have outgrown that idle apprehension which had been the nightmare of my earlier years?

Why should not the rising tide of life have drowned out the feeble growths that infested the shallows of

childhood? How many children there are who tremble at being left alone in the dark, but who, a few years

later, will smile at their foolish terrors and brave all the ghosts of a haunted chamber! Why should I any

longer be the slave of a foolish fancy that has grown into a half insane habit of mind? I was familiarly

acquainted with all the stories of the strange antipathies and invincible repugnances to which others, some of

them famous men, had been subject. I said to myself, Why should not I overcome this dread of woman as

Peter the Great fought down his dread of wheels rolling over a bridge? Was I, alone of all mankind, to be

doomed to perpetual exclusion from the society which, as it seemed to me, was all that rendered existence

worth the trouble and fatigue of slavery to the vulgar need of supplying the waste of the system and working

at the task of respiration like the daughters of Danaus,toiling day and night as the wornout sailor labors at

Why did I not brave the risk of meeting squarely, and without regard to any possible danger, some one of

those fair maidens whose faroff smile, whose graceful movements, at once attracted and agitated me? I can

only answer this question to the satisfaction of any really inquiring reader by giving him the true

interpretation of the singular phenomenon of which I was the subject. For this I shall have to refer to a paper

of which I have made a copy, and which will be found included with this manuscript. It is enough to say here,

without entering into the explanation of the fact, which will be found simple enough as seen by the light of

modern physiological science, that the "nervous disturbance" which the presence of a woman in the flower of

her age produced in my system was a sense of impending death, sudden, overwhelming, unconquerable,

appalling. It was a reversed action of the nervous centres,the opposite of that which flushes the young

lover's cheek and hurries his bounding pulses as he comes into the presence of the object of his passion. No

one who has ever felt the sensation can have failed to recognize it as an imperative summons, which

It was at this period of my life that my father determined to try the effect of travel and residence in different

localities upon my bodily and mental condition. I say bodily as well as mental, for I was too slender for my

height and subject to some nervous symptoms which were a cause of anxiety. That the mind was largely

concerned in these there was no doubt, but the mutual interactions of mind and body are often too complex to

admit of satisfactory analysis. Each is in part cause and each also in part effect.

We passed some years in Italy, chiefly in Rome, where I was placed in a school conducted by priests, and

where of course I met only those of my own sex. There I had the opportunity of seeing the influences under

which certain young Catholics, destined for the priesthood, are led to separate themselves from all

communion with the sex associated in their minds with the most subtle dangers to which the human soul can

be exposed. I became in some degree reconciled to the thought of exclusion from the society of women by

seeing around me so many who were selfdevoted to celibacy. The thought sometimes occurred to me

whether I should not find the best and the only natural solution of the problem of existence, as submitted to

myself, in taking upon me the vows which settle the whole question and raise an impassable barrier between

How often I talked this whole matter over with the young priest who was at once my special instructor and

my favorite companion! But accustomed as I had become to the forms of the Roman Church, and impressed

as I was with the purity and excellence of many of its young members with whom I was acquainted, my early

training rendered it impossible for me to accept the credentials which it offered me as authoritative. My

friend and instructor had to set me down as a case of "invincible ignorance." This was the loophole through

which he crept out of the prisonhouse of his creed, and was enabled to look upon me without the feeling of

absolute despair with which his sterner brethren would, I fear, have regarded me.

I have said that accident exposed me at times to the influence which I had such reasons for dreading. Here is

one example of such an occurrence, which I relate as simply as possible, vividly as it is impressed upon my

memory. A young friend whose acquaintance I had made in Rome asked me one day to come to his rooms

and look at a cabinet of gems and medals which he had collected. I had been but a short time in his library

when a vague sense of uneasiness came over me. My heart became restless,I could feel it stirring

irregularly, as if it were some frightened creature caged in my breast. There was nothing that I could see to

account for it. A door was partly open, but not so that I could see into the next room. The feeling grew upon

me of some influence which was paralyzing my circulation. I begged my friend to open a window. As be did

so, the door swung in the draught, and I saw a blooming young woman,it was my friend's sister, who had

been sitting with a book in her hand, and who rose at the opening of the door. Something had warned me of

the presence of a woman, that occult and potent aura of individuality, call it personal magnetism, spiritual

effluence, or reduce it to a simpler expression if you will; whatever it was, it had warned me of the nearness

of the dread attraction which allured at a distance and revealed itself with all the terrors of the Lorelei if

approached too recklessly. A sign from her brother caused her to withdraw at once, but not before I had felt

the impression which betrayed itself in my change of color, anxiety about the region of the heart, and sudden

Does all this seem strange and incredible to the reader of my manuscript? Nothing in the history of life is so

strange or exceptional as it seems to those who have not made a long study of its mysteries. I have never

known just such a case as my own, and yet there must have been such, and if the whole history of mankind

were unfolded I cannot doubt that there have been many like it. Let my reader suspend his judgment until he

has read the paper I have referred to, which was drawn up by a Committee of the Royal Academy of the

Biological Sciences. In this paper the mechanism of the series of nervous derangements to which I have been

subject since the fatal shock experienced in my infancy is explained in language not hard to understand. It

will be seen that such a change of polarity in the nervous centres is only a permanent form and an extreme

degree of an emotional disturbance, which as a temporary and comparatively unimportant personal accident

is far from being uncommon,is so frequent, in fact, that every one must have known instances of it, and not

a few must have had more or less serious experiences of it in their own private history.

It must not be supposed that my imagination dealt with me as I am now dealing with the reader. I was full of

strange fancies and wild superstitions. One of my Catholic friends gave me a silver medal which had been

blessed by the Pope, and which I was to wear next my body. I was told that this would turn black after a time,

in virtue of a power which it possessed of drawing out original sin, or certain portions of it, together with the

evil and morbid tendencies which had been engrafted on the corrupt nature. I wore the medal faithfully, as

directed, and watched it carefully. It became tarnished and after a time darkened, but it wrought no change in

There was an old gypsy who had the reputation of knowing more of futurity than she had any right to know.

The story was that she had foretold the assassination of Count Rossi and the death of Cavour.

However that may have been, I was persuaded to let her try her black art upon my future. I shall never forget

the strange, wild look of the wrinkled hag as she took my hand and studied its lines and fixed her wicked old

eyes on my young countenance. After this examination she shook her head and muttered some words, which

Strange as it may seem, these words of a withered old creature, whose palm had to be crossed with silver to

bring forth her oracular response, have always clung to my memory as if they were destined to fulfilment.

The extraordinary nature of the affliction to which I was subject disposed me to believe the incredible with

reference to all that relates to it. I have never ceased to have the feeling that, sooner or later, I should find

myself freed from the blight laid upon me in my infancy. It seems as if it would naturally come through the

influence of some young and fair woman, to whom that merciful errand should be assigned by the Providence

that governs our destiny. With strange hopes, with trembling fears, with mingled belief and doubt, wherever I

have found myself I have sought with longing yet halfaverted eyes for the "elect lady," as I have learned to

Three times I have been led to the hope, if not the belief, that I had found the object of my superstitious

belief. Singularly enough it was always on the water that the phantom of my hope appeared before my

bewildered vision. Once it was an English girl who was a fellow passenger with me in one of my ocean

voyages. I need not say that she was beautiful, for she was my dream realized. I heard her singing, I saw her

walking the deck on some of the fair days when seasickness was forgotten. The passengers were a social

company enough, but I had kept myself apart, as was my wont. At last the attraction became too strong to

resist any longer. "I will venture into the charmed circle if it kills me," I said to my father. I did venture, and

it did not kill me, or I should not be telling this story. But there was a repetition of the old experiences. I need

not relate the series of alarming consequences of my venture. The English girl was very lovely, and I have no

doubt has made some one supremely happy before this, but she was not the "elect lady" of the prophecy and

A second time I thought myself for a moment in the presence of the destined deliverer who was to restore me

to my natural place among my fellow men and women. It was on the Tiber that I met the young maiden who

drew me once more into that inner circle which surrounded young womanhood with deadly peril for me, if I

dared to pass its limits. I was floating with the stream in the little boat in which I passed many long hours of

reverie when I saw another small boat with a boy and a young girl in it. The boy had been rowing, and one of

his oars had slipped from his grasp. He did not know how to paddle with a single oar, and was hopelessly

rowing round and round, his oar all the time floating farther away from him. I could not refuse my assistance.

I picked up the oar and brought my skiff alongside of the boat. When I handed the oar to the boy the young

girl lifted her veil and thanked me in the exquisite music of the language which

She was a type of Italian beauty,a nocturne in flesh and blood, if I may borrow a term certain artists are

fond of; but it was her voice which captivated me and for a moment made me believe that I was no longer

shut off from all relations with the social life of my race. An hour later I was found lying insensible on the

floor of my boat, white, cold, almost pulseless. It cost much patient labor to bring me back to consciousness.

Had not such extreme efforts been made, it seems probable that I should never have waked from a slumber

Why should I provoke a catastrophe which appears inevitable if I invite it by exposing myself to its too well

ascertained cause? The habit of these deadly seizures has become a second nature. The strongest and the

ablest men have found it impossible to resist the impression produced by the most insignificant object, by the

most harmless sight or sound to which they had a congenital or acquired antipathy. What prospect have I of

ever being rid of this long and deepseated infirmity? I may well ask myself these questions, but my answer

is that I will never give up the hope that time will yet bring its remedy. It may be that the wild prediction

which so haunts me shall find itself fulfilled. I have had of late strange premonitions, to which if I were

superstitious I could not help giving heed. But I have seen too much of the faith that deals in miracles to

accept the supernatural in any shape,assuredly when it comes from an old witchlike creature who takes

pay for her revelations of the future. Be it so: though I am not superstitious, I have a right to be imaginative,

and my imagination will hold to those words of the old zingara with an irresistible feeling that, sooner or

Can it be possible that her prediction is not far from its realization? I have had both waking and sleeping

visions within these last months and weeks which have taken possession of me and filled my life with new

Sometimes on the bosom of the lake by which I am dreaming away this season of bloom and fragrance,

sometimes in the fields or woods in a distant glimpse, once in a nearer glance, which left me pale and

tremulous, yet was followed by a swift reaction, so that my cheeks flushed and my pulse bounded, I have

seen her whohow do I dare to tell it so that my own eyes can read it?I cannot help believing is to be

I have been warned in the most solemn and impressive language by the experts most deeply read in the laws

of life and the history of its disturbing and destroying influences, that it would be at the imminent risk of my

existence if I should expose myself to the repetition of my former experiences. I was reminded that

unexplained sudden deaths were of constant, of daily occurrence; that any emotion is liable to arrest the

movements of life: terror, joy, good news or bad news,anything that reaches the deeper nervous centres. I

had already died once, as Sir Charles Napier said of himself; yes, more than once, died and been resuscitated.

The next time, I might very probably fail to get my return ticket after my visit to Hades. It was a rather grim

stroke of humor, but I understood its meaning full well, and felt the force of its menace.

After all, what had I to live for if the great primal instinct which strives to make whole the half life of lonely

manhood is defeated, suppressed, crushed out of existence? Why not as well die in the attempt to break up a

wretched servitude to a perverted nervous movement as in any other way? I am alone in the world,alone

save for my faithful servant, through whom I seem to hold to the human race as it were by a single filament.

My father, who was my instructor, my companion, my dearest and best friend through all my later youth and

my earlier manhood, died three years ago and left me my own master, with the means of living as might best

please my fancy. This season shall decide my fate. One more experiment, and I shall find myself restored to

my place among my fellowbeings, or, as I devoutly hope, in a sphere where all our mortal infirmities are

I have told the story of a blighted life without reserve, so that there shall not remain any mystery or any dark

suspicion connected with my memory if I should be taken away unexpectedly. It has cost me an effort to do

it, but now that my life is on record I feel more reconciled to my lot, with all its possibilities, and among

these possibilities is a gleam of a better future. I have been told by my advisers, some of them wise, deeply

instructed, and kindhearted men, that such a lifedestiny should be related by the subject of it for the

instruction of others, and especially for the light it throws on certain peculiarities of human character often

wrongly interpreted as due to moral perversion, when they are in reality the results of misdirected or reversed

For myself I can truly say that I have very little morbid sensibility left with reference to the destiny which has

been allotted to me. I have passed through different stages of feeling with reference to it, as I have developed

from infancy to manhood. At first it was mere blind instinct about which I had no thought, living like other

infants the life of impressions without language to connect them in series. In my boyhood I began to be

deeply conscious of the infirmity which separated me from those around me. In youth began that conflict of

emotions and impulses with the antagonistic influence of which I have already spoken, a conflict which has

never ceased, but to which I have necessarily become to a certain degree accustomed; and against the dangers

of which I have learned to guard myself habitually. That is the meaning of my isolation. You, young

man,if at any time your eyes shall look upon my melancholy record, you at least will understand me.

Does not your heart throb, in the presence of budding or blooming womanhood, sometimes as if it "were

ready to crack" with its own excess of strain? What if instead of throbbing it should falter, flutter, and stop as

if never to beat again? You, young woman, who with ready belief and tender sympathy will look upon these

pages, if they are ever spread before you, know what it is when your breast heaves with uncontrollable

emotion and the grip of the bodice seems unendurable as the embrace of the iron virgin of the Inquisition.

Think what it would be if the grasp were tightened so that no breath of air could enter your panting chest!

Does your heart beat in the same way, young man, when your honored friend, a venerable matron of seventy

years, greets you with her kindly smile as it does in the presence of youthful loveliness? When a pretty child

brings you her doll and looks into your eyes with artless grace and trustful simplicity, does your pulse

quicken, do you tremble, does life palpitate through your whole being, as when the maiden of seventeen

meets your enamored sight in the glow of her rosebud beauty? Wonder not, then, if the period of mystic

attraction for you should be that of agitation, terror, danger, to one in whom the natural current of the

instincts has had its course changed as that of a stream is changed by a convulsion of nature, so that the

I am now twentyfive years old. I have reached the time of life which I have dreamed, nay even ventured to

hope, might be the limit of the sentence which was pronounced upon me in my infancy. I can assign no good

reason for this anticipation. But in writing this paper I feel as if I were preparing to begin a renewed

existence. There is nothing for me to be ashamed of in the story I have told. There is no man living who

would not have yielded to the sense of instantly impending death which seized upon me under the conditions

I have mentioned. Martyrs have gone singing to their flaming shrouds, but never a man could hold his breath

long enough to kill himself; he must have rope or water, or some mechanical help, or nature will make him

draw in a breath of air, and would make him do so though he knew the salvation of the human race would be

This paper may never reach the eye of any one afflicted in the same way that I have been. It probably never

will; but for all that, there are many shy natures which will recognize tendencies in themselves in the

direction of my unhappy susceptibility. Others, to whom such weakness seems inconceivable, will find their

scepticism shaken, if not removed, by the calm, judicial statement of the Report drawn up for the Royal

Academy. It will make little difference to me whether my story is accepted unhesitatingly or looked upon as

largely a product of the imagination. I am but a bird of passage that lights on the boughs of different

nationalities. I belong to no flock; my home may be among the palms of Syria, the olives of Italy, the oaks of

England, the elms that shadow the Hudson or the Connecticut; I build no nest; today I am here, tomorrow

If I quit my native land before the trees have dropped their leaves I shall place this manuscript in the safe

hands of one whom I feel sure that I can trust; to do with it as he shall see fit. If it is only curious and has no

bearing on human welfare, he may think it well to let it remain unread until I shall have passed away. If in his

judgment it throws any light on one of the deeper mysteries of our nature,the repulsions which play such a

formidable part in social life, and which must be recognized as the correlatives of the affinities that distribute

the individuals governed by them in the face of impediments which seem to be impossibilities,then it may

But if I am here when the leaves are all fallen, the programme of my life will have changed, and this story of

the dead past will be illuminated by the light of a living present which will irradiate all its saddening features.

Who would not pray that my last gleam of light and hope may be that of dawn and not of departing day?

The reader who finds it hard to accept the reality of a story so far from the common range of experience is

once more requested to suspend his judgment until he has read the paper which will next be offered for his

Perhaps it is too much to expect a reader who wishes to be entertained, excited, amused, and does not want to

work his passage through pages which he cannot understand without some effort of his own, to read the paper

which follows and Dr. Butts's reflections upon it. If he has no curiosity in the direction of these chapters, he

can afford to leave them to such as relish a slight flavor of science. But if he does so leave them he will very

probably remain sceptical as to the truth of the story to which they are meant to furnish him with a key.

Of course the case of Maurice Kirkwood is a remarkable and exceptional one, and it is hardly probable that

any reader's experience will furnish him with its parallel. But let him look back over all his acquaintances, if

he has reached middle life, and see if he cannot recall more than one who, for some reason or other, shunned

the society of young women, as if they had a deadly fear of their company. If he remembers any such, he can

understand the simple statements and natural reflections which are laid before him.

One of the most singular facts connected with the history of Maurice Kirkwood was the philosophical

equanimity with which he submitted to the fate which had fallen upon him. He did not choose to be pumped

by the Interviewer, who would show him up in the sensational columns of his prying newspaper. He lived

chiefly by himself, as the easiest mode of avoiding those meetings to which he would be exposed in almost

every society into which he might venture. But he had learned to look upon himself very much as he would

upon an intimate not himself,upon a different personality. A young man will naturally enough be ashamed

of his shyness. It is something which others believe, and perhaps he himself thinks, he might overcome. But

in the case of Maurice Kirkwood there was no room for doubt as to the reality and gravity of the long

enduring effects of his first convulsive terror. He had accepted the fact as he would have accepted the

calamity of losing his sight or his hearing. When he was questioned by the experts to whom his case was

submitted, he told them all that he knew about it almost without a sign of emotion. Nature was so peremptory

with him,saying in language that had no double meaning: "If you violate the condition on which you hold

my gift of existence I slay you on the spot,"that he became as decisive in his obedience as she was in her

Yet it must not be thought for a moment,it cannot be supposed, that he was insensible because he

looked upon himself with the coolness of an enforced philosophy. He bore his burden manfully, hard as it

was to live under it, for he lived, as we have seen, in hope. The thought of throwing it off with his life, as too

grievous to be borne, was familiar to his lonely hours, but he rejected it as unworthy of his manhood. How he

had speculated and dreamed about it is plain enough from the paper the reader may remember on Ocean,

With these preliminary hints the paper promised is submitted to such as may find any interest in them.

Being the Substance of a Report to the Royal Academy of the Bio~ logical Sciences by a Committee of that

"The singular nature of the case we are about to narrate and comment upon will, we feel confident, arrest the

attention of those who have learned the great fact that Nature often throws the strongest light upon her laws

by the apparent exceptions and anomalies which from time to time are observed. We have done with the lusus

naturae of earlier generations. We pay little attention to the stories of 'miracles,' except so far as we receive

them readymade at the hands of the churches which still hold to them. Not the less do we meet with strange

and surprising facts, which a century or two ago would have been handled by the clergy and the courts, but

today are calmly recorded and judged by the best light our knowledge of the laws of life can throw upon

them. It must be owned that there are stories which we can hardly dispute, so clear and full is the evidence in

their support, which do, notwithstanding, tax our faith and sometimes leave us sceptical in spite of all the

" In this category many will be disposed to place the case we commend to the candid attention of the

Academy. If one were told that a young man, a gentleman by birth and training, well formed, in apparently

perfect health, of agreeable physiognomy and manners, could not endure the presence of the most attractive

young woman, but was seized with deadly terror and sudden collapse of all the powers of life, if he came into

her immediate presence; if it were added that this same young man did not shrink from the presence of an old

withered crone; that he had a certain timid liking for little maidens who had not yet outgrown the company of

their dolls, the listener would be apt to smile, if he did not laugh, at the absurdity of the fable. Surely, he

would say, this must be the fiction of some fanciful brain, the whim of some romancer, the trick of some

playwright. It would make a capital farce, this idea, carried out. A young man slighting the lovely heroine of

the little comedy and making love to her grandmother! This would, of course, be overstating the truth of the

story, but to such a misinterpretation the plain facts lend themselves too easily. We will relate the leading

circumstances of the case, as they were told us with perfect simplicity and frankness by the subject of an

affection which, if classified, would come under the general head of Antipathy, but to which, if we give it a

Here follows the account furnished to the writer of the paper, which is in all essentials identical with that

" Such is the case offered to our consideration. Assuming its truthfulness in all its particulars, it remains to

see in the first place whether or not it is as entirely exceptional and anomalous as it seems at first sight, or

whether it is only the last term of a series of cases which in their less formidable aspect are well known to us

"To most of those among us the explanations we are now about to give are entirely superfluous. But there are

some whose chief studies have been in different directions, and who will not complain if certain facts are

mentioned which to the expert will seem rudimentary, and which hardly require recapitulation to those who

"The heart is the centre of every living movement in the higher animals, and in man, furnishing in varying

amount, or withholding to a greater or less extent, the needful supplies to all parts of the system. If its action

is diminished to a certain degree, faintness is the immediate consequence; if it is arrested, loss of

consciousness; if its action is not soon restored, death, of which fainting plants the white flag, remains in

How closely the heart is under the influence of the emotions we need not go to science to learn, for all human

experience and all literature are overflowing with evidence that shows the extent of this relation. Scripture is

full of it; the heart in Hebrew poetry represents the entire life, we might almost say. Not less forcible is the

More especially is the heart associated in every literature with the passion of love. A famous old story is that

of Galen, who was called to the case of a young lady long ailing, and wasting away from some cause the

physicians who had already seen her were unable to make out. The shrewd old practitioner suspected that

love was at the bottom of the young lady's malady. Many relatives and friends of both sexes, all of them

ready with their sympathy, came to see her. The physician sat by her bedside during one of these visits, and in

an easy, natural way took her hand and placed a finger on her pulse. It beat quietly enough until a certain

comely young gentleman entered the apartment, when it suddenly rose infrequency, and at the same moment

her hurried breathing, her changing color, pale and flushed by turns, betrayed the profound agitation his

presence excited. This was enough for the sagacious Greek; love was the disease, the cure of which by its like

may be claimed as an anticipation of homoeopathy. In the frontispiece to the fine old 'Junta' edition of the

works of Galen, you may find among the woodcuts a representation of the interesting scene, with the title

"Love has many languages, but the heart talks through all of them. The pallid or burning cheek tells of the

failing or leaping fountain which gives it color. The lovers at the 'Brookside' could hear each other's hearts

beating. When Genevieve, in Coleridge's poem, forgot herself, and was beforehand with her suitor in her

Always the heart, whether its hurried action is seen, or heard, or felt. But it is not always in this way that the

This saying was not meant, perhaps, to be taken literally, but it has its literal truth. Many a lover has found

his heart sink within him,lose all its force, and leave him weak as a child in his emotion at the sight of the

object of his affections. When Porphyro looked upon Madeline at her prayers in the chapel, it was too much

And in Balzac's novel, 'Cesar Birotteau,' the hero of the story 'fainted away forjoy at the moment when,

under a lindentree, at Sceaux, ConstanceBarbeJosephine accepted him as her future husband.'

"One who faints is dead if he does not I come to,' and nothing is more likely than that too susceptible lovers

have actually gone off in this way. Everything depends on how the heart behaves itself in these and similar

trying moments. The mechanism of its actions becomes an interesting subject, therefore, to lovers of both

"The heart is a great reservoir, which distributes food, drink, air, and heat to every part of the system, in

exchange for its waste material. It knocks at the gate of every organ seventy or eighty times in a minute,

calling upon it to receive its supplies and unload its refuse. Between it and the brain there is the closest

relation. The emotions, which act upon it as we have seen, govern it by a mechanism only of late years

thoroughly understood. This mechanism can be made plain enough to the reader who is not afraid to believe

"The brain, as all know, is the seat of ideas, emotions, volition. It is the great central telegraphic station with

which many lesser centres are in close relation, from which they receive, and to which they transmit, their

messages. The heart has its own little brains, so to speak,small collections of nervous substance which

govern its rhythmical motions under ordinary conditions. But these lesser nervous centres are to a large extent

dominated by influences transmitted from certain groups of nervecells in the brain and its immediate

"There are two among the special groups of nervecells which produce directly opposite effects. One of these

has the power of accelerating the action of the heart, while the other has the power of retarding or arresting

this action. One acts as the spur, the other as the bridle. According as one or the other predominates, the

action of the heart will be stimulated or restrained. Among the great modern discoveries in physiology is that

of the existence of a distinct centre of inhibition, as the restraining influence over the heart is called.

"The centre of inhibition plays a terrible part in the history of cowardice and of unsuccessful love. No man

can be brave without blood to sustain his courage, any more than he can think, as the German materialist

says, not absurdly, without phosphorus. The fainting lover must recover his circulation, or his lady will lend

him her smellingsalts and take a gallant with blood in his cheeks. Porphyro got over his faintness before he

ran away with Madeline, and Cesar Birotteau was an accepted lover when he swooned with happiness: but

many an officer has been cashiered, and many a suitor has been rejected, because the centre of inhibition has

"In the wellknown cases of deadly antipathy which have been recorded, the most frequent cause has been

the disturbed and depressing influence of the centre of inhibition. Fainting at the sight of blood is one of the

commonest examples of this influence. A single impression, in a very early period of atmospheric

existence, perhaps, indirectly, before that period, as was said to have happened in the case of James the

First of England,may establish a communication between this centre and the heart which will remain open

ever afterwards. How does a footpath across a field establish itself? Its curves are arbitrary, and what we call

accidental, but one after another follows it as if he were guided by a chart on which it was laid down. So it is

with this dangerous transit between the centre of inhibition and the great organ of life. If once the path is

opened by the track of some profound impression, that same impression, if repeated, or a similar one, is likely

to find the old footmarks and follow them. Habit only makes the path easier to traverse, and thus the

unreasoning terror of a child, of an infant, may perpetuate itself in a timidity which shames the manhood of

"The case before us is an exceptional and most remarkable example of the effect of inhibition on the heart.

"We will not say that we believe it to be unique in the history of the human race; on the contrary, we do not

doubt that there have been similar cases, and that in some rare instances sudden death has been the

consequence of seizures like that of the subject of this Report. The case most like it is that of Colone

Townsend, which is too well known to require any lengthened description in this paper. It is enough to recall

the main facts. He could by a voluntary effort suspend the action of his heart for a considerable period, during

which he lay like one dead, pulseless, and without motion. After a time the circulation returned, and he does

not seem to have been the worse for his dangerous, or seemingly dangerous, experiment. But in his case it

was by an act of the will that the heart's action was suspended. In the case before us it is an involuntary

impulse transmitted from the brain to the inhibiting centre, which arrests the cardiac movements.

"The subject of this anomalous affliction is now more than twenty years old. The chain of nervous actions has

become firmly established. It might have been hoped that the changes of adolescence would have effected a

transformation of the perverted instinct. On the contrary, the whole force of this instinct throws itself on the

centre of inhibition, instead of quickening the heart beats, and sending the rush of youthful blood with fresh

"Is it probable that time and circumstances will alter a habit of nervous interactions so long established? We

are disposed to think that there is a chance of its being broken up. And we are not afraid to say that we

suspect the old gypsy woman, whose prophecy took such hold of the patient's imagination, has hit upon the

way in which the "spell,' as she called it, is to be dissolved. She must, in all probability, have had a hint of the

'antipatia' to which the youth before her was a victim, and its cause, and if so, her guess as to the probable

mode in which the young man would obtain relief from his unfortunate condition was the one which would

"If once the nervous impression which falls on the centre of inhibition can be made to change its course, so as

to follow its natural channel, it will probably keep to that channel ever afterwards. And this will, it is most

likely, be effected by some sudden, unexpected impression. If he were drowning, and a young woman should

rescue him, it is by no means impossible that the change in the nervous current we have referred to might be

brought about as rapidly, as easily, as the reversal of the poles in a magnet, which is effected in an instant.

But he cannot be expected to throw himself into the water just at the right moment when the 'fair lady' of the

gitana's prophecy is passing on the shore. Accident may effect the cure which art seems incompetent to

perform. It would not be strange if in some future seizure he should never come back to consciousness. But it

is quite conceivable, on the other hand, that a happier event may occur, that in a single moment the nervous

polarity may be reversed, the whole course of his life changed, and his past terrible experiences be to him like

"This is one, of those cases in which it is very hard to determine the wisest course to be pursued. The

question is not unlike that which arises in certain cases of dislocation of the bones of the neck. Shall the

unfortunate sufferer go all his days with his face turned far round to the right or the left, or shall an attempt be

made to replace the dislocated bones? an attempt which may succeed, or may cause instant death. The patient

must be consulted as to whether he will take the chance. The practitioner may be unwilling to risk it, if the

patient consents. Each case must be judged on its own special grounds. We cannot think that this young man

is doomed to perpetual separation from the society of womanhood during the period of its bloom and

attraction. But to provoke another seizure after his past experiences would be too much like committing

suicide. We fear that we must trust to the chapter of accidents. The strange maladyfor such it ishas

become a second nature, and may require as energetic a shock to displace it as it did to bring it into existence.

Time alone can solve this question, on which depends the wellbeing and, it may be, the existence of a young

man every way fitted to be happy, and to give happiness, if restored to his true nature."

Dr. Butts sat up late at night reading these papers and reflecting upon them. He was profoundly impressed

and tenderly affected by the entire frankness, the absence of all attempt at concealment, which Maurice

showed in placing these papers at his disposal. He believed that his patient would recover from this illness for

which he had been taking care of him. He thought deeply and earnestly of what he could do for him after he

There were references, in Maurice's own account of himself, which the doctor called to mind with great

interest after reading his brief autobiography. Some one personsome young woman, it must behad

produced a singular impression upon him since those earlier perilous experiences through which he had

passed. The doctor could not help thinking of that meeting with Euthymia of which she had spoken to him.

Maurice, as she said, turned pale,he clapped his hand to his breast. He might have done so if be had met

her chambermaid, or any straggling damsel of the village. But Euthymia was not a young woman to be

looked upon with indifference. She held herself like a queen, and walked like one, not a stage queen, but one

born and bred to selfreliance, and command of herself as well as others. One could not pass her without

being struck with her noble bearing and spirited features. If she had known how Maurice trembled as he

looked upon her, in that conflict of attraction and uncontrollable dread,if she had known it! But what, even

then, could she have done? Nothing but get away from him as fast as she could. As it was, it was a long time

before his agitation subsided, and his heart beat with its common force and frequency.

Dr. Butts was not a male gossip nor a matchmaking gobetween. But he could not help thinking what a pity it

was that these two young persons could not come together as other young people do in the pairing season,

and find out whether they cared for and were fitted for each other. He did not pretend to settle this question in

his own mind, but the thought was a natural one. And here was a gulf between them as deep and wide as that

between Lazarus and Dives. Would it ever be bridged over? This thought took possession of the doctor's

mind, and he imagined all sorts of ways of effecting some experimental approximation between Maurice and

Euthymia. From this delicate subject he glanced off to certain general considerations suggested by the

extraordinary history he had been reading. He began by speculating as to the possibility of the personal

presence of an individual making itself perceived by some channel other than any of the five senses. The

study of the natural sciences teaches those who are devoted to them that the most insignificant facts may lead

the way to the discovery of the most important, allpervading laws of the universe. From the kick of a frog's

hind leg to the amazing triumphs which began with that seemingly trivial incident is a long, a very long stride

if Madam Galvani had not been in delicate health, which was the occasion of her having some frogbroth

prepared for her, the world of today might not be in possession of the electric telegraph and the light which

blazes like the sun at high noon. A common looking occurrence, one seemingly unimportant, which had

hitherto passed unnoticed with the ordinary course of things, was the means of introducing us to a new and

vast realm of closely related phenomena. It was like a key that we might have picked up, looking so simple

that it could hardly fit any lock but one of like simplicity, but which should all at once throw back the bolts of

the one lock which had defied the most ingenious of our complex implements and open our way into a

It certainly was not through the eye alone that Maurice felt the paralyzing influence. He could contemplate

Euthymia from a distance, as he did on the day of the boatrace, without any nervous disturbance. A certain

proximity was necessary for the influence to be felt, as in the case of magnetism and electricity. An

atmosphere of danger surrounded every woman he approached during the period when her sex exercises its

most powerful attractions. How far did that atmosphere extend, and through what channel did it act?

The key to the phenomena of this case, he believed, was to be found in a fact as humble as that which gave

birth to the science of galvanism and its practical applications. The circumstances connected with the very

common antipathy to cats were as remarkable in many points of view as the similar circumstances in the case

of Maurice Kirkwood. The subjects of that antipathy could not tell what it was which disturbed their nervous

system. All they knew was that a sense of uneasiness, restlessness, oppression, came over them in the

presence of one of these animals. He remembered the fact already mentioned, that persons sensitive to this

impression can tell by their feelings if a cat is concealed in the apartment in which they may happen to be. It

may be through some emanation. It may be through the medium of some electrical disturbance. What if the

nervethrills passing through the whole system of the animal propagate themselves to a certain distance

without any more regard to intervening solids than is shown by magnetism? A sieve lets sand pass through it;

a filter arrests sand, but lets fluids pass, glass holds fluids, but lets light through; wood shuts out light, but

magnetic attraction goes through it as sand went through the sieve. No good reasons can be given why the

presence of a cat should not betray itself to certain organizations, at a distance, through the walls of a box in

which the animal is shut up. We need not disbelieve the stories which allege such an occurrence as a fact and

If the presence of a cat can produce its effects under these circumstances, why should not that of a human

being under similar conditions, acting on certain constitutions, exercise its specific influence? The doctor

recalled a story told him by one of his friends, a story which the friend himself heard from the lips of the

distinguished actor, the late Mr. Fechter. The actor maintained that Rachel had no genius as an actress. It was

all Samson's training and study, according to him, which explained the secret of her wonderful effectiveness

on the stage. But magnetism, he said,magnetism, she was full of. He declared that he was made aware of

her presence on the stage, when he could not see her or know of her presence otherwise, by this magnetic

emanation. The doctor took the story for what it was worth. There might very probably be exaggeration,

perhaps high imaginative coloring about it, but it was not a whit more unlikely than the catstories, accepted

as authentic. He continued this train of thought into further developments. Into this series of reflections we

What is the meaning of the halo with which artists have surrounded the heads of their pictured saints, of the

aureoles which wraps them like a luminous cloud? Is it not a recognition of the fact that these holy

personages diffuse their personality in the form of a visible emanation, which reminds us of Milton's

The common use of the term influence would seem to imply the existence of its correlative, effluence. There

is no good reason that I can see, the doctor said to himself, why among the forces which work upon the

nervous centres there should not be one which acts at various distances from its source. It may not be visible

like the "glory" of the painters, it may not be appreciable by any one of the five senses, and yet it may be felt

by the person reached by it as much as if it were a palpable presence,more powerfully, perhaps, from the

Why should not Maurice have been rendered restless and anxious by the unseen nearness of a young woman

who was in the next room to him, just as the persons who have the dread of cats are made conscious of their

presence through some unknown channel? Is it anything strange that the larger and more powerful organism

should diffuse a consciousness of its presence to some distance as well as the slighter and feebler one? Is it

strange that this mysterious influence or effluence should belong especially or exclusively to the period of

complete womanhood in distinction from that of immaturity or decadence? On the contrary, it seems to be in

accordance with all the analogies of nature,analogies too often cruel in the sentence they pass upon the

Among the many curious thoughts which came up in the doctor's mind was this, which made him smile as if

it were a jest, but which he felt very strongly had its serious side, and was involved with the happiness or

suffering of multitudes of youthful persons who die without telling their secret:

How many young men have a mortal fear of woman, as woman, which they never overcome, and in

consequence of which the attraction which draws man towards her, as strong in them as in

others,oftentimes, in virtue of their peculiarly sensitive organizations, more potent in them than in others

of like age and conditions,in consequence of which fear, this attraction is completely neutralized, and all

the possibilities of doubled and indefinitely extended life depending upon it are left unrealized! Think what

numbers of young men in Catholic countries devote themselves to lives of celibacy. Think how many young

men lose all their confidence in the presence of the young woman to whom they are most attracted, and at last

steal away from a companionship which it is rapture to dream of and torture to endure, so does the presence

of the beloved object paralyze all the powers of expression. Sorcerers have in all time and countries played on

the hopes and terrors of lovers. Once let loose a strong impulse on the centre of inhibition, and the warrior

who had faced bayonets and batteries becomes a coward whom the welldressed hero of the ball room and

leader of the German will put to ignominious flight in five minutes of easy, audacious familiarity with his

Yes, the doctor went on with his reflections, I do not know that I have seen the term Gynophobia before I

opened this manuscript, but I have seen the malady many times. Only one word has stood between many a

pair of young people and their lifelong happiness, and that word has got as far as the lips, but the lips

trembled and would not, could not, shape that little word. All young women are not like Coleridge's

Genevieve, who knew how to help her lover out of his difficulty, and said yes before he had asked for an

answer. So the wave which was to have wafted them on to the shore of Elysium has just failed of landing

them, and back they have been drawn into the desolate ocean to meet no more on earth.

Love is the masterkey, he went on thinking, love is the masterkey that opens the gates of happiness, of

hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!not only

the historic wonder of beauty, that "burnt the topless towers of Ilium "for the smile of Helen, and fired the

palaces of Babylon by the hand of Thais, but the beauty which springs up in all times and places, and carries

a torch and wears a serpent for a wreath as truly as any of the Eumenides. Paint Beauty with her foot upon a

The doctor smiled at his own imposing classical allusions and pictorial imagery. Drifting along from thought

to thought, he reflected on the probable consequences of the general knowledge of Maurice Kirkwood's story,

What a piece of work it would make among the lively youths of the village, to be sure! What scoffing, what

ridicule, what embellishments, what fables, would follow in the trail of the story! If the Interviewer got hold

of it, how "The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor" would blaze with capitals in its next issue! The

young fellows' of the place would be disposed to make fun of the whole matter. The young girlsthe doctor

hardly dared to think what would happen when the story got about among them. "The Sachem" of the solitary

canoe, the bold horseman, the handsome hermit,handsome so far as the glimpses they had got of him

went,must needs be an object of tender interest among them, now that he was ailing, suffering, in danger

of his life, away from friends,poor fellow! Little tokens of their regard had reached his sickchamber;

bunches of flowers with(dainty little notes, some of them pinkish, some threecornered, some of them with

brief messages, others "criss crossed," were growing more frequent as it was understood that the patient was

likely to be convalescent before many days had passed. If it should come to be understood that there was a

deadly obstacle to their coming into any personal relations with him, the doctor had his doubts whether there

were not those who would subject him to the risk; for there were coquettes in the village,strangers, visitors,

let us hope,who would sacrifice anything or anybody to their vanity and love of conquest.

The illness from which Maurice had suffered left him in a state of profound prostration. The doctor, who

remembered the extreme danger of any overexertion in such cases, hardly allowed him to lift his head from

the pillow. But his mind was gradually recovering its balance, and he was able to hold some conversation

with those about him. His faithful Paolo had grown so thin in waiting upon him and watching with him that

the village children had to take a second look at his face when they passed him to make sure that it was

indeed their old friend and no other. But as his master advanced towards convalescence and the doctor

assured him that he was going in all probability to get well, Paolo's face began to recover something of its old

look and expression, and once more his pockets filled themselves with comfits for his little circle of

How is Mr. Kirkwood?" was the question with which he was always greeted. In the worst periods of the fever

be rarely left his master. When he did, and the question was put to him, he would shake his head sadly,

sometimes without a word, sometimes with tears and sobs and faltering words,more like a brokenhearted

child than a stalwart man as he was, such a man as soldiers are made of in the great Continental armies.

"He very bad,he no eat nothing,heno say nothing,he never be no better," and all his Southern

nature betrayed itself in a passionate burst of lamentation. But now that he began to feel easy about his

"He better every day now. He get well in few weeks, sure. You see him on hoss in little while." The

kindhearted creature's life was bound up in that of his "master," as he loved to call him, in sovereign

disregard of the comments of the natives, who held themselves too high for any such recognition of another

as their better. They could not understand how he, so much their superior in bodily presence, in air and

manner, could speak of the man who employed him in any other way than as "Kirkwood," without even

demeaning himself so far as to prefix a "Mr." to it. But "my master" Maurice remained for Paolo in spite of

the fact that all men are born free and equal. And never was a servant more devoted to a master than was

Paolo to Maurice during the days of doubt and danger. Since his improvement Maurice insisted upon his

leaving his chamber and getting out of the house, so as to breathe the fresh air of which he was in so much

need. It worried him to see his servant returning after too short an absence. The attendant who had helped him

in the care of the patient was within call, and Paolo was almost driven out of the house by the urgency of his

Notwithstanding the fact of Maurice's improved condition, although the force of the disease had spent itself,

the state of weakness to which he had been reduced was a cause of some anxiety, and required great

precautions to be taken. He lay in bed, wasted, enfeebled to such a degree that he had to be cared for very

much as a child is tended. Gradually his voice was coming back to him, so that he could hold some

conversation, as was before mentioned, with those about him. The doctor waited for the right moment to

make mention of the manuscript which Maurice had submitted to him. Up to this time, although it had been

alluded to and the doctor had told him of the intense interest with which he had read it, he had never ventured

to make it the subject of any long talk, such as would be liable to fatigue his patient. But now he thought the

"I have been thinking," the doctor said, "of the singular seizures to which you are liable, and as it is my

business not merely to think about such cases, but to do what I can to help any who may be capable of

receiving aid from my art, I wish to have some additional facts about your history. And in the first place, will

you allow me to ask what led you to this particular place? It is so much less known to the public at large than

many other resorts that we naturally ask, What brings this or that new visitor among us? We have no ill

tasting, natural spring of bad water to be analyzed by the state chemist and proclaimed as a specific. We have

no great gambling houses, no racecourse (except that fox boats on the lake); we have no coachingclub, no

great balls, few lions of any kind, so we ask, What brings this or that stranger here? And I think I may venture

to ask you whether any, special motive brought you among us, or whether it was accident that determined

"Certainly, doctor," Maurice answered, "I will tell you with great pleasure. Last year I passed on the border of

a great river. The year before I lived in a lonely cottage at the side of the ocean. I wanted this year to be by a

lake. You heard the paper read at the meeting of your society, or at least you heard of it,for such matters

are always talked over in a village like this. You can judge by that paper, or could, if it were before you, of

the frame of mind in which I came here. I was tired of the sullen indifference of the ocean and the babbling

egotism of the river, always hurrying along on its own private business. I wanted the dreamy stillness of a

large, tranquil sheet of water that had nothing in particular to do, and would leave me to myself and my

thoughts. I had read somewhere about the place, and the old Anchor Tavern, with its paternal landlord and

motherly landlady and oldfashioned household, and that, though it was no longer open as a tavern, I could

find a restingplace there early in the season, at least for a few days, while I looked about me for a quiet

place in which I might pass my summer. I have found this a pleasant residence. By being up early and out late

I have kept myself mainly in the solitude which has become my enforced habit of life. The season has gone

The doctor was sitting with his hand round Maurice's wrist, three fingers on his pulse. As he spoke these last

words he noticed that the pulse fluttered a little,beat irregularly a few times; intermitted; became feeble

and thready; while his cheek grew whiter than the pallid bloodlessness of his long illness had left it.

"No more talk, now," he said. "You are too tired to be using your voice. I will hear all the rest another time."

The doctor had interrupted Maurice at an interesting point. What did he mean by saying that his dream had

become a vision? This is what the doctor was naturally curious, and professionally anxious, to know. But his

hand was still on his patient's pulse, which told him unmistakably that the heart had taken the alarm and was

losing its energy under the depressing nervous influence. Presently, however, it recovered its natural force

and rhythm, and a faint flush came back to the pale cheek. The doctor remembered the story of Galen, and the

"You said something about a dream of yours which had become a vision," said the doctor, with his fingers on

his patient's wrist, as before. He felt the artery leap, under his pressure, falter a little, stop, then begin again,

growing fuller in its beat. The heart had felt the pull of the bridle, but the spur had roused it to swift reaction.

"You know the story of my past life, doctor," Maurice answered; "and, I will tell you what is the vision which

has taken the place of my dreams. You remember the boatrace? I watched it from a distance, but I held a

powerful operaglass in my hand, which brought the whole crew of the young ladies' boat so close to me that

I could see the features, the figures, the movements, of every one of the rowers. I saw the little coxswain fling

her bouquet in the track of the other boat,you remember how the race was lost and won,but I saw one

face among those young girls which drew me away from all the rest. It was that of the young lady who pulled

the bow oar, the captain of the boat's crew. I have since learned her name, you know it well,I need not

name her. Since that day I have had many distant glimpses of her; and once I met her so squarely that the

deadly sensation came over me, and I felt that in another moment I should fall senseless at her feet. But she

passed on her way and I on mine, and the spasm which had clutched my heart gradually left it, and I was as

"I do; and she is a very noble creature. You are not the first young man who has been fascinated, almost at a

The doctor gave him a full account of the young lady, of her early days, her character, her accomplishments.

To all this he listened devoutly, and when the doctor left him he said to himself, "I will see her and speak

"The Wonder" of the Corinna Institute had never willingly made a show of her gymnastic accomplishments.

Her feats, which were so much admired, were only her natural exercise. Gradually the dumbbells others

used became too light for her, the ropes she climbed too short, the clubs she exercised with seemed as if they

were made of cork instead of being heavy wood, and all the tests and meters of strength and agility had been

strained beyond the standards which the records of the school had marked as their historic maxima. It was not

her fault that she broke a dynamometer one day; she apologized for it, but the teacher said he wished he could

have a dozen broken every year in the same way. The consciousness of her bodily strength had made her very

careful in her movements. The pressure of her hand was never too hard for the tenderest little maiden whose

palm was against her own. So far from priding herself on her special gifts, she was disposed to be ashamed of

them. There were times and places in which she could give full play to her muscles without fear or reproach.

She had her special costume for the boat and for the woods. She would climb the rugged old hemlocks now

and then for the sake of a wide outlook, or to peep into the large nest where a hawk, or it may be an eagle,

There were those who spoke of her wanderings in lonely places as an unsafe exposure. One sometimes met

doubtful characters about the neighborhood, and stories weretold of occurrences which might well frighten

a young girl, and make her cautious of trusting herself alone in the wild solitudes which surrounded the little

village.. Those who knew Euthymia thought her quite equal to taking care of herself. Her very look was

enough to ensure the respect of any vagabond who might cross her path, and if matters came to the worst she

But it was a pity to associate this class of thoughts with a noble specimen of true womanhood. Health, beauty,

strength, were fine qualities, and in all these she was rich. She enjoyed all her natural gifts, and thought little

about them. Unwillingly, but over persuaded by some of her friends, she had allowed her arm and hand to

be modelled. The artists who saw the cast wondered if it would be possible to get the bust of the maiden from

whom it was taken. Nobody would have dared to suggest such an idea to her except Lurida. For Lurida sex

was a trifling accident, to be disregarded not only in the interests of humanity, but for the sake of art.

"It is a shame," she said to Euthymia, "that you will not let your exquisitely moulded form be perpetuated in

marble. You have no right to withhold such a model from the contemplation of your fellow creatures. Think

how rare it is to see a woman who truly represents the divine idea! You belong to your race, and not to

yourself,at least, your beauty is a gift not to be considered as a piece of private property. Look at the

socalled Venus of Milo. Do you suppose the noble woman who was the original of that divinely chaste

statue felt any scruple about allowing the sculptor to reproduce her pure, unblemished perfections?"

Euthymia was always patient with her imaginative friend. She listened to her eloquent discourse, but she

could not help blushing, used as she was to Lurida's audacities. "The Terror's" brain had run away with a

large share of the blood which ought to have gone to the nourishment of her general system. She could not

help admiring, almost worshipping, a companion whose being was rich in the womanly developments with

which nature had so economically endowed herself. An impoverished organization carries with it certain

neutral qualities which make its subject appear, in the presence of complete manhood and womanhood, like a

deafmute among speaking persons. The deep blush which crimsoned Euthymia's cheek at Lurida's

suggestion was in a strange contrast to her own undisturbed expression. There was a range of sensibilities of

which Lurida knew far less than she did of those many and difficult studies which had absorbed her vital

forces. She was startled to see what an effect her proposal had produced, for Euthymia was not only blushing,

"Is this only your own suggestion?" Euthymia said, "or has some one been putting the idea into your head?"

The truth was that she had happened to meet the Interviewer at the Library, one day, and she was offended by

the long, searching stare with which that individual had honored her. It occurred to her that he, or some such

visitor to the place, might have spoken of her to Lurida, or to some other person who had repeated what was

said to Lurida, as a good subject for the art of the sculptor, and she felt all her maiden sensibilities offended

by the proposition. Lurida could not understand her excitement, but she was startled by it. Natures which are

complementary of each other are liable to these accidental collisions of feeling. They get along very well

together, none the worse for their differences, until all at once the tender spot of one or the other is carelessly

handled in utter unconsciousness on the part of the aggressor, and the exclamation, the outcry, or the

explosion explains the situation altogether too emphatically. Such scenes did not frequently occur between

the two friends, and this little flurry was soon over; but it served to warn Lurida that Miss Euthymia Tower

was not of that class of selfconscious beauties who would be ready to dispute the empire of the Venus of

Milo on her own ground, in defences as scanty and insufficient as those of the marble divinity.

Euthymia had had admirers enough, at a distance, while at school, and in the long vacations, near enough to

find out that she was anything but easy to make love to. She fairly frightened more than one rash youth who

was disposed to be too sentimental in her company. They overdid flattery, which she was used to and

tolerated, but which cheapened the admirer in her estimation, and now and then betrayed her into an

expression which made him aware of the fact, and was a discouragement to aggressive amiability. The real

difficulty was that not one of her adorers had ever greatly interested her. It could not be that nature had made

her insensible. It must have been because the man who was made for her had never yet shown himself. She

was not easy to please, that was certain; and she was one of those young women who will not accept as a

lover one who but half pleases them. She could not pick up the first stick that fell in her way and take it to

shape her ideal out of. Many of the good people of the village doubted whether Euthymia would ever be

"There 's nothing good enough for her in this village," said the old landlord of what had been the Anchor

"She must wait till a prince comes along," the old landlady said in reply. "She'd make as pretty a queen as any

of them that's born to it. Wouldn't she be splendid with a gold crown on her head, and di'monds a glitterin' all

over her! D' you remember how handsome she looked in the tableau, when the fair was held for the Dorcas

Society? She had on an old dress of her grandma's,they don't make anything. half so handsome

nowadays,and she was just as pretty as a pictur'. But what's the use of good looks if they scare away folks?

The young fellows think that such a handsome girl as that would cost ten times as much to keep as a plain

one. She must be dressed up like an empress,so they seem to think. It ain't so with Euthymy: she'd look

like a great lady dressed anyhow, and she has n't got any more notions than the homeliest girl that ever stood

In the humbler walks of Arrowhead Village society, similar opinions were entertained of Miss Euthymia. The

freshwater fisherman represented pretty well the average estimate of the class to which he belonged. 'I tell

ye," said he to another gentleman of leisure, whose chief occupation was to watch the coming and going of

the visitors to Arrowhead Village,"I tell ye that girl ain't a gon to put up with any o' them slabsided

fellahs that you see hangin' raound to look at her every Sunday when she comes aout o' meetin'. It's one o'

In the mean time nothing could be further from the thoughts of Euthymia than the prospect of an ambitious

worldly alliance. The ideals of young women cost them many and great disappointments, but they save them

very often from those lifelong companionships which accident is constantly trying to force upon them, in

spite of their obvious unfitness. The higher the ideal, the less likely is the commonplace neighbor who has the

great advantage of easy access, or the boardinghouse acquaintance who can profit by those vacant hours

when the least interesting of visitors is better than absolute loneliness,the less likely are these undesirable

personages to be endured, pitied, and, if not embraced, accepted, for want of something better. Euthymia

found so much pleasure in the intellectual companionship of Lurida, and felt her own prudence and reserve so

necessary to that independent young lady, that she had been contented, so far, with friendship, and thought of

love only in an abstract sort of way. Beneath her abstractions there was a capacity of loving which might

have been inferred from the expression of her features, the light that shone in her eyes, the tones of her voice,

all of which were full of the language which belongs to susceptible natures. How many women never say to

themselves that they were born to love, until all at once the discovery opens upon them, as the sense that he

Like all the rest of the village and its visitors, she could not help thinking a good deal about the young man

lying ill amongst strangers. She was not one of those who had sent him the threecornered notes or even a

bunch of flowers. She knew that he was receiving abounding tokens of kindness and sympathy from different

quarters, and a certain inward feeling restrained her from joining in these demonstrations. If he had been

suffering from some deadly and contagious malady she would have risked her life to help him, without a

thought that there was any wonderful heroism in such selfdevotion. Her friend Lurida might have been

capable of the same sacrifice, but it would be after reasoning with herself as to the obligations which her

sense of human rights and duties laid upon her, and fortifying her courage with the memory of noble deeds

recorded of women in ancient and modern history. With Euthymia the primary human instincts took

precedence of all reasoning or reflection about them. All her sympathies were excited by the thought of this

forlorn stranger in his solitude, but she felt the impossibility of giving any complete expression to them. She

thought of Mungo Park in the African desert, and she envied the poor negress who not only pitied him, but

had the blessed opportunity of helping and consoling him. How near were these two human creatures, each

needing the other! How near in bodily presence, how far apart in their lives, with a barrier seemingly

These autumnal fevers, which carry off a large number of our young people every year, are treacherous and

deceptive diseases. Not only are they liable, as has been mentioned, to various accidental complications

which may prove suddenly fatal, but too often, after convalescence seems to be established, relapses occur

which are more serious than the disease had appeared to be in its previous course. One morning Dr. Butts

found Maurice worse instead of better, as he had hoped and expected to find him. Weak as he was, there was

every reason to fear the issue of this return of his threatening symptoms. There was not much to do besides

Does the reader of these pages ever think of the work a sick man as much as a well one has to perform while

he is lying on his back and taking what we call his "rest"? More than a thousand times an hour, between a

hundred and fifty and two hundred thousand times a week, he has to lift the bars of the cage in which his

breathing organs are confined, to save himself from asphyxia. Rest! There is no rest until the last long sigh

tells those who look upon the dying that the ceaseless daily task, to rest from which is death, is at last

finished. We are all galleyslaves, pulling at the levers of respiration,which, rising and falling like so

many oars, drive us across an unfathomable ocean from one unknown shore to another. No! Never was a

galleyslave so chained as we are to these four and twenty oars, at which we must tug day and night all our

The doctor could not find any accidental cause to account for this relapse. It presently occurred to him that

there might be some local source of infection which had brought on the complaint, and was still keeping up

the symptoms which were the ground of alarm. He determined to remove Maurice to his own house, where

he could be sure of pure air, and where he himself could give more constant attention to his patient during

this critical period of his disease. It was a risk to take, but he could be carried on a litter by careful men, and

remain wholly passive during the removal. Maurice signified his assent, as he could hardly help doing,for

the doctor's suggestion took pretty nearly the form of a command. He thought it a matter of life and death,

and was gently urgent for his patient's immediate change of residence. The doctor insisted on having

Maurice's books and other movable articles carried to his own house, so that he should be surrounded by

familiar sights, and not worry himself about what might happen to objects which he valued, if they were left

All these dispositions were quickly and quietly made, and everything was ready for the transfer of the patient

to the house of the hospitable physician. Paolo was at the doctor's, superintending the arrangement of

Maurice's effects and making all ready for his master. The nurse in attendance, a trustworthy man enough in

the main, finding his patient in a tranquil sleep, left his bedside for a little fresh air. While he was at the door

he heard a shouting which excited his curiosity, and he followed the sound until he found himself at the

border of the lake. It was nothing very wonderful which had caused the shouting. A Newfoundland dog had

been showing off his accomplishments, and some of the idlers were betting as to the time it would take him

to bring back to his master the various floating objects which had been thrown as far from the shore as

possible. He watched the dog a few minutes, when his attention was drawn to a light wherry, pulled by one

young lady and steered by another. It was making for the shore, which it would soon reach. The attendant

remembered all at once, that he had left his charge, and just before the boat came to land he turned and

hurried back to the patient. Exactly how long he had been absent he could not have said,perhaps a quarter

of an hour, perhaps longer; the time appeared short to him, wearied with long sitting and watching.

It had seemed, when he stole away from Maurice's bedside, that he was not in the least needed. The patient

was lying perfectly quiet, and to all appearance wanted nothing more than letting alone. It was such a comfort

to look at something besides the worn features of a sick man, to hear something besides his labored breathing

and faint, halfwhispered words, that the temptation to indulge in these luxuries for a few minutes had

Unfortunately, Maurice's slumbers did not remain tranquil during the absence of the nurse. He very soon fell

into a dream, which began quietly enough, but in the course of the sudden transitions which dreams are in the

habit of undergoing became successively anxious, distressing, terrifying. His earlier and later experiences

came up before him, fragmentary, incoherent, chaotic even, but vivid as reality. He was at the bottom of a

coalmine in one of those long, narrow galleries, or rather wormholes, in which human beings pass a large

part of their lives, like so many larvae boring their way into the beams and rafters of some old building. How

close the air was in the stifling passage through which he was crawling! The scene changed, and he was

climbing a slippery sheet of ice with desperate effort, his foot on the floor of a shallow niche, his hold an

icicle ready to snap in an instant, an abyss below him waiting for his foot to slip or the icicle to break. How

thin the air seemed, how desperately hard to breathe! He was thinking of Mont Blanc, it may be, and the

fearfully rarefied atmosphere which he remembered well as one of the great trials in his mountain ascents.

No, it was not Mont Blanc,it was not any one of the frozen Alpine summits; it was Hecla that he was

The smoke of the burning mountain was wrapping itself around him; he was choking with its dense fumes; he

heard the flames roaring around him, he felt the hot lava beneath his feet, he uttered a faint cry, and awoke.

The room was full of smoke. He was gasping for breath, strangling in the smothering oven which his

He tried to call for help, but his voice failed him, and died away in a whisper. He made a desperate effort, and

rose so as to sit up in the bed for an instant, but the effort was too much for him, and he sank back upon his

pillow, helpless. He felt that his hour had come, for he could not live in this dreadful atmosphere, and he was

left alone. He could hear the crackle of fire as the flame crept along from one partition to another. It was a

cruel fate to be left to perish in that way,the fate that many a martyr had had to face,to be first strangled

and then burned. Death had not the terror for him that it has for most young persons. He was accustomed to

thinking of it calmly, sometimes wistfully, even to such a degree that the thought of selfdestruction had

come upon him as a temptation. But here was death in an unexpected and appalling shape. He did not know

before how much he cared to live. All his old recollections came before him as it were in one long, vivid

flash. The closed vista of memory opened to its far horizonline, and past and present were pictured in a

single instant of clear vision. The dread moment which had blighted his life returned in all its terror. He felt

the convulsive spring in the form of a faint, impotent spasm,the rush of air,the thorns of the stinging and

lacerating cradle into which he was precipitated. One after another those paralyzing seizures which had been

like deadening blows on the naked heart seemed to repeat themselves, as real as at the moment of their

occurrence. The pictures passed in succession with such rapidity that they appeared almost as if simultaneous.

The vision of the "inward eye " was so intensified in this moment of peril that an instant was like an hour of

common existence. Those who have been very near drowning know well what this description means. The

development of a photograph may not explain it, but it illustrates the curious and familiar fact of the revived

recollections of the drowning man's experience. The sensitive plate has taken one look at a scene, and

Every little circumstance is there,the hoof in air, the wing in flight, the leaf as it falls, the wave as it breaks.

All there, but invisible; potentially present, but impalpable, inappreciable, as if not existing at all. A wash is

poured over it, and the whole scene comes out in all its perfection of detail. In those supreme moments when

death stares a man suddenly in the face the rush of unwonted emotion floods the undeveloped pictures of

vanished years, stored away in the memory, the vast panorama of a lifetime, and in one swift instant the past

comes out as vividly as if it were again the present. So it was at this moment with the sick man, as he lay

helpless and felt that he was left to die. For he saw no hope of relief: the smoke was drifting in clouds into the

room; the flames were very near; if he was not reached and rescued immediately it was all over with him.

His past life had flashed before him. Then all at once rose the thought of his future,of all its possibilities,

of the vague hopes which he had cherished of late that his mysterious doom would be lifted from him. There

was something, then, to be lived for, something! There was a new life, it might be, in store for him, and such

a new life! He thought of all he was losing. Oh, could he but have lived to know the meaning of love! And

the passionate desire of life came over him,not the dread of death, but the longing for what the future

All this took place in the course of a very few moments. Dreams and visions have little to do with measured

time, and ten minutes, possibly fifteen or twenty, were all that had passed since the beginning of those

nightmare terrors which were evidently suggested by the suffocating air he was breathing.

What had happened? In the confusion of moving books and other articles to the doctor's house, doors and

windows had been forgotten. Among the rest a window opening into the cellar, where some old furniture had

been left by a former occupant, had been left unclosed. One of the lazy natives, who had lounged by the

house smoking a bad cigar, had thrown the burning stump in at this open window. He had no particular

intention of doing mischief, but he had that indifference to consequences which is the next step above the

inclination to crime. The burning stump happened to fall among the straw of an old mattress which had been

ripped open. The smoker went his way without looking behind him, and it so chanced that no other person

passed the house for some time. Presently the straw was in a blaze, and from this the fire extended to the

furniture, to the stairway leading up from the cellar, and was working its way along the entry under the stairs

The blaze was fierce and swift, as it could not help being with such a mass of combustibles,loose straw

from the mattress, dry old furniture, and old warped floors which had been parching and shrinking for a score

or two of years. The whole house was, in the common language of the newspaper reports, "a perfect

tinderbox," and would probably be a heap of ashes in half an hour. And there was this unfortunate deserted

sick man lying between life and death, beyond all help unless some unexpected assistance should come to his

As the attendant drew near the house where Maurice was lying, he was horrorstruck to see dense volumes of

smoke pouring out of the lower windows. It was beginning to make its way through the upper windows, also,

and presently a tongue of fire shot out and streamed upward along the side of the house. The man shrieked

Fire! Fire! with all his might, and rushed to the door of the building to make his way to Maurice's room and

save him. He penetrated but a short distance when, blinded and choking with the smoke, he rushed headlong

down the stairs with a cry of despair that roused every man, woman, and child within reach of a human voice.

Out they came from their houses in every quarter of the village. The shout of Fire! Fire! was the chief aid lent

by many of the young and old. Some caught up pails and buckets: the more thoughtful ones filling them; the

hastier snatching them up empty, trusting to find water nearer the burning building.

This was the awful question first asked,for in the little village all knew that Maurice was about being

transferred to the doctor's house. The attendant, white as death, pointed to the chamber where he had left him,

A ladder! A ladder! was the general cry, and men and boys rushed off in search of one. But a single minute

was an age now, and there was no ladder to be had without a delay of many minutes. The sick man was going

to be swallowed up in the flames before it could possibly arrive. Some were going for a blanket or a coverlet,

in the hope that the young man might have strength enough to leap from the window and be safely caught in

One of the visitors at the village,a millionaire, it was said,a kindhearted man, spoke in hoarse, broken

The freshwater fisherman muttered, "I should like to save the man and to see the money, but it ain't a

thaousan' dollars, nor ten thaousan' dollars, that'll pay a fellah for burnin' to death,or even chokin' to death,

The carpenter, who knew the framework of every house in the village, recent or old, shook his head.

"The stairs have been shored up," he said, "and when the fists that holds 'em up goes, down they'll come. It

ain't safe for no man to go over them stairs. Hurry along your ladder,that's your only chance."

All was wild confusion around the burning house. The ladder they had gone for was missing from its

case,a neighbor had carried it off for the workmen who were shingling his roof. It would never get there in

time. There was a fireengine, but it was nearly half a mile from the lakeside settlement. Some were

throwing on water in an aimless, useless way; one was sending a thin stream through a garden syringe: it

seemed like doing something, at least. But all hope of saving Maurice was fast giving way, so rapid was the

progress of the flames, so thick the cloud of smoke that filled the house and poured from the windows.

Nothing was heard but confused cries, shrieks of women, all sorts of orders to do this and that, no one

knowing what was to be done. The ladder! The ladder! Five minutes more and it will be too late!

In the mean time the alarm of fire had reached Paolo, and he had stopped his work of arranging Maurice's

books in the same way as that in which they had stood in his apartment, and followed in the direction of the

sound, little thinking that his master was lying helpless in the burning house. "Some chimney afire," he said

Before Paolo had reached the scene of destruction and impending death, two young women, in boating

dresses of decidedly Bloomerish aspect, had suddenly joined the throng. "The Wonder" and "The Terror" of

their schooldaysMiss Euthymia rower and Miss Lurida Vincent had just come from the shore, where they

had left their wherry. A few hurried words told them the fearful story. Maurice Kirkwood was lying in the

chamber to which every eye was turned, unable to move, doomed to a dreadful death. All that could be hoped

was that he would perish by suffocation rather than by the flames, which would soon be upon him. The man

who had attended him had just tried to reach his chamber, but had reeled back out of the door, almost

strangled by the smoke. A thousand dollars had been offered to any one who would rescue the sick man, but

no one had dared to make the attempt; for the stairs might fall at any moment, if the smoke did not blind and

"How can he be reached? " asked Lurida. "Is there nobody that will venture his life to save a brother like

"No! no!" shrieked Lurida,"not you! not you ! It is a man's work, not yours! You shall not go! Poor Lurida

had forgotten all her theories in this supreme moment. But Euthymia was not to be held back. Taking a

handkerchief from her neck, she dipped it in a pail of water and bound it about her head. Then she took

several deep breaths of air, and filled her lungs as full as they would hold. She knew she must not take a

single breath in the choking atmosphere if she could possibly help it, and Euthymia was noted for her power

of staying under water so long that more than once those who saw her dive thought she would never come up

again. So rapid were her movements that they paralyzed the bystanders, who would forcibly have prevented

her from carrying out her purpose. Her imperious determination was not to be resisted. And so Euthymia, a

willing martyr, if martyr she was to be, and not saviour, passed within the veil that hid the sufferer.

Lurida turned deadly pale, and sank fainting to the ground. She was the first, but not the only one, of her sex

that fainted as Euthymia disappeared in the smoke of the burning building. Even the rector grew very white in

the face,so white that one of his vestrymen begged him to sit down at once, and sprinkled a few drops of

water on his forehead, to his great disgust and manifest advantage. The old landlady was crying and moaning,

"Nor dead, neither," added the carpenter. "Ther' won't be nothing left of neither of 'em but ashes." And the

The freshwater fisherman had pulled out a rag which he called a "hangkercher,"it had served to carry bait

that morning,and was making use of its best corner to dry the tears which were running down his cheeks.

The whole village was proud of Euthymia, and with these more quiet signs of grief were mingled loud

All this was not so much like a succession of events as it was like a tableau. The lookerson were stunned

with its suddenness, and before they had time to recover their bewildered senses all was lost, or seemed lost.

The rector, not unfeeling by nature, but inveterately professional by habit, had already recovered enough to

be thinking of a text for the funeral sermon. The first that occurred to him was this,vaguely, of course, in

The village undertaker was of naturally sober aspect and reflective disposition. He had always been opposed

to cremation, and here was a funeral pile blazing before his eyes. He, too, had his human sympathies, but in

the distance his imagination pictured the final ceremony, and how he himself should figure in a spectacle

where the usual centre piece of attraction would be wanting,perhaps his own services uncalled for.

Blame him not, you whose gardenpatch is not watered with the tears of mourners. The string of selfinterest

answers with its chord to every sound; it vibrates with the funeralbell, it finds itself trembling to the wail of

the De Profundis. Not always,not always; let us not be cynical in our judgments, but common human

nature, we may safely say, is subject to those secondary vibrations under the most solemn and soulsubduing

It seems as if we were doing great wrong to the scene we are contemplating in delaying it by the description

of little circumstances and individual thoughts and feelings. But linger as we may, we cannot compress into a

chapterwe could not crowd into a volumeall that passed through the minds and stirred the emotions of

the awestruck company which was gathered about the scene of danger and of terror. We are dealing with an

Maurice had given himself up for lost. His breathing was becoming every moment more difficult, and he felt

"Robert!" he called in faint accents. But the attendant was not there to answer.

"Paolo! Paolo!" But the faithful servant, who would have given his life for his master, had not yet reached the

"Oh, for a breath of air! Oh, for an arm to lift me from this bed! Too late! Too late!" he gasped, with what

"Not too late!" The soft voice reached his obscured consciousness as if it had come down to him from

In a single instant he found himself rolled in a blanket and in the arms ofa woman!

Out of the stifling chamber,over the burning stairs,close by the tongues of fire that were lapping up all

they could reach,out into the open air, he was borne swiftly and safely,carried as easily as if he had been

a babe, in the strong arms of "The Wonder" of the gymnasium, the captain of the Atalanta, who had little

dreamed of the use she was to make of her natural gifts and her schoolgirl accomplishments.

Such a cry as arose from the crowd of onlookers! It was a sound that none of them had ever heard before or

could expect ever to hear again, unless he should be one of the last boatload rescued from a sinking vessel.

Then, those who had resisted the overflow of their emotion, who had stood in white despair as they thought

of these two young lives soon to be wrapped in their burning shroud,those stern menthe old

seacaptain, the hardfaced, moneymaking, castiron tradesmen of the city countingroomsobbed like

hysteric women; it was like a convulsion that overcame natures unused to those deeper emotions which many

This was the scene upon which the doctor and Paolo suddenly appeared at the same moment.

As the fresh breeze passed over the face of the rescued patient, his eyes opened wide, and his consciousness

returned in almost supernatural lucidity. Euthymia had sat down upon a bank, and was still supporting him.

His head was resting on her bosom. Through his awakening senses stole the murmurs of the living cradle

which rocked him with the wavelike movements of respiration, the soft susurrus of the air that entered with

every breath, the double beat of the heart which throbbed close to his ear. And every sense, and every

instinct, and every reviving pulse told him in language like a revelation from another world that a woman's

arms were around him, and that it was life, and not death, which her embrace had brought him.

She would have disengaged him from her protecting hold, but the doctor made her a peremptory sign, which

"Do not move him a hair's breadth," he said. "Wait until the litter comes. Any sudden movement might be

One or two members of the local temperance society looked rather awkward, but did not come forward.

"I han't got no brandy," he said, "but there's a drop or two of old Medford rum in this here that you're

welcome to, if it'll be of any help. I alliz kerry a little on 't in case o' gettin' wet 'n' chilled."

So saying he held forth a flat bottle with the word ,Sarsaparilla stamped on the green glass, but which

contained half a pint or more of the specific on which he relied in those very frequent exposures which

The doctor motioned back Paolo, who would have rushed at once to the aid of Maurice, and who was not

wanted at that moment. So poor Paolo, in an agony of fear for his master, was kept as quiet as possible, and

had to content himself with asking all sorts of questions and repeating all the prayers he could think of to Our

The doctor wiped the mouth of the fisherman's bottle very carefully. "Take a few drops of this cordial," he

said, as he held it to his patient's lips. "Hold him just so, Euthymia, without stirring. I will watch him, and say

when he is ready to be moved. The litter is near by, waiting." Dr. Butts watched Maurice's pulse and color.

The "old Medford " knew its business. It had knocked over its tens of thousands; it had its redeeming virtue,

and helped to set up a poor fellow now and then. It did this for Maurice very effectively. When he seemed

somewhat restored, the doctor had the litter brought to his side, and Euthymia softly resigned her helpless

burden, which Paolo and the attendant Robert lifted with the aid of the doctor, who walked by the patient as

As for poor Lurida, who had thought herself equal to the sanguinary duties of the surgeon, she was left lying

on the grass with an old woman over her, working hard with fan and smellingsalts to bring her back from

Why should not human nature be the same in Arrowhead Village as elsewhere? It could not seem strange to

the good people of that place and their visitors that these two young persons, brought together under

circumstances that stirred up the deepest emotions of which the human soul is capable, should become

attached to each other. But the bond between them was stronger than any knew, except the good doctor, who

had learned the great secret of Maurice's life. For the first time since his infancy he had fully felt the charm

which the immediate presence of youthful womanhood carries with it. He could hardly believe the fact when

he found himself no longer the subject of the terrifying seizures of which he had had many and threatening

It was the doctor's business to save his patient's life, if he could possibly do it. Maurice had been reduced to

the most perilous state of debility by the relapse which had interrupted his convalescence. Only by what

seemed almost a miracle had he survived the exposure to suffocation and the mental anguish through which

he had passed. It was perfectly clear to Dr. Butts that if Maurice could see the young woman to whom he

owed his life, and, as the doctor felt assured, the revolution in his nervous system which would be the

beginning of a new existence, it would be of far more value as a restorative agency than any or all of the

drugs in the pharmacopoeia. He told this to Euthymia, and explained the matter to her parents and friends.

She must go with him on some of his visits. Her mother should go with her, or her sister; but this was a case

The first of her visits to the sick, perhaps dying, man presented a scene not unlike the picture before spoken

of on the titlepage of the old edition of Galen. The doctor was perhaps the most agitated of the little group.

He went before the others, took his seat by the bedside, and held the patient's wrist with his finger on the

pulse. As Euthymia entered it gave a single bound, fluttered for an instant as if with a faint memory of its old

habit, then throbbed full and strong, comparatively, as if under the spur of some powerful stimulus.

Euthymia's task was a delicate one, but she knew how to disguise its difficulty.

"Here is a flower I have brought you, Mr. Kirkwood," she said, and handed him a white chrysanthemum. He

took it from her hand, and before she knew it he took her hand into his own, and held it with a gentle

constraint. What could she do? Here was the young man whose life she had saved, at least for the moment,

and who was yet in danger from the disease which had almost worn out his powers of resistance.

"Sit down by Mr. Kirkwood's side," said the doctor. "He wants to thank you, if he has strength to do it, for

Not many words could Maurice command. He was weak enough for womanly tears, but their fountains no

longer flowed; it was with him as with the dying, whose eyes may light up, but rarely shed a tear.

The river which has found a new channel widens and deepensit; it lets the old watercourse fill up, and

never returns to its forsaken bed. The tyrannous habit was broken. The prophecy of the gitana had verified

itself, and the ill a fair woman had wrought a fairer woman bad conquered and abolished.

The history of Maurice Kirkwood loses its exceptional character from the time of his restoration to his natural

conditions. His convalescence was very slow and gradual, but no further accident interrupted its even

progress. The season was over, the summer visitors had left Arrowhead Village; the chrysanthemums were

going out of flower, the frosts had come, and Maurice was still beneath the roof of the kind physician. The

relation between him and his preserver was so entirely apart from all common acquaintances and friendships

that no ordinary rules could apply to it. Euthymia visited him often during the period of his extreme

"You must come every day," the doctor said. "He gains with every visit you make him; he pines if you miss

him for a single day." So she came and sat by him, the doctor or good Mrs. Butts keeping her company in his

presence. He grew stronger,began to sit up in bed; and at last Euthymia found him dressed as in health, and

beginning to walk about the room. She was startled. She had thought of herself as a kind of nurse, but the

young gentleman could hardly be said to need a nurse any longer. She had scruples about making any further

"Think about it?" said Lurida. " Why should n't you go to see a brother as well as a sister, I should like to

know? If you are afraid to go to see Maurice Kirkwood, I am not afraid, at any rate. If you would rather have

me go than go yourself, I will do it, and let people talk just as much as they want to. Shall I go instead of

Euthymia was not quite sure that this would be the best thing for the patient. The doctor had told her he

thought there were special reasons for her own course in coming daily to see him. "I am afraid," she said, "

you are too bright to be safe for him in his weak state. Your mind is such a stimulating one, you know. A dull

sort of person like myself is better for him just now. I will continue visiting him as long as the doctor says it

is important that I should; but you must defend me, Lurida,I know you can explain it all so that people will

Euthymia knew full well what the effect of Lurida's penetrating head voice would be in a convalescent's

chamber. She knew how that active mind of hers would set the young man's thoughts at work, when what he

wanted was rest of every faculty. Were not these good and sufficient reasons for her decision? What others

So Euthymia kept on with her visits, until she blushed to see that she was continuing her charitable office for

one who was beginning to look too well to be called an invalid. It was a dangerous condition of affairs, and

the busy tongues of the village gossips were free in their comments. Free, but kindly, for the story of the

rescue had melted every heart; and what could be more natural than that these two young people whom God

had brought together in the dread moment of peril should find it hard to tear themselves asunder after the

hour of danger was past? When gratitude is a bankrupt, love only can pay his debts; and if Maurice gave his

The change which had taken place in the vital currents of Maurice Kirkwood's system was as simple and

solid a fact as the change in a magnetic needle when the boreal becomes the austral pole, and the austral the

boreal. It was well, perhaps, that this change took place while he was enfeebled by the wasting effects of long

illness. For all the longdefeated, disturbed, perverted instincts had found their natural channel from the

centre of consciousness to the organ which throbs in response to every profound emotion. As his health

gradually returned, Euthymia could not help perceiving a flush in his cheek, a glitter in his eyes, a something

in the tone of his voice, which altogether were a warning to the young maiden that the highway of friendly

intercourse was fast narrowing to a lane, at the head of which her woman's eye could read plainly enough,

"You look so much better today, Mr. Kirkwood," she said, "that I think I had better not play Sister of

Charity any longer. The next time we meet I hope you will be strong enough to call on me."

She was frightened to see how pale he turned,he was weaker than she thought. There was a silence so

profound and so long that Mrs. Butts looked up from the stocking she was knitting. They had forgotten the

Presently Maurice spoke,very faintly, but Mrs. Butts dropped a stitch at the first word, and her knitting fell

"No! you must not leave me. You must never leave me. You saved my life. But you have done more than

that,more than you know or can ever know. To you I owe it that I am living; with you I live henceforth, if I

am to live at all. All I am, all I hope,will you take this poor offering from one who owes you everything,

What could Euthymia reply to this question, uttered with all the depth of a passion which had never before

Not one syllable of answer did listening Mrs. Butts overhear. But she told her husband afterwards that there

was nothing in the tableaux they had had in September to compare with what she then saw. It was indeed a

pleasing picture which those two young heads presented as Euthymia gave her inarticulate but infinitely

expressive answer to the question of Maurice Kirkwood. The goodhearted woman thought it time to leave

the young people. Down went the stocking with the needles in it; out of her lap tumbled the ball of worsted,

rolling along the floor with its yarn trailing after it, like some village matron who goes about circulating from

hearth to hearth, leaving all along her track the story of the new engagement or of the arrival of the last "little

Not many suns had set before it was told all through Arrowhead Village that Maurice Kirkwood was the

MY DEAREST EUTHYMIA,Who would have thought, when you broke your oar as the Atalanta flashed

by the Algonquin, last June, that before the roses came again you would find yourself the wife of a fine

scholar and grand gentleman, and the head of a household such as that of which you are the mistress? You

must not forget your old Arrowhead Village friends. What am I saying?you forget them! No, dearest, I

know your heart too well for that! You are not one of those who lay aside their old friendships as they do last

years bonnet when they get a new one. You have told me all about yourself and your happiness, and now you

And first about myself. I have given up the idea of becoming a doctor. I have studied mathematics so much

that I have grown fond of certainties, of demonstrations, and medicine deals chiefly in probabilities. The

practice of the art is so mixed up with the deepest human interests that it is hard to pursue it with that even

poise of the intellect which is demanded by science. I want knowledge pure and simple,I do not fancy

having it mixed. Neither do I like the thought of passing my life in going from one scene of suffering to

another; I am not saintly enough for such a daily martyrdom, nor callous enough to make it an easy

occupation. I fainted at the first operation I saw, and I have never wanted to see another. I don't say that I

wouldn't marry a physician, if the right one asked me, but the young doctor is not forthcoming at present.

Yes, I think I might make a pretty good doctor's wife. I could teach him a good deal about headaches and

backaches and all sorts of nervous revolutions, as the doctor says the French women call their tantrums. I

don't know but I should be willing to let him try his new medicines on me. If he were a homeopath, I know I

should; for if a billionth of a grain of sugar won't begin to sweeten my tea or coffee, I don't feel afraid that a

billionth of a grain of anything would poison me,no, not if it were snakevenom; and if it were not

disgusting, I would swallow a handful of his lachesis globules, to please my husband. But if I ever become a

doctor's wife, my husband will not be one of that kind of practitioners, you may be sure of that, nor an

"eclectic," nor a "faithcure man." On the whole, I don't think I want to be married at all. I don't like the male

animal very well (except such noble specimens as your husband). They are all tyrants,almost all,so far

However, the creatures are useful in the Society. They send us papers, some of them well worth reading. You

have told me so often that you would like to know how the Society is getting on, and to read some of the

papers sent to it if they happened to be interesting, that I have laid aside one or two manuscripts expressly for

I am delighted to know that you keep Paolo with you. Arrowhead Village misses him dreadfully, I can tell

you. That is the reason people become so attached to these servants with Southern sunlight in their natures? I

suppose life is not long enough to cool their blood down to our Northern standard. Then they are so

childlike, whereas the native of these latitudes is never young after he is ten or twelve years old. Mother

says,you know mother's oldfashioned notions, and how shrewd and sensible she is in spite of

them,mother says that when she was a girl families used to import young men and young women from the

country towns, who called themselves "helps," not servants,no, that was Scriptural; " but they did n't know

everything down in Judee," and it is not good American language. She says that these people would live in

the same household until they were married, and the women often remain in the same service until they died

or were old and worn out, and then, what with the money they had saved and the care and assistance they got

from their former employers, would pass a decent and comfortable old age, and be buried in the family lot.

Mother has made up her mind to the change, but grandmother is bitter about it. She says there never was a

country yet where the population was made up of "ladies" and "gentlemen," and she does n't believe there can

be; nor that putting a spread eagle on a copper makes a gold dollar of it. She is a pessimist after her own

fashion. She thinks all sentiment is dying out of our people. No loyalty for the sovereign, the kingpost of the

political edifice, she says; no deep attachment between employer and employed; no reverence of the humbler

members of a household for its heads; and to make sure of continued corruption and misery, what she calls

"universal suffrage" emptying all the sewers into the great aqueduct we all must drink from. "Universal

suffrage!" I suppose we women don't belong to the universe! Wait until we get a chance at the ballotbox, I

tell grandma, and see if we don't wash out the sewers before they reach the aqueduct! But my pen has run

away with men I was thinking of Paolo, and what a pleasant thing it is to have one of those childlike,

warmhearted, attachable, cheerful, contented, humble, faithful, companionable, but never presuming

grownup children of the South waiting on one, as if everything he could do for one was a pleasure, and

carrying a look of content in his face which makes every one who meets him happier for a glimpse of his

It does seem a shame that the charming relation of master and servant, intelligent authority and cheerful

obedience, mutual interest in each other's welfare, thankful recognition of all the advantages which belong to

domestic service in the better class of families, should be almost wholly confined to aliens and their

immediate descendants. Why should Hannah think herself so much better than Bridget? When they meet at

the polls together, as they will before long, they will begin to feel more of an equality than is recognized at

present. The native female turns her nose up at the idea of "living out;" does she think herself so much

superior to the women of other nationalities? Our women will have to come to it,so grandmother says,in

another generation or two, and in a hundred years, according to her prophecy, there will be a new set of old

"Miss Pollys" and " Miss Betseys" who have lived half a century in the same families, respectful and

respected, cherished, cared for in time of need (citizens as well as servants, holding a ballot as well as a

broom, I tell her), and bringing back to us the lowly, underfoot virtues of contentment and humility, which

we do so need to carpet the barren and hungry thoroughfare of our unstratified existence.

There, I have got agoing, and am forgetting all the news I have to tell you. There is an engagement you will

want to know all about. It came to pass through our famous boatrace, which you and I remember, and shall

never forget as long as we live. It seems that the young fellow who pulled the bow oar of that men's college

boat which we had the pleasure of beating got some glimpses of Georgina, our handsome stroke oar. I believe

he took it into his head that it was she who threw the bouquet that won the race for us. He was, as you know,

greatly mistaken, and ought to have made love to me, only he did n't. Well, it seems he came posting down to

the Institute just before the vacation was over, and there got a sight of Georgina. I wonder whether she told

him she didn't fling the bouquet! Anyhow, the acquaintance began in that way, and now it seems that this

young fellow, goodlooking and a bright scholar, but with a good many months more to pass in college, is

her captive. It was too bad. Just think of my bouquet's going to another girl's credit! No matter, the old

You want to know all about dear Dr. Butts. They say he has just been offered a Professorship in one of the

great medical colleges. I asked him about it, and he did not say that he had or had not. "But," said be,

"suppose that I had been offered such a place; do you think I ought to accept it and leave Arrowhead Village?

Let us talk it over," said he, "just as if I had had such an offer." I told him he ought to stay. There are plenty

of men that can get into a Professor's chair, I said, and talk like Solomons to a class of wondering pupils: but

once get a really good doctor in a place, a man who knows all about everybody, whether they have this or that

tendency, whether when they are sick they have a way of dying or a way of getting well, what medicines

agree with them and what drugs they cannot take, whether they are of the sort that think nothing is the matter

with them until they are dead as smoked herring, or of the sort that send for the minister if they get a

stomachache from eating too many cucumbers,who knows all about all the people within half a dozen

miles (all the sensible ones, that is, who employ a regular practitioner),such a man as that, I say, is not to

be replaced like a missing piece out of a Springfield musket or a Waltham watch. Don't go! said I. Stay here

and save our precious lives, if you can, or at least put us through in the proper way, so that we needn't be

ashamed of ourselves for dying, if we must die. Well, Dr. Butts is not going to leave us. I hope you will have

no unwelcome occasion for his services,you are never ill, you know, but, anyhow, he is going to be

The village news is not of a very exciting character. Item 1. A new house is put up over the ashes of the one

in which your husband lived while he was here. It was planned by one of the autochthonous inhabitants with

the most ingenious combination of inconveniences that the natural man could educe from his original

perversity of intellect. To get at any one room you must pass through every other. It is blind, or nearly so, on

the only side which has a good prospect, and commands a fine view of the barn and pigsty through numerous

windows. Item 2. We have a small fireengine near the new house which can be worked by a man or two,

and would be equal to the emergency of putting out a bunch of firecrackers. Item 3. We have a new ladder,

in a bog, close to the new fireengine, so if the new house catches fire, like its predecessor, and there should

happen to, be a sick man on an upper floor, he can be got out without running the risk of going up and down a

burning staircase. What a blessed thing it was that there was no fireengine near by and no ladder at hand on

the day of the great rescue! If there had been, what a change in your programme of life! You remember that

"cup of tea spilt on Mrs. Masham's apron," which we used to read of in one of Everett's Orations, and all its

widereaching consequences in the affairs of Europe. I hunted up that cup of tea as diligently as ever a

Boston matron sought for the last leaves in her old caddy after the teachests had been flung overboard at

Griffin's wharf,but no matter about that, now. That is the way things come about in this world. I must write

a lecture on lucky mishaps, or, more elegantly, fortunate calamities. It will be just the converse of that odd

essay of Swift's we read together, the awkward and stupid things done with the best intentions. Perhaps I shall

deliver the lecture in your city: you will come and hear it, and bring him, won't you, dearest? Always, your

It seems forever since you left us, dearest Euthymia! And are you, and is your husband, and Paolo,good

Paolo,are you all as well and happy as you have been and as you ought to be? I suppose our small village

seems a very quiet sort of place to pass the winter in, now that you have become accustomed to the noise and

gayety of a great city. For all that, it is a pretty busy place this winter, I can tell you. We have sleighing

parties,I never go to them, myself, because I can't keep warm, and my mind freezes up when my blood

cools down below 95 or 96 deg. Fahrenheit. I had a great deal rather sit by a good fire and read about Arctic

discoveries. But I like very well to hear the bells' jingling and to see the young people trying to have a good

time as hard as they do at a picnic. It may be that they do, but to me a picnic is purgatory and a sleighride

that other place, where, as my favorite Milton says, "frost performs the effect of fire." I believe I have quoted

him correctly; I ought to, for I could repeat half his poems from memory once, if I cannot now.

You must have plenty of excitement in your city life. I suppose you recognized yourself in one of the society

columns of the "Household Inquisitor:" "Mrs. E. K., very beautiful, in an elegant," etc., etc, "with pearls,"

etc., etc.,as if you were not the ornament of all that you wear, no matter what it is!

I am so glad that you have married a scholar! Why should not Mauriceyou both tell me to call him

sotake the diplomatic office which has been offered him? It seems to me that he would find himself in

exactly the right place. He can talk in two or three languages, has good manners, and a wife whowell, what

shall I say of Mrs. Kirkwood but that "she would be good company for a queen," as our old friend the

quondam landlady of the Anchor Tavern used to say? I should so like to see you presented at Court! It seems

to me that I should be willing to hold your train for the sake of seeing you in your court feathers and things.

As for myself, I have been thinking of late that I would become either a professional lecturer or head mistress

of a great school or college for girls. I have tried the first business a little. Last month I delivered a lecture on

Quaternions. I got three for my audience; two came over from the Institute, and one from that men's college

which they try to make out to be a university, and where no female is admitted unless she belongs among the

quadrupeds. I enjoyed lecturing, but the subject is a difficult one, and I don't think any one of them had any

very clear notion of what I was talking about, except Rhodora,and I know she did n't. To tell the truth, I

was lecturing to instruct myself. I mean to try something easier next time. I have thought of the Basque

The Society goes on famously. We have had a paper presented and read lately which has greatly amused

some of us and provoked a few of the weaker sort. The writer is that crabbed old Professor of Belles Lettres

at that men's college over there. He is dreadfully hard on the poor "poets," as they call themselves. It seems

that a great many young persons, and more especially a great many young girls, of whom the Institute has

furnished a considerable proportion, have taken to sending him their rhymed productions to be criticised,

expecting to be praised, no doubt, every one of them. I must give you one of the sauciest extracts from his

"It takes half my time to read the 'poems' sent me by young people of both sexes. They would be more shy of

doing it if they knew that I recognize a tendency to rhyming as a common form of mental weakness, and the

publication of a thin volume of verse as prima facie evidence of ambitious mediocrity, if not inferiority. Of

course there are exceptions to this rule of judgment, but I maintain that the presumption is always against the

rhymester as compared with the less pretentious persons about him or her, busy with some useful calling,

too busy to be tagging rhymed commonplaces together. Just now there seems to be an epidemic of

rhyming as bad as the dancing mania, or the sweating sickness. After reading a certain amount of manuscript

verse one is disposed to anathematize the inventor of homophonous syllabification. [This phrase made a great

laugh when it was read.] This, that is rhyming, must have been found out very early,

but it can never have been habitually practised until after the Fall. The intrusion of tintinnabulating

terminations into the conversational intercourse of men and angels would have spoiled Paradise itself. Milton

would not have them even in Paradise Lost, you remember. For my own part, I wish certain rhymes could be

declared contraband of written or printed language. Nothing should be allowed to be hurled at the world or

whirled with it, or furled upon it or curled over it; all eyes should be kept away from the skies, in spite of os

homini sublime dedit; youth should be coupled with all the virtues except truth; earth should never be

reminded of her birth; death should never be allowed to stop a mortal's breath, nor the bell to sound his knell,

nor flowers from blossoming bowers to wave over his grave or show their bloom upon his tomb. We have

rhyming dictionaries,let us have one from which all rhymes are rigorously excluded. The sight of a poor

creature grubbing for rhymes to fill up his sonnet, or to cram one of those voracious, rhymeswallowing

rigmaroles which some of our drudging poetical operatives have been exhausting themselves of late to satiate

with jingles, makes my head ache and my stomach rebel. Work, work of some kind, is the business of men

and women, not the making of jingles! No,no,no! I want to see the young people in our schools and

academies and colleges, and the graduates of these institutions, lifted up out of the little Dismal Swamp of

selfcontemplating and selfindulging and selfcommiserating emotionalism which is surfeiting the land

with those literary sandwiches,thin slices of tinkling sentimentality between two covers looking like

hardbaked gilt gingerbread. But what faces these young folks make up at my good advice! They get tipsy on

their rhymes. Nothing intoxicates one like hisor herown verses, and they hold on to their metre

balladmongering as the fellows that inhale nitrous oxide hold on to the gasbag."

We laughed over this essay of the old Professor; though it hit us pretty hard. The best part of the joke is that

the old man himself published a thin volume of poems when he was young, which there is good reason to

think he is not very proud of, as they say he buys up all the copies he can find in the shops. No matter what

they say, I can't help agreeing with him about this great flood of "poetry," as it calls itself, and looking at the

How I do love real poetry! That is the reason hate rhymes which have not a particle of it in them. The foolish

scribblers that deal in them are like bad workmen in a carpenter's shop. They not only turn out bad jobs of

work, but they spoil the tools for better workmen. There is hardly a pair of rhymes in the English language

that is not so dulled and hacked and gapped by these 'prentice hands that a master of the craft hates to touch

them, and yet he cannot very well do without them. I have not been besieged as the old Professor has been

with such multitudes of wouldbepoetical aspirants that he could not even read their manuscripts, but I have

had a good many letters containing verses, and I have warned the writers of the delusion under which they

You may like to know that I have just been translating some extracts from the Greek Anthology. I send you a

few specimens of my work, with a Dedication to the Shade of Sappho. I hope you will find something of the

Greek rhythm in my versions, and that I have caught a spark of inspiration from the impassioned Lesbian. I

have found great delight in this work, at any rate, and am never so happy as when I read from my manuscript

or repeat from memory the lines into which I have transferred the thought of the men and women of two

thousand years ago, or given rhythmical expression to my own rapturous feelings with regard to them. I must

read you my Dedication to the Shade of Sappho. I cannot help thinking that you will like it better than either

How I do miss you, dearest! I want you: I want you to listen to what I have written; I want you to hear all

about my plans for the future; I want to look at you, and think how grand it must be to feel one's self to be

such a noble and beautifulcreature; I want to wander in the woods with you, to float on the lake, to share

your life and talk over every day's doings with you. Alas! I feel that we have parted as two friends part at a

port of embarkation: they embrace, they kiss each other's cheeks, they cover their faces and weep, they try to

speak goodby to each other, they watch from the pier and from the deck; the two forms grow less and less,

fainter and fainter in the distance, two white handkerchiefs flutter once and again, and yet once more, and the

last visible link of the chain which binds them has parted. Dear, dear, dearest Euthymia, my eyes are running

Don't you want some more items of village news? We are threatened with an influx of stylish people:

"Buttons" to answer the doorbell, in place of the chambermaid; "butler," in place of the "hired man;"

footman in topboots and breeches, cockade on hat, arms folded a la Napoleon; tandems, "drags," dogcarts,

and gocarts of all sorts. It is rather amusing to look at their ambitious displays, but it takes away the good

I don't believe you mean to try to astonish us when you come back to spend your summers here. I suppose

you must have a large house, and I am sure you will have a beautiful one. I suppose you will have some fine

horses, and who would n't be glad to? But I do not believe you will try to make your old Arrowhead Village

friends stare their eyes out of their heads with a display meant to outshine everybody else that comes here.

You can have a yacht on the lake, if you like, but I hope you will pull a pair of oars in our old boat once in a

while, with me to steer you. I know you will be just the same dear Euthymia you always were and always

must be. How happy you must make such a man as Maurice Kirkwood! And how happy you ought to be with

him!a man who knows what is in books, and who has seen for himself, what is in men. If he has not seen

so much of women, where could he study all that is best in womanhood as he can in his own wife? Only one

thing that dear Euthymia lacks. She is not quite pronounced enough in her views as to the rights and the

wrongs of the sex. When I visit you, as you say I shall, I mean to indoctrinate Maurice with sound views on

that subject. I have written an essay for the Society, which I hope will go a good way towards answering all

the objections to female suffrage. I mean to read it to your husband, if you will let me, as I know you will,

and perhaps you would like to hear it,only you know my thoughts on the subject pretty well already.

With all sorts of kind messages to your dear husband, and love to your precious self, I am ever your

MY DEAR EUTHYMIA,My pen refuses to call you by any other name. Sweetsouled you are, and your

Latinized Greek name isthe one which truly designates you. I cannot tell you how we have followed you,

with what interest and delight through your travels, as you have told their story in your letters to your mother.

She has let us have the privilege of reading them, and we have been with you in steamer, yacht, felucca,

gondola, Nileboat; in all sorts of places, from crowded capitals to "deserts where no men

abide,"everywhere keeping company with you in your natural and pleasant descriptions of your

experiences. And now that you have returned to your home in the great city I must write you a few lines of

You will find Arrowhead Village a good deal changed since you left it. We are discovered by some of those

overrich people who make the little place upon which they swarm a kind of rural city. When this happens

the consequences are striking,some of them desirable and some far otherwise. The effect of wellbuilt,

wellfurnished, well kept houses and of handsome grounds always maintained in good order about them

shows itself in a large circuit around the fashionable centre. Houses get on a new coat of paint, fences are

kept in better order, little plots of flowers show themselves where only ragged weeds had rioted, the

inhabitants present themselves in more comely attire and drive in handsomer vehicles with more carefully

groomed horses. On the other hand, there is a natural jealousy on the part of the natives of the region

suddenly become fashionable. They have seen the land they sold at farm prices by the acre coming to be

valued by the foot, like the corner lots in a city. Their simple and humble modes of life look almost

povertystricken in the glare of wealth and luxury which so outshines their plain way of living. It is true that

many of them have found them selves richer than in former days, when the neighborhood lived on its own

resources. They know how to avail themselves of their altered position, and soon learn to charge city prices

for country products; but nothing can make people feel rich who see themselves surrounded by men whose

yearly income is many times their own whole capital. I think it would be better if our rich men scattered

themselves more than they do,buying large country estates, building houses and stables which will make it

easy to entertain their friends, and depending for society on chosen guests rather than on the mob of

millionaires who come together for social rivalry. But I do not fret myself about it. Society will stratify itself

according to the laws of social gravitation. It will take a generation or two more, perhaps, to arrange the strata

by precipitation and settlement, but we can always depend on one principle to govern the arrangement of the

layers. People interested in the same things will naturally come together. The youthful heirs of fortunes who

keep splendid yachts have little to talk about with the oarsman who pulls about on the lake or the river. What

does young Dives, who drives his fourinhand and keeps a stable full of horses, care about Lazarus, who

feels rich in the possession of a horserailroad ticket? You know how we live at our house, plainly, but with a

certain degree of cultivated propriety. We make no pretensions to what is called "style." We are still in that

social stratum where the article called "a napkinring" is recognized as admissible at the dinnertable. That

fact sufficiently defines our modest pretensions. The napkinring is the boundary mark between certain

classes. But one evening Mrs. Butts and I went out to a party given by the lady of a worthy family, where the

napkin itself was a newly introduced luxury. The conversation of the hostess and her guests turned upon

details of the kitchen and the laundry; upon the best mode of raising bread, whether with "emptins"

(emptyings, yeast) or baking powder; about "bluing" and starching and crimping, and similar matters. Poor

Mrs. Butts! She knew nothing more about such things than her hostess did about Shakespeare and the musical

glasses. What was the use of trying to enforce social intercourse under such conditions? Incompatibility of

temper has been considered ground for a divorce; incompatibility of interests is a sufficient warrant for social

separation. The multimillionaires have so much that is common among themselves, and so little that they

share with us of moderate means, that they will naturally form a specialized class, and in virtue of their

palaces, their picture galleries, their equipages, their yachts, their large hospitality, constitute a kind of

exclusive aristocracy. Religion, which ought to be the great leveller, cannot reduce these elements to the same

grade. You may read in the parable, "Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?" The

modern version would be, "How came you at Mrs. Billion's ball not having a dress on your back which came

The little church has got a new stained window, a saint who reminds me of Hamlet's uncle,a thing "of

shreds and patches," but rather pretty to look at, with an inscription under it which is supposed to be the name

of the person in whose honor the window was placed in the church. Smith was a worthy man and a faithful

churchwarden, and I hope posterity will be able to spell out his name on his monumental window; but that

old English lettering would puzzle Mephistopheles himself, if he found himself before this memorial tribute,

The rector has come out, in a quiet way, as an evolutionist. He has always been rather "broad " in his views,

but cautious in their expression. You can tell the three branches of the motherisland church by the way they

carry their heads. The lowchurch clergy look down, as if they felt themselves to be worms of the dust; the

high church priest drops his head on one side, after the pattern of the mediaeval saints; the broadchurch

preacher looks forward and round about him, as if he felt himself the heir of creation. Our rector carries his

head in the broadchurch aspect, which I suppose is the least open to the charge of affectation,in fact, is

The Society has justified its name of Pansophian of late as never before. Lurida has stirred up our little

community and its neighbors, so that we get essays on all sorts of subjects, poems and stories in large

numbers. I know all about it, for she often consults me as to the merits of a particular contribution.

What is to be the fate of Lurida? I often think, with no little interest and some degree of anxiety, about her

future. Her body is so frail and her mind so excessively and constantly active that I am afraid one or the other

will give way. I do not suppose she thinks seriously of ever being married. She grows more and more zealous

in behalf of her own sex, and sterner in her judgment of the other. She declares that she never would marry

any man who was not an advocate of female suffrage, and as these gentlemen are not very common

What do you think? I happened, just as I was writing the last sentence, to look out of my window, and whom

should I see but Lurida, with a young man in tow, listening very eagerly to her conversation, according to all

appearance! I think he must be a friend of the rector, as I have seen a young man like this one in his company.

MY BELOVED WIFE,This letter will tell you more news than you would have thought could have been

got together in this little village during the short time you have been staying away from it.

Lurida Vincent is engaged! He is a clergyman with a mathematical turn. The story is that he put a difficult

problem into one of the mathematical journals, and that Lurida presented such a neat solution that the young

man fell in love with her on the strength of it. I don't think the story is literally true, nor do I believe that other

report that he offered himself to her in the form of an equation chalked on the blackboard; but that it was an

intellectual rather than a sentimental courtship I do not doubt. Lurida has given up the idea of becoming a

professional lecturer,so she tells me,thinking that her future husband's parish will find her work enough

to do. A certain amount of daily domestic drudgery and unexciting intercourse with simpleminded people

will be the best thing in the world for that brain of hers, always simmering with some new project in its least

All our summer visitors have arrived. Euthymia Mrs. Maurice Kirkwood and her husband and little Maurice

are here in their beautiful house looking out on the lake. They gave a grand party the other evening. You

ought to have been there, but I suppose you could not very well have left your sister in the middle of your

visit: All the grand folks were there, of course. Lurida and her young man Gabriel is what she calls

himwere naturally the objects of special attention. Paolo acted as majordomo, and looked as if he ought

to be a majorgeneral. Nothing could be pleasanter than the way in which Mr. and Mrs. Kirkwood received

their plain country neighbors; that is, just as they did the others of more pretensions, as if they were really

glad to see them, as I am sure they were. The old landlord and his wife had two armchairs to themselves,

and I saw Miranda with the servants of the household looking in at the dancers and out at the little groups in

the garden, and evidently enjoying it as much as her old employers. It was a most charming and successful

party. We had two sensations in the course of the evening. One was pleasant and somewhat exciting, the

You remember how emaciated poor Maurice Kirkwood was left after his fever, in that first season when he

was among us. He was out in a boat one day, when a ring slipped off his thin finger and sunk in a place where

the water was rather shallow. "Jake"you know Jake, everybody knows Jakewas rowing him. He

promised to come to the spot and fish up the ring if he could possibly find it. He was seen poking about with

fishhooks at the end of a pole, but nothing was ever heard from him about the ring. It was an antique

intaglio stone in an Etruscan setting,a wild goose flying over the Campagna. Mr. Kirkwood valued it

While we were in the garden, who should appear at the gate but Jake, with a great basket, inquiring for Mr.

Kirkwood. "Come," said Maurice to me, "let us see what our old friend the fisherman has brought us. What

"What I 've got? Wall, I 'll tell y' what I've got: I 've got the biggest pickerel that's been ketched in this pond

for these ten year. An' I 've got somethin' else besides the pickerel. When I come to cut him open, what do

you think I faound in his insides but this here ring o' yourn,"and he showed the one Maurice had lost so

long before. There it was, as good as new, after having tried Jonah's style of housekeeping for all that time.

There are those who discredit Jake's story about finding the ring in the fish; anyhow, there was the ring and

there was the pickerel. I need not say that Jake went off well paid for his pickerel and the precious contents of

its stomach. Now comes the chief event of the evening. I went early by special invitation. Maurice took me

"I have something of great importance," he said, " to say to you. I learned within a few days that my cousin

Laura is staying with a friend in the next town to this. You know, doctor, that we have never met since the

last, almost fatal, experience of my early years. I have determined to defy the strength of that deadly chain of

associations connected with her presence, and I have begged her to come this evening with the friends with

whom she is staying. Several letters passed between us, for it was hard to persuade her that there was no

longer any risk in my meeting her. Her imagination was almost as deeply impressed as mine had been at

those alarming interviews, and I had to explain to her fully that I had become quite indifferent to the

disturbing impressions of former years. So, as the result of our correspondence, Laura is coming this evening,

and I wish you to be present at our meeting. There is another reason why I wish you to be here. My little boy

is not far from theage at which I received my terrifying, almost disorganizing shock. I mean to have little

Maurice brought into the presence of Laura, who is said to be still a very handsome woman, and see if he

betrays any hint of that peculiar sensitiveness which showed itself in my threatening seizure. It seemed to me

not impossible that he might inherit some tendency of that nature, and I wanted you to be at hand if any sign

of danger should declare itself. For myself I have no fear. Some radical change has taken place in my nervous

system. I have been born again, as it were, in my susceptibilities, and am in certain respects a new man. But I

Imagine with what interest I looked forward to this experiment; for experiment it was, and not without its

sources of anxiety, as it seemed to me. The evening wore along; friends and neighbors came in, but no Laura

as yet. At last I heard the sound of wheels, and a carriage stopped at the door. Two ladies and a gentleman got

"My cousin Laura!" whispered Maurice to me, and went forward to meet her. A very handsome woman, who

might well have been in the thirties,one of those women so thoroughly constituted that they cannot help

being handsome at every period of life. I watched them both as they approached each other. Both looked pale

at first, but Maurice soon recovered his usual color, and Laura's natural, rich bloom came back by degrees.

Their emotion at meeting was not to be wondered at, but there was no trace in it of the paralyzing influence

on the great centres of life which had once acted upon its fated victim like the fabled head which turned the

"Is the boy still awake?" said Maurice to Paolo, who, as they used to say of Pushee at the old Anchor Tavern,

"What! Mahser Maurice asleep an' all this racket going on? I hear him crowing like young cockerel when he

"Tell the nurse to bring him down quietly to the little room that leads out of the library."

The child was brought down in his nightclothes, wide awake, wondering apparently at the noise he heard,

"See if he will go to that lady," said his father. Both of us held our breath as Laura stretched her arms towards

The child looked for an instant searchingly, but fearlessly, at her glowing cheeks, her bright eyes, her

welcoming smile, and met her embrace as she clasped him to her bosom as if he had known her all his days.

The mortal antipathy had died out of the soul and the blood of Maurice Kirkwood at that supreme moment

when he found himself snatched from the grasp of death and cradled in the arms of Euthymia.

In closing the New Portfolio I remember that it began with a prefix which the reader may by this time have

forgotten, namely, the First Opening. It was perhaps presumptuous to thus imply the probability of a second

I am reminded from time to time by the correspondents who ask a certain small favor of me that, as I can only

expect to be with my surviving contemporaries a very little while longer, they would be much obliged if I

would hurry up my answer before it is too late. They are right, these delicious unknown friends of mine, in

reminding me of a fact which I cannot gainsay and might suffer to pass from my recollection. I thank them

for recalling my attention to a truth which I shall be wiser, if not more hilarious, for remembering.

No, I had no right to say the First Opening. How do I know that I shall have a chance to open it again? How

do I know that anybody will want it to be opened a second time? How do I know that I shall feel like opening

it? It is safest neither to promise to open the New Portfolio once more, nor yet to pledge myself to keep it

closed hereafter. There are many papers potentially existent in it, some of which might interest a reader here

and there. The Records of the Pansophian Society contain a considerable number of essays, poems, stories,

and hints capable of being expanded into presentable dimensions. In the mean time I will say with Prospero,

When it has got quiet I may take up the New Portfolio again, and consider whether it is worth while to open