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PART 2.               25 CENTS.
REMINISCENCES
OF A
IVIRGINIA PHYSJCIAN.
*•■
PROF. P. S. RUTER,
OF THE MASONIC COLLEGE OF KENTUCKY.
COMPbBTK IN'TWO PARTS.     " :

i      LOUISVILLE:

 BEN CASSEDAY & CO-47 WALL STREET.

          1849.
J 
Mo.:.
rtm. 
                        HAUV LAfJDON.                    12'J

cept her husband, so she quietly led the way to the room designa.
ted,  which Mary entered alone.
  Clifford rose on her entrance,  and,  perfectly mystified  by the
message he had received and the grief-stricken appearance of Miss
Landon,  and already  anticipating some dreadful cemmunication,
attempted to take her hand.  She withdrew it, but with a look of
kindness and sorrow  that  showed the  act  proceeded from no di-
minished regard for him.
  "Mary,"  said he, more  than ever perplexed and confounded,
■"tell me, I entreat you, what has happened—what is the matter?"
  "O, it is no fault of yours,  it is  no  fault of yours," said she,
sobbing as though her heart w«>uld break,—"what shall I do,—
what will become of me?"
  At a loss what to make of the scene, and not venturing to offer
the sympathy which he feared would be declined, poor Clifford sat
like a statue, dim  visions of  disappointment chasing each  othcr
•like dreams through his bewildered brain;  but in them all, not a
thought to the disparagement of the  pure and  beautiful being
by  his side.  At length she raised her head, and turning upon him
those  eyes, made still  more  charming  by the large  drops that
glistened upon the long lashes, in  a voice calmed by strong self.
control,  but betraying deep love and  inflexible resolution in its
kind and impressive tones; using, too, for the first time, his most
familiar  name, as if to soften the  effect of the terrible sentence
she was about to utter:
   "Arthur," said she, "I have sent for you to tell you that \vr
can never—I mean, that I cannot fulfill the engagement that was
made last evening between us.  You must forget me."
   "Clifford was petrified,  and for a moment silent.  During that
 moment a thousand thoughts, with lightning-like rapidity, passed
 through his mind;—all his hopes and fears, both in the past and
 future, all his knowledge of her character and belief in its purity
 and consistency, all possible imaginings of the  causo of her pres-
 ent conduct or probability of its change.
   He knew too well her peculiar  characteristics, which he had
 the more admired, as they had be^n,  in the course d¥ acquaint-
 ance, more fully developed, not to know that she must have com-
 pelling, resistless reasons for a decision so full of life-long pain
 and disappointment  to both.  Whim,  caprice or coquetry had
 no  place in her well-balanced disposition, It would be useless
 and hopeless  to attempt  to influence a determination which it
 must have cost her even more pain to form than to express, with-
                              9 
130
REMINISCENCES.
out first ascertaining and removing the grounds for it.  But here
he was met with repulse at the threshold.  The most humble and
persuasive entreaty, and the  more seriously  advanced claim  of
right to know, produced alike no effect upon her.
  "I know you have rights, I know I have  given you  a claim to
hear my reasons,"" said she, with passionate and tearful earnest-
ness, "but  I cannot give them.   It is no fault of yours, and  O,
I entreat you to believe it is no fault of mine.  I do not pretend
to conceal that it gives me  pain, that my feelings toward you are
the same as ever, and my own conviction  that I shall never  be
happy,—0 no!  I can never be happy again.  But it is my duty.
Heaven has interposed a barrier between us that no one on earth
can remove.  I am compelled  to submit, and you cannot do other-
wise."
  The  next week Clifford embarked for Italy.
                        LEAF VII.

  The day after Clifford had left us, Seymour entered my office
with, as usual, a quotation for a salutation:
  " 'Varium ct mutabile semper est femina,' " and added, "some-
body  pretty well translates it, 'Frailty, thy name is  woman.'
What think you  of Miss Landon now, Doctor?"
  "The same as ever," said I,  "I pity and sympathize writh,  but
cannot bring myself to  condemn her.  What she has done  has
manifestly been prompted by the sternest sense of duty,  and as
evidently gives quite as much pain to her as to Clifford."
  "Singular what that mysterious duty can be, isn't it?"  replied
he  rather cynically, "whose voice,  so  loud to her,   is  un-
recognized by her parents,  whose promptings, so painfully  im-
perative to her,  are utterly unknown to her nearest relatives.
This thing of making an engagement one evening to break it the
next day, so marvellously resembles coquetry or something worse,
that—"
  "You  forget," interrupted  I, "her  expressed  determination
never to marry  any one.  That precludes the possibility of at
least future coquetry, and,  I would think, relieves  her of your
charge of such conduct toward Clifford." 
MARY LANDON.
131
  "Perhaps  so,  if  she  adhere to her determination.   Strange,
though,  that no persuasion of family or friends could induce her
cither to change her resolution with regard to Clifford, or to  give
the reasons for it."
  "Still," persisted I,  "she had reasons  that she considered all-
powerful.  So much she told me."
  "Did she give Clifford no hope for the future?" asked S.
  "None whatever.  Her only words to him from first to last
were, that he must forget her."
  "That he'll nevor do,"  said the bachelor, with  something so
like a sigh that I turned to look at him in astonishment.  "Men
do  not so easily as is  generally imagined, forget  a disappoint-
ment of that kind," continued he rather bitterly, and not observ-
ing my  look  of surprise; " 'tis a wonder indeed,  so many are
fooled in this way, but 'credula res amor est,' and each one hopes
he may draw a prize in the lottery."
  "I think you are right," said I, "Clifford will never be able to
forget her."
  "Not he;  it is as I told you the night they first  met.  She is
become his destiny."
   Days, months and years passed by.  Clifford remained in Italy,
studying closely, forming no acquaintances except as connected
with his art, for the sake of which alone almost  he  seemed to en-
dure existence.  His letters,  sent only  to Seymour and myself,
beside his parents,  made  no allusion  to the blow that had come
so crushingly upon him, but it was evident that the freshness of
his heart was gone forever.  A stern  consciousness of duty, aris-
ing from his strong mind and high moral principles, alone saved
him from a reckless self-abandonment that would soon have de-
stroyed him.
   In the meantime, Mary Landon seemed, to those  sufficiently
intimate with her to judge,  scarcely less deserving of pity than
her lover.  At  first, her grief was  overwhelming, and showed
sufficiently  that her course had been an involuntary and compul-
sory one.  Time seemed, however, to soften down her sorrow in-
to  a  sort of gentle, unobtrusive pensiveness, that rendered her
only more interesting.
   None, not  even  her inquisitive and persevering mother, ever
obtained from her  the  secret so fatal to the peace  of herself and
Clifford.  I remarked  that she always listened eagerly to  news
from Italy.   Besides, she never appeared ill at ease  in conscience.
 The same sense of duty that had prompted seemed to sustain her 
132
REMINISCENCES.
in the course  she  had taken.   She went seldom  into society.
All this convinced  me that although she had to her lover  pro-
nounced their separation eternal, she herself looked  forward  to
some time when the  dreadful barrier between them might  per-
haps be broken down.
  Gossip took  up the story,—when did  it ever fail?—and with
divers and sundry additions, if not improvements, circulated it far
and wide.   Clifford was a good match, and many mothers admire d
his name as much as did Mrs. Landon; while poor Mary was un-
fortunately much too charming not to be greatly in the way  of
many young misses, who felt in her presence (to use the celebra-
ted compliment of the Russian ambassador to  Queen Elizabeth,)
as the stars must in the presence of the moon.   She therefore re-
ceived no mercy.
  Soon after this, her father's failure and  her unfortunate sister's
separation from her husband, (see last sketch,) called upon Mary
for sacrifices which she seemed to take pleasure in making.  Time
only improved her personally  as  well  as mentally-.  While  it
rounded her figure and strengthened her constitution, it also  con-
firmed her judgment and gave her knowledge  of the world.  Her
father's misfortunes taught her  that wealth was too uncertain to
be made indispensable to happiness, and her sister's bitter experi-
ence showed her how even  the warmest love,  unaccompanied by
some mere every-day  qualification, may change  to aversion if not
to hate.
   After twenty-three, she  began to be considered,  according to
American  usage, "an old maid;" but it  was not till after even
that time, that she was really most fascinating.
   The noble moral lesson, conveyed in the conduct of this lovely
creature,—so bitterly disappointed in most that may be imagined
to make life desirable  to a woman, still, never yielding to despond-
ency, never betraying impatience in her endurance, but conscious
of propriety, trusting to that virtue whose ultimate reward is sure,
and devoting herself, with no selfish indulgence of outward grief,
to the happiness of  her parents and sister,—was worthy of all ad-
miration.   I have seen a similar picture drawn,  a similar  lesson
inculcated in no work .of fiction, except recently in the "Nina"' of
Miss Bremer.
   It was  impossible to tell,  in the case of Mary Landon,  how
much, if  at all,  grief prevented or stinted the development of
beauty.  For though  she had evidently a  ceaseless source  of sad-
dening and secret sorrow,  yet s>he was manifestly supported by a 
MARY LANDON.
133
consciousness of rectitude;- and I sometimes  doubted if she had
;ict so disciplined herself as to be entirely resigned to her disap-
pointment, and suspected her habitual melancholy to proceed from
some gnawing personal anxiety rather than from grief.
  About the commencement of the seventh year of Clifford's ab-
sence, his father, who had been considered one of our wealthiest
citizens, became so involved, from his connection with a business
house in N., that, supposing he must ultimately lose his property,
he wrote  to his son to return home.
  Arthur brought with him a high reputation as an artist, no less
than as a man of integrity.  The only visible effect of his early
disappointment was a saddened manner that even time could not
wear away.  The wound of the heart had healed to outward ap-
pearance, but you could see that there was a scar.
                        LEAF VIII.

  It is time tt> tell the reader the  reasons that prompted  Mary
Landon's course, as I afterward learned them.
  When she took  the papers from her father's hand  and retired
to her room for their perusal,  it was with a foreboding of evil for
which she could not account.   They proved to be selections from
her family records,  covering authentically its history for six gen-
erations back, and giving traditions for others even beyond these.
   At first, she found little to  interest her and  much that she read
only in obedience to her father's request.  But very soon the in-
terest of the parchments became absorbing.  She learned that the
misfortune  alluded to by her  father was  hereditary madness, oc-
curring regularly at every  alternate generation, as far back as the
records or traditions extended; with this peculiarity, that it always
attacked the oldest child and none other, and  invariably, without
a single exception, developed itself during the first month after
their reachiug the age of twenty-four.
   And the  recollection  came with  crushing  force,  that she was
the oldest child, and hers the alternate generation;  then at twenty-
four  she would become—the  idea  was torturing,  horrible,—a
lunatic!
   In vain she re-read,  re-examined the fatal records,  to find a 
134                   REMINISCENCES.
       single exception to the terrible rule.  There was not one.  True,
       until the present generation, every oldest child had been  a son,
       but she knew of nothing in the change of sex to justify her in
       even hoping that she might prove an exception to the  frightful
       uniformity of the regularly-recurring madness.
         Her first thought was of her lover.   From him she was separa-
       ted, at  once and forever.  O no,  let her not  be stricken  to the
       very earth by the dreadful  certainty that  they were  parted for.
       ever.  Was there not the merest chance, the most distant possi-
       bility that  the change  of sex might exempt her from the dreadful
       contingency?   The hope of this, however slightly founded, might
       remain to her as the straw which the drowning sufferer will grasp,
       but it must not be named to him.   She was  now but seventeen,
       and even with the certainty of a future union, she felt no right to
       ask of him so long a delay in  singleness of  heart  and  life;  still
       less so,  when even the termination of the seven years might find
       her only fit for—perhaps an inmate  of a  mad-house!   No, she
       must yield  to the fearful necessity and announce to him,  now
       dearer to her  than life,  that the so recently-formed engagement
       must be broken  forever.
        She never dared name  to  her mother the reasons for her con-
       duct, because she feared that Mrs. L.'s match-making inclina-
       tions and anxiety for the marriage,  would blunt her delicacy, and
       render her insensible to the force of the apprehension which .the
       daughter felt so fatally binding on herself.
        My suspicion had been correct.  So  satisfied was she of the pro-
       priety of her  course, that after a year or two, when  the  first
      burst of incontrollable anguish was past, consciousness  of recti-
       tude and gratification at hearing of Clifford's  honorable course .
       and single  life, did remove  the sting of  her grief, and little  was
      left habitually to pain her, save the terrible fear of madness; and
      the manner in which  she endured  this,  the most dreadful appre-
      hension that can haunt a human being, I have always considered
      one of the highest efforts and evidences of mental superiority.
        As years  passed by,  the hope of escape from the threatened dis-
      ease and of a future meeting with Clifford, grew stronger; for the
      noble girl judged his  affection by her own,  and believed it  un-
j^k   changeable, undying.
Hp    At last,  her  twenty-fourth  birth-day, and  the dreaded first
Wt   month passed in safety and sanity, and  the elder Clifford's diffi-
       culties recalled Arthur from Italy.
        0, how warmly and freshly did hope spring up in that bosom so 
MARY LANDON.
13f>
constant and so severely tfied!  But there was difficulty yet.  She
had to her lover made their separation eternal, and even were this
not so, she felt that he would not renew his suit to  her with the
prospect of a limited support,  derived from his pencil,  instead
of the wealth it had  been once in his power  to  offer her.  Had
her own father been in his former circumstances,  she, with her
straight-forward purity of motive and conduct, would not  have
hesitated to make the first advances to a renewal of their acquaint-
ance.  But her present poverty forbid it.
  At this juncture, as if to reward a virtue so unequaled, an af-
fection so kind, the decease of a distant relative left to Mary and
her sister Louisa, a handsome fortune.  The  very day after this
was announced and assured to them, but  still not known out of
doors, Mary despatched a note to Arthur  Clifford, requesting his
presence at her father's.
   If any one can  fancy the rapture with which the pardoned
and  restored  Peri  is de-scribed by  the  Modern  Anacreon
to  have stood  at  Heaven"s  gate,  he  may  imagine the  joy
with which Clifford, obeying the message, received from the beau-
tiful lips of her whom he had so long and faithfully loved, an ex-
planation of the past and new hope  for the  future.  An expla-
nation of the past,  that elevated  still  higher in  his esteem the
matchless  creature for whom he  had suffered  so much; and hope
for the  future, that was like the resurrection  of  the  spirit  frcin
the grave of the body.
   It was not till the wedding-day was fixed, (for which, however,
in compliance with Mrs. Landoh's urgent suggestion, he was not
"made to wait very long,") that he was advised of Mary's  sudden
acquisition of fortune. He had expected  to support himself and
her, as he  was well able to do, by his art, but on the day before*
his marriage, the only thing that seemed lacking  to  fill up the
measure of his happiness was accomplished.   An examination of
the books  of the mercantile firm at N., with which his father had
been connected, showed such misconduct and abuse of trust on
their part, as  entirely relieved the Cliffords from  responsibility,
and assured them of the possession of their former  wealth.
   I  have little more to tell.  They were married; and if they had
before  realized the   wise  man's aphorism  that "hope  defered
maketh  the heart sick," they also proved that hope deferred,  if
not  to  the extreme, only makes the realization,  when it does
come, more full of joy.
   Besides the consciousness of having acted .rightly, and of hav- 
136
reminiscences;
 ing this acknowledged by her friends, Mary has the happiness to
 believe, and on good grounds,  that as the chain of regular heredi-
 tary liability has, in her case, been once broken, it will probably
 never again be formed; and  therefore  that her family is, in her
 person, relieved of so terrible a curse as hereitary madness.
  Years have passed since  the incidents above related,, and to
 this  day all  those cognizent of the circumstances acknowledge
 that  there never has been from that day to this, a happier match
 than the one which some very young Misses were disposed to de-
signate as the Old Maid's Marriage. 
REMINISCENCES.
NUMBER VIII.
THE OLD BACHELOR.
INTRODUCTION..
  One morning, in the Fall of 182 —, I was driving-up trie street,
making professional calls, when I met Dr. R., abroad on the same
business.
  "Well," said he, "Mrs. Nugent is returned from  the Springs,
and no better."
  "What I feared," said I.
  "What I expected," he returned.
  "I did not know you were so hopeless of the case."
  "Never dreamed of more than lengthening a life for which she
seems not to care half so much as we do."
  "I've noticed that she seems to care little about recovering, and
suspected some mental disease; do you know anything about it?'
  "I thought every body knew it that knows her and Seymour as
well as you do. Singular you have  not heard it!"
  "I am innocent of all knowledge on the subject," said I; "what
was it."                          ^
  "0, it is a long story.   I shall see you to  night at her house i
consultation; we'll adjourn to my office afterward, and I'll  te
you what  I know of it."
  What i I learned  from Dr. R.,  and what I gathered  afterwar
from others, is  thrown together in the followirigieaves. 
135
keminiscences.
                          LEAF I.

  It is an  afternoon  in 181 —.  In a .well finished room and by
the side of  a center-table covered with books and open papersi
sits John Seymour, alone.  It is likely he wishes to continue alone,
seeing that, spite of warm  weather, the room  is closed.   But,
reader, we  will look in.   It will  be  no breach of politeness, for
in scenes of this sort, you and I, like the chorus of the oldfGreck
drama, are  always supposed present,  if we choose it.
  The gentleman looks young,  properly enough, for this is his
twenty-first birth-day.  He returned  home  an  honr since from
his guardian's, having just made a final settlement with the kind
old gentleman who has so well  managed his affairs since his par-
ents' death, some five years ago.
  The numerous open papers before him are evidences of property,
certificates  of stock, notes, bonds, deeds &c.   He has looked them
all  over, and has become satisfied  that about two-thirds of his
property, consisting of stock, cannot be reckoned upon perma-
nently for more than six per cent, and the other third, invested in
various ways,  won't produce more than eight,  and he is now
leaning back in the  easy chair and endeavoring to satisfy himself
on another  point,—whether  the interest of $30,000, producing as
above invested, about $2,000 per annum, will suffice to support
in the style he is willing to live in, a Mrs. Seymour.
  There  are also a few loose  thousands of surplus revenue,  accu-
mulated during his minority,  but he  does not count them.   If he
were to marry, they will set him up in house-keeping, and  if he
do not, they will suffice  to sow his wild oats  with, without the
necessity of drawing upon his capital.
  As to  his intentions  of the probable personality  of the pros-
pective Mrs.  Seymour,  I fancy between ourselves,  reader, that
they are  tolerably well defined; for you notice how pleasant anex-
pression  his  features assume,  when,  jn  connection  with the
thought  of the future Mrs. Seymour, there brightens before his
mental vision the image  of two  brilliant eyes, that belong, if I
mistake not, to a certain Miss Clara  Brandon,  living  some half a
'ozen squares off".
  The fact  is, and the reader  may as well learn it now, that  John
 eymour, gent., is  desperately enamored of Miss Clara Brandon,
spinster.  He loves her as those only can love  who  are consti-
tuted like him, and as such men love only once. 
THE old bachelor.
139
   I have half a mind to inflict upon the reader here some notions
 of my own about this same love.   I am perfectly  convinced that
 but a small minority far from a  moity of human  beings are at
 all capable of real love, of that noble emotion, where sentiment
 predominates over passion, the intellectual over the animal;  that
 beautiful psychological illustration of the doctrine of elective affiin-
 ities shown in what the modern Anacreon calls,—
           "That sweet commingloment of hearts,
             Where,.changed as chymic compounds are
           Each with its own existence parts
             To find a new one, happier far."
   No single word in  English  (save the word Religion) is more
 prostituted than that  of love. Truly descriptive  of a passion
 equi-distant and equi-different from the self-consuming straw-blaze
 of excited sixteen and the  cool, calculating platonism  of fifty, it
 is nevertheless sacriligiously  applied to every boyish partiality and
 to each girlish caprice, to every youthful fancy and to each  sen.
 ectutal doting; untihin.love, as in religion, many of the unthink-
 ing are forced >into  utter 'infidelity.  I doubt seriously if one in
 ten among men  and one out of seven among women, are  capable
 of loving in the true  acceptance of the term.
   If the reader hesitate to concur  with me, let  him ask himself or
 herself how many of their acquaintances  are capable of the  love
■of Rebecca for Ivanhoe, or of Alice for Maltravers,  though Bulwei'
 has by no means done justice to his own conception  of Alice's
 character.
   I have not time nor room to enlarge here upon my notions, but
 what I have said is to prepare  the reader for believing that  Sey-
 mour, loved not  in the usual acceptance of the word,  but with a
 passion life-long and life-influencing.
   We will shift the scene.  It is a lady's room and  a lady is in it.
 Let me introduce you to Miss Clara  Brandon.  If you hesitate
 about entering a lady's room, let me remind you that  we possess
 this advantage over even the old Greek chorus, that having some
 sort of magical dress,  like the tarn-cap of Siegfried, in the old
 Nibelungen Lay, we are actually invissible.
   Turn your eyes  upon the  lady.  Admire that profuse black
 hair ringleting  itself so naturaly on and around a  head that is —
 observe — rather flat  on top,  to the disadvantage of the  moral de-
velopments, and of considerable breadth just at the tops of the cars,
denoting large secretiveness.  The forehead is broad and massive.
 The old Romans, with their passion  for wide and low  foreheads 
140
reminescf.nces.
     and joining eyebrows, would have  pronounced  her front head
     faultless.   A more modern admirer who had faith in phrenology,
     might perhaps associate with that lowness of forehead a lack of
     benevolence.  The head is not  so unusually large, but the brain
     it holds is assuredly  of the active and energetic character.  No-
     tice the  temperament,—hair and eyes black,—skin scarcely  dark
     enough to denominate its owner a brunette, yet certainly too dark
     for a blonde.
       Observe  the matchless expression of that  face, the graceful
     curve of the swan neck,  and be astonished at  the splendid  bust.
     You are astonished,  because usually, large intellectual develop-
     ments in a woman are accompanied by a meagre vitality.  Admire
     that slender waist, the Juno-like majesty of her rather tall figure*
     and those  hands and feet,  whose beauty  Catharine  de  Medicis
     herself (the Medici  family were  famed for the smallest hands in
     Europe) would have envied.
       Now take the tout ensemble and let us make up our estimate'
     of her general character.  I think we shall pronounce her to have
     more intellect than heart, and more heart than conscience;  a sort
     of Americo-Italian woman, of strong passions, and such control
     over them  as interest might dictate, with frequently noble im-
     pulses, but generally of selfish promptings; one whose love, once
     won,  would not stop on this side of the grave,  and whose hate or
     revenge would, if possible,  go beyond it; and  at the  same  time
     one of those fascinating creatures, for.whom and by whom a man
     might be lured even from the very gates of Paradise, like Moore's
     angel when
                 "Won down by fascinating eyes,
                  For woman's smile he lost the skies."
       Even such a being was Clara Brandon, at eighteen.  Possessing
     great  personal beauty, there was scarcely a trait in her mental
     character  that might not  have been so  managed, by  discipline to
     control the evil, and culture to develop the good, that she might'
     have been an amiable as well as fascinating woman.  This proper
     education  she unfortunately lacked.
       Her mother was a person of much tact, more knowledge of the
^^ world, and still more selfishness.   She had  found but one great
  ^k evil in this world, and fhat was  the shortness of  her husband's
   ■purse; and fully resolved to save her daughter at least this annoy-
   ■ance, she had carefully instilled into Clara's mind this great prin-
  Wciple in feminine ethics: that longitude of purse is the only touch-
  ^P stone o£ merit in suitors;  that whatever the greater or  less cute- 
THE OLD BACHELOR.                  141
chism might inculcate as the chief end of man, the chief end and
aim of woman was—a good settlement.   She was taught, there-
fore, to look upon her beauty and accomplishments as so much
capital, so much stock in trade,  by a judicious management  of
which sho was, like any other speculator, to become rich.
  If Mrs. Brandon did not succeed in  destroying altogether her
daughter's heart, it was because Clara's mind was of too high an
order  and  her passians too strong for her not  to  be conscious
that there was something more on earth to be lived for than pin-
money aud'the latest fashions.  But  the mother did  succeed  in
removing from her daughter's conscience all scruples, as to  the
motives which should prompt her in the choice and the means to
be used in the winning of a lover or husband.
   Clara was brought out at sixteen.  Proposals enough  she  re-
ceived, and some very tolerable  ones,  in the course of  the first
season.  During this season she met Seymour.  Struck from the
first with liis evident mental superiority, she listened to his voice,
perhaps  the more willingly that during that year he spoke  not
one word of love to her.  But  this could not long continue.
Flirtation  and coquetry and conquest were necessary to her ex-
istence,  and strong in her consciousness of  womanly power, and
unscrupulous of consequences to her victim,  she became piqued
at his apparent insensibility, and redoubled her efforts to bring him
 to her feet.
   Seymour certainly was fascinated, almost from first sight.  Her
 efforts to please threw an  air  of  amiability  about her which
 seemed natural, and would easily have become so if habitually
 practiced.  But  he  would not  surrender his heart without the
 sanction  of his judgment,  and when,  persuaded at last that she
 was all he wished her to  be,  he allowed  himself to admire, to
 love her, it was with a devotedness of heart and intensity of pas-
 sion proportioned to his sincere estimate of her, that she was the
 most perfect  of God's creatures.
   Mis3 Brandon had not yet discovered (self examination formed
 no part of her daily or nightly duties)  that the  possessing herself
 of his heart had been at the cost of the surrender of her  own-
 She  knew  that she  was pleased  with him.  She was aware  that
 even  in her mother's estimate of comparative value, he  was an
 eligible  match; and when, during  tho second year of their  ac-
 quaintance, she, with her  mothers sanction, accepted his offt if
 marriage, it  was with a consciousness of  satisfaction which an
 older and more experienced coquette would have felt to b3  iiuli-
 cative of more than ordinary attachment. 
142
REMINISCENCES.
  But Clara did not suspect this.  She expected the match to be
little  more than a marriage de convenance, and certainly  did not
dream that deep in the recesses of her heart of hearts there  lay
self-unknown and self-unacknowledged,  a passion  for  Seymour
fullyequal to that which he  more candidly  acknowledged  and
professed for her.
  It was understood,  among the intimate friends  of both, tha-
they would be married during the following winter.
                          LEAF II.

   Seymour had long been intending  to take a trip  to  Europe.
 He proposed to Mrs. Brandon that' he should take the journey as
 a  bridal  tour with  Clara,  immediately after marriage;  but the
 mother strenuously opposed so long a journey, and he deter-
 mined to make it alone, in the interval.
   For two or three months  after his  departure, Clara's letters
 were at least all that he  expected  in their  manifestations of re-
 gard, if not all that his own ardency might have desired.   Sud-
 denly they became  more  formal and more brief,  and then less
 regular.  Willing to assign to the change any cause rather  than
 one  which should diminish his esteem for her, he forbore to no-
 tice it; but was doubting the propriety of prolonging his absence,
 when he received a  letter from a friend, intimating that certain
 private personal arrangements of Seymour's own were suffering
 from anothers interference, and dimly hinting at the necessity o^
 his speedy return.
  Suspicion was no  ingredient in his nature.  His love made him
 even more trustful and  confiding than he was naturally.  So,
 instead of putting the hints in this letter with the unaccountable
 change of style in Clara's, and drawing conclusions unfavorable
 to her constancy, he determined hastily and angrily to  cut the
acquaintance of its author.  The next mail brought a letter  from
Clara.  It was  earlier than the  usual time,  and  taking this as  a
good omen, he opened the sheet with the certainty that all cause
for doubt was removed and his fond confidence justified.
  The letter contained but six lines,  but those six lines were fa-
tal.  They  announced that she released him from his  vows and
 * 
THE OLD BACHELOR.
143
recalled her own!-  I shall not attempt to describe his amazement,
his consternation, his despair.   Not one in a thousand of human
b2ings is capable of swch attachment as his.   In love's game, as
in ali gaming, the pain of the loser is in proportion to the amount
hazarded.  With, as he thought, a cautious pre-calculation of the
chances, Seymour had risked  upon a single throw all that  made
existenco either hopeful or desirable—and lost.
   InsUntly,  though with motives that he  made  no attempt to
analyze  or examine,  he started  homeward.   Perhaps he hoped
that his presence might effect a reversal of the terrible judgment.
Perhaps—but he  could lay  no plans, conceive no reasons—his
brain was  chaos.  Home, home  now, speedily as possible.  He
could neither talk,  read nor think.  Whatever he did was from
 liabit, not  motive.
   The journey was annoying to hiin.   The confinement on ship-
 board,  in  steamboat and stagecoach, and the compulsory  inter-
 coursa with others,  in the present morbidly sensitive state of his
 mind, was torture.   He  wished  only to pass along unspoken to,
 unknown  and unnoticed; and he would deprive himself of both
 fool and sleep, whenever the partaking of them involved that as-
 sociation with the unthinking crowd, which,  in his state of feel-
 ing, was intolerable.
   In this  condition,  his mind worn upon by suffering and his
 body  by abstinence, he, late in  the evening, reached N----, on
 his homeward route.
   The  hotel was  large and  crowded.  He  entered the supper-
 room,  but it was too full, he could not cat.   He  wandered into
 the reading-room,  and as he lounged listlessly  by the files of
 dalies and weeklies, his eye caught the title  of one of the  latter,
 published at home,  and with a  natural feeling he began to turn
  its leaves.
   Glancing toward the topf  the first  date that met his eye was
  rxactly a week after that of  Clara's last letter to him.  With a
  sickening feeling, he turned  the leaf and the following paragraph
  caught and riveted his attention:
    "On Thursday evening, 10th  inst., by Rev. Dr.------, John
  Nugent, Esq., to Miss Clara Brandon, daughter of Wm. Bran-
  don, Esq., all of this place."
    Spell-bound, as if he had seen a specter, Seymour stood  gazing
  vacantly  on the fatal ssntencc,  till the steps of persons coming
  from supper disturbed him, and he turned toward his room, heart-
  sick, hope-withered and reckless alike of present or future, though 
144
REMINISCENCES.
still calm, collected and externally impassive.  But while his step
was firm, and his bearing even haughtily stern, a gloomy depres-
sion,  a bitter,  despairing melancholy weighed upon his spirits.
  Psychologists think the weakened and etherialized (that is not
the word I want, but I cannot find a better) condition of the or-
ganization, consequent upon  fasting and suffering,  favorable to
those mysterious and  inexplicable modes of operation or impres-
sions  of man's spiritual  part,  which are otherwise seldom called
into ordinary action.  And believers in a certain modern science
think such a  condition of body and  mind  peculiarly  fitted for
the action of the generally dormant faculty of clairvoyance.
  A  dim  but  forcible presentiment in Seymour's mind warned
him   that  something  unusual,  something  too, with  which  he
would be connected, was about to happen in the external world.
By some  of the  unexplained,  perhaps  inexplicable methods of
communication from  the world of futurity to  the world of the
present, he was made  aware  and  certain  that some  crisis, in
which he was  deeply •interested, was about being evolved.
  And with this impression weighing heavily upon his mind and
thoughts, but utterly reckless what that crisis might be, from the
bitter consciousness  that no  future could be more  terrible than
the present, he threw himself upon  the bed, and fell into a rev-
erie,  which gradually became one of those heavy,  almost death-
like slumbers, the united  result  of exhaustion  and pain,  from
which awakening is so difficult.
  How  long it lasted, he knew not.  Visions chased each other
through his brain,  at first varied and changeful, and at  length,
though  they changed, becoming more of a sort and  assuming
night-mare forms, that oppressed his breathing.  Then the dream-
haunters would yell in his ears all manner  of unintelligible  and
horrible sounds; though still, even  in the depth of his ephialtic
slumber, one voice, one sound, seemed  to prevail over  all the
others.  In vain  he  struggled  against and endeavored to shake
off the incubus.  The feeling became more oppressive, the min-
gled  din of noises more babel-like, the fearful images more  and
more  hideous,  when suddenly he awoke.
  Opening his eyes to free himself from the dreadful impression?
of his dreams, he became aware in a moment that it was not all
a dream.  The horrible din of confused noises continued,  accom-
panied by a now distinct and ominous roaring;  the sense of suf-
focation rather increased than  diminished, and  those  flickering
and shapeless  shadows that flashed through the darkness on the 
THE OLD BACHELOR.
145
walls around him, must have been the demons that were haunt-
ing his slumbers.
  Suddenly a terrifying word reached his half-awakened earn
which he  recognized instantly as the prevailing sound that hac
rung through  his sleeping  visions;  and he sprang from  the bee
at a single  bound, as the truth burst upon him at once.   The ho-
tel was on  fire, and he was in the fourth story!
                         LEAF III.

  Let not the reader imagine that,  after Seymour's departure
Clara Brandon entered less into society or shared less its pleas-
ures.  The life of fashion was too naturally her element.  At
one of those scenes of pleasure, where she shone a star of first
magnitude, she met a Mr. Nugent.
  Jack Nugent, as he was familiarly termed, had just returned
from a three years' sojourn in the Old World,  whence he had
brought  most of its individual follies  and as many of its vice<<
as he had energy enough to acquire.
   He was weak, vain, selfish, twenty-four,  worth $100,000 ana
sported a tolerable moustache; and upon  the strength of the las'
two recommendations, would fain have become a lady-killer.
  With  Miss Brandon,  he lispingly professed himself smitten at
first sight, and vowed most languishingly, " Ton hith thoul and
'pon hith honaw,"  (dandies generally swear by that whose loss
would  injure them least,)  "that she  wath the motht angelic
cweature in Cwithendonu"
  Nugent always  took his opinions from  others,  (it was  too
much trouble to think  for himself,) and had not Clara been  a
belle, she might very possibly have escaped his notice altogether.
As it was,  she  very naturally received much of his attentions,
and as naturally  she encouraged them.
   He heard  of  her previous engagement, but this was not at all
in his way.  With small  development  and less cultivation  of
moral and honorable principle,  he saw in her previous betroth-
ment only an additional inducement.  For to supercede, in vul-
gar language to  '-cut out,"  the  brilliant and courted John Sey-
mour, was an exploit, he thought, worthy of his ambition. 
146
REMINISCENCES.
   Mrs. Brandon soon began to speculate, first upon the feasibility,
and then upon the propriety of Clara's discarding her old lover,
who possessed, in her Plutus-worshipping eyes,  scarce one third
the  recommendations the new one could boast.    The daughter
was too young to know herself; there was,  too, an eclat in win-
ning Nugent which delighted her vanity, nor could she be wholly
insensible, with the education she had received, to the solid ad-
vantages of her new conquest.   Little serious consideration was
given—she  gave little to anything—and when Nugent, flattered
and almost astonished at his  own success, offered  his  hand and
fortune, he was unhesitatingly accepted.
  Clara's first moment  of sober reflection was when writing to
Seymour the letter which dismissed him, and she was half alarm-
ed at her feelings while doing this, but she had then gone too far
to hesitate, even if disposed to da so.
  Nugent was resolved that his own game  should not be played
against him by  another, and insisted  on an  immediate union-
Mrs. B. concurred in this, and the daughter did not object either
to this or to her new lover's proposition of a bridal tour, for both
she and her mother could not avoid an awkward dread of  the first
meeting  with Seymour.
  The faithless Clara was wedded, as the reader has seen, within
a week of Seymour's dismissal, and with  her  husband started
from home immediately.  And now, one  month after marriage,
as the strangest fate or chance would have it, they had arrived at
N----, on the same evening and were stopping at  the same hotel
with Seymour.
  The reader already  asks if four  weeks  of married life had
wrought no change in Clara's opinions, as to whether the choice
of a life-partner should be made a matter of dollars and cents,
especially when in the face of a solemn and binding  obligation
to another?  I almost shrink from  speaking  of Mrs. Nugent's
mind or  feelings at this time.  Regrets of marriage, after mar-
riage, are of all secret griefs the most gnawing and bitter  that
can haunt a woman; for the step she has  taken  is irrevocable
and if a mis-step, irreparable.   That Clara yet felt distinct, tangi-
ble regrets, can scarcely be asserted.   But her state  of mind was
fast  verging toward this.  She was talented, and she soon discov-
ered that Nugent was—anything else.
  It is unfortunate  for a wife  to suspect inferiority in her  hus-
band; hazardous to  the oeace of  both,  for  her  to ascertain
it.  A man's qualities of <eart must  be of much more than ordi- 
THE OLD BACHELOR.
147
nary attractiveness that  he may retain the respect of a wife who
fancies, still worse of one who knows herself to be mentally his su-
perior.  Nugent's heart was as destitute of noble feelings as his
mind was of elevated thoughts.  His wife might deserve pity, had
not her course  been so reprehensible, and her uneasiness, which
was fast turning to unhappiness, all self-induced.
   True, she   still had sources  of satisfaction;  her  position
was secure, and her jointure ample, and her jewels  brilliant;  but
when the pleasure circle was broken up, and the guests departed,
and the lights  extinguished, and the flattering voices silent, and
the music still,—then indeed, she missed the intelligent  conversa-
tion, the interchange  of fresh and sensible thoughts; then she felt
the want of something  more than  the foppish, egotistical shal-
lowness, which made  up the incorporeal (One can scarcely call it
mental) part of Mr. John Nugent.
  The only thought or  feeling  she allowed  herself toward Sey-
mour, was  one  that will appear singular  only to these  un-read in
woman's nature.   At first, she had  dreaded to meet him for her-
self; now she much more dreaded to have him meet her husband.
For, strange as it may seem to some, she feared less to meet him
she had so causelessly and cruelly  wronged, then  she  feared to
have him know that she had rejected him for a fool.
                           LEAF IV.

  We leftSeymour just awakened to consciousness, just becoming
aware of his perilous situation.  Fortunately, he was but half un-
dressed.  A single moment  served  to  re-adjust his  clothes, and
then, before  taking  a single step toward escape,  he opened the
door of his room and listened intently, amidst the hoarse roaring
of the flames, for the sound of human life within the building.
  He listened in vain.   Through the  whole  long  ward, every
room of which he well knew, on the preceding evening, had its
one or more  occupants, no voice  of living being  could now be
heard, nor indeed aught else save the incessant crackling and hum-
ming of the  devouring element.  All  had escaped, save  himself
alone.   While outside, the loud orders of the firemen, mingled 
148
REMINISCENCES.
with the shouts and yells that always attend and increase  the
eonfusion of a fire, the regular  stroke of the fire-engines and the
hissing of the water where it met the heated  walls,—all told him
that the house must have been long on fire, perhaps an hour or
more.
  He raised a sash and applied his hand to open a window-blind,
but it  was too  hot to  be touched.   He dashed it open with a
chair, and instantly a mass of clear flame flashed up into the win-
dow, singeing his hair and eyebrows.  The room below his was
internally  on fire, and the devouring element was pouring  up-
ward, in greedy tongues of flame, from the open windows.
  Escape in that direction was impossible, but the  chair he had
used fell out,  and a shout of mingled sympathy and horror  rose
from the myriads below, as they saw this evidence that some hu-
man being was still so  hopelessly far up in  the  burning build-
ing.
  Seymour turned from the window and  went again  to the  pas-
sage.   Though  his life  hung upon the chances of each  mdment,
he manifested little excitement, no hurry.   A perfect tempest of
sparks, flame and smoke, which roared up through the opening
where  the staircare had been,  satisfied him that no possibility of
escape existed there; but not a moment was to be lost.   Already
the floors were  becoming too hot to be stood  upon, and  through
the imperceptible crevices of the heat-shrunk boards, a million
little tongues of smoke were ascending, forced up by the rarified
atmosphere below.
  He knew that if he could gain the other wing, the ladies' part
of the building, there was another staircase.  Coolly scattering
the clothes from his bed, he took the largest blanket, and pouring
over it the contents of  the ewer,  doubled  it together so as to re-
tain the water and be ready to throw around him, and then dash-
ed out into the hall.  It was time.   The floor smoked and swelled
upward with the heat,  but bent with his weight as he trod upon
it in passing along.
  He had noticed little of the shape of the building,  on entering
it on the previous evening, but he knew it was built in the  form
of an L, and that the shorter side contained the ladies' apartments.
Still he was blinded as  well as suffocated  by the smoke, and un-
certain of more than the general direction.
  The flames roared and crackled behind,  around and below him
as he hurried onward, but he did not hear them before him.   The
stifling smoke became gradually thinner as he advanced, and after 
THE OLD BACHELOR.
149
proceeding,  as he imagined, near a hundred steps, he was hoping
soon to reach a part of the house yet unburned, or whence escape
would be easy, when he ran in the darkness against a solid wall.
  He understood his situation instantly.  He had traversed two
thirds of the entire building, and had now reached the separating
partition between the male and female portions of the hotel.  The
fire was  on three sides of him and a wall  of mason work on the
fourth.   Almost utterly hopeless now of ultimate escape,  ho still
would not die without an effort, and had started a few steps back-
ward, to run again the terrible gauntlet before him, when the floor
trembled under his feet, and a crashing, crumbling fall was heard
like thunder.
  For one sickening moment, a faintness like that of death came
over him, for he supposed, of course, that the whole building was
falling and that even  a grave would be denied to his incinerated
corpse.   But as a sudden and  brilliant light flashed up behind
him,  he looked around, and the partition wall was gone.  It and
the ones below  it had  been built over the large store rooms of the
ground-floor, on wooden or stone columns, which had now burn-
ed or crumbled  away.  -The falling mass shattered but did not carry
down the floors with it, because, fortunately, the sleepers of the
floor were not let into it, but lay parallel to it,  resting in the side
walls.
  Springing over the narrow  chasm of fire left by the sinking
walls, he hastened forward; his way now open and  lighted, for
the falling partition  had opened a new  and powerful draught for
the flames, against which his only protection was the wet blan-
ket.
  It was like the fiery trial of the neophyte in the  Mysteries of
Isis, but his only hope of safety was in pushing rapidly onward.
A glance at the  neater arrangements  of the  rooms and at the
abandoned garments scattered here and there, showed that he was
now in the ladies' wing.
  He soon approached the staircase, but was again met by disap-
pointment, for  the hot and roaring draught announced this also
to be on fire.  But  it was his only hope, and  forcing his way
through the dense volumes of suffocating smoke, he found that
the head stair was still sound, as he placed his foot upon it, though
he could see nothing.  Each succeeding step trembled more and
more, till,  when about half way down,  the last one gave way
under him, as the smoke was dissipated by a bright sheet of flame
that shot up the stairway. 
150
REMINISCENCES.
  Seymour sprang forward just in time to reach the foot-landing.
But he was still three stories up,  and the lower portion of the
staircase was now a mass of Are.  Turning to  the right,  toward
what  seemed an open window  at the end of the passage,  he ran
on, followed and almost enveloped in the wild element, increasing
now more furiously than ever,  as if angry at being about to lose
its victim.
  His blanket was now thoroughly  dried and  scorched.  A mo-
ment more,  and he had gained the  window.  One look—he was
saved!
  The window was in the extreme end of the hotel,  and  opened
immediatly upon the roofs of a  long row of  two story buildings
that were not burning.   The comb of the roof was not four feet
below the window-sill, and ladders were already against the eaves.
He sprang out instantly, for he felt the floor trembling beneath
his feet,  but was recalled  by a female  scream that reached his
ears  from the smoke-filled apartments he  had just left.  The
sound was not repeated, but he thought he could hear low and
smothered exclamations.
  Obeying the first impulse,  he wrapped his now almost  crisped
blanket once more about him, re-entered the window and plunged
again  into  the murky atmosphere.  Ten steps brought him  in
contact with the floating drapery of a female.
  "Is there another!—are there any more?" he shouted.  And
at the sound of  his voice, the stranger sprung into his arms with
a wild scream  that seemed to  the confused senses of Seymour,
as much like joy as terror, and clung to his bosom.  No time was
allowed  for hesitation.   His  footing was already giving way un-
der him, and turning, he had  just regained the outside of the win-
dow with his burden, when floor, partition and walls sank down
with a crash, as a broad sheet of angry flame shot up through the
whole interior of the wing, revealing to  the  amazed and thunder-
stricken  Seymour that he had in  his arms the  senseless form of
Clara Nugent.
                         LEAF V.

  The  room  occupied by the Nugents was on the second  floor.
Clara had awakened her husband soon after the alarm was  given
that the house was on fire. That pusillanimous creature directed 
THE OLD BACHELOR.
151
his first movement, like his first thought,  toward the safety of
his precious self.  Grasping his clothes, he darted  out of the
room,  bidding her follow.
   This was the climax.  All women admire courage and despise
cowardice.  This  is necessarily so in the very constitution of
things.  Nature has made them physically weak to need protec-
tion, the other sex  physically strong to give it.  Had Nugent
only evinced manly courage,  his wife might have had at least
that single cause to assign to herself to justify some other feeling
than absolute contempt.  But his cowardly selfishness took from
him the  last claim to her  least respect, and  even at that dreadful
moment, and when uncertain if she should escape from the burn-
ing building, as she was ignorant how much or how little the
flames had advanced, she felt in her heart .that she despised him.
   She would not even condescend to follow him as directed.  A
melancholy despondency came oyer her heart that induced he*, to
think her lost  hour was  come.   The door closed,  blown too by
the draught of heated air  that began  to whistle meaningly up the
long passage, and  she sank into a chair-
   There were seeds of noble qualities in  that throbbing heart,
though they sadly lacked cultivation.  If her first thought was of
 home, her second  was  of one now  forbidden  forever  to her
thoughts and  to  her love.  But death would  cancel  her  hasty
vows, and she at that moment considered  herself sure  of such
canceling;  and yielding to an unrestrained and perhaps resistless
impulse, she pronounced  his name aloud, and burst into a torrent
 of the bitterest tears she had ever yet shed-
   Then, for the first time, she felt and even to herself acknowl-
edged the depth, the fervor of her passion for Seymour.  At any
other time .or under any  other circumstances, the fierce energy
 with  which her  newly confessed love awakened from its long
 obeyance,  would  have  frightened her.  But now,  in prospect of
 the dissolution of all barriers between her thoughts and him,  she
 rather encouraged than checked her feelings.  But how crush-
 ingly did the burning thought come  home, searing her very heart,
 that  Seymour did  and  must, aye, must  forever  despise her.
 This bitter reflection was intolerible, worse even than death, and
 roused her-
    During her reverie,  noises of all kinds, voices of entreaty and
 warning and hurrying  footsteps passed her door; but  now, all was
 still save the terrible roar of the fast  increasing flames, that seem-
 ed hurrying like a wild beast for their prey- 
152
REMINISCENCES.
   With the  waking  from her reverie, the love  of life returned
 strong upon her, and starting up in terror to think how long she
 had delayed,  she opened her door  and turned toward the stair-
 case.
   The hotel had first caught fire in one of the large store-houses
 on its lower floor, and the whole first story was now more or less
 in flames.  She could not descend the stairs, and in her confusion
 ascended another story.  Blinded  and suffocated by  the smoke,
 she hurried about, as  much toward as from the fire,  and  finally
 finding herself in a room yet untouched by the flames,  she sank
 down, exhausted, to die.  A moment after, the rapid step of Sey-
 mour passed by the room, and excited by one  hope  more, she
 sprang into the passage and uttered the cry which recalled him.
  Hearing no immediate response to her call, and utterly despair-
 ing of relief or aid, she exclaimed aloud in bitterness of heart—
  "O, if even Seymour could her me, he would try to save me."
  Then, on the instant, as the words were yet almost upon her
 lips, his voice was in her ear, and he stood at her side.   His sense
 had not been mistaken.  The scream with which she threw her-
 self impulsively upon his bosom, was accompanied by such a thrill
 of joy as she had never felt in all her life before.
  I have little room for sage reflections.  The reader may enlarge
 upon the strange chance or fate by which Seymour should be
 called upon«to save, for the man whom he had most reason to hate
 and despise of all on earth, the wife of whom he had himself been
 robbed; and upon the  singular chain of contingencies, by which
 it should happen that the  first meeting of  Clara  with  her former
 lover, should be on the very night when he had learned that she
 was lost to him forever, and when  she should learn how worth-
 less was the husband she had chosen, how noble the one she had
 discarded.
  I cannot even linger to speak of the unhappy  position  of the
 wretched Clara,  now  condemned to live with one in  whom she
 vainly looked for one redeeming trait, one single quality of mind,
 heart or disposition,  in which she could compare him, without
 measureless inferiority, to the one whom she had, for his sake,
heartlessly abandoned.   Perhaps her punishment was even greater
 than her crime.
  Five years  afterward Nugent died.  Though  Clara's brilliant
eye was somewhat dimmed and her velvet cheek paled and hol-
lowed by mental suffering, yet as a rich and charming widow of
twenty-three, she could not and did not lack admirers.  All, how- 
THE OLD BACHELOR.
153
ever,  were dismissed, alike without coquetry or encouragement,
but promptly  and almost sternly.  Although she knew well the
peculiar character of Seymour, it is more than likely that, for a
few years, she hoped, as she unquestionably and ardently wished.
a renewal  of acquaintance  with him.  But he soon checked
all such  hope or expectation.  Before her  husband's  death  he
never markedly avoided her,  in order not to excite observation
and gossip.  After that occurrence he  never allowed himself to
meet her.   She would willingly have made advances, but she un-
derstood too well  his studied avoidance.
  Years passed by.  He did not  marry and  she would not.  Un-
relieved his loneliness by society and  mental cultivation,—she
increased  hers by self-assumed seclusion and bitter because  un-
availing regrets.   Of the two, he was doubtless far the less unhap-
py, because his sorrow had in it no self-condemnation.
  It  is more than probable that had Seymour married her in  two
or three years after the death of Nugent, they would have been
far happier than  even if their youthful  engagement had  never
been broken; fer  years and sorrow and  compulsory self-control
must  have given to her  character and  disposition a  discipline
which otherwise,  in the absence  of proper early  training, they
would nover have received.   But Seymour would never commit
his happiness a second time where the trust had once been abused.
He had marked out his path, and if  his resolution ever faltered,
it was still never broken.
  Few constitutions can bear up against gnawing grief, close se-
clusion and want  of exercise; and  before  Mrs. Nugent was thirty,
she was in confirmed phthisis.  Despairing of benefiting her by
medicine, we ordered her to the Springs, whence she had just re-
turned when introduced first to the reader.
  She survived only about two months longer. 
 
REMINISCENCES.
NUMBER  IX.
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
                         LEAF I.

  It is the chamber of the dying.   You can enter withme, reader,
but tread lightly.  The uncarpeted floor, the uncurtained  bed,
the poorly shaded windows,  the scanty furniture and the absence
of a circle of weeping friends, all tell you that it is the chamber
of poverty as well as of death.
  You see but four persons in the room, the physician, the nurse
and two  others.  One of these latter is a manly-looking boy, of
about ten years, whose swollen eyes betray the grief which,  with
a considerate ness  beyond his years, he strives momentarily to
repress, lest he should disturb  his dying mother; though his
glances never for a moment turn from the low couch  where she
is lying.
  And the mother, pale and wasted and weakened by disease and
suffering, yet  perfectly resigned and conscious, she  lies there,
while the sands of life are falling fast, and the slow, faint beating
of the pulse tells, like a muffled funeral bell,  her near  and nearer
approach to the "house appointed for all the living."
   "How  much longer have I, doctor?" asks the patient faintly
and with an effort, as the physician seats himself beside her and
places his fingers on the wrist.
  The doctor shook his head.
  "Perhaps half an hour, but probably less."
   "Henry!" said the mother, and instantly the boy stood beside 
156
REMINISCENCED.
 her, gazing earnestly and tearfully on the only relative  he pos-
 sessed in the wide world.  Ah, too well  did the young lad know
 the meaning of the scene before him, for scarcely one year before
 he had stood thus by the couch of his dying father.   The mother
 placed her pale thin fingers, now clammy with the  death-damp,
 upon the head of her boy.
  "Oh, mother, mother," said he, choking in his utterance, "don't
 go,—don't leave  me alone!"
  "It is the  will  of God, my child," replied  the agonized mother,
 "and I must go.  But Henry, I am going where I shall  meet your
 father again, and we will watch over you together."
  The boy's pale features lighted up with almost a smile.
  "Shall I see you, mother?" asked he earnestly.
  "No,  my son, you will not see  me, but  I shall be  with you
 still.  Remember what I have told you.  Never tell a lie;  nevt-r
 regard what others say of you; always try to do right, and trust
 in God.   Do you understand me, Henry?"
  ■'Yes, mother, you have told me about it so often."
  "And now, my child,  farewell, and may God bless you."
  The lad still clung convulsively to his mother's hand, as though
his grasp could detain her.
  "Are you there, my son?" faintly asked the patient.
  "Yes, mother,"  sobbed the boy, whose grief could  no longer
be controlled.
  •'Your father is come, Henry," said the voice, low and scarcely
audible, "but who are those others, in white, and so beautiful—'"
  The voice died away, the eyes rolled upward, the jaw fell, and
at a sign from the physician, the nurse moved round to  disengage
the boy's hand from its convulsed grasp of the corpse.
                         LEAF II.

  Years are passed, and the boy is  become a man.   Struggling
through boyhood and youth, amid  the  harshness of some,  the
carelessness of many and the kindness of a few, he never forgot
or violated his  mother's dying charge.   There  must have been
something noble in the boy, for he constantly made friends and
valuable ones,  since they were  those whose feelings beo-un  in
compassion for  orphanage, and ended in esteem for merit. 
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.                157
  At  f.rst  he was bound apprentice to a cabinet-maker, but his
master was so won over by the lad's correct deportment,  as well
as by his eager and insatiate desire for knowledge, that after  six
years,  just about the  time when the apprentice's services began
to be of real value to him, he voluntarily gave up the indentures
and gratified the youth's earnest wishes by obtaining for him a
place  in an attorney's office, with the ©pportunity and means of
studying a profession.
   Here, as before, young Manton in a short time completely won
the heart and confidence of the gentleman with whom he had
been placed.   And when, after five  years of study, he was admit-
ted to the bar, not only did the three examing judges declare him
the best qualified law-student that had ever come before them,
but his late preceptor, Mr. Maxwell,  a gentleman of middle  age
and a lawyer of  high standing, received tho  young man at once
into partnership in business.  Seldom indeed did a penniless orphan
begin  the  world  at ten years under gloomier and at twenty-one
under  more  promising auspices; yet all had been obtained and
secured for him by his own honorable behavior.
   In the very first case in which he was employed, he displayed
an ability, talent for business and knowledge of law, which placed
him at once  in  the foremost  rank of young practitioners;  and
three years afterward, when the principal incidents about to be
related occurred,  no gentleman in tho county was considered as
giving better and surer promise of a virtuous and successful man-
hood, and an honorable old age.
   Our country is not yet so changed from the  simplicity of its
purer days, but that talent and merit, backed by education, even
though without wealth  and powerful connections,  can find or
make  a way into almost any desirable social circle.  And into
the best of these, young Manton was not only admitted but wel-
comed.
   It is perhaps generally true, with those  of ordinary sensibility
 and not too great selfishness,  that a person's fondness for society
 is, in some  sort, more or less proportioned to his early privation
 of it.   And  this may account partially for what  has probably
 come  within the observation of most persons,  that orphans are
 inclined to marry young.  The bitter experiences of an early life
 spent in unpitied, unshared solitude—the painful reaction with
 which the heart's fountains flow back  upon themselves, filling
 their  sources almost to bursting, when there is no  object on
 which to spend  their treasured fulness—the longing desire for 
158
REMINISCENCES.
sympathy, characteristic of minds of finer mold;  these and sim-
ilar feelings  unite to produce in the orphan a fondness for society
and a tendency  toward early marriage, scarcely  appreciated by
those whose best affections have ever found vent in a father's,
a mother's or fraternal love.
  Young Manton's warm and sensitive nature was not calculated
to make him an exception to the general rule.  Even  before he
was twenty-one, he  had fixed his choice; and if the lady occupied
a position in society,  so far as wealth is concerned,  much above
that  he was  born to, he felt the disparity only as a spur to his
ambition and a quickener to his resolution to elevate himself by
his  profession, till  all inequality between them  should be  re-
moved.
  Fanny Easton was an only child, an amiable  and intelligent
girl,  about four years younger than Manton, lovlier in  heart and
manners than in face, but still possessing sufficient personal beau-
ty, especially  when backed by  $50,000,  to break the  hearts of
some  score  of rejected  suiters.  The  accident of juxtaposition
(Mr. Maxwell's law-office was next door to the Eastons' residence)
and casual meeting, made her acquainted with Henry Manton,
while she was yet  a  school girl of fourteen  or  fifteen  and he
scarcely half through his law studies.  They were never  formal-
ly introduced  to each other, but a sort of spontaneous  acquaint-
ance grew up between them, and she probably made a  choice as
early  as he, for before he was twenty-one and without  the ex-
change  of a word on  the  subject,  both knew  that each  was an
object of unusual interest to the other.
  After Manton was  admitted  to practice  and entered society,
they met oftener, but though their eyes and their  embarrassment
when together betrayed to each other their mutual secret, the
young man still restrained himself from an open declaration, un-
til he should feel justified to his own conscience  in making one.
Moreover, as his principles would not  allow him  to address the
daughter clandestinely, he did not wish, by a premature applica-
tion, to  risk  a refusal from the father.
  The latter was an  old gentleman of sixty, testy, and selfish, and
fond of  money.   He had made his own fortune from nothing, in
the business of a speculator and broker, and perhaps his constant
handling of money had aided to give him that  love  of it that
formed  the  strongest feature  in  his almost miserly character.
There was but one  object on earth  on which he lavished money 
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
159
with a liberal hand, and that was his daughter,  for  whom his
attachment was the very concentration of paternal passion.
  The first year of Manton's practice gave such assured prestige
of ultimate and brilliant success, that at its close he felt warrant-
ed in declaring himself to his mistress.  Fanny was in truth more
than half angry that he had not done so sooner, and as she pos-
sessed no slight infusion of mischief as well as spirit and humor
in her composition, she felt strongly inclined to  torment  him a
little for his conscientious, though (as she considered it)  rather
long silence.  But as her real affection for her lover rendered it
impossible to find pleasure in giving  him pain, she passed it over
in his case, resolving inwardiy to make it up off the next luckless
suitor that should present  himself.
   Miss Easton had lost her mother  in infancy, and it was per-
haps her growing up without much contact with female  influ-
ence,  (her father being almost her only associate in childhood,;
together  with her utter  exemption  from all control,  which had
given a sort of Di Vernon freeness to her manners.  This, aided
and still  more strongly developed by a natural candor and naivete
sometimes astonished not a little those gentleman,  whose notions
of a woman's proper manner and words when love is declared
were drawn from Sir Charles Grandison.
   When young Manton made known his passion, telling her how
he had loved her for years, how, even before he had finished his
studies,  he had resolved to make it the great object of his ambi-
tion and his life to win her; even he,  with his practical good sense,
was rather non-plused by the  manner in which his  declaration
was received.
   Fanny was silent a moment,  looked down, colored, and then
quietly said, "why did you not tell me this a year ago?"
   The young man stared.
   "Yes, I say," continued she positively, "why didn't you tell
 me  tfcis twelve months ago?  You  loved me  then, I know you
did, and I loved you then, almost as much as I do now; and  do
 you know I've been angry with you for a year,  for not telling
mo this  sooner?  I'm angry with you now, and if I did not love
 you very much, I'o> never speak to you again."
   Manton hastened to tell her what  had heretofore scaled his lips;
that  he  looked upon a courtship without her father's knowledge
and perhaps against his wishes  as dishonorable, and that he had
only delayed to assure himself of the certainty of being able to 
160
REMINISCENCES.
 offer her a comfortable  home  and thus secure her father's con-
 sent.
   "Well," said the dutiful girl, "if that was the reason, you were
 right,  and I like you better for it.   I don't think papa can make
 any objection to you; but though I love you,  I won't marry any
 body, not even you, against his consent."
   But  her father  did have  an objection to Manton, which of
 course would scarcely have presented itself to the less calculating
 daughter.
   "Young, man," said  Easton, when Henry had finished his
 earnest and eloquent statement of his case, "I think a good deal
 of you, and so does Fanny.   You have talents, good habits and
 good principles. But look you,  sir, my daughter will have fifty
 thousand  dollars,—yes sir, fifty thousand; and she  shall never
 marry  any body with less than half her  own fortune.  On the
 day when you are worth twenty-five thousand, come and ask me
 tor Fanny. Till then it is useless to talk about her,  for she
shouldn't marry the President  of the United States with less than
that sum."
   The  lover did venture to urge his suit farther, but he might as
 well have tried to coax money out of the old broker at less than
ten per cent.   Easton  became angry and threatened finally  to
withdraw  even his conditional consent, if  not let  alone on the
subject.
  When  Fanny was informed by her almost  despairing lover of
the result of his application, she seemed momentarily quite angry
with her father.
  "What!" said she, "does papa want to sell me for twenty-five
thousand dollars?"  A moment's consideration however restored
her usual consciousness of filial duties, and she said, "well, Hen-
ry, we  must wait.  Don't fear for me, only take care of  yourself
and make money as fast  as you can."
   Henry no doubt thought this last rather an original recommen-
dation  from a  mistress to her lover, but resolved to act upon it
 nevertheless.   And he soon learned that Fanny's assurance of the
 needlessness of any anxiety on his part for her, was as true as
her own  noble heart.   Their prospective  engagement  became
 gradually known, for Fanny in her frankness of disposition, far
from concealing it, gave it uniformally to other lovers at the rea-
 son of their rejection,  generally varying her own manner and
 language,  according to  the esteem in which she held the suitor.
   This sometimes  led to rich scenes, for the  young lady's pe-. 
CIRCUMSTANCIAL EVIDENCE.
161
eonal and solid charms together procured her any quantity of
lovers.  Take the following as an instance:
  Fanny is in a parlor, engaged busily in embroidery.   A young
dandy, who has been bestowing upon her, for the last two months,
all  the attention he could reasonably spare from his own person,
is sitting near her and evidently screwing up his courage to the
necessary pitch for a declaration.
  The favorable moment arrives,  and sinking gracefully on one
knee, with a glance at the opposite mirror, while  he brandishes
in  one hand  a scented mouchoir and places the other upon his
left vest pocket, and commences, a la  mode:
   "Adorable Miss Fanny," (a deep sigh,) "from the first hour I
saw you,  no other divinity has reigned in my bosom,"  &c.
   Meanwhile the lady very composedly continues her embroidery.
her mischievous little mouth drawn sedately up into a very inno-
cent  looking pucker, and a roguish leer flitting about the cor-
ners of her eyes,  until the lover  gets,  as she imagines, about half
through;  when coolly breaking  her thread,  she procceeds to
thread the needle afresh, never once looking at the petitioner,
while she interrupts him with—
   "Well, you say  your lesson pretty well, but it isn't a bit of
use.  You are a very nice young man, I've no doubt, Mr. Jones.
but I don't love you, and if I did, wouldn't marry you, because
I am engaged. to Mr. Mantan and I'm going to  marry him as
soon as papa will let me.  Besides, maybe  you do  not know that
you are kneeling upon my toes."
   The astonished Jones sprang to his feet as though a bomb had
fallen before him.
   " Ton my honor, Miss Easton,  this is a very singular—"
   "Yes, I think so myself,"  interrupted Fanny, putting out her
little foot,  and energetically  rubbing  the extremity with her del-
icate fingers;—"I never before heard of a gentleman's choosing
such a cushion to kneel on."
   "I beg ten thousand pardons for my awkwardness, but if Misa
 Fanny would only attribute it to its proper cause, the impetuosi-
ty of my passion, and permit me  still to hope that my long and
constant devotedness—"
   "What! you are not going to  persist in your suit, after what  I
have told you!"
   "Why  indeed,  Miss Fanny, considering that it was no news to
me before—"
   "How, sir," exclaimed the lady, "do you mean to say that you
                              11 
162                  REMINISCENCES.

had the assurance to make this declaration to me knowing that
I was engaged to Mr. Manton?—Then you haven't a bit of the
gentleman about you,  and I would go  to a nunnery before 1
would marry you."
  "Miss Easton," said the dandy, forgetting in her stinging sar-
casm to whom he was talking, "I hope, Miss, you don't mean to
insult me."
  "If you think so, sir, just wait one moment till I write a noto
for you to Mr. Manton, and if he does not give you satifaction, my
father will."
  This was bringing matters most uncomfortably to a focus, for
one of the  few light  amusements that young Manton allowed
himself was pistol shooting, which he practiced  almost daily,
and at which he was known to be a dead shot.
  Jones had just sense enough left to mutter a half  inaudible
apology, while Fanny touched a bell near her.
  "Phoebe," said she quietly to the servant who appeared, "show
Mr. Jones to the door."
  And the discomfited suitor backed out, feeling fifty per cent
less in his own eyes than ever before, and heartily glad to get off
so well.
                         LEAF III.

  Two years  are passed.   Manton  is twenty-four years of age,
with a practice worth two  or three thousand a year; for Maxwell
already rich, has thrown gradually nearly all the business of the
office into his hands, intending soon to  withdraw  from practice.
Still it will require four or five years more, at a favoroble calcu-
lation, to obtain for the young man the prize so long sought, so
faithfully labored for
  At the close of a sultry summer afternoon, the young lawyer is
about to  refresh himself, after the day's confining labors, by his
usual evening ride and  pistol  practice.  Walking  over to  the
livery  stable, he  found  that his own horse's  back was  galled
slightly by the saddle,from along ride of the day^before, so he asked
for another horse.
  "Will he stand fire?" enquired Manton,  as he led  out the ani"
mal. 
              CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.                   165

  "I don't know indeed," said the  keeper;—"any paaticular rea-
son why you wish him to?
  Manton  felt a natural aversion to telling exactly what  his
business was, so he answered carelessly, "No, nothing very  par-
ticular," and mounting the horse, rode off.
  That evening's ride;—how little did  the young man  imagine
that its events were to be woven into the tissue of his whole fu-
ture life.
            ******
  It is about ten oclock, P. M.  The sound is heard  of a horse's
feet in full gullop down the street, and  a moment after, his horse
all  in a foam, Manton rides to the door of the livery stable and
dismounts.   The establishment is  shut up,  though three fresh
horses are standing, saddled and bridled, fastened near the door.
  Fastening his own  there, he  walks directly across the square to
his office, which he enters.  He finds,  to his surprise, that his
rooms have been visited in his  absence, for a candle burns on the
table, though the office is empty.  Several articles about  the
 room, such as trunks, chests of drawers  &c, have  been moved,
as  if to be examined, but nothing broken open.
  Disregarding this circumstance,  which  indeed  he only noticed
 with a glance, and seeming to be unaware or unmindful of sev-
eral dark redish spots upon his clothes, and without even taking
 off his hat, (such is his manifest haste,) he draws from his coat
 pocket a  large, old-fashioned  silver  watch, which he holds  near
 the candle.  In the center of the back of it are the initials "J. E.'
 deeply cut.  The crystal is broken and the case bruised, and on
the face and back----the light shows them plainly—are three, dark
 ciusied sUins, as though ii had been grasped by two fingers and
 the thumb of a bloody hand!
  With a terrified expression  of face, he starts up, and is  about
 replacing the watch in his pocket, when suddenly the door opens
 and the sheriff of the county enters, followed by two constables
 and Mr.  Maxwell,—all but the last with buttoned coats and rick-
 ing whips,  as if prepared for a long ride.
   The new comers stand for a  moment without speaking, gazing
 at Manton from head  to foot, and then the sheriff, placing his haad
 on the young man's shoulder says,—                         ,
   "Mr. Manton, I have a very unpleasant duty to perform,—you
 are my prisoner."
   "How—what's the  matter?" asked  Manton,  as if bewildered.
    "I arrest you for murder!" said the  officer. 
164
REMINISCENCES.
   "Not of Mr. Easton?"
   "For the murder of John Easton!"
   "Great God!  is it so then?" exclaimed the young man,"—"this
is what I feared!"
   The rest of the party  exchanged glances, while the sheriff con-
tinued, "We must do our duty;" and they proceeded to search
the prisoner.  The watch was taken from him, being recognized
as Easton's and then a very handsome pistol.   As they continued
to search, Manton observed,—
   "I have not the other  one with me—I lost it on  the road."
   Glances were again interchanged, but no one spoke untill one of
the officers produced from the young man's pocket, a small, care-
lessly-rolled  bundle  of paper.   As  they opened it  a cambric
handkerchief appears, once white,  now having evidently  been
soaked in blood and tben partially rinsed in muddy  water.
   As this terrible witness was unrolled, Maxwell, hitherto stand-
ing apart a silent spectator, actually burst into tears, exclaiming—
   "My God! Henry, did I ever  think  it would come  to this! I
would  as soon have suspected my own brother!"
   The prisoner's lip quivered and he became  very pale, but he
spoke not a word.
   At  the same  instant  an officer drew from  another pocket a
small but heavy  pocket-book.   It was opened  and all  saw the
name "John Easton," written on the inside, which was stuffed
with bank-notes.  The money was counted, consisting mostly of
very large bills and amounting in all to near twenty-five thousand
dollars.  Other papers also  were found, but all was placed in the
hands of Mr. Maxwell, as Easton's attorney, he giving a  receipt
for it to  the sheriff, in  presence of  the rest.  When the search
was finished, the sheriff requested the prisoner to change his coat;
it would be necessary to  take possession  of the one he wore__
stained as it was with blood—as an  evidence on the part of the
commonwealth.  The young man  complied.  Hitherto, he  had
made no remark upon the accusation against him, but now as if
unable longer to restrain  himself he said earnestly,—
  "Gentlemen, I am as  innocent of this crime as any of your-
selves,—I beg of you to tell me  why  I  am  accused  of it  and
when Mr. Easton was killed."
  One  of the constables  broke into a sneering laugh, but no one
answered, not even Maxwell; and Manton felt that there must be
some  strangely  concurrent  circumstances   working  terribly 
C1RCUMSTA.NCIAL EVIDENCE.
165
against him, for the ominous silence showed that all present were
so fully satisfied of  his guilt,  that they looked upon his request
as a sort of insult to their understandings.
  A moments silence followed, and then the sheriff led the way to
the jail, to the keeper of which the  prisoner was  handed over in
form.  It was not till the departure of the others, when the jailer
had placed him in the fellon's room and was about retiring for the
night, that  Manton ventured  to  make an  enquiry  of the same
sort as he had  made in his own office.
  "Why Squire," said  the jailer, "I don't want no man to gam-
mon me, and I reckon you know already as much about the thing
as most folks; but the fact is,  there ain't no man in the county
that I have thought more of than  you for the last three or four
years, so I suppose I must answer your question.  You  see, just
after sun-down, old Easton's horse came to  town without a rider
and with a bloody saddle; so some of the  town-people started out
immediately,  to see what was become of  the  old  man.   And
about a mile and a half out they found his body  on top of Denni-
son's hill, and  one of your fine silvermounted pistols lying in the
road near it.   So they brought the body home and the  sheriff got
ready to raise a hue and cry after you, expecting to ride all night*
when you came home;—though what you come for, after  losing
that pistol, and when (as the constables tell  me) you had twenty-
five thousand dollars in your pocket, is more than I know."   And
he started to go out.
  "Stop a moment," said Manton;  "I am  entirely  innocent of
Easton's death and can prove  it;—will you  send to Mr. Maxwell
to come here instantly?"
  "Certainly sir," said the man; who seemed perfectly astonished
at his prisoners assertion;—"if you can prove yourslf innocent,
there ain't no  man will be more glad to see  it than I shall.  But
I'm  afraid  you will find it the worst law-case  you've ever  had
yet."
   In fifteen minutes he returned, saying that Mr. Maxwell  was at
Mr. Easton's, where the old man's  daughter  was thought to be
dying, but he would  call early in  the morning.  The  prisoner
seemed  now to be aware that he had no time to lose,  for he sent
immediately  for Mr. Agnill, an attorney  of considerable reputa-
tion as a criminal lawer.   To  him he communicated  what  he de-
sired done, and that gentleman departed to have it attended to
without loss of time. 
166
REMINISCENCES.
                         LEAF IV.

   It is six o'clock in the morning and Manton is wakened from
sound sleep by the entrance of the jailer, introducing  Agnill and
Maxwell.  The prisoner had lain down in his clothes, and rises
instantly to receive his visitors, who seem surprised at his sound
slumbers.   Agnill spoke first.
   "Mr. Manton," said he, "I have bad news  for you.  The  offi-
cer who was despatched last night, by your direction, to the vill-
age of X., has returned with the information that no wagon, car-
riage or other vehicle has  pased through there, to  any one's
knowledge, within  the  last twenty-four  hours.  Nor  did the
officer meet or see any one while going or returning, nor could he
ascertain, by  any inquiries along the road, that such a wagon has
passed within a week."
   The young man turned pale at this  announcement and stood
for a moment speechless.  At length he said,—
   "Well, gentlemen, my character and perhaps life depend, upon
finding those witnesses, and  they  must  be found, cost  what it
may.  Doubtles there are persons in the  West end of  town who
saw the wagon pass out yesterday afternoon.  These must also be
found.  Did  either  of you  see Dennison  when he came in
town?"
   "I saw him riding in," answered  Maxwell, "It  was about
seven o'clock—at least a half hour before sun-down."
   "Was he alone?" eagerly enquired Manton.
   "Yes," said the other,—"No let me see,—I think  one  person
was with him."
   "A country-looking man was it not?" asked the prisoner has-
tily, "riding with a blind bridle and without a saddle?"
   "Yes now that I recollect, that was it exactly;" said Maxwell
wondering what the young man was aiming at.
   '•That young man must be found by ail means, and everything
ascertained about him that  is  possible-  I want Dennison  also
summoned."
   "From what I have heard," said Agnill, "he will be summoned
for the commonwealth, and is likely to prove a most unfortunate
witness against you."
   "To prove what?"
   "A quarrel, or at least angry words between yourself and Eas-
ton." 
CIRCUMSTANCIAL EVIDENCE.               163
  "Ah yes,—true enough!" said Manton musingly,—"how unfor-
tunate that was!"
  Maxwell here turned away toward the window, while  Agnill
cleared his throat during  a pause, of the awkwardness of which
the prisoner did not seem at all  conscious.  At  length  Agnill
asked, "Do you wish the examining court put off to-day, in view
of obtaining your absent witnesses!"
  "Yes for three days;" replied the prisoner, "if we  do not find
them in that time,  more extended operations  must  be com-
menced."  Then after a pause he continued, "You,  Mr.  Agnill
are my counsel and you, Mr. Maxwell, have been  the best friend
I have had in the wold.  I therefore wish you both to  hear  the
statement I have to make  of the occurrences of last evening; oc-
currences that have connected me most strangely and yet  inno-
cently with the commission of this telrrible crime.
  The gentlemen assented and Manton proceeded to give the fol-
lowing narrative, which the  author  has chosen  to  put in  the
third person, commencing where the young lawyer left the livery
stable and rode off up street.
                         LEAF V.

  As Manton passed up the West end of town,  he overtook Mr.
Easton.  The old gentleman was always  very  friendly  with his
aspirant son-in-law, besides that Maxwell and Manton were his
attorneys, and of course more or less acquainted  with his  chief
busines transactions.
  Easton said he had just received a very handsome offer for part
of a tract of land belonging to  him and being upon the road, and
that he was riding out to  look  at  it, in  order  to  determine if it
could be advantageously divided, and how.  He  expected it would
take about an hour  to run over it with a pocket compass.   The
old gentleman chatted and laughed in unusual  good humor, reik-
dered so by the prospect of the profitable speculation in prospect.
  Encouraged by his good nature, Manton ventured after a while
to introduce a subject  he  had not spoken upon  (to him) since if
was first prohibited; and  proceeded to express  the hope that his
own principles, prospects  and habits had been sufficiently tried to 
168
REMINISCENCES.
 allow of the father's consenting to his  long  deferred  suit.   The
 testy old man became instantly very angry.
   "Mr. Manton," said he, interrupting the other's eager pleading
 "I told you, two years  ago, that  when  you  were worth twenty-
 five thousand dollars, you might ask me for my daughter, and so
 help me God, Sir, you shall never marry her a moment sooner."
   At this instant two horsemen appeared in sight, but  Easton
 seemed in his passion to not notice them, and continued, much to
 the young man's mortification, in a loud and angry tone—
   "And,  sir,  Fanny has given   me her  promise that she  will
 never  marry you till you are worth that sum.   If I were to die
 to-morrow,  she would  never listen to you  a moment  sooner.
 Look you, sir," continued the old gentleman  taking out his pock-
 et-book, "here are twenty-five thousand dollars;  now, sir, when-
 ever you can say that you are worth so much, I?ll listen  to your
 request, but if you mention this  subject again till that time, by
 heaven, sir, you shall never marry her at all."
   By  this time the two horsemen  had met and passed them,
 though they stared wonderingly as they rode by.  Manton's face
 was crimson with mortification at the old  gentleman's angry in-
 delicacy; still he noticed that one of the  two was a person well
 known to him, while the other  was a stranger,  a young man,
 poorly dressed, riding without  a  saddle,  upon  what  seemed a
 wagon horse.
  Just then Easton turned aside into the woods, having arrived at
 the corner of his land.   His companion drew his rein a moment,
 as though uncertain whether to follow him and try to restore his
 good humor.  Chancing to turn  in the saddle, he observed  that
 the two horsemen who  had passed them were looking, as  if to
 see the result of a quarrel.  Irritated  at the whole scene and  still
 more so at being thus watched, he dashed  his spurs hastily into
 his horse's flanks and wrode onward  in, it must be confessed, no
 very agreeable mood of mind.
   Riding some four miles farther, he came up with an emigrant's
 wagon, stopped in the middle of the road,  by the side  of which
 sat an elderly female, evidently an Irish woman,  weeping bitter-
 ly and holding in her arms the apparently lifeless form of  a little
 girl, some ten or twelve years of age.  Another girl, two or three
 years older, was standing by the mother's side ringing  her hands
in the  utmost distress;  while  a lad of about sixteen was  hastily
 un-harnessing one of the wagon horses, to  ride for help.
   "Are ye a docther,.are ye a docther?" exclaimed the distressed 
CIRCUMSTANC1AL EVIDENCE.
169
 mother eagerly, as Manton rode up,—"0, for the  love  of Christ,
 stop and help us,—sure my darlin little Lucy is kilt intirely!"
   Manton dismounted instantly and took  the still senseless child
 in his arms to examine it, while the weeping mother told him how
 the accident occured; that the little girl was leaning from the side
 of the  wagon to look back,  and fell out, striking her  head vio-
 lently against a.rock in the road..  It was but a  single moment
 before Manton had appeared in sight.
   The latter, in the  course of his general reading, had of course
 learned something of common  remedies.   He ascertained easily
 that the child was only bruised and stunned by the fall, and  not
 at all dangerously,  though the head  was cut considerably  and
 bleeding  profusely.   Returning the little  suffer to the arms of
 the mother he re-assured her, and takinga bucket from the wagon,
 ran to a neighboring stream for water.
   A little of this sprinkled in the girl's face, soon restored her;
 and he then aided the mother to bind up  the wounded  head, as-
 suring her that immediate medical aid was needless; the  bleeding
 would itself  tend  to prevent  subsequent inflamation, an  easy
 position was all that was requisite, let  her place the child among
 the bed-clothes in the wagon, and they might just as well proceed
 immediately with their journey.
  The whole family were overwhelming in their gratitude to him
 who had so kindly and usefully aided them; and more to  interrupt
 the out-pourings of  the mother's grateful  heart than from curi-
 osity, Manton made  some inquiries,  while the boy was re-harn-
 essing the horse, about their destination, &c.
  The woman said she was a widow, was moving West-ward,
 that she had a young  man hired to  drive for them, manage  the
 the horses, &c.,but  he  had forgot something in  the town of Z.,
 through which they had passed  awhile ago, and had  taken the
 lead-horse—it was  a three-horse wagon—and gone back for it.
  The rest were her own children.  They should now push on to
 the next town, some twelve or thirteen miles ahead, so that if he
child needed  it, they might get medical help.
  Manton knew that her hired man must  be the stranger he had
met, riding with Mr. Dennison, when so mortified by Easton's ir-
ritability.
  It was not till after a most maternal embrace, with prayers for
ten thousand blessings on his head,  that the truly Irish- hearted
widow would  part from her new friend and suffer  the wagon to
proceed. 
170
REMINISCENCES.
  The sun had set some minutes since,  and the nearly full moon
was up.  Returning to the little stream above-mentioned, Man-
ton spent some time in endeavoring to remove, as much as possi-
ble, the stains of the child's blood from  his clothes, using for this
purpose  a  pocket-handkerchief,  which he  afterward  partially
cleansed in the water and then placed it in his pocket, wrapping
it  previously in an old newspaper,  to prevent its staining his
pocket.
  In searching his clothes for the newspaper, which he  knew he
had taken with him for wadding, he missed, for the first time, one
of his pistols, and  returned  immediately to the  scene of his late
adventure to look for it. Disappointed here, he  turned  again
toward town, riding at a slow walk, so  as to examine minutely,
in the moonlight, every foot of ground as he  passed over it.
  He had not proceeded more than a few hundred yards in this
way, when the sound was heard of a horse's feet in a hard gallop,
and immediately after a man appeared  in sight,  riding  toward
him, whom in the  clear night, he easily  recognized to be the
stranger he had met going to town in the afternoon, with Denni-
son, and who, he doubted not, was the  hired man spoken  of by
the widow.   The man's delay in town seemed to have put him in
great haste, for he rode by  Manton at  full  speed and  without
speaking a  word, though he  looked hard at him.  The latter
thought, from something'in the man's  manner of  riding, that he
was either a very poor horseman or intoxicated.  He soon forgot
the circumstance however, in the eagerness of his  own search for
the lost weapon, as he continued slowly homeward.
  Two miles farther he  suddenly stopped and dismounted, as
something upon the ground,  glittering  in  the moon's light, ar-
rested his attention.   It was Easton's watch, he  knew it  well,
even without the initials, on  the case, and he started  in conster-
nation as he  saw that it was  on both sides  crusted with blood!
It seemed to have been let fall, but could the  owner have dropped
it?  He looked  around him—he was not yet within a mile of
Easton's land!
  He drew out his own watch.  It was half-past  nine  o'clock-
In his slow search,  he had been  more than  an hour riding the
last two miles.  Turning to his  horse to re-mount, a  dark object
on the ground caught his eye.   He stooped down, and  scarcely
crediting his  own senses, picked up  Easton's pocket-book!—the
very one the old man had  shown him three hours  before, and 
CIRCUMSTANCIAL EVIDENCE.
171
spoken of as containing $25,000!  Upon this too, were the marks
of bloody fingers!
  Without another moment's delay he re-mounted, his mind full
of the most exciting and gloomy apprehensions, and turned home-
ward at full gallop, never slacking his speed for an instant, until,
when within about a mile  and a  half from town, he heard his
horses feet splash,  as though in water.   Knowing there had been
no standing water upon the dusty road as he went out, he turned
back to examine the place.  And as he leaned from his horse  to
look at it closely, he uttered an involuntary exclamation of hor-
ror.   Near the center of the road lay a large pool of blood!
   Although  now  intensely anxious, in the conviction  of some
terrible accident or more probably crime,  Manton threw  the
bridle over his arm, and proceeded to search  minutely every part
of the ground within  fifty  yards  around him, expecting every
moment to stumble upon the old man's corpse.  But  nothing
could be discovered, and  with a heart tortured by the most dread-
ful apprehensions as to Easton's fate, he re-mounted and  under
whip and spur returned to town.   He had first learned from the
jailor, after his arrest,  when and where  the body of  Easton had
been  found.   Some  ono, one too  who  knew  of tho old man's
carrying with him at the time a large sum of money, must  have
found  Manton's  lost pistol, used it to  perpetrate the  crime, and
then robbed the corpse of the watch and pocket-book, which the
murderer had afterward lost,  and which had heen picked up by
Manton.
   Here the narrative ended.  Upon both the gentlemen present it
produced an impression, and particularly upon Maxwell, who had
known Manton best  and  longest.  He immediately offered his
services to the prisoner, as additional counsel, and the offer was
gladly  accepted.  Arrangements were  agreed  upon as to the
measures necessary to be taken, and the  gentlemen separated.
   Five or six expresses were immediately started out in as many
different directions toward the West,  with accurate  descriptions
of the wagon in question and its inmates, and  with  orders to ex-
amine every country road for forty miles' distance.
   Before  the three  days  of delay,  granted by the  examining
court, were passed, all the expresses came in, wholly unsuccess-
ful.   No vehicle of the sort or description named had been  seen
or heard of, in any  direction.
   The  examining court was  held.  No  defense was made, and 
172
REMINISCENCES.
Henry Manton Esq., was fully committed to stand  his  trial
at the next supreme court, now two months off, for  the wilful
murder of John Easton.
                         LEAF VI.

  Two months are passed, and it is the last day before  the com-
mencement of the session of the  superior court.
  In the parlor of Easton's mansion sits the late so lively Fanny
Easton, now sad and in deep mourning.   Maxwell  too  is there,
in earnest consultation with her.
  This gentleman had been appointed by the  court, in the ab-
sence of any will, guardian to the young  heiress and administra-
tor of her father's estate.
  "Are you sure;"  asked Fanny, "that you hav,e done every
thing possible to get them here in time ?"
  "Every  imaginable means have  been used, I.  assure you,'
answers Maxwell.  "Expresses have been  sent, in some directions
two hundred miles, placards are  stuck up every where, and ad-
vertisements inserted  in  all the Western  newspapers of the
State."
  "And yet no news of them?"
  "Not one syllable."
  "Mr. Maxwell," said the lady,  after a pause, "I know you will
not deceive me; tell me,  are the persons employed in this search
acting with  sufficient energy in the business; do they act as  they
would if they had much hope of success?"
  "The inducements are certainly strong enough," replied he
evasively; "rewards are  offered,  from $50  to $500,  for mere
pieces of verbal information, of such sort as nobody who knows
would hesitate to give."
  "That is not what I mean."
  "Are you prepared then, and  able to bear the worst?" asked
Maxwell
  "I am."
  "Then I must tell you that not one of those employed in the
case, acts with the most distant hope of success. I myself think,
if he is cleared, it wiJ' be by a miracle." 
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
173
  The young lady covered her face with her hands for a moment,
while the  unconscious rocking of her body to and fro, betrayed
the intensity of her mental suffering.  Suddenly she  raised her
head and in a clear, calm tone asked—
  ".Mr. Maxwell, do you believe him guilty?"
  "Miss Easton," replied he, "fourteen years ago, I was clerk of
the court which bound Henry Manton, a poor destitute orphan,
an  apprentice to Mr. Howland,  the cabinet  maker.  I watched
the boy for  six years, and then took him  into  my office.  He
studied with me five years and has been my partner in business
for three years more.  During the whole fourteen years,  though
often placed in circumstances of great temptation, he  has never
once been found guilty of doing a dishonorable action  or of tell-
ing an untruth.  I have believed him the most  strictly truthful
man on the  face of the earth.  As his counsel,  he has told me
every  occurrence of that dreadful evening, which,  if we can
prove it by a single credible witness, will exculpate him entirely.
And I  believe him  to be as innocent in this matter as I am  my-
self."
   "0, may heaven  bless you for these words!" exclaimed Fanny,
bursting  into tears; "I have been sure  of it from the first,—I
 have never, for one  moment, believed he could commit such  a
 crime; but I was afraid my feelings might perhaps  influence my
judgment, and I have so much  desired  to know that  there was
 one single honorable man who could think as I do."
   "My dear Miss Easton,"  said Maxwell kindly but seriously,
 "I have  told you my own opinion candidly, as you  desired it;
 but I must warn you against the belief or expectation that a jury
 can be found in the country, who would agree with me. What-
 ever they might think or  wish to believe, they  arc sworn  to de-
 cide according  to the evidence.  When  I say that I believe him
 innocent, I must tell you also that I do so in the face of all the
 evidence, on the strength  of my long acquaintance with the man.
 I do not think he would tell a falsehood  to save  his life.  But tho
 circumstances  against him are terrible,—the  strongest I ever
 know or ever heard of, to exist against an innocent man."
    "Mr. Maxwell," said  Fanny, after another  pause, "will you
 take a message from me to him?"
    "If you very much desire it I will; but—" and he hesitated.
    "You think  it indelicate, and under ordinary circumstances it
 might be.  But these are not ordinary  ones, and I wish you  to
 tell him from me,  that I believe and have believed him innocent. 
174
REMINISCENCES.
 God forbid that he should lack, in this dreadful trial, the small
 support that the knowledge of this may give him."
  "He shall receive your message," said  Maxwell, and took his
 leave.
  Ah, much indeed did the prisoner need  the support of even the
 knowledge that one single person believed him innocent.  Du-
 ring the first days of his imprisonment, he had seemed and  had
 professed himself confident of producing the witnesses, by whom
 he could prove enough of the incidents of his own narrative to
 his counsel, at least to exculpate himself from the dreadful charge
 against him, even if it failed to account for the commission of the
 crime by another.   But as day after  day and  week  after week
 passed away,  and the different means and messengers employed
 utterly failed to obtain any evidence whatever  in  support of his
statements, the confidence he had at first manifested began to
give  way.
  O how often, during those two  months.of torturing suspense,
must his mother's dying charge have recurred to his recollection:
"Never  tell a lie;  never regard what others say of you; always
try to do right and trust  in God."
                         LEAF VII.

  The morrow has come and the hour of trial..  The court-house
and ir.deed the whole space in front of it, for many yards square,
are crowded with curious spectators.  The nature of the crime
the wealth of the victim, the previously  high character of the
accused and the general knowledge of  the circumstances, pro-
duced by the very efforts of the prisoner's counsel in search of
evidence;—all these things tended to excite interest in the case
and to collect, in and around the court-house, the largest crowd
ever seen in the town.
  This was the first case on the docket, and a most discouraging
fact for the prisoner and his counsel appeared  in the difficulty
of finding a jury.  For  though the accused did not challenge  a
single juror, no less than some eighty or a  hundred persons were
called, before twelve men could be found who had not so decisive- 
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
175
ly made up and expressed opinions on the case as to be incapaci-
tated from serving.
  The  jury was empaneled about throe o'clock in the afternoon,
and the trial commenced immediately.
  Tho prosecuting attorney, Mr. Sinclair, was a middle aged man,
of some talent and more knowledge of law, and withal of  a  mild
and  very gentlemanly disposition.  He was  assisted by a junior
counsel, Mr. Harris, a young practitioner who  was a personal
and  political enemy of Manton's, and a rejected suitor of  Miss
Easton's, and who, while he really believed  the  prisoner  guilty,
was resolved to spare no pains to make him appear so.
   There was an evident  impression produced upon the crowded
 audience  by the  appearance of the prisoner, as he was brought
into court; though as the spectators behaved  with great decorum,
it was difficult to tell whether the feelings excited were of  sym-
 pathy or abhorrence. Manton  was pale, from confinement and
 suffering, but his step was firm and manly, and his general ap-
pearance  that of  innocence;  but then the circumstances  against
him were so strong, so terribly strong.
   The counsel for the commonwealth stated the case, read the
 indictment and proceeded to call witnesses.
   The first one introduced  was  Mr. Blaney,  a livery-stable
 keeper.  The dropping of a pin might  have been heard all over
 that large and crowded  court-room, as the witness was sworn
 and took the stand.
   "Mr. Blaney," said Sinclair, "tell the  jury, if  you please,
 whether  you saw or knew anything of the prisoner at the bar,
 on  the afternoon or evening of last July 25th"
   "Yes, sir;  he  came to my stable for a horse to ride  on tha
 afternoon."
   "What o'clock was it?"
   "About six in the evening, as near as I could judge."
   "Of what color was the horse you gave him?"
   "Light grey, almost white."
   "Did you notice anything particular or unusual that he said or
 did, in your sight or hearing?"
   "Nothing, only  he asked the hostler, as he mounted,  if the
  horse would  stand fire.  I told him I didn't know, and asked
 him if there was any particular reason why he wanted to know."
    "What answer did he make?"
    "He said it wasn't no matter in particular." 
176                   REMINISCENCES.

  "We shall want you again after a while," said  Sinclair, "you
can stand aside now."'
  Cross-examined by Agnill.
  "Does the prisoner keep a horse at your stable?"
  "Yes sir."
  "Is he in the habit of riding out often?"
  "Yes sir, most every evening when it's good weather."
  "Why did he not take his own horse that time?"
  "Because his back was galled with the  saddle."
  "Do you know any reason why the prisoner should have asked
you the question he did about the horses's standing fire?"
  "I don't know positively, any farther than that he is known
to practice a good deal with his pistols."
  The next  witness  sworn was  Mr. Dennison,  a bald headed,
respectable and benevolent looking old gentleman.  Examination
as follows:
  "Please tell the jury, Mr. Dennison, if you met the prisoner at
the bar on the afternoon of the 25th of last July, and  under what
circumstances."
  "I had been out about five miles, looking at some timber on
my land,  and was returning, when, just at a  turn  of the road,
at the corner of the late Mr. Easton's tract >of woodland, I came
in sight of Mr. Manton and Mr. .Easton, riding together.  They
seemed to be quarreling and looked very angry.   Mr. Easton
was talking loud and violently."
  "What o'clock was this?"
  "About half past six, or a little later."
  "Did you hear what either one of them said?"
  "Mr. Easton took out his pocket book,  told  Mr.  Mannton it
contained  $25,000, and that when  he had so much money he
might marry  his daughter, otherwise he should  never marry  her,
or words to that effect, as near as I could gather."
  "What did the prisoner say?"
  "Nothing;  but his face was a good deal flushed  and he looked,
as I thought, very  angry."
  "Did you see anything more?"
  "Not till I had passed them.   Then I looked back and saw Mr.
Easton had turned  into the woods, at the corner of his own land.
Prisoner had stopped his own horse, and seemed about to follow
him,  but  then he  looked back,  and when  he saw me  watching
him, he turned and rode on very fast."
  "Did he ride entirely away?" 
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
177
  "Couldn't tell;  there was a turn in the road that hid lrim from
tight."
  Cross-examined.  "Were you alone, Mr. Dennison, when you
met prisoner and  Mr. Easton?"
  "No sir, a man was riding with me."
  "Do you know who he was?"
  "No sir, never saw  him before.  As  I came out  of the wood*
on my land and struck the road,  he was just passing, on his way
toward town, so he rode most of the way in with mo."
  "Will  you describe him to  the jury?"
  "I  cannot, very  particularly,—except that he was dressed in
tow linen, had red hair, coarse features and  was marked with
small pox very deeply,"
  "Did the stranger ride the whole distance in with you?"
  "He was within sight of me all the  way."
  "Did either of you find or pick up  anything along the road to-
ward town?"
  "I  did not.  About  three miles from town, the  stranger dis-
mounted and picked up something, did not see  what, and paid no
attention to it."
  Several witnesses, townspeople, were here introduced, who de-
posed, that at a quarter before eight  o'clock, on the evening in
question, Mr. Easton's horse had returned to town riderless and
with blood upon the saddle;-that they started out immediately on
horseback, (others also started on foot,) to find what was become
of  the rider.  They found his body on an elevated part of the
road, about a mile and a half from town, known as "Dennison's
Hill."   The corpse was lying near the middle of  the road, and
when found was still warm and bleeding.   By  the side of it they
had picked up a silver-mounted pistol, recently discharged.  The
pistol was produced and identified as  belonging to the prisoner at
the bar.
   Two or three physicians (one of them the writer) then testified
that  they had examined the body of the old man  as soon as it
was brought in.  It was shot through the heart, the ball stopping
only at  the back  bone.   They had  weighed the ball which,
bruised  and  flattened, they  had extracted.  It was of just thf
weight of one of the bullets  of the discharged pistol.
   Blaney, the livery stable keeper, was now recalled, and stated
that,  on the evening in  question, after Easton's body had been
brought  in, he was applied to by the  sheriff to furnish horses.
to  ride all night to hunt up prisoner.  Horses were brought out
                             12 
178
REMINISCENCES.
and ready, and be went to see the sheriff, when he was- told pris-
oner had come home and the horses would not be wanted.  Went
back to his  stable, and found fastened there the  horse prisoner
had hired in the afternoon.  The animal had been ridden hard,
and the belly and hind legs were spotted with blood.  Horse be-
ing of light color, could be no mistake about the spots.
  The sheriff  was now sworn, arid deposed  that,  after speaking
to Blaney the  livery stable keeper,  about the horses, he had  gone
over to prisoner's office to see if he could judge, by any apparent
preparations for a journey, as to prisoner's intention to return.
Found nothing disturbed, every thing as usual, and thinking pos-
sibly prisoner might come  back,  had left a light burning in the
office.   Within a half  hour afterward prisoner  returned.   Took
two  constables and  went with Mr.  Maxwell over to the office
where  they arrested him. When they  entered,  prisoner was
just concealing, or at least placing in his pocket Easton's watch.
Evidently knew that the old man had been murdered, for when
told that they  arrested him for murder, he had said, "Not of Mr.
Easton?"  and when told  that  it was for that, had exclaimed;
•'Great God! is  it so then? this is what I feared!"  They had
found  on his person  Easton's  pocket book,  containing  near
$25,000.
  Both watch  and pocket book were produced and identified.
  They had taken from prisoner also a pistol, loaded with powder
and ball.  Produced, and  matched the one found  in the road by
the corpse of Easton.   Had found on  the prisoner a pocket-hand-
kerchief, stained with blood and concealed in an old newspaper;
looked as though it  had been partially rinsed in muddy water.
Produced, and found marked "H.  M."  Lastly, prisoner's  coat,
worn by him  on that night, was shown  to the jury.   It was  a
sportsman's  frock coat, made of English fustian,  and was much
stained with blood on the left breast and on both sleeves.
  No cross-examination of the sheriff, except as  to the tone of
voice in which prisoner had  exclaimed,  "Great  God! is it so
then," &c.   Sheriff would not say positively that the tone was
one of fear or alarm—might be of surprise and regret.
  The evidence  for  the prosecution  here closed,  and as it was
now late, court was adjourned till  next morning at 9 o'clock. 
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.               179
                       LEAF  VIII.

  Great as was the crowd of anxious spectators on the last eve-
ning, it was still greater next morning; and of all that large num-
ber who  had  heard the evidence for the commonwealth, there
were perhaps not three persons in the court room who were not
fully satisfied of the prisoner's guilt.
  All were surprised,  that the overwhelming and almost direct
testimony on  the part of the commonwealth should be attempted
to be met by evidence so trifling and almost irrelevant, as that
adduced by the prisoner's counsel.
  The first witnesses sworn for the defendant were too respecta-
ble persons from the western part of the town, who,  in reply to
questions put to  them by  Manton's counsel,  deposed,  that at
about 5 o'clock on the af.ernoon of 25th July last, an emigrant's
wagon passed  through that  part of the town,  and  taking  the
direct western road, had proceeded in that direction till lost sight
of in the windings of the road.  It was a three horse wagon, with
a common coarse linen cover.  A  young man was riding one of
the  horses and driving.  Had noticed the inmates only so  far as
to see that there was an  elderly woman  and several children,
some of them pretty well grown.
  Only one of  the witnesses noticed particularly the young man
driving;  said he was dressed  in tow linen, had red hair and was
deeply pitted with small pox.  Saw him about two hours  after-
ward ride into town  again with Mr. Dennison; is confident it
was the same one.  No cross-examination.
   A grocery keeper of the town was next sworn, who  testified
that on the evening in question, at about half past seven o'clock,
a young man,  stranger to him, answering to the above  descrip-
tion, had bought at his store a quart of whiskey,  of which he
 had drank nearly a half pint  before leaving  No cross-examina-
 tion.
   Two persons were then introduced, who deposed that they
 had been employed by prisoner's counsel, on the day after the
 murder,  to  go out on the country road leading west from  town,
 some eight miles, to a place described to them by prisoner, about
a hundred yards beyond a small stream.  They had there  found
by the road  sido,  as prisoner had  told  them they would, eviden
 marks of blood on the ground and on  a stone or rock,  that wa
  sunk partly in the earth.  No cross-examination. 
180
REMINISCENCES.
   Mr. Howland, cabinet maker, being next called, testified to the
 very high character of defendant for the last fourteen years, du-
 ring which time he had known him intimately.  Prisoner had
 never been known guilty of a mean, much less a criminal action-
 Was always  and particularly noted for his strict adherence to
 truth.  The old man wept while giving his testimony.
   Maxwell  and several others, being called, also bore  witness,
 in the highest terms, to the enviable character and  irreproacha-
 ble life of the prisoner.  Maxwell stated also, that, owing to the
 haste and exciting circumstances of the arrest, an informality had
 been committed,  on the ground of which the  indictment  might
 have been quashed,- but that the prisoner had positively forbidden
 his counsel to take advantage of  it, preferring to abide the  issue
 of an honorable  trial.  He stated also that  almost  superhuman
 efforts had been made, by offer of rewards,  advertisements, pla-
 cards, &c, to procure some tangible information of the emigrant
 family, mentioned by the first two witnesses, by whom prisoner's
 counsel expected to prove an alibi; but both wagon and  inmates
 had  mysteriously disappeared.  Here  the evidence for the defense
 closed.
   The  prosecuting attorney then addressed the jury  at some
 length  on the issue before  them.  He was an able speaker, and
 his  summing up of  the evidence on the part  of the common-
 wealth, was with overwhelming  force against Manton.   And as
 he put together, link by link, the fearful chain of circumstances—
 the quarrel  between  prisoner and  Easton—the identified  pistol
 found by the side of the murdered man—Easton's watch and
 pocket  book  and the blood-steeped handkerchief found on the
 prisoner's person—his unaccountably long absence  and  late re-
 turn with a hard ridden and blood-spotted horse—his coat,  with
 its dark, tell tale stains but half effaced, lying at that instant be-
 fore  the jury, the very effort to efface them betraying conscious-
 ness of  guilt;  the voice of the speaker rang through the crowded
 court-room, like that of the accusing angel,  "making inquisition
 for blood."
  From the prisoner's long  and well known and indisputably
 high character, up to the very hour of this too strong temptation,
 he would not detract one iota, that might go to mitigate punish-
 ment but not to influence the verdict of the jury, where the pos-
itive and presumptive  evidences of guilt,  were so incontroverti-
bly strong.
  ?:nclair's speech made evidently a powerful  impression  upon 
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
181
the jury,  the more so, as with gentlemanly delicacy,  he had not
thought it proper, since he did not deem it necessary,  to excite
enmity in the jury against the prisoner personally, by dwelling
at large upon the darker features of the case.
   Mr. Harris, junior counsel for the prosecution, followed  his
senior,  for it was understood that the  prisoner's counsel would
not speak, and he took entirely different ground.
   Commencing with prisoner's question to the livery stable keep-
er, he argued a deliberate, malice-aforethought intention on the
part of defendant, to murder Easton.  He attached even the evi-
dences of previous integrity, and more than hinted that the pris-
oner's  whole  life had been a course of hypocrisy;—spoke of his
 guilty consciousness when arrested, even  in the very act of at-
 tempting to conceal the evidences of his  guilt;—enlarged upon
 the heinousness of the crime,  a cowardly  assassination of an old
man, a mere balancing of a human life against so many dollars;—
and endeavored  throughout to  rouse  in the minds of the jury,
 feelings of  personal animosity against the prisoner.
   His speech, though fluent and plausible, instead of aiding, in-
jured his cause  with the jury and produced manifest signs of dis-
 approbation in  the audience; simply because no one present be-
 lieved  it.   Manton had  been exceedingly popular, as well as in
 high moral esteem, and no one believed his crime more than what
 Sinclair with better judgment termed it,  "a momentary yielding
to a temptation  too strong for him."   And amid the  restlessness
 produced all  over  the court room by the latter part of Harris's
 address, Manton himself, to the surprise of the jury and audience,
 rose  to make  his own defense.
   During the course of the trial, he had sat calm and apparently
 unmoved, listening without a change of countenance to the fear-
 ful mass of testimony arrayed against him; nor did he once show
 signs of  emotion,  until Howland,  Maxwell and others were testi-
 fying to his hitherto irreproachable life and character.
    His face was  pale and his features sharpened by suffering, but
 his voice was clear and strong, and his manly figure had lost, by
 long confinement, none of that peculiar  and  modest dignity,  so
 sure to prepossess an audience in favor of the speaker, and which
 Manton possessed in an eminent degree.
    He commenced,  as usual,  addressing himself to the jury, but
 it was clear, before he had uttered ten sentences,  that he had lost
 utterly all hope of escaping a conviction, and was  pointing his
 efforts chiefly to persuade the mass of spectators that, spite of the 
182
REMINISCENCES.
strong circumstances against him,  there was still a possibility of
his innocence.  He therefore related minutely all the incidents
of his eventful  ride on the fatal evening in question,  as he had
already  told them to his counsel;—alluded to the evidence, con-
firmatory of his statement so far as  it went, of the wagon in ques-
tion,  the young man  driving and  the blood found on tho road
seven or eight  miles from town;—dwelt particularly  upon the
evidence expected to be  obtained  from the warm  hearted Irish
woman  and her family, and upon their mysterious disappearance,
seemingly as though intentionally kept out of the way.
   He made no appeal to the feelings of the jury, and indeed seem-
ed purposely to avoid  any excitement on  his own part  or the
arousing of it in  others, till he came to reply to the  ill-judged
insinuations of  the jurtior counsel  on the other side, as to a pre-
determined assassination and a whole past life of hypocrisy.—
This he denied  in an indignant burst of fiery eloquence, that met
a response in the heart of every man in the court room; mingling
with  it a  few  scathing sentences of personal sarcasm,  under
which the luckless Harris writhed  like a whipped school-boy.
   He closed by telling the jury he knew they would  and must
find a verdict against him,  the evidence required it; but he was
conscious of innocence and could only, as he had endeavored all
his life to do, "put his trust in God."
   A  feeling was evidently rising  in his favor, not only among
the audience, but in the minds of the jury also;  but this latter
was quickly dissipated when Sinclair again  rose to  close the case,
and in a low voice, as though reluctant to  act the part assigned
him,  reminded the jury of their oaths, to decide according to the
evidence.   The testimony in reference to the wagon proved noth-
ing as to the merits of the case; the blood  on the road, seven or
eight miles from town,  might have been put there by prisoner
himself in cleansing his blood-stained garments—he was  absent
long  enough to have done it;—and as for the prisoner's narrative
of events,  had it been proved by one single credible witness, he
did not hesitate to allow that, it would clear the defendant,—but
where was that single witness?  And amid a  breathless  silence
over the whole court house, the case was given to the jury and
they retired;
   No one supposed they would remain out many minutes and
all therefore kept their seats. The dead unbroken stillness of the
crowded hall began, after four or five minutes, to be disturbed
by low  whispers of opinion, when the sound of voices was heard 
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.              183
at the door.  Instantly every noise was hushed within, for all
supposed it to be the jury returning, and  amidst  the universal
Bilence, a woman's voice was distinctly heard:
   "Augh! let me pass now, let me in, I say!  Lucy, kape holt of
me hand!  Ah, John Looney, won't the divil burn ye for desaiv-
in' me so, and the swate young gintleman agoin' to be hanged
jist because me child's blood was on his coat! Let me in, I say!"
   In a moment, with an indescribable revulsion of feeling and a
voice as  of one man,  the whole vast multitude  within shouted—
   "The  Irish woman!  Manton's witness!  The Irish woman!"
   And instantly, spite of remonstrances on her  own part and
shouts of "Order! Silence!" from the  officers, the  widow and
her family were actually  lifted over the heads of the crowd and
placed within the bar.
   "Who are  you, my good woman?" asked the judge, but before
an answer could be given, a hundred voices shouted, "Call back
the jury!" and despairing of quieting the multitude and  probably
sympathizing with them, the judge ordered the  jury re-called.
   "In the meantime the woman looked round, and the moment
her eyes met Manton—who seemed waiting her recognitition—
 she sprang toward him and would have dropped  on her knees,
 but the  prisoner prevented her, shaking hands heartily  with her
 and with Lucy, whom she drew up beside  her.  What  was said
 was inaudible,  amid the sound  of a hundred voices, but the poor
 woman  wept like a child.
   When order was again  restored—the crowd  were  too eager to
 bear to be noisy long—the judge made a few remarks to  the spec-
 tators on the impropriety of any demonstrations of public feeling
 in a court of justice,  and intimating the reluctance but  necessity
 under which he should order the court room cleared, if  better or-
 der were not kept; then turning to the  woman, he repeated hia
 question—
    "Who are you, my good woman?"
    "Sure mo name's  Mary  Callaghan, yer  honor,"  said she,
 modestly dropping a curtesy,  "an I'm  a  lone widder  with five
 children, barrin' the two that's lyin' in the church yard at Bally-
 nasloe."
    "And you wish to give evidence in this case?"
    "I don't know  nothin'  about the case, yer honor, but I want
 to tell ye how this young  gintleman got his coat bloodied, which
 they say he's goin' to bo  hanged for.  Sure it was—come here
  Lucy!" 
184
REMINISCENCES.
  "But," interrupted the judge, "I don't know you; how are the
jury to know whether to believe you?"
  "Plaise yer honor, I have some certificates from Father O'Reilly,.
that's the praist, and Squire Magruder, and—"
  "Who—Squire Magruder of N----?" demanded the judge.
  "Yes yer honor,"
  "Hand me his certificate,—I know his hand-writing."
  The woman fumbled in  her pockets and produced some  half-
dozen letters, of  which she handed one to the Judge.  He read it
aloud to the jury;—
  "This is to certify that  the bearer,  Mary Callaghan, is well
known to me as a remarkably honest, industrious and worthy
widow, who is about moving Westward since  the death of her
husband, &c.
  "I am satisfied said the Judge, refolding the letter,  "Clerk will
you swear the witness ?"
  Please your honor," interposed Harris, "this witness  seems to
be a Catholic, and  they say  a Catholic  doesn't regard an oath
sworn on a protestant Bible-"
  "Augh ! git out wid ye," said the widow, indignantly to Har-
ris, sure ye must be a rogue yerself. to think I'd break me oath,
even ef it was swore on an almanac.  But here's a Catholic Bible
of me own," said  she, producing  a Douay Bible from  another
pocket, "with the blessed cross a-top of it."   And handing it up,
amidst the ill-concealed ridicule of the crowd at the discomfited
Harris, she was sworn upon it.
  This trifling  little incident was much to her  advantage.  Al-
ready the tide  of sympathy  had commenced  in her favor, from
her gratitude toward Manton, and this  little involuntary evidence
of both piety and conscientiousness certainly prepared both jury
and audience for believing  more readily her testimony.
  "Now my good woman,"  said Maxwell, in a voice husky with
the emotions he vainly endeavored to repress, "will you  tell  the
jury if you saw or knew anything of that gentleman," pointing
to= Manton, "on the evening of the 28th of July last ?"
  "Well I'll tell ye;  ye see, John  Looney, that's me hired man
had left the wagon and gone  back  to town, saying as how he'd
forgot somethin' though sorra a bit was it but the wheskey he'd
forgot or brought back with him—the drunken baste—"
   "Stop a moment,"  interrupted Maxwell, "is this John Looney
in town now ?"
   "He came wid me, sir, tokapeme from comin' meself, but I've 
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
185
dismissed him from me sarvice, and like enough he's gone off by
this time, for he seemed to hate mightly to come here any how."
  Maxwell instantly handed  up a line  to the Judge, who beck-
oned and whispered to the sheriff,  who  again whispered to two or
three officers, which latter left the court-house immediately.
  "Proceed, madam, if you please," said Maxwell.
  "Well,  ye see, he promised to be back before moon rise, and as
it was gettin' rather dark, my little Lucy here got frightened and
oneasy like, and  she was lainin'  out of the wagin and lookin'
back, when  a jolt  of the wagin pitched her out  agin a rock in
the  road, and when I  jumped  down  and  picked  her  up,  yer
honor," continued the mother, the tears now glistening  in  her
eyes, "there was no  more life  in her than you'd find in a stick.
Me son hero"—pointing to a stout lad of sixteen,  who had el-
bowed his way through the crowd and  was standing beside her—
"begun to un-harness a horse to go  for  a doother, when that
young gentleman rode up and I axed him ef. he was a docther.  I
soon saw that'he wasn't, but no docther could iver have  thrated.
my child more kindly than he did.  He jumped from his horse
and took me child  in his arms, and that was the  way he  got his
coat bloodied, yer  honor, for, ye see, the hurt was  on the child's
head,—come here Lucy," and parting the girl's hair, she exposed
to view the scar of a recently-healed wound.
  "How did you know" asked Agnill, "that the  prisoner  here
was not  a doctor ?"
  "Sure  a docther never wore a  sportsman's  coat," replied the
witness.
  ': You noticed his coat then, would you know it again ?"
   "Aye would I,  and every thing  else  he  wore.  When I forget
him may the Lord forget me.  Ye see,  after he got from his horse-
 and took me child in  his arms, the moon rose yer honor,  and
when the light of it struck his face, he was lookin'  as anxious at
the poor girl as ef  it was his own child.  Sure I've blessed him
in my  heart a thousand  times, that could feel so much interest in
a poor stranger,"  And here the grateful  widow wiped her eyes
again.
  "Describe the coat,.if you please," said Agnill.
  "It  was  made  of fustian  yer honor,  with pockets  in  the
breasts, and by that same token, ef it hasn't been washed, there'll
he a stain of. blood on the left breast."
  "Are you very sure," asked Maxwell,  "that the moon  rose
after he had dismounted and was holding your child ?." 
186
REMINISCENCES.
  "Ayeam I."
  "How  long did he remain with you ?"
  "Long enough to examine me child's  head, and then go  back
to the stream for a bucket of water; and wash the wound and help
me bind up the head, and then awhile afterward, while Davy was
harnessin' up the horse again."
  "Was it half an hour?"
  "More nor that."
  Witness was  now  desired  to stand aside a moment, and, at
 Maxwell's request, Sinclair recalled those commonwealth wit-
 nesses who had found the body of Easton.   They all agreed that
it was about ten minutes after moon rise  when the murdered
man's horse came to town, and as they started out immediately and
rode fast, the moon was probably from fifteen to twenty-five min-
utes high when they found the body, still warm and bleeding.
  Two physicians also, being recalled, declared that from the
fluidity of the blood, they judged it impossible that Easton could
have been killed more than fifteen or twenty minutes  before he
was discovered—couldn't have been half an hour.  The  old man
must have been shot just about moon rise.
  This evidence seemed sufficiently conclusive, but the prisoner's
counsel appeared still unsatisfied, and after  whispering together a
few minutes, the widow was recalled.
  "Mrs.  Callaghan," said Maxwell,  "you told the  prisoner that
you were going directly, that night, on to  the town of X., I be-
lieve.  Why did you not go to that place ?"
  "Because, yer honor, a few minutes after this young gintleman
had turned back, John Looney, me hired man, come  up, rayther
the worse for liquor,  and he told us  that a murder had been com-
mitted on that road and the police was out after the criminal, and
ef  they  found us in the road  we should  be suspected and car-
 ried back to be tried for the murder; and so he persuaded  me to
turn out into a by-road, and so we kept in by-roads for  three or
four days, travelin' mostly  by moon-light,  and he persuaded  me
to turn the kiver of the wagin t'other side  out, that was painted
green, and he coaxed me to  let Davy,  that's me son here, ride
 one of the horses and keep a half mile or so behind the wagin, so
 the police wouldn't know us ef they found  us.  And so  we kept
on  till we got to W.,"  (a town  about  75 miles  N. West  of  Z..
"where we stopped."
  And have you been there ever since ?"
  -"Yes, yer honor," 
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
187
  "Did you know or hear that great rewards were offered for in-
formation of your wagon or family ?"
  "O yes  sir,  but  Looney  said he knowed  the customs  of the
country, and all they wanted  was  to get us  back here and then
thry us for the murder.  And he said,  as nobody knowed  us, all
we had to do was to kape dark and say nothin' and  they'd never
find  us out."
  "Andhow came you, fearing this to come hereatall ?"
  "Why,  ye see, about a week since,  I heerd that a mighty nice
young gentleman was like to  be hanged for the murder, because
he was out on  that night and had his coat bloodied; and I said to
meself,  sure it's the same one that was so kind to me poor little
Lucy, and so I thought I'd come over any how,  and ef I had to
be thried for me life, I could only do me duty and put me  thrust
in God."
   A tremendous shout of approbation, hitherto restrained with
difficulty  and now no longer to be  controlled, burst  from the as-
sembled multitude, while the Judge was too busy wiping his eyes
to pay any attention to the breach of court-decorum.
   "One thing  more, my good woman," as  soon as ho could be
heard, "and  I  am done with you.   Have you ever, sincce  that
night, seen any thing in Looney's possession which he had not
before this time ?"
   Up to this moment, perhaps not five persons in  that whole as.
sembly had seen aught in tho questions of Maxwell,  more than
the desire completely to clear his  client; but as he put this one to
the witness, the  whole drift  of his examination  for the last  half
hour became apparent in a moment, and more than a thousand
eager eyes were turned in suspense, and an  almost terrified ex-
pectation upon the witness, as with the same  quiet and truth-like
simplicity as ever, she answered,—
   "Nothin' at all, yer honor, more than a little box that he givemei
tellin' me he found it in the road in the evenin,' as  he came out
from town."
   "Have  you it with you ?"  asked Maxwell, with an eagerness
that seemed to astonish the witness.
   "I think Davy has—haven't you, Davy ?"  turning  to her son.
   Without a  word, the boy produced from  his pocket a small
square  pocket-compass, which  he handed  to Maxwell.  On one
side was fantastically painted  a large letter J., and on the other a
similar E. 
188
REMINISCENCES.
   All saw it, and forgetful momentarily of court-rules, a hundred
 voices exclaimed at once.
   "Easton's pocket-compass !"
   At this instant, and while the excitement inside the court-house
 was becoming frightful, the officers despatched a half hour  since
 re-appeared; and as the crowd opened for them and became once
 more hushed and still, they placed within the bar a rather young
 man, whose red matted  hair and coarse  pock-marked  features
 identified him with the one Dennison had described as having rid-
 den with him on the evening of July 25th.
   He had been brought with a subpoena, as witness for defendant
 in the case now before the court, but seemed to have come very
 unwillingly, and glared angrily and suspiciously around upon the
 mass of human faces before him.   He was sworn.
   "Your  name is,  John Loony,,  I  presume ?" said Makwell
 mildly.
   "If ye know, what do you ask me for ?" replied the witness in
 a surley manner.
   "Well,"  said Maxwell, without changing  his tone, "were you
 on the road West of this town, on the  afternoon and evening  of
July 25th ?"
   "Yes I was."
   "In riding in toward town on  that afternoon, did  you find or
pick up any thing on the road ?"
  Witness gave a quick furtive glance at the questioner and then*
answered "No,"—but just then, raising his eyes, he encountered
those of Dennison in the crowd, and seeming to  recollect him-
self a moment,  he  said rather  confusedly.  "The  saddle-girth
came loose  once, and I got down to tighten  it, but I did  not pick
up nothin.' "
  "Rather singular isn't  it," asked,the  counsellor with a smile,
"that your saddle-girth  became   loose when  you were riding
without a saddle ?"
  Looney became alternately pale and red  for a  moment, and
then said—"Well I don't  know what it was then."
   "Well, will you tell the jury about what time it was when you
left town to return to Mrs. Callaghan's  wagon ?"
  "Don't know."
  "Was the moon up when you started ?"
  "No."
  "Where were you then on the  road, when  the moon rose ?." 
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
189
  At this question, the witness changed color and visibly trem-
bled, but he answered—"I don't remember."
  "Yes—no !—that is, yes—I met this man," pointing to Manton,
"a long ways out of  town."
  "And you met no  one at all, except him ?"                4
  Witness hesitated.                                       f
  "At least,"  said Makwell, slightly changing  his tone, "you
will not hesitate to tell the  jury  in what part  of the  road  you
found this ?"—and he held up Easton's pocket-compass.
  Looney became instantly pale as ashes and turned as if to es-
cape; but every  where,  as  he looked round, was a circle  of dark
and angry-looking faces and a perfect wall of stout men  to stop
his way,—and as he  turned again, terrified and despairing toward
Maxwell, the latter rose suddenly to his feet, and leaning  for-
ward till he could have touched the man with his hand, demanded
in a voice of thunder,—
  "Where are the watch and pocket-book you  found also on the
old man's body ?"
  Thrown momentarily off his guard, Looney  exclaimed hasti-
iy.-
  "I haven't got them—I lost them afterward !  indeed I did, be-
fore I met this man !"
  For a single  moment after this involuntary confession,  their
was in that horror-struck  assemblage the stillness of death; and
then, as with one voice, there  rose a yell of concentrated wrath,
fury and revenge, as the crowded hundreds made an instantaneous
rush toward the guilty and self-betrayed witness,  to  take  into
their own hands the  punishment of his crime.
  The sheriff had hardly time to  obey  a hasty order from the
bench, and hurry the witness out  of  the back door, where a  pas-
sage led to the jail; while  the Judge  addressed the angry multi-
tude, reminding them that  the grand  jury was  then in  session,
and assuring them that a bill would be  brought  in immediately
against Looney, and the majesty  of  the  law  be properly vindi-
cated.  He closed by turning to the jury—
  Gentlemen, if you think it necessary, you can retire."
   But the foreman merely glanced at the rest, and replied—
  "We are already agreed."
  "How say you, Gentlemen of the Jury,"  called out the  clerk,—
'■is the prisoner at the bar  guilty or not guilty, in form and man-
ner as set down in the indictment  ?"
  "Not Guilty !" answered the foreman. 
190
REMINISCENCES.
  I cannot linger now to tell how the overjoyed and  shouting
multitude actually lifted the late  prisoner  bodily  out  of  the
prisoner's box and  bore him triumphantly  on  their shoulders
round the public square,—how the  guilty and wretched  Looney
was found next morning dead in his cell, having anticipated  tho
hangman's duty and  gone thus, with a double  murder  on hia
stained soul  to his last  account,—how the noble hearted widow
was richly rewarded by Manton and his friends, for those grateful
exertions which had brought her so  seasonably to save her  young
friend, by her testimony, from a felon's name and  death;—nor
would it add to the  interest  of what is already written to pro-
long the narrative, even to dispose, in such manner as  will by
every one be anticipated, of the hero and heroine~
  But it may be instructive, if not  interesting, to draw from the
above-related circumstances the lesson that  Manton drew as to
the beauty and correctness of his mother's dying charge,  and to
recognize it  as the simple duty with us, short-sighted mortals, al-
ways to try  to do right and for consequences to "put  our trust in
God." 
REMINISCENCES.
NUMBER X.
KEEPING UP THE FAMILY NAME.
                        LEAF I.

  One  evening I found a message waiting for  me, desiring my
immediate presence  at Mr.  Pendleton  Nixon's  to see his sick
daughter.
  Nixon was a widower of fifty, with just sufficient peculiarities
about him to be by his friends considered a character.  His  chief
possessions consisted of a dignified  person, five  feet  by four, a
handsome establishment,  easy fortune, a most obstinate temper
and a pretty  daughter; all but the last having been hereditary- in
his family so long that, as  the law-books say,  "the memory of
man runneth not to  the contrary."  But the last, his daughter,
was a source of much anxiety to  him, not to bo wondered at
when it is considered, as he himself often remarked, that  his
family  was not used to having daughters, Lucy,  his own,  being
the first that had existed in his branch of the Nixons for some
three generations.  He  must  marry  her,  of course,  but that
would change the name and interrupt the family  line, and he was
at his  wits'  end how to prevent this catastrophe.  The reader
will learn how he proposed to do it; meantime  let us  turn to  the
daughter.
  When I reached her bed-side, I found  her flushed  in face and
under some nervous excitement;  but as neither tongue,  pulse  nor
X' 
192
REMINISCENCES.
inquiry as to her pain gave  any  indication  of sickness, I turned
to her a look of perplexity, which she answered by  requesting
that we might  be left alone  together.
  "Dr.," began the patient, when the room was cleared, "I see I
shall  have  to  make a confidant of you,  and 0,  I beg of you
(clasping two very pretty hands together,) not to  betray me.  If
you do I shall die, for I can't and won't do as papa wishes."
  Family physicians, especially if elderly gentlemen, are more of-
ten young  ladies' confidants  than the world  knows  any  thing
about.  Moreover I  had known Lucy during her whole nineteen
years of life,—knew her as a very sentimental,  very  obstinate,
(she got that from her father,) and withal a very charming little
creature, with  one of the best hearts in the world  naturally, but
already half-spoiled, partly by her father's indulgence  and partly
indiscriminate   novel-reading. So  preparing myself for some-
thing very  romantic but not very important,  I assented  to the
preposed confidence, and she proceeded.
  "I am not sick, Dr., you see that, but I told them I was, for a
particular reason.   You <know how  proud papa is of his family
and the  old name ?  I wish  I had been a son instead of a daughter,
and then the name  he  is so  proud  of would  never have been
changed.  But I'm a girl, and though he wishes to see me married,
he dosen'twish to break up the family line,  so—;would you be-
lieve it ?—he has proposed me to  his second cousin,  George Nixon
of N------, an old bachelor  thirty years old,  that I've  never
seen and never wish  to  see.  Isn't it a shame," continued she,
speaking through the tears  forced out by  this re-capitulation of
her wrongs, to bargin me off, as though I  were part of  the  plan-
tation or one of the  servants, just to keep up the family name?
  "Papa first told me of his arrangement about six months  ago,
and has ever since been trying to persuade me  to receive a letter
on the subject from my cousin; and this morning he told me that
George is to be here in a week to see me, to look at the purchase
he has made, as if I were a horse he had  bought.  I  declare it is
too bad.  I don't  want  to  marry any body, for  I  don't love any-
body—that is,  any young man.  And I will never  marry George
Nixon; so I have pretended to  be sick, that I may have  an excuse
to keep  my room all the time he  is  here,—I hope  that won't be
very long;  if it is, I don't know what I shall do, for I won't marry
him and I won't see him."
   "But, Lucy, you've made your father  very uneasy about you,
and----"


                                                         J. 
KEEPING UP TH5 FAMILY NAME.                  193
  "O ! you may tell him I'm  not going to die very soon, only I
shall have to keep my  room  for a week or two.  Dear Dr., you
are the only friend in  the world that can help me  now,—don't
you desert  me—don't you betray  me.  And  if, indeed, I am
obliged  even to  look  at that  odious George Nixon,  I shall be
really sick—I'll die, I'll do any thing first."
   I ventured to suggest to my  romantic little patient, that a bach-
elor of thirty  was of just the proper matrimonial age, and that,
having never seen him,  she might just as probably like  as dislike
him; but all would not do.   The spoiled  pet had made up her
mind, and as her resolution was not the most rational in the world,
so nothing  rational would change it.
   It was impossible, however, to resist the  earnest pleading of
the coaxing creature, who had got into her sentimental little head
the oddest sort of crotchets about a marriage of the sort proposed,
as well as the most unalterable aversion to any  and all things
either preparatory or adscititious to  it.  I was compelled, there-
fore, to. consent that she might tell to her  father  her own story
about her  health, conditioning only that she should not alarm
him by any pretence of serious indisposition, and that my sanc-
tion to the  deceit should be liable to be withdrawn whenever I
thought fit.
   Going below, I was soon relieved of all anxiety as  to  the de-
ceipt to which I had partially committed myself, by the old gen-
tleman, who took me  into a parlor, closed carefully the door, and
advancing  toward me, first smoothed his chin gravely  and then,
laying  one finger on  his  nose, winked  knowingly;  while he
said,—
   "Isn't going  to die ?—Hey ?—Sick !—humbug !  That's my
opinion, what's yours ?  Ought to  have  been a son instead of
daughter—can't be helped  now,—change name—break  up old
family  line—never do.  Promised   her to  my cousin, George
Nixon of N------., —fine fellow—handsome lad—same name—
keep up the family.   Lucy's a fool though—thinks  she can't
marry till she gets in love—humbug !  Who ever  heard ol re-
spectable people marrying for love ?—That's my opinion, what's
yours ?"
   As I  knew the interrogative at the close of Mr.  Nixon's re-
marks was  not intended to elicit aay expression  of my opinion
on the  subject, but merely from a long habit of interlarding his
own deliverances of opinion with that peculiar phrase, I made no
other reply than a bow,  and took my  leave.
                           13 
194
REMINISCENCES.
                          LEAF II.

   Next day, when I re-visited my patient,  I  found her up and
 dressed,  and confessedly so much better that  I was fain to ask
 the reason of her sudden convalesence.   This produced an  addi-
 tional confidence to this effect, that, moved by his sympathy with
 her serious illness, her  good-natured  parent had censented that
 the much-dreaded formal visit of her cousin and  promised hus-
 band should be defered for six months.
   Knowing as I did that Mr. Nixon had no faith in his daughter's
 sickness, I was no litte astonished at  her  communication, and
 strongly suspected that  the old gentleman,  finding deception the
 order of  the day, had determined  to  use a little on his  own ac-
 count, for the  benefit of his own plans.   I was therefore not much
 surprised when, upon descending the stairs to the parlor,  Mr.
 Nixon again closed the door carefully, again stroked his chin, and
 winked knowingly, while he said,—
   "How's your patient, Dr. ?  My promises better than your pre-
 scription—hey  ?—Shall cut  you   out  yet,—nice  little  plot of
 mine,—if I  tell  you,  you won't blab—hey  ?  You  see—told
 Lucy, George  Nixon should not visit her for six months.  Good—
 all true  enough,—George  Nixon shall not—but Charles Mason
 shall  come  in less than a week.  Understand ?—hey ?—That's
 my opinion, what's yours ?"
   "But who is Charles Mason ?"  I asked.
   Before replying,  the  old gentleman again carrassed his  chin,
 patted his nose,  winked, nodded his head upward  and backward
 toward his daughter's room, and at length  found words to say,__
   •'Who is he  ?—0, a very nice young gentleman of N------.,
 who will happen—mind  you, happen—to be traveling this way in
about a week;—handsome fellow—good family—but no relative
of mine however, and particularly no relation of George Nixon's.—
0 no !—That's my opinion, what's yours ?"
  Seeing that I still  looked mystified,  though  I evidently  sank
fifty per cent, on the spot in his estimation for my  obtuseness, he
proceeded to explain;—
  "Don't see it, Dr ?—hey ?—Why, you know, she has got  those
confounded love notions in her head—found them in her novels, I
suppose;—well, Charles Mason is George Nixon,—George Nixon,''
repeated  the triumphant plotter, winking his left eye as if he had
sand in it, and poking me perseveringly  in the ribs.  "Well, he is 
KEEPING UP THE FAMILY NAME.
195
traveling—comes  here all  by  accident;—I  meet  him in the
streets—find him an old friend—fetch him home—all by accident-
Lucy falls in love with him—she'll be sure to  do  so if I  tell her
not to;—I'm  obstinate at  first—gradually  relent—finally  say
yes;—she marries  him—and never knows who he  is till the par-
son calls him George Nixon "in  the  evening.  Glorious plot!—
That's my my opinion, what's yours ?"
   And the old gentleman allowed  both hands to slide into his
pockets and looked me in the face, an expression of intense satis-
faction illuminating his good-natured features all the while.
   "And I ve written to George," he suddenly continued, "and told
him about it—how Lucy's silly and  sentimental—how he's to
pass off as Charles Mason—and all  that."
   "But don't you apprehend,"  I  suggested, "that Mr. George
 Nixon may feel some  natural reluctance to visiting her under the
 circumstances ?"
   "Natural reluctance!—natural fiddlesticks!—'No'!—he dosen't
 know she dislikes him—and what if he did ?—If he's a man of
 sens?, he'll be glad  of the chance to  get a pretty  wife and an
 establishment like  this,  and—and  to  keep up  an old family
 name ;—and if he's a fool, like  Lucy,  he'll  be tickled  with the
 romance of the thing,—-courting a girl without being known to
 her—marrying  her with her own consent,  but against her own
 will ;—that's my opinion, what's yours ?"
   "But, if Lucy in the  meantime should get an inkling of your
 good intentions toward her—"
   "Ah, yes, that would be the deuce  to pay indeed,—trust me for
 keeping her in the dark ;—may  be you think the  plot's no go?—
 Tell you what, Dr.,—put up my bay filly against yourponey trot-
 ter, that Lucy is dead in love with  George  Nixon—a fortnight'
 say—just two weeks from date.  Come now, that's my opinion.
 what's yours ?"
   "My  opinion is that  you would better  guard your plot wclj
 from Lucy's knowledge ; for depend upon it, she would do some-
 thing desparate, no less to avoid  her cousin  than  to escape the
 mortification of being deceived, and so good  morning." 
196
REMTNISCENCES.-
                          LEAF TIL

   I heard nothing more from the Nixons till three days afterward,-
 in the morning, while at breakfast, I was disturbed by a message
 from Mr. Nixon,  asking if I knew what was  become  of Lucy.
 The  servant  added  that  she had disappeared  and "Massa was
 mos' crazy about it."
   Rather grieved than  astonished at  any  thing the wilful and
 over-indulged girl  might do.  I hastily swallowed  my coffee and
 rode out to Nixon's villa.
   I found the unhappy father racing about the house, winking and-
 nodding and expressing  his  "opinion" to every one he  met, evi-
 dently half distracted, but  showing  his pain and  anxiety in a
 way that was almost irresistibly ludicrous. When I appeared, he
 ran up to me and  placing his elbow energetically  in my ribs, as
 though about to utter the most laughable  thing in the world, he
 shouted in a  piteous tone,—
   "Dr.!  for  goodness sake where's Lucy ?—not in her room—
 didn't come to breakfast—house searched—not about premises—
 and—and—the fact  is, she's gone !—Lord's sake ! what's  to be
 done 1—George to be here to-morrow—won't see her, nor she
 him—plot spoiled  and all that!—Disinherit  the minx—will, by
 jove,—make over  the family property to  George  within  three
 hours  after he comes,—it's too  aggravating—too provoking;—
 that'smy opinion whatss yours ?"
   "But did   she leave  no letter, note or  message for you ?" I
 asked.
   "No, not a—yes she did—I forgot," and unclosing his  clenched
 fist, where he had  crushed, not from  anger but anxiety, a sealed
 note, found by Lucy's maid in  her  mistress' room, he opened
 and handed it to me, desiring me to read it aloud.  It was with-
 out date and ran as follows;—
   "My Dearest Papa:—The enclosed leaf of your  memorandum
 book, which  I  picked up yesterday, will  show you that I have
 learned your intention of deceiving me, and I fly to  avoid meeting
that odious cousin.  I have no intention of leaving you perma-
 nently, nor shall I be so  far from  you but that I can learn when
that hateful George has departed,—then I shall return to you.  In
the meantime I shall be staying with  a friend, perfectly  safe, but
where it will be useless for you to  seek me. You have ever been
dear to me; far better than I deserve.  I love you dearly, and my 
KEEPING UP THE FAMILY NAME.
197
greatest affliction now  is—(and it makes me cry bitterly while I
:write,) that I must spend one, two  or more weeks  without see-
ang  you.  I have  nobody to thank for it but  that abominable
'George, whom I hate worse and worse every time I think of him-
 You may be perfectly easy about me,  dear papa, for I shall  be
entirely safe.   I hope you will forgive me but if you suffer much
 anxiety, I shall never forgive myself.
                         Your affectionate daughter,
                                                  LUCY."
   The Inclosed leaf of the memorandum book showed only  the
.following—
   "Item.—To have blue room put'in order against  the 6th—day
■after  to-morrow—for  George.  Wonder if Lucy  will be sicfc
 again !"
   As I looked up from the perusal of the letter, I  saw  that  old
 Nixon was winking his eyes.
   "Ah, what a good-hearted—disobedient—charming—obstinate—
•affectionate—undutiful little minx of an angel  she-is !" said he.
 seeming to change his mind with every adjective he used.   "Did
 you ever see such a letter ?" he proceeded.  "By jove, sir, Gen-
 eral Jackson's daughter  couldn't  write  such a.one;—that's my
 opinion, what's yours ?  What's  to  be done  next ?  Wait  till
 •George comes, I suppose, and see what he thinks of it."
   And as I could suggest nothing better, while Lucy's note re-
 lieved us of much anxiety, I did not oppose the  conclusion he
 come to, and soon after departed.
                         LEAF IV.

  About sunset of the same day, and at some twenty miles, dis-
tance from Z.-------, a two horse buggy might have  been seen
driving along the road, bearing  trunks behind, and having the
general dusty appearance about the vehicle and that tired air about
the horses, that betokened journeyers who have been  long upon
the road.
  The driver, the only occupant of the carriage, was a rather
young looking man, about whose appearance there was a sort  of
ease and familiarity with posjton,  as though he had .been  accus- 
198
REMINISCENCES..
tomed all his life to travel in his own carriage, and all the novelty
of the thing had  long since worn  off.   One  would  scarce  have
needed a second glance to decide that he was a man of the world,
but for a rather unusual and prepossessing  air  of frankness  and
truth about his face and manner, which—sorry  am I to say it—is
generally attributable rather to an ignorance than to a knowledge
of our species.
  The traveler seemed to think his day's journey  long enough
for his horses, if not for himself, and he had for  the last half-hour,
been  watching the road in search of an inn.  No such  promised
accommodation however appeared  in sight, so hailing a lad who,
sitting listlessly by the road-side, seemed resting himself,  he in-
quired if there were a public house near.
  Receiving no answer, he turned to look more nearly at the boy,
as he drove toward him,  and saw with  astonishment that he was
weeping violently.  He seemed a slenderly-made  youth of thir-
teen or fourteen, well dressed, though his clothes were road-soiled
and dirty.  His face was shaded by a straw hat and covered by his
hands.
  The traveler repeated his  inquiry before noticing these particu-
lars, and touched instantly by the appearance of suffering, he de-
scended  to  offer his assistance.  As he  approached, the youth
started to his feet, the action displaced his hat,  and as it fell off a
rich mass of dark hair, far too long for the sex he assumed, fell
also and  covered his shoulders to the waist.
  A deep blush burned on the features  of the discovered girl for
one moment, aud then clasping  her hands, she exclaimed earn.
estly,—
  "O, I know it must seem strange that I should be  at such a
place and in such a—in such a dress, but indeed sir,  I have done
nothing wrong.   You look kind and honorable,  and like a gentle-
man,—I am sure you  won't injure me—only will you take me
to my aunt's  house?   It is only about  two miles from here. I
started to walk there, but I  am not used to walking so far and I
am perfectly exhausted.  Don't refuse me sir," she added, as the
traveler  seemed to hesitate,—"don't refuse me!  I've waited an
hour here for some one to pass that I would not be afraid of, and
I am sure I may trust  to you;"—and she looked up into his face
with  an expression on hers  that made his heart beat louder  and
faster than it had for many a day.
  His apparent hesitation was indeed not, from reluctance,  but- 
KEEPING UP THE FAMILY NAME.
199
from the natural awkwardness of feeling to a bachelor in such
circumstances.
   "My poor child," said he at length, with a look of pity at the
beautiful and pleading face turned up toward his, "I am afraid
you are doing wrong to trust any body you do not  know,—but
let me help  you into my buggy and we'll get to your aunt's as
quickly as possible.  No one shall harm you while I can prevent
it."
   "0, thank you, thank you," said she eagerly,  "I knew I might
 trust to you.  But you will have  to turn back," pursued she, as
 he seated himself  in the  carriage beside her, "as far as the first
 cross-road, nearly a  mile  from  here,  and then  Mrs. Estill  lives
 about a mile from this road."
   As the buggy was turned and pursued the road indicated by the
 fair stranger, an unaccountable silence came  over that man of the
 world, usually  so fluent and even brilliant in ladies' society.
 Was he vexed at his journey's delay, or was he imagining the pos-
 sible cause of this singular masquerade, or was  he guarding him-
 self, by silence and  reserve,  against a new feeling  that became
 gradually stronger and stronger, spite of his efforts to the  con-
 trary, whenever  he thonght of  that fascinating face,  with  its
 trustful expression,  turned so pleadingly toward him.  He  could
 control his tongue, but he could  not for  the life of  him prevent
 his eyes from stealing glances, momentarily, toward his compan-
 ion.
   After some five minutes of silence that was  sufficiently  awk-
 ward to both, she said—
   "I ought to have answered your question sooner,—there  is no
 public house within five or  six  miles.  My aunt will be happy
 to have you  stay at her house for the night, and,"—she hesita-
 ted—"I myself desire you should, because I feel it due to myself
 that  I should have explained to you  the singular circumstances
 under which you  found me.  I do not feel  able to do it now, nor
 do I know in fact how much I ought to tell; but you shall be sat-
 isfied, sir, that you have not been imposed upon."
    Our traveler made same common-place reply, which he felt
 could have little  or no meaning,  for he  became sensible,  about
 that time,  of two very contradictory feelings,—the first, a perfect
 conviction  that he had not been imposed upon, and the second,
 a most earnest desire to have this proved  to  him.
    Amid the silence that ensued, the  remainder of the distance
  rtas passed,  and as they came  in sight of  a handsome  mansion, 
200
REMINISCENCES.
whose paraphernalia (so to speak) of out-houses and convenien-
ces—which there was just daylight enough left to see—bespoke
at once the wealth and taste of the owner; the fair masquer point-
ed it out to her companion as Mrs. Estill's residence and request-
him to stop there.
  As  servants came out with lights, at the sound and stopping of
carriage  wheels before the entrance, the traveler threw his short
cloak—long enough still to  cover her  small figure—around  the
young girl, to conceal her  masculine dress from the servants,
and bade her, in a low voice, tie a handkerchief over her hat, so
as to give it,  in some sort, the appearance of a lady's  riding-hat.
  "Thank you,"  said she gratefully,  and  complying with  his
suggestion, "how kind and considerate you are!"  Then spring-
ing from the buggy, she ran up the steps and into  the house
with the at-home manner of one perfectly familiar with the local-
ities.
  Three or four minutes passed, scarcely  long enough for  the
traveler  to decide whether or no he should follow the servant's
suggestion, that "Massa had better go up in de  house—missus
be berry glad to see him;" when an elderly lady of dignified per-
son appeared on the steps, and with much ease and sweetness of
manner, invited him into the house.
   "This visit of my neice is very unexpected, but not the  less
pleasant; she has told me briefly her  indebtedness to you,  sir,
and it is her wish  as well as my own that you give her an  op-
portunity, by sharing our hospitality, of explaining the rather
singular meeting you have had."
  In  good sooth, the traveler needed little urging.  His horse's
uneasiness, the hour's lateness,  the distance to an inn, curiosity
to hear the promised explanation, and more than all,  a most   (to
him) unaccountable feeling of interest in the  heroine of this ro-
mantic adventure;—all these prompted him to accept the hospi-
tality so politely offered, and he  alighted at once and followed his
hostess.
   At supper, where the lady of tho house presided, his late com-
panion did not appear.  Her aunt apologized, that her neice  had
walked near twenty miles that day, for the first time in her  life,
was quite worn out and had gone to bed, but would see and thank
her kind protector in the morning.
   During the meal, the gentleman was rather  silent and abstract-
ed, but managed  to inform his hostess,  though with more appar-
ent hesitation  and embarassment than so  common-place a thing 
KEEPING UP THE FAMILY NAME.               201
demanded, that she might address him as Mr. Mason; adding that
he lived at some distance, and was on a visit, rather of  pleasure
than business at Z----.
  "I have not yet," said Mrs. Estill, "had any long conversation
with my  neice, but from what she has said, I gather  that she
feels hersekf under the greatest obligations to you, sir, for your
kind assistance and protection,"—Mr. Mason made a gesture of
dissent;  "I  know you would of course disclaim any credit on
that score, but both she and  I must feel it no less.  I know much
better  than  she how great reason we both  have fto be thankful,
that she escaped the dangers to which her rashness and willfulness
exposed her."
  "I hope," said the traveler, hesitatingly and more gravely than
he had yet spoken, "that the young lady has done nothing—that
her masquerade had no  origin in any—"
  "How true you are to your sex," interrupted the lady, smiling;
"1  have scarcely seen  a gentleman in  my life  who  would not
almost as soon commit a crime as a mistake, and be shot  at rather
than be laughed at.  But make yourself  easy on  that point, your
kindness and gallantry have not been abused, I assure you.  My
neiee  has been guilty of nothing but rashness and thoughtless-
ness.  Her father, Mr.  Nixon—"
   "Mr. who?" interrupted  Mason hastily,  "I  beg your pardon,
madam, did you say Nixon—Pendleton Nixon?"
   "That is his name, sir; are you acquainted with him?"
   "I—I—yes  madam,—that is,  I  have known him for many
years;"  and with a  long breath, the traveler relapsed into si-
lence.
  "It  is necessary to tell you,"  resumed  the hostess, "that her
father has long been anxious—in fact has promised her to  a gen-
tleman whom she has never seen and to whom she has conceived
a most unconquerable  aversion.  It seems  tho match has lately-
been urged  more strongly upon her than she could bear, and this
masquerade  and flight is the consequence. Lucy is one of the
noblest girls in the world,—her only faults are too much romance
of disposition  and a little natural wilfulness, that has  scarcely
been much lessened by  her father's indulgent fondness."
   "Is  it possible," asked the strangrr, with some embarrassment
and after a  long pause, "that any gentleman  would persist in
forcing himself  thus upon  a lady to whom he was so disagree-
able?"
   "As to that,"  replied Mrs. Estill, "the gentleman in question 
202
REMINI8CENCES-
does not reside in Z----, and so far as I know, is entirely un-
aware of Lucy's dislike to  him.  The  proposed husband  is her
father's cousin, a gentleman of the same family name, and living
at N----,  and the match originated wholly in the father's anx-
iety to keep up the family line and name."
  Our traveler, who had appeared somewhat relieved  by the first
words  of. the lady's reply,  became so manifestly embarrassed at
the close,  that the hostess,  seeming to* mistake the source of it,
said—
  "Excuse me, sir, for boring  you thus with these minute and
uninteresting details.   Lucy has always been  a great favorite
with me,  and I forget that every thing  relating  to  her  cannot
be as much matter of  interest to others as to myself."
  "I hope, madam, jrou will do  me the justice to  believe  that
nothing concerning her can ba  uninteresting  to me.  On the
contrary, her face and manner have made an impression upon me
that—I ask your pardon, madam, as  a stranger, for taking the
liberty to say so,—but really your neice has  made a  most extra-
ordinary impression upon  me,  and I  deeply  regret that I  have,
involuntarily,—I mean that any  thing  should  have  obliged her
to leave her home; though  I could almost rejoice at it,  too, since
it may perhaps lead to my enjoying the honor of her acquaint-
ance."
  There was a barely perceptible tinge of mischievous humor in
the slight smile that crossed the old lady's features, while she re-
plied—
  "The obligation you have conferred,  sir, gives you the privi-
lege of old acquaintanceship, and my niece will  feel but too high-
ly flattered by the favorable opinion you express of her, in spite
of the inauspicious circumstances under which  you met."
  A few more minutes and a few more remarks passed, and then
the visitor was shown to his roonu
                         LEAF V.

  If our traveler thought his young protege beautiful,  under the
disadvantages  of  male attire,  a face  swollen  with weeping,  a
frame exhausted by fatigue, the dim  light of evening and the 
                KEEPING UP THE FAMILY NAME.               293

suspicious circumstances connected with all, how must she have
appeared to him next morning, when in proper dress she appear-
ed at breakfast, her face covered with blushes—for the boldness
of excitement had passed away  and her native timidity and del-
icacy had  returned—as, introduced by her aunt, she came for-
ward to thank.the embarrassed bachelor for his protection and
kindness of the previous evening.
  During breakfast, (which passed pleasantly enough, though lit-
tle  attention was paid  to the coffee except by the hostess,) and
the hour that followed it, Mason talked fluently andparticularly
to his last evening's companion, with two motivies: one, to draw
her out, and the other,  to have an excuse, while talking to her,
to look at her.   And from the blush with  which her eyes retreat-
ed  whenever they encountered  his, he fancied—he  would wil-
 lingly have given, his buggy and horses to be sure of  it—that she
appeared to feel in him a little of that unusual interest which he
confessed himself to  feel in her.
   Propriety, however, seemed to require that after spending half
the  morning thus,  he should at least discover the necessity of
 prosecuting his journey.   As  he  rose reluctantly to announce
 this  necessity and request his buggy brought out, he could not
 but notice—and it sent a thrill of pleasure to his heart—the quick,
 earnest glance that Lucy gave him,  followed  by a change of
 color, as a burning blush covered her face and neck.  The next
 moment  he turned  to the hostess,  and  desired to know if he
 could be favored with a few moment's private conversation with
 her.
   Without evincing either surprise or hesitation Mrs. Estill led
 the way to a parlor, where closing  the door, her visitor said—
   "Madam, I am about to confess a deceit, though one in which
 I am not  wholly culpable, and to  throw  myself on your mercy.
 I am George Nixon of  N----,  the  very, man to-avoid the sight
 of whom your  niece fled from home..  My cousin never intima-
 ted that.his daughter felt or evinced any unwillingness to see me,
 or believe me,  this journey would not. have been  undertaken.
 He requested me, merely, as he said, to  give her a pleasant sur-
 prise, to travel under the name I  gave you last night.  I have
 fortunately seen your neice, and she has  made an impression on
 me  that I—that I never wish removed.   I would this instant tell
 her truly  who I am, and trust to her generosity to share my part
 of the deceit and listen favorably to the suit I would offer; but so
 strong must.be her prejudice against George Nixon, that I fear it 
204                    REMINISCENCES.
 would shut out  all chance df my success; and I assure you,
 madam,  such a result I cannot bear to contemplate.   Nor is this
 feeling of altogether so  sudden growth as you may imagine.  I
 have known Miss  Nixon for years by her father's  description,
:and I am only surprised to  find a father's  description fall so far
 short of  the reality.  These letters will satisfy you, madam, that
 I  am what I profess to be;" and he drew out a handful of letters
 superscribed to "George Nixon, Esq."
   But the lady gave them only a single glance, while she said,
 smilingly—
   "I know you, Mr. Nixon,—you have betrayed yourself more
 than once since you have been here, and  I am only surprised that
 Lucy has not discovered you."
   "Is it  possible'?"  said the lover, turning pale with apprehension;
-"I would not that  she should do so for any consideration.  But
 my dear madam—I may almost call you aunt—may I ask, may
 I  not hope that you will  favor nie?  You know that you  will
 have her father's sanction.   I wish to  continue to her Mr. Mason;
•that  is,  to remain  unknown to her otherwise, until I can have
 secured, as I hope to do, enough interest with her to insure me
 a  favorable reception of my suit, whoever I might prove to  be.
 I  must now proceed to Z----, where I  will see my cousin,  her
 father, and I shall no doubt surprise as well as please him by  my
 account  of this lucky fulfillment of his wishes.  Do not look so
 reproving, madam;  I do not, any more than yourself, approve of
 any compulsion of  your niece's feelings, or of the originating of
 this deceit; but since a most fortunate chance has favored me thus
 far, and—and my whole future has become so entirely at stake,
 if your niece's happiness can be secured in carrying out her fa-
 ther's wishes, you surely will not—"
   "No," said the good hearted aunt, seeing that Nixon hesitated,
 "I shall  not stand in your way or refuse you my assistance,  for
 I think if Lucy can get her own consent, it will  secure her ul-
 timate happiness.  I know you,  sir,  better than you think  for,
 and if it will relieve your anxiety, have  no objection to tell  you
 that  I think you have  already awakened an interest in Lucy's
 feelings."
   "Do you, indeed!" exclaimed the delighted lover.
   "I do.  It may be partly gratitude,  for she is now fully sensi-
 ble of her own imprudence of yesterday  and of the value of  the
 aid and protection you afforded her."
   "That was nothing," rejoined  Nixon, "but I know not how 
               KEEPING UP THE FAMILY NAME.               205'

P shall ever thank you sufficiently for your kindness.  With your
permission then,  I will return on the day after to-morrow, or in
three days at farthest."
  And so they returned to the drawing-room where they had left
their companion.
  The young lady seemed to have a suspicion that she had been
fhe subject of their conversation,  for her color went and came as
Nixon advanced to take leave of her; still with the frankness of
an  old acquaintance, she gave him her hand, while  she saidr
glancing at her aunt, as though to be assured of her sanction to-
the invitation—
  "I hope, sir, we shall see you again,—I do not feel as if I had
yet sufficiently thanked you for what I owe you."
  The young man pressed so ardently the little hand he held, as
to bring a blush to the face  of its owner,  while he replied that,
with Mrs. Estill's permission, he would see  her  again in threo
days at fartherest, and so took his leave.
                         LEAF VI.

  On his arrival at Z----, our hero proceeded immediately to his
eousin's villa.   The old gentlemen grasped  his  hand, while he
said, disappointedly and almost sadly—
  "Ah George, that you?—glad to see you—but it's all knock-
ed in the  head.—Lucy's a fool—disappeared—gone  off—Lord
knows where she is now.—That's my opinion, what's yours?"
  George proceeded to give an account of his adventures within;
the last forty-eight hours.   During the recital, the old gentleman
smoothed his chin,  caressed his nose, winked both eyes succes-
sively, poked  his cousin  in the ribs, and  at last fairly  danced
round the room with tears in his eyes in his exuberant joy.
  "By Jove, that's the very thing,—couldn't have  been better;
they say matches are made in heaven,—yours was made on the
road there.—Lucy in breeches!—how did she look?"—and  here
the old man laughed outright.  "Take care she doesn't get into
them again!"—here a violent poke in the ribs, to the serious dan-
ger of the  intercastal  integuments.—"Three days indeed!  You
shall go back to-morrow and Cupid go with you;—romance too!— 
206
REMINISCENCES.
she shall have enough of it—marry  her in a week, George,—
sooner the better.—That's my opinion, what's yours?"
  The reader  may be sure the young bachelor's opinion must
have differed widely from his wishes  if he  disagreed much with
the old gentleman on the last point.   Accordingly next morning,
at an early hour, George Nixon's horses found themselves again
on the road, carrying their master toward Mrs. Estill's, at a pace
that astonished the noble thoroughbreds themselves.  Two hours
sufficed to pass-the twenty-two miles of distance, and our trav-
eler arrived at  the aunt's by the time  of early morning calls.
  Mrs. Estill,  not counting upon quite  so  much promptness of
return on the part of her late visitor, had  walked out,  and  our
hero found Miss Nixon alone.  The young lady,  however,  re-
ceived him with a ready smile and -frank cordiality of manner,
that showed his visit to  be none the-less  welcome that it  was  un-
expected.
  The morning was a pleasant one,  but had it been of arctic se-
verity it had seemed summer-like  to the  lover,  who became more
and more  fascinated with his charming young friend, with each
moment of increased  acquaintance.   At length,  after an hours'
conversation on indifferent matters—indifferent to an uninterested
spectator, but every  word of which was a silver thread in  the
tissue Cupid was weaving round  the couple—the visitor, unable
any longer to  resist the temptation of so favorable an opportuni-
ty, said to the lady—
   "My dear Miss Nixon,  I may offend you in  what I  wish to
say, but the happiness of my life is at stake, and I must speak.
It is possible that the circumstances under which I met you may
have  at first thrown  an interest around you  and contributed to
produce the—the feelings I have for  you.   Do not be offended,"
he continued, earnestly; for the young girl had put her  hands to
her face, and  from between the taper fingers tears were trickling
fast.  "You would not perhaps think me so presumptous or  pre-
mature in this declaration, if you knew me as well as I do  you,
and as  well as I am known to your relations, to your  aunt.  I
have  known you  by character for years.  All I ask,  is, dearest
Lucy, if my suit is entirely approved by your aunt,  will you give
your consent?—One word, for heaven's sake, Lucy!"
   But that one word  was not given,  for just at that instant Mrs.
Estill passed the window, and springing up hastily, the agitated
girl hurried out of the room to meet her. Leading her aunt,  who 
               KEEPING UP TF:E FAMILY NAME.               237

smiled when she saw her niece's excited appearance, to a parlor,
Lucy said—
  "Aunt, dearest aunt,  Mr.  Mason has—he has asked mo to be-
come bis wife.  Tell me, 0 tell me, what shall I say to him?"
  "Lucy,"  said Mrs. Estill, kindly, "do not your own feelings
prompt you what to say?"
  The beautiful girl pressed her hand  upon her heart, as if to
still its tumultuous throbbings, as she answered—
  "Aunt, they do, and for that very reason I distrust them.  For
heaven's sake, tell mo, who is this Mr. Mason?"
  "My dearest child," replied  Mrs. E.,  "he is one of the noblest
men in the world.  If I could choose a husband for you out of
the whole State, I would select him."
  "O thank you, thank  you!" said the excited girl eagerly, "but
aunt, my father—I love him—I do not wish to  offend him, and
he has set his heart upon my marrying that odious cousin of his.
Besides," continued Lucy,  not  observing the quiet smilo on tho
face of her companion, "it seems to me that I ought to regard his
wishes in this,  because  I feel  as if I had not acted rightly.  So
long as I felt unhappy and angry at papa, I could justify myself,
but now, I am so happy,  it seems as though I  had done  wrong
to leave him,  and as if  I ought  not to  allow myself to b<» happy
while he must be so anxious what is become of inc." And her
tears flowed afresh.
   "My noble girl," said the aunt, pressing her niece in her arms,
"your father knows this young gentleman so well and esteems
him so highly, that, sure as he  is of your invincible aversion to
the  match he proposed for you,  I think I can be answerable for
his consent that you should  marry your own choice."
  "0 can you, can you indeed!" exclaimed the delighted Lucy,
her whole face radiant with joy, "then  I may tell him—"
  "Tell him whatever your heart prompts," said the other rising,
"and as he is waiting for you—"
   But  Lucy had already  disappeared. Re-entering the  room
which her  lover was pacing with rapid and impatient  steps, she
advauced and placed her hand in his—without a word—but with
a manner so winning,  a confidence so  generous and entire, that
the young  man thought at the moment ten lives too short to de-
vote to her happiness.
   A week  passed, during which  Nixon's horses rested, excepting
one day, when they were employed to take their master,  on a 
208
REMINISCENCES.
 visit of indispensable necessity, to a clergyman of the neighbor-
 hood.
   At  length came  a beautiful summer morning, and with it the
 parson; and the fair young bride, clad in  snowy satin, quelled,
 as well as she might, the throbbings of her heart, while she pre-
 pared for the great event of a man's or woman's life.
   The clergyman's manner was serious and his voice low, and
 this,  with her own  excitement of mind  and  heart,  prevented
 Lucy's noticing the name by which her lover was  addressed  in
 the ceremony.  But when all  was over, and she sat beside her
 husband in the carriage that was bearing  them rapidly  toward
 her father's residence, it certainly did occur to her,  as a source
 of self-congratulation,  that  she was now forever freed from all
 farther importunities in behalf of that "odious George Nixon."
   They reached the neighborhood of Z----by late  dinner-time,
 and drove immediately to her father's.
   The young wife trembled  as they alighted from  the carriage
 and ascended the steps of her so hastily abandoned home; but her
 husband tenderly re-assured and supported  her,  and  bade her be
 of good cheer, for she was already forgiven. She had no time to
 ask, even with a look, an explanation ofi this last mysterious as-
 surance ; for as they entered the familiar door, there stood her fa-
 ther, hiding as  well as  he could, under an appearance of mock
 anger,  the joy that gladdened his heart and twinkled in his eyes
 in spite of  him.
   "Father,  dear father!"  exclaimed the daughter,  springing to
 the old man's feet,  while  tears of- mingled joy and sorrow dim-
 med momentarily her bright eyes, "will you—can you forgive
 me?"
   "Forgive you,—little runaway/* said the old gentleman,  rais-
 ing her in his arms, "Yes, Lucyr I'll forgive you if you'll prom-
 ise me—"
   "O, papa," interrupted she, anticipating what was coming, and
 emboldened to speak by his kind embrace,  "don't ever mention
 that odious old bachelor, George Nixon to me again!"
   "Odious old bachelor!" roared Nixon, dropping Lucy with a
 shout of uncontrollable laughter,—"by Jove, if that isn't rich!__
 however you are undoubtedly the best judge,—don't you think
 so George?—that's my opinion, what's yours?"
  At that hateful name, Lucy sprang up and glanced round al-
 most in terror,  but no one was  near save her husband, who, ta-
king her hand, said— 
               KEEPING IP THE FAMILY NAME.               209
                              t
   "It  i-i now my turn to ask forgiveness, dear Lucy, of you.
We have both been in masquerade.   I have aided to deceive you
once,  but it shall be the last time;—will you forgive me?—I am
George Nixon."
   The young bride gave one glance at the earnest, serious coun-
tenance of her husband—threw another at the roguishly grinning
face of her father,  and, as the whole truth flashed on  her mind
at once, dropped on a sofa as she broke into a peal of the merriest
laughter that had rung in the old house for many a day.
   That night there  was a wedding party at the Nixons'; not a
regular "at home,"  but a sort of extemporaneous gathering, by
no means on that account any the less merry.
   It would have done any one's heart good to see  and hear the
old gentleman that evening.   How he would watch his chance,
when  Lucy was near, and be heard to descant largely upon the
odiousness of "old bachelors thirty years old;"—then to see him
smooth his chin andcaress his nose and  wink both eyes succes-
sively, and then insert his fore-finger or his elbow into the ribs
of any luckless wight within his reach; while he was telling the
whole story  to the laughing listeners  and expressing at large his
"opinion."  And  how he Tvound  up by shouting to me across
•the room—
   "Ah, Doctor,—won that trotting pony, have I?—by the way—
when  is Lucy going'to be sick again?—that's my opinion, what's
yours?"
1'4 
 
REMINISCENCES.
NUMBER XI.
THE CLERGYMAN'S STORY.
                  INTRODUCTION.

   I have always thought the  only profession more sombre than
 that of the physician to be that of the clergyman.  The two rela-
 tions  are indeed brought into juxtaposition more often than any
 other two.   The clergyman and physician often meet at the same
 bed-side, though (such is the thoughtlessness of men's conduct,)
 the former generally begins where the latter ends; since with too
 many of mankind, it is only after farther attention to this life
 becomes useless, that any attention is paid to the concerns of the
 next,  and  the clergyman  is only sent for to  give hope  to the
 spirit, when the physician  has utterly despaired of the  body.
   Still, melancholy,  almost gloomy as are many  of the clergy-
man's duties, he is not without his remunerating pleasures, mo-
 ments of professional enjoyment, which richly reward the habitu-
al  self-denial, expected in  the lives of the clergy in the country.
   Even the physician experiences occasionally the happiness of
 saving the patient  not only from death,  but from the  fear of it,
 which to many is more terrible than death itself.  And this sat-
 isfaction, in the consciousness of the good he has  accomplished,
 and in the affectionate burst of gratitude  from the patient's fam-
 ily and  friends, is almost the  only offset his profession affords to
 its other and more  gloomy duties.  The eager anxiety for med-
icinal effects long waited and hoped  for;  the sleepless  watching 
212
REMINISCENCES.
for the crisis of disease on which a  human life depends, and die-
hard necessity of telling,  with hesitating lip and averted  face,
to a fond  mother or affectionate wife, that the skill of man and
the power of medicine are alike unavailing;—these are, alas too>
frequently, a portion of every physician's experiences.
  But if he, whose duties concern  the body and extend no farther,
can sometimes realize a professional pleasure which may be an
offset to duties  so saddening, to anxieties so trying; how much
greater the conscious delight of him whose vacation enables him
to offer an antidote to the spirit's ills; to lift the curtain of the
grave,  which, like  the vails of Isis, no hand  save the spiritual
one  of faith has ever  raised, and to light  up even in the  very-
ashes of this life, the hope of a life to come, as undying as the
soul when it is kindled!
  Nothing shows more truly the character of the clergyman than
his manner in the chamber  of the dying.  He is  never sent for
to such scenes, except  for purposes of consolation  or instruction-
Yet some will enter the sick room with the nonchalant air  of an
accidental stranger,  seat tliemselves as far from the sick bed as
possible and talk over the news of the day, as if  at a tea-party -
They seem to forget that to the dying man, the  waning hours of
life, like the leaves of the Sybil, increase in value  as they dimin-
ish  in number.
  Others  approach the  sick bed with  an  impatient,  ennuyce
manner.   There is a manifest irksomness  in the duty of consol-
ing the dying.   They hurry through the exercise  of  the  hour,
and then hasten away, as though eager to  escape  the contempla-
tion of a subject so disagreeable as that of wasting humanity.
  It was at one  of these melancholy occasions, so calculated to
remind us, in Burk's beautiful words, "what shadows we are and
what shadows we pursue,"  that I first met with  the Rev. Mr.
Carson.  The death-bed was of a young  wife,  and the clergy-
man's  manner almost realized my beau-ideal  of clerical deport-
ment at the couch of the dying.
  While, as regarded  himself there  was no canting affection of
superior piety, toward the patient there was no harsh censure for
previous thoughtlessness or neglect,  no dogmatical insisting upon
peculiar forms or faith; he came  to comfort,  not  to proselyte.
And the very atmosphere wherein he moved  seemed  almost re-
dolent of kindness toward human infirmity and sympathy with
human suffering.
  I afterward attended his church frequently, for he had prepos- 
                     the clergyman's story.                213

 messed me much in his favor, and certainly a reputation  for much
 talent with sincere piety seemed not undeserved.
    He looked about thirty  years  of age, was  pale enough to be
 though a student, un-assuming and considerate enough to appear
 a  gentleman.  That he was rather an enthusiast was evident.
 but it was from disposition not from zeal;  and  he could scarcely
 have become a fanatic.  Of peculiarities, the most noticeable in
 him were a  timidity and bashfulness of manner in society, (the
 result of his studious, secluded life,) and a very  manifest sim-
 plicity  of character, the  almost  infallible  accompaniment to
 purity of heart.
    The only objection to the "new parson"—at the period  when
 I first met him, he had but recently been called to the place—was
 made by the  younger ladies of his congregation, who complained
 somewhat that  he never looked  toward them during service, or
 paid them in  society any sort of attention.  And it was matter of
 much speculation, whether his manifest carelessness toward the
 other sex proceeded from a previous engagement or from  insen-
 sibility, both  in their eyes, unpardonable disabilities.
   In the old  world, the abbey and the convent are always open,
 and doubtless often entered as a refuge from the disappointments
 of  love in the one sex, and of ambition, the pursuit of wealth  &c.,
 in  the other.   Here, such retirement is not every where available.
 nor is the creed universal which sanctions or recommends it.   But
 within my knowledge, instances have occured  in one sex, of the
 clerical office  having been assumed for reasons similar to those that
 in Europe prompt the abandonment of the world altogether.
  I, in common  with others, may  have had a suspicion of such
 motive being at the bottom of Mr. Carson's assumption  of  holy
 orders; but when, some years after this  time, and after  the death
 of Mr. O, I learned the true cause of his insensibility to the at-
 tractions of the other sex, I was struck with the purity  of feeling
 and simplicity of heart, as well as the singularity  of incident it
displayed.
  I give the story  as  nearly  as  possible in the words of my in-
 formant, who received it verbally from Mr. Carson himself. 
214
REMINISCENCES.
                       THE STORY.

   In the spring of 181—, I had the spiritual charge of a congre-
 gation at------in Maryland.   I  had just  received orders, was
 very young, had been all my life at school and college, knew
 nothing of  the world or of human nature except by theory, and
 was much inconvenienced by an awkward bashfulness, which has
 always troubled me more or less, and of which I am not wholly-
 rid, even yet.   My congregation was large  for a village, but it
 was not  made up  of townspeople only; many families from  the
 country were my constant hearers.
   On the very first Sabbath that I officiated,  two pews, with their
 occupants, struck particularly ray attention.  One was immedi-
 ately in front of the pulpit.   It was empty when the service be-
 gan,  but the damask velvet cushions and  gilt  morocco-bound
 prayer books, betokened sufficiently  the wealth and social position
 of its owners.
  The services had been commenced perhaps some ten minutes,
 when the noise of  wheels and horses' feet approached the church
 and stopped.   I knew  at a glance that the new-comers who en-
 tered immediately, must  be the possessors of the vacant pew.
 First came a very brilliant but haughty-looking young lady ,attend-
 ed by a youth somewhat  her junior, probably her brother.  Next
 was an elderly gentleman of mild and  dignified appearance,  by
 whose side walked a lady, just on the wrong side of forty, but
 still  showy  in person and  yet  more so in dress.   A  certain air
 of hauteur and a similarity of manners,  more than any  close re-
 semblance of features, betrayed her maternal relationship to  the
 young couple that preceded her.
  The entrance of the party disturbed the whole  congregation
 and they seemed to expect and design that it  should.  The sexton
 jumpted to the  pew-door, there was  a  rustling of silks, an un-
clasping  of prayer-books,  a fluttering  of pocket handkerchiefs
 whose perfume reached even to the desk; the elder gentleman put
 on his spectacles, the youth  adjusted the  footstool for his moth-
er's feet,  and then, with an audible breath of  relief, the congrega-
tion  seemed satisfied that the Warninghams  were at last ready to
join in the devotions which their entrance had so much disturb-
ed.
  This I afterward found, had been  their  invariable   mode  of
worship.  They had not attended church very often—with the 
                    the clergyman's story.                215

 exception of Mr. Warningham—always  came  late and  in their
 carriage, always interrupted  the  services,  always entered with
 the same ceremony, and always swept  into  their pew with the
 same air of conscious superiority.  But  then, the Warninghams
 were the wealthiest family  belonging to the congregation; and
 wealth, like charity, covers a multitude of sins.
   Before their entrance this morning, my attention  had been
 caught by the occupants of another pew or  rather slip, in a dis-
 tant corner of the building and of very different appearance.
   It was one of the free seats, but though occupied by only two
 persons, every body seemed to recognize their  right to its posses-
 sion;  for full as the church was no one offered, then or afterward,
 to enter the slip with  them,  Both were females.  The  elder one,
 apparently  the mother, was about forty,  plainly and even poorly
 dressed, and with that peculiar air of desolateness  and resignation
 which betrays the  widow.  She had once, been quite handsome-
 Even yet, tho masses of black hair showed themselves under the
 close cap and plain bonnet she wore, and her features bore rather
 the wasted appearance that privation and ill-health will give, before
 time can write its  wrinkles on them.  In spite  of the poverty of
 her appearance, there was an air of neatness  about  her person and
 dress  that gave me tho impression of industry and  virtue.
   You may smile, but I really consider  neatness  and cleanliness
 almost inseparable from  goodness.  A  proper  attention  to  the
 body is generally accompanied by some attention to the mind  and
 heart; while the neglect  of  the  one almost  always accompanies,
 though I do not say it causes, a neglect or carelessness about the
 other.
   The younger female in the seat was about  eighteen.  She was
 clad much like her mother.  A plain calico dress and simple cot-
tage bonnet, with a small handkerchief pinned closely about  her
 neck,  completed her attire.  I could have excused her  had  she
allowed her hair to fall upon her neek, sinee she wore  no orna-
ment of any kind; but it was all gathered carefully under her bon-
net,  and  only  from the projection of  two or three stray curls,
whose rich profusion would not be confined,  could  the exceeding
beauty of her hair be discovered.
   Her complexion was very fair, but I was pained to see a pale-
ness  in her cheek that  betokened close confinement or ill health,
perhaps both.  The large blue eyes were turned upward toward
the pulpit, with an expression which it was  difficult to meet un-
moved, though I cannot well describe it  And in  her whole ap- 
216                   REMINISCENCES..
pearance there was an air of meekness and resignation, as though,
young as she was, privation  and perhaps sorrow were no stran-
gers to her, yet as though she did not repine at her lot.
  I have been particular in  describing  her appearance, because
she made a peculiar impression  upon me, at the time  and after-
ward.  During the services,  her  attention was constant and de-
vout; and though looking toward her  seat as often as I  could
think it proper to turn my eyes in  any one  direction, I did not
once discover her glances wandering.from the pulpit.
  This was very different from the behavior of the richlv dressed
young lady whom I took to be Miss Warningham.  She sat  qui"
etly enough, for she had been taught  that,  but there was a mani-
fest  uneasiness of feeling if not of position, in her anxiety to
obtain all the  admiration  she  seemed conscious  of deserving.
True, she was not fidgetty,  hut this was  more as  it seemed be-
cause she knew it to  be un-lady-like, than because she thought it
unbecoming to the time and  place.   And I could not but notice
that she contrived, during most of  the service, to keep one  un-
gloved hand, with its delicate and jewelled fingers, high enough
about her person to be seen by those around.
  When the morning  services  were over, my first glance  as I
came  from the vestry-room, was toward the  pew occupied by the
widow and  her daughter, hut they  had disappeared.  Their seat
was by one of the doors, and they  were probably the first to de.
part; but I said to myself, I shall easily find them out.
  One of the wardens proceeded to' introduce me to most of the
prominent families who resided in the country, and who all  gave
me polite and urgent invitations to  visit and get acquainted with
them at an early day.  When presented to the Warninghams, I
was received very Kindly by Mr. W.,  graciously by the haughty
wife,  somewhat timedly by the youth, and by Miss Warningham
with a friendly smile, whose  sweetness,  I  own, astonished me,
unprepared as  I  was for such a qualijy in one who had already
manifested so much both of vanity and pride..
  For several  weeks afterward I was occupied in  the pleasant
duty of visiting the families of my  parishioners and others, in the
town and neighborhood, with whom I speedily become acquaint-
ed.  Every Sabbath brought the widow and her daughter to their
accustomed places in the church, but during  the week I saw and
heard nothing of them. I knew, of course,  that they must be
living in an humble sphere of life,  and must be sought  out to be
met with; and this I determined to  do at  the first opportunity. 
the clergyman's story
217
   Nowhere was I received at my visits with more  politeness and
 kindness than at the Warninghams, whose splendid residence was
 near two miles from town.  I found the old gentleman hospitable.
 courteous, well-informed and  talkative.  Mrs.  W.  had been a
 belle in early life and seemed never to have forgiven either father
 Time or the world generally, that she could not be so yet.  Hergra-
 cious condescension was almost offensive,  but  I knew it  to be
 well-meant and endeavored not  to feel its disagreeableness.
   But  in Miss Adelaide Warningham I was much and pleasantly
 disappointed.  I certaiuly had not expected  so much mildness and
 playfulness of disposition, such correctness of thought and senti-
 ment, and so much  natural goodness of  heart as she appeared to
 possess.  She was always willing (and able too)  to converse with
 me upon almost any subject; and though she had  no  great ap-
 parent predilections for early piety, yet she allowed me, without
 objection, to introduce even that subject, and listened with seri-
 ousness to my expostulations, even when they verged upon the
 soberness of reproof.
   In the meantime, Sabbath after  sabbath found the widow and
 her daughter in  their humble seats.  Sabbath after Sabbath, the
 same  pious resignation sat  upon the pale countenance of the
 mother, and the same almost superhuman beauty shone on the
 paler features  of the  daughter.  Almost every time I saw the
 latter,  I seemed  to discover some new charm in her pensive face.
 It was  not till the third or fourth Sunday  that I observed the pe-
 culiar intellectuality of her look, and  the  fine form of  her fore-
head.  Her attention was not the mere mechanical upturning of
 an unmeaning face, but the intelligent  listening of the mind and
 heart.
   I am not ashamed to say  that, gradually, I became  as much
 interested in her listening as she  seemed to be in  my speaking.
 I do not know how ofteii I fixed a day  when  I would certainly
 find her out, but one thing or another always prevented me, till
 an obstacle finally arose in the shape of my  own bashfulness.
   Strange as it may appear to you, I had by degrees conceived an
 interest in this young person, to whom  I had never yet spoken
 and of  whose name even I was not yet informed, that  I dared not
 confess to myself, much less to  another.  A dozen times  I was on
 the point of inquiring of some of my older parishioners, who this
 widow and her daughter were, but my  own consciousness of an
 unusual interest in those persons, acting on my natural  backward- 
218
REMINISCENCES.
 ness, rendered  me fearful of betraying, by  any question, the pe-
 culiar feelings by which my curiosity might be prompted.
   There was a difficulty too in  the way of finding them out, ex-
 cept  by inquiry.  As they always occupied the  same  seat  at
 church, and that next the door, it was impossible for me to speak
 to them after service, for they always departed  immediately; and
 though I often endeavored to  get out of the church soon enough
 to follow them  and thus ascertain their  residence, they were al-
 ways out of sight by the time I could finish the round of saluta-
 tions, through which  I had to pass on my way to the door.
   The very mystery thus apparently thrown around them, in-
 creased  the  curiosity and interest with  which I regarded them.
 Often in my study, when preparing my discourses for the ensuing
 Sabbath, that pale face, with its almost  unearthly beauty, would
 seem before me, and those large liquid eyes,  so intelligent in their
 blue depths, would seem to gaze upon me,  so sadly,  yet so un-
 complainingly,—just as they had done on the Sunday previous and
as I knew they would do on the following one.
   It is no wonder  that before long, the opinion which my un-
 known hearer might have of my sermons began to influence the
composition of them.  In the arrangement of the subject and the
framing of the sentences, I  could not prevent myself from imag-
 ining how she would  receive this expression  or  what she  might
think of that one.  And I took an  interest  in  watching, upon
each successive Sabbath, if such  sentences had upon her  the ef-
fect I had anticipated.  And you cannot imagine  the pleasure it
 was by thus feeling the mental pulse, as it were, to discover her
 own views  upon different subjects, by  watching her manner of
 receiving the opinions advanced.  Nor  have you an idea  of the
 gratification it afforded me  to ascertain in  this manner that her
views and feelings  coincided in  many things with my own, that
 the particular portions of my discourses which I myself consid-
ered as involving the most beautiful  and interesting truth seemed
 to interest and please her most.
   It was not very long before I fancied that she began to seem
conscious of my observation.  Such consciousness, even  if ac-
companied  with the  desire  to appear to advantage in my eyes,
 could scarcely be manifested by any change in  her dress, for her
poverty would not  permit this.   And it  seemed hardly  possible
 that any improvement could be  made in the exquisite neatness
 and taste with which her scanty wardrobe was already  arranged.
 Of any alteration in her manner  of dressing I could by no means 
THE CLERGYMAN'S STORY.                219
be sure, but her betrayal of consciousness could not be mistaken,
though I was entirely at a loss how to interpret it.
  One morning, during  the choir's  performance of one of our
beautiful church melodies, throwing my glance  carelessly round
over the congregation, I accidently encountered her eyes fastened
upon me, with an expression of interest which I had  never  seen
in them before.  My own gaze fell before  her's immediately, but
not until I  had  seen the instantaneous flush which  covered her
face as her  glance met mine.
  In my excessive bashfulness an I ignorance of woman's heart'
I could not imagine to what to attribute her conscious blush, and
I began to fancy that my involuntary notice was  disagreeable to
 her.  This idea haunted me for  weeks,  causing me  much un-
easiness.  I Jil not dare  for three or four Sabbaths,  to look to-
 ward her pew at all, and  when at lust I did so, was  shocked be-
youn 1 moasuro by the change in her appi-arance.  The first  day
I ever suv  her, I hid remarked  tho paleness of either ill-health
or sorrow upon her features, and had even  then  suspected some
secret enemy like incipient consumption making its  insidous ap-
proaches to her vitals.   Now, I foared it strongly, for  her cheek
was slightly hollowed and  a bright and beautiful hectic spot lay,
like a rose leaf, upon its whiteness.
  During all this time, I had been   increasing the circle of my
acquaintance and the  intimacy  of some   of them;  and  at   few
places did  I  visit  more  frequently than  at the  Warninghams'.
 I know that the clergy  are accused of visiting much more  will-
 ingly their wealthy parishoners than the poor ones; but you  will
absolve me of interested motives in  this  case,  when you know
the fraternal  regard and exceeding interest which I felt  for my
two unknown hearers, who were evidently among the poorest.
  It is certain  that I was often invited, both alone and with oth-
ers, to the Warninghams', was  always warmly received, and by
 no one m>r>  kinlly than  by  Adelaide.  And  I began to feel as-
 sured that  this young lady had been much abus.-d in the opinions
 of those who represented her, as most persons did, to be  the vain
 and haughty creature  which she had  seemed when I first  saw her-
 She ha 1 appeared such to me then, but never since.  On  the con-
 trary, she  manifested  unusual  docility  in the  expostulations I
 often made with her—for  I  never  hesitated to  tell  her what I
 thought of the fault < of her character—and often promised  to re-
 strain and  amend the particular  weakness or error that I  pointed
 out. 
220
REMINISCENCES.
  One fine  afternoon in the Fall, I rode out to her  fathers.
When I reached  the  house,  I found little Hal,  the  youngest
child—a sprightly boy of six  years—playing under the  portico.
As I stepped upon it he  ran  off.  When I  called  him, he camjj
back and shook hands with me, but said,—
  "I must go and tell  Sis you're  come.  Sis  is going to take a
walk, but she said whenever you  come  I  must let her know;"
and off he ran.
  Adelaide appeared immediately, in her bonnet and shawl.
  "Ah," said she smiling as she extended her hand, "I'm so glad
you're come, Mr. Carson.  I was just going to visit a poor sick
person, and though it  is a long walk, I am  sure you will  go with
me; besides she is one of your own parishioners."
  "Certainly—but who and where is it ?" I asked as she took my
arm with a sister's freedom and we set out.  "I was  not advised
that  any  one  of my congregation was sick out in  this  direc-
tion."
  "Well,  you  probably do not yet know  this  family," replied
Adeliade.  "The  sick  one is a poor girl who has been  in declin-
ing health for some months, but was only  taken  down  very ill
day before yesterday.  She has supported herself and her mother
for the last two years,  by doing embroidery for us and  others.
Poor girl ! I  pity them, and  papa would gladly have assisted them
without the  girl's labor, but they  were too proud to let  him.
They live in a cottage over beyond the  next  hill.  It is on  our
farm, and from the top of the  hill, both our house and the cottage
can be seen.  I feel for them very much,"  pursued my compan-
ion,  "for I have heard that they have seen  better  days.  I  once
saw some fine sketches and drawings at the cottage,  which the
widow told me were her daughter's work.  They were  very beau-
tiful."
  I cannot tell you  how my  heart  throbbed with pleasure  and
anxiety while  Adelaide  was speaking,  for I  was certain in  a
moment that this dutiful daughter could be  no other than my un-
known hearer, whom for six months I had  been vainly trying to
find out.
  Adelaide, on her way to visit and comfort this  sick girl,  ap-
peared to me at that moment like an angel of light.   Perhaps it
was this feeling of momentary  admiration  which prompted me to
tell her my  singular negative acquaintance with this unknown
parishioner of mine.  I know not how  else it  was, that at  that
moment it seemed perfectly  proper  for  me to tell her,  my most 
THE CLERGYMAN'S STORY.
201
familiar f-milc friend, what I would have shrunk from tMling to
a male one.
  With her already kind feelings toward the girl, shown  by this
intended visit of mercy, and her  friendship  for myself, I did not
doubt her sympathizing with me and that  we might  together re-
lieve the  unmerited privations  of one  whom  we  botli pitied.
Turning therefore to her, I said,—
  "There are many traits in your character,  Adelaide, that I have
always  admired, but you never  appeared so amiable  to me as
now."
  She colored, but said  nothing and  I proceeded—"I would  like
therefore to tell you now what I have never yet communicated to
any one, relative to the peculiar feelings and  anxieties  I have
had toward a particular person, for a  long time past—let me see—
yes, from the very first day that I saw you."
   I could not but see that something was  agitating  my  compan-
ion exceedingly, but as I was unable to  discover  the  source of
her emotion and she continued silent, I resumed,—
  "You may think me silly, perhaps presumptuous in telling you of
this, or perhaps that some other time, after waare better acquainted,
would be more suitable; but from  the  kindness I  have  ever re-
ceive.! from you and from some peculiar circumstanc2s in the mat-
ter, I am persuaded that I shall find  no better—:"
   "0 no ! not now, Mr. Carson," interrupted she  with  an emo-
tion I could not account for;—"do not tell me  now—let us hasten
 on to the cottage."
    "By all means," said I, "let us hasten on, but I  can tell you as
 we walk."  And proceeded to describe  to her  my first and strange
 impressions of my unknown hearer and  their continued and in-
 creased influence upon my feelings and heart.
    As I advanced in my narrative, her breathing became  audible,
 and I was hurrying on, flattering myself much in having excited
 such an interest in her bosom, toward me in whom  I was myself
 so deeply interested; when all at once, as I was speaking of the
 image  of the unknown being  before  me  in my  study,  she
 clasped my  arm  more  tightly  and with  a quick  sigh of pain
 exclaimed,—
    "0 stop—pray stop—I feel very ill,—let me sit down."
    She  rested a moment, during which time her face became al-
 ternately pale and flushed and her  eyes gleamed with an unnat-
 ural fire, and then said with an effort,— 
222
REMINISCENCES.
   "I am too sick to go any farther—we cannot visit  the cottage
to-day; let us return home."
   Forgetful momentarily of the claims of gallantry,  in my eager
apxiety to get to the long-sought cottage, I returned to remon-
s trate—
   "But see, the  cottage is not now far off—much  nearer than to
go back home,—would we not better go there ?"
   "Sir—Mr. Carson," she replied angrily and with a haughty im-
periousness she had never before used  to me or even in my pres-
ence; "I wish to return  home immediately,—will  you have  the
goodness to assist me ?"
   Much grieved to lose the opportunity  of visiting the cottage,
and still more to  see  Adelaide  manifesting  so  little temper, I of
course yielded and we returned to her father's in silence.
   The following  day,  (Sabbath,) the  pew in the corner was, for
the first time, vacant.   The  widow  and  her daughter were both
absent.  I am almost ashamed  to confess to you  how much their
absence affected me.  I caught myself, a half dozen  times  in the
course of service, turning my eyes toward the empty seats; es-
pecially when delivering those parts_  of my  discourse  which had          <
been written with a purpose to discover,  in her  manner of list-
ening, if   the sentiments uttered  accorded with  her own.   I
noticed too  that  Miss Warningham  was also absent,  though
for months past  she had been a regular and  constant  attend-
ant.
   On that morning  I became assured  of two things.  The first
was, that the widow and  her beautiful daughter were certainly
the poor tenants of  Mr.  Warningham.  Had they been  present,
after Adelaide's statement of the daughter's ill-health,, the iden-
tity might have  been doubted,  but now no  room was  left for
doubt.
  The second thing  was the conviction—from  the  intolerable
anxiety, the anguish of suspense I endured and the  utter indiffer-
ence into which, in spite of all my efforts to the contrary, I went
through the morning's services  in  her absence,—that I myself
loved the unknown  embroidery girl.
  You need not be surprised at any thing connected with this
confession, save theoddness of my feeling such  attachment to me
I had never spoken to.  Her position  in  society was nothing to
me.  I had and have no earthly ambition,  and though I was my-
self dependent upon my  sacred office for support, I knew  well 
the  clergyman's story.
223
that  I could always maintain her, if she would be mine, in a far
more comfortable condition than she was now in.
  My resolution was taken to  go to the cottage on the following
day, introduce myself (but what introduction did I need to her?)
and offer her marriage.  Accordingly next morning I rode out to
carry my purpose into execution.  It was nearest, as I supposed,
to go by the Warninghams', so I took the road to their house, in-
tending to walk over thence to the widow's cottage.
  When I got to Mr. W.'s, the servant who took my horse showed
me to the parlor, and went as I supposed to announce my call to
the family.  I was left alone, but some of the family were  near-
er to me than the servant was aware of.  Little Hal' was playing
noisily in the next room, (which probably prevented my entrance
from being  heard,)  and at  intervals  two low  voices  were
heard,  which  I  recognized  as those of Mis. Warningham and
Adelaide.
  A pair of folding-doors alone was between us, and the sound of
even their low voices  passed  readily through.  I sat,  expecting
each moment to hear the voice of the servant announcing me,
and becoming every instant more impatient, not only of his delay
which detained me there  when I desired to start immediately to
the cottage, but also rendering it liable that I should over-hear the
conversation of the two ladies.
   The servant still delayed, perhaps putting up  my horse, and
after the first minute, when I might have  made my  presence
known by coughing or knocking, my embarrassment and natural
bashfulness so overcame me, that I stood, especially after the first
 few words reached my ears, almost  trembling, like a guilty per-
son, and afraid to move.  The ladies still talked on.
   "But,"  said  the expostulating voice of the mother,  "if you
 will indulge this foolish fancy, you can  surely control yourself
better, so as not to let your partiality be so manifest."
   "Mother, mother,"  replied Adelaide,  deprecatingly, "I assure
 you I  have no such partiality—at least not now,—I am trying"—
 and she sobbed heavily.
   "Why, what a child you are," was  the reply, "any body can
 Bee that you are in love with him."
   "In love with who, mamma?"—Who  is Sis' in love with ?"
 screamed  little  Hal', dropping his hoop and racing  across the
 floor.
   "Nobody,  nobody !" said  Adelaide, apprehensively, for Hal' 
224
reminiscences.
talked  about every  body  and every  thing,  at all  times and
places.
  "It isn't nobody !" roared the spoiled pet, "I  know who it  is
Sis' in love with !  Didn't I see her  yesterday crying over what
Mr. Carson wrote in her album ? And didn't I see—"
  "Hush ! hush ? exclaimed Adelaide.  "Mother, don't let the
boy  talk so ?"
  The child seemed not to like this appeal to his  mother, for a
moment after he-began to sing at the top .of his voice—
                  "Addy loves  a parson,
                  His name "is Mr. Carson ?"
and delighted with the rhyme he had found, the little urchin ran
out of the room, singing at the utmost stretch of  his lungs.
  "I must silence that childj" said Adelaide, "or every servant in
the hous? will hear him;" and she ran after the boy.
  Mrs. W.  soon followed and relieved  me  of my awkward posi-
tion in one respect, but how terribly  I was  situated in another.
The mortifying discovery, betrayed by the mother and so  loudly
announcsd by  Hal',  almost  unmanned me.  That it  was true I
could  not doubt, and I  only wondered at  my  blind carlessness
heretofore  in not being  more guarded in my deportment toward
Miss Warningham.  I had  certainly treated her more  like a fath-
er, a brother or indeed anything else than like a  lover, but I con-
demned myself severely for the very frecness of manner, which,
indulged on my side in view of a wish to benefit her and permitted
on her's (as I supposed) on the ground of my sacred office, had, it
seemed, thrown her  off her guard and thus given admission to  an
unfortunate passion.
  Now I saw the cause of her unaccountable behavior during our
walk on the Saturday previous, and while I wondered at my own
blindness, regretted most bitterly that I had in my communication
to her, thus given pain to a sensitive  and noble heart.  "But in-
deed my natural backwardness would have  forever prevented me
from aspiring to the hand of Adelaide Warningham, even  if an-
other had not already possession of my  own heart,  beyond my
power to recall it.  Still less would I ever have fancied that one so
courted by many and so indifferent to them  all, would  have
give.n her heart, unasked, to a poor village clergyman.
  I could only lift up my thoughts in prayer, and certainly pray-
ed as much for Adelaide as for myself, that strength might be giv-
en her also in this trying hour.
  The entrance of Mr. Warningham  diverted  my attention for a 
                   THE  CLERGYMAN'S STORY.               225

few minutes,  when  a stranger knocked at the door  and,  be-
 ng admitted,  announced himself as a messenger from my moth-
er, then lying at the point  of death at her residence,  some sixty
miles distant.   The messenger had searched the town for me, and
had at last been directed to the Warninghams'.  The urgency of
this message  admitted not an  hour's delay.   Every  other  duty
must  yield  temporarily,  to   that  of closing a mother's eves,
and with a heart torn  with conflicting emotions—for I knew  my-
self now—but still with a firm trust in the goodness of Provi-
dence, I accompanied  the messenger on his return.
   If I had not understood them before, I should certainly, during
this week of absence  at the sick bed of my  mother,  have under-
stood the meaning of  the feelings with which I regarded my still
unknown hearer, tho  embroidery girl.  Even here, at the dying
couch of  my last earthly  relative, the image  of that meek  and
pious creature was beside me, seeming to assist me in paying the
last duties to  her whom, had her life  been  prolonged, even she
too might perhaps called mother.  0 how earnestly did I pray that
her life might be spared, so that on my  return I might carry out
the determination I had formed.
  After my mother's burial, I hastened back to my charge. I  was
told at once, at my boarding house, that during my absence,  two
or three urgent messages had been sent for me to visit a dying par-
ishoner,  a mile or two in the eountry; and before I could make
an inquiry as to who or where the sick person was,  a young man
called, with a request  for  me to  attend immediately  to perform a
funeral service, a short distance from town.
  I had never  seen this messenger before, but  before I had heard
half his message, my heart sank within me.  I followed him with-
out a word, for I seemed to know instinctively whither he would
lead me.   Taking a by-road and passing through farms, we had
proceded a mile or more,  when I thought I recognized the scene-
ry.   We ascended the next hill.   From its summit was to be seen
on  one side Mr. Warningham's  proud mansion, and  on the  oth-
er,—yes, there it was, at last,—the widow's cottage !
  We approached—we entered the humble  abode.  There was but
one room' and in the center of that, the corpse was laid  out.  A
single look was sufficient to identify  it.  There, before  me, cold
and lifeless now forever, lay the form of her who had become  part
of my religion and my life.
  I had never before been so near her living, as I was there by the
side of her, dead.   The same mildness  of expression, the same
                              15 
226
REMINISCENCES.
 pious resignation sat now, as usual, upon the pale countenance,—
 scarcely paler, even in death, than when  I last  looked  upon it.
 The only change was an angel  smile, that seemed  to hover flit-
 tingly about the fearures, and told  of hope  in death and  confi-
 dence in the life to come.
   While waiting for the necessary assembling, the poor mother,
 widowed and now childless and doubly broken hearted, took me
 aside.
   She did not wish to give me pain; but it would  ever be a source
 of the deepest regret to her, that I could  not have returned in
 time to  see her child before her death.  During her illness—a very
 quick consumption—especially toward  the  latter part of it, she
 was heard  frequently to repeat  my name, and  often to express
 the most earnest wish to see me, if but a single moment  before
 she died;  but it was  impossible.  "And  her last words were,'r
 said the widow  with streaming  eyes, "Tell him  I shall wait
 for him in Heaven."
   Since that time, as to all earthly passion, my  heart  has been
 utterly dead within me.  I look upon a beautiful  woman as upon
 a  bird  or a flower.  The memory of the  pious and  beautiful
 embroidery-girl is ever with  me in my thoughts; and  when  I  am
 alone in my study, her image  is still  before  me, as it used to
 to be while she was living.  I know she is beside me even now,—
 I believe she is waiting for me, as  she said,—I never heard the
 sound of her voice on earth,—I shall speak to  her in Heaven.

   N. B.  Should the reader think the above incidents too roman-
tic for occurrence, he is assured  that the  whole is  founded on
facts.   It is not many years since  the main circumstance of the
sketch went the rounds of the press in this country, as a newspa-
per paragraph. 
REMINISCENCES.
NUMBER XII.
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.
                         LEAF I.

  Every adult remembers the unequaled length and severity  of
the winter of '31.   Setting in very early, about the last of Octo-
ber, it advanced with more of those frequent thawing changes, so
common to the middle latitudes of this country.  The snows that
fell seemed to become fixture to  the  soil, the  rivers once closed
were permanently bridged, and in some parts of the country  the
cold was more severe than ever known or noticed before.
  Its obstinate continuance far into the months of the next year,
was matter alike of surprise and injury to all, especially the poor.
With  unyielding, perversity it extended its reign through Jan-
uary and Febuary ir.to March, when compelled at last to abdicate
by the lengthening days and Spring rains, it retired.
  Snows were lying upon the mountains, the thickness of which
had scarcely diminished an inch  during the  season, covering up
the sources of rivers, whose crusted surfaces had  afforded wagon
roads for near two months.  The sudden breaking  up, accompa- 
228
REMINISCENCES.
 nied and perhaps caused by the heavy Spring rains produced a
 result that was not, but might have been, anticipated; a flood of
 unequaled hight  and sweeping destruction, which was  felt over
 most of the Middle and Western States.
  It was on one cold evening, early in March, that having return-
 ed home from the labors of the day,  I was endeavoring to feel
 comfortable in slippers and dressing-gown before  a fire, when a
 loud and hasty summons at the street-door disturbed my anticipa-
 tions of  a quiet evening.
  I commenced resuming my out-door clothing  before the ser-
 vant went to  the door, for I knew the  messenger brought one of
 those calls which, especially during Winter, I never  refused to
 obey, a call  from the poor.   I was certain of this,  because he
 knocked instead of using the bell  handle, and because he gave a
 second knock before the first  could possibly have been answered,
  In a minute a note was handed me, blotted, almost illegible and
 without signature, seeming from the  inequality of the  lines and
 letters, to have  been written  by a* person  in bodily  pain,  and
 earnestly requesting my immediate presence at a  house in the
 suburbs, whither the messenger would conduct me.
  "Who wrote this ?" I asked of the  ragged and animal looking
 white boy that brought the missive.
  Why, the  young 'ooman write  it hersef," replied he, without
 looking at me, but stairing vacantly and grinningly around at the
 furniture, &c.
  "What young woman V
  "Why the  one  what's been in our garret more'n three months
 and never goes out no whar."
  "What's the  matter with her ?" I inquired  rather incautious-
 ly-
  Why," answered he with an impudent and knowing leer, "I
reckon she's been  expecting to want you for more'n a month past;
 if she hain't the rest of us  have,  for  she don't sleep none  and
 she's always wailing about and groaning most  all night, so  that
 nobody else can sleep nuther."
  "That will do, I'll go with you;" and we left the house.
  It was a bright moonlight night and bitterly cold.  The cutting
March wind went through one like a knife.   My Mercury, how-
ever, a slovenly lad about fifteen, seemed not to regard  it. When
the  blast  howled  he  whistled, 'and occasionally,  to change the
accompaniment, danced; still, with his hands in his ragged pock-
ets, trotting along constantly ahead of  me. 
                    CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.                 229

   Less than a half hour's walk brought us to an old two-story
 frame house, in the suburbs, before which my guide  stopped
 Forbidding as were the looks of its un-painted and  broken-win-
 dowed front, whose loose weather-boarding creaked and rattled in
 the fierce wind; it was still much superior to the villainous group
 of low hovels, most of them (like itself) grog-shops, by  which it
 was surrounded.
   It seemed that some citizen, attracted in an economical  and  un-
 lucky hour by the cheapness  of town-lots in that  vicinity,  had
 bought  there; and  then, discouraged  and disgusted by  the im-
 medicable vileness of the neighborhood, had abandoned  his  half
 finished domicil to the less  fastidious  occupancy of poverty or
 roguery.                                               J
   The pause of the boy was only long enough to look round  and
 see that I was following him, and merely nodding,  to intimate
 that I was to follow, he entered the door.
   The lower  front floor was a bar-room,  whose atmosphere,  al-
 ready redolent of whisky and tobacco, was becoming still more
 smoky and  odorous, from the busy pipes and glasses  of some half
 dozen or  more dirty, thievish looking  fellows, who were vocif-
 erously talking, laughing and disputing round a large fire.
   Following the guide, I passed through this room into an entry
 and up a dark stairway.
   "Stop here a minute, till I get a candle," said the boy, enter-
 ing as he spoke, a room, whence proceeded the squalling of what
 seemed a half dozen children and the loud voice of a negro nurse,
 in a sort of scolding accompaniment.
   Re-appearing with about three inches of tallow candle,  whieh
 he held  flaring and dripping in his fingers, the boy led me to
 another stair-case, evidently  (from its rudeness) constructed since
 tiie rest of the building, and so manifestly frail,  that  I hesitated
 to trust my  weight upon it.
   "O there ain't no danger of the stairs!" exclaimed the  urchin,
 endeavoring  to  re-assure me,  as he observed my hesitation.__
 "They're plenty strong, if you step carefully, though the boards
 is a little loose;  but nobody never fell through  'cept old uncle
 Tibb, and that was when he  broke his back, ever so long ago."
  And the  little  villain proceeded  to illustrate and  enforce his
 encouraging eulogy on the security  of the stairs, by jumping  up
and down upon them.  But this operation was  attended with
such a shaking and so manifest  a danger to  the integrity  of the
whole  structure,  that I was fain to request his forbearance, and 
230
REMINISCENCES.
also that I might get to my destination as speedily as possible
  "Well, here's the light," said he, offering me the candle, whose
sides  were by  this time tolerably well fl uted by the streams  of
melted tallow,  which poured down over them and not stopping
at the fingers, ran over the red fist of the boy.
  "O you must take it or go up in the dark," said he, seeing that
I shrank from the greasy contact, "she won't let me go up to her
room, nor nobody else 'cept old Sukey, unless when she has sent
for  'em."
  "Well, tell Sukey to come up stairs immediately," and resign-
ing myself to the necessity of spoiling one glove, I took the can-
dle  and ascended the stairs.
  As I opened  a door at their head,  a gust of cold wind rushed
down which well nigh extinguished  the light.  When it had re-
covered itself sufficiently to throw out rays,  which it  did dimly
and only to the distance of a few feet,  I saw that I was in a gar-
ret, a large apartment extending over the whole house; from the
slope of the roof habitable only in the  middle, with no windows
except in the ends,  and they must have been without  glass, for
the  cold draught seemed to pass uninterruptedly through, besides
whistling, in half the notes of  the gamut,  through any number.
of cracks and crannies in the roof and walls.  There was no fur-
niture that I could see.   Even  the floor was of loose and rough
boards, laid but not nailed upon the sleepers.  My flickering can-
dle  gave  an uncertain and feeble light,  and there was no other in
the  apartment.
  I  looked in vain for even a fire-place.  There  was  indeed no
sign of life and  no  sound of it, save frequent low groans,  heard
in the intervals of  the blast, and seeming to proceed from a dis-
tant corner of the room.
  I shuddered at the idea of a human  creature and  especially a
female being obliged to  inhabit such a place, and  protecting my
taper  against the furious current of air, endeavored  to ascertain
whence  the sounds of suffering proceeded.
  Ten steps brought me to the side of the couch of wretchedness,
and what a picture!  A low pallet of loose straw was placed in a
corner, under the lee of the  roof and  end  walls; a single blanket
and tattered coverlet its  only bed  clothes.  By  its side stood a
half-filled charcoal  furnace, utterly  ineffective to produce any
warmth in the winter air, and availing only to send up  fumes  of
noxious gas,  that,   sickening even here, would in a close room
have been fatal. 
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.                231
  On such a couch and amid such a scene of misery lay a young
female, in the incipient pains of premature parturition.
  At first glance, the incongruity struck me of a dress soiled and
faded but of costly silk,  through the rags and disarrangement of
which appeared a chemise of fine linen.  And, as though to com-
plete the mystification, when she, apparently to prevent recogni-
tion, covered her face with her hands at my approach, I could
not but notice the exceeding beauty of the wan and attenuated,
yet  delicate and taper fingers.
  No time was allowed however for curiosity or conjecture. The
old negro woman, Sukey, made her appearance, and after several
hours of suffering, the wretched patient was delivered of a dead
infant.
  She could  not during all this time keep her features concealed,
but  I  scrutinized them  in vain to satisfy myself who she was.
That I had seen her before, I was confident,—besides, that she
seemed to know me,—but when or where I could not decide.—
Sometimes the countenance, becoming natural  in the intervals
of pain, would seem for a moment quite familiar,  and then a
sudden distortion would  destroy all fancied identity.
  Her previous bodily and mental sufferings must have been ter-
rible,  for her features were unnaturally sharpened, like those of
a person in the last stages of phthisis.  The large and unnatural-
ly  brilliant  blue eye seemed almost to project from  the wasted
and sunken face.  In health she would have been beautiful; now
the  prevailing and  almost the only expression  on the pale fea-
tures  was one of utter desolation.
   The old nurse was as  ignorant of the patient's name as myself.
She had  come there, an entire stranger, several months  before,
had spent the whole long  and  severe winter  in that miserable
 garret, with no other means of warmth or comfort than what her
 scanty clothing and the  charcoal furnace afforded; and had never
left her room nor admitted into it any  one but Sukey-
  Despairing of ascertaining at that time the identity of the un-
fortunate outcast, I gave  directions for the  night, promising to
send  some necessary medicines immediately and  to call  again
.early in the  morning.  Approaching  the side  of the patient  bo-
 fore leaving, I spoke a  few words of  encouragement to her.  I
 had already  sent for more clothing and fuel, to make her as com-
 fortable as possible for the night, since she could not then be re-
 moved,  and assured her that she should be taken next morning
 t.o more comfortable quarters. 
232
REMINISCENCES.
  A melancholy shake of the head and a gesture of dissent were
her only answer.  The movement displaced the  clothes around
her neck and as I re-adjusted  them, a singular flesh-mark was
uncovered  which I  at  once recognized.   Recollection flashed
upon me in a moment.  But who can describe  the amazement
with which I  identified the  altered and  wasted form on the
wretched couch before me  as one who had been long an object
of anxious  search to me, and who was  the only daughter of one
of the first  families in the  county;  the once brilliant,  admired,
matchless Laura D----.
                         LEAF II.

  I must take the reader a half year or more back from the com-
mencement of my story and introduce him to scenes  somewhat
different.
  Of all the beautiful girls brought out in the season of '30, none
shown with more undisputed superiority of personal beauty, none
possessed and displayed greater claims to admiration on the score
of accomplishments, and few,  if any, represented families more
elevated in position than did Laura D----.  But amid all the fa-
vors of Providence,  in the gifts of nature and the advantages o f
position, she lacked one thing, without which it rests but upon
the merest chance, a cast of the dice or the turn of a card, wheth-
er all else, beauty, wealth and station  should not prove a curse
instead of a blessing.  That one thing  was a proper education.
  I  do not mean that time and  pains and  money  had not been
expended lavishly for her,  but it was  her person  and  not  her
mind and heart that had been educated.  She had been taught to
paint and dance and sing  and  play, but  not  mental discipline
and self-control.
   She had read considerably, and of its sort far too much;  for
her reading  had not been eclectically  but exclusively  of that
lighter, imaginative literature, which carefully selected, may well
enough answer for the post-coenurn, the dessert of an intellectual
feast;  but must never be mistaken or  substituted for  more solid
food.  True, the modern  French novels had not then been pour-
ed over this country, poisoning everywhere, with their  Upas in- 
                    CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.                233

fluence, the atmosphere of virtue; but even the  most unexcep-
tionable of romance-reading, such as most of the novels of Scott,
Cooper, &c, if allowed solely or too constantly,  will produce in
the mind the same  irregular and unhealthy action that an exces-
sive use of condiments will in the body.
  Still, let not the reader commit the mistake of fancying Miss
D----• or any other of the human race to be entirely destitute of
virtues, any more than wholly without faults.  The remark made
of Lord Byron by  the author of "Stanley," will apply to every
human being, "that good and evil contended for  the mastery in
his soul, like Michael and Satan about the body of Moses."
  Thus, though selfish, Miss D----. was not without generosity,
though vain  she still possessed much independence of character,
though  capricious  she was not without a firmness approaching
even to obstinacy in some things,  and though coquettish she pos-
sessed tho capability of feeling a permanent and devoted attach-
ment.
  The proper care of a competent mother might have  suppressed
the bad and developed the  good  qualities of her disposition, so
as to make her thoroughly amiable instead of partially so.  But
she had lost her mother in infancy, and except an aged father, her
only  near relative was a brother, a lieutenant in  the navy, who
was too seldom at  home to exercise over his sister any perma-
nent, character-forming influence.  Still, her  attractions were
external, manifest to all, while her deficiencies were internal,  vis-
ible to  few under  any circumstances, and to none who  would
meet her only under the vail of conventional usages, at scenes of
social pleasure.   So she was admired by all, loved by many and
adored by one—Pendleton Lisle.
   This was a gentleman of about twenty-five, generous,  intelli-
gent  and  accomplished.   His family  had not  been wealthy,
though an old Virginia name of high standing; but at twenty-two
the death of  a  relative placed him in possession of a handsome
fortune in his own right.   His father,  a professional  gentleman
of ability, had devoted all his leisure  time and much of his means
to the education of this his only child, and died just after  the
son, at the age of nineteen, had taken his degree  at old William
and Mary.   The father's leisure was perhaps small,  especially
during the early life of  young Pendleton, but the son lost nothing
on  that account,  all the deficiencies being more than supplied by
the mother.  Mrs. Lisle was a  woman  of  unusual strength of
mind,  and no selfish and short-sighted  fondness was  permitted 
234
REMINISCENCES.
to prompt those mischievous indulgences so common to mothers,
especially in the slave States.
  Early taught that self-control so necessary for a human being,
and so indicative of a rational one, he had escaped the vices pe-
culiar to his age; and if his youth promised to reward the noble
mother for her care,  his early manhood seemed already verifying
the promise.   Even before his accession of fortune, his alliance
would scarcely have been  refused by any family; after it,  none
was more courted and caressed.
  He had admired Laura D----. for a full year before he spoke
to her of love, but when he did  speak, it was in that impassioned
language that woman seldom hears unmoved. Who could refuse
one so gentlemanly and talented,  so gifted in all that woman ad-
mires in man?  Laura could not and did not, and plighted to him
her faith as irrevocably as she believed him to possess her heart.
                        LEAF III.

  It is a private party, so called, but the name is the only thing
private about it;  at  least the spectator would so judge,  from the
crowd of equipages near the doors, and the ten-fold greater crowd
of living, elbowing and squeezed  mortals inside the  brilliant
rooms.
  Reader, shall we enter free and easy, like Faust and  Mephis-
topheles at the witches' gathering, or shall I, Asmodeus like, take
off the house-roof for you, so that we can see, without being in-
commoded by the swarming inmates?   You  choose the latter.
Well, you must know this is a birth-night ball, given by old Mr.
D----,  in honor of the commencement of his daughter's  eigh-
teenth year.
  In looking over a crowded room, one's attention is always first
caught by the strangers, and you are very naturally looking at
that tall and graceful gentleman just now waltzing with the love-
ly young  hostess.
  "Who is  he?"—Well, I cannot tell you now  all I know of
him,  but  you decide  instantly that he is a foreigner.  One may
see peculiarities about him plainly indicative of this, though in-
deed he is far from trying or wishing to conceal his exotic birth. 
                     CRIME AMD PUNISHMENT.                 235

 He is not unaware that it gives him an additional charm in the
 eyes of our republican countrymen, admirers of everything, an-
 imate  or  inanimate, that hails from  the old world.  He  even
 affects anglicisms in dress, in order to impress all, unmistakably,
 with the certainty of his trans-Atlantic extraction.
   Observe with how ducal an air of condescension and lofty im-
 pudence he moves  among the  wondering natives!  He is  tall,
 rather slender,  about thirty, well whiskered, duly moustaehed,
 dances and waltzes extremely well,  is quite accustomed to such
 scenes,—shown  by his evident  familiarity with  ball-room  eti-
 quette,—and is moreover, of all things in this beautiful world,
 manifestly pleased with himself.   So much an external observer
 may see.
   As to his name, you may be informed that he answers to the
 euphonious appellation of  Clarence Mortimer, Esq.
   And as to his  admittance here, be assured that was quite reg-
 ular and legitimate, having been introduced  by the proud host
 himself, to whom he brought letters showing him to be of  un-
 questioned family and fortune at home.   So it is more than prob-
 able that after his introduction by Mr. D----. and his waltzing
 with Laura, and the speedily circulated report of his fortune and
 respectability at home, and more than  all, with his name as an
 Englishman, he  will be here a lion of the season.
   Meantime, the evening  passes on.  Clarence Mortimer, Esq.,
 is the admired and Laura D----. the envied of everything female
 that is  here to-night;  Mortimer  admired for reasons already
 named,  and Laura  envied  as  seeming to engross exclusively
 him that is so admired.
   Once, you notice, while crossing the room on the arm of Mor-
 timer,  Laura meets her fiancee, Mr. Lisle.  He evidently wishes
 to  say to her something more than a mere "good evening,"  but
 without seeming to notice this,  she passes on.   Does she  hasten
 so from an  apprehension or dislike of being obliged to introduce
 the  two gentlemen to  each other?  Later in  the evening they
 were introduced, and gave an interesting illustration of mutual
 magnetic repulsion."  Why Lisle should dislike  Mortimer,  as one
 who, a mere stranger, had engrossed almost exclusively for  the
 evening, the ear  and arm of Miss D----, was clear enough;  but
 why the disinclination should be mutual, why a stranger  whose
 interest is, and manifestly was to make influential acquaintances*
should allow to appear a dislike too positive for caprice, to so elig- 
236
REMINISCENCES.
ible an acquaintance as Pendleton Lisle, was to many observers
quite a mystery.
  Next morning Lisle called at the D----'s to come to an  ex-
planation with Laura.   Mortimer called also, to pay to the same
lady the  usual morning  compliments after  a ball.  And as the
goddess of awkward contretemps (perhaps  Mrs. Malaprop her-
self) would have it, the two gentlemen met; and to make the
matter as unpleasant as possible,  were obliged to  sit in the same
room  together—they  had  called within  ten  minutes  of  each
other—for a full quarter of  an hour before Miss D----. made her
appearance.
  Both rose at her entrance; but Lisle was vexed at her singular—
to use the  mildest phrase—behaviour of the preceding evening
and at his finding the Englishman there in the morning; he was
therefore awkward  and hesitating.   Mortimer,  on the contrary,
was made happy by the very conduct that vexed Lisle;  he came
expressly to flatter, and being in the best humor imaginable, both
with himself and with the lady, was easy, self possessed and in-
sinuating.
  Conversation  ensued.  But Lisle was too angryto talk freely,
besides he wanted explanation before conversation,  and the sub-
ject most at his heart would bear no witnesses;  he was therefore
brief, crusty and unintelligible.   On the other hand, the English-
man could  without objection converse freely  on the subject of his
visit, in presence of Lisle or any third party;  he was consequently
fluent, complimentary and agreeable.
  The result was that Lisle, incomparably  the more gifted and
admirable of the two, fell into the shade before a man of the
world who, with five years  more of age to keep him cool,  was
unscrupulous  to use every  advantage of accident or opportunity,
that enabled him to exalt himself or humble a  rival.   Lisle felt
his disadvantage and was unwise enough, in  a moment of uncon-
trolled vexation,  to take  his leave,  abandoning the field to  Mor-
timer, instead of out-sitting him, which he in his privileged posi-
tion might have done;  since the other could not in etiquette
have staid  a quarter of an hour longer.
  There was now certainly a campaign fairly opened,  for it was
a matter of no secrecy among the  knowing ones,  that Clarence
Mortimer,  Esq., the fascinating Englishman, was making a bold
push to oust Pendleton Lisle from the  heart and troth-plight  of
Laura D----; while Lisle felt most bitterly  that he had very un- 
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.
237
necessarily given his competitor a vantage-ground from the start.
He was indeed in a quandary.
  With many the course would have been plain enough; quar-
rel with Mortimer,  call him out and remove with  the bullet at
twelve paces, all impediment to the fulfillment of his engagement
with Miss D----.  But Lisle  loved Laura as she never would be
loved by another, and far too well to be willing to  risk his pos-
sessing her upon the chance of obtaining a first shot or of esca-
ping an antagonist's bullet.  Moreover,  he had sufficient sense
to be conscious that if Laura was fickle enough to abandon him
for an acquaintance of a week, and one, too,  a stranger in the
country, it  must be to him a fortunate  escape instead  of  a sor-
row-bringing abandonment.  But beside all  this, knowing little
of his rival and therefore watching him closely, he began to fancy
that he could discover about him evidences of his  being  some-
thing else than he appeared  and professed to be.  Before a fort-
night's expiration,  Lisle was satisfied that his competitor was a
man of few  scruples and  of little principle.
  During this time, the Englishman was a constant  visitor at the
D----'s, while Pendleton scarcely saw  Laura and  never  alone.
He thought she must be sensible that her conduct  required ex-
planation, and, if indisposed to break with him, would  volunteer
it;  and was at least resolved that his rejection  should come  un-
suggested by himself.  But  he  began to  be alarmed  for her.  To
lose her at  all was to lose all that seemed to him to give value
to the present or hope to the future; but to surrender her to one
still less deserving of her, less  capable of making her happy (in
his lack of that essential of gentlemanliness, integrity,) than he
knew himself to be; this was a trial to which he feft himself un-
equal.
  Yet,  how to act in his embarrassment?—To whom,  in his pe-
culiar position, could he communicate his suspicions, his knowl-
edge?   Mr.  D----. ought to know them, Laura should be put
npon her guard,  but  not from  him.  Warning  from him would
be  charged  most  surely to  the account of envy, prejudice and
dislike of a successful rival.  He doubted if the father was ac-
quainted with his daughter's apparently changing purposes and
feelings or of Mortimer's suit, for the haughty old magnate would
certainly  never receive a son-in-law upon the strength of a let-
ter of  introduction.   Nor could Lisle bring himself to put for-
ward a third party as monitor to those for whom he was so deep-
I y  interested; this seemed  too much like an  underhand  move- 
238
REMINISCENCES.
 ment, a keeping of himself out of  sight, to be reconciled to his
 high notions of honor and propriety.
   Meantime Mortimer was using all the art and effort possible to
 be subsidized in favor of his suit with Miss D----,  and,  1 am
 sorry to say, with success.
   A single month,  (alas, that I should be compelled to write it,)
 sufficed to obliterate from the  heart of  Laura D----.  all love-
 prompted remembrance of Pendleton Lisle.  He  soon suspected
 as much, but was only assured of the fact by a delicate, perfumed
 note, which reached him one morning, as he sat musing over the
 mutabilities of life.
   The missive expressed in ceremonious  and set terms, the wri-
 ter's "deep and sincere regret at the necessity she was under of
 informing him,  that the  recently discovered uncongeniality of
 disposition between them would certainly and effectually destroy
 all happiness in their union; besides, she would be candid enough
 to confess that she did not love  him and was now  convinced that
 she never had.  She had confidence in his good sense and judge-
 ment,  and believed he would see and acquiesce in the necessity
of their separation.  She hoped he would find some one  more
worthy of him,"  and closed  with assurances of esteem, friendly
regard and wishes for his future happiness.
  These professions were not as hollow as they will be imagined.
I do not know if  it will elevate  Miss D----.. in the reader's  esti-
mation, but it will at least give him more insight into her char-
acter, to know that,  cold as the note appears, more than an hour
had been spent that morning in the  inditing of some half dozen
billets, before one could be produced sufficiently free from evi-
dences of  passion  to be fit to send; though in style, tone and
even  in words, the last was little more  than a protocol of the
first.   The first one, written amidst thronging memories of the
past and the ghosts of many a happy hour, was blistered  with
tears  and of course thrown  aside.   The second was stained and
blotted, and a third, fourth and even fifth were copied before the
fair scribe could produce one that she dared  dispatch.
  To Lisle it was the death-blow of hope.  In vain  did reason
assure him that the rupture of  ties binding him  to caprice and
 instability must be a blessing and not a sorrow.   I  do not know
 that passionate love was ever noted for its submissive yielding
to the voice of  reason.   It certainly  was not in this case;  the
 unfortunate lover was in that situation when,  as the author of 
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.
239
the Spectator beautifully says, "all we can  think  is impotent
against half what we feel."
  The next morning found him on his way to  the Eastward, en-
deavoring to find,  in variety  and change of scene,  some relief
from heart-tortures, compared to which the bed of Procrustes was
a couch of roses.
  In less than a week more, Mortimer offered his hand to Miss
D----, and was accepted with an  undisguised joy, that showed
how completely she had forgotten her former  lover and how ut-
terly  she was given up,  heart and soul, to her new  attachment.
But her  lover's task was only half done.   The  consent  of the
father was yet to be obtained.   The  old gentleman  had yielded
his assent unhesitatingly to her union  with Lisle and was yet
unadvised of any change in her feelings or wishes, in  favor of the
Englishman.
  It is perhaps time to tell the reader  truly who this  last person-
age is.   Reluctant  as the writer is to introduce such characters,
it has in the present instance seemed unavoidable.   It is  neces-
sary therefore to inform the reader  that William Shehan, alias
Yorkshire Bill, alias Clarence  Mortimer, Esq., was one of those
chevaliers dHndustrie, for whom the United  States have,  of late
years, been so often indebted to the old world.   The  natural son
of a low, occasional actor in an English provincial  theater, his
youth  was spent in the  midst of associations  which, if not the
most  unexceptionable,  were at  least not such as to make  im-
possible the attainment of a respectable position in his paternal
profession; for from  such  scenes Edmund Kean emerged, the
greatest tragedian of his day.
  Alienating from  himself, by  his  precocious vices,  even the
humble  friends  of his  accidental  birth,  he  ran off  to London,
where, in  a  short time, even the metropolitian villians yielded
the palm of  thieving, house-breaking and forgery to Yorkshire
Bill.  But  the  atmosphere of the capital  becoming,  after ten
years'  trial,  decidedly unhealthy for one so well  known  to the
police, he  abandoned it in disgust and transported himself to the
wider field of the new world, for the display and exercise of those
talents which the Bow-street runners seemed incapable of  appre-
ciating.
  The nearest  approach he had made in this  country to the be-
havior or  character of  a gentleman was when, using his  stage-
acquired knowledge of dancing, he had given  lessons in  several
inland towns as a petit-maUre.   But his rascally propensities,  be- 
240
REMINISCENCES.
come from long indulgence a second nature, were too strong not
to develop themselves, even apparently in spite of himself; and
for some detected meanness or villiany, he was compelled to leave
successively each place where  he attempted to introduce or fix
himself.
  At present, temporary luck at the gaming-table, or some other
equally honorable means, had supplied him with funds on which
to gentlemanize for a season.  It need scarcely  be added that the
letters, introducing him  to the  D----'s, were forgeries.
  There  is no doubt that Mortimer earnestly  desired to marry
Laura  D----; not however  from any honorable attachment to
her,  the ardency of which, however ill-placed the passion, might
be plead in palliation or  partial excuse of the  means by which
he strove to accomplish his end.   The pure and holy sentiment
of love was as far above the  apprehension of his crime-polluted
soul, as the principles of the high-minded Lisle  were above his
own villianous motives.   But besides that Miss D----. was an
heiress of no contemptible number of broad acres, admission into
that or into any respectable family would at once give him posi-
tion in society;  and Ishmael-like  as had  been his whole guilty
life,  this was a consummation devoutly indeed  to be wished.
  It was not however without some misgivings and several tol-
erably  distinct doubts as to the result,  that he sought Mr. D----.
one  afternoon, and proceeded to make known  his wishes,  hopes
and  intentions with regard to the daughter.
   The old  gentleman listened at first with politeness to the pre-
face, then with evident  amazement to the statement of the case,
and  finally,  when Mortimer had got far  enough in his explana-
tions to manifest what the end  would be,  interrupted him:
  "Sir—Mr. Mortimer," said he warmly,  "I thought you knew—
you must have heard"—then checking himself,—"Ah, I forgot,
you are a stranger here.  Permit  me then to  inform you, sir,"
proceeded he, bowing with  ceremonious politeness, "that Miss
D--->-. is under a positive engagement of marriage to Mr. Pendle-
ton Lisle, to which engagement I have given my sanction."
  "I am authorized by Miss D----. to inform you," replied Mor-
timer very respectfully,  "that she herself dismissed Mr. Lisle,
more than  a week since."
  "The devil she did!"  burst in the old man  quickly and  again
becoming excited,—"and I suppose that is what started  Lisle off
to New York so suddenly the other day.  At  all events, I must
be permitted to say that I am surprised at you, sir.   You are old 
                    CRIME AND . ONISHMENT.                241

enough—at least you look old enough," continued he, measuring
the astonished  Englishman from head to foot;—"you look old
enough to know more than this of the usages of society; to know
the difference between the rights of hospitality and the right to
ask for  my daughter.  What and where are your claims, sir, to
admission into one of the oldest families in  Virginia and one of
the most respectable too?   Why, sir, I  have  known Pendleton
Lisle  more years than  I have known you days, almost; yes sir,
and his  father before him.  But you are too hasty,  sir," persued
D----•  in a calmer tone, "you are much too hasty, sir.  Lay be-
fore me more of your credentials—I doubt not you have them—
and give me the names of some ten or twenty of your friends
and connections at home,  to whom I may refer Mr.  Rush,   r
minister at London,  for inquiries;  and six months  hence will  be
amply soon enough to introduce this subject again.   In the mean-
time,"—Mortimer rose to take  leave—"though I am perfectly
willing  to  see  you at my  house and to introduce you  to my
friends, yet  I must take the liberty to hint that you will see the
impropriety of making  your visits of any marked frequency, for
positively,  sir, this subject must  not be  named to my daughter
till I hear from our minister at London.  Good evening, sir."
   Mortimer  left the  dignified old Virginian with feelings  better
imagined than described.  Disappointment, malice and revenge
burned  at his heart like  consuming fires.
   " 'More  credentials'  indeed!"  muttered he  to himself,  as he
turned toward his  hotel, grinding his teeth in rage,  "they mio-ht
easily enough  be  obtained as the  others were, but  as for the
names of connections or acquaintances at home, all those  at my
command would  scarcely recommend my  suit with  him, tho
d----d  haughty old  aristocrat!  'Subject not to be named to his
daughter till he hears from London,'—may be not."  And as he
muttered, a smile of infernal malignity crept over his features.
   Arrived at the hotel,  he despatched a note to Miss D----, de-
tailing,  ostensibly, the circumstances and result of his application
to her father; stating that Mr. D----. had refused on any terms
to listen to his suit,  had refused also to consider her engagement
to Lisle cancelled,  had insulted him and forbidden him the house,
that discouraged and heart-broken,  he was about to start next
morning to leave the country, never to return; and finally im-
ploring  her,  by every motive that would influence a  fond and
trusting woman,  to  give him an interview, a last meeting,  in
which to bid her an eternal farewell,  that evening at  11, in the
                             16 
242                     REMINISCENCES.

bower of the favorite summer-house where they had so often sat
together.
  More need not be told.  That evening an angel fell.
                         LEAF IV.

  Three or four months have passed since the occurrences last
detailed,  and it is cold December.  The scene is in a neat  New
York village,  situated at the  head of one of the many beautiful
lakes which add so much to the internal scenery of the Empire
State.
  Driven by disappointment, despair and vain regrets, like Orestes
by the Furies, Lisle had wandered on,  after leaving home,  stay-
ing only a few days at any one place;  mingling occasionally in
scenes of pleasure, distasteful as they were, in the vain hope of
finding relief from a sadness whose gloomy shadow alike darken-
ed the present and embittered the past.
  Nine out of ten young men in  his situation and feeling as
acutely as he felt his capricious abandonment, would have drown-
ed in the wine-cup a grief which time  seemed not to lighten nor
variety of scene to diminish.  But  he  had been too carefully in-
structed in the proper sense of what society had a right to expect
and require of him.  He even strove, with self-denial and heart-
control,  to check the ennuyee feeling which prompted him, al-
most momently,  to ask if life itself were worth enduring,  when
all  was  lost that seemed to him in his infinite  disappointment,
worthy either pursuit or possession.
  Travel brought no relief and seclusion might.   So one  morn-
ing, when the stage-coach stopped for breakfast at the beautiful
town, lying  so peacefully and invitingly by the tranquil  waters
of the lake,  he astonished the driver by ordering his luggage re-
moved and taken into the hotel,—he believed he should remain
there.
  Days, weeks  and months  passed, and   still he stayed.  His
mother and a few friends were informed of his place of retreat,
and scarce a mail passed without bringing him letters from  home.
But nothing availed to relume in his heart the  ashes of the past or
kindle up hope in the future.  Listless and aimless he passed the 
                    CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.                241

tim*. relieving the absolute impossibility of constant confinement
^ his room by long walks along the lake shores.
   The first month had almost passed before Lisle's natural good
sense,  to say nothing of his carefully inculcated consciousness of
auties, began to reproach him with a  selfish and unmanly yield-
ing to grief.  He was compelled to acknowledge that his present
course was scarcely carrying out the  great end of existence, and
soon self-reproach began to  be added to regrets.  But vainly did
he endeavor to shake off the incubus that hung over his heart and
threw its  nightmare  influence around his mental volition.  And
perhaps much of a valuable  life might  have been thus selfishly
wasted, in the want of something forcibly to  rouse him, but  fo
the following little incident.
  One afternoon, near sun-set, when his usual  walk led him to
pass the head of the lake, he stopped a few minutes to  look at the
groups of skaters, that were gliding about on the ice  which bor-
dered the shores, to the width of fifty or  more yards out.  Many
ehildred were also sporting there, too young to use the means of
locomotion enjoyed  by  their  older  companions.  Suddenly he
heard a scream, followed  by loud and alarmed  cries from  the
skaters.  A small boy of three or four years,  led  to the shore by-
its nurse and allowed in its sport  to run on the ice a few yards
from its guardian, had ventured too near one of those large open-
ings, known] as air-holes, and the treacherous crust had given
way.   All called for help but none daied render it, for everyone
knew that as the ice diminished in thickness toward the aperture,
the surface that would break  under a  child would scarcely bear
the weight of a boy or man.
  The  poor nurse was frantic.  Her good-natured neglect had  al-
lowed the accident, and she ran  screaming about, like a bird un-
der the gage  of a rattlesnake, not daring to approach,  but unable
to leave the drowning child.
  The  moment Lisle understood  the  occurrence, obeying the
first impulse, he dashed into  the water  and,  with the assistance
afforded by those  on shore, though at the  risk of his own life
rescued the child; and then hurried home, not more to change his
frozen  garments than to escape the thanks and blessings of the
grateful nurse and by-standers.
  Slight as the circumstance may appear, it occurred at a crisis in
his own mind and decided it;  nor lid he pretend  or attempt  to
conceal from himself that  the satisfaction of saving a human life
afforded him a pleasure to which his heart had long been a stran-
ger. 
244
REMINISCENCES.
   This little affair, introducing him to the grateful hospitalities of
 the family to which the child belonged, (and which happened to
 be one of the wealthiest in the village,)  led, almost  unavoidably
 on the part of Lisle, to an interchange of civilities  and acquaint-
 ance with them and others,,which seemed to have a most fortu-
 nate  influence on the incipient misanthrope.   Yielding up grad-
 ually his self-sought solitude  to the  kind politenesses  of the
 townspeople, he permitted himself to be by degrees persuaded that
 one dark cloud need not obscure a whole sky, that one bitter drop
 should not be allowed to render nauseous the whole cup of ration-
 al happiness that life presented to his lips; and  though  the fresh-
 ness, the ready confidence and the elastic spring of his  heart were
 gone forever, yet many fountains of joy still remained, and more
 than  this, many duties called  loudly upon him for their perform-
 ance, the neglect of which would render him  guilty  as  well  as
 unfortunate.  Three years before, upon the  accession of fortune,
 he  had  dropped the study of Law, when nearly through  the
 course, and he  now resumed his  studies, at the same  time  that
 he  compelled himself to re-enter  measurably the  society he had
 so long abandoned.
  Matters remained thus a few  weeks longer, up to Christmas eve.
 That  evening Lisle had  been spending  at a little party  at the
 house of Mr. Williams, the geiitleman whose child he  had saved-
 About 11 o'clock, a servant put into  his hand, a letter, which, af-
 ter looking  for a   moment at the superscription,  he  was about
 placing in his pocket.
  "0 read it, by all means,"  said the hostess,  hoping he  might
 possibly receive some news that would lessen the permanent mel-
 ancholy of one to whom she felt so indebted
  "Well, if  you will excuse me  a moment," said  he, rising  to
withdraw, -'I have had no  letter from home for several days and
 requested the Post-master  to send to me whatever might come  for
me to-night."  And proceeding to the next  room  he broke the
seal.
  At  the first glance he started, a moment after he became pale
and staggered against the mantel by whose lamp he was reading,
while he murmured to himself, "Merciful God!—can it be possi-
ble !"
  He had read but a half-dozen lines and they told him that Laura
D.------, was  ruined—and by the Englishman !
  Those in the next apartment heared his muttered exclamations
and then hurrying foot-steps through the hall.  The host went to
the door, but Lisle had disappeared. 
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.
245
  In twenty minutes afterward he was dashing down the road as
fast as horses could  take a coach, on his way to New York city
and the great thoroughfare to the South
                           LEAF V.

   The scene changes to the place where the former scenes of the
 story are laid.   The time is about a week before the last incidents
 of the last chapter.  Several young gentlemen  of  the town are
 together and some villainous deed seems the subject of conversa-
 tion.
   "Nothing in my life" pursued the first speaker  "ever shocked
 me as this did, when I first heard it, last evening."
   "I" said another, "always thought this Mortimer a puppy and
 a contemptible fellow, but never suspected  him capable of such
 villainy."
   "They say old D.------,  has driven his daughter from his
 house ?"
   Yes, and with more curses than ever an angry parent gave his
 child before—worse than old King Lear's."
   "That is not all,"remarked another;—"he shipped her favorite
 servant  off to  New Orleans  this  morning,"  what was that
 for ?"
   "Because she  had not  told him of the fact, before, which it
 seems 'Mirny knew some lime ago."
   "How came the old man to find it out ?"
  "She fainted last night at tea-table, I'm told,—laced too tight,
 I fancy,—old D. ------,.ordered 'Mirny to unloose her dress. The
girl was scared, knew it wouldn't do, and in her fright let out the
 secret."
  "He didn't turn her into  the street last  night, I hope,—one of
the coldest this winter !"
  "Yes he did  though, and  just  as she was—nearly dressed for
Mrs. X.'s party."
  "Did you notice Mortimer last night ?"
  "No, was he there ?—the d—d scoundrel !  It is the last party
he will attend in this town ?"
  ', Except one," added a gentleman by  the name of Nelson, who 
246
REMINISCENCES.
had not spoken till then, "I propose that he be invited to that to-
morrow morning by one of us and that the rest  keep it  up, one
after another, if necessary, till some one kills him."
  "Willyou be the first ?" asked one, rather drily.
  "Yes, if you'll be the second, in case he pinks me."
  There was a momentarly silence.
  "There's no need" said another  "of our  taking it  up.   Lisle
will return so soon as he hears this, and he will attend to the En-
glishman."
  "Why should he ?" remarked Nelson,—"he is no more bound
to do so than you or I, perhaps not so much.   She  has deprived
him of all right to avenge  her wrongs or play  knight-errant for
her by cutting him; besides, she has forfeited all right to  be de-
fended by Lisle, even if  she had not dismissed him."
  "Of course he is not  obliged to do  so, but  I think he will as-
sume the duty, if  only to rid the world of a scoundrel."
  Isn't her brother expected home soon ?" asked one.
  "Who—Lieut. D.------?  Yes he was to have  been at home
before this time, to see her married to Lisle."
  "If ever he meets Mortimer, there'll  be  one scoundrel less in
the world.  He will kill him as sure as fate.  Henry D.------, is
the best shot in Virginia."
  "I wonder, by the way," asked Nelson, "if any one knows any
thing of  Mortimer's shooting?"
  I fancy he's not much of a shot.  He's such a confounded brag
that if he could hit a stable-door, he'd have boasted of being- able
to bruise a dollar. I never heard him say any thing of his shoot"
ing."
  "Nor I," said another,—"I fancy he can't be  very ready at the
pistol."
  "Is Lisle ?" inquired  one.
  "What—a good shot?" answered Nelson, "I should think so;—
he will cut a tape at twelve paces, every shot."
  "He will do then.  I think this quarrel would .better be left with
him."
  "What if he do not take it up ?"
  "I'll make  an even bet that  he does."
  "If ever Lisle does call him out, he'll kill him.  Lisle's so coo'
and has so much self-command,  while the other is  so  excitable
he would be  easily  made to miss altogether, even if he be a good
shot." 
                   CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.                247

  "My only objection is, that  shooting  is too good a death for
such a villain to die."
  Scene changes.  Time, 10 o'clock P. M.  a few days after", that
of last scene.  Place, my office.  Several present, mostly young
gentlemen.
  "Who has seen him ? asked one.
  "I have,"—"and I,"—and I," replied two or three.
  "And you say he is so changed ?"
  "The most altered man  you ever saw.  Cheeks  pale and hol-
low, eyes sunken and lips blue,  as if he had the cholera.  Looks
as  though he  had  been living in a swamp for the last three
months."
  He has been at------in New York ever  since he left here;
but this change must have been since he heard this about her."
  "Poor fellow! how he must have suffered.  And you  say  they
met last evening on the hotel-steps ?"
  "Just before supper."
  "Tis a wonder Lisle did not shoot him down !"
  "You don't know Lisle," remarked Nelson; "he is too civil-
ized for a street row."
  "I am rather astonished," remarked another, "that the Eng-
lishman did not  shoot Lisle when he  struck him.   I'm told  ho
put his hand in his clothes as if feeling for a weapon, but not find"
ing one concluded I suppose,  like Falstaff, that discretion is the
better part of valor, and so—"
  "Did Lisle strike him  ?"—"who was there ?"—"who saw it?''
asked several.
  "I was present," replied Nelson;—"Lisle did not strike him.
He had waited near a half hour for him, and when at last the Eng-
lishman  came  up the steps, Lisle stepped toward him and cool-
ly told—you know Lisle's always cool when he's angry—that he
was the basest villain on earth, that they  could never  meet  but
once again and that must be to-morrow morning at eight.
  "I wonder if Mortimer will meet him ?" said one.
  "If he does not" whispered  a gentleman  near  me  in reply,
"Nelson will kill him in the street.  You know Nelson  is sort of
third cousin to theD------s; he  has had  Mortimer watched  ever
since this came out, to see that he didn't leave the town and----"
  "What do you think of these things, Dr.?" inquired  Nelson
turning to me, apparently only to interrupt the whispers of which
he suspected himself the subject. 
248
REMINISCENCES.
  "I am very sorry for Lisle," I answered.
  "0 you need not be, he's a very good shot."
  "I don't mean that.  I object to the  practice of duelling,  and
when a man of Lisle's high standing is  unfortunately so circum-
stanced as to be compelled to fight, he gives to the practice a sanc-
tion it ought never to receive.  If none but such men as Morti-
mer would fight,  it would do little harm,  for the practice would
soon be considered ungentlemanly;  but when men  like Lisle al-
low themselves to be called out or to call out others, it does mis-
chief."
  "Well, perhaps you're right—that-is, if  duelling is wrong; but
what are we to do—what else have we?—I  believe in Grattan's
dying  advice to his  son—'make  every man answerable for his
words.'  And,  for instance, how else  would you  or could  you
resent  or punish  such an offence as this of  Mortimer's?  Legal
remedies are nothing—mere mockeries  in such a case."
  "Whatever  way would be right,  this one is'certainly wrong.
Lisle's life is worth a dozen of the  Englishman's,  and yet they
are to  be pitted together without odds.  If  Mortimer fall,  who
will regret him a  moment, or who will not rather thank Heaven
that such a villian is  killed.   If  Lisle  fall,  his  connections are
plunged in mourning, his mother—dependant on him—is heart-
broken and perhaps destitute, society  loses a valuable  member
and the youth of  our town a pattern of gentlemanly deportment
and integrity of life."
  "All true, but you need not fear such a  result.  Lisle has nev-
er yet been out, but he  is a  splendid shot, and everybody knows
Mortimer must fall,  as  he deserves, he is  so excitable while the
other is always cool."
  "Very likely, but it does not alter or affect the principle.  If
the Englishman  were an experienced  duellist,  much as he  de-
serves punishment, he would escape and only add the murder of
Lisle to his other crimes.  And skill at the trigger is an advan-
tage that any scoundrel may have of the most honorable gentle-
man living, in a duel.  If you wish to  leave it to chance entirely
or the  judgment  of God, take the  old ordeal of the  dark ages.
That was not more fortuitous,  was more impartial, and  on  the
whole, I think, rather preferable."
  During the momentary silence that followed, a boy entered and
handed a note to  Nelson.
  "Does any one know  who is Lisle's second?" asked one.
  "I imagine he can tell," said another, nodding toward Nelson, 
                    CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.                 249

who was gazing in evident perplexity at the note he had just re-
ceived.
  "I say,"  inquired Nelson  at last, holding up  the  note and
pointing to the signature,  "who knows anything of Fitz James
Melton?"
 ' "I do not,"—"Nor I,"—"Nor I," replied several at once.
  "Well,  here's  a note from him—it seems he is Mortimer's
friend—requesting an interview with me at the ------ Hotel,  to
arrange preliminaries;—I wonder who he is."
  "Mortimer will meet him then," said one, "I am glad of that."
  "Yes, but this  Melton, who is he?"
  "Never heard  of him before,—possibly a  stranger,  recently
come here,—sounds like an English name."
  "That must be  it," said Nelson, going out.
  About or near midnight,  sitting alone after the  gentlemen had
gone out,  I was  surprised by  the entrance of Lisle.  He  was
scarcely to be  recognized,  and I was the more shocked by his
altered looks,  as  his last letter to me had spoken of his uninter-
rupted health during his absence.  Some of my late visitors had
referred to his changed appearance, but I  had no idea of  its ex-
tent.  What he must have endured perhaps no language  could
tell.  He  had  been  an intimate friend and came now to me  as
such.
  "Doctor," said he after the first salutations, "it is late  and I
must not detain you long.   I  have come to request of you what
I do not wish to ask of any other, painful and probably distaste-
ful  as the duty may be to you."
  I assured him  of  the cheerfulness with which I would under-
take anything he  could ask.
  "Let me  tell you what it is before you promise," replied he,
"for if I fall to-morrow, it  must be, to some one,  a most sacred
duty.  And so anxious, so resolved am I upon  its being  done,
that I hardly think I could even lie quietly  in the grave, know-
ing it  undone.  I wish you,  Doctor, if this affair unexpectedly
result  fatally  for me  to-morrow, to seek out her,  you know
whom I mean,  and see that she is not suffering more than is un-
avoidable, more than even she  deserves, in poverty and wretched-
ness.   Her  father has driven her from his door, and she has dis-
appeared, no  one knows whither.  If I  survive to-morrow, I
shall save you the trouble;  but to provide for  the worst, I have
left a credit for you in bank, sufficient to carry out my plans."
  I  was not much surprised at the request,  though the  reader 
250
REMINISCENCES.
may be, for I  knew the man;  and did  not hesitate to give  the
pledge desired.  I have always had my own opinion of the  in-
consistency  with which society, in cases of this kind,  makes an
outcast of the victim and receives  into its circles,  with little  less
than applause, the guilty betrayer.
  Little more passed between us.  I advised him to  go to  bed
mmediately  and took him home with me,  that his early absence
next  morning might  not alarm his family.  At his urgent re-
quest, I consented to accompany him to the field.
                         LEAF VI.

  Breakfast  was ordered at seven.   Nelson and a surgeon called
before  it was over; little was said by any  of the party and  we
were soon on  our way to the ground.   It was almost the only
mild morning during the season,  and the consequence  of  the
change was a heavy fog,  so  thick, almost opague,  that Nelson
whispered to me he  feared they would have to put them up at
nine or ten paces.
  As  the hack drove  into the boat, the ferryman  assured us it
would have been impossible, at any other sort  of ferry, to cross
the river through that'dense  mist... This  was what is called  a
rope-ferry and could not go  amiss.  In  reply to a question from
Nelson,  the man said that another carriage  had crossed about
fifteen minutes before. We glanced at each other.   They would
be on  the field before us, a slight advantage, but of no great
moment.
  After crossing, we had about a mile to drive.  Alighting some
fifty yards from the road and near a hundred  from the  selected
ground, we left the coachman with strict orders not to move from
the spot, except to come  and inform us if anything appeared in
sight.  As we approached the ground, a grassy knoll, surrounded
on  three sides  by woods, we perceived the Englishman and his
friend  Melton—a stranger to us—walking about in cloaks,  ap-
parently to keep warm.  But  the moment we came in sight,
Mortimer turned round and looking directly toward Lisle, burst
into a loud course laugh and cleared his throat in a marked  and
offensive manner. 
                    CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.                 251

  "How ungentleman-like," observed Nelson to me as we glanc-
ed at the one insulted.  Not a muscle of his face moved.  Morti-
mer's object was evident, to discompose and flurry his antagon-
ist and disturb the steadiness of his nerves by irritating him,  but
he failed.
  The seconds proceeded to measure the ground, when some dif-
ference arose as to the distance.  Melton, an impudent, cockney-
looking fellow, insisted upon  nine paces,  alleging  as a reason,
the  thick fog.  To this  Nelson objected, because he  knew that
Lisle's practicing distance was  twelve paces, and because he sus-
pected that Melton knew or had heard of Lisle's skill with his
weapon  and for this  very reason wished to change the distance
in order  to deprive him of the advantage of shooting at his ac-
customed interval.  Nelson was certain  of this when, upon his
refusal to place them up at nine paces, the other then proposed
fifteen; and the disagreement seemed  likely  to be  protracted
when Mortimer called out impatiently—
   "D----n it, Melton, let him have his distance, I can't stand here
all the morning in this d----d fog."   So the usual distance was
agreed upon and stepped off.
   During this time, the surgeon and I stood a  little apart,  con-
versing with Lisle.  He  was quite composed and gave  me several
little commissions to execute for him, in the event of the worst
happening.   Of this  I thought there was little danger and indeed
he thought as much himself.   Still he was somewhat uneasy on
one  point.  He wished earnestly that if he fell his large property
should  go to  his mother.   But as he hold it in his own  right,
having received it at the  ago of twenty-two, by the death and will
of a paternal uncle, (with residuary legates in case of his death
without a will and without heirs,) the mass of  his property,  in
absence  of a will, would fall to a distant  relative.  He told me
he had made  no will. Several  times during the preceding day,
he had seated himself to  write one,  but each time he had thrown
aside his pen.  A strong persuasion that it was  unnecessary had
prevented him, and perhaps also a lurking superstition, which I
have heard spoken of by others, that to  prepare for a fatal ter-
mination of a duel,  tends to produce such result.  Saving this,
he was perfectly calm, and serious.  I liked the latter quality in
his demeanor,  if it were only to contrast with that of  his antag-
onist. -
   Mortimer was evidently,  to me at least, trying to imitate the
collected  self-possession of Lisle,  but he overdid  the matter. 
252
REMINISCENCES.
While his friend was  busy with Nelson,  he walked about,  with
much assumed and rather awkward nonchalance, and when the
seconds had settled preliminaries,  he chatted and  laughed  with
Melton, sometimes quite loudly.
  I was at last rather startled by some words dropped by  them
loud enough  to reach me.  Their conversation had been  carried
on in a sort of low cant-French, when I heard the  question,—
  "Sait-il que vous etes tireur?"
  The Englishman's only reply was  a shake of the head, ac-
companied by a knowing look, which gradually  changed  to a
smile of fiendish malignity as his eyes rested finally on his antag-
onist.
  "Bon,  Bon!1'  exclaimed the other with sympathizing  malice,
"ne vous l'etonnerez pas done!"
  At that moment, as the seconds  were about placing their  prin-
cipals, our coachman appeared  with the information that a car-
riage could be heard driving furiously along the frozen road  from
the ferry toward  us.  This seemed likely to disturb our or era-
tions.  From the highway our whole party was /visible,  when-
ever the fog should lift.   Nelson advised  to  retreat  among the
trees,  or at least remain quiet where  we were,  till the possible
cause of interruption should have passed.   He was aware of what
the rest of us were ignorant of, that the police had got wind of
the contemplated meeting and intended to  prevent.it, if possible.
  Mortimer,  however,  with  characteristic impatience, insisted
that we should either proceed where we were or  finish the  affair
somewhere else immediately,  adding as a reason,  "I have a par-
ticular engagement with Miss X. at ten."
  This was a falsehood and aimed at Lisle, and was designed, by
reminding  him of Miss D----,  to ruffle his cool self-command.
And while I regretted to see,  by the compression of his lip, that
he felt the allusion, I could not repress  the thought that the issue
of this business,  which  Mortimer was in such  haste  to finish,
might possibly interfere slightly with his pretended morning en-
gagement.
  It was at length decided that we should proceed where we were.
Two  pistols were  accordingly placed in the hands of each  prin-
cipal,  with the following conditions:  at a given signal they were
to fire together, and then, if neither was killed or so badly wound-
ed as to fall,  they were at liberty  to advance and discharge the
second pistol  at any time or distance they pleased.
  As the seconds were placing the weapons in the hands of the 
                     CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.                 253

 combatants, the noise of rapidly rolling carriage wheels,  which
 had been for the last minute or two heard approaching us,  sud-
 denly ceased, and I looked mechanically toward the road.
   The haze barely allowed  me to  perceive that a carriage  had
 stopped opposite us, its  door opened and a person sprang out.  I
 could see no more and turned again to our party.
   The toss of a dollar had assigned to Melton the duty of giving
 the signal.   There was a single moment of intense anxiety, and
 then his voice was heard:
   "Are you ready?—One—two—three—fire!"
   Two pistols were discharged at once.  Mortimer uttered a sharp
 cry of pain, putting his hand to his side; and supposing him mor-
 tally wounded,  and momentarily forgtful of  all the conditions,
 we sprang toward him,  though he had not fallen.  Lisle was si-
 lent.  His bullet had struck the under side of the  guard of Morti-
• mer's pistol and glanced downward to  what is commonly called
 the hip-bone, whence it had glanced a second time, leaving no
 farther injury than a slight bruise and an intense momentary
 pain.   But the aim had been sure,  and nothing  but the  pistol-
 guard had saved the Englishman's life.
   We therefore turned from him and  stepped out of the line of
 fire,  to allow the combatants to use their second pistols.  But on
 looking toward Lisle, who can describe our  amazement to see
 him down and motionless!
   The fog had suddenly  cleared and the fatal truth was apparent
 instantly.
   "Lisle! Lisle!—0,  Great God!"  exclaimed Nelson in tones of
 agony, as he knelt by the side of his friend,—"are you hurt?"
   There was no answer,  and I stooped over the  body.  A dark
 purple stream ran from  the  temple down the  face.  Mortimer's
 bullet had entered the brain.  He was stone-dead!
   "Well, gentlemen," said the Englishman, in a tone of  sneer-
 ing irony,  "I suppose the morning's business is  settled, and—"
   "No! not by half!" interrupted  the  stern voice of a new-
 comer, unperceived  till  then.
   I turned, scarce believing  my senses,  and met—Lieut. Henry
 D----, Laura's brother.
   "Thank God!" almost shouted Nelson, springing up from the
 corpse of Lisle, "the villain will be punished yet!" for  Lieut.
 D----. was well known as the best shot in the navy.
   For the first time, Mortimer turned pale.  He doubtless recog-
 nized D----. by his resemblance to his sister, and a meeting with 
354
REMINISCENCES.
the brother of his victim was what he little dreamed  of.  There
was  something too  in  the fiery glance of the young man, like
that of the Avenging Angel, which told the seducer that the hour
of retribution was at last come.
  Nelson, without a word,  quietly assumed the duty of friend to
D----, and commenced re-loading the discharged pistol.
  "Is not this one loaded?" asked the Lieutenant, taking the un-
discharged pistol from  the passive hand of the corpse and  trying
the barrel with the  ramrod; then turning to Nelson—"I think,"
said he, with a peculiar emphasis, "one will be sufficient."
   There was something terrible as well as sublime in that  broth-
er's standing there  to avenge the ruin of his lost sister upon her
destroyer; and as he quietly took the precise spot where Lisle had
fallen and looked toward Melton for the signal, the latter seemed
to lose his  impertinent puppyism,  as Mortimor did his cour-
age.
   "Give the signal, sir," said D----. sternly, and, in a low voice,
audible only from  the death-like stillness around, Melton obey-
ed:
   "Are you ready?—One—two—three—fire!"
   Even in that dreadful moment,  the native villainy of  Morti-
mer's disposition showed  itself, and, determined  to  get some
slight advantage of  the  only one among us whom he seemed to
fear, he fired too soon, by about a second.  The next moment
another report  was heard, and with a gurgling scream,  which
 betrayed where he  was hit, the Englishman reeled and fell.  Of
 course all were  at his side immediately.
   D----'s bullet had struck the throat, on the right side, between
the Trachea and the Carotid Artery, and cutting the oesophagus,
 had passed out  through the Spine, just  below the Medulla Ob-
 longata, as that part of the brain is called, which rests upon  tho
 Spinal column.  D----. was himself  unhurt, Mortimer's bullet
 having passed through his hat.
   The Lieutenant  was said never to miss his aim, and I  have
 sometimes  thought a  fearful revenge was intended in the  very-
 mark he chose.
   Most persons probably know that if the spinal marrow  be
 struck anywhere, all of the body below the wound dies instantly,
 so far as  sensation is concerned; while the rest remains alive,
 conscious to a  frightful sort of  existence perhaps five minutes,
 possibly for days.   But such wound is utterly incurable  and the
 death that follows  is one of horrible torture. 
                    CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.                -355

  A single glance sufficed in this instance  for me, but the sur-
geon, for form's sake, made a digital examination  of  the wound,
and the,n observed that the wounded man might  live  fifteen min-
utes.
  The momentary silence that followed the surgeons announce-
ment was interrupted by peace-officers  who had, as usual, arrived
too late.
                         LEAF VII.

  My sketch has lengthened unexpectedly upon my  hands, and I
must hasten to its conclusion.
  All efforts were fruitless, on the part  of the brother  or myself,
to discover the retreat of the  unfortunate Laura;  and as she so
carefully refused to her former friends all knowledge of her exist-
ence, it has ever been a  mystery to mo  that she should have sent,
in her sickness,  for a physician to whom she had  formerly been
so well known.
  She had clung to her  second lover with  all  the  tenacity of at-
tachment of which her nature was capable.   But this love too was
destined to change, though not,  as the  former from any fault  of
 hers.
   The publication of the duel with the  names of those concerned
 was not a fortnight old and  tho parties were  yet under arrest,
 when police-agents arrived from  New York,  with  requisitions
 upon the Gov. of Virginia, for  the bodies of Fitz  James Melton)
 with a half-dozen aliases, and  of Win. Shehan,  alias Yorkshire
 Bill, alias Clarance Mortimer, (if yet living,) to be taken to New
 York and there tried for felony.  Melton was sent, but  Mortimer
 was long  since  beyond tho reach  of farther human punishment
 for his crimes.
   The speedy  circulation and  general knowledge of these facts
 soon brought them even  in  her seclusion, to  the ears of Laura.
 This was the  climax  to  the miseries of  the proud but broken-
 hearted girl.  Her love for Mortimer, and  her  obstinate though
 woman-like belief in his  worthiness  had hitherto sustained  her
 even in her out-cast wrethedness, and had been the  straw of hope 
256
REMINISCENCES;
to which she clung, all the more closely and convulsively,  as it
was all she had left to cling to.
   But the terrible knowledge that he,—for whom she had sacri-
ficed honorable love, station in society, the world's  and her own
esteem,—was not only an adventurer and a villain, but not  even
an honorable villain  in  the  world's regard, a mere common  and
branded felon, the associate and co-laborer with common thieves;—
jhis was the last intolerable drop in her  cup of agony, the final
blow, under the weight of which, love, pride, all that had hitherto
sustained her gave way at once, and she turned with almost joy-
ful eagerness, to the only  refuge left her,  the grave.   Yet with a
peculiarity  of  conscientiousness,  not  unfrequent,  in some
form or other, where crime is meditated, she could not bring her-
self, even in contemplated suicide, to destroy more existences than
one; and though she provided herself with poison, she defered its
use until the birth of her infant.
   And now, in possession of all the circumstances, the reader can
understand, or at least fancy, with some approximation to truth,
the nature, extent and intensity of that wretched girl's sufferings,
during the long, bitter and to her tortured  soul almost intermiabfo
three  months of  Winter, that  passed  from  the morning of the
duel to the evening when I was sent for.
   No wonder that every feature of her countenance, every pecu-
liarity of her once matchless loveliness was so  changed by meas-
ureless sorrow that recognition was impossible.
   My story returns at its close to  the scene of its opening.
   Ver y early  on the following  morning,  I started  to fulfil  my
promise of the evening, previous, and  was met, about a hundred
yards from my own door, by the same boy who had been the
former messenger, with a request  from old Sukey, the nurse, to
come quickly.
   Arrived  at the  bedside, all was  explained  in  a moment.  A
small, empty, blue-glass vial, still clutched in the lifeless and stif-
fened fingers, the swollen neck and a strong odor of bitter almonds
aboutthe body, betrayed, the presence of the most active and remedi-
less poison known to Chemistry.  She must have swallowed the
fatal draught during  the night  perhaps shortly after I had left her,
for the body was perfectly cold.
   One thing was noticeable.  A strange smile shown on the with-
ered and wasted features of the dead girl.  She must have found
death far less bitter than life had been for months before. 
REMINISCENCES.
NUMBER XIII.
THE DRUNKARD'S SON.
                         LEAF I.


   Well, I suppose you know old Mayland's dead at last ?"
   "No !—when did he die ?"
   "About midnight;—went  off in a fit or something of that sort."
   "Mania a Potu, I suppose ?"
   "I don't know what the doctors called his complaint.  Some-
thing brought on by  his drinking though. I've been expecting
the old fellow would drop off in some such way, for ten  years
past."
   "'Tis a good thing, since  he has drank up the remnant of his
property, that his family are  all dead but Ned.
  "Yes,—and a pity Ned's not gone too.  He's a worthless fel-
low."
  "He has had no chance to  be anything else yet.  The old man's
course has borne hard upon his son. I think the young fellow has
some stamina in his composition."
   "Pshaw !—did you ever know a drunkard's son come  to any-
thin<r.  The father's character will stick to Ned, like the  coat of
                           1? 
238
REMINISCENCES.
Nessus.  No one will trust him, no one  give him a lift.   Even if
he have good qualites where  will he find a field for their  exer-
cise ?"
  "There's no doubt, I think, about his possessing talent.  You
know old Mayland was, in his better days, one of our first men,
in talents as well as wealth; and Mrs.  Mayland  was  one of the
finest of women."
  "More shame to her husband  for breaking her heart by his dis-
graceful course."
  That, you  know, commenced with the loss  of his property,
and was probably caused by it.  I wonder, by the way, if there's
any truth in the  old story they used to tell of Tremley's having
got possession  of Mayland's property  by  rather questionable
means ?"
  What ! John Tremley ?—Elder in the church, President of our
Temperance Society and Director in the bank,  where his  name
will £0 for two thousand any  day !  Wonldn't believe such a
thing of him for a minute."
  "As for his two hundred thousand, most of that was Mayland's
once.  He  owes his bank-directorship to his  wealth, and if he be
really villain enough to have wronged Mayland, he can easily be
also hypocritic enough to patronize the  church and Temperance
Society, as a cloak for  his rascality.  You must  have heard the
circumstances,—how he came here forty years  ago, a penniless
boy, and being second cousin to Mayland, the latter was benevo-
lent enough to give him an education, fit him for  the bar, and
then—"
  "O yes.  I've heard all that and it is  one reason why  I  can't
believe Tremley  unprincipled  enough  to defraud the  man  to
whom he owed so much, to say nothing  of the distant relation-
ship."
  "Well I have heard of such things as resurrection lawyers,  in
my time "
   "But surely  you   never heard Tremley accused  of being
one ?"
   "I'll tell you one thing.  I myself shall be satisfied  in less than
a month by Tremley's own course toward Ned Mayland, whether
 or no he has wronged the young man's father.  Ned is  now near
 twenty-one.   I heard  this morning  that he has been  privately
studying Law, for three years past; though  how he could do  it I
 can't see, for he  has  watched and followed or accompanied  his
father like a shadow,  during the whole time, to keep him from 
THE DRUNKARD'S SON
259
harm in his drunken fits, and  has, to my knowledge,  saved the
old man's life some three or four times, when he was too drunk to
know it  or thank him for it afterward.  At all events,  the lad
needs a helping hand now to hold him up for a while, under pre-
judice that  will exist against a drunkard's  son.  I myself don't
think he will want it long, but at first it is  indispensible, to give
him  even a chance to show what he  is.  Now  if old Tremley has
not cheated the Maylands, he will do what  common gratitude re.
quires.   He will do for young Mayland what old Mayland did for
him. But if he has wronged the old man, the son  will be  an
eye-sore, and Tremley will feel that the sooner Ned is out of the
way, the better."
  "But then, a drunkard's son  ! I tell you sir, the moral sense of
this community is now, thank Heaven, and I hope  always will
be, against  a drunkard.  Ned  can  never make any  thing here.
There's  a  prejudice here  and in  every  community and there
ought to be, against a drunkard's son.   If he  had the talents of
Clay or Calhoun he could do nothing here."
   "Well, the world's wide, he can go elsewhere; but  if Tremley
only does what he ought—"
   "Why, what do you suppose he  ought to do ?—May be you
think Ned ought to marry his daughter and get his father's two
hundred thousand back again ?"
   «N0—though stranger things than that have happened."
   That's a good one upon my word ! The son of a common sot
marry the  richest heiress  of the  first family  in the county !   I
tell you sir,Ned Mayland would have to become richer and worthier
than a drunkard's son ever was yet, before I would give  him my
daughter,  and she wont have the  tenth part of two  hundred
thousand."
   "One  thing at least is certain;—if every one here  looks upon
poor Ned as you seem to, he never can be  any thing—ho  would
better die at ouce."
   "That's just  my opinion,   It  would be  the best thing that
could happen to  him.  A drunkard's son,   indeed !  Well, good
morning.—A drunkard's son !"—And the neighbors parted.
   Both of them were correct. It was true that Edward May-
land was a youth of  unusual  talent and of the best principles;
but  true also that he was a drunkard's son.  True that John Trem-
 ley  Esq., was an elder in the church, director in bank, worth two
hundred thousand dollars and patron, nominally  at  least,  of the
benevolent institutions of the  day; and true also that  he  was a 
:i60
REMINISCENCES.
villain and a hypocrite.   True that, though employed for years>
in watching with filial and sleepless vigilence the steps of a besotted
and helpless father, young Mayland had still found time to master
the dry and externally repulsive technicalities and intricacies  of
modern Law; but true also that,  as one of the above  talkers had
said, there was in the community a prejudice against him, as a
drunkard's  son.  The  "moral  sense of the community"  was
against him."
   "Moral sense  of the community ?"  Abased  and  mis-applied
phrase !—Expressing generally the most narrow,  unjust and ty-
rannical feeling that can pervade the  heart of a society.  Most
frequently perverted, always liable to be  so.  A sort of modern
bed of Procrustes, by which  all  the members of the social  body
are measured,—the too  short to be  racked, the  too  long to  be
maimed.
   It was the so-called moral sense of an Athenian  community
that poisoned Socrates,—and of a Jewish one that crucified Christ.
Under the  name of Ostracism it banished  Aristides,  and under
cover of false accusation,, imprisoned  Miltiades,  and exiled Ca-
millus and Coriolanus.
   The abuses and excesses of this feeling are seen most in  demo-
cratic governments,  because, under the name  of  "public opin-
ion," it is the special curse of republican communities.  That  it
prevents some from committing crimes and compels others  to
practice ostensible  virtues, is not denied.   That it fills church
pews with hypocrites and upholds abused power in  high places, is
equally unquestionable.   And whether it is most to be rejoiced at
that Providence can accomplish good  by evil means,  or most  to
be lamented that good must be accomplished  by such means;—
whether we ought to be  most glad that in degenerate  Rome a
Brutus was found to strike the usurper and  free his country,  or
most to regret that Rome could be freed only  by the violation of
friendship's and  honor's ties and  by the assassin's knife;—I  leave
to others to determine.
   But so it is, and so it was in this instance.  In the community
where young Mayland resided,  there was  a prejudice,  a  public
opinion against him,—there  he could never rise, and  he was not
sjow in perceiving this. 
THE DRUNKARD'S SON
261
                          LEAF II.

  Something  near a month after the conversation related in last
chapter, on a clear summer evening and about an hour after sun-
set, Miss Virginia Tremley left her room in the fine old mansion
of her father's, (fifteen years before the homestead of tho May-
lands,) to walk in the gardens which flanked the lawn in front of
the house.
  The reader is at liberty, if he insist upon it, to fancy this walk
purely an accidental  one,  since  romantic young ladies often do
these things; but I confess myself of a decidedly  different opin-
ion, for, on reaching  the bottom of the gardens near the road, in-
stead of turning again toward the house,  Miss Tremley, with a
hasty backward glance, turned  to the  left and  entered a pretty
summer-house, at whose door, with  some symptoms of impa-
tience, stood Edward Mayland.  It was clearly a lovers' tryst.
  Few words were spoken at first, for Mayland was saddened by
his father's recent death, as well as  by  the hopelessness  of his
own future, and Miss  Tremley sympathized  with  her  lover; be-
sides to  deprive his  future of hope, darkend  hers  also.  But
their moments were  limited and Edward soon made known to her
his plans  and intentions.
  "I can do nothing  here," said he gloomily and bitterly.  "Even
the friends of my father's better days  look coldly on  me now,
and,—in short, Virginia, I  have been compelled  to decide that I
must go elsewhere, must leave you, with  everything else that I
love, and  wait for better days to fulfill the hopes that I have formed
and you have sanctioned.
  The young girl's tears fell fast while she vainly strove to hide
 them, but she answered nothing, and Mayland proceeded;—
  "I have settled all the little business I had  to arrange here, and
shall leave—to-morroW."
   "So soon ?"
   "It is necessary," replied the  lover sadly.  "I have delayed till
this time only in order to see you once more.  And besides, Vir-
ginia, when you once see with me the necessity that I  should  go
elsewhere to pass through the long probation, the great life-strug-
gle that  awaits me, before I can hope to obtain  that  wealth  or
eminence which will insure your father's consent to our marriage;
you will see also the propriety of my starting as soon as possible. 
262
REMINISCENCES.
since every hour that I linger only places still farther distant  the
fulfillment of all my hopes."
  "I believe—I know you are right,"  said she, endeavoring to
control her tears; "I know it  can be only after  a  long time and
great changes that my father  will consent to—to the marriage,
and the sooner you go, the sooner also will you return; but this
is very sudden, and,—when shall I hear  from you or see  you
again ?"
  "I cannot tell when I shall see you again,"  slowly  responded
Mayland.   "I can scarcely hope to accomplish what I  propose in
less'than  ten years.  I  do not now know how it will be  possible
to communicate with  you,  and  I dare not tell you, Virginia
how much I dread that, in my long and uncertain  absence, with
so many others, suiters too, around you, I  may  be forgotten.  I
know I am selfih, Virginia, even to desire or  expect you to wait
till I can ask you of your father, but I  think love  is always so."
  By this time the young lady had recovered somewhat her com -
posure and in a voice of calmness she said;—
  I have  long, that is for months, foreseen that this must happen,
and I must try to bear it, but surely, Edward,  you can tell mo
when I may hear of you again ?"
  "No, I cannot," replied he rather hastily, for the very  impossi-
bility of answering her question rendered him impatient  at it'
being asked.
  "Edward !" exclaimed she in a remonstrating tone,—then, as
if  recollecting herself, she added proudly;—Well, sir,  if you can
spend ten years without any  communication between us, I cer-
tainly can."
  "Virginia! you are unreasonable," replied  Mayland, in, atono
quite as proud as her own,—"how can  I—"
  "Let it pass, sir," interruped she coldly.
   "Virginia !" said the young man, to whom, in his moody and
feverish state of, mind and body, coldness from  her was  the last
drop in the overfiUed cup  of bitterness;—"You  do not love met
or you could not speak to me in such a tone."
   "Sir !" exclaimed the young girl, astonished and  now  really-
angry at such an iifnputation,  for she was not sufficiently aware of
his feelings and physical health to make allowances for his irrita-
bility;—"I should think I had given you  sufficient proof of  that,
by condescending to listen to your vows at all, to  save  me from
such an  accusation."
   Stung to the quick by this  allusion  to  their  disparity of posi- 
THE drunkard's son.                 263
tion, which was indeed only forced out by momentary anger and
regretted by the lady as soon as uttered, Mayland merely said in a
voice of unnatural calmness;—
  "Do you wish to recall your vows ?"
  Since you propose it Sir, and probably desire it, perhaps it is
the wisest thing for both of us, and the best."
  "Be it so, then !"  exclaimed he, wrought up  almost to mad-
ness in his phrenzied excitement.  At the same instant, a heavy
step was heard descending the gravel walk  and  Miss Tremley
sprang toward the entrance, uttering a faint scream as she-emerg-
ed into the moon-light.
   "Miss Tremley !—Virginia !" cried Mayland in a  tone of an-
guish, as he sprang  after her—"for Heaven's sake do not leave
me thus !—Must we never meet again ?"—but he stopped short as
he almost ran against  the figure of John Tremley, who stood
there, in the full moon-light, choaking and almost speechless with
rage.
   "No Sir, never !" said the  old man harshly,  replying  himself,
as soon as he could speak, to the young man's passionate exclama-
tion.  "As for you," and he turned to  his  daughter, who  was
moving slowly toward the house,—"wilful and disobedient child
get to  your room  immediately, and let your walks be for  the fu-
ture, somewhat earlier in the evening.   And do you begone sir,"
said he furiously to Mayland, "and think yourself lucky that I
do not call a servant to whip you from  my grounds.  You,  &
drunkard's  son,  the beggerly offspring  of a  common sot, dare
to address my daughter! You, who could not marry the daugh-
ter of any decent  man in the county !  Is it possible !—what are
we coming to ?"  And the old man  shook with the  violence of
his passion
   "Mr. Tremley," replied the young man, coldly and restraining
himself with difficulty, "whatsoever you may  so far  forget your-
self as to say, I can have no  quarrel  with you.   The time may
possibly come sir, when you will repent of this insult."  And he
turned slowly down  the walk.
   When he reached its foot,  he paused and looked back  toward
the retreating form of her,  whom he would now almost have
given a limb from his body to speak to for five minutes, that they
might mutually recall their  last  bitter words.  What would he
have given to see her only look  back, if but  once—for a single
moment. But she did  not.   He did net know that hot scalding
t jars were blinding her eyes, and that she was hurrying on to con- 
264
REMINISCENCES.
ceal from her father the overpowering agitation which she could
not control; nor could he know  of the whole  sleepless night o*
weeping she was about to pass.  And as her  form disappeared in
the doorway, without one backward glance, to show mindfulness
of him or regret for what had just passed between them, May-
land littered not a word, but with a gesture of despair he turned
through the gate and pursued his way slowly toward the town.
                         LEAF III-

  About nine o'clock next morning, a ragged boy called  for me
to go and see Mr.  Mayland.  I had for years been  his father's
family physician and of course did not hesitate.   I found him in
high fever.  It seems he had spent most of the night in the open
air, wandering about to cool his excited feelings.  His health had
been severely drawn upon by his constant watching and  nursing
of his father, during the  latters illness.  Affliction at the loss of
his parent, anxiety  as to  his  own dark prospects, mortification
the most bittei at the prejudice he  saw  exciting against him, and
consciousness of the utter impossibility of any  success  in life,
save at the price of exile from all that he  loved among the  living
or dead;—all these mental tortures  had been wearing his frame
for a month, and the events of the previous evening had been the
climax.
  Ten days  of fever and delirium  followed, though the ready
diagnosis of  his disease was prevented by some peculiar and puz-
zling symptoms, in explanation of which Dr. R.  (the consulting
physician) and myself differed. Finally, when the case began to
look doubtful, Dr. R. intimated more than once, that in case of
fatal termination to the illness, he earnestly desired a post-mortem
examination.
  To this I objected, not  only  because I was myself satisfied on
the main points  of difficulty,  but also because private  reasons
rendered me particularly  averse to such an  examination in that
case. R. insisted, and even  intimated his  determination to ob-
tain, in some way or other, the resolution of his doubts  by such
an examination.
  All difficulty between us was however prevented by  the in- 
                     the drunkard's son                  265

 cipient convalescence of the patient.  He was  entirely free from
 fever on the eleventh day, and seemed surprisingly strong for one
 so dangerously ill.   Nothing therefore  could have astonished me
 more than to learn on the twelfth afternoon, as I  rode into town,
 from a country patient's, that Mayland was dead !
   He had gone off in a sort of fit or  paroxysm, requesting, with
 his latest rational breath, to be laid beside his father and mother,
 in the family vault.  I did not much like this, for I  knew that if
 laid there, his body would certainly be removed by  Dr. R.   But
 it seemed unavoidable, for his last  request was known,  and I
 could not, of course, make public the cause of my unwillingness.
 Arrangements were  however made for the funeral, and I engaged
 three young men to watch with the  corpse, at the poor widows,
 where Mayland had boarded since his fathers death.
   A sudden and  imperative call, detaining me till far into the
 night, prevented my going that evening to see the corpse  of the
 unfortunate youth, which I determined to examine the follow
 morning; for if my view of the case were correct, certain appear-
 ances upon the recent subject would confirm them, and I thought
 by taking Dr. R. with me, I might thus  satisfy or ^convince him
 without his having recourse to the dissecting knife.
   The story  told afterward  by the three watchers was strange
 enough.  The cottage contained three small  rooms on the  firs
 floor, a  parlor and sitting or dining  room in line  on  the front
 communicating by a door, then a bed-room back,  in which slept
 the aged widow lady. The early part of the night passed  away
 as usual, until about one oclock, when one of them agreed that
 the others might sleep an hour or two while he watched,and then
 they should in like manner relieve him.
   The two accordingly went  to  sleep and the third  must have
 partially followed  their  example, for afterward  acknowledged
 having become several times conscious  of noises  in the parlor
 loud enough  to be heard by him, yet not such as thoroughly to
 rouse him, till a sudden  and  heavy crash awakened the three at
 once.
   With a self-condemnatory exclamation, all  sprang to their feet
 and and to the next room, just in time to catch the sound of feet
 hurrying by under the window.  The  lights  still burned, with
 their long unsnuffed  wicks, beside the bier, the coffin  was  there
and the  shroud, but the corpse was gone!  The open window was
 now closed, and  it was probably  the fall of the   sash  that  had
roused them 
266
REMINISCENCES.
 By some means, perhaps through  a thoughtless young medical
student at that time reading with Dr. R. the doctor's difference from
me in opinion and his desire for a post-mortem examination had be-
come known to several,  and one of the  watches  had heard it.
They knew therefore instantly that the body must  have been re-
moved and for obvious purposes.  So closing the house and tak-
ing different directions, they sallied out immediately, to overtake
and ascertain the robbers of the dead.  But a search continued
far into daylight was utterly  unavailing to discover any  traces
whatever of  the plunderers or their booty.
   What strengthened the general impression ef the body's remov-
al, after the affair became generally known and talked of and in-
vestigated, was the fact that an old cloak belonging to the deceas-
ed was missing, together with a strong coverlet  that usually lay
upon Mayland's bed, but on the evening  in  question  had been
brought down to spread over the rough table on  which  the cof-
fin was placed.  They were just such things as would be used to
wrap up a recent subject, in the absence of a  saek made  for that
purpose.
   Suspicion scarcely attached to  myself among  the physicians,
because it was kown that, if a  post-mortem  examination or o*J
dissecting the corpse, I had opportunities far less open to animad-
version, to possess myself of the body.  But upon Dr. R.,  spite
 of his  sturdy and repeated and  angry   denials,  suspicion fell
 heavily.  Still, nothing was discovered, and weeks, months and
years passed by, and the  greatest grief  for  the  loss of the life
and for the disappearance of the body of Edward  Mayland, was
felt by one, little suspected of such or of any sympathy with the
deceased.  That one was Virginia Tremley.
   Little did this young lady know or imagine  how much her hasty
pride had to  do with  the fatal  event that followed  the  lovers'
quarrel, nor  that the trifling circumstance of her not even looking
back  toward him, when they were  parted by her father, had to his
excited  and  feverish mind  seemed  as a seal  of their separation;
nor how the thought that this, his last earthly tie, had now been
snapped, weighed upon his mind  in his illness,  producing  a
moody recklessness of life, that perhaps  went far to neutralize
the beneficial effects of medicine and hastened if it did not cause
 the fatal termination  of his disease.  For of course  she could
not know, that of the three messages sent by her during his sick-
ness, two were intercepted by her father  and  the last reached him
but too late to be  communicated.   And the  fidelity of memory 
                      THE drunkard's son.                267

which she often manifested toward him is so unusual in a girl of
seventeen,  that perhaps it may justly be  assumed to have  been
owing in part to the bitterness of her self-condemnation  as well
as to her love.  For most rarely does it happen that a young  lady
of such age does cherish, with a constancy unweakened by years,
change  of scene and the allurments of society, an attachment for
a person absent, still less so for one who is dead.  But with her
undeniable faults of too much pride  and   impulsiveness, she yet
possessed penetration to discover the good and noble qualities of
her lover, together  with a firmness  of heart and constancy  of
purpose and of affection, which rendered her memory of May-
land as fresh, after long and hopeless years, as on the fatal morn-
ing when she first learned the impossible barrier which the grave
had interposed forever between her and her fondest hopes.
   Suitors appeared, but they  were denied.  Her aged and  grief"
stricken parent reasoned and implored and even threatened dis-in-
heritance,  but all alike fruitless  of the  results  he desired.  She
made no secret of her fixed determination never to marry.   And
it was some and  no light punishment for the ingratitude and vil-
lainy  of Tremley  toward the Maylands,  that he  should  see his
only child, for whose benefit he had steeped  his  selfish soul in
dishonesty, thus refuse, before his eyes, to avail herself of the ad-
vantages he had obtained for her at such a cost.
   There had been for him but two objects of affection on earth,—
his money and his daughter.  And as years passed and his  tangi-
ble possessions widened  and lengthened, the unhappy old  man
was compelled  to acknowledge, in  his heart  of hearts, the in-
sufficiency of more than a quarter of million of money to secure
either peace of mind or happiness in his family.
   The daughter never  sought sympathy  with any one, nor did
she fail for a moment in  those filial  duties, of which  her dead
mother had, in early life, carefully  instilled into her mind.  But
her velvet cheek paled, her beautiful eyes became hollowed and
and her step less elastic, and the clear gentle-toned voice, which
once rang like a bird's carol whenever she was alone, now become
low and less often heard.  Except myself, no one save her father
knew the cause of her decline—knew that it was the memory of
the dead which was wasting away the living.
   By the time seven years were passed, Tremley had almost en-
tirely given up all hope of seeing his daughter settled in life as he
desired.  Then came reflection and  with reflection,  repentance
But he well knew that no penitence can be acceptable to God or 
269
REMINISCENCES.
availing to man, unless accompanied, so far as lies in our power,
by restitution.  And so truly sensible and repentant did the old
man at length become, in his disappointment  as to his daughter
and the nearer approach of the grave to himself, of the crime  he
had committed, that had young  Mayland been then living, he
would have made to him a late reparation for  the wrong he had
done his father.  But it only increased the bitterness of his peni-
tence to become painfully  conscious that, like most human re-
pentance, it had come too late.
  To his frequent applications for medical advice  and prescrip-
tions, relative to his daughter's now hopelessly  declining health,
my only reply was—knowing how utterly useless in her case was
the whole pharmacopia,—travel and change of scene. But this ad-
vice  Virginia obstinately refused to follow. She felt that she was
dying by inches, and she seemed resolved not to  die at a distance
from all she loved and  from those  cherished associations, the re-
calling of which formed now the only sad pleasure,  the single
oasis that remained in the dull waste of existence.
  But toward the close Of the eighth year ► it became evident that
her father's health was also failing, arid theacquisecence in medical
advice which she would never yield while she alone was concern-
ed, was given instantly when she became aware that her parent's
health required travel.  So  a long trip was planned, to go by way
of Washington—where they  had relations—to  the  sea-board
thence to Havana,  New Orleans, and round home.
                         LEAF IV.

  Unforeseen causes of delay occurred in starting, so that it was
about the second week in December before they reached the Capi-
tal.  This was not  however so much to be regretted,  since the
season was unusually mild, and this sea-voyage, whenever com-
menced would be Southward.
  The owner of a quarter of a  million—in common report
quadrupled—has  always  friends, and  the heiress to  that very
respectable   sum,  every  where   admirers.   Both  crowded
round  Tremley and  his daughter on their  arrival at  Wash-
ington,  and  urged  at least a  short stay amid the scenes and 
                     THE DRUNKARD'S SON.                 0.69

 pleasures of the Capital.  The father easily  consented, for he
 thought or at least hoped it  was not impossible, that among the
 brilliant assemblage of minds and persons gathered at the seat of
 government during the  sessions of Congress,  some suitor for his
 daughter might appear, to whom she could be persuaded to listen-
 Virginia did not object, for alike  listless of the present and hope
 less of the future, she yielded  readily  to her  father's  wishes in
 every thing save a lover.
   An hour or two at the Capital, when the house should be in
 session, was of course one of the necessary parts of sight-seeing,
 during their stay in the city.   They visited the Senate within a
 short- time after their arrival, but deferred going to  the  House for
 a day or two, for the purpose of visiting it at a time when  they
 might hear one of the  popular  orators  of the day,  with whose
 fame the city was then ringing.
  His name seemed in every one's mouth though when heard for
 the first time by Miss Tremley, it excited anew those melancholy
 recollections and saddening thoughts, the ghosts of happier days >
 which for eight years had been haunting the chambers  of her too
 aithful memory.  And when she  heard the Hon.  Mr. Mayland,
 of Kentucky,spoken of as one of  the most rising men in the House;
 how regretfully did the thought come home to her heart, that had
 not the grave  interposed its former returnless barrier, even here
 might her lover have found that  sphere of usefulness and honor,
 for which his endowments so peculiarly fitted him.
   The only immediate effect of  her sad thoughts  was  a violent
 headache, which prevented her appearance at dinner and confined
 her for most of the afternoon.  Late in the afternoon Mrs. Rich-
 ardson called.  This was a cousin of Mr. Tremley's, a dashing
 young widow of twenty-seven,  who  had assumed the office of
 chaperon to the Virg nia heiress.
   "Ah my dear eoz," said Mrs. Richardson gracefully atitudiniz-
 ing upon an ottoman,—"sorry to hear of your headach.  It isn't
 incurable, I hope, because I've called on purpose to tell you  that
 your conditional engagement at Mrs. Z.'s to-night must  become a
 positive one."
  "Impossible !" exclaimed Virginia; "I've been sick all day, ate
 no dinner, look wretchedly and feel so.   You must excuse me to
 Mrs. Z., and—"
  "Couldn't think  of such  a thing,"  persisted the widow; "if
 you've been sick all day, that is just the reason why you  should
get well at night.   If you ate  no dinner, Mrs. Z. gives  charming 
270
REMINISCENCES.
suppers,  and  as  to your looking and  feeling wretchedly, dear
child ! if you don't feel worse  than you look, I shall pity the
masculines to-night.  Besides, there's a particular reason—don't
shake your head so positively—there's an  especial reason  I say,
Why you must go to-night, even if you're  sick all  day to-mor-
row in consequence.  That  great, eloquent,  impracticable Mr
Mayland is to be there, who seems, like -3o-b, to have m ade a vow
with his eyes, not to look upon a woman, and I want you to see
him, or rather I want him to see you—but bless my heart ! what's
the matter now ?—you're pale as a corpse !" exclaimed the fright-
ened visitor,  spinging to the bell-rope,  but hesitating to ring as
the young lady held up her hand prohibitingly.
   "Only a momentary spasm," said Virginia faintly and repress-
ing with difficulty the peculiar feelings roused afresh by the men-
tion of that long remembered name;  "you know we are  invalids
and only traveling for health; and realy, my dear Mrs. Richard-
son, you will  have to excuse me to-uight.   I have no wish to see
this—"
   "Pshaw!"   interrupted  her cousin,  half peevishly,, "if  you
won't go, I suppose there's an  end of it; but you will spoil  the
prettiest plot  since the  days  of Guy  Fawkes, though  you know
Mr. Mayland already ?"
   "Never saw him in my life, to my knowledge."
   "What a pity then you won't go.  We had it  all arranged  so
nicely.   You must know, coz., half the ladies  in Washington are
dying for the honerable gentleman, and do you  think this modern
Narcissus will condescend to speak ten words to any of us ? I set
my cap for him myself the last session, for three whole months,"
pursued the pretty  widow,  adjusting her  curls by the  opposite
pier-glass,  "more trouble than I ever took for any other man—and
what do you thinlt-Igot for my pains  ?"
   "The privilege of saying no, perhaps,"  replied Virginia  will-
ing to flatter  a little.
   "No, indeed ! I got a Valentine through the  Post Office, with
nothing in  it  but that verse of Lady Mary Montagu's;
             'That you're in a terrible taking,
              By these sweet oglingsl see,
             But the fruit that will fall without shaking,
              Indeed is too mellow for me.' "
  "Surely,  no gentleman would send you such a thing," said  Miss
Tremley; "most likely it came from  some lady-rival,  jealous of
your probable success." 
THE DRUNKARD^S SON.
271
  "I don't know," said Mrs. Richardson, with an air half-flattered
and half-vexed; "of course I'm not familliar with his hand-writ-
ing, but there's no knowing what a man  so  cold and  so cruel
might do.   Why, don't you think, when he is to speak,  the gal-
leries are so crowded a  mouse couldn't put his foot out,  and yet
he has  never been known so far to forget his bachelor dignity, as
once to look up at the thousand and  one pair of pretty eyes thut
are looking down upon him so admirably."
  "Isn't it a  little singular," asked Virginia quizzingly, "that
those of our sex will acknowledge themselves so easily influenced
in favor of one so insensible to their attractions as you describe
them to be?"
   "Ah, you may think so now and talk so too," replied her love-
ly companion, "butjust wait till  you see and hear him, and judge
for yourself if he be not such a man as a woman can very easily
admire and love too, for that matter."
   "Very  probably he  is under  a  matrimonial  engagement  at
home."
   "No indeed.   Several of  the Kentucky members know him at
 home, and they say 'tis just the  way he neglects the ladies there.
 He has made  a large fortune by  land speculations and has a prac-
 tice in the Supreme Court worth five thousand  a year.  Isn't it
 a sin  that such a man will behave so?  I'm so vexed you won't
 see him to-night.  You may not have another chance while you
 are here.  'Tis only about twice in a season that he'll show him-
 self at a private house.  He must come to-night,  because  Mrs.
 Z. is the  Duchess Devonshire of our party,  and it won't answer
 to negleet her invitations."
    "I  am  going to the House to-morrow or next day, as I under-
  stand he is to speak, and then I shall both see and hear him."
    "O, it is to-morrow, and you must be there early  or you'll find
  no seat.   I'll call for you if you will permit me?"
    "With much pleasure and many thanks."
    "Well, good bye cob, it is after seven.  I must go and dress.—
  Heigh ho, what a bore!"   And the lively widow ran off. 
272
REMINISCENCES..
                         LEAF V.

  At an early hour of the following day,  the crowd of equipages
and pedestrians  that  thronged  Pennsylvania Avenue told  even
the stranger  that a  favorite  speaker would that day address the
national  legislature.
  Of  all  the multitude of beautiful forms and faces that crowded
the galleries of the Representative Hall, perhaps no two attracted
more attention than those of Mrs. Richardson and Miss Tremley.
The one  showy  and restless, nodding gracefully to her acquaint-
ances here and  there, and  manifesting how perfectly she was
aware of her own claims to admiration;.- the other quiet, dignified
and  listless,  as  though utterly  unconscious of the surpassing
loveliness of form and feature,  which not even insidious disease
had been able to  destroy or much to diminish,
  The morning  hour passed in the dispatch of the usual miscel-
laneous business, exciting little or no debate  among  the mem-
bers,  who seemed all  to share the anxiety with which the spec-
tators awaited the taking up of  the order of the day, on which
Mr. Mayland had the floor.
  From the position of the seat the ladies had taken, nearly in
front of the speaker's chair, (even at the early hour when  they
had come,  the choice of a seat  was scarcely voluntary,  for the
house was then  well filled,)  it was scarcely possible to see the
faces of most of  the members.  But Virginia's talkative compan-
ion quickly pointed out to her the seat occupied by Mr. Mayland,
around whose chair a  knot of members, engaged in earnest whis-
pered consultation  and the  evident deference with which  they
listened to  him,  showed that he was already considered a leader
in the House.
  When Virginia's glance,  following the direction of her  com-
  mon's finger,  first fell upon Mr. Mayland, her thoughts  were,
of course,  of her dead lover, for the identity of name compelled
this; though, as she knew that the Mayland's of Virginia had in
Kentucky no nearer relatives than second or  third cousins, she
scarcely  expected to  find much resemblance  between the  man
before her and him whose memory she still so fondly and  sacred-
ly cherished.  But though the member's face was turned  com-
pletely from her, for he was almost directly between her and the
Speaker's chair,  still, even  with what she could see of him,  a
strange indescribable feeling began to creep over her as she gazed. 
                    THE DRl'NKARu's SON                   -j7 3

Was it possible  that the fact of her thinking of her lost lover,
i»r that the expectation,  perhaps wish that there should be some
similarity between them, personally as  well as nominally, could
have originated the conviction she now began to feel that there
was indeed a strong resemblance?
   She gazed as if  at a basilisk; she could not withdraw her eyes
The shoulders were broader, the figure  better developed,  but the
head, the peculiar curve of the neck, the color of the light curl-
ing hair, and the graceful nod of assent he gave occasionally to
the  whispered  remarks  around him,—all these were recognized
But more than all these,  the  strange, inexplicable feeling that
came  involuntarily but resistlessly over her, and  the thought,
that had he lived,  just about so much difference would eight years
have made in  his  appearance,—made her heart throb with emo-
tions painful from their very intensity.   It  was like the inde-
scribable sort of expectancy with which a person in a night-mare
awaits the termination  of his terrible dream.
   And as the moment  approached—which she felt was aproach-
ing, though paying no attention to the business before the House.
—when she would hear the sound of  his voice,  her pmotions
became  almost incontrollable.  She trembled from head to  foot,
 and when the Speaker's hammer fell and the  order of the day
 was announced,  followed by the stillness of death all over the
 hall, she seemed, for a  moment, to forget even to breathe.
   At length Mayland arose, slowly, as if overwhelmed with the
 magnitude  of the subject and with diffidence of his own ability
 to do it justice or fulfil the expectations  of the breathless  hun-
 dreds around him.
   The last sound  of  young Edward Mayland's voice,  in his pas-
 sionate call to his mistress on that last  fatal night, hushed though
 it  had been to her  ever since in  the unbroken  silence of the
 grave, was  still  even at this moment  ringing in  her ears;  and
 when the orator  first uttered the words "Mr. Speaker!" she al-
 most  started from her  seat with a feeling akin to absolute terror.
 The tones of  the voice, as he proceeded, that never deceiving
 criterion of identity seemed exactly, the same.  Full, rich and
 musical, they rang through the house, like the notes of a silvet
 bell,  in the utterance  of "thoughts that breathe and words thar
 burn,"  enchaining every ear in that vast audience, as with the
 spell of a magician.
   Lingering but for a  moment in the exordium,  to brush  away
 the cobweb mists of sophistry thrown cunningly by his antagon-
                              18 
 *(4                     REMINISCENCES.

 ists around the subject, he  dashed at  once at  its most difficult
 points, untwisting,  as without an effort each  tangled  knot ol
 doubt, and by the application of the simplest syllogisms in polit-
 ical logic,  solving the  national problem involved in the-question,
 with a course of reasoning that any man could  follow, and pre-
 senting  conclusions that a child could comprehend.
   Nothing but the absorbing interest in the orator's word's,  and
the impossibility of removing one's eyes for a moment from tho
 charm of his gestures, prevented notice of the singularity of Miss
 Tremley's  appearance.  Pale  and  immoveable as a  statue of
 living Parian she sat,  leaning forward, with fascinated eye, dila-
 ted nostril  and a bloodless lip, whose  compression, as well as
 the tight clasping of  her fingers  over her bosom, showed  hei
 powerful effort to restrain feelings that threatened  to prove too
 strong for control.
   Size, figure, voice and manner  all  told her,  spite  of all  she
 could plead to herself of the possibilities of family resemblance,
 that the  man before her was her lost lover.  But she  would not
 be deceived, for she felt in  her inmost heart that the revulsion
would kill her.  No, it could not,  could not be!   When, O when
did ever tiie unpitying grave give up its dead!  She dared not,
 for her soul's sake, trust the possibility of the identity,  even for
 one single moment.
   But still,  spite of every effort to the  contrary both of her rea-
 son and her resolution, the conviction crept over her step by
 step.   Her nerves, weakened by disease and long attrition, began
to give way,  and feeling that she must  yield to the impression,
 though yielding would be deception and  deception death;  she
 awaited  but for one evidence farther which should be decisive,—
 she must see his face.
   Meanwhile  the orator, all  unconscious of the terrible struggle
 of apprehension and hope in the bosom of his auditor, had reach-
 ed that part of  his subject most  exciting to him and most im-
 portant  to his argument; and here he  surpassed himself,  as or-
 dinarily  he surpassed others.  His stature seemed more than hu-
 man, his voice like that of a prophet,  and accompanying one of
 his aphorisms in  favor of the universality of  legislation,  "the
 greatest  good of the greatest number," by a graceful and sweep-
ing gesture, appropriate to the sentiment,  he turned toward the
members behind him  and presented to the concentrated gaze of
Virginia's fascinated eyes, that noble countenance, every linea- 
                     TIIE UKI'NKAUD's ^(PN.                 o--

'nent of  whose features,  under the excitement of his own elo-
quence, seemed blazing with the light of intellect.
  It was for one single instant, but that was enough; and with
the  confirmation of all  her hopes  and wishes, the realization of
the  wildest dream  that  ever unreasoning  enthusiast indulged,
the  return of the dead to  life,  she uttered  a faint scream  and
swooned awav.
                          LEAF VI.

  In her invalid condition of health,  the terrible excitement she
had undergone,  the tense straining of the nerves and the  shock
under which she had fainted, had well nigh proved fatal.
  When at length she did recover, it was in her own room, with
her father, Mrs. Richardson, physicians and others by her side.
To her distressed father, the cause of her fainting was a mystery,
for without  love's  memory—sharpening  evidences,  so  many
years of absence and change had destroyed all identifying  recol-
lections, and he little imagined  that the Hon.  Mr. Mayland of
Ky.,  one of the moit brilliant orators in the House  and among
the most promising men in the country, was the poor drunkard's
son, whom,  eight years before, he  had so  insultingly  ordered
from his grounds.
  Mr. Tremley's  call upon Mr. Mayland at  his  boarding-housa
in the afternoon,  astonished  the latter gentleman little less than
Virginia's explanations had  amazed her father,  a few hours be-
fore;  for engrossed in weightier matters, Mayland had small leis-
ure to examine the  newspaper lists of hotel arrivals, and to his
woman-neglecting ears the fame  of the Virginia heiress would
scarcely reach in the space of a single week.  He had not even
been aware of the Tremley's presence in Washington.
  Listening willingly  to the  old man's earliest  and now  really
sincere  assurance  of personal esteem,  and  stUl more eagerly  to
those of  his daughter's constant remembrance and  regard, and
receiving gladly, the lather's consent and even solicitation  to his
•Acceptance  of Ins  daughter's  hand; Mayland  returned  with
 1'remley to the hotel of the latter, his heart.throbbing with sen-
sation-  such as those only  who have passed through a probation 
 376                     REMINISCENCE*.

 such as his, can fully appreciate.   Over the meeting of the lovar*
 we must draw a vail.
  For the first time  during his term of public sarvice, the mem-
 ber from Kentucky seemed  to think hi3 presence unnecessary
at the House during the afternoon se33ion.  The truth is he was
very busy and no doubt very eloquent too—though not in pres-
ence of quits so large an audience as in ths morning,—giving to
his mistress an account of his eight years adventures.
  Commencing with the night when arrangements ware far  in
progress for his funeral, he told her how he had wakened  from
his death-like trance,  sometime after midnight, to find  himself
in the coffin,  and how he had lain there  with the full  possession
of consciousness  for more than an hour,  considering the circum-
stances of his position and the coarso best for him  to pursue,
for tha awakening  from the  trance ssemed to b3  accompanied
not only by the  restoration of his mental faculties, but also by
the disappearance of every trace of his disoas?, s.ive a weakness
 of body.
  He  should of  course leave the country and carrying  out his
 former plans, endeavor to carve out, in the lonely and unpromis-
 ing path before him, a name and  fortune, the prestige of which
 he felt within hiin.  There was but one thought that caused
 hesitancy or doubt  in his mind,  and that was, if  he  should at-
 tempt, before his departure, to communicate with Mi3s Tremley
 But she had  recalled her vows, had refused him in parting ono
 single  look of farewell, and during his  long—he knew not how
 long—sickness, had appeared unconscious or careless of his ex-
 istence , and mortified and disheartened by her  seeming abandon-
 ment of him, he had felt at the  moment as if all ties between
 them  were sundered  forever.  With separation from her  came
 the snapping of every tie that bound him to Z., among the living,
 and  he  determined by  withdrawing himself undiscovered,  to
 leave all these in uncertainty as to his life or death.
  Deciding upon his course and sure of success,  from the very
 audible slumbering  of  those  who  should have boen watchers, in
 the next room, he  had quietly withdrawn himself from the  coffin
 and escaped through the open window,  whose unlucky fall  had
 nearly betrayed him;  though the delay of searching the  room
 before going out gave him an opportunity of  temporary conceal-
 ment.   Proceeding  to the river  he had walked down its  banks
 till too tired to proceed farther,  and then hailing a passing flat-
 boat he w.-i--  taken on board,  ind so by different conveyance? he 
                     'HK 1)RU.\KAR1>'S SOS.                 01 1

had reached the city of  Louisville,  without a cent in his pocket.
Thence striking inland,  he had finally reached the town he had
chosen as a residence.  He was already master of  a good knowl-
edge of Law; an office was opened with a little assistance  from
his Kentucky relatives,  and industry, perseverance and the bless-
ing of Providence had done the rest.
  Taithful in heart to his mistress, he had devoted every energy
of his mind to the acquisition of such wealth, position in society
and  reputation among men,  as would entitle  him to claim from
Mr.  Tremley the gift of his daughter's hand.   At his last unfor-
tunate interview with  Miss Tremley, he had named ten  years
as the probable period  of his probation, but eight had proved
sufficient, and as far less than even that time  had removed from
his mind and heart all  voluntary  recollection of their  regretted
quarrel,  and left the memory of his mistress  unconnected with
aught save the purest and tendeiest attachment; he had already
resolved to visit, at the close of the present session of Congress,
the place of his birth, where his heart still lived, though his mind
and  person might be far elsewhere.
   It need scarcely be  told  that at the points of his  narrative
which seemed to impeach the kindness  of his mistress, he had
been interrupted by her with explanations,  of which the reader
is already in possession.
  There  was but one part in his narrative with which Virginia
expressed herself utterly  dissatisfied, and that was, why he had
kept his existence so strictly and so cruelly a secret from her'
   In extenuation of  this he plead first,   his own despair in  the
belief that she had really  abandoned him; then, when time and
second thoughts had reassured  him in  the  conviction  that she
would not thus, for a momentary  and hasty  disagreement, tear
asunder ties,  whose  strength in her heart he estimated by  tho
tenacity  with which they clung to his, still a lurking resentment
remained.  And when  this  too faded in the reviving strength
and  tenderness of his regard,  he confessed the vanity of having
desired that she  should hear of  him through others,  before she
heard from himself.
  Though perhaps mortifying to the profession, candor compels
me to acknowledge that  Edward Mayland proved himself a more
successful physician in Miss Tremley's case, than any of  the
regular Faculty.  The father's illness too had been caused chief-
ly by anxiety and regrets at his daughter's decline—of which he
frit himself 'n be the primary, if distant cause—by hi* own fii-- 
278                  .  REMINlScr.NCKS.

appointment and bitter because unavailing repentance.  The op-
portunity for  reparation, especially  when  restitution  could bo
made in the form of a daughter's dowry and therefore without
injury to his  own  character, soon restored to him both spirits
and health.
  The journey  to  Havana was dispensed with as unnecessary;
in lieu of which, in a few weeks, a wedding took place  at Wash-
ington, hastened as much by the anxiety of the father  as of the
lover; and  at the close of  the session,  a trip to Virginia and
thence to Kentucky seemed  fully to restore,  if not already done,
the health of  the beautiful bride.
THE END. 
 
 
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