The House of a Merchant Prince

VI.

SOME PERVERSE OPINIONS OF MR. BAINBRIDGE.

RUSSELL BAINBRIDGE, among others, joined the bright procession, on the Avenue, which he had himself called the dress-parade of the toilsome drill down town. He lapsed into a querulous mood, as he went along, and inveighed against the spring as an unsettling season.

“ I shall be laying violent hands upon some of these prosperous people next, out of pure spite,” he said.

He met Bentley, who had been a friend of his, leading his charming boys by the hand, and thought, “ I dare say I should have made a very tolerable figure of a family man myself.” But, immediately afterwards, he met Madeline Scarrett, by whom he believed he had been betrayed, on mercenary grounds alone, with her elderly invalid capitalist, Elphinstone Swan ; and then he reflected that, whatever turn fortune might now take, this form of happiness was of course for him impossible.

It was better, no doubt, to have been disillusioned early. One was wiser for such experiences, and they were useful in the heavy play of life, which comes later. But he had not been in search of that kind of wisdom. Why could not his beliefs have been left to him ? Why could not his modest business ventures have been crowned with success, as he saw those of others about him daily crowned ? “I had the economic virtues,” he said. “ I was not afraid of work, and I think I should have made an exemplary use of fortune. Ah, these eternal Whys ! ” He checked himself, in order to inveigh also at Sunday, when one is abruptly cut off from the duties that keep his mind profitably employed during the week, as the most unsettling of days, just as spring is an unsettling season.

Well up towards Central Park, he encountered Miss Emily Rawson, and a companion whom he recognized, with a movement of surprise and interest, as Ottilie Harvey. They had just issued forth from the ornamental iron gates of Saint Adrian’s.

“ Will you not join us ? ” asked Miss Rawson, in her high-pitched, agreeable voice. “ I borrowed Miss Ottilie, this morning, to come and hear me sing. You have met before. I am going to put her in a horse-car, at the end of my street, so that she can get back to early dinner at the Regina Flats. She is stopping with the Hasbroucks, and they insist upon it. I have actually been singing in the choir. Would you have come if you had known it ? I know you would not. You have not been at church at all this morning. One sees that with half an eye. Oh, you young men ! you young men ! You need looking after.” She had an almost affectionate air in her banter, as though she would not have been averse to looking after this one herself. “ What were you sitting up so late over, last night, that you could not come and bear our fine sermon, — even if you cared nothing about me?”

“ To tell the truth, something a little out of the common. I have just dissolved my connection in a menial capacity with Chippendale, Bond & Saxby. You see before you Russell Bainbridge, Esq., Attorney and Counselor-at-Law, Notary Public, Commissioner of Deeds for several States, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, on his own account. I spent a good part of last evening meditating, in my new office, down among the ghosts of lower Broadway. The watchmen flashed their lanterns at me and wanted to shoot me for a burglar, when I came out. It is up in the threestory mansard roof of the Magoon Building. As it contains as yet only two chairs, a table, and a book-shelf, you see, a good deal of adjustment is needed to produce any great gorgeousness of effect. Have you no cases you want undertaken, no unlucky debtors you want persecuted ? I know you are in need of a first-class bond and mortgage, — no commission charged the lender, — at any rate ; and I have reason to believe that, if this opportunity be not taken advantage of, there will never be any others.”

“ Oh, yes, you shall have all my litigation. I shall become as quarrelsome as possible. And bow long will it take you to become Judge ? ”

“It may not be this year, perhaps. The law is said to be ‘slow, but sure,’but it sometimes happens that the proportion of slowness to sureness is rather large.”

Whether the meeting had acted as a stimulus upon Bainbridge, or he had the faculty of putting his unpleasant moods under control, he now conducted himself with quite the animation most usual with him.

“ I am so glad to get rid of that odious Kalophlogullmos,” said Miss Rawson, as, in their turn, they drew near the new dwelling of the merchant prince, from which the high fence, with its advertisement of the infallible complexion renovator, had been taken down.

“ You did not find it all that it was represented to be, then ? ”

She had not even a fan with which to do him a bodily injury, and was obliged to forego the attempt. “ No, but they have no business to poke those things into our faces so. You see it everywhere. I recollect your telling me how it impressed itself curiously upon you as a detail of the scene in your exciting experience with Rodman Harvey’s tenants, up among the rocks of shanty-town.”

“ It struck me as about the right thing in the right place there, if I remember correctly,— that is to say, if the brick-bat, and flail, and cart-rung, and brawny human fist can really be considered injurious to the complexion.”

But he passed hastily over this point, and, giving his attention to the house, said, “ Why do they not build palaces ? It is high time — since somebody estimates that there are three hundred fortunes of a million dollars each, and plenty of these of from five to a hundred millions each — that we had palaces in New York. What are they expecting to do with their money, these Crœsuses ? Does experience show that their children spend it to any better advantage than themselves ? I should think not. Here is simply one more large, genteel house, with no ideal but that of a wretched little comfort. No breadth, no solidity, nothing monumental, — everything thin and niggling. Wherever there was going to be an honest space of blank wall in an American building they have punched it with a window.”

“ I trust you are not forgetting Miss Harvey’s relationship to the owner,” interposed the elder young woman, as if solicitously.

“ Not at all; but that need not trammel our investigations into the pure realm of the higher arts, I suppose. Besides, these opinions, be assured, are the genuine article. They are eternal verities, as it were. I get them from Aureolin Slab and G. Lloyd.”

He directed a pleasantly questioning glance at Ottilie, who was on the other side of Miss Rawson. He was wondering privately what resentment, if any, she still cherished for his part in that peculiar first meeting with her uncle, now nearly two months ago.

“ Oh, I am sure ” — murmured Ottilie. She had raised her eyebrows at some of his views: she heard, for instance, for the first time that comfort was so very poor and despicable an affair, but she found him amusing, and had no idea of further offense.

“ Sardanapalus, now, — that kind of person, — understood the thing,” he went on, confessedly with the extravagance of one whose theories were never likely to be put to the test of realization. “ I should have a residence with a portico like that of the Sub-Treasury, or the Custom House. I should have perfumes burned at my banquets, menials with pots of jewels on their heads, roast peacock on the bill of fare, and, on state occasions, a pearl or two dissolved in everybody’s wine-glass.”

“ And you would ride out in a circus chariot, drawn by twenty - four white horses with nodding plumes, perhaps ? ” “ I do not know but I should. On the whole, I think I should,—just in order not to be browbeaten by other people’s ideas of what was right and proper for one with so much larger opportunities than themselves.”

“ The people about you would be very insincere.”

“ I dare say I should not be very sincere myself, but we would have a good time, all the same.”

“ You are dreadful, this morning. I wonder we listen to you. But here is our street. Good-by ! Can you not come up on Friday evening ? Ottilie and the Hasbrouck girls will be with me. Bring your violin. Oh, well, come without it, then. Good-by ! ”

“ Perhaps I could put Miss Harvey in her car for you?” Bainbridge now volunteered. “ Or,” deferring politely to her, “ perhaps, even, she might feel like walking down, — though that, I dare say, would be too fatiguing ? ”

“ I am an excellent walker,” said Ottilie, hesitating. The delightful morning and the many novel sights and sounds about allured her. If she bad borne resentment it did not survive these fascinating influences. She did the young man a tardy justice. After all, it had probably not been his fault that he was present at the disagreeable interview. “ Thank you ; I will,” she concluded. “ One hardly knows what distance is, in this entertaining New York.”

This arrangement may not have met with the perfect approval of Miss Rawson. She repeated her farewells graciously, however, and they saw her disappear down a block of one of the numerically entitled cross streets. Its collection of red sandstone façades, with all their projecting porches, cornices, and window heads, seen in profile, had somewhat the aspect of sculptured palisades, the solid banks of stone steps standing for the customary slopes of débris, at the angle of forty-five degrees.

Ottilie explained that Amy and Lulu Hasbrouck had brought her down to spend the short spring vacation with them and their mother, at the Regina Flats. “ They would not take No for an answer,” she told him. Bainbridge speculated as to whether she had quixotically refused for this an invitation from the family of her uncle; but she had not in fact been subjected to such temptation, though she may have expected it. The estrangement, so far as she was concerned, was unaltered.

“ Are you as firm a Westerner as ever ? ” he inquired, when they had gone on some little way, discoursing with a gradual decrease in formality.

“ Oh, bigoted,” she replied, laughing.

She was dressed in black silk, of a soft character, fitting her neat figure trimly. A white handkerchief, bordered with lace, was crossed over her shoulders. In facing him she was obliged to turn the upper part of her body at the same time, as the satin bows of her small bonnet held her round chin a little stiffly. They might be fancied to take a certain pleasure in the embrace. The sun, shining from the south, was incommoding, at times, and to shade her eyes she held up a small morocco prayerbook against the fringe of brown hair on her forehead, and looked at him from beneath it.

They went down, past the unfinished Cathedral, the Moorish synagogue, and the Egyptian reservoir, with the Castellated dwellings opposite, on the battlements of which an Ivanhoe, a Sister Anne, or the yellow dwarf might have appeared ; past the quaint tower of the Church of the Heavenly Rest, with its angels trumpeting to the four corners of the heavens; past the incredibly tall hotels and apartment houses, past the scattered shop-fronts of tailors, confectioners, and jewelers, come into neighborhoods where they were not much wanted, and commending themselves to favor by a profuse display of decoration in the Eastlake taste.

A few tender flowers had opened in the beds along the base of the massive granite reservoir; and in one door-yard, a peculiarly warm and sheltered nook, was seen a lovely magnolia shrub, already covered with its large white blossoms, though the leaves had not yet appeared. Ottilie exclaimed over it with pleasure. Such a tree might have grown in Paradise.

“ It is very young and ignorant,” responded Bainbridge, pretending cynicism even at the expense of the poor plant. " It wall find out that such splendid effusiveness will not do. You will see it soon enough adopt a foliage more in keeping with the actual conditions of a cold and heartless world.”

“ How many faces one sees in such a crowd,” said Ottilie, turning again towards it, “ that look kind, and good, and interesting! ”

“ There are faces occasionally, in such a crowd, that give one almost a pang to think he is never to see them again. But no doubt it is better that he should not.”

“ You do not think, on the whole, that they would prove worth knowing ? You imagine they would be disappointing ? ”

“ My misgiving is, at least as much, the more modest one, whether I should prove worth knowing.”

He made himself in some small degree her cicerone, and furnished comments on the people they passed, in whom he thought she might be interested. They saw the upright Walkills ; the wicked Huyskamps ; Watervliet the wit; young Stillsby, whose latest inanity went the rounds with Watervliet’s latest gibe ; the journalist Blithewood Gwin, and Wrye the banker, who was thought to carry Blithewood Gwin almost as much in his pocket as a copy of his journal; Mrs. Stoneglass, whoso literary receptions are so highly considered ; Mrs. Eglantine, who turns her social position to something like pecuniary account for stragglers, and entertains her friends at other people’s parties ; the Hudson-Hendricks, the Antrams, the Schinkos ; Hackley and Hastings, two intimates — cronies, as far as so staid a character could be said to have cronies — of Rodman Harvey; Daisy Goldstone, Ada Trull, Alice Burlington ; and the Misses Callahan, daughters of the ex-state senator of that name, who had laid the foundations of his fortune at a corner grocery in the so-called “ Bloody ” Sixth Ward.

“ What a variety of people ! And how do you know about them all ? ” exclaimed Ottilie.

“ Oh, I have been at the Misses Callahan’s entertainments as well as at Mrs. Antram’s. It has so happened. There is an interesting class, now, — that of the immigrants of the commoner sort, who arrive at prosperity with all their native traits unchanged. In it refinement of speech and manners is mingled helter-skelter with broken dialects and boorish coarseness of all kinds. The elder Callahan did not wish to move from his Sixth Ward even when he was rich, until prevailed upon to do so by these daughters, who insisted on his giving them a house on Madison Avenue while they were young, and not when they had grown old, and were unable to enjoy it. They have generally engaged more or less in politics, and held offices, — these wealthy ex-plumbers, bricklayers, and liquor-saloon keepers. They are not unappreciative of education, but wish to have their children superior to themselves ; and this, when they have made them so, results in numerous heart-burnings. They are purse-proud, too, on the other hand, and not unfrequently cut their children off with a shilling, in good old-fashioned style, for what they think misalliances. The younger generation is full of renegadisms, and full, no doubt, of prickings of conscience for old-country customs and creeds it has abandoned, and old-country kith and kin it is ashamed of, in the effort to conform to the ways of the ruling class which calls for its admiration.”

“ You are a student of types and characters, then ? ”

“ A student very backward at his lessons, if so. I have seen a random collection of people and places, while drifting along ; that is all.”

He lightly sketched Kingbolt and St. Hill, when these two were seen in their dog-cart.

“ Should you think they would dare parade up like that, under the eyes of everybody, just as the churches are out ? ” Ottilie inquired. “ Is it not severely disapproved of ? ”

“ As likely as not they take some credit to themselves for going up with only a single horse, instead of, for instance, a tandem, of alternate bays and grays. As a matter of fact, nobody is better received in society than Arthur Kingbolt.”

“ They put up with his bad qualities, perhaps, in consideration of his good ? ”

“ I think they rather put up with his good qualities in consideration of his bad. Nobody ever seriously disapproves of a person who is the heir to such a property. It is five millions.”

“ What does he do ? ”

“ Spending the revenues of the Eureka Tool Company is a very pretty occupation. He has numerous caprices. He went abroad with young Lloyd, the architect, to get up plans for model buildings for his tenantry, but abandoned the project, quarreled with Lloyd, and brought back St. Hill with him instead. He spent a hundred thousand dollars on a church at Bridgefield ; then left it half completed. His latest hobby, I believe, is to foster the English sport of fox-hunting in this country, He has his circle in red coats, corduroys, and top-boots, and they go flying over the fences of Westchester County in the most picturesque and dangerous fashion. He has corresponding whims about his personal appearance. Sometimes he is very simple ; again, he will have gold buttons to his dress coat, half a dozen costly rings on each hand, bangles, like a woman, on his wrists, and will pack up a dozen suits of clothes for a two days’ visit. When he first went to Bridgefield, in all his magnificence, after having been absent for some time, the good people held up their hands in holy horror. They had never seen a ‘swell’ before, he said, and he thought he would show them what one was like.”

When this personage alighted, and, passing our friends, came back presently, after the manner in which his movements have been described, Ottilie, like others, had her glance of interest for this trio. “ What a beautiful girl! ” she exclaimed.

Bainbridge, embarrassed, and finding her looking towards him inquiringly, said, “ Your cousin, Miss Angelica Harvey, and Mr. Austin Sprowle, whom she is engaged to.”

Ottilie was a little flustered. Fate seemed to insist upon an intimacy between them on this basis. But she adopted the policy of entire frankness as the best. “ There have been disagreements, as you know, between the two branches of the family,” she said, “ and I have seen little of these relatives. My cousin is very accomplished, I suppose, as well as beautiful?”

“ So I have considered, in the pleasure of but a slight acquaintance. She speaks every conceivable language, as our friend Miss Rawson would say; which means French and German quite well, and Italian enough to pronounce her music correctly. She has visited titled people abroad, and been presented at court. She rides, dances, sings, and converses. She does not always converse amiably, except with favorites. Some of the young men are said to be afraid of her, on account of the sharp things she says to them. She is a student of characters. She has discovered that I, for instance, am a very matterof-fact person.”

“ And Mr. Sprowle, what is he like? What is his profession ? ”

“ He is a genteel idiot, as I think. His profession is the same as Kingbolt’s, though he has not the same amount of money to carry it on with.”

Ottilie was not wholly pleased with this. She would have preferred her kinsfolk to be left in their attitude of dignity, at least. “ I should not think my uncle would like it,” she commented more distantly.

“ The women take him for his family.

That is what they want; and Mr. Harvey lets them have their own way. Sprowle is the sixth of the same name, in descent, from an ancestor who was a governor, or something of that kind, long before the Revolution. Sometimes he is named in the fashionable intelligence as Austin Sprowle, Sixth, as though he were part of a regular dynasty. You cannot do any better than such a connection in the way of an aristocracy of the wholly American sort.”

“ But do you not think that every young roan should have a useful occupation ? ”

“ That is one of those things that the newspapers put down as ‘ Important if True.’ Why should he? If the young millionaire is going to have a tremendous business energy, together with the power that his money gives him, what is to become of the rest of the world ? No ! Pigeon-shooting, polo, racquets, coaching, yachting, fox-hunting, with the graces of life, are his proper field. He should aim to hand down the best possible constitutions to the next generation or two, which will surely need them, for the work of accumulating again, when the fortune has slipped through their fingers, as in the natural course it must. Sprowle does a little of all these things, hut he is not very good at any of them.”

“ He might at least do them well.”

“ So he might; yet, as I say, he does not. But it is a fine, hearty, natural existence, like that of your Pottawatomies at the West.” She frowned at the allusion. “ The polo mallet is the worthiest implement of husbandry in the world, unless it be, perhaps, the Creedmoor rifle, or the hickory oar. The bold young savage, of a high state of civilization, instead of going down town of a morning to an office desk and a dyspepsia and a hectic flush, is off to the chase in the glades of the forest. Back he comes at night, his sinews strengthened, his blood bounding, and throws down the spoils at the feet of his primitive spouse. A few friendly barbarians of the vicinity, in evening dress, are gathered around the frugal mahogany, and compare notes on the prowess of the day ; and so to a wellearned repose, upon silken mattresses and eider-down pillows.”

“ But if Mr. Sprowle be stupid also ? A bright, intelligent girl, as you say my cousin is, might be capable of so much under better circumstances.”

“ Oh, if the wise married only the wise, and the beautiful the beautiful, you know ” — And with this they were at the Regina Flats.

Ottilie saw that most of what he said was, on the face of it, drollery ; but it was impossible to divine at the same time what part, under the semblance of drollery, might not be his own actual sentiments. She did not care for a person who used so much ridicule. And she did not like it that he spoke of himself as one who drifted in life, and did not square his doings to a fixed plan.

VII.

PROSPECTS FROM HARVEY’S TERRACE.

The Regina Flats was a very tall, red brick apartment house, with many picturesque balconies and a gray slate roof, close to Madison Square. Bainbridge, whose own lodging was not far distant, began to make frequent ascensions in the smoothly-working elevator there, by which one was taken up to the modest quarters of the Hasbroucks.

He devised some plans for the entertainment of his friends and of Ottilie, their guest. He took them to the theatre, and again to dinner at one of the restaurants kept in the foreign style, with the novelty of which Ottilie was charmed. His income at this time was esteemed too paltry to be worth the least husbanding. He adopted the habit

of looking upon himself as a mature person engaged in ministering to the pleasure of ingenuous youth, a view in which the three Vassar undergraduates (who had no small idea of the importance of their age and station) would not at all have coincided. When he talked with Ottilie he fancied that it was her enthusiasms, her unhesitating belief in the possibility of doing anything and everything,— in contrast with his own cynical enlightenment, by virtue of which he knew perfectly well that little or nothing could be done, or was worth doing, if it could, — that afforded him distraction.

They two had plenty of opportunity of talking together. Mrs. Hasbrouck was of a social nature, and though she could now entertain in but a poor way, numbers of her compatriots came to see her and her daughters in the evenings, and on her day at home. Her abode became something of a rallying point for the Southern émigrés who, tired of stagnating, at last had gravitated to New York, to try to repair their broken fortunes. Most of the men had titles, from the land or naval service of the extinct Confederacy, and agreed in a military way of carrying themselves, though now engaged in civil pursuits, often of an unpretending character. Among the ladies seen there was the poetess, Mrs. Anne Arundel Clum, who had written, in the heat of the struggle,

and was now the fashion-and-literary editress of the Saturday Evening Budget.

Ottilie learned much in this way of the Southern element in New York, — much of some persons who did not come as well as of those who did. She repeated to Bainbridge stories of battles and sieges she heard, which gratified her liking for the marvelous. She professed interest in some honest-faced, taciturn young men, with traditional Virginian names, who were studying medicine and engineering here on scanty means. Whereupon Bainbridge, examining himself, strangely found them worthy of just no interest at all. Mr. Dinwiddie related to her instances of fidelity and devotion between the slaves and their masters under the old régime. Colonel Roanoke, in depicting the ruin wrought by the war in various ways, showed that the valuation of the State of Georgia had shrunk from a total of six hundred millions of dollars to one hundred and fifty millions, by the abolition of property in slaves alone.

“ How singular it would have been, would it not,” speculated Ottilie, had they succeeded instead of us, and were now existing alongside of us as a foreign country, with its separate flag and uniform, and long line of custom-houses! It would have been interesting to travel in. Both sides would have gone on growing more and more unlike.”

“ One of the schemes for its future, among others, was that nobody should have a vote who did not own at least five slaves, and that the slave trade should be reopened ; thus driving out the poor whites, and constituting probably the most aristocratic society in the world. It might have taken the place, for us, of Europe; only I dare say we should not have found it easy to regard it with quite the abject reverence that is the proper feeling of the truly good American towards everything European.”

“ I will not listen to any sacrilege against Europe. It is my dream.”

“ Oh, I shall not do Europe any harm. Only let it keep to its own side of the water.”

The young girl talked to him, being led on to do so, of the things of greatest moment in her present life, — her catalogue of studies, her friends, and the routine at the school. She showed a conscientiousness in saying, “ I am not naturally inclined to mathematics ; hence I give them the greatest attention, as it shows that it is the side on which I am weakest.” The characters, too, in her books were an interest of leading importance. She considered them worthy of not less serious discussion than living persons. Secretly, there were those among them she would have liked to imitate. She would have liked to resemble Ethel Newcome, generously giving away her property, while herself remaining unknown ; or Romola, attending upon the steps of the blind old scholar, her father ; or Theresa, assuaging the lot of the poor prisoner of Fenestrella.

Whatever was magnanimous and tender moved her. She was quickly responsive to sweet music and fine poetry. She had a capacity for getting pleasure out of simple things,—a shop window, an odd figure or animal, a condition of the atmosphere. And together with her alert observation, she was of a rather ingeniously reflective turn.

Looking down into the streets, from their high balcony, in which a muezzin might have stood and called the faithful to prayers, she said to the young man, “ How strange that the whole traffic should be for the purpose of supplying our material wants alone ! Just see ! First a dry-goods store, then crockery, then millinery, then shoes, jewelry, drugs, fruits, hardware, groceries, — everything. Only once in a long way books, pictures, or even flowers. Do you suppose there will come a time — the millennium, perhaps — when there are to be just as many signs and banners swung out; baggage wagons and walking advertisements ; clerks with pens behind their ears, and marking brushes, and paint pots; and just as many people shopping, only all concerned about something for the higher faculties instead of the lower ? Will they shop for something to think, do you suppose, instead of something to eat and wear ? ”

But she was by no means an oppressively serious person. Bainbridge was privileged to see her, as he began to know her well, in moods of a breezy playfulness, that bore out the forecast of her illuminating smile. She carried her hands in the pockets of her jacket, whistled softly to herself over her embroidery, and, seated on the piano stool, threw out her arms in gestures of despair or disdain over certain music.

There came up one of those small discussions, so common in our language by reason of its want of logic. Should one pronounce e-ther or i-ther, acclimated or acclimated, or spell certain words with double letters or without ? Ottilie had got the large dictionary in her lap, and bestowed herself in an easy-chair. She had placed an ottoman, also, for further support, and there was a glimpse of her small slippered feet and pretty blue, clocked stockings below the hem of her garment.

“ I say i-ther when I am afraid of people, and e-ther when I am not,” she announced as her ultimatum on this point.

“ My conviction is that Webster gives but one l,” said Bainbridge, arguing a question of spelling.

“ But I give two l's,” she declared intrepidly.

“ Do you mean to say you do not believe in Webster ? ”

“ I mean to say that I believe in Ottilie Harvey.”

But when she was forced to consult the authority, and it was found against her, she refused to announce the decision, and endeavored by flagrant subterfuges to change the subject, and disguise her defeat.

The balcony commanded extensive views. There was seen from it, immediately in front, the interior quadrangle of a block of city houses. The small yards, separated by high fences, looked like a series of bins. In their depths were occasional vines, metal vases, and statues. Of a pair of these white-painted figures, Bainbridge, of an afternoon when he had come up early from his office, made out one to be the goddess Flora.

“ And the other,” said Ottilie, “ is certainly Fauna. You always hear of those two together.”

She had good eyes, and made tests of their ability to distinguish distant objects, in the genuineness of which her companion, whose own vision was less perfect, affected to disbelieve. She read on the high wall of a manufactory, far off towards Eighth Avenue, the sign " Hackley and Valentine, School and Domestic Furniture.” But the young man declared it to be simply “ Coffins, Millinery, and Assorted Railroad Iron;” and, in further derision, pretended to describe the pattern on the seal ring of a man looking out of a window at the lower end of the block below. When a glass was brought, however, it appeared that she was right, and she endeavored to give the credit of her excellent eyesight, somehow, to her much-maligned West.

One afternoon they went out together, to visit studios and picture galleries. Ottilie was to be left afterwards at Harvey’s Terrace, where she had promised to call upon Wilhelmina Klauser, now returned from her musical studies at Leipsic. The Klausers were to see to her safe return in the evening.

They went to Tenth Street and to the Association Building in TwentyThird Street, some artists in which had issued cards for the day, and thence to the well-known place of a dealer in modern works of the best class, of Paris, Munich, Rome, and Madrid.

Hardly had they entered this gallery when Ottilie recognized her cousin, Selkirk Harvey. He was in company with a richly dressed lady, of middle age, and a man, of a bluish-black complexion, the trace of shaving, quite bald, though of a figure still young and of an effeminate voice. The three were grouped about a salesman, who was expatiating on the merits of canvases before them. The recognition was mutual. Selkirk came over hesitatingly and shook hands with her, and then led her back to make the acquaintance of his mother, her aunt. The gentleman with them was introduced as Mr. Aureolin Slab.

Mrs. Rodman Harvey stared at her niece, in a way no doubt permissible “ in the family,” and complimented her broadly, as if it were a surprising circumstance that she should be found so presentable.

“ I have heard of you. Your uncle told me about you,” she said ; " but I have been so busy — I have so many cares — Nobody who has not been through them can have the faintest conception. We are decorating and furnishing the house now, and it seems as if every mortal being connected with it had conspired to annoy me. We are looking at pictures to-day, for the gallery. What we had in Union Square are but the merest item towards filling it. Mr. Slab has been kind enough to give me his assistance. What do you think of that ? ” pointing incidentally to one of the works close by with her parasol. “ Is n’t it too dreadful ? Here, Mr. Bainbridge, perhaps you are a critic. Did you ever see such sheep ? One would not have them at any price.” She did not wait for replies. Ottilie thought her style of conversation very fragmentary, and also that it must be rather unpleasant for the dealer and for Aureolin Slab.

But the dealer was used to many kinds of people. He led on with unbroken patience from one to another of the Bouguereaus, Géromes, Jacquets, Knaus, Von Marckes, Pasinis, and Madrazos. He dwelt on their desirability as investments, and enforced his arguments with anecdotes of the remarkable advances in price of certain names. As to Aureolin Slab, he was never so happy as when selecting a work for a friend, having lost the fortune he had once possessed, and being now able to select so very little for himself. He spoke of broken and pure colors, of masses, focus, and “ sympathies of lines, radiating and converging.” He spread his open palm at times before a picture, without other comment, as if paddling deliciously in its combined excellences.

“If I had only thought, I could have sent for you just as well as not,” said Mrs. Harvey to Ottilie later. It happened that they were a little apart from the others. “ Can you not come now for a few days? Whom are you staying with ? What Hasbroucks ? Oh, those must be the people that have made your uncle so much trouble ! — And I hardly think you ought to go about alone with a young man,” she added, glancing at Bainbridge. “ Well, I am so glad to have met you.”

Ottilie departed, not pleased with the scrutiny to which she had been subjected, nor the unpleasant allusion to her friends, yet profoundly impressed. She had seen the purchase by her aunt of an actual Gérome, the photographs of which alone, in the window of the principal picture store at Lone Tree, had been esteemed very choice artistic treasures.

Her companion took steps to sound her as to what change of sentiment, if any, bad been effected by the meeting. She was found more warmly devoted to the Hasbrouck cause than before.

“ And you,” she said, after some impartial-seeming remark of his, — “ I do not understand how you can be friendly to both sides.”

“ In international contests—and this was a kind of international contest, you know — the justice of the cause is considered equal.”

“ I do not see that there is anything equal about it. The Hasbroucks paid what they owed, once, and now my uncle makes them pay it again. He has got the courts to decide in his favor, and it is only some minor delay that keeps him from taking everything they have ; and meanwhile they have had no use of their property for years. The Confederate government passed a law that all debts of its citizens to Northern people were confiscated to its own treasury, and this was one of them. But it seems that after the war the Confederate laws were not considered binding.”

“ I should say not,” interpolated Bainbridge.

“ And so they must pay twice. I think it outrageous.”

“ The courts do not seem to think so, as you admit.”

“ But they had to pay it,” insisted Ottilie, impatiently. “ They may not have wished to; I know they did not; but their government made them.”

“ It strikes me as their misfortune, then, to have had that kind of a government. I fail to see where Rodman Harvey was benefited. It simply raised a forced loan from them, to that particular amount, whatever it was, and matters between them and Rodman Harvey remained as before. We are sorry, of course, that it is our friends the Hasbroucks, but the thing is perfectly just. Your uncle, besides, has never had any means of knowing what agreeable and deserving people they are, and he cherishes a peculiar bitterness towards the South. Perhaps if there were anybody to put the case to him in a very persuasive way he might be induced to relent.”

Ottilie may have been more impressed by this suggestion than at the moment appeared. But she said, perversely, “I should not think lawyers would want to practice their heavy arguments on just ordinary persons, unversed in legal technicalities. My aunt said I ought not to go about alone with you, and I do not think I will.”

“ Did she say that, now ? ” he exclaimed, in a hearty manner, with a laugh. “And has it reached that point? Well, you and I know better. This is the chaperon business, the latest great American problem. A matron must be on hand everywhere, to play propriety. Perhaps it is an indication of our growing wickedness. At any rate, since communication with Europe has become so easy, in these last years, European manners are rapidly making their way here. The amusing thing is to see aspiring young women forcing it, as a pure piece of fashion, upon their dazed mammas, who would never have thought of it of their own accord. It has considerable vogue already, however, and if you lived in New York I dare say you would come to it ; it is often convenient to follow the mode, even when it is based upon absurdities. But let us not begin yet. Mrs. Hasbrouck is a sensible woman, and she has not enforced it. It has scarcely touched the interior as yet, and you and I well know what can be done in the interior.”

This view seemed to Ottilie wholly reasonable. Indeed, she knew so well the entire freedom prevailing between young people at her home, and she was met by this new restriction so almost for the first time, that the puzzling caution of her aunt had seemed adapted to no other purpose than to be used, as she had used it, in her pleasantry.

By some favoritism in early times the rocky site of the old Muffett mansion, an area now containing a number of blocks of bouses, and known as Harvey’s Terrace, had been exempted from being reduced to the general grade. It rose from its surroundings, close by the East River, a kind of domestic Ehrenbreifstein. On all sides but that of the sloping ascent from Second Avenue, it was precipitous. At one end of the cul-de-sac of the top was the gate of a German garden and pavilion, utilized for Turnverein and Saengerbund feasts, for balls of the Dennis J. Burns Association, the Box-Makers’ Union, the Lady Violets, and the Happy Seven, for political caucuses, and Father McIntyre’s lectures on the Ancient Greatness of Ireland. Near the centre of the Terrace a small space was left between the houses, closed by an iron railing along its edge, for a promenade and lookout upon the wide river view.

Harvey’s Terrace was very quiet and genial on the April afternoon when our friends entered it. They took the wrong turn at first, in seeking their number. As they paced along, they could discern something of the blue prospect, and of the sails moving in the river, through the windows of the basement stories of the houses. “It is like looking into those crystals in which the seers pretended to read the prophecies of fate,” said Ottilie.

They stopped a little at the railing, as they retraced their steps, for the enjoyment of the view. There lingered by it, also, a shabby old person, whose only object seemed to be to warm himself in the early spring sunshine. A wooden oriel, projecting from the sidewall of the house abutting on the open space, at the left, contained a blonde young woman, sewing, with somewhat the air of a bird in its cage.

The river below was blue, and was ruffled by the swift passage through its tortuous channels of ships, dragged in and out by the tugs. The tops of the masts came nearly to a level with the eye. The interminable expanse of suburban city spread along all the farther shores, red and black, and bristled with the sharp points of steeples. In the ruffled blue river lay a number of islands, with singular buildings upon them, which were explained to be the institutions for the poor, sick, and criminal, housed by the great city in the stern charity of self-defense.

It was the penitentiary that especially drew Ottilie’s attention. It exercised a kind of fascination upon her, and she gazed at it steadfastly. A long, low, sullen, loop-holed, granite building, under the great light and air, it blasted the sight. A gang of convicts were seen to come out of it, and marching in lockstep to move like some strange reptile life across the ground, from which they were hardly distinguishable in color.

A guard-boat, manned by convicts, with a vigilant keeper, armed with a rifle, in its stern, was patrolling the island. There might have been noticed a yawl, which had put out from the shore, and, clumsily handled, as if by inexperienced persons, was nearing the guard-boat.

Bainbridge also was serious. “ Great heaven ! ” he exclaimed ; “ that there is possibly but one life to live, and human beings must pass it like that! ”

“No, there is, there must be, another!” said Ottilie, with fervor. “ These inequalities and sufferings more than anything else convince one of it.”

The shabby old party lounging in the sun, not quite so inoffensive as he had seemed, drew nearer, and by way of overture at conversation began, “There’s them in it as shud be out,” nodding towards the island, “ and minny a wan out as slud be in it, so there is.”

Bainbridge at first returned him a careless monosyllable, but finding that he came so close as to annoy Ottilie, who changed her position, he said sharply, “ Go off, will you ! We don’t want you here.”

“ I will not go off, then,” said the man defiantly. “ Has any wan o’ yez a better right ? Used n’t it to be me own house and home ? Used n’t I to be livin’ here aisy and paceful, wud me frinds and neighbors, till Harvey kem wud his coort of law, and his lyers, and his police, and his sowljers, and evicted us out of it ? ”

“ Oh, if you are going to set up for the Last of the Mohicans, or Philip of Pokanoket, brooding over the ruins of departed empire, and that sort of thing, all right! ” said the young man humorously. “ I dare say you have heard of the Last of the Mohicans ? ”

“ I have not,” replied the man sullenly, moving off a little, “nor the first of them, nayther, — your Geohegans, and your Poky-Woky.”

Ottilie could scarcely contain her laughter at his discomfited air. But the movements of the awkwardly managed yawl in the river were becoming very peculiar, and she desired to follow them. It had approached quite close to the patrol-boat, and the armed guard seemed to be warning it away.

The man drew off somewhat further, and then, as if having meditated his grievance, turned back with —

“ I have not heard o’ thim, but I heard tell o’ chatein’ a poor man out of his bit of a house and ground. And I heard tell o’ yourself, that was wan o’ thim that was helpin’ him wud it. I know the cut o’ you. And I heard tell o’ chatein’ a bank, what ’s more of it,” he said, after a short pause, bending forward his head in increasing excitement. “Harvey’s Terrus, is it? It’s over beyant, on the Island, Rodman Harvey shud be, if he had what’s coming to him be rights.”

“ What does he mean?” asked Ottilie, turning back with an anxious expression.

“ Nothing at all. He was one of the squatters, who were put off when the land was wanted for useful purposes, and naturally feels sore over it. I recollect him as one who was particularly violent at the time. His name is McFadd. They say he was some kind of a bank messenger once, who lost his position through shiftless habits, and finally drifted to this place, where it cost him little or nothing to live. See here!

Worse will happen to you than being put off a piece of land that was not yours, my abusive old friend, if you do not keep a civil tongue in your head,” he added, to McFadd.

“Others was knowing to it, besides meself, persisted McFadd, — " plinty more. The prisidint o’ the bank was knowing to it, A party be the name of Hackley was knowing to it. A party be the name of Gammage, of the same Antarctic Bank, was knowing to it. Didn’t I go to the prisidint meself, whin I was put out o’ me house and ground, thinkin’ I’d get a bit o’ satisfaction be rayson of it, and divil a satisfaction did I get. Sure, what is the word o’ the likes o’ me agin the word o’ the likes o’ him ? But was n’t I the missinger o’ the bank? and didn’t I carry the tilegrams ? and did n’t I bring Harvey to it mesilf, affrighted out of the life of him ? ”

Bainbridge knew that Gammage was the elderly, broken - down personage, once an occupant of positions of high respectability, for whom lie had obtained the employment of directing circulars in the office of the Prudential Land and Loan Company. He had heard from him some formless hints, in like manner to the detriment of Rodman Harvey. These were nothing more, he was convinced, than the mouthings of an impotent feeling of revenge, on the one hand, and of a mind disordered by excesses, on the other ; but the coincidence of the mention of the name made him determine to question the old clerk, at a favorable opportunity, and draw from him whatever he might have to say, in a definite form.

He was anxious, for Ottilie’s sake, just now, to check this flow of abuse, but before he could have taken any step to do so, she uttered a little excited cry. it was doubtful if she had heard the last remarks of McFadd at all. The yawl from the shore had collided with the patrol-boat, and instantly capsized it. The armed guard, losing his rifle, which sank to the bottom of the river, was forced to swim to secure his own safety. His convict crew were seen helped aboard and supplied with fresh clothing by their now openly discovered friends, who at once turned back and pulled again for the shore, with the sturdy sweep of trained oarsmen. So sudden and bold had been the manœuvre that they had reached the covert supplied by the freighting schooners, the coal and wood yards, the shot tower, and the breweries, below Harvey’s Terrace, before steps for their arrest could be taken on either side.

McFadd had raised and lowered himself on his stiff knee-joints with interest during this exciting transaction, and cried, “ Heaven be wid ye, boys ! ” He now hobbled down from the Terrace to witness the concluding scene below, where heated policemen, with clubs and revolvers in their hands, had begun to beat a grand battue among the lumber yards.

Ottilie, in trepidation lest the runagates should somehow appear in her own vicinity, now made haste to her destination. It proved to be the very house next at hand, and the young woman in the bird-cage window was no other than Wilhelmina Klauser. The unusual incident they had witnessed became the basis of an animated acquaintance at once. At the boarding-house dinner, at which Ottilie took part, since Klauser himself had not yet returned from down town, the whole subject of the escape and of the prison in the neighborhood was treated in a facetious light. The sentiment of McFadd also was repeated, to wit, that there were many outside the prison who might justly be in it.

The humorous tone was that which prevailed generally. The lively Mr. Cutter, whose engagement to Miss Speller was the latest piece of social gossip, made many sallies, of which Miss Speller did not conceal her admiration. This couple would be married within the month, Ottilie was told, and the quiet, plain bliss Finley, Miss Speller’s inseparable friend, would go to live with them.

Mr. Cutter said to the waitress, in imitation of her way of offering alternatives of “roast beef or boiled mutton,” “ baked dumpling or boiled Indian pudding,” “ I will take a little boiled tea, Sarah,” or, “ Some baked bread, Sarah, if you please.”

To which the flustered Sarah, unable to cope with him in wit of his own sort, rejoined, “ I suppose you think that very smart. Well, I don’t.”

This afternoon made a deep impression on Ottilie. The escape of the prisoners was an incident, indeed, to take back to school and narrate among the experiences of her vacation. It proved afterwards to have been a case of collusion, in the interest of an influential convict who was in the boat, and that the apparently ill-used keeper had been well paid for his ducking.

Her active mind and her sympathies opened quickly to a subject with which she had never before been confronted at close quarters. She asked Bainbridge and others many questions. A party was made up to visit the city prison, called the Tombs, and she talked there with hardened malefactors, and accepted ingenuously their stories of the malice and errors of others, which alone had placed them there.

“ Why is nothing done” she inquired, “ to make such people better, — to prevent its going on ? If women had authority, it seems to me they would do something.”

“ I am sure they do a great deal,” answered Bainbridge. “ They send all the first-class murderers flowers and quail-on-toast and their photographs, and try to get them out and introduce them into the best society.”

But she was serious, and desired him to tell her what steps had been taken in the direction of the permanent reformation of criminals. He could think of nothing further than the plan at Valencia, in old Spain, where forty-three distinct trades are taught in the prison, and the inmates are allowed a share in the proceeds of their labor; and the Maconochie system, by which convicts of good behavior are finally left almost free from supervision. But he had some pamphlets which he could send her, on her return to school. “ Only, you must tell me, when you have finished them,” he said, “ which plan, on deliberate reflection, you like the best. Will you not write me a purely philanthropic note, setting forth your system for the final settlement of these vexed questions ? ” It was not etiquette, at Lone Tree, to be hasty in opening correspondence with young men, although she might walk or ride with them to her heart’s content. “ I am sure I shall not have any opinion,” she replied; “ but if I should — Well, I will see.”

A considerable part of the pleasure of her vacation was due to him. She thought it a little odd that he should care to be so considerate to her, when his way was to scoff at almost everybody else. He seemed to delight in representing himself, too, to the very worst advantage. One would have imagined at times that he favored Indian massacres, arson, house-breaking, and residence in malarial neighborhoods, and that he was opposed to charities, railways, education, and all civilized observances. As to money matters, he said, “ What you spend you have had, and that alone;” and, “It is better to live rich than die rich.” And he crowned his preposterous sayings with the assertion, “ It is more admirable to be a martyr to error — conscious error, of course — than to truth, because then you have nothing to sustain you, and it is pure, solid heroism.”

With his apparent absence of convictions on all the important matters of life, matters as good as settled beyond dispute, he was a person to be looked at with serious misgivings, this young woman deemed, from any other point of view than that of a very superficial companionship.

Miss Rawson thought it odd, too, that he should interest himself in an immature school-girl, “a mere bread-and-butter miss,” when he so rarely came to her. He presented himself at her Friday evening, for the first time in ages, when Ottilie was there. She took occasion to compliment Ottilie to him ingeniously. “ You see at once that she is not a New Yorker,” she said. “ There is a certain lack of — but I like it, you know. It is such a pity her uncle is so hard! There is not the slightest possibility, I suppose, that he will ever do anything for her. And her family, in that obscure Western hamlet, — perfectly upright and honest, of course, but so poor, — he might do so much for them.”

And to Ottilie she said of him, with a meaning smile, which the young girl took to indicate a kind of proprietorship, “ Is he not charming? You must like him very much, or we shall quarrel.”

William Henry Bishop.