A film of lace and a droop of feather,With sky-blue ribbons to knot them together;A facing (at times) of bronze-brown tresses,Into whose splendor each furbelow presses;Two strings of blue to fall in a tangle,And chain of pink chin In decorous angle;The tip of the plume right artfully twiningWhere a firm neck steals under the lining;And the curls and braids, the plume and the laces.Circle about the shyest of faces,Bonnet there is not frames dimples sweeter!Bonnet there is not that shades eyes completer!Fated is he that but glances upon it,Sighing to dream of that face in the bonnet.—Winnifred Wise Jenks.
A Sweet thing in bonnets: A honey bee.
It will get so in Illinois, by and by, that the marriage ceremony will run thus: "Until death—or divorce—do us part."
He had been ridiculing her big feet, and to get even with him she replied that he might have her old sealskin sacque made over into a pair of ear-muffs.
A Toronto man waited until he was 85 years old before he got married. He waited until he was sure that if he didn't like it he wouldn't have long to repent.
How a woman always does up a newspaper she sends to a friend, so that it looks like a well stuffed pillow, is something that no man is woman enough to understand.
"Yes, my dear," said Mrs. Ramsbothom, speaking of her invalid uncle, "the poor old gentleman has had a stroke of parenthesis, and when I last saw him he was in a state of comma."
"Uncle, when sis sings in the choir Sunday nights, why does she go behind the organ and taste the tenor's mustache?" "Oh, don't bother me, sonny; I suppose they have to do it to find out if they are in tune."
A couple of Vassar girls were found by a professor fencing with broomsticks in a gymnasium. He reminded the young girls that such an accomplishment would not aid them in securing husbands. "It will help us keep them in," replied one of the girls.
A clergyman's daughter, looking over the MSS. left by her father in his study, chanced upon the following sentence: "I love to look upon a young man. There is a hidden potency concealed within his breast which charms and pains me." She sat down, and blushingly added: "Them's my sentiments exactly, papa—all but the pains."
"My dear," said a sensible Dutchman to his wife, who for the last hour had been shaking her baby up and down on her knee: "I don't think so much butter is good for the child." "Butter? I never give my Artie any butter; what an idea!" "I mean to say you have been giving him a good feed of milk out of the bottle, and now you have been an hour churning it!"
We wish to keep the attention of wheat-raisers fixed upon the Saskatchewan variety of wheat until seeding time is over, for we believe it worthy of extended trial. Read the advertisement of W. J. Abernethy & Co. They will sell the seed at reasonable figures, and its reliability can be depended upon.
Illustration: Our Young People
LITTLE DILLY-DALLY.
I don't believe you everKnew any one so sillyAs the girl I'm going to tell about—A little girl named Dilly,Dilly-dally Dilly,Oh, she is very slow,She drags her feetAlong the street,And dilly-dallies so!She's always late to breakfastWithout a bit of reason,For Bridget rings and rings the bellAnd wakes her up in season.Dilly-dally Dilly,How can you be so slow?Why don't you tryTo be more spry,And not dilly-dally so?'Tis just the same at evening;And it's really quite distressingTo see the time that Dilly wastesIn dreaming and undressing.Dilly-dally DillyIs always in a huff;If you hurry herOr worry herShe says, "There's time enough."Since she's neither sick nor helpless,It is quite a serious matterThat she should be so lazy thatWe still keep scolding at her.Dilly-dally Dilly,It's very wrong you know,To do no workThat you can shirk,And dilly-dally so.
Old "Uncle Jim," of Stonington, Conn., ought to have a whole drawer to himself, for nothing short of it could express the easy-going enlargement of his mind in narratives. Uncle Jim was a retired sea captain, sealer, and whaler, universally beloved and respected for his lovely disposition and genuine good-heartedness, not less than for the moderation of his statements and the truthful candor of his narrations. It happened that one of the Yale Professors, who devoted himself to ethnological studies, was interested in the Patagonians, and very much desired information as to the alleged gigantic stature of the race. A scientific friend, who knew the Stonington romancer, told the Professor that he could no doubt get valuable information from Uncle Jim, a Captain who was familiar with all the region about Cape Horn. And the Professor, without any hint about Uncle Jim's real ability, eagerly accompanied his friend to make the visit. Uncle Jim was found in one of his usual haunts, and something like the following ethnological conversation ensued:
Professor—They tell me, Capt. Pennington, that you have been a good deal in Patagonia.
Uncle Jim—Made thirty or forty voyages there, sir.
Professor—And I suppose you know something about the Patagonians and their habits?
Uncle Jim—Know all about 'em, sir. Know the Patagonians, sir, all, all of 'em, as well as I know the Stonington folks.
Professor—I wanted to ask you, Captain, about the size of the Patagonians—whether they are giants, as travelers have reported?
Uncle Jim—No, sir—shaking his head slowly, and speaking with the modest tone of indifference—no, sir, they are not. (It was quite probable that the Captain never had heard the suggestion before). The height of the Patagonian, sir, is just five feet nine inches and a half.
Professor—How did you ascertain this fact, Captain?
Uncle Jim—Measured 'em, sir—measured 'em. One day when the mate and I were ashore down there, I called up a lot of the Patagonians, and the mate and I measured about 500 of them, and every one of them measured five feet nine inches and a half—that's their exact height.
Professor—That's very interesting. But, Captain, don't you suppose there were giants there long ago, in the former generations? All the travelers say so.
Uncle Jim—Not a word of truth in it, sir—not a word. I'd heard that story and I thought I'd settle it. I satisfied myself there was nothing in it.
Professor—But how could you know that they used not to be giants? What evidence could you get? Mightn't the former race have been giants?
Uncle Jim—Impossible, sir, impossible.
Professor—But how did you satisfy yourself?
Uncle Jim—Dug 'em up, sir—dug 'em up speaking with more than usual moderation. I'd heard that yarn. The next voyage, I took the bo'sen and went ashore; we dug up 275 old Patagonians and measured 'em. They all measured exactly five feet nine inches and a half; no difference in 'em—men, women, and all ages just the same. Five feet nine inches and a half is the natural height of a Patagonian. They've always been just that. Not a word of truth in the stories about giants, sir.—Harper's Magazine.
"Nice child, very nice child," observed an old gentleman, crossing the aisle and addressing the mother of the boy who had just hit him in the eye with a wad of paper. "How old are you, my son?"
"None of your business," replied the youngster, taking aim at another passenger.
"Fine boy," smiled the old man, as the parent regarded her offspring with pride. "A remarkably fine boy. What is your name, my son?"
"Puddin' Tame!" shouted the youngster, with a giggle at his own wit.
"I thought so," continued the old man, pleasantly. "If you had given me three guesses at it, that would have been the first one I would have struck on. Now, Puddin', you can blow those things pretty straight, can't you?"
"You bet!" squealed the boy, delighted at the compliment. "See me take that old fellow over there!"
"No, no!" exclaimed the old gentleman, hastily. "Try it on the old woman I was sitting with. She has boys of her own, and she won't mind."
"Can you hit the lady for the gentleman, Johnny?" asked the fond parent.
Johnny drew a bead and landed the pellet on the end of the old woman's nose. But she did mind it, and, rising in her wrath, soared down on the small boy like a blizzard. She put him over the line, reversed him, ran him backward till he didn't know which end of him was front, and finally dropped him into the lap of the scared mother, with a benediction whereof the purport was that she'd be back in a moment and skin him alive.
"She didn't seem to like it, Puddin'," smiled the gentleman, softly. "She's a perfect stranger to me, but I understand she is a matron of truants' home, and I thought she would like a little fun; but I was mistaken."
And the old gentleman sighed sweetly as he went back to his seat.
The discovery of the alphabet is at once the triumph, the instrument and the register of the progress of our race. The oldest abecedarium in existence is a child's alphabet on a little ink-bottle of black ware found on the site of Cere, one of the oldest of the Greek settlements in Central Italy, certainly older than the end of the sixth century B. C. The Phœnician alphabet has been reconstructed from several hundred inscriptions. The "Moabite Stone" has yielded the honor of being the most ancient of alphabetic records to the bronze plates found in Lebanon in 1872, fixed as of the tenth or eleventh century, and therefore the earliest extant monuments of the Semitic alphabet. The lions of Nineveh and an inscribed scarab found at Khorsabad have furnished other early alphabets; while scarabs and cylinders, seals and gems, from Babylon and Nineveh, with some inscriptions, are the scanty records of the first epoch of the Phœnician alphabet. For the second period, a sarcophagus found in 1855, with an inscription of twenty-two lines, has tasked the skill of more than forty of the most eminent Semitic scholars of the day, and the literature connected with it is overwhelming. An unbroken series of coins extending over seven centuries from 522 B. C. to 153 A. D., Hebrew engraved gems, the Siloam inscription discovered in Jerusalem in 1880, early Jewish coins, have each and all found special students whose successive progress is fully detailed by Taylor. The Aramæan alphabet lived only for seven or eight centuries; but from it sprang the scripts of five great faiths of Asia and the three great literary alphabets of the East. Nineveh and its public records supply most curious revelations of the social life and commercial transactions of those primitive times. Loans, leases, notes, sales of houses, slaves, etc., all dated, show the development of the alphabet. The early Egyptian inscriptions show which alphabet was there in the reign of Xerxes. Fragments on stone preserved in old Roman walls in Great Britain, Spain, France, and Jerusalem, all supply early alphabets.
Alphabets have been affected by religious controversies, spread by missionaries, and preserved in distant regions by holy faith, in spite of persecution and perversion. The Arabic alphabet, next in importance after the great Latin alphabet, followed in eighty years the widespread religion of Mohammed; and now the few Englishmen who can read and speak it are astonished to learn that it is collaterally related to our own alphabet, and that both can be traced back to the primitive Phœnician source.
Greece alone had forty local alphabets, reduced by careful study to about half a dozen generic groups, characterized by certain common local features, and also by political connection.
Of the oldest "a, b, c's" found in Italy, several were scribbled by school-boys on Pompeian walls, six in Greek, four in Oscan, four in Latin; others were scratched on children's cups, buried with them in their graves, or cut or painted for practice on unused portions of mortuary slabs. The earliest was found as late as 1882, a plain vase of black ware with an Etruscan inscription and a syllabary or spelling exercise, and the Greek alphabet twice repeated.
"Pa, I have signed the pledge," said a little boy to his father, on coming home one evening; "will you help me keep it?"
"Certainly," said the father.
"Well, I have brought a copy of the pledge; will you sign it, papa?"
"Nonsense, nonsense, my child! What could I do when my brother-officers called—the father had been in the army—if I was a teetotaler?"
"But do try, papa."
"Tut, tut! why you are quite a little radical."
"Well, you won't ask me to pass the bottle, papa?"
"You are quite a fanatic, my child; but I promise not to ask you to touch it."
Some weeks after that two officers called in to spend the evening.
"What have you to drink?" said they.
"Have you any more of that prime Scotch ale?"
"No," said he; "I have not, but I shall get some. Here, Willie, run to the store, and tell them to send some bottles up."
The boy stood before his father respectfully, but did not go.
"Come, Willie; why, what's the matter? Come, run along." He went, but came back presently without any bottles.
"Where's the ale, Willie?"
"I asked them for it at the store, and they put it upon the counter, but I could not touch it. O pa, pa! don't be angry; I told them to send it up, but I could not touch it myself!"
The father was deeply moved, and turning to his brother-officers, he said:
"Gentlemen, do you hear that? You can do as you please. When the ale comes you may drink it, but not another drop shall be drank in my house, and not another drop shall pass my lips. Willie, have you your temperance pledge?"
"O pa! I have."
"Bring it, then."
And the boy was back with it in a moment. The father signed it and the little fellow clung round his father's neck with delight. The ale came, but not one drank, and the bottles stood on the table untouched.
Children, sign the pledge, and ask your parents to help you keep it. Don't touch the bottle, and try to keep others from touching it.
Stock FarmsFOR SALE;one of the very best in Central Illinois, the finest agricultural region in the world; 1,100 acres, highly improved; unusual facilities for handling stock; also a smaller farm; also one of the finest
Stock RanchesIn Central Texas, 9,136 acres. Each has never-failing water, and near railroads; must be sold; terms easy; price low. For further particulars address,J. B. or F. C. TURNER, Jacksonville, Ill.
Cut This Out& Return to us withTEN CTS.& you'll get by mailA GOLDEN BOX OF GOODSthat will bring you inMORE MONEY, in One Month than anything else in America. Absolute Certainty Need no capital.M. Young, 173 Greenwich St. N. York
Self Cure FreeNervous DebilityLost ManhoodWeakness and Decay
A favorite prescription of a noted specialist (now retired). Druggists can fill it. AddressDR. WARD & CO., LOUISIANA, MO.
The following list embraces the names of responsible and reliable Breeders in their line, and parties wishing to purchase or obtain information can feel assured that they will be honorably dealt with:
SWINE.Chester Whites.W. A. Gilbert .................... Wauwatosa, Wis.
PUBLIC SALEofPOLLED ABERDEEN-ANGUSandShort-Horn Cattle.
Illustration: Cow
We will, on March 27 and 28, at Dexter Park, Stock Yards, Chicago, offer at public sale 64 head of Polled Aberdeen-Angus, and 21 head of Short-horns, mostly Imported and all highly bred cattle, representing the best strains of their respective breeds. Sale each day will begin at 1 P. M., sharp. Catalogues now ready. Address as below.
NOTE.—ENGLISH SHIRE HORSES,—Three stallions and four mares of this breed (all imported) will be offered at the close of the second day's sale of cattle.
At Kansas City, Mo., on April 15, 16, and 17, the same parties will offer at public sale a choice lot of Aberdeen-Angus and Short-horn cattle.
When you write mention The Prairie Farmer.
HOLSTEINSatLIVING RATES.DR. W. A. PRATT,elgin, ill.,
Now has a herd of more than one hundred head of full-blooded
HOLSTEINS
mostly imported direct from Holland. These choice dairy animals are for sale at moderate prices. Correspondence solicited or, better, call and examine the cattle, and select your own stock.
SCOTCH COLLIESHEPHERD PUPS,—from—IMPORTED AND TRAINED STOCK—also—Newfoundland Pups and Rat Terrier Pups.
Concise and practical printed instruction in Training young Shepherd Dogs is given to buyers of Shepherd Puppies; or will be sent on receipt of 25 cents in postage stamps.
For Printed Circular, giving full particulars about Shepherd Dogs, enclose a 3-cent stamp, and address
N. H. PAAREN,P. O. Box 326.—CHICAGO, ILL.
VICTORIA SWINE.
Illustration: Falstaff
Winner of First Prize Chicago Fat Stock Show 1878. Originators of this famous breed. Also breeders of Pekin Ducks and Light Brahma Fowls. Stock for sale. Send for circular A.
SCHIEDT & DAVIS,Dyer, Lake Co. Ind
Illustration: Healing powder
STEWART'S HEALING POWDER.
SOLD BY HARNESS AND DRUG STORES. Warranted to cure all openSoresonANIMALSfrom any cause.
Chester White Pigs.
Good as the best at prices to suit the times. Also, Short-horn cattle. Send for price list. S. H. OLMSTEAD, Freedom, La Salle Co., Ill. Reduced rates by express.
Illustration: Hog tail
Illustration: Hog head
SILVER SPRINGS HERD, JERSEY CATTLE, combining the best butter families. Correspondence solicited.
T. L. HACKER, Madison, Wis.
PIG EXTRICATOR
To aid animals in giving birth. Send for free circular toWm. Dulin, Avoca, Pottawattamie Co., Ia.
CARDS40 Satin Finish Cards, New Imported designs, name on and Present Free for 10c. Cut this out.
CLINTON BROS. & Co., Clintonville, Ct.
40(1884) Chromo Cards, no 2 alike, with name,10c., 13 pks. $1.
GEORGE I. REED & CO., Nassau, N. Y.
THE PRAIRIE FARMER is the Cheapest and Best Agricultural Paper published. Only $2.00 per year.
Illustration: Literature
He owned the farm—at least 'twas thoughtHe owned, since he lived upon it,—And when he came there, with him broughtThe men whom he had hired to run it.He had been bred to city lifeAnd had acquired a little money;But, strange conceit, himself and wifeThought farming must be something funny.He did not work himself at all,But spent his time in recreation—In pitching quoits and playing ball,And such mild forms of dissipation.He kept his "rods" and trolling spoons,His guns and dogs of various habits,—While in the fall he hunted coons,And in the winter skunks and rabbits.His hired help were quick to learnThe liberties that might be taken,And through the season scarce would earnThe salt it took to save their bacon.He knew no more than child unborn,One-half the time, what they were doing,—Whether they stuck to hoeing corn,Or had on hand some mischief brewing.His crops, although they were but few,With proper food were seldom nourished,While cockle instead of barley grew,And noxious weeds and thistles flourished.His cows in spring looked more like railsSet up on legs, than living cattle;And when they switched their dried-up tailsThe very bones in them would rattle.At length the sheriff came along,Who soon relieved him of his labors.While he became the jest and songOf his more enterprising neighbors.Back to the place where life began,Back to the home from whence he wandered,A sadder, if not a wiser man,He went with all his money squandered.MORAL.On any soil, be it loam or clay,Mellow and light, or rough and stony,Those men who best make farming payFind use for brains as well as money.—Tribune and Farmer.
"The great trouble with my son," old Dobb observed to me once, "is that he is a genius."
And the old gentleman sighed and looked with melancholy eyes at the picture on the genius's easel. It was a clever picture, but everything Frank Dobb did was clever, from his painting to his banjo playing. Clever was the true name for it, for of substantial merit it possessed none. He had begun to paint without learning to draw, and he could pick a tune out of any musical instrument extant without ever having mastered the mysteries of notes. He talked the most graceful of airy nothings, and could not cover a page of note paper without his orthography going lame, and all the rest of his small acquirements and accomplishments were proportionately shallow and incomplete. Paternal partiality laid it to his being too gifted to study, but the cold logic, which no ties of consanguinity influenced, ascribed it to laziness.
Frank was, indeed, the idlest and best-natured fellow in the world. You never saw him busy, angry, or out of spirits. He painted a little, thrummed his guitar a little longer or rattled a tune off on his piano, smoked and read a great deal, and flirted still more, all in the same deliberate and easy-going way. Any excuse was sufficient to absolve him from serious work. So he lead a pleasant, useless life, with Dobb senior to pay the bills.
He had the handsomest studio in New York, a studio for one of Ouida's heroes to luxuriate in. If the encouragement of picturesque surroundings could have made a painter of him he would have been a master. The fame of his studio, and the fact that he did not need the money, made his pictures sell. He was quite a lion in society, and it was regarded as a favor to be asked to call on him. He was the beau ideal of the artist of romance, and was accorded a romantic eminence accordingly[aa]. So, with his pictures to provide him with pocket money, and his father to see to the rest, he lived the life of a young prince, feted and flattered and spoiled, artistically despised by all the serious workers who knew him, and hated by some who envied him the commercial success he had no necessity for, but esteemed by most of us as a good fellow and his own worst enemy.
Frank married his first wife while Dobb senior was still at the helm of his own affairs. She was a charming little woman whose acquaintance he had made when she visited his studio with a party of friends. She had not a penny, but he made a draft upon "the governor," as he called him, and the happy pair digested their honeymoon in Europe. They were absent six months, during which time he did not set brush to canvas. Then they returned, as he fancifully termed it, to go to work.
He commenced the old life as if he had never been married. The familiar sound of pipes and beer, and supper after the play, often with young ladies who had been assisting in the representation on the stage, was traveled as if there had been no Mrs. Dobb at home in the flat old Dobb provided. Frank's expenditures on himself were as lavish as they had been in his bachelor days. As little Brown said, it was lucky that Mrs. Dobb had a father-in-law to buy her dinner for her. She rarely came to her husband's studio, because he claimed that it interfered with the course of business. He had invented a fiction that she was too weak to endure the strain of society, and so he took her into it as little as possible. In brief, married by the caprice of a selfish man, the poor little woman lived through a couple of neglected years, and then died of a malady as nearly akin to a broken heart as I can think of, while Frank was making a trip to the Bahamas on the yacht of his friend Munnybagge, of the Stock Exchange.
He had set out on the voyage ostensibly to make studies, for he was a marine painter, on the principle, probably, that marines are easiest to paint. When he came back and found his wife dead, he announced that he would move his studio to Havana for the purpose of improving his art. He did so, putting off his mourning suit the day after he left New York and not putting it on again, as the evidence of creditable witnesses on the steamer and in Havana has long since proved.
His son's callousness was a savage stab in old Dobb's heart. A little, mild-looking old gentleman, without a taint of selfishness or suspicion in his own nature, he had not seen the effect of his indulgence of him on his son till his brutal disregard for his first duty as a man had told him of it. The old man had appreciated and loved his daughter-in-law. In proportion as he had discovered her unhappiness and its just cause, he had lost his affection for his son. I hear that there was a terrible scene when Frank came home, a week after his wife had been buried. He claimed to have missed the telegram announcing her death to him at Nassau, but Munnybagge had already told some friends that he had got the dispatch in time for the steamer, but had remained over till the next one, because he had a flirtation on hand with little Gonzales, the Cuban heiress, and old Dobb had heard of it. Munnybagge never took him yachting again; and, speaking to me once about him, he designated him, not by name, but as "that infernal bloodless cad."
However, as I have said, there was a desperate row between father and son, and Frank is said to have slunk out of the house like a whipped cur, and been quite dull company at the supper which he took after the opera that night in Gillian Trussell's jolly Bohemian flat. When he emigrated, with his studio traps filling half a dozen packing cases, none of the boys bothered to see him off. They had learned to see through his good fellowship, and recalled a poor little phantom, to whose life and happiness he had been a wicked and bitter enemy.
About a year after his departure I read the announcement in the Herald of the marriage of Franklin D. Dobb, Sr., to a widow well-known and popular in society. I took the trouble to ascertain that it was Frank's father, and being among some of the boys that night, mentioned it to them.
"Well," remarked Smith, "that's really queer. You remember Frank left some things in my care when he went away? Yesterday I got a letter asking about them, and informing me that he had got married and was coming home."
He did come home, and he settled in his old studio. What sort of a meeting he had with his father this time I never heard. The old gentleman had been paying him his allowance regularly while he was away, and I believe he kept up the payment still. But otherwise he gave him no help, and if he ever needed help he did now.
His wife was a Cuban, as pretty and as helpless as a doll. She had been an heiress till her brother had turned rebel and had his property confiscated. Unfortunately for Frank, he had married her before the culmination of this catastrophe. In fact, he had been paying court to her with the dispatch announcing his wife's death in his pocket, and had married her long before the poor little clay was well settled in the grave he had sent it to. In marrying her he had evidently believed he was establishing his future. So he was, but it was a future of expiation for the sins and omissions of his past.
The new Mrs. Dobb was a tigress in her love and her jealousy. She was childish and ignorant, and adored her husband as a man and an artist. She measured his value by her estimation of him, and was on the watch perpetually for trespassers on her domain. The domestic outbreaks between the two were positively blood curdling. One afternoon, I remember, Gillian Trussell, who had heard of his return, called on him. Mrs. D. met her at the studio door, told her, "Frank," as she called him, was out; slammed the door in her face, and then flew at him with a palette scraper. We had to break the door in, and found him holding her off by both wrists, and she frothing in a mad fit of hysterics. From that day he was a changed man. She owned him body and soul.
The life the pair lived after that was simply ridiculously[bb]miserable. He had lost his old social popularity, and was forced to sell his pictures to the cheap dealers, when he was lucky enough to sell them at all. The paternal allowance would not support the flat they first occupied, and they went into a boarding house. Inside of a month they were in the papers, on account of outbreaks on Mrs. Dobb's part against one of the ladies of the house. A couple of days after he leased a little room opening into his studio, converted it into a bed-room, and they settled there for good.
Such a housekeeping as it was—like a scene in a farce. The studio had long since run to seed, and a perpetual odor of something to eat hung over it along with the sickening reek of the Florida water Mrs. D., like all other creoles, made more liberal use of than of the pure element it was half-named from. Crumbs and crusts and chop-bones, which the dog had left, littered the rugs; and I can not recall the occasion on which the caterer's tin box was not standing at the door, unless it was when the dirty plates were piled up, there waiting for him to come for them. I dined there once. Frank had had a savage quarrel with her that day, and wanted me for a bender. But the scheme availed him nothing, for she broke out over the soup and I left them to fight it out, and finished my feast at a chop house.
All of his old flirtations came back to curse him now. His light loves of the playhouse and his innocent devotions of the ball room were alike the instruments fate had forged into those of punishment for him. The very names of his old fancies, which, with that subtle instinct all women possess, she had found out, were sufficient to send his wife into a frenzy. She was a chronic theatre-goer, and they never went to the theatre without bringing a quarrel home with them. If he was silent at the play she charged him with neglecting her; if he brisked up and tried to chat, her jealousy would soon pick out some casus belli in the small talk he strove to interest her with. A word to a passing friend, a glance at one of her own sex, was sufficient to set her going. I shall never question that jealousy is a form of actual madness, after what I saw of it in the lives of that miserable man and woman.
A year after his return he was the ghost of his old self. He was haggard and often unshaven; his attire was shabby and carelessly put on; he had lost his old, jaunty air, and went by you with a hurried pace, and his head and shoulders bent with an indescribable suggestion of humility. The fear of having her break out, regardless of any one who might be by, which hung over him at home, haunted him out of doors, too. The avenger of Mrs. Dobb the first had broken his spirit as effectually as he had broken Mrs. Dobb's heart. Smith occupied the next studio to him, and one evening I was smoking there, when an atrocious uproar commenced in the next room. We could distinguish Frank's voice and his wife's, and another strange one. Smith looked at me, grinned, and shrugged his shoulders. The disturbance ceased in a couple of minutes, and a door banged.
Then came a crash, a shrill and furious scream, and the sound of feet. We ran to the door, in time to see Mrs. Dobb, her hair in a tangle down her back, in a dirty wrapper and slipshod slippers, stumbling down stairs. We posted after her, Smith nearly breaking his neck by tripping over one of the slippers which she had shed as she ran. The theatres were just out and the streets full of people, among whom she jostled her way like the mad woman that she was. We came up with her as she overtook her husband, who was walking with McGilp, the dealer who handled his pictures. She seized him by the arm and screamed out:
"I told you I would come with you."
His face for a moment was the face of a devil, full of fury and despair. I saw his fist clench itself and the big vein in his forehead swell. But he slipped his hands into his pockets, looked appealingly at McGilp, and said, shrugging his shoulders, "You see how it is, Mac?"
McGilp nodded and walked abruptly away, with a look full of contempt and scorn. We mingled with the crowd and saw the poor wretches go off together, he grim and silent, she hysterically excited—with all the world staring at them. Smith slept on a lounge in my room that night. "I couldn't get a wink up there," he said, "and I don't want to be even the ear witness of a murder."
The night did not witness the tragedy he anticipated, though. Next day, Frank Dobb came to see me—a compliment he had not paid me for months. He was the incarnation of abject misery, and so nervous that he could scarcely speak intelligibly.
"I saw you in the crowd last night, old man," he said, looking at the floor and twisting and untwisting his fingers. "What do you think of it? A nice life for a fellow to lead, eh?"
What else could I reply than, "Why do you lead it then?"
"Why?" he repeated, breaking into a hollow, uneasy laugh. "Why, because I love her, damn me! and I deserve it all."
"Is this what you came to tell me?" I asked.
"No," he answered, "of course not. The fact is, I want you to help me out of a hole. That row last night has settled me with McGilp. He came to see me about a lot of pictures for a sale he is getting up out West, and the senora kept up such a nagging that he got sick and suggested that we should go to 'The Studio' for a chop and settle the business there. She swore I shouldn't go, and that she would follow us if I did. I thought she'd not go that far; but she did. So the McGilp affair is off for good, I know. He's disgusted, and I don't blame him. What I want of you is this. Buy that Hoguet you wanted last year."
The picture was one I had fancied and offered him a price for in his palmy days, one that he had picked up abroad. I was only too glad to take it and a couple more, for which I paid him at once; and next evening, at dinner, I heard that he had levanted. "Walked out this morning," said Smith, "and sent a messenger an hour after with word that he had already left the city. She came in to me with the letter in one hand and a dagger in the other. She swears he has run away with another woman, and says she's going to have her life, if she has to follow her around the world."
She did not carry out her sanguinary purpose, though. There were some consultations with old Dobb and then the studio was to let again. Some one told me she had returned to Cuba, where she proposed to live on the allowance her father-in-law had made her husband and which he now continued to her.
I had almost forgotten her when, several years later, in the lobby of the Academy of Music, she touched my arm with her fan. She was promenading on the arm of a handsome but beefy-looking Englishman, whom she introduced to me as her husband. I had not heard of a divorce, but I took the introduction as information that there had been one. The Englishman was a better fellow than he looked. We supped together after the opera, and I learned that he had met Mrs. Dobb in Havana, where he had spent some years in business. I found her a changed woman—a new woman, indeed, in whom I only now and then caught a glimpse of her old indolent, babyish and foolish self. She was not only prettier than ever, but she had become a sensible and clever woman. The influence of an intelligent man, who was strong enough to bend her to his ways, had developed her latent brightness and taught her to respect herself as well as him.
I met her several times after that, and at the last meeting but one she spoke of Frank for the first time. Her black eyes snapped when she uttered his name. The devil was alive in them, though love was dead.
I told her that I had heard nothing of him since his disappearance.
"But I have," she said, showing her white teeth in a curious smile.
"Indeed!" I replied, quite astounded.
"The coward!" she went on bitterly; "and to think I could ever have loved such a thing as he! Do you know, Mr. X., that I never knew he had been married till after he had fled? Then his father told me how he had courted my father's money, with his wife lying dead at home. Oh! Senor Francisco, Senor Francisco! Before I heard that, I wanted to kill the woman who had stolen you from me. The moment after I could have struck you dead at my feet."
She threw her arm up, holding her fan like a dagger. I believed her, and so would any one who had seen her then.
"I had hardly settled in Havana," she continued, "before I received a letter from him.Already he wanted to come back to me. Had the other woman tired of him already? I asked myself, or was it really true, as his father had told me, that he had fled alone? I answered the letter, and he wrote again. Again I answered, and so it was kept up. For two years I played with the love I now knew was worthless. He was traveling round the world, and a dozen times wanted to come directly to me. I insisted that he should keep his journey up—as a probation, you see. He submitted. But oh! how he did love me!"
The exultation with which she told this was absolutely fiendish. I could see in it, plainer than any words could tell it to me, the scheme of vengeance she had carried out, the alternating hopes and torments to which she had raised, and into which she had plunged him. I could see him wandering around the globe, scourged by remorses, agonized by doubts, and maddened by despairs, accepting the lies she wrote him as inviolable pledges, and sustaining himself with the vision of a future never to be fulfilled. She read the expression of my face, and laughed.
"Was it not an idea?" she asked. "Was that not better than this?"
And again she stabbed the air with her fan.
"But—pardon me the question—but you have begun the confidence," I said. "How will it end?"
"It has ended," she answered.
"How?"
"I had been divorced while I was writing to him. A year ago he was to be in London, where I was to meet him. While he was sailing from the Cape of Good Hope I was being married to a man who loved me for myself, and to whom I had confided all. Instead of my address at the London post office he received a notification of my marriage, addressed to him in my own hand and mailed to him by myself. He wrote once or twice still, but my husband indorsed the letters with his own name and returned them unopened. He may be dead for all I know, but I hope and pray he is still alive, and will remain alive and love me for a thousand years."
She opened her arms, as if to hug her vengeance to her heart, and looked at me steadily with eyes that thrilled me with their lambent fire. No wonder the wretched vagabond loved her! What a doom his selfishness and his duplicity had invoked upon him! I believe if he could have seen her as I saw her then, so different from and better than he knew her to be, he would have gone mad on the spot. Poor Mrs. Dobb the first was indeed avenged.
We sipped our chocolate and talked of other things, as if such a being as Frank Dobb had never been. Her husband joined us and we made an evening of it at the theatre. I knew from the way he looked at me, and from the increased warmth of his manner, that he was conversant with his wife's having made a confidant of me. But I do not think he knew how far her confidence had gone. I have often wondered since if he knew how deep and fierce the hatred she carried for his predecessor was. There are things women will reveal to strangers which they will die rather than divulge to those they love.
I saw them off to Europe, for they were going to establish themselves in London, and I have never seen or directly heard from them since. But some months after their departure I received a letter from Robinson, who has been painting there ever since his picture made that great hit in the Salon of '7—.
"I have odd news for you," he wrote. "You remember Frank Dobb, who belonged to our old Pen and Pencil Club, and who ran away from that Cuban wife of his just before I left home? Well, about a year ago I met him in Fleet street, the shabbiest beggar you ever saw. He was quite tight and smelled of gin across the street. He was taking a couple of drawings to a penny dreadful office which he was making pictures for at ten shillings a piece. I went to see him once, in the dismalest street back of Drury Lane. He was doing some painting for a dealer, when he was sober enough, and of all the holes you ever saw his was it. I soon had to sit down on him, for he got into the habit of coming to see me and loafing around, making the studio smell like a pub, till I would lend him five shillings to go away. I heard nothing of him till the other day I came across an event which this from the Telegraph will explain."
The following newspaper paragraph was appended:
"The man who shot himself on the door-step of Mr. Bennerley Green, the West India merchant, last Monday, has been discovered to be an American who for some time has been employed furnishing illustrations to the lower order of publications here. He was known as Allan, but this is said to have been an assumed name. He is stated to be the son of a wealthy New Yorker, who discarded him in consequence of his habits of dissipation, and to have once been an artist of considerable prominence in the United States. All that is known of the suicide is the story told by the servant, who a few minutes after admitting his master and mistress upon their return from the theatre, heard the report of a pistol in the street, and on opening the door found the wretched man dead upon the step. The body was buried after the inquest at the charge of the eminent American artist, Mr. J. J. Robinson, A. R. A., who had known him in his better days."
The second husband of Mrs. Frank Dobb is Mr. Bennerley Green, the West India merchant.—The Continent.
CONSUMPTION CURED.
An old physician, retired from practice, having had placed in his hands by an East India missionary the formula of a simple vegetable remedy for the speedy and permanent cure of Consumption, Bronchitis, Catarrh, Asthma and all throat and Lung Affections, also a positive and radical cure for Nervous Debility and all Nervous Complaints, after having tested its wonderful curative powers in thousands of cases, has felt it his duty to make it known to his suffering fellows. Actuated by this motive and a desire to relieve human suffering, I will send free of charge, to all who desire it, this recipe, in German, French, or English, with full directions for preparing and using. Sent by mail by addressing with stamp, naming this paper.W. A. Noyes,149 Power's Block,Rochester,N. Y.
Illustration: Humorous
Many cures for snoring have been invented, but none have stood the test so well as the old reliable clothes-pin.
A Clergyman says that the baby that pulls whiskers, bites fingers, and grabs for everything it sees has in it the elements of a successful politician.
A Hartford man has a Bible bearing date 1599. It is very easy to preserve a Bible for a great many years, because—because—well, we don't know what the reason is, but it is so, nevertheless.
A Vermont man has a hen thirty years old. The other day a hawk stole it, but after an hour came back with a broken bill and three claws gone, put down the hen and took an old rubber boot in place of it.
Alexander Gumbleton Ruffleton Scufflton Oborda Whittleton Sothenhall Benjaman Franklin Squiresis still a resident of North Carolina, aged ninety-two. The census taker always thinks at first that the old man is guying.
A little five-year-old friend, who was always allowed to choose the prettiest kitten for his pet and playmate before the other nurslings were drowned, was taken to his mother's sick room the other morning to see the two tiny new twin babes. He looked reflectively from one to the other for a minute or two, then, poking his chubby finger into the plumpest baby, he said decidedly, "Save this one."
In promulgating your esoteric cogitation on articulating superficial sentimentalities and philosophical psychological observation, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversation possess a clarified conciseness, compact comprehensiveness, coalescent consistency, and a concatenated cognancy; eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity and jejune babblement. In other words, don't use such big words.