Mr. Howells thought it was going to storm, and turned to go away. At that moment Mrs. Walter arrived, the first comer of the Review Club. And Nora’s new hostess had to turn to her guests, while Ellen in the last cares for the afternoon table had to comfort Nora by spasms. It was left for Margaret the chambermaid to pump out—or to screw out, as you choose—the details of the story from the poor frightened waif, who seemed more astray than ever.
John McLaughlin? No. Nobody knew anything about him. The last choreman was named McManus, but he went to Ottawa three years ago!
And while the different facts and doubts were canvassed in the kitchen, upstairs they settled the Bulgarian question, the origin of the natives of Tasmania, and the last questions about realism.
Only the mind of the lady of the house returned again and again to questions as to the present residence of John McLaughlin.
For in spite of the gathering snow and the prospect of more, the members of the Review Club had followed fast on Mrs. Walters and gathered in full force.
The hostess, though somewhat preoccupied, was courteous and ready.
Only the functions of the club, as they went forward, would be occasionally interrupted. Thus she would read aloud “as in her private duty bound”—
“‘The peasantry were excited, but were held in check by promises from Stambuloff. The emissaries of the Czar—’
“Mrs. Goodspeed, would you mind reading on? Here is the place. I see my postman pass the window.”
And so, moving quickly to the front door, she interviewed the faithful Harrington, dressed, heaven knows why, in Confederate uniform of gray. For Harrington had served his four years on the loyal side. Four times a day did Harrington with his letter-bag renew the connection of this household with the world and other worlds.
“Dear Mr. Harrington, I thought you could tell us. Here is a girl named Nora McLaughlin, and here is her trunk, both left at the door by the milkman, and we do not know anything about where she belongs.”
“Insufficient address?” asked Harrington, professionally.
“Exactly. All she knows is that her brother is named John.”
“A great many of them are,” said Harrington, already writing on his memorandum book, and in his memory fixing the fact that a large, two-legged living parcel, insufficiently addressed, had been left at the wrong door for John McLaughlin; also a trunk, too large for delivery by the penny post.
“I will tell the other men, and if I was you I would send to the police.”
“Would you mind telling the first officer you meet? I hate to send my girls out.” And so she returned to Bulgaria.
But Bulgaria was ended, and Mrs. Conover handed her an article on “Antarctic Discovery.” She was again reading:—
“Under these circumstances Captain Wilkes, who had collected a boatload of stones from the front of the glacier,” when she gave back the “Forum” to Mrs. Conover. “Would you mind going on just a minute? “ she said, and ran out to meet the icecream man. So soon as he had left his tins she said,—
“Mr. Fridge, would you mind stopping at the Dudley School as you go home and telling Miss Lougee that there is a lost girl here?” etc.
Good Mr. Fridge was most eager to help, and the hostess returned, took the book again and read on with “the temperature, as they observed it, was 99 degrees C.; but, as the alcohol in their tins was frozen at the moment, there seemed reason to suspect the correctness of this observation.”
And a shiver passed over the Review Club.
Thus far the powers of confusion and error seemed to have been triumphant over poor Nora, or such was the success of that power who uses these agencies, if the reader prefer to personify him.
But the time had come to turn his left flank and to attack his forces in the rear, for the postman now took the field,—that is to say, Harrington, good fellow, finished his third delivery, four good miles and nine-tenths of a furlong, snow two inches deep, three, four, six, before he was done, and then returned to his branch office to report.
“Two-legged parcel; insufficient address; 99 Linwood Street! Jim, what ever come to that letter that went to 99 Linwood Street with insufficient address six weeks ago?”
“Linwood Street? Insufficient address? Foreign letter? Why, of course, you know, went back to the central office.”
“I guess it did,” said Harrington, grimly; “so I must go there too.”
This meant that after Harrington had gone his rounds again on delivery route No. 6, four more miles and nine-tenths more of a furlong, 313 doorbells and only 73 slit boxes, snow now ranging from 6 inches to 12 on the sidewalks, and breast-deep where there was a chance for drifting, when all this was well done, so that Harrington had no more duties to Uncle Sam, he could take Nora McLaughlin’s work in hand, and thus defeat the prince of evil.
To the central office by a horse-car. Blocked once or twice, but well at the office at 7.30 in the evening.
Christmas work heavy, so the whole home staff is on duty. That is well. Enemy of souls loses one point there.
Blind-letter clerks all here. Insufficient-delivery men both here. Chief of returned bureau here. All summoned to the foreign office as Harrington tells his story. Indexes produced, ledgers, journals, day-books, and private passbooks. John McLaughlin’s biography followed out on 67 of the different avatars in which his personality has been manifested under that name. False trail here—clue breaks there—scent fails here, but at last—a joyful cry from Will Search:—
“Here you are! Insufficient address. November 1. Queenstown letter—‘Linwood, to John McLaughlin. Try Dorchester. Try Roxbury. Try East Boston. Try Somerville’—and there it stops, and was not returned.”
“Try Somerville!”
In these words great light fell over the eager circle. Not because Somerville is the seat of an insane hospital. No! But because it is not in the Boston Directory.
If you please, Somerville is an independent city, and so, unless John McLaughlin worked in Boston, if he lived in Somerville, he would not be in the Boston Directory.
Not much! Somerville has its own seven John McLaughlins besides those Boston ones.
“I say, Harry, Tom, Dick—somebody fetch Somerville Directory!”
Dick flew and returned with the book.
“Here you be! ‘John McLaughlin, laborer, 99 Linwood Street!’”
“Victory!”
Satan’s forces tremble, and as the different officers return to their desks “even the ranks of Tuscany” in that well-bred office “can scarce forbear to cheer.”
As for Harrington, he bids good-by, wraps his tartan around him, and is out in the snow again. Where Linwood Street is he “knows no more than the dead.” But somebody will know.
Somerville car. Draw of bridge open. Man falls into the river and has to be rescued. Draw closes. Snow-drift at Margin Street. Shovels. Drift open. Centre of Somerville. Apothecary’s shop open. “Please, where is Linwood Street?”
“Take your second left, cross three or four streets, turn to the right by the water-pipe, take the third right, go down hill by the schoolhouse and take second left, and you come out at 11 Linwood Street.”
All which Harrington does. He experiences one continual burst of joy that his route does not take him through these detours daily. But his professional experience is good for him. We have no need to describe his false turns. Even aniseed would have been useless in that snow. At last, just as the Somerville bells ring for nine o’clock, Harrington also rings triumphant at the door of the little five-roomed cottage, where his lantern has already revealed the magic number 99.
Ring! as for a gilt-edged special delivery! Door thrown open by a solid man with curly red hair, unshaven since Sunday, in his shirtsleeves and with kerosene lamp in his hand.
“Are you John McLaughlin?”
“Indade I am; the same.”
“And where’s your sister Nora?”
The good fellow, who had been stern before, broke down. “And indade I was saying to Ellen it’s an awful night for ’em all in the gale off the coast in the ship. The holy Virgin and the good God take care of ’em!”
“They have taken care of them,” said Harrington, reverently. “The ship is safe in dock, and your sister Nora is in Roxbury, at 99 Linwood Street!”
And a broad grin lighted his face as he spoke the words.
There was joy in every bed and at every door of the five rooms. Then John hastily donned coat, cardigan, and ulster. He persuaded Harrington to drink a cup of red-hot tea which was brewing on the stove. While the good fellow did so, and ate a St. Anne’s bun, which Mrs. McLaughlin produced in triumph, John was persuading Hermann Gross, the expressman next door, to put the gray into a light pung he had for special delivery. By the time Harrington went to the door two lanterns were flitting about in the snow-piled yard behind the two houses.
Harrington assisted in yoking the gray. In five minutes he and John were defying the gale as they sped across the silent bridge, bound south to Roxbury. Poor little Nora was asleep in the parlor on the sofa. She had begged and begged that she need not be put to bed, and by her side her protector sat reading about the antarctic. But of a sudden Harrington reappeared.
Is it Santa Claus?
Indeed it is! Beard, hat, coat, all white with snow!
And Santa Claus has come for the best present he will deliver that evening!
Dear little Nora is wrapped in sealskins and other skins, mauds and astrakhan rugs. She has a hot brick at her feet, and Pompey, the dog, is made to lie over them, so John McLaughlin No. 68 takes her in triumph to 99 Linwood Street.
That was a Christmas to be remembered! And Christmas morning, after church, the Brothers of St. Patrick, which was the men’s society, and the Sodality of St. Anne’s, which was the women’s, determined on a great Twelfth-night feast to celebrate Nora’s return.
It was to show “how these brethren love one another.”
They proposed to take the rink. People didn’t use it for skating in winter as much as in summer.
Nora was to receive, with John McLaughlin and his wife to assist. The other 74 John McLaughlins were to act as ushers.
The Salvation Army came first, led by the lass who found Michael.
Procession No. 2 was Mike and the teamsters who “don’t take nothing for such as she.”
Third, in special horse-cars, which went through from Dorchester to Somerville by a vermilion edict from the West End Company, the eleven families of that No. 99. They stopped in Roxbury to pick up Ellen and the hostess of the Review Club.
Fourth, all the patrolmen who had helped and all who tried to help, led by “cop” No. 47.
Fifth, all the school children who had told the story and had made inquiries.
Sixth, the man who made the Somerville Directory.
Seventh and last, in two barouches, Harrington and the chiefs of staff at the general post-office. And the boys asked Father McElroy to make a speech to all just before the dancing began.
And he said: “The lost sheep was never lost. She thought she was lost in the wilderness, but she was at home, for she was met by the Christmas greeting of the world into which the dear Lord was born!”
NOTE.—It may interest the reader to know that the important part of this story is true.
NOTE.—It may interest the reader to know that the important part of this story is true.
IHAVE a little circle of friends, among all my other friends quite distinct, though of them. They are four men and four women; the husbands more in love with their wives than on the days when they married them, and the wives with their husbands. These people live for the good of the world, to a fair extent, but much, very much, of their lives is passed together. Perhaps the happiest period they ever knew was when, in different subordinate capacities, they were all on the staff of the same magazine. Then they met daily at the office, lunched together perforce, and could make arrangements for the evening. But, to say true, things differ little with them now, though that magazine long since took wings and went to a better world.
Their names are Felix and Fausta Carter, Frederic and Mary Ingham, George and Anna Haliburton, George and Julia Hackmatack.
I get the children’s names wrong to their faces—except that in general their name is Legion, for they are many—so I will not attempt them here.
These people live in very different houses, with very different “advantages,” as the world says. Haliburton has grown very rich in the rag and paper business, rich enough to discard rag money and believe in gold. He even spits at silver, which I am glad to get when I can. Frederic Ingham will never be rich. His regular income consists in his half-pay as a retired brevet officer in the patriot service of Garibaldi of the year 1859. For the rest, he invested his money in the Brick Moon, and, as I need hardly add, insured his life in the late Continental Insurance Company. But the Inghams find just as much in life as the Haliburtons, and Anna Haliburton consults Polly Ingham about the shade of a flounce just as readily and as eagerly as Polly consults her about the children’s dentistry. They are all very fond of each other.
They get a great deal out of life, these eight, partly because they are so closely allied together. Just two whist-parties, you see; or, if they go to ride, they just fill two carriages. Eight is such a good number—makes such a nice dinner-party. Perhaps they see a little too much of each other. That we shall never know.
They got a great deal of life, and yet they were not satisfied. They found that out very queerly. They have not many standards. Ingham does take the “Spectator;” Hackmatack condescends to read the “Evening Post;” Haliburton, who used to be in the insurance business, and keeps his old extravagant habits, reads the “Advertiser” and the “Transcript;” all of them have the “Christian Union,” and all of them buy “Harper’s Weekly.” Every separate week of their lives they buy of the boys, instead of subscribing; they think they may not want the next number, but they always do. Not one of them has read the “Nation” for five years, for they like to keep good-natured. In fact, they do not take much stock in the general organs of opinion, and the standard books you find about are scandalously few. The Bible, Shakespeare, John Milton; Polly has Dante; Julia has “Barclay’s Apology,” with ever so many marks in it; one George has “Owen Felltham,” and the other is strong on Marcus Aurelius. Well, no matter about these separate things; the uniform books besides those I named, in different editions but in every house, are the “Arabian Nights” and “Robinson Crusoe.” Hackmatack has the priceless first edition. Haliburton has Grandville’s (the English Grandville). Ingham has a proof copy of the Stothard. Carter has a good copy of the Cruikshank.
If you ask me which of these four I should like best, I should say as the Laureate did when they gave him his choice of two kinds of cake, “Both’s as good as one.”
Well, “Robinson Crusoe” being their lay gospel and creed, not to say epistle and psalter, it was not queer that one night, when the election had gone awfully, and the men were as blue as that little porcelain Osiris of mine yonder, who is so blue that he cannot stand on his feet—it was not queer, I say, that they turned instinctively to “Robinson Crusoe” for relief.
Now, Robinson Crusoe was once in a very bad box indeed, and to comfort himself as well as he could, and to set the good against the evil, that he might have something to distinguish his case from worse, he stated impartially, like debtor and creditor, the comforts and miseries, thus:—
I am cast upon a horrible desolate island, void of all recovery.
But I am alive, and not drowned as all my hope of ship’s company were.
I am singled out and separated, as it were, from all the world, to be miserable.
But I am singled out, too, from the ship’s crew to be spared from death.
And so the debtor and creditor account goes on.
Julia Hackmatack read this aloud to them—the whole of it—and they agreed, as Robinson says, not so much for their posterity as to keep their thoughts from daily poring on their trials, that for each family they would make such a balance. What might not come of it? Perhaps a partial nay, perhaps a perfect cure!
So they determined that on the instant they would go to work, and two in the smoking-room, two in the dining-room, two in George’s study, and two in the parlor, they should in the next half-hour make up their lists of good and evil. Here are the results:—
We have three nice boysand three nice girls.
But the door-bell rings allthe time.
We have enough to eat, drink, and wear.
But the coal bill is awful,and the Larrabee furnace hasgiven out. The firm that madeit has gone up, and no castingscan be got to mend it.
We have more books thanwe can read, and do not careto read many newspapers.
But our friends borrow ourbooks, and only return oddvolumes.
We have many very dearfriends—enough.
But we are behindhand 143names on our lists of calls.
We have health in ourfamily.
But the children may besick. The Lowndes children are
We seem to be of someuse in the world.
But Mrs. Hogarth has leftFred $200 for the poor, and heis afraid he shall spend it wrong.
The country has gone to the dogs.
We have a nice home intown, and one in Sharon, anda sea-shore place at LittleGau, and we have friendsenough to fill them.
You cannot give a cup ofcoffee to a beggar but he sendsfive hundred million tramps tothe door.
We have some of the nicestchildren in the world.
A great many people call
We have enough to do, andnot too much.
We have to give a party toall our acquaintance every year,which is horrid.
Business is good enough,though complaining.
We do not do anything wewant to do, and we do a greatdeal that we do not want to do.George had added, “And thereis no health in us.” But Annamarked that out as wicked.
The children are all well.
People vote as if they werepossessed.
We have eight splendidchildren.
The plumbers’ work alwaysgives way at the wrong time,and the plumbers’ bills are awful.
We have money enough,though we know what to dowith more.
The furnace will not heat thehouse unless the wind is at thesouthwest. None of the chimneysdraw well.
George will not have to goto Bahia next year.
We hate the Kydd School.The master drinks and the firstassistant lies. But we live inthat district; so the boys haveto go there.
Tom got through with scarletfever without being deaf.
Lucy said “commence” yesterday,Jane said “gent,” Walter said“Bully for you,” and Alice said“nobby.” And what is coming wedo not know.
Dr. Witherspoon has acceptedthe presidency of TiberiasCollege in Alaska.
How long any man can liveunder this government I donot know.
Governments are strongerevery year. Money goes fartherthan it did.
But as the children growbigger, their clothes costmore.
All the boys are good andwell. So are the girls.They are splendid children.
But the children get nogood at school, exceptmeasles, whooping-cough, andscarlet fever.
Old Mr. Porter died lastweek, and Felix gets promotionin the office.
But the gas-meter lies;and the gas company wants tohave it lie.
The lost volume of Fichtewas left on the door-step lastnight by some one who rang thebell and ran away. It is ratherwet, but when it is bound willlook nicely.
But the Athenaeum is alwayscalling in its books to examinethem, and making us say whereMr. Fred Curtis’s books are.As if we cared.
The mistress of the ArbellaSchool is dead.
But our drains smellawfully, though the Board ofHealth says they do not.
We have to go to eveningparties among our friends, orseem stuck up. We hate to go,and wish there were none. Wehad rather come here.
The increasingworthlessness of the franchise.
With these papers they gathered all in the study just as the clock struck nine, and, in good old Boston fashion, Silas was bringing in some hot oysters. They ate the oysters, which were good—trust Anna for that—and then the women read the papers, while the smoking men smoked and pondered.
They all recognized the gravity of the situation. Still, as Julia said, they felt better already. It was like having the doctor come: you knew the worst, and could make ready for it.
They did not discuss the statements much. They had discussed them too much in severalty. They did agree that they should be left to Felix to report upon the next evening. He was, so to speak, to post them, to strike out from each side the quantities which could be eliminated, and leave the equations so simplified that the eight might determine what they should do about it—indeed, what they could do about it.
The visitors put on their “things”—how strange that that word should once have meant “parliaments!”—kissed good-by so far as they were womanly, and went home. George Haliburton screwed down the gas, and they went to bed.
Thenext night they went to see Warren at the Museum. That probably helped them. After the play they met by appointment at the Carters’. Felix read his
1.Number.—There are twenty-one reasons for congratulation, twenty-four for regret. But of the twenty-four, four are the same; namely, the cursed political prospect of the country. Counting that as one only, there are twenty-one on each side.2.Evil.—The twenty-one evils may be classified thus: political, 1; social, 12; physical, 5; terrors, 3.All the physical evils would be relieved by living in a temperate climate, instead of this abomination, which is not a climate, to which our ancestors were sold by the cupidity of the Dutch.The political evil would be ended by leaving the jurisdiction of the United States.The social evils, which are a majority of all, would be reduced by residence in any place where there were not so many people.The terrors properly belong to all the classes. In a decent climate, in a country not governed by its vices, and a community not crowded, the three terrors would be materially abated, if not put to an end.Respectfully submitted,Felix Carter.
1.Number.—There are twenty-one reasons for congratulation, twenty-four for regret. But of the twenty-four, four are the same; namely, the cursed political prospect of the country. Counting that as one only, there are twenty-one on each side.
2.Evil.—The twenty-one evils may be classified thus: political, 1; social, 12; physical, 5; terrors, 3.
All the physical evils would be relieved by living in a temperate climate, instead of this abomination, which is not a climate, to which our ancestors were sold by the cupidity of the Dutch.
The political evil would be ended by leaving the jurisdiction of the United States.
The social evils, which are a majority of all, would be reduced by residence in any place where there were not so many people.
The terrors properly belong to all the classes. In a decent climate, in a country not governed by its vices, and a community not crowded, the three terrors would be materially abated, if not put to an end.
Respectfully submitted,
Felix Carter.
How they discussed it now! Talk? I think so! They all talked awhile, and no one listened. But they had to stop when Phenice brought in the Welsh rare-bit (good before bed, but a little indigestible, unless your conscience is stainless), and Felix then put in a word.
“Now I tell you, this is not nonsense. Why not do what Winslow and Standish and those fellows thought they were doing when they sailed? Why not go to a climate like France, with milder winters and cooler summers than here? You want some winter, you want some summer.”
“I hate centipedes and scorpions,” said Anna.
“There’s no need of them. There’s a place in Mexico, not a hundred miles from the sea, where you can have your temperature just as you like.”
“Stuff!”
“No, it is not stuff at all,” said poor Felix, eagerly. “I do not mean just one spot. But you live in this valley, you know. If you find it is growing hot, you move about a quarter of a mile to another place higher up. If you find that hot, why you have another house a little higher. Don’t you see? Then, when winter comes, you move down.”
“Are there many people there?” asked Haliburton; “and do they make many calls?”
“There are a good many people, but they are a gentle set. They never quarrel. They are a little too high up for the revolutions, and there is something tranquillizing about the place; they seldom die, none are sick, need no aguardiente, do what the head of the village tells them to do—only he never has any occasion to tell them. They never make calls.”
“I like that,” said Ingham. That patriarchal system is the true system of government.”
“Where is this place?” said Anna, incredulously.
“I have been trying to remember all day, but I can’t. It is in Mexico, I know. It is on this side of Mexico. It tells all about it in an old ‘Harper’—oh, a good many years ago—but I never bound mine; there are always one or two missing every year. I asked Fausta to look for it, but she was busy. I thought,” continued poor Felix, a little crestfallen, “one of you might remember.”
No, nobody remembered; and nobody felt much like going to the public library to look, on Carter’s rather vague indications. In fact, it was a suggestion of Haliburton’s that proved more popular.
Haliburton said he had not laid in his coal. They all said the same. “Now,” said he, “the coal of this crowd for this winter will cost a thousand dollars, if you add in the kindling and the matches, and patching the furnace pots and sweeping the chimneys.”
To this they agreed.
“It is now Wednesday. Let us start Saturday for Memphis, take a cheap boat to New Orleans, go thence to Vera Cruz by steamer, explore the ground, buy the houses if we like, and return by the time we can do without fires next spring. Our board will cost less than it would here, for it is there the beef comes from. And the thousand dollars will pay the fares both ways.”
The women, with one voice, cried, “And the children?”
“Oh yes,” cried the eager adventurer. “I had forgotten the children. Well, they are all well, are they not?”
Yes; all were well.
“Then we will take them with us as far as Yellow Springs, in Ohio, and leave them for the fall and winter terms at Antioch College. They will be enough better taught than they are at the Kydd School, and they will get no scarlet fever. Nobody is ever sick there. They will be better cared for than my children are when they are left to me, and they will be seven hundred miles nearer to us than if they were here. The little ones can go to the Model School, the middling ones to the Academy, and the oldest can go to college. How many are there, Felix?”
Felix said there were twenty-nine.
“Well,” said the arithmetical George, “it is the cheapest place I ever knew. Why, their Seniors get along for three hundred dollars a year, and squeeze more out of life than I do out of twenty thousand. The little ones won’t cost at that rate. A hundred and fifty dollars for twenty-nine children; how much is that, Polly?”
“Forty-three hundred and fifty dollars, of course,” said she.
“I thought so. Well, don’t you see, we shall save that in wages to these servants we are boarding here, of whom there are eleven, who cost us, say, six dollars a week; that is, sixty-six dollars for twenty weeks is thirteen hundred and twenty dollars. We won’t buy any clothes, but live on the old ones, and make the children wear their big brothers’ and sisters’. There’s a saving of thirty-seven hundred dollars for thirty-seven of us. Why, we shall make money! I tell you what, if you’ll do it, I’ll pay all the bills till we come home. If you like, you shall then each pay me three-quarters of your last winter’s accounts, and I’ll charge any difference to profit and loss. But I shall make by the bargain.”
The women doubted if they could be ready. But it proved they could. Still they did not start Saturday; they started Monday, in two palace-cars. They left the children, all delighted with the change, at Antioch on Wednesday—a little tempted to spend the winter there themselves; but, this temptation well resisted, they sped on to Mexico.
Sucha tranquil three days on the Mississippi, which was as an autumn flood, and revealed himself as indeed King of Waters! Such delightful three days in hospitable New Orleans! Might it not be possible to tarry even here? “No,” cried the inexorable George. “We have put our hand to the plough. Who will turn back?” Two days of abject wretchedness on the Gulf of Mexico. “Why were we born? Why did we not die before we left solid land?” And then the light-house at Vera Cruz.
“Lo, land! and all was well.”
“Lo, land! and all was well.”
What a splendid city! Why had nobody told them of this queen on the sea-shore? Red and white towers, cupolas, battlements! It was all like a story-book. When they landed, to be sure, it was not quite so big a place as they had fancied from all this show; but for this they did not care. To land—that was enough. Had they landed on a sand-spit, they would have been in heaven. No more swaying to and fro as they lay in bed, no more stumbling to and fro as they walked. They refused the amazed Mexicans who wanted them to ride to the hotel. To walk steadily was in itself a luxury.
And then it was not long before the men had selected the little caravan of horses and mules which were to carry them on their expedition of discovery. Some valley of paradise, where a man could change his climate from midwinter to midsummer by a journey of a mile. Did the consul happen to have heard of any such valley?
Had he heard of them? He had heard of fifty. He had not, indeed, heard of much else. How could he help hearing of them?
Could the consul, then, recommend one or two valleys which might be for sale? Or was it, perhaps, impossible to buy a foothold in such an Eden?
For sale! There was nothing in the country, so far as the friend knew to whom the consul presented them, which was not for sale. Anywhere in Queretaro; or why should they not go to the Baxio? No; that was too flat and too far off. There were pretty places round Xalapa. Oh, plenty of plantations for sale. But they need not go so far. Anywhere on the rise of Chiquihiti.
Was the friend quite sure that there were no plumbers in the regions he named?
“Never a plumber in Mexico.”
Any life-insurance men?
“Not one.” The prudent friend did not add, “Risk too high.”
Were the public schools graded schools or district schools?
“Not a public school in six provinces.”
Would the neighbors be offended if we do not call?
“Cut your throats if you did.”
Did the friend think there would be many tramps?
The friend seemed more doubtful here, but suggested that the occasional use of a six-shooter reduced the number, and gave a certain reputation to the premises where it was employed which diminished much tramping afterward, and said that the law did not object to this method.
They returned to a dinner of fish, for which Vera Cruz is celebrated. “If what the man says be true,” said Ingham, “we must be very near heaven.”
It was now in November. Oh, the glory of that ride, as they left Vera Cruz and through a wilderness of color jogged slowly on to their new paradise!
“Through Eden four glad couples took their way.”
“Through Eden four glad couples took their way.”
Higher and higher. This wonder and that. Not a blade of grass such as they ever saw before, not a chirping cricket such as they ever heard before; a hundred bright-winged birds, and not one that they had ever seen before. Higher and higher. Trees, skies, clouds, flowers, beasts, birds, insects, all new and all lovely.
The final purchase was of one small plantation, with a house large enough for a little army, yet without a stair. Oranges, lemons, pomegranates, mangoes, bananas, pine-apples, coffee, sugar—what did not ripen in those perennial gardens? Half a mile above there were two smaller houses belonging to the same estate; half a mile above, another was purchased easily. This was too cold to stay in in November, but in June and July and August the temperature would be sixty-six, without change.
They sent back the mules. A telegram from Vera Cruz brought from Boston, in fifteen days, the best books in the world, the best piano in the world, a few boxes of colors for the artists, a few reams of paper, and a few dozen of pencils for the men. And then began four months of blessed life. Never a gas-bill nor a water-leak, never a crack in the furnace nor a man to put in coal, never a request to speak for the benefit of the Fenians, never the necessity of attending at a primary meeting. The ladies found in their walks these gentle Mexican children, simple, happy, civil, and with the strange idea that the object for which life is given is that men may live. They came home with new wealth untold every day—of ipomoea, convolvulus, passion-flowers, and orchids. The gentlemen brought back every day a new species, even a new genus,—a new illustration of evolution, or a new mystery to be accounted for by the law of natural selection. Night was all sleep; day was all life. Digestion waited upon appetite; appetite waited upon exercise; exercise waited upon study; study waited upon conversation; conversation waited upon love. Could it be that November was over? Can life run by so fast? Can it be that Christmas has come? Can we let life go by so fast? Is it possible that it is the end of January? We cannot let life go so fast. Really, is this St. Valentine’s Day! When ever did life go so fast?
And with the 1st of March the mules were ordered, and they moved to the next higher level. The men and women walked. And there, on the grade of a new climate, they began on a new botany, on new discoveries, and happy life found new forms as they began again.
So sped April and so sped May. Life had its battles,—oh yes, because it was life. But they were not the pettiest of battles. They were not the battles of prisoners shut up, to keep out the weather, in cells fifteen feet square. They fought, if they fought, with God’s air in their veins, and God’s warm sunshine around them, and God’s blue sky above them. So they did what they could, as they wrote and read and drew and painted, as they walked and ran and swam and rode and drove, as they encouraged this peon boy and taught that peon girl, smoothed this old woman’s pillow and listened to that old man’s story, as they analyzed these wonderful flowers, as they tasted these wonderful fruits, as they climbed these wonderful mountains, or, at night, as they pointed the telescope through this cloudless and stainless sky.
With all their might they lived. And they were so many, and there were so many round them to whom their coming was a new life, that they lived in love, and every day drank in of the infinite elixir.
But June came. The mules are sent for again. Again they walked a quarter of a mile. And here in the little whitewashed cottage, with only a selection from the books below, with two guitars and a flute in place of the piano,—here they made ready for three weeks of June. Only three weeks; for on the 29th was the Commencement at Antioch, and Jane and Walter and Florence were to take their degrees. There would need five days from Vera Cruz to reach them. And so this summer was to be spent in the North with them, before October should bring all the children and the parents to the land of the open sky. Three busy weeks between the 1st and the 22d, in which all the pictures must be finished, Ingham’s novel must be revised, Haliburton’s articles completed, the new invention for measuring power must be gauged and tested, the dried flowers must be mounted and packed, the preserved fruits must be divided for the Northern friends. Three happy weeks of life eventful, but life without crowding, and, above all, without interruption. “Think of it,” cried Felix, as they took their last walk among the lava crags, the door-bell has not rung all this last winter.’”
“‘This happy old kingOn his gate he did swing,Because there was never a door-bell to ring.’”
“‘This happy old kingOn his gate he did swing,Because there was never a door-bell to ring.’”
“‘This happy old kingOn his gate he did swing,Because there was never a door-bell to ring.’”
This was Julia’s impromptu reply.
Socame one more journey. Why can we not go and come without this musty steamer, these odious smells, this food for dogs, and this surge—ah, how remorseless!—of the cruel sea?
But even this will end. Once more the Stars and Stripes! A land of furnaces and of waterpipes, a land of beggars and of caucuses, a land of gas-meters and of liars, a land of pasteboard and of cards, a land of etiquettes and of bad spelling, but still their country! A land of telegraphs, which told in an instant, as they landed on the levee, that all the twenty-nine were well, and begged them to be at the college on Tuesday evening, so as to see “Much Ado about Nothing.” For at Antioch they act a play the night before Commencement. A land of Pullman’s palace-cars. And lo! they secured sections 5 and 6, 7 and 8, in the “Mayflower.” Just time to kiss the baby of one friend, and to give a basket of guavas to another, and then whir for Cincinnati and Xenia and Yellow Springs!
How beautiful were the live-oaks and the magnolias! How fresh the green of the cotton! How black the faces of the little negroes, and how beyond dispute the perfume of the baked peanuts at the stations where sometimes they had to stop for wood and water! Even the heavy pile of smoke above Cincinnati was golden with the hopes of a new-born day as they rushed up to the Ohio River, and as they crossed it. And then, the land of happy homes! It was Kapnist who said to me that the most favored places in the world were the larger villages in Ohio. He had gone everywhere, too. Xenia, and a perfect breakfast at the station, then the towers of Antioch, then the twenty-nine children waving their handkerchiefs as the train rushes in!
How much there was to tell, to show, to ask for, and to see! How much pleasure they gave with their cochineal, their mangoes, their bananas, their hat-bands for the boys, and their fans for the girls! Yes; and how much more they took from nutbrown faces, from smiles beaming from ear to ear, from the boy so tall that he looked down upon his father, from the girl so womanly that you asked if her mother were not masquerading. “You rascal Ozro, you do not pretend that those trousers were made for you? Why, my boy, you disgrace the family.” “I hope not, papa; I had ninety-eight in the botany examination, passed with honors in Greek, and we beat the Buckeye Club to nothing in the return match yesterday.” “You did, you little beggar?” the proud papa replied. “You ran all the better, I suppose, because you had nothing to trip you.” And so on, and so on. The children did not live in paradise, perhaps, but this seems very like the kingdom come!
And after commencements and the president’s party, up to the Yellow Springs platform came two unusual palaces, specially engaged. And one was named the “Valparaiso,” and the other, as it happened, the “Bethlehem.” And they took all the children, and by good luck Mrs. Tucker was going also, and three or four of the college girls, and they took them. So there were forty-two in all. And they sped and sped, without change of cars, save as Bethlehem visited Paradise and Paradise visited Bethlehem, till they came to New Salem, which is the station men buy tickets for when they would go to the beach below Quonochontaug, where the eight and the twenty-nine were to make their summer home before the final emigration.
They do not live at Quonochontaug, but to that post-office are their letters sent. They live in a hamlet of their own, known to the neighbors as the Little Gau. Four large houses, whitewashed without and within, with deep piazzas all around, the roofs of which join the roofs of the houses themselves, and run up on all sides to one point above the centre. In each house a hall some twenty feet by fifty, and in the hall,—what is not in the hall?—maybe a piano, maybe a fish-rod, maybe a rifle or a telescope, a volume of sermons or a volume of songs, a spinning-wheel, or a guitar, or a battledore. You might ask widely for what you needed, for study or for play, and you would find it, though it were a deep divan of Osiat or a chibouque from Stamboul—you would find it in one of these simple whitewashed halls.
Little Gau is so near the sea-shore that every day they go down to the beach to bathe, and the beach is so near the Gulf Stream that the swim is—well, perfection. Still, the first day the ladies would not swim. They had the trunks to open, they said, and the closets to arrange. And the four men and the fourteen boys went to that bath of baths alone. And as Felix, the cynic grumbler, ran races naked on the beach with his boy and the boy beat him, even Felix was heard to say, “How little man needs here below to be perfectly happy!”
And at the Little Gau they spent the months from the Fourth of July to the 13th of October—two great days in history—getting ready for Mexico. New sewing-machines were bought, and the fall of the stream from the lake was taught to run the treadles. No end of clothing was got ready for a country which needs none; no end of memoranda made for the last purchases; no end of lists of books prepared, which they could read in that land of leisure. And on the 14th of October, with a passing sigh, they bade good-by to boats and dogs and cows and horses and neighbors and beaches—almost to sun and moon, which had smiled on so much happiness, and went back to Boston to make the last bargains, to pay the last bills, and to say the last good-byes.
After one day of bill-paying and house-advertising and farewelling, they met at Ingham’s to “tell their times.” And Julia told of her farewell call on dear Mrs. Blake.
“The saint!” said she; “she does not see as well as she did. But it was just lovely there. There was the great bronze Japanese stork, which seemed so friendly, and the great vases, and her flowers as fresh as ever, and her books everywhere. She found something for Tom and Maud to play with, just as she used to for Ben and Horace. And we sat and talked of Mexico and Antioch and everything. I asked her if her eyes troubled her, and I was delighted because it seems they do not trouble her at all. She told all about Swampscott and her grandchildren. I asked her if the dust never troubled them on Gladstone Street, but she says it does not at all; and she told all about her son’s family in Hong-Kong. I asked her if the failure of Rupee & Lac annoyed them, and she said not at all, and I was so glad, for I had been so afraid for them; and then she told about how much they were enjoying Macaulay. Then I asked her if the new anvil factory on the other side of the street did not trouble her, and she said not at all. And when I said, ‘How can that be?’ she said, ‘Why, Julia dear, we do not let these things trouble us, don’t you see. If I were you, I would not let such things trouble me.’”
George Haliburton laid down his knife as Julia told the story. “Do you remember Rabia at Mecca?”
Yes, they all remembered Rabia at Mecca:—