A ROUND-UP.“She was beautiful as the Queen of Sheba was beautiful.”A ROUND-UP.I.When Rhodora Boyd—Rhodora Pennington that was—died in her little house, with no one near her but one old maid who loved her, the best society of the little city of Trega Falls indulged in more or less complacent reminiscence.Except to Miss Wimple, the old maid, Rhodora had been of no importance at all in Trega for ten long years, and yet she had once given Trega society the liveliest year it had ever known. (I should tell you that Trega people never mentioned the Falls in connection with Trega. Trega was too old to admit any indebtedness to the Falls.)Rhodora Pennington came to Trega with her invalid mother as the guest of her uncle, the Commandant at the Fort—for Trega was a garrison town. She was a beautiful girl. I do not mean a pretty girl: there were pretty girls in Trega—several of them. She was beautiful as the Queen of Sheba was beautiful—grand, perfect, radiantly tawny of complexion, without a flaw or a failing in her pulchritude—almost too fine a beingfor family use, except that she had plenty of hot woman’s blood in her veins, and was an accomplished, delightful, impartial flirt.All the men turned to her with such prompt unanimity that all the girls of Trega’s best society joined hands in one grand battle for their prospective altars and hearths. From the June day when Rhodora came, to the Ash Wednesday of the next year when her engagement was announced, there was one grand battle, a dozen girls with wealth and social position and knowledge of the ground to help them, all pitted against one garrison girl, with not so much as a mother to back her—Mrs. Pennington being hopelessly and permanently on the sick-list.Trega girls who had never thought of doing more than wait at their leisure for the local young men to marry them attheirleisure now went in for accomplishments of every sort. They rode, they drove, they danced new dances, they read Browning and Herbert Spencer, they sang, they worked hard at archery and lawn-tennis, they rowed and sailed and fished, and some of the more desperate even went shooting in the Fall, and in the Winter played billiards and—penny ante. Thus did they, in the language of a somewhat cynical male observer, back Accomplishments against Beauty.The Shakspere Club and the Lake Picnic, which had hitherto divided the year between them, were submerged in the flood of social entertainments. Balls and parties followed one another. Trega’s square stone houses were lit up night after night, and the broadmoss-grown gardens about them were made trim and presentable, and Chinese lanterns turned them into a fairy-land for young lovers.It was a great year for Trega! The city had been dead, commercially, ever since the New York Central Railroad had opened up the great West; but the unprecedented flow of champagne and Apollinaris actually started a little business boom, based on the inferable wealth of Trega, and two or three of Trega’s remaining firms went into bankruptcy because of the boom. And Rhodora Pennington did it all.Have you ever seen the end of a sham-fight? You have been shouting and applauding, and wasting enough enthusiasm for a foot-ball match. And now it is all finished, and nothing has been done, and you go home somewhat ashamed of yourself, and glad only that the blue-coated participants must feel more ashamed of themselves; and the smell of the villainous saltpetre, that waked the Berserker in your heart an hour ago, is now noisome and disgusting, and makes you cough and sneeze.Even so did the girls of Trega’s best society look each in the face of the other, when Ash Wednesday ended that nine months of riot, and ask of each other, “What has it all been about?”True, there were nine girls engaged to be married, and engagement meant marriage in Trega. Alma Lyle was engaged to Dexter Townsend, Mary Waite to John Lang, Winifred Peters to McCullom McIntosh, Ellen Humphreys to George Lister, Laura Visscher to William Jans, (Oranje boven!—Dutch blood stays Dutch,) Millicent Smith to Milo Smith, her cousin, Olive Cregier to Aleck Sloan, Aloha Jones, (niece of a Sandwich Islands missionary,) to Parker Hall, and Rhodora Pennington to Charley Boyd.But all of these matches, save the last, would have been made in the ordinary course of things. The predestination of propinquity would have settled that. And even if Ellen Humphreys had married John Lang instead of George Lister, and George Lister had wedded Mary Waite—why, there would have been no great difference to admire or to deplore. The only union of the nine which came as a surprise to the community was the engagement of Rhodora to Charley Boyd. The beauty of the season had picked up the one crooked stick in the town—a dissolute, ne’er-do-well hanger-on of Trega’s best society, who would never have seen a dinner-card if he had not been a genius at amateur theatricals, an artist on the banjo, and a half-bred Adonis.There the agony ended for the other girls, and there it began for Rhodora Boyd. In less than a year, Boyd had deserted her. The Commandant was transferred to the Pacific Coast. Rhodora moved, with her mother, bed-ridden now, into a little house in the unfashionableoutskirts of Trega. There she nursed the mother until the poor bed-ridden old lady died. Rhodora supported them both by teaching music and French at the Trega Seminary, down by the Falls. Morning and evening she went out and back on that weary, jingling horse-car line. She received the annual visits that her friends paid her, inspired by something between courtesy and charity, with her old stately simplicity and imperturbable calm; and no one of them could feel sure that she was conscious of their triumph or of her degradation. And she kept the best part of her stately beauty to the very last. In any other town she would have been taught what divorce-courts were made for; but Trega society was Episcopalian, and that communion is healthily and conservatively monogamous.And so Rhodora Boyd, that once was Rhodora Pennington, died in her little house, and her pet old maid closed her eyes. And there was an end of Rhodora. Not quite an end, though.✳✳✳II.Scene.—The Public Library of Trega.Mrs. George ListerandMrs. John Langare seated in the Rotunda.Mr. Libriver,the Librarian, advances to them with books in his hands.Mrs. Lister.—Ah, here comes Mr. Libriver, with my “Intellectual Life.” Thank you, Mr. Libriver—you are always so kind!Mrs. Lang.—And Mr. Libriver has brought me my “Status of Woman.” Oh, thank you, Mr. Libriver.Mr. Libriver,a thin young man in a linen duster, retires, blushing.Mrs. Lister.—Mr. Libriver doessoappreciate women who are free from the bondage of the novel. Did you hear about poor Rhodora’s funeral?Mrs. Lang(with a sweeping grasp at the intellectual side of the conversation).—Oh, Idespiselove-stories. In the church? Oh, yes, I heard. (Sweetly). Dr. Homly told me. Doesn’t it seem just a little—ostentatious?Mrs. Lister.—Ostentatious—but, do you know, my dear, there are to be eight pall-bearers!Mrs. Lang(turning defeat into victory).—No, I didnotknow. I don’t suppose that ridiculous old maid, that Miss Wimple, who seems to be conducting the affair,daredto tellthatto Dr. Homly. And who are they?Mrs. Lister(with exceeding sweetness).—Oh, I don’t know, dear. Only I met Mr. Townsend, and he told me that Dr. Homly had just toldhimthat he was one of the eight.Mrs. Lister.—Dexter Townsend! Why, it’s scandalous. Everybody knows that he proposed to her three times and that she threw him over. It’s an insult to—to—Mrs. Lang.—To poor dear Alma Townsend. I quite agree with you. I should like to know how she feels—if she understands what it means.Mrs. Lister.—Well, if I were in her place—EnterMrs. Dexter Townsend.Mrs. Lang.Mrs. Lister.}Why, Alma!Mrs. Townsend.—Why, Ellen! Why, Mary! Oh, I’m so glad to meet you both. I want you to lunch with me to-morrow at one o’clock. I do sohateto beleft alone. And poor Rhodora Pennington—Mrs. Boyd, I mean—her funeral is at noon, and our three male protectors will have to go to the cemetery, and Mr. Townsend is just going to take a cold bite before he goes, and so I’m left to lunch—Mrs. Lang(coldly).—I don’t think Mr. Lang will go to the cemetery—Mrs. Lister.—There is no reason why Mr. Lister—Mrs. Townsend.—But, don’t you know?—They’re all to be pall-bearers! They can’t refuse, of course.Mrs. Lang(icily).—Oh, no, certainly not.Mrs. Lister(below zero).—I suppose it is an unavoidable duty.Mrs. Lang.—Alma, is that youroldSurah? Whatdidyou do to it?Mrs. Lister.—Theydodye things so wonderfully nowadays!Scene.—A Verandah in front ofMr. McCullom McIntosh’shouse.Mrs. McCullom McIntoshseated, with fancy work. To her, enterMr. William JansandMr. Milo Smith.Mrs. McIntosh(with effusion).—Oh, Mr. Jans, I’m so delighted to see you! And Mr. Smith, too! I never expect to see you busy men at this time in the afternoon. And how is Laura?—and Millicent? Nowdon’ttell me that you’ve come to say that you can’t go fishing with Mr. McIntosh to-morrow! He’ll besodisappointed!Mr. Jans.—Well, the fact is—Mrs. McIntosh.—You haven’t been invited to be one of poor Rhodora Boyd’s pall-bearers, have you? That would betooabsurd. They say she’s asked a regular party of her old conquests. Mr. Libriver just passed here and told me—Mr. Lister and John Lang and Dexter Townsend—Mr. Jans.—Yes, and me.Mrs. McIntosh.—Oh,Mr.Jans! And they do say—at least Mr. Libriver says—that she hasn’t asked a man who hadn’t proposed to her.Mr. Jans(Dutchily).—I d’no. But I’m asked, and—Mrs. McIntosh.—You don’t mean to tell me that Mr. Smith is asked, too? Oh, that would betooimpossible. You don’t mean to tell me, Mr. Smith, that you furnished one of Rhodora’s scalps ten years ago?Mr. Smith.—You ought to know, Mrs. McIntosh. Or—no—perhaps not. You and Mac were to windward of the centre-board on Townsend’s boat whenIgot the mitten. I suppose you couldn’t hear us. But we were to leeward, and Miss Pennington said she hopedallproposals didn’t echo.Mrs. McIntosh.—The wretched c—— but she’s dead. Well, I’m thankful Mac—Mr. McIntosh nevercouldabide that girl. He always said she was horribly bad form—poor thing, I oughtn’t to speak so, I suppose. She’s been punished enough.Mr. Smith.—I’m glad you think so, Mrs. McIntosh. I hope you won’t feel it necessary to advise Mac to refuse her last dying request.Mrs. McIntosh.—What—Mr. Smith.—Oh, well, the fact is, Mrs. McIntosh, we only stopped in to say that as McIntosh and all the rest of us are asked to be pall-bearers at Mrs. Boyd’s funeral, you might ask Mac if it wouldn’t be just as well to postpone the fishing party for a week or so. If you remember—will you be so kind? Thank you, good afternoon.Mr. Jans.—Good afternoon, Mrs. McIntosh.Scene.—The Linen Closet, at the end of a sunny corridor inMr. Alexander Sloan’shouse.Mrs. Sloaninspecting her sheets and pillow-cases. To her, enterBridget,her housemaid, with a basket full of linen, the Trega Evening Eagle on the top, folded.Mrs. Sloan.—Why, that surely isn’t one of the new napkins!—oh, it’s the evening paper. Dear me! how near-sighted I am getting! (Takes it and opens it.) You may put those linen sheets on the top shelf, Bridget. We’ll hardly need them again this Fall. Oh, Bridget—here’s poor Mrs. Boyd’s obituary. You used to live at Colonel Pennington’s before she was married, didn’t you?Bridget.—I did that, Mum.Mrs. Sloan(reading).—“Mrs. Boyd’s pall-bearers arefitly chosen from the most distinguished and prominent citizens of Trega.” I’m sure I don’t see why they should be. (Reads.) “Those invited to render the last honors to the deceased are Mr. George Lister—“Bridget.—’Tis he was foriver at the house.Mrs. Sloan(reads).—“Mr. John Lang—“Bridget.—And him.Mrs. Sloan(reads).—“Mr Dexter Townsend—“Bridget.—And him, too.Mrs. Sloan(reads).—“Mr. McIntosh, Mr. William Jans, Mr. Milo Smith—“Bridget.—Andthim. Mr. Smith was her siventh.Mrs. Sloan.—Herwhat?Bridget.—Her sivinth. There was eight of thim proposed to her in the wan week.Mrs Sloan.—Why, Bridget! How can you possibly knowthat?Bridget.—Sure, what does it mean whin a gintleman calls twice in th’ wake an’ thin stops like he was shot. An’ who is the eight’ gintleman to walk wid the corpse, Mum?Mrs. Sloan.—That is all, Bridget. And those pillow-cases look shockingly! I neversawsuch ironing! (Exit, hastily and sternly.)Bridget(sola).—Only siven of thim. Saints bless us! The pore lady’ll go wan-sided to her grave!Scene.—The Private Office ofMr. Parker Hall.Mr. Hallwriting. To him, enterMr. Aleck Sloan.Mr. Sloan.—Ah, there, Parker!Mr. Hall.—Ah, there, Aleck! What bringsyouaround so late in the day?Mr. Sloan.—I just thought you might like to hear the names of the fellows Rhodora Pennington chose for her pall-bearers. (Produces list.)Mr. Hall(sighs).—Poor Rhodora! Too bad! Fire ahead.Mr. Sloan(reads list).—“George Lister.”Mr. Hall.—Ah!Mr. Sloan(reads).—“John Lang.”Mr. Hall.—Oh!Mr. Sloan(reads).—“Dexter Townsend.”Mr. Hall.—Well!Mr. Sloan(reads).—“McCullom McIntosh.”Mr. Hall.—Say!—Mr. Sloan(reads).—“William Jans.”Mr. Hall.—The Deuce!Mr. Sloan(reads).—“Milo Smith.”Mr. Hall.—Great Cæsar’s ghost! This is getting very personal!Mr. Sloan—Yes. (Reads, nervously.) “Alexander Sloan.”Mr. Hall.—Whoo-o-o-o-up! You too?Mr. Sloan(reads).—“Parker Hall.”(A long silence.)Mr. Hall(faintly).—Oh, lord, she rounded us up, didn’t she? Say, Parker, can’t this thing be suppressed, somehow?Mr. Sloan.—It’s in the evening paper.(Another long silence.)Mr. Hall(desperately).—Come out and have a bottle with me?Mr. Sloan.—I can’t. I’m going down to Bitts’s stable to buy that pony that Mrs. Sloan took such a shine to a month or so ago.Mr. Hall.—IfIcould get out of this for a pony—Oh, lord!THE TWO CHURCHES OF ’QUAWKET.“’Read it!’ commanded Brother Joash. The minister grew pale.”THE TWO CHURCHES OF ’QUAWKET.The Reverend Colton M. Pursly, of Aquawket, (commonly pronounced ’Quawket,) looked out of his study window over a remarkably pretty New England prospect, stroked his thin, grayish side-whiskers, and sighed deeply. He was a pale, sober, ill-dressed Congregationalist minister of forty-two or three. He had eyes of willow-pattern blue, a large nose, and a large mouth, with a smile of forced amiability in the corners. Hewasamiable, perfectly amiable and innocuous—but that smile sometimes made people with a strong sense of humor want to kill him. The smile lingered even while he sighed.Mr. Pursly’s house was set upon a hill, although it was a modest abode. From his window he looked down one of those splendid streets that are the pride and glory of old towns in New England—a street fiftyyards wide, arched with grand Gothic elms, bordered with houses of pale yellow and white, some in the homelike, simple yet dignified colonial style, some with great Doric porticos at the street end. And above the billowy green of the tree-tops rose two shapely spires, one to the right, of granite, one to the left, of sand-stone. It was the sight of these two spires that made the Reverend Mr. Pursly sigh.With a population of four thousand five hundred, ’Quawket had an Episcopal Church, a Roman Catholic Church, a Presbyterian Church, a Methodist Church, a Universalist Church, (very small,) a Baptist Church, a Hall for the “Seventh-Day Baptists,” (used for secular purposes every day but Saturday,) a Bethel, and—“The Two Churches”—as every one called the First and Second Congregational Churches. Fifteen years before, there had been but one Congregational Church, where a prosperous and contented congregation worshiped in a plain little old-fashioned red brick church on a side-street. Then, out of this very prosperity, came the idea of building a fine new free-stone church on Main Street. And, when the new church was half-built, the congregation split on the question of putting a “rain-box” in the new organ. It is quite unnecessary to detail how this quarrel over a handful of peas grew into a church war, with ramifications and interlacements and entanglements and side-issues and under-currents and embroilments of all sorts and conditions. In three years there was a First Congregational Church, in free-stone, solid, substantial, plain, and a Second CongregationalChurch in granite, something gingerbready, but showy and modish—for there are fashions in architecture as there are in millinery, and we cut our houses this way this year and that way the next. And these two churches had half a congregation apiece, and a full-sized debt, and they lived together in a spirit of Christian unity, on Capulet and Montague terms. The people of the First Church called the people of the Second Church the “Sadduceeceders,” because there was no future for them, and the people of the Second Church called the people of the First Church the “Pharisee-mes”. And this went on year after year, through the Winters when the foxes hugged their holes in the ground within the woods about ’Quawket, through the Summers when the birds of the air twittered in their nests in the great elms of Main Street.If the First Church had a revival, the Second Church had a fair. If the pastor of the First Church exchanged with a distinguished preacher from Philadelphia, the organist of the Second Church got a celebrated tenor from Boston and had a service of song. This system after a time created a class in both churches known as “the floats,” in contradistinction to the “pillars.” The floats went from one church to the other according to the attractions offered. There were, in the end, more floats than pillars.The Reverend Mr. Pursly inherited this contest from his predecessor. He had carried it on for three years. Finally, being a man of logical and precise mental processes, he called the head men of his congregationtogether, and told them what in worldly language might be set down thus:There was room for one Congregational Church in ’Quawket, and for one only. The flock must be reunited in the parent fold. To do this a master stroke was necessary. They must build a Parish House. All of which was true beyond question—and yet—the church had a debt of $20,000 and a Parish House would cost $15,000.And now the Reverend Mr. Pursly was sitting at his study window, wondering why all the rich menwouldjoin the Episcopal Church. He cast down his eyes, and saw a rich man coming up his path who could readily have given $15,000 for a Parish House, and who might safely be expected to give $1.50, if he were rightly approached. A shade of bitterness crept over Mr. Pursly’s professional smile. Then a look of puzzled wonder took possession of his face. Brother Joash Hitt was regular in his attendance at church and at prayer-meeting; but he kept office-hours in his religion, as in everything else, and never before had he called upon his pastor.Two minutes later, the minister was nervously shaking hands with Brother Joash Hitt.“I’m very glad to see you, Mr. Hitt,” he stammered, “very glad—I’m—I’m—““S’prised?” suggested Mr. Hitt, grimly.“Won’t you sit down?” asked Mr. Pursly.Mr. Hitt sat down in the darkest corner of the room, and glared at his embarrassed host. He was ahuge old man, bent, heavily-built, with grizzled dark hair, black eyes, skin tanned to a mahogany brown, a heavy square under-jaw, and big leathery dew-laps on each side of it that looked as hard as the jaw itself. Brother Joash had been all things in his long life—sea-captain, commission merchant, speculator, slave-dealer even, people said—and all things to his profit. Of late years he had turned over his capital in money-lending, and people said that his great claw-like fingers had grown crooked with holding the tails of his mortgages.A silence ensued. The pastor looked up and saw that Brother Joash had no intention of breaking it.“Can I do any thing for you, Mr. Hitt?” inquired Mr. Pursly.“Ya-as,” said the old man. “Ye kin. I b’leeve you gin’lly git sump’n’ over ’n’ above your sellery when you preach a fun’l sermon?”“Well, Mr. Hitt, it—yes—it is customary.”“How much?”“The usual honorarium is—h’m—ten dollars.”“The—whut?”“The—the fee.”“Will you write me one for ten dollars?”“Why—why—” said the minister, nervously; “I didn’t know that any one had—had died—““There hain’t no one died, ez I know. It’smyfun’l sermon I want.”“But, my dear Mr. Hitt, I trust you are not—that you won’t—that—““Life’s a rope of sand, parson—you’d ought toknow that—nor we don’t none of us know when it’s goin’ to fetch loost. I’m most ninety now, ’n’ I don’t cal’late to git no younger.”“Well,” said Mr. Pursly, faintly smiling; “when the timedoescome—““No,sir!” interrupted Mr. Hitt, with emphasis; “when the timedooscome, I won’t have no use for it. Th’ ain’t no sense in the way most folks is berrid. Whut’s th’ use of puttin’ a man into a mahog’ny coffin, with a silver plate big’s a dishpan, an’ preachin’ a fun’l sermon over him, an’ costin’ his estate good money, when he’s only a poor deef, dumb, blind fool corpse, an’ don’t get no good of it?Naow, I’ve be’n to the undertaker’s, an’ hed my coffin made under my own sooperveesion—good wood, straight grain, no knots—nuthin’ fancy, but doorable. I’ve hed my tombstun cut, an’ chose my text to put onto it—’we brung nuthin’ into the world, an’ it is certain we can take nuthin’ out’—an’ now I want my fun’l sermon, jes’ as the other folks is goin’ to hear it who don’t pay nuthin’ for it. Kin you hev it ready for me this day week?”“I suppose so,” said Mr. Pursly, weakly.“I’ll call fer it,” said the old man. “Heern some talk about a Perrish House, didn’t I?”“Yes,” began Mr. Pursly, his face lighting up.“‘Tain’t no sech a badidee,” remarked Brother Joash. “Wal, good day.” And he walked off before the minister could say any thing more.✳✳✳✳✳One week later, Mr. Pursly again sat in his study, looking at Brother Joash, who had a second time settled himself in the dark corner.It had been a terrible week for Mr. Pursly. He and his conscience, and his dream of the Parish House, had been shut up together working over that sermon, and waging a war of compromises. The casualties in this war were all on the side of the conscience.“Read it!” commanded Brother Joash. The minister grew pale. This was more than he had expected. He grew pale and then red and then pale again.“Go ahead!” said Brother Joash.“Brethren,” began Mr. Pursly, and then he stopped short. His pulpit voice sounded strange in his little study.“Go ahead!” said Brother Joash.“We are gathered together here to-day to pay a last tribute of respect and affection—““Clk!” There was a sound like the report of a small pistol. Mr. Pursly looked up. Brother Joash regarded him with stern intentness.“—to one of the oldest and most prominent citizens of our town, a pillar of our church, and a monument of the civic virtues of probity, industry and wisdom, a man in whom we all took pride, and—““Clk!” Mr. Pursly looked up more quickly this time, and a faint suggestion of an expression just vanishing from Mr. Hitt’s lips awakened in his unsuspicious breast a horrible suspicion that Brother Joash had chuckled.“—whose like we shall not soon again see in ourmidst. The children on the streets will miss his familiar face—““Say!” broke in Brother Joash, “how’d it be for a delegation of child’n to foller the remains, with flowers or sump’n’? They’d volunteer if you give ’em the hint, wouldn’t they?”“It would be—unusual,” said the minister.“All right,” assented Mr. Hitt, “only anidee of mine. Thought they might like it. Go ahead!”Mr. Pursly went ahead, haunted by an agonizing fear of that awful chuckle, if chuckle it was. But he got along without interruption until he reached a casual and guarded allusion to the widows and orphans without whom no funeral oration is complete. Here the metallic voice of Brother Joash rang out again.“Say! Ef the widders and orphans send a wreath—or a Gates-Ajar—efthey do, mind ye!—you’ll hev it put a-top of the coffin, where folks’ll see it, wun’t ye?”“Certainly,” said the Reverend Mr. Pursly, hastily; “his charities were unostentatious, as was the whole tenor of his life. In these days of spendthrift extravagance, our young men may well—““Say!” Brother Joash broke in once more. “Ef any one wuz to git up right there, an’ say that I wuz the derndest meanest, miserly, penurious, parsimonious old hunks in ’Quawket, you wouldn’t let him talk like that, would ye?”“Unquestionably not, Mr. Hitt!” said the minister, in horror.“Thought not. On’y thet’s whut I heern one o’ your deacons say about me the other day. Didn’t know I heern him, but I did. I thought you wouldn’t allow no such talk as that. Go ahead!”“I must ask you, Mr. Hitt,” Mr. Pursly said, perspiring at every pore, “to refrain from interruptions—or I—I really—can not continue.”“All right,” returned Mr. Hitt, with perfect calmness. “Continner.”Mr. Pursly continued to the bitter end, with no further interruption that called for remonstrance. There were soft inarticulate sounds that seemed to him to come from Brother Joash’s dark corner. But it might have been the birds in theAmpelopsis Veitchiithat covered the house.Brother Joash expressed no opinion, good or ill, of the address. He paid his ten dollars, in one-dollar bills, and took his receipt. But as the anxious minister followed him to the door, he turned suddenly and said:“You was talkin’ ’bout a Perrish House?”“Yes—““Kin ye keep a secret?”“I hope so—yes, certainly, Mr. Hitt.”“The’ ’ll be one.”✳✳✳✳✳“I feel,” said the Reverend Mr. Pursly to his wife, “as if I had carried every stone of that Parish House on my shoulders and put it in its place. Can you make me a cup of tea, my dear?”✳✳✳✳✳The Summer days had begun to grow chill, and the great elms of ’Quawket were flecked with patches and spots of yellow, when, early one morning, the meagre little charity-boy whose duty it was to black Mr. Hitt’s boots every day—it was a luxury he allowed himself in his old age—rushed, pale and frightened, into a neighboring grocery, and cried:“Mist’ Hitt’s dead!”“Guess not,” said the grocer, doubtfully. “Brother Hitt’s gut th’ Old Nick’s agency for ’Quawket, ’n’ I ain’t heerd th’t he’s been discharged for inattention to dooty.”“He’s layin’ there smilin’,” said the boy.“Smilin’?” repeated the grocer. “Guess I’d better go ’n’ see.”In very truth, Brother Joash lay there in his bed, dead and cold, with a smile on his hard old lips, the first he had ever worn. And a most sardonic and discomforting smile it was.✳✳✳✳✳The Reverend Mr. Pursly read Mr. Hitt’s funeral address for the second time, in the First Congregational Church of ’Quawket. Every seat was filled; every earwas attentive. He stood on the platform, and below him, supported on decorously covered trestles, stood the coffin that enclosed all that was mortal of Brother Joash Hitt. Mr. Pursly read with his face immovably set on the line of the clock in the middle of the choir-gallery railing. He did not dare to look down at the sardonic smile in the coffin below him; he did not dare to let his eye wander to the dark left-hand corner of the church, remembering the dark left-hand corner of his own study. And as he repeated each complimentary, obsequious, flattering platitude, a hideous, hysterical fear grew stronger and stronger within him that suddenly he would be struck dumb by the “clk!” of that mirthless chuckle that had sounded so much like a pistol-shot. His voice was hardly audible in the benediction.✳✳✳✳✳The streets of ’Quawket were at their gayest and brightest when the mourners drove home from the cemetery at the close of the noontide hour. The mourners were principally the deacons and elders of the First Church. The Reverend Mr. Pursly lay back in his seat with a pleasing yet fatigued consciousness of duty performed and martyrdom achieved. He was exhausted, but humbly happy. As they drove along, he looked with a speculative eye on one or two eligible sites for the Parish House. His companion in the carriage was Mr. Uriel Hankinson, Brother Joash’s lawyer, whose entire character had been aptly summed up by one of hisfellow-citizens in conferring on him the designation of “a little Joash for one cent.”“Parson,” said Mr. Hankinson, breaking a long silence, “that was a fust-rate oration you made.”“I’m glad to hear you say so,” replied Mr. Pursly, his chronic smile broadening.“You treated the deceased right handsome, considerin’,” went on the lawyer Hankinson.“Considering what?” inquired Mr. Pursly, in surprise.“Considerin’—well,considerin’—“ replied Mr. Hankinson, with a wave of his hand. “You must feel to be reel disapp’inted ’bout the Parish House, I sh’d s’pose.”“The Parish House?” repeated the Reverend Mr. Pursly, with a cold chill at his heart, but with dignity in his voice. “You may not be aware, Mr. Hankinson, that I have Mr. Hitt’s promise that we should have a Parish House. And Mr. Hitt was—was—a man of his word.” This conclusion sounded to his own ears a trifle lame and impotent.“Guess you had his promise that thereshouldbea Parish House,” corrected the lawyer, with a chuckle that might have been a faint echo of Brother Joash’s.“Well?”“Well—the Second Church gits it. I draw’d his will. Good day, parson, I’ll ’light here. Air’s kind o’ cold, ain’t it?”THE LOVE-LETTERS OF SMITH.“A peculiar gritting noise made her look down.”THE LOVE-LETTERS OF SMITH.When the little seamstresshad climbed to her room in the story over the top story of the great brick tenement house in which she lived, she was quite tired out. If you do not understand what a story over a top story is, you must remember that there are no limits to human greed, and hardly any to the height of tenement houses. When the man who owned that seven-story tenement found that he could rent another floor, he found no difficulty in persuading the guardians of our building laws to let him clap another story on the roof, like a cabin on the deck of a ship; and in the southeasterly of the four apartments on this floor the little seamstress lived. You could just see the top of her window from the street—the huge cornice that had capped the original front, and that served as her window-sill now, quite hid all the lower part of the story on top of the top-story.The little seamstress was scarcely thirty years old, but she was such an old-fashioned little body in so many of her looks and ways that I had almost spelled her sempstress, after the fashion of our grandmothers. Shehad been a comely body, too; and would have been still, if she had not been thin and pale and anxious-eyed.She was tired out to-night because she had been working hard all day for a lady who lived far up in the “New Wards” beyond Harlem River, and after the long journey home, she had to climb seven flights of tenement-house stairs. She was too tired, both in body and in mind, to cook the two little chops she had brought home. She would save them for breakfast, she thought. So she made herself a cup of tea on the miniature stove, and ate a slice of dry bread with it. It was too much trouble to make toast.But after dinner she watered her flowers. She was never too tired for that: and the six pots of geraniums that caught the south sun on the top of the cornice did their best to repay her. Then she sat down in her rocking chair by the window and looked out. Her eyry was high above all the other buildings, and she could look across some low roofs opposite, and see the further end of Tompkins Square, with its sparse Spring green showing faintly through the dusk. The eternal roar of the city floated up to her and vaguely troubled her. She was a country girl, and although she had lived for ten years in New York, she had never grown used to that ceaseless murmur. To-night she felt the languor of the new season as well as the heaviness of physical exhaustion. She was almost too tired to go to bed.She thought of the hard day done and the hard day to be begun after the night spent on the hard little bed. She thought of the peaceful days in the country, whenshe taught school in the Massachusetts village where she was born. She thought of a hundred small slights that she had to bear from people better fed than bred. She thought of the sweet green fields that she rarely saw nowadays. She thought of the long journey forth and back that must begin and end her morrow’s work, and she wondered if her employer would think to offer to pay her fare. Then she pulled herself together. She must think of more agreeable things, or she could not sleep. And as the only agreeable things she had to think about were her flowers, she looked at the garden on top of the cornice.A peculiar gritting noise made her look down, and she saw a cylindrical object that glittered in the twilight, advancing in an irregular and uncertain manner toward her flower-pots. Looking closer, she saw that it was a pewter beer-mug, which somebody in the next apartment was pushing with a two-foot rule. On top of the beer-mug was a piece of paper, and on this paper was written, in a sprawling, half-formed hand:porterpleas excuse the libberty Anddrink itThe seamstress started up in terror, and shut the window. She remembered that there was a man in the next apartment. She had seen him on the stairs, on Sundays. He seemed a grave, decent person; but—he must be drunk. She sat down on her bed, all a-tremble. Then she reasoned with herself. The man was drunk,that was all. He probably would not annoy her further. And if he did, she had only to retreat to Mrs. Mulvaney’s apartment in the rear, and Mr. Mulvaney, who was a highly respectable man and worked in a boiler-shop, would protect her. So, being a poor woman who had already had occasion to excuse—and refuse—two or three “libberties” of like sort, she made up her mind to go to bed like a reasonable seamstress, and she did. She was rewarded, for when her light was out, she could see in the moonlight that the two-foot rule appeared again, with one joint bent back, hitched itself into the mug-handle, and withdrew the mug.The next day was a hard one for the little seamstress, and she hardly thought of the affair of the night before until the same hour had come around again, and she sat once more by her window. Then she smiled at the remembrance. “Poor fellow,” she said in her charitable heart, “I’ve no doubt he’sawfullyashamed of it now. Perhaps he was never tipsy before. Perhaps he didn’t know there was a lone woman in here to be frightened.”Just then she heard a gritting sound. She looked down. The pewter pot was in front of her, and the two-foot rule was slowly retiring. On the pot was a piece of paper, and on the paper was:portergood for the helthit makes meetThis time the little seamstress shut her windowwith a bang of indignation. The color rose to her pale cheeks. She thought that she would go down to see the janitor at once. Then she remembered the seven flights of stairs; and she resolved to see the janitor in the morning. Then she went to bed and saw the mug drawn back just as it had been drawn back the night before.The morning came, but, somehow, the seamstress did not care to complain to the janitor. She hated to make trouble—and the janitor might think—and—and—well, if the wretch did it again she would speak to him herself, and that would settle it.And so, on the next night, which was a Thursday, the little seamstress sat down by her window, resolved to settle the matter. And she had not sat there long, rocking in the creaking little rocking-chair which she had brought with her from her old home, when the pewter pot hove in sight, with a piece of paper on the top.This time the legend read:Perhaps you are afrade i willadress youi am not that kindThe seamstress did not quite know whether to laugh or to cry. But she felt that the time had come for speech. She leaned out of her window and addressed the twilight heaven.“Mr.—Mr.—sir—I—will youpleaseput your head out of the window so that I can speak to you?”The silence of the other room was undisturbed. The seamstress drew back, blushing. But before she could nerve herself for another attack, a piece of paper appeared on the end of the two-foot rule.when i Say a thing imene iti have Sed i would notAdress you and iWill notWhat was the little seamstress to do? She stood by the window and thought hard about it. Should she complain to the janitor? But the creature was perfectly respectful. No doubt he meant to be kind. He certainly was kind, to waste these pots of porter on her. She remembered the last time—and the first—that she had drunk porter. It was at home, when she was a young girl, after she had had the diphtheria. She remembered how good it was, and how it had given her back her strength. And without one thought of what she was doing, she lifted the pot of porter and took one little reminiscent sip—two little reminiscent sips—and became aware of her utter fall and defeat. She blushed now as she had never blushed before, put the pot down, closed the window, and fled to her bed like a deer to the woods.And when the porter arrived the next night, bearing the simple appeal:Dont be afrade of itdrink it allthe little seamstress arose and grasped the pot firmly by the handle, and poured its contents over the earth around her largest geranium. She poured the contents out to the last drop, and then she dropped the pot, and ran back and sat on her bed and cried, with her face hid in her hands.“Now,” she said to herself, “you’ve done it! And you’re just as nasty and hard-hearted and suspicious and mean as—as pusley!”And she wept to think of her hardness of heart. “He will never give me a chance to say I am sorry,” she thought. And, really, she might have spoken kindly to the poor man, and told him that she was much obliged to him, but that he really mustn’t ask her to drink porter with him.“But it’s all over and done now,” she said to herself as she sat at her window on Saturday night. And then she looked at the cornice, and saw the faithful little pewter pot traveling slowly toward her.She was conquered. This act of Christian forbearance was too much for her kindly spirit. She read the inscription on the paper:porter is good for Floursbut better for Fokesand she lifted the pot to her lips, which were not halfso red as her cheeks, and took a good, hearty, grateful draught.She sipped in thoughtful silence after this first plunge, and presently she was surprised to find the bottom of the pot in full view.On the table at her side a few pearl buttons were screwed up in a bit of white paper. She untwisted the paper and smoothed it out, and wrote in a tremulous hand—shecouldwrite a very neat hand—Thanks.This she laid on the top of the pot, and in a moment the bent two-foot-rule appeared and drew the mail-carriage home. Then she sat still, enjoying the warm glow of the porter, which seemed to have permeated her entire being with a heat that was not at all like the unpleasant and oppressive heat of the atmosphere, an atmosphere heavy with the Spring damp. A gritting on the tin aroused her. A piece of paper lay under her eyes.fine groing weatherSmithit said.Now it is unlikely that in the whole round and range of conversational commonplaces there was one other greeting that could have induced the seamstress tocontinue the exchange of communications. But this simple and homely phrase touched her country heart. What did “groing weather” matter to the toilers in this waste of brick and mortar? This stranger must be, like herself, a country-bred soul, longing for the new green and the upturned brown mould of the country fields. She took up the paper, and wrote under the first message:FineBut that seemed curt;forshe added: “for” what? She did not know. At last in desperation she put downpotatos. The piece of paper was withdrawn and came back with an addition:Too mist for potatos.And when the little seamstress had read this, and grasped the fact thatm-i-s-trepresented the writer’s pronunciation of “moist,” she laughed softly to herself. A man whose mind, at such a time, was seriously bent upon potatos, was not a man to be feared. She found a half-sheet of note-paper, and wrote:I lived in a small village before I came to New York, but I am afraid I do not know much about farming. Are you a farmer?The answer came:have ben most Every thingfarmed a Spel in MaineSmithAs she read this, the seamstress heard a church clock strike nine.“Bless me, is it so late?” she cried, and she hurriedly penciledGood Night, thrust the paper out, and closed the window. But a few minutes later, passing by, she saw yet another bit of paper on the cornice, fluttering in the evening breeze. It said onlygood nite, and after a moment’s hesitation, the little seamstress took it in and gave it shelter.✳✳✳✳✳After this, they were the best of friends. Every evening the pot appeared, and while the seamstress drank from it at her window, Mr. Smith drank from its twin at his; and notes were exchanged as rapidly as Mr. Smith’s early education permitted. They told each other their histories, and Mr. Smith’s was one of travel and variety, which he seemed to consider quite a matter of course. He had followed the sea, he had farmed, he had been a logger and a hunter in the Maine woods. Now he was foreman of an East River lumber yard, and hewas prospering. In a year or two he would have enough laid by to go home to Bucksport and buy a share in a ship-building business. All this dribbled out in the course of a jerky but variegated correspondence, in which autobiographic details were mixed with reflections, moral and philosophical.A few samples will give an idea of Mr. Smith’s style:i was one trip to van demenslandTo which the seamstress replied:It must have been very interesting.But Mr. Smith disposed of this subject very briefly:it worntFurther he vouchsafed:i seen a chinese cook in hong kong could cook flapjacks like your Mothera mishnery that sells Rum is the menest of Gods crechersa bulfite is not what it is cract up to Bethe dagos are wussen the brutesi am 6 1¾ but my Father was 6 foot 4The seamstress had taught school one Winter, andshe could not refrain from making an attempt to reform Mr. Smith’s orthography. One evening, in answer to this communication:i killd a Bare in Maine 600 lbs waightshe wrote:Isn’t it generally spelled Bear?but she gave up the attempt when he responded:a bare is a mene animle any way you spel himThe Spring wore on, and the Summer came, and still the evening drink and the evening correspondence brightened the close of each day for the little seamstress. And the draught of porter put her to sleep each night, giving her a calmer rest than she had ever known during her stay in the noisy city; and it began, moreover, to make a little “meet” for her. And then the thought that she was going to have an hour of pleasant companionship somehow gave her courage to cook and eat her little dinner, however tired she was. The seamstress’s cheeks began to blossom with the June roses.And all this time Mr. Smith kept his vow of silence unbroken, though the seamstress sometimes tempted him with little ejaculations and exclamations to which he might have responded. He was silent and invisible. Only the smoke of his pipe, and the clink of his mug as he set it down on the cornice, told her that a living, material Smith was her correspondent. They never meton the stairs, for their hours of coming and going did not coincide. Once or twice they passed each other in the street—but Mr. Smith looked straight ahead of him, about a foot over her head. The little seamstress thought he was a very fine-looking man, with his six feet one and three-quarters and his thick brown beard. Most people would have called him plain.Once she spoke to him. She was coming home one Summer evening, and a gang of corner-loafers stopped her and demanded money to buy beer, as is their custom. Before she had time to be frightened, Mr. Smith appeared—whence, she knew not—scattered the gang like chaff, and, collaring two of the human hyenas, kicked them, with deliberate, ponderous, alternate kicks, until they writhed in ineffable agony. When he let them crawl away, she turned to him and thanked him warmly, looking very pretty now, with the color in her cheeks. But Mr. Smith answered no word. He stared over her head, grew red in the face, fidgeted nervously, but held his peace until his eyes fell on a rotund Teuton, passing by.“Say, Dutchy!” he roared.The German stood aghast.“I ain’t got nothing to write with!” thundered Mr. Smith, looking him in the eye. And then the man of his word passed on his way.And so the Summer went on, and the two correspondents chatted silently from window to window, hid from sight of all the world below by the friendly cornice. And they looked out over the roof, and saw the green of Tompkins Square grow darker and dustier as the months went on.Mr. Smith was given to Sunday trips into the suburbs, and he never came back without a bunch of daisies or black-eyed Susans or, later, asters or golden-rod for the little seamstress. Sometimes, with a sagacity rare in his sex, he brought her a whole plant, with fresh loam for potting.He gave her also a reel in a bottle, which, he wrote, he had “maid” himself, and some coral, and a dried flying-fish, that was somewhat fearful to look upon, with its sword-like fins and its hollow eyes. At first, she could not go to sleep with that flying-fish hanging on the wall.But he surprised the little seamstress very much one cool September evening, when he shoved this letter along the cornice:The little seamstress gazed at this letter a long time. Perhaps she was wondering in what Ready Letter-Writer of the last century Mr. Smith had found his form. Perhaps she was amazed at the results of his first attempt at punctuation. Perhaps she was thinking of something else, for there were tears in her eyes and a smile on her small mouth.But it must have been a long time, and Mr. Smith must have grown nervous, for presently another communication came along the line where the top of the cornice was worn smooth. It read:If not understood will you mary meThe little seamstress seized a piece of paper and wrote:If I say Yes, will you speak to me?Then she rose and passed it out to him, leaning out of the window, and their faces met.
A ROUND-UP.“She was beautiful as the Queen of Sheba was beautiful.”A ROUND-UP.I.When Rhodora Boyd—Rhodora Pennington that was—died in her little house, with no one near her but one old maid who loved her, the best society of the little city of Trega Falls indulged in more or less complacent reminiscence.Except to Miss Wimple, the old maid, Rhodora had been of no importance at all in Trega for ten long years, and yet she had once given Trega society the liveliest year it had ever known. (I should tell you that Trega people never mentioned the Falls in connection with Trega. Trega was too old to admit any indebtedness to the Falls.)Rhodora Pennington came to Trega with her invalid mother as the guest of her uncle, the Commandant at the Fort—for Trega was a garrison town. She was a beautiful girl. I do not mean a pretty girl: there were pretty girls in Trega—several of them. She was beautiful as the Queen of Sheba was beautiful—grand, perfect, radiantly tawny of complexion, without a flaw or a failing in her pulchritude—almost too fine a beingfor family use, except that she had plenty of hot woman’s blood in her veins, and was an accomplished, delightful, impartial flirt.All the men turned to her with such prompt unanimity that all the girls of Trega’s best society joined hands in one grand battle for their prospective altars and hearths. From the June day when Rhodora came, to the Ash Wednesday of the next year when her engagement was announced, there was one grand battle, a dozen girls with wealth and social position and knowledge of the ground to help them, all pitted against one garrison girl, with not so much as a mother to back her—Mrs. Pennington being hopelessly and permanently on the sick-list.Trega girls who had never thought of doing more than wait at their leisure for the local young men to marry them attheirleisure now went in for accomplishments of every sort. They rode, they drove, they danced new dances, they read Browning and Herbert Spencer, they sang, they worked hard at archery and lawn-tennis, they rowed and sailed and fished, and some of the more desperate even went shooting in the Fall, and in the Winter played billiards and—penny ante. Thus did they, in the language of a somewhat cynical male observer, back Accomplishments against Beauty.The Shakspere Club and the Lake Picnic, which had hitherto divided the year between them, were submerged in the flood of social entertainments. Balls and parties followed one another. Trega’s square stone houses were lit up night after night, and the broadmoss-grown gardens about them were made trim and presentable, and Chinese lanterns turned them into a fairy-land for young lovers.It was a great year for Trega! The city had been dead, commercially, ever since the New York Central Railroad had opened up the great West; but the unprecedented flow of champagne and Apollinaris actually started a little business boom, based on the inferable wealth of Trega, and two or three of Trega’s remaining firms went into bankruptcy because of the boom. And Rhodora Pennington did it all.Have you ever seen the end of a sham-fight? You have been shouting and applauding, and wasting enough enthusiasm for a foot-ball match. And now it is all finished, and nothing has been done, and you go home somewhat ashamed of yourself, and glad only that the blue-coated participants must feel more ashamed of themselves; and the smell of the villainous saltpetre, that waked the Berserker in your heart an hour ago, is now noisome and disgusting, and makes you cough and sneeze.Even so did the girls of Trega’s best society look each in the face of the other, when Ash Wednesday ended that nine months of riot, and ask of each other, “What has it all been about?”True, there were nine girls engaged to be married, and engagement meant marriage in Trega. Alma Lyle was engaged to Dexter Townsend, Mary Waite to John Lang, Winifred Peters to McCullom McIntosh, Ellen Humphreys to George Lister, Laura Visscher to William Jans, (Oranje boven!—Dutch blood stays Dutch,) Millicent Smith to Milo Smith, her cousin, Olive Cregier to Aleck Sloan, Aloha Jones, (niece of a Sandwich Islands missionary,) to Parker Hall, and Rhodora Pennington to Charley Boyd.But all of these matches, save the last, would have been made in the ordinary course of things. The predestination of propinquity would have settled that. And even if Ellen Humphreys had married John Lang instead of George Lister, and George Lister had wedded Mary Waite—why, there would have been no great difference to admire or to deplore. The only union of the nine which came as a surprise to the community was the engagement of Rhodora to Charley Boyd. The beauty of the season had picked up the one crooked stick in the town—a dissolute, ne’er-do-well hanger-on of Trega’s best society, who would never have seen a dinner-card if he had not been a genius at amateur theatricals, an artist on the banjo, and a half-bred Adonis.There the agony ended for the other girls, and there it began for Rhodora Boyd. In less than a year, Boyd had deserted her. The Commandant was transferred to the Pacific Coast. Rhodora moved, with her mother, bed-ridden now, into a little house in the unfashionableoutskirts of Trega. There she nursed the mother until the poor bed-ridden old lady died. Rhodora supported them both by teaching music and French at the Trega Seminary, down by the Falls. Morning and evening she went out and back on that weary, jingling horse-car line. She received the annual visits that her friends paid her, inspired by something between courtesy and charity, with her old stately simplicity and imperturbable calm; and no one of them could feel sure that she was conscious of their triumph or of her degradation. And she kept the best part of her stately beauty to the very last. In any other town she would have been taught what divorce-courts were made for; but Trega society was Episcopalian, and that communion is healthily and conservatively monogamous.And so Rhodora Boyd, that once was Rhodora Pennington, died in her little house, and her pet old maid closed her eyes. And there was an end of Rhodora. Not quite an end, though.✳✳✳II.Scene.—The Public Library of Trega.Mrs. George ListerandMrs. John Langare seated in the Rotunda.Mr. Libriver,the Librarian, advances to them with books in his hands.Mrs. Lister.—Ah, here comes Mr. Libriver, with my “Intellectual Life.” Thank you, Mr. Libriver—you are always so kind!Mrs. Lang.—And Mr. Libriver has brought me my “Status of Woman.” Oh, thank you, Mr. Libriver.Mr. Libriver,a thin young man in a linen duster, retires, blushing.Mrs. Lister.—Mr. Libriver doessoappreciate women who are free from the bondage of the novel. Did you hear about poor Rhodora’s funeral?Mrs. Lang(with a sweeping grasp at the intellectual side of the conversation).—Oh, Idespiselove-stories. In the church? Oh, yes, I heard. (Sweetly). Dr. Homly told me. Doesn’t it seem just a little—ostentatious?Mrs. Lister.—Ostentatious—but, do you know, my dear, there are to be eight pall-bearers!Mrs. Lang(turning defeat into victory).—No, I didnotknow. I don’t suppose that ridiculous old maid, that Miss Wimple, who seems to be conducting the affair,daredto tellthatto Dr. Homly. And who are they?Mrs. Lister(with exceeding sweetness).—Oh, I don’t know, dear. Only I met Mr. Townsend, and he told me that Dr. Homly had just toldhimthat he was one of the eight.Mrs. Lister.—Dexter Townsend! Why, it’s scandalous. Everybody knows that he proposed to her three times and that she threw him over. It’s an insult to—to—Mrs. Lang.—To poor dear Alma Townsend. I quite agree with you. I should like to know how she feels—if she understands what it means.Mrs. Lister.—Well, if I were in her place—EnterMrs. Dexter Townsend.Mrs. Lang.Mrs. Lister.}Why, Alma!Mrs. Townsend.—Why, Ellen! Why, Mary! Oh, I’m so glad to meet you both. I want you to lunch with me to-morrow at one o’clock. I do sohateto beleft alone. And poor Rhodora Pennington—Mrs. Boyd, I mean—her funeral is at noon, and our three male protectors will have to go to the cemetery, and Mr. Townsend is just going to take a cold bite before he goes, and so I’m left to lunch—Mrs. Lang(coldly).—I don’t think Mr. Lang will go to the cemetery—Mrs. Lister.—There is no reason why Mr. Lister—Mrs. Townsend.—But, don’t you know?—They’re all to be pall-bearers! They can’t refuse, of course.Mrs. Lang(icily).—Oh, no, certainly not.Mrs. Lister(below zero).—I suppose it is an unavoidable duty.Mrs. Lang.—Alma, is that youroldSurah? Whatdidyou do to it?Mrs. Lister.—Theydodye things so wonderfully nowadays!Scene.—A Verandah in front ofMr. McCullom McIntosh’shouse.Mrs. McCullom McIntoshseated, with fancy work. To her, enterMr. William JansandMr. Milo Smith.Mrs. McIntosh(with effusion).—Oh, Mr. Jans, I’m so delighted to see you! And Mr. Smith, too! I never expect to see you busy men at this time in the afternoon. And how is Laura?—and Millicent? Nowdon’ttell me that you’ve come to say that you can’t go fishing with Mr. McIntosh to-morrow! He’ll besodisappointed!Mr. Jans.—Well, the fact is—Mrs. McIntosh.—You haven’t been invited to be one of poor Rhodora Boyd’s pall-bearers, have you? That would betooabsurd. They say she’s asked a regular party of her old conquests. Mr. Libriver just passed here and told me—Mr. Lister and John Lang and Dexter Townsend—Mr. Jans.—Yes, and me.Mrs. McIntosh.—Oh,Mr.Jans! And they do say—at least Mr. Libriver says—that she hasn’t asked a man who hadn’t proposed to her.Mr. Jans(Dutchily).—I d’no. But I’m asked, and—Mrs. McIntosh.—You don’t mean to tell me that Mr. Smith is asked, too? Oh, that would betooimpossible. You don’t mean to tell me, Mr. Smith, that you furnished one of Rhodora’s scalps ten years ago?Mr. Smith.—You ought to know, Mrs. McIntosh. Or—no—perhaps not. You and Mac were to windward of the centre-board on Townsend’s boat whenIgot the mitten. I suppose you couldn’t hear us. But we were to leeward, and Miss Pennington said she hopedallproposals didn’t echo.Mrs. McIntosh.—The wretched c—— but she’s dead. Well, I’m thankful Mac—Mr. McIntosh nevercouldabide that girl. He always said she was horribly bad form—poor thing, I oughtn’t to speak so, I suppose. She’s been punished enough.Mr. Smith.—I’m glad you think so, Mrs. McIntosh. I hope you won’t feel it necessary to advise Mac to refuse her last dying request.Mrs. McIntosh.—What—Mr. Smith.—Oh, well, the fact is, Mrs. McIntosh, we only stopped in to say that as McIntosh and all the rest of us are asked to be pall-bearers at Mrs. Boyd’s funeral, you might ask Mac if it wouldn’t be just as well to postpone the fishing party for a week or so. If you remember—will you be so kind? Thank you, good afternoon.Mr. Jans.—Good afternoon, Mrs. McIntosh.Scene.—The Linen Closet, at the end of a sunny corridor inMr. Alexander Sloan’shouse.Mrs. Sloaninspecting her sheets and pillow-cases. To her, enterBridget,her housemaid, with a basket full of linen, the Trega Evening Eagle on the top, folded.Mrs. Sloan.—Why, that surely isn’t one of the new napkins!—oh, it’s the evening paper. Dear me! how near-sighted I am getting! (Takes it and opens it.) You may put those linen sheets on the top shelf, Bridget. We’ll hardly need them again this Fall. Oh, Bridget—here’s poor Mrs. Boyd’s obituary. You used to live at Colonel Pennington’s before she was married, didn’t you?Bridget.—I did that, Mum.Mrs. Sloan(reading).—“Mrs. Boyd’s pall-bearers arefitly chosen from the most distinguished and prominent citizens of Trega.” I’m sure I don’t see why they should be. (Reads.) “Those invited to render the last honors to the deceased are Mr. George Lister—“Bridget.—’Tis he was foriver at the house.Mrs. Sloan(reads).—“Mr. John Lang—“Bridget.—And him.Mrs. Sloan(reads).—“Mr Dexter Townsend—“Bridget.—And him, too.Mrs. Sloan(reads).—“Mr. McIntosh, Mr. William Jans, Mr. Milo Smith—“Bridget.—Andthim. Mr. Smith was her siventh.Mrs. Sloan.—Herwhat?Bridget.—Her sivinth. There was eight of thim proposed to her in the wan week.Mrs Sloan.—Why, Bridget! How can you possibly knowthat?Bridget.—Sure, what does it mean whin a gintleman calls twice in th’ wake an’ thin stops like he was shot. An’ who is the eight’ gintleman to walk wid the corpse, Mum?Mrs. Sloan.—That is all, Bridget. And those pillow-cases look shockingly! I neversawsuch ironing! (Exit, hastily and sternly.)Bridget(sola).—Only siven of thim. Saints bless us! The pore lady’ll go wan-sided to her grave!Scene.—The Private Office ofMr. Parker Hall.Mr. Hallwriting. To him, enterMr. Aleck Sloan.Mr. Sloan.—Ah, there, Parker!Mr. Hall.—Ah, there, Aleck! What bringsyouaround so late in the day?Mr. Sloan.—I just thought you might like to hear the names of the fellows Rhodora Pennington chose for her pall-bearers. (Produces list.)Mr. Hall(sighs).—Poor Rhodora! Too bad! Fire ahead.Mr. Sloan(reads list).—“George Lister.”Mr. Hall.—Ah!Mr. Sloan(reads).—“John Lang.”Mr. Hall.—Oh!Mr. Sloan(reads).—“Dexter Townsend.”Mr. Hall.—Well!Mr. Sloan(reads).—“McCullom McIntosh.”Mr. Hall.—Say!—Mr. Sloan(reads).—“William Jans.”Mr. Hall.—The Deuce!Mr. Sloan(reads).—“Milo Smith.”Mr. Hall.—Great Cæsar’s ghost! This is getting very personal!Mr. Sloan—Yes. (Reads, nervously.) “Alexander Sloan.”Mr. Hall.—Whoo-o-o-o-up! You too?Mr. Sloan(reads).—“Parker Hall.”(A long silence.)Mr. Hall(faintly).—Oh, lord, she rounded us up, didn’t she? Say, Parker, can’t this thing be suppressed, somehow?Mr. Sloan.—It’s in the evening paper.(Another long silence.)Mr. Hall(desperately).—Come out and have a bottle with me?Mr. Sloan.—I can’t. I’m going down to Bitts’s stable to buy that pony that Mrs. Sloan took such a shine to a month or so ago.Mr. Hall.—IfIcould get out of this for a pony—Oh, lord!
A ROUND-UP.
“She was beautiful as the Queen of Sheba was beautiful.”
“She was beautiful as the Queen of Sheba was beautiful.”
“She was beautiful as the Queen of Sheba was beautiful.”
When Rhodora Boyd—Rhodora Pennington that was—died in her little house, with no one near her but one old maid who loved her, the best society of the little city of Trega Falls indulged in more or less complacent reminiscence.
Except to Miss Wimple, the old maid, Rhodora had been of no importance at all in Trega for ten long years, and yet she had once given Trega society the liveliest year it had ever known. (I should tell you that Trega people never mentioned the Falls in connection with Trega. Trega was too old to admit any indebtedness to the Falls.)
Rhodora Pennington came to Trega with her invalid mother as the guest of her uncle, the Commandant at the Fort—for Trega was a garrison town. She was a beautiful girl. I do not mean a pretty girl: there were pretty girls in Trega—several of them. She was beautiful as the Queen of Sheba was beautiful—grand, perfect, radiantly tawny of complexion, without a flaw or a failing in her pulchritude—almost too fine a beingfor family use, except that she had plenty of hot woman’s blood in her veins, and was an accomplished, delightful, impartial flirt.
All the men turned to her with such prompt unanimity that all the girls of Trega’s best society joined hands in one grand battle for their prospective altars and hearths. From the June day when Rhodora came, to the Ash Wednesday of the next year when her engagement was announced, there was one grand battle, a dozen girls with wealth and social position and knowledge of the ground to help them, all pitted against one garrison girl, with not so much as a mother to back her—Mrs. Pennington being hopelessly and permanently on the sick-list.
Trega girls who had never thought of doing more than wait at their leisure for the local young men to marry them attheirleisure now went in for accomplishments of every sort. They rode, they drove, they danced new dances, they read Browning and Herbert Spencer, they sang, they worked hard at archery and lawn-tennis, they rowed and sailed and fished, and some of the more desperate even went shooting in the Fall, and in the Winter played billiards and—penny ante. Thus did they, in the language of a somewhat cynical male observer, back Accomplishments against Beauty.
The Shakspere Club and the Lake Picnic, which had hitherto divided the year between them, were submerged in the flood of social entertainments. Balls and parties followed one another. Trega’s square stone houses were lit up night after night, and the broadmoss-grown gardens about them were made trim and presentable, and Chinese lanterns turned them into a fairy-land for young lovers.
It was a great year for Trega! The city had been dead, commercially, ever since the New York Central Railroad had opened up the great West; but the unprecedented flow of champagne and Apollinaris actually started a little business boom, based on the inferable wealth of Trega, and two or three of Trega’s remaining firms went into bankruptcy because of the boom. And Rhodora Pennington did it all.
Have you ever seen the end of a sham-fight? You have been shouting and applauding, and wasting enough enthusiasm for a foot-ball match. And now it is all finished, and nothing has been done, and you go home somewhat ashamed of yourself, and glad only that the blue-coated participants must feel more ashamed of themselves; and the smell of the villainous saltpetre, that waked the Berserker in your heart an hour ago, is now noisome and disgusting, and makes you cough and sneeze.
Even so did the girls of Trega’s best society look each in the face of the other, when Ash Wednesday ended that nine months of riot, and ask of each other, “What has it all been about?”
True, there were nine girls engaged to be married, and engagement meant marriage in Trega. Alma Lyle was engaged to Dexter Townsend, Mary Waite to John Lang, Winifred Peters to McCullom McIntosh, Ellen Humphreys to George Lister, Laura Visscher to William Jans, (Oranje boven!—Dutch blood stays Dutch,) Millicent Smith to Milo Smith, her cousin, Olive Cregier to Aleck Sloan, Aloha Jones, (niece of a Sandwich Islands missionary,) to Parker Hall, and Rhodora Pennington to Charley Boyd.
But all of these matches, save the last, would have been made in the ordinary course of things. The predestination of propinquity would have settled that. And even if Ellen Humphreys had married John Lang instead of George Lister, and George Lister had wedded Mary Waite—why, there would have been no great difference to admire or to deplore. The only union of the nine which came as a surprise to the community was the engagement of Rhodora to Charley Boyd. The beauty of the season had picked up the one crooked stick in the town—a dissolute, ne’er-do-well hanger-on of Trega’s best society, who would never have seen a dinner-card if he had not been a genius at amateur theatricals, an artist on the banjo, and a half-bred Adonis.
There the agony ended for the other girls, and there it began for Rhodora Boyd. In less than a year, Boyd had deserted her. The Commandant was transferred to the Pacific Coast. Rhodora moved, with her mother, bed-ridden now, into a little house in the unfashionableoutskirts of Trega. There she nursed the mother until the poor bed-ridden old lady died. Rhodora supported them both by teaching music and French at the Trega Seminary, down by the Falls. Morning and evening she went out and back on that weary, jingling horse-car line. She received the annual visits that her friends paid her, inspired by something between courtesy and charity, with her old stately simplicity and imperturbable calm; and no one of them could feel sure that she was conscious of their triumph or of her degradation. And she kept the best part of her stately beauty to the very last. In any other town she would have been taught what divorce-courts were made for; but Trega society was Episcopalian, and that communion is healthily and conservatively monogamous.
And so Rhodora Boyd, that once was Rhodora Pennington, died in her little house, and her pet old maid closed her eyes. And there was an end of Rhodora. Not quite an end, though.
Scene.—The Public Library of Trega.Mrs. George ListerandMrs. John Langare seated in the Rotunda.Mr. Libriver,the Librarian, advances to them with books in his hands.
Mrs. Lister.—Ah, here comes Mr. Libriver, with my “Intellectual Life.” Thank you, Mr. Libriver—you are always so kind!
Mrs. Lang.—And Mr. Libriver has brought me my “Status of Woman.” Oh, thank you, Mr. Libriver.
Mr. Libriver,a thin young man in a linen duster, retires, blushing.
Mrs. Lister.—Mr. Libriver doessoappreciate women who are free from the bondage of the novel. Did you hear about poor Rhodora’s funeral?
Mrs. Lang(with a sweeping grasp at the intellectual side of the conversation).—Oh, Idespiselove-stories. In the church? Oh, yes, I heard. (Sweetly). Dr. Homly told me. Doesn’t it seem just a little—ostentatious?
Mrs. Lister.—Ostentatious—but, do you know, my dear, there are to be eight pall-bearers!
Mrs. Lang(turning defeat into victory).—No, I didnotknow. I don’t suppose that ridiculous old maid, that Miss Wimple, who seems to be conducting the affair,daredto tellthatto Dr. Homly. And who are they?
Mrs. Lister(with exceeding sweetness).—Oh, I don’t know, dear. Only I met Mr. Townsend, and he told me that Dr. Homly had just toldhimthat he was one of the eight.
Mrs. Lister.—Dexter Townsend! Why, it’s scandalous. Everybody knows that he proposed to her three times and that she threw him over. It’s an insult to—to—
Mrs. Lang.—To poor dear Alma Townsend. I quite agree with you. I should like to know how she feels—if she understands what it means.
Mrs. Lister.—Well, if I were in her place—
EnterMrs. Dexter Townsend.
Mrs. Townsend.—Why, Ellen! Why, Mary! Oh, I’m so glad to meet you both. I want you to lunch with me to-morrow at one o’clock. I do sohateto beleft alone. And poor Rhodora Pennington—Mrs. Boyd, I mean—her funeral is at noon, and our three male protectors will have to go to the cemetery, and Mr. Townsend is just going to take a cold bite before he goes, and so I’m left to lunch—
Mrs. Lang(coldly).—I don’t think Mr. Lang will go to the cemetery—
Mrs. Lister.—There is no reason why Mr. Lister—
Mrs. Townsend.—But, don’t you know?—They’re all to be pall-bearers! They can’t refuse, of course.
Mrs. Lang(icily).—Oh, no, certainly not.
Mrs. Lister(below zero).—I suppose it is an unavoidable duty.
Mrs. Lang.—Alma, is that youroldSurah? Whatdidyou do to it?
Mrs. Lister.—Theydodye things so wonderfully nowadays!
Scene.—A Verandah in front ofMr. McCullom McIntosh’shouse.Mrs. McCullom McIntoshseated, with fancy work. To her, enterMr. William JansandMr. Milo Smith.
Mrs. McIntosh(with effusion).—Oh, Mr. Jans, I’m so delighted to see you! And Mr. Smith, too! I never expect to see you busy men at this time in the afternoon. And how is Laura?—and Millicent? Nowdon’ttell me that you’ve come to say that you can’t go fishing with Mr. McIntosh to-morrow! He’ll besodisappointed!
Mr. Jans.—Well, the fact is—
Mrs. McIntosh.—You haven’t been invited to be one of poor Rhodora Boyd’s pall-bearers, have you? That would betooabsurd. They say she’s asked a regular party of her old conquests. Mr. Libriver just passed here and told me—Mr. Lister and John Lang and Dexter Townsend—
Mr. Jans.—Yes, and me.
Mrs. McIntosh.—Oh,Mr.Jans! And they do say—at least Mr. Libriver says—that she hasn’t asked a man who hadn’t proposed to her.
Mr. Jans(Dutchily).—I d’no. But I’m asked, and—
Mrs. McIntosh.—You don’t mean to tell me that Mr. Smith is asked, too? Oh, that would betooimpossible. You don’t mean to tell me, Mr. Smith, that you furnished one of Rhodora’s scalps ten years ago?
Mr. Smith.—You ought to know, Mrs. McIntosh. Or—no—perhaps not. You and Mac were to windward of the centre-board on Townsend’s boat whenIgot the mitten. I suppose you couldn’t hear us. But we were to leeward, and Miss Pennington said she hopedallproposals didn’t echo.
Mrs. McIntosh.—The wretched c—— but she’s dead. Well, I’m thankful Mac—Mr. McIntosh nevercouldabide that girl. He always said she was horribly bad form—poor thing, I oughtn’t to speak so, I suppose. She’s been punished enough.
Mr. Smith.—I’m glad you think so, Mrs. McIntosh. I hope you won’t feel it necessary to advise Mac to refuse her last dying request.
Mrs. McIntosh.—What—
Mr. Smith.—Oh, well, the fact is, Mrs. McIntosh, we only stopped in to say that as McIntosh and all the rest of us are asked to be pall-bearers at Mrs. Boyd’s funeral, you might ask Mac if it wouldn’t be just as well to postpone the fishing party for a week or so. If you remember—will you be so kind? Thank you, good afternoon.
Mr. Jans.—Good afternoon, Mrs. McIntosh.
Scene.—The Linen Closet, at the end of a sunny corridor inMr. Alexander Sloan’shouse.Mrs. Sloaninspecting her sheets and pillow-cases. To her, enterBridget,her housemaid, with a basket full of linen, the Trega Evening Eagle on the top, folded.
Mrs. Sloan.—Why, that surely isn’t one of the new napkins!—oh, it’s the evening paper. Dear me! how near-sighted I am getting! (Takes it and opens it.) You may put those linen sheets on the top shelf, Bridget. We’ll hardly need them again this Fall. Oh, Bridget—here’s poor Mrs. Boyd’s obituary. You used to live at Colonel Pennington’s before she was married, didn’t you?
Bridget.—I did that, Mum.
Mrs. Sloan(reading).—“Mrs. Boyd’s pall-bearers arefitly chosen from the most distinguished and prominent citizens of Trega.” I’m sure I don’t see why they should be. (Reads.) “Those invited to render the last honors to the deceased are Mr. George Lister—“
Bridget.—’Tis he was foriver at the house.
Mrs. Sloan(reads).—“Mr. John Lang—“
Bridget.—And him.
Mrs. Sloan(reads).—“Mr Dexter Townsend—“
Bridget.—And him, too.
Mrs. Sloan(reads).—“Mr. McIntosh, Mr. William Jans, Mr. Milo Smith—“
Bridget.—Andthim. Mr. Smith was her siventh.
Mrs. Sloan.—Herwhat?
Bridget.—Her sivinth. There was eight of thim proposed to her in the wan week.
Mrs Sloan.—Why, Bridget! How can you possibly knowthat?
Bridget.—Sure, what does it mean whin a gintleman calls twice in th’ wake an’ thin stops like he was shot. An’ who is the eight’ gintleman to walk wid the corpse, Mum?
Mrs. Sloan.—That is all, Bridget. And those pillow-cases look shockingly! I neversawsuch ironing! (Exit, hastily and sternly.)
Bridget(sola).—Only siven of thim. Saints bless us! The pore lady’ll go wan-sided to her grave!
Scene.—The Private Office ofMr. Parker Hall.Mr. Hallwriting. To him, enterMr. Aleck Sloan.
Mr. Sloan.—Ah, there, Parker!
Mr. Hall.—Ah, there, Aleck! What bringsyouaround so late in the day?
Mr. Sloan.—I just thought you might like to hear the names of the fellows Rhodora Pennington chose for her pall-bearers. (Produces list.)
Mr. Hall(sighs).—Poor Rhodora! Too bad! Fire ahead.
Mr. Sloan(reads list).—“George Lister.”
Mr. Hall.—Ah!
Mr. Sloan(reads).—“John Lang.”
Mr. Hall.—Oh!
Mr. Sloan(reads).—“Dexter Townsend.”
Mr. Hall.—Well!
Mr. Sloan(reads).—“McCullom McIntosh.”
Mr. Hall.—Say!—
Mr. Sloan(reads).—“William Jans.”
Mr. Hall.—The Deuce!
Mr. Sloan(reads).—“Milo Smith.”
Mr. Hall.—Great Cæsar’s ghost! This is getting very personal!
Mr. Sloan—Yes. (Reads, nervously.) “Alexander Sloan.”
Mr. Hall.—Whoo-o-o-o-up! You too?
Mr. Sloan(reads).—“Parker Hall.”
(A long silence.)
Mr. Hall(faintly).—Oh, lord, she rounded us up, didn’t she? Say, Parker, can’t this thing be suppressed, somehow?
Mr. Sloan.—It’s in the evening paper.
(Another long silence.)
Mr. Hall(desperately).—Come out and have a bottle with me?
Mr. Sloan.—I can’t. I’m going down to Bitts’s stable to buy that pony that Mrs. Sloan took such a shine to a month or so ago.
Mr. Hall.—IfIcould get out of this for a pony—Oh, lord!
THE TWO CHURCHES OF ’QUAWKET.“’Read it!’ commanded Brother Joash. The minister grew pale.”THE TWO CHURCHES OF ’QUAWKET.The Reverend Colton M. Pursly, of Aquawket, (commonly pronounced ’Quawket,) looked out of his study window over a remarkably pretty New England prospect, stroked his thin, grayish side-whiskers, and sighed deeply. He was a pale, sober, ill-dressed Congregationalist minister of forty-two or three. He had eyes of willow-pattern blue, a large nose, and a large mouth, with a smile of forced amiability in the corners. Hewasamiable, perfectly amiable and innocuous—but that smile sometimes made people with a strong sense of humor want to kill him. The smile lingered even while he sighed.Mr. Pursly’s house was set upon a hill, although it was a modest abode. From his window he looked down one of those splendid streets that are the pride and glory of old towns in New England—a street fiftyyards wide, arched with grand Gothic elms, bordered with houses of pale yellow and white, some in the homelike, simple yet dignified colonial style, some with great Doric porticos at the street end. And above the billowy green of the tree-tops rose two shapely spires, one to the right, of granite, one to the left, of sand-stone. It was the sight of these two spires that made the Reverend Mr. Pursly sigh.With a population of four thousand five hundred, ’Quawket had an Episcopal Church, a Roman Catholic Church, a Presbyterian Church, a Methodist Church, a Universalist Church, (very small,) a Baptist Church, a Hall for the “Seventh-Day Baptists,” (used for secular purposes every day but Saturday,) a Bethel, and—“The Two Churches”—as every one called the First and Second Congregational Churches. Fifteen years before, there had been but one Congregational Church, where a prosperous and contented congregation worshiped in a plain little old-fashioned red brick church on a side-street. Then, out of this very prosperity, came the idea of building a fine new free-stone church on Main Street. And, when the new church was half-built, the congregation split on the question of putting a “rain-box” in the new organ. It is quite unnecessary to detail how this quarrel over a handful of peas grew into a church war, with ramifications and interlacements and entanglements and side-issues and under-currents and embroilments of all sorts and conditions. In three years there was a First Congregational Church, in free-stone, solid, substantial, plain, and a Second CongregationalChurch in granite, something gingerbready, but showy and modish—for there are fashions in architecture as there are in millinery, and we cut our houses this way this year and that way the next. And these two churches had half a congregation apiece, and a full-sized debt, and they lived together in a spirit of Christian unity, on Capulet and Montague terms. The people of the First Church called the people of the Second Church the “Sadduceeceders,” because there was no future for them, and the people of the Second Church called the people of the First Church the “Pharisee-mes”. And this went on year after year, through the Winters when the foxes hugged their holes in the ground within the woods about ’Quawket, through the Summers when the birds of the air twittered in their nests in the great elms of Main Street.If the First Church had a revival, the Second Church had a fair. If the pastor of the First Church exchanged with a distinguished preacher from Philadelphia, the organist of the Second Church got a celebrated tenor from Boston and had a service of song. This system after a time created a class in both churches known as “the floats,” in contradistinction to the “pillars.” The floats went from one church to the other according to the attractions offered. There were, in the end, more floats than pillars.The Reverend Mr. Pursly inherited this contest from his predecessor. He had carried it on for three years. Finally, being a man of logical and precise mental processes, he called the head men of his congregationtogether, and told them what in worldly language might be set down thus:There was room for one Congregational Church in ’Quawket, and for one only. The flock must be reunited in the parent fold. To do this a master stroke was necessary. They must build a Parish House. All of which was true beyond question—and yet—the church had a debt of $20,000 and a Parish House would cost $15,000.And now the Reverend Mr. Pursly was sitting at his study window, wondering why all the rich menwouldjoin the Episcopal Church. He cast down his eyes, and saw a rich man coming up his path who could readily have given $15,000 for a Parish House, and who might safely be expected to give $1.50, if he were rightly approached. A shade of bitterness crept over Mr. Pursly’s professional smile. Then a look of puzzled wonder took possession of his face. Brother Joash Hitt was regular in his attendance at church and at prayer-meeting; but he kept office-hours in his religion, as in everything else, and never before had he called upon his pastor.Two minutes later, the minister was nervously shaking hands with Brother Joash Hitt.“I’m very glad to see you, Mr. Hitt,” he stammered, “very glad—I’m—I’m—““S’prised?” suggested Mr. Hitt, grimly.“Won’t you sit down?” asked Mr. Pursly.Mr. Hitt sat down in the darkest corner of the room, and glared at his embarrassed host. He was ahuge old man, bent, heavily-built, with grizzled dark hair, black eyes, skin tanned to a mahogany brown, a heavy square under-jaw, and big leathery dew-laps on each side of it that looked as hard as the jaw itself. Brother Joash had been all things in his long life—sea-captain, commission merchant, speculator, slave-dealer even, people said—and all things to his profit. Of late years he had turned over his capital in money-lending, and people said that his great claw-like fingers had grown crooked with holding the tails of his mortgages.A silence ensued. The pastor looked up and saw that Brother Joash had no intention of breaking it.“Can I do any thing for you, Mr. Hitt?” inquired Mr. Pursly.“Ya-as,” said the old man. “Ye kin. I b’leeve you gin’lly git sump’n’ over ’n’ above your sellery when you preach a fun’l sermon?”“Well, Mr. Hitt, it—yes—it is customary.”“How much?”“The usual honorarium is—h’m—ten dollars.”“The—whut?”“The—the fee.”“Will you write me one for ten dollars?”“Why—why—” said the minister, nervously; “I didn’t know that any one had—had died—““There hain’t no one died, ez I know. It’smyfun’l sermon I want.”“But, my dear Mr. Hitt, I trust you are not—that you won’t—that—““Life’s a rope of sand, parson—you’d ought toknow that—nor we don’t none of us know when it’s goin’ to fetch loost. I’m most ninety now, ’n’ I don’t cal’late to git no younger.”“Well,” said Mr. Pursly, faintly smiling; “when the timedoescome—““No,sir!” interrupted Mr. Hitt, with emphasis; “when the timedooscome, I won’t have no use for it. Th’ ain’t no sense in the way most folks is berrid. Whut’s th’ use of puttin’ a man into a mahog’ny coffin, with a silver plate big’s a dishpan, an’ preachin’ a fun’l sermon over him, an’ costin’ his estate good money, when he’s only a poor deef, dumb, blind fool corpse, an’ don’t get no good of it?Naow, I’ve be’n to the undertaker’s, an’ hed my coffin made under my own sooperveesion—good wood, straight grain, no knots—nuthin’ fancy, but doorable. I’ve hed my tombstun cut, an’ chose my text to put onto it—’we brung nuthin’ into the world, an’ it is certain we can take nuthin’ out’—an’ now I want my fun’l sermon, jes’ as the other folks is goin’ to hear it who don’t pay nuthin’ for it. Kin you hev it ready for me this day week?”“I suppose so,” said Mr. Pursly, weakly.“I’ll call fer it,” said the old man. “Heern some talk about a Perrish House, didn’t I?”“Yes,” began Mr. Pursly, his face lighting up.“‘Tain’t no sech a badidee,” remarked Brother Joash. “Wal, good day.” And he walked off before the minister could say any thing more.✳✳✳✳✳One week later, Mr. Pursly again sat in his study, looking at Brother Joash, who had a second time settled himself in the dark corner.It had been a terrible week for Mr. Pursly. He and his conscience, and his dream of the Parish House, had been shut up together working over that sermon, and waging a war of compromises. The casualties in this war were all on the side of the conscience.“Read it!” commanded Brother Joash. The minister grew pale. This was more than he had expected. He grew pale and then red and then pale again.“Go ahead!” said Brother Joash.“Brethren,” began Mr. Pursly, and then he stopped short. His pulpit voice sounded strange in his little study.“Go ahead!” said Brother Joash.“We are gathered together here to-day to pay a last tribute of respect and affection—““Clk!” There was a sound like the report of a small pistol. Mr. Pursly looked up. Brother Joash regarded him with stern intentness.“—to one of the oldest and most prominent citizens of our town, a pillar of our church, and a monument of the civic virtues of probity, industry and wisdom, a man in whom we all took pride, and—““Clk!” Mr. Pursly looked up more quickly this time, and a faint suggestion of an expression just vanishing from Mr. Hitt’s lips awakened in his unsuspicious breast a horrible suspicion that Brother Joash had chuckled.“—whose like we shall not soon again see in ourmidst. The children on the streets will miss his familiar face—““Say!” broke in Brother Joash, “how’d it be for a delegation of child’n to foller the remains, with flowers or sump’n’? They’d volunteer if you give ’em the hint, wouldn’t they?”“It would be—unusual,” said the minister.“All right,” assented Mr. Hitt, “only anidee of mine. Thought they might like it. Go ahead!”Mr. Pursly went ahead, haunted by an agonizing fear of that awful chuckle, if chuckle it was. But he got along without interruption until he reached a casual and guarded allusion to the widows and orphans without whom no funeral oration is complete. Here the metallic voice of Brother Joash rang out again.“Say! Ef the widders and orphans send a wreath—or a Gates-Ajar—efthey do, mind ye!—you’ll hev it put a-top of the coffin, where folks’ll see it, wun’t ye?”“Certainly,” said the Reverend Mr. Pursly, hastily; “his charities were unostentatious, as was the whole tenor of his life. In these days of spendthrift extravagance, our young men may well—““Say!” Brother Joash broke in once more. “Ef any one wuz to git up right there, an’ say that I wuz the derndest meanest, miserly, penurious, parsimonious old hunks in ’Quawket, you wouldn’t let him talk like that, would ye?”“Unquestionably not, Mr. Hitt!” said the minister, in horror.“Thought not. On’y thet’s whut I heern one o’ your deacons say about me the other day. Didn’t know I heern him, but I did. I thought you wouldn’t allow no such talk as that. Go ahead!”“I must ask you, Mr. Hitt,” Mr. Pursly said, perspiring at every pore, “to refrain from interruptions—or I—I really—can not continue.”“All right,” returned Mr. Hitt, with perfect calmness. “Continner.”Mr. Pursly continued to the bitter end, with no further interruption that called for remonstrance. There were soft inarticulate sounds that seemed to him to come from Brother Joash’s dark corner. But it might have been the birds in theAmpelopsis Veitchiithat covered the house.Brother Joash expressed no opinion, good or ill, of the address. He paid his ten dollars, in one-dollar bills, and took his receipt. But as the anxious minister followed him to the door, he turned suddenly and said:“You was talkin’ ’bout a Perrish House?”“Yes—““Kin ye keep a secret?”“I hope so—yes, certainly, Mr. Hitt.”“The’ ’ll be one.”✳✳✳✳✳“I feel,” said the Reverend Mr. Pursly to his wife, “as if I had carried every stone of that Parish House on my shoulders and put it in its place. Can you make me a cup of tea, my dear?”✳✳✳✳✳The Summer days had begun to grow chill, and the great elms of ’Quawket were flecked with patches and spots of yellow, when, early one morning, the meagre little charity-boy whose duty it was to black Mr. Hitt’s boots every day—it was a luxury he allowed himself in his old age—rushed, pale and frightened, into a neighboring grocery, and cried:“Mist’ Hitt’s dead!”“Guess not,” said the grocer, doubtfully. “Brother Hitt’s gut th’ Old Nick’s agency for ’Quawket, ’n’ I ain’t heerd th’t he’s been discharged for inattention to dooty.”“He’s layin’ there smilin’,” said the boy.“Smilin’?” repeated the grocer. “Guess I’d better go ’n’ see.”In very truth, Brother Joash lay there in his bed, dead and cold, with a smile on his hard old lips, the first he had ever worn. And a most sardonic and discomforting smile it was.✳✳✳✳✳The Reverend Mr. Pursly read Mr. Hitt’s funeral address for the second time, in the First Congregational Church of ’Quawket. Every seat was filled; every earwas attentive. He stood on the platform, and below him, supported on decorously covered trestles, stood the coffin that enclosed all that was mortal of Brother Joash Hitt. Mr. Pursly read with his face immovably set on the line of the clock in the middle of the choir-gallery railing. He did not dare to look down at the sardonic smile in the coffin below him; he did not dare to let his eye wander to the dark left-hand corner of the church, remembering the dark left-hand corner of his own study. And as he repeated each complimentary, obsequious, flattering platitude, a hideous, hysterical fear grew stronger and stronger within him that suddenly he would be struck dumb by the “clk!” of that mirthless chuckle that had sounded so much like a pistol-shot. His voice was hardly audible in the benediction.✳✳✳✳✳The streets of ’Quawket were at their gayest and brightest when the mourners drove home from the cemetery at the close of the noontide hour. The mourners were principally the deacons and elders of the First Church. The Reverend Mr. Pursly lay back in his seat with a pleasing yet fatigued consciousness of duty performed and martyrdom achieved. He was exhausted, but humbly happy. As they drove along, he looked with a speculative eye on one or two eligible sites for the Parish House. His companion in the carriage was Mr. Uriel Hankinson, Brother Joash’s lawyer, whose entire character had been aptly summed up by one of hisfellow-citizens in conferring on him the designation of “a little Joash for one cent.”“Parson,” said Mr. Hankinson, breaking a long silence, “that was a fust-rate oration you made.”“I’m glad to hear you say so,” replied Mr. Pursly, his chronic smile broadening.“You treated the deceased right handsome, considerin’,” went on the lawyer Hankinson.“Considering what?” inquired Mr. Pursly, in surprise.“Considerin’—well,considerin’—“ replied Mr. Hankinson, with a wave of his hand. “You must feel to be reel disapp’inted ’bout the Parish House, I sh’d s’pose.”“The Parish House?” repeated the Reverend Mr. Pursly, with a cold chill at his heart, but with dignity in his voice. “You may not be aware, Mr. Hankinson, that I have Mr. Hitt’s promise that we should have a Parish House. And Mr. Hitt was—was—a man of his word.” This conclusion sounded to his own ears a trifle lame and impotent.“Guess you had his promise that thereshouldbea Parish House,” corrected the lawyer, with a chuckle that might have been a faint echo of Brother Joash’s.“Well?”“Well—the Second Church gits it. I draw’d his will. Good day, parson, I’ll ’light here. Air’s kind o’ cold, ain’t it?”
THE TWO CHURCHES OF ’QUAWKET.
“’Read it!’ commanded Brother Joash. The minister grew pale.”
“’Read it!’ commanded Brother Joash. The minister grew pale.”
“’Read it!’ commanded Brother Joash. The minister grew pale.”
The Reverend Colton M. Pursly, of Aquawket, (commonly pronounced ’Quawket,) looked out of his study window over a remarkably pretty New England prospect, stroked his thin, grayish side-whiskers, and sighed deeply. He was a pale, sober, ill-dressed Congregationalist minister of forty-two or three. He had eyes of willow-pattern blue, a large nose, and a large mouth, with a smile of forced amiability in the corners. Hewasamiable, perfectly amiable and innocuous—but that smile sometimes made people with a strong sense of humor want to kill him. The smile lingered even while he sighed.
Mr. Pursly’s house was set upon a hill, although it was a modest abode. From his window he looked down one of those splendid streets that are the pride and glory of old towns in New England—a street fiftyyards wide, arched with grand Gothic elms, bordered with houses of pale yellow and white, some in the homelike, simple yet dignified colonial style, some with great Doric porticos at the street end. And above the billowy green of the tree-tops rose two shapely spires, one to the right, of granite, one to the left, of sand-stone. It was the sight of these two spires that made the Reverend Mr. Pursly sigh.
With a population of four thousand five hundred, ’Quawket had an Episcopal Church, a Roman Catholic Church, a Presbyterian Church, a Methodist Church, a Universalist Church, (very small,) a Baptist Church, a Hall for the “Seventh-Day Baptists,” (used for secular purposes every day but Saturday,) a Bethel, and—“The Two Churches”—as every one called the First and Second Congregational Churches. Fifteen years before, there had been but one Congregational Church, where a prosperous and contented congregation worshiped in a plain little old-fashioned red brick church on a side-street. Then, out of this very prosperity, came the idea of building a fine new free-stone church on Main Street. And, when the new church was half-built, the congregation split on the question of putting a “rain-box” in the new organ. It is quite unnecessary to detail how this quarrel over a handful of peas grew into a church war, with ramifications and interlacements and entanglements and side-issues and under-currents and embroilments of all sorts and conditions. In three years there was a First Congregational Church, in free-stone, solid, substantial, plain, and a Second CongregationalChurch in granite, something gingerbready, but showy and modish—for there are fashions in architecture as there are in millinery, and we cut our houses this way this year and that way the next. And these two churches had half a congregation apiece, and a full-sized debt, and they lived together in a spirit of Christian unity, on Capulet and Montague terms. The people of the First Church called the people of the Second Church the “Sadduceeceders,” because there was no future for them, and the people of the Second Church called the people of the First Church the “Pharisee-mes”. And this went on year after year, through the Winters when the foxes hugged their holes in the ground within the woods about ’Quawket, through the Summers when the birds of the air twittered in their nests in the great elms of Main Street.
If the First Church had a revival, the Second Church had a fair. If the pastor of the First Church exchanged with a distinguished preacher from Philadelphia, the organist of the Second Church got a celebrated tenor from Boston and had a service of song. This system after a time created a class in both churches known as “the floats,” in contradistinction to the “pillars.” The floats went from one church to the other according to the attractions offered. There were, in the end, more floats than pillars.
The Reverend Mr. Pursly inherited this contest from his predecessor. He had carried it on for three years. Finally, being a man of logical and precise mental processes, he called the head men of his congregationtogether, and told them what in worldly language might be set down thus:
There was room for one Congregational Church in ’Quawket, and for one only. The flock must be reunited in the parent fold. To do this a master stroke was necessary. They must build a Parish House. All of which was true beyond question—and yet—the church had a debt of $20,000 and a Parish House would cost $15,000.
And now the Reverend Mr. Pursly was sitting at his study window, wondering why all the rich menwouldjoin the Episcopal Church. He cast down his eyes, and saw a rich man coming up his path who could readily have given $15,000 for a Parish House, and who might safely be expected to give $1.50, if he were rightly approached. A shade of bitterness crept over Mr. Pursly’s professional smile. Then a look of puzzled wonder took possession of his face. Brother Joash Hitt was regular in his attendance at church and at prayer-meeting; but he kept office-hours in his religion, as in everything else, and never before had he called upon his pastor.
Two minutes later, the minister was nervously shaking hands with Brother Joash Hitt.
“I’m very glad to see you, Mr. Hitt,” he stammered, “very glad—I’m—I’m—“
“S’prised?” suggested Mr. Hitt, grimly.
“Won’t you sit down?” asked Mr. Pursly.
Mr. Hitt sat down in the darkest corner of the room, and glared at his embarrassed host. He was ahuge old man, bent, heavily-built, with grizzled dark hair, black eyes, skin tanned to a mahogany brown, a heavy square under-jaw, and big leathery dew-laps on each side of it that looked as hard as the jaw itself. Brother Joash had been all things in his long life—sea-captain, commission merchant, speculator, slave-dealer even, people said—and all things to his profit. Of late years he had turned over his capital in money-lending, and people said that his great claw-like fingers had grown crooked with holding the tails of his mortgages.
A silence ensued. The pastor looked up and saw that Brother Joash had no intention of breaking it.
“Can I do any thing for you, Mr. Hitt?” inquired Mr. Pursly.
“Ya-as,” said the old man. “Ye kin. I b’leeve you gin’lly git sump’n’ over ’n’ above your sellery when you preach a fun’l sermon?”
“Well, Mr. Hitt, it—yes—it is customary.”
“How much?”
“The usual honorarium is—h’m—ten dollars.”
“The—whut?”
“The—the fee.”
“Will you write me one for ten dollars?”
“Why—why—” said the minister, nervously; “I didn’t know that any one had—had died—“
“There hain’t no one died, ez I know. It’smyfun’l sermon I want.”
“But, my dear Mr. Hitt, I trust you are not—that you won’t—that—“
“Life’s a rope of sand, parson—you’d ought toknow that—nor we don’t none of us know when it’s goin’ to fetch loost. I’m most ninety now, ’n’ I don’t cal’late to git no younger.”
“Well,” said Mr. Pursly, faintly smiling; “when the timedoescome—“
“No,sir!” interrupted Mr. Hitt, with emphasis; “when the timedooscome, I won’t have no use for it. Th’ ain’t no sense in the way most folks is berrid. Whut’s th’ use of puttin’ a man into a mahog’ny coffin, with a silver plate big’s a dishpan, an’ preachin’ a fun’l sermon over him, an’ costin’ his estate good money, when he’s only a poor deef, dumb, blind fool corpse, an’ don’t get no good of it?Naow, I’ve be’n to the undertaker’s, an’ hed my coffin made under my own sooperveesion—good wood, straight grain, no knots—nuthin’ fancy, but doorable. I’ve hed my tombstun cut, an’ chose my text to put onto it—’we brung nuthin’ into the world, an’ it is certain we can take nuthin’ out’—an’ now I want my fun’l sermon, jes’ as the other folks is goin’ to hear it who don’t pay nuthin’ for it. Kin you hev it ready for me this day week?”
“I suppose so,” said Mr. Pursly, weakly.
“I’ll call fer it,” said the old man. “Heern some talk about a Perrish House, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” began Mr. Pursly, his face lighting up.
“‘Tain’t no sech a badidee,” remarked Brother Joash. “Wal, good day.” And he walked off before the minister could say any thing more.
One week later, Mr. Pursly again sat in his study, looking at Brother Joash, who had a second time settled himself in the dark corner.
It had been a terrible week for Mr. Pursly. He and his conscience, and his dream of the Parish House, had been shut up together working over that sermon, and waging a war of compromises. The casualties in this war were all on the side of the conscience.
“Read it!” commanded Brother Joash. The minister grew pale. This was more than he had expected. He grew pale and then red and then pale again.
“Go ahead!” said Brother Joash.
“Brethren,” began Mr. Pursly, and then he stopped short. His pulpit voice sounded strange in his little study.
“Go ahead!” said Brother Joash.
“We are gathered together here to-day to pay a last tribute of respect and affection—“
“Clk!” There was a sound like the report of a small pistol. Mr. Pursly looked up. Brother Joash regarded him with stern intentness.
“—to one of the oldest and most prominent citizens of our town, a pillar of our church, and a monument of the civic virtues of probity, industry and wisdom, a man in whom we all took pride, and—“
“Clk!” Mr. Pursly looked up more quickly this time, and a faint suggestion of an expression just vanishing from Mr. Hitt’s lips awakened in his unsuspicious breast a horrible suspicion that Brother Joash had chuckled.
“—whose like we shall not soon again see in ourmidst. The children on the streets will miss his familiar face—“
“Say!” broke in Brother Joash, “how’d it be for a delegation of child’n to foller the remains, with flowers or sump’n’? They’d volunteer if you give ’em the hint, wouldn’t they?”
“It would be—unusual,” said the minister.
“All right,” assented Mr. Hitt, “only anidee of mine. Thought they might like it. Go ahead!”
Mr. Pursly went ahead, haunted by an agonizing fear of that awful chuckle, if chuckle it was. But he got along without interruption until he reached a casual and guarded allusion to the widows and orphans without whom no funeral oration is complete. Here the metallic voice of Brother Joash rang out again.
“Say! Ef the widders and orphans send a wreath—or a Gates-Ajar—efthey do, mind ye!—you’ll hev it put a-top of the coffin, where folks’ll see it, wun’t ye?”
“Certainly,” said the Reverend Mr. Pursly, hastily; “his charities were unostentatious, as was the whole tenor of his life. In these days of spendthrift extravagance, our young men may well—“
“Say!” Brother Joash broke in once more. “Ef any one wuz to git up right there, an’ say that I wuz the derndest meanest, miserly, penurious, parsimonious old hunks in ’Quawket, you wouldn’t let him talk like that, would ye?”
“Unquestionably not, Mr. Hitt!” said the minister, in horror.
“Thought not. On’y thet’s whut I heern one o’ your deacons say about me the other day. Didn’t know I heern him, but I did. I thought you wouldn’t allow no such talk as that. Go ahead!”
“I must ask you, Mr. Hitt,” Mr. Pursly said, perspiring at every pore, “to refrain from interruptions—or I—I really—can not continue.”
“All right,” returned Mr. Hitt, with perfect calmness. “Continner.”
Mr. Pursly continued to the bitter end, with no further interruption that called for remonstrance. There were soft inarticulate sounds that seemed to him to come from Brother Joash’s dark corner. But it might have been the birds in theAmpelopsis Veitchiithat covered the house.
Brother Joash expressed no opinion, good or ill, of the address. He paid his ten dollars, in one-dollar bills, and took his receipt. But as the anxious minister followed him to the door, he turned suddenly and said:
“You was talkin’ ’bout a Perrish House?”
“Yes—“
“Kin ye keep a secret?”
“I hope so—yes, certainly, Mr. Hitt.”
“The’ ’ll be one.”
“I feel,” said the Reverend Mr. Pursly to his wife, “as if I had carried every stone of that Parish House on my shoulders and put it in its place. Can you make me a cup of tea, my dear?”
The Summer days had begun to grow chill, and the great elms of ’Quawket were flecked with patches and spots of yellow, when, early one morning, the meagre little charity-boy whose duty it was to black Mr. Hitt’s boots every day—it was a luxury he allowed himself in his old age—rushed, pale and frightened, into a neighboring grocery, and cried:
“Mist’ Hitt’s dead!”
“Guess not,” said the grocer, doubtfully. “Brother Hitt’s gut th’ Old Nick’s agency for ’Quawket, ’n’ I ain’t heerd th’t he’s been discharged for inattention to dooty.”
“He’s layin’ there smilin’,” said the boy.
“Smilin’?” repeated the grocer. “Guess I’d better go ’n’ see.”
In very truth, Brother Joash lay there in his bed, dead and cold, with a smile on his hard old lips, the first he had ever worn. And a most sardonic and discomforting smile it was.
The Reverend Mr. Pursly read Mr. Hitt’s funeral address for the second time, in the First Congregational Church of ’Quawket. Every seat was filled; every earwas attentive. He stood on the platform, and below him, supported on decorously covered trestles, stood the coffin that enclosed all that was mortal of Brother Joash Hitt. Mr. Pursly read with his face immovably set on the line of the clock in the middle of the choir-gallery railing. He did not dare to look down at the sardonic smile in the coffin below him; he did not dare to let his eye wander to the dark left-hand corner of the church, remembering the dark left-hand corner of his own study. And as he repeated each complimentary, obsequious, flattering platitude, a hideous, hysterical fear grew stronger and stronger within him that suddenly he would be struck dumb by the “clk!” of that mirthless chuckle that had sounded so much like a pistol-shot. His voice was hardly audible in the benediction.
The streets of ’Quawket were at their gayest and brightest when the mourners drove home from the cemetery at the close of the noontide hour. The mourners were principally the deacons and elders of the First Church. The Reverend Mr. Pursly lay back in his seat with a pleasing yet fatigued consciousness of duty performed and martyrdom achieved. He was exhausted, but humbly happy. As they drove along, he looked with a speculative eye on one or two eligible sites for the Parish House. His companion in the carriage was Mr. Uriel Hankinson, Brother Joash’s lawyer, whose entire character had been aptly summed up by one of hisfellow-citizens in conferring on him the designation of “a little Joash for one cent.”
“Parson,” said Mr. Hankinson, breaking a long silence, “that was a fust-rate oration you made.”
“I’m glad to hear you say so,” replied Mr. Pursly, his chronic smile broadening.
“You treated the deceased right handsome, considerin’,” went on the lawyer Hankinson.
“Considering what?” inquired Mr. Pursly, in surprise.
“Considerin’—well,considerin’—“ replied Mr. Hankinson, with a wave of his hand. “You must feel to be reel disapp’inted ’bout the Parish House, I sh’d s’pose.”
“The Parish House?” repeated the Reverend Mr. Pursly, with a cold chill at his heart, but with dignity in his voice. “You may not be aware, Mr. Hankinson, that I have Mr. Hitt’s promise that we should have a Parish House. And Mr. Hitt was—was—a man of his word.” This conclusion sounded to his own ears a trifle lame and impotent.
“Guess you had his promise that thereshouldbea Parish House,” corrected the lawyer, with a chuckle that might have been a faint echo of Brother Joash’s.
“Well?”
“Well—the Second Church gits it. I draw’d his will. Good day, parson, I’ll ’light here. Air’s kind o’ cold, ain’t it?”
THE LOVE-LETTERS OF SMITH.“A peculiar gritting noise made her look down.”THE LOVE-LETTERS OF SMITH.When the little seamstresshad climbed to her room in the story over the top story of the great brick tenement house in which she lived, she was quite tired out. If you do not understand what a story over a top story is, you must remember that there are no limits to human greed, and hardly any to the height of tenement houses. When the man who owned that seven-story tenement found that he could rent another floor, he found no difficulty in persuading the guardians of our building laws to let him clap another story on the roof, like a cabin on the deck of a ship; and in the southeasterly of the four apartments on this floor the little seamstress lived. You could just see the top of her window from the street—the huge cornice that had capped the original front, and that served as her window-sill now, quite hid all the lower part of the story on top of the top-story.The little seamstress was scarcely thirty years old, but she was such an old-fashioned little body in so many of her looks and ways that I had almost spelled her sempstress, after the fashion of our grandmothers. Shehad been a comely body, too; and would have been still, if she had not been thin and pale and anxious-eyed.She was tired out to-night because she had been working hard all day for a lady who lived far up in the “New Wards” beyond Harlem River, and after the long journey home, she had to climb seven flights of tenement-house stairs. She was too tired, both in body and in mind, to cook the two little chops she had brought home. She would save them for breakfast, she thought. So she made herself a cup of tea on the miniature stove, and ate a slice of dry bread with it. It was too much trouble to make toast.But after dinner she watered her flowers. She was never too tired for that: and the six pots of geraniums that caught the south sun on the top of the cornice did their best to repay her. Then she sat down in her rocking chair by the window and looked out. Her eyry was high above all the other buildings, and she could look across some low roofs opposite, and see the further end of Tompkins Square, with its sparse Spring green showing faintly through the dusk. The eternal roar of the city floated up to her and vaguely troubled her. She was a country girl, and although she had lived for ten years in New York, she had never grown used to that ceaseless murmur. To-night she felt the languor of the new season as well as the heaviness of physical exhaustion. She was almost too tired to go to bed.She thought of the hard day done and the hard day to be begun after the night spent on the hard little bed. She thought of the peaceful days in the country, whenshe taught school in the Massachusetts village where she was born. She thought of a hundred small slights that she had to bear from people better fed than bred. She thought of the sweet green fields that she rarely saw nowadays. She thought of the long journey forth and back that must begin and end her morrow’s work, and she wondered if her employer would think to offer to pay her fare. Then she pulled herself together. She must think of more agreeable things, or she could not sleep. And as the only agreeable things she had to think about were her flowers, she looked at the garden on top of the cornice.A peculiar gritting noise made her look down, and she saw a cylindrical object that glittered in the twilight, advancing in an irregular and uncertain manner toward her flower-pots. Looking closer, she saw that it was a pewter beer-mug, which somebody in the next apartment was pushing with a two-foot rule. On top of the beer-mug was a piece of paper, and on this paper was written, in a sprawling, half-formed hand:porterpleas excuse the libberty Anddrink itThe seamstress started up in terror, and shut the window. She remembered that there was a man in the next apartment. She had seen him on the stairs, on Sundays. He seemed a grave, decent person; but—he must be drunk. She sat down on her bed, all a-tremble. Then she reasoned with herself. The man was drunk,that was all. He probably would not annoy her further. And if he did, she had only to retreat to Mrs. Mulvaney’s apartment in the rear, and Mr. Mulvaney, who was a highly respectable man and worked in a boiler-shop, would protect her. So, being a poor woman who had already had occasion to excuse—and refuse—two or three “libberties” of like sort, she made up her mind to go to bed like a reasonable seamstress, and she did. She was rewarded, for when her light was out, she could see in the moonlight that the two-foot rule appeared again, with one joint bent back, hitched itself into the mug-handle, and withdrew the mug.The next day was a hard one for the little seamstress, and she hardly thought of the affair of the night before until the same hour had come around again, and she sat once more by her window. Then she smiled at the remembrance. “Poor fellow,” she said in her charitable heart, “I’ve no doubt he’sawfullyashamed of it now. Perhaps he was never tipsy before. Perhaps he didn’t know there was a lone woman in here to be frightened.”Just then she heard a gritting sound. She looked down. The pewter pot was in front of her, and the two-foot rule was slowly retiring. On the pot was a piece of paper, and on the paper was:portergood for the helthit makes meetThis time the little seamstress shut her windowwith a bang of indignation. The color rose to her pale cheeks. She thought that she would go down to see the janitor at once. Then she remembered the seven flights of stairs; and she resolved to see the janitor in the morning. Then she went to bed and saw the mug drawn back just as it had been drawn back the night before.The morning came, but, somehow, the seamstress did not care to complain to the janitor. She hated to make trouble—and the janitor might think—and—and—well, if the wretch did it again she would speak to him herself, and that would settle it.And so, on the next night, which was a Thursday, the little seamstress sat down by her window, resolved to settle the matter. And she had not sat there long, rocking in the creaking little rocking-chair which she had brought with her from her old home, when the pewter pot hove in sight, with a piece of paper on the top.This time the legend read:Perhaps you are afrade i willadress youi am not that kindThe seamstress did not quite know whether to laugh or to cry. But she felt that the time had come for speech. She leaned out of her window and addressed the twilight heaven.“Mr.—Mr.—sir—I—will youpleaseput your head out of the window so that I can speak to you?”The silence of the other room was undisturbed. The seamstress drew back, blushing. But before she could nerve herself for another attack, a piece of paper appeared on the end of the two-foot rule.when i Say a thing imene iti have Sed i would notAdress you and iWill notWhat was the little seamstress to do? She stood by the window and thought hard about it. Should she complain to the janitor? But the creature was perfectly respectful. No doubt he meant to be kind. He certainly was kind, to waste these pots of porter on her. She remembered the last time—and the first—that she had drunk porter. It was at home, when she was a young girl, after she had had the diphtheria. She remembered how good it was, and how it had given her back her strength. And without one thought of what she was doing, she lifted the pot of porter and took one little reminiscent sip—two little reminiscent sips—and became aware of her utter fall and defeat. She blushed now as she had never blushed before, put the pot down, closed the window, and fled to her bed like a deer to the woods.And when the porter arrived the next night, bearing the simple appeal:Dont be afrade of itdrink it allthe little seamstress arose and grasped the pot firmly by the handle, and poured its contents over the earth around her largest geranium. She poured the contents out to the last drop, and then she dropped the pot, and ran back and sat on her bed and cried, with her face hid in her hands.“Now,” she said to herself, “you’ve done it! And you’re just as nasty and hard-hearted and suspicious and mean as—as pusley!”And she wept to think of her hardness of heart. “He will never give me a chance to say I am sorry,” she thought. And, really, she might have spoken kindly to the poor man, and told him that she was much obliged to him, but that he really mustn’t ask her to drink porter with him.“But it’s all over and done now,” she said to herself as she sat at her window on Saturday night. And then she looked at the cornice, and saw the faithful little pewter pot traveling slowly toward her.She was conquered. This act of Christian forbearance was too much for her kindly spirit. She read the inscription on the paper:porter is good for Floursbut better for Fokesand she lifted the pot to her lips, which were not halfso red as her cheeks, and took a good, hearty, grateful draught.She sipped in thoughtful silence after this first plunge, and presently she was surprised to find the bottom of the pot in full view.On the table at her side a few pearl buttons were screwed up in a bit of white paper. She untwisted the paper and smoothed it out, and wrote in a tremulous hand—shecouldwrite a very neat hand—Thanks.This she laid on the top of the pot, and in a moment the bent two-foot-rule appeared and drew the mail-carriage home. Then she sat still, enjoying the warm glow of the porter, which seemed to have permeated her entire being with a heat that was not at all like the unpleasant and oppressive heat of the atmosphere, an atmosphere heavy with the Spring damp. A gritting on the tin aroused her. A piece of paper lay under her eyes.fine groing weatherSmithit said.Now it is unlikely that in the whole round and range of conversational commonplaces there was one other greeting that could have induced the seamstress tocontinue the exchange of communications. But this simple and homely phrase touched her country heart. What did “groing weather” matter to the toilers in this waste of brick and mortar? This stranger must be, like herself, a country-bred soul, longing for the new green and the upturned brown mould of the country fields. She took up the paper, and wrote under the first message:FineBut that seemed curt;forshe added: “for” what? She did not know. At last in desperation she put downpotatos. The piece of paper was withdrawn and came back with an addition:Too mist for potatos.And when the little seamstress had read this, and grasped the fact thatm-i-s-trepresented the writer’s pronunciation of “moist,” she laughed softly to herself. A man whose mind, at such a time, was seriously bent upon potatos, was not a man to be feared. She found a half-sheet of note-paper, and wrote:I lived in a small village before I came to New York, but I am afraid I do not know much about farming. Are you a farmer?The answer came:have ben most Every thingfarmed a Spel in MaineSmithAs she read this, the seamstress heard a church clock strike nine.“Bless me, is it so late?” she cried, and she hurriedly penciledGood Night, thrust the paper out, and closed the window. But a few minutes later, passing by, she saw yet another bit of paper on the cornice, fluttering in the evening breeze. It said onlygood nite, and after a moment’s hesitation, the little seamstress took it in and gave it shelter.✳✳✳✳✳After this, they were the best of friends. Every evening the pot appeared, and while the seamstress drank from it at her window, Mr. Smith drank from its twin at his; and notes were exchanged as rapidly as Mr. Smith’s early education permitted. They told each other their histories, and Mr. Smith’s was one of travel and variety, which he seemed to consider quite a matter of course. He had followed the sea, he had farmed, he had been a logger and a hunter in the Maine woods. Now he was foreman of an East River lumber yard, and hewas prospering. In a year or two he would have enough laid by to go home to Bucksport and buy a share in a ship-building business. All this dribbled out in the course of a jerky but variegated correspondence, in which autobiographic details were mixed with reflections, moral and philosophical.A few samples will give an idea of Mr. Smith’s style:i was one trip to van demenslandTo which the seamstress replied:It must have been very interesting.But Mr. Smith disposed of this subject very briefly:it worntFurther he vouchsafed:i seen a chinese cook in hong kong could cook flapjacks like your Mothera mishnery that sells Rum is the menest of Gods crechersa bulfite is not what it is cract up to Bethe dagos are wussen the brutesi am 6 1¾ but my Father was 6 foot 4The seamstress had taught school one Winter, andshe could not refrain from making an attempt to reform Mr. Smith’s orthography. One evening, in answer to this communication:i killd a Bare in Maine 600 lbs waightshe wrote:Isn’t it generally spelled Bear?but she gave up the attempt when he responded:a bare is a mene animle any way you spel himThe Spring wore on, and the Summer came, and still the evening drink and the evening correspondence brightened the close of each day for the little seamstress. And the draught of porter put her to sleep each night, giving her a calmer rest than she had ever known during her stay in the noisy city; and it began, moreover, to make a little “meet” for her. And then the thought that she was going to have an hour of pleasant companionship somehow gave her courage to cook and eat her little dinner, however tired she was. The seamstress’s cheeks began to blossom with the June roses.And all this time Mr. Smith kept his vow of silence unbroken, though the seamstress sometimes tempted him with little ejaculations and exclamations to which he might have responded. He was silent and invisible. Only the smoke of his pipe, and the clink of his mug as he set it down on the cornice, told her that a living, material Smith was her correspondent. They never meton the stairs, for their hours of coming and going did not coincide. Once or twice they passed each other in the street—but Mr. Smith looked straight ahead of him, about a foot over her head. The little seamstress thought he was a very fine-looking man, with his six feet one and three-quarters and his thick brown beard. Most people would have called him plain.Once she spoke to him. She was coming home one Summer evening, and a gang of corner-loafers stopped her and demanded money to buy beer, as is their custom. Before she had time to be frightened, Mr. Smith appeared—whence, she knew not—scattered the gang like chaff, and, collaring two of the human hyenas, kicked them, with deliberate, ponderous, alternate kicks, until they writhed in ineffable agony. When he let them crawl away, she turned to him and thanked him warmly, looking very pretty now, with the color in her cheeks. But Mr. Smith answered no word. He stared over her head, grew red in the face, fidgeted nervously, but held his peace until his eyes fell on a rotund Teuton, passing by.“Say, Dutchy!” he roared.The German stood aghast.“I ain’t got nothing to write with!” thundered Mr. Smith, looking him in the eye. And then the man of his word passed on his way.And so the Summer went on, and the two correspondents chatted silently from window to window, hid from sight of all the world below by the friendly cornice. And they looked out over the roof, and saw the green of Tompkins Square grow darker and dustier as the months went on.Mr. Smith was given to Sunday trips into the suburbs, and he never came back without a bunch of daisies or black-eyed Susans or, later, asters or golden-rod for the little seamstress. Sometimes, with a sagacity rare in his sex, he brought her a whole plant, with fresh loam for potting.He gave her also a reel in a bottle, which, he wrote, he had “maid” himself, and some coral, and a dried flying-fish, that was somewhat fearful to look upon, with its sword-like fins and its hollow eyes. At first, she could not go to sleep with that flying-fish hanging on the wall.But he surprised the little seamstress very much one cool September evening, when he shoved this letter along the cornice:The little seamstress gazed at this letter a long time. Perhaps she was wondering in what Ready Letter-Writer of the last century Mr. Smith had found his form. Perhaps she was amazed at the results of his first attempt at punctuation. Perhaps she was thinking of something else, for there were tears in her eyes and a smile on her small mouth.But it must have been a long time, and Mr. Smith must have grown nervous, for presently another communication came along the line where the top of the cornice was worn smooth. It read:If not understood will you mary meThe little seamstress seized a piece of paper and wrote:If I say Yes, will you speak to me?Then she rose and passed it out to him, leaning out of the window, and their faces met.
THE LOVE-LETTERS OF SMITH.
“A peculiar gritting noise made her look down.”
“A peculiar gritting noise made her look down.”
“A peculiar gritting noise made her look down.”
When the little seamstresshad climbed to her room in the story over the top story of the great brick tenement house in which she lived, she was quite tired out. If you do not understand what a story over a top story is, you must remember that there are no limits to human greed, and hardly any to the height of tenement houses. When the man who owned that seven-story tenement found that he could rent another floor, he found no difficulty in persuading the guardians of our building laws to let him clap another story on the roof, like a cabin on the deck of a ship; and in the southeasterly of the four apartments on this floor the little seamstress lived. You could just see the top of her window from the street—the huge cornice that had capped the original front, and that served as her window-sill now, quite hid all the lower part of the story on top of the top-story.
The little seamstress was scarcely thirty years old, but she was such an old-fashioned little body in so many of her looks and ways that I had almost spelled her sempstress, after the fashion of our grandmothers. Shehad been a comely body, too; and would have been still, if she had not been thin and pale and anxious-eyed.
She was tired out to-night because she had been working hard all day for a lady who lived far up in the “New Wards” beyond Harlem River, and after the long journey home, she had to climb seven flights of tenement-house stairs. She was too tired, both in body and in mind, to cook the two little chops she had brought home. She would save them for breakfast, she thought. So she made herself a cup of tea on the miniature stove, and ate a slice of dry bread with it. It was too much trouble to make toast.
But after dinner she watered her flowers. She was never too tired for that: and the six pots of geraniums that caught the south sun on the top of the cornice did their best to repay her. Then she sat down in her rocking chair by the window and looked out. Her eyry was high above all the other buildings, and she could look across some low roofs opposite, and see the further end of Tompkins Square, with its sparse Spring green showing faintly through the dusk. The eternal roar of the city floated up to her and vaguely troubled her. She was a country girl, and although she had lived for ten years in New York, she had never grown used to that ceaseless murmur. To-night she felt the languor of the new season as well as the heaviness of physical exhaustion. She was almost too tired to go to bed.
She thought of the hard day done and the hard day to be begun after the night spent on the hard little bed. She thought of the peaceful days in the country, whenshe taught school in the Massachusetts village where she was born. She thought of a hundred small slights that she had to bear from people better fed than bred. She thought of the sweet green fields that she rarely saw nowadays. She thought of the long journey forth and back that must begin and end her morrow’s work, and she wondered if her employer would think to offer to pay her fare. Then she pulled herself together. She must think of more agreeable things, or she could not sleep. And as the only agreeable things she had to think about were her flowers, she looked at the garden on top of the cornice.
A peculiar gritting noise made her look down, and she saw a cylindrical object that glittered in the twilight, advancing in an irregular and uncertain manner toward her flower-pots. Looking closer, she saw that it was a pewter beer-mug, which somebody in the next apartment was pushing with a two-foot rule. On top of the beer-mug was a piece of paper, and on this paper was written, in a sprawling, half-formed hand:
porterpleas excuse the libberty Anddrink it
The seamstress started up in terror, and shut the window. She remembered that there was a man in the next apartment. She had seen him on the stairs, on Sundays. He seemed a grave, decent person; but—he must be drunk. She sat down on her bed, all a-tremble. Then she reasoned with herself. The man was drunk,that was all. He probably would not annoy her further. And if he did, she had only to retreat to Mrs. Mulvaney’s apartment in the rear, and Mr. Mulvaney, who was a highly respectable man and worked in a boiler-shop, would protect her. So, being a poor woman who had already had occasion to excuse—and refuse—two or three “libberties” of like sort, she made up her mind to go to bed like a reasonable seamstress, and she did. She was rewarded, for when her light was out, she could see in the moonlight that the two-foot rule appeared again, with one joint bent back, hitched itself into the mug-handle, and withdrew the mug.
The next day was a hard one for the little seamstress, and she hardly thought of the affair of the night before until the same hour had come around again, and she sat once more by her window. Then she smiled at the remembrance. “Poor fellow,” she said in her charitable heart, “I’ve no doubt he’sawfullyashamed of it now. Perhaps he was never tipsy before. Perhaps he didn’t know there was a lone woman in here to be frightened.”
Just then she heard a gritting sound. She looked down. The pewter pot was in front of her, and the two-foot rule was slowly retiring. On the pot was a piece of paper, and on the paper was:
portergood for the helthit makes meet
This time the little seamstress shut her windowwith a bang of indignation. The color rose to her pale cheeks. She thought that she would go down to see the janitor at once. Then she remembered the seven flights of stairs; and she resolved to see the janitor in the morning. Then she went to bed and saw the mug drawn back just as it had been drawn back the night before.
The morning came, but, somehow, the seamstress did not care to complain to the janitor. She hated to make trouble—and the janitor might think—and—and—well, if the wretch did it again she would speak to him herself, and that would settle it.
And so, on the next night, which was a Thursday, the little seamstress sat down by her window, resolved to settle the matter. And she had not sat there long, rocking in the creaking little rocking-chair which she had brought with her from her old home, when the pewter pot hove in sight, with a piece of paper on the top.
This time the legend read:
Perhaps you are afrade i willadress youi am not that kind
The seamstress did not quite know whether to laugh or to cry. But she felt that the time had come for speech. She leaned out of her window and addressed the twilight heaven.
“Mr.—Mr.—sir—I—will youpleaseput your head out of the window so that I can speak to you?”
The silence of the other room was undisturbed. The seamstress drew back, blushing. But before she could nerve herself for another attack, a piece of paper appeared on the end of the two-foot rule.
when i Say a thing imene iti have Sed i would notAdress you and iWill not
What was the little seamstress to do? She stood by the window and thought hard about it. Should she complain to the janitor? But the creature was perfectly respectful. No doubt he meant to be kind. He certainly was kind, to waste these pots of porter on her. She remembered the last time—and the first—that she had drunk porter. It was at home, when she was a young girl, after she had had the diphtheria. She remembered how good it was, and how it had given her back her strength. And without one thought of what she was doing, she lifted the pot of porter and took one little reminiscent sip—two little reminiscent sips—and became aware of her utter fall and defeat. She blushed now as she had never blushed before, put the pot down, closed the window, and fled to her bed like a deer to the woods.
And when the porter arrived the next night, bearing the simple appeal:
Dont be afrade of itdrink it all
the little seamstress arose and grasped the pot firmly by the handle, and poured its contents over the earth around her largest geranium. She poured the contents out to the last drop, and then she dropped the pot, and ran back and sat on her bed and cried, with her face hid in her hands.
“Now,” she said to herself, “you’ve done it! And you’re just as nasty and hard-hearted and suspicious and mean as—as pusley!”
And she wept to think of her hardness of heart. “He will never give me a chance to say I am sorry,” she thought. And, really, she might have spoken kindly to the poor man, and told him that she was much obliged to him, but that he really mustn’t ask her to drink porter with him.
“But it’s all over and done now,” she said to herself as she sat at her window on Saturday night. And then she looked at the cornice, and saw the faithful little pewter pot traveling slowly toward her.
She was conquered. This act of Christian forbearance was too much for her kindly spirit. She read the inscription on the paper:
porter is good for Floursbut better for Fokes
and she lifted the pot to her lips, which were not halfso red as her cheeks, and took a good, hearty, grateful draught.
She sipped in thoughtful silence after this first plunge, and presently she was surprised to find the bottom of the pot in full view.
On the table at her side a few pearl buttons were screwed up in a bit of white paper. She untwisted the paper and smoothed it out, and wrote in a tremulous hand—shecouldwrite a very neat hand—
Thanks.
This she laid on the top of the pot, and in a moment the bent two-foot-rule appeared and drew the mail-carriage home. Then she sat still, enjoying the warm glow of the porter, which seemed to have permeated her entire being with a heat that was not at all like the unpleasant and oppressive heat of the atmosphere, an atmosphere heavy with the Spring damp. A gritting on the tin aroused her. A piece of paper lay under her eyes.
fine groing weatherSmith
fine groing weather
Smith
it said.
Now it is unlikely that in the whole round and range of conversational commonplaces there was one other greeting that could have induced the seamstress tocontinue the exchange of communications. But this simple and homely phrase touched her country heart. What did “groing weather” matter to the toilers in this waste of brick and mortar? This stranger must be, like herself, a country-bred soul, longing for the new green and the upturned brown mould of the country fields. She took up the paper, and wrote under the first message:
Fine
But that seemed curt;forshe added: “for” what? She did not know. At last in desperation she put downpotatos. The piece of paper was withdrawn and came back with an addition:
Too mist for potatos.
And when the little seamstress had read this, and grasped the fact thatm-i-s-trepresented the writer’s pronunciation of “moist,” she laughed softly to herself. A man whose mind, at such a time, was seriously bent upon potatos, was not a man to be feared. She found a half-sheet of note-paper, and wrote:
I lived in a small village before I came to New York, but I am afraid I do not know much about farming. Are you a farmer?
The answer came:
have ben most Every thingfarmed a Spel in Maine
Smith
As she read this, the seamstress heard a church clock strike nine.
“Bless me, is it so late?” she cried, and she hurriedly penciledGood Night, thrust the paper out, and closed the window. But a few minutes later, passing by, she saw yet another bit of paper on the cornice, fluttering in the evening breeze. It said onlygood nite, and after a moment’s hesitation, the little seamstress took it in and gave it shelter.
After this, they were the best of friends. Every evening the pot appeared, and while the seamstress drank from it at her window, Mr. Smith drank from its twin at his; and notes were exchanged as rapidly as Mr. Smith’s early education permitted. They told each other their histories, and Mr. Smith’s was one of travel and variety, which he seemed to consider quite a matter of course. He had followed the sea, he had farmed, he had been a logger and a hunter in the Maine woods. Now he was foreman of an East River lumber yard, and hewas prospering. In a year or two he would have enough laid by to go home to Bucksport and buy a share in a ship-building business. All this dribbled out in the course of a jerky but variegated correspondence, in which autobiographic details were mixed with reflections, moral and philosophical.
A few samples will give an idea of Mr. Smith’s style:
i was one trip to van demensland
To which the seamstress replied:
It must have been very interesting.
But Mr. Smith disposed of this subject very briefly:
it wornt
Further he vouchsafed:
i seen a chinese cook in hong kong could cook flapjacks like your Mother
a mishnery that sells Rum is the menest of Gods crechers
a bulfite is not what it is cract up to Be
the dagos are wussen the brutes
i am 6 1¾ but my Father was 6 foot 4
The seamstress had taught school one Winter, andshe could not refrain from making an attempt to reform Mr. Smith’s orthography. One evening, in answer to this communication:
i killd a Bare in Maine 600 lbs waight
she wrote:
Isn’t it generally spelled Bear?
but she gave up the attempt when he responded:
a bare is a mene animle any way you spel him
The Spring wore on, and the Summer came, and still the evening drink and the evening correspondence brightened the close of each day for the little seamstress. And the draught of porter put her to sleep each night, giving her a calmer rest than she had ever known during her stay in the noisy city; and it began, moreover, to make a little “meet” for her. And then the thought that she was going to have an hour of pleasant companionship somehow gave her courage to cook and eat her little dinner, however tired she was. The seamstress’s cheeks began to blossom with the June roses.
And all this time Mr. Smith kept his vow of silence unbroken, though the seamstress sometimes tempted him with little ejaculations and exclamations to which he might have responded. He was silent and invisible. Only the smoke of his pipe, and the clink of his mug as he set it down on the cornice, told her that a living, material Smith was her correspondent. They never meton the stairs, for their hours of coming and going did not coincide. Once or twice they passed each other in the street—but Mr. Smith looked straight ahead of him, about a foot over her head. The little seamstress thought he was a very fine-looking man, with his six feet one and three-quarters and his thick brown beard. Most people would have called him plain.
Once she spoke to him. She was coming home one Summer evening, and a gang of corner-loafers stopped her and demanded money to buy beer, as is their custom. Before she had time to be frightened, Mr. Smith appeared—whence, she knew not—scattered the gang like chaff, and, collaring two of the human hyenas, kicked them, with deliberate, ponderous, alternate kicks, until they writhed in ineffable agony. When he let them crawl away, she turned to him and thanked him warmly, looking very pretty now, with the color in her cheeks. But Mr. Smith answered no word. He stared over her head, grew red in the face, fidgeted nervously, but held his peace until his eyes fell on a rotund Teuton, passing by.
“Say, Dutchy!” he roared.
The German stood aghast.
“I ain’t got nothing to write with!” thundered Mr. Smith, looking him in the eye. And then the man of his word passed on his way.
And so the Summer went on, and the two correspondents chatted silently from window to window, hid from sight of all the world below by the friendly cornice. And they looked out over the roof, and saw the green of Tompkins Square grow darker and dustier as the months went on.
Mr. Smith was given to Sunday trips into the suburbs, and he never came back without a bunch of daisies or black-eyed Susans or, later, asters or golden-rod for the little seamstress. Sometimes, with a sagacity rare in his sex, he brought her a whole plant, with fresh loam for potting.
He gave her also a reel in a bottle, which, he wrote, he had “maid” himself, and some coral, and a dried flying-fish, that was somewhat fearful to look upon, with its sword-like fins and its hollow eyes. At first, she could not go to sleep with that flying-fish hanging on the wall.
But he surprised the little seamstress very much one cool September evening, when he shoved this letter along the cornice:
The little seamstress gazed at this letter a long time. Perhaps she was wondering in what Ready Letter-Writer of the last century Mr. Smith had found his form. Perhaps she was amazed at the results of his first attempt at punctuation. Perhaps she was thinking of something else, for there were tears in her eyes and a smile on her small mouth.
But it must have been a long time, and Mr. Smith must have grown nervous, for presently another communication came along the line where the top of the cornice was worn smooth. It read:
If not understood will you mary me
The little seamstress seized a piece of paper and wrote:
If I say Yes, will you speak to me?
Then she rose and passed it out to him, leaning out of the window, and their faces met.