The Slave of the Lamp
Author: William North
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE

SLAVE OF THE LAMP.

A Posthumous Novel.

BY WILLIAM NORTH

AUTHOR OF ANTI-CONINGSBY, ETC.

————

"WHO WILL EXCHANGE OLD LAMPS FOR NEW?"

—Arabian Nights' Entertainments.

————

NEW YORK:

H. LONG & BROTHER, 121 NASSAU-STREET.

J. C. DERBY, 119 NASSAU-STREET.

1855

ENTERED according to Act of Congress, in the year One Thousand Eight Hundred and Fifty-five, by H. LONG & BROTHER, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York.

TAWS, RUSSELL & CO.,
PRINTERS.
28 Beekman and 18 Spruce St.

PREFACE.

————

THE preface to a new book is usually radiant with words of Gladness and Hope. This must be one of privilege and sorrow.

The brain that conceived, and the hand that penned the "SLAVE OF THE LAMP," are now mouldering beneath the turf in Greenwood Cemetery.

On the 14th of November, 1854, the author of this volume was found in his chamber, a corpse. A bottle standing on the table—beside the last pages of this novel—indicated too sadly how he had left the world. The coroner called it death by Prussic acid; death by disappointment would have been the better verdict. He bade farewell to his friends in rapid interviews preceding the event. Others whom he could not see he wrote to, lovingly and kindly. Whilst with one hand he clutched the boney fingers of death, the other was extended in Friendship. He died not madly, but calmly in sorrow, in disappointment, and in poverty.

Known since his early manhood to the British public as a writer of considerable talent, WILLIAM NORTH arrived in this country only some two years ago, his soul glowing with an ardent but strangely erratic love of liberty, and his wild dreams with regard to this sentiment, he fondly hoped to find realized in America. He was connected by the ties of consanguinity with the Guildford family, one of his ancestors being Lord North, Earl of Guildford, who figured prominently in England, during the period of the American Revolution. His strong democratic feelings, estranged him from his family connections at home, and from his nineteenth to his twenty-eighth year, he appears to have led a strangely isolated life, although (during this period,) he contributed largely to the English periodicals, his productions exciting much attention and curiosity, as much from the originality of his genius, as on account of his strangely mystical style. Before he had completed his twentieth year, he wrote and published a political novel, entitled, "ANTI-CONINGSBY," in refutation of D'Israeli's "Coningsby." This novel, although the production of so young a man, is perhaps the most forcible of all his works.

It may be supposed that Mr. North derived considerable pecuniary emolument from this work, which at that early age, established his fame as an author. Whether he did, or not, we cannot say. At this period of his life, however, money was a secondary object with him. He was possessed of some property in his own right, but with the proverbial indiscretion of men of his peculiar temperament, this was soon squandered, lent, or given away.

Although he published numerous books in England, and was connected with various popular periodicals, at different times, he does not appear to have reaped much pecuniary benefit from his labors. His productions were highly prized by such as could understand, and sympathize with the feelings of the author; but his style was too strongly embued with German metaphysics to become popular with the majority of readers.

He had been educated in a German university, and his mind had become morbidly impressed with the peculiar doctrines, inculcated in those places of education.

After struggling with adverse circumstances for many years in England, he came, as we have stated, about two years ago, to this country, and upon his arrival, immediately sought literary employment. He was successful, and at different times, contributed largely to various periodicals. In Harper's Magazine, a story from his pen appeared, entitled "The Usurer's Gift." In the Knickerbocker, "Blondine," "Brunette," "My Ghost," and "The Man that Married his Grandmother," and in Graham's Magazine, a tale, entitled the "Phantom World.". He wrote also for the Whig Review, and other periodicals; and at Burton's Theatre, brought out a farce called "The Automaton Man," which was highly successful. All this literary labor was accomplished while Mr. North was also engaged as a writer for the public press; but it appears that his pecuniary success was not equal to his anticipations, notwithstanding the popularity of his contributions. The pressure, not perhaps of actual poverty, but of continuous necessity, added to the mental distress consequent upon an hopeless attachment, proved too much for his singularly sensitive nature. He had peculiar notions of suicide, the result partially, of his early education; and at length, impelled perhaps by a morbid sensitiveness, he released his spirit from its mortal bondage, and dismissed it into that eternal world, which had so long been the subject of its mystic broodings.

In a letter now before us, written by Mr. North the day before he committed the fearful act, occurs the following passage. He is lamenting the failure of one of his fondest hopes, and observes—

"An inseparable barrier existed between us. What was left to me? I had seen Paradise: the portals were eternally closed to me. I could but die.

"To me—philosopher and poet, of a school yet in its infancy; the school of passional, intellectual, and moral harmony—the idea was natural. I never feared death."

In another letter, having special allusion to this his last novel, he says—

"I have written what I believed it best to write, and what I believed, myself, I could write best.

"Such as my work is, I commend it more especially to the young and true-hearted sons of America. I am neither a Bulwer nor a Dickens, yet, in one respect, I feel myself to enjoy an advantage over either—I live in a free country. It is only in an atmosphere of freedom, that we can indeed think freely, as freely, as I, the poor, weary literary adventurer have taken the liberty of writing; and the history of A Slave of the Lamp, despising humbug and owning a yet unshaken faith in the heroic and the beautiful; may not appear mal-apropos."

With a few unavoidable exceptions the characters in this book have originals in real life. The strong appeals—with which it abounds—for the literateur and the inventor, have been elicited by a personal knowledge of the miseries, humiliations, and hardships those ennoblers of a country have to endure. Neglect too often, and in all countries, is a condition of genius. The absence of proper legal protection makes it peculiarly irksome here. Mr. North's memory will be respected for the able manner in which has urged this neglected fact in the present novel.

In works of an autobiographical character the hero is generally (rightly or not), associated in some indescribable way with the author. In the character of Dudley Mondel, Mr. North undoubtedly gives us glimpses of himself, but not sufficiently to make author and hero identical. It is hard to find a hero in broadcloth, and to himself a man never seems heroical. The best among us would need the heightening touch of the romancist to be attractive from the cold pages of a book. Whilst therefore, there is much curious thought that may be traced to the idiosyncrasy of William North, the reader is requested to remember that there is more mere personality that owes its origin purely to the fictitious Dudley Mondel. In the incidental memoirs of the hero, Mr. North undoubtedly speaks mostly of himself and his family. That section of the present work will be found of no ordinary character. Simply as a work of art it is remarkable. For pureness of style, elegance of diction, and force of thought, it has seldom, if ever, been surpassed.

It will not escape the careful reader, that this novel is eminently thoughtful. William North was essentially a thinker, and like other thinkers on abstract matters, was not always right. There is much profitable reading in this volume, and of a kind not often found in novels. Many of the ideas are of startling boldness, particularly those relating to the inventions and progress of the future. In the latter part of the work, however, there are some theological speculations which bear their own extravagance on the face of them. As a whole, this last prose work is no unworthy offering to America. It breathes throughout the national sentiment, and without being gaseous, is patriotic in the best sense of the word. It is also sincere, written perhaps, in excitement, but the excitement of doing good.

CONTENTS.

————

- PREFACE
- I. UNDERGROUND
- II. LUCIFER
- III. ABOVEGROUND
- IV. PEREGRINE COPE
- V. FITZGAMMON O'BOUNCER
- VI. THE PLOT
- VII. THE ROW
- VIII. A CURIOUS GIRL
- IX. IN LOVE
- X. HOW TO MAKE MONEY
- XI. STRANGE TALE
- XII. MORE LOVE
- XIII. GREEN-EYED NEMESIS
- XIV. THE SICK MAN
- XV. CHAOS
- XVI. THE JUDAS KISS
- XVII. LIFE AND DEATH
- XVIII. THE GAMBLERS
- XIX. OLD LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE
- XX. GOLD
- XXI. THE BEGGAR AND THE POET
- XXII. PETER QUARTZ
- XXIII. THE SHIP OF MONDEL
- XXIV. THE FAREWELL PRESENT
- XXV. MEMOIRS OF DUDLEY MONDEL'S YOUTH
- XXVI. MISFORTUNE
- XXVII. THE VOYAGE TO THE GOLDEN ISLAND
- XXVIII. MUTINY
- XXIX. BERKELY MARRIED
- XXX. THE FAIR SLAVE OF THE LAMP
- XXXI. RECONCILIATION
- XXXII. CONCLUSION

THE SLAVE OF THE LAMP.

BOOK I.

———

CHAPTER I.

UNDERGROUND.

NOT far from the celebrated Tombs—a modern Egyptian temple devoted to the custody of New York law-breakers—down a street chief remarkable for the irregularity of its pavement and the poverty of its inhabitants, three men were eating oysters in a cellar.

In the city alluded to—a city of which, probably, many of my readers have heard—oyster eating is mostly a subterranean process.

Whether the consumption of that particular shell-fish is considered too mysterious and awful a ceremony to be carried on universally in broad daylight, or whether oysters are supposed to taste better by gaslight than in the glare of sunshine, we know not; we can only testify to the fact, and record it for the instruction of future ages. Cellars and oysters are, in New York, like the ex-republic of France, one and indivisible. Those who profanely eat oysters above ground feel the proceeding to be, at best, inconsistent and unsatisfactory. The oyster is naturally a thing of darkness. Oysters were evidently not created to be looked at, but to be swallowed with the faith of unwavering fanaticism and "no questions asked." Even to this day, after eight and twenty years sad experience of the world and its fishes, I swallow a raw oyster with a strange mingling of horror and appetite—such as, I fancy, I should feel if taken prisoner in Africa, and forced to marry the Queen of the Hottentots under penalty of being immediately given to her majesty's pet boa-constrictor for supper.

Strangely enough, in that same city of New York, oysters and theatrical criticism are supposed to go together; and the critic, like the oyster, is thought to prefer to all other resorts, the semi-obscurity and mystery of a restaurant-catacomb for the preparation of those shadowy accusations, which he is for ever throwing, like the Venetians of old, into the open lion's mouth of a theatre-going and oyster-eating public.

But the three men, of whom I am about to speak, were no oyster critics, except in the plain and unpoetical sense of simple critics of oysters. Neither was the subterranean saloon (or, as its frequenters classically termed it, "the dive") in which they were seated by any means one of those luxurious establishments with which many of my male readers are familiar. No splendid carved and gilded bar was there, glittering, like a diamond necklace, with crystal bottles and glasses, and lumps of ice plunged into ruby and amber drinks, relieved by dripping tufts of emerald mint. No velvet-cushioned boxes, in which, as in a private cave, snug parties of convivialists are protected by curtains and blind from the curiosity of stray outsiders. No well-dressed loungers, no gas, no mirrors were there. It was a place in which three men were rudely eating oysters by the dubious light of a three-wicked pewter camphene lamp, in a straightforward unpretending manner, each one opening for himself, and leaving his companions to do the same. In a word, it was a cheap edition of liberty hall, if ever such a hall existed, or could be imagined to exist, in the shape of a cellar, with a ceiling smoked as black as General Cass's old hat (lately exhibited at a hatter's in Fourth Street, Cincinnati, corner of Main Street, as I can personally testify), and with an extemporised table, and three rascally old cane-bottomed chairs for furniture.

The table, which was supported by three small casks, and notched at the edge like a saw, haying been originally a door, was remarkably solid its construction. This table, or ex-door, supported by way of centre-piece the basket of oysters from which the three bons vivants were helping themselves, pleasantly throwing the shells on the floor, and dipping their oysters into the saucers of salt and red pepper, with a disregard of etiquette, as natural as it was congenial. On the fourth or unoccupied side of the table stood, like so many soldiers, a double row of bottles, containing Philadelphia ale and porter in equal measure. A large paper of quadrangular crackers, torn open for convenience of access at both ends, completed the festive arrangements. And now, having set the table, I shall at once proceed to introduce the guests, who may, perhaps, prove more interesting company than oysters, which are proverbially mute, and, moreover, according to naturalists, creatures on the very lowest steps of the great spiral staircase of creative development.

From oysters, then, we proceed naturally to the eaters of oysters.

Now the three oyster-eaters in question, were by no means the sort of people a respectable clergyman would select as intimate friends, or a wealthy merchant be apt to choose as partners in business, nor could they in any light be, strictly speaking, regarded as very eligible acquaintances. Still they were "men and brothers," and would have been fellow-Christians had they believed in any religion at all.

Possibly the reader never heard of them. As, however, I abominate clap-trap and humbug in literature as in life, I shall at once and unaffectedly state that these three obscure celebrities were neither more nor less than those, to their own set illustrious, vagabonds, known by the initiated as—

1. Confidence Bob.

2. The Slinker.

3. The Perfessor, or professor (the former pronunciation was the more fashionable amongst his friends, though, on the score of orthography, perhaps objectionable).

Confidence Bob, or, as he otherwise styled himself, Mr. Robert Mombcross—probably a lineal descendant of the impenitent thief—was a well-shaven personage with dark curling hair, a round, good-tempered face, very black eyes, and a costume consisting of a very short blue coat (of which he facetiously observed that it would be long enough before he got another), a pair of fashionable crossbarred pantaloons, and a maroon-colored satin waistcoat with gilt buttons, altogether, in the eyes of the general public, "considerable of a swell." He had new and very highly varnished shoes, copies of which may be obtained for the sum of one dollar and fifty cents, in Greenwich street or the Bowery. He had also a very shiny shirt-collar (glazed with gum), which in fact he had purchased, with a view to appearances, that very afternoon at a hosier's near the corner of Fulton street.

This charming cavalier, who (in his own opinion) was "got up" somewhat in the style of the London and Parisian aristocracy, showed great science in knocking off the necks of the ale bottles with his knife, just as a Turkish executioner is supposed, by students of the "Arabian Nights," and other great Oriental authorities, to behead a fated prisoner at one blow of his glittering Damascus sabre.

The absence of such trifling luxuries as corkscrews and tumblers, rendered this a useful accomplishment under the circumstances.

The Slinker, who, if he had any other name, baptismal or genealogical, never could get any of his friends to acknowledge it, was a little thin starveling man, with small eyes, red hair, and a nose like the beak of a sparrow. He swallowed his oysters in a stealthy and voracious manner, as if to make sure of his portion, and seemed to observe his companions with a timidly suspicious air; more especially he glanced with an imploring sense of inferiority towards the Professor, who, in return, regarded the Slinker with a contemptuous patronage, worthy of a great tragedian, or a modern military despot.

The Slinker's attire commenced with a greasy, napless hat, worn, like the famous falling tower of Pisa, at a considerable incline from the perpendicular. Next came, undivided by even the narrowest parapet of linen, a dirty blue silk handkerchief with yellow spots, followed by a black dress coat of the last year but twenty's fashion, which showed strong signs of having been prematurely brushed to death in its youth. It was a threadbare old corpse of a coat, and the eye was refreshed by escaping from its contemplation to that of his trowsers, which were of a pea-green color faded to a grassy yellow. These failed utterly to meet his shoes, split equally over the little toes, and as innocent of blacking as the paws of a polar bear. His hands were long, venous, and bony, resembling the claws of some queer bird, whilst his complexion was of a brownish yellow, with a sprinkling of brick-dust on the cheeks and nose. The cuffs of his coat, and indeed his dress generally, were here and there stained with tobacco-juice. Taken altogether, he would have cut rather a queer figure at a fashionable party.

The Professor, sometimes called Jack Rivers on the covers of epistolary communications, was a man of a very different stamp. He was broad-shouldered, deep-chested, with a head like a low-browed and brutal Napoleon, iron-jawed, long-armed, short-legged, yet of fully medium stature. His complexion was bronzed and coppered almost to the hue of an Indian's. His eyes were of a greenish hazel, that flashed animal courage and latent ferocity. Such was the man who sat there, at once the admiration and terror of his two weaker comrades.

In man, as shown by Lavater, re-appear the types of all other animals. We involuntarily associate one man with the fox, and one with the sheep, another with the tiger, a fourth with the goat. I have frequently seen very pretty girls who irresistibly reminded me of greyhounds, cats, sparrows, or kangaroos.

The Professor was of the lion genus. Although of European birth, he might have been compared to the supple black lion of South America; Confidence Bob was more like a large black dog; and the Slinker was evidently a carrion crow, with a dash of the jackal in his composition.

A Brahmin—and who knows but what I am a disciple of the Vedas myself—would have given good reasons for these fanciful resemblances.

"Well, Slinker," said the Professor, throwing his last oyster-shell over his shoulder, and decapitating a bottle of porter with even greater dexterity than Mr. Mombcross (alias Confidence Bob), "How's trade?"

"Werry poor;" said the Slinker, in a whining voice like a whipt cat's, looking all the while at the oyster-shells on the floor as if in search of pearls, "werry poor, honly vun shorl, two boys' clokes (vurth nex' ter nuffin), and ahimitation bamboo valkin stick with a gilt 'ed. The 'all lurk is a gitten ter be a werry hunprofiterbul bisnis. People locks their parlers, and gents gits shy of 'angin up their coats down stairs in the 'alls. Humberellers is a drug now as the vinter's hover, and valkin canes with gold 'eds is gone houter fashun."

"Nothing else?" said the Professor, to whom this strange dialect of the native cockney was perfectly familiar.

"Nuffin, s'elp me baccy?"

"Means Bacchus, Slinker does," remarked Confidence Bob, as if making the explanation for his own private satisfaction, and by no means with any vain idea of imparting useful information to his companions.

"I'll tell you what, Confidence," said the Professor, fixing his keen eyes upon the Blinker, "if he aint lying at this particular date, he's at any rate prevaricating like a corkscrew. Why don't he look a cove in the mug when he cants? why, because he's a galvanized squirt, and as the parson said, the truth aint in him."

"There's not room for it," said Confidence Bob, "he's so darned thin! Besides he's the only son of the man who told a lie the fust words he spoke, and never spoke another afterwards!"

"You're hollers at me with yer stoopid Yankee jokes;" muttered the Slinker, looking angrily at Bob, and appealingly towards the Professor. "I vish hi'd never hemmergrated to this 'ere beast of a country, I do by——!"

"Oh, you go to blazes!" said the Professor, with a broad grin; "you know very well you only cut London because you were so well known to the peelers you didn't dare to stop. What a pity you didn't learn English before you left. They don't understand the cockney lingo here."

"I vish I 'ad your edication, Perfessor," said the Slinker, with mock humility.

"Education, indeed!" growled the Professor. "A nice education I had, and a nice position it has given me!"

"Learning to sign one's name," observed Confidence Bob, sentimentally, "too often leads to a fellow's signing somebody else's. It is the first step that counts, as I've heard say in French, though I can't recollect the exact European of it at the moment."

"Now, Slinker," resumed the Professor, whilst Confidence Bob playfully made a lunge at that gentleman with an oyster-knife, thereby causing him to collapse in sudden terror; "now, Slinker, what else did you do to-day?

"Nuffin, Perfessor," said the Slinker, again intently studying the saucer of red pepper.

"Don't chaff me, Slinker," growled his pitiless interrogator. "Do you think I don't read your miserable soul like a four-yard poster? What else did you do? I say, and remember I'm in a hurry!"

"Out with it, old bird! don't chaff the Professor," put in Confidence. "What we want is facts, which, according to scholars, are the foundation of all real scientific information."

"Well," said the much oppressed Slinker, who, under the eye of the Professor, was like a bird magnetised by a serpent—"I got these;" and he reluctantly extended a bunch of keys, with a strong steel ring, to the Professor.

"Where from?"

"Sixteenth street."

"How?"

"From a coat pocket."

"Whose?"

"Mr. Simpkins, the broker's."

"What did you mean to do with them? Wait for the reward in the advertisement, eh?"

The Slinker's downcast eyes seemed tacitly to admit that he had been guilty of the meanness of contemplating that course of action.

"Humph! a rich broker's?" muttered the Professor, playing with the keys, and apparently engaged in some profoundly important calculation.

"You surely don't think of—of——"

"Of business again?" broke in Bob.

"No—no," said the Professor, as if reluctantly giving up a pleasant scheme; "no, I will not be tempted. I mean to give up the line." And Mr. John Rivers disdainfully threw back the bunch of keys to the Slinker, who eagerly thrust them into his pocket.

"To give it up!" exclaimed Bob.

"Give it up!" whined the Slinker.

"Yes," said the Professor, "I've seen the inside of more stone jugs than one, and made a trip to Australia once at the Queen of England's particular request, and at the British Government's expense. In my time, and I'm now close on forty, I've introduced myself into more first-rate houses than I can well recollect, and done business in more towns than I want to count, and I'm getting pretty tired of risking my life for a few bits of yellow, and skulking about the streets, like a dog that has lost its master. Here I'm not known yet. I've done little, and never been nabbed. So I think whilst there's time I'll turn over a new leaf, and reform. That's what I mean to do; and I advise you two to do the same, and go in for something that's gentlemanly and respectable, at once."

"Reform, guv'ner?" squeaked the Slinker, in an almost inaudible tone.

"Reform?" queried Confidence, in equal amazement.

"Yes, reform, by G——!" reiterated the Professor, coolly. "Now, mark me, you, Confidence, and you, Slinker! I'm going to make you partners in the speculation; but, by the Eternal! if either of you are caught and peach, and you are to be shot in the very cells of Sing Sing, it will be done. You are dealing with two men who stand no nonsense, and forgive no weakness. You know me!"

"And the other," said Confidence Bob, suspiciously, "who is your friend?"

"Yes, who is he?" snivelled the obsequious Slinker, like an ill-conditioned echo.

"Our master—a real boss and no mistake!" replied the Professor, with impressive emphasis; "the professor of pugilism and house-breaking in all their branches."

At this moment, there was a single, heavy, dull knock at the door of the cellar.

"There he is!" said the Professor, with a start. "Mind, he does not relish joking, so treat him like a gentleman—do you hear?"

"But, who is he?" again asked Confidence, curiously.

"He is the—ALTERER!" replied the Professor, beginning to unbar the door at a second impatient summons of his visitor.

"The Devil!" exclaimed Confidence, who seemed wonderfully impressed by the strange cognomen.

"A near relative," muttered the Professor, "and that's a fact."

As for the Slinker, he felt very much like a fifteenth-rate poet about to be introduced to Alfred Tennyson, or M. de Lamartine; or like an unpaid attaché on the verge of a presentation to Lord Palmerston, or Prince Metternich.

By this time, the Professor had opened the door, and admitted a man in black, with a pale, thin face, and eyes that glittered like two stars, not with actual light, but with that redundant electric vitality, which at once makes itself felt by those on whom it rests, as the indications of an internal force of which it is the sign and the manifestation.

"Good evening, Professor," said the stranger. "Gentlemen, good evening. I drink to our better acquaintance!" And, calmly taking one of the bottles, the mysterious new comer, at one blow against the edge of the table, removed its neck, and, to the intense admiration of the three spectators of the feat, drank up its contents at a draught. "And now to business," he resumed "You are all rich men, if true to me, and dead men, if you betray me;" and, placing his hand in his bosom, the outline of a revolver became visible, at which the Professor alone glanced with a smile of sincere and sympathetic satisfaction.

————

CHAPTER II.

LUCIFER.

"TAKE a chair, Mr.—— Mr.—?" Confidence Bob paused interrogatively.

"LUCIFER," said the stranger sharply, "if you needs must have a name;" and he bent a searching glance upon the questioner, which made that self-possessed personage feel a momentary doubt whether or not the devil had not sought an interview with him in reality.

"Lucifer?" echoed the Slinker with involuntary amazement, "Lucifer?"

"One name is as good as another;" said the Alterer, with sudden calmness; "and Lucifer will suit me as well as any."

"Better," said the Professor; "for the Prince of Darkness himself would have to knock under to you in the altering business!"

"You shall be my prime minister," said Lucifer, turning his pale face and flashing eyes towards the Professor, with a grim approval of his flattery, "and these gentlemen your secretaries. In my character as an infernal potentate, I shall necessarily appear but rarely; To you, therefore, Professor, I shall entrust full powers, and with you alone, except on special occasions, I shall communicate—"

"But what are we to do? what's it all about? how do you know that I shall go into it?" said Confidence Bob, sulkily, determined to show his very distinct appreciation of his own personal importance to the stranger

The Slinker looked an echo to these queries. Further he dared not go, so deeply was he impressed by the stern and resolute aspect of the Alterer.

"Do they know who I am?" said Lucifer; again looking sharply into the eyes of his introducer.

"Yes," said the Professor, "I have told them that you—the Alterer."

"Good!" said the stranger, taking out a pocket-book, from which he extracted three rolls of bankbills, which he handed politely to the three men respectively. "Now my friends," said he, "examine those bills, keep those which are good, return me the bad. Take your time, look at them well, there is no hurry."

"I guess the whole pile are bogus," muttered Confidence Bob, as he turned over his roll.

"These is good, at any rate," said the Sinker, "has for the rest, they are Indiana money, and I don't much like their looks, tho' they is uncommon well got up, by Jingo they is!"

"What do you say, Mr. Rivers?"

"Well," said the Professor, "I confess I'm bothered, there ain't a bill in my hand, I would not have taken of any one, and yet, I suppose some of 'em are rum uns; but I can't distinguish, and that's a fact. I give it up, as the boy said to the riddle about the door that wasn't a door; I'm cust if I can twig a screw loose anywhere, though I've pretty sharp eyes too for the scrieving dodges!"

"Humph!" said Lucifer, "you are at least wise enough to know your own ignorance. As for your opinion," he continued, addressing Confidence Bob, "it so happens, that out of the ten bills you hold, five are genuine, and five altered. In the third lot (and he turned to the Slinker), it chances, that precisely the Indiana money you object to, is the only good paper in your hands. Professor," he continued triumphantly, "all the bills you have examined, are from my workshop. So much for the judgment of three flash men, supposed to know the ropes as well as any in New York. Now, what do you say to business. My terms are one dollar in five, cash down, and death to traitors." At these words, the stranger looked steadily for a few seconds at Confidence Bob and the Slinker alternately, until even the former's impudence yielded, and his eyes fell before the resolute and inquisitorial gaze of his scrutinizer. "By following my instructions, detection is almost impossible," completed the Alterer, with a smile of unexpected amiability. "Once a fortnight I will meet you, or at any rate, Mr. Rivers, to keep up the supplies——. For the present, here are three hundred bankable bills, real money, redeemable at par, to set you afloat as respectable citizens. By to-morrow night, the Professor will bring you my instructions. One word before parting; should you meet me anywhere, under any circumstances, we are strangers—a look of recognition will be regarded by me as a premeditated treachery. Good night!"

And making an amicable sign to the Professor with his hand, the mysterious stranger departed, without further words, leaving the two subordinate rascals in a state of utter astonishment and confusion of ideas.

Every class of crime has its peculiar horror; and, to the illiterate rogue, the man who uses the pen as his instrument, inspires a more irresistible feeling of awe, than the most daring burglar and the most adventurous highwayman.

"Ain't he a stunner?" exclaimed the Professor, enthusiastically, as soon as the door had fairly closed upon the retiring figure of the stranger.

"Won't we live? that's all!" cried the Confidence man suddenly, seeing open before him an existence of hitherto undreamed-of luxury.

"Hain't it wery 'azardous?" suggested the Slinker timidly, feeling somewhat like a small fly just caught in the web of a huge spider.

"Pshaw! Lucifer's a jolly devil in his way;" said the Professor laughing, "and passing a queer bill is no great matter, specially when you have a good one in your pocket to fork out if it's questioned. And now, good night; I expect Sal's tired of waiting for me; you sleep here, don't you Slinker? What are you going to do, Bob?"

"Stroll up to the Astor," said the Confidence man easily; "and see if I can't catch a flat from the country, at any rate, I'll"—

"Don't humbug me," said the Professor, "I know where you'll go, safe enough—take care of your money, that's all;" and so saying, the three worthies separated, as we too, not unwillingly, shall separate from them for the present.

————

CHAPTER III.

ABOVE GROUND.

THE house of Mr. Harrison B. Yonkers was in the best part of the Fifth Avenue, that is, in the very best part of New York.

Indeed, the Fifth Avenue has been called by strangers, a street of palaces, and is not surpassed by even the handsomest line of villa-residences in the suburbs of London. Continental towns have nothing of the kind to show, and assuredly no other dwelling-street in any American city can rival its elegance and substantial magnificence.

The house of Mr. Harrison B. Yonkers was built in the native "know-nothing," or conglomerate, style of architecture. It gloried in a Greek portico, Gothic windows, and Moorish pinnacles. It was faced with brown-stone—done brown, as the masons facetiously say—and had an open-work stone wall, like pie-crust, before it. The entrance was reached, through a small garden, by a broad flight of marble steps. On each side of these steps, tail in air, with open mouth, and lustreless eyes stood sentinel, a huge bronze lion. Own brothers of these same leonine twins, mount guard at the doors of Mrs. Peterson Jones and Mr. Lundy Smith. No lion was ever more popular, not even Eleazar Williams, King of France, and Emperor of "Putnam's Monthly." The man who has the mould, says it is the most philoprogenitive lion he ever caught, and he would not take five thousand dollars for it.

As to the interior comforts of the house of Mr. Harrison B. Yonkers (B. stands for Benjamin, but he was always called Harrison B.), it had, in advertising phrase, all the modern improvements—gas, baths, gutta-percha telegraphs, and so forth. Its furniture was in a style of exaggerated splendor, though far from vulgar in taste. Mr. Harrison B. had married, for the second time, at the age of forty-eight, a beautiful young lady precisely half his age—decidedly the better half—that is, four and twenty, and she naturally expected a great deal.

In this world life is a trade, and most earthly transactions bargains. Much bogus coin and wild-cat-cum-red-dog bills are in circulation; but, as a general principle, "shin plasters" are regarded cautiously; and nothing is given for nothing. He who has no capital realizes the ex nihilo nihil fit axiom infallibly. But money is not the only capital. Miss Amelia Luton gave youth, beauty, accomplishments, in exchange for dulness, middle age, and wealth. She had no idea of being cheated out of her equivalent for what she justly considered an "awful sacrifice." In the South, pretty colored ladies are sold by the slave-dealer; in the North, pretty white ladies sell themselves directly. Perhaps, so long as poverty shall be the greatest curse of life, unequal marriages and prostitution will continue to desolate society, and change the harmony of human nature into discord.

Amelia Luton, like many others, imagined that of two evils, she chose the least. To live in a palace, to dress like a princess, to receive her guests with superb hospitality, were now supposed necessities of her existence.

To do her justice, she would not have sold herself for these considerations alone, had any of the men she encountered as a spinster succeeded in touching her heart. But none succeeded in the task, for she expected much. She was a woman of strong mind and ardent feelings. She had no fortune. Her mother had an income which, like the Irishman's story, wanted nothing but a beginning and an end, except a middle, to make it perfect. In a blank state of sentiment she exercised her judgment, and married a rich widower; a man of money; a Wall street potentate; a good-humored gentleman; with a red face, iron-grey hair and whiskers, and a large, portly figure, as became a man nominally worth a million. Mr. Yonkers was a great man in Wall street, but a very small one in Fifth Avenue; his wife was supposed to be highly cultivated, and knew a hundred things of which he had scarcely a dim conception. What usually happened in such cases, happened in this. Mrs. Yonkers having thrown herself away, as she more than once sarcastically hinted, on a heap of gold dust, was rendered suddenly alive to the fact, that she had committed an irretrievable blunder. Within eighteen months of her marriage, she met, what some ladies poetical term, her destiny. This destiny came in the shape of a man some twenty years younger than her husband, and in her eyes the very paragon of earthly perfection. This was the gentleman who, on the evening following that of the Alterer's enlistment of his mysterious recruits, sat in pleasant conversation with Mrs. Yonkers, and her daughter-in-law, Columbia, in the magnificent drawing-room of her Fifth Avenue mansion.

He was a man nearly thirty years of age, tall, pale, and of an imposing mien. His face wore an agreeable, but sad expression, which might have seemed still sadder, had not a dark-brown moustache and beard almost concealed the line of his mouth, that unfailing indication of the mind's interior condition. What was particularly striking about this person, was the steady gaze of his soft, inscrutable grey eyes. When not resting on the faces of his companions, they seemed to be looking forward into the future; or, possibly, backwards into the past, in search of fantasmal images, and scenery of mysterious interest. He was evidently full of thought, though it might have puzzled a phrenologist to determine the predominating character of his reflections.

A lawyer might have taken him for a brother counsellor, pondering over the intricacies of a cause about to be tried on the following morning; a merchant for a speculator in stocks, meditating a grand operation in railway scrip; an author for a poet forming the plot of a tragedy, or the plan of an epic.

Perhaps an acute man of the world would have recognized in his countenance, calm and passionless as it appeared; the indications of that painful perplexity which a man feels who has plunged himself, or been plunged by circumstances, or the conduct of others, into a position of apparently inextricable embarrassment.

He was seated on a sofa covered with blue damask, so constructed that as he leaned back on one of its ends, he partially faced a young lady of some twenty to twenty-three years of age, who occupied a like position at the other end of the sofa.

This young lady was Columbia Yonkers.

Precisely opposite that part of the sofa on which the gentleman sat, and so near that their feet were almost in contact, sat Mrs. Yonkers. She was dressed in white, for it was summer weather, and white well suited the rich creamy delicacy of her somewhat dark complexion.

Her hair, almost black, was parted simply on the smoothest of foreheads; and her large, dark, hazel eyes were fixed languidly on the object of her secret preference, whilst her strong, rounded, subtle shape reposed motionlessly balanced in the rocking-chair—motionlessly; yet, if I may venture on the phrase, instinct with latent motion. There was palpably a fund of life and animation in that tranquil lady, which only awaited fitting occasion to exhibit itself openly. Languidly as her eyes were fixed upon her visitor's features, there was a strange intensity in her look, which implied, perhaps, doubt, most assuredly, watchfulness.

In truth, it was a strange comedy these three people were playing. To look at the placid Columbia, with her fine fair complexion, her slender, graceful, exquisitely developed figure, and little white tapering hands so innocently folded, as if in unconscious prayer; to observe the calm gentleness of her large, long-lashed blue eyes, half covered by their drooping delicate lids, as they rested vaguely on her step-mother's countenance, would have caused a stranger to see in her the very type of happy girlish ignorance, and unimpassioned womanhood. Yet were those soft blue eyes no less vigilant than the bright dark orbs of the dark beauty on whom they rested. Nor, impassible as he appeared, was the companion of these two charming women less closely observant of the slightest change in the conventionally-governed features of either.

The conversation, as is common when thoughts that cannot be uttered are within the hearts of the speakers, turned upon the most trivial topics.

"The weather is unusually fine," said Columbia, with an air of preoccupation and assumed nonchalance.

"A little cloudy," said the pale visitor, as if dreaming of something or somebody in another world, or another sphere, as the professional "spiritualists" would phrase it.

"There will be a storm unless the clouds pass over," said Mrs. Yonkers, with a lazy sweetness, fixing her eyes upon her vis-à-vis, to express the emphasis which her tones avoided.

"A storm?" said the gentleman, "there is no danger of that; see how bright the sun is shining!" and he sent a smiling look towards the eyes of Mrs. Yonkers.

Her features brightened at the delicately-implied compliment.

"I cannot help thinking," she said playfully, yet with an almost imperceptible tremor in her voice, "that the sun would shine brighter, but for the fear of the coming eclipse."

"What is an eclipse but a shadow that passes away?" said the visitor, with a second smile so admirably forced that it dissipated, for the moment, the vague suspicions that were flickering within the heart of the young married woman.

But Dudley Mondel, for we may as well give the gentleman a name, having made the effort which feeling and policy dictated, immediately allowed his countenance to relax into its old expression of serious and sad meditativeness, whilst Columbia, who had watched the exchange of looks, and listened to the brief colloquy with acute attention, said in a tone of sprightliness, "One would almost fancy that you were talking parables, propounding enigmas, or trying to be poetically sentimental. My dear mamma, I never thought the weather so interesting a topic before."

"Who started it?" said Mrs. Yonkers, meeting Columbia's sprightly manner with an equally excellent assumption.

Mondel here made a desperate effort to start a new subject of conversation, by alluding to a recently published autobiography of an actress.

"It strikes me as the play of Hamlet, with the part of Hamlet omitted," said Mrs. Yonkers "it lacks reality; it is wanting in material facts."

"Are material facts the most real things in life?" said Columbia, timidly.

"Not to those who live in dreams, my fairy-like darling," replied Mrs. Yonkers, smiling, with a patronizing air of superior experience; and then she added, as if involuntarily, "but we soon discover how little the most beautiful dreams can satisfy the heart, how feeble are mere visions as food for the cravings of the soul."

"I understand," said Columbia, shaking off her timidity, and excited by the brilliancy of her own fancy, "I understand that dear, distinct perceptions are absolutely essential to the enjoyment of existence; but it seems to me, that my delight in the perfume of a flower is fully as interesting to record, as a naturalist's description of its petals and outward characteristics."

"Always the same battle—the subjective versus the objective—genius puzzling common-place," murmured Mondel, inaudibly, as he stole a rapid glance at Columbia's exquisite profile, pure and noble, as if cut by the chisel of a god.

Dudley Mondel—we will leave the ladies to their transcendental discussion, and devote ourselves to the part of Hamlet for a few minutes—Dudley Mondel found himself in a most peculiar position, A few days before, he had been attracted to the house in Fifth Avenue, by the beauty and accomplishments of the fascinating Mrs. Yonkers. Pleased and flattered by the lady's evident prepossession in his favor, he had formed no plan, conceived no ulterior design. All men, however philosophical they may be, are pleased to become an object of interest to a lovely woman. Nor could Mondel fail to admire the grace and beauty of Mrs. Yonkers.

It was, however, with feelings of dismay and annoyance, that he perceived, after a few interviews, the extent of the feelings he had awakened. Profoundly versed in all the mysteries of feminine nature, he saw himself the object of a first deep, all-absorbing, all-destroying passion, which he could not reciprocate, and dared not slight; which he at the same time feared and pitied, and which was suddenly thrown as a bar athwart the path of a new vista of happiness, unexpectedly opened before him.

In the centre of this vista stood Columbia.

On his first visit to Mrs. Yonkers, he recognized in her step-daughter the very earth-born goddess which his whole life had been spent in seeking. In the very first flash of her eyes, he felt the soul of beauty that sprung to meet his own, and already he was involved in a sort of intrigue, from which it was impossible to recede, without mortally wounding and offending her, to whom he owed the introduction to the suddenly discovered idol.

Love is a matter of organization. It is a simple question of harmony between two instruments. Hence, almost all real love is instantaneous as the explosion which follows the application of a match to gunpowder. We love a type which is, in reality, an ideal reflex of our own souls. Every approximation to that type affects us, as one harp is affected by the vibrations of another. The more perfect the accord, the louder and stronger the sympathetic vibration of our nerves. Hence a more perfect image of the ideal type will always destroy all feebler images; hence inconstancy and all the sorrows of abandoned love; hence the agonies of genius, in its deep longing for sympathy, which it can only truly meet with in genius itself; hence incomplete, shadowy, disappointed loves—deep, dark, overwhelming sorrows; hence the wild dreams of poetry, the wild adventures of poets, and their misapprehension by the ignorant and the unscientific world!

Dudley Mondel was not what severe religionists and vulgar disciplinarians would call a good man. He was generous and brave, gentle and benevolent; but his life had been passed in wild roving from land to land on the one hand, from science to science, and literature to literature on the other. He had criticised all systems of morality to death. All religions and systems had, in the crucible of his pitiless analysis, melted away into forms of thought,—ways of looking at an idea. So that at last his own will had become his sole law, and vice and virtue were nominal distinctions. He was a popular writer, a poet, and a philosopher. He had many admirers and some disciples. He was a man famous in his way; and his vast reading and varied knowledge filled his opponents, as well as his friends, with amazement. But he was a man as well as a student. He had seen and experienced much.

He had known rapid reverses of fortune. He had been a worker as well as an employer. If he had had his follies and his mistresses, he had also written books and engaged in many enterprises. Wherever he was, he became more or less the centre point of action—the motive and directing power. Men fancied they drove him harnessed to the chariot of their fortunes, whilst Mondel led them by the golden thread of genius. No matter what he turned his attention to, his severely logical mind at once grasped the fundamental facts of the position.

Above all, he was ever true to himself. His soul was ever kingly. His soul was his own, and his body also. He was a free doer and thinker. Like Talleyrand, he had no prejudices. Like Nelson, he had no knowledge of fear. Like every true philosopher, he had no master. He bent neither to men nor to the opinions of men.

He could neither be bribed, intimidated nor humbugged. His great vice, if vice it were, was pride. But pride in the successful man is greatness; pride is only condemned in those who fail. Tarquin Superbus, would have been Tarquin the Superb, not Tarquin the Proud, had he not been dethroned and driven into exile.

Such was Mondel the man. We have yet to give some idea of Mondel as a member of society.

In this respect, he was a struggling adventurer. He had consumed his fortune and all he had since acquired. In the golden phraseology of Wall street, he was not worth a cent.

"There is plenty of gold scattered about," he would say in sportive mood; "when I want it, I will take it. The world is my debtor and my banker. One of these days, I will have a settlement, and, take my funds into my own hands, for more profitable investment."

If Mondel had any religion, it was the worship of beauty. If he ever prayed, his prayers were the words of love, entreating love. Beauty was, to his intelligence, like music. Every face and form was a new combination of harmony. Mondel had no conception of life without woman's sympathy. But he sought restlessly for the highest female perfection; in his search, he had many adventures, and tried many experiments. He had left more than one Ariadne behind him to be consoled, let us hope, by some nobler and more respectable god than Bacchus.

Finally, the mother of Mondel was an American senator's daughter, and his father an English gentleman, whilst his birth took place by a singular caprice of destiny, in a packet-ship in the very centre of the Atlantic ocean. The ship, moreover, was a French ship, owned by a Dutchman. Thus, Mondel first landed upon the soil of la belle France. He was born a cosmopolite, without a country and without a government, which latter fact accounts for his subsequent contempt of all established political authorities, great and small.

Having thus given the reader some vague idea of the central character in the scene I am describing, I shall resume the thread of active narrative without further digression.

The desultory conversation, sustained for some time with little interest to any of the three personages engaged in it, was interrupted by the entrance of a servant, who wished to speak with Mrs. Yonkers on some household matter.

Mrs. Yonkers rose to leave the room, but having already reached the door, opened it, and taken one step into the hall, she was impelled by that demon of divination which jealousy lends to a woman who loves, to turn suddenly back and unexpectedly re-enter the apartment she was leaving. Her presentiment was not without justification. The moment the door began to close upon her form, a sudden change took place in the expression of the faces of both Mondel and Columbia. As if by an invincible attraction, their heads turned upon their shoulders with the simultaneous motion of two flowers affected by the same gust of wind, or two wheels of a steam engine united by the same band of gutta percha. Thus their eyes were brought opposite to one another's, and each drank in eagerly the longed-for rays, streaming as it were from the very fountain-head of life, the man absorbing deliciously the exhalation of innocent beauty, spiritual purity and sweet intelligence of his lovely companion, the girl drinking in with avidity the torrent of thought, of intellect and noble manhood which the gaze of Mondel poured in a flood of light upon her now awakened being.

It was this meeting, or rather, if I may offend my critics still further by my temerity, and say this rushing together of the eyes of Mondel and Columbia, which the sudden return of Mrs. Yonkers surprised, without immediately disconcerting. Neither of the eager gazers perceived it. They were both, for the instant, carried away from all outward sensations by the thrilling contemplation of that loveliness which they found so marvellously realized in one another. Mrs. Yonkers gazed, pale with anger.

Anger was her first sensation; the anguish was to come afterwards.

"Mr. Mondel," said Columbia, and at the sound of her own voice she blushed, and not till then; "Mr. Mondel, have you ever seen a more charming woman than my step-mother?"

"No," said Mondel, "never till I"—— At this crisis, he suddenly became aware of the presence of Mrs. Yonkers.

There she stood, pale and trembling, with a ghastly invention of a smile flickering like a dead light upon her lips.

But Mondel was a man who had seen too much of life, to be taken unprepared whilst possibility of escape yet remained to him.

"Never," he continued, without changing his tone, "till I saw that lady who has just entered, and who appears to me to surpass Mrs. Yonkers immeasurably in every respect. Do you not think so?"

And both Mondel and Columbia laughed, and their laugh sounded natural, for they were happy, and could accomplish that, which to Mrs. Yonkers was impossible. Hollow, indeed, was the laugh with which she responded to the pleasantry, as she affected to look for her handkerchief by the chair she had occupied. She had only returned to pick up a piece of laced French cambric, that was all!

But Mondel was not deceived by this shallow ruse; and when he rose to take his leave, the look he exchanged with Columbia was a revelation. Henceforward, he made up his mind that disguise was useless.

Oh, that look! that look! it burned into the very heart of hearts of the young wife!

But she did not yet despair of victory over her rival.

————

CHAPTER IV.

PEREGRINE COPE.

MONDEL had left the house of Mrs. Yonkers. It was already dusk. He soon found himself in Broadway. There is an invincible attraction about that crowded thoroughfare. All the life of New York seems to be concentrated in the perpetual flood of humanity which, from early dawn till after midnight, pours wave on wave along its rocky pavement.

Mondel was a man of the world in the true sense. He shunned society, it is true, and yet he hated solitude. It is a strange relief to a mind troubled by gloomy reflections to be in the midst of a crowd of animated figures. They distract without disturbing the current of meditation. Mondel was an intense observer of character. He was a skilful artist, and an incomparable physiognomist. He read faces like books. Every man he saw was to him more or less a study, a problem, a subject of speculation. We have already alluded to his passion for the criticism of female beauty and expression.

This habit of observation was with him instinctive. No matter how absorbed he might be in other thoughts, it still went on in a parallel line of alternating mental action.

However, he had progressed considerably down Broadway; before any of the passing promenaders had sufficiently arrested his attention to cause him to give them anything more than a passing notice, when suddenly three men of the most singular aspect, and walking arm in arm, came suddenly before him.

Other pedestrians on either side prevented him from immediately passing the three strangers.

The most distinguished in appearance of the three had the air of a sporting man, or a gambler disguised as a clergyman, while his tall friend looked, or tried to look, the extreme dandy and hotel-step lounger. The third resembled a very sharp lawyer, and wore a massive gold chain, which he played with nervously, as if to assure himself that it still secured the invisible measurer of time, which probably had its abode in the breast-pocket of his waistcoat.

These well-dressed promenaders, whose hats all three shone with an unearthly gloss, and whose clothes fitted them, according as their figures were adaptable to the inflexible mathematics of the ready-made system, were, it must be admitted, no new characters to the reader, but simply our worthy friends, the Professor, Confidence Bob, and their acolyte, the Slinker, of oyster-consuming memory.

The Professor alone might have passed for an eccentric Southerner, a Tammany Hall politician, or a foreign merchant. The Slinker might, unaccompanied, have been mistaken for one of those contemptible respectabilities so abundant in civilized society. But Confidence Bob, with his air of reckless impudence and outrageous assumption, at once threw an air of burlesque extravagance over the "solemnly constituted imposture" of the whole party.

"If those fellows," thought Mondel, as he quietly moved out of the way, "are not three disreputable rascals, may I never kiss a pretty woman again!"

"Ho!" cried a voice behind him. "Mondel, my dear fellow, I am delighted to meet you. I am as dull as the window of a newspaper office, or the speech of one of Louis Napoleon's senators! I am delighted to meet with a reasonable and talkable being!"

"What, Cope? Peregrine Cope! Where do you come from?"

"In a beehive, from Paris."

The speaker was a man of medium height, slender, graceful figure, large bright eyes, careless, yet elegant dress, and some seven and thirty years of age. In turning to regard this new-comer, Mondel lost sight of the three vagabonds, who, with a natural subterranean instinct, descended ostentatiously into the nearest drinking saloon.

"My dear Cope," said Mondel, taking his old friend, for such he palpably was, by both hands, and regarding him affectionately, "your arrival is most apropos. I want some one to confide in, and, by a curious chance, all my intimates are scattered abroad over the earth. Bivar is gone to San Francisco, Pinkney is editing a paper in Arkansaw, Rashmere has eloped with Judge Spoker's wife, Madder is gone to practice law in Oregon, and Pearlin is gone to the devil—at any rate, nobody knows what has become of him—so that some think he has retired to a remote part of Long Island, to take lessons in singing from a young lady, who is missing from Flicflac's theatre. For my part, I suspect he has committed suicide, out of disgust for his own mediocrity."

"Very likely," said Peregrine Cope. "If he has, the trait is a creditable one in his character; but where can we sit down quietly, and talk at our ease? That last rowdy, who ran against me, nearly dislocated my shoulder. Broadway is not broad enough for dialogue. Where can we rest ourselves?"

"Let us go down into the Waverly saloon, and take some supper. It is as quiet and well-conducted a place as any in the city. Besides, the landlord imports his own cigars direct from Havana."

"The Waverly!" said Cope—"with all my heart. The name has a romantic sound, which I like. By the way; why do not you turn great unknown, and astonish the world by a new and successful mystification?"

"Because, in the first place, the world would not be mystified, and we live in an age of newspapers. Secondly, because the anonymous system is a damnable swindle, expressly invented to cheat authors out of their reputations. Why, my dear Cope, I published more than a dozen anonymous volumes before I was five and twenty years of age, and before anybody ever heard of me."

"Is it possible?"

"Yes! not only possible, but true. But to revert to your proposition as to writing novels, I do not believe in novel-writing any more."

"Not believe in novel-writing?"

"No, I think the form is exhausted. I think that Scott, Bulwer, Dickens, Thackeray, & Co., have used it up. Novels are no longer novel. The same scenes and situations, as dramatists say, reappear over and over again, till one is sick of them. What Bulwer gave us hot with sauce, Thackeray gives us cold with pickles, and both are behind the age, old fogies with no spirit of prophecy in them. I should like to do something better for English literature than tread in the footsteps of such masters."

"But if you abolish the novel, what sort of light reading can you invent to replace it? Essays soon grow tiresome. Dramas are imperfect without the accessories of the stage; and what decent author can endure the vulgarity and impertinence of managers? Poetry is a bore to nine readers out of ten."

"Ninety-nine out of a hundred," said Mondel laughing, "do not spare my feelings. It is not my fault, but my misfortune, that I am a bit of a poet."

"But what do you propose as a substitute for the worn-out novel?"

"Memoirs—not merely of celebrities, but of Jack, Tom and Harry. Tales, compact and artistic, carrying out an idea like a poem, short and good, not lengthy and windy like six romances out of seven, even of the better class. Historical studies, Philosophical treatises, made amusing, witty and intelligible, instead of dull, ponderous and obscure. Travels full of accurate observation, not of stupid national prejudice. In a word, ideas and facts, instead of stereotyped scenes and phrases everlastingly repeated. For the rest, there is a new school of poetry to be established. We want poets who will take the trouble, like musicians or artists, to learn the rudiments of their art, before astonishing the world with such crude monstrosities, as "Life-dramas," and all that sort of feeble trash, the varied flummery of egotism, inexperience and affectation. In a word, we want artists, not dilettanti!"

"Ha, ha!" said Cope, "you are severe on the Smiths and the Joneses, Mondel, and I am with you. If the authors of that line of book, Festus, Balder, &c. had the real poetical stuff in them, they would go out into the world and do something more than merely howl lamentations and egotism in blank verse. But why does not a great poet arise here in America?"

"Because, if he were to appear, he would starve;" said Mondel drily. "The hour for American genius to raise the standard of a national literature is at hand, but not yet arrived. We are still inundated with trashy reprints and trashier imitations. We are still plagued with that ridiculous invention of the old world, magazines— the curse of talent, and the hotbed of amateur scribblomania, which it so absurdly encourages."

"Bravo," said Cope, "I always despised a magazine! How absurd to collect a bundle of trash, with one good article, perhaps, to flavor it, to palm off quantity for quality, and, as in certain infamous cases, to conceal the names of the authors in order to prevent them from deriving independent reputation from their contributions. But do not let us discuss such meanness, or the rascals who live by it. I have other matters to talk to you about."

By this time, the two friends were snugly ensconced in a box; supper ordered, and the blind drawn down. As the gas blazed up into full flame, Peregrine Cope observed the face of Mondel was pale and weary, as with many days of care and sadness.

————

CHAPTER V.

FITZGAMMON O'BOUNCER.

"I DO not wish to sentimentalize," said Mondel, thoughtfully, to his friend, as soon as they had discussed the—in New York—inevitable oysters, and opened a second bottle of champagne. "I do not wish to sentimentalize, but it seems to me, judging from all I hear and read, that a deep-seated and gloomy discontent pervades the minds of most persons of culture in the present age. In America this feeling is as rife as in Europe. There is no affectation about it. Every day I hear men—aye, and women—even fair and lovely girls, express an indifference to life, a disgust for the world, a vague, objectless dissatisfaction that is utterly depressing and discouraging."

"You associate, probably," said Cope, "with the literary class more than any other, and since the calamities of authors are proverbial and universal, as we ourselves know from dire experience in many cities, it is no wonder that they utter cries of pain, and even groans of despair in their sufferings. Authors love pleasure,—they are poor. Superior in education and refinement to all other classes, they are proud and in debt. The popular taste is in its infancy, and naturally is captivated by books written most down to the level of the vulgar apprehension. Hence the success of female writers, and commonplace trivialities. The poet and the student is perhaps out of his element amongst us."

"Not so!" said Mondel, brightening up and speaking with decided animation. "You, Cope, are a New England Yankee, and, with all your travelled lore, can scarcely see things here with the clearness of view given to me, a cosmopolite and a stranger. I have neither patriotism nor prejudices. I see that in England literature has exhausted itself. It is only here in America that new circumstances and a new life can bring forth a new poet. For my part I have long abandoned the idea of playing the part of a mere literary man. If I can originate a thought, I care little for the mode of its realization. At this moment I am ruined—as usual—to all appearances."

"You are not prospering then in a pecuniary line?" said Cope.

"Not in the slightest degree," replied Mondel, coolly.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing."

"What do you live on?"

"Credit."

"What are your prospects?"

"I do not know."

"Not know!" said Cope, astounded at the unparalleled recklessness of this accomplished desperado.

"Of course not," said Mondel; "how should I? There is no sail in sight; but I have not cruised for ten long years on the ocean of adventure without learning that prizes turn up when we least expect them."

"Ah, Mondel! how are you?" said a sonorous voice. "I have some good news for you. I saw Flicflac to-day. He is delighted with your comedy. It is to be put in rehearsal at once."

"Thank you for your good news! Pray, sit down—Mr. Peregrine Cope—Mr. Fitzgammon O'Bouncer. You, hear," said Mondel to Cope. "God takes care of the sparrows. The man who sows rarely fails to reap, at some period or other. It is two months since I sent in that comedy—I had almost forgotten it. How have you been getting on lately, O'Bouncer?"

"Splendidly!" said O'Bouncer, who had not paid his board for three months, and had borrowed of every one he knew, till the list was utterly exhausted, "Splendidly! the——the——and the——(mentioning the three principal daily papers) are constantly dunning me to write leaders for them. H——r, P——m, and G——m's Magazines have offered to accept and pay in advance for anything I write. Flicflac has taken my farce and the melodrama; and I am now on a tragedy, for which For——st is to give a thousand dollars cash, as soon as it is finished."

"Is any of it written yet?" said Cope, who, from a long experience of Mondel, detected in his immovable gravity the spirit of irony, which in this strange man took so many varied forms of expression.

"Not exactly—written," said O'Bouncer, slightly disconcerted—even brazen statues are occasionally shaken on their pedestals—"but I have the plot drawn up. It is first rate."

"Pray, let us hear it," said Mondel, with an imperceptible side glance at Cope.

"Nothing could delight me more," said Peregrine, with polite interest.

"Of course it must be in profound confidence," said O'Bouncer.

"Of course," assured his companions.

"I wonder who is in the next box but me?" said the author of the unwritten tragedy, suspiciously; and, hearing some noise, which struck him as peculiar, Mr. Fitzgammon O'Bouncer, who was of an active muscularity, suddenly sprang upon the seat, and looked over the partition. Strange to say, he found himself face to face with another gentleman, who also was looking over the partition on the other side of the empty box!

With my usual abhorrence of mystery, I beg at once to admit that this curious personage was no other than our already familiar acquaintance, Confidence Bob, who had taken up that position, in order to overhear more conveniently the conversation of the literary party. Whatever might have been Bob's motive for this espionage, he was not disposed to allow himself to be detected. Therefore, in his coolest and blandest manner he said, before O'Bouncer, whose eyes flashed fire, could utter a word:

"Excuse me, sir. Did you hear a hat drop? Mine has just fallen into this box."

"No sir," said O'Bouncer, sharply, redescending to his seat. "Some snob who has dropped his hat," he explained to Mondel and Cope. "By Jove! I thought it might be one of those confounded oyster-critics. Yes, bring me a glass of punch, waitarrh!"

Mr. Fitzgammon O'Bouncer always spoke to waiters with a lofty and dignified severity. Mr. F. O'Bouncer was intensely aristocratic in his feelings. Like all Irishmen, he came of a great but impoverished family, was heir to an estate of unascertained rental, was a lineal descendant of the ancient Irish kings, and would rather have been damned eternally than admitted that he had had a drop of plebeian blood in his veins, since Adam, or Lord Monboddo's monkeys, whichever legend may be preferred.

"He was a penny-a-liner in Dublin, sir, Jim Bounce, a well-known character," said Bubbleton, the manager, one day, with a grin of galvanic humor. Ye gods! how O'Bouncer, whose maternal ancestors, for untold ages, were Fitzgammons and princes—how he would have shuddered at this awful saga or legend, invented by Bubbleton, in his ferocious scorn of an offending critic!

But do not let the reader run away with any such idea. Fitzgammon O'Bouncer was no doubt a gentleman, according to his own and the social meaning of the phrase. He was well educated, had edited, even to the death, a magazine in London, wrote in every style but his own (not having any in particular), and was what, even in the best European society, would be considered an accomplished man. His verses were very sweet, if not very strong—like French tea. His lively writings were pleasant, if hastily written, and, therefore, diluted—good negus, if not rare wine. His farce was not damned, if not actually successful. When he wrote, his mind seemed to take its tone from the last book he had read, or the last person he had talked to. Without intending it, he was a wonderful imitator—certainly never a servile plagiarist. In short, he was a man of universal talent and adaptive genius; a brilliant versatility, precociously perfect, in his way, for he was scarcely six and twenty years of age.

In appearance he was handsome, had a fine brow, and a decided nose, which Napoleon would have appreciated. He was carefully dressed, and had palpably trimmed his moustaches and whiskers with laborious exactness. In profile, his head was remarkable for the exaggeration of the organs of self-esteem and love of approval, which, with the flatness of his veneration, gave his cranium a strange angularity. His figure was somewhat tall, and his frame powerful, active, and symmetrical. His complexion was florid, his hair dark, his eyes blue, and of a peculiar softness, though by no means conveying the idea of a peculiar gentle nature. On the contrary, his general expression was that of a man whose duty to himself would be performed at all hazards, whatever became of the rest of the world.

Morally, he was good-natured and impulsive, yet politic and selfish. He was extravagant and brave—spurred on by vanity, he could be generous and heroic. The great vice of his character was his inordinate self esteem, which had taken the diseased form of ambition for superior social position. Even as it was, the young Irish adventurer fondly affected the airs of a scion of nobility—an exiled prince—I know not what rôle de fantasie, to the great amusement of his friends. He was not content that those to whom fortune had given inferior education, and antecedents to himself, should practically stand before him in the social scale; he also wished them to feel, and in a manner indirectly acknowledge, this intangible advantage which he believed in as a divine right, and yet half doubted himself, because he felt that it was not admitted by others.

Mondel, born himself of a distinguished and historical family, strove to reason O'Bouncer out of this weakness, and to persuade him into a philosophical republicanism, which, whilst admitting distinctions of individuals and even of classes, repudiates the insolence of caste as a delusion and a dream in a free country. But every man is mad on some topic, and aristocratic pretension was O'Bouncer's, as perhaps intellectual domination was his more experienced friend's monomania. Fitzgammon was ever taken in by the absurd tinsel of New York fashionable society, that ridiculous agglomeration of vulgarity, ignorance, vanity and imitation, in which the London and Paris bourgeoisie is caricatured, just as the London and Parisian bourgeois caricature the people of the Quarter St. Germain and St. James, themselves a caricature of defunct aristocratic society which can never again be reproduced upon this earth. For the sake of the people, the future, and human dignity and intelligence, I rejoice that it is so.

————

CHAPTER VI.

THE PLOT.

"WELL" said Mondel, "to return to your tragedy."

"Yes, to return to the tragedy," said Cope.

O'Bouncer stroked his moustache, which being of a perfectly natural brown, he dyed assiduously of a deep purple black, and tossing his head back like a spirited young horse, with an air of semi-disdainful self-complacency thus commenced his description:

"In the first place I flatter myself that the idea of the piece is entirely original. There are two rivals in love with the same girl."

"Rivals usually are," observed Cope, parenthetically. Cope was a precisionist, and the last man in the world to make allowances for the fatal facility of Hibernian narrative. When Cope wrote, every word had its place like a piece on a chess-board. Even euphony would not excuse a superfluous adjective in his eyes. Like Mondel, he considered writing an art and talking a science. As for O'Bouncer, he trusted to habit and the inspiration of the moment, both in conversation and in writing. He had the cunning of the man of the world, but little of the soul of the artist in his nature. Indeed art was the one thing which he never could comprehend. A professional critic, he wrote brilliantly but falsely. His imagination dominated his judgment, and worst crime of all, he was superficial—worse yet, consciously superficial. That is, he knew and disguised his ignorance of a given topic with consummate dexterity. This his widely spread information enabled him to do with great tact and success. Perhaps few writers for the press possessed the facility and the power of this accomplished personage. Perhaps to say that in his way he was a man of genius would scarcely be an exaggeration.

"The elder rival," continued O'Bouncer, "the villain of the piece, a man of no family—stay, no—a cousin of the young lady, who is a countess in her own sight, tells the other rival, the young Duke of Whats-its-name, that she—the countess—has a cork leg! and deplores her sensitiveness on the subject. Of course it is impossible for the young rival to find out with certainty whether this is the fact or not, and he is haunted by the most harrowing uncertainty."

"Why does he not ask the family physician?" said Cope.

"Or give her an opiate and find out whilst she is asleep?" said Mondel.

"Or bribe the lady's maid?"

"Or peep through her keyhole, whilst she is undressing?"

"Or pretend to stumble on approaching her; or make a declaration on his knees, and clasp hers in his frantic passion?"

"Or openly tell the story as an example of the calumnies afloat, and study her expression?"

"Because," said O'Bouncer, "none of those actions would suit my plot. In the end, he sets the house on fire at night, and saves the young countess himself in her night dress, when, of course, he has an ample opportunity of resolving all his doubts. Meanwhile, you see, the other rival has poisoned his wife, who suddenly turned up, and"——

At this moment, a stranger, who had entered the saloon, suddenly descried Mondel; and, turning away from the bar, directed his step towards the box, of which the blind had been left unlowered by the last waiter.

The new comer was a pale, thin man, slightly above the ordinary height, erect in form, stern in mien, and of commanding aspect. Beneath his dark, massive brows, flashed eyes cold, scintillating, and penetrating, as those of an osprey. He stretched out his hand to Mondel, who took it coldly, and smiled with that faint, sad smile, which had yielded to a more genuine expression of merriment during the commencement of O'Bouncer's recital.

"What, Mr. Cope, too?" said the stranger; "I am decidedly in the way of meeting old friends. When did you return from Paris? I thought you were to be secretary of legation?"

"Indeed?" said Cope, who at first looked coldly on the stranger; "I assure you I never expected anything of the kind."

"Well, I know it was talked of, at Washington," said the stranger, with the gravity of a diplomatist of fifty, though he himself could scarcely have reached his thirtieth year.

"Sit down, Mr. Berkeley," said Mondel, "and let me make you acquainted with Mr. O'Bouncer. Mr. Fitzgammon O'Bouncer—Mr. Berkeley. Mr. O'Bouncer's writing must be known to you, if you ever read the magazines or reviews."

"Both the name and writings of Mr. Fitzgammon O'Bouncer are perfectly familiar to me," said he whom Mondel had introduced by the name of Berkeley, with consummate gravity.

"A very gentlemanly man," thought O'Bouncer to himself; "decidedly a distingué air—quite aristocratic, in fact;" and the young Milesian was perfectly captivated by the stranger, to whom his writings and name were so perfectly familiar.

"A coxcomb and a scribbler," was the saturnine reflection of the self-possessed diplomatist. "I wonder what the devil he writes; occasional poems and sketches for magazines, I suppose; in love with himself and every pretty woman he meets; fond of dress, but can't do it—ties his cravat like a mathematical figure—got quizzed to death in Europe amongst the fast sets—wants money, ditto savoir faire—not worth my while to know—no use—perhaps an encumbrance. Besides, he looks inquisitive, with those soft, selfish, watchful eyes of his!"

Like an electric flash these thoughts passed through Berkeley's cold and analytic mind.

"Suppose we adjourn to my rooms, where we can smoke our cigars more at ease," said Mondel, preparing to rise.

"And Mrs. Mondel?" said Berkeley.

"Mrs. Mondel! What do you mean?"

"Oh, I am not curious, if you have poisoned your wife, or given her the sack, like the Turks. It is no affair of mine. Excuse my indiscretion."

"My wife?—my wife??" said Mondel, somewhat coldly; "really I do not understand."

"No? Why, did you not introduce me to her at Niagara Falls, last year? I really must apologize for the mistake, if it be one."

"Oh, that girl!" said Mondel, laughing. "I had quite forgotten. She is married to a man at St. Louis I had a letter from her the other day."

"What was she?" said O'Bouncer, who was not to be beaten even by a born Yankee in desire for information on all topics.

"An experiment," replied Mondel, gloomily, "and, as usual, a failure."

"Woman is a mistake altogether," said Cope. "She is a fascinating humbug."

Cope did not, at that moment, happen to be in love.

"I wonder if there will be any sexes in the next world?" said Mondel.

"I hope so," sighed Cope, piously, thus giving the lie to his affected misogyny.

"The next world!" said Berkeley. "I thought you did not believe in anything, Mondel."

"Nor do I—perhaps, however, that is next door to believing in everything."

And the supposed skeptic rose, and, followed by the rest of the party, approached the bar of the saloon, for the purpose of settling the score.

As they crossed the room, Berkeley said, carelessly, to Mondel, "You know Mrs. Yonkers?"

"Yes, a charming woman," replied Mondel, carelessly. "Do you know her?"

"Intimately," said Berkeley, and his voice trembled slightly.

Mondel looked his collocutor full in the face, and said, with affected enthusiasm, "She is very beautiful!"

"Very!" replied Berkeley, and his fierce, quick glance betrayed to Mondel a jealous and implacable rival. Immediately, the idea of making this accident a bridge of safety for his own new-born passion crossed the mind of the acute reader of souls.

"What do you think of Columbia Yonkers?" said Mondel, with difficulty commanding his own voice and features.

"A very pretty girl—charming!" said Berkeley indifferently.

"He loves Amelia; praised be the unknown gods!" reflected Mondel.

Poor H. B. Yonkers! thou respectable man of large property, for how very little didst thou enter into the calculation of this penniless adventurer!

Meanwhile, the three vagabonds had also emerged from their box, and advanced towards the bar.

"Bob!" said the Slinker, tugging at his tall friend's coat-tails, "Bob, there he is!"

"Where?—who?"

"There!—he—the Alterer."

And the two vagabonds at the same instant, fixed their eyes upon Berkeley, who cast towards them a furtive glance of disdain and menace.

At the same time, O'Bouncer took the opportunity of surveying the mysterious three with an air of contemptuous curiosity, so little disguised, that Confidence Bob, who recognized the editor (whom he had seen before), though the editor did not in the least remember Bob, Confidence Bob, we repeat, being full of brandy and cigars, and at least two-thirds drunk, thus rudely abandoned all conventional restraint, and, if I may use the expression, let loose the dogs of war by the following explosion of indignation:—

"What the blazes are you staring at, with your damnation moustache, you precious shadow of a tailor, you infernal Paddy you?"

The row which followed the utterance of this remarkable speech, shall be described Homerically in a chapter devoted to the subject.

If it were not for love-making and fighting, life would be a very dull affair, and novels about speculations in cotton and Nicaragua stock would hardly be considered works of an interesting or exciting character. Therefore, most respectable reader, pray excuse my veracious description of this most disreputable shindy.

————

CHAPTER VII.

THE ROW.

THE O'Bouncer—that excited magnifico, whom the stern fiat of destiny and relentless duns had driven to these Western shores—the O'Bouncer, that loftily descended young Celtic prince, maternally proceeding from the illustrious and world-renowned house of Fitzgammon, that brilliant author of a possibly forthcoming tragedy, remained what the French called atterré, earth-glued—amazed, stunned at the audacity of Bob—Bob of confidential devices!

Possibly, the O'Bouncer's first idea was, like Vathek, the Caliph of Bagdad, to destroy his enemy by one terrible look. That failing, it occurred to the rage-electrified Fitzgammon to take out a revolver which he carried in his pocket, and at once dismiss the wretch who had insulted the majesty of his royal blood to infernal Tartarus and the shadowy shores of Acheron. Prudence, however, and a dim vision of trial by jury, and other consequences dreadful to dwell upon, restrained this reckless impulse. Lastly, O'Bouncer resolved to rush immediately on the profane outrager of his grandezza, and give him the soundest thrashing possible within the briefest possible period of time.

"I may get a black eye, or a swelled lip," thought the conventional O'Bouncer; "but that must be chanced, even if I do not see Miss Candlesoap for a fortnight. It is an awful sacrifice. However, here goes! At the worst, I have the revolver."

Miss Candlesoap, be it parenthetically remarked, was an heiress of the Fifth Avenue hierarchy; and an object of the O'Bouncer's wild young heart's devotion. Not that the great Fitzgammon was guilty of falling in love, in the extravagant sense of the word. He was too sensible for that, and worshipped the pure unity or abstract number one far too intensely. But Miss Candlesoap was pretty, and with her quarter of a million dollars Fitzgammon would, in his own eyes, and in those of the world, be, at length, somebody. And to become somebody was the grand aim of O'Bouncer's most transcendant ambition.

It may be here darkly hinted, that old Candlesoap laid the modest foundations of his fortune in a corner grocery, by a judicious scorn of weights and measures, and a dexterity in adulterating liquors rarely surpassed. But that was long ago, and the Candlesoaps were now merchant princes, and grandees in the world of the Snookses and the Joneses, those Jupiters and Apollos of the New York fashionable Olympus. O'Bouncer himself assured Mondel (pitiless and unimpressionable skeptic!) that the Candlesoaps were of noble origin in the old country, and quite equal to the Percys and Howards in their way; though, indeed, O'Bouncer might have well dispensed with nobility in a wife, seeing that he had so large an amount of that intangible transatlantic commodity enshrined in his own person. But it is an old proverb, which says of some people—"the more they have, the more they want." Some men are intellectual gluttons; though the memoirs of such gluttons are rarely as candid as that amusing autobiography published a couple of years ago, in a review, by one of O'Bouncer's most distinguished compatriots.

Confidence Bob, now the Robert Mombcross, Esq., of social life, whose personal courage, like that of the average run of rogues, was of a very flickering brightness, mistook O'Bouncer's moral hesitation, very naturally, for a symptom of physical timidity; and, puffing his cigar very coolly in the face of the fiery editor, already seemed to consider, in whist-player's phrase, the odd trick as his own.

He was destined to be cruelly undeceived. Thus perchance might an inexperienced hound have approached a couchant panther, or a foolish heron in the early days of ornithology have flaunted to his face a fierce gerfalcon, resting from his sunward flight.

O'Bouncer's eyes flashed a bluish flame. Quick as light he struck the long vagabond one terrible blow between the eyes, which sent the Confidence man reeling dizzily against the nearest pillar.

"Stand up, Bob, and walk into him, you fool!" roared the excited Professor, whose unworthy pupil in the art of self-defence that personage had been.

But O'Bouncer did not care a chip for the noble art of self-defence. His blood was up. Black eyes and the loss of Miss Candlesoap excepted, he was afraid of nothing very particularly. O'Bouncer might be a coxcomb, he certainly was not a coward.

"Bravo! well done!" cried Mondel, as at the second round Mr. Robert Mombcross measured his six feet upon the floor.

"Come, none of your nonsense!" grunted the Professor, squaring up to Dudley, and bent upon retrieving the honor of his party.

"My good man," said Mondel, in that deep tone of confident menace, which to the vulgar is a mystery, "take care—I warn you you will hurt yourself"

"You are armed, I suppose?" retorted the ruffian, scornfully, and he drew a formidable bowie knife.

"Stand back, idiot!" shouted a voice of thunder, and the Alterer sprang forwards to throw himself between his familiar and Mondel, who had coolly stepped one step backwards, and drawn an exquisitely small double-barrelled pistol, suspended, like a watch, by a fine steel chain from his neck. At the same moment Peregrine Cope, who had smoked calmly during the whole scene, seeing the bowie-knife drawn, and seized with apprehension for his friend's safety, sprang forwards, and, regardless of his personal danger, laid the huge athlete prostrate with one crashing blow of a large cut glass decanter, caught up, in the excitement of the moment, as a weapon. Simultaneously with this unexpected movement of Cope, was heard the sharp report of Mondel's pistol, and as if by an electric shock of sympathy, every one in the saloon was suddenly calmed and awe-stricken. Confidence Bob, O'Bouncer, Cope, Berkeley, Mondel, and the landlord of the saloon (who was kicking the Slinker from behind his bar, where that humble practitioner in human spoliation had taken refuge on all fours like a rat), all crowded round the wounded champion, who, like the villains in the old romances, had fallen without a groan, and lay perfectly still and bleeding upon the floor.

"You have shot him," said O'Bouncer.

"I fear you have killed him!" said Berkeley; anxiously.

Mondel said nothing. He knelt down and sought hastily for traces of his bullet; in so doing he accidentally drew a large silver watch from the Professor's waistcoat pocket, when, O marvellous fortune! a deep indent in the very centre of its thick tarnished case, and a corroborative mark on the exterior of his waistcoat demonstrated that it was to the bottle, and not to the bullet, that the pugilist was indebted for his possible quietus. Accordingly Mondel proceeded to examine the wound inflicted by the decanter of Cope. It was a deep ugly gash, from which the blood flowed freely.

"I fear the skull is fractured," said Mondel.

"I did it to save your life," said Cope.

That Cope had saved the life of Mondel was scarcely doubtful, for, as the bullet had failed to take effect, another instant would probably have seen the knife of the pugilist buried in the body of his antagonist.

"Thank you, my dear friend, you did wisely," said Mondel; "still I should be sorry that the man should die in consequence of a mere drunken brawl."

"Where does he live?—who is he?" said O'Bouncer, looking round for the companions of the wounded vagabond.

But they were no longer present. At a wave of the Alterer's hand they had quietly absconded. The superior demon had judged it best to get rid of his imps, for fear they should, by some unforeseen inadvertency, compromise their master and his character.

During the whole scene, Berkeley had been filled with the utmost dread of exposure. His arrival at the saloon had been purely accidental. Nothing could have annoyed him more than an encounter with his agents in so public a place. What to do with the Professor perplexed him. The man was wounded, might have a fever, become delirious, talk at random; yet to take him home to his, Berkeley's, house, was a perilous proceeding, and might lead to the detection of his own malpractices, or at least throw suspicion on his character. The Alterer did not dare run any risks, nevertheless he had almost resolved to extend the hospitality of his roof to his unfortunate minister, when to his horror and alarm Mondel said, abruptly: "I have my reasons for wishing this affair to be hushed up quietly. It is now late. Every moment strangers may enter. I have resolved to take this man home with me, and have him attended to. Cope, will you get a carriage while I bind up his head? On our way we will call for Doctor Vortex."

Thus the pugilistic Professor, housebreaker and robber, became the guest of Mondel, whilst the Alterer, after promising to call and inquire about the sick man next day, walked homewards in a state of doubt, suspicion, and vexation, which so absorbed his mind that he did not even observe that the illustrious Fitzgammon O'Bouncer was walking by his side, and fighting the battle with Confidence Bob over again, after the custom of most heroes, ancient and modern.

"Come and see me," said the Irishman, frankly, as they parted.

"I'll see you d——d first!" thought the Alterer, who had other business on hand than to make new acquaintances amongst fast young men of letters. However, he bowed with exquisite politeness, and replied cordially:

"Nothing will give me greater pleasure, Mr. O'Bouncer. Good night, sir; I hope your repose will not be disturbed by the nervous excitement you have undergone."

And so they parted at the corner of —th street.

"Devilish gentlemanly fellow, Berkeley," mused O'Bouncer, "good name—no doubt a person of respectable descent. At any rate I hope his father was not a shop-keeper. It is a horrid thing to know a man whose father was a shop-keeper. One is apt to wound his feelings in talking. Who is Cope, I wonder? Not an old Knickerbocker, evidently, or his name would be Goosefelt, or Vanderscrewler, or some such name. He has not the air noble. None of these Yankees have. He is too lively to be dignified, and makes himself quite at home with you at starting. Mondel seems to know him very well. I wonder where they met? I wonder if Berkeley or Cope are rich? I wish, by the way, Mondel had shot that fellow; a trial for murder would have been so exciting. I don't quite like Mondel. Sometimes I fancy he does not believe in my pedigree. I suspect his own is rather mystified, or he would not be so damnably fond of democracy. Besides, he has no respect for Irishmen; and the way he laughs at our runaway patients is disgusting, though for that matter they are a cursed set of blockheads and bores!"

Poor O'Bouncer! he secretly despised his country. He was an Anglicised Celt. To call him Englishman, was the surest way to flatter him. He lacked the patriotic monomania which often supplies the place of so many other advantages. He was an Irishman because he could not help it. How gladly would he have forgotten it, could the world have forgotten it also. But the O'Bouncer name was legion in the land. There was no evading the destinies; so O'Bouncer contented himself with cutting his own compatriots. To do him justice, O'Bouncer was too much of a man to be an Irishman in America, or mingle in the petty intrigues of American-Irish politics. Strong was his hope, that the grand Candlesoap alliance would finally settle the difficulty.

"At any rate," thought O'Bouncer, "I can take the girl to Europe, and spend her money in Paris; and a fellow with tin is sure to get into society somehow!"

O'Bouncer was a refined sensualist, and could imagine no better life than the luxurious corruption of European aristocracy. To share that life, was his ambition, his hope, his dream.

It was really a great pity that he was not a man of large fortune, and Viscount Fitzgammon. He would have enjoyed a title and a fortune so intensely. But, the Parcæ were inexorable.

————

CHAPTER VIII.

A CURIOUS GIRL.

COLUMBIA YONKERS was one of those rare women, who, when they meet with men of a certain class, become truly wonderful and witch-like in their attributes.

TAUSSENEL in his Passional Zoology (an admirable work which Dr. Edgeworth Lazarus has admirably translated) describes the "blonde woman" as "the most precious gift of heaven, a charming creation with which the Supreme Ordainer of things has gifted the pale countries of the North, to compensate them for the absence of the sun."

In truth, to those who understand her, the fair beauty, in her full development, is a most admirable and soul-dazzling creature. From her we derive our only idea of angels, goddesses, elemental nymphs, and all beautiful spirits superior to man. Poetry and Art prove it. The Terrestrial Venus is a brunette, the Celestial is a blonde. Dark beauty gives security to the affections, fair loveliness enchantment to the imagination. The one may afford us real satisfaction, the other offers us the delicious illusions, the enchanting tantalizations of desires, for ever veiled in mystery.

But I must not attempt even to enter upon that great study of my life, the poetry of organization. Rather let me recall a dialogue between my restless, roving, ideal-chaser Mondel, and the blonde Columbia, which happened at their very second interview, and some days before the scene of "quiet agitation" which we described in a former chapter.

The encounter of two such minds as those of Columbia and Mondel was peculiarly interesting, from the opposing similarity of their characteristics.

They had arrived at a like—and yet how different a result, by roads peculiar to each. Columbia, the delicate student, devouring with intense ardor the literature of past ages and of the modern time, even to newspapers and reviews, had yet lived in comparative seclusion from the world. She divined everything; she understood life; she knew men, women and their passions; she judged calmy, clearly, and justly of life and its evils, with a sadness unembittered by experience of personal suffering.

Mondel, on the other hand, the intellectual wrestler with Life and Destiny, though essentially a student, had seen, felt, and done enough since boyhood, to throw all his reading in the shade. The observations on men and manners he had found in books, had been verified by fact. He knew more than he had read, more than it was possible to learn by reading. He, too, had pervaded the book world, and with the education and strength of a man, read and digested innumerable volumes, which, to Columbia, were unknown. He had reached the Ultima Thule,—the last stage of written progress,—and dashed into the chaos beyond. He was a pioneer in the career of thought, an originator, and no longer an absorber of ideas.

Emancipated, at fifteen, by his transplantation to a German university, he had travelled, fought, written, speculated, with a restlessness that had enabled him to sow in many fields, without yet reaping a harvest in any. Thus he found himself with a scattered and fragmentary reputation, an empty purse, and a gloomy, discontented, desolate indifference to life, on the verge of his thirtieth year, weary of a vain search for an ever-flying happiness, and ready to welcome death or any desperate adventure, as an escape from apathy and monotony. But none can foresee what change a single hour may operate in human feelings. Mondel met Mrs. Yonkers, and her smiling beauty suddenly made life vaguely tolerable. He saw Columbia, her step-daughter, and lo! his heart began to beat, his nerves to thrill, his eyes to brighten, his soul to expand its drooping wings. In the energy of that new sensation, his hope in the future revived, his self-respect and confidence were restored; he was again the man to face a dun or a dilemma without faltering. In one day after that first and memorable interview, during which the telegraph of looks, vibrating nerves, and inflamed fancy, was the only medium of communication between him and his new-found idol, Mondel completed a poem, on which he had concentrated his force, and in which he had been long delayed by utter depression of spirits; wrote half a dozen letters on business, which, for the time, retrieved his apparently desperate finances; and projected, as he lay in bed at night, a course of enterprising work, which, if persevered in, would make him, in the space of less than twelve months, comparatively easy and independent in circumstances.

And all this was the result of an hour's interview with a fair girl, and of one or two glances from a pair of large, spiritual, blue eyes.

Talk of tonics! Why there is more power, in one look of beauty, to revive the deadened brain of jaded and despondent intellect, than all the tonics in the world! Talk of poets writing under the influence of champagne, not to mention gin and water! What horrible and indescribable paltry nonsense! A touch of the tip of her fingers, at parting, will carry with it more electric vitality than all the vintage of Rhineland, France, and Cyprus, not to mention Cozzen's sparkling Catawba, from our own Ohio, which is well worthy the rare honor of being sold by a poet!

"You are a great reader, Mr. Mondel," said Columbia, on the occasion above referred to.

"No. I read little now. I am tired of reading," said Mondel, gravely.

"Tired of reading?" said the fair student. "How can any one be tired of reading?"

"Very easily, when books offer nothing but repetition of familiar ideas. In order that the world should progress, it is necessary to have students who are students of something else than books."

"I understand; you philosophize?"

"Not exactly. I have the same objection to philosophizing that I have to reading. It is an endless repetition."

"What do you do, then?—dream, perhaps," said Columbia, with an arch smile.

Very few women, be it remarked, have any sense of humor, especially of reined humor. It is a great relief to find one who can appreciate a joke, that is, not as broad as a cart-wheel. On the other hand, they are far beyond men in comprehending the subtlest delicacies of sentiment. Watch them at dramatic representations: they will only laugh at the grossest hits, yet be penetrated by the most shadowy nuance of pathos.

Columbia was an exception to the rule. Her sense of humor was keen; and no sooner did Mondel make this delightful discovery, than she rose immensely in his estimation. The fact is, humor is essential to the reason. Causality and comparison (to use phrenological nomenclature) give only sense of sequence and resemblance; it is humor which, giving us the perception of differences or contrasts,* enables us to escape the hasty conclusions at which people in whom this organ is weakly developed, are perpetually arriving.

[*Vide Art. "National Humor," by the present writer in late American (Whig) Review.]

All great men make jokes, and are born humorists. It must be admitted that some distinguished personages have had a particularly solemn style of joking.

To resume our dialogue.

"Dream!" said Mondel—"of course I dream. What would life be without dreaming? But dreaming is involuntary. It is not logical to call dreaming studying.

"Excuse my inexactness," said Columbia; "and let me ask you plainly what you do, in place of reading, to keep up your character as a student?"

"I observe facts and phenomena," replied Mondel. "I read everywhere the book of Nature. I extract from outward signs, the inward and spiritual grace. Chiefly I read men, and, like a geologist or a chemist, classify my specimens. Every variety of organization is to me a new study—its characteristics the handwriting of the fates. Every face is a dial—every feature a cypher."

"And what is the object of this scientific criticism of mankind?" said Columbia.

"Knowledge is power. To know men, is to rule them."

"Then you aspire to rule?"

"I do not aspire. It is my nature. I love freedom beyond all gifts of life. To be free, one must be master; for are not all the world either slaves or masters, spiritually or bodily?"

"Then," said Columbia, with restrained interest, "you would govern men with your thoughts?"

"My dear Miss Yonkers," said Mondel, pausing, "I perceive that I am becoming terribly egotistical, and, besides, running the risk of being misunderstood. Let us change the subject."

"No, no," said Columbia, eagerly. "I do not misunderstand you. Go on."

"I really do not know," said Mondel, "why I should speak to you as I have never spoken to perhaps any living being before," and he looked with earnest admiration into the eyes of Columbia for an instant, then resumed his speech, before she had time to feel embarrassed by this claim to exclusive sympathy.—"He who takes the foremost steps in science, must be followed by all men; therefore, he is the ruler of the world. He who professes knowledge superior to all other men, is thereby raised above all other men; therefore, is spiritually their king. To aim at the discovery of more important facts and higher truths than have yet been known, is therefore the highest ambition; and this is the ambition of the wise. In this sense I would rule—nay, were it my destiny, must rule—and in no other. I do not despise outward forms of power, but I would never seek them, by grovelling before the herd. Science, poetry, and art are of themselves crowns to their votaries. The student, the poet, and the artist, are kings, who give from their individual wealth to the many. The political ruler exists by sufferance, and owes his place to the patience or fear of the people. When all the world is educated, there will be no government but public opinion, and stupid mediocrity will no longer occupy presidential thrones or ministerial cabinets; for there will be none to occupy."

"Your politics are strange enough, compared to those of our stump orators," said Columbia.

"I am an anarchist," said Mondel. "I foresee the downfall of all brute-force systems, and the reign of pure reason and liberty. Suppose even, extravagant as is the supposition, individualism substituted for government to-morrow in this country, do you imagine that we should turn barbarians, and cut one another's throats? But, of course, I do not propose any such abrupt change from the present to the new system. All I say is, that I see the line which progress must take in America."

"And what is to become of Europe?"

"We are to conquer it."

"To conquer Europe?"

"Yes; by our ideas and our wealth, if not by our arms, and the revolt of its inhabitants. Of course a free Europe must be philosophically regarded as an American conquest."

"And when do you think it will happen?" said Columbia, much excited.

"Soon!" said Mondel, fixing his triumphant gaze upon Columbia's sparkling eyes—"much sooner than people dream of."

"How soon?"

"Perhaps within ten years. Ten years is a century now, compared to the times of our fathers. Only let the new storm of speculation pass over."

"What storm of speculation?"

"The Ocean Transit Company storm, which even now looms in the horizon. It will leave railways and Mississippi schemes in the rear; and, what is most astonishing, it will end in no panic, but in universal triumph. Yes!" said Mondel, warming with his favorite subject. "Inventions have been made of late, which, though temporarily neglected by the boobyism of bloated capitalists, will soon force their way into favor. Steam will be discarded, or used in an improved way, fuel reduced to a nominal outlay, and four or five days become the ordinary voyage to Europe, not to mention that aerial transit will be put into practice."

"What! is it possible to travel in balloons with certainty?"

"Nothing is easier," replied Mondel. "The true principle has been known to a few men of science for years past. It is to rise and fall at angles produced by reversible inclined planes. We must return to the cheap and manageable means of ascent discovered by Montgolfier, more than seventy years ago, from the hydrogen gas of later innovation. The whole theory and practice lies in a nutshell, and contains only two propositions. Firstly, by means of a hot-air stove, a balloon can be made to rise and fall at will. Secondly, by means of inclined planes, it can be made to rise or fall at any angle, according to the law of pressure in fluids. Thus up and down hill, like the Montagnes Russes, must be the course of the great California Air Transit Company's balloons. Between each ascent and descent, the impetus will enable a considerable motion in a direct line; and the velocity of the locomotion altogether, will render its indirectness of no importance. The voyage to San Francisco will be made in two or three days."

"But why is not the system carried out?"

"For want of means. Inventors have generally little capital, and even their time is precious."

"But surely it would be easy to find some wealthy men to advance funds."

"I do not know," said Mondel, smiling bitterly, "I fancy, from my own experience, that they are rare. Besides, men of high education and profound studies do not like to go hat in hand to stupid merchants, who cannot even understand the proposition that twice two is four, except when the abstract number, two, is reduced to the concrete two dollars."

"I should like to fly! I think it would be delightful, but are you not too enthusiastic, Mr. Mondel?"

Mondel's face resumed an intenser pallor. "Not in the least," he said, almost coldly; "but sometimes I look forward into the future till I forget the present; but I forget to despise mankind to the degree it merits."

"I did not mean by enthusiastic, to say visionary," said Columbia, quickly, "I believe all you say. It is in the ignorance of men alone that I see obstacles. I love enthusiasm—I"—

At that moment Mrs. Yonkers came up, being released from another gentleman's conversation. But on that occasion she noticed nothing particular in the manner of Columbia or Mondel. It was far otherwise on the evening of the memorable exchange of looks. No sooner was Mondel out of the house than Mrs. Yonkers involuntarily began to expose the condition of her own feelings by saying, with but half-concealed acerbity, to her step-daughter: "Why Columbia, I declare I think that you have fallen in love with Mr. Mondel!"

Be it noted that Mrs. Yonkers did not suggest the much more natural hypothesis, viz., that Mondel had fallen in love with Columbia.

"Not at all, madam, not at all," replied Columbia, with a careless haughtiness.

There was an instinct of refinement in the young student, familiarized as she was, by reading, with the manners of the great ladies of the old world, that caused her to revolt against anything resembling a direct personal attack, such as Mrs. Yonkers too often indulged in. Mrs. Yonkers was of a sanguine temperament, and could not understand that any bounds were to be placed to the intimacy between herself and one socially so nearly connected with her as her step-daughter. As she had had the good sense never to attempt to assert any sort of authority over Columbia, Mrs. Yonkers good-naturedly set down sundry quiet repulses she received from time to time, as mere eccentricities of manner in her step-daughter.

"She is a curious girl," said Amelia to her old friend, Miss Ross, "so cold, so reserved, and yet so enthusiastic about poetry and music, and art, and all that sort of thing. But, you know, too much literature and criticism is a bore, and it is impossible to get Columbia to talk about anything else. She is so shy and reserved; do you know I have never heard her say one word about love or marriage, or anything of the sort, and yet, in that volume of tales she published two years ago—'The Wizard's Book'—you know"—

"Yes, I know," said Miss Ross, nodding with an ominous air.

"In the 'Wizard's Book,'" resumed Amelia, "some of the love-scenes are passionate enough, I think."

"Almost improper," said Miss Ross, in an undertone, as if afraid of the remark being overheard, or perhaps to give a mysterious solemnity to the insinuation.

Miss Ross, by the way, at the age of fourteen, had been caught by her mamma with young Washington Todds, two years her senior, under very suspicious circumstances; and three years later had been desperately in love with a young lawyer, who—but no matter; Miss Ross was excessively particular and severely set against anything that bordered on the improper. Perhaps she knew what was improper better than many other young ladies, and was therefore an authority on the subject.

From this second digression, the reader will have gained a piece of information, that Columbia was an authoress. We must not imagine however, that her book was as common-place as most young, and for that matter, old ladies' books of the present age. On the contrary, it was a production full of imagination and wild beauty, far too subtly conceived to be ultra-popular, and too artistically executed to be appreciated by every-day critics. Although it had not yet reached its "fiftieth thousand," it had sold well, and had been favorably spoken of by some of the best writers of the day.

"Do you think Mr. Mondel handsome?" said Mrs. Yonkers, returning to the charge.

"I really do not know, he is very gentlemanly and agreeable," replied Columbia.

"I think he admires you," said Mrs. Yonkers.

"Do you, indeed?" said Columbia.

"You had better be very careful with him, Columbia."

"I am always careful, madam."

"I am told he is very reckless and extravagant, and not worth a cent."

"I am sorry to hear it, for his sake."

"He is not the sort of man your father would wish you to encourage, I am sure."

"You think not?"

"I am certain he is not."

"Then why did you invite him to the house at all?"

"Because—because, in short, I merely thought him—a very amusing person."

"I quite agree with you. Good night. I am very much fatigued."

"Good night, Columbia, think of what I have been saying."

"I will," said Columbia quietly.

"She loves him, and he"——Mrs. Yonkers paused.

At this moment her husband entered.

"How late you are, Mr. Yonkers!"

"Don't look so cross, my dear," said the worthy merchant, who was a little the worse for the wine he had taken with some very particular friends at Delmonico's, and Mr. Yonkers gave his wife an affectionate kiss, with rather a maudlin expression.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, pushing him away with disgust, "you have been drinking brandy—don't come near me! Let me go to bed, I am very unwell this evening."

"D——d if she ain't always unwell, or something!" muttered Mr. Yonkers, steadying himself by the back of the rocking-chair, which gave a tilt, and nearly upset him. Mr. Yonkers had begun to discover that buying a white slave was not such a profitable investment after all.

Meanwhile, Columbia had ascended to her room, closed and locked the door, turned up the gas, and seated herself in a luxurious arm-chair before a table covered with books. She took up one of them—it was Mondel's "Logic of Life." She paused, with the open volume on her knee.

"I do believe," murmured Columbia, "that my step-mother is jealous. Is it possible that she can seriously love him?—is it possible?—rather is it possible that she should not love him? My father is old enough to be her own. Can such marriages prosper? O Mammon, Mammon, what fiery scourges canst thou invent for thy victims! And he, does he, can he feel any interest in her beyond ordinary friendship? But no! how can she understand a soul like Mondel's. To her he is—simply a handsome and agreeable man—whilst to me, he is—I know not what—something beyond all that I had yet dreamed of, something that I can look up to. Oh, the desolation of superior knowledge, the misery of the society of fools, the loneliness of the ambitious spirits soaring in the cold empyrean, without sympathy or companionship!"

Columbia paused and looked before her with a vague dreaminess—unconsciously she imitated the expression habitual to Mondel in his moments of abstraction. It is one of the phenomena of love, well-known to the observant student of its manifestations.

Columbia's face was pale. Her hair and clearly pencilled brows seemed dark by contrast with her marble forehead and colorless cheeks. Her blue eyes seemed to darken to the hue of the violet. Never was seen beauty more noble, more spiritual.

"They think I am cold," she murmured; "they think that because I recoil with horror from the contact with the gross and silly men I see, that I am incapable of love, of passion, of devoted idolatry! Oh, the ignorance of the vulgar, who cannot see beyond the wretched sphere which they inhabit!"

The young beauty rose and stepped before a mirror, in which her whole form was reflected. She stood there, tall, graceful, delicately voluptuous in the rounded outlines of her neck, shoulders and bust, from which she had now removed the lace, that till then had shrouded their whiteness. She stood there with an innocent, yet imperial pride, and in her inmost heart, a little voice whispered, "For his sake, I thank God that I am beautiful!"

When a woman of genius is beautiful, it is the beauty of a celestial world. Woe to those who can understand the beauty, and on whom its rays fall coldly! Better never to have scaled the walls of Paradise, and gazed upon its matchless delights, than, having seen it, to be driven by the flaming sword of the angel of despair into eternal darkness from its precincts!

————

CHAPTER IX.

IN LOVE.

"I APPREHEND no danger to his life," said Dr. Vortex, a young man of very lofty stature, with a fair and most engaging countenance, which, like that of his friends, Cope and Mondel, was dignified with a well-trimmed beard.

"Will you not stay, doctor? Here are some excellent cigars and some real French brandy."

"No, thank you," said Vortex "I will take a cigar, however, but I am expected by a patient."

"Or an impatient?" said Mondel smiling.

"I hope so," said the doctor, who was a young married man, and still in love with his wife.

Enviable individual!

Mondel and Cope stepped together into the adjoining room. There lay fast asleep the grim professor of pugilism, looking very pale, with his bandaged head and blue chin close shaven, after the custom of his class.

"A strong fellow!" said Cope, pointing to the muscular arm, which, owing to the want of a button to the wristband, was lying half bared on the coverlid.

"I have no doubt a desperate ruffian, according to received ideas," said Mondel, as they returned to the sitting-room. "However, you can easily imagine that pure philanthropy did not decide me to encumber myself with such a guest. The fact is, I was afraid the row would lead to exposure, and get into the papers; and just now I am on very delicate ground, and wish to avoid everything that is disreputable."

"How so?"

"I have found a treasure—a real wonder of beauty and intelligence—a girl such as I had hitherto met only in dreams."

"Ha! you are in love, then?"

"Madly. To you, and you only, I must confide it. But you shall see her, and judge for yourself."

"If I see her, I shall certainly do so. My eyes are not yet crystallized over, whilst you already look through prismatic glasses. You should read Henry Beyle, alias Stendahl's, Des l'amour."

"Pray do not jest—the affair is too serious."

"It usually is."

"There are difficulties of the gravest kind."

"Not an uncommon accident. But what are your special obstacles—want of money?"

"Oh, that is the least of them, though bad enough in itself. Her father is immensely rich, whilst I, as you know, have been immensely careless and dissipated. However, I can soon recover myself, under the inspiration of such a hope. But the fact is she has a step-mother."

"A perverse old hag, I suppose?"

"Not at all; a charming woman of five-and-twenty, a few years older than Columbia."

"Columbia—a pretty name, national or dove-like, as you like to take it," said Cope, intently studying the rapt expression of Mondel's anxious countenance.

"Unfortunately; I paid this lady some little attentions—flattered her perhaps a little too heavily."

"Oh, no; flattery is too broad or too exaggerated for nine women out of ten," said Cope; "even if they do not quite believe that you are in earnest, the idea that you wish to please them is already pleasing. There is only one kind of flattery that offends a woman."

"What is that?"

"To flatter her out of pity, and let her see that you do so. But only boys under one or two and twenty perpetrate such enormities."

"There is, I think, one other kind of flattery which offends," said Mondel, "and that is to pay a woman the compliment of speaking the truth to her, on the supposition that she is too sensible to be deluded by flattery!"

"It is indeed a dangerous experiment," said Cope; "I tried it once."

"So did I," said Mondel.

"And the result?"

"An argument all on one side, that lasted a whole evening. And yours?"

"A hint that some people did not know that their society was troublesome. Candor is a bore, and I believe the woman was right after all."

"True; I should like to catch any one but a real friend like yourself, or an angel like—somebody else—troubling me with a candid opinion! But as I was saying, I made Mrs. Yonkers, the lady in question, believe that I was smitten. She is a fine woman, a beautiful complexion, a large dark eye, a figure such as would make the fortune of a 'model artist'—in a word, the very embodiment of passionate temptation. I was dying of ennui. I looked all sorts of things at her, rather languidly perhaps; but at any rate not without effect. It was evident I pleased her; her husband is old enough to be my father, fat and red-faced, with grey whiskers. She asked me to call. Of course I called, and—imagine my position!—she introduced me to her step-daughter Columbia, a perfect angel of light, and, as it proves, the most accomplished, learned, gentle, noble, graceful, fascinating woman in America!"

"By Jove!—a hard case," ejaculated Cope.

"But that is not all. Whenever madame can speak to me alone, she makes love to me in the most unmistakable manner. She tells me, in parables, how unhappy she is; how she had no idea what marriage meant when she was dragged into the Yonkers alliance; how her life is a wreck—an Inferno; and how marriage itself is an institution on a par with the Spanish inquisition. She had read the works of Stephen Pearl Andrews, and others, on the subject, and tells me, confidentially, that there is no real marriage but that of the soul. In this opinion, in the abstract, I perfectly agree; but, as you perceive, I am in a most painful position. It is almost impossible, for my studiously polite efforts, to misunderstand her allusions, and to prevent an explanation. She evidently thinks that I am a modest man, who only requires encouragement."

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Cope, with a most unsophisticated merriment. "Well, I must say; you are as innocent-looking a roué as I ever encountered, with your mild, dreamy look. Sometimes I fancy, that if you shaved, you might pass for a youth of the evangelical persuasion, and a regular church-goer!"

"I am not a roué," said Mondel. "I am a—a—a philosopher!"

Cope laughed yet more heartily.

"Hell upon earth!" resumed Mondel, checking Cope's merriment, by his earnestness, and pacing the room in his excitement. "What miserable lives men lead in this present accursed social organization! With what difficulties are the noblest and mightiest of our impulses surrounded! I look back on ten years of manhood, and I see but six months—one-twentieth part of the time—during which the first elements of happiness were mine. You know how that ended—in what a gulf of unhappiness and despair it plunged me! Had I at that time possessed the wealth which came too late to save me; but it is over now. I am free. Whatever has been my past, my present is my own. You know I have but one dream which I cherish—love—love—eternal love and fidelity. I have never yet been unfaithful, for I have never loved but once; and then, you knew my innocence. No, Cope! So much do I abhor the wretched life of a roving roué, that I would give my whole future for a single year of true happiness and sympathy."

"That is of Columbia?" said Cope, mildly.

"Yes! I confess. she is now all to me—world, future, and hope. I cannot live without her. She must be mine. Are we not made for one another? Do we not sympathize in taste, in culture, in temperament? See here, I bought her work to-day—'The Wizard's Book.' Let me read you a few passages."

*  *  *  *  *  *

"Is it not splendid?—equal to George Sand or Bulwer? What melody of style, what loftiness of conception, what luxuriance of fancy!"

"It is very well written, indeed," said Cope, glancing over the volume, which he had taken from the hands of Mondel.

"Do you really think so?" said Mondel, eagerly.

"Really, on my honor," replied Peregrine, frankly.

"Because love is blind, you know," said Mondel.

"Yet, with all his blindness, the god often sees what no one else can discern," said Cope, sarcastically.

"What! are you going?"

"I am quite tired out. I can scarcely keep my eyes open."

"Ah, forgive me!" said. Mondel. "I forgot. You are not in love with a Columbia. Now, I never feel sleepy of late. I really seem never to sleep. But you are still human."

"Good night," said Cope. "I leave you to your divine afflatus."

The clock on the mantelpiece struck three.

"Good night. I will call on you to-morrow," said Mondel, as he sat down to the perusal of the "Wizard's Book."

He little thought that at that same hour the blue-eyed Columbia was yet watching over his own philosophical treatise, "The Logic of Life," and mentally adoring its author, with all the sublimity of virtue, which he inculcated in such fascinating periods.

Thus love—intelligent, glorious, all-devouring love—had sprung up in two young hearts, amid all the trees of life and knowledge with which they had planted the Edens of their creative imaginations. No wonder that, when they slept, each was present to the visions of the other.

Meanwhile, in his lonely and mysterious habitation, toiled one, whose love, if not so pure as that of our two impassioned students, was, at least, as dominating a law to his existence—Berkeley the Alterer.

————

CHAPTER X.

HOW TO MAKE MONEY.

BEYOND Thirtieth Street, and between the Eighth Avenue and the river, in a neighborhood far removed from all business, activity, or fashionable circulation, stood the isolated house of John Berkeley. It was a substantial red brick building, and had an iron railing and small garden before it, in the English style. Berkeley, on reaching this remote residence, after parting from Mondel and his friends, opened the door with his latch-key, and, at once, commenced the ascent of the stairs. He did not pause till he reached the landing of the third story, where a door, at the foot of the next flight of stairs, which were narrower than those below, barred further progress.

Since the carpenter put it up, no living mortal save Berkeley had ever passed the threshold of that door, nor would even the most cunning locksmith have succeeded in picking the lock by which it was secured. To open the door, when unlocked, required the knowledge of a secret, which could scarcely have been guessed by one uninitiated in the mystery. It was necessary to lift the door, in order to open it; otherwise it remained secured, by a bar of wood at the bottom, as firmly as ever.

When Berkeley had passed this formidable barrier he carefully relocked the door, then struck a light from a small box of wax-matches he carried, and, passing a second door, which swung to by a weight, entered a room which an instant later was illuminated by the vivid glare of a large gas-burner, covered by a large paper shade.

What a glorious invention is gas! It will seem strange to Americans, but gas is very little used—indeed scarcely at all—in private houses in Europe. The Londoners, whilst freely burning it in their shops and warehouses, have a silly prejudice against its use in their drawing-rooms, or even in their counting-houses. In the former they darkle miserably by the glimmer of wax-tapers or "composites," which drop on and spoil every piece of furniture; in the latter, unhappy clerks still endure all the horrors of tallow, and write by the smell as well as by the light of "dips, four to the pound," or, as they call them in the vernacular, "muttons." Now it became clear to me that in a country where tallow candles were still burned, political progress was impossible. No wonder that in the "great metropolis" printers still sweat away existence in working wretched hand-presses that do not even ink themselves; and that iced creams and cool breezes, produced by steam, are utterly unknown to the limited intellect of benighted Cockneydom.

A singular workshop was that of Berkeley. On every side of the large apartment, which occupied nearly the whole story, were seen tables covered with artists' and engravers' tools, and other materials, shelves laden with bottles, a press of singular construction, a photographic camera, a microscope, &c.; in one corner, on a small table, lay no less than three revolvers, and a bowie-knife of sword-like dimensions, whilst beneath the table stood a small barrel marked gunpowder. Near one of the windows lay a coil of rope securely fastened to a ring in the wall, as if to facilitate escape by the window, in case of fire or other peril. It was evident that this apartment was not intended for the reception of visitors. A solitary wooden arm-chair was the only means of repose it offered. This, Berkeley; who was tired by his walk, threw himself into, and lighting a seventeenth cigar since his breakfast, fell into a train of meditation sufficiently uncommon to be worth reporting, as the "ghost-raisers" would say, by "spiritual telegraph."

"Art is long, and life is short;" thought Berkeley, anxiously, "a man does not become the first forger of his age in a day. Let me see. Five years ago I began by altering bills, and, with the aid of a little chemistry, I brought it to such perfection that I won the admiration of every bank in the country. I became the alterer par excellence, and by Phito! I deserved the title. Since then I have done business on a large scale. By reference to my book"—Berkeley here referred to a ledger—"I have passed exactly two hundred and ninety-five thousand seven hundred and forty-three dollars of my own manufacture. Of the proceeds I have invested some thirty-five thousand dollars in town lots, which may now be worth nearer eighty thousand. The balance I have squandered in expenses, and in the process of passing. Thanks to my caution, my disguises, and my resolution, no accomplice has yet had it in his power to betray me. But I have now dashed into the open sea; I have taken 'sink or swim' for my motto. A few months must decide my fate—Amelia and an Italian palace, or despair and a grave of infamy!"

"A melodramatic finale!" assumed the Alterer with a grim smile. "And now to work! I must make ten thousand dollars before morning!"

The alterer had well said that forgery was an art not to be learned in a day. More than four years out of the five had been wasted by John Berkeley, in the laborious task of altering bills (that is, changing their denominations from one to ten, &c.), and in engraving plates, with prodigious patience, from which to print counterfeits. As each of these plates required a long time to engrave, it was necessary to print off large numbers of the same bill, which was not only very dangerous, but eventually frustrated its own object.

Persevering investigation and industry, however, will overcome all obstacles. A simple zincographic press now enabled Berkeley, without any trouble, to reproduce, at will, fac-similies of any bills issued.

As the reader may be interested in the application of this curious art to other purposes than forgery, I will here briefly describe the process.

Any engraving, lithograph, newspaper, writing or drawing (in printer's or lithographic ink), can be immediately transferred, by pressure, from the paper to a smooth sheet of zinc, from which, as from a lithographic stone, impressions can at once be taken. I have seen copies of "Punch," and the "Illustrated London News," reproduced with absolute exactness, as, also, autograph sketches and writings of my own, both by the pen and crayon.* All that is necessary, therefore, to reproduce any number of bank-bills, is to get new and clean copies free from grease-spots, which would otherwise cause spots in the impression, and give much trouble.

[*Zincography is, so far as I know, practised in New York only by Mr. Hohneck, 168 Hester street.]

The plate of zinc which Berkeley now placed on the press, contained impressions of no less than sixteen different bills—the very best, in point of credit, in the city. His paper being ready damped, and the red portions already printed, our scientific counterfeiter deliberately proceeded to ink the plate with a roller, and slowly to print off about one hundred sheets, equal in nominal value to more than ten thousand dollars, of illegal money. The process of cutting up and separating the bills was performed in a few minutes by another machine, and the Alterer—whose alterations were now radical—held in his hands as nice a looking pile of bills as ordinary critics would wish to see in their profession. Another hour devoted to the process of crumpling, dirtying, greasing, and tearing the bills, with the assistance of a small dust-bin and a jar of butter, into an appearance of decent antiquity and indistinctness, and—the manufacture was perfect.

But do not let the facility with which ten thousand dollars in bank bills can be forged, tempt any unscrupulous person to embark in so ridiculous a pursuit as forgery. Forgery is like murder, which De Quincey has so ably treated as "one of the fine arts;" it leads to every description of meanness. It is a life of fear, anxiety, and hideous degradation. It is perpetual unrest. I never knew a man who launched out into forgery or its kindred sciences—such as frauds in connection with railway scrip, for example—who ever seemed to enjoy a happy existence, even if spared by the law. Hudson, the English "railway king," is shunned like a pestilence by every honorable man. True gentlemen in the House of Commons get up and move from his neighborhood; and, despite all his ill-gotten wealth, his name is never mentioned without contempt. Schuyler, of New York, who issued the false scrip to such an enormous extent, the other day, will henceforward have to skulk about obscurely, and associate with swindlers and thieves. Most unenviable is the life of the imprudent rascal, enriched by unorthodox roguery. He is spunged on by rogues poorer and less daring than himself—the vilest of the vile. He is liable to be scorned and insulted at every turn, by the disdain of those who, at least, cheat their fellows according to rule. In short, no sensible rascal should take a more direct cut to robbery than bankruptcy, which, periodically arranged, answers well enough in some lines of business.

A curious reminiscence here occurs, to serve as illustrative of the class of speculations to which forgery pertains: it is the case of Captain Marshall, the check-giver. This notorious character, who may have many aliases, is a man of middle height, moderately stout, fifty years of age, with a mild, good-humored face, who occasionally professes himself a pious convert to Catholicism, and will discuss, at length, on his pride in his profession—the nautical—and a new invention for reefing topsails from below.

He goes about—probably some of our readers may have heard of him—living at the best hotels, and paying by check. Now and then he catches a green-horn, who cashes a small draft on a banker in the next city, of importance. He knows everybody you know, and is very unobtrusive, being especially dexterous in making your acquaintance, by means apparently accidental. Having already availed myself of the electric telegraph and the post-office—too late, however, to save my erewhile host and his bill, I rejoice at being enabled, by a novel medium, to increase the celebrity of this remarkable man. This little check on the Bank of Utica, Buffalo, I still preserve, for the sake of the autograph. But why should I complain? Do I not owe to that insignificant loss the gain of one of the most remarkable spectacles I ever witnessed?

It is an unwarrantable digression; but, digression or no digression, the incident shall be related.

It was at Niagara Falls. I had stayed over Sunday at Buffalo, in order to present the Captain's check on Monday morning. All was excitement at the hotel. A man was in the rapids!

I hastened to the bridge above the Falls.

"You cannot pass, sir."

"I am the editor of the——"

"Pass on."

The word editor is an "open Sesame" in America, and, indeed, in most civilized countries.

"Oh, let me pass. I must pass!" cried the voice of a female behind me.

"You really cannot, miss," said the sentinel.

"But I must!" replied a voice of anguish.

"No one is allowed on the bridge, but those who are assisting to let down the boats," said the sentinel. "You really cannot come. We must keep the bridge clear."

"Oh, sir," cried the girl, a fair and pretty creature, with large hazel eyes, seeing that I had turned back to look at her, "get me through,—for God's sake, get me through!"

Struck by her deep agitation, I said to the man, "Let her pass," and as I pressed against the human barrier, she slipped through and seized my arm. The scene which presented itself from the bridge was most appalling. Before us, at the distance of perhaps less than a quarter of a mile, was the crystalline edge of the cataract. On the right bank, between the fall and the bridge, were thousands of people staring in impotent horror. In the centre of the rapids, and about half way between the bridge and the cataract's margin, was a log jammed between two rocks. It is still there. On this log stood a man erect, and distinctly visible. There he had been since the previous night. It was now five in the afternoon. He had fallen asleep in his boat, the boat had been carried away by the current, and had probably struck against the log on which he had saved himself. The roar of the rushing, foaming waters rendered it useless to shout for assistance. In the morning he was discovered standing where he now stood in temporary security, yet almost beyond the possibility of escape. Boats had been floated down with ropes attached to them, containing provisions and brandy. They had all failed in their mission; the overstrained ropes had given way, and the boats had disappeared over the fatal line of the fall. Nothing remained to be tried but a strong raft, though every one agreed that it was at best but a shadow of a chance. Such as it was, I urged its immediate employment, and, briefly representing the utter folly of delay, aided with my own hands to lower it into the boiling torrent. Alas! a few minutes had not elapsed before one of the ropes, by which it was guided, was fairly torn from our hands, and the raft drifted guideless amid the eddies. I looked around for my companion, whom I had quitted to aid in letting down the raft. She was requesting a gentleman to lend her a telescope, through which he was regarding the unfortunate man in the rapids. He handed it to her with politeness. She took one look, then dropped the telescope, and exclaimed, staggering as if shot—"It is he—O, God, it is he!"

She would have fallen, had I not caught her in my arms. I, myself, looked through the telescope, and beheld the pale, anxious, yet still courageous countenance of a young man of two-and-twenty, of handsome and pleasing appearance.

One more attempt was made. We formed a second raft of the rudest materials, obtained a fresh supply of rope, and this time, by wonderful fortune, succeeded in letting it float down to the log. In a few minutes it was there. The young man scrambled upon it, but his strength was evidently exhausted. It was hoped that the raft might be so guided as to run ashore on Goat Island, which unequally divides the river above the cataract. I may mention, for the benefit of such of my readers as have never visited Niagara, that to draw back anything against the torrent of the rapids at that point is impossible. But all speculation on the subject was soon at an end. The man was suddenly swept from the raft, and carried with awful velocity towards the fall. For one instant he managed to stand erect and utter a wild shriek, on the very edge of the abyss, then he had vanished forever.

Those near at hand, affirmed that the word he uttered was "Mary!"

More audible was the shriek of Mary herself, as witnessing the last agony of her lover, she fell senseless at my feet.

As soon as I had seen the poor girl placed in the care of friends, I hastened to the foot of the fall, and, heedless of the spray which wetted me to the skin, peered curiously into the infernal cauldron of waters.

But it is as wise to ask of oblivion the fate of the passing hours, as to ask of savage Niagara the bodies of his victims. Ten thousand years ago, that awful torrent fell, broken by the immense descent into snow-like particles, even as it now falls—of all spectacles which Nature offers, the most enthralling and the most sublime. Yet, for me, the solemn grandeur of the giant falls is for ever painfully mingled in memory with the hideous vision of the "man in the rapids," and the shriek of his despairing mistress.

Thus to Captain Marshall's check on a bank in which he never deposited one cent, I was indebted for a remarkable adventure, and the reader for a curious anecdote.

But, I was saying that forgery and ultimate misery go together. The fact is, all crime, save personal violence, is fundamentally falsehood. The greater the lie, the greater the injury to mankind, and the heavier mankind's resentment. The petty shop-keeper who adulterates his goods, who sells forged coffee, forged pepper, forged brandy, &c., is a more contemptible, but less dangerous rascal than your Fauntleroy, your Hudson, or your Schuyler.

John Berkeley was a bolder, but perhaps not morally, a more corrupt man, than two out of three traders in Wall Street, or nine out of ten politicians at Washington. He had taken to a by-way for fleecing his fellows, instead of the beaten track, that was all. And quite enough for any honest man. But who is honest in this world? Who, but the man who works, and gives a fair equivalent for what he asks of the world. For the rest, it may be an error of judgment, but I see little difference, in a rational point of view, between the tyrant who oppresses, the speculator who extorts, and the brigand who robs; or between the brokers and bankers who, by their nefarious trickery, raise stocks and shares to an artificial value, and the less particular counterfeiter, who creates fictitious value altogether. Mankind at large is equally a sufferer by either.

I do not defend John Berkeley. I admit that he is a scoundrel. But he plays his game like the rest, and chooses his risk with the odds against him. In proportion to the risk is the gain. Now, if John Berkeley had counterfeited opinions, or levied black-mail as a journalist, if he had palmed off pretended medicinal panaceas as a quack doctor, if he had raised sham ghosts as a spiritual medium, or exhibited counterfeit woolly horses as a showman, he would have engaged much less hazardous line of business. But, as we have seen, John Berkeley simply took to forging bank-bills; and, on the morning after the night of the fracas with his myrmidons, sallied out in search of Confidence Bob and the Slinker, with ten thousand newly created dollars in his pocket. As he went out, he was grinned at with the most sincere affection by an ugly old negress with a big head, and feet like a duck. She was his only servant; and, though her master rarely honored her by remembering the fact of her humble existence, was simply and devotedly attached to the man who, for five long years, had provided her with food, shelter, and clothing—requirements to which poor Peggy had in her early life been but too often a stranger. Perhaps she was the only real friend John Berkeley possessed in the world.

————

CHAPTER XI.

STRANGE TALK.

AS a new superstition is fostered by persecution, so a young love becomes enhanced by obstacles.

Mondel loved Columbia, and Columbia loved Mondel. Day and night the image of each was present to the other. In mutual deification, both were intoxicated with happiness.

Never had ocean-sprung Venus two nobler, two more ecstatic votaries.

Revived by the elixir of passion, Dudley Mondel saw the clouds of disappointment and the shadows of experience pass away like vapors before the rising sun. His imagination became purified. The grosser illusions of his reckless and adventurous youth dimmed into half-forgotten nightmares, feeble phantoms of unpleasant waking dreams. His will became once more strong and imperial. His courage and his hope once more bade defiance to the world.

He was again prepared to renew, on the highest plane of existence, that gigantic struggle which genius for ever maintains, by her knightly champions, with the falsehood and ignorance of the universal spiritual chaos.

"How little," said Mondel, "is the mission of the man of genius comprehended by the herd! An incarnate god, he stamps his law and effigy upon the brow of humanity for all coming time. He reveals a truth, he discovers a principle, he combines an idea, and all eternity receives it! Every day he is nearer his kingdom. Even now he laughs aloud at the fools who sit on thrones or presidential chairs, in ministerial cabinets, and boast that they are governing the earth.

"Meanwhile, the true kings of men, the kings of thought, invent, foretell, predestine things to be, securely seated in the Olympus of their science.

"'But I use you,' cry the despot and the worldling.

"'You obey me,' says the thinker.

"'You think for me—you are my slave,' says the political ruler.

"'You act upon my thought. I am your master,' says the philosopher.

"'You work—I enjoy,' says government.

"'I plan—you execute,' says science.

"In fine, government is merely a focus, by means of which the rays of the lamp of genius are to be brought to bear upon a nation. As soon as the press shall be sufficiently developed, and photographic printing perfected, genius will no longer require government as a medium, because it will have the means of transmitting all its decrees straight to the intelligence of every citizen. In those days, public opinion will be government, and every man will represent his own opinions, when he has any to represent, by simply expressing them openly."

"But how is crime to be suppressed?" said Columbia, timidly.

"In a very advanced state of society, which demands that the freedom of the individual should be perfect, and entirely unshackled by external force, there would be no crime, save as a rare exception. Law, existing only as an idea in the mind of every citizen, and a philosophical education rendering that disease of brain, which produces the anti-rational abortion, called crime, extremely uncommon, there would be so few occasions for society to apply personal restraint to the individual man, that each emergency could readily find its own tribunal."

"Still, suppose that in the absence of an executive government, men were to unite together, and form bands of robbers?"

"My dear Miss Columbia," said Mondel, smiling, "you forget that twenty years hence every one will be armed with an air-gun, or revolver, loaded by a turn of a screw, and that poverty, in the sense of actual privation, will have no existence; therefore, the motive for so hazardous a defiance of society; nonexistent."

"Do you really believe that want will cease to exist?" exclaimed Columbia, with a radiant expression of benevolence and goodness, that made her look like an angel about to take wing.

Mondel, with difficulty repressing an insane desire to defy propriety and Mrs. Yonkers, by clasping Columbia to his heart, and kissing her a thousand times, replied, trembling with contending feelings:

"Oh, yes. It must end at last! In this country, at least, even the trading classes will at length rise above the revolting meanness and stupidity of fostering, instead of preventing crime. What is crime? Mental disease, produced by want of the necessaries of life. These necessities are food, shelter, clothing, and love. The man who is precluded, by poverty, from the simple gratification of his appetites, to the degree required by a sound mind, in a sound body, becomes necessarily a degraded being—a criminal.

"Ages of selfishness, ignorance, and poverty, have created a standing army of these outcasts, perpetually recruited from the ranks of starving laborers of every kind. In America, emigration furnishes ready-made hordes of vagabonds, as a nucleus for the home production of the same human vermin. In New York and Philadelphia, the horrors of London and Paris are beginning to reappear, accompanied by the same senseless luxury and extravagance, and the same fiendlike selfishness and indifference to the welfare of the community as a whole. I have often said it before—harsh as it may sound to 'ears polite,'—the rich people, who let poor people suffer actual want in their neighborhood, are criminal to the last degree. The wealthy merchants of New York could easily provide funds for distributing the continually-increasing amount of superfluous labor accumulating in this city, over the whole country, which their work would enrich and cultivate. When people are utterly destitute, a few days reduces them to the brink of starvation. Gratuitous locomotion is the greatest boon which wealth can give to poverty. The English poor-rates, invested in steam navigation, would suffice, in a couple of years, to remove every able-bodied pauper from the soil of Great Britain, and to give every pauper emigrant an outfit for the New World. But British statesmen, in the decline of the monarchy, and on the eve of revolution, can only imagine such things; and American statesmen have not yet learned the one great and simple lesson in political economy, that pauperism is the one thing—the only thing—to be dreaded in a Republic."

"Your words imply some result which I do not precisely see," said Columbia.

"They imply," answered Mondel, "that liberty and pauperism cannot long co-exist. If meanness and grasping selfishness are not checked in America, by loud, bold, and reiterated warnings, American liberty will soon degenerate into oligarchy, and thence into despotism. Already we have a race of pauper politicians and corrupt intriguers, who pander basely to the lowest rabble—the Irish emigrants and German hucksters. Were it not that I foresee a revolution in these United States, before many years are over, which will annihilate the representative system and all its delusive jugglery, I should despair of America ever becoming anything but an overgrown England. As it is, we march towards changes little dreamed of in the philosophy of Washington senators and New Hampshire generals!"

"And slavery?" said Columbia, "how is slavery to be abolished?"

"It will abolish itself," said Mondel.

"By what means?"

"By the free will of the slave-holders."

"How so?"

"They are men, and must progress in intelligence like the rest of the world. What the abuse of the abolitionists has failed to do in so many years, their own reason may do in one. No such absurdities as a fugitive slave law can exist long in the North, and without it where are the slavers? American slavery is like the English national debt; it must walk the plank before long, however unpleasant may be the operation to the holder of stock in either iniquity."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Yonkers, "I never can understand your political regenerators, who wish to upset everything. I find things very comfortable as they are. I am sure I wish everybody to be happy, and I never go out that I do not give away at least a quarter in sixpences to poor little crossing-sweepers; but there will always be some poor people, I suppose, in the world."

"Yes," said Mondel, "there will be probably poor people even in the next world—people who cannot afford a comet to live in during the dull season."

————

CHAPTER XII.

MORE LOVE.

MONDEL no longer even temporized with the infatuation of Mrs. Yonkers. With a studied calmness, an almost severe gravity, he baffled all her attempts to draw him into a conversation of a personally embarrassing nature.

"I feel very ill," Mrs. Yonkers would say, when he called, as he did nearly every evening, to catch a few moments' stolen conversation with, and a great many stolen glances from his now adored Columbia.

"I am very sorry to hear it," Mondel would reply, with polite yet sufficiently cordial sympathy.

"Are you really sorry?" Mrs. Yonkers would say, with a vague air of sentimental reproach.

"I am not a hypocrite—I never knelt in a pulpit," Mondel would reply, quite coolly.

I am sorry to say that Mondel could not endure the sight of a clergyman, and would rather have dined with a pirate than with a bishop. It was one of his weaknesses.

Mondel was not a church nor chapel-going man. However, I do not hold him up as an example—I do not pretend to be a moralist. I describe life as I know and see it, that is all.

"This is a stupid world," again Mrs. Yonkers would begin, shaking back her dark ringlets from her white shoulders, with an air of languid disdain.

"Very," acquiesces Mondel.

"It is so full of cold, selfish people, that for my part, I almost doubt the existence of love or affection anywhere!" said the lady, desperately resolved to despair of humanity without reserve.

"I often doubt it myself," says Mondel, stealing a side glance at the door to see whether Columbia is entering.

"You must find it very lonely, Mr. Mondel, with all your deep poetical feelings?"

"Poets are a shocking race of impostors," replies the poet to this argumentum ad hominem.

"But surely you have felt the passions and sentiments you describe, or poetry is"——

"All humbug, in nine cases out of ten," replies the would-be cynic.

"Then Famosina is"——

"A myth."

"Metafusa?"

"A joke."

"Colorissa?"

"An allegory."

"Why dear me! Mr. Mondel, I give you my word, I took them to be all real ladies you had known, and"——

"Me, to be—a most fortunate man?"

"Perhaps a very wicked one."

"Not at all. All my heroines are mere spectres of the halls of fancy."

"And Fantasma—Fantasma, your last idealization, who eclipses all others, as the sun eclipses the planets in brightness, she surely has something real about her?"

"No, she is merely a type—an impersonation of Fancy itself—the most unreal of all."

Mondel had denied his enchantresses of by-gone years, as pictured in his passionate verses, with as little remorse as a sculptor feels in smashing his juvenile Venuses. But when it came to repudiating the vitality of Fantasma—Fantasma, in whose dream-like beauty and prismatic radiance he had always enshrined the blonde Columbia, his eternal queen and goddess, he blushed faintly, and, felt the twinge of a St. Peter-like pang in doing what seemed to be very much like denying not his master, but his mistress.

But he was resolved to keep carefully within the limits of the Arabia Petræa, or Stony Arabia of sentiment with his enamored friend; since, well he knew that one false step might seriously interfere with his projected trip to the Arabia Felix or happy land, of which Columbia was the imperial hostess. Of wanderings in the Arabia Deserta, of parching thirst in the sandy desert of doubt, and error, and hope long deferred, and of pilgrimages to the black stone of Despair's Caaba, Mondel dreamed not at all. Happily for mortals, to-morrow is an eternal mystery.

Many weeks after her first introduction to the reader, Columbia entered the drawing-room already mentioned, dressed for the theatre. It was the first night of Mondel's new comedy. Mrs. Yonkers and Columbia were to accompany the author to his private box, where Mr. Yonkers had promised to join them. Not that any one supposed he would come. Mr. Yonkers had of late grown very undomesticated. In fact, he began to feel himself more at home anywhere than in his own house, where his wife's intense coldness and politeness created for him a freezing atmosphere, in which he found neither enjoyment nor excitement. He tried at first a few matrimonial quarrels with Amelia, but she so evidently did not care a straw whether he was displeased or not, that he gave up the attempt as hopeless, and took to publicly acting the part of a very happy husband, and patting his wife's shoulder in the presence of friends, to make them believe that Mrs. Yonkers and himself were living on the most affectionate terms. I know nothing more ridiculous than an old fool who thinks he can make the world believe that the young wife he has bought with his money, is in love with his elderly personality. Stay!—I know one thing more ridiculous; it is an old fool who is jealous of his slave, and thinks it possible to watch her. As if a girl of sixteen were not a match for a whole regiment of old fogies, at any time! With a woman of six-and-twenty there is no game at all; the advantages are too enormously one-sided. The old slaver is nowhere!

Columbia entered the drawing-room. Mondel was already there. Mrs. Yonkers was dressing. In her ambition to outshine her rival in her toilette, she gave the lovers an opportunity for a tête-à-tête, almost the only one they had ever enjoyed. For the first few minutes they were silent. Mondel had so much to say that he could say nothing. It was Columbia who broke the silence first.

"Are you not very anxious, Mr. Mondel, to see your comedy realized on the stage?"

"Not in the least;" said Mondel, "I have not even attended a rehearsal."

"Is it possible?—surely you cannot be indifferent to the success of your work?"

"Indifferent to success, Miss Columbia? Oh, no; I am not indifferent to success—perhaps partly because a blind self-confidence assures me that success is certain—chiefly, however, because all minor successes are at present for me merged in the one grand object of my life."

"And that object?" said Columbia, trembling and changing color.

"That object," said Mondel, in a voice so deep, yet clear and audible, that it seemed to come from the very inmost centre of his being, "that object is yourself."

Columbia started, like a frightened fawn; the earnest, concentrated passion of her lover's look alarmed her delicate and over-sensitive nature. Her own wild feelings alarmed her. She appeared about to fly. Already she had retreated some paces.

Quick as lightning, yet without any violent movement, Mondel stood again before her, took her hand in his, and looking down, with an expression of almost sombre scrutiny, into her magnificent blue eyes, said, simply—"I love you."

"He loves me," thought Columbia—"he loves me! How strange, how wonderful!" And yet the confession did not surprise her. She even expected it.

There was no reproof in the look Columbia gave, but something so weird, so unusual, so spiritual, that the naturally audacious Mondel completely lost courage for the moment. His impulse was to throw his arm round her slender waist, to seal the confession of his passion on her lips. But he dreaded to offend a being so refined, so utterly unsensuous. He could only look, with that searching, eternal, mysterious gaze, peculiar to himself, and murmur, in a broken voice, "It is my life I place in your hands. I wait my sentence."

"Not now, not now," said Columbia, in deep emotion.

"You do not hate me—I mean, I am not absolutely repulsive to you?"

"No, no! I like you as a friend—I admire your genius; but I must have time to reflect."

"I can wait," said Mondel, sadly.

Columbia was seized with a vague panic. The idea of marriage had for her a sort of fantastic horror. She loved, but feared to surrender her will to another. Again, her woman's instinct had divined the secret of her step-mother's unhappy fancy. The fair poetess recoiled from a dénoûment. Her pride and modesty also refused to allow that she had been so rapidly and easily conquered.

It is strange to contemplate the difference between the mental condition of a man and a woman, who love, in the present state of society. The man has seen, experienced all; the woman knows nothing but in theory. The man's passions are fully developed; the woman's often yet slumber in mysterious unconsciousness. The man is all ardor, the woman one-half misgiving. Thus, Mondel had lived; Columbia had only dreamed.

"Alas!" thought Mondel, "how well I know that the chances are millions to one against my ever meeting a second Columbia, while she probably pictures to herself a world in which such men as I are common as the shells upon the sea-shore. And what am I, after all, with all my reading, my intellectual power, and my boundless daring, but a jaded man of pleasure, a reckless desperado, compared to this pure and radiant flower of beauty? How can I hope to exchange love upon equal terms with one whose personal advantages, as a woman, are so immeasurably beyond my own as a man? Doubtless I am handsome enough for Mrs. Yonkers, for any ordinary beauty, but, to such angelic loveliness as Columbia's, how rude a creature I must seem!" And poor Mondel glanced ruefully at a glass, in which his stern, pale features and athletic form were miserably reflected, owing to the unevenness of the mirror's surface.

"Decidedly," thought he; "I must appear anything but attractive to the imagination of a delicate girl. Besides, I begin to look quite old, and my complexion grows positively cadaverous. In asking her to love me, I perhaps ask what is unreasonable." So, calling pride to his aid, Mondel shook off all tenderness from his aspect, and advanced to meet Mrs. Yonkers, who then entered, with the stately mien of a conqueror. Defeated, as he believed himself, he resolved at least to betray no external sign of weakness, and, with a burning heart, looked more cold and haughty than he had ever looked before. Columbia, witnessing this change, longed to say something which might soften the effect of her former expressions, and even Mrs. Yonkers was amazed at the unusual indifference of her non-admiring friend, not to her own, but to her step-daughter's attractions. Still more was Mrs. Yonkers amazed to observe that Mondel took no interest in the representation of his own piece, notwithstanding the unbounded favor with which, from first scene to last, it was received. At the fall of the curtain, Columbia turned to Mondel with such a bright look of triumph in the applause which greeted his work, that his doubts for the moment were utterly dissipated, and pressing her hand, unobserved by the rest of the party; with tears starting to his eyes, he whispered, softly "May I hope?"

And Columbia's voice almost inaudibly murmured back like a far-off echo—"Hope."

That night Mondel gave a late supper to his friends, and as the champagne corks flew, O'Bouncer cried, "Why, Mondel, my dear fellow, how changed you look. The success of your play has made you five years younger!"

But Peregrine Cope made no such blunder. He knew that love alone had power to work so great an alteration in his friend, and said to himself as he filled his glass, "By Jove, Columbia has accepted him!"

————

CHAPTER XIII.

GREEN-EYED NEMESIS.

AMELIA was not a woman to be scorned with impunity. She saw that Mondel did not love her, and reluctantly admitted that he adored Columbia.

Enraged as she was, she could not teach herself to feel indifferent towards the man who had so completely subjugated her imagination. But if she could not hate Mondel, she could and did hate the idea of his possession by Columbia, and to frustrate that union became now the most immediate object of her excitable nature.

Her feelings towards Columbia were of a very strange and complex nature. As a rival she hated her step-daughter. As a woman, Amelia could not resist the wonderful power of fascination possessed by Columbia.

This power of fascination is the gift only of few. It is a most rare and wonderful quality, depending for its existence on the possession of exquisitely reined sympathies. It betokens some moral superiority difficult to analyze, yet of tremendous influence on all minds that come within its sphere. It is generally one of the prerogatives of supreme beauty and genius. It is accompanied even in the vicious by an internal harmony, a grand self-reliance. It is in itself a main element of greatness.

Columbia fascinated every one with whom she came in contact, under circumstances of intimacy. In spite of herself, Mrs. Yonkers was nervously anxious to have the good opinion and affection of her step-daughter. Secretly; she felt the immense gulf between her own superficial brilliance and Columbia's dazzling acquirements. Nevertheless she had conceived, since the visits of Mondel had commenced, a gradually increasing dislike for her former idol. The thought of such happiness as she felt would be the portion of Mondel and Columbia, if united, was more than she could bear. Devoured by passion, jealousy and mortification, she said fiercely to herself, "That marriage shall never be!—never whilst I am alive to oppose it by means fair or—otherwise!" And the jealous woman took a half timid glance into the most evil depths of her own nature, and beheld there shadowy possibilities which, if distinctly revealed, even to herself, at that time, would have terrified her by their hideousness.

The descent of Avernus is facile, but it is gradual at least with the ordinary run of mortals. It is only great evil geniuses who plunge abruptly into the murky gloom of the nether world of thought, like suicides who dash into death, and by a moment's awful resolution cut through the entanglements of a life-time.

But to effect her object Amelia required an accomplice. Nor was she long in finding one both able and willing to assist her.

This dangerous ally was John Berkeley.

Berkeley had before her marriage with Mr. Yonkers been the most ardent of her admirers. But a certain mystery which hung about his pecuniary position at that time rendered him uninteresting in a speculative point of view, whilst the hard polish and caustic dryness of his manners and conversation repelled the naturally passionate and romantic Amelia.

Berkeley, however, loved her with an insane fanaticism. Had he received the slightest encouragement he would have declared himself, and perhaps have surprised and conquered Amelia by the violence and sincerity of his passion. Apart from its reserved air and habitual severity of expression, Berkeley's face was handsome and striking. His features were sharply cut, but regular and well-proportioned. His figure was well-knit and even graceful in its outlines. His manners were dignified and easy. In age he was little more than Mondel's equal. His connections were highly respectable New Englanders. He was to all outward appearances a most unobjectionable match for a young lady in Miss Luton's then position.

By becoming suddenly Mrs. Yonkers, Amelia almost drove Berkeley to distraction. The only consolation he had was in reflecting that she had perhaps escaped the horrors of a discovery of his crimes and the consequent exposure and retribution. Until some time after Mondel's first introduction to Mrs. Yonkers, Berkeley neither visited nor met her. At length, driven by fatality and a yet unconquered love, he called upon the object of his former attentions. He saw Mr. Yonkers, and conceived a vague hope of yet realizing the wishes of his heart. Mrs. Yonkers flirted with him unmercifully. By the torments which she infected on Berkeley; she indemnified herself for the sufferings caused by Mondel's indifference to her own attachment.

As Berkeley generally called in the morning, whilst Mondel paid his visits in the evening, they did not at all clash or interfere with one another. But after the meeting of Berkeley and Mondel, as described, at the Waverley saloon, on the evening of the scuffle, a new feature presented itself. Berkeley called on Mondel and extracted from him not only a confession of his views with regard to Columbia, but a vague allusion to the difficulty of his position. This Mondel allowed to escape him the more readily that he had no suspicion of any serious interest being taken by Berkeley in Mrs. Yonkers.

"If he has a fancy for her, a little jealousy will make him more attentive and relieve me from a great deal of trouble;" thought Mondel with a culpable recklessness.

Berkeley, however, became savagely jealous, and this jealousy added to the danger of his secret falling into the hands of Mondel, through indiscretion on the part of the sick Professor, caused the unscrupulous fabricator of bank-bills to become the deadly enemy of the unsuspecting poet, who neither dreamed of his vagabond protége's relation to Berkeley nor of Berkeley's old acquaintance with and passion for Amelia.

Thus, when Mrs. Yonkers confidentially assured her suspicious admirer of her utter detestation of Mondel, and of her wish to prevent him from obtaining the hand of Columbia at all hazards, "for the dear girl's sake," Berkeley was perfectly prepared to stand by her in any emergency.

"Indeed I suspect," said Mrs. Yonkers, taking a bold stride in the Avernian descent, "that he is an odious libertine, for whilst paying his attentions to Miss Yonkers, you will hardly believe it, he takes every opportunity of showing me by his manner that in fact he is—that is, that he should be only too happy to become—well, in short, he makes love to me as far as he dares without coming to any actual demonstrations, whenever Columbia happens to be out of the way!"

"A charming specimen of transatlantic morality," said the Alterer sarcastically. "He is an Englishman, or at any rate was educated in Europe. I know him well. He introduced me to his wife at Niagara."

"Then he is married?"

"Who knows?" said Berkeley, shrugging his shoulders.

"And separated from his wife?"

"Probably."

"Divorced, do you think?"

"I know nothing more than I tell you."

"It is enough," thought Mrs. Yonkers, with a diabolical sensation of triumph. "I have the mine prepared."

Its explosion was not long delayed.

Columbia entered the room. A conversation on general topics followed. Berkeley was, as usual, fluent, courtly, and sarcastic.

"By the way, Mr. Berkeley, what a charming man is Mr. Mondel! He is quite a favorite of mine. What a pity that he should not live happily with his wife! I did not even know he was married, till you told me."

Berkeley saw the snare; but his hatred for Mondel, increased by his now settled conviction of Mrs. Yonkers' love for that detested individual, determined him to run all risks. Berkeley was personally brave, though usually cautious. He answered, quietly—

"I did not know it myself till he introduced me to the lady; last fall, at Niagara. She is very pretty, and seemed quite devoted to her husband. Miss Columbia! excuse me. You look very pale. Are you unwell?"

"Not at all, sir," said Columbia, rising and leaving the room, with a look at Mrs. Yonkers, which absolutely terrified her for the consequences of her stratagem.

It was a look of cold, piercing despair. Her face had become so pale that she resembled a ghost, as she glided away. Mrs. Yonkers did not dare to follow her.

Columbia had no suspicion of deception. She had heard Mondel mention Berkeley casually as one of his friends; neither was she aware that Mrs. Yonkers had any power of control over Berkeley. She took for granted the fact; and it was easy for Mrs. Yonkers afterwards to fill up the details, and, by affected expressions of pity and horror, to convince Columbia, that the man she loved was a roué of the most unmitigated class.

Columbia was deeply read in books, but very innocent in all that concerned the passions. She did not know, what every true man knows, that your professed saints are either the most contemptible of hypocrites, or the most miserable specimens of humanity.

But how long is this infernal mystification to last? How long are we of the harder sex to deceive and mock the gentler half of creation, with such palpable delusions, as the pretence that man can live in deadly opposition to nature. To man, the indulgence of the passion of love is an inevitable necessity. Society has made it an inevitable crime.

How long will this atrocious infamy last, of selling young beauty to old men, and driving youthful manhood into the arms of unhappy courtesans? How long will mothers continue to conceal from their daughters the great truths of life, and fathers persevere in refusing to give their sons the results of their own dismal experience.

Love is the master passion of the world, the elixir of happiness, the talisman of power. To how many has it become a scourge and a curse! How constantly do we see the noble and the beautiful driven apart like ships at sea in a storm, by the errors, the prejudice, and the cant of social imposture!

Thus, because Mondel had been in his past life a man, and not an imbecile trifler, he was condemned as depraved and criminal. Columbia believing him married regarded his love as an insult. By a single lie, malignantly repeated, was marred the happiness of two of the most accomplished persons of their age.

"Amelia," said John Berkeley abruptly, as soon as Columbia had left the room, "this is a serious business, did you notice the girl's face? She turned as white as a corpse. We have, I fear, indicted a severer blow than you intended.

"We?" exclaimed Amelia, resenting that unusual familiarity of her companion. "We? What do you mean? Did not you tell me that Mr. Mondel was married?"

"Yes; but you know very well that I did not mean it seriously, and that I only said it to please you."

"To please me? Why should it please me? what does it matter to me?" said the unreasonable beauty, pouting, and looking—in Berkeley's eyes—doubly seductive.

"In that case," said Berkeley, "perhaps I had better remedy the mistake—especially as in making it, I deliberately risked my life."

"How risked your life?" said Mrs. Yonkers, with some show of interest.

"Do you think Mondel is the man to leave so gross an injury unrevenged? No madam, if he discover the deception he will either kill me or I shall kill him; rely upon that as certain."

"But he never can discover it."

"That remains to be seen. Sooner or later many things are discovered;" muttered Berkeley gloomily. "However, the thing is done, let us leave the rest to fate. As for you, Amelia, you see that when you ask even a crime as a proof of my devotion, I cannot refuse you!"

"O, Mr. Berkeley!"

"One kiss before we part."

"Leave me, sir, I insist."

"My dear girl, consider how long, how ardently I have loved you."

"There!—now go, I hear Mr. Yonkers opening the door with his latch-key. Go"——

"To-morrow?"

"To-morrow."

"Good by, dearest!"

"Good by."

And Berkeley departed in a state of delicious vertigo. The knell of Mondel's happiness was the signal for his own to commence. He had gained that first step which counts for so much. Experience told him that the rest must inevitably follow. But bold as he was, under all ordinary circumstances, he could not, on calmer reaction, recall without a rather unpleasant sensation, the fact that he had done a deadly injury to a man who under adequate provocation was capable of going to the most desperate extremities.

Henceforward, not only his liberty but his life hung by a thread, and the terrible arm of the law was not more certainly suspended over his head than was the deadly pistol of Mondel hypothetically pointed at his heart. By his head he had sinned against mankind, by his heart he had wronged Mondel. By a single phrase he had doubled the perils of his destiny. And the Professor—what if the Professor should betray him? Truly, John Berkeley's was not an enviable predicament.

————

CHAPTER XIV.

THE SICK MAN.

SLOWLY and painfully the wounded vagabond recovered from the effects of Cope's well directed blow. Berkeley called daily to inquire as to his progress. Dr. Vortex attended him with the greatest assiduity, and as his attentions were gratuitous, he deserved more credit for the regularity of his visits. Cope and Mondel nursed the patient, assisted by the latter's landlady, Mrs. Normer. Mrs. Normer was a stout, fine looking, dark-eyed widow, a German by birth, whose father had been a colonel in the Prussian army. She was one of those true, noble, generous natures which are so rarely met with, and which seem created for the express purpose of consoling the suffering and aiding the unfortunate. Married young, unfortunate in her marriage, and disappointed in her affections, she yet had faced adversity with a lofty and steady courage, and maintained herself and her little daughter in respectability and comfort. All who knew her esteemed and admired her. Every one who lodged in her house became her personal friend. She had lived long in the South, and in her youth—she married, at sixteen, a dissipated Virginian—had imbibed prejudices which rendered her utterly impervious to all argument against the great institution of negro slavery. In her eyes there was nothing meaner under the sun than an abolitionist. She could not realize the idea that people of color were to be put upon an equality with whites. Nevertheless, no "darkey" in distress could have applied with a better chance of assistance than to Madame Normer—or, as her boarders habitually addressed her, "Madame." Her house was generally occupied by gentlemen only; chiefly officers in the army, Southerners, literati, or foreigners of distinction. Mrs. Normer possessed, in addition to great experience and the keenest observation, a profound intuition of character. She had brought from the Old World, and kept up in her Southern life, a strong aristocratic predilection in favor of good birth, manners and education, notwithstanding that she was, in many respects, most democratically democratic. In her bearing she was free in her language, often reckless of conventional forms. But the delicacy of her feelings at heart rendered her incapable of wounding the sensibility of a fellow creature. She was fond of animals, and had a splendid greyhound, a parrot, and divers cages of canaries, all which she tended with the greatest care and kindness. Between Mondel and Mrs. Normer subsisted a friendship founded on mutual esteem and respect. In all worldly matters she was Mondel's confidante, and Mondel hers. They understood one another perfectly, for neither was capable of meanness. In conclusion, Mrs. Normer gave the poet unlimited credit, knowing well that he always took the earliest opportunity of paying up arrears. This the irregularity of his receipts almost necessitated. Having premised thus much, the reader will understand that nothing which Mondel might take it into his head to do was likely to meet with opposition on the part of Mrs. Normer. Thus, when Mondel brought home the wounded Professor to his apartments, he simply communicated the fact to his benevolent landlady, and she at once dismissed all thought upon the subject, until the sick man should be restored to a state of convalescence. The desire to save a man's life was, in her eyes, quite enough to explain Mondel's conduct, and the unlucky burglar found himself in most desirable quarters.

When, after a long interval of fever and mental confusion, the Professor awoke to a clear consciousness of his position, he beheld a grave, benevolent face gazing calmly upon him from the foot of the bed, to which gradually added itself, as his perceptions became clearer, the whole form of Dudley Mondel, with a dim vision of a lady slicing up a water-melon at a small table, in the background. This lady was Mrs. Normer.

The water-melon was a huge specimen, as big as the giant Garagantua's head, or the famous roc's egg, mentioned by Sinbad, the sailor. The Professor's eyes brightened as he perceived coming towards him the no longer visionary lady, with a large plate of melon, free from rind or seeds, and ready for immediate consumption. The poor vagabond, who had eaten scarcely anything since his illness, attacked the succulent vegetable instinctively, and felt wonderfully revived.

"Thank you, ma'am—thank you, sir," he murmured, faintly. So weak was the once Herculean man, that a child might have beaten him without fear of resistance. Nevertheless, he felt a strange sensation of well-being. The cleanliness and comfort of everything around him, a certain elegance in the arrangement of the furniture, above all, the gentle expression of the faces of Mondel and Mrs. Normer, all showed him that he had been transplanted into the atmosphere of a world entirely different from that in which he had of late been accustomed to dwell.

Dim recollections—dim as to distance, yet vivid as to imagery—of his early childhood, of his father's house, of his old school-room, before he ran away and went to sea, as he did at the age of thirteen, and became, by one accident and another, from reckless audacity and wild companionship, first a smuggler, then a robber. All passed swiftly before his mind. Even his little playmate, Alice, came dancing, with her blue sash and her yellow hoop, and golden hair, before his retrospective imagination. Old, long-forgotten impulses—long-crushed boyish sentiments, which never yet had found their expansion, upheaved within his soul, and beams of sincere, deep-felt gratitude shone in his dark greenish eyes, as they rested, admiringly, on the noble countenance of Mondel.

That countenance, with its lofty air of command, and broad, white, massive brow, its soft, unwavering eyes, and regular features, its brown silky hair; and fair, pale, spiritual complexion—that countenance swam before the eyes of the sick outcast, like the phantasm of some divine messenger from another world, calling him back to virtue and humanity.

In truth, Columbia's love had illuminated Mondel's features with a serene radiance of happy confidence and hope, that made him quite another being in appearance, from the stern and haughty personage with whom the world at large was more familiar.

Nor did the tall stature and athletic proportions of his benefactor, by any means, diminish the Professor's feelings of admiration. For the first time in his life the pugilistic bandit felt a real sentiment of respect and awe, very different from the indefinite feelings with which John Berkeley, the Alterer, had inspired him.

By a sudden inexplicable movement of his soul, the Professor resolved to devote his future life, if spared, to the service of Mondel, who, seating himself by the bedside, kindly took the right hand of the invalid in his own. The Professor squeezed it feebly. By that squeeze he meant to imply—"Yours, till death. I am your slave; you are my master."

"How do you feel, my friend?" said Mondel.

"Better," said the Professor—"better, sir—oh! much better!"

He spoke, in fact, more of the state of his soul than of his body.

"Does it fatigue you to speak?"

"No sir."

"Then let me ask, since you have been so long insensible to outward events, whether you have any family or friends with whom you wish to communicate?"

"Ah!" cried the wounded man, with a sharp cry, starting up, but only incipiently, for he was too weak actually to raise his head from the pillow—"ah! I had forgotten them—the children—the poor children!"

"What! You have children?"

"No, sir. They are not mine. They are the children of a friend—a brave fellow, as ever fought under the black ——. I mean, sir, he was shot at my side, in a sea-fight, and his last words were—'Dick, take care of the children.' So I did."

"And where are they now?"

"With Sally."

"Who is Sally?"

"A woman I lived with—not that I really cared for her, but she never would leave me, because she did not know what else to do, I suppose," and the Professor heaved an ominous sigh at the recollection of the very limited felicity of this unsanctioned marriage of his.

"Has she the means to support them? You are not perhaps aware that you have been more than a month confined to this room?"

"More than a month!" exclaimed the Professor, "ah, yes, I have had lots of dreams too, it seems only the other day or else an age. I don't know—my head is weak."

"Where do the children live?"

"Sally Smith—ask for Sally Smith corner of Grand and Putnam."

"Good," said Mondel, "now do not try to talk any more, I will go and see about the children at once."

"God bless you, sir!" said the vagabond, himself much astonished to hear such a phrase escape his lips, and the exhausted Professor lapsed once more into the oblivion of slumber.

Mondel went straight to the address indicated; but Sally Smith and the children had left their lodging weeks before, and as their rent had remained by some accident unsettled, Miss Smith had not deemed it necessary to leave her next address behind her. After many vain inquiries Mondel returned with the conviction that until the Professor was himself able to head the search, all chance of finding them would be hopeless. There are so many vagabond children and such an immense number of Miss Smiths in New York!

————

CHAPTER XV.

CHAOS.

"THERE are two letters for you, Mr. Mondel," said Mrs. Normer, as Dudley returned from his unsuccessful expedition in search of the children of the deceased pirate, and the young lady whose "name was Legion."

Dudley took the letters, and an electric current ran up his arm, as he recognized in the direction of the smaller envelope of the two, the handwriting of Columbia.

The moment he was alone in his study, he broke the seal of the note, carelessly throwing the other letter on the table.

As he read, his eyes grew fixed and glazed, his hands trembled, his face lost even the faintest trace of color.

He read it again, and a third time, and still remained motionless and white as a marble statue of Horror.

The letter contained these words:—

"Miss Columbia Yonkers presents her compliments to Mr. Mondel, and begs him to understand that this note must positively terminate their acquaintance."

For several hours Mondel remained plunged in a state of gloomy abstraction. He reviewed the past, interview by interview. He recalled every particular of Columbia's manner, her shyness and reserve, her fits of dreamy silence, and manifold eccentricities.

"She never loved me!" he at length muttered, "possibly she tried to do so—and failed, my conversation perhaps interested her, but my personality was indifferent. Yet she told me to hope! But no, that was a momentary impulse, the result of my comedy's triumph, or, perhaps—perhaps her words bore another meaning—she seems to live but in the ideal world of intellect and poetry—perhaps she meant that I might hope as a poet and a dramatist? Yet, I have fancied, that in her looks I read—but how could I read her looks—I, stained with all the sensualism and selfishness of the world, she, so pure, so spiritual? The dream is at an end!—at our last meeting, I perceived a strange coldness in her manner—her eyes avoided mine—I thought she withdrew her hand hastily at parting. Well, well, such happiness was too glorious to be real. There is no necessity for my living and suffering in this mean, dastardly world of hypocrites and traders! I can die—die as I have lived, a free man, the lord of my own destiny;" and Mondel having laid his pistols upon the table, paced slowly up and down the apartment with an air of utterly desperate depression.

The reader will, perhaps, be amazed, that a man like Mondel, should accept Columbia's note as final, without even suspecting a secret cause for her conduct, or endeavoring to effect a change in her resolution.

But true love is a beautiful insanity. Mondel's love demanded absolute reciprocity or nothing. In the excess of his pride, and the violence of his passion, he was unreasonable and extravagant. Thus, at the first shock given by Columbia's insulting note, his mind naturally fixed upon the worst and most hopeless view of the case. He did not, in his first moments of agony, contemplate an external agency, because all his fears naturally pointed towards an internal and purely passional cause.

"Love," argued the poet-philosopher, "can never be forced. Love is a wild flower, not a garden plant. If Columbia at any time loved me, no outward circumstances could destroy that love, and therefore she must love me still. If she never loved me—as I cannot but believe—no perseverance on my part would have surmounted a radical discord of nature. There is no such thing as winning a woman. There is no medium between love and indifference; and to try to reason indifference into admiration, or tempt it into desire, is the labor of a fool. Either love is a pre-existent harmony between two spiritual types, of which the bodily organizations are the absolute representatives, or it is nothing. If love be a pre-existent harmony, then is love at first sight the only real love I can acknowledge! Alas! into what an error did my wild longing for ideal bliss lead me, when in the first eager glances of Columbia's curiosity at the sight of a stranger and a supposed man of genius, I read that answer to my own mad prayers to Destiny, which must now for ever remain without response from humanity! Fool, fool, vain fool that I was!" And in an agony of self-abasement, the strong man threw himself upon a sofa, and wept long and bitterly over the last withered blossom of his wild and passionate youth.

At length he arose. His pale face seemed to have grown thinner, his eyes deeper and darker, his whole aspect more sombre and ghost-like.

"What if I turn monk?" said he, and a slight shudder pervaded his whole frame, as he whispered the awful words.

Awful indeed was the meaning which Mondel attached to those words. To him they meant, what if I become a living corpse, a disembodied spirit, a spectre of my former self? What if I abrogate for ever the hopes and passions of life? What if I die in the flesh, and, abjuring manhood, walk the earth an abstraction, a type, a phantom? Then, in a spirit of horrible mockery, Mondel abjured the religion of his life, the worship of Venus, the adoration of beauty, and the search for the incarnation of the ideal woman for ever! He registered his vow, and became a monk of the order of desolation—the order being as yet comprised in himself. A strange, dreamy listlessness stole over him. If I might venture on a much abused class of illustration, I would say that from being surcharged with positive vitality, he had become a perfect battery of the negative fluid. In this state he sat down and wrote the following reply to Columbia's note:

"Farewell for ever. Yours, and yours alone,
"Mondel"

Then he continued to pace the room with the same dreamy spectral manner, supremely indifferent to all things earthly or unearthly, till the shades of night descended, and he still paced up and down in the gathering darkness.

————

CHAPTER XVI.

THE JUDAS-KISS.

"A LADY wishes to see you, sir," said the servant.

"Show her in," said Mondel, with a sudden bound of the heart, that strangely belied his newly adopted monkdom. A wild hope rushed through his brain.

Entered—Mrs. Yonkers. With instantaneous reaction, Mondel was the same spectral statue of despair, which we have seen automatically pacing his study in the darkness. Mechanically he lit a lamp.

"Be seated, madam," he said, and waited for her to speak.

"My presence here, at this hour, no doubt surprises you," Mrs. Yonkers began.

"Nothing surprises me," said Mondel, gloomily.

His voice had a curious, monotonous cadence, which struck Mrs. Yonkers as peculiar.

"I have called upon you because—because I wish your happiness," she resumed.

"Thank you, madam," said Mondel. The four syllables were like four hail-stones falling, one after another, on a flat stone.

"You were interested in Miss Columbia Yonkers."

"Well, madam?" said Mondel, his eyes alone assuming a yet more disdainful expression.

"You loved her, adored her, were devoted to her?" said Mrs. Yonkers, with a pleasant quietude, yet with a secret fury.

"Well, madam?" said Mondel, sternly.

"She has written you a most insulting note?" continued Mrs. Yonkers, looking down to avoid Mondel's penetrating gaze.

"No madam."

"Yes, I know she has; and believe me, Mr. Mondel,"—here Amelia seemed much affected,—"believe me, I cannot bear that you should labor under a delusion which may influence the happiness of your life."

"Well, madam?"

"You think Columbia once loved you?"

"Indeed, madam?"

"Yes, I know you think so; I thought so too. Mr. Mondel, I felt an interest in you. I admired—nay, why should I disguise the truth—I loved you too well not to wish you happy."

Mondel was still silent and unmoved. He allowed the image of Mrs. Yonkers to float before his eyes, her voice to strike upon the tympana of his ears: that was all.

"My dear friend, you were a victim to a delusion, as was I myself."

Mondel gave no sign.

"She never loved you. I do not think she ever loved anybody."

"Never!" said Mondel, still coldly, but assuredly less icily than before—"never?"

"Never," replied Mrs. Yonkers, not perceiving that cold as was the tone of this query, it was the first sign of interest which, as yet, she had succeeded in eliciting. "When I spoke to her of marrying you, she expressed the most violent repugnance; indeed, she expressed her detestation of marriage, and of love in any form."

"Strange," said Mondel.

"Very," said Mrs. Yonkers. "Had you treated her as a friend only, you might have still been received by her. But the moment you assumed the character of a lover, you became a source of painful aversion."

Mondel bowed, with the same unchanged face and listless manner.

"Mr. Mondel, I am sorry for you. I can understand your feelings. It almost broke my heart to see you lavishing your love upon a cold, ungrateful girl, when ——. Oh, Mr. Mondel! Such a soul as yours was never made for solitude. Let us be friends." The unhappy Amelia here took Mondel's hand in her own. It was like the hand of a corpse. "Let us be—as we were before you saw this proud selfish, unsympathizing woman."

"Do not speak of her," said Mondel.

"No. We will not speak of her," said, Amelia, gazing up, imploringly, at the dreamy eyes of the self-made monk. "Let us speak of other things."

Mondel was silent.

"Is there anything that I can do to make you happy?" said Mrs. Yonkers, softly.

"Yes. Go home," was Mondel's uncompromising answer.

Mrs. Yonkers started with an offended air at this outrageous excess of disdainful indifference, on the part of a man to whom she was, harsh as the term may sound, engaged in making love, and that in the most desperate manner.

"I mean," said, Mondel, "that your reputation may suffer. I fear"——

"I fear nothing, with you," replied, Mrs. Yonkers.

Mondel frowned darkly. He rose, took his hat, and said to Amelia, in a tone of cruel coldness—

"Come, madam, allow me the honor of escorting you home."

Mrs. Yonkers shivered with anger and disappointment. She took Mondel's arm, which he did not offer. She felt the necessity of a yet surer revenge. A woman whose love is despised and rejected, becomes a tigress.

In the extremity of his despair, Mondel became satanic. The fate of such a woman as Mrs. Yonkers was to him of no possible interest. What she called love, he did not deign to recognize. He no longer feared her. He only wished to be rid of her annoyance. In dead silence, he accompanied her to her house.

Columbia was standing at an open window.

Amelia saw her, though Mondel did not. Mrs. Yonkers knew the habits of her step-daughter. A gas-lamp fell full upon herself and Mondel. She paused, suddenly, and throwing her arms round Mondel's neck, kissed him passionately. Then leaving him, utterly confounded and amazed by her conduct, ran up the steps which led to the door, and rang the bell violently.

Mondel strode away in a tempest of rage.

"Infernal woman!" he exclaimed—"a thousand curses on her absurd passion! What if Columbia had seen us? But that is not likely. The darkness of the night, the hour, the suddenness of the act. No. It is not likely that we were seen. But the woman is mad! And, after all, what matters now?"

Mondel forgot, for an instant, that he was a monk—that he had eternally resigned all hope of Columbia's love. For many hours he paced the streets that night, and many and strange were the wild speculations he indulged in.

Meanwhile Mrs. Yonkers entered the room from which Columbia had witnessed her parting with Mondel. Her first words were—

"For heaven's sake, do not betray me to your father. I am innocent—I am, indeed. I have just parted with Mr. Mondel for ever. I saw you at the window, Columbia, but I call God to witness that you beheld the first and last kiss ever exchanged between us. Now you know all—you know the secret of his attentions to yourself, of all his mysterious conduct. Pity me! I am indeed, guilty—if to love be guilt alone. But, indeed, indeed, Columbia, I am not criminal, towards Mr. Yonkers!"

And Amelia burst into tears—real tears of fury, disappointment, and baffled passion.

"I shall not betray you, madam," said Columbia loftily, as she swept from the room with the dignity of an imperial queen.

"And so," she said when she reached her own room, "the world is vile enough for such revolting crimes. He loved my step-mother after all, and yet he dared—the wretch, the insolent, the mean-souled traitor!"

And Columbia paced the room, her hair flying in wild disorder, her eyes flashing, her virgin bosom heaving wildly, like the surge of ocean, a very picture of divine Nemesis.

"Dudley Mondel, I despise you," she fiercely wrote with trembling angers, on the fly leaf of her lover's great philosophical work.

Then the poor betrayed, unhappy girl, pressed her hands to her throbbing temples, and exclaimed bitterly, "O God, O God! what is all the genius and wealth of this world when love is for ever absent!"

And as she vainly tried to sob herself to sleep, the blonde poetess murmured distractedly: "And yet I love him still—I love him still!"

————

CHAPTER XVII.

LIFE AND DEATH.

WHEN Mondel returned home, long after midnight, he saw the second yet unopened letter on his table. Without feeling the slightest interest in its contents, he opened, it and read:

"DEAR SIR:—You can have the ship, and the funds are ready.
"ROBERT LAX.
"P.S.—Call to-morrow at ten."

Mondel read this laconic note with imperturbable indifference. What but the day before would have elated him beyond measure, was now a matter of no import.

Robert Lax was a man of immense capital, a great part of which was invested in ocean steamboats. The ship and funds he spoke of were destined to the carrying out of a new motive power discovered by Mondel, in whose eyes the offer amounted to a certain fortune. But what is the ambition of the inventor or the desire for fortune, compared to the all-absorbing interest of a great passion. Columbia lost, all Mondel's daring schemes became, in his eyes, stale, flat and unprofitable. An intellectual languor had seized on his soul, accompanied by a bodily restlessness. What cared he for progress or science, for fame or fortune? His life, within a few hours, had become a purgatory. The long weariness of a life of adventure and contest returned upon him with full force, and he asked himself, as in many a dark hour he had asked before, "Why live to suffer? Why suffer to live?"

With a moody air he once more laid his pistols upon the table—two long duelling pistols which he had reserved for some such desperate emergency. They were already loaded.

"An instant's resolution," thought he, "and all my pains are at an end, and this strange, sensitive, unhappy organization, which men call Dudley Mondel, is a thing of the past, a theme for newspaper paragraphs, a study for the dissecting room on the one hand, and the post mortem critics on the other."

Mondel paced slowly up and down, eyeing the pistols as he passed with a certain gloomy satisfaction. There is an absolute certainty about death that is fascinating to the philosophic mind.

It involves no worldly after-thought. Its results being utterly unknown, must be left to take care of themselves. It is a solution of all difficulties—it is a complete measure, and cannot be improved on. To die is to die, and dead men need to answer no questions.

Still two thoughts occupy the minds of most intending suicides. One is the vain idea of what people will think and say of them afterwards. The other, what will become of themselves in that new world which lies behind the black curtain of shadows which, by men, is called Death.

Mondel took out of a drawer a small pile of manuscript.

"Here," thought he, "are my memoirs. What a pity that I have left off precisely at the most interesting point! Suppose I add a few pages, and send them to Columbia."

This led to a long, dreamy reverie on the beauty, the grace, the ineffable charms of his lost idol.

Finally, though he would have repudiated the suspicion, had any mocking demon whispered it in his ear, a vague shadowy sense of hope began to arise in his soul, and struggle quietly but vigorously for ascendancy with the still dominating thought of self-destruction.

What if Columbia loved him after all? What if she did not yet understand him? Or had misunderstood something he had said? What if Mrs. Yonkers' jealousy had caused her to utter reports to his prejudice? What if he were to write to Columbia and demand—no, entreat—an explanation?

But no, these were idle fancies. There was her letter distinctly repudiating his acquaintance, casting him off with scorn and indifference. No woman who had ever felt a spark of love warm her heart would write so cold and insulting an edict. His pride rebelled, too, against the thought of bending perhaps only to the lash of contempt. He threw down the pen which he had taken up and approached the table on which the pistols were lying.

"I have never truly enjoyed life," said Mondel to himself; "the satisfaction of my highest cravings has ever escaped me. Who shall say that the discovery of the nullity of earthly life and its pleasures is not in itself a step to a superior intellectual state? And yet, O Columbia, adored Columbia! what a paradise might earth have been to me if thou"—Mondel did not complete the sentence in his mind, which dissolved in a vast agonizing attempt to grasp the idea of the immensity of the happiness which he had lost. In this overwhelming thought all minor considerations disappeared; all ideas of writing letters or leaving a written explanation of his conduct, a profession of faith or a formal farewell to his friends, was banished as trivial fancies unworthy of a man earnestly bent upon embarking for an unknown world. With a steady hand Mondel pointed one of the pistols at his heart. Strange fancy! he had the vanity to wish to leave his face intact, in case—absurd supposition!—that Columbia should take it into her head to wish to see his corpse. The pistol was cocked, his finger was on the hair trigger, another instant and Dudley Mondel would have executed his design,——suddenly a deep groan was heard in the Professor's room.

Mondel instinctively deferred his suicidal project in order to fulfil a last duty to humanity. He found the patient in great pain, and was long occupied in attending to him.

"How kind you are!" said the Professor—"and yet, if you knew what I have been!"

"What have you been—a murderer?" said Mondel quietly.

"No—no, not so bad as that; I never killed a man except in fair fight, and I don't call that murder," said the vagabond argumentatively.

"A pirate—a robber—a forger?" said Mondel.

"In that line," said the Professor dismally.

"It is of no consequence," said Mondel cynically; "all men rob, lie and commit acts of brute-force, violence, moral or physical. It is a mere question of form."

"But I wish to—well, to turn over a new leaf when I get well," said the bandit.

"Hardly worth while," murmured the poet.

"I thought it would please you," said the Professor disappointedly; "I wanted to show you my gratitude by devoting myself to your service."

"No one can serve me," said Mondel; "you will never see me again in this world."

"What do you mean, sir?"

"I simply mean that I am going to shoot myself; so don't be alarmed if you hear the report of a pistol presently;"

"Shoot yourself?" said the Professor, "what for?"

"Because I am too unhappy to live—the only reason, I imagine, for which men ever do shoot themselves."

"You, too unhappy to live? then what am I?" said the hard-headed vagabond, who had a blunt sort of logic of his own, which Cope's blow had luckily not deranged. "What am I?"

The tremendous contrast thus suggested, caused Mondel to indulge in a few curious reflections. Men on the verge of suicide, are very apt to reflect curiously.

"Are you hard up?" said the Professor, "people mostly commit suicide for want of money. But hold on till I'm well, and I'll raise the wind for you. No matter how; that is my affair. Men must live. At any rate, I'll take all the risk."

"Then, you would rob for me, my friend?" said Mondel, with a slight rising in the throat; betokening a return to human emotions, which he would fain have repudiated.

"Why not? one good turn deserves another."

"I see you have some sense of social duties and relations," said Mondel, smiling grimly. "Nevertheless, I must leave you. Good night."

"But, sir!" cried the Professor, at his wits' end, "what will become of me if you shoot yourself?"

"True," thought Mondel, "and poor Mrs. Normer! Her position will be very unpleasant; besides, I owe her fifty dollars. Pshaw, what are the paltry obligations of society to a soul about to take a plunge into eternity?"

"Sir, sir," cried the Professor, "consider, I shall be accused of the murder!"

"I will leave a writing to explain," said Mondel.

The Professor relapsed into exhaustion.

Mondel returned to his room, and once more raised his pistol. He pulled the trigger—the hammer descended on the cap—the cap ignited, and no explosion followed! Without an instant's hesitation, Mondel adjusted the second pistol, and immediately fired—with the same result.

"Wonderful!" exclaimed the would-be suicide.

"Not at all; I drew the charges," said a well-known voice.

At this moment the door opened, and Peregrine Cope stood on the threshold.

"Why, how on earth did you enter at this hour?"

"By a very simple magic—by a latch-key which fits your door. I had a presentiment that something was wrong with you."

"How so?"

"You broke your appointment with me, and as you and I have agreed long ago that only snobs break appointments, I knew there was cause for it. I have been at a party till now, and coming home, I felt an unaccountable curiosity to learn what had happened to you."

"Excuse me," said Mondel, "I really forgot you; as to what has happened, I have been simply sentenced, and the execution would have taken place, but for your well-meant interference, for which I regret not to be able to thank you."

"Tell me all about it?" said Cope.

Mondel told his tale. It is in such cases an inexpressible relief to confide in the sympathy of a real friend.

Peregrine Cope said all that ingenuity could suggest to revive the hopes of his friend. "All I ask is time," said this sage counsellor, after a long conversation. "Let me make the lady's acquaintance, and find out the secret cause of her conduct—meanwhile, be sure and see Robert Lax to-morrow. Let us die fighting at any rate. You cannot marry without means, and literature is the devil. Fix the capitalist, and leave me to watch the lady. Good night!"

And Cope departed as noiselessly as he had entered, after extorting a promise from Mondel, to defer all extreme measures till they had again conversed on the subject.

Mondel, who had eaten nothing all day, but a slice of toast at breakfast, fell, dressed as he was, upon the sofa-bed which he occupied since the Professor had become his guest, and soon fell into an uneasy slumber, full of those strange, vivid, fantastic dreams, which come only in their perfection, under circumstances of intense cerebral excitement.

In all these dreams Columbia figured as the leading actress, and wonderful was the variety of parts in which she ever fascinated her audience with equal dexterity. A grand theatre is dream-land, and one in which some splendid dramas are represented! The best of it is, that a private box costs nothing, and that all the actors are well up in their parts, whilst the scenery is always effective, and the répertoire absolutely inexhaustible. Although Mondel shot himself over and over again, during this night of restless fantasies, he was rather surprised to find himself in perfectly good preservation at ten o' clock on the following morning, expounding to Robert Lax the necessities and requirements of his new engines. As for the Professor, he was easily persuaded that Mondel's eccentric conversation on the previous night was a mere joke of the latter.

We may as well state here that before Mondel's ship and its new engines were ready for trial, the Professor had perfectly recovered his health, and proved a most valuable aid to Mondel in the minor arrangements of his vessel. But the retreat of the pirate's children he utterly failed in discovering. And Sally Smith had relapsed into the universal gulf of Smithdom, and no more to be found. Probably she had left the city, and taken the children with her.

Intense occupation, no doubt, deadened the sense of his loss to our adventurous lover, yet could the image of Columbia never be said to be absent from his mind.

Peregrine Cope, though he amused his friend with news of Columbia's looks and sayings, was constrained to report, that at the mention of his (Mondel's) name, she immediately discontinued or changed the conversation.

Several times the two unfortunate lovers passed one another in the street, but Mondel's bow was met by an averted look, and no accident occurred to provoke or justify a closer interview.

It seemed as if these two noble spirits were separated by a vast wall of crystal, impassable, yet transparent. Of this wall Amelia Yonkers was the triumphant architect—she and her guilty admirer and accomplice, John Berkeley the counterfeiter.

————

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE GAMBLERS.

IT was still early in the forenoon, on a fine dry dusty summer's day, that a plainly but fashionably-attired gentleman entered an open doorway in a house not far from the Park, ascended a staircase, passed through an ante-room, past a negro, who vaguely protested against the liberty, and, without making a sign, or uttering a word, walked into a large room devoted to the blind goddess Fortune.

In the centre of the room stood a faro-table, with its thirteen cards systematically arranged. Thirteen is considered an unlucky number, and when the Devil first invented cards no doubt he had that superstition in view. And faro is an unlucky game for those who play against the bank; especially for confiding individuals.

In this great country talent makes itself felt, and a "smart" man soon rises from the humblest obscurity to positions of comparative magnificence.

We beg the reader, therefore, not to be too much amazed at recognizing in the well-dressed, well-oiled and well-washed gentleman who officiated as banker and dealer, our quondam vagabond, Mr. Robert Mombcross, or Confidence Bob, whom not long ago we saw succumb so ingloriously to the valor of the illustrious O'Bouncer, maternally descended, as we know, from the imperial house of Fitzgammon.

By his side, and occupied with the cash box and counters, sat the sharp-eyed Slinker. Around the table were divers gentlemen of the great gambling fraternity, with the queerest physiognomies, and the quietest and easiest manners.

At first sight, the gambler and the trading speculator resemble one another. But the vulture-like greed, and cold pitiless selfishness which causes so many faces in Wall street to resemble birds of prey, or venomous reptiles, is rarely seen amongst gamblers. The gambler has travelled, has seen ups and downs in life, has experienced the necessity of friendship. He is at open war with society—he cheats in a manner professedly. He does not try to humbug you into the idea that he is an honest man.

Gamblers may, as a general rule, be divided into two great classes—insiders or swindlers, outsiders or dupes. The first swindler—I here consider cheating as a fine art—is he, who wearing a quiet frank air, says little or nothing, and, above all, avoids looking as if he knew more than another. The most egregious dupe is he who has the will, but lacks the ingenuity to cheat. Such men are always terribly cunning, and much given to assert the utter fallacy of an attempt to take them in. Of course no really accomplished gambler ever even contemplates, much less talks of, such a casualty; He may be robbed or victimized as a friend, but cheated?—impossible!

The British nobility and gentry have brought the gambling swindle perhaps to higher perfection than any other class or nation, in the development of their exquisitely rascally turf system.

The French Bourse, or Stock Exchange, is, however, by some considered admirable, and the King or Emperor there, as the case may be, and their ministers, aided by Rothschild and the bankocrats, find dishonesty the best policy to an extent almost incredible to the uninitiated.

America—putting the Presidential elections aside—America excels mainly in downright gambling proper. Although Germany still maintains public and authorized tables, it is only in America that gamblers can be said to form a distinct and important class of the community.

This dangerous non-producing class swarms on the Mississippi River, in New Orleans, New York, and all great cities. It is a heavy additional tax on the working part of the community. The gambling resembles the banking-system or swindle; it is the cunning of the few playing, with every chance in its favor, against the ignorance of the many.

The pertinacity of ignorance is wonderful!

Expose all the tricks of gamblers, and the utter stupidity of frequenting gambling-houses to-day, and no diminution of their custom would be perceived by the "bankers" to-morrow.

Explain that unproductive capital bearing interest is a ridiculous fallacy, a gross imposture or practical joke; in short, that banking is a merely well-planned system of fraud, and who will understand you, though your explanation be as clear as crystal, and as logical as Euclid?"

But the banker is a superior trickster to the gambler, for the gambler is content to win your money, without asking you to pay more than one per centage for the use of his counters!

In a community of highly-educated men, the proposition to gamble or start a bank, on the plan now prevailing, would simply be laughed at.

But to show the burlesque extravagance of labor allowing its blood to be sucked by these two classes of vampires, let us suppose a case sufficiently limited to admit of mathematical reasoning.

Ten men with their families inhabit an island containing ten hundred acres of land. Nine work, and cultivate, sow, plant, weave, quarry, fish and produce to their utmost ability. One turns banker, and, issues, for purposes of exchange, one hundred bills, each representing an acre of land. The security is unquestionable, the land of certain value. The other nine pay him interest for the use of his bills, which they use as a means of exchange amongst themselves. The banker lives on part of his income by exchanging it for labor and produce, but he finds that he can live on the value of five acres—there remain five due to him. This must be paid him in land. At the end of twenty years he has two hundred acres, and supposing the rest of the community to have prospered equally, each of his fellow-islanders will possess a fraction less than eighty-nine acres. In this calculation, also, I have omitted to consider compound interest. In reality, if the banker lived to be an old man, and speculated cleverly, he might very well become the possessor of the whole island, and its inhabitants his slaves. In the same way a cunning gambler would win the whole island at faro, or rouge et noir, with infallible certainty. The reign of bankers, speculators and gamblers has succeeded that of feudal lords. It is equally oppressive and absurd. In England and France it has become a bondage of the most agonizing description. In America it would soon arrive at the same point but for the resource of flight from the horrors of civilized barbarism, which our extent of territory or vast tracts of unoccupied lands offer, and for the grand army of philosophers who even now are (thanks to the free speech and free press of a free country) disseminating those mighty and radical truths which, ere long, will be seen to prove the banker with his antitype the forger, as vile an excrescence of ignorant childhood in thought, as the professional gambler or the representative form of government.

It is time to speak when in our great cities a poet or a workman—that is, a simple "son of man" can scarcely find a spot whereon to lay his head, owing to the exorbitant rents artificially forced up by the sham-money conspiracy. It is time to speak when, instead of working and producing even the slightest benefit to society at large, whole classes of men (as in the old world of tyranny and pauperism) devote themselves to the mean and useless careers of the banker, stock-broker and gambler! It is time to speak when, as in degraded Europe, the imposture called government is carried on by corrupt so-called majorities in defiance of individual sovereignty and common sense; that a corruptly-elected President and a corruptly-elected Legislature, with their lazy followers, may divide that other Old World villainy the budget, derived from national taxation (that is plunder) amongst them!

No wonder men turn thieves, gamblers, anything, to escape the dire fate of the workman—that is, the slave, the drudge, the pauper, the victim!

No wonder poets die in despair, or wander ragged and penniless in a land which the curses of government, bankers and desperadoes yet desolate. But my dear slant-browed friends in Wall street, my very eloquent friends in Congress, and my very devil-may-care friends in the countless petty robbers' caves called gambling-hells, all over the land, a day is at hand when men will begin to suspect, as we of the advanced guard know, that in an educated community where every man is armed, and ready to defend his liberty, where public opinion can be expressed without check, it may not be absolutely necessary to pay a crowd of men called a government, to prevent us from eating one another, or a foreign foe from eating us. Some suspicion may then dawn that letters can be forwarded without a government post-office, and that public lands can be more justly appropriated to the use of those who have nothing, than to the profit of the grasping and idle speculator. It may also prove that, in an enlightened society, public justice is quite as effectual in repressing crime as public law. In a word, it may prove that public liberty is quite as natural a system as public government, and that the Presidential, Congressional and Senatorial parody of King, Lords and Commons, was no such grand invention after all!

In those days, men may also suspect the feasibility of giving one another credit, and employing a circulating medium to represent value, without paying highly respectable bankers three or four times over for the privilege of using their very valuable autographs. In those days, the idea that a man should first lend his money, and receive interest for it from the State (deposit stock), then issue notes upon it, and lend it a second time, a third, a fourth time, at interest to the community, will appear rather too funny to be realized!

Finally, I do not think in those days that professional gamblers will find many persons ignorant enough to sit down deliberately to play a game in which the chances are against them to begin with, and all possibility of cheating on the side of the banker.

————

CHAPTER XIX.

OLD LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE.

THEY were a queer set of faces round the table at which Confidence Bob presided. There was a sallow, orientally-visaged gentleman, with a long nose, half-closed sleepy eyes, and a neatly trimmed moustache, who looked the personification of incapacity-to-be-surprised-at-anything. There was a light-haired, close-cropped, close-shaven, bull-necked young man, whose air of resolute roguery was Anglo-Saxon to the very marrow. There was a big red-whiskered Irishman, with large coarse features, and small eyes, surrounded by creases, whose soul appeared to have had hard work to make the body a fit medium for the acute observation required in a gambler's existence. Then there was a clerical-looking man, of methodical mien, in a very high shirt collar, with large silver-rimmed spectacles, and grey hair—an old stager, slow but sure; not to mention a dusky Spaniard, who might have sat for a portrait of Mephistopheles. All these were gamblers by profession, agglomerated, heaven knows how, around the newly-started bank.

Most of them had queer stories to tell of wonderful tricks, runs of luck, dire catastrophies, and revolver-and-bowie-knife adventures, which, as a general rule, happened "when they were in California."

"When I was in California"—that is the starting point with a gambler. A gambler who has not visited the golden shores of the Pacific, is not thought much of by his tribe; unless he has the wonderful merit of being in funds. And gamblers, like the rest of the world, revere success above all other virtues. There is a savage logic in this religion of the trader and the gambler. Of internal forces they cannot judge, from the weakness of their intellectual totalities. Their reasoning and imaginative powers, being feebly developed, perception of present fact governs them. What they see they believe.

The moment the well-dressed stranger entered the room, Confidence Bob recognized his superior demon and financial lord and master—the Alterer.

Let us still call him by the name with which habit has made us familiar.

No sign of recognition was exchanged between Lucifer and his imps. By this time they were well drilled in their duty.

The other gamblers eyed the new-comer with curiosity. There was something in his keen bright eye that awed them into a vague admiration. He did not look like a pigeon come to be plucked. Nevertheless he began to play, staking fifty dollars at a time. In ten minutes, he had won five hundred. The uninitiated band looked aghast. A third of their leader's professed capital was gone already. To them the Alterer was an utter stranger.

The bull-necked Anglo-Saxon, by the time another five hundred dollars had been transferred by Confidence Bob to his mysterious patron, grew quite nervous, and called to mind a pleasing reminiscence of a "house" with which he had been connected, of a lucky stranger, like the present, and a desperate skirmish—ending in a half inanimate body thrown recklessly from a back window, and a general escapade, or, as the Mexicans would say, estampede, of the whole band from the establishment.

But Confidence Bob remained unmoved. Presently the run of luck changed, and the stranger lost hundred after hundred. Meanwhile, a new player appeared upon the scene. He was a tall, cadaverous-looking, powerful man, with a ragged beard, moustaches and hair, which, from the mixture of yellow and grey, appeared of a greenish color. His eyes were light blue, and gleamed with a steady lurid brightness. His eyebrows were dark, arched and tufted. His nose was long and aquiline. His mouth a line, the lips being so thin and compressed as to be nearly imperceptible. His jaws were lean, his forehead high, narrow and wrinkled. His figure was gaunt, his neck scraggy, and his limbs long and loosely hung. His age was perhaps five and forty. The deep lines of his face appeared to be rather the result of care and thought than of age. His dress was that of a beggar.

A miserable frock-coat of brown cloth, stained, threadbare and torn, was buttoned across his chest in order to conceal to the utmost a dirty blue-check shirt, and a tattered vest, on which, five buttons out of six were wanting. His pantaloons were black; but what a black! what a miserable, shiny, napless, whitish pretence to blackness! what a meeting of extremes! His boots without soles, with heels worn down to the quick,—well, well, it was a sad joke to call them boots at all! They were indeed on their last legs, for how they could be taken off and put on again, even once more, without going to pieces and utterly perishing, was an inconceivable problem. On his head, to crown all, was a broad-brimmed green felt-hat, the very incarnation of shapeless limpness, and unrecorded antiquity.

Yet, this poverty-stricken wretch was a gambler, and a gambler too of no common order. He was well-known to several of the men present.

"Here comes old Latitude and Longitude," said the long-nosed gambler.

"'E come yesterday," said the Slinker, "and lost a dollar and an 'arf."

"What's a narf?" said the bull-necked young man.

"Give me counters for these," said the ragged gambler, cautiously handing across the table, a dollar note and silver to the amount of two dollars more.

Confidence Bob handed him six fifty cent counters, and the strange being commenced playing away, not the earnings, but the beggings of a week, with a look of the most intense eagerness.

In a few minutes he had doubled his capital. He staked boldly on the knave, and three times running the knave did not deceive him, even knaves know pity. He had won twenty-four dollars. He transferred his stake to the ace, and still won—who trusts to number one is generally fortunate. He pushed his forty-eight dollars over to the queen. The faithless sex betrayed his confidence. He lost. Confidence Bob swept away his pile of counters.

"If I had only coppered!" muttered the ragged gambler, "I was nearly doing it. Ah! all is gone, and I have not eaten to-day."

"Take this," said the Alterer, thrusting a half dollar piece into his hand unperceived; and then even Berkeley's hard nature somewhat relenting at the aspect of the unlucky one, he whispered, "I will add a five dollar bill, if you will promise not to play with it."

"No," whispered the beggar hoarsely, "give me a three, and let me try once more!"

The maker of money in a moment of caprice handed the desired bill to the stranger, who speedily staked and lost it, as well as the fifty-cent piece, with unwavering fanaticism.

"You are out of luck to-day, Mr. Peter Quartz," said Confidence Bob, on whom the fierce blue eyes of the ragged gambler were fixed vacantly.

"Out of luck!" growled the beggar, "yes, I am out of luck, and yet what are all your paltry gains compared to the treasure which is mine. If you but knew the latitude and longitude!"

"Well; what if we did?" said the long-nosed gambler, coolly puffing a cigar.

"You would know where the gold is—that is all!"

By this time the Alterer found himself a loser by some trifling sum, and having played his part and made his observations, lounged carelessly out of the room.

The ragged gambler followed him closely.

"Sir!" said the mendicant, "I know where gold is to be had for the taking, I know the latitude and longitude—if you can aid me, if a ship can be obtained, I will share with you wealth without limit—thousands—millions"——

"My friend," said the counterfeiter, "I am no ship-owner."

"But I offer you the secret of unbounded wealth!" said the beggar earnestly.

"Which I already possess," said the Alterer, gloomily.

"But it is of gold—solid gold—gold by the hundred weight, by the ton, by the ship-load, that I speak!—It is to be had for the fetching."

"I can dispense with the trouble of fetching," said the grim jester. "My friend, did you ever hear of the philospher's stone and the alchymists?"

"What miserable folly!" groaned the ragged gambler; "dreams, visions, insanity?"

"Look at me!" said the Alterer.

"I look."

"Good; you see an alchymist before you."

"What! you can make gold of lead, of iron, of some baser metal?"

"Of yet cheaper materials."

"To any extent!—But this is folly."

"Without limit, save my will. Here, take a quarter, and dine in the devil's name," said Berkeley striding hastily away. "It is useless to give the poor wretch money," thought the counterfeiter, "he would only return and throw it into the hellish cash-box. He is evidently a lunatic, whose mania is some sunken treasure or fabulous Eldorado."

"Fool!" said the beggar to himself, "fool! to waste time in jesting when I had half made up my mind to offer my secret at a bargain. But it is still mine!" he murmured proudly, "and no other man living knows the latitude and longitude but myself"

————

CHAPTER XX.

GOLD.

"COLUMBIA," said Mr. Yonkers one evening, when taking tea at home with his daughter, Mrs. Yonkers being absent on a visit, "Columbia, what has become of your literary friend, Mr. Mondel?"

"I do not know."

"He has not been here lately?"

"No, papa."

"Why does he not come? I wished to see him. Robert Lax tells me they are fitting up a ship with new engines, that will give steam the go-by. If anybody but Lax went into it I should not believe in it. But Lax is a smart man—very. You have seen Robert Lax?"

"Yes, papa."

Columbia spoke in a sweet, subdued tone, endeavoring to conceal her listlessness and depression from her father, whose rough inquisition she dreaded, notwithstanding his unbounded affection for her, as testified from her earliest youth, in the humoring of all her delicate tastes and caprices, no matter how little Mr. Yonkers was capable of understanding them.

"They say Robert Lax is worth three millions," said Mr. Yonkers.

No Indian worshipping his three-headed god could have possibly felt or expressed by his looks a deeper reverence than did Harrison B. Yonkers, by the solemn gravity of his tone, imply for this three-millioned commercialist.

"His daughter is a fine girl," pursued Mr. Yonkers, reflectively—"a great catch for this scribbling friend of yours, if old Lax gives him a chance. Why; Columbia, you look as if you were not listening to me. I say that Mr. Mondel might make his fortune by marrying Julia Lax, by a much shorter cut than inventing steam-engines."

Columbia was silent. Her father's careless talk threw her into a train of the saddest and most bitter reflections. In spite of her conviction of his unworthiness, she still felt an undefinable interest in the destinies of her adventurous lover. Strange to say, even the revolting secret of his by-gone intrigues with her step-mother did not wound her so deeply as the idea of his irrevocable union with Robert Lax's heiress. A woman who has once loved a man finds considerable difficulty in imagining that another woman can be otherwise than flattered by his preference. Columbia knew that, except in point of wealth, all comparison between herself and Julia Lax was preposterous. She had frequently encountered the heiress in question at evening parties. Miss Lax was what men usually designate as an uncommonly fine girL She had a tall, splendidly-developed figure, fine dark eyes and abundant ringlets, and was decidedly one of the best-dressed women in New York. It is true that she was somewhat stupid—perhaps even slightly vulgar in her manners, but then—her father had three millions, and Mondel was unprincipled and ambitious.

"Why, Columbia, you do not seem to relish this idea of a match between your poetical friend and Miss Lax?"

I assure you papa," said Columbia, "it is a matter of perfect indifference to me whether Mr. Mondel marries Miss Lax or not."

"Indeed?" said Mr. Yonkers. "Now, do you know it occurred to me the other day that you did take some interest in Mr. Mondel's matrimonial proceedings?"

"You are quite mistaken, papa, you are quite mistaken," said Columbia, coldly.

"I am glad to hear it," said Mr. Yonkers, "these writing men are never worth a cent, and make uncommonly bad husbands. In nine cases out of ten, they are roués and spendthrifts. I heard the other day of one of them who deserted his wife and ran away with one of the female horse-riders from the circus. I never thought much of your scribblers," pursued Mr. Yonkers. "There was Fox, I recollect, who used to edit the Atlantic Journal, and levied black-mail upon every one whose credit was at all shakey."

"But, papa," said Columbia, "you surely do not confound Mr. Mondel with such miserable creatures. He is bad enough, no doubt"——

Columbia paused; she felt that she was about to commit herself.

Mr. Yonkers, however, with the persistent obstinacy that characterizes some men, in pursuing a subject to the death—or, as journalists say—running it into the ground, returned once more to the charge.

"You see, Columbia, as you are now three and twenty, and have refused so many offers from men of the highest respectability and position, I took it into my head that as you were so fond of books and literature, perhaps nothing but a book-reading and book-making man would suit you. Now, what I want is to see you happy. So don't be afraid of telling me the truth. If this versifying gentleman pleases you, say so, and money shan't stand in the way of your happiness. I do not suppose he is worth a cent, but he seems a straightforward, manly fellow—I met him at Robert Lax's to-day, and had some talk with him—this ship of his may turn out a great speculation, after all. So, if my suspicions are correct, as Mrs. Yonkers is out of the way, just tell me all about it, and how it stands between you."

Columbia, touched by this kindness and generosity on the part of her father, rose gently, put her arm round his neck, kissed his rubicund cheek, and said in a very low voice—so low that it was almost a whisper—

"Thank you, my dear father, thank you for your kind intentions; but you are quite mistaken. Mr. Mondel is nothing to me beyond a mere acquaintance—nothing more: absolutely nothing."

"Well, well," said Mr. Yonkers, "say no more about it Colly; I went on the principle that birds of a feather flock together, but I see that two of a trade can't agree is your motto. By-the-by, a curious thing happened to-day. A mad begging fellow came to my office, and asked me if I dealt in bullion, and whether I wanted to know where it was to be had by the ton for the taking. He said he knew the latitude and longitude, and offered to go halves with me if I would fit up a ship, and send him after it. It was only a three months' voyage, I think, he said. He looked as ragged as an Irish emigrant, though his face and talk were American. I gave him a dollar to get rid of him. It's astonishing what queer people come boring a man who has money with their wild-goose schemes. Imagine a fellow in rags coolly asking me to risk ten thousand dollars on his bare word! Why, a man came to me one day, and offered to make diamonds out of coal."

"But, papa," said Columbia, "the chemists at Paris have done it."

"I don't know about that," said Mr. Yonkers; "but this speculative friend of mine said it took a ton of coal to make a square inch of diamond. I advanced him the money to set up his furnaces, and I never saw him again from that day to this. No, no," said Mr. Yonkers, "I'm not to be taken in by your golden romances—though I suspect the fellow was mad, and I'm not sorry I gave the dollar."

At this moment Mrs. Yonkers entered.

By a curious coincidence, not three minutes elapsed before Mr. John Berkeley was announced.

"Ah! Mr. Berkeley, how are you?" said Yonkers. "Of course you have heard that there is a rise in the —— stock, you lucky dog, you. What a fool I was to sell out the day before yesterday. However, I don't care much for your stocks now; I stick to the solids."

"Gold is the true metal," said the Alterer; and, turning his bright eye on Mr. Yonkers, he gave the rich man a very peculiar look.

It was the sort of look which a crouching tiger throws on the fated buffalo from his jungle.

In that look was expressed Mr. Harrison B. Yonkers' destiny.

————

CHAPTER XXI.

THE BEGGAR AND THE POET.

THERE are some faces which attract confidence. Mondel's was one of them. Though somewhat stern, there was a certain noble gentleness about its ordinary expression, which caused strangers to feel secure against a haughty or careless repulse of their advances. To this peculiarity the poet was indebted for many a strange confession, and wonderful history recounted to him by people whom he beheld for the first time, and often never set eyes on again.

It is by listening to the life-stories of the obscure, and comparing them with the biographies of the great, that a great writer forms his gallery of studies, and completes his knowledge of human nature.

Mondel, as we have seen, was a great student of character. No wonder that his attention was attracted to a face so striking as that of the ragged gambler, with whose general appearance the reader is already familiar.

It was in the park at the Battery.

Mondel was looking at the water. His birth upon the ocean had left in his mind an unbounded love of the sea, which, but for the yet more potent influence of beauty, would have infallibly made a sailor of the poet.

When a boy, he was a hundred times on the eve of running away, and trying his fortune on the great waters, but for some sweet bright-eyed little girl, whose loss he could not bear to contemplate. Mondel often said that he could not recollect the time when he was not in love.

At six years of age he had quite a passion for a young lady with ringlets that hung to her waist, and a blue sash.

At ten, he was quite serious about the matter, and promised marriage to a blonde syren of nine and a half, but quite as precocious in sentiment as himself.

At fourteen, he grew desperately enamored of a third young enchantress, and wrote poems to her, in which "tresses" rhymed to "caresses," "charms" to "arms," and "grace" to "embrace." Finally, before his going abroad to complete his education, the engagement was solemnly ratified.

At fifteen—O fickleness of man!—we find him "compromised" with a young French lady's-maid; and at sixteen, really in the vortex of a grande passion for a German baron's daughter, which ends in a fever—a declaration—an interchange of vows—a correspondence—and three years of hope, dreams, despair and poetry.

Love makes the poet—what else?

Thus, Venus, daughter of the sea, watched over the destinies of her sea-born votary, and vowed that their common father—Ocean—should not deprive her temple of so ardent a hierophant.

Nevertheless, Mondel had been frequently at sea, and was not only a voyager of the deep, but was well versed in all the mysteries of a ship's rigging and management. In technical parlance, he "knew the ropes," and how to splice them. He could go aloft, was a good hand at steering, and possessed that rarest quality in a landsman, a perfect theoretical and practical knowledge of the science of navigation.

As he had, most certainly, never spent above three or four months of his life on shipboard, his acquisition of the above-mentioned knowledge was a mystery to his acquaintance. But Mondel had acquired, in fact, more than a smattering of the arts and sciences of men. Vast and shadowy projects had moved like phantoms in the abysses of his all-grasping soul. It was his business to know what life meant, and he knew it.

He stood looking at the water, and watching the white sails of the vessels as they glittered in the rays of the setting sun, when he suddenly perceived that a man was watching him with a singular interest. The ragged gambler—for as we have already intimated, it was he and no other—presently approached the poet, and said bluntly, yet humbly:—

"Sir, will you give me a dollar?"

"With pleasure," said Mondel, inclining his body courteously towards the strange mendicant, "but I have not a dollar in my pocket."

"I am sorry to hear it!" said the beggar gravely.

"Your sorrow is natural," said, Mondel, "pray accept my apologies for detaining you, but I must first get change for a half-eagle, which is all I have about me. I regret that I cannot spare more than a dollar at the moment, or you should have it all."

"Do not mention it," said the mendicant, rather puzzled by the singular humor of the grave gentleman; "a dollar is all I want."

"Perhaps you would not mind going across the road, and getting change?" said Mondel quietly.

The beggar looked at Mondel with an intensity that gave a wizard air to his marked and wrinkled visage.

"Are you joking?" said he, half angrily, half admiringly.

"Not in the least," said Mondel "here is the piece of gold."

"I will return directly," said the beggar. "You believe that I shall return?"

"I am too poor to afford to lose four dollars," said Mondel; "besides, I have reasons for knowing that you will return."

"Pray what are they?"

"Your language is good, you have an intelligent brow, and a strong frame. You are nearly fifty, and"——

"A beggar, and in rags," completed the mendicant coolly.

"Precisely."

"Well, sir?"

"Well, sir, you must be either stupidly honest, or you are a rogue who has sadly neglected his opportunities."

"Wait till I return; and we will speak further, with your consent sir," said the beggar.

Mondel waited patiently.

A quarter of an hour—half an hour—an hour elapsed, and no beggar reäppeared.

The great physiognomist looked at his watch every minute. At length he resolved to return home, ill satisfied at having emptied his purse in order to try an experiment in human nature.

But just as he was about to leave the park, a hand lightly touched his arm

It was the mendicant.

"I thought you had forgotten me?" said Mondel.

"I have done worse; I have robbed you," said the beggar.

"How so?"

"I have lost your money."

"Lost it?"

"I have gambled it away. Oh! if I had not coppered on the queen! Zounds! I had run up to a hundred and sixty, when the devil possessed me to copper. I'll never trust to a presentiment again!"

"Nor I," said Mondel.

"You despise me; you regard me as a thief?" said the mendicant gambler despondently.

"I do not despise you. As for your being a thief, it is your misfortune. Most men are thieves when opportunity offers suitable to their idiosyncrasies."

"You do not then wish to punish me for stealing your money?"

"No;" said Mondel, "I do not believe in punishment. I trusted you, it was my own weakness."

"Sir!" said the beggar, standing erect, and confronting Mondel with the air of one Grand Seigneur facing another, "you are a great man! May I ask your name?"

"Dudley Mondel."

"Mondel, the poet."

"Some critics call me so."

"Are you rich or poor?"

"Too poor to continue your acquaintance I fear," said Mondel, puzzled by the audacious impudence of the beggar.

"Poet Mondel, you are a millionaire!" said the beggar, with the air of a Jupiter, looking calmly into the eyes of his victim.

"In petto," said Mondel "though"—he murmured—"if my ship succeed"——

"Your ship—you have a ship?" cried the beggar.

"One that can cut water like a sword-fish!" replied Mondel, still wondering what his curious acquaintance was driving at.

"You are a prince!" said the beggar—" an imperial prince!"

"Are you mad?" said Mondel, looking sternly at the beggar, but detecting nothing resembling lunacy in his exaltation.

"Fools say so," replied the mendicant scornfully; "Hear my story, and judge for yourself. My name is Peter Quartz. I am a gambler, it is the vice of my destiny. For twenty-seven years I have begged and gambled and starved in rags! Why? Because I knew all the time that I possessed the secret of unbounded wealth. For twenty-seven years I have dreamed of the realization of my power, of the possession of the treasures which I, and I alone, know to exist in such limitless profusion. For twenty-seven years I have gambled daily in the hope of some day making one grand haul, and fitting out the enterprise, which has been the vision of my life. Never have I communicated to a human being the secret which has been my curse. To-day I have met my master. When I gambled away your money I made a vow, and that vow was, that if I lost, my secret should be yours; it shall—you shall know it in an instant. Listen: latitude A B longitude X Y! There! You are a millionaire of millionaires, a king of kings—the Golden Island is yours. I give it to you—to you and to your heirs for ever!"

Mondel looked steadily at the ragged enthusiast, and saw that he spoke sincerely and sanely; It was given to the man of genius to recognize what, to the cunning counterfeiter and the shrewd merchant was denied. What is the knowledge of the world but the knowledge of man's nature? For the first time for seven-and-twenty years, Peter Quartz, the supposed lunatic gambler found a patient listener to his extravagances.

————

CHAPTER XXII.

PETER QUARTZ.

"TWENTY-SEVEN years ago," began the beggar, when seated after supper in Mondel's study, "twenty-seven years ago, a ship was wrecked one dark and stormy night, on the coast of a small island in the South Pacific Ocean. In that ship I, Peter Quartz, was a passenger. The captain was my relative, and some minutes before the ship ran on the rocks, he happened to tell me the latitude and longitude which, as I was very tired of the voyage, and very anxious to reach port, I most particularly noticed at the time, and ever afterwards most carefully remembered. Indeed, I was still poring over the ship's position on the chart, in the cabin, when we felt the ship strike. A few hours later the Argo (that was her name) went to pieces, and I being the best swimmer on board, though no sailor, was, so far as I have ever been able to ascertain, the only one on board who escaped.

"Imagine my horror on discovering with the light of morning that the island was one vast barren rock rising towards a crater in the centre, at the bottom of which, but utterly inaccessible from the perpendicularity of the descent was, strange to say, a large lake of water. There was not a vestige of animal or vegetable life on the island, which was altogether scarcely two miles in diameter. But my horror at this discovery was soon equalled by my amazement and temporary delight at discovering that the whole mineral mass was impregnated with gold to a degree never known in any mines yet discovered. In some places, tons and tons of pure gold were seen in masses streaking the less brilliant quartz, and glittering in the sunshine, whilst huge round lumps of the pure metal, as if dropped molten from lofty precipices, like shot from the summit of a short tower, were to be picked up on one side of the mountain to an extent which defied all computation. I myself saw several as large as ordinary melons. But my amazement did not last long. I reflected that, to a man on a desert island, gold was a useless commodity. There being neither food, shelter nor water attainable, I was but too glad to take the first chance of escape from this El Dorado of horror which offered itself. The wreck had entirely disappeared. It was almost a dead calm. The burning sun fell cruelly on my uncovered head, when I suddenly descried a dark object on the rocks at some little distance from the shore. It was the smallest of our boats. I succeeded in launching it, and shipping some stores which had been drifted ashore from the wreck, I eventually put to sea with perhaps five hundred pounds weight of gold as ballast. A strong breeze sprang up, I drifted perhaps a thousand miles to the eastward, and was capsized by a gust of wind within two hundred yards of a Spanish brig which picked me up almost starved to death, and master of the most valuable secret in the world!

Unfortunately, my mind gave way from the physical sufferings I had undergone, and when I awoke in the seamen's hospital at Valparaiso, to the possession of my reason, no one regarded my miserable attempts to express in Spanish the wonderful discovery I had made. A Yankee captain shipped me as a green-hand, and in process of time I reached New Orleans. There I was utterly without means, and fell into the most deplorable poverty. In vain I told my story to hundreds of men. All shook their heads, all either believed me mad or monomaniac. One only was tempted to try the adventure. But after making some preparations, the idea struck him, that I might not have remembered rightly the latitude and longitude. In vain I offered to demonstrate my wonderful memory for figures, and declared that I could point out on the chart the point which my acute sense of locality had indelibly impressed upon my mind. Besides, I was always in a peculiar dilemma. If I described the true aspect of the island, it was treated as a fairy tale or madman's dream. If I moderated my description, it was of late nothing better than California after all. In a word, for twenty-seven years, I have vainly striven to find a man to believe the simple story of a wrecked man, because to a world of Mammon-worshippers the story appears too good to be true, as if Nature could not as easily lavish gold as iron, or any other nominally less valuable substance!"

"Then you never communicated the latitude and longitude to any one?" said Mondel.

"Never," replied the gambler, "though I have often offered to do so for the merest trifle, say a thousand dollars in the extremity of my misery."

"Did you ever try Wall street?" said Mondel, ironically.

"From end to end. Folly and meanness!" replied the gambler bitterly.

"Yes, they are tolerably blind. They can neither tell an honest man from a knave, nor a man of genius from a fool. Yet, they have built my ship, and paid for my engines!"

"How did you persuade them?"

"By humoring their pigmy souls. By calling a grand invention a modest improvement. By talking of a revolution in machinery as a slight simplification. By coming down, in a word, to the level of their vulgar and uncultivated intelligences. One Robert Lax is my tool; he knows nothing, understands nothing, and obeys my will, because he fancies that he outwits and patronizes me. Like all your men who grow rich by trading speculation, he has a sort of cunning which is almost an instinct of self-interest. There is, however, one thing that his cunning will scarcely teach him to suspect; and that will be the cruise of our new ship to this isle of gold which you report of."

"And you believe me?" said the beggar eagerly.

"No!"

"You doubt my word?"

"No!"

"What then?"

"I doubt your sanity and memory. I am a skeptic, but an investigating skeptic. I will inquire."

"Inquire? Inquire of whom? Since none but myself know the island's existence?"

"That is my affair," said Mondel. "Let me see you to-morrow. Here is money for present necessities. Good night!"

"Good night! may God defend you from doubting me!" said the ragged gambler piously.

Mondel sent for Mrs. Normer.

"My dear madam," said he, "I wish to magnetize you to-night."

"You know I dislike it."

"It is to ascertain a fact which will make all our fortunes."

"I submit, but do not exhaust me."

Mrs. Normer was a remarkable somnambulist. Her presentiments even in her ordinary state were wonderfully correct. She was a prophetess if ever there was one, and in a state of clairvoyance, her vision was transcendent. Mondel looked steadily at her, made a few passes, smoothed her hair, and murmured in a gentle but imperious tone the word "Sleep!"

In a few minutes, the eyes of the somnambulist opened with that glassy look peculiar to magnetized persons, and Mondel put his all-important question.

"Yes," replied the somnambulist, "yes, I see the island—it is gold, all gold—but, in the centre, there is"——

At this moment, they were interrupted by the arrival of Cope, and despite his interest in the question he was propounding, Mondel's thoughts were so distracted by the idea of news from Columbia, that he did not hear the remainder of the reply. A new idea struck him—he signed to Cope to excuse him, and put, in a low voice, a new question to the somnambulist.

After a long pause, the somnambulist replied, as if with a great effort, her brows painfully contracted.

"She loves you as you are, and hates you as you seem."

"A truly Delphic Oracle;" said Cope, smiling.

"I see hope in the distance," said Mondel, abstractedly.

"It must be beyond the horizon then;" said Cope, bluntly, anxious to cure his friend of what he considered a fatal monomania.

"What do you mean?"

"I saw Miss Columbia this morning. I spoke of the poem you published last week, and said you were looking ill of late."

"And she?"

"Changed the subject and asked me if I had been to the opera lately!"

"The devil!" exclaimed Mondel.

"Yes, love is the devil, and so is hate. Believe me, that if a woman dislikes you, it is a law of nature."

"But I fancied once"——

"We all have fancied"——

"Her looks, her expression"——

"We must judge by actions."

"Well, well," sighed the love-sick poet, "let me release my clairvoyante, and we will go out and get some wine. Wine! ye Gods! how I wish I could drink and be happy like the"——

"Human swine we see reeling out of late drinking saloons, eh?" said Cope, sarcastically.

"Like those who can forget," said Mondel, gloomily. "But for men like myself, there is no oblivion, save in death's 'coal black wine.'"

"I always hated the idea of a black draught," said Cope, laughing.

"By the way," said Mondel, "what do you say to a cruise in the Pacific?"

"As first-cabin passenger I should not mind, for I don't believe in the dignity of labor a bit. I once did duty as a cabin boy, so I think I know what sea life is."

"You shall be historiographer of the expedition, like Alexander Dumas on the Montpensier journey to Spain."

"Good; that will suit me," said Cope, "when do you start?"

"As soon as the ship is ready."

"But what will Robert Lax say?"

"Nothing; I shall not ask his opinion."

"You are not going to turn pirate?" said Cope suspiciously, for since his misadventure in love, Mondel was terribly reckless in his projects—at least in his conversation.

"Not this time."

"What is the object then?"

"Gold."

"Then I'm with you, for gold is a substance I have seen very little of lately, and I'm tired of making paper money out of ideas."

How cheerfully Cope uttered these last words! If John Berkeley could have heard them, or any of his fellow rogues, the stock brokers, note shavers, railway scrip forgers, &c., how strangely the suspicion would have crept over them that working for the good of mankind, is better than cheating for its ill.

O ye generation of bankers, brokers and landsharks! how little does all your bogus labor weigh in the eyes of the Spirits of the Universe, compared to one page created by the hand of the poet, one sketch of the artist, aye, or one really useful pot or pan, garment or instrument, which the hand of the workman produces! Tribe of locusts, shuffling loafers and idlers of commerce, incubi on humanity, devourers of industry; is not John Berkeley, the alterer and counterfeiter, your true culmination and representative? Answer me idle and non-producing tribes, human cyphers! Answer me—and tremble.

————

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE SHIP OF MONDEL.

THE ship was ready at last.

The first trial trip came off brilliantly. Nothing could exceed the amazement of the New Yorkers at beholding a vessel without sails, without smoke, without paddle-wheels, or screw propeller, cutting through the water at a rate never yet attained by the fastest ocean steamers. Yet "Captain" Mondel assured the gentlemen of the press who came on board "to see the elephant," that he had not even attempted to put the vessel to her full speed. But what perplexed and amazed every one was the news that the motive power was mercury not vaporized—merely warmed into life as it were—quite a gentle process, managed without a particle of coal, the fuel being—could you believe it?—gas generated on board the vessel itself.

*  *  *  *  *  *

The reporting gentlemen, who, to do them justice, are a most intelligent and quick-witted class of men, were perfectly satisfied so far.

"But how do you propel your vessel?" they inquired.

"By water pressure. The engine in fact does nothing but continually raise a column of water, which descends and escapes continually by two pipes under the stern of the ship."

"Why do you reject sails?" said one of the reporters.

"Because I wish to spare men the hardest part of a sailor's life—reefing and furling. Besides, if more speed is wanted, why not use more powerful engines? I can make engines three times as powerful, and yet not consume one more particle of fuel. Heat is not a thing to be measured by the amount of combustion, but by subdivision and surface. It can be propagated almost infinitely. My aim is to save labor, to make the life of a seaman as pleasant as another."

"How broad in the beam your vessel is!" said another visitor.

"It is little more," said Mondel, "than an oblong box with a long sharp wedge-shaped cutwater. I do not yet despair of setting an ark afloat which shall resemble a block of houses with an engine of a hundred thousand horse-power making a twenty-four hours' business of the Atlantic ferry."

"Really captain, you jest?"

"Not in the least. The true plan of building a grand ship is vertebrate. Each vertebra is a square building complete in itself. A number of these are united by an external casing and keel, and all that is wanting is the head-piece and the cut-water. On that let all the art of the builder be expended, and the more acute the angle of the wedge the better. There never yet was built a ship which cut the water as it should."

"How large should a ship then be to cross the Atlantic according to your taste, sir?" said a pert young inquirer from a Wall street paper.

"About a quarter of a mile long, and some sixty to seventy yards beam," answered Mondel, tranquilly.

"By the way, you carry guns?" said an older visitor, "but they appear to be only for show, and look more like printing presses, if you will excuse the remark."

"The artillery of the press is the most dangerous in these times," said Mondel, "but the screw and lever which you see are for the purpose of loading these air-cannon (an improvement on the cannon and imperfect air-guns) with compressed air, which here supplies the place of powder. Neither are they made of wood, as you probably imagine, but of vulcanized India rubber, a substance both lighter and cheaper than iron."

"Have you any other innovations on board?"

"A few. For example, an electric light at the head of the vessel, gas laid on in every cabin, gas cooking apparatus, and some interesting experiments in preserved provisions, which I am trying for the benefit of poor Jack, who, in an age of progress might, I think, get something more palatable and healthy than salt junk, bean soup, or 'plum duff' and hard biscuit!"

"Well, sir," said the elderly reporter, "I wish you success, and all men like you!"

"Gentlemen," said Mondel "I hope you will do me the honor of dining on board—Ah, Mr. Lax, you have arrived just in time. You dine with us, of course (aside), these are gentlemen connected with the leading newspapers."

"Then don't spare the champagne," said Lax, "I should like to see the ship well noticed. By the by, when do you propose to try the trip to Havana?"

"Next week; the stores are coming on board already."

Robert Lax rubbed his hands, and eyed Mondel complacently. He regarded that inventor as a species of property which he had had the dexterity to appropriate.

Meanwhile, the devil of wild adventure and dark projects stirred within the heart of the triumphant but unhappy man of genius.

Oh, how willingly would he have given his ship, his fame, his coming wealth, golden island and all, for one line from the blonde Columbia, bidding him return to her feet, and once more tell her that he loved her better than the world!

But it was not to be.

He made one desperate attempt—in defiance of all etiquette and propriety. He saw her carriage standing at a shop-door. She was alone waiting for Mrs. Yonkers. He advanced to the step of the carriage.

"Miss Columbia," he said, in a deep passionate tone, "I am going on a long and perilous voyage. To you alone, I confide the secret. Before I go, I ask you to say in what I have offended? I love you still, I adore you, I shall love you till death. For your sake I have renounced all other hope. For your sake I am a lonely, sad, and miserable man—a monk without a cowl, a hermit of the sea and of the land. Dear, dear, dearest Miss Columbia! one parting word, one look of pity!"

But Columbia, though torn with anguish at the beloved voice, though trembling with agitation, remained silent, and looked another way till Mondel, in despair, withdrew to let Mrs. Yonkers enter the carriage. He exchanged with Amelia a look of terrible scorn on his part, of mingled love and hate on hers, and the carriage was whirled away.

On the following day the Columbia—Mondel had, unsuspected by Robert Lax—given the national name of his adored girl to the vessel—started on its voyage to Havana.

But Mondel had made his preparations and laid in his stores, and it was not long before he announced, as if opening sealed orders, to his crew, what a very different destination he had in view.

But of the ship and those in it and their adventures we shall ere long have occasion to speak.

For the present, let us revert to the living Columbia and her destinies.

————

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE FAREWELL PRESENT.

THE very day after Mondel's departure—as was generally supposed for Cuba—in reality for the golden island of the Pacific—a lady called upon Columbia, and delivered into her hands a sealed packet.

That lady was Mrs. Normer.

"From whom is this packet, madam?" said Columbia.

"From Mr. Mondel. He requested me to give it to you, and to no other, myself, as he might possibly never return to the United States."

"You knew Mr. Mondel well?"

"Intimately."

"And his wife? did you ever see Mrs. Mondel?"

"Never, and for the best of all possible reasons, he never was married."

"Not married and divorced?"

"Never married, therefore most certainly never divorced. Ah, my dear young lady, excuse me for saying it, you do not know what you have lost."

"What do you mean, madam?"

"I mean that no woman was ever loved with a deeper and truer devotion than were you by Dudley Mondel. He is the proudest man I ever knew, yet he wept like a child when he gave me this packet to give to you."

"Favor me, madam, with your name and address," said Columbia, trembling with agitation, "I will do myself the pleasure of calling upon you."

"I shall be happy to see you at any time," said Mrs. Normer, with a look of pity and penetration. "Good day."

"Good day, madam."

Columbia hastened to her own room. She tore open the packet. It contained Mondel's Memoirs, and a letter written in an almost illegible hand, in which, with the utmost consideration for Mrs. Yonkers, he explained to Columbia his exact position with respect to her step-mother:

"She is innocent" he said, "of all blame. The caprices of passion are the fiats of destiny. When I think how, at length, I despised her, how I hated her, when one night she unexpectedly kissed me at parting, at the very door of your house, I shudder to imagine that, perhaps, your feelings towards myself are equally contradictory. But a secret instinct tells me, that this woman has been the cause of your hatred for me. It may be an act of meanness, it may show want of generosity, but in the abyss of my own misery, I feel no pity for a woman who could show so little pride as first to wed a man she did not love, for self-interest, and then to torment a man who could not love her. But I forget my fatalism. All now is at an end. I go, and many, many long months must elapse before my return. Yet, if you could relent, if there were a possibility of clearing up some horrible mystery which has overshadowed and darkened our lives, bear in mind that I, at least, am fixed and immutable in my faith, and that that faith, whilst Dudley Mondel breathes and lives is, and can only be—Columbia.

"In you," continued Mondel in his letter "I have at length beheld the visioned queen of my most exaggerated dreams of beauty and intelligence. I wish you to know me as I am and have been, not as a mere fragment of a life. We live, O beautiful and enlightened Columbia, in a world of cant. We are indoctrinated from our cradles with absurd prejudices, the result of ages of ignorance. We are taught to call one thing virtue, and another vice, to trust utterly to the teachings from without, and to silence ever the voices from within. The highest source of happiness, LOVE, is surrounded by restrictions, calculated to engender baseness and crime. The commonest necessities of existence are rendered unattainable to vast multitudes of mankind. Our sympathies are narrowed by selfish fears, our intellects cramped by pompous repetitions of antique fallacies. Our whole lives are poisoned by conventional delusions!

"Against this world and its civilization, I am, and have been, a rebel. In the accompanying memoirs I have spoken, like Jean Jacques Rousseau, what I believed to be the language of absolute truth, without false modesty on the one hand or false shame on the other.

"Read, fair Columbia, and learn to know the man who had the presumption to offer you his love. Yours till death,

"MONDEL."

With fingers actually quivering with emotion, the blonde poetess, having first bolted her door, to prevent Mrs. Yonkers from surprising her, pushed back the damp silken hair that clung to her white temples, and commenced the perusal of a manuscript which bore for a heading the ominous title:—

A SLAVE OF THE LAMP.

But it was no Arabian Night's Entertainment, no story of Aladdin and his genii, which awaited her perusal.

Reader, we have had short chapters lately; prepare yourself for a long one.

————

CHAPTER XXV.

MEMOIRS OF DUDLEY MONDEL'S YOUTH.

I.

MY history is of all histories the saddest. It is the history of the soul wrestling with Destiny.

I may die crowned with the wreath of victory, but the wreath of victory is also the wreath of martyrdom. I have lived, and suffered.

I have been preëminently a reasonable and reasoning being, yet have apparently committed the greatest follies.

I have been so scrupulously moral that I have even been accused of crimes.

By morality I understand acting in harmony with Nature's truth, and the soul's highest conceptions of life!

I have been a refined voluptuary, yet my cravings for enjoyment have been frustrated and counteracted.

Seemingly predestined by my physical organization to be a man of action, I have been for the most part constrained to live the life of a student. My existence has been a tormenting contradiction. Filled with a superabundance of vitality, I have sat face to face with death during the best years of life.

A natural orator, and even an improvisatore, I have brooded in almost unbroken silence. A born philosopher and statesman, I have scarcely attracted attention except as a poet and a humorist. Abounding in social sympathies, I have lived for years together in solitude and retirement.

In vain have I, from time to time, striven by a desperate effort, to burst the iron chain which bound me to the pen.

I have been offered military commands, I have been placed at the head of a commercial enterprise. I have been made editor of journals, elected grand master of political societies, and I have, at various periods, studied no less than three regular professions.

But the world was against me. The voice of tyrant Fates murmured imperiously—

"Think, and when weary of thinking, write! Write, and when weary of writing, think!"

Walls—nay ramparts of books seemed to grow up around me, hem me in, and imprison me. Like a huge rat in a cage, I gnawed myself a breach, by devouring all before me, and lo! new ramparts arose, and the task was still to be recommenced. So I wrote and read, and read and wrote, till I became in the bloom of youth a man without an age. I had analyzed all things, and there remained nothing—nothing but primitive elements—the elements of a skepticism dark and all-embracing, in the shadow of which the pride and power and aims of men withered and became colorless. For to me all things were alike. A dismal sameness overspread the world of mortals. I knew too much, and felt too little to share their illusions, though, alas! illusions are but illusions when we recognize them to be so. The soul gives its hue to nature, and the reaction of mine became a neutral tint—a sad color not far removed from that "darkness visible," which the Inferno of Milton rejoiced in.

I was the last man of the old world with a great purpose and a great heart; and the old world could not comprehend me.

Possibly it was fortunate that a link also bound me to the new world.

Old England is dead. Its supremacy is a legend of the past. Ere long it will be no more to America than was Troy of old to Rome. It is a grand fable that of the gods who dethrone their fathers. Such gods are the genii of nations. Old age brings decay, and vigorous youth springs up to manhood and empire. Britannia is a decrepit hag—a step-mother who starves her children. What more can I say?

Regard the modern poets of England!

Let their feeble versicles serve to demonstrate the justice of my disdain. Life is a riddle to them, heroism a forgotten dream, invention—unknown, beauty the ornamental. Sublimity, egotistic bombast; art, a caprice, love a mixture of vanity and sensualism!—in a word, they are weak, they are ridiculous!

They have neither the personal greatness, the loftiness of idea, nor the executive power of true poets.

Their verses limp. They resort to poetical licenses, to antiquated words, to the forced pronunciations of words ending in ed, and I know not what paltry puerilities, imitated, indeed, from the great old masters, but no longer justified by the advanced state of the noble and marvellously combined language of our supreme Scandinavian race.

But why call them poets—that is creators? They wrote nothing. Shakspere created a world of living characters, as did Homer before him. Æschylus, Dante, Milton, Goethe, Byron, Lamartine, impressed the world with the intense grandeur of their intelligence and god-like personalities.

What have Tennyson and his sequent lotus-eaters accomplished?

Nothing, literally nothing! their words are like the summer's breeze that leaves no trace of its passage. To seek enjoyment in their pages is to smoke light cigars, not to quaff the nectar of the gods; it is literally to kill time. They have founded a school, they have not created an image.

If England have a poet, he is Charles Dickens. He has created forms and fancies that will live, and he alone of his generation.

But the glorious majesty of harmonious numbers is wanting. The measured cadence of his easy prose but ill supplies the magic of the lyre. It is Shakspere without his laurels, Homer without his gods. England can never again produce a real poet. A nation of paupers can no longer respond to the celestial vibrations of enthusiasm, of national sympathy, or national glory. It is in America that the poet must arise and sing such songs as never yet were sung—the songs of hope and enterprise.

*  *  *  *  *  *

Long before I was born, a profound philosopher might have predicted the stormy destiny prepared for me.

My father and mother were eminently unsuited to one another in disposition. The theory of contrasts harmonizing in marriage is an insane delusion. My father and mother were as opposite in nature as two people could well be, and yet find any points of harmony.

My father was dark, haughty, vain, irascible, and though capable of liberality, naturally selfish and sensual. He was tall, handsome and agreeable, even cordial in manner. His mind was strong in will, but limited in grasp. His intellect was practical, but not expansive, tenacious without being absorbent. Brought up in English High Church and Ultra-Tory principles, he was a bigot in religion and a partisan in politics. His great talisman was obedience, discipline, order. His whole moral strength lay in his exactness. His sense of justice was comparatively strong, his benevolence limited by his caution and suspicion. He ought to have entered the army. He would have made an admirable colonel of cavalry, if not a great general. He had no physical fear so far as I could ever observe. His moral, at least his intellectual, timidity was excessive. He was easily imposed on by the assumption of a man his superior in one particular branch of knowledge. His amatory affections were powerful, but he was a natural tyrant, and required in a wife a submissive inferior, not an equal companion.

It was his misfortune to marry a woman immeasurably his superior in intelligence.

My mother was a fair beauty, tall, delicate, blue-eyed, gentle, and imaginative. She had a far greater talent for painting than my father, who also cultivated the arts; she wrote poetry, whilst my father could scarcely compass metre. She had been accustomed, at * * House, her father's (the American Minister's) residence in London, to meet many of the most illustrious men of the age, including most of the famous writers and artists of the past generation. Sir W. S., the great Sir W.——! was her friend, and with his own hand inscribed her name in many of his books. H——n, the unfortunate H——n, was her drawing-master. The present Sir E. L. was a constant visiter at the House. There, too, she saw Spurzheim, the famous phrenologist, Theodore Hook, the wit, and numerous other celebrities, now for the most part vanished from this earth's surface.

Her father was opposed to the marriage. As a philosopher and an accomplished man of the world, he probably foresaw the inevitable discord which must spring up sooner or later between two such characters. He even left town to avoid being present at the marriage, though he would not oppose his daughter's wishes. They were married. I have heard my father say that they exchanged impatient words in the very post-chaise which, according to established precedent, whirled them away to the retirement of the honeymoon.

Storms soon lowered.

The young couple differed in religion. My father was a bigoted churchman, my mother a free-thinker and republican, like her father. Still, I fancy, they tried their best to agree. But it is an old saying, that fire and water will not mingle. My parents were on the verge of separation before they had been married many years, whilst I was a mere baby. However, friends of the family interfered, and effected a reconciliation, and—things went on as discordantly as ever.

Why is the world so stupid as not to see that the moment a married couple cease to be happy, should be the moment of their separation? Why is marriage, which should be a union for the noblest delights, converted into an ignoble slavery and punishment!

To throw any obstacles, even the slightest, in the way of divorce by mutual consent, is a monstrous absurdity. Marriage should cordially be a simple contract between two parties. To make it more is an invention of fiendlike cruelty. Reason, where divested of religious prejudice, must recognize the same absolute freedom in relation of the sexes, as in those of commerce or friendship. There is but one law that should ever bind two human beings together—the law of love. To apply brute force (that is legal restraint or penalty) to the regulation of the spontaneous passions of our nature, is a miserable remnant of barbarism.

Let those who love be united, let those who hate be parted. All other systems are the insanities of diseased minds, superstitions of an ignorant age past.

Imagine two young married couples, equally ill assorted and wretched, placed upon an island, discovering that by a simple exchange of partners, they can convert a social hell into a paradise. What are they to do? Endure the torments of love on the one hand, and disgust on the other, in conformity with the laws of Man, or embrace happiness and a new life in conformity with the laws of Nature?

My earliest recollections are of frolicking with my little sister, a beautiful fairy-like child, in a large drawing-room, whilst my mother played a series of pieces on the piano. The intoxication of music—the only intoxication, save that of love, which, in my opinion, is worthy of a poet—filled my mind with the wildest fancies and illusions. Never, never shall I forget my mother's sweet soft voice, and clear intelligible expression, when she conversed by the hour with her children—her only companions. Although neglected and abandoned by her husband, she never breathed to us a syllable concerning our father, save of love and duty. Her imagination was vivid, her appreciation of genius intense, but her life was a desert. The society she would have enjoyed was driven by my father's strange eccentricity and vain pride from their house. He unconsciously loved the society of inferiors, and was captivated by the adulation and flattery of parasites, paid rather to his wealth than to his talent. The death of his father, in my seventh year, had left him rich and independent; though I have always suspected that he diminished his fortune by vast speculations in stocks, or possibly by downright gambling. He was very secretive, and even in after years, vague in his confidences. To this day I know little of the history of his affairs.

I was born on the sea, during the return of my father and mother from America, which they visited shortly after their marriage.

My childish life was passed in a sort of dream. From the plays I saw at the theatres, and the books, which at an unusually early age, I devoured with a burning avidity, I constructed within my soul an imaginary world of knights, enchanters, kings, princesses, ghosts, demons, bandits, and wild beasts; dragons, griffins, and chimeras. In this fantasmal world, my little sister and myself passed our lives. We acted a never-ending succession of improviso-dramas, robing ourselves fantastically in colored shawls and draperies, fighting feigned battles with wooden swords and spears, and utterly indifferent to the commonplace lives and games of other children whom we visited, or who visited at our house.

This exaggeration of the imaginative faculty at one time began to take in me the form of mental disease, and in broad daylight hideous spectres began to appear to me with all the distinctness of actual forms. An insane horror of darkness, and of the invisible world of mystery, possessed me to such a degree, that I wonder I did not die in some of the agonies of fear which I endured. It seems to me that I thus exhausted all my power of feeling terror, for, in after life, I observed in myself an indifference to physical danger, and even to death itself, which I have never seen so coldly and completely developed in any other man. I have often laughed in after years at the trouble people have taken to impress me with the idea of some personal peril. To risk my life in a chance has become with me a habit. I am a sort of fatalist; I feel that when a man's hour comes, it comes. Life is but a page in the book of time, death but turning over a new leaf in the diary of eternity.

My recollections of actual events in my early childhood are somewhat obscure. A few brighter points start up here and there. I remember a visit, when I was, perhaps, five or six years of age, to my grandfather's country-seat, Lakeland House. There was a lake of some twenty acres on the estate, and boats upon it; and seven little islands, which were named after my aunts and uncles. The house was modern, and the most attractive objects in it, to me, were the skins of some badgers, bears and foxes, which served as mats and which I coveted hugely. A quantity of Indian weapons, which an adventurous uncle had brought back from the South Seas, were also objects of interest, as were two suits of armor and a great cross-handled sword, with which I had a confused notion that my grandfather had fought under Richard Cœur-de-Lion, in the third crusade. At that time my notions of dates were confused, and I had been reading Sir Walter Scott's Talisman with the perfect faith of childhood, so much so, that I dreamed of being Ivanhoe and fighting Bois du Guilbert nightly.

It seems to me, that at that time, my grandfather was always talking about his plantations and improvements, and driving people about in a poney-chaise to admire his doings. I remember also, having a confused notion that some day or other I was to be created Lord Lakeland, and become a tremendously rich and important man. Dimly so, methinks, I once heard my excellent grandmother impressively say to her daughter—

"Make the dear boy a clergyman."

And I, in utter disdain of that, in England, most respectable and aristocratic profession, ran up to my mother and growled petulantly—

"I won't be a parson, ma', I'll be a soldier. I won't wear a long gown like a woman, I hate it, I do."

"Hush! hush! you naughty boy!" said my grandmother, indulgently.

But they could not make a parson of me, I felt sure of that, so they might talk till they were tired. I should be a soldier, or more probably a knight errant—like Don Quixote, that glorious hero of La Mancha, whose acquaintance I was just beginning to make in a splendid illustrated edition in the library.

Of all books which I ever read, Homer's Iliad, in Pope's translation, made the greatest and most deeply enduring impression on my mind. I read it at eight years of age, in an old large printed edition, strongly bound in worn calf, with plenty of gilding, red marble edges, and engravings which, to me, at the time, were marvels of art.

I remember my father tearing out the picture which represented Mars and Venus under the net of Vulcan in a state of considerable déshabillé. I presume now that he thought it might suggest evil thoughts to my youthful mind. Then I simply regretted any damage to my dear, dear book. Oh, how I read that Iliad! I knew the names of all the Greek and Trojan warriors, even to the third-rate fellows who were barely worth the killing; Achilles, Petrocles, Agamemnon, Ajax, Ulysses, Menelaus, Tydides, Hector, Æneas, Sarpedon, Paris, were all to me as real, nay, much more real than Mr. This or That, who actually were visitors at the house.

If there was one thing I theoretically delighted in, it was fighting.

I formed in my mind a sort of thermometer of the valor and prowess of the Greek and Trojan leaders, and got up, in the arena of my martial fancy, a series of imaginary single combats between warriors who, in the Iliad itself, never had an opportunity of measuring their strength. I cannot say how much I was puzzled by the consideration of the possible result of a "regular set-to" between Æneas and Ulysses, or Hector and the King of men.

This love of Homer and his heroes, which has never abated, caused me, even when I read Shakspere's plays, a year or two later, to prefer Troilus and Cressida to any other, on account of what Lamb calls "the old familiar faces." Indeed, the Greek and Roman education of boys in England of the higher ranks, predisposes them to prefer classical scenery and characters in their first introduction to the second great poet of the world.

I say the second great poet—for of this rest assured, between Homer and Shakspere there is a parallel to be drawn. Otherwise each stands unapproachable on his pedestal. All other comparisons are feeble.

Nevertheless, when, immediately after my rush into Shakspere, I received a complete set of Milton's poetical works as a present from my father, I shall not easily forget the devouring rapture with which I read the Paradise Lost, amazed at my own wickedness for taking so intense an interest in Satan. But who can help wishing the rebel Archangel success in his stupendously audacious enterprise—the first grand fillibustero adventure on record! I prayed God to forgive me, but I really could not avoid feeling that Milton's hero was the Devil, and his God a tyrant.

I had not then read the mighty Prometheus of Æschylus, on which the Satan is modelled. I did not know that Milton was the secretary of Cromwell, and Satan the embodied spirit of liberty. Even now it puzzles me to know whether Milton intended the world to sympathize so strongly with his Rebel God of Evil as the magic of his poetry necessitates.

Was Milton a free-thinker at bottom?

Can genius and superstition live side by side? In form perhaps, in essence never.

Thus from the fountains of the highest and purest genius, my soul was nourished in despite of the dull formal routine to which I was subjected under the pretence of education. My schoolmasters at first mistook me for a dunce, or, at best, a boy of disordered mind.

Sometimes I fell into reverie, and forgot my lesson, then made a desperate effort to learn in ten minutes the task of an hour. For this I was reprimanded and punished. Little did they understand that my spirit had returned from a voyage to another world—returned to the consciousness of human stupidity and tyranny.

Why is it that schoolmasters so rarely understand human nature?

It is because this important and most noble occupation is still not appreciated socially at its true value. It is because, to keep school is a desperate resource, not a field of honorable ambition. Yet it is in the education of the young, that men of letters ought to find that ease and emolument which their irregular profession too often denies them. But the teacher must not be the corrector, nor should domestic cares form part of his charge.

My first success at school was a fine illustration of the attractive theory of Fourier.

Our mathematical master Mr. R——, adopted the plan of proposing to his juvenile class, a series of arithmetical problems, to be solved mentally, without the use of slate or pencil. I was then in my eighth year. The novelty of the thing interested me, and awakened my intellectual energies. I proved quite a "calculating boy" (in after life, calculation has not been supposed to be my forte by my wise relatives and friends); I multiplied twenty-three and three quarters, by sixteen and a half, with a rapidity and facility that astonished my teacher.

"How do you do it?" said Mr. R——

"I do it on a slate!"

"On a slate? But no slate is allowed, and you have none before you."

"I fancy a slate, sir, and I fancy the figures; I see them in my mind."

From that moment Mr. R——regarded me with interest. In the holidays my father engaged him as my private tutor. But this was an outrage I resented most indignantly; as did also my little sister. We would not work during holidays, and our childish wills were like the "laws of the Medes and Persians, which altered not," only a shade more obstinate. So we learned nothing, and poor Mr. R——resigned himself to our tricks and his emoluments. But like a good fellow, he told no tales out of school. It was lucky for us he did not, since we had a father who did not comprehend insubordination.

My little sister, two years younger than I, was a most beautiful child, with light hair, blue eyes, and the most delicate complexion in the world. We loved one another dearly. We told one another all our thoughts and fancies, with the exception, in my case, of my fantastic love-dreams, which were too mysteriously inexplicable to myself for me to make them a theme of conversation. Of these I shall soon have occasion to speak.

I may mention here, as one of the misfortunes of my life, that although the most perfect sympathy existed between my sister and myself at all times, we have been almost constantly separated since our childhood, by the force of circumstances, and my own wandering adventures. Thus I have been for the most part deprived of one of the greatest possible sources of consolation in adversity—the pure unselfish affection of one of the noblest and most enlightened women of the age.

But I must not linger too long over the dreamy recollections of childhood, or I shall never come to the events which, alone, can give any original interest to these hasty records of my life.

I was nearly eleven years of age, when my father and mother actually separated. My father seized her letters; he said she had carried on a correspondence with a gentleman who frequented the house. He himself, undoubtedly, kept a mistress at the time. Nothing could equal the bitterness with which he poisoned my mind against her. He was all noble indignation and generous forbearance! Alas! before the suit which she commenced against him in the Ecclesiastical Court, could be brought to a conclusion, she died of a broken heart, and I became the lonely and peculiar child, of which I shall now have occasion to speak.

We children were, immediately on the open rupture taking place between our parents, hurriedly dressed, and thrust into a carriage at the door, without even bidding farewell to our unfortunate mother. We were conveyed to the house of my father's private physician, and, subsequently, sent to schools where she could not find us out. I saw my mother but once again. It was during the holidays; my sister, her governess and I, were returning from a drive. As the carriage approached the gates of the country-house in which we lived, the tall form of a lady in black, with a black lace veil, appeared before the threshold.

It was my mother!

Filled with the hideous impressions produced by my father's revolting insinuations against her, I felt—shall I confess the horror!—a strange apprehension of that sad victim of an ill-judged marriage. I leapt from the carriage, and would have rushed before it through the open gates, had not my mother, whose eyes were red with weeping, clasped me in her arms, and kissing me passionately, exclaimed—

"What! have they taught you to fear me?"

"No, no, mamma, I love you; indeed I love you!" was my sobbing answer.

Then I heard her voice speaking to the governess, in almost inarticulate accents, begging her to be kind to her children.

Then she fainted—yes, reader, my mother fainted on the threshold of my father's house, and his servants did not dare to carry her into the house to restore her!

Was it not in that house, that, accompanied by witnesses, she surprised him in the very arms of his paramour?

When she was restored, she re-entered the carriage, which awaited her hard-by, and the poor governess, with eyes full of tears, stammered vaguely words of consolation to my grief.

Poor, dear Mrs. F——, she was a good woman, and a true lady. She had been formerly governess to Lord M——'s children, the grandchildren of the King. It was to her evidence, as to the truth of my representations that I owed at a later period the offer of a commission in the British army, from the late commander-in-chief himself. I could not accept the commission; but I well recollect at the time, the admirable effect produced on my worthy landlady, by the arrival of the long official letter with "on her majesty's service," printed so conspicuously on the cover. I believe it was worth three months' additional credit to me, at the least. But I anticipate events.

I was twelve years of age. I had been sent to a new boarding-school, about ten miles from London.

In this house it was, that Dean Swift, the renowned satirist, ate the bread of bitterness, as private secretary of the famous minister, Sir William Temple.

It was in Swift's little study, that I wrote my first boyish satire, "The Bengal Tiger," wherein I lashed with a "whip of scorpions" a little boy, son of an Indian Major, who had indulged the carnivorous extravagance of taking a mouthful of a schoolfellow's shoulder.

Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers was not more successful in the great world, than was the "Bengal Tiger" at Temple Grove. I "awoke and found myself famous."

II.

At that time the measles had run through the school, and though convalescent, a large party of us were living in happy idleness. Not being able to go out, and released from scholastic torture, we devoted ourselves to literature.

Pickwick had just electrified the world. The star of Boz had risen like a superb comet with a most extraordinarily fine tale. I awoke one morning (not on the morning in which I found myself famous, but a day or two before that occurrence), and saw all the boys in the room reading PICKWICK.

"Hollo, whose books are those?" cried I, gazing covetously at the bright green-covered numbers.

"Why, yours," said one of the boys.

"Mine?"

"Yes, yours of course; I suppose your governor sent them for you; we found them on the mantelpiece wrapped loosely in that piece of brown paper, and so took a look at them."

From that day a Pickwickian element was mingled with our conversations. We were all Sam Wellers, or rather, Vellers, for we did not forget Mr. Weller senior's, solemn injunction. "Spell it with a we Sammivel, spell it with a we!"

Under these circumstances, a comic poet arrived at the right time, and there was a furore in favor of the Bengal Tiger.

Like Uncle Tom, the Bengal Tiger originally owed its immense success to the happy selection of the subject and its advocacy of a great principle. English boys, especially the "sons of gentlemen," are severe advocates of fair-fighting. In fact, they have very rigid ideas of the conduct of the duelleo or single combat.

In a battle with fists, it is lawful to hit anyhow and any where above the waist, but the boy who scratches or bites, is utterly disgraced in the eyes of this youthful chivalry.*

[*A lingering remnant of the educational prejudice would, I admit, even now enable me to shoot a man who talked of gouging, not as a remedial, only, but even as a preventive measure, without any scruples of conscience. I should certainly propose, on all occasions, to administer Lynch law to the degraded ruffians who indulge in such fiendlike and revolting atrocities.]

The Bengal Tiger, besides being the "funniest poem ever written" (I quote a Review started for the express purpose of criticising the "Tiger") was an indignant denunciation of all unfair fighting, which it stigmatized as altogether unworthy of gentlemen and only fit for wild Irishmen and cannibals.

Hence its unbounded popularity.

Hence half a dozen spurious imitations, which vainly strove to rival the "real original Tiger."

In fact no less than six Bengal Tigers were in the field and, be it noted, in every one of them tiger rhymed to Niger, according to the arrangement of the first verse of the original masterpiece, which ran thus:—

"You've heard of crocodiles that fill
The seven-mouthed Nile and Niger,
You've heard of wondrous Jack and Jill,
But not the Bengal tiger!"

But like the numberless apocryphal gospels which were discarded in the early centuries of Christianity, the spurious tigers disappeared, as rapidly and surely from view as that renowned animal of the same breed, who, in the magniloquent phrase of the world-famed Peter Parley, on some occasion had the remarkable indiscretion to "plunge like a thunderbolt into the very jaws of the crocodile."

Probably this sublime passage (vide illustration) suggested my own opening stanza. If so, I render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and to Parley the things which are Parley's—which is more than the booksellers and their miserable hacks have done to that ingenious writer.

A word here for Peter! His natural history is the most charming book of the kind, for the young, ever produced. Its frontispiece with the comparative sizes of the animals is an admirable idea. Its style and method are delightful. I read it over so often when a child that even at this moment I can recite passages from its pages verbatim.

His son walks in his footsteps, and the letters of "Dick Tinto" from Paris,* are the best correspondence letters in the world.

[*Published in the Daily Times.]

The success of the "Tiger" prompted me to more ambitious efforts, and I translated one of the most famous odes of Horace into English verse so much to the satisfaction of the head master of the academy, that he encouraged me to go on, and resolved, if I succeeded as well with the rest, to publish the work as a specimen of what boys at twelve years of age were in the habit of doing under his tuition. But I was like the bird that sings when he pleases, and so Horace was left to his fate and to the pedants. Meanwhile the wife of the master, a lady of about five and thirty, still extremely beautiful and highly accomplished, showed my lighter boyish productions to her most distinguished guests, and with a woman's instinct recognized in them a germ of that which, perhaps, escaped her learned husband. Accordingly she suggested an epic!—and "Scanderbeg the Epirotian King," was the result, a most infernally absurd poem in the heroic measure—a childish epic of a hundred and fifty lines!

Thanked be Destiny, I was not a precocious genius, or, as Dickens phrases it, an infant phenomenon. I wrote as I thought and felt, but wrote as a boy. My command of language was perfect, my command of ideas limited by my years. I could not produce those marvellous parodies which are so often mistaken in the young for signs of original power. Nothing is more fallacious. The true poet, or inventive spirit, writes himself. The pseudo-genius reproduces others. The one is a "mirror to nature," the other a mere colored window. There was one boy at Temple Grove who could write so good an imitation of an Edinburgh Quarterly review article, that Macaulay himself could not have helped laughing at the likeness, which, as his son was at the school, he possibly may have seen.

My next attempts were a series of tales in prose and verse, ranging from "The Last of the Romans, or the fall of Constantinople," to "Prester John," and "The Island of Magicians," with odes to all the Seasons, and a love poem so universal in its aspirations, that I quote it here from memory, as showing what strange thoughts boys do cherish:

"Oh! had I but one being to share
My dreams and fears and delights and tears,
And were she passing passing fair!
With azure eyes, and amber hair;
Might she be prest,
To my fond breast!
And I, in words of flame declare
My glowing love, and she confess,
An echo—this
Were brighter bliss,
Than, save in castles in the air,
Illumes life's bleak wilderness!"

I still preserve the original MS. of this sentimental production, written in a trembling round hand, as if under slight agitation. Truly, the boy is the father of the man!

III.

Properly speaking, I have known but one passion in my life—the love of Beauty.

All other sentiments have ever with me been secondary to the one great idea. I cannot recollect the time when this idea did not predominate in my mind. My earliest dreams, waking and sleeping, were of beautiful little girls, of ecstatic caresses, and ineffable affection.

Being incapable of conceiving any other object in existence than love, nearly the whole energy of my being has been expended in the search for that ideal beauty and sympathy, without which, I saw no hope of happiness, no refuge from utter despair and death.

Living in this dream, I have accomplished all other acts of my life, comparatively speaking, as tasks, from a sense of duty, or rather pride and self-respect. I never cared much for praise, even when a boy. I never felt emulation. A strangely blind confidence in my own success, under all circumstances, and against all rivalry, was one of the peculiarities (perhaps diseases) of my character.

At the same time this pride, which sustained me, and alone counteracted my natural tendency to fantastic and meditative idleness, was of an almost satanic intensity. I was a natural desperado. At an early age I adopted as my motto under all circumstances, the simple alternative, "Victory or Death."

The heraldic motto of my family, "Animo et Fide—By courage and by faith," was not indeed far removed in spirit from that which I adopted.

To revolutionize empires, to achieve literary, artistic or scientific supremacy; to conquer the thousand difficulties which oppose an unbounded ambition, appeared to me always mere matters of calculation, perseverance and audacity. But to discover the ideal beauty—and, having discovered her, to gain the return for my love which my soul so imperiously demanded, there, there indeed, was a perilous problem for my life!

Even in that dilemma I fell back—I still fall back upon my old and desperate motto—Victory or Death!

IV.

I HAD only been some months at T—— G——, when one day my father came to see me. According to established usage, I was arrayed in fresh clothes from head to foot, and then sent to the reception-room. My father received me with a strange, abstracted, yet determined, air.

"We will walk," said he, "down the hill; I have left the carriage at the inn."

He then paused, and seeming to collect himself for an effort, said abruptly—

"Your poor mother is dead—she died some time ago of a fever. I sent H—— (his steward) to verify her decease. Poor thing! her death was perhaps fortunate both for herself and others."

After this appropriate moral reflection, my father paused, and seeming to make a second effort more violent than the first, he continued rapidly:—

"But this was not what I more especially came to tell you—the fact is—you may as well know it at once—and I may as well let you know it as leave others to talk nonsense to you—the fact is that I am married again.

"Your mother is dead—I am married again ! ! !"

That was all!

My mind refused to receive such an idea. The shock of the sudden and startling news made me feel confused and stupid. I walked beside my father in silence. He said no more till we reached the hotel, before which stood a carriage.

In it sat my little sister, then ten years of age, and a lady of about two or three-and-twenty at most, dressed in a satin cloak, trimmed with fur. She was pretty, but it was a coarse and vulgar beauty, even to the eyes of a boy who had seen glimpses of good society. She had a strange look, that look which in after years I learned so easily to appreciate in the fashionable kept mistresses of London, Paris, and other European capitals. She looked out of her element. Poor thing! she little thought what a bleak prospect lay before her; she little dreamed that the whole remainder of her life was to be one long battle for admission into a society which despised her, one long attempt to solve the insoluble problem of remedying a defective education, and concealing a never-sleeping fear of retribution. Had she herself been even a model of discretion, policy and delicate tact, she could have done nothing, wedded as she was to a—madman.

Yes, reader, the secret of my father's outrageous conduct in thus indecently marrying his mistress on the very day after my mother's death, lay not in the fierce impatience of his family-character, nor indeed in any peculiar recklessness or defiance of public opinion, which he secretly dreaded as much as any man I ever knew. No, it lay in the fact that in one point he was as thoroughly insane as any patient in Bedlam.

My father's madness was religious. This insanity was, I believe, the primary cause of his disagreement with my mother. As soon as I grew up, I became aware of the fact, which was finally proved conclusively by a proceeding on his part, so absurd and ridiculous as to be almost incredible.

It happened when I was about two-and-twenty, but I will narrate it here, to bear out the above statements satisfactorily.

He took it into his head, and for years—so he told me—meditated the design, to print the four gospels in such a manner, that verse 1, of Matthew, should be opposite verse 1, of Mark, Luke, and John; and so on to the end of the shortest gospel, when the other three continued their parallel careers, till, first two, then one only remained, and that also finally ended with a threefold white margin at its side.

Of the preposterous absurdity of this arrangement he seemed to have no consciousness. He called the book, of which was printed a large edition, regardless of expense "THE PERFECT LAW OF LIBERTY," and designed for it a frontispiece. This frontispiece represented Jesus Christ, with his cross, as the apex of a Gothic arch. Below him were angels blowing trumpets, and beneath their feet the earth, bursting in twain, disclosed a gigantic Death's head, emblem, I suppose, of that final catastrophe expected by the devout.

The parallel gospels, without parallel (for of course the passages describing the same events, never faced one another), were preceded by an introduction, with a strange mixture of imaginative intelligence, and raving lunacy, and were followed by a general chronology, studiously adapted to the exigencies of religious tradition.

In after years, when, by his own confession, he had disinherited me, and resolved to give his whole property to his wife, I often took up the "PERFECT LAW OF LIBERTY," and said bitterly, "Thou art my box of title-deeds—the will of a madman is waste paper. I may yet live to spend in the cause of man's rights and liberties, to relieve suffering genius and honest worth, the wealth which insanity devoted to publishing its own delusion and selfishness, and in preparing costly entertainments for parasites and fools, whilst I, the heir and hope of my race, wandered in poverty and sorrow over the earth, with no fortune but my courage, and no companion but my science—a treasure and a friend of which death alone can rob us!"

My father's madness, then, being religious, he took the earliest opportunity of sanctifying, by wedlock, a connection which, in his eyes, was a crime.

Men of the world may laugh at such simplicity. For my part, I believe religious superstition to be the greatest curse of humanity. I was myself at the age of fourteen very near becoming a bigoted religionist. An accident cured me. It was my custom, at night, to read with enthusiastic devotion, portions of the Four Gospels (selected by the Church out of some hundreds now lost or forgotten ), supposed to be written by the four writers above alluded to. By this means I exalted myself into a state of intense fanaticism, and learned to understand the true nature of the religious sentiment, or insanity, as freethinkers would term it.

Love alone offers any parallel to the force of the religious passion. At that time I would have become a martyr without hesitation. One night I dreamed the whole scene of the Crucifixion with such awful vividness, that it has never since faded or become dim like other dreams. Especially the tall, gaunt, mildly stern figure of Jesus is ever present to my memory, when it reverts to the subject of his life and mystery.

The accident which checked the flow of my gushing enthusiasm for the creed of mediation, was this: My father one night suddenly entered my bed-room, and finding me reading the Gospels as usual, ordered me sternly to go to bed at once, and indulge no such eccentricities.

"But," said I, amazed at this harshness, "I was reading the New Testament."

"Nonsense!" said my father "Go to bed, and read the New Testament at a more fitting season."

My father had a strange dread of fire, and much disliked any one to burn lamp or candle during the night. Of course he himself, in his autocratic character, was an exception to all his own laws, which, like those of the Medes and Persians, altered not, except when necessity left no alternative.

The idea that at any time to read the words of God (for such I then firmly believed the Gospels to be) could be wrong, or that any worldly considerations could possibly be superior to the eternal salvation of one's soul, shocked me unutterably. At one leap I arrived at the conclusion that all professed Christians were hypocrites, that their religion was a mere fancy, and their belief too weak to influence their external lives in any matter of importance. I saw that it did not please my father to see real faith in my heart. What he required was, that I should accept religion from him, and as he understood it. My stronger and more passionate intelligence at once rejected with scorn the mere shell of religious forms, and sought to warm itself in the rays of the living Truth. But the blow was struck. To my intense sensibility there was never any middle way. Before two years had elapsed, I was what the canters term an Infidel, that is, I began to substitute the rational belief of the philosopher for the blind dream of the fanatic. My study of the Gospels cured me at least of the religious dread or "reign of terror," as I have elsewhere called it. A silly sermon by a dull parson could no longer alarm me with visions of hell, devils, and damnation: I ceased to meditate on religion; the subject became hateful to my mind; I avoided it with care. I fell back on my visions of ideal beauty, and began to compose new poems and tales, which were the admiration of my schoolfellows. I could improvise verse without an effort, and invent endless stories at a moment's notice.

Often I was amazed to observe that the fictions I thus spontaneously poured out were eagerly credited as facts by my young auditors, and that I was seriously regarded as the hero of the adventures which I narrated.

In after years it has been the highest triumph of my literary ambition to hear from authors of my acquaintance, the repeated assertion of a belief in the substantial truth of my wildest conceptions.

V.

O infernal torture of Greek verbs and Latin verses! what a discipline for the soul! Is it for good or evil? I know not, I cannot here discuss the question. There is a strange prejudice in favor of the old scholastic routine of education, which never utterly dies in the soul of one of its alumni. English school-life is a dire imprisonment, yet I do not regret its severity; no, I would not miss from my thoughts, even Old Harper, the sergeant who drilled us in the gun exercise, and rapped us over the knuckles with a ramrod! That drilling was the most unsatisfactory process, for the reader must understand that the rusty old flint-lock muskets (Heaven knows how much they weighed!) were never loaded, and that the only part of a drill we boys would have enjoyed, viz., "burning powder," was rigorously denied to us.

I must say that we were well taken care of at T—— G——. If we had been of glass or wax, we could not have been more watched over and looked after.

Seven ladies—emphatically so called—and they were, in my time, a very pretty set of young women (a sort of cross between the lady's maid and the governess), had each the care of a certain number of boys, their linen and their general comforts. To servants, our royal highnesses were never to speak, on any pretence, except at meals, when a solemn butler waited on us with the gravity of a Turkish Moolah, or a Gold Stick in waiting.

It will appear singular, and I record the fact as curious, that one of the duties of these fair ladies, was to wash us every morning and evening to the waists, which they did, I must admit, in the chastest and most gentle manner. It was also their duty to see us undress, and go to bed, and to extinguish the lights. When my friend L—— took his warm baths, he told me that the youngest of these "ladies" was ever ready with the warm towels, to perform the part of oriental bath servant, for his lordship.

Nevertheless, I consider on the whole, that the morality at T—— G—— was unexceptionable. The conversation of the boys was, as usual, of the most libertine character. I am told that at young ladies' boarding schools, the subjects of conversation in the dormitories are apt to be of a romantic nature.

How foolishly parents and teachers act in these matters. As if the great mystery of life, could possibly fail to be a subject of the most intense interest to the young; as if the development of the germ of passion, could possibly be impeded by the impracticable attempt to disguise or misrepresent the great truths of nature.

The boys at T—— G—— belonged to the first families in England, many of them the sons of peers, of distinguished statesmen, even of cabinet ministers and royal blood: all connected with the rank and celebrity of the day. The terms were very high, and the profits to T——, the master, immense. Never were juvenile aristocrats more simply or cheaply dieted than we. A bowl of milk-and-water for breakfast, with dry bread ad libitum, the same for supper, and at dinner a plain joint, potatoes and pudding—such was our unvarying victual.

I believe the cost of keeping a boy at T—— G—— was above a hundred pounds (or $500) a year.

It is a question with me whether a more generous diet would not have in most cases proved beneficial. But, at any rate, this frugal fare was calculated to keep down the budding passions, and leave our heads clear for study. And how we studied!—rather say crammed. I will give the programme of the day.

Up at six, dress till half-past; chapter of Bible, and unlimited Greek grammar till half-past eight. School-room cold, boys hungry.

From ten till twelve, Latin translation, Virgil, Horace, Cicero, as the case may be. Geometry, or some branch of mathematics, till one. A dry biscuit, an hour's play, and dinner at two. Play till three. Greek play till five; Latin verses till half-past seven! Tea—wash—bed by nine at latest. Conversation on the greatness of our doings at home—horses, dogs, pretty girls, the tremendous dignity of those awful potentates, the "governors," and sleep—fights, bolstering-matches, marauding expeditions excepted—till six, and the inevitable alarm-bell.

Drawing, dancing, fencing, riding and drilling, in extra hours.

If boys could be educated, we were; for I really do not see how we could have worked any harder, and survived the operation.

For my part, what with a secret impression I conceived that T—— G—— was a sort of educational Bastile for young lords and gentlemen of refractory dispositions, and my horror at my father's marriage, I resolved to run away, and seek my fortune like the heroes I had read about in that very narrow (minded) place, the "wide, wide world."

David B——, son of Sir David B——, of E——, was the only boy I could induce to accompany me. But what with me was a stern purpose, with him was a thoughtless whim. However, we raised all the funds we could—a hard matter—for a lady banker was made the depository of all our cash, and in this truly phalansterian establishment, there was a store on the premises at which bats, balls, and other "notions" were handed to us on payment by check being tendered. However, we collected all the smuggled specie, which was readily given up to us as it was useless in the pockets of its owners, who had absolutely no means of communication with the external world.

An hour or two before the bell rang, one morning, we made a start. Our plan was simple and romantic. We would make our way to the sea-coast, take up our lodging in a cave in the cliffs, and watch an opportunity to join a band of smugglers! Meantime, if our funds ran out, we could sell our gold watches and chains, or, finally eat lobsters, crabs and oysters, which we could get for the catching on the seashore.

We ourselves were however caught within a couple of hours, on the top of the London coach, notwithstanding that, like the villains in the melodramas, we affected to disguise ourselves by sticking up our collars, and slouching our caps over our eyes. Old A——, the mathematical master, stopped the coach, and though I jumped down, had all the money about me, and could have out-run the fat little man with ease, I did not care for a lonely escapade, and surrendered myself prisoner of war, and was led home captive along with poor David, who, like King David of old, raised up his voice and wept. I am sorry to say, that I only swore. But that was mentally; externally, I preserved the stoicism of an Indian prisoner.

The utmost consternation prevailed at T—— G—— on our flight being detected. Messengers were dispatched in all directions. T—— himself went off to my father's house in London; the boys were in ecstasies. When we returned as culprits, in our sombre despair and terror of the coming judgment, we distributed recklessly whole pockets full of candy, and were heroes and persecuted patriots ranking with Harmodius and Aristogeiton in the eyes of our companions.

We were soon martyrs.

And here a word. If there be one contemptible, unmanly, cowardly act in the world, it is flogging a school-boy—a weak, helpless, imperfectly responsible being, who does wrong because he is ignorant or weak, a delicate plant which, physically and morally, is eternally influenced by every moment of suffering which it endures—a creature to be guided by love and wisdom, and dignity, inspiring respect; not to be bullied, menaced, cowed, spirit broken, and frightened. Know this, modern Solomons—three thousand years behind the age! there is no surer way to breed fools and cowards than by flogging.

When M—— W——shot the schoolmaster, I for one, acquitted him from the depths of my heart.

Had I a son, and any living pedagogue dared to put him to the torture, he should either beg the child's pardon on his knees, or die the death of a scoundrel and a coward! Like Thomas Carlyle, I have no pity for scoundrels—at least, not when they cross my path. A rattlesnake cannot help being a rattlesnake; nevertheless, I feel no scruple in giving his soul a lift on the great staircase of spiritual progress.

We were flogged—half a dozen ushers were ready to overpower all resistance.

Mark the result. I meditated murder, at the age of twelve years! For long years the insult rankled in my heart, and passing visions of inflicting awful justice on poor T—— returned again and again. Yet, this man was merely part of a vicious system, and in his miserable ignorance of everything but pedantic lore, and every-day worldly maxims and prejudices, he would be now, in my eyes, were I to meet him, as much morally a child compared to his future pupil, as was I then, physically compared to himself.

What a mystery is the philosophy of the passions!

To revenge is natural; to cherish revenge is diabolical.

How strange would it seem to me, were I to meet this man again—he, almost in second childhood; I, in the early prime of manhood, capable perhaps, of striking him dead at a blow; our positions utterly reversed, our very intellectual relations totally subverted! Could I recall with bitterness his by-gone folly? No; I should only see before me, an old man who, to the best of his feeble ability, labored to form my mind for the battle of life, to impart to me the stores of learning, which he himself had accumulated with such vast and patient labor, and who after all gave me credit for all the good he could see in me, and meant to do his duty, so far as his own self-interest would let him.

But, at the time, the effect of that flogging was to demonize me.

Up to that time, I was almost girlish in my gentleness and delicacy of feeling. A harsh word or look, would bring tears into my eyes. The ordinary cruelties of boys to animals and one another were, to me, revolting even to think of. My confidence in my fellows was unbounded; to deceive me was so easy, that the boys amused themselves with hoaxing me in the most ridiculous ways.

From the moment of receiving that flogging, strange suspicions entered my mind. Its virgin innocence and goodness were darkened by Doubt's poisonous fumes; I looked round on my comrades in the pure consciousness of wishing, not only, not to harm, but to benefit them all, and I saw malignant, imperfectly balanced intelligences, capable of causing me pain for mere caprice, and of deriving pleasure from my sufferings; I was brutally attacked, I defended myself fiercely. At first, they misunderstood the horror with which I shrunk from a personal contest—from the idea of causing pain—for cowardice. They were soon undeceived. No superiority of strength or skill was available against a boy who would have died rather than own himself defeated, and who was ever ready to renew an unequal struggle, rather than endure an insult.

After a time, it ceased to enter any boy's head to lay a finger on me; and yet I can truly say that if they respected me, not a boy in the school feared me. By degrees, they came to learn that my life was different from theirs, and many, from some mysterious instinct, treated me as one whose future was to be famous and honored.

Dear young friends! never, never shall I forget those prophecies of boyish affection destined in all probability to be so dimly and imperfectly realized!

"Think," said young T——, as I strolled with him and H——(the nephews of Sir J—— famous as the friend of Lord B——and a cabinet minister), "think what a capital anecdote that running away will make, when you are dead, and they write a big life of you, like M——'s life of B——!"

O, exquisite, because unconscious flattery of youthful faith and friendship! "When I am dead—yes, that is the way of the world. So much is done for us after we are dead! Think of Chatterton and Edgar Poe!

It is well for a Lord Byron to wait for death, and a Tom Moore to—burn his memoirs. A poor soldier of fortune may as well let the world have the chance of showing him some sympathy before that interesting composition, the "funeral service," is read over his remains. Even egotism itself may be excused, when we reflect that the alternative is to have one's memoirs burned at the request of one's amiable relatives, by the d——d good-natured friend to whom they have been confidingly intrusted!

But you, dear, dear Columbia, type of the land whose name you ought to bear, you will not burn my memoirs, and perhaps, some day, even Old England, and the highly respectable family of Mondel, will confess that, however indiscreet the exposure, there is a retributive justice in the sternly faithful record of an exiled kinsman's sufferings.

As for the world at large, it can dispense with a little modesty for the sake of so formidable an instalment of truth, as the revelation of a whole human life must necessarily prove.

To return to my narrative: I was fourteen years old, I had attained the highest classical, mathematical prizes, as also that for drawing—that is, copying those chalk and pencil sketches which, in an English drawing master's opinion, is a sufficient initiation in the mysteries of art for—a gentleman who is certain not to become an artist.

I think—oh, vanity of youth!—I really think I should have carried off the prize for dancing, as well as Greek, had I not committed the impropriety of kissing the dancing-master's daughter, a little fairy in white muslin, with lace-frilled trousers, whom I met at a juvenile ball we gave at the end of the half year.

Nothing is so apt to get one into scrapes as kissing without reflection. To all young men I would say, think twice before you kiss anybody, however pretty. It is the first step that counts!

Alas! I have wept more tears in consequence of random, unpremeditated kisses, than for all other causes put together!

Oh, I would solemnly warn all the youth of Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Australia and the Polynesian Isles, above all things never, never to kiss an ugly woman, because it is easy! for as sure as you do it, you will immediately afterwards encounter an angel of beauty, and the ugly woman will tell her that you kissed her, and you may die of despair perhaps, for a moment's thoughtless extravagance.

Many a man has wrecked his life and happiness on a word, a look, but how many thousands have eternally damned themselves—by a kiss!

Give anything in charity, gold, time, work, your life, if you will, but never give a kiss out of pity!

Waste your all in gambling, in wine, in every possible folly, but economize your kisses!

They rise up in judgment against you, like lies, and indeed lies they are, for there is but one kiss that man or woman should ever give, and that is the kiss of true love, the seal of ineffable happiness!

For my part, I will kiss the true kiss, or by my hopes of happiness, I will never kiss again!

Of late a German teacher was added to my usual inflictions. Why I was to learn German—I, alone of all the boys, was a mystery. But I found it a relief; Professor Jacobi, was a good fellow, and talked with me on general topics. Like many teachers of languages, he rightly conceived that it was his pupil's fault if he wasted the hour for which he paid. So, although I did not learn German, I learned a great deal about Germany, and things in general. Professor Jacobi was no sage or prophet, but he was the first man I had met, who talked to me like a man, and for that I liked him.

The mystery was now unveiled. I was to complete my education on the continent.

My father was, I fancy, glad to get a son, rapidly approaching adolescence, out of the way, and to enjoy the society of his young and pretty wife, undisturbed. As for me, the idea of travel was enchanting to my adventurous fancy.

I paid a farewell visit to my schoolfellows; but already I was a man, and they were boys in my eyes. I had left school! Sublime reflection! I was going abroad, I was about to be free!

O! sweet, sweet, liberty! how cheerfully have I since sacrificed at thy shrine the most brilliant chances of fortune, rank, place, power, even popularity! for what is all the gold and honor in the world, unless a man be sovereign of himself?

Like Satan, I have preferred to reign in hell, to serving in heaven. I have preferred the wild liberty of the oft penniless poet, to the ease and luxury of the prince's parasite, the partisan politician, the dependent heir.

I have, it is true, walked on the margin of the abyss of despair. In my fearlessness of death, I have been driven to seek the courage to live. But my will has been my law, my dull-souled oppressors have been shaken off with scorn; my purpose has been maintained, my aims, one by one, accomplished, and now—I risk all once more, upon a cast of the die, still lord and master of my fate, still firm in the maintenance of my eternal code and its three magical words, Victory or Death.

Another delightful discovery! I was to have no private tutor to spy and watch over me. I was to be entrusted to the care of a certain high government functionary, en retraite (at the well-known town of B——n), a friend of my father's and of Major —— the father of Mrs. T——. This gentleman was to receive me into his family, and treat me with paternal consideration. Admirable old friend! I shall never forget his kindness, or that of his lady, and her accomplished daughter and son.

It is the only true glimpse of happy domestic life I have ever enjoyed. But I anticipate events.

My father accompanied me to B——n. We took the steamer to Antwerp, and thence, by way of Brussels, Liége, and Aix la Chapelle, reached Cologne, whence a second steamer conveyed us to our destination.

At Antwerp and Brussels, the magnificent picture galleries, for the first time, awoke in me that love of art, which has ever since made painting my most beloved recreation. I may even venture to say, that by the most round-about and irregular ways in the world, I became eventually an artist, rather than an amateur, since for many months of my life, at various periods, I have owed my bread to my brush or pencil, when all other resources failed me.

It was at B——n, that I learned the manipulation of the colors used in oil-painting. But these too, I merely copied. The true knowledge of the theory and practice of art, was to be acquired at a later period in the studios of that rising school of English painters, who, if my personal friendship and the love they bore me, deceive me not, are destined to become the great regenerators of the art—the Titians and Da Vincis of the future!

My education it will be perceived, was such as befitted a man predestined to fortune and worldly position.

Besides the usual scholastic routine, I was instructed in every athletic accomplishment. Riding, swimming, fencing, the use of various arms, and gymnastic exercises, were by no means neglected. At the age of seventeen, I was "a cavalier, like other cavaliers;" to quote the description of Goethe's incomparable Mephistopheles.

I also indistinguished myself by drinking the best wines, serenading the prettiest girls, fighting rapier-duels, with young fire-eaters as wild as myself, and finally, by falling in love with the most beautiful girl in Germany—and to me, at that period, Germany was the world, for in fact, though not a German by birth, I was a student at a German University.

My complexion was at that time, pure and fresh as a rose; my long hair fell, after the student fashion, in curling abundance on my shoulders; my eyes were clear as the heavens, which I contemplated from an hundred mountain summits, in my daily rambles, on foot or on horseback; my figure was erect, supple, strong—in a word, I was then on the threshold of manhood, and in the bloom of youthful pride and vigor. I was not yet, as I soon afterwards became, a Slave of the Lamp.

Nevertheless, I was a devourer of books from my childhood. Before I was twelve years of age, I had as I have described, read Shakspere's plays and Scott's novels. I had read Fielding and Smollett; I had read all Milton's poems, and numerous other British classics. At fifteen, Byron and Shelly fell into my hands, and, for the first time, showed me the darker side of life, as well as its more brilliant joys. Then I was in Germany, and Goethe and Schiller, Hoffman, Wieland, Heine, and a host of others became my familiar spirits. I fell in with Voltaire, and new fields of speculation were opened to me.

Let me here revert, for an instant, to my school days. I was about thirteen; my father was abroad; I had to pass the holidays in part at T——Q——. One day, I surreptitiously entered the drawing-room by the window, and possessed myself of a superb copy of Byron's Don Juan. With intense greediness I read the first three cantos. I was in raptures—not so much with the humor and the voluptuous fascination of the descriptions, but with the magic ease of the versification.

Two years later, I composed a poem of some hundreds of stanzas in the same metre—the octave rime. I mastered it at once. Rhyming was to me second nature. My verse was fluent and correct at the first attempt. It took me a long time to learn to write prose—that is, to learn to speak on paper.

If orators would only learn to write in speech! How much vapid windy verbalism we should be spared at public meetings and in political assemblies!

At the same time, I had eagerly perused elementary works on the natural sciences, and all the history I could lay my hands on. I was ambitious of universal knowledge, and universal distinction. I wrote tales and poems, both in English and German, and even in the Latin language. I began to aim at inventions in machinery; I attended a course of chemical lectures, by the most celebrated professor of chemistry in Germany. My soul was of a grasping and assimilating nature; its cravings were unappeasable. I never retired to rest without a book and a reading lamp, and too often I read till the break of dawn reminded me of the necessity for repose. It was a wonder my health did not suffer. Irregular in my system of study, I attempted works unequal to my strength. Before I was sixteen, I translated Goethe's Faust into English verse. Impatient of instruction, I profited little by my masters. I drew caricatures of the professors at the lectures, instead of taking notes, and practised pistol-shooting with my French teacher instead of listening to his expositions. Yet I acquired the French, German, and Italian languages, almost without an effort, impelled by a keen curiosity to read the books I obtained. It seemed to me as if I acquired languages by some wonderful process of induction. As soon as I knew a few words, I guessed, or rather reasoned out, by imperceptible logic, the meaning of others. For example, I can read Spanish, yet I never devoted three hours to its study. Grammars and dictionaries I patronized little. Language was my element. In it I lived and moved, and had my being. Metres in versification were to me like the sciences of music—a mathematical system, an unutterable necessity to composition. I scarcely ever wrote an incorrect line even in my childhood. I listened with a smile to my companions who talked of writing by ear, and then falsified their numbers. Such faults were in my eyes unpardonable. A line with a false accent, or a wanting or superfluous syllable was simply, to my mind, no verse at all, a ridiculous blunder, a thing beneath all criticism. Indeed it is only in the English tongue, that such barbarous fallacies as poetical liberties are practicable. In my eyes, they are still abominations. A poet has no more right to make a false verse, in order to squeeze in an idea, than has an artist to violate perspective, in order to bring two objects in juxtaposition.

It was shortly after my arrival at B——n, that a proposition was made to me to become the companion and fellow-student of the present reigning Grand-duke of * * * * at that time, nearly of my own age. I declined the proposition instantly, without even appreciating the compliment, though I was to have received instruction with the young prince, and have been his most intimate associate. But I had in my soul the pride of fifty princes, and the idea of becoming a dependent, a courtier, a parasite, was to me inconceivable. But for this haughty love of independence, I might perhaps at this moment have been a titled minister, covered with stars and orders, and the delight of my worldly relatives; I preferred my liberty, and I prefer it still.

I pass over the first two years of my residence on the Rhine. They were years of study and reading, and charming associations.

Herr K——, in whose house I was domiciled, was an ex-minister of Jerome Napoleon, ex-king of Westphalia. He was very much like a French courtier of the olden time in his manners, and a pure Voltarian skeptic in his opinions. With regard to religious matters, he had a remarkably humorous way of laying his finger against his large aquiline nose, elevating his grey bushy eyebrows, smiling with every part of his face but his mouth, and saying gravely—"No eye has seen, no ear has heard." This was probably a quotation; where from I never knew. Nor did the fine old gentleman ever moralise, though he frequently impressed upon me that dissipation was injurious to the health, and that health was the sine qua non of enjoyment.

His age I never knew. He must have been then near eighty. His wife's brother, the Colonel (who was at Waterloo when only sixteen), gravely assured me one day that since his sister's marriage he had never observed any perceptible change in K——, who was nevertheless as brisk as a young man, and who played his game at l'ombre at his club every evening with immutable regularity.

"I win two hundred dollars a year," said the old diplomatist confidentially. "It keeps me in pocket money."

Colonel von R——. was a fine old German baron, and a popular officer with his regiment, which was one of rifles, and then stationed at W——w, beyond Frankfort. But his great merit was—his daughter. She came with him to B——n, to the wedding of Miss K——, her cousin.

They talked much about her beforehand. At length she arrived. She was eighteen; a noble, beautiful girl; tall, with dark brown hair, a fair complexion, and soft eyes,—a figure from which to model Graces; in a word, she was enchanting.

I was no longer a boy, I had just revisited England with young K—— and my inseparable friend, the Polish Baron de Rominski; I had experienced new sensations, become a new being. Body and mind had with my changed life and under the exhilarating influence of liberty, become matured with unusual rapidity. Every stranger supposed me to be two or three years older than I really was.

I saw Rosalie, and a new life was revealed to me. I had imagined love before, now I knew it. The light of beauty descended upon my soul. I gazed and dreamed and formed vague plans. Life began to assume a form. With every day the thoughts and cares of manhood grew more upon me.

I became indifferent to the Bacchanalian orgies of the students. Nevertheless, one evening, at my rooms, took place a grand drinking bout. I lived at an hotel, overlooking the Rhine, in which the K——s had a suite of apartments, and I my separate rooms.

In conclusion, long after midnight, the band of intoxicated students ran wildly about the hotel, changing the localities of all the boots and shoes, and possessing themselves of Rosalie's, the shoe-strings of which they divided in small pieces, and swore to preserve as sacred relics to their dying days.

I was myself far too elevated by the many flasks of golden Rudesheimer and sparkling Moselle, to observe clearly what was going on. The next day I was severely enlightened. Rosalie was evidently deeply offended. She would not speak to me for a long time; at length I extorted from her the cause of her anger.

"To allow my name," she said, "to be made a theme for the jests of a parcel of drunken students!"

I said little, but fixed on the three most prominent actors in the scene of the previous night, and at once challenged them severally, not to an ordinary rapier duel, but to a meeting with the sabre, as usual with military men in Germany, and amongst students, for the gravest offences. A duel with the sabre is, in my opinion, more dangerous than with the pistol. However, in this case, two of the challenged disclaimed all share of the shoe-string, and the third backed out on the ground that he had pledged his honor to his father (who was a clergyman), never to fight a duel. It is not half so brave a world as it would make believe. My friend the Count N——, called out six young noblemen of the best families in Prussia, but insisted on the pistol as a weapon. The result was, an offer to meet him with the rapier; declined on the ground that N—— never practised fencing. Finally, N—— accepted the rapier on condition that every contest with the sword should be followed by one with the pistol. Refused. Negotiations followed negotiations. Finally, no one fought; N——, was triumphant. For my part, I believe nine men out of ten to be natural poltroons.

In the Count's case, it was known that he was a good shot, and he had let slip the remark, that six Prussians, each with the left ear shot off, would cut a queer figure.

But the six brave young noblemen declined to submit themselves to the experiments of so dextrous an artist.

An orthodox rapier duel is or was a burlesque affair. We fought for the sake of fighting. On a given day twenty or thirty "affairs" would come off in a forest near the city. The belligerent parties were enveloped in a padded leather apron tied under the arms; a huge stock round the neck and absorbing the chin, a cap with a large shade, and an immense gauntlet on the right arm, completed the arrangements.

Then at it they went on the word los (set-to!) uttered by the seconds, who stood by, sword in hand, ready to interpose their swords on either party being touched. The result would be a cut nose or cheek, which a piece of sticking-plaster, or at worst, a needle and thread would remedy, though many were permanently disfigured in these ridiculous contests. The rapiers are very sharp at the edge. It is all cutting, no thrusting is allowed; I had a cut myself under the lip, which has left absolutely no trace, though the scar did not entirely disappear for many years. These duels generally originated in wanton jests or drunken insults.

Although all young men, especially at universities, or in the army, are inevitably impressed by the atmosphere in which they move, I made up my mind very resolutely not to allow the German students' absurd code of honor—literally a code as long as an act of Congress—to interfere with my reasonable independence. Many of the "fighting" men at B——n practised with the rapier from morning till night, and I was warned to avoid quarrelling with these blood-thirsty gentry. My answer was very simple, "I never will meet such fellows with such weapons. If I meet them it will be seriously, with chest exposed, sabre or pistol in hand." I was rarely molested. Bullies and ruffians are never really brave. They rarely attack those whom they cannot hope to intimidate.

But with all their love of amateur fighting, I must mention one fact to the credit of the German student. He does not admit of a blow even as an insult. To strike a fellow-student is to insure being sent to Coventry by the decree of the Presidents or Seniors of the Clubs, in convention assembled.

On the other hand "snobs," that is tradesmen, &c., may be caned or thrashed to any extent. The student assumes that it is absurd to apply codes of honor to inferior orders of being, who cannot possibly understand them.

The student drinks—that is his grand characteristic—he drinks beer by the cask, wine by the dozen bottles. He smokes long pipes, with great china bowls, eternally. At night he pervades the streets in his robe-de-chambre and slippers, pipe in hand, on his way to his club, that is—a private drinking saloon. In parties of four he serenades the professors' daughters. In parties of fifty he makes excursions which result in a Commensch or extra drinking bout. Since 1848 the student, however, is no longer the student of my experience. He has become a politician, and is spied by the police as mice are by cats. Still he drinks hugely, but reserves much of his fighting propensity for the grand coming day of Revolution, when, as at Vienna, he will once more strike for fatherland and liberty.

I yet hope to see a free Germany. But since the miserable failure of the last great struggle, I no longer venture to prophesy.

Time passed on, Miss K——was married to a Captain of Rifles, the accomplished C——r, a musician, composer, and author, who nearly killed a brother officer in a sabre duel, without ever having practised the use of the weapon, and who eventually, I heard, quitted the army, and devoted himself to the gentler services of the Muses altogether.

I read to Rosalie the works of Byron in a German translation, and was wrapt up in her contemplation, dreamed of her, and wrote of her, and loved her till I brought on a fever, which might have become dangerous, as I refused all medicines. But Rosalie came, and at her hands I would have taken poison. I recovered. I still loved on, and worked up my imagination to the idea that my love was eternal and incurable. Rosalie returned to her father's home. I felt myself attracted to her as a needle by a magnet. B——n was to me no longer of any interest, since the Baron de Rominski, my friend (an artist and poet too, in his own sweet Polish tongue, which he began to teach me), was going to Paris. I therefore resolved to go to Berlin, and on the way to visit the Colonel at W——. He had given me a frank invitation, and Rosalie confirmed it.

I wrote to my father, and, backed by the kind old Aulic councillor K——, succeeded in getting his consent, and ample pecuniary supplies.

My last twenty-four hours at B——n were spent in prison. I was arrested for singing in the street with a party of students at night, and, though released by the watch on showing my card, was summoned next day before Herr von Solomon, the University Judge, and duly sentenced by that functionary, in the following words:—

"Mr. Mondel, it is painful to me to inform you that you will have the kindness to put yourself under arrest, at the University prison, for the space of twenty-four hours."

"But I wish to start to-day for Berlin."

"Oh! in that case, I will send on a note to the authorities, and you can sit out your twenty-four hours when you arrive there."

But the idea of commencing my abode in a new city by going to prison, appeared to me even less pleasant than concluding it in such a manner. So I escorted myself quietly to the prison, and informed the jailer that I had come to sit out my four-and-twenty hours' incarceration!

"Walk in, sir, said the jailer, politely; "if you want anything, ask for it; wine, coffee, dinner, anything you please."

"Thank you, I have just breakfasted; what society have you here?"

"There is Herr von P——, sir, came in yesterday—booked for a week."

I knew Herr von P—— slightly, and we were soon engaged in a game at ecarté, very much to the profit of the Herr von P——, and very little to my amusement; as I have not a particle of the gambler in my composition.

There was a great deal of play amongst the students at B——n.

P—— was a noted gambler, and made much money out of innocent young gentlemen. He belonged, to the most aristocratic clique, and it was said paid his expenses out of the losses of his friends.

P—— once made a singular bet with Count N—— (of pistol-shooting repute). It was that he would sit up longer at ecarté than N——. The bet was a hundred dollars. They sat playing for six and thirty hours, and made it a drawn bet by mutual consent, but P—— had won two hundred and seventy-three dollars at the game.

Why, however, do I linger over these trivial reminiscences of youth? Let me hasten with my story.

I followed Rosalie to W——. I stayed there a whole month, and with a tremendous effort bade her farewell, and continued my journey to Berlin. On the road I met with a curious example of honesty—I dropped a roll of notes at a wayside inn, where I stopped to dine, and the diligence or Schnell-post (quick-post, lucus a non) was already in motion when the waiter followed me, and thrusting his hand in at the window gave me the undiminished roll of notes. I had not even time to separate one of them from its fellows and give it to the poor man for his trouble.

Nothing else happened on the road worthy of mention, save my tragic loss of dear R——'s parting present, a splendid gold-headed bamboo, which slipped out of the window, whilst I was asleep, from the straps at the top of the vehicle. I would rather have lost half my next quarter's income, which I carried in my carpet bag, in the shape of some four hundred five-franc pieces—each then, practically worth perhaps, three times as much in Berlin, as is now a dollar in New York.

When I reached Berlin, I felt myself for the first time my own master. I threw my quarter's income into a drawer of my escritoire. It lasted me precisely three weeks, instead of three months. However, credit and friendly loans carried me on to the end of the second month, when I ventured on an application to my father, and was supplied with the requisite means, accompanied by a severe lecture and an intimation that for the future I should draw a diminished income monthly from a banker's. However, the banker was accommodating, and I managed to keep afloat, with the assistance of my friend, A—— (the son of Germany's most popular living poet.) We made common purse, and were rarely utterly drained, though we went to the opera regularly, drank the best wine we could discover, and made generally as profound a business of pleasure as most men of our years and position.

On my first arrival in the Prussian capital, I presented a letter of introduction from Madame K—— to the Baroness von W——, wife of the General von W——. They treated me with unvarying hospitality, and the young baron, who was also a Captain in the Royal Guards, volunteered to show me Berlin du fond en comble. I quote his own phraseology.

This he did, but what most interested me was a lovely girl of my own age, who sold gloves in a little shop at the corner of the Frederich Strasse, close to the bridge.

And now I wish to do what no modern writer has dared to do. I wish to tear off the mask of hypocrisy with which men insult the reason and delude the fancy of women in polite society in England and America. In France the truth is allowed to be written on social matters, though political discussion is forbidden. With us we may preach any political doctrines we please, but it is an impropriety to allude to facts of universal importance of the greatest social interest. It is not of shocking exceptions but of general truth that I wish to speak.

Men do not, cannot, lead the lives of women before marriage. No man, who is anything or anybody, ever reaches the age of thirty years unmarried without numerous adventures more or less serious with the other sex. It is impossible from the constitution of society that there should be even a single exception to this rule, save in the case of unfortunates who, by imprisonment, ill-health or natural imbecility, were artificially isolated. My experience of the young men of the upper classes of society in many countries justifies me in saying that precisely those men who have been stigmatised as roués and libertines have been generally the most intellectual and honorable, in fact, truly virtuous men, I have met with. I will go further, the man in whom the passion of love is strongest will naturally be engaged in most adventures, and also best able to distinguish between the real love and the false. The man who has experience has also appreciation. In a word it is useless to condemn that which is universal.

If any hypocrites, or would-be saints, deny the fact—I pity them sincerely if they have acted up to principles which Nature imperatively refutes.

The remedy for this evil, if evil it be, is early marriage, and absolute liberty of divorce. People are afraid to marry from the idea that it is taking a step which is irremediable, that it is risking a whole life's happiness in a chance. How wretchedly wicked and foolish are such institutions! Make divorce as easy as marriage, and the whole class of degraded women would almost instantly vanish. Even men would shrink from such miserable pleasures, and, at length, the first real step in social progress would be taken.

As there are degrees in love, so there should be variety of duration in marriage.

To enjoy the highest, the eternal love, is the privilege of few, to the many should be given at least the chance of finding the nearest approximation to that ideal felicity.

Again, when a man once does experience the great passion, how absurd to reproach him with the minor caprices of the past. As wisely reproach a great poet for the bad verses of his boyhood.

All young men of rank and culture, are, out of sight of their mothers and sisters, theoretical and practical Don Juans.

In this creed I too was nurtured, even before I knew what it meant, at school. In after life it never was my lot to find any circle of young men who did not possess the Don Juanic faith, at any rate up to the epoch of marriage.

Of married men I shall say nothing: I dare not. I will hope that my friends have been exceptions to the rule. For my part I pity a man who can be unfaithful to his wife. I could not bear to live with a woman to whom I COULD be unfaithful.

The pretty glove-girl charmed me, yet I still dreamed of Rosalie.

Six months later the little glove-girl married an old Philistine, as all non-students or citizens are called in the Burschen tongue.

I was in a moderate state of pique.

Four years later, when I was compelled by circumstances to abandon all hope of returning to Germany, to demand the hand of Rosalie, I was in a state of despair.

So vast is the gulf between a mere intrigue and a love-dream, however vague.

Five years later Rosalie was married to a judge, the president of a college of officials in Prussia. I never saw her after my departure for Berlin.

I think it must be admitted that the love of boys is rather of the imagination than of the deeper life, rather of the senses than of the heart.

At Berlin I first drank deeply and eagerly at the inexhaustible fountain of metaphysics. At that time the mind of the studious portion of the German youth was absorbed in the transcendental philosophy of Hegel and Schelling. The latter was still alive, and lecturing at the University. But his great rival was still more alive in the souls of his disciples. At first I was mystified by the abstract terms employed. Then I understood, and—O monstrous presumption of boyish audacity—I cavilled and questioned. I denied that the substantial matter at issue in all philosophy was really affected by Hegel's logic. But I seized on the application of philosophy to life. I became a republican amongst republicans, and helped to lay the seeds of the revolution which in 1848 shook all Europe to its foundations.

At Berlin I continued to read much, and to disdain the tedious road to knowledge which the lecture-rooms offered. Such a system may serve minds deficient in self-reliance, and temperaments naturally slow. To the born student, it is a tiresome obstacle to the enthusiastic love of knowledge, which rests not till it obtains its satisfaction.

In this city also I was a great theatre-goer, and accompanied by A——, I heard at the Royal Opera those masterpieces of music to which the world is never tired of listening. My friend, who lived in the same house with me, was himself a fine player on the pianoforte, and it is from this epoch more especially that I date the development of a passionate taste for harmony, and a fuller appreciation of those delights, without which poets have found even their visions of heaven incomplete.

I even commenced the study of music as a science, and attempted to compose some airs. It will be seen how these projects, with many others of my universally ambitious idiosyncrasy, were frustrated by circumstances, against which I have in vain rebelled, even up to the moment of this present writing.

But hitherto I had merely led a life of preparation. I had been a child of fortune, petted, caressed, and lapped in luxury. If the early shadows of my family history had thrown a gloom over my brilliant student travels and studies, it needed the presentiment of future sorrows to afflict me with that melancholy which, from the period of adolescence, has been my inseparable companion.

Strange to say, this funereal and incurable gloom which has ever wrapped me as in a mantle, is to the eye of the outer world, counterbalanced by a sense of humor, and what I may truly call, a vigor of merriment rarely equalled. But it is a foolish blunder to confound mirth with enjoyment. How often has my loud laugh shaken the air, when within my heart the vision of Death sat enthroned, and palpable to my soul! How often have I seated myself to write the most facetious articles, the most ludicrous pieces of versification, by an effort of almost superhuman self-conquest over mental anguish and depression. Dearest! I have more than once paused over a half finished tale, or at the end of the first act of a comedy, to ask myself the solemn question, whether it was worth while to torture my brain even for one instant longer, to preserve an existence so utterly mortifying and miserable.

Am I alone an isolated example? I know not. I will hope that few have suffered as I have suffered, in the age of so-called civilization we live in!

And here I will pause to cite one remark, profound, terrible, and indisputable, in answer to the cant which replies to the agony expressed by the great thinkers of earth, by a trivial reference to the more obvious sufferings of beings of inferior intelligence.

The degree of suffering is in proportion to the capacity to suffer. The strongest nature and the loftiest intellect, are subject to exquisite tortures, of which the boor and the drudge of routine is unsusceptible.

Again, under a certain amount of pain, feeble natures give way: delirium, lunacy, or death, come to their relief. It is the awful privilege of the strong to bear—unbent, unbroken, still to bear.

My last act in Germany was to leave Berlin and bury myself in the midst of vast pine forests on the shore of the Lake of Tegel. There, with my books, and the use of a boat, in which I paddled myself about on the lake, I lived in utter solitude at the house of a forester, an old soldier, who had received his place as a reward for services during the war against Napoleon.

Just as I became accustomed, by a six weeks' experiment, to this new and meditative communion with nature, I received a summons from my impatient and unquiet father, who was, indeed, ever tormenting me with his restless suspicion, commanding my immediate return to England.

I returned to Berlin, bade farewell to my friends, and took the Schnell-Post for Hamburgh. It was a bitterly cold journey, in the month of November, and a poor young actress who was the only other occupant of the spacious vehicle during the whole journey, was nearly frozen to death, notwithstanding that I gave her my overshoes and thickest cloak. Truly, never did young student and pretty girl huddle together with more innocent feelings, than did we during that terrible three days' voyage. It was like the retreat from Moscow. Meanwhile, there was heat caught elsewhere; for, during our journey, Hamburgh was almost entirely burnt to the ground, and we entered a city over which the destroying angel appeared to have passed.

We put up at a half-burnt hotel, and three days after, with many kisses, bade one another farewell for ever, in all human probability.

I took the steamer for London, and arrived safely, despite a storm of the most violent character. Never could I cross even the straits of Dover without a storm!

I met with a cold reception; and not a week elapsed before my father desired me to find separate lodgings for myself. He preferred the additional expense to my presence in his house. I was no longer at home.

Already I felt my dependence upon my father an oppression.

On my return, I commenced nominally the study of the law, really, the pursuit of literature, as the stepping-stone to fame and power.

Whilst forcing myself to study a repugnant profession, from a sense of duty towards my father, I devoted every leisure moment to reading and composition. This I could the more easily do that I had absolutely no friends or acquaintances in London. By my early transplantation to Germany I had lost sight of all my school-friends, and as my father had separated himself from all his old connections, on account of his marriage; as, moreover, he almost treated me as a stranger, except in matters of paternal authority, I found myself in the most isolated position imaginable. Brought up with brilliant prospects, and accustomed to refined society and abundant social intercourse, I had suddenly strayed into a bleak desert, and was, for the first time in my life, alone in a great city.

I had yet to learn how lonely a man may be in the midst of all the luxury and gaieties of a vast metropolis, when misfortune segregates him from his fellows, and he becomes indeed as one having a leprosy, with whom no man may hold communion.

The slavery of the lamp now began; but as yet it was a voluntary servitude.

A humorous incident decided my first appearance in print.

My poems—imitations of Byron, translations of Schiller, Goethe, &c.,—being very wisely rejected by the great publishers, I, with the indomitable pertinacity of the true author, commenced laying siege to the small ones. In these attacks, I had no guide, philosopher, or friend; in my innocence I walked into the first bookseller's shop I came to, who affixed the more dignified title of publisher to his sign, and confidently proposed to make his fortune. It was from one of the poorest and humblest of the tribe, that I received the following amicable counsel.

"Sir," said the printer, publisher, editor, and compiler of "Brown's Miscellaneous Broad-sheet," "your poetry is very fine, I should like to publish it in my journal; but as I shall be in the gazette next week (i. e. bankrupt), I cannot indulge my inclination. Sir, your poetry is very fine, but poetry does not pay. You are too high, sir, a great deal too high. Write down to the people, sir, write something about what they know and understand, and you will succeed. I suppose you could write prose—a novel, for example?"

"I could write anything," was my reply, and my modest belief, in my then state of scribblomaniac fanaticism.

"Well, write down, sir, if it is only for once in a way; just to try the experiment."

"I will," said I emphatically, and I left the publisher to his reflections, and his bankruptcy. I never saw him more; but his words never ceased to ring in my ears. Of their wisdom I have been but too well convinced, by experience. My lightest, most careless, most imperfect efforts have alone attained popularity. Those works in which I have put forth all my strength, in which I have as it were concentrated my life, my science, and my art, have been passed over by the multitude unnoticed. For doing what hundreds could do as well, or better than myself, I have received unqualified testimonies of approval. For accomplishing what no other could have accomplished, I have at best received the qualified applause of a few friends or critics. As every original man can do certain special things, better than any other, I do not by the above sentence assert any arrogant claim to superiority. I merely assert a claim common to that class who alone can strictly and particularly be included under the denomination—Thinkers and Poets. I may be the last in its ranks, but to this class I naturally pertain; and as I have fairly proved my claim by my labors, I have never yet had the misfortune to hear it disputed; if, on the other hand, I have but rarely heard it acknowledged with candor.

I sat down to follow the advice of the bankrupt publisher, nor did I underrate his advice on account of his own failure. Men learn wisdom by misfortune. I obeyed his hint, in the widest acceptation of the word; for, after writing poems in which nothing short of princes, knights, grand inquisitors, and magicians, were admissible, I at once descended to the very bottom of the social scale, and made my hero—a beggar. Finding novel-writing easy; in my utter ignorance of art, I soon scribbled half a dozen chapters, and having, with Machiavellian foresight, prepared a dozen different titles, all adaptable to the same embryo novel, I once more sallied forth a literary Don Quixote, in search of a publishing castle to storm.

By a singular chance the very first shop I entered was the very best in London I could have selected. The proprietors were enterprising young beginners, who printed cheap illustrated works, of an unexceptionable class. I showed them my catalogue of titles like a bagman, who shows the list of his goods.

They were regarded with evident, though disguised, satisfaction.

"And have you written all these tales?" said the partner with whom I negotiated.

"They are not all completed," said I coolly, "but many of them are in progress."

The publisher selected one of the titles as particularly attractive.

"Fortunately," said I, "I have the first chapters of that very tale in my pocket," and I produced my omnivorous manuscript with a slight blush.

"If you will call again the day after to-morrow, you shall have an answer," said the publisher.

Of course I was punctual. The publisher asked but one question—the price.

I was so dizzy with my triumph, and the prospect of seeing myself in print, that I answered, by stating the first round sum that came into my head, and which happened to be ten pounds.

"We shall require twenty numbers, of eight pages each," said the publisher.

I acquiesced without reflection, still intoxicated with my success.

The tale appeared. It sold by some thousands of copies, and I became almost immediately the editor of an illustrated paper, or rather weekly magazine, which I supplied with tales, horrible, sentimental and comic, with editorial leaders, with satirical poems, puns, wood-cuts and epigrams. I worked awfully hard, and gained about as large an income as—most hack writers, and lawyers' clerks. Some years later, when I really strove to live by literature, I failed to secure so good an income. The regular newspaper editor and the really famous author, are the only men who can live decently by literature. Magazine and periodical writing in all its branches, high and low, is a mere lottery even to the comparatively lucky ones. Ten years of observation and personal struggle enable me to state this general fact so decisively, that I venture to accuse any man of monomania who voluntarily persists in such a career. Many have no choice in the matter, and these must of course bend to the inevitable destinies.

In ten weeks the illustrated paper died. The novel was, at the publishers' request, wound up summarily. I killed off all the characters in my hurry, and forgot even to leave one alive to tell the story. The publishers absconded. The shop was to let.

My father, who had regarded my proceedings with mingled amazement and annoyance, was glad to see me deprived of the opportunity of scribbling. Indeed, literary life is all ups and downs, and the down had now arrived. I wrote a few sketches for some obscure papers, and then found no further opening. Under these circumstances, I rested on my laurels, gave the few people I knew nicely bound copies of my abruptly wound-up "biography of a beggar," and once more relapsed into law, study, and isolation.

A droll adventure happened to me at this period. An elderly gentleman who was compiling an archæological romance, advertised for literary assistance. I called upon him; and he requested me to put the sentiment into his book, "which, otherwise," he added, "I must cabbage from James and Bulwer, for sentiment is out of my line!"

However, I expressed so freely to him my views as to the necessity of a plot to a romance, that we disagreed about terms, and parted, like my two friends who went to see the sun rise on a foggy morning, and quarrelled on the top of a mountain—to meet no more.

I now commenced the translation of a voluminous German work, and applied myself till late in the night with such ardor, that all suddenly I was seized with a fierce fever, became delirious, and for weeks together lost all consciousness of the outer world.

During this illness I was abandoned to the care of a young doctor, who followed the old fashioned system of reduction to an extent I barely survived, and to the attentions of the people in whose house I had lodgings.

When I recovered I met with neither kindness nor sympathy. My step-mother was my secret, interested, and determined enemy. My father's affections were utterly alienated. I was doubly alone. My books were my only friends. Therefore I addressed to them a poem, perhaps the first tolerable attempt of the kind I had ever made, except translations, for which my delicate perception of idioms and their equivalents, gave me a peculiar facility.

I was not yet truly a slave of the lamp. But the hour was at hand. I was but nineteen years of age. It struck; and my doom was sealed.

Like the tiger that has tasted blood, I tasted the sweet poison of popular fame, and from that moment the thirst was insatiable!

Since that date precisely ten years have elapsed; ten years, during which time the demon of unrest has been my familiar spirit. The genius of desperation my almost constant tempter; my faith in the Beautiful my only source of consolation.

A book appeared, the manifesto of a man who aimed at leading a party.

It was a brilliant book, and the parliamentary position of its author gave it great importance. The papers were full of it.

The retrograde progressionists advanced (like crabs backwards) in power. Nevertheless, the book was a humbug, the "principles" it advocated fallacious, the ideas plagiarisms, its sentiment artifice, and its effect clap-trap.

It was full of plausible nonsense, and sublime bombast. There was not a particle of honesty, truth, or real greatness of soul in the book or in its author—an ambitious and intriguing adventurer, who, by dint of a rich marriage and exquisite policy, eventually became the leader of the ultra-stupid, that is, aristocratic party, in England, and, for a brief space, a cabinet minister.

I resolved to answer the book, and hold it up to the ridicule and contempt it deserved.

I wrote a novel; a bold, dashing, satirical extravaganza. It succeeded, sold largely, was reviewed in all the papers, and was even the subject of lengthy articles in the magazines. Its authorship was a mystery; it was attributed to authors of established fame and talent.

It produced me, however, little, save fame and an offer from the publisher—one of the grandees of his class—to follow up my success, by a second attempt. The publisher even advanced me money on the strength of the future.

Already I was beginning to feel embarrassed, as, since my return from abroad, I was barely supplied with the funds necessary to sustain my position, and supply my necessities. My income was doled out to me by degrees. I was questioned, doubted, lectured by my father, and contradicted and insulted by my step-mother, whose defective education, added to natural weakness of mind, made her an implacable torment.

The Slavery of the Lamp had begun.

A violent quarrel with my father, the result of a long train of petty annoyances on the part of himself and my step-mother, drove me to an abrupt decision.

I quitted the chambers, or rather garrets, which my father had allotted to me, in one of his houses, and sought the hospitality of my maternal uncle.

I had not seen him since I was a child; he was the younger of my mother's two brothers. He resided in London. This brother was domiciled at New Orleans. My grandmother was an Englishwoman, and after my grandfather's death, resided partly on her own estate of Lakeland, partly in London, at her house in P—— Square.

My father's separation from my mother, had naturally separated him from her family.

I wrote to my uncle, who was a distinguished man of science, an author, and a travelled connoisseur in art—himself an admirable amateur artist.

He replied gracefully to my letter, accompanied by a copy of my new work, inviting me to dine with him at his club. In England, dinner and friendship are inseparable ideas.

At six o' clock precisely, I entered the splendid, club-house in St. James's Square, and was conducted by a powdered footman into the presence of Mr. Harley. A tall, spare, but powerful man, of some three and thirty years, with a pale face, and deeply sunken, intense eyes, rose to welcome me, with languid cordiality, but with perfectly easy and natural manner of one accustomed to the refinement of the very highest society.

He appeared pleased with my appearance. We conversed freely, on general and family matters. For the first time since I had returned from Germany, I felt as if I had a family, a name, and a friend. Hitherto so ghastly was the change from my brilliant continental life, with its gay companionship, its lively balls, its constant excitement, and my position as a young "milord," to the solitude and comparative penury of my London life, that I seemed to myself an abstraction, a nightmare-ridden hero of Hoffman, rather than an only son and heir, in two English families of undoubted position. In England, without family, a man is nothing. He has no introduction to society, he knows nobody, he is not recognized, he does not exist. People always ask who is a young man's father, who his grandfather? Not even at the actual shopkeeper does the aristocratic prejudice stop. I never knew a man in England, who was not, somehow or other, of noble family, except a downright honest mechanic. In this respect Englishmen are as bad as Irishmen, only their pride causes them to keep quiet, and not absolutely ram their ramified pedigrees down the throats of their acquaintance!

What a droll vanity! Are we not all cousins of the order mammal, genus bimana, species man?

After dining with my uncle, he took me to a soirée in Belgrave Square, having previously arranged my introduction. After nearly two years in London, it was the first party at which, except at my father's house, I had been present! My father had always refused all invitations for me, from his own newly-formed circle, such as it was—with few exceptions a miscellaneous horde of parvenus and parasites.

But the study of my uncle himself interested me more than all the titled and untitled celebrities I encountered in the society to which he introduced me; and in which I was, thanks to my book and natural vivacity, treated, as the French say, with distinguished consideration.

Indeed nothing astonished or impressed me much in this new sphere. Had I not, in Germany, conversed with the great Schlegel, the friend of Madame de Staël, and the translator of Shakspere? Had I not danced with countesses and associated with princes? The "great world" was the only world of which I knew anything, and of that I knew little, it is true; but then I had read all the novels of the age, and novels are—or ought to be—the mirrors of society.

But George Harley puzzled me. He was not as other men. The objects of his life appeared to be purely intellectual. He was a magnetizer, a phrenologist, a materialist philosopher. He was constantly on the look-out for new ideas and strange books. He knew strange men, famous for strange specialities. One day he introduced me to an astrologer, the next to M—— F——, afterward Countess of O——i, a strong-minded American lady. He had a curious sympathy with trees and landscape effects, and would walk with me for hours, discussing philosophy till long after midnight, through the deserted streets or round the silent Regent's Park, near which his house was situate.

But there was a mysterious indifference, a cold pride (not hauteur—he was quiet, gentle and affable in manner), about him. The upper part of his face was superb, his lips thin, compressed, stern, and full of sadness. He seemed to have no strong passions but anger, which he suppressed, and scorn which he gave vent to in cynical analyses of men and their motives. He interested, yet oppressed me. I loved him with a vague misgiving. I doubted whether he was capable of affection. Yet he treated me at that time with kindness, and gave me his confidence so far as, perhaps, he was capable of confiding. He seemed to be occupied solely with the study of man and his organization. He absolutely hated the idea of a future state, repudiated all spiritual theories and transcendental metaphysics, and though handsome, and possessing worldly advantages, the thought of marriage never seemed to enter his mind.

Had he been disappointed in love? I often asked myself. Yet all the women I saw appeared to admire, many to idolize, this cold, strange, unimpressible man. He treated them like children, and they looked up to him as a wonder and a mystery.

Suddenly the mania for railway speculation broke out. All classes were infected, and lo! my grave uncle, who seemed to live but in science and dreams became, presto, a speculator. He enabled me also to speculate on a miniature scale. I gained, as if by magic, considerable sums of money. Ere long came the crash. Harley, who at one time had been almost a millionaire, was, after all, a loser of thousands of pounds. He became gloomy and anxious, and relapsed into his old habits, but as it seemed to me without zest or interest. The even tenor of his life was broken. We became estranged by degrees, and when my hour of real imperative trouble arrived, he too, deserted me.

It soon came. At twenty I had published my second novel. It was well received, but the times were bad, the terrible railway crash absorbed the universal attention. Nevertheless, the produce of my fortunate speculations, with the profits of my book, were enough to sustain me in a life of luxury and ease.

I shall never cease to remember with pleasure a delightful trip to Paris, made with my friend Templeton Bivar, a relative of Lord Bivar's, but himself the son of a half-pay Major in the army, and of the slenderest pecuniary resources. He was two years younger than myself, a noble, talented, enthusiastic young fellow; tall, blue-eyed, with black hair, a fresh color, and the features of an Apollo. His sisters were surpassingly beautiful; their presentation at court produced quite a sensation. Bivar was full of humor, and his judgment was pure and true as his heart was generous and faithful. He has always been, he still is, my friend and brother in soul. We have rendered each other a thousand services, seconded each other in affairs of honor, aided one another in affairs of love. We have shared prosperity and adversity, we have never had two purses. Together we have battled with the world, and together we have, at least, triumphed over obscurity, and taught men to recognize our existence in the world of art and literature. Whenever we have been separated, our worst misfortunes have happened. Rominski is the only friend I ever had, who approached Bivar in chivalric grandeur of sentiment and action. Bivar was emphatically a gentleman.

And here let me abandon for a brief space the external progress, to record the spiritual movements of my life.

I was now a man, I corresponded with a celebrated authoress and a famous poet, I lived in and of the world, I had some reputation as an anonymous author. I had tasted to a certain extent the feeling of independence. I began to feel my intellectual power, and to meditate earnestly on man and his destinies. My conversations with Harley, and my arguments against his material theories had strengthened my own convictions. I felt the necessity of systematizing my speculations.

I found myself mentally at war with all received ideas. In politics I was virtually an anarchist, in religion an atheist. In morals I was a skeptic.

I had to reconstruct the universe from its elements, and to account for its apparent inconsistencies.

Familiar with the theories of the ancient Hindoo philosophers, the Greek, the English, the French, the German schools of all shades, alike versed in material facts and fancies, as in transcendental formulas, without prejudice or bias, seeking only knowledge, I was as ready to follow August Compte or the Baron von Reichenbach; as Berkeley the bishop, or Spinoza the Hebrew; as ready to listen to the inductions from Harley's experiments, as to the sublime doctrines of Fichte and the audacious logic of Hegel.

I was an impartial investigator, not however, an eclectic. To me Victor Cousin was—an academician.

I desired a new form for the one great truth.

The result was my system of Atomic Individualism, with which the philosophic world is acquainted.

What will, perhaps, surprise any students of ontology who may read this work, is the unprecedented fact that my system was, and is (for I still hold the same opinions), neither spiritual nor material, according to the ordinary acceptation of the terms, but rather a reconciliation of the two hostile, or supposed hostile, theories, which may be most correctly defined as mathematical.

I could not, with the idealists, admit that ideas were the fundamental realities of existence, because ideas were ever changing. Nor could I allow, with the materialists, that matter was the essence of all things, because, matter being infinitely divisible, had evidently no ultimate particles, and therefore resolved itself into nothing but forms and phenomena.

To exist absolutely, a thing must exist immutably and independently, because it is—and for no other reason. Now, ideas only exist because we conceive them, and matter only exists—if it be supposed to exist apart from ideas at all—in relation to other matter. In a word, both ideas and matter have merely a comparative and proportionate, not a real and absolute existence.

Both depend upon the sentient beings' power of perceiving their existence. Hence, I was driven to conclude that the ultimate atoms of the universe were sentient points, having neither length, breadth, nor qualities, and that all existences, apparent or real, were simply the relations, I may say, for want of a better phrase, the mathematical relations, of these points to one another (perhaps intertortuosity of infinitely extensible atoms). That power or force existed, moreover, was undeniable, else constant change and movement would be impossible. And as all force exerted must proceed ultimately from some determinate point, I concluded that each of these vital atoms was the centre from which it necessarily emanated, and that volition was the pure and radical nature of this primitive force. In fact, that the idea of universal forces governing the world, was at bottom nothing but an imperfect glimmering of the notion of the united action of the will or force resident in every individual atom or spirit.

This will or force amounted then, in mathematical parlance, to a power of changing its position with reference to other spiritual atoms, or vital centres, possessed by each individual atom. On these relations depended the sentient condition of the atom. Hence, as I assumed the necessary existence of free-will, or independent self-originating motion in each point of intelligence or ultimate atom of the infinite, I also assumed, as the inevitable principle of every such atom's motions, the desire to place itself in a condition most productive of the sense of enjoyment; to seek which, and avoid its opposite, pain (or as Locke calls it, uneasiness), must be the fundamental craving of every sentient being, or spirit.

This relation of one atom to the rest, is what in mundane parlance is called circumstance, a phrase which betrays an unconscious presentment of my philosophy; as implying a sentient centre, surrounded by external entities. I also saw that as all motion must logically spring from central points, so all will must be governed by primitive motive or impulse. Hence, that the desire of selfish enjoyment must be the fountain of all actions whatsoever.

Hence that, humanly speaking, the great object of this life, as of all other modes of existence, must be to place oneself in the most favorable circumstances for enjoying the highest degree of sensual and intellectual pleasure, which are, at bottom, mere varieties of the same action.

Such was the substance of the profound system I had excogitated before reaching my one-and-twentieth year.

As to religion, I had none, in the vulgar sense of the word. I repudiated the idea of a personal deity, as contrary to the nature of an infinite and eternal Existence. As to the destinies of the soul or primitive atom, I saw nothing but an everlasting vista of progress, and increase of enjoyment. I had ascended from the abyss, I was soaring into the empyrean. I had been perchance a stone, a plant, a fish, an insect, a bird, and a mammal. I was now a man, I might be an angel, a god, a Kosmos; there was no bound to imagination, nor limit to reality. In the Eternal Infinite there was space for all things. The stars might perish in old age, the whole present occupants of the stage of being vanish in the storms of change, but I and all the other indestructible, indivisible atoms of the measureless whole, could never escape from Existence. Eternal space was our abode, and there was no escape from the eternal.

Thus I have given you a vague glimpse of the deepest depths of my unfathomable thoughts. Let us now return from the subtle abstractions of philosophy, to the embodied forms and images of human life. Henceforward I shall speak of things as they appear, and leave the more difficult science of essential analysis to those of my readers who care to investigate such mysteries.

I will merely add, that in love I recognised the highest spiritual potence, and in the mystery of sex, the grand motive power of Nature's atomic citizens.

Up to this time, I had still vaguely dreamed of Rosalie, although I narrowly escaped a second serious passion (from which, however, I recovered after a precipitate declaration and very natural rejection). But it was only a dream, a hope. The Destinies were eager to overthrow the edifice of pride, which the last two years had built up.

The day of my majority arrived. I had creditors like any other young man of pleasure. But what matter? I had reversionary property to the value of thousands of pounds. I could discount the future, sacrifice large prospects for immediate independence!

Delicious illusion! On examination of the will of my grandfather, a flaw in my title was discovered. My reversionary possessions were, perhaps, unsaleable, without my father's consent!

I trembled at my danger. A horrible presentiment of my crushed and blighted future, darkened my soul like a thunder cloud. Already I knew that to live by literature alone in London, was for a young aspirant, like myself, a hideous experiment, a chance game, against the most hazardous odds. Authors swarmed; the magazines were overwhelmed with contributors, competing for their miserable honoraria. I had, it is true, written books, conquered the attention of readers, and sowed the seeds of a reputation. But the railway panic deadened the sale of my last book, as of every other published at the time. Money was scarce. The publisher, growing timid, demanded to see the whole MS. of my next work, before making any advances. Alas! I had written no work, but my grand system of "Atomic Individualism" in the shape of a long blank verse poem, and when I showed it to the philosophic publisher by speciality, he glanced at one of its pages, and within the space of two minutes and three quarters, delivered himself of the following opinion:

"This is a string of mere assumptions, sir."

I have heard some fine criticism in my time. Eight years later—only the other day—I met a young gentleman in Wall street, who did me the honor to tell me that one of my most artistical compositions was "fair, very fair," in his, young Wall Street's, opinion. I thanked him humbly for his patronage of my modest muse, though I confess I shivered a little at his further proposition, that we should spend an evening in the mutual enjoyment of one another's society.

Authors have to practise patience, more than even money-lenders. The currency of ideas is even less understood than the currency of barter.

My father was abroad. I sacrificed a smaller reversion, by way of a stop-gap, and started a magazine, besides printing at my own expense, a most abominably bad poem, entitled,

"BORIANNA,"
A Tale of Ancient Nineveh,

or something of the kind.

My invisible friend, the famous poet, wrote me his candid opinion, and that candid operation, I blush to say, terminated our correspondence for several years. Not that I was vain enough to feel offended at his utter condemnation of my poem, but that I thought he need not have damned it so utterly, since the verses were at least correct and melodious. But the poet was a Scotchman, and did his duty as a friend, like a Brutus. My after difficulties were the real cause of my ceasing to write, either to the poet, or to any one else with whom I was in correspondence. Even Lady —— —— was neglected, till her patience gave way, and she wrote through a friend, for the return of a tale, forwarded for my magazine. I had not used the tale, from a scruple of delicacy, foreseeing the probable catastrophe of that periodical and its editor.

My father returned. I told him the difficulty—he was marble. I entreated his signature—he was iron. I besought his pity for the utter ruin of all my prospects, the destruction of my whole scheme of ambition and hope in life—he was adamant.

He would do nothing—nothing—absolutely nothing. Yes, he would give me a small stipend—perhaps even a hundred pounds a year, if I would return to the profession of the law, and (as far as possible), abandon literature.

I yielded for the moment to necessity; but as my father sternly refused to pay one farthing of my debts, it was too late for economy. One morning before I rose, the servant tapped at my bed-room door.

"Sir, Captain Smith is waiting to see you."

"Who is Captain Smith I wonder?" thought I, as I jumped out of bed; "ah! Smith, perhaps, of the H——n service. Everybody knows a Captain Smith."

The name of Smith suggests a reminiscence. Walking one day in a street in a Western city, I saw a beautiful girl at a window. Impelled by curiosity; and hoping to get an excuse to see her more closely, I knocked at the door, and for want of something to say inquired if Miss Smith lived there.

"Sir," said a middle-aged lady who came to the door, "I am Miss Smith."

Now had she not been Miss Smith I was fully prepared with apology, inquiry and various means of prolonging the conversation. As it was, I was for the moment taken aback. It was only by a prodigious effort that I invented the safety valve.

"Miss Rowena Alexandrina Smith?"

"No, sir, Miss Mary Smith."

And so our interview terminated by my saying, "Ah! I beg your pardon, it was Miss Alexandrina Rowena Smith I wanted; pray excuse me."

In these latter days I might have suspected a snare in the early visit of a man with so popular a name. But at one and twenty, one suspects nothing.

I dressed, entered my sitting-room, and found reading the paper an utter stranger. He was a well-dressed man with sandy whiskers, of medium height and easy manner.

"Captain Smith?" said I.

"Oh, yes sir," said the stranger courteously, "we always like to do these things quietly—on account of the servants. The fact is, I have come to arrest you, to take your body, sir, in legal phrase—at the suit of Mr. Roller, the printer."

"Who are you then?"

"Oh I, sir? I'm a sheriff's officer; my name is Jacobs."

"Very well," said I "I suppose I can breakfast first."

"Certainly, sir."

"I shall be able to pay the bill in the course of the day," I added, with an off-hand air, and still lingering feeling of a grand seigneur to whom such a trifle as fifty pounds could not possibly be a difficulty.

"No doubt, sir," said Captain Smith, otherwise Jacobs, with apparent conviction.

"Since the writ was served, I really forgot to attend to it," said I, "but it is a mere accident."

"Nothing more, of course," said Jacobs; "a gentleman like yourself would of course never leave a bill unpaid—except by accident. And now, sir, if you please, I'll bring up my man Sloker whose time is not so valuable as mine, and he will wait till you breakfast, and then be at your disposal."

"Very well, bring up Sloker," said I, feeling a strange novelty in my position.

Sloker came up. He was a short, stout man, of immensely broad and heavy build, with a red-face, small eyes, pug-nose, top boots, a thick stick, in short, the bum-bailiff of tradition in high perfection.

Sloker introduced, Jacobs vanished with a bow.

"Sloker," said I, when I had finished my breakfast, "suppose I were to knock you down with the fire-poker (and an English poker is a formidable weapon) and then walk off and become invisible?"

"Captain Frosterville tried that 'ere game," said Sloker, a little appalled at my cool proposition, "and vot wus the consekuns? vy, 'e wus transported as a fellun!"

As Sloker thought that statement of fact conclusive, I said no more, but put a few things in a carpet bag, and sending for a cab, bid the man carry the bag down-stairs, and preceded him in the descent.

I could not imagine that my relatives would allow me to remain an hour in prison for debt. Otherwise, I might have saved a world of suffering, by bribing Sloker to let me escape, and keeping out of the way till my creditors were pacified. But it was destined that I should learn at one blow, what vile stuff the world is made of.

I was taken to a sponging-house, thence to a prison. I found myself for the first time in my life, in the society of a miscellaneous rabble; ranging from the "broken-down swell," as in slang phrase the prisoners called any luckless member of the "upper ten," who, like myself, found his way by accident to those regions, down to cab-drivers, barbers, and petty traders of all kinds.

A hideous sense of degradation, horror, rage and disgust filled my whole being, when I found myself utterly abandoned by all my relatives, friends and acquaintances. A foreign servant, dependent upon me, was my only visitor, with the exception of those who were too poor to aid me. The old exiled, impoverished and one-armed Marquis d'A——, once commander of the forces in C——a; Colonel T——, a literary as well as military veteran, and a publisher who had in his possession a small MS. Satire on the Satirists of the Day, from my pen, were the only friends of better days who came to the prison.

Bivar was absent, on a visit to Scotland.

For week after week I lingered in this horrible den of misfortune, with difficulty raising the means of living, by allowing my man to sell books, pictures, and other valuables. Even that resource was stopped, as all my furniture, &c., was seized by the landlord, when he saw that I was in difficulties. At length, I wrote to my sister, who was married to a rich man, and had herself property in expectancy, like myself. She obtained the money for my release, and extorted a promise from my father to allow me a regular income. Once more I was at liberty.

Carpet bag in hand—for I had discharged my servant, who had besides robbed me—I quitted the detested precincts of the city, and hastened towards one of the principal thoroughfares. I felt as one in a dream; men, horses, omnibuses, all swam before my eyes; the streets looked bright and gaudy like the scenery of a pantomime, after the gloom of the stone yard of the prison, surrounded by high buildings, and almost impervious to the sun.

My furniture was sold, my books, papers, even my clothes were detained, under pretext of a balance due to my landlord. I was utterly destitute. I had little more than a change of linen, and my income was fixed at four dollars a week (fifteen shillings sterling), by my noble father, who, without spending or sacrificing a cent, could, by merely signing his name, put me in possession of a fortune which, after all, was mine, and which eventually I proved to be mine by the best of all possible proofs, viz. by selling it.

He did not dare to leave me to starve, though his unnatural hatred, fostered by his wife (of whom I had incautiously spoken, with the contempt she merited) would, have gladly driven me to suicide, and thus been rid of my mother's representative and possible avenger.

Finding myself alone, without friends, consolation, or resources, my spirit broken by the humiliations of my position, my health injured by imprisonment and want of air and exercise, and my mind weakened by previous over exertion, I yielded to the violence of the shock; and when a letter to my grandmother remained unanswered, and the landlady, at the end of two weeks, began to persecute me for the rent of a small room I had taken; when, moreover, owing to my actual inability to see distress without relieving it, and a poor "prison-acquaintance," yet worse off than myself, I actually learned what it was to want food at times—I fairly gave way to Destiny, and deliberately swallowed a large dose of laudanum in the hope of escaping all further misery.

By a sort of miracle, the poison refused to destroy. I woke in the morning, was very sick, and recovered. But the effect remained, not of the laudanum, but of that terrible and profound sentiment of despair, which must animate the human heart, before it can attain to so supreme a resolution as that of self-destruction.

For twelve months the equilibrium of my mind was disturbed—my usual courage was weakened. I roamed dreamily about, avoiding all society. I called on none of my former acquaintances. I disappeared utterly from the eyes of my acquaintance. I vegetated miserably. In my deep sadness, I became indifferent to food; a little bread, butter and fruit sufficed for my nutriment. I wrote nothing. I read but with a feeble, dreamy indifference. My literary ambition seemed dead, my self-confidence destroyed.

But I was young. One day I woke up, I asked my father for some necessary furniture, of which his large house was full to superfluity. I took suitable apartments in a suburb of London, and resolved to—turn schoolmaster. In my bitter misanthropy, I preferred a life of simple obscurity, to the trials and ambitions of a world which I despised.

I issued cards—well I recollect with what difficulty I spared the few shillings I paid for printing them—I obtained by degrees a few pupils, who at "The Classical and Commercial Academy of Mr. D. Mondel, member of the Universities of &c., were instructed in Latin, Greek, Arithmetic, &c. N. B. Drawing, French, German, Italian and Spanish, extra!"

The last item I considered rather a good idea, as I was, of course, my own drawing-master, as well as professor of modern languages.

The son of the neighboring milkman, of the barber, of the confectioner, the washerwoman and the green-grocer were amongst my pupils, and I thus was chiefly paid in kind. Unfortunately the baker had no son. However, I lived, and with a certain savage pride. Sometimes I thought of John Milton and Dionysius Tyrannus. I ate opium, inhaled ether, and strolled about dreaming. In the eyes of the vulgar I was a very strange personage, especially since one day I picked up a dying beggar on the threshold of a rich nobleman's villa, and walked, supporting him on my arm, through the main street, till I finally gave him into charge of the parish authorities, with stern injunctions to relieve his necessities forthwith.

My greatest torture in these years of horrible poverty, for my rent absorbed nearly all my little annuity, was the appeals of the poor whom I was unable to assist.

Oh! the bitterness and the wild hopes that animated me when I beheld the sufferings of the poor in London! when I beheld the atrocious meanness, the base ignoble selfishness of the rich!

Sometimes in my dreams I heard the measured tramp of thousands, and found myself riding at the head of a mighty army into the great city of corruption—a second Cromwell with a greater purpose and a sterner will. Then I woke in a cold perspiration—the poor, half-starved schoolmaster, who fancied that he had once seen the society of the great and the beautiful a long, long time ago—perhaps in a former life or in another planet.

Then I said to myself, these English lords and gentlemen, and merchants and scholars, are only fit to be destroyed utterly for their cruel murders of the working man—murder by inches, murder by starvation!

I became familiar with the pawnbrokers, to whom, having at length recovered my books and papers, I carried volume after volume, from my rapidly diminishing library. At length, all my books were gone, but the presents of youth, of college friends, keepsakes, and souvenirs. Hunger drove me to part with these at length, and poverty allowed the time fixed to elapse, so that they all were lost. Of all my books, there remained only a Latin dictionary, a Greek Lexicon, Grammars of the two dead languages, a Lemprière's Classical Dictionary; a Bible given me by my mother, which I still preserve, and one or two German books, of no salable value.

It was the workman selling his tools, but keeping a hammer and chisel, a saw and a gimblet, till the last. I now became a political agitator. I hoped for a revolution. I saw so much injustice, suffering, and neglect of the working classes, that I cared not what change took place. It could but benefit the people. I harangued the Chartists at some of their meetings, but my soul sank within me, when I saw what a set of crushed and spirit-broken men I proposed to lead. Oh! had I then had money, only a single thousand pounds (!) how much I could have done amongst men who were so miserably poor, by even the smallest signs of liberality—paying the hire of a hall, for example; but I had nothing but eloquence and reason, and they were not reasonable. They expected the impossible, they expected victory without fighting.

Still, with a small sum of ready money; I think that on the outbreak of the French revolution in 1848, I could have upset the British Government, by a rise in the metropolis. As it was, there was more danger of such an event, than people supposed. As for the subsequent meeting of the Chartists, on Kensington Common, it was a mere farce. All was prepared for resistance. But in February, 1848, the thing might have been done by bold men, by a coup-de-main, and once done, with a strong arm at the helm, the middle class would have accepted it. But my utter poverty crippled all possibility of action; and I have ever been too proud to beg subscriptions, even for the cause of humanity, or to intrigue to ally myself with richer men, for the purpose of using their means.

On the day that the news arrived of Louis Philippe's fall, a cab stopped at my door. Unusual event! the scholars were amazed. Out jumped a gentleman, a publisher. He wanted me to translate an important work from the French, with all possible speed. It was a book of two hundred small duodecimo pages. He offered me five pounds—twenty-five dollars, to translate it in a fortnight. I accepted. I translated several other books for this man. He paid me as well as he could, but he was poor himself, and had his family to consider before his creditors. He is like nearly every publisher I ever dealt with—still in my debt.

Let me now pass rapidly over two more years of perpetual struggle, poverty, and suffering. Bivar returned and engaged a room in the same house with me. I dismissed my scholars, and relapsed into the professional author. Now, indeed, I was a true Slave of the Lamp. Bivar and I made common cause, but with all our efforts, we lived irregularly, fared badly, and were often almost in rags, as to costume.

I should be sorry to write down all the bitter feelings which the mere mortification of not being able to get proper clothes, induces in the mind of a born gentleman in England. How often, when some well-dressed puppy passed me, the poor threadbare poet, with a side-glance in the street, have I muttered dark and awful anathemas on the brutal selfishness of my pitiful relatives. Not to feel was impossible, because we know the effect of appearances on the mind, but my feelings were not of shame, but of wrath and contempt for the meanness and baseness of mankind.

One day, a dandy on horseback nearly rode over me, as he emerged from a doorway. Striking his horse on the forehead with my clenched hand, I commanded him to draw back while I passed, or I would speak to his master to discharge him. This pretence of mistaking him for a groom, displeased my gentleman, who made some muttered reply, in which I caught the words "whips and insolence." I stopped his horse, and said to him calmly, but with the feelings of a devil—"Sir, were you ever torn from your horse, rolled in the mire, trampled and spit upon?—No! then utter one word, look at me impertinently, and you will enjoy that novel experience."

When the man had left me, which he did in silence, for after all, he was, perhaps, only some rich shopkeeper, who liked horses, and in England all shopkeepers are cowards, I still trembled with agitation. My mind was diseased, I was fierce and dangerous as a famished wolf. A dun forced himself into my study, and said he would stay there till he was paid. I threw him down-stairs, after warning him gravely of my intention. Bivar laughed when he came in, and heard of the incident. The people in the house thought me mad. If anything is calculated to drive a proud and honorable man mad, it is pecuniary embarrassment and petty miseries.

Bivar and I now had made the acquaintance of many young artists and authors, mostly as poor as ourselves. We wrote and drew for a comic paper, which paid well enough, but which, as it had to support half the rising talent in London, could not give a very large slice to individuals. Bivar and I were also, in a manner, intruders, and had not been originally connected with the affair. However, the devil-may-care young editors gave us what space they could, and eventually, I attended the funeral of the paper, as editor, and mourner-in-chief, having in its latter days, occasionally written the whole paper, and drawn the caricatures into the bargain, during Bivar's absence in the country.

I had moved into the heart of London, and now occupied chambers, as they are called, in an Inn of court. These chambers are like offices, quite independent, and taken on lease like separate tenements. My rooms were naturally on the third floor, which happened to be the highest.

There, in utter solitude and desolation, I lived and wrote, and studied, boiling my own potatoes, and making my own tea; meditating grand poems, philosophical treatises, tales, novels, dramas, and all kinds of fantastic creations, whole boxes of which, in embryo, are probably still mouldering in the cellar of the inn. But except Bivar, no one saw in me anything but a man who had seen better days, and written books; who was very poor, and very gloomy.

"Ha, ha, Mondel, you are one of the great unappreciated!" said a brilliant young writer whose imitative faculty rendered him more easily successful as a journalist and magazinist.

What had this boy done that he should thus speak to me, who, at the age of four and twenty, in one way or other, had already produced more than a dozen volumes? I reflected impatiently. But a second reflection calmed me. He was right. I was unappreciated, because I expected credit for the inward power, not for the external deed. I immediately resolved to write a new work, and threw my whole soul into its composition. I found a young publisher, who was not afraid of new ideas, and in fact, was glad to catch an author of even my celebrity. A bargain was struck—I was to receive a per centage on the work, and a small—a very small, advance; for the publisher was poor and himself a practical printer.

During these three years of purgatory, from which I now began somewhat to emerge, having renewed my wardrobe, and become a more dextrous financier, I had of course, had many slight flirtations of a more or less fleeting character, but love—divine love—had been as it were, exorcised by the angel of sorrow. My mind had been too much absorbed in gloomy meditation, and anxious care, to dwell perseveringly on the still slumbering Ideal. Beside, I lived alone, and made no female acquaintances of a suitable kind.

One day, I had just written the last sentence of my new prose version of the "Atomic Individulism," as it is now printed, and condemned the long poem to eternal oblivion, when there was a tap at my door, "some one gently tapping—tapping at my chamber door—merely this, and nothing more."

I opened the door, a young girl of sixteen to seventeen years, beautiful as a dream, entered. She brought me a letter of no importance, but she brought me herself, a matter of great importance.

Organization is the handwriting of Nature, the emblem of the soul. We love types. The moment we see a sufficiently near approximation to the type within us, we love it.

I loved the fair stranger at the first glance. For a second time, but with far greater power, I felt that thrill which love, real love only can inspire. At four and twenty the passions have a far grander movement than at seventeen. We are not less intoxicated perhaps, but far more deeply shaken.

This charming visitor appeared to me like a dove bearing the olive branch of Hope to my tempest-tossed ark, after a deluge of sorrows.

She was not really tall, but she looked so, from the fine proportions of her figure. She was beautiful—would you know how beautiful; imagine a somewhat less dazzling reflection of Columbia, with hazel eyes instead of ethereal blue, and a mien somewhat less imperially graceful, standing like a Greek statue, self-posted, calm, unconscious of the effect she was producing, and you see the fair stranger before you as I then beheld her.

I inquired the name of this heavenly messenger.

"Blanche D'Arcy."

I repeated the name to myself with delight. In young girls and poets Nature still speaks. We looked and loved. A few confused words, a hasty kiss, a pressure of the hand, and Blanche glided away like a shadow, leaving me happy—yes happy, for the first time in my life!

So happy did I feel, that I could not believe my happiness. I had been hitherto, even in my more prosperous days so unutterably miserable from the fierce craving for affection that consumed my soul, amid fictitious mockeries of pleasure! And now was it possible that in one hour the misery of a life had been remedied? I hardly dared to believe. Yet to-morrow came and I with it. Blanche came again, and from day to day our love grew, and our happiness was almost without spec.

Blanche was the daughter of a dramatic author and poet, who had neither accomplished anything as a writer, nor in any other line, and who had allowed his youngest daughter to grow up wild as it were, like the flowers on the heath or in the forest. But Blanche was a genius in her way, and I have never heard anything more fascinating than her stories of her childhood; passed like Annabel Lee's, "in a city by the sea." One of them I will record in her own words.

"You must know, dearest, that at one time I was in the habit of giving all my pocket-money to a poor old beggar who stood on the Marine Parade. I could not resist him, he was so old and looked so very poor. Very shortly after, papa became poor himself, that is very much troubled, so that we had scarcely bread to eat at home on some days. But we let no one know how poor we were. Still, I outgrew my dresses, and mamma took opium, and papa had no money to buy me new ones, so that I no longer looked like a young lady, but quite like a poor workman's child. One day I passed the beggar, and said, 'How sorry I am that I have nothing to give you!' Then the beggar said, 'Oh, my dear young lady, what is the matter? you do not look so well dressed as you did; has any misfortune happened to your parents?' 'Yes,' said I, 'papa's eyes are grown weak, and we are not so rich as we were,' and I wished to go away. But the beggar held my arm, and said, 'My dear child, I am not so poor as I look. Say nothing, you were always good to me, and I wish to show my gratitude.' And the old man took out a bright piece of gold—a half-sovereign I think—and tried to force it into my hand!"

"And what did you do, Blanche?" said I.

"Who, I?" resumed Blanche, "I cried out, 'What! take money from a beggar! Oh, no, my dear old friend, never!' And I ran away as fast as I could. But when I grew older I often thought of the incident, and I don't know why, but the tears always come into my eyes when I do."

"Blanche," said I, "you are a little angel."

And so things went on, and we became all to one another that man can be to woman or woman to man. Blanche had no conventional ideas, whatever. She was absolutely a child of nature. We were to be formally married, however, on a day agreed upon between us. My book was completely printed and published. I had provided Blanche with an outfit and a wedding dress. All was arranged; when, by one of the most infernal conspiracies ever formed, originating in the jealousy of her elder sister, and a young female friend, the daughter of a relative with whom Blanche lived, our whole scheme of life and happiness was overthrown as by an earthquake.

In an insane fit of jealousy I had an interview with Blanche, who had been goaded into an equally insane fit of pride. Without any explanation, without alluding to details, which seemed to us beneath our dignity to discuss, we each assumed positions from which neither would descend. I insisted; Blanche defied; and we parted the very day before that fixed for our marriage, the victims of a few ingenious lies and of our own unreasonable pride.

"Have the extreme kindness, sir," said Blanche, "to light me down stairs."

"Pardon me, Madam, I forgot that the gas was not lit," I replied, as with studied politeness, I escorted her to the bottom of the staircase.

"You know best," said Bivar, who was present at the interview, but—he shook his head sadly.

Never, indeed had Blanche looked more lovely than on that fatal occasion. The unfortunate cause of the whole catastrophe, also accompanied Blanche.

Thus we had each our second, or as the French say witness, in this duel of almost incredible folly, and it is with a shudder that I recall, how when Blanche requested to speak with me, alone in the adjoining room, I answered coldly, "all we have to say, can be as well said here!"

The presence of others prevented all possibility of a true explanation. Altogether, I am amazed that such a scene could have occurred, and been regarded by us, as final. Yet, so it was. Blanche indeed returned to unveil the conspiracy of our enemies, but it was too late. I had left the chambers for ever, and given no clue to my abode.

It happened thus. Spurning from me the more than hinted propositions of Blanche's perfidious friend (a young and pretty young girl, who subsequently married an actor, and died of consumption in the same year), I immediately left the hated scene of so much happiness, now lost to me for ever, and resolved to sell my estate in reversion, at all hazards, for whatever I could obtain, were it only a single hundred pounds, with which, to give a last grand supper to my literary comrades, and drug my last goblet with prussic acid, by way of a suitable finale.

Bivar and I took roomy lodgings in a pleasant suburb, where we were attended on as at an hotel. Bivar's father advanced me some money, till my negotiations were concluded, and Bivar himself suddenly determined to start for New York, and seek his fortunes in America. Thus, I was left to the society of my only other confidential friend, Peregrine Cope, an American editor, orator, and man of letters, then in London. For some months, he and I struggled on together, both terribly embarrassed in our circumstances, when I effected a sale of a share of my property, at a sacrifice of at least six sevenths of its real value, and within forty-eight hours, Cope and I were in the capital of the then Republic of France, one and indivisible, declaring that after all, there was only one city in the world, and that was Paris.

But though I never alluded to the subject, the pale spectre of Blanche D'Arcy, haunted me like a crime. I was restless, irritable, morbid. Cope could scarcely endure my caprices.

Let me now sum up briefly, the next two years of my life.

Though not entirely idle, for I published my system of philosophy, and wrote many articles which were well paid for, and highly appreciated by first-class periodicals, I devoted myself, mainly, to a restless pursuit of excitement. The three years of poverty, and the loss of my beautiful Blanche, had left me in a state of misanthropy and despair. I now believed in, hoped in nothing. I felt like a man without a future. I associated with rich young men, and rivalled them in their extravagant dissipations. My reversionary thousands, dwindled down into hundreds when realized, disappeared one after the other, with an alarming rapidity. Still, I plunged on, I was like a man falling in a dream.

One morning, I awoke in a handsome villa, which I rented with a fair Rosamond, whom I did not love, and servants to provide for, and with empty purse. To hope to maintain such expenses by writing for magazines or papers, was preposterous, and I had just failed in getting a purchaser for my last remnant of reversion. I was used up mentally and pecuniarily. I had no inducement to live; I did not love my supposed wife in the least. It had been a union of caprice and recklessness, and on my part, at least, resulted in perfect indifference. In fact, I was tired of the whole life. So, unsatisfactory as it was to die in the prime of manhood, and perhaps on the verge of fame, I very quietly made up my mind to get up, dress, load my pistols, and blow my brains out.

What else could I do with expenses, say at least some four or five hundred pounds a year, and not a penny in possession or prospect? The case seemed to me clear, and my resolution was taken. As for applying again to my rich relatives, it did not even occur to me.

A miracle again saved me. The servant knocked at the door and handed in a card, saying that a lady was below, and wished to see me.

"A lady!" I looked at the card. It was that of my sister, whom I had not seen for four years!

One month from that time I had got rid of my establishment, was separated from my fair but uncongenial friend, had chambers in the best part of London newly furnished, and a hundred pounds at my bankers! Thanks to my noble sister, all this had been accomplished. Her love inspired me with new energy, my capitalist had, after all, advanced me the funds I required, and the new magazine which I had started, was going on well. I might yet have succeeded in retrieving my fortune in England.

Nevertheless, the moment I was not actually employed, the old gloom and disgust of life returned. I was walking past Trafalgar Square, a day or two after my instalment in my new abode, when a woman's hand was laid gently on my arm. I turned impatiently; and saw a pale lady in black, instead of the person I anticipated.

"Excuse me," I said, "I really do not"——

"Not remember me?" said a voice that vibrated to my inmost soul. It was Blanche D'Arcy.

"Walk with me," said Blanche, with dignity, "I wish to speak to you. I am no longer a child."

In truth she was now a beautiful woman—though looking unutterably sorrowful and care-worn.

We walked together towards my house. She unravelled the whole mystery of our quarrel, and explained the base deceptions of which we were the victims.

I begged Blanche to enter. We sat down, at a great distance from one another, on either side of the fireplace. We were grave and polite.

"O Blanche!" I exclaimed, "if you had but known how much I loved you!"

"Loved?" said Blanche.

In that one word she said more than could be expressed in hours. The next moment she was in my arms.——

"Blanche," I cried, "let us be married at once!"

"I am married," said Blanche sadly; "I have been married nearly two years. I married in despair; I have since repented. My husband and I are separated."

"For what cause?"

"Because I found that I could not endure his society."

"Is he old?"

"Twenty two."

"Good looking?"

"He is considered to be so. He is very successful with women."

"Does he love you?"

"He adores me."

"And you?"——

"I cannot endure him near me. I do not love him. I——I loathe him! I cannot account for it. So it is. Dudley! my heart has been true to you."

*  *  *  *  *

Consumption! horrible scourge of love and beauty and hope! I cannot, dare not, trace its progress.

*  *  *  *  *

Blanche died in my arms.

I buried her with my last remaining money.

I was alone, penniless, lost; yet I had not yet found the happiness I sought—a great, an equal love. Poor Blanche was but a child. I loved her and nursed her—cherished her. She looked up to me as a woman, though she had braved me as a child. But I still had a dream, a secret image of a goddess, whose intelligence, as well as feeling, should harmonize with my own. This indefinite longing revived after the first storm of grief was over. Yet, once more I owed my life to an accident. In a moment of despair at my loss, I was about to form a desperate resolution, when a letter from Bivar was given me.

A trifle now decided my destiny; I resolved to rake together the necessary sum and start for America at once. All social and conventional considerations were now with me as wind. I made no attempt to realize my remaining property. I embarked on board a sailing vessel, as a second cabin passenger, with ten pounds in my purse, and as outfit just what was absolutely necessary. A thirty days' voyage landed me in New York, where Bivar received me with open arms. Of the rest of my doings, I need not speak. I have travelled and seen the new land of my adoption. I have lived by my pen, my pencil, and my invention, as becomes a gentleman and a poet. Men call me eccentric, fools whisper that I am insane. Let my work speak for me, as it constantly does in reviews, magazines, papers, from Florida to the British Provinces, and from New York to San Francisco. But of one thing feel certain, the hardships which I have endured as a Slave of the Lamp in this land, are little inferior to my worst days in England. It is true, I am now too old and too sensible to go without a dinner. But short of that, New York is as hard a step-mother for poets as London or Paris! Some day I will hope to fill up the outline so lightly traced in these hasty pages.

Such, O, peerless Columbia! is a brief and imperfect outline of my life. In it I have dwelt little on my numerous literary labors; also omitted many details which might have added apparent consistency to the narrative. Such as it is, it is true. You now know me to some extent as I am. Whilst others around you wear the mask of conventional hypocrisy, I stand before you as one who has loved and suffered, who still loves and suffers, a victim to the Fate which has implanted in his soul the instinct to seek for the highest beauty and noblest happiness upon earth.

Farewell! divinely beautiful and dear, too dear, Columbia. I have been rejected, perhaps condemned justly—yet would I be judged as I am, not as I seem, and by the law of reason and nature; not by that of cant and preconceived morality.

Once more farewell—if successful in my enterprise I shall return ere many months are past. Adored Columbia, farewell—farewell!

(Signed)
MONDEL.

When Columbia had finished the perusal of these strange confessions, she meditated long and gravely over their contents.

"Strange man! strange man!" she murmured; and again, and again, she perused certain passages in the memoir of this second Rousseau, who, from the vulgar point of view—a spendthrift, a libertine, a reckless desperado, was, philosophically regarded—a strong spirit at war with prejudice and conventional slavery.

It might be that his excessive pride glossed over his vices and weaknesses in his descriptions; and it was perfectly plain that he had at various periods led anything but a respectable and saintly existence. It was also evident that he neglected his literary life to dwell upon his active and passional existence. But, in fact, Columbia was familiar with Mondel's poems and works, and now that his memoir furnished the key, she took deeper glimpses into the dark abysses of his nature, and its fiery intensity of volition, than she had yet attempted.

"And he is gone!" murmured Columbia, "he is gone—perhaps for ever! Oh, why did I not receive this package one day before the vessel sailed,—one single day!"

————

CHAPTER XXVI.

MISFORTUNES.

AS villages are oft-times crushed by the fall of an avalanche, so whole families are desolated by the volcanic eruption of calamities, which, unforeseen and irresistible, overwhelm the fated victims. To-day they were with us; to-morrow they are gone, dead, scattered; impoverished by crime, folly, or insanity.

It was thus with the house of Atreus. Thus too, the black wings of Destiny flapped noiseless thunder over the Fifth Avenue palace of Mr. Yonkers.

Mr. Yonkers has, for some time past, dealt largely in bullion, besides speculating in stocks to an enormous extent. His notes were discounted at the lowest rates. His credit was, in commercial parlance, A. 1. in the market. Nevertheless, a succession of losses brought him, in the space of a few months, to the verge of ruin. At first, he refused to believe it; but a sudden and pressing demand, which he had no means to meet, opened his eyes to a sense of his true, or rather extremely false, position. His whole complicated system of speculation was but a huge bubble. One day's delay in raising the sum required, and the bubble would burst.

It was at this crisis, that he met his very useful friend, Mr. Crusher. Mr. Crusher was only known to Mr. Yonkers, since a very recent date, but their transactions had been numerous. Mr. Crusher bought a great deal of bullion of Mr. Yonkers, for which he paid invariably ready cash, down, and not by check as was usual. Mr. Crusher was a singular man, he drove very hard bargains; he seemed to distrust everybody; he professedly had no banker, though his pockets were always full of money. His air of intense assurance was marvellous, and the few people who knew him, soon learned to respect him as a man who at any time could command ten thousand dollars, perhaps a hundred.

"Well, Mr. Crusher, the bullion is ready for you," said Mr. Yonkers, alluding to a large order given by Mr. Crusher, some days before.

"Very well," said Mr. Crusher, "I will call for it in an hour, and bring the money with me. I need not impress upon you once more, that where political interests are concerned, secresy is most requisite."

"Nuff sed," said Mr. Yonkers, with a feeble attempt at jocularity; "by the way, have you any money to spare this morning?"

"How much do you want?" said Mr. Crusher.

"Twenty-five thousand dollars," said Mr. Yonkers, "in bills at one, two, and three months."

"It is a large amount," said Mr. Crusher.

"I have just lent fifty thousand on —— stocks," said Mr. Yonkers.

"Well, you shall have it," said Mr. Crusher, "that will be one hundred and fifty-thousand dollars, altogether. I will bring the money, and take away the bullion in my carriage. You know, I have no banker, and trust nobody," said Mr. Crusher, with his diplomatic smile.

A few minutes later, Mr. Crusher was in his office, No. —— Wall street.

"I have done it," he cried, throwing off his assumed manner, and resuming his natural effrontery. "Slinker, old boy, our fortunes are made. Here, lock the outer door, and come and help me to count out the money. One hundred and fifty-thousand! it is quite a sum to pass off in one transaction. I guess we shall not do such another stroke in a hurry."

"But ain't it horful, Confidence?" said the Slinker, who officiated as the highly demure clerk of the eccentric capitalist, and possibly, mysterious political agent, Mr. Crusher.

"Well, it is rather trying to the nerves," said Bob, "but faint heart never won fair lady; so go ahead, we must be there in an hour."

Confidence Bob was one of those men who, though not physically brave, are morally audacious to a degree scarcely conceivable by more cautious natures.

The Slinker trembled, but obeyed.

In another hour the triumphant Alterer received from his two acolytes, one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars' worth of gold, and the notes of Mr. Yonkers, which he immediately put in the fire, as if they had been signed by a mere man of straw, and not by one of the greatest speculators in New York. "Here are thirty thousand dollars in real bills," said Berkeley; "and five thousand in specie. So the sooner you are both disguised and out of the city the better."

"But," said Confidence Bob, carefully examining the bills, given him by Berkeley, "how do I know that these are good?"

"If you do not know, how can any one else know?" said the counterfeiter coolly.

"I hope you haint playing horf any tricks on hus," whispered the Slinker.

"No, no, it is all right," said Berkeley impatiently, locking up the bullion in an immense iron safe, and putting the key in his pocket.

Half an hour later, and an old lady in spectacles, on the arm of a red-haired be-whiskered gentleman, with an immense fiery moustache, emerged unnoticed from Berkeley's quiet dwelling, its master having sent the old negress on an errand, expressly to get rid of her very limited powers of observation.

The old woman in spectacles was the Slinker. The tall gentleman with red hair, whiskers and moustache, was the same identical Confidence Bob, who so recently figured as the close-cropped and shaven Mr. Crusher in Wall street. His suit of immaculate black was exchanged for crossbarred pantaloons, a light green surtout, a showy waist-coat, and a colored neck-cloth. His imposingly stiff shirt collar, was turned down with careless negligence, a little judicious padding gave him quite a corpulent air, and a little rouge on his cheeks and nose so completely destroyed his external identity, that he might have called straightway on Mr. Yonkers himself without fear of detection.

Meanwhile, the unlucky merchant eagerly conveyed his pile of forged notes to his bankers, securely locked up in an iron box.

The next day he was a ruined man—the forgery was discovered! It is true, the matter was hushed up, on account of the universal panic which such a disclosure might have caused, for it was with a feeling of unmitigated dismay that all the bankers in the city recognized the facsimile copies of their own bills. Of course the office of Mr. Crusher was deserted.

On the evening of the day on which Mr. Yonkers stopped payment, his wife eloped with John Berkeley.

Columbia was moreover attacked by a mysterious illness, which showed more resemblance to a perpetual state of trance than anything else. She scarcely ate or drank, never spoke, and appeared utterly insensible to all external events. This illness lasted for many weeks. When at length she became convalescent, and, though bodily weak, spiritually collected, and capable of clear perception and reflection, she found her unfortunate father not only a bankrupt but a drunkard. Always fond of alcoholic stimulus, Mr. Yonkers, seeing the irremediable confusion of his affairs, and overcome by his domestic disgrace and misfortunes, with his daughter apparently dying before his eyes, took swift and long strides in the infatuation of a vice from which the ambition of active pursuits had long partially protected him. Soon he became unable to bear existence, save in a state of complete or partial intoxication, and a few days after leaving his house in the Fifth Avenue, and removing to a hotel, within six months of the departure of Mondel and the elopement of his wife, Mr. Yonkers was attacked by delirium tremens—an apoplectic stroke supervened, and he died miserable; regretted only by his beautiful and unhappy daughter, who wept in paroxysms of grief over the body of the only friend she imagined herself to possess in the world!

Columbia was alone in the world—alone without means, and without friends. The once petted heiress, thanks to her very intellectual superiority and eccentricity of character, had no intimates of her own sex. Her father had had no near relatives, and his conduct previous to his death had alienated his few business friends, whom old acquaintance induced to assist him.

There was not a person she knew, to whom Columbia dared to apply for aid. Latterly her wretched father had so often requested her to call on people for him, with requests for loans which he devoted to his infernal passion, that she felt no courage to bear any additional humiliation.

One vague hope sustained her—Mondel might return—return once more to throw his great man's soul and measureless devotion at her feet.

She sold her books and trinkets to pay for her father's funeral. The landlord of the hotel came to her, and not only refused to accept payment of his bill, but offered her a home, so long as she might require it. The dazzling perfection of her beauty, the greatness of her misfortunes, excited the deepest interest. A strange gentleman from the South—a young man of brilliantly handsome exterior, called upon her, and placed his fortune at her disposal, with the most delicate possible hint, that in due time he was only too anxious to throw his person into the bargain. A subscription was even raised by the ladies in the hotel—one of the largest and most fashionable in the city—and most respectfully presented to her.

But Columbia, with superb pride, which grief seemed only to have exalted and intensified, gracefully but firmly refused all offers of assistance, and one day, quietly making her way to Mrs. Normer's house, said simply—

"Madam, can you take me as a boarder?"

The amiable and pretty face of Mondel's former landlady was hidden on Columbia's shoulder before the blonde poetess had half finished the story of her misfortunes.

"I will try to be a mother to you—and poor as I am, whilst I live this house shall be your home," said Mrs. Normer, sobbing.

"You are too young, madam, to be a mother to me," said Columbia, wiping away Mrs. Normer's tears, with an exquisite gentleness, "and I am too proud to be anybody's pensioner. Let me board with you, and pay the usual price, or I must seek a home elsewhere."

"As you will," said Mrs. Normer, regarding her beautiful visitor with unceasing admiration. "By the way, I must give you Mr. Mondel's rooms. They are the only ones I have vacant at present."

Columbia trembled and blushed. The idea of occupying the apartments, of sleeping in the bed, once occupied by Mondel, was to her a strange and electrifying thought. She felt as if his spirit might yet haunt the chambers.

"And what do you propose to do?" said Mrs. Normer.

"To work," said Columbia.

"To work?"

"I mean to write," sighed the authoress, "to write for my bread, as hitherto I have written for my pleasure."

The very next day, Columbia's writing desk was opened on the very table at which Mondel had written so many of his wild, soul-stirring compositions. She sat in the very arm-chair which he had occupied, and commenced her first magazine article, with an unconscious quotation from the Slave of the Lamp, that treasured and often-read manuscript. But even as she was about to commence, that good angel, Mrs. Normer, glided slowly into the room, and laying a small morocco case upon the table, said gently—

"A present for you—which you cannot refuse"—and Mrs. Normer vanished almost before Columbia raised her eyes from her paper.

Mrs. Normer's present was a splendid daguerreotype of Mondel.

Columbia started with delight. She then gazed long and earnestly at the grave, sad countenance of her lover, kissed passionately the glass which covered it, and murmured pensively—

"How glad I am that he stole mine from the drawing-room table!—I know he took it—for who else could it have been?"

"Now let me see," said Columbia; "what shall I write?—a love tale? Yes, a tale of happy love!" and Columbia began to write, and in a few hours produced a sketch of which she was the heroine, and Mondel so unmistakably the hero, that she tore it up in despair.

"This will never do!" she cried, "I must write something very different—something about the ancient Kings of Madagascar, and a young princess who had a jealous step-mother; yes that will do, and as the characters of the story will be black, who knows but I may make a second Uncle Tom reputation!"

Columbia smiled as she thus spoke to herself, and already the spirit of art began to whisper consolation to her wounded heart and distracted mind.

What would Mondel have given could he have seen her at that moment!

What would he have given?—His life, his fortune, his prospects; all the golden islands ever dreamed of!

I once read a curious story in a magazine more than a hundred years old. It was entitled "All for the want of knowing one another," and dwelt upon the vexatious reflection that if people only knew one another, there would be perfect happiness in the world. I was much struck by it. But if all the world were clairvoyant, history would run up a tree. Romance and adventure would be at an end.

No, no, it is better as it is; there is at least excitement in a lottery; and as Nature knows her own business best, the destinies are, after all, sure to be accomplished.

Thus Columbia sits down to write articles for magazines, and Mondel steers his course towards the antarctic zone. They might have been happier seated on a velvet sofa, kissing one another, and whispering vows of adoration? But who dares arraign the unknown Gods of Time? Let the Anarchs of Eternity judge them!

————

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE VOYAGE TO THE GOLDEN ISLAND.

NO rest came to Mondel's mind till the Columbia was out of sight of land. Then, and not till then, his deep sympathy with the element on which he had first seen the light, began to exercise a soothing influence over his thoughts.

"Never," said he, to Peregrine Cope, who stood by him on the starboard side of the quarter-deck, near the wheel-house, "never have I, in all my life, known real peace of mind, save when at sea! unless it were, perhaps, when a boy I wandered by its shore, and watched the waves as they came in breaking upon the sea-weed tangled rocks, or flattening on the smooth brown sand—to my feet, more pleasant walking than the greenest grass, or the most purple heath, or the most velvety moss in creation! How many thousand fantastic variations has my imagination played on that one theme—the breaking of the waves upon the shore!

"But it is chiefly in the roar and lashing of the storm, that my spirit seems to expand and vibrate in harmony with nature. Then, for a time, the long pain seems lulled, and a frenetic sombre exhilaration to fill all my being, more potent than the fumes of opium or hasheesh, more on a level with the mad intoxication of love or the fierce excitement of battle!"

Night descended—all slept but the watch, and still Mondel remained upon deck, his eyes alternately resting upon the stars and upon the sea.

"Oh, how each knot we run increases the pain of separation from the one centre of hope!" sighed the adventurer, as he leaned over the taffrail to leeward and watched the phosphorescent sparkles of the waters. "Shall I ever behold that shape, that peerless shape, those glorious blue eyes again? Yet, why desire that which could only bring increase of misery? She does not love me—and I, have I no pride, no secret fund of force to struggle with this insane delusion, this unreasonable passion?

"No, no, a thousand times, no! There is no remedy for such love as mine. Where can I find beauty more perfect, a soul more elevated, yet more exquisitely feminine? Can I deny perfection? Can I refute my own matured and cultivated judgment? And she—, is it possible that the Fates can be so cruel as to leave her indifferent to such a love as mine? What can I henceforward become—a Don Juan, a trifling sensualist, a prating politician, a pompous poet? What is all petty praise and vulgar admiration to the man who has lost a Paradise of happiness? All these things I can imagine with the certainty that if I willed I could attain. But Columbia!—to imagine such happiness as her love would bring is utter torture, the feast of Tantalus, the toil of the Danaides—it is the mania for the impossible, the dream of the non-existent."

And Mondel repeated to himself, a thousand times. "Fool, she never loved you;" but a mysterious voice like that of the demon of Socrates, would still whisper like a bad echo—"loved you, loved you!"

*  *  *  *  *  *

The ship's company consisted of Mondel, Peregrine Cope, the Professor, and the begging gambler; of a first, second, and third mate, an engineer, assistant engineer, a carpenter, the doctor—that is the cook—a negro, and twelve men, before the mast.

The Professor officiated as purser—a humorous example of the vicissitudes of human adventure.

Mondel was in uncontrolled command, though the first mate might be said to be acting master, as far as the managment and navigation of the vessel was concerned. But Mondel was much occupied in the engine room. On the care of the engine, everything depended, and simple as was its construction, its inventor watched it with the interest of a father in his child. This it was, which, in the eyes of his crew and officers, gave Mondel a weight and importance, which caused them to forget the anomaly of an amateur commander. The ship was, as it were, his creation. He seemed to be its soul, and it an organ of his will. Moreover, the silent and gloomy Mondel showed no ignorance of any maritime matters; seemed fully conversant with nautical terms, and when he spoke to the crew, which was rarely, spoke with a brevity, a decision, and a look of command, which bore no criticism. Alas! the mysterious fact of his birth upon the ocean, gave him a superstitious prestige in the eyes of the veriest old salt on board. Soon, Mondel himself became familiar with his new position; and as weeks passed away, and the ship yet cut the water like a shark, his transports of despair abated, and a settled melancholy took their place, which never varied—unless at times when a mood of boisterous humor would come over him, and he would joke and laugh loudly with Cope, and even with his officers. But his laughing mood ended as abruptly as it began, and moving away, he would once more gaze for hours in silence on the dark blue waters.

Not five weeks had elapsed, since he departed from New York, and the Columbia had doubled Cape Horn, and reached the placid waters of the Pacific. Still, onward sped the vessel, at a rate unparalleled in nautical annals, making its twenty knots an hour, in the very teeth of a stiff breeze, more like some huge leviathan of the deep, than a machine built by hand, of timber and iron and copper.

Another week had elapsed, when one forenoon, a huge black cloud, bearing a fantastic resemblance to a crowned giant, mounted on a colossal winged lion, rose unexpectedly on the western horizon, surrounded and followed by a band of brother monsters, at first edged with brilliant golden hues, which soon dissolved into tawny shadows, lit till the whole spectral array of vapors, uniting in an impenetrable phalanx, overshadowed the heavens with a canopy of darkness, clashing their shields with reverberating strokes of thunder, and darting their fiery spears from pole to pole, whilst from the inky sea, uprose in fierce emulation, armies of crested waves, rolling upon the other, like insurgent nations, till all fanciful distinctions were lost in the chaotic fury of the tempest.

The ship pitched, and rolled, and strained, and groaned as savage Neptune, with his clenched fist, struck blow after blow, upon its mighty ribs; ever and anon, some reckless pirate of a wave, leaping over the bulwarks, drenched to the skin those who upon deck held on for their lives to ropes or belaying pins, whilst the hoarse voices of the ship's officers were drowned in the mingled war of the elements, till finally, a deluge of water from above, rendered all pretentions to dry clothes on deck a mockery. The sailors huddled forward in, to them, strange inactivity, for the absence of sails deprived them of the hardest part of their usual duty, felt themselves given up to Destiny, whilst Mondel, for the first time since he had departed on his voyage of adventure, felt the all-absorbing horror of his inward grief and despair relieved by the exciting sense of peril, and the necessity for real exertion. It was soon necessary to stop the engines, and to trust solely for headway, to an auxiliary propeller, worked by the very motion of the vessel itself, and which, of slight effect in calmer seas, now became a power of very considerable importance. The hatches were fastened down, and all on board awaited the result which such equanimity as their respective temperaments afforded.

More than once when a tremendous wave struck the ship and caused her to quiver from stern to stem with a mute agony, the boldest of the ship's company prepared themselves for a longer and more adventurous voyage. Mondel and Cope exchanged the thoughts of philosophers. The first mate and the Professor expressed, each in their way, a rude confidence in, and submission to, the invisible powers of Nature. But there was one man on board whose long over-excited brain, unstrung by its recent privation of habitual stimulus, became, under the influence of the storm-terror, a complete wreck in the confusion of its sensations and the extravagance of its developments.

It was the begging Gambler, the originator of the cruise, the discoverer of the Island Eldorado.

It happened that in the hurry of fastening down the hatches, he found himself amongst the sailors in the forecastle, and to them, for the first time forgetting all the injunctions of Mondel, he opened his mouth, and disclosed the secret object of the voyage, and the nature of the hopes which animated their commander to the enterprise.

From these mad ravings sprang the germ of that Upas tree of death which was to throw a blood-stained mantle over the future success of the expedition.

On that day, amid the fury of that storm, was developed in the heart of a man, the black thought of mutiny, hereafter to become fertile in action and disaster.

This man's name was David Borack. He was the best sailor on board. In stature he was full six feet and a span, of gigantic frame, and to those who knew him, formidable as a fierce, brutal, and quarrelsome ruffian. But with all this he had a rude plausibility and seeming frankness of manner which acted very effectually on weaker natures than his own. In appearance he was not ill-looking, though his features were coarse and large. His eyes were of a jetty blackness. His lips full and sensual, and his hair and beard of a black wiry texture. His enormous hands were covered with hair even to the finger tips, and he had a habit of contracting his bushy brows till they met, when he spoke, and showing the white of his eye all round the pupil, when he looked intently at any one, which gave him a truly diabolical aspect.

Mondel had desired to form his crew of bold and adventurous materials. Nevertheless he had never much liked the looks of David Borack, and soon had occasion to discover that he was a troublesome personage.

Borack was the only man on board who ever gave Mondel an insolent word by replying to one of the latter's commands, which he gave in a moment of abstraction, by a laugh and a muttered allusion to landlubbers. Mondel, recalled to himself, corrected his order calmly, then, looking sternly at the refractory giant, said very slowly, "Landlubber or not, you will find that I am captain in my own ship. Unless you wish to make a three months voyage in irons, remember it."

Borack never forgot that look. From that moment he did his duty without venturing on a word, either to Mondel or his officers. But when he learned from the strange, half-crazed Gambler the golden secret, Borack meditated mischief. He managed to scrape acquaintance with the assistant engineer, and heard him boast complacently of his own perfect capacity to direct the engine. Next, David Borack fixed on the second mate as the one officer who might be induced to favor his scheme.

The first and third mates were brothers; John, and Edward Wallace. They were both tall, fair, and blue-eyed, with the open, gentlemanly air of good seamen, and men of respectable birth and education. Both had, in nautical parlance, crept in through the cabin window. But John, the elder, who was some six and twenty years of age, was, especially, a first rate navigator and practical seaman. His brother was four years younger, but equally efficient in proportion to his experience.

The second mate's name was Richard Grote. He was scarcely five feet four inches in height, though broad-chested as the Farnese Hercules, and of prodigious personal strength. His face was set in a frame of bushy red whiskers, and his small green eyes had the brilliancy and quickness of a serpent's. His avarice was unbounded, and he was reported to have already accumulated, and invested ashore, quite a comparative fortune. There was no sentiment about Richard Grote. He was a child of the streets, and had roughed it for five and thirty years in all possible latitudes. To the men he would have been a bully and a tyrant had he dared with such eyes upon him as Mondel's, who, though never familiar with the sailors, particularly insisted on their good treatment in every possible way.

Amongst the sailors, Borack placed his great reliance on Hans Rodde, the Dutchman.

Hans Rodde was the favorite of the forecastle. About five feet eight inches in stature, and twenty-three or four years of age, Hans possessed a face of almost feminine delicacy, large soft brown eyes, shining with a wicked lustre, and dark curling hair; a flexile, slightly sarcastic mouth, and a figure so correctly proportioned, that no unpractised eye would have suspected the prodigious strength it was capable of developing. The thrashing, however, which he administered so easily to Ben Grizzle, next to Borack, the biggest and heaviest man on board, opened the eyes of his comrades to his merits as a fighting man. For the rest, Hans Rodde, though a Dutchman by origin, spoke English without a foreign accent, and had received the rudiments of a better education than the rest of his shipmates. But though he expressed himself in choicer language, and with a more elegant manner than the rest, he infinitely surpassed them all in devices of the most horrible and unimaginable atrocity. Never were they tired of listening to his stories and laughing at his jokes, in which the impurity was only equalled by the utter want of any apparent sense of conscientiousness. In a word, Hans Rodde's external gentleness of manner concealed the cruel fierceness of a young tiger, with all that beautiful but detestable animal's most treacherous and murderous instincts.

Ben Grizzle was a huge grumbling fellow, of some two-and-thirty, who might be well defined as two yards of thirst and laziness, or thereabouts.

Of the remaining sailors we need not speak more particularly at present.

When the storm subsided, it proved fortunately that no serious damage was done, and the Columbia (which, in Mondel's lover-like superstition, bore a charmed existence) once more pursued her course towards the point in the chart indicated by the beggar's recollections.

Already they had reached the necessary latitude, and had twice crossed and re-crossed the supposed meridian, after repeatedly taking the most careful observations. A look-out was continually kept at the mast-head, and since the crew were informed of the great secret, every soul on board was equally anxious for the hoped-for cry of "land!"

At length it came, and Mondel descried through his glass the outline of a rocky island, answering in every respect to the description of the Gambler.

Peter Quartz, who, throughout the voyage, had hitherto been silent and abstracted, amused himself mainly by murmuring to himself, as he generally pervaded the vessel, "Latitude, longitude," till his old nickname ashore, spontaneously revived amongst the sailors, and he was Old Latitude and Longitude on board the Columbia, as of old in the gambling hells of Gotham.

As they neared the land, perpendicular rocks and the vast cone-like mountain, with its craggy precipices and barren surfaces, became clearly visible.

Before night the Columbia was anchored in a convenient roadstead, and a boat, containing Mondel, the Gambler, Cope, the third mate, and four sailors, had effected a landing, and within half an hour, Mondel, advancing before the rest on the beach, waved for those in the ship the yellow flag, which was to be the signal of the complete and absolute confirmation of the statements of the guide he had trusted.

"We are all rich men!" was the first thought that swelled the heart of every weather-beaten man, who had made that voyage of wonder. We shall never more know poverty! we need toil no more! our future is a future of enjoyment! We have but to wish and to receive! The yellow talisman is ours! We are princes, potentates, and powers, till Death relieves us of necessity!"

The pale blue eyes of Peter Quartz flashed with a strange fire.

Even Mondel was not without his share of this mighty and too human exultation!

He too had tasted the bitterness of poverty, the mortification of embarrassment, the humiliation of debt. He knew too thoroughly the horrors which afflict this pauper planet, not to appreciate most intensely the triumph of possessing a power which is universal empire—the power of gold!

But whilst all the rest of the crew save Cope and Mondel, went almost mad with joy, these two friends and philosophers made all their arrangements for taking in a cargo of the precious metal as speedily as possible in order to return, before their stores were exhausted, and enjoy the fruits of their adventure.

Mondel then devised a system of division by which two-fifths of the cargo should be the property of the owners, one-fifth of it Peter Quartz, the discoverer of the Island, one-fifth to be divided amongst the officers in certain proportions, and the remaining fifth to be equally shared by the crew. He explained to the latter that as each would have more than he would probably be ever able to spend, it was utterly absurd to attempt any foolish plans of secretion, since moreover, he determined that before leaving the ship, it should be well ascertained that no one took a single pound of gold away beyond his share of the common stock.

This arrangement was absolutely necessary to check the wild infatuation which seized on the poor men at the aspect of the gold.

In less than a week all was complete. The Columbia bore in her hold such a treasure as no earthly monarch yet even dreamed of possessing, and Mondel—Mondel the poet, the adventurer, the dreamer, was the richest man upon the face of the earth—aye richer than a hundred Rothschilds. And in the midst of all his incalculable wealth he had but one thought—to return to New York, and once more to make a last effort to soften the indifference of the only real treasure which he believed in—Columbia.

How willingly, to ensure the possession of that blonde maiden and her love, would he have seen all his gold sunk in the blue Pacific, and returned a penniless adventurer, once more to recommence the hard struggle with the devils incarnate of this selfish Pandemonium, called the world.

The ship was loaded with gold. But before leaving the island, one thing remained to be done—to gratify a traveller's curiosity. The island was explored in all directions. No symptoms of vegetation were discovered, no sign of living animal, or even nest of bird. Nothing could be more utterly inhospitable—not even a spring of fresh water was detected—a bitter disappointment, for a supply of water was desirable, and its want might necessitate a visit to some other of the Polynesian Isles, whilst all agreed in one longing to return home, and commence reaping the harvest of their golden expedition.

Lastly, Mondel, Cope, and the greater part of the crew, including the Professor and the Gambler, made a grand ascent of the conical mountain, and after immense exertion, succeeded in reaching its summit and looking down into the crater.

Imagine their astonishment on beholding in the centre of this crater, with almost perpendicular sides, at a depth of some hundreds of feet, a lake of water, in which the blue sky and the sides of the crater itself, with the figure of the adventurers on the margin, were reflected with the accuracy of a plate-glass mirror.

This lake was, perhaps, a third of a mile in diameter. Nothing can give any idea of its intense lucidity and motionless smoothness.

"I wonder if it is salt water or fresh?" said Cope, regarding the lake with unmitigated amazement.

"It looks fresh," said Mondel, however, that is no criterion.

"I should be sorry to back myself to drink a gallon of it," said the Professor.

"We are all too rich to bet now," said the first mate, laughing.

"I see no possibility of descending," said Cope.

"Nor do I," said Mondel.

"Nor I," said the mate.

"Nor I," said each of the rest, in succession.

The discoverer of the island alone said nothing, but, at some distance from the rest, remained with his eyes fixed, as if fascinated, on the watery mirror below.

Suddenly—whether it was that a vertigo seized him from looking over the precipice, or that the edge of the rock on which he stood simply gave way beneath his feet—suddenly with an unearthly shriek, that awoke a thousand piercing echoes from the walls of the rock-built amphitheatre, the unfortunate Gambler lost his equilibrium, fell over the edge of the crater, and as the rock on which he stood slightly overhung the lake, was precipitated in an instant into its depths.

But no, strange phenomenon! the body of the unfortunate man scarcely disappeared beneath the surface, before it reappeared, extended as on a real mirror; so rapidly did the lake recover its marvellous smoothness; and what was, of all, the most strange thing to behold, the body reappeared after its immersion, to all appearances converted into a statue of silver!

Mute horror seized all present at this astounding spectacle.

A dead silence followed the hideous miracle.

The superstitious sailors began to have vague thoughts of enchanted islands and the devil. Ben Grizzle, even, put the question to himself, whether all was not illusion on the isle, and whether the gold might not dissolve like "an unsubstantial pageant," or, if not actually fantastical, prove to be lumps of sulphur or sandstone!

Such were Ben Grizzle's reflections, and not his alone; others had fancies which differed from his, only in form, not in substance.

Their philosophic captain observed the phenomenon, and being inaccessible to all superstitions but love, simply summed up its features, and arrived at a practical conclusion.

"It is a lake of quicksilver," said Mondel.

"Of quicksilver?" cried Cope.

"Most assuredly, how else explain the fact, that a body becomes silvered over, and remains upon its surface."

"It is indeed strange."

"Not at all; quicksilver is seventeen times heavier than water; a human body therefore displaces less one-seventeenth of its bulk, so little, in fact, that it scarcely indents the liquid metal—which gold and platina alone surpass in gravity."

"What are we to do, sir?" said the first mate.

"Nothing; we can do nothing. The man was dead the moment he sank beneath the poisonous lake, whose fumes we ought to fly as from a pestilence. Besides, descent is impossible, and with the sun now shining vertically, to stay here is suicidal. We must care for the living, let the dead care for themselves."

And with a last look at the glittering form, that lay extended on the lake, now blazing with unendurable brightness, from the effect of the fierce solar rays, Mondel and Cope followed their already retreating companions towards the boats, eager to abandon an abode of horrors, such as not unfrequently accompany the presence of unbounded treasures.

Within the space of a few hours, the Columbia had left the setting sun, and the golden island behind her, and the shades of evening began to fall prematurely on the body of the mendicant Gambler.

Lord of unbounded wealth, triumphantly successful in the great object of his life, Peter Quartz died, like many a greater man, upon the very eve of realizing that worldly enjoyment which he had known but as a desire, a hope, a far-off vision.

Thus, conquerors have died in the hour of victory, genius on the threshold of glory.

"It is strange," said Mondel to Cope, as he looked down into the engine room, from the main-deck, "that the same imprisoned god which bore him to his destiny, should also give him welcome to the land of shadows."

"Who knows but that his spirit will be translated to the planet Mercury?" said Cope, smiling sadly.

"I have no pity for the dead," said Mondel, "and in this case, there are no living sufferers to deplore the loss of a protector."

"We owe him our fortune," said Cope.

"We owe everything every day to somebody, nevertheless, I shall write a poem to his memory."

"A sufficient honor to have tumbled into a mercurial pond for!" said Cope ironically.

"What a fantastic dream life is!" sighed Mondel. "Now all these strange adventures, this voyage, this motley crew, our novel companionship as modern Jasons in search of the golden fleece, and means of fleecing our fellows, to me appears spectral and unreal. There is but one real thing for the soul in Nature, its master passion, its dominating thought!"

"In a word," said Cope—"Columbia!"

"Yes, yes," said the pale leader of the gold-seekers, "Columbia or death!"

"Incurable!" sighed Cope; "and before he gets back to New York, she will have been married to some highly respectable merchant."

"Work, work, messengers of the gods!" murmured the poet, still looking down upon his engine, fancifully apostrophizing his metallic slave, whose resistless expansive force, gave way to the iron giant below. "Work, work, and bear your master to the Mecca of his pilgrimage! let him once more kiss the black stone of scorn's Caaba, and then farewell to dreams of empire, glory; creation! Farewell to pride and passion, to science and to art, to illusion and to torment! At the worst, even my enemies cannot deny that I have lived and died—a man!"

"Sail ho!" cried the look-out at the mast head.

But night descended, and with the morning the stranger had disappeared from the circle, and sea and air met unbroken round the Columbia.

————

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MUTINY.

"THERE was some foul play!" said David Borack.

"He was the first discoverer of the island, remember," said Hans Rodde, "and it was the Captain's interest to get rid of him."

"He fell very suddenly!" said Ben Grizzle.

"Very;" said another of the malcontents.

"Who is there?" said Borack.

"I"—said the voice of the third mate.

It was a dark night, and the mutineers had assembled near the head of the vessel.

Their plan was long since matured. It was to wait until the third mate was officer of the watch, seize him, and then surprise the captain in his state cabin.

Their first object was easily accomplished, and Edward Wallace was secured and gagged before he could give the alarm. The further execution of David Borack's project to get possession of the ship and all its treasure, would have been equally certain, had not the demon of restlessness which possessed the soul of Mondel, caused him by mere accident to ascend, in his slippers and a loose wrapper, the gangway of the chief cabin, at the very moment of the seizure of his third officer by the mutineers. Ben Grizzle, who was mounting guard at the head of the stairs, luckily happened to turn his head for an instant, to see the result of the struggle. This inadvertency enabled Mondel to draw back quietly, return to his state room, seize his sword and revolver, awaken Cope, and return to the stairs, just in time to pass his straight military sword through the body of David Borack as, armed with an axe and a double-barrelled pistol, he led the van of the descending mutineers.

Borack uttered a yell of agony, and threw himself upon Mondel, who, overwhelmed by the weight of the giant, staggered back.

Borack fired his pistol without effect, and then aimed a blow at Mondel with the axe, which fortunately struck only the frame work of the cabin door.

Mondel fired, and Borack fell mortally wounded. Ben Grizzle, who followed, received the Captain's sword in his heart, and fell instantly. But Hans Rodde who next followed, struck Mondel on his uncovered head with a hand spike so violently, that although he partially guarded the blow with his sword, he fell stunned with the blow and would have been dispatched at once by the young Dutchman's knife, but for the sudden diversion caused by some scene upon deck, which caused the other mutineers to re-ascend the staircase with much greater eagerness than they had evinced in their descent.

Hans Rodde's attention was diverted for an instant, and by the time he again turned to Mondel, he received a ball from Cope's revolver in the shoulder, which disabled him—a second barrel of the revolver fired by the same steady hand, sent the soul of Hans Rodde to the gulf of mysteries.

Meanwhile, the Professor and the first mate having by some means, reached the deck, maintained an unequal contest with the remaining mutineers, till Cope and Mondel, who rose almost immediately; his broken sword still grasped firmly in his hand, appearing in the scene, the bloody drama ended by the unconditional submission of the three surviving mutineers and the commission to the deep of the corpses of David Borack, Hans Rodde, and their companions. As for the second mate, Richard Grote, he had been brained by the Professor with a marling spike, and was found near the windlass, still gasping, though past all hope of recovery. He too was thrown overboard in the fierce excitement of the hour, and Mondel found himself once more undisputed master of a vessel full of gold, but deficient in men, water, and, in the event of a protracted voyage, or any accident to the engines, of the most necessary provisions.

At this time the clouds cleared away from the heavens, and the rays of the moon fell on the pale stern brow of their chief, as with his bloody sword still in his hands, he briefly thanked his friends for the energy displayed in the late desperate and unhappy emergency.

Scarcely had he uttered a few words on the necessity for unparalleled exertion on the part of all remaining on board, when the boom of a gun broke the silence of the night, and a rakish looking brig was seen bearing down under full sail upon the Columbia.

Mondel hastened to the engine-room. Cope took the wheel. The assistant engineer was dead, and Mondel had to rouse the engineer himself from a deep slumber, which not even the firing of the pistols had interrupted. Perhaps, living in the perpetual noise and jar of the machinery; he was less susceptible in his acoustic sensibilities, than is usual. The mate looked through his glass at the suspicious stranger.

"It is a pirate—by G——, a pirate!" said he, seizing his speaking trumpet—"Sir,—Mr. Mondel! a pirate. He hoists the black flag and makes sure of us."

"Probably he mistakes us for a vessel in distress," said Mondel, reascending, "Now for my air-guns, now is the time to test their efficacy! At the worst we can outstrip them, as soon as the engine is in full play; meanwhile to the work!"

"Rivers!" he resumed, "bring up the canisters! you understand me!"

The Professor descended, and returned, almost immediately with two cylinders of iron, with which Mondel immediately proceeded to load his stern-chasers. A few turns of their powerful screws, and the air was compressed which was to expedite the deadly explosive. Each cylinder had a spike at its end, and contained materials of such destructive character, that any vessel struck by one of them, was certain to be seriously damaged if not utterly destroyed. The preparation of these terrible explosives, in a safely portable form, was a recent discovery, of which Mondel had, with his usual love of progress in all things, taken care to avail himself.

The first canister was projected without effect, and perhaps still sleeps harmlessly at the bottom of the ocean. The second produced an effect for which even Mondel was unprepared. There was a quick lurid flash, a sound, a dispersion of fragments, and within three minutes the pirate vessel had disappeared!

All strained their eyes incredulously towards the vacant space. Yet, so it was, the fatal missile had struck the pirate right abeam, between wind and water, exploded, and in so doing, tore up the deck, and opened a vast rent in the side of the vessel, which, admitting the sea, caused her to sink almost instantaneously.

"Truly the Columbia bears a charmed life!" said Mondel.

"Truly, her Captain leads a charmed life!" said Cope, who, like all philosophers, was capable of joking under the most exciting circumstances.

But the gods of ocean, were not yet weary, nor was the ship Columbia ever destined to see port, or discharge cargo again in this world.

*  *  *  *  *  *

Three weeks later, the Panama and San Francisco steamer picked up a boat containing three gaunt; hollow-eyed, and hungry men, almost starved, perishing with thirst, and yet bearing a brave and undaunted aspect, in their last and most desperate extremity.

These men were, the commander of the Columbia—Dudley Mondel, Peregrine Cope, and that remarkable ex-housebreaker, who we have so long alluded to as the Professor; they, and they alone, survived.

But though they had seen the ship of gold go down before their eyes, they were still the envied possessors of certain lumps of that eternal "incentive to vice" and "indispensable requisite to happiness"—the yellow talisman—tied up in canvass covers, and thrown at the bottom of the boat, as ballast, to the extent of at least one million of dollars in value!

And let it be put down to the credit of Mondel, Cope, and their faithful follower, that starved and parched as they were, they were still too deeply convinced of the superiority of the moral torture of poverty, over the physical agony of privation, to either ask for bread or water, till their hard-won treasure had been deposited, by the captain of the steamer's orders, in a place of security.

"Who are you, gentlemen?" said he of the steamer, impressed, notwithstanding his deplorable condition as to clothing, by the stately manner of Mondel, as he stood, surrounded by the curious passengers, on the quarterdeck.

"I am Dudley Mondel, lord of the golden island," said the late captain of the Columbia, with a faint smile.

Four days later, our adventurers found themselves luxuriating at the best hotel in San Francisco.

————

CHAPTER XXIX.

BERKELEY MARRIED.

THERE is no more curious or painful drama acted on the world's stage than one-sided love.

To the laughing devils of the soured and skeptical school, the sight of a man desperately bent on self-delusion as to a woman's feelings towards himself, is full of the comic element, and the observation of a woman under a similar hallucination respecting a man, supremely amusing.

To the profound thinker there is nothing more tragic.

How often, and under how many varied conditions, have I studied this melancholy phase in the grand comedy of life!

John Berkeley had, we have seen, persuaded Mrs. Yonkers to elope with him. He had attained possession of the great object of his desires; he had realized a felicity, which to him had been the one green oasis of hope in a desert of crime and suffering.

How brief was his delusion! He had, it is true, obtained possession of Amelia—that is, the outward and visible Amelia, with all her beauty of form, her dark lustrous hair, and large soul-subduing eyes. But of the real Amelia—the πνευμα, the animating principle of that charming form—he possessed no more than the great Khan of Tartary, or the Ethiopian Highpriest of Mumbo-Jumbo in the lands beyond the Koran's range, near to the Mountains of the Moon.

Amelia had in fact eloped with Berkeley, because she was desperate. She had loved Mondel with all the fiery passionate sensualism of her nature. His indifference had outraged her vanity, wounded her pride, and left behind it a sense of incurable dissatisfaction. But for Columbia, she felt, things would have happened very differently. She, Amelia, would have been the heroine of a deliciously romantic intrigue, living in a perpetual state of interesting and exciting relations with a man who possessed the faculty of perpetually amusing, puzzling, and pleasing her. She could not understand Mondel, it is true, but the very mystery which hung round his vast powers and acquirements, and strange, daring, indefinite aims, made him irresistibly fascinating to her imagination. Before she saw him, her step-daughter Columbia affected her with a presentiment of the coming influence. Both had the same pale transparent spiritual complexion, the same fathomless look of infinite thought, the same silky hair and unstudied grace of movement, even in moments of embarrassment. Both had that peculiar wildness and impulsive forcible tone, manner, gesture and look, which is the certain sign of genius. Both had, in a word, precisely what she had not—that regal air of self-reliance, which inspired our great ancestral God of war Odin, in the old Norse ballad.

"I am a king," said he
"My empire is the sea,
My throne yon ship that rides
At anchor in the haven;
Above whose topmost mast,
Fit comrade of the blast,
My regal standard floats,—
The yet unconquered raven."

The hero has returned from a prolonged cruise in his Viking-galley; and thus answers the insolent demand of Lok as to his rank and ancestry.*

[*The production on the stage of the present writer's unpublished poem or drama of "Odin," has been delayed by the difficulties inherent in the piece itself, which requires a large stage and expensive accessories: also by the unremitting engagement of the author in other literary occupations.]

But it was as impossible for Amelia and Columbia to be true friends, as for Amelia and Mondel really to harmonize in love.

Eagles cannot mate with herons. The bird of Jove, whose "home is heaven's light," soars habitually in regions unattainable to inferior birds. Thus, too, genius, in its constant exaltation of idea, leaves the petty prejudice and narrow sympathies of ordinary society so far beneath its spiritual feet, that it becomes undistinguishable, from distance, to the vulgar; yet, just as the dark speck upon the sky excites our interest, because we know it to be an eagle, so genius, even when incomprehensible to ordinary mortals, is still genius—the revelation of ideal knowledge and beauty to mankind.

With regard to Berkeley, Mrs. Yonkers neither liked nor disliked him, though flattered by the love of a man who in many respects was a desirable conquest. He was young, and, in his peculiar style, handsome, accomplished as a man of the world, and now reported rich. He had force, vivacity, and energy in his character, but no poetry, no romance, no charming playfulness of manner. There was always something cynical, reserved, indifferent in his look. Even in his love he was earnest and impassioned, without being gentle or pleasing. There was devotion, but no tenderness in his nature.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Yonkers became his mistress; and, by the ceremony of marriage, his wife, upon the death of Mr. Yonkers.

His life was a purgatory of alternate hope, despair, and savage jealousy.

Amelia trifled with the stern and implacable Berkeley, as might an oriental despot with a chained tiger.

Berkeley raged, yet loved. The coldness with which his burning passion, the pent-up torrent of a whole life's abnegation, was received, only served to increase the value of its indulgence. He worshipped the indifferent Amelia, as an Indian worships his three-headed god. His whole life was passed in asking himself this one question, "Does she love me or does she not?" Will she or can she love me? was a still more sombre form of putting the same all-important query.

As for Amelia, though she could not command the weather-like variations of her temper, she wished to make the best of her lot, and enjoy life to the utmost; so, after asking herself the above question, and arriving much more readily at an answer, she concluded that she could quite well endure to be loved by her husband, and forthwith began to think of all other possible distractions. Her extravagance knew no limits; and when she returned to New York, the unbounded profusion of her outlay called round her a sort of parasitical circle of people, quite as well bred, indeed much more instructive and amusing, than her old humdrum commercial circle. Her drawing-room, indeed, became the rendezvous of the most remarkable foreign adventurers; Cuban patriots, Irish fortune hunters—counts, French, Italian or Polish, who had counted their chances in the Old world, and made themselves counts, expressly to get an additional chance in the New. There too, were to be seen seventh-rate literati, and men who were lions because they had discovered sciences which did not exist. Also were seen spiritual mediums, and kings of France, of Indian origin, and many nice young men who danced there, and did heaven knows what elsewhere, and looked very much as if they had all been dressed by contract, by the same tailor, and let out for the night as stop-gaps and fill-corners.

The species of infatuation—the infatuation of the senses—of which Berkeley was the victim, is radically incurable, except by death, or a higher form of passion. The miserable counterfeiter indulged every whim of his syren, accepting every humiliation and neglect on her part, little more than a husband in name, since the ever-ready plea of illness was always at hand to exclude him from his wife's apartments, or convert him from a lover into a nurse. All this he bore, and to gratify his ungrateful wife, lavished upon her his ill-gotten fortune with recklessness, which soon brought him to the alternative of immediate and positive retrenchment, or a fresh plunge into the hazardous career which for nearly two years, he had entirely and delightedly abandoned.

Amelia received the news of their impoverishment with amazement and scorn. Why did he remain idle, why did he not speculate? do something? make money like other people, as he had done formerly?

Then this luxurious Phryne, putting on an affectionate air, and lavishing on Berkeley a few careless caresses, which as usual he accepted, as the dog accepts the crumbs from the rich man's table, entreated her husband not to make her miserable by talking to her of poverty, and misery, and all sorts of disagreeable things. She wondered he did not suggest a boarding-house at once, or emigrate to Minnesota.

Berkeley left Amelia in a state of terrible agitation. Finally he resolved to make—literally to make—money to supply all demands for the present.

Amelia was delighted to hear no more talk of economy, and all went on as usual, till one evening Berkeley, who still secretly retained his old house, though he occupied one in Fourteenth street with Amelia, and was about to devote the night to his infernal manufacture, Berkeley, I repeat, told his wife that he had to call upon a friend at some distance from the city, and should not return till the next day.

It so happened however that a couple of hours afterwards he did return, for his pocket-book, which contained the very notes he was about to transfer and reproduce.

As he entered by means of a latch-key, he overheard Amelia in the drawing-room say these ominous words in a tone which few jealous husbands are slow to recognize—

"Do not run away, my dear Count—Mr. Berkeley is out of town. He will not return till to-morrow. I am so glad you called."

Berkeley remained motionless on the doormat. He was naturally noiseless in his movements. He unlocked a street door as no other man unlocked it. The next five minutes satisfied him. He advanced to the door just ajar, and through the crack of the hinge (that terrible crack)! he saw his adored Amelia pillowing her soft cheek on the shoulder of a particularly handsome and black-bearded Frenchman, the Count Alfred de Clichy in fact—otherwise Alfred Clichy ex-cashier of Tripier's bank at Paris, political, alias felonious, exile at New York.

Now John Berkeley, who knew a great many things which his wife did not know, knew the fascinating Count Alfred de Clichy, in vernacular parlance, like a book. So, without more ado, he walked into the room, giving the lovers just time to assume a suitable innocence of attitude and aspect.

"Ah, my dear, I am returned you see sooner than I said," began the Alterer with a feigned carelessness which did not altogether deceive Amelia. Not however suspecting that he had actually seen or heard anything, she said in her usual tone—

"John, here is the Count."

Amelia liked Counts. It is an amiable weakness in some American ladies. She liked Lords too, and titles of all descriptions, both of home and foreign manufacture. Perhaps, the novelty of the latter, made them more attractive.

"Count? what Count?" said Berkeley, looking with an insulting coolness of contempt at Clichy.

"Why, the Count de Clichy, my dear, of course," said Amelia, flushing crimson.

"Where is he? I see no Count de Clichy," said Berkeley; still annihilating the fascinating Alfred, with the look of a basilisk.

"Mais, Monsieur,"—began M. Clichy, rising and trying to give an air of spirit and dignity, to his large and somewhat portly figure.

"Don't try to impose on me!" thundered Berkeley, all at once breaking out, and turning absolutely livid with fury. "Do you think I want my house to be a rendezvous for every French pickpocket and blackguard, that likes to stick Count and de before his name? I know you, Monsieur Clichy; I recollect you at Paris years ago, as garçon at a café in the Rue Vivienne (this invention, for it was an invention of Berkeley's, told fearfully on the nerves of Mrs. B.), from which you were turned away for stealing the spoons! Out of my house, rascal! and never let me catch you here again!"—howled, rather than spoke, the Alterer, as he rather carried than dragged the unfortunate "Count" to the street-door, and fairly kicked him into the kennel.

"Madame," said Berkeley, when (after administering a few supplementary kicks to the prostrate Alfred) he returned, still ghastly pale, "I have long suspected you, I now know and despise you."

"John, I am innocent, indeed I am," said Amelia, not sobbing, but very much frightened at her husband's violence, and very much humiliated at his treatment of the supposed Count.

"Madame," said Berkeley, with a look of very cold contempt. "I have the honor to wish you a very good evening." Mrs. Berkeley sat stupefied with consternation. By the time she recovered the use of her faculties, her husband was gone.

Early on the following morning, there was a fire up town. It was the old house of the counterfeiter. Berkeley had made his last ten thousand dollars, and quitted New York for ever.

In the course of the following day, the officer of justice came to the house in Fourteenth Street, to arrest Berkeley as a forger, and his wife as his accomplice. They found only the latter.

It was from the Tombs that Columbia received the first communication she had had from her step-mother, since the elopement.

In her despair, at the unexpected horrors of her position, the wretched lady could think of no one to apply to for aid, but the noble-hearted and generous Columbia. In return for her sympathy, and assistance, she offered to explain the whole mystery of her conduct, with respect to Mondel. Thus were the statements of the unfortunate lover confirmed, and his conduct justified. But where was he, this tried and acquitted criminal of love? Answer ye waves, ye tempests, isles of metallic horrors, knife of mutineer, and ball of pirate; answer ye fevers, and physicians of the golden land, where is he? where is Mondel?

Where is the poet-adventurer, the eternal lover of Columbia, the fair, the imperial?

Two years have passed away, and no news of Mondel. His fame as a writer is beginning to recede into the past, his character as a man is over-clouded with dark shadows. Vaguely the words adventurer and pirate are mingled. Saddest of all, rumors of wrecks, and every rational conjecture, hint at one only possible solution. Dudley Mondel is dead. Columbia has opened her eyes too late. Thenceforward, her heart is a mausoleum, not a temple, and her brow grows paler and her cheeks grow thinner, and her fingers whiter, and her eyes more spiritually beautiful, as she murmurs—

"Death, what is death? Oh! let me too die, and be at rest!"

Rest!—vain demand—there is no rest for spirits, even in eternity. There is no rest—but there is happiness somewhere, or Nature were herself a lie and a delusion.

————

CHAPTER XXX.

THE FAIR SLAVE OF THE LAMP.

FOR two long dismal years, Columbia had toiled, and wept, and hoped, and dreamed, and despaired, in solitude and poverty.

Pride, noble pride, and that mysterious intuition of the soul, which divines, without comprehending, the unknown, and the unborn event, sustained her in her arduous struggle.

Nor did Mrs. Normer's kind and cheerful consolations fail to have their effect on the sensitive feelings, however, little they really biased the independent judgment of Columbia.

Mrs. Normer would not hear of any accident to Mondel. He would most certainly return, and return a rich and successful man. Had he not said to her at parting, that he should come back a millionaire? Why did he not write?—What was the use in writing? He was never a man of letters, in the corresponding sense. Once, he was absent for six months before, and never wrote to any one, as she, Mrs. Normer knew, for she inquired of all his friends, and none of them had heard of him.

Meanwhile, Columbia wrote tale after tale, and sent them to the magazines, and was kept waiting and neglected, and refused, and her manuscripts lost, and her patience sorely tried in every possible way. It is true, some of her pieces were admired, and quoted, and reprinted, but all this produced no personal advantage to the authoress, and Columbia, who could not see a beggar, or listen to a tale of distress, without opening her purse to the sufferer, found herself constantly poor, and behind-hand, and anxious. Her dresses began to wear out, and were not replaced. She began to taste that refined misery, which Mondel had so graphically described, those exquisitely petty mortifications, which corrode and embitter the hearts of the delicate and refined children of misfortune.

The world became repulsive as well as gloomy to her imagination. Day by day, she became more fond of solitude, more abstracted in her manner, more indifferent to appearances. Like a beautiful ghost, she glided along the main streets of the city, her eyes fixed upon invisible phantasms, her lovely countenance pale and sad as a nun's, her brows slightly contracted with that expression of nervous endurance so peculiarly indicative of profound mental anguish, her fingers drawn together with nervous tension, the very image of a beautiful Sibyl, an enchanted princess, a creature of another world wildly wandering through the horrors of an earthly Inferno!

Oh, ye cold-blooded men of rank and office, gold and commerce! how willingly would I forgive you for all the assassinations which your heartless indifference to the Great and the God-like, has committed on the unhappy knights of intellect and companions of the great order of Light! After all, they were men, and fell fighting for the cause of truth, and love, and beauty—fell bravely, as fell the Titans of old, crushed by the bolts of Fate, and the omnipotent arm of Jove. Even now I see them—the gaunt and ill-paid soldiers of the great living army of martyrs, and it rejoices me to hear the low, muttered defiance of all comers, and their eternal watchword "Victory or death!—and even in death—Victory!"

But for the sufferings of the fair and noble daughters of genius, I do not forgive you. It is for this that I not only hate your meanness, but abhor your very existence. It is for this that I curse your civilization, your policies, your institutions, your spasmodic enterprise!—You men?—races of cowards and pedlars! You who on all sides and every possible way see women suffer, and are calm, contented, easy in your iniquities.

Once more, the vice of this age is MEANNESS. Look to it England, land of selfish aristocracy and servile shopkeepers! look to it America, land of greedy speculators and corrupt politicians! look to it France, land of police spies and slaves! The angels look down from the heavens and weep at your meanness, the demons laugh below at the age of traffic and progress!

To the devil with your progress! if the many are still to agonize for the benefit of the few! if young and lovely women are still to be driven by your society to starvation or the streets. Learn this great fact. All your philanthropy up to this present moment has been a pitiful humbug. My worthy, wealthy Pharisees! you have hitherto tried to do good at too cheap a rate, to give an immense deal and sacrifice nothing!

Besides, your system is in itself demoniacal. You wait for extreme cases, you are so grossly material that you can think only of the sufferings of the body. For the tortures of the soul you have no pity. You are overwhelmed with applications!—What a sad infliction! when in fact you ought to invite them and rejoice in the opportunity of doing good.

But what would you have us do? you say; perhaps.

Wait a little, and I will tell you.

Meanwhile, give! But you want to save. O, generation of savers! there was one who of old gained the name of Saviour and whom the like of you crucified, but he saved men—not dollars.

And what do you save after all?

A capital which is a fiction, a lie, a forgery with which to pay, that is, enslave, future labor. Is the world richer by a cent for a dollar saved by an individual?

Imagine the Gods saving. And do you not boast that you were made in a God's image? Traditionally ye were, but it was a Hebrew God's. He knew the avarice of man, and directed that every fifty years the work of vicious accumulation should be annihilated for the general good, and all lands revert to the original families who had owned them. But ye, with your forged bills issued on sham security; buy up the lands of the people, and torture their souls with rents heavier than the worst taxes of the Old world, and for the people of the American God, that is the God of Nature, there is no jubilee of restitution, the wrong done is eternal!

But it is not now, that I can say all that I have to say on these subjects. I was speaking of the sufferings of Columbia.

This is no common fiction of the day—for those who can understand it, there is deep truth slumbering beneath its wildest extravagances.

That one of the most beautiful and accomplished and learned and adorable ladies in the land, should suffer day by day the most intense anxiety, for the mere means of subsistence, that such a being should live in constant danger of becoming a beggar and a dependent, may seem, to gross minds, a very simple casualty.

To me, it appears a horrible sign of the times, when genius, although acknowledged and appreciated, is yet permitted to suffer. Still more horrible it seems to me, that that genius should be ever embodied in the person of a woman!

"But you are writing a novel!"

A novel? O wise and heroic citizens! what can the poet invent half so thrilling, half so worthy of record, as the simple facts of the life, which whirls and seethes and groans and laughs around us?

Who knows, but for Mrs. Normer's generous affection, that the blonde Columbia, the very type and acme of the American woman, in her most glorious perfection, would not have felt the actual pangs of hunger as others, fair loving and talented, have felt them?

Beware, beware, my great adopted country! that with his dying breath, a poet does not curse you with the eternal insult—A second Europe.

Starve not genius!

What if it be hard to recognize as good bills and pure gold. Better to support a hundred lunatics and loafers in idleness, than to let one earth-born demigod fly murdered back to Elysium!

But oh, unutterable horror! if the shade of Edgar Poe—for example—should ever meet, upon the shores of Styx, a ghostly queen of poetry, and she, fixing her starry gaze on the sombre shade of America's greatest genius, should murmur gently—"Me too, they murdered!"

Can such crimes find atonement or excuse, in lives by Rufus Griswold, and social slanderers of the dunces?

"Never more,"—it is the Raven that answers—"Never more!"

————

CHAPTER XXXI.

RECONCILIATION.

THE very day after Columbia's visit to her step-mother in the Tombs—from which that lady was released on the following day, as it appeared that she had no knowledge of her husband's doings—the fair authoress seated herself at her desk, not to write—for she felt too ill, too depressed in mind, too utterly unhappy to write—but to calculate. Her only hope lay in getting payment in advance from some publisher, and the very demand was risking the acceptance of the article by the magazine. Yet what could she do? Her friend Mrs. Normer was herself distressed for money. Two of her best rooms were empty, and already the pretty face of the kind German was overcast with anxiety and care, for Mrs. Normer was too generous to be more than prudent, and unexpected losses had of late impoverished her.

"I am not fit for this world," sighed Columbia, "its horrible necessities are too much for my lonely strength. Great evils I can bear, and have borne with fortitude, but these perpetual stings of fortune's mosquitoes, this constant dread of to-morrow's contest, the daily battle for mere existence, kills me more than even the grief, which is, in a manner, my chosen companion to the grave. Could I but indulge it in tranquillity!

"Let the strong-minded ones say what they will, I feel that woman is destined to lean upon man for strength, that it is man's highest duty and mission to sustain her. Oh, how I wish that, but for a single hour, I could weep upon his heart and then smile from his arms into those of the great Physician. Yes I could die now—willingly, how willingly, if I could but once more see him, hear him, feel his kiss upon my lips."

At this moment there was a heavy footstep in the corridor. The door opened and—Mondel stood before her!

For an instant, each of the pale lovers remained paralyzed by amazement, and half suspected an illusion of the brain, or a spectral apparition in the altered countenance before them—

"Why!—Mrs. Normer—told me nothing of this—she said my old room was vacant—and I"——The bold adventurer paused from excess of emotion.

"I had—not—the remotest idea"—stammered the blonde poetess, vainly attempting to rise from her seat.

"Columbia," cried Mondel, springing forward and suddenly clasping the adored shape in his arms, and kissing her lips before she could even think of resistance, "My dear, dear love! my adored angel of hope! spurn me, kill me, if you will! I have felt one moment of happiness."

"Dudley—dear Dudley!" said Columbia, and at length the tears of the fond beauty burst from their fountains, and she wept long and hysterically in the arms of her intoxicated lover.

"She called me Dudley!" murmured Mondel, and he felt as if that one fact was in itself a source of infinite ecstasy.

"You have returned at last!"

"You desired my return?"

"What else?—O Dudley, Dudley!"

"My queen!"

"My world!"

"At length we understand one another!"

"Now and for ever."

*  *  *  *  *  *

"Well, Mr. Mondel, have you returned a millionaire?" said Mrs. Normer, when, after as long an interval as her woman's curiosity would allow, she at length interrupted the wild whispers of the two storm-tossed children of genius.

"I always keep my word, madam," replied Mondel, smiling.

"Seriously?" said Columbia, who amid all her wild delights, was still under the terror of the spectre which had so long haunted her.

"Seriously, we are rich beyond my most sanguine wishes."

"We!" said Columbia, "O, Dudley! what is wealth between us!—Yet how glad I am that it is so! How much I have suffered!"

"True—it is strange—you are here. Your father, your step-mother?"

"My tale is soon told. But first let us hear your adventures."

"Then, prepare yourselves for a long story!" said Mondel, and with both Columbia's hands between his own, and his eyes fixed upon hers, he commenced a minute relation of those events, with which the reader is already familiar.

A fortnight later, a young married couple were seen walking on the sea-shore at ——, so radiant with happiness and hope, that all who saw them murmured involuntary admiration.

They were Mondel and Columbia.

"After all," said the poet, looking gravely into the blue eyes of his superb bride, "it is a grand thing to have suffered!"

"It teaches us, at least," said Columbia, "to sympathize with all who suffer."

"Angel!" said Mondel, gaily, "you are now an imperial queen, and I am your subject; what shall I do to please your majesty?"

"Let me never see talent in distress without relieving it."

"Granted, dearest, and when we come down to the lees of my million, a second visit to the golden island will give us a fresh start."

"By the by, Dudley, what name did you give to the island?"

"LOVE."

"Oh, what a mockery! what a profanation!"

"Not at all. What was the Isle of Gold but a material type of my love, which was a power greater than even gold itself? I called it LOVE, because, like love, it seemed an inexhaustible treasure."

"But love and gold are generally antagonistic."

"Not at all. There has been more gold accumulated by love, than by any other cause. Love is the spring of life—the grand motive—it makes the world go round, you know."

"Yes,—in the song."

"And in prose too. However, it is a poor Cupid who cannot defeat Mammon in single combat!"

"You think love omnipotent?"

"I believe love to be God."

"Oh! what a beautiful shell!"

"Its opening reminds me of your lips."

"There now, you are drawing in the sand with my parasol again. Dudley, I declare you are getting quite a monster! this morning you threw my new shawl on the ground."

"Stop, stop—that smile is too much for my philosophy," said Mondel, gazing entranced at the graceful beauty of his wife.

"Yes, flatterer, to escape being scolded.—Now what shall we do next?"

"Suppose we make the tour of Europe and spend a year in Italy?" said Mondel.

"Delightful! I wish to see everything," said Columbia.

"I wish to see nothing, but yourself," said Mondel, playfully.

"Of course, it is your duty to flatter!" said the fair bride, with an air of mock importance—and so they trifled, and were happy. But of course, the reader does not care for trifling.

————

CHAPTER XXXII.

CONCLUSION.

"WELL, sir," says the curious reader, "well, sir?"

Well, what do you want? says the author.

"Why, I want to know all about it, of course; what became of the whole pile, the ultimate end of everybody?"

But this is a modern tale, and modern tales are not like the old seven volume romances.

"How so?"

Why, in the first place, they have no beginning—

"Proceed, sir."

In the second place, they have no end, they are in fact all middle.

"And mostly middling," groans the reader, of an inquiring mind.

No wonder—they are written by steam.

"Written by steam?"

Yes, my dear sir, or madam. In these fast times, the nine years' correction of Horace is as impossible as it is antiquated. Mr. L——, the publisher, calls in the morning on Mr. N——, the author.

"Mr. N.," says Mr. L., "I wish you would write me a novel."

"Certainly," says Mr. N., "by what time do you want it?"

"This week will do," says Mr. L., "I am not at all in a hurry. Here is a thousand dollars in advance."

"Thank you," says Mr. N., "here is my note of hand for a novel, payable seven days after date."

And off goes Mr. L., to engage seven other authors, to write seven other books.

Mr. N. rings the bell. His black valet-de-chambre appears, and is dispatched for Mr. Scribblum, Mr. N.'s private secretary, and one of the fastest short-hand writers in America.

Mr. Scribblum sits down with a ream of superfine paper before him.

Mr. N. takes a seventy-five cent cigar, lights it, takes three turns up and down the room, and begins dictating his novel at the rate average of one hundred and fifty words a minute.

Mr. Scribblum takes down the whole verbatim. In two days the novel is composed. In five more it is copied out by Scribblum and his clerks, and without even taking the three days grace accorded to a promissory note, the work is placed in Mr. L.'s hands, who sends it by the fastest boy in the establishment to the printers, who sets a hundred compositors to set it up; on the following day it is stereotyped, and within a fortnight from the time of Mr. L's suggestion, the novel is in the hands of the reviewers, who blow it up sky-high in the next morning's papers and, presto! Mr. N. wakes and finds himself famous, Mr. L becomes a millionaire, and half a dozen million of readers are made happy, and write a half a dozen million letters (luckily prepaid) full of compliments to the author, who instantly resolves to buy ten square miles of Texas for a city, call it by his name, and marry the most beautiful and adorable.

But stay, let us stick to business and not let the cat out of the bag. Who knows what the wonderfully successful writer may do about the twenty-four baskets of love-letters from anonymous heiresses, who take it for granted that his head is a portrait of himself, and will not listen for an instant, to the simple statement that he is a hump-backed dwarf, with a hare lip; a club foot, one eye, a bald head, and deeply marked with the small-pox!

But what of that? beauty is only skin deep, and virtue is the great thing after all. Luckily the author's reputation as a saint is too firmly established to need puffing, so further comment is unnecessary.

Having thus let the reader behind the scenes, and shown our hatred for anything resembling humbug, we beg further to explain that the modern system of novel writing is quite correct, and strictly in accordance with the laws of nature.

It is quite useless to have a beginning unless it be the beginning, and, as the great Knickerbocker, in his famous history of New York, has demonstrated, the beginning of the world itself is involved in considerable mystery.

Next, it is quite impossible to end a story which is not yet really ended. So that the reader must be content to take our romance as a mere slice of the great pudding of creation, a fragmentary episode in the history of the world, a leaf torn from the book of life, in short, and make the most of his bargain.

Yet, as I am of an accommodating disposition, and have made such a hit with my book—it sold twenty-five thousand before it was written, and was much admired in advance, by several critics who read it by spiritual manifestation—I will give a few particulars which have lately come to my knowledge respecting the actors in my fragment of a drama, by way of news items for their acquaintance.

John Berkeley the alterer, counterfeiter, and speculator in the general line, growing desperate from his grief at Amelia's infidelity, turned savagely respectable, went to Australia, started a bank, and as many a thief in Europe has ended by becoming a spy, became a highly influential financier, railway director, and land owner.

Mrs. Berkeley, finding that she had made two unhappy marriages, declared herself a determined enemy of the matrimonial institution, and became successively the guide, philosopher, and friend of a Roman Catholic bishop, a comic actor, an importer of hardware, and an editor of a newspaper, which last facetiously informed her, that though she had "been the rounds," he considered her a very capital article. She engaged her friend the editor as part of his duty to abuse Mondel and his poetry, on all possible occasions, and notwithstanding Columbia's kindness, told stories about that angelic woman, which are too absurd for repetition.

The Professor stuck to Mondel, and devoted all his energies to the poet's service, acting as his courier and steward when travelling, and making himself an indispensable, though always unobtrusive, attendant. Little did the general European public imagine that the "distinguished Americans" were attended on by a man capable of commanding a quarter of a million of dollars! But every one has his whim, and this was the Professor's. Mondel's kindness and their voyage together to the Isle of Gold, bound the ex-robber for ever to his eccentric Captain.

Nor was the Professor's devotion to the fortunes of his eccentric leader diminished by the discovery of his adopted children, in two young proteges of Columbia, who, having found them starving in one of the suburbs of New York, had for many months sustained them, even in her own direst distress. By the care of Rivers they were placed at good boarding schools, and it is not impossible that the pirate's son may live to be an ornament to his country; and the pirate's daughter, the belle of some future season. Wonderful is the meeting of extremes on the great web of Destiny. Man tries to disentangle its threads—gives up the fruitless task, observes, accepts, and wonders.

Confidence Bob, who only had three wives, besides one in Canada, one in New England, and one in New Jersey—went to Texas, and married the daughter of a great man in ——, who, as he confidently told his son-in-law, originally emigrated to the old Texan republic, because "he had the cursed misfortune in Arkansaw, to hold a fellow just three minutes too long by the throat, one day in a rough and tumble hog fight." Bob became a member of the bar, and hoped to be one of the Legislature, eventually, and was considered "some" down there, though not quite a fighting man of the first water.

The Slinker eventually slunk into a small retail business, and kept a corner grocery in the Eighth Avenue.

The most noble and illustrious Fitzgammon O'Bouncer, after many assaults repulsed, did not capture Miss Candlesoap after all. He fell in love with and married a pretty actress of Flicflac's theatre, and finally became a most brilliant writer of comedies—especially French translations, and was, with the slight drawback of being perpetually "hard up"—(so hard up, that some cruel wag took him off in P——'s magazine, in an article under that envious title), a very successful and much admired man of letters. He often regretted, when carrying the carpet bag containing his wife's costume to the theatre, that he had sacrificed to love the chances of the great Candlesoap alliance. But it was not to be. Fate determined that O'Bouncer should be hard up, and despite all loans, and all editorships, farces, and blank verse to the contrary, hard up he remained, so far as intelligence has been received by telegraph at the office of this novel, up to the time of going to press.

Peregrine Cope took his share of the golden remnant and went back to Paris, the city of his love, where he occupied a grand hotel in the Quartier St. Germain, and married a lovely widow, the brilliant Comtesse de Henry. He was one of the esoteric contributors to Alexande Dumas's Mousquetaire, and published here a work on France and the French, which electrified his countrymen. His "Voyage to the Golden Island" is also a very popular book of travels.

Mrs. Normer, enriched by Mondel's gratitude, married a Major in the U. S. Army, who had long sought her hand, and lived very happily with her husband, who luckily had "faith in dreams," and raised no objection to prophecies. But she never lost an opportunity of recounting to every new auditor the wonderful romance of her two literary tenants, their misfortunes, their love and ultimate prosperity. Nor did she ever fail on the first of every month to write Mondel and Columbia a letter full of the kindest wishes and the most playful humor.

Of the further adventures of Mondel and Columbia themselves I shall not pretend to speak. Their happiness I leave to the imagination of those who, like them, have loved and loved grandly, with the whole force of their being and the whole passion of their souls.

THE END.