Chapter VIII

"Come, clear the stage and give us something new,
For we are tired to death with these old scenes."

Night after night, high up in the sky, the stars shone wildly bright, but the heaven refused its grateful showers and the earth lay parched to a cinder beneath the blazing sunbeams. The mighty Mississippi shrunk within its banks to the size of a mere wayside rivulet, and the long lines of boats lay lazily along the levees. No exchange of produce or merchandise could be effected between the upper and lower regions of the great Mississippi valley, and the consequence was universal depression in trade and heavy failures. Esquire Camford went among the first in the general crash, and his fair consort's nerves went also. The nerve-reviver failed to produce the least soothing effect in this dreadful emergency, and she sank into a bed-ridden ghost of hysteria, with Thisbe for her constant attendant, to minister to her numerous wants, and feed her with lobsters' claws and Graham crackers, which constituted her sole food and nourishment.

As for the "belle and beauty," she, on a day, married Mr. Gilbert, in pearl-colored satin, and that gentleman chancing to overturn a sherry-cobbler on the fair bride's robe, the delicate creature went into a nervous paroxysm, which so alarmed and terrified the happy bridegroom, that, when he recovered his senses, he found himself on the far, blue ocean, with the adorable Celestina's marriage-portion, consisting of the snug sum of fifty thousand dollars, wrapped up in a blue netting-purse in his coat pocket. How the great bank-bills grinned at him, as if to charge him with the wanton robbery and desertion! He gazed around in a bewildered manner, and the first face that met his eye was that of his brother-in-law, Jack Camford, who advanced with a woeful smile distorting his fine features, and exclaimed,

"Upon my word, you're a lucky dog, Gilbert!"

"How so?" demanded the latter.

"To have married my sister the day before father failed, and thus secured a pretty fair sum of money; and now to have escaped a tedious wife and got safely off with it in your pocket," said Jack, with a theatrical flourish of manner.

"But what does all this mean? Why are you here, and where is this ship bound?"

"Well, I'm here--hum--I don't know why, save that life was intolerable at home after the smash-up, and Winnie Morris heard I was getting wild, and turned a cold shoulder on me, I fancied. As to this craft, that reels and tumbles about like a reef of drunkards, she is bound for Australia; so I suppose, in due time, you and I will be landed on the shores of the golden Ophir, if we don't get turned into Davy Jones' locker by some mishap."

"Australia!" exclaimed Gilbert, "what the deuce am I going there for; and how came I in this place?"

"All I know is, I found you here asleep when I came aboard, and here you have been asleep for the last three days, wearing off the effects of your wedding-feast, I suppose. I thought best not to disturb you, as at sea one may as well be sleeping as waking."

"But, Jack Camford! I cannot go to Australia," said Gilbert, still half confounded.

"How are you going to avoid it?" asked Jack, laughing.

"True! but what will my bride say? Here I hold her fortune in my hand."

"Exactly! Divide it with me, if you please, and we'll increase it four-fold e'er a year in the golden land."

"But I don't like the idea of going to Australia!" pursued Gilbert.

"Neither do I, very well," answered Jack; "but when folks can't do as they will, they must do as they can, I've heard say."

Thus we leave our Australian adventurers and return to the land from which they are so rapidly receding. We didn't know what else to do here in the eighth chapter, reader, unless we capped the climax, cleared the stage, and scattered the characters; for we were quite as tired of them as you were, and wanted to get them off our hands in some way.

A few people think "Effie Afton" can tell stories tolerably well. But she can't, reader! We speak candidly, for we know "a heap" more about her than you do. There may be those in the wide world who hug themselves in the belief that she can tell _little_ fibs and _large_ fibs pretty flippantly. Well, let them continue thus to believe, if they choose! We shall not pause to say ay, yes, or nay; and we also entertain a private opinion, now publicly expressed, that there are people within the limited circle of our acquaintance who can not only give utterance to _little_ and _large_ fibs, but make their whole lives and actions play the lie to their thoughts and feelings. But as to "Effie's" telling long magazine tales,--pshaw! she is the most unsystematic creature in the world. She just humps down in a big rocking-chair, with one sort of _foolscap_ in her _hand_, and another sort on her _head_, with an old music-book to lay the sheets on, a lead-pencil for a pen, and thus equipped, writes chapter one, and dashes _in medias res_ at once, without an idea as to how, where, or when the story thus commenced is to find its terminus or end. This is the way she does, reader; for we have seen her time and again. Well, she scratches on "like mad" till her old lead-pencil is "used up." Then she sharpens the point, and rushes on wilder than before. She don't eat much, and if any one calls her to dinner, never heeds them; but when she conceives herself arrived at a suitable stopping-place, drops her paper, runs to the pantry, snatches a piece of gingerbread, and back to her scribbling again, munching it as she writes.

This is precisely the way she brings her "stories" into existence; but, lest we write her out of favor too rapidly, we'll leave the subject, and back to our tale again, recommencing with a new chapter, which is--