Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

Well, two chairs secured, and partner comfortably seated on one of them, the next thing for the man to do, before settling down into conversation, is to forage at the buffet for supplies; for the stock originally placed on the little table is pretty sure to have been eviscerated in the course of the first half hour's attack. He doesn't ask his partner to say what she will have, knowing full well that ladies, young and old, even if so interrogated, are sure to give that invariable pair of successive answers, "chicken" and "jelly," not because they really prefer those to any other viands--as a matter of fact, their own inclinations, so far as they are earthly enough to have any, are generally very much otherwise--but from a modest wish to give the least possible trouble; chicken and jelly being stock dishes that are quite certain to be at hand in every supper-room. No, he is far more likely to please by asking to have the matter left in his hands, and thereupon going off to the buffet, to return with a small but varied collection of three or four samples, each on a separate plate, of the most novel and attractive of the culinary triumphs there displayed, for her to choose from. Which duty done, and some champagne and seltzer-water deftly mixed, he will with a light heart take possession of his reserved chair, and fall to upon one or other of the unchosen samples and the most thoroughly zestful chat of the evening.

Behooves it to say a word or two of the materials of the typical ball-supper? There is a family likeness about those turned out by Gunter that the experience of one season is enough to make one recognize. And, on the whole, the Gunterian supper is as good, in its way, as; need be. Nothing hot, of course, except oyster soup (specially adapted for deserving chaperons), and, maybe, some delicately browned cutlets; but cold meats of every shade of substantiality, from boars' heads and chickens and raised pies to the most delicate of sandwiches, tempting translucent aspics, in which larks, lobsters, prawns, fillets of sole, and such-like lie "imbedded and injellied," and ethereal plovers' eggs. Of sweets the multitude and variety is almost infinite; and indeed the possible combinations of things creamy and jammy and gelatinous are tolerably well known all over the world. Among them fresh strawberries combined with plain iced cream may be mentioned as holding a high place in general favor. As to the drinkables, sherry and claret are always at hand, but the almost universal beverage is a mixture of, say, two thirds of champagne to one of seltzer-water. The idea of this mixture is, no doubt, partly to get rid of that excess of fixed air which is apt to make undiluted champagne a rather uncomfortable material for a draught; but the custom is mainly the result of sad experience of the unwisdom of doing otherwise, owing (it must be admitted) to the badness of the so-called champagne only too commonly dispensed at ball suppers. How the man who wouldn't dream of giving his guests a glass of inferior wine at his dinner-table comes to think nothing of poisoning them with the cheap rubbish that audaciously flouts in advertising columns as "supper-champagne," has puzzled sager brains than mine. Surely, bad wine is not less injurious taken in repeated draughts in the small hours of the morning than it would be sipped in small doses at dinner-time; yet it's only here and there a logically-minded individual produces his dinner-champagne at his wife's dancing-parties; and everywhere else old and young with equal caution demand a prudent admixture of the seltzer that will, if anything can, avert a next-morning headache. The chaperon, warrantably hungry, taking her time over her supper in a comfortable corner, is often not to be tempted by any sparkling liquid; but the dancers want the nervous exhilaration that champagne, however inferior, at least temporarily supplies, and are rarely careful enough to shun the danger altogether.

"Are you going on anywhere?" is a query that not unfrequently meets one's ears about halfway through the evening. "Going on" is an essentially town practice. In the country, houses lie too far scattered for it, and there is seldom such a press of gayeties on foot together as to make it likely that two or more engagements will have been made for one night. But in London, owing to the limited number of evenings comprised in a season, as compared with the host of people who want to give their parties in the course of it, it constantly happens that folk who go out much find themselves invited to a dinner, a drum and a couple of dances, all on one and the same evening. Ay, and they manage to achieve them all, too, thanks to determination and broughams. To the dinner at eight P. M.; away at a quarter to eleven to put in an appearance and for ten minutes swell the hurried and promiscuous chatter at the drum; thence off again to one of the balls--to stay if it is good, or if it isn't to go on after a dance or two to the other. The custom is so thoroughly recognized that no hostess would ever dream of being offended with any of her guests for "going on" elsewhere whenever they think fit. Not that she is ever likely to know whether this or that individual does or does not do so; for it's not at all necessary before one goes off to say any formal good-night to the hostess, and in fact men very seldom do so. When they have had dancing enough, or, remembering some disagreeable necessity of being up and alert for work next morning, feel it's about time to be going bedward, they quietly slink down stairs to the cloak-room, get hats and wraps, and are off in a fast hansom without a word to anybody. It's all very well for the young lady, who has from day to day no calls upon her time but those of her own pleasures and engagements, to stay late at any particularly pleasant dance. She may collapse to her heart's content next morning, and still be ready again by nightfall for another round of excitements; but with her partners things are very different, unless, indeed, they are officers in the Household Brigade. The young barrister or banker, or what not, who is frivolous enough to like combining some nights of dancing in the season with hard days of work, soon finds that the only way of gratifying both tastes is to partake sparingly, in point of hours, of the former one; so he comforts himself with the reflection that there are as good balls in the season as ever came out of it, and resolutely says good-night to the most festive scenes by 2 A. M. at latest. By that time, indeed, the best of a private ball is very commonly over. No doubt there are delicious and long-to-be-remembered opportunities now and then seizable by staying later. Strauss' world-known "Blue Danube" waltz with an appreciative partner, and the rare luxury of ample dancing-space in an emptying room, is one such. But when the minute-hand of the hall-clock is approaching the third of the small hours, the endurance of the most indulgent and enduring of matrons is apt to get exhausted, and she carries off her brood, determined, like everybody else, not to be the last to go. In the tea-room she will get a strengthening draught of some clear soup or other in a tea-cup, and meanwhile John Thomas will have called the carriage to the door.

Next morning the _Morning Post_ will serve up to its (mostly lady) readers a full list of the names of those who were at last night's balls, under the head of "Fashionable Entertainments." The _Post_ is the one daily paper that systematically goes in for this kind of news, publishing every day during the season a long list of coming fixtures, as well as catalogues of the guests attending them. And I fear it must be owned that there are people not a few who take delight in having their parties and appearances chronicled in this small-beer manner, and that there are several grains of truth contained in the good-humoredly sarcastic lines in which that clever rhymer "C.S.C," parodying the _Proverbial Philosophy_ of Mr. Tupper, gives worldly advice to young ladies entering society. Says "C.S.C.":

Choose judiciously thy friends, for to discard them is undesirable;
Yet it is better to drop thy friends, O my daughter, than to drop
thy H's.
Dost thou know a wise woman? yea, wiser than the children of light?
Hath she a position? and a title? _and are her parties in the
Morning Post_?
If thou dost, cleave unto her, and give up unto her thy body and mind;
Think with her ideas, and distribute thy smiles at her bidding:
So shalt thou become like unto her, and thy manners shall be "formed:"
And thy name shall be a sesame at which the doors of the great shall
fly open:
Thou, shalt know every peer, his arms, and the date of his creation,
His pedigree and their intermarriages, and cousins to the sixth remove;
Thou shalt kiss the hand of royalty, and lo! in next morning's papers,
Side by side with rumors of wars and stories of shipwrecks and sieges,
Shall appear thy name, and the minutiæ of thy headdress and petticoat,
For an enraptured public to muse upon over their matutinal muffin.

Society expects every guest after a dance to go through the form of paying a call upon the giver. If you are an old friend of the house, or for any reason want to go in, it will be wise to defer your visit for two or three days, until the interior of the house has recovered its normal condition; for of course on the very day that follows a dance the rooms are in such a universal state of up-side-downness (if the word may be coined) that callers can't expect to be admitted. For which reason, if you don't want to go in, you can't do better than select this very day for leaving a card at the door; which last ceremony duly concluded, all possible respect and duty may be taken to have been shown and done to the private ball: at all events, the present writer--rejoice, long-suffering reader, if you still exist--has no further word or suggestion to offer, on this occasion, on the subject.

W. D. R.

THE LIVELIES.

IN TWO PARTS.--I.

"What under the canopy is all that hammering at the door?" said Mrs. Lively, glancing up from her crocheting.

Master Napoleon Lively, the person appealed to, was sucking a lemon through a stick of candy. He took this from his mouth, said, "Dunno," and then returned it to the anxious aperture.

"And don't care," said Mrs. Lively with spirit. "Any other child in the city would go to the door and find out what it means; but you! much you care to save your mother's feet!" Gathering her ball of worsted with the crocheting in her left hand, she swept out of the room and through the hall to the front door. She pulled this open. There stood a man with hammer in hand.

"No harm to ye's, marm," he said. "I's jist afther puttin' a bill on ye's door; for shure it's to be sowld, that the house is."

"Sold!" cried Mrs. Lively. "When?"

"Faith! whiniver it may please a body to buy it," was the definite reply.

Mrs. Lively read the bill: "'Six thousand dollars!' Why the whole property isn't worth six thousand, much less the lease for twelve years. Won't the owner take less?"

"It's more than likely he would, 'specially from the likes of ye's. Shure! folks most ginerly wants all they kin git, and ef they can't git it they'll be afther takin' less. The gintleman says as it must be sold immadiate, for the owner is bruck to smitherations."

Here was prospective trouble. Mrs. Lively went down the doorsteps and along the paved walk to her husband's office, in the front basement. The doctor laid down his pen, expecting a patient, but, seeing that it was only his wife, resumed it.

"There's a bill put up on our door: the house is for sale--six thousand dollars. I'll warrant it could be got for five: I think it's worth six, though. We may have to move out at a day's notice, and we've just had this office newly papered, and the kitchen repainted, and, dear me! just got those Brussels carpets down in the parlors. It's too provoking! I know those carpets'll have to be cut and slashed into ribbons to make them fit other rooms. I was afraid of that when I got them. Until you own a house we oughtn't to get anything nice. But, oh dear! if I waited till we owned a home, I should go down to my grave on a two-ply. But where in the name of reason are we going? There isn't another vacant house in this neighborhood that I'd live in. And just think of the damage to your practice in moving your office! What are we going to do? Why in the world don't you say something? Can't you suggest something? One would think you hadn't any interest in the matter. But it's always the way. I've had to do all the planning for this family ever since I came into it, and I came into it before it was a family. Oh, you needn't smile: I know you're thinking that I haven't given you a chance to say anything; but I wouldn't talk if you'd talk, and I wouldn't bother myself about our arrangements if you would. It's too provoking about this house. It just suits me: there isn't a thing about it I should wish to have altered."

"Closets, little kitchen, back stairs," said Napoleon, who had entered the office unobserved, and who had often heard his mother denounce the house as most inconvenient in these three particulars.

"What have you come for?" the mother demanded sharply. "Go back to the sitting-room, and learn your geography lesson for to-morrow."

"Have learnt it," replied the imperturbable Napoleon.

"Then go and get your arithmetic."

"Have got it."

"Well, then, get your history."

"Have."

"And your grammar and spelling and German--you've learned them all, have you?"

"Yes."

"Then go and take your walk."

"Have."

"For pity's sake, what is it you haven't done?"

"Nothing."

"Every duty of life discharged, is it?" and Mrs. Lively smiled in spite of herself.

"'Cept eating."

"Except eating! Of course: I never knew a time in your life when you'd finished up your eating.--What are you going to do about that bill?" Mrs. Lively continued, turning to her husband.

"I can't do anything about it except to leave it there," replied the gentleman, smiling quietly.

"It's exasperating," cried the lady. "I don't see how I can ever give up this house."

"We might buy it," said Dr. Lively. "I've been thinking about it for some time."

"How can we? Where's the money?"

"I have some in bank."

"You have, and you didn't let me know it, you mean, stingy thing!" said Mrs. Lively between a pout and a smile. "How much have you in bank?"

"Four or five thousand."

"Why, where did you get it?"

"Saved it."

"Why, you've always talked as poor as poverty, especially if I wanted a bonnet or anything--said you were barely making a living."

"No man is making a living till he can afford to own a home," said the doctor, laying aside his pen. "I'll go and see the agent, and learn what we can get the house for."

"Well, beat him down: don't give him six thousand for it, and don't decide on anything till you've consulted me. After all, there are a good many things about this house that don't suit me. Maybe, we can get a lot and build a house to suit us better for the same money."

"Hardly," said Dr. Lively.

"Well, really, I don't know about buying this house," said the lady in an undecided way. "I should like to be nearer church, and Nappy ought to be nearer his school."

"But my practice is all in this neighborhood, and it's a most excellent neighborhood--permanent: the people own their houses. To go into a new neighborhood would be like going into a new city. I should have to build up a practice with new people."

Dr. Lively saw the agent, and agreed to pay five thousand dollars in cash for the house, and five hundred in one year, at six per cent. "Now, my dear," he said to his wife, "we've got to save that five hundred dollars this year."

"Don't I know that? I suppose, now, I shall have to hear that ding-donged at me for the next twelve months. You'll fling it at me every time I ask for change. I dare say before the year is out I shall repent in sackcloth and ashes that we ever bought the house. Save it! Of course I've got to save it. It never enters your head that it's possible for you to save anything."

"Who saved the five thousand?" asked the doctor quietly.

"For pity's sake, how could I save it if you never gave it to me? I didn't even know you'd made it. I'm sure my dress has been shabby enough to suit the stingiest mortal in existence. There isn't a woman in our church that dresses plainer than I do."

"As you are going out," said the doctor, changing the subject, "you can call at the savings bank and get the money: the agent will be here in the morning with the papers."

Mrs. Lively came home in due time and displayed ten five-hundred-dollar bills. "They offered to give me a cheque," she said, "but these bills look so much richer."

"But a cheque is safer in case of accident," the doctor suggested.

"What in the world's going to happen to-night? You are such a croaker, always anticipating trouble!"

"Oh no; I don't anticipate a fire or a robbery before morning," the doctor said.

That night, when Mrs. Lively went to bed, she took the doctor's purse from his pocket and put it under her pillow. All night long she was dreaming about those bills. The next morning, when she woke, her first act was to look for the purse. There it was, just where she had placed it. She returned it to her husband's pocket, and then dressed without waking him, for he had been called up that night to see a patient.

Very promptly at eight o'clock the agent for the house presented himself in Dr. Lively's office. Who ever knew an agent behind time when a sale was to be consummated?

Dr. Lively looked over the papers carefully, and, being satisfied, opened his purse to make the cash payment. If the agent's eyes had not been eagerly watching the purse for the forthcoming bills, but instead had been fixed on Dr. Lively's face, they would have seen in it first a look utterly blank, then one of intense alarm.

"Excuse me a moment," he said as he closed his purse. He left the office and hurried to Mrs. Lively's sitting-room.

"Well, is the deed done?" the lady asked with the complacent air of a land-holder.

"What did you do with the money?" the doctor asked anxiously. "I thought you put it in my purse."

"I did," replied Mrs. Lively, her eyes dilating with alarm.

"It isn't here," the doctor asserted. "You must be mistaken."

"I am not mistaken," said the lady, panting with alarm. "I did put it in your purse. You've dropped it out somewhere."

"That is impossible: I haven't opened my purse since those bills were brought into the house until just now in my office. You must have put the bills somewhere else. Look in your purse."

"I tell you I put the money in your purse," replied Mrs. Lively with asperity, at the same time opening her purse with an impatient movement. "It isn't here: I knew it wasn't. I tell you again I put it in your purse, and you've dropped it out somewhere."

"But I haven't opened the purse till a moment since in my office," the doctor reiterated.

"Then you've dropped the bills in the office."

"No, I have not. I was holding the purse over the table when I opened it, and I perceived at once that it was empty, even to my small change."

"Well, that shows that the money has been dropped out of the purse some time when you opened it. If I put the bills somewhere else, what's become of the change? You've lost it all out together, you see."

"Then it must be in the house somewhere," said the doctor, evidently staggered, "for I haven't been out since those bills were brought home."

"Yes, you have," urged Mrs. Lively from her vantage-ground. "You were called up last night to see that child on Morgan street."

"But I didn't lose it there. For when I wanted to make change for a five-dollar bill, I found that I hadn't my purse; and that reminds me, I found it in my pocket this morning, though it wasn't there last night."

"I can explain that," said Mrs. Lively after a moment's hesitation. "I put the purse under my pillow last night, and returned it to your pocket this morning."

"Then of course you lost the money out," said the doctor promptly.

"Of course! I might have known you would lay it on me if there was a shadow of a chance. I had nothing in the world to do with the losing of that money."

"You ought to have got a cheque."

"Why in Heaven's name didn't you tell me to?"

All this while the two had been looking the room over, rummaging through drawers, looking on whatnots, brackets, shelves, etc.

"Well, I can't keep the agent waiting any longer," said the doctor. "I'll tell I him I'll bring the money round to him;" and he left the room.

"What are you standing there for?" said Mrs. Lively, whirling sharply on Napoleon. "Go, and look for that money."

"Where?"

"How do I know where? Look anywhere and everywhere. There's no telling where your father lost it. Napoleon Lively," she exclaimed, a sudden idea seeming to strike her, "what did you do with that money?"

"Nothing," answered the youth with cool indifference.

"Where did you hide it?"

"Didn't hide it."

His perfect nonchalance was irresistibly convincing.

"Have you found it?" said the doctor, re-entering the room.

"Found it!" Mrs. Lively snapped out the words, and then her lips shut close together as if with the vehemence of the snapping.

"Perhaps the house was entered last night," suggested the doctor.

"I locked every door and window, and they were all locked this morning when I got up," replied Mrs. Lively. "Perhaps you left the front door open when you went out in the night. I'll warrant you did: it would be just like you."

"I did _not_ leave the door open," replied the doctor. "I found it locked when I got back, and opened it with my night-key. Besides, I was not out of the house more than forty minutes, and you told me when I got back that you hadn't been asleep."

"I told you I had scarcely been asleep," said Mrs. Lively.

All that day the Lively household was in extreme commotion. Every bedstead was stripped naked, and each article of bedding was separately shaken in the middle of the room; the contents of every drawer were turned out; every piece of furniture was moved; every floor was carefully swept. The house, in short, was turned inside out. Advertisements were put in the papers; handsome rewards were offered; the police were notified of the loss. The detectives were of opinion that the house had been entered, but there was not the slightest clew to the burglars.

It was Friday, the sixth of October, when the loss was discovered. On the seventh the house was again looked over, inch by inch.

"You _must_ have put that money somewhere else than in my purse," said Dr. Lively to his wife. "Have you looked in the pockets of all your dresses?"

"Don't say to me again that I didn't put that money in your purse," said Mrs. Lively vehemently: "I won't bear it. You might as well tell me that I don't see you this minute. There never was anything in this world that makes me so tearing mad as to be contradicted about something that I perfectly well know. I'd go into any court and swear that I put that money in your purse; and I don't want to hear any more of your insinuations. Do you think I've stolen the money? You've lost it out of the purse--that's all there is about it. This house has no more been entered than I've been burglaring."

"Then where's the money?"

"How in the name of sense do you think I know? I'd go and get it if I knew. Dear! dear! dear! dear! The savings of ten years gone in a night, after all my pinching! I've done my own work--"

"When you couldn't get a girl," said Napoleon.

"I've worn old-fashioned clothes; I've twisted and screwed in every possible way to save that money--"

"Pa saved it," was Napoleon's emendation.

"Well," retorted the lady, "he'd better not have saved it: he'd better have let his family have it. What's the use of saving money for burglars?"

"You think now that the burglars have it?" said the doctor dryly.

"Oh, for pity's sake, hush! I don't think anything about it. I believe I'm going insane. How in the universe we're ever going to live is more than I can conceive."

"My dear, we are better off than we were ten years ago, for I yet have my practice, and we are as well off as you thought we were two days ago; and you were happy then."

"Happy!" There was a volume of bitter scorn in the word as Mrs. Lively uttered it.

"Oh, my dear!" said the husband in a tone of piteous remonstrance.

The next evening, which was Sunday, Dr. Lively and wife went to church, and; heard a sermon by the Rev. Charles Hilmer from the words, "Help one another."

"What's the use of preaching such stuff?" said Mrs. Lively with petulance when they were out of church. "Nobody heeds it. Who's going to help us in our loss?"

"Our lesson from that sermon is, that we are to help others," said the doctor.

"We help others! I'd like to know what we've got to help others with! Five thousand dollars out of pocket!"

"There's a fire somewhere," said the doctor as an engine whirled by them while they stood waiting for a car.

The lady and gentleman proceeded to their home on the South Side, and went to bed, though the fire-bells were still ringing. About midnight they were roused by a violent ringing of the door-bell. Dr. Lively started up with a patient on his mind. "There's a fire somewhere," he exclaimed immediately, perceiving the glare in the room. Mrs. Lively was out of bed in an instant.

"Where? where's the fire?" she cried. "Is the house afire? I believe in my soul it is."

"No," said Dr. Lively, who had gone to the window; "but there's a tremendous fire to the south-west. The flames seem to be leaping from roof to roof. That was a policeman who rang us up. He seems to be waking all this neighborhood."

They dressed hurriedly, called up Napoleon, and went out at the front door, and on with the stream toward the fire. The street was crowded with people, the air thick with noises, and everywhere it was as light as day. They passed on under the lurid heavens, and reached a hotel which stood open. Two streams of people were on the stairs--one hurrying down, the other going up for a view of the fire. Our party followed the stream up the stairs and on to the roof. It was crowded with spectators, all greatly excited. Making their way to the front of the roof, our couple stood spellbound by a vision which once seen could never be forgotten. It was like a look into hell. The whole fire seemed below them, a surging, tempest-lashed ocean of flame, with mile-long billows, mile-high breakers and mile-deep shadows. All about the flaming ocean, except to the leeward, was a sea of faces, white and upturned, and rapt as with some unearthly vision. Stretching out for miles were housetops swarming with crowds, gazing appalled at the spectacle in which the fate of every man, woman and child of them was vitally involved. At times the gale, with a strong, steady sweep, would level the billows of fire, and bear the current northward with the majestic flow of a great river. Then the flames would heave and part as with earthquake throes, dash skyward in jets and spouts innumerable, and pile up to the north-east mountains of fire that seemed to touch the heavens. Clouds of smoke obscured at times the view of the streets below, without making inaudible the roll of wheels, the beat of hoofs, the tramp of human feet, the cry of human voices, the scream of the engines, the thunder of falling buildings, the maniacal shriek of the gale, the Niagara-like roar of the fire; and ever and anon, striking through all the tumult, the deep, solemn voice of the great court-house bell, and the one word it seemed to say to the trembling city--"Doomed! doomed! doomed."

"We must go home," said Mrs. Lively in a lost, bewildered way.

"Yes," assented the doctor: "there is no safety this side the river. All the engines in creation couldn't stop that fire. Why in God's name don't they pull down houses or explode them? Come!"

But the lady continued to gaze in a fascinated way at the unearthly spectacle. It was all so wild, so awful, that the brain reeled. The doomed houses in the path of the fire seemed to her to be animate things--dumb, helpless, feeling creatures, that trembled and shrank as the flames reached out cruel fingers for them. She shook off the bewildered, dazed feeling, but it came again as the tempest of flame and smoke went racing to the north. Street and house and steeple and the vast crowds seemed sailing away on some swift crescent river to a great, vague, yawning blackness beyond.

They hurried down into the street. Momently the crowds, the tumult, the terror were growing. Every house stood open, the interior as clear as at noonday. Men, women and children were moving about in eager haste, tearing up carpets, lifting furniture and loading trucks. Ruffians were pushing in at the open doors, snatching valuables and insulting the owners. There was a hasty seizing of goods, and a wild dash into the street from imperiled houses, a shouting for trucks and carriages, piteous inquiries for absent friends, distressed cries for absent protectors, screams of little children, swift, wild faces pushing eagerly in this direction and that; oaths and prayers and shoutings; women bowed beneath mattresses and heavy furniture; wheels interlocking in an inextricable mass; horses rearing and plunging in the midst of women separated from their husbands and little children from their mothers; men bearing away their sick and infirm and their clinging little ones; the shower of falling brands, and the roar of the oncoming flood of destruction.

In the next block but one to our doctor's home a brand had lodged in the turret of a little wooden Catholic church, and, pinned there by the fierce gale, was being blown and puffed at as with a blowpipe. There was no time to lose. While he stopped on the street to secure a truckman, Mrs. Lively hurried in to get together the most valuable of their belongings. For a time she proceeded with considerable system, tying in sheets and locking in trunks the best of the bedding and other necessaries. Then she got together some family relics, looked longingly at some paintings, took down a quaintly-carved Black-Forest clock from its shelf, and then set it back, feeling that something else would be more needed. But as the roar of the tempest came nearer she was seized with panic, and no longer knew what she did. When Dr. Lively came in to announce the dray at the door he found his wife making for a trunk with a tin baking-pan in one hand and a cloth duster in the other.

"For Heaven's sake, Priscilla, don't pack up such trash!" he cried. "Have you got up the parlor carpets?"

"Oh dear! no: I never thought of them. Nappy might get them up if he would. Napoleon! Where under the sun is that boy? Napoleon!" she called.

"Here," answered Napoleon through a mouthful of cake. He entered with a basket in his hand.

"Why in the world don't you go to work and help?"

"Am helping."

"What are you doing?"

"Packing."

"Packing what, I'd like to know?"

"Victuals."

"Of course! I might have known without asking. What in the world shall we want with victuals, in the street without roof or bed?"

But the father told him to hold on to his basket.

"You may be sure he'll do that," said the mother. "What in the world are all those boxes you've got there?" she asked as she dragged a sheet full of articles to the front door.

"Some things from my office," the doctor replied hurriedly.

"I just know they're those plants and fossils and casts and miserable things that have been in my way everlastingly. I was in hopes they'd get burnt up."

Without heeding his wife, Dr. Lively disappeared into the house for something else.

"Take those boxes off," she said to the drayman.

"Blast my eyes if I'm going to be lifting boxes off and on here all night for any darned twenty-five dollars that ever was paid. Hurry your things on here, or, by Godfrey! I'll dump 'em and be off. Blast me if I'll wait here a second beyond five minutes."

Just then the doctor reappeared, and began to turn over the contents of a sheet before tying it. "Oh, my dear," he cried in a tone of mingled remonstrance and despair, "we can't spare room for these worthless traps;" and he pitched out a pair of vases, two pin-cushions, a dustpan, a sieve, a kitchen apron, a statuette of Psyche, a pair of plaster medallions, _Our Mutual Friend_ in paper cover, a pink tarletan dress, a dirty tablecloth, an ice pitcher, a flat-iron, a mosquito-bar, a hoop-skirt, a backgammon-board and a bottle of hair restorative.

"They're worth a thousand times more than those old rocks and things you've loaded up the dray with," Mrs. Lively maintained.

At last the truck moved off, followed by Dr. Lively, shouting to his wife to come on and not lose sight of him. Mrs. Lively seized a carpet-bag in which she had packed her silver and jewelry, and rushed into the street, screaming to Napoleon to follow and not lose sight of her. Napoleon hung his basket of provisions on his arm and stuck his hat on his head. Then he went to the pantry and poked up cookies through a lift between his hat and forehead, until there was no vacant space remaining in the top of his hat. Then he crammed a cake in his mouth, filled his pockets and both hands, and left the rest to their doom.

The wind, which for a time had blown steadily to the north-east, was now seemingly bewildered. At times there would be a dead calm, as though the fierce gale had tired itself out; then it would sweep roaring down a street with the force of a hurricane, and go shrieking through an alley as though sucked through a tube; again, it seemed to strike from every quarter of the compass, while anon a vast whirlwind was formed, swirling and circling till one half expected to see the glowing masses of masonry lifted and whirled like autumn leaves.

On went our party as fast as the press would permit. One bundle after another, as it took fire from falling brands, was pitched off the truck and left to burn out on the pavement; and to these bundle-pitchings Mrs. Lively kept up a running accompaniment of groans and ejaculations. When they had reached the corner of Washington and La Salle, the truckman signified his intention of throwing off his load.

"They'll be safe here," he said. Dr. Lively, too, thought this, for he did not believe that the flames could pass the double row of fireproof buildings on La Salle street and others in the neighborhood. But as he was bound for a friend's house across the river, on the North Side, he would of course have preferred to take his goods with him, even if there had been no danger from pillagers. But no arguments or persuasions, even when offered in the shape of the gentleman's last five-dollar bill, could induce the drayman to cross the river. He dumped on the sidewalk all that remained of the Livelies' earthly possessions, and disappeared in the press.

Again and again, but all in vain, Dr. Lively offered his forlorn hope, his one greenback, to procure the transportation of his goods across the river. But that five-dollar bill was so scorned and snubbed by the ascendent truckmen that the doctor found himself smiling at his conceit that the poor, despised thing, when returned to his purse, went sneakingly into the farthest and deepest corner.

As he could not leave his goods, it was decided that Mrs. Lively and Napoleon should cross the river without him. He sat down on Mrs. Lively's big Saratoga trunk to await developments. He did not have to wait long. The double row of fireproofs, which was to have held the fire at bay, was attacked and went down; then the Chamber of Commerce melted away; shortly after the court-house was assailed. Dr. Lively gave up his trunks and bundles as lost, and as too insignificant, in that wild havoc, to be worth a sigh. He did feel a desire, however, for a clean shirt in which to face the heavens. Then, too, he wanted to bring something through the fire--to preserve something which would serve as a memento of his ante-igneous life. The best thing in the way of a relic which he could secure was a case of sea-weeds mounted on cards. He made a hasty bundle of these and a few articles of underwear, tucked it under his arm, and then looked about him, considering which way he should go. The wind had again risen to a hurricane. All around him was a storm of fire-brands, as though the flakes in a snow-storm had been turned to flame. Great sheets of blazing felt-roofing were driving overhead. Everywhere timbers and masonry were falling: walls a half square in length came down with the thunder's crash, and in such quick succession that the noise ceased to be noticed. Thousands of frantic people were pushing wildly in every direction. The crowds seemed bewildered, lost, frenzied. And what wonder? The world seemed to be burning up, the heavens to be melting: a star looked like a speck of blood, so that the whole canopy of heaven when visible seemed blood-spattered.

As the doctor was gazing at the terrible spectacle the cry ran from mouth to mouth that all the bridges across the west branch of the river were burned. There were thousands of spectators from the West Division who had come over to witness the melting away of the South Side business-palaces. If the bridges were burned, there remained but one avenue by which they could reach their homes. There were cries of "The tunnel! the tunnel!" a panic and a grand rush, in which everybody was borne westward toward Washington street tunnel. Dr. Lively found himself forced into the tunnel. It was crowded with two streams of wildly-excited people moving in opposite directions. One was rushing to the rescue of property on the South Side or to see the fire--the other, to get away from it. Most of these latter were carrying articles of furniture and bales of goods, or they were wheeling loaded barrows. Everybody was crowding and pushing. Our doctor had made his way through about one-third of the tunnel when suddenly every light went out. The great gasometer of the South Side gas-works had exploded. He was under the river, in the bowels of the earth, in the midst of that wild crowd of humanity, and in utter darkness. "There will be a panic," he thought: "all the weak will be overrun and trampled to death. God help them and help us all!" Then there came to him a flash of inspiration: "Keep to the right!" he shouted, "to the right!" "Keep to the right!" repeated an abetting voice. "To the right!" "Keep to the right!" "Right! right!" The blessed words ran along from one end of the dark way to the other. Then a hush seemed to fall on the lips as though the hearts were at prayer, and the two streams moved along like processions through the dark valley of the shadow of death.

Facing about, Dr. Lively squeezed his way through a dense throng on North Water street bridge till he gained the North Division. Here he sat down on the steps of a warehouse to take breath, and looked back on the scene he had left. The fire had reached the river, which reflected the lurid horror above, and seemed a stream of molten metal, or a current of glowing lava poured from some wide rent in the earth. Struggling human creatures in the blazing, hissing, sputtering waters realized Dante's imaginings of tortured, writhing souls on the red floor of hell.

Tired and faint, Dr. Lively pressed on to the north. He was not long in learning that the fire was already raging in the doomed North Division, and that the waterworks were disabled. Reaching the house of his friend, where his family had taken refuge, he found them all informed of the peril to the North Side, and getting ready to move. His friend decided to take refuge on the prairies. "There we can keep up the race," he said.

"I'm going where I can get water," said Dr. Lively: "it's the only thing under heaven that this fire-fiend won't eat. There isn't a suburb but may be burned. I'm going toward the lake." So he took possession of his wife and boy and started for Lincoln Park. There were lights in all the houses, and eager, swift-moving figures were seen through the doors and windows: everywhere people were getting their things into the streets. Shortly after, the flames, it was; noticed, were beginning to pale. A weird kind of light began to creep over burning house, blazing street and ruined wall. The day was dawning. With a kind of bewildered feeling our friends watched the coming on of the strange, ghostly morning, and saw the pale, sickly, shamefaced sun come up out of the lake. It was ten o'clock before they reached the old cemetery south of Lincoln Park. Hundreds had already arrived here with their belongings, representing every article that pertains to modern civilization. Parties were momently coming in with more loads. Here our friends halted. Mrs. Lively dropped down in a fugitive rocking chair, thinking what a comfort it would be to go off into a faint. But without a pillow or salts or camphor it was a luxury in which she did not dare to indulge, though she had a physician at hand. Right in front of her she noticed a besmutched, red-eyed woman who had something familiar in her appearance. "Why, it's myself!" she said to her husband, pointing to a large plate mirror; leaning against an old headstone.

"Yes," said the doctor smiling, "we all look like sweeps."

Napoleon seated himself on a grave and opened his lunch-basket.

"Did anybody ever?" cried the mother. "This boy's brought his basket through. There's nothing in all the world except something to eat that he would have devoted himself to in this way."

"Nothing could have proved more opportune," said the father.

Then they ate their breakfast, sharing it with a little girl who was crying for her father, and with a lady who was carrying a handsome dress bonnet by the ribbons, and who in turn shared her portion with her poodle dog. They offered a slice of cake to a sad old gentleman sitting on an inverted pail with his hands clasped above a gold headed cane, and his chin resting on them. He shook his head without speaking, and went on gazing in a dreary, abstracted way into the air, as though oblivious of everything around him. "'Though I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there,'" he said in slow measured soliloquy. His lip began to quiver and the tears to stream down his furrowed face. Dr. Lively heard, and wiped his eyes on the back of his hand: he had nothing else to receive the quick tears. Just then a hearse with nodding black plumes came by loaded with boxes and bundles, on which were perched a woman and five children, the three youngest crowing and laughing in unconscious glee at their strange circumstances. This was followed by two buggies hitched together, both packed with women and children drawn by a single horse, astride of which was a lame man.

"What is it, madam?" said Dr. Lively to a woman who was wringing her hands and crying piteously.

"Why, you see," she said between her sobs, "me and Johnny made our livin' a-sellin' pop-corn; and last night we had a bushel popped ready for the Monday's trade; and now it's all gone: we've lost everything--all that beautiful corn: there wasn't a single scorched grain."

"But think what others have lost--their beautiful homes and all their business--"

She suddenly ceased crying, and, turning upon him, said sharply, "We lost all we had: did they lose any more'n they had?"

A young man came pressing through the crowd, desperately clutching a picture in a handsome gilt frame. Through the smoke and smutch which stained the canvas was seen a gray-haired, saintly woman's head.

"The picture of his mother," thought the doctor with a swelling about his heart.

"I saved dese," said a jolly-faced German, extending his two hands; "and dey is all I had when I come from de Faderland to Chicago. And saved you nothin'?"

The man appealed to had about him three children and a pale delicate woman.

"I saved these," he said with a gesture that was an embrace. "All the baby-faces we left hanging on the walls in the home where all were born."

Then the bearded lip quivered and the lids were dropped over the brimming eyes. The mother looked up with clear, unfaltering features, and with a light grateful, almost joyous, in her fine eyes, and said softly, "But all the real faces we've brought along."

Then one of the little girls took up the story: "Oh, mother, Tommy's picture will be burned, and we can never get another. Tommy's dead, you know," she explained.

The mother's eyes grew misty, and so did the German's and the doctor's, and many others. There they were in that old deserted cemetery, a company of strangers, not one of whom had ever seen the other's face before, exchanging their confidences and mingling their tears.

All day long the fugitives poured into this strange encampment, and by night they numbered thirty thousand. There was shouting, swearing, laughing, weeping, waiting. There was pallid stupefaction, sullen silence, faces of black despair--every kind of face except the happy variety. The air was thick with frightful stories of arson; of men hanged to lamp-posts; of incendiaries hurled headlong into the fires they had kindled; of riot, mobs and lawlessness. There was scarcely a suburb that was not reported to be burning up, and prairie-fires were said to be raging. The fate of Sodom was believed to have overtaken Chicago and her dependent suburbs.

"There's no safety here," said Mrs. Lively nervously as the flames approached the cemetery. "Do let's get out of this horrid place. What in the world do you want to stay here for?"

"My dear," replied the doctor with a twinkle, "I don't want to stay here. We are not certainly safe, but I don't know of any place where our chances would be better."

"Let's go down to the beach, get on a propeller and go out into the lake."

"But, my dear, 'the Sands' and the lake shore are already thronged. It is said that people were lying in the lake, and others standing up to their necks in water--women with children in their arms. The propellers have doubtless taken off fugitives to their entire capacity."

In the mean time the fire came on. Everywhere over the dead leaves and dry grass and piles of household goods, and against the headboards and wooden crosses, the brands were falling; and the people were running and dodging, and fighting the incipient fires.

"Oh, we shall be burned to death here: I knew all the time we should," cried Mrs. Lively, dodging to the right to escape a torch, and then running backward over a grave, beyond the reach of a second. Dr. Lively stamped out the fires. "What under the sun are we going to do?" persisted the lady.

"Dodge the brands--that's your work--and look out that Napoleon doesn't get on fire in one of his dreams."

"Look there!" said Napoleon.

"Look where?" cried Mrs. Lively, whirling around.

"There."

"Where is _there_?"

"Dead-house."

"The dead-house! Good Heavens! it's afire!"

"This fire-demon," said the doctor, "isn't going to let any of us off. It strikes at the living through their dead."

The dead-house, fortunately empty, was consumed, the headboards and crosses were burned, the trees were scorched and blackened, the graves were seared: all the life which the years had drawn from the entombed ashes was laid again in ashes.

After a horrible suspense these graveyard campers saw the fiery tide recede from their quarters and sweep on to the north. Then came on the weird, elfinish night, that mockery of day, when, except in the direction of the lake, great mountains of fire loomed up on every side against the horizon, so that one felt environed, besieged, engirdled by horrors.

"Try to get some sleep," said Dr. Lively to his wife when the torrent had swept by to the north.

"Sleep!" said Mrs. Lively. "How can anybody sleep with these terrible fires all around? It seems to me as if I were in some part of the infernal regions. I shall always know after this how hell looks."

"I don't think the fire will trouble us any more to-night, but I'll watch: there will be plenty of watchers, indeed, to give the alarm. Lie down and try to get some rest."

"Where in the world is anybody to lie? On a grave? What in the world are you eating?" continued Mrs. Lively, turning on Napoleon.

"_Shoemake_" answered the boy. "Want some?"

Mrs. Lively took some of the crimson, acrid berries and put them in her mouth.

"You're hungry," said the father compassionately.

"Awful," answered the lad.

"Where are you going?" asked the mother as he started off.

"To bed," he replied, and he stretched himself out on a piece of carpet where half a dozen children were sleeping.

"Now do, Priscilla, lie down and try to sleep," the husband insisted.

"How under the stars do you suppose I could sleep with hunger and thirst gnawing at the pit of my stomach? Do let me alone: I want to try to think out something--to plan for the future. What under the sun is to become of us?"

"My dear," said the doctor, "don't worry about the future. I'll take care of it some way, if the fire will ever let us out of our present prison. We have our lives, our hands and our heads, and we must thank God."

"Heads! I feel as if I'd lost mine. I think sometimes that I'm insane."

"Oh no: you ain't of the kind that go insane."

"I suppose you mean by that I've got no feelings, no sensibility."

"No, I don't mean that;" and Dr. Lively became silent, as though it was useless to prolong the conversation.

They were sitting together on the ground, she leaning against a headstone.

"Let me sit there against that stone, and you put your head on my lap," the doctor proposed.

"What in the world is the use of it?" she said. "Do you think I'm deaf that I could sleep with all this moaning around me? Just hear it! One would think all these graves had just been made, and that all these people were chief mourners for the dead."

"The strangest bivouac ever seen under heaven!" said the doctor, looking around. "In a life liable to such vicissitudes," he continued softly, "it is important that we possess our spirits."

"Oh, for pity's sake, don't preach! What's the use?" said the wife.