Chapter LX: An Offering (2)

DEAR BESS: Please excuse my not answering your last two letters, on the plea of business. Indeed, working and waiting on my friend, George Hammond, have occupied all my time.

Now, Bessie, I want you to do something for me. Yesterday, when I got your letter, I read it aloud as usual, George looking very sad the while. When I was done he said in a trembling tone, "I wish to heaven there was some one in the world nearly enough related to me to care to write to me! But I am alone, entirely alone;" and his eyes filled. (Forgive his weakness, Bess: he has been very sick.) I tried to cheer him, but all to no purpose till an idea struck him. His face brightening, he said, "Do you believe, Philip--I know it is a great deal to ask--but do you believe you could persuade your cousin to write to _me_? I should prize it _so_ much. Do you think she _would_? Just fancy what it is never to receive a letter from any one except a business-man!"

Now, Bessie, _won't_ you write him once in a while? There is not a particle of harm in it, and I assure you it will be a real boon to the poor fellow. Just imagine him lying here on his back day after day, and not a thing to amuse him but my company!

Of course you'll say that you can have nothing to write about to a stranger. But you'll soon find something, _I_ know: I'll trust to your "woman's wit." Ask him about his past life: begin _that_ way. But there! I'll not give you any advice on the subject: you understand writing letters better than I do. So good-bye, "fair coz." Pray accede to my request.

Yours, etc.,
PHILIP A----.

BROOKSIDE, July 1, 1872.

MY DEAREST BESSIE: I'm getting jealous! Twice within a week have you written to George Hammond, and but once to me. Your letters to him are long, I know, for I see him read them. The correspondence is become something desperate--no wonder. He has just told me that through your letters he has become very deeply attached to you, and that when I return home at the end of another week he will come and plead his cause personally. He asks my benediction. I am sure he has my most hearty good wishes, and I do hope, Bessie dear, you may be inclined to say "Yes." Then, after you are married, you can come out here and settle down near your only remaining relative for the rest of your natural existence. You smile and shake your head, and say, "Oh yes, that will last till Philip marries!" But I say that if I see you and George Hammond united, it is all I ask.

But I shall say no more. He can plead better by word of mouth than I by paper, I hope. Ever your devoted

PHILIP.

TO MISS BESSIE LINTON.

A week later, Bessie Linton, fair and young spite of her thirty years, waited at the Applethorpe station in her pony-carriage for her cousin and his friend. She was possessed by so many emotions that she hardly knew whether she most wished or most dreaded seeing the visitors. That she was herself deeply interested in George Hammond she did not pretend to deny even to herself; yet just at the last she dreaded seeing him. It seemed to bring everything so near.

The whistle sounded round the bend, and in another moment the dreaded, hoped-for train arrived. There alighted from it a number of passengers, but none that Bessie recognized at all. Presently there came toward her a gentleman with full beard and moustache, holding out his hand and exclaiming, "Cousin Bessie, don't you know me?"

"Why, Philip Aubrey! No, I _didn't_. Why, where--" and she hesitated a half second--"where is my Philip gone?"

"He's here alive and hearty, and the same old scapegrace, I'm afraid."

Then, seeing the look of inquiry and suspense on her face, he added with considerable embarrassment, "George didn't come just yet. I'll tell you all about it when we get home."

She was forced to be satisfied, but a nameless feeling of "something" made the drive a rather silent one, although each tried spasmodically to start a conversation. Tea over, Philip drew Bessie out into the garden, and sitting down in a rustic scat, said, "Bessie, come and sit down: I want to talk to you." Simply, straightforwardly as of old, she came.

"Bessie dear," said Philip, "I have something to say, and don't know how to say it. But I guess the only way is to tell the truth at once. There is no such person as George Hammond."

Bessie's heart-blood stopped for what seemed half an hour, and then she articulated slowly, "Then who wrote those letters, Philip?"

"_I_ did," he answered sadly.

She started away from him as if he had been a serpent. She walked up and down like a caged animal. At last her scorn burst forth: "_You_, Philip Aubrey! _you_! You have dared to laugh me to scorn, have you? You have dared to presume that because I am what the world calls an 'old maid,' I am a fit mark for the arrows of the would-be wits? Philip Aubrey, all I have to wish is, that your actions may recoil upon yourself." She would have said more, but her feelings overcame her entirely, and sitting down she covered her face with her hand, the tears trickling through her fingers.

"Oh, Bessie! Bessie! they have. Bitterly have I repented of my ruse. But I know if you will hear me you will not judge me harshly."

She drew herself up, and throwing all possible scorn into her face, said, "Go! and if there remains in your body one vestige of feeling belonging to a gentleman, never let me look upon your face again."

Like a stricken cur he went from her presence. He knew her too well: he knew that once roused as she now was, years could not efface her impression. He knew she would listen to no apology, no word of any kind; so the only thing left for him to do, as she had expressed it, was to "leave her presence."

As soon as he was fairly gone Bessie rose, went into the house, locked herself in her own room and struggled with herself. She did not even pretend to herself that her trouble was not hard to bear. What did life hold for her now? She had not even the cousin on whom her affections had so long been centred as her one living relation.

"Oh, if he had only died! if he had only died before he deceived me this way!" she moaned, "I think I should have borne it more easily. It cannot be called the thoughtless trick of a boy: he is too old, and has carried it on too long, and planned it all too systematically, for that."

Three hours after she came from her vigil pale and silent, but a conqueror. A little card stuck in the drawing-room mirror told her that Philip had started for New York on his way to his Western home again.

"I declare, Ophelie, Bessie Linton's awful queer about Philip Aubrey. Last night I says to her, says I, 'Bessie, I hear Philip Aubrey's home--is he?' First she turned mighty red, and then as white as a sheet, and she seemed kind a-chokin' like; but in a moment she says, 'So he was, Mrs. Dartle, but he found some pressing business that took him back a great deal sooner than he expected.' 'La!' says I, 'what a pity! You ain't seen him for so long, and you was so attached to him!' And she says, just as cold as an ice-pitcher, 'I shall miss him very much. Have you seen my new heliotrope, Mrs. Dartle?' So I couldn't say anything more, but I declare to man I'd give a penny to know what's the matter--such friends as they used to be, too! You may depend upon it the fault's on his side. Mebbe he's done something dreadful."

So things got whispered around, not very much to the credit of Mr. Aubrey, but after Mrs. Dartle's rebuff no one dared question Miss Linton, knowing her so well.

Day succeeded day, and no one knew the bitterness that filled Miss Linton's heart so full that it seemed as if it must burst. Then came a letter from Philip. "Shall I open it? No, I will send it back. That he should dare to write again!" One mail followed another, and still the letter was unsent, was unopened. At last, after a fortnight had passed, her good sense got the better of her ill-feeling, and she said to herself, "I will at least see what he can say for himself in excuse. I need not answer it." So she opened it, and read as follows:

BROOKSIDE, October 8, 1872.

MY MUCH-ABUSED COUSIN: I dare not even _hope_ that you will not return this unopened. But if you do open it I hope you may read what I have to say without _too_ bitter feelings. Where shall I commence to tell you my story?

You know what you said in regard to "making up" news, and one day as I was out riding my horse _did_ land me at my own fence in the way I described. For weeks I lay on a bed of the most excruciating torture. Then I began to recover, and although I was confined to a sofa my faculties were on the alert, and I was pretty nearly distracted for something to do to amuse myself with. Finally, a brilliant idea struck me, and you were the victim of its execution. Believe me, believe me, Bessie dear, I only meant it for the harmless amusement of a week or two, but I became so interested in your letters to my imaginary friend that I could not bear to give them up. I had, Bessie, as I told you, learned to love you from your letters. They were so precious to me, it seemed like tearing from me a part of my very life to think of letting you know how I had deceived you, and so closing all the correspondence (which meant so much to me) between us. You will say I was cowardly. I _was_: I know it, and I admit it. But, Bessie, Bessie, I loved you so! Let my love plead for me. I thought it would be easier for me to tell you face to face. But God knows the hardest task I ever set myself was telling you how I had deceived you.

Bessie, don't cast me off! Can't you find a little corner in your heart wherein I may rest? Let me be your cousin: of course I dare not hope ever to be anything dearer. But if you only will forgive me the trick into which I was led by sickness and want of amusement, and afterward continued from love of you, it is all I dare ask.

Ever your devoted
PHILIP.

Emotions of various kinds seized the soul of Bessie Linton as she read Philip's letter once, twice, thrice. First, her heart was hardened to anything he might say--then as he told of his sufferings a little pity crept in; and finally, as she concluded the last word for the third time, her heart was so overflowing with pity--which is akin to love--that she--forgave him.

At least, so I suppose, as they passed my window just now laughing, and as happy a married couple as ever you saw, if she _is_ "five years older than he is, and had the bringin' of him up," to use Mrs. Dartle's expression.

E. C. HEWITT.

FROM THE FLATS.

What heartache--ne'er a hill!
Inexorable, vapid, vague and chill
The drear sand-levels drain my spirit low.
With one poor word they tell me all they know;
Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my pain,
Do drawl it o'er again and o'er again.
They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot name:
Always the same, the same.

Nature hath no surprise,
No ambuscade of beauty 'gainst mine eyes
From brake or lurking dell or deep defile;
No humors, frolic forms--this mile, that mile;
No rich reserves or happy-valley hopes
Beyond the bends of roads, the distant slopes
Her fancy fails, her wild is all run tame:
Ever the same, the same.

Oh might I through these tears
But glimpse some hill my Georgia high uprears,
Where white the quartz and pink the pebbles shine,
The hickory heavenward strives, the muscadine
Swings o'er the slope, the oak's far-falling shade
Darkens the dogwood in the bottom-glade,
And down the hollow from a ferny nook
Bright leaps a living brook!

SIDNEY LANIER.

A DAY'S MARCH THROUGH FINLAND.

"Why don't you go to Imatra?" asks my friend P---- as we lean over the side of the Peterhof steamer and watch the golden domes of St. Petersburg rising slowly from the dull gray level of the Gulf of Finland. "Now that you've seen a bit of Central Russia, that's the next thing for you to do. Go to Imatra, and I'll go too."

"And where on earth _is_ Imatra?" ask I innocently.

"Oh come! you don't mean to say you've never heard of Imatra? Why, everybody knows it. Let's go there next week."

Nevertheless, it so happens that I have _not_ heard of Imatra--an ignorance probably shared by most people out of Russia, and perhaps not a few in it. But I am destined to a speedier acquaintance than I had anticipated with the famous waterfall (or "foss," as the natives call it), which, lying forty miles due north of the Finnish port of Viborg, close to the renowned "Saima Lake," attracts the amateur fishermen of St. Petersburg by scores every summer.

The proposed trip comes at an auspicious moment, for St. Petersburg in July is as thoroughly a "city of the dead" as London in September or Chamouni in January; and the average tourist, having eaten cabbage-soup at Wolff's or Dominique's, promenaded the Nevski Prospect and bought photographs in the Gostinni-Dvor (the Russian Regent street and Burlington Arcade), witnessed a service in the Isaac Church, and perhaps gone on to Moscow to stare at the Kremlin and the Monster Bell, must either await the approach of winter or fall back upon the truly British consolation of being able to "say that he has been there." Then is the time for suburban or rural jaunts; for picnics at Peterhof and drives to Oranienbaum; for wandering through the gardens of Catherine II. at Tsarskoe-Selo ("Czar's Village") and eating curds and cream at Pavlovski; for surveying the monastery of Strelna or the batteries of Cronstadt; or, finally, for taking the advice of my roving friend and going to Imatra.

Accordingly, behold all our preparations made--knapsacks packed, tear-and-wear garments put in requisition, many-colored Russian notes exchanged (at a fearful discount) for dingy Finnish silver[D]--and at half-past ten on a not particularly bright July morning we stand on the deck of the anything but "good ship" Konstantin, bound for Viborg.

Despite her tortoise qualities as a steamer, however (which prolong our voyage to nearly nine hours), the vessel is really luxurious in her accommodations; and were her progress even slower, the motley groups around us (groups such as only Dickens could describe or Leech portray) would sufficiently beguile the time--jaunty boy-officers in brand-new uniforms, gallantly puffing their _papirossi_ (paper cigarettes) in defiance of coming nausea, and discussing the merits of the new opera loud enough to assure every one within earshot that they know nothing whatever about it; squat Finnish peasants, whose round, puffy faces and thick yellow hair are irresistibly suggestive of overboiled apple-dumplings; gray-coated Russian soldiers, with the dogged endurance of their race written in every line of their patient, solid, unyielding faces; a lanky Swede, whose huge cork hat and broad collar give him the look of an exaggerated medicine-bottle; the inevitable tourist in the inevitable plaid suit, struggling with endless convolutions of fishing-tackle and hooking himself in a fresh place at every turn; three or four pale-faced clerks on leave, looking very much as if their "overwork" had been in some way connected with cigars and bad brandy; a German tradesman from Vasili-Ostroff (with the short turnip-colored moustache characteristic of Wilhelm in his normal state), in dutiful attendance on his wife, who is just completing her preparations for being comfortably ill as soon as the vessel starts; and a fine specimen of the real British merchant, talking vehemently (in a miraculous dialect of his own invention) to a Russian official, whose air of studied politeness shows plainly that he does not understand a word of his neighbor's discourse.

Directly we go off the rain comes on, with that singular fatality characteristic of pleasure-trips in general, arising, doubtless, from the mysterious law which ordains that a man shall step into a puddle the instant he has had his boots blacked, and that a piece of bread-and-butter shall fall (how would Sir Isaac Newton have accounted for it?) with the buttered side downward. In a trice the deck is deserted by all save two or three self-devoted martyrs in macintosh, who "pace the plank" with that air of stern resolution worn by an Englishman when dancing a quadrille or discharging any other painful duty. The scenery throughout the entire voyage consists chiefly of fog, relieved by occasional patches of sand-bank; and small wonder if the superior attractions of the well-spread dinner-table detain most of our fellow-sufferers below. What is this first dish that they offer us? _Raw salmon_, by the shade of Soyer! sliced thin and loaded with pepper. Then follow soup, fried trout, roast beef, boiled ditto, slices of German sausage, neck of veal and bacon, fried potatoes and cabbage. Surely, now, "Hold, enough!" Not a bit of it: enter an enormous plum-pudding, which might do duty for a globe at any provincial school; next, a dish of rice and preserve, followed by some of the strongest conceivable cheese; finally, strawberries, and bilberries, with cream and sugar _ad libitum_. Involuntarily I recall the famous old American story of the "boss" at a railway refreshment-room who demanded fifty cents extra from a passenger who stuck to the table after all the rest had dined and gone away. "Your board says, 'Dinner, three dollars and fifty cents!'" remonstrated the victim.--"Ah! that's all very well for reasonable human bein's with one stomach apiece," retorted the Inexorable; "but when a feller eats _as if there were no hereafter_, we've got to pile it on!"

As we pass Cronstadt the fog "lifts" slightly, giving us a momentary glimpse of the huge forts that guard the passage--the locked door which bars out Western Europe. There is nothing showy or pretentious about these squat, round-shouldered, narrow-eyed sentinels of the channel; but they have a grim air of reserved strength, as though they could be terribly effective in time of need. Two huge forts now command the "southern channel," in addition to the four which guarded it at the time of the Baltic expedition during the Crimean war; and the land-batteries (into which no outsider is now admitted without special permission) are being strengthened by movable shields of iron and other appliances of the kind, for which nearly one million roubles (one hundred and fifty thousand pounds) have been set apart. The seaward approaches are commanded by numerous guns of formidable calibre, and far away on the long, level promontory of the North Spit we can just descry a dark excrescence--the battery recently constructed for the defence of the "northern passage." Thus, from the Finnish coast to Oranienbaum a bristling line of unbroken fortification proclaims Russia's aversion to war, and the gaping mouths of innumerable cannon announce to all who approach, with silent eloquence, that "L'empire c'est la paix." It is a fine political parable that the Western traveler's first glimpse of Russian civilization should assume the form of a line of batteries, reminding one of poor Mungo Park's splendid unconscious sarcasm, when, while wandering helplessly in the desert, he came suddenly upon a gibbet with a man hanging in chains upon it; "Whereupon," says he, "I kneeled down and gave hearty thanks to Almighty God, who had been pleased to conduct me once more into a Christian and civilized country."

As the afternoon creeps on the rain seems to fall heavier, the fog to brood thicker, the steamer to go (if possible) slower than before. However, everything earthly has an end except a suit in chancery; and by nightfall (if there _be_ any nightfall in this wonderful region, where it is lighter at midnight than in England at daybreak) we reach Viborg, a neat little town built along the edge of a narrow inlet, with the straight, wide, dusty streets which characterize every Russian town from Archangelsk to Sevastopol. Along the edge of the harbor runs a well laid-out promenade, a favorite resort after sunset, when the cool breeze from the gulf comes freshly in after the long, sultry hours of the afternoon. Behind it cluster, like a heap of colored pebbles, the painted wooden houses of the town; while over all stands, like a veteran sentinel, the gray massive tower of the old castle, frowning upon the bristling masts of the harbor like the Past scowling at the Present.

The rippling sea in front and the dark belt of forest behind give the whole place a very picturesque appearance; but the beauty of the latter is sorely marred by the destroying sweep of a recent hurricane, traces of which are still visible in the long swathes of fallen trees that lie strewn amid the greenwood, like the dead among the living.

In the solemn, subdued light of the northern evening we rattle in a crazy drosky over the uneven stones of the town into the vast desolate square in which stands the solitary hotel, a huge barrack-like building, up and down which we wander for some time, like the prince in the Sleeping Beauty's palace, without meeting any sign of life, till at length in a remote corner we come suddenly upon a chubby little waiter about the size of a well-grown baby, to whom we give our orders. This, however, is his first and last appearance, for every time we ring a different waiter, of the same diminutive size, answers the bell; which oppresses us with an undefined apprehension of having got into a charity-school by mistake.

When I first made the acquaintance of Viborg, a journey thither from St. Petersburg, though the distance by land is only about eighty miles, was no light undertaking. The daring traveler who elected to travel by road had no choice but to provide himself with abundant wrappings and a good stock of food, draw his strong boots up to his knee, fortify his inner man with scalding tea or fiery corn-whisky, and struggle through axle-deep mud or breast-high snow (according to the season), sometimes for two days together. "Mais nous avons change tout cela." Two trains run daily from St. Petersburg, covering the whole distance in about four hours, and the stations along the line, though bearing marks of hasty construction, are still sufficiently comfortable and well supplied with provisions. Thanks to this direct communication with the capital, Viborg is now completely _au fait_ of the news of the day, and all fashionable topics are canvassed as eagerly on the promenade of this little Finnish seaport as along the pavements of the Nevski Prospect.

"We must breakfast early to-morrow, mind," says P---- as we settle into our respective beds, "for a march in the sun here is no joke, you bet!"

"Worse than in Arabia or South America?" ask I with calm scorn.

"You'll find the north of Russia a pretty fair match for both at this season. Do you happen to know that one of the hottest places in the world is Archangelsk on the White Sea? In summer the pitch melts off the vessels like butter, and the mosquitoes are so thick that the men on board the grain-ships fairly burrow into the corn for shelter.[E] Good-night! Sharp six to-morrow, mind!"

Accordingly, the early daylight finds us tramping along the edge of the picturesque little creek (dappled here and there with wood-crowned islets) in order to get well into our work before the sun is high in the sky, for a forty-mile march, knapsack on shoulder, across a difficult country, in the heat of a real Russian summer, is not a thing to be trifled with, even by men who have seen Turkey and Syria. A sudden turn of the road soon blots out the sea, and we plunge at once into the green silent depths of the northern forest.

It is characteristic of the country that, barely out of sight of one of the principal ports of Finland, we are in the midst of a loneliness as utter as if it had never been broken by man. The only tokens of his presence are the narrow swathe of road running between the dim, unending files of the shadowy pine trees, and the tall wooden posts, striped black and white like a zebra, which mark the distance in versts from Viborg, the verst being two-thirds of a mile.

To an unpractised eye the marvelous smoothness and hardness of this forest highway (unsurpassed by any macadamized road in England) might suggest a better opinion of the local civilization than it deserves; for in this case it is the soil, not the administration, that merits all the credit. In granite-paved Finland, as in limestone-paved Barbados, Nature has already laid down your road in a way that no human engineering can rival, and all you have to do is to smooth it to your own liking.

And now the great panorama of the far North--a noble change from the flat unending monotony of the Russian steppes--begins in all its splendor. At one moment we are buried in a dark depth of forest, shadowy and spectral as those which haunt us in the weird outlines of Retzsch; the next minute we burst upon an open valley, bright with fresh grass, and with a still, shining lake slumbering in the centre, the whole picture framed in a background of sombre woods. Here rise giant boulders of granite, crested with spreading pines--own brothers, perhaps, of the block dragged hence eighty years ago from which the greatest of Russian rulers still looks down upon the city that bears his name;[F] there, bluffs of wooded hill rear themselves above the surrounding sea of foliage, and at times the roadside is dotted with the little wooden huts of the natives, whence wooden-faced women, turbaned with colored handkerchiefs, and white-headed children, in nothing but a short night-gown with a warm lining of dirt, stare wonderingly at us as we go striding past. And over all hangs the clear, pearly-gray northern sky.

One hour is past, and still the air keeps moderately fresh, although the increasing glare warns us that it will be what I once heard a British tourist call "more hotterer" by and by. So far, however, we have not turned a hair, and the second hour's work matches the first to an inch. As we pass through the little hamlet which marks the first quarter of our allotted distance we instinctively pull out our watches: "Ten miles in two hours! Not so bad, but we must keep it up."

So we set ourselves to the third hour, and out comes the sun--bright and beautiful and destroying as Homer's Achilles:

Bright are his rays, but evil fate they send,
And to sad man destroying heat portend.

Hitherto, despite the severity of our pace, we have contrived to keep up a kind of flying conversation, but now grim silence settles on our way. There is a point in every match against time when the innate ferocity of man, called forth by the exercises which civilization has borrowed from the brute creation, comes to the front in earnest--when your best friend becomes your deadly enemy, and the fact of his being one stride in advance of you is an injury only to be atoned by blood. Such is the precise point that we have reached now; and when we turn from exchanging malignant looks with each other, it is only to watch with ominous eagerness for the coming in sight of the painted verst-posts, which somehow appear to succeed one another far more slowly than they did an hour ago.

By the middle of the fourth hour we are marching with coats off and sleeves rolled up, like amateur butchers; and although our "pace" is as good as ever, the elastic swing of our first start is now replaced by that dogged, "hard-and-heavy" tramp which marks the point where the flesh and the spirit begin to pull in opposite directions. Were either of us alone, the pace would probably slacken at once, and each may safely say in his heart, as Condorcet said of the dying D'Alembert, "Had I not been there he _must_ have flinched!"

But just as the fourth hour comes to an end (during which we have looked at our watches as often as Wellington during the terrible mid-day hours that preceded the distant boom of the Prussian cannon) we come round a sharp bend in the road, and there before us lies the quaint little log-built post-house (the "halfway house" in very truth), with its projecting roof and painted front and striped doorposts; just at which auspicious moment I stumble and twist my foot.

"You were right to reserve _that_ performance to the last," remarks P---- with a grin, helping me to the door; and we order a _samovar_ (tea-urn) to be heated, while we ourselves indulge in a scrambling wash of the rudest kind, but very refreshing nevertheless.

Reader, did you ever walk five miles an hour for four hours together over a hilly country, with the thermometer at eighty-three degrees in the shade? If so, then will you appreciate our satisfaction as we throw aside our heavy boots, plunge our swollen feet into cold water, and, with coats off and collars thrown open, sit over our tea and black bread in that quaint little cross-beamed room, with an appetite never excited by the best _plats_ of the Erz-Herzog Karl or the Trois Freres Provencaux. Two things, at least, one may always be sure of finding in perfection at a Russian post-station: tea is the one; the other I need not particularize, as its presence does not usually become apparent till you "retire to rest" (?).

Our meal being over and my foot still unfit for active service, we order a _telyayga_ (cart) and start anew for Imatra Foss. Our vehicle is simply a wooden tray on wheels, with a bag of hay in it, on which we do our best to recline, while our driver perches himself on the edge of the cart, thereby doubtless realizing vividly the sensation of rowing hard in a pair of thin unmentionables. Thanks to the perpetual gaps in the road formed by the great thaw two months ago (the Finnish winter ending about the beginning of May), during the greater part of the ride we play an animated though involuntary game of cup-and-ball, being thrown up and caught again incessantly. At length a dull roar, growing ever louder and louder, breaks the dreamy stillness of the forest, and before long we come to a little chalet-like inn embosomed in trees, where we alight, for this is the "Imatra Hotel."

Let us cast one glance out of the back window before sitting down to supper (in a long, bare, chilly chamber like a third-class waiting-room), for such a view is not seen every day. We are on the very brink of a deep narrow gorge, the upper part of which is so thickly clad with pines as to resemble the crest of some gigantic helmet, but beneath the naked granite stands out in all its grim barrenness, lashed by the spray of the mighty torrent that roars between its projecting rocks. Just below us, the river, forced back by a huge boulder in the centre of its course, literally piles itself up into a kind of liquid mound, foaming, flashing and trembling incessantly, the ceaseless motion and tremendous din of the rapids having an indescribably bewildering effect.

On quitting our inn the next morning a very picturesque walk of half an hour brings us to a little hut beside the Saima Ferry, where we find a party of "three fishers" from St. Petersburg, comprising a Russian colonel, an ex-chasseur d'Afrique (now an actor at one of the Russian theatres) and an Englishman. The three give us a cordial welcome, and insist upon our joining them; and for the next few days our surroundings are savagely picturesque enough to satisfy Jean-Jacques himself--living in a cabin of rough-hewn logs plastered with mud, sleeping on a bundle of straw, with our knapsacks for a pillow; tramping for miles every day through the sombre pine forest or fishing by moonlight in the shadowy lake, with the silence of a newly-created world all around; and having an "early pull" every morning across the ferry with our host, a squat, yellow-haired, gnome-like creature in sheepskin frock and bark shoes, who manifests unbounded amazement every time he sees us washing our hands.

But the lake itself is, if possible, even more picturesque than the river. It is one of those long, straggling bodies of water so common in the far North, resembling not so much one great lake as an endless series of small ones. Just at the sortie of the river a succession of rapids, scarcely less magnificent than those of the "Foss" itself, rush between the wooded shores, their unresting whirl and fury contrasting gloriously with the vast expanse of glassy water above, crested with leafy islets and mirroring the green boughs that droop over it along the shore. Here did we spend many a night fishing and "spinning yarns," in both of which accomplishments the ex-chasseur was pre-eminent; and strange enough it seemed, lying in the depths of that northern forest, to listen to descriptions of the treeless sands of Egypt and the burning wastes of the Sahara. Our midnight camp, on a little promontory just above the rapids, was a study for Rembrandt--the slender pine-stems reddened by the blaze of our camp-fire; the group of bearded faces coming and going as the light waxed and waned; beyond the circle of light a gloom all the blacker for the contrast; the ghostly white of the foam shimmering through the leaves, and the clear moonlit sky overhanging all.

When a wet day came upon us the inexhaustible ex-chasseur (who, like Frederick the Great, could "do everything but keep still") amused himself and us with various experiments in cookery, of which art he was a perfect master. His versatility in sauces might have aroused the envy of Soyer himself, and the party having brought with them a large stock of provisions, he was never at a loss for materials. Our ordinary dinner consisted of trout sauced with red wine, mutton, veal, duck, cheese, fresh strawberries and coffee; after which every man took his tumbler of tea, with a slice of lemon in it, from the stove, and the evening began.

_The_ sight of the country, however, is undoubtedly the natives themselves. Their tawny skins, rough yellow hair and coarse flat faces would look uninviting enough to those who have never seen a Kalmuck or a Samoyede, but, despite their diet of dried fish and bread mixed with sawdust, both men and women are remarkably healthy and capable of surprising feats of strength and endurance. They make great use of bark for caps, shoes, plates, etc., in the making of which they are very skillful. As to their dress, it baffles description, and the horror of my friend the ex-chasseur at his first glimpse of it was as good as a play. On one occasion he was criticising severely the "rig" of some passing natives: "Voila un qui porte un pantalon et point de bottes--un autre qui a des bottes et point de pantalon; peut-etre que le troisieme n'aura ni l'un ni l'autre!" At last came one with a pair of boots almost big enough to go to sea in, and turned up like an Indian canoe. Our critic eyed them in silence for a moment, and then said with a shudder, "Ce sont des bottes impossibles!"

But there needs only a short journey here to show the folly of further annexations on the part of Russia while those already made are so lamentably undeveloped. Finland, which, rightly handled, might be one of the czar's richest possessions, is now, after nearly seventy years' occupation, as unprofitable as ever. Throughout the whole province there are only three hundred and ninety-eight miles of railway.[G] Post-roads, scarce enough in the South, are absolutely wanting in the North. Steam navigation on the Gulf of Bothnia extends only to Uleaborg, and is, so far as I can learn, actually non-existent on the great lakes, except between Tanasthuus and Tammerfors. Such is the state of a land containing boundless water-power, countless acres of fine timber, countless shiploads of splendid granite. But what can be expected of an untaught population under two millions left to themselves in an unreclaimed country nearly as large as France?

Helsingfors can now be reached from St. Petersburg, _via_ Viborg, in fourteen and a half hours; but what is one such line to the boundless emptiness of Finland? The fearful lesson of 1869 will not be easily forgotten, when all the horrors of famine were let loose at once upon the unhappy province. Seed-corn was exhausted: bread became dear, dearer still, and then failed altogether. Men, women and children, struggling over snowy moors and frozen lakes toward the distant towns in which lay their only chance of life, dropped one by one on the long march of death, and were devoured ere they were cold by the pursuing wolves. Nor did the survivors fare much better: some reached the haven of refuge only to fall dead in its very streets. Others gorged themselves with unwholesome food, and died with it in their mouths. Fields lying waste; villages dispeopled; private houses turned into hospitals; fever-parched skeletons tottering from the doors of overcrowded asylums; children wandering about in gaunt and squalid nakedness; crowds of men, frenzied by prolonged misery and ripe for any outrage, roaming the streets night and day,--such were the scenes enacted throughout the length of Finland during two months and a half.

But better days are now dawning on the afflicted land. Roads and railways are being pushed forward into the interior, and the ill-judged attempts formerly made to Russianize the population have given place to a more conciliatory policy. A Russian from Helsingfors tells me that lectures are being delivered there, and extracts from native works read, in the aboriginal tongue; that it is being treated with special attention in the great schools of Southern Finland; that there has even been some talk of dramatic representations in Finnish at the Helsingfors theatre. Such a policy is at once prudent and generous, and far better calculated to bind together the heterogeneous races of the empire than that absurd "Panslavism" which is best translated as "making every one a slave."

DAVID KER.

FOOTNOTES:

[D] Finland still retains its own currency of "marks" and "pennia."

[E] A fact.

[F] The statue of Peter the Great stands at the corner of the Senate-House Square, overlooking the Neva, on a block of Finnish granite twenty feet high.

[G] Since this was written two new lines have been opened.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE DEAD OF PARIS.

It is an expensive operation to die in Paris, particularly for a foreigner. If an unhappy American chances to pay the debt of Nature in a furnished apartment or a hotel, the proprietor makes the heirs of the deceased pay roundly for the privilege which their relation has enjoyed. No matter by what manner of death the departed may have made his or her exit, be it chronic or epidemic--anything so impossible to communicate as heart disease or apoplexy, for instance--every article in the room must be paid for at its full value, or rather quadruple that amount. As much as one thousand dollars has sometimes been charged for the plenishing of a room, everything in which, if put up at auction, would not have realized a tenth part of that amount. Through the efforts of our representatives, however, this tax has been fixed at a somewhat less exorbitant amount.

Parisian funerals are conducted by a company--which, like most of such enterprises in France, is a gigantic monopoly--under the direct supervision of the government. The tariff of its charges includes nine grades of funerals, at prices ranging from fifteen hundred dollars down to four dollars. For the first amount the mourners enjoy all the splendors possible to the occasion--a hearse draped with velvet and drawn by four horses, each decked with ostrich-plumes and led by a groom clothed in a mourning livery; velvet draperies sprinkled with silver tears for the porte-cochere wherein the coffin lies in state; and grand funeral lamps lit with spirits to flame around the bier at the church. For the last tariff a pine coffin painted black, a stretcher and two men to bear the body to the _fosse commune_, are accorded. But between these two extremes lies every variety of funeral that one can imagine, a very respectable affair with two mourning carriages being offered for about sixty dollars. Very few Americans are ever interred in a Paris cemetery, the prejudices of our nation exacting that the remains of the dead should be transferred to their native land. To the foreigner this process appears to be inexplicable, for, as a French gentleman once remarked to me with a shrug of his shoulders, "Only the Americans and English are fond of making corpses travel" (_de faire voyager leurs morts_). They generally prefer to call in the services of the embalmer, who for a charge of six hundred dollars will do his work wisely if not too well. Still, there are some graves of our fellow-citizens still visible even at Pere la Chaise. And at that historic cemetery for years there existed a beautiful spot, a sort of hollow on the hillside, where flowers, trees and grass all flourished luxuriantly, thanks to years of neglect. It was a wild and lovely oasis of Nature in the midst of the stiff, artificial formality of the rest of the cemetery, and became one of the sights of the place. Unfortunately, French formality revolted against the untamed charm of this neglected spot: the proprietor, an American gentleman, was sought out, the lot was repurchased by the city, the trees were uprooted, the hollow filled in, and the beautiful ravine exists no longer.

The Compagnie des Pompes Funebres is obliged to inter the poor gratuitously; nor is this service light, as the number of free funerals is considerably greater than that of paying ones. The city pays one dollar to the company for each pauper funeral. The mass of material possessed by the company is very great, comprising six hundred vehicles of all kinds, three hundred horses, six thousand biers or stretchers, and a vast number of draperies, cushions, torches, etc. Over five hundred and seventy-five men are employed by this organization. Thanks to these ample arrangements, the terrible spectacle afforded during the cholera outbreaks of 1832 and 1849, when the dead were conveyed to the cemeteries piled in upholsterers' wagons, is not likely to be renewed, as during the exceptional mortality from the same cause in 1854 and 1865 the arrangements were found to suffice for all demands.

In olden times Paris was full of cemeteries: they were attached to every hospital and every church. The wealthy were interred in the churches themselves: in the church of Les Innocents, which was specially affected by the nobility, the aisles were often crowded with coffins awaiting their turn to be placed in the overcrowded vaults. Nobody troubled himself about the sanitary side of the question in those days, as witness the cemetery of Saint Roch, which in 1763 was established beside one of the city wells. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries cemeteries were popular places of resort. Les Innocents was especially popular: it was surrounded by arcades, where booths and stores were established, and people came there to promenade and to amuse themselves. Nor were private cemeteries unknown, many prominent Jewish and Protestant families being privileged to inter their dead (to whom the Church denied burial in consecrated ground) in the gardens attached to their houses. Thus, when the work of reconstructing Paris under the Second Empire was begun, the enormous quantity of graves that were discovered filled the workers with amaze. The bones thus found were at first transferred to the Western Cemetery, which had been closed for over twenty years, but the accumulation speedily became unmanageable, and when a mass of over three thousand square feet of bones had been deposited there, a decree of the authorities caused the whole and all similar discoveries to be deposited in the catacombs.

The Revolution did away with the greater part of the intramural cemeteries by suppressing those attached to the churches and declaring the ground to be national property: they were consequently parceled out into lots and sold. But the guillotine created a need for new burial-grounds, two of which were accordingly established. One, situated near the Place du Trone, still exists: it occupies the former site of the gardens of the Dames Chauvinesses de Picpus. After the Revolution it was purchased by an association of the surviving members of families who had relatives interred there. This cemetery ought to be a pilgrim shrine for every American visiting Paris, for it was chosen as a last resting-place for the remains of La Fayette. The other "garden of the guillotine," as these cemeteries were once significantly called, has long since disappeared, but the Chapelle Expiatoire erected to the memory of Marie Antoinette and of Louis XVI. on the Boulevard Haussmann now marks its former site. It was there that the bodies of these royal victims of revolutionary fury were hastily interred in a bed of quicklime, with a thick layer of quicklime cast over each of them. When, after the Restoration, the task of exhuming the royal remains was undertaken, crumbling bones alone remained to point out the resting-place of the once beautiful daughter of the Caesars and of the descendant of Saint Louis. The smaller bones of the skeleton of Louis XVI., in particular, had almost wholly disappeared: that of the queen was in better preservation, owing to a smaller quantity of quicklime having been used. Strange to say, her garters, which were of elastic webbing, were found in a state of almost perfect preservation, while of the rest of her garments only a few rotting fragments remained. These garters, together with some pieces of the coffins, were presented as precious relics to Louis XVIII. But grave doubts have frequently been expressed, in view of the very slight means of identification afforded by the state of the remains, as to whether these crumbling relics of mortality were really those of the king and queen. With the exception of the plot on which stands the Chapelle Expiatoire, every vestige of the revolutionary cemetery has long since disappeared. The splendid Boulevard Haussmann now passes directly over its site, and the gayety and animation of one of the most brilliant quarters of modern Paris surround what was once the last resting-place of those who perished by the guillotine on the Place de la Revolution.

The present system of Parisian cemeteries was only adopted at the beginning of this century. Paris now possesses twenty, the most important of which are Pere la Chaise and Montparnasse. The ground of all of these belongs to the city. You can purchase a lot to be held for ever, or you can buy a temporary concession, the price varying with the length of time for which the ground is to be held. Five years is the shortest period for which a lot can be accorded, as experts declare that the body is not wholly absorbed into the surrounding earth before that time.

What shall Paris do with her dead? is now becoming a very serious question. It is against the law to bury bodies within her limits, yet fourteen out of her twenty cemeteries are within her bounds, and the vast city, spreading out on either side, soon catches up with those established on her exterior territories.

It has been proposed to construct a new and immense cemetery at a distance of some twenty or thirty miles from the city, to which the funeral corteges could be transferred by rail. But the strong sentiment of the French for the dead has as yet prevented the realization of this very sensible and really necessary project. As a rule, the French are very fond of visiting the graves of their departed relatives, and on the great anniversary for such visits, "Le Jour des Morts," it is calculated that over half a million persons are present in the different cemeteries during the day. On such occasions not only are wreaths of natural flowers, of beads and of immortelles deposited on the tombs, but often the visiting-cards of the persons who have come to pay due respect to the dead. The tomb of Rachel, for instance, has been specially honored in that way, some of the visitors even turning up the corner of the card to show that they had called in person. The question suggests itself, _What if the visit should be returned?_ Edgar A. Poe might have found in this idea material for one of his weird and wondrous tales. We all know what happened when Don Juan in merry fashion begged that the statue of his former victim would come to take supper with him.

The French authorities have indeed purchased a vast tract of ground at Mery-sur-Oise, distant from Paris about one hour by rail, with intent to found there a vast central necropolis, but the prejudices or indifference of the Parisian populace have as yet prevented the realization of this project. Something must be done, however, and that speedily. Were cremation an established fact, that would settle the whole matter, but the French, who always seem to get an attack of piety in the wrong place, are horrified at such an idea. It is probable, therefore, that a law will be adopted, such as is now in force in Switzerland, making all concessions of burial-lots merely temporary. Such a law is already talked of, and the duration of the longest concession is fixed at ten years. A regulation of this kind would of course do away with much of the elegance of decoration that now distinguishes the Parisian cemeteries, as few families would care to erect costly monuments over a grave that must be vacated at the end of ten years.

L. H. H.

THE RELIGIOUS STRUGGLE AT GENEVA.

Even for a chance resident in Geneva, for a disinterested stranger to the strife, the Ultramontane and Old Catholic question is no more to be avoided than the _bise_ which blows in the month of November upon the just and the unjust. You take the longest way round through the sheltered streets, if you like, but the terrific north wind is certain to catch you at the first square you cross. And you may say you have no particular interest in the war of churches, and no adequate means of forming a judgment: you still hear a good deal that is said, and read much that is written, on the burning topic. If a supporter of the ruling party describes what occurred some months since at Bellerive on the lake shore, when a company of gendarmes marched into the village, took possession of the church, set the Swiss cross floating from the steeple and established the new _cure_ by force of arms, in place of the Ultramontane incumbent, who had long defied the cantonal authorities and remained at his post in spite of reiterated orders to depart, the impression you receive is that of the might and majesty of the law triumphant. What else can be done, they ask, when the government of the land is flouted in open scorn? What, indeed? And the counter-display of banners by the vanquished party on that eventful day illustrated, it would appear, the well-known step from the sublime to the ridiculous. Every black rag on which they could lay hands dangled from the windows of the faithful in sign of distress: not even a petticoat rather the worse for wear but did duty on the occasion. And yet one thoroughly convinced of the puerility of such demonstrations may also think that the Swiss flag itself has been unfurled in causes more glorious.