Chapter X: The Real Hero (1)

When a pile of wood has been laid upon smouldering embers, a thin curl of smoke crawls lazily up the chimney, another follows with like indolence, and it looks after a while as if the wood would not burn at all. Suddenly a little whiff of air enters the pile, when, presto! up blazes the fire, and soon there is a famous glow.

It was somewhat thus with Mr. Austin Buckingham. He had been toying with the fancy of his story, and especially of this maiden to whom his eyes had become so wonted, and had allowed himself to look at her in so many lights, that she had gradually come to be always before him. The figure of the hero had as gradually disappeared: it was only by an effort that he could revive it. Suddenly he had sat a long quarter of an hour with the girl, he had heard her voice, he had seen her smile, he had felt the graciousness of her near presence when he was not merely at hand, but the direct object of her thought. What a world of difference there was between sitting by her side in a crowded horse-car and sitting even half a room-breadth's away, when they two were the only ones in the room!

By all this experience, as much perhaps by what had gone before as by what had followed suddenly after, Buckingham now stood revealed to himself. He was ablaze with this new, tingling, searching ardor. When he had entered the room and shut the door, he saw lying upon his table his note-book, open as he had left it. He had been amusing himself, just before he went out, with further suggestions for his story. He dipped his pen into the ink and drew a bold, straight line across the page. He stood looking at the leaf,--idle fancy above the line, a blank below it.

A knock at the door, and Henry Wilding entered. Buckingham greeted him with a sudden excess of fervor which puzzled the young man.

"I was sorry to miss finding you," he began, and then checked himself. "Not so very sorry either, since fortune made me acquainted with--your cousin--and with Miss Vila," he added, after an embarrassed pause.

"I don't understand," said Wilding. "Have I missed a call from you?"

"Yes. I just came from your house. Your cousin at first thought you were at home. Now I think of it, she--"

"But I don't live at my cousin's," said Wilding.

"Where do you live, then?"

"Next door to her house."

"Oh! then she sent out for you. That explains it." And so Mr. Buckingham, intent on his own affairs, brushed away the duplicity of the fair hostess. "But I was very glad to hear a piece of news about you from her. Let me congratulate you. I did not know you were engaged." And he shook Wilding's hand warmly. He was not so generous at the moment as he appeared. In reality, he was shaking his own hand in anticipation. Wilding responded with a good-natured laugh.

"I have sometimes wondered, Mr. Buckingham," he said, "how you, who write stories of love and marriage, should remain unmarried."

"Let us put it the other way. How can I who am unmarried write such stories? In truth, I have a dim sense that persons like you, who know the matter by experience, must laugh inwardly at my innocent attempts at realistic treatment."

"Why not, then, have the experience first?" said Wilding lightly.

"God forbid!" said Buckingham, with a somewhat unintelligible seriousness. "If I were ever in love, it seems to me I should stop writing love-stories."

Now, this was just what happened, for a time at least. To any one so dead in love as Buckingham was at this time, all circumstances are favorable. It needs but a given moment, and the hero is on hand ready to seize it. The next night he could not ride out from the city; he must walk. When he got beyond the bridge, he wondered that he saw no horse-cars coming toward him. He remembered that he had seen none for some time, but now he noticed a long line of them standing before him, pointed outward. He heard the puff of a steam fire-engine, and saw that travel by rail was stopped by a fire. The hose crossed the track, and the incoming horse-cars were in a long line beyond it. He looked at the cars which he had over-taken. Midway in the line stood the one he had been accustomed to take. He caught sight of a familiar head bent over a book. He stepped into the car and stood before Miss Vila. He bent forward, and she looked up as he spoke:

"The cars are stopped by a fire. We may be delayed a long while. Why not walk home from here? It is a fine night."

He spoke somewhat hurriedly. He did not know how appealingly he looked. She did, however, and she closed her book and followed him.

The story, then, never was written, even though the heroine had been found. Everything else had disappeared,--the hero, the mystery, the plot. Nothing was left but the heroine and--love.

HORACE E. SCUDDER.

SHADOWS ALL.

Shadows all!
From the birth-robe to the pall,
In this travesty of life,
Hollow calm and fruitless strife,
Whatsoe'er the actors seem,
They are posturing in a dream;
Fates may rise, and fates may fall,
Shadows are we, shadows all!

From what sphere
Float these phantoms flickering here?
From what mystic circle cast
In the dim æonian Past?
Many voices make reply,
But they only rise to die
Down the midnight mystery,
While earth's mocking echoes call,
Shadows, shadows, shadows all!

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE.

ROSES OF YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY.

It always seemed to me, as a child, that the birds put their hearts more wholly into their songs in that special little corner of Paradise on the Hudson River than they did anywhere else. Not that it was really so very little a corner, being small only in comparison with an entire Paradise, composed of many such bits, that lines the shore of the beautiful Hudson.

It was so great a delight to the child who knew little of country pleasures to be called away from some task or commonplace "every-day" pastime and to be told that there was an invitation to spend an afternoon, or perhaps several days, at Professor Morse's place, "Locust Grove."

There would be the drive, leaning back in the barouche (with a feeling of easy importance lent by the consciousness of wondrous delights to come) and looking up with a species of admiring awe at the herculean form of the French coachman, who seemed to be concealing romantically brigandish recollections behind his fiery black eyes and wide-spreading, ferocious moustache. Along the dusty "South Road" we would go, under the green lights and shadows of the maple-trees, over the two miles which stretch between Poughkeepsie town and "Locust Grove,"--past "Eastman's Park," with its smart decorations, past the small, unambitious houses, draped with many-hued, old-fashioned roses, that straggled along the dividing-line between the narrow restrictions of town and the fragrant wideness of the country, where the air was cool with the breath of the river, and the breezes brought suggestions of freshly-cut grass, just blown locust-blossoms, and the thousand sweet, indefinable scents of the woods.

On approaching the boundaries of "the Grove," the perfume of the locust-flowers assumed due prominence, as the name of the place implies they should, while their white clusters drooped from the heavily-loaded branches till they fairly touched the high posts of the gate. And then would come the drive up the dim avenue, flecked with patches of sunshine that lay like fallen gold pieces in the dusk shadow, while if one glanced upward or on either side one saw nothing save the arching trees,--pines and locusts, and maples no less stately,--until a space was reached where the grove was less dense and the view widened to a stretch of velvet grass whitened with daisies lying soft on the tops of the blades in a way to make one fancy a summer fall of snow. At the turn of the avenue one caught a glimpse of the house, with its vine-wreathed tower, generous piazzas, and hospitable _porte-cochère_, and in the background, beyond the lawn, the river, with the blue hills on the opposite shore veiled by a light, lace like haze, just enough of a haze to lend mystery to the distance.

The loud clattering of the horses' shoes on the stone pavement under the _porte-cochère_, which informed the occupants of the house that visitors had come, seemed always to tell the youngest, most insignificant, yet happiest of those visitors that the anticipated hour of many delights had actually arrived. And of these delights there were to the heart of the child a thousand and one such as could scarcely be realized or even dreamed of at the home in town. There were the broad, shady piazzas to be walked over with dainty footfalls, lest the grown people should be disturbed. There was the mystic retreat within the circle of a group of low-branching pines, the secret of which one penetrated by stepping down from the front piazza at a certain place and there insinuating one's self into a small opening, which only the initiated could discover, among the trees. Here one had a little fragrant sanctum all one's own, carpeted with pine needles, green and brown, and arched over by ceiling and walls of thick branches, from out of which peeped startled robins, who soon, finding that no harm was meant them, went on with their song. Then there was the garden, fragrant and brilliant, which one might explore when one had promised Thomas, the presiding genius, that one would not touch his cherished sweets, for it "went to his heart" to see a single blossom torn from its parent stem. And there were the grape-houses, for which the place was famous far and near,--hot, and odorous of moist soil and growing vines, among which white and purple clusters hung temptingly heavy and low.

One especial pleasure was to walk along the gravelled path that skirted the smooth, level stretch of lawn at the back of the house, and thus to reach the brow of the hill overlooking the "farm" and the river. There were seats on the edge of this bluff, and a large spring-board on which one might ride and jump to one's heart's content. By following this path still farther, and to the left, one soon deserted the well-kept lawn and found one's self on a narrow, winding walk overhanging a deep, wooded ravine, in the depths of which a little brook ran curving about among the ferns and daisies; and presently, far out of sight of the house, in shade so dense as to lend a certain pleasing enchantment, one came upon a rustic summer-house, with odd, three-cornered-seats, and a table surrounding the tree-trunk that supported the centre of the roof.

There were manifold other out-of-door enjoyments, such as visiting the pigeon-house, and, as a rare favor, rioting in the scented hay in the loft over the barn, visiting the gardener's wife (whose home was in that part of the old Livingston mansion which its master and time had allowed to stand), and being permitted to draw water from the ancient well, about which hung so many stories of generations past. How exciting it was, and with what delicious awe one listened, when the little lady who was a fairy grandmamma instead of a fairy godmother in the household told a certain story regarding this well! It was a story before the time of her own birth, when two of her older sisters were very tiny girls. One day, when the mother was busy in superintending some homely task (such as the manufacturing of the "cream cheese," perhaps, for which she was noted), the baby of two years toddled in and began to lisp over and over the same broken words, "Tatie in 'ell, Tatie in 'ell." She had repeated them many times, with increasing insistence, before the busy mother realized that they possessed a meaning. "Tatie in 'ell, Tatie in 'ell," the little one said, pulling at her mother's gown, half crying as she spoke; and then it dawned upon the latter that her baby had something serious to tell. She yielded to the little importunate hands upon her dress, and followed the child out of doors to the well and there looked down. "Katie" was indeed in the well, as the lisping tongue had tried to say, and, gazing into the darkness below, the mother could see the frightened, pitiful little face turned up to her, while two small hands convulsively grasped the edge of the great bucket. The husband and father was away from home, all the men employed about the place were working at a distance, and there was no time to lose: those frail hands must soon relax their hold, and the child was sorely terrified and begging to be saved. As the mother hesitated, in an agony of doubt, out from the house came a stout, elderly serving-woman, who had lived in the family for many years, and who was especially devoted to little Kate. She had heard her mistress's cry, and, running to look into the well, without even waiting to explain, she set about the execution of a hazardous and original plan of rescue. Climbing over the curb, she began to descend by striding the well and planting her feet upon the rough, protruding stones of which the sides were formed. Not one woman in a thousand could or would have done such a thing; but this one was tall and strong, and brave as a lion with the might of her love for little Kate. She saved the child, who had suffered no graver injury than a thorough drenching and a fright which served as a warning for herself and the children of her own and several generations to come.

Interesting as was this story and others told of the past, and delightful as it was to play under the great trees, roaming at one's own sweet will all about "the Grove," better than everything else was it to be admitted into the "sanctum sanctorum" of the place,--Professor Morse's study,--where the master sat among his books and treasures, his kindly, clear-featured face and bright brown eyes, framed in by silver hair and beard, shining out from the curtained dimness of the room. There were many objects fascinating even to a child in that study, which opened out of the family library with its store of books. The library was very good, but the study was still better. There, under a glass case, was the first telegraph-instrument that had ever been made. One or two of Professor Morse's early paintings hung upon the wall, and sometimes he would display a few sketches to the older members of the party, who were naturally regardless of the fact that there was "a chiel amang 'em, takin' notes." The crowning treat offered within the study-walls, however, was to have the marvels of the Professor's immense and powerful microscope displayed before our wondering gaze. There we became acquainted with the rainbow-tinted plumes of the fly's wing and the jewels that lie hidden from ordinary ken in the pollen and petals of the simplest blossoms. And the master of it all, to whom the marvels were as familiar as the common objects themselves, seemed to derive a genuine pleasure from that which he bestowed upon his guests.

When Professor Morse purchased Locust Grove, before his second marriage, he was not aware that it had belonged to the family of the lady who was soon to become his wife. Indeed, it was not until some friend remarked, "How delightful for you to take your bride to the old ancestral place owned by her kindred for so many generations!" that he knew the home would possess any associations, save those to be formed in the future, for his _fiancée_. But no doubt at the beginning of their life there Locust Grove was thus rendered doubly dear to both. The old Livingston mansion was at that time standing, much nearer to the entrance-gates than the more modern residence inhabited by the owner's family; and the quaint well, with the stone curb, the water of which was so remarkable for its purity that travellers came from a distance to ask the privilege of drinking, formed an object of interest at least, if not of actual beauty, before the old vine-grown porch. Gradually the house fell into decay, and the greater portion was torn down, leaving but five or six rooms, with their odd, hooded windows and strangely-fashioned fireplaces and mantels, the porch, with its broad, shallow seats, and the green-painted, "divided" front doors, to tell the tale of what once had been the home of so much hospitality and happiness.

So all remained painted with unfading colors on the canvas of my memory, each object as I had known and loved it when a child. And then the child went far away and grew to womanhood, having looked on many places and "things of beauty," but, while forgetting much that belonged to the old days, never forgot Locust Grove. The scent of the new locust-blossoms, the songs of the birds, and the beauty of the lights and shadows dancing on the river were as vivid in recollection as they had been in actuality; and after a severe and tedious illness it seemed that no tonic could prove so effectual as a visit to that dear old place, not seen for years, and which I had loved so well.

There is generally experienced a vague yet bitter disappointment in returning to a spot hallowed by associations after an absence of any appreciable length of time. It is wellnigh impossible for the reality to equal what has through the filtering of fancy become scarcely more than a remembered dream.

Nothing can be as it has been;
Better, so call it, only--not the same.

And yet Locust Grove in 1884 looked almost as unchanged as though it had shared the slumbers of the "Sleeping Beauty" since 1871. Only, a certain potent charm had fled with the presence of the departed master. It was now but his pictured eyes and silver hair that lit up the dimness of the room that had been sacred to him. The books and papers covering the desk belonged to a later and more careless generation. The microscope stood unused under its glass case, the sketches were lovingly laid away out of sight, and altogether a subtile change could be detected in the atmosphere. There were things, however, about the house which perhaps had always been there, and yet which I looked upon now with a new and keener appreciation. The picture of Professor Morse when a child of five or six years, standing by his father, who is clad in the quaint robes which then distinguished a Congregationalist divine, seemed to me one that might interest others besides myself. Also the portrait of his mother, with pearls in her puffed and powdered hair, and her beautiful bare arms holding the older child, Sidney (a baby in oddly-fashioned long robes), was charming to look at because of its intrinsic beauty as well as the associations attached to it. And the life-size painting of General Washington's mother,--said to be the only one of the kind in existence,--which looked down from its broad frame over the dining-room mantel, possessed a special fascination for me. One felt rather insignificant with that scornful smile and those languid eyes brooding over one as one sat engaged in the discussion of soup; and it was impossible to keep from imagining that the stiff and stately dame in her mathematically correct white and green draperies was drawing invidious comparisons between the way one did one's hair and the way in which she had considered it proper to arrange her abundant pale-brown locks.

About the place itself were more changes than at first would strike the eye. The old Livingston homestead had been razed to the ground, and smooth, emerald grass thrived upon its site, while the chief gardener, Thomas, had been promoted to a new æsthetic cottage of the latest approved colors and style. Even the famous well was no more; for a small and inconspicuous pump had been put in its stead, to save unwary children from instituting a too curious search for the "truth" popularly supposed to lie within its depths. The graperies were gone, and in their stead nourished rose-houses,--visiting the interior of which seemed fairly to transport one into the famous "Vale of Cashmere." Roses of all colors and all descriptions here found an ideal home, and with their beauty served the purses of their two young masters, who superintended their culture. It was in the early summer that I saw the place again after my long absence, and the rose-houses of course could not be seen at their best, as they can in winter. There are four large houses, opening into a long, narrow frame building, at one end of which is the office where the young gentlemen managers transact their business. Here all was--and still is, no doubt--immaculately neat, the walls adorned with colored prints and paintings of flowers, an array of books, papers, and ledgers carefully arranged in their exact places on the desk, and everything kept free from dust, swept and garnished. In the long, bare room from which the office opens are stored gardening-tools, watering-cans of all shapes and descriptions (some of which to an untutored eye present a striking resemblance to coffee-pots such as the Brobdingnag giants might have used), baskets for packing the roses, with all their paraphernalia, earthen pots for plants great and small, and many other utensils such as those unlearned in gardening lore would consider uncouth in the extreme. On one side of the room stands the big table upon which the baskets are set, and above this are ranged numerous rows of shelves. Four doors open into the rose-houses, and at the east end is the one devoted exclusively to the culture of Jacqueminots,--the "Jack"-house it is irreverently, if not slangily, styled. Here the glass roof stands open all the summer long, for the breezes to blow and the soft rains to fall upon the petted plants; and here the sunshine holds high revel, bronzing the intricate tracery of stem and branch and turning half the leaves to shining emeralds.

It was in the "Jack"-house that I one morning found Thomas Devoy, the gardener, at work with his great oddly-shaped shears or scissors, and detained him long enough to make a little sketch of him among his flowers; and while I worked with pencils and paper he told me divers anecdotes of the twenty-eight years he had spent in Professor Morse's service. "I entered service in the old country when I was very young," he said; "and even as a little boy I was fond of gardening. One time, when I was a child, I was going through some splendid greenhouses with the head-gardener who took care of them. There was one very rare plant of which he was exceedingly proud, and I begged him for a tiny slip to take home with me. But he refused; and so, in passing by, I quietly broke off one little leaf. Some time afterward I was able to show him a plant as fine as his own which I had raised from that one leaf, and then I told him its story."

All the fine, large Jacqueminots in the "Jack"-house were raised from one parent plant with cuttings made about four years or so before, the gardener told me, while I, gazing in amazement at their high-reaching branches, thought, with "Topsy," it was something to boast of that they had "jest growed."

In the winter the rose-houses become things of beauty and a joy forever, seeming to have imprisoned the very heart of summer within their walls, while outside--shut away from the warmth and glowing tints of red and pink, yellow and lustrous rosy pearl--lie the snow and the ice, and through the bare branches of the trees the wind whistles drearily.

But in the summer the aspect of the rose-houses is very different. All then is preparation and making over for the coming autumn and winter. Some of the houses are planted with tiny cuttings just lifting little tender sprays above the warm, moist soil. Men are at work here and there with hammers and nails, repairing any slight damage that may have been done in previous months. Hose-pipes coil over the floors, and one must walk by them daintily. In other houses one would exclaim with pleasure at finding one's self in a wilderness of roses, pink, yellow, and white, only to be told, rather contemptuously, "_That_ is nothing. There are no roses here now. You must wait till winter if you want something worth seeing. We have roses as large as tea-saucers then, and any quantity of them."

Outside the buildings, and fairly surrounding them, are large square beds of hybrid roses of many varieties, each sort planted in separate rows by itself. There are beds of cuttings also, and one long, narrow bed of red hybrids running the entire length of the greenhouse. "Catherine Mermet," "La Reine," "Adam," "Paul Neyron," the exquisite "La France," "John Hopper," the "Duke of Connaught," "Niphetos," and "Perle des Jardins" are here in profusion, with others of every shade and tint, too numerous almost to count, and the perfume arising from beds and hot-houses is intoxicating in its strength and sweetness. Some bushes are merely set in earthen pots out of doors; and these are supposed to be in a dormant state, undergoing the process of "drying off," or "hardening," receiving very little water, and are to be so kept until September, when they will be repotted and "started" for growing,--thus illustrating the truth of the saying that there is a blessing for those who only stand and wait. But one could not help pitying them, when one thought how their more fortunate companions with their uncramped roots were exploring underground passages and enjoying all the freedom and moisture of the rich soil.

"During the fall and winter we are very busy in a different way," said Thomas Devoy, as he displayed his treasures. And then he told me how every day in the later months all hands are occupied in tending, cutting, and packing the roses which are daily expressed to a certain New York florist. The beautiful half-blown buds are carefully cut, with long, leafy stems, and laid in the great market-baskets standing on the table ready to receive them. Row after row and layer after layer are laid in, sprinkled until leaves and petals sparkle with a diamond dew. Only buds at a certain stage of unfolding are used, and the most exquisite roses with their petals opening one pink or pearly crease too far are discarded as unfit to send away. Tissue-paper covers the flowers as they lie ready in their baskets, then oiled paper is placed on top, and finally a thin red oilcloth is fastened over all.

Thus from two to four hundred roses of almost every variety are daily put upon the New York train and expressed to the florist, at whose establishment they arrive, after a few hours, as fresh, dewy, and fragrant as when they left their parent plants.

And yet, with all these that are sent away, the home is not forgotten. Gorgeous blooms in exquisite foreign vases adorn table, cabinet-shelf, and mantel in every inhabited room in the house, where, among relics of the old time, the roses of yesterday and to-day meet in a rivalry so lovely that one is at a loss in deciding the merits of their separate claims. The roses of to-day are freshest, and it may even be fairest; yet there is a little poem which asks,--

What's the rose that I hold to the rose that is dead?

And thus, to one who has known and loved the place in days gone by, when what has become a mere association and memory now made its very life and soul, there is something in the suggestion of that verse which at least lets itself be readily understood.

ALICE KING HAMILTON.

A HOOSIER IDYL.

It was a part of the Great West which in the past fifty or seventy-five years has been transformed from unbroken forests, the home of the red Indian and the deer, to a thickly-settled farming-country, dotted with comfortable homes and traversed by railways and wagon-roads. Here and there in retired districts the log cabins of the pioneers remained, and wherever one looked an horizon of woods met his eye; but the numerous towns and villages gave evidence of a higher and ever-increasing degree of civilization.

It was a land of rich soil and lush natural growth, without rocks or hills or swiftly-running streams, a region of corn- and wheat-fields and orchards, of clover-pastures and melon-patches.

The human _physique_ showed good development and abundant nourishment, but the dwellers along the sluggish creeks sometimes had a tinge of yellow beneath the sunburn of their faces. Caste distinctions, pride of station, were unknown here; all the people, whether their possessions were great or small, drew their nurture from the soil, and greeted each other with a friendly "Howdy?" when they met, conscious of perfect equality. It was much better to be poor in a place like this than in a great city,--to have at least physical abundance if one could not have other advantages. Elvira Hill was not conscious of being poor, though just now she was anxious to get a country school to teach. All her life had been spent amid these familiar scenes, her condition in life was neither worse nor better than that of her acquaintances, and it never occurred to her to be discontented with her lot and rebel against fate. She had been brought up on a farm, had known what it was to go after the cows of an evening, to drive them to the barn-lot bars and milk them, to catch a horse in the pasture and saddle and ride it, to hunt hens' nests in the hay-mow, to churn, and wash dishes, and get vegetables from the garden, and pick the raspberries and blackberries that ripened in the fence corners along the fields and woods. But just now she was living with her grandmother in a little brown house in the cluster of houses called Hill's Station. There were two stores, a post-office, a blacksmith's shop, and a mill; the mail-trains stopped here, and a daily hack carried passengers northward two miles and a half to a larger village, Sassafrasville, where there was an excellent academy. The national pike ran through Hill's Station, and there was a great deal of travel on this road,--local travel of various kinds, peddlers' wagons which stopped in every town, and long rows of white-covered movers' wagons going West to Illinois or Iowa or Kansas. What wonder, then, that with all these advantages the people of Hill's Station thought themselves centrally located, and watched with complaisant interest the passing trains, the daily hack, and the teams going along the pike? That they were pleasantly located there was no doubt. Tall beech- and sugar-maple-trees, part of the original forest, stood singly here and there and cast pleasant islands of shade upon the expanse of sunshine, and from the fields which bordered the road came the scent of clover-blooms.

Elvira Hill had gone to the little country schools, sometimes to the one a mile west of town, sometimes to the one a mile east, and for the past three years had attended the Sassafrasville Academy: so that now, at seventeen, she was considered to have a good education, and expected to follow the example of many of the young people of that section and go to teaching. She talked it over with her grandmother, and decided that she had better try a subscription school in the country first; then, if she succeeded in giving satisfaction, she would apply in the winter for the position of assistant in the Hill's Station school.

Her grandmother, placid and fair, with a cap of sheer white muslin resting on her yet brown hair, and a pair of gold-bowed spectacles pushed up on her forehead above her kindly blue eyes, was considered a handsome old woman, and showed few traces of the life of toil through which she had passed. She read a great deal in a New Testament with large print, and often sat a long time in thought, with it open on her knees. Another work which she frequently perused was Mrs. Ellet's "Women of the Revolution," in two volumes, containing steel engravings of stately dames in laced bodices and powdered hair.

Elvira borrowed a horse of one of the neighbors, put her grandmother's much-worn red plush side saddle upon it, and started out in search of a school. She rode east and she rode north; but in the first district they had a teacher already engaged, and in the second they had concluded they wouldn't have any school that summer. Did they know of any other school where a teacher was wanted? she inquired. No, they couldn't say they did; but she might hear of one by inquiring further, the honest district trustees said. So she rode homeward again, in no wise discouraged, and asked the postmaster to inquire of the farmers who came in from other neighborhoods in regard to this matter.

He promised that he would, and a week later called her in as she was passing, and said, "There was a man here yesterday from Buck Creek district who said they wanted a teacher in their school this summer. You might try there. His name is Sapp, and he lives right by the school-house. You go two miles and a half south till you come to a mud road, then two miles and a half east till you come to a pike. You can't miss the place."

Elvira thanked him, and a little while later, when her accommodating neighbor was not using his horse, she borrowed it again and rode forth on her quest. It had been raining, the mud road was muddy, and clouds still hung in the sky; but the country through which she passed was a rich, fresh green, and the fruit-orchards were in bloom. From solitary farm-houses big dogs and little dogs issued forth to bark at the sound of her horse's feet, and bareheaded children at this signal ran out to the gate to see who was passing.

The school-house of Buck Creek district, a neat wooden building, painted white, stood in a grassy acre lot, bordered on two sides by thick woods, on the other two by the roads which crossed here. In the corner diagonally across from it stood a snug cabin, with a garden around it, a well-sweep in the rear, and a log stable not far distant. She alighted in front of it, and was proceeding to hitch her horse, when the door opened, and a man stepped out, greeting her with a friendly "Howdy?"

She responded, and asked if Mr. Sapp lived here.

"My name is Sapp," he said, and, tying her horse, invited her in.

There she found the rest of the family,--the mother, a grown daughter, and two half-grown sons: they seemed friendly, but a little shy, and stood in the background while she transacted her business.

"Yes," Mr. Sapp said, in answer to her question, "they wanted a three-months' school, but had no teacher engaged. Had she ever taught before?"

No, she had had no experience in teaching; but she had attended the Sassafrasville Academy several terms, and was qualified to teach the common branches,--arithmetic, grammar, and geography, reading, writing, and spelling.

Well, he would bring her application before the other two trustees, and guessed they would elect her: there was no other applicant. Now, about the terms: three dollars a scholar for the term of twelve weeks was the usual rate. If she would draw up a subscription-paper, he would take it round himself and get as many names as he could; thought he could get twelve scholars signed, and knew that more would be sent. The children had to be kept at home in busy times, and the farmers didn't like to bind themselves to pay the full amount for all that they would send. He himself would sign one and send two. Charley could go all the time; but Jack would have to help about mowing and reaping and threshing, and couldn't attend regularly.

So Elvira drew up the paper according to his dictation, and, leaving it with him, rode home in the dusk of the evening, feeling happy over her prospects.

Her grandmother had supper ready in the little kitchen; and it tasted so good, the salt-rising bread and butter and hash, the little tea-cakes, and the preserved pears. While the grandmother drank her cup of tea, Elvira told her the incidents of the afternoon; and the night closed around them as they sat secure and content in their humble home.

The great world was full of great problems which wearied and perplexed men's brains and seemed wellnigh unsolvable, but she had solved her own little problem in her own little way, and was at peace.

In a few days Mr. Sapp called with the subscription-paper. He had got sixteen scholars signed,--more than he expected. That was a good prospect for a summer school. They wanted her to begin on the following Monday; which she promised to do. Then she asked him if she could board at his house a week or two, until she could make some arrangements to ride from home. Yes, she could; he guessed a dollar and a half a week for board would be about the fair thing.

So, early Monday morning she bade her grandmother good-by, and, with her books under her arm, set forth to walk to Buck Creek district. The school-house door was locked when she got there, but a few timid country-children were sitting on the door-steps or on the fence, with their school-books and dinner-buckets. Mr. Sapp came over and unlocked the door; then, as it was half-past eight, Elvira rang the little bell which she found on the teacher's desk, and school began. After taking down the children's names and ages and assigning desks to them, she heard them read in their first, second, or third readers, and questioned them about the progress they had made in other branches. Other children came in from time to time, until there were twenty-two present. And when Mr. Sapp went home at "little recess," as the intermission of fifteen minutes in the middle of the forenoon was called, he told her that her school opened very well. "Big recess" was the intermission from twelve o'clock till half-past one. In that time the children ate their dinners and then scattered to play in the large grassy yard or in the shade of the adjoining woods. Elvira won their hearts by going out and playing prisoners' base and two or three other games with them. When she rang the bell again, the children said, "It's books now," meaning the time allotted to study and recitation, came in red and panting, and, with the energy generated by violent exercise, got out their books and turned to their lessons as if they meant to learn everything there. But as their blood cooled their efforts relaxed, and they were soon looking idly around the school-room for some source of entertainment. When Elvira called up a class to recite, the children at their seats looked and listened with absorbed interest, till reminded by their teacher that they had lessons of their own to learn. There was another "little recess" in the afternoon; then, at half-past four, school closed, or "broke," as the children called it, and they rushed forth with their empty dinner-buckets in hand, laughing and shouting and chasing each other as they started home. Some of the little girls waited to say good-by to the school-ma'am and to kiss her, and one of them said, in a shamefaced way, "I like you real well."

When all had gone, Elvira sprinkled and swept the floor and put her own desk in order. Then, locking the door, she went over to Sapp's cabin, which was to be her home for a while.

Mrs. Sapp rose up from the quilt she was quilting, and, greeting Elvira cordially, invited her to lay off her things--meaning her hat and cloak--and take a chair. Mary was in the kitchen, a small shed-room attached to the cabin, getting supper. Elvira looked around her. The hewn logs which formed the walls were well chinked in the cracks, and neatly whitewashed. A home-made rag carpet covered the floor. Two beds stood foot to foot in the back part of the room, and a third in the corner by the fireplace. On the wall, over the beds, hung various articles of clothing,--a dozen calico dresses, several pairs of pantaloons, and coats, turned wrong side out. In the corner, between the window and the fireplace, stood a bureau, covered with a white muslin cloth, the borders ornamented with open-work made by drawing out the horizontal threads in narrow strips and knotting the others together in various patterns. Over the mantel hung an almanac, and two highly-colored pictures representing a brunette beauty and a blonde, named Caroline and Matilda. Mrs. Sapp, meantime, was giving a biographical account of the school-children and their parents,--saying how Mrs. Brown was bound her two little girls should get some schooling, if she had to pay for it herself out of money she got by selling eggs and butter, and how the Sanders children didn't have any clothes in the world besides those they wore to school, except some old ragged ones, and how they had to change them at night as soon as they got home.

"I saw 'Tildy White at school to-day," she continued, "but I guess she won't get to come much. Her step-mother keeps her at home and makes her work, while her _own_ children can go all the time. The three Mays children were there too, but you needn't care whether they come regular or not: Mr. Mays is mighty poor pay, and I suppose you won't ever get your dues from him; but maybe Mr. Sapp can collect it off of him some way. And Bert Mowrer was there: he's a sassy boy. His folks don't make him mind at home at all, and 'most every teacher has trouble with him. Mr. Redding, the teacher we had last winter, licked him with a beech gad, and he behaved hisself after that. And there's Maggie Loper; her mother needs her at home real bad, but she'll get to come all summer. She's the only girl, and there are six grown boys; and the family set a heap o' store by Maggie."

This stream of talk was interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Sapp and the two boys; and soon after Mary called them all to supper. There was hardly space to pass between the stove and the table in the kitchen, and several splint-bottomed chairs had to be brought from the front room; but at last all were seated, and, after Mr. Sapp said grace, conversation began in a loud and cheerful tone. The plate of hot biscuits was first passed to Elvira, then the platter of fried ham, then the butter, the young radishes and onions, and later the blue bowl containing stewed dried apples. Mrs. Sapp poured out the hot coffee, saying, "Our folks want coffee three times a day, and want it pretty strong." The sugar-bowl, containing brown sugar, was passed around, that each one might sweeten his coffee according to his taste; then the cream-pitcher, full of rich cream. Mr. Sapp drank three cups of coffee, and ate in proportion, and frequently passed the meat and bread to Elvira, hospitably urging her to eat more.

After supper, Mrs. Sapp invited Elvira to come out and see her little chickens. She had sixty, all hatched within the last two or three weeks, and another hen would come off next week with a brood. "I've got some young turkeys, too," she said, "but they hain't done very well this spring, because it was so rainy. Two died, and I have to look after the others to keep 'em out of the wet grass." Then they looked at the garden, and Mrs. Sapp remarked that the boys must stick the peas right off, went on to the milk-house,--a log shanty beyond the well,--and finally came back to the sitting-room, where, as there was yet an hour of daylight, Mrs. Sapp sat down to the quilting-frame. Elvira borrowed a thimble and assisted her, having only to ply her needle and listen. The stream of talk ran on the subject of quilts, the various patterns in which they were pieced and quilted, the Rising Sun, the Lion's Paw, and the Star of Bethlehem being Mrs. Sapp's favorites. From the pile resting on a chair between the two beds at the back of the cabin, quilts representing these patterns were brought and unfolded for Elvira to admire; and each one had reminiscences connected with it which she must hear. One was pieced when Jack was a baby, one was Mary's work and property, and another was quilted in one day by the neighbor women on the occasion of a quilting-bee, which Mrs. Sapp proceeded to describe in all its particulars.

As darkness settled down, the other members of the family came in from their various chores, and, as the evenings were yet cool, a fire was made in the fireplace. Then, seating himself by one of the jambs, Mr. Sapp opened the spelling-book, and, calling Charley into the middle of the floor, pronounced one row of words after another for him to spell, until several pages had been gone over and not a single word missed, greatly to the pride and admiration of the father. But by nine o'clock the fire got low, and the family began to yawn. It was time to go to bed, and, without saying good-night, the different members retired to their allotted quarters,--Mr. and Mrs. Sapp to the bed by the fireplace, Jack and Charley to one bed in the back part of the room, and Mary and the school-ma'am to the other.

Thus, with few variations, the days passed until the first week of school had gone. Elvira became better acquainted with her pupils, with the Sapp family, and, through them, with the news and gossip of the neighborhood. One evening she found Mary, who was a young woman grown and older than herself, standing outside the back door, crying bitterly, while her mother stood by, talking to her with the air of one who could be liberal in some views and yield many points, but who felt that a firm stand must be made somewhere. On explanation, it appeared that Mary wanted to go to the nearest station on the railroad and ride to the next station east, a distance of thirteen miles, for the purpose of making a visit; but Mrs. Sapp was not willing that she should do so, giving as her objection that there was so much danger in riding on the cars, adding that if Mary would wait till corn-planting was over, her father would take her through in a wagon. She had never been on the cars herself, and could not give her consent for one of her family to enter upon such risks. So Mary, with much disappointment, had to give up her proposed visit for the time.

When Friday evening came, Elvira walked home to Hill's Station, feeling that she had made a good beginning in her new work, and related to her grandmother all the incidents of the week. On Saturday she went about among the neighbors, who were most of them farmers, to see if she could hire a horse for the summer. All the good horses, however, were in constant use, and could not be spared by their owners. At last, one farmer said that he had a horse which wasn't worth much at its best, and just now had a sore head, so that he had put it out to pasture for the summer on a farm several miles distant. She could have it to use, and be welcome, if she would provide pasturage for it and give it now and then a few ears of corn. Elvira accepted the offer gratefully, and he promised to have it at Hill's Station for her by another Saturday. She boarded at Sapp's another week, and after that rode from home every morning and back every night. Her steed did not seem to have an arch or curve in its whole body, but to be made up of straight lines and angles. It reminded her of the corn-stalk horses she used to make when a little girl. Its favorite gait was a slow walk, with its head in a drooping dejected attitude, and sometimes it came to an entire stand-still, as if it had reached its journey's end. When she was about to meet some one, or heard wheels coming behind her, she tried to urge it into a spirited trot, and to rein it in so that its neck would have some slight appearance of a curve; but it only threw its nose into the air, presenting a longer straight line than before, and, after trotting a little way, it came to a sudden pause about the time the people passed or met her. More than once she heard them laugh and felt her face burn. If she had not known better days, she had at least known better horses, and was aware that her steed presented a sorry appearance. The only time it displayed any life was in the morning, when she came to catch and saddle it. Then it trotted repeatedly around the pasture-lot, occasionally sticking its head over the top rails, as if it had a notion to jump the fence and run away. During the day it fed on the grass in the school-house yard, and every day at noon she took it over to Sapp's, drew water from their well, and gave it as many bucketfuls as it would drink. Elvira carried her dinner, consisting generally of bread and butter, cold meat, and pie, in a little basket hung on the horn of the saddle, and sometimes, when she had been trotting, found on reaching school that part of it had fallen out on the way.

The road over which she passed every morning and evening grew familiar to her, even to the individual trees, the mossy old stumps, the fence-corners over-grown with wild vines. The life of the farm-houses, as daily presented to her, furnished perpetual entertainment. She came to know every member of every family by sight, and to associate certain traits of character with them. Some two-story white houses stood back from the road in the retirement of fruit- and shade-trees, and seemed reserved and dignified; other smaller houses were only a few steps removed, and had their wood-piles on the side of the road. One little new cabin in the corner of a strip of woods especially interested Elvira. It was the home of a lately-married pair, young folks full of energy and ambition. The husband chopped down trees, ploughed, or ditched his land, as if he were working for a wager, and the wife was equally active and industrious. Her bright tin milk-pans were out sunning early every morning, her churning and ironing were done in the cool part of the forenoons, her front yard was always neatly swept, and the borders were bright with balsams, petunias, and other flowers.

Then the world of nature unfolded every day something fresh to the solitary rider,--the blue depths of summer sky in which great masses of dazzling white clouds were heaped, the thick beech woods, where it was always cool and pleasant, the swamps, with their spicy fragrance, their variety of growth, and their slow-running streams of clear brown water. The blossoming blue-flags of May gave way in June to the fragrant wild roses, and these were followed in July and August by ripe raspberries and blackberries, which grew plentifully along the fence-corners and could be had for the picking.