Chapter V (1)

When Gluck found that Schwartz did not come back, he was very sorry, and did not know what to do. He had no money, and was obliged to go and hire himself again to the goldsmith, who worked him very hard, and gave him very little money. So, after a month or two, Gluck grew tired, and made up his mind to go and try his fortune with the Golden River. "The little king looked very kind," thought he. "I don't think he will turn me into a black stone." So he went to the priest, and the priest gave him some holy water as soon as he asked for it. Then Gluck took some bread in his basket, and the bottle of water, and set off very early for the mountains.

If the glacier had occasioned a great deal of fatigue to his brothers, it was twenty times worse for him, who was neither so strong nor so practised on the mountains. He had several very bad falls, lost his basket and bread, and was very much frightened at the strange noises under the ice. He lay a long time to rest on the grass, after he had got over, and began to climb the hill just in the hottest part of the day. When he had climbed for an hour, he got dreadfully thirsty, and was going to drink like his brothers, when he saw an old man coming down the path above him, looking very feeble, and leaning on a staff. "My son," said the old man, "I am faint with thirst; give me some of that water." Then Gluck looked at him, and when he saw that he was pale and weary, he gave him the water; "Only pray don't drink it all," said Gluck. But the old man drank a great deal, and gave him back the bottle two thirds empty. Then he bade him good speed, and Gluck went on again merrily. And the path became easier to his feet, and two or three blades of grass appeared upon it, and some grasshoppers began singing on the bank beside it; and Gluck thought he had never heard such merry singing.

Then he went on for another hour, and the thirst increased on him so that he thought he should be forced to drink. But, as he raised the flask, he saw a little child lying panting by the roadside, and it cried out piteously for water. Then Gluck struggled with himself and determined to bear the thirst a little longer; and he put the bottle to the child's lips, and it drank it all but a few drops. Then it smiled on him, and got up, and ran down the hill; and Gluck looked after it, till it became as small as a little star, and then turned, and began climbing again. And then there were all kinds of sweet flowers growing on the rocks, bright green moss, with pale pink starry flowers, and soft-belled gentians, more blue than the sky at its deepest, and pure white transparent lilies. And crimson and purple butterflies darted hither and thither, and the sky sent down such pure light that Gluck had never felt so happy in his life.

Yet, when he had climbed for another hour, his thirst became intolerable again; and, when he looked at his bottle, he saw that there were only five or six drops left in it, and he could not venture to drink. And as he was hanging the flask to his belt again, he saw a little dog lying on the rocks, gasping for breath,--just as Hans had seen it on the day of his ascent. And Gluck stopped and looked at it, and then at the Golden River, not five hundred yards above him; and he thought of the dwarf's words, "that no one could succeed, except in his first attempt"; and he tried to pass the dog, but it whined piteously, and Gluck stopped again. "Poor beastie," said Gluck, "it'll be dead when I come down again, if I don't help it." Then he looked closer and closer at it, and its eye turned on him so mournfully that he could not stand it. "Confound the King and his gold too," said Gluck; and he opened the flask, and poured all the water into the dog's mouth.

The dog sprang up and stood on its hind legs. Its tail disappeared, its ears became long, longer, silky, golden; its nose became very red, its eyes became very twinkling; in three seconds the dog was gone, and before Gluck stood his old acquaintance, the King of the Golden River.

"Thank you," said the monarch; "but don't be frightened, it's all right"; for Gluck showed manifest symptoms of consternation at this unlooked-for reply to his last observation. "Why didn't you come before," continued the dwarf, "instead of sending me those rascally brothers of yours, for me to have the trouble of turning into stones? Very hard stones they make, too."

"O dear me!" said Gluck, "have you really been so cruel?"

"Cruel," said the dwarf, "they poured unholy water into my stream; do you suppose I'm going to allow that?"

"Why," said Gluck, "I am sure, sir,--your Majesty, I mean,--they got the water out of the church font."

"Very probably," replied the dwarf; "but," and his countenance grew stern as he spoke, "the water which has been refused to the cry of the weary and dying is unholy, though it had been blessed by every saint in heaven; and the water which is found in the vessel of mercy is holy, though it had been defiled with corpses."

So saying, the dwarf stooped and plucked a lily that grew at his feet. On its white leaves hung three drops of clear dew. And the dwarf shook them into the flask which Gluck held in his hand. "Cast these into the river," he said, "and descend on the other side of the mountains into the Treasure Valley. And so good speed."

As he spoke, the figure of the dwarf became indistinct. The playing colors of his robe formed themselves into a prismatic mist of dewy light; he stood for an instant veiled with them as with the belt of a broad rainbow. The colors grew faint, the mist rose into the air; the monarch had evaporated.

And Gluck climbed to the brink of the Golden River, and its waves were as clear as crystal and as brilliant as the sun. And when he cast the three drops of dew into the stream, there opened where they fell, a small circular whirlpool, into which the waters descended with a musical noise.

Gluck stood watching it for some time, very much disappointed, because not only the river was not turned into gold, but its waters seemed much diminished in quantity. Yet he obeyed his friend the dwarf, and descended the other side of the mountains, toward the Treasure Valley; and, as he went, he thought he heard the noise of water working its way under the ground. And when he came in sight of the Treasure Valley, behold, a river, like the Golden River, was springing from a new cleft of the rocks above it, and was flowing in innumerable streams among the dry heaps of red sand.

And as Gluck gazed, fresh grass sprang beside the new streams, and creeping plants grew, and climbed among the moistening soil. Young flowers opened suddenly along the river sides, as stars leap out when twilight is deepening, and thickets of myrtle, and tendrils of vine, cast lengthening shadows over the valley as they grew. And thus the Treasure Valley became a garden again, and the inheritance, which had been lost by cruelty, was regained by love.

And Gluck went and dwelt in the valley, and the poor were never driven from his door; so that his barns became full of corn, and his house of treasure. And, for him, the river had, according to the dwarf's promise, become a River of Gold.

And to this day the inhabitants of the valley point out the place where the three drops of holy dew were cast into the stream, and trace the course of the Golden River under the ground, until it emerges in the Treasure Valley. And, at the top of the cataract of the Golden River, are still to be seen two BLACK STONES, round which the waters howl mournfully every day at sunset; and these stones are still called, by the people of the valley,

THE BLACK BROTHERS.

THE LADY OF SHALOTT.

BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.

It is not generally known that the Lady of Shalott lived last summer in an attic, at the east end of South Street.

The wee-est, thinnest, whitest little lady! And yet the brightest, stillest, and withal such a smiling little lady!

If you had held her up by the window,--for she could not hold up herself,--she would have hung like a porcelain transparency in your hands. And if you had said, laying her gently down, and giving the tears a smart dash, that they should not fall on her lifted face, "Poor child!" the Lady of Shalott would have said, "O, don't!" and smiled. And you would have smiled yourself, for very surprise that she should outdo you; and between the two there would have been so much smiling done that one would have fairly thought it was a delightful thing to live last summer in an attic at the east end of South Street.

This perhaps was the more natural in the Lady of Shalott because she had never lived anywhere else.

When the Lady of Shalott was five years old, her mother threw her down stairs one day, by mistake, instead of the whiskey-jug.

This is a fact which I think Mr. Tennyson has omitted to mention in his poem.

They picked up the Lady of Shalott and put her on the bed; and there she lay from that day until last summer, unless, as I said, somebody had occasion to use her for a transparency.

The mother and the jug both went down the stairs together a few years after, and never came up at all,--and that was a great convenience, for the Lady of Shalott's palace in the attic was not large, and they took up much unnecessary room.

Since that the Lady of Shalott had lived with her sister, Sary Jane.

Sary Jane made nankeen vests, at sixteen and three quarters cents a dozen.

Sary Jane had red hair, and crooked shoulders, and a voice so much like a rat-trap which she sometimes set on the stairs that the Lady of Shalott could seldom tell which was which until she had thought about it a little while. When there was a rat caught, she was apt to ask "What?" and when Sary Jane spoke, she more often than not said, "There's another!"

Her crooked shoulders Sary Jane had acquired from sitting under the eaves of the palace to sew. That physiological problem was simple. There was not room enough under the eaves to sit straight.

Sary Jane's red hair was the result of sitting in the sun on July noons under those eaves, to see to thread her needle. There was no question about that. The Lady of Shalott had settled it in her own mind, past dispute. Sary Jane's hair had been--what was it? brown? once. Sary Jane was slowly taking fire. Who would not, to sit in the sun in that palace? The only matter of surprise to the Lady of Shalott was that the palace itself did not smoke. Sometimes, when Sary Jane hit the rafters, she was sure that she saw sparks.

As for Sary Jane's voice, when one knew that she made nankeen vests at sixteen and three quarters cents a dozen, that was a matter of no surprise. It never surprised the Lady of Shalott.

But Sary Jane was very cross; there was no denying that; very cross.

And the palace. Let me tell you about the palace. It measured just twelve by nine feet. It would have been seven feet post,--if there had been a post in the middle of it. From the centre it sloped away to the windows, where Sary Jane had just room enough to sit crooked under the eaves at work. There were two windows and a loose scuttle to let in the snow in winter and the sun in summer, and the rain and wind at all times. It was quite a diversion to the Lady of Shalott to see how many different ways of doing a disagreeable thing seemed to be practicable to that scuttle. Besides the bed on which the Lady of Shalott lay, there was a stove in the palace, two chairs, a very ragged rag-mat, a shelf with two notched cups and plates upon it, one pewter teaspoon, and a looking-glass. On washing-days Sary Jane climbed upon the chair and hung her clothes out through the scuttle on the roof; or else she ran a little rope from one of the windows to the other for a drying-rope. It would have been more exact to have said on washing-nights; for Sary Jane always did her washing after dark. The reason was evident. If the rest of us were in the habit of wearing all the clothes we had, like Sary Jane, I have little doubt that we should do the same.

I should mention that there was no sink in the Lady of Shalott's palace; no water. There was a dirty hydrant in the yard, four flights below, which supplied the Lady of Shalott and all her neighbors. The Lady of Shalott kept her coal under the bed; her flour, a pound at a time, in a paper parcel, on the shelf, with the teacups and the pewter spoon. If she had anything else to keep, it went out through the palace scuttle and lay on the roof. The Lady of Shalott's palace opened directly upon a precipice. The lessor of the house called it a flight of stairs. When Sary Jane went up and down she went sidewise to preserve her balance. There were no bannisters to the precipice, and about once a week a baby patronized the rat-trap, instead. Once, when there was a fire-alarm, the precipice was very serviceable. Four women and an old man went over. With one exception (she was eighteen, and could bear a broken collar-bone), they will not, I am informed, go over again.

The Lady of Shalott paid one dollar a week for the rent of her palace.

But then there was a looking-glass in the palace. I think I noticed it. It hung on the slope of the rafters, just opposite the Lady of Shalott's window,--for she considered that her window at which Sary Jane did not make nankeen vests at sixteen and three quarters cents a dozen.

Now, because the looking-glass was opposite the window at which Sary Jane did _not_ make vests, and because the rafters sloped, and because the bed lay almost between the looking-glass and the window, the Lady of Shalott was happy. And because, to the patient heart that is a seeker after happiness, "the little more, and how much it is!" (and the little less, what worlds away!) the Lady of Shalott was proud as well as happy. The looking-glass measured in inches 10 X 6. I think that the Lady of Shalott would have experienced rather a touch of mortification than of envy if she had known that there was a mirror in a house just round the corner measuring almost as many feet. But that was one of the advantages of being the Lady of Shalott. She never parsed life in the comparative degree.

I suppose that one must be the Lady of Shalott to understand what comfort there may be in a 10 X 6 inch looking-glass. All the world came for the Lady of Shalott into her looking-glass,--the joy of it, the anguish of it, the hope and fear of it, the health and hurt,--10 X 6 inches of it exactly.

"It is next best to not having been thrown down stairs yourself!" said the Lady of Shalott.

To tell the truth, it sometimes occurred to her that there was a monotony about the world. A garret window like her own, for instance, would fill her sight if she did not tip the glass a little. Children sat in it, and did not play. They made lean faces at her. They were locked in for the day and were hungry. She could not help knowing how hungry they were, and so tipped the glass. Then there was the trap-door in the sidewalk. She became occasionally tired of that trap-door. Seven people lived under the sidewalk; and when they lifted and slammed the trap, coming in and out, they reminded her of something which Sary Jane bought her once, when she was a very little child, at Christmas time,--long ago, when rents were cheaper and flour low. It was a monkey, with whiskers and a calico jacket, who jumped out of a box when the cover was lifted; and then you crushed him down and hasped him in. Sometimes she wished that she had never had that monkey, he was so much like the people coming in and out of the sidewalk.

In fact, there was a monotony about all the people in the Lady of Shalott's looking-glass. If their faces were not dirty, their hands were. If they had hats, they went without shoes. If they did not sit in the sun with their heads on their knees, they lay in the mud with their heads on a jug.

"Their faces look blue!" she said to Sary Jane.

"No wonder!" snapped Sary Jane.

"Why?" asked the Lady of Shalott.

"Wonder is we ain't all dead!" barked Sary Jane.

The people in the Lady of Shalott's glass died, however, sometimes,--often in the summer; more often last summer, when the attic smoked continually, and she mistook Sary Jane's voice for the rat-trap every day.

The people were jostled into pine boxes (in the glass), and carried away (in the glass) by twilight, in a cart. Three of the monkeys from the spring-box in the sidewalk went, in one week, out into the foul, purple twilight, away from the looking-glass, in carts.

"I'm glad of that, poor things!" said the Lady of Shalott, for she had always felt a kind of sorrow for the monkeys. Principally, I think, because they had no glass.

When the monkeys had gone, the sickly twilight folded itself up, over the spring-box, into great feathers, like the feathers of a wing. That was pleasant. The Lady of Shalott could almost put out her fingers and stroke it, it hung so near, and was so clear, and gathered such a peacefulness into the looking-glass.

"Sary Jane, dear, it's very pleasant," said the Lady of Shalott. Sary Jane said it was very dangerous, the Lord knew, and bit her threads off.

"And, Sary Jane, dear!" added the Lady of Shalott, "I see so many other pleasant things."

"The more fool you!" said Sary Jane.

But she wondered about it that day over her tenth nankeen vest. What, for example, _could_ the Lady of Shalott see?

"Waves!" said the Lady of Shalott, suddenly, as if she had been asked the question. Sary Jane jumped. She said, "Nonsense!" For the Lady of Shalott had only seen the little wash-tub full of dingy water on Sunday nights, and the dirty little hydrant (in the glass) spouting dingy jets. She would not have known a wave if she had seen it.

"But I see waves," said the Lady of Shalott. She felt sure of it. They ran up and down across the glass. They had green faces and gray hair. They threw back their hands, like cool people resting, and it seemed unaccountable, at the east end of South Street last summer, that anything, anywhere, if only a wave in a looking-glass, could be cool or at rest. Besides this, they kept their faces clean. Therefore the Lady of Shalott took pleasure in watching them run up and down across the glass. That a thing could be clean, and green, and white, was only less a wonder than cool and rest last summer in South Street.

"Sary Jane, dear," said the Lady of Shalott, one day, "how hot _is_ it up here?"

"Hot as Hell!" said Sary Jane.

"I thought it was a little warm," said the Lady of Shalott. "Sary Jane, dear, isn't the yard down there a little--dirty?"

Sary Jane put down her needle, and looked out of the blazing, blindless window. It had always been a subject of satisfaction to Sary Jane, somewhere down below her lean shoulders and in the very teeth of the rat-trap, that the Lady of Shalott could not see out of that window. So she winked at the window, as if she would caution it to hold its burning tongue, and said never a word.

"Sary Jane, dear," said the Lady of Shalott, once more, "had you ever thought that perhaps I was a little--weaker--than I was--once?"

"I guess you can stand it if I can!" said the rat-trap.

"O, yes, dear," said the Lady of Shalott. "I can stand it if you can."

"Well, then!" said Sary Jane. But she sat and winked at the bald window, and the window held its burning tongue.

It grew hot in South Street. It grew very hot in South Street. The lean children in the attic opposite fell sick, and sat no longer in the window making faces, in the Lady of Shalott's glass.

Two more monkeys from the spring-box were carried away one ugly twilight in a cart. The purple wing that hung over the spring-box lifted to let them pass; and then fell, as if it had brushed them away.

"It has such a soft color!" said the Lady of Shalott, smiling.

"So has nightshade!" said Sary Jane.

One day a beautiful thing happened. One can scarcely understand how a beautiful thing _could_ happen at the east end of South Street. The Lady of Shalott herself did not entirely understand.

"It is all the glass," she said.

She was lying very still when she said it. She had folded her hands, which were hot, to keep them quiet too. She had closed her eyes, which ached, to close away the glare of the noon. At once she opened them, and said:--

"It is the glass."

Sary Jane stood in the glass. Now Sary Jane, she well knew, was not in the room that noon. She had gone out to see what she could find for dinner. She had five cents to spend on dinner. Yet Sary Jane stood in the glass. And in the glass, ah! what a beautiful thing!

"Flowers!" cried the Lady of Shalott aloud. But she had never seen flowers. But neither had she seen waves. So she said, "They come as the waves come." And knew them, and lay smiling. Ah! what a beautiful, beautiful thing!

Sary Jane's hair was fiery and tumbled (in the glass), as if she had walked fast and far. Sary Jane (in the glass) was winking, as she had winked at the blazing window; as if she said to what she held in her arms, Don't tell! And in her arms (in the glass), where the waves were--oh! beautiful, beautiful! The Lady of Shalott lay whispering: "Beautiful, beautiful!" She did not know what else to do. She dared not stir. Sary Jane's lean arms (in the glass) were full of silver bells; they hung out of a soft green shadow, like a church tower; they nodded to and fro; when they shook, they shook out sweetness.

"Will they ring?" asked the Lady of Shalott of the little glass.

I doubt, in my own mind, if you or I, being in South Street, and seeing a lily of the valley (in a 10 X 6 inch looking-glass) for the very first time, would have asked so sensible a question.

"Try 'em and see," said the looking-glass. Was it the looking-glass? Or the rat-trap? Or was it--

O, the beautiful thing! That the glass should have nothing to do with it, after all! That Sary Jane, in flesh and blood, and tumbled hair, and trembling, lean arms, should stand and shake an armful of church towers and silver bells down into the Lady of Shalott's little puzzled face and burning hands!

And that the Lady of Shalott should think that she must have got into the glass herself, by a blunder,--as the only explanation possible of such a beautiful thing!

"No, it isn't glass-dreams," said Sary Jane, winking at the church towers, where they made a solemn, green shadow against the Lady of Shalott's bent cheek. "Smell 'em and see. You can 'most stand the yard with them round. Smell 'em and see! It ain't the glass; it's the Flower Charity."

"The what?" asked the Lady of Shalott slowly.

"The Flower Charity."

"Heaven bless it!" said the Lady of Shalott. But she said nothing more.

She laid her cheek over into the shadow of the green church towers. "And there'll be more," said Sary Jane, hunting for her wax. "There'll be more, whenever I can call for 'em,--bless it!"

"Heaven bless it!" said the Lady of Shalott again.

"But I only got a lemon for dinner," said Sary Jane.

"Heaven bless it!" said the Lady of Shalott, with her face hidden under the church towers. But I don't think that she meant the lemon, though Sary Jane did.

"They _do_ ring," said the Lady of Shalott by and by. She drew the tip of her thin fingers across the tip of the tiny bells. "I thought they would."

"Humph!" said Sary Jane, squeezing her lemon under her work-box. "I never see your beat for glass-dreams. What do they say? Come, now!"

Now the Lady of Shalott knew very well what they said. Very well! But she only drew the tips of her poor fingers over the tips of the silver bells. Clever mind! It was not necessary to tell Sary Jane.

But it grew hot in South Street. It grew very hot in South Street. Even the Flower Charity (bless it!) could not sweeten the dreadfulness of that yard. Even the purple wing above the spring-box fell heavily upon the Lady of Shalott's strained eyes, across the glass. Even the gray-haired waves ceased running up and down and throwing back their hands before her; they sat still, in heaps upon a blistering beach, and gasped for breath. The Lady of Shalott herself gasped sometimes, in watching them.

One day she said: "There's a man in them."

"A _what_ in _which_?" buzzed Sary Jane. "Oh! There's a man across the yard, I suppose you mean. Among them young ones, yonder. I wish he'd stop 'em throwing stones, plague on 'em! See him, don't you?"

"I don't see the children," said the Lady of Shalott, a little troubled. Her glass had shown her so many things strangely since the days grew hot. "But I see a man, and he walks upon the waves. See, see!"

The Lady of Shalott tried to pull herself up upon the elbow of her calico night-dress, to see.

"That's one of them Hospital doctors," said Sary Jane, looking out of the blazing window. "I've seen him round before. Don't know what business he's got down here; but I've seen him. He's talkin' to them boys now, about the stones. There! He'd better! If they don't look out, they'll hit--"

"_O, the glass! the glass!_"

The Hospital doctor stood still; so did Sary Jane, half risen from her chair; so did the very South Street boys, gaping in the gutter, with their hands full of stones, such a cry rang out from the palace window.

"_O, the glass! the glass! the glass!_"

In a twinkling the South Street boys were at the mercy of the South Street police; and the Hospital doctor, bounding over a beachful of shattered, scattered waves, stood, out of breath, beside the Lady of Shalott's bed.

"O the little less, and what worlds away!"

The Lady of Shalott lay quite still in her little brown calico night-gown [I cannot learn, by the way, that Bulfinch's studious and in general trustworthy researches have put him in possession of this point. Indeed, I feel justified in asserting that Mr. Bulfinch never so much as _intimated_ that the Lady of Shalott wore a brown calico night-dress]--the Lady of Shalott lay quite still, and her lips turned blue.

"Are you very much hurt? Where were you struck? I heard the cry, and came. Can you tell me where the blow was?"

But then the doctor saw the glass, broken and blown in a thousand glittering sparks across the palace floor; and then the Lady of Shalott gave him a little blue smile.

"It's not me. Never mind. I wish it was. I'd rather it was me than the glass. O, my glass! my glass! But never mind. I suppose there'll be some other--pleasant thing."

"Were you so fond of the glass?" asked the doctor, taking one of the two chairs that Sary Jane brought him, and looking sorrowfully about the room. What other "pleasant thing" could even the Lady of Shalott discover in that room last summer, at the east end of South Street?

"How long have you lain here?" asked the sorrowful doctor, suddenly.

"Since I can remember, sir," said the Lady of Shalott, with that blue smile. "But then I have always had my glass."

"Ah!" said the doctor, "the Lady of Shalott!"

"Sir?" said the Lady of Shalott.

"Where is the pain?" asked the doctor, gently, with his finger on the Lady of Shalott's pulse.

The Lady of Shalott touched the shoulder of her brown calico night-dress, smiling.

"And what did you see in your glass?" asked the doctor, once more stooping to examine "the pain."

The Lady of Shalott tried to tell him, but felt confused; so many strange things had been in the glass since it grew hot. So she only said that there were waves and a purple wing, and that they were broken now, and lay upon the floor.

"Purple wings?" asked the doctor.

"Over the sidewalk," nodded the Lady of Shalott. "It comes up at night."

"Oh!" said the doctor, "the malaria. No wonder!"

"And what about the waves?" asked the doctor, talking while he touched and tried the little brown calico shoulders. "I have a little girl of my own down by the waves this summer. She--I suppose she is no older than you!"

"I am seventeen, sir," said the Lady of Shalott. "Do they have green faces and white hair? Does she see them run up and down? I never saw any waves, sir, but those in my glass. I am very glad to know that your little girl is by the waves."

"Where you ought to be," said the doctor, half under his breath. "It is cruel, cruel!"

"What is cruel?" asked the Lady of Shalott, looking up into the doctor's face.

The little brown calico night-dress swam suddenly before the doctor's eyes. He got up and walked across the floor. As he walked he stepped upon the pieces of the broken glass.

"O, don't!" cried the Lady of Shalott. But then she thought that perhaps she had hurt the doctor's feelings; so she smiled, and said, "Never mind."

"Her case could be cured," said the doctor, still under his breath, to Sary Jane. "The case could be cured yet. It is cruel!"

"Sir," said Sary Jane,--she lifted her sharp face sharply out of billows of nankeen vests,--"it may be because I make vests at sixteen and three quarters cents a dozen, sir; but I say before God there's something cruel somewheres. Look at her. Look at me. Look at them stairs. Just see that scuttle, will you? Just feel the sun in't these windows. Look at the rent we pay for this 'ere oven. What do you s'pose the meriky is up here? Look at them pisen fogs arisen' out over the sidewalk. Look at the dead as have died in the Devil in this street this week. Then look out here!"

Sary Jane drew the doctor to the blazing, blindless window, out of which the Lady of Shalott had never looked.

"Now talk of curin' her!" said Sary Jane.

The doctor turned away from the window, with a sudden white face.

"The Board of Health--"

"Don't talk to me about the Board of Health!" said Sary Jane.

"I'll talk to them," said the doctor. "I did not know matters were so bad. They shall be attended to directly. To-morrow I leave town--" He stopped, looking down at the Lady of Shalott, thinking of the little lady by the waves, whom he would see to-morrow, hardly knowing what to say. "But something shall be done at once. Meantime, there's the Hospital."

"She tried Horspital long ago," said Sary Jane. "They said they couldn't do nothing. What's the use? Don't bother her. Let her be."

"Yes, let me be," said the Lady of Shalott, faintly. "The glass is broken."

"But something must be done!" urged the doctor, hurrying away. "I will attend to the matter directly."

He spoke in a busy doctor's busy way. Undoubtedly he thought that he should attend to the matter directly.

"You have flowers here, I see." He lifted, in hurrying away, a spray of lilies that lay upon the bed, freshly sent to the Lady of Shalott that morning.

"They ring," said the Lady of Shalott, softly. "Can you hear? 'Bless--it! Bless--it!' Ah, yes, they ring!"

"Bless what?" asked the doctor, half out of the door.

"The Flower Charity," said the Lady of Shalott.

"Amen!" said the doctor. "But I'll attend to it directly." And he was quite out of the door, and the door was shut.

"Sary Jane, dear?" said the Lady of Shalott, a few minutes after the door was shut.

"Well!" said Sary Jane.

"The glass is broken," said the Lady of Shalott.

"Should think I might know that!" said Sary Jane, who was down upon her knees, sweeping shining pieces away into a pasteboard dust-pan.

"Sary Jane, dear?" said the Lady of Shalott again.

"Dear, dear!" echoed Sary Jane, tossing purple feathers out of the window and seeming, to the eyes of the Lady of Shalott, to have the spray of green waves upon her hands. "There they go!"

"Yes, there they go," said the Lady of Shalott. But she said no more till night.

It was a hot night for South Street. It was a very hot night for even South Street. The lean children in the attic opposite cried savagely, like lean cubs. The monkeys from the spring-box came out and sat upon the lid for air. Dirty people lay around the dirty hydrant; and the purple wing stretched itself a little in a quiet way, to cover them.

"Sary Jane, dear?" said the Lady of Shalott, at night. "The glass is broken. And, Sary Jane, dear, I am afraid I _can't_ stand it as well as you can."

Sary Jane gave the Lady of Shalott a sharp look, and put away her nankeen vests. She came to the bed.

"It isn't time to stop sewing, is it?" asked the Lady of Shalott, in faint surprise. Sary Jane only gave her sharp looks, and said,--

"Nonsense! That man will be back again yet. He'll look after ye, maybe. Nonsense!"

"Yes," said the Lady of Shalott, "he will come back again. But my glass is broken."

"Nonsense!" said Sary Jane. But she did not go back to her sewing. She sat down on the edge of the bed, by the Lady of Shalott; and it grew dark.

"Perhaps they'll do something about the yards; who knows?" said Sary Jane through the growing dark.

"But my glass is broken," said the Lady of Shalott.

"Sary Jane, dear!" said the Lady of Shalott, when it had grown quite, quite dark. "He is walking on the waves."

"Nonsense!" said Sary Jane. For it was quite, quite dark.

"Sary Jane, dear!" said the Lady of Shalott. "Not that man. But there _is_ a man, and he is walking on the waves."

The Lady of Shalott raised herself upon her little calico night-dress sleeve. She looked at the wall where the 10 X 6 inch looking-glass had hung.

"Sary Jane, dear!" said the Lady of Shalott. "I am glad that girl is down by the waves. I am very glad. But the glass is broken."

Two days after, the Board of Health at the foot of the precipice, which the lessor called a flight of stairs, which led into the Lady of Shalott's palace, were met and stopped by another board.

"_This_ one's got the right of way, gentlemen!" said something at the brink of the precipice, which sounded so much like a rat-trap that the Board of Health looked down by instinct at its individual and collective feet to see if they were in danger, and dared not by instinct stir a step.

The board which had the right of way was a pine board, and the Lady of Shalott lay on it, in her little brown calico night-dress, with Sary Jane's old shawl across her feet. The Flower Charity (Heaven bless it!) had half covered the old shawl with silver bells, and solemn green shadows, like the shadows of church towers. And it was a comfort to know that these were the only bells which tolled for the Lady of Shalott, and that no other church shadow fell upon her burial.

"Gentlemen," said the Hospital doctor, "we're too late, I see. But you'd better go on."

The gentlemen of the Board of Health went on; and the Lady of Shalott went on.

The Lady of Shalott went out into the cart that had carried away the monkeys from the spring-box, and the purple wing lifted to let her pass; and fell again, as if it had brushed her away.

The Board of Health went up the precipice, and stood by the window out of which the Lady of Shalott had never looked.

They sent orders to the scavenger, and orders to the Water Board, and how many other orders nobody knows; and they sprinkled themselves with camphor, and they went their ways.

And the board that had the right of way went its way, too. And Sary Jane folded up the shawl, which she could not afford to lose, and came home, and made nankeen vests at sixteen and three quarters cents a dozen in the window out of which the Lady of Shalott had never looked.

MARJORIE FLEMING.

BY JOHN BROWN, M.D.

One November afternoon in 1810,--the year in which "Waverley" was resumed and laid aside again, to be finished off, its last two volumes in three weeks, and made immortal in 1814, and when its author, by the death of Lord Melville, narrowly escaped getting a civil appointment in India,--three men, evidently lawyers, might have been seen escaping like school-boys from the Parliament House, and speeding arm in arm down Bank Street and the Mound, in the teeth of a surly blast of sleet.

The three friends sought the _bield_ of the low wall old Edinburgh boys remember well, and sometimes miss now, as they struggle with the stout west-wind.

The three were curiously unlike each other. One, "a little man of feeble make, who would be unhappy if his pony got beyond a foot pace," slight, with "small, elegant features, hectic cheek, and soft hazel eyes, the index of the quick, sensitive spirit within, as if he had the warm heart of a woman, her genuine enthusiasm, and some of her weaknesses." Another, as unlike a woman as a man can be; homely, almost common, in look and figure; his hat and his coat, and indeed his entire covering, worn to the quick, but all of the best material; what redeemed him from vulgarity and meanness were his eyes, deep set, heavily thatched, keen, hungry, shrewd, with a slumbering glow far in, as if they could be dangerous; a man to care nothing for at first glance, but, somehow, to give a second and not-forgetting look at. The third was the biggest of the three, and though lame, nimble, and all rough and alive with power; had you met him anywhere else, you would say he was a Liddesdale store-farmer, come of gentle blood; "a stout, blunt carle," as he says of himself, with the swing and stride and the eye of a man of the hills,--a large, sunny, out-of-door air all about him. On his broad and somewhat stooping shoulders was set that head which, with Shakespeare's and Bonaparte's, is the best known in all the world.

He was in high spirits, keeping his companions and himself in roars of laughter, and every now and then seizing them, and stopping, that they might take their fill of the fun; there they stood shaking with laughter, "not an inch of their body free" from its grip. At George Street they parted, one to Rose Court, behind St. Andrew's Church, one to Albany Street, the other, our big and limping friend, to Castle Street.

We need hardly give their names. The first was William Erskine, afterwards Lord Kinnedder, chased out of the world by a calumny, killed by its foul breath,--

"And at the touch of wrong, without a strife,
Slipped in a moment out of life."

There is nothing in literature more beautiful or more pathetic than Scott's love and sorrow for this friend of his youth.

The second was William Clerk,--the _Darsie Latimer_ of "Redgauntlet"; "a man," as Scott says, "of the most acute intellects and powerful apprehension," but of more powerful indolence, so as to leave the world with little more than the report of what he might have been,--a humorist as genuine, though not quite so savagely Swiftian as his brother Lord Eldon, neither of whom had much of that commonest and best of all the humors, called good.

The third we all know. What has he not done for every one of us? Who else ever, except Shakespeare, so diverted mankind, entertained and entertains a world so liberally, so wholesomely? We are fain to say, not even Shakespeare, for his is something deeper than diversion, something higher than pleasure, and yet who would care to split this hair?

Had any one watched him closely before and after the parting, what a change he would see! The bright, broad laugh, the shrewd, jovial word, the man of the Parliament House and of the world, and, next step, moody, the light of his eye withdrawn, as if seeing things that were invisible; his shut mouth, like a child's, so impressionable, so innocent, so sad: he was now all within, as before he was all without; hence his brooding look. As the snow blattered in his face, he muttered, "How it raves and drifts! On-ding o' snaw,--ay, that's the word,--on-ding--" He was now at his own door, "Castle Street, No. 39." He opened the door, and went straight to his den; that wondrous workshop, where, in one year, 1823, when he was fifty-two, he wrote "Peveril of the Peak," "Quentin Durward," and "St. Ronan's Well," besides much else. We once took the foremost of our novelists, the greatest, we would say, since Scott, into this room, and could not but mark the solemnizing effect of sitting where the great magician sat so often and so long, and looking out upon that little shabby bit of sky, and that back green where faithful Camp lies.[1]

[Footnote 1: This favorite dog "died about January, 1809, and was buried, in a fine moonlight night, in the little garden behind the house in Castle Street. My wife tells me she remembers the whole family in tears about the grave, as her father himself smoothed the turf above Camp with the saddest face she had ever seen. He had been engaged to dine abroad that day, but apologized on account of the death of 'a dear old friend.'"--_Lockhart's Life of Scott_.]

He sat down in his large, green morocco elbow-chair, drew himself close to his table, and glowered and gloomed at his writing apparatus, "a very handsome old box, richly carved, lined with crimson velvet, and containing ink-bottles, taper-stand, etc., in silver, the whole in such order that it might have come from the silversmith's window half an hour before." He took out his paper, then, starting up angrily, said, "'Go spin, you jade, go spin.' No, d---- it, it won't do:--

'My spinnin'-wheel is auld and stiff;
The rock o't wunna stand, sir;
To keep the temper-pin in tiff
Employs ower aft my hand, sir.'

I am off the fang.[2] I can make nothing of 'Waverley' to-day; I'll awa' to Marjorie. Come wi' me, Maida, you thief." The great creature rose slowly, and the pair were off, Scott taking a _maud_ (a plaid) with him. "White as a frosted plum-cake, by jingo!" said he, when he got to the street. Maida gambolled and whisked among the snow; and her master strode across to Young Street, and through it to 1 North Charlotte Street, to the house of his dear friend, Mrs. William Keith of Corstorphine Hill, niece of Mrs. Keith of Ravelston, of whom he said at her death, eight years after, "Much tradition, and that of the best, has died with this excellent old lady, one of the few persons whose spirits and _cleanliness_ and freshness of mind and body made old age lovely and desirable."

[Footnote 2: Applied to a pump when it is dry and its valve has lost its "fang."]

Sir Walter was in that house almost every day, and had a key, so in he and the hound went, shaking themselves in the lobby. "Marjorie! Marjorie!" shouted her friend, "where are ye, my bonnie wee croodlin doo?" In a moment a bright, eager child of seven was in his arms, and he was kissing her all over. Out came Mrs. Keith. "Come yer ways in, Wattie." "No, not now. I am going to take Marjorie wi' me, and you may come to your tea in Duncan Roy's sedan, and bring the bairn home in your lap." "Tak' Marjorie, and it _on-ding o' snaw!_" said Mrs. Keith. He said to himself, "On-ding--that's odd--that is the very word." "Hoot, awa'! look here," and he displayed the corner of his plaid, made to hold lambs,--the true shepherd's plaid, consisting of two breadths sewed together, and uncut at one end, making a poke or _cul de sac_. "Tak' yer lamb," said she, laughing at the contrivance; and so the Pet was first well happit up, and then put, laughing silently, into the plaid neuk, and the shepherd strode off with his lamb,--Maida gambolling through the snow, and running races in her mirth.

Didn't he face "the angry airt," and make her bield his bosom, and into his own room with her, and lock the door, and out with the warm, rosy little wifie, who took it all with great composure! There the two remained for three or more hours, making the house ring with their laughter; you can fancy the big man's and Maidie's laugh. Having made the fire cheery, he set her down in his ample chair, and, standing sheepishly before her, began to say his lesson, which happened to be, "Ziccotty, diccotty, dock, the mouse ran up the clock, the clock struck wan, down the mouse ran, ziccotty, diccotty, dock." This done repeatedly till she was pleased, she gave him his new lesson, gravely and slowly, timing it upon her small fingers,--he saying it after her,--

"Wonery, twoery, tickery, seven;
Alibi, crackaby, ten, and eleven;
Pin, pan, musky, dan;
Tweedle-um, twoddle-um,
Twenty-wan; eerie, orie, ourie,
You, are, out."

He pretended to great difficulty, and she rebuked him with most comical gravity, treating him as a child. He used to say that when he came to Alibi Crackaby he broke down, and pin-Pan, Musky-dan, Tweedle-um, Twoddle-um made him roar with laughter. He said _Musky-Dan_ especially was beyond endurance, bringing up an Irishman and his hat fresh from the Spice Islands and odoriferous Ind; she getting quite bitter in her displeasure at his ill behavior and stupidness.

Then he would read ballads to her in his own glorious way, the two getting wild with excitement over "Gil Morrice" or the "Baron of Smailholm"; and he would take her on his knee, and make her repeat Constance's speeches in "King John," till he swayed to and fro, sobbing his fill. Fancy the gifted little creature, like one possessed, repeating,--

"For I am sick, and capable of fears,--
Oppressed with wrong, and, therefore, full of fears;
A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;
A woman, naturally born to fears."

"If thou, that bidst me be content, wert grim,
Ugly, and slanderous to thy mother's womb,--
Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious--"

Or, drawing herself up "to the height of her great argument,"--

"I will instruct my sorrows to be proud,
For grief is proud, and makes his owner stout.
Here I and sorrow sit."

Scott used to say that he was amazed at her power over him, saying to Mrs. Keith, "She's the most extraordinary creature I ever met with, and her repeating of Shakespeare overpowers me as nothing else does."

Thanks to the little book whose title heads this paper, and thanks still more to the unforgetting sister of this dear child, who has much of the sensibility and fun of her who has been in her small grave these fifty and more years, we have now before us the letters and journals of Pet Marjorie: before us lies and gleams her rich brown hair, bright and sunny as if yesterday's, with the words on the paper, "Cut out in her last illness," and two pictures of her by her beloved Isabella, whom she worshipped; there are the faded old scraps of paper, hoarded still, over which her warm breath and her warm little heart had poured themselves; there is the old watermark, "Lingard, 1808." The two portraits are very like each other, but plainly done at different times; it is a chubby, healthy face, deep-set, brooding eyes, as eager to tell what is going on within as to gather in all the glories from without; quick with the wonder and the pride of life: they are eyes that would not be soon satisfied with seeing; eyes that would devour their object, and yet childlike and fearless; and that is a mouth that will not be soon satisfied with love; it has a curious likeness to Scott's own, which has always appeared to us his sweetest, most mobile, and speaking feature.

There she is, looking straight at us as she did at him,--fearless, and full of love, passionate, wild, wilful, fancy's child. One cannot look at it without thinking of Wordsworth's lines on poor Hartley Coleridge:--

"O blessed vision, happy child!
Thou art so exquisitely wild,
I thought of thee with many fears,--
Of what might be thy lot in future years.
I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest,
Lord of thy house and hospitality;
And Grief, uneasy lover! ne'er at rest
But when she sat within the touch of thee.
O too industrious folly!
O vain and causeless melancholy!
Nature will either end thee quite,
Or, lengthening out thy season of delight,
Preserve for thee, by individual right,
A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flock."

And we can imagine Scott, when holding his warm, plump little playfellow in his arms, repeating that stately friend's lines:--

"Loving she is, and tractable, though wild;
And Innocence hath privilege in her,
To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes
And feats of cunning, and the pretty round
Of trespasses, affected to provoke
Mock chastisement and partnership in play.
And, as a fagot sparkles on the hearth
Not less if unattended and alone
Than when both young and old sit gathered round
And take delight in its activity,
Even so this happy creature of herself
Is all-sufficient; solitude to her
Is blithe society: she fills the air
With gladness and involuntary songs."

But we will let her disclose herself. We need hardly say that all this is true, and that these letters are as really Marjorie's as was this light brown hair; indeed, you could as easily fabricate the one as the other.