Chapter VII (5)

Peter Alrichs also came down to the quay with his pretty daughter, who could no longer keep her secret. "Good Nanking," she whispered, "is building a nest for a real stork. He has found one, just like the dear creatures in Holland!"

The news was presently dispersed, and all felt an interest, until finally Nanking produced his stork.

"It is like a stork, indeed!" uttered Peter Alrichs; "'tis big as one, too, but its wings are all white!"

"'Tis a stork, _yah, op myne eer_! Upon my honor, it is!" muttered uncle Van Swearingen.

"Nanking is not an idiot, papa!" said Elsje, overjoyed.

The widow was delighted at the enterprise of her son.

When Nanking had carried the great bird to the nest he made a little speech:

"Worshipful masters and good people all, I have been at great pains to get this stork, not for my own gratification entirely, though there are some here I expect to please particularly. (He looked at Elsje and his mother.) This stork will pick up the offal and eat it, and we shall have no more bad fevers here for want of a good scavenger. By and by he will bring more storks, and they will multiply; and every house, however humble, shall have its own stork family to ornament the chimney-top and remind us of our dear native land. I have done all this good with the hope of being useful, and now I hope nobody will call me wicked names any more."

Nanking cut the fastenings on the bird and set it on the new-made nest. In a minute the stork stood up on its short legs, poked its beautiful head and neck into the air, and with its wings struck Nanking so heavy a blow that it knocked him off the roof of the house, but happily the fall did not hurt him. As he arose the huge bird was spreading its wings for flight. Before Nanking could climb the ladder again, it was sailing through the air, magnificent as a ship, toward its winter pastures on the bay of Chisopecke.

"_He! Zoo!_" exclaimed the soldiers.

"_Foei! weg!_" cried the fishermen.

Only three persons said "_Ach! helas!_"--the Widow Cloos, pretty Elsje, and Nanking.

"Thy stork is a savage bird!" cried Peter Alrichs. "The English on the Chisopecke name it a _swan_!"

Nanking burst into tears. His uncle struck the ground with his schout's staff, swore dreadfully, and shouted to the Widow Cloos:

"Sister, thy boy is nothing but a big idiot. Thou hadst better drown him, as I told thee!"

Nothing could equal the mortification of Nanking. He thought he would die of grief. He was now known to be more of an idiot than ever, and the fickle Miss Elsje would not let him hold her doll for a whole week.

"My poor son," entreated the widow, "do not pine and lose courage! The venison will feed us half the winter. You can help me smoke it and dry it. Do not give up your sweet simple faith, my boy! As long as you keep that we are rich!"

The next day Schout Van Swearingen, the great dignitary, came in and said to Nanking: "As you are a big idiot and good for nothing else, I will give you an office. Even there you will be a failure, for you are too simple to steal any thing."

Nanking's mother was happy to hear this, and to see her son in a linsey-woolsey coat with large brass buttons, and six pairs of breeches--the gift of the city of Amsterdam--stride up the streets of New Amstel, with copper buckles in his shoes and his hair tied in an eel-skin queue. The schout, his uncle, who was sheriff and chief of police in one, marched him up to the jail and presented him with a beautiful plaything--a handle of wood with nine leather whip-lashes upon the end of it. "Your duties will be light," said the schout. "Every man you flog will give your mother a fee. Come here with me and begin your labors!"

In the open space before the jail and _stadt huys_ were a pair of stocks and a whipping-post. Nanking's uncle released a rough but light-built man, who had been sitting in the stocks, and taking off the man's jacket and shirt, fastened him to the post by his wrists.

"Give this culprit fifty lashes, well laid on!" ordered the schout.

Nanking turned pale. "Must I whip him? What has he been doing that he is wicked?"

"Smuggling!" exclaimed Schout Van Swearingen. "He has taken advantage of the free port of New Amstel to smuggle to the Swedes of Altona and New Gottenburg, and the English of Maryland. Mark his back well!"

The sailor, as he seemed to be, looked at Nanking without fear. "Come, earn your money," he said.

"Uncle," cried Nanking, throwing down the whip, "how can I whip this man who never injured me? Do not all the people smuggle in New Amstel? Was it not to stop that which brought the mighty Director Stuyvesant hither with the great schout of New Amsterdam, worshipful Peter Tonneman? Yes, uncle, I have heard the people say so, and that you have smuggled yourself ever since your superior, the glorious Captain Hinoyossa, sailed to Europe."

"Ha!" exclaimed the bold smuggler. "Van Swearingen, _dat is voor u_! That is for you!"

"_Vore God_!" exclaimed the schout; "am I exposed and mocked by this idiot?"

He took up the whip and beat Nanking so hard that the strong young man had to disarm his uncle of the instrument. Then, stripped of his fine clothes and restored to his rags, Nanking was returned with contempt to his mother's house.

"Mother!" he cried, throwing himself upon the floor, "am I an idiot because I cannot hurt others? No, I will be a fool, but not whip-master!"

The shrewd Peter Alrichs came to the widow's abode and asked to see Nanking. He brought with him the worshipful Beeckman, lord of all South River, except New Amstel's little territory, which reached from Christine Hill to Bombay Hook. They both put long questions to Nanking, and he showed them his burnt heel, still scarred by the fagots of the Susquehannocks.

"_Ik houd dat voor waar!_ I believe it is true," they said to each other. "They were burning him at the stake and he did not know it. Yes, his feeble mind saved him!"

"Not at all," protested Nanking. "It was because I thought no evil of anybody."

"Hearken, Nanking!" said Peter Alrichs, very soberly. "And you, Mother Cloos, come hither too. This boy can make our fortunes if we can make him fully comprehend us."

"Yah, mynheers!"

"He can return in safety to the land of the Susquehannocks, where no other Dutchman can go and live. Thence, down the great river of rocks and rapids, come all the valuable furs. Of these we Dutch on South River receive altogether only ten thousand a year. Nanking must take some rum and bright cloth to his friends, the chiefs, and make them promise to send no more furs to the English of Chisopecke, but bring them to Head-of-Elk. There we will make a treaty, and Nanking and thee, widow, shall have part of our profits."

"_Zeer wel!_" cried Nanking. "That is very well. But Elsje, may I marry her, too?"

"Well," said Peter Alrichs, smiling, "you can come to see her sometimes and carry her doll."

"Good enough!" cried Nanking, overjoyed.

Before Nanking started on his trip, the sailor-man he had refused to whip walked into his mother's house.

"Widow Cloos, no doubt," he said, bowing. "Madame, I owe your son a service. Here are three petticoats and a pair of blue stockings with red clocks; for I see that your ankles still have a fine turn to them."

The widow courtesied low; for she had not received a compliment in seven years.

Nanking now began to show his leg also, as modestly as possible.

"Ah! Nanking," cried the sailor, "I have a piece of good Holland stuff for you to make you shirts and underclothes. 'Tis a pity so good a boy has not a rich father; ha! widow?"

The widow stooped very low again, but had the art to show her ankle to the best advantage, though she blushed. She said it was very lonely for her in the New World.

"Now, Widow Cloos," continued the sailor, "I am Ffob Oothout, at your service! I am a mariner. Some years ago, when Jacob Alrichs was our director, I helped to build this great warehouse with my own hands. They were good men, then, in charge of New Amstel's government. Thieves and jealous rogues have succeeded them. Would you think it, they suspect even me, and ordered Nanking to whip me with the cat! But for Nanking I should have a bloody back at this minute, and you would be wiping the brine out of it for me, I do not doubt!"

Nanking had gone out meantime, seeing that he was to get no clock-stockings.

"Widow, come hither," said the sailor. "Do you know I like this big barn of a warehouse. It is my handicraft, you know, and that attaches me to it. Well, you say nothing to anybody, and let me sleep in the river end. In a little while the noble veteran, Alexander D'Hinoyosso, will be due from Holland on the ship Blue Cock. Then we will all have good protection. In that ship are lots of supplies of mine. Of evenings we can court and drink liquor of my own mulling. And when the Blue Cock comes to port you shall have more petticoats and high-heeled shoes than any beauty in New Amstel."

Ffob Oothout stole a couple of kisses from the widow, like a bold sailor-man, and she promised that he should lodge in the river end of the Amsterdam warehouse.

For the rest of that afternoon Nanking carried Elsje's beautiful doll, and his feelings were very much comforted.

"Big sweetheart," she said, "what a smart man you would be if you could only make me a bigger doll than this, which would open and shut its eyes and cry '_fus_; hush!'"

Nanking left New Amstel at moonlight, at the head of a little procession, carrying gay cloths and plenty of rum for the Susquehannocks. The last words Peter Alrichs said to him were: "You must talk wisely, Nanking. It is a mighty responsibility you have on this errand. Remember Elsje!"

Next morning Nanking pushed off in a boat, all alone, from the Head-of-Elk, and rowed under the blue bar of mountain into the Chisopecke, and turned up the creek below the rocky mouth of the great river toward the council-fire retreat of the fierce Susquehannocks. As he was about to step ashore a band of Englishmen confronted him, with swords and muskets.

"Whom art thou?" cried their leader, a stalwart man, with long mustaches.

"Only Nanking Cloos, mynheers, who used to be the big idiot of New Amstel. But," he added, with confidence, "I am now a great man on a very responsible mission to the Indians. I am to talk much and wisely. They are to send to New Amstel thousands of furs and peltries, and I am to give them this rum and finery!"

"He talks beautifully," exclaimed the English; and the chief man added:

"Nanking, I know thee well. Thy mother is the pretty widow in the house by the river. I am Colonel Utye, who swore so dreadfully when I summoned New Amstel to surrender. Come ashore, Nanking."

Nanking felt very proud to be recognized thus and receive such compliments for his mother. The English poured out a big flagon of French brandy and gravely drank his health, touching their foreheads with their thumbs. The brandy elated and exalted Nanking very much.

"Nanking," said Colonel Utye, "we desire to spare thee a long journey and much danger. Leave here thy rum and presents, and return to thy patrons, Alrichs and Beeckman, bearing our English gratitude, and thou shalt wear a beautiful hat, such as the King of England allows only his jester to put upon his head."

Nanking felt very much obliged to these kind gentlemen. They made the hat of the red cloth he had brought. It was like a tall steeple on a house, and was at least three feet long. As proud as possible he re-entered New Amstel on the evening of the day after he left it. It was now within a few days of Christmas, and the Dutch burghers and boors, and Swedes, English and Finns, were anticipating that holiday by assembling at the two breweries which the town afforded, and quaffing nightly of beer. Beeckman and Alrichs were interested in the largest brewery, and their beer was sent by Appoquinimy in great hogsheads to the English of Maryland in exchange for butts of tobacco.

As Nanking walked into the big room where fifty men were drinking, his prodigious red hat rose almost to the ceiling, and was greeted by roars of laughter.

"_Goeden avond! Hoe yaart gij!_ How do you do, my bully?"

Nanking bowed politely, and singling out Beeckman and Alrichs, stood before them with child-like joy.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I gave all your presents to the noble Colonel Utye, who sends his deepest gratitude, and presented me with this exalted cap in acknowledgment of my capacity."

"Thou idiot!" exclaimed Beeckman; "'tis a dunce's cap!"

"Dunder and blitzen!" swore Peter Alrichs, "hast thou lost all our provision and made fools of us, too?"

They struck the dunce's cap off Nanking's head with their staves, and threw their beer in his face.

"Two hundred guilders are we out of pocket," cried both these great men. "Was ever such a brainless dolt in our possessions?"

The room rang with the cry, "Incurable idiot!" and Gerrit Van Swearingen cried louder than any, "Go drown thyself, and spare thy mother shame!"

"Then I shall not marry Elsje?" exclaimed Nanking, bursting into tears.

"No!" stormed Peter Alrichs; "thou shalt marry a calf. Away!"

When Nanking arrived home he found his mother sitting very close to Ffob Oothout. He told his tale with a broken heart.

"My man," exclaimed the rough sailor, in his kindest tone, but still very rough, "take this advice from me: Whatever thou believest, tell it not. Where thy head is weak, hold thy teeth tight. Then thou canst still have faith in many things, and make no grief."

The next day the Blue Cock sailed into the roadstead and the fort thundered a salute. Fort and vessel dipped the tricolor flag of the States-General and the municipal banner of Amsterdam. Beeckman surrendered all the country on South River to Hinoyossa, who came ashore very drunk and very haughty, and threatened to set up an empire for himself and fit out privateers against the world.

"Let him lose no time," muttered Ffob Oothout; "the English have doomed these Western Netherlands!"

Amidst the festivity Nanking was in a condition of despair. He had seen Elsje on the street and she turned up her nose at him. Christmas was only one day off, and Santa Claus, the Swede boys insisted, never came to the sorrowing shores of New Amstel.

"My uncle Gerrit was right," thought Nanking. "I had better drown myself. Yes; I will watch on Christmas eve for Santa Claus. I will give him plenty of time to come. He is the patron saint of children, and if he neglects poor, simple boys in this needful place, there is no truth in any thing. On Christmas morning I will fall into the river without any noise. My mother will cry, perhaps, but nobody else, and they will all say, 'It was better that the big idiot should be drowned; he had not sense enough to keep out of the water.'"

Nanking spent half the day watching the chimneys of his mother's house. Both chimneys were precisely alike in form and capacity, and the largest in the place. But the chimney next the river did not retain the dark, smoky, red color of the chimney on the land side.

"No wonder," thought Nanking, "for no fire nor smoke has been made in that river chimney for years. It almost seems that the bricks therein are oozing out their color and growing pale and streaked."

Night fell while he was watching. Nanking hid himself upon the roof of the house, determined to see if Saint Nicholas ever came to bless children any more by descending into chimneys, or was only a myth.

It was a little cold, and under the moonlight the frost was forming on the marshes and fields. The broad, remorseless river flowed past with nothing on its tide except the two or three vessels tied to the river bank, of which the Blue Cock was directly under the widow's great dwelling. From the town came sounds of revelry and wassail, of singing and quarrel, and from the church on Sand Hook softer chanting, where the women were twining holly and laurel and mistletoe. Nanking lay flat on the roof, with his face turned toward the sky. The moon went down and it grew very dark.

"Lord of all things," he murmured, "forgive my rash intention and comfort my poor mother!"

The noise of the town died on the night air, and every light went out. Nanking said to himself, "Is it Christmas at all, out in this lonely wilderness of the world? Is it the same sky which covers Holland, and are these stars as gentle as yonder, where all are rich and happy?"

He heard a noise. A voice whispered, just above the edge of the chimney on the river gable: "_Fus-s-s! Pas op!_"

"What is that?" thought Nanking; "somebody saying, 'Hist! be careful?' Surely I see something moving on the chimney, like a living head."

The voice whispered again: "_Maak hast! Kom hier!_" Or, "Hasten! Come here!"

Nanking raised up and made a noise.

"_Wie komt, daar_?" demanded the voice, and in a minute repeated: "_Wie sprecht, daar_?"

They ask, "Who comes and who speaks?" said Nanking. "Blessed be the promises of heaven! It is Santa Claus!"

Then he heard movements at the chimney, and people seemed to be ascending and descending a ladder. There seemed, also, to be noises on the deck of the Blue Cock, and sounds of falling burdens and spoken words: "Maak plaats!" or make room for more.

"I never heard of Santa Claus stopping so long at one humble house," thought Nanking.

After awhile all sounds ceased. Nanking crept to the chimney and touched it with his hand. It had no opening whatever in the top.

He felt around this mysterious chimney. "He! Zoo!" he said aloud, "there is more wood here than brick. 'Tis a false chimney altogether!"

Then he saw that his close observation had not been at fault. The chimney over the river gable was a painted chimney, a mere invention. Yet, surely Santa Claus had been there.

After a time Nanking opened the top and side of this chimney as if they were two doors. He found it packed with goods of all kinds--a ton at least.

"I will run and awaken my mother," he thought. "But no. Did not Ffob Oothout tell me to blab no secrets and shut my teeth tight? I will tell nobody. These costly things are all mine; for there are no other boys in this whole dwelling but Nanking Cloos, the fatherless idiot!"

He slipped down and hastened to his boat, which lay in a cove not far below. Towing it along the bank to a sheltered place convenient, Nanking began to load up the goods from the chimney. Before daylight broke he had secured every thing, and hoisting sail was speedily carried to the island of the Pea Patch, far down the bay--that island which shone in the offing and seemed to close the river's mouth. Here, in the wreck of an old galiot, he hid every article dry and secure; kegs of liquors and wine, shawls and blankets, pieces of silk, gunpowder, beautiful pipes, bars of silver and copper, and a whole bag of gold. Nanking covered them with dry driftwood and boughs of trees, and sailed again to New Amstel, where he arrived before breakfast.

At breakfast Nanking found upon his bench a beautiful new gun.

"It is thine, good child," said Ffob Oothout, "for sparing me those lashes. Thy churlish uncle felt so reproved by thy innocent words that he set me free. Widow, here is a _spiegel_ for thee, a looking-glass to see, unseen, whoever passes up or down the street. That is a woman's high privilege everywhere. Thou shalt be, erelong, the best-dressed wife in all New Amstel. Nanking, wouldst thou like to have a father?"

"I would like you, Ffob Oothout, for a father."

"Widow," said Ffob, "he has popped the question for me; wilt thou take an old pirate for thy man?"

"They are all pirates here," replied the blushing widow, "and thou art the best pirate or man I have seen."

"Well, then, when the English conquer this region I have that will make thee rich. Till then let us wait on the good event, but not delay the marriage."

That Christmas Day they were married in form. As the three sat before the fresh venison and drank wine from the store of the Blue Cock, Nanking said:

"Father Ffob, you are wise. Give me yet another word of advice, that I may not continue to be a big idiot."

"Trust whom thou wilt, Nanking, yet ever hold thy tongue. If thou hast now a secret, hold it close. Begin this instant!"

"Even the secrets of Santa Claus?"

"Yes, even them."

Nanking said no more. He found compensation for Elsje's contumely in his gun, and roved the forests through, and peeped from time to time at his mystic treasures.

One day the news came overland that the English had taken New Amsterdam. Then the great Hinoyossa and uncle Van Swearingen and Alrichs and Beeckman swore dreadfully, and said they would fight to the last man. Ffob Oothout went around amongst the Swedes and the citizen Dutch, and prepared them to take the matter reasonably.

One day in October of that same wonderful year, 1664, two mighty vessels of war, flying the English flag, came to anchor off New Amstel and the fort. They parleyed with the citizens for a surrender, and Ffob Oothout conducted the negotiations. The citizens were to receive protection and property. The fort replied by a cannon. Then the English soldiery landed and formed their veteran lines. They charged the ramparts and broke down the palisades, and killed three Dutchmen and wounded ten more. Proclamation was made that New Amstel should for all the future be named New-_castle_, and that Gerrit Van Swearingen, the refractory schout, should yield up his noble property to Captain John Carr, of the invaders, and Peter Alrichs lose every thing for the benefit of the fortunate William Tom.

The English soldiery proceeded to make barracks of the Amsterdam warehouse. The first night they inhabited it they strove to light a fire under the wooden chimney in the river gable. The chimney caught fire and burnt out like an old hollow barrel.

"Wife," exclaimed Ffob Oothout, looking grimly on, "in that chimney was all my property and thine. Poor boy," he said to Nanking, "we must all be poor together now."

"No," cried Nanking, "I have yet the gifts of Santa Claus which I took from that chimney on the night before Christmas. Yours, father, may be burnt. Mine are all safe!"

He sailed his father and mother to the island since called the Pea Patch, and Ffob Oothout recognized his property.

"Wonderful Nanking!" he cried, "thy faith was all the wisdom we had. God protects the simple! Thou art our treasure."

The great Hinoyossa condignly fled to Maryland. Uncle Van Swearingen was exported to Holland, and in the dwelling of Peter Alrichs the family of Ffob Oothout made their abode.

"Nanking," asked the houseless Alrichs, "is not Elsje pretty yet?"

"Not as pretty," answered Nanking, "as my little baby sister. I will carry nobody's doll but hers."

"Humph!" said Peter Alrichs, "you are not the big idiot I took you for!"

A BAYSIDE IDYL.

Basking on the Choptank pleasant Cambridge lies
In the humid atmosphere under fluttered skies,
And the oaks and willows their protection fling
Round the court-house cluster and the public spring.

There the streets are cleanly and they meet oblique,
Forced upon each other by the village creek
Winding round the ancient lawns, till the site appears
Like a moated fortress crumbling down with years.

Round the town the oysters grow within the coves,
And the fertile cornfields bearing yellow loaves;
And the wild duck flying o'er the parish spire
Fall into the graveyard when the fowlers fire?

There the old armorial stones dwellers seldom read;
There the ivy clambers like the rankest weed;
There the Cambridge lawyers sometimes scale the wall
To the grave of Helen, loveliest of all.

Even here the fairest of the little band
Strangers call the fairest girls in Maryland,
Like the peach her color ere its dyes are fast,
And her form as slender as the virgin mast.

Like a vessel gliding with a net in tow,
Up the street of evenings Helen seemed to flow,
Leaving light behind her and a nameless spell
Murmured in the young men, like an ocean shell.

Made too early conscious of her power to charm,
Still unconscious ever love of men could harm,
Voices whispered to her: "Beauty rare as thine
Princes in the city never drank in wine!

"Hide it not in Cambridge! Cross the bay and see
How a world delighted hastes to honor thee.
Seek the fortune-teller and thy future hear;
There is empire yonder; there is thy career!"

Oh, the sad ambition and the speedy dart!
He, the fortune-reader, read poor Helen's heart;
And a face created for the hearthstone's light--
Fishers tell its ruin as they scud by night.

Whisper, whisper, whisper! leaf and wave and grass;
Look not sidewise, maiden, as the place you pass.
If you hear a restless spirit when you pray,
'Tis the voice that tempted Helen o'er the bay.

SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON'S NIGHT.

An extraordinary story, some say the recital of a dream, or scenes in somnambulism, is that of Andrew Waples, of Horntown, Va. He visited Saratoga twenty years ago, well-to-do, the owner of slaves, sloops, lands, and fisheries, and visits it now upon an income of $2000 a year, derived from boiling down fish into phosphates for the midland markets. He preserves, however, the habit and appearance of old days: that is to say, his chin is folded away under his lip like a reef in a mainsail; his cheek-bones hide his ears, so tusky and prominent are the former, and tipped with a varnish of red, like corns on old folks' feet; he has a nose which is so long and bony that it seems to have been constructed in sections, like a tubular bridge, and to communicate with itself by relays of sensation. A straight, mournful, twinkling, yet aristocratic man was Andrew Waples, "befo' de waw, sah! befo' de waw!"

He had no sooner arrived at Saratoga than he met some ancient boon companions, who took him off to the lake, exploded champagne, filled his lungs with cigar-smoke, and sent him to bed, the first night, with a decided thirst and no occasion to say his prayers. For it was Andrew's intention, being a mournful man of the Eastern Shore, to pray on every unusual occurrence. Piety is relative as well as real, but Andrew Waples on this occasion jumped into bed, said hic and amen, and "times befo' de waw," and went to sleep in the somnorific air of the Springs.

He awoke with a dry throat, a disposition to faint and surrender his stomach, and an irresistible propensity to walk abroad and drink of the waters. He looked at his watch: it was two o'clock, and Saturday night. "Alas!" said Andrew Waples aloud, "the bars are closed. Even Morrissey has gone to bed, and the club-house is in darkness, but perhaps I can climb over the gate of some spring company, or find a fountain uninclosed. Yes, there is the High Rock Spring!"

He drew on his clothes partly, slipped his feet in slippers, and wrote on a piece of paper, which he conspicuously posted on the gas bracket:

"Andrew Waples, Gentleman (befo' de waw), departed from the United States Hotel, at two o'clock A. M., precisely. If any accident happens to him, seek at the High Rock Spring, or thereabouts."

It was a sad, green, ghostly moonlight streaming through the elms as Andrew Waples walked up Broadway. The moon appeared to be dredging for oysters amongst the clouds, circling around there by bars, islets, and shoals. Bits of spotted and mackerel-back sky swam like hosts of menhaden through the pearly sheen of the more open aërial main. The leaves of the tall domes and kissing branches of the elms, that peeped on either side into open windows of people asleep and told across the street to each other the secrets there, were now themselves heavy as if with surfeit of gossip and they drooped and hardly rustled. Not a tipsy waiter lurked in the shadows, not a skylarking couple of darkey lovers whispered on doorsteps. No birds, nor even crickets, serenaded the torpid night. The shuffling feet of Andrew Waples barely made watch-dogs growl in their dreams, and started his own heart with the concussions they produced on the arborescent and deeply-shadowed aisles of the after midnight. He saw the town-hall clock pallidly illuminated above its tower. The low frame villa of Chancellor Walworth, cowering amongst the pine-trees, expressed the burden of parricidal blood that had of late oppressed its memories. There were no murmurs from the court-room where Judge Barnard had been tried, but its deep silence seemed from the clock to tick: "Removed! disqualified!" and "Disqualified! removed!"

Turning from Broadway to lesser streets of cheap hotels and plain boarding cottages, where weary women and girls had drudged all day long, and washerwomen moaned and fluting and ruffling were the amusements of the poor, Andrew Waples became haunted with the idea that Saratoga was poisoned, that every soul in the village was dead, and that he was to be the last man of the century to drink of the Springs. Nature and night were in the swoon of love or death. Parting their drowsy curtains went Waples through the muffled echoes, impelled by nothing greater than a human thirst.

He saw his shadow, at length, fall down the steep stairs of the valley of High Rock Spring, as he stood at the top of the steps uncovered to the moon. It was a shadow nearly a hundred feet long, a high-cheeked head without a chin and all nose, like the profile of a mountain. But what was extraordinary was the total absence of an abdominal part to Mr. Waples' exaggerated shadow, for he distinctly saw a young maple-tree, in perfect moonlight, grow through the cavity where his stomach ought to have been.

"I must be hollow," said Andrew, as he looked,--"the frame of a stomach removed; for surely my whole figure is in blackness, except my bread-basket." But his fears were dissipated by the sound of voices, of glasses clinking and water running, and the evident semblance of life at the High Rock Spring in the ravine beneath, to which the steep stairs descended. At the same moment he descried another shadow propelled alongside his own, as if from some far distance in the rear a human object was slowly advancing to stand beside him.

There were very old wooden houses around this precipice or promontory of Saratoga, some of them a hundred years old, and decrepit and in ruins; for here, at the High Rock, was the original fountain of the village. As if from the cover of one of these old and decaying tenements came a person of venerable aspect, with a tray of glasses fastened to the top of a staff, like a great caster of bottles on a broomstick. As this person stood by the side of Andrew Waples, and planted his staff on the top step of the stairs, his prolonged shadow, falling in the valley, gave him the appearance of a gigantic Neptune, with a trident in his hand.

"Hallo!" exclaimed Mr. Waples, "are you a town scavenger, to be up at this time of the clock?"

The man replied, after a very curious and explosive sound of his lips, like the extraction of a cork from a bottle, "No, sir; I'm only the Great Dipper."

"Very good," resumed Mr. Waples. "Then, perhaps, you'll explain to me a very great optical delusion, or tell me that I'm drunk. Do you see our two shadows as they fall yonder on the ground, and amongst the tree-tops? Now, if I have any eyes in my head, there is a stomach in your shadow and no stomach whatever in mine."

"Quite right," answered the Great Dipper. "You are the mere rim of a former stomach. Abdominally, you are defunct."

Andrew Waples put his hand instinctively where his stomach was presumed to be, and he saw the hand of his shadow distinctly imitate the motion, and repeat it through his empty centre.

"This is Sir William Johnson's night," remarked the Great Dipper. "We have a large company of guests on this anniversary, and no gentleman is admitted with a stomach, nor any lady with a character. My whole force of dippers is on to-night, and I must be spry."

As the venerable man spoke, and ceased to speak, exploding before and after each utterance, it occurred to Mr. Waples that his voice had a sort of mineral-water gurgle, which was very refreshing to a thirsty man's ears. He followed, therefore, down the flight of rickety stairs and stood in the midst of a promenading party of many hundred people, variously dressed and in the costumes of several generations.

The canopy or pavilion of the spring, which, like a fairy temple, seemed to have been exhaled from in bubbles, was yet capped, as in the broad light of day, by a gilded eagle, from whose beak was suspended a bottle of the water, and no other light was shed upon the scene than the silver and golden radiance emitted together from this bottle, as if ten thousand infinitely small goldfish floated there in liquid quicksilver. The spring itself, flowing over its ancient mound of lime, iron and clay, like the venerable beard over the Arabian prophet's yellow breast, shed another light as if through a veil fluttered the molten fire of some pulsating crater. The whole scene of the narrow valley, the group of springs, the sandy walks, dark foliage, and in closing ridges took a pale yellow hue from the effervescing water and the irradiant bottle in the eagle's beak. The people walking to and fro and drinking and returning, all carried their hands upon their stomachs or sides, and sighed amidst their flirtations. Mr. Waples saw, despite their garments, which represented a hundred years and more of all kinds, from Continental uniforms and hunting shirts to brocades, plush velvets, and court suits, that not a being of all the multitude contained an abdomen. He stopped one large and portly man, who was carried on a litter, and said:

"Have you a window through you, too, old chap?"

"'Sh!" exclaimed one of the supporters of the litter, who wore the feathers and attire of an Indian. "'Tis Sir William Johnson--he who receives to-night."

"Young man," exclaimed that great and first of Indian agents, "this is the spot where all people come to find their stomachs. Mine was lost one hundred and ten years ago. The Mohawks, my wards, then brought me through the forest to this spot. Faith! I was full of gout and humors, and took a drink from a gourd. One night in the year I walk from purgatory and quench my thirst at this font. The rest of the year I limp in the agonies of dyspepsia."

A large and short-set woman was walking in one of the paths, wearing almost royal robes, and her train was held up by a company of young gallants, some of whom whistled and trolled stanzas of foreign music. "Can you tell me her name!" asked Waples, speaking to a bystander.

"It is Madame Rush, the daughter of the banker who rivalled Girard. She was a patroness of arts and letters in her day, full of sentiment."

"But disguised in a stomacher!" interrupted our friend. The lady passed him as he spoke, and, looking regretfully in his face, murmured:

"Avoid hot joints for supper! Terrapin must crawl again. Drink nothing but claret. Adieu!"

"Really," thought Andrew Waples, "this is a sort of mass meeting of human picture-frames. But here is one I know by his portrait--the god-like head, the oxen eyes, the majestic stalk of Daniel Webster." He was about to address this massive figure, when it turned and looked upon him with rolling orbs like diamonds in dark caves.

"Brandy," said the great man, "'tis the drink of a gentleman, and the stimulus of oratory. But public life requires a thousand stomachs. Who could have saved the Constitution on only one?"

"Poor ghost!" thought Andrew Waples. "Yet here is a milder man, also of mighty girth, like the frame of a mastodon, transparent. Your name, my friend?"

"John Meredith Clayton, of Delaware! I filled my paunch of midnights with chicken soup. I arose from bed to riot in gravy. Ye who have livers and intestines, think of my fame and fate!"

The old man sobbed as he receded, and Waples had only time to get a glimpse of the next trio before they were upon him.

"I agree with Commodore Vanderbilt," said the other, the wearer of a rubicund face, and great blue eyes. "My _forte_ was oysters and economy. I grew wondrous fat and conservative, and one day awoke with a stomach that exclaimed, 'I have become round, so that you can trundle me for the exercise you deprived me of.' Henceforward, not even the unequalled advantages of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad gave me pleasure. I live like a skeleton world, without an inner globe, without a paunch. Beware?"

"Well," cried Mr. Waples, "it is a singular thing that the conservative as well as the volatile lose their full habits. How is it with Colonel Tom Scott, I wonder?"

"No rest," exclaimed a full-necked man, "I eat at figures, and think in my sleeping car. Go slow, go fast, young man, 'But it is even, heads I win, stomach you lose!'"

The shaggy iron-gray whiskers and hair of Charles Sumner were well known to Mr. Waples, as that great Senator strutted down the maple paths. "You here, also!" shouted Mr. Waples.

"Ay!" answered the champion. "Freedom is not worth enjoying without the gastric juice. The taste of Château Yquem pursues me through eternity. There are times when Plymouth Rock is a pennyweight in value compared to High Rock at Saratoga, and all the acts of Congress foolish beside a pint of Congress water!"

A tall and elegant man came by and said: "I was the reviver of the running turf. My stomach was tough as my four-in-hand. 'Twas Angostura nipped my bud. It was, by Saint Jerome!"

Another passer, with a dark skin and a merry twinkle, said: "Uncle John's under the weather to-night. But he can lay out another generation yet. While there's sleep there's hope. Cecil's the word! Give me me an order."

A tremendous fellow, with a foot a little gouty, gulped down a gallon of the water, and said: "Rufe Andrews never gives up while on that high rock he builds his church!"

"The way to eat a sheep's head," exclaimed a florid man, "is with plain sauce. Clams are not kind after nightfall. Champagne destroyed the coats of W. Wickham, Mayor of the _bon vivants_. _Sic transit_ overtook my rapid transit. Heigh-ho!"

"Hear me lisp a couplet," said the great poet Saxe. "Oh, how many a slip 'twixt the couplet and the cup! Abdomen dominates. When Homer had no paunch, he went blind."

"Halt! 'Sdeath! is't I, that once could put the whole Brazilian court to bed, who prowls these grounds for midnight water now? I am the Chevalier Webb. Who says it is dyspepsia? I will spit him upon my walking-staff."

"Ees! 'tis good drinkin' at the fount when one can naught sleep. Johnson, of Congress Spring, the resident cherub; that's my name. I tipped the rosy, and it tripped on me. What measure I used to take around the bread-basket!"

"The top of the foine midnight to you!" said Richard O'Gorman. "I'm here, my lords and gentle folk, to find a portion of my appetite. It was not so when I could lead a revolution in a cabbage garden."

So went past Uncle Dan Sanford and Father Farrell, and arm-in-arm, on mutual errands of thirst, Judge Hilton and Joseph Seligman.

"Shudge," said Seligman, "when you refushed me a room, it was only becaush you had no stummicks? Heigh, Shudge?"

"Ay, Joseph, me broth of a darlint," answered Hilton, "when a spalpeen has no stummick, he speaks without circum--spection. Ye can impty yer stummick wherever ye loike over the furniture, if ye'll fill this aching void."

So went the procession. All walking with hands laid heavily on their paunches, or where they used to be. Lovers had lost the light of interest from their eyes, wedded people the light of retrospection, statesmen the pride of intellect, princes and legates the pride of power. Wealth flashed in a thousand diamonds to contrast with the heavy eyes that had no vanity in them, and religion wore the asceticism of everlasting gloom instead of the hope of immortal life.

As Mr. Andrew Waples beheld these things, and felt his thirst impel him toward the fountain of the High Rock, he became sensible of a wonderful change in the proportions of that object. It had always been a mound or cone of sand, clay, magnesia, and lime, well oxidized, and made rusty-red by the particles of iron in the composition deposited with the other materials, through ages of overflow. It had never been above three feet in height, and of little more diameter than a man's stature. The water, flowing through its middle, sparkled and discharged diamond showers of bubbles, and ran down the ochre-besmeared sides, to disappear in the ground, the cavity through which it came not more than ten inches wide. Such had been the dimensions of the High Rock Spring.

But it was now a mountain, rising high in the air, and flowing crystal and gold, like a volcano in an eruption of jewels. The pyrites of sulphur and motes of iron, that formerly gleamed in the rills that trickled down its slopes, were now big as cascades, filled with carbuncles and rocks of amethyst. A mist of soft splendor, like the light of stars crushed to dust and diffused around the mountain's head, revealed an immense multitudes of people scaling the slopes, and drinking; and some were raising their hands to Heaven in praise, and some were drawing the water from the mountain's base by flumes and troughs. This extensive prospect fell to a foreground of people, such as Mr. Waples had been mingling with, and these were clamoring and supplicating for water faster than a hundred dippers there could pass it up. The dippers were of all garbs and periods, from Indians and rustics to boys in cadet uniform. The vessels with which they dipped were of all shapes and metals, from conch shells and calabashes to cups of transparent china, and goblets of gold and silver. Amongst the dippers, conspicuous by his benevolent face and clothing of a butternut color, was the Great Dipper himself, directing operations.

"Drink freely!" he exclaimed, "for the night is going by. Sir William Johnson has ordered his litter, and the company is breaking up. Drink while you may, for the sun is soon to arise, and ye who have no stomachs will be exposed and disgraced."

"Hark ye! old friend," whispered Andrew Waples to the Great Dipper, "are there here people alive, as well as dead people, and why do they fear exposure?"

The Great Dipper replied: "Nobody can be said to live who has lost his stomach. We make no other distinction here. There are thousands who have lost them, however, and who deceive mankind. Even these, you perceive, who drink at the High Rock Spring, flirt while they feel unutterable gloom, and so are dead women above the ground tied to living men, and men without a human hope of health mated to joyous beauty and animation."

It seemed at this point that Mr. Waples shrank away down to the ground, and the Great Dipper loomed up high as the mountain of High Rock. His drinking glasses were as large as Mr. Waples' body; he was a mighty giant, clad in colors like those of the overflowing mountain.

"Old chap," cried Mr. Waples, "methinks your clothing up there is of much age and tarnish. Tell me its material?"

A voice came down the long ravines of the mountain like rolling thunder. "It's calcareous tufa I'm a-wearing, wove on me by exudation and accretion in the past two thousand years."

At this point the head of the Great Dipper was quite invisible in the clouds, but the tray of glasses he carried, which were now big as barrels or full-sized casks, was set down on Mr. Waples' toe. As he sought to get out of the way a torrent of water washed him up and away, and he was spilled into one of the glasses; and then, as it appeared, he was raised an inconceivable distance in the air and plunged down like a bursted balloon from the sky to the sea, and he found himself immersed in mineral water and rapidly descending, against the current, toward the centre of the earth!

Before Mr. Waples could get his breath he was landed in a bar or shoal of mineral salt, which came nearly to the surface of the torrent in which he found himself, and the current of this torrent was ascending toward the surface, as full of mineral substances as a freshet is full of saw-logs. Explosions of gas, loud and rapid as the guns in a naval battle, took place on every side. The walls of the inclosure made a large and almost regular cave or tunnel of blue marl, and in the contrary way from the course of the stream. Mr. Waples sank along the sides of the cave in the swash or backflow, until he arrived at a grand archway of limestone, riven from a mass of slate. A voice from the roof of the archway, whispering like a sigh of pain, articulated shrilly,

"Who goes back?"

Waples discerned, in the joint or junction of the arch a huge deformed object, whose hands were caught between the masses of stone, and he still desperately pulled to divide them, so that the torrent could escape through. The eyes of this object rolled in pain, but he gave no sign of relinquishing his hold, and again the painful whisper skipped through the abyss, "Who goes back from the alluvial?" Mr. Waples got a breathful of air from an explosion of bubbles, and boldly replied, "The Great Dipper's assistant."

"Tell him," whispered the hunchback in the roof, "that Priam, the Fault Finder, is holding the strata back, but wants the relief to come on three centuries hence, that I may spit upon my hands."

Mr. Waples had no time to reply, for a large bubble of carbonic acid gas burst at that moment, and blew him through the gap or "fault" of the rock, into the coldest and clammiest cavern he had ever trodden. From every part of the walls, ceilings, and floor exuded moisture, which flowed off in rills and large canals, until they formed the torrent that disappeared at the Fault Finder's Archway.

"Magnesia, faugh!" exclaimed Mr. Waples, unconscious that he was in the presence of somebody.

"You don't like Magnesia, then?" rejoined a large, spongy object on the floor, whose forehead perspired while he looked up through the chalky-white sockets of sightless eyes. "Why, he's a sixth part of all that's drunk at the springs. Here, I'll call him up. Come Magnesia! come Potash! come Lime, Soda, Lithia, and Baryta! Come ye all to the presence of Prince Saturation."

There glided to the Sponge's feet a number of leather-looking beings, of broad, circular faces, and to every face a tail was appended on the other side.

"The gentleman don't like our laboratory," exclaimed the Sponge, purring the while like a cat. "Apply your suckers to him, ye percolating angels, and draw him to the forests of Fernandes!"

Mr. Waples felt a hundred little wafers of suction take hold of his body, and a sense of great compression, as if he was being pulled through a mortar bed. He opened his eyes on the summit of a stalagmite in a vast thicket or swamp of overthrown and decaying trees. Birds of buried ages, whose long, bittern-like cries flopped wofully through the silence, made ever and anon a call to each other, like the Nemesis of century calling to century. One of these birds, having authority and standing on one leg, observed to Mr. Waples, in a very philosophical manner:

"Stranger, are you of the Fungi family?"

"No, Fernandes," answered our bold adventurer; "I live nearer the phosphates when at home, and it's a good article."

A mournful chorus of croons from the loons went round the solitude. "Phosphates! phew! Phosphates! phew!"

"This apartment," exclaimed the one-legged bird, "is exclusively for fungi of the old families. Here we rot piecemeal and furnish gas to the nine-thousandth generation after us. By our decay the springs are fed with bubbles. Here is the world as it fell in the floral period, and our boughs are budding anew in the Eldorado of the waters above us."

"Phosphates! phew!" shouted the great birds of this land of Lethe, as Mr. Waples' stalagmite broke off and dropped him and set him astride of an ancient pterodactyl bird that flew off with its burden to an immense height, and swinging him there by the seat of his breeches, as if he were to be the pendulum of a fundamental and firmamental clock, the griffin-bird finally let go. Mr. Waples was propelled at least six miles out of gravity, and tossed into a most deep and silent lake. Nothing affected its loveliness but an oppressive shadow that came from above, and seemed to sink every floating object in the scarcely buoyant waves. No shores were visible, but distant mountains on one side; nothing lived in the waters but meteoric lights and objects that ran as if on errands for the spirit above. Broad, submissive, unevaporating, but sinking down; the great inland lonely pool was everywhere the creature of an invisible footprint. Mr. Waples knew the power it obeyed to be that prostrate, cloud-like, overbrooding presence, far above, with outlines like a mountain range. The silent sea was the water-trough of Apalachia, the western dyke of the deluge of Noah. The oppressive spirit, stretching overhead, was Bellydown, or the thing that brooded over the waters of chaos, known to schoolmasters as Atmospheric Pressure.

Mr. Waples saw it all now. The spirit overhead, with equal and eternal pressure, forced down this meteoric water through the slopes of stone, until it reascended toward the clouds of its origin and was lost in the forest of the fossils, where every decaying fibre made bubbles to drive it forward, and hold in solution the mineral substances it was to receive in the porous magnesian barrier between it and freedom. Soaking through this, the water escaped by the break in the strata at the arch of the Fault Finder.

But who had ever passed back against the current of the earth's barometry, from the spa to the reservoir, like Andrew Waples, of Horntown, Eastern Shore of Virginia?

He felt a mighty vanity overwhelm him to get recognition of some kind from Bellydown, who disdained even thunder for a language.

"Thou sprawling spirit, up yonder in the sky!" shouted Mr. Waples, with much firmness, "if thou art not mere nightmare, mere figment of the sciences, let me feel thy strength unequally, for once!"

The vast cloud object moved and yawned. Something like a small world, wearing a boot, smote Andrew Waples in the rear, as if the spirit above had kicked him on the proper spot. He felt a pain and a flying sensation, that was like paralysis on wings, and he never seemed to stop for years, until he fell and struck the ground, and, after an interval, looked around him.

He was in his room, at the United States Hotel, and had fallen out of bed. The clock in the Baptist church cupola struck two. On the gas bracket was pinned a written notice, not yet dry, that Andrew Waples had just started for the High Rock Spring.

But he knew that his adventure continued to be true, for when he went to breakfast at daylight, he found he had no stomach.

THE PHANTOM ARCHITECT.