Chapter XLVII: Du Schmerzensreiche! (1)

So the long, silent, sunlit days passed, and it seemed to the three patient watchers that the object of their care was slowly recovering health and strength. But if they were all willing and eager to wait on him, it was Violet who was his constant companion and friend, his devoted attendant, his humble scholar. Sometimes when Mrs. Warrener's heart grew sore within her to think of the wrong that had been wrought in the past, the tender little woman tried to solace herself somewhat by regarding these two as they now sat together--he the whimsical, affectionate master, she the meek pupil and disciple, forgetting all the proud dignity of her maidenhood, her fire, and audacity, and independence, in the humility and self-surrender of her love. Surely, she thought, this time was making up for much of the past. And if all went well now, what had they to look forward to but a still closer companionship in which the proud, and loyal, and fearless girl would become the tender and obedient wife? There was no jealousy in the nature of this woman. She would have laughed with joy if she could have heard their marriage bells.

And Violet, too, when the sun lay warm on the daisies and cowslips, when the sweet winds blew the scent of the lilacs about, and when her master and teacher grew strong enough to walk with her along the quiet woodland ways--how could she fail to pick up some measure of cheerfulness and hope? It almost seemed as if she had dropped into a new world; and it was a beautiful world, full of tenderness, and laughter, and sunshine. Henceforth there was to be no more George Miller to bother her; he had gone clean out of existence as far as she was concerned; there was no more skirmishing with Lady North; even the poor Dowses, with their piteous loneliness and solemn house, were almost forgotten. Here was her whole world. And when she noticed the increasing distances that he walked, and the brighter look of his face, and the growing courage and carelessness of his habits--then indeed the world became a beautiful world to her, and she was almost inclined to fall in love with those whirling and gleaming southern seas.

It was in the black night-time, when all the household but herself were asleep, that she paid the penalty of these transient joys. Haunted by the one terrible fear, she could gain no rest; it was in vain that she tried to reason with herself; her imagination was like some hideous fiend continually whispering to her ear. Then she had no friend with whom to share those terrible doubts; she dared not mention them to any human soul. Why should she disturb the gentle confidence of his sister and her daughter? She could not make them miserable merely to lift from her own mind a portion of its anxiety. She could only lie awake, night after night, and rack her brain with a thousand gloomy forebodings. She recalled certain phrases he had used in moments of pathetic confidence. She recalled the quick look of pain with which he sometimes paused in the middle of his speech, the almost involuntary raising the hand to the region of the heart, the passing pallor of the face. Had they seen none of those things? Had they no wild, despairing thoughts about him? Was it possible they could go peacefully to sleep with this dread thing hanging over them, with a chance of awaking to a day of bitter anguish and wild, heart-broken farewell? This cruel anxiety, kept all to herself, was killing the girl. She grew restless and feverish; sometimes she sat up half the night at the window listening to the moaning of the dark sea outside; she became languid during the day, pale, and distraite. But it was not to last long.

One evening these two were together in the small parlor, he lying down, she sitting near him with a book in her hand. The French windows were open; they could hear Mrs. Warrener and her daughter talking in the garden. And, strangely enough, the sick man's thoughts were once more turned to the far Highlands, and to their life among the hills, and the pleasant merry-making on board the Sea Pyot.

"The air of this place does not agree with you at all, Violet," he was saying. "You are not looking nearly so well as you did when we came down. You are the only one who has not benefited by the change. Now that won't do; we cannot have a succession of invalids--a Greek frieze of patients, all carrying phials of medicine. We must get off to the Highlands at once. What do you say--a fortnight hence?"

She knelt down beside him, and took his hand, and said in a low voice--

"Do not be angry with me--it is very unreasonable, I know--but I have a strange dread of the Highlands. I have dreamed so often lately of being up there--and of being swept away on a dark sea--in the middle of the night."

She shuddered. He put his hand gently on her head.

"There is no wonder you should dream of that," he said with a smile. "That is only part of the story which you made us all believe. But we have got a brighter finish for it now. You have not been overwhelmed in that dark flood yet----"

He paused.

"Violet! My love!" he suddenly cried.

He let go her hand, and made a wild grasp at his left breast; his face grew white with pain. What made her instinctively throw her arms round him, with terror in her eyes?

"Violet! What is this? Kiss me!"

It was but one second after that that a piercing shriek rang through the place. The girl had sprung up like a deer shot through the heart; her eyes dilated, her face wild and pale. Mrs. Warrener came running in; but paused, and almost retreated in fear from the awful spectacle before her; for the girl still held the dead man's hand, and she was laughing merrily. The dark sea she had dreaded had overtaken her at last.

* * * * *

But one more scene--months afterward. It is the breakfast room in Lady North's house in Euston Square; and Anatolia is sitting there alone. The door opens, and a tall young girl, dressed in a white morning costume, comes silently in; there is a strange and piteous look of trouble in her dark eyes. Anatolia goes over to her, and takes her hand very tenderly, and leads her to the easy-chair she had herself just quitted.

"There is not any letter yet?" she asks, having looked all round the table with a sad and wearied air.

"No, dear, not yet," says Anatolia, who, unlovely though she may be, has a sympathetic heart; and her lip trembles as she speaks. "You must be patient, Violet."

"It is another morning gone, and there is no letter, and I cannot understand it," says the girl, apparently to herself, and then she begins to cry silently, while her half-sister goes to her, and puts her arm around her neck, and tries to soothe her.

Lady North comes into the room. Some changes have happened within these few months; it is "Mother" and "My child" now between the enemies of yore. And as she bids Violet good morning, and gently kisses her, the girl renews her complaint.

"Mother, why do they keep back his letter? I know he must have written to me long ago; and I cannot go to him until I get the letter! and he will wonder why I am not coming. Morning after morning I listen for the postman--I can hear him in the street from house to house--and they all get their letters, but I don't get this one that is worth all the world to me. And I never neglected anything that he said; and I was always very obedient to him; and he will wonder now that I don't go to him, and perhaps he will think that I am among my other friends now and have forgotten---- No, he will not think that. I have not forgotten."

"My child, you must not vex yourself," says Lady North with all the tenderness of which she is capable--and Anatolia is bitterly crying all the while. "It will be all right. And you must not look sad to-day; for you know Mrs. Warrener and your friend Amy are coming to see you."

She does not seem to pay much heed.

"Shall we go for the flowers to-day?" she asks, with her dark wet eyes raised for the first time.

"My darling, this is not the day we go for the flowers; that is to-morrow."

"And what is the use of it?" she says, letting her head sink sadly again. "Every time I go over to Nunhead I listen all by myself--and I know he is not there at all. The flowers look pretty, because his name is over them. But he is not there at all--he is far away--and he was to send me a message--and every day I wait for it--and they keep the letter back. Mother, are all my dresses ready?"

"Yes, Violet."

"You are quite sure!"

"They are all ready, Violet. Don't trouble about that."

"It is the white satin one he will like the best; and he will be pleased that I am not in black like the others. Mother, Mrs. Warrener and Amy surely cannot mean to come to the wedding in black."

"Surely not, Violet. But come, dear, to your breakfast."

She took her place quite calmly and humbly; but her mind was still wandering toward that picture.

"I hope they will strew the church-yard with flowers as we pass through it--not for me, but for him; for he will be pleased with that; and there is more than all that is in the Prayer-book that I will promise to be to him, when we two are kneeling together. You are quite sure everything is ready?"

"Everything, my darling."

"And you think the message from him will come soon now?"

"I think it will come soon now, Violet," was the answer, given with trembling lips.

THE END.

* * * * *

And now to you--you whose names are written in these blurred pages, some portion of whose lives I have tried to trace with a wandering and uncertain pen--I stretch out a hand of farewell. Yet not quite of farewell, perhaps: for amid all the shapes and phantoms of this world of mystery, where the shadows we meet can tell us neither whence they came nor whither they go, surely you have for me a no less substantial existence that may have its chances in the time to come. To me you are more real than most I know: what wonder then if I were to meet you on the threshold of the great unknown, you all shining with a new light on your face? Trembling, I stretch out my hands to you, for your silence is awful, and there is sadness in your eyes; but the day may come when you will speak, and I shall hear--and understand.

JULIET ON THE BALCONY.

O lips that are so lonely
For want of his caress;
O heart that art too faithful
To ever love him less;
O eyes that find no sweetness
For hunger of his face;
O hands that long to feel him,
Always, in every place!

My spirit leans and listens,
But only hears his name,
And thought to thought leaps onward
As flame leaps unto flame;
And all kin to each other
As any brood of flowers,
Or these sweet winds of night, love,
That fan the fainting hours!

My spirit leans and listens,
My heart stands up and cries,
And only one sweet vision
Comes ever to my eyes.
So near and yet so far, love,
So dear, yet out of reach,
So like some distant star, love,
Unnamed in human speech!

My spirit leans and listens,
My heart goes out to him,
Through all the long night watches,
Until the dawning dim;
My spirit leans and listens,
What if, across the night,
His strong heart send a message
To flood me with delight?

HOWARD GLYNDON.

OUR RURAL DIVINITY.

I wonder that Wilson Flagg did not include the cow among his "Picturesque Animals," for that is where she belongs. She has not the classic beauty of the horse, but in picture-making qualities she is far ahead of him. Her shaggy, loose-jointed body, her irregular, sketchy outlines, like those of the landscape--the hollows and ridges, the slopes and prominences--her tossing horns, her bushy tail, her swinging gait, her tranquil, ruminating habits--all tend to make her an object upon which the artist eye loves to dwell. The artists are for ever putting her into pictures too. In rural landscape scenes she is an important feature. Behold her grazing in the pastures and on the hill sides, or along banks of streams, or ruminating under wide-spreading trees, or standing belly deep in the creek or pond, or lying upon the smooth places in the quiet summer afternoon, the day's grazing done, and waiting to be summoned home to be milked; and again in the twilight lying upon the level summit of the hill, or where the sward is thickest and softest; or in winter a herd of them filing along toward the spring to drink, or being "foddered" from the stack in the field upon the new snow--surely the cow is a picturesque animal, and all her goings and comings are pleasant to behold.

I looked into Hamerton's clever book on the domestic animals, also expecting to find my divinity duly celebrated, but he passes her by and contemplates the bovine qualities only as they appear in the ox and the bull.

Neither have the poets made much of the cow, but have rather dwelt upon the steer, or the ox yoked to the plough. I recall this touch from Emerson:

The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far heard, lows not thine ear to charm.

But the ear is charmed nevertheless, especially if it be not too near, and the air be still and dense, or hollow, as the farmer says. And again, if it be spring time and she task that powerful bellows of hers to its utmost capacity, how round the sound is, and how far it goes over the hills.

The cow has at least four tones or lows. First, there is her alarmed or distressed low, when deprived of her calf, or separated from her mates--her low of affection. Then there is her call of hunger, a petition for food, sometimes full of impatience, or her answer to the farmer's call, full of eagerness. Then there is that peculiar frenzied bawl she utters on smelling blood, which causes every member of the herd to lift its head and hasten to the spot--the native cry of the clan. When she is gored or in great danger she bawls also, but that is different. And lastly, there is the long, sonorous volley she lets off on the hills or in the yard, or along the highway, and which seems to be expressive of a kind of unrest and vague longing--the longing of the imprisoned Io for her lost identity. She sends her voice forth so that every god on Mount Olympus can hear her plaint. She makes this sound in the morning, especially in the spring, as she goes forth to graze.

One of our rural poets, Myron Benton, whose verse often has the flavor of sweet cream, has written some lines called "Rumination," in which the cow is the principal figure, and with which I am permitted to adorn my theme. The poet first gives his attention to a little brook that "breaks its shallow gossip" at his feet and "drowns the oriole's voice":

But moveth not that wise and ancient cow,
Who chews her juicy cud so languid now
Beneath her favorite elm, whose drooping bough
Lulls all but inward vision, fast asleep:
But still, her tireless tail a pendulum sweep
Mysterious clockwork guides, and some hid pulley
Her drowsy cud, each moment, raises duly.

Of this great, wondrous world she has seen more
Than you, my little brook, and cropped its store
Of succulent grass on many a mead and lawn;
And strayed to distant uplands in the dawn.
And she has had some dark experience
Of graceless man's ingratitude; and hence
Her ways have not been ways of pleasantness,
Nor all her paths of peace. But her distress
And grief she has lived past; your giddy round
Disturbs her not, for she is learned profound
In deep brahminical philosophy.
She chews the cud of sweetest revery
Above your worldly prattle, brooklet merry,
Oblivious of all things sublunary.

The cow figures in Grecian mythology, and in the Oriental literature is treated as a sacred animal. "The clouds are cows and the rain milk." I remember what Herodotus says of the Egyptians' worship of heifers and steers; and in the traditions of the Celtic nations the cow is regarded as a divinity. In Norse mythology the milk of the cow Andhumbla afforded nourishment to the Frost giants, and it was she that licked into being and into shape a god, the father of Odin. If anything could lick a god into shape, certainly the cow could do it. You may see her perform this office for young Taurus any spring. She licks him out of the fogs and bewilderments and uncertainties in which he finds himself on first landing upon these shores, and up on to his feet in an incredibly short time. Indeed, that potent tongue of hers can almost make the dead alive any day, and the creative lick of the old Scandinavian mother cow is only a large-lettered rendering of the commonest facts.

The horse belongs to the fiery god Mars. He favors war, and is one of its oldest, most available, and most formidable engines. The steed is clothed with thunder, and smells the battle from afar; but the cattle upon a thousand hills denote that peace and plenty bear sway in the land. The neighing of the horse is a call to battle; but the lowing of old Brockleface in the valley brings the golden age again. The savage tribes are never without the horse; the Scythians are all mounted; but the cow would tame and humanize them. When the Indians will cultivate the cow, I shall think their civilization fairly begun. Recently, when the horses were sick with the epizoötic, and the oxen came to the city and helped to do their work, what an Arcadian air again filled the streets. But the dear old oxen--how awkward and distressed they looked! Juno wept in the face of every one of them. The horse is a true citizen, and is entirely at home in the paved streets; but the ox--what a complete embodiment of all rustic and rural things! Slow, deliberate, thick-skinned, powerful, hulky, ruminating, fragrant-breathed, when he came to town the spirit and suggestion of all Georgics and Bucolics came with him. Oh, citizen, was it only a plodding, unsightly brute that went by? Was there no chord in your bosom, long silent, that sweetly vibrated at the sight of that patient, Herculean couple? Did you smell no hay or cropped herbage, see no summer pastures with circles of cool shade, hear no voice of herds among the hills? They were very likely the only horses your grandfather ever had. Not much trouble to harness and unharness them. Not much vanity on the road in those days. They did all the work on the early pioneer farm. They were the gods whose rude strength first broke the soil. They could live where the moose and the deer could. If there was no clover or timothy to be had, then the twigs of the basswood and birch would do. Before there were yet fields given up to grass, they found ample pasturage in the woods. Their wide-spreading horns gleamed in the duskiness, and their paths and the paths of the cows became the future roads and highways, or even the streets of great cities.

All the descendants of Odin show a bovine trace, and cherish and cultivate the cow. What were those old Vikings but thick-hided bulls that delighted in nothing so much as goring each other? And has not the charge of beefiness been brought much nearer home to us than that? But about all the northern races there is something that is kindred to cattle in the best sense--something in their art and literature that is essentially pastoral, sweet-breathed, continent, dispassionate, ruminating, wide-eyed, soft-voiced--a charm of kine, the virtue of brutes.

The cow belongs more especially to the northern peoples, to the region of the good, green grass. She is the true _grazing_ animal. That broad, smooth, always dewy nose of hers is just the suggestion of green sward. She caresses the grass; she sweeps off the ends of the leaves; she reaps it with the soft sickle of her tongue. She crops close, but she does not bruise or devour the turf like the horse. She is the sward's best friend, and will make it thick and smooth as a carpet.

The turfy mountains where live the nibbling sheep

are not for her. Her muzzle is too blunt; then she does not _bite_ as do the sheep; she has not upper teeth; she _crops_. But on the lower slopes, and margins, and rich bottoms, she is at home. Where the daisy and the buttercup and clover bloom, and where corn will grow, is her proper domain. The agriculture of no country can long thrive without her. Not only a large part of the real, but much of the potential wealth of the land is wrapped up in her.

What a variety of individualities a herd of cows presents when you have come to know them all, not only in form and color, but in manners and disposition. Some are timid and awkward and the butt of the whole herd. Some remind you of deer. Some have an expression in the face like certain persons you have known. A petted and well-fed cow has a benevolent and gracious look; an ill-used and poorly-fed one a pitiful and forlorn look. Some cows have a masculine or ox expression; others are extremely feminine. The latter are the ones for milk. Some cows will kick like a horse; some jump fences like deer. Every herd has its ringleader, its unruly spirit--one that plans all the mischief and leads the rest through the fences into the grain or into the orchard. This one is usually quite different from the master spirit, the "boss of the yard." The latter is generally the most peaceful and law-abiding cow in the lot, and the least bullying and quarrelsome. But she is not to be trifled with; her will is law; the whole herd give way before her, those that have crossed horns with her, and those that have not, but yielded their allegiance without crossing. I remember such a one among my father's milkers when I was a boy--a slender-horned, deep-shouldered, large-uddered, dewlapped old cow that we always put first in the long stable so she could not have a cow on each side of her to forage upon; for the master is yielded to no less in the stancheons than in the yard. She always had the first place anywhere. She had her choice of standing room in the milking yard, and when she wanted to lie down there or in the fields the best and softest spot was hers. When the herd were foddered from the stack or barn, or fed with pumpkins in the fall, she was always first served. Her demeanor was quiet but impressive. She never bullied or gored her mates, but literally ruled them with the breath of her nostrils. If any newcomer or ambitious younger cow, however, chafed under her supremacy, she was ever ready to make good her claims. And with what spirit she would fight when openly challenged! She was a whirlwind of pluck and valor; and not after one defeat or two defeats would she yield the championship. The boss cow, when overcome, seems to brood over her disgrace, and day after day will meet her rival in fierce combat.

A friend of mine, a pastoral philosopher, whom I have consulted in regard to the master cow, thinks it is seldom the case that one rules all the herd, if it number many, but that there is often one that will rule nearly all. "Curiously enough," he says, "a case like this will often occur: No. 1 will whip No. 2; No. 2 whips No. 3; and No. 3 whips No. 1; so around in a circle. This is not a mistake; it is often the case. I remember," he continued, "we once had feeding out of a large bin in the centre of the yard six oxen who mastered right through in succession from No. 1 to No. 6; _but No. 6 paid off the score by whipping No. 1_. I often watched them when they were all trying to feed out of the box, and of course trying, dog-in-the-manger fashion, each to prevent any other he could. They would often get in the order to do it very systematically, since they could keep rotating about the box till the chain happened to get broken somewhere, when there would be confusion. Their mastership, you know, like that between nations, is constantly changing. But there are always Napoleons who hold their own through many vicissitudes; but the ordinary cow is continually liable to lose her foothold. Some cow she has always despised, and has often sent tossing across the yard at her horns' ends, some pleasant morning will return the compliment and pay off old scores."

But my own observation has been that in herds in which there have been no important changes for several years, the question of might gets pretty well settled, and some one cow becomes the acknowledged ruler.

The bully of the yard is never the master, but usually a second or third-rate pusher that never loses an opportunity to hook those beneath her, or to gore the masters if she can get them in a tight place. If such a one can get loose in the stable, she is quite certain to do mischief. She delights to pause in the open bars and turn and keep those at bay behind her till she sees a pair of threatening horns pressing toward her, when she quickly passes on. As one cow masters all, so there is one cow that is mastered by all. These are the two extremes of the herd, the head and the tail. Between them are all grades of authority, with none so poor but hath some poorer to do her reverence.

The cow has evidently come down to us from a wild or semi-wild state; perhaps is a descendant of those wild, shaggy cattle of which a small band still exists in the forests of Scotland. Cuvier seems to have been of this opinion. One of the ways in which her wild instincts still crop out is the disposition she shows in spring to hide her calf--a common practice among the wild herds. Her wild nature would be likely to come to the surface at this crisis if ever; and I have known cows that practised great secrecy in dropping their calves. As their time approached they grew restless, a wild and excited look was upon them, and if left free, they generally set out for the woods or for some other secluded spot. After the calf is several hours old, and has got upon its feet and had its first meal, the dam by some sign commands it to lie down and remain quiet while she goes forth to feed. If the calf is approached at such time, it plays "'possum," assumes to be dead or asleep, till on finding this ruse does not succeed, it mounts to its feet, bleats loudly and fiercely, and charges desperately upon the intruder. But it recovers from this wild scare in a little while, and never shows signs of it again.

The habit of the cow, also, in eating the placenta, looks to me like a vestige of her former wild instincts--the instinct to remove everything that would give the wild beasts a clue or a scent, and so attract them to her helpless young.

How wise and sagacious the cows become that run upon the street, or pick their living along the highway. The mystery of gates and bars is at last solved to them. They ponder over them by night, they lurk about them by day, till they acquire a new sense--till they become _en rapport_ with them and know when they are open and unguarded. The garden gate, if it open into the highway at any point, is never out of the mind of these roadsters, or out of their calculations. They calculate upon the chances of its being left open a certain number of times in the season; and if it be but once and only for five minutes, your cabbage and sweet corn suffer. What villager, or countryman either, has not been awakened at night by the squeaking and crunching of those piratical jaws under the window or in the direction of the vegetable patch? I have had the cows, after they had eaten up my garden, break into the stable where my own milcher was tied, and gore her and devour her meal. Yes, life presents but one absorbing problem to the street cow, and that is how to get into your garden. She catches glimpses of it over the fence or through the pickets, and her imagination or epigastrium is inflamed. When the spot is surrounded by a high board fence, I think I have seen her peeping at the cabbages through a knot-hole. At last she learns to open the gate. It is a great triumph of bovine wit. She does it with her horn or her nose, or may be with her ever ready tongue. I doubt if she has ever yet penetrated the mystery of the newer patent fastenings; but the old-fashioned thumb-latch she can see through, give her time enough.

A large, lank, muley or polled cow used to annoy me in this way when I was a dweller in a certain pastoral city. I more than half suspected she was turned in by some one; so one day I watched. Presently I heard the gate-latch rattle; the gate swung open, and in walked the old buffalo. On seeing me she turned and ran like a horse. I then fastened the gate on the inside and watched again. After long waiting the old cow came quickly round the corner and approached the gate. She lifted the latch with her nose. Then, as the gate did not move, she lifted it again and again. Then she gently nudged it. Then, the obtuse gate not taking the hint, she butted it gently, then harder and still harder, till it rattled again. At this juncture I emerged from my hiding place, when the old villain scampered off with great precipitation. She knew she was trespassing, and she had learned that there were usually some swift penalties attached to this pastime.

I have owned but three cows and loved but one. That was the first one, Chloe, a bright red, curly-pated, golden-skinned Devonshire cow, that an ocean steamer landed for me upon the banks of the Potomac one bright May day many clover summers ago. She came from the north, from the pastoral regions of the Catskills, to graze upon the broad commons of the national capital. I was then the fortunate and happy lessee of an old place with an acre of ground attached, almost within the shadow of the dome of the capitol. Behind a high but aged and decrepit board fence I indulged my rural and unclerical tastes. I could look up from my homely tasks and cast a potato almost in the midst of that cataract of marble steps that flows out of the north wing of the patriotic pile. Ah, when that creaking and sagging back gate closed behind me in the evening, I was happy; and when it opened for my egress thence in the morning, I was not happy. Inside that gate was a miniature farm redolent of homely, primitive life, a tumble-down house and stables and implements of agriculture and horticulture, broods of chickens, and growing pumpkins, and a thousand antidotes to the weariness of an artificial life. Outside of it were the marble and iron palaces, the paved and blistering streets, and the high, vacant, mahogany desk of a government clerk. In that ancient enclosure I took an earth bath twice a day. I planted myself as deep in the soil as I could to restore the normal tone and freshness of my system, impaired by the above mentioned government mahogany. I have found there is nothing like the earth to draw the various social distempers out of one. The blue devils take flight at once if they see you mean to bury them and make compost of them. Emerson intimates that the scholar had better not try to have two gardens; but I could never spend an hour hoeing up dock and red-root and twitch grass without in some way getting rid of many weeds and fungus, unwholesome growths that a petty, in-doors life was for ever fostering in my own moral and intellectual nature.

But the finishing touch was not given till Chloe came. She was the jewel for which this homely setting waited. My agriculture had some object then. The old gate never opened with such alacrity as when she paused before it. How we waited for her coming! Should I send Drewer, the colored patriarch, for her? No; the master of the house himself should receive Juno at the capital.

"One cask for you," said the clerk, referring to the steamer bill of lading.

"Then I hope it's a cask of milk," I said. "I expected a cow."

"One cask it says here."

"Well, let's see it; I'll warrant it has horns and is tied by a rope"; which proved to be the case, for there stood the only object that bore my name, chewing its cud, on the forward deck. How she liked the voyage I could not find out; but she seemed to relish so much the feeling of solid ground beneath her feet once more that she led me a lively step all the way home. She cut capers in front of the White House, and tried twice to wind me up in the rope as we passed the Treasury. She kicked up her heels on the broad avenue and became very coltish as she came under the walls of the capitol. But that night the long-vacant stall in the old stable was filled, and the next morning the coffee had met with a change of heart. I had to go out twice with the lantern and survey my treasure before I went to bed. Did she not come from the delectable mountains, and did I not have a sort of filial regard for her as toward my foster mother?

This was during the Arcadian age at the capital, before the easy-going southern ways had gone out and the prim new northern ways had come in, and when the domestic animals were treated with distinguished consideration and granted the freedom of the city. There was a charm of cattle in the streets and upon the commons: goats cropped your rose bushes through the pickets, and nooned upon your front porch, and pigs dreamed Arcadian dreams under your garden fence or languidly frescoed it with pigments from the nearest pool. It was a time of peace; it was the poor man's golden age. Your cow, or your goat, or your pig led a vagrant, wandering life, and picked up a subsistence wherever they could, like the bees, which was almost everywhere. Your cow went forth in the morning and came home fraught with milk at night, and you never troubled yourself where she went or how far she roamed.

Chloe took very naturally to this kind of life. At first I had to go with her a few times and pilot her to the nearest commons, and then left her to her own wit, which never failed her. What adventures she had, what acquaintances she made, how far she wandered, I never knew. I never came across her in my walks or rambles. Indeed, on several occasions I thought I would look her up and see her feeding in the national pastures, but I never could find her. There were plenty of cows, but they were all strangers. But punctually, between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, her white horns would be seen tossing above the gate and her impatient low be heard. Sometimes, when I turned her forth in the morning, she would pause and apparently consider which way she would go. Should she go toward Kendall Green to-day, or follow the Tiber, or over by the Big Spring, or out around Lincoln Hospital? She seldom reached a conclusion till she had stretched forth her neck and blown a blast on her trumpet that awoke the echoes in the very lantern on the dome of the capitol. Then, after one or two licks, she would disappear around the corner. Later in the season, when the grass was parched or poor on the commons, and the corn and cabbage tempting in the garden, Chloe was loth to depart in the morning, and her deliberations were longer than ever, and very often I had to aid her in coming to a decision.

For two summers she was a well-spring of pleasure and profit in my farm of one acre, when in an evil moment I resolved to part with her and try another. In an evil moment I say, for from that time my luck in cattle left me. Juno never forgave me the execution of that rash and cruel resolve.

The day is indellibly stamped on my memory when I exposed my Chloe for sale in the public market place. It was in November, a bright, dreamy, Indian summer day. A sadness oppressed me, not unmixed with guilt and remorse. An old Irish woman came to the market also with her pets to sell, a sow and five pigs, and took up a position next me. We condoled with each other; we bewailed the fate of our darlings together; we berated in chorus the white-aproned but bloodstained fraternity who prowled about us. When she went away for a moment I minded the pigs, and when I strolled about she minded my cow. How shy the innocent beast was of those carnal market men. How she would shrink away from them. When they put out a hand to feel her condition she would "scrooch" down her back, or bend this way or that, as if the hand were a branding iron. So long as I stood by her head she felt safe--deluded creature--and chewed the cud of sweet content; but the moment I left her side she seemed filled with apprehension, and followed me with her eyes, lowing softly and entreatingly till I returned.

At last the money was counted out for her, and her rope surrendered to the hand of another. How that last look of alarm and incredulity, which I caught as I turned for a parting glance, went to my heart!

Her stall was soon filled, or partly filled, and this time with a native--a specimen of what may be called the cornstalk breed of Virginia: a slender, furtive, long-geared heifer just verging on cowhood, that in spite of my best efforts would wear a pinched and hungry look. She evidently inherited a humped back. It was a family trait, and evidence of the purity of her blood. For the native blooded cow of Virginia, from shivering over half rations of corn stalks, in the open air, during those bleak and windy winters, and roaming over those parched fields in summer, has come to have some marked features. For one thing, her pedal extremities seemed lengthened; for another, her udder does not impede her travelling; for a third, her backbone inclines strongly to the curve; then, she despiseth hay. This last is a sure test. Offer a thorough-bred Virginia cow hay, and she will laugh in your face; but rattle the husks or shucks, and she knows you to be her friend.

The new comer even declined corn meal at first. She eyed it furtively, then sniffed it suspiciously, but finally discovered that it bore some relation to her native "shucks," when she fell to eagerly.

I cherish the memory of this cow, however, as the most affectionate brute I ever knew. Being deprived of her calf, she transferred her affections to her master, and would fain have made a calf of him, lowing in the most piteous and inconsolable manner when he was out of her sight, hardly forgetting her grief long enough to eat her meal, and entirely neglecting her beloved husks. Often in the middle of the night she would set up that sonorous lamentation and continue it till sleep was chased from every eye in the household. This generally had the effect of bringing the object of her affection before her, but in a mood anything but filial or comforting. Still, at such times a kick seemed a comfort to her, and she would gladly have kissed the rod that was the instrument of my midnight wrath.

But her tender star was destined soon to a fatal eclipse. Being tied with too long a rope on one occasion during my temporary absence, she got her head into the meal barrel, and stopped not till she had devoured nearly half a bushel of dry meal. The singularly placid and benevolent look that beamed from the meal-besmeared face when I discovered her was something to be remembered. For the first time also her spinal column came near assuming a horizontal line.

But the grist proved too much for her frail mill, and her demise took place on the third day, not of course without some attempt to relieve her on my part. I gave her, as is usual in such emergencies, everything I "could think of" and everything my neighbors could think of, besides some fearful prescriptions which I obtained from a German veterinary surgeon, but to no purpose. I imagined her poor maw distended and inflamed with the baking sodden mass which no physic could penetrate or enliven.

Thus ended my second venture in live stock. My third, which followed sharp upon the heels of this disaster, was scarcely more of a success. This time I led to the altar a buffalo cow, as they call the "mully" down south--a large, spotted, creamy-skinned cow, with a fine udder, that I persuaded a Jew drover to part with for ninety dollars. "Pag like a dish rack (rag)," said he, pointing to her udder after she had been milked. "You vill come pack and gif me the udder ten tollars" (for he had demanded an even hundred), he continued, "after you have had her a gouple of days." True I felt like returning to him after a "gouple of days," but not to pay the other ten dollars. The cow proved to be as blind as a bat, though capable of counterfeiting the act of seeing to perfection. For did she not lift up her head and follow with her eyes a dog that scaled the fence and ran through the other end of the lot, and the next moment dash my hopes thus raised by trying to walk over a locust tree thirty feet high? And when I set the bucket before her containing her first mess of meal, she missed it by several inches, and her nose brought up against the ground. Was it a kind of far-sightedness and near blindness? That was it, I think; she had genius, but not talent; she could see the man in the moon, but was quite oblivious to the man immediately in her front. Her eyes were telescopic and required a long range.

As long as I kept her in the stall, or confined to the enclosure, this strange eclipse of her sight was of little consequence. But when spring came, and it was time for her to go forth and seek her livelihood in the city's waste places, I was embarrassed. Into what remote corners or into what _terra incognita_ might she not wander! There was little doubt but she would drift around home in the course of the summer, or perhaps as often as every week or two; but could she be trusted to find her way back every night? Perhaps she could be taught. Perhaps her other senses were acute enough to in a measure compensate her for her defective vision. So I gave her lessons in the topography of the country. I led her forth to graze for a few hours each day and led her home again. Then I left her to come home alone, which feat she accomplished very encouragingly. She came feeling her way along, stepping very high, but apparently a most diligent and interested sightseer. But she was not sure of the right house when she got to it, though she stared at it very hard.

Again I turned her forth, and again she came back, her telescopic eyes apparently of some service to her. On the third day there was a fierce thunderstorm late in the afternoon, and old buffalo did not come home. It had evidently scattered and bewildered what little wit she had. Being barely able to navigate those straits on a calm day, what could she be expected to do in a tempest?

After the storm had passed, and near sundown, I set out in quest of her, but could get no clue. I heard that two cows had been struck by lightning about a mile out on the commons. My conscience instantly told me that one of them was mine. It would be a fit closing of the third act of this pastoral drama. Thitherward I bent my steps, and there upon the smooth plain I beheld the scorched and swollen forms of two cows slain by thunderbolts, but neither of them had ever been mine.

The next day I continued the search, and the next, and the next. Finally I hoisted an umbrella over my head, for the weather had become hot, and set out deliberately and systematically to explore every foot of open common on Capitol hill. I tramped many miles, and found every man's cow but my own--some twelve or fifteen hundred, I should think. I saw many vagrant boys and Irish and colored women, nearly all of whom had seen a buffalo cow that very day that answered exactly to my description, but in such diverse and widely separate places that I knew it was no cow of mine. And it was astonishing how many times I was myself deceived; how many rumps or heads, or liver backs or white flanks I saw peeping over knolls or from behind fences or other objects that could belong to no cow but mine!

Finally I gave up the search, concluded the cow had been stolen, and advertised her, offering a reward. But days passed, and no tidings were obtained. Hope began to burn pretty low--was indeed on the point of going out altogether, when one afternoon, as I was strolling over the commons (for in my walks I still hovered about the scenes of my lost milcher), I saw the rump of a cow, over a grassy knoll, that looked familiar. Coming nearer, the beast lifted up her head; and, behold! it was she! only a few squares from home, where doubtless she had been most of the time. I had overshot the mark in my search. I had ransacked the far-off, and had neglected the near-at-hand, as we are so apt to do. But she was ruined as a milcher, and her history thenceforward was brief and touching!

JOHN BURROUGHS.

LOVE'S MESSENGERS.

Who will tell him? Who will teach him?
Have you voices, merry birds?
Then be voice for me, and reach him
With a thousand pleading words.
Sing my secret, east and west,
Till his answer be confessed!

Roses, when you see him coming,
Light of heart and strong of limb,
Make your lover-bees stop humming;
Turn your blushes round to him--
Blush, dear flowers, that he may learn,
How a woman's heart can burn!

Wind--oh, wind--you happy rover!
Oh that I were half as free--
Leave your honey-bells and clover,
Go and seek my love for me.
Find, kiss, clasp him, make him know
It is _I_ who love him so!

MARY AINGE DE VERE.

THE HEAD OF HERCULES.

One of the most curious cases that ever came under my notice in a long course of criminal practice was not brought into any court, and, as I believe, has never been published until now. The details of the affair came under my personal cognizance in the following manner:

In 1858 I went down into the Shenandoah valley to spend my summer vacation among the innumerable Pages, Marshalls, and Cookes who all hailed me as cousin, by right of traditional intermarriages generations back. My first visit was to the house of McCormack Beardsley, a kinsman and school-fellow whom I had not seen since we parted at the university twenty years before.

We were both gray-haired old fellows now, but I had grown thin and sharp in the courts of Baltimore and Washington, while he had lived quietly on his plantation, more fat and jovial and genial with every year.

Beardsley possessed large means then, and maintained the unlimited hospitality usual among large Virginia planters before the war. The house was crowded during my stay with my old friends from the valley and southern countries. His daughter, too, was not only a beauty, but a favorite among the young people, and brought many attractive, well-bred girls about her, and young men who were not so attractive or well bred. Lack of occupation and a definite career had reduced the sons of too many Virginia families at that time to cards and horses as their sole pursuits; the war, while it left them penniless, was in one sense their salvation.

One evening, sitting on the verandah with Beardsley, smoking, and looking in the open windows of the parlor, I noticed a woman who sat a little apart, and who, as I fancied, was avoided by the younger girls. In a Virginia country party there are always two or three unmarried women, past their first youth, with merry blue eyes, brown hair, and delicate features--women "with a history," but who are none the less good dancers, riders, and able to put all their cleverness into the making of a pie or a match for their cousins. This woman was blue-eyed and brown-haired, but she had none of the neat, wide-awake self-possession of her class. She had a more childish expression, and spoke with a more timid uncertainty, than even Lotty Beardsley, who was still in the schoolroom. I called my host's attention to her and asked who she was.

"It is the daughter of my cousin, General George Waring. You remember him surely--of the Henrico branch of Warings?"

"Certainly. But he had only one child--Louisa; and I remember receiving an invitation to her wedding years ago."

"Yes. This is Louisa. The wedding never took place. It's an odd story," he said, after a pause, "and the truth is, Floyd, I brought the girl here while you were with us in the hope that you, with your legal acumen, could solve the mystery that surrounds her. I'll give the facts to you to-morrow--it's impossible to do it now. But tell me, in the mean time, how she impresses you, looking at her as a lawyer would at a client, or a--a prisoner on trial. Do you observe anything peculiar in her face or manner?"

"I observed a very peculiar manner in all those about her--an effort at cordiality in which they did not succeed; a certain constraint in look and tone while speaking to her. I even saw it in yourself just now as soon as you mentioned her name."

"You did? I'm sorry for that--exceedingly sorry!" anxiously. "I believe in Louisa Waring's innocence as I do in that of my own child; and if I thought she was hurt or neglected in this house---- But there's a cloud on the girl, Floyd--that's a fact. It don't amount even to suspicion. If it did, one could argue it down. But----Well, what do you make of her--her face now?"

"It is not an especially clever face, nor one that indicates power of any kind; not the face of a woman who of her own will would be the heroine of any remarkable story. I should judge her to have been a few years ago one of the sensible, light-hearted, sweet-tempered girls of whom there are so many in Virginia; a nice housekeeper, and one who would have made a tender wife and mother."

"Well, well? Nothing more?"