Chapter IX

A Picnic at Croton Dam--The Waterworks--A Game of Twenty Questions--Gabrielle as a Logician--Evangeline's Betrothal--Marguerite's Letter--Description of Chappaqua--Visitors--Edmonia Lewis.

_June 26_.

Gabrielle and I have just returned from spending the day at Croton Dam. A large party from the prominent families of Chappaqua was organized by Miss Murray, the pretty daughter of one of our neighbors, and at nine o'clock a number of carriages, packed to overflowing with young people and lunch-baskets, and led off by a four-horse wagon, started caravan-wise from the place of rendezvous, Mr. Murray's elegant grounds.

The drive was a very pretty one, skirting for some distance the beautiful little lake that supplies the great thirsty city of New York; and the spot chosen for the picnic--shady, terrace-like heights, with a gradual slope to meet the water, and a rough bench here and there--was declared the most suitable place in the world to lay the cloth. One or two members of the party remained behind to unload the carriages, count the broken dishes, and estimate the proportion of contributions--many people fetching salt in abundance but forgetting sugar, whilst others furnished elaborately frosted cakes, but omitted such necessaries as knives and forks. Meantime, we climbed the stone steps leading to the waterworks, and after a glimpse of the seething dark-green water through the heavy iron grating, we hunted up the overseer and asked him to unlock the doors for us, that we might have a nearer view. He assented, and admitted us very obligingly, giving us meantime a graphic description of the yearly journey of the Inspector in a boat down the dark passage to New York, and pointing out the low narrow place of entry from the water-house where they must lie down in the boat.

Dinner hour is generally a most interesting moment in a picnic, and this was the time when the young gentlemen showed their gallantry by partaking only of such viands as had come from the baskets of their favorites among the young ladies.

A cloth was spread upon the ground; seats were extemporized for the ladies out of carriage cushions, waterproofs and wraps; the knives, forks and plates were dealt out as impartially as possible, and we passed a very merry hour.

When the repast was over, the party dispersed--some to play croquet, others to row upon the lake, or to stroll about under the trees; some young ladies produced books and bright bits of fancy-work, while Gabrielle, Arthur and I, with our pretty captain, Miss Murray, and one of her attendant cavaliers, decided to pass away the time by playing a game--no trivial game, however; neither "consequences" nor fortune-telling, but an eminently scientific one entitled "Twenty Questions." For the benefit of the uninitiated I will remark that the oracle chooses a subject (silently), and the others are allowed to put twenty questions to him to enable them to divine it--usually commencing with "Is the object that you have in your mind to be found in the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdom?"

Gabrielle is very clever in this somewhat abstruse game, for she possesses her mother's spirit of inquiry and love of reasoning, and she passes entire evenings with Arthur, pursuing the most perplexing and intangible subjects. She and Arthur are admirably matched in this game; for if she is unparalleled in the quickness with which she will follow up a clue and triumphantly announce the mysterious object, after asking eighteen or nineteen questions, Arthur is no less adroit in selecting unusual subjects, and so artfully parrying her questions as to give her the least possible assistance. I often hear them call to each other--

"I have chosen a subject; you will never in the world guess it!"

Then follows an hour of questions and reasoning, with inferences drawn and rejected, and a display of sophistry that would do credit to a more fully fledged lawyer than Arthur is at present.

Yesterday, after dinner, they launched into one of their games, and Gabrielle guessed after eighteen questions what would have required forty, I am sure, from any one else--the eighty-eighth eye of a fly!

Another was even more puzzling. The object belonged, Arthur assured her, to the vegetable kingdom, the color was white, and he had often met it within a dozen yards of the railway station. "A daisy," was the first and natural solution, but she was, he assured her, very far adrift. "A telegraph post," she next announced, but she was again unsuccessful. At this point I left them; but after an hour had passed Gabrielle ran up to my room to tell me that she had guessed it--a polka dot upon one of her morning dresses!

The object chosen by Arthur at the picnic was the right horn of the moon. Gabrielle, this time, sat beside me and enjoyed the perplexity of the questioners, for not until we were about to step into the carriage to return home did they guess it.

_June 27_.

A letter this morning from our pretty cousin Evangeline, announcing that she is engaged to a Dr. Ross of Chautauqua county, where she lives. Evangeline is the only daughter of mamma's youngest sister, Margaret. She is eighteen years old, of medium height, and well formed, with a fair complexion, the chestnut hair that is peculiar to the younger members of the Greeley family, and brown eyes inherited from her father's family, for the Greeley eye _par excellence_ is blue. Although Evangeline has been brought up in the quiet little village of Clymer, she has been well educated, and besides being uncle's favorite among his nieces, she was much admired in general society during the winter that she spent with us in New York two years ago. At uncle's birthday party, which she attended, she was by many pronounced the handsomest young lady present.

We have never seen Dr. Ross, but mamma remembers his family well, and says that "he comes of a good stock." He is not wealthy, but he is in a good profession, is of unexceptionable character, and very devoted to our dear Evangeline; so they have _my_ blessing. The marriage will not take place until December, when Evangeline will have laid off her mourning.

Marguerite's portfolio is open upon her writing-table, and a letter to Evangeline, not yet sealed, lies between the blotting-sheets. As it speaks of Evangeline's betrothal, I will insert it here:

"CHAPPAQUA, _June 27_.

"DEAREST EVANGELINE:--You complain in your last letter that I do not write enough about Chappaqua and 'the farm.' You wish particulars. My sweet cousin, I thought that you were familiar with descriptions of this dearest spot on earth, as I remember that dear uncle gave each of us a copy of his 'Recollections' the last Christmas that you were with us--the last Christmas indeed that he spent upon this earth. Peruse that volume, dear, for in it you will find a more vivid picture, a more poetic description of his dearly loved home and surroundings, than anything that I can say.

"As to Chappaqua being a large or small village--it is small, very small, not half so large as Clymer, where you live; but it is far more picturesque. There are only a dozen or two houses in all, including a couple of stores, a post-office, a 'wayside inn,' and a church without a bell. There are, however, many fine residences scattered over the township; whichever way we drive, we see elegant mansions nestling in a copse of wood, or crowning some hill-top.

"The valley through which we approach Chappaqua is faced on either side by a succession of beautiful undulating hills that are thickly covered with dark-green foliage. This farm, consisting of eighty-four acres (for you know that there is another lying adjacent of nearly the same size), presents very beautiful and varied scenery. Near the house in the woods, where uncle and aunt lived so many years, a pretty brook winds down by the lower barn, and goes singing away through the meadows bright

"'With steadfast daisies pure and white.'

But this is not all; this lovely, babbling brook fills a large pond, high up in the woods, then flows over a stone dam, and comes rushing down in a succession of waterfalls, stopping for breathing-space in one of the wildest story-telling glens I ever saw.

"And here, in the gloom of the forest-trees, where the birds love to congregate, and a thousand perfumes of clover and new-mown hay, and the aroma of the evergreen grove, come up, Ida and I spend many an hour, forgetful of city life, and heedless about ever returning to it.

"This year we are occupying the roadside house, which, although not so beautiful as the new one on the side-hill, nor so retired and romantic as the one in the woods still is lovely and has a very charming prospect. It stands on sloping ground that is skirted by forest and fruit trees. Some of them throw their grateful shade on the piazza and balcony that run the width of the front of the house. My room opens on the balcony by three French windows, and here I often walk to catch the last gleam of departing day, or linger after nightfall to see the far-away stars come out. The moonrise here is perfectly enchanting, climbing up as it does over the eastern hills, and throwing its pensive light over the silent meadows, and distant, dark woods.

"But I have filled my sheet before speaking of your engagement. As I have not seen your handsome doctor, you will not expect me to be enthusiastic. I hear that he is intelligent, clever in his profession, and of excellent character, but not rich. Well Evangeline, you know I approve of wealth, combined with other good qualifications; but if I had to choose between a man of mind and a man of money, I don't think I would hesitate long which to take; so you are sure of my approbation, and you have my best wishes for your future happiness.

"Your loving cousin,

"MARGUERITE."

_June 29_.

A visit yesterday from our friend Mrs. Sarah L. Hopper, the clever contributor to several Southern journals. Among them the _Washington Gazette_, and the _True Woman_--the latter an anti-suffrage journal. Mrs. Hopper not only writes well; she is also a woman of varied and excellent reading, and the appreciation of the modern classics is displayed in one of her poems--an admirable apostrophe to the character and works of Dante. This poem, which was published some time since, Mrs. Hopper once recited to us, and both mamma and I were struck with the true ring of poesy so apparent in it.

_June 30_.

Upon returning from church yesterday, we found the front door standing open, a couple of arm-chairs upon the piazza, and a newspaper or two in lieu of the occupants--proof unmistakable of a masculine invasion. Who it was we could not imagine; that it was not a neighbor we were convinced by seeing the morning _Herald_ and _Times_, for the Sunday papers cannot be obtained here, save by being at the depot when the interminable way-train comes up from New York, and waylaying the newsboy who accompanies the cars; and for this our neighbors are rarely sufficiently enterprising. Unmistakably our visitors had come from the city.

Upon questioning Minna, she gave us a graphic description of the gentlemen. One was "tall, oh so tall! with dark hair and red cheeks"--in him we recognized Mr. Walworth Ward--the other was a blonde gentleman whom she had seen here before.

"Lina has already made wine _padding_," she said, seeing Ida about to descend and inspect the larder. "Miss no fret--all right."

Ida and I then started to walk to the grove, where we thought we would probably find our guests awaiting our return. Not there, indeed, but in the vegetable garden we found them, where they were kindly looking after the interests of the family by weeding the strawberry-beds, regardless of the Sabbath, and notwithstanding one of the gentlemen was a grandson of a D.D. In answer to our regrets that we should have been absent when they arrived, they mildly intimated some surprise, one having telegraphed his proposed coming, and the other sent a message through papa the day previous; dear papa, however, had as usual forgotten to deliver the message, and whither the telegram went, no one could imagine.

_July 1_.

A visit yesterday from the little colored sculptress, Edmonia Lewis. Miss Lewis was accompanied by a box of formidable size, containing, she told us, a marble bust of Mr. Greeley, which she had brought out here for the opinion of the family; but as Ida was in the city where she had gone for a day's shopping, we reserved our judgment until she should return and see it with us.

I was very glad to learn that Miss Lewis was prospering in both a pecuniary and an artistic point of view. She had, she told me, received two orders for busts of uncle--one from the Lincoln Club, and one from a Chicago gentleman. She intends returning to Rome before long.

Miss Lewis had already opened a studio while we were in Rome four or five years ago, and I heard much talk about her from her brother and sister artists. I intended at one time to visit her studio and see her work, but several sculptors advised me not to do so; she was, they declared, "queer," "unsociable," often positively rude to her visitors, and had been heard to fervently wish that the Americans would not come to her studio, as they evidently looked upon her only as a curiosity. When, therefore, I did see her for the first time (last summer), I was much surprised to find her by no means the morose being that had been described to me, but possessed of very soft and quite winning manners. She was amused when I told her what I had heard of her, and remarked, quite pertinently:

"How could I expect to sell my work if I did not receive visitors civilly?"

Miss Lewis expressed much gratitude to Miss Hosmer and Miss Stebbins for their kindness to her in Rome, and of Miss Cushman she said enthusiastically, "She is an angel!"

She is, I have been told, very well received in society abroad, and when baptized a Catholic in Rome, two ladies of high position, Countess Cholmondeley and Princess Wittgenstein, offered to stand godmother for her. Edmonia chose Lady Cholmondeley, whom I remember well in Rome as a great belle and a highly accomplished woman. She wrote poetry, I was told, and modelled in clay with much taste, and her finely trained voice and dainty playing of the harp I well remember as one of the attractions of Miss Cushman's receptions.

Edmonia has, beside her somewhat hard English appellation, two pretty baptismal names--Maria Ignatia.