Thus it is easily seen that your life at the Federal Capital, if you possess either an eye for beauty or an interest in affairs, may be full of enjoyment and variety. Your companions are people of mark; you learn, by returning, when summer does, to the small scandals and personalities of common towns, how large is the outlook in Washington; the theatre of the world opens before you there; you feel that you assist at the making of history, if you are not yourself a part of events.

But this is one side of life. There is another and a more purely social side which is a very different thing. Into this affairs of state do not enter; with the right or wrong of vital questions it does not concern itself at all; and in fact it is doubtful if politics are not thought there mere subsidiaries to the authority of Fashion, and if the fair wives and daughters of our lawgivers do not regard the great machinery of state as something ordained solely to sustain them in their brilliant round as the wind of the juggler's fan supports his paper butterflies upon their airy flight. In this life an etiquette reigns that has no law of its being save that of vague tradition—an etiquette at variance with that of other regions, and through which the female population is resolved into what might be termed, in the parlance of the place, a committee of the whole on "calling." This etiquette rules the wives of important functionaries with a rod of iron. By some occult method of reasoning they have reached the conclusion that their husbands' popularity, and consequent lease of power, depend upon their own faithful performance of what is considered to be social duty, and they devote themselves to it with a zeal worthy of a better cause. On certain days of the week their houses are open to all who choose to come; and both residents and passing travelers, all who wish to inspect the inside of such homes among the other sights of the town, throng the doors, leave cards and partake of refreshments. Of course many strange occurrences are incidental to such occasions; and so the lady whose beauty had been made famous must have thought when unknown crowds flocked to see her, destroying daily a vase or a statuette, a photograph or a book, but always staring with all their eyes, and one day crowning their enormities with a procession of deaf-mutes from an asylum, which filed in and gazed and filed out again, in total silence of course, save now and then a crack of nimble finger-joints.

All the other days in the week the great lady is occupied in returning these visits, hunting for obscure addresses, trailing her rich garments over third-story stairs; and it is no uncommon thing for her to have the names of one or two thousand people in her visiting-book, on whom she is to call, provided she can find them. Of course the call is brief, the faces are unknown, the conversation is void, and the only satisfaction attained is in checking off that particular name as done with. Certainly this great lady's lot is not altogether enviable. In the daytime she is claimed by calls, in the night-time by balls; at nine in the morning people on business begin to clamor for her husband, at ten, if he is a Congressman, he goes to his committee, at twelve Congress meets to adjourn at five; and if after that some political dinner, at which great things are to be adjusted, does not take him to itself till nearly midnight, constituents, schemers and lobbyists do. What sort of home-life there can be where the master of the house is out all day and the mistress is out all night, remains a matter of conjecture.

But there are wheels within wheels; and all the wheels are not so thoroughly oiled as to make things run with perfect smoothness; and thus in the progress of this very "calling" sad disturbances arise. Shall the Senators' wives make the first call on the Cabinet ministers' wives? By no means: the Cabinet ministers are but creatures of a day, ephemera, who draw their breath by and with the advice and consent of the Senate: they must respect their creator. Shall the Senators' wives call first upon the wives of the justices of the Supreme Court? There is a doubt: the Supreme Court is the last resort of the law of the land, a reverend and hoary institution, and its judges, having a life-lease, will be judges still when the Senators shall have passed away; but no, again—the Senators make the justices. The Representatives shall make the first call on the Senators' wives of course; but how about the Speaker's wife? She is the third in succession from the presidency, says the new-comer: she is nothing but a Representative still, says the compelling etiquette. Finally, through some incomprehensible regulation, whose framer forgot that though democracies may be rude they must not be inhospitable, the wives of the foreign ambassadors, representatives of sovereign states, have to go the whole round and knock first at every door before being fairly accredited to Society. But once established, be it said in passing, the foreigners have a full revenge accorded them; for in vain the native youth aspire, the freshest belles hover round the titled flames, not perhaps till their wings are singed, but till successive seasons have taught them that Cleopatra's beauty is useless without Cleopatra's pearls. Meantime, to give one last discomfort to the "calling" system, the ubiquitous reporter presents himself, deliberately overturns the card-basket in the hall and notes the names there; and the lady of the house sees herself, her dress, her deportment and her guests photographed in the morning paper with startling distinctness.

But the calling is the brightest part of this social side of life. The other part is the night-life—not the night-life of gambling saloons and their kind: of that dark underground existence Society has no knowledge, though he who left it at daybreak and will go back to it at midnight clasps the last debutante in his arms and whirls with her to the sweet waltz-music—but the night-life of the Season.

A Washington season is a generic thing: women come to the place for the sake of it, as they go nowhere else. Through the system of calling just described official society is accessible to all, and the introductions obtained there to people of the more select circles, when fortified by wealth and pertinacity, open the whole charmed round of pleasure. Society in other cities is totally unlike Society in Washington. There it is an interchange of kindliness between households of friends: it is the festivity of happy anniversaries, the union of families in new ties, the cherishing of long acquaintance. But in Washington—except so far as the small number of residents is concerned—its whole purpose and meaning are anomalous: each Administration brings a new following, each Congress has a new rabble at its heels; friendships are accidents of the day, diplomacy is carried on by dining; every party has a political purpose, every civility a double meaning. Nevertheless, the sparkle of wit, the kindling of enthusiasm, are not absent from it; on the contrary, there is more of that than elsewhere, for it is sustained by the chosen intellect and beauty of the continent. You may meet admirals there who have sailed round the world, generals who have fought mighty battles, priests who may yet be popes, men and women who are figures of the century: they will tell you the romance of their travel, the heart-beat of their successes, and you will contrive to hear it for all the accompanying roar and sweep in which they are the lay figures for aspirants to measure, and the property of reporters. In such a Society of course all asperities are softened: this man's daughter dances with the son of his arch-enemy; deference is accorded to the opinion of a woman on public matters as if she already possessed her right of suffrage; there is an exhilaration in meeting and avoiding and overlooking, in the light and skillful skating over dangerous surfaces, while a rare freedom unites with a gentle even if politic courtesy, which it is delightful to meet to-night and which allures you to seek it to-morrow. Society without a conscience it is, possibly, but for all that sufficiently fascinating.

Let us look at one of its scenes: not a "state sociable" nor a hotel "hop," and not a President's "levee." There are fine ladies who have lived forty years in Washington without attending that pandemonium, the levee, where the crowd seizes one with a hundred hands till flounce and furbelow are crushed in its grasp, and where, while the court reigns in the Blue Room, the mob are disporting themselves in the magnificence of the East Room, the parlor of the people, where they have the reddest of red curtains, the broadest of gold cornices, the portraits of their public servants in the panels between square rods of looking-glass; where the huge chandeliers shine with a thousand pendants and a thousand jets, and where, because foreign crowds tread bare marble floors, they have on theirs a tufted velvet, and so revolve rejoicing on the biggest carpet in the world, like the medley of a vast kaleidoscope—old people with one foot in the grave, children in arms, a bride with veil and orange-blossoms, cripples, heroes, dwarfs and beauties, all together. Not on any such scene of the Season let us look, where the doors are locked behind us at eleven o'clock, but on one of its "balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to midday." It is like an Aztec revel for its flowers: the great stairways, leading up and down between the rooms that glow with light and resound with the tones of flute and violin, are wound with shrubs where art conceals everything but the branch and blossom; doors are arched with palms and long banana leaves; flowers swing from lintel and window and bracket, stream from the pictures, crown the statues; sprays of dropping vines wreathe the chandeliers that shed the soft brilliance of wax-lights around them; mantels are covered with moss; tables are bedded with violets; tall vases overflow with roses and heliotropes, with cold camellias and burning geraniums; the orchestra is hidden with latticed bloom and bud; and yellow acacias and scarlet passion-flowers and a great white orchid with a honeyed breath encircle the fern-filled basin where a fountain plays. The murmur of music, the wealth of perfume, make the atmosphere an enchantment. A crowd of gorgeous hues and tissues, bare bosoms and blazing jewels, ascend and descend the stairs: here are women the fame of whose beauty is world-wide, wearing lace whose intricate design, over the pale shimmer of some perfectly tinted silk beneath, represents the labor of a lifetime, wearing necklaces and tiaras of diamonds, where the great stones set in a frosty floral splendor seem to throb with a spirit of their own. There of course is the President; yonder is the Chief-Justice; here again the general of all our armies; here flash the glittering insignia of soldiers, here the fantastic array of diplomats; down one vista the dancers float through their mazes, down another shine the crystal and gold and silver of the tables red with burgundy and bordeaux, tempting with terrapin and truffle, with spiced meats and salads, pastries, confections and fruits; and close by is the punch-room. You have your choice of the frozen article, or of that claret concoction to hold whose glowing ruby a bowl has been hollowed in the ice itself, or of the champagne punch, where to every litre of the champagne a litre of brandy, a litre of red rum, a litre of green tea, are given, and where you see a flushed and fevered damsel dipping the ladle and tossing off her jorum as coolly as though she had not had her three wines at dinner that day, and had not, in half the houses of her dozen morning calls, sipped her sherry or set down her little punch-glass empty of its delicious mixture of old spirits and fermenting fruit-juices. Perhaps that sight sets you to thinking. You may have been attracted earlier in the night by her delicate toilette and her face pure as a pearl: you saw her later, warm from the dance, eating and drinking in the supper-room: then her partner's arm was round her waist, her head was on his shoulder, and she was plunging into the German, whirling to maddening measures, presently caught in a new embrace, flying from that man's arms to another's, growing wild with the abandon of the figure, hair flying, dress disordered, powder caked, face burning, till, pausing an instant for the champagne in a servant's hands, your girl with the face as pure as a pearl seemed nothing but a bacchante. And you ask yourself, "What is to be the end, for her, of these midnights rich in every delight of vanity—the thin slipper, the bare flesh, the brain loaded with false tresses, the pores stopped with the dust of white and pink ball, the heated dance, the indigestible banquet, the scanty sleep to get which she doses herself nightly with some tremendous drug?" You wonder what emotions are stimulated by the whirling dances, the rich dainties, the breath of the exotics, the waltz-music, the common contact, the emulation of dress, the unseasonable hours, the twice-breathed air, the everlasting drams. "I saw Florimonde going the round of her half dozen parties the other night," wrote a "looker-on in Venice" toward the close of the last season. "What a resplendent creature she was, the hazel-eyed beauty, with the faintest tinge of sunset hues on her oval cheeks! Her dress was of that peculiar tarnished shade of pink—like yellow sunshine suffusing a pale rose—which made the white shoulders rising from it whiter and more polished yet; the panier and scarf were of yellowest point lace; and a necklace of filigree and of large pale topazes, each carved in cameo, illuminated the whole. Maudita went out with Florimonde, too, that night, as she had gone every night for two months before. Skirt over skirt of fluffy net flowed round Maudita, and let their misty clouds blow about the trailing ornaments of long green grasses and blue corn-flowers that she wore, while puffs and falls half veiled the stomacher of Mexican turquoise and diamond sparks, whose device imitated a spray of the same flowers; and in among the masses of her glittering, waving auburn hair rested a slender diadem of the turquoise again—that whose nameless tint, half blue, half green, makes it an inestimable treasure among the Navajoes, as it was once among the Aztecs, who called it the chalchivitl; each cluster of Maudita's turquoises set in a frost-work of finest diamonds—a splendid toilette indeed, as fresh and radiant as the morning dew upon the meadows. When they set out on the love-path, that is. When they came home from it, and from all the fatigues and fervors of the German, a metamorphosis. The gauzy dress was so fringed and trodden on and torn that it seemed to hold together, like many an ill-assorted marriage, by the cohesion of habit alone; the hair—Madge Wildfire's was of more respectable appearance; the powder had fallen on arms and shoulders; and to my critical eyes, if to no others, the sunset hues remained on only one of Florimonde's cheeks; and those enticing shadows round Maudita's eyes when she went out—for the best of eyes are dulled by too much wear and tear—does antimony 'run,' or had some pugilistic partner given her a 'black eye'? Not that the damsels came home in such trim on every night of the season: this was the accumulation of six parties in one night, the last of the Germans, when the fun grew fast and furious, the figures and the favors more fantastic; when daylight was breaking ere the champagne breakfast was eaten; and when the drunken coachman, out all night, had kept them shivering in the porch an endless while, and had jolted them about the carriage afterward. But they had had a glorious time: their eyes were dancing like marsh-lights, their laughter was ringing like a peal of bells, the jests and bon-mots and flattery they had heard were running off their lips like rain; they had made Goodness knows what conquests, they had made Goodness knows how many engagements; and oh, they were so tired! I ran into their room to see them next day: it was afternoon, and they were still in bed. There was nothing remarkable in that, they said: some girls were obliged to stay in bed two days out of every week through sheer fatigue, and some got so excited they couldn't sleep at all, except by means of morphia, and that made them sick a couple of days, any way; but as for themselves, they had never given out yet, and never meant to do so. While she was speaking, Florimonde's voice faltered, and the sentence was finished under the breath. Her voice had given out. At the moment the muscles round that handsome mouth of hers began to twitch ridiculously: she yawned and threw up her arms, as a baby stretches itself, and stiffened in that position, with her teeth set and her eyes rolled out of sight, and lay there like a corpse. Florimonde had given out. As I sprang to investigate this surprising condition of things, there came a sudden gurgle and a groan from Maudita, who had risen in her own little bed at my motion. I turned to see her clutching her throat, as if her hands were the claws of a wild-cat: she was laughing and howling and crying all at once; her face was of a dark purple tint; her body—that lithe and supple waltzing body of hers—was bending itself rigidly into the shape of a bow, resting by the head and the heels on the bed—the dignified Maudita!—and the foam was standing half an inch high on her mouth. Maudita had given out too. Of course the doctor came presently and separated the patients, and gave them pills and powders and bromides without end; and there were watchers to keep the delicate creatures, whom it took three or four people to hold in their fits, from injuring themselves; and at last sleep came with the all-persuading chloral, and with the awaking from that powerful chloral-given sleep came an imbecile sort of state, whose scattered wits were full of small cunning and spites, that told secrets and told lies, and could not pronounce names; and lips were blistered and eyes were swollen and purblind; and Florimonde and Maudita must keep Lent in spite of themselves. But how long do you suppose they will keep it? and in what way? As the good formalist fasts on Friday, with dishes of oysters escalloped deliciously on the shell, with toasted crabs, and bass baked in port wine. Will Florimonde forego her low necks or Maudita her blonde powder? Will there be any less excitement or rivalry in their private theatricals and concerts for charity? Will the flirtations be any less extraordinary at the high teas? The mind will be perhaps a little flighty; the health will not be so firm; there will be a good deal of morbid sorrow over imaginary misdeeds, and none at all over real ones; there will be compensatory church-going, with delightful little monogram-covered prayer-books. But will the flesh be mortified by any real rough sackcloth and ashes? It is hardly to be hoped. Neither Lent, nor religion, nor judgment, nor anything but poverty and absolute impotence, will put a period to the wild pursuit of pleasure that a fashionable season begins. Ill for the next generation, the mothers of which are wrecks before its birth! Well for Florimonde and Maudita, with all the dew and freshness of their youth destroyed, if at length, thoroughly ennuyees, they do not put a piquancy and flavor of sin into their pleasure, as the old West Indian toper dashes his insipid brandy with cayenne!"

Doubtless on such phenomena of the Season as these the ashes with which the priest sprinkles the heads of the penitents while he murmurs Memento, homo, quod pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris, falls like the Vesuvian dust upon Pompeiian revels, and they are buried beyond sight and hearing, for a time at least. But we all know that ashes are a fertilizer, and by and by there blossoms above the ruins a later season which is to the earlier one what the spirit is to the body. Everywhere outdoors, then, it is spring: the damp and windy weather has blown away, the sky is as blue as the violets and hyacinths starting untended in the sod that the soft showers have clad in a vivid verdure, and sunbeams are pouring over dome and obelisk and pillared lines of marble till they shine with dazzling lustre through the light screens of greenery. Then come the "kettle-drums," with sunset looking in for company; then the receptions are held in rooms full of sunshine, with open windows letting in the outside fragrance and bird-song and glimpses of charming landscape, or they are turned into fetes-champetres in the surrounding gardens; then come the riding-parties to the Falls, where last night's sylph may be to-day's Amazon in the midst of exceedingly grand scenery. Then, too, is the time for the moonlit boating where the Potomac narrows between steep and romantic banks of a sylvan wildness, and where the long oars of the swift rowers bear you as if on wings; for picnics to Rock Creek, a region of rude beauty, where the woods abound in lupines and pink azaleas, and the great white dogwood boughs stretch away into the darkness of the forest like a press of moonbeams, and where at dark your horses ford the stream and climb the hill, and bring you over the Georgetown Heights, past villas half-guessed by starlight among their gardens and fountains, and in by a market picturesque with a hundred torches flaring over the heads of mules and negroes and venders and higglers—piles of game, crisp vegetables and scarlet berries. And with this comes the excursion down river, sheet after sheet of the shining stream opening on woody loveliness remote in azure hazes, to Mount Vernon among its blossoming magnolias and rosy Judas trees, where the great tomb stands open with its sarcophagi, and where Eleanor Custis's harpsichord keeps strange company with the grim key of the Bastile that has never been moved since Washington hung it on the nail—where the quaint old rooms and verandahs and conservatories invite the guests, and the garden with its breast-high hedges of spicy box invites the lovers. Now the few ancestral mansions embower themselves in an aristocratic seclusion of trees and vines that shut them in with their birds and flowers and sunshine, and the Van Ness Place, where Washington came to lay out the city, adorns all its ancient and mossy magnificence with fresh drapery of leaves and flowers. The halls of Congress, too, are still open all day, the drama growing livelier as the adjournment draws nearer; and at evening the drives are thronged with fine equipages winding down the Fourteenth street way, out by the Soldiers' Home, through Harewood, or up by the Anacostia branch and the wild Maryland hill-roads, where wide-stretching pictures are revealed between the forest trees, while sometimes one sees, with its two rivers—one shining like silver, one red and turbid—the city lying far away, much of its outline veiled and the color of its baked brick and stone and marble mellowed in the distance, till through the quivering air and among all its towering trees it looks like a vision of antique temples in the midst of gardens of flowers. And now the numberless squares and triangles and grass-plots of the city are green as Dante's newly-broken emeralds, are a miracle of spotless deutzia and golden laburnum, honeysuckle and jasmine: half the houses are covered with ivies and grapevines; the Smithsonian grounds surround their dark and castellated group of buildings in a wilderness of bloom; and the rose has come—such roses as Sappho and Hafiz sung; deep-red roses that burn in the sun, roses that are almost black, so purple is their crimson, roses that are stainless white, long-stemmed, in generous clusters, making the air about them an intoxication in itself—roses fit to crown Anacreon. Twice a week during all this sweet season the Marine Band has been blowing out its music in the President's Grounds and in the Capitol Park late in the warm afternoon, and every one promenades in gala attire beneath the trees and over the shady slopes till the tunes die with the twilight, and many a long-delaying love-affair culminates as the stars come out and the perfumed wind casts down great shadows from the swinging branches overhead, while indulgent duennas gossip on, oblivious of dew; and at midnight the mocking-birds begin to bubble and warble a wild sweet melody everywhere throughout the dark and listening city. For one brief month, you see, it is politics and power set down in Paradise—let only the envious say as strangely out of place as the serpent there. And finally the festivities of this almost ideal spring season, where the world of Fashion and the world of Nature meet at their best, come to an end with Decoration Day—the last day ere the spring brightens into the blaze of summer—a day that robs death of its terrors, and seems to carry one back to that primeval period when the old death-defying Egyptians made their festivals with flowers, as we stand in that desolation of the dead on the heights of Arlington, and see the billows of graves stretching away to the horizon, wave after wave, crested with the line of white headstones, and every mound heaped with flowers that have been scattered to the tune of singing children's voices, while below the peaceful river floats out broadly; and far across its stream, over all the turfy terraces and above the plumy treetops that hide the arched and columned bases of its snowy splendor, the dome of the country's Capitol rises—a shining guardian of the slumbers of the dead.



A DAY'S SPORT IN EAST FLORIDA.

Through these green tents, by eldest Nature dressed, He roamed, content alike with man and beast. Where darkness found him, he lay glad at night: There the red morning touched him with its light.

R.W. EMERSON

On the 18th of February we arrived in the yacht off Mosquito Inlet about sunrise, and as the tide served our pilot took us in over the bar, which happened to be smooth at the time, and we anchored just above the junction of the Halifax and Hillsboro Rivers. Rivers they are called by the Floridians, but are long stretches of salt water lying parallel with the coast, and separated from the sea by a sandy beach of a mile in width, which is covered with a growth of pitch-pine and palmetto scrub. In New York and New Jersey such waters are called bays, and on the coast of Carolina they are sounds. They furnish a convenient boat-navigation for the people, who in consequence do most of their traveling by water.

Here we found lying at anchor a couple of large Eastern schooners: they were waiting for cargoes of live-oak, which was being cut by a large force of men in the employ of the Swifts, a firm that supplies all this timber for the American navy. A lighthouse is much needed here, the entrance being narrow, with only eight or ten feet of water at high tide. The Victoria followed us in, and we had not been long at anchor when a canoe came down the river under sail, and rounding to alongside, a tall young man in white duck jacket and trousers stepped on board, and accosted our pilot: "How are you, Pecetti? So you are taking up my trade?"

"Well, yes: I've shipped as pilot for this cruise, and Al. Caznova has the other yacht.—Captain Morris, this is Mr. Weldon, one of the branch pilots."

"How do you do, Mr. Weldon? Is there a collector of the port here?"

"There's a deputy living in that cottage that you see on the bluff to the left—Major Allen; and there is his boat coming down the river."

"Any hotel here, Mr. Weldon?"

"Yes, there is a very good one at New Smyrna, about three miles up the river: Mr. Loud keeps it."

"We think of stopping here two or three days: where would be the best place to anchor the yachts?"

"If you are going to Loud's, you can anchor near Major Allen's: there is good holding ground, and you would be in sight of your vessel."

"Won't you stop and take breakfast, Mr. Weldon? and we will get you to show us the way to the hotel."

"Much obliged, but I want to see the pilot of the other yacht. You can see the hotel when you get to Major Allen's;" and he departed.

"I believe I have seen that man before," said Captain Morris. "We sent a party ashore here in '63 to get wood, and they were fired upon by the natives, and one man was killed. I shelled the place and burned a house or two, and we took a couple of prisoners and left them at St. Augustine. I think this young fellow was one of them."

Presently a yawl boat, rowed by two negroes, with the revenue flag flying, came alongside, and a stout man of middle age came on board. Morris came forward: "Mr. Allen, the collector, I suppose? I am master and owner of this yacht, the Pelican of New York, a pleasure-vessel on a cruise. The other schooner is also a yacht: she belongs in Montreal."

"All right, captain! I will step below and look at your papers, if you please. A handsome vessel, upon my word!"

"We are just going to breakfast, major: you will join us, I hope?"

This the major did, and being a Yankee of fluent speech, we soon learned all about him—how he had served in a Massachusetts regiment, and had been the first secretary of state under the new constitution of Florida. This has an imposing sound, but when we learn that almost all the better class of whites were mere unreconstructed rebels, leaving only a few poor whites, some carpet-baggers from the North and the negroes from whom to select the State officers, the position ceases to seem exalted. During breakfast he told us all about New Smyrna and its people, which was not much, since there are only five or six houses there. The conjecture of Captain Morris about the pilot was correct: he was of a good old rebel family, every man of whom of suitable age had been in the Confederate service.

Major Allen went to visit the Victoria, and on his return we both got under way and beat up the river about two miles, anchoring in three fathoms water under the bluff on which stands the collector's house. About noon a boat from each yacht started for the hotel. The river here expands into a bay of a mile in width, containing several islands, some of them wooded, and some low and grassy. The main channel of the Hillsboro' River comes in from the south, half a mile wide, with ten or twelve feet of water. On the west side the bay is a low island with a creek between it and the mainland. On this mainland is a shell bluff, twelve feet high, on which stands the hotel—a long two-story building, with a piazza in front and out-buildings behind. In the front yard are young orange, olive and fig trees, with two splendid oleanders fifteen feet high, one on each side the door. Another tropical plant, seen at the North in greenhouses, but here growing ten feet high in the open air, is the American aloe or century-plant. This house will accommodate twenty-five boarders, but it was not full at the time; so we obtained rooms. It is one of the most comfortable places in Florida, with a well-kept table, provided with fish, oysters, turtle and game. New Smyrna is about thirty miles from Enterprise, on the St. John's River: to this place there are three or four steamers weekly from Jacksonville.

A hunting-party was organized to go the next day to Turnbull's Swamp, which lies a few miles west of Loud's, and contains deer, turkeys and ducks, with bears and panthers for those who desire that kind of game. The party consisted of Captain Morris and Roberts of our yacht; Colonel Vincent and two of the Englishmen from the Victoria, with Weldon the pilot, and a tall Ohio hunter named Halliday, who lived in the woods near Loud's. He took three fox-hounds, and Morris brought his deer-hounds ashore. They took with them a mule and cart, with a tent and blankets, intending to stay in the swamp over night. Captain Herbert and I preferred to go a-fishing, and we hired a man to get bait and take us to the ground in his boat. Doctor White went off by himself to shoot birds for his collection.

About eight A.M. we anglers sailed out of the creek, and stood across the bay with a light southerly breeze. Our boatman was one of the Minorcan race, of whom there are many on this coast, descendants of the men of Turnbull's colony of 1767. He was a cousin of our pilot, by name Pecetti—a stout, well-built man forty years old, with keen black eyes and curling dark hair and beard, and a great fisherman with line and net. He lived near the inlet, and had the kind of boat commonly used in these shallow waters—flat-bottomed, broad in the beam, with centre-board and one mast set well forward. He had dug a peck or two of the large round clams, and two or three throws of his cast-net as we came through the creek procured a dozen mullet.

We ran into a channel between the eastern shore of the bay and an island, and came to in a deep channel near the shore, which was marshy and covered with a dense growth of mangrove bushes.

"Now," said Pecetti as he made fast the painter to a projecting limb, "if the sand-flies don't eat us up, we ought to get some fish here."

"What kind of fish do you find here?" asked Herbert.

"Mostly sheepshead, some groupers and snappers, trout, bass, and whiting. For sheepshead you want clam bait—for the others, mullet is best. Rig up your rods and I will bait for you."

I had a bamboo bass-rod, with a large reel: the captain had a light salmon-rod, with click reel. Pecetti selected for us some stout Virginia hooks tied on double gut, with four-ounce sinkers, the tide being quite strong here and half flood.

I found the bottom alongside the boat with about twelve feet of line, and left my hooks upon it as directed. Soon I felt a slight touch, but pulled up nothing but bare hooks. Twice was I thus robbed by the small fish which swarmed about us, and which get the bait before the larger ones can reach it; but the third time I felt a heavy downward tug, and found myself fast to a strong fish, which fought hard to keep at the bottom, and made short but furious rushes here and there, so that I had to give him line. In a few minutes he tired himself by his own efforts, and I wound him up toward the surface, but no sooner did he approach daylight than he surged downward again. Five minutes' play of this sort exhausted him, and I lifted on board a five-pound sheepshead, the same thick-set, arched-backed fish, with his six dusky bars on a silvery ground, which we buy in Fulton market at half a dollar the pound, and which the wise call Sargus ovis. In the New York waters it is a scarce fish, but runs larger than on the Southern coast, sometimes up to ten or twelve pounds. Here they do not average more than four pounds, a seven-pounder being rare. I agree in opinion with Norris, whose theory is that those found on the coasts of the Middle states are the surplus population of more Southern waters—perhaps the magnificoes of their tribe, who, like the rich planters in the good old times, like to amuse themselves at Cape May or Long Branch.

But to return to our muttons. Here Captain Herbert pulled up a handsome silvery fish of about a pound weight.

"A whiting!" cried Pecetti, "and the best fish in the river." Next I hooked a couple of sheepshead, but lost one by the breaking of a hook—a common accident, the jaws of this fish being very powerful. Herbert now got hold of a big one, which played beautifully on his elastic rod, and gave him a long fight and plenty of reel music, but was finally saved, a six-pound sheepshead.

Pecetti, who had waited on us attentively, baiting our hooks and taking off our fish (a service of some danger to a tyro, as the sheepshead is armed with sharp spines), had a hook baited with mullet away astern of the boat. This line was now straightened out by something heavy, which he pulled in, hand over hand, and lifted on board a handsome fish, near two feet long, with darkly mottled sides and shaped like a cod-fish. "That's a nice grouper," said he—"ten pound, I think." This is a percoid, Serranus nigritus of Holbrook, and one of the very best table-fishes of these waters.

We took six or eight more sheepshead, and the captain caught a handsome, active fish of about four pounds weight, resembling the squetegue or weakfish of New York, but having dark spots on the back, like the lake-trout of the Adirondacks. This is the salt-water trout, so called, though it is not a salmonine: it is Otolithus Caroliniensis, the weakfish being Otolithus regalis.

Next I hooked a strong fish which seemed disposed to run under the mangrove roots. "That's a big grouper," cried Pecetti. "Keep him away from the roots, or you will lose him."

I did my best, but he was too strong: the rod bent into a hoop with the strain, but I had to let him run, and he took to his hold under the bank, from whence I was not able to dislodge him, and had to break my line, losing hooks and snood. While this was going on, Herbert, who had put on a mullet bait and let it float down the current, hooked and secured after five minutes' play a channel bass or redfish of about seven pounds. This is a fish peculiar to the Southern waters, good on the table when in season, which is the spring and summer: in the winter it spawns, and is not so good. When above ten or twelve pounds in weight it is of a brilliant copper-red on back and sides: the smaller ones are of a steel-blue on the back, and iridescent when first caught. It grows to the weight of fifty or sixty pounds, runs in great schools, and in habits and play when hooked resembles the allied species Labrax lineatus, the striped bass. Cuvier named the species Corvina ocellata, from the black spot which it bears near the tail.

The bottom here was rather foul, being covered with old logs and branches of the mangroves, which, being a very heavy wood, had sunk to the bottom and become covered with barnacles and other crustaceae, which attracted the fish to this spot. They bit well, but so did the sand-flies: as soon as the breeze died away they came out from the bushes in clouds, and attacked us so fiercely that we were obliged to quit.

"We'll go down toward the inlet," said Pecetti: "there's good fishing-ground and more breeze." So he set the sail, and we ran down the river, past the yachts, about a mile, where we came to anchor near a bluff covered with trees, in a deep channel. Here we first caught blackfish or sea-bass, of small size, but plenty; also snappers, lively fish of the perch family, of a red color, and from a pound to two pounds in weight, which usually take a mullet bait, in the swift current near the surface. Then a school of sheepshead came along, of which we got a dozen. After these we found bass, of which we took eight, weighing from six to ten pounds each; also three fine groupers, the largest twelve pounds. Pecetti caught a Tartar in the shape of a monstrous sting-ray, four feet across, with a tail three feet long armed with formidable spines. This creature lives on the bottom, his food being chiefly mollusks and crustaceae, for the disposal of which he has a huge mouth with a pavement of flat enameled teeth. He lies usually half buried in the sand, and is much dreaded by the fishermen, who are in danger of treading on him as they wade to cast their nets. In that case he strikes quick blows with his whiplike tail, the jagged spines of which make very dangerous wounds, apt to produce lockjaw.

After much difficulty our boatman got the ray alongside the boat with his gaff-hook, and gave it a few deep cuts in the region of the heart with a large knife. The blood spurted out in big jets, as from the strokes of a pump, which soon exhausted its strength, and Pecetti dragged it ashore and cut off its tail for a trophy. As the creature was dying it ejected from its stomach a quart or more of small bivalves, which must have been recently swallowed.

"That makes the best bait for sharks," said Pecetti: "I always bait with sting-ray when I can get it."

As the rays and sharks both belong to the order of placoids, it appears that the shark is not particular about preying on his kindred.

"Are sharks plenty here?" I inquired.

"Indeed they are!" said Pecetti: "I wonder we have not had our lines cut by them. I have caught half a dozen in an hour's time right here. I think I can show you one very quick." He went ashore and launched the ray's carcass down the current. It floated slowly away, but had not gone fifty yards when it was seized by a shark, which tugged and tore at it, till directly a second and a third arrived and struggled furiously for it, lashing the water into foam with their tails. Presently more came up, till there were five or six of the monsters all fighting for the prey, which they soon devoured. "There, you see how soon they smelt the blood. What you think of sharks, now?"

"I think," said I, "that this is not exactly the place to bathe in."

The tide being now well on the ebb, the fish stopped biting, perhaps driven away by the sharks, and we sailed down to the inlet, where there is a long sandy beach fringed with mangroves: behind these, low hillocks of sand covered with saw-palmetto extend across to the ocean, perhaps half a mile; and here is an expanse of sandy beach some hundreds of yards in width at low tide, hard and smooth, so that one could drive from St. Augustine to the south end of the peninsula were it not for the creeks and inlets.

On the river-front is a long bed of oysters, growing up to high-water mark, the upper ones poor, called "raccoon oysters" by the natives, but the lower ones, which are mostly covered with water, large, fat and delicious. We gathered about a bushel of these, built a fire of dead mangrove wood, which is the best of fuel, and when we had a good bed of coals threw on the oysters. The heat, at the same time that it roasted them, obliged them to open their valves, so that it was both easy and pleasant to take them on the half shell. Besides these free gifts of Nature, we had with us from the hotel biscuits, cold meat and doughnuts. While we were eating, a handsome sailboat from the hotel came to the beach: it contained a party of ladies and gentlemen who were going for shells, which are numerous on the sea-beach, though not many of the finer sorts are found so far north. After a heavy storm the paper nautilus is sometimes found. Sea-beans of various kinds are numerous, and the search for them, and the polishing of them when found, seem to be the principal occupations of many Florida tourists. Were it not for the sharks, this would be a fine bathing-beach. Whether they are man-eaters or not, may be a question, but we preferred to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt.

On our return to Loud's we found Doctor White very busy skinning his birds.

"What is this, doctor?—a jay? It looks rather different from our blue jay."

"Yes: this is the Florida jay: it has no crest, you perceive. Here is another Southern bird, the fish-crow, smaller than ours, you see. Here I have a white heron and a wood-ibis. These will give me work for to-day."

"What game did you see, doctor?" inquired Captain Herbert.

"I saw some quails in the palmetto scrub behind the house, and shot one to see if it differs from ours. It is the same bird, Ortyx Virginiana: they call it partridge in the South—rather smaller than ours at the North. In the swamp I found snipe, Scolopax Wilsonii: they call them here jacksnipe. Here is one of them: did you ever see a fatter bird?"

"I should like to go and look them up to-morrow morning," said the captain. "How far away were they?"

"About half a mile only, north-west. You will find some small ponds, and near them the snipe were plenty: there were wood-ducks there also."

"I will go with you, captain," said I. "We will take Morris's old pointer, Dash: he is steady and staunch."

About four o'clock that afternoon the hunting-party returned, bringing in three deer, six wild turkeys, twenty-five ducks, ten gray squirrels, and three rabbits, besides a wild steer, killed by Halliday. They had also killed a wild-cat, and a small alligator about seven feet long. A good heap of game it made.

"What are you going to do with that alligator, Captain Morris?" asked the doctor.

"I thought I should like to take home his hide to put in my hall. He was going for one of my hounds when I shot him."

"I will take off the skin for you," said the doctor: "you had better pack it in salt till you get to New York. We will save that wild-cat's skin, too: it is a handsome pelt—Felis rufus, the Southern lynx."

"Well done!" cried Mr. Loud, who just then came out to the cart. "That's the biggest gobbler I have seen this year. I must weigh that bird: bring out the scales, Peter. So—eighteen pounds, and this other sixteen: fine birds indeed! Who killed them?"

"Colonel Vincent killed the largest, and I two of the others," said Dr. Macleod of the Victoria. "Captain Morris, I think, shot three turkeys and a deer; Mr. Weldon killed two deer; Halliday shot the steer and the cat, and the small game was pretty equally divided between us, I believe."

We had that night a fine supper of venison steaks, roast ducks, stewed squirrels, oysters and fish, all well cooked by Mr. Loud's old negro, who was really an artist.

S.C. CLARKE.



THE LIVELIES.

IN TWO PARTS.—II.

When Dr. Lively had accomplished his part toward relieving immediate suffering, when he saw system growing gradually out of the chaos, when he saw that he could be spared from the work, he began to consider his personal affairs.

"I can't start again here," he said to Mrs. Lively. "Office and living rooms that would answer at all cannot be had for less than one hundred and fifty dollars a month, and that paid in advance, and I haven't a cent."

"What in the world are we going to do?"

"I'll tell you what I've been thinking about: I met in the relief-rooms yesterday an old college acquaintance—Edward Harrison. He lives in Keokuk, Iowa, now—came on here with some money and provisions for the sufferers. He would insist on lending me a few dollars. He's a good fellow: I used to like him at college. Well, he told me of a place near Keokuk where a good physician and surgeon is needed—none there except a raw young man. It has no railroad, but it's all the better for a doctor on that account."

"No railroad! How in the world do the folks get anywhere?"

"It's on the Mississippi River, and boats are passing the town every few hours."

"The idea of going from Chicago to where there isn't even a railroad! What place is it?"

"Nauvoo."

"Nauvoo! That miserable Mormon place?"

"Harrison says there is only an occasional Mormon there now—that it's largely settled by Germans engaged in wine-making."

"Grapes?" asked Napoleon.

"That boy never comes out of his dreaming except for something to eat. Dear me! the idea of living among a lot of Germans!" said Mrs. Lively, returning to the subject.

"There's a French element there, the remnants of the Icarians—a colony of Communists under Cabet," the doctor explained.

"What! those horrid Communists that turned Paris upside down?" Mrs. Lively exclaimed.

"Oh no," said the doctor. "They settled in Nauvoo some twenty years ago, I believe."

"Dear! dear! dear! it's very hard," said the lady.

"My dear, I think we are very fortunate. Harrison says there's plenty of work there, though it's hard work—riding over bad roads. He promises me letters of introduction to merchants there, so that I can get credit for the household goods we shall need to begin with and for our pressing necessities. He has already written to a man there to rent us a house, and put up a kitchen stove and a couple of plain beds, and to have a few provisions on hand when we arrive. I purpose leaving here to-morrow, or the day after at farthest."

"But how are we ever to get there without money?"

"We can get passes out of the city. So, my dear, please try to feel grateful. Think of the thousands here who can't turn round, who are utterly helpless."

"Well, it never did help me to feel better to know that somebody was worse off than I. It doesn't cure my headache to be told that somebody else has a raging toothache. Grateful! when I haven't even a change of clothes!"

"Go to the relief-rooms and get a change of under garments," Dr. Lively advised.

"I won't go there and wait round like a beggar, and have them ask me a million of prying questions, and all for somebody's old clothes," Mrs. Lively declared.

"Now, my dear," her husband remonstrated, "I have been a great deal in the relief-rooms, and I believe there are no unnecessary questions asked—only such as are imperative to prevent imposition."

"The things don't belong to them any more than they do to me."

"Perhaps not as much. They were sent to the destitute, such as you, so you shouldn't mind asking for your own," the doctor argued.

"Think what a mean little story I should have to tell! I do wish you'd bought that house. If we'd lost fifty thousand!—but a few bed-quilts and those old frogs and bugs and dried leaves of yours! The most miserable Irish woman on DeKoven street can tell as big a story of losses as we can."

"I'll go to the relief-rooms and get some clothes for you," said the doctor decidedly: "I'm not ashamed."

"I won't wear any of the things if you bring them," said Mrs. Lively.

"Oh, wife," said the doctor, his face pallid and grieved, "you are wrong, you are wrong. Are you to get no kind of good out of this calamity? Is the chastisement to exasperate only? to make you more perverse, more bitter?"

"You are very complimentary," was the wife's reply.

The doctor was silent for a moment: then he took up his hat. "I'm going to try to get passes out of the city," he said.

He had a long walk by Twelfth street to the rooms of the committee on transportation. Arrived at the hall, he found two long lines of waiting humanity reaching out like great wings from the door, the men on one side, the women on the other. He fell into line at the very foot, and there he waited hour after hour. For once, the women held the vantage-ground. They passed up in advance of the men to the audience-room, being admitted one by one. The audience consumed, on the average, five minutes to a person. At length all the women had had their turn: then, one by one, the men were admitted. Slowly Dr. Lively moved forward. He had attained the steps and was feeling hopeful of a speedy admission, when the business-session was pronounced ended for the day, and the doors were closed. He went back drooping, and related his experience to his wife.

"You don't mean to say you've been gone all this afternoon and come back without the passes?" she exclaimed.

"That's just how it is," answered the doctor.

"Well, I'll warrant I would have got in if I'd been there," she said.

"Yes, you'd have got an audience, for, as I have said, the women were admitted before the men. My next neighbor in the line said he had been there three days in succession without getting into the hall."

"Well, I'll go in the morning, and I'll come home with a pass in an hour, I promise you."

The next morning Mrs. Lively started for the hall at eight o'clock, determined to procure a place at the head of the line. But, early as was the hour, she found the doors already besieged. There were at least three dozen women ahead of her. She took her place very ungraciously at the foot of the line. At nine the doors were opened, and the first comers admitted. Ten o'clock came, and Mrs. Lively was still in the street—had not even reached the stairs. Eleven o'clock came—she stood on the second step. At length she had reached the top step but one, and it was not yet twelve.

"It doesn't seem fair," she said to the doorkeeper, "that the men should have to wait, day after day, till all the women in the city are served."

"No," assented the keeper, "it is not fair. Now, there are men in that line who have been here for four days. They'd have done better and saved time if they'd gone to work in the burnt district moving rubbish, and earned their railroad passage."

Mrs. Lively's suggestion of unfairness proved an unfortunate one for her, for the keeper conceived the idea of acting on it.

"It isn't fair," he repeated, "and I mean to let some of those fellows in."

"Oh, do let me in first," she cried, but the keeper had already beckoned to the head of the other line, and was now marching him into the hall.

"No use for you to try for a pass," said the inner doorkeeper after a few words with the petitioner. "You must have a certificate from some well-known, responsible person that your means were all lost by the fire, or you cannot get an audience. Must have your certificate, sir, before I can pass you to the committee."

The man thus turned back went sorrowfully down the steps into the street, and the next man passed in-doors.

"You want a pass for yourself," said the inner keeper. "The committee refuse in any circumstances to issue passes to able-bodied men. If you are able to work, you can earn your fare: plenty of work for willing hands. No use in arguing the matter, sir," he continued resolutely: "you can't get a pass."

"But I haven't a dollar in the world," persisted the man.

"Plenty of work at big prices, sir. Women and children and the sick and helpless we'll pass out of the city, but we need men, and we won't pass them out."

He turned away from the petitioner and beckoned the head woman to enter. This one had her audience, and came back crying. Mrs. Lively was now at the head of the line. Her turn had at last come.

"Session's over," announced the keeper, and closed the doors.

Some scores of disconsolate people dispersed in this direction and that. Mrs. Lively and a few others sat down on the steps, determined to wait for the reopening of the doors. After a weary waiting in the noon sun, which was not, however, very oppressive, the doors were again opened, and Mrs. Lively was admitted to the audience-room. At the head of one of the long tables sat George M. Pullman, to whom Mrs. Lively told her small story. Then she asked for passes to Nauvoo for herself, husband and son. She was kindly but closely questioned. Didn't she save some silver and jewelry? didn't her husband save his watch? etc. etc.

Mrs. Lively acknowledged it. "But," she added, "we haven't a change of clothes—we haven't money enough to keep us in drinking-water."

"Buy water!" said Mr. Pullman with a decided accent of impatience. "Don't talk about buying water with that great lake over there. Wait till Michigan goes dry. I've brought water with my own hands from Lake Michigan. Money for water, indeed!"

"So has my husband brought water from the lake," replied the lady with spirit: "he brought two pails yesterday morning, and it took him three hours and a half to accomplish it. I presume your quarters are nearer the lake than ours."

"Well, well, I can't give your husband a pass. He can raise money on his watch, can get a half-fare ticket, or he can work his way out. We don't like to see our men turning their backs on Chicago now: some have to, I suppose. I ought hardly to give you a pass, but I'll give you one, and your child;" and he gave the order to the clerk.

In another moment she was on her way to the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy ticket-office to get the pass countersigned. At three o'clock she reached her quarters with the paper, having been absent seven hours.

As the pass was good for three days only, despatch was necessary in getting matters into shape and in leaving the city. Dr. Lively pawned his watch—a fine gold repeater—for twenty dollars, and the next day, with an aching heart but smiling face, turned his back on the city whose bold challenges, splendid successes and dramatic career made it to him the most fascinating spot, the most dearly loved, this side of heaven.

In due time these Chicago sufferers were landed at Montrose, a miserable little village in Iowa, at the head of the Keokuk Rapids. Just across the wonderful river lay the historical Nauvoo, fair and beautiful as a poet's dream, though the wooded slopes retained but shreds of their autumn-dyed raiment. Mrs. Lively was pleased, the doctor was enthusiastic. They forgot that "over the river" is always beautiful. They crossed in a skiff at a rapturous rate, but when they had made the landing the disenchantment began. A two-horse wagon was waiting for passengers, and in this our friends embarked. The driver had heard they were coming, and knew the house that had been engaged for them—the Woodruff house, built by one of the old Mormon elders. The streets through which they drove were silent, with scarcely a sound or sight of human life. It all looked strange and queer, unlike anything they had ever seen. It was neither city nor village. The houses, city-like, all opened on the street, or had little front yards of city proportions, and to almost every one was attached the inevitable vineyard. It was indeed a city, with nineteen out of every twenty houses lifted out of it, and vineyards established in their places; and all the houses had an old-fashioned look, for almost without exception they antedated the Mormon exodus.

The Livelies were set down in a street where the sand was over the instep, before a stiff, graceless brick building, standing close up in one corner of an acre lot. On one side, in view from the front gate, was a dilapidated hen-house—on the other, a more unsightly stable with a pig-sty attached. All the space between the house and vineyard, in every direction, was strewn with corncobs and remnants of haystacks, while straw and manure were banked against the house to keep the cellar warm. In front was a walled sewer, through which the town on the hill was drained, for the Livelies' new home was on "the Flat," as the lower town is called. The view from the front took in only a dreary hillside covered with decaying cornstalks.

The doctor moved a barrel-hoop which fastened the gate, and it tottered over, and clung by one hinge to the worm-eaten post, from which the decaying fence had fallen away. A hall ran through the house, and on either side were two rooms. The second floor was a duplicate of the first, so that the house contained eight small rooms, nine by eleven feet, exactly alike, each with a huge fireplace. There was not a pantry, a closet, a clothes-press, a shelf in the house. Not a room was papered: all were covered with a coarse whitewash, smoked, fly-specked and momently falling in great scales. The floors were rough, knotty and warped; the wash-boards were rat-gnawed in every direction; all the woodwork was unpainted and gray with age.

Two beds and a kitchen stove had been set up on the bare floors. On a pine table in the cramped kitchen were a few dishes, tins and pails, a loaf of bread, a ham, some coffee and sugar. Mrs. Lively sat down in the kitchen on a wooden chair with a feeling of utter desolation in her heart. Napoleon looked longingly at the loaf of bread. The doctor flew round in a way that would have cheered anybody not foregone to despondency. He brought in some cobs from the yard and kindled a fire in the stove, filled the tea-kettle, and put some slices of ham to fry and some coffee to boil.

"Go up stairs, dear," he said to Mrs. Lively, "and lie down while I get supper ready. You are tired: I feel as smart as a new whip. I haven't been a soldier for nothing: I'll give you some of the best coffee you ever drank. Nappy, run across the street and see if you can't get a cup of milk: I see the people have a cow. Won't you lie down?" he continued to his wife. She looked so ineffably wretched that his heart ached for her.

"I think I shall feel better if I do something," she said drearily; "but," she continued, firing with something of her old spirit, "how in the world is anybody to do anything here? Not even a dishcloth!"

"Oh, never mind," laughed the doctor, piling the dusty dishes in a pan for washing, "we'll just set the crockery up in this cullender to drain dry."

"We'd better turn hermits, go and winter in a cave, and be done with it. How are we ever to live?"

"Why, my dear, I never felt so plucky in my life. We mustn't show the white feather: we must prove ourselves worthy of Chicago. Come, now, we'll work to get back to Chicago. We can live economically here, and when we get a little ahead we can start again in Chicago. Only think of these eight rooms and an acre of ground, three-fourths in grapes, for six dollars a month! Ain't it inspiriting? I've seen you at picnics eating with your fingers, drinking from a leaf-cup, making all kinds of shifts and enjoying all the straits. Now we can play picnicking here—play that we are camping out, and that one of these days, when we've bagged our game, we're going home to Chicago. Now, we'll set the table;" and he began moving the dishes, pans and bundles off the pine table on to chairs and the floor.

"Isn't this sweet," said Mrs. Lively, "eating in the kitchen and without a tablecloth?"

"We'll have a dining-room to-morrow, and a tablecloth," said the doctor cheerfully.

Thanks to his friend Harrison's letters, Dr. Lively readily obtained credit for imperative family necessities. If ever anybody merited success as a cheerful worker, it was our doctor. He did the work of ever-so-many men, and almost of one woman. Pray don't despise him when I tell you that he kneaded the bread, to save Mrs. Lively's back; that he did most of the family washing—that is, he did the rubbing, the wringing, the lifting, the hanging out—and once a week he scrubbed. When he wasn't "doing housework" he was in his office, busy, not with patients, but in writing articles for magazines and papers. Then he set to work upon a book, at which he toiled hopefully during the dreary winter, for he was almost ignored as a physician, although there seemed to be considerable sickness. He heard of the other doctor riding all night. Indeed, if one could believe all that was said, this physician never slept. True, this man was not a graduate of medicine. He had been a barber, and had gone directly from the razor to the scalpel; but that did not matter: he had more calls in a week than Dr. Lively had during the winter.

"The idea of being beaten by a barber!" exclaimed Mrs. Lively. "Why don't you advertise yourself?"

"There's no paper here to advertise in."

"Then you ought to have a sign to tell people what you are—that you were surgeon of volunteers in the army; that you had a good practice in Chicago; that you're a graduate of two medical schools; that you write for the medical journals and for the magazines. Why don't you have these things put on a big sign?"

"It would be unprofessional."

"To be professional you must sit in that miserable office and let your family starve. Why don't you denounce this upstart barber?—tell people that he hasn't a diploma—that he doesn't know anything—that he couldn't reduce that hernia and had to call on you?"

"That's opposed to all medical ethics."

"Medical fiddlesticks! You've got to sit here like a maiden, to be wooed and won, and can't lift a finger or speak a word for yourself. Then there's that woman with the broken arm—Joe Smith's wife. Why shouldn't you tell that the barber didn't set it right, and that you had to reset it? I saw some of Joseph Smith's grandchildren the other day," she continued, suddenly changing the subject, "and I must say they don't look like the descendants of a prophet."

For a brief period in the unfolding spring Mrs. Lively experienced a little lifting of her spirits. The season was marvelously beautiful in Nauvoo: one serious expense, that for fuel, was stayed, and there was the promise of increased sickness, and thus increased work for the doctor. But this gleam was followed almost immediately by a shadow: a scientific paper which he had despatched to a leading magazine came back to him with the line, "Well written, but too heavy for our purposes." [1]

"I knew it was," said Mrs. Lively. "You write the driest, long-windedest things that ever I read."

Dr. Lively sighed, took his hat and went out, while Mrs. Lively, after some moments of irresolution, set about getting dinner.

"Now, where's your father?" she impatiently demanded when the dinner had been set on the table.

"Dunno," answered Master Napoleon through the potato by which his mouth was already possessed.

The Little Corporal, as he was sometimes called by virtue of his illustrious name, was a lean-faced lad with no friendly rolls of adipose to conceal the fact that he was cramming with all his energies.

"Why in the name of sense can't he come to his dinner?"

Napoleon gave a gulping swallow to clear his tongue. "Dunno," he managed to articulate, and then went off into a violent paroxysm of choking and coughing.

"Why don't you turn your head?" cried the mother, seizing the said member between her two hands and giving it an energetic twist that dislocated a bone or snapped a tendon, one might have surmised from the sharp crick-crack which accompanied the movement. "What in the name of decency makes you pack your mouth in that manner? Are you famished?"

"A'most," answered the recovered Napoleon, resettling himself, face to the table, and resuming the shoveling of mashed potato into his mouth.

"That's a pretty story, after all the breakfast you ate, and the lunch you had not two hours ago! Where under the sun, moon and stars do you put it all?"

"Mouth," responded Napoleon, describing with his strong teeth a semicircle in his slice of brown bread.

"Tell me what can be keeping your father," said Mrs. Lively, returning to her subject.

"Can't."

"He'll come poking along in the course of time, I suppose, when all the hot things are cold, and all the cold things are hot. Just like him. And I worked myself into a fever to get them on the table piping hot and ice-cold. From stove to cellar, from cellar to well, I rushed, but if I'd worked myself to death's door, he'd stay his stay out, all the same."

"Reason for stayin', I s'pose," suggested Napoleon.

"Yes, of course you'll take his part—you always do. For pity's sake, what has your mother ever done that you should side against her?"

"Dunno."

"Dunno! Of course you don't. I'll tell you: She tended you through all your helpless infancy: she nursed you through teething, and whooping-cough, and measles, and scarlet fever, and chicken-pox, and mercy knows what else. Many's the time she watched with you the livelong night, when your father was snoring and dreaming in the farthest corner of the house, so he mightn't hear your wailing and moaning. She's toiled and slaved for you like a plantation negro, while he—"

"He's comin'," interrupted Napoleon, without for a moment intermitting his potato-shoveling. "Walkin' fast," continued the sententious lad, swallowing immediately half a cup of milk.

Dr. Lively came hurrying into the dining-room.

"For pity's sake, I think it's about time," the wife began pettishly.

"Have you seen my purse anywhere about here?" the gentleman asked with an anxious cadence in his voice.

"Your purse!" shrieked Mrs. Lively, turning short upon her husband and glaring in wild alarm.

"Lost it?" asked Napoleon, digging his fork into a huge potato and transferring it to his plate.

"Go, look in the bed-room, Nappy: I think I must have dropped it there," said the father.

Napoleon rose from his chair, but stopped halfway between sitting and standing for a farewell bite at his bread and butter.

"For mercy's sake, why don't you go along?" Mrs. Lively snapped out. "What do you keep sitting there for?"

"Ain't a-settin'," responded Nappy, laying hold of his cup for a last swallow.

"Standing there, then?"

"Ain't a-standin'."

"If you don't go along—" and Mrs. Lively started for her son and heir with a threat in every inch of her.

"Am a-goin'," returned the son and heir; and, sure enough, he went.

During this passage between mother and child Dr. Lively had been keeping up an unflagging by-play, searching persistently every part of the dining-room—the mantelpiece, the clock, the cupboard, the shelves.

"In the name of common sense," exclaimed the wife, after watching him a moment, "what's the use of looking in that knife-basket? Shouldn't I have seen it when I set the table if it had been there? Do you think I'm blind? Where did you lose your purse?"

"If I knew where I lost it I'd go and get it."

"Well, where did you have it when you missed it?"

"As well as I can remember I didn't have it when I missed it."

"Well, where did you have it before you missed it?"

"In my pocket."

"Oh yes, this is a pretty time to joke, when my heart is breaking! I shouldn't be surprised to hear of your laughing at my grave. Very well, if you won't tell me where you've been with your purse, I can't help you look for it; and what's more, I won't, and you'll never find it unless I do, Dr. Lively: I can tell you that. You never were known to find anything."

"Not there," said Napoleon re-entering the room and reseating himself at the table. "Milk, please," he continued, extending his cup toward his mother.

"You ain't going to eating again?" cried the lady.

"Am."

"Where do you put it all? I believe in my soul—Are your legs hollow?"

"Dunno."

"Do, my dear," remonstrated Dr. Lively, "let the child eat all he wants. You keep up an everlasting nagging, as though you begrudged him every mouthful he swallows."

"Oh, it's fine of you to talk, when you lose all the money that comes into the family—five thousand dollars in Chicago, and sixty dollars now, for I'll warrant you hadn't paid out a cent of it; and all those accounts against us! Had you paid any bills? had you? You won't answer, but you needn't think to escape and deceive me by such a shallow trick. If you'd paid a bill you'd been keen enough to tell it: you'd have shouted it out long ago. Pretty management! Just like you, shiftless! Why in the name of the five senses didn't you pay out the money before you lost the purse? You might have known you were going to lose it: you always lose everything."

"Bread, please," called Napoleon, who had taken advantage of the confusion to sweep the bread-plate clean.

"In the name of wonder!" exclaimed the mother, snatching a half loaf from the pantry. "There! take it and eat it, and burst—Do," she continued, turning to Dr. Lively, "stop your tramp, tramping round this room, and come and eat your dinner. There's not an atom of reason in spending your time looking for that purse. You'll never see it again. Like enough you dropped it down the well: it would be just like you. I just know that purse is down that well. Carelessness! the idea of dropping your purse down the well!"

Without heeding the rattle, Napoleon went on eating and Dr. Lively went on searching—now in the dining-room, now in the kitchen, now in the hall.

Mrs. Lively soon returned to her life-work: "What's the sense in poking, and poking, and poking around, and around, and around? Mortal eyes will never see that purse again. I've no question but you put it in the stove for a chip this morning when you made the fire. Who ever heard of another man kindling a fire with a purse? Will you eat your dinner, Dr. Lively, or shall I clear away the table? I can't have the work standing round all day."

Notwithstanding his worry, the doctor was hungry, so he replied by seating himself at the table. "There's nothing here to eat," he said, glancing at the empty dishes and plates.

"If that boy hasn't cleared off every dish!" cried the housekeeper. "Why didn't you lick the platters clean, and be done with it?" and she seized an empty dish in either hand and disappeared to replenish it.

While her husband took his dinner she went up stairs and ransacked the bed-room for the missing purse. "What are you sitting there for?" she exclaimed, suddenly re-entering the dining-room, where Dr. Lively was sitting with his arms on the table. "Why don't you get up and look for that purse you lost?"

"No use, you said," Napoleon put in by way of reminder.

"For pity's sake, arn't you done eating yet?"

"Just am," answered the corporal, rising from his seat, yet chewing industriously.

Mrs. Lively began to gather the dirty dishes into a pan. "What are you going to do about it, Dr. Lively?" she asked meanwhile.

"I don't know what we can do about it, except to cut off corners—live more economically."

"As if we could!" cried Mrs. Lively, all ablaze. "Where are there any corners to cut off? In the name of charity, tell me. I've cut and shaved until life is as round and as bare as this plate." With a mighty rattle and clatter she threw the said plate into the dish-pan and jerked up a platter from the table. Holding it in her left hand, she proceeded: "Do you know, Dr. Lively, what your family lives on? Potatoes, Dr. Lively—potatoes; that is, mostly. How much do I pay out a month for help? A half cent? Not a quarter of it. How much is wasted in my housekeeping? Not a single crumb. It would keep any common woman busy cooking for that boy. I tell you, Dr. Lively, I can't economize any more than I do and have done. I might wring and twist and screw in every possible direction, and at the year's end there wouldn't be a nickel to show for all the wringing and twisting and screwing. There's only one way in which the purse can be made up—there's only one way in which economy is possible. You can save that money, Dr. Lively: you're the only member of the family who has a luxury."

"Hang me with a grapevine if I've got any luxury!" said the doctor with something of an amused expression on his face.

"Tobacco," suggested Napoleon.

"Yes, it's tobacco. You can give up the nasty weed, the filthy habit."

"Do it?" asked Napoleon.

"Don't think I shall," replied the doctor coolly.

"Then I'll save the money," responded Mrs. Lively with heroic voice and manner. "I had forgotten: there is one other way. Dr. Lively, I'm housekeeper, laundress, cook, everything to your family. And what do I get for it? Less than any twelve-year-old girl who goes out to service. I have the blessed privilege of lodging in this old Mormon rat-hole, and I have just enough of the very cheapest victuals to keep the breath in my body; and one single, solitary thing that is not absolutely necessary to my existence—one thing that I could possibly live without."

"What?" asked Napoleon, gaping and staring.

"It is sugar—sugar in my coffee. I'll drink my coffee without sugar till that sixty dollars is made up. I'll never touch sugar again till that money is made good—never!" and into the kitchen sailed Mrs. Lively with her pan of dishes.

"Sugar, please," demanded Napoleon the next morning at the breakfast-table. Dr. Lively passed over the sugar-bowl.

"How can you have the heart to take so much?" said the mother, watching Napoleon as he emptied one heaping spoonful and then another into his coffee-cup. "But I might have known you'd leave your mother to bear the burden all alone. All the economizing, all the self-denial, must come on my shoulders. And just look at me!—nothing but skin and bones. I've got to make up everybody's losses, everybody's wasting. It's a rare thing if I get a warm meal with the rest of you: I'm all the while eating up the cold victuals and scraps and burnt things that nobody else will eat."

"I'd eat 'em," said Napoleon.

"Of course you'd eat them. There's nothing you wouldn't eat, in the heavens above or the earth beneath. And all the thanks I get is to be taunted with stinginess."

"Take some?" asked Napoleon, passing the sugar-bowl to his mother.

"Never!" she exclaimed, drawing back as though a viper had been extended to her. "Take the thing away—set it down there by your father's plate. I said I'd use no more sugar till that money was made good. When I say a thing I mean it."

"Now, Priscilla," remonstrated the doctor, "what is the use of breaking in on your lifelong habits? You'll make yourself sick, that's all."

"Dr. Lively, you're trying to tempt me: why can't you uphold me? It will be hard enough at best to make the sacrifice. Yes, I shall make myself sick, but it won't hurt anybody but me. I can get well again, as I've always had to."

"Perhaps so, after a druggist's bill and hired girl's wages. Every spoonful of sugar you save may cost you ten dollars."

"Then, why don't you give up that vile tobacco? I won't use any sugar till you do. All you care about is the money my sickness will cost—my suffering is nothing." Mrs. Lively raised her cup to her lip, then set it back in the saucer with a haste that sent the contents splashing over the sides.

"Bitter?" asked Napoleon.

"Bitter! of course it's bitter—bitter as tansy. It sends the chills creeping up and down my backbone, and the top of my head feels as if it was crawling off. I believe I shall lose my scalp if I don't use sugar."

"To stick it on?" asked Napoleon with a stolid face.

"Oh, it's beautiful in my only child to laugh at a mother's discomfort!" "Ain't a-laughin'," he replied.

"What are you doing if you ain't laughing?"

"Eatin'."

"Of course: you're always eating." Again Mrs. Lively essayed her coffee, but fell back in her chair with an unutterable look. "Oh, I can't!—I cannot do it!" she exclaimed.

"Don't," Napoleon advised.

Mrs. Lively with a sudden jerk sat bolt upright, as straight as a crock. "Who asked you for your advice?" she demanded sharply.

The young Lively swallowed three times distinctly, and then replied, while shaking the pepper-box over his potato, "Nobody."

"Then, why can't you keep it to yourself?"

"Can."

"Then, why don't you do it?"

"Do."

"You exasperating boy! Wouldn't you die if you didn't get the last word?"

"Dunno."

"Look here, Napoleon Lively: you've got to stop your everlasting talking. Your chatter, chatter, chatter just tries me to death. I'm not—"

Here Dr. Lively, overcome with the absurdity of this charge, did a very unusual thing. He broke into laughter so prolonged and overwhelming that Mrs. Lively, after some signal failures to edge in a word of explanation, left the table in the midst of the uproar and dashed up stairs, where she jerked and pounded the beds with a will.

The next day Mrs. Lively was canning some cherries which the doctor had taken in pay for a prescription. The air was filled with the mingled odor of the boiling fruit and of burning sealing-wax. The cans were acting with outrageous perversity, for they were second-hand and the covers ill-fitting. Her blood was almost up to fainting heat, and she was worried all over. She had to do all her preserving in a pint cup, as she expressed it in her contempt for the diminutive proportions of the saucepan which she was using.

"Here 'tis," said Napoleon, suddenly appearing at the kitchen-door.

"Here what is?" demanded Mrs. Lively shortly, without looking up. Her two hands were engaged—one in pressing the cover on a can, the other in pouring wax where a bubble persistently appeared.

"This," answered Napoleon.

"What?"

"Purse."

"Purse!" she screamed. "Is the money in it?" She dropped her work and took eager possession of it. "Where did you find it?"

"Big apple tree," replied Napoleon.

"Under the apple tree?"

"Fork," was the lad's emendation.

"Why in the name of sense do you have to bite off all your sentences? They are like a chicken with its head off. Do you mean to say that you found the purse in the fork of the big apple tree?"

"Do; and pipe."

"Pipe! of course. One might track your father through a howling wilderness by the pipes he'd leave at every half mile. Don't let him know you've found the purse, and to-morrow morning I'm going to see if I can't have some of his bills paid before the money is lost, as it would be if he should get it in his hands."

The next morning Mrs. Lively felt under her pillow, as on a former occasion, and, as on that former occasion, found the purse where she had put it the night before. She gave it into Napoleon's hands after breakfast, and despatched him to settle the bills. In less than half an hour he was back.

"Did you pay all the bills?" she asked.

"No."

"How many?"

"None."

"Why don't you go along and pay those bills, as I bade you?"

"Have been."

"Then, why didn't you settle the bills?"

"Couldn't."

"If you don't tell me what's the matter—Why couldn't you?"

"No money!"

"No money? Where's the purse?"

"Here 'tis;" and he handed it to her.

She opened it and found it empty. "Where's the money?" she demanded in great alarm.

"Dunno."

"What did you do with it?"

"Nothin'."

By dint of a few dozen more questions she arrived at the information that when he had opened the purse to pay the first bill he found it empty.

"Why didn't you look on the floor?"

"Did look."

"And feel in your pocket?"

"Did."

"I suppose you couldn't be satisfied till you'd opened the purse to count the money. You're a perfect Charity Cockloft with your curiosity. And then you went off into one of your dreams, and forgot to clasp the purse. Go look for it right at the spot where you counted the money."

"Didn't count it."

"Well, where you opened the purse in the street."

"Didn't open it in the street."

"The money just crawled out of the purse, did it?"

"Dunno."

The house was searched, the store, the street, but all in vain. Dr. Lively was questioned: Did he take the money from the purse when it was under her pillow? He didn't even know before that the purse had been found. The house had been everywhere securely fastened, and the bed-room door locked.

"Well, it's very mysterious," said Mrs. Lively. "That money went just as the other did in Chicago. We must be haunted by the spirit of some burglar or miser."

Cards were posted in the stores and post-office, offering five dollars reward for the lost money.

"A pretty affair," said Mrs. Lively, "to payout five dollars just for somebody's shiftlessness!"

"To recover sixty we can afford to pay five," said the doctor.

Shortly after this an express package from Chicago was delivered for the doctor at his door. Mrs. Lively was quite excited, hoping she scarce knew what from this arrival. The half hour till the doctor came home to tea seemed interminable. She sat by watching eagerly as the doctor cut the cords and broke the seals and unwrapped—what? Some things very beautiful, but nothing that could answer that ceaseless, persistent cry of the human, "What shall we eat, what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?"

"Nothing but some more of those miserable sea-weeds!" exclaimed Mrs. Lively, "and the express on them was fifty cents."

"They are beautiful," cried the doctor with enthusiasm.

"Beautiful! What have we got to do with the beautiful? We've done with the beautiful for ever. I feel as if I never wanted to see anything beautiful again. And you'll have to spend your time collecting geodes to send back for the miserable trash. I hate those old sea-weeds. You left everything we owned to perish in that fire, and brought away only that case of sea-weeds. I'll take it some time to start the fire in the stove. Beautiful! What right have you to think of the beautiful? It's a disgrace to be as poor as we are. The very bread for this supper isn't paid for, and never will be. Come to supper!" She snapped out these last words in a way inimitable and indescribable.

"Priscilla," said the husband in a sad, solemn way, "I never knew anybody in my life who seemed so utterly exasperated by poverty as you."

"You never knew anybody else that was tried by such poverty."

"I saw thousands after the Chicago fire."

"Yes, when they had the excitement all about them."

"And who is the object of your exasperation? Who is responsible for your circumstances? Who but God?"

"God didn't lose that sixty dollars, and He didn't lose that money in Chicago."

"Well, now, my dear, I'm working hard at my book, and I think I'm making a good thing of it. I hope it'll bring us a lift."

"A book on that horrid subject isn't going to sell. I wouldn't touch it with a pair of tongs: I'd run from it. Nobody'll read it but a few old long-haired geologists. I'd like to know what good all your geology and botany and those other horrid things ever did you. You couldn't make a cent out of all them put together. You're always paying expressage on fossils and bugs and sea-weeds and trash. All that comes of it is just waste."

"Does anything but waste come of your fault-finding?"

"Now, who's finding fault?"

Dr. Lively left the table and took down his case of sea-weeds, and turned it over in his hand.

"The only thing that came through the fire," he said musingly.

"And of what account is it?" said Mrs. Lively.

"It may prove to be of value," he said. "To-night's addition will make my collection very fine. I may take some premiums on it at fairs." He sat down and began to compare the specimens just received with his previous collection.

"What is the use of looking over those things—miserable sea-weeds? You'd better bring in some wood and draw some water: it nearly breaks my back to draw water up that rickety-rackety well."

"Good Heavens!" cried Dr. Lively, springing to his feet like one electrified. "What does it mean?"

Mrs. Lively gazed at him: his hand was full of money, greenbacks.

"I found them here, among the sea-weeds in the case." He counted them out on the table, Mrs. Lively standing by watching him, for once speechless. "It's just the amount we lost, and the same bills. See here: ten five-hundred-dollar bills, and this change that we lost in Chicago; and four ten-dollar bills and four fives that were lost here. They are the same bills. Who put them here?"

"I don't know," replied Mrs. Lively in a low tone: "I didn't." She spoke as though she was dealing with something supernatural.

In the case of sea-weeds, the only thing that came through the fire! How often had she pronounced it worthless! What a spite she had conceived against it! How the sight of it had all along exasperated her!

"It is very strange," said the doctor, believing in his secret soul that his wife had put the money there and forgotten it. "Have you no recollection of putting the money here?" he said cautiously. "Try to think."

"I never put it there," she said in a subdued, dazed way: "I know I never did."

Napoleon came in eating an apple. He was informed of the discovery, and closely questioned. "Don't know nothin' 'bout it," he declared. "Go back to Chicago?" he asked.

"Yes," answered the doctor. "The money's here, however unaccountably: we'll accept the fact and thank God." The doctor's lip quivered, and Mrs. Lively burst into tears. "We will go back home, to the most wonderful city in the world. If possible, we'll buy the very lot where we lived, and build a little house. Many of those who lived in the neighborhood, my old patients, will return, and so I shall have a practice begun. I shall start for Chicago in the morning. You can make an auction of the few traps we have here, and follow as soon as possible. You'll find me at Mrs. B——'s boarding-house on Congress street."

There was some further planning, so that it was eleven o'clock before they retired. Napoleon went to bed hungry that night, if indeed since the Chicago fire he had ever gone to bed in any other condition. He dropped off to sleep, however, and all through his dreams he was eating—oh such good things!—juicy steaks, feathery biscuits, flaky pies, baked apples and cream. He awoke with an empty feeling, an old familiar feeling, which had often caused him to awake contemplating a midnight raid on the cupboard. But poor Napoleon had been restrained by conscientious scruples and by the fear of his mother's tongue, for he appreciated the altered condition of the family. But now they were all rich again there was no longer any necessity for pinching his stomach. There were in the cupboard some biscuits intended for breakfast, and some cold ham. He remembered how tempting they had looked as his mother set them away. Now they fairly haunted him as he lay thinking how favorable the moonlight was to his contemplated burglary. He left his bed, not stealthily: he was not of a nature to be specially mortified by discovery. He made his way to the dining-room. In one of the recesses made by the chimney Dr. Lively had constructed a kind of cupboard, and in the other recess he had put up some shelves, where their few books and the case of sea-weeds lay. Napoleon cut some generous slices of ham, and with the biscuits constructed several sandwiches. Then he seated himself by the window for the benefit of the moonlight. This brought him within a few feet of the shelves where the sea-weeds were. There he sat in his night-dress, his bare feet on the chair-round, vigorously eating his sandwiches. Suddenly he heard a soft, stealthy, gliding noise in the hall. It was as though trailing drapery was sweeping over the naked floor. He gave a gulping swallow, paused in his eating and listened intently. The stillness of death reigned through the house. He crammed half a sandwich in his mouth and began a cautious chewing. Again the trailing sound, and again his jaws were stilled. At the door entered a tall figure in flowing white robes. Steadily it advanced upon him, seeming to walk or glide on the air. For once there was something in which he was more interested than in eating. At last the ghost stood close beside him, and he saw with his staring eyes that it wore a veil and carried its left hand in its bosom. The boy sat rooted with horror, his tongue loaded, his cheeks puffed with his feast, afraid to swallow lest the noise of the act should reveal him. The figure withdrew its hand from its bosom: it held a roll of bankbills. It reached out for the case of sea-weeds, laid the bills carefully between the cards, returned these to the case and the case to the shelf. It stood a moment in the broad moonlight, then lifted the veil, and revealed to the astonished boy the face of his mother. She stood within two feet of him, her eyes on his face, but she did not speak.