The House of a Merchant Prince

I.

AN AWKWARD MEETING.

A YOUNG girl sat in a hackney coach, of a mid-February afternoon, looking up with interest at one of the great wholesale dry-goods stores, of iron and glass, in the most roaring part of Broadway. It could be seen that she was rather tall, slender, with a pale, smooth skin, brown hair, which was gathered in a loose, semi-matronly knot behind, and eyes of a color which would commonly be denominated gray. Brows of a stronger marking than usual gave to these eyes a certain grave, not to say severe, aspect. There were strapped behind the hackney coach some modest trunks which appeared to have come a long journey.

The inscription " Rodman Harvey & Co.” was neatly lettered in black on two plates of polished zinc bent round the bases of two of the fluted iron columns of the façade. In the plate-glass windows, under the blue shades, half rolled up, were presented to the street only the cold shoulders, as it were, of some bolts of the great accumulation of prints, ticks, and denims, cassimeres, cheviots, damasks, and Canton flannels, heaped up in all the stories within. A plaster bust of a classic nymph, standing upon a pedestal of flat green pasteboard boxes, in one of the windows, utilized to display a new pattern of corset, was the sole concession to attempted advantage by allurement of the eye.

At this distinguished height the securing of trade is matter of deep and far-reaching rather than superficial influences. Though it offered so little appeal to the casual passer-by, there were special ships on the seas whose compasses were deflected to this decorous iron store front; and merchants in all

the small towns, from Maine to California, who, seeing the cut of it, with which the bill-heads rendered them with their purchases were adorned, looked upon it with reverence, as possibly the structure of leading importance in all the metropolis.

The trade of Rodman Harvey & Co. was matter of repute for long and solid standing, in the house; matter of prominence in every commercial and social enterprise, of patriotic service to the government during the war, and of especial staunchness in the political opinions of the majority ever since, in the head of it ; matter of “ special inducements to cash and short-time buyers,” — so its advertisements read ; matter of the blandishments of the ingenious commercial travelers who passed constantly through the length and breadth of the land in its interest.

The companion of the young girl, a square-built, middle-aged man, the veteran and trusted Klauser, who every year made a journey upon the tracks of these oftentimes too sanguine commercial travelers, to look after the security of the credits they were inclined to extend, had but a moment before got down with a pair of satchels, and picked his way across the crowded sidewalk to the entrance. He had met at the threshold the proprietor in person, who had come out to look for his carriage, and was engaged in conversation with him there, his own part in it marked by a slight German accent. A tallish young man, of a gentlemanly aspect, with a package of papers in his hand, followed the merchant out, and would have gone away, but was detained by him for some further affair.

The young girl made sure, from a certain well-known resemblance, that it was the proprietor-in-chief, Rodman Harvey, she saw. As to the minor partners, whom he took in from time to time, they were all lumped together under the Co., and never heard of by name. She was alarmed and annoyed. It was not right of Klauser to have brought her here. Klauser had assured her that there was hardly a possibility that Rodman Harvey could be found at his place of business at this time, since he was in the habit, now that he was contemplating withdrawing from trade, of spending his afternoons in attention to multiplying outside affairs. And even if he were, since his own errand was but of an instant’s duration, and she was not to alight, there was no conceivable chance of their catching sight of each other.

She had not been averse to having so much of a glimpse of the place where was made the fortune of an arrogant relative who had always played an important part in the imaginations and discourse of the home circle she had lately left. He was building, too, she knew, a great new mansion up town, which it had been agreed they should drive past on their way to the depot. But as to meeting him, as to throwing herself in his way, there were most cogent reasons against it.

“ If you should see your uncle ” — her mother had begun, as they sat at table, the evening before her departure, with Klauser, who was to take charge of her on the journey, as their guest.

“ But she will not see her uncle! ” her father had interrupted, hotly. “ I do not wish it this time more than before. I forbid it. She will take the train for Poughkeepsie immediately on her arrival. Her uncle scarcely knows of her existence, nor does he care to. He has never done anything for us, and it is too late now for him to begin. I will have no toadying and crawling to such a person.”

The daughter was used to discounting certain violent and unreasonable moods in her father, and could recall, herself, some tangible favors from this source. Nevertheless, the chronic disagreement existing between the brothers was at present at its most aggravated pass. The repute for magnanimity of her uncle, in the family, by concentration of view upon his more obnoxious traits, was decidedly bad. And there was her father’s express interdiction. She had in addition, if more were needed, a private and local resentment of her own, based upon his attitude towards two dear friends of her school existence, whose cause she thought good warmly to espouse. “ I do not at all like his treatment of the Hasbrouck girls,” she said.

But the judicious Klauser, politic and imperturbable, and not without his impulses towards benevolence, in his way ; Klauser, who could hear both sides of a controversy, and keep an unbiased mind ; who could listen, on his rounds, to the tirades of the less fortunate brother, without finding it necessary to relax his devoted vigilance in the service of the other, or to dismiss his belief in his possession of redeeming traits, or the more to betray any part of the said tirades to the ears of his employer, had conceived other views of his own. He predicted a favorable impression upon Rodman Harvey from the acquaintance of this pleasing niece. The more she won him on their long journey, as she did, both by amiable and vivacious manners and her appearance, the more desirous he became to devise some means of bringing about a meeting, which might result to her in some substantial benefits. He was able to invent nothing more promising in the end than a pretext for stopping at the store, with the very slight chances this offered. Such chances as there were in it, however, had resolved themselves favorably. To the extent, at least, of finding the merchant at home, the experiment was a success.

The merchant dallied on the steps, and again at the curb-stone, when his belated carriage, a light buggy behind a pair of fast-traveling horses, driven by his man. Joseph, in livery, came up. The young girl in the hackney coach was in full range of his wandering vision. At every moment she dreaded some awkward resting of it upon herself. The young man, dancing attendance, having nothing better to do, as it seemed, regarded her fixedly, too, while he waited. To withdraw herself somewhat from observation, she turned away a shapely head moving easily on a slim neck, and, assuming as unconscious an air as possible, studied the doings in the street.

The foot-ways were black with hurrying masses of humanity. An impenetrable muster of omnibuses, latticing in more black parcels of humanity, like a curious sort of mercantile freight, with trucks, vans, and tumbrels piled high with the boxes and bales of an illimitable traffic, filled the central space. There was a long rise in the ground, to the southward. The boxes and bales, the swaying whips, the heads and bodies of the drivers, coming over the edge of it, were seen exalted impressively against the sky, and against the long, full, rich perspective of becolumned façades ; carved and gilded emblems of trade, and flaunting banners; domes, bristling cupolas, steeples of churches, and prodigious mansards of many stories overladen with fanciful dormers. Some stream of the Yellowstone region might chisel into such a semblance the high walls of the cañon into which it cuts its way deeper and deeper from the light.

As in the borders of actual rivers, to one looking closely, there are runnels of water down the banks, retardations and overflows among the sedges, bubbles rising from the bottom, so here the fresh young observer of the scene speculated on the comings-out and goings-in, the distinct stir of life at every portal; marveled how each several foot of the margin presented to the flood its local conformations and special interests. Drawn involuntarily away by the fascination of the onward movement, she had wellnigh forgotten her cause of anxious preoccupation, till aroused suddenly by hearing, close at hand, —

“ And whom have you there, Klauser ? Your daughter ? ”

To which Klauser replied, “ Your niece, Miss Ottilie Harvey, of Lone Tree, Illinois. I have had the pleasure of taking her in charge to bring back to school. She was just setting out on her return, after a short leave of absence, when I passed through there, and we made it convenient to come together. And a long way it is too, Mr. Harvey.”

Embarrassed, overawed, Miss Ottilie Harvey, of Lone Tree, Illinois, found the uncle she had dreaded to meet regarding her with a keen scrutiny.

He was a spare, small man of sixty, with gray hair, curling in a tight roll behind, tufts of gray side-whiskers, pallid skin, and a mouth which by long habit of compression was little more than a straight, unmodulated line in his countenance. He had something of a stoop in the shoulders ; wore broadcloth, not too glossy ; and had a habit, imposing to inferiors, of carrying a hand to his ear, to catch what you had said.

He shook the young girl’s hand, and said she had the Harvey look. Recollecting something on which he wished to confer again, at once, with Klauser and Mr. Minn, the head of the “ whitegoods ” department, he insisted that she should alight. She dared not refuse. They all went into the store together, including the young man with the envelope of papers, whose affair, whatever it was, was not yet dispatched. The roar of all the heavy wheels, grinding the stone paving blocks in the street, entered with them through the open door, like a section of an actual solid.

The glance of the rather severe eyes of the visitant newly arrived would have been quite of its severest towards Klauser, had it corresponded to her real convictions and sentiments. That faithless person was flustrated himself at a highly inauspicious opening of his experiment. For the merchant, turning to his niece with asperity, began, “ Going back to school? So you are at school? What school ? ”

“ Vassar,” said Ottilie.

“ And you have been there — how long ? ”

“ About a year. I — graduate this summer.”

“ Your father must be doing very well, making a precious lot of money, to afford schools like that, and thousandmile journeys back and forth. Let us see, —there were five or six of you, were there not ? ”

“ Five ; but one, the youngest sister, is dead.” She glanced involuntarily at her dress, which was still of the degree of sombreness known as “ half mourning,” in witness of this bereavement. She had thrown back the fronts of her shrouding ulster, in the warmer temperature of the interior. “I think my father is not doing any better than usual in his affairs, — not as well, indeed, as at some times, or I should have come last year, when I was already prepared. It was my wish to do something for my own support, as a teacher or governess, in order to lighten somewhat, if possible, his burdens,” she continued, in a lower voice, though one in which anxiety to avoid all appearance of appealing to his sympathy was conveyed. “ We — I thought — that to have the diploma of a very thorough, excellent school would help command a better position. As to my traveling so much, my brother was going to the Sandwich Islands, where he has obtained a position, and we did not know when we should see him again, and as I had not been home at Christmas, and it was my father’s desire ” —

She was angry at herself for having to make these explanations, but they seemed necessary to refute his placing of things in such an erroneous light. Oppressed, too, by her idea of his greatness, she was not at all mistress of herself.

Klauser hovered, with a deprecating air, on the outskirts of this conference. The young man with the papers had been driven before it, as it were, into the private office of the merchant, partitioned off at one side of the store, near the front, to the entrance of which the interlocutors had now approximated. However he might seem to occupy himself with the maps on the wall, with poking the fire in the grate and adjusting an office chair of maroon Russia leather nearer to one of the handsome desks of walnut and bird’s-eye maple, Ottilie felt that he had heard every word that was said, and in his present position he could not avoid doing so if he would. She had caught his eyes fixed upon her, she knew, with looks of quizzical inquiry. Most likely he was a private secretary of some sort, before whom his employer was accustomed to talk with freedom; but that made it none the pleasanter that her belittlement and confusion should be witnessed by him. He had an odiously self-possessed and conceited air, she thought.

“ So it seems you have been in these parts some year or two, and have not thought it worth while to let us know anything about it,” continued Rodman Harvey, exaggerating the case, in his carping mood.

“ I passed through very hastily, and — the family — I knew they were in Europe a great — deal,” stammered Ottilie, at a loss for a plausible excuse for conduct which he was pleased to put in the light of reprehensible neglect and incivility.

“ Your father is a fool! ” he burst out, as if, under the spur of irritating memories, going at once to the reason he deemed the real one. “ I always meant well by him. I always stood ready to help him, if his conduct had ever been half-way decent or endurable. A person who has made so complete a botch of his own affairs one would think would be somewhat amenable to reason. I know him, both when he was in partnership with me years ago, and in everything he has undertaken since. But no, here he is, throwing back your counsel in your teeth, and insults by the dozen with it. He must continually threaten to withdraw his custom, forsooth, unless this and that were allowed him or done for him, that nobody else in the world would think of demanding. As though his picayune custom could make a straw’s difference to a house like that of Rodman Harvey & Co.! And then he actually did it, and that was the end of it. Your father is a fool, I tell you; he would try the temper of saints.”

Ottilie, though understanding fairly well her father’s weaknesses, would have liked to say many resentful things in reply, had she dared. But she was much more in danger of bursting into tears.

Her uncle, observing her distressed look, and having vented sufficiently, as it seemed, his complaints, — framed, perhaps, as much on his account as hers, to justify to himself a long neglect, for which conscience was not always free from vague prickings, deserved though such neglect might be, — took now an opposite and more cheerful tone. He was not imputing blame to her, — she knew that very well; she was not at fault; he was only laying certain facts before her. And, designing to leave her in as good spirits as possible, while he bustled off with Klauser to the whitegoods department of Mr. Minn, he presented her, with a mild flourish, a really rare display of humor on his part, to the young man, close by, whom she had appointed in speculation his private secretary. “ This is my niece, Miss Ottilie Harvey, of Illinois,” he said. “ You see they raise girls, as well as wheat and pork, in that great West we hear so much about. If they always did as well as this we should n’t complain, eh ? ” And to her, “This is Mr. Bainbridge. Mr. Bainbridge is my lawyer. He is a famous fellow for drawing documents. I always have to send down to Chippendale, Bond & Saxby’s and have him up when there is anything important on hand. And for serving dispossess warrants, now, that is his strong point. You must bear it in mind. He is wonderful at that.”

Left together thus, they did not at once fall into the easy understanding that may have been intended. Ottilie was cold. As a witness, though involuntary, of her humiliations, she made him a sharer in their infliction. She was fatigued with traveling, and uncomfortable in that place. Why was she there at all ? Why did not Klauser hasten, and take her away ?

The young man made talk, of a facile sort, but patronizing, she thought. She surmised that owing to her school-girl character and the unceremonious treatment to which he had seen her subjected, he took her for a person younger and less experienced than she was. This was really the case. He would not have put her age at above eighteen, but she was twenty, and flattered herself upon opportunities for observation of the world she had enjoyed, not at Lone Tree only, but in visits to the important centres of Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Chicago.

She was unresponsive, curt, almost ungracious, in her replies. He hazarded the observation that she might have come by the northern route, and seen Niagara in winter. Yes, she had. With the larger way of doing things at the West, no doubt there was little to impress her in New York. On the contrary, there was a great deal, though Chicago, in some respects, was finer. In what respects ? She had not analyzed the difference ; she could not say.

She was firmly patriotic to her section, he found. He drew out that in the West people were in the habit, involuntarily perhaps, of judging somewhat according to the scale of proportions on the map, and that New York, and the Eastern seaboard generally, were apt to seem rather small, and not at all so indispensable as when you were in the midst of them.

He scanned her face, as they talked, with much more attention than might have appeared. It was faintly like one, he said to himself, connected with an agitating memory of his past, — an agitation long since happily tranquillized, but which had left its impress upon his whole view of women and life. There was a curious flicker in her looks of something he had been used to adore in Madeline Scarrett — now Mrs. Elphinstone Swan — at a time when he expected much more of women, and of men too, for that matter; before he had turned cynical philosopher, in short. He expected nothing at all from this one, but rather to devote himself philanthropically to her rescue from a sense of embarrassment. He pleased himself now with whatever presented itself as slightly out of the common and gave him a new sensation, flattering himself that there was very little that did. The manner of her advent interested him. There was the further reason, too, of the coincidence of a mention of her name in the document he carried in his hand, which he had been engrossing for Rodman Harvey, and was on the point of carrying away, to complete for the morrow.

He thought her face comely and of a pleasing intelligence, but not formally pretty. “That irregularity of feature is pretty enough, however,” he analyzed, in easy disinterestedness, “provided it is accompanied by the right sort of qualities and nice manners.” The kind of eyes she had were unusual. He did not know why they should he called gray. The term was purely a conventional one. The effect was dark, and they inclined more to hazel than blue, having little yellow points in them like a sprinkling of gold dust. One did not quite like them at first, but in the end they had the more attraction, like acquired tastes, and whatever else is mysterious.

Not a susceptible person any longer, or in any way in the matrimonial market, he deemed that he could make observations like these with entire safety. He would like very much to overcome her pique, and relax the perverse gravity of the so strongly marked brows. There was a quaint discordance between these brows and eyes and the softness of the rest of the face. No doubt she would have smiled, but these would not let her. Perhaps there corresponded in her character some traits of different progenitors which were in like manner set side by side, and not mingled or fused together.

The light from the window in the office, as she sat somewhat against it, was becoming to her hair, burnishing the edges and some inner strands of the braids. Any light was becoming to her smooth white skin, over which modulations of shade were spread from the brim of her black, round hat. It could be seen that her black dress, adorned with a trim furbelow or two, was neatly fitted to a slender waist and corsage as yet but little filled out. Her cheviot ulster, with the large collar standing up, enveloped her in half military fashion. The toe of a small buttoned boot, moving a little below the hem of her garment, conveyed her nervousness and inaccessibility of approach.

The new acquaintance persevered, nevertheless : spread before her without demanding a reply his ideas on this and that; what he thought New York was as compared with the West, where he had never been ; how it impressed him when he went and came of journeys ; his view of the substantial uprightness and well-meaningness of Rodman Harvey (this of course peculiarly for her comfort), though of a temper a little uncertain, as was natural in one so weighted with harassing responsibilities. He was so cheerfully indifferent to her reserve that there seemed a slight absurdity in maintaining it. He even ventured upon a little banter as not unbecoming one of his superior age and importance to hers.

“ New York is a city of processions,” he said, “ going up and down its long and narrow extent in a few contracted grooves, — I wonder they don’t wear it down to the backbone, — procession of the larger commerce and strangers from all the ends of the earth on Broadway ; procession of shop-boys and shop-girls and mechanics in the Bowery ; procession of small housewives driving thrifty bargains on the side avenues ; procession of splendor and fashion on Fifth Avenue. That is the dress parade for which all the rest is preliminary drill ; that is the butterfly state of which the rest is chrysalis. For my part, when I go up town, — I generally walk up in the evening, for the exercise, from my place in the Magoon Building, near Trinity Church, — I can’t get the idea of drums out of my head, in the booming of the trucks.”

“ I was thinking of that to-day,” said Ottilie, " as I sat in the carriage.”

“ You will be more impressed when you see more of us. It does not seem quite right to have anybody taking New York for the first time so calmly. You must go down to the ferries, and see how the surrounding coasts are nothing but one bristling mass of cities also, as far as the eye can reach. We are really a population of three millions, kept apart by a few merely nominal barriers. You must appreciate the tremendous movement that is waked up, every day, in the country for fifty miles round about, — all the gigs and phaetons that drive to stations, all the trains that come rushing, the incessant ferry-boats, that weave, shuttle-like, all these interests together. I get an idea sometimes of that looming business quarter of granite, iron, and glass where I am, at the lower end of the island, as if it were heated up by the sun of a morning with definite magnetic properties, so that all the iron filings and bits of pith, as you might say, from any distance, fly to it like mad. At night it is depolarized, and off they go again, repelled to whence they came. How does that strike you as a figure?”

“ I am not especially partial to figures.”

“ They say they cannot lie ; so I suppose it is correct,” he replied, with unbroken equanimity.

“ All Westerners are apt to be banded together, I have found,” he said again ; “ so that you cannot prove a great deal by them. But I should really like to have your description of Lone Tree, to compare with the ideal picture of it I form in my mind from the name alone; from nothing else, I assure you. As I see it, there is a large green, or common, surrounded by — yes, block houses. The tree itself is in the centre of the common. I am not certain whether it is a tall pine, with its high tuft still green, or only a blasted and riven oak, last of its kind, which in the mean time have retreated beyond the Rocky Mountains. At evening the inhabitants assemble on the green and relate to each other their adventures with rattle snakes and Pottawatomies during the day, and sometimes take hands in dances of rejoicing and mystic rites around the tree.”

“ And Easterners are banded together to be most egotistically benighted and absurd,” she rejoined, flushing a little, and drawn out of herself. “ Lone Tree has twenty thousand people, three railroads, a high school that has sent graduates who have entered among the very first at Yale and Harvard, water-works, a public library, and a handsome park ; and there has been talk of heating the place by steam as a city enterprise. It is so strange that people here, who seem intelligent, will not reflect. They make the same mistakes about us that I have heard Europeans make about them,—• who fancy that there are buffaloes and Indians in New York, — though we are in the same country. The West has the best and latest of everything. It is very imitative and ambitious, and has the money to buy with, and gets the most improved patterns. Indeed, it could hardly get anything else if it would. They cost no more. It is only in old communities that you find lumbering and inconvenient things about. You should see our railway carriages. It is natural enough that this should be so. The West has the young blood, which is not afraid to try experiments.”

“ The Pottawatomies prefer that kind, do they ? ”

He received for this a frown of added displeasure ; but it was followed by the smile of which he had been in search. It was worth the waiting for. It irradiated her face quite enchantingly, and showed charming white teeth. A miracle was wrought with the previous pensiveness and severity, though the tired expression soon returned.

She began to attend a little, furtively, to his looks. She had hardly noted his features yet, except the profile view, which was strong and good. He was of a figure naturally well built and robust, but inclining towards the ascetic type, through sedentary pursuits and neglect of the exercises of athletic development. He had one of those high, straight, symmetrical heads that oftener excel in the refined, acute, and ingenious qualities than in wisdom of the ponderous sort. His light hair was cropped close. A short beard, lighter than his hair, curled around his face. The trace of a small upright furrow was marked between his brows, which was deeper at times of concentrated attention. A spot of gold appeared in the front of one of his otherwise excellent teeth. He might have been twenty-eight, and did not look more. Ottilie was not altogether so impressed by his assumption of elderly and deliberate airs, to which he considered himself entitled by reason of his large and unfelicitous experience of life, as he may have supposed. He was an important person, no doubt, used among other things to the best company, — anybody could see that, — but not at all of an age to be her uncle’s leading lawyer.

They went out to see the stir of life in the lower wareroom of the store. Ottilie had never conceived of so many subordinates, such a wealth of properties in the ownership of any one man. As if, with the sound, the fierce energy of the street rushed in, sluice-like, through the openings of the doors, there was hardly a less turmoil within. The bolts of stuffs which in their normal condition, piled upon their packing boxes, formed monumental cairns, in the heat of an afternoon of the busy season were thrown down into the alleys between, and a hundred salesmen and the buyers upon whom they attended were seen half buried in the chaos, over the wide area. Some had plunged headlong to lift up from the bottom the contents of cases, which ran over with bright-colored draperies around them. It was, one might have said, another Spanish Fury, or a sack by beneficent Visigoths of traffic. Ottilie recalled well that her father had told her that the controlling spirit of all this had once been on the verge of as complete a bankruptcy as his own ; and she could not repress a sigh at the unequal dispensations of fate.

Some few of the clerks there were, in favoring nooks of the piled-up cairns, who had leisure to remark upon the appearance of Ottilie, feminine visitations of such a sort being rare there, and gossip on the matters peculiar to themselves.

There was in one such group, McKinley, a slow-moving man with a huge moustache, descending like a brown cascade, who sat on the edge of a bale, and complained that Solomons had taken from him a customer upon whom he had always been in the habit of attending. “ He has always inquired for me when he has come to the store,” he said, “ and if he did n’t this time, it is damned strange ; that ’s what it is.”

Westfield talked of the fashions, women, the characteristics of boardinghouses where he had lived, and the clogdancing at the Oceanic Minstrels.

Widgery, whose specialties were the superiority of the early drama, and the old fire department, of which he had only the recollections of a gamin of tender age, took issue with Bowsfield on a theatrical matter, and laid down radical doctrines. “ Edwin Booth,” he said, “ does not know the first principles of acting. Forrest was the man. An actor when he first comes on the boards, for me, any way ! When he gets a reputation he does n’t care what he does. Compare Sothern now and ten years ago. Great Scott! I went to hear him the other night in Sam, and I wanted to come out, and get my money back.”

The dashing Cutter, divested of his coat, which displayed to the better advantage a pair of wide crimson braces, a gorgeous scarf, and sleeve-links of an elaborate pattern, was on his favorite subject of a rich girl. “ A man gives up his freedom, and puts in his time and management, and she contributes the money. It ought to be a regular partnership,” he declared. “ But the point is to find out whether she has got money ; don’t you understand ? That is the little joke. You can’t judge by appearances ; do you see what I mean ? Or her father may have it, and not give her any till he dies, and then where are you ? And he has a chance to fail half a dozen times over before that.”

Some of the wilder ones began to banter the rather ingenuous and steadygoing Whittemore, who came from the same small Connecticut city as Rodman Harvey, their employer, and was something of an authority on his earlier history, for having recently left his boarding-house in Waverley Place, and gone to another, high up town, on the east side, in Harvey’s Terrace.

“ Oh, it’s merely homesickness in him; he wanted to be near Bridgefield,” suggested Bowsfield.

“ Harvey’s Terrace ? What Harvey’s Terrace ? ” inquired Widgery.

“ It’s named after the old man,” said the heavy-moustached McKinley, who was solacing his discontent by gloomily paring his nails with a penknife. “ It’s where his wife’s property, the old Muffet place, used to be, on the bluff, over on the East River. He put up some blocks of pretty fair brown-stone houses on it, two or three years ago. Don’t you remember the time there was getting the shanty squatters off it ? It was a regular fort of a place, and they resisted with sticks and stones. A file of marines had to be got, besides the police, to put them out. That young sprig, over there, with the young lady [he indicated Bainbridge, standing with Ottilie], if I am not mistaken, was the one who served the dispossess warrants on them. Harvey has given him odd jobs now and then, on account of it, ever since.”

“ It’s an A 1 place,” said Whittemore. “ There is a staving view, off on the river; you see all over everywhere. Klauser has boarded there ever since it first started. He told me about it. You had better come up to dinner with me [to Cutter], and I ’ll introduce you to a school-teacher who has five thousand dollars in the savings-bank. I know that is so. She showed me the books.”

“ Is she pretty ? ”

“ No; I should say she was pretty plain, if it is looks you want also. And rather old. She made it all herself. But there is a younger one, who is ; I ’ll put you next to her. Miss Speller is, but Miss Finley is n’t. They are great friends. They have agreed to live together just the same if either one is ever married.”

“Marry the good-looking one, Cutter,” suggested Widgery jocosely; “ take the other one in to board, and get appointed guardian. Then you ’ll have them both.”

“ I ’m not in the marrying line,” said Cutter ; “ but I don't mind going up with you, for a change, to see what part of the world Harvey’s Terrace is in.”

The college graduate, Milton, who had come in to learn the business from the bottom up, and had for his department chiefly the trucking of goods about the store, at three dollars a week, paused a moment in his labors to regard with envy the careless ease of manners in this experienced upper stratum.

II.

ASPIRATIONS OF A MERCHANT PRINCE.

Bainbridge and Ottilie arrived at that boon of conversations, so much more sensible than the weather, safer than wit, and less fatiguing than abstract philosophizing, a common acquaintance.

“ By the way, as you are at Vassar,” said the young man, “ I dare say you know something of the Hasbrouck girls, of Baltimore, and further South ?”

“ Oh, they are great friends of mine,” returned Ottilie, brightening.

“I knew them in Florida some years ago, when I planted oranges there. The Hasbroucks were one of the few families that did not think all Northerners had hoofs and horns. The bitterness of the war had not died out then. They had such a charming place : one of these old houses with projecting eaves and long low veranda ; splendid live-oaks shading it; jasmine, myrtles, gardenias, and japonica all round about. You get violets and narcissus in the woods in January, in that country. I can recall the fragrance now.”

“Yes, I have heard them tell about it.”

“They were very nice to me—the mother, Mrs. Hasbrouck, of course, for the girls were mere children — once when I ran an orange thorn into my foot. You never ran an orange thorn into your foot, I dare say ? ”

“ No, I never did.”

“ Well, it is a rather painful sort of thing, and tedious in healing. They drove over and looked after me when I was laid up. I remember one of the children had a white chicken with a green ribbon around its leg. They used to call it General Zollicoffer. I have seen them once since, in Baltimore. What are they like now? They seemed of the real Southern type. It used to do me good to hear their pronunciation of the vowels.”

“ Oh, yes, they are real Southerners. I had never known any before intimately, and I liked them immensely. I believe I have a weakness for anything a little out of the common, from a distance, — anything in the way of curiosities.” Bainbridge made mental note of this, as a taste quite agreeing with his own. “Amy is dark and Lulu light, and both are plump and inclined to dress in bright colors. They reckon sometimes; and pronounce idea, and gen’al for general; and talk about sweethearts, and buzzards, and their friends by their names in full. I know by heart, almost, the affairs of certain Johns and Dicks and Bobs I never saw; and, oh dear! Judge Bibb, and the people that had plantations near theirs,— the Wheeler family, William Henry Wheeler, and Colonel Scott Wheeler, and Brick-House Wheeler, and I don’t know how many besides.”

“ It was Scott Wheeler’s place that I had.”

“ Really ? Oh, I know that, by hearsay, very well. They are such frank, generous, warm-hearted girls. They have asked me to visit them in the Easter vacation. Their mother is coming here pretty soon, — or perhaps she has come already, — and is going to take a flat, so as to have a home for them close by, to run down to if they wish. They have another year to stay after this.”

“ I am glad to hear of that, and shall give myself the pleasure of hunting up Mrs. Hasbrouck. But I should think you would want to visit your uncle, instead.”

“ No,” she said evasively.

“ They have had rather a hard time,” she recommenced. “ They were defrauded in some way in their property matters, in the South, by a person named St. Hill. And then ” —

“ St. Hill? What St. Hill? There is a St. Hill next to me, in the Magoon Building, who has lately set up some new-fangled company — the Prudential Land and Loan or something that way — with a great flourish. I think he was from the South. I got a place to direct envelopes, with him, only yesterday, for a broken-down old party who has tried to throw himself on my hands lately.”

“ I don’t know. I only heard that he was a dangerous, youngish sort of person. And then my uncle seized upon a large part of what they had left, real estate, claiming that their father had owed him before the war ; and it was thrown into the courts, and has been dragging along, so that they have no use of it; and it will probably be decided in his favor, because he is the stronger.”

“ I have heard something of that case.”

“ Amy, therefore, will have to be a governess. That is what has been the result of it. And Lulu has considerable talent for elocution, and may perhaps teach that. We sympathize, and lay our plans together. It seems harder for them, however, because they were brought up under such a different system and with such different expectations. They thought, of course, when they first knew me, and heard that I was Rodman Harvey’s niece, that I would sympathize with him ; but I did not. I let them know, when I understood the true state of the case, that I was quite on their side ; and since that they have not blamed me at all.”

The return of Rodman Harvey himself, just at this point, constituted the most valid of interruptions, and aroused in the young girl a confused sense of where and to whom she was speaking, which perhaps she had not kept quite distinctly enough in mind. How imprudent to have made her avowal of adhesion to the enemy to a confidential agent and a stranger, who would no doubt make mention of it to his principal at the first opportunity!

The merchant brought back with him his eldest son, Selkirk Harvey, a person of rather mopish manners, yet not disagreeable expression, student-like more than mercantile-looking, with projecting teeth, of the kind that always seem to he pronouncing the letter “ V ” on the lower lip. He was being trained in the white-goods department of Mr. Minn, and elsewhere, in the accurate business habits which were to fit him for the responsibilities, of no common kind, to fall upon him hereafter. He had developed no great talent, if the truth must be told, either in the counting-room or any other department requiring foresight of a superior order and the keen scent of gain. With all a parent’s fondness, his father could not yet estimate him as of a calibre equal to his own. But he looked for Selkirk to improve.

When presented, the young man shook hands with his cousin, with an elaborate, acquired manner, and stood about regarding her in silence, whether favorably or not it would not be easy to say.

Ready now to take his departure, her uncle, in his pleasanter mood, pressed her hospitably to get in with him and go up to see her aunt. “ We are at the Bayswater Hotel,” he said. “ We are building a new house. The old one, in Union Square, has been turned into a piano factory, and we have no great accommodations to offer; but we can keep you a few days as well as not. My daughter will be glad to see you. She is back from Europe again. She will tell you about her travels.”

“Thank you, so much ! I should like to; but I have only a short leave of absence, and every day is important. I really must — return this evening,” pleaded Ottilie, secretly alarmed lest her resistance might somehow be overborne.

“ Well, another time. I shall speak to your aunt about you. She will bear you in mind. You must write to her. She will send for you in some vacation. You might make some arrangement with her, you know. She has no end of things to do. You might call it a governess-ship or secretary-ship with her, if you liked. Why not ? You might give our youngest, Calista, a lift. She makes very hard work of everything. You could brighten her up a bit.”

Ottilie dissimulated, murmured more thanks for these embarrassing offers, made timidly-smiling farewells, and took her place beside Klauser for the onward progress to the station where she was to take her train. As the air was more chill the top of the hackney coach was put up. She set to reproving Klauser. He defended himself in a jumbled way. As they had got on so well together in their long travels, she had not the heart for a persistent resentment, but accepted the theory, proposed by him, of the astoundingness of the incident.

She had practiced her German with him on the way, taking his advice gladly on her umlauts and pronunciations, though he was far from an authority in fine points of syntax. They had spoken of his daughter, Mina, whom, having a musical taste, he had placed at the Conservatory at Leipsic for its better cultivation. “ I too am of German descent on the mother’s side,” she said. “ You see I have a German name. My mother’s grandfather settled at Cincinnati, and made a great fortune there, which I am sorry to say his descendants have not retained.”

In the hope (as her fancy turned naturally to whatever promised a touch of the romantic) that he, Klauser, might have left his country as the exile of revolutions, and have stories to tell her of stirring scenes, she asked him if his departure was for political reasons. Yes, he said : it was on account of an extra tax on aniline colors in Bavaria, which made it bad for the dyeing business, in which he was engaged. And it was not in 1848, but in 1842.

His daughter, Wilhelmina, was expected back, and would be with him soon. “ You will do me the favor to come and see her, I hope, if you visit your uncle in the spring.”

“ I shall not visit my uncle in the spring,” she said, almost sharply, wondering at his obtuse lack of comprehension of her position.

The business for which Bainbridge had been detained was of no great moment. “ Oh, just write into the document, will you,” said Rodman Harvey, when that had been disposed of, “ that this niece is to have the portion of the one who is dead. It seems that one of them is dead. That will be a good enough way to fix it, eh ? ”

“ By the way,” he said again, as Bainbridge was taking his departure, “ leave the amended draft, on the whole; there is a point or two further for consideration ; and stop for it again to-morrow. Selkirk, ride up with me ! We will drive ourselves. Let Joseph take the stage.”

The tide of life which had eddied strong and deep all day in the purlieus of the lower business quarter had set strongly upward on the return movement towards five o’clock in the afternoon. The throngs were like a veritable procession, a host with its equipage and supplies. It moved at a uniform pace, surging impatiently by and around all that came in the opposite direction.

The young brokers’ and mercantile clerks marched with breasts thrown out and swinging arms, making the miles pedestrian-like, not forgetting to ogle on the way the comely shop-girls, hastening down to the ferries to cross to the suburban cities. The brokers themselves drove, sedately leaning back in their coupés. The distraught and wild-eyed of the morning, straining to be on time, to be competent for desperate difficulties, sinking under the exactions of cruel task-masters and dread of failure after supreme effort, respited for the day, came back more languidly.

The strangers clustered in the porches and low, wide windows of the hotels. The grand waiters at the luxurious restaurants in Madison Square stood expectant near their small tables. Half a million housewives were giving the last anxious thoughts to the preparation of half a million dinners. The click of half a million latch-keys turning in their locks had begun.

The incident of the arrival of the young girl, her amusing pique, and his acquaintance, in his confidential capacity, with the slender legacy which had fallen to her mingled with and returned among the more serious preoccupations of Bainbridge, moving upward with the pedestrians in the street.

“ I am glad her visit availed her even so much. She would have precious little more, — as would any other relative out of his own household, I judge, — no matter what fancy he might take to her; and she, besides, is not likely to give him a chance to take any,” he soliloquized.

He deemed himself justified in holding these views with great positiveness. He knew Rodman Harvey to be a character of peculiar thrift and unimpressibility in the matter of sentiment, and of as peculiar uncompromisingness in the prosecution of favorite aims. His morning’s work had given him, as it happened, a more thorough insight into what these favorite aims were than he had ever obtained before.

They had been engaged together in a codification of the merchant prince’s will, which, grown a trifle complex with the emendations of years, he had desired to have recast into its simplest form, and framed at the same time in a verbiage which should be lucid and unimpeachable by any legal quibbles.

“ To my nephews and nieces, children of my brother, Alfred B. Harvey, of Lone Tree, Illinois,” the young attorney’s clerk, who had been sent up from the office of Chippendale, Bond & Saxby for this service, had written among the minor paragraphs, “ I bequeath five hundred dollars each.”

He had wondered at the time whether the paucity of the amount was to be ascribed to the flourishing circumstances of the legatees. A brother of Rodman Harvey — not himself mentioned as a beneficiary — could scarcely be poor. And yet Lone Tree, Illinois, seemed hardly the place that a large capitalist would retire to, by preference, to enjoy his accumulations. The glimpse of the feud, in the arrival of the heiress of a part of this munificent dispensation, cast a new illumination on the subject.

There was illumination, too, in the merchant prince’s declaration of his leading purpose in the disposition of his property. It seemed to Bainbridge that he could easily have formed a worthier ideal than that it should go, in the greatest possible bulk, into the hands of no more promising an heir-in-chief than Selkirk Harvey. The purpose was to found a family, — by insuring such perpetuity as was possible to a line of descendants, to be raised so much above the common in fortune as to have always this claim at least to an impressive position in the community. This was the conclusion at which Harvey, with his wife, had maturely arrived. If it had not been at first an inspiration of his own, but of hers, it was none the less fully adopted. Mrs. Rodman Harvey, herself a person of family (the old and well-known Muffets), married to a man of wealth who made no pretensions of the kind, was firm in her conviction that “ family ” was the direction in which their position chiefly needed strengthening.

“ Anybody,” the fashionable Mrs. Harvey had maintained, “ can found a hospital or a university. That is very much overdone. The merest canaille do it, flattered or brow-beaten into it by the newspapers. It is every way more distinguished and original to try to do something to have one’s name and standing kept up by descendants of importance, even although the laws are so defective, as compared with those of foreign parts, in helping to bring this about.”

There was illumination, too, in certain maxims let fall by Harvey, in the freedom of this conference. “I have yet to learn,” he said, “ that there is injustice in any possible disposition of what one has earned himself.”

An ingrained habit of disparagement appeared in his discourse for all such as had not exhibited the same mastery over fortune as he. He inclined to ascribe it to voluntary shiftlessness and lack of effort. Too much already was done, he thought, to make the lives of the inefficient easier. His own children, as well perhaps as those generally who had inherited wealth, were of an exceptional and finer clay than the common ; but for the rest the rule should be unaided exertion, to develop their full powers under the stimulus of necessity.

“ Whom had I ever to extend a helping hand to me ? Where should I have been had I waited for it ? Have I not shown in my own career that nothing of the kind is called for ? ”

So had Rodman Harvey spoken. Under the sway of such a conviction, and his purpose to diminish by nothing not of absolute need the principal bulk, to be received and increased, as he anxiously entreated, by the elder son, the minor legacies of his last will and testament (and the impressions of Russell Bainbridge who had aided in its preparation) felt the influence accordingly.

Yet if one must first approve in every detail the types of character with whom he comes in business contact, he can have relations but little extended. Bainbridge had enjoyed, since Harvey had been pleased to speak of him as “ a bright young man,” after the affair of the dispossess warrants, a certain patronage from this influential source, though compensated, as he knew, at a shrewdly economical price. He desired to keep and increase it, as a part of his established clientage, in the bold step he meditated,—no less than casting loose from Chippendale, Bond & Saxby, and setting up as an attorney at law, commissioner of deeds, and notary public, on his own account. By the liberal system of checks and balances, and a making of allowances, which he considered himself to have learned the advisability of in his experience of life, there was conduct on every hand far more heinous than Harvey’s, — sins not only of omission, but of commission, of a most flagrant sort. He defended Harvey by contrast. “ He is not one of those,” he said, “ of whom the community is full, whose routine is a mere setting of traps, and whose wealth is an accumulation of the spoils of the simple and unwary.”

His occupation was a tangible service to men ; his dealings, so far as Bainbridge knew and believed, in spite of the aspersions which, in the fierce light that beats upon so exalted a position, did not fail to be made, — the brokendown Gammage, his protégé at the Prudential Land and Loan Company, the Other day, curiously enough, had had some incoherent babblings of this sort, — were above-board and honorable. If he did you no great service, at least he did you no harm; and of how many could so much be said ?

Rodman Harvey, riding up town beside his son, handed him the document in question for his perusal. " You will see here more explicitly,” he said, “ the plans in your regard, which I have often explained to you. It is time that you became impressed by them with the utmost seriousness. Mr. Minn tells me of frequent absences of yours of late, and that not long ago you were away three days at a time.”

“ It has been about my collections. There was an important book sale in Philadelphia, which ” —

“ Nothing of that sort is important, I tell you, to a man in your position. They are gentlemanly tastes, and well enough in their way, those things, your books and your bricabrac; but not for one who has something to do in the world. You are to be the nominal head, at least, of the new firm, to consist of you and the minor partners, with Hackley, — who, as you know, desires to come in, — as soon as my own entrance into political life is determined. It should be your pride and duty to add to what I may legitimately call the glories of the old house, and to the sum of the fortune I shall leave in your charge. You have no time to waste with a trumpery of old books and china plates. It has not resulted well, on some accounts, — your going to Harvard. I was in business already when a boy of fourteen, and perhaps I should have seen that you began as early. I observe with pain your tendency to be led away by all that is not to the purpose in your direction, just as your brother Rodman is in his. Here I have letters from this new military school, for which he expressed such a fancy, and where he has scarcely been six months, that he is as incorrigible as ever, and that it will be quite a serious question, unless he can agree to change radically, whether, after the vacation, they will wish him to return.”

“ To my dear wife, Alida,” Selkirk read, skimming the document, “ I bequeath all my household effects of every kind, my horses and carriages and their equipment, the contents of my stables, my personal apparel and ornaments, her own belongings, all my paintings and statuary, all my plate, except the service of silver voted to me by the city of Bridgefield, Connecticut, for aid in the raising of a regiment of troops at that place during the war of the rebellion, which I wish to be given to my elder son, Selkirk Harvey. I bequeath to her also my country-seat at Newport, Rhode Island ; my farms at my native town of Pompton, Massachusetts; my city house, now in process of erection, at the corner of West Blank Street and Fifth Avenue, for her natural life, without impeachment of waste. I bequeath also to her, in lieu of dower, an income of twenty-five thousand dollars per annum for her natural life, to be paid to her from the residuary real estate.

“ To my daughter, Angelica Harvey ” — the peruser read out here a fixed sum, imposing in itself, but less so by contrast with the suggestion of the far greater amounts in the later dispositions.

“ To my second son, Rodman Harvey, Jr.” — a liberal provision, in the hands of trustees, to guard against a further developmeut of unruly and frivolous tendencies, of which the testator desired to make mention as a cause to him already of anxious concern.

In the end, and the gist of the instrument, came the devising of all the residuary estate, real and personal, with the deductions named, to the principal heir and eldest son, who, as figures were not mentioned, had but a vague idea of the extent of the resources thus falling into his hands.

But— signal feature to note, and afterwards to be expatiated upon sonorously — only one half the personal estate to be to the legatee in absolute ownership ; the income of the other half to be applied to the improvement of the residuary real estate ; the real estate itself only to be held in trust for the offspring of the next generation.

It was earnestly hoped and entreated that the heir-in-chief should pursue the same policy of limited entail in his own last will and testament in turn, and thus hand it down as a tradition of as potent force as obtainable to posterity. In this way the influences making against the perpetuity of family state in our own country might be in a measure overcome.

“ It is high time that you were settled in the world, too,” said the merchant, coming to the second part of his urgency, when the duty of the heir to make the careful stewardship of what was committed to him his one profession in life had been dwelt upon with sufficient impressiveness,— “ high time that you had taken a wife.”

He set himself sedulously to inquire, “ What do you think of the Schinko girl ? Why do you not like Goldstone’s daughter ? And there is Ada Trull, and Lehigh Cole’s daughter.”

To which his son replied with but languid commendations of the young women, and a hesitating statement that he did not altogether like “ the regular sort.”

The serried procession of Broadway, reaching the first of its infrequent points of expansion, debouched into Union Square. The bronze Washington, father of his country, was there on horseback, aloft, with majestic arm extended to sway and govern it. The bronze Lafayette bowed before it, holding his sword and cloak to his breast, with the courtly grace of the old régime. The gauntvisaged, plain, contemplative Lincoln regarded it, let it be figured, with that “charity towards all and malice towards none ” lettered around the base of his granite pedestal. Martial orders seem to resound. Can it be that the bronze Washington is shouting which columns shall deploy to this side, which to that; which shall keep on through the centre of the park, among the sparse trees, past the benches, on which the tramps loll by day and sleep at night in all endurable weathers, and the fountain, around which, though it is still and covered with boards for the winter, the nursemaids still trundle their charges ?

No, a pair of colossal wheels, carrying a heavy iron casting, slung in chains, has broken down and stopped the way. A jaded cab horse has fallen, besides, and lies supine under the efforts to divest him of his harness and lift him up, with that tacit assumption that it is much more the affair of other people than his owu characteristic of his kind. The clamor is the commands of the stalwart police of the Broadway squad, forcing back the animals on their haunches and clearing the chaos, and the vociferations of the drivers, who clutch their whips and mutter curses in impotent rage.

In the wedging together of vehicles at this point pedestrians came alongside some which had much outstripped them. Bainbridge thus caught sight again of Ottilie, looking out pensively into the confusion. Her head was framed in the window of the carriage, her white skin and her hair under the brim of her black hat illuminated against the dusk background of the interior, like a portrait of the Flemish school. He lingered a little, till he had attracted her notice. She did not smile again, but bowed gravely, when he doffed his hat. By an onward movement of all the wheels, she was again swallowed up.

Rodman Harvey at the same time, waiting in his buggy, had above his head a political banner of some sort, suspended across the street. He raised his eyes to it with favor. The portraits of the candidates were rudely depicted on it, and it was pierced with holes for baffling the wind, — as riddled, perhaps, as might be their reputations before the campaign was over. Such banners, he hoped and trusted, in the next campaign for Congress, were to be hung out for him. He felt that he should meet in a more equable frame of mind the legislators and political economists he entertained at dinner when he could write M. C. after his name. It would be worth while, if only for the comfort in his relations with his foreign correspondents, M. de la Tour Rigolboche, who was a deputy, from whom he imported his silks and velvets of Lyons, and Sir Folkestone Margate, M. P., maker of woolen cloths at Leeds, with both of whom he exchanged letters and small gifts of personal courtesy.

“ What do you hear said,” he asked his son. “about my political prospects, in the talk that has lately been set going ? ”

“ I overheard Dr. “Wyburd lately ” —

“ Wyburd is a great gossip. He goes everywhere, and knows everybody and everything. I Suppose his opinion ought to be good for something. What did he say ? ”

“ He said that General Burlington would make the same effort for the nomination as before, and, failing to secure that, would throw his influence in favor of a compromise candidate, to defeat you, just as on that occasion. But it seemed to him that you had conciliated to yourself a great deal more favor than you then possessed, especially by moving into the district and putting up so fine a house in it, and that the same programme could not be carried out.”

“ So say Hastings and Hackley ; but Burlington is a hard fighter ; he is as poor as he can be since his return from his mission to Austria, and needs office, and there is no telling what may happen. However, it is a long way ahead yet. It would be no bad beginning in political life to represent the district of principal wealth and social standing in New York. It is the kind of thing that easily leads to positions much higher.”

For the founding of a family, the prestige of public employments, of all that which passes reputably into tradition, as well as money, was desirable. He had outside projects, lines of railway and the like, which he might pursue in political life. He had had enough of trade, the confinement of which gave him slight vertigos of late ; and in any event he would complete, when favorable opportunity offered, the shifting of these interests to the new firm to be constituted, of which his son Selkirk was to be the head.

The procession spreads out again in the opening of Madison Square. It is a procession decimated now by constant depletion below, but the Seward at the edge of the grass plots, whose business, according to the saying of Watervliet, the wit of the Empire Club, it is to record on his bronze tablets the tally of those passing by, has still enough and to spare to do. The trucks and drays have boomed away over the broken pavements of the remote side streets, to be unharnessed in front of dingy, high brick tenement houses, and serve as the tribunes and playground of ragged urchins ; while the horses, that have once known the sweet air and herbage of farm pastures, are ensconced, in darkness, in ill-scented, make-shift stalls, where it is much if they be able to stand upright.

The steaming dinners of the anxious housewives are served now. The grand waiters at the Brunswick, Delmonico’s, the St. James, are conveying viands to the elegant people who may be seen through the windows, smiling at each other across their small square tables, which glitter with silver and crystal on the whitest of damask. The gas flares brightly in front of the hotels and theatres, and about these latter have begun to gather leisurely persons who fillip small bundles of tickets for the choice seats, in anticipation of the coming audiences.

Bainbridge is putting himself in evening dress, for a meeting of the Harmonia Musical Club at Mrs. Clefs, of which he forms a part.

Ottilie, whose coming has been telegraphed, that she may be met at the station, is bowling along the edge of the stately river, whose high palisaded shores echo the rattling of the train in the dark. The many-winged, many-storied institution to which she returns twinkles with lights, above a carpet of snow laid among bare stems and lines of funereal evergreens.

She is greeted and kissed on this hand and that. She is in her room at last, sinking down in a dazed way after her long whirl of experiences, and wishing, with homesickness in her heart, that such need of roaming the interminable, bewildering world did not exist, that the allotted term of her stay were over, and that she need never again leave dear old comfortable, appreciative Lone Tree.

It was but a temporary mood, however. A person of more than ordinary interest in adventure, and sleepless though tired, she sat down at once to acquaint her family of her safe arrival, with some mention of what had befallen her. The letter expanded much beyond its projected limits. She had taken many a note on the way of novel sights and people, which she wove into her narrative. They had passed Niagara in the night, she said, and Klauser’s affairs had not permitted him to stop ; but she had opened the window of her berth, as they moved warily over the suspension bridge, and heard it roar in the darkness, two miles away. She had even seen the mist rising. Rarely, perhaps, had the venerable cataract roared and shaken its mane for the pleasure of a more brightly appreciative young woman.

The staple matter, we may suppose, was the unlooked-for meeting with her uncle, and his manners, at first fierce, then conciliatory. Ah, if there were but some legitimate way of securing the influence of this powerful connection in her project of self-support! But of course there was not. If he were, in fact, the kind of uncle they used to dream about when they were children ! Paul had figured him as coming with a pony by the bridle to present to him ; and she that he might suddenly invite her to put on her things and travel with him many years in Europe!

There was no extended mention in this letter of a young man who had planted oranges in Florida, and been painfully injured by an orange thorn in the foot. He appeared only as “ an odd, patronizing sort of person, who overheard part of my interview with uncle Rodman.”

Klauser, meanwhile, drawing a sigh of relief at the termination of his labors, made his way back, once more, to the comfortable chamber he had long occupied at Mrs. Neddy’s, in Harvey’s Terrace.

At dinner, Dr. Gaffin, the dentist, Mr. Reinboldt, the druggist, and ex-Alderman Finnegan, now head of an important bureau in the comptroller’s office, questioned him gravely on his journey, and compared the relative merits of the Erie, the Central, and the Pan Handle routes to the West, as they had classed them from their experiences.

Whittemore and Cutter, his fellow employees at the store, were there, and the latter had already begun to make himself agreeable to the two schoolteachers, the moneyed Miss Finley and her comely bosom friend, Miss Speller.

Certain freedoms were ventured upon with Klauser, by reason of long acquaintance, especially by Cutter, who inquired jocularly,—

“ Who was the pretty young lady you had with you at the store this afternoon, Klauser? Aha, you rascal! If I might advise, Mrs. Neddy, a rather sharp eye should be kept on Sir. Klauser. This thing of bringing back fascinating young women from the West will bear looking into.”

“It was the daughter of the old man’s brother, A. B. Harvey, of Lone Tree. And a mighty nice girl she is,” said Klauser gravely. “ You don’t find many such girls nowadays : a scholar, accomplished, kind-hearted, no airs about her, and good-looldng in the bargain. I was proud to have in my company such a person, I can tell you. She brought everybody in the parlor car to like her during the two days we were coming from Chicago, especially by her way of talking and doing small services to an old lady who traveled alone.”

“ They say A. B., her father, has n’t a cent to bless himself with ; never knows where the next day’s dinner is coming from,” suggested Cutter.

“Not so bad as that. They have a very pretty homestead, with grounds around it; and, as the principal merchant of the place, the father has a neat business, which in the hands of anybody with good management ought to yield very comfortable returns. But he has not good management, and probably gets as little out of it as anybody could.”

“ What ever took him to such an outof-the-way place, when he had once been Rodman Harvey’s partner here, and engaged in big affairs ? ”

“ Bad management, want of calculation, unpractical ideas. He went into the iron business, after he left the old man, and failed; then he went into leather, and failed. When he was all broke up, Rodman Harvey happened to have this store on hand, which he had taken for debt, at Lone Tree, and put him into it as a resource — better than nothing, at any rate — for supporting his family. He worked hard till he had paid for it, by installments, and made it his own, so as to hold up his head, and go to wrangling again with his brother, if he felt like it. He is one of the most independent men you would meet. And his daughter, I should think, inherited a share of the same quality. ”

William Henry Bishop.