In the Old Dominion

FOUR o’clock of a lovely day in the early autumn; a chilly wind, contradicted by a hot sun ; a touch of crimson in the sumach bushes lining a country lane in Virginia, down which a gentleman is galloping, — a fine, erect figure mounted on a stout hack, which is carefully groomed, somewhat dingy in accoutrement, and just now putting out its best paces. At the mouth of the lane, where it debouches into the high-road, there is a glorious maple, that a month later might well stand for the burning bush of Moses, with its shimmering lights, glowing and sparkling in new and beautiful combinations of color, as sunshine, cloud, and breeze make of it alternately a tree of gold, a tree of blood, a tree of bronze.

Already the ground at its feet is carpeted in a way to delight the æsthetic soul, and a girl who has been sitting for an hour with a lap full of leaves, which she has been admiring, arranging, comparing, unable to decide which to keep and which to throw away, rises, seizes two parcels, drops three, recaptures them only to drop half her leaves, makes a triumphant swoop upon these, and picks her way toward the horseman. Not a lady at all; an awkward, freckled factory-girl, going home with the coming week’s work ; yet the moment he catches sight of her, he pulls up his horse with a suddenness that sends streams of liquid mud flying up the animal’s flanks, and as he walks past her takes his hat off and executes a profound and courtly salute, — such as Sir Charles Grandison may have kept for the duchesses of his acquaintance, — goes on quietly for a few hundred yards, and then resumes his gallop for a couple of miles, when he reaches a shackling, lowspirited gate, off the hinge, set in a luxuriant, unclipped hedge of bois d’arc, and turns into the grounds of Edgewood. In its day Edgewood was known from New England to the Carolinas as one of the colonial show-places, with a thousand acres at its back, half as many slaves to till its fields, stables that accommodated fifty horses, and room and welcome for a perennial stream of guests, — the belles, beaux, and local magnates of the country and neighborhood, with such distinguished foreigners as chanced to stray that way. The house was built of English bricks, in a pseudo-Grecian style of architecture, with portico sufficient for the Madeleine, and a noble hall, through which one could drive a coach-and-four : two features greatly insisted upon by the Virginian gentry of the period. It stood in a park of seventy-five acres of beautiful woodland, and was set on a knoll commanding fine views of the surrounding country. But the place was sadly shorn of its past glories, and in China would properly have been regarded as a monument, not a home, and promptly converted into a chapel and grounds for the worship and deification of ancestors. The lawn was ragged and unkempt, and the grass dying, apparently, of a green and yellow melancholy. The enormous wooden pillars of the portico were almost destitute of paint, and the boards under-foot were rotting away in various places. In front, a weather-stained, chipped marble fountain seemed incapable of pumping up so much as a single tear over its own bright past and arid future, or that of its owners. Of the original estate, only two hundred and fifty acres remained, producing chiefly blue thistles, and having no modern devices, such as phosphates, rotation of crops, and improved machinery, to stimulate its flagging cereals.

The front door was a fine old piece of mahogany, to which time had given a rich wine-color; it was further adorned with a huge brass lock and knocker, polished by several generations of muscular Africans, under the lynx-eyed supervision of as many notable housewives. It stood open, revealing a section of the hall, with its stained floor, spindle-legged furniture, racks for hats, whips, and fishing-tackle, family portraits, and a group of crossed swords wielded by revolutionary sires, supplemented by two others that had belonged to the dead sons of the house, — two gallant young cavalry officers, who fell on the same day in the Wilderness.

Just outside, in a rustic arm-chair, sat an old man of ninety, who looked as though he would crumble at a touch; with long, scanty locks of white hair hanging down on his shoulders, a face wrinkled like a baked apple, a nose that still insisted on being handsome amid the wreck and ruin of all the other features, and two bristling tufts of white hair set above a pair of pale blue eyes, deeply sunken in their sockets and wandering in expression. He was dressed with extreme care, in the style of the “ fine old English gentleman,” in a dark suit of some long-past period, very long as to the waistcoat and tight as to the coat; wore a patched boot neatly blacked, topped by gray gaiters, a fob, and a voluminous cravat, wrapped around his neck again and again, until the tip of chin and ears disappeared. It was this, combined with a trick he had of moving his entire body, from the waist, in turning to address one, that gave a curious Jack-in-the-box effect to the shining bald crown which had, indeed, been engaged for a life-time in trying to keep itself above water. With one tremulous, deep-veined hand he held a brown vellum book, from which he was reading aloud to a gentleman sitting near, using the other to turn over the yellow leaves, and pointing his moral with a skinny forefinger as he peered closely at the text.

“ Listen to this, my boy,” said he, his cracked voice rising in shrill exultation, as he went on with the passage from his favorite author : “‘If New England be called a receptacle of Dissenters, Pennsylvania a nursery of Quakers, Maryland the retirement of Roman Catholics, North Carolina the refuge of runaways, and South Carolina the delight of buccaneers and pirates, Virginia may justly be esteemed the happy retreat of true Britons and true Churchmen.’" It is impossible to give an idea of the emphasis and importance he contrived to throw into his “Virginia.” Even in his thin tones it had a dignified, Old Dominion, Mother-of-Statesand-Presidents swell to it that told its own tale of love and pride ; it was a roll-call of the States, in which his heart said “ Here ! ” as plainly as possible to the listening ear.

His companion had given a merely mechanical attention, and was saying, “You are very fortunate, Mr. Vesey, in being able to read without your glasses. I suffer considerable inconvenience from the necessity I am always under of carrying them about with me wherever I go. My carelessness and absence of mind are such that ” —

“ There’s my son ! " exclaimed the old gentleman abruptly; “ and he has taken the chestnut out again, in spite of my having distinctly forbidden it. A troublesome lad, — a very troublesome lad.” Saying this for the third time, he rose with great difficulty, and aided by his cane limped to the edge of the veranda, and stood there waiting for his son to dismount.

“ You have taken the chestnut again, Wyndham, although you knew it was contrary to my wishes. I am surprised at your want of filial respect, sir, —surprised, surprised,” he called out fretfully, as soon as his son came within earshot. “ You have three saddle-horses of your own, sir, and had better leave mine alone. I should think that an intimation of my wishes on the subject would be all that is necessary; but you forget yourself, sir, — forget yourself entirely.”

Although assailed in this way, the son did not seem at all disturbed, but fastened his bridle-rein composedly to a staple driven into one of the oaks ; a substitute for the stable-boys who used to dart out from behind the house, by some happy inspiration, the moment there was any need of them. Mr. Vesey the elder was in his second childhood, and had a fixed idea that, with a stable full of thoroughbreds, his son would ride his father’s horses. It was useless to argue the point, or explain that the chestnut was the only decent bit of horseflesh about the place; so his son advanced, hat in hand, made his apologies elaborately, and was told that “ Mr. Brooke, of Shirley, had been waiting for more than an hour.” Now, although the two men had been neighbors, schoolmates, college chums, and intimate friends all their lives, and were moreover in the habit of meeting daily at the same hour for a game, or games, of backgammon, of which both were very fond, the mere suspicion of discourtesy to a guest was so intolerable that Mr. Wyndham Vesey hastened to go through a second set of apologies, as formal and punctilious as though they had been meant for an entire stranger. On examination, “ the troublesome boy ” proved to be a man of sixty-five, with gray hair and beard, and dignity and ease of manner quite incomparable, and a diction as clear-cut as his profile. His friend was a year or two older, of equally good address, with a manner suggestive of intense self-respect, utterly untinged by self-assertion, delightfully simple and unaffected, and with that unspoken deference for the opinions and utterances of others which scores so many points for the accomplished man of the world, especially with women.

After shaking hands, the friends stood for several minutes making the usual inquiries after each other’s health, and that of each member of their respective households. it was, “ I hope the ladies at Shirley are in the enjoyment of their usual good health to-day,” and “ I trust that Miss Gertrude has quite recovered from the extremely severe attack of neuralgia from which she was suffering yesterday,” accompanied by repeated bows and thanks, and so on through the list. To have omitted anybody or slurred over so important a ceremony would have been considered almost indecent. The three gentlemen took chairs, and began a desultory conversation, which was soon interrupted by the arrival of the daughter of the house, Miss Gertrude Vesey, a smiling little lady, who trotted out, key-basket in hand, and greeting Mr. Brooke informed him that she was “ right glad to see him,” and “it certainly was a mighty fine day for him to ride over:” two phrases whose Elizabethan quaintness suited her and her surroundings. She was so fair and plump and rosy that, though only three years younger than her brother, she looked a softened fifty, and was regarded by her father as a mere child. If in consequence of her poverty she belonged to the black-alpaca sisterhood, by virtue of her ladyhood she had contrived to take out of that dubious material all its unpleasant shininess and suggestion of vulgarity. Worn as Miss Gertrude wore it, with lace at the throat and wrists, — a miniature of an ancestress, a court beauty of Queen Anne’s reign, — and a watch from whose chain depended a cross made from the wood of General Washington’s coffin, it became to all intents and purposes a black silk, and could have held its own in the very finest company.

Yes, Miss Vesey wore alpaca and took boarders, who seemed to have taken her, so gentle and mild was she, and to have been the gainers by the transaction. For it had come to this. The scanty living afforded by the land had to be supplemented by something ; and if every helpless incapable in petticoats and difficulties runs to boarders as inevitably as a garden to weeds, it is no wonder that a woman whose recipe for pickled oysters had been copied in half the cookery-books of a State where all the housewifely arts are esteemed and practiced, as they used to be among English dames a couple of centuries back, should take an impregnable position, and, first inserting advertisements demanding and according the “ very highest testimonials,” await the result as calmly as Napoleon before Austerlitz. Among the family heirlooms was a treasure,— the only one on which no one had counted or been able to dissipate,— in the shape of a small book bound in leather, in which several generations of ladies had recorded their domestic experiences and experiments. Here, in faded, crabbed characters, with a liberal use of capitals, and not always a fanatical adherence to the rules of spelling, were recorded recipes of every conceivable kind. A tremendous compound of honey, hyssop, licorice root, anise-seed, pulverized elecampane, angelica root, pepper, and ginger, called “ Queen Elizabeth’s Cordial Electuary,” and said to have been “ Her Majesty’s favorite remedy when troubled with straitness,” which must have been pretty often, if we may judge from her pictures ; “ The Honorable Mr. Charles Hamilton’s Method of Making Grape Wines,” which “ the Duke de Mirepoix,” presumably a judge of such matters, “ preferred to any other ; ” “ Dr. Fuller’s Chemical Snuff for Drowsy Distempers ; ” an “ Incomparable Method of Salting Meat as Adopted by the late Empress of Russia,” “ more expensive than common brine,” as imperial brine has a right to be, “ but promising advantages that most people would be glad to purchase at a much higher price,” — these, with recipes for “ Bragget,” “ Ink Powder,” a “ Grand Ptisan or Diet Drink of Health and Longevity, by a Celebrated French Physician, who lived nearly one hundred and twenty years,” doubtless on his own mixture, and a highly genteel “ Remedy for Noisome Vermin,” which “ if applied with only the tip of a pin will cause the insect to be instantly deprived of existence,” jostled each other in this quaint record of the dark age in which a woman was supposed to “ superintend her family arrangements, investigate her accounts, instruct her servants, and keep within the bounds of her husband’s income.”

There was ample field for the expenditure of all Miss Vesey could earn ; for, in addition to other claims, she had a brother’s widow and her two daughters to take care of, beside a little boy, a distant cousin, who, being left orphaned and homeless, drifted, as a matter of right and of course, under the roof of a fourth cousin, who felt that she was only fulfilling a plain duty in engaging to support and educate him.

We will now go back to the company on the veranda, talking over several matters of local interest, with occasional interruptions from Mr. Vesey, senior, whose chair is set a little apart, so that he catches only a word here and there.

MR. BROOKE : “ I saw Egerton Wharton, yesterday, when I went into town; and it was a great source of gratification to me to meet him again, and recall the pleasant week we spent together at Baltimore in the winter of ’70. He has been living out in the West for thirty years, you know, but tells me that he has come home to remain, and has bought back the old place. He has been remarkably successful in his commercial ventures, I hear, and has achieved an independent fortune.”

MR. W. VESEY, flicking with thumb and middle finger one of his sister’s neatest darns on the knee of his trousers : “ I am glad to hear it. Now that his time is no longer monopolized by money-making, a mechanical routine of sordid cares, in which there is little or no expansion of the higher faculties, or room for more elevating pursuits, he will be at liberty to cultivate the feelings and pursue the objects that exalt our nature, rather than increase our fortune. He married a Stainsforth, did he not ? ”

MR. BROOKE : “ Yes. I was at his wedding, and it was a most interesting occasion. I still remember the alacrity with which I saluted the lovely bride, a most bewitching young enchantress ; a second-cousin of mine, once removed. Her mother was a Fosbrooke, and her grandmother a Noel.”

OLD GENTLEMAN, who has slipped down in his chair, and has been dozing, with his head on his breast: “Eh? What’s that ? ”

MR. W. VESEY: “We are saying that Egerton Wharton’s wife’s mother was a Fosbrooke, and the grandmother a Noel.”

OLD GENTLEMAN, sitting bolt upright: “Nothing of the sort, Wyndham, —nothing of the sort. Her mother was a Flower, and her grandmother was a gentlewoman of great worth and discretion, a daughter of Richard Jocelyn, of Helstone.”

MR. W. VESEY : “I think you are mistaken, sir. You are thinking of the other brother.”

OLD GENTLEMAN: “ Nothing of the sort, — noth-ing of-the-sort. How can I be mistaken ? I never was mistaken in a thing of the kind in my life, —never. His is father’s place in King and Queen marched with mine, and I knew him when he was in long clothes. Visiting in the West, is n’t he ? ”

MR. BROOKE : “ He has come home, but he is looking wretchedly ill, and tells me the doctors give him a lease of only two years on life ; just as he has gained all that he hoped for. Welll, ’ Sunt superis sua jura.’ ”

OLD GENTLEMAN, decisively: " He had better retire to his estate to die, and be buried among his own people.”

MISS VESEY, on hospitable thoughts intent: " Is he staying in the neighborhood ? ”

MR. BROOKE : " I am unable to say. He was with Heathcote yesterday.”

OLD GENTLEMAN: “That is a tide-water name. What is he doing up here ? ” (Glancing suspiciously from son to guest, from under his white, tufted eyebrows, as if the fact of Mr. Heathcote’s being out of his own county required satisfactory explanation, and was in itself damaging.)

MR. W. VESEY : " He has come to settle up his aunt’s property. She died without a will, and he is next of kin.”

OLD GENTLEMAN, mollified by the respectable nature of his errand : " Oh, indeed! Fine man, his father. He was the arbiter elegantiarum of the county, when we were young fellows. No such people about here. The gentleman ceases with the oyster, in Virginia.”

MR. W. VESEY, aside to his friend: " He is talking of the grandfather. Are you disposed to give me my revenge, now ? If so, we may as well go inside for our game, unless, indeed, you prefer to woo the fickle goddess on the porch.”

MR. BROOKE, rising: " Not at all; but may I trouble you for a glass of water, first ? ”

MISS VESEY : " Not water alone, Mr. Brooke. You must try my raspberry cordial.”

Interval of five minutes, after which a small African, with his wool carded out carefully and a snow-white apron over his every-day suit, appears in the doorway, a sulky frown on his face, the result of being forced to make a toilette de circonstance, and in his hand a silver tray, bearing glasses of cordial, in which bits of ice tinkle temptingly, flanked by a blue India plate, full of golden sponge-cake that clamors to be eaten.

“ Ah, here is our Mercury,” says Mr. Vesey ; and after a little more conversation and liberal refreshment of the inner man, both gentlemen rise, and take their way to a large, bare room on the right of the hall, with windows giving on the porch. Left alone, outside, the weary old man takes intermittent naps, or lets his eyes wander to the white monuments in the cemetery on the hillside, where the declining rays of the sun are shining sadly upon the lonely graves of many a gallant soul who wore the blue or gray ; and then to the mistveiled mountain peaks, on which their eyes must often have nested, too, with God knows what longings for the distant home and friends they were never to see again. At last sleep wins what remains of the day. Not content with sleeping, he snores, and presently wakes himself up, and cries out with feeble fierceness, " Who’s that?” It is the inquiry he usually makes under such circumstances, and never meets a response ; but this time, as soon as he gets done blinking and staring, in the general confusion of his senses, he sees a dapper, spruce-looking man coming up the steps and approaching him. The new-comer has not dropped from the clouds at all, but has driven up in a smart buggy, very like a tea-tray set on wheels, freshly painted, glittering with varnish, and presenting a striking contrast to the vehicle in which Mr. Brooke was wont to make his appearance, — a dingy, mud-splashed, ram-shackle affair, made up of blistered leather and black wood, the shafts being tied up in various places with bits of rope, and the harness three sizes too large for the small pony it festooned. With a good deal of difficulty old Mr. Vesey gets himself out of his chair, and bows to the stranger; then sinks back, and, leaning on his cane, peers suspiciously into the unfamiliar face.

OLD GENTLEMAN : “ Good evening to you, sir. Take a seat ” (waving him stiffly toward a chair).

Taking the seat indicated, he lolled back in it with breezy ease, crossed his legs aggressively, and, running his hand through his hair, began with breathless volubility to explain his errand, in short, staccato phrases, that irritated his listener very much as a fusillade from a peashooter might have done, though he caught only one in a dozen.

STRANGER : “ Been traveling through your country. Very poor country, I call it. Should n’t think it would yield twelve bushels of anything to the acre. Going to rack and ruin. Guess we ’ll have to buy you out and put you down in truck farms. Convenient to markets. Raised on a farm. Worked on it till I took to the road. Know all about it. Got a better thing. Always on the lively hop, but layin’ up the circulatin’ cornstant.” (In his satisfaction he here jerks up his coat-sleeves a little way, and rubs his hands together.) “ Got a cousin down here. Been sick, and had to stop to see him.” (Here he winked facetiously, and laid a finger on the side of his nose.) “Know him? Name’s Perkins, — Obadiah.”

OLD GENTLEMAN, shaking his head : “I have never met the relative you mention. There is no such name in the county.”

STRANGER: “ What say ? Been livin’ five miles from here twenty years ! Spick-spanking farm on the Woodville pike. No rags, bones, dirt, nor weeds there, you bet. Wife and ten children, mostly of the female gender.”

OLE GENTLEMAN: “ Now that I think of it, there has been a person of that name about here for a good while. I trust that you are enjoying your visit, sir.” (At this moment a pretty, darkeyed boy of about six runs out on the porch, and seeing the stranger shrinks behind Mr. Vesey’s chair.)

STRANGER : “ Nice little chap. Grandson ? ”

OLD GENTLEMAN: “ No, sir : a young relative, who has been the subject of a most afflicting dispensation of Providence, and has lost both his parents, whose places we are endeavoring as far as possible to fill.”

STRANGER : “ Fond of children. Got two little buckets of my own, out my way. Come here, young ’un.” (Child declines.)

OLD GENTLEMAN : “ Go and speak to the — ah ” — (hesitates, and wipes his face with an enormous red bandana, laboriously searched for and applied) “ the gentleman, my dear.” (Child goes.)

STRANGER: “That’s right. Be polite. It’s always worth ninety cents on the dollar. Now, tell me, who are you ?”

CHILD, as though he were announcing himself a Guelph or Ghibelline: “ I am a Vesey.”

STRANGER: “Oh, you are, are you?” (Laughing.) “ How old are you? ”

CHILD : “ Going on seven.”

STRANGER : “ Well, how do you like it as far as you’ve got ? ” (Silence.) “ Now tell me what you know. Can you read and write ? Can you say your catechism ? ”

CHILD : “ Which one ? ”

STRANGER: “ HOW ’S that? How many do you learn ? ”

CHILD: “I know two : cousin Gertrude’s and grandpa’s. But I’ve forgot my duty to my neighbor.”

STRANGER : “ That’s bad. Well, suppose you say the other. Sail in, now.”

CHILD : “I can’t say it, ’less grandpa asks the questions.”

OLD GENTLEMAN : “ Very well, my son. Come here, and I will hear you. Speak so you can be heard. What are you ? ”

CHILD: “A gentleman.”

OLD GENTLEMAN: “What is a gentleman, my son ? What does he do ? ”

CHILD, in a shrill treble, running all the words together: “ Fears God, loves his country, tells the truth, respects women, pities the unfortunate,helps the needy, and does his duty.” (Old gentleman explains to stranger, and both laugh heartily.)

OLD GENTLEMAN, concluding that stranger is not quite as objectionable as he at first thought: “ May I offer you a glass of wine ? ”

STRANGER : “ No, I’m ’bliged to you. Must be off. Smart-like chap, that. Gets that off like it was greased. Like to see the lady of the house.” (Child goes in search of Miss Vesey, who presently comes out, dropping a stiff courtesy on the door-sill to the stranger.)

STRANGER, not rising: “ How are yer, ma’am ? My name ’s Bates. I’m down here introducin’ the finest thing of the age. Sold two thousand of ’em since the 1st of April. Can’t get ’em made fast enough. Buckwheat cakes don’t go off no faster. Got a large wash, ain’t yer ? Done in the house ? Now I tell yer what yer want to do. Yer want to buy one of Baker’s patent, automatic-action, self-feeding, double-cylindered wringers. Have all your petticoats and stockings out on the fence by eight o’clock, ef yer was born deaf and dumb and blind ! ”

A faint color tinged Miss Vesey’s cheek at this “ bold and indelicate allusion to certain garments,” as she put it afterward, in talking over the merits of the new invention with her sister; but she passed it over at the time, though she stiffened perceptibly, and pushed her chair back a little further from the presumptuous speaker. The family linen weighed as heavily upon Miss Vesey as it ever did upon Falstaff, and when got up at home was about equivalent to a weekly case of small-pox ; so she listened not only with patience, but with interest, to Mr. Bates’s exposition of the incomparable advantages to be derived from the use of his wringer, and then went for a paper and pencil with which to take his address, in the event of her deciding to invest in the machine. Mr. Vesey, with one of the changes of humor to which he was subject, had grown more and more irritated during the conversation, and had interrupted it several times with stage asides, such as, “ Send the man away, Gertrude. We shall not sell any of the land, tell him.” Wholly mistaking Mr. Bates’s mission, he had an idea, born doubtless of much painful experience in the past, that some more of the Edgewood acres were about to be put into the melting-pot. When his daughter had gone, he leaned forward, and said with a puzzled air, “ What part of the country did you say you lived in, sir ? ”

“ Bad Axe, Michigan,” promptly and proudly replied Mr. Bates.

“ Good God! What a place to come from ! ” said the old man, a look of positive horror overspreading his face; and getting up, he tottered into the hall without another word, and shuffled slowly out of sight, every line in his figure expressive of the profoundest disgust.

It was not long after Miss Vesey had dismissed the florid Bates that some Washington people, staying in the neighborhood, came to call, and flocking up the steps were soon dotted about the porch in groups of two or three, enlivening the scene by their gay costumes and comments. The other ladies of the family were sent for, — a timid, sad-eyed widow and her two daughters. Conversation flourished apace, and old Mr. Vesey, coming back after a while with two books under his arm, exclaimed, “ Well, I declare ! ” at the sight of so many visitors, and was about to beat a retreat, when one of the gentlemen pulled up an arm-chair, and insisted on installing him in it. They entered into a friendly, if on Mr. Vesey’s part rambling and incoherent, chat, and the younger man was highly diverted to hear his companion talk of " Tom Jefferson ” and " Tom Paine,” " the Resolutions of ’98; quote from “Mr. Addison’s works” and Euripides ; enter into an ardent defense of the principles and practices of the Whig party ; and make a tremendous onslaught in Johnsonian periods upon foreigners in general, and the French in particular. It was, “ I apprehend that the greatest danger threatening the perpetuity of our institutions lies in the unrestricted powers of our Chief Executive, sir. What does Patrick Henry say? ’ The President of the United States will always come in at the head of a party. He will be supported in all his acts by a party. The day is coming when the patronage of the President will be tremendous, and from this power the country may sooner or later fall.’ ” Or, " Don’t talk to me of the French, sir. I have no prejudices, but look at the Reign of Terror! They are a dirty race ; they eat the Lord knows what kind of messes and kickshaws, and you can’t believe a single word they say, sir. I was educated in England, and the day I left Southampton to return to my native land I looked toward France, and then toward England; and I said to myself, ’ I thank my God that I sprang from this people, and not from that.’ ”

Meanwhile Miss Vesey had been taken possession of by a bright, pretty girl, of whom she was very fond, though the girl was as unlike as could be the ideal model young lady whom Miss Vesey had been trained to admire and imitate in her own youth. " So awfully glad to see you, dear Miss Gertrude,” the girl was saying. “Do sit right down here by me, and let me tell you what stacks of fun we’ve been having lately.”

“ ’ Awful ’ is a very suitable word to use when you have occasion to allude to the Day of Judgment, Amy ; but I hardly think it applicable to the pleasure we experience on meeting a friend,” objected Miss Vesey. “I wish you would try ” —

“ Oh, never mind, you dear old-fashioned thing! Don’t scold. Everything is awful nowadays that is n’t quite too perfectly jolly. I’ve been to a party at the Seaforths’, and I danced twentythree dances running. What do you think of that? Weren’t you awfully fond of waltzing, too, when you were a girl ? ” asked the girl. “ It’s just too delightful for anything.”

“ I never waltzed in my life, my dear,” said Miss Vesey, gently patting her young friend’s hand as she spoke. “I don’t approve of it, at all, you know. It seems to me a most indelicate proceeding, and I think that if you should read Salmagundi you would agree with me. I used to dance quadrilles, sometimes, but I never gave the gentleman more than the tips of my fingers, and I always wore gloves.”

“ Good gracious ! You don’t mean it! ” cried Miss Amy, amazed and not a little amused by such a code of propriety. " How glad I am that I didn’t live then ! There was a sweet little man, with a perfect love of a mustache, who danced like an angel, at the party, the other night, and how we did spin! I tore all the embroidered flounce off my dress, and my hair all came down, and I dare say I looked a fright; but that did n’t matter.”

MISS VESEY, severely, for her : ” My dear child, how can you talk of any gentleman in such a shocking way ? And alluding to his — his mustache, — it is positively bold. It is a fault of heedlessness, no doubt,” she went on, afraid of having given offense, " yet it cannot but give rise to scandal among the gossips. It is a great pity that you spoilt so expensive a dress, dancing in that violent way.”

“ Oh, that don’t matter. Popper will give me a dozen like it, if I want them,” said Amy.

“ But surely you can repair the injury,” urged Miss Vesey.

“ No, I can’t. I can’t darn a bit, and it would be an awful bother.”

Now Miss Vesey was amazed, in her turn. Her own needlework was exquisite. She had been pinned by her skirts to the chintz covering of a mahogany chair, at her grandmother’s side, for two hours daily, from the age of three until such a measure was no longer necessary ; and a child of six, at that period in Virginia, who could not make a shirt for her father neatly and completely was regarded as either hopelessly stupid, or a disgrace to her family. She could only murmur, “ Dear me, dear me! I never knew any one so sadly neglected. You must not be angry with me for saying so, my dear.”

“ Why, of course not. I don’t mind about not sewing. Popper’s got lots of money, just pots of it, and he don’t care how much I spend. My shoe-bill at school last winter was sixty dollars for three months, and my candy-bill was seventy-five, and Popper never said a word.”

“ I think I never heard of such extravagance ! ” exclaimed Miss Vesey. “ It is really wicked to throw away money in that reckless fashion. What would you do if reverses came, my dear ? ”

“ Oh, come and be housemaid at Edgewood, you dear thing!” replied the warm-hearted girl, with a kiss and pressure of Miss Vesey’s hand. “ There, they are going ! I must say good-by.” And say good-by she did; and Miss Vesey, having waited to get a last nod and bright smile from her through the carriage window, pulled out her knitting, and clicked away briskly with her needles in the twilight. Through the open window close by came the rattle, rattle, rattle, and clop, clop, of the diceboxes, with fragments of the conversation of the two gentlemen inside, “ Ha ! Had you there, Everard.” “ I’ve crossed the Rubicon now.” “ Look out for your laurels! ” “ Ten games ahead ! Really, your hand seems to have lost its cunning. You block your game by heaping up men in the corners, I think.” The voices grew higher and higher, expressing exultation on the one hand, and much irritation on the other. Presently Mr. Vesey called out, “Sixes!” “ That takes all your men in,” exclaimed his opponent, in a disgusted tone. “ Sixes again, by the beard of the Prophet! ” cried Mr. Vesey, and a clatter of pieces taken off and dumped down in the vacant board followed. “ Sixes again! ” he next shouted, in delighted amazement. “ AND AGAIN ! ” he exclaimed, in genuine astonishment. “ Did you ever hear of such luck?”

This was more than poor Mr. Brooke could bear, for he was of an impulsive temperament, and had been losing steadily all the afternoon. “ By Heaven, it is n’t fair! It is n’t fair ! ” he roared, and, getting up, seized board, dice, and men, and threw them violently out of the window upon the lawn.

A dead silence followed this outburst, and then Miss Vesey, all of whose faculties had come out to hear, overheard her brother say, in his lowest, quietest, and most distinct tones, as he pushed back his chair, “ You have called my honor in question, Mr. Brooke, and I am under my own roof. Allow me to wish you good-evening.” With this he walked up-stairs, and a moment later Mr. Brooke bolted out on the porch, hastily untied his horse, scrambled into the buggy, and belaboring an astonished pony with the butt end of his cane was soon out of the Edge wood grounds.

The estrangement that followed between the two friends was one of the most painful episodes either had ever known. A most melancholy hiatus in their relations set in. They met continually, but only to stalk past each other fiercely, with averted looks, and then to go home to brood over their respective injuries.

“ To think that Everard Brooke, whom I have known, man and boy, for fifty years, should accuse me of cheating! Loading the dice ! A Vesey loading dice ! ” groaned Mr. Vesey to his sister, throwing himself about in his comfortable arm-chair as though it contained nests of scorpions, instead of well-stuffed cushions.

“ Wyndham Vesey is too hard on me,” Mr. Brooke would say. “ I met him at the post-office this morning, and he could not have treated me with more contempt if I had been a tramp! He must know that I said what I did in an impulse of ungovernable temper; but I am not going to tell him so while he continues to assume that confounded air of superiority.”

This state of affairs continued until Mr. Brooke, implacable, as people in the wrong generally are, having raged and abused and suffered his fill, came suddenly, one morning, in looking over an old trunk, upon a handsome silvermounted whip, the gift of his friend. Forthwith habit, affection, regret, enforced by a conscience silenced, not convinced, all made a united, and this time successful, assault upon the weakened citadel, and sitting down he wrote as follows : —

THE HONORABLE WYNDHAM VESEY :

SIR, — Feeling as I do that I have almost forfeited the right to address you at all, it is with considerable trepidation that I approach the subject of our late misunderstanding. I cannot too deeply deplore that in a moment of extreme irritation I allowed myself to be betrayed into a most ungentlemanly and indeed unpardonable display of temper and ill-breeding; but at the same time, I must be allowed to utterly disclaim the construction you unhappily placed upon my hasty utterances, reflecting severely upon you as a gentleman and a man of honor, to offer you an unconditional apology for the same, express my profound regret at what has happened, and assure you of the high esteem in which I have ever held you.

With assurances of distinguished consideration, I have the honor to remain very faithfully yours,

EVERARD BROOKE.

If the grave, orderly, dignified Mr. Brooke knew how to lose his temper with a good-will on rare occasions, he also knew how to atone for his indiscretion. He got in reply an extremely frank and cordial acceptance of his amende honorable, and, meeting Mr. Vesey two days later, looked so dreadfully embarrassed, held out his hand with such an uncertain air, and murmured in such an agitated tone, “ You will shake hands with me, won’t you, Wyndham?” that Mr. Vesey nearly wrung it off, and they were soon going through the usual stilted inquiries for the ladies at Shirley and Edgewood, with a barely perceptible additional tinge of formality and deference. The friendship that had withstood the shocks of a life-time, to be imperiled, strange to say, by four throws of a dice-box, flowed on ever after in a current strong as it was deep, undisturbed by the faintest breath of disagreement; and every day in the week, at the usual hour, the two men may still be seen, deeply engaged in the mysteries and intricacies of their favorite pastime.

F. O. Baylor.