Chapter 8

While she was still hoping and praying and despairing, no conclusion reached, no aiding hand outstretched for her deliverance, the day advanced toward its end; the sun sank lower and still lower upon the ridge of those long, darkly-wooded hills to the westward, shed its last red rays upon the ocean, reflected its dying brilliancy upon the fleecy clouds above, and soon left nothing but a fading twilight to show men their way about the world. To a man seeking unknown objects in a hitherto unexplored vicinity this condition of affairs is unpropitious; but Dudley, having tied his hired steed to a neighboring fence, concluded nevertheless not to be daunted, and proceeded on foot in search of the "new-fangled, sorter yaller-and-red, p'inted-roofed house," where the village postmaster had told him the lady whom he sought resided. It was not difficult to find: it was the only thing for miles around that laid any claims to "new-fangledness," and he recognized it at a glance. From behind the hedge that bordered the place he scrutinized each window. No smiling face appeared to welcome him. He scanned the lawn, the shrubbery, the dark shade beneath the trees: no girlish figure could be seen to answer to the one he carried in his mind.

"Perhaps my letter hasn't reached her," was his disappointed soliloquy. Then followed a few moments of silent thought. Suddenly he pulled himself together, put on a bold front, stalked manfully up to the porch, and rang the bell determinedly. When a man in brass buttons appeared to answer his summons, Dudley felt decidedly more reassured, and his previous fears of being greeted with a countryman's heavy boot were agreeably dispelled.

"Is Miss Jennings in?" he asked, feeling for his card-case.

James stared. "Beg pardon, sir?"

"Miss Jennings,--Miss Jane Jennings," he repeated, with emphasis.

James surveyed the visitor from his jaunty straw hat to his neat patent-leathers, cast a queer look at the crocodile card-case, replied, "Humph! I'll see," and shut the door in his face.

"Infernal impudence, by Jove!" exclaimed Dudley, in wrath. "Does the dolt take me for a tramp?" There was nothing for it, however, but to wait where he was, which he did with bad grace enough until he heard a hand upon the inner knob and saw the door slowly open, to disclose the generous proportions of Mabel's maid.

"The old woman, by the gods!" he whispered, in dismay.

"I called--" he began.

"Yes, sir," replied Jane, in a flutter of excitement.

"I called--er--I have the pleasure of addressing Mrs. Jennings, I presume?"

"_Miss_ Jennings,--Jane Jennings," she corrected, and blushing at the title.

Dudley stared open-mouthed. "_Miss_ Jennings! Jane Jennings!" he repeated, in astonishment. Then a terrible possibility dawned upon him. A cold perspiration broke out all over him. Oh, god of love, was this his precious Jennie? Had he made an irrevocable ass of himself over this lump of ancient human flesh? A hue of brilliant scarlet suffused his countenance. Oh, what an imbecile, a simple, drivelling idiot, he had been!

"Was it me that you wished to see, sir?" she asked, wondering at his strange manner.

"No!" he answered fiercely. "I think there must be some mistake," he added more calmly, struggling to repress his feelings. "Very sorry to have--er--Good-day." He turned suddenly, and, without another glance at his long-lost Jennie, quickly gained the road and the welcome cover of the hedge.

His uppermost feeling was undoubtedly that of anger mixed with mortification, and he swore with sublime eloquence at his own folly as soon as he was out of ear-shot of the house; but the ludicrous side of his situation could not but strike him before he had gone many steps, and he laughed grimly in spite of himself while repeating the undeniable assertion that he had been a lamentable fool.

As he swung himself into his saddle prepared to shake the dust of Stillton that very night from his feet, a voice came to him through the semi-obscurity:

"Hold on, there! Hold on, I say!"

He gave his nag a good kick in the flank and urged him to the top of his speed.

"Hold on there! Dudley! Hold on!"

He was recognized--caught! That cursed photograph of his! "Go on, you brute, go on!" he cried to his sorry beast. There was not much speed in him, however, and a minute later footsteps were quickly overtaking him.

"I say, Dudley! Don't you know me?" panted his pursuer.

He turned for an instant in his saddle. Why! Could he believe his eyes? Surely it was Manton! He reined in.

"Why, Manton, old boy, what--"

"Dudley, what on earth brings you here?" gasped Manton.

"That's just what I've been trying to find out, Manton. Take my oath I don't know."

"Humph!" ejaculated Manton, fixing his eyes curiously upon his friend.

"I don't," reiterated Dudley.

"No girl in the case?" suggested Manton significantly.

"Girl!" He laughed uneasily. Could Manton be in the joke? "No," he answered, "I can safely say that there is not," the figure of the old nurse clearly in his mind.

"Come, now, Dudley," said Manton; "perhaps I know more about your affairs than you think I do. She was frightfully cut up this morning, and I think your letter did it."

"Cut up, was she? Ha! ha! Cut up! She appeared to be in one pretty substantial piece just now, notwithstanding."

"Look here, Dudley; get off that horse and come over to the farm for supper. There's something wrong. I want to have a talk with you. Now, there has been some misunderstanding, hasn't there?"

"Well, I confess I was rather taken in."

"Taken in! Nonsense! Do you imagine she would take you in?"

"It struck me that she might, boots and all," replied Dudley, with a sad grin.

"Do talk sense, Dudley. It's a pity that this should have occurred."

"A d--d shame, I call it."

"I would swear that she loves you, Dud."

"Really, I suppose I ought to feel flattered; but, somehow, Manton, I can't get up much enthusiasm over _her_. She's not exactly my style."

"You're very fastidious, then. Here, come this way through the wood: it's a short cut. I confess my experience has been very much more limited than yours, but _I_ never saw a girl more--"

"A what?" asked Dudley, with a sneer.

"A young lady, then,--more charming, more lovely in every respect, than Miss Moreley."

"Miss who? Moreley? (I believe he has got one of those wandering fits, poor fellow!) Well, Manton, old boy, I won't dispute that for a moment, because--"

"Yet you say that she is not 'your style.'"

"Oh, I must get him home immediately," sighed Dudley inwardly, commiserating his friend.

"She talks of you incessantly, Dud, and only seems happy when I am answering her thousand and one questions about you."

(A young lady hidden among the rocks and pines blushes crimson as this speech is wafted to her on the still evening air, and stamps her little foot in vexatious indignation.)

"Her manner to-day," continued Manton, "showed plainly that your letter this morning hurt her exceedingly."

"Miss Moreley! Letter this morning! _My_ letter! Come, now. By Jove! Stop a moment. I believe-- Tell me, did you ever chance to see her handwriting?"

"Yes: I've mailed several of her letters to you."

"You don't say so! Is that her writing?"

"Yes."

Dudley muttered something incoherent about "little wretch!" "Jane Jennings!" and, pointing excitedly to the scene of his recent discomfiture, asked, "Lives there, doesn't she?"

Manton, too astonished at his friend's remarkable conduct to speak, nodded assent, and Dudley hastened away toward the house, shouting back, "I'll see you later, old fellow!"

"Oh, don't! don't! don't!" came a shrill voice from among the rocks.

Both turned. "Why, here she is now!" cried Manton.

There was an awkward pause. The blush upon her face detracted nothing from her beauty. Dudley felt drawn toward her as a needle is drawn by the North Star. He walked quickly toward her, hesitated as she drew back, stopped as she cast her eyes upon the ground, and presently said, "Life would be a very sad thing, would it not, if we had no pleasant memories of the past? I believe the thoughts of those happy days of our childhood are the sweetest I have ever had. It brings them back to me very vividly to find you now after so many years. Won't you even shake hands with your old playmate?"

She put out her hand shyly and reluctantly, and he took it in both of his.

"I'll walk on, Dud, and put this horse of yours in the barn," said Manton. "I'll come back presently." And he left them, feeling that perhaps the reconciliation which he was looking forward to between them would be more complete if they were left alone.

"Are you angry with me for coming?" asked Dudley softly, when he had gone.

"You should not have done it," she answered.

"Were we never to meet?"

"Never."

"Then I am glad I took matters into my own hands," said he, laughing.

"But you must go to-night--now."

"Impossible."

The subject gave rise to considerable argument, at the end of which, however, Dudley remained as determined as before, and, as a matter of fact, he did stay, accepting Farmer Manton's hospitable invitation to make his house his home. He would stay a week, he said; he had no immediate pressing engagements, and his delight at being with his old friend Manton once more was too great to admit of his leaving immediately upon finding him.

The week proved to be a delightful one. Farmer Manton's buxom daughters got up one of their celebrated "flare-ups" in his honor, and all the female population of Stillton was set by its ears. Mabel was not present, of course,--fortunately, too, perhaps, for her state of heart and mind was strangely and unnaturably irritable at that time, and his promiscuous attentions to the various country belles might have provoked a feeling of which she would afterward have been very much ashamed.

The week was over, yet he lingered. The sea-breezes, he declared, were just the sort of tonic he needed, and the quiet country-life the very thing he had been longing for for years.

One day, after an introduction by Farmer Manton to Mr. Moreley, he enlarged so eloquently upon the benefits of such an atmosphere, and spoke so feelingly about the ailments to which the latter considered himself a martyr, that the old gentleman's heart actually warmed toward him, and he violated all the laws of his monotonous existence and one of Dr. Nevercure's most specific instructions by inviting him to dinner.

"How did you do it?" asked Mabel, with an incredulous smile, when he told her down on the beach that afternoon of his unexpected success with the much-feared parent.

"Oh, it's my fatal fascination, I suppose," he answered exasperatingly.

The weeks that followed were passed much as all of us have passed some happy weeks of our own lives, and the rest of their story is but the old one once more repeated.

Dudley persistently maintains to this day that there is much more in a name than is generally conceded, but his young wife ridicules such nonsense, saying that it was nothing but a random shot that chanced to hit the mark. A significant fact is that the boy has been named plain John, after their never-to-be-forgotten friend John Manton.

C. W. WILMERDING.

THE PEABODY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY.

In respect to her facility and opportunities for advancing the cause of scientific knowledge, Harvard University certainly stands pre-eminent. She has a splendid astronomical observatory, and laboratories for chemistry and physics unexcelled elsewhere. Her botanical garden is the only one for instruction of any consequence in the Union, and its director, Asa Gray, is the chief of American botanists. In the Museum of Comparative Zoology, founded by Louis Agassiz and sustained by his son, Alexander Agassiz, Cambridge possesses the most productive, and in some respects the completest, museum of animal life in the United States, while it offers to the laboratory student of natural history advantages which he can find equalled nowhere else in the whole world. Last, and most modern, it has a museum of anthropology which in point of material is rivalled only by the National Museum at Washington, and in point of instructiveness is probably in advance of anything yet attained in the United States, despite its youth and small resources. This school and storehouse is the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, whose merits deserve a wider recognition than they have yet received.

When, in 1866, George Peabody, of philanthropic fame, was distributing his bequests among the educational institutions of the Eastern States, he was desirous of giving to Harvard a certain sum of money, but was puzzled as to its proper application. It was suggested to him to endow a department of archaeological research, and his proposition to that effect was considered by several friends of the university. The institution had peculiar needs at that time. Its finances generally were weak. The library and the zoological museum especially needed money, and the idea of a special department of prehistoric science was entirely new. It was decided, however, not to attempt to influence Mr. Peabody away from his own plan. President Walker saw that European minds were eagerly turning toward studies of primitive man, that the interest in the subject would grow from year to year, and that, as the first museum in the country devoted to this branch, it would have the best chance for securing collections rapidly going to destruction or distributed through private cabinets. More than all, the fittest man to take charge of it was at hand, in the person of Professor Jeffries Wyman. On the 3d of November, 1866, therefore, the arrangements were completed, and Mr. Peabody delivered to a board of trustees one hundred and fifty thousand dollars as an endowment. On the first of the following month Dr. Wyman began his curatorship.

As yet, of course, there was no museum. As a nucleus, Professor Wyman contributed some Indian implements and crania, the nooks and corners of the college were ransacked for stray skulls, stone axes and arrow-heads, pottery that had been ploughed up in the suburbs, and relics of colonial days, all of which, when brought together, served to fill a few empty cases in a room of Boylston Hall. Soon afterward, printed circulars were issued, and gifts began to flow in from the neighborhood, illustrating the life of the native races at and just before the time of the Pilgrims' landing. Several societies in Boston made permanent deposits of ethnological accumulations in the infant establishment; Mr. E. G. Squier, the Peruvian explorer, sent a Peruvian mummy of great value, with seventy-five crania, and promised larger gifts; the Smithsonian Institution gave a lot of duplicates, many of which were gathered by the great Wilkes Exploring Expedition; the Honorable Caleb Cushing forwarded antiquities gathered by his command during the Mexican war; and several famous collections were bought in Europe, illustrating the stone and bronze ages. Thus public interest was stimulated, and even at the end of the first year a very presentable sketch of a picture of the aboriginal people of the world was to be seen in that small room in Boylston Hall. It was accessible to any interested visitors, and began to receive attention from the scientific world, particularly after the first annual report appeared in January, 1868, containing an original essay by the curator and a full statement of the growing importance of the museum.

From this beginning the work went steadily on. Contributions from private and public sources came without stint. The fund of the museum available for explorations and the purchase of collections was judiciously expended year by year, and each annual report contained news of great interest to _savants_. The amount of material gathered speedily outgrew its original quarters, and a new story was added to Boylston Hall for the reception of the museum. At the end of seven years the catalogue showed over eight thousand entries, one entry in many cases covering a series of objects. Then a great calamity happened: Jeffries Wyman died.

Wyman had been the soul of the whole enterprise. At the founding of the museum he gave up those studies in anatomy and natural history which had made him famous and furnished him so sure a foundation as an anthropologist, in order to devote himself entirely to the new enterprise. His death occurred in September, 1874, closely following that of his great associate in Cambridge, Louis Agassiz.

Dr. Wyman had found an eager companion in his studies and excursions, during several years preceding his death, in Frederick W. Putnam, who was almost the only man in the neighborhood of Boston having either interest or capability (not to speak of opportunity) for such pursuits. A Salem lad, he was one of that group of students whom the elder Agassiz gathered round him when he began teaching at Harvard,--a group comprising Alpheus Hyatt, A. E. Verrill, J. A. Allen, Edward S. Morse, N. S. Shaler, A. S. Packard, Jr., and others now of worldwide reputation. Putnam was an all-round zoologist, but his specialty was fishes. Accident, nearly thirty years ago, turned his attention to the shell-heaps and the primitive implements of his home-neighborhood. The only man to whom he could go for guidance in studying these was Dr. Jeffries Wyman, at that time his instructor in comparative anatomy. Thus the two men were drawn more and more together, and when Wyman organized the new museum Putnam found much time for helping him, although at that time he was in charge of the Salem Museum, an editor of "The American Naturalist," a publisher, and the permanent secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a position which he still retains. It happened, consequently, that upon Dr. Wyman's decease Mr. Putnam was the only man suitable and available to become his successor, and he was quickly appointed to fill the vacancy.

Sixty thousand dollars of the original fund had been set aside by Peabody as a building-fund, but he decreed that this sum should be allowed to grow until it amounted to at least a hundred thousand dollars. This limit was attained in ten years, and in 1876 a building was begun for the accommodation of the museum. The college gave the ground,--a lot on Divinity Avenue, nearly opposite the old Divinity School, and close to the great structure occupied by the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Surrounded by green lawns and avenues of old trees, it is the pleasantest spot in all that charming city. The building was completed and entered in 1878. It is of brick, four stories in height, thoroughly fire-proof, simple in design, and tasteful in ornamentation. The present structure is only a fifth of what the whole building is designed ultimately to be. Two rooms yet remain to be opened to the public, but their fitting will not long be delayed. Its spacious doors open on Divinity Avenue, and there let us enter and glance at its treasures.

The entrance-hall is a square well in the centre of the building, accommodating the broad stairways and galleries, and affording room for many large objects, such as carved figures of stone and the models of the ruined houses and present pueblos of the village Indians of the Southwest. The walls are of finished brick.

On the left a large room is devoted to the office, to the reception of new specimens, and to the library, which is intended to include only works pertaining to this special study. On the right opens the room where naturally and properly begins our survey of the museum. Like the other apartments, it occupies the whole of one side of the building, and is about thirty-five by forty feet in dimensions. Its ceiling is twenty-two feet in height, but a broad gallery runs around all four sides, which adds almost as much exhibition-space as would a second story, without spoiling the open and well-lighted effect of a lofty room. Glass cases cover the walls above and below; upon the floor stand combined upright and table cases, resting upon long cabinets of interchangeable drawers, and the gallery-rail supports a line of narrow, flat cases. In each room is a fireplace, while all are well heated in winter and comfortably ventilated in summer, so that they are attractive to visitors.

This first room holds what is regarded by the curator as the most important series of objects ever brought together illustrative of that ancient people who built the mounds and the singular stone graves of the southern and central portions of the United States. The contents of each mound and grave are arranged by themselves, so that as one passes from case to case a picture of the human life of the past is presented as nearly perfect as can be constructed out of that part of the handiwork of the people which has escaped decay. Here can be seen and studied the many singular results of the potter's art, simple and complex in form and varied in style of ornament; carvings in stone, shell, and bone; implements and ornaments of stone, shell, bone, mica, clay, copper, and other substances; fragments of cloth and twine twisted from vegetable fibres, which have been preserved through charring. One case in this room is devoted to a collection of objects from caves in Kentucky and Tennessee, and contains many interesting fabrics, including a large piece of cloth woven from bark-fibre, shoes formed by braiding leaves of the cat-tail rush, and many other things kept for us in the dry air of the caves through uncounted centuries. In the gallery are grouped several collections from Mexico and Central America, which are especially rich in pottery.

In the room, on the second floor, over this one are stored the most ancient--most primitive--evidences of man's presence yet discovered in the Atlantic States,--evidences in the shape not only of chipped stones of his fashioning, but relics of his very frame, which incontestably extend the period of human occupation along our Atlantic coast back at least to the glacial era. I refer to the palaeolithic remains exhumed by Dr. C. C. Abbott from the terraces of river-drift in the valley of the Delaware at Trenton, New Jersey. These deposits of pebbles and sand owe their origin to the continental glacier, whose front reached in solid mass almost to that locality; through them was worn the bed of the present river, and whatever is contained in their undisturbed mass can belong to no more recent date than the later days of the glacial period.

In these gravels near his home, when cut through by railway-building and the wearing of the river-bank, Dr. Abbott found his palaeoliths under such circumstances as left no doubt that they were quite as old as the formation of the bed itself. If you are inexperienced, and take in your hand one of these specimens by itself, it may seem to you simply a small, broken boulder or a fragment from some ledge; but the trained eye sees (what observation and experiment confirm) that fractures like those on these specimens are not such as are made by accident; and when a hundred specimens are displayed before you, all doubt as to their origin vanishes at a glance.