CHAPTER II.

Now, this house-hunting was a piece of business to be got through as soon as possible. Nevertheless, three hours elapsed before we returned to the hotel. We found the father and Margaret leaning their heads out of a corridor window, and when we asked them what they were about, she replied, "We have been wishing that the grand old mansion in yonder village were only a _pension_, where we could obtain rooms. But have you met with any success?"

"A _pension_! That sounds like Meran or Switzerland, instead of this primitive Pusterthal. Only let us have tea, and we will tell you what we have done."

"Very good! We will be patient; but you do not look dissatisfied with your afternoon," said my father.

Nor in truth were we. Sipping our mild tea, we related our adventures. The little girl Lina had taken us into the town, which consisted of one narrow street in the shape of a half-moon, where houses of all ages and ranks squeezed against each other and peeped into each other's windows with the greatest familiarity. In one of the largest of these Frau Sieger lived. Her husband was the royal imperial tobacco agent, and the house was crammed full of chests of the noxious and obnoxious weed, the passages and landing being pervaded with a sweet, sickly smell of decomposing tobacco. In the parlor, however, where Frau Sieger sat drinking coffee with her lady friends, the aromatic odor of the beverage acted as a disinfectant. The hostess drew us aside, listened complacently to our message, and then graciously volunteered to let us rooms under her very roof.

We should have chosen chemical works in preference! There was, then, nothing to be done but to take leave with thanks. Accompanied by the little Lina, we passed under the town-gate, and whilst sorely perplexed perceived a pleasant village, at the distance of about a mile, lying on the hillside in a wealth of orchards and great barns. The way thither led across fields of waving green corn, the point where the path diverged from the high-road being marked by a quaint mediaeval shrine, one of the many shrines which, sown broadcast over the Tyrol, are intended to act as heavenly milestones to earth-weary pilgrims.

That was the village of Adelsheim, Lina said, where their own country-house was situated, and Freieck, belonging to Frau Sieger; and there, at the farther extremity of the village, was Schönburg, where old Baron Flinkenhorn lived. The biggest house of all on the hill was the Hof, and that below, with the gables and turrets, the carpenter's.

The bare possibility of finding a resting-place in that little Arcadia made us determine to go thither. We would try the inn, and then the carpenter's.

The inn proved a little beer-shop, perfectly impracticable. A woman with a bright scarlet kerchief bound round her head, who was washing outside the carpenter's, told us in Italian that she and her husband, an overseer on the new railway, occupied with their family every vacant room, which was further confirmed by the carpenter popping his head out of an upper window, and in answer to Lina's question giving utterance to an emphatic "_Na, na, I hab koan_" ("No, no, I have none").

Lina was so sure that the Hofbauer would not let rooms, for he was a wealthy man and owned land for miles around, that she stayed at a respectful distance whilst we approached nearer to at least admire the grand old mansion, even if it were closed against us as a residence. The village was full of marvelous old houses rich in frescoes, oriel windows, gables and turrets, but this dwelling, standing in a dignified situation on an eminence, was a prince amongst its compeers. The architecture, which was Renaissance, might belong to a bad style, but the long slopes of roof, the jutting balconies, the rich iron-work on the oblong façade, the painted sun-dial and the coats-of-arms now fading away into oblivion, the grotesque gargoyle which in the form of a dragon's head frowned upon the world,--each detail, that had once been carefully studied, helped to form a complete whole which it was a pleasure to look upon. The grand entrance, no longer used, was guarded by a group of magnificent trees, the kings of the region. Traces of an old pleasure-garden and the dried-up basin of a fountain were visible within.

At this point in the narrative Margaret exclaimed, "None other than my would-be _pension_! I have known it from the first, so pray do not keep me on tenterhooks. Were you or were you not successful? Yet all hope has died within me already, for such a treasure-trove we never could get."

"Well, listen," said the mother. "As we were admiring the house, a handsome, fair-haired young man, one's perfect ideal of a peasant, came along the road, bowed to us, and when we expressed our interest in the mansion said that he was the son of the house, and that we might see the rooms if we liked. Grand old rooms they are, with a great lack of furniture, but nevertheless perfectly charming. The young man, who is named Anton, thought his father would probably have no objection to let us rooms. At all events, we could all go over and see the Hofbauer at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, when he would be in: he was in his fields this afternoon. The whole, in fact, was a pastoral poem."

The next day we were as punctual as clock-work. A pleasant, comely young peasant woman, who looked as if she had lived on fresh air all her life, met us in the great stone entrance-hall. She told us that her father would soon be at liberty, and that, with our permission, she would again show us the rooms if we wished to see them. This promised well. Fetching a huge bunch of handsome iron-wrought keys, she conducted us into the great hall of the first floor, hung with large unframed pictures of the Holy Sacrament. Then unlocking a handsome door which had once been green and gold, we entered the vast reception-room, almost bereft of furniture, but possessing a pine floor of milky whiteness and a remarkably fine stove of faience eight feet high. My father measured the length of the apartment: it was forty feet, and could have seated a hundred guests. The casements were filled with old lozenge-shaped glass set in lead, and the fine old iron trellis-work on the outside of the windows gave a wonderfully mediaeval look to the apartment. There was, moreover, a magnificent bay window, which formed a little room of itself, besides a second room much less, which, with carved wood wainscot and ceiling, could have served as an oratory.

Margaret's delight was unbounded. The father smiled quietly, and we the pioneers could scarcely refrain our pride and pleasure. But there was more to be seen. Crossing the great hall once more, we entered a large and beautiful room overlooking the main entrance. This had other furniture besides its handsome porcelain stove and inlaid floor of dark wood. There was not only a comfortable modern bed, but chairs, sofa and table; a chest of drawers too, which was covered with innumerable religious knickknacks--little sacred pictures in glass frames, miniature saints, and artificial flowers in small china pots. Having dipped her finger in a holy-water shell hanging on the wall, our guide drew back a long chintz curtain which covered the end of the room, and showed us a large and handsome chapel below. A fald-stool ran along the front of the window which, with an additional lattice of gilt and carved wood, separated the room from the church. This had evidently been in old times the apartment of the lord and his lady, and here they had knelt and listened to the holy office without mingling with their dependants below. This room, if we had the good fortune to obtain lodgings in the mansion, was to belong to the poetess, for it was full of inspiration and old-world memories.

Then out again into the hall and up another flight of stone stairs, through a second great lobby into a corridor, which communicated on either side with two charming rooms, spotlessly clean and perfectly empty, if I except the stoves; but still, if we chose, these two rooms could be Margaret's and mine, and the corridor as well, with a beautiful balcony which commanded an enchanting view of the rich Pusterthal up and down, right and left, with a row of jagged, contorted dolomite mountains thrown into the bargain. All this was to be ours if only the Hofbauer would have us. So down we went, casting longing looks around us--down into the entrance-hall, where a crowd of poor people were streaming out of the _stube_, the parlor of the family, such as in the midland counties of England would be called the house-place, and so into the grassy court in front, where we awaited with anxious hearts the fiat of the Hofbauer.

We were not long kept waiting. In another minute the master of the house stood before us, a tall, thin, elderly man, dressed in the full costume of the district--an embroidered cloth jacket, black leather breeches, which displayed a broad band of naked knee, green ribbed stockings, shoes and buckles, with a silver cord and tassel on his broad beaver hat. Saluting us with the grace and ease of a courtier, he apologized for keeping us waiting, but he had been entertaining the poor of the parish at dinner, according to an old custom of his. These simple Tyrolese dined, then, at ten o'clock in the morning!

An elderly woman, also tall and spare, now appeared in a bright blue linen apron, that half hid her thickly-plaited black woolen petticoat, which was short enough to give full effect to scarlet knit stockings and low, boat-shaped shoes. She carried in her hand a plate of large hot fat cakes, which she pressed upon us; then pitied the smallness of our appetites, and urged two apiece at least. Two mouthfuls, however, were sufficient, as the cakes were not only extremely greasy, but filled with white curds, aniseed and chives. Having received in good part this intended hospitality, we were rejoiced to hear the Hofbauer express his perfect willingness that we should take up our abode at the mansion. We need merely pay him a trifle, but we must furnish ourselves the extra bedsteads. Moidel, his daughter, could cook for us, for she understood making dishes for bettermost people, having been sent by him to Brixen for a year to learn cooking; for what was a moidel (maiden) good for that could not cook? He should not make any charge for her services. Also, if we saw any bits of furniture about the house that suited us we might take them; and lastly, we could stay until Jacobi, the 25th of July, but on that day the best bedroom must be given up, as it belonged to his son, the student, who would return from Innsbruck about that day. All this was charming. We promised to procure beds and bedding in Bruneck, and arranged to take possession of our new quarters on the following morning.

I will not enter into the rashness of our promise respecting the bedsteads, merely hinting at the difficulties and complications which beset us. Some of these can be imagined when it is known that, firstly, there proved not to be an upholsterer, nor even a seller of old furniture, at Bruneck; and that, secondly, the officers and soldiers of the garrison now quartered there occupied by night every available spare bed in the township. So it seemed until in our embarrassment the landlady of the Post arose from her bed to help us to procure some. The interview ended again with the prudent advice, "Go to Frau Sieger." We went, and that incomparable lady, who bore us no malice for refusing her rooms, generously provided for a small sum three bedsteads and an amazing, and what appeared to us superfluous, amount of bolsters, pillows, feather beds, winter counterpanes; but she would hear no nay, declaring, "It often turned very chilly in the Pusterthal, and at such times a warm bed was a godsend."

We now began to dream of beds of roses, but we were mistaken: we were crying before we were out of the wood. We arrived at the Hof the following afternoon with our bag and baggage, and found Moidel, otherwise Maria, busily preparing the newly-erected bed in the state-room. She received us cordially, until my mother, laying her shawl on the bedstead belonging to the house, remarked that she wished that for herself.

Maria seemed suddenly thunderstruck. She turned a deep red, and with a gesture of astonishment let drop a pillow, exclaiming, "Heavens alive! that is the Herr Student's bed!"

She fled from the chamber, bringing back her aunt to the rescue. The latter looked stern and aggrieved. "Never, never! no one must lay his head on that pillow but the student," she cried. Had my mother asked to repose on the altar of the chapel they could not have been more dumbfoundered.

As Frau Sieger's beds were truly spare, and as she could merely provide three, this second complication ended in the family giving up a bed of their own--one which was adorned at the head and foot with a cross, a bleeding heart and sacred monogram--one, in fact, which bore more marks of sanctity about it than the sacred bed of the student. It was obvious that this mysterious individual was consecrated to the Church, and that even before his ordination all that he touched was holy.

The storm had again given place to sunshine, and the two quiet women passed gently to and fro with coarse but sweet-scented linen, which they fetched from an old chest adorned with red tulips, a crown of thorns and the legend "K. M., 1820," on a bright blue ground. Good old Kaetana! That chest had once been crammed full to overflowing with linen which, like other young women, she had spun for her own dowry, but when the Hofbauerin died Kathi became the housekeeper and mother to the little children. Thus the contents of the chest had gradually decreased, until the maiden aunt drew forth the four last pair of new sheets for these passing strangers. She felt it no sacrifice. It would have grieved her more to touch the piles of fine new linen which she and Moidel had spun through many a long winter evening, and which were now safely hidden away in the great mahogany wardrobe, which the Hofbauer, in harmony with the more luxurious ideas of the age, had given to his daughter. It occupied the place of honor in the great saloon, having three companion chests of drawers of lesser dimensions, which the father at the same time had presented to each of his sons. That of the eldest, Anton, was emptied by the owner and placed by him at our disposal; that of the second, the student, was carefully guarded from the sun by a covering formed of newspapers; the third, belonging to Jacobi, the youngest, appeared to us filled with books. Jacob was shy, and some days elapsed before we became acquainted. Anton, however, appeared modestly ready to attend to our least beck and call. The first evening, perceiving that we had no candlesticks, we conferred with Anton.

"Freilich," he said. "We have none of our own, but I am sure that, as you will take care of them, there can be no great harm in lending you some of the Virgin's." We demurred at first, but with a smile on his open, ingenuous face he added, "The Herrschaft may be quite sure that I would not sin against my conscience." He then brought half a dozen plated candlesticks from the little sacristy, which he committed to our care.

The reader must not suppose that this was a disused chapel: far from it. In the dusk of the summer evening a murmuring chant like the musical hum of bees pervaded the vast old mansion, which was otherwise hushed in perfect silence. It was the Rosenkranz (or rosary) repeated by the household in the chapel. The Hofbauer knelt on one side near the altar, and led the service, his two sons, the four men-servants, the aunt and Moidel, with the three maid-servants, reciting the responses on their respective sides. The even-song over, the household quietly retired to rest.

Chance had graciously brought us to the Hof in the midst of preparations for the festival of the Holy Father. On Sunday, June 18, the whole Catholic world was to celebrate the astounding fact of Pio Nono having exceeded the days of Saint Peter. We, who had come from Rome, where thirty upstart papers were denouncing time-honored usages and formulas, where many of the people had begun to sneer at the Papacy and to take gloomy views of the Church, were not prepared for the religious fervor and devotion to the Papal See which greeted us in the Tyrol, especially at Bruneck, where from time immemorial a race of the staunchest adherents to Rome had flourished. The mere fact that we came from the Eternal City clothed us with brilliant but false colors. Endless were the questions put to us about the health and looks of the Holy Father, whom they believed to be kept in a dungeon and fed on bread and water--a diet, however, turned into heavenly food by the angels. Perhaps the most perplexing question of all was, whether the Herr Baron Flinkenhorn, who had been born in exactly the same year as the Holy Father, bore the faintest resemblance to that saintly martyr. We could but shake our heads as the old nobleman was pointed out to us on the morning of the festival. Decrepit and bent with age, he shuffled along by the side of his old tottering sister, an antiquated couple dressed in the French fashions of 1810. They hardly perceived, so blind and old were they, the bows and greetings which they received. They knew, however, that it was Pio's festival, and they made great offerings to the Church and to the poor.

Deafness even has its compensations. Thus this old couple had not been kept awake all night by the ringing of bells and the firing of small cannon, which had continued incessantly since the setting of the sun had ushered in the festival on the previous evening. The firing lasted all day--a popular but very startling and disturbing mode of expressing joy and satisfaction. Bruneck wreathed and flagged its houses: there were processions, the prettiest being considered that of the female pupils of the convent of the Sacred Heart, who walked in white, bearing lilies. At night the good Sisters made a grand display of sacred transparencies in their convent windows--rhymes about the age of Saint Peter and the Pope; the Virgin rescuing the sinking vessel of the Church; Saint Peter seated on his emblematic rock, with his present successor at his side; and so forth--all wondered, gaped at and admired by the people, until the great spectacle of the evening commenced. As soon as night had fairly set in a hundred fires blazed upon the mountains--far as the eye could reach, for miles and many miles, one dazzling gigantic illumination. Papal monograms, crosses, tiaras shone forth in startling proportions. High up, far from any human habitation, on the verge of the snow, in clearings of the mountain forests, on Alpine pastures, these fiery letters had been patiently traced by toiling men and lads. Anton and Jacobi were not behind-hand, and by means of two hundred little bonfires had devised the papal initials on the upland common behind the house. The illumination, however, had not begun to reach its full splendor when one quick flash of lightning succeeded another, followed by a rolling artillery of thunder, the precursors of heavy down-pouring rain. In five minutes the storm had extinguished every bright emblem, and plunged the illuminated mountains into impenetrable blackness. The weather, grimly triumphant, drove lads and lasses drenched to their homes. So ended the festival, but in the morning, in dry clothes, every one had the pleasure of imagining how beautiful the spectacle would have been but for the rain.

MARGARET HOWITT.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

WILMINGTON AND ITS INDUSTRIES.

CONCLUDING PAPER.

We have pointed out the metropolis of Delaware as being a distinctly Northern city, planted in the distinct South. Among other things, this complication has led to some singularities in its settlement. As a community regulated by the most liberal traditions of Penn, but placed under the legal conditions of a slave State, it has held a position perfectly anomalous. No other spot could be indicated where the contrasts of North and South came to so sharp an edge; and there are few where a skilled pen could set down so many curiosities of folk-lore and confusions of race. The Dutch, the Swedes and the English Quakers formed the substratum, upon which were poured the _émigrés_ of the French Revolution and the fugitives from Santo Domingo. The latter sometimes brought slaves who had continued faithful, and who retained their serfdom under the laws of Delaware. The French _bonnes_ stood on washing-benches in the Brandywine, and taught the amazed Quaker wives that laundry-work could be done in cold water. The names of grand old French families, prefaced by the proprietarial forms of _le_ and _du_, became mixed by marriage with such Swedish names as Svensson and such Dutch names as Staelkappe. (The first Staelkappe was a ship's cook, nicknamed from his oily and glossy bonnet.) As for the refugees from Santo Domingo, they absolutely invaded Wilmington, so that the price of butter and eggs was just doubled in 1791, and house-rents rose in proportion. They found themselves with rapture where the hills were rosy with peach-blossoms, and where every summer was simply an extract from Paradise.

We cannot linger, as we fain would do, over the quaint and amusing _Paris en Amerique_ which reigned here for a period following the events of '93. At Sixth and French streets lived a marchioness in a cot, which she adorned with the manners of Versailles, the temper of the Faubourg St. Germain and the pride of Lucifer. This Marquise de Sourci was maintained by her son, who made pretty boxes of gourds, and afterward boats, in one of which he was subsequently wrecked on the Delaware, before the young marquis was of age to claim his title. In a farm-house, whose rooms he lined with painted canvas, lived Colonel de Tousard. On Long Hook Farm resided, in honor and comfort, Major Pierre Jaquette, son of a Huguenot refugee who married a Swedish girl, and became a Methodist after one of Whitefield's orations: as for the son, he served in thirty-two pitched battles during our Revolution. Good Joseph Isambrie, the blacksmith, used to tell in provincial French the story of his service with Bonaparte in Egypt, while his wife blew the forge-bellows. _Le Docteur_ Bayard, a rich physician, cured his compatriots for nothing, and Doctor Capelle, one of Louis XVI.'s army-surgeons, set their poor homesick old bones for them when necessary. Monsieur Bergerac, afterward professor in St. Mary's College, Baltimore, was a teacher: another preceptor, M. Michel Martel, an _émigré_ of 1780, was proficient in fifteen languages, five of which he had imparted to the lovely and talented Theodosia Burr. Aaron Burr happened to visit Wilmington when the man who had trained his daughter's intellect was lying in the almshouse, wrecked and paralytic, with the memory of all his many tongues gone, except the French. Some benevolent Wilmingtonians approached Burr in his behalf, showing the colonel's own letter which had introduced him to the town.

"I wrote that letter when I _knew_ him," said the diplomatic Colonel Burr, "but I know him no more."

The day quickly came when Burr's speech of denial was reflected upon himself, and those who then honored him "knew him no more."

Another French teacher, by the by, was not of Gallic race, but that of Albion _le perfide_: this was none other than William Cobbett, with his reputation all before him, known only to the Wilmington millers for the French lessons he gave their daughters and the French grammar he had published. He lived on "Quaker Hill" from 1794 to 1796. He then went to Philadelphia, and began to publish _Peter Porcupine's Gazette_. "I mean to shoot my quills," said Cobbett, "wherever I can catch game." With the sinews of Wilmington money he soon made his way back to England, became a philosopher, and sat in the House of Commons. Another British exile was Archibald Hamilton Rowan, an Irish patriot, and one of the "United Irishmen" of 1797. Escaping from a Dublin jail in woman's clothes, he found his way to Wilmington after adventures like those of Boucicault's heroes; lived here several years in garrets and cottages, carrying fascination and laughter wherever he went among his staid neighbors; and after some years flew back to Ireland, glorious as a phoenix, resuming the habits proper to his income of thirty thousand pounds a year.

A familiar figure on the wharves of Wilmington was the gigantic one of Captain Paul Cuffee, looking like a character in a masquerade. His athletic limbs forced into the narrow garments of the Quakers, and a brim of superior development shading his dark negro face, he talked sea-lingo among the trading captains, mixed with phrases from Robert Barclay and gutturals picked up on the coast of Sierra Leone. Captain Cuffee owned several vessels, manned by sailors as black as shoemaker's wax, and he conducted one of his ships habitually to the African ports. Coming back rich from Africa, this figure of darkness has often led its crew of shadows into port at the Brandywine mouth, passing modestly amongst the whalers and wheat-shallops, dim as the Flying Dutchman and mum as Friends' meeting. It is possible that from some visit of his arose the legend that Blackbeard, the terrible pirate, who always hid his booty on the margins of streams, had used the Brandywine for this purpose. At any rate, some clairvoyants, in their dreams, saw in 1812 the glittering pots of Blackbeard's gold lying beneath the rocks of Harvey's waste-land, next to Vincent Gilpin's mill. They paid forty thousand dollars for a small tract, and searched and found nothing; but Job Harvey hugged his purchase money.

Latrobe the architect lived here in the first quarter of the century, midway between Philadelphia (where he was building waterworks and banks) and Washington (where he was seating a young nation in legislative halls worthy of its greatness); using Wilmington meanwhile as a pleasant retirement, where he could wear his thinking-cap, educate his beautiful young daughter, and mix with the French and other cultured society of the place. Here, too, about fifty years ago, a pretty French girl used to play and eat peaches, maintained by funds mysteriously supplied from Louisiana, and ignorant of all connections except a peculating guardian. It was little Myra Clark (now Mrs. Gaines), who woke up one day to find herself the heroine of the greatest of modern lawsuits, and the credited possessor of a large part of New Orleans--the same who has recently gained a million, while she expects to gain a million more, and to be richer than Lady Burdett-Coutts.

Thus has the pretty city ever played its part as a storing-house where things and people and ideas might be set by to ripen. It is not wonderful that it now and then found itself, quite unintentionally, a museum, where the far-brought rarities were living souls. In a heavenly climate, just where the winged songsters of the South held tryst with those of the North, and where the plants of both latitudes embowered the gardens together, Nature arranged a new garden wherein were brought together almost all the races that had diverged from Babel.

The antiquities we have been examining, however, yield in age to the venerable walls which were built to shelter a worship no longer promulgated among us. The Swedes' churches of Philadelphia and Wilmington are among the oldest civilized fabrics to be found in this new country of ours. That of Wilmington was built in 1698, and that at Wicaco in Philadelphia in 1700. Rudman, a missionary from Sweden, preached the first sermon to the Wilmingtonians in May, 1699; and after him a succession of Swedish apostles arrived, trembling at their own courage, and feeling as our preachers would do if assigned to posts in Nova Zembla or Patagonia. The salary offered was a hundred rixdollars, with house and glebe, and the creed was the Lutheran doctrines according to "the Augsburg Confession of Faith, free from all human superstition and tradition." Dutch ministers alternated peaceably with the Swedish ones, who bore such Latinized names as Torkillus, Lokenius, Fabricius, Hesselius, Acrelius. The last wrote in his own language an excellent history of the Swedish settlements on the Delaware, only a part of which has been rendered into English by the New York Historical Society. William Penn proved his tolerance by giving the little church a folio Bible and a shelf of pious books, together with a bill of fifty pounds sterling. The building was planted half a mile away from the then city, in the village of Christinaham. Its site was on the banks of the Christine, and its congregation, in the comparative absence of roads, came in boats or sleighs, according to the season. The church was well built of hard gray stone, with fir pews and a cedar roof: iron letters fixed in the walls spelled out such holy mottoes as "LUX L. I. TENEBR. ORIENS EX ALTO," and "SI DE. PRO NOBIS QUIS CONTRA NOS," and commemorated side by side the names of William III., king of England, William Penn, proprietary, and Charles XI. of Sweden. Swedish services were continued up to about the epoch of the Revolution, when, the language being no longer intelligible in the colony, they were merged into English ones: the last Swedish commissary, Girelius, returned by order of the archbishop in 1786, and the intercourse between the American Swedish churches and the ecclesiastical see in the fatherland ceased for ever. The oldest headstone in the churchyard is that of William Vandevere, who died in 1719. Service was long celebrated by means of the chalice and plate sent over by the Swedish copper-miners to Biorch, the first missionary at Cranehook, and the Bible given by Queen Anne in 1712. The sexes sat separately. In our grandfathers' day the old sanctuary used to be dressed for Christmas by the sexton, Peter Davis: he was a Hessian deserter, with a powder-marked face and murderous habits toward the English language. Descending from their sledges and jumpers, the congregation would crowd toward the bed of coals raked out in the middle of the brick floor from the old cannon stove: to do this they must brush by the cedars which "Old Powderproof" had covered with flour, in imitation of snow; and then Dutch Peter, as they complimented him on his efforts, would whisper the astonishing invocation, "God be tankful for all dish plessins and tings!"

Modern improvement has a particular spite against the landmarks of antiquity. The railroad to Baltimore slices off a part of the Swedish graveyard--an institution much more ancient than the church which stands on it. And the rock by old Fort Christina, upon which Governor Stuyvesant--Irving's Stuyvesant--stood on his silver leg and took the surrender of the Swedish governor-general, is now quarried out and reconstructed into Delaware Breakwater.

Doubtless we dwell too fondly on the old memories, but it appears that the souvenirs of this region are somewhat remarkable for their contrast of nationalities. Perhaps the colonization of other spots would yield better romances than any we have to offer; yet we cannot help feeling that a better pen than ours would find brilliant matter for literary effects in the paradise revealed to good Elizabeth Shipley by her dream-guide.

Delawarean Wilmington is perhaps hardly known to the general public except through two of its products. Everybody buys Wilmington matches, and everybody knows that Du Pont's powder is made in the vicinity. Ignoring the foundries and shipyards, the popular imagination recognizes but these two commodities--the powder which could blow up the obstructions to all the American harbors, and the match which could touch off the train. A million dollars' worth of gunpowder and three hundred thousand dollars' worth of matches are the annual product.

Eleuthère Irenée Du Pont, a French gentleman of honorable family, appeared in Wilmington in 1802. The town had at that time hardly three thousand inhabitants. He amazed all the quidnuncs by buying, for fifty thousand dollars, Rumford Dawes' old tract of rocks on the Brandywine, which everybody knew was perfectly useless. The stranger was pitied as he began to blast away the stone. Out of a single rock, separated into fragments, he built a cottage: it was a lonely spot, and the snakes from the fissures were in the habit of sharing the contents of his well-bucket. Such was the beginning of the Eleuthère Powder-works. M. Du Pont, who died some forty years ago, was much beloved for his benevolence and probity. In 1825, La Fayette, during his celebrated visit of reminiscence, was the guest of the brave old Frenchman for several days, during which he examined the battle-ground of Brandywine. He here received the ball with which he got his wound in that battle, from the hands of Bell McClosky, a kind of camp-follower and nurse, who had extracted the bullet with her scissors and preserved it. The general wrote in the album of Mademoiselle Du Pont the following graceful sentiment:

"After having seen, nearly half a century ago, the bank of the Brandywine a scene of bloody fighting, I am happy now to find it the seat of industry, beauty and mutual friendship.

"LA FAYETTE.

"JULY 25, 1825."

While on a Revolutionary topic we may mention that among a great many relics of '76 preserved in the town is the sword of General Wayne--"Mad Anthony"--a straight, light blade in leather scabbard, possessed by Mr. W. H. Naff.

The citizens of this pleasant town have ever been orderly and pious, just as they have ever been loyal. Their religious institutions have grown and flourished. Godfearing and unspeculative, they have attached themselves to such creeds as appealed most powerfully to the heart with the least possible admixture of form. "The words _Fear God_" says Joubert, "have made many men pious: proofs of the existence of God have made many men atheists." Since the day when Whitefield poured out his eloquence among the Brandywine valleys and touched the hearts of the French exiles, Methodism, with its almost entire absence of dogma, has had great success in the community. This success is now indicated by a rich congregation, and a church-building that would be called noble in any city. Grace Church, on Ninth and West streets, is a large Gothic temple, seating nearly eight hundred persons--warmed, frescoed and heavily carpeted inside, and walled externally with brownstone mixed with the delicate pea-green serpentine of Chadd's Ford. The architect was a native Wilmingtonian--Thomas Dixon--now of Baltimore. The windows, including a very brilliant oriel, are finely stained: the font is a delicate piece of carving, the organ is grand, and the accommodations for Sunday-schools and lectures are of singular perfection. Few shrines in this country show better the modern movement of Methodism toward luxury and elegance, as compared with the repellant humiliations of Wesley's day.

It is to be hoped that this advance in attractiveness does not indicate any lapse in the more solid qualities of spiritual earnestness. "Whenever this altar," well said Bishop Simpson in dedicating the building on the centenary anniversary of the rise of Methodism--"whenever this altar shall be too fine for the poorest penitent sinner to kneel here, the Spirit of God will depart, and that of Ichabod will come in."

We have indicated the Swedish Lutheran missionaries exhorting under the roof of their antique church in a language which their congregations were beginning to forget, and afterward in a broken English hardly more intelligible. Their place is largely taken now by predicators of the faith of John Knox, with a plentiful following of pious believers. Among the family of Presbyterian kirks in Wilmington the youngest is a large brick edifice built in 1871, for sixty-one thousand dollars, on Eighth and Washington streets, able to seat nearly a thousand persons, most comfortably and invitingly furnished, and supplied with lecture-, infant- and Sunday-school-rooms, together with a huge kitchen, suggesting the _agapæ_ or love-feasts of the primitive Christians. Meantime, Anglicanism does not lack supporters. The descendants of Monsieur Du Pont, cultured and influential, have done much to advance the creed, and about fifteen years ago Mr. Alexis I. Du Pont, pulling down a low tavern in the suburbs, prepared to erect a church upon the site, to be built mainly through his own liberality. Unhappily, Mr. Du Pont died from the effects of an explosion at the powder-works ten weeks after the laying of the corner-stone; but the building was soon completed through the pious munificence of his widow, and the Bible of St. John's Protestant Episcopal Church now rests on its lectern upon the site of the old liquor-bar, and the gambling-den of former days is replaced by its pews. The rector is Mr. T. Gardiner Littell, a man of eminent goodness and intelligence. St. John's has a beautiful open roof, stained windows and a fine organ: it can offer seats to seven hundred worshipers.

These few specimen churches--and especially the last, which blots out a grogshop--are good instances, with the large congregations they accommodate, of the way in which a sane, flourishing manufacturing community provides for the spiritual needs of its members. The tone and moral well-being which Boz found, or thought he found, among the operatives at Lowell are largely realized here. But our picture of Wilmington as a hive of industry is not yet complete, and before we enter upon the highly-interesting problem of its dealings with its working family, we should enter a few more of its sample manufactories.

Take car-building, for an example, in which the reputation of this town is known to the initiated of all the States and many foreign countries. Travelers are at this moment spinning in Wilmington-made railway-carriages over the extremest parts of North and South America, admiring, through Wilmington-made windows, every possible variety of winter and tropical scenery, on which they comment in English, German, French, Spanish and all civilized languages. Such a migratory product as a rail-car is an active messenger of fame for the place of its fabrication. We examine, as a fair type, the Jackson and Sharp Company's works, claimed to be the largest in the New World, and only exceeded by a few British and Continental establishments. The buildings have frontage upon the Brandywine and Christine streams, as well as on the principal railroad. Here are a congeries of two-story buildings, which are together fifteen hundred feet in length by a width of seventy feet. Five miles of heating-pipes warm the rooms for a thousand workmen. There is something logical and consecutive in the arrangement here, which makes it the best spot on the face of the earth for an enthusiast who should wish to demonstrate, what all loyal Americans believe in, the vast superiority of our form of railway-carriage. The cars proceed, in perfectly regular order, from raw material to completion with the progressive march of a quadratic equation in algebra. They seem to be arranged to demonstrate a theory. First the visitor sees lumber in stock, a million feet of it; then, across one end of a long room, the mere sketch or transparent diagram of a car; then, a car broadly filled in; and so on, up to the last glorious result, upholstered with velvet and smelling of varnish. The cars are on rails, upon which they move, side on, as if by a principle of growth, the undeveloped ones perpetually pushing up their more forward predecessors, until the last perfect carriage is ejected from the fifteen-hundredth foot of the building's length. Each one, gathering material and ornament as it rolls steadily along in its crablike side-fashion, becomes at last a vehicle of perfect luxury; and then, with one final plunge into the open air, it leaves its diversely-destined neighbors, and changes for ever its sidelong motion for the forward roll which will carry it through a long existence. A very large proportion of this company's work is on "palace" cars of the Pullman type, those extravagances of luxury of which Europe is just now applying to Wilmington to learn the lesson. Narrow-gauge cars for the West, in supplying which they are the pioneers, gaudy cars for South America, and sturdy, solid ones for Canada, are all gently riding forward, side to side, in this inexorable chain of destiny, and diverging at the front door on their widely-different errands. Besides the manufacture of cars, the company builds every sort of coasters and steamers. The class of workmen it employs is often of a particularly high grade. German painters quote Kotzebue and sing the songs of Uhland as they weave their graceful harmonies of line and color over the panels; and the sculptors who carve antique heads over the doorways of palace cars make the place merry with studio jokes from the Berlin Academy. It is evident that a community of artists like this, furnishing the æsthetic department to an immense manufactory, will also elevate the tone of the industrial society outside, if they can but be kept free from vice and supplied with means of culture; more of which anon. Meantime, as a kind of standard of what the manufacturers themselves arrive at in prosecuting the amenities of life, we will quote the fine residence of Mr. Job Jackson, a magnate of the company.

The wheel on which the car is mounted is of course another specialty, turned off in another manufactory. We leave the rooms where the work goes on with easy smoothness like a demonstration in a lecture-hall, and come to raging, roaring, deafening furnaces and hammers. The hollow-chested artists give way to cyclops. Here we are in the Lobdell Car-wheel Company's premises. Negligently leaning up against each other, like wafers in the tray of an ink-stand, are wheels that will presently whiz over the landscapes of Russia, of Mexico, of England; wheels that will behave rashly and heat their axles; wheels that will lie turned up in the air at the bottoms of viaducts; and wheels that in various ways will see astonishing adventures, because in railway-transit there are telescopings and wheels within wheels. The English and the foreign trade of the Lobdell Company is due to its manufacture of wheels in the material or process lately known as chilled iron. This manufacture has not yet penetrated the British intellect. Take the foreman of an English car-manufactory, tell him that you will supply him a wheel about as durable as a wheel with a steel tire at less than half the cost, and he will laugh at you for an impudent idiot. But they _use_ our wheels. The "chilling" of iron, when poured into a mould partly iron-faced, is very singular: as the melted metal hardens against the metallic boundary, its granulation changes to a certain depth, and the outside becomes excessively strong: species of crystals seem to form, presenting their ends to the surface, and meeting the wear and tear there to be experienced. The use of this fact secures, in many manufactures, a hardness approaching that of steel, without increase of cost. This company employs the process both for car-wheels and for the large cylinders (or "rolls") used in paper-mills. It is not to be supposed that the work is all rude and rough, like ordinary iron casting. The polishing of the large cylinders almost suggests diamond-cutting, it is so fine. So true is the finish that a pair of these broad rolls, perhaps five feet across, may be approached so near each other that the light showing between them is decomposed: a blade of blue or violet light, inexpressibly thin and of the width of the cylinders, passes through the entire distance. As for the "chilling" of iron, it was applied first to wheels in Baltimore, in 1833, by Mr. Ross Winans; and then, during the same year, Mr. Bonney and his nephew, George G. Lobdell, established the business we see, which has gradually grown to its present capacity of three hundred wheels per day.

The use of such cylinders as we have just seen under the difficult process of polishing is only understood when we explore some large paper-mill, where they take the place of the old-fashioned frame of wire gauze which produced the hand-made paper. We may select the splendid works of Messrs. Jessup & Moore on the Brandywine. Our welcome is sure to be a cordial one, for among the largest customers of the firm are the publishers of _Lippincott's Magazine_. The process of paper-making by the Fourdrinier machine was so fully explained in our Number for last November that it is useless now to repeat the details. But it would never do to leave the Brandywine without a glance at least at one of its principal manufactures. The mill of Jessup & Moore uses the strength of the torrent as an auxiliary to its steam-power of seven hundred and fifty horses. The machinery is made by Pusey, Jones & Co., whose iron ships and machine-shops we have already examined: the rolls of admirable accuracy are from the shops of J. Morton Poole & Co. The paper-making process--the vast revolving boiler of twelve feet by twenty-six; the countless sacks of filthy rags, that have clothed peasants of the Black Forest, beggars on the steps of St. Peter's and Egyptian fellahs; their reduction to purity, and hardening from pulp to snowy continuities of endless, marginless paper,--all this is of rare interest in the watching, but has been told until the public is satiated. We leave the banks of the Brandywine and the wharves of Christine, and try to lose ourselves in the thickly-built heart of the city.

Even here the implacable business spirit exhibits itself at every turn. In place of the placid millers and quaint refugees of the last century at their doors, we see the shops, the storehouses of manufacturers' supplies, the hotel and the theatre; and, pervading all, the vast throng of artisans, providing such problems of local government and education as the last century never dreamed of.

In almost all the industries of the city you are struck by the ancestral aspect of the trades, the continuance of a business from father to son, or the gradual change of firms by the absorption of partners. Boughman, Thomas & Co., established in a handsome, modern-looking bookstore, represent a business as old as 1793, uninterrupted since the time when the founder, James Wilson, hung the sign of Shakespeare at his door. The young girl of the period, who goes to their place from one of the model seminaries of which Wilmington is so full to buy a little paper for confidential notes or perhaps a delicate valentine, sees the old brown advertisement framed against the wall, and behind it, in sign-painting of her great-grandfather's time, the head of him who wrote _Romeo and Juliet_.

While in this literary vein we would say a word of the newspapers. These, the true finger-posts of thought in a community, are apt in manufacturing cities to be conservative and timid, as trade is timid. The very special attitude of Wilmington, however--a Yankee town in perpetual protest with a Bourbon State--has inspired its press with peculiar political energy. No more vehement Republican organ can be found in the land, for instance, than the Wilmington _Commercial_: it is not in its columns that you will see ingenious defences of the whipping-post at Newcastle or of the crushing taxes levied at Dover, whereby a lazy State feeds greedily upon a hard-working metropolis. The _Commercial_ (Jenkins & Atkinson) is a staunch Administration sheet, sound on the subject of industrial protection, and highly appreciated by the manufacturers. Founded in 1866, it was, we believe, the sole daily until eighteen months ago, when some of the sober-sided weeklies began to understand that they must bestir themselves and put forth a diurnal appearance. The _Gazette_ (C. P. Johnson), a paper nearly one hundred years old, now appears daily, and expresses the opinions of the State Assembly, where the Senate has but a single Republican member, and the House of Representatives stands fourteen Democrats to seven Republicans. Here the conservative thought of Kent and Sussex counties is kneaded up into the requisite coherency and eloquence. _Every Evening_ (Croasdale & Cameron), a smart paper without political bias, flies around the city as the shadows begin to lengthen, selling at one cent a sheet, and liked by everybody.

To be candid, however, we do not suspect that this unique old city thinks through its newspapers. The circumstances here are so peculiar, the neighborhood so close, activity so concentrated, and the circumjacent neighborhood so little congenial, that an order of things has been established unusual in modern times. Mind acts on mind by personal contact; the strong men meet and support each other; the Board of Trade assembles daily in beautiful rooms, and discusses every interest as quickly as it arises. It is like the order of things of old, ere the press and telegraph undertook to express our views before we had formed them ourselves. We are reminded of the guilds of labor in ancient Flanders or the _fondachi_ of Venice. The State of Delaware, meanwhile, comes up and looks in at the windows, only half satisfied with the rapid fortunes making by the civic trades. What the Delaware yeomen know is, that they have broad acres of sunny land, on which they are perpetually wanting advances of money. They therefore instruct their legislators to fix a legal rate of interest, and to fix it low. The abuse which naturally follows on this blind policy is, that the wealth created by the splendid industries of Wilmington is constantly leaving the State to seek investment where usury is not kept down by old-fashioned legislation. Richard Burton, the Anatomist of Melancholy, saw a somewhat similar state of things among the unproductive and ale-tippling scholars with whom he lived at Oxford, but he was keen enough to feel an envy of the livelier marts of commerce. "How many goodly cities could I reckon up," says Burton, "that thrive wholly by trade, where thousands of inhabitants live singular well by their fingers' ends! As Florence in Italy by making cloth of gold; great Milan by silk and all curious works; Arras in Artois by those fair hangings; many cities in Spain, many in France, Germany, have none other maintenance, especially those within the land.... In most of _our_ cities" (continues the mortified Englishman), "some few excepted, we live wholly by tippling-inns and ale-houses."

The average Delawarean of 1873 is the average Oxford gossip of 1620, with the scholarship left out. But he has the unfortunate advantage for mischief that he is in a position to enact laws over the producers of "all curious works." These anomalies, however, must soon pass away with the march of the age, leaving Wilmington less individual perhaps, but more free.

How deftly, by the by, Burton picks up the distinction between an inland city, living by handicraft, and a port city, handling weighty materials and feeding freely on commerce! His livers by their finger-ends are especially "those within the land." Just so the great capital of France, arbitrarily concentred amongst her provinces, and deprived of a port, can only thrive by her exceptional genius in fine and easily-moved _articles de Paris_. The site now under our consideration, however, means to have no such one-sided success. If her horoscope be not cast amiss, this American Glasgow will both make whatever human ingenuity can make, and she will also distribute. One of the first things she intends to do is to tap the stream of food, fuel and lumber destined for the South, and now laid up in the winter in Philadelphia by the closing of the Delaware, and send it to the Southern consumer by her cheap water-transport. Connected with this enterprise will be the multiplication of her steam colliers, ultimately scattering the crop of breadstuffs to the South Atlantic and Gulf States (if not the Eastern), and coming home with ballast of the varied iron ores those States abound in. When Delaware Bay begins to be whitened with the sails of returning coal-vessels, or lashed with the wheels of steam carriers, bringing in the oxides and magnetite ores of North Carolina and the hematite and other varieties of the extreme South, to mix with the rail-brought ores of interior localities, then Wilmington proposes to be the chosen centre of industry in cast iron. This production, it is now well understood, is no longer carried on most advantageously in the neighborhood of any one great natural deposit of ore. The important thing is to be at a meeting of all varieties of the metal: chemistry then selects the proportions for mixture, and the best stock is produced with scarcely any greater expense than the lowest grade. The situation at the head of Delaware Bay is one where every choice of the ores can be easily swept together by rail or water. It also controls fuel, by both means of carriage, from either of the great anthracite regions--a matter of special importance in this time of "strikes," as the operatives of both districts rarely throw up work at the same time. Wilmington thus proposes to obtain its iron at three dollars per ton less than Pittsburg.

To properly digest these advantages, the city needs a large furnace, centrally located, to work for all the foundries and forges of the place. This construction is now being earnestly advocated, and will doubtless soon take form.

Thus we see the northernmost of the slave-State cities leaping up to catch first the advantages of perfect commercial union under the new regime. Affiliated with the South, inspired by the North, we should watch her as a standard and a type.

Meantime, her labor problem, as a city crammed with proletarians, she meets with consummate tranquillity. The paternal relations between the good old Brandywine millers and their journeymen are continued through the immense operations of the present day. A singular harmony has thus far subsisted between employers and employed: the prosperity and calm which travelers used to praise among the operatives of New England mills are perhaps now best seen here. To this result both Nature and man contribute. The country round about is so bounteous, is such a garden, that the pay of the workman represents a far higher grade of social life than anywhere else in manufacturing regions. Rents so far are low, but a beneficent system is in active operation amongst the working-classes which helps a man to own his own house, and avoid the teasing periodical drain of rent.

This is the associative system, here in faultless operation, by which the fragments of a large piece of ground are paid for by degrees and cleared of all incumbrance in eight or nine years by the profit on the contributed moneys. This plan is assisted by the best men in the town, who participate in the associations, receive themselves a reasonable profit, and supply the credit and advantages necessary for the safety of wholesale enterprises. They have thus far worked with their workmen for the latter's profit, with perfect honor and without a stain of scandal. The great advantage, after all, is to themselves; for a workman owning his own home, accumulating comforts and a family, is indissolubly tied to the city and its peaceful order.

Various plans for the improvement of the workmen are afoot, including a "Holly-Tree Inn" for the supply of harmless refreshment and evening relaxation, the ground for which is bought and a stock-company forming. A public park, for which a beautiful stretch of the Brandywine, on Adams street and north of Levering Avenue, is recommended, is already engaging the attention of the citizens as a necessary provision. A "fountain society" is in active operation, offering cool, wholesome drink to the thirsty workman and the tired beast: the principal of its fountain-structures forms a memorial monument to a young gentleman who had distinguished himself by his liberality in preparing scientific lectures for the free entertainment of the working public. Shut up in the public hall among the materials of his lecture, he was found dead from the result of some solitary experiment--slain by his own kindness. A rich monument to the soldiers and sailors slain in the civil war was unveiled in 1871: it is formed of a pillar from the old United States Bank, surmounted by an eagle cast from captured cannon.

But the best thing a manufacturing town can do for her workman is to educate his children. During the old aristocratic days of Wilmington she was satisfied with the reputation of her private tutors and of her young ladies' seminaries, where "sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair" cultivated cheeks like the surrounding peaches, while they learned Shakespeare, musical glasses and the use of the globes. It was not until 1852 that the Delaware Legislature chartered a board of education for the town. In these twenty years fifteen schools have been put up, with five thousand attenders. Schoolhouse No. 1, shown in the illustration, accommodates four hundred and thirty-six pupils, and furnishes an education, in the words of the late Bishop Potter, "good enough for the richest and cheap enough for the poorest."

The choice streets of the city are filling up with tasteful residences. As a specimen we present the house of Colonel McComb, an old favorite of Wilmington, where his familiar appellation of "Harry McComb" is as often uttered day by day as it was at Washington during the exposure by its owner of Congressional honesty and piety--or magpiety.

A hotel of the first class has been erected, and baptized with the commemorative name of the Clayton House. It has one hundred and five chambers and every improvement. A very characteristic fact, showing the spirit of integrity and goodness which here travels hand in hand with modern enterprise, is that the owners sacrificed full _three-quarters_ of the rent they could have obtained, in order to keep it pledged as a temperance house. Another elegant building has been put up by the Masonic fraternity for their own purposes and those of the Board of Trade, etc., including a handsome opera-house on the ground floor. The auditorium is praised for its acoustic properties by Parepa-Rosa, Wallack, Davenport and other performers, seats about fifteen hundred, and is furnished with the inevitable drop-curtain by Russell Smith. Faced with iron painted white, and very rich in mouldings and ornaments, the building presents as cheery a front to enter as any similar place of attraction known to the American tourist. The Masonic rooms above, and those of the Board of Trade, Historical Society, etc., are provided with every beauty and comfort.

Here are the indications of a prospering, laboring, thinking, virtuous city of the New World. We have tried to sketch it both as a city with a past and a city with a future. Could we have selected one for illustration that would be a better or sharper concentration of all that is good in American life?

MARIE FAMETTE AND HER LOVERS.

I.

Marie Famette is the prettiest girl in the market-place of Aubette. Her eyes are of such a sweet, soft blue, deeply shaded by long black lashes: her eyebrows are not black, but they are of a much darker tint than her hair, which (so much of it as can be seen under her full white cap-border) is a golden yellow. But it is not her eyes and her hair that make Marie so attractive: she has charmed young and old alike ever since she came, a toddling damsel of two years, and took her place beside her mother in the market-place of Aubette.

Madame Famette's was the best fruit-stall of the market. No one else could show such baskets of peaches and hampers of pears; and as to the citrouilles and potirons, their reputation was so established that by ten o'clock there was little to be seen of them among the glowing vegetables which decked the stall. Such radishes were not to be seen elsewhere--white and purple, as thick as carrots; and the carrots themselves like lumps of red gold, lying nestling beneath their feathered tops or setting off the creamy whiteness of the cauliflowers ranged in a formal row in front of them.

But Marie had always eclipsed all other beauty in the stall, and now that she had grown too big to be patted on the cheek and kissed by grown-up admirers, she had a host of victims in the sturdy young countrymen who came in to Aubette--either to bring mothers and sisters with their produce or to purchase for themselves.

Madame Famette has weak health, and lately Marie comes often to the market by herself, and is able to flirt to her heart's content, unchecked by her mother's presence. She is so bright, so arch, so ready with a sparkling answer, that it is no wonder her stall is always thronged and that her fruit and her vegetables disappear so rapidly.

There is an extra buzz in the market to-day. It is September, the epoch of the Mascaret, for the dreaded flood-tide seldom visits the Seine more than twice a year, and always draws dwellers in the neighboring towns to see its autumn fury. There is an influx of strange faces in the little place beneath the richly-sculptured spire of Notre Dame--the cathedral of Aubette, as strangers call it, although it is only the parish church of the quaint little town--and a certain extra excitement is communicated to the settlers under the canvas-covered booths and to the humbler sellers of wares in baskets. Mademoiselle Lesage, a short, plump young woman dressed in black, flits in and out of the chattering crowd more busily than usual. Mademoiselle holds herself of a rank above the country-folk who bring in their poultry and garden produce to Aubette. In token of this she wears a round black mushroom-shaped hat, and a holland apron with two deep pockets in virtue of her office; for Mademoiselle Lesage has an enterprising spirit. She found herself at thirty years old left alone in the world with an ugly face and with an insufficient "dot." Mademoiselle Lesage is ambitious: she does not care to marry a very poor man, and she has managed to give the town council of Aubette such security that it allows her to farm the market yearly for some hundreds of francs. Watch her collecting her dues. She goes rapidly from stall to stall, jingling her pockets, laughing and chatting with the farmers' wives, all the time keeping a hawk's eye on the basket-carriers, not one of whom may presume to sell so much as an onion without the weekly toll of one sou. She darts in and out among them, and her pockets swell out in front as if they were stuffed with apples.

She has left Marie Famette's stall till the last. She crosses over to it now as quickly as she can go, but there is no means of darting in and out here, as there was just now among the basket-women. Old Floris Marceau has covered a good-sized space with his heap of green and yellow melons, and he stands behind these marchandéing, gesticulating, brandishing the knife with which he slices his citrouilles and inveighing against the folly of his customers. "Will mam'selle believe," he says, addressing her as she approaches, and wiping his knife on his often-patched blouse, "they come to buy fruit of a respectable vegetable-seller and they don't know the price of a melon? Ten sous for a cantaloupe like that!" His blue eyes gleamed furiously under his frowning gray eyebrows. "Ten sous! I told them to be off and buy chickens." He broke into a laugh, and pointed to a tall, bent old gentleman, who seemed covered with confusion at this public rebuke, and sidled his way out of the throng without attempting an answer.

"Buy a turkey, m'sieur?" A smiling, dark-eyed woman in a close-setting white cap went on with the joke and pointed to her basket, but the old gentleman had had enough: he hurried away with a rueful glance at the basket in which, divided only by the handle, sat two fat turkey poults and two chickens. One of the turkeys stirred and got a wing free, but it was remorselessly tucked in again and reduced to passive endurance, with "Keep quiet then, ne soyez pas bête."

Mademoiselle Lesage approaches Marie's stall at a leisurely pace: she wishes to see her ground before she speaks. By the extra sweetness of her smile one might suppose that mademoiselle loved the gay little beauty: "Bonjour, Marie. Madame Famette trusts you alone again, I see?"

Marie does exactly that which Mademoiselle Lesage intended to make her do: she starts violently and she looks annoyed.

Elise Lesage glances quickly from Marie to the two young men who stand beside her. One of these, tall, well-dressed, with a Jewish face, and a sparkling pin in his brilliant blue scarf, is Alphonse Poiseau, the son of Monsieur Poiseau of the large clockmaker's and jeweler's shop at the corner of the place next the church: the other is Nicolas Marais, a handsome, gypsy-looking fellow with no decided occupation. He is sometimes at work on his uncle's farm at Vatteville, and when he falls out with his uncle and tires of Vatteville he comes across the Seine and gets employed by Léon Roussel, the chief timber-merchant of Aubette.

People say that old Marais, the miser of Vatteville, means to make Nicolas his heir; but Nicolas takes no pains to please the old man: he goes here and there at his pleasure, a favorite wherever he shows his handsome dark eyes and his saucy smile. The men like him as much as the women do, he has such a ready, amusing tongue, and he never says a spiteful word; so that more than one of the keen, observant poultry-sellers standing beside their baskets near Marie's stall have commented on the scowl with which for full five minutes Léon Roussel has regarded Nicolas. Léon Roussel is a middle-sized, in no way remarkable-looking person, with honest brown eyes and a square, sensible face. His father, the wealthy timber-merchant on the Yvetôt road, died when he was a boy, and Léon is one of the most prosperous citizens of Aubette, and well thought of by all. Léon is ostensibly in consultation with Monsieur Houlard, tailor and town councillor, but as he stands at the worthy's shop-door he is raised above the level of the place, and is exactly opposite the stall of Marie Famette.

"Nicolas is out of favor with Monsieur Roussel: he has worked badly in the lumber-yard," says La Mère Robillard.

"Chut! chut!" says her gossip, Madelaine Manget, and she gives at the same time a pat to a refractory chicken. "Nicolas looks too hard at Marie Famette. Ma foi! there are men in the manger as well as dogs. If Monsieur Léon wants Marie to be for his eyes only, why does he not ask for her and marry her, the proud simpleton?"

"Ah, but look you, Madelaine, Léon is not proud: he never turns a poor man from his door without a morsel to quiet hunger, and he must be clever or his business would not prosper."

La Mère Manget shrugs her shoulders. "Will you then not buy turkeys at eleven francs the couple, ma belle dame?" she cries shrilly to a passer-by.

While Marie Famette recovers herself, Nicolas answers Mam'selle Lesage. "Pardon, Mam'selle Lesage, but Mam'selle Marie is not alone," he says, raising his hat with exquisite politeness--Alphonse Poiseau tries to follow suit, but his bow is stiff and pompous--"the whole market is her body-guard, and she permits Monsieur Poiseau and myself to act as sentinels." He throws an insinuating glance at Marie, which deepens the gloom on Léon Roussel's face.

Elise Lesage has taken in the whole situation, and she knows exactly where to look for the timber-merchant. An uneasy consciousness makes Marie follow her glance: she looks red and confused when she sees Léon's stern, disapproving face. His eyes are fixed on her as she looks across, but he withdraws them instantly and turns to Monsieur Houlard.

Marie bites her pretty red under-lip: she can hardly keep from crying: "If we were alone and he scolded me, I would not mind; but he has no right to frown at me before the whole town. It is enough to compromise me. It will be said presently that I am a bold girl, while I only amuse myself, and never move a step from my stall to speak to any one. It is too bad!"

She gulps down a lump in her throat, and gives Nicolas Marais a smile that makes the clockmaker long to knock his rival's head against the gray buttress of the old church.

"Sentinels!" Elise Lesage laughs. "Is Marie afraid, then, that some one will steal her?"

"Marie is afraid of nothing, Mademoiselle Lesage." The little beauty is glad to be able to vent her vexation on some one. "What right has she to call me Marie?" she says to Nicolas in a very audible under-tone.

Mademoiselle's black eyes close till they look like lines: Marie does not see her face, but Nicolas Marais shivers, he hardly knows why.

A restraint has come over the merry trio, and Nicolas abhors restraint. "Tiens!" he says carelessly, "there is a fresh bevy of basket-women, Mam'selle Lesage."

Elise darts off like a greyhound, and Marie forgets her vexation and laughs out merrily at Nicolas's ruse: "She is such a busybody!" The girl glances across to see what has become of Léon: he is talking to Mademoiselle Lesage.

Alphonse Poiseau has kept silence, but he has observed. "I should not like to offend mam'selle," he says, "her eyes are so like a snake's."

II.

Market has come and gone again. Marie Famette was not happy as she went home last Saturday, but to-day her heart aches sorely as she goes along the dusty road to St. Gertrude. Last Saturday was the first market-day this year that Léon Roussel has not helped her into her cart and taken a friendly leave of her; but he disappeared before market was over, and to-day he was not there at all.

"And he might have walked home with me!" Tears are in poor little Marie's eyes. Léon Roussel has seemed her own special property, and he has not been to her mother's house for a fortnight. "And if he had been at market to-day, he would have been content with me: poor Nicolas must be ill indeed to stay away from market. Ma foi! I have been dull alone. Elise Lesage was civil, for a wonder: I hope she will give old Marais's note safely to his nephew. I wonder why she goes to see Nicolas?"

As she says the word a strange foreboding seizes Marie: she cannot tell what causes it, but her old dislike to Elise rises up, mingled with a kind of fear. "I ought to have given Nicolas the note myself; and yet--"

The road is very long and very dusty to-day: it is never an interesting way out of Aubette, except that being cut on the hillside it is raised high, the little river meandering through the osier meadows on the left, and also commands a fine view of the beautiful old church. But Marie does not turn back to look at the church: her heart is too heavy to take interest in anything out of herself. She has left the cart behind to bring out crockery and some new chairs which she has purchased for her mother, and she wishes she had stayed in Aubette till her cargo was packed. All at once a new thought comes, and her eyes brighten. A wood clothes the hilly side of the road, but on the left there is a steep descent into the valley, and the road is bordered either by scattered cottages or by an irregular hawthorn hedge. A little way on there is a gap in this hedge, and looking down there is a long steep flight of steps with wooden edges. At the foot stands a good-sized house divided now into several cottages. The walls are half-timbered with wood set crosswise in the plaster between two straight rows. Ladders, iron hoops and a bird-cage hang against the wall, and over the door is a wooden shelf with scarlet geraniums. There is a desolate garden divided into three by a criss-cross fence and a hedge, and over the last a huge orange citrouille has clambered and lies perched on the top.

Marie knows that Nicolas Marais sometimes lodges in one of the cottages, but she knows too that the property belongs to Léon Roussel, and that he lives close by. A blush comes to the girl's cheeks: she may see Léon there. She stops and looks down: Elise Lesage is coming out of the doorway, but she is talking over her shoulder to some one behind her. Marie sees her put her fingers into one of the brown holland pockets, pull out a note and give it to her companion.

Marie draws a deep breath: "How I wronged her! Ever since I gave her that note I have felt anxious and troubled. She seems so spiteful to me that I feared she might somehow get me into trouble with it, and yet I don't know how."

There were footsteps coming along the road, but Marie did not look round: in the quick revulsion of feeling toward Elise she was eager to make atonement. She leaned on the hand-rail that went down the steps, waiting for Mademoiselle Lesage: if she had listened she would have noticed that the footsteps had come nearer and had suddenly ceased.

Nicolas Marais came forward out of the cottage, and then Elise looked up and saw Marie. She smiled and nodded. "I am coming," she called up in her rasping voice; and she did seem in high haste to get to Marie Famette, but Marie saw that she looked beyond her at some one or something else. The girl looked over her shoulder, and there was Léon Roussel, but he did not care to look at her. His eyes were fixed sternly on Nicolas Marais, but Nicolas did not seem to care for his employer's anger: he was smiling rapturously up at Marie, and as she now looked at him he first kissed his hand and then put the note to his lips and kissed it twice.

Marie grew crimson. Elise, who had just reached the top of the steps, laughed, and Léon Roussel stood an instant pale and defiant, and then turned back toward Aubette.

"Stay, stay, Monsieur Léon!" Elise darted after him; then, stopping suddenly, she nodded back at Marie: "Stop and talk to Nicolas, mon enfant: I will make it all right for you with Monsieur Roussel;" and she hurried on in pursuit.

But Marie was too angry with Nicolas to give him even a moment: "How dare he kiss his hand to me? And oh, Léon will think that I wrote that note to him, and how can I ever tell him the truth? Will Elise Lesage tell him?"

She had just a faint hope; and then she reproached herself. Why should not Mademoiselle Lesage tell the truth? She was cross and spiteful, but then, poor thing! she was old and ugly. "And it may be," Marie thought, "that one is not half thankful enough for one's gifts, and that it is very irritating to be plain. It is Alphonse Poiseau who has made me think evil of Elise, and one should not cherish evil thoughts."

Marie went home happier and lighter-hearted: that little glimpse of Léon had quieted the sore longing at her heart, and at first the joy of having seen him made her dwell less on his stern looks and his avoidance of herself.

She came to the broad grassed turning that leads off the main road to St. Gertrude. A saddled donkey was grazing on one side, and on the other an old woman sat on a stone post. She jumped up when she saw Marie. She had looked tall as she sat: she was as broad as she was long now she stood erect in her dark striped gown and black jacket, and white cap with its plain border and lappets pinned together over her forehead.

"Well, well, well!" She spoke in a short bustling voice--a voice that would have been cheering if it had been less restless. "Hast thou then seen Léon Roussel, Marie? Hast thou learned the reason of his absence?"

Marie's tender, sweet look vanished: she tossed her pretty head and pouted: "Léon was not at the market, but I saw him as I came home; only he was not close to me, so we did not speak."

"Didst thou see that vaurien Nicolas?"

"Yes, I saw him."

Marie blushed, and her mother burst out into angry words: "Foolish, trifling child that thou art! thou lovest that black-eyed gypsy boy; and for him, the idle vagabond, thou hast flung away the best _parti_ in Aubette. Ciel! what do I say? In Bolbec itself there is no one with better prospects than Léon Roussel." Madame Famette always failed in managing her daughter.

Marie smiled and kept down her indignation. "I hardly know that," she said: "old Marais will make Nicolas his heir, and there is no saying how rich a miser is." She crossed the road, caught the donkey by the bridle, and held him ready for her mother to mount.

Madame Famette went on grumbling, but Mouton the donkey soon drew her anger on himself; and by the time the three reached the triangle of gray, half-timbered cottages which surround the old church of St. Gertrude, the easy, sieve-like nature of the woman had recovered from its vexation.

"Holà, Jeanne, Jeanne! run there and take Mouton from Mam'selle Marie, who is tired with the market. Come, thou, mon cher, and tell me the news." Madame Famette rolled off her donkey, and then rolled on into the house.

III.

Marie Famette was ill--much too ill to go to market.

"I will go. Do not vex thyself, my child, and I will see our good doctor and bring thee back a tisane." The bustling woman, with her blue eyes and light eyelashes, bent down and kissed Marie's forehead, and then departed.

"A tisane!" The bright blue eyes were so dull and languid now, half closed by the heavy white eyelids. "I wonder if even Doctor Guéroult is wise enough to cure the heart when it aches like mine? Ah, Léon, I did not think you could be so hard, so cruel; and how could he know, how could he see into my heart, while I stood laughing so foolishly with Nicolas and Monsieur Poiseau? If Elise Lesage had not teased me about Léon, it might have been different, but I could not let her think I cared for him after what she said." She leaned back her head and cried bitterly.

Madame Famette was more serious than usual on her way to the market. Matters were getting tangled, she thought. Léon Roussel had begun to be a regular Sunday visitor at the cottage, and now three weeks and more had gone by and he had not come; and a gossip who had walked home from church with her overnight had told Madame Famette that Mam'selle Lesage was going to marry a Monsieur Roussel: whether it was Léon or a Monsieur Roussel of some other place than Aubette her gossip could not affirm; and in this uncertainty the mother's heart was troubled. She was very proud of Marie's beauty and graceful ways, and she had thought it a just tribute when the young timber-merchant had asked her permission to call at the cottage; and now, just when she had been expecting that his aunt, La Mère Thérèse, the superior of the Convent du Sacré Coeur in Aubette, would send for her in order that the demand for her daughter's hand and the preliminaries of the marriage might be settled, had come first Léon Roussel's strange absence and the visits of Nicolas Marais, and now the gossip about Elise Lesage.

"I will know the right of it to-day," Madame Famette thinks, and she lashes out at Mouton in an unusual fashion.

The first customer at her stall is Madame Houlard, the wife of the tailor and town councillor. "How is Marie?" she says: "the market does not seem itself without Marie Famette."

Madame Famette smiles, but she sighs too: "My poor little girl is ill;" and then her eyes rove round the market, and fix on Mademoiselle Lesage bustling in and out among her clients. "Have you then heard that Elise Lesage is to be married?" she says in a low, cautious voice.

Madame Houlard's flat, good-tempered face grows troubled: "Ah yes, I have heard some talk; and listen to that noisy fellow;" then she points to Floris Marceau, who is gesticulating and vehement as usual.

She is surprised to find her arm tightly grasped by the large hand of the fruit-seller: "Madame Houlard, tell me the truth: who is to marry with Elise Lesage?"

Madame Houlard leads a very tranquil life: her husband is the most placid man in Aubette, and she has never had any children to disturb the calm of existence. She is ruffled and shocked by Madame Famette's vehemence. She bridles and releases her plump arm: "Ma foi, my friend! what will you? Gossip comes, and gossip goes. I believe all I hear--that is but convenable--but then, look you, I am quite as willing to believe in the contradiction which so frequently follows. One should never excite one's self about anything: be sure of this, my friend, it is bad for the nerves. What is salsify a bundle to-day?"

Madame Famette, as has been said, has a sieve-like nature with regard to the passing away of wrath, but still her anger is easily roused. "It would be simpler to tell me what you have heard," she says in a very snappish accent. "When I want a lecture I can get it from monsieur le curé."

Madame Houlard had felt unwilling to tell her news, but this aggravating sentence goaded it out of her mouth: "It is to Monsieur Roussel, the timber-merchant, that Elise Lesage is to be married: see, he is talking to her now." There is a slight tone of satisfaction in Madame Houlard's smooth voice, and yet in her heart she is sorry for her friend's disappointment. All the market-place of Aubette had given Léon Roussel to the charming Marie.

"Léon Roussel! Why, she is as old as he is--older; and, ma foi! how ugly! and her parents--no one knows where they came from; and she--she is nothing but a money-grubber."

The day was tedious to Madame Famette. She tried to speak to Léon, but he avoided her with a distant bow. There was not even Alphonse Poiseau to help her: only little Pierre Trotin came and carried her baskets to the donkey-cart. She called at the doctor's house, but she could not see him. Madame Famette's heart had not been so heavy since her husband died. "It is that serpent"--she wiped her eyes on a huge blue-and-yellow pocket handkerchief--"who has done it all; and my poor unsuspecting child has flirted with Nicolas, and made the way easy. Ciel! what do I know? It is possible that Marie loves Nicolas, and is willing to throw herself away on a vaurien with a pair of dark eyes; and the news will not grieve her as it has grieved me."

She met her servant Jeanne at the entrance of the road, and gave up the donkey-cart to her care. Then she went on sorrowfully and silently to find Marie. The door stood ajar, just as she had left it. She went in more quietly than usual, but Marie heard her. The girl sat just where her mother had left her: the loaf of bread lay untouched. It was plain that Marie had gone without breakfast. Her face was very pale, and her eyes fixed strainingly on her mother, but she did not speak.

Madame Famette's vexation had made her cross, and Marie's pale face increased her trouble: "How naughty thou art then, Marie! I set thee a knife and a plate: thou hadst but to stretch out thy hand. Ciel! but the market tires!" She cut a slice of bread for her daughter, and then she seated herself.

"Mother"--Marie bent forward and shaded her eyes with her hand--"didst thou see Léon Roussel?"

Madame's shoulders went up to her ears in a heave of disgust: "Thou mayest as well know it, Marie: Léon Roussel is promised to Elise Lesage, and they were together in the market. See what thy folly has caused!"

But Marie scarcely heard her mother's reproaches. The blood flew up to her face, and then it left her paler than before. She bent lower--lower yet, until she overbalanced and fell like a crushed lily at her mother's feet.

IV.

"How is Marie Famette?" Monsieur Houlard the tailor asks of Monsieur Guéroult the doctor of Aubette, as he meets him hurrying through the Rue de la Boucherie.

"She is better, the poor child! but she must be careful this winter." Then, seeing Houlard look anxious, the good doctor says, "But she is so far better that I have discontinued my visits: I have given Marie leave to come to Aubette."

"That is good news," says Houlard as the doctor shoots past him, and the tailor tells the next person he meets that Marie Famette is as well as ever, and is coming to market as usual.

It is Léon Roussel to whom he tells this, and Monsieur Houlard is pained at the young man's want of interest.

"One would have thought," he says to his wife when he reaches his shop, "that Roussel was displeased with Marie for recovering her health."

"Perhaps he thinks she will make a fool of herself, now she is well again, by marrying Nicolas Marais: I hear they are lovers."

"It is a pity," says the dutiful husband. "Girls should not choose for themselves. You did not, my dear, and that is why our life has gone so easily."

But Marie is not really as strong as the doctor pronounces her to be: her cheeks are hollow, and the color on them is feverish and uncertain. If she could get away from home she would have more chance of mending. Madame Famette's sorrow at her daughter's changed looks expands itself in querulous remonstrance on the folly of flirting and on the good-for-nothing qualities of Nicolas Marais. Nicolas has come to inquire for Marie, but Madame Famette has received him so uncourteously that the poor fellow contents himself with hovering about on the chance of meeting Marie alone. But he never sees her, although the rumor grows strong in St. Gertrude, and is wafted on to Aubette, that Nicolas and Marie will be married as soon as she gets well enough to see about wedding-clothes.

It is the beginning of October, a bright clear morning. The red and yellow leaves come swiftly to the ground with a sudden snap from the twigs that held them: the rabbits move about briskly, and a couple of field-mice in search of winter stores run across the road nearly under Marie's feet. Marie's cheeks are rosy with the fresh, crisp air, but she does not look gay or happy. Life seems to have got into a hard knot which the poor little girl finds no power to untie. Market-day used to be a fête to Marie, but to-day she considers it a penance to be sent in to Aubette. She is not going to hold her stall--ah no, she is not nearly strong enough for such a task--but Madame Famette has a severe attack of rheumatism, and Jeanne cannot be trusted to buy the weekly provision of groceries. Marie shrinks as she goes along at the thought of meeting Léon Roussel. There is another thought, which she will not face--that it is possible Léon and Elise Lesage will be together in the market-place. "I need not go into the Grande Place at all," the poor child says. "I can get all I want in the Rue des Bons Enfants;" and she goes there when she reaches Aubette.

But Marie has miscalculated her strength. She grows suddenly so white that Monsieur le Blanc, the épicier of the Rue des Bons Enfants, takes her into his daughter's room and makes her lie down on the little sofa. Marie lies there with widely-opened eyes, wondering how she shall get back to St. Gertrude.

"You are to lie still till Thérèse comes back from market," the old man says, "and then she will arrange about your going home."

Marie lies gazing dreamily at the blue-papered ceiling. "I used to think Thérèse le Blanc a cross old maid," she ponders: "shall I be a cross old maid too?" And then the pale, stricken girl holds up her thin hand and sighs: "I shall not be old: I shall die soon. Poor mother! she will forgive Nicolas when I am gone away."

There is a bustle in the shop, but Marie does not heed it. She smiles when Thérèse comes in, but she is too weak to talk--too weak to make any objection when she hears that a farmer who lives some miles beyond St. Gertrude has undertaken to convey her in his huge green-hooded wagon as far as the cross-road.

Thérèse stands over her while she eats a piece of bread and drinks a glass of wine, and then the farmer, a stout old Norman in a gray blouse, helps her into the back of the wagon, and makes a resting-place for her on some of the hay still left unsold, under the lofty arched roof.

V.

"Get up my friend, get up: you will reach Yvetôt sooner if I give you a lift than if you wait. The diligence does not leave Aubette till six o'clock, remember, and my old horses get over the ground surely if not quickly."

Marie rouses from a sort of doze, but she cannot see the farmer or the wayfarer to whom he speaks: a pile of new fruit-baskets fills up the middle of the huge vehicle, and makes a wall between Marie and the driving-seat.

"Well, mon gars, it is a long time since I saw you, and the town-gossip of Aubette tells me more of your affairs than you ever condescend to inform your cousin of. Your mother was different, Léon. Dame! I could never pass her door after your father died but she would stop my wagon and ask me for just five minutes' counsel. But you young ones are all alike: the world has got a new pivot, it seems, for this generation, and it will move round more easily when we graybeards are all kicked out."

"I don't think so, for one." Marie had known she must hear Léon Roussel's voice, and yet her heart throbbed at his first words. "But, my cousin, what is the news that thou hast learned about me in Aubette?"

"Well, the news varies: sometimes I hear thee coupled with one girl, and then again with another, till I do not know what to think, Léon. I am afraid thou art fickle."

There was a pause. Marie raised herself on one elbow and listened breathlessly: it never came to her mind that she was listening to talk not intended for her ears.

"Well, man"--the farmer seemed nettled--"why not speak out and say thou art promised to old Lesage's daughter?"

"Because I am not promised to her."

Marie stifled a sob. It seemed as if her heart could not much longer hold in its agitation, she longed so intensely for the farmer's next question and for Léon's answer.

"Art thou promised to the beauty of the market, the little Marie?"

There was no pause this time. Léon's words came out rapidly with bitter emphasis: "Marie Famette is going to marry Marais of Vatteville."

"Marry! Ma foi! I hear the girl is very ill. I forget--there is a sick girl in the wagon now."

It seemed to the listener that Léon spoke heedless of the farmer's last words: "Once again the town-gossip has deceived you, Michel. I heard a week ago, and Houlard had just learned it from the Doctor Guéroult, that Marie Famette is as well and gay as ever. I believe she has come back to the market."

No reply. The silence that followed oppressed Marie: a sense of guilt stole over her. It was not likely that old Michel Roussel knew who she was when he helped her into the wagon: she remembered now that Léon had told her of his rich cousin at Yvetôt; she knew she must get out soon, and then Léon would see her and know that she had heard him. She felt sick with shame. Would it not have been more honest to have betrayed her presence? It was too late now. "And I could not--I have not the courage." Marie crouched closer under the wall of baskets.

Suddenly, Léon spoke. "Well, Michel, I will get out here," he said.

The wagon stopped. Marie heard farewells exchanged, and then on they jogged again to St. Gertrude.

Marie's heart was suddenly stilled: its painful throbbing and fluttering had subsided--it sank like lead. Léon was gone, and she had flung away her only chance of telling him that Nicolas Marais never had been--never could be--more to her than a friend.

"Oh what a fool I am! I may often see him, but how can I say this? And just now the way was open!"

When Farmer Roussel stopped the wagon again, and came round to the back to help Marie out, he found her sobbing bitterly.

"Here we are at St. Gertrude, but--Ma foi! but this is childish, ma belle," he said kindly, "to go spoiling your pretty eyes because you feel ill. Courage! you will soon be well if you eat and drink and keep a light heart." He helped her down tenderly, and shook both her hands in his before he let her go. "Well," he said as he rolled up on to the seat, "I wonder I had not asked for a kiss. She is rarely pretty, poor child!"

Marie stood still just where she had found her mother seated on that evening which it seemed to the girl had begun all her misery; but till now through all there had been hope--the hope given by disbelief in Léon's engagement to Elise Lesage. Now there was the sad, terrible certainty that Léon believed her false. Marie knew that though she had never pledged faith, still her eyes had shown Léon feelings which no other man had seen in them. For a moment she felt nerved to a kind of desperation: she would go and seek Léon, and tell him the truth that some one had set on foot this false report of her promise to Nicolas Marais. She turned again toward the high-road, and then her heart sank. How could she seek Léon? He did not love her, and if she made this confession would it not be a tacit owning of love for himself? The weight at her heart seemed to burden her limbs: she dragged on toward home wearily and slowly.

The road turns suddenly into St. Gertrude, and takes a breathing-space at a sharp angle with a breadth of grass, bordered by a clump of nut trees. Before Marie reached the nut trees she saw Léon Roussel standing beside them. She stopped, but he had been waiting for her coming: he came forward to meet her.

When he saw her face he looked grieved, but he spoke very coldly: "I have been to your cottage to inquire for you"--he raised his hat, but he made no effort to take her hand--"and then I heard you were expected home from Aubette. I did not know how ill you had been till to-day, Marie: I had been told you were quite recovered."

His cold, hard manner wounded her: "Oh, I am better, thank you;" but as she spoke her sight grew dizzy: she would have fallen if Léon had not caught her in his arms. She felt that he clasped her closely for an instant, and then he loosed his hold.

"Thank you!" She freed herself. "I am better. I will go home now, Monsieur Roussel."

He took off his hat mechanically, and Marie turned toward St. Gertrude.

But she did not move: she had no power to go forward. An impulse stronger than her will was holding her. She looked round: Léon had not moved--he stood with his eyes fixed on the ground.

"I must tell you something," she said. Léon started: he had never heard Marie speak in such a humble tone. "I was in the wagon just now, and I listened to your talk with Monsieur Michel." Her cheeks grew crimson. "But, Monsieur Roussel, you are in error about me. Nicolas Marais is my friend"--Léon's face grew so stern that her eyes drooped and her voice faltered--"but he will never be more to me. He has always been my friend."

Léon came close to her and took her hand: "Marie"--his voice was so harsh and severe that she shrunk from him--"you must tell the truth, and you must not be angry if I doubt you. My child, did I not see Nicolas kiss the letter you sent him, and look at you as he kissed it?"

"Did Elise Lesage tell you I wrote that letter?" But Marie's fear had left her. She smiled up at her lover, once more his own arch, bright Marie: "How dared you believe her, Léon? I have a great mind not to tell you the truth."

But Léon Roussel was satisfied, for while she spoke his arm had folded round her again, and he was much too happy to trouble himself about Nicolas Marais.

* * * * *

Léon and Marie are to be married in November, and Mam'selle Lesage has been so indisposed that for two consecutive Saturdays she has sent a deputy to collect sous in the market of Aubette.

KATHARINE S. MACQUOID.

SALMON FISHING IN CANADA.

Fifty years ago, when the manners and habits of the Americans were very different from what they now are, there lived in Boston two gentlemen so far in advance of their age as to devote much time to shooting and fishing. These pursuits were denounced by the Puritans and their descendants as a sinful waste of time, and there is a letter extant from one of the early Massachusetts governors, in which he reproaches himself for indulging in "fowling," the rather because, as he confesses, he failed to get any game. These two bold Bostonians were wont to go to Scotland for salmon-fishing, having a belief that the salmon of the American rivers were too uncultivated in their taste to rise at a fly. However this may have been in 1820, the salmon of the Dominion are to-day as open to the attractions of a well-tied combination of feathers and pig's-wool, as those of the rivers of Norway or Scotland; and as, under the protection which the Canadian rivers now enjoy, the fish are becoming plentiful, sport is offered in the numerous streams which flow into the St. Lawrence, the Bays of Chaleur and Miramichi, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, probably superior to any now to be found elsewhere.

Having last year paid a visit to one of these beautiful rivers, I propose to give an account of my introduction to the art and mystery of salmon-fishing, to the end that other anglers, whose exploits have hitherto been confined to the capture of a pound trout or a four-pound pickerel, may know the joy of feeling the rush of a twenty-pound salmon fresh run from the sea--the most brilliant, active and vigorous of the finny tribes, the king of the river, using the term in its original sense--the strongest, the ablest, the most cunning. A late writer on English field-sports says: "I assert that there is no single moment with horse or gun into which is concentrated such a thrill of hope, fear, expectation and exultation as that of the rise and successful striking of a heavy salmon."

And first, let me say something of the system of protection to these fisheries adopted by the Canadian government, which renders this sport possible. Finding that under the constant slaughter of salmon and trout, by the Indians with spears and by the whites with nets, the fish were becoming not only scarce, but in danger of extinction, the government interfered, and a few years ago passed laws the effects of which are already apparent. Certainly, a paternal government is sometimes a good thing. On our side the line a ring of wealthy men, with a large capital in nets, seines, pounds, etc., will, as has been seen in Rhode Island, depopulate a coast in a few years of its food-fishes, leaving nothing for increase; and when the poor fishermen, whose living depends on these free gifts of God, ask for protection from the legislature, the ring is too powerful, one of its members being perhaps governor of the State.

In the year 1858 the colonial government resumed possession of all the salmon and sea-trout fisheries in Lower Canada, and after the enactment of a protective law offered them for lease by public tender. A list is given of sixty-seven salmon rivers which flow into the St. Lawrence and the Saguenay, and of nine which flow into the Bay of Chaleur. There are also tributaries of these, making over one hundred rivers which by this time contain salmon, and many of them in great abundance. Licenses are granted by the government for rod-fishing in these rivers on payment of sums ranging from one hundred to five hundred dollars the season for a river, according to its size, accessibility, etc. These rivers are generally taken by parties of anglers, but of late I learn that licenses for single rods have been granted, so that all may be accommodated. Applications for a river or part of one can be made to Mr. William F. Whitcher of Ottawa, who is at the head of the Fisheries Department. Our party of four persons had obtained, through the courtesy of Messrs. Brydges and Fleming of the Intercolonial Railway of Canada, the upper part of the Restigouche, a river flowing into the Bay of Chaleur, and one of the best in the Dominion. Three of us had never killed a salmon, though we were familiar with other kinds of fishing. We had, however, for teacher one who for fifty years had been a salmon-fisher--first as a boy in Ireland, and since that for many years in Canada, in most of whose rivers he had killed salmon. As an angler he was a thorough artist, as a woodsman he was an expert, and as a companion he was most agreeable. Among the Indians, who have the habit of naming every person from some personal trait, he was known as "the Kingfisher," and by that name I shall call him. The second of our party, who procured the right of fishing the Restigouche, and made up the party, I shall call Rodman, which suits him both as fisherman and in his professional character of engineer. The third, being a tall man of rather military aspect, we knew as "the Colonel;" and the fourth, who writes this narrative, shall be called "the Scribe."

Behold us, then, at Quebec in the last week of June, making our preparations--laying in stores for camping out, and buying fishing-tackle, which for this kind of sport is best procured in Canada. On the 25th of June our thirty-one packages were on board the steamer Miramichi, piled on the upper deck, with many more of the same appearance--tents, buffalo robes, camp-chests, salmon-rods and gaff-handles--belonging to other parties bound on the same errand as ourselves. Three were British officers going to the Upsalquitch, men of the long-whiskered, Dundreary type, who soon let us know with many haw-haws that they had fished in Norway, and had killed salmon on the estate of my Lord Knowswho in Scotland, while guests of that nobleman. There were two Londoners in full suits of tweed, with Glengarry bonnets, who were bound to the Cascapediac: they tried to imitate the bearing of the military men; and why not? As Thackeray says, "Am I not a snob and a brother?" There was a party of Americans on their way to a Gaspé river--veteran anglers, who had frequented these rivers for some years. The rest of the company was made up of Canadians from Montreal and Quebec, many of them pleasure-seekers--stout elderly men, with equally full-fed, comfortable-looking wives, and rosy-faced daughters with straight, slender figures, by and by to emulate the rounded proportions of their mammas. The young men were mostly equipped with white canvas shoes and veils twisted round their hats--for what purpose I have not been able to discover, but it seems to be the correct thing for the Canadian tourist.

Four hundred and fifty miles from Quebec we reach the entrance of Gaspé Bay, at the head of which fine sheet of water, in a landlocked harbor, stands the town of Gaspé, distinguished as the place where Jacques Cartier landed in 1534. It is now a great fishing-station, employing thousands of men along the coast in the cod-fishery. Here are fine scenery, clear bracing air, good sea-bathing, excellent salmon- and trout-fishing and a comfortable hotel. What more can a well-regulated mind desire? Into Gaspé Bay flow the Dartmouth, the York and the St. John--good salmon-rivers, while both they and the smaller streams abound with sea-trout and brook-trout. Thirty miles south of Gaspé is the little town of Perce, also a fishing-station. Near this stands a rock of red sandstone, five hundred feet long and three hundred high, with an open arch leading through it, under which a boat can pass. It stands a mile from the shore in deep water, and its top affords a secure breeding-place for hundreds of sea-fowl.

South of Gaspé Bay we pass the mouths of the Bonaventure and the Grand and Little Cascapediac--rivers well stocked with salmon--and reach Dalhousie on the Bay of Chaleur about midnight on the 28th. We land in a small boat in the darkness, and soon find ourselves at the comfortable tavern of William Murphy, where we breakfast the next morning on salmon-trout and wild strawberries. The town contains about six hundred inhabitants, and has a pleasant seat along the bay. Its principal industry seems to be lumber, or deals, which mean three-inch plank, in which shape most of the pine and spruce exported from the Dominion find their way to England. Here they also put up salmon and lobsters for the American market--America meaning the United States. Two steamers touch here weekly, and there is a daily mail and telegraphic communication with the outside world. A few tourists, mostly from Montreal and Quebec, fill two or three small boarding-houses.

The next morning we started in wagons for Matapedia, thirty miles up the river, where we expected to secure canoes and Indians for our trip to the upper waters of the Restigouche. Our road was good, following a terrace about fifty feet above the river, which here is about a mile in width, and flows placidly through a wide valley, with high hills on both sides covered with a growth of spruce and cedar. Fifteen miles above Dalhousie, at the head of navigation for large vessels, lies the village of Campbellton. Here the character of the river changes: it becomes more narrow and rapid, the hills come down closer to the shore, and it assumes the features of a true salmon-river. It was formerly one of the most famous in the provinces, and the late Robert Christie, for many years member for Gaspé, used to take two thousand tierces of salmon annually from the Restigouche.

Here we fall in with the Intercolonial Railway, which has its western terminus at Rivière du Loup, below Quebec, and its eastern at Halifax. The line is to cross the river at Matapedia on an iron bridge, and follow down the valley. About 1 P. M. we crossed the ferry in a row-boat, just below Fraser's hotel. The river is deep, swift and very clear, with a rocky bank, from which they are getting out stone for the abutments of the bridge. This bridge, and another similar one where the line crosses the Miramichi, are building at Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, and we saw at Campbellton a large bark discharging her cargo, consisting of the bridge-work ready to set up.

We arrived at Fraser's in time to partake of a fine boiled salmon, and we observe a constant improvement in this fish. Those in Montreal were better than those in the States; those in Quebec still better; those we ate on board the Gulf steamer a shade finer still. At Dalbousie we thought that salmon had reached perfection, but were undeceived by those upon Fraser's table, which far surpassed all that we had yet tasted in succulence and flavor.

We had hoped to go up the river on the morrow, Saturday, but found it was a great festival of the Catholic Church, and the Indians would not start till Monday. Great was the indignation of the British officers who were preparing to go up the other river. To be delayed by the religious scruples of an Indian was too absurd. But even the "superior race" had to submit. So the next day we all went down the river trout-fishing.

I went about two miles to the "flat lands," and fished some pretty pools and rapids: the day was very bright and hot, so that I thought the trout would not rise to a fly, and I put on a small spoon, which I dropped into the rapids at the end of a long rod. After catching three or four they grew suspicious, and I changed my lure for an artificial minnow, and with it I had better success, though I have often tried it in Western trout-streams ineffectually. I got about a dozen, from four ounces to a pound weight: they were sea-trout, _Salmo Canadensis_, and the first of that species that I ever saw. They are handsome and active fish, lighter in color than the brook-trout, with silvery sides and belly. The flesh is red like a salmon, and is of higher flavor, I think, than that of _Salmo fontinalis_. My companions, Rodman and Kingfisher, both used the fly, and got, I think, more fish than I did.

The next day, June 30th, was Sunday, and the law of the Dominion prohibits fishing on that day. The weather was intensely hot, and we stayed in the house and enjoyed the fine scenery all about us. At night a heavy thunder-storm cooled the air for our next day's journey.

_July 1._ Our canoes and Indians arrived this morning about ten o'clock, and instead of being shepherds of the forest, with their blankets tied with yellow strings, they had no blankets at all, but wore coats and trowsers--yea, even boots, which I had always been told had no business in a canoe. There were four bark canoes and eight Mic-macs--one boat for each of us--and as we had a large amount of baggage and provisions, it was thought best to send off the canoes with these, while we went in wagons across a great bend of the river to the house of Mr. John Mowatt, the river overseer. We crossed the Matapediac in a dug-out: this is a tributary of the Restigouche, which comes in at Fraser's. On the other side we found wagons which took us to Mowatt's, seven miles over the hills, arriving at 4 P. M. The canoes arrived about sunset, having come twelve miles since noon against a strong current.

_July 2._ Starting in the morning at sunrise, the canoes took us six miles by seven o'clock, when we stopped in the woods for breakfast. The river has a very strong current, and from two to three miles an hour is all that can be done against it with setting-poles when there is a heavy load in the canoe. In places the water was too shallow even for a bark, and the men stepped over-board and lifted her along. The Restigouche is a beautiful river, with few islands or obstructions of any kind: the water is perfectly transparent, and very cold--the chosen haunt of the salmon. We see few houses or farms: rounded hills, from three to nine hundred feet high, border the stream, leaving only a narrow strip of beach, which is free from bushes or fallen trees. These are probably all swept away by the ice in the spring freshets. The hills somewhat resemble those on the Upper Mississippi, except that here there are none of those cliffs of yellow limestone which are remarkable on the great river of the West. About eight miles farther on we stopped for dinner near a cold brook, from which I took half a dozen trout. In the afternoon we proceeded five or six miles, and then camped for the night upon a rocky beach, and, though somewhat annoyed by the sand-flies, we slept well upon our beds of spruce boughs.

_July 3._ Broke camp at 5 A. M., and went up six miles to a place called Tom's Brook, where we breakfasted. Here I killed a dozen trout with the spoon. Six miles from Tom's Brook we came to the first salmon-pool, of which there were six in the portion of the river assigned to us--viz.: First, Big Cross Pool; second, Lower Indian-house Pool; third, Upper Indian-house Pool; fourth, Patapediac Pool, called by the Indians Paddypajaw; fifth, Red Bank Pool; sixth, Little Cross Pool. These pools are the places where the salmon rest in their journey from the sea to the headwaters of the river. They are usually in spots where there is a strong but not violent current, perhaps six or eight feet deep, running off to shoal water on one side of the river. The pools have been found by the Indians, who search for them by night with torches, which show the fish as they lie near the bottom, and they do not differ materially in appearance from other parts of the river where no salmon are to be found.

The salmon is what is called _anadromous_--that is, though an inhabitant of the ocean for most of the year, it ascends the fresh-water rivers in summer to spawn. In this function it is guided by curious instincts. The female deposits her eggs in swift shallow water at the heads of streams, in trenches dug by herself and the male fish in the gravelly bottom; but it must not be fresh gravel: it must have been exposed to the action of water for at least two years, or they will have none of it; and if a freshet should bring new gravel from the banks, they will abandon the place and seek for new spawning-grounds. It is only when the salmon are resting in these pools that they will take a fly.

The first pool was at a point where the river made a short turn around a large rock: the current was swift, with a hole at the foot of the rapid perhaps twenty feet deep, with a rock bottom. Here our leader, Kingfisher, rigged his salmon-rod, put on two flies and began to cast. I trolled in the swift water as we proceeded, and with my spoon took a few small trout. A salmon rose to the fly of Kingfisher, but was not hooked; this was the first fish that we saw. (The term "fish" is always applied to the salmon by anglers: other inhabitants of the water are spoken of as "trout" or "bass;" a salmon is a "fish.") Although we had seen none before, our keen-eyed Indians had seen many as we came up the river.

We then went on to the Lower Indian-house Pool, two miles farther, and Kingfisher made a few casts; but raising no fish, we went up a mile farther to our camping-ground, an island between the two pools, having plenty of wood upon it, with a cold spring brook close by--an old and famous camping-place for salmon-fishers--and here we intended to make our permanent quarters. We had four tents--one to sleep in, fitted with mosquito-bars; one for an eating-tent, with canvas top and sides of netting: in it was a rough table and two benches, hewed out with an axe by one of our men. There was also a tent for storing provisions and for the cook, for we had brought with us a man for this important office. A fourth tent for the Indians, and a cooking-stove with camp-chests and equipage, completed our outfit, which all belonged to Kingfisher, and represented the results of many years' experience in camping out. The cooking-stove is made of sheet iron and packs in a box, and is one of the most valuable utensils in the woods.

It took the rest of the day to make the camp, and in the evening Kingfisher and the Colonel went in their canoe to the lower pool, and the former killed two salmon, weighing eighteen and twenty-two pounds. These, our first fish, were objects of much interest to us new hands. The Colonel took his first lesson in salmon-fishing, and thought he could do it himself.

_July 4._ We proposed to celebrate this day by each of us killing a salmon, but I thought it would be prudent first to go out with Kingfisher and see how he did it, before attempting it myself. So I got into his canoe, and the Indians paddled us to Upper Pool, within sight of our camp but for a bend in the river. Kingfisher had the canoe anchored within casting distance of the channel, and there, as he sat in the bottom of the boat, he made his casts with a nineteen-foot rod, first about twenty-five feet, and rapidly letting out more line he increased the length of his casts to sixty feet perhaps, the big salmon-flies falling lightly on the water, first across the channel to the right; then letting the current take the flies down to the end of the line, he drew them round to the left in a circle; then raising them slowly from the water, he repeated the process, thus fishing over all the water within his reach. Now the Indians raise the anchor and let the canoe drop down a few feet. At the first cast after this change of ground a bulge in the water showed where a salmon had risen at the fly and missed it. "We will rest him for five minutes," said Kingfisher, and lighted his pipe for a smoke. Then he changed his fly for a larger and more brilliant one, and at the first cast a big fish rolled over at the fly and went off with a rush, making the reel whiz.

"I've got him," said Kingfisher, calmly putting up his pipe and bringing his rod to a nearly perpendicular position, which threw a great strain on the mouth of the salmon from the spring of the rod. He ran about twenty-five yards, and then leaped six feet into the air. Kingfisher dropped the point of his rod as the fish leaped, and then raised it as the salmon went away with twenty yards more of line.

"Up anchor, Hughey: we must follow him." So they plied their paddles after the salmon, who was making down stream, Kingfisher reeling up his line as fast as possible. Up went the salmon again, striking at the line with his tail as he came down; but this trick failed, and he then sulked, by diving into the depths of the river and remaining there motionless for half an hour. Suddenly he rose and made for the heavy current, from which Kingfisher tried to steer him into the still water near the shore, where it was about three feet deep, and where he could be played with more safety. After about forty minutes' play the fish was coaxed alongside the canoe, evidently tired out and having lost his force and fury, when Hughey struck the gaff into him near the tail, and lifted him into the canoe, where he struggled very little, so nearly beaten was he.

"About nineteen pounds, I think," said Kingfisher, who from long experience could name the weight of a fish very correctly.

Returning to the spot where he had hooked the fish, Kingfisher after a few casts rose and hooked another, which he killed in twenty-five minutes--a fish of twelve pounds. After seeing the method of this artist I was presumptuous enough to suppose that I could do it also, and I determined to open the campaign the next day.

_July 5._ Bent on salmon-killing, I was off this morning at five, hoping to bring home a fish for breakfast. The Upper Indian-house Pool is for Rodman and me to-day, the others going to Patapedia, three miles above. Kingfisher fitted me out with a Castle Connell rod, quite light and pliable, with which he has killed many a fish; a click reel, which obliges the fish to use some force in getting out the line: of this I have one hundred yards of oiled silk, with a twelve-feet gut casting-line, to the end of which is looped a brilliant creature almost as large as a humming-bird--certainly the likeness of nothing inhabiting earth, air or water. Mike and Peter, my Indians, took me to the pool, and I began casting at the place where Kingfisher got his salmon yesterday, while Rodman took the upper end of the pool, which was three or four hundred yards in length. I had fished for trout in a bark canoe, and knew how crank a vessel it is; so I did not attempt to stand up and cast, but seated myself upon the middle cross-bar with my face turned down stream, and began to imitate the casting of Kingfisher as well as I could. I had fished but a few yards of water when the quick-eyed Peter cried, "Lameau!" which is Mic-mac for salmon. He had seen the rise of the fish, which I had not. And here I may observe that good eyes are necessary to make a salmon-fisher, and a near-sighted person like the Scribe can never greatly excel in this pursuit. All the salmon which I hooked fastened themselves: I had only this part in it, that I was the fool at one end of the rod. I waited five minutes, according to rule, and cast again. "Habet!" There can be no mistake this time: my eyes were good enough to see the savage rush with which he seized my fly and plunged with it down to the depths.

"Hold up your rod!" cries Peter, who saw that, taken by surprise, I was dropping the point of it. I raised it nearly upright, and this, with the friction of the reel, caused the fish, which had started to run after he felt the prick of the hook, to stop when he had gone half across the river, and make his leap or somersault.

"A twenty-pounder," said Mike.

When he leaped I ought to have dropped my point, so that he should not fall on the line, but I did nothing of the sort. I felt much as I once did in the woods of Wisconsin when a dozen deer suddenly jumped up from the long grass all about me, and I forgot that I had a gun in my hands. I had so much line out that, as it happened, no bad consequences followed, and the fish started for another run, at the end of which he made his leap, and coming down he struck my line with his tail, and was gone! Slowly and sadly I wound up my line, and found the gut broken close to the hook, and my beautiful "Fairy" vanished.

Then I looped on another insect phenomenon, and went on casting. Rodman, I perceived, was engaged with a salmon on the other bank. Presently I raise and hook another, but he directly shakes out the hook.

I move slowly down the pool, casting on each side--which I find is hard work for the back and shoulders--when, just opposite the big rock where Kingfisher raised his second fish yesterday, I feel a pluck at my fly and see a boil in the water. The robber runs away twenty yards and leaps, then turns short round and comes at me, as if to run down the canoe and drown us all. I wind up my line as fast as possible, but, alas! it comes in, yard after yard, so easily that I perceive all connection between the fish and me is at an end.

"He got slack line on you," said Peter.

By this time it was seven o'clock, and I returned home to breakfast with what appetite I had, a sadder if not a wiser man. Rodman brought in a nine-pound fish, and Kingfisher had three--thirteen, ten and twenty-one pounds. The Colonel had made a successful _début_ with a fifteen-pound fish.

As we sat at breakfast Rodman asked, "How many salmon did you ever kill in a day, Kingfisher?"

_Kingfisher._ "I once killed thirty-three in one day: that was in the Mingan, a North Shore river, where the fish are very numerous, but small--not over ten pounds on an average. I knew a man once to kill forty-two in a day there, but he had extra strong tackle, with double and treble gut, and being a big strong fellow he used to drag them out by main force."

_The Colonel._ "If he had played his fish as you do here, there would not have been time in the longest day to kill forty-two. You average half an hour to a salmon, which would have taken twenty-one hours for his day's work."

_Kingfisher._ "True enough, but those little fellows in the Mingan can be killed in ten or fifteen minutes."

_Rodman._ "And what was the longest time you ever spent in killing a salmon?"

_Kingfisher._ "Once fishing in the Moisie, where the fish are very large, I hooked a salmon at five in the morning and lost him at six in the evening: he was on for thirteen hours, but he sulked at the bottom most of the time, and I never saw him at all."

_Scribe._ "Perhaps it was no fish at all."

_Kingfisher._ "It might have been a seal, but Sir Edmund Head, who was with me, and I myself, thought it was a very large salmon and hooked foul, so that I could not drown him. I think from his play that it was a salmon: he ran many times round the pool, but swam deep, as heavy fish are apt to do. How do you like the cooking of this salmon?"

_Scribe._ "I think it is perfect. The salmon have been growing better ever since we entered the Dominion, but we have reached perfection now. Is this the Tweedside method?"

_Kingfisher._ "It is. Put your fish in boiling water, well salted, boil a minute to a pound, and when done serve it with some of the water it was boiled in for sauce. You can't improve a fresh-caught salmon with Worcestershire or Harvey."

The day proving very hot, we stayed in camp till evening, when Kingfisher and the others went to the nearest pool for salmon, and I went trout-fishing to the little rapids and took a dozen of moderate size. Kingfisher brought in four fish--seven, ten, seventeen and eighteen pounds; Rodman got two--twelve and sixteen pounds; the Colonel failed to secure one which he had hooked.

_July 6._ To-day Kingfisher and the Colonel take the Upper Indian-house Pool, and Rodman and I go to the Patapedia. We start at 4 A. M., so as to get the early fishing, always the best. It takes an hour to pole up the three miles, the current being very strong, and when we arrive the pool is yet white with the morning mist. It is a long smooth rapid, with a channel on one side running close to the high gravelly bank, evidently cut away by spring freshets. On the other side comes in a rushing brook or small river called the Patapedia. Rodman took the head of the pool, and I the middle ground. I fished down some fifty yards without moving anything, when, as I was bringing home my fly after a cast, it was taken by a good fish. Away he went with a wicked rush full forty yards, in spite of all I could do, then made a somersault, showing us his huge proportions. A second and a third time he leaped, and then darted away, I urging my men to follow with the canoe, which they did, but not quickly enough. This was a terribly strong fish: though I was giving him all the spring of the rod, I could not check him. When he stopped running he began to shake his head, or, as the English fishing-books say, "to jigger." In two minutes he jiggered out the hook and departed.

I had changed rods and lines to-day, having borrowed one from Rodman--a Montreal rod, larger and stiffer than the other: although heavier, I could cast better with it than with the Irish rod. Unluckily, there were only about seventy yards of line on the reel, and the next fish I hooked proved to be the most furious of all, for he first ran out forty yards of line, and before I could get much of it wound up again, he made another and a longer run, taking out all my line to the end, where it was tied to the reel: of course he broke loose, taking away my fly and two feet of casting-line. By this time the sun was high in the heavens, and we returned to camp--Rodman with a salmon of seventeen pounds and a grilse of five pounds.

A salmon has properly four stages of existence. The first is as a "parr," a small bright-looking fish, four or five inches long, with dark-colored bars across the sides and a row of red spots. It is always found in the fresh water, looks something like a trout, and will take a fly or bait eagerly. The second stage is when it puts on the silvery coat previous to going to sea for the first time: it is then called a "smolt," and is from six to eight inches long, still living in the river where it was hatched. In the third stage, after its return from the sea to its native river, it is called a "grilse," and weighs from three to six pounds. It can be distinguished from a salmon, even of the same size, by its forked tail (that of the salmon being square) and the slight adhesion of the scales. The grilse is wonderfully active and spirited, and will often give as much play as a salmon of three times his size. After the second visit of the fish to the sea he returns a salmon, mature, brilliant and vigorous, and increases in weight every time he revisits the ocean, where most of his food is found, consisting of small fish and crustacea.

As we dropped down the stream toward the camp we saw a squirrel swimming across the river. Paddling toward him, Peter reached out his pole, and the squirrel took refuge upon it and was lifted on board--a pretty little creature, gray and red, about half the size of the common gray squirrel of the States. He ran about the canoe so fearlessly that I think he must have been unacquainted with mankind. He skipped over us as if we had been logs, with his bead-like eyes almost starting from his head with astonishment, and then mounting the prow of the canoe,

On the bows, with tail erected, Sat the squirrel, Adjidaumo.

Presently we paddled toward the shore, and he jumped off and disappeared in the bushes, with a fine story to tell to his friends of having been ferried across by strange and friendly monsters. Kingfisher got eleven salmon to-day, and the Colonel one.

_July 7_ was Sunday, and the pools were rested, as well as ourselves, from the fatigues of the week. Kingfisher brought out his materials and tied a few flies, such as he thought would suit the river. This he does very neatly, and I think he belongs to the old school of anglers, who believe in a great variety of flies.

It may not perhaps be generally known that there are two schools among fly-fishers. The "formalists" or entomologists hold that the natural flies actually on the water should be studied and imitated by the fly-maker, down to the most minute particulars. This is the old theory, and whole libraries have been written to prove and illustrate it, from the _Boke of St. Albans_, written by the Dame Juliana Berners in 1486, down to the present day. The number of insects which we are directed to imitate is legion, and the materials necessary for their manufacture are of immense variety and difficult to procure. These teachers are the conservatives, who adhere to old tradition. On the other side are the "colorists," who think color everything, and form nothing: they are but a section, though an increasing one, of the fly-fishing community. Their theory is, that all that a fish can distinguish through the watery medium is the size and color of the fly. These are the radicals, and they go so far as to discard the thousand different flies described in the books, and confine themselves to half a dozen typical varieties, both in salmon- and trout-fishing. Where learned doctors disagree, I, for one, do not venture to decide; but when I remember that on some days no fly in my book would tempt the trout, and that at other times they would rise at any or all flies, it seems to me that the principal question is, Are the trout feeding or not? If they are, they will take almost anything; if not, the most skillful hand may fail of tempting them to rise. As to salmon, I think no one will pretend that the salmon-flies commonly used are like anything in Nature, and it is difficult to understand what the keen-eyed salmon takes them for. Until, then, we can put ourselves in the place of the salmon and see with his eyes, we must continue to evolve our flies from our own consciousness. My small experience seems to show me that in a salmon-fly color is the main thing to be studied.

But to return to Kingfisher, who has been all this time softening some silk-worm gut in his mouth, and now says in a thick voice, "Do you know, colonel, I lost my chance of a wife once in this way?"

_Colonel._ "How was that? Did you steal some of the lady's feathers?"

_Kingfisher._ "No, it was in this way: I was a lad of about seventeen, but I had a sweetheart. I was at college, and had but little time for fishing, of which I was as fond as I am now. One evening I was hastening toward the river with my rod, with my mouth full of flies and gut, which I was softening as I am now. Turning the corner of a narrow lane, I met my beloved and her mother, both of whom were precise persons who could not take a joke. Of course I had to stop and speak to them, but my mouth was full of hooks and gut, and the hooks stuck in my tongue, and I only mumbled. They looked astonished. Perhaps they thought I was drunk: anyway, the young lady asked what was the matter. 'My m--m--mouth is full of guts,' was all that I could say; and the girl would never speak to me afterward."

_Rodman._ "That was lucky, for you got a wife better able to bear with your little foibles."

_Kingfisher._ "I did, sir."

_July 8._ Rodman and I were to take the Upper Indian-house Pool to-day, the others going to the Patapedia. Kingfisher and I exchanged Indians: he, having a man who was a better fisherman than either of mine, kindly lent him to me, that I might have a better chance of killing a salmon, I being the only one of the party who had not succeeded in doing so. I found in my book a casting-line of double gut: it was only two yards long, but I thought I had better trust to it than the single gut which the fish had been breaking for me the last two days. I also found in my book a few large showy salmon-flies tied on double gut: with these I started, determined to do or die. I was on the pool at 5 A. M., and had raised two salmon, and caught two large trout, which often took our flies when we were casting for bigger fish. At 6.30 I raised and hooked a big fish, which ran out twenty yards of line, and then stopped. I determined to try the waiting method this time, and not to lose my fish by too much haste; so I let him have his own way, only holding him with a tight hand. Joe, I soon saw, understood his part of the business: he kept the canoe close behind the fish, so that I should always have a reserve of line upon my reel. My salmon made two runs without showing himself: he pulled hard, and was evidently a strong fish. He now tried to work himself across the river into the heavy current. I resisted this, but to no purpose: I could not hold him, and I thought he was going down the little rapid, where I could not have followed, when he steered down through the still and deep water, and went to the bottom near the camp. There he stayed, sulking, for more than an hour, and I could not start him. The cook came down from his fire to see the conflict; Joe lighted his pipe and smoked it out; old Captain Merrill, who lived on the opposite bank, came out and hailed me, "Reckon you've got a big one this time, judge;" and still my line pointed to the bottom of the river, and my hands grew numb with holding the rod.

They have tied me to the stake: I cannot fly, But, bear-like, I must fight the course.

Suddenly, up from the depths came the salmon, and made off at full speed down the river, making his first leap as he went, which showed him to be a twenty-pounder at least. We followed with the canoe. On the west side of the island ran the main channel, wide and deep, gradually increasing in swiftness till it became a boiling torrent. Into this my fish plunged, in spite of all my resistance, and all we could do was to follow. But I soon lost track of him and control of him: sometimes he was ahead, and I could feel him; sometimes he was alongside, and the line was slack and dragging on the water, most dangerous of positions; sometimes the canoe went fastest, and the salmon was behind me. My men handled the canoe admirably, and brought me through safe, fish and all; for when we emerged into the still pool below, and I was able to reel up, I felt him still on the hook, but unsubdued, for he made another run of thirty yards, and leaped twice.

"That's good," said Joe: "that will tire him."

For the first two hours of the struggle the fish had been quiet, and so had saved his strength, but now he began to race up and down the pool, trying for slack line. But Joe followed him up sharply and kept him well in hand. Now the fish began to jigger, and shook his head so hard and so long that I thought something must give way--either my line or his spinal column. After about an hour of this kind of work I called to Rodman, who was fishing not far off, and asked him to come alongside and play my fish for a few minutes, so that I might rest my hands, which were cramped with holding the rod so long; which he did, and gave me fifteen minutes' rest, when I resumed the rod. The fish now seemed somewhat spent, for he came to the surface and flounced about, so that we could see his large proportions. Still, I could not get him alongside, and I told Joe to try to paddle up to him, but he immediately darted away from us and headed up stream, keeping a parallel course about fifty feet off, so that we could see him perfectly through the clear water. After many efforts, however, he grew more tame, and Louis paddled the canoe very carefully up to him, while Joe stood watching his chance with the gaff, which he put deep in the water. At last I got the fish over it, when with a sudden pull the gaff was driven into him just behind the dorsal fin; but he was so strong that I thought he would have taken the man out of the canoe. The water flew in showers, and the big salmon lay in the bottom of the boat!

I could hardly believe my eyes. That tremendous creature caught with a line no thicker than a lady's hair-pin! I looked at my watch: it was eleven o'clock, just four hours and a half. "Well, I have done enough for to-day, Joe: let us go home to breakfast." Arrived at the camp, we weighed the salmon and measured him--twenty-four pounds, and forty inches long--a male fish, fresh run from the sea, the strongest and most active of his kind. It had been my luck to hook these big ones: I wished that my first encounters should be with fish of ten or twelve pounds. Rodman came in with two--fourteen and sixteen pounds.

That evening I went again to the same pool, and soon hooked another good fish with the same fly; but though he was nearly as large as the first, weighing twenty-two pounds, I killed him in thirty minutes. He fought hard from the very first, running and vaulting by turns without any stop, so that he soon tired himself out. Rodman got another this evening, and Kingfisher brought seven from the Patapedia, and the Colonel one. Thirteen is our score to-day.

_July 9._ Rodman and I went this morning to the Patapedia, but raised no salmon. Either some one had been netting the pool that night, or Kingfisher had killed all the fish yesterday. I got a grilse of four pounds, which made a smart fight for fifteen minutes, and Rodman hooked another, but lost him. That evening we went again to the pool, and I killed a small but very active salmon of nine pounds, which fought me nearly an hour: Rodman got a grilse of five pounds. Strange to say, neither Kingfisher nor the Colonel killed a fish to-day, so that I was for once "high line."

Having killed four salmon, I concluded to retire. I found the work too hard, and determined to go to Dalhousie and try the sea-trout fishing in that vicinity. So, after an hour's fly-fishing at the mouth of the brook opposite our camp, in which I got a couple of dozen, hooking two at a cast twice, and twice three at a cast, I started at seven o'clock on the 10th, and ran down with the current and paddles forty miles to Fraser's in seven hours--the same distance which it took us two days and a half to make going up stream.

Of all modes of traveling, to float down a swift river in a bark canoe is the most agreeable; and when paddled by Indians the canoe is the perfection of a vessel for smooth-water navigation. Where there are three inches of water she can go--where there is none, a man can carry her round the portage on his back. Her buoyancy enables her to carry a heavy load, and, though frail, the elasticity of her material admits of many a blow and pinch which would seriously damage a heavier vessel. The rifle and axe of the backwoodsman, the canoe and the weapons of the Indian, are the result of long years of experiment, and perfectly meet their necessities.

The rest of the party remained and fished five days more, making ten days in all, and the score was eighty-five salmon and five grilse, the united weight of which was fourteen hundred and twenty-three pounds. The salmon averaged sixteen and a half pounds each: the three largest weighed thirty, thirty, and thirty-three pounds. Nearly two-thirds of the whole were taken by Kingfisher, and our average for three rods was three fish per day each.

It is asserted by Norris in the _American Angler's Book_ that the salmon of the American rivers are smaller than those of Europe, that in the Scottish rivers many are still taken of twenty and twenty-five pounds weight, and that on this side of the Atlantic it is as rare to take them with the rod over fifteen pounds. If this statement was correct when Norris wrote, ten years ago, then the Canadian rivers have improved under the system of protection, for, as above stated, our catch in the Restigouche averaged over sixteen pounds, and nearly one-third of our fish were of twenty pounds or over.

Yarrel, in his work on British fishes, says that in 1835 he saw 10 salmon in the London market weighing from 38 to 40 pounds each. Sir Humphry Davy is said to have killed a salmon in the Tweed that weighed 42 pounds: this was about 1825. The largest salmon ever seen in London was sold there in 1821: it weighed 83 pounds. But with diminished numbers the size of the salmon in Scottish waters has also diminished. In the _Field_ newspaper for August and September, 1872, I find the following report of the fishing in some of those rivers: The Severn--average size of catch (considered very large) is 16 pounds; fish of 30, 40 and 50 pounds have been taken. The Tay--one rod, one day in August, 7 fish; average weight, 18 pounds. The Tweed--two rods, one day's fishing, 12 fish; average, 20 pounds. The Eaine--fish run from 12 to 20 pounds.

In Lloyd's book on the _Sports of Norway_ we find the following reports of the salmon-fishing in that country, where the fish are supposed to be very large: In the river Namsen, Sir Hyde Parker in 1836 killed in one day 10 salmon weighing from 30 to 60 pounds. This is considered the best of the Norwegian rivers, both for number and size of fish. The Alten--Mr. Brettle in 1838 killed in fifteen days 194 fish; average, 15 pounds; largest fish, 40 pounds. Sir Charles Blois, the most successful angler, in the season of 1843 killed in the Alten 368 fish; average, 15 pounds: largest fish, 50 pounds. The Steenkjaw--one rod killed in twenty days 80 salmon; average, 14 pounds. The Mandall--one rod killed 35 fish in one day. The Nid--two rods killed in one day 19 fish; largest fish, 38 pounds.

The following records are from Canadian rivers prior to 1871: Moisie--two rods in twenty-five days, 318 fish; average 15-1/7 pounds; three largest, 29, 29 and 32 pounds. Godbout--three rods in forty days, 194 fish; average, 11-1/8 pounds; three largest, 18, 19 and 20 pounds. St. John--two rods in twenty-two days, 199 fish; average, 10 pounds. Nipisiquit--two rods, 76 fish; average, 9-1/2 pounds. Mingan--three rods in thirty-two days, 218 fish; average, 10-1/5 pounds. Restigouche, 1872--three rods in ten days, 85 fish; average, 16-1/2 pounds; three largest, 30, 30 and 33 pounds.

The greatest kill of salmon ever recorded was that of Allan Gilmour, Esq., of Ottawa, who killed in the Godbout in 1867, in one day, 46 salmon, averaging 11-1/2 pounds, or one fish about every fifteen minutes.

The largest salmon taken with the fly in an American river have been out of the Grand Cascapediac, on the north shore of the Bay of Chaleur. In 1871, by the government report, there were 44 salmon killed with the fly--two of 40 pounds, one of 38, and four others of over 30 pounds; average weight, 23 pounds. In the same river in 1872, Mr. John Medden of Toronto, with three other rods, killed 2 fish of 45 pounds, 4 of between 40 and 45, 5 of between 35 and 40 pounds, 7 of between 30 and 35 pounds, 15 of between 25 and 30 pounds, 16 of between 20 and 25, besides smaller ones not enumerated.

From these data it would seem that the average size of the Canadian salmon is as great as those of Norway, and very nearly equal to those of the Scottish rivers; while the number of fish taken in a day in the Canadian rivers, particularly in those on the north shore of the St. Lawrence, surpasses the best catch of either the Scottish or Norwegian rivers.

S. C. CLARKE.

A PRINCESS OF THULE.

BY WILLIAM BLACK.