Lady Baltimore

e droll looks and head-turnings which followed me from strangers that passed me by in the street, I was made aware that I must b

hing about it, and the first account that I took of external objects was to find myself sitting in my accustomed chair in the Library, with the accustomed row of books about the battle of Cowpens waiting on the table in front of me. How long we had thus been facing each other, the books and I, I've not a notion. And with such mysterious machinery are we human beings fi

TIMATIONS

hee, thou G

onnect me w

, cousin, aun

ust, through

or

s! and a cu

time left in my spirit, and not because the verses themselves are in the least meritorious; they should serve as a model for no serious-minded singer, and they afford a striking instance of that volati

e and king's blood; I intimated my conviction that further effort on my part would still be met with failure; and I renounced with fitting expressions of disappointment my candidateship for the Scions thanking Aunt Carola for h

ominent heading given to it: THEY WORE THEIR CROWNS. This in very conspicuous Roman capitals, caused me to sit up. There must have been truth in some of it, because the food eaten by the Scions was mentioned as consisting of sandwiches, sherry and croquettes; yet I think that the statement that th

t he might speak to me about something that would open a way for my hostile preparations against Miss Rieppe. So far he had not touched upon his impending marriage in any way, but this reserve concerning a fact generally known among the people whom I was seeing could hardly go on long without becoming ridiculous. If he should sh

lf; and although it was with no special purpose in mind that I took out one of the volumes and sat down with it to wait for John Mayrant, in a l

nature was so finely tempered with good bringing-up; forwardness and shyness were alike absent from him, and his bearing had a sort of polished unconsciousness as far removed from raw diffidence as it was from raw conceit; it was altogether a rare and charming address in a youth of such true youthfulness, but it had failed him upon two occasions which I have already mentioned. Both times that he had come to the Exchange he had stumbled in his usually prompt speech, lost his habitual ease, and betrayed, in short, all the signs of being disconcerted. The matter seemed suddenly quite plain to me: it was the nature of his errands to the Exchange. The first time he had been ordering the cake for his own wedding, and to-day it was something about the wedding again. Evidently the high mettle of his delicacy and breeding made him painfully conscious of the view which others must take of the part that Miss Rieppe was playing in all this--a view from which it was out of his power to shield her; and it was this consciousness that destroyed his composure. From what I was soon to learn of his fine and unmoved disregard for unfavorable opinion when he felt his course to be the right one, I know that it was no thought at all of his own scarcely heroic role during these days, but only the perception that outsider

gth appeared in the Library; and possibly I put some reproach into my greeting:

oholic girls. The two subjects seemed certainly far enough apart! But he immediately began upon a conversation briskly enough--so briskly that I suspected at once he had got his subject ready in advance; he didn't w

is hearty preface. "I wonder if yo

peare," I answered restor

the title.

e love affairs that w

and J

the full, and died before they caused each other anything but ecstasy. No weariness of routine, no tears of

d. "Sometimes I bel

o and his pin-headed intelligence and his preordained infidelities. Do you imagine that her predecessor, Rosamond

t. "Why, it's for their sake dese

ughters grow up and comprehend their father's absences, and see their mother's submis

onishing rejoinder, and one which I cannot in the leas

people here would be doubly careful as to what man

nything I had privately developed from the text of Bottom and Titania; none the less, however, did I intend to press into my service that fond couple also as basis for a moral, in spite of the sharp turn which th

the same initial briskness, "

t what impropriety we

the views you expres

sat on the

think about

ward Worship Street. "Did you say anyt

Well, but all the same, didn't we give

eserves a black eye

arely. "I believe

t trashy thing I'

st admit you're sc

Why, you're talking

n't compare a gentl

ly set up 'pessimist,' which certainly has a threatening appearance. They don't know its meaning, and in their mouths it merely signifies that what a man says snakes them feel personally uncomfortable. The word has become a dusty rag of slang. The arrested bu

We had turned into Worship Street, and, as we passed the churc

aunts." He paused, gazing into the churchyard, before he contin

knew what

ed a sculptured

rything still?" he

suppose that he read

. "And I hope my aunts won't find that out! They would think me gone to perdition indeed. But I always go to church here" (he pointed to the quiet building, which, for all its modest size and simplicity, had a stately and inexpressible charm), "because I like to kneel where my mother s

he religions all over the earth from the beginning, and of wh

lamation at my

ng in this world is

egan, somewh

human nature is the one indest

he beg

turned it into a last year's hat. Answer me, if Christianity is the same as when it wore among its savage ornaments a devil with horns and a flaming Hell! Forever and forever the human race reaches out its hand and shapes some system, some creed, some government, and declares: 'This is at length the final thing, the cure-all,' and lo and behold, some

!" the boy exclaimed

prevails," I

like that

. "But Jacob got Esau's in

s punishe

t help E

e a pes

o-day, alive and kicking in Wall Str

o optimis

blind in n

t give us

r w

e accomplished

instance? They spread the Bible and t

cience. Take ou

and the stock market--a pretty eve

u don't take a

ble to-day as David was sometimes, and just as bestial to-day as David was sometimes, and we've every poss

od is the guiding p

, sometimes like a tandem, taking turns in the lead. Order has me

tter ea

ho never lived in an

have a hi

neighbor as himself. He gave his great teac

he sweet old churchyard. "I can't a

gayety. "That's una

hose people in there didn't think

volume of the history of our nationa

on! And pray what v

the se

ce w

entous picnic,

w that took the

rely waked Europe

leships,

ur gold coffers, ou

d; for he was a Southerner, and man's gallan

irgin wilderness, for it's explored; to the Indian, for he's conquered; to the pioneer, for he's dead; we've finished our wild, romantic ad

rted, "that it is going too fa

avements. And when he doesn't go to them, they come to him. The Wall Street bucket-shop goes fishing in the woods with wires a thousand miles long; and so we exchange the solid trailblazing enterprise of Volume One for Volume Two's electric unrest. In Volume One our wagon was hitched to the star of liberty. Capital and labor have cut the traces. The

t, because" (and here there came into his voice and face that sudden humor wh

cheerfulness from my fli

y more lamentatio

type that our eighty millions on the whole melt into and to which my heart warms each time I land again from more polished and colder shores--my optimistic eye sees that American dealing adequately with these political diseases. For

y was in John Ma

repeated with surprise. Still t

cried. "To have escaped t

so he

-indulgence in blaming has given it a painful stutter when attempting praise; it's the sprucely written sheet of the supercilious; it's the af

ut a country! Th

better, but it is not mine. A clever N

w that

orning and the Post making virtue so odious in the even

ook his hand from the church-gate railing, and we had turned to

e distant corner of his demesne, where he had been (to all appearances) engaged in some trifling activity among the flowers--perhaps picking off the faded blossoms. It now came home to me that the venerab

on, and I saw that in the pause which followed, his eye shot a swift look

dy Ben, wh

s' John, I speck de President he dun' know de cullud people like we know

e wiped his forehea

a stern change over John Mayrant's face; then he an

ng "Mas' John" should, by the President's act, find himself the subordinate of a member of the black race, and he had just now, in his perspiring e

or some moments that John Mayrant spoke again, eviden

got into that secon

not prog

e prog

e? Better grow

de son age De son ag

nally not growin

s the Unit

square miles very fast. Philanthropists don't seem to remember that you can beget children a great deal fast

l suffrage is like the appendix--useful at an early stage

t a surgical operation is

and white--and I shouldn't much fear surgery. We're not nearly civilized enough yet to have lost the power Of recuperation,

old, old st

anything new

gloom lightened. "Nothing new under the sun-

e topic of matrimony from which he had dodged away, that he never awoke to what was coming until it had come. He began pointing out, as we passed them, certain houses which were now, or had at some period been, the dwellings of his many relatives: "My co

hat is the difference betwe

of course

by marriage, and there they

very true. I met the most embarra

't embarrassed!

I was," s

e march," I continued. "'Lohengrin' or 'Midsummer-Night's Dream' played backward. They hav

and we walked along until we turned

d, "what a perpetual allegory 'M

as just a fairy

s hand to a fairy sort of thing, yo

a jackass," he remarked

her arms around a jackass. Does

mself. "I'm afraid Puc

are was probably too gallant to put it the other way, and make

e mutter

"Titania got out of it. It i

as quite evident that the fla

w come to the steps of my boarding-house, and I dropped my last drop. "

up quick

can always break off honorably

me an astonishing rejoinder: "Would

ing. "I have never--such

wouldn't. Eve

g piece of fierceness. I was still so much taken

or a moment I stared after him; and then, as I rang the bell, he was back again; and with

ayrant! Wha

stiffer formality: "I feel that I have not acted politely

Northerner. I am glad that I had the sense to feel that any careless, good-natured putting away of his deliberate and definitely tendered apology would seem to him a "slig

er offend me unless I thought that you wish

he replied

e can get into the house," I suggest

n one instant his face was stricken with complete dismay. "I had forgotten," he said;

forgotten; this was certainly my supposition as I turned again to the front door. There stood one of the wai

l boarder--the lady whom I secretly called Juno--swept up the steps, a

ns! Oh, Lawd, sinner is in my way, Daniel!" She was strongly, but I think pleasurably, excited; and she next t

upstairs to make as ha