A Hero of the Pen

And D

cloudless January day of the year 1871. A score of years ago, this town consisted of only a dozen or so roughly built wood

equalled prospect. The elegance of its surroundings, the exquisite taste and richness of its appointments, its arti

a clear, colorless, brunette complexion, with large, brown eyes and perfectly regular features, is set in a frame of dark, luxuriant hair, and possesses undeniable claims to beauty. And yet there is something wanting in this exquisite face. It is that joyous, artless expression which so seldom fails in youth; that breath of timidity we look for in young maidenhood, and that look of gentleness a woman's face seldom entirely lacks, and never to its advantage. There is

on. It is more in that expression of cold, dignified repose, and self-conscious pride peculiar to both. In the young girl this expression assumes the most decided form; in the young man it is partially hidden by a conventional polish

e. I shall first pass a few months in New York, where the business affairs of our house demand my personal supervision, and from there I shall sail for Europe in March. A

oval to the plan of the proposed journey; now

son! My father will regret that his illness rende

receive my adieux, personally. May I beg yo

eantime, accept my best wishes for a

. He took the cold, beautiful hand, and held it fast; but

may I ask yo

ed over the young girl

, Mr.

holding the hand fast, he

ght be dangerous to my hopes. Therefore, pardon me, Miss Jane, if I at this moment venture to speak of an affection which, perhaps, is no secret to

beneath this outward calm there lay an almost violently repressed emotion; and now,

n her features betrayed whether this proposal was welcome or unwelcome to her; the immobility of her face offere

your affection for me; I reciprocate it, and upon your return, with th

s features, but the usual calmness at once came back,

happy," he said. "Can I not

my father's death-bed; I cannot and will not deprive him of one of those hours the new relation might demand. Therefore let the words you have just spoken to me remain

ided, "I will not!" at the first moment of acceptance. Alison

to delay my departure, and remain by your side, if

ung girl's lips quivered--"I shall know how to bear, and I can bear it best alone. I would not have you delay your departure one

hat Alison at once saw the impossibility of opposing her will; he saw that indeed s

fficult for me to do so. But if I may claim none of the rights of your betrothed husba

re was again an impassioned gleam in his eyes, and for a moment he pressed her close to his heart; but a

ssarily difficult. In a year you will

assumed the cold, proud expression, which had not left hers for a moment. Mr. Alis

rm chair, and Alison opposite her, when the person who had thus announced his coming, entered the parlor. He was a small, elderly man with gra

ive away, Miss Jane. You wish

ison, I must go to my father. I will

glance of deep, calm, mutual understanding, then the

ind her, the last comer stepped up to A

ratulat

uickly around. "For wh

ur betr

s, Mr. Atkins, that you ha

s reproach very

I do not belong to those disinterested perso

ared somewhat. "You certainl

Will you have me? I will have you,'--all right. 'The wedding shall be a year from now!'--all short, smooth, clear, without much eloquen

Alison had resembled her mother, I shoul

d to tears and scenes, full of sentimentality and extravagances,--a real German woman, she died of homes

l accuse Mr. Forest of an

with it. With a sort of morose energy, he flung from him every remembrance of the fatherland, and even Americanized his name--it was Forster there, you know--and when our colony grew, and the German settlers naturally clung together, he kept aloof from them and fraternized with the Americans. But this his wife could not endure; she could not accustom herself to the new life; there were endless quarrels and hard fee

tarily changed from a mocking to a serious tone; Alison, w

busied himself with buttoning his gloves--"if there should be difficulties in relation to the arrangement of the property, my father will stand ready to aid you to the full influence of his business

quently all will be found in perfect order. You and your father must wait patiently for a year until Miss Jane herself brings her dowry into your house. Meantime, I can give

"Mr. Atkins, you are sometimes mos

f marrying a young lady without fortune, now, when the immense development of your business house and the relations you will establish in Euro

hief of our house, been circumspect even in my choice of a wife, but I give you my word that if M

ire a like sentiment in our beautiful, cold Miss Forest. Well, that will happen in time; in any event it is fortunate if the

ered a half-darkened, but richly and tastefully furnished sleeping-chamber. Gliding

, intense seriousness, cool determination, energetic pride; all these, unobliterated, unsoftened by the traces of illness, were repe

sit. He was alone with you, and I wished to b

ch it would have been difficult to give freely in your p

e pillows. She did not answer, but her whole form shook with the tearle

ugh we have both, perhaps, expected a longer respite. It must be, and you wi

the most absolute self-mastery; her lips scarce quivered. The sick man smiled, but there lay a

not know how many quiet, painless hours may

y her father's bedsid

king nature has never been agreeable to me; but in an association of almost twenty years, I have proved his integrity and devotion. You know that he long since amassed a fortune

hing to tell you. You know that Mr. Aliso

elf up with an express

d y

ven him my

back upon his pill

"And are you not willing? I felt c

ice of a husband. It is your own future for which you have to decide, an

e; his family is one of the first in our city, his position is brilliant, and I am certain that his mercantile genius wil

nly, if it is

pon her father. "What more could be demanded from a marria

promise. But it is just as well. Mr. Alison indeed possesses all the advantages you have named

onditions she had imposed upon her betrothed, and the delay up

, too, have a condition to impose upon you. What would you say if I demand

ul surprise, the young girl rose

ou not lov

fe, and at last thrust you out like a malefactor. I could not forgive my mother, that with a consciousness of all you had suffe

understand! I met no consideration in your mother, that I confess; she indeed made me unhappy; and still, she gave me h

ickness, sometimes quite incomprehensible. With the consideration one gives the sick,

u to be, what I would have you be, and I do not now regret having given you this direction. You will better endure the life-conflict th

in questioning expectation, f

t of this; but lately no one has ev

arn with certainty. I at last forbade all mention of his name, because his remembrance threatened

wn yet closer to her father. He to

come to my fatherland under a new and more liberal order of things. We sought to carry out these revolutionary ideas, and for that crime the government repaid us with imprisonment, in many cases with sentence of death. I was doomed to die, but by especial favor, my sentence was commuted to thirty years' imprisonment. Seven of these years I endured; but as you have often enough heard the story, I wil

ures, and which was even more grimly reflected in Jane's face, showed that these remembra

were married, and a year after, your brother was born. He was not like you, Jane."--As he said these words, a lingering, almost painful glance swept the beautiful face of his daughter. "He was blonde and blue-eyed like his mother, but his possession was not unalloyed happiness to me. The first eight years of my marriage were the darkest of my life; more terrible, even, than those days in prison. There I suffered alone; here it was with wife and child that

the syren's song, only to be dashed anew against the rocks.--I took my wife and child to a secure place among relatives, and threw myself headlong into the tide of revolution. You know how it ended! Our parliament

merica. My brother-in-law offered me the necessary passage-money; perhaps from kindness of heart, but more probably it was to be rid of the accursed demagogue, th

ths. Poor child! It was in an evil hour I first pressed you to my heart. With the first kiss of your father, tears of glowing hatred, of bitter

the boy to follow his mother; he was old enough to understand, and she stood there in sight. I flung myself into the thickest of the throng at the harbor. An hour later, the spy had vanished, and I reached the ship unremarked. My wife, who had been prepared for possible delay on my part, hastened to meet me; her first inquiry was for the

one, but I was forced to make it. When I trod the ship's deck without my child; when I saw receding from me the shores where he was left alone, a prey to every danger,--that moment--when I broke l

brother-in-law, pursued the search with the warmest ardor and the fullest sympathy. He went to Hamburg himself, he did everything in his p

dangerous, perhaps fatal to him; such regardful tenderness did not lie in the relations between this father and daughter. She had a secret to hear, a last

rom a band of swindlers who already had me, the inexperienced foreigner, half in their net. Out of gratitude, I proposed that he should accompany me to the West. He had nothing to lose, and came with me to this place, then a vast, unpeopled solitude. Our plough was first to break up the prairie

ue. Undertakings, to which I pledged myself with others, had an undreamed-of success. Participation in public life, and the position for which I had once so ardently longed, with social importance and conside

ore noticeable even than before; but it did not seem like her usual haughtiness;

that his strength was failing, Fore

e loss of her child, was never assuaged. To the hour of her death, she clung to the hope that he was living, that he would sometime appear. This hope I had long since relinquished, and yet upon her death-bed she exacted from me a promise to go myself to Europe and make one last search in person. I promised this, as the last amnesty had lifted the

d you to the Rhine. In the business steps to be taken, your uncle will stand at your side; you are only to add to your proceedings, that energy of which he is incapable. It will not appear strange to our social circle if you pass the year of mourning for you

efore her father with all he

hall find it, father! I shall yield only to i

as evident, there were no kisses, no caresses, a pressure of the hand as among men, sealed the given and the ac

ins; I can no longer endure t

ew. There lay the city, with its streets and squares, its sea of houses, the river-landing with its boats; there lay the lordly Mississippi dotted with its fairy isles, among which glided in and out the countless skiffs and steamers. Scattered near and far, wer

alth; perhaps he was gazing with pride upon the city which owed its birth and expansion to him; perhaps he was sad at the thought of leaving all this beauty and grandeur and prosperity. Convulsed with emotion, he sank back on his pillow. Jane be

e old home and the old home-river for me! Do you h

st inaudible from his lips. Jane gazed

so much, father? You have a

quivered, and tears, seemingly wrung from a te

, degraded me, cast me out; it denied even bread to me and mine. America gave me freedom, gave me

after long years of suffering, had died of it at last; and her father, that proud, energetic man who had so entirely broken away from home and its remembrances, who had united heart and soul

father and mother one; which must keep her eternally remote from both. She gazed intently at her father, he now lay quiet, with closed eyes and compressed lips. She knew t