Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, September, 1880

It sleeps with tranquil breast,
As if its haste and rage at last were ended,
And all it sought was rest.

In spicy woodpaths by its rapids straying,
I hear, with lingering feet,
Its liquid organ and the treetops playing
Te Deums strangely sweet.

I break the covert: pictured far emerges
On the enraptured sight
The arrowy flow, green isles, a cascade's surges,
Foam-flaked in rosy light,

Still pools, and purples of the sleepy sedges,
The skyward forest-wall,
Old sorrowing pines and hazy mountain-ledges,
And soft blue over all.

O golden hours of summer's precious leisure!
From care and toil apart
Fresh drawn, I taste the angler's gentle pleasure
With friend of equal heart.

Trout leap and glitter, and the wild duck flutters
Where beds of lilies blow:
A loon his long, weird lamentation utters,
And Echo feels his woe.

We see in hemlock shade the reedy shallow,
Where, screened by dusky leaves,
The guileless moose comes down to browse and wallow
On still balsamic eves.

The great blue heron starts as if we sought her,
On pinions of surprise,
And to our lure the darlings of the water
In pink and crimson rise.

Still gliding on, how throng the sweet romances
Of Youth's enchanted land!
A lordly eagle, as our bark advances,
Glares on us, sad and grand.

Onward we float where mellow sunset glory
Streams o'er the lakelet's breast,
And every ripple tells a golden story
Of the transfigured west.

Onward, into the evening's calm and beauty,
To camp and sleep we go:
Thrice bless'd are lives, in tasks of love and duty,
That end in such a glow!

                                     —HORATIO NELSON POWERS.

THE RUIN OF ME

(TOLD BY A YOUNG MARRIED MAN.)

I am Poverty scuffing about in old shoes and rubbers. I was one of those who, at a good salary, think up smart things to put around in the corners of the Chicago Times. When every newspaper, from the London Punch down, was making jokes about Elihu Burritt's Sanskrit for the Fireside, it was I who beat them all by saying in solid nonpareil, "The best way to learn Sanskrit is to board in a family of Sanskritters." It was I who said, "Let the Communists carry pistols: they may shoot each other;" and, "Sara Bernhardt's children are articles of virtu."

O quam me delectat Sara Bernhardt! I love such diversified, such picturesque gifts. Sculpture, painting, acting, writing! This is why I loved Lydia, who was an adept at numberless arts and accomplishments. She was a brunette with a clear, cream-tinged skin, red cheeks, rolling black eyes, ripe velvety lips, and hair of a beautiful hue and rich lustre—raven black, yet purple as the pigeon's wing in the sun. I believe it is true that dark people belong to the pre-historic races: centuries of sunlight are fused in their glowing complexion. Blondes are beautiful—both the rosy ones with pinkish eyelids and warm golden locks, and the pale ones with ash-colored hair, gray eyes and dark brows and lashes—but a florid brunette excels them all.

In seeing Lydia you would make the mistake that you usually make in judging girls: entering among them, you think their attitudes proclaim their traits. For instance, you take the most giggling one for a simpleton, but afterward learn that she is a good scholar and has accepted the Greek chair in a Western college, and looking again you see she has a strong frame, a capable head and large bright eyes. Lydia dressed in the mode, wore the high-heeled shoes that give such a dainty look to the foot and gait, and came into a room with a great effusion of fashionableness; yet she was not in the least what she seemed. She had a great deal of what is more pleasing than mere appearance, and that is character. She was ambitious and energetic. She did tatting when she did nothing else—said it concealed her lack of repose and liability to fidget. She was able to draw la quintessence de tout: she could make a mountain-spring of a mole-hill. She also had a touch of temper: those who are perfectly amiable are nothing else.

I was a youth blue-eyed and fair of face, tall, thin and having a complying spirit that has been—But let me not anticipate. The race after fashion ever wearied me—I shall stop early at some standing-collar or heavy-neckcloth period—and I never cared much for money—could live with it or without it, desiring "this man's art or that man's scope" rather than his cash. There is such a great majority of poor folks, I expected to be one of them; still, I had a taste for honesty, asked favors of nobody, considered the least debt a degradation, and thought myself better than most rich people. I was of the family and the religion of Plato, who peddled oil to pay his expenses while travelling in Egypt.

We discover in others what they most wish to hide: therefore I early discovered that Lydia's mother, who had a large girl-family, and who knew that the supply of some one to love greatly exceeds the demand, was anxious to secure me as a son-in-law. I was glad of it, for, let poets and novelists say what they will, the young fellow who marries with the approval of friends drifts happily on, while the rash boy who weds against the good sense of his elders is dragged bleeding along a rough way. So I married Lydia, and began life in gladness and content. I liked her family and they liked me. It puzzles me to see how the English mother-in-law, who is a grum-voiced, dogmatic and belligerent person with a jointure to bequeath, came to be engrafted on our literature. The inoffensive delicacy of an American elderly woman forbids her the rôle of her British sister. Our mother-in-law troubles are mostly confined to our low foreign population. Neither have we a character similar to the silly, spiteful, dried-up old maid of English literature and its American imitations, our spinsters being generally stout and jolly personages and rather over-fond of children. My mother-in-law was very nice, and we were the best of friends.

Rich relations, as a general thing, are abominable: the mere possession of one sometimes makes a person disagreeable. Show the person with a rich cousin the most secluded cot among mountains, and, "Oh, you should see my cousin's house on Michigan Avenue!" is the reply; or a beautiful room speaking the noble quality of its occupant, and, "Call that nice? You should see my cousin's house on Michigan Avenue!" is remarked. But Lydia's rich relations, the Stenes of Chicago, appeared to be exceptions. They were very clannish people, fond of their own kin to the last degree. They came from Michigan, and were of the old colony stock, regular Yankee-Doodle folks, the older ones and many of the younger ones still using New England idioms and quaint phrases that came long ago from the East—yes, from the holts of old England's Suffolk perhaps. You could not persuade one of them to call jelly anything but "jell" or a repast anything but a "meal of victuals," and they said "dooty" and "roomor" and "noos" and "clawg," and sometimes would pop out "his'n" and "her'n." Several of the Stenes had been in business thirty years in metropolitan Chicago, yet they spoke in the twang of a Yankee hill-country. The women of the family were famous housekeepers—too neat to keep a cat lest there might be a cat hair on the carpet, and never liking visitors unless there was a dreadful note of preparation, and then they received grandly. To show Lydia their good-will, they gave her profuse wedding-presents and a splendid trousseau. On my side I bought a neat cottage, paying cash down—all the money I had. It was one of a square of cottages principally occupied by young married people having plenty of children, and a joyous crew they were. Our street had a broad roadway and flagged sidewalks edged with neat turf in which fine trees were growing, and was lined with beautiful homes of varied architecture, suggesting charming interiors. A row of tall, "high-stoop" New York houses with dark stone trimmings stood next to a row of English basements of tuck-pointed brick, and next to them was a range of houses of light, cheerful Joliet stone, with awnings at the windows and carriage-steps as clean as gravestones. Then came an old cottage fixed up nobby, then a comfortable old wooden mansion, then a splendid dwelling in the style of the fifteenth century, and after that the palace of a railway grandee. Here and there on a corner stood a Gothic church. All day well-dressed people trod our pavements and beautiful carriages rolled by our windows. Our cottage was my ideal of perfection: it had few rooms, but those spacious. We had no sitting-room. Let me see: what does that word suggest to my mind? A table heaped with stale newspapers, a stand piled with sewing, a darned carpet, scratched furniture and fly-specked wall-paper.

Lydia's presents filled our house. All were Eastlake and in good taste, the colors sage-green, pumpkin-yellow and ginger-brown, dashed with splashes of peacock feathers and Japanese fans. The vases were straddle-legged and pot-bellied Asiatic shapes. Dragons in bronze and ivory, sticky-looking faïence and glittering majolica, stood in the corners. Silk embroideries representing the stork—a scrawny bird with a scalp-lock at the back of its neck, looking like a mosquito when flying—and porcelain landscapes out of drawing, like a child's first attempts, peopled by individuals with the expression of having their hair pulled, hung 'twixt our dados and friezes. Lydia's young-lady friends gave her their works in oil or water-colors done in a fine, free-hand style that may one day form a school of its own. Our Chicago girls are people of nous. Their talk is "fluent as the flight of a swallow:" their manners are delightful—American manners must be excellent, so many Englishmen marry American girls. Their playing makes us glad the seven poor strings of the old musicians have been multiplied to seven times seven: no Chicago girl is a musician unless she has the masters at her finger-tips. And they are readers too. You would suppose, judging from the papers, that our Chicagoans are inordinately fond of reading about the indiscretions of rustic wives, and are given to a perusal of the news in startling headlines: but such is not the fact. We are great readers of the distinguished magazines and of first-rate books, and our taste for art is keen. When we go abroad we don't care so much for mountains and rivers—they are like potatoes and pork to a man who is visiting: we have them at home—but we are after art. Ruskin says no people can be great in art unless it lives among beautiful natural objects; which is hard on us Chicago folks. If we had any mountainous or rocky tracts we should not live in them. If we possessed a Mount Vesuvius we should use it for getting up bogus eruptions to draw tourists to our hotels, and we should tap the foot of the mountain to draw off the lava for our streets.

Lydia's finery had a subduing effect upon me, who had bounded my aspirations to what was distinctly within my grasp—namely, things Plain, but not sordid—though not splendid, clean.

Lydia was an expert housekeeper. "I love a little house that I can clean all over," said she. She would have liked a Roman villa made of polished marble, that could be scrubbed from top to bottom, or a house of the melted and dyed cobble-stones that some genius has promised to give us. Her china-closet was a picture, with platters in rows and cups hanging on little brass hooks under the shelves. Our whole house was exquisite, and became quite renowned for its elegance and charm. Lydia's exuberant vitality was attractive: her relations and friends liked to come there. Some of our friends were of the high, haughty, tone-y sort, which would have been well enough if we had not incurred debts in our housekeeping.

What and how great the merit and the art
To live on little with a thankful heart!

Lydia's rich uncle, Nathan Stene, gave us a bookcase that caused my heart to sink with an appalling premonition at its first appearance, it was so huge and high. How we got it into our parlor without cutting off the top and bottom words cannot explain. That bookcase was my first step toward ruin. I had a good many books—not of scientific but of delightful literature, the best works of the best authors—and my books were as shabby as Charles Lamb's library. There never were such dilapidated volumes as my De Quinceys. Lydia had Young Mrs. Jardine and lots of other

Stickjaw pudding that tires the chin,
With the marmalade spread ever so thin;

and her books were new-looking. She said mine looked disgustingly dirty in our new bookcase, so I had them rebound; and this was my next step toward ruin. Lydia wanted a long peacock-feather duster to dust the top of the bookcase. I bought that. Our only long tablecloth was a damask, engarlanded and diapered and resplendent with a colored border warranted to wash. I had to buy napkins to go with it. I bought a butter-knife to match a solid silver butter-dish, and a set of individual salt-spoons to match salt-cellars, and nut-picks and crackers to match something else. Moreover, there was a magnificent opera-glass that required to be matched with theatre-going—not as I was wont to go, in an old overcoat having its pockets stuffed with old playbills. But why enumerate?

On the strength of her wedding-presents Lydia became a gladiatrix in the arena of society. She already belonged to three clubs: she joined four more—Private Theatrical, a History of Art, a Conversation and a Suffrage Club. I myself belong to but one, the Cremation Club—am an officer in that: I split kindlings. As the bordered tablecloth was suitable for lunch-parties, Lydia entertained her friends at an hour when I was about town looking up paragraphs, but I have no doubt she carried it off bravely, and their discussions were as important as those of a poultry convention on the question of feathers or no feathers on chickens' legs.

At this time I found that great feasts make small comforts scarce. Often, on coming home and finding Lydia out, I had Ionic hours alone, when I refreshed myself with the great shouting, cheering and laughter of the Greek armies and people that gladden our dull hearts even now, and for want of anything better I regaled myself on the feasts offered by Machaon (first Scotchman) in the Iliad, and by Nestor, on the table with azure feet and in the goblet with four handles and four feet, with gold turtles drinking at the brim from the handles. Or I supped with Achilles while Patroclus turned the meat on the bed of wide, glowing embers and the tent brightened in the blaze. Once, when I was seeking something for that newspaper bore, Woman's Sphere, I lunched with the Suffragists. Each character of the Suffrage Club was as clear as a figure cut on a sapphire. The president, a matron of sixty wearing waving gray hair and dressed in black, with plenty of white lace under her chin, had the air of a woman used to command a large family and accustomed to plenty of money and to good society. Her voice was the agreeable barytone of her years, its thin tones entirely gone, and her good English was like gentle music: nevertheless, an occasional strong tone or gesture revealed her determined will. The Suffragists were handsomely dressed, were self-possessed and appreciative of each other's company, and were of all ages, one being a plain young girl quietly looking on and enjoying the world more than a self-wrapped belle is capable of doing.

But to my tale, which is to me more absorbing than Rob Roy, Robinson Crusoe and Boots at the Swan combined. Of all our visitors I preferred Uncle Nathan Stene. Not that I liked him personally. He was the typical rich man: I should know he was rich wherever I met him. There are thousands like him: they despise me utterly. Uncle Nathan had a scorn for poor people. He disdained whole States that gave him a bad market, and regarded young fellows who smoke and go to the theatre as beggars' dogs. He was of middle height, with reddish complexion, sandy hair and eyebrows, quick, sharp gray eyes, and features of a short, clean, close aquiline cut, with thin, dry lips—a man of iron, pig iron. When young he might have been facetious, but he had concentrated his energies entirely on money, till there was nothing left to go in other directions, and his humor was now as sombre as the grin of a hanged man. He had self-conceit, which is a talent when combined with some other qualities. Doctor Johnson's observation, that to make money requires talents, is true: a dull man cannot do it. Uncle Nate had to remember thirty thousand articles in his business of wholesale druggist. He was a perfect devil-fish for sucking the goodness from every business he was concerned in—banking, railroading, and so on. He belonged to the Chicago Board of Trade, and was particularly useful in getting those fellows in Indianapolis on a string, sending the wheat up, up, until the Hoosiers had made a few hundred thousands, and then, when they thought they were going to make millions, letting it down and scooping them. My habit of listening intently to Uncle Nate's telegrammatic style of talk caused him to like me. I resembled King Lear: I talked with those who were wise, and said little, and Nathan's aphorisms about trade and politics made good paragraphs when boiled down to the crisp cracklins.

While I worked and Lydia entertained we were waltzing like the wind down to ruin. No use to cry, "Ho! great gods! Hilloa! you're wanted here!" On we went.

Worrying over pecuniary affairs gradually sapped my mind. To lose one's eyes or all one's relations, or to be bitten by a mad dog, will not unhinge the brain so completely as pecuniary anxiety. My paragraphs, spite of Nate's verbum saps., lost their originality. I resigned my post on the Times. I became the collector on commission of certain rents of Uncle Nathan's. Whoso collects rents in Chicago tenements should know how to box or else to run: I could do neither. I got little or nothing out of the devils and devillets, my respected uncle's tenants. He had a genius for the despatch of business: I had none; therefore he concluded I was an ass, and wondered how he came to be pleased with me. Oh, 'tis a good thing to know what you can do, and to do that, and know what you cannot do, and leave that alone. Dull as weeds of Lethe was my task. 'Twas terrible! I thought it would never end. No greater misery could be imagined than what I endured in Nathan's service.

One morning of those days I picked up a note in Lydia's writing hastily scrawled as follows: "I have discovered your retreat: I must see you. At seven o'clock wave the lamp three times across the window if all is well."