"When I took Mr. Edmonton off I thanked | home at seven or eight. God, Kate, thinking I had saved you a broken heart, little guessing my own lay so near to windward." "You can not, Hector," she answered, "you -you can not-" "Yes I do-I can. I love you as if you had never sent me away, Kate." That would be not only civilized; it would be millennial. But Keturah is perfectly aware that you will do as you will. If the excitement of the "wee sma' hours ayont the twal" prove preferable to a quiet evening at home, and a good, Christian, healthy sleep after it, why the "sma' hours" it will be. If you will do it, it is "none of her funerals," as the small boy remarked. Only she particularly requests you not to insult her by offering her your sympathy. Wait till you "But I am so frightfully-pitted; you know what forty-eight mortal, wide-awake, starhaven't thought about that." ing, whirring, unutterable hours mean. "I was a little fool," said she; "but, Hector, you haven't fairly seen me yet." "Shall I get the ship's glass?" "Then don't you." If there's any one to be pitied it's Mr. Edmonton. Kate, there's not an inch of you but what is sweeter, and fairer, and lovelier to me than the morning star; so no more pitfalls, if you please." And Kate pleased. One morning, a year or so later, Kate Holland received wedding-cards; they were only Eugenia's and Mr. Edmonton's." K Listen to her mournful tale; and, while you listen, let your head become fountains of water, and your eyes rivers of tears for her, and for all who are doomed to reside in her immediate vicinity. "Tired nature's sweet restorer," as the newspapers in a sudden and severe poetical attack remarked of Jeff Davis, "refuses to bless" Keturah, except as her own sweet will inclines her. They have a continuous lover's quarrel, exceedingly bitter while it rages, exceedingly sweet when it is made up. Keturah attends a perfectly grave and unimpeachable lecture-the Restorer pouts and goes off in a huff for twenty-four hours. Keturah undertakes at seven o'clock a concert THE VOICES OF THE NIGHT. ETURAH wishes to state primarily that she is good-natured. She thinks it necessary to make this statement, lest, after hav-announced as Mendelssohn Quintette, proving ing heard her story, you should, however polite you might be about it, in your heart of hearts suspect her capable not only of allowing her angry passions to rise, but of permitting them to boil over "in tempestuous fury wild and unre-tainly has never seen one face to face; and strained." If it were an orthodox remark, she would also add, from like motives of self-defense, that she is not in the habit of swearing. Are you accustomed, O tender-hearted reader, to spend your nights as a habit, with your eyes open or shut? On the answer to this question depends her sole hope of appreciation and sympathy. to be Gilmore's Brassiest-and nothing hears she of My Lady till two o'clock A.M. Keturah spends an hour at a prayer-meeting, on a pine bench that may have heard of cushions, but cer comes home at eight o'clock to the pleasing discovery that the fair enslaver has taken some doctrinal offense, and vanished utterly. Though lost to sight she's still to memory dear, and Keturah penitently betakes herself to the seeking of her in those ingenious ways which she has learned at the school of a melancholy experience. A table and a kerosene lamp are brought into requisition, also a book. If it isn't the Dictionary, it is Cruden's Concordance. If these prove too exciting, it is Edwards on the Will. Light reading is strictly forbidden. Congressional Reports are sometimes efficacious, as well as Martin F. Tupper, and somebody's "Sphere of Woman." She begs you will understand that she does not mean you, the be-ribboned and be-spangled and be-rouged frequenter of ball and soirée, with your faint, floating perfumes, flutter of fans, and sweep of many-hued drapery; your well-taught drooping lashes, or wide girl's eyes, untamed and wondering, your flushing color, and your pulse up to a hundred. You are very pretty for your pains-as she hopes you know, to take the comfort of God's great gift as women can; as true and royal women can-oh, to be sure, you are very pretty! She has not the heart to scold you, though you are dancing and singing and flirting away your golden nights, your restful, young nights, that never come but once-though you are dancing and singing and flirting yourselves merrily into your grave. She would like to put in a plea before the eloquence of which Cicero and Demosthenes, Beecher and Sumner, should pale like wax-lights before the sun, for the new fashion said to be obtaining in New Some day she will write a book. The pubYork, that the soirée shall give place to the mat-lishers shall nap over it, and accept it with pleasinée, at which the guests shall assemble at four ure. The drowsy printers shall set up its type o'clock in the afternoon, and are expected to go with their usual unerring exactness. The proof There is one single possibility out of ten that this treatment will produce drowsiness. There are nine probabilities to the contrary. The possibility is worth trying for, and trying hard for; but if it results in the sudden flight of President Edwards across the room, a severe banging of the "Sphere of Woman" against the wall, and the total disappearance of Cruden's Concordance beneath the bed, Keturah is not in the least surprised. It is altogether too familiar a result to elicit remark. It simply occasions a fresh growth to a horrible resolution that she has been slowly forming for years. Cus-ground after an interval, steps splash into a pool of water, knocks over a mop, and embraces a tall cider barrel with her groping arms. After a little wandering about among ash-bins and applebins, reservoirs and coal-heaps, and cobwebs, she discovers the hanging-shelf which has been the ignis fatuus of her search. Something extremely cold crossing her shoeless feet at this crisis suggests pleasant fancies of a rat. Keturah is ashamed to confess that she has never in all the days of the years of her pilgrimage set eyes upon a rat. Depending solely upon her imagination, her conception of that animal is a cross between an alligator and a jaguar. She stands her ground manfully, however, and is happy to state that she did not faint. readers shall correct it in their dreams. tomers in the book-stores shall nod at the sight of its binding. Its readers shall dose at its first page. Sleepless old age, sharp and unrelieved pain, youth sorrowful before the time, shall seek it out, shall flock unto the counters of its fortunate publishers (she has three firms in her mind's eye; one in Boston, one in New York, and one in Philadelphia; but who the happy men are to be is not yet definitely decided), who shall waste their inheritance in distributing it throughout the length and breadth of a grateful continent. Physicians from every where under the sun, who have proved the fickleness of hyoscyamus, of hops, of Dover's powders, of opium, of morphine, of laudanum, of hidden virtues of herbs of the field, and minerals from the rock, and gases from the air; who know the secrets of all the pitying earth, and, behold, it is vanity of vanities, shall line their hospitals, cram their offices, stuff their bottles, with the new universal panacea and blessing to suffering humanity. And Keturah can keep a resolution. Her literary occupation disposed of, in the summary manner referred to, she runs through the roll of her reserve force, and their name is Legion. She composes herself, in an attitude of rest, with a handkerchief tied over her eyes to keep them shut, blows her lamp out instead of screwing it out, strangles a while in the gas, and begins to repeat her alphabet, which, owing to like stern necessity, she has fortunately never forgotten. She says it forward; she says it backward; she begins at the middle and goes up; she begins at the middle and goes down; she rattles it through in French, she groans it through in German, she falters it through in Greek. She attempts the numeration table, flounders somewhere in the quadrillions, and forgets where she left off. She watches an interminable flock of sheep jump over a wall till her head spins. There always seem to be so many more where the last one came from. She listens to oar-beats, and drum-beats, and heart-beats. She improvises sonatas and gallopades, oratorios and mazourkas. She perpetrates the title and first line of an epic poem, goes through the alphabet for a rhyme, and none appearing, she repeats the first line by way of encouragement. But all in vain. She is as likely to fly as to sleep. With a silence that speaks unutterable things she rises solemnly, and seeks the pantry in darkness that may be felt. At the bottom of the stairs she steps with her whole weight flat upon something that squirms, and is warm, and turns over, and utters a cry that makes night hideous. Oh, nothing but the cat, that is all! The pantry proves to be well stocked with bread, but not another mortal thing. Now, if there is any thing Keturah particularly dislikes, it is dry bread. Accordingly, with a remark which is intended for Love's ear alone, she gropes her way to the cellar door, which is unexpectedly open, pitches head first into the cavity, and makes the descent of half the stairs in an easy and graceful manner, chiefly with her elbows. She reaches the In the agitation consequent upon this incident she butters her bread with the lard, and takes an enormous bite on the way up stairs. She seeks no more refreshment that night. One resort alone is left. With a despairing sigh she turns the great faucet of the bath-tub and holds her head under it till she is upon the verge of a watery grave. This experiment is her forlorn hope. Perhaps about three or four o'clock she falls into a series of jerky naps, and dreams that she is editor of a popular Hebrew Magazine, wandering frantically through a warehouse full of aspirant MSS. (chiefly from the junior classes of theological seminaries) of which she can not translate a letter. Of the tenth of Keturah's unearthly experiences of the number of times she has been taken for a robber, and chased by the entire roused and bewildered family, with loaded guns; of the pans of milk she has upset, the crockery whose hopes she has untimely shattered, the skulls she has cracked against open doors, the rockingchairs she has stumbled over and apostrophized in her own meek way; of the neighbors she has frightened out of town by her perambulations; of the alarms of fire she has raised, pacing the wood-shed with a lantern for exercise stormy nights; of all the possible and impossible corners and crevices in which she has sought repose-she has slept on every sofa in every room in the house, and once she spent a whole night on a closet shelf; of the amiable condition of her mornings, and the terror she is fast becoming to family, Church, and State, the time would fail her to tell. Were she to "let slip the dogs of war," and relate a modicum of the agonies she undergoes-how the stamping of a neighbor's horse on a barn floor will drive every solitary wink of sleep from her eyes and slumber from her eyelids; the nibbling of a mouse in some un-get-at-able place in the wall, prove torture; the rattling of a pane of glass, ticking of a clock, or pattering of rain-drops, as effective as a cannon; a guest in the "spare room" with a musical "love of a baby," something far different from a blessing, and a tolerably windy night, one lengthened vigil long drawn outthe liberal editor would cry, "Forbear!" It becomes really an interesting science to learn how slight a thing will utterly deprive an unfortu nate creature of the great necessity of life; but this article not being a scientific treatise, that must be left to the sympathizing imagination. Keturah feels compelled, however, to relate the story of two memorable nights, of which the only wonder is that she has lived to tell the tale. Every incident is stamped indelibly upon her brain. It is wrought in letters of fire. "While memory holds a seat on this distracted globe," it shall not-can not be forgotten. killed them in corners-t -they came to life under her very eyes. She caught them in her handkerchief and tied them up tight-they crawled out before she could get them in. She shut the cover of the wash-stand down on them-she looked in a while after and there was not one to be seen. All ten of the great blundering creatures were knocking their brains out against the ceiling. After the endurance of terrors that came very near turning her hair gray she had pushed the last one out on the balcony, shut the It was a night in June-sultry, gasping, fear-window, and was gasping away in the airless ful. Keturah went to her own room, as is her room, her first momentary sense of security, custom, at the Puritanic hour of nine. Sleep when there struck upon her agonized ear a for a couple of hours being out of the question fiendish buzzing, and three of them came she threw wide her doors and windows, and be- whirling back through a crack about as large took herself to her writing-desk. A story for a as a knitting-needle. No mortal beetle could Magazine, which it was imperative should be fin- have got through it. Keturah turned pale and ished to-morrow, appealed to her already par- let them alone. tially-stupefied brain. She forced her unwilling pen into the service, whisked the table round into the draft, and began. In about five minutes the sibyl caught the inspiration of her god, and heat and sleeplessness were alike forgotten. This sounds very poetic, but it wasn't at all. Keturah regrets to say that she had on a very unbecoming green wrapper, and several inkspots on her fingers. It was a very thrilling and original story, and it came, as all thrilling and original stories must come, to a crisis. Seraphina found Theodore kissing the hand of Celeste in the woods. Keturah became excited. "Oh, Theodore!" whispered the unhappy maiden to the moaning trees. "Oh, Theodore, my-" Whirr! buzz! swosh! came something through the window into the lamp, and down squirming into the ink-bottle. Keturah jumped. If you have half the horror of those great June beetles that she has you will know how she jumped. She emptied the entire contents of the ink-bottle out of the window in great disgust, closed her blinds, and began again. The clock was striking eleven when quiet was at last restored, and the exhausted sufferer began to think of sleep. At this moment she heard a sound before which her heart sank like lead. You must know that Keturah has a very near neighbor, Miss Humdrum by name. Miss Humdrum is a—well, a very excellent and pious old lady, who keeps a one-eyed servant and three cats. And the sound which Keturah heard was Miss Humdrum's cats. Keturah descended to the wood-shed, armed herself with a huge oaken log, and sallied out into the garden, with a horrible sang froid that only long familiarity with her errand could have engendered. It was Egyptian darkness; but her practiced eye discerned, or thought it discerned, a white cat upon the top of the high wooden fence. Keturah smiled a ghastly smile, and fired. Now she never yet in her life threw any thing any where, under any circumstances, that did not go exactly in the opposite direction from what she wanted to have it. This occasion proved no exception. The cat jumped, and sprang over, and disappeared. The stick went exactly into the middle of the fence. Keturah can not suppose that the last trump will be capable of making a louder noise. She stood transfixed. One cry alone broke the hideous silence. "O Lord!" in an unmistakably Irish, halfwakened howl, from the open window of the one-eyed servant's room. "Only that, and nothing more." "Theodore," said Seraphina. "Seraphina," said Theodore-jump the second. It was-it really was-the same identical creature, whirring round the lamp, and buzzing down into her lap. Hadn't he been burned in the light, drowned in the ink, speared with the pen, and crushed by falling from the window? Yet there he was, or the ghost of him, fluttering Keturah returned to her apartment, a sadder his inky wings into her very eyes, and walking if not a wiser woman. Marius among the ruins leisurely across the smooth, fair page that wait- of Carthage, Napoleon at St. Helena, M‘Clellan ed to be inscribed with Seraphina's woe. Nerved in Europe, have henceforth and forever her symby despair, Keturah did a horrible thing. Never before or since has she been known to accomplish it. She put him down on the floor and stepped on him. She repented of the act in dust and ashes. Before she could get across the room to close the window ten more had come to his funeral. To describe the horrors of the ensuing hour she has no words. She put them out of the window-they came directly back. She drowned them in the wash-bowl-they fluttered, and sputtered, and buzzed up into the air. She pathy. She thinks it was precisely five minutes after her return, during which the happy stillness that seemed to rest upon nature without and nature within had whispered faint promises of coming rest-that there suddenly broke upon it a hoarse, deep, unearthly breathing. So hoarse, so deep, so unearthly, and so directly underneath her window, that for about ten seconds Keturah sat paralyzed. There was but one thing it could be. A traveling menagerie in town had lost its Po lish wolf that very day. This was the Polish | infallible resort, the wood-shed, and filled her wolf. The horrible panting, like the panting of a famished creature, came nearer, grew louder, grew hoarser. The animal had found a bone in the grass, and was crunching it in his ghastly way. Then she could hear him sniffing at the door. arms up to the chin with pine knots. Thas equipped she started afresh to the conflict. It is recorded that out of twenty of those sticks, thrown with savage and direful intent, only one hit. It is, however, recorded that the enemy dispersed, after being valiantly pursued around the house, out of the front gate (where one And Amram's room was on the lower story! stuck, and got through with the greatest diffiPerhaps wolves climbed in windows! The awful thought roused Keturah from the stupor of her terror. She was no coward. She would face the fearful sight. She would call and warn him at any risk. She faltered out upon the balcony. She leaned over the railing. She gazed breathlessly down into the darkness. A cow. Another cow. culty), and for a quarter of a mile down the street. In the course of the rout Keturah tripped on her dress only six times, and fell flat but four. One pleasing little incident gave delightful variety to the scene. A particularly frisky and clover-loving white cow, whose heart yearned after the apples of Sodom, turned about in the road without any warning whatever and showed fight. Keturah adopted a sudden resolution to return home "across considerable empressement. Exactly half-way It was succeeded by a storm. She concludes over she was surprised to find herself gasping that she was about five seconds on the passage among the low-hanging boughs of a butternutfrom her room to the garden. With "hair flo- tree, where she hung like Absalom of old, betant, and arms disclosed," like the harpies of tween heaven and earth. She would like to heraldic device, she rushed up to the invad- state in this connection that she always had ers-and stopped. Exactly what was to be too much vanity to wear a waterfall; so she done? Three great stupid, browsing, content- still retains a portion of her original hair. ed cows versus one lone, lorn woman. For However, she returned victorious over the siabout one minute Keturah would not have wa-lent dew-laden fields and down into the garden gered her fortune on the woman. But it is not paths, where she paced for two hours back and her custom to "say die," and after some reflec- forth among the aromatic perfumes of the great tion she ventured on a manful command: yellow June lilies. There might have been a bit of poetry in it under other circumstances, but Keturah was not poetically inclined on that occasion. The events of the night had so roused her soul within her that exercise unto exhaustion was her sole remaining hope of sleep. Keturah sat down on the window-sill in the lots," and climbed the nearest stone-wall with calm of despair. "Go away! Go! go!" The stentorian remark caused a result for which she was, to say the least, unprepared. The creatures coolly turned about and walked directly up to her. To be sure. Why not? Is it not a part of our outrageous Yankee nomenclature to teach cows to come to you when you tell them to go away? How Keturah, country-born and bred, could have even momentarily forgotten so clear and simple a principle of philology remains a mystery to this day. A little reflection convinced her of the only logical way of ridding herself of her guests. Accordingly, she walked a little way behind them and tried again. At about two o'clock she crawled faintly up stairs again, and had just fallen asleep with her head on the window-sill, when a wandering dog had to come directly under the window, and sit there and bark for half an hour at a rakehandle. Keturah made no other effort to fight her destiny. Determined to meet it heroically, she put a chair precisely into the middle of the room, "Come here, Sir! Come, good fellow! and sat up straight in it, till she heard the birds Wh-e-e! come here!" Three great wooden heads lifted themselves slowly, and three pair of soft, sleepy eyes looked at her, and the beasts returned to their clover and stood stock-still. What was to be done? You could go behind and push them. Or you could go in front and pull them by the horns. Neither of these methods exactly striking Keturah's fancy, she took up a little chip and threw at them; also a piece of coal and a handful of pebbles. These gigantic efforts proving to be fruitless she sat down on the grass and looked at them. The heartless creatures resisted even that appeal. At this crisis of her woes one of Keturah's many brilliant thoughts came to her relief. She hastened upon the wings of the wind to her sing. Somewhere about that epoch she fell into a doze with one eye open, when a terrific peal of thunder started her to her feet. It was Patsy knocking at the door to announce that her breakfast was cold. In the ghastly condition of the following day the story was finished and sent off. It was on this occasion that the patient and long-enduring Editor ventured mildly to suggest, that when, by a thrilling and horrible mischance, Seraphina's lovely hand came between a log of wood and the full force of Theodore's hatchet the result might have been more disastrous than the loss of a finger-nail. Alas! even his editorial omniscience did not know-how could it ?—the story of that night. Keturah forgave him. It is perhaps worthy of mention that Miss Humdrum appeared promptly at eight o'clock the next morning, with her handkerchief at her | to go and look, insists upon it that was nothing eyes. "My Star-spangled Banner, my nearest and my dearest, has met with her decease, Ketury." "Indeed! How very sad!" "Yes. She has met with her decease. Under very peculiar circumstances, Ketury." "Oh!" said Keturah, hunting for her own handkerchief; finding three in her pocket, she brought them all into requisition. "And I feel it my duty to inquire," says Miss Humdrum, "whether it may happen that you know any thing about the event, Ketury." "I?" said Keturah, weeping, "I didn't know she was dead even! Dear Miss Humdrum, you are indeed afflicted." "But I feel compelled to say," pursued Miss Humdrum eying this wretched hypocrite severely, "that my girl Jemimy did hear somebody fire a gun or a cannon or something, out in your garden last night, and she scar't out of her wits, and my poor cat found cold under the hogshead this morning, Ketury." "Miss Humdrum," said Keturah, "I can not in justice to myself answer such insinuations, further than to say that Amram never allows the gun to go out of his own room. The cannon we keep in the cellar." "Oh!" said Miss Humdrum, with horrible suspicion in her eyes. "Well, I hope you haven't it on your conscience, I'm sure. Good-morning." It has been the ambition of Keturah's life to see a burglar. The second of the memorable nights referred to crowned this ambition by not only one burglar but two. She it was who discovered them, she who frightened them away, and nobody but she ever saw them. She confesses to a natural and unconquerable pride in them. It came about on this wise: It was one of Keturah's wide-awake nights, and she had been wandering off into the fields at the foot of the garden, where it was safe and still. There is, by-the-way, a peculiar awe in the utter hush of the earliest morning hours, of which no one can know who has not familiarized himself with it in all its moods. A solitary walk in a solitary place, with the great world sleeping about you, and the great skies throbbing above you, and the long unrest of the panting summer night, fading into the cool of dews, and pure gray dawns, has in it something of what Mr. Robertson calls "God's silence." Once, on one of these lonely rambles, Keturah found away in the fields, under the shadow of an old stone-wall, a baby's grave. It had no head-stone to tell its story, and the weeds and brambles of many years had overgrown it. Keturah is not of a romantic disposition, especially on her midnight tramps, but she sat down by the little nameless thing, and looked from it to the arch of eternal stars that summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, kept steadfast watch over it, and was very still. It is one of the standing grievances of her life that Amram, while never taking the trouble but somebody's pet dog. She knows better. On this particular night, Keturah, in coming up from the garden to return to the house, had a dim impression that something crossed the walk in front of her, and disappeared among the rustling trees. The impression was sufficiently strong to keep her sitting up for half an hour at her window, under the feeling that an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure. She has indeed been asked why she did not reconnoitre the rustling trees upon the spot. She considers that would have been an exceedingly poor stroke of policy, and of an impolitic thing Keturah is not capable. She sees far and plans deep. Supposing she had gone and been shot through the head, where would have been the fun of her burglars? To yield a life-long aspiration at the very moment that it is within grasp was too much to ask, even of Keturah. Words can not describe the sensations of the moment, when that half-hour was rewarded by the sight of two stealthy, cat-like figures, creeping out from among the trees. A tall man and a little man, and both with very unbanditti-like straw-hats on. Now if Keturah has a horror in this world, it is that delicate play of the emotions commonly known as "woman's nonsense." And therefore did she sit still for three mortal minutes, with her burglars making tracks for the kitchen window under her very eyes, in order to prove to herself and an incredulous public, beyond all shadow of doubt or suspicion, that they were robbers and not dreams; actual flesh and blood, not nightmares; unmistakable hats and coats, in a place where hats and coats ought not to be, not clothes-lines and pumps. She tried hard to make Amram and the Paterfamilias out of them. Who knew but they also, by some unheard-of revolution in all the laws of nature, were on an exploring expedition after truant sleep? She struggled manfully after the conviction that they were innocent and unimpeachable neighbors, cutting the short way home across the fields from some remarkably late prayer-meeting. She agonized after the belief that they were two of Patsy's sweet-hearts, come for the commendable purpose of serenading her.. In fact, they were almost in the house before this remarkable female was prepared to trust the evidence of her own senses. But when suspense gloomed into certainty, Keturah is happy to say that she was grandly equal to the occasion. She slammed open her blinds with an emphasis, and lighted her lamp with a burnt match. The men jumped, and dodged, and ran, and hid behind the trees, in the most approved manner of burglars, who flee when no woman pursueth; and Keturah, being of far too generous a disposition to enjoy the pleasure of their capture unshared, lost no time in hammering at Amram's door. "Amram!" No answer. |