the proud, the well-born, and the wealthy, entering unabashed into stately chambers, and lying down with the slumberers in silken beds. Some of the most distinguished guests of the Province Houseeven those whom the haughty Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe had deemed not unworthy of her favour -were stricken by this fatal scourge. It was noticed, with an ungenerous bitterness of feeling, that the four gentlemen-the Virginian, the British officer, the young clergyman, and the governor's secretary - who had been her most devoted attendants on the evening of the ball, were the foremost on whom the plague-stroke fell. But the disease, pursuing its onward progress, soon ceased to be exclusively a prerogative of aristocracy. Its red brand was no longer conferred like a noble's star, or an order of knighthood. It threaded its way through the narrow and crooked streets, and entered the low, mean, darksome dwellings, and laid its hand of death upon the artisans and labouring classes of the town. It compelled rich and poor to feel themselves brethren then; and stalking to and fro across the Three Hills, with a fierce ness which made it almost a new pestilence, there was that mighty conqueror-that scourge and horror of our forefathers-the small-pox! We cannot estimate the affright which this plague inspired of yore, by contemplating it as the fangless monster of the present day. We must remember, rather, with what awe we watched the gigantic footsteps of the Asiatic cholera, striding from shore to shore of the Atlantic, and marching, like destiny, upon cities far remote, which flight had already half depopulated. There is no other fear so horrible and unhumanising as that which makes man dread to breathe Heaven's vital air, lest it be poison, or to grasp the hand of a brother or friend, lest the gripe of the pestilence should clutch him. Such was the dismay that now followed in the track of the disease, or ran before it throughout the town. Graves were hastily dug, and the pestilential relics as hastily covered, because the dead were enemies of the living, and strove to draw them headlong, as it were, into their own dismal pit. The public councils were suspended, as if mortal wisdom might relinquish its devices, now that an unearthly usurper had found his way into the ruler's mansion. Had an enemy's fleet been hovering on the coast, or his armies trampling on our soil, the people would probably have committed their defence to that same direful conqueror, who had wrought their own calamity, and would permit no interference with his sway. This conqueror had a symbol of his triumphs. It was a blood-red flag, that fluttered in the tainted air, over the door of every dwelling into which the small-pox had entered. Such a banner was long since waving over the portal of the Province House; for thence, as was proved by tracking its footsteps back, had all this dreadful mischief issued. It had been traced back to a lady's luxurious chamber-to the proudest of the proud-to her that was so delicate, and hardly owned herself of earthly mould-to the haughty one, who took her stand above human sympathies to Lady Eleanore! There remained no room for doubt that the contagion had lurked in that gorgeous mantle, which threw so strange a grace around her at the festival. Its fantastic splendour had been conceived in the delirious brain of a woman on her death-bed, and was the last toil of her stiffening fingers, which had interwoven fate and misery with its golden threads. This dark tale, whispered at first, was now bruited far and wide. The people raved against the Lady Eleanore, and cried out that her pride and scorn had evoked a fiend, and that, between them both, this monstrous evil had been born. At times their rage and despair took the semblance of grinning mirth; and whenever the red flag of the pestilence was hoisted over another, and yet another door, they clapped their hands and shouted through the streets, in bitter mockery, 'Behold a new triumph for the Lady Eleanore!" One day, in the midst of these dismal times, a wild figure approached the portal of the Province House, and folding his arms, stood contemplating the scarlet banner, which a passing breeze shook fitfully as if to fling abroad the contagion that it typified. At length, climbing one of the pillars by means of the iron balustrade, he took down the flag, and entered the mansion, waving it above his head. At the foot of the staircase he met the governor, booted and spurred, with his cloak drawn around him, evidently on the point of setting forth upon a journey. "Wretched lunatic, what do you seek here?" exclaimed Shute, extending his cane to guard himself from contact. "There is nothing here but Death. Back—or you will meet him!" 66 "Death will not touch me, the banner-bearer of the pestilence!" cried Jervase Helwyse, shaking the red flag aloft : Death and the Pestilence, who wears the aspect of the Lady Eleanore, will walk through the streets to-night, and I must march before them with this banner!" "Why do I waste words on the fellow?" muttered the governor, drawing his cloak across his mouth. 66 What matters his miserable life when none of us are sure of twelve hours' breath? On, fool, to your own destruction!" He made way for Jervase Helwyse, who immediately ascended the staircase, but on the first landing-place was arrested by the firm grasp of a hand upon his shoulder. Looking fiercely up, with a madman's impulse to struggle with, and rend asunder his opponent, he found himself powerless beneath a calm, stern eye, which possessed the mysterious property of quelling frenzy at its height. The person whom he had now encountered was the physician, Dr. Clarke, the duties of whose sad profession had led him to the Province House, where he was an unfrequent guest in more prosperous times. he. Something stirred within the silken curtains of a canopied bed; and a low moan was uttered, which, listening intently, Jervase Helwyse began to distinguish as a woman's voice, complaining dolefully of thirst. He fancied even that he recognised its tones. "My throat-my throat is scorched!" mur "Young man, what is your purpose?" demanded mured the voice. "A drop of water." "What thing art thou?" said the brain-stricken "I seek the Lady Eleanore," answered Jervase youth, drawing near the bed, and tearing asunder Helwyse, submissively. "All have fled from her," said the physician. "Why do you seek her now? I tell you, youth, her nurse fell death-stricken on the threshold of that fatal chamber. Know ye not that never came such a curse to our shores as this lovely Lady Eleanore ?-that her breath has filled the air with poison?-that she has shaken pestilence and death upon the land, from the folds of her accursed mantle ?" "Let me look upon her!" rejoined the mad youth, more wildly. "Let me behold her, in her awful beauty, clad in the regal garments of the pestilence! She and Death sit on a throne together. Let me kneel down before them!" "Poor youth!" said Dr. Clarke; and, moved by a deep sense of human weakness, a smile of caustic humour curled his lip even then. "Wilt thou still worship the destroyer, and surround her image with fantasies the more magnificent, the more evil she has wrought? Thus man doth ever to his tyrants! Approach then! Madness, as I have noted, has that good efficacy, that it will guard you from contagion—and perchance its own cure may be found in yonder chamber.” Ascending another flight of stairs, he threw open a door, and signed to Jervase Helwyse that he should enter. The poor lunatic, it seems probable, had cherished a delusion that his haughty mistress sat in state, unharmed herself by the pestilential influence, which, as by enchantment, she scattered round about her. He dreamed, no doubt, that her beauty was not dimmed, but brightened into superhuman splendour. With such anticipations, he stole reverentially to the door at which the physician stood, but paused upon the threshold, gazing fearfully into the gloom of the darkened chamber. its curtains. "Whose voice hast thou stolen for thy murmurs and miserable petitions, as if Lady Eleanore could be conscious of mortal infirmity? Fie! Heap of diseased mortality, why lurkest thou in my lady's chamber? "Oh! Jervase Helwyse," said the voice, and as it spoke, the figure contorted itself, struggling to hide its blasted face, “look not now on the woman you once loved! The curse of Heaven hath stricken me, because I would not call man my brother, nor woman sister. I wrapped myself in PRIDE as in a MANTLE, and scorned the sympathies of nature; and therefore has nature made this wretched body the medium of a dreadful sympathy. You are avenged-they are all avengedNature is avenged-for I am Eleanore Rochcliffe!" The malice of his mental disease, the bitterness lurking at the bottom of his heart, mad as he was, for a blighted and ruined life, and love that had been paid with cruel scorn, awoke within the breast of Jervase Helwyse. He shook his finger at the wretched girl, and the chamber echoed, the curtains of the bed were shaken with his outburst of insane merriment. "Another triumph for the Lady Eleanore!" he cried. "All have been her victims! Who so worthy to be the final victim as herself?" Impelled by some new fantasy of his crazed intellect, he snatched the fatal mantle, and rushed from the chamber and the house. That night a procession passed, by torch-light, through the streets, bearing in the midst the figure of a woman, enveloped with a richly embroidered mantle; while in advance stalked Jervase Helwyse, waving the red flag of the pestilence. Arriving opposite the Province House, the mob burned the effigy, and a strong wind came and swept away the ashes. It was said that from that Where is the Lady Eleanore ? " very hour the pestilence abated, as if its sway had Call her," replied the physician. some mysterious connection, from the first plague"Lady Eleanore-Princess!-Queen of Death!" stroke to the last, with Lady Eleanore's Mantle. cried Jervase Helwyse, advancing three steps into A remarkable uncertainty broods over that unthe chamber. "She is not here. There, on yonder happy lady's fate. There is a belief, however, table, I behold the sparkle of a diamond which that, in a certain chamber of this mansion, a once she wore upon her bosom. There," and female form may sometimes be duskily discerned, be shuddered, "there hangs her mantle, on shrinking into the darkest corner, and muffling which a dead woman embroidered a spell her face within an embroidered mantle. Supposof dreadful potency. But where is the Ladying the legend true, can this be other than the Eleanore ?" 66 whispered he. once proud Lady Eleanore? MOSES, THE SASSY, OR THE DISGUISED DUKE. GOD'S JUDGMENT ON A BISHOP. THE summer and autumn had been so wet, They crowded around Bishop Hatto's door, At last Bishop Hatto appointed a day He bade them to his great barn repair, And they should have food for the winter there. The poor So then to his palace returned he, "Fly! my lord bishop, fly!" quoth he, "I'll go to my tower in the Rhine," replied he, ""Tis the safest place in Germany; The walls are high, and the shores are steep, Bishop Hatto fearfully hasten'd away, 217 And reach'd his tower in the island, and barr'd He laid him down and closed his eyes- For they have swum over the river so deep, Down on his knees the bishop fell, From the right and the left, from behind and before, From within and without, from above and below, They have whetted their teeth against the stones, MOSES, THE SASSY, OR ["ARTEMUS WARD." CHAPTER I.-ELIZY. My story opens in the classic presinks of Bostin. In the parler of a bloated aristocratic mansion on Bacon street sits a luvly young lady, whose hair is cuverd ore with the frosts of between 17 Summers. She has just sot down to the piany, and is warblin the popler ballad called "Smells of the Notion," in which she tells how with pensiv thought, she wandered by a C beat shore. The THE DISGUISED DUKE. See Page 281, Vol. I.] son is settin in its horizon, and its gorjus light pores in a golden meller flud through the winders, and makes the young lady twict as beautiful nor what she was before, which is onnecessary. She is magnificently dressed up in a Berage basque, with poplin trimmins, More Antique, Ball Morals and 3 ply carpeting. Also, considerable gauze. Her dress contains 16 flounders and her shoes is red morocker, with gold spangles onto them. Presently she jumps up with a wild snort, and pressin her hands to her brow, she exclaims: "Methinks I see a voice!" A noble youth of 27 summers enters. He is attired in a red shirt and black trowsis, which last air turned up over his boots; his hat, which it is a plug, being cockt onto one side of his classical hed. In sooth, he was a heroic lookin person, with a fine shape. Grease, in its barmiest days near projuced a more hefty cavileer. Gazin upon him admirinly for a spell, Elizy (for that was her name) organized herself into a tabloo, and stated as follers: "Ha! do me eyes deceive me earsight? Is it some dreams? No, I reckon not! That frame! them store close! those nose! Yes, it is me own, me only Moses!" He (Moses) folded her to his hart, with the remark that he was "a hunkey boy." CHAPTER II-WAS MOSES OF NOBLE BIRTH? Moses was foreman of Engine Co. No. 40. Forty's fellers had just bin havin an annual reunion with Fifty's fellers, on the day I introjuce Moses to my readers, and Moses had his arms full of trofees, to wit: 4 scalps, 5 eyes, 3 fingers, 7 ears (which he chawed off), and several half and quarter sections of noses. When the fair Elizy recovered from her delight at meetin Moses, she said:"How hast the battle gonest? Tell me!" “We chawed 'em up-that's what we did!" said the bold Moses. "I thank the gods!" sed the fair Elizy. "Thou did'st excellent well. And Moses," she continnered, laying her hed confidinly agin his weskit, "dost know I sumtimes think thou istest of noble birth?" "No!" said he, wildly ketchin hold of hisself. "You don't say so!" "Indeed do I! Your dead grandfather's sperrit comest to me the tother night." "Oh no, I guess it's a mistake," sed Moses. "I'll bet two dollars and a quarter he did!" replied Elizy. "He said, 'Moses is a Disguised Juke!"" You mean Duke," said Moses. pirut capting isn't a man of much principle and intends to kill all the people on bored the Sary and confiscate the wallerbles. The capting of the S. J. is on the pint of givin in, when a fine lookin feller in russet boots and a buffalo overcoat rushes forored and obsarves: "Old man! go down stairs! Retire to the starbud bulk-hed! I'll take charge of this Bote!" "Owdashus cuss!" yelled the capting, "away with thee or I shall do mur-rer-der-r-r!" Oh that I should live to see myself a ded "But don't body!" screamed the unfortnit man. print any verses about my deth in the newspapers, for if you do I'll haunt ye!" from yon bloody pirut! Ho! a peck of oats!" People!" sed the Juke, "I alone can save you The oats was brought and the Juke, boldly mountin the jibpoop, throwed them onto the towpath. The pirut rapidly approached, chucklin ill-gotten gains. But the leadin hoss of the pirut ship stopt suddent on coming to the oats, and with fiendish delight at the idee of increasin his comment for to devour them. In vain the piruts swore and throwd stones and bottles at the hossJane, her hosses on the full jump, was fast leavin he wouldn't budge a inch. Meanwhile the Sary the pirut ship! "Onct agin do I escape deth!" sed the Juke between his clencht teeth, still on the jibpoop. CHAPTER IV.-THE WANDERER'S RETURN. "Dost not the actors all call it Juke !" said she. acknowledged as Juke in France, as the Orleans That settled the matter. "I hav thought of this thing afore," said Moses, abstractedly. "If it is so, then thus it must be! 2 B or not 2 B! Which? Sow, sow! But enuff. O life! life!-you're too many for me!" He tore out some of his pretty yeller hair, stampt on the floor sevril times, and was gone. CHAPTER IIL-THE PIRUT FOILED. Sixteen long and weary years has elapst since the seens narrated in the last chapter took place. A noble ship, the Sary Jane, is a sailin from France to Ameriky via the Wabash Canal. A pirut ship is in hot pursoot of the Sary. The Dienasty and Borebones were fernest him, but he one of his ears and a part of his nose had bin finally conkered. Elizy knowd him right off, as chawed off in his fights with opposition firemen durin boyhood's sunny hours. They lived to a green old age, beloved by all, both grate and small. Their children, of which they have numerous, go up onto the Common and see the Fountain squirt. This is my 1st attempt at writin a Tail & it is far from bein perfeck, but if I have indoosed folks to see that in 9 cases out of 10 they can either make Life as barren as the Dessert of Sarah, or as joyyus as a flower garding, my objeck will have bin accomplished, and more too. |