"Yes,” replied Girard, "All-Saint has gone. He was well named. He has never held up his head since he lost his wife.” "Toussaint was a gentleman, every inch of him,” said Pompilard. "He believed in the elevation of the black man, not by that process of absorption or amalgamation which some of our noodles recommend, but by his showing in his life and character that a negro can be as worthy and capable of freedom as a white man. He was for keeping the blacks socially separate from the whites, though one before the law, and teaching them to be content with the color God had given them. A brave fellow was Toussaint. I remember that was before your day when the yellow fever prevailed here. Maiden Lane and the lower parts of the city were almost deserted. But Toussaint used to cross the barricades every day to tend on the sick and dying, and carry them food and medicine.” "Did you know him well?" asked Girard. "Intimately, these thirty years. In his demeanor exquisitely courteous and respectful, there was never the slightest tinge of servility. You could not have known him as I did without forgetting his color and feeling honored in the companionship of a man so thoroughly generous, pious, and sincere. He would sometimes make playful allusions to his color. He seemed much amused once by my little Netty, who, when she was about three years old, said to him, after looking him steadily in the face for some time, 'Toussaint, do you live in a black house?' The other day, knowing he was quite ill, my wife called on him, and while by his bedside asked him if she should close a window, the light of which shone full in his face. ‘O non, madam,' he replied, 'car alors je serai trop noir.'"* Here Pompilard ceased, and looked up. There was a stir in the court-room. Their Honors had re-entered and taken seats. The messenger with the missing paper had returned. The presiding judge, after a long and tantalizing preamble, in the course of which Charlton was alternately elevated and depressed, at length summed up, in a few intelligible words, the final decision of the court. Charlton fainted. Pompilard's lawyers bent down their heads, as if certain * "O no, madam, for then I shall be too black." A Life of Toussaint, by Mrs. George Lee, was published in Boston some years since. papers suddenly demanded their close scrutiny; but Pompilard himself was radiant. Everybody stared at him, and handsomely did he baffle everybody by his imperturbable good humor. It is not every day that one has an opportunity of seeing how a fellow-being is affected by the winning or the losing of a million of dollars. No one could have guessed from Pompilard's appearance whether he had won or lost. Unfortunately he had lost; and Charlton had reached the acme of his hopes, mortal or immortal,—he was a millionnaire. Pompilard took the news home to his wife in the little old double house at Harlem; and her only comment was : dear Melissa! I had hoped to make her a present of a furnished cottage on the North River." "Poor The conversation was immediately turned to the subject of Toussaint, and one would have thought, hearing these strange foolish people talk, that the old negro's exit saddened them far more than the loss of their fortune. Angelica, Pompilard's widowed daughter, entered. After her came Netty, the elf, now almost a young lady. She carried under her arm a portfolio, filled with such drawings of ships, beaches, and rocks as she could find in occasional excursions to Long Island, under the patronage of Mrs. Maloney, the tailor's wife. Julia and Mary Ireton, daughters of Angelica, came in. "Which of my little nieces will take my portfolio up-stairs? asked Netty. "I will, aunt," said the dutiful Mary; and off she ran with it. "Poor Melissa! We shall now have to put off the wedding,” sighed Angelica, on learning the result of the lawsuit. "No such thing! It sha'n't be put off!" said Pompilard. Netty threw her arms round the old man's neck, kissed him, and exclaimed: "Bravo, father of mine! Stick to that! It is n't half lively enough in this house. We want a few more here to make it jolly. Why can't we have such high times as they have in at the Maloneys'? There we made such a noise the other night that the police knocked at the door." Maloney, by the way, be it recorded, had, under the pupilage of Pompilard, given up strong drink and wife-beating, and risen to be a tailor of some fashionable note. Pompilard had found out for him an excellent cutter, --- had kept him posted in re "an gard to the fashions, and then had gone round the city to all the clubs, hotels, and opera-houses, blowing for Maloney with all his lungs. He did n't "hesitate to declare" that Maloney was the only man in the country who could fit you decently to pantaloons. Pantaloons were his specialité. His cutter was a born genius," an Englishman, sir, whose grandfather used to cut for the famous Brummel, you've heard of Brummel?" The results of all this persistent blowing were astonishing. Soon the superstition prevailed in Wall Street and along the Fifth Avenue, that if one wanted pantaloons he must go to Maloney. Haynes was excellent for dress-coats and sacks; but don't let him hope to compete with Maloney in pantaloons. You would hear young fops discussing the point with intensest earnestness and enthusiasm. How many fortunes have a basis quite as airy and unsubstantial! Soon Maloney's little shop was crowded with custom ers. He was obliged to take a large and showy establishment in Broadway. Here prosperity insisted on following him. Wealth began to flow steadily in. He found himself on the plain, high road to fortune; and by whom but Pompilard had he been led there? The consequence was perpetual gratitude on the tailor's part, evinced in daily sending home, with his own marketing, enough for the other half of the house; evinced also in the determination to stick to Harlem till his benefactor would consent to leave. While the Pompilards were discussing the matter of the wedding, Melissa and Purling entered from a walk. Melissa carried her years very well; though hope deferred had written anxiety on her amiable features. Purling was a slim, gentlemanly person, always affecting good spirits, though certain little silvery streaks in the side-locks over his ears showed that time and care were beginning their inevitable work. In aspiring to authorship he had not thought it essential that he should consume gin like Byron, or whiskey like Charles Lamb, or opium like De Quincey. But if there be an avenging deity presiding over the wrongs of undone publishers, Purling must be doomed to some unquiet nights. There was something sublime in the pertinacity with which he kept on writing after the public had snubbed him so repeatedly by utter neglect; something still more sublime in the faith which led publishers to fall into the nets he so industriously wove for them. The result of the lawsuit being made known to the newcomers, Melissa, hiding her face, at once left the room, and was followed by her sisters and step-mother. Purling keenly felt the embarrassment of his position. Pompilard came to his relief. "We have concluded, my dear fellow," said he, "not to put off the wedding. Don't concern yourself about money-matters. You can come and occupy 66 Melissa's room with her till I get on my legs once more. shall go to work in earnest now this lawsuit is off my hands." My dear sir," said Purling, "you are very generous, very indulgent. The moment my books begin to pay, what is mine shall be yours; and if you can conveniently accommodate me for a few months, till the work I'm now writing is "Accommodate you? Of course we can! merrier," interrupted Pompilard. "So it's wedding comes off next Wednesday." وو The more the settled. The And the wedding came off according to the programme. It took place in church. Pompilard was in his glory. Cards had been issued to all his friends of former days. Many had conveniently forgotten that such a person existed; but there were some noble exceptions, as there generally are in such cases. Presents of silver, of dresses, books, furniture, and pictures were sent in from friends both of the bride and bridegroom; so that the trousseau presented a very respectable appearance; but the prettiest gift of the occasion was a little porte-monnaie, containing a check for two thousand dollars signed by Pat Maloney. -S, As for Charlton, young in years, if not in heart, good-looking, a widower unencumbered with a child, what was there he might not aspire to with his twelve hundred thousand dollars? He was taken in charge by the Js, and the Mand the P——s, and introduced into "society." Yes, that is the proper name for " our set." A competition, outwardly calm, but internally bitter and intense, was entered upon by fashionable mothers having daughters to provide for. Charlton became the sensation man of the season. “Will he marry?" That was now the agitating question that convulsed all the maternal councils within a mile's radius of the new Fifth Avenue Hotel. CHAPTER XVIII. THE UNITIES DISREGARDED. "Blessed are they who see, and yet believe not! Leopold Schefer. HE admirers of Aristotle must bear with us while we take a little liberty: that, namely, of violating all the unities. Fourteen years had slipped by since the great steamboat accident; fourteen years, pregnant with forces, and prolific of events, to the far-reaching influence of which no limit can be set. In those years a mechanic named Marshall, while building a saw-mill for Captain Sutter in California, had noticed a glistening substance at the bottom of the sluice. Thence the beginning of the great exodus from the old States, which soon peopled the auriferous region, and in five years made San Francisco one of the world's great cities. In those years the phenomena, by some called spiritual, of which our friend Peek had got an inkling, excited the attention of many thousand thinkers both in America and Europe. In France these manifestations attracted the investigation of the Emperor himself, and won many influential believers, among them Delamarre, editor of La Patrie. In England they found advocates among a small but educated class; while the Queen's consort, the good and great Prince Albert, was too far advanced on the same road to find even novelty in what Swedenborg and Wesley had long before prepared him to regard as among the irregular developments of spirit power. "Humbug and idiocy!” cried the doctors. "A cracking of the toe-joints!" said Conjurer Anderson. "A scientific trick!" insisted Professor Faraday. |