From Household Words.

PHARISEES AND SINNERS.

young mother, and which I thought the most beautiful of songs. The Everetts were not given to any such follies; excepting Jacob, who loved He was the saint of the family, and the model children as they would be loved, and who used to man of the neighborhood. There was not a play at bo-peep with the cottagers' babies. charity that he did not subscribe to, not a deputation that he did not entertain—and they were Anna Fay, the Sunday-school mistress, so sudSome years ago-just at the time when pretty hungry fellows generally, who knew the comfort- denly left Green Groveing virtues of his choice Madeira - he founded took place in Jacob Everett. His cheerfulness, -a strange alteration Sunday-schools and Chapels-of-Ease as other which had been his strongest characteristic, was men would build barns, and he was the public exchanged for the most painful depression. He purse of all the ten parishes round. The poor talked frequently of his sins, and gave more libcalled him a real gentleman, and the ungodly a erally than ever to missions and charities. His fine fellow; while the elect looked solemn, and friends could not understand this depression; spoke of "that pious man, Jacob Everett;" which, at last, became habitual. He gave them through their noses for the most part. No one no clue to it; but, with scarcely a day's warning, had an ill word for him excepting the landlord he left home to travel in the south of Europe. of the Grapes, who declared with a mighty oath He had been looking ill and more than ever that he was the "pest of the place, and would harassed of late; and every one said, it was the ruin all Green Grove if he was left to do as he best thing he could do, great as would be everyliked." Notwithstanding this Bacchic judgment, body's loss. His sister Tabitha alone objected, Jacob Everett was a good man; weak, perhaps, on the score of the Jesuits. However, Jacob but lovable in his very weakness; sincere, gentle, went; discharging all his servants and shutting generous, merciful; puritanical in principle, but up the beautiful old Hall. To the infinite sur-as his younger brother, the archdeacon, once prise of everybody, he openly and unblushingly said in full vestry, when Jacob opposed him about took from the neighboring village a certain Betty the penance of Hannah Brown —“sadly latitu- Thorne, a fine, handsome Roman looking woman, dinarian in practice." Jacob, however, who loved a farmer's sister, aged about forty. And Betty mercy and hated condemnation, went on his own Thorne travelled with him in his own carriage. way, opening a wide door of forgiveness to all sinners; closing to a narrow chink the yawning became rarer and more rare. Five years passed away, and Jacob's letters gates of destruction which his brother swung back the same depressed condition of mind; spoke He wrote ever in wide enough for all mankind; saving the small often of "Good Betty Thorne, who had been such band of the elect to which he and his belonged. a blessed comfort to him," and hinted vaguely at The family was proud of Jacob. He was an some nnforgiven sin. Then for two years more old bachelor and rich; and the Everetts-albeit no letters came, even in answer to business inof the rigidest—liked wealth and honored pedi-quiries; and all trace of the traveller was lost. grees. They were grand people, who practised His very bankers did not know his address, and humility in coaches, and self-abasement in velvet; | "Sardinia" left wide margins. Mrs. Hibbert one who denounced the lusts of the flesh at state din-day grew quite warm when she spoke of his nener-parties, over champagne and pine apples; glect with Paul and Jessie, her two children; but who believed that eternal punishment was the almost agreeing that Paul, poor child—who, by doom of all who entered a theatre or a ball-room. the way, was three-and-twenty, destined for the They went to morning concerts of serious music, church but preferring the army, and so making a and patronized oratorios. They thought it sinful compromise by studying for the bar-that Paul to be in love, and called it making idols-so should go to Italy in search of his Uncle Jacob. they married their children comfortably among But the Jesuits and the Signoras frightened her. godly families with money, and told them that And while their deliberations went on, a letter esteem was better than romance. Miss Tabitha came to Mrs. Hibbert sealed with black and writEverett was once suspected of a tender partiality ten with copper-colored ink; which letter was for young Mr. Aldridge of Aldridge Park; but from Betty Thorne, telling her " that her honored the family hushed it up as a scandal, for uncon-master had gone to rest the seventh of this Sepverted Mr. Aldridge kept a pack of hounds. tember last past, and that the letter would tell Afterwards, they married her to the Rector of her gracious madam all about it." Green Grove, the Honorable and Reverend Humdrummle Hibbert, eldest son of the Dean, and heir to an un-apostolic fortune. The Everetts Oh Anna Fay! with your nut-brown hair and were exceedingly undemonstrative. Miss Tab-quaker eyes, and dove-like ways, who would have itha accepted her husband, and, concealing her believed that you, so good and so demure, with feelings, made a very good wife. For marriage Jacob the best man of Green Grove, would have was not their forte. Not an Everett was ever given such a hostage as that round red laughing known to stoop down to kiss a husband's fore-loving little being-that floweret plucked in a head as he sat before the fire reading; not an forbidden forest; that unauthorized, unsanctionEverett was ever known to talk nonsense in the ed, unlawful little liege "star of your - neither to ride a-cock-horse, nor to be- mourning!" God forgive you both. You sinned, wail the fate of Humpty Dumpty, neither to and you suffered; you fell, and you repented; rock-a-by-baby on a tree top, nor to perform a perhaps your burning tears and your prayers of monody in A minor, all about "Kiddlie, Coosie, penitence and grief may have effaced the dark Coosie, Coo". -a song I once heard from a dear record in the Great Book above. You are both

nursery

The letter enclosed was from Jacob Everett himself, revealing the mystery of his life.

-a

cold in your tombs now- - Heaven's mercy rest punctually remitted; Betty Thorne writing all on you, and Heaven's angels restore you! There the letters in the name of Master's Heiress. are enough in this hard world to cast stones at There was a certain yearly allowance made by you both; for us, we will but water the flowers Jacob to a certain widow with five children on your graves, and pluck up the weeds, and Mrs. Malahide, relict of Captain Malahide of place a headstone where ye lie, with " There is the Fourth Engineers. She was an Everettjoy among the angels of God over the sinner Miss Grace Everett - who had eloped one day that repenteth," engraven thereupon. with a scampish young officer with nothing but his pay, and who had consequently been disinherited by her father. She was the youngest, and had been the darling; but she had lost herself now, they said; and so, though not wholly dead to, she was partially excommunicated by, the family. Jacob, as head of the house since his father's death, had always given Mrs. Malahide an allowance, with the consent of Mrs. Hibbert and the archdeacon; to whom it was a matter of pride rather than of love that an Everett should not starve. But for themselves— Grace had married a poor man and an unconvert

In this letter to his sister, Jacob made a full confession; telling her that, shocked and terrified at his crime, he had sent away Anna Fay, who refused to marry him as he wished, and how she had lived in Italy ever since - he, Jacob, feeling that entire separation, though they loved each other well, was the only reparation they could make to Heaven; and how, five years ago, she had died, leaving their child without a friend or protector in the world. How he had then gone over with Betty Thorne, to whom he had confided his secret, to guard and educate his girl; which he had done carefully. He then ended by ap-ed one, and what claim had she, therefore, on pointing Tabitha guardian and sole trustee of his daughter, now seventeen years of age; for, to his child he left all his property, excepting a generous donation to Betty Thorne. He further said that a bequest made so solemnly as this of his orphan child on his deathbed, would, he was sure, be regarded as sacred; and that Estella would be nurtured carefully for his sake. All his usual subscriptions, and a certain yearly allowance of which we shall have to speak presently, were to be continued until Estella would be of age, when she would consult her father's memory and her own feelings only.

them? So, the archdeacon drove his prancing bays, and Mrs. Hibbert bought her Lyons velvets, and they both said that Mrs. Malahide was only too fortunate in having such a devoted brother as Jacob, and that her sins had merited her sufferings. This was the allowance which Jacob had desired in his will should be continued, until Estella was of age, but which then she was free to discontinue or keep up as she liked.

Mrs. Hibbert had not remembered this clause when she refused to accept the trust confided to her. Perhaps if she had, she would have acted differently, from family interests. For the EverIt took but little time for Mrs. Hibbert to re-etts dare not, for the sake of the world's opinion, flect on her course of action. Paul and Jessie, impulsive as all young people are, pleaded instant adoption of the child, and of Betty Thorne, too; but Tabitha Hibbert, wounded in her family pride, in her religious conscience, and in her worldly ambition, turned coldly to her children, saying, "The girl who has robbed you and your cousins of your rightful inheritance; who is a stain on an unspotted name, and who damages our religious character forever; shall never darken my threshold. I refuse to act as guardian or trustee. Entreaty is useless, Jessie ! I am a Christian woman and a mother, and I understand my duties."

So Betty Thorne was written to, and "all recognition of that unhappy girl" distinctly declined; coupled with a severe warning which sounded very like a threat, to" sell the Hall when she came of age, and never dare to intrude herself among the members of a family which disowned her as a disgrace." After Mrs. Hibbert had written this letter, she read, as was her daily wont, the lesson of the day. It chanced to be the history of the Magdalene, her sins, and her pardon. But she made no comment, though Paul and Jessie looked at each other-the girl's pale eyes full of tears, and the youth's cheek

crimson.

Months and years rolled by; and Jacob's name was never mentioned, neither was his sin, neither were his good works. The beautiful old Hall was still shut up, until Estella should be of age, and the donations and subscriptions were

wholly desert a sister of their house; and if Jacob's five hundred a year were withdrawn, they must either support Grace themselves, or suffer an additional family degradation in her poverty. Neither of which alternatives pleased them. However, the matter as yet was in abeyance; but soon to be settled; for the year wanted only six or seven months of completion which would see Estella of age, mistress of the Hall, and of her father's wealth. And Mrs. Hibbert groaned, and the archdeacon shook his stick, and something very like an anathema flew across the seas to rest on the bright head of the young girl sitting in the balcony overlooking the Grand Canal at Venice, thinking of the mother she had loved, and of the father she had lost.

This young girl leading the secluded life of a foreign damsel; seeing no one but her faithful English nurse and the various mistresses of such accomplishments as her father had desired her to learn, and her own artistic taste had directed her to; living in a world of poetry of her own creation, her full heart yearning for love and sympathy, and companionship; her imagination filled with great visions of her mother's home, of that large strong England whose voice sounded through the whole world, and whose sons held sway in every quarter of the globe; this young girl stored up large treasuries of poetry and affection, all the purer because of their depth, all the more enduring because of their unuse.

Mrs. Malahide lived at Brighton in a pretty little house on the sea-shore, occupying herself

with the education of her four daughters the time had really come when she was to see her only son was at Cambridge- in quite a and be seen by her father's family, and she alnatural and un-Everett fashion. Not that she was most wished she had remained in Italy. She felt wholly natural either; for inherited reserve and strange too in England. Everything was cold early education were too strong to be set aside, and formal. The language sounded harsh, spoeven by the freer life she had led since her mar-ken all round her with gruff, rough voices and riage. There were still traces of Green Grove ungraceful accents; the houses looked small and in the precise slow manner in which she spoke, mean after the glorious marble palaces of Italy; and in the stiff hand held out like a cleft bar of and the people were strangely dressed in shabby iron, which formed the chief characteristics of finery-dirty bonnets in place of the white veil the Everett world. But she was a good creature of Genoa, the simple flower of the Mediterranean at heart, and had been softened, first by love and coast, and the picturesque head-dresses of Italy; then by sorrow, into more real amiability than trailing gowns, with flounces dragging in the her rigid manners would give one to believe. mud, worn by women who, in her own country, would have been dressed in peasant's costume, graceful and distinctive - all was so strange that Estella felt lost and miserable, and wished herself back among the orange trees again, far away from a land with which she had not learnt to be familiar in its familiar features, and whose industrial grandeur seemed to diminish as she approached it. For, ideal admiration does not go very far in daily life.

It was to Mr. Malahide that all Estella's feelings turned. She knew the secret of her birth, poor child; and though too ignorant of the world to understand it in all its social bearing, yet she was aware that a stain of some kind rested on her, which made her grateful for any love as for an act of condescension. She knew that her father's family had disowned her, and that the very woman who had lived on her father's bounty, and who now expected to live on hers, had written At last, Estella took heart and courage, and in a letter to her lawyers thus.-"No one can one day boldly went to Mrs. Malahide's house. feel more strongly than I the sin and the shame She knocked at the door, which a prim, neatwhich the existence of Miss Fay's daughter en-looking servant girl opened. To her inquiry if tails on our family; still, for the sake of my "Mrs. Malahide was in her own house," - for children, I trust that she may continue the allow-Estella did not speak English with a perfect ance made to me by my brother in reparation of my father's injustice, and that, in so doing, she will not feel she is conferring a benefit, but simply doing her duty in repairing, so far as she can, the wrong which her birth has done to us

all."

But although Estella knew that these were the proud and hostile feelings with which the whole Everett world regarded her, yet, as she used to say to herself, whom else had she to love? whom else to benefit? Her father had left her his fortune and his name; she must see the old Hall at Green Grove; she must some day go down there as mistress, sole and unaccountable, of all the farms and lands around; and, do what they would, they could not keep it secret from the world that Jacob Everett had left his property and his name to the child of his unmarried wife. She pitied them; she would have pitied them more had she understood the matter more; but she knew of nothing better to do than to win their love and conquer their esteem, and so make them forgive her for her unintentional wrong towards them.

She, therefore, determined to go to Brighton, where she knew Mrs. Malahide resided; to find some means of introduction to her; and, she said, looking on to the waters of the Adriatic, force her aunt to respect, to love, and in the end to acknowledge her. The scheme was romantic enough; but it did not promise badly. Estella and Betty Thorne left beautiful Italy, and went, in the dull autumn months, to Brighton.

It took a little time before she and her faithful nurse settled themselves, and then a little time longer before she discovered Mrs. Malahide's address. Then she had to make her plans and determine on her point of attack; for a thing of such gravity, she thought, was not to be done in a hurry. She felt frightened now, that

knowledge of its idioms the servant with a broad stare said "yes,” a vague belief that she was somebody very improper crossing her brain.

Estella was ushered into a prim room, with the chairs, and the sofa, and the curtains, done up in brown holland; no fire in the grate, and girl's work all about-Berlin worsted mats netted, knitted and crotcheted, and embroidered blotting books of faded colored flowers, and other things of the same kind, all very stiff and formal, and with no evidence of life or artistic taste among them. Estella's heart sank when she looked round this cold lifeless room, so different to the Italian homes of pictures, and birds, and living gems of art; but she resolved to bear up against the chilling influences pressing on her, and to be brave and constant to herself; no little merit in a girl brought up in Italy, where but little of the moral steadfastness of life is braided in with its poetry. In a short while a lady entered, dressed in deep mourning, her face fixed into a mask of severe grief, but still with a certain womanly tenderness lurking behind, like the light through a darkened window. She bowed; looking suspicious and a little stern, standing erect by the door.

"You do not know me, Madam?" said Estella, her soft voice, with its pretty foreign accent, trembling.

"And I

"I do not," answered Mrs. Malahide coldly. The girl's eyes filled with tears. am afraid I shall not be welcome when you do know me," she said timidly. "I am Estella Everett."

Mrs. Malahide started. Impudent! forward! presumptuous! here in my very house!" she thought this, strongly agitated; and moved to the fireplace to ring the bell.

Estella went nearer to her, and laid her hand on her arm. "Do not send me away without

hearing me," she said plaintively; "for, indeed, I have only come in kindliness and love."

birth

Everett, there was that in Estella which no one could withstand-such depth, such gentleness, such fervor, such childish faith! And although she was by birth so highly objectionable, and albeit she had been brought up abroad, and was therefore only half an Englishwoman, the truth and trust of her nature were stronger than even Mrs. Malahide's prejudices; so, giving way for once to her own instincts, she folded the girl to her heart, and kissed her again and blessed her.

Her pure young voice touched the woman's heart in spite of herself. She dropped the hand outstretched, and, pointing to a chair said, "What is it you have to say?" in a voice still cold, yet with a shade less sharpness in it. "I have come to you, Madam," began Estella, "that I might see some one who knew my father, and some one that he loved and belonged to. I am very lonely, now that he has gone, with all of you disowning me; but I thought that you, who Jessie Hibbert was delicate. She was ordered had seen more sorrow than the others, would to the sea-side; and Brighton being convenient have more sympathy with me than they; for on many accounts, Mrs. Hibbert took her there, sorrow brings hearts very near! And so, Aunt notwithstanding the presence of Mrs. Malahide, Grace, I came to Brighton from Venice on pur- who was rather "cut" than sought after by the pose to see you and the children, that I might family. So, she packed up a carpet-bag full of make you love and adopt me among you. "And tracts; and it being Paul's vacation time, they now," she added, her full heart swelling with its all went down together-poor Jessie growing old hope of love, "you will not turn me away paler and paler every day. Mrs. Hibbert had from your hearts? You will not forbid my cou- heard nothing of Estella. The correspondence sins to love me? If I have injured you by my between her and her sister was too slight and forand, dear Aunt, it was not my own fault mal to suffer them to enter into details; and when —I will make up for it in the best way I can, she arrived at Brighton with her daughter, and saw and prove to you my love for my father by lov- a tall, graceful, foreign-looking girl among the ing you. I want some one to be kind to me. Malahide girls, teaching one Italian, and another and some one, Aunt, that I can be kind to and singing, showing the rules of perspective to a third, love. I am rich, and I want some near one to and explaining the meaning of architecture to a share my riches, and not strangers; I want one fourth, she neither asked her name nor dreamed of my own blood, one of my own kindred. I of her condition; but treated her as the Hibbert want you and your children, Aunt Grace, and world in England does treat governesses — with you will give them to me!" silence and contempt, passing her by as something too low to demand the rights of courtesy. Estella, frightened at Mrs. Hibbert's iron severity, prayed that her real name might not be told -a prayer Mrs. Malahide was only too glad to comply with. Once, indeed, Mrs. Hibbert condescended to say, "You seem to have rather a superior kind of governess there, Mrs. Malahide," in an acid tone, that seemed to end the matter and ask no confirmation. So Mrs. Malahide made no reply, and the matter was dropped.

This simple, unworldy outpouring, softened Mrs. Malahide into almost a smile-a smile which, when just born around the corners of her mouth, Estella caught like a ray of light. Young and impulsive, she ran up to her Aunt, and flinging herself on her kness by her side putting her arms around her said, "You are going to love me, Aunt Grace? And you will let me love you and the children?" holding up her face to be

kissed.

She looked so lovely, with her beautiful grey eyes which had their mother's depth, and softness, and lustre — with her bright brown hair braided off her low white brow with her small red lips, like little rose-buds parted her caressing ways which had all the grace and warmth of Italy-her voice so soft and musical-that the frozen Everett soul was thawed in Mrs. Malahide, and the iron bond of reserve which had so long unnaturally held it prisoner, gave way. She laid her hand on the girl's shoulder, she looked her frankly in the eyes. Tears came into her own. She remembered the time when she was young and impulsive- when love formed her life too, and when loneliness and want of love were death. She stooped down, half unconsciously, and kissed the face upturning to hers, murmuring, "My poor desolate child!"

--

Estella sat among the children like a young Madonna- with such a prodigality of generous giving- both of love and mental wealth, both of worldly gifts and intellectual advantages she was so fond, so devoted, so happy, in the joys of others, so penetrated with love-that even Mrs. Hibbert watched her with a strange kind of interest, as if a new experience were laid out before her. Jessie clung to Estella as to a sister, happy only in her society, and seeming to feel for the first time in her life what was the reality of affection; and Paul treated her now as a princess and now as a child, now with a tender reverence that was most beautiful and touching, and now with a certain manly petulance and tyranny. They both loved her with all their hearts and were never happy away from her.

:

Estella felt as if a volume had been said beJessie grew paler and paler every day she tween them as if a life had been written in one was thin, and had a transparency in her flesh motherly caress. She cried for joy-she sobbed-painfully eloquent: her slight hands showed the she kissed her Aunt's cold hands, called her caris- daylight almost purely through, and her eyes sima and carina, and poured out a flood of grati- were large and hollow the white of them pearltude and love, half in Italian and half in bad colored and clear. She complained little; sufEnglish, sweeping away all power of resistance fering no pain, and dying away one scarcely knew in the living force of her own tenderness. All why. There was a general look of fading, and a was over. Little impulsive as was any true born show of lassitude and weakness, as if the essence

when

of her life were slowly evaporating; as if she | te, as she was called, being her disowned neice were resolving back to the ethereal elements Estella, never struck her, something that was not which had met together for a brief season in her. all confessed admiration, but which afterwards She was dying, she often said, from the desire to she believed to be natural instinct, drew her die; from the want of motive of life: she had nearer and nearer to the girl, and made her at nothing to live for. last love her with sincerity if not with warmth. And when Jessie grew paler and weaker hour by hour- when every one saw that she was dying, and that only a few days more stood like dusky spirits between her and the quiet future Estella's prayers were for peace; no longer for the restoration which had become a mockery when sleepless eyes and haggard looks spoke of the shadow of the death that was striding onthen Jessie taking Estella's hand and laying it in her mother's, said, "Mamma, you have another daughter now, to fill my place! Estella, your neice and my sweet sister and consolation, will comfort you when I am gone, and will take the place in your heart where I have lived.

Mrs. Hibbert nursed her daughter as any such woman would nurse a fading girl-with conscientiousness, but with hardness; doing her duty, but doing it without a shadow of tenderness. She had the best advice Brighton could afford, and she took care that the medicines were given at the exact hours prescribed, and without a fraction of difference in the mode prescribed. Fruit and good books were there in abundance; but all wanted the living spirit.

On Estella the weight of consolation fell, and no one could have fulfilled its duties better. It was the spring time now, and she would go out into the fields and lanes, and bring home large bunches of forget-me-nots, and primroses, and daisies, with sprays of the wild rose and of the honeysuckle; and she sang to the dying girl, and sometimes brought her sketching-book and sketched the costumes of Italy, the palaces of Genoa, and the glorious water-streets of Venice: and she would sit and talk to her of Italy, and tell her all that would most interest her, being most unlike the life of home. And she would tell her anecdotes of Italian history and wild stories of Italian romance; and then they would talk of graver things of the poetry of the old Church, of its power in the past, and of its marvellous union of wickedness and virtue; and then they would speak of the angels and of God; and both felt that one of them would soon be face to face with the great mysteries of the future, and would soon know of what nature were the secrets of the world to come. And all of poetry, of warmth, of glorious vision, and high-souled thought all of the golden atmosphere of religion, in which art and spiritual beauty, and spiritual purity, and poetry and love were twined as silver cords set round with pearls - all that lightened Jessie's death-bed, and seemed to give a voice to her own dumb thoughts, a form to her own unshaped feelings, Estella shed there.

It was impossible that even the Everett world could reject her forever. It was impossible that even Mrs. Hibbert could continue indifferent to the beautiful young woman who gave peace to her dying child; and though the fact of Mrs. Es

It was too solemn a moment, then, for Mrs. Hibbert to fall back into her old fortress of pride and hardness. By the side of her dying child, she became womanly and christian; although, even then, the struggle was a hard one, and the effort cost her dear. She bent over Estella, kneeling there and weeping, and saying, slowly and with a still gravity not wholly ungentle, "I accept the trust now, Estella, and forgive your father for the sin he committed and for the shame that he wrought. Your place shall be, as my dear child has said, in my heart; and we will mutually forgive and pray to be forgiven."

Jessie smiled. "That is all I have hoped and prayed for," she said faintly; "be a mother to her as you have been to me, and let the future make up for the short-coming of the past!" And she turned her face towards the last rays of the sunlight streaming in through the open window. A bird sang on a tree just opposite; the waves murmured pleasantly among the shells and seaweed on the shore; the sun sinking down in his golden sleep, flung one last stream of glory on the marble brow and long locks of the dying girl. It was a word of blessing for the past, and of baptism for the future. Jessie held her mother's hand in one of hers: the other clasped Paul's and Estella's held together. "Blessed by love," she murmured, "redeemed by love, -Ŏ God, save those who trust in thee, and for Thy sake pardon othersThou whose name and essence are love and mercy!"

NIGHTLY SERENADE.- Every night, while in | dozing in the canoe I have often fancied myself the upper part of the river we had a concert of at home, hearing the familiar sounds of the apfrogs, which made most extraordinary noises. proaching mail-train, and the hammering of the There are three kinds, which can frequently be boiler-makers at the iron works. Then we often all heard at once. One of these makes a noise had the "guarhibas," or howling monkeys, with something like what one would expect a frog to their terrific noises, the shrill grating whistle of make, namely a dismal croak; but the sounds ut- the cicadas and locusts, and the peculiar notes tered by the others were like no animal noise of the suacúras and other aquatic birds; add to that I ever heard before. A distant railway train these the loud pleasant hum of the mosquito in approaching, and a blacksmith hammering on your immediate vicinity, and you have a pretty his anvil are what they exactly resemble. They good idea of our nightly concert on the Tocanare such true imitations, that when lying half-tins.- Wallace's Amazon and Rio Negro.