"Not even Mrs. Woodmansee knew, and she of late had zealously favored the cause of the 'Squire Hovey of whom Philip spoke 'Squire Hovey having persisted, spite of Patty's gentle coldness, in constantly coming to Hope, on one pretext or another, to see her.

"Other eager admirers followed Patty to the little, unpainted house-an unheard-of number for this simple neighborhood and those simple days—but then no such beauty as Patty's was anywhere to be met with, and her trade took her here and there, into houses in all the towns about. All these admirers were persuaded, one after another, to go and return no more; only 'Squire Hovey remained, and he, encouraged by Mrs. Woodmansee's evident good-will, came oftener than ever to Hope, and he was known to have declared that if ever he had a wife she would be none other than Patty Woodmansee.

"Toward the end of the second year, after Patty's ride home from commencement with Philip Dixon, there was a talk of a new lover who found more favor with her than all others had done-a rich young farmer from the next county. He was seen with her at various merry-makings. She visited his sisters; he was often at her own home. At last the busybodies were quite clear that John Wilder had fairly cut Phil Dixon out.' 'John's got the money in hand, you know.' 'Wonder ef John'll build, or take Patty home to the old folks's?' "Xpect Miss Woodmansee'll break up and go to live with her darter.' In the midst of these buzzings, John, too, departed on his solitary way. And then, indeed, Mrs. Woodmansee's wrath broke forth: Was Patty crazy? What did she expect? What, pray, was the fault to be found with John Wilder? She had thought age was the objection Patty had to 'Squire Hovey, but John was young, 'fore-handed, no one had ever had a word to say against him. Would Patty tell her for what reason he was dismissed?

"Didn't like him well enough to marry him? Poor people couldn't give way to such silliness! They had to think about bettering themselves. Hadn't she known well enough what it was to be poor? And who was to take care of her old mother if things went on in this way? Did she think John Wilders grew on every bush, or that 'Squire Hovey would wait forever at her beck and call? And there was 'Squire Hovey, a little old, perhaps, but that was a true saying about an old man's darling, and think what he could do for her! Why, everybody said his place was the grandest in all Hanford, and his wife would never need to do a hand's turn. Did Patty mean to slave away at tailorin' till she was nothing but skin and bone, like old Dorcas Tripp? And so through the arguments and cajolings in aid of Auld Robin Gray.

must have led a hard life. It seemed at last more than she could bear, for she ceased going out to sew, and could undertake but a small portion of the work carried to her at home. People began to recall her early delicacy-to fear that Patty was going into a decline, and kindly neighbors went often to see her, to carry this or that dainty, or to suggest some new strengthening remedy to the troubled mother.

"Suddenly a terrible whisper was breathed as to the real cause of Patty's languor-a whisper that, scarcely heard to be indignantly rejected, was forgotten in the shock of awful news of Mr. Philip Dixon

that he was lying, barely alive, and wholly unconscious, at his father's house, having been thrown from his horse while on his way home, near a rocky watering-place some miles away. Swiftly upon this came report of a frightful scene at Philip's bedside. Patty Woodmansee had appeared there in an agony of grief, calling upon him as her husband-shrieking that she had murdered him, that it was to her he was coming-she had sent for him. Why, why had she not waited? What would anything have mattered if only Philip were not lying there? Oh, God never would let her kill him—she who loved him so! Such a cruel thing could not be !

"Then Patty had flung herself on her knees beside the bed, clasped her arms around Philip's hand, and, burying her face upon it, was still, save for a moan now and then like some wounded animal, the old governor and the watchers present looking at her in silence, too dazed to know what to do, when Mrs. Dixon appeared-behind her, Mrs. Woodmansee. Philip's mother walked straight to the kneeling girl, grasping her shoulder with no light hand.

"What scandal is this, Patty Woodmansee?" she said. 'Will you get up and leave this room directly. You have no business here.'

'Patty raised her head. Oh, I know I've killed him, but I cannot go away! He would not wish it; he loved me. I am Philip's wife! You cannot ask me to leave him!'

"At these words of Patty's they said Mrs. Dixon's look of passionate hate was dreadful to see in that room where her first-born child lay mangled and dying.

"His wife, shameless!' she burst forth; 'and John Wilder's, Barton Hovey's, and a dozen others' as well! Never dare to utter that lie again! Who are you, to talk like an honest woman of being any decent man's wife? Who will believe a Dixon would stoop to you for your foolish face? I'd see my boy dead, sooner!-Mary Woodmansee, this is what you've always schemed for, but you've failed! Now take your light-o'-love daughter out of this room, and do neither of you darken a doorway here again while I'm aboveground!'

'Patty had not heard all the bitter words. She had sunk upon the floor unconscious as Philip himself. Her mother and Philip's father raised her, carried her out, a wagon was brought into which they put her, and Governor Dixon himself drove them home, and carried Patty up-stairs to her bed. There she lay many days before her reason and memory

wholly returned-never wildly delirious, but like one stunned. When she came back to the misery of life Philip had forever departed from it, the breath lingering in the shattered body only two days; and there was never glance or sign of consciousness.

"Those who made him ready for the grave spoke, with low voices, of a locket they found on Philip's breast-in the locket a curl of dark-red hair. They asked his father what should be done with it. "Poor boy! poor boy!' he said; 'let it go with him. Leave it where he put it. Poor boy and girl!' "When Patty gained strength enough to sit again in her accustomed place by the window, to busy herself with her needle, a great listlessness had settled upon her. She was silent hours together when alone with her mother.

"When friends came she seemed neither to notice nor avoid them.

"She asked no question concerning Philip, and to rouse her, if possible, from her apathy, her mother told her he was dead.

"Yes,' she answered, 'I knew I had killed him.' "When Mrs. Woodmansee went on to speak of the locket, Patty shivered a little, then said:

"It was my hair. He cut it himself. He didn't know then I was to be the means of his death. Philip never would have believed I could be that!' But she asked no question-displayed no further emotion.

"Terrible stories were flying through the country, having for their foundation the scene beside Philip's dying - bed, the wicked things Mrs. Dixon never ceased saying, and Patty's manifest condition. There were not many who believed them, but enough to spread them, and to give great pain to those who had loved the gentle, modest, pretty creature, as she had been in their homes.

“One day 'Squire Hovey appeared at the little house, looking pale and worn. It happened that Patty had wandered out in the pasture, and he found Mrs. Woodmansee alone. He told her his errand at once. He could no longer endure these flying rumors: he should never believe them; but lying tongues must be stopped-had Patty told her mother when and where she was married?

'Mrs. Woodmansee answered that she had asked her daughter so soon as she dared; that Patty had said it was during the time of the talk of John Wilder's attentions to her. She was away, sewing, in another town. Philip had unexpectedly come to her there, half beside himself with jealous anger at reports that had reached him. Patty explained that she had never dreamed of marrying John Wilder; that she had again and again told 'Squire Hovey it was useless for him to persist in coming to their house; but Philip could not be convinced that she would be firm enough to hold to her secret engagement to him against all that beset her. Would Patty marry him at once? They could go on Saturday to V- (naming a town just over the State line), be married, he would bring her back on Monday-no one would know that he had not carried her home, and at home they would know nothing about it.

Patty refused. Then Philip had became quite violent : had declared he would go to his father and tell him he need no longer support him while he read law; he should give up law, and go to teaching again in the Hanford Academy or elsewhere. Then he should be free to marry Patty at once, and publicly, and if she really loved him she wouldn't be afraid to marry a poor man. Patty implored him to have patience, and do nothing so ruinous to his prospects. Was their life less hard for her than for him?

"But Philip would hear no reason, and Patty gave way. They went to V, were married; then went to N, where they remained for more than a week. Philip then was anxious to end the secrecy, take her home as his wife, and bear what came of the announcement; but Patty would not consent. She had yielded before, now he must do so; so Philip reluctantly carried her back, and Patty excused the prolonged absence as well as she could. She had heard from him, but had not seen him since till coming home herself. Ill and frightened, she had sent for him, and, on his hurried way to her, he had met his death.

"Has Patty her marriage certificate?' 'Squire Hovey asked.

"No; she had begged Philip to keep it, since she had no place where to hide it securely. If it had been found, it was in the Dixons' possession, but Patty showed not the least anxiety about it. Philip was dead, and she had killed him—nothing mattered now.

"She will care by-and-by,' said 'Squire Hovey; and he rose and went away without seeing Patty.

"He rode direct to V to find the minister who had performed the ceremony, and found that he had gone, with his whole family, 'up-country,' as they called the West then, but whether to New York or Ohio the neighbors couldn't tell. Then he came back, got father to go with him, and called at Governor Dixon's, to urge him, as a just man, in the interest of Patty's good name, to say whether or not a marriage certificate had been found among his son's papers.

But the old man, though confused and troubled, would own nothing. The women- folks had seen to Philip's things; he hadn't meddled. Like enough the young people had been foolish enough to get married on the sly; he hoped, for Patty's sake, they had. He should have found no fault, for a nicer, prettier wife than Patty Woodmansee, if she was poor, no man need want; but he'd no papers to show for't, and nothing more to say: and, indeed, no more could be got from him, and there was nothing for 'Squire Hovey to do but to go sadly home to Hanford again.

"It was not many weeks before Patty's child was born-a little fellow, white as a snow-drop, but with Philip's dark hair and great black eyes. Mother said father went over to carry the boy a cradle, and came back to sit down in his chair and cry like a child. He said that desolate young thing with the fatherless baby in her arms was a sight to melt a heart of stone. Father was very soft-hearted, and he'd always thought a deal of little Patty.

"None of the Dixons went near her. The gov

ernor had lately had a second shock of paralysis, and got about but little; but he soon after rode up here one day, and sent for mother to come out to him-it was so difficult for him to get off and on his horse. He had brought a package which he wanted mother to take to Patty. He said he should like to see her baby, but it was best he should not go there; and then he asked about the child, and seemed pleased to hear that it looked like Philip.

"The package contained a silver cup that had been Philip's in his babyhood, and was marked with his name, and the cup was filled with silver dollars.

"To have Philip's cup was a great delight to Patty: she showed more feeling about it than she had done for anything but her baby's coming since Philip's death.

'The baby grew-it could hardly be said to thrive -but was a perfect-limbed, dainty thing, with a wistful look in its pale face that touched every one who saw it. The poor mother worshiped it; but its grandmother seemed as if she could scarcely endure to see it.

"I can myself remember little Phil-for Patty called him after his father. He lived to be six or seven years old, but was always frail, never running noisily about like other little lads. When I saw him he was always on his mother's lap; or, if she were sewing, curled up on the floor, with a white kitten he had, always close against her skirts, and out of his grandmother's way. Mrs. Woodmansee said tears enough had been shed over him to drown him; but kisses didn't fail him, poor baby, if smiles and sunshine did!

"When he was a year or two old 'Squire Hovey came again to Patty, to see if time had done anything for him with her; but his coming was useless, though Mrs. Woodmansee, almost upon her knees, implored her daughter to marry him.

"So the 'squire rode away from the little house for the last time, and we never heard more of him than that he had sold his property and gone away from Hanford. Mother always said that Barton Hovey had the right grain of manliness in him, and that if Patty could have pleased her mother—but when did love come at call, or go, ever, where it was reasonable and right?

"This last disappointment Mrs. Woodmansee never recovered from or forgave. After that she grew hard and bitter with Patty, and her dislike to her grandchild became almost hatred. Often Patty had to interfere to save him from harsh blows, and the child held her in such fear that he would scarcely stir without his mother's hand to hold by. So when at last he sickened of some childish ailment, and it became certain that his little strength was too exhausted for him ever to rally, desperately as Patty clung to this child of her sorrow-all she had left of Philip, and her youth, and their brief-snatched bit of happy love-yet when all was over, and the precious body laid away in the grave she could see from her window as she worked, she owned to mother that it was best so for her little lad, and she would not call him back if she might.

"Some time during the year before little Philip's death his grandfather had died, leaving a will about as wise and generous in its provisions as the wills of farmers of that day commonly were. To Mrs. Woodmansee was left an annuity of fifty dollars; to Patty, nothing, nor anything toward the maintenance of Philip's child, but at his majority he was to come into possession of one of Governor Dixon's best farms. "So the only income the two women possessed beyond what Patty earned with her needle was this pitiful fifty dollars.

"For some years they got on tolerably, but Mrs. Woodmansee grew very infirm, requiring so much care that her daughter could sew but little.

"Then the house fell into disrepair, and, as there was no money to expend upon it, it went from bad to worse, till at last one could hardly find shelter from draught or leak. Patty injured herself very much in the constant lifting of her mother, and suffered terribly from rheumatism brought on by dampness and exposure.

"She could not have been over fifty when her mother died, but she was bent over then like a person of extreme age, and the joints of her hands were so twisted and swollen that she could no longer do other than the coarsest work.

"But work she would; it was very difficult to assist her in any way. Of course, her mother's annuity died with her, and Patty had long ago ceased to keep a cow, her fingers being so lame she could not milk one; only her chickens remained. Every week or so she would hobble over to us with a few eggs, or a birch-bark basket filled with whatever berries were in season, or pears or apples from her trees. Of course, we did not need such things, farmers ourselves, but we always took everything she brought. Then the neighbors gave her all the coarse sewing they had, and one or another of us would often go to take tea with her, and so smuggle a great basket of food into the house. Your grandfather, for father was gone by this time, made one of her rooms as tight as he could, and in that room she lived. The old house was fairly tumbling over her, and we wanted her to come and stay here, but she said no; the old timbers would hold together while she needed a roof, and she had suffered too much there ever to live anywhere else.

"She could see her baby's grave, her mother's; Philip's was not so far away, and pretty soon she should herself be gone to find out what it had all been for-life, and the misery of it.

"So we did the best we could for her, and, to make her easy to receive what she could now but poorly earn, your grandfather bought the old pasture.

"She lived several years afterward, though not able to get far from her house. I often found her sitting in the sun in her doorway, her head on her hands, her eyes fixed on little Philip's grave. One day she walked there with me, and showed me where she wished herself to be laid-between her mother and her child.

"The next winter was one of great snows, and we often felt very uneasy about the poor old woman;

but when we could get over she would say she had not been frightened, her wood was packed close at hand in one of the deserted rooms-she did nicely. At last there came a three days' storm, and the snow drifted dreadfully. It was a week before the pike was broken out, so that a man could get through on horseback with the mail, and longer still before we could reach Patty's. I was too anxious to stop at home, so I went, too, on the ox-sled, carrying a basketful of baking warm from the oven. When we got in sight of the house your grandfather called out that there was no smoke!

“I was frightened, but thought, perhaps, Patty had staid in bed to get through the cold, lonely days; but when we came round the house and saw the door wide open, and the room blown full of snow-oh, I cannot tell you how I felt!

"They would not let me go in till they had cleared the snow out, and then-there she was! In her bed, dead, frozen to marble. It was awful; but they comforted me by declaring it was not likely she had ever suffered from the storm; from little indications about they thought she had passed away in the night before it began. I hoped she did: but what life, what a death, for lovely Patty Woodmansee, the 'Hope country beauty!' I wanted to know, with her, what it had all been for.'

"I knew her grave-clothes had long been ready. Next day I found them in her chest. There were hardly any other clothes, and such under-garments I never saw-literally patch upon patch.

"But the packet of grave-clothes was all in careful order, sprigs of lavender scattered through it. She had kept the gown she was married in for the last she would ever wear-a gray silk, faded with long lying, the white-satin breast-knot, the soft lace ruffles in neck and sleeves, yellow with time.

"There were other things in the packet-a few letters from her husband, some of his hair, a beautifully carved fan that I suppose he gave her, and a handkerchief with his initials. Little relics of her baby, too: a dark, short curl, a lace cap, and one of his first little shirts. I folded them all in the handkerchief, and we placed them in the coffin with her.

"We could not bury her then in the spot she had shown me; it was many feet under the snow, and the earth like iron. So she was laid in our tomb until spring came, and then one sunny day when her peartrees were white with bloom, and the robins in them loudly planning their housekeeping, we brought Patty back to the spot whence, living, she could not bear to be taken; where, dead, we felt she would sweeter rest."

Fo

ORTY-SIX years ago an enterprising NovaScotian, Samuel Cunard by name, conceived the idea of establishing a line of mail-steamers to run between England and America. The scheme was not a very bold one, for the voyage had already been made by several steamers; but Mr. Cunard was cautious, and turned it over and over in his mind for some years before he finally decided to act upon it. He then went to England, and took into partnership with him two small shipping-firmsthe Messrs. Burns, of Glasgow, and the Messrs. MacIver, of Liverpool, who owned a few coasters trading between these two ports-and in 1840 the now famous Cunard Line was opened by the sailing of the Britannia from Liverpool for Halifax and Boston. The Britannia was a bark - rigged sidewheeler of eleven hundred tons burden, with one red funnel, scarcely larger than one of the Jersey City ferry-boats; but for her day she was a marvel of naval architecture, and excited as great interest at her launch as the Great Eastern did many years later. She was followed within the next three or four years by the Acadia, the Caledonia, the Columbia, the Hibernia, and the Cambria, which were all alike barkrigged and red-funneled, and with them she formed the nucleus of a fleet whose history has no parallel in the mercantile navy.

The enterprise did not call for great inventive genius, but its success depended on the unswerving

application by its projectors of the common principles of business integrity. They had to build sound ships, and to keep them in repair; to man them with faithful navigators; never to overload them, nor sacrifice them to speed, nor run risks of any kind. The hope of gain is the primary impulse of all business, of course; and it actuated Mr. Cunard and his partners as it actuates all merchants, but with them it never became a lust. The seed they planted lay deep in the soil, and was a very slow growth. "The richer a nature, the harder and slower its development. The quickest and completest of all vegetables is the cabbage," writes Carlyle. Now, if the originators of the Cunard Line had been impatient or speculative instead of patient and cautious, they would have probably met with disasters of some kind sooner or later; but, since the first sailing of the Britannia, they have built and owned over one hundred and fifty large steamers, with an aggregate tonnage of 152,361, and an aggregate horse-power of 46,012. The steamers have made considerably over 4,000 trips, a distance of about 12,000,000 miles, and have carried over 2,000,000 passengers to and fro on the stormiest of oceans, without losing a life, or even a letter in the mails intrusted to them. They have been detained by fogs and gales and mishaps, and occasionally they have been given up as lost.

"There begins to be great consternation here,"

...

wrote Charles Dickens, from New York, to Forster, in London, February, 1842, "about the Cunard packet, which we suppose left Liverpool on the 4th. God grant that she may not have gone down! but every ship that comes in brings intelligence of a terrible gale, and the sea-captains swear that no steamer could have lived through it." In another letter Dickens, who was not over-timid, says of his own voyage in the Britannia: "I will never trust myself on the wide ocean, if it please Heaven, in a steamer again. When I tell you all I observed on board, I shall astonish you. Meanwhile, consider two of the dangers: First, that, if the funnel were blown overboard, the vessel must instantly be on fire from stem to stern; to comprehend which consequence you have only to understand that the funnel is more than forty feet high, and that at night you see the solid fire two or three feet above its top. Imagine this swept down by a strong wind, and picture to yourself the amount of flame on deck; and that a strong wind is likely to sweep it down you soon learn from the precautions taken to keep it up in a storm, when it is the first thing thought of. Secondly, each of these boats consumes between Liverpool and Halifax seven hundred tons of coal: and it is pretty clear, from this enormous difference of weight in a ship of only twelve hundred tons burden in all, that she must either be too heavy when she comes out of port or too light when she goes in."

Many and many a time have like apprehensions existed besides those of Dickens; but winter and summer, through the hardest gales, hurricanes, and cyclones of thirty-six years, the Cunard steamers have made their ports, until now their black hulls and red smoke-stacks are as symbolic of security as is a Bank-of-England note.

What a picture of fidelity, courage, wisdom, and honesty, this record presents! what a prodigious evolution of commercial integrity and nautical skill! As a mere example of business enterprise and rapid growth the Cunard service deserves a place by the side of the express and the telegraph; while as a corporation wedding the best qualities of the human heart and intellect with financial stability it is almost heroic.

The earliest commanders of the line were Captains Woodruff, Shannon, Douglass, Hewitt, Riery, Harrison, Judkins, and Lott, of whom all, except the last two, are dead. Captain Hewitt endeared himself to Dickens, who frequently mentions him; and no one who can appreciate the bluff heartiness of an old salt can have met the others without admiring them. I have heard complaints that the Cunard officers are uncivil to their passengers. Perhaps they are. We ought not to expect the refinement of a courtier in a man who has been brought up to the rough usages of sea-life. Perhaps they are not. A brusque manner is often the shield of a true and simple-hearted gentleman.

But, whether they are or are not ungracious, they are good and faithful seamen, and that, after all, is the essential point-at least it has always seemed so to me when coming down the Irish Channel from

Liverpool to Queenstown in a fog or gale with a threatening coast on both sides. I have watched the captain then with much reverence, and have been as studious of his moods as his subordinates were. Out on the bridge he has stood, swathed in oil-skins, and his beard glistening with moisture, for a period of thirty-six hours or longer, without relief, and without other refreshment than a bottle of beer or a cup of coffee-all his energies and senses concentrated in his duties with exhausting intensity. The steamer has seemed to be imbedded in the yellow fog, which has hid her topmasts and subdued the bright scarlet to a pink. The mates and sailors have been relieved from time to time, but the captain has never moved from his place until the veil has lifted; his eyes have been steadily fixed on the dimmest shadow that has projected itself through the haze, and his ears strained to catch the faintest echo.

In one of his lectures James T. Fields mentions an incident which may be repeated here, as it took place on the Britannia when she was commanded by Captain Harrison, who was afterward drowned in Queenstown Harbor: “A happier company never sailed upon an autumn sea. The story-tellers are busy with their yarns to audiences of delighted listeners; the ladies are lying about on couches or shawls, reading or singing; children are taking hands and racing up and down the decks-when with a quick cry from the lookout and a rush of officers and men we are grinding on a ledge of rocks off Cape Race! One of those strong currents, always mysterious, and sometimes impossible to foresee, had set us into shore out of our course, and the ship was blindly beating on a dreary coast of sharp and craggy rocks. . . . Suddenly we heard a voice, up in the fog that surrounded us, ringing like a clarion above the roar of the waves and the clashing sounds on shipboard; and it had in it an assuring, not a fearful, | tone. As the orders came distinctly and deliberately through the captain's trumpet to 'shift the cargo,' to 'back her,' and to 'keep her steady,' we felt somehow that the commander up there in the thick mist knew what he was about, and that through his skill and courage, by the blessing of Heaven, we should all be rescued. The man who saved us, so far as human aid ever saved drowning mortals, was one fully competent to command a ship; and when, after weary days of anxious suspense, we arrived safely in Halifax, old Mr. Cunard, on hearing of the accident and the captain's behavior, simply replied: 'Just what might have been expected; Captain Harrison is always master of the situation!'

Of the two million passengers carried to and fro, more than half the number have been Americans, and I wonder how many of these, who have passed through a storm on the ocean, are not sensible of a debt of gratitude to the Cunard Line? Two or three winters ago the Calabria was crossing in command of that grand old seaman, Captain McMickan, and when she was about half-way across the wind increased to such an extraordinary degree of violence that it was impossible to keep her up to it. Many a vessel has foundered under similar circumstances; but