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mond Hill, for Chrysostom went again to see a play there, and did not see it through. It was "Tekeli." His brother made him come out at the end of the second act. Tekeli was up a tree-and remains there to this day!

This early act of self-sacrifice on the part of Chrysostom was to be rewarded by a long and excellent and complete theatrical experience. He was destined to see the best acting and to hear the best singing in all Europe and in his own country. He collected play-bills in all cities, and recollections which are a perpetual feast. The oldest of these yellow treasures is dated Saturday evening, January 7, 1832, and is of the American Theatre, Bowery, Mr. Hamblin's benefit, and the last night of the sea

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They played "Venice Preserved," with Miss Clifton as Belvidera; the comedy of "Everybody's Husband," with Mrs. Maugeon as Mrs. Pimpernel; "The Review," with Mrs. Maugeon as Lucy, "in which she will sing by particular request The Dashing White Sergeant,' 'I've been roaming,' and 'As he marched through the Town.'” "The entertainment to conclude with part of the third, fourth, and fifth acts of 'Virginius,' and (first time) Virginia by Miss Clifton."

Hamblin played in every one of these pieces. What monstrous versatility; what immense industry! If that isn't a good bill, what is? How gay, how dashing, how amusing, it all sounds! I wish somebody would sing for me, by particular request, "The Dashing White Sergeant," "I've been roaming," and "As he marched through the Town." Do we get as much in our play-bills now? It seems to me there then were more cakes and ale. There was variety, there was a lively change from grave to gay. It must have taken all Saturday night, and, one fears, part of the next day.

Then we find, on Monday evening, June 4, 1832, the beautiful Clifton (a fine, great creature, with black eyes, regular features, and a touching voice, so Chrysostom says) singing in the " opera of 'The Devil's Bridge,'" in which she gives us, "Behold his Soft, Expressive Face," "Is there a Heart?" "Though Love is warm awhile," and ""Tis but Fancy's Sketch."

with the farce of “Is he jealous?"—the indefatigable Clifton singing " Here we meet too soon to part," accompanying herself on the piano-forte.

The work these people did of an evening! Really, Chrysostom got the benefit-the worth of his fifty

cents.

One old play-bill announces that Mrs. Barrymore will make her first appearance in "The Troubadour," and Chrysostom tells us how pretty she was. We seem to see a Bracegirdle, "whose name was a charming compliment," as some one says, a Peg Woffington step out before the foot-lights, as memory recalls the dead-and-gone charms of the then blooming favorite.

And "Master Maugeon, a youth only eight years old, will make his first appearance in the arduous character of Duke of Gloster, Richard III.”—an infant phenomenon, no doubt; where is he now? Then come great names. "Mr. Cooper, in passing through New York, will produce Shakespeare's tragedy of Julius Cæsar.'" Mark Antony, Mr. Cooper; Brutus, Mr. Hamblin; Cassius, Mr. Booth. Miss Vincent will perform, by particular desire, her celebrated character of Clari, or the Maid of Milan. How prettily these old titles sound! Will nobody sing for us now Clari, or the Maid of Milan ?"

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Did Booth, Cooper, and Hamblin, play better than the three sons of Booth later? or better than Lawrence Barrett, Davenport, and Bangs, later still? Chrysostom says they did; but he is very true to ses premières amours.” To him the acting of the past was so much better than that of the present that there is no argument admitted. The play of "Julius Cæsar," as given by Barrett and his confrères, was, however, so well done, that a lady who saw them, in January, 1876, penciled the following lines on her play-bill, as indicative of her pleasure :

"Rome mother of all symbols, one great hour with thee
Is worth a decade of our common life;
Strange that a people, calling themselves free,
Have but preserved thy luxury and thy strife!
Not ours the virtues of that earlier day,
Not ours the courage to be right, and slay,
First the usurper, then the outraged wife!
Thy purple pageants make our visions tame!
A world sufficed thee! Nothing else were worth
Thy blood, thy sons, thy cruelty, thy grasp,

Thou monstrous mistress of our little earth!
That we forget thee is our modern shame.
Oft from my spirit this ideal fades ;
Then comes great Shakespeare, painting it in flame.
I thank thee, noble Art, for these heroic shades!"

But this was a modern play-bill, and has no place here.

I wish Dickens had not ruined the English ballad-mania, as he did by making it so immortally ridiculous through the lips of Dick Swiveller. They were so pretty, those ballads, so sentimental, so suggestive of long curls, white frocks and sashes, general innocence and folly-very tol-lol! full, however, of a tenderness hidden under the Anglo-Saxon sternness, and creeping out rather absurdly, to be sure, but still with a freshness and sweetness which Chrysostom says that they lightened their hearts remind one of honeysuckle and clover-field! Better afterward by seeing Mr. Rice in his popular extravaMiss Clifton in "The Devil's Bridge" and her four-ganza of "Jim Crow." teen sentimental songs than Aimée in "La Jolie Parfumeuse." I prefer the perfume of the cloverfields !

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This was a bit of local coloring destined to make a great shadow on our national picture. Just at that moment when the abolition riots were convulsing the country, the very year before Miss Martineau claims to have been threatened with loss of life at our hands in this excited country, innocent Jim Crow was pointing his heel and toe, and casting that

gloom which was so unlike himself over our whole political history. Mr. Rice founded the school of negro-minstrelsy, since so popular, so remunerative; and Jim Crow could say as it is said of Belshazzar in the song:

"A thousand dark nobles all drink at his board!"

On January 7, 1833, Mr. Booth appears in gloomy Pescara in "The Apostate." Great, and worthy, and eccentric tragedian, was he greater than his gifted son? I doubt it; but do not tell this to Chrysostom.

Then, after a long interval, in which Chrysostom enjoys the glories of the old Park Theatre, and sees processions of Keans, Trees, Cushmans, Wallacks, and other names which were not born to die, he sails off for Europe, and we find the Haymarket, the Italian Opera-House, or Her Majesty's Theatre, and other names of high renown, on the yellow papers. Here we have a play-bill which many a collector would steal from us, if he could:

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This is the cap-sheaf of the play-bills, the apex of the pyramid. It is our Taglioni. We descend into the plains again, and find at the Haymarket, August 6, 1845, the following by no means unattractive bill: "Time works Wonders and "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain-Lectures;" Mr. Leopold de Meyer, "Pianiste de sa Majesté l'Empereur d'Autriche," filling in the thirty minutes between the plays with a fantasia. It was the necessity of filling in this intermission that brought out Sims Reeves. His beautiful voice obtained its first recognition in that way.

She

Among the actresses, we find in this bill Miss Fortescue, whose charms won her a coronet. made Chrysostom's heart ache with that intermittent stage-love which hurt nobody, and which it pleases young and old gentlemen to remember. She was a great beauty.

Mr. Farren gives the public, in one evening, "The King and I, 1691," with Buckstone in Perkin Pyefinch, and Mr. Dion Boucicault's popular play of "Used up;" and Mr. John Parry, the cele

This evening, Saturday, July 12, 1845, will be performed brated buffo-singer, is announced.

Donizetti's opera,

ANNA BOLENA.

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Yes; Chrysostom saw all that-the famous "Par de Carter" of "Jeames's Diary "-the most extraor dinary accumulation and concentration ever seen on any stage, the reverse of that evening when Talma played to a pit full of kings, for the audience watched a stage full of queens!

Then, after that unrivaled emulation of grace, Carlotta Grisi did "La Esmeralda " for them.

When I recognize all this good luck of Chrysostom's, and remember that he also heard Jenny Lind in "Fidelio" and "Lucia," I see that virtue is rewarded in this world; and I am less affected when I remember the scene at the old Richmond Hill The atre, whence he turned, poor, disappointed child, so many years ago!

He goes back, with one of Lucile Grahn's own mighty bounds, thirty years, to tell us how splendid she was. A tall, powerful woman, clearing the stage with her great, grand, heroic movements, like a daughter of the Vikings, hers was the grace of strength, of size, of grand proportions!

This gentleman has only lately retired, and his name, and those of others so soon forgotten, form the text of a melancholy sermon on the fleeting nature of the actor's triumphs. The memory of one generation is all that he can claim as his own, and an honorable record in a few histories of his art.

These play-bills, illustrating no uncommon or exciting period of theatricals, merely the every-day story, are the more impressive as reminders, on that account. They show how incessantly these artists work, and that it is an ungrateful profession to him who professes it, except for the brilliant moment of success. Alas!" said poor Burton, as he lay dying on a Christmas-evening-"alas! who of all the thousands whom I have made laugh is thinking of me this merry evening, as I lie here struggling for breath?" And such has been the complaint since Yorick and Grimaldi a few words and a passing sigh, and all is forgotten

Chrysostom is never tired of talking of Mitchell's Olympic Theatre, where everything was so well done, or of the superiority of the opera and the ballet of the past.

What has become of the ballet? Where are the Taglionis? Is there no "Par de Carter" for the children of the future? We are always fond of Niblo's; we even (who have been less fortunate than Chrysostom) have seen the Ravels there—those unrivaled pantomimists-and therefore we greet with pleasure, amid the yellow play-bills (to whom Time has lent the now

Cerito was the beauty, where all were beautiful; 'Grisi, perhaps, the sweetest and the most graceful-fashionable écru tint), certain allusions to the corner when lo a butterfly comes poising over a rose, a creature who floats above the earth, descending to it with difficulty, and the transcendent Taglioni, queen of the fairies, triumphs over the law of gravitation! He describes her moonlight loveliness, her almost pathetic grace, her captivating serenity. Then, as all things must come to an end, the four goddesses of the dance fly on together, and Lucile Grahn catches Taglioni in her great arms, and holds her above the three, a noble group, worthy of Pygmalion.

of "Broadway and Prince Street, Niblo's Garden," the entertainments under the sole direction of Mr. Mitchell. On July 12, 1844, was produced, for the fourth time, "The Revolt of the Harem," in which Mademoiselle Pauline Desjardins danced, no doubt, delightfully. The scene is laid in the Alhambra at Granada, as we are told with refreshing accuracy, and in the "warlike evolutions of the Amazons one prophesies a future "Black Crook;" but if you were to ask Chrysostom if the "Black Crook" were equal

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to the "Revolt of the Harem," or Pauline Markham to Pauline Desjardins, he would snub you with a disdainful sniff, which would ruin your self-respect for a year.

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men, who talk while the play is going on. Being the gentlest and most polite of men, he tries to "suggest without insistance, and to realize without emphasis,” that they should hold their tongues, and, if they hesitate to accept his theory, he gets up and leaves the house. Once he retreated to the gallery-but I must give his own words: "On Monday evening last I went to Mr. Daly's theatre to see Shakespeare's comedy of 'The Merry Wives of Windsor.' I had a good seat in the front row of the parquette, and looked forward to an evening of great enjoyment, when there came to me two soiled, ungentlemanly, unprincipled persons, from the deck of a canal-boat, or some place where I should say that they had indulged in that carelessness of personal effeminacy called 'sleeping in one's clothes.' To me, gentleman on the right, smelling strongly of onions, thus: 'Jack Brougham in the play?' I replied to him that I thought Mr. Brougham was not at the moment playing at this theatre, and referred him to the play-bill "

We are all afraid of Chrysostom and his memories and his experience; we feel ashamed of our easily-pleased histrionic natures; we listen to his records as country bumpkins do to the traveled cit, and veil our faces when we say a play is well done if he frowns. But we have one terrible revenge. He has a " blot i' the scutcheon," a spot on his otherwise immaculate ermine: his classic taste knows one shocking immorality-he loves melodrama. Some of us remember going with him to see Forrest, and in the play of "Damon and Pythias" he took out his watch to see if Pythias could get back in time—or is it Damon? And in Paris he went off alone to see "Le Chevalier de la Maison Rouge!" He (it is feared) has stolen round to see many a blood-and-thunder play, when he might have been in more regular business; and, as Burton said when he found a button in-and so on. the meat-pie, “I have eaten my friend, and, what is worse, I liked him," so we can only say of our cultured friend, who has seen Rachel, Ristori, Macready, Vandenhoffs, Keans, Booths, Cushmans, Trees, Grisis, Marios, Linds, and all the legitimates, that he dearly loves a melodrama, he has eaten of the fruit, and, | what is worse, "he likes it ;" so we make sarcastic remarks upon jaded palates, and red-pepper in soup, and the like delicate stabs of wit, when we feel our-ferent place the every-day theatre would be! That selves otherwise wholly worsted. But Chrysostom does not care.

Here and there amid the old play-bills we read of later favorites. One at Niblo's Garden, June 6, 1844, introduces Mr. Holland (underlined) as Lobwitz, in "The Daughter of the Regiment "-funniest of old fellows! It only cost fifty cents to see him then; he was thrice as expensive later. In this same year “La Polka” was danced between the acts by Miss Maywood and Mr. Wells, after which the popular comedietta of "The Alpine Maid"—Swig, Mr. Holland.

One reflection is forced upon us in looking through these play-bills: there was a greater variety offered each evening; there was a constant change from evening to evening. Going to the play was more of a business than it is now. It was done with a sort of conscientious fidelity, a respect for the great dramatic art, which is in itself one of the lost arts. I have another friend who, after Chrysostom, is the most beautiful exemplar of a conscientious play-goer. He respects the amusement, and arrays his thoughts in purple and fine linen" before entering the sacred precincts. Nothing annoys him so much as impertinent or jocular allusions to the actors, whom he regards with gratitude and respect, as the high-priests who are to officiate at the altar of his correct taste and cultivated aspirations. He knows how the thing ought to be done, and, seeing it done conscientiously, he is patient, even if the actor does not fill his own very elevated conception. Nothing makes him so furious as to go with what is called a "theatre-party," with a set of giggling girls or nonsensical young

The allusion to Mr. Brougham (one of his greatest favorites) in this careless and unclean manner was too great for our pre-Raphaelite play-goer-he left for the gallery.

If there were more such play-goers in this city as this friend of mine and Chrysostom, men who knew well the points of good acting, the difficulties overcome, the excellences to be obtained, what a dif

would indeed be playing to a pit full of kings! Now, how often is the going to the theatre but a “haggard, malignant, careworn running for luck "-a hope often betrayed, disappointment, rather, that you have seen the green curtain go up, than, like our little friend, you had to leave before it rose on hopes deferred!

Perhaps there is something in the don terrible de la familiarité; perhaps we go too much. It is always delightful to trace, in literature, the effect upon uneducated minds of the first vision of a play. "Soft air-tints and delightful dreams" accompany my earliest recollections. The Vandenhoffs, father and daughter, in "Virginius "—there was something to cry for; Fanny Ellsler, dancing on with her little wheelbarrow and milk-pail-“Calypso was not a woman, she was a goddess;" Mr. Manvers as Fra Diavolo, "whose bloom was then most lovely ;" then a long season of Macready-and all when life was very young. The good fortune, too, was mine of living in the country, and the visit to the city and to the play only an occasional thing. I pitied those jaded city children who listened with apathy to the announcement that they could go and see "The Lady of Lyons." Great Orpheus! How the music of the Marseillaise, as Claude dashes off, struck on the chords of my heart, and shook me to the core! They had heard it so often that they sat like little stocks and stones, effete civilisés, infantile Sir Charles Coldstreams.

From the great scene where Partridge speculates on the Ghost in " Hamlet," all through the masterpieces of fiction, we see how one art loves to borrow

of another. Scott describes, in "St. Ronan's Well," Mrs. Blower's opinion of the play of " Macbeth."

"Truth is," she replied, "I dinna greatly like stage-plays. John Blower, honest man, did ance take me to see ane Mrs. Siddons. I thought we should have been crushed to death before we gat in, a' my things riven off my back, forbye the four lily-white shillings that it cost us. And then in came three frightsome carlines wi' besoms, and they would bewitch a sailor's wife. I was lang eneuch there, and | out I wad be; and out John Blower gat me, but wi' nae sma' fight and feud."

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George Macdonald follows in the footsteps of his illustrious countryman by describing in his latest novel, "Blue Peter," a very Calvinistic Scot at the play of The Tempest." But Blue Peter was very much pleased and carried away until he knew that he was in a play-house, and then he bolted, undoubtedly thinking that it was the veriest snare of his lower majesty that he had ever been exposed to.

The most noble description of Rachel's acting is given in Miss Brontë's novel of "Villette," where Lucy Snowe, the forlorn school-teacher, goes to the play:

"She rose at nine that December night; above the horizon I saw her come. She could shine yet with pale grandeur and steady might, but that star verged already on its judgment - day. Seen near, it was a chaos, hollow, half consumed, an orb perished or perishing, half lava, half glow.

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the gem is hard, clear, and flawless, the cutting is by the hand of a master. Here is a modeling in clay after the round, by a more tender hand :

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'At last they got to the theatre, which was Astley's, with all the paint, gilding, and looking-glass; the vague smell of horses, suggestive of coming wonders; the curtain that hid such gorgeous mysteries; the clean, white saw-dust down in the circus; the company coming in and taking their places; the fiddlers looking carelessly up at them as they tuned their instruments, as if they didn't want the play to begin, and knew it all beforehand. What a glow was that which burst upon them all when that long, clear, brilliant row of lights came slowly up; and what the feverish excitement when the little bell rang, and the music began in good earnest, with strong parts for the drums, and sweet effects for the triangles!

"Well might Barbara's mother say to Kit's mother that the gallery was the place to see from, and wonder it wasn't much dearer than the boxes. Well might Barbara feel doubtful whether to laugh or cry in her flutter of delight."

This is a Teniers, the whole of this wonderful description. Of all Dickens's devoted and loving pictures of that dramatic intoxication which seizes the fresh sense, this is the most Dutch in its fidelity. That sweet sisterhood of the arts on which the old Greek poetry dilated is never so clearly proved as in these attempts to characterize the descriptions of a play. One thinks of Wilkie in reading Dickens, and of Dickens when looking at Teniers, and of all these masters in seeing a play.

Chrysostom greeted with delight, among the old play-bills, a bill of fare of the Dickens dinner. It is printed in blue ink, very inelegant, and has the British lion, couchant: "Dinner in honor of Charles Dickens, Esq., at the City Hotel, New York, on Friday, February 18, 1842."

I had heard this woman termed 'plain,' and I expected bony harshness and grimness, something large, angular, sallow. What I saw was the shadow of a royal Vashti, a queen, fair as the day once, turned pale now like twilight, and wasted like wax in a flame. For a while-a long while-I thought it was only a woman, though a unique woman, who moved in might and grace before the multitude. By-and-by I recognized my mistake. I found upon her something neither of man nor of woman-in each He saw poor Washington Irving sit down, unable of her eyes sat a devil. These evil forces bore her to speak from innate modesty-one of the few Amerthrough the tragedy, kept up her feeble strength-icans who had not the "gift of the gab." General for she was but a frail creature-and, as the action rose, and the stir deepened, how wildly they shook her with their passions of the pit! They wrote Hell on her straight brow; they tuned her voice to the note of torment. They writhed her regal face to a demoniac mask. Hate, and murder, and madness, incarnate she stood!"

So stands Rachel painted by Charlotte Brontë. As I remember the great picture, the guilty, the remorseful Phædra, against her mantle of crimson, I do not know which to most admire, the reality or the description, the great Frenchwoman or the great Yorkshire lass, who, from her sombre entourage of the Haworth graveyard, thus measured her contemporary genius. It is Michael Angelo painting Dante.

Fallen, insurgent, banished," she goes on to say, "she remembers the heaven where she rebelled; heaven's light, following her exile, pierces its confines, and discloses their forlorn remoteness."

Charlotte Brontë's description is like an intaglio;

Grant makes an illustrious third, being at this moment contending with his lack of language at English dinner-tables. George Washington, Washington Irving, and General Grant, have proved that silence is golden. One respects Nature's odd occasional miserly instincts when she locks up her gold in such caskets as these.

Dickens was splendidly fluent, as everybody knows, and great and many were the compliments he poured out on the author of the "Sketch-Book," who sat with the cold perspiration running down his back, no doubt.

But I must roll up the bunch of old play-bills. They are too eloquent; they open too many rooms. They lead one on like the second Calender wanting an eye. I can only think of how much of life we forget-how much we lose and how little we retain of these golden sands which sparkle as they pass. That river which was made by the tears of the disappointed little boy, so many years ago, has become to him a perfect Pactolus.

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CHAPTER I.

ON THE QUEEN'S BASTION.

'WO boys and a girl, standing together in the northwest corner of the Queen's Bastion on the old town wall.

Leonard, the elder boy, leans on an old-fashioned thirty-two-pounder which points through an embrasure, narrow at the mouth and wide at the end, straight up the harbor.

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years younger than Leonard. I believe I had already arrived at my present tall stature, which is exactly five feet one inch. I am a hunchback. An accident in infancy rounded my shoulders and arched my back, giving me a projection which causes my coats to hang loosely where other men's fit tight, forcing my neck forward so that my head bends back where other people's heads are held straight upon their necks. It was an unfortunate accident, because I should, but for it, have grown into a strong man; my limbs are stout and my arms are muscular. It cost me nothing as a boy to climb up ropes and posts, to clamber hand-over-hand along a rail, to get up into trees, to do anything where I could get hold for a single hand, or for a single foot. I was not, through my unlucky back, the distortion of my neck, and the length of my arm, comely to look upon. All the years of my childhood and some a good deal later were spent in the miserable effort to bring home to myself the plain fact that I was disgracié. The comeliness of youth and manhood could be no more mine than my father's broad lands. For, besides being a hunchback, I was an exile, a Pole, the son of a Polish rebel, and therefore penniless. My name is Ladislas Pulaski.

Should any enemy attempt to cross the lagoon of mud which forms the upper harbor at low tide, that enemy would, as Leonard often explained, be 'raked" by the gun. Leonard is a lad between seventeen and eighteen, tall and well grown. As yet his figure is too slight, but that will fill out; his shoulders are broad enough for the strength a year or two more will give him; he has short brown hair of quite a common color, but lustrous, and with a natural curl in it; his eyes are hazel, and they are steadfast; when he fought battles at school those eyes looked like winning; his chin is strong and square; his lips are firm. Only to look upon him as he passed you would say that you had seen a strong man in his youth. People turned their heads after he had gone by to have another look at such a hand-grass was longest and greenest, the wild convolvulus some boy.

He leans his back, now, against the gun, his hands resting lightly upon the carriage, on either side as if to be ready for immediate action; his straw hat lies on the grass beside him. And he is looking in the face of the girl.

We were standing, as I said, in the northwest corner of the Queen's Bastion, the spot where the

most abundant, and where the noblest of the great elms which stood upon the ramparts-"to catch the enemy's shells," said Leonard-threw out a gracious arm laden with leafy foliage to give a shade. We called the place Celia's Arbor.

We were all three silent, because it was Leonard's last evening with us. He was going away, our companion and brother, and we were there to bid him God-speed.

If you looked out over the parapet, you saw be She is a mere child of thirteen or fourteen, stand-fore you the whole of the most magnificent harbor in ing before him and gazing into his face with sad and the world, and if you looked through the embrasure solemn eyes. She, too, is bareheaded, carrying her of the wall you had a splendid framed picture-summer hat by the ribbons. I suppose no girl of water for foreground, old ruined castle in middle fourteen, when girls are bony, angular, and big-foot- distance, blue hill beyond, and above blue sky. ed, can properly be described as beautiful, but Celia was always beautiful to me. Her face remains the same to me through the changes of many years; always lovely, always sweet and winsome. Her eyes were light blue and yet not shallow; she had a pair of mutinous little lips which were generally, but not to-night, laughing; her hair hung over her shoulders in the long and unfettered tresses which so well become young maidens; and in her cheek was the prettiest little dimple ever seen. But now she looked sad, and tears were gathered in her eyes.

As for me, I was lying on the parapet of the wall, looking at the other two. Perhaps it will save trouble if I state at once who I was, and what to look upon. In the year 1853 I was sixteen years of age, about two years older than Celia, nearly two

It was after eight; suddenly the sun, which a moment before was a great disk of burnished gold, sank below the thin line of land between sky and sea. Then the evening gun from the Duke of York's Bastion proclaimed the death of another day with a loud report which made the branches in the trees above us to shake and tremble. And from the barracks in the town; from the harbor-admiral's flag-ship; from the port-admiral's flag-ship; from the flag-ship of the admiral in command of the Mediterranean fleet, then in harbor; from the tower of the old church, there came such a firing

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