LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 157, 4 December 1874, Page 3

LITERATURE.

“DOLLY.” A Stukv of the London “Sans-Souci.” ( Concluded.) I. was off my perch like a shot, and pulling open that door. Along of the driver and John Thomas, which we three were, we got the gentleman out of yMr Robinson’s brougham. A puff of thick smoke come out with him. ‘ I never smelt a wuss cigar, ’ says I. ‘ Hullo, the gen’leman’s a goner ! Where’s the nearest doctor, Bobby ? ’ ‘ Cigar ? ’ says the footman, taking a sniff, and cautiously putting his head inside the brougham. ‘ There’s some stuff smoking on the foot-warmer. The captin’s pisen’d, that’t what it is ! ’ He was right, so the doctor said when he came up. The action of the heart had ceased ten minutes before he was called, he said. Some one had put a packet of queer powder on the foot-warmer, and the heat had filled the carriage with smoke, and suffocated the man. On the box they had heard him laughing loudly, and that was all until he had broken through the winder. But how was it Mr Robinson was not in the carriage, and Dolly with him ? Well, both of them had been in the brougham, but Dolly had left it to get something she had forgotten on her dressingtable ; and Mr Robinson had spied his friend the captain, and beckoned him to take his place, and go to say they were coming, while lie waited for Dolly. They were to have followed in a cab ; but Dolly, on seeing Mr Robinson at the door, after she had distinctly told him not to wait for her, had flown into such a rage that there was no holding her. Perhaps she said something that made Mr Robinson suspect there was a mouse in the straw. Certainly she was arrested the night of the coroner’s inquest on a charge of murder. The following paragraph is taken from Le Figaro, Paris : ‘La derniere saison a Bade ! The domain of rouge, noir, ct Blanc dies, like the dolphin, with its brightest colours uppermost. Among the foreign vistitors are remarked M. le Comte do Katchakoff, Madame Briton d’Orchcstre, the Signoras Afrcsco di Firenze, the U.S. Commodore Pautucket B. Quahog, Sir Snook, M. P.,'La Markowitz, Raphacla, and the novelty of the season, the charniang [sic] Miss De Forest, the heroine of the late long and exciting trial in London for assassination, by fumes of the upas antiar , of the Wagner of a noble English Faust, supposed to have been martyred for that friend. Her rooms at the H6tel des Favorites cost twenty three lons a week, and her colours were worn by M. Dubois at the Thursday’s stceplc-chaix'. Subsequently the N. 1. Daily Graphic gave the subjoined: Shocking Accident to One of the Pattie Betterton Troupe. [lllustration. ] ‘As the watchman was going the 3 to 4 a.m. round in the gardens of the Santa-Klaus House, he found the inanimate body of one of the lady boarders on the stones by the Gough Fountain. It was ascertained that Miss De Forest, the highly-beautiful and genuine unbleached blonde of the new English burlesque company (whose opening night isbilled for thelSth, see advertising columns), had walked out of her sitting-room window in her sleep (see Illustration). ‘ We reproduce from a London journal a full report of the trial for murder which the young lady underwent at the Old Bailey, under peculiarly sensational circumstances. ’ In Greenwood Cemetery, near the Indian Princess’s monument, in a plain marble tablet, on which are the words ; ‘DOLLY’ FOREST. Erected to her Memory by Jane and Samuel Travers (All of London, England). ‘And only Nineteen ! ’ H. L. Williams.

T HE SNOW-SHKIEK: A Talk of the Prairies. (From Chambers's Journal.) ‘ Hark ! there is the snow-shriek again—loud, wild, and mournful. Listen ; and, if you are wise, make use of the warning.’ Such was the admonitory remark of Hiram Pell, an aged hunter in the north-western prairies, in addressing three young persons, whom he accidentally encountered on the border of a small creek. One of the three was a young lady, Metella Stewart, about eighteen, daughter of Colonel Stewart, proprietor of a well-stocked farm in the district ; the others were two gentlemen little more than her own age. ‘ We are far from disregarding what you tell us, Hiram, ’ said the slighter of the two young men ; ‘ but we should like to know its precise meaning. Be pleased to explain what is the snow-shriek. ’ ‘The snow-shriek,’ replied the hunter of the wilderness, ‘ is a sign of an approaching and terrible storm of frost and snow. It is not often heard, and few know its meaning. I am now an old man, and have heard it but thrice; but never is the token a false one. ’ The sound, then, portends extremely severe weather ?’ asked Metella, impressed, despite herself, with the rugged solemnity of the hunter’s manner. ‘ Worse than that, miss, a deal worse. When the snow shriek rings across the plains, folks that have a love for their life, don’t care to camp out. The Indians strike their lodges at the sound, and make the best of their way to shelter among the bluffs, or in a wooden tract. As for the settlers, they take wagons, and hurry off to the nearest town, leaving everything behind to its fate. If I were the colonel, now, that’s what I’d do, and go for a week or two to Grantville, or Sparta, eleven Troy.’ < Hunning away from the snow!’ exclaimed Metella, with a merry laugh, which she could not repress, and in which her two companions joined. ' Wait, young lady, till you see what snow means. Kcckon you'll hardly see much then

to laugh at it,’ returned the hunter, much offended. I’m going to make tracks, for one, and old Hiram Pell has not the name of being chicken-hearted along the frontier-line. Perhaps you’ll wish, later on, you had set more store by the warning of a man who had fought many a tough fight with bears and savages before ever a spade was stuck in the turf of the Territory.—Good-morning to you, miss ; think better of it, and ask the colonel to leave home for a bit. ’ So saying, he lifted his rifle, and strode off along the bank of the creek, in the direction of the town. ‘What a queer old fellow that is !’ said the taller of the two gentlemen, whose name was Parnell. ‘ He seems an anachronism here at this time of the day, picking up, as he does, a precarious living by trapping and hunting, and occasionally acting as guide and interpreter to some Indian agent bound for the plains. But the colonel has done him more than one kindness, and I have no doubt that his harangue was well intended, although I suspect his account of the snow-storms to be somewhat highly colored. It might be as well, however, to mention it at home, in case this wind should really be a sign of bad weather. ’ Colonel Stewart paid very little attention to the reported words of the old backwoodsman, or to the low shrill shriek of the wind. ‘ A cold snap, if it comes, will not annihilate us, ’ he said cheerfully ; ‘ and we rather enjoyed the heavy snowfall of the last winter, with the pleasant sleighing-partics while the frost held. A pretty settler I should have made if I had heeded every croaker who predicted that locusts, drought, and Indian raiders would harry me out of house and home, if I dared to pitch my tent so far to the west. Hiram Pell is a worthy old fellow in his way, but he is vain of his infallibility in woodcraft, and as sad a Jonah as I ever encountered.’ On the day succeeding that on which the hunter’s words of caution had been uttered, Mr Parnell, whose residence was about a mile on the other side of Troy, was to take his departure on a journey, the duration of which seemed vague, since ho had merely indicated that his absence would probably be a long one, and that it might even be necessary that he should visit Europe. He had been invited to pass this, the last evening, at the house of the Stewarts, with whom he was on terms of intimacy; but there were circumstances which promised to add pain to the pleasure of these last moments with Mctella. The betrothcl of Miss Stewart to Caryl Winthrop was matter of notoriety in the vicinity. In the spring of that year the young man had arrived in the neighbourhood, one of those invalids whom the fashionable physicians of the Atlantic States had despatched to find vigour and health in the pure and bracing air of that lofty tableland, a grassy ocean, lately traversed by only the buffalo and the Red Man, that lies between the great lakes and the Rocky Mountains. He had derived much benefit from even a brief residence in the Territory, and his ailment, a heart complaint, had long since lost all its alarming symptons, while he himself seemed daily to gain strength. Nothing, now, except the delicate pallor of his face, could denote that Caryl had been accounted, before he left New York, as one of the hopelessly doomed, of those victims on whom reluctant Science passes the sentence of an early tomb. He was well now, though not robust; and bi-ight hopes, of which he had had no idea on his arrival at Troy, spread themselves before him, and caused him to view his future career through that roseate haze which none but the great magician, Love, can conjure up for our delighted vision. From the first, Caryl Winthrop’s name nad recommended him to the warm friendship of the Stewarts, It had, years ago, been the fate of the elder Mi Winthrop, a citizen of wealth and eminence in his native state, which was also that of Metalla’s parents, to render a considerable service to the colonel; and this old act of kindness was gratefully remembered when first the invalid shewed his pale face, and bright but dreamy eyes, on the threshold of that dwelling where he was soon to find himself as in second home. It is an old, old story which teaches us that pity is akin to love, and that the one sentiment often glides, by gentle and almost imperceptible gradations, into the other. Metella had felt much sympathy with the city-bred youth, whom suffering had but rendered more gentle and refined, not fretful or querulous, as it does with some of a coarser nature ; and her father and mother wished for nothing better, as Cax-yl’s health improved, than that the friendship of the two young people should ripen into a deep and lasting attachment. Caryl was high principled, well educated, accomplished, amiable, and would, one day, be rich. What more could the most watchful parents desire in a son-in-law ? Wherefore, it came about, that when Caryl told his love, and was accepted, and Metella began to receive the congratulation of all her friends, the girl hardly knew whether she loved Mr Winthrop otherwise than as a sister loves a brother, or whether, in truth, there was in existence any passion more ardent than the calm affection which she entertained towards her future husband. One thing was certain, and that was, that with the full consent of both families, she was soon to become Mrs Winthrop, and that Caryl was a most excellent young man, and sincerely devoted to her. She had very little doubt but that a life of quiet happiness lay before her. Very little doubt, that is to say, until she met with Alberic Parnell, and realised, for the first time, how very different was the sentiment she felt towards him, from the so-called love, which was really liking and esteem, which had been all that poor Caryl could win from her. Yet, as she often told herself, Caryl was by far the handsomer of the two, better off, more highly cultured, than this competitor for her smiles. Alberic Parnell was merely a tall, manly young fellow, with a bronzed face, and dark hair, strong, indeed, and of a dauntless courage, as was reported, but not, like Caryl, a musician, a aketchcr, and a poet, to whom foreign languages and art-talk were familiar. Yet, Miss Stewart knew, and was not sorry to know, that Alberic’s heart was hers, for had she not seen the love-light shining in his eyes ? He had not said to her one word that could be construed into courtship, for to have done so, considering Mctclla’s engagement, and the trustful hospitality which her father and mother had extended to him, would have seemed base indeed to one so honourable as lie. But the tell-tale pressure of a hand as it clasps that of the loved one, a chance intonation, a change of colour, may telegraph the true state of the feelings on both sides ; and so it was, that when Alberic and Metella found themselves altogether for an instant in

the entrance-hall of the colonel’s house, when the time came for the former to take his leave, both hearts throbbed wildly, and each felt as if about to part with the one object most beloved on earth. * You start, then, to-morrow ?’ said M etella, in a voice which she flattered herself to be firm, but which trembled as does the nightingale’s song; and Parnell groaned out some hoarsely inarticulate answer. Neither dared to look into the other’s face. ‘When, 1 wonder, shall wc meet again?’ said the girl, rallying all her resolution to feign a tone of indifference, ‘Never, perhaps ! Safer and better that it should be so,’ returned Alberic, bitterly. * Never, at anyrate, until Miss Stewart shall have ceased to be. Possibly, then, I may find patience enough to come back, and even to renew my acquaintance with Mr Winthrop’s wife. She will be nothing to me !’ To he continued.