"Well, we may be plain in the face, but we are certainly unexceptionable behind." It was an absurd thing to say even to one's self, and I remember blushing like a beet, as though it were not quite out of the question that I could be overheard. There were several jewel-drawers; this ruby upon my middle finger, a ring belonging to my mistress's late husband, was in one of them; but I had no time for more than to set off a handsome necklace or two, and to very much regret that my ears had not been punched for the accommodation of an especial pair of diamond ear-rings, before I heard wheels in the courtyard, and my mistress came home. Everything had been put away very carefully, and I undressed her and saw her to bed as usual. She was more than commonly kind and gentle in her manner that night, as I have since thought at least; and when she wished me her bon soir, she added:

"I am sure we shall both be tired tomorrow, Bessie; so call me an hour later, and take an extra sleep yourself."

I was never to hear my good mistress speak any more.

Did I dream that night that she had left me all her wardrobe, and that I was married in the glacé silk? Did I, even in my sleep, build schemes of what I would do with the money that my dead mistress might enrich me with? No: as I hope for heaven, and to meet dear Joseph, with all my woman's vanity, I had my woman's heart too, beating true and warm, and I thought no shadow of evil. I told them so in court, where all looked black against me, and they believed me even there. But in that morning, late, when the sun was shining full upon the window, and the noise of the people going about their dayly work was full and clear, I saw a frightful sight, a ghastly horror that the day but served to make more hideous and unnatural, my mistress murdered in her bed! No answer when I knocked; again no answer. The curtains at the bedside were close drawn, but through the open shutters a fiery flood of light fell red upon the carpet and the curtains, ay, and on the corner of the snow-white counterpane, red also. It was blood! I thought there had been a rain of blood; upon the handles of the drawers, upon the toilet-cover, on the

basin, everywhere where the murderer's hands had been after their deadly work; and in the bed; I dared not look in the bed; but in that great swing-glass, where I had decked myself but a few hours ago, I saw it all, and every mirror in the room was picturing the same sight; there lay the corpse, the murdered woman with her gaping throat.

They thought at first that I was murdered too, lying so stiff and cold in that death-chamber. I answered nothing to their questions, neither in the house nor in the prison. I knew nothing, nor could I have told them had I known, until Joseph came. It seemed to me then quite natural that he should be with me; nothing praiseworthy, nothing. [This dear little engaged young person's eyes began to get redder about the rims at this reminiscence, and her story to assume an incoherent as well as choky character.] I did not understand how much I owed him how, not having heard from me for some time, and reading in the paper that an English lady's maid had been taken up in Paris for a murder in the Rue St. Honoré, but that she refused to speak, and even had perhaps in reality lost her senses, he started off at once, giving up his employ, and borrowing and begging what he could, and knowing no word of French but the name of that one street, he hurried to me: so that my mind came back again, and I could tell them what I knew. All he did, he said, was less than he ought to have done, because he had behaved ill to me of old, (which, I am sure, dear Joseph never had, nor thought of doing.)

He stood by me in court; in the prisoner's place along with me he stood and shared my shame. I told about the jewels, and of my trying them on; how everything was safe, and the doors locked, and the chamber-window too high to be climbed up to, though a man might have let himself down from it into the yard. And then I learned for the first time that all that afternoon and night the murderer had lain hidden under my mistress's bed; that he must have been there all that time— think of it!-that I was trying on the dresses and the ornaments; that there was murder waiting in that chamber all the while; it made me shudder even then, amid that crowded court, with Joseph by me. They thought it very strange, they said, that

since there was so much time before him between my mistress's departure and return, that he had not murdered me instead. He had carried off all the jewels; those in the drawers as well as those which my poor mistress had worn that very evening; but from the moment he had dropped into the courtyard the police could find no trace of him. A mere suspicion fell upon the brother of the gate porter; but it was so vague that he was not put upon trial.

A great sum was offered in reward for the apprehension of the murderer, making up, with what was offered by the late mistress's family, nearly £400. She died without a will, poor lady, and they were not disposed to give me anything beyond the wages due to me. After my acquittal, a collection for mine and Joseph's benefit was made by some good people; but the money only sufficed to bring us back to England. Joseph had to work out a heavy debt, incurred upon my account, and I went into service again at once, resolving to do my best to help him. At the end of two years, poor fellow, except that he had discharged his obligation, he was but little better off than at the beginning; and despairing of ever getting a living for us both in the old country, he sailed twelve months ago for Sydney. Whichever of us first got rich, it was arranged, should cross the seas after the other; and until very lately, it seemed that we might each stop where we were, engaged young persons, till we died.

I was nursery-maid in my new place, and was taking the youngest child across Hyde Park one afternoon, when I was followed by an impertinent man; I had my "ugly" on, for the sun was hot, so that my face might have been like Venus, for all he knew to the contrary; and otherwise, I flatter myself I was not disagreeable looking. At all events, I attracted the wretch, who kept close behind me. He was an abominable person with a foreign appearance, which I had reason enough for disliking, and that looked different ways, but neither of them nice ways, so that I was glad enough to get in sight of the policemen about the marble arch. He saw that there was no time to be lost, if he meant to get a good look at me at all, so he passed me on a sudden very quickly, turned round, and looked up into my face. I gave him a very tolerable stare, too, because I knew it would disappoint him,

eyes

after his great expectations; and it did so ; and not only that, for it made him give a sort of villainous grin, which I hope I may never see again, and he broke out, as if he could not help it for the life of him, with," Well, we may be plain in the face, but we are unexceptionable behind." I cried out "Murder" and "Police!" as loud as I could, and the man was secured at once. No human being except the one who had been under the bed, her murderer, could have known those words, which I had spoken alone, before madame's toiletglass. He denied everything, of course, and said it was an unjust detention; but in little more than half an hour, a telegraphic message from the Paris authorities set his mind at ease in this respect, and demanded his presence in that city. was the elder brother of the gate porter, whom I had never before seen; and what I had to tell, in addition to the previous suspicions against him, procured his conviction. He was sent to the galleys for life. This ruby ring, which he wore upon his little finger, I identified as having been in the jewel-drawer that very night. It was bestowed upon me after the trial by the heir-at-law, and I obtained besides the £400 reward. If I had been pretty, you see, there would not have been any occasion for me to have remarked upon it that evening, and I might have remained, my whole life long, an engaged young person.

I'M WAITING FOR TO-MORROW.
WE sought her on her bridal eve,
So beautiful and fair,
And sportively we placed the wreath
Of roses in her hair;

Her smile a flood of sunshine seem'd,
Without a cloud of sorrow,
And when we left she gayly said,
"I'm waiting for to-morrow."

He

Next morn we led her to the church;
No bridegroom met her there;
The white-robed angel Death had stolen
The heart she hoped to share;
We told her he was call'd away,

And strove to soothe her sorrow. "I knew he was not false," she said; "I'm waiting for to-morrow." Now ofttimes in the churchyard green Alone poor Ellen strays, And kneeling by a new-made grave, By turns she weeps and prays;

And when at eve the radiant skies
Their sunset glories borrow,
She turns toward the west, and sighs,
"I'm waiting for to-morrow."

AN EMBALMED PATRIARCH.

MON

I said "laying in state!" let me rather substitute "sitting in state," for therein consisted the singularity of the spectacle. Everybody has seen great men, or rather their remains, exposed to public gaze with all the paraphernalia of velvet coffins, tall candlesticks, and so forth; but very few have had an opportunity, especially in hot climates, where immediate sepulture is indispensable, of standing face to face with a body a week dead, and no inconvenience or horrible sensations arising therefrom. Such, however, was the case in this ceremony.

The summer had been intensely hot, and the cholera had been raging for three months in its most virulent form. There was something peculiarly awful and solemn in the cases hourly occurring around us; something more shocking to the nervous system than has to be encountered, under similar afflictions, in our own country, and among civilized people. With us, death is a quiet warning, bringing with it a sacred sorrow. The closed shutters impart to the casual passer-by the gloomy fact within doors. A hearse and a coach or two, waiting in the shady side of the street, and eventually a dark load carried out of the door, these are significant to the American; but he cannot, nor has he any wish to pry into the extent of the calamity that has fallen upon his neighbor; he is only too thankful, though sooner or later it must come to his turn, that as yet the fell shadow has been kept away from his own hearth. Turning into the next street, his attention is immediately riveted by something else, and he has forgotten that sad particular procession. The whole street may die off of cholera, and Jones or Smith be not one atom the wiser or the more frightened. There is no denying that a

vailing contagion.

Now in Egypt it was physically impossible to shut one's eyes or ears to the dreadful extent of the malady raging around. At whatever hour of the day business or exercise called us into the streets, we were forcibly reminded of the brief tenure of life under any circumstances or age, by the continuous string of funeral processions. Now hurrying along with indecent speed, preceded by bands of blind men and boys, chanting their rapid and interminable chorus from the Koran, (God is God alone; praise to God and Mohammed, the chief of God;") or, with rosaries and crosses, and low, heart-rending wail, native Christians of all persuasions, Greeks, Maronites, Armenians, Copts, and Catholics; some carrying their dead in open coffins, covered over with wreaths of flowers; lastly, and not so commonly, owing to the comparative paucity of population, the somber, lumbering old hearse of the Protestants, carrying the dead to their graves in Egypt's sandy soil. Such were hourly incidents out of doors during the day; but, both by day and night, we were at all times apprised of catastrophes happening around by the wild, loud bursts of lamentation that issued from houses in the neighborhood.

Cries so peculiar and awful that, coming, as they often did, long after midnight, and just as one was enjoying the first few snatches of slumber, hitherto interrupted by the heat and musquetoes, they almost congealed the blood, and struck a momentary terror, which seemed to whisper that the Angel of Death was even then entering the threshold, and aiming his tortureimbued arrow at one's palpitating heart. The sudden scream and howl of terror often came from the next room; sometimes from above; sometimes below. Hired mourners, a profession or calling

in vogue ever since the days of the ancient patriarchs, would rush up and down the streets, their usually ugly faces distorted and besmeared with tears and ashes, their hair disheveled, and flying loose in the night air; their garments rent, and their girdles loosed, while waving these latter to and fro in their hands with grotesque antics, and a hideous dirge, they proclaimed aloud to the world that Azrael had stricken such and such an inhabitant; that the great and the rich, the charitable, and beneficent, had passed suddenly from the earth; and they called upon the city to take up the echoes of their lamentations; to howl aloud, as they did, like unearthly demons, for the heavy visitation that had fallen upon the city.

Look out upon this at the solemn hour of midnight, with a heaven whose canopy of brilliant stars seemed to gaze down in mocking brilliancy upon the pest-ridden earth; to listen to this wailing, and behold the distortions of those unearthly hired mourners, carried the mind solemnly back to those darker pages of prophecy which cried even against this very land of Egypt; and an illustration of the force of which, and the truthfulness of its imagery, was never surely better painted than by the scenes there enacted.

Toward the close of the scourge season the old patriarch succumbed to a short but virulent attack, and the whole city was called upon to bewail the loss of a man, who, through nearly half a century, had commanded the esteem of all classes and creeds; and, accordingly, the invitations were issued already mentioned.

In the East no patriarch is ever committed to the earth, as is the usage, or with the same ceremonials, attendant upon other defunct mortals. Although he had fulfilled the full term of years allotted to man upon earth; although he had died full of honors and old age, the scene of his honors upon earth had not closed with the departure of his immortal soul; his clay remained to be almost worshiped by the semi-idolatrous Greeks and Armenians. The old man had barely expired when a considerable subscription was made to meet, not only the paraphernalia of a public funeral, but to reimburse the labors of the embalmer; who, with cunning spices and sage devices, after the manner of the ancient Egyptians; or, rather, as he is said to have expressed himself, with

considerable improvements on the art, undertook to preserve the body of the dead. Accordingly, having duly pocketed the six thousand piasters he had claimed as a fee, this Esculapian genius completed his task, agreeably to the expectations of those who had employed him.

Within the week ensuing the patriarch's demise, the rooms where he sat in state were opened to gratify public curiosity; and multitudes flocked thither with marvelous expectation depicted on their faces. Every master and every man of a ship's crew that could manage it rushed to the spectacle; the Mufti and the Ulemas, the Cadis, the cautious, calculating merchant, the money-making banker, the reckless clerk, the renegade and the cutthroat, Moslem, Christian, Jew, and Heathen, all pressed eagerly to view the gratuitous exhibition; and that when death had only so lately, in many and fearful shapes, been familiar to them every hour in the day and night.

Carried along by the impetus of general attraction, I, too, found myself climbing up some fifty tiresome stone steps, which led to the chamber of death. We entered with a sensation of awe, tinged with curiosity; we left with a mingled feeling of pity, contempt, and derision, at the mockery that the superstitions of degenerate Christians reveled in.

On entering the apartment we found ourselves face to face with the mortal remains of the poor old patriarch. He was propped up in a gaudeous chair of state, the back of which was surmounted with a massive cross. Dressed out in all his robes, holding a cross in one hand, a golden apple in the other; his head decorated with a crown, from which flowed a loose gauze vail, which reached down to his feet, the old man looked the picture of calm sleep, his face retaining (artificially, I presume) the tinge of health, while his eyelids were judiciously closed. People crept in and out softly and quietly, afraid to disturb the sleeper's repose.

So far, all appeared natural enough: but when we came to look at his hands, these were horribly arranged; there was no substance, no appearance of flesh, or bone, or vein; like a pair of damp, creased gloves, they were tied round the objects they sustained, the whole being supported by being carefully bandaged to the arms of the chair. Moreover, the head had not

been strongly set, and the result was, that every gust of wind that blew through the open windows imparted to it a ghastly nodding motion, which threatened some horrible catastrophe even while we were looking on.

On either side stood a couple of gigantic candlesticks, the tapers from which emitted a sickly flare in the palpable sunlight of an Egyptian August day. Priests were swinging incense to and fro; pious laymen sat on the divans about the room, keeping up a low chant, while a low conversation was carried on by the spectators.

For a whole week this spectacle was continued; the weather had meanwhile become exceedingly sultry, and it was discovered, to the dismay of bishops and prelates, enthusiastic Greeks and Armenians, that even a patriarch was nothing more than mortal, and that, notwithstanding all the pretended skill of the embalmer, all the drugs used, all the piasters expended, a change was rapidly taking place, which rendered it imperative that the funeral obsequies should no longer be delayed. Accordingly, an early Sunday was fixed upon for the procession. About four o'clock in the afternoon, the square began to fill from all sides with a mixed multitude of anxious spectators. Now came bishops and clergy, with long trains of small boys carrying all the insignia of Oriental churches; the whole square was filled with the odor of incense. Then numberless cocked hats and feathers, indicating the consuls of the various nations; afterward species of sedan chair, painted black, with a large white cross on the back; (this was to hold the patriarch, chair and all, on the transit of the body to Cairo ;) and, finally, an unexpected climax, one that filled the spectators with surprise and consternation, the martial notes of a military band suddenly burst upon their ears, very speedily followed by the appearance of the musicians and a whole regiment of Egyptian infantry in full dress uniform. At first, people were wholly at a loss to account for this sudden irruption of soldiers; some were of opinion that they were only out for drill and exercise; others that they came forcibly to prevent public demonstrations on the part of Christians; this latter seemed the most plausible opinion, especially as the soldiers halted in the square, and piled their arms. Soon, to the delight of Europeans and natives, it was ascer

tained that the pasha, out of personal respect and esteem for the deceased prelate, had ordered military honors to be paid to his manes! Such an occurrence was without precedent in Egypt. The idea of Mohammedan soldiers and music attending to escort a Christian's funeral; and that Christian not an embassador, or consul, or traveler of high consideration, but absolutely a bishop! a high priest of a sect that Islam detested and openly insulted, whenever fair opportunity offered for so doing! Gray-headed Egyptians wagged their beards sagely and quoted the Koran, morosely predicting that now for a certainty the Prophet's sway would shortly come to an end. What was still more remarkable, the soldiers themselves evinced not the slightest distaste for the task allotted them. On the contrary, they were eager and determined to follow up as much as they could conceive to be the usual etiquette of European military funerals. The band took up its position in front of the sedan chair already alluded to. The soldiers formed a line of march on either side by ranging themselves in single columns, from the square right away to the gates of the Latin church, where the corpse was to be deposited for the night prior to its removal by railway to Cairo. Presently the body, just as we had seen it before, only much more agitated and of a hue that too clearly indicated decay, was carried down, chair and all, on the shoulders of eight privileged personages, merchants of high rank and wealth, who considered themselves honored by the burden they bore; the procession formed and moved the band struck up, and, horror of horrors to the scandal of Christians present, they executed with extreme gusto a very favorite polka!

on,

Thus the procession, augmenting in numbers as they proceeded, reached the Latin church, while the poor patriarch's head, from the motion of being carried, nodded the while after a most unearthly and ghastly fashion. None were more eager to enter the church than the Egyptian soldiers. The monks endeavored to exclude them by closing the gates, but they quickly yet determinately forced them open again.

Two days afterward the old patriarch, chair, robes, crosses, and all, was let into a niche in his cathedral at Cairo, and then carefully bricked up.