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sly smile, "if you insist upon it; but I don't think the young gentleman who asked for your address the other day would have been balked of it if I had not known it, itself." And that was the only time I heard Honor Devlin relapse into so broad a Hibernianism.

Winifred was pale and silent as we drove from Bedford Row to Knightsbridge, and I saw a large tear occasionally steal down her cheek and drop unheeded on her mourning-dress. The tide of memory and association was sweeping over the orphan girl, about to find a new friend where she had looked her last upon her dead father's face. I saw the quiver of her lips and the pallor of her cheek increase as we drew near to the house, in which she had passed so many happy, dutiful, mournful hours, and when the carriage stopped she was trembling violently. I had been considering on the way whether I should accompany Winifred to Mrs. Carter's presence, or should suffer their first interview to take place without witnesses, and I decided on the latter course.

"Go up-stairs with Mrs. Devlin, dear,” I said; "I will wait here for a little."

She obeyed silently, and I went into the small sitting-room occupied by Mrs. Devlin. There that good woman joined me almost immediately.

and uncertainty concerning those we love should be a portion of the cross we must carry all through this mortal life. But I believe he knows that the woman who so faithfully loved him will be henceforth the mother of his child. It is a stranger question than any other in my mind whether her own mother, the false wife who betrayed her husband and deserted her child, knows it also; whether she knows that the woman, forgotten for her sake, is repairing the evil and misery wrought by her."

"Oh," said Mrs. Devlin, thoughtfully, "how many things we want to know, not only about the next world, but about this. At all events, I shall never forget this time, and the story of my lodger in 1862. I used to think nothing stranger than the adventures of the lady and the child in Wilton Place could ever happen in this house, but all this has been far more wonderful."

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"No, I fancy not, ma'am," she replied. "As for the house in Wilton Place, I have quite taken an interest in it since; it has been let several times since the people Mrs. Hungerford was staying with went I know a new family came in a

away.

short time ago."

"Indeed!" I remarked, rather idly, for my mind was straying from the subject. "What is the name?"

"I don't know, ma'am," said Mrs. Devlin, "but I will ask the postman. I always like to know who is living in that house."

"I just showed her in, ma'am," she said, "and Mrs. Carter came up almost to the door, and she was as white as a sheet, and she put her arms round her, and said, 'My dear child!' and then I shut the door and came down to you. And I have told them they must go on as well as they can in the shop and in the work-room without me, At this moment Mrs. Devlin was called for I'm not fit for business, and that's the out of the room by one of the workwomen. truth." She remained away about a quarter of an There were tears in the good little wo-hour, and when she returned, her face bore man's voice as she spoke. The next an expression of surprise. moment they made their way to her eyes, "Oh, ma'am!" she exclaimed, "what do and Mrs. Devlin enjoyed that favourite you think has happened? The postman feminine luxury, a good cry." When came into the shop just now, and I asked she had recovered her composure we fell to him the name of the new people. Fancy talking of the strange train of circumstances my astonishment when he told me it is which had led to the present happy re- Pennifold! I'll be bound they are Miss sult. Winifred's lover, and his mother and sister."

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"If the Captain could only have known," said Mrs. Devlin, "that within so short a time his orphaned child would find a home and friends, and be brought to them in the very house in which he left her so desolate, so much more desolate than he thought, poor gentleman, he would have died more peacefully."

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Yes," I said, "that is true; and it seems strange to us that so much sorrow

"And my husband's aunt and cousins!" I exclaimed, in astonishment equal to her own.

My simple story has reached its conclusion now. All that ensued was so much a matter-of-course that it would not interest you to hear the details. Aunt Anne bad no reason to regret the precipitancy with which her intentions with regard to Winifred

had been carried out, in consequence of the accommodating insolence of Mrs. Montague Vicars. That amiable lady had not even an opportunity of annoying Winifred and her lover by the suppression or detention of a letter, for within an hour of the discovery of the near neighbourhood of the Pennifolds, our happy party in the drawing-room was reinforced by the appearance of a tall, handsome young man, remarkably like my husband, though not at all as good-looking, whom Winifred blushingly presented to us as James Pennifold.

"Margaret, I congratulate you upon your husband. Most women are inclined to meanness, not on their own account perhaps, but to a kind of magnanimous meanness, full of sharp interested motives for the good of those they love. With such a husband as James, I don't think you could retain such a weakness; he is the most perfectly disinterested human being I ever met. Absolute absence of self-interest is so natural to him that he is not aware that he is more disinterested than other people."

The marriage of James and Winifred took place at Woodlee in the early spring days of 1863. As the carriage which conveyed the bride and bridegroom away from our sight, to an accompaniment of vociferous barking from Corporal Trim, disappear

long been familiar to me, before I saw them elsewhere, in the memorable canvas watercolour drawing which had played so large a part in this little drama, Mrs. Carter said to me, very softly,

"I stood here just on this flagstone, Margaret, when her father spoke to me for the last time. As she kissed me just now, his spirit looked at me from her eyes through all those years. I am content, my dear; I have buried my dead."

I think it possible that Aunt Anne may have felt a little pang of disappointment when she found that the future fate of the fair young girl in whom she had found an object for the dormant affection and benevolence of her brave old heart was fixed, beyond her control and without her inter-ed beyond the laurel hedges which had ference. But if she felt any such pang, she hid it, even as she had hidden many another, and was satisfied. We found much to like in Mrs. Pennifold, and there was no difficulty in obtaining her consent to James's marriage with Winifred Dallas. Aunt Anne and her stranger sister-in-law suited each other remarkably well, and as the long previous estrangement had arisen from a feeling of friendship towards Arthur Dallas, and condemnation of my husband's father, common to both in different degrees, it made, when it no longer existed, an additional tie between them. How Mrs. Pennifold would have received the announcement of her son's engagement with the penniless daughter of her dead friend, had there been no Mrs. Carter in the case to play the part of fairy godmother, was a question unnecessary, and therefore unasked. I sometimes speculated upon this point a little, however, and I confess the previous departure from England, the long stay on the continent, and the absence of all communication (owing, of course, entirely to the exigencies of foreign travel), guided me on my way to a conclusion. All was, however, under present circumstances, perfectly couleur de rose, and Winifred the happiest of the happy. My part in the family proceedings at this time was chiefly that of an impartial looker-on, and I saw one thing which gave me unlimited satisfac

tion.

This one thing was the regard, affection, and confidence with which my dear James inspired every one. His cousins declared him the finest fellow in existence; Winifred regarded him as a sort of embodied providence; and Aunt Anne said to me, one day, when he and she had been closeted for the discussion of business,

That evening James and I walked in the cool bright moonlight by the side of the terrace, where a carefully-kept, sufficiently wide walk lay between the stone wall and the smooth flower-decked lawn. We had been talking of the wedding and of all that preceded it, and a short silence had ensued, which James broke by saying,

"You have never asked me anything about Aunt Anne's arrangements with regard to Winifred in money matters, Maggie; do you not care to know?"

"Oh yes!" I said, turning rather red as I spoke. "I would like very much to know; but the truth is, I did not like to ask because I fancied Aunt Anne suspected that I do not take the loss of your chance of Woodlee quite so cheerfully as you do."

"My dear Maggie," said my husband, gently, but somewhat seriously, "I had indeed lost my chance of Woodlee; I had, however, exchanged it for a certainty. Aunt Anne has settled one half of her property upon Winifred, and the other half, including Woodlee, which she has moreover strictly entailed, upon me!"

I have one more circumstance to relate, a circumstance hitherto confined to the knowledge of Mrs. Devlin and myself, and

which is not the least remarkable link in a curious chain.

Winifred had been married nearly a month, and I had returned to our house in Bedford Row, and was expecting to hear of the arrival of the young couple in town, when Mrs. Devlin called on me one day and told me she had received a note from Mrs. James Pennifold, whom, however, she invariably called "Miss Winifred."

"She writes from Paris, ma'am," said Mrs. Devlin," and it seems they have found out a photographer there who makes beautiful copies of portraits of any kind, and Miss Winifred desired me to open the small box still in my charge, and take out a sealed parcel, and bring it to you. She says, Tell dear Mrs. Pennifold to send me, at once, all the portraits on ivory, and the two photographs of my father, and ask her to keep the others for me.""

Captain Dallas would have communicated with her. I told Mrs. Devlin that I had heard from Aunt Anne of the relationship subsisting between Captain Dallas and the original of this portrait, and asked her if she had ever heard him make any mention of his aunt.

“Oh, no! ma'am," she replied; "he distinctly told me there was no one living with whom Miss Winifred could claim kindred." As she spoke, Mrs. Devlin was looking earnestly at the miniature, which she held in her hand, with an air of dawning recognition. Suddenly she turned it round, and read the name upon the back.

Marion Hungerford! Hungerford!" she said, in a puzzled tone. "I seem to know the face indistinctly, as if I had seen it in a dream. The name, too; what is it that it reminds me of ?" She paused a moment and thought deeply, then exclaimed,

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"Did

"And Eleanor Hungerford was Winifred's aunt, Mrs. Devlin," I said, grasping her arm, in the excitement of a sudden idea which had struck me with all the vividness of an irresistible conviction. you not me that Winifred said she liked to go to St. Paul's because she had been used to go there as a child when she had stayed for her holidays with her aunt in Wilton Place?"

Mrs. Devlin produced the parcel, and I Why, yes, ma'am, to be sure; Hungeropened it. It contained some pencil like- ford was the name of the lady in Wilton nesses, evidently sketches taken by Captain Place, the lady who came to the shop and Dallas, three of the number being of Winifred ordered the things for the little girl; herself, and three finely-executed minia- the lady whom our stranger lodger followed. tures on ivory, without cases and unset. At And this picture is her face. I only saw the back of each of the latter a small strip her twice, but I remember the face perfectof paper was pasted, and on them was ly. Yes, indeed, Mrs. Pennifold, that Mrs. written respectively "Archibald Hugh Hungerford and this Eleanor Hungerford Dallas," "Isabel Marion Dallas," and are the same." "Eleanor Hungerford." The miniatures were beautifully painted, and Mrs. Devlin and I scanned them attentively. Two were evidently likenesses of Arthur Dallas's father and mother; and Mrs. Devlin told me that, but for the difference of dress, the first might have been taken for a portrait of the Captain himself. The third represented a tall, fine-looking woman, who bore a strong likeness to the portrait of Mrs. Dallas, but whose features were much finer and more expressive. This, then, was Mrs. Hungerford, Captain Dallas's aunt, the wife of the rich Calcutta merchant, to whose care Arthur Dallas had been confided when he left England, at the crisis of his life. This, then, was the only relative, on her father's side, who remained to Winifred. But did she remain? If she yet lived, Winifred would have sought her,

"I did," she replied; and her hesitating voice and changing colour showed me that the same idea which had taken possession of my mind had entered hers.

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Your mysterious lodger was Winifred's guilty, wretched mother," I exclaimed," and to you she owes her last embrace of her child, as her child owes to you all the happiness of her life."

CITIES WHICH EMBRACE ALL NATIONALITIES. London is a world in itself. The last English census develops the curious fact that there are more Scotchmen in London than in Edinburgh, more Irish than in Dublin, more Roman Catholics than in Rome, and more Jews than in Palestine. Next to London perhaps

New York is the most cosmopolitan of cities. It has not so many Scotchmen as Edinburgh, but according to the census it has nearly as many Irish as Dublin, while as a German city, it is probably the third in the world, ranking next to Berlin and Vienna. - Evangelist.

[From the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal.] | first, predisposition in the inhabitants of the WHETHER CHOLERA IS CONTAGIOUS.

BY JACOB BIGELOW, M. D.

WITHIN the present century, cholera, a disease indigenous in hot climates of the East, has, at various intervals, made its appearance in the temperate latitudes of Europe and America. It is now again exciting interest from its possible and perhaps probable approach to this country.

The experience of the last thirty or forty years has led a majority of medical men who had observed the disease to believe that, as a general law, it is not contagious. In this belief I must individually remain, until evidence more satisfactory than any which has yet appeared shall justify an opposite conviction.

place visited; and, second, the arrival or presence of an exciting cause. This cause in some epidemics, such as small pox, is contagion. In others it is an occult influence, not yet discovered nor understood, nor known to be controlled, except in some instances, by hygienic agencies. No country, I believe, has succeeded in keeping out cholera by quarantines, and no country, as far as we know, can produce it artificially or retain it after the predisposition has disappeared. In its own time it moves on thoroughfares where men are travelling, and spreads into cities where they are stationary, for no better known reason than that mankind are its necessary food, and that where there are no people there can be no cholera. But why, of two frequented roads or cities, it selects one and avoids the other, investigators have not yet been able to satisfy us.

The great epidemics of 1830 and 1847 had a remarkable coincidence in the path which they pursued, and in the order and dates of their arrival in different cities. The credit of having introduced the They seem to have followed certain great present epidemic into Europe is by a sort of routes of travel, and to have avoided others popular acclamation assigned to the hosts of equally frequented. According to Leségue, squalid devotees who perform an annual they both visited consecutively, and in cor- pilgrimage to Mecca. Yet we are told that responding months, Tiflis, Astrachan, Mos-"the cholera exists every year among the cow, Petersburg, and Berlin. In 1831, cholera did not take the most frequented route from Berlin to Paris, but passed along the shores of the Baltic, crossed over to Sunderland, went down to London, and again crossed the channel and arrived in Paris about six months after its appearance at Berlin. A disease propagated by contagion of any kind would hardly have avoided the most frequented thoroughfares from Berlin to Paris, while it occupied half a year in going round by England.

The epidemic now or lately prevailing in Europe appears to date back at least nine months, at which time it existed among the caravans of pilgrims visiting or returning from the city of Mecca. In the middle of May last it was at Alexandria and Cairo, in June at Constantinople, Ancona and Marseilles, and in November at Paris, Havre and other European cities.

Thus it appears that cholera has now existed in Europe from three to eight months, among cities having constant commercial intercourse with seaports of the United States, during which time thousands of passengers and tens of thousands of bales and packages have been landed in our maritime cities. If cholera were as contagious or portable as many believe it to be, it ought to have begun and perhaps finished its work in many of our seaports before this time.

Epidemics require two things for their introduction and extension. These are

caravans of Musselmans arriving at the holy cities," so that their supposed mission of forwarding the cholera to Europe in most years fails to be performed.

Cholera, like influenza and some other migratory diseases, has usually but not always advanced from east to west. Of the vehicle in which it travels, or the course it is next to take, we know about as much as mankind knew of the cause of lightning before the discovery of electricity. Its conveyance and propagation have been ascribed to air, to water, to material foci, to electricity, to ozone or to the want of it. Of late, in consequence of the vast development by the microscope of the existence everywhere of minute living organisms, it has become more common to ascribe the arrival of this and other like epidemics to certain unseen "germs" which are called seeds or ova, cryptogamic or animalcular, according as the fancy of the theorist inclines him to adopt a vegetable or an animal nomenclature.

But in this, as in many other cases, it is easier to trace an analogy, or to assume a cause, than it is to prevent an effect. Although inquirers have been indefatigable in their attempts to enlighten the world on the means of ridding ourselves of the presence of the various offensive co-tenants of our globe, yet no crusade has yet succeeded in banishing from our fields and houses the unwelcome swarms of mosquitoes, worms, grubs and flies, which molest us with their

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certain surfaces in vessels with oil, and had them "disinfected by chlorine gas," after which "no new cases occurred," is to be classed with other like results, with which the medical press always abounds at the close of epidemics.

annual presence; nor in suppressing the blight of grain, the potato rot, or the peach tree disease. Happily some if not most of these have their periods of abatement or disappearance, and this rather through the order of Providence than the agency of Cholera seems to abide in the same In clean and well-regulated cities of temcategory. We know little of its exciting perate climates, cholera is far from being cause, and not much of its prevention, ex- the most formidable of epidemics. A cept, that by following in our personal greater part of its victims are the miserahabits the dictates of reason and experi- bly poor, the worn out, the ill provided, ence, we diminish both the frequency and and the intemperate, in whom this disease danger of its occurrence. only anticipates the date, but does not Whatever may be the cause or vehicle of greatly increase the annual or biennial cholera, credulous and excitable personal number of deaths. Its mortality in our are impatient of suspense, and are prone to northern Atlantic cities rarely amounts to cut a knot which they fail to untie. When one per cent. of the population in a given an epidemic disease first appears, some place or year, so that a man may reside coincidence is always brought to light through an epidemic in one of these cities which is supposed capable of accounting with less risk than he can take a pleasure for it. The arrival of a ship, the opening voyage to Europe. After having witnessed of a trunk, or the washing of a garment, many cases of cholera in this and other are among the most frequently accepted cities, I am farther satisfied that it affords one causes. But as these events have happened of the easiest modes of exit from the world. a thousand times before, and apparently People who would avoid or prevent cholunder like circumstances, without any era should cutivate equanimity, regularity known results, it has been thought neces- of life and habits, cleanliness, salubrious sary by some of our later writers to narrow exercise, temperance, and avoidance of all the compass of actual exposure down to excesses. When they have done their duty the reception of the morbid excretions of one individual into the digestive canal of another. The first impression made by this announcement must, if true, be one of relief, the danger not seeming likely to happen very often. But to the possibility of such danger we can never oppose an absolute negative, so long as we persist in eating smelts and flounders caught about the mouths of our drains, or even turnips, salads, and strawberries raised at Brighton. The risk, however, is so small, that most persons will prefer to take it rather than to deprive themselves of food or luxuries. Of the many sensation tales printed and reprinted about cholera, and the supposed instances of remarkable communications or arrestation, it is sufficient to say that they are frequently interesting, being fully as dramatic as they are probable.

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In the same regard we cannot help noticing that credulity, and perhaps private cupidity, have caused much stress to be laid on the supposed preventive efficacy of what called "disinfectants," a mysterious word which implies a thing assumed but not proved to exist. We have deodorizers, such as chlorine, charcoal, &c., which by their combinations render certain effluvia imperceptible to our senses. But that these are not disinfectants, there is most abundant evidence. The narrative, then, of the physician at Malta, who covered

in providing for the care of the sick, allaying public panics, and abating public nuisances, they may safely dismiss their apprehensions. Little good and some harm is always done by the indiscreet agitation of a subject which is to a great extent beyond our control. A single or sporadic case of cholera occurring in a village of a thousand inhabitants may attract little notice, and perhaps pass without record; but a hundred cases in a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants make an aggregate which generally causes some panic, though the proportion is exactly the same, and the panic equally unnecessary. It is possible that the supposed immunity of country districts in comparison with cities may be accounted for by the fact, that in the sparse population of country towns cases are less liable to be detected and published.

I may be excused for repeating the following remark from among some "Aphorisms" published by me about thirty years ago, when the disease was new and little known among us. "Should the cholera continue to prevail for three years throughout this continent, it would cease to interrupt either business or recreation. Mankind cannot always stand aghast, and the wheels of society at length would be no more impeded by its presence than they now are by the existence of consumption, of old age, or of drunkenness."

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