NEW-ENGLAND LIFE.

Faith Gartney's Girlhood. By the Author of "The Gayworthys," &c., &c. (Sampson Low, Son, & Marston.)

Faith

THE author of the "Gayworthys" is one with whom it is a real pleasure to become better acquainted. He does not ask you to pay him a flying visit, or seek to dazzle you by spreading before you false glitter and electro-plate. He takes you home with him into New-England life, and, if your palate be not vitiated by highly-spiced sensational condiments, you will be sure to enjoy the sound and healthy food which he places abundantly before you; good wholesome country fare, choicest of its kind, in plenty. Human nature in its best and simplest phases, peace and kindliness without cant, puritanism in its purest form, are the materials the author delights to work with, and in his hands the result is that "Faith Gartney's Girlhood" is one of the most genial gifts which America has sent over, in recognition of close kindred, to the Old Country.

We are told in the preface that "Faith Gartney's Girlhood," was a story begun for young girls; that it has grown as they grow, to womanhood; and, having no artistic pretension, is a simple record of something of the thought and life that lies between fourteen and twenty." A most critical period is chosen; one that stamps its impress upon the character for good or evil that is never effaced; a period of waiting and longing for something to do out of the ordinary routine of that daily life in which what we know and what we do is the world to us a period so little understood, that we are glad to find an author able and willing to "dedicate a work to those young girls, who dream, and wish, and strive, and err, and obtain, perhaps, little help to interpret their own spirits to themselves."

The scene is laid in New England. Aunt Faith Henderson has relics of the Pilgrim Fathers a blunderbuss, a wooden ox-saddle, high-backed claw-footed chairs, and other bygones, in the low oak-pannelled rooms of her old home in Kinnicutt, "where generation after generation of the same name and line had inhabited it until now." Aunt Faith Henderson arrives at her nephew's, Mr. Gartney's house, on New Year's Eve, somewhat unexpectedly. Her young namesake, Faith Gartney, is absent at a party at the Rushleigh's, an influential family, residing in Signal-street, Mishaumok; Mrs. Rushleigh being "a sort of St. Peter of

"Aunt Henderson had a downright, and rather extreme fashion of put'ing things; nevertheless, in her heart she was not unkindly." Her object in coming to Mishaumok at this time was to provide herself with another "girl," her servant Prue having become "Mrs. Pelatiah Trowe."

"I haven't told you yet, Elizabeth, what I came to town for," said Aunt Faith, when Mrs. Gartney came back into the breakfastroom.

"I am going to hunt up a girl." But why in the world do you come to the city for a servant? It's the worst possible place. Nineteen out of twenty are utterly good for nothing."

"I'm going to look out for the twentieth."

"But aren't there girls enough in Kinnicutt who would be glad to step into Prue's place?"

"Of course there are; plenty. But they're all well enough off where they are. When I have a chance to give away, I want to give it to somebody that needs it."

"I'm afraid you'll hardly find any efficient girl who will appreciate the chance of going twenty miles into the country."

"I don't want an efficient girl. I'm efficient myself, and that's enough."

"Going to train another, at your time of life, aunt?" asked Mrs. Gartney, in surprise.

"I suppose I must either train a girl, or let her train me; and, at my time of life, I don't feel to stand in need of that."

"How shall I go to work to inquire?” resumed Aunt Henderson, after a pause.

"Well, there are the Homes, and the Offices, and the Ministers at Large. At a Home, they would probably recommend you somebody they've made up their minds to put out to service, and she might or might not be such an one as would suit you. Then at the Offices, you'll see all sorts, and mostly poor ones."

"I'll try an Office first," interrupted Miss Henderson. "I want to see all sorts. Faith, you'll go with me, by-and-bye, won't you, and help me find the way."

Faith is busy writing in her album, ab

sorbed in copying into it the oracle, which, in the game of "Sortes," played the night before, had fallen to her share. It ran thus:

Rouse to some high and holy work of love,
And thou an angel's happiness shalt know;
Shalt bless the earth while in the world above;
The good begun by thee while here below
Shall like a river run, and broader flow.

This oracle is the key to Faith's aspirations. But nothing "high and holy" presents itself, and "common calls to common duty" alone await her. Faith leaves the room to attend upon her mother, and Aunt Henderson reads the lines her niece has just copied into her album. When Faith returns, in alluding to them, she says to her aunt," There don't seem to be much that I can do." The aunt's reply gives the key to that lady's character: "Just take hold of the first thing that comes in your way. If the Lord's got anything bigger to give you. he'll see to it. There's your mother's mending-basket brimfull of stockings.

Faith Gartney has beauty, loving friends, tender parents, though Mr. Gartney is improvident and always short of money, a young lover in Paul Rushleigh, and much that should have made life bright to her; while in another young existence, that of Glory M Whirk, an orphan brought up in Stonebury Poor-house, into which there seemed little probability of "any great joy" ⚫ ever getting, though she, also, was looking for something to happen. A place is found for her with a Mrs. Grubbling, in Budd Street, 66 one of those houses where they have fried dinners so often that the smell never gets out," and "here Glory M. Whirk, from eight years old to nearly fifteen, soured knives and brasses, tended door-bell, set tables, washed dishes, and minded the baby; whom, at her peril, she must keep pacified'. -i. e., amused and content, while its mother is busy." This girl—

·

Uncherished, repressed in every natural longing to be and to have, took in all the more of what was possible; for God had given her this glorious insight, this imagination, wherewith we fill up life's scanty outline, and grasp at all that might be, or that elsewhere is. In her, as in us all, it was often nay, daily—a discontent; yet a noble discontent, and curbed with a grand, unconscious patience. She scoured her knives; she shuffled along the streets on hasty errands; she went up and down the house in her small menial duties; she put on and off her coarse, repulsive clothing; she uttered her self in her common, ignorant forms of speech; she showed only as a poor, low, little Irish girl,

with red hair and staring, wondering eyes, and awkward movements, and a frightened fashion of getting into everybody's way; and yet, behind all this, there was another life that went on in a hidden beauty that you and I cannot fathom, save only as God gives the like, inwardly, to ourselves.

Glory had one friend after a time; Bridget Foye, a tidy, kindly, merry apple-woman, who gives the poor girl a portion of her bench to rest upon, and tells Master Herbert Grubbling, the baby's elder brother, some of her funny stories to keep him quiet, till Glory can take up the baby again, and return to her hard duties. This boy is untruthful, and brings unmerited charges against Glory, who, in her indignation at being accused of falsehood, suddenly breaks the chain that binds her to such servitude, and declares her wish to leave. She is taken at her word, and despatched forthwith, Mrs. Grubbling telling her never to return but to "fetch her things," though secretly expecting to receive her again as an abject penitent, when she would get more work out of her than ever. Glory is taken by Bridget Foye to her own poor home, and kindly cared for. From hence she goes to an office where girls are waiting "for a place."

Having tried a "genteel West-end intelligence office," Aunt Henderson and Faith, in great disgust, "go down town, and try some of the common ones." Here they meet with Glory; attracted by her pitiful exclamation, as another girl stepped before her, of "Plenty of good times going, but they all go right by; I ain't never in any of 'em!"

the rough, uncouth girl, and encouraged her to confidence.

"Well, you see, mum, I should like so to go where things is green and pleasant. I lived in the country once, ever so long ago, when I was a little girl."

Miss Henderson could not help a smile that was half amused, and wholly pitiful, as she looked in the face of this creature of fourteen, so strange and earnest, with its outline of fuzzy, cropped hair, and heard her talk of ever so long ago." "There's only just the common here, you know, mum. And that's when all the chores is done. And you can't go on the grass, either."

“Are you strong?"

"Yes'm. I ain't never sick."

"And willing to work?"

find her out. That somebody must always eat "drumsticks" being Miss Sampson's motto, she illustrates it by always choosing the hardest nursing, "the toughest job," and by her quiet, self-reliant, experienced way, and energetic rule, brings repose and comfort to the anxious hearts around a sick bed.

"And you always take the very worst and hardest cases, Dr. Gracie says."

"What's the use of taking a tough job if you don't face the toughest part of it. I don't want the comfortable end of the business. Somebody's got to nurse small-pox, and yellow-fever, and raving-distracted people; and I know the Lord made me fit to do just that very work. There ain't many that He does make for it, but I'm one.

ped."

And set table?"

"I don't belong to anybody, mum. Father, and mother, and grandmother is all dead. I've done the chores and tended baby up at Mrs. Grubbling's ever since. That's in Budd Street. I'm staying now in High Street, with Mrs. Foye. Number 15." "I'll come after you to-morrow. Have your things ready to go right off."

"Something happens" to Faith, besides mending stockings and making Glory fit to be seen. Mr. Gartney's health gives way under the heavy losses he sustains, and the sacrifices he is obliged to make to pay his creditors. A critical case of typhoid requires other care than wife or daughter can bestow, and Dr. Gracie, the old. tried friend and physician of the family, obtains the services of Miss Sampson, the best nurse in all Mishaumok. After explaining to her all that he requires, he takes her down for a morsel of supper, stating that if that were chicken on the table, she was a woman who always chose "drumsticks;" and as she was a study, Faith is set to work by him to

Yellow fever! where have you nursed that?"

Do you suppose I didn't go to Norfolk ? I've nursed it, and I've had it, and nursed it again. I've been in the cholera hospitals, too. I'm seasoned to most everything." "Do you think everybody ought to take the hardest thing they can find to do?"

"Do you think everybody ought to eat drumsticks? We'd have to kill an unreasonable lot of fowls to let 'em. No. The Lord portions out breast and wings, as well as legs. If He puts anything into your plate, take it."

There is a hearty and loving purpose in the book, so that we go willingly whithersoever it is the author's will to take us; whether it be into Aunt Faith's cozy dwelling, where she and Glory receive the minister. Roger Armstrong, as an inmate, or to Cross Corner's Farm, across the field, where Faith has persuaded her father and mother to reside, giving up business, and letting the house in Hickory Street to add to his small income, and without other cares recover his lost health and strength. How Paul Rushleigh's wooing prospered, how Faith rewarded his constancy, and how Glory found the "good times, and was always in 'em," it is not for us to reveal.

Faith's path was made so pleasant and so easy, that trial of the kind that bruises the broken reed was not sent to her. Therefore, the young life that may read “Faith Gartney's Girlhood," must not suppose that, when "something happens" to herself, her longings and strivings to achieve "some high and holy work of love shall be attained in like manner; but take, as her

guide, the simple direction of doing with all her might that which her hand finds to do, and therewith be content. "Faith Gartney's Girlhood" is quite worthy of the author of the " Gayworthys," and greater praise cannot be bestowed upon it.

From the London Review. INDECENT DANCES.

FATHERS and mothers will not, we trust, look on us as puritanical, if we think it time to call their attention to a subject in which the interests of morality are deeply involved, though some of its aspects have only lately begun to engage the notice of the press. It has long been notorious that that species of public entertainment called the ballet, though as an interlude on the lyric stage it is looked on without complaint by sedate and respectable members of society, tends to recruit the ranks of a class whose existence is a pestilent sore, and whose increase is a national disgrace; that rich voluptuaries in many cases supply the funds by which a manager's exchequer is enabled to bear the drain caused by the expensive spectacles in which crowds of dancing-girls appear; and that the patrons have all the opportunities which the coulisses afford of cultivating an intimacy with those whom they may specially wish to favour. To be just, however, we must admit that there are instances in which public dancing became, from necessity, the calling of young girls who were brought up to it from childhood by worthless or helpless parents, and in the end could hardly find any other; that it is an extremely laborious and even painful occupation, in which the most moderate degree of distinction cannot be attained without a considerable amount of actual suffering; and that there are many poor creatures by whom the toils and hardships of such a life are endured as a bitter but unavoidable necessity. But, on the other hand, the more unpleasant such a life is, the stronger must be the temptation to escape from it; and the humble coryphée, who is not sustained by the triumphs and the rewards of a Taglioni or an Ellsler, is often only too happy to fly from a bullying manager and a sneering maître-de-ballet, to find a relief in praises that degrade, and consolations that destroy. Bad as the case was, however, when only the opera-houses and principal theatres

could afford such an entertainment, it has now become exceedingly serious when, from the Alhambra Palace in Leicester-square to the Agricultural Hall at Islington, the demand for troops of girls who are to appear every night, encumbered with as little clothing as possible, before a crowd of spectators, has attained such extraordinary proportions. It is not by the "poetry of motion" that the visitors of such places of amusement are attached and their attention fascinated. Poetical such motions may be, in the sense in which Catullus was a poet; but otherwise they are simply prurient to the depraved, and to the undepraved (who had better stay away) disgusting. Sensuality alone, and that of the coarsest, is stimulated and indulged by advertisements which particularly insist upon the "loveliness" of the numerous performers, and by sights which, within the limits of decent language, are indescribable. It is time to ask, then, what we are coming to? We are naturalizing in London some of the institutions of Lahore; but worse than that, we are training our English nautchgirls not for a mere ooxnois napoivios, perperformed in private before a limited number of spectators, but for a system of public exhibitions, to find a parallel for which we must go back to the worst period of Corinthian corruption. This is not a matter upon which even the highest classes of society can afford to look with indifference. If tolerated, much more if patronized, the taint will spread, and a moral pestilence, worse immeasurably than any cholera or cattle plague, will desolate every rank of society. Already our noblest matrons have found reason to complain that their sons openly display their intimacy with the Anonymas who exhibit their horse-breaking abilities in Hyde-park; and even their high-bred daughters form the style of their conversation on such vicious and vulgar models. But the imitation, they may be sure, will not stop there. If we can draw any conclusion from what is happening in France, where at least one lady of very high rank and position has lately distinguished herself in a way of which Sallust's words "psallere, saltare elegantius quàm necesse est proba -are a mild description, is there not some reason to apprehend that we may find amongst us not only an enormous increase of Phrynes, but even a large growth of Fulvias?

Among fashionable people fashion is the only standard of morality. A good many years ago our grandfathers and grandmothers were shocked by the introduction of a