THE LIVELIES.

IN TWO PARTS.—II.

When Dr. Lively had accomplished his part toward relieving immediate suffering, when he saw system growing gradually out of the chaos, when he saw that he could be spared from the work, he began to consider his personal affairs.

"I can't start again here," he said to Mrs. Lively. "Office and living rooms that would answer at all cannot be had for less than one hundred and fifty dollars a month, and that paid in advance, and I haven't a cent."

"What in the world are we going to do?"

"I'll tell you what I've been thinking about: I met in the relief-rooms yesterday an old college acquaintance—Edward Harrison. He lives in Keokuk, Iowa, now—came on here with some money and provisions for the sufferers. He would insist on lending me a few dollars. He's a good fellow: I used to like him at college. Well, he told me of a place near Keokuk where a good physician and surgeon is needed—none there except a raw young man. It has no railroad, but it's all the better for a doctor on that account."

"No railroad! How in the world do the folks get anywhere?"

"It's on the Mississippi River, and boats are passing the town every few hours."

"The idea of going from Chicago to where there isn't even a railroad! What place is it?"

"Nauvoo."

"Nauvoo! That miserable Mormon place?"

"Harrison says there is only an occasional Mormon there now—that it's largely settled by Germans engaged in wine-making."

"Grapes?" asked Napoleon.

"That boy never comes out of his dreaming except for something to eat. Dear me! the idea of living among a lot of Germans!" said Mrs. Lively, returning to the subject.

"There's a French element there, the remnants of the Icarians—a colony of Communists under Cabet," the doctor explained.

"What! those horrid Communists that turned Paris upside down?" Mrs. Lively exclaimed.

"Oh no," said the doctor. "They settled in Nauvoo some twenty years ago, I believe."

"Dear! dear! dear! it's very hard," said the lady.

"My dear, I think we are very fortunate. Harrison says there's plenty of work there, though it's hard work—riding over bad roads. He promises me letters of introduction to merchants there, so that I can get credit for the household goods we shall need to begin with and for our pressing necessities. He has already written to a man there to rent us a house, and put up a kitchen stove and a couple of plain beds, and to have a few provisions on hand when we arrive. I purpose leaving here to-morrow, or the day after at farthest."

"But how are we ever to get there without money?"

"We can get passes out of the city. So, my dear, please try to feel grateful. Think of the thousands here who can't turn round, who are utterly helpless."

"Well, it never did help me to feel better to know that somebody was worse off than I. It doesn't cure my headache to be told that somebody else has a raging toothache. Grateful! when I haven't even a change of clothes!"

"Go to the relief-rooms and get a change of under garments," Dr. Lively advised.

"I won't go there and wait round like a beggar, and have them ask me a million of prying questions, and all for somebody's old clothes," Mrs. Lively declared.

"Now, my dear," her husband remonstrated, "I have been a great deal in the relief-rooms, and I believe there are no unnecessary questions asked—only such as are imperative to prevent imposition."

"The things don't belong to them any more than they do to me."

"Perhaps not as much. They were sent to the destitute, such as you, so you shouldn't mind asking for your own," the doctor argued.

"Think what a mean little story I should have to tell! I do wish you'd bought that house. If we'd lost fifty thousand!—but a few bed-quilts and those old frogs and bugs and dried leaves of yours! The most miserable Irish woman on DeKoven street can tell as big a story of losses as we can."

"I'll go to the relief-rooms and get some clothes for you," said the doctor decidedly: "I'm not ashamed."

"I won't wear any of the things if you bring them," said Mrs. Lively.

"Oh, wife," said the doctor, his face pallid and grieved, "you are wrong, you are wrong. Are you to get no kind of good out of this calamity? Is the chastisement to exasperate only? to make you more perverse, more bitter?"

"You are very complimentary," was the wife's reply.

The doctor was silent for a moment: then he took up his hat. "I'm going to try to get passes out of the city," he said.

He had a long walk by Twelfth street to the rooms of the committee on transportation. Arrived at the hall, he found two long lines of waiting humanity reaching out like great wings from the door, the men on one side, the women on the other. He fell into line at the very foot, and there he waited hour after hour. For once, the women held the vantage-ground. They passed up in advance of the men to the audience-room, being admitted one by one. The audience consumed, on the average, five minutes to a person. At length all the women had had their turn: then, one by one, the men were admitted. Slowly Dr. Lively moved forward. He had attained the steps and was feeling hopeful of  a speedy admission, when the business-session was pronounced ended for the day, and the doors were closed. He went back drooping, and related his experience to his wife.

"You don't mean to say you've been gone all this afternoon and come back without the passes?" she exclaimed.

"That's just how it is," answered the doctor.

"Well, I'll warrant I would have got in if I'd been there," she said.

"Yes, you'd have got an audience, for, as I have said, the women were admitted before the men. My next neighbor in the line said he had been there three days in succession without getting into the hall."

"Well, I'll go in the morning, and I'll come home with a pass in an hour, I promise you."

The next morning Mrs. Lively started for the hall at eight o'clock, determined to procure a place at the head of the line. But, early as was the hour, she found the doors already besieged. There were at least three dozen women ahead of her. She took her place very ungraciously at the foot of the line. At nine the doors were opened, and the first comers admitted. Ten o'clock came, and Mrs. Lively was still in the street—had not even reached the stairs. Eleven o'clock came—she stood on the second step. At length she had reached the top step but one, and it was not yet twelve.

"It doesn't seem fair," she said to the doorkeeper, "that the men should have to wait, day after day, till all the women in the city are served."

"No," assented the keeper, "it is not fair. Now, there are men in that line who have been here for four days. They'd have done better and saved time if they'd gone to work in the burnt district moving rubbish, and earned their railroad passage."

Mrs. Lively's suggestion of unfairness proved an unfortunate one for her, for the keeper conceived the idea of acting on it.

"It isn't fair," he repeated, "and I mean to let some of those fellows in."

 "Oh, do let me in first," she cried, but the keeper had already beckoned to the head of the other line, and was now marching him into the hall.

"No use for you to try for a pass," said the inner doorkeeper after a few words with the petitioner. "You must have a certificate from some well-known, responsible person that your means were all lost by the fire, or you cannot get an audience. Must have your certificate, sir, before I can pass you to the committee."

The man thus turned back went sorrowfully down the steps into the street, and the next man passed in-doors.

"You want a pass for yourself," said the inner keeper. "The committee refuse in any circumstances to issue passes to able-bodied men. If you are able to work, you can earn your fare: plenty of work for willing hands. No use in arguing the matter, sir," he continued resolutely: "you can't get a pass."

"But I haven't a dollar in the world," persisted the man.

"Plenty of work at big prices, sir. Women and children and the sick and helpless we'll pass out of the city, but we need men, and we won't pass them out."

He turned away from the petitioner and beckoned the head woman to enter. This one had her audience, and came back crying. Mrs. Lively was now at the head of the line. Her turn had at last come.

"Session's over," announced the keeper, and closed the doors.

Some scores of disconsolate people dispersed in this direction and that. Mrs. Lively and a few others sat down on the steps, determined to wait for the reopening of the doors. After a weary waiting in the noon sun, which was not, however, very oppressive, the doors were again opened, and Mrs. Lively was admitted to the audience-room. At the head of one of the long tables sat George M. Pullman, to whom Mrs. Lively told her small story. Then she asked for passes to Nauvoo for herself, husband and son. She was kindly but closely questioned. Didn't she save some silver and jewelry? didn't her husband save his watch? etc. etc.

Mrs. Lively acknowledged it. "But," she added, "we haven't a change of clothes—we haven't money enough to keep us in drinking-water."

"Buy water!" said Mr. Pullman with a decided accent of impatience. "Don't talk about buying water with that great lake over there. Wait till Michigan goes dry. I've brought water with my own hands from Lake Michigan. Money for water, indeed!"

"So has my husband brought water from the lake," replied the lady with spirit: "he brought two pails yesterday morning, and it took him three hours and a half to accomplish it. I presume your quarters are nearer the lake than ours."

"Well, well, I can't give your husband a pass. He can raise money on his watch, can get a half-fare ticket, or he can work his way out. We don't like to see our men turning their backs on Chicago now: some have to, I suppose. I ought hardly to give you a pass, but I'll give you one, and your child;" and he gave the order to the clerk.

In another moment she was on her way to the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy ticket-office to get the pass countersigned. At three o'clock she reached her quarters with the paper, having been absent seven hours.

As the pass was good for three days only, despatch was necessary in getting matters into shape and in leaving the city. Dr. Lively pawned his watch—a fine gold repeater—for twenty dollars, and the next day, with an aching heart but smiling face, turned his back on the city whose bold challenges, splendid successes and dramatic career made it to him the most fascinating spot, the most dearly loved, this side of heaven.

In due time these Chicago sufferers were landed at Montrose, a miserable little village in Iowa, at the head of the Keokuk Rapids. Just across the wonderful river lay the historical Nauvoo, fair and beautiful as a poet's dream, though the wooded slopes retained but shreds of their autumn-dyed raiment. Mrs. Lively was pleased, the doctor was enthusiastic. They forgot that "over the river" is always beautiful. They crossed in a skiff at a rapturous rate, but when they had made the landing the disenchantment began. A two-horse wagon was waiting for passengers, and in this our friends embarked. The driver had heard they were coming, and knew the house that had been engaged for them—the Woodruff house, built by one of the old Mormon elders. The streets through which they drove were silent, with scarcely a sound or sight of human life. It all looked strange and queer, unlike anything they had ever seen. It was neither city nor village. The houses, city-like, all opened on the street, or had little front yards of city proportions, and to almost every one was attached the inevitable vineyard. It was indeed a city, with nineteen out of every twenty houses lifted out of it, and vineyards established in their places; and all the houses had an old-fashioned look, for almost without exception they antedated the Mormon exodus.

The Livelies were set down in a street where the sand was over the instep, before a stiff, graceless brick building, standing close up in one corner of an acre lot. On one side, in view from the front gate, was a dilapidated hen-house—on the other, a more unsightly stable with a pig-sty attached. All the space between the house and vineyard, in every direction, was strewn with corncobs and remnants of haystacks, while straw and manure were banked against the house to keep the cellar warm. In front was a walled sewer, through which the town on the hill was drained, for the Livelies' new home was on "the Flat," as the lower town is called. The view from the front took in only a dreary hillside covered with decaying cornstalks.

The doctor moved a barrel-hoop which fastened the gate, and it tottered over, and clung by one hinge to the worm-eaten post, from which the decaying fence had fallen away. A hall ran through the house, and on either side were two rooms. The second floor was  a duplicate of the first, so that the house contained eight small rooms, nine by eleven feet, exactly alike, each with a huge fireplace. There was not a pantry, a closet, a clothes-press, a shelf in the house. Not a room was papered: all were covered with a coarse whitewash, smoked, fly-specked and momently falling in great scales. The floors were rough, knotty and warped; the wash-boards were rat-gnawed in every direction; all the woodwork was unpainted and gray with age.

Two beds and a kitchen stove had been set up on the bare floors. On a pine table in the cramped kitchen were a few dishes, tins and pails, a loaf of bread, a ham, some coffee and sugar. Mrs. Lively sat down in the kitchen on a wooden chair with a feeling of utter desolation in her heart. Napoleon looked longingly at the loaf of bread. The doctor flew round in a way that would have cheered anybody not foregone to despondency. He brought in some cobs from the yard and kindled a fire in the stove, filled the tea-kettle, and put some slices of ham to fry and some coffee to boil.

"Go up stairs, dear," he said to Mrs. Lively, "and lie down while I get supper ready. You are tired: I feel as smart as a new whip. I haven't been a soldier for nothing: I'll give you some of the best coffee you ever drank. Nappy, run across the street and see if you can't get a cup of milk: I see the people have a cow. Won't you lie down?" he continued to his wife. She looked so ineffably wretched that his heart ached for her.

"I think I shall feel better if I do something," she said drearily; "but," she continued, firing with something of her old spirit, "how in the world is anybody to do anything here? Not even a dishcloth!"

"Oh, never mind," laughed the doctor, piling the dusty dishes in a pan for washing, "we'll just set the crockery up in this cullender to drain dry."

"We'd better turn hermits, go and winter in a cave, and be done with it. How are we ever to live?"

 "Why, my dear, I never felt so plucky in my life. We mustn't show the white feather: we must prove ourselves worthy of Chicago. Come, now, we'll work to get back to Chicago. We can live economically here, and when we get a little ahead we can start again in Chicago. Only think of these eight rooms and an acre of ground, three-fourths in grapes, for six dollars a month! Ain't it inspiriting? I've seen you at picnics eating with your fingers, drinking from a leaf-cup, making all kinds of shifts and enjoying all the straits. Now we can play picnicking here—play that we are camping out, and that one of these days, when we've bagged our game, we're going home to Chicago. Now, we'll set the table;" and he began moving the dishes, pans and bundles off the pine table on to chairs and the floor.

"Isn't this sweet," said Mrs. Lively, "eating in the kitchen and without a tablecloth?"

"We'll have a dining-room to-morrow, and a tablecloth," said the doctor cheerfully.

Thanks to his friend Harrison's letters, Dr. Lively readily obtained credit for imperative family necessities. If ever anybody merited success as a cheerful worker, it was our doctor. He did the work of ever-so-many men, and almost of one woman. Pray don't despise him when I tell you that he kneaded the bread, to save Mrs. Lively's back; that he did most of the family washing—that is, he did the rubbing, the wringing, the lifting, the hanging out—and once a week he scrubbed. When he wasn't "doing housework" he was in his office, busy, not with patients, but in writing articles for magazines and papers. Then he set to work upon a book, at which he toiled hopefully during the dreary winter, for he was almost ignored as a physician, although there seemed to be considerable sickness. He heard of the other doctor riding all night. Indeed, if one could believe all that was said, this physician never slept. True, this man was not a graduate of medicine. He had been a barber, and had gone directly from the razor to the scalpel; but that did not matter: he had more calls in a week than Dr. Lively had during the winter.

"The idea of being beaten by a barber!" exclaimed Mrs. Lively. "Why don't you advertise yourself?"

"There's no paper here to advertise in."

"Then you ought to have a sign to tell people what you are—that you were surgeon of volunteers in the army; that you had a good practice in Chicago; that you're a graduate of two medical schools; that you write for the medical journals and for the magazines. Why don't you have these things put on a big sign?"

"It would be unprofessional."

"To be professional you must sit in that miserable office and let your family starve. Why don't you denounce this upstart barber?—tell people that he hasn't a diploma—that he doesn't know anything—that he couldn't reduce that hernia and had to call on you?"

"That's opposed to all medical ethics."

"Medical fiddlesticks! You've got to sit here like a maiden, to be wooed and won, and can't lift a finger or speak a word for yourself. Then there's that woman with the broken arm—Joe Smith's wife. Why shouldn't you tell that the barber didn't set it right, and that you had to reset it? I saw some of Joseph Smith's grandchildren the other day," she continued, suddenly changing the subject, "and I must say they don't look like the descendants of a prophet."

For a brief period in the unfolding spring Mrs. Lively experienced a little lifting of her spirits. The season was marvelously beautiful in Nauvoo: one serious expense, that for fuel, was stayed, and there was the promise of increased sickness, and thus increased work for the doctor. But this gleam was followed almost immediately by a shadow: a scientific paper which he had despatched to a leading magazine came back to him with the line, "Well written, but too heavy for our purposes."¹

"I knew it was," said Mrs. Lively. "You write the driest, long-windedest things that ever I read."

Dr. Lively sighed, took his hat and went out, while Mrs. Lively, after some moments of irresolution, set about getting dinner.

"Now, where's your father?" she impatiently demanded when the dinner had been set on the table.

"Dunno," answered Master Napoleon through the potato by which his mouth was already possessed.

The Little Corporal, as he was sometimes called by virtue of his illustrious name, was a lean-faced lad with no friendly rolls of adipose to conceal the fact that he was cramming with all his energies.

"Why in the name of sense can't he come to his dinner?"

Napoleon gave a gulping swallow to clear his tongue. "Dunno," he managed to articulate, and then went off into a violent paroxysm of choking and coughing.

"Why don't you turn your head?" cried the mother, seizing the said member between her two hands and giving it an energetic twist that dislocated a bone or snapped a tendon, one might have surmised from the sharp crick-crack which accompanied the movement. "What in the name of decency makes you pack your mouth in that manner? Are you famished?"

"A'most," answered the recovered Napoleon, resettling himself, face to the table, and resuming the shoveling of mashed potato into his mouth.

"That's a pretty story, after all the breakfast you ate, and the lunch you had not two hours ago! Where under the sun, moon and stars do you put it all?"

"Mouth," responded Napoleon, describing with his strong teeth a semicircle in his slice of brown bread.

"Tell me what can be keeping your father," said Mrs. Lively, returning to her subject.

"Can't."

"He'll come poking along in the course of time, I suppose, when all the hot things are cold, and all the cold things are hot. Just like him. And I  worked myself into a fever to get them on the table piping hot and ice-cold. From stove to cellar, from cellar to well, I rushed, but if I'd worked myself to death's door, he'd stay his stay out, all the same."

"Reason for stayin', I s'pose," suggested Napoleon.

"Yes, of course you'll take his part—you always do. For pity's sake, what has your mother ever done that you should side against her?"

"Dunno."

"Dunno! Of course you don't. I'll tell you: She tended you through all your helpless infancy: she nursed you through teething, and whooping-cough, and measles, and scarlet fever, and chicken-pox, and mercy knows what else. Many's the time she watched with you the livelong night, when your father was snoring and dreaming in the farthest corner of the house, so he mightn't hear your wailing and moaning. She's toiled and slaved for you like a plantation negro, while he—"

"He's comin'," interrupted Napoleon, without for a moment intermitting his potato-shoveling. "Walkin' fast," continued the sententious lad, swallowing immediately half a cup of milk.

Dr. Lively came hurrying into the dining-room.

"For pity's sake, I think it's about time," the wife began pettishly.

"Have you seen my purse anywhere about here?" the gentleman asked with an anxious cadence in his voice.

"Your purse!" shrieked Mrs. Lively, turning short upon her husband and glaring in wild alarm.

"Lost it?" asked Napoleon, digging his fork into a huge potato and transferring it to his plate.

"Go, look in the bed-room, Nappy: I think I must have dropped it there," said the father.

Napoleon rose from his chair, but stopped halfway between sitting and standing for a farewell bite at his bread and butter.

"For mercy's sake, why don't you go along?" Mrs. Lively snapped out. "What do you keep sitting there for?"

 "Ain't a-settin'," responded Nappy, laying hold of his cup for a last swallow.

"Standing there, then?"

"Ain't a-standin'."

"If you don't go along—" and Mrs. Lively started for her son and heir with a threat in every inch of her.

"Am a-goin'," returned the son and heir; and, sure enough, he went.

During this passage between mother and child Dr. Lively had been keeping up an unflagging by-play, searching persistently every part of the dining-room—the mantelpiece, the clock, the cupboard, the shelves.

"In the name of common sense," exclaimed the wife, after watching him a moment, "what's the use of looking in that knife-basket? Shouldn't I have seen it when I set the table if it had been there? Do you think I'm blind? Where did you lose your purse?"

"If I knew where I lost it I'd go and get it."

"Well, where did you have it when you missed it?"

"As well as I can remember I didn't have it when I missed it."

"Well, where did you have it before you missed it?"

"In my pocket."

"Oh yes, this is a pretty time to joke, when my heart is breaking! I shouldn't be surprised to hear of your laughing at my grave. Very well, if you won't tell me where you've been with your purse, I can't help you look for it; and what's more, I won't, and you'll never find it unless I do, Dr. Lively: I can tell you that. You never were known to find anything."

"Not there," said Napoleon re-entering the room and reseating himself at the table. "Milk, please," he continued, extending his cup toward his mother.

"You ain't going to eating again?" cried the lady.

"Am."

"Where do you put it all? I believe in my soul—Are your legs hollow?"

"Dunno."

"Do, my dear," remonstrated Dr. Lively, "let the child eat all he wants. You keep up an everlasting nagging, as though you begrudged him every mouthful he swallows."

"Oh, it's fine of you to talk, when you lose all the money that comes into the family—five thousand dollars in Chicago, and sixty dollars now, for I'll warrant you hadn't paid out a cent of it; and all those accounts against us! Had you paid any bills? had you? You won't answer, but you needn't think to escape and deceive me by such a shallow trick. If you'd paid a bill you'd been keen enough to tell it: you'd have shouted it out long ago. Pretty management! Just like you, shiftless! Why in the name of the five senses didn't you pay out the money before you lost the purse? You might have known you were going to lose it: you always lose everything."

"Bread, please," called Napoleon, who had taken advantage of the confusion to sweep the bread-plate clean.

"In the name of wonder!" exclaimed the mother, snatching a half loaf from the pantry. "There! take it and eat it, and burst—Do," she continued, turning to Dr. Lively, "stop your tramp, tramping round this room, and come and eat your dinner. There's not an atom of reason in spending your time looking for that purse. You'll never see it again. Like enough you dropped it down the well: it would be just like you. I just know that purse is down that well. Carelessness! the idea of dropping your purse down the well!"

Without heeding the rattle, Napoleon went on eating and Dr. Lively went on searching—now in the dining-room, now in the kitchen, now in the hall.

Mrs. Lively soon returned to her life-work: "What's the sense in poking, and poking, and poking around, and around, and around? Mortal eyes will never see that purse again. I've no question but you put it in the stove for a chip this morning when you made the fire. Who ever heard of another man kindling a fire with a purse? Will you eat your dinner, Dr. Lively, or shall I clear away the table? I can't have the work standing round all day."

Notwithstanding his worry, the doctor was hungry, so he replied by seating himself at the table. "There's nothing here to eat," he said, glancing at the empty dishes and plates.

"If that boy hasn't cleared off every dish!" cried the housekeeper. "Why didn't you lick the platters clean, and be done with it?" and she seized an empty dish in either hand and disappeared to replenish it.

While her husband took his dinner she went up stairs and ransacked the bed-room for the missing purse. "What are you sitting there for?" she exclaimed, suddenly re-entering the dining-room, where Dr. Lively was sitting with his arms on the table. "Why don't you get up and look for that purse you lost?"

"No use, you said," Napoleon put in by way of reminder.

"For pity's sake, arn't you done eating yet?"

"Just am," answered the corporal, rising from his seat, yet chewing industriously.

Mrs. Lively began to gather the dirty dishes into a pan. "What are you going to do about it, Dr. Lively?" she asked meanwhile.

"I don't know what we can do about it, except to cut off corners—live more economically."

"As if we could!" cried Mrs. Lively, all ablaze. "Where are there any corners to cut off? In the name of charity, tell me. I've cut and shaved until life is as round and as bare as this plate." With a mighty rattle and clatter she threw the said plate into the dish-pan and jerked up a platter from the table. Holding it in her left hand, she proceeded: "Do you know, Dr. Lively, what your family lives on? Potatoes, Dr. Lively—potatoes; that is, mostly. How much do I pay out a month for help? A half cent? Not a quarter of it. How much is wasted in my housekeeping? Not a single crumb. It would keep any common woman busy cooking for that boy. I tell you, Dr. Lively, I can't economize any more than I do and have done. I might wring and twist and screw in every possible direction, and at the year's end there wouldn't be a nickel to show for all the wringing and twisting  and screwing. There's only one way in which the purse can be made up—there's only one way in which economy is possible. You can save that money, Dr. Lively: you're the only member of the family who has a luxury."

"Hang me with a grapevine if I've got any luxury!" said the doctor with something of an amused expression on his face.

"Tobacco," suggested Napoleon.

"Yes, it's tobacco. You can give up the nasty weed, the filthy habit."

"Do it?" asked Napoleon.

"Don't think I shall," replied the doctor coolly.

"Then I'll save the money," responded Mrs. Lively with heroic voice and manner. "I had forgotten: there is one other way. Dr. Lively, I'm housekeeper, laundress, cook, everything to your family. And what do I get for it? Less than any twelve-year-old girl who goes out to service. I have the blessed privilege of lodging in this old Mormon rat-hole, and I have just enough of the very cheapest victuals to keep the breath in my body; and one single, solitary thing that is not absolutely necessary to my existence—one thing that I could possibly live without."

"What?" asked Napoleon, gaping and staring.

"It is sugar—sugar in my coffee. I'll drink my coffee without sugar till that sixty dollars is made up. I'll never touch sugar again till that money is made good—never!" and into the kitchen sailed Mrs. Lively with her pan of dishes.

"Sugar, please," demanded Napoleon the next morning at the breakfast-table. Dr. Lively passed over the sugar-bowl.

"How can you have the heart to take so much?" said the mother, watching Napoleon as he emptied one heaping spoonful and then another into his coffee-cup. "But I might have known you'd leave your mother to bear the burden all alone. All the economizing, all the self-denial, must come on my shoulders. And just look at me!—nothing but skin and bones. I've got to make up everybody's losses,  everybody's wasting. It's a rare thing if I get a warm meal with the rest of you: I'm all the while eating up the cold victuals and scraps and burnt things that nobody else will eat."

"I'd eat 'em," said Napoleon.

"Of course you'd eat them. There's nothing you wouldn't eat, in the heavens above or the earth beneath. And all the thanks I get is to be taunted with stinginess."

"Take some?" asked Napoleon, passing the sugar-bowl to his mother.

"Never!" she exclaimed, drawing back as though a viper had been extended to her. "Take the thing away—set it down there by your father's plate. I said I'd use no more sugar till that money was made good. When I say a thing I mean it."

"Now, Priscilla," remonstrated the doctor, "what is the use of breaking in on your lifelong habits? You'll make yourself sick, that's all."

"Dr. Lively, you're trying to tempt me: why can't you uphold me? It will be hard enough at best to make the sacrifice. Yes, I shall make myself sick, but it won't hurt anybody but me. I can get well again, as I've always had to."

"Perhaps so, after a druggist's bill and hired girl's wages. Every spoonful of sugar you save may cost you ten dollars."

"Then, why don't you give up that vile tobacco? I won't use any sugar till you do. All you care about is the money my sickness will cost—my suffering is nothing." Mrs. Lively raised her cup to her lip, then set it back in the saucer with a haste that sent the contents splashing over the sides.

"Bitter?" asked Napoleon.

"Bitter! of course it's bitter—bitter as tansy. It sends the chills creeping up and down my backbone, and the top of my head feels as if it was crawling off. I believe I shall lose my scalp if I don't use sugar."

"To stick it on?" asked Napoleon with a stolid face.

"Oh, it's beautiful in my only child to laugh at a mother's discomfort!" "Ain't a-laughin'," he replied.

"What are you doing if you ain't laughing?"

"Eatin'."

"Of course: you're always eating." Again Mrs. Lively essayed her coffee, but fell back in her chair with an unutterable look. "Oh, I can't!—I cannot do it!" she exclaimed.

"Don't," Napoleon advised.

Mrs. Lively with a sudden jerk sat bolt upright, as straight as a crock. "Who asked you for your advice?" she demanded sharply.

The young Lively swallowed three times distinctly, and then replied, while shaking the pepper-box over his potato, "Nobody."

"Then, why can't you keep it to yourself?"

"Can."

"Then, why don't you do it?"

"Do."

"You exasperating boy! Wouldn't you die if you didn't get the last word?"

"Dunno."

"Look here, Napoleon Lively: you've got to stop your everlasting talking. Your chatter, chatter, chatter just tries me to death. I'm not—"

Here Dr. Lively, overcome with the absurdity of this charge, did a very unusual thing. He broke into laughter so prolonged and overwhelming that Mrs. Lively, after some signal failures to edge in a word of explanation, left the table in the midst of the uproar and dashed up stairs, where she jerked and pounded the beds with a will.

The next day Mrs. Lively was canning some cherries which the doctor had taken in pay for a prescription. The air was filled with the mingled odor of the boiling fruit and of burning sealing-wax. The cans were acting with outrageous perversity, for they were second-hand and the covers ill-fitting. Her blood was almost up to fainting heat, and she was worried all over. She had to do all her preserving in a pint cup, as she expressed it in her contempt for the diminutive proportions of the saucepan which she was using.

"Here 'tis," said Napoleon, suddenly appearing at the kitchen-door.

"Here what is?" demanded Mrs. Lively shortly, without looking up. Her two hands were engaged—one in pressing the cover on a can, the other in pouring wax where a bubble persistently appeared.

"This," answered Napoleon.

"What?"

"Purse."

"Purse!" she screamed. "Is the money in it?" She dropped her work and took eager possession of it. "Where did you find it?"

"Big apple tree," replied Napoleon.

"Under the apple tree?"

"Fork," was the lad's emendation.

"Why in the name of sense do you have to bite off all your sentences? They are like a chicken with its head off. Do you mean to say that you found the purse in the fork of the big apple tree?"

"Do; and pipe."

"Pipe! of course. One might track your father through a howling wilderness by the pipes he'd leave at every half mile. Don't let him know you've found the purse, and to-morrow morning I'm going to see if I can't have some of his bills paid before the money is lost, as it would be if he should get it in his hands."

The next morning Mrs. Lively felt under her pillow, as on a former occasion, and, as on that former occasion, found the purse where she had put it the night before. She gave it into Napoleon's hands after breakfast, and despatched him to settle the bills. In less than half an hour he was back.

"Did you pay all the bills?" she asked.

"No."

"How many?"

"None."

"Why don't you go along and pay those bills, as I bade you?"

"Have been."

"Then, why didn't you settle the bills?"

"Couldn't."

"If you don't tell me what's the matter—Why couldn't you?"

"No money!"

"No money? Where's the purse?"

"Here 'tis;" and he handed it to her.

 She opened it and found it empty. "Where's the money?" she demanded in great alarm.

"Dunno."

"What did you do with it?"

"Nothin'."

By dint of a few dozen more questions she arrived at the information that when he had opened the purse to pay the first bill he found it empty.

"Why didn't you look on the floor?"

"Did look."

"And feel in your pocket?"

"Did."

"I suppose you couldn't be satisfied till you'd opened the purse to count the money. You're a perfect Charity Cockloft with your curiosity. And then you went off into one of your dreams, and forgot to clasp the purse. Go look for it right at the spot where you counted the money."

"Didn't count it."

"Well, where you opened the purse in the street."

"Didn't open it in the street."

"The money just crawled out of the purse, did it?"

"Dunno."

The house was searched, the store, the street, but all in vain. Dr. Lively was questioned: Did he take the money from the purse when it was under her pillow? He didn't even know before that the purse had been found. The house had been everywhere securely fastened, and the bed-room door locked.

"Well, it's very mysterious," said Mrs. Lively. "That money went just as the other did in Chicago. We must be haunted by the spirit of some burglar or miser."

Cards were posted in the stores and post-office, offering five dollars reward for the lost money.

"A pretty affair," said Mrs. Lively, "to payout five dollars just for somebody's shiftlessness!"

"To recover sixty we can afford to pay five," said the doctor.

Shortly after this an express package from Chicago was delivered for the doctor at his door. Mrs. Lively was quite excited, hoping she scarce knew what  from this arrival. The half hour till the doctor came home to tea seemed interminable. She sat by watching eagerly as the doctor cut the cords and broke the seals and unwrapped—what? Some things very beautiful, but nothing that could answer that ceaseless, persistent cry of the human, "What shall we eat, what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?"

"Nothing but some more of those miserable sea-weeds!" exclaimed Mrs. Lively, "and the express on them was fifty cents."

"They are beautiful," cried the doctor with enthusiasm.

"Beautiful! What have we got to do with the beautiful? We've done with the beautiful for ever. I feel as if I never wanted to see anything beautiful again. And you'll have to spend your time collecting geodes to send back for the miserable trash. I hate those old sea-weeds. You left everything we owned to perish in that fire, and brought away only that case of sea-weeds. I'll take it some time to start the fire in the stove. Beautiful! What right have you to think of the beautiful? It's a disgrace to be as poor as we are. The very bread for this supper isn't paid for, and never will be. Come to supper!" She snapped out these last words in a way inimitable and indescribable.

"Priscilla," said the husband in a sad, solemn way, "I never knew anybody in my life who seemed so utterly exasperated by poverty as you."

"You never knew anybody else that was tried by such poverty."

"I saw thousands after the Chicago fire."

"Yes, when they had the excitement all about them."

"And who is the object of your exasperation? Who is responsible for your circumstances? Who but God?"

"God didn't lose that sixty dollars, and He didn't lose that money in Chicago."

"Well, now, my dear, I'm working hard at my book, and I think I'm making a good thing of it. I hope it'll bring us a lift."

"A book on that horrid subject isn't going to sell. I wouldn't touch it with a pair of tongs: I'd run from it. Nobody'll read it but a few old long-haired geologists. I'd like to know what good all your geology and botany and those other horrid things ever did you. You couldn't make a cent out of all them put together. You're always paying expressage on fossils and bugs and sea-weeds and trash. All that comes of it is just waste."

"Does anything but waste come of your fault-finding?"

"Now, who's finding fault?"

Dr. Lively left the table and took down his case of sea-weeds, and turned it over in his hand.

"The only thing that came through the fire," he said musingly.

"And of what account is it?" said Mrs. Lively.

"It may prove to be of value," he said. "To-night's addition will make my collection very fine. I may take some premiums on it at fairs." He sat down and began to compare the specimens just received with his previous collection.

"What is the use of looking over those things—miserable sea-weeds? You'd better bring in some wood and draw some water: it nearly breaks my back to draw water up that rickety-rackety well."

"Good Heavens!" cried Dr. Lively, springing to his feet like one electrified. "What does it mean?"

Mrs. Lively gazed at him: his hand was full of money, greenbacks.

"I found them here, among the sea-weeds in the case." He counted them out on the table, Mrs. Lively standing by watching him, for once speechless. "It's just the amount we lost, and the same bills. See here: ten five-hundred-dollar bills, and this change that we lost in Chicago; and four ten-dollar bills and four fives that were lost here. They are the same bills. Who put them here?"

"I don't know," replied Mrs. Lively in a low tone: "I didn't." She spoke as though she was dealing with something supernatural.

In the case of sea-weeds, the only thing that came through the fire! How often had she pronounced it worthless! What a spite she had conceived against it! How the sight of it had all along exasperated her!

"It is very strange," said the doctor, believing in his secret soul that his wife had put the money there and forgotten it. "Have you no recollection of putting the money here?" he said cautiously. "Try to think."

"I never put it there," she said in a subdued, dazed way: "I know I never did."

Napoleon came in eating an apple. He was informed of the discovery, and closely questioned. "Don't know nothin' 'bout it," he declared. "Go back to Chicago?" he asked.

"Yes," answered the doctor. "The money's here, however unaccountably: we'll accept the fact and thank God." The doctor's lip quivered, and Mrs. Lively burst into tears. "We will go back home, to the most wonderful city in the world. If possible, we'll buy the very lot where we lived, and build a little house. Many of those who lived in the neighborhood, my old patients, will return, and so I shall have a practice begun. I shall start for Chicago in the morning. You can make an auction of the few traps we have here, and follow as soon as possible. You'll find me at Mrs. B——'s boarding-house on Congress street."

There was some further planning, so that it was eleven o'clock before they retired. Napoleon went to bed hungry that night, if indeed since the Chicago fire he had ever gone to bed in any other condition. He dropped off to sleep, however, and all through his dreams he was eating—oh such good things!—juicy steaks, feathery biscuits, flaky pies, baked apples and cream. He awoke with an empty feeling, an old familiar feeling, which had often caused him to awake contemplating a midnight raid on the cupboard. But poor Napoleon had been restrained by conscientious scruples and by the fear of his mother's tongue, for he  appreciated the altered condition of the family. But now they were all rich again there was no longer any necessity for pinching his stomach. There were in the cupboard some biscuits intended for breakfast, and some cold ham. He remembered how tempting they had looked as his mother set them away. Now they fairly haunted him as he lay thinking how favorable the moonlight was to his contemplated burglary. He left his bed, not stealthily: he was not of a nature to be specially mortified by discovery. He made his way to the dining-room. In one of the recesses made by the chimney Dr. Lively had constructed a kind of cupboard, and in the other recess he had put up some shelves, where their few books and the case of sea-weeds lay. Napoleon cut some generous slices of ham, and with the biscuits constructed several sandwiches. Then he seated himself by the window for the benefit of the moonlight. This brought him within a few feet of the shelves where the sea-weeds were. There he sat in his night-dress, his bare feet on the chair-round, vigorously eating his sandwiches. Suddenly he heard a soft, stealthy, gliding noise in the hall. It was as though trailing drapery was sweeping over the naked floor. He gave a gulping swallow, paused in his eating and listened intently. The stillness of death reigned through the house. He crammed half a sandwich in his mouth and began a cautious chewing. Again the trailing sound, and again his jaws were stilled. At the door entered a tall figure in flowing white robes. Steadily it advanced upon him, seeming to walk or glide on the air. For once there was something in which he was more interested than in eating. At last the ghost stood close beside him, and he saw with his staring eyes that it wore a veil and carried its left hand in its bosom. The boy sat rooted with horror, his tongue loaded, his cheeks puffed with his feast, afraid to swallow lest the noise of the act should reveal him. The figure withdrew its hand from its bosom: it held a roll of bankbills. It reached out for the case of sea-weeds, laid the  bills carefully between the cards, returned these to the case and the case to the shelf. It stood a moment in the broad moonlight, then lifted the veil, and revealed to the astonished boy the face of his mother. She stood within two feet of him, her eyes on his face, but she did not speak.

"Mother! mother!" he cried with a sense of the supernatural on him, "what's the matter?" He seized her by the arm: he shook her.

"What is it? what do you want? where am I? what does this mean?" were questions she asked like one newly awakened. "What are you doing here, Napoleon?"

"Eatin'."

"Eating! what for?"

"Hungry."

"What time is it?"

"Dunno."

"What am I doing here?"

"Hidin' money;" and Napoleon took a bite from his long-neglected sandwich.

"What do you mean?"

"Mean that."

"Stop bobbing off your sentences. Tell me what it all means."

Napoleon stood up, laid his sandwiches on the chair, took down the sea-weeds and showed her the bills among them.

"Who put these here?"

"You."

"When?"

"Just now."

"I did not."

"You did."

By this time Dr. Lively, who had been restless and excited, was awake, and down he came to the family gathering. By dint of persistent inquiries he at length arrived at the facts in the case, and drew the inevitable conclusion that his wife had been walking in her sleep, and that to her somnambulism were to be referred the mysterious emptyings of his purse.

Mrs. Lively was mortified and subdued at being convicted of all the mischief which she had so persistently charged to her husband. And she said this to him with her arms in a very unusual position—that is, around her husband's neck.

"Oh, you needn't feel that way," he said, choking back the quick tears. "If you hadn't hid that money maybe we never could have got back home. But I'll hide my own money, after this, while I'm awake: I sha'n't give you another chance to hide money in sea-weeds. Strange, I should have snatched just those sea-weeds, and left everything else to burn! All these things make me feel that God has been very near us."

"Yes," said the wife, "He has whipped me till He's made me mind."

The husband kissed her good-bye, for he was starting for Chicago. Then he stepped out into the dewy morning, and hurried along the silent streets, witnesses of the crushed aspirations of the thousands who had gone out from them. But he thought not of this. A gorgeous Aurora was coming up the eastern heights: his lost love was found. He was going home: all earth was glorified.

SARAH WINTER KELLOGG.

Footnote 1:

While desirous of affording full scope to a talent for realistic description, we must protest against allusions bordering on personality.—ED.